Dear Yuletide Writer 2014
Hi, Yuletide writer! I hope you like long letters. It's not because I'm picky, it's just because I want to give you lots of options and prompts that will hopefully inspire you. =)
I didn't realize until after signups ended that my request theme this year is feisty ladies running circles around otherwise highly competent/powerful dudes. It's a huge narrative kink for me so I've provided a lot of prompts that focus on that dynamic, but don't think that means I won't like any other type of story!
This will be my seventh year doing Yuletide. I mostly live on Tumblr now (and I'm pretty embarassed about 90% of the old stuff on this LJ), but feel free to read through my old Yuletide letters as well as my Tumblr if you're a recip-stalker like me.
Also, I may be afk around Christmastime due to a move, so if I don't comment on your story right away please don't worry. I promise I will!
I like:
• Relationship dynamics. How characters affect each other, how they clash or get along or both. Romance (and gen between characters who might become romantic in the future) is my favorite type of relationship to explore, with dysfunctional familial bonds a close second.
• Character studies. Characters who make flawed decisions, and the mundane details of their lives that illuminate the bigger things. I like moments of honesty. I like the moment when walls that characters have built start to dissipate.
• Worldbuilding. Culture, politics, how the characters’ world works and how they function within it… and what happens when that social order begins to shift.
• Apocalypse, dystopia and on-the-lam survival situations. How do characters survive in high-pressure situations when something dangerous is out to get them and they have to leave everything they know behind? What skills help them survive? How do they carve out a life somewhere else? A zombie rising is the #1 bulletproof plot in any fandom for me.
• Canon divergence AUs.
• Stories told through social media, letters, messages scribbled on walls, etc. Stories with a non-linear timeline. Stories told in disjointed glimpses.
• Comedy in the same vein as the canon. Affectionate bickering.
• Angst. Relationships falling apart. People falling apart. People patching themselves back together haphazardly and carrying on. People hurting the ones they love. Bittersweet endings where not everything is explained or tied up neatly, just like in real life.
• Fluff, domesticity, UST, slice-of-life fic. Curtainfic. First-time fic.
• Consensual sex of any rating. Sex that emphasizes an emotional connection or an important character dynamic. Slow, romantic sex. Fun sex! Characters laughing and having conversations in the middle of sex. Morning sex where the characters still have morning breath.
• Kinks: frottage/grinding, cunnilingus, slow burn/extended buildup, orgasm delay/control/denial, male chastity, sounding, clit worship, tentative first-time exploration, public teasing (e.g. under the table), begging, consensual incest.
I generally dislike:
• Uber-crack and completely unrelated AUs (high school AUs, coffee shop AUs, etc.)
• Sappy ~lifetime milestones~ stuff: weddings, births, kidfic, etc. A darkish, realistic take on that stuff is fine, but I’m not overly fond of sap.
• Drama generated entirely by the characters’ unexplained refusal to just talk about the thing.
• Gore or horror.
• Rape and dubcon tropes - aliens made them do it, fuck or die, they were under an aphrodisiac spell, etc.
• Genderswap.
• Mpreg.
• Bondage, D/s or other kink not mentioned above.
• Issuefic.
• First-person POV, unless it’s in a context where the character is literally telling their own story: an autobiography, a letter, an address to the living from beyond the grave, etc.
- - -
National Treasure Series
Characters: Benjamin Franklin Gates, Abigail Chase
IDC that it's not a popular pairing, I adore these two together. THEY'RE HISTORY GEEKS IN LOVE, OKAY?! Abigail's so smart and fiery and Ben's so buttoned-up most of the time, yet he has this kinda crazy side that she brings out in him. They exasperate each other 90% of the time and the rest of the time they're giving each other moon-eyes over some dusty old document and I LOVE IT. I'd love anything revolving around the two of them. Just anything.
This definitely doesn't have to be romance fic; I'm down with any chronological setting and any genre. Fic about the inter-movie breakup is fine, although I'd prefer not to see Ben and Abigail break up for good. Feel free to include other characters (especially Ben's parents!), but I'd like Ben and Abigail to be the focus. I like Riley, but I think of him more as their adopted kid than a potential OT3 partner.
Plotty adventurefic would be awesome here. Maybe Ben and Abigail solve the mystery of page 47, or find the sunken ruins of Atlantis. Maybe a corrupt presidential administration comes to power and only Ben and Abigail can expose their evil plot. Maybe the opening of an ancient tomb releases a deadly zombie virus into the world, and Ben and Abigail must race to find the long-lost cure! (BTW, I'm not the only Yuletider interested in Ben Gates + zombies. If you're trawling for treat fodder, you should check out my fellow National Treasure zombie lover's letter!)
I'd also adore any kind of relationship or character study for these characters. I love Ben and Abigail because they're not star-crossed lovers. They're just two eccentric, driven people trying to make a relationship work. I think Ben is kind of Abigail's history nerd wet dream. He excites her with his sense of living and creating history rather than just studying it, but at the same time his bossiness and belief that he's always right makes him a nightmare for a woman like her. And she challenges him, infuriates him, leaves him at a loss for words - but she also keeps him grounded, keeps him from losing himself in his work, from turning bitter, from turning into his father. Studying history all the time makes you think a certain way - makes you consider small things in the context of the broad sweep of history, and makes you value things like honor, tradition, ancestry, and the weight of posterity in ways that most people don't. Abigail's attracted to that, but might it also be difficult to carve out a space for yourself in someone's life when it's so full of the ghosts of dead people? Mightn't it be difficult to just do normal stuff like stay in and watch Netflix with a guy like that?
If porn is your wheelhouse: HISTORY GEEK SEX! Sex in libraries, sex in a back room of the National Archives, sex in the ruins of ancient cities to break up the monotony of searching for hidden treasure. If you're down with kink, I would also loooooove to see Abigail dominating Ben. Bondage and D/s aren't my thing, but I love any kind of teasing/desperation/orgasm control play, and I find the idea of control-freak Ben giving Abigail complete power over his own pleasure both romantic and incredibly sexy. Maybe Abigail buys Ben a cock cage for Presidents' Day? Seeing oh-so-intellectual-and-focused Ben completely undone by sexual frustration would be both hilarious and super hot.
- - -
Zenon, Girl of the 21st Century (Movies)
Characters: Zenon Kar
I just love Zenon, okay. When that movie premiered I literally watched the first 10 airings. Zenon is such an amazing character and I would be totally heart-eyes over anything that puts her front and center, being the awesome HBIC that she is. I kinda ship her with Prota Zoa but it's not necessary for me. I love Nebula and would be totally down for friendship hijinks or femslash with the two of them. Bonus points for Aunt Judy and Commander Plank being adorable. But I seriously seriously love Zenon as a character in her own right, no matter who's around her. (And if you wanna add a reference to Chelsea Clinton being president during Zenon's teenage years that'd be awesome!)
This is my shameless nostalgia request! I'm mostly interested in the characters and events from the first two movies. I'm not a fan of the third movie, so I'm not really interested in reading about Sage or Dasha or moon goddesses. I'm also not super interested in Zenon's other canon love interests. I like Margie, my childhood introduction to the concept of a "frenemy." I love Nebula and Lynx from the first movie and the camaraderie they had with Zenon. Aunt Judy and Commander Plank are sweet and hilarious together and I would love to see them happy ever after. I adore Prota Zoa, that lovable grandiose dumbass. And aliens! I love the lost rainbow aliens!
I would love something about Zenon getting in trouble and her girl friends backing her up, breaking her out, and/or enabling her. (And maybe kissing along the way? Zenon/Nebula/Lynx or any combination of those would sweet. I don't really ship Zenon with Margie, though.)
Show me more of Zenon's crazy adventures! Show me the epic saga of Zenon versus Earth life! Show me Zenon saving the world (or just her space station... especially her space station) from zombies! Show me a future Zenon who runs for president or helps found a new colony on another planet or fights to protect her other frenemy, Earth, against an alien invasion .
If het is your thing, I love age-difference pairs so Zenon/Prota Zoa is my jam. I'd rather not see their relationship become overtly romantic or sexual until after the first movie, but second-movie casual sexing in between chasing aliens would be totally cool. My favorite thing is how Zenon takes 0% of Prota Zoa's shit. This is the world's most famous rockstar, the kind of guy who ditches his whole life because of a ~creative funk~... but when Zenon says "jump" he asks "how high?" Lbr, the guy is hopeless when it comes to her. So I guess my actual request for this pairing would just be "Zenon running circles around poor lovestruck Prota Zoa, please." For the porn-inclined, the teasing, orgasm control and male chastity kinks I mentioned in the National Treasure section above definitely apply here because you know Zenon is a kinky motherfucker.
I'm not really into relationship angst for this fandom, but something like dark, gritty apocafic would be great. Can Zenon really always save the day?
- - -
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
Characters: Monkey, Trip
I'm so obsessed with post-apocalyptic settings and how humans carve out small communities to survive and rebuild and create small pockets of beauty. I adore Trip because she believes so strongly that people can still live and love and be safe in this world. And I'm so in love with watching Monkey slowly go from wanting to throttle her to being completely disarmed by her and WANTING to believe in her ideals. I'd love anything about them surviving and rebuilding after the game ends, or slowly falling in love in between fighting.
I don't have a lot of prompts for this pairing because... seriously, just anything. Relationship dynamics, character study, vignette. Plotty post-canon adventures or just a coda. I'd like to see how Trip and Monkey deal with the freed slaves. Do they stick around to try and help them? Do they quietly slip away to look for a place where they recover from their ordeal in peace? Do they start a new settlement somewhere or rebuild Trip's old one? Does Monkey ever let Trip take the headband off? How does their relationship change when she does?
First-time fic would also be perfect for this pairing. For two such badasses, I love how essentially innocent their relationship is, and how tentative each step they take towards each other emotionally. Watching them slowly learn how to be together would be beautiful.
Any exploration of the canon world and how it got that way would be awesome. What happened to the earth? What survives of the pre-apocalypse world? How much do Trip and Monkey know, and what do they find of the old world that might baffle or surprise or even help them?
If you're here for porn, let me reiterate my request from both fandoms above: I am all about typically dominant men giving sexual control to their female partner. That goes double for this pairing because of the unique connection between Trip and Monkey: he literally has to do anything says. I'd love to see Trip playing with that, and Monkey totally getting off on it. Maybe it starts out as a joke when she tells him he has to beg for it, but then he surprises them both by being incredibly into it? Kink aside, I'd love to see any exploration of the intimacy the headband link creates. And I imagine Monkey would be extremely tender and almost worshipful towards her in bed, so I would love to see that.
The most important thing, though, is that you write something that plays to your strengths. You do you, Yuletide writer. ♥
Have fun, and happy Yuletide!
I didn't realize until after signups ended that my request theme this year is feisty ladies running circles around otherwise highly competent/powerful dudes. It's a huge narrative kink for me so I've provided a lot of prompts that focus on that dynamic, but don't think that means I won't like any other type of story!
This will be my seventh year doing Yuletide. I mostly live on Tumblr now (and I'm pretty embarassed about 90% of the old stuff on this LJ), but feel free to read through my old Yuletide letters as well as my Tumblr if you're a recip-stalker like me.
Also, I may be afk around Christmastime due to a move, so if I don't comment on your story right away please don't worry. I promise I will!
I like:
• Relationship dynamics. How characters affect each other, how they clash or get along or both. Romance (and gen between characters who might become romantic in the future) is my favorite type of relationship to explore, with dysfunctional familial bonds a close second.
• Character studies. Characters who make flawed decisions, and the mundane details of their lives that illuminate the bigger things. I like moments of honesty. I like the moment when walls that characters have built start to dissipate.
• Worldbuilding. Culture, politics, how the characters’ world works and how they function within it… and what happens when that social order begins to shift.
• Apocalypse, dystopia and on-the-lam survival situations. How do characters survive in high-pressure situations when something dangerous is out to get them and they have to leave everything they know behind? What skills help them survive? How do they carve out a life somewhere else? A zombie rising is the #1 bulletproof plot in any fandom for me.
• Canon divergence AUs.
• Stories told through social media, letters, messages scribbled on walls, etc. Stories with a non-linear timeline. Stories told in disjointed glimpses.
• Comedy in the same vein as the canon. Affectionate bickering.
• Angst. Relationships falling apart. People falling apart. People patching themselves back together haphazardly and carrying on. People hurting the ones they love. Bittersweet endings where not everything is explained or tied up neatly, just like in real life.
• Fluff, domesticity, UST, slice-of-life fic. Curtainfic. First-time fic.
• Consensual sex of any rating. Sex that emphasizes an emotional connection or an important character dynamic. Slow, romantic sex. Fun sex! Characters laughing and having conversations in the middle of sex. Morning sex where the characters still have morning breath.
• Kinks: frottage/grinding, cunnilingus, slow burn/extended buildup, orgasm delay/control/denial, male chastity, sounding, clit worship, tentative first-time exploration, public teasing (e.g. under the table), begging, consensual incest.
I generally dislike:
• Uber-crack and completely unrelated AUs (high school AUs, coffee shop AUs, etc.)
• Sappy ~lifetime milestones~ stuff: weddings, births, kidfic, etc. A darkish, realistic take on that stuff is fine, but I’m not overly fond of sap.
• Drama generated entirely by the characters’ unexplained refusal to just talk about the thing.
• Gore or horror.
• Rape and dubcon tropes - aliens made them do it, fuck or die, they were under an aphrodisiac spell, etc.
• Genderswap.
• Mpreg.
• Bondage, D/s or other kink not mentioned above.
• Issuefic.
• First-person POV, unless it’s in a context where the character is literally telling their own story: an autobiography, a letter, an address to the living from beyond the grave, etc.
- - -
National Treasure Series
Characters: Benjamin Franklin Gates, Abigail Chase
IDC that it's not a popular pairing, I adore these two together. THEY'RE HISTORY GEEKS IN LOVE, OKAY?! Abigail's so smart and fiery and Ben's so buttoned-up most of the time, yet he has this kinda crazy side that she brings out in him. They exasperate each other 90% of the time and the rest of the time they're giving each other moon-eyes over some dusty old document and I LOVE IT. I'd love anything revolving around the two of them. Just anything.
This definitely doesn't have to be romance fic; I'm down with any chronological setting and any genre. Fic about the inter-movie breakup is fine, although I'd prefer not to see Ben and Abigail break up for good. Feel free to include other characters (especially Ben's parents!), but I'd like Ben and Abigail to be the focus. I like Riley, but I think of him more as their adopted kid than a potential OT3 partner.
Plotty adventurefic would be awesome here. Maybe Ben and Abigail solve the mystery of page 47, or find the sunken ruins of Atlantis. Maybe a corrupt presidential administration comes to power and only Ben and Abigail can expose their evil plot. Maybe the opening of an ancient tomb releases a deadly zombie virus into the world, and Ben and Abigail must race to find the long-lost cure! (BTW, I'm not the only Yuletider interested in Ben Gates + zombies. If you're trawling for treat fodder, you should check out my fellow National Treasure zombie lover's letter!)
I'd also adore any kind of relationship or character study for these characters. I love Ben and Abigail because they're not star-crossed lovers. They're just two eccentric, driven people trying to make a relationship work. I think Ben is kind of Abigail's history nerd wet dream. He excites her with his sense of living and creating history rather than just studying it, but at the same time his bossiness and belief that he's always right makes him a nightmare for a woman like her. And she challenges him, infuriates him, leaves him at a loss for words - but she also keeps him grounded, keeps him from losing himself in his work, from turning bitter, from turning into his father. Studying history all the time makes you think a certain way - makes you consider small things in the context of the broad sweep of history, and makes you value things like honor, tradition, ancestry, and the weight of posterity in ways that most people don't. Abigail's attracted to that, but might it also be difficult to carve out a space for yourself in someone's life when it's so full of the ghosts of dead people? Mightn't it be difficult to just do normal stuff like stay in and watch Netflix with a guy like that?
If porn is your wheelhouse: HISTORY GEEK SEX! Sex in libraries, sex in a back room of the National Archives, sex in the ruins of ancient cities to break up the monotony of searching for hidden treasure. If you're down with kink, I would also loooooove to see Abigail dominating Ben. Bondage and D/s aren't my thing, but I love any kind of teasing/desperation/orgasm control play, and I find the idea of control-freak Ben giving Abigail complete power over his own pleasure both romantic and incredibly sexy. Maybe Abigail buys Ben a cock cage for Presidents' Day? Seeing oh-so-intellectual-and-focused Ben completely undone by sexual frustration would be both hilarious and super hot.
- - -
Zenon, Girl of the 21st Century (Movies)
Characters: Zenon Kar
I just love Zenon, okay. When that movie premiered I literally watched the first 10 airings. Zenon is such an amazing character and I would be totally heart-eyes over anything that puts her front and center, being the awesome HBIC that she is. I kinda ship her with Prota Zoa but it's not necessary for me. I love Nebula and would be totally down for friendship hijinks or femslash with the two of them. Bonus points for Aunt Judy and Commander Plank being adorable. But I seriously seriously love Zenon as a character in her own right, no matter who's around her. (And if you wanna add a reference to Chelsea Clinton being president during Zenon's teenage years that'd be awesome!)
This is my shameless nostalgia request! I'm mostly interested in the characters and events from the first two movies. I'm not a fan of the third movie, so I'm not really interested in reading about Sage or Dasha or moon goddesses. I'm also not super interested in Zenon's other canon love interests. I like Margie, my childhood introduction to the concept of a "frenemy." I love Nebula and Lynx from the first movie and the camaraderie they had with Zenon. Aunt Judy and Commander Plank are sweet and hilarious together and I would love to see them happy ever after. I adore Prota Zoa, that lovable grandiose dumbass. And aliens! I love the lost rainbow aliens!
I would love something about Zenon getting in trouble and her girl friends backing her up, breaking her out, and/or enabling her. (And maybe kissing along the way? Zenon/Nebula/Lynx or any combination of those would sweet. I don't really ship Zenon with Margie, though.)
Show me more of Zenon's crazy adventures! Show me the epic saga of Zenon versus Earth life! Show me Zenon saving the world (or just her space station... especially her space station) from zombies! Show me a future Zenon who runs for president or helps found a new colony on another planet or fights to protect her other frenemy, Earth, against an alien invasion .
If het is your thing, I love age-difference pairs so Zenon/Prota Zoa is my jam. I'd rather not see their relationship become overtly romantic or sexual until after the first movie, but second-movie casual sexing in between chasing aliens would be totally cool. My favorite thing is how Zenon takes 0% of Prota Zoa's shit. This is the world's most famous rockstar, the kind of guy who ditches his whole life because of a ~creative funk~... but when Zenon says "jump" he asks "how high?" Lbr, the guy is hopeless when it comes to her. So I guess my actual request for this pairing would just be "Zenon running circles around poor lovestruck Prota Zoa, please." For the porn-inclined, the teasing, orgasm control and male chastity kinks I mentioned in the National Treasure section above definitely apply here because you know Zenon is a kinky motherfucker.
I'm not really into relationship angst for this fandom, but something like dark, gritty apocafic would be great. Can Zenon really always save the day?
- - -
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
Characters: Monkey, Trip
I'm so obsessed with post-apocalyptic settings and how humans carve out small communities to survive and rebuild and create small pockets of beauty. I adore Trip because she believes so strongly that people can still live and love and be safe in this world. And I'm so in love with watching Monkey slowly go from wanting to throttle her to being completely disarmed by her and WANTING to believe in her ideals. I'd love anything about them surviving and rebuilding after the game ends, or slowly falling in love in between fighting.
I don't have a lot of prompts for this pairing because... seriously, just anything. Relationship dynamics, character study, vignette. Plotty post-canon adventures or just a coda. I'd like to see how Trip and Monkey deal with the freed slaves. Do they stick around to try and help them? Do they quietly slip away to look for a place where they recover from their ordeal in peace? Do they start a new settlement somewhere or rebuild Trip's old one? Does Monkey ever let Trip take the headband off? How does their relationship change when she does?
First-time fic would also be perfect for this pairing. For two such badasses, I love how essentially innocent their relationship is, and how tentative each step they take towards each other emotionally. Watching them slowly learn how to be together would be beautiful.
Any exploration of the canon world and how it got that way would be awesome. What happened to the earth? What survives of the pre-apocalypse world? How much do Trip and Monkey know, and what do they find of the old world that might baffle or surprise or even help them?
If you're here for porn, let me reiterate my request from both fandoms above: I am all about typically dominant men giving sexual control to their female partner. That goes double for this pairing because of the unique connection between Trip and Monkey: he literally has to do anything says. I'd love to see Trip playing with that, and Monkey totally getting off on it. Maybe it starts out as a joke when she tells him he has to beg for it, but then he surprises them both by being incredibly into it? Kink aside, I'd love to see any exploration of the intimacy the headband link creates. And I imagine Monkey would be extremely tender and almost worshipful towards her in bed, so I would love to see that.
The most important thing, though, is that you write something that plays to your strengths. You do you, Yuletide writer. ♥
Have fun, and happy Yuletide!