Dear Yuletide Writer!

[eglantiere]

My dear Yulewriter, hello! Thank you for writing for me, and for loving those fandoms.

I list specific prompts below to give you a sort of starting point, but I'm also sure that there are things that I haven't thought of that I would absolutely love - so if you have ideas you're really passionate about, I'm deeply curious to know what they are, and to read your story. ODAO is fine! Mix, match and invent at will, please, and I'm looking forward to seeing you in December.

I'm also super okay with treats, including treats that use prompts from the last couple of challenges.

Links:

• My exchange tag (letters, recs et cetera)
• AO3 (fics and bookmarks)
• Tumblr

Likes:

• Hurt/comfort! When in doubt, go with h/c: physical, emotional, captivity scenarios, caretaking, whipping, dungeons, bullet wounds, wilderness survival, whatever. I love hurt/comfort within a relationship context (ships or gen: family ties, friendship, comradeship, all is good), as an opening for one character to be hurt and for the other(s) to be outraged/terrified/comforting on their behalf. I am particular about who gets whumped, and will usually indicate so in prompts.
• Found families, tight friendships, us-against-the-world, people finding and keeping each other, providing kindness and warmth against the dark.
• Hope and kindness, Clair universes, stories where the entropy tries its hardest but doesn't win.
• Loyalty in all forms! From ritualized (oaths, kneeling, ring-kissing, knights and bodyguards and henchmen and so on) to more casual ways, like standing up for your friends.
• Self-sacrifice (metaphorical and quite literal) and martyrdom (ditto).
• Tropey AUs - space opera! high fantasy! historical! pirates!
• Outsider POVs.

DNWs:

• Hurt no comfort.
• Partner betrayal of any kind or infidelity.
• Unhappy endings and permanent character death ("presumed dead" and "died but got better" are fine).
• A/B/O, hurtcomfortverse, any other 'verses with built-in biology-based inequality.
• Hanahaki AUs and variations thereof.
• Mundane AUs.
• Non-con and dub-con front and center in the story (as a piece of backstory or an implied threat it's fine).

Psmith - P. G. Wodehouse
Mike Jackson Rupert Psmith

Those books are my perennial favorites; I adore the kind hilarity of them, and the intensity of the main relationship (whether it's taken as friendship or romance). I love Psmith's surety and his unflappability, his lowkey but endless loyalty and protectiveness, the way he manages to warp the world around himself but does it with benevolence, the way the narrative pokes fun at him but allows him to stand unhumiliated. And I love that Mike is his foil but never the butt of the narrative joke, that Mike's intrinsic value is never questioned or doubted, by the text or by them both. I love how different they are and how wholeheartedly they embrace each other nevertheless, neither trying to change or undermine each other, how much they just - adore and accept and support each other.

And so!

• ...Having said what I did about Psmith self-surety, I would also read a lot about Psmith secretly having doubts about himself and his own worth in relation to Mike and trying to let Mike go for his own good (family, career, etc.), and Mike having none of it.
• And also literally all the stories about Psmith getting into some trouble he can't get himself out of (ideally on Mike's behalf), and trying to hide it or make light of it, and Mike becoming the rescuer and taking care of him. I always thought that Psmith would make an awesome 'pay no attention to my troubles, have a languid anecdote' kind of iron woobie - iron woobie in a velvet glove? Is it a thing? In any case, yes.
• (For example, I loved Psmith's descent from rich heirdom to self-supporting poverty and the way he tried to deal with it by himself and without burdening anybody. Take it to the extreme, and I'll be here with bells on.)
• But also something with a more action/adventure bent and injuries, kidnappings, and accidents (see: Psmith, Journalist, only sans racism and Mike is actually there). Psmith Hides A Supernatural Secret (he's an elf! he's a selkie! he's an alien!) And Why Would Mike Care No Really.
• The super self-indulgent slavefic option: Mike the bewildered owner rescuing a chill, seemingly unconcerned slave!Psmith and slowly discovering the depths of trouble that will bring? Psmith the jaded, high-ranking slave taking a newly enslaved Mike under his wing and getting into all the trouble trying to keep him safe (and, being Psmith, probably engineering a revolution in the process?)
• Also all the setting AUs! Be it high fantasy or space opera or high sea piracy, those two trampling through it would be amazing.
• Also, optionally, all the crossovers and fusions. I love pastiche, but I would also love read Psmith and Mike transposed into a different kind of voice.

Fandom-specific DNW caveat: Please no happy heterosexuality for either Mike or Psmith. They can be platonic partners or friends, but I would rather not read about them marrying somebody else and parting ways.

Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells
Moon

I'm forever struck by how delightful a protagonist Moon is, with his mixture of naivete, cynicism, snarky humor, desperate need to belong, incredible protectiveness, and vulnerability hidden under what he thinks is an angry and opaque exterior. So - basically - I just want to read more about Moon and his various families and how he settles into them and defines himself by them and changes them.

I've nominated Moon only to give you the broadest possible pool of relationships you could write about - some people I'll mention in my prompts, but feel free just to pick anybody else who strikes your fancy, or avoid the prompts with characters who don't work for you.

• Early days in the Indigo Cloud, between the first and second book - it's pretty obvious from the books that most of the Arbora solidly adore him by his point, which Moon, obviously, misses by about an ell, so anything to that effect would be really wonderful.
• Anything about Moon interacting with friendly consorts from other courts, because they're 'his people' too, to an extent, but in a different way from how his court or his birthcourt are; I just like this whole dynamic, from Moon being a surrogate older brother-ish figure to Ember to Moon getting kinda crush-y on older consorts.
• And speaking of which, are there any other line grandfathers in the Reaches, besides Stone? Would Moon ever meet them?
• And alternately, Moon as a line-grandfather (let's just go with... unwidowed one. Let's pretend it works). Old and big and unkillable and even less possible to control and everybody being in a bit of awe and a bit of respect and a bit of 'oh, facepalm' at him.
• The entirety of Moon and Stone's filial relationship is one big source of joy for me, and I would read literally anything about it, especially something with the reversed dynamic when it's Moon who cares or worries about Stone, and Stone Does Not Know how to take that.
• Moon and Malachite, wherein Malachite is very scary and will obviously give Moon everything he ever wanted and he is never going to ask except that sometimes he does and it makes her so happy, and they're both extremely bad at talking about it.
• And, of course, Moon and his adopted half-Fell siblings, and the development of this relationship - Shade's worship, Lethe's easy outgoing liking for him.
• And Consolation's envious, awed hunger for connection, too. I bet you anything that if Moon was allowed to spend at least a week together with Consolation, he'd adopt her and her court.
• Will anybody, ever tell Moon that he can pretend to be a hardboiled antisocial badass all he wants, but he literally bonds to everything that moves, starting from random groundlings and ending with random non-evil Fell? I would just read a story about Moon just dragging weirder and weirder beings into being adopted by the court and the court just going like, ah well, this is Moon, might as well.
• I was pretty fascinated by the Moon-Chime-Jade-Balm quartet on that reread, and I would be pretty interested in some casefic that focuses on the Moon-Balm and Chime-Jade interactions - if they're separated somehow, if somebody's lost, for example? How do they work along those lines.
• (Jade's homicidal rage on Moon's behalf every time somebody threatens him will never stop being hot.)
• And so on! And et cetera! Those above are some possibilities, but honestly, it's such a big, beautiful, messy world and the emotional setting of those books is such an ideal setting to all my narrative kinks so pretty much everything will make me very, very happy.

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (Video Game) Sol

I spent so much time in this game this autumn, you seriously have no idea. I think I have about 200 hours on my save. The delightful mix of old school juvenile space fantasy and out-and-about explicit queerness and freedom just latched onto something in my head and won't let go. I loved how expansive and lush and alien the nature of Vertumna was, I loved the way Sol slowly discovered both appreciation for the adults in their life and the knowledge of just how frail and flawed they were, I loved the inventive scramble for survival, I loved all the relationships you could build, I loved the delightful timeloop weirdness…

In terms of prompt, overall: I chose Sol solo (hehe) partially because I actually love Sol a lot (to quote one discussion, this character depends a lot on how you play them, but also this character definitely has an ugly mullet in any incarnation), and partially to give you the widest maximum freedom to explore. I tend to play f!Sol in lesbian romances except for Sol/Dys/Sym, but, with an exception of one specific DNW, go wild. Include any relationships you'd like to, definitely not limited to anything I mention in particular down the list below.

Some ideas I'm thinking about:

• Okay, so: whump! Wilderness exploration whump, sickness, starvation, grief, that one post-canon bit where Sol's stranded together with Utopia in Quiet… Animal attacks, timeloop headaches, accumulated weight of too many lives - anything goes.
• Playing around with the Groundhog Day vibes - maybe one day Sol's time powers glitch and they become stranded in One Very Bad Day instead of an entire lifetime? Maybe somebody joins them? Maybe they find out that somebody else was experiencing the same thing?
• Sol the Governor and The Worldbuilding Vibes: look, I love administrivia. I love positive survival books, where people work together and cobble things out of thin air and invent something and help each other and thrive against the world.
• Say Lum didn't let go of the power so easily, and, while the events didn't go full ecocide routine, things are Bad and Sol and company are forced to organize the resistance? Go guerrilla, leave for the forests, fight for Vertumna's survival in a more protracted and messy ways?
• Years late, the Earth ship come! This is a clusterfuck on all sides, and a lot of diplomacy is needed. I want it. I want this diplomacy.
• All the delightfully weird careers Sol can has, off the beaten part, and how they can develop. (I'm still not over this one playthrough when Marz built a whole JAIL to put Sol, alone, into, for his rebel crimes. I'm still dying over this one.)
• Outside perspective on Sol, especially in their weirder moments, would be just great. How do they know things? How are they so good at some things and not so good at others? What's up with all the "We were lovers in a dream" stuff?
• Sol, bartending slash psychologizing in the dark. Yes.

And so on! And et cetera! Lean towards worldbuilding if it's your thing, or casefic or adventure, or, honestly, anything. There's such a dizzy array of possibilities my mind reels.

Fandom-specific DNW caveat: more of them than usual, because the game is so big:

• No Tangent's Cure, Array Destruction or that one where Dys and Sol leave the colony for good together.
• No Sol/Vace and no focus on domestic abuse overall, although it's okay to mention Vace's… Vaceness.
• I'm fine with Sol's timeloop-related mental health issues, headaches etc, but forced institutionalization is super squicky for me, so not this one, please.

DNW excеption: character deaths that are possible in canon are OK despite the main no-MCD DNW.