Yuletide 2022

[teumesia]

Heyo :D

It’s that time of the year again, happy Yuletide \o/ Thanks for checking out my letter, I hope it’ll be useful.

I’ve gone ahead and written some general things about each requested fandom/character (because when else am I going to get to ramble about my fave tiny canons if not now…) and also some prompts/general ideas for each – feel free to just ignore those if you’ve got other ideas, of course. I’ll be excited to read whatever it is you’re excited to write!! Also I love shipfic just as much as I love gen, and would be absolutely delighted with either for any of the fandoms I’ve requested.

Find me elsewhere: AO3 | twitter

 

DNWs:

mundane AUS, unrequested crossovers, pregnancy/mpreg, A/B/O, permanent physical damage, first-person POV

 

General Likes:

worldbuilding, missing-scene type fic, unreliable narrators, banter, us against the world, moral conflicts, loyalty and abuse of said loyalty, moral ambiguity in general, pragmatic characters, people kicking ass together, dysfunctional/codependent relationships, unlikely allies, competence, horror (!), cosmic horror – the more grotesque and inhuman the better, action scenes and battles/fights, trust and trust issues, protectiveness, things getting destroyed in totally over-the-top-ways, ambiguous or downright unhappy endings

I also really, REALLY love fic that plays with its medium. House of Leaves and its weird typesetting was a formative influence for me, lmao, and I love when horror in the story interacts with horror in the medium. Interactive Fiction is also something I’d be super down for trying, if that’s what you’d like to go for.

General NSFW Likes:

body horror, blood, bruises, gore (find a list of gore-specific likes here), fight sex, violence and injuries, xeno, size differences/size kink, aggressive/rough sex, abuse of authority/loyalty, power dynamics/power imbalances, possessiveness, terrible people having a great time, breathplay/choking, manhandling, stomach and/or throat bulges, somnophilia, dubcon/noncom in all its varying shades

 

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
Ida Tetsuya (2188), Kurabe Tamao (2188), Worldbuilding

I absolutely love a good doomed-world narrative, and oh boy did 2188 deliver here. In fact, all of 13 Sentinels was really good to me in that regard – I loved the interwoven narratives, I loved trying to piece everything together as more and more bits of the truth were revealed, and then BAM! Turns out everyone’s just in a simulation and the world properly ended uncountable years ago already, oops. THAT WAS SO GOOD. (Also I’m always happy to punch things using giant robots, ngl.) Anyway I’m super interested in the 2188 side of things, which is why I requested these characters plus the worldbuilding tag.

On that note: please mix and match my three requested tags as you’d like. Don’t feel obligated to include all of them – and that goes for the worldbuilding tag, too. I’m totally game for worldbuilding through the lens of characters who didn’t end up being one of the 15 residents, or through one of the two I requested POV’s.

• I’d love to see your take on how exactly the world ended, in 2188. How people got together to build Project Ark, and what public perception of that was like at the time; how everyone involved just kept on working while below the space station everything just went to absolute hell. As noted in my likes I’m a big fan of unhappy endings – go for it. We know that everyone on the colony in 2188 is doomed, no matter how hard some of them may be fighting against it. We know they’re all going to die. Have fun with that knowledge – twist the knife as deep as it can go!!
• Ida in 2188 is apparently even more of a heartless bastard than his version from one loop ago is, apparently – FANTASTIC. He’s obviously brilliant, if he’s the Sysadmin for Project Ark; however, we saw just how well that brilliance ended up working for him in the loops, which is to say: not at all. So. What was life like for Ida, on the space station? What does being Sysadmin entail? What was his relationship to Project Ark on a more personal level; what was his life like before the nanomachine infection hit and everyone had to evacuate? And, finally: what exactly did his betrayal of 2188-Shinonome entail? Just what happened there between these two, right at the end?
• Tamao, meanwhile, seems to have been the complete opposite of Ida in 2188, ethics-wise at least. Her final message to the 15 clone children . . . chilling. But also so optimistic!! That kind of hope in the face of the devastation the nanomachine infection wreaked on the world is super interesting to me, and I’d love to see you take a closer look at this incredible woman.What was her relationship like not only with her mentee Morimura, but also the other 15 who eventually ended up becoming part of Project Ark? What did she think about the various machiantions going on between the others – like Renya and Sekigahara and Morimura, or Ida and Shinonome, or… -- and really, what was her role in that whole happy game of blackmail, anyway?

 

Drifting Home
Worldbuilding

So I love summer adventure stories, and this looked incredible just from the trailer – kids exploring a strange ocean on a floating building?! How could I not love it!! And I mean I very much did, but I also ended up bawling my eyes out at the end ;A; There’s something so profoundly melancholy about the movie – the kids learning to let go of their grief, growing closer and maybe not getting over their issues, but at least learning to acknowledge them, that I thought was incredibly well-done.

I also really loved the idea of all forgotten/abandoned places ending up on that ocean, drifting with their personifications until hopefully one day they also land on that landmass made of other forgotten things…it’s such a cool idea and I would love to know more about it, and people’s interpretation of it. Which is why I requested the worldbuilding tag here!!

• Were there other times, before or after the movie, in which humans got stuck on the forgotten ocean? How did they get there? How did they leave? (Did they manage to leave?) What was their building/place like? What happened to its spirit?
• What’s up with that island, at the end? What sort of buildings were stranded there? Are there even more populated areas further inland? What are those like – what’s a city to a personification of a building, anyway?
• What are the lights that kept on appearing in the forgotten world? What’s the dark monster thing hiding out in the depths of the ocean, in contrast? The lights seem protective; the dark thing anything but – what’s the relationship there?
•  If any of my requested fandoms is especially suited for formatting weirdness it’s this one, I think – are online places considered abandoned places in such a sense that they leave something of themselves behind, too, on that ocean? How does the realm of forgotten spaces interact with places that aren’t as tangible as, well, a giant apartment building? I’d be super interested in your take on this.
• What would your forgotten/disused place be, author? What would its spirit look like? Tell me all about it!!

 

 

The Half-Made World – Felix Gilman
Any (Liv, John Creedmoor, Worldbuilding)

This is one of my all-time favorite books—there’s just so many super cool things about it, ahh. I love the Weird West aspects, with the almost hivemind-like thing the Engine spirits have going for them, and the more direct, patron-like deals the Agents enter into with the demons in that inhabit their guns; I love the worldbuilding that has the actual landscape dissolving the further into the undiscovered lands of the west you go, and how the native inhabitants interact entirely differently with that. I love Liv and Creedmoor’s character development over the course of the book, and I’m super into how they both grow to be a bit more like the other: Liv becoming just a bit more ruthless and world-weary, so that she can make the tough decisions she needs to, and Creedmoor regaining his humanity and compassion just enough to allow Liv to finally destroy Marmion’s gun and then later journey together with her to find a way to kill both Gun and Line for good. Marmion I love for how alien it is – the spirits of the Gun in their smoke-and-fire lodge are A+ eldritch beings, and the long-standing enmity between them and the Line is such a great hook and I wish the books had gone just a bit more into the details of that.

Basically: IT’S SO COOL and I love all of it.

Requested characters: I requested “any”, and I really will be happy with any and all in any combination (worldbuilding solo included!!! Love me some worldbuilding.)

• Liv interacting with an actual Gun spirit would be super cool I think—Marmion and her never directly got to interact, so basically anything with the two of them holding an actual conversation (however they end up doing that) would be super awesome! Liv isn’t fond of the Gun and Marmion basically tried to get Liv out of the way the moment she showed up-- them actually interacting without Creedmoor as a buffer between them would be very interesting, I think. Or did Liv maybe run into some Gun spirits beforehand, and just never realized??? That could be super interesting as well.
• I am 110% here for John Creedmoor’s terrible well-meaning adventures pre-novel, lmao. We know how his final mission with the girl ended, but what about all the other things beforehand? What sort of other Agents did he meet/team up with/antagonize; what Engine and Linesmen did he get into trouble with? Basically if you’re up for it, I’d be super down for some heist or adventure or honestly just him chilling somewhere being his usual charming dickish self.
• Worldbuilding would be super cool, too, like I said! Something exploring the spirits of the Gun – and the Line, if you feel like it, and both sides’ relationship with the people they employ. There’s a line in the book where Marmion says, “All our Agents are unruly, and we love you for it” – and that seems to be true enough, because even though the spirits of the Gun seem to really like being in charge, they don’t keep their Agents under their heel like the Line does with their men. Plus Gun and Line make for fantastic eldritch forces, and if you feel like digging a bit deeper into the nitty gritty parts of just what a pact between an Agent of the Gun and the spirit in their weapon entails, I’d be SO here for it.

 

 

The Malazan Book of the Fallen – Steven Erikson
Dancer | Cotillion, Surly | Laseen

Note: The prompts/etc for this don’t have spoilers for anything but the main ten books, but I am up to date with just about everything except the Necromancer novellas.

I LOVE THESE TWO SO MUCH. Stabby ambitious assassins of my heart. My favorite thing is how they’re actually quite similar – they’re both super capable, they’re both the more no-nonsense type (at least in comparison to Kellanved), they’re both the type to do their best to fix a situation they don’t like, even/especially if it means killing people. Sadly, of course, that last similarity meant that Surly came gunning for Kellanved’s throne when she thought he and Dancer weren’t doing right by their empire, and that before long Cotillion tried to send Sorry after her in retaliation, but…well, what can you do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Dancer tried running an empire together with Kellanved and realized eventually that he/they weren’t particularly suited to it, so they decided to move on; Surly tried to depose them because she thought she could do better, only it then turned out that while she was good at fighting she wasn’t all that great at people-politics, and Mallik Rel came for her just like she’d come for Dancer and Kellanved. While Cotillion grows to be more empathetic and becomes more human after his ascension, Laseen seems to have been closing herself off from anyone but her Claw; Cotillion came around to relying on others (the Bonehunters, Apsalar, Tavore…) while Laseen, at the end, was all alone. They just contrast each other so well, and I think that’s really cool.

• Literally any sort of missing scene from before Dancer and Kellanved ascended. From the PtA books it very much comes across as if Surly and Dancer ended up playing the straight woman/man to Kellanved’s…everything, so did they bond over that at any point? What’s it like, both being assassins but realizing, as the years go on, that it you want to see your ambitions through you’re inevitable going to end up fighting each other to the death? Hell, if you’re up for it I’d love something about the night Laseen took the throne – what were things like in Mock’s Hold that night, how did she take on Dancer and Kellanved, just how hard did she press them to make them decide that falling out of the window was the best way to fake their death?
• On the flip side, Cotillion and Laseen interacting after she took the throne would be absolutely fantastic as well. Cotillion is still so bitter in GotM over what she did, but he gets over that eventually – but what about Laseen? Cotillion and Shadowthrone’s true identities are pretty much the worst-kept secret in the whole Malazan world, and I can’t imagine Laseen of all people never managed to make that connection, too. So what was her reaction when she realized that she hadn’t managed to kill them both after all? What would it be like for her and Cotillion to meet again after all that?
• Tragically, despite them both being great fighters and being involved in various battles separately across all the various Malazan books, Dancer and Surly (and I guess Cotillion and Laseen) never actually get to fight anything together. So. Please. Have them team up to punch/skewer/shank/stab some enemy together and rectify this great injustice. (Or have them fight each other! That’s cool too. Fight fight fiiiiight)
• So…turns out that apparently Dancer is my little stabby black dress for this fandom, because while typing all this out I realized I could definitely ship him and Surly? A nice little hateship where they both secretly (or not so secretly) kind of want to assassinate each other, only that at first it would hurt the empire and then later they’ve both got much bigger fish to fry so they…don’t. But they would! Totally! If only they had the time, but alas Kellanved makes so many demands of them they just can’t find any free time to put aside for it. Oh no. Life sure is difficult.