Dear Yuletide Writer 2019
Dear Yuletide Writer,
Hi, and thank you in advance for writing a story for me! I'm pretty easy to please -- unless you write a context-free sex scene, I'll be thrilled just to get a fic in one of the fandoms I asked for. *grin* But I realize that's not terribly helpful, so here's the (very!) long version. (I am sorry for the tl;dr, but I like to talk about things I love and I figure more details are better than fewer.)
---------------
General Information:
1. First, while you cannot go wrong by writing gen for me, that is not a requirement. I will also read and enjoy pretty much anything when it comes to ships -- het, slash, femslash, threesomes, poly, whatever -- so long as you put in a bit of character development so the relationships don't seem to come out of nowhere. I tend to skim past sex scenes, though, so your efforts are best spent in other directions. (Except if you are writing the Lisi prompt, in which case feel free to go nuts with romance tropes. *grin* I'd still appreciate some context around any porn, though.)
2. I read all kinds of genres and moods, from schmoopy fluff to angsty deathfic, but my favorite endings are bittersweet (leaning toward happy) and a little complicated.
3. If I said 'any' characters, I meant it. I fall in love with worlds and themes as much as I fall in love with characters, if not more. On a related note, I would prefer fic compatible with the worlds and situations that canon presents. AUs of a "what if person X made choice A instead of choice B at moment Y" type are cool, but high school or coffee shop AUs are not what I'm looking for.
4. Stuff I really, really like: This can be boiled down to, 'Please treat characters as intelligent people who have understandable motives for their actions, please take the worlds seriously as settings, and please remember that sex and romance are not all there is to life. Also, ethics, metaphysics, and world-building are dead cool.'
The long version: I like character development; world-building; explanation of plot holes in canon; subtle humor; a sense of wonder; writing that evokes an emotional reaction as well as telling a story; close relationships that don't necessarily involve sex (i.e., friendship, families, teachers and students, coworkers, traveling companions, soldiers in the same cause, etc.); the consequences of actions and choices; a sense of place and time; dialogue that conveys character as well as plot information; politics; ethics; people being intelligent even if they make bad choices; people trying to do the right thing even if they make bad choices; conflict because of opposing goals that both have points in their favor; a lack of simple solutions; female characters treated as people instead of plot devices; male characters treated as people instead of plot devices; ideas that make me stop and think; the nature of memory; the nature of truth; possession; soul-searching; non-gratuitous torture (...I have a kink, shut up); war and battles; hand-to-hand fighting; swordfights; peace and diplomacy; magic that's properly magical and strange or magic that's explained as a science (but not both at once); books and reading; people exploring a new country/world/city; linguistics and languages; early Industrial Revolution technology (or whatever technology is suitable to the milieu); people using logic to investigate a problem; and fires, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.
5. Stuff I'm not so keen on: obvious authorial hatred for characters I like and/or find interesting (which is generally all of them); sex or romantic love with no in-story justification (unless the people in question are already a canon couple); pining (it's just not my trope); gratuitous angst/torture/rape (i.e., bad stuff that comes out of nowhere and is not necessary to make the plot or character arc work); idiot plots (i.e., problems that could be solved in five minutes if the characters asked one or two obvious questions); and predestination, prophecies, and anything else that denies free will.
Okay. On to specific fandoms.
---------------
The Darkangel Trilogy
(This is a fantasy/sci-fi trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce, which would probably be classed as YA if written today. The component books are The Darkangel, A Gathering of Gargoyles, and The Pearl of the Soul of the World. They're quick reads but it may take a little work to find copies.)
Characters: Eoduin, Syllva, Sabr, Erin
Request: I would like some backstory on female characters, please. You don't need to choose all four (I'm not sure how that would even work, anyway!), but tell me a story about at least one of them before they got tangled up in the events of the series. I am cool with dark!fic here, given that Erin is a slave, Eoduin is a slave-owner, and there's presumably a reason Sabr is referred to as a bandit queen, but dark!fic is not a requirement; light and hopeful stories are also wonderful. My one hard Do Not Want is a story centered around Syllva mourning Irrylath, though that can be a background thread in a story with a different main focus.
You can write shippy stuff if you want -- creepiness with Erin buying in to her position as a concubine, an explanation for how and why Syllva married again (and perhaps why her second husband is never mentioned or seen in canon?), Eoduin or Sabr having crushes or considering dynastic alliances, etc. -- but gen is just as welcome. Also, any worldbuilding or additional female characters you can slide in around the edges will be welcomed with open arms!
My Thoughts: This series has been one of my favorites since I was quite young, and I love it madly and passionately because of everything it doesn't do. I mean, I love what it does do as well -- the utterly matter-of-fact fairytale atmosphere and the equally matter-of-fact way Pierce melds science fiction into that framework, the slow reveal of the post-apocalyptic elements, the lush descriptive language, the way Aeriel's power of heart is literalized through her mastery of the golden spindle, etc. -- but the characters and their world would not stick in my mind half as strongly if Pierce hadn't written what needed to happen instead of what narrative structures have trained us to expect will happen when you make a love story as central as Aeriel and Irrylath are.
Also the story hinges entirely on women's choices and women's relationships, and lets women be strong and central characters without forcing them into the Strong Female Character template. (Erin and Sabr come closest, and even they don't really fit into that box.) Women get to be heroes and villains and people just trying to go about their lives while occasionally getting swept up by grand events.
As mentioned in the prompt, my one caveat is that I don't want a story centered around Syllva mourning Irrylath's presumed death. It is absolutely fine for that to be a side element in a Syllva-centric story with a different main plot, but I feel that Irrylath's tragedy gets enough focus in canon and I would like to hear about something else this year.
---------------
Saga of the Skolian Empire
(This is a long-running series of novels and short stories by Catherine Asaro that mixes military sf, hard sf, space opera, and romance. Also telepathy, because why not. It's a very fun and tropey canon, but not one that can be picked up in a day.)
Characters: Rocalisa Qox-Skolia
Request: This request is both very specific and very open-ended. Here is the specific part: Lisi leaves Prism as a young adult (use whatever plot justification works best for you), and encounters the giant tangle of post-Radiance War interstellar politics and its ramifications for her family. Here is the open-ended part: literally everything else.
I admit that I would love you forever if you can get Lisi to meet any of her relatives either in person or via the psiberweb (which is why I nominated Jai, Kelric, and Dehya), but that is not strictly necessary. Other things that would be received with great joy but which are not requirements include some kind of action/adventure plot and/or a romance. If that romance happened to be lesbian and/or poly, I would be even more thrilled -- canon is sadly short on lesbians, though we did get Althor being both bi and poly -- but again, that is a bonus rather than a demand.
If that prompt is not working for you, here are some other ideas for Lisi-centric stories. Tell me about her growing up on Prism, or about returning to Prism to rebuild. Tell me about her years living on Earth with Seth: did she make friends; did she have a cute teenage romance; how hard was it to keep all the necessary secrets; did she adopt any pieces of Earth culture like Jai adopted Catholicism; etc. Just, tell me something about Lisi!
For this prompt, a focus on romance is obviously fine, though I would appreciate if you also put equal emphasis on at least one of the following: family, secrets, or action/adventure.
My Thoughts: Back in 2017, I posted some thoughts about this series. Namely, what really gets me is the family stuff, and the secrets, and the intersection of those secrets with dicey interstellar politics, leading to the situation where nobody can ever learn the truth about Jai's heritage without pulling everything down around everyone. Which means Lisi's very existence is a time bomb, if and when she ever ventures off Prism. (This is also true for Vitar and del-Kelric, obviously, but I'm not asking for them as my main character.)
I think all the Qox-Skolia children grew up with this interesting mix of innocence/naivety and gut-level knowledge of how terrible the universe can be (this will happen when you're raised in peaceful isolation, but your parents are telepaths who've been through some deep shit), and I'd really like to see how that plays out in someone other than Jai (since he gets plenty of focus as a major protagonist in canon). I'd also like to see how the matriarchal backdrop of the Skolian Empire plays out for a female protagonist who isn't coming from a (perceived) background of privilege like Soz, Dehya, and Roca (or a military background like Major Bhaajan) since obviously Lisi can't tell people about her heritage and would have to make her journey incognito.
...
Also I just want to see a woman doing a variation of Kelric's Ascendant Sun plot, only without the sexual objectification. *hands* I am a simple woman. I have simple needs. And in this particular case, they boil down to family, secrets, and bantering romances while on the run from space pirates or some convenient equivalent. (Or, you know, family stuff on Prism, or romance and secrets on Earth, or whatever, so long as Lisi's choices drive the story.)
---------------
Books of the Raksura
(This is a fantasy series by Martha Wells, composed of a trilogy, a duology, and two short story collections, starting with The Cloud Roads. They're pretty quick reads and should be fairly easy to find via a library or as ebooks.)
Characters: Selis, Moon, Sorrow
Request: This request has three completely separate options, so please don't worry about trying to fit all the characters into a single prompt!
Option 1: Tell me what Selis did after Moon and Jade left her in the Turning City during "The Cloud Roads," because I'm sure she had interesting adventures of some sort! Where did she go? What kinds of people did she meet? What sort of jobs did she try out, and why did she stick with them or move on to other things? Did she run into any canon characters in later years? This is a great opportunity for worldbuilding and also for writing about a prickly young woman learning how to take charge of her own life.
Option 2: Let's imagine an AU in which at least one of Moon's adoptive Arbora siblings lived longer -- maybe even up through canon. How does this change Moon's life? Presumably the siblings would experience less ostracism as multiple members of an unknown species instead of a single weird drifter who sets off everyone's "this guy's lying" bells. Would they even wind up in a place to encounter any of the canon characters? Would they look harder for their people? Would Sorrow tell them more about their past if she also lived a bit longer? Anyway, this could be anything from a cute kids' adventure (though with grim undertones, given the dangers of the Three Worlds), to an imprisoned-by-Fell horror story (since it would be harder for Moon-plus-Arbora-siblings to escape Saraseil than for Moon alone), to some kind of culture-shock comedy of manners if and when Moon-plus-siblings finally encounter other Raksura. Go wild!
Option 3: Sorrow tried to act as the adoptive parent of five mostly helpless children while alone in the middle of a dangerous forest and suffering from serious mental/emotional trauma. How did that work on a day-to-day level? A warrior wouldn't have prior experience in childcare or home-building, and I'd like to see her learning curve before things canonically went to hell, and what her coping mechanisms were for the destruction of her home and the perceived betrayal/madness of her people.
My Thoughts: Okay, so these books are about shapeshifting flying dragon people who live in sort of... monarchical communist polyamorous collectives? And they have adventures in a world filled with both wonders and dangers at every turn. Anyway, the character stuff and adventure/mystery plots are great, but the real standout for me is Wells's worldbuilding, which is jaw-dropping AMAZING in its casual breadth and inventiveness.
Mostly what I want here is an exploration of that world, through the vehicle of character-focused stories. I am also, as you can see, highly interested in female characters doing their best to carve out lives within the constraints of their situations.
---------------
And that is that. Thank you again, and happy writing!
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
Hi, and thank you in advance for writing a story for me! I'm pretty easy to please -- unless you write a context-free sex scene, I'll be thrilled just to get a fic in one of the fandoms I asked for. *grin* But I realize that's not terribly helpful, so here's the (very!) long version. (I am sorry for the tl;dr, but I like to talk about things I love and I figure more details are better than fewer.)
---------------
General Information:
1. First, while you cannot go wrong by writing gen for me, that is not a requirement. I will also read and enjoy pretty much anything when it comes to ships -- het, slash, femslash, threesomes, poly, whatever -- so long as you put in a bit of character development so the relationships don't seem to come out of nowhere. I tend to skim past sex scenes, though, so your efforts are best spent in other directions. (Except if you are writing the Lisi prompt, in which case feel free to go nuts with romance tropes. *grin* I'd still appreciate some context around any porn, though.)
2. I read all kinds of genres and moods, from schmoopy fluff to angsty deathfic, but my favorite endings are bittersweet (leaning toward happy) and a little complicated.
3. If I said 'any' characters, I meant it. I fall in love with worlds and themes as much as I fall in love with characters, if not more. On a related note, I would prefer fic compatible with the worlds and situations that canon presents. AUs of a "what if person X made choice A instead of choice B at moment Y" type are cool, but high school or coffee shop AUs are not what I'm looking for.
4. Stuff I really, really like: This can be boiled down to, 'Please treat characters as intelligent people who have understandable motives for their actions, please take the worlds seriously as settings, and please remember that sex and romance are not all there is to life. Also, ethics, metaphysics, and world-building are dead cool.'
The long version: I like character development; world-building; explanation of plot holes in canon; subtle humor; a sense of wonder; writing that evokes an emotional reaction as well as telling a story; close relationships that don't necessarily involve sex (i.e., friendship, families, teachers and students, coworkers, traveling companions, soldiers in the same cause, etc.); the consequences of actions and choices; a sense of place and time; dialogue that conveys character as well as plot information; politics; ethics; people being intelligent even if they make bad choices; people trying to do the right thing even if they make bad choices; conflict because of opposing goals that both have points in their favor; a lack of simple solutions; female characters treated as people instead of plot devices; male characters treated as people instead of plot devices; ideas that make me stop and think; the nature of memory; the nature of truth; possession; soul-searching; non-gratuitous torture (...I have a kink, shut up); war and battles; hand-to-hand fighting; swordfights; peace and diplomacy; magic that's properly magical and strange or magic that's explained as a science (but not both at once); books and reading; people exploring a new country/world/city; linguistics and languages; early Industrial Revolution technology (or whatever technology is suitable to the milieu); people using logic to investigate a problem; and fires, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.
5. Stuff I'm not so keen on: obvious authorial hatred for characters I like and/or find interesting (which is generally all of them); sex or romantic love with no in-story justification (unless the people in question are already a canon couple); pining (it's just not my trope); gratuitous angst/torture/rape (i.e., bad stuff that comes out of nowhere and is not necessary to make the plot or character arc work); idiot plots (i.e., problems that could be solved in five minutes if the characters asked one or two obvious questions); and predestination, prophecies, and anything else that denies free will.
Okay. On to specific fandoms.
---------------
The Darkangel Trilogy
(This is a fantasy/sci-fi trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce, which would probably be classed as YA if written today. The component books are The Darkangel, A Gathering of Gargoyles, and The Pearl of the Soul of the World. They're quick reads but it may take a little work to find copies.)
Characters: Eoduin, Syllva, Sabr, Erin
Request: I would like some backstory on female characters, please. You don't need to choose all four (I'm not sure how that would even work, anyway!), but tell me a story about at least one of them before they got tangled up in the events of the series. I am cool with dark!fic here, given that Erin is a slave, Eoduin is a slave-owner, and there's presumably a reason Sabr is referred to as a bandit queen, but dark!fic is not a requirement; light and hopeful stories are also wonderful. My one hard Do Not Want is a story centered around Syllva mourning Irrylath, though that can be a background thread in a story with a different main focus.
You can write shippy stuff if you want -- creepiness with Erin buying in to her position as a concubine, an explanation for how and why Syllva married again (and perhaps why her second husband is never mentioned or seen in canon?), Eoduin or Sabr having crushes or considering dynastic alliances, etc. -- but gen is just as welcome. Also, any worldbuilding or additional female characters you can slide in around the edges will be welcomed with open arms!
My Thoughts: This series has been one of my favorites since I was quite young, and I love it madly and passionately because of everything it doesn't do. I mean, I love what it does do as well -- the utterly matter-of-fact fairytale atmosphere and the equally matter-of-fact way Pierce melds science fiction into that framework, the slow reveal of the post-apocalyptic elements, the lush descriptive language, the way Aeriel's power of heart is literalized through her mastery of the golden spindle, etc. -- but the characters and their world would not stick in my mind half as strongly if Pierce hadn't written what needed to happen instead of what narrative structures have trained us to expect will happen when you make a love story as central as Aeriel and Irrylath are.
Also the story hinges entirely on women's choices and women's relationships, and lets women be strong and central characters without forcing them into the Strong Female Character template. (Erin and Sabr come closest, and even they don't really fit into that box.) Women get to be heroes and villains and people just trying to go about their lives while occasionally getting swept up by grand events.
As mentioned in the prompt, my one caveat is that I don't want a story centered around Syllva mourning Irrylath's presumed death. It is absolutely fine for that to be a side element in a Syllva-centric story with a different main plot, but I feel that Irrylath's tragedy gets enough focus in canon and I would like to hear about something else this year.
---------------
Saga of the Skolian Empire
(This is a long-running series of novels and short stories by Catherine Asaro that mixes military sf, hard sf, space opera, and romance. Also telepathy, because why not. It's a very fun and tropey canon, but not one that can be picked up in a day.)
Characters: Rocalisa Qox-Skolia
Request: This request is both very specific and very open-ended. Here is the specific part: Lisi leaves Prism as a young adult (use whatever plot justification works best for you), and encounters the giant tangle of post-Radiance War interstellar politics and its ramifications for her family. Here is the open-ended part: literally everything else.
I admit that I would love you forever if you can get Lisi to meet any of her relatives either in person or via the psiberweb (which is why I nominated Jai, Kelric, and Dehya), but that is not strictly necessary. Other things that would be received with great joy but which are not requirements include some kind of action/adventure plot and/or a romance. If that romance happened to be lesbian and/or poly, I would be even more thrilled -- canon is sadly short on lesbians, though we did get Althor being both bi and poly -- but again, that is a bonus rather than a demand.
If that prompt is not working for you, here are some other ideas for Lisi-centric stories. Tell me about her growing up on Prism, or about returning to Prism to rebuild. Tell me about her years living on Earth with Seth: did she make friends; did she have a cute teenage romance; how hard was it to keep all the necessary secrets; did she adopt any pieces of Earth culture like Jai adopted Catholicism; etc. Just, tell me something about Lisi!
For this prompt, a focus on romance is obviously fine, though I would appreciate if you also put equal emphasis on at least one of the following: family, secrets, or action/adventure.
My Thoughts: Back in 2017, I posted some thoughts about this series. Namely, what really gets me is the family stuff, and the secrets, and the intersection of those secrets with dicey interstellar politics, leading to the situation where nobody can ever learn the truth about Jai's heritage without pulling everything down around everyone. Which means Lisi's very existence is a time bomb, if and when she ever ventures off Prism. (This is also true for Vitar and del-Kelric, obviously, but I'm not asking for them as my main character.)
I think all the Qox-Skolia children grew up with this interesting mix of innocence/naivety and gut-level knowledge of how terrible the universe can be (this will happen when you're raised in peaceful isolation, but your parents are telepaths who've been through some deep shit), and I'd really like to see how that plays out in someone other than Jai (since he gets plenty of focus as a major protagonist in canon). I'd also like to see how the matriarchal backdrop of the Skolian Empire plays out for a female protagonist who isn't coming from a (perceived) background of privilege like Soz, Dehya, and Roca (or a military background like Major Bhaajan) since obviously Lisi can't tell people about her heritage and would have to make her journey incognito.
...
Also I just want to see a woman doing a variation of Kelric's Ascendant Sun plot, only without the sexual objectification. *hands* I am a simple woman. I have simple needs. And in this particular case, they boil down to family, secrets, and bantering romances while on the run from space pirates or some convenient equivalent. (Or, you know, family stuff on Prism, or romance and secrets on Earth, or whatever, so long as Lisi's choices drive the story.)
---------------
Books of the Raksura
(This is a fantasy series by Martha Wells, composed of a trilogy, a duology, and two short story collections, starting with The Cloud Roads. They're pretty quick reads and should be fairly easy to find via a library or as ebooks.)
Characters: Selis, Moon, Sorrow
Request: This request has three completely separate options, so please don't worry about trying to fit all the characters into a single prompt!
Option 1: Tell me what Selis did after Moon and Jade left her in the Turning City during "The Cloud Roads," because I'm sure she had interesting adventures of some sort! Where did she go? What kinds of people did she meet? What sort of jobs did she try out, and why did she stick with them or move on to other things? Did she run into any canon characters in later years? This is a great opportunity for worldbuilding and also for writing about a prickly young woman learning how to take charge of her own life.
Option 2: Let's imagine an AU in which at least one of Moon's adoptive Arbora siblings lived longer -- maybe even up through canon. How does this change Moon's life? Presumably the siblings would experience less ostracism as multiple members of an unknown species instead of a single weird drifter who sets off everyone's "this guy's lying" bells. Would they even wind up in a place to encounter any of the canon characters? Would they look harder for their people? Would Sorrow tell them more about their past if she also lived a bit longer? Anyway, this could be anything from a cute kids' adventure (though with grim undertones, given the dangers of the Three Worlds), to an imprisoned-by-Fell horror story (since it would be harder for Moon-plus-Arbora-siblings to escape Saraseil than for Moon alone), to some kind of culture-shock comedy of manners if and when Moon-plus-siblings finally encounter other Raksura. Go wild!
Option 3: Sorrow tried to act as the adoptive parent of five mostly helpless children while alone in the middle of a dangerous forest and suffering from serious mental/emotional trauma. How did that work on a day-to-day level? A warrior wouldn't have prior experience in childcare or home-building, and I'd like to see her learning curve before things canonically went to hell, and what her coping mechanisms were for the destruction of her home and the perceived betrayal/madness of her people.
My Thoughts: Okay, so these books are about shapeshifting flying dragon people who live in sort of... monarchical communist polyamorous collectives? And they have adventures in a world filled with both wonders and dangers at every turn. Anyway, the character stuff and adventure/mystery plots are great, but the real standout for me is Wells's worldbuilding, which is jaw-dropping AMAZING in its casual breadth and inventiveness.
Mostly what I want here is an exploration of that world, through the vehicle of character-focused stories. I am also, as you can see, highly interested in female characters doing their best to carve out lives within the constraints of their situations.
---------------
And that is that. Thank you again, and happy writing!
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)