worryingly jolly batman

Dear YT writer,

I'm excited to have you write for me! The number one thing you need to know is that I’ve participated in a lot of exchanges and I’ve read a lot of fanfic and I’m pretty relaxed about what you give me because I care a lot about you having fun, so feel free to go off the rails a bit, do something creative, do something sadder or more difficult or more kinky or less tropey and ridiculous or MORE tropey and ridiculous or something you wouldn’t normally do in an exchange - do what your heart tells you. (But if your heart tells you to follow my prompts, don’t worry, I am excited about them, too.) More stuff under the cuts!

Jump to:
General likes and dislikes
The Expanse
Emelan
Murderbot Diaries

GENERAL LIKES

- I like stories that make me Feel Things, and I’m OK if sometimes those feelings are complicated and not all the way happy. (Although I also like the stuff that’s unabashedly all the way happy.) I like tropes played straight and tropes that are inverted, questioned, played around with unexpectedly. I like fanfic that explores what happens when people fail or make mistakes, and whether, and how, they can resolve them. I do like shippy fic a lot, but I also enjoy gen - even though lots of the likes I talk about here are usually seen in shippy fic, I like them in gen, too.

- breakup-makeup/getting back together stories are favourites of mine. I never get tired of reading those plots. I love the agony of the break-up and then the cautious learning to trust again. I love people holding themselves apart because they’re in pain. And I love the sense of recreated love, new, more honest, better relationships that have genuinely resolved what was wrong with the first relationship, whatever that was - secrecy, dishonesty, lack of self-acceptance, lack of communication, differing expectations, whatever - relationships that are stronger because they resolved those problems. Starting years after the breakup and just focusing on the getting back together is good for me :)

- I love the classic slash tropes, especially fake dating, wake up married, kidfic, emotional misunderstandings, pining. Wacky dilemma tropes like bodyswap, sudden mind reading, cursed to tell the truth, etc are also really fun for me. I’m especially fond of established relationship, navigating relationship problems inside a steady relationship. I also like the classic first-time sex experiences that are treated as casual but gradually become serious and feelingsy, as well as inarticulate-about-feelings people accidentally bumbling towards a relationship dynamic they don't fully understand.

- I like a range of different tones, many different styles of AU, etc. I like reading stuff close to the tone of whichever canon and I like reading stuff that takes those characters and puts them in stories of different tones - darker, lighter, different contexts, pornier, etc

- I love canon-divergence AUs where one thing happened differently and then …

- I’m happy to receive porn. My significant porn squicks are bloodplay, scat, and daddy kink. Dubcon is not a squick. You can feel free to be adventurous here if you wish.

GENERAL DISLIKES

Please don't focus on or ideally refer to parental death. I find stuff set in ICU rooms, especially things where a character is on a ventilator, very distressing. Other than that there’s not much I truly DNW other than sickfic, deathfic, and rape recovery as a plotpoint. Sometimes I struggle with truly, unambiguously unhappy endings, but I don’t think characters breaking up is necessarily an unhappy ending - that can be happy or hopeful. Endings that are a bit unresolved, that leave questions, can be tantalising.


( The Expanse )
( Emelan )

( Murderbot Diaries )

Thanks again, yuletide writer, I'm really looking forward to reading whatever you come up with :)

Oh man, it's Yuletide time already!

To my author, it's important to me that you have fun, so if there's anything in my sign-up or letter that you find obnoxious or whatever please feel free to toss it out the window and go with what you need. Read as much as you need & want to and no more :) I will be very happy with anything in my requested pairings/characters, so if the muse takes you in a different direction from my prompts and letter, please do just go with it.

General Likes
- For the purposes of Yuletide, hopeful (or outright happy) endings are my jam. I would prefer for all of my requested characters to still be alive at the end of the story. I don't mind if the story goes in a darker or angstier direction before that, though (in fact I quite like it).
- I love many of the classic slash tropes, especially fake dating, wake up married, kidfic, emotional misunderstandings, pining. Wacky dilemma tropes like bodyswap, sudden mind reading, cursed to tell the truth, etc are also really fun for me.
- breakup-makeup/getting back together stories are the greatest trope of all time. I love the agony of the break-up and then the cautious learning to trust again.
- I like a range of different tones, many different styles of AU, etc. I like reading stuff close to the tone of whichever canon and I like reading stuff that takes those characters and puts them in stories of different tones - darker, lighter, different contexts, pornier, etc
- I love canon-divergence AUs where one thing happened differently and then ...
- If the porn muse takes you, go with it with my blessing. My significant squicks are bloodplay and scat, and although I love noncon I think probably not for the fandoms I'm requesting this year. Dubcon is not a squick.

General Dislikes
- I don't enjoy rape recovery as a plotpoint
- Deathfic, sickfic, and H/C are also things I would prefer not to receive.

( Fandom-specific stuff under the cut )

Thanks again, dear author, and I hope you have a great time this Yuletide. You can stalk me as required labellementeuse here/AO3/LJ/twitter and birdhead on my (rarely updated) tumblr.

Hi, author! I'm very happy to be doing Yuletide again and I hope you will be too. It's important to me that you have fun, so if there's anything in my sign-up that you find obnoxious or whatever please feel free to toss it out the window and go with what you need. Read as much as you need & want to and no more :) I will be very happy with anything in my requested pairings/characters.

General Likes
- For the purposes of Yuletide, happy or hopeful endings are my jam. I would prefer for all of my requested characters to still be alive at the end of my stories
- Some of the classic slash tropes, especially fake dating, wake up married, kidfic, emotional misunderstandings, pining. Wacky dilemma tropes like bodyswap, sudden mind reading, cursed to tell the truth, etc are also really fun for me.
- breakup-makeup/getting back together stories (the greatest trope of all time)
- I like a range of different tones, many different styles of AU, etc. I like reading stuff close to the tone of whichever canon and I like reading stuff that takes those characters and puts them in stories of different tones - darker, lighter, different contexts, pornier
- canon-divergence AUs where one thing happened differently and then ...
- I haven't done anything for Yuleporn chiefly out of laziness. If the porn muse takes you, go with it with my blessing. My significant squicks are bloodplay and scat, although I would prefer for noncon and humiliation not to show up in Young Wizards stories or between John and Nancy. (Noncon would be a way to take my Mansfield Park request to a ... very dark place that would probably conflict with my happy/hopeful ending Prime Objective as well as my Be Nice To Mary request but, um, I think I would. enjoy that.)

General Dislikes
- I don't enjoy rape recovery as a plotpoint
- Deathfic, sickfic, and H/C are also things I would prefer not to receive.

( requests under the cut )

Thanks again, dear author, and I hope you have a great time this Yuletide. You can stalk me as required labellementeuse here/AO3/LJ/twitter and birdhead on my (rarely updated) tumblr.

a) Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it!

b) If you like WORLDBUILDING or JOYFUL POST-APOCALYPSES or CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, or alternatively if you've read 7 Seeds, YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY READ THE THING I GOT FOR YULETIDE.

Germination (6451 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 7 Seeds
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Asai Semimaru/Iwashimizu Natsu, Aramaki Takahiro/Ayu, Shishigaki Ran/Nijiko
Characters: Asai Semimaru, Iwashimizu Natsu, Ayu (7 Seeds), Aramaki Takahiro, Shishigaki Ran, Saotome Botan, Nijiko (7 Seeds), Kusakari Hotaru, Tendou Matsuri, Suguruno Hana, Taiami Chisa, Amacha Fujiko
Additional Tags: Future Fic, Pregnancy, Dinosaurs, Herbalism, Road Trips
Summary:

It's amazing, the things that can grow in this world.

I am in LOVE with this and it has a whole 3 hits and it deserves to get a MILLION of them and 324983409 comments and kudos, especially because I gave a HORRENDOUS prompt that they absolutely ran with. READ LIKE THE WIND, FLIST.

Happy New Year! You can check out my annual stuff I read last year post if you want.

In other news, Yuletide is upon us once again! I had a really really fabulous time doing Yuletide this year actually, including a couple of desperation writing parties with the Yulecops of Twitter that were both delightful social occasions and also really good at cudgeling me into action. I ended up being really proud of the thing that I wrote, not that it's necessarily all that great shakes but it was something new for me - new fandom, new pairing I'd never really thought about before, and new sensation of ... feeling like I could really see the development in my writing from my older Yuletide fic?

Dispatches (4644 words) by labellementeuse
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Dorothea Callum/Nancy Blackett
Characters: Dorothea Callum, Nancy Blackett, Peggy Blackett, Titty Walker
Summary:

Do come up and visit me next time you get a bit of leave. Love, Nancy.

I received two fics that I really loved in Gentleman Bastards, an incredibly tough fandom that I'm truly awed anyone could offer. The two pieces are very different, which reflects the breadth in tone of the canon and also obviously makes for a couple of awesome gifts.

a glass poured to air (1717 words) by Raven
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Gentleman Bastard Sequence - Scott Lynch
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sabetha Belacoros/Locke Lamora, Locke Lamora/Jean Tannen
Characters: Locke Lamora, Sabetha Belacoros, Jean Tannen,
Additional Tags: Spoilers, The Republic of Thieves
Summary: Redacted for spoilers

This is very spoilery for Republic of Thieves and I don't want to cut this so I'm not going to say much more but a great follow-up to that book if you needed a breather after it. It incorporates a number of things about the Jean-Locke and Locke-Sabetha relationships that I really love and has a brief passage about one of the things I find most intriguing about Locke, his relationship with religion.

The Goddess of Suffering Scam (4266 words) by Edonohana
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Gentleman Bastard Sequence - Scott Lynch
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Jean Tannen, Father Chains, Locke Lamora, Calo Sanza, Galdo Sanza
Additional Tags: Don't Have to Know Canon, No Spoilers, Con Artists
Summary:

In the early days of the Gentleman Bastards, Locke impersonates a self-flagellating acolyte of the Goddess of Suffering, and Jean stands by as the muscle in case the mark catches on. You know what they say about the best-laid plans.

Completely different in tone to the other fic and yet, like the other fic, also totally like canon! This is a fun little caper fic, not at all spoilery, set during the gang's childhood/teenage years in Camorr. It's vicious, violent and fun in just the way canon can be - I particularly loved the flagellating apparatus, which fits SO seamlessly into Camorr.



For other recs, I'm still barely anywhere with my reading (I have about fifty open tabs in a special Yuletide window) but my recs I'm bookmarking on the AO3 here. I particularly commend the Rivers of London fic, which is excellent, and the Merlin Conspiracy fic, which had one thing I really disliked but was a very interesting and thoughtful fic that you definitely need to know canon for but is very rewarding if you do. I'm really impressed by people's ability to add to that canon which I think is awfully tricky.

Finally, I saw Desolation of Smaug the other day. ( spoilers: some positive, some negative, a fairly incoherent set of commentary bashed out the day afgter I went )

Oops, I was too slack to do recs again this year, but look! I got and gave stuff!

I received two totally adorable pieces in Yuletide this year.

Would You Like Some Lightning With Your Soup? (7440 words) by alyoraShadow
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Circle of Magic - Tamora Pierce
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Daja Kisubo, Trisana Chandler, Briar Moss, Sandrilene fa Toren
Summary:

Dinner at 6 Cheeseman Street is a rather unpredictable affair.

This is a really terrific fic about Daja and the whole circle, which is fantastic since I LOVE Daja and the whole circle and I really love 6 Cheeseman Street fic. There's a really great grasp on the Circle's voices and it really stresses Tris and Daja's relationship, which is something I particularly asked for and am thrilled to read about.

Phone a Friend (1657 words) by Reading Redhead
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Dairine Callahan, Carmela Rodriguez
Summary:

In which Carmela gets herself into a bit of a situation, and Dairine is the right person to call.

In this story Carmela gets thrown into alien prison for chocolate smuggling and Dairine has to come and rescue her, so obviously I ADORE it. It's funny and smart about their characters, and has a fantastic ultimate solution which really draws on Carmela's strengths without letting her get away with anything. I also love where C and D *are* in their life at this point, it really meshes up with my headcanon.

I also wrote a thing!

Don't be afraid to lend a hand (5407 words) by labellementeuse
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Rating: Not Rated
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Nita Callahan/Kit Rodriguez
Characters: Nita Callahan, Kit Rodriguez, Carmela Rodriguez
Summary:

"Let's go into the city," said Nita.

This is about Nita and Kit on an everyday errantry, and while I had a lovely prompt from a very nice recipient I still struggled mightily with it. On the whole I'm pleased with it - it's very long by my standards, the second-longest piece of fic I've ever written, and technically competent - but, I don't know. I don't think it adds anything new or contributes in any meaningful way to the Nita/Kit body of work, basically, and I'm starting to realise that in Young Wizards I really need to feel like I'm adding something or I can't get into it. I think the problem may have been that I didn't do a canon review this year and was just like, oh I know this fandom back to front, which of course just trapped me into writing something I thought was repetitive. So next year I think I'll try to take a few more risks. (Someone remind me of this?)

I did have a wonderful suite of betas who dropped everything at the eleventh hour to help me out. sushiflop, as usual, was very good to me for the entire month. archiesfrog read it in person and was extremely kind and encouraging, as was owlbeer. arysteia gave me a tremendous unfamiliar-with-the-canon beta which kicked me in a few places I needed to be kicked (but I ignored her about the ellipses because I'm a rebel, sorry V). And both chattycheese and shihadchick gave really thoughtful canon betas.

I beta'd some things as well! The beta process, which happens when my fic is usually posted, is often my favourite part of Yuletide because I enjoy the collaborative group-huggy feeling of it all.

A Week in the Life (3282 words) by archiesfrog - this is Kel fic! With Neal and Tobe!

Trust and Timing (2449 words) by aworldinside - This is fic for a rather cute and silly movie about young women who run relay at the thinly-disguised Olympics. I watched it in order to do this beta and I'm extremely glad I did because it's delightful! The fic itself is, of course, ALSO delightful, being the pairing I really craved in the film the whole time - funny and hot.

I have a funny feeling I've forgotten something but I can't remember what at this stage, remind me if it was you!

I did have a great Yuletide this year, much improved on last year's general emotional malaise. Thanks for making it fun with me, gang!

Way-too-late obligatory Yuletide post.

I had kind of a weird Yuletide this year where I just felt ... out of it the whole time. I read hardly any fic and, although on the whole I was not unhappy with what I wrote, I didn't really *feel* it. This led to me doing dreadful things like not leaving a comment on my gift fic til the day before reveals, about which I feel guilty even now. So, anyway, I don't have any particular recs because I just read hardly anything.

I received: Velveteen Wizards by oniongirl, a YW/DCU crossover that's the sequel to Wizards in Winter, my gift last year. These are really darling portal crossover fics and considering the pool of DC + YW fans is really pretty small, are such thoughtful gifts.

I wrote: and remember who I am, a Tris-at-Lightsbridge story for the lovely staranise. I got an excellent beta from morbane and some tremendous handholding from sushiflop, Queen of the Yuletide Cheerleaders, archiesfrog and sixth_light.

This was quite fun to write but, warning for those who care about this kind of thing, has a horrendously huge amount of OCs. The excellent prompt, which I used as a summary, was "Can she fit in, and does she really want to?" and asked for insecure!Tris. I didn't quite capture Tris' insecurity in the way I wanted to but I really enjoyed the opportunity to look at Tris in a different light - although Tris' insecurity is quite important it's not an aspect of her character I think about very often, and so that was actually really great.

I keep thinking of things I want to request for Yuletide and then forgetting them. Grr, the tyranny of the human brain. NO MORE.
( Yuletide requests, VERY spoilery for the Newsflesh trilogy )

YOU GUYS

I GOT THE MOST AMAZING YULETIDE FICS.

I WILL TALK ABOUT THEM IN THE ORDER THEY SHOW UP ON MY GIFTS PAGE. Which, it turns out, is posting order: cool.

Also, I got *four* yuletide fics this year, which is just plain embarrassing! I am going to have to work hard next year to increase my yuletide karma. I've only ever got one before and I kinda didn't know what to do with myself. I feel *so* spoiled.

In Absentia (Nikita: Nikita/Alex, Alex/Jaden)
PORN SNIPPETS: THE BEST THING EVER. This is hot and yet also illuminating of all their characters. Alex and Jaden have a wonderful competitive vibe in this which I love, and Nikita and Alex are so sweet to each other.

Wizards in Winter (Young WizardsxDCU)
GIANT SIZED CROSSOVER. Seriously, this story is SO INDULGENT. Nita and Kit get accidentally sucked into Gotham (back when Tim was still Robin the first time around). They have adventures with Renee Montoya, Tim Drake, Cass Cain and Babs Gordon. In other words, everything is amazing!

Roleplay (Nikita: Jaden character study, Alex/Jaden)
OH MAN, so this is basically five things that never happened to Jaden, and it is GENIUS. Each of the five things are like perfectly formed gems that instantly satisfy you while realllly making me want to know WAY MORE and get FIC SET IN THOSE UNIVERSES. Also: there is hot damn porn in a pairing I ADORE. Jaden has a wonderful couple of relationships with Alex that are really well-thought-out and, like the best AUs, each of these different Jadens are clearly rooted in canonical Jaden. I love it.

On the Burning Deck (Swallows & Amazons: Nancy in the Blitz, John/Nancy)
THIS IS SO GOOD. I don't want to spoil plot details for you, but it's really perfect, the writer has a WONDERFUL grip on Nancy and works her well. It's just a lovely fic.

YOU GUYS, I AM SO SPOILED, I HOPE YOUR YULETIDE IS JUST AS GREAT.