Dear Yuletide Author 2016
Dear Yuletide Author,
Thank you so much for writing for me! I am so excited to see what you come up with, and I want to say that aside from anything that I say below, so long as you don't hit any of my really strong dislikes, I am pretty much guaranteed to love whatever you write. I am very easy to please, and I'm sure I'll love whatever you do.
Also, I have a terrible time thinking up prompts off the cuff, I freeze up and get terrible writer's block, so please don't hesitate to write something that isn't listed here. If you want a little more information about anything, you can always drop by my tumblr askbox and inquire. I always have anon turned on, but if you'd rather I be surprised, Nell knows me very well and would be happy to give you some general guidance, or specific guidance about Killjoys and Galavant. If you'd like a friend's insight for my Critical Role feelings, Sovin is intimately familiar with them and would be happy to help you out.
General Preferences
Likes: HAPPY ENDINGS. I don't mind angst or heartbreak along the way (at all, I thing some angst can make a happy ending even more satisfying!), but please please, an ending that is hopeful at the very least. I adore shippiness and romance, but if that's not your thing that's totally fine. I love just as much strong friendships and people who feel an intense bond with each other without it being romantic, so I'd be just as thrilled with friendfic, character studies, or other genfic. I have a huge choice kink -- write me a fic about choosing to be together, choosing to love each other (romantically or not) and I will love you forever. I love people being competent and clever, wit, banter, strong fabulous ladies (and the men or women who watch them be their fabulous selves with hearts in their eyes). I love tropes, and AUs of all flavors are some of my very favorite things, but I am always impressed by a great canonfic, too. I love hurt/comfort and UST, first times and developing relationships and getting-together fics, fake relationship or pretend married or marriage of convenience. I love fairy tale or mythology AUs. If you're inclined to write something shippy, I adore smut, though if you're uncomfortable or uninterested in writing something explicit, I find a good kissing scene to be hugely satisfying as well. I love a good threesome or other poly dynamics, though if I mention poly and that's not what you're into, please know that I don't tend to ship people poly unless I also ship every ship within it, so if I ask for A/B/C and you're only comfortable with A/C and B along as a friend, that is 100% fine. Additionally, if you're moved to write something explicit either way, I'm fine with as kinky or as vanilla as you care to write. On the kink side, though, I would prefer no watersports, scat, or humiliation.
Dislikes: Sad endings, major character death, non-con, infidelity, abusive relationships. Don't feel the need to avoid these things if they happen in canon, but I'd prefer they not be introduced where they don't already exist, and that they not be the focus of the fic either way.
Now for the specifics...
Killjoys
Characters: Any
Killjoys is a science fiction show on Syfy that currently has two 10-episode seasons. It's a show about a small team of bounty hunters with lots of found family feels. You can find my tumblr tag about the show here. I honestly love all of the characters we've seen on the show so far and would be thrilled with a fic about any of them, though I have the biggest, deepest feelings for the friendship (or more) between Dutch and Johnny. But D'avin has been an absolute delight this past season, and Pree was an absolute MVP and scene-stealer in every episode he was in, Alvis and his relationship with religion interests me so much, Clara was AMAZING and I need so much more about her than the show has given us so far, and Lucy and Johnny's relationship consistently makes me clutch at my heart. Even Delle Seyah is a villain whom I love to hate, so I'd honestly be thrilled with fic about any of the nominated characters in this show.
This is also a show that I multiship like crazy, so just about any romantic pairing is one I'd be interested in reading about, if you're inclined to write it. The only ships that come to mind that I wouldn't be interested in are any that involve Khlyen or Aneela, really. D'avin/Johnny would be a hard sell for me just because of the incest, but honestly, if you can make it work I'd be willing to give it a try.)
Prompts:
-Casefic in which the team pursues a warrant together. Canon or pre-canon, and/or with any of the rest of our recurring cast accompnying them would be just fine.
-Exploration of Dutch and Johnny's pre-canon history. I would love to know the story behind how they went, in one day, from Johnny trying to steal Lucy from Dutch, to the both of them flying away in her together. Or give me the two of them just starting to get to know each other and feel each other out. Maybe how Johnny became a killjoy, or their first official warrant together. There's a lot of room left to explore in the many years of their partnership before the pilot.
-Something fun and fluffy! Everyone takes a vacation and hijinks ensue. They get stuck in orbit/on a long trip with nothing to do but entertain each another with increasingly-improbably stories. 5+1 fic with five times Dutch and Johnny tried to set each other up with someone else and one time they got set up together.
-A post-S2-finale fic about Johnny and Clara's roadtrip
-Just about any AU or trope ever, honestly. I love them all, from the fandom staples like the ubiquitous coffeeshop AU to whatever unconventional alternate setting you can think of. A soulmate or soulmark AU in this world could be so interesting, especially if it's one that contains the possibility for multiple and/or platonic soulmates, though I'll note that these AUs tend to work best for me when there's some element of choice involved.
Galavant
Characters: Galavant, Isabella, Sidney
A high-fantasy musical sitcom with eighteen half-hour episodes that is a ridiculous amount of fun. There are all sorts of hijinks, musical references, jokes, guest stars, and of course lots of musical numbers, all written by Alan Menken, so you know they're a delight. I've got a tumblr tag for it here.
I love our core trio so much, and OT3 them very hard, though like I mentioned, I'm also fine with any romantic or platonic combination therein. I loved their road tripping hijinks together in season 1 so much, and it's where I really fell in love with their dynamic.
Prompt ideas:
-Before season 2 aired, I was so looking forward to Isabella rescuing herself from her creepy cousin and riding off to rescue Sid from Gareth like she promised, so some sort of AU where that's how season 2 actually went down would be amazing.
-I am SO HAPPY that Sid is getting the opportunity to go off and be a hero in his own right, and post-canon fic about his adventures doing so would be just wonderful. There are lots of options here that could be delightful -- Sid making "phone calls" back home to Galavant and Isabella while he's out adventuring, to keep in touch or ask for advice or just to tell them he loves them. Sid finally deciding he's done with adventuring, and his homecoming when he returns to Isabella and Galavant's little seaside cottage. Sid and Isabella and Galavant all getting married, and his parents finally getting to throw that wedding they've been planning for since season 1.
-Again, AUs are always a wonderful option! Galavant in space? (Space-princess Isabella would be amazing. And I'm so intrigued by how translating the idea of knights and other high fantasy tropes into a space sci-fi settin would work.) High school or college AU? Soulmark/bonds could be really fun here, too, especially with how they'd relate to Galavant and Madalena and Isabella.
Critical Role
Characters: Percy, Vex, Vax
A webseries in which a bunch of nerdy ass voice actors play Dungeons and Dragons each week. With sixty-nine episodes and counting, all ranging from three to five hours long, there's a lot of content to get through here if we didn't get matched on this fandom -- though if we got matched on one of my other fandoms but you're not really feeling it and are looking for an alternative, this one does have potentially the option with the least time investment required. I'll get to that in a moment, though.
Critical Role is about a team of adventurers who have become family to one another, and the relationships between all of them are some of the most interesting and most compelling that I've ever seen. I only requested Percy, Vex, and Vax because they're my favorites of the group, but feel free to consider that an "or" rather than an "and" because I love everyone in this bar and I am 1000% okay with including any of the other PCs or NPCs you might wish to.
I absolutely adore the twins' relationship with each other, and fic exploring that would be amazing. I also ship Vex and Percy pretty hard, especially after the events of episode 69. While Keyleth is not my favorite member of Vox Machina, I'm just fine with Vax/Keyleth if you care to go there, though I usually tend to prefer Vax/Keyleth/Gilmore in my shippy feelings about them, because like Matt Mercer, my main ship preferences for Gilmore are Gilmore/happiness, and it breaks my heart that there's such care and longing between him and Vax, when polyamory could be such a simply solution to all of this. I'd also be perfectly happy with a fic exploring Percy and Keyleth's friendship, or any of these three's friendship with each other or the rest of Vox Machina.
If we matched on something else but my feelings for that fandom don't sound interesting to you, or don't align with yours, and you'd like something you could easily familiarize yourself with, there is a single standalone episode set in the world of Critical Role but with entirely different characters that you can find here, and watch in just a few hours. And while I didn't request them because yuletide's "and" matching would have made things complicated, I would honestly adore fic about Devan and Dren, who are two adorable lesbians with a plan to escape the thieves' guild they've both become tangled up in, and run away together. It doesn't quite work out for them that way in the episode, but that's what AUs are for, right? And I personally believe that the dice gods were trying so hard to save them at the end of the episode, but even dice gods are eventually going to be subject to the rules of probability. If you go this route, I'd definitely prefer it that either Devan never planned to betray Dren, or changed her mind during the events of the episode, because as I mentioned above in my general likes, I believe strongly in happy endings, and these two darling ladies deserve better than to break one another's hearts just because Liam felt like running an evil campaign.
Prompt ideas:
-Episode 69 is the most recent at the time I'm writing this, so with the full understanding that this could be jossed before you're even reading this: post-69 fic about how Vex and Percy start exploring their feelings for one another would be wonderful. Or a post-69 fic in which Vax has a heart-to-heart with his sister about the hard-won lessons he's learned about being honest about your feelings and the benefits to be had of taking the risk and allowing yourself to be vulnerable. Everything that she's about to face is something he's already struggled his way through with Keyleth, and I would love to see a fic focusing on the relationship between these siblings in which he tries to impart a little bit of that wisdom onto her, and help her avoid some of the pitfalls he stumbled into along his way.
-I would also love to see fic just focusing on this twins and their relationship, whether with or without any outside romances. I love them and their relationship SO MUCH and anything focusing on the two of them would be great. Maybe pre-Vox Machina fic about the two of them when they were on their own and the only people in the world they could rely upon? Happy fluffy childhood shenanigans between the two of them, before Syldor came and took them from their mother and made everything awful? We've gotten some hints from Vax about how he initially felt about Trinket, so a fic exploring the time right after Vex brought him home and how Vax eventually warmed up to him would be wonderful, too.
-Alternately, or additionally: anything about Vex and Vax and VELORA. I was so, so taken with how adorable Velora was, and how much Vex and Vax loved her, and how much she looked up to and admired them, and I would honestly love anything exploring the relationship of these three siblings.
-As always: AUs! Vox Machina as rogues-turned-heroes in space? Vox Machina and an exploration of how their various roles translate into a modern AU? Canon AU in which the twins stayed in Syngorn and now Vex is facing an arranged marriage with Percy to secure an alliance between Syngorn and Whitestone? Or Vex is facing the same with Keyleth for the sake of an alliance with the ashari? There are a million options here and all of them would be a ton of fun.
Thank you again, author! I hope something in here caught your interest and was inspiring, but if not, or if you'd like more guidance, please don't hesitate to reach out to me or Sovin or Nell. I can't wait to see what you come up with!
Thank you so much for writing for me! I am so excited to see what you come up with, and I want to say that aside from anything that I say below, so long as you don't hit any of my really strong dislikes, I am pretty much guaranteed to love whatever you write. I am very easy to please, and I'm sure I'll love whatever you do.
Also, I have a terrible time thinking up prompts off the cuff, I freeze up and get terrible writer's block, so please don't hesitate to write something that isn't listed here. If you want a little more information about anything, you can always drop by my tumblr askbox and inquire. I always have anon turned on, but if you'd rather I be surprised, Nell knows me very well and would be happy to give you some general guidance, or specific guidance about Killjoys and Galavant. If you'd like a friend's insight for my Critical Role feelings, Sovin is intimately familiar with them and would be happy to help you out.
General Preferences
Likes: HAPPY ENDINGS. I don't mind angst or heartbreak along the way (at all, I thing some angst can make a happy ending even more satisfying!), but please please, an ending that is hopeful at the very least. I adore shippiness and romance, but if that's not your thing that's totally fine. I love just as much strong friendships and people who feel an intense bond with each other without it being romantic, so I'd be just as thrilled with friendfic, character studies, or other genfic. I have a huge choice kink -- write me a fic about choosing to be together, choosing to love each other (romantically or not) and I will love you forever. I love people being competent and clever, wit, banter, strong fabulous ladies (and the men or women who watch them be their fabulous selves with hearts in their eyes). I love tropes, and AUs of all flavors are some of my very favorite things, but I am always impressed by a great canonfic, too. I love hurt/comfort and UST, first times and developing relationships and getting-together fics, fake relationship or pretend married or marriage of convenience. I love fairy tale or mythology AUs. If you're inclined to write something shippy, I adore smut, though if you're uncomfortable or uninterested in writing something explicit, I find a good kissing scene to be hugely satisfying as well. I love a good threesome or other poly dynamics, though if I mention poly and that's not what you're into, please know that I don't tend to ship people poly unless I also ship every ship within it, so if I ask for A/B/C and you're only comfortable with A/C and B along as a friend, that is 100% fine. Additionally, if you're moved to write something explicit either way, I'm fine with as kinky or as vanilla as you care to write. On the kink side, though, I would prefer no watersports, scat, or humiliation.
Dislikes: Sad endings, major character death, non-con, infidelity, abusive relationships. Don't feel the need to avoid these things if they happen in canon, but I'd prefer they not be introduced where they don't already exist, and that they not be the focus of the fic either way.
Now for the specifics...
Killjoys
Characters: Any
Killjoys is a science fiction show on Syfy that currently has two 10-episode seasons. It's a show about a small team of bounty hunters with lots of found family feels. You can find my tumblr tag about the show here. I honestly love all of the characters we've seen on the show so far and would be thrilled with a fic about any of them, though I have the biggest, deepest feelings for the friendship (or more) between Dutch and Johnny. But D'avin has been an absolute delight this past season, and Pree was an absolute MVP and scene-stealer in every episode he was in, Alvis and his relationship with religion interests me so much, Clara was AMAZING and I need so much more about her than the show has given us so far, and Lucy and Johnny's relationship consistently makes me clutch at my heart. Even Delle Seyah is a villain whom I love to hate, so I'd honestly be thrilled with fic about any of the nominated characters in this show.
This is also a show that I multiship like crazy, so just about any romantic pairing is one I'd be interested in reading about, if you're inclined to write it. The only ships that come to mind that I wouldn't be interested in are any that involve Khlyen or Aneela, really. D'avin/Johnny would be a hard sell for me just because of the incest, but honestly, if you can make it work I'd be willing to give it a try.)
Prompts:
-Casefic in which the team pursues a warrant together. Canon or pre-canon, and/or with any of the rest of our recurring cast accompnying them would be just fine.
-Exploration of Dutch and Johnny's pre-canon history. I would love to know the story behind how they went, in one day, from Johnny trying to steal Lucy from Dutch, to the both of them flying away in her together. Or give me the two of them just starting to get to know each other and feel each other out. Maybe how Johnny became a killjoy, or their first official warrant together. There's a lot of room left to explore in the many years of their partnership before the pilot.
-Something fun and fluffy! Everyone takes a vacation and hijinks ensue. They get stuck in orbit/on a long trip with nothing to do but entertain each another with increasingly-improbably stories. 5+1 fic with five times Dutch and Johnny tried to set each other up with someone else and one time they got set up together.
-A post-S2-finale fic about Johnny and Clara's roadtrip
-Just about any AU or trope ever, honestly. I love them all, from the fandom staples like the ubiquitous coffeeshop AU to whatever unconventional alternate setting you can think of. A soulmate or soulmark AU in this world could be so interesting, especially if it's one that contains the possibility for multiple and/or platonic soulmates, though I'll note that these AUs tend to work best for me when there's some element of choice involved.
Galavant
Characters: Galavant, Isabella, Sidney
A high-fantasy musical sitcom with eighteen half-hour episodes that is a ridiculous amount of fun. There are all sorts of hijinks, musical references, jokes, guest stars, and of course lots of musical numbers, all written by Alan Menken, so you know they're a delight. I've got a tumblr tag for it here.
I love our core trio so much, and OT3 them very hard, though like I mentioned, I'm also fine with any romantic or platonic combination therein. I loved their road tripping hijinks together in season 1 so much, and it's where I really fell in love with their dynamic.
Prompt ideas:
-Before season 2 aired, I was so looking forward to Isabella rescuing herself from her creepy cousin and riding off to rescue Sid from Gareth like she promised, so some sort of AU where that's how season 2 actually went down would be amazing.
-I am SO HAPPY that Sid is getting the opportunity to go off and be a hero in his own right, and post-canon fic about his adventures doing so would be just wonderful. There are lots of options here that could be delightful -- Sid making "phone calls" back home to Galavant and Isabella while he's out adventuring, to keep in touch or ask for advice or just to tell them he loves them. Sid finally deciding he's done with adventuring, and his homecoming when he returns to Isabella and Galavant's little seaside cottage. Sid and Isabella and Galavant all getting married, and his parents finally getting to throw that wedding they've been planning for since season 1.
-Again, AUs are always a wonderful option! Galavant in space? (Space-princess Isabella would be amazing. And I'm so intrigued by how translating the idea of knights and other high fantasy tropes into a space sci-fi settin would work.) High school or college AU? Soulmark/bonds could be really fun here, too, especially with how they'd relate to Galavant and Madalena and Isabella.
Critical Role
Characters: Percy, Vex, Vax
A webseries in which a bunch of nerdy ass voice actors play Dungeons and Dragons each week. With sixty-nine episodes and counting, all ranging from three to five hours long, there's a lot of content to get through here if we didn't get matched on this fandom -- though if we got matched on one of my other fandoms but you're not really feeling it and are looking for an alternative, this one does have potentially the option with the least time investment required. I'll get to that in a moment, though.
Critical Role is about a team of adventurers who have become family to one another, and the relationships between all of them are some of the most interesting and most compelling that I've ever seen. I only requested Percy, Vex, and Vax because they're my favorites of the group, but feel free to consider that an "or" rather than an "and" because I love everyone in this bar and I am 1000% okay with including any of the other PCs or NPCs you might wish to.
I absolutely adore the twins' relationship with each other, and fic exploring that would be amazing. I also ship Vex and Percy pretty hard, especially after the events of episode 69. While Keyleth is not my favorite member of Vox Machina, I'm just fine with Vax/Keyleth if you care to go there, though I usually tend to prefer Vax/Keyleth/Gilmore in my shippy feelings about them, because like Matt Mercer, my main ship preferences for Gilmore are Gilmore/happiness, and it breaks my heart that there's such care and longing between him and Vax, when polyamory could be such a simply solution to all of this. I'd also be perfectly happy with a fic exploring Percy and Keyleth's friendship, or any of these three's friendship with each other or the rest of Vox Machina.
If we matched on something else but my feelings for that fandom don't sound interesting to you, or don't align with yours, and you'd like something you could easily familiarize yourself with, there is a single standalone episode set in the world of Critical Role but with entirely different characters that you can find here, and watch in just a few hours. And while I didn't request them because yuletide's "and" matching would have made things complicated, I would honestly adore fic about Devan and Dren, who are two adorable lesbians with a plan to escape the thieves' guild they've both become tangled up in, and run away together. It doesn't quite work out for them that way in the episode, but that's what AUs are for, right? And I personally believe that the dice gods were trying so hard to save them at the end of the episode, but even dice gods are eventually going to be subject to the rules of probability. If you go this route, I'd definitely prefer it that either Devan never planned to betray Dren, or changed her mind during the events of the episode, because as I mentioned above in my general likes, I believe strongly in happy endings, and these two darling ladies deserve better than to break one another's hearts just because Liam felt like running an evil campaign.
Prompt ideas:
-Episode 69 is the most recent at the time I'm writing this, so with the full understanding that this could be jossed before you're even reading this: post-69 fic about how Vex and Percy start exploring their feelings for one another would be wonderful. Or a post-69 fic in which Vax has a heart-to-heart with his sister about the hard-won lessons he's learned about being honest about your feelings and the benefits to be had of taking the risk and allowing yourself to be vulnerable. Everything that she's about to face is something he's already struggled his way through with Keyleth, and I would love to see a fic focusing on the relationship between these siblings in which he tries to impart a little bit of that wisdom onto her, and help her avoid some of the pitfalls he stumbled into along his way.
-I would also love to see fic just focusing on this twins and their relationship, whether with or without any outside romances. I love them and their relationship SO MUCH and anything focusing on the two of them would be great. Maybe pre-Vox Machina fic about the two of them when they were on their own and the only people in the world they could rely upon? Happy fluffy childhood shenanigans between the two of them, before Syldor came and took them from their mother and made everything awful? We've gotten some hints from Vax about how he initially felt about Trinket, so a fic exploring the time right after Vex brought him home and how Vax eventually warmed up to him would be wonderful, too.
-Alternately, or additionally: anything about Vex and Vax and VELORA. I was so, so taken with how adorable Velora was, and how much Vex and Vax loved her, and how much she looked up to and admired them, and I would honestly love anything exploring the relationship of these three siblings.
-As always: AUs! Vox Machina as rogues-turned-heroes in space? Vox Machina and an exploration of how their various roles translate into a modern AU? Canon AU in which the twins stayed in Syngorn and now Vex is facing an arranged marriage with Percy to secure an alliance between Syngorn and Whitestone? Or Vex is facing the same with Keyleth for the sake of an alliance with the ashari? There are a million options here and all of them would be a ton of fun.
Thank you again, author! I hope something in here caught your interest and was inspiring, but if not, or if you'd like more guidance, please don't hesitate to reach out to me or Sovin or Nell. I can't wait to see what you come up with!