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K ([personal profile] karanguni) wrote2021-10-16 04:55 pm
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Dear Yuletide Writer 2021

Thank you for writing for me! I hope you have fun this Yuletide – everything in this letter is optional, and I am an omnivorous reader, so I'm looking forward to whatever you come up with! 2021 has been a wild extension of 2020, so please just have fun!

AO3: karanguni
tl;dr: Gen is great, porn is great, unusual media types and crossovers with fandoms I know are great, you are great; ignore or take as many parts of this wall of text as you want.

Jump:

General Likes

  • Old friendships and 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. Pining is great, 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/contractual obligations.
  • High-pressure situations - whether immediate or over a long time span - and how people respond to them.
  • Competence porn: people who have worked very hard to become highly proficient in their skillsets, whether that's being an assassin or meticulous scholarship.
  • Private versus public conflicts, 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, in-group, and political worldbuilding.
  • AUs, crossovers, non-traditional media (IF, art, whatever!) are all fine with me. Anything I've written for or in my AO3 bookmarks is fair game, but I do bookmark things that I do not have canon knowledge of, so please hit me up via a mod inquiry if you're worried!

If you're interested in writing for Yuleporn or Crueltide:

  • Powerplays and mindfucking, whether in bed or out of it. Cavalier but not careless use of power.
  • Dom/sub dynamics, but not as an opt-in lifestyle (To whit - a commander/subordinate, slave, or ABO AU where the setting encourages the dynamic? Yes, please! Bringing a BDSM master/slave relationship in a vanilla society out of the bedroom without a supporting non-bedroom context? Nah. :)) I give a carte blanche for any kink exploration.
  • Age gaps, and gaps in general - of experience, of personal wealth, of language, of social class.
  • Breathplay, dirty talk, spanking/impact play, voyeurism/exhibitionism, clothing or uniform porn or mostly-dressed sex, age gaps, restraints.

Dislikes/DNWs:

Again, I'm omnivorous! I have no hard DNWs; if there is something I would like you to avoid, it will be in the fandom-specific section. I'd only request avoiding solely fluff or introspection-based gen pieces - I don't mind it as a scene, but I'd rather not it be the whole fic.



Britain's Lost Masterpieces RPF

Characters: Simon Gillespie
Acquiring the canon: some of it is available on US Amazon as The Art Detectives. You really don't need much more than a single episode in which Simon shows up, which is most of them.

Britain's Lost Masterpieces is a show in which the hosts (one of whom is named Bendor, come now) rummage around in art collections and whatnot to find pieces worth further examination in hopes of finding a long-lost masterpiece. Now nevermind all that, and focus your attention on Mr. Simon Gillespie, their art restorer.

Some small clips that demonstrate his magnificence: Simon at work and Simon examines a possible Titian.

Glorious. If there were ever competence porn in action, this is it. There's something about Simon's extremely dapper upper-crustiness combined with the fact that he's also actually bloody good at his job that hooks me. The art world – especially around purchasing and who's a master and what's a masterpiece and all that claptrap – can be so strange and (frankly) full of pats of cowturd, but there's an undeniable quality to the work that Simon does in his show (and in his studio beyond) that is just a feast for the eyes. I always look forward to him roasting Bendor for dragging in whatever piece has made Bendor all peppy and excited, but then getting on with his craft anyway.

Fic-wise, I would love whatever whimsical flight of fancy you come up with! Dabbles into magical realism or something eldritch would be amazing: what if Bendor brings Simon a haunted painting? Take "haunted" to mean as much or little as you want: do animals in a pastoral come to life in some magical, Princess Mononoke kind of way? Do pixies start to inhabit Simon's studio? Is there a historical personage who speaks to him? Does he fall in love with the Picture of Dorian Grey? Is there something Lovecraftian he's restoring that alters his studio's reality?

If you want to go onto a wild crossover adventure, there are a good number of British properties in the tagset that I would love seeing Simon wander into: Does Kevin McCloud call him in when someone on Grand Designs discovers, I don't know, a magical mural in a castle/grand house they're trying to restore? Does Tony Robinson haul Simon into a Time Team special? Does The Culture snap him up for, uh, reasons? What would he be like as a denizen of the Discworld, or as a member of the high Vor in the Vorkosigan saga?

More than anything, I want to see Simon's competence shine forth. If you want to go on an art restoration research journey and have a new (or invented!) technique be central to the story, I'd be chuffed! If you have a particular painter or painting you've always wanted to write about that Simon can have a go at, regale me with the details! Maybe Simon isn't even human – AU away!

I am happy to receive gen or shipfic of any variety as long as Simon is front and centre somewhere. Invent as much of a world or as many original characters as you would like! While I think this request would do great as something to go on a cracky romp with, I'm certainly also up for different tones or levels of darkness if you have an idea you want to pursue :D



Barakamon

Characters: Handa Seishuu, Kawafuji Takao. Feel free to use OR matching here!
Acquiring the canon: Funimation (US) has all 12 episodes; I'm only familiar with the anime but would be fine with any version of the canon.

Do Not Wants/DNWs: Naru and Handa in a romantic or sexual relationship; same with Naru and Kawafuji.

I am the least slice-of-life anime person in the world, but here we are. Barakamon is about young Tokyoite calligrapher Handa Sei who, after enduring years of too much pressure as the son of a great calligrapher, snaps during a competition and punches a judge in the face. He then gets "exiled" to somewhere on the Goto Islands out in the boonies to get his erstwhile shit together, where he learns to just let go, live a simple life, and be connected with other human beings. It's heartwarming and insightful simultaneously, and at only 12 episodes is well worth the pickup.

I adore Handa having to unlearn being a stuck up/clueless human being who's trapped in his own head. I love him being adopted by everyone on the island: him learning to care, and how that feeds back into his art. There's so much here that speaks to the milk of human kindness and the power of being connected that warms my heart.

I would love more Handa on the island – what happens after he returns? What happens in... 5 years? Like everyone in the anime well knows, Handa's got such a self-sabotaging personality, but he opens up so much throughout the series that I just want to know more about how that search for himself goes. There's this line between being gifted with talent and being what I suppose you could call blessed with people like Naru and the rest of the village, and I'd love to see that line explored. I'm also fascinated with anything to do with Handa's artistic process, and while I'm hard-pressed to find something to prompt there... go wild with it if you have an idea!

As for Kawafuji, I love the tension between him being Handa's friend and Handa's art dealer. He and Handa are such opposites – I'd love some backstory! I have watched pieces of the sequel Handa-kun (feel free to incorporate or ignore elements of it), but I'd love something after they graduate high school. Where do Kawafuji's tattoos come from? When did he get them? What has he gone through with Handa – were there more nervous breakdowns before? What was it like watching Handa grow up in the shadow of his father? How does a guy like Kawafuji end up involved with art, anyway, and does it have to do with his tattoos?

I'm happy for both gen and shipfic if you choose to write them both! Some random ideas: what does Handa think of Kawafuji's handwriting? Did they have an epistolary exchange beyond that one letter from Kawafuji we see in the anime? What about Kawafuji's art dealership? What does a caper out in Tokyo or any other place look like with the two of them – out at a museum seeking inspiration for Handa? Drinking with Kawafuji? What do they look like together when they're Handa's father's age? What does Kawafuji think of Handa and Naru's relationship? I would love something in which Kawafuji watches Handa teach others, because when he isn't paying attention so much as to sabotage himself Handa really does seem to be suited to it. I would equally love to see them interact in a worldbuild exploration of the Goto islands like we see in the series, whether that's something real from Kyuushuu or something you invent about the village!

Some AUs that might be fun: Kawafuji and Handa in a platonic soul bond? Handa develops magical powers while on the island where what he writes becomes real - whether that's physical manifestations or altering the future, I leave to you! Handa ends up in a time loop until he Figures Something Out?



Edo Era Japanese Go Players RPF

Characters: Honinbou Shuusaku, Oota Yuuzou

Go in real life, I've come to discover, is as strange or stranger than - say - Hikaru no Go, and that's what makes it amazing. (I mean, even the modern players have weird fairytale careers.) I listed competence porn as one of my likes above, and boy oh boy do Go players hit that spot. There are some tremendous stories about them and their exploits. This request does not actually need all that much digging into: GLORIOUS AGE-DIFFERENCE RIVALRY is all you really need to know about the Honinbou Shuusaku/Oota Yuuzou relationship. To quote this website:

[...] Yuzo was Shusaku's top rival and Shusaku played more games with Yuzo than with anyone else. [...] He was also said to be one of the most handsome professional Go players of the time. He did not participate in the Castle games because he would have had to shave his head.

WHAT MORE NEED I SAY? Here we have two people with incredibly specific competencies at a slow board game set during a fin de siècle period when old feudal Japan was on the teetering brink of change. Write me anything about them going at their craft and I will love it! I know functionally zero about Go, so don't feel obliged to go into technical details, though if you do I will thoroughly enjoy reading about it. While I'd love this to be shippy, I'd be just as happy with gen.

Besides going about the game, I would love the two of them walking through any worldbuild you want to do. What do Castle games look like? What do court Go players have access to and how do they operate? Some more ideas:

  • How do either of them feel about titles and status? Did Oota care at all? Does he smirk at Shuusaku's accumulated accolades? Is he envious? I adore in-group/out-group dynamics, so if you want to write about how rankings worked and what that meant socially for them, I'd love that
  • Castle Game or the 30 Game Competition shenanigans. Thought: Oota hanging outside any of the million of Castle Games Shuusaku won, smiling rakishly/suggestively...
  • Tell me about Shuusaku growing up and learning from Oota: why didn't they end up in a mentor/student setup? How did Shuusaku, little genius that he was, go about learning about the world beyond the Go board?
  • Drunken Go with other players while the two of them engage in totally inappropriate cross-generational flirting
  • Reincarnation AU? Magical Go board AU?

If you want to cross this over with the nominated 21st CE Japanese Go Players RPF fandom, or veer into some Hikaru no Go or AlphaGo alley, feel free! Once again, I play zero Go and know very little about this era of Japan, so please don't feel obliged to be technically correct about anything to do with game mechanics or to do much more than a brief waltz through Wikipedia for anything historical if you're writing something character driven.

N.B.: feel free to abandon and choose your own romanisation of the character names; there be a lot of vowels going on here.



Edo Era Intellectuals RPF

Characters: Any
Acquiring the canon: This RPF fandom could be summarised as "most of the people from the movie Tenchi Meisatsu running around." The movie is hard to find on streaming platforms, but feel free to use it as canon if you find it! I also wrote a brief fandom promo post.

I find the concept of time-keeping and calendar making fascinating, and this fandom is all about that. The nominated characters are all in some way or another related to the Jokyo Reform of 1685, which switched Japan away from the borrowed Chinese calendrical system that it had been using for the last 800 years (!) to a new, Japan-centric system created by Shibukawa Shunkai/Santetsu. The other nominated characters were part of Santetsu's story: Honinbo Dosaku was the greatest player of his generation and a Go rival of Santetsu's in a somewhat Hikaru no Go, Akira/Touya like sense. Seki Takakazu was a mathematical genius (seriously, look this dude up) who could see all the numbers but not the astronomy. Tsuchimikado of the Bureau of Divination saw the rightness of Santetsu's calendrical thinking but had to fight against the political leanings of the Kyoto court, which wanted to adopt the Ming Dynasty Daitoreki calendar instead.

This is all incredibly esoteric and a long shot fandom, but I find it fascinating that a calendar system which kept time that was slowly but surely falling out of synchronisation with natural phenomena was left unquestioned for 800 years, only to be overturned by Shibukawa – who had been "nothing but" a Go player for the shogun. His original name, Santetsu, means "mathematical wisdom," and boy did that end up being semi-prophetic.

I'd love for a fic that explores, whether scientifically or psychologically or fantastically or magically, this desire of man to reach for a seemingly impossible understanding of the world. Maybe it's Santetsu and Dosaku sitting at a Go board, playing out in a tengen-opening game the metaphysical arc of Santetsu's calendar work and Dosaku's Go playing. Maybe it's Tsuchimikado navigating the Bureau of Divination and the court's political power to state what time is. Maybe it's Seki Takakazu – who in the Tenchi Meisatsu movie reminded me so much of Donald Glover's portrayal of Rich Purnell from The Martian – up all night in a pile of mathematical calculations grasping at something he can't quite get.

Whether it's mathematics or divination or Go playing or astronomy, there's an innate aspirational desire to reach further and go deeper that I'd love to read about. The spirit, as it were, and not the historical mechanics! I really don't need research into things like variable hour calendars or Santetsu's understanding of the difference in longitudes between Beijing and Kyoto.

Here are some ideas:

  • A fantastical or magical realistic take on this slice of history. Maybe Tsuchimikado in the Bureau of Divinations really can do magic? Maybe Santetsu has some sort of special gift or ability? Maybe Dosaku and Santetsu play a game of Go that changes actual reality? Maybe Seki Takakazu casts spells? Maybe the various creatures of the hours come to life in some way and are either an accepted part of magical reality or a new phenomenon that has to be dealt with.
  • In that same vein, a crossover or AR blend with canons like, say, Mononoke or The Watchmaker of Filigree St. would be amazing.
  • Handwave reality and hand-of-god a total eclipse of the sun – do the characters predict it? Is it a magical moment?
  • What are the consequences of a calendar going out of alignment or a world out of harmony?
  • Worldbuilding about calendars in Edo Japanese, whether real or fantastical, would also be supremely interesting on its own! Crossover with Discworld's Thief of Time AU?

Finally, please don't feel like you have to write to a high degree of historical accuracy for me! As long as there isn't something anachronistic to the point that no suspension of disbelief is possible (I'm talking Mickey Mouse showing up in Edo Japan level), I'm not nitpicky. I actually know very little about Edo Japan!



The Watchmaker of Filigree Street Series - Natasha Pulley

Characters: Mori Keita
Acquiring the canon: There are two books in the series, but feel free to use only Watchmaker if you're so inclined.

Oh, Keita: eldritch horror? Grumpy old man? Magical realist incarnation of the elite of the Meiji Restoration breaking out into a brave new world that has such strangeness in it? I love his complexity and his inner universe and his cavalier attitude towards the very aristocratic background that allows him to do, alongside a little magic, whatever the hell he wants to do.

I am extremely taken by Keita's general attitudes towards Meiji Japan and his title, family, and place in (and out) of Japanese society as a whole, especially in Pepperharrow. I adore his spymastering and manipulation, his language acquisition (and loss) as a tool he uses in his intrigues, his relationship with other lords, the mark he has on him as being something strange and sinister.

I'd love to read more about adult Keita before or after he meets with Thaniel. I want, very badly, to know how he reconciles his public duties with his private impulses; his abilities with his reality. A couple of ideas:

  • Keita in Japan as an adult with his titles: I'd love to know about the ways in which he tries to manipulate the world. Is it really all for Thaniel? Or is Keita less detached from his life outside of his relationship than he might otherwise present?
  • What does Keita see or know that only he (and, presumably, his mother) can see or know? What are his coping mechanisms? Does he see horror? Does he also see joy? If you want to go Lovecraftian, I'm all for some cosmic horror.
  • Keita has a lot of dark in him, the way I read him: how does he manage it? Is his relationship with Thaniel the product of him being a bit of a monomaniac thinking Thaniel is the only one who will ever understand him, or something else - healthy or otherwise? Is the darkness part of a self-fulfilling prophecy?
  • Language/competency/codeswitching porn: the idea that Keita - for all of his oddities - can blend in while standing out like a sore thumb because he can remember a future of being in whatever society he chooses to dump himself into. Tell me about his adventures in Russia or China or Britain, perfectly at home and perfectly alien at the same time! If you want to write porn: dirty talk in all of the languages! Or using the future to mindfuck someone!
  • Tell me more about Keita's watches. How are they special? Has he given them to anyone else? How do they (ah-ha) tick? Where do they stand in relation to the watchmaking and timekeeping tradition of Japan? Some fun potential things: toki no kane as part of the soundscape of Edo Japan or the beautiful but inaccurate pillow clocks. There's a whole JSTOR article on late Edo Western-style timepieces if that floats your boat.
  • Or tell me how Keita moves through time: how long is his lifespan? How much can he actually do?
  • If you've read The Bedlam Stacks: Keita's time in the EIC, wandering around getting nearly blown up and being far too good at what he does. Does he have any solo adventures? Or was he mostly in it to play matchmaker for another unlikely couple? Why did he choose the Company, of all things? After Thaniel, does he ever catch up with Merrick again?
  • As with my Edo Era Intellectuals request above, feel free to toss Keita through space and time (and worlds) as you feel appropriate. Maybe he meets Shibukawa Shunkai? CALENDRICAL REFORM MAGICAL REALISM AU? :D?
  • I have read all of Pulley's books if you want to do something wild there with The Kingdoms....

If you've matched with me hoping to write some Keita/Thaniel, I certainly do ship them! I just ask that the core of the story focus on Keita's personality and backstory. Example: if you want to write about the long (long) setup to him meeting Thaniel, that's great as long as it's about Keita and his preparations. Or if you want to write about Thaniel and Keita in Japan, please focus on Keita's navigation of that can of worms – I don't mind if it's from Thaniel's point of view, even.



The Culture - Iain M. Banks

Characters: Cheradenine Zakalwe
Acquiring the canon: Use of Weapons (Amazon) is the primary book in which Zakalwe appears, though you might enjoy Surface Detail as well as an optional.

I mean come on how could you not.

I've been asking for The Culture for forever, and even though I've been lucky enough to receive fic for it recently I WILL NEVER GET OFF OF THIS SHIP.

Zakalwe is my favourite Culture-not-Culture dumpster fire and I would be so excited to receive anything that you could come up with for him. A couple of things that have floated to the top of my mind over the last few years include Zakalwe's split personality – not what happened in Use of Weapons, per se, but everything that happens afterwards. It's hinted and then just outright stated that there are many (many?) copies of Zakalwe running around doing SC's bidding: how does that work? Is there a "Zakalwe" anymore, or is Zakalwe more of a... ship type than a person? As there is the Picket Ship Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints, is there the Zakalwe Cheradenine? Was it his idea to get this distributed? Was it SC's? How does a - heh - distributed human architecture work? Does he hate it? Is there even a "him"? Do they fight with one another? Work with one another? There are so many questions both mundane and philosophical to tackle here and I'd love your take on it in particular, whether that's something high brow or a punchy "two Zakalwes walk into a room..." fic.

Less abstrctly, there's also Zakalwe's conversion of experience to wisdom over the years of working for SC, and where he remains naive still. I love his conversation with Tsoldrin about The Culture and whether they are as objective as they pretend to be; about how he's lived a long time and doesn't necessarily want to go to war. He's such a complicated bag of competencies and abject failures: how does his personal moral compass evolve? Does he ever really retire?

SC caperfic would also be amazing! Zakalwe gets into trouble and Sma calls in a favour, perhaps. Or Zakalwe ends up on FOTNMC on assignment and they end up going... rather outside the bounds of their authority. Or maybe Zakalwe ends up in, horror of horrors, recruiting! I'm happy for any crossover here that I could read: Discworld? Our reality? James Bond? Ghost in the Shell? John Wick?

Then there's Zakalwe and the Culture. Like a strangely belligerent exchange student, Zakalwe seems to pick and choose bits of the Culture to adopt at will, but he also has... no home, anymore. Or does he? What's your take? How Culture is he, after 10 years, then 50, then – gods above – 500? Putting aside the What Is A Zakalwe Anyway question from above, what is Zakalwe's personal culture in relation to The Culture? Does he ever identify fully with it? Does he end up cult leader of a faction of it? Does he settle down somewhere ever? Does he become a Mind? Does he get put into a PS? Does he ever go from being, as we've seen repeatedly, aggressively heterosexual to something else? SO MANY THINGS!

Finally, I would also love to see you throw Zakalwe at any of the Culture cast. More about his relationship with Sma? Hooray! Meeting or working with the FOTNMC? Yes! Maybe he learns about Led through FOTNMC and goes to see what's so interesting there. Or just some type of Culture original character or archetype. Maybe he gets to meet a, ah, player of games who doesn't realise how easily SC can twist people around their metaphorical fingers. Go nuts! I'm excited!