the sea does not dream of you

Hey there, dear Yuletide Writer!

Thank you so much for writing for me, and I hope you have a great Yuletide! I hope you’ll find this letter useful; I’ve gone ahead and listed some prompts/ideas for my requested fandoms, but please don’t think they’re the be-all end-all for me. If you’ve got something else in mind already or have an idea for something completely different, go right ahead and write that instead! I’ll be looking forward to reading whatever you come up with.

In case you want to find me elsewhere: My AO3 is cadmean, and I’m on tumblr as teumesia. I’m really only here on DW because it’s easier for letter formatting/readability, haha. (That said by now I have started to accumulate some letters here, so if you want to have a poke at those as well then they’re there.)

Now, some general things:

General Likes:

worldbuilding, missing-scene type fic, character studies, banter, us against the world, found family/family of choice, moral conflicts, loyalty, pragmatic characters, people kicking ass together, unlikely allies, competence, darkfic, horror, cosmic horrors – the more grotesque and inhuman, the better, things getting destroyed in totally over-the-top ways, action scenes and battles, trust and trust issues, power dynamics/power imbalance, dysfunctional/codependent relationships, ambiguous or downright unhappy endings.

I’m also super down for any kind of work that plays with presentation and format – epistolary fic, IF, etc. Likewise, I have no hard preferences for POV or tense.

Porn—if you get the inspiration to write porn for any of my fandoms and requested characters below then sure, go for it! I’m just as happy with gen, however, so feel free to do whatever. I tend to like porn that’s heavier on the manipulative plot/sex-for-power side of things rather than straight-up fluff, so dubcon, breathplay, etc are all appreciated – though again, my only hard nopes are the ones listed below, so if you want to have a go at something else go right ahead! I’m easy to please and always happy to try new things.

DNWs:

mundane AUs; unrequested crossovers; pregnancy/mpreg/kidfic; A/B/O; overly graphic descriptions of bodily fluids other than blood.

On to fandom specifics! Though please note that any differences in length come down entirely to how well (or not) I was able to condense my thoughts, and not any sort of preference for one fandom over the others. All three fandoms are near and dear to my heart (else I wouldn’t be requesting them), and I’d be absolutely delighted to receive fic for any of them \o/

Kill Six Billion Demons
Characters: Incubus, Jagganoth

I honestly can’t remember how I first came across this webcomic, only that by page three weird spiky horsebeast-riders were riding around and chopping off a dude’s head, and then that dude just went about his business regardless, and—well. By that point I was hooked!

I love the intricate world Abbadon’s built – the angels, devils, demiurges, and all the various other kinds of beings living in Throne and the rest of the 777,777 universes. The worldbuilding, like the super cool artstyle, is very colorful but also depressing: you have all these worlds, and also these seven people with near unlimited power, and this is what comes out of it? I don’t know about you, but I can definitely see where Zoss is coming from when he tells Allison to have a go at killing six billion demons and reclaiming Throne.

Now, as for Jagganoth and Incubus: unholy alliances are my jam, and I was so happy when it turned out that they’re working together. (Or, uh, at least not actively trying to kill each other. That’s almost the same thing, isn’t it!) I love trickster-god types with glaring issues, which Incubus has plenty of, and then Jagganoth takes the dumb-brute trope and turns it on its head by being the smartest demiurge out of all of them – they make a great team, and I can’t wait to see what further havoc they’ll end up wreaking.

Some ideas:

--Like I said unholy alliances are my jam, so I’d be super interested in why exactly these two decided to ally up. Who approached who, what were the terms, what were the circumstances? And what happens if either of them break it off? Incubus seems to be mainly in it to screw over the other Demiurges (but why go to Jagganoth, of all people?), but what exactly is Jagganoth, a dude so powerful the other six had to team up to stalemate him during the first war, getting out of allying with him? The power differential there is ridiculous, is all I’m saying. And then of course Incubus has his side deal with Allison as well.

--The early days of the Second Conquest! What was their relationship like back when all of the various demiurges were doing their best to kill each other, and was there any change when the Pact of the Seven-Part World was made? Do any of the other seven have any opinions on this, and just how aware are they of Jagganoth and Incubus working together in the current era?

--In KSBD, legend and history blur together all the time. So: how are Incubus and Jagganoth viewed by the common population of Throne? What tales are told about them, and just how accurate are they to what actually happened? I find the psalms and spasms super fun additions to the comic, so anything in the vein of those would be cool.

(A note: I’m up-to-date with the canon and plan to stay that way, too, so don’t worry about spoilers or anything. Likewise, I don’t mind canon divergence, so if a later update josses something you’ve written please don’t worry about it.)

The Half-Made World – Felix Gilman
Characters: Any (John Creedmoor, Liv Alverhuysen, Marmion)

I love weird west stories, and The Half-Made World is amazing weird west – the characters are great, and I’ll get to them in a second, but the setting! I love how Gilman actually incorporated the idea of unexplored lands being literally unformed, and how Gun and Line, anarchy and order, fight for dominion out in those lawless lands. How the west literally isn’t fully-formed yet, and you nobody knows what happens if you walk out into the unmade-ness, and the eastern countries are all more scientific than the west, and how science and the west’s general unfinished state of being clash – there’s probably more eloquent ways to put this, but basically it’s super cool and I love the world Gilman built in all its dusty glory. 

Of course I love the characters a whole lot, too! I really like the way Liv and Creedmoor contrast each other; how Liv starts out as being super by-the-books and eventually becomes incredibly pragmatic and even a bit ruthless, in her own way; how she serves as both a moral compass and a catalyst for Creedmoor going through with what he couldn’t do on his own and finally leaving the service of the Gun. And Marmion – well, I find the relationship the spirits of the Gun have with their Agents to be super interesting in and of itself, and with Marmion and Creedmoor it’s not a simple give-and-take, but more the both of them constantly trying to see how far they can push the other to get what they want.

The prompts I’ve put up are more character-focused, but as you’ve maybe already gathered I’m super into all types of worldbuilding so if you’d rather go that direction, I wouldn’t mind at all! Also feel free to mix and match the three characters in any way you want, and please don’t feel the need to include all three of them if that’s not what you were going for anyhow.

Some ideas:

--Marmion and Liv 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.

--What if Creedmoor had chosen differently, at the end? After the battle of New Design, there’s only a handful of Linesmen left – what if he had killed them, what if Liv had never had the chance to stab Creedmoor, what if he had taken the General and tried to make it back to civilization? How would Liv deal with a Creedmoor who chose the Gun instead of humanity?

--Since it’s Harry Ransom narrating The Rise of Ransom City we never really do get to find out what exactly happened when Knoll and Marmion catch up to Creedmoor in White Rock; or how Liv and Creedmoor’s journey back to civilization went; or what happened to them after they split with Ransom, how they made it to the World’s Wall Mountains and what exactly they found there… Basically, I’d love anything about Liv and Creedmoor’s adventures and what they were up to in general while Harry Ransom was busy making it big (or trying to, in any case) as a salesman.

--Wait, I lied, have a worldbuilding prompt: 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.

The Malazan Book of the Fallen – Steven Erikson
Characters: Dancer, Dassem Ultor

The ridiculously detailed worldbuilding is one of my favorite things about the books, as well as the way Erikson manages to flesh out his characters pretty well over comparatively little screentime. Cotillion and Dassem are two of my favorite characters because they have super cool character arcs! And I like how their characters/plots mirror each other a bit, with Dancer being focused on Empire and Azath Things and quite frankly being kind of a dick, but Cotillion caring about others to the point that other characters remark on him being unsuited to being a god; while Dassem pretty much embodied the ‘Father to His Men’ trope but Traveller is hell-bent on getting his revenge and nothing else matters. What rounds it all out for me is that Dancer and Dassem were fairly good friends before they both ascended, but that it didn’t stop Cotillion and Shadowthrone from using Dassem for their own plans re: Rake, while Dassem himself is just so focused on getting his revenge on Hood that he doesn’t care about anything or anyone else.

Basically I really like how they have to reconcile the relationship they had before they both abandoned the empire with the one they have now as ascendants, and how it’s just super awkward for everyone involved. (I do happen to ship them, so I would not at all be opposed if you wanted to go in that direction, too :D)

Some ideas:

--Early empire adventures! Did they partner up sometime to go kill/intimidate/thoroughly confuse some neighboring kingdom’s ruler?  Did Dancer and Kellanved take Dassem along to explore Shadow at any point? How exactly did they end up getting Hood’s Mortal Sword to be a part of their group? Also, at one point Apsalar tells Crokus and Fiddler that “Dancer trusted but two men. One was Kellanved. The other was Dassem Ultor, the First Sword” – I’d love to know how that happened!

--Anything at all to do with the last Chaining of the Crippled God. We know that Dancer attended it while Kellanved apparently happened to be conspicuously absent, and Dassem was there as Knight of High House Death only to have Hood kill his daughter. So . . . what exactly went down there? Did Dassem bring Dancer along to the Chaining; if not, how did Dancer get access? How did Dassem’s daughter die, how did she end up in the Deadhouse – and how did all that affect the relationship between Dancer and Dassem (and Kellanved)?

--Post-canon fic would also be lovely! After Toll the Hounds Dassem is a wreck; after Orb Sceptre Throne he finally seems to be doing a bit better now that he has a whole island of Seguleh to worry about. The last time he and Cotillion talked was presumably during the whole Darujhistan thing, so I’d be super interested in seeing them meeting again afterward – maybe they talk it out, maybe they don’t, but either way I’d really love to see something that deals with the personal consequences that having Rake kill Hood had for the two of them, and where they go from there.

(A note: I’ve read all of Erikson’s and ICE’s books, and once Deadhouse Landing comes out in November I’ll be reading that as well. So a) no worries about spoilers, but also b) I don’t mind canon divergence at all, so if there’s something in DhL or in basically any of the books aside from Erikson's main ten that josses what you’ve written please don’t worry about it.)

And that's that! Hope you have fun :D

Hey, dear Yuletide Writer!

First of all thanks for offering one of my fandoms – you’re awesome! This is my first Yuletide so I’m still trying to get the hang of things; this letter got a bit wordy, I’m sorry, but I got started writing and then it was suddenly very difficult to stop. But please don’t worry, anything you do with these characters I will be super happy with! I’ve included some prompts if you want inspiration, but they’re really just there for ideas so don’t feel like you have to use them.

(In case you want to find me elsewhere: My AO3 is cadmean, and I’m on tumblr as teumesia. I’m really only here on DW because it’s easier for letter formatting/readability, haha.)

General likes: Worldbuilding, character studies. Missing scenes. Comfortable established relationships, banter, us against the world, couples kicking ass together. People in general being competent at what they do. UST, snark. Loyalty and betrayal and their respective consequences.

General dislikes:  Pregnancy/kidfic. Any overly graphic descriptions of bodily fluids. A/B/O. Noncon. Tentacles. AUs of the coffee shop/high school/etc variety. Mechanics-focused smut, if that makes sense? I am totally fine with smut! But I like it more when it’s character-focused rather than bits going boink.

On to requests!

THE MALAZAN BOOK OF THE FALLEN - STEVEN ERIKSON
Characters: Dancer|Cotillion, Dassem Ultor, Surly|Laseen, Kellanved|Ammanas

I fell in love with Malazan the moment Cotillion and Shadowthrone showed up in Itko Kan, and by the end of Gardens of the Moon I was hooked. There are two main drawing points for me: one of them is the massive amount of worldbuilding that can be found, and the other is the underlying theme of compassion going on.

Dancer – My favorite thing about Dancer is how much he grows as a character over the course of the story. In the beginning there are a lot of hints and implications that while he was always a really gifted assassin, as a person he was, well, kind of a douche. (Urko Crust wanted to throw him into a canal!) I feel like that starts to change once he possesses Sorry, until we get that awesome scene between Lostara Yil and Cotillion in the beginning of The Crippled God. I love the development he goes through.

Kellanved, on the other hand, I find interesting because we really don’t get to see him all that much in the books. And when he does show up, Ammanas comes across as very probably totally insane, but also  very, very good at the whole lord of shadow thing. He’s the mysterious schemer type and that’s a lot of fun, but I’m also really curious as to what’s going on in his head.

Dassem is sort of the odd man out in that he shows up a whole lot later on as Traveller, but you get the sense that he’s changed a lot after the death of his daughter and his own disappearance. He must have been close to the rest of the Old Guard going by the way they all talk about him, but in the present time he’s pretty dedicated to staying undercover. His single-minded focus to kill Hood is really fascinating in light of all the people he left behind to get close to being able to kill Hood. Character-wise he seems kind of the opposite of Cotillion: he was kind and compassionate before his daughter’s death and Surly’s rise to power, but afterward he seems to lose a lot of that in his quest for revenge. Not all of his compassion! But a good deal of it. I also ship him and Dancer in a sort of low key, UST way, and them more or less switching their outlooks on life works great into that.

And Surly. What I like about her is that she realized that the two top men of the empire were gone for way too long and that, really, there were better people around to take the throne, her right up at the top of the list – and so she went right ahead and became empress. That’s really impressive in and of itself, and I’m a big fan of that sort of decisive mindset in characters. Plus, she just really kicks ass.

Prompts: Anything from the early days of the empire, basically. I’m a huge sucker for the Found Families trope, especially when it comes to all of the Old Guard huddling in the Deadhouse together and plotting to take over the world.

--How did they all end up together? We know Surly came with the other Napans, but what about Dassem? And how did him becoming Knight of Death factor into everything later on?

--Likewise, how did Kellanved and Dancer even meet in the first place, and how did they come to decide to build up an empire together? They trust each other a lot and have that sort of camaraderie that comes with years of knowing the other person, so I’m interested in how that all began.

--What was Laseen thinking when she heard of the new gods of shadow? Did she make the connection between the comrades she murdered and the two gods? (Did Dassem?)

--Present-day, does Shadowthrone just sit on his shadowy throne all day and complain about his increasing immaterialness? What are his thoughts on the goings-on, like Tavore leading the Bonehunters and Mallick Rel becoming the next emperor? He tries to come across as detached and whimsical, but underneath all that he still seems to care for his empire.

Addendum: I requested those four characters, but please don’t feel as if you have to fit them all into a single fic; I’d be delighted to read about any of them in any combination or on their own! Likewise if you want to include some of the other characters in the tagset or from the canon in general.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT ANNIKA – SIMON STÅLENHAG
Characters: Any

Quick link if you’re just browsing: ‘We Need To Talk About Annika’ is a series of pictures by Simon Stålenhag, depicting a young teenage couple investigating some strange contraption while some sort of robot/technology apocalypse seems to be going on. It’s really worth checking out!

The image post showed up on my dashboard, and I was instantly intrigued. All the barely touched-on details of the world (robots! Weird technology!) are super cool and offer a whole lot of different opportunities for interpretation which I really like. I’m a big fan of that kind of background apocalypse trope in general, and the creepy technology thrown in is a huge plus as well.

The images throw up so many questions: What’s going on with the teleportation/transfer thing the boyfriend steps into? Why is he holding his head – what happened in there? To me it looks like whoever steps into one of the chambers gets taken apart and then reassembled or maybe cloned in the other chamber? Annika and her boyfriend are just exploring so I’m not sure they have any idea what they’ve gotten themselves into, but she did lead him to it in the earlier pictures and she does look back at the lake of gore while guiding her boyfriend away. Did she know something weird was going to happen or was something strange going on in the first place – really, why do we need to talk about Annika?

And then of course there’s the whole robot apocalypse thing going on in the background, which as I said earlier is super awesome! Annika and her boyfriend seem to just kind of accept it all, so I’m curious as to how long the robot/technology weirdness has been going on and what it was fought over and who was fighting and all that, and how Annika and the boyfriend feel about the whole thing.

Prompts: Basically, dear writer, I’d be delighted with whatever sort of worldbuilding fic you come up with! As I said earlier there's a whole lot of room for interpretation in this canon, so I'd love to know what other people make of it. A few possible starting points:

--The technology in general. What’s going on there, what’s the world like? The technology all looks sort of alive, or at least very organic-like. Is all of it like that, or is the teleporter machine an especially creepy exception?

--The teleporter machine. What’s it for, and why is out in the middle of a field somewhere? How does it work, what happens in the pods? And how does the pool of bloody remains play into it?

--Annika and her boyfriend. Did they explore other strange structures, or was the one in the field the first? Are they always that adventurous, or was this an exception?

--Relatedly, does whatever happened in the teleporter have any effect on their relationship? Does it mean anything in the context of the world in general?

--And what’s life in that world like? Annika and her boyfriend seem like your average teenage couple, but I’m curious how all of that plays out in front of the weirdness of the rest of the setting. Where and how do they live, what about their hometown? Family?

Really, throw some cool worldbuilding my way and I will be over the moon.

WARHAMMER 40,000
Characters: Ahzek Ahriman, Magnus the Red, Malcador the Sigillite

I could go on about how I love that this canon is incredibly lore-rich, and the over the top grimdark, and how the hilariously on-the-nose naming for things is, well, hilarious, but basically I am so here for all the loyalty kink and war and betrayal in space. Yes.

Now, I’ll be completely honest here with you and say that I love Malcador a whole lot. I think it’s awesome how in a setting with superhumans and aliens and evil gods and sentient butts of gas and all that Malcador is just a human, and yet the right-hand man of the Emperor, Sigillite of Terra, Lord of Assassins, you know the drill. Yes of course he’s a powerful psyker, but still human! With all the pitfalls and constraints that come with that, and I find it super interesting how he interacts with the primarchs and the Emperor, who are at least nominally on a different level than him. (Plus there’s that whole thing about him hoarding lots of ancient art and stuff – he has the Mona Lisa hanging in his rooms! That’s pretty awesome.)

As for the traitors, I’m going to lump Ahriman and Magnus together here, because I think they’re both very similar: smart, highly ambitious, and they both more or less ended up making the same mistakes. Basically what I find super interesting about these two is that even though in 40k they’re very much antagonistic, there’s also nevertheless a lot of respect left between them. Magnus might have banished Ahriman for the Rubric but still considers him his best son; Ahriman likewise still seems to have a lot of respect for his primarch despite everything that happened. I see it as this old bond of loyalty existing between them in face of everything that happened – from the early days of the Crusade to the burning of Prospero and then the Planet of Sorcerors they went through so much stuff side by side, and I imagine it’s really difficult to just forget all that.

I ship them, too, because again they’re very similar but just different enough that it causes friction, and with the primarch and first captain thing they’re bound to see a lot of each other. And then it all backfires spectacularly with the Burning of Prospero and the Rubric, of course, which is super fun!

Prompts: For Magnus and Ahriman I know I talked a lot about 40k, but if you want to do pre- or actual Heresy with them, go for it! (Sadly 40k isn’t really an option with Malcador…)

--Anything with Malcador, really; what does he do all day in the palace? Does he meet up with the Emperor to discuss things, does he get bogged down by bureaucratic stuff a lot? Really, if you want to write him I’ll be over the moon no matter what else you write about.

--Malcador talking with Magnus would be really cool, too – they’re both psykers, and we know that Malcador canonically takes a sort of uncle role for at least a couple of the primarchs. So what would they talk about if they met, what do they think of one another?

--Ahriman’s Wacky Warp Adventures post-Rubric. He’s a resourceful guy and the Eye of Terror is a big place – what sort of shenanigans does he get up to? Unfortunate run-ins with Space Wolves or Khorne Marines? Eldar trying to outsmart him? Tzeentch being a dick again? Go wild.

--Similarly, Magnus’ not quite as spectacular life on the Planet of Sorcerors. It’s a question I seem to be asking a lot here, but: what does he do all day? In John French’s Ahriman novels he seems to be aware of what’s going on off his planet at least vaguely, and he’s also keeping an eye on Ahriman, but that’s not a lot to be doing when you’re stuck in the warp.

--Ahriman and Magnus in 30k, kicking ass in a battle or nerding out dramatically over some ancient text or the like together. Ahriman was Magnus’ First Captain, so they spent a lot of time together doing things, and they have that huge library on Prospero and they had to acquire that somehow, right?

Again, I requested those three characters but feel free to mix and match as you want!