Dear Yuletide Writer...

[eleanorjane]

Hello, dear writer! I hope you're having fun with Yuletide so far and that the details I provide here are useful and edifying, not terrifying. Thankyou so much for signing up to write one of the fandoms I love, and I hope the info below is useful.

Before we get started, I just want to say: Optional Details Are Optional. All of the below is meant to be a guide for you, not a recipe list.

If you're looking to get a general idea of what pushes my buttons, you can read my fandom journal here at eleanorjane (mirrored on livejournal at eleanorjane. My main mostly-non-fandom journal is ladyjestyr on LiveJournal, and my (very sparse) fic output can be found at my AO3 account, eleanorjane. Also, I tweet as Eleanor. Otherwise, read on!

General Thoughts

Things I Love: banter, snark, UST, UST that gets resolved, first times, stoic pining, stoic pining that gets resolved, partnerships of equals, partners who know each other well enough not to need words, shenanigans and capers, snappy dialogue, lyrical prose, humour, happy endings, bittersweet endings, het, gen, slash (including femslash), love, loyalty, lust, hot sex, a total absence of hot sex, crack, AUs, crossovers, bodyswaps, genderfuck, and anything wildly improbably that works anyway.

I also have a massive kink for competence; people being assured and good at things is just hot.

Things On Which I Am Generally Not Quite So Keen: unrelenting misery, heavy kink, character bashing, het-hate, incest (although in some fandoms I buy it), humiliation, the fish-out-of-water trope, and comma splices. And I have a major embarrassment squick.

* I'm not really into slash-for-slash's sake. While I often get OTPish about some fandoms, those OTPs are just as likely to be het as slash pairings. But I'm not anti-slash - it's just about the characters for me, and who they have individual chemistry with.

* I love gen. Hot sex, both slash and het, is great, of course, but if you're a bit iffy about the pairings I prefer, I really don't mind a gen piece - preferably something with a bit of plot, not just a character study. Canon gen stories are what our fandoms are often based on, after all, and I love the characters for much more than just having sex with each other in our minds.

* As hinted at, I'm not fussed about rating; I'll read everything from G-rated gen to explicit sex. However, I'm generally not a fan of PWPs and would much prefer something character- or plot-centric, whether it has no sex or heaps of it.

* It's Yuletide, which I kind of feel is not entirely the time for really miserable angst or grinding despair - if it's going to be dark, give me some leavening touches of humour or hope, please! That said, I don't require all sweetness-and-light la la happy fun times fic either. I'm an adult, and adult conflicts and dilemmas are interesting. :) (However, if you are inspired for sweet fluff, far be it from me to say no thanks!)

* I have a huge embarrassment/humiliation squick. It makes me sad in my pants.

* I love crossovers. You are welcome, if you are inspired by an appropriate crossover, to cross over any of my requests with any of the fandoms or canons I'm familiar with. Please don't just write a crossover for the sake of it, but if you're inspired by a crosover idea that works perfectly, and I know the canon, go for it. :)

* I love interesting formats. I'm not particularly au fait with poetry, but I love screenplays and epistolary fics and diaries and so on.

* "Christmas" stories don't bother me (although I'm not specifically requesting them), but please bear in mind that I am and always have been Australian, so the concept of a white Christmas, or this being winter? Rather alien to me. :)

Whew! Okay, on to the specific fandoms:



Fandom: NCIS: Los Angeles
Characters: Kensi Blye

Prompt: Kensi is, bar none, the awesomest thing about NCIS: LA. A lot of the time it seems as though everyone who's fannish about NCIS:LA is all over the G/Sam slash, and while I do agree they're totally married, I'm not really after more stories about them individually or as a couple. Kensi, on the other hand, is strong and funny and totally kickass. I'd - no surprise! - love anything about Kensi; I don't mind whether it's gen, het or femslash. I prefer her paired with Deeks, as partners or more, but really I just want Awesome Kensi Being Awesome. Casefiles are good, or a look at her backstory, or a story about her and Deeks (or any of her pre-series partners), or as part of the ensemble in a team story.

Extra details: I find Kensi really interesting, and I think the show gives her short shrift; she has as complex a background and as diverse a skillset as anybody, but mostly all she gets to do is exposit in the background. I love her dynamic with Deeks, so a Kensi/Deeks story (in any sense of the pairing) would be great, but I'm also really curious about her backstory and would love a look at that, too.

As I said in my prompt, I'd prefer to avoid G- or Sam-centric stories, or G/Sam stories (except backgrounded) because there's plenty of those around already.

Where to acquire canon: Nowhere legit, other than purchasing/renting DVD sets and/or watching on TV. Or it might be on Hulu! I'm not in North America, so I can't check, sorry.



Fandom: Left 4 Dead (and Left 4 Dead 2)
Characters: Zoey, Francis, Ellis

Prompt: There are so many stories to tell in the L4D-verse! I'd prefer gen or het, and I don't mind if you cross over the two groups of survivors, since they do canonically meet at least once. I'm particularly interested in their futures after their ingame storylines end, either separately or in groups, but if you're inspired for pre-Infection fic that would be super cool too. My favourite characters, separately, are Zoey, Francis and Ellis, and a focus on one or more of them would be great, but you don't have to include all of them - just a focus on at least one of them please.

Extra details: I like the backstory in L4D, and hey, who doesn't love a good zombie apocalypse! I'd prefer a story that doesn't end the way most of my games do -- that is, with our heroes dying, unlamented, in an unremarkable ditch -- but other than that I'm not picky; I don't expect it to be all sunshine and teddybears, but I find pointless death that achieves nothing to be particularly depressing.

I'm also happy for crossovers between L4D and L4D2, or crossovers with other media (although I'm not familiar with most zombie movies, for instance, so if you're doing the crossover dance I'd prefer the other source be a non-zombie source; you can see from my journal the canons with which I'm familiar. I especially love the way that the campaigns are framed as movies, what with the movie-poster-style intros and the roll of credits at the end of the campaign, and a story playing with this cinematic style - using it or inverting it, I don't mind - would be extra nifty.

In terms of plot prompts, as I said in my prompt I'm particularly interested in their futures after the games are done; do the L4D survivors make it to the Keys? How do the L4D2 survivors cope with being rescued by the military (given that Bill, Zoey, Francis and Louis didn't have a great experience)? I would especially love a story where the two teams don't go separate ways after encountering each other in The Passing, but team up to fight crime zombies together, but if you're only familiar with one of the games' canons I don't mind something restricted to one set of characters. Also, I'm happy to contradict canon wherever it makes things more interesting (such as ignoring the canonical death in The Sacrifice, if you like).

Where to acquire canon: You can buy the games on Steam for US$10 each; they work on both PC and Mac, and each campaign takes a couple of hours to play through. If you're not the gaming type, there's the comic prequel to the most recent campaign, available for free online here.



Fandom: Constantine
Characters: John Constantine, Angela Dodson

Prompt: I love this movie a ridiculous amount, and I love John in all his fucked-up, dysfunctional glory. I love John's stubborn pride, his inability to grasp the idea of grace, his innate decency, his outward misanthropy. I love Angela, too; I love her strength and her adaptability and the complex relationship with her sister. I'm happy with a John story, an Angela story or a John/Angela story; gen or het is fine (or John/Gabriel). I'm not a fan of Chas, Balthazar, or John paired with either of them and would prefer to leave them in the background. Of course, I'd be happy with genfic too, since Constantine is ripe for plotty occulty fun.

Extra details: I don't have much to say about Constantine other than capslocky flaily glee, because I love the movie and the aesthetic so much. There's so much to talk about; John's history, as a troubled teen or an angry man; his previous encounters with Gabriel; his history with Papa Midnite. Although John's my favourite, I'm actually a big fan of Angela as well, and if you would prefer to write an Angela-centric story that would also be cool by me, even if it doesn't feature John; I'd love to read about Angela's history with Issy, or where she goes from here, now, as a fully-fledged psychic.

Where to acquire canon: Nowhere legit, other than purchasing, renting and/or watching on TV. Sorry!



Fandom: Echo Bazaar
Characters: Any

Prompt: Welcome, delicious friend! You seek to share echoes of the Bazaar, and those with discretion have suggested me as a patron? I am delighted to hear it. Rest assured that my eyes hunger to devour your stories of Fallen London; any scrap of gossip you can share, any gossamer dream that floats out of that hidden city is a delectable confection sure to satisfy all who are fortunate enough to hear your whispers.

Extra details: Where to start? Echo Bazaar is a browser-based casual game with great writing and an intriguing storyline. Imagine Victorian London after a horde of bats stole the city away a mile underground, and that's Fallen London, where the city's population is swelled by the tomb-colonists (who are mostly dead), the Rubbery Men (whose speech sounds like water on stones, and who are lamentably persecuted), demons, the clay men, and any number of other folk never found in London before it fell. The game is incredibly atmospheric, with a huge backstory that's only hinted at through gameplay.

I would love basically any glimpse of Fallen London, or the cities before it. I don't mind if you write as the [player], one of the Masters of the Bazaar, a character from one of the storylets, or any other denizen. I'm fascinated by the history of the Bazaar, too, so a story of one of the older cities would be more than welcome.

Where to acquire canon: You can play the game for free here; it needs to be connected to a Twitter account, a Facebook account or both, although (at least on Twitter) it's very non-intrusive and well-behaved. There is an Echo Bazaar meme with useful info and hypothesising here. The TV Tropes page is here. There are two Echo Bazaar wikis; this one is fairly superficial, but a good source for starter info, and there's another, better Wiki here.

And heck, just for the laughs:


Yulegoat Letter Goes Went Here!

Whew. So, that's done. :)

Comments

[helens78]

CAPTAIN PLACEHOLDER! Oh my God, I miss him SO INCREDIBLY HUGELY MUCH!