silver

Hi writer!

Apologies for the lateness of this!

Thanks for offering these fandoms. I'm super excited to see what you come up with! I love them all and want so much fic, you don't even know!

More general things:

I like action/adventure stories, casefic, continued adventures of so and so, missing scenes, stories that expand the worldbuilding. I love alternate history and history in general, fantasy and magical systems. Love longfic, will not freak out at big word counts. I'm not a fan of grimdark and depressing stories - not to say that you can't have serious issues, but I don't enjoy stores that conflate constant violence and despair with verisimilitude. I'm also not a fan of lectures. I absolutely love worldbuilding, so in terms of AU I like the kind where the plot takes a different direction, rather than mundane world AUs!

HOWEVER. I read stuff that I don't expect to like and oops, actually I did. So if my prompts don't work for you, and you have that burning story, go for it!

Fandom specific things:
( Down the Long Wind - Gillian Bradshaw, Shades of Grey - Jasper Fforde, The Seventh Tower - Garth Nix, Georgina Kincaid - Richelle Mead )

The couldn't-get-home-before-reveals version >.<

First, my gift: let me fly, Matt Cruse series. It has an excerpt from an in-universe textbook! And it solves the rather pesky problem of the element which is lighter than hydrogen quite neatly. It's such a treat - I never expected anyone to tackle that problem! I love the little shout-outs (the authors of the textbook!) that reference our world. And there's a glimpse of what Kate thinks of next - what will she do in the future, with a zoobiology degree and the freedom to fly?


Other fics!

And the planet may go astray, In a million years I say (1482 words) by ardentaislinn
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: WTF Evolution (Tumblr)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Evolution - Character, HR - Character, God, Weather - Character
Additional Tags: The corporate side of heaven, Yuletide Treat
Summary:

All Evolution wanted was to be able to create cool creatures. It would be a lot more fun if HR wasn't such a killjoy.

A wry, funny take on a scenario where Evolution works in an office.

For the Best (1057 words) by DebetEsse
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Shades of Grey - Jasper Fforde
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Violet deMauve
Summary:

Violet always gets what she wants.

The story of that production of Hamlet.

Violet is amazingly and perfectly petulant here. Violet is so horrible it's fun to roll around in her awfulness. Mad props to getting the voice just right.

The Green Year (18000 words) by Selden
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Lady Bertilak/Gawain/Bertilak de Hautdesert, Background Arthur/Lancelot/Guinevere
Characters: Gawain (Arthurian), Bertilak de Hautdesert, Lady Bertilak, Morgan le Fay, Morgause (Arthurian), Gareth (Arthurian)
Additional Tags: Brief instance of parent-on-child violence, dubcon, Gore, (Mis)use of the backstory of a Catholic saint, Period-Typical Sexism, Period-Typical Homophobia, Gratuitous severed heads
Summary:

Learn to love, and leave all other.

Or: Lady Bertilak offers Gawain her body as well as her girdle. Here, he takes the first, but not the second.

A fascinating, rich story that takes on Gawain and the Green Knight. I've read a lot of stuff set in the medieval period and this is one of the few that really feels like it is set then. If you are interested in Arthurian mythology I strongly recommend you check it out too.

In the Shadow of the Baobabs (1370 words) by kattahj
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Le Petit Prince | The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Le Petit Prince | The Little Prince, The Flower (Le Petit Prince), The Sheep (Le Petit Prince)
Additional Tags: Melancholy, Hopeful Ending
Summary:

The little prince returns home and finds that all is not well with his planet.

It's hard to capture the right tone and style of some really famous works, like Le Petit Prince, and this fic does a marvellous job of it. Just the right balance of sweet and dark.

Toil and Trouble
http://archiveofourown.org/works/5462120

(My apologies, it looks like the share button is disabled - I hope the author is OK with being recced; if not please contact me and I will remove it). This is Robin Hood in SPAAAAACE and I love all the little call-backs that have been incorporated into the fic.

This year I wrote one fic for Queen's Thief (Megan Whalen Turner), Rooftop Sneaking for morganstern, 1,500 words, about Eugenides teaching Eddis how to sneak around her palace.

I already recced my fic but I want to rec it again: Kushiel's Keys, by vibishan, 8,000 words, a what-if AU if Morwen succeeded in getting a child from Imriel and what would happen. Very very cool to see what might have been - lots of callbacks to the books' real chronology but also a lot of inventiveness that makes the AU great.

--

Stats about my novel reading in 2014!

( brief rundown with mini-reviews of my favourite books this year )

Hi!

It's that time of year again! I love yuletide and the prospect of reading and talking about my small fandoms :D

I'd like to just say first that this letter is very long and I have lots of likes and dislikes written in it, but I'm easy to please and I will almost certainly love the fic you write for me. I really love all three of the fandoms I'm requesting, and honestly just any fic being written about them will make me very happy.

General likes and dislikes:
Likes!

• I like magic and space and fantasy and historical fiction. Some form of those four comprise the majority of what I read.


• I like adventure/action and quests. You know how in portal fantasy, the protagonists are always going on quests? Or missions? Yeah! I love that.


• I like fics that extend the canon (prequels, sequels, missing scenes), I love canon AU divergences and what-if AUs.


• Did I mention magic? I love magic. If there are magical/fantastic elements in the canon, I will love you forever if you write about the magic! I really do love magic.


• I love worldbuilding! The setting in many of these books are really cool and I'd love to know more about it! Historical context, filling in people (adding OCs to flesh out the world is totally fine), talking about places mentioned but not seen, customs and culture worldbuilding, all good.


• If you want to write long fic, I love long form. This is not an obligation--I've gotten almost exactly 1000-word fics and they're stories I still love and go back to even today. But if you find your story wants to go long, go for it. I'd be thrilled to get that!


• In romantic tropes, I love everything about and springing from arranged marriage tropes. Rivals to lovers, slap slap kiss, I hate you but also lust for you, etc etc. I eat it all up with a spoon.

Dislikes:

• Grimdark stories--stuff that is angsty and grim to be grim. I'm totally fine with violence, fighting, etc; I don't mean everything needs to be eternally happy! But I just don't like novels and stories that seem to believe darker = more real. I also do not like maiming or terminal illnesses.


• I prefer past tense and first or third person POV. Other styles often break my immersion and it's harder to enjoy stories, but I've definitely read really good novels in other formats. I mean, Shopaholic is first-person present-tense, so fic for that fandom in that tense is fine.


• Magic disappearing forever endings, fic that changes the setting, no superpowers AU--I really liked the settings and the magical and fantastical elements! Please don't take those away.

I want to stress again that I have just given you a big pile of things I like and things I don't (and there is even more to follow!) but I am fairly flexible. I don't have any triggers and nothing will ruin my Christmas/holidays/yuletide. So go ahead and write the fic you want if my requests don't work for you!

Finally, my AO3 name is ivy. Feel free to poke round, but I do read very eclectically and you don't have to write something similar to what I've written (AT ALL, what I read and what I write are different things!)

Fandom specific prompts and thoughts:


Airborn - Kenneth Oppel
Characters: Any - Kate de Vries, Matt Cruse, Baz Hilcock, or Captain Walken.

I love these books because Kate and Matt are adorable but also because I love the Aurora. From the descriptions it sounds like a huge, fancy floating hotel, or a cruise ship - the Titanic of the skies, maybe; they have a cinema, workout rooms, lounges, kitchens, smoking rooms, luxurious state rooms. Hidden in the crew-only areas is a fascinating other world, with the huge air cells made of goldbeater's skin, the rigging and catwalks that surround the ship, the bridge, the bays. And it's staffed by, what, seventy, eighty crewmembers? It's a world all by itself up in the air.

For Baz, it's clear that he and Matt are close; they've served on the ship since Matt joined. I'd love to see them during a day on the Aurora. Even the most routine days seem so cool, especially since we can see just a glimpse of the Aurora. Same with Captain Walken. He worked his way up from a cabin boy. The time period seems to be late Victorian or so; what was it like flying airships thirty, forty years ago? I'd also love to see fic about the crash landing in the Pacific, with Kate and Matt, or Captain Walken and Baz who are tending the ship--there's the confrontation with the pirates, after all, when Kate and Matt are stumbling through the jungle after their sleepover at the pirate base.

For Kate: one of her big drivers is her curiosity about (just about) everything, but most especially biology. She clearly has read a lot about the subject and is most definitely interested in becoming an explorer. I love her enthusiasm and gung-ho attitude. In the following book, she discovers aerozoans which terrified and fascinated me (the electricity! there are those things floating in the sky? AAaA!) I'd love to see what she does with those, or other organisms she discovers--Matt makes the admiring comment that she just thinks differently: maybe a creature the size of a whale sailing the skies, feeding on tiny plankton-esque air organisms, just undiscovered! A scientific treatise on Creatures of the Air, I could totally see her writing, whether for her thesis as she studies or just for kicks. (If you want to do the science angle, I'd love to see your take on the lighter-than-hydrogen hydrium. Maybe in that world hydrogen has two protons, or IDK maybe hydrogen is always deuterium, or something totally different. Or you can also handwave all this too, I don't mind.)



Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Characters: Moirin mac Fainche

Moirin! ♥

Moirin is my favourite character in these books (and is one of my favourite, period). I know she doesn't have the same training like Phèdre or the backstory like Imriel, but I read her books first and fell in love. I love how much she cares. She really does epitomize Elua's precept.

PROMPTS: EVERYTHING ABOUT MOIRIN. Under things I'd love to see, non-exhaustive list:

• Things set in Terre d'Ange! Her interacting with the royal court, eg Thierry and Balthazar, whether as the slightly naive young woman or after she returns from Asia or the New World. Thierry has inherited the crown, after all--how's that going? Talking to the Shahrizai family, since she did take off for Terra Nova on their dime. The Shahrizai haven't lost their touch at all (though I see that they are still not the ruling house of Kusheth. Balthazar being close to Thierry might change this.) Interacting with Phanuel, who is a sweetheart if I've ever seen one. Working with or along the Orders, or visiting the Night Court! IDK, travelling round Terre d'Ange, I'd be thrilled to see: I love Terre d'Ange! What's it like in Normandy, Languedoc, etc? Are there still tensions on the Skaldi border?


• Things set in Alba, whether before she leaves or after she comes back. I'd love to see more exploring how Alba has developed, more about Fainche and Oengus and Mabon and well, just the Maghuin Dhonn. How does Moirin deal with the whole two-country thing? Does she travel between Terre d'Ange and Alba regularly? Does Moirin find it easy to settle in a place for more than like three months at a time? Inductions of new members? The gift of taking away memories was passed to her, so I suppose she must be there at the initiations. Tell me more about how the Maghuin Dhonn live!


• Moirin during her travels: on the run in Ch'in, on the plains with the Tartars, imprisoned in Russia somewhere, travelling in Terra Nova whether in the jungle or in the Raphael's mad court. Missing scenes, Moirin interacting with the many friends she makes, worldbuilding about the places she travels through!

Other things I'd love to see: integrating Kushiel's Legacy with history. I've had interesting discussions with people over when they're set. To me they seem pretty medieval (eg the payment of wergeld, the Frisians seem to control the Baltic instead of Hansa when Imriel chases Berlik) but I fully admit I am a medievalist so there are some biases; other people think it's more Renaissance. Anyway, regardless, it's obviously not a straight analogue of our world (see what's going on in Khebbel-im-Akkad compared to what's going on in Terre d'Ange). If you also like history, I'd love to see historic events link in with the world of Kushiel's Legacy!

One note: if you have been matched to me because you offered a whole slew of characters, I'd also be very happy to see fic about other characters. There are lots of characters I wanted to request but couldn't figure out how to with the AND matching (aaaghh there are three different periods of time plus four continents involved!) THIS PARAGRAPH IS ENTIRELY OPTIONAL. I mean, more optional than this entire letter is. It's just--there are seventeen characters nominated and I would be thrilled with fic about a good chunk of them, but the way matching works limits what I can request; I mean, if you matched to me, you offered at least one more character. So, only if you want to, you can go ahead and not include Moirin and go by the other things I've got in this paragraph. And I will be thrilled. But only if you want to. If you do not, please pretend this whole paragraph did not exist. If you write me fic about Moirin I will legitimately be over the moon. She is seriously one of my favourite characters.


I'd love to see stuff about Berlik and Morwen and the days when the Maghuin Dhonn were shapeshifters, I ship Mavros/Amarante and would love to see them together (or plotting), I would love a fic where Dorelei lives (I wonder how that'd fall out? Maybe she and Imriel can divorce), where Jehanne lives but maybe Daniel doesn't and she has to run the country while Moirin goes to rescue Thierry (oh god, can you imagine), backstory about Fainche (why's she a hermit, what's the Maghuin Dhonn like in her day, since Moirin kinda takes off by the age of sixteen or so).

Finally, a list of what I ship, because I didn't think I could handle "any" but would love to see the other characters in not only the tagset but the books show up! (Note: like before, appearances of other characters is optional. You didn't sign up to write them, do not feel obligated to include them. I'm just including them here for your reference.) I multiship pretty hard and would be happy to see any of these ships.


Moirin is a bit of a bicycle ship, tbh:
Moirin/Bao (endgame ship) - they went on a truly epic journey together!
Moirin/Jehanne - omg have you seen Jehanne
Moirin/Alexei - aww he's so sweet (and she can corrupt him)
Raphael/Jehanne/Daniel - I am rooting for them to sort things out and get Raphael some therapy, good grief
From Imriel's trilogy: Amarante/Mavros, Amarante/Mavros/Sidonie, Sidonie/Amarante

From Phèdre's trilogy: Phèdre/Joscelin, Phèdre/Nicola, Phèdre/Melisande



Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella
Characters: Becky Bloomwood, Luke Brandon

My guilty secret is this book series. I love Becky and Luke so much I can't even tell you. Oh my god the two of them.

I love Becky and her attitude of can-do about everything. She has the guts to try pulling off pretty much anything, even if she's not totally sure on the execution, and watching her try to do it (and flail) is endearing and kind of adorable. And despite her fuzziness on finance and her terrible self-control, she's actually very savvy about campaigning, media and publicity matters--see her rallying Scully against Arcodas. She's also so upbeat and pretty funny.

And as for Luke--I have the worst crush on him. He is just absurdly competent. Well, except for the breakdown via Elinor in Ties the Knot. Anyway. It's also why I admire Elinor. The two of them seriously have some indomitable, ultra-capable personalities.

OK OK, specific prompts. I'd love to see fic about Luke and Becky and something from their lives in Manhattan. How did they meet Danny anyway? Does Luke ever take a break off work and actually walk around in the city a bit with Becky? They went on a ten-month honeymoon that was written about only at the very end. There's a big confrontation with Elinor & Luke coming, after the buildup in Mini-Shopaholic, and I'd bet anything that Becky's going to have to deal with the fallout--I'd love to see stuff about that!

I am actually not quite sure how I picked up these books. I don't like shopping and I have honestly learned most of what I know about fashion brands from these novels. So feel free to incorporate what you like! (I do know about finance though. Please don't feel obligated to add in finance!)

I have read all the books except for the newest, which apparently has a 300-person waitlist at the library and which I haven't gotten my hands on yet. My favourite period, if these books can even be partitioned, is probably from about Confessions of a Shopaholic to about Shopaholic Ties the Knot which is why there's Michael Ellis nominated. The adversarial Becky/Luke interactions in the first book were seriously the best and if you write more of it I'd be incredibly delighted. But I love the later novels as well. Feel free to add in any additional supporting characters, or OCs if you need! I'd be thrilled to see other characters appear--Jess or Suze or Michael or Bonnie or Becky's parents or Tarquin or whoever.


The only thing I do not love is the movie. Please book-canon only, thank you!

I look forward to seeing your fic! Happy writing!

I ALWAYS FORGET

*Georgina Kincaid (Carter, Georgina, Roman, maybe Peter and Cody?)
*The Dragon Rider (Firedrake, Ben, Sorrel, Nettlebrand, Professor Greenbloom, Twigleg, so many)
*The Seventh Tower (Tal, Milla, Great-Uncle Ebbitt, Spiritshadows?)
*The Ragwitch (Julia, Anhyvar, Mirren, Paul, Leasel, the Patchwork King, Quigin, Tanboule)
*Kushiel's Legacy
*Shades of Grey - Jasper Fforde (Jane Grey, Eddie Russett, Holden Russett, The Apocryphal Man, Lucy Ochre, Mrs Lapis-Lazuli, Violet deMauve, Travis Canary)
*Jedi Apprentice - minus Obi-Wan Kenobi & Qui-Gon Jinn

Dear yuletide writer:

Hi! You have offered to write in one of these fandoms, so I like you already :)

Optional details are optional. As always, I want to say that if my prompts and ramblings and theories about these books don't work for you, I'd rather you wrote the story you liked and were enthusiastic about, than write me something that aligns perfectly with my requests and doesn't work for you. These specific prompt things are mostly me throwing out ideas: they're not story outlines for you to adhere to! Do what you think makes a good story.

I am ivy on AO3.

General likes and dislikes:

I enjoy:
*Adventuring, quests, "continued adventures of". All these books have characters going on quests or travelling or fighting or something, and this is totally what I look for in fic! Doesn't have to be Quests to Save the World like they are in the books or anything grand; they have such different lives that even an 'ordinary' day is pretty fascinating.
*What-if/fork-in-the-road AU! All these novels only show us a slice of what life is like there: there is so much to explore in an AU like that, which leads to my next point...
*Worldbuilding! EVERYTHING ABOUT IT. They're all fantasy or historical fiction, so the setting is different, and we often don't get to see enough about the world! Tell me more about the magic, or the customs, or the stories their culture passes down, or their worldview! I love original characters that deepen the worldbuilding, but not as an exclusive focus.
*Competence! I love people who are just really good at what they do--like Hermione, or Ilario de Sylvae (forever hearts about his swordsmanship and acting), or Simon Iddesleigh (ditto.)
*Magic, the fantastic, and to a lesser extent the supernatural! My absolute favourite genre is historical fantasy, and I love pretty much all the different subgenres of fantasy. Something about magic and spells and all that is simply (sorry) magical.
*History! I love seeing how things play out in alternate-universe history, or seeing different perspectives on X Historical Event in fiction. Medieval history is my favourite, but if you incorporate historical events into these I'd love that!
*I like long works, if you like writing longer stories!

I would prefer not to receive:
*No-magic AU, modern-day AU, magic disappears forever stories. The magic and the historical setting are the whole point.
*Grimdark fic. I'm pretty burned out on the "grittier the realer" trend. What I mean by this: depictions of rape, child abuse, gore, violence, prejudice, bigotry, torture etc are fine. What I don't like is the piling-on of everything bad, in order to make a story more "realistic". The tragic angsty backstory of a character who had everything bad happen to him, that's what I'm tired of.
*No crossovers or fusions please.
*Not a fan of terminal illnesses.
*I prefer past tense (instead of present) and 1st/3rd point of view (instead of 2nd). I find it a lot harder to immerse myself in these tenses/perspectives, whereas past tense/first and third POV is absolutely invisible to me and I just go right to the "enjoy story" stage.

Other:
*I'm neutral on sexually explicit fic. Apparently this year I didn't request any pairings (I don't know what happened), but I do multiship if you want to include them (my preferences are generally het, followed by femslash. Slash isn't a dealbreaker, I just rarely ship slash.)
*I nominated as many characters as I could, and requested even fewer, in order to make matching easier. If you include other characters, I would be thrilled.

*Nothing will RUIN MY CHRISTMAS/YULETIDE. I know I just gave you a heap of things I like and don't like, but I read eclectically and I'm open to trying new things. I am always delighted by what I get every yuletide, and some of these fandoms are so small that anything, absolutely anything, is contributing hugely to the fandom.

Specific fandoms and prompts:

Hawk of May - Gillian Bradshaw
Characters requested
*Gwalchmai ap Lot (Hawk of May)

These books! Oh my god. (I put it under the name "Hawk of May" in the hopes that someone would recognize it more easily than the series' title "Down the Long Wind", but I love the whole trilogy.) Gwalchmai is probably my favourite character, followed by Bedwyr and Arthur and Gwynhwyfar all together in a tie, because there's a goodness or something to them that can't be eradicated by the horrible circumstances around them.

I really love bildungsroman; the journey of Gwalchmai from a young boy to an adult--accelerated by Lugh or not--is one of my favourite parts. I love how he makes it from a child unable to keep up with Agravain to his equal; I also really love that in the intervening years, Agravain learns humility. I love that reunion scene--I love that the two of them manage to move on past wrongs, which many characters are unable to do (see: Arthur & Bedwyr, because one of them dies). It's an Arthurian story, so tragedy was incoming, but oh my god, was I unprepared for how terrible the unmaking of Arthur's golden age was.

I would love to see more about Gwalchmai's life in Arthur's Family, or while he's in Lugh's hall, or stuff later on: Gwalchmai gets sent to do a lot of diplomacy, and probably sees firsthand how Arthur's alliances and kingdom start coming apart. Or stuff about Gwyn! He is at the core of the dispute that runs three ways between him, Medraut, and Arthur--fic about this would be great too. (The part where Medraut, just before dying, realizes his brother is dead breaks my heart. Actually, a lot of In Winter's Shadow broke my heart.)

I talk about these books on my author tag for Gillian Bradshaw.




Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Characters requested:
*Morwen (Kushiel's Legacy)
*Berlik (Kushiel's Legacy)

To me, one of the super intriguing parts of the Kushiel's Legacy books are the people of the Maghuin Dhonn. Even though Moirin is one of them, we don't really get to see much of her people because a) she's off adventuring, b) Fainche is a hermit, c) a lot of their powers were broken generations ago.

But wind back to the Imriel trilogy, and while the Maghuin Dhonn are not terribly powerful, they're still there, a presence in all the wild places. Morwen's kind of ambiguous; she's pretty hell-bent on getting a child out of Imriel to keep her people alive, and then she's hell-bent on saving them from Dorelei & Imriel's child, and she doesn't seem to care so much about the consequences to herself or Imriel. She, like Berlik, has immense power. Berlik can transform into a bear, and I'm guessing that Morwen has similar powers. I'd love to see something exploring how the Maghuin Dhonn lived, how they might have reacted to the presence of Imriel (or if they reacted at all), the interactions between the Maghuin Dhonn and the other inhabitants of Alba. I'd love to see what Morwen and Berlik think about solving the problem regarding Imriel. Did Ferghus contribute? What stories do they tell, that the D'Angelines see the other side of? What kind of magic do they do, anyway? Basically anything about the Maghuin Dhonn would be awesome.

I talk about these books on my Terre d'Ange tag.




Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Characters requested:
*Lirael (Old Kingdom)
*The Disreputable Dog

So I have a huge weak spot for the Disreputable Dog. How delightful I find her, one of the Seven as a completely shameless dog, I cannot even express. I love how she's so loyal, warm-hearted, and so rueful--at once a dog, and also holding the knowledge of who she was inside. Lirael, too: what an introduction we get to her! I was initially a bit disappointed there was a big gap between Sabriel and Lirael, but Lirael won me over so fast. I'd love to see the two of them on their adventures around the Glacier. We know Lirael turns into all these different creatures and crawls around the Library and finds things, but we only hear about the big discoveries. Lirael pretty much just has the Disreputable Dog as a friend for years and years. I'd love to see Lirael amongst the Clayr, or what the Disreputable Dog gets up to when Lirael's not there (when she disappears? Does she just...become part of the Charter or what?)

I'd also love to see an interlude of Lirael during or after the events of Abhorsen (and if you do go this route, post-Abhorsen, not including the Disreputable Dog is totally fine; she's moved on ;_;)

I talk about these books on my Garth Nix tag (this is intermixed with his other works, I'm afraid.)



The Seventh Tower - Garth Nix
Characters requested:
*Great Uncle Ebbitt (Seventh Tower)
*Tal Graile-Rerem

THE WORLDBUILDING. I am forever sad that this was a six-book children's book series, because I wanted to know so, so much more about the Light Magic the Chosen employ, and the land of Aenir, and the Shield Maidens out on the Ice. Tal's kind of inexperienced, but we get to see him make huge leaps in magical ability; by the later books, he can conjure stairs out of light, stairs he can stand on. The tantalizing glimpses of what Light can do--the Achievements that Tal tries to compete with, the stuff that Great Uncle Ebbitt uses (on the sly), etc--all of those are indescribably fascinating to me.

Aenir is this weird, weird world which looks kind of like ours but is totally different. It's like a whole secondary fantasy world all on its own, and its inhabitants are equally distinct--I was expecting something like the shadowguard or Ebbitt's cat Spiritshadows, but the Storm Shepherds were something totally different. What about the Shield Maidens?

I love Great Uncle Ebbitt and his irreverance that conceals so much. I wonder why he got booted from Indigo? What does he do down in his ever-changing maze of things? What's it like in Indigo?

I talk about these books on my Garth Nix tag (this is intermixed with his other works, I'm afraid.)



Thank you, yuletide writer! I'm looking forward to what you come up with--happy yuletide!

Hello! Thanks for offering to write in these fandoms!

Optional details are optional, and I want to say first that seriously, any fic will do me. I read in a lot of genres (though I've grown up on fantasy/historical fiction/sci-fi, and it's obvious in my yuletide fandoms) and enjoy a lot of different styles and takes. These fandoms are so small that there is SO MUCH unexplored, so many situations and permutations unexploited, that you are not at all obliged to follow my prompts or likes if you don't find them working for you; I will still be happy with more fic for them! (Also, I am bad at manufacturing prompts. An exhaustive list, this is not!)

I tend to be very wordy, so if you can't make my optional details work, I would very much prefer that you wrote a fic you liked and felt enthusiastic about, than one where you try really hard to fit yourself into my arbitrary requests and have a miserable time doing it. Like I said: I read a lot of different stuff, so try me!

Lastly, for the fandoms I've written about a lot, I've linked entries on my journal (they'll be public til December 25th). They're not required reading, by any means! Just, if you want to hear ALL MY THOUGHTS on the books - they were originally private braindumps about the books, and are therefore rather unstructured/long - there you go.

General likes and dislikes:
*I do not have any triggers.

*I like plotty stories, gen, shippy fics, further exploration of the world the novels take place in, characters interacting with each other in different permutations, deleted scenes/offstage scenes. I usually prefer canon-compliant fic - i.e. where the characters stay close to their canon personalities and the events of the novel aren't changed - but I see this as a spectrum: if you can justify it in the writing, I will totally accept that, say, Harry Potter is a squid or something!
*I am a huge history geek, and all the books are either straight-up set in a historical past, or are based off one time period or another. If you want to include hints of, oh, IDK, what a peasant's life in sub-Roman Britain was like or hints of famous historical events happening elsewhere or whatever, that would be amazing.
*I read fast and like longfic, if you swing that way!

*Please, no crossovers or fusions.
*I prefer when characters are not mouthpieces for authors, especially on present-day political/social/economic issues. (Er, anachronisms kind of bug me ;)
*I don't like - for lack of a better word - grimdark, perpetually-cynical, depressing stories. I like angst and grittier historical fiction fine, I just don't like it when everything is pervasively dark or depressing.
*No songfic please. I like poetry lots, but I tend to be even more critical of poetry because of its conciseness and emphasis on style. Since my basis for liking poetry generally falls along lines of "I LIKE IT" or "I DON'T" I've kind of given up trying to quantify it.
*I don't mind explicit scenes, but I tend to scroll instead of actually reading.

Specific fandoms:

I requested Moirin to tie my request into the third trilogy, because there is more fic for the first and second trilogies and a sad lack for the third. I nominated Fainche, Jehanne, and Bao (and was dying to nominate more like Balthasar and Thierry and Jagrati and Master Lo and Aleksei and Valentina and Achcualti and so many more); this isn't to pressure you into writing more than Moirin if you don't feel up to it, but to say if you write fic with more characters from the Naamah trilogy, I'd love it!

I always wondered why Fainche could not accompany Moirin (other than the Doylist "protagonist goes on quest alone" part, I mean!) because it kind of implies that she's needed for something, back in Alba. They're gone for a long time, and I wondered if maybe the Maghuin Dhonn might decide that the art of shapeshifting might be returned, since it's obvious that the people have and continue to remember the consequences. What are the skills and small magics and tricks that the Maghuin Dhonn have, that Oengus mentions to Moirin at the end of the books? (Moirin lives in basically a hermitage with her mother and then leaves, Terre d'Ange and Alba know very little about the people of the Maghuin Dhonn, so they are a pretty big blank that I'd love to see more about.)

On the Terre d'Ange side: I've always wanted to have the messed up triangle of Raphael and Jehanne and Moirin sorted out (Daniel seems to have made his peace); if nothing, to sit Raphael down and make him listen. Moreover, I've had so much fun wrestling over when this trilogy is allegedly set. (Oh god, so much mental debate.) Did the Reconquista and conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the first place happen? (We only get to see Barcelona, so...) The conversion of Vralia suggests 10th century, but then you've got travel to Terra Nova, which pushes the time period to 15th century or later (though again: if Leif Erickson could reach Canada circa about 1000 AD then it's possible it's earlier). No gunpowder. The presence of the marketplaces and apparent excellent trade suggests high Middle Ages - the optimism and population suggests before the devastation of the Black Plague - and France seems to be under one power and has a unifying language (!) and the borders are like modern France's (so before the partition of Louis the Pious' territory by his sons?) so I don't know! I'd love to see fic exploring this, too. I love the politicking. And the varying families of the nobility, and how they seem to have totally not changed (see House Shahrizai, for one! I notice that Septimus Rousse is following in his ancestor's footsteps.)

On shipping: I ship Moirin/Bao as my 'endgame' ship, but I will and do gleefully read basically about a million permutations. (Though seriously, IDEK what to do about Jehanne, Moirin, Raphael and Daniel, I really don't. Issues, oh god, do they have them!) Aleksei, Jagrati, Cillian, Jehanne, Raphael, Erdene - the openness of both main characters to relationships throws the door wide open to shipping.

Lastly, I have unlocked my random meta/squee/reaction posts about the series, if you're curious. Uh, I've written a lot. I have read all the books except for Kushiel's Mercy - is there some clue in there that will tell me where the books are set? - but honestly, I'm not fussed about spoilers.



In Winter's Shadow kind of broke me (dear God, so much death). I love the bildungsroman genre in general (which is one reason why I really like Hawk of May) and I can't deny that Gwalchmai is my favourite character. However, I'd love fic with pretty much all the rest of the cast - Agravain, Cei, Rhys ap Sion, Arthur, Gwynhwyfar, Bedwyr, Eivlin, Morgawse, Medraut, Taliesin. I'd prefer not to have any secondary character carry the plot themselves, though.

The one thing that was frustrating (beyond the whole "this is the end of it all") that made me sad about In Winter's Shadow was the lack of resolution among a lot of characters, though if it happened in canon I'd feel it misplaced. Bedwyr never gets to really work anything out with...well, anyone, because he's stuck in Car Aes. Gwynhwyfar and Arthur never really hash it out.

Gwalchmai is our POV character for the first book, and so he doesn't know what happens in a lot of parts - the two years he's off in Lugh's feast hall, nor what the rest of the island is like, doesn't get to see Arthur's actions except second- or third-hand from messengers and his father. Likewise, we don't see much of how Arthur and Gwynhwyfar's relationship develops (even though she is the one who reports it...) When Gwyn died I was frozen, shocked, because that's not supposed to happen and it will break Gwalchmai's heart so badly. I would love to see expansion on the kingdom of summer, Lugh's palace, or on the prophetic dreams and seeings that are dropped in Hawk of May by Taliesin and Sion ap Rhys.

Here's my tag for this series with stuff I've written about the books. Rather incoherent there about In Winter's Shadow.



I'll admit, I'm still in love with Ilario de Sylvae, and Anne de Vernase is amazing. The whole world fascinates me. I like how it's framed as a world recovering from a cataclysmic war (and all the trauma it represents). I like how Berg drops in notes like sorcerers being so plainly marked (collaring in shiny silver, permanent tattoos that must be shown, etc) the division between the church/state/magic (academics, really?) Same with the whole changing world; it's like a pre-Renaissance world, on the cusp of discarding magic for science.

I love Ilario for many reasons - fantastic swordsman that no one takes seriously because he's also a fantastic actor! Loyal! Knows how exactly to dress and act and react to do whatever he needs! And for Anne de Vernase, she's the classic thrust-into-a-situation-she's-unprepared-for and rising-with-equanimity to do whatever needs to be done - testifying against her beloved father, whipping out a knife to defend herself, blasting raw undiluted magic when necessary even though she's afraid of it.

I'd love to see more of what the magic that Portier left behind does! Is it just the elemental fire, or does Dante's constructed visualizations of everything still stand true? Does Anne's raw power just disappear? What about the people without magic - it seemed to me to imply that everyone could share in that particular brand of magic. I wonder, too, what would happen to the Temple, and the Collegia, now that the ideas about Ixtador, death, and magic have been revised. How does crown deal with all this upheaval? Then there are all the relationship dynamics between all the characters. All the protagonists/main characters go around with masks, hiding their actual thoughts and intentions, to varying degrees, and Berg kind of experiments with taking them off for one or two together (Dante doesn't realize about Ilario for the longest time, for example, and everyone thinking that Dante has crossed over, Portier's just a failed magician, etc).

I realize that the two characters I've requested may be rather difficult to work into a story together: if necessary, it's all right if you end up focussing on one more than the other! They come from disparate places; Ilario would be reluctant to leave Eugenie (who's tied to the court) and Anne rather detests the court.

When I read Collegia Magica I seem to not have been in the custom of writing down all my various reactions about it, so I'm afraid I have no links. I requested this last year and got some really awesome fic out of it; chances are if you're in the fandom, you've seen it before, but it's here: A Liar's Honour, by theblueescapist. I request this fandom frequently because I love it, and would like to see more of the world and the characters; I am greedy enough to want more than one amazing fic.

Thanks again, and have a happy Yuletide! I'm really excited to see what you come up with!

Recs!

Really hard to do, actually; everything I read was excellent, and I mean excellent, not "isn't badfic".

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