Dear Yuletide Writer 2023
Oct. 21st, 2023 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reconditarmoniaHi! Thank you for writing/drawing for me! I’m reconditarmonia here and on AO3. I have anon messaging off, but mods can contact me if you have any questions.
The Shadow Campaigns | The Hazards of Love | Sleep No More
General likes:
– Loyalty kink! Trust, affectionate or loving use of titles, gestures of loyalty, replacing one’s situational or ethical judgment with someone else’s, risking oneself (physically or otherwise) for someone else, not doing so on their orders. Can be commander-subordinate or comrades-in-arms.
– Heists, or other stories where there’s a lot of planning and then we see how the plan goes.
– Femslash, complicated or intense relationships between women, and female-centric gen. Women doing “male” stuff (possibly while crossdressing).
– Relationships that aren’t built on romance or attraction. They can be romantic or sexual as well, but my favorite ships are all ones where it would still be interesting or compelling if the romantic component never materialized. Stories whose emotional climax or resolution isn’t the sex scene, if there is one.
– Uniforms/costumes/clothing.
– Stories, history, and performance. What gets told and how, what doesn’t get told or written down, behavior in a society where everyone’s consuming media and aware of its tropes, how people create their personas and script their own lines.
– Minority/diaspora feelings and themes.
Smut Likes: clothing, uniforms, sexual tension, breasts, manual sex, cunnilingus, grinding, informal d/s elements, intensity.
General DNW: rape/dubcon, torture, other creative gore; unrequested AUs, including “same setting, different rules” AUs such as soulmates/soulbonds; PWP; food sex; embarrassment; focus on pregnancy; Christmas/Christian themes; infidelity; unrequested polyamory; focus on unrequested canon or non-canon ships; unrequested trans versions of characters; breakups; jealousy; focus on grief; unequal levels of investment in a relationship (including concerns about same that turn out to be unwarranted), or the idea of a character accepting something they're unhappy with as the most they're going to get; characters who are written in a sexual context within the fic being ignorant about sex/anatomy (inexperienced is fine); the word "pussy"
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Fandom: The Shadow Campaigns
Character(s): Winter Ihernglass
The loyalty kink and competence kink in this series is so tasty. Winter just keeps getting promoted and accomplishing things! I don’t have a lot of specific prompts, to be honest, because I kind of feel like anything I would say is “ *gestures at canon* MORE OF THAT.”
- More of Winter being good at the job that was initially just the furthest place she could hide but that became her real job and something she was good at and that was her life.
- The delightful and hilarious running gag of Marcus thinking that she is a male soldier who went undercover as a woman for a mission and only Marcus knows the truth.
- The loyalty and protectiveness she inspires from her subordinates, even when asking them for things that are risky or hard - I found her relationship with Bobby and Folsom and Graff in the first book VERY gratifying to my id, and then there’s her subordinates in the Girls’ Own, and on the mission to Elysium.
- BOBBY. I ship them a lot. (I liked it as a platonic loyalty kink thing even before the disguise reveal, and then!) Winter trusting Bobby! Bobby having her back in battle and against Davis et al! Cuddling for warmth/comfort! Bobby begging her commanding officer to take care of her herself if she was ever wounded instead of going to a surgeon. *___* More trust and competence and mutual protectiveness, Bobby being so instrumental to Winter’s plans, her right hand person that she can use and direct as readily as she can use her weapons… (Uh, feel free to go AU on this. You know why. Even though the way it actually panned out was insanely shippy! Maybe it just didn't end that way.)
- I also LOVE the mentor-mentee relationship between Winter and Janus. (I know this will be difficult, but you have yet to disappoint me.) Janus manipulating Winter but also explaining to her that she has something he hasn’t, the ability to understand and relate to people. Jane’s accusation that Winter has fallen in love with him, not because it’s a romance-romance or because Winter, as a lesbian, would be capable of it in that sense, but because that’s a way to talk about someone’s platonic relationship to the leader they follow. How determined she is not to fail him, and his trust that she won't. What other Janus things does he want her to learn or need her for?
(As of writing this letter I’ve read through The Guns of Empire but have not yet read The Infernal Battalion, so I don't have any Infernal Battalion-inspired prompts. Don’t feel that you can’t spoil me or have to reinvent the wheel for anything that canonically happens in it, I’ll catch up!)
Fandom-Specific DNW Info: to avoid my infidelity/poly/breakup DNWs, if you write Winter/Bobby I’d prefer to assume that Bobby/Marsh and Winter/Cyte didn’t happen or were flings that didn’t become relationships; Winter/Jane breaking up as per canon is fine if it’s not a central focus of the fic, but if you write Winter/Bobby set during the Shadow Throne/Price of Valor period of canon, please write as though Winter and Jane simply never rekindled their relationship.
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Fandom: The Hazards of Love
Character(s): Amparo Uribe | Fawn
My favorite things about this comic are Fawn's relationship with El Ciervo and essentially the way that Fawn gets thrown into this horrible world and THRIVES there. Like, a lot of bad things happen to them and they get very fucked up. BUT ALSO, they turn out to be good at the things that it takes to survive(??) there? They're good with their pointy teeth and magic hands and scary eyes and intrigue!
I love the weird (non-romantic/sexual but very intimate) intimacy of Fawn's apprenticeship with El Ciervo - learning dissection and stuff, E.C. telling them that anyone who disrespects them disrespects him and they should eviscerate them, but also him cutting their hair! putting them in a nice suit! body-modding them! bathing them! More of them being his henchperson would be very fun (whether or not they're simultaneously plotting against him), but I'd also be happy to read something where he doesn't appear on screen and it's more about Fawn using what they've learned and gained and becoming more of a Bright World critter.
(I have read the first print volume, the next couple of chapters of what's online, and happened to also read the most recent updates where El Ciervo is bathing an injured Fawn and they're having their weird heart to heart. Don't worry about spoiling me for anything I missed, I'll catch up.)
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Fandom: Sleep No More
Character(s): J. Fulton, Speakeasy Bartender, Porter (any)
You can probably tell from my character picks that I'm the sort of guest who sees any part of the actual Macbeth plot happening and wanders away to look at something else. Proud 4th floor stan here - I love all the small magic and folk magic up there, the precise little rituals that reach out to or guard against the world of darkness and magic that is Outside their town but also underlying/intertwined with it - but I also hung out with the Porter a lot last time and I love him now. I'm really interested as well in how magic and outsider-ness and queerness all interact in the world of SNM - stuff like:
- the occasional new cross-casting of Speakeasy Bartender! (side note: I'd read the character as a butch woman, learned afterwards that the performer is nb and uses she/they pronouns, but either way, it's interesting to me that this Speaks is a gender non-conforming character in a way the usual one is very much not. I'm also pretty psyched that some of the show ephemera now refers to the character in a gender-neutral way. Please take it as read in this letter that if I refer to f!Speaks I'm referring to the gender non-conforming version of this character.)
- the way that the Fulton/male!Speakeasy duet where they search each other for witch marks starts off like they're trying to pick each other up
- everything about the Porter, but especially his (her?) 1:1
- I didn't select Bald Witch because I've received good witch fic in the past, but the witches' everything is also very queer
An assortment of possible prompts:
- the intense queerness of Fulton's trip to the speakeasy, whether that's about having an extremely homoerotic encounter with a male Bartender that he may or may not have partly sought out, or a confounding one where not only is he entering this underworld location to confront a creepy magic person, but there’s also the gender transgression aspect of f!Speaks (and on the other other hand, she’s not the way he might have envisioned a witch either!)
- more of Fulton's little charms and rituals. more of Porter's little charms and rituals!
- what actually is the difference between being a witch and being a human familiar? more about how Speaks and the witches interact?
- ...Fulton/Porter?! (in a story where Porter is a man rather than a closeted trans woman)
- I love the d/s vibes of the Hecate/Speaks relationship, especially with f!Speaks as Hecate’s creature/enforcer/weapon. How/why did Hecate choose Speakeasy and what does she think of or do with their devotion and service? (THE VIAL OF TEARS SCENE asdsjhasjkhd, it killed me.)
- fic/art about Porter getting to eventually escape and also transition, if that's how you read that 1:1, would be sweet
- what's f!Speaks's story? Were her GNC presentation or sexuality a factor in her getting involved in the underground booze business and/or Hecate’s service, and how do they affect her dealings with people now? Did she do small magic before becoming Hecate’s familiar, or did that come after/as a result of it?
- by structural design, the canon can't really engage with race and racism, but I'd be fascinated by a story that got into a character being a racial/ethnic minority in Paisley/McK in a non-race-blind-casting way (including one of the witches - feel free to ignore my three selected characters and write about this for Bald Witch or Sexy Witch)
- I've tried not to make this section TOO long, especially since I've had previous exchange requests for f!Speaks (and witches), so you can look at my "dear author letters" tag for additional previous prompts and thoughts for f!Speaks and Bald Witch as well if you'd like!
Fandom-Specific DNW Exception: if you write Hecate/f!Speakeasy, consider my DNW of unequal investment waived, as long as Speaks isn't under the impression that it is equal or upset by that. You don't need to act as though any of the unrequested f/m ships for the requested characters (eg. male Speaks/Sexy Witch, Fulton/Agnes) aren't canon, but I'd rather they not be focused on, please. I'm also not interested in the Porter/Boy Witch romance being the focus of a story (because I haven't spent much time with Boy - go into Porter's queerness as much as you like). If you have other questions about which ships can be present, please drop me a line. As well, please don't use singular "they" or neopronouns for Speaks even if you are envisioning them as nonbinary - they can be nonbinary even in a world where that hasn't entered the language.
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Thank you!
