Fandom: Dear Yuletide Author
Oct. 18th, 2015 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
escritoireazulETA November 5: I have now played the final episode of Life is Strange, in case my author keeps coming back to the letter for reference the way I do. I still love the things I've written below, but don't stress about something small from the fifth episode slipping in and spoiling me.
Dear Yuletide Author,
I can't wait to read your story. Yuletide is my favorite fannish time of the year. No matter on which fandom(s) we match, I'm excited to see what you've written. It brings me great joy to write stories for people for Yuletide, and I hope that you have a lot of fun and a wonderful experience writing for me.
You can find me on DW, LJ, and AO3 as escritoireazul, where I've been somewhat active this year, and generally tag a lot, so if you're looking for more information about a particular fandom or what I've written in a given fandom (I know I'm not the only person who checks that), it should be easy to find.
Just as a note: I am always down for adding werewolves to a fandom. Always.
General Information
For Yuletide, I tend to prefer happy, joyful stories. I cannot handle character death this time of year, particularly the death of a mother figure. Even if it's in canon, I would really prefer the story either be au to that death or simply not touch on it. I like all fic ratings, and love both gen and romantic stories. Sex, no sex, whatever makes you happy in your story.
Likes:
+ girl slash, gen, and het more than boy slash, mostly because I really love stories about women
+ women being awesome and competent and smart and funny and sexy
+ werewolves and werewolf packs as families and women being amazing werewolves and werewolf alternate universes in any canon and full moons over the ocean
+ chosen families being loving and protective and a little snarly with each other because they trust each other to always be there and adoption stories where adoption is treated as totally normal and not a BIG DRAMATIC SECRET to up the tension and siblings as friends and friends as family
+ poly families, threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes, as long as it is consensual and not cheating
+ intricate plots and adventure stories and mysteries to solve
+ friends and family teaming up to save the world
+ Halloween and horror movies
+ roadtrip stories and motorcycle rides
+ crossovers, the more twisty and complicated the better.
+ kink that is biting, light bondage, rough body play, and bloodplay, particular for supernatural characters, and for all of it, female top or dom only
Do Not Want:
+ disrespect for characters of color, queer characters (particularly bisexual and trans characters), fat characters, or characters with mental illness
+ character bashing
+ rape and non-con and dub-con
+ use of "crazy" to mean bad or dangerous or scary, etc.
+ embarrassment/humiliation
+ animal cruelty or death
+ incest (with one exception in my Long Live the Queen prompts)
+ big age difference in romantic relationships, except for supernatural creatures (again with an exception in my Long Live the Queen prompts)
Requests
My requests are in no specific order. I love each of them, and would be absolutely delighted to receive a story in any of them. There are spoilers in each section.
Life is Strange
Source material: Life is Strange is a five episode game from DONTNOD; as of writing this letter, four episodes are available and the fifth will be released October 20. It is a choice-based game in which the playable character, Max, can manipulate time.
Max learns she can rewind time when she saves her childhood best friend, Chloe Price, from being shot by a fellow student. While Max and Chloe try to find the limits of Max's power, Max is also getting premonitions of a massive tornado that will wipe out Arcadia Bay. Chloe's main focus, though, is on finding Rachel Amber, the girl she loves, who mysteriously disappeared from the same boarding school Max now attends.
(There's not a lot of first person camera angles, but there is a little bit of it, mostly during cut scenes. That triggers my vertigo, so I mention it when I talk about games. The story contains, among other things, bullying of teens by other teens and adults, domestic violence, suicide, non-explicit rape and sexual assault, and a one-sided student-teacher flirtation.)
Here's a walkthrough of the first four episodes, with video excerpts and pictures.
Requested character(s): Maxine Caulfield, Chloe Price
Sign-up notes: Max is such an amazing character. I love how she sees the world, and I love the complications, good and bad, of her ability to turn back time. My favorite part of the game is her friendship with Chloe, and the way the two of them hurt each other and help each other, every interaction nuanced. While I do ship Max and Chloe, I would also love a gen story about their friendship or their adventures.
I'm not sure when I'll be able to play episode five, so please only use source material from episodes one through four.
Additional notes:
Life is Strange is the most fun I've had playing a game in years. Max is a ridiculous, adorable, smart playable character, and her reunion with Chloe is the best. While their friendship is complicated by the fact Max didn't contact for Chloe for five years after she moved away (directly after Chloe's dad died), they still clearly care about each other a lot. Chloe is not the fun, sweet girl she was when they were younger, but Max loves this new Chloe too.
What really makes me love this game is the story and the characters. Max and Chloe are the most adorable, with all their talk about superheroes and sidekicks, all their flirting and fighting, all their trying to deal with the changes in their lives and the fact that Max left and didn't call for five years, but all of the characters are interesting. They are complicated and flawed and wonderful.
Max and Chloe are smart, sharp, and funny, and I ship them so, so hard.
Prompts:
One of the things the game only touches upon is the fact that Max keeps having to watch Chloe die. Sure, she can rewind time and save her, but starting with the very first time Max rewinds time in the girls' bathroom at the school, she watches Chloe die over and over again. I'd love to see that explored, both what it does to her to have to watch it over and over again, and what it does to be the only one who remembers.
Max's ability is prime for "five things" fic. Five times she does something and then rewinds time, five different ways she has a first experience, five different mean things she does before she changes her mind -- there's a lot to explore with that format.
There's a beautiful scene between Chloe and Max in the pool. I love that they take a moment to have fun in the middle of their increasingly frantic search for more information, and I love how they bond alone in the water. I'd love to see this scene (and/or the morning after, in Chloe's bedroom) expanded upon. Give me bonding and flirting and friends finding their way together.
I spend a great deal of time going "VORTEX CLUB! GIANT TORNADO DESTROYING THE CITY! A TORNADO IS A VORTEX! AT LEAST FLOAT THAT THEORY, MAX!" while playing the game. Sometime this year, we'll get the actual resolution, but I'd love to know about it, supernatural twists, magic and monsters alternate universe, anything.
In the alternate timeline where Max saves Chloe's dad, Max is apparently a member of the Vortex Club, and Victoria is super friendly and into her. I want to know more about that world! While Max did write to Chloe in that timeline, what changed that led Max to being popular enough to join the Vortex Club and attract Victoria's attention? What sort of flirty, fun things do Victoria and Max get up to prior to Max waking up in this timeline and visiting Chloe?
Long Live the Queen (Video Game)
Source material: Long Live the Queen is a visual novel role playing game from Hanako Games. The game follows Elodie, a princess whose mother has just died, leaving her on the cusp of becoming queen. As you play Elodie, you make decisions about what she will study and what she will do in order to prepare to be queen and survive until her coronation. Elodie's personality and mood changes based on the choices you make, and she's surrounded by complicated rules and people with their own agendas. Here are some written playthroughs showing different choices and character interactions.
Requested character(s): Elodie (Long Live the Queen)
Sign-up notes: I am so intrigued by Elodie's interactions with various characters, and want more than the little pieces we get. I particularly enjoy the flirtation that takes place between Elodie and Brin in some scenarios, as well as Elodie's adventures with Briony in the forest. At the heart of it, though, I love Elodie and all the different ways she tries so hard to survive and become queen, and I would love to see stories of her adventures during this time or after she's crowned, with her choices always being the core to who she is and who she will become.
Additional notes:
I only started playing this game in September, due to people's enthusiasm when discussing it as a potential Yuletide fandom, and I'm so glad I gave it a try. It's an adorable, fun, unexpectedly addictive game about a princess, Elodie, who is trying to learn enough to survive and become queen after her mother's death. Different personality traits become stronger or weaker depending on the choices you make as the player, which change how you interact with people.
Prompts:
In one potential ending, Elodie and Brin's flirtation leads to Elodie marrying Brin's brother, Banion, and remaining close with Brin. I would love to see more of this, Elodie and Brin's flirtations, how Brin and Banion navigate being involved with the same person, scenes at balls and parties with nuanced flirtations and layers of meanings. (For this threesome only, I'm down for incest between Brin and Banion so long as Elodie is a beloved and welcomed third.)
Elodie and Briony having all the adventures, as girlfriends or snarky best friends. Briony can be the muscle (she brags about her prowess) and Elodie can be the magic. Monsters and dangerous spells and haunted forests, beware, Team Lady Warriors to the rescue.
Elodie goes through a lot just trying to survive until her coronation. I can't imagine life settles down too much after that, either, and I'd love to see some of the things that come up during her life. What new things does she learn? How goes the magic training? What secrets lurk within her own palace walls?
Sometimes, Elodie ends up with a spy musician, Selene. What sort of intelligence does she bring Elodie once Elodie is Queen? They have layers of interactions, secrets within secrets. Does Elodie woo Selene? Secret meetings, songs that seduce as much as share secrets. Secret, stolen moments during parties (to whisper, to woo).
Turn of the Story - Sarah Rees Brennan
Source material: Turn of the Story is a novel by Sarah Rees Brennan available for free online; this is the master post with links to all the parts (and notes about the sequel, a short story in an anthology). It is, in SRB's words, the story of the grouchiest boy in fantasyland, all about Elliot Schafer, a boy from our world who is called upon to protect a world of magic and monsters. Elliot, along with Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle, an elf girl warrior, and Luke Sunborn, a human boy warrior, lives and learns at a training camp, finding ways to change the world as he does.
Requested character(s): Louise Sunborn
Sign-up notes: Elliot, Serene, and Luke are wonderful characters, but we get a good chunk of story about them in the source material. We don't see a lot of Luke's family, particularly his sister, Louise, but I fell in love with her from the first moment she arrived, a golden lioness at the family picnic. I want to know so much more about her story. I want to read about her adventures and her lovers and her view of the world. Having the other characters along for the ride would be an excellent bonus.
Additional notes: I really do love Elliot, Serene, and Luke, too, and ship the three of them together hardcore. (My first real OT3, I think. They are wonderful.) Having them be a part of Louise's adventures would be wonderful, too, if you want to write about them as well.
Prompts: Louise is often described as being like a lioness, and I think this is brilliant, the golden warrior. This is a land of magic and monsters. Of course I'd love to see Louise the lion shapeshifter, or fighting alongside great talking beasts. Where are the werewolves in this magical world?
Louise is 18 when the story starts. What sort of adventures did she get up to when she was younger and first training to be a warrior and defender of the realm? What about as she keeps having adventures as she grows older? Does she, too, end up fighting alongside the elves, with a swordsister of her own (and all the physical closeness that can imply)? Louise's first command, as a lieutenant leading the 15th troop, takes place in the second year of the story, but where does she go from there? How far through the ranks does she rise?
The harpies are lion-sized eagles, and Louise's younger brother ends up being part harpy. Does she go off with Luke to have all sorts of adventures with the harpies as he learns to adjust?
Louise's friends are always over at the Sunborns' home, especially during the summer. I want to know more about her beautiful friends and the adventures they have, their fighting and swordplay, their laughter and fun.
Dear Yuletide Author,
I can't wait to read your story. Yuletide is my favorite fannish time of the year. No matter on which fandom(s) we match, I'm excited to see what you've written. It brings me great joy to write stories for people for Yuletide, and I hope that you have a lot of fun and a wonderful experience writing for me.
You can find me on DW, LJ, and AO3 as escritoireazul, where I've been somewhat active this year, and generally tag a lot, so if you're looking for more information about a particular fandom or what I've written in a given fandom (I know I'm not the only person who checks that), it should be easy to find.
Just as a note: I am always down for adding werewolves to a fandom. Always.
General Information
For Yuletide, I tend to prefer happy, joyful stories. I cannot handle character death this time of year, particularly the death of a mother figure. Even if it's in canon, I would really prefer the story either be au to that death or simply not touch on it. I like all fic ratings, and love both gen and romantic stories. Sex, no sex, whatever makes you happy in your story.
Likes:
+ girl slash, gen, and het more than boy slash, mostly because I really love stories about women
+ women being awesome and competent and smart and funny and sexy
+ werewolves and werewolf packs as families and women being amazing werewolves and werewolf alternate universes in any canon and full moons over the ocean
+ chosen families being loving and protective and a little snarly with each other because they trust each other to always be there and adoption stories where adoption is treated as totally normal and not a BIG DRAMATIC SECRET to up the tension and siblings as friends and friends as family
+ poly families, threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes, as long as it is consensual and not cheating
+ intricate plots and adventure stories and mysteries to solve
+ friends and family teaming up to save the world
+ Halloween and horror movies
+ roadtrip stories and motorcycle rides
+ crossovers, the more twisty and complicated the better.
+ kink that is biting, light bondage, rough body play, and bloodplay, particular for supernatural characters, and for all of it, female top or dom only
Do Not Want:
+ disrespect for characters of color, queer characters (particularly bisexual and trans characters), fat characters, or characters with mental illness
+ character bashing
+ rape and non-con and dub-con
+ use of "crazy" to mean bad or dangerous or scary, etc.
+ embarrassment/humiliation
+ animal cruelty or death
+ incest (with one exception in my Long Live the Queen prompts)
+ big age difference in romantic relationships, except for supernatural creatures (again with an exception in my Long Live the Queen prompts)
Requests
My requests are in no specific order. I love each of them, and would be absolutely delighted to receive a story in any of them. There are spoilers in each section.
Life is Strange
Source material: Life is Strange is a five episode game from DONTNOD; as of writing this letter, four episodes are available and the fifth will be released October 20. It is a choice-based game in which the playable character, Max, can manipulate time.
Max learns she can rewind time when she saves her childhood best friend, Chloe Price, from being shot by a fellow student. While Max and Chloe try to find the limits of Max's power, Max is also getting premonitions of a massive tornado that will wipe out Arcadia Bay. Chloe's main focus, though, is on finding Rachel Amber, the girl she loves, who mysteriously disappeared from the same boarding school Max now attends.
(There's not a lot of first person camera angles, but there is a little bit of it, mostly during cut scenes. That triggers my vertigo, so I mention it when I talk about games. The story contains, among other things, bullying of teens by other teens and adults, domestic violence, suicide, non-explicit rape and sexual assault, and a one-sided student-teacher flirtation.)
Here's a walkthrough of the first four episodes, with video excerpts and pictures.
Requested character(s): Maxine Caulfield, Chloe Price
Sign-up notes: Max is such an amazing character. I love how she sees the world, and I love the complications, good and bad, of her ability to turn back time. My favorite part of the game is her friendship with Chloe, and the way the two of them hurt each other and help each other, every interaction nuanced. While I do ship Max and Chloe, I would also love a gen story about their friendship or their adventures.
I'm not sure when I'll be able to play episode five, so please only use source material from episodes one through four.
Additional notes:
Life is Strange is the most fun I've had playing a game in years. Max is a ridiculous, adorable, smart playable character, and her reunion with Chloe is the best. While their friendship is complicated by the fact Max didn't contact for Chloe for five years after she moved away (directly after Chloe's dad died), they still clearly care about each other a lot. Chloe is not the fun, sweet girl she was when they were younger, but Max loves this new Chloe too.
What really makes me love this game is the story and the characters. Max and Chloe are the most adorable, with all their talk about superheroes and sidekicks, all their flirting and fighting, all their trying to deal with the changes in their lives and the fact that Max left and didn't call for five years, but all of the characters are interesting. They are complicated and flawed and wonderful.
Max and Chloe are smart, sharp, and funny, and I ship them so, so hard.
Prompts:
One of the things the game only touches upon is the fact that Max keeps having to watch Chloe die. Sure, she can rewind time and save her, but starting with the very first time Max rewinds time in the girls' bathroom at the school, she watches Chloe die over and over again. I'd love to see that explored, both what it does to her to have to watch it over and over again, and what it does to be the only one who remembers.
Max's ability is prime for "five things" fic. Five times she does something and then rewinds time, five different ways she has a first experience, five different mean things she does before she changes her mind -- there's a lot to explore with that format.
There's a beautiful scene between Chloe and Max in the pool. I love that they take a moment to have fun in the middle of their increasingly frantic search for more information, and I love how they bond alone in the water. I'd love to see this scene (and/or the morning after, in Chloe's bedroom) expanded upon. Give me bonding and flirting and friends finding their way together.
I spend a great deal of time going "VORTEX CLUB! GIANT TORNADO DESTROYING THE CITY! A TORNADO IS A VORTEX! AT LEAST FLOAT THAT THEORY, MAX!" while playing the game. Sometime this year, we'll get the actual resolution, but I'd love to know about it, supernatural twists, magic and monsters alternate universe, anything.
In the alternate timeline where Max saves Chloe's dad, Max is apparently a member of the Vortex Club, and Victoria is super friendly and into her. I want to know more about that world! While Max did write to Chloe in that timeline, what changed that led Max to being popular enough to join the Vortex Club and attract Victoria's attention? What sort of flirty, fun things do Victoria and Max get up to prior to Max waking up in this timeline and visiting Chloe?
Long Live the Queen (Video Game)
Source material: Long Live the Queen is a visual novel role playing game from Hanako Games. The game follows Elodie, a princess whose mother has just died, leaving her on the cusp of becoming queen. As you play Elodie, you make decisions about what she will study and what she will do in order to prepare to be queen and survive until her coronation. Elodie's personality and mood changes based on the choices you make, and she's surrounded by complicated rules and people with their own agendas. Here are some written playthroughs showing different choices and character interactions.
Requested character(s): Elodie (Long Live the Queen)
Sign-up notes: I am so intrigued by Elodie's interactions with various characters, and want more than the little pieces we get. I particularly enjoy the flirtation that takes place between Elodie and Brin in some scenarios, as well as Elodie's adventures with Briony in the forest. At the heart of it, though, I love Elodie and all the different ways she tries so hard to survive and become queen, and I would love to see stories of her adventures during this time or after she's crowned, with her choices always being the core to who she is and who she will become.
Additional notes:
I only started playing this game in September, due to people's enthusiasm when discussing it as a potential Yuletide fandom, and I'm so glad I gave it a try. It's an adorable, fun, unexpectedly addictive game about a princess, Elodie, who is trying to learn enough to survive and become queen after her mother's death. Different personality traits become stronger or weaker depending on the choices you make as the player, which change how you interact with people.
Prompts:
In one potential ending, Elodie and Brin's flirtation leads to Elodie marrying Brin's brother, Banion, and remaining close with Brin. I would love to see more of this, Elodie and Brin's flirtations, how Brin and Banion navigate being involved with the same person, scenes at balls and parties with nuanced flirtations and layers of meanings. (For this threesome only, I'm down for incest between Brin and Banion so long as Elodie is a beloved and welcomed third.)
Elodie and Briony having all the adventures, as girlfriends or snarky best friends. Briony can be the muscle (she brags about her prowess) and Elodie can be the magic. Monsters and dangerous spells and haunted forests, beware, Team Lady Warriors to the rescue.
Elodie goes through a lot just trying to survive until her coronation. I can't imagine life settles down too much after that, either, and I'd love to see some of the things that come up during her life. What new things does she learn? How goes the magic training? What secrets lurk within her own palace walls?
Sometimes, Elodie ends up with a spy musician, Selene. What sort of intelligence does she bring Elodie once Elodie is Queen? They have layers of interactions, secrets within secrets. Does Elodie woo Selene? Secret meetings, songs that seduce as much as share secrets. Secret, stolen moments during parties (to whisper, to woo).
Turn of the Story - Sarah Rees Brennan
Source material: Turn of the Story is a novel by Sarah Rees Brennan available for free online; this is the master post with links to all the parts (and notes about the sequel, a short story in an anthology). It is, in SRB's words, the story of the grouchiest boy in fantasyland, all about Elliot Schafer, a boy from our world who is called upon to protect a world of magic and monsters. Elliot, along with Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle, an elf girl warrior, and Luke Sunborn, a human boy warrior, lives and learns at a training camp, finding ways to change the world as he does.
Requested character(s): Louise Sunborn
Sign-up notes: Elliot, Serene, and Luke are wonderful characters, but we get a good chunk of story about them in the source material. We don't see a lot of Luke's family, particularly his sister, Louise, but I fell in love with her from the first moment she arrived, a golden lioness at the family picnic. I want to know so much more about her story. I want to read about her adventures and her lovers and her view of the world. Having the other characters along for the ride would be an excellent bonus.
Additional notes: I really do love Elliot, Serene, and Luke, too, and ship the three of them together hardcore. (My first real OT3, I think. They are wonderful.) Having them be a part of Louise's adventures would be wonderful, too, if you want to write about them as well.
Prompts: Louise is often described as being like a lioness, and I think this is brilliant, the golden warrior. This is a land of magic and monsters. Of course I'd love to see Louise the lion shapeshifter, or fighting alongside great talking beasts. Where are the werewolves in this magical world?
Louise is 18 when the story starts. What sort of adventures did she get up to when she was younger and first training to be a warrior and defender of the realm? What about as she keeps having adventures as she grows older? Does she, too, end up fighting alongside the elves, with a swordsister of her own (and all the physical closeness that can imply)? Louise's first command, as a lieutenant leading the 15th troop, takes place in the second year of the story, but where does she go from there? How far through the ranks does she rise?
The harpies are lion-sized eagles, and Louise's younger brother ends up being part harpy. Does she go off with Luke to have all sorts of adventures with the harpies as he learns to adjust?
Louise's friends are always over at the Sunborns' home, especially during the summer. I want to know more about her beautiful friends and the adventures they have, their fighting and swordplay, their laughter and fun.
