Dear Yuletide author
Oct. 19th, 2021 07:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkHi! Thank you very much for writing a story for me! :D
Things I like:
* I enjoy hurt/comfort, especially emotional h/c. Angst with a good pay-off and (some) comfort at the end is great.
* I'm a big fan of loyalty (casual and/or ritualized), betrayal, (self-)sacrifice, atonement, and related tropes.
* Friendship/team/found family fic is wonderful. Characters who grow to like each other, trust each other, and eventually would do many things for each other, yes please. Especially when they started out enemies/opponents/unlikely allies/are in slightly different positions/places/there are obstacles etc.
* Canon-divergent AUs and time travel stories are always great.
* Some other things I love: competent characters, plot, happy (or at least optimistic) endings, hugs…
Things I don't like for Yuletide:
* Stories with a very dark or hopeless ending
* Explicit rape or abuse
* Character bashing
* PWP without character development
* Different world AUs, like coffeeshop AUs or Harry Potter fusions. I love the canon worlds of all these fandoms so I'd prefer to read fic taking place there.
Have fun! The prompts below are guidelines, I hope they help you think of ideas.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Characters: Miriam, Johannes, Gebel
Fandom promo
I would especially love canon divergence here.
- What if Miriam woke up earlier?
- What if Gebel survives the possession, only to see Miriam possessed instead?
- What if Gebel finds out that Johannes survived and tries to get his former best friend on "his" side?
- What if Gebel gets a do-over and travels back in time to shortly after the apocalypse, but can't find Johannes with Miriam who is hiding from him?
- What if Miriam gets a do-over after the bad ending to shortly before the apocalypse and tries to stop it and save Gebel and the other Shardbinders?
- Or what if Gebel survives in the true ending so everything ends as well as it could and all three of them are reunited - but figuring out how to recover and what comes next is hard.
It would also be fun to see Miriam and especially Johannes struggle with Dominique's betrayal, Gebel's feelings about his possession and about the fact that Johannes believed he was acting of his own free will, or all of their feelings about Alfred, who didn't confide in Johannes, put Miriam into a coma in the hopes that it would save her and left Gebel to be sacrificed, and then disappeared. All three of these characters have so much potential for angst, but they can help each other get through this.
Yono and the Celestial Elephants
Characters: Yono, Worldbuilding
Fandom promo
I loved the worldbuilding in this game, especially combined with the politics. Ever since I finished the game I wondered what would have happened if the queen had not so quickly voluntarily abdicated, and/or if her daughter had shared (some of) her ambitions. It'd also be interesting to see some of the discussion and politics and planning pre- and/or post-abdication, and/or some exploration of how these very different cultures live together, what life is like in the Sundergarden or Freehaven, how they all have very different "children"…
It would be nice to see more of Yono interacting with the different cultures and learning about them. Yono is a child (star-born - what does that mean, what kind of knowledge did he arrive with?) but he is also a symbol, and therefore forced to deal with people's expectations of him, and these cover a wide range. Somehow he has to learn how to balance learning how to be or do what he is supposed to be or do, once he figures out what that is, and learn more about life, discover hobbies etc.
Or the other direction, people learning about Yono and wondering what his appearance means and how he fits into their plans, and learning that he is a person too.
Tales of the Otori – Lian Hearn
Characters: Muto Taku
I'd love fix-it fic for "The Harsh Cry of the Heron," at least for the second generation. Taku also has many interesting relationships with other people that I'd enjoy seeing more of, for example Hiroshi. Exploring his relationship with Kenji and the wider Muto clan could be interesting (also Kenji could teach Taku more so he becomes a better spymaster…), or Taku's feelings toward Takeo and how much he is or isn't loyal to him, or his feelings on being a part of/being torn between two worlds. Or Taku's relationship with his mother Shizuka which we saw very little of, and even Taku's relationship with Zenko could be interesting to explore (even though I usually want to set Zenko on fire. But what if they got along better?) I enjoyed Taku/Sada (to my own surprise), and Maya as their kitten. We barely see Taku interact with Miki or Shigeko in canon, I wonder what that could look like. Or Taku could interact with people he doesn't meet in canon at all, like Hisao, or Yuki.
Some possible canon divergence AUs:
- What if instead of fleeing Taku&Sada&Maya had decided to kill Akio and succeeded?
- What if Taku figured out Zenko's and Akio's plans sooner, how would he deal with them?
- What if Taku and/or Kenji managed to take Hisao away from the Kikuta as a child or teenager?
- What if Yuki had refused to die when ordered and escaped back to the Muto family, with or without Hisao?
I'm not a fan of Hiroshi/Shigeko and would prefer it not come up. The one character where I definitely don't want to see a redeemed version is Kikuta Akio.
Things I like:
* I enjoy hurt/comfort, especially emotional h/c. Angst with a good pay-off and (some) comfort at the end is great.
* I'm a big fan of loyalty (casual and/or ritualized), betrayal, (self-)sacrifice, atonement, and related tropes.
* Friendship/team/found family fic is wonderful. Characters who grow to like each other, trust each other, and eventually would do many things for each other, yes please. Especially when they started out enemies/opponents/unlikely allies/are in slightly different positions/places/there are obstacles etc.
* Canon-divergent AUs and time travel stories are always great.
* Some other things I love: competent characters, plot, happy (or at least optimistic) endings, hugs…
Things I don't like for Yuletide:
* Stories with a very dark or hopeless ending
* Explicit rape or abuse
* Character bashing
* PWP without character development
* Different world AUs, like coffeeshop AUs or Harry Potter fusions. I love the canon worlds of all these fandoms so I'd prefer to read fic taking place there.
Have fun! The prompts below are guidelines, I hope they help you think of ideas.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Characters: Miriam, Johannes, Gebel
Fandom promo
I would especially love canon divergence here.
- What if Miriam woke up earlier?
- What if Gebel survives the possession, only to see Miriam possessed instead?
- What if Gebel finds out that Johannes survived and tries to get his former best friend on "his" side?
- What if Gebel gets a do-over and travels back in time to shortly after the apocalypse, but can't find Johannes with Miriam who is hiding from him?
- What if Miriam gets a do-over after the bad ending to shortly before the apocalypse and tries to stop it and save Gebel and the other Shardbinders?
- Or what if Gebel survives in the true ending so everything ends as well as it could and all three of them are reunited - but figuring out how to recover and what comes next is hard.
It would also be fun to see Miriam and especially Johannes struggle with Dominique's betrayal, Gebel's feelings about his possession and about the fact that Johannes believed he was acting of his own free will, or all of their feelings about Alfred, who didn't confide in Johannes, put Miriam into a coma in the hopes that it would save her and left Gebel to be sacrificed, and then disappeared. All three of these characters have so much potential for angst, but they can help each other get through this.
Yono and the Celestial Elephants
Characters: Yono, Worldbuilding
Fandom promo
I loved the worldbuilding in this game, especially combined with the politics. Ever since I finished the game I wondered what would have happened if the queen had not so quickly voluntarily abdicated, and/or if her daughter had shared (some of) her ambitions. It'd also be interesting to see some of the discussion and politics and planning pre- and/or post-abdication, and/or some exploration of how these very different cultures live together, what life is like in the Sundergarden or Freehaven, how they all have very different "children"…
It would be nice to see more of Yono interacting with the different cultures and learning about them. Yono is a child (star-born - what does that mean, what kind of knowledge did he arrive with?) but he is also a symbol, and therefore forced to deal with people's expectations of him, and these cover a wide range. Somehow he has to learn how to balance learning how to be or do what he is supposed to be or do, once he figures out what that is, and learn more about life, discover hobbies etc.
Or the other direction, people learning about Yono and wondering what his appearance means and how he fits into their plans, and learning that he is a person too.
Tales of the Otori – Lian Hearn
Characters: Muto Taku
I'd love fix-it fic for "The Harsh Cry of the Heron," at least for the second generation. Taku also has many interesting relationships with other people that I'd enjoy seeing more of, for example Hiroshi. Exploring his relationship with Kenji and the wider Muto clan could be interesting (also Kenji could teach Taku more so he becomes a better spymaster…), or Taku's feelings toward Takeo and how much he is or isn't loyal to him, or his feelings on being a part of/being torn between two worlds. Or Taku's relationship with his mother Shizuka which we saw very little of, and even Taku's relationship with Zenko could be interesting to explore (even though I usually want to set Zenko on fire. But what if they got along better?) I enjoyed Taku/Sada (to my own surprise), and Maya as their kitten. We barely see Taku interact with Miki or Shigeko in canon, I wonder what that could look like. Or Taku could interact with people he doesn't meet in canon at all, like Hisao, or Yuki.
Some possible canon divergence AUs:
- What if instead of fleeing Taku&Sada&Maya had decided to kill Akio and succeeded?
- What if Taku figured out Zenko's and Akio's plans sooner, how would he deal with them?
- What if Taku and/or Kenji managed to take Hisao away from the Kikuta as a child or teenager?
- What if Yuki had refused to die when ordered and escaped back to the Muto family, with or without Hisao?
I'm not a fan of Hiroshi/Shigeko and would prefer it not come up. The one character where I definitely don't want to see a redeemed version is Kikuta Akio.
