Because I now have enough stories scattered arount the internet to make it worth posting links in one place

So I'm not doing Yuletide this year.

I figure that if I post that publicly, it makes it official. (And the signups are now closed, so I couldn't change my mind if I wanted to.) It was so, so tempting to sign up anyway, but RL is busy enough and stressful enough right now that I honestly couldn't guarantee time to write

I do admit to having browsed lots of other people's letters, and I do have some ideas of things I'd love to write as treats, so I may yet do that, but honestly, looking at my schedule I don't think I'll have time; at least this way I'm not letting anyone down.

In fact, my entire year has pretty much been like this -- I can't describe how much I'm looking forward to an entire 10 days away with family over Christmas -- and I realise I never posted publicly after last year's Yuletide reveal. So very belatedly, let me point anyone who is interested to the Hades/Persephone story I wrote for Rosencrantz; The Fruits of Hades. For anyone who's not seen it, I think that if you like my Guinevere story, What Is and What Seems to Be, you will like this and vice versa, although the stories and the characters are really very different.

And I should also acknowledge the truly lovely story Thassalia wrote for me, The Main Line is Frayed and Thin, a look at the future for Tracy and Dex from The Philadelphia Story (1940). It's a film I love, mainly because I adore the character's and I ship Tracy/Dex like mad; but I'm also very aware of the serious unresolved issues between them, some of which the film acknowledges and some of which it... um... perpetuates. I was quite upfront about that ambivalence in both my request and my Yuletide letter, and to be honest I'd half expected that even if I was matched on this fandom, my writer would be likely to go away and investigate my fourth request (where the fandom is a three or four-minute song) and write for that instead. But Thassalia ran with the characters and gave me a lovely, subtle wartime story. Her Tracy and Dex feel deeply real as they work out their own future together and apart after the film's "happy ever after".

Firstly, thanks so much for signing up. And as always, please feel free to ignore this letter; I do understand that optional details are optional and I'll be delighted with pretty much anything in these fandoms.

In the past I've tried to talk about lots of different things I'd like to see in a story rather than being too specific about just one request; this year I seem to instead be rambling at great length about the things I love about each set of source material; hopefully that will also be informative for you. Please ignore it if it's not and please don't feel you need to reproduce the things I love in the canon - I'd rather have the story that excites you to write.

Practicalities first -- I've arranged the order of this post carefully as it includes fairly major spoilers for the first three books in Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series and it includes book destroying spoilers for Sarah Rees Brennan's Demons Lexicon, with fairly major spoilers for its sequel. So please use the cut tags and don't read to the end if you haven't read the books (which I recommend strongly to anyone who hasn't). I do have a note about any potential spoilers for Demon's Surrender right at the end.

Secondly, you may notice that my request for The Queen's Thief contains a link to an entire additional post. PLEASE don't read this as a hint that that's the request I really want to see fulfilled -- it's really, really not. If you've matched on something else and don't know MWT's work I should explain that I'm asking for the story of two tiny bit characters in one book of what's already a fairly obscure fandom -- the extra post is simply an attempt to demonstrate to anyone who doesn't live in my brain what I see in the characters and why the request isn't totally random. My other requests are probably a bit more mainstream and a bit more self-explanatory, but I want to see those stories just as badly. Similarly, I've quoted quite a bit of Demon's Covenant dialogue -- Oh the beauties of owning ebooks! That might make that section of this letter look by far the longest, but I think the things I'm actually saying are about the same length in all cases.

Things I like

As far as general likes and dislikes go, I've written a little summary of some of my favourite and less favoured things for the last couple of years -- this year it's not quite as relevant to the specifics of some of my requests, so I'm going to link to it rather than copy it out again.

I will say that I particularly like happy endings, complex paths to get there, relationships between people who really get each other, conflicting loyalties and relationships where there are both 'political' and personal things going on at different levels. I would really prefer not to receive anything with partner betrayal, rape, main character death, incest or graphic torture.

I'll happily read gen, het or slash (even despite any preferences I express below) and any rating that works for the story is okay with me -- I would pretty much always prefer plot, character development or relationship development to pure PWP though. I also generally prefer stories that take us beyond what we know from canon to missing scenes. And where I have expressed pairing preferences, I'd prefer you didn't permamently pair either character up with someone else altogether.

Now onto the fandoms


Orphans (Gaslight Anthem Song)
any characters

This is my completely wild card request.  And if you've got matched on a request you really don't feel up to then, because this is a single track, you can probably familiarise yourself with it really quickly.

This is a repeat request from last year. I truly love this film, but there's no denying that it's got some problematic bits.

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR KING OF ATTOLIA AND THE TWO BOOKS BEFORE IT IN THE SERIES; Minor spoilers for Conspiracy of Kings

Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner,
Hilarion (Queen's Thief),
Philologos (Queen's Thief),

If you've been assigned to this request, I can only assume it's because you offered "any" characters for this fandom. And I'm sorry!

BOOK DESTROYING SPOILERS FOR DEMON'S LEXICON AHEAD. Plus spoilers for the ending of Demon's Covenant

Demon's Lexicon - Sarah Rees Brennan,
James 'Jamie' Crawford,
Nicholas 'Nick' Ryves,

I only started reading this series in the last few months and I don't think I've loved new reading material so much since I discovered Megan Whalen Turner. (High praise indeed!) I'm serious about the book destroying spoilers, and also that it's really, really worth reading these books unspoiled -- if you don't already know them, please click away now (and then go buy and read!)

Nothing to see here. Whistles innocently.

This is basically a supporting post to try and explain why I don't think one of my yuletide requests is foolish or unreasonable. Hilarion and Philogos are two minor characters in Megan Whalen Turner's King of Attolia, and in an attempt to explain why I see huge potential for character development and a burgeoning relationship between them, this post contains every mention of them in that book and the sequel.

Please don't read if you haven't read the series -- I've been quite ruthless about cutting parts of scenes to only show the Hilarion and Philologos dialogue -- if you don't already know the books, you won't be able to follow this post, but you will still gather enough to be spoiled for a wonderful story.

Another year down, Yuletide nominations already over and this is my first journal post of the year. Which leaves me with some serious thinking to do about whether I participate again this year.

I love Yuletide. It's one of my favourite parts of the fannish  year. In recent years it's also been the one big motivation for me to come back to writing. On the other hand, last year's participation for the first time became a burden as well as a joy and one that I seriously feared I might have to default on. Not because of the request I was given -- which was lovely --, but just because real life placed me under so much pressure as deadlines loomed. And I look around me now and have to accept that things in the off-line world are busier and more stressful this year than last.

(I was also one of the people hit hard by the overloading of AO3 on Christmas Day -- over the holiday period, I tend to snatch moments for Yuletide on other people's computers; being unable to get into the archive then meant it was almost New Year before I was able to read -- or to respond, which didn't feel very fair on my wonderful writers. As far as reading and recommending over the anonymous period went, I had to forget it. As for reading and recommending in January; well I was working long hours, had bookmarked other people's recs to read later and then lost them all when my hard drive died.)

My final decision is probably going to depend on when signups open and whether I can seriously predict a free weekend to write in November after I'm likely to have an assignment; December is looking impossible. But oh, I still do want to participate!

And since this year has been so busy I haven't postede at all, let me very belatedly point out the stories that were written for me --

Lean on Me by CiraArana
Source - Tanya Huff - The Fire's Stone, Aaron/Darvish
Darvish is fighting old demons.

One of the things I love about the source canon is the way that all three protagonists are individual and their choices and characterisations have consequences. So I'd asked for something that would really explore that in the context of a future relationship between Darvish and Aaron. It was probably an intimidating request to make, but I'm so glad I did -- the author really picked up on all the issues where the guys might quite legitimately have insecurities about each other or see their relationship in different ways while still having you rooting for a relationship that fundamentally should be able to succeed.

And then the ever talented edenfalling wrote me a treat --
And Both Shall Row
Source - Susan Cooper - Seaward

900 words of Cally and West meeting again and a real delight. And as well as everything else, she gave Westerly a nationality and an ethnicity and a back story to match the story in the books; I knew I wanted that, but I didn't realise how quite how much until I saw it written out.

(And she's since written a prequel as well -- Wings To Fly  -- if you know Seaward the book, go check both stories out)

My own story was in the world of Megan Whalen Turner's Attolia series -

The King's Guard
Costis is just glad to be a squad leader again, even if Aris does say he's starting to think like a politician.

Major  spoilers for King of Attolia, so don't read if you're not that far on in the series.