![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Dear Yuletide Author 2015
HOW IS IT ALREADY 2015. And look, this year I'm not writing at the very ass-end of signups, either.
Behold my shameless copy/paste/edit from last year's general section. As a rule, I'm omnivorous as a reader and big on character interactions. I'm just happy to be receiving fic! I'm doing a crazy House Buying/Moving interspersed with Visiting Home Country 100000 Miles Away this yuleseason, so you are contributing generously to my general sanity and sense of goodwill to the world.
General Likes/Dislikes
Likes:
Dislikes:
(I'm happilyre-requesting The Culture re-requesting and apparently amending +1000 because ONE DAY MY SHIP WILL COME.)
The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Cheradenine Zakalwe, GOU Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints, GCU Grey Area
I mean come on how could you not. See also my letter fromlast last-last year.
Gosh do I want to see the fallout (or fall-in) of a Culture AI actually going literal meatfucker. FOTNMC took over a human body and everything, but that's a very different place to be than having sexual relations with a human body. Or, hell, invasive mental sex with a human mind.
Honestly, though, The Culture is one fandom in which I'd love to see an author take an idea and go wild. I adore everything about it: from the sprawling plots, to the worldbuild about Orbitals, to the gender-fluidity, to the essential point that even a post-scarcity world will find its own problems. Whether it's a piece expanding on potential meta (suicide in Ships? Anti-AI but "pro-Culture" human factions?); a piece entirely made out of Ship-to-Ship dialogue (!!); crossovers (completely unrelated to this request, but Ledjeje <> FOTNMC in a bizarro Homestuck crossover is... I'll be over here. Rocking back and forth to myself); I'd be happy no matter what you give me.
If that's not helpful: I like the idea of the Ships prodding the(ir) humans. Giving Players of Games games to play, and changers of worlds worlds to change. I like the idea that they find the right hole if they have the right peg, instead of just the other way around.
I like that some Ships just Nope right out of the game, whether it's to go on long tours or to become Ostracised. What motivates those decisions? How do you get bored when you're an AI running at a million light-years a second? How do you not go Eccentric when you're out of the normal swing of The Culture?
What non-Contact means does The Culture employ to not end up at war? Alternatively, how do non-Contact people view Special Circumstances? Or, hell, how do Contact people view Special Circumstances?
Remember the Iliad, guys? Remember the 2nd chapter? Remember the list of Ships and the men on them? God above, if you write me The Culture Version, I'd... /incoherent noise here. If you want to play with classics or languages, yes please.
If you want to experiment with fic structures, I'd adore a Ship-to-Ship log. Or even a Ship's log, if one of them might be so antiquated-ly inclined as to keep something traditional like that; a verbal diary of sorts.
Since The Culture is about the most worldbuildy mc-worldbuild fandom there is, a few more concrete thingamabobs:
- Multiple-Mind ships (interpret that noun as you wish): give me a peek at how much stays separate, how much melds together. Do shipminds ever break up with each other after they get together? Is it like a happy poly relationship, or something more familial – are there ships that join up/leave once every, oh, few hundred years? See my do-want list above... :>
- Demeisen going through an upgrade. One hundred pages of him drooling over new inventory? Amen. Or: what GCU does he dock with for his refitting? What GCU would want to take him? Or what GCU would reject him?
- GCU Grey Area: an example of it being psychopathically righteous. The Culture has a great sort of top-down-then-bottoms-up view of events, in that we go from lightyear scale one moment down to the nanometre the next -- so in addition to its interest in genocide and pain, what are its takes on personal pains, personal crimes?
Vorkosigan Saga
Simon Illyan, Ivan Vorpatril, Byerly Vorrutyer
Note: feel free to OR this character request if you got matched to me. I'm happy to read them singularly, in pairs, or all together.
I spent a long while wondering which characters I wanted out of the whole long Vorkoverse, and even though I've got an enough-is-never-enough complex for Simon?Aral (fill in the question mark how you like it; hell, fill out last year's prompts if you want), this year I think - more than anything - I want a little in into Ivan Vorpatril. With a handsome side serving of Simon (whom I love more than anyone else, practically) and By - but more on that later.
Oh Ivan, where to begin with you. Let's start out with the fact that he grew up - for a few short but perhaps formative years - in the most bizarre of company: an Emperor, a Count's Heir, and an armsman's daughter. Fast forward twenty years later and Ivan is somehow the sort of guy who can use the word prole unironically while simultaneously seeming to have a better grasp of real, everyday life than any of the Vor-whatevers whom we meet.
I don't know where I'm going with this except to say that Ivan - for all that I'm sure he spent the first, oh, 18+ years of his life being a bit of a blithering idiot - probably has some real, good smarts in him.
So I'd love to see:
- Ivan and By in the strange Ivan/By romcom that you find every now and then.
While Captain Vorpatril's Alliance is all well and good, I get a little ): by LMB's magical "Get Married and You'll Be Fixed" trope. Ivan and By in any flavour'd be wonderful: Ivan experimenting? Sure. A one-off fling? That works too. Byerly playing the long game just to see if Ivan'll notice? A-okay. Ivan coming to pity or - better yet - respect By for his domestic affairs work with ImpSec? Marvellous.
Double triple quadruple points if Simon is setting them up. Whether to be together or to fail or to succeed, I leave to your imagination.
- Ivan looking in on By, Simon, and the dirty angels
One of the things that's always turned my crank about Simon and co. is that Aral really runs a rather vicious sounding ship. One that's as fair as it can be, in Aral's eyes, but there are these notes: Aral saying that throwing Simon in prison is an educational experience; Aral saying that if thought control technology were available he would surely use it; their agreement not to use Miles on assassinations.
Which is all to say that ImpSec is probably not as golly-gee-good as someone like Miles would like to think it is. He's had his own fair share of traumatic experiences, but I think Miles - for all his adventures - had never quite been thrust against any real moral dilemmas during his tenure.
I doubt the same is true of By. I remember having a good rummage out on LMB's mailing list, and By's childhood and whatnot aren't exactly spectacular. Then he joins up with ImpSec and gets used for god knows what as a town clown. But a known town clown - no separate, easily dismissable identity for him; what By does for the Service he has to sleep with afterwards. If Simon didn't use the fact that By's bi (ha ha... ha) at some point or another, I'll eat my hat.
That was a lot of rambling and not much concrete suggesting, so:
- How did Simon pick up By? What great (and awful) training did By receive?
- Perhaps By rather fucks up a mission; Ivan's safe, isn't he? What's he safe for?
- By hearing the town talk about him, and having to swallow that very bitter pill. Maybe one day Ivan hearing that talk as well when he knows it's not true
- Ivan experiencing any sort of righteous rage over By, directed at Simon - falling over his own moral precipice of do-no-harm-by-doing-nothing because doing nothing is doing harm
Tangential thought: in a post-Memory world, someone has got to watch if Simon's saying things he oughtn't be saying in public. Someone who's near him on social occasions. And since Simon's near Alys on social occasions, I wonder who that someone might be. (This isn't to handwave the thought that Alys might well be Simon's rearguard - she very likely is - but one suspects that for a little while Barrayar stuck him with more than one failsafe. Plus By would, one imagines, be able to do things Alys won't do.) This can go as dark as you'd like it to go: By actually getting Simon's ass out of serious trouble (whether that be in the mental health zone or the "let's not talk about that sort of business, sir" zone is up to you) and paying the price for it would be amazing.
If you want to throw some sort of loyalty kink in there, let's just say I won't be unhappy...
On the porn/darkfic side of things, if you're so interested:
- Ivan watching By work. I leave the definition of "work" up to you, but it could either be getting fucked stupid or fucking someone stupid or getting someone stupidly fucked up.
- On the creepier side of things, Simon watching By work. Let's not forget this man has the planet's largest store of porn in his head (pre-Memory) - I highly doubt all of it was because of work.
Go nuts, author, seriously.
[edit] addendum: having just read through the e-Arc of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (I have many feelings, but mostly about the plot - everything about the hints of Jole/you-know-who I ADORE) -- GO NUTS ON THAT CANON IF YOU'D LIKE. PLEASE. If you want to write about Simon almost HAVING A MENTAL BREAKDOWN WHEN HE FINDS OUT, that would be. Amazing. Awesome. Fantastic. ANYTHING about Simon and the Jole situation. ANYTHING AT ALL. This is totally tack-on-optional but I have. So many feelings. AGE GAPS!!! SIMON KEEPING SECRETS!!!!!
Antique (2008)
Kim Jin Hyeok (서양골동양과자점 앤티크), Min Seon Woo (서양골동양과자점 앤티크)
This is such a feel-good movie, and I loved the anime (if you've not picked it up, do yourself a favour) and the manga both, so feel free to go nuts if you want to mix in bits and bobs from across all the canons.
More than anything, I'd love something fun and a good romp through Seon Woo and Jin Hyeok's bromance. Because what a bromance. Let's take a look at them:
- Getting into raging fights over non-shop talk
- But Jin Hyeok realising what an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime talent Seon Woo is
- Witnessing the stream of boyfriends-turned-to-ex-boyfriends
- Managing to keep their bromance bromantic
- Or getting slashed up if you want. That works too.
Bonus points if Jin Hyeok's family features and comes to adore Seon Woo. For any reason.
It would be spanking for Seon Woo to throw out some honest-to-god technical awesomeness. If you want to throw in something about desserts and baking in general, I'll never say no to someone in a profession being Professional: competency is great, and Seon Woo gets a lot of the swoon/hilarity factor when the kind of hours he must put in to the kitchen would break anyone else. Other than Ki-Beom, but Ki-Beom boxed until he almost lost his eyesight so let's just say he's probably not got the lowest standards with regard to effort expended. SO: technical jargon, go. Kicking ass in competitions, go. Working to the bone, definitely go.
Adjacent to that: Jin Hyeok's sheer dedication to his business and his staff is a thing of beauty. Him making cake after cake and then throwing up? One of my favourite scenes. I adore him painting over it with bratty complaints before burning through his own personal difficulties with the subject matter anyway. I'd love it if you showed me Jin Hyeok's Blaseness/Resting Bitch Face/Upperclass Entitlement on one side and then the Janus-face of his work ethic/sensitivity on the other.
If you want to mix in something dark here, I'm a great big fan of marbled cake. Jin Hyeok seeing the kind of shit that Seon Woo must go through on the flip side of being the Gay of Demonic Charm? Yes, please.
Random other gen thoughts:
- Antique as a sort of safe space for all sorts of people - who comes in? What does Jin Hyeok overhear? What does the bakery do for people? If you want to go crossover-crazy on this one, I HIGHLY ENCOURAGE IT. I adore thehoyden's Hikaru no Go cross, for example.
- Do they ever expand? Do they ever close down? Or do they sort of go magically sideways, and - if so - what do they do?
As always, optional details are totally optional. If you've got a great idea - write it. AU? Go nuts. Crossover? Take it and run with it. I'd much rather read something you enjoyed writing than have put you through a wringer this Yuletide. :)
Behold my shameless copy/paste/edit from last year's general section. As a rule, I'm omnivorous as a reader and big on character interactions. I'm just happy to be receiving fic! I'm doing a crazy House Buying/Moving interspersed with Visiting Home Country 100000 Miles Away this yuleseason, so you are contributing generously to my general sanity and sense of goodwill to the world.
General Likes/Dislikes
Likes:
- Super easy: my recs and my AO3 bookmarks
- Old friendships/relationships and their implications. People who were close, then driven/drifted apart, then come together again. Relationships from the past. Unrequited/unresolved tension. Background wink/nods/assumptions that the reader can and will read deep.
- People who know each other very well, and who translate that knowledge into a variety of things - whether that's intimacy, sex, codependency, abrasion or otherwise. Service/loyalty/betrayal.
- Personal versus public battles, and how a character balances the two. Winning one only to lose the other, or compromising between them.
- Irony! Whether bitter or sweet or hilarious. All flavours. Karma.
- Gen and/or not-fix-it-with-porn relationships are often better than sex. Worldbuilding gen especially. Not that I don't read porn with great enthusiasm, but yes.
- If you want to porn it out: powerplay, dom/sub dynamics, age gaps, kink! Yuleporn comment: http://yuletide.livejournal.com/1241284.html?thread=20967876#t20967876
Dislikes:
- Upfront, I'm an omnivorous reader. This list is more writer-be-aware than I-won't-read: there's really almost nothing I won't read
- PWPs, though if you want to go the porny route, I am perfectly okay with it being plotless - in which case, pressing a kink button over something vanilla is a big plus for me.
- I'm not a huge fan of mindless fluff - I don't mind it sprinkled on, but I'd rather something hilarious than something saccharine.
(I'm happily
The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Cheradenine Zakalwe, GOU Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints, GCU Grey Area
I mean come on how could you not. See also my letter from
Gosh do I want to see the fallout (or fall-in) of a Culture AI actually going literal meatfucker. FOTNMC took over a human body and everything, but that's a very different place to be than having sexual relations with a human body. Or, hell, invasive mental sex with a human mind.
Honestly, though, The Culture is one fandom in which I'd love to see an author take an idea and go wild. I adore everything about it: from the sprawling plots, to the worldbuild about Orbitals, to the gender-fluidity, to the essential point that even a post-scarcity world will find its own problems. Whether it's a piece expanding on potential meta (suicide in Ships? Anti-AI but "pro-Culture" human factions?); a piece entirely made out of Ship-to-Ship dialogue (!!); crossovers (completely unrelated to this request, but Ledjeje <> FOTNMC in a bizarro Homestuck crossover is... I'll be over here. Rocking back and forth to myself); I'd be happy no matter what you give me.
If that's not helpful: I like the idea of the Ships prodding the(ir) humans. Giving Players of Games games to play, and changers of worlds worlds to change. I like the idea that they find the right hole if they have the right peg, instead of just the other way around.
I like that some Ships just Nope right out of the game, whether it's to go on long tours or to become Ostracised. What motivates those decisions? How do you get bored when you're an AI running at a million light-years a second? How do you not go Eccentric when you're out of the normal swing of The Culture?
What non-Contact means does The Culture employ to not end up at war? Alternatively, how do non-Contact people view Special Circumstances? Or, hell, how do Contact people view Special Circumstances?
Remember the Iliad, guys? Remember the 2nd chapter? Remember the list of Ships and the men on them? God above, if you write me The Culture Version, I'd... /incoherent noise here. If you want to play with classics or languages, yes please.
If you want to experiment with fic structures, I'd adore a Ship-to-Ship log. Or even a Ship's log, if one of them might be so antiquated-ly inclined as to keep something traditional like that; a verbal diary of sorts.
Since The Culture is about the most worldbuildy mc-worldbuild fandom there is, a few more concrete thingamabobs:
- Multiple-Mind ships (interpret that noun as you wish): give me a peek at how much stays separate, how much melds together. Do shipminds ever break up with each other after they get together? Is it like a happy poly relationship, or something more familial – are there ships that join up/leave once every, oh, few hundred years? See my do-want list above... :>
- Demeisen going through an upgrade. One hundred pages of him drooling over new inventory? Amen. Or: what GCU does he dock with for his refitting? What GCU would want to take him? Or what GCU would reject him?
- GCU Grey Area: an example of it being psychopathically righteous. The Culture has a great sort of top-down-then-bottoms-up view of events, in that we go from lightyear scale one moment down to the nanometre the next -- so in addition to its interest in genocide and pain, what are its takes on personal pains, personal crimes?
Vorkosigan Saga
Simon Illyan, Ivan Vorpatril, Byerly Vorrutyer
Note: feel free to OR this character request if you got matched to me. I'm happy to read them singularly, in pairs, or all together.
I spent a long while wondering which characters I wanted out of the whole long Vorkoverse, and even though I've got an enough-is-never-enough complex for Simon?Aral (fill in the question mark how you like it; hell, fill out last year's prompts if you want), this year I think - more than anything - I want a little in into Ivan Vorpatril. With a handsome side serving of Simon (whom I love more than anyone else, practically) and By - but more on that later.
Oh Ivan, where to begin with you. Let's start out with the fact that he grew up - for a few short but perhaps formative years - in the most bizarre of company: an Emperor, a Count's Heir, and an armsman's daughter. Fast forward twenty years later and Ivan is somehow the sort of guy who can use the word prole unironically while simultaneously seeming to have a better grasp of real, everyday life than any of the Vor-whatevers whom we meet.
I don't know where I'm going with this except to say that Ivan - for all that I'm sure he spent the first, oh, 18+ years of his life being a bit of a blithering idiot - probably has some real, good smarts in him.
So I'd love to see:
- Ivan and By in the strange Ivan/By romcom that you find every now and then.
While Captain Vorpatril's Alliance is all well and good, I get a little ): by LMB's magical "Get Married and You'll Be Fixed" trope. Ivan and By in any flavour'd be wonderful: Ivan experimenting? Sure. A one-off fling? That works too. Byerly playing the long game just to see if Ivan'll notice? A-okay. Ivan coming to pity or - better yet - respect By for his domestic affairs work with ImpSec? Marvellous.
Double triple quadruple points if Simon is setting them up. Whether to be together or to fail or to succeed, I leave to your imagination.
- Ivan looking in on By, Simon, and the dirty angels
One of the things that's always turned my crank about Simon and co. is that Aral really runs a rather vicious sounding ship. One that's as fair as it can be, in Aral's eyes, but there are these notes: Aral saying that throwing Simon in prison is an educational experience; Aral saying that if thought control technology were available he would surely use it; their agreement not to use Miles on assassinations.
Which is all to say that ImpSec is probably not as golly-gee-good as someone like Miles would like to think it is. He's had his own fair share of traumatic experiences, but I think Miles - for all his adventures - had never quite been thrust against any real moral dilemmas during his tenure.
I doubt the same is true of By. I remember having a good rummage out on LMB's mailing list, and By's childhood and whatnot aren't exactly spectacular. Then he joins up with ImpSec and gets used for god knows what as a town clown. But a known town clown - no separate, easily dismissable identity for him; what By does for the Service he has to sleep with afterwards. If Simon didn't use the fact that By's bi (ha ha... ha) at some point or another, I'll eat my hat.
That was a lot of rambling and not much concrete suggesting, so:
- How did Simon pick up By? What great (and awful) training did By receive?
- Perhaps By rather fucks up a mission; Ivan's safe, isn't he? What's he safe for?
- By hearing the town talk about him, and having to swallow that very bitter pill. Maybe one day Ivan hearing that talk as well when he knows it's not true
- Ivan experiencing any sort of righteous rage over By, directed at Simon - falling over his own moral precipice of do-no-harm-by-doing-nothing because doing nothing is doing harm
Tangential thought: in a post-Memory world, someone has got to watch if Simon's saying things he oughtn't be saying in public. Someone who's near him on social occasions. And since Simon's near Alys on social occasions, I wonder who that someone might be. (This isn't to handwave the thought that Alys might well be Simon's rearguard - she very likely is - but one suspects that for a little while Barrayar stuck him with more than one failsafe. Plus By would, one imagines, be able to do things Alys won't do.) This can go as dark as you'd like it to go: By actually getting Simon's ass out of serious trouble (whether that be in the mental health zone or the "let's not talk about that sort of business, sir" zone is up to you) and paying the price for it would be amazing.
If you want to throw some sort of loyalty kink in there, let's just say I won't be unhappy...
On the porn/darkfic side of things, if you're so interested:
- Ivan watching By work. I leave the definition of "work" up to you, but it could either be getting fucked stupid or fucking someone stupid or getting someone stupidly fucked up.
- On the creepier side of things, Simon watching By work. Let's not forget this man has the planet's largest store of porn in his head (pre-Memory) - I highly doubt all of it was because of work.
Go nuts, author, seriously.
[edit] addendum: having just read through the e-Arc of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (I have many feelings, but mostly about the plot - everything about the hints of Jole/you-know-who I ADORE) -- GO NUTS ON THAT CANON IF YOU'D LIKE. PLEASE. If you want to write about Simon almost HAVING A MENTAL BREAKDOWN WHEN HE FINDS OUT, that would be. Amazing. Awesome. Fantastic. ANYTHING about Simon and the Jole situation. ANYTHING AT ALL. This is totally tack-on-optional but I have. So many feelings. AGE GAPS!!! SIMON KEEPING SECRETS!!!!!
Antique (2008)
Kim Jin Hyeok (서양골동양과자점 앤티크), Min Seon Woo (서양골동양과자점 앤티크)
This is such a feel-good movie, and I loved the anime (if you've not picked it up, do yourself a favour) and the manga both, so feel free to go nuts if you want to mix in bits and bobs from across all the canons.
More than anything, I'd love something fun and a good romp through Seon Woo and Jin Hyeok's bromance. Because what a bromance. Let's take a look at them:
- Getting into raging fights over non-shop talk
- But Jin Hyeok realising what an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime talent Seon Woo is
- Witnessing the stream of boyfriends-turned-to-ex-boyfriends
- Managing to keep their bromance bromantic
- Or getting slashed up if you want. That works too.
Bonus points if Jin Hyeok's family features and comes to adore Seon Woo. For any reason.
It would be spanking for Seon Woo to throw out some honest-to-god technical awesomeness. If you want to throw in something about desserts and baking in general, I'll never say no to someone in a profession being Professional: competency is great, and Seon Woo gets a lot of the swoon/hilarity factor when the kind of hours he must put in to the kitchen would break anyone else. Other than Ki-Beom, but Ki-Beom boxed until he almost lost his eyesight so let's just say he's probably not got the lowest standards with regard to effort expended. SO: technical jargon, go. Kicking ass in competitions, go. Working to the bone, definitely go.
Adjacent to that: Jin Hyeok's sheer dedication to his business and his staff is a thing of beauty. Him making cake after cake and then throwing up? One of my favourite scenes. I adore him painting over it with bratty complaints before burning through his own personal difficulties with the subject matter anyway. I'd love it if you showed me Jin Hyeok's Blaseness/Resting Bitch Face/Upperclass Entitlement on one side and then the Janus-face of his work ethic/sensitivity on the other.
If you want to mix in something dark here, I'm a great big fan of marbled cake. Jin Hyeok seeing the kind of shit that Seon Woo must go through on the flip side of being the Gay of Demonic Charm? Yes, please.
Random other gen thoughts:
- Antique as a sort of safe space for all sorts of people - who comes in? What does Jin Hyeok overhear? What does the bakery do for people? If you want to go crossover-crazy on this one, I HIGHLY ENCOURAGE IT. I adore thehoyden's Hikaru no Go cross, for example.
- Do they ever expand? Do they ever close down? Or do they sort of go magically sideways, and - if so - what do they do?
As always, optional details are totally optional. If you've got a great idea - write it. AU? Go nuts. Crossover? Take it and run with it. I'd much rather read something you enjoyed writing than have put you through a wringer this Yuletide. :)