Dear Yuletide Writer, 2021

[hopefulnebula]

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thank you for writing for me! You clearly have great taste. ;)

First of all, I want to say that I truly don't want any single request more than any other one that's listed here. I realize some of my requests are much longer than others, but that's primarily due to the number of characters nominated in each. So if you got matched on Periodic Table anthro and are looking at the length of my Alphas prompts, put it out of your mind, I will love what you write just as much regardless of how long the requests are.

Second, this is my first time in a while doing one spoiler cut per prompt. Wish me HTML luck.

On to the letter itself.

Let's get the "generally do not want" list out of the way first. I'm fine with canon-typical violence for each canon, but please don't focus on gratuitous descriptions of gore. Also please don't spend a lot of time glorifying the nasty things people do to each other. If you're going to include them in the story, that's fine, but please treat them like the terrible things they are. My other hard DNW for the year is animal harm or death.

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/notes sent by carrier pigeon 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.
- AUs, particularly of the "what-if" variety.
- 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, and while my prompts tend to lean toward gen-ness, I do like to read romance as well, so if you're a shipper of any sort, please don't feel obligated to avoid it for my sake.


The prompts themselves are below, along with some commentary on what I love about each source material. Caution: here be spoilers.


Alphas - Gary Bell, Anna Levy

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, and what did she do to piss him off?

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 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'm just selecting them both because Reasons.)

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.

(From a Watsonian perspective, I hate how she died. From a Doylian perspective, I totally understand it and am fascinated by the implications. This isn't to say I desperately want an AU where she lives, though I'm definitely open to that possibility, and I'd be kind of fascinated to see what Anna-ten-years-from-now would be up to.)

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 Neurotypical Viewers Can Feel Good About Themselves. (And speaking of which, this show is literally the only time I've encountered the word "neurodiversity" in mass media. Which says quite a lot.) 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! (Best-ness is not zero sum.)


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Black Mirror - USS Callister - Any

I'm interested in so many things here - how do the "crew members" fill their time when Daly isn't around as puppetmaster? (We have some indications but there's got to be way more going on over the years he's been doing this.) How do they settle into their new "lives" within the game? Do they pose as players or as NPCs, or something else entirely? What happens if they get discovered by the programmers in brickspace? Do Lowry and Nanette interact any more between Daly's visits?

DNW: focus on Daly's abuse of the crew - referencing it & its aftermath is fine, graphic descriptions or focus on Daly's POV are not.

I grew up on Star Trek (seriously, when I was not-quite-2 my dad plopped me down and told me "Hey, I'll bet you'll like this" and it was the premier of The Next Generation, and he was right) and I loved how "USS Callister" managed to simultaneously be a love letter to the great parts of Trek and a takedown of its most problematic elements (including those of society at large, as they creep into fandom).

One of the things I both love & hate about the format of Black Mirror is how many questions each episode leaves. It really does allow for some nice complexity, but I also keep wondering what happens next and how things got to where they did.

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The Darkside Detective - Any

I would love to see any combination of these characters going on some kind of paranormal adventure. Maybe something a few years on, when Raxa has her degree and signs onto the Darkside Division (or does whatever else she wants to do with it)? Maybe she ends up confronting the corruption in the rest of the TLPD. What adventures has Dooley gone on with the Bloodwolves? What has Nigel the Totally Real Human gotten up to since we've seen him? And how about McQueen? Why did he join the Darkside Division in the first place? What does he have to do to be taken seriously by the department as a whole?

Basically anything that has these characters interacting with each other, or their universe as a whole, is fair game here.

If you haven't played this but it sounds intriguing, it's available on Steam, as is a free demo of the first case, as well as a free demo of the sequel.

I just really love all these characters. I love how we get little fleshed-out details of their lives, and the world they're in. I love the banter. I love how protective McQueen is of Dooley, and how Dooley sees the world, and how the supernatural is just one more thing that happens in Twin Lakes. I love the intrigue and the worldbuilding and the snarkiness. I love the way they all lean on the fourth wall without ever actually breaking it. I love how Dooley's brain works.

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Exit/Corners - Any

I said "any" here and I mean it. One of my favorite things about E/C is the interactions between the characters, and their ever-shifting dynamics as they learn more about each other. There's a lot of stuff that happens during the course of the game that we never get to see because Ink isn't there. (Also the drink-testing conversation Aether mentions in one of the good endings - we never actually see that in game, but it might be fun to include a missing scene like that). Fill in the negative space! There's also a lot of potential for exploring some characters' relationships with their Contacts, and the conversations they have. Or: how do the remaining characters end up surviving/thriving after the end of the game? Are the people in charge right in their calculations that the players will eventually forgive them? Or, give me Sent's POV of any point during the game. What do they actually think of what's happening? What's their relationship like with the game's creators? What goes into their decision at the end of the game?

E/C is... well, not a five-minute fandom, but a "whoops, it's 3am" fandom. If you like visual novels with light (but skippable) puzzles and meaningful choices, the genre of "we all woke up in this place none of us has seen before and a shadowy force is making us participate in a creepy, potentially lethal game," and complex, engaging characters, the VN is available for free at http://exitcorners.com. That said, I wouldn't feel good recommending it without also providing content warnings. By their nature, these warnings will spoil the game, so if you want to read them I'll put them in a "highlight to read" bit at the end of this part of the letter. Also, these prompts are largely based on the best ending, whose save code you can find in this comment at the E/C subreddit. Feel free to disregard that, though, and go with whichever ending you choose, if that's the direction your muse takes you.

I mean it when I say that my favorite part of the game is the character interactions. I'd love to see something from Aether's point of view, since she's clearly going to view the other characters differently than they view each other. I'd like to see further backstory or flashes-forward for any of the characters - how does Liza come to terms with what she knows about her family, and what they've done to her? What does Beth think about that knowledge (beyond what we find in her letter)? Does Ink actually become a detective? What steps does Rae take to repair his social life, post-game? Does Sent communicate privately with anyone else during the game? Does the remaining team stay friendly years later? How do they cope?

SPOILERY CONTENT NOTES (highlight to read): (skip) E/C is an amazing game, but it does include (in no particular order) blood/gore, limb amputation, gaslighting/manipulation, abusive parents, transphobia, suicide references, and character death.



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Periodic Table (anthropomorphic) - Any

These two are just so explosive. Especially together. Do they just want to watch the world burn? What do they get up to? Why are they so reactive? Is there a secret cabal of other elements that wants to create ions of these two (chlorides and fluorides) to render them harmless?

(I realize this prompt is way shorter than my others; so is the subject material, thus the length!)

Some jumping-off points for ideas/inspiration:

- Periodic Videos: Chlorine, Fluorine
- Chemicool has some facts on the history of fluorine and chlorine.
- Chlorine trifluoride. That is all. (If you haven't seen Hank Green's explanation of ClF₃, I also recommend it.)



Thanks again for matching to me, dear writer, and I look forward to "meeting" you in December.

-Neb (aka HopefulNebula on AO3)