Dear Yuletide Author 2023

Dear Yuletide Author,

 

Hi there! Thanks so much for the time and energy you are putting into this exchange. I wish you an ease-filled writing process, and I hope that you have as much fun writing this story as I will surely have reading it.

In this letter: some things I enjoy in stories, my DNWs, my requests, and some prompts. With the exception of my DNWs, please take or leave these as is most useful to you in your creative process. If you're really excited about a prompt of mine, awesome! If your own inspiration wants to take you elsewhere, go for it!

Yuletide Mini-Challenges: Crueltide | Yuleporn
My ao3 username: serephemeral

Treats are welcome! 

LIKES

• Character-driven narratives, stories driven equally by plot and character, plotty stories with lots of juicy character development.
• Queer stories. I am bi/queer and have a giant soft spot for tender, nuanced portrayals of queer identities and queer love.
• Women loving each other, whether platonically, romantically, sexually, complicatedly, or all of the above.
• Characters making messy life choices that land them in delightfully awkward/occasionally painful situations. Characters learning and growing from the consequences of those choices. Stories that deal with the general theme of "well, well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions."
• Stories that weave hope into difficult or bittersweet circumstances.
• Also, stories about fucked up people doing fucked up things to one another and slowly becoming better. Traumatic situations and their fallout. Trauma that resolves by the end of the story; angsty stories that leave room for hope somewhere in the world of the story.
• Moments where characters show up for one another in little ways that demonstrate deep affection and care.
• Splashes of worldbuilding that convey the intricacy and vibrancy of the world beyond the story. Worldbuilding that focuses on mythology, history, and evolution of magical arts.
• AU space opera settings. Worldbuilding within those settings that gets into the intersections of magic and science + the history of space travel and exploration, and how these things interact with and re-shape existing mythologies.

Romance and Sex-Specific Likes

• Dynamics I enjoy: banter, banter that leads to deep conversations, characters being very competent at what they do and admiring each other's competence, characters holding one another after a big emotional event, touch contact that leads to blushing/yearning.
• Romance tropes I enjoy: slowburn, pining, desire that builds like a thunderstorm and then -- boom! Rivalmances, enemies to lovers, fake dating/marriage to real dating/marriage, falling in love/lust with the mark, falling in love/lust with a captive (or captor), hurt/comfort, power imbalances. Running away from feelings and slowly accepting those feelings. People understanding one another on a deep level and alternately wounding and healing each other through that understanding.
• I enjoy reading romance that features monogamy, ethical non-monogamy, and polyamory. My polyamory taste tends toward ot3s or foursomes simply because my brain sometimes has difficulty keeping track of larger polycules in fic.
• Smutty things I like: Talking: dirty talk, talk that baits someone into sex, banter during sex. Touching: first touches, hand-holding, face-touching, fingers/palms on necks, backs, thighs, wrists, in hair. Kissing: gentle, rough, everything in between. Biting. Fucking: ass play, cunnilingus, fight sex, fingering, fisting, frotting/clothed sex, nonpenetrative sex, rough sex, pegging, scissoring, strap-ons, telepathy and mindfucking, fucking against a wall. Cocksucking and facefucking, particularly when a strap-on is involved. Light, medium, and heavy kink and bdsm (ropes and sensory deprivation = perennial delight); especially enjoy women domming. Dubcon of the variety that suggests both parties are really into it by the end of the encounter. Tentacles, oviposition, weird monster genitalia and monsterfucking. Rough sex that does not lead to serious or lasting injuries. Power dynamics and power play with clearly negotiated limits; power dynamics and power play that stops short of nonconsensual sex.  

DO NOT WANTS/DISLIKES

• Unrequested, canon-divergent prominent themes of discrimination or harm: things like abuse (emotional, physical, sexual), fatshaming, gender-based violence, harassment, homophobia, misogyny and gender discrimination, racism, rape, slavery, sexual assault, or transphobia.
• Graphic descriptions of violence and gore. Mentions of violence and wounds or injuries is okay; please no graphic, detailed descriptions.
• Forced religious conversion.
• High school, college, or coffee shop AUs; unrequested modern-day or real-world AUs; unrequested crossovers.
• Suicide and/or death of a requested character.

Romance and Sex-Specific Dislikes

• Unrequested 24/7 d/s relationships, abuse, cruelty, excessive control, and/or excessive jealousy as features of a romance.
  
• Sex DNWs: age play; a/b/o; daddy or mommy kink; fetishized fatness or weight; forced and/or fetishized pregnancy; master/slave relationships; misogyny in erotic play; rape/noncon; scat; sex acts that incorporate food outside of foreplay (happy if Partner A feeds Partner B a grape during a romantic dinner/while in bed; do not like whipped cream trails over bodies, fruit inserted into bodily orifices during sex, Cosmo-tips scenarios for incorporating food into sex); watersports.

If a character has experienced any of the things mentioned in my DNWs as part of their canon storyline, I am fine with this being referenced and used as part of their character arc as long as it is not the primary driver of the plot and/or new elements of character development.

Same for worldbuilding/universe consistency; if a canon I've requested has elements of any of the above as part of in-universe worldbuilding, please don't feel like you need to break the world in order to write me fic -- I'm fine if said elements are still a part of the world so long as they aren't a huge, central focus of the story. I request and strongly prefer that no new storylines with elements from my DNWs be added.

Thank you so much for writing this story! On to my requests and prompts...

( Crier's War Series - Nina Varela  )

( Dimension 20: A Court of Fey and Flowers )

( Duskwalker Brides - Opal Reyne )

( Neopets )

( Oz - L. Frank Baum )

( The Widow's Captive - Logandria )