Dear Yuletide '21 Author

[robberbaroness]

 

Great to meet you, potential author! I’m RobberBaroness on AO3. Thank you for picking one of my fandoms, and welcome to one of the best fannish times of the year! I’m really excited by the nominated fandoms this year (especially mine!), and eager to see what kind of stories they spark.

General likes: Fairy tales, gothic literature, film noir, revenge tragedies, bodice rippers, melodrama, dark comedy, heroine/villain/hero love triangles, heroine/villain dynamics, rescue romance, mythology, maledom (non and dubcon are welcome), bdsm, bondage, character studies, what-if AUs, genre swapping AUs, vampires, folklore, knight and lady dynamics, epistolary fic,  interactive fiction.

DNWs: Pushing away female characters, fetish universes, character bashing, fully mundane AUs for fantastical settings, unrequested identity headcanons, Christmas or other Christian holiday-themed fic, abrupt character death (character death fully earned and explored is fine), A/B/O, scat, watersports, comeplay.

I’m open to both Crueltide and Yuleporn, but I’m also okay with getting neither of those.

Waxwork (1988)

Sarah, China, Dracula, Marquis de Sade

Such a fun, silly movie!  And absolutely perfect for anyone who likes to read or write Problematic Fanfiction.  You can write about all four of those characters, or just focus on one of the two heroine/villain ships (China/Dracula or Sarah/de Sade.)  The movie (and its sequel) have lots of references and homages to classic horror movies, so that would be fun to see here!  In any case, this is a great place to pile on all the gothic tropes and aesthetics your heart desires. If you write sex, I know the real life Marquis de Sade was into some of my DNWs, but try to steer clear of them if you can.

Some ideas:

• Sarah and China are very much positioned as the Virgin and the Whore, respectively, but surely there must be some more to their characters than that!  What if they were the two survivors who had to rally troops of monster-hunters against the forces of darkness?  (Mark can be there too if you want, I have nothing against him.)  How would Sarah deal with being put in a position of leadership?  How would China deal with having to think about the well-being of people other than herself?

• Tell me about the women whose situations the girls found themselves in, Dracula’s victim and the Marquis’ plaything.  Tell me how they ended up in those situations.  Alternately, what if they found themselves in America in the 1980s when Sarah and China took their places?

• Explore the darkly sexy situations Sarah and/or China were in if the camera hadn’t cut away (China) or Mark hadn’t been there to rescue them (Sarah.)  Straightforward porny stuff is fine, or you could spin it into a full story of the aftermath.  (I know the Marquis plans to whip Sarah to death, but I’d rather that didn’t happen- he can spare her life or she can escape, whatever you want.)  This can be a seductive dom-sub scene, full on noncon, or anything in between.

• Dracula and/or the Marquis de Sade don’t get killed and have to adapt to the modern era.  Will China and/or Sarah pledge themselves to hunting them down, or grudgingly and grumblingly help them adjust?

• The sequel has characters hopping between times and alternate universes, so if you want to bring that into the events of the first movie, that could be fun.  Sarah and China find themselves running from one sexy horror movie scene to the next, having to deal with a whole range of hot villains interested in them!

Tarot of the Haunted House

Raven Wandsworth | The Fool, Knight of Cups, Worldbuilding

If you are such a magical person as to have offered fic for a tarot deck, thank you so much! This is one of my favorite decks, illustrating the Fool’s Journey from beginning to end through melodramatic yet truly eerie adventures. I love the recurring characters, I love that it blends gothic romance novels with bloodier Hammer Horror fare, and I love all the little stories contained within the suits. Horror, romance, or something playing off the tarot’s mysticism- give me what you’ve got!

Some ideas:

• This house seems to have endless secrets hidden within. Tell me some of them, and just why and how Raven ended up owning it on the World card! You can take one of the stories told by the suits (I particularly like the one about the cult!) and expand it into a full narrative. Is this house the nexus of great power, is there a curse, or is it all tied into being owned by magical and dangerous people?

• I love that Raven and the Knight of Cups are an item! You could flesh out his backstory as an angel- a fallen angel, or here for a purpose? A romance could be an oasis of happiness against a stormy backdrop, or a source of dangerous attraction on its own. And how does he interact with all the other characters? Are there allies, enemies, rivals for Raven?

• If all else fails, draw yourself a spread and come up with something based on that! Any use of lore around the tarot would be a wonderful addition here (and I’m not too concerned about historical accuracy!)

Climax - 2018

Selva, Psyche

This movie absolutely blew my mind. The whole experience was so bizarre and horrible and beautiful, I knew I had to have more of it. I saw a description that said Gaspar Noe’s films are all about immersion and so this is like having actually been to a fucked up party, and I think I agree! The movie itself is maddening so you can get a bit experimental with form if you want (more interviews?), or simply with the psychology of the characters. I love that Selva, the closest thing to our protagonist and our Final Girl, survives not because she’s the only morally pure character but because the actress and director decided together that this is how it would go for her, and that she quite literally makes love not war. I’m fascinated by questions around Psyche- was she a sadist who wanted to hurt everyone around her, a naive hippie who thought she was helping everyone expand their consciousnesses, or a callous manipulator who simply wanted to see what would happen?

Some ideas:

• I thought of the maenads and of the play The Bacchae watching this movie, and I think playing out this story in different times and places could bring out all kinds of themes and twists.  Maenads turn a celebration on its head, a ball at pre-revolutionary Versailles goes mad, a 1920s artist’s cabaret has the ultimate surrealist experience. You can also make this fit a mythological setting- is Psyche a witch? Does her name connect her to the bride of Eros?

• What happens if Selva decides to take revenge on Psyche for all the lives lost because of her? You could dip into the whole New French Extremity genre and send her on a brutal journey where she loses what remains of her sanity, or fall into Revenge Tragedy mode where she seeks to give Psyche something poetically just, even if it means giving up her own morality or even life. In either case, can she go through with it? Would Psyche retaliate? (I would prefer if Psyche didn’t get to kill Selva and walk away fine here, but that doesn’t mean she can’t end up dead at the end.)

• Could all that psychic agony and ecstacy leave behind a dance troupe of ghosts? Could this warehouse turn into a miniature version of the Overlook Hotel where shades of the dead dance forever, whether they understand their own existence or not? If Selva came back, what would she find? If Psyche came back, what would they do to her?

Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey

Worldbuilding

This world delights and frustrates me in equal measure, and Yuletide has been a consistently great place to find fic delving into all its open questions! I love every moment spent in the Night Court in the books, and I love the chance to flesh it out. I tagged worldbuilding not because I don’t love Phedre (I do love her!) but because I want to see every aspect that she didn’t have the chance to show us. Night Court worldbuilding would make me very happy.

Some ideas:

• I always, always want to read fic about the individual houses, either during assignations or behind the scenes. What’s it like to be in Valerian or Mandrake houses if you don’t have Phedre’s extreme masochism? What the hell do they do in Cereus house, anyway? This sort of thing could be answered via porn, or just by some of the adepts going about their daily lives, within their own houses or tangling with each other.

• My biggest problem with the series is its handling of Jewish and Romani people. Do you think you could do a better job? In particular, do you think you could come up with a faction of Judaism that hasn’t been swallowed up by “Yeshuites”, and what relationship could they have to the Night Court or broader society if they won’t pay homage to foreign priests?

Cabin in the Woods

Worldbuilding

This movie is an absolute gold-mine of worldbuilding potential for a horror fan. So many monsters! So many different places and eras for rituals to happen! So much potential in showing previous years, delving into the histories of the monsters, and exploring what happens in the apocalypse and whether anyone could survive. Throw in all the horror allusions and references you  want, and you can come up with something funny, frightening or even deep hidden within the premise.

Some ideas: 

• I would love to see rituals from previous times and places that explore different horror subgenres. Classic gothic literature! 1950s mad science movies! Brutal Italian 1980s exploitation movies! Maybe the procedure has changed a bit over the years, or it’s a bit different in other countries. Bring in the formula for any kind of horror you want and tell me how things went to plan- or, as is known to happen, how it all went awry.

• What’s the deal with the monsters? Do they have any connection to the evil gods? How are they caught, and do they ever escape (aside from the big monster mash at the end of the movie)? Are any of them remotely sympathetic? Do they have to be revived if killed at the end of a ritual?

• The Japanese schoolgirls who turned the evil spirit into a happy little frog went on to use their magic to defeat the gods and save the world. I believe this. Tell me about it.

Happy Yuletide, and I hope you have fun with this!