yuletide the ninth
To my dearest, beloved Yuletide writer,
My Yuletide letters all start the same: with me saying that if you're as excited about any of these fandoms as I am, I'll love what you write me no matter what. That said, I'm a fan of giving more information in the hopes that it will give you greater freedom in your writing, and because I know I'm going to want to know as much about the person I'm writing for as possible and figure I should give what I hope to get. :D So here are some paragraphs of perhaps tl;dr-level specificity, and please feel free to ignore all of it if there's a story in any of these fandoms that you really, really want to write. I trust you.
I like slash or het or gen as long as the ship is relevant to the story and the world it's set in. Characterization is my weak spot; show me the nuances of a character I love, a secret side of them I've never seen before, and I'm sold. I love worldbuilding, expanding on the setting and the world as it’s described in canon. If you write sex, awesome; it’s definitely not a requirement by any means, but I certainly don't mind it. And to borrow a clarification phrase straight from someone else's letter, When I say "explicit" I mean "I have a good idea who's doing what to whom," and not so much paragraph-long descriptions of penises. I'm all about the emotions; as you'll see if you explore my pinboard, any fic that packs an emotional punch is guaranteed to win me over.
As far as genre goes, it's kind of up to you. I love action and mystery, I like ship-centered fic as much as fic where the ship is a sidebar to the plot, I like happy or serious or funny or sad. I would definitely prefer a hopeful ending to whatever you write, if an actual happy ending isn't appropriate or fitting; however if your story is leading you toward a waterfall of angst that'll end with an emotional sucker punch, go for it! Wow me with UST, show me just how evil the bad guy really is, scare the crap out of me if you want. Some of my all-time favorite fics are pieces that I would never have guessed I'd enjoy, so please surprise me!
stuff i love in fic / kinks :
slash, femmeslash, interesting het, worldbuilding / strong sense of the world, strong friendships/partnerships, snarky partnerships with lots of ust, angst with a happy ending, angst with sex and a we-don't-ever-talk-about-it ending, hurt/comfort, stories where they've been sleeping together and not talking about their feelings but they secretly love each other (♥), snarky banter, collective / ensemble badassery, women being awesome, friendships between awesome women, friendships with ust between awesome women, fight scenes, people bandaging each other up after a battle, surprising each other with badassery, forbidden attraction, old friends and inside jokes, past history, magic, illusion spells, misunderstandings / misdirection through magic, travel, spy/undercover deception, crossovers, cross-genre AUs, pastiche AUs, college or bookstore or coffee shop AUs, basically any AUs, long plotty stories where the ship is a slow build (though definitely not expecting a long fic, just saying I do enjoy them), plot twists, long-suffering irritation (especially as a mask for growing fondness or attraction), stories where person a can't have person b so they start something up with person c to distract themselves (and either make person a jealous or actually end up falling for person c), physical altercations that highlight attraction, origin stories, flashbacks, first times, emotional first times, power play / bdsm fun, wit and snark and people being smart, flirting, drawn-out seduction, happy endings.
squicks : mpreg, hardcore fetishes and heavy bdsm, daddy kink, humiliation, rape/noncon, extreme gore (though, I watch Hannibal, so I guess artful gore is OK? lol...). i also don't really get into stories where misunderstandings or unrequited love occur because of a lack of communication (ie: every romcom ever)-- strong relationships with lots of good communication really do it for me, so a "i can't tell them they wouldn't understand" is hard to get into.
and now onto the specific requests!
fandom: gideon the ninth by tamsin muir (gideon, harrow, jeannemary, coronabeth)
details: I don't want to speculate too much about what's in store for our heroes after the end of the book, so I'd like either backstory or AU if you're going to write about Gideon and Harrow. If you choose to write a fic focusing on Jeannemary or Corona, feel free to write whatever you're excited about, I just love them both and want more of them.
Gideon. Harrow. Gideon/Harrow. Give it to me! They are OTP, so if you do an AU that includes a romance for either of them, please make them each other's endgame ship. Regarding AUs, as I said above, I love them all! A modern magical high school or college AU would be amazing (in the style of HP, the Magicians, Simon Snow, whatever you like), or any silly tropey romcom type AU, or a pastiche with another fandom on my list (Inception springs to mind as an amazing choice). If you write an AU, it can feature as many of the supporting characters as you like, I basically love them all. As far as backstory goes, if you decide to write some, I'd love to see your take on one of Gideon's many escape attempts, or a time when Gideon and Harrow had to work toward a common goal despite their loathing.
fandom: shades of magic by v.e. schwab (alucard, rhy, kell, lila)
details: futurefic with King Rhy and his ex-pirate husband! Kell and Lila come back from their travels and mayhem ensues! Alucard and Kell still hate each other (though maybe a little less now than before?) and Lila and Rhy think they are insufferable! Basically any sort of shenanigans involving the four of them, the sillier and lower the stakes the better.
Words cannot describe how much I love these four characters and their intertwined relationships. The prospect of them being able to relax and not worry about saving the world anymore is so good and so deserved-- but inevitably of course capers and shenanigans will ensue, and I'd love to hear about one of them. It doesn't have to be anything super complicated, I'd take a tropey "oh no how are we going to deal with problematic guests at holiday dinner" fluff piece in a heartbeat. But a Lila-driven heist of some kind that ropes the others into it would be equally awesome, or someone from Alucard's pirate past coming back to cause trouble, or something. Basically I just want to see these four kicking ass and protecting each other while teasing the hell out of each other along the way.
fandom: altered carbon (takeshi, quellcrist, poe, lizzie)
details: I'm interested in basically any combination of people you want to write about, except I'm not super into in a story focusing heavily on Reileen.
I love the Elliott family, I love Lizzie and Poe, I love Quell and the Envoys, and I love Tak. We get the broad strokes of how Tak came to see the Envoys as his family, but I'd love a story examining that further. More about what Lizzie gets up to exploring the Array on her own, more about Poe's inner life as an AI (and I don't believe he's really dead either so a futurefic about him would be super), something about how Vernon and Ava met and what they were like as badass hackers in their youth... Broadly speaking I'm really really into the universe of this show, so if you want to ignore the specific characters and write about the world, or do a crossover with characters from another of my fandoms, I'm totally down.
fandom : the checquy files (felicity, odette)
details: The sequel to The Rook didn't disappoint, except that it left Felicity and Odette's relationship sadly hetero-platonic. Dear Yule Fairy, these ladies are MFEO, and I want to read all about it. Make it any genre you want-- action/adventure, where they realize their attraction and feelings while beating up monsters? Office politics, where they become each other's first line of defense against centuries of ingrained prejudice while the two organizations merge? Awkward romcom, where they go on a series of dates that are hilariously bad while they continue to work like a seamless machine in other areas of their lives? All of the above??? The sky's the limit-- just give me my girls being badasses near and for each other, and finally realizing their hopeless attraction.
This is a rare fandom where I am much less interested in AUs than in an exploration of canon. I am SO HERE for every interaction these two have, and I'm dying to see how their relationship develops. My prompt basically says it all, but I will add that there's so much great humor in these books (do they start a Days Without Incident clock for Odette making it thru a day w/o ruining a suit?) I would love to see this get as tropey as you like with the ludicrous scenarios-- AMTDI, stuck together, amnesia, pretending to be married-- thanks to the various supernatural abilities floating about, all the classic fanfic tropes are prime candidates for mishaps these two could fall into.
If you haven't read them, I just cannot endorse these books enough. You can read Stiletto as a standalone, though I highly recommend reading The Rook as well; the ebook for Stiletto is here.
For the record, I also love, love, love AUs and crossovers, so if you want to tie any of these into any of my other fandoms (which you can find a list of here) that would rule. Put them in space, put them in a noir, put them in college, put them in a jaeger, I'll read it all.
Despite the verbosity of this, I will (again!) paraphrase my past yuletide letters and say that if we got matched on any of these fandoms, and you love any of them as much as I do, whatever you write will make my yuletide. I'm already so excited to read whatever you come up with. XD
<3 emily
This post crossposted from Dreamwidth (
comments)
My Yuletide letters all start the same: with me saying that if you're as excited about any of these fandoms as I am, I'll love what you write me no matter what. That said, I'm a fan of giving more information in the hopes that it will give you greater freedom in your writing, and because I know I'm going to want to know as much about the person I'm writing for as possible and figure I should give what I hope to get. :D So here are some paragraphs of perhaps tl;dr-level specificity, and please feel free to ignore all of it if there's a story in any of these fandoms that you really, really want to write. I trust you.
I like slash or het or gen as long as the ship is relevant to the story and the world it's set in. Characterization is my weak spot; show me the nuances of a character I love, a secret side of them I've never seen before, and I'm sold. I love worldbuilding, expanding on the setting and the world as it’s described in canon. If you write sex, awesome; it’s definitely not a requirement by any means, but I certainly don't mind it. And to borrow a clarification phrase straight from someone else's letter, When I say "explicit" I mean "I have a good idea who's doing what to whom," and not so much paragraph-long descriptions of penises. I'm all about the emotions; as you'll see if you explore my pinboard, any fic that packs an emotional punch is guaranteed to win me over.
As far as genre goes, it's kind of up to you. I love action and mystery, I like ship-centered fic as much as fic where the ship is a sidebar to the plot, I like happy or serious or funny or sad. I would definitely prefer a hopeful ending to whatever you write, if an actual happy ending isn't appropriate or fitting; however if your story is leading you toward a waterfall of angst that'll end with an emotional sucker punch, go for it! Wow me with UST, show me just how evil the bad guy really is, scare the crap out of me if you want. Some of my all-time favorite fics are pieces that I would never have guessed I'd enjoy, so please surprise me!
stuff i love in fic / kinks :
slash, femmeslash, interesting het, worldbuilding / strong sense of the world, strong friendships/partnerships, snarky partnerships with lots of ust, angst with a happy ending, angst with sex and a we-don't-ever-talk-about-it ending, hurt/comfort, stories where they've been sleeping together and not talking about their feelings but they secretly love each other (♥), snarky banter, collective / ensemble badassery, women being awesome, friendships between awesome women, friendships with ust between awesome women, fight scenes, people bandaging each other up after a battle, surprising each other with badassery, forbidden attraction, old friends and inside jokes, past history, magic, illusion spells, misunderstandings / misdirection through magic, travel, spy/undercover deception, crossovers, cross-genre AUs, pastiche AUs, college or bookstore or coffee shop AUs, basically any AUs, long plotty stories where the ship is a slow build (though definitely not expecting a long fic, just saying I do enjoy them), plot twists, long-suffering irritation (especially as a mask for growing fondness or attraction), stories where person a can't have person b so they start something up with person c to distract themselves (and either make person a jealous or actually end up falling for person c), physical altercations that highlight attraction, origin stories, flashbacks, first times, emotional first times, power play / bdsm fun, wit and snark and people being smart, flirting, drawn-out seduction, happy endings.
squicks : mpreg, hardcore fetishes and heavy bdsm, daddy kink, humiliation, rape/noncon, extreme gore (though, I watch Hannibal, so I guess artful gore is OK? lol...). i also don't really get into stories where misunderstandings or unrequited love occur because of a lack of communication (ie: every romcom ever)-- strong relationships with lots of good communication really do it for me, so a "i can't tell them they wouldn't understand" is hard to get into.
and now onto the specific requests!
fandom: gideon the ninth by tamsin muir (gideon, harrow, jeannemary, coronabeth)
details: I don't want to speculate too much about what's in store for our heroes after the end of the book, so I'd like either backstory or AU if you're going to write about Gideon and Harrow. If you choose to write a fic focusing on Jeannemary or Corona, feel free to write whatever you're excited about, I just love them both and want more of them.
Gideon. Harrow. Gideon/Harrow. Give it to me! They are OTP, so if you do an AU that includes a romance for either of them, please make them each other's endgame ship. Regarding AUs, as I said above, I love them all! A modern magical high school or college AU would be amazing (in the style of HP, the Magicians, Simon Snow, whatever you like), or any silly tropey romcom type AU, or a pastiche with another fandom on my list (Inception springs to mind as an amazing choice). If you write an AU, it can feature as many of the supporting characters as you like, I basically love them all. As far as backstory goes, if you decide to write some, I'd love to see your take on one of Gideon's many escape attempts, or a time when Gideon and Harrow had to work toward a common goal despite their loathing.
fandom: shades of magic by v.e. schwab (alucard, rhy, kell, lila)
details: futurefic with King Rhy and his ex-pirate husband! Kell and Lila come back from their travels and mayhem ensues! Alucard and Kell still hate each other (though maybe a little less now than before?) and Lila and Rhy think they are insufferable! Basically any sort of shenanigans involving the four of them, the sillier and lower the stakes the better.
Words cannot describe how much I love these four characters and their intertwined relationships. The prospect of them being able to relax and not worry about saving the world anymore is so good and so deserved-- but inevitably of course capers and shenanigans will ensue, and I'd love to hear about one of them. It doesn't have to be anything super complicated, I'd take a tropey "oh no how are we going to deal with problematic guests at holiday dinner" fluff piece in a heartbeat. But a Lila-driven heist of some kind that ropes the others into it would be equally awesome, or someone from Alucard's pirate past coming back to cause trouble, or something. Basically I just want to see these four kicking ass and protecting each other while teasing the hell out of each other along the way.
fandom: altered carbon (takeshi, quellcrist, poe, lizzie)
details: I'm interested in basically any combination of people you want to write about, except I'm not super into in a story focusing heavily on Reileen.
I love the Elliott family, I love Lizzie and Poe, I love Quell and the Envoys, and I love Tak. We get the broad strokes of how Tak came to see the Envoys as his family, but I'd love a story examining that further. More about what Lizzie gets up to exploring the Array on her own, more about Poe's inner life as an AI (and I don't believe he's really dead either so a futurefic about him would be super), something about how Vernon and Ava met and what they were like as badass hackers in their youth... Broadly speaking I'm really really into the universe of this show, so if you want to ignore the specific characters and write about the world, or do a crossover with characters from another of my fandoms, I'm totally down.
fandom : the checquy files (felicity, odette)
details: The sequel to The Rook didn't disappoint, except that it left Felicity and Odette's relationship sadly hetero-platonic. Dear Yule Fairy, these ladies are MFEO, and I want to read all about it. Make it any genre you want-- action/adventure, where they realize their attraction and feelings while beating up monsters? Office politics, where they become each other's first line of defense against centuries of ingrained prejudice while the two organizations merge? Awkward romcom, where they go on a series of dates that are hilariously bad while they continue to work like a seamless machine in other areas of their lives? All of the above??? The sky's the limit-- just give me my girls being badasses near and for each other, and finally realizing their hopeless attraction.
This is a rare fandom where I am much less interested in AUs than in an exploration of canon. I am SO HERE for every interaction these two have, and I'm dying to see how their relationship develops. My prompt basically says it all, but I will add that there's so much great humor in these books (do they start a Days Without Incident clock for Odette making it thru a day w/o ruining a suit?) I would love to see this get as tropey as you like with the ludicrous scenarios-- AMTDI, stuck together, amnesia, pretending to be married-- thanks to the various supernatural abilities floating about, all the classic fanfic tropes are prime candidates for mishaps these two could fall into.
If you haven't read them, I just cannot endorse these books enough. You can read Stiletto as a standalone, though I highly recommend reading The Rook as well; the ebook for Stiletto is here.
For the record, I also love, love, love AUs and crossovers, so if you want to tie any of these into any of my other fandoms (which you can find a list of here) that would rule. Put them in space, put them in a noir, put them in college, put them in a jaeger, I'll read it all.
Despite the verbosity of this, I will (again!) paraphrase my past yuletide letters and say that if we got matched on any of these fandoms, and you love any of them as much as I do, whatever you write will make my yuletide. I'm already so excited to read whatever you come up with. XD
<3 emily
This post crossposted from Dreamwidth (
comments)