Dear Yuletide Writer 2019
Oct. 27th, 2019 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxinthestarsHello, Hello! It's Yuletide time again! Thank you, kind writer, for volunteering to write a story for me, or for considering writing a treat for me!
See under the cut for the things you need to know…
I've been in a fallow period this year, fanfic-wise, but there's no way I'd let Yuletide pass me by (I've been doing it every year since 2011 now). This year's requests include bothcopy-pasting golden oldies and some fresh blood. I love all these fandoms and hope you have fun with whichever of my prompts you choose!
I'm![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
foxinthestars at Ao3, same username as on DW/LJ.
LIKES:
Sympathetic Protagonists, people being good-hearted
Happy Endings or Bittersweet ones
Competence
Explorations of Issues, Ideas, and Sticky Messes
Character Pieces
Genfic (but I’m also fine with all sorts of pairings & poly)
Drama, Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Fluff and WAFF
Fixer-upper/Canon-Divergent/"What If?" AUs
Cuddling (cute fluffy cuddling or intense romantic cuddling, it’s all good)
Sensuality and Description Porn
Representation (Women/LGBTQ/PoC/PwD/et. al. being awesome)
DO NOT WANTS:
(Note that these are not necessarily things I disapprove of or even dislike, but they are things it’s not safe to give me in an exchange)
Humiliation/Abasement/Embarrassment (the Embarrassment squick can be triggered vicariously by, e.g., a character acting stupid or being set up to fail as an object lesson)
Rape, Non-con, Dub-con
Christocentrism
Zombies
Crossovers (unless specifically noted)
Gritty/Grimdark
Sad/Bad/Tragic Endings
Actual Porn
Character/Ship Bashing
Directly speculating about future events in an open canon (This one’s weird. Writing in a timeframe beyond current canon with vague or absent explanation of how it turned out the way you’re depicting it is fine, but if you directly invent or handwave, e.g. “they got out of the current arc like thus and such,” or “the prophecy turned out to mean this,” I tend to bounce off.)
Suffocation in any form is acceptable but I need you to tag for it.
Special note: Around Yuletide Story-Time I tend to in the mood for winter-themed stories — things with sensuous descriptions of long dark nights and bracing winds and deep snows, cold-reddened skin, getting warm by fires and sipping hot beverages and bundling up in cozy clothing, that kind of thing. If you want to get some characters into adorable and/or highly-charged body-heat-sharing situations, that’s fine, too, just note the “do not want” on porn.
Or just don’t worry about it. If it doesn’t grab you or doesn’t fit with an idea that does grab you, I don’t want you to feel like you have to shoehorn it in.
(This is a seasonal thing, so to anyone here looking for New Years Resolution prompts, a) thank you! and b) don’t worry about it unless you just want to.)
And the prompts, roughly in descending order of canon length:
Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Characters: Kija, Shin-ah, Jae-ha
You don’t have to include all the requested characters on this one. Focusing on one or two of them is fine. Feel free to include the rest of the ensemble, too; this really is an “I love everyone in this bar!” fandom for me, and basically everyone other than arc villains I like or at least could be interested to read about. The current dragons are my very favorites, tho, so I’d like a focus on one or more of them.
Maybe pre-canon. At least in the manga, Kija said he has been outside his village before, maybe show me one of those times. Maybe let Shin-ah meet someone from outside his village and have some kind of positive interaction with them (fleeting and bittersweet perhaps, but please not tragic). A time Jae-ha needed a rescue from the other pirates. Etc.
Or maybe something after they’ve all met. Send one or more of them on an adventure. Or, the relationships are what really make this series, so just pick two of them and play them off each other somehow; every combination is precious with this bunch. (As a random specific prompt, I’ve thought it could be interesting if Jae-ha hurt his left leg enough to cause mobility problems for a while; could be serious, funny, or both.)
This is also a good series for “What If” AUs. Maybe a story where one of the dragons left their village under different circumstances — maybe adopted by another canon character. For a different sort of AU, spillover from this fandom actually got me into historical Kdramas, and after dabbling in those I think an AU set in Joseon Period Korea would be interesting, although it would take someone more knowledgeable than me to do it right.
(As of this writing, I have not caught up with the manga chapters since the Xing arc ended, so I'd ask that you not rely on the canon after that.)
Canon Review and Notes
The anime’s TV episodes can be viewed free online on Crunchyroll. The TV anime covers the manga through about vol. 8. There are also AFAIK three OVA episodes that cover a few choice bits of later material; they’re only available in fansubs (1, 2-3 +bonus).
The manga is being translated by Viz, and is up to vol. 20 as of this writing — here’s the series on Amazon. It's not caught up with the Japanese, but it's covered my favorite parts. Really, I don't need you to worry about anything past the "blue forest" story in vol. 19.
Where both are available, I tend to go with manga canon more than anime canon, but you don’t have to, and I don’t think it makes much difference on this one. On the other hand, for the transliteration of the characters' names and for the feel of the series' language, the official manga translation isn't my favorite, so the anime (and manga scanlations) are a better guide there.
FYI, while I’m mostly a genfic person, I have soft spots for Yona/Lili, Yona/Everybody, Jae-ha/Kija (I do headcanon ace!Kija, but that just makes it more interesting), and Everybody/Cuddles. The Hak/Yona/Soo-won mess is crucial to the plot and all, but it’s not my catnip. No ship-bashing please.
I’ve also written several AkaYona fics myself — here they are on Ao3 — so you can read those if you want extra insight into how I relate to the material.
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War & Thracia 776
Characters: Altena, Brigid, Finn, Lewyn
You don't have to use all of the requested characters; they're my grab-bag of interesting people, so just use at least one:
Lewyn - He starts out interesting as a royal drop-out with his own mix of not caring enough and caring too much, and then in the second generation, what is actually going on with him and Forseti? How much of each of them is it? How long has Forseti been involved with him? What was Lewyn's own experience like through all that? (And maybe, how does this hash out in the fraught relationship with his kids?)
Brigid (a.k.a. Eyvel) - What a life she's had! Actual princess, kidnapped and raised as a pirate princess, sadly the other pirates didn't deserve her, reunited with her sister, then tragedy strikes and she loses her memory, and when she washes up in a distant land with no idea who or where she is, what does she do? Busts up a slave market, adopts a number of god-blooded foster kids, and starts a militia. Plenty of fodder for competence-kink with this woman. Plus it turns out she and Edain both survived the war, so we're due for some kind of big ol' family reunion (hopefully with room for the above-mentioned foster kids).
Altena - Another dislocated princess; with her the reveal is where things get really interesting, and the game's take on it was a bit simplistic, so this is an opportunity to go deep. She had viewed Travant as her father for as long as she could remember, but she turned on him too easily for it to have been all warm and fuzzy there. (Relevant tangent, I don't like Travant but don't really hate him. I see him as an instance of creditable motives complicating but not redeeming scummy behavior, so not a monster but also not a nice guy whom I would want as my Dad.) Perhaps more interesting, at this point I have to imagine Altena is culturally (South) Thracian, with revived memories from and a sudden role in Leonster/North Thracia, so kind of a between two cultures thing. At the very least, she's a badass lady with a pet dragon.
Finn - From the start I've had a soft spot for Finn, although I'll admit that his knightly sense of duty and self-abnegation goes right to the point where it gets in the way of having a personality. My own headcanon-musings have leaned into this and cast him as a starry-eyed idealistic youth turned deeply-damaged shut-down-from-trauma adult whose purity has remained in a way but has ossified into a not-always-healthy ego defense. If that sounds about right to you, some kind of healing story could be good, or maybe you have a whole different take. In any case, I was struck by how he broke down on being reunited with Altena; it got through to him in a way few things seem to do, so if you want to use more than one character, some post-canon Altena & Finn could be good (I don't even object to shipping them post-canon, they're both adults now).
Canon Review and Notes
So, this past year I finally got around to playing my copy of FE: Awakening, and as it had done for so many before me, it turned me into an FE fangirl. Since I'm also fond of watching YouTube playthroughs, I embarked on a video review of the entire series, and as of this writing I'm still making my way through the Jugdral arc (hoping to finish the playthrough of Thracia before YT Story-Time). OMG, what a wonderful epic mess! And although we never got the game in the States in my actual youth, the look and sound of the SNES and and the anime-of-a-certain-era character designs strike a powerful nostalgic chord for me.
The playthroughs I've been watching:
Genealogy of the Holy War - However, this uses an older translation patch that never got to the ending, so I had to dig up another video: Project Naga translation ending.
Thracia 776
(If you're new to FE, yeah, that's it. These two are a self-contained sub-series, you don't need to worry about any of the other FE games.)
BTW, I don't have really strong opinions about pairings that the canon doesn't weigh in on (e.g. who Brigid and Edain were married to, if anyone).
Kemono no Souja Erin
Characters: Erin, Ial
Please do use both characters on this one.
I want Erin/Ial, preferably something quiet and thoughtful, or something fluffy. Anything along that line would make me happy, really, but if you need an angle, maybe think about how he’s adjusting to his new life post-canon, and how Erin’s other friends are adjusting to this guy with his stone face and ninja vibes. Bonus points: include a warm, soft, furry animal, not necessarily an Ohjuu.
Canon Review and Notes
Crunchyroll used to have this, but unfortunately it looks like they've let it lapse, so it's currently only available in fansubs.
Recycling a long-running prompt here, but I still love these two. There are novels for this one, but I'm just working from the anime canon. It's more aimed at children, but that doesn't keep it from getting into some serious territory and I love it. After my first viewing (in fansubs), I wrote a review of it that you can see here. This series was actually my introduction to the author of the said novels, Nahoko Uehashi, who also wrote the novels behind Moribito. Both series are built on masterful, well-grounded fantasy worldbuilding (Uehashi-sensei is also an anthropology professor). As mentioned in the review, I loved the anime’s combination of the domestic and the epic. Erin is such a great strong heroine, too --- brilliant and curious, always chasing her dreams and holding to her principles, even when she struggles and things get very dark. Ial is the kind of (figuratively) scarred stone-faced pretty boy I have a weakness for, I admit it. I was happy with the slow and subtle building of their relationship in canon --- Uehashi seems to be good at that, too ::coughBalsaTanda:: --- but I would like to see a bit more with these two.
The Prince and the Dressmaker - Jen Wang
Characters: Frances, Prince Sebastian | Lady Crystallia
Both characters on this one, please.
Such a beautiful story - and such a beautiful pair of kids. Sebastian | Crystallia's ambigender nature and struggle between authenticity and anxiety perhaps more obviously stand out, but I'm no less fascinated by Frances' creative dreams and class issues. It also warms my heart that so many people are willing to learn in this story, not smoothly perhaps but with grace in the end. And the setting on the cusp of modernity reminds us that we're always on the cusp of something new in understanding ourselves and each other. I'd really just like to spend some more time with these people. For a specific prompt, as I said, I found the class issues around Frances interesting, maybe introduce more backstory for her, or friends or family she's known since pre-canon. Please do maintain the canon's optimism in whatever you do.
Canon Review and Notes
Buy the Book at alibris
Buy an ebook version at Amazon or Kobo
or Find it in a Library at WorldCat
Being a stand-alone graphic novel, this one makes for a good "gimme." If we matched on something else and you don't like my prompt, give this a try. Reading it won't take you long, and it's well worth it!
Toshokan Rocket (Minna no Uta Music Video)
No characters specified
This two-and-a-half-minute music video is just packed! So many characters! So many fascinating images! So cute! Much epic! The basic "plot" seems to involve four little birds (in their whale starship and their corgi shuttle!) running a kind of pan-galactic bookmobile for great justice and everlasting peace, but... well, you just have to see it. I want to see what somebody can do with this, anywhere you want to take it that's in keeping with the canon atmosphere.
Canon Review and Notes:
Here's the video. Sorry for the jacked-up aspect ratio, but it was the best I could get. If you have something like VLC and can set the aspect ratio to 4:3, it'll look right.
And, since it's not subtitled, here's my own quick-and-dirty translation of the lyrics.
This is your second, even-quicker gimme. If nothing else grabs you, take two-and-a-half minutes and see if you can do something with this. Heck, take the two-and-a-half minutes anyway, you deserve it!
Yeah, for a while there I had a gadget of questionable legality that let me watch streams of NHK-E(ducational). Sadly no longer works, but I ran across some real gems, particularly in NHK's "Minna no Uta" all-ages music video series. I think this one takes the cake. (Fire-breathing feathered dinosaur!)
And that’s it! Happy writing and a Joyous Yuletide to you!
See under the cut for the things you need to know…
I've been in a fallow period this year, fanfic-wise, but there's no way I'd let Yuletide pass me by (I've been doing it every year since 2011 now). This year's requests include both
I'm
LIKES:
Sympathetic Protagonists, people being good-hearted
Happy Endings or Bittersweet ones
Competence
Explorations of Issues, Ideas, and Sticky Messes
Character Pieces
Genfic (but I’m also fine with all sorts of pairings & poly)
Drama, Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Fluff and WAFF
Fixer-upper/Canon-Divergent/"What If?" AUs
Cuddling (cute fluffy cuddling or intense romantic cuddling, it’s all good)
Sensuality and Description Porn
Representation (Women/LGBTQ/PoC/PwD/et. al. being awesome)
DO NOT WANTS:
(Note that these are not necessarily things I disapprove of or even dislike, but they are things it’s not safe to give me in an exchange)
Humiliation/Abasement/Embarrassment (the Embarrassment squick can be triggered vicariously by, e.g., a character acting stupid or being set up to fail as an object lesson)
Rape, Non-con, Dub-con
Christocentrism
Zombies
Crossovers (unless specifically noted)
Gritty/Grimdark
Sad/Bad/Tragic Endings
Actual Porn
Character/Ship Bashing
Directly speculating about future events in an open canon (This one’s weird. Writing in a timeframe beyond current canon with vague or absent explanation of how it turned out the way you’re depicting it is fine, but if you directly invent or handwave, e.g. “they got out of the current arc like thus and such,” or “the prophecy turned out to mean this,” I tend to bounce off.)
Suffocation in any form is acceptable but I need you to tag for it.
Special note: Around Yuletide Story-Time I tend to in the mood for winter-themed stories — things with sensuous descriptions of long dark nights and bracing winds and deep snows, cold-reddened skin, getting warm by fires and sipping hot beverages and bundling up in cozy clothing, that kind of thing. If you want to get some characters into adorable and/or highly-charged body-heat-sharing situations, that’s fine, too, just note the “do not want” on porn.
Or just don’t worry about it. If it doesn’t grab you or doesn’t fit with an idea that does grab you, I don’t want you to feel like you have to shoehorn it in.
(This is a seasonal thing, so to anyone here looking for New Years Resolution prompts, a) thank you! and b) don’t worry about it unless you just want to.)
And the prompts, roughly in descending order of canon length:
Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Characters: Kija, Shin-ah, Jae-ha
You don’t have to include all the requested characters on this one. Focusing on one or two of them is fine. Feel free to include the rest of the ensemble, too; this really is an “I love everyone in this bar!” fandom for me, and basically everyone other than arc villains I like or at least could be interested to read about. The current dragons are my very favorites, tho, so I’d like a focus on one or more of them.
Maybe pre-canon. At least in the manga, Kija said he has been outside his village before, maybe show me one of those times. Maybe let Shin-ah meet someone from outside his village and have some kind of positive interaction with them (fleeting and bittersweet perhaps, but please not tragic). A time Jae-ha needed a rescue from the other pirates. Etc.
Or maybe something after they’ve all met. Send one or more of them on an adventure. Or, the relationships are what really make this series, so just pick two of them and play them off each other somehow; every combination is precious with this bunch. (As a random specific prompt, I’ve thought it could be interesting if Jae-ha hurt his left leg enough to cause mobility problems for a while; could be serious, funny, or both.)
This is also a good series for “What If” AUs. Maybe a story where one of the dragons left their village under different circumstances — maybe adopted by another canon character. For a different sort of AU, spillover from this fandom actually got me into historical Kdramas, and after dabbling in those I think an AU set in Joseon Period Korea would be interesting, although it would take someone more knowledgeable than me to do it right.
(As of this writing, I have not caught up with the manga chapters since the Xing arc ended, so I'd ask that you not rely on the canon after that.)
Canon Review and Notes
The anime’s TV episodes can be viewed free online on Crunchyroll. The TV anime covers the manga through about vol. 8. There are also AFAIK three OVA episodes that cover a few choice bits of later material; they’re only available in fansubs (1, 2-3 +bonus).
The manga is being translated by Viz, and is up to vol. 20 as of this writing — here’s the series on Amazon. It's not caught up with the Japanese, but it's covered my favorite parts. Really, I don't need you to worry about anything past the "blue forest" story in vol. 19.
Where both are available, I tend to go with manga canon more than anime canon, but you don’t have to, and I don’t think it makes much difference on this one. On the other hand, for the transliteration of the characters' names and for the feel of the series' language, the official manga translation isn't my favorite, so the anime (and manga scanlations) are a better guide there.
FYI, while I’m mostly a genfic person, I have soft spots for Yona/Lili, Yona/Everybody, Jae-ha/Kija (I do headcanon ace!Kija, but that just makes it more interesting), and Everybody/Cuddles. The Hak/Yona/Soo-won mess is crucial to the plot and all, but it’s not my catnip. No ship-bashing please.
I’ve also written several AkaYona fics myself — here they are on Ao3 — so you can read those if you want extra insight into how I relate to the material.
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War & Thracia 776
Characters: Altena, Brigid, Finn, Lewyn
You don't have to use all of the requested characters; they're my grab-bag of interesting people, so just use at least one:
Lewyn - He starts out interesting as a royal drop-out with his own mix of not caring enough and caring too much, and then in the second generation, what is actually going on with him and Forseti? How much of each of them is it? How long has Forseti been involved with him? What was Lewyn's own experience like through all that? (And maybe, how does this hash out in the fraught relationship with his kids?)
Brigid (a.k.a. Eyvel) - What a life she's had! Actual princess, kidnapped and raised as a pirate princess, sadly the other pirates didn't deserve her, reunited with her sister, then tragedy strikes and she loses her memory, and when she washes up in a distant land with no idea who or where she is, what does she do? Busts up a slave market, adopts a number of god-blooded foster kids, and starts a militia. Plenty of fodder for competence-kink with this woman. Plus it turns out she and Edain both survived the war, so we're due for some kind of big ol' family reunion (hopefully with room for the above-mentioned foster kids).
Altena - Another dislocated princess; with her the reveal is where things get really interesting, and the game's take on it was a bit simplistic, so this is an opportunity to go deep. She had viewed Travant as her father for as long as she could remember, but she turned on him too easily for it to have been all warm and fuzzy there. (Relevant tangent, I don't like Travant but don't really hate him. I see him as an instance of creditable motives complicating but not redeeming scummy behavior, so not a monster but also not a nice guy whom I would want as my Dad.) Perhaps more interesting, at this point I have to imagine Altena is culturally (South) Thracian, with revived memories from and a sudden role in Leonster/North Thracia, so kind of a between two cultures thing. At the very least, she's a badass lady with a pet dragon.
Finn - From the start I've had a soft spot for Finn, although I'll admit that his knightly sense of duty and self-abnegation goes right to the point where it gets in the way of having a personality. My own headcanon-musings have leaned into this and cast him as a starry-eyed idealistic youth turned deeply-damaged shut-down-from-trauma adult whose purity has remained in a way but has ossified into a not-always-healthy ego defense. If that sounds about right to you, some kind of healing story could be good, or maybe you have a whole different take. In any case, I was struck by how he broke down on being reunited with Altena; it got through to him in a way few things seem to do, so if you want to use more than one character, some post-canon Altena & Finn could be good (I don't even object to shipping them post-canon, they're both adults now).
Canon Review and Notes
So, this past year I finally got around to playing my copy of FE: Awakening, and as it had done for so many before me, it turned me into an FE fangirl. Since I'm also fond of watching YouTube playthroughs, I embarked on a video review of the entire series, and as of this writing I'm still making my way through the Jugdral arc (hoping to finish the playthrough of Thracia before YT Story-Time). OMG, what a wonderful epic mess! And although we never got the game in the States in my actual youth, the look and sound of the SNES and and the anime-of-a-certain-era character designs strike a powerful nostalgic chord for me.
The playthroughs I've been watching:
Genealogy of the Holy War - However, this uses an older translation patch that never got to the ending, so I had to dig up another video: Project Naga translation ending.
Thracia 776
(If you're new to FE, yeah, that's it. These two are a self-contained sub-series, you don't need to worry about any of the other FE games.)
BTW, I don't have really strong opinions about pairings that the canon doesn't weigh in on (e.g. who Brigid and Edain were married to, if anyone).
Kemono no Souja Erin
Characters: Erin, Ial
Please do use both characters on this one.
I want Erin/Ial, preferably something quiet and thoughtful, or something fluffy. Anything along that line would make me happy, really, but if you need an angle, maybe think about how he’s adjusting to his new life post-canon, and how Erin’s other friends are adjusting to this guy with his stone face and ninja vibes. Bonus points: include a warm, soft, furry animal, not necessarily an Ohjuu.
Canon Review and Notes
Crunchyroll used to have this, but unfortunately it looks like they've let it lapse, so it's currently only available in fansubs.
Recycling a long-running prompt here, but I still love these two. There are novels for this one, but I'm just working from the anime canon. It's more aimed at children, but that doesn't keep it from getting into some serious territory and I love it. After my first viewing (in fansubs), I wrote a review of it that you can see here. This series was actually my introduction to the author of the said novels, Nahoko Uehashi, who also wrote the novels behind Moribito. Both series are built on masterful, well-grounded fantasy worldbuilding (Uehashi-sensei is also an anthropology professor). As mentioned in the review, I loved the anime’s combination of the domestic and the epic. Erin is such a great strong heroine, too --- brilliant and curious, always chasing her dreams and holding to her principles, even when she struggles and things get very dark. Ial is the kind of (figuratively) scarred stone-faced pretty boy I have a weakness for, I admit it. I was happy with the slow and subtle building of their relationship in canon --- Uehashi seems to be good at that, too ::coughBalsaTanda:: --- but I would like to see a bit more with these two.
The Prince and the Dressmaker - Jen Wang
Characters: Frances, Prince Sebastian | Lady Crystallia
Both characters on this one, please.
Such a beautiful story - and such a beautiful pair of kids. Sebastian | Crystallia's ambigender nature and struggle between authenticity and anxiety perhaps more obviously stand out, but I'm no less fascinated by Frances' creative dreams and class issues. It also warms my heart that so many people are willing to learn in this story, not smoothly perhaps but with grace in the end. And the setting on the cusp of modernity reminds us that we're always on the cusp of something new in understanding ourselves and each other. I'd really just like to spend some more time with these people. For a specific prompt, as I said, I found the class issues around Frances interesting, maybe introduce more backstory for her, or friends or family she's known since pre-canon. Please do maintain the canon's optimism in whatever you do.
Canon Review and Notes
Buy the Book at alibris
Buy an ebook version at Amazon or Kobo
or Find it in a Library at WorldCat
Being a stand-alone graphic novel, this one makes for a good "gimme." If we matched on something else and you don't like my prompt, give this a try. Reading it won't take you long, and it's well worth it!
Toshokan Rocket (Minna no Uta Music Video)
No characters specified
This two-and-a-half-minute music video is just packed! So many characters! So many fascinating images! So cute! Much epic! The basic "plot" seems to involve four little birds (in their whale starship and their corgi shuttle!) running a kind of pan-galactic bookmobile for great justice and everlasting peace, but... well, you just have to see it. I want to see what somebody can do with this, anywhere you want to take it that's in keeping with the canon atmosphere.
Canon Review and Notes:
Here's the video. Sorry for the jacked-up aspect ratio, but it was the best I could get. If you have something like VLC and can set the aspect ratio to 4:3, it'll look right.
And, since it's not subtitled, here's my own quick-and-dirty translation of the lyrics.
This is your second, even-quicker gimme. If nothing else grabs you, take two-and-a-half minutes and see if you can do something with this. Heck, take the two-and-a-half minutes anyway, you deserve it!
Yeah, for a while there I had a gadget of questionable legality that let me watch streams of NHK-E(ducational). Sadly no longer works, but I ran across some real gems, particularly in NHK's "Minna no Uta" all-ages music video series. I think this one takes the cake. (Fire-breathing feathered dinosaur!)
And that’s it! Happy writing and a Joyous Yuletide to you!
