Dear Yuletide Writer 2011

[estirose]

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Don't panic! I'm friendly. And optional details and characters are very, very much optional. I tend to be a little wordy, so please bear with me! This is my fifth Yuletide, and I love it still.

As a note, these fandoms are listed in alphabetical order, not by fandom preference. (I want a story in any of these fandoms, dear writer!) I've done a lot of promoting this year for Final Fantasy II, but I am just as happy to see the other three fandoms. Please don't think that anything in this letter means I prefer one fandom or another.

In general, if you stay away from noncon, shotacon, and horror, I'm good. I'm not so big on incest except for one pairing in a fandom I'm not asking for this year. Humiliation is a squick for me. I don't have an issue with mpreg and dubcon. Most sexual kinks don't do much for me, I'm pretty vanilla. Despite the fact that my main writing fandoms tend to include people with supernatural abilities and/or mecha, I'm more interested in characters than battles. I love worldbuilding and original characters. I'm as much into hurt/comfort and angst as I am with happy stories, and I have a soft spot for bittersweet endings, but I don't have to have them. Any rating is fine, please make sure if you write Mature/Explicit fic that everybody's at least in their late teens.

Here's some stuff about my individual fandoms.

Final Fantasy II (the original II, not the renumbered IV) is my obscure game fandom, and I love it to Pandaemonium and back. If you share this fandom with me, hello! I'm glad to meet a fellow player. (If you're not, but you want to meet a new fandom, I've transcribed the dialogue for you and here's a transcription for Soul of Rebirth, one of the bonus dungeons. Here's links to the Final Fantasy Wikia and TV Tropes pages for it as well.) I met this on the iPod Touch and later ended up with a Game Boy Advance copy, so I'm going by the names from that particular iteration (since they use identical names).

Things I love about it? Well, I love the characters, all of them, though it took until this year and another fandom to really appreciate Leila. My favorite character in the entire game is Minwu, but romatically I pair Firion/Maria. (Though I've seen a really good Minwu/Maria fic and I'm open to Minwu/practically anyone except maybe Borghen.) I realize that the age of the game means that you don't get a ton of backstory and it's very open to Alternate Character Interpretation, which is cool with me. I've named Minwu in my nomination, but really, any of these are fine.

If you're like me and need some prompts, here are mine:
* Leon: Tell me about his post-game adventures, or how things were before everything happened, or how he takes his little sister being more powerful than he is when they meet again.
* Maria: Your take on her quest to save Leon, her ponderings on what it means to save the world (when all she might really want is to save her family), or how game events weigh heavy on her. (The last one would also make a good prompt for Firion.)
* Guy: A lighthearted fic on how Guy learned to speak Beaver.
* Minwu: I'd love an AU where Minwu takes a young, orphaned Firion under his wing. (Firion's start-of-game stats make him a perfect white mage/healer.) Minwu/Hilda might be a bit hard, but might be interesting to write. Minwu coming back to advise people, even after the end of the game.
* Hilda: There's almost no fic featuring Hilda (which is not surprising, as fic for the fandom is extremely rare)! Tell me about her, her adventures, even how she got everybody set up in Altair. How she feels about the young adventurers she keeps sending out. Or her starting to fall in love with Gordon.
* Worldbuilding: Tell me about the events of the story through the eyes of the ordinary people/minor characters. I want to hear about one of the refugees of Fynn, what it was like to labor on the Dreadnought, what the Black Mask means to the people of the Tropical Island (preferably without the um, interesting and somewhat problematic dialogue). Or how people start to rebuild their world and lives after everything happens.
* Crossover: If you're familiar with Dissidia, imagine how it would be for Minwu or Maria to be involved in the storylines of these games. Or maybe one of the DIssidia-canon characters ends up in Fynn/Altair during/after the game. (I have a soft spot for Laguna, Golbez, and Terra.)

Here's my Final Fantasy II fics - and some I and III - for those wanting to check them out.

Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger is one of those rare sentais I've taken to, and if this is our shared fandom, welcome! It didn't win me from the start, but I really started taking to the show around Gai's introduction. He's my favorite character (despite me wanting to smack him a whole lot), and it shows in my fic. I love the fact that he's both living his dream and having to learn how to work in a (sentai) team. He's not really a team player, and it shows. Other favorites of mine are Ahim and Don, and I really like Marvelous as well. I like Don's seeming awkwardness and genius, and Ahim's gentleness-with-steel. Marvelous intrigues me with his moods. (I'm not as fond of Joe and Luka, and I'd prefer any fic not focus on them.) Nobody stands out among the baddies except Isarn and, oddly enough, Sally/Sari. (I'm not so fond of Barizorg, but see below about Sid.) I've paired Ahim and Gai before, but I am as open to Ahim/just about anybody and Gai/just about anybody. I chose Gai as the character I most wanted, but I'm perfectly happy with any of them.

If you're looking for some prompts, here are some.
* Gai: There's so much that can be done with/to him, but I'll stick to a few ideas. Take him from before he joined the team, when they were just another team instead of his (future) teammates. Or something right after he gets his powers and knows he's ~destined~ and just getting used to his powers/trying to figure out how he fits in. Maybe a future fic about Gai's adventures living in space with his teammates, or being the sole member of the Gokaigers on Earth - maybe trying to mentor a new team. Heck, him hanging around one of the more amenable/lighthearted characters (Kenta, Sosuke, Hyuuga, etc) would be fine.
* Ahim: What would happen if she was given the option to rule Earth, in return for leaving the Gokaigers?
* Sid: What if he'd escaped instead of being recaptured?
* Marvelous: A piece maybe about him as he chooses to welcome each/any of his crew aboard the ship.
* Other/any: A day aboard the Galleon, either during, before, or after the series. An interaction/further interaction with a sentai member or team of your choice. The first day aboard ship (including Marvelous).

Here's my fics. They tend to be Gai-heavy, with some Ahim.

Hi there! Did you match me in Kamen Rider W? You might know me, our fandom is small enough. I'm a fan of the whole story, from the whole Sonozaki family drama to the dynamics of Shoutarou's family and friends. Heck, I love the universe in general and any story you'd write for me is great.

If you're a person who loves prompts, here's some:
* Shoutarou: Give me his past. Have him around his adopted family. Give him adventures after the end of the series, or before. I love stories about his first days with Philip, and can never get enough of them. I tend to slash him with Philip anyway, so if you're a Shou/Philip writer, have fun exploring their relationship, how it develops/developed, how Double makes things easier or harder.
* Philip: I'm fascinated by Philip, about both his biological family and his adoptive one. Give me Philip as a kid, give me an AU where Shroud gets away with him as a little kid, give me a world where he's never rescued but the Sonozakis think that using him and Shoutarou as Double is a good idea. Heck, I'd be happy with a thousand words of Philip playing with Mick.
* Akiko: I love that scene in the W/OOO movie where she's having her birthday and calling her Dad. Could you write me an expansion of that scene from her perspective? Or if writing her as a kid is not your thing, I'd like to see her running the agency, her musings about the same, especially after her marriage, how she balances the whole thing.
* Other characters: I didn't choose Sokichi, Shroud, or any of the Sonozakis, but if any of the above don't appeal, I'd love hearing about Shroud and Sokichi's friendship and how they met, or a story about the family pre-accident, or if you're into drama, the whole Shroud-Terror drama. Or tell me about a random Dopant, what motivates them, what made them choose what they are.

Here's my fic for Kamen Rider W.

Matched me in Mulan? It's a very new fandom for me, because I picked it up in mid-Yuletide 2010. I have to admit, I'm fascinated with the various versions of the Mulan myth that Disney adapted as much as I like the movie itself. (I started researching the background for "Versal and Marginalia" and have been intrigued since.) I could go on and on about the whole thing, but I'll just tell you what I love most about the myths.

The myths are about a heroic woman when women had little value - to the extent that the fifth-century-or-so earliest known version doesn't include her name at all in the text I've read. This is the tale of a woman who dared to go to war when it's something that women completely, absolutely did not do. In fact, in most of the original myths, Mulan could have been killed for joining the army or being one of the Emperor's ministers. In some myths, she fights her father in order to have the privilege of joining the army. In others, she just sneaks off. In some versions, she does so well that Shang doesn't find out that she's a woman until he arrives at her household to find a woman instead of a man. (That version is particularly amusing as he's come to offer a gift to "Ping"/the family for a family who wants to arrange a marriage between "Ping" and their daughter.) Also, Shang wouldn't be able to propose marriage to Mulan - his family would have to send gifts to her family. (The whole purpose of the matchmaker that appears in the movie would originally have been to serve as a go-between.) And then they would have had to determine that everything was auspicious, and so on.

So, this is one fandom where I'd really like a story focusing on Mulan or Mulan/Shang, though if you want to write one of my Emperor prompts, that's fine too. I tend to ignore Mulan II and hope you do, too. My character choices were Shang and Mulan.

Here's some prompts for those so inclined:
Mulan: I could just say "write Mulan being kickass", but I realize that it's not that concrete by prompt standards. So, tell me about the girl that became the warrior before the events of the movie. Have her saving the world/China. Helping to raise the status of women in her homeland, being an advisor to the emperor, dealing with being a married woman while doing so. Mulan with her own set of (female) trainees. Or maybe weave your own favorite version of the myth into the world of the movie.
Mulan/Shang: While Shang is interesting in himself, I'm mostly interested in his interactions with Mulan. Tell me about him trying to get used to this girl who used to be one of his men. Or how there's surely some pressure in his life to marry Mulan; if the Emperor's urging him to go for the girl, Shang's family is sure to apply some pressure as well. Oh, heck, Shang is probably going to have some competition for Mulan. And how does Shang feel about being married to Mulan anyway?
Emperor: The Emperor's reason for awarding Mulan her rank. Pondering making changes to a culture because he can. Or, if you're so inclined, the Emperor plays matchmaker to the two warriors.

My two Mulan fics, both written for Yuletide, are available for your reading pleasure.

If you're trying to get a hold of the sources for these, here are some resources below.

Final Fantasy II: If you desire to play the game yourself, it's available on a variety of platforms. Check the Final Fantasy wikia for the various and sundry systems. As I mentioned above, my spellings conform to the GBA/iOS version, different versions have slightly different spellings (but the same plot).
Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger: Currently airing, and has several groups fansubbing it.
Kamen Rider W: No longer airing, but the fansubs are still out there.
Mulan: Should be available on DVD, and for the US, there's iTunes/Amazon.

And if you're really curious about the prompts I liked best, I have a nice little fic about my preferences, but I suggest only reading it if you're stuck picking out a prompt and want some more material.