Dear Betapalooza 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, 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 (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.)
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General Information:
1. I will read anything when it comes to pairings, so long as you put in a bit of character development so the relationships don't seem to come out of nowhere, but 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. (For this particular exchange, I would prefer prompts #1 and #3 to lean toward the happy end of the scale, whereas prompts #2 and #4 can have downbeat endings if you want.)
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 relationships than sex. Also, ethics, metaphysics, and world-building are dead cool.'
5. Stuff I'm not so keen on: authorial hatred for characters seeping into the narrative; sex or romantic love with no in-story justification; 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 all my Homestuck fic, and here is my homestuck tag on this journal.
7. While this is a beta kid-centric fest, if you want to toss in other characters and/or side relationships, that is totally fine by me. :-)
Okay. On to specific prompts.
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1. Girl Genius AU
I would like to see the beta kids in a Girl Genius style AU! Whether this involves an adventure or just a quiet(ish) day at home in the lab is up to you. Jade is obviously a Spark, but I don't care if you make the other kids Sparks as well or give them different ways of being awesome (constructs, spies, ninjas, or anything else you can dream up). Preferably this should include lots of banter and at least one explosion, intentional or otherwise. :-)
Girl Genius is a webcomic about adventure, politics, war, and romance in an alternate version of Europe where mad scientists rule the world. Badly. And hilarity ensues. It's a type of steampunk that its creators prefer to call gaslamp fantasy. The basic idea is that some people are born with the 'spark,' which gives them amazing science/engineering abilities -- including the ability to bend the laws of physics to varying degrees -- and also lets them impose their wills on many people around them, turning them into minions. Sparks tend to be slightly crazy/impractical, moreso as they get deeper into their science/engineering fugues. (There are reasons they're popularly called madboys/madgirls.)
I am not requesting an actual crossover with the canon characters and plot of Girl Genius, just the use of that general setting. (However, if you have an idea for a proper crossover rather than just a conceptual fusion, please go for it!)
If you're doing art for this and aren't into doing comics, I think a picture of all four kids together doing something dynamic and dramatic would probably work best. Death rays and/or bizarre weapons made out of repurposed household implements are a plus. :-)
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2. Sedoretu AU
I'd like to see the beta kids form a sedoretu! I realize this is kind of a weird request, since I've written a version of that myself, but in this case I want to see them in a society much more closely based on the rural milieu of the planet O where Ursula Le Guin's sedoretu stories are set. So probably Jade and John have a farm, and maybe Rose and Dave work in the nearby town, and they have to negotiate living space and what's going to happen to everybody's jobs, and just a lot of very domestic stuff. Or maybe Rose and Dave are visitors from another planet in the Ekumen, who came to study the customs of O and wind up staying and there's a bunch of culture clash stuff? I dunno, I just really want farmsteading polyamory and people being mature enough to actually talk about potential problems in a developing relationship.
This is a sedoretu, in case you weren't aware of the concept. The beta kids fall beautifully into this pattern; Jade and John belong to one moiety, and Rose and Dave to the other. I tend to assume the Prospit dreamers are Morning and the Derse dreamers are Evening, but moieties are purely social constructs and don't involve any inherent personality traits, so if you want to go the other way and play against stereotypes, go for it!
Le Guin wrote three stories about sedoretus: "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea," "Unchosen Love," and "Mountain Ways." Interestingly, she complicated things within her own canon -- the sedoretu in "Mountain Ways" actually has three women and only one man, and the issue in "Unchosen Love" is how to arrange a four-way marriage between two pre-existing couples that already have their own problems, and who either don't know or don't especially like the people they'd have to get along with in the other pair. So if you have trouble writing any particular twosome within a beta kid foursome, that can slip right into the framework Le Guin set up.
O is a rural, dispersed society, very set in its ways. The Ki'O aren't completely pre-industrial -- they have some technology in their town-equivalents, and they definitely have contact with other planets -- but O is a deliberately low-tech world and slow to welcome strangers. The Ki'O aren't inhospitable, exactly -- guests are supposed to be given rooms, and basic hospitality seems to be a cultural ideal -- but true openness takes a long time. I'd be very interested to see the beta kids in a culture like that, which is so very different from the modern internet culture they're immersed in in canon.
If you want to include the alpha kids as part of the beta kids' extended families, that would probably add verisimilitude. Two people can't effectively run a farm on their own, after all. (And since there's no FTL travel in the Ekumen, if either sibling pair is from offworld, they'd be separated from their own families by decades of time dilation, unless said families had taken interstellar trips of their own. Either way, they'd probably never see each other in person again, though faster-than-light communication via the ansible does make interstellar letters and/or phone calls possible.)
I am not entirely sure how this prompt would work for non-sequential art. Maybe a picture of the characters working on a low-tech farm, taking care of slightly alien livestock? Or if you go the route of one sibling pair being from offworld, perhaps you could do something with their resulting culture shock? Sorry I can't be more helpful on that front.
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3. Accidental Relationship?
After the end of Sburb, Jade's oldest and best friends crash briefly at her house while they try to figure out what's happening with their new victory planet. (Details of that planet are completely up to you!) Then they never get around to leaving. She doesn't realize she's in a foursome with them until somebody else points it out a long while later.
I'd like a focus on Jade's slow discovery that she's in love with her friends and they return the feeling... with as much interpersonal humor and world-building weirdness as you want to fit around the edges, because hey, this IS Homestuck fanfiction. :-)
First of all, I truly do not care what you do vis-à-vis their new planet. If you want to recreate either the beta or alpha Earth, combine the two, dump everyone on Alternia, merge Earth and Alternia, turn all the trolls into humans, turn all the humans into trolls, turn everyone into gods, remove all game weirdness whatsoever... seriously, I don't care. Go nuts! I mean, I'd like to SEE some of whatever option you settle on, and how it affects the characters, but you have complete discretion as to what that option IS.
This prompt is mostly about Jade trying to figure out what to do now that the game is over, and not noticing that she's in love with her friends (and they're in love with her), either because the relationship develops so gradually; or because she doesn't think it's a serious/lasting thing, just a series of one-off dates, or cuddle sessions, or sex; or whatever. I prefer a fairly lighthearted tone here, and a happy ending. The presence of side characters is encouraged, both because I want Jade to have lots of friends and because I think there's a lot of potential for humorous miscommunication here.
My one stipulation is that once Jade DOES realize she's effectively in a relationship, she should immediately go talk to the other beta kids and make sure they're all on the same page, because I'm not really into angsty miscommunication. Whether the others were likewise unaware that they were all dating, or were just unaware that Jade hadn't caught on, is up to you.
Again, I'm not sure how this would work as non-sequential art. Honestly, I'd be fine with an adorable group hug and/or cuddle pile, unless you have a better idea!
-----
4. Four Against the Condesce
In a non-Sburb version of the alpha Earth, four people come together to found a resistance against their new alien overlady! This should include stuff like secret meetings, silly disguises, fights with robots, a lot of bickering, counter-propaganda, dangerous spying missions, Hollywood glamour, book tours turned violent, and unexpected falling in love. I would prefer you to keep a roughly canonical age gap between Jade & John on one hand (born around 1910 -- maybe 1920 at the latest) and Rose & Dave on the other hand (born around 1970).
The setup here is that the Condesce is the last survivor of her race and tries to infiltrate Earth before conquering it and trying to recreate her species. It's up to you whether she acted as Jade and John's mother, or whether she arrived more recently and they had a more normal childhood. But she's been taking control by stealth, via Crockercorp and its subsidiaries, and now four unlikely heroes join forces against her.
I don't really care if you set this before or after the Condesce publicly reveals herself. Mostly I just want a lot of friendly bickering and hijinks, and four people falling in love despite the danger and uncertainty of their situations and the large gap between their ages. It's up to you whether you want to end on a hopeful or dystopian note.
If you're doing non-sequential art, a picture of our four heroes in a secret hideout vigorously discussing their next operation could work. (Heck, maybe an homage to those early Midnight Crew panels Dave looks at back in Act I or II?) Or maybe sneaking around in silly disguises at a public event. Or, you know, fighting evil killer robots and/or the Condesce herself. There are many options!
---------------
And that is that! Once again, thank you in advance and best of luck in your creative endeavors. ♥
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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, 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 (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. I will read anything when it comes to pairings, so long as you put in a bit of character development so the relationships don't seem to come out of nowhere, but 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. (For this particular exchange, I would prefer prompts #1 and #3 to lean toward the happy end of the scale, whereas prompts #2 and #4 can have downbeat endings if you want.)
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 relationships than sex. Also, ethics, metaphysics, and world-building are dead cool.'
5. Stuff I'm not so keen on: authorial hatred for characters seeping into the narrative; sex or romantic love with no in-story justification; 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 all my Homestuck fic, and here is my homestuck tag on this journal.
7. While this is a beta kid-centric fest, if you want to toss in other characters and/or side relationships, that is totally fine by me. :-)
Okay. On to specific prompts.
---------------
1. Girl Genius AU
I would like to see the beta kids in a Girl Genius style AU! Whether this involves an adventure or just a quiet(ish) day at home in the lab is up to you. Jade is obviously a Spark, but I don't care if you make the other kids Sparks as well or give them different ways of being awesome (constructs, spies, ninjas, or anything else you can dream up). Preferably this should include lots of banter and at least one explosion, intentional or otherwise. :-)
Girl Genius is a webcomic about adventure, politics, war, and romance in an alternate version of Europe where mad scientists rule the world. Badly. And hilarity ensues. It's a type of steampunk that its creators prefer to call gaslamp fantasy. The basic idea is that some people are born with the 'spark,' which gives them amazing science/engineering abilities -- including the ability to bend the laws of physics to varying degrees -- and also lets them impose their wills on many people around them, turning them into minions. Sparks tend to be slightly crazy/impractical, moreso as they get deeper into their science/engineering fugues. (There are reasons they're popularly called madboys/madgirls.)
I am not requesting an actual crossover with the canon characters and plot of Girl Genius, just the use of that general setting. (However, if you have an idea for a proper crossover rather than just a conceptual fusion, please go for it!)
If you're doing art for this and aren't into doing comics, I think a picture of all four kids together doing something dynamic and dramatic would probably work best. Death rays and/or bizarre weapons made out of repurposed household implements are a plus. :-)
-----
2. Sedoretu AU
I'd like to see the beta kids form a sedoretu! I realize this is kind of a weird request, since I've written a version of that myself, but in this case I want to see them in a society much more closely based on the rural milieu of the planet O where Ursula Le Guin's sedoretu stories are set. So probably Jade and John have a farm, and maybe Rose and Dave work in the nearby town, and they have to negotiate living space and what's going to happen to everybody's jobs, and just a lot of very domestic stuff. Or maybe Rose and Dave are visitors from another planet in the Ekumen, who came to study the customs of O and wind up staying and there's a bunch of culture clash stuff? I dunno, I just really want farmsteading polyamory and people being mature enough to actually talk about potential problems in a developing relationship.
This is a sedoretu, in case you weren't aware of the concept. The beta kids fall beautifully into this pattern; Jade and John belong to one moiety, and Rose and Dave to the other. I tend to assume the Prospit dreamers are Morning and the Derse dreamers are Evening, but moieties are purely social constructs and don't involve any inherent personality traits, so if you want to go the other way and play against stereotypes, go for it!
Le Guin wrote three stories about sedoretus: "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea," "Unchosen Love," and "Mountain Ways." Interestingly, she complicated things within her own canon -- the sedoretu in "Mountain Ways" actually has three women and only one man, and the issue in "Unchosen Love" is how to arrange a four-way marriage between two pre-existing couples that already have their own problems, and who either don't know or don't especially like the people they'd have to get along with in the other pair. So if you have trouble writing any particular twosome within a beta kid foursome, that can slip right into the framework Le Guin set up.
O is a rural, dispersed society, very set in its ways. The Ki'O aren't completely pre-industrial -- they have some technology in their town-equivalents, and they definitely have contact with other planets -- but O is a deliberately low-tech world and slow to welcome strangers. The Ki'O aren't inhospitable, exactly -- guests are supposed to be given rooms, and basic hospitality seems to be a cultural ideal -- but true openness takes a long time. I'd be very interested to see the beta kids in a culture like that, which is so very different from the modern internet culture they're immersed in in canon.
If you want to include the alpha kids as part of the beta kids' extended families, that would probably add verisimilitude. Two people can't effectively run a farm on their own, after all. (And since there's no FTL travel in the Ekumen, if either sibling pair is from offworld, they'd be separated from their own families by decades of time dilation, unless said families had taken interstellar trips of their own. Either way, they'd probably never see each other in person again, though faster-than-light communication via the ansible does make interstellar letters and/or phone calls possible.)
I am not entirely sure how this prompt would work for non-sequential art. Maybe a picture of the characters working on a low-tech farm, taking care of slightly alien livestock? Or if you go the route of one sibling pair being from offworld, perhaps you could do something with their resulting culture shock? Sorry I can't be more helpful on that front.
-----
3. Accidental Relationship?
After the end of Sburb, Jade's oldest and best friends crash briefly at her house while they try to figure out what's happening with their new victory planet. (Details of that planet are completely up to you!) Then they never get around to leaving. She doesn't realize she's in a foursome with them until somebody else points it out a long while later.
I'd like a focus on Jade's slow discovery that she's in love with her friends and they return the feeling... with as much interpersonal humor and world-building weirdness as you want to fit around the edges, because hey, this IS Homestuck fanfiction. :-)
First of all, I truly do not care what you do vis-à-vis their new planet. If you want to recreate either the beta or alpha Earth, combine the two, dump everyone on Alternia, merge Earth and Alternia, turn all the trolls into humans, turn all the humans into trolls, turn everyone into gods, remove all game weirdness whatsoever... seriously, I don't care. Go nuts! I mean, I'd like to SEE some of whatever option you settle on, and how it affects the characters, but you have complete discretion as to what that option IS.
This prompt is mostly about Jade trying to figure out what to do now that the game is over, and not noticing that she's in love with her friends (and they're in love with her), either because the relationship develops so gradually; or because she doesn't think it's a serious/lasting thing, just a series of one-off dates, or cuddle sessions, or sex; or whatever. I prefer a fairly lighthearted tone here, and a happy ending. The presence of side characters is encouraged, both because I want Jade to have lots of friends and because I think there's a lot of potential for humorous miscommunication here.
My one stipulation is that once Jade DOES realize she's effectively in a relationship, she should immediately go talk to the other beta kids and make sure they're all on the same page, because I'm not really into angsty miscommunication. Whether the others were likewise unaware that they were all dating, or were just unaware that Jade hadn't caught on, is up to you.
Again, I'm not sure how this would work as non-sequential art. Honestly, I'd be fine with an adorable group hug and/or cuddle pile, unless you have a better idea!
-----
4. Four Against the Condesce
In a non-Sburb version of the alpha Earth, four people come together to found a resistance against their new alien overlady! This should include stuff like secret meetings, silly disguises, fights with robots, a lot of bickering, counter-propaganda, dangerous spying missions, Hollywood glamour, book tours turned violent, and unexpected falling in love. I would prefer you to keep a roughly canonical age gap between Jade & John on one hand (born around 1910 -- maybe 1920 at the latest) and Rose & Dave on the other hand (born around 1970).
The setup here is that the Condesce is the last survivor of her race and tries to infiltrate Earth before conquering it and trying to recreate her species. It's up to you whether she acted as Jade and John's mother, or whether she arrived more recently and they had a more normal childhood. But she's been taking control by stealth, via Crockercorp and its subsidiaries, and now four unlikely heroes join forces against her.
I don't really care if you set this before or after the Condesce publicly reveals herself. Mostly I just want a lot of friendly bickering and hijinks, and four people falling in love despite the danger and uncertainty of their situations and the large gap between their ages. It's up to you whether you want to end on a hopeful or dystopian note.
If you're doing non-sequential art, a picture of our four heroes in a secret hideout vigorously discussing their next operation could work. (Heck, maybe an homage to those early Midnight Crew panels Dave looks at back in Act I or II?) Or maybe sneaking around in silly disguises at a public event. Or, you know, fighting evil killer robots and/or the Condesce herself. There are many options!
---------------
And that is that! Once again, thank you in advance and best of luck in your creative endeavors. ♥
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)