Yuletide Letter
Oct. 23rd, 2021 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraDear Yuletide writer,
I love Yuletide; it's such a crucial part of the the whole season for me. I am thrilled to see what you come up with, and I hope you enjoy creating it.
What I like hasn't changed much from previous years (including this sentence, its time come round again, slouching towards AO3 etc). I like humour that cares about the characters. I like characters who are outsiders in some way, but (even despite themselves!) become part of something larger - a relationship, a cause, a community. I like food as a way of showing character or worldbuilding. I like bittersweet endings. I like justified angst, pining, weirdness, and invention. I like pretty much any style of writing - epistolary, experimental, Dickensian - and even second person, if it works for the story. In a previous year I got IF for one story and that was fantastic. Artwise, I like quiet moments, possibly with tea or food, and prefer stylised to photorealistic.
I have no problem with sexual content as long as it fits with the characters, although pages of explicit anatomical detail are unlikely to be my thing. I like stories that make me remember why I love the original inspiration as well as stories that make me think about it differently (and both! both is great). And I do like the canons themselves. I like these characters being part of their worlds, even when they struggle against them.
DNWs: child or animal harm &/or death as a major plot point. If you’re looking back through old letters I have previously excluded earthquakes but it’s been ten years and now I’m okay with them but would like them tagged. No A/B/O or noncanonical trans characters, please.
銀の匙 | Silver Spoon
Hachiken Yuugo
This is a slice-of-life coming-of-age manga about Hachiken Yuugo, who burned out on the academic track his father insisted on and instead ends up at an agricultural high school in Hokkaido, and it's by Arakawa Hiromu and it's fantastic. Sweet, funny, touching, educational, and with a deep-down love of food that encompasses exactly how hard (and heart-breaking) it can be to bring that food to the table. It's a fantastic story and it ends in just the right place BUT Yuletide obviously exists to meet my need for still more from Hachiken and his classmates (and families).
Basically anything in this would be great. A look at Hachiken 5 or 10 years later, possibly with him returning to the school (in achievement? disgrace? (unjustified and/or remediable, obviously) as a guest or a teacher?)? Another incredible food and togetherness story ? Farming anecdotes? High school pranks? I would also be happy with non mundane AUs (farming IN SPACE, the school is suddenly catapulted 300 years back in time, the animals are mythological creatures). Basically more of them, whenever and wherever. I don't really ship Hachiken with anybody - I do like Mikage, but I don't feel that they're destined for each other. Any of the gang showing up is fine, right down to Dot Brows the horse.
(For reference I have not seen the anime, just in case it differs)
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Sheldon ("Shelly") Oberon
Ruby Roundhouse
Bethany Walker
Martha Kaply
I loved this so much, and it was so unexpected - I loved the van Allsburg book, really liked the Robin Williams film while being a bit disoriented about the undoing of the past, and went into this expecting it to be a bit of a let-down, and it was great. Everybody really leaned into the gaming aspects, NPC briefings, strengths/weaknesses, limited lives, and all, and this time the undoing of the past is actually heartbreaking in its consequence for Bethany/Shelly.
I've nominated the real world and game versions, but I'm much more interested in the experience in-game than in the real world. For this request I'd like to ignore The Next Level (although references to it welcome!), but apart from that, anything and everything goes. A sidequest within canon, where the two of them get to develop their uneasy friendship (I am, in fact, totally up for f/f (well, sort of, if we're in game, definitely queer though) if you wanted to go for more than friends)? AU where they don't make it past one of the challenges and have to find another way out? Another trip back into the game, just the two of them? And I said more in-game than real world, but having the game intrude into the real world with the two of them trying to balance their game knowledge with their real world lives would be great.
Armitage Family Stories | The Serial Garden - Joan Aiken
Harriet Armitage
Mark Armitage
Worldbuilding
The ending of The Serial Garden has haunted me for over 40 years and I just want someone to fix it.
(oh all right, possibly you need more prompts. I love the matter-of-factness and fantasticality of these stories, all neatly intertwined and tucked into short construction of impeccable dream logic. Myth, fairytales, ghosts, witches, all uncanny and oddly comforting, like a ghost governess who wakes you up each night to drill you in Latin conjunctions. And yes, the story The Serial Garden absolutely broke me as a child. So unfair, so inevitable; the childhood trauma of your parents throwing away something that to them was totally unimportant but that meant the world to someone else. I know there are hints in her later stories that all was not lost, and I also know that Aiken didn't fix it (and for very good reasons), but for Yuletide, I'd like it mended. It can be bittersweet, hard-earned, fragile and possibly transient, but- somehow - get the princess and her faithful dog out of that garden.)
But yes!! Optional details are optional. If you don’t want to or can’t do that, any other Armitage hijinks would be very welcome. I particularly like intersections with myth or transformations (animals? Wings? Winged animals? ), the odd villagers that live nearby or visit, and hints of horror. What are Mark and Harriet like as adults? Do they acquire another extraordinary pet? I’d particularly like to know about Harriet’s ongoing witchy education, and how this develops (and her interactions with other practitioners)
Thank you so much, and have an amazing Yuletide!
I love Yuletide; it's such a crucial part of the the whole season for me. I am thrilled to see what you come up with, and I hope you enjoy creating it.
What I like hasn't changed much from previous years (including this sentence, its time come round again, slouching towards AO3 etc). I like humour that cares about the characters. I like characters who are outsiders in some way, but (even despite themselves!) become part of something larger - a relationship, a cause, a community. I like food as a way of showing character or worldbuilding. I like bittersweet endings. I like justified angst, pining, weirdness, and invention. I like pretty much any style of writing - epistolary, experimental, Dickensian - and even second person, if it works for the story. In a previous year I got IF for one story and that was fantastic. Artwise, I like quiet moments, possibly with tea or food, and prefer stylised to photorealistic.
I have no problem with sexual content as long as it fits with the characters, although pages of explicit anatomical detail are unlikely to be my thing. I like stories that make me remember why I love the original inspiration as well as stories that make me think about it differently (and both! both is great). And I do like the canons themselves. I like these characters being part of their worlds, even when they struggle against them.
DNWs: child or animal harm &/or death as a major plot point. If you’re looking back through old letters I have previously excluded earthquakes but it’s been ten years and now I’m okay with them but would like them tagged. No A/B/O or noncanonical trans characters, please.
銀の匙 | Silver Spoon
Hachiken Yuugo
This is a slice-of-life coming-of-age manga about Hachiken Yuugo, who burned out on the academic track his father insisted on and instead ends up at an agricultural high school in Hokkaido, and it's by Arakawa Hiromu and it's fantastic. Sweet, funny, touching, educational, and with a deep-down love of food that encompasses exactly how hard (and heart-breaking) it can be to bring that food to the table. It's a fantastic story and it ends in just the right place BUT Yuletide obviously exists to meet my need for still more from Hachiken and his classmates (and families).
Basically anything in this would be great. A look at Hachiken 5 or 10 years later, possibly with him returning to the school (in achievement? disgrace? (unjustified and/or remediable, obviously) as a guest or a teacher?)? Another incredible food and togetherness story ? Farming anecdotes? High school pranks? I would also be happy with non mundane AUs (farming IN SPACE, the school is suddenly catapulted 300 years back in time, the animals are mythological creatures). Basically more of them, whenever and wherever. I don't really ship Hachiken with anybody - I do like Mikage, but I don't feel that they're destined for each other. Any of the gang showing up is fine, right down to Dot Brows the horse.
(For reference I have not seen the anime, just in case it differs)
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Sheldon ("Shelly") Oberon
Ruby Roundhouse
Bethany Walker
Martha Kaply
I loved this so much, and it was so unexpected - I loved the van Allsburg book, really liked the Robin Williams film while being a bit disoriented about the undoing of the past, and went into this expecting it to be a bit of a let-down, and it was great. Everybody really leaned into the gaming aspects, NPC briefings, strengths/weaknesses, limited lives, and all, and this time the undoing of the past is actually heartbreaking in its consequence for Bethany/Shelly.
I've nominated the real world and game versions, but I'm much more interested in the experience in-game than in the real world. For this request I'd like to ignore The Next Level (although references to it welcome!), but apart from that, anything and everything goes. A sidequest within canon, where the two of them get to develop their uneasy friendship (I am, in fact, totally up for f/f (well, sort of, if we're in game, definitely queer though) if you wanted to go for more than friends)? AU where they don't make it past one of the challenges and have to find another way out? Another trip back into the game, just the two of them? And I said more in-game than real world, but having the game intrude into the real world with the two of them trying to balance their game knowledge with their real world lives would be great.
Armitage Family Stories | The Serial Garden - Joan Aiken
Harriet Armitage
Mark Armitage
Worldbuilding
The ending of The Serial Garden has haunted me for over 40 years and I just want someone to fix it.
(oh all right, possibly you need more prompts. I love the matter-of-factness and fantasticality of these stories, all neatly intertwined and tucked into short construction of impeccable dream logic. Myth, fairytales, ghosts, witches, all uncanny and oddly comforting, like a ghost governess who wakes you up each night to drill you in Latin conjunctions. And yes, the story The Serial Garden absolutely broke me as a child. So unfair, so inevitable; the childhood trauma of your parents throwing away something that to them was totally unimportant but that meant the world to someone else. I know there are hints in her later stories that all was not lost, and I also know that Aiken didn't fix it (and for very good reasons), but for Yuletide, I'd like it mended. It can be bittersweet, hard-earned, fragile and possibly transient, but- somehow - get the princess and her faithful dog out of that garden.)
But yes!! Optional details are optional. If you don’t want to or can’t do that, any other Armitage hijinks would be very welcome. I particularly like intersections with myth or transformations (animals? Wings? Winged animals? ), the odd villagers that live nearby or visit, and hints of horror. What are Mark and Harriet like as adults? Do they acquire another extraordinary pet? I’d particularly like to know about Harriet’s ongoing witchy education, and how this develops (and her interactions with other practitioners)
Thank you so much, and have an amazing Yuletide!
