Dear Yuletide Writer (2022)

[primeideal]

Dear Yuletide writer,
 

Optional details are optional! Please feel free to write anything about these fandoms/characters, this is just to provide some suggestions if you're interested. I have treats enabled on my Ao3 account.

 

I'm also primeideal on Ao3 (and Tumblr), and Ember Nickel on FFN. I have many previous dear author letters from which much of this is copied, pasted, and endlessly rewritten. I've written/blogged more heavily about several of these fandoms than others at times, but I would be equally delighted with fic for any one of them.

General Likes:

-canon-divergence AUs

-five things

-worldbuilding

-dialogue

-wit and wordplay

-nonstandard formats (documentation, epistolary, etc.)

-interactive fiction--I prefer formats like Twine to open-ended parsers.

-happy endings

-sad endings (when providing some measure of closure or melodrama; I'm fine with character death!) See fandom-specific note for Project Hail Mary.

General DNWs: (see fandom specific-notes for further details)

-explicit sex

-underage characters having sex

-rape/noncon

-second person POV (in "normal" prose, happy with it in IF or the like)

-moralizing/didactic stories (characters Learning An Important Lesson about the value of tolerance, etc.)

-non-canonical allegories of current events and/or contemporary politics (Ye Wenjie in the Cultural Revolution: fine; Cheng Xin comments on a Xi Jinping stand-in: no thanks. Columbus has issues: fine; Columbus has issues and this is a metaphor for the US educational system as a whole: no thanks.)

-character bashing

-cliffhanger endings

-themes of cynicism or futility, or that the (canon's) main plotlines "are for nothing"
 

Crying Suns

 

Any character/worldbuilding (Ellys Idaho, Kaliban, Worldbuilding nominated for this fandom)

 

I enjoy the self-awareness of a roguelike that has an IC reason for being a roguelike, and Ellys' belief in free will and mercy despite everything the galaxy throws at him.

 

Ellys: his relationships with Okonkwo and/or Rebecca before the shutdown? What if things had gone differently at Ganyma? (I am fine with any combination of ships for these three.) What have some of the previous clones get up to with their Kalibans? Post-canon? (Any of the game's endings, or something else!)

 

Kaliban: what do the rest of the Odysseus' crew think of him? Were the Kalibans on Gehenna self-aware before the Shutdown? What's some of the other humorous unhelpful advice he gives Ellys about to deal with random events?

 

Worldbuilding: what's the deal with the pirates and their unions, anyway? What kind of technology is still present on Earth, and how much do they know about the rest of the galaxy? What's the deal with House Vicarelli, other than being the butt of everyone's jokes? If you happen to be familiar with FTL as well, I think a crossover comparing/contrasting their mechanics, or lampshading the parallels, would be funny, but this is obviously not expected!

FTL: Faster Than Light

Any character (The Captain, Engi, Mantis, Rock nominated)

I like this game's sense of humor--the whimsical music, the absurd situations, the destruction and mayhem. Anything from weird "what's the deal with the giant spiders anyway" worldbuilding to tragic "rocks fall, everyone dies, again" quests would be great. If you happen to be familiar with Crying Suns as well, I think a crossover comparing/contrasting their mechanics, or lampshading the parallels, would be funny, but this is obviously not expected!

The Captain: what are the in-universe reasons for some of the OOC mechanics stuff? Do they feel bad about committing war crimes? How do they hold together a very diverse crew?

Engi: So they're a robotic species--were they programmed by one of the species we know, an ancient precursor, or did they just evolve on their own? The awkward Engi specialist who has to explain "achieving a union" to the crew? An individual Engi who yearns to go against type and excel in hand-to-hand combat? Do they see themselves as individuals, nanobot assemblies, something in between?

 

Mantis: do their violent tendencies create difficulties for the Federation even in peacetime? There are several enemy ships that have a mostly-Mantis crew and maybe one or two Engi for repairs--do they complement each other or get on each others' nerves? Are their mating rituals as violent as their namesakes would suggest?

Rock: more on their religion/honor culture? Do they get annoyed with crewmates using them as fire extinguishers? Who approved the design of a spaceship without doors?
 

Pastwatch

Some things I liked about this book: the parent-child relationships, the twist of "oh dang what if our 'real' timeline is someone else's alternate history," and the premise of "for a world-affecting evil like slavery, it's not enough to take out one or two bad guys--you really have to go back centuries to put history on a better course" combined with "we have nothing to lose in this timeline, so let's do it!" (I feel like a lot of works that engage with these tropes either handwave the implications of "eh we just wiped out one timeline, but oh well" and/or send the message that "the evil is so pervasive that your only option is total self-abnegation, which is metaphysically impossible, have fun being complicit in evil forever!") I would be interested in anything that engages with these themes, with the canon characters or OCs using the Pastwatch technology.

Project Hail Mary

Worldbuilding, Rocky

Please treat this as an OR request--I would be happy to receive something that's worldbuilding-focused even if Rocky doesn't appear, or vice versa.

I was captivated by the "science the shit out of this" adventures throughout the book, as well as the deepening friendship between Rocky and Ryland. For this request, I'd like something canon-compliant--could be a missing scene during the book timeframe, something pre-canon with the Eridians' outbound journey or Rocky alone at Tau Ceti, or post-canon when Ryland is on Erid (or later human contact?) But I'm not interested in an AU where the mission fails and one or both of the planets is eventually doomed.

Rocky: what was going through his mind when he was isolated at Tau Ceti for decades? Does Grace ever tell him the truth about his "volunteering" for the mission, or the irony/significance of his name? Eridians have long lifespans, so it's possible by the time the planets make contact via astrophage-powered ships or lightspeed communications he might still be around--what happens next?

Worldbuilding: more technologies that are commonplace on Erid but unknown on Earth, or vice versa? What kind of other creatures might have evolved on Planet Adrian? How does Earth adapt and develop new technologies during the interim? (Of the Earth characters, my favorite is Steve Hatch, the "Beetles" engineer who's so over-the-top optimistic and enthusiastic about technology even by the standards of an Andy Weir book...but feel free to bring in anyone.)

Remembrance of Earth's Past/Three-Body Problem (三体)

 

Any character/worldbuilding (Ye Wenjie, Cheng Xin, Worldbuilding nominated for this fandom)

 

I enjoy the shifting scales and narrative voices: how the narrator notes that Bai Mulin betraying Ye Wenjie to the government actually altered the fate of humanity even if he never knew it, how we see just enough of Bronze Age to understand how Blue Space escaped. Anything from weird physics worldbuilding or small-scale character pieces is great, and both scales at once is also great! For this request, I'm not really interested in "The Redemption of Time" as canon--feel free to draw ideas from it if you like, but I don't want to take it as read.

 

Ye Wenjie: secrets at Red Coast Base? Some more of the "declassified" documents? The early days of the ETO? What did she work out about Dark Forest theory before meeting Luo Ji? What if Yang Dong had talked to her about the documents she'd sneaked a look at? Or if Ye had lived long enough to discover more of Deterrence theory herself?

 

Cheng Xin: A fix-it where she doesn't miss Yun Tianming at their star? Any kind of outside POV on her and the many different hats she wears: Older men patronizing her during Project Staircase? The humans resenting her in Australia? Luo Ji and the museum? What if she'd stayed on the cylinder worlds near Jupiter where things felt "normal" and 2000s-y? Her relationship with Guan Yifan--is he really a different kind of human for having been to space, or are they more two sides of the same coin?

 

Worldbuilding: More of the "video game" that taught people about Trisolaris--what were others' experiences like playing it? The aftermath of Gravity and Blue Space? The four-dimensional artifact Guan Yifan talks to? The legacy of the old universe in the new?

Steerswoman

 

Worldbuilding, Bel

 

Please treat this as an OR request--I would be happy to receive something that's worldbuilding-focused even if Bel doesn't appear, or vice versa.

 

I was thrilled by the worldbuilding in this series--the depiction of Rowan's scientific inquiry is great, even if our perspective as readers is different from the characters'. And I especially enjoyed the complexity of Outskirter society in "Steerswoman's Road"--the tribes closer to the Inner Lands growing more militaristic and less cultured, the Face People and Efraim's weirdness around women, the naming ceremony and recitation of ancestors, the importance of poetry and lore--that makes them much more than "wilderness raiders." I'd love to see more about Bel's approach to life as a warrior and a bard, whether that be with Kammeryn's tribe or others in the outskirts, or adapting to Inner Lands culture (Rowan being impressed by the way she learns the importance of the "once upon a time..." narrative was a really neat touch!) I'm open to shippy Bel/Rowan if you're so inclined, but gen is great too.

 

Something more worldbuilding-focused elsewhere in the world would also be neat--documents at the Archives? Steerswomen and wizards' POV on the same events? What does religion look like in a world where Christian symbols and language exist but most people don't remember their homeworld? (I'd prefer no authorial bashing of any specific belief system or lack thereof, but canon-typical disagreements/skepticism on different characters' part is fine and expected!)

 

Feel free to bring in any canon characters or OCs. Steffie's POV sometimes dragged for me so I would prefer if he wasn't a central character, but mentions are fine.

 

--

Again, this is all optional, feel free to use as much or as little as is helpful. I look forward to reading your story!

*(I used to do limericks at the beginning of my Yuletide letters because I thought it was funny the first year and then I figured I had to keep going. Eventually I reached the point where it's like...this is maybe coming off as a little too tryhard. So if for whatever reason you're looking for one because it's tradition, I'm sorry for the disappointment.)