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Dear Yuletide Writer 2017
Dear Yuletide (2017?!) author,
Thank you for writing for me! I hope you have a fun Yuletide - if you have an idea that you want to write, the details in my letters are always optional: I'm an omnivorous reader who doesn't really have squicks, and I'd love to read anything you come up with!
Jump:- Likes/DNWs
- The Culture (Zakalwe, Diziet, FOTNMC - feel free to OR or to worldbuild)
- Rush (2013) (Niki Lauda)
- The Left Hand of Darkness (Ashe, Therem)
- Machineries of Empire Series (Istradez, Mikodez)
tl;dr: Gen is great, porn is great, you are great; ignore or take as many parts of this wall of text as you want
Likes
- Easy reference: my recs and my AO3 bookmarks
- Old friendships and ex-relationships: people who were close but who then drifted or were driven apart, and how they come together again. The internal struggle of renegotiating new/old territory; unrequited/unresolved tension. I really like pining that aches, and I don't mind not having a happy (or any) resolution.
- People who know each other very well, and who translate that knowledge into a variety of things - whether that's intimacy, sex, codependency, codeswitching or otherwise - that aren't easily read or understood by third parties. Ingroup/outgroup dynamics!
- Service/loyalty/betrayal/contractual obligations.
- Perserverance under pressure and the need for pressure to thrive.
- People wielding technical proficiencies - learned or trained - like a knife
- Personal versus public battles, and how a character balances the two. Winning one only to lose the other; difficult compromises.
- Cross-class interactions; the bigger the divide, the better. Double points if it's not just a case of "I've got X and you've not", but rather how two people challenge each other across said divides.
- Worldbuilding, especially economic and political worldbuilding
- Powerplays and mindfucking, whether in bed or out of it. Cavalier but not careless use of personal power, or personal .
- Dom/sub dynamics, but not as a lifestyle (This one's weird - so.... A commander/subordinate relationship with lots of sir-ing? Delicious. Bringing a BDSM master/slave relationship out of the bedroom without a supporting non-bedroom context? Nah. :))
- Age gaps, and gaps in general - of experience, of personal wealth, of language, of social class
- Breathplay, button-pushing (like, say, putting someone with a fear of chairs in a chair...), voyeurism, uniform-kink, being mostly dressed...
Dislikes:
- Again, I'm omnivorous. I know that's not helpful, so if you're going to avoid anything: gen PWPs (go nuts if you're writing porn), in the sense that I'm not a huge fan of mindless fluff or introspection - I don't mind it as a scene, o'course, but I'd rather not it be the whole fic
The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Characters: Cheradenine Zakalwe, Diziet Sma, GCU Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints
Amazon: Use of Weapons and Surface Detail are the only two you need for this letter
ONE DAY MY SHIP WILL COME. While I'd love all three of these characters together, I get that they're kind of hard to throw into a box - a bit like herding cats - so OR the listed characters away. Two or more would be great, but if you want to solo-worldbuild one of them? Fantastic. See also my letter from last last-last last-last-last-whatever year.
I mean come on how could you not.
As always, 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. Whether it's consensual or something darker, I'd love any take on this.
Honestly, though, anything you want to do with The Culture, I'd love to read. I adore everything about it: from the sprawling plots, to the worldbuilds-in-worldbuilds, to the everything-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; 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 Sma might work more with AIs than with humans.
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?
I like that Sma is one of the most Ship-like humans we see, while being enormously human herself. I like that Cheradenine can blow up continents and reorganise monarchies and still not get within touching range of Sma when Sma doesn't want him to. On that note: Sma as a matchmaker for Zakalwe could be hilarious, terrible, or both, and god would I love to read that. Even moreso if she matchmakes him with a Ship.
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? How do Special Circumstances people view Sma or Zakalwe or FOTNMC? Is there someone trying to spreadsheet who the other members of SC are?
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. Or... Zakalwe's personal diary or mental log or enforced ship's log or enforced medical diary or him just working through some inventory taking notes...
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? Demeisen talking it over with Zakalwe...
- Sma dolls Zakalwe up in an attempt to help the man fucking unwind a moment. Fucking ensues. Unexpected fucking.
- Zakalwe attempting to learn any amount of Culture technology. Him getting a crash course in certain bits of tech – point-and-shoot-y or otherwise – from Demeisen?
- Sma and FOTNMC have a talk about Contact. Philosophical, ah, disagreements ensue.
For porn, allow my enthusiasm for all things xeno. Or all things in general! Or anything involving Zakalwe tied to a chair. (Sma/Demeisen go at it in front of him? Clearly it's, ah, cognitive behavioural therapy, right?)
Rush (2013)
Characters: Niki Lauda
OH BOY OH BOY. How do I express how much I want to /hand motions Niki Lauda, his personality, his history, and everything about him? First off: feel free to draw as much from real life as you want for this. WORLDBUILD AWAY: I'd be happy to read about him growing up, about him growing into racing, about him growing out of racing, about him running his plane company, about him getting so personally involved in a crash of one of his company's planes...
There's a force of personality to Lauda that is at once so calculating-Austrian-sternness and on the other hand so livewire-lives-on-the-edge. I'd love to read anything about that contrast between a man calculates... yet says he's not good at calculating. Show me something about that calculation/action dynamic!
- Lauda and engineering... and then Lauda and driving. Where did he learn one? The other? Where does he draw his lines of risk and how does he justify it to himself, to the world? What is it about these things that makes him tick?
- Lauda getting out of racing. Does the racing get burnt (er) out of him, or is it just another step in the road for him: something else for him to laser-focus on? Does he lose anything? Or does he just gain something new?
- AU: Lauda unable to race, against his own will. What does being forced out of something do to him? How does he recover? Does he recover? I am okay with sadness and suffering and disability and struggle, but I'd like for Lauda to find a place of peace - in any way, not necessarily through recovery - in the end.
- Outside perspective of Lauda doing something people would consider insane that Lauda himself considers a deliberately taken risk sounds magical. Him versus his family: walking out of family money and into the world on his own. Him and racing: the first drive that hooks him forever.
I didn't request him, but if you want James Hunt to feature? Go ahead! Especially if it remains Lauda-centric or seen through his lens, here are some options:
- Lauda at one of Hunts' Raging Parties (TM). Lauda around Hunts' nobby friends (good lord give me some class interaction and I'll spin you round in circles). Long-time-no-see-hookups: I can't express how much I like the trope of people with chemistry walking away from each other, not talking for years, then meeting again and burning up in some reunion (however brief). Pile on the bittersweet, the mixed feelings. Or maybe it's euphoric, if shortlived? GO NUTS.
- Hunt gets out. But so does Lauda. How do either of them feel about it?
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
Characters: Ashe Foreth rem ir Osboth, Therem Harth rem ir Estraven
I don't think there's a book that's spoken to me as strongly as The Left Hand of Darkness has. It's hard to gush about something that sits in the bottom of my heart like a stone in a deep well: I love the meditativeness of this canon. Any way you want to spin Therem and Ashe, I'd love to see more of that sense of ponderousness and slow-but-steady motion that is omnipresent in the book.
For this request, I'd prefer the focus to be on Therem and Ashe and their intrapersonal relationship. If you'd like to worldbuild, I'd prefer it to focus on Gethen-internal-politics: so less on gender as Genly would have interpreted it, and more on kemmer, on Gethen-specific taboos.
Tell me more about Therem Harth and how he walks away from Estre: young but not young enough, wise but not wise enough. Tell me how he makes a new life for himself and how he comes to know Ashe. Tell me how someone like Therem comes to kemmer and have children with someone: tell me if he means it.
It's hard for me to imagine that someone like Therem wouldn't take a relationship like that seriously, but it obviously ended: how? Why? Did Therem understand it to be doomed from the start, or was it something he tried to fight?
As for Ashe - what did he see in Therem? Was it an attraction to Therem's strengths, or a desire to help him in moments of weakness? What about Ashe gets through to Therem?
Tell me about what others around Therem and Ashe view them. Do they come together at a point where they're reaching an ascendency of their own careers or before that? Who would a Gethenian pity more? Who would a Gethenian envy more? Are they social elites or something of a set of pariahs? Where do they draw their lines - between each other and between themselves and the outside world?
That's all very generic because I honestly would love you to surprise me! I feel that giving concrete prompts for something like the Left Hand feels like so much backseat driving, but if these are helpful:
- Their first meeting: good? bad? ugly? of no note? It'd be amazing to read a worldbuild around the setting that enabled these two to meet, or a slow-burn of how they go from initial contact to something that they both obviously consider important, if in tragically different ways
- Therem leaving. I am ready for any amount of heartbreak you want to give me. I am not someone who needs fix-it in this fandom: the more I want to rip my heart out...
- Epistolary exchanges over the years. Surely Therem writes Ashe, if he writes their children. Tell me about Therem being buttoned up. Or - worse/better - tell me if Therem still manages some sleight-of-shifgrethor in some correspondence with Ashe to share confidences, worries, moments of weakness.
- Ashe watching Therem from afar, in the intervening years between their break and the end.
- What led them to having children? What made Therem leave them?
In case it's not immediately obvious, I am ready for pain in this fandom. So much pain: transformative pain, or recuperative pain, or chronic, long-carried pain. Whether it's carried with dignity or not, I'd love to read about how things that hurt, that don't work, that build up and then maybe fall apart are nevertheless important, and meaningful.
Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Characters: Shuos Mikodez, Vauhan Istradez
(I might as well name this the "tragic incest" letter...)
Ahem. MIKODEZ!! And now that I've got that out of my system: if you're here to write Machineries, I'll take any flavour of these two and/or the world that surrounds them. Porn? Yay! Plot? Yes! A romp through Shuos Academy or HQ scaring the shit out of everyone? Terrific! Worldbuild an outsider POV of what it's like being the poor bastard in charge of monitoring their diets or pysch profiles? Sure!
I love reading about power structures and the people who populate them, and Mikodez and Istradez fall smack-dab in the middle of buttons I like pushed. They each have non-neatly overlapping obligations to each other and to others; they have markedly different personalities even as they're stuck living a sort of single life. They've both got smarts and then a hell of a lot of issues to balance those smarts out.
If you want to write worldbuild, tell me about... I give up; I'll just make a list.
- Growing up and becoming Shuos: Mikodez in the Academy and Istradez out of it. How? Why? When? What? ?? ?? So many options. Let me give you some random nouns, because apparently sentences are beyond me: psychological profiling. Going to school and how they did differently on tests and what their aptitudes were. What Istradez manifests as, if Mikodez was a Ninefox. The siblings and how they grew up; whether that's within their own family structure or in some other system of your choice.
- Anything about the Shuos power structure and how these two fit in to it and/or break it to pieces behind closed doors. Tell me about the body double system. Tell me about Istradez's views of duty to the Shuos - if he has one - or to Mikodez, and vice versa. Tell me how and why Mikodez cares so much.
- If you want to go right off left field, I'd adore these two and non-political things just as much. Uniform porn, Istradez's love of shinies, Mikodez's eating habits. Hell, them and gardening, for all I care. I like green things. Mikodez has a green onion. That counts, right?
- Smash all the buttons you'd like about unhealthy lifestyle habits, bodymods, medication and mixed states, sex and the upper Shuos hierarchy, body-doubles on body-doubles on body-doubles (interpret how you will), Mikodez pretending he's Istradez to Get Out for a day, identity porn (ALL THE IDENTITY PORN)...
As for the two of them together: I am a sucker for the complexity of the relationship. I'll eat this layer cake of duty, family obligation, personal love, and the hefty sprinkling of bad habits until I'm licking the crumbs off of the pan.
- Porn: Mikodez/Istradez in any combination: want to write them happy? Give me them saying fuck-you to all convention. Unrequited Istradez? Yes, baby. Mikodez and his libido go on an adventure of figuring out what - if anything - gets him stirred up? Yep. Especially if "anything" ends up equalling "mindfucking other people" and/or "taking care of what's his to the point where it gets service-porn-y". Mikodez watching Istradez's various nighttime activities. Also, have I mentioned body doubles? You can take any kink and apply it to these two and I'd be over the moon. (Author, I am so sorry that my letter is a giant wall of text fire this year.)
- Hurt-comfort and caretaking: Istradez' profiles - what's wrong with him sometimes? Mikodez's eating and sleeping habits. Either of their work ethics. The quesiton of whether Istradez can have a lift outside of the Citadel or HQ, considering what he looks like.
- Happier, rompier things: Istradez pretending to be Mikodez and scaring the shit out of the cadets; then Mikodez having to own it or clean it up. Mikodez stubbornly pretending to be his brother and not being a good enough actor to pull it off. Mikodez in the Academy and sneaking out to see his brother - or Istradez sneaking in.
- Darker: Kujen takes a liking to Istradez (!!!). Istradez breaks: either under the pressure of the job, or how he feels about Mikodez and Mikodez's somewhat sociopathic ability to compartmentalise.
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