Dear Yuletide Personage
Oct. 14th, 2021 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
melmilloHello, dear writer!
It's time for Yuletide once more! I took a little break from participating last year as 2020 was, well, what it was, but I'm eager to hop back into the Yuletide fun. I hope you're eager to write for me--I know I'm eager to see what you come up with.
My presence in namespace fandom is still pretty much nil, but my AO3 name is melmillo and my old tumblr is under the name smallmonday.
Below is some basic blab about my reading preferences, and reposts of my official requests plus some specific thoughts on each request/canon.
General thoughts:
- I have no real preferences in terms of POV or tense, as long as it's consistent and clear. First-, second-, and third-person POVs are all fine. I love character studies and meditative pieces just as much as plottier stories, and I'm also happy with various forms of stories like five-times fics and document/epistolary fics and so on.
- I'm fine (sometimes more than fine!) with things like uneven power dynamics, creepy imagery, gore that isn't extreme, etc. My general DNWs and squicks are:
- blatant character-bashing
- mundane/modern AUs
- A/B/O of any kind
- body fluids besides blood, sweat, and tears
- damage to eyes, teeth, fingernails, and inner ears
- incredibly detailed descriptions of insects and arachnids (general mentions are fine!)
- graphic violence to/torture of animals (again, not a problem if it's mentioned or described generally--I just don't want the gory details)
If you want more guidance about some other squick (or like/kink), please feel free to get in touch with me through the mods!
--If you're writing something shippy or involving a romantic/sexual relationship, actual sex scenes are great but absolutely not required! If your writing preference is for UST or fade-to-black then please don't make yourself go bonkers trying to churn out something explicit--I would much rather you not make yourself miserable trying to write something that's beyond your comfort level. Unless otherwise specified in a request itself, consent of all levels, dub-con, and non-con are all fine. (Given the choice between dub- or non-con my preference leans more toward the former, but non-con is also okay and won't squick me.)
--Remember, optional details are optional! I want this to be a good Yuletide for you, and that means writing something you're excited about. If you think you have a great idea that fits the fandom/characters I've asked for but isn't mentioned in my babble, go for it!
And, as always, length of request does not equal level of desire for fic for that particular canon. I asked for all these because they're all canons and characters I'm genuinely dying to read a little more about!
Fandom: The Wolf of Winter - Paula Volsky
Characters: Varis, Shalindra
What it is and where to find it: A single-volume fantasy novel by Paula Volsky, centered on a Russian-esque kingdom with a tradition of dangerous and forbidden necromantic magic and told from the points of view of the villain-protagonist-turned-antagonist Varis and his niece (and more straightforward protagonist) Shalindra. Much of the book has them entirely separate as Varis intrigues and necromances his way to the top of the political heap while Shalindra and her brother flee to other lands for safety, but the last quarter of the book brings them together as captor and captive--by which time Shalindra's just happened to learn a little necromancy herself....
Out of print, alas, but many used copies are available on Amazon and elsewhere.
Official request and further thoughts:
I'm requesting both Varis and Shalindra as characters, but I don't need them both to appear on-screen or in POV--what I'm really just dying to get is some kind of fic that gives me another taste of their interactions with and impact on each other. Their time together is one of the most interesting parts of the book for me, but necessity of pacing means that the weeks of time Shalindra spends as Varis's hostage/'guest' gets swept past rather quickly, so a fic expanding on that time period is one thing I'd love to see. A couple of sentences, for examples, mention that once Shalindra is being kept in better conditions she and Varis usually dine together, so what did that look like? What did they talk about? (Dinner scenes that are tense or emotionally charged in some way are one of my favorite things to read, so this is one of those skimmed-over details that I desperately wish we had an actual example of in the book!) I have to admit I'm also darkly tempted by the thought of an AU where the proposed marriage went through for whatever reason--how in the world would both of them have navigated that relationship?--or where Shalindra didn't quite have the strength to ask Varis to take her out of the crypt, and gave in to the unspoken offer of further instruction in necromancy.
Varis's POV scene during some point of Shalindra's captivity could be fertile ground to explore, too. We only get a few scenes from his perspective in the latter part of the novel, but the couple of times we do his thoughts about Shalindra are very striking--particularly that scene were he's in a post-necromancy waking nightmare and thinks of her face and her voice as a point of light and sanity in the madness. Something about his first impressions of her once she's been captured, maybe, or his thoughts after the crypt scene?
Or I'd love to see some kind of Shalindra fic set post-canon, as the conclusion is a pretty much a happy-yet-not ending--Shalindra's been too changed to celebrate her brother's victory and Varis's defeat the way she once would have, and certain elements of her world are already starting to feel grating, unsatisfying, or dull to her. So I always wonder: what is she going to do from now on? Is she truly going to manage to resist the lure of necromancy for the rest of her life? Or would she take advantage of her new position and resources--a titled noble, with time and money and the research skills that come from her years as an enforced scholar at Fruce--and begin exploring the forbidden art again?
Given the situation Varis is in at the book's conclusion (spifflicated in that shack in the woods and so ragged and dishelved that the few patrols who've come across him haven't recognized him), it's very unlikely that Shalindra will encounter him again after the book's end--but if she did turn back to necromancy and let a sufficient number of years pass, might she able to summon his ghost? Would she try to do it, if only to assuage her own curiosity about him and why he'd let her go? I don't know how lucid a ghost!Varis would be--I can't remember if we see any ghosts of spifflicates in the book--but the two of them having one last conversation and their previous power dynamic of captor/captive being so completely reversed into necromancer/ghost is an idea I can't get out of my brain.
My perennial request! I read The Wolf of Winter when I was about 11 or 12, and it left a huge number of chilly skeletal bone-prints all over my impressionable young mind. I think it was one of the first'grown-up' fantasy novels I read that wasn't drawing solely on Standard Medieval Western Europe for its setting, and also probably the first one that centered so heavily on necromantic magic as a plot element. And it was peppered with certain narrative devices and tropes that I'd later come to love wholeheartedly: a cold but somewhat sympathetic protagonist growing into an antagonist; stretches of affiability/understanding between the protagonist and the antagonist even if they're working at cross-purposes; a good character being truly, truly tempted by something the antagonist offers them. Looking back at it these days it has its flaws, but it's a book that's always stuck with me and is a frequent reread--I still have the original paperback copy that I first read ages ago.
And Shalindra and Varis and their interactions left such an impression that I always find it surprising that their actual time together comes so late in the book, and is barely more than 100 pages of content. The impact the two of them have on each other feels so strongly drawn in that small amount of space! In spite of their antagonism they have points of similarity and common aspects in their histories/personalities/experiences that they've never found echoed in another person. You understand why Shalindra is uneasily drawn to Varis and finds him easy to talk to about personal and painful things even though she knows better; why Varis, who goes through the entire book manipulating everyone with an ice-cool lack of emotion, feels an unspoken--affinity? affection?--for Shalindra, enough to let her go at the end even though it dooms him. And you understand why the memory of her and that moment can still break through his madness at the end, just a little, and why Shalindra feels somehow bereft once he's gone. It's a short but potent portrayal of two semi-kindred spirits getting pulled into each other's orbit for a little bit before fate and their own actions yank them apart again, and I wish there'd been just a tiny bit more of it.
So, yes, any story that draws on this stuff that I can't stop blabbing about would make me a happy reader. :D
Fandom: Villain (1971)
Characters: Vic Dakin, Wolfe Lissner
What it is and where to find it: A 1971 British crime thriller, very pulpy and bleak. Brutal East End gangster Vic Dakin (a late-forties Richard Burton) decides to take a stab at a too-good-to-miss payroll heist; the plot follows the planning, robbery, and fallout through a number of complicating factors, one of which is Dakin's underling and kept man/unwilling boyfriend Wolfe Lissner (a twenty-something Ian McShane).
Available on DVD and Blu-Ray, and for rent on Amazon Prime and Apple TV. If you watch, be prepared for violence and Burton's, umm, interesting attempts to shift his accent into something more character-appropriate. (The book it's based on, James Barlow's The Burden of Proof, is also available for purchase on Kindle--it's fun if you like lurid crime novels, but it's not necessary to read it and the movie diverges from the book in a couple of significant elements anyway.)
Official request and further thoughts:
My feelings for this request essentially boil down to "another slice, please". I don’t want to oversell the presence of the arrangement/relationship/whatever you call it when one person’s consent is highly dubious between Dakin and Lissner in the canon, as it is only one thread among several--but it’s a key thread, and there’s enough unsaid but bubbling up in and around it that I really want another glimpse of it.
I will absolutely not say no to sex if you want to write it (never!), but I’d be just as happy with a character-focused piece without it. A missing scene, a dive into the thoughts of either character during a scene in canon, something set pre- or post-canon, an outsider POV--almost any angle you could take on their relationship and interactions would be interesting to me. What are these two thinking about each other? Do they have anything like a normal conversation? Does Lissner have any non-negative feeling for Dakin at all in him, even if it’s only a sliver of old loyalty, or pity for an aging gangster who’s got no one else, or does he just wish with his entire being that someone would drop a piano on Dakin’s head?
I’d love to see anything about how things started--it’s easy to see why it happened, given that Lissner is nice-looking and leagues smarter than Dakin’s other underlings to boot, but how did it happen, and what was it like pre-canon? Lissner seems like he would very much prefer not to be the subject of Dakin’s affections, but was it always like that? Was he fully reluctant from the beginning and only going along with it out of fear and survival instinct, or did the prospect of steady money and good suits in exchange for sex seem like a palatable deal when it started?
Or something that digs into the detail around the previous split--Lissner’s awkward "No ties, Vic" comment makes it pretty clear that he did the leaving, but what where the circumstances and how did it happen? Did he pull a slow fade, or did he wake up one day and decide to disappear and hope Dakin wouldn’t haul him back? (In the novel it's because Lissner stole a chunk of protection money owed to Dakin to pay his own gambling debts and scarpered--and apparently Dakin took no retribution for that, which says a lot right there--but I'd be just as interested in other explanations for it.)
In spite of Dakin's final posturing to Matthews, both he and Lissner seem bound for prison time at the end (though I can see Lissner slipping out with a lesser sentence or none at all if he's really lucky)--do they see or hear from each other again, or is that final moment in the tunnel really the end? Does Lissner get out of the city, or go legit, or are the pull of London/crime too strong? Does Dakin die in prison, or does he survive long enough to get released and live a post-prison life? (I remember one reassessment-review musing that if Vic Dakin had made it to the present day he’d end up with a career like Frankie Fraser, publishing memoirs of his life and crimes and turning up in cameo roles in gangster films--that could be a fun angle to approach from.)
I watched this movie sometime last year when I was in a real mood and watching crime and gangster films as fast as I could find them, and all I knew about this one was that it hit cinemas the same year as the much more well-known Get Carter, was pretty violent, and Burton and McShane were in it. So you can imagine my eyebrows going up and up when they had their first scene...and even though it was just dialogue the atmosphere between the characters seemed very intense...and then Dakin puts his hand on Lissner’s shoulder and ominous discordant music starts up on the soundtrack and Lissner’s face goes through a terrific shift of realization and dismay to a false smile to resignation and I thought "huh!" and discovered my osmosis about this movie had been significantly lacking. It did make it more interesting to watch, though, and then to rewatch and chew over more thoroughly. Current day opinions about the quality of this film seem to be sharply divided--is it an underappreciated gem of the genre or miscast and unintentionally hilarious trash? IMO it sits somewhere between the two, but I liked it well enough on those first watches and was happy to do another rewatch so I could write this request.
It's not the greatest film or the most scorching on-screen pairing, but it's got something about it that intrigues me. There's an established history there that I'd like to know more about, and elisions I'd like to see expanded on, and a sharp ending that makes me wonder what happens decades down the line, and a sense of doom hanging over the whole thing from the word go that I want to meditate on more. And there's a flourish I like about Lissner being Dakin's undoing but not at all in the way you'd think--when Dakin's got cops behind him and a long dash through an open field in front of him and yet is still all for trying to get away, what defeats him is Lissner refusing and telling him what’s been obvious to him (and the viewer) for ages: "You blew it." Dakin had chances to get out of this mess and he wrecked them all; he can make himself vulnerable and tell Lissner he needs him all he likes but when it comes to the crisis point Lissner will give up rather than run for it (and die) with him. It's a lot of punch for a last exchange, with a real significant look between them to go with it.
Feel free to dig into the setting and criminal elements as much or as little as you like. The movie's real-life influences are not subtle--Dakin as a character is obviously drawing significant inspiration from Ronnie Kray--but given what I’ve requested and the potential research rabbit hole that is of organized crime in 1960s-70s London I absolutely won’t be fussed if any details on that topic are only lightly sketched in or somewhat inaccurate. :D
Also specific (and unenforceable, I know) DNW for this one: I'm hoping for something that sticks at least somewhat within the mood of the canon. Not violence-wise--no need for writing people getting filleted with a razor if you aren't up for it--but this is a mean, nasty movie about mean, nasty people and while I'm fully on board for sympathetic/empathetic approaches I would prefer not to see these characters mutually working out their issues or their relationship turned into fluff or whatever. In previous Yuletides I've had a blanket ask that for a gift not to steer too far into a depressing or bleak mood, but that ask absolutely does not apply to this request!
Fandom:Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman
Characters: Dollface
What it is and where to find it: A standalone novel set in a world where comic book-style superheroes and supervillains exist. The dual POV narrative follows the megalomaniacal Doctor Impossible on his thirteenth attempt to conquer the world and the recently cyborg'd Fatale as she (and the superhero team she belongs to) attempt to stop him and to discover why their Superman-analogue has disappeared. Other heroes and villains appear and are referenced, and superhero comic tropes are thoroughly employed, examined, broken apart, and reconstructed.
In print and likely to be easily available in physical and ebook form wherever you like to acquire your books.
Official request and further thoughts:
If you're familiar with this book but haven't read it recently you might be puzzling over who the heck Dollface is, which is understandable as she never appears on-page! Doctor Impossible references her as a villain from a decade ago who committed crimes via the use of elaborate mechanical toys (as he steals one of said toys from a Champions museum exhibit case, which is labeled with the wrong name), and her back-of-the-book bio gives a little more detail.
I'm fascinated by the concept of this character on a level that is totally disproportionate with her presence in the book, and would love to see her fleshed out through a fic! What is the life of a specialized villain like in this novel's version of a comic-book world?
How long was she in the game? Her bio calls her "a neglected child" but Doctor Impossible refers to her as "a woman"--did she start early, building little mechanical terrors and setting them on classmates or neighbors as a preteen, or was this an instance of childhood damage later birthing an adult villain? Was the neglect that wounded her lack of parental love, or lack of friends, or lack of resources? What kind of crimes did she commit with her devices, and what things did she want to achieve? Revenge on people/a world that had hurt her? Attention? Friendship and love?
What were her inspirations for the objects she created? How DID she make all those wonderful toys? (Since this is a nonsense comic book world, feel free to make up your own bonkers scientific explanations rather than using plain old real world science...or, if you know enough science to figure out how to build a tiny flamethrower or gravity ray, feel free to do that!) How did she learn her mechanical skills in the first place? Is she entirely self-taught, or did she ever train with someone else--a civilian who was unaware of her goals, or another villain (the mechanically-minded Baron Ether, perhaps)? Did she have any allies or associates among fellow villains, or did she always work alone? What were her victories, frustrations, and defeats like? Did she suffer the annoyance of having to put a scheme on hold because the widget she needed for her latest creation was backordered?
Her toys are all in the Champions museum and her file simply lists her status as "no longer active", which doesn't sound like she's deceased or in prison--so what's she up to? Did she get what she was after and disappear into satisfied retirement, or did she suffer one two many defeats and give it all up? Did go legit and turn her mechanical skills into something profitable, or is she living quietly somewhere, secretly planning a comeback or training a new villain?
What did people think of her? How was she written about in the news and talked about on the street? Is there some grad student in the field of Hero and Villain studies writing their master's thesis on Dollface's methods, psychology, etc.?
I read this book when it was first published and the bit about Dollface stuck in my head like a persistent bit of glue--and when I reread it this year I found that bit of glue was still in my brain, and that I was really looking forward to rereading that tiny mention of her.
For easy reference here's the text describing her in the book:
And her entry in the after-text bio sums her up thus: "A neglected child develops her own playmates, and unleashes them on the world."
Multiple times over the years I've thought about writing something about her, but never could settle on an idea that I felt was right to turn into a fic--so perhaps what I really want is for someone else to write a fic about her that I can read!
I think what caught me so thoroughly when I initially read the book in 2007 was that combination of traits: a female villain; a mechanics-based villain; a villain who’s admired by her colleague for her craft; a villain who doesn’t seem to have been paid much attention to by either side (to the point of her life's creations being mislabeled); a villain who hasn’t died and doesn’t seem to be in prison and could still be out there, doing something.... Because of all that, even though she’s not a character in the fullest sense the possibilities of what she COULD be as a character really have a hold on me.
(I can also probably blame having Batman: the Animated Series as a childhood touchstone, as that show was excellent at turning out interesting and engaging backgrounds and stories for gimmicky and forgotten villains.)
I’m also genuinely fond of the setting and the writing approach, which uses comics and hero&villain tropes with a lot of loving humor while acknowledging the downsides and problems, large and small, that the people on both sides go through (like Fatale gloomily reflecting on how her cyborgization has fucked up her sense of her body AND means she needs reinforced chairs and floors to carry the weight of all the metal, or Doctor Impossible reflecting on the difficulties of fleeing in his supervillain suit&cape and tiredly admitting that sometimes you just don’t feel all that evil), so lean into that element as much as feels fun or interesting for you!
That's my blab for this year! Again, please feel free to reach out through the Yuletide mods if something isn't clear, and happy writing!
It's time for Yuletide once more! I took a little break from participating last year as 2020 was, well, what it was, but I'm eager to hop back into the Yuletide fun. I hope you're eager to write for me--I know I'm eager to see what you come up with.
My presence in namespace fandom is still pretty much nil, but my AO3 name is melmillo and my old tumblr is under the name smallmonday.
Below is some basic blab about my reading preferences, and reposts of my official requests plus some specific thoughts on each request/canon.
General thoughts:
- I have no real preferences in terms of POV or tense, as long as it's consistent and clear. First-, second-, and third-person POVs are all fine. I love character studies and meditative pieces just as much as plottier stories, and I'm also happy with various forms of stories like five-times fics and document/epistolary fics and so on.
- I'm fine (sometimes more than fine!) with things like uneven power dynamics, creepy imagery, gore that isn't extreme, etc. My general DNWs and squicks are:
- blatant character-bashing
- mundane/modern AUs
- A/B/O of any kind
- body fluids besides blood, sweat, and tears
- damage to eyes, teeth, fingernails, and inner ears
- incredibly detailed descriptions of insects and arachnids (general mentions are fine!)
- graphic violence to/torture of animals (again, not a problem if it's mentioned or described generally--I just don't want the gory details)
If you want more guidance about some other squick (or like/kink), please feel free to get in touch with me through the mods!
--If you're writing something shippy or involving a romantic/sexual relationship, actual sex scenes are great but absolutely not required! If your writing preference is for UST or fade-to-black then please don't make yourself go bonkers trying to churn out something explicit--I would much rather you not make yourself miserable trying to write something that's beyond your comfort level. Unless otherwise specified in a request itself, consent of all levels, dub-con, and non-con are all fine. (Given the choice between dub- or non-con my preference leans more toward the former, but non-con is also okay and won't squick me.)
--Remember, optional details are optional! I want this to be a good Yuletide for you, and that means writing something you're excited about. If you think you have a great idea that fits the fandom/characters I've asked for but isn't mentioned in my babble, go for it!
And, as always, length of request does not equal level of desire for fic for that particular canon. I asked for all these because they're all canons and characters I'm genuinely dying to read a little more about!
Fandom: The Wolf of Winter - Paula Volsky
Characters: Varis, Shalindra
What it is and where to find it: A single-volume fantasy novel by Paula Volsky, centered on a Russian-esque kingdom with a tradition of dangerous and forbidden necromantic magic and told from the points of view of the villain-protagonist-turned-antagonist Varis and his niece (and more straightforward protagonist) Shalindra. Much of the book has them entirely separate as Varis intrigues and necromances his way to the top of the political heap while Shalindra and her brother flee to other lands for safety, but the last quarter of the book brings them together as captor and captive--by which time Shalindra's just happened to learn a little necromancy herself....
Out of print, alas, but many used copies are available on Amazon and elsewhere.
Official request and further thoughts:
I'm requesting both Varis and Shalindra as characters, but I don't need them both to appear on-screen or in POV--what I'm really just dying to get is some kind of fic that gives me another taste of their interactions with and impact on each other. Their time together is one of the most interesting parts of the book for me, but necessity of pacing means that the weeks of time Shalindra spends as Varis's hostage/'guest' gets swept past rather quickly, so a fic expanding on that time period is one thing I'd love to see. A couple of sentences, for examples, mention that once Shalindra is being kept in better conditions she and Varis usually dine together, so what did that look like? What did they talk about? (Dinner scenes that are tense or emotionally charged in some way are one of my favorite things to read, so this is one of those skimmed-over details that I desperately wish we had an actual example of in the book!) I have to admit I'm also darkly tempted by the thought of an AU where the proposed marriage went through for whatever reason--how in the world would both of them have navigated that relationship?--or where Shalindra didn't quite have the strength to ask Varis to take her out of the crypt, and gave in to the unspoken offer of further instruction in necromancy.
Varis's POV scene during some point of Shalindra's captivity could be fertile ground to explore, too. We only get a few scenes from his perspective in the latter part of the novel, but the couple of times we do his thoughts about Shalindra are very striking--particularly that scene were he's in a post-necromancy waking nightmare and thinks of her face and her voice as a point of light and sanity in the madness. Something about his first impressions of her once she's been captured, maybe, or his thoughts after the crypt scene?
Or I'd love to see some kind of Shalindra fic set post-canon, as the conclusion is a pretty much a happy-yet-not ending--Shalindra's been too changed to celebrate her brother's victory and Varis's defeat the way she once would have, and certain elements of her world are already starting to feel grating, unsatisfying, or dull to her. So I always wonder: what is she going to do from now on? Is she truly going to manage to resist the lure of necromancy for the rest of her life? Or would she take advantage of her new position and resources--a titled noble, with time and money and the research skills that come from her years as an enforced scholar at Fruce--and begin exploring the forbidden art again?
Given the situation Varis is in at the book's conclusion (spifflicated in that shack in the woods and so ragged and dishelved that the few patrols who've come across him haven't recognized him), it's very unlikely that Shalindra will encounter him again after the book's end--but if she did turn back to necromancy and let a sufficient number of years pass, might she able to summon his ghost? Would she try to do it, if only to assuage her own curiosity about him and why he'd let her go? I don't know how lucid a ghost!Varis would be--I can't remember if we see any ghosts of spifflicates in the book--but the two of them having one last conversation and their previous power dynamic of captor/captive being so completely reversed into necromancer/ghost is an idea I can't get out of my brain.
My perennial request! I read The Wolf of Winter when I was about 11 or 12, and it left a huge number of chilly skeletal bone-prints all over my impressionable young mind. I think it was one of the first'grown-up' fantasy novels I read that wasn't drawing solely on Standard Medieval Western Europe for its setting, and also probably the first one that centered so heavily on necromantic magic as a plot element. And it was peppered with certain narrative devices and tropes that I'd later come to love wholeheartedly: a cold but somewhat sympathetic protagonist growing into an antagonist; stretches of affiability/understanding between the protagonist and the antagonist even if they're working at cross-purposes; a good character being truly, truly tempted by something the antagonist offers them. Looking back at it these days it has its flaws, but it's a book that's always stuck with me and is a frequent reread--I still have the original paperback copy that I first read ages ago.
And Shalindra and Varis and their interactions left such an impression that I always find it surprising that their actual time together comes so late in the book, and is barely more than 100 pages of content. The impact the two of them have on each other feels so strongly drawn in that small amount of space! In spite of their antagonism they have points of similarity and common aspects in their histories/personalities/experiences that they've never found echoed in another person. You understand why Shalindra is uneasily drawn to Varis and finds him easy to talk to about personal and painful things even though she knows better; why Varis, who goes through the entire book manipulating everyone with an ice-cool lack of emotion, feels an unspoken--affinity? affection?--for Shalindra, enough to let her go at the end even though it dooms him. And you understand why the memory of her and that moment can still break through his madness at the end, just a little, and why Shalindra feels somehow bereft once he's gone. It's a short but potent portrayal of two semi-kindred spirits getting pulled into each other's orbit for a little bit before fate and their own actions yank them apart again, and I wish there'd been just a tiny bit more of it.
So, yes, any story that draws on this stuff that I can't stop blabbing about would make me a happy reader. :D
Fandom: Villain (1971)
Characters: Vic Dakin, Wolfe Lissner
What it is and where to find it: A 1971 British crime thriller, very pulpy and bleak. Brutal East End gangster Vic Dakin (a late-forties Richard Burton) decides to take a stab at a too-good-to-miss payroll heist; the plot follows the planning, robbery, and fallout through a number of complicating factors, one of which is Dakin's underling and kept man/unwilling boyfriend Wolfe Lissner (a twenty-something Ian McShane).
Available on DVD and Blu-Ray, and for rent on Amazon Prime and Apple TV. If you watch, be prepared for violence and Burton's, umm, interesting attempts to shift his accent into something more character-appropriate. (The book it's based on, James Barlow's The Burden of Proof, is also available for purchase on Kindle--it's fun if you like lurid crime novels, but it's not necessary to read it and the movie diverges from the book in a couple of significant elements anyway.)
Official request and further thoughts:
My feelings for this request essentially boil down to "another slice, please". I don’t want to oversell the presence of the arrangement/relationship/whatever you call it when one person’s consent is highly dubious between Dakin and Lissner in the canon, as it is only one thread among several--but it’s a key thread, and there’s enough unsaid but bubbling up in and around it that I really want another glimpse of it.
I will absolutely not say no to sex if you want to write it (never!), but I’d be just as happy with a character-focused piece without it. A missing scene, a dive into the thoughts of either character during a scene in canon, something set pre- or post-canon, an outsider POV--almost any angle you could take on their relationship and interactions would be interesting to me. What are these two thinking about each other? Do they have anything like a normal conversation? Does Lissner have any non-negative feeling for Dakin at all in him, even if it’s only a sliver of old loyalty, or pity for an aging gangster who’s got no one else, or does he just wish with his entire being that someone would drop a piano on Dakin’s head?
I’d love to see anything about how things started--it’s easy to see why it happened, given that Lissner is nice-looking and leagues smarter than Dakin’s other underlings to boot, but how did it happen, and what was it like pre-canon? Lissner seems like he would very much prefer not to be the subject of Dakin’s affections, but was it always like that? Was he fully reluctant from the beginning and only going along with it out of fear and survival instinct, or did the prospect of steady money and good suits in exchange for sex seem like a palatable deal when it started?
Or something that digs into the detail around the previous split--Lissner’s awkward "No ties, Vic" comment makes it pretty clear that he did the leaving, but what where the circumstances and how did it happen? Did he pull a slow fade, or did he wake up one day and decide to disappear and hope Dakin wouldn’t haul him back? (In the novel it's because Lissner stole a chunk of protection money owed to Dakin to pay his own gambling debts and scarpered--and apparently Dakin took no retribution for that, which says a lot right there--but I'd be just as interested in other explanations for it.)
In spite of Dakin's final posturing to Matthews, both he and Lissner seem bound for prison time at the end (though I can see Lissner slipping out with a lesser sentence or none at all if he's really lucky)--do they see or hear from each other again, or is that final moment in the tunnel really the end? Does Lissner get out of the city, or go legit, or are the pull of London/crime too strong? Does Dakin die in prison, or does he survive long enough to get released and live a post-prison life? (I remember one reassessment-review musing that if Vic Dakin had made it to the present day he’d end up with a career like Frankie Fraser, publishing memoirs of his life and crimes and turning up in cameo roles in gangster films--that could be a fun angle to approach from.)
I watched this movie sometime last year when I was in a real mood and watching crime and gangster films as fast as I could find them, and all I knew about this one was that it hit cinemas the same year as the much more well-known Get Carter, was pretty violent, and Burton and McShane were in it. So you can imagine my eyebrows going up and up when they had their first scene...and even though it was just dialogue the atmosphere between the characters seemed very intense...and then Dakin puts his hand on Lissner’s shoulder and ominous discordant music starts up on the soundtrack and Lissner’s face goes through a terrific shift of realization and dismay to a false smile to resignation and I thought "huh!" and discovered my osmosis about this movie had been significantly lacking. It did make it more interesting to watch, though, and then to rewatch and chew over more thoroughly. Current day opinions about the quality of this film seem to be sharply divided--is it an underappreciated gem of the genre or miscast and unintentionally hilarious trash? IMO it sits somewhere between the two, but I liked it well enough on those first watches and was happy to do another rewatch so I could write this request.
It's not the greatest film or the most scorching on-screen pairing, but it's got something about it that intrigues me. There's an established history there that I'd like to know more about, and elisions I'd like to see expanded on, and a sharp ending that makes me wonder what happens decades down the line, and a sense of doom hanging over the whole thing from the word go that I want to meditate on more. And there's a flourish I like about Lissner being Dakin's undoing but not at all in the way you'd think--when Dakin's got cops behind him and a long dash through an open field in front of him and yet is still all for trying to get away, what defeats him is Lissner refusing and telling him what’s been obvious to him (and the viewer) for ages: "You blew it." Dakin had chances to get out of this mess and he wrecked them all; he can make himself vulnerable and tell Lissner he needs him all he likes but when it comes to the crisis point Lissner will give up rather than run for it (and die) with him. It's a lot of punch for a last exchange, with a real significant look between them to go with it.
Feel free to dig into the setting and criminal elements as much or as little as you like. The movie's real-life influences are not subtle--Dakin as a character is obviously drawing significant inspiration from Ronnie Kray--but given what I’ve requested and the potential research rabbit hole that is of organized crime in 1960s-70s London I absolutely won’t be fussed if any details on that topic are only lightly sketched in or somewhat inaccurate. :D
Also specific (and unenforceable, I know) DNW for this one: I'm hoping for something that sticks at least somewhat within the mood of the canon. Not violence-wise--no need for writing people getting filleted with a razor if you aren't up for it--but this is a mean, nasty movie about mean, nasty people and while I'm fully on board for sympathetic/empathetic approaches I would prefer not to see these characters mutually working out their issues or their relationship turned into fluff or whatever. In previous Yuletides I've had a blanket ask that for a gift not to steer too far into a depressing or bleak mood, but that ask absolutely does not apply to this request!
Fandom:Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman
Characters: Dollface
What it is and where to find it: A standalone novel set in a world where comic book-style superheroes and supervillains exist. The dual POV narrative follows the megalomaniacal Doctor Impossible on his thirteenth attempt to conquer the world and the recently cyborg'd Fatale as she (and the superhero team she belongs to) attempt to stop him and to discover why their Superman-analogue has disappeared. Other heroes and villains appear and are referenced, and superhero comic tropes are thoroughly employed, examined, broken apart, and reconstructed.
In print and likely to be easily available in physical and ebook form wherever you like to acquire your books.
Official request and further thoughts:
If you're familiar with this book but haven't read it recently you might be puzzling over who the heck Dollface is, which is understandable as she never appears on-page! Doctor Impossible references her as a villain from a decade ago who committed crimes via the use of elaborate mechanical toys (as he steals one of said toys from a Champions museum exhibit case, which is labeled with the wrong name), and her back-of-the-book bio gives a little more detail.
I'm fascinated by the concept of this character on a level that is totally disproportionate with her presence in the book, and would love to see her fleshed out through a fic! What is the life of a specialized villain like in this novel's version of a comic-book world?
How long was she in the game? Her bio calls her "a neglected child" but Doctor Impossible refers to her as "a woman"--did she start early, building little mechanical terrors and setting them on classmates or neighbors as a preteen, or was this an instance of childhood damage later birthing an adult villain? Was the neglect that wounded her lack of parental love, or lack of friends, or lack of resources? What kind of crimes did she commit with her devices, and what things did she want to achieve? Revenge on people/a world that had hurt her? Attention? Friendship and love?
What were her inspirations for the objects she created? How DID she make all those wonderful toys? (Since this is a nonsense comic book world, feel free to make up your own bonkers scientific explanations rather than using plain old real world science...or, if you know enough science to figure out how to build a tiny flamethrower or gravity ray, feel free to do that!) How did she learn her mechanical skills in the first place? Is she entirely self-taught, or did she ever train with someone else--a civilian who was unaware of her goals, or another villain (the mechanically-minded Baron Ether, perhaps)? Did she have any allies or associates among fellow villains, or did she always work alone? What were her victories, frustrations, and defeats like? Did she suffer the annoyance of having to put a scheme on hold because the widget she needed for her latest creation was backordered?
Her toys are all in the Champions museum and her file simply lists her status as "no longer active", which doesn't sound like she's deceased or in prison--so what's she up to? Did she get what she was after and disappear into satisfied retirement, or did she suffer one two many defeats and give it all up? Did go legit and turn her mechanical skills into something profitable, or is she living quietly somewhere, secretly planning a comeback or training a new villain?
What did people think of her? How was she written about in the news and talked about on the street? Is there some grad student in the field of Hero and Villain studies writing their master's thesis on Dollface's methods, psychology, etc.?
I read this book when it was first published and the bit about Dollface stuck in my head like a persistent bit of glue--and when I reread it this year I found that bit of glue was still in my brain, and that I was really looking forward to rereading that tiny mention of her.
For easy reference here's the text describing her in the book:
A decade ago the Champions fought a woman who called herself Dollface. She built tiny malevolent toys--a cowboy, a tiger, a carriage--but the toys worked, and they each did something different. A novelty villain, arguably, but she had a kind of concentrated ingenuity. Why only toys? it must have meant something to her.
They're in back, a dusty miniature carnival behind glass, their creator mislabeled as "Doll Woman". Sic transit gloria mundi. Tiny merry-go-round, tiny Ferris wheel, tiny elephants, and tiny calliope, each with its own sinister function. A genius work of miniaturization; they don't make craftsman like her any more.
Gravity is many things to many people: a particle, a wave, a force. To Dollface, it was the luminous gaze of a tiny laughing fat man, a tiny ray that could make a person heavier or lighter. Some trick inside it no one ever figured out, not even me.
And her entry in the after-text bio sums her up thus: "A neglected child develops her own playmates, and unleashes them on the world."
Multiple times over the years I've thought about writing something about her, but never could settle on an idea that I felt was right to turn into a fic--so perhaps what I really want is for someone else to write a fic about her that I can read!
I think what caught me so thoroughly when I initially read the book in 2007 was that combination of traits: a female villain; a mechanics-based villain; a villain who’s admired by her colleague for her craft; a villain who doesn’t seem to have been paid much attention to by either side (to the point of her life's creations being mislabeled); a villain who hasn’t died and doesn’t seem to be in prison and could still be out there, doing something.... Because of all that, even though she’s not a character in the fullest sense the possibilities of what she COULD be as a character really have a hold on me.
(I can also probably blame having Batman: the Animated Series as a childhood touchstone, as that show was excellent at turning out interesting and engaging backgrounds and stories for gimmicky and forgotten villains.)
I’m also genuinely fond of the setting and the writing approach, which uses comics and hero&villain tropes with a lot of loving humor while acknowledging the downsides and problems, large and small, that the people on both sides go through (like Fatale gloomily reflecting on how her cyborgization has fucked up her sense of her body AND means she needs reinforced chairs and floors to carry the weight of all the metal, or Doctor Impossible reflecting on the difficulties of fleeing in his supervillain suit&cape and tiredly admitting that sometimes you just don’t feel all that evil), so lean into that element as much as feels fun or interesting for you!
That's my blab for this year! Again, please feel free to reach out through the Yuletide mods if something isn't clear, and happy writing!
