Yuletide 2024: Dear Author
Oct. 14th, 2024 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penguinzeroDear Author:
Thank you for signing up for Yuletide! I've been participating for many years now, but it's always a new thrill to put out my requests for someone else to see. I hope my prompts give you some interesting ideas, and that you enjoy the writing process as much as I'm going to enjoy your story!
If you're interested in seeing what I've written in the past, or the gifts I've received in previous years, everything's up at my profile on Ao3: PenguinZero I'm not a very prolific writer, so there's not all that much there, but it might be an inspiration.
Don't consider any of my requests as mandatory in terms of detail. I personally enjoy getting specific requests to prompt my imagination, but I'm not picky in terms of what I receive! As long as it includes the characters I requested and at is at least loosely inspired by the mood of what I'm looking for, I'll be happy.
I'll be including source links for each of my fandoms -- obviously, we matched on at least one, but if my request for another catches your eye, go ahead and do whichever!
General likes:
General dislikes:
General DNWs: underage below about 16, graphic violence, graphic sex, incest, noncon/dubcon, futanari (trans is okay), cheating, loss of body parts, hopeless situations, 'grossout' situations or kinks, ABO, PWP.
Sub-challenges I'd be interested in: Interactive Fiction, Chromatic Yuletide, Queering the Tide, Family Matters)
Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine:
I've been a huge fan of Jenna Moran's writing for many years now. There's just something about her style that is so amazing, and the worlds and characters she builds are breathtaking. I've read Hitherby Dragons, Nobilis, her work on Exalted, Glitch, and a lot more. (I've got a particular soft spot for the lore sheet vignettes she wrote for Weapons of the Gods.) I keep coming back to all of them, off and on, and right now, Chuubo's has me enraptured again.
I'm particularly fascinated by Natalia and Jasper, as portrayed in The Glass-Maker's Dragon. They're two very different characters, and yet they have some undeniable parallels and interesting ties that I'd love to see explored more. Even just in the game mechanics, there are some elements that immediately draw them together -- for instance, the quest set for being Natalia is the same as the quest set for being someone accompanying Jasper on her story, and vice-versa. Just by being themselves, they're also in the perfect position to accompany each other.
Then there's their asymmetric Connections. Jasper has a level 2 Connection with Natalia, stronger than she has with anyone else -- as strong as the bond Chuubo has with Seizhi, even, and they're best friends by dint of a world-changing wish! And the only reason given is that Natalia fascinates her, and she's not sure why.
And on the other hand, we've got Natalia, who has a -1 Connection to Jasper. Negative one! Which means that when she's trying to work with Jasper, or trust her, or just spend time with her, she's got to spend Will just to get to a neutral result! She just doesn't know how to deal with someone like Jasper, apparently. And that leads to the obvious image of the two of them trying to do something together, and the cheery naive daughter of the sun somehow outshines the superhuman prodigy who's good at everything, just because Jasper's really enjoying Natalia's presence and Natalia feels somehow incredibly awkward around her.
Overall, I see them as a fascinating odd couple. Jasper the cheerful ray of sunshine who's uncannily drawn to the dark, brooding Natalia for reasons neither of them can understand, and despite Natalia's discomfort with it, she can't get out of it somehow.
Personally, I like to interpret this mysterious imbalance as a mutual crush, where neither of them has any experience dealing with romance, but there's plenty of other ways to see it, and I'm eager to see how you take it.
The arcs of their stories also make for a number of potentially interesting scenarios they could find themselves in. At the start of everything, they're both probably the newest arrivals in Town, and still trying to get their bearings in their own unique ways. The two of them crossing paths during that could lead to some interesting interactions. I'm struck by the way two of their early quests have the potential to overlap. Jasper's 'The Miracle (Changes)' has, as one of the once-per-chapter actions, 'dealing with acne, braces, your period, ear infections, or other annoyingly intrusive elements of physicality.' Natalia's 'The Golden Snake of the Rooftops,' meanwhile, has 'helping someone who's in trouble' and 'talking about your past in Russia, reflecting on and developing the memories the snake is resting on.'
And seeing those, I thought, well, aren't those annoyingly physical troubles the sorts of things Natalia might have been forced to deal with on her own in Russia? The sort of things that a group of people training a prodigy to be the perfect physical specimen would have expected her to be capable of handling, or otherwise not seen as worth their time? Might she not have had some sort of minor trauma from that -- something she'd feel the urge to try to help with when she meets a girl who's completely lost and bewildered by them? (I mean, canonically, Jasper's utterly confused by sneezing -- how much worse would some of these be?)
So I can picture a first meeting between them, or at least an early one, where Natalia helps Jasper out, and Jasper is utterly, sunnily grateful for this in a way Natalia can't handle, and yet can't quite dismiss -- an early way in which Jasper's sunlight might melt Natalia's frozen heart a little.
And then on the other side of the story, the climax to both of their sagas involves journeying to the Bleak Academy. For Jasper, it's because things have gone wrong, and she's not handling her grief for her mother well, and she's starting to turn from a sunny incarnation of hope into a more shadowy being of despair. And for Natalia, it's also because her life has been going poorly, but she's coming to the Bleak Academy to demand answers of it, to find out why they sent an innocent weapon to kill everyone who she had to kill in turn, to try to fix or destroy the place to make the world better.
Under those circumstances, I can actually see the two of them reversing their roles from the first section. Where it's Jasper who's the dark, depressed person who can't see the meaning of life and has a heart that's, if not frozen, perhaps shadowed -- and Natalia the one who pulls her out of it with her determination, her courage, her surety that there's something in the world worth saving -- and maybe that something is Jasper.
Those are just my broadest of ideas -- if you have any other interesting ways to make them interact, go for it! I'm fine with most of the alternate versions of the characters, too, if that's what interests you (though as mentioned above, I'm a big WLW fan, so if you're going to ship them, I'd like female versions of each). And of course, you can include as many or as few of the other main characters as you want -- obviously, they could have plenty of other friends getting involved in their mishaps, whether it's Rinley making mischief, or Seizhi ending up at the Bleak Academy as part of his story arc, or Leonardo or Chuubo or anyone else playing some kind of role in the plot.
Where to find: There are links to all currently-available releases on the official Chuubo's Wiki.
Magus of the Library:
I've loved reading since I was a child. I love books, I love libraries, I love everything connected with the art form in general. And so finding a series like Magus of the Library, which is a love letter to all those things, was amazing and overwhelming to me. The enticing, mysterious plot, the charming characters, and the fascinating world were just a bonus.
So it might seem a little odd that I'm requesting worldbuilding. But there's two reasons for it. First, I really do enjoy the world and all the little hints we get of its depth. The implications of cultures and races beyond the ones we've seen so far, the offhand references to authors and texts that may or may not get filled out later, the customs and rituals that pretty much everyone takes for granted until they come across someone who breaks the mold. I'd love exploring that more. Maybe take a look at some books that have been alluded to, like the famous authors the popular fiction club talks about, or the Seven Seminal Scripts described in Volume 3, and get more into their contents and their impact. (You could even do a story as an in-universe work of fiction, if you liked -- maybe a new chapter of the Adventures of Shagrazzat or Mulligad! Or do a chapter, and then reviews by in-universe characters, reactions from librarians debating whether it should be banned, that sort of thing.) I'd like to see just how fiction or other writings would be affected by the cultures of the setting -- they obviously wouldn't be just like something written by a modern 21st century author! What assumptions or stereotypes would go into their works? What different tropes or cliches would they use that would be familiar to them but strange to us? What moral lessons might they try to teach that we'd disagree with?
You could also explore the different cultures and their customs, as we did with marriage customs early on. What sort of differences exist in the ways the various races approach parenting, or major life turning points, or grieving? Looking at their approaches to LGBTQ+ issues could be fascinating, too -- I doubt they'd have a modern approach, with equality and individuality as ideals, and yet there have been places in cultures throughout history for people who didn't gender conform or who loved the same sex. Is there any place for such people in Hyron society, or Rakta, or Kokopa? What sort of clashes would come up when someone who fits such a role in one society faces someone from another society where the rules of acceptance are different?
And the second reason is that I'd love to see the world expanded with more details on, well, the parts of it having to do with books and librarian duties in general. I loved the section in the first volume where the team of kafna go into repairing a damaged grimoire with all the intensity you'd find in a standard manga fight scene. I loved the test where the candidates had to identify a book given just a cover and one page in an unknown language. I loved the kafna giving Theo's home-town librarian a dressing-down for not letting poor people check out his books. Every part of the story where we get into the making of books or the ways they're bought and sold or the duties of the kafna is enthralling to me.
A story focusing on this aspect could use any of the kafna trainees the series focuses on, or some of the other peripheral kafna, or original characters of your own devising. I'm fond of a few of the trainees more than others (particularly Mihona, Ohgga, Sala, and Aya), but they're all pretty darned interesting characters. You could write something about them learning a new aspect of a librarian's duties, or struggling with work repairing or categorizing books, or visiting a provincial library to learn how they'll be expected to interact with them, or in general anything else about their work with books.
Overall, I'd just like something that celebrates books, reading, and libraries, in whatever way you find most interesting. I'm guessing most of the people who sign up for Yuletide have a love of the written word in one way or another, so I'd be honored if you'd reach deep inside and show off what you really love about writing and books, however that manifests!
Where to find: The first three chapters are available on Kodansha's web site, which also has links for purchasing all currently available volumes in digital or print versions.
Wayfarers Series:
There's something about Speaker and the Akarak that speaks to me (if you'll pardon the redundancy). Speaker's not the most prominent character in the books, and the Akarak only get one real appearance outside of her story, but just what's seen there is fascinating to me -- and what could come next, even more so.
The Akarak are interesting because of their place on the margins of galactic culture. The Galactic Commons is generally a good place to be -- but not for everyone. The exposition on how the GC council kept putting them off for centuries, due to the difficulties of finding a methane-atmosphere world they could survive on and the inconvenience their shorter lifespans caused in negotiations, was heartbreaking. In a way, they're a mirror to the humans -- the humans lost their planet due to their own excesses, and had to live on spaceships for generations, but were warmly accepted by the GC, and now have worlds of their own and the ability to live just about anywhere. The Akarak lost their planet due to the actions of one of the GC's founding species, and have had to live on spaceships for many more generations (due to their shorter lifespans and the longer time they've been exiled), and yet were given the brush-off by the GC, can't go anywhere without protective suits, and are unwelcome due to the reputation they've gotten from some of them turning to piracy to survive.
And Speaker, just by being trapped at the Five-Hop One-Stop with Roveg, may have started to change things (ironically enough, given how isolationist both of their species are). I feel like when Speaker and Tracker attend the next rakree, they're going to be eager to figure out how to distribute copies of Wushengat to every Akarak who wants one. And after initial skepticism, I think it would probably take the community by storm. The way it hit Speaker will probably be echoed in just about every Akarak who experiences it. After hundreds of generations, just being exposed to the world like that is beyond even the remotest imagination of any Akarak alive.
You could take this in a lot of different directions -- Speaker and Tracker at the rakree, trying to find ways to copy the sim and get sim hubs bought or built for any Akarak who wants them, or trying to persuade skeptical Akarak to try it, or enlisting Roveg to make more sims so the Akarak can get an even broader understanding of what a world is like. A grand-scale overview of the changes over the next few standards as Akarak culture undergoes an upheaval due to this could be interesting. Or maybe thirty or forty standards later, Roveg gets a guest named Speaker, and is overjoyed for a moment before realizing the Speaker he knew must be long gone, and it turns out this is an entirely different Akarak with a talent for languages wanting to meet the sim artist who did so much for xyr species. Or any other idea you have!
Speaker running into the characters from the other books could be interesting, too -- maybe she meets up with Pepper while trying to get sim hubs made on Port Coriol? I certainly think Sidra and Owl could have empathy for people whose existence is inconvenient for GC regulations...
Crossing over with the Wayfarer itself would be tricky, but possible, and I'd love to see Rosemary and Sissix if you have an idea for them. (As I said above, sucker for WLW.) Speaker seemed not too fond of comparisons of her species to humans — is it just envy of what the humans have gotten from the GC in such a short time, or is there more to it? (And even if it's just envy, how would she express it?) Seeing if the Akarak have any analogies to romance would be interesting, too -- they don't have recreational or bonding sex, and they view all members of their ship as basically equal family, but do they have any form of short- or long-term connection above and beyond that with its own place in their culture?
It also might be fascinating to have her meet the pirate crew that raided the Wayfarer, and see what they're like when they're not engaged in piracy. Is 'Captain Big' really a bad person, or just doing a rough job to survive? What does it mean to be 'captain' in a non-hierarchical culture like the Akaraks?
And what sort of things have survived from their dead planet? Not just materially, but in terms of history, legend, and myth, or ancient cultural practices that have long since lost the context they make sense in? Are there any Akarak archaeologists who try to reconstruct their lost civilizations, or historians who have ancient information they carefully preserve? And would the arrival of sims be a blessing or a bane for them? Or perhaps some Akarak know their lost history is archived in some Harmagian database or museum somewhere, and now Speaker's inadvertently inspired a heist to get it back so it can be reborn in sim form...
Where to find: The author has links to purchase all of the books at her web site. Speaker's story is entirely contained in The Galaxy and the Ground Within, but the other books would give more depth to the setting.
Lavender Jack:
Lavender Jack! I was thrilled to be able to get it into the nominations this year, after discovering it a little too late for last year's Yuletide. I love the art, the plotting, the pacing, the beautiful use of colors, and just everything about it. (I've followed Dan Schkade on to his new work on the Flash Gordon newspaper strip, and it's every bit as good, too!)
And specifically, I love Madame Theresa Ferrier and her charming wife, Marguerite. Not that I dislike the rest of the cast, but there's something about having an elderly lesbian couple in a setting like this that's so amazing. And not just any couple — Theresa is calm, perceptive, devastatingly intelligent, a thoughtful mentor, and committed to justice, while Marguerite is cheerful, playful, imaginative, and so very grateful to have been cured of a condition that was making their lives so much harder. I'd love to see what you could come up with to explore these two great characters and their relationship.
One possibility would be their early days. How did the great detective and the famous artist meet? Were they both established in their fields at the time, or just getting started? It's almost a given that they met because of or during a case, but what kind of case was it, and was Marguerite the victim, an important witness, an expert on something Theresa needed information on, maybe even the culprit (though presumably she'd have a good reason)? What was their early relationship like — did one commit to courting the other (and if so, which one), or was it more tentative, or perhaps a back-and-forth dance where they alternated reaching out to each other and being pulled away by mysteries or social obligations or other elements of the real world interfering? Was there ever another suitor trying for one or both of them — maybe one tied in to a case? What sort of things did each of them find attractive about the other, and what romantic moments did they have? For that matter, what was their wedding like?
And then on the other end of things, you could look at them post-canon. In the final chapter, they seem quite pleased to be running the detective agency (with Crabb and Nina as partners). Is this something of a working retirement for them — no longer chasing the most heinous of cases around the globe, but settling into a city where they can enjoy a life with good friends, the occasional mystery, a new generation of sleuths to mentor, and of course each other? Or is Theresa never going to slow down, at least if she can make her body keep up with her? How are they feeling now that Marguerite's tumor has been cured, and she's back to full coherence? (Is it completely cured, incidentally, or does she still have the occasional minor brain issue that Theresa helps her through?) How are they enjoying the second chance they've been given now that she's cured? What do they do to spend time with each other — walking in Gallery's parks with Requin, going to museums or libraries, attending the theater, going to parties, or just sitting around in their rooms in the Margrave Building watching the sunset?
If you're interested in bringing in any of the other members of the Lavender League, I'd love to see them in a post-canon story, but one idea specifically that comes to mind is the implied attraction between Crabb and Ducky in the last few chapters. As elder lesbians who've been through a lot together, I have no doubt that Theresa and Marguerite would see what's going on there quite quickly, and also note how the younger couple are fumbling around and not actually saying what they're feeling, with Crabb being too clumsy and brusque about things, and Ducky teasing and playing to avoid having to actually make herself vulnerable. And I can see them giving some gentle, amused guidance to the two of them, and reminiscing between themselves about their own days of being foolish youths who somehow managed to stumble into a loving marriage.
For that matter, if you like both the flashback and post-canon ideas, weave them together! Have Theresa and Marguerite relating their current activities to what was happening when they met. Perhaps just as an ordinary flashback, but framing it as case notes on an early case, like the comic did to show what happened in Pilaf, could be fun and thematic.
I'm just excited to see what your thoughts on these amazing, adorable, elderly queer women are, and on their marriage and love and the adventures they face day to day.
Where to find: The entire comic is available at WebToon. If you want to jump straight to the final season, there's a good recap chapter that sums up seasons one and two.
Thank you for signing up for Yuletide! I've been participating for many years now, but it's always a new thrill to put out my requests for someone else to see. I hope my prompts give you some interesting ideas, and that you enjoy the writing process as much as I'm going to enjoy your story!
If you're interested in seeing what I've written in the past, or the gifts I've received in previous years, everything's up at my profile on Ao3: PenguinZero I'm not a very prolific writer, so there's not all that much there, but it might be an inspiration.
Don't consider any of my requests as mandatory in terms of detail. I personally enjoy getting specific requests to prompt my imagination, but I'm not picky in terms of what I receive! As long as it includes the characters I requested and at is at least loosely inspired by the mood of what I'm looking for, I'll be happy.
I'll be including source links for each of my fandoms -- obviously, we matched on at least one, but if my request for another catches your eye, go ahead and do whichever!
General likes:
- Plot-filled fics — while quick vignettes or mood pieces are fine too, there's something about a story with a challenge the main characters overcome or an event they have to react to that really appeals to me. Doubly so if it's thematically appropriate — if it somehow parallels the dynamic the main characters have, or highlights their personalities, strengths, and flaws. You can absolutely have the emotional relationship between the characters be the main point of the story, but I do like having something else going on at the same time.
- WLW relationships. I was hooked on yuri and femslash at an early age.
- Worldbuilding. I didn't tag it specifically on some of these fandoms, but I'd love to explore all of their worlds.
- I love exploring the sides of a world that often go overlooked in the big drama — how people get by day to day, what they do to relax, where the basic necessities come from, how whatever weird powers they have or unusual situations they're in affect their daily routine.
- Happy endings. I don't mind a story where things get tough for the characters — indeed, that's often really satisfying. But in the end, I like optimism in my stories. I like the idea that even when times are tough, people can make a difference if they work at it.
- Additional characters. I may have only asked for one or two characters in my prompt, but I know that all of them have a whole constellation of supporting cast or other protagonists around them, and I'd love to see them get involved in whatever the story is. Having characters bounce off their friends, their family, their enemies, or just the random people they know can add so much depth and richness to the story.
General dislikes:
- Plotless smut. I like romance in my stories, but just having two characters making out or more for the whole story doesn't really satisfy me. It's the plot and the emotional depth I'm here for.
- Random AUs. I'm generally invested in the characters and the world as they are, and looking to explore their depths. Canon divergences, or pre- or post-canon stuff is just fine, but randomly taking the characters and putting them in a coffee shop or a sitcom premise kind of takes a lot of the fun out of it for me.
General DNWs: underage below about 16, graphic violence, graphic sex, incest, noncon/dubcon, futanari (trans is okay), cheating, loss of body parts, hopeless situations, 'grossout' situations or kinks, ABO, PWP.
Sub-challenges I'd be interested in: Interactive Fiction, Chromatic Yuletide, Queering the Tide, Family Matters)
Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine:
I've been a huge fan of Jenna Moran's writing for many years now. There's just something about her style that is so amazing, and the worlds and characters she builds are breathtaking. I've read Hitherby Dragons, Nobilis, her work on Exalted, Glitch, and a lot more. (I've got a particular soft spot for the lore sheet vignettes she wrote for Weapons of the Gods.) I keep coming back to all of them, off and on, and right now, Chuubo's has me enraptured again.
I'm particularly fascinated by Natalia and Jasper, as portrayed in The Glass-Maker's Dragon. They're two very different characters, and yet they have some undeniable parallels and interesting ties that I'd love to see explored more. Even just in the game mechanics, there are some elements that immediately draw them together -- for instance, the quest set for being Natalia is the same as the quest set for being someone accompanying Jasper on her story, and vice-versa. Just by being themselves, they're also in the perfect position to accompany each other.
Then there's their asymmetric Connections. Jasper has a level 2 Connection with Natalia, stronger than she has with anyone else -- as strong as the bond Chuubo has with Seizhi, even, and they're best friends by dint of a world-changing wish! And the only reason given is that Natalia fascinates her, and she's not sure why.
And on the other hand, we've got Natalia, who has a -1 Connection to Jasper. Negative one! Which means that when she's trying to work with Jasper, or trust her, or just spend time with her, she's got to spend Will just to get to a neutral result! She just doesn't know how to deal with someone like Jasper, apparently. And that leads to the obvious image of the two of them trying to do something together, and the cheery naive daughter of the sun somehow outshines the superhuman prodigy who's good at everything, just because Jasper's really enjoying Natalia's presence and Natalia feels somehow incredibly awkward around her.
Overall, I see them as a fascinating odd couple. Jasper the cheerful ray of sunshine who's uncannily drawn to the dark, brooding Natalia for reasons neither of them can understand, and despite Natalia's discomfort with it, she can't get out of it somehow.
Personally, I like to interpret this mysterious imbalance as a mutual crush, where neither of them has any experience dealing with romance, but there's plenty of other ways to see it, and I'm eager to see how you take it.
The arcs of their stories also make for a number of potentially interesting scenarios they could find themselves in. At the start of everything, they're both probably the newest arrivals in Town, and still trying to get their bearings in their own unique ways. The two of them crossing paths during that could lead to some interesting interactions. I'm struck by the way two of their early quests have the potential to overlap. Jasper's 'The Miracle (Changes)' has, as one of the once-per-chapter actions, 'dealing with acne, braces, your period, ear infections, or other annoyingly intrusive elements of physicality.' Natalia's 'The Golden Snake of the Rooftops,' meanwhile, has 'helping someone who's in trouble' and 'talking about your past in Russia, reflecting on and developing the memories the snake is resting on.'
And seeing those, I thought, well, aren't those annoyingly physical troubles the sorts of things Natalia might have been forced to deal with on her own in Russia? The sort of things that a group of people training a prodigy to be the perfect physical specimen would have expected her to be capable of handling, or otherwise not seen as worth their time? Might she not have had some sort of minor trauma from that -- something she'd feel the urge to try to help with when she meets a girl who's completely lost and bewildered by them? (I mean, canonically, Jasper's utterly confused by sneezing -- how much worse would some of these be?)
So I can picture a first meeting between them, or at least an early one, where Natalia helps Jasper out, and Jasper is utterly, sunnily grateful for this in a way Natalia can't handle, and yet can't quite dismiss -- an early way in which Jasper's sunlight might melt Natalia's frozen heart a little.
And then on the other side of the story, the climax to both of their sagas involves journeying to the Bleak Academy. For Jasper, it's because things have gone wrong, and she's not handling her grief for her mother well, and she's starting to turn from a sunny incarnation of hope into a more shadowy being of despair. And for Natalia, it's also because her life has been going poorly, but she's coming to the Bleak Academy to demand answers of it, to find out why they sent an innocent weapon to kill everyone who she had to kill in turn, to try to fix or destroy the place to make the world better.
Under those circumstances, I can actually see the two of them reversing their roles from the first section. Where it's Jasper who's the dark, depressed person who can't see the meaning of life and has a heart that's, if not frozen, perhaps shadowed -- and Natalia the one who pulls her out of it with her determination, her courage, her surety that there's something in the world worth saving -- and maybe that something is Jasper.
Those are just my broadest of ideas -- if you have any other interesting ways to make them interact, go for it! I'm fine with most of the alternate versions of the characters, too, if that's what interests you (though as mentioned above, I'm a big WLW fan, so if you're going to ship them, I'd like female versions of each). And of course, you can include as many or as few of the other main characters as you want -- obviously, they could have plenty of other friends getting involved in their mishaps, whether it's Rinley making mischief, or Seizhi ending up at the Bleak Academy as part of his story arc, or Leonardo or Chuubo or anyone else playing some kind of role in the plot.
Where to find: There are links to all currently-available releases on the official Chuubo's Wiki.
Magus of the Library:
I've loved reading since I was a child. I love books, I love libraries, I love everything connected with the art form in general. And so finding a series like Magus of the Library, which is a love letter to all those things, was amazing and overwhelming to me. The enticing, mysterious plot, the charming characters, and the fascinating world were just a bonus.
So it might seem a little odd that I'm requesting worldbuilding. But there's two reasons for it. First, I really do enjoy the world and all the little hints we get of its depth. The implications of cultures and races beyond the ones we've seen so far, the offhand references to authors and texts that may or may not get filled out later, the customs and rituals that pretty much everyone takes for granted until they come across someone who breaks the mold. I'd love exploring that more. Maybe take a look at some books that have been alluded to, like the famous authors the popular fiction club talks about, or the Seven Seminal Scripts described in Volume 3, and get more into their contents and their impact. (You could even do a story as an in-universe work of fiction, if you liked -- maybe a new chapter of the Adventures of Shagrazzat or Mulligad! Or do a chapter, and then reviews by in-universe characters, reactions from librarians debating whether it should be banned, that sort of thing.) I'd like to see just how fiction or other writings would be affected by the cultures of the setting -- they obviously wouldn't be just like something written by a modern 21st century author! What assumptions or stereotypes would go into their works? What different tropes or cliches would they use that would be familiar to them but strange to us? What moral lessons might they try to teach that we'd disagree with?
You could also explore the different cultures and their customs, as we did with marriage customs early on. What sort of differences exist in the ways the various races approach parenting, or major life turning points, or grieving? Looking at their approaches to LGBTQ+ issues could be fascinating, too -- I doubt they'd have a modern approach, with equality and individuality as ideals, and yet there have been places in cultures throughout history for people who didn't gender conform or who loved the same sex. Is there any place for such people in Hyron society, or Rakta, or Kokopa? What sort of clashes would come up when someone who fits such a role in one society faces someone from another society where the rules of acceptance are different?
And the second reason is that I'd love to see the world expanded with more details on, well, the parts of it having to do with books and librarian duties in general. I loved the section in the first volume where the team of kafna go into repairing a damaged grimoire with all the intensity you'd find in a standard manga fight scene. I loved the test where the candidates had to identify a book given just a cover and one page in an unknown language. I loved the kafna giving Theo's home-town librarian a dressing-down for not letting poor people check out his books. Every part of the story where we get into the making of books or the ways they're bought and sold or the duties of the kafna is enthralling to me.
A story focusing on this aspect could use any of the kafna trainees the series focuses on, or some of the other peripheral kafna, or original characters of your own devising. I'm fond of a few of the trainees more than others (particularly Mihona, Ohgga, Sala, and Aya), but they're all pretty darned interesting characters. You could write something about them learning a new aspect of a librarian's duties, or struggling with work repairing or categorizing books, or visiting a provincial library to learn how they'll be expected to interact with them, or in general anything else about their work with books.
Overall, I'd just like something that celebrates books, reading, and libraries, in whatever way you find most interesting. I'm guessing most of the people who sign up for Yuletide have a love of the written word in one way or another, so I'd be honored if you'd reach deep inside and show off what you really love about writing and books, however that manifests!
Where to find: The first three chapters are available on Kodansha's web site, which also has links for purchasing all currently available volumes in digital or print versions.
Wayfarers Series:
There's something about Speaker and the Akarak that speaks to me (if you'll pardon the redundancy). Speaker's not the most prominent character in the books, and the Akarak only get one real appearance outside of her story, but just what's seen there is fascinating to me -- and what could come next, even more so.
The Akarak are interesting because of their place on the margins of galactic culture. The Galactic Commons is generally a good place to be -- but not for everyone. The exposition on how the GC council kept putting them off for centuries, due to the difficulties of finding a methane-atmosphere world they could survive on and the inconvenience their shorter lifespans caused in negotiations, was heartbreaking. In a way, they're a mirror to the humans -- the humans lost their planet due to their own excesses, and had to live on spaceships for generations, but were warmly accepted by the GC, and now have worlds of their own and the ability to live just about anywhere. The Akarak lost their planet due to the actions of one of the GC's founding species, and have had to live on spaceships for many more generations (due to their shorter lifespans and the longer time they've been exiled), and yet were given the brush-off by the GC, can't go anywhere without protective suits, and are unwelcome due to the reputation they've gotten from some of them turning to piracy to survive.
And Speaker, just by being trapped at the Five-Hop One-Stop with Roveg, may have started to change things (ironically enough, given how isolationist both of their species are). I feel like when Speaker and Tracker attend the next rakree, they're going to be eager to figure out how to distribute copies of Wushengat to every Akarak who wants one. And after initial skepticism, I think it would probably take the community by storm. The way it hit Speaker will probably be echoed in just about every Akarak who experiences it. After hundreds of generations, just being exposed to the world like that is beyond even the remotest imagination of any Akarak alive.
You could take this in a lot of different directions -- Speaker and Tracker at the rakree, trying to find ways to copy the sim and get sim hubs bought or built for any Akarak who wants them, or trying to persuade skeptical Akarak to try it, or enlisting Roveg to make more sims so the Akarak can get an even broader understanding of what a world is like. A grand-scale overview of the changes over the next few standards as Akarak culture undergoes an upheaval due to this could be interesting. Or maybe thirty or forty standards later, Roveg gets a guest named Speaker, and is overjoyed for a moment before realizing the Speaker he knew must be long gone, and it turns out this is an entirely different Akarak with a talent for languages wanting to meet the sim artist who did so much for xyr species. Or any other idea you have!
Speaker running into the characters from the other books could be interesting, too -- maybe she meets up with Pepper while trying to get sim hubs made on Port Coriol? I certainly think Sidra and Owl could have empathy for people whose existence is inconvenient for GC regulations...
Crossing over with the Wayfarer itself would be tricky, but possible, and I'd love to see Rosemary and Sissix if you have an idea for them. (As I said above, sucker for WLW.) Speaker seemed not too fond of comparisons of her species to humans — is it just envy of what the humans have gotten from the GC in such a short time, or is there more to it? (And even if it's just envy, how would she express it?) Seeing if the Akarak have any analogies to romance would be interesting, too -- they don't have recreational or bonding sex, and they view all members of their ship as basically equal family, but do they have any form of short- or long-term connection above and beyond that with its own place in their culture?
It also might be fascinating to have her meet the pirate crew that raided the Wayfarer, and see what they're like when they're not engaged in piracy. Is 'Captain Big' really a bad person, or just doing a rough job to survive? What does it mean to be 'captain' in a non-hierarchical culture like the Akaraks?
And what sort of things have survived from their dead planet? Not just materially, but in terms of history, legend, and myth, or ancient cultural practices that have long since lost the context they make sense in? Are there any Akarak archaeologists who try to reconstruct their lost civilizations, or historians who have ancient information they carefully preserve? And would the arrival of sims be a blessing or a bane for them? Or perhaps some Akarak know their lost history is archived in some Harmagian database or museum somewhere, and now Speaker's inadvertently inspired a heist to get it back so it can be reborn in sim form...
Where to find: The author has links to purchase all of the books at her web site. Speaker's story is entirely contained in The Galaxy and the Ground Within, but the other books would give more depth to the setting.
Lavender Jack:
Lavender Jack! I was thrilled to be able to get it into the nominations this year, after discovering it a little too late for last year's Yuletide. I love the art, the plotting, the pacing, the beautiful use of colors, and just everything about it. (I've followed Dan Schkade on to his new work on the Flash Gordon newspaper strip, and it's every bit as good, too!)
And specifically, I love Madame Theresa Ferrier and her charming wife, Marguerite. Not that I dislike the rest of the cast, but there's something about having an elderly lesbian couple in a setting like this that's so amazing. And not just any couple — Theresa is calm, perceptive, devastatingly intelligent, a thoughtful mentor, and committed to justice, while Marguerite is cheerful, playful, imaginative, and so very grateful to have been cured of a condition that was making their lives so much harder. I'd love to see what you could come up with to explore these two great characters and their relationship.
One possibility would be their early days. How did the great detective and the famous artist meet? Were they both established in their fields at the time, or just getting started? It's almost a given that they met because of or during a case, but what kind of case was it, and was Marguerite the victim, an important witness, an expert on something Theresa needed information on, maybe even the culprit (though presumably she'd have a good reason)? What was their early relationship like — did one commit to courting the other (and if so, which one), or was it more tentative, or perhaps a back-and-forth dance where they alternated reaching out to each other and being pulled away by mysteries or social obligations or other elements of the real world interfering? Was there ever another suitor trying for one or both of them — maybe one tied in to a case? What sort of things did each of them find attractive about the other, and what romantic moments did they have? For that matter, what was their wedding like?
And then on the other end of things, you could look at them post-canon. In the final chapter, they seem quite pleased to be running the detective agency (with Crabb and Nina as partners). Is this something of a working retirement for them — no longer chasing the most heinous of cases around the globe, but settling into a city where they can enjoy a life with good friends, the occasional mystery, a new generation of sleuths to mentor, and of course each other? Or is Theresa never going to slow down, at least if she can make her body keep up with her? How are they feeling now that Marguerite's tumor has been cured, and she's back to full coherence? (Is it completely cured, incidentally, or does she still have the occasional minor brain issue that Theresa helps her through?) How are they enjoying the second chance they've been given now that she's cured? What do they do to spend time with each other — walking in Gallery's parks with Requin, going to museums or libraries, attending the theater, going to parties, or just sitting around in their rooms in the Margrave Building watching the sunset?
If you're interested in bringing in any of the other members of the Lavender League, I'd love to see them in a post-canon story, but one idea specifically that comes to mind is the implied attraction between Crabb and Ducky in the last few chapters. As elder lesbians who've been through a lot together, I have no doubt that Theresa and Marguerite would see what's going on there quite quickly, and also note how the younger couple are fumbling around and not actually saying what they're feeling, with Crabb being too clumsy and brusque about things, and Ducky teasing and playing to avoid having to actually make herself vulnerable. And I can see them giving some gentle, amused guidance to the two of them, and reminiscing between themselves about their own days of being foolish youths who somehow managed to stumble into a loving marriage.
For that matter, if you like both the flashback and post-canon ideas, weave them together! Have Theresa and Marguerite relating their current activities to what was happening when they met. Perhaps just as an ordinary flashback, but framing it as case notes on an early case, like the comic did to show what happened in Pilaf, could be fun and thematic.
I'm just excited to see what your thoughts on these amazing, adorable, elderly queer women are, and on their marriage and love and the adventures they face day to day.
Where to find: The entire comic is available at WebToon. If you want to jump straight to the final season, there's a good recap chapter that sums up seasons one and two.
