Dear Yuletide Author (2023)

[lielac]

Letter last updated: 2023, Oct. 20th, 1:10
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.

Mini-challenge comments: Two for One, Interactive Fiction, Wrapping Paper

Table of Contents:
General likes
General DNWs
Bionicle (Generation 1)
Outer Wilds
Paleo Pines
The Planet Crafter


General likes: ^ToC

• Focus on canon friendships
• "You can't prove this didn't happen" missing scenes
• Happy endings
• Slice of life
• Casual physical affection
• 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 loops, Peggy Sue, alternate timelines... yes)
• 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.
• I am open to treats, either fic or art!

General DNWs: ^ToC

• Incest, including adopted and step-relations.
• Underage (under 18) sex - depiction or discussion.
• Rape - depiction or discussion.
• Explicit sex. References to sex having happened off-screen are fine.
• Graphic depictions of violence. Exception for canon-typical levels of violence.
• Harming children 12 and under severely or permanently. Being scared, upset, or temporarily injured (scrapes, bruises) are fine.
• Harm to pet animals, unless the animal is rescued and fully 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.
• Medical procedures described in detail.
• Parasites that prey on sapients or animals, particularly endoparasites (e.g. tapeworms, cordyceps fungus). Vague depictions of e.g. mosquitos in summer are fine.
• Bigotry (e.g. ableism, transphobia, homophobia, sexism, racism, speciesism), unless echoing canonical views and even then only if condemned/fought against.
• Unrequested ships. Mentioning canonical relationships is fine, background OC couples existing are fine, if I say I like a ship it's not unrequested.
• Sinking requested ships if writing their relationship as platonic. (E.g. having the characters say they would/could never think of each other as anything but friends.) If I say I like a ship it's not unrequested.
• Setting-change AUs (e.g. all human, BSDM-world, coffeeshop, modern, no magic, soulmates, etc)
• RPF crossovers.
• AI-generated works.

Bionicle (Generation 1)^ToC
Characters requested: Any! Yes! (Nominated: Dalu, Gali, Hahli, Jaller, Kopaka, Kotu, Lewa, Matoro, Onua, Pohatu, Roodaka, Tahu, Takua | Takanuva, Vakama, Worldbuilding)

• 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, Hahli/Jaller.

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.
• There's an interesting sort of approximately-sexism with Ga-Matoran that's touched on in the 2006 storyline, where Dalu's a rough-and-tumble kind of person, Hahli is shocked, and Dalu's like "I can't afford to be gentle like you city Matoran, have you SEEN this island?" So I'd be interested in looking more at Dalu breaking the stereotype of Ga-Matoran as gentle, loving healer-teacher-mom types.
• The Toa Nuva need a break. What do they do for fun?
• 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?
• Roodaka... is a character. Oh my god is she a character. Did she ever care for Sidorak at all or was she always planning to feed him to something to get rid of him?
• I love Matoro. Matoro died for our sins. See if you can make me cry about Matoro.
• I will happily read a thousand words of worldbuilding about the Matoran Universe. How do you think new Matoran are made? What weird things lurk beneath Metru Nui? Pick a random named island and wax rhapsodic about its inhabitants!

Fandom-specific DNW(s):

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

Outer Wilds^ToC
Characters requested: Any (Nominated: Worldbuilding, Feldspar, Gabbro, Player Character)

• No objection to non-nominated characters appearing.

Holy shit what is this game. What is this game???? I love it. I may never recover from the ending. I love it so much. I love time loops so much and. God this game is tragic on so many levels.

As of this writing, I am working my way through the DLC. I will definitely have finished it by Christmas, so if you want to write worldbuilding about it I would be delighted. If any of my prompts contradict canon, it's because I missed something or haven't gotten to it yet; treat them as AU fodder or pretend I said the canon-compliant thing, whichever you prefer.

Some thoughts mostly too incoherent to even really be prompts:

(Base game) All my thoughts are incredibly spoilery, click to open at your own risk

• The contrast between how everyone talks up Feldspar as the best pilot in the space program and how they are, in fact, kind of a goof who tallies up "crashes" and "boring crashes" and eats jellyfish to see if they're edible (verdict: NO) and decides to stay in the Bramble to get a break from people... I love them. I love them so much.
• Gabbro is so chill. Gabbro is astonishingly chill. Gabbro, how are you doing so well just chilling on Giant's Deep while the protagonist runs around? Are. Are you okay there?
• Also like. Like. The fucking. The time loops. There have been NINE MILLION before the game even starts!! Nearly FOUR HUNDRED YEARS that the system has been stuck like this! That, possibly, the entire universe has been looping?? I. I don't know if the ATP can loop the entire universe or if it's just the local system but like. like. All the stars have gone out by the end of a loop and then they're back at the start so... aaaaaaaa?
• [SCREAMING] WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK
• Hey. Interloper. Ghost matter. What the FUCK is ghost matter. It's not exactly antimatter or the entire damn solar system would be gone, but it's sure some kind of terrifying exotic matter...
• The statues can activate "in the event of equipment failure" as well as when the Eye is found. What if the orbital probe cannon got so fucked by Avens' and Mallow's overexuberance that it straight-up broke too much to fire the probe and Gabbro and the PC had to figure out how to fix it and also what the FUCK is even going on. That. That would be extremely something. And probably way too long to fit into 1k, but I'll leave it here among other ideas anyway.
• Alternative canon-divergence: what if the Nomai did Not die of ghost matter. What if they figured out cryonics or life-extension or something and everything was beautiful and nothing hurt and they mentored the Hearthians as a newly sapient species and saved the universe from heat death by absurd application of time travel and thumbing one's nose at causality. That would be nice.
• Anyway breaking the fabric of spacetime is funny, what if there wasn't a game over when you did that and something even more bizarre happened.
• Montage of all the ways it's possible to die in this game? Yes please that would be hilarious.

DLC thoughts, click to open

• Okay so what the hell! The antler-people (gonna call them Antlerians) also heard the signal from the Eye, and also came to the system to investigate it, but since they had their solar sail ring habitat ship they didn't warp and so I guess the Eye couldn't fuck up their targeting? Cool?
• Solar sail ship: very cool. Obviously it's solar sails, I mean, look at them. And the damn slide reel about how they made it was burnt! Rude!
• Probably I will find this out as I keep playing, but: why did the Antlerians smash up their ?temple? to the Eye? They looked Big Fucking Mad in that slide reel but the silent film didn't even have subtitles.
• So the Nomai have spirally-branching writing, and the Antlerians have writing that looks like pine trees... and I guess the Hearthians just write in English, because [gestures at the signs in the village]. But it would be kinda neat if the Hearthians also had their own cool-looking language.
• If you go to Hal after finding the translator is, of course, useless on Antlerian language, they're like "sure I can translate a new language, give me a shitton of samples, an epigraphical codex, and six months, and I can kinda sorta begin to understand it a little bit". Of course, Hal doesn't have that kinda time. But you know who has all the time in the world in 22-minute intervals?? I mean. Probably the game will give me a damn translation pack at some point. Maybe. Who knows!! But it would be interesting to see the protagonist chip away at the Antlerian language.
• The star of the Antlerians' home system looked older than the Hearthian system star when they launched. Is that why they know about surfing the hell away from a supernova on solar sails, or is that just a logical thing to create when you know supernovae exist at all?
• They all died of friggin' ghost matter, didn't they. Obviously. DAMN GHOST MATTER. Except whoever the hell is in the submerged structure, because: ghost matter doesn't work in water!
• I'm sure I will discover more about the prisoner, because I have been spoiled by enough AO3 summaries to know they exist. Are they even Antlerian??? How are they still alive??
• Hey. Hey. Were the Antlerians in the system at the same time as the Nomai. I mean, I guess they had to have been, because if they were a late arrival There Wouldn't Be Ghost Matter On The Ship. But they're cloaked, so... the Nomai didn't know shit. But what if the Nomai did know shit?
• AU where everything is beautiful, nothing hurts, and there are THREE entire peoples to work on turning back entropy?

Paleo Pines (Video Game)^ToC
Characters requested: Any (Nominated: Worldbuilding, Lucky, Bongo, Paprika)

• No objection to non-nominated characters appearing.

This game is lethally cute and I'm interested in more lethal cuteness. Please rot my teeth with how innocent and sweet and cotton-candy this world is.

Some prompts:

• I'm so curious about expanding the premise of "dinosaurs are friends" into a semi-realistic ecology! They don't eat each other, so what exactly is carnivore food? Fish? Terrestrial mammals? Tofu? Probably not tofu.
• Lucky is adorable!! How did the PC find her egg? Where did they live before they moved to Paleo Pines? What happened to Lucky's parent herd? It's word of devs that Lucky is smaller than other parasaurolophi because she's a juvenile; how juvenile, exactly?
• Bongo is a little gremlin and I love them. Garlic! Why do you love garlic! Why do you keep sabotaging Owynn's hobby attempts??
• Paprika is a lovely fluffy dino and I want to know how they got their name and how they met Mari.
• Sure, the game won't involve breeding our dinos because of mechanical limitations on how many dreamstones we can find, but: baby dinos are cute. Maybe once Lucky is grown up she finds a nice parasaur boy to bring home and the PC becomes a grandparent?

Fandom-specific DNWs:

• Canon-atypical realistic dino diets/behaviors, e.g. dinos eating other dinos or their eggs. Dinosaurs having kids doesn't count as "canon-atypical".
• Canon-atypical dystopic/dark tone, e.g. "dinos are secretly Not Friends and Eat Their Humans", "soylent carno food is people"
• Sex involving animals/dinos - depiction or discussion any more graphic than e.g. "fertilized egg(s) exist so the logical conclusion is some cloacal kissing occurred between this bonded pair"
• Bestiality/xenophilia - depiction, discussion, or implication.

The Planet Crafter (Video Game)^ToC
Characters requested: Any (Nominated: Ikhlas, Riley, Xiaodan, Worldbuilding)

• No objection to non-nominated characters appearing!

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?