Yuletide Letter 2022
19 October 2022 08:59 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 attempting to participate once more, focusing on public domain poetry 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, yanno, it’s in a fandom I want yet so rarely find.
The best way you can please me is to 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), multi, and poly are all great, as clean or smutty as you want. As a partial guide to the sort of things I like, my stories from past Yuletides are as good as anything. Turn-offs (Do Not Want!) are humiliation-based humor, sadism, and explicit torture (plus one specific to a canon, detailed below). Find something and make it your own, the thing you love writing, and it’s easy odds I’ll like it.
And to make it explicit: poetry gleefully accepted—I mean, these fandoms are all poems—but not required. Also, again to be explicit, I welcome treats, which get double the thanks for going above and beyond.
The rest of this is basically expansion on my Optional Details Are Optional, with notes on resources.
Poem of Hidden Resentment - A Woman of Anyi Lane
Requested characters: Woman of Anyi Lane
What this is: A short poem, given in a dream visitation, by a restricted upper-class woman of the Tang Dynasty relating her reaction to hearing the story of Mulan—and it hit her hard. IOW, proof that Mulan has represented freedom for Chinese women for a lonnng time. She’s is described as a wealthy man’s wife or concubine, who would have spent most of her adult life sequestered in her husband’s house, and she now knows that above the wave-rough confines of her life, there is a woman who experienced the sun—and learning this feels like a slash in the gut.
So much heartbreak here.
And so much to learn between the lines.
Possible prompts: Anything that expands on her relationships with her constrained life and the glimpse of freedom the story provided.
Considerations: This story is from a collection of poems by ghosts of the Tang Dynasty. That said, it is never stated that the woman is already dead. Most of the other dream visitations I’ve so far translated from the collection have unambiguously been by dead spirits, but not all. Your decision what to understand here.
Sources: In English, I once met this story in some collection of women’s voices of ancient China, but have not succeeded in tracking this down. My own translation is available here in an earlier draft and revised here (along with other Chinese ghost poems). My translations of two contemporary tellings of the Mulan story are here and here, and tons, including other translations, about the story’s changes through history is at this website. In Chinese, the text is here, as well as (with links to vocabulary aids) here and here (without the headnote). There are two relevant articles on Baike Baidu, on the poem and the author, both including historical commentaries.
A Poem Thrown at Martial Duke Pei - An Armored Ghost
Requested characters: Any
What this is: A ghost story, in which a suit of armor throws a poem at the general whose tactical incompetence got him killed.
Possible prompts: WTF was Duke Pei thinking, burning a poem he knows is by a ghost? Or maybe just more about the armored ghost’s life. Do the two ever meet again in the underworld—or wandering the earth? Do their widows ever meet? Does anyone ever forgive anyone else? Or anything else that fills in the cracks behind this very brief tale.
I would also be fine with stories about other poems thrown at people in protest (such as a “five times” or “five times and one”), as long as some tangential relationship to this is maintained.
DNWs: hurt/comfort with ghost and general.
Sources: In English, as far as I know the only translation is my own, available here in an earlier draft and revised here (along with other Chinese ghost poems). In Chinese, the text is here, as well as (with links to vocabulary aids) here and here (without the headnote).
Three Poems by a Ghost on a Stone Wall in Huqiu
Requested characters: Any
What this is: A ghost story, in which two poems appear on the wall of a Buddhist temple complaining about being dead and lamenting his grieving family. After a memorial service is held, a third poem appears on the wall, hinting at how to find the graves of him and another person buried with him.
Possible prompts: So many unanswered questions here, starting with Who’s in the second grave?! Is the headnote or one of the alternate stories in the footnote correct (or more correct)? Just how cranky did the editor get, having to decide which story was right? How did the ghost die anyway? Was it his family who criticized his poetry? Did criticizing his poetry have anything to do with his death? IS the ghost a him, as the alternate stories assume? What sort of poems would the occupant of the second grave write? And why didn’t they ask the old women in the area, given they’re the ones who’d have all the gossip?
But mostly, it’s that second grave that haunts me.
Sources: In English, as far as I know the only translation is my own, available here in an earlier draft and revised here (along with other Chinese ghost poems). In Chinese, the text is here, as well as (with links to vocabulary aids) here 1 / here 2 / here 3 and here 1&2 here 3 (without the headnote).
Sir Orfeo (Poem)
Requested characters: Any
What this is: The story of Orpheus and Euridice retold in Middle English as a Breton Lai, with Greek mythology replaced by fairy folklore, and a happy ending. Which is just as crack as that sounds.
Possible prompts: It’s a medieval AU of an ancient Greek myth: can you AU it again? —age it forward to the Jazz Age or the Vietnam era or Earth’s Diaspora to other stars? —age it backward to the Ancient Near East or the Indo-European expansion or Imperial Japan? —slide it sideways to an alternate history or a high fantasy world or anthropomorphized animals? fold it over into an epistolary novel or an epic poem or interactive fiction? And for any of these, how does this story change and how does it stay the same? (Please note, I’m asking about AUs of Sir Orfeo itself, not the original Orpheus myth.)
Sources: There’s a few Modern English editions out there, including one by J.R.R. Tolkein. Online, I’ve found this decent verse translation from 1909 and this recent prose version, and I’m sure there are more. (If you’re up to snuff on reading the original Middle English, then you probably know better than me how to find a good text.)
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came - Robert Browning
Requested characters: Worldbuilding
What this is: A short narrative poem, a romance in the original sense, about an arduous quest through an ambiguous wilderness.
Possible prompts: How did the unnamed narrator’s companions actually fall away? Just how significant was it that it was only at the moment of final despair that he succeeded? What happens next at the Tower? What is at the Dark Tower anyway—a magician? a grail? the McGuffin that will save the kingdom? a gate to the afterworld? something else? Now that he has succeeded, how can the narrator possibly return to an ordinary life?
IOW, I’d like some worldbuilding to flesh things out.
Considerations: Note that all the dangers perceived by the narrator are in his own head, reflecting his state of mind.
Sources: Yeah, this popular public-domain poem is not hard to find. If critical analysis would help you, here’s a few—more are also not hard to find.
Kubla Khan - Coleridge
Requested characters: Worldbuilding
What this is: A opium-spurred fever dream of oriental legends with vivid visions of uncertain import. Also, possibly one of the best patches of pure English poetry of the Romantic Era.
Possible prompts: Despite Kubla Khan being a historical figure, this is clearly set in a high fantasy world. (This is not a new observation: see Greg Bear’s Songs of Earth and Power.) So what other fantasies take place here? What kinds of fantasy? —are we in an Arabian Nights setting, wuxia/xuanhuan, or something more like modern western fantasy? And just how powerful a mage is that Abyssinian maid, anyway?
Sources: This is another popular, readily available poem. There’s also tons of critical analysis.
---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, yanno, it’s in a fandom I want yet so rarely find.
The best way you can please me is to 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), multi, and poly are all great, as clean or smutty as you want. As a partial guide to the sort of things I like, my stories from past Yuletides are as good as anything. Turn-offs (Do Not Want!) are humiliation-based humor, sadism, and explicit torture (plus one specific to a canon, detailed below). Find something and make it your own, the thing you love writing, and it’s easy odds I’ll like it.
And to make it explicit: poetry gleefully accepted—I mean, these fandoms are all poems—but not required. Also, again to be explicit, I welcome treats, which get double the thanks for going above and beyond.
The rest of this is basically expansion on my Optional Details Are Optional, with notes on resources.
Poem of Hidden Resentment - A Woman of Anyi Lane
Requested characters: Woman of Anyi Lane
What this is: A short poem, given in a dream visitation, by a restricted upper-class woman of the Tang Dynasty relating her reaction to hearing the story of Mulan—and it hit her hard. IOW, proof that Mulan has represented freedom for Chinese women for a lonnng time. She’s is described as a wealthy man’s wife or concubine, who would have spent most of her adult life sequestered in her husband’s house, and she now knows that above the wave-rough confines of her life, there is a woman who experienced the sun—and learning this feels like a slash in the gut.
So much heartbreak here.
And so much to learn between the lines.
Possible prompts: Anything that expands on her relationships with her constrained life and the glimpse of freedom the story provided.
Considerations: This story is from a collection of poems by ghosts of the Tang Dynasty. That said, it is never stated that the woman is already dead. Most of the other dream visitations I’ve so far translated from the collection have unambiguously been by dead spirits, but not all. Your decision what to understand here.
Sources: In English, I once met this story in some collection of women’s voices of ancient China, but have not succeeded in tracking this down. My own translation is available here in an earlier draft and revised here (along with other Chinese ghost poems). My translations of two contemporary tellings of the Mulan story are here and here, and tons, including other translations, about the story’s changes through history is at this website. In Chinese, the text is here, as well as (with links to vocabulary aids) here and here (without the headnote). There are two relevant articles on Baike Baidu, on the poem and the author, both including historical commentaries.
A Poem Thrown at Martial Duke Pei - An Armored Ghost
Requested characters: Any
What this is: A ghost story, in which a suit of armor throws a poem at the general whose tactical incompetence got him killed.
Possible prompts: WTF was Duke Pei thinking, burning a poem he knows is by a ghost? Or maybe just more about the armored ghost’s life. Do the two ever meet again in the underworld—or wandering the earth? Do their widows ever meet? Does anyone ever forgive anyone else? Or anything else that fills in the cracks behind this very brief tale.
I would also be fine with stories about other poems thrown at people in protest (such as a “five times” or “five times and one”), as long as some tangential relationship to this is maintained.
DNWs: hurt/comfort with ghost and general.
Sources: In English, as far as I know the only translation is my own, available here in an earlier draft and revised here (along with other Chinese ghost poems). In Chinese, the text is here, as well as (with links to vocabulary aids) here and here (without the headnote).
Three Poems by a Ghost on a Stone Wall in Huqiu
Requested characters: Any
What this is: A ghost story, in which two poems appear on the wall of a Buddhist temple complaining about being dead and lamenting his grieving family. After a memorial service is held, a third poem appears on the wall, hinting at how to find the graves of him and another person buried with him.
Possible prompts: So many unanswered questions here, starting with Who’s in the second grave?! Is the headnote or one of the alternate stories in the footnote correct (or more correct)? Just how cranky did the editor get, having to decide which story was right? How did the ghost die anyway? Was it his family who criticized his poetry? Did criticizing his poetry have anything to do with his death? IS the ghost a him, as the alternate stories assume? What sort of poems would the occupant of the second grave write? And why didn’t they ask the old women in the area, given they’re the ones who’d have all the gossip?
But mostly, it’s that second grave that haunts me.
Sources: In English, as far as I know the only translation is my own, available here in an earlier draft and revised here (along with other Chinese ghost poems). In Chinese, the text is here, as well as (with links to vocabulary aids) here 1 / here 2 / here 3 and here 1&2 here 3 (without the headnote).
Sir Orfeo (Poem)
Requested characters: Any
What this is: The story of Orpheus and Euridice retold in Middle English as a Breton Lai, with Greek mythology replaced by fairy folklore, and a happy ending. Which is just as crack as that sounds.
Possible prompts: It’s a medieval AU of an ancient Greek myth: can you AU it again? —age it forward to the Jazz Age or the Vietnam era or Earth’s Diaspora to other stars? —age it backward to the Ancient Near East or the Indo-European expansion or Imperial Japan? —slide it sideways to an alternate history or a high fantasy world or anthropomorphized animals? fold it over into an epistolary novel or an epic poem or interactive fiction? And for any of these, how does this story change and how does it stay the same? (Please note, I’m asking about AUs of Sir Orfeo itself, not the original Orpheus myth.)
Sources: There’s a few Modern English editions out there, including one by J.R.R. Tolkein. Online, I’ve found this decent verse translation from 1909 and this recent prose version, and I’m sure there are more. (If you’re up to snuff on reading the original Middle English, then you probably know better than me how to find a good text.)
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came - Robert Browning
Requested characters: Worldbuilding
What this is: A short narrative poem, a romance in the original sense, about an arduous quest through an ambiguous wilderness.
Possible prompts: How did the unnamed narrator’s companions actually fall away? Just how significant was it that it was only at the moment of final despair that he succeeded? What happens next at the Tower? What is at the Dark Tower anyway—a magician? a grail? the McGuffin that will save the kingdom? a gate to the afterworld? something else? Now that he has succeeded, how can the narrator possibly return to an ordinary life?
IOW, I’d like some worldbuilding to flesh things out.
Considerations: Note that all the dangers perceived by the narrator are in his own head, reflecting his state of mind.
Sources: Yeah, this popular public-domain poem is not hard to find. If critical analysis would help you, here’s a few—more are also not hard to find.
Kubla Khan - Coleridge
Requested characters: Worldbuilding
What this is: A opium-spurred fever dream of oriental legends with vivid visions of uncertain import. Also, possibly one of the best patches of pure English poetry of the Romantic Era.
Possible prompts: Despite Kubla Khan being a historical figure, this is clearly set in a high fantasy world. (This is not a new observation: see Greg Bear’s Songs of Earth and Power.) So what other fantasies take place here? What kinds of fantasy? —are we in an Arabian Nights setting, wuxia/xuanhuan, or something more like modern western fantasy? And just how powerful a mage is that Abyssinian maid, anyway?
Sources: This is another popular, readily available poem. There’s also tons of critical analysis.
---L.
no subject
Date: 19 October 2022 07:08 pm (UTC)Good luck!!
no subject
Date: 19 October 2022 07:48 pm (UTC)Thankee :knocks wood: 🪵