Fic: In Thrall (La Belle Dame Sans Merci, PG)

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 12:50:43 GMT

Title: In Thrall
Rating: PG
Warnings: Mention of wartime death
Notes: Written for junetide 2011, but somehow not posted here till now. Some femslash, some genderqueer concepts. Thank you to my beta readers, lilacsigil, grav_ity
Prompt: Fantasy based on Keats's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", wherein the knight gets a second chance with the lady.
Summary: For mortal or fairy the thread of a story, once snagged, is with you forever.

( La Belle Dame sans Merci/ Hath thee in thrall! )

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Dear Junetide Author!

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 13:34:35 GMT

Dear Junetide Author,

Sorry to make you wait a couple of days for your letter. But here it is, at last! I want to say first up that whatever you choose to write, I'm going to be delighted. My Dear Author letters tend to be heavy on detail, but they're meant as guidelines only. Take as little or as much guidance as you're comfortable. Bend them. If they don't suit your story-telling style, ignore them completely. I want writing this story to be as enjoyable a process for you as reading it will be for me.

So, how exciting is this? I've never taken part in an original fic exchange, and I think it's going to be amazing.

You can probably tell from my prompts that I love world building, and by that, I don't mean you need to build the whole world to show me how weird and wonderful the place is. I'm a small details kind of person. Let me see the mundane – what they eat, how it's cooked, where they buy their food. Their small and daily religious observations. What remedies they use when they get a pimple or the wallpaper comes away because of the damp. As I read this ordinary stuff, I'm building the world for you in my own head, and that's an enjoyable process in itself.

Plotty stories float my boat. Big epic swathes of plot, tiny encapsulated plots where you only get to see one corner of what is probably a bigger story, porn with plot, or plot as the framework on which you hang an interesting conversation. Let the characters do something with their time on the page.

I adore, adore competent characters – people who can look after themselves, who know what their strengths and weaknesses are, and who know when to make a strategic retreat. I'm not looking for superstars – the best characters have flaws and can be trapped by those weaknesses – but characters who can quietly get on with the job and save the day.

Give me female characters who have self-determination, in worlds where it's not remarkable or unexpected that they would make decisions about the path of their own lives. Ditto for queer characters. You don't have to write a queer character if that's not your preference, but if you can make queerness visible and accepted in your world, I will be very happy. By queerness, I'm talking about sexualities and gender presentations, as well as relationship dynamics. I also love different body types, and I love different ways of thinking. Non-neurotypical characters who have functional, happy lives and relationships. I love multicultural societies, I love learning about a character by seeing their culture.

( Prompt by prompt )

Want more? Here's a link to my Dear Author letters from Yuletide 2006-2010. If you're looking for more details about my preferences, I've got thoughts about tropes, genres, bulletproof kinks and so on, with examples of canon I enjoy, too.

Yuletide 2010
Yuletide 2009
Yuletide 2008
Yuletide 2007
Yuletide 2006

Thank you again for signing up for junetide! I'm excited that you're going to write (or draw) something for one of these prompts, and I hope you enjoy the process as much as I'm going to enjoy reading (or viewing) your work.

st_aurafina

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Patron Saint of Falling Over Things

Fic: In Thrall (La Belle Dame Sans Merci, PG)

Dear Junetide Author!