Dear Yuletide Writer 2014
Oct. 19th, 2014 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minutia_rHi, yuletide writer!
How great is the fandom or fandoms that we matched on? So great, right? All those people who don't love that fandom are missing out. For instance, they're missing out on the excellent fic you're going to write me, which I'm going to love whatever it is, because it's going to be about some awesome characters in an awesome fandom.
I think you and I are going to get along okay.
Herein you will find prompts, and wittering on about fandoms, and so on! If you don't see the characters we matched on, or stuff seems wonky, don't panic: I am still editing this letter. So some of what is here is cut and pasted from other exchanges and whatnots, but it will be edited into proper yuletide form and the characters I've actually requested will have stuff written for them and the irrelevant stuff will be cut out, I just wanted to make sure I had something up before assignments went out?
Anyway. Enjoy!
Fandom: Alliance-Union - C. J. Cherryh
Characters: Elene Quen, Damon Konstantin, Joshua Talley
About the canon: The Alliance-Union universe is C.J. Cherryh’s sprawling science fiction epic--and by sprawling I mean that it consists of at least thirty books including half-a-dozen sub-series which don’t share any locations or characters and may be set millions of years apart. If you like complex politics and societies, alien aliens, hypercompetent and emotionally guarded and often sexually predatory women, people being stressed out and short on sleep 100% of the time, strange worlds, ethical dilemmas, the occasional lengthy infodump, and going, “Wait, what just happened?” when you finish a book, you might like some or all of these--but you don’t need to have read all of them in order to read or write fanfic in the ‘verse. God knows I haven’t. In this case, the relevant book is Downbelow Station, which tells the story of the human and alien residents of Pell caught in the conflict between Earth Company and the insurgent Union. (I understand that some of these characters show up as side characters in Merchanter’s Luck and Finity’s End; I haven’t read those, so I don’t mind if you haven’t or if your story contradicts them, but I don’t mind spoilers either.)
Optional details: Damon Konstantin is the paladin-bureaucrat, the guy who knows it’s no good fighting for your civilization if it means everything that makes you civilized gets thrown out the window. Elene Quen is the woman who single-handedly created the Merchanter’s Alliance while waddling around pregnant. Josh Talley is the destroyer of worlds who finds the family that Damon and Elene have made for him to be the thing he can cling to when everything he knows turns out to be a lie. Hell yes, I ship it.
Write me a sexy or sweetly domestic scene when Josh visits Pell Station? Write me kidfic if that’s your thing; I’d especially like to see the place that Josh has in the life of Damon and Elene’s children.
If you don’t want to include Josh in Damon and Elene’s sexual relationship, that’s cool too, as long as they’re still the home he comes back to no matter where he goes or who else he sleeps over with. (I am fine with Josh/Signy in the background, as long as it’s not the focus.)
Or if you’d rather write gen, can I get an Elene story? I’d love to see more details of how she put together the Merchanter’s Alliance than we get in the book. I’d also like to read about her working with Signy Mallory, or against her, if and when their purposes don’t coincide. Post-canon, do her loyalties and duties to Pell and the Merchanters ever come into conflict, and how does she deal with it when they do? How does she raise her children with the legacy of the Estelle as well as Pell? Pre-canon, I’d like to see her youth and early adulthood on the Estelle, or her decision to stay on Pell.
Fandom: Chronicles of the Kencyrath - PC Hodgell
Character: Torisen Knorth
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: Okay, Tori is great. In a universe where Jame is running around righteously (if often accidentally) smashing institutions that need smashing, it’s nice to see Tori scrambling around desperately trying to preserve his people and their society, even when they hurt people terribly, even when he’s one of the ones they hurt, because they’re all he has and he loves them. I love how this sometimes leads him into bad mistakes and horrible belief systems, how sometimes he’s the bad guy but frankly you’d rather have him showing up at your house than Jame.
I also love how . . . well, okay, it doesn’t seem right to say that Tori is a realistic portrayal of someone with a mental illness, because he doesn’t have a real mental illness, he has a magical made-uppy mental illness. AND YET. It does ring very true to me, the (sometimes self-destructive) strategies he has for coping, the way that sometimes it’s better and sometimes it’s worse but it’s always there, the way he manages to be a good and compassionate and competent leader for his people despite everything, the way he sometimes just can’t. And the way that the people around him help him (and don’t), understand him (and don’t), take advantage of him (and don’t).
So, um, anything that deals with these issues would be great? Also, it was excellent how in Dark of the Moon Tori was surrounded by a crowd of small children, and I kind of miss them. Write me something with them, or with Tori’s next crop of hostages? Or something with Tori and Burr? How Tori and Grimly met and became friends? Tori’s developing relationship with Adric, and whether Tori’s own experience of mental illness helps him deal with Adric’s decline (or not)? If Tori ever met Bane?
I like Tori and Kindrie just fine but I am not terribly fond of Tori/Kindrie.
Fandom: The Darkangel Trilogy - Meredith Anne Pierce
Characters: Aeriel, Irrylath, Roshka
About the canon: The story of Aeriel, a slave girl on the terraformed moon, who goes hunting the sinister creature who stole away her mistress and gets caught up in an adventure of love and redemption that will decide the fate of her world (which is, once again the TERRAFORMED MOON). It’s a series of books where fairy-tale logic sits uneasily side-by-side with a science-fictional everything-is-just-sufficiently-advanced-technology sensibility, where a witch builds a spaceship out of ice and fueled by souls, where the power of love can save a world but not a marriage. It is very much its own thing, and if it is the sort of thing you like then you will like it.
Optional details: Although I requested Aeriel and would love a story with her in it, there are also all sorts of hints about interesting stories happening when Aeriel’s not around. What adventures did Sabr and Irrylath have during A Gathering of Gargoyles? What happened to Roshka and Erin after Aeriel left them?
If you’d like to write future fic, I’d love to see how an OT4 with Aeriel, Erin, Roshka and Irrylath would work. I’d also be interested in reading about Irrylath and Sabr (and possibly the Avarclon and Talb?) rebuilding Avaric--although I’d prefer gen there, since I’m not completely sold on Irrylath/Sabr. And there was this one fic where Aeriel was planning an expedition to Earth, which is an idea I’d love to see explored.
Fandom: Facade - An Entertainment - Edith Sitwell and William Walton
Characters: Any
So according to the link with the lyrics above, Edith Sitwell said this was about a couple of cats having a love affair, which I guess is as good interpretation as any other. There is definitely some kind of courtship as battle or battle as courtship going on here, on a weird and epic scale which brings to mind space opera or the faerie court. I’m particularly (though not exclusively) interested in the white soldiers--what does a grunt’s-eye view of this conflict and/or reproductive process look like?
Fandom: Fallen Angels (Marvel Comics)
Characters: Chance, Ariel, Roberto DaCosta
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--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. 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.
Uplift Series - David Brin
yee, Rety, Gillian Baskin
So you know how some people consider Kirk or Picard or whoever their captain? Gillian Baskin is my captain. Write me a story where she’s being awesome and captainly please? Something from Streaker’s missing years--either one of the dramatic episodes hinted at in the books, like the escape from the Institutes at Oakka, or else a smaller, more downtime sort of story (in three years, there must have been some, even on Streaker.) Or else, does Gillian manage to semi-retire after the series the way she intends? Show me her working on treatments and therapies with Emerson, finding a publisher for Alvin’s journal, having drinks and swapping stories with Helene Alvarez and Jacob Demwa, and acting as an honorary grandmother to dozens of baby dolphins.
Alternatively! I . . . actually ship Rety/yee? There’s nothing romantic about their marriage, and nothing sexual about it (at least in the books, but see below) and yet--although they arrived at the arrangement in a spur-of-the-moment fashion--they seem to take their life partnership pretty seriously. You just have to read yee talking Rety through her claustrophobia, or teasing her about finding a female of his own species, to know how much he adores her, and--for someone who is so self-centered, driven, and justifiably suspicious of everyone else--it’s touching to see her care for him in return. (He’s like the weak spot in her armor! I have a kink, okay.) Anything with them, from quiet domestic moments to wacky hijinks in Jijo’s Bamboo Space Program, would be lovely. Or, if you’re up for it, I’d be interested in seeing some xeno? I mean, yee is just about the right size for Rety to use as a sex toy, and I think she’d be a lot more comfortable figuring out her sexual responses with him than with someone of her own species. On his side, you have to wonder whether being carried around in a pouch does something for him sexually? Since that is central to how his species reproduces and all. If you have ideas about how that works between them, I am all ears, is what I’m saying.
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 once again, mystery writer! I am really looking forward to reading what you write for me, and I hope you get an awesome story too!
How great is the fandom or fandoms that we matched on? So great, right? All those people who don't love that fandom are missing out. For instance, they're missing out on the excellent fic you're going to write me, which I'm going to love whatever it is, because it's going to be about some awesome characters in an awesome fandom.
I think you and I are going to get along okay.
Herein you will find prompts, and wittering on about fandoms, and so on! If you don't see the characters we matched on, or stuff seems wonky, don't panic: I am still editing this letter. So some of what is here is cut and pasted from other exchanges and whatnots, but it will be edited into proper yuletide form and the characters I've actually requested will have stuff written for them and the irrelevant stuff will be cut out, I just wanted to make sure I had something up before assignments went out?
Anyway. Enjoy!
Fandom: Alliance-Union - C. J. Cherryh
Characters: Elene Quen, Damon Konstantin, Joshua Talley
About the canon: The Alliance-Union universe is C.J. Cherryh’s sprawling science fiction epic--and by sprawling I mean that it consists of at least thirty books including half-a-dozen sub-series which don’t share any locations or characters and may be set millions of years apart. If you like complex politics and societies, alien aliens, hypercompetent and emotionally guarded and often sexually predatory women, people being stressed out and short on sleep 100% of the time, strange worlds, ethical dilemmas, the occasional lengthy infodump, and going, “Wait, what just happened?” when you finish a book, you might like some or all of these--but you don’t need to have read all of them in order to read or write fanfic in the ‘verse. God knows I haven’t. In this case, the relevant book is Downbelow Station, which tells the story of the human and alien residents of Pell caught in the conflict between Earth Company and the insurgent Union. (I understand that some of these characters show up as side characters in Merchanter’s Luck and Finity’s End; I haven’t read those, so I don’t mind if you haven’t or if your story contradicts them, but I don’t mind spoilers either.)
Optional details: Damon Konstantin is the paladin-bureaucrat, the guy who knows it’s no good fighting for your civilization if it means everything that makes you civilized gets thrown out the window. Elene Quen is the woman who single-handedly created the Merchanter’s Alliance while waddling around pregnant. Josh Talley is the destroyer of worlds who finds the family that Damon and Elene have made for him to be the thing he can cling to when everything he knows turns out to be a lie. Hell yes, I ship it.
Write me a sexy or sweetly domestic scene when Josh visits Pell Station? Write me kidfic if that’s your thing; I’d especially like to see the place that Josh has in the life of Damon and Elene’s children.
If you don’t want to include Josh in Damon and Elene’s sexual relationship, that’s cool too, as long as they’re still the home he comes back to no matter where he goes or who else he sleeps over with. (I am fine with Josh/Signy in the background, as long as it’s not the focus.)
Or if you’d rather write gen, can I get an Elene story? I’d love to see more details of how she put together the Merchanter’s Alliance than we get in the book. I’d also like to read about her working with Signy Mallory, or against her, if and when their purposes don’t coincide. Post-canon, do her loyalties and duties to Pell and the Merchanters ever come into conflict, and how does she deal with it when they do? How does she raise her children with the legacy of the Estelle as well as Pell? Pre-canon, I’d like to see her youth and early adulthood on the Estelle, or her decision to stay on Pell.
Fandom: Chronicles of the Kencyrath - PC Hodgell
Character: Torisen Knorth
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: Okay, Tori is great. In a universe where Jame is running around righteously (if often accidentally) smashing institutions that need smashing, it’s nice to see Tori scrambling around desperately trying to preserve his people and their society, even when they hurt people terribly, even when he’s one of the ones they hurt, because they’re all he has and he loves them. I love how this sometimes leads him into bad mistakes and horrible belief systems, how sometimes he’s the bad guy but frankly you’d rather have him showing up at your house than Jame.
I also love how . . . well, okay, it doesn’t seem right to say that Tori is a realistic portrayal of someone with a mental illness, because he doesn’t have a real mental illness, he has a magical made-uppy mental illness. AND YET. It does ring very true to me, the (sometimes self-destructive) strategies he has for coping, the way that sometimes it’s better and sometimes it’s worse but it’s always there, the way he manages to be a good and compassionate and competent leader for his people despite everything, the way he sometimes just can’t. And the way that the people around him help him (and don’t), understand him (and don’t), take advantage of him (and don’t).
So, um, anything that deals with these issues would be great? Also, it was excellent how in Dark of the Moon Tori was surrounded by a crowd of small children, and I kind of miss them. Write me something with them, or with Tori’s next crop of hostages? Or something with Tori and Burr? How Tori and Grimly met and became friends? Tori’s developing relationship with Adric, and whether Tori’s own experience of mental illness helps him deal with Adric’s decline (or not)? If Tori ever met Bane?
I like Tori and Kindrie just fine but I am not terribly fond of Tori/Kindrie.
Fandom: The Darkangel Trilogy - Meredith Anne Pierce
Characters: Aeriel, Irrylath, Roshka
About the canon: The story of Aeriel, a slave girl on the terraformed moon, who goes hunting the sinister creature who stole away her mistress and gets caught up in an adventure of love and redemption that will decide the fate of her world (which is, once again the TERRAFORMED MOON). It’s a series of books where fairy-tale logic sits uneasily side-by-side with a science-fictional everything-is-just-sufficiently-advanced-technology sensibility, where a witch builds a spaceship out of ice and fueled by souls, where the power of love can save a world but not a marriage. It is very much its own thing, and if it is the sort of thing you like then you will like it.
Optional details: Although I requested Aeriel and would love a story with her in it, there are also all sorts of hints about interesting stories happening when Aeriel’s not around. What adventures did Sabr and Irrylath have during A Gathering of Gargoyles? What happened to Roshka and Erin after Aeriel left them?
If you’d like to write future fic, I’d love to see how an OT4 with Aeriel, Erin, Roshka and Irrylath would work. I’d also be interested in reading about Irrylath and Sabr (and possibly the Avarclon and Talb?) rebuilding Avaric--although I’d prefer gen there, since I’m not completely sold on Irrylath/Sabr. And there was this one fic where Aeriel was planning an expedition to Earth, which is an idea I’d love to see explored.
Fandom: Facade - An Entertainment - Edith Sitwell and William Walton
Characters: Any
So according to the link with the lyrics above, Edith Sitwell said this was about a couple of cats having a love affair, which I guess is as good interpretation as any other. There is definitely some kind of courtship as battle or battle as courtship going on here, on a weird and epic scale which brings to mind space opera or the faerie court. I’m particularly (though not exclusively) interested in the white soldiers--what does a grunt’s-eye view of this conflict and/or reproductive process look like?
Fandom: Fallen Angels (Marvel Comics)
Characters: Chance, Ariel, Roberto DaCosta
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--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. 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.
Uplift Series - David Brin
yee, Rety, Gillian Baskin
So you know how some people consider Kirk or Picard or whoever their captain? Gillian Baskin is my captain. Write me a story where she’s being awesome and captainly please? Something from Streaker’s missing years--either one of the dramatic episodes hinted at in the books, like the escape from the Institutes at Oakka, or else a smaller, more downtime sort of story (in three years, there must have been some, even on Streaker.) Or else, does Gillian manage to semi-retire after the series the way she intends? Show me her working on treatments and therapies with Emerson, finding a publisher for Alvin’s journal, having drinks and swapping stories with Helene Alvarez and Jacob Demwa, and acting as an honorary grandmother to dozens of baby dolphins.
Alternatively! I . . . actually ship Rety/yee? There’s nothing romantic about their marriage, and nothing sexual about it (at least in the books, but see below) and yet--although they arrived at the arrangement in a spur-of-the-moment fashion--they seem to take their life partnership pretty seriously. You just have to read yee talking Rety through her claustrophobia, or teasing her about finding a female of his own species, to know how much he adores her, and--for someone who is so self-centered, driven, and justifiably suspicious of everyone else--it’s touching to see her care for him in return. (He’s like the weak spot in her armor! I have a kink, okay.) Anything with them, from quiet domestic moments to wacky hijinks in Jijo’s Bamboo Space Program, would be lovely. Or, if you’re up for it, I’d be interested in seeing some xeno? I mean, yee is just about the right size for Rety to use as a sex toy, and I think she’d be a lot more comfortable figuring out her sexual responses with him than with someone of her own species. On his side, you have to wonder whether being carried around in a pouch does something for him sexually? Since that is central to how his species reproduces and all. If you have ideas about how that works between them, I am all ears, is what I’m saying.
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 once again, mystery writer! I am really looking forward to reading what you write for me, and I hope you get an awesome story too!
