light of the mind

(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) )

( Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came )

( Flower Fairies - Cicely Mary Barker )

( “Her strong enchantments failing” - A.E. Housman )

( Mesopotamian RPF )

( Puck of Pook’s Hill Series - Rudyard Kipling )