write like you need it to survive

Dear Yulewriter!

Hi there! I am DELIGHTED that you love one of these things I love! Please, please remember that optional details are optional and write what makes you happy!

(Apologies of the lateness of this letter!! I did my request in the last ten minutes before leaving for the airport and then sort of. Forgot. That I still needed to do this bit after I got back home.)

Some things I like, not necessarily all in the same story:
-Hurt/comfort, heavy on the comfort, recovery from past/canonical Bad Things
-Domesticity, quiet moments
-Intimacy, sexual or otherwise, the sometimes hilarious weirdness of being so close to someone else, physically or emotionally
-Kidfic, characters interacting with kids, all varieties of accidental baby acquisition whether temporary or permanent
-Cuddles, blankets, coziness, etc.
-Characters being smart and perceptive
-Winter or holiday stories appropriate to the world of the characters!

DNW: Bummer stories beyond the sad stuff built in to canon. Sad endings or a focus on acute grief rather than healing. Action-heavy or plot-heavy stories.


Specific requests:

( Critical Role: Aramán (Web Series) )

( The Summer War - Naomi Novik )

( The Rising World series - Martha Wells )

My family isn't celebrating Christmas until tomorrow, due to my brothers' assorted in-law plans and travel schedules, so I get a blissfully quiet Christmas Day at home to read Yuletide and Dreamling Secret Santa fic until I pass out on the couch. :D

I have multiple gifts this year! 

For Yuletide: The Grief of Knives (The Goblin Emperor series, Thara Celehar/Iäna Pel-Thenhior, 2k) a lovely little story with the people closest to Thara offering him as much comfort as he can accept in the aftermath of The Grief of Stones.

For Dreamling Secret Santa: The Christmas Invasion (Hob Gadling dreams of Christmas) (The Sandman, Dream/Hob, TWENTY K) in which Dream has temporarily lost his memory and Lucienne asks Hob to look after him so he doesn't get into trouble in the Dreaming--and also it's a few days before Christmas. Fluffy cuteness, sexiness, Dream accidentally discovering several of his powers, this fic covers all sorts of ground. :D

ALSO for Dreamling Secret Santa (I think from one of the organizers? Everyone got a bonus short story!): Anchor & Anchored (The Sandman, Dream/Hob, 1k) in which Hob gets to be in charge--mostly--of some surreal Dreaming sex. :D

I didn't sign up for Yuletide this year, but i wound up writing a couple of pinch hits:

Venom Versus Christmas (4571 words) by Dira Sudis
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Venom (Movie 2018)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote, Dan Lewis (Venom 2018)/Anne Weying
Characters: Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Eddie Brock, Dan Lewis (Venom 2018), Anne Weying
Additional Tags: Holidays, Christmas, Unhappy Holiday Feelings, Fluff, Fluffy Ending
Summary:

Eddie doesn't like Christmas, but Venom really likes celebrating things.

The Giant in the Cavern Brings Copper and Silver and Gold (3172 words) by Dira Sudis
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Thing in the Walls Wants Your Small Change - Virginia M. Mohlere
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: The Dragon & Caro, The Dragon & the House Spirit
Characters: The Dragon (The Thing In the Walls Wants Your Small Change), Caro (The Thing In the Walls Wants Your Small Change)
Additional Tags: Dragons, Friendship, Agender Dragon, It Pronouns
Summary:

Every time the dragon takes a penny, the giant supplies another one.

Dear Yulewriter!

Hi there! I am DELIGHTED that you love one of these things I love! Please, please remember that optional details are optional and write what makes you happy!

Some things I like, not necessarily all in the same story:
-Hurt/comfort, heavy on the comfort, recovery from past/canonical Bad Things
-Domesticity, quiet moments
-Porn (where appropriate & illustrative of character/relationship, NOT REQUIRED AT ALL!)
-Kink & kink negotiation (as above, NOT REQUIRED PLEASE DON'T BE ALARMED IF IT'S NOT YOUR THING!)
-Cuddles, blankets, coziness, etc.
-Characters being smart and perceptive

For any of these characters, I would totally love to read anything from a quiet moment together to a wildly kinky PWP (erm, within the constraints of the characters' histories...) so, really, write the story of your heart, and thank you in advance!

And if you have any questions, feel free to ask iulia (iuliamentis on twitter and tumblr). She knows what I like and she's good at keeping secrets from me!

My specific requests:

( Chalion Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold (Penric kin Jurald, Desdemona) )

( Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (Guinevere Pettigrew, Joe Bloomfield) )

( Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat (Damen, Laurent) )

( Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (Phryne Fisher, Jack Robinson) )

( The Shawshank Redemption (Andy Dufresne, Ellis Boyd (Red) Redding) )

Holy crap I got FIVE STORIES FOR YULETIDE!!!!!

:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

( Three Stories for The Martian! )

( And two Raven Cycle stories!!!! )

And in other news I just watched (and wept through) Inside Out with my dad so the Christmas tradition of crying in front of Pixar movies with him remains intact.

ETA: Oh man, SIX stories! A madness Martian story tooooo!


Lifehack (429 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Martian (2015)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Mark Watney, Melissa Lewis (The Martian)
Summary:

Mark enjoys finding interesting solutions to everyday problems. Even if he doesn't really need to.

OH MARK. HONEY. :D D:

Dear Yulewriter!

Hi there! I am DELIGHTED that you love one of these things I love, and please by all means remember optional details are optional and write what makes you happy!

Some things I like, not necessarily all in the same story:
-Hurt/comfort, heavy on the comfort
-Domesticity
-Porn (where appropriate & illustrative of character/relationship, NOT REQUIRED AT ALL!)
-Kink & kink negotiation (as above, NOT REQUIRED PLEASE DON'T BE ALARMED IF IT'S NOT YOUR THING!)
-Polyamory & poly negotiation
-Cuddles, blankets, etc.
-Family feels
-Characters being smart and perceptive

Tropes I love, if you see a way to fit them into the fandom/characters in the question: kidfic, deaged characters, amnesia, woke up married, pretend relationship, marriage of convenience/arranged marriage, BDSM AU. (Uh, looking at my requests, I really don't know how some of these would work, but, you know, if you have a brilliant/irresistible idea, run with it! :D)

And if you have any questions, feel free to ask iulia (iuliamentis on twitter and tumblr). She knows what I like!

( The Martian (book or movie), Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, The Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater )

1) I adore my family and we had a lovely holiday together and it was great to be all under one roof for several hours but OH MY GOD PEOPLE ARE EXHAUSTING I AM SO TIRED.

2) I got two more Yuletide stories from the Yuletide Madness collection! :D

Who Kisses Who (100 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Colin Craven/Mary Lennox/Dickon Sowerby
Characters: Mary Lennox, Dickon Sowerby, Colin Craven
Additional Tags: Drabble, Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational, Threesome, Friends to Lovers, First Kiss, Romance, Fluff
Series: Part 16 of Yuletide Drabble Invitational 2014
Summary:

What they do remember is that it started very chastely, almost innocently.

A glimpse of first kisses in the garden. ♥

Sufficient (1800 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Deret Beshelar and Maia Drazhar, Deret Beshelar and Cala Athmaza
Characters: Deret Beshelar, Cala Athmaza, Maia Drazhar
Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Tropes, Deaged Character, Fluff and Crack, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Summary:

As soon as Cala came out to the outer chamber and the door was shut behind them, Deret rounded on him. “This is thy fault,” he barked, knowing it for truth.

“My fault? What makes thee think—“

“I know thee, fool of a maza! I may not know how, or why, but I know this is thy doing, and I know that thou must fix it.”

BESHELAR AND CALA LOOKING AFTER KIDDIFIED MAIA, OH MY GOD YOU GUYS THIS IS THE GREATEST.

So in the last 36 hours, I:

1) Finally got told my car was totaled, two weeks after the accident, started making tentative plans to buy a new car, etc.

2) Interviewed for a promotion (basically more money to do the same job). It went well, I think? I came out of it only mildly sweat-soaked. Fingers crossed.

3) Got told my car is not totaled after all and instead will be in the shop until January 9. IN MICHIGAN. WHICH IS NOT THE STATE WHERE I LIVE.

4) Wrote less than 400 words, all not-very-interesting middle bits of my Yuletide story, which still has yet to cross the 1000 word threshold.

5) Forgot to bring pajama pants for my overnight stay at iulia's (less aggravating than forgetting my hairbrush, but still not ideal).

I AM SO FUCKING DONE WITH THIS WEEK.

But tomorrow I get to watch The Nutcracker and then Spy Game with suitably appreciative audiences for each, so things are looking up, right? And I don't have to buy a car! And I still have... a whole week to write that Yuletide story. And maybe also that treat that I spent the whole drive to iulia's happily contemplating when not trying to remember if I had packed my pajamas pants.

And iulia is terrible at surprises and waiting and so gave me my Christmas present Winter Soldier hoodie immediately. So no matter how bad things get at least now I have a zip-up mask to hide behind when they do.

So I was all set to post about how I have come up with this clever NaNoWriMo plan for this month and then noticed that I have a "pseudonanowrimo" tag and realized that, ha! I have had this plan before, EIGHT YEARS AGO, jeez I've been in fandom a long time.

Anyway, same plan, but this time I'm not in grad school and not going to New Jersey and/or Boston for Thanksgiving--oh man that time I went to New Jersey for Thanksgiving was ALSO EIGHT YEARS AGO, I AM OLD--ANYWAY.

So just like eight years ago, I have this epic fic that I meant to have finished by now and haven't, so I'm going to try writing 50,000 words of it, hopefully the concluding fifty thousand words, in a month. This time around it's my Teen Wolf Derek/Stiles underage hookerfic AU, which is roughly half written. I'm playing a little game on tumblr with people naming page numbers and me choosing a number and posting a snippet from the corresponding page--page 19 and page 33 are already out--so hopefully that will help me coax myself through the next thirty days of, woe is me, writing hookerfic porn.

(Then I looked at my outline and the next line has a date because I worked out the timeline fairly meticulously and then "fisting?" so... you know I'm not sure I've ever written that before? NEW EXPERIENCES EVERYWHERE.)

Also I am really tired--I went to my local NaNoWriMo group's midnight write-in/unofficial kickoff last night, and, see above re: being super old, I am way too old for this staying-out-til-two-in-the-morning business, I've been rather pathetically exhausted all day. Luckily I got 1700 words done at the write-in, so I'm already on track for today. Unluckily I have yet to be able to brace myself to look at what it is that I wrote last night while sitting in a Denny's at 1AM.

So anyway, that's my November NaNo adventure so far. Will report back.

Also, not super relevant to the above but I got my Yuletide assignment and I WON AT YULETIDE ASSIGNMENTS THIS YEAR, THIS IS THE BEST EVER, I AM SO EXCITED. At least when I am not about to curl up on iulia's couch and fall asleep, anyway. I am excited in spirit. The flesh is ooooold.

Dear Yulewriter!

As it turns out, I find I have very little to say other than that I am DELIGHTED that you love one of these things I love, and please by all means remember optional details are optional and write what makes you happy! As a general rule I adore cuddles and hurt/comfort that is heavy on the comfort. I adore little mundane moments--for any of my requests I would love to see them doing laundry or washing dishes or buying groceries or trying to find two matching socks when they're not quite awake yet. And if you need other tips on things I enjoy, feel free to hit up iulia (iuliamentis on twitter and tumblr) for advice; she knows what I like and is scarily good at keeping secrets from me.

Also, I apologize if I have totally scarred your for life with my Sound of Music request, I AM JUST SAYING THOUGH. THAT RIDING CROP.

Ahem.

Also this turned out to be a lot of canon het relationships, I don't know how that happened.

( What Maisie Knew, Sound of Music, The Secret Garden, The Cutting Edge, North and South )

Whatever you're writing, thank you for it! I am excited to read what you come up with, and I'm delighted to know that you love something I love. Happy Yuletiding!