Dear Jadefest creator letter!
Note: I am repurposing my stock Yuletide letter here, which is why some of the sections may seem slightly off-topic for a single fandom exchange.
Hi, and thank you in advance for creating a story or artwork for me! I'm pretty easy to please -- unless you write a context-free sex scene or draw explicit porn (which would be very out of place for these prompts, I am just saying), I'll be thrilled just to get something in response to one of my prompts. Optional details are optional, after all! *grin* But I realize that's not terribly helpful, so here's the long version.
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General Information:
1. I will read anything when it comes to pairings -- 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 -- but I prefer gen, and I tend to skim sex scenes because the non-sex parts of the story are almost always more interesting to me.
2. I enjoy all kinds of genres and moods, from schmoopy fluff to angsty deathfic, but my favorite endings are bittersweet and a little complicated.
3. I fall in love with worlds and themes as much as I fall in love with characters, if not more, so any world-building you can sneak in around the edges of a story or in the background details of a picture will be received with great joy.
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 there's more to life than sex. Also, ethics, metaphysics, and world-building are dead cool.'
The tl;dr version: I like character development; world-building; explanation of plot holes in canon; subtle humor; good spelling and grammar; 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); 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. (I admit that that last dislike is tricky since Homestuck is practically built on predestination paradoxes, but if you include any, please let the characters be annoyed at the constriction of their choices.)
6. If you want more information on what I think about Homestuck, here is a post on various ships I made in July 2012 (so it has nothing about the Dancestors), here is all my Homestuck fic, and here is my homestuck tag on this journal.
Okay. On to specific prompts.
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1. Jade English's adventures in the Medium: I would like to see Jade exploring Hellmurder Island, discovering the portals into the Medium, and having adventures in the strange new universe of Sburb. How much of the game exists before the players enter? Did she have any contact with the Black Queen, or had the Condesce already conquered Derse? Did she have any contact with the White Queen? How and why did she steal Jack Noir's fourth wall? If the Denizens existed (instead of being retroactively created upon the players' entries), were they awake and open to conversations? How much did she tell Rose and Dave about her adventures? (Did she take pictures of Roxy and Dirk so they would have some tangible record of their timelost wards?) Did she try to spark a resistance among the Dersites the way she founded a resistance movement on Earth? I have so many questions and would love some answers!
I think this is fairly clear as it stands. But to elaborate a touch more, I'm not hugely interested in reading about Jade's relationships with Jake, John, Rose, or Dave, except as a small part of a story focused on something else. I am also not hugely interested in angst or a story focused on Jade's feelings. I want to read about her DOING something -- going out into the world and making shit take place, whatever said shit may be.
This applies similarly to art: I'd prefer a picture of Jade doing something awesome over a more portrait-like picture. Which is not to say it would have to be an action scene! It could be something quiet like Jade in a meteor lab, or at a computer trying to reverse-engineer Sburb, or on Prospit meeting with the White Queen, or whatever. Jade piloting a battleship with her stolen loot, or strifing with the skeleton zombies, or exploring the Sburb-related parts of Hellmurder Island would be extra awesome. (Bonus if she has copies of The Complacency of the Learned or Dave's movies lying around in the background or in her backpack or whatever, regardless of the main action. *grin*)
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2. Grimbark!Jade and the alpha!Earth: In other words, the stuff we would've seen if the [S] page at http://mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=008178 hadn't glitched out because of special stardust interference. I assume Jade shrinks the alpha!Earth and carts it off into another universe to become the cherubs' home; that is really the only explanation. I would like to see the details of that process! Or maybe Jade (beneath the grimbark) reacting to the waterlogged destruction and half-assed conversion of Earth into a new troll homeworld, or maybe spotting the jpg Statue of Liberty artifacts alpha!Dave must have made as they emerge from beneath the evaporating waters under the red sun's light. Or maybe just Jade exploring Roxy's and Dirk's homes and the wreckage left behind by their entry into the Medium. The whole episode is fascinating and I would like to see it explored in a way I suspect canon will never do.
This is a world-building and gap-filler prompt, pure and simple. Hussie is a cruel, cruel tease, and I'd like to see some loving and detailed exploration of this part of the story, since I suspect even if he gets back to it, we'll only ever get a rushed and superficial treatment in canon. I just want to see Jade being a superpowered badass, or being all creepy grimbark analytical about the alpha kids' homes, or having weird feelings about Dave and his terrible sense of humor, or railing about time travel and circular inevitability despite the mind control she's under. Just. I dunno. Something.
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3. Jade making her deal with Echidna: So after watching Dave get brutally murdered in front of her, Jade carries on with her frog breeding quest (I guess they were nearly done, since she does succeed without any further time loops), makes the possibly suicidal decision to confront her Denizen... and ends up talking instead of fighting, after which she emerges having made a seemingly impossible bargain. I'd like to see her thoughts and feelings leading up to that confrontation, and also whether she really thought she could pull off the terms she agreed to (did Echidna let something slip? had she seen cloud visions that now suddenly made sense?) or whether it was her equivalent of Rose's attempt to break the game -- sort of a, "My friends are dead, none of this matters, why the hell not!" reaction. Should you wish to include Bec Noir and his creepy-ridiculous stalking ways, that is fine by me.
Another gap-filler and world-building prompt, though this one is more obviously a character study request. We see so little of Jade's thoughts and actions during this period -- I guess under the narrative trope where a plan that is discussed for the audience to see will inevitably fail, whereas a plan that's not discussed will succeed in amazing and awesome style -- but there is a LOT of resulting ambiguity and I'd like to see somebody's take on what Jade was feeling and why she made those particular choices.
---------------
Apparently I am feeling very gen for this fest. Well, that's not really a surprise, is it? Gen adventures, gen world-building, and gen friendship for the win!
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
Hi, and thank you in advance for creating a story or artwork for me! I'm pretty easy to please -- unless you write a context-free sex scene or draw explicit porn (which would be very out of place for these prompts, I am just saying), I'll be thrilled just to get something in response to one of my prompts. Optional details are optional, after all! *grin* But I realize that's not terribly helpful, so here's the long version.
---------------
General Information:
1. I will read anything when it comes to pairings -- 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 -- but I prefer gen, and I tend to skim sex scenes because the non-sex parts of the story are almost always more interesting to me.
2. I enjoy all kinds of genres and moods, from schmoopy fluff to angsty deathfic, but my favorite endings are bittersweet and a little complicated.
3. I fall in love with worlds and themes as much as I fall in love with characters, if not more, so any world-building you can sneak in around the edges of a story or in the background details of a picture will be received with great joy.
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 there's more to life than sex. Also, ethics, metaphysics, and world-building are dead cool.'
The tl;dr version: I like character development; world-building; explanation of plot holes in canon; subtle humor; good spelling and grammar; 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); 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. (I admit that that last dislike is tricky since Homestuck is practically built on predestination paradoxes, but if you include any, please let the characters be annoyed at the constriction of their choices.)
6. If you want more information on what I think about Homestuck, here is a post on various ships I made in July 2012 (so it has nothing about the Dancestors), here is all my Homestuck fic, and here is my homestuck tag on this journal.
Okay. On to specific prompts.
---------------
1. Jade English's adventures in the Medium: I would like to see Jade exploring Hellmurder Island, discovering the portals into the Medium, and having adventures in the strange new universe of Sburb. How much of the game exists before the players enter? Did she have any contact with the Black Queen, or had the Condesce already conquered Derse? Did she have any contact with the White Queen? How and why did she steal Jack Noir's fourth wall? If the Denizens existed (instead of being retroactively created upon the players' entries), were they awake and open to conversations? How much did she tell Rose and Dave about her adventures? (Did she take pictures of Roxy and Dirk so they would have some tangible record of their timelost wards?) Did she try to spark a resistance among the Dersites the way she founded a resistance movement on Earth? I have so many questions and would love some answers!
I think this is fairly clear as it stands. But to elaborate a touch more, I'm not hugely interested in reading about Jade's relationships with Jake, John, Rose, or Dave, except as a small part of a story focused on something else. I am also not hugely interested in angst or a story focused on Jade's feelings. I want to read about her DOING something -- going out into the world and making shit take place, whatever said shit may be.
This applies similarly to art: I'd prefer a picture of Jade doing something awesome over a more portrait-like picture. Which is not to say it would have to be an action scene! It could be something quiet like Jade in a meteor lab, or at a computer trying to reverse-engineer Sburb, or on Prospit meeting with the White Queen, or whatever. Jade piloting a battleship with her stolen loot, or strifing with the skeleton zombies, or exploring the Sburb-related parts of Hellmurder Island would be extra awesome. (Bonus if she has copies of The Complacency of the Learned or Dave's movies lying around in the background or in her backpack or whatever, regardless of the main action. *grin*)
-----
2. Grimbark!Jade and the alpha!Earth: In other words, the stuff we would've seen if the [S] page at http://mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=008178 hadn't glitched out because of special stardust interference. I assume Jade shrinks the alpha!Earth and carts it off into another universe to become the cherubs' home; that is really the only explanation. I would like to see the details of that process! Or maybe Jade (beneath the grimbark) reacting to the waterlogged destruction and half-assed conversion of Earth into a new troll homeworld, or maybe spotting the jpg Statue of Liberty artifacts alpha!Dave must have made as they emerge from beneath the evaporating waters under the red sun's light. Or maybe just Jade exploring Roxy's and Dirk's homes and the wreckage left behind by their entry into the Medium. The whole episode is fascinating and I would like to see it explored in a way I suspect canon will never do.
This is a world-building and gap-filler prompt, pure and simple. Hussie is a cruel, cruel tease, and I'd like to see some loving and detailed exploration of this part of the story, since I suspect even if he gets back to it, we'll only ever get a rushed and superficial treatment in canon. I just want to see Jade being a superpowered badass, or being all creepy grimbark analytical about the alpha kids' homes, or having weird feelings about Dave and his terrible sense of humor, or railing about time travel and circular inevitability despite the mind control she's under. Just. I dunno. Something.
-----
3. Jade making her deal with Echidna: So after watching Dave get brutally murdered in front of her, Jade carries on with her frog breeding quest (I guess they were nearly done, since she does succeed without any further time loops), makes the possibly suicidal decision to confront her Denizen... and ends up talking instead of fighting, after which she emerges having made a seemingly impossible bargain. I'd like to see her thoughts and feelings leading up to that confrontation, and also whether she really thought she could pull off the terms she agreed to (did Echidna let something slip? had she seen cloud visions that now suddenly made sense?) or whether it was her equivalent of Rose's attempt to break the game -- sort of a, "My friends are dead, none of this matters, why the hell not!" reaction. Should you wish to include Bec Noir and his creepy-ridiculous stalking ways, that is fine by me.
Another gap-filler and world-building prompt, though this one is more obviously a character study request. We see so little of Jade's thoughts and actions during this period -- I guess under the narrative trope where a plan that is discussed for the audience to see will inevitably fail, whereas a plan that's not discussed will succeed in amazing and awesome style -- but there is a LOT of resulting ambiguity and I'd like to see somebody's take on what Jade was feeling and why she made those particular choices.
---------------
Apparently I am feeling very gen for this fest. Well, that's not really a surprise, is it? Gen adventures, gen world-building, and gen friendship for the win!
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)