Dear Yuletide Writer, 2013

[hopefulnebula]

Dear Yuletide Writer:

Thank you for writing for me! Or thank AO3's matching algorithm for making you write for me. Or something. Here's my letter (with prompts included for easy reference/what-have-you), full of joy and "omg this bit is THE BEST" and all the usual stuff like that.

As a fan, I'm pretty easygoing. I love quite a lot of things, and I'm not squicked out by a lot. I have some of triggery issues regarding characters with disabilities, though, which I trust won't be problematic given my requests. Please, don't "cure" or otherwise erase the disabilities/differences of characters, and don't resort to problematic tropes ("Rain Man" is not research), and you're good. :) In each of my requests, I love the way these characters are portrayed in their respective canons, so if you stay true to that, I'll be happy.

Other things I don't like: glorification of the nasty things people do to each other (if you're going to have them in the story, that's fine, but please treat them like the terrible things they are) and gratuitous gore.

Now that that's out of the way, a non-exhaustive list of the general things I like:

- Fiction that's in the spirit of the source material. I love me some "original flavor" fic (not linking to the TVTropes page because then you'll never get anything written). Explore the things that the canon doesn't explore in a way that the canon would do it, and I'll be a happy camper.
- Non-human/human-but-neurologically-atypical characters not thinking the way neurotypical humans do, without being caricatures of themselves.
- Unexpected/odd POVs (external POVs of relationships, for instance).
- Epistolary fiction (that is, stories told in the form of letters/e-mails/telegrams/smoke signals/notes sent by carrier pigeon sent between characters)
- Strong character voices (I love hearing the characters speak the lines I read in my head).
- Stories that explore the characters' reactions to things around them (what makes them who they are? How does that relate to how they react to things now?)
- Anything that passes the Bechdel test (has at least two female main characters who communicate with each other about something other than a man)
- Past-fic, future-fic, missing scenes, sets of vaguely connected drabbles, weirdly formatted fics, plotless "slice of life" fics, fix-it fics, and probably about a hundred other things I could think of.
- I like happy endings, but I also like it when things don't end exactly as the protagonist plans. I like bittersweet and even sad endings. But please don't make it a "rocks fall, everyone dies" ending. There should be something happy or hopeful to grab onto.

I'm open to all ratings, so write whatever you're comfortable writing.

Also, you can find my writing both at AO3 and nebula_of_words -- the former has newer stuff I need to move to DW, and the latter has older stuff I need to move to AO3. I'm (still!) in the process of doing both. (Fourth year I've had this exact paragraph in my letter! At this point I suspect I'm just being lazy about it so I can snark about it here once a year.)

As always, please take these prompts as suggestions and starting points. Don't be compelled to address every aspect of them, and if your muse takes you in a direction I don't foresee, that's great too. These are meant primarily for inspiration. Also don't be alarmed by the giant wall of text or the varying lengths of my writing about these fandoms. I don't have favorites here, it's just that my squee for some things produces more words than my squee for others.

One other note: I'm up to date on all the canons mentioned herein. No need to worry about spoilers. (The upshot of this: this letter is seriously spoilery in places, so read carefully.)

Alphas

Anna Levy, Gary Bell - What is Anna's day-to-day life like? How does she work with her local community? How and why did she join Red Flag? How did she get to such a high position in the group? What was her childhood like? How did she create her language, and who was the first person to understand it for what it was? Who does she work with at Red Flag, and what are their interactions like? What have her interactions with Stanton Parrish been like?

How did Anna and Gary's relationship go from Gary hanging up on Anna to Gary disobeying orders to try to save her life? What was their correspondence like? What does she think of him?

Fic about Gary is also most welcome! Something highlighting his relationships with the rest of the team? Yes, please. Or an episode tag would be awesome too. Or Gary's driving lessons. Or a post-series fic (taking the finale into account or handwaving it, I don't care) would also be amazing. What is he doing five years from now? Ten? (Has he taken over Red Flag and led it in a non-violent direction? Is he making oodles of money as a consultant on the side? Who knows? You do!) The world needs more Gary.

(If you only want to write about one character or the other for this prompt, that's cool with me.)

I've loved Anna since the second they introduced her.

I love antagonists who aren't necessarily wrong (though I obviously don't condone Red Flag's methods). I love that they make her relatable, but obviously very different from "normal" humans. I even love that she's been misdiagnosed all her life because none of her doctors knew about alphas. I love how sympathetic she is. I love that she and Gary bonded so quickly.

One thing that fascinates me as well is the possibility that her ability might allow her to understand what people mean versus what they actually say.

(I hate how she died, though I see why they did it that way. This isn't to say I desperately want an AU, though I'm definitely open to that possibility.)

And then there's Gary. Gary, Gary, Gary. I love how they (both the showrunners and the characters) treat Gary as an individual. His autism is an integral part of who he is, but he's not the token oddball or the savant or the Very Special Episode The Writers Put In So Viewers Can Feel Good About Themselves. Sometimes it's helpful, and sometimes it's debilitating. He does get the lion's share of the funny moments, but it's not in an exploitative way.

In short: Anna and Gary are both the best. If you can make them be the best together, all the better. If not, they're still the best!

-

His Dark Materials

Any - I'm truly open to anything in this fandom. You can even ignore the existing characters if you want to; I'd love to hear stories, myths, and legends from any of the other worlds we see. If there's a geographic area and/or time period you love, I'd love to see what life is like in that time/place in Lyra's world -- create a character and send hir on an adventure in Lyra's world. Or you know those snippets of documents/other materials in Lyra's Oxford and Once Upon a Time in the North? Excerpts from things like that -- from any world -- would be amazing as well.

I request this every year, only tweaking the request slightly based on what I got the previous year/what mood I'm in when I'm letter-writing. the rest of this is copypasted with slight edits from last year:

I'm pretty much obsessed with this series, and have been since I was 13 (which is omg more than half my life now). I love the worldbuilding, I love the variety of characters (especially non-human ones!), I love that the non-human characters don't think like humans do. (And not all the humans think like most humans, either...)

If you don't like the ideas I prompted, take whatever you have in mind and write the story you want to write. Just because I'm obsessed doesn't mean I'm a total "OMG IT MUST BE THIS WAY" purist. Keep to the spirit of the novels and I'll be glad. (Please no crossover fusions, though; there's a plethora of those on AO3 anyway, and those aren’t not really HDM fics in the sense that I'm requesting.)

(The "snippets" I mention in the request, btw, are things like a functional board game that folds out of a packet, or Lyra's letters to a friend as she decides what to write her thesis on, or the cover page of said thesis, or a postcard Mary Malone sent that has a certain row of hornbeam trees and The Bench and a lab near Mary's. Stuff like that.)

-

Ink (2009)

Jacob - What makes Jacob different? How does he perceive the worlds, and the differences between them? What does the "beat of the world" feel like to him? What do Pathfinders do when there isn't a little girl to be saved? Do he and Allel stay friends after the events of the film? When Emma shows up in their realm (for real this time, after a long life), does he go find her?

Some more general prompts, just for grins: How do people get to be Storytellers? What were their lives like before they died, and how does that (or what they remember of it) inform their identities? What is their world like? What happens after the movie ends? What is it like to become a Storyteller, and how do you go about it? Do these folks interact with the children Liev plays with as well? How so?

I saw this movie for the first time a couple years ago and it instantly became one of my "deserted island" movies. It's really just a lovely film. Plus, it was filmed entirely in and around my hometown, so that was a bonus. (I'm actually an extra in the movie they're making that should come out sometime next year. So I'm now zero degrees of separation from the filmmakers!) The storytelling and worldbuilding are amazing, the characters are multifaceted and relatable, and the visual effects are astounding, especially considering that they made this movie for less than it costs to buy a house in this city. (If you didn't match on this fandom but don't want to write what we did match on, or if you're just curious, Ink is available on Netflix Instant.)

I'm particularly fascinated by the Storytellers; aside from what Liev tells Emma, we don't know too much about them. Why do they do what they do? Is it because of the Incubi, or would they be Storytellers just because they do good things? What are their thought processes like? Do they get anything beyond the satisfaction of a job well done when they provide people with good dreams? The movie leaves so many questions open, but in a good way. Answer any of them for me and I'll be happy.

-

Sunshine (2007)

Any - Who's your favorite character or characters? Tell me about them. Ensemble fic would also be lovely. What didn't they learn in training that they wish they had? Who won the bet as to when Capa and Mace would finally snap at each other for the first time? How do they pass the time as they get farther from Earth? How did they join the program in the first place? How did they initially react to the loss of Icarus I? What coping mechanisms do they develop, both for dealing with each other and for not having anyone else? ("Anyone" includes Icarus, of course, though these questions probably don't apply to her. I do love me some AIs though.) Anything you can think of, for any character or combination of characters, would be great.

This is another of my "deserted island" films. I love the themes it explores and the choices they have to make and the juxtaposition of what happens to them with what happens to the crew of Icarus I. I love the colors, I love the sound, I love the music (omg the music). I would go straight if Cillian Murphy knocked on my door. I love the foreshadowing and the interactions and the tough decisions with tougher consequences. I even love the ending even though it's a completely different feel from the rest of the movie.

And seriously, don't feel limited to the prompts in the request. They're just potential jumping-off points. If one of them grabs you, great. If not, you can find something else.

One note I feel I should mention: I know a lot of the fic for Sunshine is Capa/Mace slash. I'm cool with Capa/Mace if that's what you want to write, but I also won't be disappointed if you don't. (It's the same with pairings in general for the fandom, really, but this seems to be the big one.)
-

So yeah, that's pretty much it. Feel free to ask me any questions via the admins (I don't bite and neither do they, seriously they're awesome).

<3,

hopefulnebula