Dear Yuletide Writer (2013):
Dear Yuletide writer:
Yay, we have at least one fandom in common! Just for that, may I say that you totally rock! I hope that you have an eventful Yuletide.
Below you will find what basically amounts to an essay on what I like lol. I can’t help it, I just tend to get a bit carried away when it comes to fic and what I love about it. Kind of like the snowball effect, once you get me talking about it, I find it a bit hard to slow down. First off, may I preface all of this by saying that these are general ideas. If you have a particular idea that really hits you, I know what that can be like. You lock the plot bunny in the cellar only to find that it tunnels its way out :P If you have a specific fic you want to write, please do. I promise you I will be thrilled with it. Just having fic written in any of the below fandoms would be amazing as it’s not something that I get to experience all too often.
Enough waxing eloquent, onto the good stuff now, right?
p.s. - before you get into reading prompt specifics later on in this letter, please be aware that the prompt for each fandom is likely rife with spoilers (mostly canonical moments that I’m using to demonstrate what I love about the story or moments I would love to see expanded on in fan-fic). If you hit a fandom where you’d like to read the canon material but haven’t, and that is not the prompt you are visiting this letter for, I would recommend skipping that entire prompt and finding the fandom/prompt we share in common.
General Likes
I am a whumper through and through. My favorite genres are hurt/comfort and angst. I am not such a huge fan of permanent disability maiming; I like more acute trauma and then fics that focus on the aftermath and the recovery phase. My favorite dynamic is probably when you have one character not really taking care of themselves after getting injured. Cue a friend stepping in and fussing over them (such cuteness!). I love fics where people are protective of their loved ones as a general rule.
That’s one dynamic I like, I also have several others! I love cute fuzzy animals in all forms. Any fic that focuses on the relationship between a character and an animal (pet, animal that followed them home, etc.) is amazing.
I like fics that have an element of surprise in them. I like when you have one character being underestimated, or ones where they really do something that their loved ones didn’t expect, something out of left field that really humbles them. Maybe a character has secret hobby that no one knows about that would impress them. Maybe it's a specific sacrifice that the character makes for another teammate or loved one. I really love fics where we get to see a new side of our favorite characters that brings further depth to how we perceive them.
I like fics that have an element of pursuit to them. Maybe it’s a character running away because they are just overwhelmed and need some time to process and think about something that’s happened in their life. I love the idea that a friend or other individual cares enough about them to go outside their normal routine, track that individual down, comfort them, and tell them that it’s going to be okay. There are other iterations of this as well. Maybe a character is missing and a friend organizes the search to locate and/or rescue them. This one’s pretty open to interpretation.
I am a person who loves angst in all of its forms. I like characters who face hardship that breaks them in some visceral way, that has warped them into something that at first glance doesn’t meet the definition of beauty. Despite that, though, characters thrive and they find a way to move through it and past it and find someone who sees that bent shape not as something broken, but unique, a testament to the hardships they’ve faced and successfully overcome. I would ask that if you are going angst heavy (which I do so love!) to maybe balance it out with a few light moments too, and happy endings are much appreciated :D
I like fics that flesh out a character’s back story. For instance, some of my favorite fics fuse the past and the present. It’s often a character with a shadier past who doesn’t really share much about their life, but through some event or another parts of their past leak out. Their friends are there to help them with the fallout, and remind them that even if they had a hard past, they can make up for it in the present.
To balance out the angst factor, I also really do love fluff and the kind of fic that makes your heart melt. Humor is great, believable crack is excellent, unexpected shenanigans are pure gold.
I am a bit of a tomboy myself in real life so I also really love fics that play with gender dynamics. For example, I love Disney’s Mulan because we see a woman riding off to war and throwing off pretty much every female stereotype in existence. I love fics where a female is perhaps underestimated and somehow saves the day, etc.
I will say that I tend to fall on the gen side of the shipping spectrum. I usually prefer friendship fics where a team or a group of friends has become almost like a family unit. If you prefer to ship your characters, I’m totally fine with that, write what comes naturally to you. I’m pretty flexible about such things, but would ask that if you are shipping the fic focus on the emotional as opposed to physical relationship.
I’m also a bit odd in that there are specific stylistic devices that I love to see in fic, to me it really just lifts the fic one peg higher. One major one that I really love is when the fic has a sense of circularity about it. By circularity, I mean a fic that starts with an idea, a line, and somehow the author manages to bring that idea/line back at the end. It just gives the fic a really nice feeling of tying up all the loose ends. I also have a weird thing for extended metaphors, when an author is able to employ them well it can be a thing of true beauty.
If you’ve stayed with me thus far you will probably see that one of the strongest themes that runs through many of the things that I like revolves around one character expressing how much they care for a friend or loved one, whether it be expressed through protectiveness, caring for them in the aftermath of an injury, taking the time to seek them out, etc. I’ve requested many such fics and have received many wonderful ones in turn.
This year I am also trying to take the opportunity to step into another realm, which is expanding on interesting characters or moments in the fandoms I’ve selected that aren’t huge moments in the canon. It’s often just an idea or person that the author had and I stop for a minute and think, “That is *so* cool! I would love to read more about this particular idea!” Some fics are awesome because they are all about the hurt/comfort, but some are awesome simply for the elegance of their plotline. I’ve made a sordid attempt to choose a few fandoms/prompts that fall into this category, small moments or concepts or minor characters from stories that I would love to read more about. If you want to throw in some of the hurt/comfort stuff for these, I will of course, be thrilled. More than anything, though, just tell me a good story. Flesh out those characters or ideas that the author just didn’t have the space to write about in their books and I will be thrilled and bouncing up and down with squee, I promise :D
At least for me, I’ve also found it useful when recipients have linked me to stories they have adored for one reason or another. It gave me a starting point to go from. If you are interested, these are a few stories that I’ve really enjoyed. Most are in one particular fandom (Leverage), so if you are not familiar don’t worry about it. This is more just another resource if you’re curious, but feel free to totally skip over it if you’d like.
Escapology - (Leverage Fandom) - http://pogrebin.livejournal.com/79455.html?style=mine - I really like this fic for the style, it’s one of the best-written fics I’ve ever read. The use of an extended metaphor is also amazing.
Thicker Than Blood - (Leverage Fandom) - http://scout-lover.livejournal.com/24293.html#cutid1 - This fic is a wonderful use of backstory, fic circularity, and angst that I just sort of adore.
Four Times Parker Dreamed About Having a Family- (Leverage Fandom) - http://amazonziti.livejournal.com/26719.html - I loved this fic for the character back story and believable angst.
Home Sweet Home - (Leverage Fandom) -http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5805723/1/Home_Sweet_Home - This is an example of the pursuit-oriented fic that I love. A character is not living in her apartment, her friends engage in a humorous game of Cat and Mouse to figure out where she is living these days.
The River Serpent - (Mulan, Twisted Princesses Fandom) - http://archiveofourown.org/works/302477 - This is one of those fandoms where I saw the image and wanted to know more about it. This story fleshes out the back story quite nicely and I just *adore* the storytelling. There are those stories that are excellent for their plots, this is one of those fics.
This is just a small slice of fics that I love. For a longer list, feel free to check out my delicious page with the tag “noteworthy:” http://www.delicious.com/hollow_echos/noteworthy. If you are worried about being triggered for anything and would like a summary of the stories listed above before reading them, all three stories listed above can be found my my delicious page here with summaries to go with them.
General Dislikes
Unless designated otherwise, I prefer gen and friendship fics to shipping. I prefer fics that focus on the emotional relationship between two characters as opposed the physical/sexual side. If you like to write smut, indulge! There is absolutely nothing wrong with a good sex scene, but I would ask that the overall focus of the story be on the emotional side of the relationship instead of PWP. I also generally prefer fics based at least loosely in the canon!verse as opposed to crossovers or AU’s. Minor AU's are totally fine (and can be a lot of fun, I write many of these myself), where you take a moment in a fic and move out in a different direction than what the canon followed. The kind of AU's I generally have found a bit harder to get into are the ones that take the characters from a show/series and place them in a different universe, time period, etc.
I totally respect that everyone has their own kinks, I assure you, I certainly have some odd ones too. I do have a few squicks though, that I would ask be avoided unless they are critical to the plot. Squicks for me include death fic, mpreg, and incest.
Prompt Specifics
Fandom: Empress (Godspeaker Trilogy by Karen Miller)
Characters: Hekat, Nagarak, Raklion, Vortka
Hekat knows she is fated for something special, she is seen in the god’s eye and he maneuvers the world about her such that her path opens before her, without barriers to slow her down. What is haunting about this series to me, and in truth, my favorite portion of the trilogy, is Hekat’s rise to power within her country. From birth as a slave girl all the way through to her taking the throne, no barrier or person has stood against her. What more, she knows it. She dares do things that no other mortal would get away with and live: as a slave she spoke against her owners, as the wife of a warlord, she dared to speak against the high priest. As a young woman, Hekat bows to no one, she tempts fate and rides its fury toward her destiny without concern that her god may ever fail her (at least during her rise to power, fate has different plans in store for her later on).
As strange as it is, one of my favorite types of characters are the ones that you know are special. Some know it, others deny it, and still more are obvious to the roles they will play in shaping the world. Hekat is rare for the fact that she recognizes it, and instead of being humbled or frightened by such power, she gathers it around her like a cloak and flaunts it in the face of all who will stop to stare.
I would love any story focusing on Hekat’s rise to power as the empress, something that expands the canon or perhaps a new way that fate bends around her (other examples from the series include the slaver purchasing her for her beautiful eyes, her dancing before the warlord and attracting his eye, the magical stone that falls into her possession, the bouts where she passes invisible to those around her, or her eerie skill with a blade). Really, I am entranced by Hekat as a character, by her blind devotion to her god and the way that this divine entity seems to bend the world around her path. As far as other characters go, again, I’d love to see her interactions with other characters that witness her rise to power such as Raklion, who becomes her path to the throne, Nagarak, who tries to stand in her path and is trampled for his efforts, or Vortka, who witnesses the monster Hekat is becoming, but follows in her shadow because it seems that the god he has devoted his life to favors her movements in the world. More than anything else, the tag line for the novel says it all, “This is the story of Hekat, slave to no man.”
She may not be a character you love (indeed, she is the villain of this tale), she can be cruel and vicious and ruthless, but there is an eerie and haunting melody to her life’s story, and I would absolutely love a fic that gave me the opportunity to visit this world and her as a character once more.
Fandom: The Light Bringer Series - Brent Weeks
Characters: Iron Fist, Kip Guile, Gavin Guile
Brent Weeks is just one of those authors that manages to come up with some revolutionary fantasy concepts to base his worlds around and the Light Bringer series is no exception. I love the magic system he’s envisioned with the colors and splitting light. There’s been a lot of fantasy books written over the years and the genre has given birth to many common tropes and clichés. I love that Brent Weeks neatly sidesteps many of these pitfalls to have come up with something as unique as the magic system in this series.
For this prompt I have requested 3 characters: Gavin Guile, Kip Guile, and Iron Fist. It’s probably imperative to define which character I mean by Gavin Guile since there was a switcheroo pulled after the False Prism’s War. By Gavin Guile I mean the current acting Prism (not the one locked up in a cell).
While all of the characters in this series are fascinating, Kip is really the one who hits me close to home. He’s not the typical hero at the beginning of the book, he’s a gangly kid brought up in destitute poverty. Through meeting the Prism his life is catapulted in a different direction with a far greater trajectory than he would’ve ever probably imagined for himself most likely. What I love about Kip is that he really doesn’t seem to get just how important his is going to be in the coming years. With Gavin losing his colors, Kip could very well be next in line to take over that role. One of the tropes I adore in fiction in general is when you have one character underestimating their own worth and the people around them actually being the ones to demonstrate just how important that individual is.
Take Kip for example. Gavin takes great lengths to cover up the results of the test that show how many colors Kip can split and work. Gavin understands Kip’s implicit worth, and sets Iron Fist, commander of the Blackguard, to watch after him. What Kip sees as his father thinking him unworthy to join him in his pursuits against the color wights is actually Gavin’s attempt to protect Kip. Yes, Kip may be a tool in his arsenal, but he’s one with an important role to play out ultimately.
We see many hints of Kip’s strength in the colors, from how he can recognize ultraviolet hues to figuring out how to go Green Golem all on his own. I would love to see a fic where Kip gets shown just how important he really is, or where he does something that really makes everyone pause and realize it too. Maybe there’s another instance of him displaying this almost supernatural gift for light splitting that takes everyone aback, maybe he’s threatened by an outside force or an enemy of Gavin’s and the Prism and/or Ironfist come to rescue him and wreak vengeance upon those who have threatened Kip. I’m pretty open ended on this particular prompt.
Really, I am intrigued by the disparity between how Kip often times sees himself as less than worthy, and someone who is holding his father back, and how important he really is going to be in how events play out given his strength with the colors. I would absolutely treasure a fic that explores this theme in any capacity.
Cal Leandros Series - Rob Thurman
Niko and Caliban
The thing that really strikes me about this series, and continues to do so, is the relationship between the two brothers (Niko and Cal). I am a hurt/comfort fan through and through and we see so many canonical moments like that.
My favorite dynamic is probably when you have one character not really taking care of themselves after getting injured. Cue a friend stepping in and fussing over them (such cuteness!). I love fics where people are protective of their loved ones as a general rule. For this particular series, I love when you have hurt!Cal in some capacity and Niko going absolutely to any lengths necessary to protect him, make sure he takes the time out to recover, etc. I just get so humbled when see the depths of their relationship in this capacity, they are so dedicated to one another. We've had so many moments in the series of physical whump followed by wonderful comfort, as well as emotional moments (like when Cal gets possessed by that creature who lived in the mirror and Niko does little things like keep all the mirrors in the apartment covered for him). Little mundane moments like that seem so small, but they really do show how much our boys care for one another. I requested this fandom for Yuletide two years ago and received a wonderful fic that explored just that moment: the covering of mirrors after Darkling. There are those fandoms that just resonate with you, and the Landros series is certainly such a fandom for me. One I adore enough to see it written for again if I were to be so fortunate.
Now back to fandom specifics that I love! There are times when Niko’s devotion to Cal blinds him: when he throws himself head first into harm’s way for the sake of his brother, when Cal gets amnesia and Niko goes weeks without sleeping, following every lead to dead end after dead end, making threats to people he might think have an inkling to Cal’s location. There are times when you wonder whether Niko goes too far: like the memories of Darkling and his decision to have Rafferdy block those memories to an extent or give him terrible migraines every time he opens a gate. We understand the motivation: to keep Cal safe, to keep him from harm or causing irreversible harm to others, but there are still moral issues at play there where Niko rides the line between right and wrong in his pursuit of keeping his brother alive, safe, and in one piece (both mentally and physically). Basically, if you give me a fic that explores any of these themes, I will be bouncing up and down with joy.
And one final note, if possible, I would prefer a fic that focuses on their familial/emotional relationship, I don't normally ship family members romantically.
Fandom: Kingkiller Chronicles - Patrick Rothfuss
Characters: Kvothe, Auri, Bast
This series, again, is just such an exceptional example of storytelling that I couldn’t *not* request for more tales in this ‘verse for Yuletide. I can never get enough of this series and would love to receive a fic expanding on the canon. There are so many wonderful puzzles that we have just been given the slightest teasers as to what they really are, from the Chandrian and the shroud of mystery that hangs over them to what ultimately happened to Kvothe that changed him from a thick-skulled adventurer to a barkeep in a quiet town focused on minding his own business.
Really, I love how Kvothe is so high-spirited. He doesn’t let people tell him no. What more, when someone does try to put him or his aspirations down and stop him in his tracks, he not only finds a way around the blockade, but he often manages to outwit and/or humiliate the person who has gone after him. Not to say that this doesn’t sometimes end badly, it’s a double edged sword. But I would be equally thrilled with a tale of the university era or of his other adventures where he manages to outwit his adversary in a way that you just have to smile and shake your head at the pure hijinks of it all, the ridiculousness of it, and somehow, even while flying by the seam of his pants, Kvothe somehow manages to pull it off.
This is a fandom that I requested for a previous Yuletide and was fortunate enough to receive a fic for. That prompt focused on the relationship between Bast and Kvothe (more or less exploring Bast’s near pathological devotion to Kvothe). If you are as enamored as I am with their relationship, I would love to see a fic that explored how it was that these two seemingly disparate characters met and became so closely entwined in life.
I also am really excited by so many interesting minor characters in the series. Auri is amazing, I’m just going to go write out there and say it. She’s not necessarily like the rest of us, but she knows her way around the undertown more than anyone else. I would love a fic that explored her as a character in any capacity. Some characters in the book seem to know Auri, I’d love to see a fic exploring how that came to be. There are also rumblings that she was once a student at the university, how did life bring her to where she is now? As interesting as a character’s back story can be, I also love Auri as she appears in the book. Tell me more about her life, what she does in a day, or what living in the city means to her and what she finds so special about the relics of a previous era that live beneath the modern city.
In the same vein, Devi is amazing. I’d love to learn more about her history with the school, how she runs her business within the city (perhaps who else in the city she has leverage against?), why she is so desperate to get back into the library at the university, etc. All in all, this canon is filled to the brim with fascinating characters, ideas, and world building and I would be thrilled by a fic that explores their live’s stories further.
Fandom: World War Z (2013 movie)
Characters: Gerry Lane
I’ve recently been drawn into post-apocalyptic worlds as a theme in literature and cinema. Happy stories are fabulous, but I also love seeing how a world can be twisted into something so radically different than modern society and seeing how normal people fare when they are thrust into that world. I haven’t read the World War Z book yet (it’s on my reading list!) but I’ve seen the movie and I fell in love with it.
I’m not necessarily attached to any of the main characters in the movie. I know that the producers felt that they needed a main character to tie the story together so they followed him galavanting across the globe trying to find a way to counter the apocalypse. Gerry Lane is fabulous as a character, going to unimaginable lengths to ensure the safety of his family. More than anything else, what I loved in this series was seeing how different parts of the world were dealing with the infection: walling off their entire country, a band of soldiers maintaining their vigil at a remote outpost and just trying to survive. I would love to see either 1) how things progress after the end of the movie (we have a way to combat things, but there is still going to be a long uphill fight), or perhaps tales of other parts of the world, other communities, other peoples, and seeing how they are trying to survive the apocalypse.
I would ask that you keep your fic in the spirit of the apocalyptic genre. Happy endings are fine (as are twisted ones if that’s what you’d prefer!), but don’t make it “poof! And then the world was all fixed.” As we often see with apocalyptic fic or horror fics, there often is some sort of light on the horizon at the end of the fic, but it’s a different world with different rules and a great distance to go before there is anything resembling that fairytale ending.
I have a thing for stories with darker themes, stories of the apocalypse, or characters twisted into something different than what a person with upstanding morals would possess. I’ve always been intrigued by the question, “what happens to a character when things don’t go according to plan, when they are faced into impossible odds and their morals gradually undergo a shift toward something a lot darker in order to survive?”
Show me what everyday people have to become to survive the apocalypse and whatever challenges face them in this new world. I’d love you forever for gifting me with such a wonderful fic!
In Summation
Well, I feel like I’ve written an essay :P I hope that I haven’t overwhelmed you with too much here. I’ve been caught before where I just didn’t feel that I had enough information to go on when writing a gift fic for someone so I really try to make sure that you don’t have the same issue. I’ve basically thrown together a conglomeration of everything that I could think of in hopes that something would catch your eye/spark a plot bunny, and you could run with it. Please, please, please, don’t assume that all of this needs to go into a fic, I think that fic might read a bit strangely and disjointed lol. Take what pieces work for you and play with those, don’t worry about the rest. More than anything else, write what feels write to *you,* I want this to be as much fun for you to write as it will be for me to read!
Happy Yuletide, good luck writing, and I cannot wait to see what you produce :D
Thanks,
hollow_echos
Yay, we have at least one fandom in common! Just for that, may I say that you totally rock! I hope that you have an eventful Yuletide.
Below you will find what basically amounts to an essay on what I like lol. I can’t help it, I just tend to get a bit carried away when it comes to fic and what I love about it. Kind of like the snowball effect, once you get me talking about it, I find it a bit hard to slow down. First off, may I preface all of this by saying that these are general ideas. If you have a particular idea that really hits you, I know what that can be like. You lock the plot bunny in the cellar only to find that it tunnels its way out :P If you have a specific fic you want to write, please do. I promise you I will be thrilled with it. Just having fic written in any of the below fandoms would be amazing as it’s not something that I get to experience all too often.
Enough waxing eloquent, onto the good stuff now, right?
p.s. - before you get into reading prompt specifics later on in this letter, please be aware that the prompt for each fandom is likely rife with spoilers (mostly canonical moments that I’m using to demonstrate what I love about the story or moments I would love to see expanded on in fan-fic). If you hit a fandom where you’d like to read the canon material but haven’t, and that is not the prompt you are visiting this letter for, I would recommend skipping that entire prompt and finding the fandom/prompt we share in common.
General Likes
I am a whumper through and through. My favorite genres are hurt/comfort and angst. I am not such a huge fan of permanent disability maiming; I like more acute trauma and then fics that focus on the aftermath and the recovery phase. My favorite dynamic is probably when you have one character not really taking care of themselves after getting injured. Cue a friend stepping in and fussing over them (such cuteness!). I love fics where people are protective of their loved ones as a general rule.
That’s one dynamic I like, I also have several others! I love cute fuzzy animals in all forms. Any fic that focuses on the relationship between a character and an animal (pet, animal that followed them home, etc.) is amazing.
I like fics that have an element of surprise in them. I like when you have one character being underestimated, or ones where they really do something that their loved ones didn’t expect, something out of left field that really humbles them. Maybe a character has secret hobby that no one knows about that would impress them. Maybe it's a specific sacrifice that the character makes for another teammate or loved one. I really love fics where we get to see a new side of our favorite characters that brings further depth to how we perceive them.
I like fics that have an element of pursuit to them. Maybe it’s a character running away because they are just overwhelmed and need some time to process and think about something that’s happened in their life. I love the idea that a friend or other individual cares enough about them to go outside their normal routine, track that individual down, comfort them, and tell them that it’s going to be okay. There are other iterations of this as well. Maybe a character is missing and a friend organizes the search to locate and/or rescue them. This one’s pretty open to interpretation.
I am a person who loves angst in all of its forms. I like characters who face hardship that breaks them in some visceral way, that has warped them into something that at first glance doesn’t meet the definition of beauty. Despite that, though, characters thrive and they find a way to move through it and past it and find someone who sees that bent shape not as something broken, but unique, a testament to the hardships they’ve faced and successfully overcome. I would ask that if you are going angst heavy (which I do so love!) to maybe balance it out with a few light moments too, and happy endings are much appreciated :D
I like fics that flesh out a character’s back story. For instance, some of my favorite fics fuse the past and the present. It’s often a character with a shadier past who doesn’t really share much about their life, but through some event or another parts of their past leak out. Their friends are there to help them with the fallout, and remind them that even if they had a hard past, they can make up for it in the present.
To balance out the angst factor, I also really do love fluff and the kind of fic that makes your heart melt. Humor is great, believable crack is excellent, unexpected shenanigans are pure gold.
I am a bit of a tomboy myself in real life so I also really love fics that play with gender dynamics. For example, I love Disney’s Mulan because we see a woman riding off to war and throwing off pretty much every female stereotype in existence. I love fics where a female is perhaps underestimated and somehow saves the day, etc.
I will say that I tend to fall on the gen side of the shipping spectrum. I usually prefer friendship fics where a team or a group of friends has become almost like a family unit. If you prefer to ship your characters, I’m totally fine with that, write what comes naturally to you. I’m pretty flexible about such things, but would ask that if you are shipping the fic focus on the emotional as opposed to physical relationship.
I’m also a bit odd in that there are specific stylistic devices that I love to see in fic, to me it really just lifts the fic one peg higher. One major one that I really love is when the fic has a sense of circularity about it. By circularity, I mean a fic that starts with an idea, a line, and somehow the author manages to bring that idea/line back at the end. It just gives the fic a really nice feeling of tying up all the loose ends. I also have a weird thing for extended metaphors, when an author is able to employ them well it can be a thing of true beauty.
If you’ve stayed with me thus far you will probably see that one of the strongest themes that runs through many of the things that I like revolves around one character expressing how much they care for a friend or loved one, whether it be expressed through protectiveness, caring for them in the aftermath of an injury, taking the time to seek them out, etc. I’ve requested many such fics and have received many wonderful ones in turn.
This year I am also trying to take the opportunity to step into another realm, which is expanding on interesting characters or moments in the fandoms I’ve selected that aren’t huge moments in the canon. It’s often just an idea or person that the author had and I stop for a minute and think, “That is *so* cool! I would love to read more about this particular idea!” Some fics are awesome because they are all about the hurt/comfort, but some are awesome simply for the elegance of their plotline. I’ve made a sordid attempt to choose a few fandoms/prompts that fall into this category, small moments or concepts or minor characters from stories that I would love to read more about. If you want to throw in some of the hurt/comfort stuff for these, I will of course, be thrilled. More than anything, though, just tell me a good story. Flesh out those characters or ideas that the author just didn’t have the space to write about in their books and I will be thrilled and bouncing up and down with squee, I promise :D
At least for me, I’ve also found it useful when recipients have linked me to stories they have adored for one reason or another. It gave me a starting point to go from. If you are interested, these are a few stories that I’ve really enjoyed. Most are in one particular fandom (Leverage), so if you are not familiar don’t worry about it. This is more just another resource if you’re curious, but feel free to totally skip over it if you’d like.
Escapology - (Leverage Fandom) - http://pogrebin.livejournal.com/79455.html?style=mine - I really like this fic for the style, it’s one of the best-written fics I’ve ever read. The use of an extended metaphor is also amazing.
Thicker Than Blood - (Leverage Fandom) - http://scout-lover.livejournal.com/24293.html#cutid1 - This fic is a wonderful use of backstory, fic circularity, and angst that I just sort of adore.
Four Times Parker Dreamed About Having a Family- (Leverage Fandom) - http://amazonziti.livejournal.com/26719.html - I loved this fic for the character back story and believable angst.
Home Sweet Home - (Leverage Fandom) -http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5805723/1/Home_Sweet_Home - This is an example of the pursuit-oriented fic that I love. A character is not living in her apartment, her friends engage in a humorous game of Cat and Mouse to figure out where she is living these days.
The River Serpent - (Mulan, Twisted Princesses Fandom) - http://archiveofourown.org/works/302477 - This is one of those fandoms where I saw the image and wanted to know more about it. This story fleshes out the back story quite nicely and I just *adore* the storytelling. There are those stories that are excellent for their plots, this is one of those fics.
This is just a small slice of fics that I love. For a longer list, feel free to check out my delicious page with the tag “noteworthy:” http://www.delicious.com/hollow_echos/noteworthy. If you are worried about being triggered for anything and would like a summary of the stories listed above before reading them, all three stories listed above can be found my my delicious page here with summaries to go with them.
General Dislikes
Unless designated otherwise, I prefer gen and friendship fics to shipping. I prefer fics that focus on the emotional relationship between two characters as opposed the physical/sexual side. If you like to write smut, indulge! There is absolutely nothing wrong with a good sex scene, but I would ask that the overall focus of the story be on the emotional side of the relationship instead of PWP. I also generally prefer fics based at least loosely in the canon!verse as opposed to crossovers or AU’s. Minor AU's are totally fine (and can be a lot of fun, I write many of these myself), where you take a moment in a fic and move out in a different direction than what the canon followed. The kind of AU's I generally have found a bit harder to get into are the ones that take the characters from a show/series and place them in a different universe, time period, etc.
I totally respect that everyone has their own kinks, I assure you, I certainly have some odd ones too. I do have a few squicks though, that I would ask be avoided unless they are critical to the plot. Squicks for me include death fic, mpreg, and incest.
Prompt Specifics
Fandom: Empress (Godspeaker Trilogy by Karen Miller)
Characters: Hekat, Nagarak, Raklion, Vortka
Hekat knows she is fated for something special, she is seen in the god’s eye and he maneuvers the world about her such that her path opens before her, without barriers to slow her down. What is haunting about this series to me, and in truth, my favorite portion of the trilogy, is Hekat’s rise to power within her country. From birth as a slave girl all the way through to her taking the throne, no barrier or person has stood against her. What more, she knows it. She dares do things that no other mortal would get away with and live: as a slave she spoke against her owners, as the wife of a warlord, she dared to speak against the high priest. As a young woman, Hekat bows to no one, she tempts fate and rides its fury toward her destiny without concern that her god may ever fail her (at least during her rise to power, fate has different plans in store for her later on).
As strange as it is, one of my favorite types of characters are the ones that you know are special. Some know it, others deny it, and still more are obvious to the roles they will play in shaping the world. Hekat is rare for the fact that she recognizes it, and instead of being humbled or frightened by such power, she gathers it around her like a cloak and flaunts it in the face of all who will stop to stare.
I would love any story focusing on Hekat’s rise to power as the empress, something that expands the canon or perhaps a new way that fate bends around her (other examples from the series include the slaver purchasing her for her beautiful eyes, her dancing before the warlord and attracting his eye, the magical stone that falls into her possession, the bouts where she passes invisible to those around her, or her eerie skill with a blade). Really, I am entranced by Hekat as a character, by her blind devotion to her god and the way that this divine entity seems to bend the world around her path. As far as other characters go, again, I’d love to see her interactions with other characters that witness her rise to power such as Raklion, who becomes her path to the throne, Nagarak, who tries to stand in her path and is trampled for his efforts, or Vortka, who witnesses the monster Hekat is becoming, but follows in her shadow because it seems that the god he has devoted his life to favors her movements in the world. More than anything else, the tag line for the novel says it all, “This is the story of Hekat, slave to no man.”
She may not be a character you love (indeed, she is the villain of this tale), she can be cruel and vicious and ruthless, but there is an eerie and haunting melody to her life’s story, and I would absolutely love a fic that gave me the opportunity to visit this world and her as a character once more.
Fandom: The Light Bringer Series - Brent Weeks
Characters: Iron Fist, Kip Guile, Gavin Guile
Brent Weeks is just one of those authors that manages to come up with some revolutionary fantasy concepts to base his worlds around and the Light Bringer series is no exception. I love the magic system he’s envisioned with the colors and splitting light. There’s been a lot of fantasy books written over the years and the genre has given birth to many common tropes and clichés. I love that Brent Weeks neatly sidesteps many of these pitfalls to have come up with something as unique as the magic system in this series.
For this prompt I have requested 3 characters: Gavin Guile, Kip Guile, and Iron Fist. It’s probably imperative to define which character I mean by Gavin Guile since there was a switcheroo pulled after the False Prism’s War. By Gavin Guile I mean the current acting Prism (not the one locked up in a cell).
While all of the characters in this series are fascinating, Kip is really the one who hits me close to home. He’s not the typical hero at the beginning of the book, he’s a gangly kid brought up in destitute poverty. Through meeting the Prism his life is catapulted in a different direction with a far greater trajectory than he would’ve ever probably imagined for himself most likely. What I love about Kip is that he really doesn’t seem to get just how important his is going to be in the coming years. With Gavin losing his colors, Kip could very well be next in line to take over that role. One of the tropes I adore in fiction in general is when you have one character underestimating their own worth and the people around them actually being the ones to demonstrate just how important that individual is.
Take Kip for example. Gavin takes great lengths to cover up the results of the test that show how many colors Kip can split and work. Gavin understands Kip’s implicit worth, and sets Iron Fist, commander of the Blackguard, to watch after him. What Kip sees as his father thinking him unworthy to join him in his pursuits against the color wights is actually Gavin’s attempt to protect Kip. Yes, Kip may be a tool in his arsenal, but he’s one with an important role to play out ultimately.
We see many hints of Kip’s strength in the colors, from how he can recognize ultraviolet hues to figuring out how to go Green Golem all on his own. I would love to see a fic where Kip gets shown just how important he really is, or where he does something that really makes everyone pause and realize it too. Maybe there’s another instance of him displaying this almost supernatural gift for light splitting that takes everyone aback, maybe he’s threatened by an outside force or an enemy of Gavin’s and the Prism and/or Ironfist come to rescue him and wreak vengeance upon those who have threatened Kip. I’m pretty open ended on this particular prompt.
Really, I am intrigued by the disparity between how Kip often times sees himself as less than worthy, and someone who is holding his father back, and how important he really is going to be in how events play out given his strength with the colors. I would absolutely treasure a fic that explores this theme in any capacity.
Cal Leandros Series - Rob Thurman
Niko and Caliban
The thing that really strikes me about this series, and continues to do so, is the relationship between the two brothers (Niko and Cal). I am a hurt/comfort fan through and through and we see so many canonical moments like that.
My favorite dynamic is probably when you have one character not really taking care of themselves after getting injured. Cue a friend stepping in and fussing over them (such cuteness!). I love fics where people are protective of their loved ones as a general rule. For this particular series, I love when you have hurt!Cal in some capacity and Niko going absolutely to any lengths necessary to protect him, make sure he takes the time out to recover, etc. I just get so humbled when see the depths of their relationship in this capacity, they are so dedicated to one another. We've had so many moments in the series of physical whump followed by wonderful comfort, as well as emotional moments (like when Cal gets possessed by that creature who lived in the mirror and Niko does little things like keep all the mirrors in the apartment covered for him). Little mundane moments like that seem so small, but they really do show how much our boys care for one another. I requested this fandom for Yuletide two years ago and received a wonderful fic that explored just that moment: the covering of mirrors after Darkling. There are those fandoms that just resonate with you, and the Landros series is certainly such a fandom for me. One I adore enough to see it written for again if I were to be so fortunate.
Now back to fandom specifics that I love! There are times when Niko’s devotion to Cal blinds him: when he throws himself head first into harm’s way for the sake of his brother, when Cal gets amnesia and Niko goes weeks without sleeping, following every lead to dead end after dead end, making threats to people he might think have an inkling to Cal’s location. There are times when you wonder whether Niko goes too far: like the memories of Darkling and his decision to have Rafferdy block those memories to an extent or give him terrible migraines every time he opens a gate. We understand the motivation: to keep Cal safe, to keep him from harm or causing irreversible harm to others, but there are still moral issues at play there where Niko rides the line between right and wrong in his pursuit of keeping his brother alive, safe, and in one piece (both mentally and physically). Basically, if you give me a fic that explores any of these themes, I will be bouncing up and down with joy.
And one final note, if possible, I would prefer a fic that focuses on their familial/emotional relationship, I don't normally ship family members romantically.
Fandom: Kingkiller Chronicles - Patrick Rothfuss
Characters: Kvothe, Auri, Bast
This series, again, is just such an exceptional example of storytelling that I couldn’t *not* request for more tales in this ‘verse for Yuletide. I can never get enough of this series and would love to receive a fic expanding on the canon. There are so many wonderful puzzles that we have just been given the slightest teasers as to what they really are, from the Chandrian and the shroud of mystery that hangs over them to what ultimately happened to Kvothe that changed him from a thick-skulled adventurer to a barkeep in a quiet town focused on minding his own business.
Really, I love how Kvothe is so high-spirited. He doesn’t let people tell him no. What more, when someone does try to put him or his aspirations down and stop him in his tracks, he not only finds a way around the blockade, but he often manages to outwit and/or humiliate the person who has gone after him. Not to say that this doesn’t sometimes end badly, it’s a double edged sword. But I would be equally thrilled with a tale of the university era or of his other adventures where he manages to outwit his adversary in a way that you just have to smile and shake your head at the pure hijinks of it all, the ridiculousness of it, and somehow, even while flying by the seam of his pants, Kvothe somehow manages to pull it off.
This is a fandom that I requested for a previous Yuletide and was fortunate enough to receive a fic for. That prompt focused on the relationship between Bast and Kvothe (more or less exploring Bast’s near pathological devotion to Kvothe). If you are as enamored as I am with their relationship, I would love to see a fic that explored how it was that these two seemingly disparate characters met and became so closely entwined in life.
I also am really excited by so many interesting minor characters in the series. Auri is amazing, I’m just going to go write out there and say it. She’s not necessarily like the rest of us, but she knows her way around the undertown more than anyone else. I would love a fic that explored her as a character in any capacity. Some characters in the book seem to know Auri, I’d love to see a fic exploring how that came to be. There are also rumblings that she was once a student at the university, how did life bring her to where she is now? As interesting as a character’s back story can be, I also love Auri as she appears in the book. Tell me more about her life, what she does in a day, or what living in the city means to her and what she finds so special about the relics of a previous era that live beneath the modern city.
In the same vein, Devi is amazing. I’d love to learn more about her history with the school, how she runs her business within the city (perhaps who else in the city she has leverage against?), why she is so desperate to get back into the library at the university, etc. All in all, this canon is filled to the brim with fascinating characters, ideas, and world building and I would be thrilled by a fic that explores their live’s stories further.
Fandom: World War Z (2013 movie)
Characters: Gerry Lane
I’ve recently been drawn into post-apocalyptic worlds as a theme in literature and cinema. Happy stories are fabulous, but I also love seeing how a world can be twisted into something so radically different than modern society and seeing how normal people fare when they are thrust into that world. I haven’t read the World War Z book yet (it’s on my reading list!) but I’ve seen the movie and I fell in love with it.
I’m not necessarily attached to any of the main characters in the movie. I know that the producers felt that they needed a main character to tie the story together so they followed him galavanting across the globe trying to find a way to counter the apocalypse. Gerry Lane is fabulous as a character, going to unimaginable lengths to ensure the safety of his family. More than anything else, what I loved in this series was seeing how different parts of the world were dealing with the infection: walling off their entire country, a band of soldiers maintaining their vigil at a remote outpost and just trying to survive. I would love to see either 1) how things progress after the end of the movie (we have a way to combat things, but there is still going to be a long uphill fight), or perhaps tales of other parts of the world, other communities, other peoples, and seeing how they are trying to survive the apocalypse.
I would ask that you keep your fic in the spirit of the apocalyptic genre. Happy endings are fine (as are twisted ones if that’s what you’d prefer!), but don’t make it “poof! And then the world was all fixed.” As we often see with apocalyptic fic or horror fics, there often is some sort of light on the horizon at the end of the fic, but it’s a different world with different rules and a great distance to go before there is anything resembling that fairytale ending.
I have a thing for stories with darker themes, stories of the apocalypse, or characters twisted into something different than what a person with upstanding morals would possess. I’ve always been intrigued by the question, “what happens to a character when things don’t go according to plan, when they are faced into impossible odds and their morals gradually undergo a shift toward something a lot darker in order to survive?”
Show me what everyday people have to become to survive the apocalypse and whatever challenges face them in this new world. I’d love you forever for gifting me with such a wonderful fic!
In Summation
Well, I feel like I’ve written an essay :P I hope that I haven’t overwhelmed you with too much here. I’ve been caught before where I just didn’t feel that I had enough information to go on when writing a gift fic for someone so I really try to make sure that you don’t have the same issue. I’ve basically thrown together a conglomeration of everything that I could think of in hopes that something would catch your eye/spark a plot bunny, and you could run with it. Please, please, please, don’t assume that all of this needs to go into a fic, I think that fic might read a bit strangely and disjointed lol. Take what pieces work for you and play with those, don’t worry about the rest. More than anything else, write what feels write to *you,* I want this to be as much fun for you to write as it will be for me to read!
Happy Yuletide, good luck writing, and I cannot wait to see what you produce :D
Thanks,
hollow_echos