Aurora (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
auroracloud) wrote2019-11-03 11:39 pm
auroracloud) wrote2019-11-03 11:39 pm
Dear Yuletide Writer
Dear Yuletide Writer
Thank you so much for writing for me! I'm super into all these fandoms and characters, and there isn't enough fic about any of them, whether the number of existing fics is 1 or 150 or whatever. So I'm sure I'll be pleased with whatever you write for me. I like a whole load of things and genres and stuff, so feel free to go wild. I'm providing some prompts and things-I-like in this letter and the sign-up, but these are just to help spark your imagination, if you are a writer who works better with prompts and details. You absolutely don't need to stick to writing about something I've explicitly mentioned.
(Note early on Nov. 4th: I may edit this slightly later in the day, as I edited some sign-up details and don't have the time to finish editing the letter now. But it's nothing major, just some phrasings and prompts and such - the fandoms, characters and the DNWs are valid as is.)
I like gen, f/f, m/m, m/f and other things. I like many genres and tropes, for example adventures, mysteries, romance, smut, domestic/slice of life, fluff, angst (with a happy or sort-of-happy ending because otherwise my feelings get too down, but it doesn't mean you have to make problems disappear), character studies, missing moments, past fic, future fic. I usually like either canon universe or fork-in-the-road/canon divergence AUs. If you want to write crossovers with two (or more!) of these fandoms, or with one of these fandoms and another fandom you know I like, feel free to do so.
Mostly I've discovered/read these books only fairly recently (save for the Wayfarers series) so if I say something dumb because my brain is having a useless moment, just ignore it.
I'm okay with fairly dark stuff depending on how present those themes are in canon. Ie. you can go darker with Machineries of Empire than with other things. I'm okay with stories dealing with mental health issues, especially ones that are present in canon as well, but please tag for them so I know when I start reading. I have some mental health issues myself, and while sometimes reading about characters dealing (or not dealing) with theirs is helpful, it's good to know that's coming up. And I'd prefer not getting super deep into suicidal/self-harm stuff even if it's canon. Warn for anything that requires warning, but generally, stuff that the canon deals with is also okay in fic, as long as we know.
A general list of things I like. Not an exhaustive list, and all things aren't applicable to all fandoms, but feel free to take something you like.
Space, stars, astronomy
Science
Worldbuilding, including culture and customs
Food, cakes and biscuits, tea
Sensory details
Books, music, arts
Characters being really into something and geeking out about it, whether it's Cheris with her maths or Breq collecting songs or Pepper and her mad tech/mechanics skills
- Humour, also when interlaced with serious/dark stuff
- Hurt/comfort (for emotional hurt or physical injury, and usually leaning rather towards the comfort than the hurt, but depends on how the canon handles it, as well)
- Friendship and found/chosen family
- Touching, hugging, clinging, physical comfort, whether platonic or not
- Banter
- People having to work together despite personal issues, disagreements or other issues
- Also working together while not taking the other's shit
- Dreams and nightmares
- letters, epistolary format, diaries, unusual formats like encyclopedia entries or news articles or what have you
- Handwriting and fountain pens
- Smart women
- Bad-ass women (I have such a thing for women who could easily kill me or, preferably, my enemies, and I'm not going to psychoanalyze that now)
- To be clear, I also like nice women (and other folks) who aren't going to kill anyone. I'm actually a near-pacifist and squeamish about violence, but look, being a person is complicated so I have complicated likes.
- Emotionally vulnerable and/or messed up men. Okay, emotionally vulnerable and/or messed up people of any gender whatsoever.
- Allllll the queers
- Women, LGBTQ+ folks and minorities supporting one another
- Overthrowing tyranny, rebellion; this may be obvious from the choice of fandoms
- Nature and animals
- Crafts and hobbies
Do Not Want:
- gore, strong violence, torture
- non-canonical death of canon characters
- Underage, child abuse, incest
- non-con, rape, very dubious consent
- Unhappy endings (ambiguous/bittersweet is fine if that's how the story rolls)
different-universe type AUs, unless it's a crossover/fusion with another requested fandom or another sci-fi fandom you know I like. But especially please no college/highschool/coffee house/werewolf/Wild West/etc. type AUs. The one exception is Machineries of Empire where I'm surprisingly open to wildly different AUs as well. Though I'd still prefer to avoid really US-specific environments because look, we get that in culture a lot already.
- A/B/O or mpreg.
Also, I don't really believe these things need to be stated for these fandoms, so this isn't going into my sign-ups, but no homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, aphobia, sexism, racism, ableism and other ways of ignoring the rights and needs of vulnerable/marginalized/oppressed groups.
And here be the requests! It's mostly just the same stuff as in my sign-up, but for some fandoms I have additional notes. Also, the Machineries of Empire part includes some post-Glass Cannon prompts after the sign-up part, so if you haven't read Glass Cannon, skip that.
Imperial Radch — Ann Leckie
Characters: Breq, Seivarden, Mercy of Kalr
I love these three characters and their interactions and relationship(s) so much. I do ship them as an OT3, so feel free to run with that, but you don't have to write a shippy fic if you don't want to (though when two of the characters are ships, I guess it's hard to avoid being shippy… okay, I'll stop in the bad overused puns department). I'm also interested in any kind of gen about interactions or domestic moments aboard Mercy of Kalr or other places we see, about space travel and other sci-fi shenanigans, or about the budding Republic of Two Systems, or How Much Everyone Cares About Breq, or any futures or adventures or cute or angsty moments during or after the series are all appreciated. Feel free to include any other characters from the series, I basically love them all (except the ones you're meant to hate, but then I love to hate them).
Some prompts:
- negotiating just how the weird poly ship love arrangement between them might go
- Seivarden and Ship connecting over loving Breq, or something else
- I'm always a sucker for comforting people who've had bad stuff happen to them, so any of that, with any of the characters, would make me happy
- Breq endangering herself to help others is a theme, and I'm sure Seivarden and Ship will have feelings about that.
- Tea! Food! Breq liking songs! any of that mundane life stuff.
- How do A.I.s go about establishing a republic, anyway?
For shippy stuff, I'm happy with any flavour. It can be asexual Breq just liking cuddles with Seivarden and connection with both her and Ship and their relationship not needing anything else. It can be romantic without sex, or it explicitly sexual between any of the three characters, however you arrange that; it can be anything in between those or something else. But if there is sex, I want all participants to want it equally, rather than someone being pressured to accept it as a part of the relationship. Also, if there isn't sex, the relationship(s) aren't treated as lesser or less complete than a relationship with sex would be. Basically, I want everyone's choices and desires to be respected, regardless of how the situation carries out.
Do Not Want:
- gore, strong violence, torture
- non-canonical death of canon characters
- Underage sex (under 16), child abuse, incest
- non-con, rape, very dubious consent
- Unhappy endings (ambiguous/bittersweet is fine if that's how the story rolls)
different-universe type AUs, unless it's a crossover/fusion with another requested fandom or another sci-fi fandom you know I like. But especially please no college/highschool/coffee house/werewolf/Wild West/etc. type AUs.
- A/B/O or mpreg
Also: if it's a shippy fic, I'd prefer categorising it as Other (ie. Not F/F, M/F etc. It just feels more right to not slot Raadchai into genders.)
Additional note:If you want to add other characters, I'm particularly fond of Sphene, Translator Zeiat, Tisarwat, and Kalr Five (and Awn, but she might be a bit hard to add into this story) but like I said, I'm going to be happy no matter what. I like Ekalu and Seivarden/Ekalu well enough, so you can choose to include or not include that relationship, however you like.
This is How You Lose the Time War — Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Characters: Red, Blue
I love this book madly and would adore any fan content of it and these beautiful characters! Some suggestions:
- letters or scenes during the story that we didn't see in the book
- Red and Blue after the book ends! How do they recover from all the stuff that they go through? How do they communicate with each other in real time? How do they set up their own little bridge between time lines and defend it? How many dogs do they get and what are they like? Slice of life, scenes/snapshots, cuteness, smooches, conflicts, learning to understand one another, still writing each other letters, drinking tea, puns, angst, declarations of love, whatever you like!
- I'm also super into stuff involving time travel, different times and time strands, timey-wimeyness of how changing events transforms the possible outcomes, particular time periods they enjoy or people they meet, etc. Feel free to play with that if you want to, but no need if you don't want.
Please stick to canon universe, or canon divergence (fork-in-the-road) if you have a particularly alluring idea in mind.
Do Not Want:
- gore, strong violence, torture
- non-canonical death of canon characters
- Underage sex (under 16), child abuse, incest
- non-con, rape, very dubious consent
- Unhappy endings (ambiguous/bittersweet is fine if that's how the story rolls)
different-universe type AUs, unless it's a crossover/fusion with another requested fandom or another sci-fi fandom you know I like. But especially please no college/highschool/coffee house/werewolf/Wild West/etc. type AUs.
- A/B/O or mpreg
Additional note: this can be a good emergency fandom in the case you don't feel you can write another fandom we matched on, since it's a novella and doesn't take that long to read. So if you're in such a situation, you can take a look this up and see if you'd like to try it. It's basically time-travel enemies-to-friends-to-lovers f/f romance and super gorgeous. I wrote a non-spoilery review of it in my journal here.
Machineries of Empire — Yoon Ha Lee
Characters: Cheris, Jedao
Cheris is my favourite scifi BAMF and fighter-woman/mathematician. Jedao is my favourite dysfunctional I-shouldn't-love-him-but-I-do rebellious mess of an undead murderous general. Together, they fight tyranny! Or something.
I've come to this fandom pretty recently, because I'd previously not dared to read this series because I gathered it was going to have some dark content; but this summer I felt okay enough to give it a try, and I fell hard in love with it and basically read books Two and Three within a week in order to finish the series before the Hugo voting ended, which may not have been the smartest thing to do, but it was pretty amazing nonetheless. I bought Hexarchate Stories at WorldCon, and read it more slowly, but I finished it and Glass Cannon (the sequel novella) recently and it was all things amazing. I have some Glass Cannon specific prompts after my sign-up details which I didn't include in the sign-up so as not to spoil stuff, so while it's not detailed, quit reading after the DNWs if you haven't read Glass Cannon.
Sign-up details
I love the interactions between Cheris and Jedao, the unlikely yet delightful way in which they cooperate, their dysfunctional and weird and intense relationship. They're like a gen version of OTP for me, I can't get enough of their interactions and would happily read 100K words of them doing whatever. I much prefer gen for them and would prefer you don't ship them with each other, unless it's for crack/humour purposes or fake/arranged marriage AU or something. I'm fine with shipping either of them with other people, though.
In this fandom I am more open to weird AUs or crackfic than usually, probably because the canon setting is so weird and dark that you can do interesting things with AUs and crack, keeping the relationship between the characters but in a different setting, possibly with lower stakes. But I'm also still very much into canon or close-to-canon stuff.
Possible prompts/ideas:
- some missing scene/story taking place during Ninefox Gambit. Anything! Unseen adventure, conversations about anything at all, random moments from Cheris getting used to having a homicidal undead general in her head and nervous system, conspiring, random moments of Jedao mindfuck…
- Alternate ending to Ninefox Gambit where Jedao survives somehow and they go on to overthrow the Hexarchate together (even if possibly Jedao still in Cheris's head), rather than Cheris becoming a blend of them both
- I've recently read Glass Cannon and OMG! I so much want to read more about what happens next! Anything! I'm going to put the rest of my prompts in my letter so that this doesn't spoil things for people who haven't read it yet.
- Also, you can substitute original!Jedao for Jedao Two if you like, somehow dealing with his mess and Cheris, though I didn't request him. I love poor confused lonely young Jedao Two, too.
- I'm always into Cheris being awesome, Cheris being So Done with Jedao's bullshit but working together anyway, Cheris coping with insane situations, etc.
Feel free to add any other characters from the series if you want. I like/am interested in basically everyone, but if you want help choosing, I'm particularly fond of Khiruev, Hemiola, Brezan, Tseya, Mikodez, Zehun, Zehun's cats, and Nija. And I realise that's still quite a lot of characters, sorry!
Do Not Want
- more gore and violence than the books have. I was surprisingly fine with the Jedao-whump-fest of Glass Cannon, but let's not go further or get super descriptive, okay?
- non-canonical death of canon characters; by that I mean permanent death; temporary Jedao deaths aren't a problem, if he comes back.
- Changing either Cheris's or Jedao's sexual orientation from the information we have in canon.
- non-canon rape/non-con; I'm perfectly fine with dealing with consequences of anything that happened in canon
- non-canon cases of child abuse, underage sex (under 16) or incest
- A/B/O or mpreg.
NEXT: ADDITIONAL PROMPTS/THOUGHTS BASED ON GLASS CANNON, DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T READ GLASS CANNON NEXT, BECAUSE WHILE IT'S NOT DETAILED, I MIGHT STILL SPOIL SOME THINGS FOR YOU.
Additional prompts for Glass Cannon: I just so much want to read more about what happens next! Anything! Anything from Cheris and Jedao go shopping to Cheris and Jedao save/destroy the world together to Cheris and Jedao try to sort out some issues. How much will the mental link fuck up with their relationship? How can Jedao plot? How often will they annoy each other? How would things go if one of them tried to have a relationship/one-night-stand/something? What happens if they try to play chess against one another? How brain-hurting is it whenever they have different opinions about someone/something and keep hearing the other's thoughts? Is there a psychotherapist in the Hexarchate capable of dealing with either of them? How do Mikodez and Zehun deal with them? What do they do about the rise of the A.I.s with plans? How does being in a body of his own again work out for Jedao? Anything!
Wayfarers Series — Becky Chambers
Characters: Sidra, Tak, Pepper
I love these books and all the characters so much that I had a lot of trouble deciding who to request! But I decided eventually to go for Sidra, Tak, and Pepper from the second book in the series - and feel absolutely free to include Blue and Owl though I didn't specifically request them. I love the themes of carving out a place for yourself and creating yourself as who you want to be rather than who you've been made to be for the use of others, as well as overcoming trauma and learning how to live and belong. I also love the whole found family vibe all these characters eventually build together, and all the misunderstandings and prejudices that Sidra, Tak and Pepper all have to overcome.
I'd especially love stories taking place after A Closed and Common Orbit, or before the ending in the time when Sidra is setting up her bar and building her own way of living. I just want to see more of what happens to these characters after the last thing we see. But if you've got an idea for something that takes place during the book, that's fine, too. I would prefer sticking to canon rather than going AU.
I'm happy with both gen and shippy fic. I absolutely adore the friendship and found family themes and will be happy with a story with those. But if you have shippy ideas, I like Pepper/Blue, and it could be fun to see Sidra and Tak experimenting with romance and/or sex in what would certainly be a non-standard way, for an AI in human body and a genderfluid alien, both who really really like research… And if you want to go for a more poly arrangement, that's fine, too.
If you want to add characters from the other Wayfarers books, too, that would be neat! Maybe some of the Wayfarer crew stop by at Sidra's bar, or Kip and his friends from school end up travelling there when learning the ways of the universe. The only thing I don't want, please don't do any whiff of romance/attraction between Sidra and Jenks, I would find that really uncomfortable as it's important for Sidra's story to learn to be who she is, not who Lovey was.
Do Not Want:
- gore, strong violence, torture
- non-canonical death of canon characters
- Underage sex (under 16), child abuse, incest
- non-con, rape, very dubious consent
- Unhappy endings (ambiguous/bittersweet is fine if that's how the story rolls)
different-universe type AUs, unless it's a crossover/fusion with another requested fandom or another sci-fi fandom you know I like. But especially please no college/highschool/coffee house/werewolf/Wild West/etc. type AUs.
- A/B/O or mpreg
Thank you so much for writing for me! I'm super into all these fandoms and characters, and there isn't enough fic about any of them, whether the number of existing fics is 1 or 150 or whatever. So I'm sure I'll be pleased with whatever you write for me. I like a whole load of things and genres and stuff, so feel free to go wild. I'm providing some prompts and things-I-like in this letter and the sign-up, but these are just to help spark your imagination, if you are a writer who works better with prompts and details. You absolutely don't need to stick to writing about something I've explicitly mentioned.
(Note early on Nov. 4th: I may edit this slightly later in the day, as I edited some sign-up details and don't have the time to finish editing the letter now. But it's nothing major, just some phrasings and prompts and such - the fandoms, characters and the DNWs are valid as is.)
I like gen, f/f, m/m, m/f and other things. I like many genres and tropes, for example adventures, mysteries, romance, smut, domestic/slice of life, fluff, angst (with a happy or sort-of-happy ending because otherwise my feelings get too down, but it doesn't mean you have to make problems disappear), character studies, missing moments, past fic, future fic. I usually like either canon universe or fork-in-the-road/canon divergence AUs. If you want to write crossovers with two (or more!) of these fandoms, or with one of these fandoms and another fandom you know I like, feel free to do so.
Mostly I've discovered/read these books only fairly recently (save for the Wayfarers series) so if I say something dumb because my brain is having a useless moment, just ignore it.
I'm okay with fairly dark stuff depending on how present those themes are in canon. Ie. you can go darker with Machineries of Empire than with other things. I'm okay with stories dealing with mental health issues, especially ones that are present in canon as well, but please tag for them so I know when I start reading. I have some mental health issues myself, and while sometimes reading about characters dealing (or not dealing) with theirs is helpful, it's good to know that's coming up. And I'd prefer not getting super deep into suicidal/self-harm stuff even if it's canon. Warn for anything that requires warning, but generally, stuff that the canon deals with is also okay in fic, as long as we know.
A general list of things I like. Not an exhaustive list, and all things aren't applicable to all fandoms, but feel free to take something you like.
Space, stars, astronomy
Science
Worldbuilding, including culture and customs
Food, cakes and biscuits, tea
Sensory details
Books, music, arts
Characters being really into something and geeking out about it, whether it's Cheris with her maths or Breq collecting songs or Pepper and her mad tech/mechanics skills
- Humour, also when interlaced with serious/dark stuff
- Hurt/comfort (for emotional hurt or physical injury, and usually leaning rather towards the comfort than the hurt, but depends on how the canon handles it, as well)
- Friendship and found/chosen family
- Touching, hugging, clinging, physical comfort, whether platonic or not
- Banter
- People having to work together despite personal issues, disagreements or other issues
- Also working together while not taking the other's shit
- Dreams and nightmares
- letters, epistolary format, diaries, unusual formats like encyclopedia entries or news articles or what have you
- Handwriting and fountain pens
- Smart women
- Bad-ass women (I have such a thing for women who could easily kill me or, preferably, my enemies, and I'm not going to psychoanalyze that now)
- To be clear, I also like nice women (and other folks) who aren't going to kill anyone. I'm actually a near-pacifist and squeamish about violence, but look, being a person is complicated so I have complicated likes.
- Emotionally vulnerable and/or messed up men. Okay, emotionally vulnerable and/or messed up people of any gender whatsoever.
- Allllll the queers
- Women, LGBTQ+ folks and minorities supporting one another
- Overthrowing tyranny, rebellion; this may be obvious from the choice of fandoms
- Nature and animals
- Crafts and hobbies
Do Not Want:
- gore, strong violence, torture
- non-canonical death of canon characters
- Underage, child abuse, incest
- non-con, rape, very dubious consent
- Unhappy endings (ambiguous/bittersweet is fine if that's how the story rolls)
different-universe type AUs, unless it's a crossover/fusion with another requested fandom or another sci-fi fandom you know I like. But especially please no college/highschool/coffee house/werewolf/Wild West/etc. type AUs. The one exception is Machineries of Empire where I'm surprisingly open to wildly different AUs as well. Though I'd still prefer to avoid really US-specific environments because look, we get that in culture a lot already.
- A/B/O or mpreg.
Also, I don't really believe these things need to be stated for these fandoms, so this isn't going into my sign-ups, but no homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, aphobia, sexism, racism, ableism and other ways of ignoring the rights and needs of vulnerable/marginalized/oppressed groups.
And here be the requests! It's mostly just the same stuff as in my sign-up, but for some fandoms I have additional notes. Also, the Machineries of Empire part includes some post-Glass Cannon prompts after the sign-up part, so if you haven't read Glass Cannon, skip that.
Imperial Radch — Ann Leckie
Characters: Breq, Seivarden, Mercy of Kalr
I love these three characters and their interactions and relationship(s) so much. I do ship them as an OT3, so feel free to run with that, but you don't have to write a shippy fic if you don't want to (though when two of the characters are ships, I guess it's hard to avoid being shippy… okay, I'll stop in the bad overused puns department). I'm also interested in any kind of gen about interactions or domestic moments aboard Mercy of Kalr or other places we see, about space travel and other sci-fi shenanigans, or about the budding Republic of Two Systems, or How Much Everyone Cares About Breq, or any futures or adventures or cute or angsty moments during or after the series are all appreciated. Feel free to include any other characters from the series, I basically love them all (except the ones you're meant to hate, but then I love to hate them).
Some prompts:
- negotiating just how the weird poly ship love arrangement between them might go
- Seivarden and Ship connecting over loving Breq, or something else
- I'm always a sucker for comforting people who've had bad stuff happen to them, so any of that, with any of the characters, would make me happy
- Breq endangering herself to help others is a theme, and I'm sure Seivarden and Ship will have feelings about that.
- Tea! Food! Breq liking songs! any of that mundane life stuff.
- How do A.I.s go about establishing a republic, anyway?
For shippy stuff, I'm happy with any flavour. It can be asexual Breq just liking cuddles with Seivarden and connection with both her and Ship and their relationship not needing anything else. It can be romantic without sex, or it explicitly sexual between any of the three characters, however you arrange that; it can be anything in between those or something else. But if there is sex, I want all participants to want it equally, rather than someone being pressured to accept it as a part of the relationship. Also, if there isn't sex, the relationship(s) aren't treated as lesser or less complete than a relationship with sex would be. Basically, I want everyone's choices and desires to be respected, regardless of how the situation carries out.
Do Not Want:
- gore, strong violence, torture
- non-canonical death of canon characters
- Underage sex (under 16), child abuse, incest
- non-con, rape, very dubious consent
- Unhappy endings (ambiguous/bittersweet is fine if that's how the story rolls)
different-universe type AUs, unless it's a crossover/fusion with another requested fandom or another sci-fi fandom you know I like. But especially please no college/highschool/coffee house/werewolf/Wild West/etc. type AUs.
- A/B/O or mpreg
Also: if it's a shippy fic, I'd prefer categorising it as Other (ie. Not F/F, M/F etc. It just feels more right to not slot Raadchai into genders.)
Additional note:If you want to add other characters, I'm particularly fond of Sphene, Translator Zeiat, Tisarwat, and Kalr Five (and Awn, but she might be a bit hard to add into this story) but like I said, I'm going to be happy no matter what. I like Ekalu and Seivarden/Ekalu well enough, so you can choose to include or not include that relationship, however you like.
This is How You Lose the Time War — Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Characters: Red, Blue
I love this book madly and would adore any fan content of it and these beautiful characters! Some suggestions:
- letters or scenes during the story that we didn't see in the book
- Red and Blue after the book ends! How do they recover from all the stuff that they go through? How do they communicate with each other in real time? How do they set up their own little bridge between time lines and defend it? How many dogs do they get and what are they like? Slice of life, scenes/snapshots, cuteness, smooches, conflicts, learning to understand one another, still writing each other letters, drinking tea, puns, angst, declarations of love, whatever you like!
- I'm also super into stuff involving time travel, different times and time strands, timey-wimeyness of how changing events transforms the possible outcomes, particular time periods they enjoy or people they meet, etc. Feel free to play with that if you want to, but no need if you don't want.
Please stick to canon universe, or canon divergence (fork-in-the-road) if you have a particularly alluring idea in mind.
Do Not Want:
- gore, strong violence, torture
- non-canonical death of canon characters
- Underage sex (under 16), child abuse, incest
- non-con, rape, very dubious consent
- Unhappy endings (ambiguous/bittersweet is fine if that's how the story rolls)
different-universe type AUs, unless it's a crossover/fusion with another requested fandom or another sci-fi fandom you know I like. But especially please no college/highschool/coffee house/werewolf/Wild West/etc. type AUs.
- A/B/O or mpreg
Additional note: this can be a good emergency fandom in the case you don't feel you can write another fandom we matched on, since it's a novella and doesn't take that long to read. So if you're in such a situation, you can take a look this up and see if you'd like to try it. It's basically time-travel enemies-to-friends-to-lovers f/f romance and super gorgeous. I wrote a non-spoilery review of it in my journal here.
Machineries of Empire — Yoon Ha Lee
Characters: Cheris, Jedao
Cheris is my favourite scifi BAMF and fighter-woman/mathematician. Jedao is my favourite dysfunctional I-shouldn't-love-him-but-I-do rebellious mess of an undead murderous general. Together, they fight tyranny! Or something.
I've come to this fandom pretty recently, because I'd previously not dared to read this series because I gathered it was going to have some dark content; but this summer I felt okay enough to give it a try, and I fell hard in love with it and basically read books Two and Three within a week in order to finish the series before the Hugo voting ended, which may not have been the smartest thing to do, but it was pretty amazing nonetheless. I bought Hexarchate Stories at WorldCon, and read it more slowly, but I finished it and Glass Cannon (the sequel novella) recently and it was all things amazing. I have some Glass Cannon specific prompts after my sign-up details which I didn't include in the sign-up so as not to spoil stuff, so while it's not detailed, quit reading after the DNWs if you haven't read Glass Cannon.
Sign-up details
I love the interactions between Cheris and Jedao, the unlikely yet delightful way in which they cooperate, their dysfunctional and weird and intense relationship. They're like a gen version of OTP for me, I can't get enough of their interactions and would happily read 100K words of them doing whatever. I much prefer gen for them and would prefer you don't ship them with each other, unless it's for crack/humour purposes or fake/arranged marriage AU or something. I'm fine with shipping either of them with other people, though.
In this fandom I am more open to weird AUs or crackfic than usually, probably because the canon setting is so weird and dark that you can do interesting things with AUs and crack, keeping the relationship between the characters but in a different setting, possibly with lower stakes. But I'm also still very much into canon or close-to-canon stuff.
Possible prompts/ideas:
- some missing scene/story taking place during Ninefox Gambit. Anything! Unseen adventure, conversations about anything at all, random moments from Cheris getting used to having a homicidal undead general in her head and nervous system, conspiring, random moments of Jedao mindfuck…
- Alternate ending to Ninefox Gambit where Jedao survives somehow and they go on to overthrow the Hexarchate together (even if possibly Jedao still in Cheris's head), rather than Cheris becoming a blend of them both
- I've recently read Glass Cannon and OMG! I so much want to read more about what happens next! Anything! I'm going to put the rest of my prompts in my letter so that this doesn't spoil things for people who haven't read it yet.
- Also, you can substitute original!Jedao for Jedao Two if you like, somehow dealing with his mess and Cheris, though I didn't request him. I love poor confused lonely young Jedao Two, too.
- I'm always into Cheris being awesome, Cheris being So Done with Jedao's bullshit but working together anyway, Cheris coping with insane situations, etc.
Feel free to add any other characters from the series if you want. I like/am interested in basically everyone, but if you want help choosing, I'm particularly fond of Khiruev, Hemiola, Brezan, Tseya, Mikodez, Zehun, Zehun's cats, and Nija. And I realise that's still quite a lot of characters, sorry!
Do Not Want
- more gore and violence than the books have. I was surprisingly fine with the Jedao-whump-fest of Glass Cannon, but let's not go further or get super descriptive, okay?
- non-canonical death of canon characters; by that I mean permanent death; temporary Jedao deaths aren't a problem, if he comes back.
- Changing either Cheris's or Jedao's sexual orientation from the information we have in canon.
- non-canon rape/non-con; I'm perfectly fine with dealing with consequences of anything that happened in canon
- non-canon cases of child abuse, underage sex (under 16) or incest
- A/B/O or mpreg.
NEXT: ADDITIONAL PROMPTS/THOUGHTS BASED ON GLASS CANNON, DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T READ GLASS CANNON NEXT, BECAUSE WHILE IT'S NOT DETAILED, I MIGHT STILL SPOIL SOME THINGS FOR YOU.
Additional prompts for Glass Cannon: I just so much want to read more about what happens next! Anything! Anything from Cheris and Jedao go shopping to Cheris and Jedao save/destroy the world together to Cheris and Jedao try to sort out some issues. How much will the mental link fuck up with their relationship? How can Jedao plot? How often will they annoy each other? How would things go if one of them tried to have a relationship/one-night-stand/something? What happens if they try to play chess against one another? How brain-hurting is it whenever they have different opinions about someone/something and keep hearing the other's thoughts? Is there a psychotherapist in the Hexarchate capable of dealing with either of them? How do Mikodez and Zehun deal with them? What do they do about the rise of the A.I.s with plans? How does being in a body of his own again work out for Jedao? Anything!
Wayfarers Series — Becky Chambers
Characters: Sidra, Tak, Pepper
I love these books and all the characters so much that I had a lot of trouble deciding who to request! But I decided eventually to go for Sidra, Tak, and Pepper from the second book in the series - and feel absolutely free to include Blue and Owl though I didn't specifically request them. I love the themes of carving out a place for yourself and creating yourself as who you want to be rather than who you've been made to be for the use of others, as well as overcoming trauma and learning how to live and belong. I also love the whole found family vibe all these characters eventually build together, and all the misunderstandings and prejudices that Sidra, Tak and Pepper all have to overcome.
I'd especially love stories taking place after A Closed and Common Orbit, or before the ending in the time when Sidra is setting up her bar and building her own way of living. I just want to see more of what happens to these characters after the last thing we see. But if you've got an idea for something that takes place during the book, that's fine, too. I would prefer sticking to canon rather than going AU.
I'm happy with both gen and shippy fic. I absolutely adore the friendship and found family themes and will be happy with a story with those. But if you have shippy ideas, I like Pepper/Blue, and it could be fun to see Sidra and Tak experimenting with romance and/or sex in what would certainly be a non-standard way, for an AI in human body and a genderfluid alien, both who really really like research… And if you want to go for a more poly arrangement, that's fine, too.
If you want to add characters from the other Wayfarers books, too, that would be neat! Maybe some of the Wayfarer crew stop by at Sidra's bar, or Kip and his friends from school end up travelling there when learning the ways of the universe. The only thing I don't want, please don't do any whiff of romance/attraction between Sidra and Jenks, I would find that really uncomfortable as it's important for Sidra's story to learn to be who she is, not who Lovey was.
Do Not Want:
- gore, strong violence, torture
- non-canonical death of canon characters
- Underage sex (under 16), child abuse, incest
- non-con, rape, very dubious consent
- Unhappy endings (ambiguous/bittersweet is fine if that's how the story rolls)
different-universe type AUs, unless it's a crossover/fusion with another requested fandom or another sci-fi fandom you know I like. But especially please no college/highschool/coffee house/werewolf/Wild West/etc. type AUs.
- A/B/O or mpreg