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Yuletide Letter
Oct. 22nd, 2022 02:24 pmDear Yuletide writer,
I love Yuletide, and in many ways it's my favourite yearly tradition. 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 (and for eating!). 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 am definitely open to treats.
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.
With my noms this year I am happy with crossovers (with other noms or any fandoms I've written). For AUs see specific fandoms. If you are picking this up, Everything Everywhere All at Once is the shortest canon - it's one movie.
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 over ten years and now I’m okay with them but would like them tagged. No A/B/O or noncanonical trans characters, please.
Stray (video game)
Worldbuilding
Orange Cat
B-12
This was such a fun game and I would love to revisit the world. I loved being a cat and doing cattish things, as well as getting to explore this fantastic bittersweet world that the robots had created. I loved the relationship with B-12. I loved the music and the culture and the undergroundness of everything, with all those lurking dangers (those horrible Zurks!).
You could do anything with this - robot point of view? Return of the humans? How has the cat protagonist been changed by their experiences, and what do they do next? (I don't have any firm views on cat gender/name - feel free to pick). I would love to see them finding their fellow cats again and either bringing them back to the city or meeting the robots who emerge. And I know I've picked B-12 and yes, I would not object at all to a slightly tweaked ending (the other robots fix B-12? There's a back up or a prototype somewhere?) or if you'd rather not, an unseen moment from within the game would be great, particularly if the two of them are exploring something new. Within canon AUs fine.
Dungeon Crawler Carl series - Matt Dinniman.
Carl
Princess Donut
Mongo
I totally love this series, the world and the characters (full disclosure; I have started but not finished book 5, but will have finished it by Yuletide). Such a great concept, carried through with ruthless elan and with unexpected depths of feeling and insight. I love Carl, who is trying so hard despite everything being so stacked against him, and how he teeters between his goals and their costs. I love Princess Donut, who is very much a cat despite everything, and of course I can't forget Mongo. I love the gamelit/RPG tropes (loot boxes! stat increases!) and the horror tropes and the pokes at reality TV.
Prompts - go wild. Carl's past, before he goes into the dungeon? An outtake from where we've been? A different level, a side quest, or something totally outside the dungeon - Carl & Donut & Mongo end up on an alien world? What if they're suddenly back in the (apparent) real world, still in their gaming personas? Game in-jokes - my gaming this year has been the Horizon series, Genshin Impact, Stray (as above), and I was a Teenage Exocolonist, if that helps. Feel free to play with formats as well. Please don't kill any of the requested characters but otherwise darkness consistent with canon is fine. I think you could do some interesting stuff with AUs here if you wanted.
Worrals series - WE Johns
Joan "Worrals" Worralson
Becky "Frecks" Lovell
I have only read three of these so far but they're fantastic - so action-filled! So many sudden reversals! - and Worrals & Frecks are great, competent and brave, but never over-confident or perfect. I would love more adventures and I would also love femslash, h/c, spies, plane dogfights/crashes, coping with being in some form of wilderness after a plane crash, space AUs, or even just a quiet moment between the two of them in-between adventures. Although I'd like to keep the WWII setting (unless you want to write a space AU) I would prefer not too much attention on the Nazis.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Evelyn Wang
Deirdre Beaubeirdre
Such an amazing movie - funny and heart-breaking and totally unexpected. Michelle Yeoh is fantastic, but so are all the cast - I've picked my two favourites, but only because otherwise I was listing everybody. I love Waymond and his steadfast kindness, even while he is finally drawing a boundary line around his relationship; I love Joy's determination, and how even as Jobu Tupaki she still isn't entirely lost. But Evelyn and her failures, and Deirdre and her savage nit-picking rule-following, (and how these are both their weaknesses and their strengths) had the most effect on me. Anything between the two of them would be great. Do they stay friends after the movie? How did they meet in the hot-dog finger universe? Are there other universes in which they meet, and what is their relationship there? Obviously no limitation on AUs or on story format, go wild.
I hope this is helpful! Basically these are all worlds & characters I love, and I would love to see more of.
I love Yuletide, and in many ways it's my favourite yearly tradition. 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 (and for eating!). 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 am definitely open to treats.
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.
With my noms this year I am happy with crossovers (with other noms or any fandoms I've written). For AUs see specific fandoms. If you are picking this up, Everything Everywhere All at Once is the shortest canon - it's one movie.
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 over ten years and now I’m okay with them but would like them tagged. No A/B/O or noncanonical trans characters, please.
Stray (video game)
Worldbuilding
Orange Cat
B-12
This was such a fun game and I would love to revisit the world. I loved being a cat and doing cattish things, as well as getting to explore this fantastic bittersweet world that the robots had created. I loved the relationship with B-12. I loved the music and the culture and the undergroundness of everything, with all those lurking dangers (those horrible Zurks!).
You could do anything with this - robot point of view? Return of the humans? How has the cat protagonist been changed by their experiences, and what do they do next? (I don't have any firm views on cat gender/name - feel free to pick). I would love to see them finding their fellow cats again and either bringing them back to the city or meeting the robots who emerge. And I know I've picked B-12 and yes, I would not object at all to a slightly tweaked ending (the other robots fix B-12? There's a back up or a prototype somewhere?) or if you'd rather not, an unseen moment from within the game would be great, particularly if the two of them are exploring something new. Within canon AUs fine.
Dungeon Crawler Carl series - Matt Dinniman.
Carl
Princess Donut
Mongo
I totally love this series, the world and the characters (full disclosure; I have started but not finished book 5, but will have finished it by Yuletide). Such a great concept, carried through with ruthless elan and with unexpected depths of feeling and insight. I love Carl, who is trying so hard despite everything being so stacked against him, and how he teeters between his goals and their costs. I love Princess Donut, who is very much a cat despite everything, and of course I can't forget Mongo. I love the gamelit/RPG tropes (loot boxes! stat increases!) and the horror tropes and the pokes at reality TV.
Prompts - go wild. Carl's past, before he goes into the dungeon? An outtake from where we've been? A different level, a side quest, or something totally outside the dungeon - Carl & Donut & Mongo end up on an alien world? What if they're suddenly back in the (apparent) real world, still in their gaming personas? Game in-jokes - my gaming this year has been the Horizon series, Genshin Impact, Stray (as above), and I was a Teenage Exocolonist, if that helps. Feel free to play with formats as well. Please don't kill any of the requested characters but otherwise darkness consistent with canon is fine. I think you could do some interesting stuff with AUs here if you wanted.
Worrals series - WE Johns
Joan "Worrals" Worralson
Becky "Frecks" Lovell
I have only read three of these so far but they're fantastic - so action-filled! So many sudden reversals! - and Worrals & Frecks are great, competent and brave, but never over-confident or perfect. I would love more adventures and I would also love femslash, h/c, spies, plane dogfights/crashes, coping with being in some form of wilderness after a plane crash, space AUs, or even just a quiet moment between the two of them in-between adventures. Although I'd like to keep the WWII setting (unless you want to write a space AU) I would prefer not too much attention on the Nazis.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Evelyn Wang
Deirdre Beaubeirdre
Such an amazing movie - funny and heart-breaking and totally unexpected. Michelle Yeoh is fantastic, but so are all the cast - I've picked my two favourites, but only because otherwise I was listing everybody. I love Waymond and his steadfast kindness, even while he is finally drawing a boundary line around his relationship; I love Joy's determination, and how even as Jobu Tupaki she still isn't entirely lost. But Evelyn and her failures, and Deirdre and her savage nit-picking rule-following, (and how these are both their weaknesses and their strengths) had the most effect on me. Anything between the two of them would be great. Do they stay friends after the movie? How did they meet in the hot-dog finger universe? Are there other universes in which they meet, and what is their relationship there? Obviously no limitation on AUs or on story format, go wild.
I hope this is helpful! Basically these are all worlds & characters I love, and I would love to see more of.
