Yuletide 2020!

[shinyfakehard]

Dear Yuletide creator,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write for me. I really appreciate it, and I’m so excited to see what you come up with. This letter is only meant to be an aide to you, so if I start getting rambly or contradictory or hyperfocused, please only take what is helpful and run with it.

To rip the bummer bandaid off quick, I, like many other people, Have Not Had A Great Year, so I’m looking for lighter fare this Yuletide than what some of my past requests, fics, or gifts might indicate. I know I have requested some horror or horror adjacent canons and am about to offer some potentially angsty prompts, so I’m not expecting pure fluff or anything. For the most part, I just mean that I’d like there to be some sort of positivity in the story, whether that’s hope, loyalty, perseverance, comedy or whatever.

… I feel like I’m already getting into rambling territory. Again, my likes are hard for even me to pin down, so if you get a gleam, please, be free!

— plastics

General

Likes

Scenery, tradition, communities

I absolutely love being transported to a specific time, place, and/or culture. All of them. I love seeing how characters interact with the places and things around them, and I love it as a form of intimacy.

This can also be within smaller groups of people, perhaps within a limited window! I love sports teams, boarding schools or summer camps or colleges, subcultures, intense careers, etc. I also love focusing on less ~glamorous positions—it’s a shitty job or a shitty town or a shitty situation, but goddamn it, it’s your shit.

Relationship messiness

People make the wrong choices for the right person (or the wrong person, but it feels so right) just works for me. This covers a lot of ground: codependent relationships, infidelity, power imbalances, working through internalized homophobia, assholes in love, etc. For this exchange, I’d greatly prefer something in a gray area over “A is abusing B.”

Casual sex (or is it (it is (unless…?))! Best friends (unless!?)! Taking time to figure out what the fuck your relationship is! Knowing what it is and loving and being dedicated to each other but still having to put in the work! Highs and lows within established relationships! The honeymoon period shining a little too bright!

Competency, loyalty, dedication

Really, I’m just very character-focused. I love seeing what people are good at and what (and who) they care about. They don’t need to be saintly about it, and it doesn’t need to come easy—making the choice is what really gets me.

I have also recently rediscovered my love for romance tropes, especially ones focused on how much the two characters just really, genuinely like each other. “As you wish”-ass levels of dedication. Pining because you don’t want to hurt what you’ve got already. Intimate little touches. Wooing your love interest with just, like, all the love languages. People committing to each other!!! (And I am also genuinely into platonic relationships, affection, and dedication between characters, too, although I know I’ve been speaking in very shippy terms.)

Smut

assplay • begging • bruising or biting • casual sex • come marking • dirty talk • drunk or high sex • edging • familiarity • finger sucking • first times • frottage • hands • informal D/s • manhandling • mouth kink • multiple orgasms • nipple play • oral sex • over the clothes • overstimulation • pining while fucking  • playful sex • possessiveness • power imbalances • rough sex • size differences

Art

I’m not very good at art-specific prompts, but I’ve found it very soothing in recent months. Generally, I like oversaturation, contrast, color blocking; tender moments (fingers brushing, kissing, holding hands, intense eye contact), atmosphere and settings; details and clutter. Bright, warm colors make me really happy. I also like art that fleshes out the world—informational brochures, “photos,” postcards—and captures those quiet moments that are hard to capture with words.

A few examples, if you’d like: x | x | x | x | x

Do Not Want

apocalypse, devastating natural disasters, or complete dystopias; incest treated as normal or culturally accepted, intergeneral incest; major character death, graphic injury, gore, body horror, serious illness, injuries resulting from sex (bruising or soreness is fine); gender or sex swap, feminization, crossdressing; impact play; slavery; explicit underage sex (<16) or smut with NITW characters; hate crimes or other extreme instances of bigotry, abuse or fighting isms as the main plot; heavy focus on IRL religions; IRL partners in RPF; unrequited romantic or sexual interest that stays unrequited

Requests

Night In The Woods

Requested Characters: Any (Angus, Bea, Casey, Gregg, Lori, Mae, Mae’s Grandfather, Pastor Kate)

Fandom-specific DNW: Explicit smut

Finally got the chance to play this a few months ago and I absolutely adored everything about it. It being a half-step apart from ours but still feeling just so real makes it just so exciting to go exploring in more.

Besides Angus and Gregg, I don't really ship any of the characters, so if the work isn't focused on those two, I'd prefer any romance take the backseat.

Up and Out: Possum Springs was just so immediately familiar to me, and it did such a good job building up the character and innate value in these sorts of towns where the best you can hope for is to get out, and the cracks that you can fall (or be thrown) into if you’re not doing things The Right Way. I’d love exploring more nooks and crannies around Possum Springs, but also Angus and Gregg getting out to Bright Harbor, their first Longest Night in the city and how things are better and harder there. 

Theirs is perhaps the most definitive I’m Leaving, but I’d love to see any of the requested characters’ thought process in whether they’re just trying to make it to tomorrow or hunker down in Possum Springs or see what else is out there. The game makes many very, very strong points about how sometimes adulthood, responsibilities, or disability can take those choices away from you to an extent, but I’d really prefer if it’s more kept in a positive bend—there’s a beauty in people doing the best they can, and sometimes things really do work out, or at least get better.

Myth Making: I’d love something along the lines of Longest Night—more telling each other stories, being immersed in one's own culture, holidays—or spending more time in the library or historical places, digging deeper into the cult’s beliefs, how things got to the point they did. And then the pit! The ghost! Surely there’s more supernatural going ons. Maybe Mae, Bea, or some of the other female characters try to become witches, with varying success?

Also, pre-canon in general! These characters have such vivid, lived-in lives, and I’d love to see how things came to the point they were by the time the game started.

A few freeforms from an exchange I participated in earlier in the year: 24 hr convenience store in a really weird neighborhood AU (“AU”), dreams bleeding into reality, Forest Is Dark and Mysterious and Possibly Sentient But Definitely Out to Get Us, In-Universe Lore and Myth, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Telling scary stories that turn out to be real, Losing Confidence in the Belief that the Monster is Really Dead Over Time, Investigating The Evil Cult

Seattle Kraken

Where to find: Here, and also literally anything else there is to know about the team at this point.

This is probably the fandom I have the least clear idea of what I want, but I still have so much enthusiasm for what it could be. I hope I’m not breaking any hearts by saying I’m not particularly interested in xeno at the moment (“But the tentacles!” I know, I’m disappointed in myself, too). Mostly, I’m really interested in the “worldbuilding” around the team, city, and Kraken itself.

— Magical realism or urban fantasy; Seattle floods and now A Literal Kraken is just, like, around.
— A Literal Kraken as Moby Dick, who has taken down too many fishing boats and needs to be tamed somehow, and why not blood sacrifices on ice?
— Gigantic Octodad has recently earned a promotion to general manager
— Nontraditional mediums, like newspaper clippings or Olde Texts about A Literal Kraken, the team Kraken, the Metros…
— The Metros! Tell me about them! What was early 20th century hockey like? What dark deals did they make for their success and leave behind for the next guys?
— This has all been very magic-forward, but I also do just genuinely love Seattle and have for a long time, from a distance, and I also really love hockey. I’m sorry that my brain is more ‼ right now than helpful content, but I genuinely am so interested to see what you could come up with.

Surfing RPF

Requested characters: Any (Mike Hynson, John John Florence, Nathan Florence, Koa Rothman)

Fandom-specific DNW: Focus on IRL romantic partners 

Everything I know about surfing has been learned via Youtube in the last unknowable number of months. Four, maybe? Point being, if you know what the fuck you’re talking about, I’d be absolutely delighted to be thrown in. If you’re landlocked, can doggy paddle with moderate success, and have minimal ideas about what’s going on but nonetheless intrigued, hi, same, I wrote a small promo/primer post that hopefully can get you rolling.

Generally speaking, I’m a bit basic. I love travel, the ocean, beaches, and bros. I love extreme sports. I love the idealized fantasy versions of these things, and I love diving into the darkness (or as close as RPF allows) behind the illusion. Any combination of these things will make me happy. Surf trips! Hurt/comfort after a wipeout! Toxic masculinity! Party waves with the boys! Anything!

If it makes more sense for you to focus on just one of the characters (especially Mike), feel free to do so.

Florences: I just find siblings inherently compelling, especially with these two’s bonkers upbringing, followed up by John being crowned The Next One for Hawaiian surfing. I’d love to see how they dealt with all that as they settled into a more secure adulthood, John with competing, Nate with… also competing? I’m still working out how exactly big wave surfing works career-wise.

I also think it’s cute/interesting that they, along with their younger brother, make up a full half of the (as described by this one video) North Shore Rat Pack—so goes small-town living. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind an AU where they’re just, like, casual surfers instead of pros. In terms of shipping, I feel like if you throw all these guys into a bag and pull out of a pair, you have an interesting dynamic to work with. 

Rothman: Again, just a really fascinating family. It was astounding watching his videos and then reading this article that was just like, yeah, Koa is not the charmer of this family. And while the Florences have the whole John-John situation going on, Koa clearly has a whole generational cloud hanging over him. 

I also really appreciate how frank he is about his (generally minor, but still) medical issues and his nerves before competitions or heading out into big haves. Still very much a bro, but, again, I like taking a peak behind the curtain every now and again.

(And other times he's just hanging out with Jason Momoa, so, like, not all doom and gloom.)

Hynson: Basically what I said in the promo post. I’m a sucker for recent history period pieces, and his whole story feels like it was fished out of my id. I’d absolutely love to hear more about that Endless Summer (perhaps with some Mike/Robert, preferably with less White Man In The 1960s Discovers Africans), and what the everloving fuck came later in Laguna Beach.

Tri Phi

Requested characters: Any (Demon, Vampire, Werewolf, Witch)

Where to find: Here!

The Yuletide nom limits are what they are, but I’m open to any of the characters who appear in the illustrations being main characters.

These illustrations build up SO MUCH happening all at once, and I just want to hear all about this house and all the girls who live in it and the campus it’s on. I’d really prefer that this mostly be fun, but I’d love a campy approach to sorority girls and scary (“scary”) movies and tropey set-ups along those lines. I don't mind minor gore or one of the undead girls starting out alive and ~transforming within the fic.

And while it’s a bit corny of me, but I do genuinely love the #sisterhood where, even if they have petty roommate problems or species rivalries, they still have each other’s backs against, like, their annoying brother frat’s pranks or Prof. Frankenstein’s finals always being the stuff of nightmares.

I’ve always loved the juxtaposition of Spooky and Cozy Wintertimes. I’m imagining Black Christmas or Oops, We’re Snowed In At The Ski Lodge sort of stories, only preferably with the would-be slasher learning he’s fucked with the wrong monstrous girls, or even things answering questions along the lines of, like, what do winter holiday traditions look like for a demon?

Feel free to go shippy or gen.

Some more freeforms: Scary But Have Fun With It, telling scary stories, Sketchy Carnivals, Pranks and Practical Jokes, pranks gone wrong, Belated Realization That Your Jerk "Friends" Tricked You Into This Horrifying Situation, Characters Wander Into The Extra Creepy Part Of The Cursed Forest, Crack Treated Semi-Seriously, It Was A Dark And Stormy Night, man eating lesbians strike again, Monsters Having A Swell Time, Would-Be Bad Guy Underestimates Target