sobriquett

Dear Yuletide author,

Thank you for thinking about writing for me! If you took the pinch hit, hooray/thank you! If you're here for potential treats then I am also delighted, as treats are both enabled and welcome and I'm hopeful of writing some of my own.

It has been the Year of Audible for me, with four of these five fandoms being books I have listened to this year. If you've come here for A Date WIth Death (which, looking at the signup summary at the time of writing, seems most likely) then I heartily recommend all the other novels to you but ADWD is very much the red herring of the bunch.

I tend to write very long letters because that's what I prefer to receive in return, but please don't feel bound by anything here. I'm hoping to give lightbulbs not limitations. That said, in the unlikely event you want to know more, my past letters for all exchanges can be found here.



Contents

1. Unenforceable DNWs
2. Likes & Loves
3. Smut Likes
4. Darkfic Likes
5. A Date With Death (Visual Novel)
6. The Godfather - Mario Puzo
7. That Bonesetter Woman - Frances Quinn
8. Wolf Den Trilogy - Elodie Harper
9. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel



DNWs (of course not enforceable because I failed to put them in my signup so they're really more Dislikes)

Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics | Anyone being called “Daddy” in a sexual context | Bestiality | Body Horror | Gore | Medical Experimentation | Mpreg | Mutilation | Non-Canonical Amputation | Scat | Torture | Vore



Likes & Loves

5+1 Times | Alternate Endings | Angst | Backstory | Banter/Bickering | Bittersweet | Canon Compliant | Canon Divergence | Character Death | Character Death Aftermath | Character Study | Class Differences | Coming of Age | Competence | Complicated Sibling Relationships | Cultural Differences | Dark Fic | Debt & Financial Pressures | Despair | Disabled Characters | Domesticity | Different Worldviews | Enemies to Friends/Lovers | Epistolary | Examining Societal Issues | First Meetings | First Time | Fix-It | Fluff | Found Family | Friends/Lovers to Enemies | Grief/Mourning | Grumpy Character/Sunshine Character | Historical Details | Humour | Hurt/Comfort | Last Time | Laws of Magic | Living Up/Down to Expectations | Long-Distance Friendship | Marriage of Convenience | Miscommunication | Missing Moment | Obeying Canonical Boundaries (Social/Cultural/Moral) | Outsider POV | Parent/Child Relationships | Peril | Pining | Platonic Intimacy | Politics & Intrigue | Poor Life Choices | Post-Canon | Pre-Canon | Pregnancy & Babies | Presumed Dead | Protectiveness | Redemption | Religious Elements | Reunions | Romance | Sad Endings | Secret Relationships | Starcrossed/Doomed Lovers | Uneven Power Dynamics | Unexpected/Unlikely Friendship | Unreliable Narrators | Whump | Worldbuilding


Smut Likes

Biting/Marking | Bondage | Canon Compliant/Historically Appropriate (esp. period fandoms) | Desperate Sex | Dirty Talk | Dubcon | Edging/Orgasm Delay | Fingering | First Times | Fisting | Foreplay | Hair Pulling/Touching/Playing | Last Times | Loss of virginity (either/both/all partners) | Oral (any/all combinations/intensities/setups) | Porn with Feelings | Power Imbalance (Physical or Social/Financial/Other) | Restraint/Held Down | Rough Sex | Semi-Public Sex | Sensual Details | Vanilla Sex



Darkfic Likes

Apocalypse | Betrayal | Character Death | Character Death Aftermath | Claustrophobia | Conspiracy | Debt & Financial Pressures | Degradation | Disease | Dubious Consent | Dystopia | Fire | Forced Marriage | Gaslighting | Hauntings | Humiliation | Hypothermia | Infertility | Miscarriage/Pregnancy Loss | Murder | Paranoia | Poisoning | Prison | PTSD | Shame | Suicide | Terminal Illness | Unhappy Endings



A Date With Death (Visual Novel)

Characters: Grim | Casper, Main Character


If only worldbuilding had been a tag in this fandom! Unfortunately I seem to have said I’d like both characters, but if you want to take a very light touch approach to including the MC and focus on Grim and his world, that works for me. Also, I will have played the new DLC by Yuletide reveals if you’d like to include content from that. (Update 15 Dec: yep, all four endings, ouch my feelings.)

I don’t know what it was about this that got in my head, but it did. Over a couple of days, I played it through until I’d seen all five endings. And months later I still can’t hear gentle background muzak without being straight back in this game in my head.

There are so many delicious tropes in here. There are nicknames, delayed name reveals, Azrael, so much flirting, canonical soul bonding/telepathy (and explicit reference, if you choose, to that being useful for sex), starcrossed lovers, and more I can’t remember.

I am extremely curious about what on earth could happen next. If you continue your relationship beyond the bet, what happens?

• Does the afterlife come looking for Grim? Does that place you or him in danger?
• Does he fit into your life, your apartment? Do you need to leave it?
• Spending too long in the mortal realm is bad for him, tips his soul out of balance towards light and if his soul is not balanced then he dies – so how does he/you bring back the darkness?
• How does the afterlife function? Are there really nine hells, or is that blasphemy and there are, like, eight or something?
• Mind bridges and soul bonding – does that become regular, routine, perhaps permanent?
• What is Grim’s past? How did he become a reaper? Did he have a human life?
• Perhaps follow the ending where the character becomes a reaper too, in the DLC – explore the bureaucracy, the vocation, the training, your gift/nature. Do you take an oath, live by and learn the reaper code?
• First times all round, both in the relationship and in life experiences.
• Use elements of the bad ending even in the good ending? I bloody love angst and peril.
• And what exactly are soul babies?

One virtue of the visual novel is the extent to which you can customise your experience – character, name, pronouns, compliment style, appearance, pet, decoration, etc. I have typically played with female characters with she/her pronouns and that would be my soft preference for fic, but that’s not a hill to die on and I don’t think it’s totally out there to write a fic that can be read ambiguously. I also don’t hate second person…



The Godfather - Mario Puzo

Characters: any of Apollonia Vitelli Corleone, Carmela Corleone, Kay Adams Corleone, Lucy Mancini


Okay, so this is actually more or less copied from last year, except someone left some very insightful comments on that letter so I’ve reworked it with those in mind. Also, I lied: I re-read (listened to) this last year. But I still want more of the women.

The narrator (yes, not necessarily the author, but definite the authorial voice!) is wildly misogynistic, where all women are essentially defined in terms of their fuckability and/or relationships with men (specific and general), and very few women are ever really the POV character. Kay is occasionally, and possibly Lucy, but that’s it. But they are all defined by their (sexual) relationships with the Corleone men – wives, lovers, mothers. I want more of the women as women. That can include the men, but no woman is defined entirely by her relationship with a man.

Apollonia says one word in the novel: “Grazie.” Who is she? Give her some flesh, a spark, to be more than just a pretty shell. What does she want? What moves and motivates her? How would she have fit in with the New York family if she’d lived? Why did she marry Michael? How much of a free choice was it, and what did she think it would lead to?

Mama Corleone is much the same, she turns up for a moment here and there to (magnificently) berate one of her sons or to feed somebody, but she also feels like a thread of steel in the lives of those around her, holding them up, but it’s unspoken. I love her Catholicism and how it both sustains her and supports her family, and how she converts Kay, and they go together to pray for the souls of their husbands. The ending of the novel is divine.

Kay is an outsider to the world for more than just having girl parts, and I’m curious how that changes her experience, and particularly how she relates to her mother-in-law (and sister-in-law) through cultural and generational differences. And once she’s in this world, how does she relate to the family and friends of her previous life? Is she more of one world than the other, or not quite part of either?

Lucy’s character arc is literally defined by her vagina and she willingly and semi-knowingly lets herself continue to be used by the family through the hotels, but there is more to her than that. Like what? How does she balance what she wants to know, what she guesses, what she thinks, what she absolutely and definitely knows? Is Sonny a lingering ghost through her life? Is she happy with Jules? Does she ever get out? Does she want to?

I don’t really know what I want, just more of the women.

• Apollonia and the American dream: what does she actually want? Is Michael a way to get it? (Children, comfort, fortune, adventure, love, other?)
• Does Apollonia love Michael? Does it matter? Was her courtship/marriage a pleasant or a horrible experience? What did she think her future would look like?
• What does Kay want? What does she think their future will look like?
• The same questions for Kay as Apollonia, possibly different answers. Compare the women, be thoughtful or go dark.
• I’m always intrigued by Kay’s Catholicism, especially in the book. The movie’s ending happens too, but then Kay goes to church with Mama Corleone and prays for Michael’s soul.
• Michael’s grief at losing both women in his life, in very different ways. (Does he acknowledge them as women and individuals, or only as wives/lovers?)
• A missing happy moment for any of these characters or either couple.
• A contrast between weddings – Connie’s, Apollonia’s, Kay’s, even Carmela’s, others.
• What if Apollonia had lived, and met Kay?
• What if Apollonia lives?
• What if Apollonia had lived, and they’d returned to New York, and she’d lived in the compound? What place would she find in that family, in that life, in that country? What would Mama Corleone have thought of her new daughter-in-law? Would this have impacted Michael, how would he show it? Could Apollonia be happy? Or a very mixed bag?
• I feel like Kay makes a “better” American wife for Michael, in the world he wants to move in. Would the path have unfolded differently with a different woman at his side?
• Does the ghost of Apollonia haunt Michael at later points in his life?
• How does Carmela respond to the milestones in her husband’s life? The shooting of Don Fanucci, having Clemenza and Tessio in her home, the Don’s first shooting, the rise in their fortunes, that magnificent carpet?
• Does Carmela ever regret her marriage? Was her life what she wanted? What, if anything, was lacking? How rich was her own feminine world, parallel but separate to the world of the men?
• How does her worldview differ from her daughters-in-law, her daughter? What similarities are there?

That Bonesetter Woman - Frances Quinn

Characters: any of Durie Proudfoot, Ellen Proudfoot, George Layton, Tom Proudfoot


Durie was a little different to the historical heroines I’m used to; she’s extremely competent at her trade, but socially awkward and generally cumbersome in a way that is highly relatable! I really enjoyed her story, memorably the slow dread leading to that nonsense with Malachy O’Neill. It’s odd but, again, relatable, to see love bombing in the eighteenth century, and I was rooting for her so hard to come back from it and overcome the bullshit of the men around her. The gender themes in this novel are genuinely interesting. Durie is not a lady, by birth, character or inclination. (She’s that bonesetter woman, not that bonesetter lady!) She’s got so many masculine characteristics (or just a total absence of traditionally feminine ones - delicacy, beauty, grace) and a sort of pining for them, and she has to learn to manipulate all her talents and her shortcomings to her advantage. In such a rigidly defined world, Durie does not neatly fit into any boxes, although George loves her anyway and I think she has the self-esteem by the end to stand wherever she damn well pleases - a good woman, one her family could be proud of, but not by the traditional definition. I’m not articulating this well at all, but I would love to see these questions come up again in the context of a happier marriage and perhaps taking stock of her life in the face of her nephew.

I would especially love some follow-up to the revelations of the final page. Durie deserves her happy ending, and if that featured all of the tag set characters then that would be quite wonderful.

• How do Durie and George build a life together? They’d have to find and build an odd place for themselves in the world. How do their children fit in?
• How does Tom get his start in life?
• Does Tom meet his Aunt Durie again?
• Does Durie become the woman she wants to be?
• What if she was wrong about the fate of Malachy O’Neill?
• Do the papers/gossip rags continue to blight Durie, or does she continue to use them to her advantage?

Wolf Den Trilogy - Elodie Harper

Characters: any of Amara, Britannica, Felix, Philos


I devoured this trilogy in less than a week as well, biting the heads off people who dared to talk to me through the second half of the third book. I listened to the first on Audible and then bought the second and third in hard copy, new, from a bookshop - an extremely rare indulgence for me, but I was enjoying them too much.
 
I’m mostly curious about other people’s perspectives on the events of the series. We see everything through Amara’s eyes. What did other characters see, believe, think, feel, do? Separately, what about the gaps in the books, such as Amara’s arrival in Rome?

There are spoilers in some of these questions, if you haven’t read the trilogy yet.
 

Amara

• Does Amara become more at ease with motherhood as time passes?
• How did she spend her time in Rome?
• Does she encounter Demetrius again?
• Amara and Felix have a lot in common - too much? - which is worth exploring.

Philos

• His POV on any of the dangerous trajectory of his life.
• How does his friendship with Menander develop?

Britannica

• What happened to her after the eruption?
• What was it like for her when she first arrived at the wolf den, her perspective?
• What was her life like in Britain? Does she ever go back? Would she want to?
• What are her formative experiences as a gladiator?

 Felix

• What was his story in the eruption?
• How did he go from being the boy who defended his mother to the man who terrorised women just like her?
• What is he afraid of?

Also, what happened to the other women of the wolf den? Do any of them find the opportunity forge new lives after the eruption?



Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel

Characters: Thomas Cromwell


I have lived in this universe in my head this year; I have probably listened to Ben Miles’ narration of this trilogy on more days than I haven’t. I don’t know how or why I let this pass me by fifteen years ago, but I am a late and devoted convert.

It’s a combination of things, I think: the richness of the world – the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, the social hierarchy and the language and the culture and customs; it’s the family/found family of Cromwell’s household; the sophisticated play with history and historical events, the way it all feels so uncertain even when you know how it ends; the depth and complexity of Cromwell’s consciousness, his perceptions and feelings; the humour of the books, like Sion Madoc on the Thames; themes of language and linguistic dexterity, both different languages and different keys in the same language; the layering of themes of England and Englishness, the creation of a nation and the writing of history, the development of modern England, modern Europe, the modern world, which is happening in real time before Cromwell’s eyes and he’s directing it while so many of his contemporaries refuse to see it. There’s more, but let’s move on before I write a dissertation on why I love this series.

My favourite scenes of the series are often those where Cromwell interacts with women, either with a romantic undercurrent — Mary Boleyn, Jane and Bess Seymour, his wife — or an antagonistic one: Catherine of Aragon, Margaret Pole, or they’re the funny ones. Often they’re both – like Cromwell having one conversation with his sister-in-law and another with his nephew at the same time. If you can replicate any of that, I will fall over with delight.

I’ve only requested Cromwell, but I am open to Cromwell & anyone, and Cromwell/most people done thoughtfully. I’ve started with thoughts about Cromwell and the tag set characters… and then let my imagination wander.

I am also open to Cromwell being very much a character while also largely absent through an outsider POV. If you don’t want to get inside Cromwell’s head, what do those around him think of him?

• What happens to Christophe after his actions in the final moments of the series? If he lives, does he continue to use the name Christophe Cremuel?
• What would have been different if one or both of his daughters had lived? Would he have bought Grace a title? Would Anne have married Rafe, or pursued her studies to the very end of what was possible and perhaps beyond? Would they have met Henry? Would they have gone to court, played a part in the constant tumult of the queen’s rooms?
• Fuck it, wish fulfilment: what if his cry for mercy works? Or what if he never falls at all? Give him a summer evening at Launde with his family.
• What if Cromwell had pursued Jane Seymour? The consequences for England might be a bit too much to consider, but what about for him? Would she have perplexed him, kept him sharp?
• Or if he had let the confusion with Bess Seymour stand, what then?
• There are women in his life, paid by the hour, or at least it's strongly implied. Why are they excluded from the narrative?

This has very much been the hardest section of the letter to write, so I will probably come back with more questions as they occur to me.

For now, dear author, I wish you the best of luck and very easy words in whatever you choose to work on. Happy Yuletide!