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Oct. 9th, 2016 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lastwingedthingDear author, I'm so excited you're writing something for me! I haven't done yuletide in a few years, so apologies in advance if this is incoherent/unhelpful/too long. Please don't feel obliged to read any of this letter if you'd prefer not to!
I don't have any die-hard dislikes - anything fandom-specific will be mentioned there. In general, I am comfortable with just about anything - including noncon, violence, character death, etc - provided that it is warned for up front, although I have asked for no major character death/extreme bleakness in Books of the Raksura or Temeraire.
I am also pretty flexible with the things I like. Explicit porn is awesome, G-rated fluff with hand-holding is awesome, angst and bleakness are awesome (usually), happy endings are awesome, humor is awesome, domesticity is awesome! Etc.
A few of my favourite things are banter/humor, adventures, stoic girls with feeeeelings, road trips (slash spaceship trips... actual ship trips... etc), female antiheroes or villains with complex motivations, enemies forced to work together by circumstance, reluctant superheroes or people coming to terms with powers or a destiny that isn't necessarily wanted, found families, unexpected/unconventional happy endings, tragedies that are more-or-less inevitable given the nature of the individuals involved, and worldbuilding, but by no means feel obligated to include any of these things!
For these fandoms, I am not very interested in the kind of AU where characters are in a completely different universe where they are pirates or cowgirls or something. AUs that explore the ramifications of a change to canon (what if character x survived/won the battle/etc instead) are always fascinating to me, however!
If you'd like some general information about me, all my fic is on AO3 here and my tumblr is here.
If you'd like more detail, I requested:
Alexander trilogy - Mary Renault
Requests: Eurydike, Roxane, Stateira, Kleopatra
All ladies, all the time edition! Please note, I am requesting a story about AT LEAST one of these ladies, not ALL of these ladies - that would be too much, I feel. If you wanted to write about a different lady, not appearing in this tagset (Olympias? Sisygambis? Drypetis? Thessalonike?) that would also be amazing!
I love - or at least enjoy reading about - the dudes of this trilogy too, but after (finally) getting my hands on a copy of Funeral Games a few months ago, almost a decade after I first read the other two books, I've been overwhelmed in complicated feelings about Women In The Ancient World and Mary Renault's Occasionally Disturbing/Upsetting Thoughts And Opinions About Women In The Ancient World (Eurydike... oh my fucking GOD). On one hand, Mary Renault did a brilliant job of getting in people's heads and making them come alive as characters while staying true to (what we know of) what they would have thought and felt... but there are also those moments where you stare at the page and go Oh Mary Renault No...
Eurydike :(
Okay, so more helpful details about what I'm looking for - anything, really! I would be thrilled by 1000 words of Roxane eating sweets and brooding, or Kleopatra and her mother issues, or poor sweet Stateira... I really would.
I do like a story showing two characters interacting, who may or may not have done so in canon, in a way that often tells you more about each of them individually than a solo story would have done. I am very partial to what-if AUs - for example, what if Hephaistion and Alexander had lived for another ten or fifteen years? What would that have meant for his wives and family? (And his empire.) (WHAT IF HE HAD A DAUGHTER???) Or Eurydike-isn't-thwarted-by-her-menstrual-cycle AU? A different relationship for Roxane and Stateira?
I am always here for queering ladies in history, if you are also into that!
While I'm all for Ladies Being Alive, and Ruling Things, and maybe Sleeping With Each Other, I'm okay with disappointment, failure and tragedy too - I fucking read Funeral Games, after all! I'm okay with (canonical or otherwise) sad endings, as long as the characters are true to themselves up until that point. None of these ladies are perfect, either, and I wouldn't want to read about them if they were.
Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells
Requests: Moon, Jade, Malachite, River
For some wild whiplash in tone and mood - the found family AU of my heart! There's quiet darkness lurking in the background (Moon's childhood, Indigo Cloud's slow decline, the violence of what happened to Opal Night) but that just makes the happy parts sweeter. Moon finds a family! Indigo Cloud finds a consort! Everyone's happy!
For this fandom, I'm requesting that you stay with roughly canon levels of trauma - minor/secondary character death is fine, but please don't kill off any requested characters - and if you wanted to explore something like Saraseil or the destruction of Opal Night, obviously that's going to be super dark and bleak, but I wouldn't really want to see anything worse than canon. I would strongly prefer a happy or at least a mixed ending for main/requested characters also. This fandom is my happy place, so rocks fall everyone dies (unhappy and alone) is not really gonna do it for me.
Also, once again I'm requesting OR not AND - lmao, what a story that would be! I love basically every nominated character (though I feel like Moon/Chime and Moon/Chime/Jade already has very healthy representation on the archives, I'd be more interested in something a bit different?) so I just picked some favorites, more or less out of a hat. If you want some others to show up, feel free!
I like Indigo Cloud stories, I like it when the court goes travelling, I like pre and post series stories, especially bits of stories we don't see in canon - Indigo Cloud pre Moon, Opal Night at any time really, outsider perspective on one of the courts, outsider perspective in general about the Raksura, etc. Adventures are great, slice of life is great, alternate histories are great, etc. I love the gender stuff - Moon is a delicate princess who wants to FIGHT EVERYONE, Jade will fight you if she's gotta but actually she's quite chill for a handsome prince, Malachite is SCARY MOM, River really wants to be a delicate princess and is super sad that he isn't :(
I am that ridiculous person with a soft spot for River and Moon/River - I know, I know. Enemies-turned-reluctant-allies is one of my favourite tropes ever - I can't help but be charmed by River's intensely reluctant yet heartfelt determination not to let Moon get eaten/killed/humiliated/inhaled by a giant turtle. IDK, I also feel like there's some interesting stuff you could do with River and the wanting to be a consort thing - like, is it just the power thing? Is it some kind of gender dysphoria? What would it actually be like, to grow up thinking you're one thing but turn out to be another?
Xenogenesis - Octavia Butler
Requests: Any
This series - Butler in general, really - hits my 'imperfect compromises with difficult unsettling aliens' id so hard. Also my 'sexuality-is-complicated-and-weird' id. Pretty much any story that hits those marks somewhere - from the painful compromises Lilith is forced to make to Jodahs' ability for genuine, wholehearted seduction would be wonderful. The Oankali are genuinely creepy, even (especially?) when it's Jodahs making every eligible human want to be with it. I'd love anything on the spectrum of unhappy resignation to the romance of the Jodahs/Jesusa/Tomas relationship, but I hope that the creepiness would still be there, on some level.
Lilith's story is sort of heartbreaking, even if she ends up more or less happy, most of the time. Seeing who she is in Dawn - making compromises for survival's sake, but unquestionably on the side of humanity - and where she ends up in Imago, lying to Jesusa and Tomas for the sake of her alien child - oof. I love her for that complexity, though. None of her choices are the wrong choices - there just aren't any good ones.
Jodahs' story is much happier, on the surface - Imago is a love story, more or less - but there is creepiness there too, in its biology (literally fuck or die?? Or rather, fuck or dissolve into primordial goo) and its ability to attract humans regardless of the sexuality or major ethical/moral positions of the humans involved.
And Jesusa and Tomas - where they end up, with Jodahs, definitely looks like a happy ending on a lot of levels, but there's some complicated/troubling stuff there too, starting with Jodahs being Oankali and running right past how they basically end up married. Like, they're not physically having sex, but they're gonna have babies together, with Jodahs and their Oankali mates...?
Any fic involving any of these characters - alone, with each other, with others - would be wonderful, but so would any fic set in this universe, really. I'd prefer to stick with canon rather than what-ifs, set any time after the Oankali arrive. This is also definitely a fandom where I'd be happy to see porn - not that I wouldn't be happy to see porn anywhere else! But sex, especially taboo-breaching sex (sex with aliens, queer sex, incest) is such a major part of this series (even when it isn't explicit), it would be especially fun to see it here. Not that gen isn't also fun!
Temeraire series - Naomi Novik
Requests: Tenzing Tharkay, William Laurence
Oh my god so I love the dragons and the alternate history and Jane Roland and everything but HOLY HELLS I SHIP THARKAY AND LAURENCE SO HARD. SO hard. So much PINING and DEEPLY MEANINGFUL USE OF FIRST NAMES and basically every classic slash trope in history, no seriously, I'm pretty sure somebody had a bet with Naomi Novik about how many she could squeeze into the series. Like by the end there we'd had AMNESIA and CLOTHES SWAPPING and HUDDLING FOR WARMTH and COMPROMISING ONE'S MORALS TO SAVE A LOVED ONE and then basically a marriage proposal...? And that only covers off the last two books!
I would read literally anything about their life post series in Tharkay's house, with The Hon Temeraire MP holding meetings and debating policy and accidentally terrorising the opposition, while Laurence and Tharkay stroll around in fabulous outfits discussing dragon rights in France (for about ten minutes, until they get bored and have an Adventure, probably).
I love Jane Roland a lot, and I think her casual flings with Laurence are wonderful, I am 100% okay with that continuing in whatever kind of stilted Regency poly arrangement you think she and Tharkay could wrangle Laurence into, but she's been pretty consistently clear that she doesn't want to be Laurence's primary romantic partner so I'm cool with an amicable breakup if that's where you wanna go - just to clarify how I feel about things, in case you were wondering how I saw that part of canon! I'm sure that Jane's reaction upon hearing Laurence and Temeraire's future living arrangements would be GOLD, though, regardless of the state of her relationship with Laurence at the time.
As delightful as the end of the series is, I'd be just as thrilled with a story set at any other point during the series, though (obviously) I'd prefer it to be set at a point after Laurence and Tharkay have met. Amnesia plotline? Boat to Australia? Awkward/tension filled hookup very early in the trip from China to Europe, at the point where Laurence still ~hates~ Tharkay? Basically as long as it involves Tharkay and Laurence having FEELINGS and/or ADVENTURES together, I would be thrilled!
I would also be into them having SEX together. Just saying.
Like the Books of the Raksura, the Temeraire series is my happy place, so I'd prefer no major character death (Laurence/Tharkay/Temeraire/Jane/Emily are the characters that would really upset me), no unrequited love/ust (I can't deal with Tharkay pining unrequitedly?) and at least a reasonably happy ending. If you don't ship them, then a Laurence and Tharkay friendship story would also be wonderful - as long as they have some kind of relationship, really.
Sprig Muslin - Georgette Heyer
Requests: Amanda "Smith"
AMANDA IS SUCH A DELIGHT. I love her so much! The rest of the book and the characters are fun - Lady Hester Theale is another delight - but mostly I am here for AMANDA, tiny steamroller person. I love that she is SO determined and SO sure about what she wants, and so resourceful, even when her information is limited (by wellmeaning pricks and the patriarchy, argh) - but also she is still really young and easily distracted by FIGHTS WITH HER PSEUDO-BROTHER, and/or a KITTEN - basically she is endlessly charming and I would love to read anything about her and her adventures.
I... don't really care about Neil...? Like, the heart wants what it wants, and if Amanda's heart is set on Neil, that's fine, I guess? But I don't really have opinions about him, so do what you want, really. As long as the main focus of the story is on Amanda and Amanda's thoughts/needs/wants, I'm fine with whatever you reckon those should be. (But, uh, please don't ship Amanda with Sir Gareth instead, I'm not really into that.)
I am SUPER into AUs for this fandom - like, Temeraire AU, just for starters! What if Amanda found a dragon's egg??? Or any Regency + magic AU - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell? Sorcery & Cecelia? Basically Amanda + witchcraft would be glorious, anywhere on the spectrum from humour to dark and numinous.
But I feel like canon stories would also be fun - Amanda getting up to mischief as a child! Amanda in Spain basically taking over the army! Elderly Amanda scandalising her grandchildren and continuing to be The Boss! Etc.
I don't have any die-hard dislikes - anything fandom-specific will be mentioned there. In general, I am comfortable with just about anything - including noncon, violence, character death, etc - provided that it is warned for up front, although I have asked for no major character death/extreme bleakness in Books of the Raksura or Temeraire.
I am also pretty flexible with the things I like. Explicit porn is awesome, G-rated fluff with hand-holding is awesome, angst and bleakness are awesome (usually), happy endings are awesome, humor is awesome, domesticity is awesome! Etc.
A few of my favourite things are banter/humor, adventures, stoic girls with feeeeelings, road trips (slash spaceship trips... actual ship trips... etc), female antiheroes or villains with complex motivations, enemies forced to work together by circumstance, reluctant superheroes or people coming to terms with powers or a destiny that isn't necessarily wanted, found families, unexpected/unconventional happy endings, tragedies that are more-or-less inevitable given the nature of the individuals involved, and worldbuilding, but by no means feel obligated to include any of these things!
For these fandoms, I am not very interested in the kind of AU where characters are in a completely different universe where they are pirates or cowgirls or something. AUs that explore the ramifications of a change to canon (what if character x survived/won the battle/etc instead) are always fascinating to me, however!
If you'd like some general information about me, all my fic is on AO3 here and my tumblr is here.
If you'd like more detail, I requested:
Alexander trilogy - Mary Renault
Requests: Eurydike, Roxane, Stateira, Kleopatra
All ladies, all the time edition! Please note, I am requesting a story about AT LEAST one of these ladies, not ALL of these ladies - that would be too much, I feel. If you wanted to write about a different lady, not appearing in this tagset (Olympias? Sisygambis? Drypetis? Thessalonike?) that would also be amazing!
I love - or at least enjoy reading about - the dudes of this trilogy too, but after (finally) getting my hands on a copy of Funeral Games a few months ago, almost a decade after I first read the other two books, I've been overwhelmed in complicated feelings about Women In The Ancient World and Mary Renault's Occasionally Disturbing/Upsetting Thoughts And Opinions About Women In The Ancient World (Eurydike... oh my fucking GOD). On one hand, Mary Renault did a brilliant job of getting in people's heads and making them come alive as characters while staying true to (what we know of) what they would have thought and felt... but there are also those moments where you stare at the page and go Oh Mary Renault No...
Eurydike :(
Okay, so more helpful details about what I'm looking for - anything, really! I would be thrilled by 1000 words of Roxane eating sweets and brooding, or Kleopatra and her mother issues, or poor sweet Stateira... I really would.
I do like a story showing two characters interacting, who may or may not have done so in canon, in a way that often tells you more about each of them individually than a solo story would have done. I am very partial to what-if AUs - for example, what if Hephaistion and Alexander had lived for another ten or fifteen years? What would that have meant for his wives and family? (And his empire.) (WHAT IF HE HAD A DAUGHTER???) Or Eurydike-isn't-thwarted-by-her-menstrual-cycle AU? A different relationship for Roxane and Stateira?
I am always here for queering ladies in history, if you are also into that!
While I'm all for Ladies Being Alive, and Ruling Things, and maybe Sleeping With Each Other, I'm okay with disappointment, failure and tragedy too - I fucking read Funeral Games, after all! I'm okay with (canonical or otherwise) sad endings, as long as the characters are true to themselves up until that point. None of these ladies are perfect, either, and I wouldn't want to read about them if they were.
Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells
Requests: Moon, Jade, Malachite, River
For some wild whiplash in tone and mood - the found family AU of my heart! There's quiet darkness lurking in the background (Moon's childhood, Indigo Cloud's slow decline, the violence of what happened to Opal Night) but that just makes the happy parts sweeter. Moon finds a family! Indigo Cloud finds a consort! Everyone's happy!
For this fandom, I'm requesting that you stay with roughly canon levels of trauma - minor/secondary character death is fine, but please don't kill off any requested characters - and if you wanted to explore something like Saraseil or the destruction of Opal Night, obviously that's going to be super dark and bleak, but I wouldn't really want to see anything worse than canon. I would strongly prefer a happy or at least a mixed ending for main/requested characters also. This fandom is my happy place, so rocks fall everyone dies (unhappy and alone) is not really gonna do it for me.
Also, once again I'm requesting OR not AND - lmao, what a story that would be! I love basically every nominated character (though I feel like Moon/Chime and Moon/Chime/Jade already has very healthy representation on the archives, I'd be more interested in something a bit different?) so I just picked some favorites, more or less out of a hat. If you want some others to show up, feel free!
I like Indigo Cloud stories, I like it when the court goes travelling, I like pre and post series stories, especially bits of stories we don't see in canon - Indigo Cloud pre Moon, Opal Night at any time really, outsider perspective on one of the courts, outsider perspective in general about the Raksura, etc. Adventures are great, slice of life is great, alternate histories are great, etc. I love the gender stuff - Moon is a delicate princess who wants to FIGHT EVERYONE, Jade will fight you if she's gotta but actually she's quite chill for a handsome prince, Malachite is SCARY MOM, River really wants to be a delicate princess and is super sad that he isn't :(
I am that ridiculous person with a soft spot for River and Moon/River - I know, I know. Enemies-turned-reluctant-allies is one of my favourite tropes ever - I can't help but be charmed by River's intensely reluctant yet heartfelt determination not to let Moon get eaten/killed/humiliated/inhaled by a giant turtle. IDK, I also feel like there's some interesting stuff you could do with River and the wanting to be a consort thing - like, is it just the power thing? Is it some kind of gender dysphoria? What would it actually be like, to grow up thinking you're one thing but turn out to be another?
Xenogenesis - Octavia Butler
Requests: Any
This series - Butler in general, really - hits my 'imperfect compromises with difficult unsettling aliens' id so hard. Also my 'sexuality-is-complicated-and-weird' id. Pretty much any story that hits those marks somewhere - from the painful compromises Lilith is forced to make to Jodahs' ability for genuine, wholehearted seduction would be wonderful. The Oankali are genuinely creepy, even (especially?) when it's Jodahs making every eligible human want to be with it. I'd love anything on the spectrum of unhappy resignation to the romance of the Jodahs/Jesusa/Tomas relationship, but I hope that the creepiness would still be there, on some level.
Lilith's story is sort of heartbreaking, even if she ends up more or less happy, most of the time. Seeing who she is in Dawn - making compromises for survival's sake, but unquestionably on the side of humanity - and where she ends up in Imago, lying to Jesusa and Tomas for the sake of her alien child - oof. I love her for that complexity, though. None of her choices are the wrong choices - there just aren't any good ones.
Jodahs' story is much happier, on the surface - Imago is a love story, more or less - but there is creepiness there too, in its biology (literally fuck or die?? Or rather, fuck or dissolve into primordial goo) and its ability to attract humans regardless of the sexuality or major ethical/moral positions of the humans involved.
And Jesusa and Tomas - where they end up, with Jodahs, definitely looks like a happy ending on a lot of levels, but there's some complicated/troubling stuff there too, starting with Jodahs being Oankali and running right past how they basically end up married. Like, they're not physically having sex, but they're gonna have babies together, with Jodahs and their Oankali mates...?
Any fic involving any of these characters - alone, with each other, with others - would be wonderful, but so would any fic set in this universe, really. I'd prefer to stick with canon rather than what-ifs, set any time after the Oankali arrive. This is also definitely a fandom where I'd be happy to see porn - not that I wouldn't be happy to see porn anywhere else! But sex, especially taboo-breaching sex (sex with aliens, queer sex, incest) is such a major part of this series (even when it isn't explicit), it would be especially fun to see it here. Not that gen isn't also fun!
Temeraire series - Naomi Novik
Requests: Tenzing Tharkay, William Laurence
Oh my god so I love the dragons and the alternate history and Jane Roland and everything but HOLY HELLS I SHIP THARKAY AND LAURENCE SO HARD. SO hard. So much PINING and DEEPLY MEANINGFUL USE OF FIRST NAMES and basically every classic slash trope in history, no seriously, I'm pretty sure somebody had a bet with Naomi Novik about how many she could squeeze into the series. Like by the end there we'd had AMNESIA and CLOTHES SWAPPING and HUDDLING FOR WARMTH and COMPROMISING ONE'S MORALS TO SAVE A LOVED ONE and then basically a marriage proposal...? And that only covers off the last two books!
I would read literally anything about their life post series in Tharkay's house, with The Hon Temeraire MP holding meetings and debating policy and accidentally terrorising the opposition, while Laurence and Tharkay stroll around in fabulous outfits discussing dragon rights in France (for about ten minutes, until they get bored and have an Adventure, probably).
I love Jane Roland a lot, and I think her casual flings with Laurence are wonderful, I am 100% okay with that continuing in whatever kind of stilted Regency poly arrangement you think she and Tharkay could wrangle Laurence into, but she's been pretty consistently clear that she doesn't want to be Laurence's primary romantic partner so I'm cool with an amicable breakup if that's where you wanna go - just to clarify how I feel about things, in case you were wondering how I saw that part of canon! I'm sure that Jane's reaction upon hearing Laurence and Temeraire's future living arrangements would be GOLD, though, regardless of the state of her relationship with Laurence at the time.
As delightful as the end of the series is, I'd be just as thrilled with a story set at any other point during the series, though (obviously) I'd prefer it to be set at a point after Laurence and Tharkay have met. Amnesia plotline? Boat to Australia? Awkward/tension filled hookup very early in the trip from China to Europe, at the point where Laurence still ~hates~ Tharkay? Basically as long as it involves Tharkay and Laurence having FEELINGS and/or ADVENTURES together, I would be thrilled!
I would also be into them having SEX together. Just saying.
Like the Books of the Raksura, the Temeraire series is my happy place, so I'd prefer no major character death (Laurence/Tharkay/Temeraire/Jane/Emily are the characters that would really upset me), no unrequited love/ust (I can't deal with Tharkay pining unrequitedly?) and at least a reasonably happy ending. If you don't ship them, then a Laurence and Tharkay friendship story would also be wonderful - as long as they have some kind of relationship, really.
Sprig Muslin - Georgette Heyer
Requests: Amanda "Smith"
AMANDA IS SUCH A DELIGHT. I love her so much! The rest of the book and the characters are fun - Lady Hester Theale is another delight - but mostly I am here for AMANDA, tiny steamroller person. I love that she is SO determined and SO sure about what she wants, and so resourceful, even when her information is limited (by wellmeaning pricks and the patriarchy, argh) - but also she is still really young and easily distracted by FIGHTS WITH HER PSEUDO-BROTHER, and/or a KITTEN - basically she is endlessly charming and I would love to read anything about her and her adventures.
I... don't really care about Neil...? Like, the heart wants what it wants, and if Amanda's heart is set on Neil, that's fine, I guess? But I don't really have opinions about him, so do what you want, really. As long as the main focus of the story is on Amanda and Amanda's thoughts/needs/wants, I'm fine with whatever you reckon those should be. (But, uh, please don't ship Amanda with Sir Gareth instead, I'm not really into that.)
I am SUPER into AUs for this fandom - like, Temeraire AU, just for starters! What if Amanda found a dragon's egg??? Or any Regency + magic AU - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell? Sorcery & Cecelia? Basically Amanda + witchcraft would be glorious, anywhere on the spectrum from humour to dark and numinous.
But I feel like canon stories would also be fun - Amanda getting up to mischief as a child! Amanda in Spain basically taking over the army! Elderly Amanda scandalising her grandchildren and continuing to be The Boss! Etc.
