Dear Yuletide Writer

[sunlit_stone]

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thank you for offering one of these fandoms. (Clearly, you have excellent taste! :P)

ETA: Writer, if you see this: oops, and I'm sorry. I've managed to Learn Some Yuletide Letter Etiquette--I'm not going to change the text of the letter, because that seems like more of a dick move, but I've added some prompts in the QT and Temeraire sections.


Things I like:
-The most important is loyalty and honour--the terrible conflict that occurs when doing the right thing and being loyal to the person who has your loyalty go in different directions, so that you can't do both of them at once--whichever side of the conflict they end up going for, but especially if they go for what's right;
-or conversely, the sheer joy when they do go together, when they've found someone to be loyal to who will only ask of you what is right.
-Fullblown AUs, where the characters are born and raised in another setting, especially:
-AUs which are not of a specific fairytale, but which run on fairytale logic
-Fantasy AUs
-Sci-fi AUs
-Mysteries!
-Bittersweet endings, even when more heavy on the bitter than the sweet (but not endings where the suffering is made meaningless).

Things I dislike:
-AUs which are set in everyday life in the modern world, especially coffee shop AUs
-Relatedly, AUs which "remove the magic"--e.g., for Queen's Thief, a world where there were no gods
-Crossovers
-Endings where the characters' suffering is totally meaningless
-Addiction plotlines are really, really unpleasant for me to read. Please do not include them.

Vorkosigan Saga
Some ideas I would love: Miles/Duv (never enough of this pairing), Illyan & Piotr interacting, Cordelia and Piotr having to work together, Byerly and Miles doing Intrigue, Ivan welcoming Ekaterin to the family, Jole having to interact with Alys after GJatRQ. That said,
I picked 'Any' for the characters and I meant it. Obviously I have a preference for characters from the main series, and if you do write EoA I'd love it if one of them showed up, but if you want to write about Ethan or Terrence just on their own, have fun! I'll have a great time reading it just the same.

Queen's Thief
Costis, Costis, Costis! Honestly, anything post TKoA, or pre-KoA which foreshadows his relationship with Eugenides, would be great :D If you do post-TKoA, Gen obviously doesn't have to be present, but I'd love if Costis thinks about him or about their relationship (I default platonic but romantic would also work). (Bonus points if Costis misses Gen obviously caring about him.) Costis interacting with people who knew him before Gen messed with his worldview and realizing how he's changed would also be a lot of fun. Honestly, I just love Costis.

Further prompts that would be great: Costis having to go undercover as an anti-Attolis agent (oh God, can you imagine); Costis-Gen or Costis-Irene bodyswap; Costis trying to comfort Gen by giving him rural Attolian comfort food Costis himself loved as a kid.

(ETA: I haven't yet read TAT but will have done so by the time Yuletide fic is open; I can't provide prompts therefore but would be delighted by a Costis fic that used THAT too.)

Temeraire
...my dream fic for this fandom is one where they end up deciding to poison the dragons after all and Laurence runs off and fights for Napoleon, especially if it ends up being Laurence/Napoleon. (Bonus points for interactions with the other aviators; extra ecial bonus points for Tharkay and Napoleon being tense at each other and Laurence not realizing why.) But I will be delighted by any fic with Laurence-Napoleon interaction, whatever form it takes.

(I do strongly prefer fic that is either canon-compliant or a canon-based AU in this fandom.)

Further prompts that would be great: Laurence gets amnesia again, and--Napoleon rescues him and tells him what's going on, or tells him and doesn't (and/or with Temeraire having to argue him back to the side of democracy :P), or it's not total amnesia but it is pre-Napoleon and he doesn't know what's going on here; Laurence having to pretend to whatever country he's in that he's a member of Napoleon's court for some reason (with Napoleon there, playing along, and taking total advantage); Napoleon requests that Laurence, as the Most Honourable Man He Knows and a Worthy Opponent, look in on his son from time to time and make sure he's doing okay, and they exchange correspondence on the subject.

All that said, if you can't get anywhere with anything here, with these fandoms of a set of characters you're not going to go wrong.

Thanks again, and have a wonderful Yuletide!