Yuletide 2021 letter

[ungefug]

1. General
2. Likes
3. Do Not Write
4. Prompts

 
General

Hey there! I'm ungefug on ao3 and as a general rule I am not demanding more than one character - the prompts should explain it.

I'll try to explain some of the things I love, but in the end its your writing and I'm happy to read whatever you come up with, especially since those fandoms are so rare, and I'd rather you be happy and comfortable with your work than tailor it to me. If you feel like "this is too weird, too out there, I shouldn't" - don't worry. I'd rather be surprised than bored.

You can also check out my letters from other exchanges on here, which will be relevant if you're writing dark and/or sexy content (there is one for dubcon/noncon). 

My fav tag is Dead Dove : Do Not Eat, and I have a sadistic streak, but I don't exclusively enjoy dark fic, just a bit of smart conversation on an interesting topic or atmospheric worldbuilding or wholesome smut is entertaining to me too. You may just go off about mesopotamian pottery, medieval visions of the Apocalypse, the architecture of the American diner or the beauty of Arctic lichen. Truth be told I'm not much into outright "everyone having a day at the beach" fluff, especially if it blocks out the grim realities of a fandom's setting, but I do quite like a bit of love and intimacy in hostile environments. Holding hands on the couch? Ok. Holding hands in your dying moments on the battlefield? Yes!

I love a short bit of flowery prose just as much as something plot or dialogue driven. Style is substance, substance is substance. Word count is just a number. The only thing I am not super fond of is excessively navelgazing introspective work that ventures into straight up analysis.

Smut

You can be as fancy and vague or crude and detailed as you want. In fact I am quite fond of alternating between the two.
I lean towards M/M but I don't mind F/F (unlikely to come up, given my prompts) or F/M.
When it comes to F/M I am very much in favour of it written with a female gaze, for female pleasure or with the woman in charge. I am not interested in reading about a woman getting ravished by a man or anything in that vein, but I am all for the vice versa.,
For F/F or hot women in general I'm moreso into muscular, strong, thick or curvy women, older women, butch women, tomboys, natural or genderqueer women, so if you're gonna focus on women being especially petite, cute, soft, dainty and fragile, or performative feminity like makeup, heels etc I'm not gonna be much into it.
Please don't use the phrase "his/her opening" or "cum".

Language

You can write for me in German if you like. Specifically "19th Century CE Bavaria RPF" would be suited to it, but I am open to German fic with the other fandoms too with exception of "Polar Exploration RPF" (it's just too English) and "Blood Meridian: or The Evening Redness in the West - Cormac McCarthy" (unless the Judge speaks German for some reason such as setting changes that I have indicated in my request - I just don't want a babelfish'd American setting).

Art

I'd be happy with art of Barin or Ludwig and anything for Valley of the Bees.
As for art styles it feels silly to tell an artist how to draw, but I can say that I love medieval art and early Renaissance and then fast forward past all realism to the 20th century. Then I like the 1910s and 1920s a lot, silent films, expressionist dance, the grotesque. I'm generally fond of things being abstract, distorted, heightened and symbolic rather than realistic.
For smut I care a lot more about props (including clothing!) and poses than genitalia and I am partial to thick guys with a bit of meat and hair on them in positions of distress.

Likes

• deep and meaningful platonic relationships
• quiet moments of intimacy
• hand holding, hand kissing, neck touches, chaste kisses, displays of fealty
• dialogue
• romantic friendships
• melancholy, nostalgia, Weltschmerz
• hierarchies, abuse of power, stifling environments, coded language, uniforms
• obscene, grotesque disgusting things
• violence, gore, hurt and comfort, hurt and hurt
• tormented saints, martyrdom, self-sacrifice
• religious imagery, symbolism
• very bad things happening to my little mew mews
• the breaking point, catharsis, awakenings, trauma
• insanity, mania, tears
• flowers, insects, birds
• history, science, art
• pastiche, archaic language, unusual form
• unreliable narrators, letters, diary entries, events relayed in conversation
• 1st person (as commonly used in literature, I'm saying this specifically because I see it in so many DNWs)

Smut:

I have a general purpose list of smut things that interest me here.

• sex as an exploration of emotions and interpersonal dynamics
• noncon/dubcon
• non-penetrative sex (intercrural, handjobs, frottage etc)
• clothed sex
• unhygenic sex and body fluids
• sadism and masochism
• realistic bodies (body fat, hair, small dicks etc)
• differences in size and body type (in particular if the bigger guy is not "topping")
• unpleasant, awkward sex

Do Not Write

• underage sex written to arouse (especially prepubescent, I'm ok with late-ish teen)*
• mundane bdsm/kink things* (formal negotiations, sex toys, diapers, daddy/mommy kink, latex outfits, roleplay, whipping in the bedroom rather than as corporal punishment on deck of the ship)
• terminal illness, cancer*
• dementia, amnesia, Alzheimer's*
• salacious m/f violence*
• infantilization
• mpreg
• mundane modern AU (coffee shop, college, rock band etc.)
• issuefic
• unrequested changes to canon characters such as sex, race, age or ethnicity (some genre change like Space Opera AU negates this point)
• alpha/beta/omega (and similar worldbuilding with assigned roles)

*mentions are ok

Prompts

1. 19th Century CE Bavaria RPF
2. Blood Meridian: or The Evening Redness in the West - Cormac McCarthy
3. Údolí včel | Valley of the Bees (1968)
4. Third Crusade RPF
5. Polar Exploration RPF
6. Flash Gordon (1980)

19th Century CE Bavaria RPF
Ludwig II von Bayern | Ludwig II of Bavaria (19th Century CE Bavaria RPF)

I'm not kneedeep into the historical reality here so these prompts are very superficial, but I have seen and loved the Visconti film. He's such a repressed drama queen (I don't mean to belittle the real man, I am full of compassion for his struggles but also recognize that he was quite... privileged).

• Romantic idealism vs carnal desires
• Wagner. I do not ship it, but I am not opposed to it, I think Wagner was encouraging Ludwig's affections for monetary gain.
• I love Wagner's work and anything dealing with the process of creation of it or the operas themselves would be pleasing
• his relationship with Richard Hornig (the slow burn, hidden courtship, horseriding, smut)
• straight up smut with some other pretty lad(s)
• going undercover for some countryside pleasures
• just anything with Sissi in it, too.. dialouge, hand holding, heartfelt confessions
• magical realism Wagner style. Those swan lake love caves are full of surpises
• Apparently Ludwig wrote diary and slipped into French when it got horny. Wouldn't mind reading a fictional entry either!
• men in uniforms
• the lifestyle of the nobility
• displays of fealty
• the five times he nearly sinned and the one time he did

Blood Meridian: or The Evening Redness in the West - Cormac McCarthy
Judge Holden

I adore the book and would simply love to see more of the Judge, full stop. Love that guy (as a problematic fav). Obviously there is an element of child abuse, but I don't specifically crave that salaciously shown (I am saying this because my general introduction might lead one to believe otherwise), but I do not mind showing this side of him. If I misremember things from the book for the prompts...sorry.

• Love to hear him speak about things. Tell me about the stars or the fathers who build in stone, where did he learn Dutch/German, how do you make fire from bone.
• More interactions between the Kid and the Judge
• Missing scene: the outhouse, rape and/or murder (I personally don't subscribe to the theory that the Kid  is the man walking away from the outhouse to murder the girl, but it won't kill me to read this take)
• I remember a dreamlike encounter between the Kid and the Judge in the jail cell - have we really been shown everything?
• At the camp fire (during the fortune telling maybe, or I am mixing things up) the ex priest warns the Kid about going with the Judge, the Kid says he is not afraid of him - what does the ex priest know?
• Does the Kid understand the nature of the danger, has he maybe already had an intimate encounter with the Judge... he is after all not as helpless as the children who fall victim to the Judge
• Why children? Pied Piper of Hameln. Zeus and Ganymede. "War is young men dying and old men talking."
• story within a story: the judge and the gang watch or stage a play
• You can also put him in any other time and place. I like him as a supernatural being (if not perhaps Lucifer), if that wasn't obvious. “His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die."
• Lightbringer, Prometheus, Mephistopheles, Nietzscheanism, Faustian spirit and so on and so forth
• Actually not opposed to Modern Day AU here. Or the future or the distant past, war is eternal etc.
• Even stuff like coffee shop AU, if it's played for laughs - sure
• Picked up as a hitchhiker in Florida (A Good Man is Hard to Find)
• as a naturalist, as part of some other colonial ventures (South America, Africa)
• Third Crusades crossover
• in 1920s Berlin

 

Údolí včel | Valley of the Bees (1968)
Armin (Valley of the Bees)

I adore the aesthetics of this film (and František Vláčil).The historical context is also interesting here, essentially Christian Germanic colonialism. The German/Czech relations are a theme in the director's work.

The poor repressed Teutonic knight only wanted a friend to hold hands with while he freezes his genitals off, which is very normal and straight. I like their relationship when it is tender and when it goes south and I weep for Armin (who does deserves his end). Just him kissing Ondrej's hand would make me feel all kinds of happy, but they might also have gone further before Ondrej disappeared (awkward fondling, secrecy, Arming feeling terribly ashamed) or the whole thing with Armin and Leonora gets a little more explicit, them inviting Armin to the wedding bed.

• christianity vs paganism
• minimalism vs plenty
• self-denial vs indulgence
• bees as symbols of paganism, sweet honey of life, forests, soil of the earth, earthly delights
• bees as symbol of the church, hierarchies and submission, industry, chastity, angels 
• angels (I am fond of the bible accurate be not afraid angels as well as just a little off, Bruegel's The Fall of the Rebel Angel is one of my favs both for angels and demons)
• cilice and discipline or other dubious form of mortification
• slice of religious life
• getting lost in the haunted pagan woods
• magical realism, nightmares, witchcraft
• my poor knight suffers

Third Crusade RPF
Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb | Saladin (Third Crusade RPF)

I saw this in the tagset and it sparked my interest. My knowledge of the third crusades specifically is very superficial, I just find the setting aesthetically super interesting.  I simply don't know enough about the other characters in the tagset to add them, but it's all good as long as it is in the setting and not polemic and ideology driven.
I am okay both with takes that are more along the lines of glorification/mystifaction of the characters and setting aswell as more factual observations of geopolitics and so on, as long as it is somewhat equally applied to all parties in the conflict. For example don't demystify Saladin but make the crusaders rightous Warrior of God. Or: don't make Saladin the most noble man on earth and all of the crusaders comically evil.
This does not have to be focused on Saladin and can be more heavy on Worldbuilding or less historically significant characters down to the common (wo)man of Jaffa or crusaders, knights, peasants, the women who came along, children.

• battlefield scenes that earned Saladin the Western recognition as a "chivalrous knight" and "virtuous pagan"
• His relationship to Hugh II of Tiberias (I am ok with wholesome friendship, shipping and darker takes)
• "Richard once praised Saladin as a great prince, saying that he was, without doubt, the greatest and most powerful leader in the Islamic world. Saladin, in turn, stated that there was not a more honorable Christian lord than Richard. After the treaty, Saladin and Richard sent each other many gifts as tokens of respect but never met face to face." - what if they did?! Or a love story told in letters and gifts.
• blood on the sand
• Arab poetry (I have read some Al-Maʿarri and enjoyed it a lot)
• Biblical references (Psalm 102:6, the winepress of God)
• Visions of the Apocalypse
• The devil in the desert
• Religious fanatics as political pawns
• the terrors of war
• A chance encounter in the desert
• A chess match
• Prisoners
• Cultural exchanges, people across religious camps making peace at least for a brief moment
• Encounters with literal angels, demons or djinn (I am fond of the bible accurate be not afraid angels as well as just a little off, Bruegel's The Fall of the Rebel Angel is one of my favs both for angels and demons)
• miracles and charlatans
• knights suffering
• I adore this album
• Space Opera AU

Polar Exploration RPF
James Clark Ross (Polar Exploration RPF), Joseph Dalton Hooker (Polar Exploration RPF), Francis Crozier (Polar Exploration RPF)

I know two of these guys because I have watched the Terror (and done a bit of extra reading), Hooker I simply added because when I read botanist I was in. So I have few concrete prompts, I just love exploration and naturalists and the (Ant)arctic. You can ship them and write a bit of smut for me (Crozier/Ross probably?) or go hard on the worldbuilding. If imperialism is touched on, I'd like it to be somewhat critical, not completely chauvinistic (I am quite capable of telling the difference between the opinions held by characters and the author though). All or any of the characters is good.

• Crozier and Ross in their lonely observation hut
• the inherent eroticism of ship collisions
• the (Ant)arctic sublime ([the ice inferno],[Antarctica and the Traumatic Sublime])
• "Polar explorers - one gathers from their accounts - sought at the Poles something of the sublime(...)" [Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk]
• heroism as one's capacity to endure suffering and hardships
• environmental horror, psychological horror
• wonders, adventures
• friendship, male bonding
• penguin encounters
• diary entries, letters (if you write as Crozier you may be true to his lack of beta reading)
• the joys of collecting algae specimen in subzero temperatures
• Hooker published some parts of the Flora Antarctica before the departure of the Franklin expedition, did Mr. Goodsir, the naturalist on that expedition, know him or his work?
• Did Hooker know any of the amateur Lady naturalists (Anna Atkins for example)?
• A Mountain of Madness style take (Lovecraft/The Thing AU)
• Faustian spirit running itself into a cold grave (Aguirre the Wrath of God style)
• "Man Proposes, God Disposes"
• Crozier's background and the discrimination he faced due to classism and racism
• Crozier's steward Jopson showing up would delight me too
• Franklin expedition but it's Crozier and Ross (fix it! AU)

Flash Gordon (1980)
Barin (Flash Gordon)

I simply think Barin is neat, in particular when he was blindfolded and bound to a wall or fighting for his life. I like the lightheartedness of the source material so even if I am asking for stuff like bondage, torture and noncon/dubcon here I do mean it more in a way that fits the tone of the original, not like genuine trauma and torment and consequences. Flash Gordon in the 1936 series gets tied up every other day. It's the kind of sexy pulp cover violence, a hunk with a bit of blood on him and his shirt conveniently ripped. I really have very little erotic feelings for Flash in the film, so I am not specifically asking for this ship, but it is kind of obvious and convenient and I am ok with it. Princess Aura too, although I am not excited about her. Or just some OC, male or female or other.

• Klytus and his brand of torture
• cheese, crack, monster fucking
• he could make a fine damsel in distress (comedic or smut)
• Break the haughty trope
• the weird rituals of his people (I'm not saying gay chicken but...)
• maybe his anatomy isn't quite as human as it seems
• maybe he shows his fealty in very particular ways
• 5+1 but with some kind of perils