Off the prompt "cuddles."

Hey, it's a yuletide letter. Let's start with my requests. I figure you probably only matched me on one of these, since they are all pretty damn rare (two of them aren't in the archive at all), so in case for whatever reason my prompt for what you matched me on doesn't fill you with joy, I will tell you about the other ones so you can contemplate picking up a new fandom (they're all book fandoms--reading a couple of novels shouldn't be too time-consuming should it?)

Dancing Meteorite and Stolen Law - Anne Mason
Kira Warden

( my prompt details )

( more about these books )

Perilous Gard - Elizabeth Marie Pope
Gwenhyfara, Kate Sutton, Cecily Heron

( my prompt details )

( more about this book )

Harbinger Trilogy - Diane Duane
Delde Sota

( my prompt details )

( more about these books )

About my requests in general:

You may have noticed, all of my requests are for female characters. I like male characters from these stories, but I don't want to see them central, I want stories about my favorite girls. I think it would be awesome if you wrote me a story that passed Bechdel, though of course that depends on who you choose to have my gals interact with--Kira on a Vallusian explorer ship is going to have a hard time passing Bechdel, I know!

Cultural differences are relevant to all of these stories--with more awareness in the science fiction, more darkness in the historical fantasy. I like the world-building of each, the development of the different cultures, and I think in any story you write me from any of these books, the culture each character comes from and how it shapes her is going to be an important part of the story. There's a richness of cultural context, of characters that come from societies, that I treasure here. Even if you end up writing a PWP for a pairing or threesome I pitched, write me the characters coming together in a way that shows who they are, how they're shaped by their backgrounds. That stuff's sexy! (Cultural baggage is sexy. Hang on, where is my twitter...)(That's... yes. I tweet to mock myself. You should know that about me. decontextual, if you want to watch me mock myself in real time.)

While I like a variety of genres, I really feel like which fandom you write for me is going to dictate genre, so I hesitate to just be like "I like crack!" or whatever. Like, I feel like a Perilous Gard story about Gwenhyfara is necessarily going to be at least a little dark. A Dancing Meteorite/Stolen Law story... well, depending on what story, I suppose it could range! But I'd think it would be more light-hearted. And with a Harbinger story about Delde Sota, I'd want it to be funny, I'd want her sense of humor to color it, whether it's light or dark humor.

Thank you very much for writing me a story! I'm looking forward to Yuletide.
~Juls

Have you ever been listening to the radio and suddenly felt like the song was written for you personally for five seconds? When I was putting together this list I found myself realizing how much it says about my psyche and maybe also my generation. Like, I almost wish Imagine or something was on here, it seems loftier than *cough* some of these, but I grew up with Imagine, I never had a paradigm shift on it, it was just always there for me. These? These were really personal moments of impact.

Three song lyrics that meant the world to me:

I was made to believe there's something wrong with me, from Cold War by Janelle Monae

This was the line that made me want to write this entry. I wish I'd heard this years ago. I wish I'd heard it years before she even wrote it. I wish I'd heard it in high school. I don't know if I would have understood it, if I would have had the objectivity to get it, but this was something I struggled with, as a queer girl growing up: the sense that there was something wrong with the way I was, that didn't actually come from something being wrong with me but from something being wrong with society, that society was telling me you don't fit, you're a broken cog but it wasn't true, it was society being a broken machine. It's hard to see it the first time but it's so liberating when you do. If I could send this song back in time a dozen years to tiny me, I would.



I'm Not Okay (I Promise) by My Chemical Romance

Okay, don't laugh at me, you folks.

I first heard this song--saw the music video, actually--during Lost Year II, The Flunk Out of Every Institution in the State Remix. We'll call it the Geographically Challenged Year. It was bad, but not quite as bad as my Lost Year, and part of the reason was this song.

I have chronic clinical depression. The Lost Year was the year I just went under to it, the Geographically Challenged Year was the year that I could admit--to myself, if no one else--that something was wrong. I burned some bridges figuring that out, but. It was better. A little.

You see, clinical depression is, 95% of the time, invisible to other people. You're tired or you're cranky or in a bad mood or whatever, you should just buck up and get over it. (You can't get over it, it goes on and on.) And it's so ingrained in our culture that the answer to "How are you?" is "I'm fine" at the best or "I'm okay" at the worst. If you say "I'm awesome!" people look at you kind of pityingly, like "I'm so sorry your company is asshats, at least they don't also make you wear flare?" If you say "I'm terrible," you really had better be bleeding to death, and even then, the temptation is to brush it off as "Just a flesh wound." And if anyone has any reason to suspect you're not really okay, that you're just giving the socially acceptable response, the thing to do is in fact to promise, to assure them that you're okay. Even more for women, I think, there's a negative stereotype of a the woman who complains, what a nag, what a hag she is, and no one wants to be that, right?

So for ages and ages I told everyone including myself that I was okay, when I wasn't, because I didn't know how to say anything else. It seems like such a small thing that this song deconstructs but I don't think any more sweeping statement would have had the same impact--if they had said "I'm depressed, my life sucks," well, that would have been the sort of sentiment you can get away with in emo music, right? But "I'm not okay, I promise," takes the thing you're supposed to say, with all its trappings, and says, "That is a social fiction. That is a lie."

Seven years later I can admit to myself when I'm not okay, and sometimes even to other people.



Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears, from The Cool, Cool River by Paul Simon

This is off The Rhythm of the Saints, which may be one of my favorite albums of all time. What this line encapsulates for me is how the creative process comes out of deep emotions--for him, it's music; for me, it's fiction or film. You don't know how many times I've been jarred to realize that I'm putting myself down on paper at the safe distance of a character in a story. Sometimes it's enough, sometimes you can work through your issues at that distance and write something that's interesting to other people and we call that being inspired. And sometimes it's not enough, sometimes putting things at the safe distance of fuel for the creation engine is putting them too far away, sometimes the only way you can actually process is to own it in yourself. Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears.