2025 Dear Yuletide Author
Oct. 23rd, 2025 04:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraHello! Happy Yuletide! I've been participating for awhile and I love Yuletide for the chance to share a moment of enthusiasm for something that isn't a big fandom. I like all kinds of things in fic (gen, worldbuilding, angst, romance, humor, plot, smut, AUs, etc) and I love getting to see what someone else finds interesting about a particular canon or character. So please feel encouraged to take anything I say here in the direction of your own creative vision. (And I'm happy to receive treats, if someone else happens to read something here and it sparks an idea for you!)
If you have a great idea for a story, I'm fine if that includes whatever makes sense for it, including "dark" elements like character death or violence. But no child death, please, and no sexual violence/rape. And I would prefer characters to more or less keep their canonical moral values, like, if they're thoughtful or caring in canon, I don't want an AU where they're careless or cruel, if that makes sense.
My requests behind the cut:
Willowweep Manor Series - Shaenon K. Garrity
Character: Haley
Willowweep Manor is an adorable duology of YA scifi-fantasy graphic novels, in which the protagonist Haley, from our world, travels into a Gothic-romance pocket universe. I would be thrilled to read anything about Haley - what was she like as a little kid? How might her relationship with the gasket universe change as she gets older - is she going to have to balance an our-world job with her heroine/guardianship? Might she ever try introducing a friend from our world to the gasket universe? If you've read Nefarious Nights, what other genres might show up and add themselves? I felt like there were some hints of romantic tension between Haley and Miss Harewood - in a multi-genre gasket universe, might the heroine get a new Designated Love Interest for every genre (or at least these two)? In my heart, Haley and Montague and Miss Harewood eventually end up in a happy V, and I'd be interested in any moment of that or their path to that, unresolved tension, or pre-romance, or polyamory negotiations, or what their relationships look like when they're long since established and settled.
For this fandom, I don't mind an open ending, but I would prefer no outright unhappy endings. (They're just too cute to hurt like that.) If you want to write romance and want to focus only on Haley/Montague or Haley/Miss Harewood, I would prefer no outright infidelity, unrequited love, or permanent sad breakups of the other ship. (Drama on the way to a happy ending is fine.) I'm not sure whether I think Haley is more like a senior in high school or a first-year in college - either way, while I'm fine in general with stories that include older-teen sexuality, I'm happy to assume she's 18+ in canon to simplify that issue. But also for this fandom if you want to include sexual content I would prefer fade-to-black or "Mature" at most rather than anything that would need the Explicit rating.
To Shape A Dragon's Breath - Moniquill Blackgoose
Character: Anequs
Dragons! Dragons who do chemistry! I love this book so much and I would love to spend more time in its world and I feel like the perfect Yuletide story involves Anequs interacting, at some point, with a dragon. Maybe her own beloved dragon Kasaqua, maybe Theod's dragon, maybe a wild dragon, maybe one of her teachers' dragons or one of her enemies' dragons or I don't even know what. Does the dragon need Anequs's help? Does Anequs need the dragon's help? Does the interaction solve a problem in one of her human relationship - or make a problem worse? Would some sort of classic trope like sex pollen or huddling for warmth or only one bed or amnesia or something be fun here? Romance-wise, I ship Anequs/Liberty/Theod as a V or a triangle but would be fine to focus only on one of those relationships, but would also be happy to see more of Anequs's friendship with Sander or her relationship with her family. Maybe a dragon is only there in the background, that's fine too! Please feel free to put in as much magical chemistry as you would like to write. I can also imagine a fantastic story from the perspective of a dragon - maybe Kasaqua, maybe somebody else - in which we get a dragon's-eye-view on the weird things humans do and/or the (fun? challenging? strange? boring?) things they ask their dragons to do.
For this fandom, I would prefer to avoid a focus on the racism of Anequs's world, although of course if it feels relevant to include I don't want to erase that. I'm okay with angst that includes animal harm but please tag for it. If you want to write something with sex pollen or Pern-style "the dragons have sex so the people have sex", I'm fine with that as long as it's consensual in the sense of being clearly mutually desired in general even if maybe not intended yet/at that time/in that place/in that way.
Copper Script - K.J. Charles
Character: Helen Challice
I just read this, like, last week, and I cannot tell you how much I need a Helen Challice spin-off. A case file-type story about a mystery she solves? A scene from her backstory? A scene from her future? A romance? Children? What does she do in World War II? If she's in her 20s in the 20s, she's in her 60s in the 60s - what does she think about the Swinging Sixties, or the sexual revolution? Please feel free to invent whatever original characters would make sense to fill out the particular moment of her life we get to see. Ship-wise, I would most prefer to see her with another woman (or series of women), but I would also be all for a bisexual Helen Challice, an asexual or aromantic Helen Challice (perhaps with enduring friendships in a queer community), or, heck, Helen Challice who, I don't know, leaves law enforcement to become a professional domme? Or gets recruited to work as a spy, or politician, or some other interesting career change and is focused on that? So many possibilities!
For this fandom, I know she canonically works on rape and child abuse cases, so I'm okay with the mention of such things in an abstract way, but would prefer no details or depictions. Because she comes from a romance novel I think she needs a happy ending, but I'm fine with seeing a hard or sad time of her life as long as there's a sense that something good is waiting for her and she's going to get there eventually. Oh, and explicit sex is fine if you are feeling the romance-novel spirit. :)
Thank you so much, author, and happy Yuletide!
If you have a great idea for a story, I'm fine if that includes whatever makes sense for it, including "dark" elements like character death or violence. But no child death, please, and no sexual violence/rape. And I would prefer characters to more or less keep their canonical moral values, like, if they're thoughtful or caring in canon, I don't want an AU where they're careless or cruel, if that makes sense.
My requests behind the cut:
Willowweep Manor Series - Shaenon K. Garrity
Character: Haley
Willowweep Manor is an adorable duology of YA scifi-fantasy graphic novels, in which the protagonist Haley, from our world, travels into a Gothic-romance pocket universe. I would be thrilled to read anything about Haley - what was she like as a little kid? How might her relationship with the gasket universe change as she gets older - is she going to have to balance an our-world job with her heroine/guardianship? Might she ever try introducing a friend from our world to the gasket universe? If you've read Nefarious Nights, what other genres might show up and add themselves? I felt like there were some hints of romantic tension between Haley and Miss Harewood - in a multi-genre gasket universe, might the heroine get a new Designated Love Interest for every genre (or at least these two)? In my heart, Haley and Montague and Miss Harewood eventually end up in a happy V, and I'd be interested in any moment of that or their path to that, unresolved tension, or pre-romance, or polyamory negotiations, or what their relationships look like when they're long since established and settled.
For this fandom, I don't mind an open ending, but I would prefer no outright unhappy endings. (They're just too cute to hurt like that.) If you want to write romance and want to focus only on Haley/Montague or Haley/Miss Harewood, I would prefer no outright infidelity, unrequited love, or permanent sad breakups of the other ship. (Drama on the way to a happy ending is fine.) I'm not sure whether I think Haley is more like a senior in high school or a first-year in college - either way, while I'm fine in general with stories that include older-teen sexuality, I'm happy to assume she's 18+ in canon to simplify that issue. But also for this fandom if you want to include sexual content I would prefer fade-to-black or "Mature" at most rather than anything that would need the Explicit rating.
To Shape A Dragon's Breath - Moniquill Blackgoose
Character: Anequs
Dragons! Dragons who do chemistry! I love this book so much and I would love to spend more time in its world and I feel like the perfect Yuletide story involves Anequs interacting, at some point, with a dragon. Maybe her own beloved dragon Kasaqua, maybe Theod's dragon, maybe a wild dragon, maybe one of her teachers' dragons or one of her enemies' dragons or I don't even know what. Does the dragon need Anequs's help? Does Anequs need the dragon's help? Does the interaction solve a problem in one of her human relationship - or make a problem worse? Would some sort of classic trope like sex pollen or huddling for warmth or only one bed or amnesia or something be fun here? Romance-wise, I ship Anequs/Liberty/Theod as a V or a triangle but would be fine to focus only on one of those relationships, but would also be happy to see more of Anequs's friendship with Sander or her relationship with her family. Maybe a dragon is only there in the background, that's fine too! Please feel free to put in as much magical chemistry as you would like to write. I can also imagine a fantastic story from the perspective of a dragon - maybe Kasaqua, maybe somebody else - in which we get a dragon's-eye-view on the weird things humans do and/or the (fun? challenging? strange? boring?) things they ask their dragons to do.
For this fandom, I would prefer to avoid a focus on the racism of Anequs's world, although of course if it feels relevant to include I don't want to erase that. I'm okay with angst that includes animal harm but please tag for it. If you want to write something with sex pollen or Pern-style "the dragons have sex so the people have sex", I'm fine with that as long as it's consensual in the sense of being clearly mutually desired in general even if maybe not intended yet/at that time/in that place/in that way.
Copper Script - K.J. Charles
Character: Helen Challice
I just read this, like, last week, and I cannot tell you how much I need a Helen Challice spin-off. A case file-type story about a mystery she solves? A scene from her backstory? A scene from her future? A romance? Children? What does she do in World War II? If she's in her 20s in the 20s, she's in her 60s in the 60s - what does she think about the Swinging Sixties, or the sexual revolution? Please feel free to invent whatever original characters would make sense to fill out the particular moment of her life we get to see. Ship-wise, I would most prefer to see her with another woman (or series of women), but I would also be all for a bisexual Helen Challice, an asexual or aromantic Helen Challice (perhaps with enduring friendships in a queer community), or, heck, Helen Challice who, I don't know, leaves law enforcement to become a professional domme? Or gets recruited to work as a spy, or politician, or some other interesting career change and is focused on that? So many possibilities!
For this fandom, I know she canonically works on rape and child abuse cases, so I'm okay with the mention of such things in an abstract way, but would prefer no details or depictions. Because she comes from a romance novel I think she needs a happy ending, but I'm fine with seeing a hard or sad time of her life as long as there's a sense that something good is waiting for her and she's going to get there eventually. Oh, and explicit sex is fine if you are feeling the romance-novel spirit. :)
Thank you so much, author, and happy Yuletide!
