Dear Yuletide Writer 2020!

[runespoor]

Welcome! Thank you for writing a story for me!

I'm also Runespoor on Ao3.

Likes:
• friends-to-enemies-to-it’s-complicated
• m u t u a l p i n i n g
• slow burn, including the version where sex happens before anyone admits to feelings
• denial
• angst with a happy ending
• putting characters through the wringer with a happy ending
• intense relationships: codependency, relationships that straddle the line between “&” and “/”, being scared of how you feel for this person because it’s giving them too much power, being greater together than apart, being awfuller together than apart, “I would do terrible/amazing things for you” and "I have done terrible things to you"
• hopeful endings
• aftermathes, consequences, atonement, picking-up-the-pieces, rebuilding
• fraught communication: double or triple meanings (on purpose or accidental), tokens as reminders/code, carefully avoiding outright lying, brazen lying, putting on a scene for the gallery, characters saying the most cruel thing, things left unsaid, things pointedly left unsaid, dancing around issues, declarations of love/hate
• emotional showdowns: understated ones, big dramatic ones after a dramatic scene, public denial, private denials, displays of support, magical curses that force you to speak the truth (and the aftermath), using the truth like a weapon
• performative relationships that don’t reflect exactly the private truth of the relationship
• transactional relationships: characters who are together because each has something the other want
• a willingness to use oneself, one’s loved ones, or the love between you to achieve your goals
• the emotional cost of the above, especially in pining, denial, and sense memory after you get blood on your hands
• betrayal and loyalty: your loved ones for your ideals, your ideals for your loved ones, your morality for your ambition, your ambition for the greater good… including the opposite way you thought you were going to choose; compromising between the two while knowing you might not if it were someone else; a character concealing the fact they didn't betray someone the way one might expect they'd conceal a betrayal
• explicitly making exceptions or refusing to make exceptions for your loved ones
• when characters are truly in love and agree after angsting that this love isn’t the most important thing to them, and the fact that they agree about it is one of the reasons they’re in love
• idealists: ruthless idealists, idealists who reject ruthlessness at every turn, people whose only ideals are their devotion to another person, believers in realpolitiks, people who are very angry at discovering they have ideals, people on the run talking about what kind of a world they want, talking about the cost/limits of idealism/pragmatism
• politics: lawmaking, every day urban planning, negotiations, intrigue, alliances, etc!
• stories about ruling: rulers who want to fix their country, starting with building a hospital/passing a law banning child labour/studying how they’re going to beat the famine this winter, what kind of difficulties they face, how they deal with them, how they address the misgivings (both legitimate and not!) of their opponents, etc, with as many details as you can put in
• little details that add to the world-building: traditions, celebrations, the kind of food, etc.
• imagery, local color, a sense of place and atmosphere – traditions, celebrations, passing seasons, the color and shape of buildings and streets, what kind of people live there, how the city changes between day and night. The contrast between the overarching stakes and the mundane (we’re saving the world but we still need to buy food) and the mention of one when you’re dealing with the other.
• travels to the center of the mind/inside someone's dreams to save them (Eurydice plot with "inside their own mind/nightmares" as "the underworld" = A++)
• outsider PoV
• resentment, nostalgia, love
• possessiveness that expresses itself by flaunting your loved one and smirking when they flirt with someone else and that person trips on their own feet speaking to them
• a contrast between personal life being rocky/angsty and professional/occupational life being a success (still rocky obstacles to be surmounted, but no-one can look at the proceedings/results and think "this person is a disaster," and yet)
• semi-sentient objects, especially places, especially canonical places


likes: dirty talk, humiliation (including breeding kink as a threat), begging/desperation, wall sex, rough sex, antagonistic sex, holding down/pinning down, manhandling, overstimulation, oral or vaginal fingering, blowjobs, comeplay, penetrative sex (+two-in-one, +spitroasting), nipple play, sex that is obviously a terrible idea but is so good, under-negotiated kink, a need for secrecy/~forbidden relationships~, infidelity rp, "I could do anything to you right now and you would let me", “you fucking bastaah yes just like that” (also “you little--ah, yes, you’re so--”), no-no-yes, the less experienced/more vulnerable partner turning the tables on the more experienced one, gentle sex as a powerplay, gentle sex as an admission you're not ready to make, the inherent intrigue of banging a royal (rounding back to "political favors" and "breeding kink")

dislikes: formalized kink, safewords in contexts where “no” would work, sex where someone is in total control, spanking, TPE, daddy or mommy kink, pet-play, voyeurism unless planned by the person(s) being watched, being caught in the act, public sex, non-con where someone isn’t enjoying themselves, omegaverse


Dislikes:
• Christmas fics
• different setting AU
• A/B/O
• a fic that's nothing but fluff (schmoop, WAFF, slice-of-life where people have a nice day and the focus is on that, comfort fic)
• babies/children fic, wedding fic, proposal fic
• non-con (the kind where someone isn’t having a good time)
• bleak, banal unhappiness
• unrequested non-canonical pairings (background canon pairings are fine), unless otherwise stated
• kink-wise: pet-play, voyeurism, being caught in the act, language kink (by which I mean "speaking a foreign language as a kink"), daddy kink, TPE, gags, toys.
• shovel talks
• I have a bit of an embarrassment squick
• I cannot think it would be relevant, but the specifics of this 2020 year (politics, covid etc)


Folk of the Air
characters: Jude; Cardan; Madoc; Taryn
you can choose to write only a subset of these characters, as detailed below: you don’t need to include them all

DNW: PWP, fluff, curtain fic, major permanent character death, setting change, non-con, shovel talks, mariage/proposal/pregnancy except as fitting their use in canon (I wouldn't enjoy reading about happy, romantic mariage preparations, but fake-marrying or marrying for political gain is fine), non-canonical pregnancies, fic focusing entirely on pregnancy or childcare (if it's just one of the issues the character has to balance, though, it's more than welcome!)

This canon and its complicated familial relationships and its canonical enemies-to-it's-complicated main relationships and its vivid worldbuilding! I love how Jude and Taryn both want to be safe, through very different means. I love Cardan best when he's awful. I adore Madoc.

Here’s a few prompts:

• Jude/Cardan: a canon divergence AU where the set-up of mid-book two lasts longer. I love the “enemies having sex as they run the court, it’s more complicated than that but they don’t really trust one another” setting and basically I would love more of that. Intrigue and we-shouldn’t-but-we-totally-do. Slow-burn hatred that's a bit more complicated than hatred and politics. I live for this shit. I would have read three more novels of this.


• if there's a canon-divergence you want to write, go for it! I love canon-divergence.


• Madoc post-canon, taking over that apartment building (I would prefer if there were cameos from other characters, either from the tagset or not, especially Vivienne), because "exiled Fae general becomes the incognito neighbor of perfectly normal humans" sounds hilarious, does he recruit ppl, what do the neighbours make of him and his wife, are there kids who adopt him because he'll teach how to swordfight; maybe deciding or not to try and take back the crown?


• something focused/showcasing the complicated relationship between he and his daughter and his daughter's sisters. The relationship between him and the girls was the first thing that made me fall of this series and I would love to read more of that. How does his relationship with Taryn go post-canon, does he respect her more or feel like he understands her better? How does Taryn feel about being Madoc's focus for once? His relationship with Jude? Does Jude get letters? Are Jude and Cardan expected to show up for family dinner once a month?


• I would like to know about what Taryn decides to do with her life! Does she get dragged back into politics? Or that, in the canon-divergence of the first prompt.


• canon-divergence during the first or second book where Jude is Unavailable for a while (....magical coma???) and Taryn and Cardan must team up to have Taryn play Jude's part because of reasons! or canon-divergence AU where things go a little less fast all the time and Taryn and Jude and Cardan play politics at court and Taryn gets to side-eye her sister's life-choices and also side-eye Cardan because really and they're allies? maybe?


• any post-canon with Unexpected Problems, either political or magical. Negotiating an alliance? Maybe there's Unexpected Magical Problems after the shenanigans of the third tome (maybe Jude becoming queen or Cardan becoming a giant snake has negative consequences on their health and they need a cure)!


• I’m waiving the dnw about setting change for the purpose of saying, if you wanted to add the Homestuck quadrants to this series, I,,,,, would not be in any way opposed,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, “Jude/Cardan and quadrants” has been living in my brain rent free for almost a year now and Taryn navigating her quadrants sounds fantastic too….. (for the purpose of this prompt you can ignore the DNW about unrequested non-canonical pairings, because quadrants are more fun when you can mention other things, even if they're past or unrequited.)


• commment at Yuleporn

Magical Diary
characters: Damien Ramsey; Mary Sue; Gary Stu; William Danson
you can choose to write only a subset of these characters, as detailed below: you don’t need to write all of them into the fic

yes hello i’m trash and I ship everyone here. (yes, including flirty-scheming!Gary Stu with grumpy-compassionate!Mary Sue.)(note: "ship" can translate to "flirt" or "banter" if gen's more your speed!) Mary Sue/Damien and Gary Stu/William are my respective OTPs. but they’re flexible, if you see what i mean.
Subtext/pre-relationship works fine here if you’d rather write something gennish.
other ship notes: if it comes up, please don’t break up Donald/Ellen, and please do break up Minnie and Kyo.

DNW: Christmas fic, fluff, language kink, pre-canon, non-con (the kind where someone isn’t having a good time; dubcon where everyone is having a good time/~wants~ it despite reservations is fine, no-means-yes is fine. except William, William doesn’t dubcon people.), permanent major character death, setting change, torture, marriage except for magical/political gain, proposal, pregnancy, bleak/banal unhappiness, trans headcanons for Mary Sue, voyeurism unless the people being watched are doing it on purpose as part of a seduction process, the jealous kind of possessiveness, amnesia, body switching, unrequested non-canonical pairings, if you include both Mary and Gary: please go with Horse Hall canon (Gary was in Illyria).
I would prefer if you came up with another name for Gary (i tend to use Albanian or Croatian first names for Gary Stu, if it’s all the same to you), I'm okay with Mary keeping the name (I prefer short-ish names for her)

I don’t mind fic with dark/disturbing undertones or overtones for this fandom! Think “Damien route dark” and “the magical world doesn’t explain the rules to 16yo wildseeds and then punishes them for breaking them.” If the walking content warning that is Damien is involved, I just want him to not have all the power in whatever relationship is taking place by the end of the fic, I ship him because I really like messed-up relationships where and the idea of Damien's lover "stealing back" power from him/being able to "fight back"/manipulate him etc (it's revenge + obsession all in one sexy package!).

If you want to worldbuild, especially on Illyria (and Gary Stu’s parents) or Otherworld, please do! I’d love to know more about it, if that’s where you want to set your fic. People going to Illyria in futurefic for research/resources and it leading to reconnection/OT3/OT4 time! A tropey “and now they must date/get married for magical/inheritance reasons” fic would work great. A tropey “and now they must marry someone who’s not the LI, and there’s zero angst about infidelity but there’s politics/magic/intrigue/we shouldn’t but we really want to even though we’re such a bad idea” would be fantastic. I would also love that generic-ish prompt about “someone is cursed and now someone else must go through their mind to find them back.”
I love love love post-canon fics and most of the prompts under are about variations of that. They're examples and flexible.

• post-canon SECRET RELATIONSHIP! (Mary Sue/Damien, Gary Stu/William where William goes to work in Illyria maybe, Gary Stu/Damien). Mary and Damien seducing one another, Gary seducing William. Damien or William trying to fit in Illyria, Mary balancing Horse Hall and Damien and sneaking around to meet him, Gary not telling his parents about William, all that good stuff. (do the Dansons know.)
  If you wrote Damien/Gary, I wouuuuuld prefer if you found a way not to have them actually go through the soul ritual? Maybe Gary can be subtly warning people off on the down-low. Maybe Damien gets distracted playing with Gary. If you know you love to write dark corruption stories, go for it, though.


• futurefic OT3 (or OT4) get-together! Mary Sue and Damien end up ~seducing William (maybe in the world where she lost her powers, and William's on the right side of the law, but compromises more and more until he's working with them from inside the system; or in a good-end world, Mary Sue and Damien are trying to convince William Damien is totally on level, legally speaking, now - and maybe it's true, legally speaking - and they ~seduce him); something about Damien politicking to reconquer his throne (for some reason the soul ritual isn't gonna work), does he get help from Gary and Illyria, is William a diplomatic contact? years-post-Horse Hall OT4 where Damien/Mary, on the run, go for Illyria for research, and there they find dear William, who's very close to the Illyrian crown prince… (it doesn't need to end in an OT4, I just think the set-up has potential)


• "William meets one of them/more of them years later through work, how does it go" can be liberally applied and mixed-and-matched.


• in a world where neither Damien nor William dated a PC, they get back together! (maybe it starts with hate-sex! maybe it's surprisingly rom-com-y! maybe it's years down the line! maybe it's a canon-divergence of their last year!)


• futurefic mixing the light and the dark: Mary Sue is an up-and-coming Otherworld agent and still dating Damien and so long as he doesn't perform soul rituals in her living room it's not her jurisdiction. (and maybe she's tempted to sell him out for a guaranteed promotion, or maybe he proposes to her because Magical Inheritance Reasons, and they give each other's tips, and presumably the sex is great.)


• waiving the setting change dnw here to say that,,,, if you wanted to add Homestuck quadrants,,,,,,,, the quadrant-flipping and quadrant-confusion in these relationships,,,,,, or if you literally want to write a Homestuck AU I'm here for it too. (for the purpose of this prompt you can ignore the DNW about unrequested non-canonical pairings except Grabiner/Mary or Grabiner/Gary, because quadrants are more fun when you can mention other things, even if they're past or unrequited.)


• if there's a canon-divergence messed-up fic on one of these ships you've always wanted to write, NOW IS YOUR CHANCE. (Gary seducing William in Canon but fucking Damien on the side? the Mary Sue equivalent? Go go go.)


• commment at Yuleporn

Scholomance
characters: Aadhya; Galadriel “El” Higgins; Orion Lake
you can choose to write only a subset of these characters, provided you include at least either El or Aadhya

DNW: explicit smut, non-canonical marriage/proposal/pregnancy, fic focused on fluff/waffiness, non-con/dub-con (except for external, "magic made them do it" type of causes), fluffy established relationship, major permanent character death, setting changes, pet-centric fics, shovel talks, body-switching, age regression

Love the world-building! Would love more! Feel free to tell more about how dangerous Scholomance is and the politics of the world! Still a fan of “someone is cursed into a magical coma and someone else must travel through their mind to find them”! Love each of the character, their backstories, the wariness and pragmatism and struggles of day-to-day life, would also love more of that! Especially adore El!
I didn’t nominate Yi Liu and haven’t mentioned her in my prompts (because she didn’t feel as central to the prompts here) but it's not because I don't like her: if you want to include her/have her cameo, I'd be totally okay with that!

I ship El/Orion/Aadhya and El/Orion and El/Aadhya, but I’m perfectly happy with gen (I’m not big on fluffy romance as opposed to angsty romance, so gen/pre-relationship/subtext might work out best anyhow).

Here’s a few prompts:

• so I know we were short on time in canon, but El fake-dating Orion for social capital (that she ends up not using right, i love her so much) is PEAK my jam and i would read so much more of it. maybe just. make it so that the relevant revelations didn’t happen, or didn’t happen the way they did in canon?


• the AU where Gwen Higgins did join an enclave after all. what changes? What does El think of her mother’s choices? Tell me of her friendship or rivalry or more (but it’s complicated) with Aadhya, with Orion. Does she plan on staying in her mother’s enclave, or leaving - or maybe her mother told her that she’d leave the enclave no matter how, when El graduates, because she just joined it so her daughter would be safe. Is El truly safer - do other people know about the prophecy?


• the roleswap AU between El and Orion. El is the enclave girl whose mother is a respected enclaver, even if El’s kind of weird, even if the others from her enclave don’t treat her quite right (her affinity being what it is, maybe), and Orion is the one with the prophecy, raised by parents who chose to leave the enclave and get lost in the mundane world, because the enclave would have hated the prophecy (or maybe loved it too much). What about their relationships with Aadhya? (you can just write about El and Aadhya or El/Aadhya or! Orion&Aadhya where they’re both kind of pining over El! Maybe Aadhya makes a deal with Orion!)


• the post-canon one where Orion has become the Dark Lord and El stands against him and possibly hates that the prophecy was misunderstood (because of course it would be) or useless (because of course it would be), and it would be so much easier to just join him and be by his side? or something along those lines, I just think “Orion goes dark and El really doesn’t” has potential I’d love to see explored! Maybe El and Aadhya fall into each other’s arms! Maybe someone is awfully betrayed! Maybe the New York enclave falls and El and/or Aadhya now counts Orion’s mom among their… allies? Maybe Magic Stuff needs to happen for Orion to be unDark-Lorded!!


• post-A Deadly Education: what changes for El now the school knows whose daughter she is? (#five times) how much effort does she make so things don’t change?


• outsider PoV on El please and thank you! five times someone thought was El was super creepy!
• 
  
• outside PoV at all actually. (Scholomance can always be that)


• on that note, how does Aadhya come to the conclusion that El killed the maw-mouth?


• El/Aadhya/Orion get-together during their last year at school, please I’m dying. El has two hands!!!! Orion and Aadhya can realize they’ve started Competing over Utterly Oblivious El! (they all win but it’s gonna be a while because our protag is not the most non-oblivious one) or she's fake-dating Orion for social capital and confusingly-real-date (is it dating?) Aadhya! and it can get complicated! or Magic Makes Two Of Them Do It and it's extra awkward and the three of them get together!


• five deals Aadhya made. five secrets Aadhya keeps. a favour Aadhya doesn’t want to collect.


• I usually dnw setting-change AUs, but here I’ll make an exception for: Evangelion AU, or daemon AU.