[Yuletide 2016] Dear Writer...

[antediluvian]

Hello my lovely Yuletide author! I am so excited that you're going to be writing for me and rest assured I am going to love my gift. This letter is meant in the spirit of suggestions intended to inspire, so if you have an idea that doesn't match my specific interests exactly please feel free to go for it - I want you to enjoy the experience of writing for Yuletide and I will just be so excited to receive an awesome fic for one of these fandoms. <3

In general, I prefer fics written in third person and I don't mind whether it's past or present tense. I love character- and relationship-driven stories over plot-driven ones (not that I don't love a long and involved story, but I find the emotional beats in it a lot more satisfying than the intricacies of the plot) and for Yuletide I strongly prefer happy endings or at least hopeful/optimistic ones. I don't mind if you put the characters through hell first, but I need that to be resolved happily at the end and with enough length to enjoy the resolution. 

I am happy with any rating and I love both gen and shipfic. However, please don't break up existing canonical relationships or include non-canon pairings unless specifically requested. 

Some particular things I love in fic: banter, slow burn attraction, slice of life, found family, everyday and mundane themes combined with the extraordinary or magical, power dynamics with a positive impact on everyone involved, loyalty kink, elaborate descriptions of scenery, people being super competent at what they do (and other people being super into it *_*), enthusiastic and explicit consent, daemon AUs, soulbond AUs, university AUs with elements of the canon world.

Things I don't love: focus on character death (during or after), angst without happy endings, noncon, character bashing, humour fic, a/b/o, knotting, body piercing, misogynistic dirty talk, misogyny in m/m, characters described as "slutty" or "trash", humiliation kink, infidelity, descriptions of hipbones.

If you're hoping to do a little research beyond this letter on what I enjoy, you can find my previous Yuletide letters in this tag, my tropes meme results here and my kink meme results here. I'm laserae on Tumblr and Antediluvian on  AO3. 


Spirited Away (animated film)
Characters requested: Chihiro Ogino, Haku

This film is the film of my heart. I love the way it blends the mundane details (scrubbing a bathhouse) with the magical (a bathhouse of the GODS!!!) and all the tiny little details that make up a Miyazaki film, like the kodama and the little jumping lamps and the train through the sea and and and just so many tiny marvellous magical things. This is the film I watch when I want to feel a sense of wonder, as though I am walking through a tunnel away from my everyday world and into some place full of tiny magics and vast wonderful things.

I would love to see future fic for this film about Chihiro as a teenager, a university student, an adult, any stage of her life really! Does she ever get to go back? What about Haku? I ship them like burning and would love to see their reunion (and perhaps courtship and eventual wedding and divine domestic bliss) but I would also be tremendously gloriously happy with genfic about Chihiro's life post-film. What does she do? What is her life like? How does the Land of Spirits bleed over into her life?

Optional prompts:

• Does Chihiro go to university, and if so, what does she study? I feel like her future is going to be something to do with the environment? How does the Land of Spirits bleed over into her life? Does Haku come back into her life? Give me details of student life with little bits of magic, or entry-level job mundaneity with little bits of magic, or corporate business trips with (you've probably guessed) little bits of magic.

• What's it like getting married to a former river god? I feel like that would be a weird and beautiful courtship. I love Haku's clear and evident worship of Chihiro. Give me the domesticity of their life together and the strangeness of it too.

• Does Chihiro ever go back to the Land of Spirits? Why? And what is it like?

• Do Chihiro and Haku ever have children? What are their kids like? What are trips back to the Land of Spirits like?

• Are there any scary moments for Chihiro now she knows how to see gods and ghosts? Obviously she's faced down Kaonashi, so she has nerves of steel, but surely there are all kinds of strange and scary wonderful things still in our world. What's it like being able to recognise them for what they are? Can she still do that?

We're Alive (podcast)
Characters requested: Saul Tink, Lizzie Fabre

I love zombie apocalypse survival stories so terribly, terribly much, because slice of life stories are my jam and slice of life fics in a zombie apocalypse are a perfect blend of terrifying adrenaline and weird everyday detail. I like the rotas and the hardship of surviving and the intense emotional bonds people form when the world is ending because the dead are walking the earth. I really liked this podcast because of the banter and everyday details, even though the writing for its female characters is often rather weak. I fell in love with Lizzie very, very quickly though and her ending in this podcast gutted me.

What I would really like for this fandom is a slice of life fic when she and Saul are both alive and together at the tower, or an alternative storyline where they get to survive and what surviving in this brave new world means. Please do feel free to include any of the other characters too - I loved the found family aspect of this podcast a lot. My particular faves were Riley, Kelly, and Saul's mum. I'd love to see them in this too, but with Saul and Lizzie as the focus.

Optional prompts:

• How does Saul eventually manage to woo Lizzie? She's pretty unimpressed by him at the beginning, until he risks his life to save his dog. But how do they actually get together?

• What's a day in the Tower like? You're suddenly flatmates with other survivors and all going about the business of trying to make sure you have enough resources to survive. What's it like integrating new arrivals? You form suddenly very strong bonds with people because you have no other choice - how do these people become your family?

• A fix-it happy ending - Lizzie and Saul don't die, they have their baby, what is life like for them now in a zombie-infested world? Give me slice of life surrounded by nightmares but with optimism and heart. Who else survives with them? Where do they go? What's the plan?

Demon's Lexicon (book trilogy)
Characters requested: Mae Crawford, Nick Ryves

This series has the perfect blend of magic, fear, practicality and banter for me. I loved the descriptions of the Goblin Market and the blend of magic with people's everyday lives. I love Mae's confidence and leadership skills and her utter enchantment with the magic around her. I like the fact that she doesn't let Nick push her around and that Nick likes her for the fact she'll order him around instead. She is basically my precious darling and while I ship the hell out of her with Nick, I also really love her relationship with Sin (which is also my secondary ship) and how close she is with Jamie.

I would love to see a missing scene from the books, like when Nick shows up in Surrender while she's bludgeoning the magician's monster with a fire extinguisher, or a post-series look at her life as the leader of the Market and how her relationship with Nick works. I am particularly enamoured of dynamics where inhuman/monstrous creatures are hopelessly smitten with their humans and how those relationships work, so I would love to see an exploration of that with Nick and Mae.

Optional prompts:

• Mae & Nick scenes from the Demon's Surrender - either more detail of the scenes we did get, or any other scenes that occurred off-camera. I would love to see Nick showing up after Mae bashed the necromancer's widget with a fire extinguisher.

• Mae/Nick future fic - I feel like there's still a lot to work out between them but honestly I find this pairing hot as fuck and I love that Mae clearly bosses the hell out of Nick and he loves it. I would love to see Mae figuring out how this relationship works for her, and what exactly it means to be dating a demon. 

• Everyone dealing with the day-to-day realities of the Market - and the fact that presumably a lot of Circles are terribly threatened by this new order they're forging. I love found families facing down everything that threatens them and I love the idea of them creating this new magical world order. 

The Iliad
Characters requested: Helen of Troy

Helen is one of those characters who fascinates me and also inspires in me a lot of sympathy. It always seemed to me that she got a pretty rough deal during the Trojan War, at least according to the Iliad. She was pretty much a pawn in the competition between the goddesses and after being seduced/abducted by Paris, she gets to spend ten years being blamed for the Trojan War with everyone arguing about whether or not they should just return her to Menelaus to end the war.

I would love to see fic about her life before Troy, during Troy, after Troy - what is it like for her to be this figure of living myth? What are her relationships with the people around her like? How does she compare her marriage with Menelaus to her marriage with Paris? And what about Deiphobus? Does she have a significant relationship with any of the gods or goddesses? She has a close friendship with Hector (and wanted more than that, according to some sources) - what about with his wife, Andromache? I would be happy with a sympathetic or critical portrayal of Helen, but I absolutely don't want a piece of Helen character-bashing. If you want to include any elements of Helen's mythology from other sources, I would also be very happy.

Optional prompts:

• Which gods or goddesses visit Helen while she's in Troy? What sort of conversations do they have? Do they offer her advice, or judgment, or solace?

• What is Helen's relationship with Paris like and how does it change as the war goes on? How does she feel returning to Menelaus at the end? How does her time in Troy change her?

• How is Helen's relationship with Hector, and with Andromache? Some sources feel it's implied strongly that Helen would have chosen Hector over Paris towards the end - do you agree? Or is it a friendship? Or respect?

• What is Helen's daily life like?

Six of Crows (book series)
Characters requested: Inej Ghafa

ETA: I finished Crooked Kingdom (oh my heart<3) so I have edited this section a little, but only to add/amend - nothing has been taken out.

Oh my god these books and their glorious wonderful deadly criminal found family *_*<3 I am currently 25% of the way through Crooked Kingdom so I may add to this in my letter once I've finished, but I won't be taking anything out, only adding to it. Inej Ghafa was my heart almost immediately - I love her skill as the Wraith, her knives named after Saints, her morality, her Suli proverbs, her acrobatic skills, her steely strength, her compassion, her relationships with the other Dregs - particularly her feelings for Kaz and her friendship with Nina.

I would basically love any fic which is Inej-focused, whether it is about her life as a wandering Suli acrobat before she was taken by slavers- I love all the world and culture-building in these series and would love to see more detail about being Suli- or about her early days in the Dregs as she became the Wraith. I love her relationship with Kaz and that he obviously cares deeply about her but also respects her as dangerous, and that she demands more of him- "I will have you without armour, or not at all". I also really liked the flashbacks Kaz has of them hanging out in his room, her feeding the crows, and would love character-driven fic in that slice of life kind of vein.

I know Nina isn't in the tagset, so please feel free to ignore this, but I loved her and Inej's friendship and would also love fic about that, whether first meeting or how they became friends or just slice of life criminal fic with them being their flawless dangerous bff selves. I also love Inej's dream of setting up her own ship and hunting slavers - I don't know how Crooked Kingdom is going to end, but if you wanted to write future fic/canon divergent fic where she ends up doing this (hopefully happy and loved and still with many members of her found family) I would love that so much. Does she ever see her parents again? What is happiness for Inej Ghafa? While I've specifically requested Inej because I would like her to be central to any gift I receive for this fandom, I loved all of the "main" characters- Kaz, Nina, Matthias, Jesper, Wylan- and would be so happy to have them included as well. 

Optional prompts:

• What was Inej's childhood like? How did she train with her parents and what was it like to wander together? What is the Suli community like? 

• Inej feeding the crows in Kaz's window. Why does she start doing this? Why does Kaz let her? What do they talk about when she's there, or do they even talk at all?

• How do Inej and Nina become friends? They're clearly very loyal to each other. Or give me slice of life friendship fic for them - heists, shenanigans, dismantling the establishment of pleasure houses etc!

•  Inej achieves her dream of a small ship to hunt down slavers - what's her life like on that ship and who goes with her? What is her happy ending?

• Does Inej ever find her parents again? ETA: I see that she did (or rather Kaz did) and I would love fic about her relationship with her parents now, about Kaz meeting them, about their thoughts on their daughter and how she's changed - I would like it to be positive and ultimately optimistic and full of family love, but I'm ok with that being the endgame and them working towards it.

• If you wanted to write me filthy smut with Inej and Kaz working around Kaz's aversion to touching skin, I would not say no. *_*

Stranger Things (TV series)
Characters requested: Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers, Steve Harrington

I loved the spookiness of this show and the eerie nightmare shadow world to which Eleven punched a portal and the way everyone bands together in their little groups to defeat the nightmare and get Will back. I loved the strange bond that Nancy and Jonathan developed and that they faced a nightmare together and came up with a plan to defeat it and I loved Steve's redemption arc - that he realised for himself he was being an asshole, that his friends were being assholes, and that he came back to help Nancy and Jonathan fight even though he didn't really know what was going on.

I would really love fic set after the first season - what's it like living in this place, knowing that there are nightmares just a thin skin away? Are any strange things still happening? Will spat up that bit of nightmare goop at the end of the first season, which kind of implies that things aren't over. Do they have nightmares? Do they learn even more about fighting? How do they deal with the aftermath of everything? I would like it very much if Nancy and Steve stay together - I found their Christmas jumpers unbearably cute at the end of the first season - and it is entirely up to you whether you OT3 them with Jonathan (because I definitely felt there was that vibe) or OTFriend them with Jonathan. I do imagine that all three of them remain incredibly important to each other whatever happens ship-wise. What happens with Steve's asshole friends afterwards? Do they ever have to run into them again? How is it for Nancy and Jonathan and their respective younger brothers? 

Optional prompts:

• Nancy still dreams about being in the shadow world sometimes. Sometimes she even thinks she sees it, out of the corner of her eye, or in the back of the mirror. What's it like living so close to a nightmare world?

• How does Jonathan's life change now he has his brother back? What parts do Nancy and Steve play in his life?

• Does Steve have any repercussions now he's ditched his asshole friends? Now he's really serious about Nancy Wheeler?