yuletide 2024 - dear author letter

[deepestbluesky]

Dear Author Letter

hello! if you’re making something for me, i’m already guaranteed to love you and whatever you write, but i also know that personally, i love getting a ton of info to work from in exchanges, so i’ve written a bunch here! feel free to look through it for ideas, but also please please don’t feel beholden to it. this is intended as a bouquet of options that you can pick one or two things from, not something you should feel obligated to check boxes off for. not all of it is even going to be relevant to all the fandoms i’m requesting!

treats policy: definitely open! i would be honored to receive treats.

generally, i love rarepairs and genfic and poly ships - i really enjoy character interactions between characters who don't always interact a lot in canon, and stuff like genfic and rarepairs gets you a lot of that. found family is one of my always-favorite tropes too! i’m also very big into pairings in fic that aren’t necessarily OTPs - casual sex, friends who hook up sometimes, queerplatonic relationships, relationships that change over the course of the story, complex relationships that don’t fit neatly into a platonic vs romantic vs sexual divide; those are all things i find really fun, and as a person who likes multishipping, i’ll check out anything as long as it has cool stuff going for it, even stories that “contradict” ships i generally enjoy. of course, i’ve loved many many stories that are classic romance between two characters too! i just tend to like them more if there are also important relationships with other characters.

in terms of tropes and themes, i love a good future fic that digs into what ways a character might have changed since we knew them in canon. i love stories that play with POV, either using something unusual like second person or an unreliable narrator whose POV hides things from the audience until a crucial moment. i LOVE a good multimedia or nontraditional narrative fic—fake scientific papers, stories told via found text, social media AUs, fics formatted as screenplays, anything like that is always a delight. i always enjoy any sort of magical/supernatural/fantasy au (especially if it’s regular setting- But Now With 200% More Magic! OR in the case of canons with magic, modern AU but there’s still magic around). similarly, i love TTRPG AUs, whether that’s character in a modern setting playing a game together or fantasy AUs based on something like D&D. with AUs, part of the joy for me is seeing how the creator plays with canon, whether that’s a canon divergent au where you get to see how a small change can make a big impact, or a complete AU that still echoes canon in interesting ways, or a fusion where you get to enjoy how the creator has “cast” characters in roles or combined/split up roles from one canon to fit another.

some more random likes
road trips (or canon-appropriate road trip equivalent)
bondage (as a kink or as something like a d/s au)
banter/snarking
tattoos (just as a thing or as a tattoo store au)
superheroes
tentacles (but only if everyone involved enjoys it)
characters poking fun at each other as a form of affection

extra special likes
polyamory where everyone’s relationship with each other is different and they get different things from each person
Queer Themes (including/especially characters struggling to articulate queerness or feeling settled in a form of queerness they can’t clearly explain)
original characters and/or outside POV
that moment where someone sees something new in someone else for the first time and is taken aback by it
meaningful changes in how one character refers to another character (names)

DNWs
(non-canonical or non-temporary) major character death
rape/non-con
stories centered around the terminal illness of a main character
cutting in a realistic self-harm sense. i don't mind descriptions of cuts, or general self-harm behaviors, or fantasy things where a character cuts themselves for magic reasons, or anything else adjacent to this basically. i only mind this specific thing.
bashing/villainizing of canon significant others in the process of getting a different ship together
pregnancy as a major focus
amnesia

dislikes

high school au
big power imbalance within relationships
age difference as a feature of a ship (like, i don’t dislike age difference pairings, but it’s not an appeal for me)
cheating/infidelity
angsty endings
PWP (i'm happy to read fics that revolve around sex but i'd like there to be something else too - porn with plot is a-ok with me!)

definitely feel free to check out my bookmarks, works, and gifts on ao3 for more of an idea of what i like! or other posts i’ve made on this here dreamwidth or on my tumblr at the same username!

Fandoms and prompts!

Dimension 20: Escape from the Bloodkeep
i watched this this year and was a lot more charmed than i expected to be! first off, LOVE the rancid workplace vibes—i like that they all start the series being completely horrible to each other specifcally as coworkers, and then even once they all start working together and becoming a found family, there's still some petty workplace grievances, i just think that's so funny and also tasty. 'yes i love you but if you reply all to my emails ONE MORE TIME—' i would be delighted to read about any of these characters! lilith's friendship with efink is a delight, as is her relationship with her kids. i really enjoyed markus's vibe as the only normal guy who it turns out is not normal at all, especially in contrast with sokhbarr's vibe as absolutely a weirdo who turns out to be for sure the only normal guy here. and of course: leiland. what else can you say <3. i very enjoyed marcus/leiland and love that it's confirmed afterwards, but i'd also be absolutely down to read any vile villains ship at all, because if ever there was a place for messy workplace relationships, it's gotta be these losers, right? i feel like i'd prefer canon for this fandom but ALSO i do think some other wack workplace setup (future scifi? modern day astronauts? just a regular coffee shop but with the worst vibes imaginable?) could be a complete joy too! so go with your heart if you pick this fandom.

Escape The Greenroom
i actually hadn't watched this until quite recently, because i was saving some Big game changer episodes for a nice long stretch in between seasons. but now that i have watched it: PLEASE give me an au where samuel dalton is real and trapping all of them including sam. or sam's evil twin/mirror universe self/whatever is taking advantage of the conceit of the episode to trick them, or taking over sam's brain! i'm just saying, there's such a fun plot hook in this episode lol. i also think it could be very fun to have the rest of the cast+crew turning the episode around on sam somehow! basically, this seems very ripe for 'what if sam is no longer on the outside but in the episode/puzzle too' which is a scenario i think is very tasty. i'm not opposed to some shipping in a fic for this fandom, but i'd also be delighted to have it be completely gen. the thing i'm most fascinated by is the dynamics between the versions of these people on game changer and how that might shift or not if Something Unsual Happened.

Challengers
ah okay hm lemme try to be coherent: i loved this movie SO MUCH bc it hits a lot of things i really enjoy. i love an ot3 and i also love a 'these three people are obsessed with each other and i genuinely can't tell in what way' and that's so much the vibe here. i love SPORTS NARRATIVES and the ways that being a professional athlete kind of means being completely out of touch with the vast majority of people and the requisite intensity about something that ultimately isn't very important. i love people who are kind of horrible, especially to each other, but also maybe it's genuinely for the best if they're doing it together. i'm more interested in them as adults than as teens/college students, whether that's post-canon or alternate events of the last few years before new rochelle. i'm less interested in a totally AU for this canon because i think the history is so important to their relationship, but if there's an AU that you think preserves that history and would be really cool: sure why not! (and i do always love a future/sci fic sports au lol)

Couple of Mirrors
i just watched this pretty recently and let me just say: lesbians. thank you for your time. i think youyi should get to wander around being an amateur detective, bc she's honestly quite good at it, and yan wei can be her watson. also, given how much yan wei feels like a comic book character, with her wild backstory and cartoonish booby traps in her house and general vibes, i would love a superhero AU hehe. i also would love just like... post canon slice of life! or: do they get to be happy can they get away from whatever of yan wei's life seemingly caught up to them in the last baffling 5 minutes of the show! I Just Think They're Neat! (would i also be fascinated by something where youyi has to think through her very close friendship with a'wan and wonder if maybe there was more to it but also mourn that bc of how it ended? yeah absolutely, but i realize that's quite far away from the nominated characters for this fandom lol.)

Mistakenly Saving the Villain
oh boy. so. i didn't even think i was going to READ this book at all, much less devour it in like three days, which is what i did earlier this year. i am. FASCINATED by what an long's relationship with yue wuhuan and song qingshi is like after [waves hands at canon] all that. i know we get some of it in the extras but like, come on what's it LIKE! is he weird about it! do he and yue wuhuan become real friends again! is there eventual polyamory! i'm also generally fascinated by the idea from the extras that song qingshi and yue wuhuan just like... occasionally go put themselves in AUs for fun? idk i just... i really wasn't sure about the original premise but i love how logical but also really unwilling to compromise his ideals song qingshi is, and i love that the story is ultimately about trust and believing in there being a better way!

FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - Luke Burns
i’m obsessed with this original piece, i’m obsessed with pretty much everything everyone’s written for it in previous yuletides (see the podfics i’ve made of some of them lmao), i would love anything. however, i like providing ideas so: fake paper about the history of the snake fight tradition? something more on the snake side of things—what’s the care and keeping of thesis snakes like, and are all snakes suitable as thesis snakes? nightvale style ‘someone seemingly from our world shows up in this world and is baffled by the snake fights’?