Dear Yuletide Writer (2021)

[primeideal]

So somehow this is my tenth Yuletide.

The years and the decade have...flied?

Any sort of a gift

Gives my spirits a lift

When the weather is iffy outside!

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'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!)

I expanded more on some of the worldbuilding and darkfic tropes I'm interested in in the minichallenges posts.
 

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 (Wayside School closing for cows: fine; Wayside School closing for COVID: no thanks; Ye Wenjie in the Cultural Revolution: fine; Cheng Xin comments on a Xi Jinping stand-in: no thanks.)

-character bashing

-cliffhanger endings

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

Adventures of Ledo and Ix
 

Any character/worldbuilding (Ledo, Ix, Worldbuilding nominated in this fandom)
 

This is a YouTube series that's less than an hour in total (one season of eight episodes, and a couple episodes in an unfinished second). lemniskath wrote up a great promo post here, and...this entire canon is a trip. Anything leaning into the fourth-wall absurdity!

 

-Do they ever get the princess to her destination? By accident? While trying to accomplish something else?

-What does "winning" even look like in this context? Do they even want it?

-Maybe their self-awareness starts wearing off on others (temporarily? permanently?) and they have to deal with the chaos as all the tropes collapse.

-More horrific aspects of the glitches/world collapsing.

-This could be a fun fandom for some alternative formats/weirdness if you want to go down that road!
 

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?
 

Redwall

Any (no characters nominated for this fandom)

I'm more interested in "new adventures in the Redwall world" than any specific character, so go crazy!

 

-I like the Salamandastron culture of honorable warriors, and especially characters like Russano the badger who see themselves as more peacetime leaders. How do those tensions play out? What happens to badgers or hares who aren't committed to a particular battle?

-The Guosim and their union struggles are amusing--I'd be interested to see more "political" type organizations transferred to the fantasy setting, as long as it's not too didactic.

-Quests and riddles and puzzles! Maybe with all the secrets that have been hidden over the years, someone stumbles on something they weren't supposed to, or come up with an interpretation that makes sense but isn't what the cluegiver had in mind?

-Villains with their own schemes. Maybe inside of trying to conquer Redwall for its own sake, they want to dam the rivers or construct their own fortress? Does battle ensue anyway? Or are creatures with long-term goals and planning ultimately not villainous enough to go to war?

-If you're interested in the religious aspects of "what makes this an abbey," anyway, with fathers and mothers and rituals, I'd be interested in that kind of worldbuilding. (What does faith look like in a universe where ghosts show up in people's dreams with practical advice?) But if this isn't your thing, no need to go down that path!

-If you're writing OCs: feel free to go against type--if you want to have a heroic searat or an evil hare, that's fine with me. (I'd rather it be something that just happens and not have the narrative dwell on it, though.)

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.

Wayside School

Miss Zarves, Dana, Sue, Bald Man in the Basement

Please treat this as an *OR* request--I would be very happy with fic that focuses on one of the requested characters, you don't need to include all four! But feel free to bring in any other characters, from the tagset or otherwise.

I enjoy the weird humor of these books, and especially the surreal contrast between the nonexistent nineteenth story and the rest of the school, which is only slightly less silly. Something during the canon timeframe would be great, but also feel free to age the younger characters up--is there a high-school or college equivalent of Wayside? How, if at all, do they eventually fit into the "adult world"?

Miss Zarves: Anything about Allison's time on the 19th story, with the whole Mark Miller|Benjamin Nushmutt doppelganger effect? The weird passage of time (especially given the real-world 25-year hiatus between volumes!) How did the 19th story deal with the Cloud of Doom? What does she think of Mr. Kidswatter, Miss Mush, and the "normal" staff--or does she even know they exist?

Dana: The chapter in "Falling Down" about Dana hating books but actually loving them resonated with me, as a kid who got too invested in/emotionally affected by sad endings. Dana seems to just trust Ms. Jewls' judgment, but does she ever discover that love in her own right? Become a writer or find some other way to make narratives she prefers? And (when they're older) does she really love John, too, or are they still frenemies?

Sue: she shows up in the "Wayside Arithmetic" spinoffs as a transfer student from the "normal" world who is not impressed. What's her take on the cow situation, or the substitutes, or the Cloud of Doom? What do the other students think of her? (Silly math is not expected but would be welcome!)

Bald Man in the Basement (and/or his fellow goons): What are they doing down there? How does Myron's "freedom" work? Are they aware of Miss Zarves? Is this a specifically Wayside thing, or are they just the equivalent of mysterious administrators at any other school?

--

 

Hopefully something here sparks your interest, but again, this is all optional--feel free to go in a different direction if you have ideas. Thanks, and hope you have a festive Yuletide!