lielac | Dear Yuletide Author (2022)

Letter last updated: 2022 Oct. 22, 1:37 PM Eastern Time

Dear Yuletide Author,

I'm

lielac on AO3 as well as on Dreamwidth. This letter is pretty much just my signups collated into one post. I am open to treats, either fic or art.

Mini-challenge comments: Interactive Fiction, Yule Be First, Two for One, ...and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

General likes:

Focus on canon friendships
"You can't prove this didn't happen" missing scenes
Happy endings
Slice of life
Characters who in canon get put through the wringer getting nice days where nothing bad happens
Getting punched in the feelings about characters
Canon-divergence AUs
Crossovers
Cracky crossovers taken seriously
Cracky premises, in general, taken seriously (commit to the bit!)
Crackfic about video game glitches specifically
Fluff
Time travel
Time travel fix-its in particular
Cats. Full generality. Can a cat reasonably make a cameo? A cat should make a cameo.
Epistolary fiction, especially for worldbuilding. Mock scientific reports, news article format, letters... it's great, do that.
Interactive fiction sounds fun!

General DNWs:

Incest, including adopted and step-relations.
Depiction or discussion of underage sex.
Depiction or discussion of rape.
Graphic depictions of violence, with an exception for canon-typical levels of violence.
Bigotry (e.g. ableism, transphobia, homophobia, sexism, racism, speciesism), unless echoing canonical views and even then only if condemned/fought against in-story.
Unrequested shipfic. Mentioning canonical relationships is fine, background OC couples existing are fine.
Sinking requested ships if writing their relationship as platonic. (E.g. having the characters say they would/could never think of each other in a non-platonic manner.)
Explicit sex. References to sex having happened off-screen are fine.
Severe or permanent harm to children 12 and under. Being scared, upset, or minorly injured (scrapes, bruises) are fine.
Harm to pet animals, unless the animal is rescued and nursed back to health.
Cruelty to non-pet animals. Clean deaths are fine.
Body horror, e.g. involuntary transformation played for horror, lingering descriptions of limb loss or bodily mutilation. Mere mention of amputees, prosthetics, or cybernetic implants are fine. Something like "They found the bodies chopped to pieces" with no further detail is fine in writing.
Parasites that prey on sapients or animals, particularly endoparasites (e.g. tapeworms, cordyceps fungus). Vague depictions of e.g. mosquitos in summer are fine.
Lingering descriptions of medical needles. Mentions that someone e.g. got vaccinated are fine.
Setting-change AUs (e.g. modern, all human, no magic, soulmates, coffeeshop, etc)

Bionicle (Generation 1)

Characters requested: Anybody! Everybody! I love them ALL. (Nominated: Hahli, Hewkii, Jaller, Matoro, Kotu, Macku, Gali, Kopaka, Lewa, Onua, Pohatu, Tahu, Takua | Takanuva, and Worldbuilding)

My promo post goes into some detail about who and what I'm interested in.

In general: write Bionicle fic and I will LOVE YOU
No objection to non-nominated characters appearing
I welcome original characters to flesh out the world. If they're Matoran Universe natives, feel free to ignore the elemental gender restrictions.
Ships that I like: Lewa/Onua, Kopaka/Pohatu, Hewkii/Macku.

Some prompts:

Hey you know who deserved a reunion in Metru Nui after the 2007 arc? Jaller and Takanuva, that's who. Infinite hugs required.
Kotu: Rahi vet, and also does practical jokes? I desire more fleshing out of her personality. And her friendship with Macku.
I have the headcanon that the Matoran Universe natives experience romantic attraction, but they don't really have an understanding of it separate from "close/intimate friendship". How might the introduction of Spherus Magnans and their likely human-typical range of understanding of squidgy feelings shake things up?
The Toa Nuva need a break. What do they do for fun?
I love Matoro. Matoro died for our sins. See if you can make me cry about Matoro.
Macku is now shorter than Hewkii. By a lot. Can you say "piggyback rides"? ... and/or a pair of stilts.
Something fun with Gali and her Matoran, since there are three of them in the tag set!

Fandom-specific DNWs:

Matoran Universe natives wanting, having, or being capable of having sex; exception for Rahi, and Zyglak and other fully organic entities in the GSR.

Cookie Clicker

Characters requested: Any (Nominated: The Baker | Player Character, The Grandmas, and Worldbuilding)

Who hasn't made too many cookies? ... okay. Probably not more cookies than there's room for in the observable universe. But with Cookie Clicker, you can! And I'd love to read about it.

Some prompts:

Does the cookie empire get out of the baker's control, or do they realize what they're getting into and dive in on purpose?
The slow transformation of everything into cookies can be compared to paperclip maximizing, or a grey goo apocalypse. Sci-fi horror: cookie edition?
The Grandmapocalypse: always a good time. Possibly the real beige dough apocalypse. Why do they turn into eldritch horrors? How? And what, exactly, are wrinklers?

Dwarf Fortress

Characters requested: Any (Nominated: Forgotten Beast, Necromancer, Overseer, and Worldbuilding)

This game is buck-wild and it's great. I go in more for the "D is for Dwarf" fanon than whatever Threetoe's written, which I admit I haven't read. Elves are tree-hugging hippies, lava is the best weapon, dwarves are possibly a little bit of a hive mind (although deaths only being announced on sighting of a body has dinged that), cats and cat-lovers must be carefully controlled for fear of splosions. Stupid dwarf tricks are delightful enough to read about when people are just relaying their misadventures on the forum; they're even better when a narrative spin is put on them.

Some prompts:

What's it like as a Forgotten Beast? Do they have internal lives, or are they just ravening monsters? Is it lonely, being the only one of their kind?
Those dwarves who come into being at the start of the world as adults: what's that like? Do they have fake histories, do they come into being with only procedural knowledge...?
How do you, dear author, think "Overseers" work? Are they just Some Dwarf, are they the spirit of the fortress, are they a god, are they aspects of Armok?
Necromancers: cartoon villains who desire to overrun the world with zombies, or just goth dudes chilling with their decaying friends?
Building a Stupid Dwarf Trick: what's it like, as a dwarf on the ground?

Fandom-specific DNWs:

Cat hatred. Cats dying is fine, addressing the problem of catsplosions is fine, just don't make it personal.

Fandom-specific DNW exceptions:

You may harm children if you write Dwarf Fortress for me! Baby shields are great black comedy.
You may reference pet animal death.
Interspecies bigotry is allowed on the level of e.g. "fuck those prissy elves, let's steal all their stuff and dump lava on them" D is for Dwarf comedy.

The Planet Crafter (Video Game)

Characters requested: Riley, Worldbuilding.

You don't need to use both requested characters.
No objection to non-requested characters appearing.
No objection to non-nominated characters appearing!

My promo post goes into some detail about who and what I'm interested in.

Some prompts:

So. Uh. Sentinel Corp. What the FUCK? To elaborate: Why Planet Crafters? Why this particular torment? Was it ever meant to be a genuine effort to terraform planets or was it always meant to be a death sentence with a thin veneer of "you can totally commute your sentence this way"?
What the hell do Planet Crafters do to get sentenced to this? In at least one case it's implied the crime was small; was that accurate? Does it vary? I bet Sentinel Corp is a draconian dystopic megacorp and will hang you for a sheep as a lamb. Or stealing a loaf of bread.
Who is Riley? A friend, presumably. Why are they trying to help the player? And is "they" the correct pronoun or a stand-in for the fact that "Riley" is an extremely unisex name, although trending feminine?
Hey so why the FUCK do so many ships crash on this one barren hellball
The start of this game really lends itself to "amnesiac protagonist" readings. I sure read it like that. Have fun go nuts maybe make it tragic that Riley is looking out for the Planet Crafter and you don't even know who they are.
Sentinel Corp says you may not claim the planet you terraformed or any of its resources. Well, screw that, it's mine now, I made it starting in a cave with a box of scraps. Viva la revolution, anyone?

Stellaris

Characters requested: Any, which is to say none, which is to say go wild.

Some prompts:

The Blorg! The Blorg are friends. Don't you love your friends the Blorg? No? Well TOO BAD YOU MUST LOVE THEM-- Ahem. A story either from the perspective of the Blorg or from the perspective of (someone from) an empire in the same galaxy as the Blorg would be cool. Can they find friends, or will their repugnant appearance and willingness to use violence be too offputting?
One of the tragicomic unique systems is Sol with a bombed-to-hell Earth... with pre-sapient cockroaches. Tell me about the cockroaches. Tell me about uplifting the cockroaches.
You want to tell me about one of your games? Tell me about one of your games. I'd love to read a narrativization of something cool that happened while you were playing.
How and why do Fallen Empires fall from greatness?
Hey uh. Ancient Caretakers? Your ring worlds are really very busted. I don't know if this is their standard system layout, but this one time I had a galaxy with Ancient Caretakers who had the systems Alpha through Delta Refuges (mostly extremely busted ring worlds, some failed cryo-pods), and a system called Central Processing that was a black hole. With a dust cloud around it that kind of looked like it might have once been a ring world too. Uh. What. What do you think happened there??
Expand upon the origin story of the Commonwealth of Man!

Fandom-specifc DNW exceptions:

Stellaris doesn't so much "have canonical bigotry", with the proc-gen aspect. I'm fine with xenophobic, authoritarian, anti-robot spiritualist, etc. empires. Half the fun is being an asshole to your neighbors, and the other half is dealing with your neighbors being assholes to you.

Untitled Goose Game (Video Game)

Characters requested: Goose, Second-Player Goose

No objection to non-requested characters appearing.
No objection to non-nominated characters appearing.

Causing problems!! Causing PROBLEMS. God this game is so funny. I love the goose's mild assholery that does little more than inconvenience and annoy people. Even though I do feel bad about terrorizing the boy with the glasses. (Not bad enough to not go out of my way to do it, but I'm a gremlin.) I love the lighthearted tone of canon and I want more of it.

Some prompts:

I've seen Goose POV, but how about a villager's POV on the Goose? What do these poor sods think of the chaos bird in their midst, beyond putting up No Goose signs everywhere?
Is the Goose front page of the village newspaper? Well they OUGHT to be, and they will MAKE IT SO
The co-op mode is the funniest thing. Are the two geese friends, lovers, siblings, rivals?
Is this goose a normal goose? Is the goose a spirit of mischief incarnate, a feathery demon, a curse, a blessing? What is the goose and why does it love bells??

Fandom-specific DNWs:

Canon-atypical dark tone, e.g. sinister intent on the part of the Goose, comedic elements taken to disturbing conclusions.
Character death, major or minor.
Violence beyond bloodless slapstick comedy. (The Goose may e.g. bite or smack people.)