Yuletide Letter 2015 (2nd Update: 12/7)
Dear My Amazing Masked Writer,
Hello, there and thank you, thank you, thank you very much. You are one of my very most favorite parts of the holiday season. Getting to write a fic, and knowing there will be something shiny and brilliant waiting for me on Christmas morning, made from my rarest loves by someone with gorgeous artisan hands. Thank you. Really. So much.
I want you to have tons fun with this challenge and not feel pigeon holed, thus do not feel locked, chained and bound to any of the details I will place below. I am a fan of all relationships, slash and het and fem and gen with equal squee. So please feel free to go with whatever fits you best in your writing and know that I'll love it regardless.
I do not like: characters who are one dimensional, characters who sound like they are fourteen or twenty when they aren't, weak underdeveloped villains, nonconsensual anything scenes (unless it's actually show in the canon before hand), abuse, needless character bashing or setting up of people (character a and b go together in this fic thus c and d and e and f must be together to make a and b have happened), weak women, and really unless it's very well written, and has a solid point to plot, I skim most sex scenes.
Things that should definitely be avoided, because they get me on edgy/uncomfortable/annoyed incredibly quickly. Mpreg, possessiveness/overruling jealousy, embarrassment/humiliation, first person present-tense, RPF of all kinds, prejudice, racism, misogyny, bigotry, completely breaking something canon already proved, hatesex, hyper-dependence, high school AUs, furies, infantilism, BDSM (in canons or character it doesn't fit in).
Not all of these dislikes are absolutely universal. I've enjoyed several of these that were done amazingly well, by writers I trust, in canon bubbles I trust. I don't have that same kind of safety net in an anonymous exchange though, and so it's easier for me side with caution over reckless abandon.
I like: plots and character development, especially deeper into the canon which we haven't gotten to see. I love relationships; friends, family, lovers (together and unrequited). Prose that is written as poetry. Good spelling and proper grammar. Narrators (though this one is very hard to have pulled off correctly). I like happy and I like dark. Set the right, true depth in a scene and I'll be there whatever you put it. Scenery and setting, and all the people and places this connects to being present is important.
Strong characters, over whelming emotions, hard truths, hypocritical humanity (or beingness), to be able to feel and touch and hear what is happening, details that fill out the world around my characters makes my heart soar. Emotions, banter, secrets revealed, journals, poetry, literacy. Believable alternate universes, flawed characters, formal wear, bare feet, multiculturalism, twisted endings and what if endings. All sorts of weather, especially windy fall, snowy winter, sunny spring and rain.
I like case fics, adventure fics, family fics, team fics, mystery fics, snapshot fics, back in the day flashback fics. I like plot, so much that it's hard to have that be three tiny words. I adore, above and beyond everything, actual canon details and historical call backs/shout outs to things that happened before. I like worlds that are diverse. I like characters/casts that are diverse. I like varieties of and diversity in everything: women, men, children, race, skin color, multiculturalism, religion, age, disabled, not disabled, gay, straight, bisexual, asexual, gender box figuring out.
I love love stories, too, perhaps, best of all. I don't mean just fluff, but any kind of story even unrequited or parted lovers, deaths, family, friends, etc love stories. If it has love in it somewhere, that is true and beating and not perfect, I will love it.
~*~
I. Sense8
Characters: Riley Blue ,Will Gorski, Whispers, Sun Bak
This was one my three favorite finds for the last summer. I have a mad cap love for this series in general and Riley Blue in specific, but I honestly love everyone and I want to know everything. I love every setting and how every character can exist with every other character regardless of distance or circumstance. I love the incredible way everything in woven together for this group because of what's happened to them, and because of my love burgeoning everywhere, you could almost write me anything and I'd love it.
I would love something about how everyone is handling what happened to Will. How the pack on the boat is going. Or a day in the lives of all these people. Maybe even a moment from childhood, or another mass shared something that we didn't see, or something we did, but seen through everyones eyes there equally in the writing. I would love to know about other groups, and the group that 'gave birth' to theirs. Really I would love it all so much.
II. Killjoys
Characters: Dutch, D'avin Jaqobis, Johnny Jaqobis, Lucy
This is another of my three favorite finds from the summer. I feel hook, line and sinker for this one. Sci-Fi western, with bounty hunters, mysterious government spies/assigns, political intrigue and back biting, cheeky gay bar tenders along with cheeky talking ships, and monks making religious-civil unrest which is headed to revolution? Sign me, the hell, up for all of that. And then it only got better and better. From harem girls, to bombs, to back stories.
I don't have a favorite character that isn't "all of the three of them together," but i'm definitely interested in the backgrounds of D'avin and then Dutch most. I would love pieces on either of them. I'd love anything in-depth about where D'avin ended up and what he did while trying to make himself a better man. I'd love the missing time of D'avin's. I'd love pieces of Dutches childhood.
I have a massive love for the Dutch-Johnny family bond (from watching each others back to picking Dutch over D'avin and even reading comic books outlouf to Dutch) and I'd love to see how that formed. I'd, also, love to see anything about how the Jaqobis Boys grew up together, shadows and all.
III. The Expanse
Characters: Naomi Nagata, Amos Burton, Alex Kamal, Bobbie Draper
I love The Expanse. End Stop. Like entirely. Completely. I love the universe. I love it's growth. I love Miller, and the molecule and I've gotten compelled about and come to care for every single narrator that's ever been in any book or novella extra piece. I have read all of them. I've even reread half of them, in preparation for the show coming at the end of the year.
I would love nearly anything and everything from this. Tell me more about the rag-tag 'found family' crew learning to be a family, or realizing they are one. Tell me more about where any of them came from and what they went through before they got her. Tell me more about the Mao's. Tell me about Bobbi and Chrisjen's working relationship. Or more about Bobbi's family. Or more about Chrisjen's family or background or tell me the story of Chrisjen and The Expanse Events through Arjun's eyes. Tell me anything and everything and I will love it beyond words.
VI. The Night Circus
Characters: Celia Bowen, Marco Alisdair, Penelope Aislin "Poppet" Murray, Bailey Alden Clarke
Guh. This is one of my favorite books read during the last year. It was recommended by a friend and once I opened it I was glued like crazy for days on end, swallowed up in the sharp contrasting whites and blacks, presents and futures and pasts, in the magic and fatality. I love this world, incontrovertibly. It's glorious and the prose is beyond the world into a magic of its own.
Again, so much would make me happy here. I would love to know more about how Celia and Marco get on after the events of the book, now that they are together but altogether in another place they never expected to be. I would love to know about how the Circus is taken care of my the twins and Bailey. I would love to know the story of Bailey and Poppet. I would love to know more about the story of the bet, with the people before this one. I would love to hear more about the tents that were made and the people in the circus. Everything, everything.
V. Raven Boys Cycle
Characters: Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III, Ronan Lynch, Adam Parrish
This book is magic, pure and simple. I love it's hard edges and rough magic, and the way it cuts both with awkward friendship and absolute honesty about the emotions of these characters who have been trust into insane places. I love the main four endlessly strong, every single one of them. I love Blue's family. I love The Grey Man. I love the mysteries, and the ley lines, and the creeping shadows.
This is another one you can't go wrong on nearly anything. Tell me about anyone's childhood, or their summers or winter's away if they have them. Tell me about an average day for the group, all across their places they touch the world. A day in Blue's family's house. Tell me more about the forest. Or Blue & Gansey falling in love. Or Ronan and Adam falling in love. More about what is happening to Noah The Ghost now. Tell me what The Grey Man is up to, and going through, since he made his choice. Tell me about The Sleeping King. Tell me about Gansey first discovering all of this. Everything and anything would be magic here, as well.
VI. Green Rider
Characters: Karigan Gladheon, King Zachary, Lady Estora
Okay, so being honest. This would probably be taken off my options if I chose now because I'm uncertain I've done my potential writer some problems. I just finished book three and I mean to start book four during sometime next month, but I'll never manage to make it through four and five before getting this (unless I give up everything, even though I *do* already know the big spoilers in Book 5). I just feel it might be hard to ask for a story and keep from getting spoilers, too.
I will make an effort to get through both of these before Christmas in case you are my writer, here. I love Karigan, and The Green Riders. I love the call. I love the work. I love those people, the institution. I love the magic and the harsh, gorgeous, sweeping world. I love the magic and the way it's wound into the past, both on the good and the bad side. I love the magic of the wall. I love the forbidden romance, and I love Estora - -though I'm still not convinced that I love Zachary and Estora together.
Update I: I have finished Blackveil and am now in Mirror Sight.
Update II: I have finished Mirror Sight.
Thank you, thank you, and thank you, again. I am already bowled over with your amazingness just offered to write my story and I hope it wasn't so bad having to wait for me to write up this letter. Have some metaphorical milk and cookies, or dark hot chocolate with marshmallows and mint in them, as I would love to spoil you with everything already in my gratitude.
Also, while I will leave you, I celebrate Yule as a religious day of birth and Christmas as family day, so this does not have to be set near the holiday. (But I do have a soft spot for the rare holiday fic done well, too, so long as they really aren't 'miracle' reliant or religious propaganda. Christmas and Yuletide, the challenge itself in this season, just tends to give me warm fuzzies, too.)
[This entry was originally posted at http://wanderlustlover.dreamwidth.org/2302877.html. Comment on either at your leisure.]
Hello, there and thank you, thank you, thank you very much. You are one of my very most favorite parts of the holiday season. Getting to write a fic, and knowing there will be something shiny and brilliant waiting for me on Christmas morning, made from my rarest loves by someone with gorgeous artisan hands. Thank you. Really. So much.
I want you to have tons fun with this challenge and not feel pigeon holed, thus do not feel locked, chained and bound to any of the details I will place below. I am a fan of all relationships, slash and het and fem and gen with equal squee. So please feel free to go with whatever fits you best in your writing and know that I'll love it regardless.
I do not like: characters who are one dimensional, characters who sound like they are fourteen or twenty when they aren't, weak underdeveloped villains, nonconsensual anything scenes (unless it's actually show in the canon before hand), abuse, needless character bashing or setting up of people (character a and b go together in this fic thus c and d and e and f must be together to make a and b have happened), weak women, and really unless it's very well written, and has a solid point to plot, I skim most sex scenes.
Things that should definitely be avoided, because they get me on edgy/uncomfortable/annoyed incredibly quickly. Mpreg, possessiveness/overruling jealousy, embarrassment/humiliation, first person present-tense, RPF of all kinds, prejudice, racism, misogyny, bigotry, completely breaking something canon already proved, hatesex, hyper-dependence, high school AUs, furies, infantilism, BDSM (in canons or character it doesn't fit in).
Not all of these dislikes are absolutely universal. I've enjoyed several of these that were done amazingly well, by writers I trust, in canon bubbles I trust. I don't have that same kind of safety net in an anonymous exchange though, and so it's easier for me side with caution over reckless abandon.
I like: plots and character development, especially deeper into the canon which we haven't gotten to see. I love relationships; friends, family, lovers (together and unrequited). Prose that is written as poetry. Good spelling and proper grammar. Narrators (though this one is very hard to have pulled off correctly). I like happy and I like dark. Set the right, true depth in a scene and I'll be there whatever you put it. Scenery and setting, and all the people and places this connects to being present is important.
Strong characters, over whelming emotions, hard truths, hypocritical humanity (or beingness), to be able to feel and touch and hear what is happening, details that fill out the world around my characters makes my heart soar. Emotions, banter, secrets revealed, journals, poetry, literacy. Believable alternate universes, flawed characters, formal wear, bare feet, multiculturalism, twisted endings and what if endings. All sorts of weather, especially windy fall, snowy winter, sunny spring and rain.
I like case fics, adventure fics, family fics, team fics, mystery fics, snapshot fics, back in the day flashback fics. I like plot, so much that it's hard to have that be three tiny words. I adore, above and beyond everything, actual canon details and historical call backs/shout outs to things that happened before. I like worlds that are diverse. I like characters/casts that are diverse. I like varieties of and diversity in everything: women, men, children, race, skin color, multiculturalism, religion, age, disabled, not disabled, gay, straight, bisexual, asexual, gender box figuring out.
I love love stories, too, perhaps, best of all. I don't mean just fluff, but any kind of story even unrequited or parted lovers, deaths, family, friends, etc love stories. If it has love in it somewhere, that is true and beating and not perfect, I will love it.
~*~
I. Sense8
Characters: Riley Blue ,Will Gorski, Whispers, Sun Bak
This was one my three favorite finds for the last summer. I have a mad cap love for this series in general and Riley Blue in specific, but I honestly love everyone and I want to know everything. I love every setting and how every character can exist with every other character regardless of distance or circumstance. I love the incredible way everything in woven together for this group because of what's happened to them, and because of my love burgeoning everywhere, you could almost write me anything and I'd love it.
I would love something about how everyone is handling what happened to Will. How the pack on the boat is going. Or a day in the lives of all these people. Maybe even a moment from childhood, or another mass shared something that we didn't see, or something we did, but seen through everyones eyes there equally in the writing. I would love to know about other groups, and the group that 'gave birth' to theirs. Really I would love it all so much.
II. Killjoys
Characters: Dutch, D'avin Jaqobis, Johnny Jaqobis, Lucy
This is another of my three favorite finds from the summer. I feel hook, line and sinker for this one. Sci-Fi western, with bounty hunters, mysterious government spies/assigns, political intrigue and back biting, cheeky gay bar tenders along with cheeky talking ships, and monks making religious-civil unrest which is headed to revolution? Sign me, the hell, up for all of that. And then it only got better and better. From harem girls, to bombs, to back stories.
I don't have a favorite character that isn't "all of the three of them together," but i'm definitely interested in the backgrounds of D'avin and then Dutch most. I would love pieces on either of them. I'd love anything in-depth about where D'avin ended up and what he did while trying to make himself a better man. I'd love the missing time of D'avin's. I'd love pieces of Dutches childhood.
I have a massive love for the Dutch-Johnny family bond (from watching each others back to picking Dutch over D'avin and even reading comic books outlouf to Dutch) and I'd love to see how that formed. I'd, also, love to see anything about how the Jaqobis Boys grew up together, shadows and all.
III. The Expanse
Characters: Naomi Nagata, Amos Burton, Alex Kamal, Bobbie Draper
I love The Expanse. End Stop. Like entirely. Completely. I love the universe. I love it's growth. I love Miller, and the molecule and I've gotten compelled about and come to care for every single narrator that's ever been in any book or novella extra piece. I have read all of them. I've even reread half of them, in preparation for the show coming at the end of the year.
I would love nearly anything and everything from this. Tell me more about the rag-tag 'found family' crew learning to be a family, or realizing they are one. Tell me more about where any of them came from and what they went through before they got her. Tell me more about the Mao's. Tell me about Bobbi and Chrisjen's working relationship. Or more about Bobbi's family. Or more about Chrisjen's family or background or tell me the story of Chrisjen and The Expanse Events through Arjun's eyes. Tell me anything and everything and I will love it beyond words.
VI. The Night Circus
Characters: Celia Bowen, Marco Alisdair, Penelope Aislin "Poppet" Murray, Bailey Alden Clarke
Guh. This is one of my favorite books read during the last year. It was recommended by a friend and once I opened it I was glued like crazy for days on end, swallowed up in the sharp contrasting whites and blacks, presents and futures and pasts, in the magic and fatality. I love this world, incontrovertibly. It's glorious and the prose is beyond the world into a magic of its own.
Again, so much would make me happy here. I would love to know more about how Celia and Marco get on after the events of the book, now that they are together but altogether in another place they never expected to be. I would love to know about how the Circus is taken care of my the twins and Bailey. I would love to know the story of Bailey and Poppet. I would love to know more about the story of the bet, with the people before this one. I would love to hear more about the tents that were made and the people in the circus. Everything, everything.
V. Raven Boys Cycle
Characters: Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III, Ronan Lynch, Adam Parrish
This book is magic, pure and simple. I love it's hard edges and rough magic, and the way it cuts both with awkward friendship and absolute honesty about the emotions of these characters who have been trust into insane places. I love the main four endlessly strong, every single one of them. I love Blue's family. I love The Grey Man. I love the mysteries, and the ley lines, and the creeping shadows.
This is another one you can't go wrong on nearly anything. Tell me about anyone's childhood, or their summers or winter's away if they have them. Tell me about an average day for the group, all across their places they touch the world. A day in Blue's family's house. Tell me more about the forest. Or Blue & Gansey falling in love. Or Ronan and Adam falling in love. More about what is happening to Noah The Ghost now. Tell me what The Grey Man is up to, and going through, since he made his choice. Tell me about The Sleeping King. Tell me about Gansey first discovering all of this. Everything and anything would be magic here, as well.
VI. Green Rider
Characters: Karigan Gladheon, King Zachary, Lady Estora
Okay, so being honest. This would probably be taken off my options if I chose now because I'm uncertain I've done my potential writer some problems. I just finished book three and I mean to start book four during sometime next month, but I'll never manage to make it through four and five before getting this (unless I give up everything, even though I *do* already know the big spoilers in Book 5). I just feel it might be hard to ask for a story and keep from getting spoilers, too.
I will make an effort to get through both of these before Christmas in case you are my writer, here. I love Karigan, and The Green Riders. I love the call. I love the work. I love those people, the institution. I love the magic and the harsh, gorgeous, sweeping world. I love the magic and the way it's wound into the past, both on the good and the bad side. I love the magic of the wall. I love the forbidden romance, and I love Estora - -though I'm still not convinced that I love Zachary and Estora together.
Update I: I have finished Blackveil and am now in Mirror Sight.
Update II: I have finished Mirror Sight.
Thank you, thank you, and thank you, again. I am already bowled over with your amazingness just offered to write my story and I hope it wasn't so bad having to wait for me to write up this letter. Have some metaphorical milk and cookies, or dark hot chocolate with marshmallows and mint in them, as I would love to spoil you with everything already in my gratitude.
Also, while I will leave you, I celebrate Yule as a religious day of birth and Christmas as family day, so this does not have to be set near the holiday. (But I do have a soft spot for the rare holiday fic done well, too, so long as they really aren't 'miracle' reliant or religious propaganda. Christmas and Yuletide, the challenge itself in this season, just tends to give me warm fuzzies, too.)
[This entry was originally posted at http://wanderlustlover.dreamwidth.org/2302877.html. Comment on either at your leisure.]