Dear Yuletide Writer - 2025
Oct. 23rd, 2025 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perikarnassian[ AO3 username: snuffradio ]
Dear Yuletide Writer,
We matched! (Or you’ve found me because I’m willing to receive - and indescribably appreciative of - surprise treats.) I don’t know who you are but I love you already, for loving one of these small fandoms with me.
First of all: You do not have to read this letter! If you’d like to skip it, go nuts. Have fun. I will love you, and I will love you most of all if you’re having fun.
But I would go a little nuts with anxiety if my recipient prompted me with just “do anything” and no details. (Even if they really would be happy with anything - which is basically how I feel about the fandoms I’ve selected.)
Further details to follow if you want them. Scroll down for fandom-specific notes. I’ve tried to offer a long list for two reasons: because I hope it gives you a sense of what I like overall, and because it offers you a lot of ideas to pick from so that you can leave behind the parts you don’t like.
Very little is a DNW for me, and a lot of the common DNWs - suicide comes to mind - are appealing to me if the writer handles them thoughtfully. I like all ratings, and both shipfic and gen, and if I’ve included a character in my requests, it’s okay to write anything else I’ve mentioned below about that character. You do not have to include anything from my letter; it is provided as inspiration.
LIKES
- Daemon AUs and His Dark Materials Fusion
- Crueltide / darkfic / “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat”
- ‘Author writing about their own expertise’ fics. (Think: The ’Naruto and Sasuke work as Canadian public servants for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’ fic.)
- Trauma fallout
- Coming of age + formative experiences
- Body horror
- Fridge horror
- People who fundamentally do not think like each other, especially because of a basic difference in morals. (Note: This is not a condemnation of one person or the other.)
- “Consensual but not safe or sane” behavior, not necessarily sexual despite the description.
- Worldbuilding!!
- AUs, almost all of them
- The 4 major Archive Warnings, all of them.
- Character studies
- Pre-canon, Canon-divergence, Post-canon, Missing scene fic
- Casefic
- Suppressed thoughts (+ coping) (+ self-hatred about it). Often this means ‘suppressed violent thoughts’ but it covers a lot of territory. See also: repression. Also: Intrusive thoughts.
- Nightmares
- Characters behaving in ways that range from “deeply imperfect” to “unforgivable” (which is not inherently darkfic!). See: doing their best and their best is really bad
- Experimental fiction (see more notes below)
- Crackfic taken very seriously
- Folkloric / etc allusions
- Humor!! Fics that can pull this off are incredible
- GRIEF and PRE-GRIEF and DEATH and the FRAGILITY OF THE HUMAN BODY I think about this a normal amount.
DO-NOT-WRITES (capitalized for title, not for yelling)
- No “[adult] adopts [child]” plot fics, + no fic about characters having an uncomplicatedly loving and healthy relationship with a parent/guardian. If the relationship is less than perfect, you’re fine.
- No Y/N fic / reader-insert fic
- No OC x Canon character unless otherwise indicated
- For Locust City: No splitting up C&C’s place in each other’s lives for romance(s) with someone else. This is not a protest against post-canon fics about them growing up, or a protest against pairing them with other people, or a request to pair them with each other. It is about the phenomenon of a new romantic partner displacing the previous most important connections in someone’s life. It’s a not-too-uncommon trope in C&C fic that they stop talking to each other very much after one of them starts dating another person and This Trope Makes Me Sad.
- I am going to make the bizarrely specific request not to crossover Locust City with either of the other two fandoms I’ve requested even though I’d be perfectly happy with Locust City crossover’ed with fandoms besides those two.
THINGS I WOULD ACCEPT HAPPILY THAT I’M TOLD ARE NORMALLY A FAUX PAS IN FIC EXCHANGE UNLESS THE RECIPIENT GIVES PERMISSION:
I have seen some people say to never write these for a gift exchange or to always ask first. I like them, though!
- Experimental fiction and formats
- Interactive fiction
- Fusions/AUs that I may not be familiar with
- Second person POV
- Strange formatting / CSS, or fic with illustrations / documents / diagrams integrated
- Fic written as transcripts, screenplays, storyboard scripts, or similar
- “Dead dove” and “darkfic” topics, see further above.
- “Choose not to use archive warnings” / fics that rely on the author giving you a surprise, possibly an unpleasant one (with a warning note by the author that tags are incomplete). “Tags would be spoilers” kinds of fics
- Do people consider it wrong to write someone porn unless they specifically OK it? This is my formal permission. You can write that if you want.
- Crackfic taken very seriously. I like when someone goes ‘what if…’, gets carried away, and then actually writes the premise with total sincerity and no irony.
- FANDOM-SPECIFIC NOTES -
LOCUST CITY
RESOURCE MASTERPOST: https://www.tumblr.com/parasolemn/793302529486258176/x7-masterpost-so-i-can-stop-getting-confused-where
I don’t need all the characters in my signup to be in the story. I don’t need only characters in the tagset to be in the story. I picked all 4 tags available - Cuno, Cunoesse, the Locusts, & Worldbuilding - with the “giver’s choice” tag. I included 'Worldbuilding' and I meant it! It's harder to write a traditional prompt about "the entire world in Locust City" but less prompts does not equal less enthusiasm.
Prompts (assorted):
- *Daemon AU.* Daemon-settling fics are so much about coming of age stories and formative experiences, and LC is a coming of age story about formative experiences; I love all the daemon tropes in general, but one of the things that interests me most about the idea of an AU for LC in particular is that I can’t imagine they’d settle as the same things in each ending, since the endings make them into such drastically different people. (But if *you* imagine they would settle the same way no matter what I’d be really intrigued by that too.)
- Post-canon - which may or may not include the immediate aftermath - of any of the endings, but the one that intrigues me the most is post-brainwashing. Either POV would be interesting. (Re: brainwashing: Does she regret it? What is it like? *What happens afterwards?*)
- Something surrounding Cuno’s relationship to the locusts and/or his nightmares and/or his imagination in some combination. I dearly love the locust box mechanic and its grotesque and beautiful evolution. (I would be delighted, and impressed, by any fic that manages to be about the relationship between the three of them: Cuno, Cunoesse, and the Box of Locusts.)
- Anything using Zaum (the drug) &/or the psychedelic cavefish marrow.
- I love Hercule and every ‘timeline’ he can go through in Act II and what C&C do to him; I love his opinions of them and theirs of him. & I also love everything we know about the Girl Leader and her place and scenes in Act IV. I think it would be really interesting to bounce them off other characters their age in a fic without leaning into smarm or losing their canon-typical rough edges. (I have a strong bias towards fiction that takes conflicts between children seriously.)
- There are very few C POV fics out there in the world compared to Cuno, and I would love any fic from C’s POV. (I love also whatever is going on with her skill Surface Tension and her “deep connection to water”, and wonder how that affects her perspective.)
NOTE: I have like, null opinions on slash tagging (/) vs ampersand tagging (&) C and C. There seems to be really broad disagreement about how exactly to categorize or describe their relationship regardless of which tagging convention someone picks.
RIMWORLD
My ideal RimWorld fic is a fic about your own RimWorld characters. (Or with their permission your friend’s, or something.) I’m really invested in other people’s games and read through their RimWorld liveblogging tags for fun.
Notes and prompts:
- I love modded RimWorld most of all. Mods and DLCs are the fun part, most of all the self-indulgent ones that give all the colonists fox tails or make torture worse or whatever it is a given player likes. (Pick what YOU like.) I include the forbidden mod as an acceptable mod to write; i.e. RJW is not a DNW, but also not a request.
- I actively like other people’s very self-indulgent RW OCs. RimWorld *is* a “story generator”.
- I would gladly love an AU from another fandom set inside RimWorld if the focus is on RimWorld worldbuilding. (Example fandoms I am in: Annihilation & the whole Southern Reach series by Jeff VanderMeer, The Wire (2002), all Porpentine Charity Heartscape’s stories in the story codex on xrafstar.monster - yeah, these are weird choices, but the weirder the better.) It being a fandom I’m not in is fine.
- Or maybe RimWorld adapted to integrate another trope, like Wingfic, or Daemon AU, or Time Loops, into RW.
- I am definitely open to experimental formats.
The thing I am *most interested in* is worldbuilding, which I know (especially with mods) is different for every game: What is your agricultural system like? What’s going on with your economy? How are your politics, or religion, or prison systems, or factions doing? How does all this impact colonists’ lives? What is it like to be a colonist there? This is the type of question I would like a story to answer.
SAFETY VIDEOS - U.S. CHEMICAL SAFETY AND HAZARD INVESTIGATION BOARD
Hello, this surprised me so much when I saw it on the fandom list. I didn’t know what it meant and spent a few fascinated hours watching videos and reading their associated comments sections and screenshotting things and sending them to my friends. To my knowledge there is no other fic about it, and I could not find a fandom. I don’t know what a fic about it *would* look like. If you’ve signed up to write it I assume you have some idea of what you’d most like to write about it so like: Please write what your heart wants. And show me. Because I’m very invested and still watching U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board videos.
I think this would be really well-suited to experimental formats in particular.
Last: Happy Yuletide! This is my very first. Are you excited? I’m excited.
I hope you have fun and I cannot thank you enough.
Dear Yuletide Writer,
We matched! (Or you’ve found me because I’m willing to receive - and indescribably appreciative of - surprise treats.) I don’t know who you are but I love you already, for loving one of these small fandoms with me.
First of all: You do not have to read this letter! If you’d like to skip it, go nuts. Have fun. I will love you, and I will love you most of all if you’re having fun.
But I would go a little nuts with anxiety if my recipient prompted me with just “do anything” and no details. (Even if they really would be happy with anything - which is basically how I feel about the fandoms I’ve selected.)
Further details to follow if you want them. Scroll down for fandom-specific notes. I’ve tried to offer a long list for two reasons: because I hope it gives you a sense of what I like overall, and because it offers you a lot of ideas to pick from so that you can leave behind the parts you don’t like.
Very little is a DNW for me, and a lot of the common DNWs - suicide comes to mind - are appealing to me if the writer handles them thoughtfully. I like all ratings, and both shipfic and gen, and if I’ve included a character in my requests, it’s okay to write anything else I’ve mentioned below about that character. You do not have to include anything from my letter; it is provided as inspiration.
LIKES
- Daemon AUs and His Dark Materials Fusion
- Crueltide / darkfic / “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat”
- ‘Author writing about their own expertise’ fics. (Think: The ’Naruto and Sasuke work as Canadian public servants for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’ fic.)
- Trauma fallout
- Coming of age + formative experiences
- Body horror
- Fridge horror
- People who fundamentally do not think like each other, especially because of a basic difference in morals. (Note: This is not a condemnation of one person or the other.)
- “Consensual but not safe or sane” behavior, not necessarily sexual despite the description.
- Worldbuilding!!
- AUs, almost all of them
- The 4 major Archive Warnings, all of them.
- Character studies
- Pre-canon, Canon-divergence, Post-canon, Missing scene fic
- Casefic
- Suppressed thoughts (+ coping) (+ self-hatred about it). Often this means ‘suppressed violent thoughts’ but it covers a lot of territory. See also: repression. Also: Intrusive thoughts.
- Nightmares
- Characters behaving in ways that range from “deeply imperfect” to “unforgivable” (which is not inherently darkfic!). See: doing their best and their best is really bad
- Experimental fiction (see more notes below)
- Crackfic taken very seriously
- Folkloric / etc allusions
- Humor!! Fics that can pull this off are incredible
- GRIEF and PRE-GRIEF and DEATH and the FRAGILITY OF THE HUMAN BODY I think about this a normal amount.
DO-NOT-WRITES (capitalized for title, not for yelling)
- No “[adult] adopts [child]” plot fics, + no fic about characters having an uncomplicatedly loving and healthy relationship with a parent/guardian. If the relationship is less than perfect, you’re fine.
- No Y/N fic / reader-insert fic
- No OC x Canon character unless otherwise indicated
- For Locust City: No splitting up C&C’s place in each other’s lives for romance(s) with someone else. This is not a protest against post-canon fics about them growing up, or a protest against pairing them with other people, or a request to pair them with each other. It is about the phenomenon of a new romantic partner displacing the previous most important connections in someone’s life. It’s a not-too-uncommon trope in C&C fic that they stop talking to each other very much after one of them starts dating another person and This Trope Makes Me Sad.
- I am going to make the bizarrely specific request not to crossover Locust City with either of the other two fandoms I’ve requested even though I’d be perfectly happy with Locust City crossover’ed with fandoms besides those two.
THINGS I WOULD ACCEPT HAPPILY THAT I’M TOLD ARE NORMALLY A FAUX PAS IN FIC EXCHANGE UNLESS THE RECIPIENT GIVES PERMISSION:
I have seen some people say to never write these for a gift exchange or to always ask first. I like them, though!
- Experimental fiction and formats
- Interactive fiction
- Fusions/AUs that I may not be familiar with
- Second person POV
- Strange formatting / CSS, or fic with illustrations / documents / diagrams integrated
- Fic written as transcripts, screenplays, storyboard scripts, or similar
- “Dead dove” and “darkfic” topics, see further above.
- “Choose not to use archive warnings” / fics that rely on the author giving you a surprise, possibly an unpleasant one (with a warning note by the author that tags are incomplete). “Tags would be spoilers” kinds of fics
- Do people consider it wrong to write someone porn unless they specifically OK it? This is my formal permission. You can write that if you want.
- Crackfic taken very seriously. I like when someone goes ‘what if…’, gets carried away, and then actually writes the premise with total sincerity and no irony.
- FANDOM-SPECIFIC NOTES -
LOCUST CITY
RESOURCE MASTERPOST: https://www.tumblr.com/parasolemn/793302529486258176/x7-masterpost-so-i-can-stop-getting-confused-where
I don’t need all the characters in my signup to be in the story. I don’t need only characters in the tagset to be in the story. I picked all 4 tags available - Cuno, Cunoesse, the Locusts, & Worldbuilding - with the “giver’s choice” tag. I included 'Worldbuilding' and I meant it! It's harder to write a traditional prompt about "the entire world in Locust City" but less prompts does not equal less enthusiasm.
Prompts (assorted):
- *Daemon AU.* Daemon-settling fics are so much about coming of age stories and formative experiences, and LC is a coming of age story about formative experiences; I love all the daemon tropes in general, but one of the things that interests me most about the idea of an AU for LC in particular is that I can’t imagine they’d settle as the same things in each ending, since the endings make them into such drastically different people. (But if *you* imagine they would settle the same way no matter what I’d be really intrigued by that too.)
- Post-canon - which may or may not include the immediate aftermath - of any of the endings, but the one that intrigues me the most is post-brainwashing. Either POV would be interesting. (Re: brainwashing: Does she regret it? What is it like? *What happens afterwards?*)
- Something surrounding Cuno’s relationship to the locusts and/or his nightmares and/or his imagination in some combination. I dearly love the locust box mechanic and its grotesque and beautiful evolution. (I would be delighted, and impressed, by any fic that manages to be about the relationship between the three of them: Cuno, Cunoesse, and the Box of Locusts.)
- Anything using Zaum (the drug) &/or the psychedelic cavefish marrow.
- I love Hercule and every ‘timeline’ he can go through in Act II and what C&C do to him; I love his opinions of them and theirs of him. & I also love everything we know about the Girl Leader and her place and scenes in Act IV. I think it would be really interesting to bounce them off other characters their age in a fic without leaning into smarm or losing their canon-typical rough edges. (I have a strong bias towards fiction that takes conflicts between children seriously.)
- There are very few C POV fics out there in the world compared to Cuno, and I would love any fic from C’s POV. (I love also whatever is going on with her skill Surface Tension and her “deep connection to water”, and wonder how that affects her perspective.)
NOTE: I have like, null opinions on slash tagging (/) vs ampersand tagging (&) C and C. There seems to be really broad disagreement about how exactly to categorize or describe their relationship regardless of which tagging convention someone picks.
RIMWORLD
My ideal RimWorld fic is a fic about your own RimWorld characters. (Or with their permission your friend’s, or something.) I’m really invested in other people’s games and read through their RimWorld liveblogging tags for fun.
Notes and prompts:
- I love modded RimWorld most of all. Mods and DLCs are the fun part, most of all the self-indulgent ones that give all the colonists fox tails or make torture worse or whatever it is a given player likes. (Pick what YOU like.) I include the forbidden mod as an acceptable mod to write; i.e. RJW is not a DNW, but also not a request.
- I actively like other people’s very self-indulgent RW OCs. RimWorld *is* a “story generator”.
- I would gladly love an AU from another fandom set inside RimWorld if the focus is on RimWorld worldbuilding. (Example fandoms I am in: Annihilation & the whole Southern Reach series by Jeff VanderMeer, The Wire (2002), all Porpentine Charity Heartscape’s stories in the story codex on xrafstar.monster - yeah, these are weird choices, but the weirder the better.) It being a fandom I’m not in is fine.
- Or maybe RimWorld adapted to integrate another trope, like Wingfic, or Daemon AU, or Time Loops, into RW.
- I am definitely open to experimental formats.
The thing I am *most interested in* is worldbuilding, which I know (especially with mods) is different for every game: What is your agricultural system like? What’s going on with your economy? How are your politics, or religion, or prison systems, or factions doing? How does all this impact colonists’ lives? What is it like to be a colonist there? This is the type of question I would like a story to answer.
SAFETY VIDEOS - U.S. CHEMICAL SAFETY AND HAZARD INVESTIGATION BOARD
Hello, this surprised me so much when I saw it on the fandom list. I didn’t know what it meant and spent a few fascinated hours watching videos and reading their associated comments sections and screenshotting things and sending them to my friends. To my knowledge there is no other fic about it, and I could not find a fandom. I don’t know what a fic about it *would* look like. If you’ve signed up to write it I assume you have some idea of what you’d most like to write about it so like: Please write what your heart wants. And show me. Because I’m very invested and still watching U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board videos.
I think this would be really well-suited to experimental formats in particular.
Last: Happy Yuletide! This is my very first. Are you excited? I’m excited.
I hope you have fun and I cannot thank you enough.
