Yuletide Letter 2025
17 October 2025 01:10 pm![[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 focusing on public domain fandoms that are poems or poetry-adjacent.)
Dear Yulemouse,
Thank you for offering to write in at least one of these fandoms. You are totally awesome for doing this. I can only hope you enjoy writing about it as much as I will reading it — for certainly, squees will ring off the mountains and echo down the canyons when it arrives given, yanno, it’s in a fandom I want yet find so rarely.
The best way to please me is to have fun. Wit, sex, dramatic irony, and cracktastic silly rom-com are all possibilities, but go with whatever floats your boats. Gen, het, slash, femslash, multi, and poly are all great, as clean or smutty as you want (so yes, Yuleporn and Three Turtle Doves both fine). 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, explicit torture, and A/B/O, plus a couple DNWs specific to two fandoms (listed 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, either in whole or in part, is gleefully accepted — I mean, these fandoms are all related to poetry in some way — but not in the least 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 Optionals, with notes on resources.
赠答诗 - 金车美人 (弘农) | Poems Composed in Reply - Beautiful Woman in a Golden Carriage (Hong Nong)
What this is: A short romance of Tang Dynasty China where the woman happens to be some sort of non-human: in Complete Tang Poetry it’s in a chapter of poems by ghosts, but in the Extensive Records of the Taiping Era it’s in tales about 妖怪, monsters/devils. (In Xuanshi Records, it’s in an appendix of unsorted tales.) Poems are exchanged after a one-night stand that neither can forget, and after being reunited (and exchanging more poems) they spend more nights together until the ghost “vanishes in both sight and sound.”
Prompts: The story is enigmatic, even for ghost stories of the time. Why is Hong Nong interested in Xie Ao and his peonies? Why does she have to vanish? What’s the deal with the blinged-out ride? What type of being is this Hong Nong of the Crooked Path anyway?
Or you could, yanno, write up the sexyfuntimes of their first night together.
Bonus points if Hong Nong maintains the same sass as when they meet: “He naturally asked who she was, and she replied, ‘You understand I’m not human, yet calmly ask such a question?’”
Resources: The Complete Tang Poetry version is at https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hans/御定全唐詩_(四庫全書本)/卷866#金車美人, and my translation of this is at https://larryhammer.dreamwidth.org/796115.html#hongnong — AFAIK no one else has translated it. Alternate versions of this story are in Extensive Records of the Taiping Era at https://ctext.org/taiping-guangji/364/xieao/ens and Xuanshi Records at https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hans/宣室志/補遺#謝翱, neither of which are AFAIK translated anywhere. Nor do I know of any criticism or discussions, in any language, not that my search in Chinese was remotely exhaustive.
“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” - Browning
What this is: A narrative poem in 204 lines about a lone knight on a grim, surreal journey to a mysterious tower. The narrator is not in a good space, mentally or physically, and it’s unclear exactly how unreliable he is, and Browning’s language reflects this knotted state. And yes, it did inspire Stephen King.
Prompts: Worldbuilding please. There’s two angles I’m particularly interested in:
1) It’s not at all clear how much of the malevolence the narrator ascribes to the landscape is a projection of his unstable mental state. What does the setting look like to someone not at the end of their rope? Better, or possibly even worse? (I mean, trekking through actual Hell is an option here.)
2) What exactly is the quest? How did it start? How did it go so wrong? How did the narrator’s companions fall away? Just how significant is it that it’s only at the moment of final despair the narrator succeeds? Is this dark tower really the culmination (after all, the narrator’s not entirely reliable)?
But this is not an exhaustive list of possibilities — anything that explores this world would be greeted with ecstatic glee. (What’s at the dark tower anyway — a magician? a grail? the McGuffin that will save the kingdom/universe/his sister? a gate to the afterworld? Ged/Sparrowhawk? a daoist cultivator? a ninja village? alien remnants?)
Resources: This is a popular 19th century narrative poem, which means it’s readily found and frequently discussed. Heck, it even has its own Spark Notes. More reliable might be Victorian Web’s collection, but there’s plenty more out there.
Flower Fairies - Cicely Mary Barker
What this is: Eight slender collections of illustrated poetry for children, each about the fairy of a (usually) flowering plant. The art is gorgeous. The poetry does not have much bite, as Barker was clearly trained in both Late Victorian fairy lore and Edwardian children’s literature, and often writes with the sentimentality that implies. However, there are hints here and there of wild Faerie breaking through, sometimes in a poem, sometimes in a picture. Which is … interesting.
Prompts: The tagset includes eight of the most Fae-looking (based on pictures) fairies: Gaillardia Fairy, Gorse Fairy, Jack-Go-To-Bed-At-Noon Fairy, Lords-and-Ladies Fairy, Mallow Fairy, Nightshade Fairy, Poppy Fairy, and Silver Birch Fairy. I would like an exploration of just how much of Faerie are these fairies. Are all of the fairies Fae, or only some? Who is aware of this? How much fun are the Fae ones having with the charade? For that matter, and admittedly this is straying into RPF territory, how much of Faerie were Barker’s models? How much feyness was Barker’s imagination, and how much did she paint from life?
Additional DO NOT WANTS: Please do not put any human younger than 15 years old in an explicit sexual situation.
Resources: All the collections are available at a website created by Barker’s estate: https://flowerfairies.com/. Some of the collections are in print in the UK, plus used copies can be occasionally found overseas.
“Her strong enchantments failing” - A.E. Housman
What this is: A 12-line poem, set at the climax of a confrontation between a man and the Queen of Air and Darkness. (Fun fact: the title Queen of Air and Darkness was coined in this poem.)
Prompts: Backstory is one possibility, for either the narrator or the Queen — or their history together. What happens tomorrow is another. For that matter, is the Queen’s prediction a prophecy or a bluff? and does the narrator know which? Given such a smol work, there’s obvs not a lot of setting, so you might want to add some scaffolding despite Worldbuilding not being a tag here. How real/fantastic/symbolic is the story we’re given, anyway?
So much is implied in such a small space.
Resources: It’s one of Housman’s most popular poems and in the public domain, so readily found online — here’s Project Gutenberg’s text. Commentary/interpretation is a little harder, but searches can turn up some good ones.
Mesopotamian RPF
What this is: In the years straddling the start of the 23rd century BCE, king Sargon of Kish conquered the other city-states of Sumeria and most of the rest of Mesopotamia, ruling them all from the northern city of Akkad as the world’s first recorded empire. He installed a daughter, who we know as Enheduanna, as high priestess in Ur, a southern Sumerian city of great cultural cachet, and in the course of her duties, she wrote poetry, including “The Exaltation of Inanna” and various hymns, which are the oldest poems with a named author to survive from any culture. IOW, she is the oldest known poet, serving the oldest known empire.
From over a thousand years before the Trojan War, let alone before Homer.
Prompts: Anything Enheduanna, especially as a poet: what she wrote, why she wrote, how she wrote. The intersections between art and craft and the politics of imperium would be amazing — the situation around the revolt of Lugal-Ane of Ur against the rule of her nephew, Naram-Sin of Akkad, practically invites that last. NGL this could require some heavy research. Just maybe.
Writing any “lost” poetry by Enheduanna would be going above and beyond, enough so I cannot ask that of you. But my joy would ring loud and long.
Resources: There are a couple (!) recent translations of her complete works (“The Exaltation of Inanna” alone has many more). The only one I’m familiar with is Sophus Helle, but it’s a good one, with useful commentary.
Puck of Pook’s Hill Series - Rudyard Kipling
What this is: Two collections of short stories, interspersed with poems, written for children, in which Puck the fairy causes a brother and sister to meet the spirits of various people of the past who have a connection to the region of Sussex around their home — thus giving the children (and the reader) a guided, if haphazard, tour of British history. It includes several of Kipling’s better known poems, some of which are my favorites of his.
Prompt: Dan and Una as grown-ups, each responding in their own way to their experiences as children.
Two thoughts: Does one of them have a career related to history, as a consequence of (or reaction against?) what happened? Does one of them somehow engage with Kipling’s interstitial poetry (which in canon always reflects the history it’s attached to, rather than the children)?
Or anything else you want.
Additional DO NOT WANTS: No incest please.
Resources: The books are public domain and available from Project Gutenberg, as well as through several modern critical editions. Commentary is also widely available, including extensive notes at the Kipling Society for both books.
Dear Yulemouse,
Thank you for offering to write in at least one of these fandoms. You are totally awesome for doing this. I can only hope you enjoy writing about it as much as I will reading it — for certainly, squees will ring off the mountains and echo down the canyons when it arrives given, yanno, it’s in a fandom I want yet find so rarely.
The best way to please me is to have fun. Wit, sex, dramatic irony, and cracktastic silly rom-com are all possibilities, but go with whatever floats your boats. Gen, het, slash, femslash, multi, and poly are all great, as clean or smutty as you want (so yes, Yuleporn and Three Turtle Doves both fine). 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, explicit torture, and A/B/O, plus a couple DNWs specific to two fandoms (listed 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, either in whole or in part, is gleefully accepted — I mean, these fandoms are all related to poetry in some way — but not in the least 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 Optionals, with notes on resources.
赠答诗 - 金车美人 (弘农) | Poems Composed in Reply - Beautiful Woman in a Golden Carriage (Hong Nong)
What this is: A short romance of Tang Dynasty China where the woman happens to be some sort of non-human: in Complete Tang Poetry it’s in a chapter of poems by ghosts, but in the Extensive Records of the Taiping Era it’s in tales about 妖怪, monsters/devils. (In Xuanshi Records, it’s in an appendix of unsorted tales.) Poems are exchanged after a one-night stand that neither can forget, and after being reunited (and exchanging more poems) they spend more nights together until the ghost “vanishes in both sight and sound.”
Prompts: The story is enigmatic, even for ghost stories of the time. Why is Hong Nong interested in Xie Ao and his peonies? Why does she have to vanish? What’s the deal with the blinged-out ride? What type of being is this Hong Nong of the Crooked Path anyway?
Or you could, yanno, write up the sexyfuntimes of their first night together.
Bonus points if Hong Nong maintains the same sass as when they meet: “He naturally asked who she was, and she replied, ‘You understand I’m not human, yet calmly ask such a question?’”
Resources: The Complete Tang Poetry version is at https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hans/御定全唐詩_(四庫全書本)/卷866#金車美人, and my translation of this is at https://larryhammer.dreamwidth.org/796115.html#hongnong — AFAIK no one else has translated it. Alternate versions of this story are in Extensive Records of the Taiping Era at https://ctext.org/taiping-guangji/364/xieao/ens and Xuanshi Records at https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hans/宣室志/補遺#謝翱, neither of which are AFAIK translated anywhere. Nor do I know of any criticism or discussions, in any language, not that my search in Chinese was remotely exhaustive.
“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” - Browning
What this is: A narrative poem in 204 lines about a lone knight on a grim, surreal journey to a mysterious tower. The narrator is not in a good space, mentally or physically, and it’s unclear exactly how unreliable he is, and Browning’s language reflects this knotted state. And yes, it did inspire Stephen King.
Prompts: Worldbuilding please. There’s two angles I’m particularly interested in:
1) It’s not at all clear how much of the malevolence the narrator ascribes to the landscape is a projection of his unstable mental state. What does the setting look like to someone not at the end of their rope? Better, or possibly even worse? (I mean, trekking through actual Hell is an option here.)
2) What exactly is the quest? How did it start? How did it go so wrong? How did the narrator’s companions fall away? Just how significant is it that it’s only at the moment of final despair the narrator succeeds? Is this dark tower really the culmination (after all, the narrator’s not entirely reliable)?
But this is not an exhaustive list of possibilities — anything that explores this world would be greeted with ecstatic glee. (What’s at the dark tower anyway — a magician? a grail? the McGuffin that will save the kingdom/universe/his sister? a gate to the afterworld? Ged/Sparrowhawk? a daoist cultivator? a ninja village? alien remnants?)
Resources: This is a popular 19th century narrative poem, which means it’s readily found and frequently discussed. Heck, it even has its own Spark Notes. More reliable might be Victorian Web’s collection, but there’s plenty more out there.
Flower Fairies - Cicely Mary Barker
What this is: Eight slender collections of illustrated poetry for children, each about the fairy of a (usually) flowering plant. The art is gorgeous. The poetry does not have much bite, as Barker was clearly trained in both Late Victorian fairy lore and Edwardian children’s literature, and often writes with the sentimentality that implies. However, there are hints here and there of wild Faerie breaking through, sometimes in a poem, sometimes in a picture. Which is … interesting.
Prompts: The tagset includes eight of the most Fae-looking (based on pictures) fairies: Gaillardia Fairy, Gorse Fairy, Jack-Go-To-Bed-At-Noon Fairy, Lords-and-Ladies Fairy, Mallow Fairy, Nightshade Fairy, Poppy Fairy, and Silver Birch Fairy. I would like an exploration of just how much of Faerie are these fairies. Are all of the fairies Fae, or only some? Who is aware of this? How much fun are the Fae ones having with the charade? For that matter, and admittedly this is straying into RPF territory, how much of Faerie were Barker’s models? How much feyness was Barker’s imagination, and how much did she paint from life?
Additional DO NOT WANTS: Please do not put any human younger than 15 years old in an explicit sexual situation.
Resources: All the collections are available at a website created by Barker’s estate: https://flowerfairies.com/. Some of the collections are in print in the UK, plus used copies can be occasionally found overseas.
“Her strong enchantments failing” - A.E. Housman
What this is: A 12-line poem, set at the climax of a confrontation between a man and the Queen of Air and Darkness. (Fun fact: the title Queen of Air and Darkness was coined in this poem.)
Prompts: Backstory is one possibility, for either the narrator or the Queen — or their history together. What happens tomorrow is another. For that matter, is the Queen’s prediction a prophecy or a bluff? and does the narrator know which? Given such a smol work, there’s obvs not a lot of setting, so you might want to add some scaffolding despite Worldbuilding not being a tag here. How real/fantastic/symbolic is the story we’re given, anyway?
So much is implied in such a small space.
Resources: It’s one of Housman’s most popular poems and in the public domain, so readily found online — here’s Project Gutenberg’s text. Commentary/interpretation is a little harder, but searches can turn up some good ones.
Mesopotamian RPF
What this is: In the years straddling the start of the 23rd century BCE, king Sargon of Kish conquered the other city-states of Sumeria and most of the rest of Mesopotamia, ruling them all from the northern city of Akkad as the world’s first recorded empire. He installed a daughter, who we know as Enheduanna, as high priestess in Ur, a southern Sumerian city of great cultural cachet, and in the course of her duties, she wrote poetry, including “The Exaltation of Inanna” and various hymns, which are the oldest poems with a named author to survive from any culture. IOW, she is the oldest known poet, serving the oldest known empire.
From over a thousand years before the Trojan War, let alone before Homer.
Prompts: Anything Enheduanna, especially as a poet: what she wrote, why she wrote, how she wrote. The intersections between art and craft and the politics of imperium would be amazing — the situation around the revolt of Lugal-Ane of Ur against the rule of her nephew, Naram-Sin of Akkad, practically invites that last. NGL this could require some heavy research. Just maybe.
Writing any “lost” poetry by Enheduanna would be going above and beyond, enough so I cannot ask that of you. But my joy would ring loud and long.
Resources: There are a couple (!) recent translations of her complete works (“The Exaltation of Inanna” alone has many more). The only one I’m familiar with is Sophus Helle, but it’s a good one, with useful commentary.
Puck of Pook’s Hill Series - Rudyard Kipling
What this is: Two collections of short stories, interspersed with poems, written for children, in which Puck the fairy causes a brother and sister to meet the spirits of various people of the past who have a connection to the region of Sussex around their home — thus giving the children (and the reader) a guided, if haphazard, tour of British history. It includes several of Kipling’s better known poems, some of which are my favorites of his.
Prompt: Dan and Una as grown-ups, each responding in their own way to their experiences as children.
Two thoughts: Does one of them have a career related to history, as a consequence of (or reaction against?) what happened? Does one of them somehow engage with Kipling’s interstitial poetry (which in canon always reflects the history it’s attached to, rather than the children)?
Or anything else you want.
Additional DO NOT WANTS: No incest please.
Resources: The books are public domain and available from Project Gutenberg, as well as through several modern critical editions. Commentary is also widely available, including extensive notes at the Kipling Society for both books.
no subject
Date: 18 October 2025 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 18 October 2025 03:50 pm (UTC)I didn't meet them till I was an adult, so no nostalgia for me -- but they are ... interesting artifacts. I love the art.