Dear Yuletide Writer
Nov. 2nd, 2019 06:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runespoorWelcome! Thank you for writing a story for me!
This letter is a bit more of a WiP than I'd like, though I suspect it's pretty complete. >_>
I'm sorry to say my fandom presence isn't the easiest for researching/stalking purposes.
Likes:
• 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, mixing angst and fluff
• intense relationships: codependency, relationships that straddle the line between “&” and “/”, being scared of how you feel for this person because it’s giving this specific person too much power, being greater together than apart, “I would do terrible/amazing things for you” and "I have done terrible things to you"
• friends-to-enemies-to-lovers
• hopeful endings
• aftermathes, consequences, atonement, picking-up-the-pieces
• fraught communication: double or triple meanings (on purpose or accidental), tokens as reminders/code, carefully avoiding outright lying, putting on a scene for the gallery, when a character says something so cruel and true the reader gasps in delighted horror, 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)
• 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
• 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
• idealists: ruthless idealists, idealists who reject ruthlessness at every turn, people whose only ideals are their devotion to another person, believers in realpolitiks, 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, 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 (Euridyce plot with "inside their own mind/nightmares" as "the underworld" = A++)
• outsider PoV
• resentment, nostalgia, love
In all three canons and characters I picked, there's an element of emotional revenge/come-uppance I love: the betrayer realizing he hurt themselves the most, the manipulator realizing they underestimated their opponent, the seducer falling and staying fallen, and realizing they're not as in control as they thought they were, and how could they be so blind? I find reading about that very satisfying, it feels like a victory for the other character. If you wanted to include one aspect of that, I would eat it up with a spoon.
If your fic leads you to including smut (and I don't mind the absence of smut, fade-to-black is perfectly fine with me), I like edging, begging, desperation, wall sex, rough sex, "I could do anything to you right now and you would let me", the more experienced/less vulnerable partner being surprised by the other/not being in control.
I don't enjoy negotiated kink, safewords, or fics where the top is the only one engaging in dirty talk and the bottom has lost all control.
Dislikes:
• Christmas fics
• different setting AU
• A/B/O or gender essentialism
• a fic that's nothing but fluff (schmoop, WAFF)
• PWP
• babies/children fic
• non-con
• bleak, banal unhappiness
• unrequested pairings (background canon pairings are fine), unless otherwise stated
• character bashing
• kink-wise: pet-play, voyeurism, language kink (by which I mean "speaking a foreign language as a kink")
• I have a bit of an embarrassment squick
Akatsuki no Yona
characters: Soo-Won, Yona
do i ship them: yes, a lot, and as an OT3 with Hak
DNW: PWP, fluff, Christmas fic,domesticity curtainfic, language kink, setting change, babies/children fic, non-con.
I love themes of "killing your own heart/humanity to achieve your dream", sacrificing your dearest bonds, and then exploring the emotional cost of that. Especially when there's a lot of regrets, a lot of denial, and no possible take-backs (maybe there's a happy ending, but they're gonna have to work for it). I love a charismatic, fem-looking guy who plays (everyone for) a fool and realizes he's been underestimating someone, too.
I'd prefer fic that's set vaguely during canon (or a future fic), to childhood shenanigans.
- Soo-Won, p i n i n g. For Yona, for the past, for an impossible way to get both his dream and his friends. Realizing he underestimated her so very, very much. (How much of a distraction is it? How obvious is he? How many risks does he end up taking for her, for Hak? Outsider PoV?)
- Soo-Won and Yona, after she wins. Did she condemn him to house arrest for life, because she won't condemn him to death? Are there any plots to put him back on the throne, does he think her a fool for not executing him? Has she forgiven him?
- anything about ruling and being a leader and how they're both idealists even though it's not the same kind of idealists. Maybe Hak's PoV as he does his own p i n i n g over them. (Hak’s taste runs to pretty charismatic dangerous people he would lay down his life for.)
Give me all the ways Soo-Won looks at Yona and tries to processes that she’s amazing? he didn’t see her development coming? at all? also she’s a danger to his plans, but omg she’s so? smart and brave and devoted to their country and she got to know their country so much asdklsdkldzokmw<333, tl;dr Soo-Won getting to be a big, swooning Yona fan and concealing it because it’s extremely inconvenient no matter the moment you place the story is a bulletproof kink.
I love that the more Yona (and Hak) are able to be functional over Soo-Won, the more Soo-Won is prey to Feelings. I love that Soo-Won and Yona are both good people, good leaders, good rulers.
Give me all the ways Feelings are making things way less convenient than they should be for everyone involved. The Feelings can totally be platonic, so long as they are most intense, soul-wrenching, you-were-half-of-my-world Feelings. I love the intensity/desperation of it, it doesn't need to include smooching. Wistfulness and sensorial memories would also be fantastic, as well as (pining) guilt for misplaced nostalgia (p i n i n g for the past is still pining).
If you wanted to write a story with a soulmate trope, that could be yet another angst source for these two!
You can consider me up to date with canon (which i'll def do before Yuletide) for the purposes of writing!
Long Live the Queen
characters: Elodie; Banion
do i ship them: oh so much
DNW: PWP, fluff,domesticity curtainfic, language kink, Cruel Elodie, character death, Elodie/Talarist, setting change
I'm interested in politics, snark, Banion being the most ExtraTM smug snake, and Elodie giving as good as she's getting.
- more of the timeline where they marry with Elodie making the wedding attires a statement about their respective powers and Banion attempting to embarrass Elodie by revealing one of the flower boys is his. (IconiqueTM.) How does Elodie retaliate - does she declare the child heir to something? Does she get interested in his education, does she test him for a Lumen? I'm not into kidfic usually, but if you want to write about the boy's life should Elodie take an interest in him, and all the ways it gets political, I'd love to read it. What kind of other public power plays do the Queen and Consort engage in throughout the years? Are they secretly allies, and using their cheerful rivalry to run circles around would-be political plots? What kind of personal agenda does Banion attempt to have Elodie acquiesce to? Outsider PoV on said relationship (through gossip rags, letters between nobles, etc) and how inaccurate the court's impression of them is?
- more of the timeline where they carry an affair after Elodie marries Thaddeus. (if you want Thaddeus to know and be okay with it, it's fine by me; I don't mind infidelity in the context of arranged marriages, though, so you don't have to.) How do they keep their affair going? Does Thaddeus know? How much political power does Elodie keep? Does she ever play her husband against her lover so she can have freer range over her country's politics?
- if you'd rather stay gen, rivalry over politics. Does Banion ever get over his disdain for the young queen, or the fact that she didn't marry him? Who did she marry (Briony? Kevan? someone who's not even a noble? my shipping of Elodie/Kevan is pretty strong too so if you wanted to write the fic where Banion is pestering Elodie about politics and Kevan takes it upon himself to officially terrify Banion into not fucking up Elodie's plans, I would be into that), and how much does it break Banion's brain?
- the AU where Elodie has to flee during the invasion, and turns toward Banion for help.
- a timeline where sacrifices were made to prevent the invasion/Kraken, and Banion is forced to be supportive of Elodie's guilt, or help her through the cost. Especially if he's way less wracked with guilt, but maybe slightly scared all the same.
Obviously the tone I suggested above is just a suggestion and other tones may lend themselves to several of these prompts! I would never, ever dislike a story about a moment of uncharacteristic emotional honesty between these two - such a scene, or such a story, would be lovely.
Feel free to add as many or as little cameos from other characters as you want, I like pretty much everyone in this bar and reading about life went on for them would be fantastic. If you want to mention ships, whether canonical or not, all I ask is that you don’t break up Julianna and Lucille.
If you do ship Elodie and Banion and the fic isn't set several years after canon, I would prefer fade-to-black over explicit smut.
Magical Diary
character: Damien Ramsey
do i ship him: Damien/Mary Sue is my OTP, and in a world where Mary Sue isn't interested in doing him (good for her!), Damien/William is my other OTP; and post-canon Damien/William/Angela could be a thing.
other ship notes: if it comes up, please don’t break up Donald/Ellen, and please do break up Minnie and Kyo.
DNW: PWP, fluff, Christmas fic,domesticity curtainfic, language kink, Damien backstory, non-con, character death, focus on OCs, setting change, torture
Damien Ramsey never did anything right, ever, in his life.
With that out of the way, here's a couple of prompts!
- Damien/Mary Sue - any post-canon where Mary Sue has wrestled/manipulated more power from Damien in the relationship, or a Damien PoV of the school year. Either the timeline where Mary Sue lost her powers and Damien is in super over his head or the timeline where Mary Sue played everything right and is still in Horse Hall work for me. You can go as obsessive, resentful, devoted, and focused on mutual destruction as you want in how you imagine their feelings; I love the idea of Mary Sue using Damien's new-found devotion for her to make him pay.
- Damien/William - if Damien/Mary Sue never happened, I would love a fic with exes getting back together. Maybe it starts with hate-sex. Maybe it's surprisingly rom-com-y. Either during the school year or years later would be great!
- Damien &-or-/Angela - props to the only person to win at a relationship with Damien. How did it go? Was there much it's-all-about-William going on that they would never address? (i hope yes.)
- Damien and Potsdam - I trust each of them about as far as I could throw them, and I'd love to read more about their dynamic. Did she ever try to talk to him after William punched him? Do they get back in touch post-canon?
I'm not into non-con, but Damien is a manipulative asshole even if he's no longer quite the abuser he is during canon, and if he manipulated/guilt-tripped someone into giving more than they wanted to (because Damien totally frames it as "giving"), even if the fic/relationship progresses past that and even if it's not explicitly adressed, I would be into that.
I just want Damien to not have all the power in whatever relationship is taking place by the end of the fic, I really like the idea of Damien's lover being able to "fight back".
I only requested Damien, but as you can see it’s more because I find him agreat terrible phenomenal taste that goes poisonously well with everything than because I’m invested in how Damien came to be! Feel free to use another character as your PoV, for instance (because William going DDDD: over his Terrible Taste that leads him unerringly toward Awful Very Pretty People Who Will Use Him And Break His Heart, or Angela going :3333 over winning at the relationship, or Mary Sue going >:D, would also be great!).
I also noted above “Damien Ramsey never did anything right”, but if you’re of the opinion that the Damien/William thing back then (and just that) was a bit more complex than just Damien deciding to break William's heart, it’s fine with me if you want to have them work through that. (I can see William being oblivious of Damien being jealous of William's family.)
You can also go way lighter with Damien/Mary Sue than most of the examples I've given - for instance, Damien finding himself playing the supportive if disreputable boyfriend while Mary Sue is preparing her exam to become an Otherworld agent, and being a bit resentful but mostly being way more into trolling other people than Mary Sue for once, or something along those lines... That'd be fantastic tbh.
I'm up-to-date with the beta of Wolf Hall, for the purposes of Damien knowledge, but I'd rather the fic take place in Horse Hall continuity.
This letter is a bit more of a WiP than I'd like, though I suspect it's pretty complete. >_>
I'm sorry to say my fandom presence isn't the easiest for researching/stalking purposes.
Likes:
• 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, mixing angst and fluff
• intense relationships: codependency, relationships that straddle the line between “&” and “/”, being scared of how you feel for this person because it’s giving this specific person too much power, being greater together than apart, “I would do terrible/amazing things for you” and "I have done terrible things to you"
• friends-to-enemies-to-lovers
• hopeful endings
• aftermathes, consequences, atonement, picking-up-the-pieces
• fraught communication: double or triple meanings (on purpose or accidental), tokens as reminders/code, carefully avoiding outright lying, putting on a scene for the gallery, when a character says something so cruel and true the reader gasps in delighted horror, 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)
• 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
• 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
• idealists: ruthless idealists, idealists who reject ruthlessness at every turn, people whose only ideals are their devotion to another person, believers in realpolitiks, 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, 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 (Euridyce plot with "inside their own mind/nightmares" as "the underworld" = A++)
• outsider PoV
• resentment, nostalgia, love
In all three canons and characters I picked, there's an element of emotional revenge/come-uppance I love: the betrayer realizing he hurt themselves the most, the manipulator realizing they underestimated their opponent, the seducer falling and staying fallen, and realizing they're not as in control as they thought they were, and how could they be so blind? I find reading about that very satisfying, it feels like a victory for the other character. If you wanted to include one aspect of that, I would eat it up with a spoon.
If your fic leads you to including smut (and I don't mind the absence of smut, fade-to-black is perfectly fine with me), I like edging, begging, desperation, wall sex, rough sex, "I could do anything to you right now and you would let me", the more experienced/less vulnerable partner being surprised by the other/not being in control.
I don't enjoy negotiated kink, safewords, or fics where the top is the only one engaging in dirty talk and the bottom has lost all control.
Dislikes:
• Christmas fics
• different setting AU
• A/B/O or gender essentialism
• a fic that's nothing but fluff (schmoop, WAFF)
• PWP
• babies/children fic
• non-con
• bleak, banal unhappiness
• unrequested pairings (background canon pairings are fine), unless otherwise stated
• character bashing
• kink-wise: pet-play, voyeurism, language kink (by which I mean "speaking a foreign language as a kink")
• I have a bit of an embarrassment squick
Akatsuki no Yona
characters: Soo-Won, Yona
do i ship them: yes, a lot, and as an OT3 with Hak
DNW: PWP, fluff, Christmas fic,
I love themes of "killing your own heart/humanity to achieve your dream", sacrificing your dearest bonds, and then exploring the emotional cost of that. Especially when there's a lot of regrets, a lot of denial, and no possible take-backs (maybe there's a happy ending, but they're gonna have to work for it). I love a charismatic, fem-looking guy who plays (everyone for) a fool and realizes he's been underestimating someone, too.
I'd prefer fic that's set vaguely during canon (or a future fic), to childhood shenanigans.
- Soo-Won, p i n i n g. For Yona, for the past, for an impossible way to get both his dream and his friends. Realizing he underestimated her so very, very much. (How much of a distraction is it? How obvious is he? How many risks does he end up taking for her, for Hak? Outsider PoV?)
- Soo-Won and Yona, after she wins. Did she condemn him to house arrest for life, because she won't condemn him to death? Are there any plots to put him back on the throne, does he think her a fool for not executing him? Has she forgiven him?
- anything about ruling and being a leader and how they're both idealists even though it's not the same kind of idealists. Maybe Hak's PoV as he does his own p i n i n g over them. (Hak’s taste runs to pretty charismatic dangerous people he would lay down his life for.)
Give me all the ways Soo-Won looks at Yona and tries to processes that she’s amazing? he didn’t see her development coming? at all? also she’s a danger to his plans, but omg she’s so? smart and brave and devoted to their country and she got to know their country so much asdklsdkldzokmw<333, tl;dr Soo-Won getting to be a big, swooning Yona fan and concealing it because it’s extremely inconvenient no matter the moment you place the story is a bulletproof kink.
I love that the more Yona (and Hak) are able to be functional over Soo-Won, the more Soo-Won is prey to Feelings. I love that Soo-Won and Yona are both good people, good leaders, good rulers.
Give me all the ways Feelings are making things way less convenient than they should be for everyone involved. The Feelings can totally be platonic, so long as they are most intense, soul-wrenching, you-were-half-of-my-world Feelings. I love the intensity/desperation of it, it doesn't need to include smooching. Wistfulness and sensorial memories would also be fantastic, as well as (pining) guilt for misplaced nostalgia (p i n i n g for the past is still pining).
If you wanted to write a story with a soulmate trope, that could be yet another angst source for these two!
You can consider me up to date with canon (which i'll def do before Yuletide) for the purposes of writing!
Long Live the Queen
characters: Elodie; Banion
do i ship them: oh so much
DNW: PWP, fluff,
I'm interested in politics, snark, Banion being the most ExtraTM smug snake, and Elodie giving as good as she's getting.
- more of the timeline where they marry with Elodie making the wedding attires a statement about their respective powers and Banion attempting to embarrass Elodie by revealing one of the flower boys is his. (IconiqueTM.) How does Elodie retaliate - does she declare the child heir to something? Does she get interested in his education, does she test him for a Lumen? I'm not into kidfic usually, but if you want to write about the boy's life should Elodie take an interest in him, and all the ways it gets political, I'd love to read it. What kind of other public power plays do the Queen and Consort engage in throughout the years? Are they secretly allies, and using their cheerful rivalry to run circles around would-be political plots? What kind of personal agenda does Banion attempt to have Elodie acquiesce to? Outsider PoV on said relationship (through gossip rags, letters between nobles, etc) and how inaccurate the court's impression of them is?
- more of the timeline where they carry an affair after Elodie marries Thaddeus. (if you want Thaddeus to know and be okay with it, it's fine by me; I don't mind infidelity in the context of arranged marriages, though, so you don't have to.) How do they keep their affair going? Does Thaddeus know? How much political power does Elodie keep? Does she ever play her husband against her lover so she can have freer range over her country's politics?
- if you'd rather stay gen, rivalry over politics. Does Banion ever get over his disdain for the young queen, or the fact that she didn't marry him? Who did she marry (Briony? Kevan? someone who's not even a noble? my shipping of Elodie/Kevan is pretty strong too so if you wanted to write the fic where Banion is pestering Elodie about politics and Kevan takes it upon himself to officially terrify Banion into not fucking up Elodie's plans, I would be into that), and how much does it break Banion's brain?
- the AU where Elodie has to flee during the invasion, and turns toward Banion for help.
- a timeline where sacrifices were made to prevent the invasion/Kraken, and Banion is forced to be supportive of Elodie's guilt, or help her through the cost. Especially if he's way less wracked with guilt, but maybe slightly scared all the same.
Obviously the tone I suggested above is just a suggestion and other tones may lend themselves to several of these prompts! I would never, ever dislike a story about a moment of uncharacteristic emotional honesty between these two - such a scene, or such a story, would be lovely.
Feel free to add as many or as little cameos from other characters as you want, I like pretty much everyone in this bar and reading about life went on for them would be fantastic. If you want to mention ships, whether canonical or not, all I ask is that you don’t break up Julianna and Lucille.
If you do ship Elodie and Banion and the fic isn't set several years after canon, I would prefer fade-to-black over explicit smut.
Magical Diary
character: Damien Ramsey
do i ship him: Damien/Mary Sue is my OTP, and in a world where Mary Sue isn't interested in doing him (good for her!), Damien/William is my other OTP; and post-canon Damien/William/Angela could be a thing.
other ship notes: if it comes up, please don’t break up Donald/Ellen, and please do break up Minnie and Kyo.
DNW: PWP, fluff, Christmas fic,
Damien Ramsey never did anything right, ever, in his life.
With that out of the way, here's a couple of prompts!
- Damien/Mary Sue - any post-canon where Mary Sue has wrestled/manipulated more power from Damien in the relationship, or a Damien PoV of the school year. Either the timeline where Mary Sue lost her powers and Damien is in super over his head or the timeline where Mary Sue played everything right and is still in Horse Hall work for me. You can go as obsessive, resentful, devoted, and focused on mutual destruction as you want in how you imagine their feelings; I love the idea of Mary Sue using Damien's new-found devotion for her to make him pay.
- Damien/William - if Damien/Mary Sue never happened, I would love a fic with exes getting back together. Maybe it starts with hate-sex. Maybe it's surprisingly rom-com-y. Either during the school year or years later would be great!
- Damien &-or-/Angela - props to the only person to win at a relationship with Damien. How did it go? Was there much it's-all-about-William going on that they would never address? (i hope yes.)
- Damien and Potsdam - I trust each of them about as far as I could throw them, and I'd love to read more about their dynamic. Did she ever try to talk to him after William punched him? Do they get back in touch post-canon?
I'm not into non-con, but Damien is a manipulative asshole even if he's no longer quite the abuser he is during canon, and if he manipulated/guilt-tripped someone into giving more than they wanted to (because Damien totally frames it as "giving"), even if the fic/relationship progresses past that and even if it's not explicitly adressed, I would be into that.
I just want Damien to not have all the power in whatever relationship is taking place by the end of the fic, I really like the idea of Damien's lover being able to "fight back".
I only requested Damien, but as you can see it’s more because I find him a
I also noted above “Damien Ramsey never did anything right”, but if you’re of the opinion that the Damien/William thing back then (and just that) was a bit more complex than just Damien deciding to break William's heart, it’s fine with me if you want to have them work through that. (I can see William being oblivious of Damien being jealous of William's family.)
You can also go way lighter with Damien/Mary Sue than most of the examples I've given - for instance, Damien finding himself playing the supportive if disreputable boyfriend while Mary Sue is preparing her exam to become an Otherworld agent, and being a bit resentful but mostly being way more into trolling other people than Mary Sue for once, or something along those lines... That'd be fantastic tbh.
I'm up-to-date with the beta of Wolf Hall, for the purposes of Damien knowledge, but I'd rather the fic take place in Horse Hall continuity.
