Dear Yuletide Writer letter for 2011

Nov 17, 2011 20:00

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thank you! Thank you for participating in Yuletide, thank you for writing for me (or considering writing for me, if you found this via the community post and got curious), and thank you for reading this letter. Before we get started, there are three major points I'd like you to keep in mind.

1. None of the fandoms on my list is a gimme/consolation-prize fandom. I've got three video-game fandoms and one book fandom, none of them an easy match, and I've chosen them all because I'd be delighted to receive a Yuletide fic for them. Don't take the lengths of prompts (or my DYW notes) and similar as any kind of sign of what I "want more"; if I didn't want it, I wouldn't have requested it!

2. I generally consider character tags as suggestions, not ironclad. I tend to use character tags to indicate whom I'm particularly interested in, not as something I demand, and unless you deliberately write fic to troll me (which you're not going to do, because you're a Yuletide writer and therefore rad), I'm not going to report you to the mods for not obeying my character tags. Please do keep them in mind, though!

3. Above all else, I want you to write something you want to write. One of the great joys in Yuletide is writing in a rare fandom, and I want you to really enjoy the act of writing for me. To that end, please remember that all my optional details are optional! I've listed specific likes and dislikes under the individual fandoms, and I'd appreciate it if you paid attention to that, but at the end of the day, what I really want from my Yuletide story is something crafted with joy and love for our shared rare fandom. If that means writing completely off my prompt, I don't mind at all.

With that out of the way, here are some general notes about my taste in fic:

Likes: Gen, whether plot-based or just slice-of-life; I'm not a huge fan of fluff or angst for their own sake, but low-key pieces that develop characters are great. Similarly, I like stories that develop settings -- tastes of everyday life in fantastic worlds, imaginary histories, that sort of thing. I enjoy fic set all along the time spectrum, from pre-canon events to fill-in-the-holes to post-canon. I enjoy happy endings, and in general notes of hope and optimism are always appreciated.

Dislikes: PWP/excessively mechanical porn; I prefer that porn be used as a tool to develop the characters involved and their relationship with one another, and therefore "$character did $sexact to $othercharacter all night long hooo baby" exercises don't do much for me. For similar reasons, I don't like crack pairings, and in general I'm not fond of crack or excessive AU-ing. ("What if?"s based on canon are great, but "what if they were all in high school/in a band/in a weyr on Pern/generally not actually in their canon" AUs just don't work for me.) I also don't like character-bashing exercises or excessively downbeat endings.

Squicks: Incest, rape (I respect that this can be used as a legitimate plot element and isn't automatically fetish fuel, but I still would rather not read about it, sorry!), humiliation, hatesex (snark between people who like each other is all good, but actual hatred is not), porn involving excessive or non-sexual bodily byproducts (a bit of spit here and there is fine, but please no bloodplay, watersports, scat, truly ludicrous amounts of sexual fluids, etc.), underage sex (below about 15-16 or so), pairings involving heavy power inequality or abuse of privilege (teacher/student and what have you), heavy BDSM (I don't have a parenthetical for this, but, y'know)... yeah, if it wasn't obvious, I tend to prefer my porn on the cheerful side.

And here are my individual prompts and notes:

Geek Love - Katherine Dunn -- (no character tags)

Request: I've left the Characters field blank because I'm very open-minded in this fandom, but I'm most interested in stories about the five Binewski siblings and the setting in general. Magical realism in the tone of the books is good, as is their psychological reality; basically, anything that feels like the canon would be excellent.

I'm also interested in what-if-style AUs for this fandom. The two that come to mind immediately are "what if some of the jar kin (Janus and Leona especially) had survived?" and "what if siblings other than Olympia eventually left the carnival for the wider world?", but any alternate Carnivals Fabulon that appeal to you would be great too!

I may as well be honest here: I like the scenario and setup of Geek Love better than its denouement, so while I didn't really get into this in my request, I'd prefer to avoid the darker sexual material and most of the Arturism stuff in fic. This probably motivates my request for what-if AUs that avert the total-doom scenario or take the setup in different directions. I'm okay with body horror and the baseline grotesquerie of the novel, though, so don't feel obliged to skimp there.

This is the novel that introduced me to magical realism as an impressionable adolescent, so if you prefer to write about the setting, feel free to play up that element; all evidence suggests that the world of the novel is a strange place to live in for everyone, after all. With the characters, though, I enjoy the novel's emphasis on their psychological reality -- that the Binewski siblings are at their heart rather normal young people, just fundamentally changed by the circumstances of their birth and upbringing.

999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors -- Seven, Lotus

Request: First things first: Seven and Lotus are my two favorite characters from 999, and I'd really like a story involving at least one of them, but you don't have to write both! I requested them both because I like their dynamic together, but if you really only have an idea for one of them, I'll be just as happy with that.

Lotus and Seven are particularly interesting characters to me for one reason: they both start as rather stock personalities but develop over time into more deep, nuanced characters. I love that they're both very smart and competent in non-stereotypical specialties, and I'd love to see more of their being good at what they do. Post-game stuff is great, backstory stuff is great (Lotus and her daughters, maybe, or any of Seven's life at all), vignettes during the main plot... it's all good.

Gen and pairing-focused fic are both okay here; I'm good with Seven and Lotus being paired, but if you'd rather have them as friends (or just snarky allies), that works for me too.

I already covered a lot of my reasons for being interested in these characters in my request, but just to reinforce it, what I really love about them is that they violate the stereotypes associated with their character types in so many media sources. When I first saw Seven and Lotus, I assumed they'd be used for comic relief and catty pettiness, respectively... and instead, both were serious, intelligent characters with rounded personalities and real competence. If you feel like writing an adventure story, I'd love to see more of Lotus's computer-security skills and Seven's detective work.

Like I said above, these character tags are suggestions, but I'd like to see at least one of these two featured. If you'd like to use other characters or setting elements, feel free; I'm not sure how much real worldbuilding there is to do in the 999 universe as stands, but whatever you want to do is welcome.

Professor Layton -- Claire

Request: Claire is a fascinating character, but we really only see her from Layton's perspective in the canon; I'd love to see a fic that explores her life and character from her own point of view. Gen and het (Claire/Layton) are both perfectly okay.

If Claire isn't moving you, though, I'd be happy with a story about the Layton universe as a whole. It's an engagingly weird world, a sort of hyper-cerebral Eurobritain that never was, and a story exploring daily life in a world where puzzles are conversational icebreakers would be delightful.

This is another request where the character tag really is optional. I'd love to read Claire-focused fic, but if you just offered any characters for the Layton fandom and don't feel terribly moved by her (or haven't played Unwound Future), she's not an absolute necessity. (I think Clive is the only character in the Yuletide 2011 tag set I'm not interested in reading about, and the extended ensemble cast is pretty cool too.)

That said, I requested her because I'm interested in her story. Like the request said, we only see her from Layton's perspective, but she's clearly someone worth seeing more of. She has both the scientific ability to be part of a successful time-machine research team and the presence of mind to do what she must knowing about the fate she can't avert; those are pretty remarkable traits to me. Backstory or Unwound-Future-event fic would both be great.

Barring that, setting or ensemble stuff would be awesome too. Like I said, the Layton world is wonderfully weird, and it has a really broad and interesting cast of characters, so have some fun with it!

When it comes to genre and pairings... as I said, I prefer gen and het here and definitely pair Layton/Claire. If you're not working with Claire, I'd prefer no age-inappropriate romantic or sexual material with the younger characters but am open-minded otherwise.

Mother 3 -- (no tags)

Request: The only thing I would really rather not read in this fandom are rape, underage sex, and incest. Otherwise, getting any M3 fic at all for Yuletide would be great! Feel free to go crazy, but here are a few ideas that come to mind:

* First of all, I love Duster and Kumatora, together (as friends or romantically) or separately. Backstory, post-game, or missing-three-years fic for either or both of them would be great.
* Extrapolation on the setting and backstory would be wonderful too -- I'm fascinated by the concept that the Nowhere Islands is a half-formed utopia built on the ruins of bigger things.
* Yokuba/Fassad is a character who's always intrigued me: a deep, ancient schemer who's also childishly cruel and petty and apparently willing to aid Porky in a plan that can only end in his own death. What was going on in his mind?

Mother 3 is a game with so many potential plot, character, and setting elements to explore, and I'd love to read whatever you can build with them.

I know this is a pretty broad request, but it's sincere. Mother 3 is a real fandom of my heart, and I tried to stay open because I want potential writers to feel comfortable doing what they'd like. On the whole, I'd probably prefer investigation of some of the less common characters and plot elements in the existing fanwork; while I like Lucas and his family, they've already gotten a lot of love in the fandom, so they aren't my first priority. That said, if you burn to write Lucas fic, I will happily read it!

Seriously, do what you want here. Write about the main cast, the villagers, the Magypsies, the Pork Army -- heck, write Wess/Alec if that's how the muse moves you. (Actually, a fic about Wess and Alec being friends would be sort of rad.) The only things I really don't want to read here, like the request says or implies, are rape, underage sex, incest, and Duster-bashing. Otherwise, be free.

yuletide

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