William Lazenbyotch

Dear Yuletide Author Letter

Sun, 21 Oct 2018 03:35:20 GMT

Dear Yuletide Author,

Thank you so much for writing for me (and for, if you encountered it, dealing with my prior, lackluster placeholder letter). I'm glad we've matched on one of the many Victorian novels with which I happen to be obsessed, and I look forward to whatever you end up working on. I only requested a few fandoms, all of which I am very fond, and I'm psyched to see what you come up with.

I really like darkfic and angst, and I'm also very open to receiving all manner of messed up porn, but I am also very pleased to receive all manner of lighter, smut-free works. I will honestly like pretty much anything that's thoughtful and that tries to match the tone/atmosphere/style of the original pieces.

Note on Crossovers: If there's a non-realist novel (sci-fi, horror, sensation etc) that was written and/or set around the second half of the nineteenth century and you have a good idea for a crossover between it and one of these works, feel free to go wild. I'm not terribly keen on things that take these works out of the period/setting/style, though so I'd request no crossovers with works from other eras or that have very different styles.

Note on Commenting: I have a major upcoming medical event that will likely go down in late December, and I might not be able to comment on your work right away as a result. I assure you, however, I will read and comment as soon as I am able.

General

General Likes: angst; messed up/dysfunctional relationships; unrequited love; subtle/ambiguous horror; attention to historical minutiae; hurt/comfort; whump; bittersweet endings; ambiguous endings; serious characters being uncharacteristically emotive/sentimental/cute

General Kinks (if you want to go that route and can make it work): dubcon and noncon; somnophillia/sexsomnia; mesmerism/hypnosis/mind control; violence/blood/torture/gore; strangulation

DNW: A/B/O; scat/watersports/emetophillia; ageplay or consensual/romanticized cross-generational incest

Prompts

Dracula (Quincey P. Morris, Jack Seward)

Very vague starter prompts from optional details: Jack Seward's my absolute fave on account of him being a broody loser. Quincey P. Morris is pretty much everyone else's fave on account of him being made out of sunshine and America. I suggest they make out. Alternatively, I suggest that they have heartfelt, introspective conversations in the snowfields of Transylvania as they approach the novel's final battle. (These two things can be combined.) Really though, it is hard to write fic involving both characters that I will not adore.

Some more prompts, now that I'm actually sitting down to write this:

Jack and Quincey navigating that really awkward get together with Arthur post proposal day, possibly getting intoxicated to widely varying degrees on account of Jack having imbibed additional chemicals and Quincey, in all likelihood, having the stomach of a concrete ox.
Jack and Quincey meeting for the first time in the midst of some manner of globe-trotting adventure and doing something like hunting wolves in Siberia (possibly huddling together for warmth in the process).
Things go wrong. Our two intrepid heroes are captured by Dracula's forces in the final stretch of the novel before they reach the meet up point. Terrible things happen.
Explorations of Jack having all sorts of survivor's guilt, given that he and Quincey spent the last few weeks before his death traveling together. Alternatively, an AU where Jack dies in the final confrontation and Quincey lives on with a similar examination of the resultant emotional fallout.

The Invisible Man (Griffin)

Very vague starter prompts from optional details: Griffin is awful. I love him. I would really love fic about awful things happening to him. Examinations of how much it sucks to be naked, cold, and invisible; explorations of his messed up relationship with his dad; melodramatic takes on his relationship with Kemp... all good ideas for potential awfulness.

Some more prompts, now that I'm actually sitting down to write this:

Anything dealing with Griffin and his relationship to the nameless girl he meets at his father's funeral would be lovely. That entire scene is super chilling, and one of my favorite points in the novel.
Griffin surviving the final confrontation with Kemp and the Ipingites and dealing with the rage/horror of being captured and tried for Wicksteed's murder.
I really sort of want to know what Griffin was like as a disgruntled grad student resentfully teaching college students' chemistry while anxiously resenting his adviser. Like, seriously, can you imagine this man teaching undergraduate anything? Exploring the ways that his supposedly predatory mentor and he actually get on also has a lot of potential (both in a tropey, awful, possibly-porny sense should one go with him being genuinely malevolent and in an angsty, neurotic, character-studyish sense should one go with Griffin being paranoid).

The Moonstone (Ezra Jennings)

Very vague starter prompts from optional details: If it wasn't readily apparent, I'm massively into dysfunctional 19th century men of science with substance abuse problems. The never spoken romantic past Jennings alludes to that motivates his intercession? Personal angst about being of mixed descent and having piebaldism in Victorian England? General sadtimes opium addiction narratives? I am game for all of that.

Some more prompts, now that I'm actually sitting down to write this:

An examination of Jennings' thoughts on the brahmins and their entanglement in the affair (possibly even a chance encounter, given how those guys get around). As the two instances of racially marked outsiders in the text, I think there's interesting things to be done here.
Given their similar, tragic, clearly written by a sensation novelist, archetypes, anything comparing Jenning's story to Rosanna's would also have a lot of potential.
Dark stories of the past in which Jennings himself had some manner of terrible mishap with drugs, hypnotism, or trance states.

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Trick or Treat Author Letter

Tue, 18 Sep 2018 22:10:06 GMT

Hello there, and thank you so much for writing for me (and for bearing with the temporary absence of a proper letter). I’m psyched for this exchange, being a person who is way too into late nineteenth-century Gothic and canons rather suitable to the season.

I’ll be upfront in saying that I like darkfic a lot, and that I mostly selected Tricks in keeping with this. I’m totally up for porn if it is porn you are inclined to write, but I also generally acknowledge that a lot of the stuff that interests me on that front might not be up everyone’s alley as a writer. I’ve tried to include some non-porny, not-too-terribly-dark prompts for each canon, and I want to emphasize that you do not need to commit to anything with graphic sex and/or over-the-top misery if that’s not your jam.

If you enjoy writing crossovers and you have a great idea, I’m game for any of these canons being combined with one another or with other material from the same rough time period and genre (Jekyll and Hyde, Dorian Gray, etc…) I’d appreciate it if you refrained, though, from crossovers with wildly diverging settings and/or themes.

Likes: angst; messed up/dysfunctional relationships; unrequited love; subtle/ambiguous horror; attention to historical minutiae; hurt/comfort; whump

Art Likes: bold, strong lines; detailed backgrounds; tiny details with a lot of symbolic value

Kinks: dubcon/noncon; somnophillia/sexsomnia; mesmerism/hypnosis/mind control; violence/blood/torture/gore; strangulation

DNW: A/B/O; scat/watersports/emetophillia; ageplay or consensual/romanticized cross-generational incest (messed up, non-consensual scenarios between characters like Griffin and his father or Marageret and Abel would be fine)

Dracula (John Seward)

John/Jack Seward is one of my favorite literary characters, and I'm interested in anything that explores him, his darker impulses towards unethical science, and his myriad neurotic relationships to Stoker’s other protagonists.

Prompts:

Renfield returns, as a vampire, and attempts to enact revenge and/or bestow enlightenment on Jack.
Jack, on the night that he falls asleep while assigned to watch Lucy, awakens in the night to witness the vampire at work, and is either helpless to stop what transpires or forced into becoming a victim himself or an unwilling participant.
In the aftermath of Lucy’s death, Jack and one of the other suitors engage in some sort of manful, Stokerian bonding through grief (bonus points for double tragic Quincey/Jack interactions in the days immediately prior to Quincey’s death).
Jack gives in to his temptations to violate ethical boundaries in the name of furthering brain science and veers towards going full mad scientist.
Years after the events of the novel, Jack has other brushes with the supernatural (perhaps as a doctor perhaps as a former doctor turned monster hunter) that make him think back to the past.

The Beetle (Sidney Atherton, Paul Lessingham, The Beetle, The Woman of the Songs)

The Beetle is a tripped out nightmare of Victorian sexual and nationalistic paranoias, and I adore it in all of its over the top bizareness. I particularly adore Sydney Atherton, who is totally a malevolent, age of decadence supervillain who just happens to not be the antagonist of the novel he inhabits. I’m also rather interested in the general concept of a gender ambiguous monster from a cult of murderorgiests victimizing various men and women. Feel free to delve into the awful subtexts of this mess and render them text texts if your heart so desires.

Prompts :

Any elaboration of the terrible torments that Paul Lessingham experienced during his captivity in Egypt.
The Beetle hates Paul Lessingham. Atherton hates Paul Lessingham. What if they were to become allies and hate Paul Lessingham together? Would Sydney be inducted into whatever world of horrible exoticized murderorgies that the Beetle hails from? Would the Beetle gain access to the destructive power of Sydney’s unstoppable death gas?
The Beetle is, ultimately, never caught. What’s the aftermath? How do Sydney and/or Paul react to this not-quite-satisfying conclusion and Marjorie’s confinement?
Lurid descriptions of the Beetle actually succeeding in its campaign of revenge against Paul, either through attacking Paul himself or through using Margorie
General world building regarding the cult, the Woman of the Songs, and the Beetle’s origins.

The Invisible Man (Griffin)

Griffin is this magnificently tragic loser trapped in a largely comedic novella in which he has virtually no unmitigated narrative voice. Despite being a thoroughly awful dude, I nevertheless find him to be immensely interesting and sympathetic, and would love anything that looks at his isolation, vulnerability, and immense separation from mankind in detail.

Prompts :

Griffin showing up bleeding and slightly crazy on Kemp’s doorstep is a great opening for hurt/comfort scenarios, for Kemp taking advantage of an injured Griffin, or for Griffin irrationally attacking an injured Kemp.
Somebody in the midst of the hysteria around Iping realizing that an Invisible Man is a near perfect victim in addition to being a near perfect criminal, particularly when his is an accused murderer that seems to be outside of the law.
An examination of what Griffin and Kemp’s relationship was like at King’s College such that Griffin instantly recognizes Kemp and views him as a friend but Kemp seems to have largely forgotten Griffin.
A closer look at Griffin’s relationship to the dead father he supposedly doesn’t hate, to the manipulative graduate adviser who supposedly wanted to steal his research, or to the mysterious woman he meets at the funeral, whom he dismisses as “a very ordinary person.”

Note if You’re Up for Smut: I am, in fact, interested in the fact that fluids entering or exiting Griffin’s body would be visible even if he is not.

The Jewel of Seven Stars (Margaret Trelawney, Queen Tera, Malcolm Ross, Silvio)

This novel isn’t Bram Stoker at his best (i.e. Dracula), but its a wild ride of mersmerism, dual identity, and middle class gentlemen awkwardly profaning women’s bodies that hits my id in much the same way. This is the one canon where I’m particularly interested in some femslash and where I did select “Treats,” the latter fact being almost entirely on account of the adorable cat and its astral, ancient Egyptian cat counterpart.

Prompts :

An exploration of Tera’s relationship with Margaret, as it’s communicated via their seeming dual inhabitation of one body or via their eventual potential meeting at the point of Tera’s resurrection in the earlier ending.
Tera possessing Margaret and making an attempt to manipulate/seduce/otherwise affect one of the male characters (Malcolm being the most obvious and Abel being the most messed up).
The happy, B ending of the story seems to imply that Tera has left and blessed Malcolm and Marageret’s marriage, but what if she still lingers, either having an interest in continuing some sinister plan through a possession of Margaret or having a more benign interest in vicariously experiencing marital love through Margaret as a host.
Worldbuilding and backstory that provides us elements of the story from Tera’s perspective, either as an ancient Egyptian witch queen or as a passive watcher of the events in the Edwardian era.
Anything cute and fun involving Silvio and his astral cat counterpart. Silvio is honestly more on top of this mess than any of the human characters, and it would be great to have his constant attempts to warn them get some recognition. (Fanart would be lovely too!)

Note if You’re Up for Smut: I am, in fact, interested in the fact Tera has a detached seven-fingered hand that can do her bidding.

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