Dear Yulemouse 2017
2 October 2017 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
larryhammer(Context: Yuletide is an annual fanfiction gift exchange for fandoms with relatively few fics, notable for its large number of participants and the high average quality of stories. I'm participating again this year, once more offering and requesting only public-domain fandoms.)
Dear Yulemouse,
Thank you for offering to write in at least one of these fandoms. They are awesome, and you are too. I can only hope you enjoy writing a story as much as I will reading it -- for certainly, there will be squees ringing off the mountains when it arrives given, dude, it's in a fandom I wanted.
The best way you can please me is if you have fun. Wit, sex, dramatic irony, and cracktasticly silly rom-com are all possibilities, but go with whatever floats your boats. Gen, het, slash (including femslash), and poly are all great. As a limited guide to the sort of things I like, my stories on AO3 is as good as anything. Turn-offs (do not want!) are humiliation-based humor, sadism, and torture in general. Find something and make it your own, the thing you love writing, and it's easy odds I'll like it.
The rest of this expands a little on my Optional Details Are Optional, with comments on possible resources.
Táng Cháo | Tang Dynasty RPF - characters: Lǐ Bái, Dù Fǔ
Li Bai claimed to have taken up the sword in his wandering youth -- in other words, that he was a youxia. But what about the other poets of his time, like Du Fu and Wang Wei? Prompt: a wuxia story in which Li Bai and Du Fu have an adventure, possibly involving other poets. Martial-arts poetry battles not required but would be vigorously applauded. (Questions to consider: Just how strong is Li Bai's drunken master style? Was Du Fu's ill health in his last years of his life from having acupressure points sealed? Is Wang Wei equally adept at martial-arts painting as martial-arts poetry? --and does switching styles give him an advantage?)
The prompt is, of course, entirely an optional detail that is optional, so if you want to write any other kind of story about these friends, please do. As long as you have fun, I'll probably like it.
Resources: There are many, many translations of poetry of the High Tang, especially, given their reputation as the two greatest poets, Li Bai and Du Fu -- including books devoted to them, separately and together. Be aware that those aspects of his poetry that make Du Fu great, including formal excellence and innovation, are precisely those that do not translate well. Some online resources include this page and that one. A.C. Graham's Poems of the Later Tang includes for Du Fu poems from the last decade of his life, which may shed light on any aftermath, and are also just about the best translations of him I've found.
竹取物語 | Taketori Monogatari | Tale of the Bamboo Cutter - character: The Emperor
Prompt: A post-canon fic explaining what REALLY happened to the elixir of life. I mean, burning seems like such a chancy way to dispose of it. Assuming a mortal fire can actually do anything an elixir of life (and if it can, would the results be non-toxic?). This post and comments has some possible answers -- but I'd love to see yours.
Resources: This page has links to several resources as well as comments about various translations. There isn't really one good standard translation, or even version of the story, in no small part because there isn't a good standard scholarly recension of the various manuscript traditions. Decent versions online include either of these two translations and this modern retelling.
The Ballad of East and West - Rudyard Kipling - characters: Kamal, The Colonel's Son
Anything -- especially if it acknowledges, either pro or con, the message of lines 3-4. Possible prompts: Kamal's story. A genderswap, either in-setting or in an AU. The sequel career of Kamal's son. A retelling of the poem's historical kernel: the recruitment by Col. Harry Lumsden of the "Guides" of bandit Dilawur Khan in c.1848 (again either in-setting or AU).
Verse not required (and couldn't be, by Yuletide regulations) but would be vigorously applauded and pimped on every rec page I can find. (Personally, I suspect the stanza of Noyes's "The Highwayman" would be at least as fruitful as Kipling's original. But having said that, watch as you instead rewrite it as a ghazal or a crown of sonnets.)
Resources: Ye complete text and the Kipling Society's annotations. If you're interested in the historical kernel, here is one account of Dilawur Khan.
Liáo zhāi zhì yì | Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio - Pú Sōnglíng - no characters
Anything. Seriously, anything -- especially if it brings out Pu Songling's strange, ironic humor. Feel free to riff any story in the canon (and there's plenty to chew on, what with all the ghosts, fox spirits, dreamworlds, romances, and obsessions he writes about) or write a new one of your own.
I've written in this fandom, if you want a sample of what I like about it.
Resources: Wikipedia is a surprisingly decent starting place with the article on the collection as well as several on individual stories. My current favored translation, which is among the most easily found, is John Minford's (Penguin Classics) selection of about a third of the stories. I've also enjoyed this China-published version, which has more tales, and out this year there is the first complete translation into English by Sidney Sondergard, which I have not read. Project Gutenberg has Herbert Giles's Victorian translation of the better-known stories, which is predictably bowdlerized (pro-tip: if a man and woman suddenly get married, in the original they actually just had sex) but still evocative. And finally, here's another Yuletide participant's glowing description of things that can be done in this fandom.
---L.
Dear Yulemouse,
Thank you for offering to write in at least one of these fandoms. They are awesome, and you are too. I can only hope you enjoy writing a story as much as I will reading it -- for certainly, there will be squees ringing off the mountains when it arrives given, dude, it's in a fandom I wanted.
The best way you can please me is if you have fun. Wit, sex, dramatic irony, and cracktasticly silly rom-com are all possibilities, but go with whatever floats your boats. Gen, het, slash (including femslash), and poly are all great. As a limited guide to the sort of things I like, my stories on AO3 is as good as anything. Turn-offs (do not want!) are humiliation-based humor, sadism, and torture in general. Find something and make it your own, the thing you love writing, and it's easy odds I'll like it.
The rest of this expands a little on my Optional Details Are Optional, with comments on possible resources.
Táng Cháo | Tang Dynasty RPF - characters: Lǐ Bái, Dù Fǔ
Li Bai claimed to have taken up the sword in his wandering youth -- in other words, that he was a youxia. But what about the other poets of his time, like Du Fu and Wang Wei? Prompt: a wuxia story in which Li Bai and Du Fu have an adventure, possibly involving other poets. Martial-arts poetry battles not required but would be vigorously applauded. (Questions to consider: Just how strong is Li Bai's drunken master style? Was Du Fu's ill health in his last years of his life from having acupressure points sealed? Is Wang Wei equally adept at martial-arts painting as martial-arts poetry? --and does switching styles give him an advantage?)
The prompt is, of course, entirely an optional detail that is optional, so if you want to write any other kind of story about these friends, please do. As long as you have fun, I'll probably like it.
Resources: There are many, many translations of poetry of the High Tang, especially, given their reputation as the two greatest poets, Li Bai and Du Fu -- including books devoted to them, separately and together. Be aware that those aspects of his poetry that make Du Fu great, including formal excellence and innovation, are precisely those that do not translate well. Some online resources include this page and that one. A.C. Graham's Poems of the Later Tang includes for Du Fu poems from the last decade of his life, which may shed light on any aftermath, and are also just about the best translations of him I've found.
竹取物語 | Taketori Monogatari | Tale of the Bamboo Cutter - character: The Emperor
Prompt: A post-canon fic explaining what REALLY happened to the elixir of life. I mean, burning seems like such a chancy way to dispose of it. Assuming a mortal fire can actually do anything an elixir of life (and if it can, would the results be non-toxic?). This post and comments has some possible answers -- but I'd love to see yours.
Resources: This page has links to several resources as well as comments about various translations. There isn't really one good standard translation, or even version of the story, in no small part because there isn't a good standard scholarly recension of the various manuscript traditions. Decent versions online include either of these two translations and this modern retelling.
The Ballad of East and West - Rudyard Kipling - characters: Kamal, The Colonel's Son
Anything -- especially if it acknowledges, either pro or con, the message of lines 3-4. Possible prompts: Kamal's story. A genderswap, either in-setting or in an AU. The sequel career of Kamal's son. A retelling of the poem's historical kernel: the recruitment by Col. Harry Lumsden of the "Guides" of bandit Dilawur Khan in c.1848 (again either in-setting or AU).
Verse not required (and couldn't be, by Yuletide regulations) but would be vigorously applauded and pimped on every rec page I can find. (Personally, I suspect the stanza of Noyes's "The Highwayman" would be at least as fruitful as Kipling's original. But having said that, watch as you instead rewrite it as a ghazal or a crown of sonnets.)
Resources: Ye complete text and the Kipling Society's annotations. If you're interested in the historical kernel, here is one account of Dilawur Khan.
Liáo zhāi zhì yì | Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio - Pú Sōnglíng - no characters
Anything. Seriously, anything -- especially if it brings out Pu Songling's strange, ironic humor. Feel free to riff any story in the canon (and there's plenty to chew on, what with all the ghosts, fox spirits, dreamworlds, romances, and obsessions he writes about) or write a new one of your own.
I've written in this fandom, if you want a sample of what I like about it.
Resources: Wikipedia is a surprisingly decent starting place with the article on the collection as well as several on individual stories. My current favored translation, which is among the most easily found, is John Minford's (Penguin Classics) selection of about a third of the stories. I've also enjoyed this China-published version, which has more tales, and out this year there is the first complete translation into English by Sidney Sondergard, which I have not read. Project Gutenberg has Herbert Giles's Victorian translation of the better-known stories, which is predictably bowdlerized (pro-tip: if a man and woman suddenly get married, in the original they actually just had sex) but still evocative. And finally, here's another Yuletide participant's glowing description of things that can be done in this fandom.
---L.
no subject
Date: 2 October 2017 06:44 pm (UTC)I hope you get this.
no subject
Date: 2 October 2017 07:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 9 October 2017 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 3 October 2017 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 3 October 2017 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 9 October 2017 06:46 pm (UTC)We had an old hardcover picture book with woodcut illustrations in my grandparents' house when I was growing up, but I am really sure I got the story first from Sesame Street's Big Bird in Japan (1989). In many ways that hour-long special has a lot to answer for.