Yuletide Dear Author Letter 2012
Oct. 12th, 2012 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
measured_wordsDear Amazing Yuletide Author:
Thanks, first of all, for writing! That is really the most important thing, and I will be delighted with whatever I wind up getting. I am scamming most of this from my last year’s letter (including this line!), so hopefully it will retain some amount of coherency.
So first of all.... I like stories with plot - with adventure, intrigue, and wacky hijinks. I also like stories that are more focused on character exploration, however – I don`t need action if I have interesting introspection. That said, introspection does not necessarily equate with excessive angsting. I also don't like major deviations from cannon - that is, I don't like people to act out of character, and I'm not a huge fan of AU's unless they're very clever. Funny is good, but not required.
I like porn, but I do not require it. If you have a preference for or against in whatever you wind up writing, knock yourself out, I will appreciate it. If you include porn, I prefer it to be somehow relevant to the story – either it develops character relationships, or is vital to some zany caper or what have you. I’m not a big fan of pwp or sex thrown into a story randomly. Porn can certainly *be* the main action, so to speak, but I like it better if it is more than just some random bodies pressing up against each other in interesting ways. I'm really hard to squick – I can handle the weird stuff, so to speak, so don't be afraid to show me your kinks! More than anything, I want to be able to believe that the sex I'm reading is in character for whoever I'm reading about – not necessarily that it is something they want, but that the reactions I'm reading are true to whoever is having them, if that makes any sense.
If you are looking to find out more about me, I have a more mundane and fairly negelected lj over at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elanya, and I am I am often online in the yuletide chat (which you can find out how to access here, either as elanya, lan-school, hioppo-lan, or some other similar configuration of lan-somethingorother.
On to the specifics! Please note that these are in no particular order :D
1. JourneyQuest - Rilk, Grellnok Skullsplitter, Yart Flayschildren
First, a little intro for people who may be unfamiliar. Iof we matched on this, presumably you will already know it all, but if we didn't and you got scared or curious, here you are :) JourneyQuest is a fantasy comedy webseries, all available online for free at the website right here! It's funny and full of tropes and trope subversions and lots of ridiculousness and nerdery. If you have ever played any fantasy rpg or enjoyed a schlocky fantasy adventure novel, you will likely enjoy this. The second season just ended, and there are only 20 episodes of ten minutes or less each. There is a fairly large cast, but I am actually focusing my request (for once) on three characters – I love my orc boys!
Rilk is the orcish sergeant, and he hasn't actually been named in the series. He's observant, clever, stoic, and practical – far more so than your average orc, which is possibly how he has survived this long. Canon ships him with Wren, the bard assigned to follow the main party in order to chronicle their adventures. The scene where she encounters the orc boys is the first in the series, though because of the way the show plays with the chronology you don’t' actually find out what's going on for a while. Anyway, the point is, although I didn't ask for Wren, if you want to include her, directly or indirectly, that would be absolutely fine, as long as the other three all have some role in the story.
Grellnok Skullsplitter (two 'l's) and Yart Flayschildren (spelled like it sounds) are really the comedy relief orcs, as well as Rilk's friends and subordinates. Grellnok is very enthusiastic, and imaginative. He relishes a good fight and wants to be well remembered. He respects Rilk's leadership and is clearly good friends, or more than friends, with Yart. Yart has expressed that he has always wished to be a female. He's also generally more sensitive, and full of amusingly conflicted advice about women intended to leave potential woo-ers sufficiently confused and anxious.
Of course you will know all that already if you have watched the series, so on to the optional story details! I love the dynamic these three have to absolute pieces. The orcs are hands-down my favourite characters. I would love to read something about them just hanging out. I would love to get insights on just exactly what it is that Yart always wants to talk about with Grellnok (wink wink nudge nudge). I see shippyness there, but if that's not your deal that's fine. If you want to write something about the two of them, with background sardonic Rilk, awesome! How about Grellnok's advice on women? Or his advice on men (to Wren, perhaps)? Or on the Orcslayer? Would you like to write a more explicitly trans or genderqueer Yart, or tell us anything more about female orcs? Because I'd be all over that! If you want to give me some kind of pre-canon bonding or friendship moment between the three of them, that's cool, or if you want to pick up where things left off, with them turning back to find and face an incredibly pissed off Glorion, that would also be awesome. Really, I'm not hard to please, I promise that I will love your story, as long as it is full of wonderful orcishness! As a side note, there is a little bit more information about the orcs on the website, and if you are inclined you can poke around there for ideas and inspiration. Also to reiterate, I am completely open to orc porn, as long as there is some story or character stuff to go along with it.
2. The Shadow - Any
I love the Shadow in pretty much all its iterations, from the radio show (I own and have listened to all the existing ones) to the pulps (I have PDFs of them....somewhere around the house), to the movie serial (TALKING TIGER HEAD!), the various comics and the 1994 movie (also some of the other earlier movies, but they were not very good >.>). For anyone not already familiar with him, or his extended franchise, the easiest shorthand is to say that he is a pulp/radio drama detective from the 30's, who is also the original Batman. The easiest version for someone to pick up is probably the movie, starring Alec Baldwin, John Lone, and Penelope Ann Miller. I am at least passingly familiar with most versions of the comics, and while as of this writing I haven't gotten my hand on the new Garth Ennis ones, I am planning to nab the graphic novel when it comes out in November. This is all to say that if you, dear author, have a preference for media type, knock yourself out and enjoy yourself, because I am certain to as well. I didn't request any characters because I am happy to read about any of them, but I will give you some specific prompts for Margo and Lamont since they were the only ones actually nominated.
Starting with Margo then – in most versions, she is romantically tied to Lamont Cranston, and she is one of The Shadow's very few female agents. How does she feel about working in such a male dominated world? In the early radio show, she's strong, capable, and resourceful, and that's the side of her I like to see. Maybe a story with her working with or recruiting other women to help solve some crime? Shadowfic that could pass the Bechdel Test or examines any of the gender issues inherent in the source material would be delightful, and Margo would be a great PoV character for any of those things. If that's not your cuppa, stories exploring her relationship with Lamont as a wealthy young man about town versus her relationship with The Shadow as a crime fighter (romantic or otherwise, depending on your source material of choice) would be lovely!
For Lamont... well, I will assume that the chances of someone writing me a story based on the pulps is pretty low, as they are nigh-impossible to track down these days. In which case it is a pretty safe bet that we are looking at a scenario where Lamon Cranston is The Shadow (as opposed to Kent Allard pretending to be Lamont Cranston while the real Lamont mostly spends his time being rich and murdering helpless African animals). Oh The Shadow, how I love you! Anyway! I have plenty of ideas for any continuity! Tell me how he got started with crime fighting, or how things went for him on his first couple cases. How did he build his network? His origin is pretty well covered in the movie, but there is a big gap of time in there as well between getting back to New York and when the story starts. Or just tell me anything about his relationships – with Margo, with the commissioner, his agents... What does his life look like to someone who knows Lamont, but not The Shadow? What about a deeper investigation into his alter-ego – how much of either is a façade?
Or.... how about case fic!? I would love case fic! Give me the Shadow doing what he does best! Give him to me alone or with Margo, give me him moving his agents in to place to get things done, give me him meddling with Commissioner Weston's cases! You don't have to give me The Shadow, even, I'm happy with just agents following orders. Or criminals being thwarted! I am also interested in The Shadow because of the time and place it came out of. He is (like Batman) an extremely privileged person, and he is fighting lots of underprivileged folks, and I think anything that picks at that could be really neat.
3. Ghost Soup Infidel Blue RPF - Any
Okay, so I realize that I'm kind of throwing myself on the mercy of a fandom that is infamous for it's... eccentricities, shall we say, but whoever nominated this didn't actually include any characters. I'm not even sure how that works, but since I can only ask for 'any' I'll have to take what I can get! Hopefully it won't be another winged werewolf AU – really there are only so many of those a girl can handle. If you got assigned to me for something else and have never heard of Ghost Soup Infidel Blue (or Red, *sigh), the safest place to find out more about it is probably on yulechat, though the fanlore page on Yuletide talks about one of the best ever stories to come out of the show fandom that might give you a decent starting point.
Well, on the off chance that I get paired up with someone who might like to play in my little corner of the sandbox, I’ll tell you what I really want. I'm sure that anyone standing up to write this has at least heard the rumours about that infamous con in Memphis in '03. I actually have a friend whose college roommate was there, and apparently it really was as crazy as all that D: And of course there are already 50 million stories about what everyone thinks happened, and who went home with who (and I really am not even going to touch the whole 'whose baby is it!?' thing.... just please don't, that kid probably has enough problems). BUT. Here is a thing that not everybody knows! Actually it wasn't just the official GSIB people who were there, but some of the stars of the musical inspired by the fan video that (and yes I know about the multitude of raging debates, but I'm simplifying here and trying to be diplomatic >.>) got the reboot kickstarted after the writer's strike derailed the ending of Classic. I understand some people love how things got wound up but, I apologize, I am not among them and that's the main reason I stick to RPF rather than dabbling much in the show fandom itself. So, anyway. As I am, as ever, a fan of the more minor characters, and I think they probably do still count for this fandom since no actual characters were nominated, I would love to see some wacky hijinks ensuing with that crowd! Mistaken identities, perhaps? Drunken snarking over fickle fans? How they engineered the reconciliation that got us all more of any kind of Ghost Soup, for better or for worse? Commiserating with other left-out cast members? How they got bitter and summoned some evil power to curse all other iterations of the show (go ahead, tell me this isn't feasible ;p)
If that doesn’t float your boat (annnnnnd I'm not holding my breath, don't worry), there are plenty of other things I would happily read about! Anything involving the female cast members (yes, anything) from the second American cast, maybe during that 'extended break' (yes, another writer's strike, oh Ghost Soup, see above re: curses -_-) in '07? If you want to go into more AU territory (though, uh, see above re: please no winged werewolves -_-), how about a Galaxy Quest style scenario where aliens think that the show was real? I'd love to see how they would sort out the different continuities and casts, hah! (Obviously cast cameos from other Ghost Soup versions would be fine for this, but I'd rather they not be the main focus of any story. I know there is some overlap with the robot voice-overs, but it's really not what I'm after here). I honestly don’t have any pairing preferences, but I am a fan of poly fic for the cast and I don't have a mad hate on for any of the spouses the way some people do. Hopefully this is all enough to give you some ideas, anyway! I really am not too hard to please, but if you are one of the set dedicated to winged werewolf AU can I request that it at least have some smoking hot porn?
4. Death of the Necromancer - Martha Wells - Nicholas Valiarde, Arisilde Damal
I love this book - it remains my favourite of Wells's novels. I love the setting - Victorian gaslight fantasy - and I love that the protagonists are of ambiguous morals. I love that Nicholas is a devious schemer with his own agenda. I love that Arisilde ruined himself out of spite.
I will re-state (and honestly) that if you have something different in mind for your story - go ahead and write that! But this is the one fandom that I do have actual specific desires for. I really want to see how Nicholas dealt with Arisilde not as he is in the book, but as he became more and more heavily addicted to opium. What was their relationship like before (and... slashiness is perfectly acceptable here, explicit or otherwise!), what stages did it go through... Did Arisilde regret what he was doing or have any second thoughts? Did Nicholas try and stop him? I admit that I can't remember exactly what the book says on the subject but I know that there is certainly room for further development of the theme! Feel free to go as dark as you want with this, delving into the darker side of addictions, frustration and difficulties of dealing with addicts, consent issues surrounding drug use, whatever, I'm game if you are! And if you are not, don't stress about it, I will happily read and enjoy lighter material as well :)
If that doesn't float your boat, anything with the two of them will probably make me happy and while I tend to ship them, you don't have to. They're both brilliant, but their minds are very very different, and it is a fascinating relationship to me no matter how close you want to make it. And if you are a Madeline fan, I am also happy to see her with Nicholas, and in fact would rather not just see their relationship ignored or dismissed if you're dealing with that period in canon.
Whatever you write me in any fandom, wonderful author person, I am sure to love it, so thank you!
Thanks, first of all, for writing! That is really the most important thing, and I will be delighted with whatever I wind up getting. I am scamming most of this from my last year’s letter (including this line!), so hopefully it will retain some amount of coherency.
So first of all.... I like stories with plot - with adventure, intrigue, and wacky hijinks. I also like stories that are more focused on character exploration, however – I don`t need action if I have interesting introspection. That said, introspection does not necessarily equate with excessive angsting. I also don't like major deviations from cannon - that is, I don't like people to act out of character, and I'm not a huge fan of AU's unless they're very clever. Funny is good, but not required.
I like porn, but I do not require it. If you have a preference for or against in whatever you wind up writing, knock yourself out, I will appreciate it. If you include porn, I prefer it to be somehow relevant to the story – either it develops character relationships, or is vital to some zany caper or what have you. I’m not a big fan of pwp or sex thrown into a story randomly. Porn can certainly *be* the main action, so to speak, but I like it better if it is more than just some random bodies pressing up against each other in interesting ways. I'm really hard to squick – I can handle the weird stuff, so to speak, so don't be afraid to show me your kinks! More than anything, I want to be able to believe that the sex I'm reading is in character for whoever I'm reading about – not necessarily that it is something they want, but that the reactions I'm reading are true to whoever is having them, if that makes any sense.
If you are looking to find out more about me, I have a more mundane and fairly negelected lj over at
elanya, and I am I am often online in the yuletide chat (which you can find out how to access here, either as elanya, lan-school, hioppo-lan, or some other similar configuration of lan-somethingorother. On to the specifics! Please note that these are in no particular order :D
1. JourneyQuest - Rilk, Grellnok Skullsplitter, Yart Flayschildren
First, a little intro for people who may be unfamiliar. Iof we matched on this, presumably you will already know it all, but if we didn't and you got scared or curious, here you are :) JourneyQuest is a fantasy comedy webseries, all available online for free at the website right here! It's funny and full of tropes and trope subversions and lots of ridiculousness and nerdery. If you have ever played any fantasy rpg or enjoyed a schlocky fantasy adventure novel, you will likely enjoy this. The second season just ended, and there are only 20 episodes of ten minutes or less each. There is a fairly large cast, but I am actually focusing my request (for once) on three characters – I love my orc boys!
Rilk is the orcish sergeant, and he hasn't actually been named in the series. He's observant, clever, stoic, and practical – far more so than your average orc, which is possibly how he has survived this long. Canon ships him with Wren, the bard assigned to follow the main party in order to chronicle their adventures. The scene where she encounters the orc boys is the first in the series, though because of the way the show plays with the chronology you don’t' actually find out what's going on for a while. Anyway, the point is, although I didn't ask for Wren, if you want to include her, directly or indirectly, that would be absolutely fine, as long as the other three all have some role in the story.
Grellnok Skullsplitter (two 'l's) and Yart Flayschildren (spelled like it sounds) are really the comedy relief orcs, as well as Rilk's friends and subordinates. Grellnok is very enthusiastic, and imaginative. He relishes a good fight and wants to be well remembered. He respects Rilk's leadership and is clearly good friends, or more than friends, with Yart. Yart has expressed that he has always wished to be a female. He's also generally more sensitive, and full of amusingly conflicted advice about women intended to leave potential woo-ers sufficiently confused and anxious.
Of course you will know all that already if you have watched the series, so on to the optional story details! I love the dynamic these three have to absolute pieces. The orcs are hands-down my favourite characters. I would love to read something about them just hanging out. I would love to get insights on just exactly what it is that Yart always wants to talk about with Grellnok (wink wink nudge nudge). I see shippyness there, but if that's not your deal that's fine. If you want to write something about the two of them, with background sardonic Rilk, awesome! How about Grellnok's advice on women? Or his advice on men (to Wren, perhaps)? Or on the Orcslayer? Would you like to write a more explicitly trans or genderqueer Yart, or tell us anything more about female orcs? Because I'd be all over that! If you want to give me some kind of pre-canon bonding or friendship moment between the three of them, that's cool, or if you want to pick up where things left off, with them turning back to find and face an incredibly pissed off Glorion, that would also be awesome. Really, I'm not hard to please, I promise that I will love your story, as long as it is full of wonderful orcishness! As a side note, there is a little bit more information about the orcs on the website, and if you are inclined you can poke around there for ideas and inspiration. Also to reiterate, I am completely open to orc porn, as long as there is some story or character stuff to go along with it.
2. The Shadow - Any
I love the Shadow in pretty much all its iterations, from the radio show (I own and have listened to all the existing ones) to the pulps (I have PDFs of them....somewhere around the house), to the movie serial (TALKING TIGER HEAD!), the various comics and the 1994 movie (also some of the other earlier movies, but they were not very good >.>). For anyone not already familiar with him, or his extended franchise, the easiest shorthand is to say that he is a pulp/radio drama detective from the 30's, who is also the original Batman. The easiest version for someone to pick up is probably the movie, starring Alec Baldwin, John Lone, and Penelope Ann Miller. I am at least passingly familiar with most versions of the comics, and while as of this writing I haven't gotten my hand on the new Garth Ennis ones, I am planning to nab the graphic novel when it comes out in November. This is all to say that if you, dear author, have a preference for media type, knock yourself out and enjoy yourself, because I am certain to as well. I didn't request any characters because I am happy to read about any of them, but I will give you some specific prompts for Margo and Lamont since they were the only ones actually nominated.
Starting with Margo then – in most versions, she is romantically tied to Lamont Cranston, and she is one of The Shadow's very few female agents. How does she feel about working in such a male dominated world? In the early radio show, she's strong, capable, and resourceful, and that's the side of her I like to see. Maybe a story with her working with or recruiting other women to help solve some crime? Shadowfic that could pass the Bechdel Test or examines any of the gender issues inherent in the source material would be delightful, and Margo would be a great PoV character for any of those things. If that's not your cuppa, stories exploring her relationship with Lamont as a wealthy young man about town versus her relationship with The Shadow as a crime fighter (romantic or otherwise, depending on your source material of choice) would be lovely!
For Lamont... well, I will assume that the chances of someone writing me a story based on the pulps is pretty low, as they are nigh-impossible to track down these days. In which case it is a pretty safe bet that we are looking at a scenario where Lamon Cranston is The Shadow (as opposed to Kent Allard pretending to be Lamont Cranston while the real Lamont mostly spends his time being rich and murdering helpless African animals). Oh The Shadow, how I love you! Anyway! I have plenty of ideas for any continuity! Tell me how he got started with crime fighting, or how things went for him on his first couple cases. How did he build his network? His origin is pretty well covered in the movie, but there is a big gap of time in there as well between getting back to New York and when the story starts. Or just tell me anything about his relationships – with Margo, with the commissioner, his agents... What does his life look like to someone who knows Lamont, but not The Shadow? What about a deeper investigation into his alter-ego – how much of either is a façade?
Or.... how about case fic!? I would love case fic! Give me the Shadow doing what he does best! Give him to me alone or with Margo, give me him moving his agents in to place to get things done, give me him meddling with Commissioner Weston's cases! You don't have to give me The Shadow, even, I'm happy with just agents following orders. Or criminals being thwarted! I am also interested in The Shadow because of the time and place it came out of. He is (like Batman) an extremely privileged person, and he is fighting lots of underprivileged folks, and I think anything that picks at that could be really neat.
3. Ghost Soup Infidel Blue RPF - Any
Okay, so I realize that I'm kind of throwing myself on the mercy of a fandom that is infamous for it's... eccentricities, shall we say, but whoever nominated this didn't actually include any characters. I'm not even sure how that works, but since I can only ask for 'any' I'll have to take what I can get! Hopefully it won't be another winged werewolf AU – really there are only so many of those a girl can handle. If you got assigned to me for something else and have never heard of Ghost Soup Infidel Blue (or Red, *sigh), the safest place to find out more about it is probably on yulechat, though the fanlore page on Yuletide talks about one of the best ever stories to come out of the show fandom that might give you a decent starting point.
Well, on the off chance that I get paired up with someone who might like to play in my little corner of the sandbox, I’ll tell you what I really want. I'm sure that anyone standing up to write this has at least heard the rumours about that infamous con in Memphis in '03. I actually have a friend whose college roommate was there, and apparently it really was as crazy as all that D: And of course there are already 50 million stories about what everyone thinks happened, and who went home with who (and I really am not even going to touch the whole 'whose baby is it!?' thing.... just please don't, that kid probably has enough problems). BUT. Here is a thing that not everybody knows! Actually it wasn't just the official GSIB people who were there, but some of the stars of the musical inspired by the fan video that (and yes I know about the multitude of raging debates, but I'm simplifying here and trying to be diplomatic >.>) got the reboot kickstarted after the writer's strike derailed the ending of Classic. I understand some people love how things got wound up but, I apologize, I am not among them and that's the main reason I stick to RPF rather than dabbling much in the show fandom itself. So, anyway. As I am, as ever, a fan of the more minor characters, and I think they probably do still count for this fandom since no actual characters were nominated, I would love to see some wacky hijinks ensuing with that crowd! Mistaken identities, perhaps? Drunken snarking over fickle fans? How they engineered the reconciliation that got us all more of any kind of Ghost Soup, for better or for worse? Commiserating with other left-out cast members? How they got bitter and summoned some evil power to curse all other iterations of the show (go ahead, tell me this isn't feasible ;p)
If that doesn’t float your boat (annnnnnd I'm not holding my breath, don't worry), there are plenty of other things I would happily read about! Anything involving the female cast members (yes, anything) from the second American cast, maybe during that 'extended break' (yes, another writer's strike, oh Ghost Soup, see above re: curses -_-) in '07? If you want to go into more AU territory (though, uh, see above re: please no winged werewolves -_-), how about a Galaxy Quest style scenario where aliens think that the show was real? I'd love to see how they would sort out the different continuities and casts, hah! (Obviously cast cameos from other Ghost Soup versions would be fine for this, but I'd rather they not be the main focus of any story. I know there is some overlap with the robot voice-overs, but it's really not what I'm after here). I honestly don’t have any pairing preferences, but I am a fan of poly fic for the cast and I don't have a mad hate on for any of the spouses the way some people do. Hopefully this is all enough to give you some ideas, anyway! I really am not too hard to please, but if you are one of the set dedicated to winged werewolf AU can I request that it at least have some smoking hot porn?
4. Death of the Necromancer - Martha Wells - Nicholas Valiarde, Arisilde Damal
I love this book - it remains my favourite of Wells's novels. I love the setting - Victorian gaslight fantasy - and I love that the protagonists are of ambiguous morals. I love that Nicholas is a devious schemer with his own agenda. I love that Arisilde ruined himself out of spite.
I will re-state (and honestly) that if you have something different in mind for your story - go ahead and write that! But this is the one fandom that I do have actual specific desires for. I really want to see how Nicholas dealt with Arisilde not as he is in the book, but as he became more and more heavily addicted to opium. What was their relationship like before (and... slashiness is perfectly acceptable here, explicit or otherwise!), what stages did it go through... Did Arisilde regret what he was doing or have any second thoughts? Did Nicholas try and stop him? I admit that I can't remember exactly what the book says on the subject but I know that there is certainly room for further development of the theme! Feel free to go as dark as you want with this, delving into the darker side of addictions, frustration and difficulties of dealing with addicts, consent issues surrounding drug use, whatever, I'm game if you are! And if you are not, don't stress about it, I will happily read and enjoy lighter material as well :)
If that doesn't float your boat, anything with the two of them will probably make me happy and while I tend to ship them, you don't have to. They're both brilliant, but their minds are very very different, and it is a fascinating relationship to me no matter how close you want to make it. And if you are a Madeline fan, I am also happy to see her with Nicholas, and in fact would rather not just see their relationship ignored or dismissed if you're dealing with that period in canon.
Whatever you write me in any fandom, wonderful author person, I am sure to love it, so thank you!
