![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Yuletide 2015 letter
Oct. 17th, 2015 06:27 pmDear Yuletide writer,
First of all, thank you for writing for me. I'm thrilled that you share my interest in one of these fandoms, and I can't wait to read your story.
What follows is a little more information about what I like and don't like. But I want to say right away that I hope you will write a story you find interesting and enjoy writing, even if it goes in a different direction from the things I mention here. It could well turn out to be the story I didn't know I wanted.
The thing that appeals to me most in a fanfic is character exploration. I love getting to know characters with more depth and intimacy than in canon, as well as seeing them in a new light or from a new perspective. Character studies and stories that focus on emotional developments rather than outside events work well for me. I certainly would be happy to read something plotty if you enjoy writing plot (and if you do, I envy you!), but I look at plot as a bonus rather than a requirement.
Something else I adore is worldbuilding, whether it's a fantasy world with magic, an alternate history, or the real world we live in. I love the details of material culture (clothes and food and such) but also, or especially, the details of the social world: who's got what kinds of power, how people relate to one another, their jokes and superstitions and traditions and what they do for fun. I will happily wallow in this kind of stuff, so if you like worldbuilding, go wild!
I'm not terribly picky about genre, style, or tone. I like happy stories and melancholy stories, straightforward narratives and stylistic experiments, missing scenes and metafictions, canon-compliance and what-ifs, backstory and futurefic. Feel free to take an idea and run with it. One caveat, however: I'm not a big fan of AUs that completely change the premise of the canon (such as coffee shop AUs, high school AUs, or things like omegaverse or BDSM verses). I love the original settings too much to want to lose them in an AU. My exception to this preference is The Great British Bake-Off, where AUs are among my requests.
You'll notice from my prompts that I love male/male slash, but if that's not your cup of tea, gen is absolutely welcome. I've tried to give gen prompts as well as slashy ones. I'm not much interested in het, though, so I'd rather the story didn't focus on a heterosexual relationship.
If you choose to write slash for me, don't feel obliged to include a sex scene if you'd rather not or if you don't think it develops the characters or the emotional arc. Some stories need a sex scene and others don't; I'm not a huge fan of porn for porn's sake, and I'm every bit as happy with a nonexplicit story as a porntastic one. If you do include a sex scene, my tastes are pretty vanilla.
I should mention my two strong Do Not Wants. Please avoid any rape scenes or even offscreen rape as a focus of the story. Also, while I'm fine with stories including or addressing issues of homophobia and transphobia, I'd rather not receive something terribly bleak and hopeless that's all about the victimization of queer characters.
( On to the requests )
First of all, thank you for writing for me. I'm thrilled that you share my interest in one of these fandoms, and I can't wait to read your story.
What follows is a little more information about what I like and don't like. But I want to say right away that I hope you will write a story you find interesting and enjoy writing, even if it goes in a different direction from the things I mention here. It could well turn out to be the story I didn't know I wanted.
The thing that appeals to me most in a fanfic is character exploration. I love getting to know characters with more depth and intimacy than in canon, as well as seeing them in a new light or from a new perspective. Character studies and stories that focus on emotional developments rather than outside events work well for me. I certainly would be happy to read something plotty if you enjoy writing plot (and if you do, I envy you!), but I look at plot as a bonus rather than a requirement.
Something else I adore is worldbuilding, whether it's a fantasy world with magic, an alternate history, or the real world we live in. I love the details of material culture (clothes and food and such) but also, or especially, the details of the social world: who's got what kinds of power, how people relate to one another, their jokes and superstitions and traditions and what they do for fun. I will happily wallow in this kind of stuff, so if you like worldbuilding, go wild!
I'm not terribly picky about genre, style, or tone. I like happy stories and melancholy stories, straightforward narratives and stylistic experiments, missing scenes and metafictions, canon-compliance and what-ifs, backstory and futurefic. Feel free to take an idea and run with it. One caveat, however: I'm not a big fan of AUs that completely change the premise of the canon (such as coffee shop AUs, high school AUs, or things like omegaverse or BDSM verses). I love the original settings too much to want to lose them in an AU. My exception to this preference is The Great British Bake-Off, where AUs are among my requests.
You'll notice from my prompts that I love male/male slash, but if that's not your cup of tea, gen is absolutely welcome. I've tried to give gen prompts as well as slashy ones. I'm not much interested in het, though, so I'd rather the story didn't focus on a heterosexual relationship.
If you choose to write slash for me, don't feel obliged to include a sex scene if you'd rather not or if you don't think it develops the characters or the emotional arc. Some stories need a sex scene and others don't; I'm not a huge fan of porn for porn's sake, and I'm every bit as happy with a nonexplicit story as a porntastic one. If you do include a sex scene, my tastes are pretty vanilla.
I should mention my two strong Do Not Wants. Please avoid any rape scenes or even offscreen rape as a focus of the story. Also, while I'm fine with stories including or addressing issues of homophobia and transphobia, I'd rather not receive something terribly bleak and hopeless that's all about the victimization of queer characters.
( On to the requests )
