Yuletide Letter 2010
Nov. 12th, 2010 03:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miramiraDear Yuletide Writer,
Thanks for agreeing to write for my fandom(s)! I apologize for not picking anything that's readily accessible on the Internet, but if you're anything like me, hopefully the relevant reference material is sitting nearby on your bookshelf.
Most of what I said last year about my general preferences still goes: I like plot regardless of whether the fic is cracky or introspective, and my one real turnoff is being cruel to characters for cruelty's sake. I don't think this year's batch of requests lends itself quite as well to crossovers, though, so don't knock yourself out trying to make that work.
If you haven't scrolled down through the paragraph on shipping yet, don't: I'm going to skip all that this year, because I do have a scenario that I wouldn't mind seeing stray into more mature territory. Even so, I'll gladly trade mind-blowing sex for awkwardness with lots of character development, and I like my pairings fully consensual, legal, and on the vanilla side. (Which, in addition to ruling out things like incest and chan, means no hot action for any feline wizards. Sorry, Urruah!)
So! On to the prompts. I figure if you've gotten matched with me at all, we probably have similar taste in literature and you might want to check out some of these books if you're not familiar with them already, so I've put them each under separate cuts and warned for spoilers where appropriate. I've tried to be as vague as possible about the latter, but better safe than sorry.
Good luck, and have fun! I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
- Mira
Connie Willis - Oxford Time Travel series
I was originally going to ask for Ned/Verity cuteness, but there was a lot of that last year. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized Badri deserves a chance to claim the spotlight for once. Please give him one. If you can turn it into a Crowning Moment of Awesome, so much the better. (Though if you want to throw some Ned/Verity cuteness into the background or give other people cameos, I'm certainly not going to complain.)
When people ask me a horribly unfair question like who my favorite author is, I usually say Connie Willis, and this series is the reason why. I studied a fair amount of British history in college, and I'm a sucker for paradoxes and all the other complications that come with time travel, but what I really love is that Willis never lets the care she takes with the technical details get in the way of the characterization. That, and she writes the most utterly brilliant self-absorbed nuisances of antagonists: you're never sure whether you want to laugh at them or choke them. So if you can throw one of those in, too, major props.
Diane Duane - Cats of Grand Central Station
The Lone Power is one of my favorite adversaries, but I'm really looking for something more lighthearted than an epic showdown. Send Arhu and Ith on a pastrami-hunting expedition, give Urruah a chance to work with one of his beloved o'hra singers, turn the Speech into LOLcat and make everyone scramble to fix it...I'm sure you can come up with something. Or heck, if you have way too much time on your hands and are feeling really ambitious, you could finish The Big Meow. It's Hollywood; there must be some way to work in screwball comedy.
I wish I could give an elaborate explanation of why I like this series, but...c'mon. They're cats. Who do magic. Which is really more like Clarke's "science we can't explain yet" principle in practice, and results in such awesome things as fighting manifestations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. What's not to like?
As a side note, if you're going to include Young Wizards characters, I have a general idea of where things stand with the series as a whole, but I'm only caught up through the third book. Just bear that in mind when doling out cameos or making in-jokes.
Brandon Sanderson - Mistborn series (mild spoilers)
I'd love a fic set sometime between Well of Ascension and Hero of Ages where Vin teaches Elend what being Mistborn is all about - using any incentives necessary (*nudge, nudge, wink, wink*). If that's too constraining, then any scenario where they initially clash a bit in their approach to a problem but ultimately figure out a way to make it work to their advantage will do nicely. Feel free to give the rest of the crew stuff to do as well.
Vin is one of my favorite fantasy heroines. I like that she's tough and smart without being invincible or incapable of making mistakes, and I like that her relationship with Elend (whose thoughtful bookishness appeals to me) enhances who she is as an individual rather than turning her into the love interest. And Allomancy is just plain cool...or hot, I imagine, if you've got a Mistborn keenly attuned to his or her abilities using them for something other than fighting. But you don't have to go that route by any means.
Lev Grossman - The Magicians (spoilers)
Tell me a story about Jane, please. It can be part of the Fillory books, especially if it involves the events of The World in the Walls from her perspective. It can explain how Brakebills found out about her. It can feature prior encounters with the Beast. It can shine some light on whether she had anything to do with the Julia situation (I have my suspicions, obviously). Or it can be about what happened to her after the end of the book. I just want more of her.
The sorts of questions that The Magicians deals with - whether there comes a point at which you're too old for magic, what you do with it when there isn't some great evil to fight, how spells might work, the nature of the multiverse - are all issues that intrigue me, and a large part of the reason I can't get this book out of my head. I'd just prefer to see someone with more internal drive than Quentin displays for a good chunk of the story wrestle with them (though if you can give him that, by all means, please do), and Jane's deeper/broader perspective on the worlds she moves through seems like a good place to start. I also like Julia and Janet (and Alice, though that might be too depressing as a main focus), so I wouldn't object to seeing them in a substantive role.
Thanks for agreeing to write for my fandom(s)! I apologize for not picking anything that's readily accessible on the Internet, but if you're anything like me, hopefully the relevant reference material is sitting nearby on your bookshelf.
Most of what I said last year about my general preferences still goes: I like plot regardless of whether the fic is cracky or introspective, and my one real turnoff is being cruel to characters for cruelty's sake. I don't think this year's batch of requests lends itself quite as well to crossovers, though, so don't knock yourself out trying to make that work.
If you haven't scrolled down through the paragraph on shipping yet, don't: I'm going to skip all that this year, because I do have a scenario that I wouldn't mind seeing stray into more mature territory. Even so, I'll gladly trade mind-blowing sex for awkwardness with lots of character development, and I like my pairings fully consensual, legal, and on the vanilla side. (Which, in addition to ruling out things like incest and chan, means no hot action for any feline wizards. Sorry, Urruah!)
So! On to the prompts. I figure if you've gotten matched with me at all, we probably have similar taste in literature and you might want to check out some of these books if you're not familiar with them already, so I've put them each under separate cuts and warned for spoilers where appropriate. I've tried to be as vague as possible about the latter, but better safe than sorry.
Good luck, and have fun! I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
- Mira
Connie Willis - Oxford Time Travel series
I was originally going to ask for Ned/Verity cuteness, but there was a lot of that last year. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized Badri deserves a chance to claim the spotlight for once. Please give him one. If you can turn it into a Crowning Moment of Awesome, so much the better. (Though if you want to throw some Ned/Verity cuteness into the background or give other people cameos, I'm certainly not going to complain.)
When people ask me a horribly unfair question like who my favorite author is, I usually say Connie Willis, and this series is the reason why. I studied a fair amount of British history in college, and I'm a sucker for paradoxes and all the other complications that come with time travel, but what I really love is that Willis never lets the care she takes with the technical details get in the way of the characterization. That, and she writes the most utterly brilliant self-absorbed nuisances of antagonists: you're never sure whether you want to laugh at them or choke them. So if you can throw one of those in, too, major props.
Diane Duane - Cats of Grand Central Station
The Lone Power is one of my favorite adversaries, but I'm really looking for something more lighthearted than an epic showdown. Send Arhu and Ith on a pastrami-hunting expedition, give Urruah a chance to work with one of his beloved o'hra singers, turn the Speech into LOLcat and make everyone scramble to fix it...I'm sure you can come up with something. Or heck, if you have way too much time on your hands and are feeling really ambitious, you could finish The Big Meow. It's Hollywood; there must be some way to work in screwball comedy.
I wish I could give an elaborate explanation of why I like this series, but...c'mon. They're cats. Who do magic. Which is really more like Clarke's "science we can't explain yet" principle in practice, and results in such awesome things as fighting manifestations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. What's not to like?
As a side note, if you're going to include Young Wizards characters, I have a general idea of where things stand with the series as a whole, but I'm only caught up through the third book. Just bear that in mind when doling out cameos or making in-jokes.
Brandon Sanderson - Mistborn series (mild spoilers)
I'd love a fic set sometime between Well of Ascension and Hero of Ages where Vin teaches Elend what being Mistborn is all about - using any incentives necessary (*nudge, nudge, wink, wink*). If that's too constraining, then any scenario where they initially clash a bit in their approach to a problem but ultimately figure out a way to make it work to their advantage will do nicely. Feel free to give the rest of the crew stuff to do as well.
Vin is one of my favorite fantasy heroines. I like that she's tough and smart without being invincible or incapable of making mistakes, and I like that her relationship with Elend (whose thoughtful bookishness appeals to me) enhances who she is as an individual rather than turning her into the love interest. And Allomancy is just plain cool...or hot, I imagine, if you've got a Mistborn keenly attuned to his or her abilities using them for something other than fighting. But you don't have to go that route by any means.
Lev Grossman - The Magicians (spoilers)
Tell me a story about Jane, please. It can be part of the Fillory books, especially if it involves the events of The World in the Walls from her perspective. It can explain how Brakebills found out about her. It can feature prior encounters with the Beast. It can shine some light on whether she had anything to do with the Julia situation (I have my suspicions, obviously). Or it can be about what happened to her after the end of the book. I just want more of her.
The sorts of questions that The Magicians deals with - whether there comes a point at which you're too old for magic, what you do with it when there isn't some great evil to fight, how spells might work, the nature of the multiverse - are all issues that intrigue me, and a large part of the reason I can't get this book out of my head. I'd just prefer to see someone with more internal drive than Quentin displays for a good chunk of the story wrestle with them (though if you can give him that, by all means, please do), and Jane's deeper/broader perspective on the worlds she moves through seems like a good place to start. I also like Julia and Janet (and Alice, though that might be too depressing as a main focus), so I wouldn't object to seeing them in a substantive role.