Dear Yuletide Writer

[hellabaloo]

It’s finally fall and Yuletide letters are going up, which makes this officially my favorite time of the year ;D

First off, thank you for writing for me! Above all else, I most want to read a story you want to write. It could be one you’ve been thinking about for years and years or maybe a prompt grabbed you yesterday. Either way, please think of my prompts as guidelines: there if you need them, but don’t worry about taking them in a different direction I didn’t think of. Besides steering clear of my DNWs listed below, have at my requests and I’m looking forward to read whatever you come up with :)

General Information

My AO3 handle is hellabaloo, but I spend most of my fannish time on tumblr as historiograph.

Previous Yuletide letters: 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012

General Likes:

Oof, so many things I’m sure I’ll forget some!

I love longfics that are sprawling epics and I love tight, short fics that are just the perfect, contained little morsel. I love casefic and gapfillers and slice-of-life fic that give you real sense of the characters and the atmosphere of canon. I love AUs too: canon divergence/for-want-of-a-nail/what-if type things! organized crime/hitmen! space pirate! historical! gladiator! art thief! parallel universes!

I love tropes—any version of fake dating/pretend relationships, soulmates/soulmarks/soulbonds (especially if they come with a side of mental connection/telepathy), bodyswaps, groundhog day/time loops, clothes-sharing, hurt/comfort oh man anything h/c, friends to lovers, enemies to lovers to friends, secret royalty, huddling for warmth, bed-sharing, and Canadian shacks if you want to combine those last two ;) I’m also always intrigued when tropes are subverted or my expectations for how something is going to play out are upended.

I love gen and friendship-focused fics and I love shippy fics and porn. See the Yuleporn section below for kinks and squicks!

General Dislikes:

Please no rape/non-con, necro, mpreg, terminal illness, infidelity, scat, non-canonical character deaths, character bashing, or character flaws being glossed over. Other fandom-specific DNWs are included in each section below.

I love a lot of AUs, just not high school or college AUs, coffee shop AUs, and omegaverses.

Tropes I’m not a fan of: miscommunication (characters assuming the worst and then refusing to talk about it) and whump (excessive, sadistic injury to characters with or without comfort)

Yuleporn

Kink Likes: fun giggly sex, inexperienced (but not necessarily virginal) characters enjoying themselves and having premature orgasms, kink discovery (e.g. one partner starts dirtytalking because they’re being funny and the other partner’s reaction can be summed up as “fuck, that’s hot”), anything size difference related (especially forehead kisses!), frottage and coming in pants, sex pollen/heats, breathplay, accidental stimulation, edging, and ass-worship (although no scat, please).

Squicks: along with the major ones listed in my general DNWs, please no formal BDSM relationships (elements of d/s or bondage are fine), animal/pet play, or infantilization/age play.

If you have any questions or want any clarification, please reach out through the mods! But I’ve also turned on anon commenting, if you want to use unofficial channels ;)

Requested Fandoms

⇒ Band of Brothers │ Richard Winters; Beyond preferring fic set in the canon era, I am open to anything. For Dick in particular, I love any fic that gets inside his head and really explores his feelings and reactions to events throughout the course of the war and beyond. There’s a certain distance he keeps from just about everyone, so I love it when there’s a crack in his demeanor and you catch a glimpse of his unfiltered thoughts. I ship Dick both with Nix and Doc Roe if want to feature either of those relationships.

Band of Brothers is one of my forever fandoms. I may wander off and be distracted by something new and shiny, but eventually I will always come back. A big part of that’s definitely the characters, and Dick Winters has always been one of my favorites. He’s just so goddamn likeable!

Dick’s practically the poster boy for The Greatest Generation—the sort of guy that enlists and goes through officer school because he wants to make a difference and believes that he can. And the thing that’s always fascinated me about Dick is that he really is that genuine and clearly cares about the men under his command, but he’s also not perfect by any means and does a lot to keep any of his shortcomings from affecting the people around him. It makes for a really interesting character!

When it comes to ships, it’s hard to go wrong with Winnix. Whether or not the relationship is actually romantic, I just really love their dynamic together so so much. Winters way be way more straight-laced than Nix, but they're still really close and it makes for great odd-couple shenanigans. They have so many moments (big and little) together throughout the series that are so perfect it’s unfair—”Going my way?”, “I’m okay, I’m okay. Am I okay?”, “I’ve got a present for you”/”Happy VE Day.” Ugh, they’re so good.

I’m also completely taken with the idea of Winters/Doc Roe. It’s definitely got a different flavor to it that Winnix—a little quieter, more understated—but that's also what really intrigues me about them. Especially if you add in the layer of odd power dynamics they have: what with Dick having the higher rank and Gene having the special position of medic. Who else can make Dick look guilty like Gene does when he's yelling at Dick and Harry Welsh?

And feel free to include other BoB characters in your fic, nominated or not!

Do Not Want more than canon typical violence

Prompts

◊ Oh man, anything about Richard Winters: Commanding Officer would be amazing. I’m just so fascinated by how he relates to the rest of the men in the company, but also tries to maintain a certain distance from them.

◊ I’d love more fic about Dick’s leave in Paris. If you’d like to go in a supernatural direction: that scene on the metro has always made me wonder, what if he could see the dead? If you want to go in a fun direction: Dick asks Gene for basic, useful French phrases and Gene laughs at his accent.

◊ I will never be able to read enough ‘Dick can heal people’ fics. Whether those are physical, spiritual, or mental ailments he’s healing, I’ll leave up to you.

◊ I have a weird love for holiday fics where they don’t really belong, so Dick aids and abets jolly old St. Luz on his Christmas mission? Or is awkward around Liebgott who casually mentions Hanukkah already having passed. Or Nix convinces him to take a swig of whiskey to celebrate and keep warm. Basically muted festivities because of the reality of being dug in at Bastogne, but still some attempt at doing something in the spirit of the season.

◊ Dick finds himself watching Gene more often than not and doesn’t really know what to do with his feelings because he’s the superior officer. It would be taking advantage and wrong, so he pines from a distance. Gene may or may not agree with him. Or maybe Dick’s never really noticed Gene, he’s just always been there, but then he get’s getting yelled at by this usually reserved medic for not following morphine syrette procedure and it intrigues him.

◊ I’d love anything about how Winters and Nix actually got to be friends in the first place. And if you want to continue that into friends-to lovers territory, all the better! Or something post-war and Dick is feeling insecure because Nix gave him a job and worrying about not letting him down or needing to fit into Nix’s world and not sure he does.

⇒ FC Barcelona RPF │ any (Rafael "Rafinha" Alcântara, Lionel Messi, Marc-André ter Stegen); I love everyone at this club, so really anything you write I will adore. For footie fic, I really like any sort of gapfiller or a look into the players’ lives during the season and important matches. Also anything to do with team bonding or being new to team and learning to play and spend a lot of time with new teammates would be fantastic. I ship Marc with both Rafa and Leo, and while I haven’t really considered Rafa/Leo before, I’m definitely not opposed to the idea!

Not gonna front, I am a total Barcelona stan. Not that the team and the club don’t frustrate me ever, but more often than not the good outweighs the bad. Which, for me, is the emphasis on an aesthetically attractive style of football, bringing players ups through the youth system, and a team that really enjoys the heck out of playing together. And in and of itself that’s not all that unique to Barça, but I love the Barça version of it.

I love Leo Messi. It’s pretty much that simple. And at this point in his career, I am super interested in how he’s developing into one of the experienced, older members of the team and helping younger teammates the way his teammates helped him once upon a time.

I was lucky enough to see Barcelona play in the States last year, and Rafinha was the player that in person impressed me the most. And it was so disheartening when he had that injury and was out for practically the whole season when it felt like he was on the edge of really breaking through. I don’t think when his generation was coming through Barça B that most people would have pegged him and Sergi Roberto as the two to stick and that sort of stuff fascinates me.

Goalkeepers are my favorite: they’re such an odd breed. And ter Stegen has rapidly become one of my favorite keepers ever. I am most fascinated by ter Stegen’s confidence and poise at his age. I also love it when he does make a mistake, owns it, and his teammates support him. SO MANY FEELS.

About shipfic and rl partners: I am totally fine with both the no-wives/girlfriends-AUs and open relationships/negotiated polyamory routes to get pairings together, but please do not explicitly break up a rl couple in fic.

Do Not Want permanent or serious injury

Prompts

◊ Leo actually is magical. He just kind of forgets sometimes because it’s never helped him win a game.

◊ With Rafa, I’ve been wanting some h/c set last season when he had that injury and worked so hard to come back, but he’s such a delight I’d adore something light and frothy too. Or, if you want to go the Alcantara Brothers route, I’d love anything about Rafa and Thiago. The La Masia years or competing against each other when Barcelona played Bayern in the recently in the Champions League. Or Rafinha and Neymar are just the cutest together, I’d love a fun fic with them featuring prank wars or a fluffy getting-together fic.

◊ I know it’s been two years at this point, but I will never not love new-to-a-team or new-to-a-city fics and I think they work particularly well for Marc who left Mönchengladbach when they were coming off a rough couple seasons with a relegation scare for Barcelona that’s just on another level in terms of size and media attention. And I really love when they include any sort of culture shock or language barriers!

◊ So, the Leo/Marc pairing was straight out of left field but I really, really enjoy the idea of them together and anything will make me happy. But I like the idea of Leo does Marc a favor once by getting his boots or something and all of a sudden the rest of the team is calling Leo Marc’s girlfriend. Leo rolls with it, Marc blushes a lot and gets flustered when asked about it. Or a fic about all the different types of hugs Marc and Leo share. Or, the classic new player comes to Barcelona and can’t help falling a little in love with Leo Messi.

◊ These darling children are too much. I mean, ter Stegen’s learning Portuguese now and Rafa’s totally encouraging him? And they always seem to be joking around and just enjoying each other's company. I'd love any fic that deals with language barriers and Rafa and Marc working getting to know each other despite them. Or accidental telepathy. Or something with height difference.

◊ I’d love tales about Leo training with Rafinha’s Barça B or Rafinha being brought into train with the first team before he was promoted. Basically anything about Leo and Rafa being La Masia kids.

◊ I love thinking about bodyswap fic in a football context. How would Leo react to being in ter Stegen’s body—younger and taller? How would Marc deal with suddenly being Leo Messi? Or how would Rafa and Marc try to throw Thiago off the scent when ‘Rafa’ suddenly speaks perfect German? There’s just so much potential for all sorts of shenanigans!

⇒ Basketball RPF │ Kevin Durant & Klay Thompson; Okay, I recognize that this request is a little cracky and part of still developing canon, what with the preseason just having started when I submitted my Yuletide signup, but I am utterly intrigued by the thought of Klay and KD together—as friends, teammates, or more. I’d love something about KD fitting into the Warriors and getting to know Klay or the story of the pitch meeting where KD was sold on going to Golden State. Of course I’d love fic featuring them together, but focus on either of them individually if you’d like.

I have been a Warriors fan for a good while now, but I have never considered the RPF side of things until recently. However, I am a sucker for Narrative and hoo boy have the last two to three years plus KD’s move this summer kicked my desire for fic up several notches. There's just so much material (from perpetual laughing stock to NBA Champions, a record season but losing the Finals, another MVP/top 5 player coming to Oakland) and I want fic about everything.

I was sort of torn about the whole idea of Kevin Durant joining the Warriors—it just didn’t seem like it would ever happen! we’d have to move so many players just to get him! he’d have to leave Russ and OKC!—but now that it’s happened, I am still trying to figure out how it happened and what it means for the Warrior’s famed team chemistry. How players fit into new team cultures and new places is endlessly fascinating to me.

And I'm totally blaming mainstream sports fandom journalism for making me ship KD/Klay. Even now there are a bunch of articles about how Durant’s presence on the team will affect Klay’s numbers, when all the quotes actually from the players seem far less concerned about who’s gonna get buckets. Like KD joking that he didn’t know Klay had a phone, or Klay going off-topic during the pitch meeting and getting excited by the idea of how many open shots he’d get if KD were around.

Klay’s such an even-keeled guy, who’s kind of spacey with the oddest or driest sense of humor (I’m not really sure which) and while he’s hella competitive he’s shown he doesn’t really care who gets the most attention or has the best stats on the team. I’m just really intrigued by the idea that Kevin’s never really had a teammate quite like Klay and it makes him want to figure Klay out.

Do Not Want permanent or serious injury

Prompts

◊ I would love any part of the story of how KD decided to leave the Thunder. From the dinner he had with Westbrook and Ibaka where he said he was probably going to re-sign with the Thunder to the Warriors camp arriving in the Hamptons for the pitch meeting to Kevin actually making the decision, anything.

◊ KD announced The Decision 2k16, then the Olympics happened and he was in the USA Basketball bubble, but what happens now?

◊ Klay Thompson was, unintentionally, Golden State's secret weapon to signing Kevin Durant.

◊ My favorite niche AU has to be the “professional athlete plays a different sport” canon divergent AU. So, let’s pretend Klay plays baseball instead. And maybe he plays for the Giants and is kind of a fanboy when KD comes to a home game to throw out the first pitch. Or he plays for the A’s and he’s always using the tunnel that connects Oracle and the Coliseum to randomly show up at shoot-around.

◊ Klay keeps asking KD to go out with him under the guise of “exploring Oakland/the Bay Area” or “you broke the streak of buckets in practice, you have to pay for my lunch” and Kevin cannot for the life of him tell if Klay’s flirting and these are dates or if Klay’s just being friendly and it’s starting to drive him a little crazy.

◊ Soulbond/soulmate AU! I always love versions that are about soulmates or soulbonds that don’t work out completely right, like what if KD and Russ had actually been soulmates and KD decided to move to Golden State? But I also love when unexpected ships make sense in a soulmate/soulbond universe, so what if everyone thought KD and Russ were soulmates but were hiding it For Reasons but it turns out KD moves to the Warriors and Klay is actually his soulmate.

⇒ Don't Threaten Me With a Good Time │ Man & Tentacle Monster; This is one of the wackiest music videos I’ve seen in a while, and honestly, go nuts. I’m interested in anything from backstory about the Tentacle Monster, how they got to our world, how they live day-to-day, or how they pick their next victim to a story like this was actually a revenge killing because the Man cheated on the Tentacle Monster’s best friend. Also tentacle porn didn’t happen when there was such a perfect setup for it, which seems like a shame.

I was going to swear off 5-minute fandoms for this year’s Yuletide. And then I watched this cracky music video (linked here!) and welp. I want all the fic. (It also doesn’t hurt that the song’s catchy.) Watching it, I definitely had one of those “is this going where I think it’s going?” moments and then you get flashes of the tentacles and it totally did and didn’t go where I wanted it to go. Like A+ for literal man-eating Eldritch horror thing and bonus points for intriguing twist where the Tentacle Monster then takes on the form of the Man (but it’s an illusion? glamour? thing?) and goes about repeating the cycle of seduce and eat humans, but there’s still so many things you could do with an actualfax tentacle monster that there’s just not enough time in a music video to really exploit.

So about the Tentacle Monster. I have so many questions about them: where did they come from? how long have they been here? how often do they stay in one place? how did they learn enough about human culture/society to successfully pick up strangers in bars to eat? do they enjoy terrorizing the people they eat? or do they feel vaguely guilty about it, the way a human might feel about squishing a bug? I love the music video because exactly none of that’s answered and is left totally up to your imagination.

And what’s up with the Man? Does he often try to pick up women in bars and ply them with drinks? Was this his average weekend night and thought he was going to get laid before it went terribly wrong? There’s so much I want to know! As a sidenote: clearly it’s Brendon Urie in the music video, but I’d prefer this to be FPF rather than RPF.

Do Not Want vore or gore.

Prompts

◊ How does the Tentacle Monster pick their next victim? Whoever chats up their current disguise or do they have a type they go for?

◊ Is there a particular reason the Man was chosen as the Tentacle Monster’s next victim? Like, what’s his story?

◊ We see a couple times in the video their glamour/illusion thing cuts out and people can see the Tentacle Monster’s tentacles, so a story about their glamour failing at inappropriate times could be really funny.

◊ Tentacle porn. Which isn’t much of a prompt, but the video almost goes there and then doesn’t and I gotta admit I was disappointed. This is the one canon I’m okay with non-con/rape fic, but would particularly like it if there were pheromones or sex pollen or something that makes the Man turned on/enjoy the tentacles against his will.

◊ What would happen if this were a case being investigated by the BAU/Criminal Minds cast or Sherlock and Joan Watson from Elementary?

⇒ Tumanbay (Podcast) │ Heaven & Slave; I always love when two very different characters—in backgrounds, ages, goals, etc.—are forced to work together to survive or make it through a difficult situation and these two fit that dynamic so perfectly. I'd love any sort of fic that explores that, through backstory fic, a gapfiller while they’re trying to get to Tumanbay, or post-canon fic. Feel free to focus on either Heaven or Slave and include other characters, especially Boy and Ibn Bay.

If you're looking for where to listen to the podcast, the first 8 episodes are on youtube and I've made the last two available for download here.

 

SPOILERS AHOY

I listened to this podcast/radio drama in about a day and a half and it took me that long only because I needed to sleep. I love how all the different storylines have been interwoven together, and only eventually do you start to get a complete picture of everyone’s real allegiances and backstories. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a second season, and in the meantime there’s fic!

Honestly, Heaven was not a character that intrigued me at first. I kind of agreed with Slave’s first impression that she was a spoiled rich kid who was too naive to survive in the world. But she totally changed my mind within an episode and a half, and now I’m most interested in her, Slave, and the Boy’s storyline—especially once they reach Tumanbay and reunite with Heaven’s father, Ibn Bay. There’s a resilience and resourcefulness to Heaven that even when she makes mistakes (e.g. like trusting Pamira and Rajik not to try and sell them into slavery), she moves past them and manages to find a solution.

And Slave I thought started off similarly one-dimensional and all about revenge, and yet as the series progresses you start to see the chinks in his armor where he could actually care about and form an emotional bond to Heaven and later the Boy. By the end of series, I am fully invested in their little found family triumvirate and them building a new life together.

I definitely do ship Heaven and Slave, but I also think that given Heaven’s age and where they started from in canon—not quite enemies, but way more reluctant allies than friends—that it would take a lot for them to get to a shippy point, so I’d love gen adventures just as much.

Prompts

◊ SO ABOUT THAT ENDING, Heaven’s not actually pregnant, right? Like it has to be a ploy to gain sympathy from Gregor so he doesn’t kill Slave/Akiba, because otherwise that relationship went from zero to sleeping together real quick. I’d love a fic about needing to keep up the charade of Heaven’s pregnancy, there’s a marriage of convenience, and they slowly fall in love. Or if I’m totally off-base and it wasn’t a ploy, I’d love gapfillers to explore how and when Akiba and Heaven’s relationship changed.

◊ Slave unexpectedly finds himself with an armful of crying Heaven after she returns from being inspected by Pamira and comforts her.

◊ I got the impression that before Slave’s name was revealed to the audience, he told Heaven and Boy that they could call him Akiba. How did that go down? Did Heaven make a big deal of it and embarrass him? Was it a prize in a game (e.g. “if I win at dice you have to tell me your name”)?

◊ Once Heaven’s reunited with her father, Slave starts to see a different side of her and his initial opinion of her being a spoiled brat starts to change. And if age difference is your thing: Slave then slowly falls in love, but pines from a distance and feels guilty for having feelings towards Heaven because she’s so young compared to him.

◊ Now that she’s not constantly struggling to survive, Heaven grieves for her mother.

◊ I’d adore any sort of Slave backstory: the fall of the kingdom of Bonu (Bornu? I couldn’t tell from the audio :/), what happened to his family, how Akiba became Slave and swore revenge, or anything about his life before meeting Heaven on the slave ship.

◊ I have a huge loyalty kink, particularly when that loyalty is either kind of a surprise to a character or hard won, so anything about Slave’s growing loyalty to Heaven (and Boy) and his willingness to protect her.

◊ I’ll admit I kind of panicked when nominations came around because I only could think of actual prompts for Heaven and Slave, but if you want to write about any of the other characters and their storylines—Gregor and Sarah and their whole cat and mouse game, Madu and Daniel and the whole love with ulterior motives thing, Shajar politicking on behalf of her son and his succession, etc.—or worldbuilding, I’d be over the moon.