it's yuletide time again!
To my dearest, beloved Yuletide writer,
So I’m going to copy wholesale from my past Yuletide letters here, and start by 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 : the magicians by lev grossman (janet, plum, julia, asmodeus)
details: I would love a story about any or all of the women in this series. Janet, Plum, or Asmodeus especially, but I also want to know what the fuck happens to Julia and if she and Asmo ever reunite. Asmodeus killing Reynard is an especial interest, but go where your heart takes you.
It took me ages-- AGES-- to get around to reading The Magician's Land because of how much The Magician King upset me. I loathed Quentin so much in that book, and Julia's backstory made me furious, and there wasn't NEARLY enough development for Janet or Eliot for my taste. But in spite of myself I really liked Magician's Land, especially everything it implies about magic in that world, and the development Janet got, and Asmo's cameo, and just everything about Plum is so fun. So if we've matched on this request, a story about cool magic involving any of the women I've named would be great. Or, I cannot understate how badly I want to know everything about Asmo, whether it's about cool magic or not, I desperately want to know what happened to her between Murs and the heist, and if she ever finds Reynard, and if she ever finds Julia again.
fandom : vicious by v. e. schwab (victor, sydney, mitch)
details: As of writing this prompt I haven't read Vengeful yet, but I will have done by the time Yuletide arrives. I'd love a story focusing on the found family / runaways-esque aspect of Victor, Sydney, and Mitch's relationship (and Dol, of course!)-- maybe a future fic about them as a crimefighting team, if the end of Vengeful makes sense that way? A far-future "getting the gang back together" kind of fic would be great too; I'm so curious to see what adult Sydney is like.
It's not that I'm not interested in Eli, but I'm interested in the other three more, and I'm less interested in a story that focuses entirely on Victor/Eli to the exclusion of the others. However, I love stories where you see a relationship develop through the eyes of someone outside of it, so if it makes sense to bring Eli into the story via Sydney or Mitch watching him interact with Victor, and dealing with how that changes their relationship with Victor, go for it.
fandom: society of gentlemen (francis, gabriel, silas, dominic)
details: As long as you don't break the pairings up, I'm here for whatever you want to write. I'm least interested in Richard and Harry, but I'd be happy with stories about them as long as David and Julius (respectively) were a strong presence. Futurefic, backstory, crossover with KJ Charles's other work-- go to town.
This is self-indulgent fluff city, and proud of it. I'd love futurefic, especially for Silas and Dom, or Francis and Ash-- and for Francis and Ash, I'd also love more of the nitty gritty of their earlier associations, how they fit into the Ricardians, or anything more about Francis bc he's the one I think we get the least window into. Julius is my favorite character in the series, so I'd love anything about him and his relationships with the others. But let's be real, the romances are the draw for me: how complex each of the characters is and how they negotiate their respective relationships is just so satisfying. I also love the minor characters-- Zoe, Jon Shakespeare, etc-- and enjoy the idea of a crossover between this and Charles's Flight of Magpies 'verse, especially showcasing the awesome women in that series. I'm less into modern AU's with this one, but a fantasy or steampunk AU would be awesome.
I don't have ebooks of any of these, but they're available through most libraries, and are pretty affordable if you want to just straight-up buy them. If queer Victorian romances are your thing, you won't be disappointed.
fandom: colors in the dreamweaver's loom by beth hilgartner (any)
details: i just reread this series over the summer and am DYING for some good remarr/vihena fic.
This is one of the first foe-yay ships I can remember loving in my early teens, and I always wanted to see the two of them get together. I prefer something set in the world of the Orathi, but our world is fine too if you have a story you really want to tell.
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.
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)
So I’m going to copy wholesale from my past Yuletide letters here, and start by 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 : the magicians by lev grossman (janet, plum, julia, asmodeus)
details: I would love a story about any or all of the women in this series. Janet, Plum, or Asmodeus especially, but I also want to know what the fuck happens to Julia and if she and Asmo ever reunite. Asmodeus killing Reynard is an especial interest, but go where your heart takes you.
It took me ages-- AGES-- to get around to reading The Magician's Land because of how much The Magician King upset me. I loathed Quentin so much in that book, and Julia's backstory made me furious, and there wasn't NEARLY enough development for Janet or Eliot for my taste. But in spite of myself I really liked Magician's Land, especially everything it implies about magic in that world, and the development Janet got, and Asmo's cameo, and just everything about Plum is so fun. So if we've matched on this request, a story about cool magic involving any of the women I've named would be great. Or, I cannot understate how badly I want to know everything about Asmo, whether it's about cool magic or not, I desperately want to know what happened to her between Murs and the heist, and if she ever finds Reynard, and if she ever finds Julia again.
fandom : vicious by v. e. schwab (victor, sydney, mitch)
details: As of writing this prompt I haven't read Vengeful yet, but I will have done by the time Yuletide arrives. I'd love a story focusing on the found family / runaways-esque aspect of Victor, Sydney, and Mitch's relationship (and Dol, of course!)-- maybe a future fic about them as a crimefighting team, if the end of Vengeful makes sense that way? A far-future "getting the gang back together" kind of fic would be great too; I'm so curious to see what adult Sydney is like.
It's not that I'm not interested in Eli, but I'm interested in the other three more, and I'm less interested in a story that focuses entirely on Victor/Eli to the exclusion of the others. However, I love stories where you see a relationship develop through the eyes of someone outside of it, so if it makes sense to bring Eli into the story via Sydney or Mitch watching him interact with Victor, and dealing with how that changes their relationship with Victor, go for it.
fandom: society of gentlemen (francis, gabriel, silas, dominic)
details: As long as you don't break the pairings up, I'm here for whatever you want to write. I'm least interested in Richard and Harry, but I'd be happy with stories about them as long as David and Julius (respectively) were a strong presence. Futurefic, backstory, crossover with KJ Charles's other work-- go to town.
This is self-indulgent fluff city, and proud of it. I'd love futurefic, especially for Silas and Dom, or Francis and Ash-- and for Francis and Ash, I'd also love more of the nitty gritty of their earlier associations, how they fit into the Ricardians, or anything more about Francis bc he's the one I think we get the least window into. Julius is my favorite character in the series, so I'd love anything about him and his relationships with the others. But let's be real, the romances are the draw for me: how complex each of the characters is and how they negotiate their respective relationships is just so satisfying. I also love the minor characters-- Zoe, Jon Shakespeare, etc-- and enjoy the idea of a crossover between this and Charles's Flight of Magpies 'verse, especially showcasing the awesome women in that series. I'm less into modern AU's with this one, but a fantasy or steampunk AU would be awesome.
I don't have ebooks of any of these, but they're available through most libraries, and are pretty affordable if you want to just straight-up buy them. If queer Victorian romances are your thing, you won't be disappointed.
fandom: colors in the dreamweaver's loom by beth hilgartner (any)
details: i just reread this series over the summer and am DYING for some good remarr/vihena fic.
This is one of the first foe-yay ships I can remember loving in my early teens, and I always wanted to see the two of them get together. I prefer something set in the world of the Orathi, but our world is fine too if you have a story you really want to tell.
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.
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)