dira | Dear Yagkyasyak

(I know, I know, you are not a yak! But it is a fond appellation, I promise.)

Ahem.

Dear

yagkyasyak (or Yagkyasperson or Yagkyaswriter as you prefer),

I don't rememeber which pairings/characters I requested. Nate/Brad probably, right? Maybe also Brad/Ray? Wow, I really don't remember. If I did request both of those, please resist any impulse to give me both by smooshing them into a threesome; I like both pairings, but not all three together. If I requested some other second pairing instead of Brad/Ray, um, never mind! Write that one if you like! Or gen about any of the single characters, I think I listed some of those too.

Wow, we are off to an excellent start here. Next year I will totally remember to make a note of what I request.

Okay, I do remember that my wild card prompt was Reign of Fire, because I was PRETTY EXCITED about that idea. If you have seen Reign of Fire, please let me specify that I'd rather you didn't make any of Our Marines a part of the group of Americans in the movie, because, despite my post-apoc prompt, I really like happy endings. (Well, I guess if you wanted to do a substitution thing where Nate or Brad was kind of like Quinn's character and Brad or Ray was like the helicopter pilot that would be kind of cool except they're probably going to be really sad about the rest of the Americans...) Uh. I have seen this movie a lot of times and have a lot of feelings about it. So something that just takes the milieu of the movie and explores Our Heroes in that setting would be great--how did the Marines first react to the appearance of the dragons? How are they doing holding down the fort in the States? How do they react when they realize the dragons are disappearing again? I think I asked for Evan, and Evan's take on any of this would be awesome! Any of those that would be fantastic and I would eat it up like cake.

If you haven't seen the movie, it actually--okay, I mean, brace yourself for the terrible CGI of the dragons and the fact that it is not by any means a cinematic masterpiece, but it has Christian Bale and Gerard Butler as OTP BFFs co-parenting a couple of dozen orphans in their post-apocalyptic castle in northern England where they hide from dragons, and then Matthew McConaughey shows up leading his militia of Americans who are going to free the world from ~~terror~~ dragons by Liberating The Natives Whether They Want It Or Not and, uh, well, we know that always works out well for Americans. There are, honest to God, thematic resonances with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Plus dragons and Christian Bale speaking in his native accent. And being madly in love with Gerard Butler. And this happens:

Uh. But of course that prompt is optional! You don't need to write about Reign of Fire! I obviously love the canon setting, during or after the war--I love how high the stakes are in everything they do, and putting them in an apocalyptic future full of dragons is a way of raising those stakes, but there is plenty of tension in the original recipe version. And I also do love those moments when they can relax--one of my perennial requests is fic about guys doing laundry (or... not, I guess, in the case of GK) or any other little totally mundane moment. Or porn, porn is always good.

So, apologies if this is totally unhelpful, but I hope you'll have fun writing, and if you are totally stumped you can ask

iulia for more coherent pointers, she knows what I like and delights in keeping secrets from me.