Yuletide letter

Dear Yuletide writer,

I love Yuletide, as a challenge, a community and a 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). I have also spent the year obsessed with Final Fantasy VII (totally not yuletide eligible! But Easter eggs appreciated). For AUs see specific fandoms.

DNWs: child or animal harm &/or death as a major plot point (outside of canon). 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 noncanonical trans characters, please.

Worrals series - WE Johns

Joan "Worrals" Worralson
Becky "Frecks" Lovell

So fantastic! So action-filled, with 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. I like spies and betrayal and working with the Resistance, if you're looking for WWII themes; I would prefer the Nazis to not be massively emphasised and obviously I know that horrible things happened to British agents in reality but would prefer the narrow escapes and last-minute dashes of these books.

I’ve read the first few non WWII ones (which unfortunately do have some terrible racial bits). I do have a slight preference for keeping the war setting BUT I am also totally up for leaping forward 10 years or more to see what the two of them are like. More spying? Test piloting? Involvement in the space program? Go for it. AUs of any kind fine as long as it's still them and there's danger and determination in bucketloads.

Dungeon Crawler Carl

Carl
Princess Donut
Katia
Mordecai

I totally love this series, the world and the characters (I have read all six books and the chapters of the seventh posted on Patreon, as well as listening to the audiobooks). 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 Katia, who has grown so much (ha!) during her time in the dungeon. I love the gamelit/RPG tropes (loot boxes! stat increases!) and the horror tropes and the pokes at reality TV. I love that everyone has their own agenda (even Donut - her line to Zev in the latest book totally cracked me up) and I really, really love the way that Carl, even as he blows everything up and gets increasingly unstable, can listen to others, respect their opinions, and give them chances to make their own paths.

Prompts - go wild. Carl or Katia’s past, before they go into the dungeon? (Or Donut’s - what was she like as a kitten? What was her take on Carl when he first showed up?) A bit from Mordecai’s crawl? An outsider pov from a fan, an NPC, or another top ten crawler? An AU - feel free to design your own floor!! - or an outtake? What if, when they’d ended up in the Ghosts of Earth section, they’d been in a different area, or they’d lost their memories and thought they were back? What if they find themselves (apparently) outside the dungeon?

I do not ship any of the nominated characters - one of the things I like about DCC is that Carl hasn't had any sexual relationships since entering the dungeon. Canonical relationships (Katia/Bautista and I SUPPOSE Donut/Gravy Boat) are fine but I don't really want them to be the focus.

Feel free to play with formats. Please don't permanently kill any of the requested characters but otherwise darkness consistent with canon is fine. I am fine with gore. AUs - tbh you could probably do a terrifying coffee shop AU with this group and I would love it, as long as I still recognise the characters, so go wild, but no high school ones, please.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Zelda (Echoes)

Link (Echoes)

Gosh this was fun to play. Finally being Zelda! The Link’s Awakening remake aesthetic! A cute companion, creepy rifts, and a game that encourages wild invention to solve problems, while still having the beat-dungeon-gain-new-cool-ability style of the pre BOTW era, AND you can talk to cats. Fantastic. I loved it a lot. I think there’s a lot of scope here for fic, whether that’s exploring Zelda’s feelings as she progresses through the game (entering a rift the first time must have been super creepy!) or filling in gaps (how did she get captured? What happens afterwards? Does Zelda look at other forms of magic, after her experience with the staff? ). I loved the two different Zora groups and the Gerudo and would cheerfully read any adventures or quiet moments set with either, and I also loved Zelda’s horse.

Having Link not be a knight in this and be damaged by his time in the rifts was fascinating. I’m not sure how I feel about his recovery at the end and would be happy to gloss over that. I’d love to see him spending more time with Zelda – maybe she gets to show him around Hyrule? How does he feel about Evil Link – does he share any memories with him? The Echoes don’t do people but the rift copies do – how does that work?How did he get out of the rift the first time? What does he do after the end of the game? Does he also like making dubious smoothies?

For reference I have played Link’s Awakening, BOTW, most of TotK (next gaming project is finishing this) and all of Skyward Sword except the end battle because I was doing it with motion controllers and nearly sprained something, plus then moving house etc but I really should go back. I do not want setting AUs in this fandom but am happy with AUs of events BUT I do not want a version in which Link does Zelda’s role. I am not particularly shippy about Link and Zelda generally but I actually think it would work well for me in this game (I would also cheerfully read Zelda/Dohna, but I do realise she’s not in the tagset!). I would also especially love it if Zelda got to wear her cat costume for at least some of the story (or Link could wear it! I am not fussy).