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Oct. 8th, 2017 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaesaHey! Thank you for writing for me this year! My letters are always super long; sorry about that. It was meant to give you options, not hem you in.
If you don't want to read it, don't bother. The tl;dr version: avoid my DNWs and include my requested characters and I'll probably be happy.
If you get stuck on our matched canon and want to try writing a different one, or if you need canon review resources, I have a separate post full of those.
General Likes/Dislikes
Night in the Woods
Hiveswap
Imperial Radch
The Switch
Sword & Sworcery EP
We Know the Devil
AUs and crossovers
Contact Info
Canon Resources
General Likes and Dislikes
Likes
Much of what I read and write is gen, and I love worldbuilding (OC-heavy or canon-focused) in particular, so if you want to write that kind of thing, by all means, do! But I will also happily read any kind of ships you may come up with (het, slash, femslash, OT3s, something entirely else...). Unless I've said I don't ship them, I'm fine with cracky pairings that I didn't prompt, though I'd prefer to know how the characters got together; if you're going to write established relationship fic for characters who haven't interacted much, I would love that, but please give me some discussion of that and really sell me on it -- I'm open-minded, but I want you to show your work. My favorite kinds of pairing dynamics include pairings with the potential for intense loyalty or loyalty conflicts, foeyay/nemesis ships, friendly rival ships, and ships where two intense people work together or compete to be badass/create things/solve problems/do science.
I am big on humor, especially witty dialogue, and adventure stories, particularly ones that sound cracky when summarized but make perfect sense in context. Wordplay, riddles, and stupid puns are also great.
I really, really love trickster characters and underestimated characters who are discovered to be badass (or who discover themselves to be badass) in the course of the story. I love well-written moral ambiguity, but I also love straight-up good and honorable hero/ines. (And stories that somehow manage to have both in them are wonderful.) I love self-sacrifice, too! I love it when it's noble and when it's atonement or redemption, or even when it's just kind of hilariously overdramatic. (Caveat: I'm not really into lengthy scenes where Character A is going to do some self-sacrificing thing and Character B who cares about them is like BUT YOU CAN'T! I feel like a better demonstration of Character B's love would be working desperately to find a different solution.)
I also love all sorts of demonstrations of loyalty, especially ones that are weird or make no sense to someone outside the relationship, and I love this in the context of ships, but also in the context of found family or friends or even just people who are going through/have been through an ordeal together but may not get along well.
I like some crossovers! I also like some AUs. I have some specific crossover and AU prompts if either of those are your jam. If it's not, please don't sweat it. In general I enjoy setting AUs that add more speculative or historical elements rather than ones that take speculative/historical elements away.
I have no particular preferences regarding first/second/third person or past/present tense. Hell, use future tense if it works for you. Some of these canons are written in unusual styles; mimic canon's style or not, as is your preference.
If you would like to write darkfic, things I enjoy include: heartbreak and betrayal, mind control, psychological torture, creepy people (mostly women) manipulating the less-powerful (mostly men) into sexual situations, evil selves, political situations spiraling slowly and horribly out of control, body horror, creeping subtle wrongness, eldritch horrors from beyond space, and weird cult stuff. Cannibalism is okay but it doesn't interest me all on its own. While viscera and gore can be fun and I don't find them objectionable, I'd prefer horror involving that to be more psychological than visceral.
If you would like to write porn, I generally prefer het or femslash, and my favorite porny fanfic tropes are xeno and femdom! I also really like switching, threesomes, costume porn, power exchange/inversion of usual power dynamics, and mild bondage. Vanilla sex is also cool with me! I am also really fond of funny sex/things going slightly wrong, and just generally the more your sex scene is about those particular characters having sex, the more interested I will be.
Please don't feel you need to work every single thing about my prompts into your fic! The prompts are just guidelines; if you have a fantastic idea that veers far, far away from my original prompt, OMG DO IT, I love surprises.
Dislikes
First off, please don't write explicit/intense non-canonical child abuse.
Several of the characters I've prompted are underage. I'd enjoy reading awkward adolescent sexual discovery, but I'd prefer that anyone under 15 be aged up if you're going to write them in consensual sexual situations, and if you're writing noncon, I'd prefer the characters involved be at least 18.
I would also prefer not to receive a Happy Warm Family Gathering story about how Family is all-important, although if you want to do something like that with a darker edge, be my guest! If you'd like to focus on a particular positive familial relationship, that's fine -- I'd just rather get fic about how that particular relationship is great, and not with any sort of message about how family is always full of safe and supportive people and you can always rely on them and they always deserve to be forgiven for whatever. Happy warm family gathering stories about found family are cool though!
I don't ship incest for any of these canons, so please no incest. (Selfcest is fine though.)
Pornwise, I would prefer not to receive stories that focus on painplay, humiliation, M/f, anal, or lengthy kink negotiation scenes; I'd prefer that if the sex is consensual, that the people having sex behave as if they're into what's happening and assume the negotiation happened offstage instead.
Night in the Woods
Mae Borowski
MAN I loved this game. It wasn't perfect but I love the sense of place we get about Possum Springs, and how like a real place it feels, with its long history -- from the Andrew Carnegie expy and the coal mining days right down to the recently-abandoned Food Donkey and the details of the flood years ago. I also love the... autumnalness of the game? and how it encomasses homecoming and harvest and fun spooky stories but also death and sacrifice and a literal fall. And I knew a lot of Maes, Beas, Greggs, and Anguses in my awkward stumble through my early twenties. (I've been them too.) It just felt incredibly true to life for a game that's about talking animals and a cult, set in the kind of town I definitely didn't grow up in.
That said, I was left wanting to know more... so here I am asking for fanfic of it. I really really want to know what happens next, I guess? "Next" is flexible -- what happens within the next weeks or months; what happens in two years? Five? Ten? Does anyone like... notice all the people who are suddenly missing from the town who presumably died horribly in an abandoned mine? Does Mae go back to college or does she opt to do something else, assuming she's able to get her life back together? Do Gregg and Angus live happily ever after? Does Bea ever get like... anything resembling happiness?
(I hope so. She's been through some shit.)
So okay, that's a lot of questions, although I'm not sure they constitute prompts. I'd really like something exploring the worldbuilding of the 'verse and how (whether?) Mae's dreams and visions tie into that. (My general preference is that this is somewhat related to her mental health issues but that it isn't just all in her head. But I like ambiguity too.) I'd also just plain like to see her happy, maybe going back to school but maybe finding something in town to do.
I don't really have my heart set on specific ships and am 100% fine with gen focused on worldbuilding or adventure or a specific friendship, but I think my favorite Mae ship is Mae/Lori, weirdly enough? The Lori M segments were my favorite parts outside of the Gregg and Bea outings, and I'd also totally be happy with them as platonic friends but I think it would be cute for Lori to have a kind of kid crush on Mae that develops into a real thing once she's older. I also slightly shipped Mae/Selmers in the game (because of course I listened to all the poems) and I'd be curious to see what would happen if Mae ran into the Bombshell again. (Would bad decisions ensue or could she be honest and also not weird?)
I'd also love fics concentrating on Mae's friendship with Bea, Gregg, Lori, Selmers, Germ, and... really probably anyone else in the cast she was friendly with, including the weird janitor. I'd also love to see a fic about young Mae and her grandfather.
Also, just throwing it out there -- if you wanna totally ditch Mae (much as I love her) and write me fic about what the actual fuck happened to the Deep Hollow Hollerers, that'd be AWESOME.
Specific DNW: I'd prefer not to get fic about MaeBea as a romantic pairing. (Fic focusing on their friendship is fine!)
Hiveswap
Joey Claire
Hiveswap was incredibly charming and '90s-nostalgic for me, and I also really love fish out of water stories, so while I fell in love with Joey as she ran away from the monsters, watching her get to Alternia and explore this weird troll planet's weird troll culture was a delight. So I'd really really like to see more of her on Alternia. Feel free not to worry about what timeline this is even set in Homestuck-wise, or the implied time limit before the portal opens and she can go back to earth -- I'm totally fine with fic that sends her back home at the end but if you also want to write her staying on Alternia and becoming some kind of alien rebel leader (who is also a ballerina veterinarian) who takes down the empire, feel free! (Or, have her bring some a troll or five home with her!)
I really loved Joey's interactions with Xefros and I'd love to see more of them interacting. I could ship them as moirails, or you could just write regular old friendship fic! (If you're uncertain I'd like to see "alien trying to blend in with native inhabitants" shenanigans with them either on Alternia or Earth, or maybe rebellion stuff, or just... pick up where canon leaves off with them on the run from the Heiress' forces.
And okay, I know there's basically nothing we know about Trizza yet except that she's TERRIBLE, but I'd love to see Joey and Trizza interactions! If you want to do some kind of redemption arc I'd love Joey ♥ Trizza or some kind of weird friendship or moirallegiance, but I'm also really into enemy ships and would love to see Joey ♠ Trizza. (If you write a redemption arc for Trizza, though, please make sure she's done something she needs redemption from, though.)
I haven't mentioned Jude but I'm very fond of him too, and if you wanted to have a Jude-heavy fic that's great! I'd just prefer that it also had some weirdness also involved? Maybe Joey comes back from Alternia and they hunt down the cult together/take on Betty Crocker/whatever?
Specific DNWs: A Trizza redemption arc where all her cruelty is explained away by extenuating circumstances. Make her at least a little horrible at the start!
A tiny troll romance primer:
♥ = Matesprits = traditional romance
♠ = Kismeses = sexy enemy romance
♦ = Moirails = platonic besties who serve to keep each other stable
♣ = Auspistices = a three-way non-sexual relationship where one person conducts diplomacy between two people with kismesissitude potential. Mostly ignored by the fandom
See the MSPA wiki for more detail, or don't, as is your wont.
Imperial Radch
Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen | Breq
These books were so good that after I ran out of fiction set in this 'verse I actually went and hunted down all of Ann Leckie's other stories (and actually I also really like her fantasy 'verse centering around gods needing worship to survive -- so, uh, have a random rec?). I'm confident I'll really enjoy Provenance even though I haven't finished it yet, so feel free to incorporate worldbuilding or other stuff from it. Anyway!
The things I loved most about the books, in no particular order: all the descriptions of tea; Breq's collection of songs and her anthropological interest in them and their lyrics and their misinterpretations (oh tree! where's my ass?); loving descriptions of gloves (I like handporn, so sue me); a narrative that really vividly depicts both the appealing and appalling aspects of empire and colonialism ("luxury always comes at someone else's expense"); Breq's heroism and sarcasm and her moral code and her insistence on trying to do the right thing; the thought that goes into the worldbuilding, in particular that the various planets don't generally have one uniform culture but many that interact in complicated ways with each other; the interesting interplay of Breq's multiple selves and the general evolution of her sense of self throughout her history as a ship and as a separate entity.
Anyway, I would love you to do something with any of the above! Hopefully it was at least somewhat coherent.
My ships (such as they are) include onesided Justice of Toren/Lieutenant Awn; Seivarden/Breq; and Breq/Mercy of Kalr, so I'd be really pleased if you concentrated on any one of those relationships, whether or not you wanted to make them explicitly romantic or sexual. The thing that appeals to me most is the bond of loyalty between these particular characters, and so if you bring that out (either by testing their loyalty or reaffiriming it) I will probably be happy! Maybe show me how Lt. Awn ended up becoming one of Justice of Toren's favorites, or some hurt/comfort between Seivarden, Breq, and/or Mercy of Kalr. I don't think I have any NOTPs in this fandom, though, so if you have another relationship in mind that you'd prefer to write, please go ahead.
While I didn't request them, I'd also be super interested in fic about Anaander Mianaai's rise to power, or Translators Dlique and/or Zeiat's origins/upbringing.
The Switch
Chris
This show is so delightfully surreal while also having some really touching moments, and while I love Sü and her struggles... I really found myself craving more awkward eco-assassin shenanigans. Chris in general is a lot of fun; I love how they don't seem to see an actual ethical issue with, you know, murdering oil execs with a crossbow, and their enthusiasm for their cause, and their general awkwardness around all things interpersonal. (I was actually an environmental studies major in college and so a lot of the things they get excited about are things my peers and I spent a lot of time discussing the ethics of. Somehow crossbows never came up? Anyway, if you'd enjoy it, feel free to have them go into nerdy detail about grey water recycling or composting or something, because I would actually be interested.)
They're also apparently the only person Toni feels even vaguely comfortable with opening up about his feelings to, and I'd actually really like to see how the two of them met, and how they got into this business, or where things go from where canon leaves off -- both with Toni's transition (and maybe some discussion of Chris' transition? -- they do not appear to be out to Toni considering the awful things he said about them being "real women") and with the, uh, assassination business. (I would, however, prefer that even if a fic deals largely with transitions that there's plenty of assassin shenanigans as well.)
I also really really enjoy Chris' relationship with Zoey and Sandra, and I have to admit, when Chris and Sandra got mistaken for Zoey's parents I kind of instantly started shipping it? Also, Chris' defense of Zoey was (as is their trademark) both genuinely sweet and pretty offputting. I'd love to see the dire awful/awkwardness of flirting with the person you are investigating for multiple homicide.
Chris/Isabelle is also pretty cute in a violent kind of way and I'd be cool with something concentrating on them -- maybe the rest of their date night? Please feel free to ignore my general painplay DNW if you write this!
Sword & Sworcery EP
The Scythian; All-Knowing God | Player (Sword & Sworcery EP)
So this game is so surreal and beautiful and sad, and I was actually really upset when I came to the gradual realization that the Scythian's woeful errand was actually killing her, rather than the loss of lives being solely a game mechanic to make it harder. She seems to know it, but it's concealed from the player, and that really intrigues me. I'm also curious about the game being an experimental treatment for soul-sickness -- is the player character a patient somewhere, in a world where soul-sickness is a thing? And the Scythian seems to think of the player as an all-knowing god guiding her along, so I'm super curious whether she's been hearing something guiding her along for a while now. How real is this whole setting? What if the Scythian was to realize her god was not all-knowing? What if the Player refused to complete the woeful errand and found a way to save the Scythian? What on earth does the Scythian think about the Archetype randomly appearing and teaching her Sworcery?
I know this is an insane meta prompt (and I think that's fair; it's an insane meta game) but if you're not feeling it, please feel free to write something about the Scythian just assuming all that soul-sickness treatment jazz is not a thing. What did she tell Logfella about growing up on the steppes and the finger of God, and her fearless Scythian brothers and sisters?
Worldbuilding about Mingi Taw, the Gogolithic Mass, why Scythians hate rainbows, or what exactly the Sylvian Sprites are would be cool too! I also really like Girl and her weird dreams and her ability to see the sprites, and the way she worries about the Scythian, and her enthusiasm for miracles. I'd love a fic that focused on her relationship with the Scythian. (I've seen them shipped, and I've also seen them written as being like sisters; either is cool with me.)
They never really explain why Girl and Logfella live together, and Girl/Logfella is okay with me, but Girl being Logfella's sister or something is okay too.
Specific DNWs: Scythian/Logfella as a romantic pairing.
We Know the Devil
ANY (Jupiter; Neptune; Venus)
This game is incredibly creepy and I love it and I want to hug all three of the main characters. I'd just really like to spend more time with them? I'm open to any combination of OT3/pairings here, and anything from stuff concentrating on one of the girls, two of them, or an ensemble fic.
Jupiter's passive trying-to-be-chill-even-when-chill-is-not-possible is very relateable to me, and her self-loathing and fear of touching and the whole rigamarole with the hairtie is so awfullll for her. I'd like to learn more about her parents, because it sounds like they have a pretty awkward marriage of convenience and while her father is at least a little more understanding neither parent is doing a great job here. Maybe show me the aftermath of the red ending (assuming she lives), and whether she changes? Does she become more open about things and maybe a little bitter like Neptune, or does she double down on the Midwestern Nice facade?
Neptune fascinates me, because she's incredibly bitter and rebellious and seems to know a lot about the whole God/Devil situation than the others, but we don't really know much about her life outside of the camp except that she's got a friend she texts with constantly. I'd really like to know more about her backstory, and I'd love some worldbuildy stuff about the culture of this 'verse and what her parents/family expect of her. Did she get in some specific kind of trouble to get sent to this camp, or is she just there on the basis of her general attitude? Fallout after the blue ending would also be interesting to see.
Venus is a sweetheart, and I'd like to see more of her fiddling with the radios, struggling to fit in, etc., and I also find those moments where she surprises people by talking back and being angry as fuck are actually really endearing to me -- I'd like to see some exploration of that depth if you choose to concentrate on Venus in your fic. I'd also like to see how she deals after the yellow ending; I think of all of them she suddenly gains and then just as suddenly loses the most freedom and self-expression and it must be incredibly painful for her. Hers was the first "bad ending" I saw because I was shipping Jupiter/Neptune hardcore, and I think it's really interesting that her "devil" form gives me serious creepy Biblical angel vibes. (I mean all of them do, but ESPECIALLY hers.) Also more stuff about her radio expertise would be great!
In general I'd love to see worldbuilding about what the Devil and God really are, and the radios, and the magical girls, and just... all of it. If you're willing I'd also love to see stuff set in the true ending where they get to keep their new bodies, and hopefully hold out against the shitty camp authorities/legal authorities/....religious authorities?
Specific DNWs: Any of Group West committing suicide.
AUs and Crossovers:
Canon divergence AUs are great, but... okay, I feel silly saying this... sometimes I have trouble immediately seeing what detail has changed, so be kind to me and remember that, while I love whatever canon you've written about, I may not have reviewed it intensely as you have this Yuletide, because I spend my effort canon reviewing for the fic I'm writing. Make the changed details really clear, please.
I am a total sucker for anything IN SPAAAACE. I also like historical AUs, gangster/organized crime AUs, and superhero/villain AUs.
Crossovers or fusions between any of these canons would be great!
I am also always up for crossovers or fusions with Analogue: A Hate Story, Fallen London, the Gallifrey audios by Big Finish, Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, Homestuck, or Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Out of respect for the fandom whose setting you're borrowing, though, please don't tag it as being fic of that canon; there are tags like "Alternate Universe - Daemons" and "Hogwarts AU" that you can put in the additonal tags instead if what you're doing fits them. And if you end up doing a crossover or fusion like this, I'd prefer that the focus was primarily on the characters from the fandom I've requested this year!
In general I like AUs that add more speculative or historical elements and am less interested in ones that remove them. So if you're going to write that coffeeshop/academic/chef/treehouse-building AU, please keep the cosmic horror/aliens/AIs/eco-assassin shenanigans/sword & sorcery meta weirdness/magical girls/whatever, or put the coffeeshop in space or make them all wizards or set it in 1550s Istanbul or something.
CONTACT INFO:
You're reading this either on my Dreamwidth or my Tumblr.
My AO3 name is Kaesa, and I have a lot of bookmarked recs there if you're curious about what kind of fic I like.
I hang out in Yulechat frequently, and also the Yuletide Discord, and generally go by "Kaesa" or some variation thereof in both places.
Did I somehow neglect to explain whether or not I liked a thing in this long-ass letter? Allay your fears by contacting my BFFthinkatory! She does not know all my fandoms, but she knows me and my fannish tastes probably better than anyone. Her email address is dynamite.with.a.laser.beam at gmail dot com.
If you don't want to read it, don't bother. The tl;dr version: avoid my DNWs and include my requested characters and I'll probably be happy.
If you get stuck on our matched canon and want to try writing a different one, or if you need canon review resources, I have a separate post full of those.
General Likes/Dislikes
Night in the Woods
Hiveswap
Imperial Radch
The Switch
Sword & Sworcery EP
We Know the Devil
AUs and crossovers
Contact Info
Canon Resources
General Likes and Dislikes
Likes
Much of what I read and write is gen, and I love worldbuilding (OC-heavy or canon-focused) in particular, so if you want to write that kind of thing, by all means, do! But I will also happily read any kind of ships you may come up with (het, slash, femslash, OT3s, something entirely else...). Unless I've said I don't ship them, I'm fine with cracky pairings that I didn't prompt, though I'd prefer to know how the characters got together; if you're going to write established relationship fic for characters who haven't interacted much, I would love that, but please give me some discussion of that and really sell me on it -- I'm open-minded, but I want you to show your work. My favorite kinds of pairing dynamics include pairings with the potential for intense loyalty or loyalty conflicts, foeyay/nemesis ships, friendly rival ships, and ships where two intense people work together or compete to be badass/create things/solve problems/do science.
I am big on humor, especially witty dialogue, and adventure stories, particularly ones that sound cracky when summarized but make perfect sense in context. Wordplay, riddles, and stupid puns are also great.
I really, really love trickster characters and underestimated characters who are discovered to be badass (or who discover themselves to be badass) in the course of the story. I love well-written moral ambiguity, but I also love straight-up good and honorable hero/ines. (And stories that somehow manage to have both in them are wonderful.) I love self-sacrifice, too! I love it when it's noble and when it's atonement or redemption, or even when it's just kind of hilariously overdramatic. (Caveat: I'm not really into lengthy scenes where Character A is going to do some self-sacrificing thing and Character B who cares about them is like BUT YOU CAN'T! I feel like a better demonstration of Character B's love would be working desperately to find a different solution.)
I also love all sorts of demonstrations of loyalty, especially ones that are weird or make no sense to someone outside the relationship, and I love this in the context of ships, but also in the context of found family or friends or even just people who are going through/have been through an ordeal together but may not get along well.
I like some crossovers! I also like some AUs. I have some specific crossover and AU prompts if either of those are your jam. If it's not, please don't sweat it. In general I enjoy setting AUs that add more speculative or historical elements rather than ones that take speculative/historical elements away.
I have no particular preferences regarding first/second/third person or past/present tense. Hell, use future tense if it works for you. Some of these canons are written in unusual styles; mimic canon's style or not, as is your preference.
If you would like to write darkfic, things I enjoy include: heartbreak and betrayal, mind control, psychological torture, creepy people (mostly women) manipulating the less-powerful (mostly men) into sexual situations, evil selves, political situations spiraling slowly and horribly out of control, body horror, creeping subtle wrongness, eldritch horrors from beyond space, and weird cult stuff. Cannibalism is okay but it doesn't interest me all on its own. While viscera and gore can be fun and I don't find them objectionable, I'd prefer horror involving that to be more psychological than visceral.
If you would like to write porn, I generally prefer het or femslash, and my favorite porny fanfic tropes are xeno and femdom! I also really like switching, threesomes, costume porn, power exchange/inversion of usual power dynamics, and mild bondage. Vanilla sex is also cool with me! I am also really fond of funny sex/things going slightly wrong, and just generally the more your sex scene is about those particular characters having sex, the more interested I will be.
Please don't feel you need to work every single thing about my prompts into your fic! The prompts are just guidelines; if you have a fantastic idea that veers far, far away from my original prompt, OMG DO IT, I love surprises.
Dislikes
First off, please don't write explicit/intense non-canonical child abuse.
Several of the characters I've prompted are underage. I'd enjoy reading awkward adolescent sexual discovery, but I'd prefer that anyone under 15 be aged up if you're going to write them in consensual sexual situations, and if you're writing noncon, I'd prefer the characters involved be at least 18.
I would also prefer not to receive a Happy Warm Family Gathering story about how Family is all-important, although if you want to do something like that with a darker edge, be my guest! If you'd like to focus on a particular positive familial relationship, that's fine -- I'd just rather get fic about how that particular relationship is great, and not with any sort of message about how family is always full of safe and supportive people and you can always rely on them and they always deserve to be forgiven for whatever. Happy warm family gathering stories about found family are cool though!
I don't ship incest for any of these canons, so please no incest. (Selfcest is fine though.)
Pornwise, I would prefer not to receive stories that focus on painplay, humiliation, M/f, anal, or lengthy kink negotiation scenes; I'd prefer that if the sex is consensual, that the people having sex behave as if they're into what's happening and assume the negotiation happened offstage instead.
Night in the Woods
Mae Borowski
MAN I loved this game. It wasn't perfect but I love the sense of place we get about Possum Springs, and how like a real place it feels, with its long history -- from the Andrew Carnegie expy and the coal mining days right down to the recently-abandoned Food Donkey and the details of the flood years ago. I also love the... autumnalness of the game? and how it encomasses homecoming and harvest and fun spooky stories but also death and sacrifice and a literal fall. And I knew a lot of Maes, Beas, Greggs, and Anguses in my awkward stumble through my early twenties. (I've been them too.) It just felt incredibly true to life for a game that's about talking animals and a cult, set in the kind of town I definitely didn't grow up in.
That said, I was left wanting to know more... so here I am asking for fanfic of it. I really really want to know what happens next, I guess? "Next" is flexible -- what happens within the next weeks or months; what happens in two years? Five? Ten? Does anyone like... notice all the people who are suddenly missing from the town who presumably died horribly in an abandoned mine? Does Mae go back to college or does she opt to do something else, assuming she's able to get her life back together? Do Gregg and Angus live happily ever after? Does Bea ever get like... anything resembling happiness?
(I hope so. She's been through some shit.)
So okay, that's a lot of questions, although I'm not sure they constitute prompts. I'd really like something exploring the worldbuilding of the 'verse and how (whether?) Mae's dreams and visions tie into that. (My general preference is that this is somewhat related to her mental health issues but that it isn't just all in her head. But I like ambiguity too.) I'd also just plain like to see her happy, maybe going back to school but maybe finding something in town to do.
I don't really have my heart set on specific ships and am 100% fine with gen focused on worldbuilding or adventure or a specific friendship, but I think my favorite Mae ship is Mae/Lori, weirdly enough? The Lori M segments were my favorite parts outside of the Gregg and Bea outings, and I'd also totally be happy with them as platonic friends but I think it would be cute for Lori to have a kind of kid crush on Mae that develops into a real thing once she's older. I also slightly shipped Mae/Selmers in the game (because of course I listened to all the poems) and I'd be curious to see what would happen if Mae ran into the Bombshell again. (Would bad decisions ensue or could she be honest and also not weird?)
I'd also love fics concentrating on Mae's friendship with Bea, Gregg, Lori, Selmers, Germ, and... really probably anyone else in the cast she was friendly with, including the weird janitor. I'd also love to see a fic about young Mae and her grandfather.
Also, just throwing it out there -- if you wanna totally ditch Mae (much as I love her) and write me fic about what the actual fuck happened to the Deep Hollow Hollerers, that'd be AWESOME.
Specific DNW: I'd prefer not to get fic about MaeBea as a romantic pairing. (Fic focusing on their friendship is fine!)
Hiveswap
Joey Claire
Hiveswap was incredibly charming and '90s-nostalgic for me, and I also really love fish out of water stories, so while I fell in love with Joey as she ran away from the monsters, watching her get to Alternia and explore this weird troll planet's weird troll culture was a delight. So I'd really really like to see more of her on Alternia. Feel free not to worry about what timeline this is even set in Homestuck-wise, or the implied time limit before the portal opens and she can go back to earth -- I'm totally fine with fic that sends her back home at the end but if you also want to write her staying on Alternia and becoming some kind of alien rebel leader (who is also a ballerina veterinarian) who takes down the empire, feel free! (Or, have her bring some a troll or five home with her!)
I really loved Joey's interactions with Xefros and I'd love to see more of them interacting. I could ship them as moirails, or you could just write regular old friendship fic! (If you're uncertain I'd like to see "alien trying to blend in with native inhabitants" shenanigans with them either on Alternia or Earth, or maybe rebellion stuff, or just... pick up where canon leaves off with them on the run from the Heiress' forces.
And okay, I know there's basically nothing we know about Trizza yet except that she's TERRIBLE, but I'd love to see Joey and Trizza interactions! If you want to do some kind of redemption arc I'd love Joey ♥ Trizza or some kind of weird friendship or moirallegiance, but I'm also really into enemy ships and would love to see Joey ♠ Trizza. (If you write a redemption arc for Trizza, though, please make sure she's done something she needs redemption from, though.)
I haven't mentioned Jude but I'm very fond of him too, and if you wanted to have a Jude-heavy fic that's great! I'd just prefer that it also had some weirdness also involved? Maybe Joey comes back from Alternia and they hunt down the cult together/take on Betty Crocker/whatever?
Specific DNWs: A Trizza redemption arc where all her cruelty is explained away by extenuating circumstances. Make her at least a little horrible at the start!
A tiny troll romance primer:
♥ = Matesprits = traditional romance
♠ = Kismeses = sexy enemy romance
♦ = Moirails = platonic besties who serve to keep each other stable
♣ = Auspistices = a three-way non-sexual relationship where one person conducts diplomacy between two people with kismesissitude potential. Mostly ignored by the fandom
See the MSPA wiki for more detail, or don't, as is your wont.
Imperial Radch
Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen | Breq
These books were so good that after I ran out of fiction set in this 'verse I actually went and hunted down all of Ann Leckie's other stories (and actually I also really like her fantasy 'verse centering around gods needing worship to survive -- so, uh, have a random rec?). I'm confident I'll really enjoy Provenance even though I haven't finished it yet, so feel free to incorporate worldbuilding or other stuff from it. Anyway!
The things I loved most about the books, in no particular order: all the descriptions of tea; Breq's collection of songs and her anthropological interest in them and their lyrics and their misinterpretations (oh tree! where's my ass?); loving descriptions of gloves (I like handporn, so sue me); a narrative that really vividly depicts both the appealing and appalling aspects of empire and colonialism ("luxury always comes at someone else's expense"); Breq's heroism and sarcasm and her moral code and her insistence on trying to do the right thing; the thought that goes into the worldbuilding, in particular that the various planets don't generally have one uniform culture but many that interact in complicated ways with each other; the interesting interplay of Breq's multiple selves and the general evolution of her sense of self throughout her history as a ship and as a separate entity.
Anyway, I would love you to do something with any of the above! Hopefully it was at least somewhat coherent.
My ships (such as they are) include onesided Justice of Toren/Lieutenant Awn; Seivarden/Breq; and Breq/Mercy of Kalr, so I'd be really pleased if you concentrated on any one of those relationships, whether or not you wanted to make them explicitly romantic or sexual. The thing that appeals to me most is the bond of loyalty between these particular characters, and so if you bring that out (either by testing their loyalty or reaffiriming it) I will probably be happy! Maybe show me how Lt. Awn ended up becoming one of Justice of Toren's favorites, or some hurt/comfort between Seivarden, Breq, and/or Mercy of Kalr. I don't think I have any NOTPs in this fandom, though, so if you have another relationship in mind that you'd prefer to write, please go ahead.
While I didn't request them, I'd also be super interested in fic about Anaander Mianaai's rise to power, or Translators Dlique and/or Zeiat's origins/upbringing.
The Switch
Chris
This show is so delightfully surreal while also having some really touching moments, and while I love Sü and her struggles... I really found myself craving more awkward eco-assassin shenanigans. Chris in general is a lot of fun; I love how they don't seem to see an actual ethical issue with, you know, murdering oil execs with a crossbow, and their enthusiasm for their cause, and their general awkwardness around all things interpersonal. (I was actually an environmental studies major in college and so a lot of the things they get excited about are things my peers and I spent a lot of time discussing the ethics of. Somehow crossbows never came up? Anyway, if you'd enjoy it, feel free to have them go into nerdy detail about grey water recycling or composting or something, because I would actually be interested.)
They're also apparently the only person Toni feels even vaguely comfortable with opening up about his feelings to, and I'd actually really like to see how the two of them met, and how they got into this business, or where things go from where canon leaves off -- both with Toni's transition (and maybe some discussion of Chris' transition? -- they do not appear to be out to Toni considering the awful things he said about them being "real women") and with the, uh, assassination business. (I would, however, prefer that even if a fic deals largely with transitions that there's plenty of assassin shenanigans as well.)
I also really really enjoy Chris' relationship with Zoey and Sandra, and I have to admit, when Chris and Sandra got mistaken for Zoey's parents I kind of instantly started shipping it? Also, Chris' defense of Zoey was (as is their trademark) both genuinely sweet and pretty offputting. I'd love to see the dire awful/awkwardness of flirting with the person you are investigating for multiple homicide.
Chris/Isabelle is also pretty cute in a violent kind of way and I'd be cool with something concentrating on them -- maybe the rest of their date night? Please feel free to ignore my general painplay DNW if you write this!
Sword & Sworcery EP
The Scythian; All-Knowing God | Player (Sword & Sworcery EP)
So this game is so surreal and beautiful and sad, and I was actually really upset when I came to the gradual realization that the Scythian's woeful errand was actually killing her, rather than the loss of lives being solely a game mechanic to make it harder. She seems to know it, but it's concealed from the player, and that really intrigues me. I'm also curious about the game being an experimental treatment for soul-sickness -- is the player character a patient somewhere, in a world where soul-sickness is a thing? And the Scythian seems to think of the player as an all-knowing god guiding her along, so I'm super curious whether she's been hearing something guiding her along for a while now. How real is this whole setting? What if the Scythian was to realize her god was not all-knowing? What if the Player refused to complete the woeful errand and found a way to save the Scythian? What on earth does the Scythian think about the Archetype randomly appearing and teaching her Sworcery?
I know this is an insane meta prompt (and I think that's fair; it's an insane meta game) but if you're not feeling it, please feel free to write something about the Scythian just assuming all that soul-sickness treatment jazz is not a thing. What did she tell Logfella about growing up on the steppes and the finger of God, and her fearless Scythian brothers and sisters?
Worldbuilding about Mingi Taw, the Gogolithic Mass, why Scythians hate rainbows, or what exactly the Sylvian Sprites are would be cool too! I also really like Girl and her weird dreams and her ability to see the sprites, and the way she worries about the Scythian, and her enthusiasm for miracles. I'd love a fic that focused on her relationship with the Scythian. (I've seen them shipped, and I've also seen them written as being like sisters; either is cool with me.)
They never really explain why Girl and Logfella live together, and Girl/Logfella is okay with me, but Girl being Logfella's sister or something is okay too.
Specific DNWs: Scythian/Logfella as a romantic pairing.
We Know the Devil
ANY (Jupiter; Neptune; Venus)
This game is incredibly creepy and I love it and I want to hug all three of the main characters. I'd just really like to spend more time with them? I'm open to any combination of OT3/pairings here, and anything from stuff concentrating on one of the girls, two of them, or an ensemble fic.
Jupiter's passive trying-to-be-chill-even-when-chill-is-not-possible is very relateable to me, and her self-loathing and fear of touching and the whole rigamarole with the hairtie is so awfullll for her. I'd like to learn more about her parents, because it sounds like they have a pretty awkward marriage of convenience and while her father is at least a little more understanding neither parent is doing a great job here. Maybe show me the aftermath of the red ending (assuming she lives), and whether she changes? Does she become more open about things and maybe a little bitter like Neptune, or does she double down on the Midwestern Nice facade?
Neptune fascinates me, because she's incredibly bitter and rebellious and seems to know a lot about the whole God/Devil situation than the others, but we don't really know much about her life outside of the camp except that she's got a friend she texts with constantly. I'd really like to know more about her backstory, and I'd love some worldbuildy stuff about the culture of this 'verse and what her parents/family expect of her. Did she get in some specific kind of trouble to get sent to this camp, or is she just there on the basis of her general attitude? Fallout after the blue ending would also be interesting to see.
Venus is a sweetheart, and I'd like to see more of her fiddling with the radios, struggling to fit in, etc., and I also find those moments where she surprises people by talking back and being angry as fuck are actually really endearing to me -- I'd like to see some exploration of that depth if you choose to concentrate on Venus in your fic. I'd also like to see how she deals after the yellow ending; I think of all of them she suddenly gains and then just as suddenly loses the most freedom and self-expression and it must be incredibly painful for her. Hers was the first "bad ending" I saw because I was shipping Jupiter/Neptune hardcore, and I think it's really interesting that her "devil" form gives me serious creepy Biblical angel vibes. (I mean all of them do, but ESPECIALLY hers.) Also more stuff about her radio expertise would be great!
In general I'd love to see worldbuilding about what the Devil and God really are, and the radios, and the magical girls, and just... all of it. If you're willing I'd also love to see stuff set in the true ending where they get to keep their new bodies, and hopefully hold out against the shitty camp authorities/legal authorities/....religious authorities?
Specific DNWs: Any of Group West committing suicide.
AUs and Crossovers:
Canon divergence AUs are great, but... okay, I feel silly saying this... sometimes I have trouble immediately seeing what detail has changed, so be kind to me and remember that, while I love whatever canon you've written about, I may not have reviewed it intensely as you have this Yuletide, because I spend my effort canon reviewing for the fic I'm writing. Make the changed details really clear, please.
I am a total sucker for anything IN SPAAAACE. I also like historical AUs, gangster/organized crime AUs, and superhero/villain AUs.
Crossovers or fusions between any of these canons would be great!
I am also always up for crossovers or fusions with Analogue: A Hate Story, Fallen London, the Gallifrey audios by Big Finish, Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, Homestuck, or Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Out of respect for the fandom whose setting you're borrowing, though, please don't tag it as being fic of that canon; there are tags like "Alternate Universe - Daemons" and "Hogwarts AU" that you can put in the additonal tags instead if what you're doing fits them. And if you end up doing a crossover or fusion like this, I'd prefer that the focus was primarily on the characters from the fandom I've requested this year!
In general I like AUs that add more speculative or historical elements and am less interested in ones that remove them. So if you're going to write that coffeeshop/academic/chef/treehouse-building AU, please keep the cosmic horror/aliens/AIs/eco-assassin shenanigans/sword & sorcery meta weirdness/magical girls/whatever, or put the coffeeshop in space or make them all wizards or set it in 1550s Istanbul or something.
CONTACT INFO:
You're reading this either on my Dreamwidth or my Tumblr.
My AO3 name is Kaesa, and I have a lot of bookmarked recs there if you're curious about what kind of fic I like.
I hang out in Yulechat frequently, and also the Yuletide Discord, and generally go by "Kaesa" or some variation thereof in both places.
Did I somehow neglect to explain whether or not I liked a thing in this long-ass letter? Allay your fears by contacting my BFF
thinkatory! She does not know all my fandoms, but she knows me and my fannish tastes probably better than anyone. Her email address is dynamite.with.a.laser.beam at gmail dot com.
