The Return of Yuletide Hell

[nineveh_uk]

It’s that time of year again! The cards creep into the shops. Mince pies and whatever “Ecclefachan”* pies are start to appear on the shelves. Far, far away the attentive ear catches the sound of reindeer bells, and on a screen near you the first signs of Yuletide start to be seen. Which means that it is time for the return of How Will You Ruin Yuletide?

I first ruined Yuletide in 2009.

I did it in 2010 with a poll.

And again in 2011, on both LJ and DW.

In 2012 and 2013 I ruined Yuletide by not Ruining Yuletide. That is worst of all.

And now it is 2014, the nominations are in, the fandoms are being sorted, people are are having arguments about what should go in Yuletide letters, and whether saying you don’t want cannibalism in Flower Fairies fandom is kinkshaming.

So I have two choices. I could Ruin Yuletide by write a very long post about how to do everything right that is actually accurate and quite reasonable (except that it is 20,000 words long and starts a flamewar on yuletide_coal that spills over into civil war in Quebec), and then break the spirit of every rule in my own fic.

Or I could do a Yuletide Hell game post. I choose the latter.

The rules are simple: write in comments the Yuletide prompt that you would hate to get. Others are then invited to try and write a sentence of it.

Like every other facet of Yuletide, it is of course more complicated. To be true to the spirit of Yuletide Hell, there is no possible degree by which your prompt could be too entitled, self-contradictory, and generally batshit. While optional details are entirely optional I nonetheless expect that all prompters on this page will have many optional details that they will fully expect their writers to cover, and will also be dreadfully, mortally offended if writers do not merely cover the prompt, but fail to intuit what the requester wanted but forgot to write down.

Here are mine to start off with...

(1) Measure for Measure. Angelo/Isabella. Thanks so much for writing this for me, Yuletider! I know that you’ll do something true to the spirit of Shakespeare’s play! Though don’t do iambic pentameter unless you can really measure up to the standard set by Will as I find bad poetry triggering. Angelo and Isabella are my OTP, so it’s such a pity that Isabella’s internalised misogyny and Vienna’s slut-shaming culture make her unable to respond in a sex-positive way to Angelo’s proposal. I’d love some fix-it fic that has Angelo teaching Isabella to respect her identity as a sexual being. Also, it’s so stupid that Juliet and Claudio don’t practice responsible contraception. I know it’s 1603, but NFP was available then and they should have educated themselves more responsibly, so no babyfic. Bloodplay and BDSM are canonical, so don’t leave them out.

(2) 17 Moments of Spring. Stirlitz/Schellenberg. Omegaverse. I just think that the confluence of the last days of the Third Reich and A/B/O could lend a really fascinating dimension to the story. Obviously in order to respect the very serious setting of the canon complete historical accuracy is a must. It is particularly important that you get the uniforms right.**

(3) Lord Peter Wimsey. Bunter. Bunter isn’t actually in the list of characters, because I didn't nominate the fandoms I planned to request because the Spirit of Yuletide means other people should nominate them for me while I nominate for things I want to write experimentally but actually hate, so I selected Any, but that doesn’t matter, he is still the main one you should write about. I have a very, very specific story in mind, and if you don’t write about this then obviously you are going to ruin Yuletide forever and also possibly cause me to go on the rampage and destroy all Christmas trees within a hundred miles. I’d like a post-war story that has Bunter start by wanting to help Peter to overcome his shell-shock, but he gets to like Peter being dependent on him and when he realizes that Peter doesn’t remember what happens during his nightmares, starts to coerce him into acting as his sex slave. But Bunter’s got an enormous sex drive (and that’s not the only enormous thing, lol!) and wants more sex, so he tricks Peter into thinking that hypnotherapy will help him, so that he can force him to have sex whenever he wants. Please respect Bunter’s demisexual identity.

BTW, I know that the Wimsey canon can be intimidating for a first-time writer, but don’t worry. As long as you avoid the most egregrious Americanisms and make sure you say things like “settee” instead of sofa, couch, or Chesterfield, and stick closely to Strunk and White, I’m sure you’ll be fine.

*Some sort of cross between Lancashire and Wales?

**Note in 2015. The recipient was lucky enough to receive an absolutely masterful fic for this prompt, in which Stirlitz’s cover is blown when he screamed in Russian during childbirth.

Comments

[ankaret]

L. Ron Hubbard RPF. Any.

[nineveh_uk]

'Take me!’ cried the actor, groaning in his bonds as the religious prophet applied the electrodes to his urgent manhood. ‘Reveal yourself and help me to self-actualize my full potential!’

[perennialanna]

I know nothing of Yuletide, but Ecclefechan tarts are from the Scottish borders (and not particularly associated with Christmas).

[legionseagle]

Enquiring minds wish to know: do they go better with Auchentoshan?

[nineveh_uk]

They are at supermarkets round here! But they look very nice - a cousin of Yorkshire curd tarts - and I am inclined to have a go.

Yuletide is an annual fic exchange (not Christmas themed) for small fandoms, or big fandoms that people manage to shoe-horn in. I've done it several times, but don't really have enough time for it at the right time, so don't any more. Inevitably as a large fandom thing, people manage to get wanky about it.

[oursin]

Rasselas/Imlac, Omegaverse with mpreg, in Johnsonian prose, I am very fussy about stylistic authenticity, a single word that is not authentic C18th and verifiable in Johnson's Dictionary will ruin Yuletide for me. (And Imlac is the alpha, right?)

[nineveh_uk]

Thanks for such an awesome request! Imlac is totally the alpha! I'm sure that, like me, you think keeping fic IC is very important. As Wikipedia states There is little of incident, no love-making, with few endeavours to charm the fancy, and with but slight recognition of the claims of sentiment. So I'm sure that you're fine with this being non-con misery-fic in the extreme.

“As this has happened,” said Rasselas, “I can no longer enjoy life. I must be tortured to madness by the remembrance of such cruelty, or pine away in abhorrence of myself. I do not blame my friend, caught also in the wanton madness of that animal heat, but though he may now go free until the lust next strike him, the product of that knotting remains yet with me. My breast must swell with this sorrow until I be discharged of it, if I am not first discharged of mine own life. Oh woe is me, that I may not plunge my dagger into this great belly and make an end, but that I should destroy that innocent babe!”

[legionseagle]

Slings and Arrows Darren Nichols, Richard Smith-Jones and Oliver Wells during the run of Macbeth. Please handle the witches in a sensitive, historically accurate, inter-faith manner which emphasises the positives. Try to link so-called "superstitions" to their origins in pagan practices in a positive and constructive spirit. No references to character death, please! Also, no camp.

[nineveh_uk]

Of course I will handle the witches in a sensitive spirit! Frankly, I'm a bit uncomfortable that your letter implies I wouldn't be respectful, but I understand that you come from a place of pain so I'll let it go. Fortuntately I have this amazing book about the beliefs of the witches in Macbeth and how Scottish witches worshipped potatoes. I am trying to publish an academic paper on how "Out, out, damn spot!" reflects the unfairly demonised Lady Macbeth's attempts to cure the potato blight brought to the area by the patriarchal Duncan.

I dislike fanfic representation of camping because it culturally appropriates the traditions of nomadic peoples like the Poles, so you needn't worry about my including that. Besides, I want to leave room for those awesome men in make-up!

[quillori]

Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - [fandom nominated without characters]

Optional Details - [left blank]

Sign up name - [unrelated to name used on other social media]

References on LJ/DW/Tumblr/etc when finally tracked down - [single reference to deeply held belief all 19th C Russian literature actually expresses esoteric Masonic philosophy, written in Kabbalist code]

[nineveh_uk]

AARGH! I think that you might have won.

Ed. Although on reflection I'm not so sure. Maybe there's a fellow Masonic philosophy and Kabbalist Russian literature lover out there. Your fic-writer produces some sort of brilliant piece of classic W&P het. You hate it. There is massive wank. It is famed throughout social media. The other person hears about it and flies to your aid to defend and commiserate. Back to back you hack at the despoilers of the Truth. You meet to plot revenge. You stare into one another's eyes. You fall in love. You spend your honeymoon and every subsequent holiday trawling archives in search of the Truth. At least at 90 you track down a letter. But your health is fading. Will you make it - no. Your son goes afterwards and reads the text, "Dear Fyodor Mikhailovich, Great idea about working in that Masonic shit. It'll really give the critics something to think about!"

[moetushie]

The Charioteer - Mary Renault, Ralph Lanyon, Alec Deacon, Laurie Odell -- I know it's a teensy-weensy not allowed, but I would love it if you could include the character of Captain Jack Harkness, as well as the other nominated characters I've requested? Perhaps he gives a stirring eulogy at Bim Taylor's funeral. Or maybe he's Alec Deacon's previously completely unmentioned American friend. I think he and Ralph would get along very well, don't you?

If you can't write Jack, I'd rather you try the other canons, please.

20th Century RPF RPF, Any -- I hope this isn't too broad a category! But I'm fascinated by the the people who are fascinated by who prominent historical figures in the 20th century were boning.

Hamlet - COULD BE ANYONE REALLY , The Pirates, Gravedigger #1 and 2, Fortinbras -- No doubt I've made it obvious by my character choices, I'm an ardent Anti-Stratfordian. Please don't ruin my Yuletide by implying in any way that the vile Pretender, William Shakespeare, wrote the genius that is Hamlet.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Gravedigger 1:
I am the very model of a handy Danish gravedigger,
I've arguments on death and life and if we really can be sure,
If men are guilty if they're drowned or whether it was accident
And whether if one hangs oneself a crowner knows it's really meant.

I puzzle other gravediggers with wit and merry ribaldry
But somehow I suspect that they pay no heed to philosophy
That Hamlet might appreciate my sagacity, my thus-and-so ---
Alas, he's too concerned with that attractive youth Horatio.

---

What? It's not by Shakespeare...

[antisoppist]

Fandom: Guardian newspaper columnists RPF
Mariella Frostrup and Captain Awkward combine to give joint marital advice to Lucy Mangan and the wife of that man in the band whose name I can't remember, oops, sorry! I know Captain Awkward is not a Guardian newspaper columnist and wasn't in the character list but that doesn't matter and by the way I don't like people writing fic about real people and I love these characters and don't want to upset them.

[serriadh]

Hi, letter writer! I don't know who some of these people are, so I've just missed them out!! (I should probably have checked who the characters on this would be before signing up to write - but I thought it would be all David Mitchell/Charlie Brooker/Giles Fraser threesome requests).

Dear 'My friends and family think my husband is a horrid Tory',
I did a quick google and I see that 'Tory' is what we call a 'Republican'. It's true that political differences can be a problem in relationships, which is why I try to include it in conversation during the first two minutes of meeting a potential date.
However, your problem sounds like it's not so much that your husband is a horrid Tory, but that your family and friends disagree with him. Friends get to have an opinion on this, but they should process away from you. Here are some scripts you can use:

You: Hey, chief [or $friendname]. I might be wrong but I think we've already talked this to death already. This makes me feel bored of your repetitive conversation. One thing we could do is stop talking about this. How does that sound to you?
Them: blah blah blah something you don't need to listen to
You: I take that on board, but we can't talk about this anymore. Is that something you can do?
Them: blah blah but he'll force your child to go to Eton and be a capitalist prig.
You: Since you won't acquiesce to my simple request, I'm afraid I'll have to find a completely new set of friends. No hard feelings! Boundaries!
Deliver african violets to the whole group as necessary.

With your mother, I suggest you just put the phone down on her whenever she mentions it, and walk out the house if you're visiting and she brings it up. She'll either respect your boundaries or... you won't have to deal with her saying these things. I don't want commenters weighing in with diagnoses over the internet, but you might find My Mother Has Narcissistic Personality Disorder a useful book for you.

[taelle]

17 Moments of Spring. Stirlitz/Schellenberg. Omegaverse.

Congratulations, you've ruined not only Yuletide but my brain.

[nineveh_uk]

I am so proud ;-)

[serriadh]

Antonia Forest's Marlowverse/My Little Pony:Friendship is magic
I really love the olde worldy pony things they do at Trennels, so I'd love to see it combined with MLP. I'm a keen rider, so accuracy in that is really important - you might need to find a horse-picker if you don't know much about it all. I think it might be really cool if they were doing a sort of Gondal with their MLPs and then it turned real and they went into the MLP-verse. I haven't specified characters but my favourite is Patrick so please don't write him as arrogant or opinionated!! I am triggered by OOC writing after a bad incident in my teens where someone said Fred and George were bullies. I also really hate animal cruelty so no hunting!!

I know the canon is hard to get hold of so don't worry if you haven't seen all the series of MLP.

[nineveh_uk]

I agree entirely with your on Patrick. He is so sensitive and delicate - OMG! the crying!!!! - and no-one ever considers his feelings, I think it's awful how oppressed he is.

I know the canon is hard to get hold of so don't worry if you haven't seen all the series of MLP.

Magic!

Horrific as this idea is, part of me would pay good money to see Patrick Merrick confronted with MLP.

[fallingtowers]

Aubrey-Maturin, modern coffeeshop AU. – Sophie is an asexual cupcake baker; Diana is her awesome bisexual polyamorous cross-dressing cousin, who’s a barista by day and a glamorous fashion blogger by night. There’s this couple of clueless customers who keep showing up in their fancy beach town coffeeshop and keep hitting on them.

Obviously, Stephen is a non-neurotypical nerd and animal rights activist, and Jack is his fratboy friend. Somebody should totally unpack Jack’s privilege as a cishet white guy with a rich father and a military career. But things get so much better when he finally owns up to being into furry kink, and Stephen starts leading him round by a collar while wearing a bear suit.

Babbington should show up too, he’s such a trashy little man slut! LOL. But he shouldn’t be sex-shamed and get STDs for his promiscuity as he does in canon. And NO UNDERAGE!!!!

Please include references to 18th century natural history as well, just without any speciesism. And you’d really, really make my Yuletide for accurately quoting the Aeneid in there (only in Latin), but just if you read it as a fundamentally anti-imperialist, innately post-colonial text.

PS. Movie canon ONLY.

[nineveh_uk]

This prompt is so staggeringly awful in its brilliance that I simply don't know how to respond it. The genius of the first paragraph (asexual cupcake baker!) is only matched by the rest. It's just so wrong, and yet - non sex-shamed Babbington aside - I find myself actually wanting to read it. The bear skin! Jack's privilege! And the Aeneid (I bet people do quote bits of it OOC as fundamentally anti-imperialist and innately post-colonial).

***

'Jack, for all love, will you stop asking dear Sophie for a threesome?'

[el_staplador]

Biggles series – W. E. Johns (Ginger Hebblethwaite)

I’m convinced that Ginger is a Weasley. How does he get on at Hogwarts? No need to include Biggles or Algy.



Just William series – Richmal Crompton (Ginger Merridew)

I’m convinced that Ginger is a Weasley. How does he get on at Hogwarts? No need to include William, Douglas or Henry.



1950s Actor RPF (Ginger Rogers)

I’m convinced that Ginger is a Weasley. How does she get on at Hogwarts? No need to include Fred. (Fred Astaire, I mean! Obviously include Fred Weasley!)

[moetushie]

Hi, I was looking to write you a treat, but I think it is impossible. To say Ginger Rogers might be a Weasley is clearly ginger-erasure. Please educate yourself!

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

(3)

As you may be aware, large areas of Scotland are suffering from a lack of woodland diversity as a result of commercial conifer plantations, so it would be environmentally irresponsible of me not to pass up the opportunity for a low-carbon ground-clearance operation. As such, I will not be able to follow your prompt in full. However, as it's Christmas, I have kept Bunter, the shell-shock and the settee.

His Lordship had recently expressed an interest in the cuisine of the Indian subcontinent, and as, in Mr Bunter's opinion, any interest, however slight, should be nurtured as being beneficial to his Lordship's delicate mental state, Bunter had undertaken to transform the delivery of a note to an elderly Anglo-Indian civil servant (retired) into an invitation to spend an afternoon aiding his manservant Mr. Chatterjee in the preparation of various pickles and chutneys.

The brass ornaments on the hall table next to the elephant's-foot umbrella stand were quite outside Mr Bunter's experience and not entirely to his taste but he observed with approval that they all showed signs of conscientious polishing. At the appearance of a dark-skinned figure from the direction of the kitchen, Bunter rose from the mauve-draped rosewood settee upon which he had been desired to wait and followed his guide into a cloud of intriguingly fragrant steam.

[nineveh_uk]

Will no-one think of the pine martens??????

I love the idea of Bunter learning Indian cooking in order to tempt his lordships's jaded palate. Will lessons in Mysterious Eastern Hypnotism follow? Or perhaps this is where he picked up his curious knowledge about the unshaven beards of Muslim men?

can we still play?

[lilliburlero]

David Blaize/Violet Grey/her fiancé love triangle. I'd love a bakery AU! No cousincest, please, that really squicks me. I find cricket really boring: please don't include extended descriptions of cricket matches! No piffle: I just can't stand it when people use that word (pet peeve ha ha).

Re: can we still play?

[nineveh_uk]

I can't remember who Violet Grey is and anyway I wouldn't writer her because that's homophobic erasure of Maddox so I'm going to write about him instead. I'm sure you'll agree that's what you ought to have asked for. As a passionate cricket fan, I find your dismissal of it distressing. For a while I thought that you didn't deserve the brilliant cricket scene I was going to write but then I realised that that was silly, and Yuletide stories are really gifts to the whole fandom aren't they, so I included it anyway. If you don't know much about cricket maybe you should educate yourself. Obviously its going to be a Peter Wimsey crossover.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

It is particularly important that you get the uniforms right.

Right with respect to canon, obviously, rather than historically accurate. I mean, who wants to imagine one member (hee!) of the SS being rogered by another while wearing a grey uniform*, talk about squicky!

*Although if it resulted in Stirlitz screaming out in Russian while giving birth, I might just be able to endure the trauma.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I feel sure that whether you choose canon or history, you can be sure that I wanted the other one and that therefore you have RUINED YULETIDE for me with your squicky fail. Though I might forgive you if you caught the Semenyov voice well enough.

I was about to say that there is no way on earth I am ever writing that fic, except that is folly. This is fanfic, there can be no never.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

Ecclefechan is a town in Dumfries and Galloway. I've never been there but it's signposted from the main A road into Glasgow and the route we take to visit my folks down south and for some reason the name of it always amuses me :)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

it is an excellent name. I know it must be the cake association, but it does sound sort of warming and cake-like.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

I . . . sort of want cannibalistic flower fairies now.

So, so traumatised by your 17 Moments note. Traumatised with LAUGHTER.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

The Song of the Nettle Dodder (https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=nettle+dodder&rlz=1C1CHFX_enGB505GB505&espv=2&biw=1567&bih=767&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=yQ00VODbNdjzau_9gLgI&ved=0CDkQsAQ) Fairy

O, children trampling unawares
Through Nettle's cruel and stinging leaves,
You may find comfort from your cares:
Revenge will come from one who weaves.

Thus while my seeking tendrils grow
And my shy flowers jewel the green
I wind about the stems below
To feed upon the sap unseen.

[tudorpot.livejournal.com]

Loves this. I so wanted to comment on the oh so precious kink-shaming post, restrained myself by reading the various comments which were split between overweening attempts to "unpack" the post (shudders), support OP, direct and indirect allusions to 2013 fic which I gather totally ruined OP's life.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It was truly eye-rolling stuff.

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

Measure for Measure

Author's note: Don't worry, dear recipient, I too find bad poetry triggering. I don't think I could do good Will's iambic pentameter justice, alas, so I chose another verse form.

***

My gentle reader
I so hope you will enjoy
eighty-eight haikus.

Our best belov'd duke
to Angelo hath giveth
Viennese command.

Dressed in friar's smock
He watches Angelo teach
frozen heart to love.

Or if it be not love
then burgeoning* manhood
and her clitoris.

***

* Remember that this has to be pronounced with all four Elizabethan syllables, burg-e-O-ning!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

"Eighty-eight haikus":
Words cannot express how much
My heart sank at that.

Honestly, I think that if I got Measure for Measure in haikus on Christmas morning, I would fake my death of leprosy. This is brilliant. And the last one. Argh!

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Oh, gosh, now you've got me reading back through fandom history. File under People Are Strange...

In The Thick Of It, 1930s AU. Politics is politics any time, right? But I'd like the 1930s because I like the clothes. Any characters, in any combinations - just remember that no-one swore like that back then, so watch the language! Oh, and I've only seen Series 1. NO SPOILERS!

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

Dearest Yuletide Author!

Gosh, I'd love a crossover of a Thick of It 1930's AU and McKellen's 1930's Richard III!!!11!!1! With Malcolm as Richard, natch, and all the swearing in blank Shakespearean verse. But please have lots of fuckitys. Or fuckities.