Dear Yule Goat 2013 (!!)
Dear Yule Goat,
It seems that Yuletide is upon us! Whether I’m agonizing over nominations, writing Raylan Givens digging coal with Boyd Crowder, or reading expansions on my favorite Jonathan Coulton songs, this truly is the most wonderful time of the year for me, and I’m so excited to share one of my fandom loves with you this season. ♥
Also, my Yuletide letters are habitually over-long, so I apologize in advance! If you decide I am crazy and want to throw all my opinions out the window, please feel free to do so. Optional details are optional, and I know I will be thrilled with a story in any of these fandoms. This letter is an attempt to make it easier for you, not harder!
Things I love to see in fic include but are not limited to: awesome female characters, witty repartee, slapstick comedy, rhyming verse, diverse characters banding together, the apocalypse (zombie or otherwise), intrigue and deception, and sincere platonic love. Obviously, some of these are more suited to one fandom than others, and some of them might be mutually exclusive. It's not a checklist, I promise!
Any rating is great, from the stuff I could read to a six-year-old to the stuff I wouldn’t want my mother to see. I read, write, and love gen, het, slash and femslash. Pairing preferences, if applicable, are listed for specific fandoms. AUs are totally fine if you are caught by the desire to write, say, sky pirates, or historical fic from any period ever. (Or those zombies.)
I would prefer not to see a focus on suicide, eating disorders or extreme torture. Animal cruelty is probably out (with the possible exception of injuries sustained through Bovine Intervention) and I would really prefer not to read about underage characters in sexual situations. Short of that, anything goes!
☆⋰⋱★⋰⋱☆
Munchkin Cthulhu
The Cultist
Oh my gosh, I was so excited to see someone else nominate this! I had planned to do it and totally failed at nominations this year. So if you nominated it, just know that I already love you. In a totally non-creepy way. With very few tentacles, I promise.
I’m requesting The Cultist specifically because I play Cthulhu with the pure delight of being a Cultist always looming in my mind. If I am the one player stuck as a regular citizen, even going up a level cannot assuage my disappointment. Seriously, Cultists RULE. But this does not mean I would not love fic about Investigators, Lloyd Lloiger, or Tht Whch Hs N Vwls. I would be SUPER thrilled to see any of them! (The characters I meant to nominate and failed to were H.P. Munchcraft, and Cowthulhu from the Call of Cowthulhu expansion pack, so if you felt like working one of them in too, that would be icing on the cake!)
As far as potential plotlines go, I don’t even know where to begin. I would love something that followed the general path of the game (can you escape being a cultist?) or details about any single element of that crazy little universe. (Who is wearing the Miskatonic University T-shirt? What is the provenance of the Sushi Knife of Doom?) Infiltrating Snarkham Asylum! Campus Crusade for Cthulhu meetings! (Oh, ye elder gods, yes.)
Dark and gloomy tones would be awesome here, if only because the source material makes it so hilarious. I’m not averse to saving the town from Cultists, but I’m also happy with an ending along the lines of “Cowthulhu falls, everybody dies.”* Seriously, just go wild! Anything about this canon is bound to be amazing.
*Note: Cowthulhu appears in the Call of Cowthulhu expansion pack, not the base deck itself, so I am gleefully sharing the information that a card entitled “Bovine Intervention” allows Cowthulhu to fall from the sky, instantly killing a monster during combat. That being said, Cowthulhu is obviously not a required character in any way, shape, or tentacle.
----
Nashville (TV)
Rayna Jaymes
I meant to request more characters, but the fact is, it’s all about Rayna for me. That being said, you can write me fic about Rayna with just about any of the other nominated characters and I will be thrilled. This is a soapy, soapy show, and I kind of love that, so drama and interaction between the characters is really what I’m going for. (Also, I love how songwriting is such an obvious metaphor for sex on the show. Love it.) But any sort of character study of Rayna would also be awesome!
I ship Rayna/Deacon in that abstract, know it’s going to be a terrible idea but can’t help wanting it kind of way. (I think Teddy is an awful partner, but a pretty great parent, so fic that doesn’t demonize him is probably the way to go if you write about that particular love triangle.) I enjoy Rayna with Liam too. And I love Rayna as a mother. But I REALLY love her as a freakin’ amazing career woman.
Last season, I waited 21 episodes for the Rayna and Juliette mentoring/bonding moment of my dreams, and it was worth every minute. Any interaction between the two of them would be amazing, be it catty digs, or moments of earnest understanding, or the two of them really wanting to understand each other and not quite making it. I love the two of them together and I love Juliette, so I would also prefer that you show her human side as well as her overly ambitious one. And I would adore fic with Rayna acting as a mentor to Scarlett in any capacity. Fic regarding Will’s recent record label decision would also be absolutely great. (For the record, I ADORE Scarlett with Gunnar. I also adore Will in every way, and any fic about his struggles in the closet, or pairing Will and Gunnar, would be totally welcome too.)
Basically? Anything in the world about Rayna being awesome. Including Rayna having doubts and making mistakes, if that’s the story that speaks to you.
Side note: I’ve lived in Nashville for over ten years, and I’m pretty sure it’s the best city in the world. If you Wikipedia a couple of Nashville references to drop, I will geek out over them in the most ridiculous way imaginable. ;)
----
The Pirates’ Mixed-Up Voyage
Any
Oh, my gosh. This was the other fandom (besides Munchkin Cthulhu) that I was dead set on requesting this year and somehow someone else out there did it. ♥ Nominator, I have no idea who you are, but I can’t tell you how happy you have made me. Ahem.
I’m honestly not even sure where to start with this book, because I love every bit of it so deeply and passionately. Dark Doings in the Thousand Islands! And I would be thrilled beyond belief with anything in the world for this fandom. Worldbuilding, un-nominated characters, the story of how Towelly came to be in the bathroom cupboard of the Deadlock Orphanage - all are welcomed with open arms.
What I love most about this book is its whimsical yet oddly pedantic tone. World famous piano movers! Footnotes of the Guinness Book of Piratical Records! Clearly the whimsy is what drew me in (would you whisper to a whiting that the barricuda’s biting?) but I will never not love the matter-of-fact way in which it is presented.
And okay, since there were specific characters nominated, let me talk a little bit too about what I love about them!
Ivy Mangle. Anything with Ivy Mangle. Seriously. Talk about her gingerbread houses. Talk about her wicked, kidnapping ways. Talk about TURNING HER HUSBAND INTO A FIREDRAKE. Anything Ivy/Mangle would make my heart glad, pre- or post-firedrake. A story about Ivy and Silkweed colluding with wickedness (perhaps witnessed by Thomas Sump?) would be delightful. A showdown between Ivy Mangle and Nellie McTodd, be it a duel over Ivy's treacherous ways or a gingerbread bake-off, would possibly make my life.
Ahem. But there are OTHER characters in The Pirates' Mixed-Up Voyage, you say? Of course there are. There would be no Mixed-Up Voyage were it not for Lionel Wafer. Captain Wafer struggling with library cards and dog licenses before learning how to read. The troubles of Ye Olde Pyratte Shippe Tea Shoppe (before or after the piratical adventures of The Sinful Sausage.) The despair of forbidden love, the appeal of a woman in terrifying black boots and a belt all studded with spikes. A humbling lesson about proper respect for Winkle (who always knew the score.)
And doom-and-destiny Toothpick, and PACKY, with his happy-go-lucky haplessness, and resourceful Caramello (Little Nell!), and TOAD with his tin ears! And Carstairs! Oh my gosh. Seriously. Write me anything in the world in this fandom, and I will be overjoyed.
----
Sky High (2005)
Will Stronghold, Layla Williams, Warren Peace
So this is a request I’ve made before, because I just love this movie more than you could possibly know. (I wasn’t going to ask for it this year, but then I rewatched it, and that was that.) It’s also probably my “safety” fandom: if you matched on one of the other three, and find yourself at a total loss, this is a quick and easily obtainable source to offer you an exit strategy.
What do I love so much about this movie? (You mean aside from pretty much everything?) Mostly the collusion and delight of teenage friends saving the world. Gets me every time. Then the innocence and general silliness (“Perhaps time would go faster if we had an Xbox.”) The way it is both incredibly, unforgivably cheesy, and painfully earnest. That combination really works for me here. Like Layla, I was an incredibly earnest teenager, and I only wish I’d gone to an awesome superhero high school to add that amount of cheesy perfection. Also, anything with teenage superheroes ever makes me incredibly happy. Superheroes make me happy, period. :) And this world is so delightfully superheroic.
So what would I like to see? Fic focused on any one of the main characters, but not to the detriment of others, please. If you want to write shippy fic, my preferences are for Warren/Layla, Will/Layla, or Will/Warren/Layla, with all the characters aged up appropriately if you go the sexytimes route, please.* (Relationship fic in high school is fine, I'd just prefer it PG. Or maybe a very kid-friendly PG-13.) But gen fic would make me DEEPLY happy. I love all these characters and would rather not see any of them bashed or handwaved off, even if you do choose to go the pairing route in a non-poly way. Alternately, if you want to do some worldbuilding here as opposed to character fic, I would ultimately love that too. (A newscast about some heroic exploits? Sky High lesson plans?)
*If you really want to write explicit fic, I will repeat a previous year’s suggestion for “the humorous and deeply sultry adventures of The Commander and Jetstream.”
But! Plot suggestions of ultimate optional-ness! Potentially awesome stories for me could include an AU in which Will never gets his powers (and saves the day anyway! Or bonds with his father anyway! Or something!), an examination into Layla’s convictions (challenging them and giving her an opportunity for development would be great, but especially if she's able to keep being her earnest hippie self), or of course anything with Warren’s ongoing supervillain legacy (and I do mean anything.) But equally awesome would be anything slice-of-life about Sky High. Give me an "ordinary" day, and I'll be ticked pink Magenta. (Save the Citizen! The Mad Science lab! Coach Boomer! RON WILSON, BUS DRIVER.) As Will says, if life were suddenly to get fair, it wouldn’t be in high school, but when you add the complexity of superpowers to the teenage experience, how can you possibly go wrong? ;)
☆⋰⋱★⋰⋱☆
So thank you so much, dear Yuletide writer! I am overcome with delight at the thought of getting fic in any one of these fandoms of my heart. :) I know I have talked your ear off now, and please don’t feel overwhelmed or afraid I am a crazy person. Whatever you write is bound to be awesome!
Cheers!
tamarind (rogue)
P.S. My previous Yuletide letters can be found clicking on the "dear yule goat" tag. Examples of my previous Yuletide fic and some truly wonderful gifts can be seen at my AO3 account.
It seems that Yuletide is upon us! Whether I’m agonizing over nominations, writing Raylan Givens digging coal with Boyd Crowder, or reading expansions on my favorite Jonathan Coulton songs, this truly is the most wonderful time of the year for me, and I’m so excited to share one of my fandom loves with you this season. ♥
Also, my Yuletide letters are habitually over-long, so I apologize in advance! If you decide I am crazy and want to throw all my opinions out the window, please feel free to do so. Optional details are optional, and I know I will be thrilled with a story in any of these fandoms. This letter is an attempt to make it easier for you, not harder!
Things I love to see in fic include but are not limited to: awesome female characters, witty repartee, slapstick comedy, rhyming verse, diverse characters banding together, the apocalypse (zombie or otherwise), intrigue and deception, and sincere platonic love. Obviously, some of these are more suited to one fandom than others, and some of them might be mutually exclusive. It's not a checklist, I promise!
Any rating is great, from the stuff I could read to a six-year-old to the stuff I wouldn’t want my mother to see. I read, write, and love gen, het, slash and femslash. Pairing preferences, if applicable, are listed for specific fandoms. AUs are totally fine if you are caught by the desire to write, say, sky pirates, or historical fic from any period ever. (Or those zombies.)
I would prefer not to see a focus on suicide, eating disorders or extreme torture. Animal cruelty is probably out (with the possible exception of injuries sustained through Bovine Intervention) and I would really prefer not to read about underage characters in sexual situations. Short of that, anything goes!
☆⋰⋱★⋰⋱☆
Munchkin Cthulhu
The Cultist
Oh my gosh, I was so excited to see someone else nominate this! I had planned to do it and totally failed at nominations this year. So if you nominated it, just know that I already love you. In a totally non-creepy way. With very few tentacles, I promise.
I’m requesting The Cultist specifically because I play Cthulhu with the pure delight of being a Cultist always looming in my mind. If I am the one player stuck as a regular citizen, even going up a level cannot assuage my disappointment. Seriously, Cultists RULE. But this does not mean I would not love fic about Investigators, Lloyd Lloiger, or Tht Whch Hs N Vwls. I would be SUPER thrilled to see any of them! (The characters I meant to nominate and failed to were H.P. Munchcraft, and Cowthulhu from the Call of Cowthulhu expansion pack, so if you felt like working one of them in too, that would be icing on the cake!)
As far as potential plotlines go, I don’t even know where to begin. I would love something that followed the general path of the game (can you escape being a cultist?) or details about any single element of that crazy little universe. (Who is wearing the Miskatonic University T-shirt? What is the provenance of the Sushi Knife of Doom?) Infiltrating Snarkham Asylum! Campus Crusade for Cthulhu meetings! (Oh, ye elder gods, yes.)
Dark and gloomy tones would be awesome here, if only because the source material makes it so hilarious. I’m not averse to saving the town from Cultists, but I’m also happy with an ending along the lines of “Cowthulhu falls, everybody dies.”* Seriously, just go wild! Anything about this canon is bound to be amazing.
*Note: Cowthulhu appears in the Call of Cowthulhu expansion pack, not the base deck itself, so I am gleefully sharing the information that a card entitled “Bovine Intervention” allows Cowthulhu to fall from the sky, instantly killing a monster during combat. That being said, Cowthulhu is obviously not a required character in any way, shape, or tentacle.
----
Nashville (TV)
Rayna Jaymes
I meant to request more characters, but the fact is, it’s all about Rayna for me. That being said, you can write me fic about Rayna with just about any of the other nominated characters and I will be thrilled. This is a soapy, soapy show, and I kind of love that, so drama and interaction between the characters is really what I’m going for. (Also, I love how songwriting is such an obvious metaphor for sex on the show. Love it.) But any sort of character study of Rayna would also be awesome!
I ship Rayna/Deacon in that abstract, know it’s going to be a terrible idea but can’t help wanting it kind of way. (I think Teddy is an awful partner, but a pretty great parent, so fic that doesn’t demonize him is probably the way to go if you write about that particular love triangle.) I enjoy Rayna with Liam too. And I love Rayna as a mother. But I REALLY love her as a freakin’ amazing career woman.
Last season, I waited 21 episodes for the Rayna and Juliette mentoring/bonding moment of my dreams, and it was worth every minute. Any interaction between the two of them would be amazing, be it catty digs, or moments of earnest understanding, or the two of them really wanting to understand each other and not quite making it. I love the two of them together and I love Juliette, so I would also prefer that you show her human side as well as her overly ambitious one. And I would adore fic with Rayna acting as a mentor to Scarlett in any capacity. Fic regarding Will’s recent record label decision would also be absolutely great. (For the record, I ADORE Scarlett with Gunnar. I also adore Will in every way, and any fic about his struggles in the closet, or pairing Will and Gunnar, would be totally welcome too.)
Basically? Anything in the world about Rayna being awesome. Including Rayna having doubts and making mistakes, if that’s the story that speaks to you.
Side note: I’ve lived in Nashville for over ten years, and I’m pretty sure it’s the best city in the world. If you Wikipedia a couple of Nashville references to drop, I will geek out over them in the most ridiculous way imaginable. ;)
----
The Pirates’ Mixed-Up Voyage
Any
Oh, my gosh. This was the other fandom (besides Munchkin Cthulhu) that I was dead set on requesting this year and somehow someone else out there did it. ♥ Nominator, I have no idea who you are, but I can’t tell you how happy you have made me. Ahem.
I’m honestly not even sure where to start with this book, because I love every bit of it so deeply and passionately. Dark Doings in the Thousand Islands! And I would be thrilled beyond belief with anything in the world for this fandom. Worldbuilding, un-nominated characters, the story of how Towelly came to be in the bathroom cupboard of the Deadlock Orphanage - all are welcomed with open arms.
What I love most about this book is its whimsical yet oddly pedantic tone. World famous piano movers! Footnotes of the Guinness Book of Piratical Records! Clearly the whimsy is what drew me in (would you whisper to a whiting that the barricuda’s biting?) but I will never not love the matter-of-fact way in which it is presented.
And okay, since there were specific characters nominated, let me talk a little bit too about what I love about them!
Ivy Mangle. Anything with Ivy Mangle. Seriously. Talk about her gingerbread houses. Talk about her wicked, kidnapping ways. Talk about TURNING HER HUSBAND INTO A FIREDRAKE. Anything Ivy/Mangle would make my heart glad, pre- or post-firedrake. A story about Ivy and Silkweed colluding with wickedness (perhaps witnessed by Thomas Sump?) would be delightful. A showdown between Ivy Mangle and Nellie McTodd, be it a duel over Ivy's treacherous ways or a gingerbread bake-off, would possibly make my life.
Ahem. But there are OTHER characters in The Pirates' Mixed-Up Voyage, you say? Of course there are. There would be no Mixed-Up Voyage were it not for Lionel Wafer. Captain Wafer struggling with library cards and dog licenses before learning how to read. The troubles of Ye Olde Pyratte Shippe Tea Shoppe (before or after the piratical adventures of The Sinful Sausage.) The despair of forbidden love, the appeal of a woman in terrifying black boots and a belt all studded with spikes. A humbling lesson about proper respect for Winkle (who always knew the score.)
And doom-and-destiny Toothpick, and PACKY, with his happy-go-lucky haplessness, and resourceful Caramello (Little Nell!), and TOAD with his tin ears! And Carstairs! Oh my gosh. Seriously. Write me anything in the world in this fandom, and I will be overjoyed.
----
Sky High (2005)
Will Stronghold, Layla Williams, Warren Peace
So this is a request I’ve made before, because I just love this movie more than you could possibly know. (I wasn’t going to ask for it this year, but then I rewatched it, and that was that.) It’s also probably my “safety” fandom: if you matched on one of the other three, and find yourself at a total loss, this is a quick and easily obtainable source to offer you an exit strategy.
What do I love so much about this movie? (You mean aside from pretty much everything?) Mostly the collusion and delight of teenage friends saving the world. Gets me every time. Then the innocence and general silliness (“Perhaps time would go faster if we had an Xbox.”) The way it is both incredibly, unforgivably cheesy, and painfully earnest. That combination really works for me here. Like Layla, I was an incredibly earnest teenager, and I only wish I’d gone to an awesome superhero high school to add that amount of cheesy perfection. Also, anything with teenage superheroes ever makes me incredibly happy. Superheroes make me happy, period. :) And this world is so delightfully superheroic.
So what would I like to see? Fic focused on any one of the main characters, but not to the detriment of others, please. If you want to write shippy fic, my preferences are for Warren/Layla, Will/Layla, or Will/Warren/Layla, with all the characters aged up appropriately if you go the sexytimes route, please.* (Relationship fic in high school is fine, I'd just prefer it PG. Or maybe a very kid-friendly PG-13.) But gen fic would make me DEEPLY happy. I love all these characters and would rather not see any of them bashed or handwaved off, even if you do choose to go the pairing route in a non-poly way. Alternately, if you want to do some worldbuilding here as opposed to character fic, I would ultimately love that too. (A newscast about some heroic exploits? Sky High lesson plans?)
*If you really want to write explicit fic, I will repeat a previous year’s suggestion for “the humorous and deeply sultry adventures of The Commander and Jetstream.”
But! Plot suggestions of ultimate optional-ness! Potentially awesome stories for me could include an AU in which Will never gets his powers (and saves the day anyway! Or bonds with his father anyway! Or something!), an examination into Layla’s convictions (challenging them and giving her an opportunity for development would be great, but especially if she's able to keep being her earnest hippie self), or of course anything with Warren’s ongoing supervillain legacy (and I do mean anything.) But equally awesome would be anything slice-of-life about Sky High. Give me an "ordinary" day, and I'll be ticked pink Magenta. (Save the Citizen! The Mad Science lab! Coach Boomer! RON WILSON, BUS DRIVER.) As Will says, if life were suddenly to get fair, it wouldn’t be in high school, but when you add the complexity of superpowers to the teenage experience, how can you possibly go wrong? ;)
☆⋰⋱★⋰⋱☆
So thank you so much, dear Yuletide writer! I am overcome with delight at the thought of getting fic in any one of these fandoms of my heart. :) I know I have talked your ear off now, and please don’t feel overwhelmed or afraid I am a crazy person. Whatever you write is bound to be awesome!
Cheers!
tamarind (rogue)
P.S. My previous Yuletide letters can be found clicking on the "dear yule goat" tag. Examples of my previous Yuletide fic and some truly wonderful gifts can be seen at my AO3 account.