Dear 2013 Yuletide Author
Dear Yuletide Author,
Thanks so much for writing for me! I love all my teeny-tiny fandoms, and I'm thrilled that other people want to tell stories about them, too.
As a general note, I know my prompts have a ton of questions and options, but by no means do I expect you to address every single one in whatever you write. I'm mostly trying to give my Yuleauthors a lot of options because I know the matching process isn't always exact. That being said, if the prompts really aren't working for you and there's another story you want to tell, feel free to ditch the prompts entirely and do your own thing -- I'll still want to read that story.
So! Things I like. I love CONFLICT and CONSEQUENCES, whatever forms they might take; I love seeing how the macro- affects the micro-; I love struggle and recovery and things that don't come easily and things that don't work out as planned and things that must be dealt with and strength that comes from unexpected places.
I also like: facepunching, snappy dialogue, moral complexity, the occasional happy ending, the occasional less-literal-more-euphemistic happy ending, cocky sons-of-bitches, long slow awkward relationship development, people who never get to make out, people who do get to make out, people who have to jump through rings of fire before they can make out, goofballs, brilliant and self-destructive people (who are also sometimes goofballs), and issues of agency and authority.
I'm comfortable with any and all ratings and quite a few pairings, too, as long as you make me believe the sex/violence/etc. within the context of the story. I definitely like porn, and love kink. Genrewise, I like everything from romance to horror to humor, as long as there's conflict in it somewhere. (So non-sequitur-derived humor and fluff/sap don't really do it for me.) Happy endings are fine, unhappy endings are fine, endings that are a little bit of both are fine, as long as the characters have earned them through their actions and through the consequences of those actions.
What I don't want: misogyny and slut-shaming (especially as the punchline of a joke), unless those attitudes get deconstructed in-story. Queer erasure. AUs, particularly a/b/o AUs, unless I've asked for AUs in the request. (Normally I'm all for AUs, but in three out of my four requests this year, I'm more interested in the world of the canon.) Infallible protagonists. Pregnancyfic, especially mpreg. Romanticizing abuse. Scat, vomit, and watersports. Detailed descriptions of violence inflicted on hands or eyes. For purposes of these requests, I'm not interested in seeing issues of consent (dub- or noncon/rape), though I'm all right with having it be a background element in the story if it's already present in the canon. I'm neutral on poly, but poly-fixes-everything stories make me grit my teeth.
My LJ is pretty barren these days, but I'm fairly active on tumblr if you want even more of a window into what I like. My older fic is largely accessible via my fic tag on LJ; newer stuff is either on my AO3 or fic tag on tumblr.
Awoken - Serra Elinsen [Andromeda 'Andi' Slate, Riley Bay]
Some of Riley's family has met Andi already, but I'd love to see what happens when he takes her to meet some of his other relatives (since they didn't stick around for too long after the end of Awoken). I'm interested to see what some other famous figures in the mythos are up to in this setting, and what they think of Riley's rather unconventional relationship.
Alternately, considering what the source material's parodying (and what the working title of Awoken was for a while), how about a Fifty Shades of Grey-style AU? Or any other AU in the style of Twilight fandom's greatest hits, really. Play it as straight or as tongue-in-cheek as you like, but the opportunity seems too good to pass up.
Lindsay and Nella wrote this book as a sendup of YA paranormals, but it kind of ended up being better than a lot of the books it's parodying. The worldbuilding in particular is solid and fun, and I love what we get to see of Riley's relatives, Uncle Neil in particular. Heck, I'm kind of fond of Riley's seriousness and melodrama, too, especially when other characters are making fun of him for it; there's something delightful about Cthulhu moping around like a teenage boy. It's that kind of spirit that makes me genuinely curious about what family gatherings are like with this bunch. I want to see how you anthropomorphize creatures that are supposed to be terrifying and incomprehensible -- does everyone make fun of the Deep Ones for being the stereotypical West Virginians of the mythos? Is Yog-Sothoth kind of a shut-in? Is there a reason why everyone avoids saying Hastur's name?
I requested the Fifty Shades of Grey-style AU because I'm really curious about how an eldritch horror-style parody of the Fifty Shades-inspired BDSM erotica craze would play out. Maybe it requires injecting a little mad science or old-school Gothic drama into the billionaire businessman setup. Either way, I'm interested to see how the characters can remain recognizably themselves in this new scenario. You don't have to do the porn if you want to go this route, although I certainly wouldn't mind -- I'm most interested in the tone and the humor.
Parasol Protectorate - Gail Carriger [Any]
I love all the characters who got nominated this year, and I'd be happy with a story about any of them! The length of the characters' lives means that there's plenty of stories to tell, too. A few prompt ideas:
- Biffy and Lyall! Biffy (with Lord Maccon's help) learning how to be a good Alpha for a pack that needs a certain amount of urban sophistication; Lyall adjusting to life in Scotland and the state of the Kingair pack; what happens when they see each other again.
- Genevieve and Countess Nadasdy: more of their shared history with Angelique, or what happens during Genevieve's service as one of Countess Nadasdy's drones.
- More of Lord Akeldama's parenting adventures with Prudence. Just imagine what she'll be like as a teenager!
- Ivy and Tunstell adjusting to their new position in society, and to Ivy's new status as a hive queen. What sort of fashions do they set for London's vampires? How do Ivy and Countess Nadasdy get along? Do they both have to give up acting? How does one balance the needs of one's hive with the needs of one's young children?
- Alexia and Lord Maccon finally retiring to Egypt, though something tells me that their retirement won't be entirely peaceful...
- Any of the supernatural characters in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries. How do they adapt to modern times, and how do modern times adapt to them?
- Or heck, any of the supernatural characters in the centuries before the nineteenth. Particularly Lord Akeldama, if he's as old as he seems to be -- just how much has he seen?
I feel like since I offered "Any" in this one, I should stress that I really am fine with stories about any of these characters, or with worldbuilding fic. The setting is a ton of fun, and that's part of why I'm so full of fic I'd love to see for this canon -- it's such a gleeful matchup of vampires and werewolves and steampunk and mad science and Victorian comedy-of-manners and crazy fashion, and it manages to deliver some pretty powerful storylines without taking itself too seriously. Also, somewhere along the line the series kind of exploded with queerness, and I can't help but cheer that on.
As far as shipping goes, I'm enthusiastically on board with all the canon ones; as far as non-canon ships go, I have a fondness for Genevieve/Nadasdy and Genevieve/Alexia, and Akeldama and Lyall have a few nicely, ahem, charged moments. I think the prompts give you a nice range of genres to work with, but to be extra clear, I'm fine with things being as gen or as shippy as you'd like.
Sengoku Basara [Takeda Shingen, Uesugi Kenshin]
What were these two up to during their heyday? I'd love to see how their rivalry began and developed -- where was their first battle, and what happened during it? They clearly grew closer over the intervening years; how did that closeness develop? I'm also fine with seeing them spend time together off the battlefield, enjoying moments of peace.
Sengoku Basara has been a fandom of my heart for over a year now, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. Kenshin and Shingen tend not to get as much focus as the younger set, though, so I thought I'd use Yuletide as an excuse to shine the spotlight on them. They're what a lot of the other rival pairs in the series aspire to be, and I'm really struck by what Shingen said in the anime's second OAV about your most cherished rival also being your closest friend.
I definitely ship Shingen and Kenshin, but I'm fine with fic that has a more gen focus. I'm also fine with fic that portrays Kenshin as male or female or nonbinary (I tend to headcanon Kenshin as nonbinary, but since the creators don't seem inclined to give a definitive statement on Kenshin's gender, there's a lot of room for interpretation).
Feel free to include characters who aren't mentioned in the request. I do want the focus to be on Kenshin and Shingen, but both Kenshin and Shingen have a lot of friends and allies they interact with regularly, and far be it for me to exclude any of them from the story. If you want to drop in little winks or nudges to events in actual history, I'm cool with that, too, although please don't feel like you have to commit to volumes of research -- this is Sengoku Basara, after all, where Honda Tadakatsu is a Gundam. There's a limit to how seriously you can take this canon. (And bless it for that.)
Fate/Zero [Sola-Ui Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri]
I'd love to see almost anything that digs more into Sola-Ui's psyche and motivations. What was it like to grow up in a magus family and not be named the heir, even though she's far more talented than her brother? What were her goals before she got engaged to Kayneth, and did they change after? How did she prepare for the Grail War, and what would she have wished for? Explorations of magus society and gender politics are more than welcome. Feel free to draw on the light novels if you're familiar with them.
Sola-Ui doesn't get the best rap in fandom, although I've seen a few great essays on her circulating recently. Which is good, because there's a lot more to her character than "ruthless bitch" or "Grainne clone." There's that remark in the light novels that she could have fought off Lancer's Mystic Face, had she wanted to, for one. She's one of the best examples in /zero of how screwed-up magus society is, and while Sola-Ui never tries to punish the worst offenders like Kiritsugu does or reform the system from within like Waver does eventually, she's definitely fighting her own battles with it. Show me a Sola-Ui who's determined to do something about her lot in life, and I'll love you forever.
I'm leaning a bit more towards gen with this request, since Sola-Ui could stand not to be characterized solely by her relationships with men. Depending on when the fic is set, some of those relationships might have to be addressed, but I'd prefer for the focus to remain on Sola-Ui.
As far as obtaining things goes:
Awoken is, like a lot of paranormal YA, a fairly quick read. Amazon has it for $11 in paperback and $5 on the Kindle.
Parasol Protectorate - Gail Carriger: The individual books run about 300 pages or so each, and there are five in the series. Amazon has a great deal for the set in paperback and on the Kindle right now.
Sengoku Basara: Unfortunately, the games that feature Shingen and Kenshin most prominently haven't been given an English language release. (We do not speak of Devil Kings.) You can track down playthroughs of their story modes and stages for Sengoku Basara, SB2, and SB2 Heroes on YouTube, and there are script translations up on GameFAQs, but it's an undertaking. It's probably easier to tackle the anime, which is available for free on YouTube and Hulu. Each season is thirteen episodes long; Kenshin and Shingen have more to do in the first season but still play a fairly major role in the second.
Fate/Zero is both an anime and light novel series. The anime is 25 episodes long, and the whole thing's available for free on Crunchyroll. Baka-tsuki has a complete translation of the light novels here. The anime is, by and large, faithful to the light novels, though there's some material in the novels (including information about Sola-Ui) that doesn't make it into the anime.
Thanks again, Yuletide author -- I hope you have fun this year!
- Puel
Thanks so much for writing for me! I love all my teeny-tiny fandoms, and I'm thrilled that other people want to tell stories about them, too.
As a general note, I know my prompts have a ton of questions and options, but by no means do I expect you to address every single one in whatever you write. I'm mostly trying to give my Yuleauthors a lot of options because I know the matching process isn't always exact. That being said, if the prompts really aren't working for you and there's another story you want to tell, feel free to ditch the prompts entirely and do your own thing -- I'll still want to read that story.
So! Things I like. I love CONFLICT and CONSEQUENCES, whatever forms they might take; I love seeing how the macro- affects the micro-; I love struggle and recovery and things that don't come easily and things that don't work out as planned and things that must be dealt with and strength that comes from unexpected places.
I also like: facepunching, snappy dialogue, moral complexity, the occasional happy ending, the occasional less-literal-more-euphemistic happy ending, cocky sons-of-bitches, long slow awkward relationship development, people who never get to make out, people who do get to make out, people who have to jump through rings of fire before they can make out, goofballs, brilliant and self-destructive people (who are also sometimes goofballs), and issues of agency and authority.
I'm comfortable with any and all ratings and quite a few pairings, too, as long as you make me believe the sex/violence/etc. within the context of the story. I definitely like porn, and love kink. Genrewise, I like everything from romance to horror to humor, as long as there's conflict in it somewhere. (So non-sequitur-derived humor and fluff/sap don't really do it for me.) Happy endings are fine, unhappy endings are fine, endings that are a little bit of both are fine, as long as the characters have earned them through their actions and through the consequences of those actions.
What I don't want: misogyny and slut-shaming (especially as the punchline of a joke), unless those attitudes get deconstructed in-story. Queer erasure. AUs, particularly a/b/o AUs, unless I've asked for AUs in the request. (Normally I'm all for AUs, but in three out of my four requests this year, I'm more interested in the world of the canon.) Infallible protagonists. Pregnancyfic, especially mpreg. Romanticizing abuse. Scat, vomit, and watersports. Detailed descriptions of violence inflicted on hands or eyes. For purposes of these requests, I'm not interested in seeing issues of consent (dub- or noncon/rape), though I'm all right with having it be a background element in the story if it's already present in the canon. I'm neutral on poly, but poly-fixes-everything stories make me grit my teeth.
My LJ is pretty barren these days, but I'm fairly active on tumblr if you want even more of a window into what I like. My older fic is largely accessible via my fic tag on LJ; newer stuff is either on my AO3 or fic tag on tumblr.
Awoken - Serra Elinsen [Andromeda 'Andi' Slate, Riley Bay]
Some of Riley's family has met Andi already, but I'd love to see what happens when he takes her to meet some of his other relatives (since they didn't stick around for too long after the end of Awoken). I'm interested to see what some other famous figures in the mythos are up to in this setting, and what they think of Riley's rather unconventional relationship.
Alternately, considering what the source material's parodying (and what the working title of Awoken was for a while), how about a Fifty Shades of Grey-style AU? Or any other AU in the style of Twilight fandom's greatest hits, really. Play it as straight or as tongue-in-cheek as you like, but the opportunity seems too good to pass up.
Lindsay and Nella wrote this book as a sendup of YA paranormals, but it kind of ended up being better than a lot of the books it's parodying. The worldbuilding in particular is solid and fun, and I love what we get to see of Riley's relatives, Uncle Neil in particular. Heck, I'm kind of fond of Riley's seriousness and melodrama, too, especially when other characters are making fun of him for it; there's something delightful about Cthulhu moping around like a teenage boy. It's that kind of spirit that makes me genuinely curious about what family gatherings are like with this bunch. I want to see how you anthropomorphize creatures that are supposed to be terrifying and incomprehensible -- does everyone make fun of the Deep Ones for being the stereotypical West Virginians of the mythos? Is Yog-Sothoth kind of a shut-in? Is there a reason why everyone avoids saying Hastur's name?
I requested the Fifty Shades of Grey-style AU because I'm really curious about how an eldritch horror-style parody of the Fifty Shades-inspired BDSM erotica craze would play out. Maybe it requires injecting a little mad science or old-school Gothic drama into the billionaire businessman setup. Either way, I'm interested to see how the characters can remain recognizably themselves in this new scenario. You don't have to do the porn if you want to go this route, although I certainly wouldn't mind -- I'm most interested in the tone and the humor.
Parasol Protectorate - Gail Carriger [Any]
I love all the characters who got nominated this year, and I'd be happy with a story about any of them! The length of the characters' lives means that there's plenty of stories to tell, too. A few prompt ideas:
- Biffy and Lyall! Biffy (with Lord Maccon's help) learning how to be a good Alpha for a pack that needs a certain amount of urban sophistication; Lyall adjusting to life in Scotland and the state of the Kingair pack; what happens when they see each other again.
- Genevieve and Countess Nadasdy: more of their shared history with Angelique, or what happens during Genevieve's service as one of Countess Nadasdy's drones.
- More of Lord Akeldama's parenting adventures with Prudence. Just imagine what she'll be like as a teenager!
- Ivy and Tunstell adjusting to their new position in society, and to Ivy's new status as a hive queen. What sort of fashions do they set for London's vampires? How do Ivy and Countess Nadasdy get along? Do they both have to give up acting? How does one balance the needs of one's hive with the needs of one's young children?
- Alexia and Lord Maccon finally retiring to Egypt, though something tells me that their retirement won't be entirely peaceful...
- Any of the supernatural characters in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries. How do they adapt to modern times, and how do modern times adapt to them?
- Or heck, any of the supernatural characters in the centuries before the nineteenth. Particularly Lord Akeldama, if he's as old as he seems to be -- just how much has he seen?
I feel like since I offered "Any" in this one, I should stress that I really am fine with stories about any of these characters, or with worldbuilding fic. The setting is a ton of fun, and that's part of why I'm so full of fic I'd love to see for this canon -- it's such a gleeful matchup of vampires and werewolves and steampunk and mad science and Victorian comedy-of-manners and crazy fashion, and it manages to deliver some pretty powerful storylines without taking itself too seriously. Also, somewhere along the line the series kind of exploded with queerness, and I can't help but cheer that on.
As far as shipping goes, I'm enthusiastically on board with all the canon ones; as far as non-canon ships go, I have a fondness for Genevieve/Nadasdy and Genevieve/Alexia, and Akeldama and Lyall have a few nicely, ahem, charged moments. I think the prompts give you a nice range of genres to work with, but to be extra clear, I'm fine with things being as gen or as shippy as you'd like.
Sengoku Basara [Takeda Shingen, Uesugi Kenshin]
What were these two up to during their heyday? I'd love to see how their rivalry began and developed -- where was their first battle, and what happened during it? They clearly grew closer over the intervening years; how did that closeness develop? I'm also fine with seeing them spend time together off the battlefield, enjoying moments of peace.
Sengoku Basara has been a fandom of my heart for over a year now, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. Kenshin and Shingen tend not to get as much focus as the younger set, though, so I thought I'd use Yuletide as an excuse to shine the spotlight on them. They're what a lot of the other rival pairs in the series aspire to be, and I'm really struck by what Shingen said in the anime's second OAV about your most cherished rival also being your closest friend.
I definitely ship Shingen and Kenshin, but I'm fine with fic that has a more gen focus. I'm also fine with fic that portrays Kenshin as male or female or nonbinary (I tend to headcanon Kenshin as nonbinary, but since the creators don't seem inclined to give a definitive statement on Kenshin's gender, there's a lot of room for interpretation).
Feel free to include characters who aren't mentioned in the request. I do want the focus to be on Kenshin and Shingen, but both Kenshin and Shingen have a lot of friends and allies they interact with regularly, and far be it for me to exclude any of them from the story. If you want to drop in little winks or nudges to events in actual history, I'm cool with that, too, although please don't feel like you have to commit to volumes of research -- this is Sengoku Basara, after all, where Honda Tadakatsu is a Gundam. There's a limit to how seriously you can take this canon. (And bless it for that.)
Fate/Zero [Sola-Ui Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri]
I'd love to see almost anything that digs more into Sola-Ui's psyche and motivations. What was it like to grow up in a magus family and not be named the heir, even though she's far more talented than her brother? What were her goals before she got engaged to Kayneth, and did they change after? How did she prepare for the Grail War, and what would she have wished for? Explorations of magus society and gender politics are more than welcome. Feel free to draw on the light novels if you're familiar with them.
Sola-Ui doesn't get the best rap in fandom, although I've seen a few great essays on her circulating recently. Which is good, because there's a lot more to her character than "ruthless bitch" or "Grainne clone." There's that remark in the light novels that she could have fought off Lancer's Mystic Face, had she wanted to, for one. She's one of the best examples in /zero of how screwed-up magus society is, and while Sola-Ui never tries to punish the worst offenders like Kiritsugu does or reform the system from within like Waver does eventually, she's definitely fighting her own battles with it. Show me a Sola-Ui who's determined to do something about her lot in life, and I'll love you forever.
I'm leaning a bit more towards gen with this request, since Sola-Ui could stand not to be characterized solely by her relationships with men. Depending on when the fic is set, some of those relationships might have to be addressed, but I'd prefer for the focus to remain on Sola-Ui.
As far as obtaining things goes:
Thanks again, Yuletide author -- I hope you have fun this year!
- Puel