Entry tags:
Yuletide Letter
Dear my wonderful hand-picked (bot-picked?) anon,
Thank you so much for being my Yuletide Writer and putting in the time to make something nice for me! :DD What follows are things I like and my biases. If you have a great idea that doesn't match with the ideas I throw out, that's totally fine. I suspect I'll like my gift better if you've written an idea that you, writer, feel really excited about and can really believe. I ask only that you stay away from the dislikes. All the rest is only there for purposes of inspiration.
General
I think the kind of shit I write is pretty indicative of my tastes. I like stories that are tenderly dramatic, stories that get their punch from people being people. I like it when ironic bad things happen, like when people try to do what's right and it turns out horribly. Some real-life stories I find very compelling are the theft of the Lydian Hoard and the role of media in Genie's ultimate fate (tw: severe child neglect). (And I doubt this will tie into fic-writing, but I also like absurd irony like that of the Tragedy Series on tumblr.)
But you don't have to write about things ending terribly! I am also secretly a fan of saccharine kitten pix and displays of love, whether incredible or mundane. Also the two combined. The only thing I ask of stories with happy, positive outlooks is that difficulties are not trivialized into simple sparkly solutions.
Similarly, I actually don't like super-grimdark stuff where some character/group is absolutely oppressed and powerless in every way ever. It's more charming when they have enough latitude to struggle. They can only show you the choices they'd make if you give them some to make.
If you happen to be my Tamir writer, I have to flail and take this back a tiny tiny bit. Although it isn't an absolute and it really depends on the fic and the writer and the execution, I usually like fic that respects the canon's -- "tone"? So like, cracky fluffy Criminal Minds fanfic is generally not what I'm looking for. If you do happen to be my Tamir writer, I just want to assure you that I like the sweetness of Lynn Flewelling's world just fine. (Well, okay, maybe I secretly would have preferred that the last battle hadn't been a slaughter only on the "bad guys'" side, but I am okay with the fact that this is what happened and Tamir is a semi-dark series with a bright outlook.)
I like theories, preferably when it's deeply tied into canon and explains a lot about something, and preferably when it's not about someone's psychological state. Pure headcanon is fun in moderation -- little asides and jokes about that-time-we-went-panty-snatching, if it suits the character.
tl;dr:
Yes: "borderline" pretentious, ironic, character exploration, staying relatively close to canon's "tone"
No: things that are resolved too easily
For the record I have no strong kinky kinks but am basically unsquickable as long as the subject matter's handled well. I have a post with biases but my relationship with my biases is a bit temperamental (some top-tier biases quickly wrap around to turn-offs depending on the execution). If I were writing for me, I'd just ignore the bias list entirely.
By the way,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
traincat and I have made a Yuletide Pact! If you feel secure enough doing so, you can get in touch with her and ask her if I will like something, and she will offer her full opinion on the matter while keeping me totally in the dark. And I will do the same for whoever's writing for traincat.
Granted, our fandoms are a bit disjointed these days but I think we've got a pretty good sixth sense.
Stuff about me as a person
Though I don't consider myself easily offended (especially not when compared with the prevailing fandom culture), I am a bit unsettled by sexist/racist/classist writing. I'm probably the most sensitive with respect to classism and ablelism, specifically regarding mental stuff. Religiously speaking, I'm an agnostic, and I consider that a consequence of being an incredible skeptic about everything in life, ever, often including being skeptical of skepticism itself. I think everything is funny, like the way my cat's leg hangs over the side of the pillow when he's sleeping, or the way I'm sitting here right now trying to come up with something I recently found funny despite giggling like twice a minute on average. And yet I have a compulsion to analyze everything and explain jokes after everyone's already gotten them or decided they're dumb, go figure. My favorite book is Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron, my favorite song changes near-weekly, and I play the oboe. (I fit about half the oboist stereotypes.) IRL, I do mathematics, which I think also says a lot about me.
I'm a bi female and I think bromance/no homo/etc are hilarious. Alpha men are hilarious. Everything is ironic. If I paid more attention to what I wore I'd probably be an irredeemable hipster. I believe that nothing is sacred when it comes to art. It's all a matter of why the joke is funny.
The stories I reread the most are not the ones I call my favorites. I like elegance and wordplay but I never seek out poetry. I have stopped halfway for months through almost half the literary novels I have ever started reading. I finished each book in the Hunger Games trilogy in one sitting. Overall, I liked them. I thought they resolved the problem of having a teenage hero with too much agency in a satisfying way. But I really kept reading because I enjoyed reading about kids trying to outsmart and kill each other.
Whenevertraincat recommends me new things to read or watch, she always gives me piles of pretty guys being kind of gay, hurt children, bizarre parent-child relationships. She is almost always right about what I will like.
I think it's hilarious that people rap in Georgian. Because Georgian is literally a Caucasian language. Get it? ... Get it?
(I'm really sorry if you're actually a serious white rapper, anon. I swear the joke is about the word Caucasian. Okay, yes, it's also about rap being a black genre. Sorry man.)
I've studied three years of Japanese and I love stuff about languages in general. Linguistics is awesome.
I'm writing this post in stream of consciousness because I read somewhere in an advice post that writer anons often want to know about their recipients personally. I'm sorry. I ramble a lot. It's a fact about me, personally.
Boys Next Door
Fic for this is almost non-existent. I'd practically take any fic on any subject matter concerning Lawrence. Really! If you have a great idea, go for it.
But if I had to say, I do have in mind an idea exploring him and Dallas. There's an intriguingly Stockholm-Syndrome-y line:
Dallas: You've run from me many times, and every time you've been brought back. / In other words, you don't got the guts to run away for good. // You *want* to stay in the palm of my hand!
Lawrence: ... That might have been the truth. But it's different this time, / brother. // The person you used to be is already dead. / Adrian has released me from the phantoms of the past...!
(Pgs 69-70)
And Lawrence's speech on page 40 also says a lot about how Dallas had once been the only one for him to rely on. I just think there's something interesting there to be explored.
But I did only request Lawrence. It's totally okay if you don't want to involve Dallas. It's really Lawrence's situation that I'm interested in.
Or, hell, write an AU. I haven't even thought about the possibilities there. If you do write an AU though, I'd like it to keep the urban feel of BND.
Incidentally, I worked on translating this over the summer becauseblankspectrum gave me a copy as a gift, re-inspiring my love for this manga, and also I'm not totally happy with the Sakura-Crisis scans. Raws are here, and I've put up my current WIP here. (It's complete -- I'd just like to make it more elegant. There are some weird notes in there, like [agape] which I just used to distinguish 愛 from 好き so I could ctrl+f them later if I make up my mind how to render it.) There's no really big dramatic change in the interpretation of the story. Most of the differences are in lost wordplay. The biggest difference is in a few characterization nuances on pages 44-49 (Lawrence); 52-53,58,59 (Adrian); 69-72 (Dallas). They're details and I don't mind if you don't care about this nitpicking. :P I wanted to get this whole scanlation thing done and release it before Yuletide, but that obviously didn't come even near to happening. Also, you don't have to follow my translation! My general policy with quoting translated canons is to rephrase it as suits what I'm writing. And if you know Japanese and got it right from the source, awesome.
but omg please don't obsess over this, I would feel so bad if I made you obsess over this ;A;
Tamir Triad
I'm not even totally sure what I want to see in a fic for this series. I haven't found any fic for this series at all, really.
I have fic-cravings for this triad because it is so wonderful and perfect and hit so many good spots for me ... and then it was over.
eternal weeping.
I was just awed at how really really really good it was while still being a whimsical, magical little fantasy. It was so smart about gender and race. I really liked that you could sort of see the trans experience in Tobin's childhood, but it's not totally stereotypically that, that she experiences so much dissonance in little ways very particular to her -- and then the sudden revelation and change is as surprising and scary as anything. I loved that she had a horrible childhood and as she grew up, she manages to cope and all but it really sticks with her, and some people think the climax of her relationship with Ki was cheesy but I thought it was really appropriate and I liked it a lot.
More than just the characters, I also really liked how coherent the plot was, how it rose and fell and how it was all mystical but all mystical things had scientific reasons! (Eg, the plague in Ero and sewage.) And there was just a wonderful completeness to everything in Tamir that was just amazing. And I loved that you watched all the main players grow up as kids. Korin's transformation was so moving. It's just, you aren't just told they were good people, you saw they were good peoples with little weaknesses in all the wrong places.
But yeah basically I like how canon ends. I want more of it but I don't really want it to peter on forever so much. I'd rather have more content but in something "overlooked" by canon maybe. A little lost moment or something.
(Also if you can tell I basically have no opinion about names/pronouns when talking about Tobin/Tamir in a cross-timeline fashion. I think she really does identify as Tobin, male, for a fair stretch of time in her late childhood after the doll incident and before the reveal, and is generally okay with this. My meta thoughts are that she does lean female, but not vigorously so, and in an environment that teaches that men have all the bravery and agency and etc., she's willing to bury that part of her and think of herself as a man -- with some dissonance, but not so much that it would have compelled her to actively perform female if she hadn't been told "you're actually a girl".
Actually honestly modern AU Tamir stuff could be fascinating as fuck and I would be basically okay with any theory you have about the genderstuff that you bring into it, writeranon.)
So yeah, tl;dr, would like something that either fits into the timeframe of canon mid-story, or something AU. Modern AU would be especially nice. If you AU it please let Brother exist somehow in some shape or form, even if his influence is limited to memories or something.
Other misc biases include Arkoniel's science dorkery, Iya's coarse not-quite-likable-ness, and Caliel's incredible loyalty. And I do like Tamir/Ki a lot, because I have a bias for couples who knew each other as kids. A really big bias.
No. 6
So I really love the main boys and their gay adorableness but I am kind of epic sad that Safu was just there to be fridged.
I mean come on wouldn't it be more interesting to explore girl-who-wants-Shion's-sperm after Shion got with asperm guy? Especially since they're all such believable yet dynamic characters. I really want to see the three of them together! I want to see them not exactly getting along, but kind of getting along, like the weird dysfunctional not-quite-family of two weird geniuses and a street-smart actor that they are.
This probably requires AU, given the restrictions of canon continuity. I'd be cool with a What-If AU taking place in the No. 6 world, or an AU taking them to another world, so long as their main sources of tension in this new world are similar.
Inukashi can come too, if you want to bring him. I pretty much like everyone, so anyone can hang in the background as long as the focus is on Safu and the boys.
Man this section looks disproportionately short. Um. Fwiw I am reading the fan translation of the novels, and I have seen the anime, but I haven't kept up with the manga. I probably like the novels' version of canon best because they retain a lot of nuance in a very grimdark world, but I probably enjoyed the anime more because the presentation was so slick.
... And also because Nezumi had a really hot voice.
Oh oh oh I definitely need to say that I was hooked on No. 6 from the beginning because I really liked the hurt/comfort -- but then when Shion lost everything because of it that really sucked me into it, that he did something great and suffered great losses for it, and it just made it mean so much and aksdjfklasjdfkljasdf feels.
Thank you so much for being my Yuletide Writer and putting in the time to make something nice for me! :DD What follows are things I like and my biases. If you have a great idea that doesn't match with the ideas I throw out, that's totally fine. I suspect I'll like my gift better if you've written an idea that you, writer, feel really excited about and can really believe. I ask only that you stay away from the dislikes. All the rest is only there for purposes of inspiration.
General
I think the kind of shit I write is pretty indicative of my tastes. I like stories that are tenderly dramatic, stories that get their punch from people being people. I like it when ironic bad things happen, like when people try to do what's right and it turns out horribly. Some real-life stories I find very compelling are the theft of the Lydian Hoard and the role of media in Genie's ultimate fate (tw: severe child neglect). (And I doubt this will tie into fic-writing, but I also like absurd irony like that of the Tragedy Series on tumblr.)
But you don't have to write about things ending terribly! I am also secretly a fan of saccharine kitten pix and displays of love, whether incredible or mundane. Also the two combined. The only thing I ask of stories with happy, positive outlooks is that difficulties are not trivialized into simple sparkly solutions.
Similarly, I actually don't like super-grimdark stuff where some character/group is absolutely oppressed and powerless in every way ever. It's more charming when they have enough latitude to struggle. They can only show you the choices they'd make if you give them some to make.
If you happen to be my Tamir writer, I have to flail and take this back a tiny tiny bit. Although it isn't an absolute and it really depends on the fic and the writer and the execution, I usually like fic that respects the canon's -- "tone"? So like, cracky fluffy Criminal Minds fanfic is generally not what I'm looking for. If you do happen to be my Tamir writer, I just want to assure you that I like the sweetness of Lynn Flewelling's world just fine. (Well, okay, maybe I secretly would have preferred that the last battle hadn't been a slaughter only on the "bad guys'" side, but I am okay with the fact that this is what happened and Tamir is a semi-dark series with a bright outlook.)
I like theories, preferably when it's deeply tied into canon and explains a lot about something, and preferably when it's not about someone's psychological state. Pure headcanon is fun in moderation -- little asides and jokes about that-time-we-went-panty-snatching, if it suits the character.
tl;dr:
Yes: "borderline" pretentious, ironic, character exploration, staying relatively close to canon's "tone"
No: things that are resolved too easily
For the record I have no strong kinky kinks but am basically unsquickable as long as the subject matter's handled well. I have a post with biases but my relationship with my biases is a bit temperamental (some top-tier biases quickly wrap around to turn-offs depending on the execution). If I were writing for me, I'd just ignore the bias list entirely.
By the way,
traincat and I have made a Yuletide Pact! If you feel secure enough doing so, you can get in touch with her and ask her if I will like something, and she will offer her full opinion on the matter while keeping me totally in the dark. And I will do the same for whoever's writing for traincat.Granted, our fandoms are a bit disjointed these days but I think we've got a pretty good sixth sense.
Stuff about me as a person
Though I don't consider myself easily offended (especially not when compared with the prevailing fandom culture), I am a bit unsettled by sexist/racist/classist writing. I'm probably the most sensitive with respect to classism and ablelism, specifically regarding mental stuff. Religiously speaking, I'm an agnostic, and I consider that a consequence of being an incredible skeptic about everything in life, ever, often including being skeptical of skepticism itself. I think everything is funny, like the way my cat's leg hangs over the side of the pillow when he's sleeping, or the way I'm sitting here right now trying to come up with something I recently found funny despite giggling like twice a minute on average. And yet I have a compulsion to analyze everything and explain jokes after everyone's already gotten them or decided they're dumb, go figure. My favorite book is Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron, my favorite song changes near-weekly, and I play the oboe. (I fit about half the oboist stereotypes.) IRL, I do mathematics, which I think also says a lot about me.
I'm a bi female and I think bromance/no homo/etc are hilarious. Alpha men are hilarious. Everything is ironic. If I paid more attention to what I wore I'd probably be an irredeemable hipster. I believe that nothing is sacred when it comes to art. It's all a matter of why the joke is funny.
The stories I reread the most are not the ones I call my favorites. I like elegance and wordplay but I never seek out poetry. I have stopped halfway for months through almost half the literary novels I have ever started reading. I finished each book in the Hunger Games trilogy in one sitting. Overall, I liked them. I thought they resolved the problem of having a teenage hero with too much agency in a satisfying way. But I really kept reading because I enjoyed reading about kids trying to outsmart and kill each other.
Whenever
traincat recommends me new things to read or watch, she always gives me piles of pretty guys being kind of gay, hurt children, bizarre parent-child relationships. She is almost always right about what I will like.I think it's hilarious that people rap in Georgian. Because Georgian is literally a Caucasian language. Get it? ... Get it?
(I'm really sorry if you're actually a serious white rapper, anon. I swear the joke is about the word Caucasian. Okay, yes, it's also about rap being a black genre. Sorry man.)
I've studied three years of Japanese and I love stuff about languages in general. Linguistics is awesome.
I'm writing this post in stream of consciousness because I read somewhere in an advice post that writer anons often want to know about their recipients personally. I'm sorry. I ramble a lot. It's a fact about me, personally.
Boys Next Door
Fic for this is almost non-existent. I'd practically take any fic on any subject matter concerning Lawrence. Really! If you have a great idea, go for it.
But if I had to say, I do have in mind an idea exploring him and Dallas. There's an intriguingly Stockholm-Syndrome-y line:
Dallas: You've run from me many times, and every time you've been brought back. / In other words, you don't got the guts to run away for good. // You *want* to stay in the palm of my hand!
Lawrence: ... That might have been the truth. But it's different this time, / brother. // The person you used to be is already dead. / Adrian has released me from the phantoms of the past...!
(Pgs 69-70)
And Lawrence's speech on page 40 also says a lot about how Dallas had once been the only one for him to rely on. I just think there's something interesting there to be explored.
But I did only request Lawrence. It's totally okay if you don't want to involve Dallas. It's really Lawrence's situation that I'm interested in.
Or, hell, write an AU. I haven't even thought about the possibilities there. If you do write an AU though, I'd like it to keep the urban feel of BND.
Incidentally, I worked on translating this over the summer because
blankspectrum gave me a copy as a gift, re-inspiring my love for this manga, and also I'm not totally happy with the Sakura-Crisis scans. Raws are here, and I've put up my current WIP here. (It's complete -- I'd just like to make it more elegant. There are some weird notes in there, like [agape] which I just used to distinguish 愛 from 好き so I could ctrl+f them later if I make up my mind how to render it.) There's no really big dramatic change in the interpretation of the story. Most of the differences are in lost wordplay. The biggest difference is in a few characterization nuances on pages 44-49 (Lawrence); 52-53,58,59 (Adrian); 69-72 (Dallas). They're details and I don't mind if you don't care about this nitpicking. :P I wanted to get this whole scanlation thing done and release it before Yuletide, but that obviously didn't come even near to happening. Also, you don't have to follow my translation! My general policy with quoting translated canons is to rephrase it as suits what I'm writing. And if you know Japanese and got it right from the source, awesome.but omg please don't obsess over this, I would feel so bad if I made you obsess over this ;A;
Tamir Triad
I'm not even totally sure what I want to see in a fic for this series. I haven't found any fic for this series at all, really.
I have fic-cravings for this triad because it is so wonderful and perfect and hit so many good spots for me ... and then it was over.
eternal weeping.
I was just awed at how really really really good it was while still being a whimsical, magical little fantasy. It was so smart about gender and race. I really liked that you could sort of see the trans experience in Tobin's childhood, but it's not totally stereotypically that, that she experiences so much dissonance in little ways very particular to her -- and then the sudden revelation and change is as surprising and scary as anything. I loved that she had a horrible childhood and as she grew up, she manages to cope and all but it really sticks with her, and some people think the climax of her relationship with Ki was cheesy but I thought it was really appropriate and I liked it a lot.
More than just the characters, I also really liked how coherent the plot was, how it rose and fell and how it was all mystical but all mystical things had scientific reasons! (Eg, the plague in Ero and sewage.) And there was just a wonderful completeness to everything in Tamir that was just amazing. And I loved that you watched all the main players grow up as kids. Korin's transformation was so moving. It's just, you aren't just told they were good people, you saw they were good peoples with little weaknesses in all the wrong places.
But yeah basically I like how canon ends. I want more of it but I don't really want it to peter on forever so much. I'd rather have more content but in something "overlooked" by canon maybe. A little lost moment or something.
(Also if you can tell I basically have no opinion about names/pronouns when talking about Tobin/Tamir in a cross-timeline fashion. I think she really does identify as Tobin, male, for a fair stretch of time in her late childhood after the doll incident and before the reveal, and is generally okay with this. My meta thoughts are that she does lean female, but not vigorously so, and in an environment that teaches that men have all the bravery and agency and etc., she's willing to bury that part of her and think of herself as a man -- with some dissonance, but not so much that it would have compelled her to actively perform female if she hadn't been told "you're actually a girl".
Actually honestly modern AU Tamir stuff could be fascinating as fuck and I would be basically okay with any theory you have about the genderstuff that you bring into it, writeranon.)
So yeah, tl;dr, would like something that either fits into the timeframe of canon mid-story, or something AU. Modern AU would be especially nice. If you AU it please let Brother exist somehow in some shape or form, even if his influence is limited to memories or something.
Other misc biases include Arkoniel's science dorkery, Iya's coarse not-quite-likable-ness, and Caliel's incredible loyalty. And I do like Tamir/Ki a lot, because I have a bias for couples who knew each other as kids. A really big bias.
No. 6
So I really love the main boys and their gay adorableness but I am kind of epic sad that Safu was just there to be fridged.
I mean come on wouldn't it be more interesting to explore girl-who-wants-Shion's-sperm after Shion got with a
This probably requires AU, given the restrictions of canon continuity. I'd be cool with a What-If AU taking place in the No. 6 world, or an AU taking them to another world, so long as their main sources of tension in this new world are similar.
Inukashi can come too, if you want to bring him. I pretty much like everyone, so anyone can hang in the background as long as the focus is on Safu and the boys.
Man this section looks disproportionately short. Um. Fwiw I am reading the fan translation of the novels, and I have seen the anime, but I haven't kept up with the manga. I probably like the novels' version of canon best because they retain a lot of nuance in a very grimdark world, but I probably enjoyed the anime more because the presentation was so slick.
... And also because Nezumi had a really hot voice.
Oh oh oh I definitely need to say that I was hooked on No. 6 from the beginning because I really liked the hurt/comfort -- but then when Shion lost everything because of it that really sucked me into it, that he did something great and suffered great losses for it, and it just made it mean so much and aksdjfklasjdfkljasdf feels.