Dear Yuletide Writer 2013
Oct. 7th, 2013 04:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minutia_rHello there, yuletide writer! It’s the most wonderful time of the year again--the time when some poor sap has to write me a story for a canon that barely anyone else has ever heard of, let alone written fanfic for. And this year, you’re the poor sap!
Seriously though, if I were you I wouldn’t worry if you have a completely different idea for a story than the optional details below, or if you don’t happen to be the world’s greatest writer, or if you get hit by the Real Life bus and end up frantically banging on the keyboard two hours before the deadline--if by Christmas I have a story in one of these fandoms, I can pretty much guarantee I’ll be thrilled. It’s not like I’m going to be able to compare it unfavorably to the dozens of other stories in these fandoms, right?
But, seeing as how “anything” is a terrible prompt, have some optional details. Also, have a brief description of the canons I’m requesting, in case you don’t want to write for the fandom we matched on, or I’ve made it to the pinch hit list again, or you’re idly curious, or you want to write me a treat. Or just on the off-chance that anyone reading this letter wants to consume some excellent (but obscure) media.
Fallen Angels (Marvel Comics)
Characters: Chance, Ariel, Roberto
About the canon: Roberto Da Costa runs away from his school and superhero team due to ~teen angst, and falls in with a group of petty mutant criminals, including Chance, a Korean-American street kid with a switchblade and the ability to cancel or boost other people's powers, and Ariel, a glam alien with mind-control and spatial manipulation powers. But some of Roberto's old friends are searching for him, and Ariel has a mysterious agenda of her own. Wackiness ensues! The prose is purple, the teen angst is over-the-top, the worldbuilding is gonzo even by the standards of superhero comics, and it is so delicious.
Optional details: When I read this as a kid I shipped Chance/Roberto so hard. Then I reread it as an adult and wondered how I'd missed all the Chance/Ariel. I would love anything for either of these pairings, and Ariel/Chance/Roberto would lead to dangerous levels of squee. I'm not that familiar with current doings in the Marvel Universe, but Roberto meeting up with either or both of the others in 616-now would be cool, just, you know. Be generous with explaining what’s going on? (I understand Ariel was briefly an X-Man, and is currently dead? As if that's ever stopped characters in the Marvel Universe.) The further adventures of the Fallen Angels post-series would be awesome, too. I've always wanted to see Chance bring down Reverend Park, and I'd be intrigued to read about Ariel learning to interact with people, and trying to figure out the whole empathy thing when she can basically make people do whatever she wants without realizing she's doing it much of the time.
The Dunderheads Series - Paul Fleischman
Characters: Any
About the canon: A couple of picture books (The Dunderheads and The Dunderheads Behind Bars) chronicle the misadventures of a group of kids, each with their own unique talent, as they pit their wits against their nasty teacher (and in the second book, her equally nasty chief-of-police brother). It is charming as fuck--a bit like what would happen if Roald Dahl and Charles Addams got together to write Ocean’s Eleven for preschoolers.
Optional Details: I’d really love to see casefic for this--some other criminal or semi-criminal caper that the kids pull off. Or else, where do their unique talents take them later in life? (Any or all of the kids--I nominated the four I did because I only got four slots, but if you want to write a story focussing on grown-up Nails, for instance, that would be peachy keen with me.) I kind of ship Einstein and Hollywood, and would be interested in reading how the somewhat skewed ideas about romance she’s picked up from movies collide with his unconventional approach to problem solving and how both of those things collide with the reality of them being kids trying this out for the first time before they’re quite ready for it. (Whether “this” is grade-school romance or sex or the whole marriage-and-kids-and-building-a-life-together would depend on what stage of their lives you choose to set it.)
Or else, it was established in the second book that Hollywood is in online fandom (though not necessarily fic-writing fandom). So write me a fandom not-actually-AU--can the other kids help her in her quest to become a BNF?
Lawyers Guns and Money - Warren Zevon (Song)
Characters: The Waitress Who is Also a Russian Agent
About the canon: Once upon a time, there was an overprivileged young idiot who went traveling abroad and got in trouble way over their head. “Lawyers, Guns, and Money” is the young idiot’s plea to their wealthy and influential father to extricate them from this trouble using any means at his disposal. It’s also a rollicking song, only three and a half minutes long, and you can listen to it (and read the lyrics) here.
Optional details: I want the story of the waitress who is also a Russian agent! What’s her mission? Is the narrator really as innocent a dupe as they claim? (Yes is a perfectly acceptable answer.) Does she manage to make her escape and leave the narrator in the soup; does she also wind up in trouble that she needs her ingenuity to get out of; or does she come back to rescue the narrator when their dad’s lawyers, guns, and money can’t? Or some other possibility I haven’t thought of?
Please note that although Warren Zevon was a man I don’t insist on the narrator of this song being one. Not that I object to it--go with whatever you think makes the most interesting story.
Knights-Errant (Webcomic)
Characters: Kadeen
About the canon: Swashbuckling mercenaries swashbuckle their way across Renaissance-ish Europe-ish, with angsty backstories and loads of sibling and quasi-sibling feelings. Also there is pretty art. Also it has a cast of characters with diverse ethnicities and sexualities, but I'm reluctant to bring that up because a) some of it is spoilers and b) that makes it sound like issuefic (or, well, issue-original-comics) and it doesn't read like that to me at all. But I have brought it up anyway, so.
The archive binge is trivial! You can read it here. It’s been on hiatus for a while, and while I hope it starts updating again before Christmas, and I certainly plan on being caught up if it does, I also have no objection to your writing something that’s current as of Chapter 4, page 5, which is where it’s at now. Also, I do follow the creator’s tumblr and am aware of various word-of-god things (though probably not all of them) but I don’t expect you to treat them as canon; I never do.
Optional details: Isn’t Kadeen a sweetheart, though? I mean he has obviously had a pretty shitty life, and he still has a pretty shitty position in society, and he’s angry about it, but he hasn’t let it turn him into an asshole. Unlike some other assholes I could mention. Whom I also extremely fond of, but I just have a special soft spot for decent human beings, and Kadeen strikes me as one, despite the whole killing people for a living thing.
Anyway, I love Kadeen’s quasi-brotherly relationship with Oswald, and I’d love to read more of it, whether it’s their mutual backstory or a slice of mercenary life. Feel free to go as dark as you like with this one--it’s clear that Kadeen and Oswald are very important to each other but they can also hurt each other like no one else, and they don’t always appreciate where the other is coming from. I’d also be interested in reading more about Kadeen’s uneasy friendship with Amir.
Fox in Socks - Dr. Seuss
Characters: Fox in Socks, Mr. Knox
About the canon: Fox in Socks is a picture book by Dr. Seuss about a fox (in socks) who challenges a woebegone yellow individual of indeterminate species to pronounce a series of ever-more-difficult tongue twisters. It’s a classic!
Optional details: One of the things you do when you are a parent of a small child is read the same picture books over and over, and one of the things you do when you read the same picture books over and over is think way too much about them. (At least for values of you that include me.)
And this is how I became convinced that Mr. Knox and Mr. Fox are in some sort of (not necessarily sexual) D/s relationship. Why else does Mr. Knox put up with Mr. Fox’s increasingly bizarre and capricious demands? Also, check out this illustration:
I rest my case.
Chronicles of the Kencyrath - PC Hodgell
Characters: Tirandys, Lyra Lack-Wit Caineron, Nightshade
About the canon: Six books (and counting) chronicle the adventures of Jame--an avatar of the destructive face of god and definitely someone you don’t want to go on a camping trip with--as she struggles to find a place for herself among the people who cast her out when she was a child and on the world that would rather her people hadn’t arrived there in the first place. It's got everything fans like: magical adventures, kung fu, secret princesses, incest, thieves' guilds, HONOR!, incest, psychic unicorns, incest, kitties, and incest.
Optional details: These are some of my favorite characters in the series, and ones that I wish got more page time, but I certainly don’t expect you to get all of them (or even any two of them) into a single story. A story about any one of them would be lovely, though.
I’d love to see the story of the Fall, or its lead-up/aftermath, from Tirandys’ point of view, and his relationships with Gerridon, Jamethiel and/or Terribend. One detail that has intrigued me since I read it is that Tirandys developed his version of the Senethar as a gift to Jamethiel--a story about that would be great. Either that or something with Jame’s childhood and adolescence in Perimal Darkling, and the relationship between the two of them. And if it goes to a Jame/Tirandys place, well, this is the Chronicles of the Kencyrath--it wouldn’t go amiss is what I’m saying.
How much do I love Lyra Lack-Wit? Despite the name, I don't think she's actually stupid—but she has been deliberately kept ignorant, and away from any access to power, both in the secret corridors of the women's world and in the wider sphere. Her father actually contracted her for a marriage outside the Kencyrath; he couldn't have said, "You are an entirely disposable pawn" much plainer. And yet Lyra remains relentlessly cheerful, which is part of why I find her so appealing. Also—and this is another thing that leads to her being seen as stupid—she has basically no impulse control. But the flipside of never taking time to think about things is being a quick thinker, and Lyra has several times demonstrated her ability to act before anyone else gets a chance to. She can be terribly, thoughtlessly cruel. And she has a for-serious-canonical crush on Jame (at one point she says in her internal narration that Jame is the sister of her choice, and we all know what sister-friend means to a Highborn lady) which I'd love to see explored.
I find Shade a really fascinating, complex, prickly character, and there are lots of angles to her that I’d love to see explored. What was her childhood like, in Wilden or wherever it was; who is/was her mother, and did her influence serve to counteract Rawneth and Kenan’s and help Shade become the independent actor that we see in the books? I’d love to read about her relationship with Addy, or see the events of the books she was in from her point of view, especially her growing knowledge of her own darkling nature. I also find her loyalty-crush on Randiroc to be absolutely adorable and would adore anything with the two of them. Also, I’m just saying--she’s a shapeshifter and he shares his consciousness with a swarm of carnivorous insects, the sex would be incredibly weird and hopefully awesome.
As far as general likes/dislikes go, I really like all kinds of fic, from gen to shippy (I am a dedicated multishipper and will happily read any rating, any number/gender of participants), from warm-and-fluffy to dark (kill my favorite characters, please!), from plotty and action-packed to intense conversations on the Formless Plane of Dialogue (I don't tend to like extremely introspective stories where there's no interaction, however). I'm not terribly fond of AUs of the coffee-shop/university/whatever variety, but I like canon-divergence AUs and fusions and crossovers when they're clever.
If for some reason you want to stalk me, I am dead easy to stalk; I'm minutia_r (or occasionally minutia-r) all over the internet: LJ/DW, AO3, tumblr, deviantart, ff.net, and probably one or two other places I don't recall off-hand.
Thank you, happy writing, and I hope you get something you love for yuletide too!
Seriously though, if I were you I wouldn’t worry if you have a completely different idea for a story than the optional details below, or if you don’t happen to be the world’s greatest writer, or if you get hit by the Real Life bus and end up frantically banging on the keyboard two hours before the deadline--if by Christmas I have a story in one of these fandoms, I can pretty much guarantee I’ll be thrilled. It’s not like I’m going to be able to compare it unfavorably to the dozens of other stories in these fandoms, right?
But, seeing as how “anything” is a terrible prompt, have some optional details. Also, have a brief description of the canons I’m requesting, in case you don’t want to write for the fandom we matched on, or I’ve made it to the pinch hit list again, or you’re idly curious, or you want to write me a treat. Or just on the off-chance that anyone reading this letter wants to consume some excellent (but obscure) media.
Fallen Angels (Marvel Comics)
Characters: Chance, Ariel, Roberto
About the canon: Roberto Da Costa runs away from his school and superhero team due to ~teen angst, and falls in with a group of petty mutant criminals, including Chance, a Korean-American street kid with a switchblade and the ability to cancel or boost other people's powers, and Ariel, a glam alien with mind-control and spatial manipulation powers. But some of Roberto's old friends are searching for him, and Ariel has a mysterious agenda of her own. Wackiness ensues! The prose is purple, the teen angst is over-the-top, the worldbuilding is gonzo even by the standards of superhero comics, and it is so delicious.
Optional details: When I read this as a kid I shipped Chance/Roberto so hard. Then I reread it as an adult and wondered how I'd missed all the Chance/Ariel. I would love anything for either of these pairings, and Ariel/Chance/Roberto would lead to dangerous levels of squee. I'm not that familiar with current doings in the Marvel Universe, but Roberto meeting up with either or both of the others in 616-now would be cool, just, you know. Be generous with explaining what’s going on? (I understand Ariel was briefly an X-Man, and is currently dead? As if that's ever stopped characters in the Marvel Universe.) The further adventures of the Fallen Angels post-series would be awesome, too. I've always wanted to see Chance bring down Reverend Park, and I'd be intrigued to read about Ariel learning to interact with people, and trying to figure out the whole empathy thing when she can basically make people do whatever she wants without realizing she's doing it much of the time.
The Dunderheads Series - Paul Fleischman
Characters: Any
About the canon: A couple of picture books (The Dunderheads and The Dunderheads Behind Bars) chronicle the misadventures of a group of kids, each with their own unique talent, as they pit their wits against their nasty teacher (and in the second book, her equally nasty chief-of-police brother). It is charming as fuck--a bit like what would happen if Roald Dahl and Charles Addams got together to write Ocean’s Eleven for preschoolers.
Optional Details: I’d really love to see casefic for this--some other criminal or semi-criminal caper that the kids pull off. Or else, where do their unique talents take them later in life? (Any or all of the kids--I nominated the four I did because I only got four slots, but if you want to write a story focussing on grown-up Nails, for instance, that would be peachy keen with me.) I kind of ship Einstein and Hollywood, and would be interested in reading how the somewhat skewed ideas about romance she’s picked up from movies collide with his unconventional approach to problem solving and how both of those things collide with the reality of them being kids trying this out for the first time before they’re quite ready for it. (Whether “this” is grade-school romance or sex or the whole marriage-and-kids-and-building-a-life-together would depend on what stage of their lives you choose to set it.)
Or else, it was established in the second book that Hollywood is in online fandom (though not necessarily fic-writing fandom). So write me a fandom not-actually-AU--can the other kids help her in her quest to become a BNF?
Lawyers Guns and Money - Warren Zevon (Song)
Characters: The Waitress Who is Also a Russian Agent
About the canon: Once upon a time, there was an overprivileged young idiot who went traveling abroad and got in trouble way over their head. “Lawyers, Guns, and Money” is the young idiot’s plea to their wealthy and influential father to extricate them from this trouble using any means at his disposal. It’s also a rollicking song, only three and a half minutes long, and you can listen to it (and read the lyrics) here.
Optional details: I want the story of the waitress who is also a Russian agent! What’s her mission? Is the narrator really as innocent a dupe as they claim? (Yes is a perfectly acceptable answer.) Does she manage to make her escape and leave the narrator in the soup; does she also wind up in trouble that she needs her ingenuity to get out of; or does she come back to rescue the narrator when their dad’s lawyers, guns, and money can’t? Or some other possibility I haven’t thought of?
Please note that although Warren Zevon was a man I don’t insist on the narrator of this song being one. Not that I object to it--go with whatever you think makes the most interesting story.
Knights-Errant (Webcomic)
Characters: Kadeen
About the canon: Swashbuckling mercenaries swashbuckle their way across Renaissance-ish Europe-ish, with angsty backstories and loads of sibling and quasi-sibling feelings. Also there is pretty art. Also it has a cast of characters with diverse ethnicities and sexualities, but I'm reluctant to bring that up because a) some of it is spoilers and b) that makes it sound like issuefic (or, well, issue-original-comics) and it doesn't read like that to me at all. But I have brought it up anyway, so.
The archive binge is trivial! You can read it here. It’s been on hiatus for a while, and while I hope it starts updating again before Christmas, and I certainly plan on being caught up if it does, I also have no objection to your writing something that’s current as of Chapter 4, page 5, which is where it’s at now. Also, I do follow the creator’s tumblr and am aware of various word-of-god things (though probably not all of them) but I don’t expect you to treat them as canon; I never do.
Optional details: Isn’t Kadeen a sweetheart, though? I mean he has obviously had a pretty shitty life, and he still has a pretty shitty position in society, and he’s angry about it, but he hasn’t let it turn him into an asshole. Unlike some other assholes I could mention. Whom I also extremely fond of, but I just have a special soft spot for decent human beings, and Kadeen strikes me as one, despite the whole killing people for a living thing.
Anyway, I love Kadeen’s quasi-brotherly relationship with Oswald, and I’d love to read more of it, whether it’s their mutual backstory or a slice of mercenary life. Feel free to go as dark as you like with this one--it’s clear that Kadeen and Oswald are very important to each other but they can also hurt each other like no one else, and they don’t always appreciate where the other is coming from. I’d also be interested in reading more about Kadeen’s uneasy friendship with Amir.
Fox in Socks - Dr. Seuss
Characters: Fox in Socks, Mr. Knox
About the canon: Fox in Socks is a picture book by Dr. Seuss about a fox (in socks) who challenges a woebegone yellow individual of indeterminate species to pronounce a series of ever-more-difficult tongue twisters. It’s a classic!
Optional details: One of the things you do when you are a parent of a small child is read the same picture books over and over, and one of the things you do when you read the same picture books over and over is think way too much about them. (At least for values of you that include me.)
And this is how I became convinced that Mr. Knox and Mr. Fox are in some sort of (not necessarily sexual) D/s relationship. Why else does Mr. Knox put up with Mr. Fox’s increasingly bizarre and capricious demands? Also, check out this illustration:
I rest my case.
Chronicles of the Kencyrath - PC Hodgell
Characters: Tirandys, Lyra Lack-Wit Caineron, Nightshade
About the canon: Six books (and counting) chronicle the adventures of Jame--an avatar of the destructive face of god and definitely someone you don’t want to go on a camping trip with--as she struggles to find a place for herself among the people who cast her out when she was a child and on the world that would rather her people hadn’t arrived there in the first place. It's got everything fans like: magical adventures, kung fu, secret princesses, incest, thieves' guilds, HONOR!, incest, psychic unicorns, incest, kitties, and incest.
Optional details: These are some of my favorite characters in the series, and ones that I wish got more page time, but I certainly don’t expect you to get all of them (or even any two of them) into a single story. A story about any one of them would be lovely, though.
I’d love to see the story of the Fall, or its lead-up/aftermath, from Tirandys’ point of view, and his relationships with Gerridon, Jamethiel and/or Terribend. One detail that has intrigued me since I read it is that Tirandys developed his version of the Senethar as a gift to Jamethiel--a story about that would be great. Either that or something with Jame’s childhood and adolescence in Perimal Darkling, and the relationship between the two of them. And if it goes to a Jame/Tirandys place, well, this is the Chronicles of the Kencyrath--it wouldn’t go amiss is what I’m saying.
How much do I love Lyra Lack-Wit? Despite the name, I don't think she's actually stupid—but she has been deliberately kept ignorant, and away from any access to power, both in the secret corridors of the women's world and in the wider sphere. Her father actually contracted her for a marriage outside the Kencyrath; he couldn't have said, "You are an entirely disposable pawn" much plainer. And yet Lyra remains relentlessly cheerful, which is part of why I find her so appealing. Also—and this is another thing that leads to her being seen as stupid—she has basically no impulse control. But the flipside of never taking time to think about things is being a quick thinker, and Lyra has several times demonstrated her ability to act before anyone else gets a chance to. She can be terribly, thoughtlessly cruel. And she has a for-serious-canonical crush on Jame (at one point she says in her internal narration that Jame is the sister of her choice, and we all know what sister-friend means to a Highborn lady) which I'd love to see explored.
I find Shade a really fascinating, complex, prickly character, and there are lots of angles to her that I’d love to see explored. What was her childhood like, in Wilden or wherever it was; who is/was her mother, and did her influence serve to counteract Rawneth and Kenan’s and help Shade become the independent actor that we see in the books? I’d love to read about her relationship with Addy, or see the events of the books she was in from her point of view, especially her growing knowledge of her own darkling nature. I also find her loyalty-crush on Randiroc to be absolutely adorable and would adore anything with the two of them. Also, I’m just saying--she’s a shapeshifter and he shares his consciousness with a swarm of carnivorous insects, the sex would be incredibly weird and hopefully awesome.
As far as general likes/dislikes go, I really like all kinds of fic, from gen to shippy (I am a dedicated multishipper and will happily read any rating, any number/gender of participants), from warm-and-fluffy to dark (kill my favorite characters, please!), from plotty and action-packed to intense conversations on the Formless Plane of Dialogue (I don't tend to like extremely introspective stories where there's no interaction, however). I'm not terribly fond of AUs of the coffee-shop/university/whatever variety, but I like canon-divergence AUs and fusions and crossovers when they're clever.
If for some reason you want to stalk me, I am dead easy to stalk; I'm minutia_r (or occasionally minutia-r) all over the internet: LJ/DW, AO3, tumblr, deviantart, ff.net, and probably one or two other places I don't recall off-hand.
Thank you, happy writing, and I hope you get something you love for yuletide too!
