threeplusfire | Entries tagged with yuletide

Hello writer!

After a couple year hiatus, I've returned to my favorite fannish event of the year. Yuletide is always such a wonderful thing for me. I have fairly broad tastes, which I hope will make you sigh and say "thank (deity/expletive)" at this point. So hopefully this letter will be helpful.

General information!
All ratings from the mildest G to the hardest "check your ID at the door" Explicit are welcome. This applies to sex, and violence. I'm comfortable with dark themes, and a happy ending is not a requirement. I love ships, I love genfic, I love PWP. I will read just about anything, if we're honest. While I have requested some things that are ships, please don't feel bound to write ships if it just isn't working out for you. I'm very happy to receive something that's just world building, or focused only on a single character.

The do-not-want list:
- Pregnancy, kidfic
- the "sold as a slave, falls in love with owner" trope

Things I do enjoy:
- Any and every AU you can come up. If you can build it, I'm interested. Especially if you have niche knowledge to really flesh it out, I'm down. War zone reporters? Esoteric academics? Line cooks? Marine biologists? Landscapers? Construction workers? Whatever it is, I'm down. I love AUs.
- Polyamory. I would like to avoid painful love triangles and have more poly in the world.
- Hurt/comfort fic is one of those things I enjoy, okay. A lot.
- I enjoy the slice of life, missing scene and curtain fic pieces a lot.
- Messy relationships, ones that are fucked up somehow.
- Functional relationships, people who work well together.
- Ghost stories
- The partners in crime tropes, us against the world
- Holiday fic, and all sorts of autumn/winter fic (October-December is my favorite time)
- Found families, families of choice
- Food as an expression of love, cooking, any excuse for food descriptions

Sexy times:
It's hard to find a blow job I didn't like somehow. I enjoy everything on the spectrum of enthusiastic consent to the dubcon/noncon side, vanilla to kinky. Special love for well written BDSM scenes. See my YulePorn comment for more information.

( Specific fandom information! Firewatch, Morgan (2016), Stranger Things, Crimson Peak, Ex Machina, Only Lovers Left Alive )

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thank you for being part of my most favorite time of the year. Every year I participate in Yuletide brings so much happiness and I'm glad you're doing this with me. Let's be awesome and write stories! I've written a bit about my requests below to kind of tell you why I love these fandoms. I'm sure you'd also like to know what kind of stories I enjoy, what odd little things turn the gears in my brain. I'm excited to see anything, from world building to little vignettes to crazy cyberpunk AUs or anything in between. Write however you love to write! I just love that you are bringing a story to me, wrapped up in your shiny words.

Things I enjoy: androids, the future, complicated friendships, life under terrifying regimes, hopeless love, darkness, resistance, cyberpunk, world domination, unbearable sexual tension, demons both actual and metaphorical, comrades against the world, loyalty, betrayal, winter, all things goth, loud music, swimming, technology changing everything.

Feel free to write sex and death as explicitly as you like. I'm happy to read stories ranging from mild to full frontal everything, and I love all genders and combinations of sexuality. (My preferences tend to skew queer, but I love a good story about anyone really.) I enjoy the hell out of kink and BDSM, especially power dynamics and bondage and pain. I'm comfortable with full consent, dubcon and noncon situations. (It's probably easier to say the only things I don't like are feces, vore and mpreg.) Sometimes you have to kill your darlings, so I am fine with violence or character death.

I love questions of humanity or inhumanity, especially as it relates to robots/androids and moral choices. The darker, the stranger, the better!

Papers, Please! - This game is astonishing. All the terror and moral choices of a complex, terrifying world distilled down into one bureaucratic job. I've played it obsessively since it came out, obsessed with how things come together and fall apart. The story of the border guard Sergiu and his love for Elisa, the hysterical weirdness of Jorgi, the terrifying inspector who comes to find out if you've talked to terrorists, the faceless EZIC agent - there's a wealth of stories even before you get to all the ordinary people trying to get through the checkpoint. Because of my intense love/fascination with Soviet and Iron Curtain history, I'm drawn to this like a moth to flame. I would love to see anything that explores the absurdity, the terror, the hidden joys, the unbearable hope through a totalitarian lens of this world. (I'm a big fan of Slavic lit from the 19th & 20th century, so anything echoing that would be mega bonus amazing.)

Coldfire Trilogy by CS Friedman - I recently re-read this after many years and loved the sci-fi/fantasy trope of a world colonized and humanity altered. There are so many things we never learn about Gerald Tarrant and his life, such as how his apprentice Amoril came to be with him. What drove him there, how did he survive? Why did Tarrant take an apprentice? We briefly see Almea in the third novel and I've always wondered if Tarrant thinks about her. What was their relationship like, and does that influence his behavior towards the women he hunts in the Forest? How does he see Vryce? That prickly comrades in arms relationship is one of the best things in the book.

Daft Punk - I love how Daft Punk has always kept themselves a bit of a mystery. Their helmet designs, especially the latest look, really speak to me on some weird level. I like to believe they really are some sort of robot or android or cyborg duo. So any story that explores them as not quite entirely human would be fantastic. Are they here to take over the world? What do androids do for fun when they are world famous musicians?

Free! - This show is so much silly, wonderful fun. It's hot boys with girlish names in the pool. I especially enjoy the times where they teach poor Rei how to swim. Anything that explores their camaraderie and how they become a team/strengthen their friendship. I adore Makoto and Rei! What can I say, I'm a sucker for glasses type guy in anime, and Makoto is just so damn sweet. This is really the nomination that doesn't quite match the rest I suppose. It's just fun! I don't know, maybe Rei's a secret goth who listens to a lot of the Cure. Maybe Makoto takes everyone to see Depeche Mode or Daft Punk!

I hope there's something here that helps you get started! Whatever you write, I know it is going to make my Yuletide because it always does. Thank you! You are the best!

PS: Completely frivolous, unnecessary things that if you happen to work into your story, they would be the sprinkles on my happiness sundae!
- baked goods such as cupcakes, pie, cakes, kolache
- dancing in the goth club
- Depeche Mode
- fur hats
- giant robots

Dear Yuletide author,

It is nice to see you again! I always look forward to writing this letter to you because it means one of the best parts of the year is about to begin. We get to share our stories and be a little bit of wonder for each other. I hope Yuletide 2012 finds you well, Yuletide author.

The most important thing to me is that the feel of the world is there, or the voice of the character. Everything else is just icing on the cake. (I love icing by the way.) As ever, optional things are optional but I know I like to have some idea of what the person enjoys. (My previous yuletide letters can be found under the tag for fic requests.)

My requests might not make it terribly obvious, but I'm a goth kid at heart. Sex and death and longing and all that jazz. I enjoy stories about the future, about technology and transition and change and regret. Bittersweet stories are my favorites. If you feel the urge to write your way into the outer darkness, then go for it. I'll follow you there. I'm glad of all levels of sex and violence so write to whatever rating strikes your fancy. If you want to write sex or relationships, go for it - I like all intersections of sex and gender. There's very little I find unpleasant to read aside from traumatic eye injuries and excessive ruminations on shit.

I enjoy stories set around holidays, though it is not a requirement by any means. Holidays always feel like the concentrated burst of a season, whatever they are.

Supremely optional extra bonus details are things I like - candy and sweets, snappy dialogue, BDSM, blood, Christmas lights, stars, cold weather, good coats, androids, vampires, intense emotional relationships that may or may not be physical, moral ambiguity, cities at night, dancing, shiny objects, cigarettes and alcohol.

Young Adult (2011)
This movie is such a dark, amazing thing. I was floored by the rage and the crazy lurking under Mavis' skin. Matt feels like her opposite on the same coin, wearing his damage a bit more visibly. I don't have any specific sort of requests except that someone explore the incredibly fucked up world happening here. I want to know the details of their lives, the hidden moments that happened before the movie or off screen. I want to feel everything they feel.

Absolut Vodka Greyhound Commercial
When I saw this, the very first thing I said was "I am going to request this for Yuletide." Because why not? This is a crazy colorful little bit of madness. Anything in this world would be amazing. Why are they here? What is at stake with this race? Who are these people? Why does the woman with the blue lipstick appear to loathe the woman with the gold mane? WHAT IS GOING ON? WHO WINS?

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
I recently got to see this in the theater again, and relieve the glorious feeling I had when I first saw it. I was pretty young when this came out and looking back twenty years later I can see how much all this sex and death and blood had an influence on me. Give me blood, give me pain, give me hundreds of years of grief and loneliness and longing. Give me eternity. Give me Oldman's yearning, hungry Dracula.

The Bridge Trilogy - William Gibson
I find Rei Toei the most fascinating part of this particular series of novels, even though she doesn't get a lot of time directly in front of the reader. The idea of developing artificial intelligence and the rise of consciousness from machines is one that fascinates me. I wonder what Rei Toei thinks about. Any sort of story about the search for self, or how Rei Toei stands between the physical and virtual worlds would be amazing.

So, hopefully there's something in here that you'll find helpful for writing. Good luck Yuletide author. Thanks for being part of the best time of the year.
-Pear

Christmas Eve mail brought a package from my NYC connection to coconut maple sugar candy. It's my cure-all.

Last night Mike and I continued our tradition of a big, delicious Eastern European feast for Christmas Eve dinner. (European Bistro makes delicious, delicious schnitzel.) It was busy and took a long time, but the food was worth it. We looked at some lights in the neighborhood, watched Richard III with Ian McKellan and drank some wine to wait up for midnight. We decided that for Christmas we would celebrate by opening our presents after midnight. That way he can sleep as late as he like without me hounding him to get up and open presents already. I think it is a good compromise.

There were kitchen widgets, all dishwasher safe. There was a box of soap and bath salts. There was also a giant box with Squishables - a hedgehog, a baby panda and the octopus. The octopus is gigantic and very pink. (Dudes, I have fourteen Squishables now.) Mike got lots of geeky things, like a build your own trebuchet set and Leonard Nimoy's autograph and some geeky books. Plus a tiny flash light that works on a crank and doesn't need batteries. It is shockingly bright.

My gifts continued this morning, thanks to two generous souls with Yuletide. That's right, I got two stories. First up, Keeping Austin Weird, which is World War Z stuff set in Austin. The author claims never to have been here but hot damn did they ever nail it right in the brain. GOVERNOR GOODHAIR, Y'ALL. It's so amazing that I was shivering with suppressed glee while reading. Continuing the trend of so fun I could cry, Dreaming of Churrascarias which takes places after the events of Brick. There's a description in there of the jitters before a fight that's so vivid and lovely it steals my breath. (And there's pie!) It is the sort of thing that I can see in the shaded noir half light, playing out on a flickering movie screen. I am so blown away by these gifts.

We spent the afternoon hanging out at the House of Mellow with friends, watching hilarious and terrible things on the TV, eating really good chili and cornbread, and just relaxing. I am so exhausted from an afternoon of sitting and standing around though. Damn. Hobble, hobble, hobble. Well, at least I feel better than before.

I'm looking forward to reading through the huge Yuletide treasure. (Two thousand, six hundred and eighteen stories guys. 2618!) Now to flop.

Hello!

I hope that your assignment is a merry one, and that the writing will be a pleasurable lead up to the holidays. Whatever you end up writing, I'm looking forward to reading it. Like a lot of people, I'm just happy you are writing something in this fandom!

My fandom requests this year are Profit, World War Z, Brick and Sergei Lukyanenko's Nightwatch (Nochnoi Dozor) series. These are all stories with dark edges to them. I don't want to box you in too much, so I'll just tell you about things I like instead of making specific story requests. I'm a big fan of hard changes, difficult choices, smart dialogue, the end of the world, danger, sex, violence, the cold, winter, days of bright hard sunshine and pale blue sky, coats, manipulation, complex schemes, things falling apart, star crossed lovers, tragedy, kissing in the dark, a hand on the neck, blurring the line between light and dark, a touch of evil. I love stories that make you ache, from desire or loss.

I'm not afraid of explicit content and in fact often relish it. My preference tends to skew towards gay pairings, but het is fine if that's what the story requires. As explicit or gen as you like - essentially write what works best in your story.

While it is not required in any way, setting it during the winter or holidays would be sweet and creepy.

If you work better with more specific story requests, I have some bonus features!

Profit - How did Jim Profit get so computer savvy anyways? Mega bonus for including Patrick Bateman/gratuitous references to Bret Easton Ellis. I love how the "bad" guy wins in this series.

World War Z - A story set in Prague, or Austin Texas. In this novel, it is the raw, journalistic vibe that I enjoy.

Brick - What was Brendan's first case? Or his last one? Mega bonus for seduction and poisoned drinks.

Nightwatch - Anton's vampire hunting for the Watch. Mega bonus for Anton hunting down some sparkly vampires. super mega bonus for Christmas in Moscow.

I received a gift story set in Eastern Promises, titled Unseasonably Cold. It's broody and full of chilly moments, crunching leaves, the weight of time and happens to also have a couple of scorching, excruciatingly sexy lines. Go read and enjoy.

Oh Yuletide writer, do I know you? Because I feel like you must know me, or else used some great oracle to see through the screen right into my head. It was perfect.

It was quite nice to look over at the stories I wrote and see they were enjoyed. Sooner or later I will post a list of some of my favorites from this year. There's some great stories for World War Z, and an incredibly hilarious Maru story.