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Dear Yuletide Author
Oct. 12th, 2020 09:54 pmHere's my yuletide letter! I'm Gammarad on AO3.
General likes: cats (including cat-like fantasy creatures or spirits), aliens (including cat-like and human-like aliens as well as ones like nothing at all on Earth), friendship, rivalry, enemies, eerie supernatural stuff, unusual settings, ancient history (BCE), science fiction, technology, AI, robots, cyborgs, worldbuilding. Older mature characters.
& ship likes: Loyalty - either one way or mutual, enemies who have a certain understanding, colleagues who rely on each other, colleagues who undermine each other, employee & employer relatioship either with loyalty or with one using the other, parent & child relationships with protectiveness, student & teacher relationships with mutual desire to learn, criminal & victim relationships with complexities, bounty hunter & target relationships where they have to be taken alive (or where the target is just that hard to kill), stranger & potential new friend (but also potential new threat) relationships, allies of convenience. One character noticing things about the other and sharing insights (or not, as their character dictates). Doing something meaningful without being asked. Bickering. Using someone's observed weakness against them. The way only someone close to them can hurt them like that.
/ ship likes: Pining, previous and/or background ships, cheating or adultery, equal partnerships, casual consensual D/s elements, different sorts of beings (like AI/human or vampire/human or AI/vampire or alien/different kind of alien, you get the idea) in love. Being able to see what makes that person the one they want. Being perfect for each other but not knowing it yet. Characters struggling to figure out how to show their love. Characters who have good reason to think the person they want isn't right for them but can't help it. Obsessive unhealthy love. Complicated relationships with give and take and balance issues. Canon poly.
Plotty likes: intelligent non-humans, learning to get along despite differences, working out misaligned goals. Myth inspired plots or fairy tale retellings, mysteries, ghost stories, adventure stories, coming of age stories, romances, case or mission fic, noir style, pastiche of canon, pastiche of something other than the canon you're actually writing. Happy for now endings, bittersweet endings, knowing what you have won't last forever, getting what they want and realizing it's not what they need, getting what they need even though it wasn't what they thought they wanted, taking what they can get in lieu of what they really need or want.
Smut likes: Older human characters having explicit sex. Saying with physical affection what they can't say out loud. Solving problems in sex (difficulty climaxing, premature ejaculation, injury does not allow for their usual sex, that kind of thing). Sex toys, improvised sex toys, edging, honor bondage, orgasm denial. D/s (with equal amounts of experience or with the submissive person more experienced, I also like couples who switch who is dominant), vampires with sexy blood drinking, aliens with strange genitalia, robots or cyborgs with technological genitalia.
Style likes: I like a whole broad variety of styles. First person, second person, omniscient narrator (like a historian or telepath or seer or deity), same as canon, totally different from canon for reasons, carefully preserved realism, blend of realism vs fantastical elements, fourth wall breaking, epistolary, unreliable narrator, close third person, out-of-order storytelling, time jumps, dream scenes, surreal or stream-of-consciousness interludes, main character viewpoint, outsider viewpoint including POV of AI, cats, ghosts, deities, or other unusual being. Reallly, go with whatever best suits your personal style or your chosen story.
DNWs: Any sexual activity with children under 16, any explicit sex with any character under 18 or who is not an adult in their setting and culture, stories focused on serial killers, nonconsensual sex with a member of a gender they aren't attracted to (you don't have to establish that they're attracted to that sex, just don't establish that they aren't), setting change AUs like coffeeshop AU or omegaverse AU or unrequested crossover AU that takes my requested characters to another story's setting.
(It would be completely fine if you want to bring characters from another canon into the world of Megalophilia or into Ul Qoma as cameos, though, as long as the story has focus on the requested setting/worldbuilding, and you give enough information about the imported characters that I don't need to be familiar with the canon they're from.)
(Any characters / none nominated / worldbuilding) What I love is the whole setting of the two (or three) cities and their overlapping. Any story set there would work, especially if the city (cities) are kind of the main character. You can make up original characters to embody the story. I'd also love to read a story about any of the canon characters. Something mostly set in Ul Qoma would be great, since it's not examined as much in the book as Besźel.
Character: Chuz
Feel free to have him interacting with any of the other Lords or with his canon love interest or any of his subjects. He could be the canon sort of figure showing up in a story essentially about someone else to play a key role, or he could be the story's main or viewpoint character. Also, you could cross him over with the Sandman series (Gaiman, Vertigo comics) and have him meet one of the Endless, too, if that seemed interesting.
Character: Elu Ariehmu
Feel free to have him interact with any canon character - Yasira, Tiv, Akavi, Enga, Nemesis, Dr. Talirr, or perhaps a more minor character, maybe one of the people that the team had hunting Talirr before they found Yasira?
I'd love anything about Elu's relationship with Akavi, who he clearly adores and wants more from than Akavi is willing to give, or his friendship and collegiality with Enga, who he has built cybernetic enhancements for that she loves. It'd also be great to see his viewpoint on his interactions with anyone he's had to confront on behalf of Nemesis. He's an inveterate "good cop" type who insists on being personable despite the terrible things the Nemesis angels are probably going to do - their way of handling things is a lot like a criminal organization, which makes sense since most of them are criminals, but Elu is not. He works differently.
Characters: Nineteen Adze, Yskandr Agavn, and Six Direction
I'd love an exploration of some of the things that happened before canon with these three. From the book, it seems like there was a lot of it. I'm open to any sort of relationship that fits the canon hints to be in the story, romance or allies with benefits or allies suspicious of each others' motives or the first time they meet or anything really as long as it's about those characters in the canon setting will make me happy.
The story can absolutely be gen political stuff, or shippy smut, or anywhere in between... it's all good.
Story available here: Yellow and... on tor.com
Any character(s): the narrator (June Harris), her sister (Wanda Harris), the octopus (Claude), one of the other scientists (Kyle Choi)
I really loved this story and the world it created and the characters and implications. Between this story, Kado: the Right Answer and the Outside, there's a sort of concept of reality being too devastating for human beings to really comprehend or withstand knowing too much about. What happens when Wanda finally relearns how to talk and interact? Does she spread the damaging knowledge or is it too incomprehensible to communicate?
What is Claude up to that the aquarium keepers don't know about? Or back story for any of the human characters would be great, what they were doing in the weeks leading up to the events that ended up injuring Wanda and killing the men she worked with. Or something with June and her interactions with Wanda's doctors, or with Wanda herself, or with Claude?
We barely learn anything about Kyle, what was his life like, and what led him to take the path he did? You could do a canon divergence where Kyle survives instead of Wanda, maybe a role reversal between their two parts, and June visits Kyle instead, trying to learn what happened to her sister from him perhaps?
View many of the pictures here:
https://ariduka55.tumblr.com/
http://tendencee.com.br/2019/03/ilustrador-japones-imagina-um-mundo-onde-seres-humanos-vivem-entre-animais-gigantes/
https://imgur.com/a/s8p2cCY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzWIQyl4pc4 Youtube video of these pictures and some of the rest in the book they're from
https://happylaw.tumblr.com/post/184570734587/megalophilia-monokubo-artbook-part-1
https://happylaw.tumblr.com/post/184570750142/megalophilia-monokubo-artbook-part-2
(some of my favorites will be linked below with prompts, but all the pictures in the series are open to your storytelling)
The odd-eyed white cat is a recurring character. What is the cat doing about that crystal? Is it collecting them or are they healing the cat or maybe making a deal? The black cat seems larger than the white one. It appears in several pictures as well, and there's one where both cats meet that artist - who is she? What do they need her to do or are they just fond of her artwork?
The woman and the mantis fairy look like they love each other. Are they a romantic couple? or is the human a human-reflection of the fairy or vice versa? Is it a single person who can shapeshift being depicted?
The creature with the coffee cup and the other one with the lamp might be the same kind of creature - maybe they meet? Maybe the human friends each has introduce them to each other? What sort of beings are they and what is their society like and why are they interacting with humans - maybe they're aliens of some kind? or spirit creatures? Maybe they can go invisible... or maybe it's a world where their sort of person are commonplace alongside humans? What is it like there?
As for the owl, maybe where it got its jewelry, or why it came to the city - was it looking for something? or someone? or just lost...
Fandoms requested:
Click to jump ahead to fandom specific details- The City & the City
- Flat Earth series
- The Outside - Hoffmann
- Teixcalaan (A Memory Called Empire)
- Yellow and the Perception of Reality
- Megalophilia (Monokubo)
Likes:
General likes: cats (including cat-like fantasy creatures or spirits), aliens (including cat-like and human-like aliens as well as ones like nothing at all on Earth), friendship, rivalry, enemies, eerie supernatural stuff, unusual settings, ancient history (BCE), science fiction, technology, AI, robots, cyborgs, worldbuilding. Older mature characters.
& ship likes: Loyalty - either one way or mutual, enemies who have a certain understanding, colleagues who rely on each other, colleagues who undermine each other, employee & employer relatioship either with loyalty or with one using the other, parent & child relationships with protectiveness, student & teacher relationships with mutual desire to learn, criminal & victim relationships with complexities, bounty hunter & target relationships where they have to be taken alive (or where the target is just that hard to kill), stranger & potential new friend (but also potential new threat) relationships, allies of convenience. One character noticing things about the other and sharing insights (or not, as their character dictates). Doing something meaningful without being asked. Bickering. Using someone's observed weakness against them. The way only someone close to them can hurt them like that.
/ ship likes: Pining, previous and/or background ships, cheating or adultery, equal partnerships, casual consensual D/s elements, different sorts of beings (like AI/human or vampire/human or AI/vampire or alien/different kind of alien, you get the idea) in love. Being able to see what makes that person the one they want. Being perfect for each other but not knowing it yet. Characters struggling to figure out how to show their love. Characters who have good reason to think the person they want isn't right for them but can't help it. Obsessive unhealthy love. Complicated relationships with give and take and balance issues. Canon poly.
Plotty likes: intelligent non-humans, learning to get along despite differences, working out misaligned goals. Myth inspired plots or fairy tale retellings, mysteries, ghost stories, adventure stories, coming of age stories, romances, case or mission fic, noir style, pastiche of canon, pastiche of something other than the canon you're actually writing. Happy for now endings, bittersweet endings, knowing what you have won't last forever, getting what they want and realizing it's not what they need, getting what they need even though it wasn't what they thought they wanted, taking what they can get in lieu of what they really need or want.
Smut likes: Older human characters having explicit sex. Saying with physical affection what they can't say out loud. Solving problems in sex (difficulty climaxing, premature ejaculation, injury does not allow for their usual sex, that kind of thing). Sex toys, improvised sex toys, edging, honor bondage, orgasm denial. D/s (with equal amounts of experience or with the submissive person more experienced, I also like couples who switch who is dominant), vampires with sexy blood drinking, aliens with strange genitalia, robots or cyborgs with technological genitalia.
Style likes: I like a whole broad variety of styles. First person, second person, omniscient narrator (like a historian or telepath or seer or deity), same as canon, totally different from canon for reasons, carefully preserved realism, blend of realism vs fantastical elements, fourth wall breaking, epistolary, unreliable narrator, close third person, out-of-order storytelling, time jumps, dream scenes, surreal or stream-of-consciousness interludes, main character viewpoint, outsider viewpoint including POV of AI, cats, ghosts, deities, or other unusual being. Reallly, go with whatever best suits your personal style or your chosen story.
DNWs: Any sexual activity with children under 16, any explicit sex with any character under 18 or who is not an adult in their setting and culture, stories focused on serial killers, nonconsensual sex with a member of a gender they aren't attracted to (you don't have to establish that they're attracted to that sex, just don't establish that they aren't), setting change AUs like coffeeshop AU or omegaverse AU or unrequested crossover AU that takes my requested characters to another story's setting.
(It would be completely fine if you want to bring characters from another canon into the world of Megalophilia or into Ul Qoma as cameos, though, as long as the story has focus on the requested setting/worldbuilding, and you give enough information about the imported characters that I don't need to be familiar with the canon they're from.)
The City & the City
(Any characters / none nominated / worldbuilding) What I love is the whole setting of the two (or three) cities and their overlapping. Any story set there would work, especially if the city (cities) are kind of the main character. You can make up original characters to embody the story. I'd also love to read a story about any of the canon characters. Something mostly set in Ul Qoma would be great, since it's not examined as much in the book as Besźel.
Flat Earth series
Character: Chuz
Feel free to have him interacting with any of the other Lords or with his canon love interest or any of his subjects. He could be the canon sort of figure showing up in a story essentially about someone else to play a key role, or he could be the story's main or viewpoint character. Also, you could cross him over with the Sandman series (Gaiman, Vertigo comics) and have him meet one of the Endless, too, if that seemed interesting.
The Outside - Hoffmann
Character: Elu Ariehmu
Feel free to have him interact with any canon character - Yasira, Tiv, Akavi, Enga, Nemesis, Dr. Talirr, or perhaps a more minor character, maybe one of the people that the team had hunting Talirr before they found Yasira?
I'd love anything about Elu's relationship with Akavi, who he clearly adores and wants more from than Akavi is willing to give, or his friendship and collegiality with Enga, who he has built cybernetic enhancements for that she loves. It'd also be great to see his viewpoint on his interactions with anyone he's had to confront on behalf of Nemesis. He's an inveterate "good cop" type who insists on being personable despite the terrible things the Nemesis angels are probably going to do - their way of handling things is a lot like a criminal organization, which makes sense since most of them are criminals, but Elu is not. He works differently.
Teixcalaan (A Memory Called Empire)
Characters: Nineteen Adze, Yskandr Agavn, and Six Direction
I'd love an exploration of some of the things that happened before canon with these three. From the book, it seems like there was a lot of it. I'm open to any sort of relationship that fits the canon hints to be in the story, romance or allies with benefits or allies suspicious of each others' motives or the first time they meet or anything really as long as it's about those characters in the canon setting will make me happy.
The story can absolutely be gen political stuff, or shippy smut, or anywhere in between... it's all good.
Yellow and the Perception of Reality
Story available here: Yellow and... on tor.com
Any character(s): the narrator (June Harris), her sister (Wanda Harris), the octopus (Claude), one of the other scientists (Kyle Choi)
I really loved this story and the world it created and the characters and implications. Between this story, Kado: the Right Answer and the Outside, there's a sort of concept of reality being too devastating for human beings to really comprehend or withstand knowing too much about. What happens when Wanda finally relearns how to talk and interact? Does she spread the damaging knowledge or is it too incomprehensible to communicate?
What is Claude up to that the aquarium keepers don't know about? Or back story for any of the human characters would be great, what they were doing in the weeks leading up to the events that ended up injuring Wanda and killing the men she worked with. Or something with June and her interactions with Wanda's doctors, or with Wanda herself, or with Claude?
We barely learn anything about Kyle, what was his life like, and what led him to take the path he did? You could do a canon divergence where Kyle survives instead of Wanda, maybe a role reversal between their two parts, and June visits Kyle instead, trying to learn what happened to her sister from him perhaps?
Megalophilia (Monokubo)
Gorgeous pictures of giant fluffy animals and strange alien and spirit creatures, fairies or monsters or cryptids or something in between. I'd love it if you took one or several of the pictures and created a story that made sense of them and tied them together, giving the characters in the books personality and goals and conflict. Or tell a story about how the world depicted in the pictures came to have such enormous cats and pandas and raccoons and all the rest.View many of the pictures here:
https://ariduka55.tumblr.com/
http://tendencee.com.br/2019/03/ilustrador-japones-imagina-um-mundo-onde-seres-humanos-vivem-entre-animais-gigantes/
https://imgur.com/a/s8p2cCY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzWIQyl4pc4 Youtube video of these pictures and some of the rest in the book they're from
https://happylaw.tumblr.com/post/184570734587/megalophilia-monokubo-artbook-part-1
https://happylaw.tumblr.com/post/184570750142/megalophilia-monokubo-artbook-part-2
(some of my favorites will be linked below with prompts, but all the pictures in the series are open to your storytelling)
The odd-eyed white cat is a recurring character. What is the cat doing about that crystal? Is it collecting them or are they healing the cat or maybe making a deal? The black cat seems larger than the white one. It appears in several pictures as well, and there's one where both cats meet that artist - who is she? What do they need her to do or are they just fond of her artwork?
The woman and the mantis fairy look like they love each other. Are they a romantic couple? or is the human a human-reflection of the fairy or vice versa? Is it a single person who can shapeshift being depicted?
The creature with the coffee cup and the other one with the lamp might be the same kind of creature - maybe they meet? Maybe the human friends each has introduce them to each other? What sort of beings are they and what is their society like and why are they interacting with humans - maybe they're aliens of some kind? or spirit creatures? Maybe they can go invisible... or maybe it's a world where their sort of person are commonplace alongside humans? What is it like there?
As for the owl, maybe where it got its jewelry, or why it came to the city - was it looking for something? or someone? or just lost...
