yuletide 2024 dear author letter
Oct. 12th, 2024 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minnarrHello, dear author! Thank you for writing for me. This is a lot, but it's really just to give you a sense of my tastes and as many options to work with as I can.
Long list of favorite tropes and themes: family (found or birth) and friendship, platonic intimacy, polyamory, time travel and dimension-crossing, secret identity, political intrigue, AUs generally, loyalty, finally getting to live when you thought that was off the table, mutual pining, heists, only one bed, fake dating/marriage and arranged marriages, truth or dare (and other games that involve gambling your closely held heart), fleshing out minor characters, trying to explain the changes in your life since the last time you saw someone but it ends up sounding absurd because your life took some wild turns, interactive fiction/games/puzzles, found media/epistolary and other nontraditional narrative structures
Love Like the Galaxy
Cheng Shaoshang, Huo Buyi, Yuan Shen (must feature all, except for exceptions in sign-up)
Sign-up details: Exceptions: Any two of these three in combination would be fun to me - I have feelings about a potential OT3 with them, but in a way that each arm is fascinating to me. (Manifesto to come in my letter!) This does mean that I would be into just CSS/HBY, that IS on the table.
DNWs: Dom/sub, humiliation kink, calling someone slut/whore/etc as dirty talk, infidelity, modern AU
Okay, so here's the promised manifesto on Cheng Shaoshang-Huo Buyi-Yuan Shen. Some of it is cribbed from a post I previously wrote on tumblr.
At the end of the show, there is 1 loose thread: Yuan Shen still claiming (despite all suggestions to the contrary) that he is a cold-hearted person who doesn't care about love. Now to preface this: I will invent an aro or ace narrative out of tiny crumbs. This is NOT the vibe I get from him. He liked Shaoshang so much he did truly stupid things, especially while her teacher, and then he was going to pine while married to her, and THEN stepped nobly aside in clear growth from his previous jealous crush hijinks.
Also by the end, Yuan Shen and Huo Buyi have a fun rapport and can talk to each other on the same level in a way we don't really see for either of them with anyone besides Shaoshang (and maybe Third Prince, but Buyi is still his subordinate). They care about each other for Shaoshang's sake, but we also see them work well together and there's seeds of what could be a strong relationship, whatever form that takes.
Cheng Shaoshang and Yuan Shen went from "I don't know about this" to one of my favoite dynamics by the end. I thirst for more of them. They should get to be bitchy gossip friends. They are willing to pick at each other until things get serious, and then they are absolutely ride or die for each other. They are mirrors and understand each other's deep fears about intimacy and abandonment, even if they take different routes in addressing them in the show.
There are so many routes to explore these relationships and I have managed to finish writing ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THEM myself. Please join me in the pit. Thank you.
All of that said, I also adore Cheng Shaoshang and Huo Buyi's dynamic - the way they challenge each other and come to a better understanding of each other and what they will give and take in a relationship. I'd be truly happy to see more of them post-canon as well, or an AU that explores their dynamic if they met under different circumstances.
Prompts:
- post-canon OT3 get-together
- AU: Shaoshang and Yuan Shen get married before Huo Buyi makes his way back to the capital; Huo Buyi and Shaoshang reconnect and must navigate the grey area this plunges them into
- Casefic! 2-3 of them solving a mystery together a la that section in canon where there was a bunch of these in a row
- Honestly this is the single one of the fandoms I'm requesting that I'd be really into porn-as-character-study. My blorbos with so many intimacy and trust issues and sooo much yearning. Bonus for pining while fucking.
The Blood of Youth
Ye Ruoyi, Tang Lian (must feature one or more, giver's choice)
Sign-up details: Both of these characters are just scrumptious to me. (So are many characters!! But I'm sticking to these two). For Ye Ruoyi, I'm particularly fascinated with her long-standing bond with Xiao Se and the way she gets to lean into delight with Lei Wujie, and I want to see her getting to have adventures post-canon. For Tang Lian, I love him as da-shixiong to our main bunch, I wish him a very time to recover/process/build the version of himself he wants to be and reunions in all their complexity, and I also really wanted more of his relationship with Fairy Rui.
DNWs: Non-canonical major character death, PWP, infidelity, modern AU
Ye Ruoyi:
To expand on what I said above, I love that we see her sense of adventure awakening, that she now has hopes and the ability to travel the world and have the same kind of silly power-up adventures everyone else has been having. She's had to be quiet and/or sensible for so long! I would love to see this paired with Ye Ruoyi/Lei Wujie, since he draws out so much of that in her.
Optional prompt for this: Ye Ruoyi visits Sword Heart Tomb and goes through a trial for a cool sword that tests some of her character development. Has she been too cautious after knowing her limits for too long and having different ones now and needs a push to break through to the next step? Her commitment to loyalty and duty versus her newfound path towards adventure and learning? Maybe something keying into her and Lei Wujie still figuring out what they are to each other?
I also love her relationship with Xiao Se, that they have known each other so long and so well but decided a romantic relationship was not for them. I adore relationships that can kind of slide along a platonic/not platonic divide and I would be into them as friends with benefits or besties or really anything other than straightforward romance. I'm also super super fascinated by that scene in episode 17 where Xiao Se says, "I know it'll hurt a lot, but I know you can survive it. Hang in there," very calmly and steadily. Would love something that explored them knowing each other's limits through hard experience, maybe being the only one able to really push them with the other.
Tang Lian:
Look, I am a sucker for reunions after one character is presumed dead and I am always down to see Tang Lian's re-emergence into the world expanded upon. I'd love to see the aftermath of the extra little episode: Tang Lian trying to fit back into the spaces he left, dealing with the ways he's changed, the life he wants, and the very real grief his loved ones went through while he was gone. He told Fairy Rui that he would come back after that fight with Dark River as just Tang Lian. What does that LOOK like? I wanted to see that so badly - it was why his death hit me so hard.
Speaking of Fairy Rui! I would also love to see his relationship with her expanded upon. The vibe seems to be that they ran missions together and she wanted a relationship and he was Not Ready until, right at the end, he was. Flirting and flusterment and wanting-but-not-allowing-himself during pre-canon casefic would be just as great as post-canon making good on his promises. (Or both!)
I'm not against shipping him with others, but if you go that route, please don't ignore Rui or make her the bad guy in a breakup, if that's what happens. I am always down for polyamory/consensual non-monogamy, and I'm also down for it didn't work out and sometimes part of growing is realizing when a thing won't work. But that relationship is important to his character for me!
New Life Begins
Any (Li Wei, Yuan Ying, Yin Zheng, Hao Jia, Shangguan Jing, Yin Han, Xiao Yang, Zhao Fangru, Ruan Sisi)
Sign-up details: I love everybody in this bar. I just want to roll around in this world more - see a little more of everyone's lives after or in-between, just off-screen. I love how warm this show is, how much making and deepening connections enriches everyone's lives and opens up possibilities they could never have seen. More of that, please, with whomever you like.
DNWs: PWP, infidelity, modern AU
Little potential prompts, since I've allowed such a wide variety of possibilities:
- I would love to see a snapshot a year, a few years, into the future. Some new development or new addition to the group gives a lens into the lives they've been carrying on since the show ended? Or Yuan Ying comes for her first extended visit in a while and sees all the changes with her own eyes? (cough second-chance romance with Li Wei and/or Yin Zheng on her own terms?)
- Li Wei and Yin Zheng vs parenthood
- AU where Hao Jia's scheming didn't work and she ended up married to Yin Qi - what would THAT look like? Feel free to also focus on a ripple effect with the matches - someone else paired with someone different than in the show.
- alternately: Shangguan Yan bargained for a ruzhui situation pre-canon rather than when Yin Zheng visited and (brother of your choice) gets dunked headfirst into the cultural dissonance of living in Dan State, while Shangguan Jing is both grateful to stay home and dealing with New Person in Her Space that she didn't ask to be saddled with
- Yin Han/Xiao Yang shipper(s), I see you. I would read more of these two. Also, a blanket note that non-canon pairings are fun for me, go wild
- What is Ruan Sisi's story, anyway? What's her background, what are early days after marriage like for her, etc etc. Would love to see her bloom more post-canon in her own way as well, find a niche to really make her own.
- Hao Jia and Zhao Fangru...so many fun tidbits I'd love to see expanded on from the show: raising a baby together? Hao Jia's crossdressing flirtation moment with Zhao Fangru? Both: settling down somewhere just far enough away to get away with it as a married couple (no one has to know Hao Jia isn't a suspiciously pretty young man)?
Space Shuttle No. 8 (Jeff Satur Music Videos)
Any (Husband (Ghost/Yellow Leaf), Sunshine, Moonshine, 00008, Lucid, Black, Ghost, Worldbuilding)
Sign-up details: I love crossing over these characters and making connections between them, whether it's just putting them in a room together without much explanation why or a lore-heavy connect-the-dots. The bigger on aesthetics and weirdness the better. Mirrors, foils, paths diverging and coming together.
DNWs: PWP
First off, if you're looking for a five-minute yuletide fandom, do I have some options for you. (Multiple of these characters are from just 1 music video, and honestly even if you watch all the music videos that's not much of your time). If you're interested, check out this excellent primer from airgiodslv on tumblr.
Here are some prompts:
- For these stories specifically I think I would enjoy trust/wariness, power/vulnerability (particularly being a powerful entity and struggling with the things you're missing despite that and the difficulty of showing soft underbelly), mirrors and foils, action, the power of a well-arranged story (in the in-universe sense—characters aware of their role or performing a persona, possibly narrative itself as a kind of magic), and sff takes both within and outside the bounds of what we're shown on screen
- ANYTHING fleshing out Black Tie would be so fun. I just think there's opportunity to get so metaphysical with it. Delve into apocalyptic horror, Black Tie!Jeff as some kind of god or other powerful being, what's up with the mirrors, etc etc
- Sunshine + Businessman Jeff (Dum Dum) + others as Old Guard/Jack Harkness style unkillable immortals, possibly leaning more hired gun than hero, possibly with other superpowers (Sunshine telekinesis moment on the shuttle, anyone?)
- Sunshine is a space bounty hunter after leather jacket Jeff; who wants him and what will be the result of this meeting? Bonus for them having history, knowing of each other, but never having met until now
- I love weird dimension travel stuff and parallel worlds which all of these seem ripe for
- I am really intrigued by the idea of crossovers involving multiple of them as clones, or possibly multiple characters escaping or getting trapped in webnovels (based around Happy Ending), or becoming aware of themselves as simulations and finding ways to change their stories/take control of the simulation (inspired by the SS8 photobook)
Long list of favorite tropes and themes: family (found or birth) and friendship, platonic intimacy, polyamory, time travel and dimension-crossing, secret identity, political intrigue, AUs generally, loyalty, finally getting to live when you thought that was off the table, mutual pining, heists, only one bed, fake dating/marriage and arranged marriages, truth or dare (and other games that involve gambling your closely held heart), fleshing out minor characters, trying to explain the changes in your life since the last time you saw someone but it ends up sounding absurd because your life took some wild turns, interactive fiction/games/puzzles, found media/epistolary and other nontraditional narrative structures
Love Like the Galaxy
Cheng Shaoshang, Huo Buyi, Yuan Shen (must feature all, except for exceptions in sign-up)
Sign-up details: Exceptions: Any two of these three in combination would be fun to me - I have feelings about a potential OT3 with them, but in a way that each arm is fascinating to me. (Manifesto to come in my letter!) This does mean that I would be into just CSS/HBY, that IS on the table.
DNWs: Dom/sub, humiliation kink, calling someone slut/whore/etc as dirty talk, infidelity, modern AU
Okay, so here's the promised manifesto on Cheng Shaoshang-Huo Buyi-Yuan Shen. Some of it is cribbed from a post I previously wrote on tumblr.
At the end of the show, there is 1 loose thread: Yuan Shen still claiming (despite all suggestions to the contrary) that he is a cold-hearted person who doesn't care about love. Now to preface this: I will invent an aro or ace narrative out of tiny crumbs. This is NOT the vibe I get from him. He liked Shaoshang so much he did truly stupid things, especially while her teacher, and then he was going to pine while married to her, and THEN stepped nobly aside in clear growth from his previous jealous crush hijinks.
Also by the end, Yuan Shen and Huo Buyi have a fun rapport and can talk to each other on the same level in a way we don't really see for either of them with anyone besides Shaoshang (and maybe Third Prince, but Buyi is still his subordinate). They care about each other for Shaoshang's sake, but we also see them work well together and there's seeds of what could be a strong relationship, whatever form that takes.
Cheng Shaoshang and Yuan Shen went from "I don't know about this" to one of my favoite dynamics by the end. I thirst for more of them. They should get to be bitchy gossip friends. They are willing to pick at each other until things get serious, and then they are absolutely ride or die for each other. They are mirrors and understand each other's deep fears about intimacy and abandonment, even if they take different routes in addressing them in the show.
There are so many routes to explore these relationships and I have managed to finish writing ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THEM myself. Please join me in the pit. Thank you.
All of that said, I also adore Cheng Shaoshang and Huo Buyi's dynamic - the way they challenge each other and come to a better understanding of each other and what they will give and take in a relationship. I'd be truly happy to see more of them post-canon as well, or an AU that explores their dynamic if they met under different circumstances.
Prompts:
- post-canon OT3 get-together
- AU: Shaoshang and Yuan Shen get married before Huo Buyi makes his way back to the capital; Huo Buyi and Shaoshang reconnect and must navigate the grey area this plunges them into
- Casefic! 2-3 of them solving a mystery together a la that section in canon where there was a bunch of these in a row
- Honestly this is the single one of the fandoms I'm requesting that I'd be really into porn-as-character-study. My blorbos with so many intimacy and trust issues and sooo much yearning. Bonus for pining while fucking.
The Blood of Youth
Ye Ruoyi, Tang Lian (must feature one or more, giver's choice)
Sign-up details: Both of these characters are just scrumptious to me. (So are many characters!! But I'm sticking to these two). For Ye Ruoyi, I'm particularly fascinated with her long-standing bond with Xiao Se and the way she gets to lean into delight with Lei Wujie, and I want to see her getting to have adventures post-canon. For Tang Lian, I love him as da-shixiong to our main bunch, I wish him a very time to recover/process/build the version of himself he wants to be and reunions in all their complexity, and I also really wanted more of his relationship with Fairy Rui.
DNWs: Non-canonical major character death, PWP, infidelity, modern AU
Ye Ruoyi:
To expand on what I said above, I love that we see her sense of adventure awakening, that she now has hopes and the ability to travel the world and have the same kind of silly power-up adventures everyone else has been having. She's had to be quiet and/or sensible for so long! I would love to see this paired with Ye Ruoyi/Lei Wujie, since he draws out so much of that in her.
Optional prompt for this: Ye Ruoyi visits Sword Heart Tomb and goes through a trial for a cool sword that tests some of her character development. Has she been too cautious after knowing her limits for too long and having different ones now and needs a push to break through to the next step? Her commitment to loyalty and duty versus her newfound path towards adventure and learning? Maybe something keying into her and Lei Wujie still figuring out what they are to each other?
I also love her relationship with Xiao Se, that they have known each other so long and so well but decided a romantic relationship was not for them. I adore relationships that can kind of slide along a platonic/not platonic divide and I would be into them as friends with benefits or besties or really anything other than straightforward romance. I'm also super super fascinated by that scene in episode 17 where Xiao Se says, "I know it'll hurt a lot, but I know you can survive it. Hang in there," very calmly and steadily. Would love something that explored them knowing each other's limits through hard experience, maybe being the only one able to really push them with the other.
Tang Lian:
Look, I am a sucker for reunions after one character is presumed dead and I am always down to see Tang Lian's re-emergence into the world expanded upon. I'd love to see the aftermath of the extra little episode: Tang Lian trying to fit back into the spaces he left, dealing with the ways he's changed, the life he wants, and the very real grief his loved ones went through while he was gone. He told Fairy Rui that he would come back after that fight with Dark River as just Tang Lian. What does that LOOK like? I wanted to see that so badly - it was why his death hit me so hard.
Speaking of Fairy Rui! I would also love to see his relationship with her expanded upon. The vibe seems to be that they ran missions together and she wanted a relationship and he was Not Ready until, right at the end, he was. Flirting and flusterment and wanting-but-not-allowing-himself during pre-canon casefic would be just as great as post-canon making good on his promises. (Or both!)
I'm not against shipping him with others, but if you go that route, please don't ignore Rui or make her the bad guy in a breakup, if that's what happens. I am always down for polyamory/consensual non-monogamy, and I'm also down for it didn't work out and sometimes part of growing is realizing when a thing won't work. But that relationship is important to his character for me!
New Life Begins
Any (Li Wei, Yuan Ying, Yin Zheng, Hao Jia, Shangguan Jing, Yin Han, Xiao Yang, Zhao Fangru, Ruan Sisi)
Sign-up details: I love everybody in this bar. I just want to roll around in this world more - see a little more of everyone's lives after or in-between, just off-screen. I love how warm this show is, how much making and deepening connections enriches everyone's lives and opens up possibilities they could never have seen. More of that, please, with whomever you like.
DNWs: PWP, infidelity, modern AU
Little potential prompts, since I've allowed such a wide variety of possibilities:
- I would love to see a snapshot a year, a few years, into the future. Some new development or new addition to the group gives a lens into the lives they've been carrying on since the show ended? Or Yuan Ying comes for her first extended visit in a while and sees all the changes with her own eyes? (cough second-chance romance with Li Wei and/or Yin Zheng on her own terms?)
- Li Wei and Yin Zheng vs parenthood
- AU where Hao Jia's scheming didn't work and she ended up married to Yin Qi - what would THAT look like? Feel free to also focus on a ripple effect with the matches - someone else paired with someone different than in the show.
- alternately: Shangguan Yan bargained for a ruzhui situation pre-canon rather than when Yin Zheng visited and (brother of your choice) gets dunked headfirst into the cultural dissonance of living in Dan State, while Shangguan Jing is both grateful to stay home and dealing with New Person in Her Space that she didn't ask to be saddled with
- Yin Han/Xiao Yang shipper(s), I see you. I would read more of these two. Also, a blanket note that non-canon pairings are fun for me, go wild
- What is Ruan Sisi's story, anyway? What's her background, what are early days after marriage like for her, etc etc. Would love to see her bloom more post-canon in her own way as well, find a niche to really make her own.
- Hao Jia and Zhao Fangru...so many fun tidbits I'd love to see expanded on from the show: raising a baby together? Hao Jia's crossdressing flirtation moment with Zhao Fangru? Both: settling down somewhere just far enough away to get away with it as a married couple (no one has to know Hao Jia isn't a suspiciously pretty young man)?
Space Shuttle No. 8 (Jeff Satur Music Videos)
Any (Husband (Ghost/Yellow Leaf), Sunshine, Moonshine, 00008, Lucid, Black, Ghost, Worldbuilding)
Sign-up details: I love crossing over these characters and making connections between them, whether it's just putting them in a room together without much explanation why or a lore-heavy connect-the-dots. The bigger on aesthetics and weirdness the better. Mirrors, foils, paths diverging and coming together.
DNWs: PWP
First off, if you're looking for a five-minute yuletide fandom, do I have some options for you. (Multiple of these characters are from just 1 music video, and honestly even if you watch all the music videos that's not much of your time). If you're interested, check out this excellent primer from airgiodslv on tumblr.
Here are some prompts:
- For these stories specifically I think I would enjoy trust/wariness, power/vulnerability (particularly being a powerful entity and struggling with the things you're missing despite that and the difficulty of showing soft underbelly), mirrors and foils, action, the power of a well-arranged story (in the in-universe sense—characters aware of their role or performing a persona, possibly narrative itself as a kind of magic), and sff takes both within and outside the bounds of what we're shown on screen
- ANYTHING fleshing out Black Tie would be so fun. I just think there's opportunity to get so metaphysical with it. Delve into apocalyptic horror, Black Tie!Jeff as some kind of god or other powerful being, what's up with the mirrors, etc etc
- Sunshine + Businessman Jeff (Dum Dum) + others as Old Guard/Jack Harkness style unkillable immortals, possibly leaning more hired gun than hero, possibly with other superpowers (Sunshine telekinesis moment on the shuttle, anyone?)
- Sunshine is a space bounty hunter after leather jacket Jeff; who wants him and what will be the result of this meeting? Bonus for them having history, knowing of each other, but never having met until now
- I love weird dimension travel stuff and parallel worlds which all of these seem ripe for
- I am really intrigued by the idea of crossovers involving multiple of them as clones, or possibly multiple characters escaping or getting trapped in webnovels (based around Happy Ending), or becoming aware of themselves as simulations and finding ways to change their stories/take control of the simulation (inspired by the SS8 photobook)
