But seriously, where has the year gone?
Oct. 26th, 2014 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
st_aurafinaOh, Yuletide Writer! It's that time of year! Let's hang all that festive junk in all the right places.
Welcome to my letter. Woah, this is my ninth Yuletide letter. That's a bit scary.
First up, I want to let you know that I will love what you write. I promise! Eight Yuletides down, and I've loved every fic written for me. I love Yuletide, and I love that it's grown into this giant, multifaceted party celebrating fandom.
This letter is mostly optional. If you're the kind of writer who chafes at boundaries, please don't let this letter fence you in. I've thrown together a bunch of possibilities for these fandoms, but they're meant as inspiration, not as concrete requests. I would appreciate if you can veer away from the things that squick me but otherwise, if your muse is pulling you in other directions, that's awesome.
If, like me, you prefer prompts with guidelines (Lots of guidelines! All the guidelines!), then I've talked about each fandom behind the cut. I've nominated specific characters, and I know by Yuletide rules you're meant to include all of them, but I'm fine if you don't. I just wanted to narrow down the field for some of the larger fandoms and to give you an idea of who I find most interesting in the canon.
Here are my general likes and dislikes, c&p'ed from previous letters:
Things that generally tickle my fancy:
People! Gen, slash, femslash, het. Friendship fic, relationship fic, frenemies, enemies, sexy enemies. People putting their differences aside to work with each other. Backstory, AUs (though not the no powers barista kind), crossovers, teamwork.
Plot! Big sweeping plot, small canon-compliant plot, things for the characters to do while they're snarking at each other, things going on around them while they're getting it on. I like stuff to happen.
Competence! I have a huge competence kink. I love seeing people being really, really good at stuff. I love lateral thinkers and characters who follow their instincts and people putting their skills to use in unexpected ways.
Ladies! BAMF female characters who don't have to bring other female characters down to be BAMFs. Mothers and sisters and girlfriends and girlfriends and wives. Women with agency. Women treated with respect.
Representation! People of colour. People outside the gender binary. Queer identities and culture. Non-nuclear families, found families, poly families, family that is family because you get to define it.
Things that I don't like as much (but can handle if the story takes you there):
Sad endings, character death, angst, embarrassment.
Things I'd rather you didn't write:
Cross-gen relationships, incest, teacher/student, employee/employer, non-con.
Fandoms: Death by Silver, Captive Prince, Stigmata, Ms Marvel, Orphan Black, Hawkeye
Death by Silver
Charles Hatton, Cordelia Frost, Julian Lynes, Ned Matthey
Julian and Ned working together outside their comfort zones – on holiday or away from the city, figuring out their relationship and solving some small mystery. Or the respectable Miss Frost, being awesome and keeping things together behind the scenes of Ned's practice while never letting on that she's at least as good at the job as Ned.
As you'd expect from a Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes fan, I adore this book! I've always loved mysteries, and the integration of magic into practical living, and for me, that's what this series is about.
How about Ned and Julian out of their home territory – at a country house, perhaps, for a shooting party, or stuck on a train, or at the seaside? Somewhere where they're away from their own separate support systems, anyway, so that they have to band together (perhaps literally!) for the sake of the case.
Alternatively, a Miss Frost story would be awesome – how she manages her job in an otherwise male-dominated field. I'll bet she's a killer networker, and I'd love to see her being super competent and amazing while maintaining her Victorian cool. Or something from her background – I know she went to a very respectable ladies' college of some sort, and I would love to know something about all the roundabout ways that she has used to put together what seems to be a very competent metaphysical ability.
I know the bullying at their hideous public school forms an important part of Ned and Julian's relationship, but it's not easy for me to read about, so if you can avoid descriptions of the bullying, I'd be very grateful.
Amy Griswold recently posted a piece about the magic system in this book, here: Metaphysics.
"A Death at the Dionysus Club", the second book, is out now, and I am fine if you want to refer to events that happen in it.
---
Captive Prince
Auguste, Laurent, Nicaise, Damen
Future fic for Damen and Laurent, or past fic for Laurent and his brother (or Nicaise and Laurent and their prickly, weirdly protective relationship), any sort of light-hearted side-adventure taking place during the books themselves like Damen and Laurent's escapades in the brothel and escaping over the rooftop.
We're all waiting for Book Three! While we've still got the chance to speculate on what will happen, if you'd like to write some future scenes with Damen and Laurent, hopefully (but not necessarily) living in peaceful harmony. Or you know, totally at war. Bittersweet enemy meet-ups across the battlefield? I'm good with that. And of course, missing scenes, side stories, tiny tendernesses between Damen and Laurent would always be welcome.
This is a canon that lends itself to divergent AUs - what if Auguste lived? What if Laurent were sent across the sea in chains? What if Damen or Laurent were fostered with the other's parents as a young man to hold the peace between their countries and they had the chance to grow up together? I love C S Pacat's world building, so anything that shows me more of that world would be a treat.
---
Stigmata
Andrew Kiernan, Frankie Page
Future fic, happy endings, Andrew and Frankie working as a team to help other people, or debunking false miracles, or just travelling and figuring out what their relationship is.
This movie is a feel-good favourite for me, and yeah, I definitely favour the happy alternate ending. I love that Frankie and Andrew are basically asking themselves the same questions under different personal circumstances: what is faith? What do I believe in? What is important to me? I am always a sucker for people from very different backgrounds who are thrown together, and I especially liked that Andrew and Frankie brought different but vital skillsets to the battle that they fought together. I love the idea of a person with oodles of classical education but few lifeskills working with someone quite worldly who hasn't had the chance to soak up history and language but has the passion and determination to find out how things all fit together.
If future fic isn't to your taste, everything from the above paragraph still applies and I would love to see something set during the movie. Alternate POVs or missing scenes are always great. Fic set before the movie has potential, too – foreshadowing what's coming for Andrew, or any brushes that Frankie might have had with the supernatural as a child.
---
Ms Marvel
Kamala Khan, Bruno Carrelli, Lockjaw, Nakia Bahadir
An adventure! Embiggening yourself and stopping parakeet-styled villains and sneaking home past curfew and always staying true to yourself.
This is such a hopeful, joyous title! It has embiggened my heart! I stopped reading comics for a long time, and coming back this year and finding Kamala Khan has been a delight. I'd love a story that fits the tone of the comic - Kamala facing down some improbable foe, balancing her mission with her home life, loving on her big weird dog, and figuring out what she believes in. I am an old Marvel comics fan, so any cameos or team-ups you'd like to write would be fantastic. I adored her Wolverine team-up, both for the way she fangirled him, and the old-school superhero wisdom she picked up along the way.
---
Orphan Black
Helena, Grace Johanssen, Marian Bowles, Siobhan 'Mrs S' Sadler
Helena's adventures in the real world – possibly shepherding Grace around and protecting her. The two of them are sheltered in similar ways, though they have different ways of dealing with that. Alternatively, something with Mrs S and Marian Bowles – old flames, frenemies, past science sisters.
Holy crap, I can only request four characters here? But I love all the ladies of Orphan Black! Feel free to write any of them, seriously. I've thrown some prompts together for my four favourites, but it was bloody hard to narrow it down to four. Oh, and I have left out Felix, brother-seestra! And Kira. And Charlotte the littlest clone. There are so many!
I really loved the way second season showed more of Helena's ferocious protective side. I especially loved that it wasn't just her seestras that brought out this aspect of her character, it was children and poor, poor Grace. I love that she completely understood why Grace tried to kill her, and that it meant nothing when Grace needed help. I'd love some kind of story that shows me mad, ferocious, merciless Helena protecting people.
Mrs S is the biggest, best boss of all, and I love her. She's as protective as Helena, but worldly and realistic and able to make the heartbreaking decisions to protect the ones under her umbrella of care. I'd love to see her and Marian going head to head or collaborating to protect their people or sharing battle stories. I think that if Mrs S stepped into Marian's pristine house, the china cups would rattle and the window crack.
---
Hawkeye
Jessica Drew, Kate Bishop, Lucky
Kate and Lucky, having adventures, fighting crime, road-tripping and learning to live on low funds. Or Kate and Jessica, superhero team-up, mentor/mentee or femslash. Or anything where Kate, Jessica and Lucky fight bad guys and back eachother up.
I love superheroes, and I love Kate Bishop, and her appearance in Hawkeye has brought me back to reading comics after a long spell. I'm a big fan of women mentoring women, so I'd love to see Kate and Jessica bonding over training or fighting some supervillain (Madame Masque comes immediately to mind) or going for coffee and chat and taking out New York's unluckiest mugger. Or even just hanging on the sofa and catching up on Dog Cops. I'm good with that! Friendship and support is the thing I want to see most of all. If sexy times come with that friendship, all the better, but not essential. I'm an old fan of Marvel comics, even though I've drifted away recently, so feel free to include cameos from other titles, if that's your whim.
Miscellanea
As always, I have somehow ended up writing more about some of these fandoms than others – that doesn't mean that I prefer them over the others. I love all of these fandoms and would be delighted with fic for any of them.
If we've matched on a fandom that doesn't suit you, I've got a couple of short canons in my requests this year. Death by Silver is available DRM-free from Smashwords. And Stigmata is a movie that you're most likely going to find in the bargain bin because it's (omg) 13 years old. (It's pretty cheap on iTunes, too, which I know because all my DVDs are still in boxes, and I had to buy it to review canon.)
For stalking purposes, I'm![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
st_aurafina and ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
st-aurafina. All my previous Dear Author letters are here: Dear Author. If you have any questions, you're welcome to message my partner, lilacsigil. She will keep your secrets!
Yuletide is a happy time for me, I always have a great time, and I always love my gifts. Thank you for volunteering to write for another person this year! I hope you enjoy the writing process, and that you have a great Yuletide too.
Welcome to my letter. Woah, this is my ninth Yuletide letter. That's a bit scary.
First up, I want to let you know that I will love what you write. I promise! Eight Yuletides down, and I've loved every fic written for me. I love Yuletide, and I love that it's grown into this giant, multifaceted party celebrating fandom.
This letter is mostly optional. If you're the kind of writer who chafes at boundaries, please don't let this letter fence you in. I've thrown together a bunch of possibilities for these fandoms, but they're meant as inspiration, not as concrete requests. I would appreciate if you can veer away from the things that squick me but otherwise, if your muse is pulling you in other directions, that's awesome.
If, like me, you prefer prompts with guidelines (Lots of guidelines! All the guidelines!), then I've talked about each fandom behind the cut. I've nominated specific characters, and I know by Yuletide rules you're meant to include all of them, but I'm fine if you don't. I just wanted to narrow down the field for some of the larger fandoms and to give you an idea of who I find most interesting in the canon.
Here are my general likes and dislikes, c&p'ed from previous letters:
Things that generally tickle my fancy:
People! Gen, slash, femslash, het. Friendship fic, relationship fic, frenemies, enemies, sexy enemies. People putting their differences aside to work with each other. Backstory, AUs (though not the no powers barista kind), crossovers, teamwork.
Plot! Big sweeping plot, small canon-compliant plot, things for the characters to do while they're snarking at each other, things going on around them while they're getting it on. I like stuff to happen.
Competence! I have a huge competence kink. I love seeing people being really, really good at stuff. I love lateral thinkers and characters who follow their instincts and people putting their skills to use in unexpected ways.
Ladies! BAMF female characters who don't have to bring other female characters down to be BAMFs. Mothers and sisters and girlfriends and girlfriends and wives. Women with agency. Women treated with respect.
Representation! People of colour. People outside the gender binary. Queer identities and culture. Non-nuclear families, found families, poly families, family that is family because you get to define it.
Things that I don't like as much (but can handle if the story takes you there):
Sad endings, character death, angst, embarrassment.
Things I'd rather you didn't write:
Cross-gen relationships, incest, teacher/student, employee/employer, non-con.
Fandoms: Death by Silver, Captive Prince, Stigmata, Ms Marvel, Orphan Black, Hawkeye
Death by Silver
Charles Hatton, Cordelia Frost, Julian Lynes, Ned Matthey
Julian and Ned working together outside their comfort zones – on holiday or away from the city, figuring out their relationship and solving some small mystery. Or the respectable Miss Frost, being awesome and keeping things together behind the scenes of Ned's practice while never letting on that she's at least as good at the job as Ned.
As you'd expect from a Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes fan, I adore this book! I've always loved mysteries, and the integration of magic into practical living, and for me, that's what this series is about.
How about Ned and Julian out of their home territory – at a country house, perhaps, for a shooting party, or stuck on a train, or at the seaside? Somewhere where they're away from their own separate support systems, anyway, so that they have to band together (perhaps literally!) for the sake of the case.
Alternatively, a Miss Frost story would be awesome – how she manages her job in an otherwise male-dominated field. I'll bet she's a killer networker, and I'd love to see her being super competent and amazing while maintaining her Victorian cool. Or something from her background – I know she went to a very respectable ladies' college of some sort, and I would love to know something about all the roundabout ways that she has used to put together what seems to be a very competent metaphysical ability.
I know the bullying at their hideous public school forms an important part of Ned and Julian's relationship, but it's not easy for me to read about, so if you can avoid descriptions of the bullying, I'd be very grateful.
Amy Griswold recently posted a piece about the magic system in this book, here: Metaphysics.
"A Death at the Dionysus Club", the second book, is out now, and I am fine if you want to refer to events that happen in it.
---
Captive Prince
Auguste, Laurent, Nicaise, Damen
Future fic for Damen and Laurent, or past fic for Laurent and his brother (or Nicaise and Laurent and their prickly, weirdly protective relationship), any sort of light-hearted side-adventure taking place during the books themselves like Damen and Laurent's escapades in the brothel and escaping over the rooftop.
We're all waiting for Book Three! While we've still got the chance to speculate on what will happen, if you'd like to write some future scenes with Damen and Laurent, hopefully (but not necessarily) living in peaceful harmony. Or you know, totally at war. Bittersweet enemy meet-ups across the battlefield? I'm good with that. And of course, missing scenes, side stories, tiny tendernesses between Damen and Laurent would always be welcome.
This is a canon that lends itself to divergent AUs - what if Auguste lived? What if Laurent were sent across the sea in chains? What if Damen or Laurent were fostered with the other's parents as a young man to hold the peace between their countries and they had the chance to grow up together? I love C S Pacat's world building, so anything that shows me more of that world would be a treat.
---
Stigmata
Andrew Kiernan, Frankie Page
Future fic, happy endings, Andrew and Frankie working as a team to help other people, or debunking false miracles, or just travelling and figuring out what their relationship is.
This movie is a feel-good favourite for me, and yeah, I definitely favour the happy alternate ending. I love that Frankie and Andrew are basically asking themselves the same questions under different personal circumstances: what is faith? What do I believe in? What is important to me? I am always a sucker for people from very different backgrounds who are thrown together, and I especially liked that Andrew and Frankie brought different but vital skillsets to the battle that they fought together. I love the idea of a person with oodles of classical education but few lifeskills working with someone quite worldly who hasn't had the chance to soak up history and language but has the passion and determination to find out how things all fit together.
If future fic isn't to your taste, everything from the above paragraph still applies and I would love to see something set during the movie. Alternate POVs or missing scenes are always great. Fic set before the movie has potential, too – foreshadowing what's coming for Andrew, or any brushes that Frankie might have had with the supernatural as a child.
---
Ms Marvel
Kamala Khan, Bruno Carrelli, Lockjaw, Nakia Bahadir
An adventure! Embiggening yourself and stopping parakeet-styled villains and sneaking home past curfew and always staying true to yourself.
This is such a hopeful, joyous title! It has embiggened my heart! I stopped reading comics for a long time, and coming back this year and finding Kamala Khan has been a delight. I'd love a story that fits the tone of the comic - Kamala facing down some improbable foe, balancing her mission with her home life, loving on her big weird dog, and figuring out what she believes in. I am an old Marvel comics fan, so any cameos or team-ups you'd like to write would be fantastic. I adored her Wolverine team-up, both for the way she fangirled him, and the old-school superhero wisdom she picked up along the way.
---
Orphan Black
Helena, Grace Johanssen, Marian Bowles, Siobhan 'Mrs S' Sadler
Helena's adventures in the real world – possibly shepherding Grace around and protecting her. The two of them are sheltered in similar ways, though they have different ways of dealing with that. Alternatively, something with Mrs S and Marian Bowles – old flames, frenemies, past science sisters.
Holy crap, I can only request four characters here? But I love all the ladies of Orphan Black! Feel free to write any of them, seriously. I've thrown some prompts together for my four favourites, but it was bloody hard to narrow it down to four. Oh, and I have left out Felix, brother-seestra! And Kira. And Charlotte the littlest clone. There are so many!
I really loved the way second season showed more of Helena's ferocious protective side. I especially loved that it wasn't just her seestras that brought out this aspect of her character, it was children and poor, poor Grace. I love that she completely understood why Grace tried to kill her, and that it meant nothing when Grace needed help. I'd love some kind of story that shows me mad, ferocious, merciless Helena protecting people.
Mrs S is the biggest, best boss of all, and I love her. She's as protective as Helena, but worldly and realistic and able to make the heartbreaking decisions to protect the ones under her umbrella of care. I'd love to see her and Marian going head to head or collaborating to protect their people or sharing battle stories. I think that if Mrs S stepped into Marian's pristine house, the china cups would rattle and the window crack.
---
Hawkeye
Jessica Drew, Kate Bishop, Lucky
Kate and Lucky, having adventures, fighting crime, road-tripping and learning to live on low funds. Or Kate and Jessica, superhero team-up, mentor/mentee or femslash. Or anything where Kate, Jessica and Lucky fight bad guys and back eachother up.
I love superheroes, and I love Kate Bishop, and her appearance in Hawkeye has brought me back to reading comics after a long spell. I'm a big fan of women mentoring women, so I'd love to see Kate and Jessica bonding over training or fighting some supervillain (Madame Masque comes immediately to mind) or going for coffee and chat and taking out New York's unluckiest mugger. Or even just hanging on the sofa and catching up on Dog Cops. I'm good with that! Friendship and support is the thing I want to see most of all. If sexy times come with that friendship, all the better, but not essential. I'm an old fan of Marvel comics, even though I've drifted away recently, so feel free to include cameos from other titles, if that's your whim.
Miscellanea
As always, I have somehow ended up writing more about some of these fandoms than others – that doesn't mean that I prefer them over the others. I love all of these fandoms and would be delighted with fic for any of them.
If we've matched on a fandom that doesn't suit you, I've got a couple of short canons in my requests this year. Death by Silver is available DRM-free from Smashwords. And Stigmata is a movie that you're most likely going to find in the bargain bin because it's (omg) 13 years old. (It's pretty cheap on iTunes, too, which I know because all my DVDs are still in boxes, and I had to buy it to review canon.)
For stalking purposes, I'm
lilacsigil. She will keep your secrets! Yuletide is a happy time for me, I always have a great time, and I always love my gifts. Thank you for volunteering to write for another person this year! I hope you enjoy the writing process, and that you have a great Yuletide too.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-26 05:08 pm (UTC)*leaves the secret Death by Silver sigil*
no subject
Date: 2014-10-26 11:35 pm (UTC)