Yuletide 2018
Oct. 8th, 2018 08:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saiditallbeforeDear Yuletider,
I'm sure I'll like whatever you make for me, so just have fun! I know this letter got a little long, and there are some canons that have more prompts than others, but that just means I had a lot of ideas for those (or had a past letter to copy & paste from). If I requested a character or canon, I would be happy to see just about anything for them!
Please don’t feel like you have to include all of my requested characters.
I’m saiditallbefore on AO3.
Things I like:
Smut Likes:
Porn is welcome for all ships I’ve requested, unless otherwise specified.
See below for more specific prompts!
DNWs:
Jane, Ivy Yellan, Kiran Thrash
My ships: Jane/Ivy, Jane/Kiran
This book is weird and trippy as fuck and I love it. I love the branching universes and how it’s almost a CYOA but not quite and how each ending reveals new information for the next ending, so that the reader slowly becomes privy to everything going on in the background, even if this version of Jane doesn’t know anything about what’s up.
Jane
I love Jane! I love her Doctor Who pajamas and the care she puts into her umbrellas and how much she misses her Aunt Magnolia and how out of place she feels in Tu Reviens. And I would love more adventures! I like all the paths, but my favorites were The Missing Masterpiece, Lies Without Borders, and Jane Unlimited. What happens after those, though? When the secrets are out? What does Jane do next?
Ivy
I love Ivy, with her camera and her secrets and her desire to find her own path and not one that her family has determined for her. I’d love something pre-canon for her, about her and Kiran and Patrick and Tu Reviens. Or something post-canon with her and Jane, branching out from whichever path you like, or maybe something entirely new!
Kiran
Kiran is prickly and a lot harder to like than either Ivy or Jane, but that’s part of what makes her interesting! I like her friendships with Jane and Ivy, and how gung-ho she is when she’s presented with a sense of purpose for her life. Something pre-canon would be fun, especially about her friendships with Jane and Ivy and everyone else, or about her relationship with her mother, or something post-canon that explores how she’s changed and what she does next.
Fatima, Khutulun, Mondukhai Khatun, Toregene Khatun
My ships: Toregene/Fatima, Khutulun/OC
If you’ve been hanging around spaces that talk about exchanges for the past year, you’ve probably heard me mention Mongolian History RPF already. If not... welcome to my TED talk! ;D
I’ll be listing some online resources and primers for the curious at the bottom of this post, but if you really want to dive deep, Jack Weatherford’s The Secret History of the Mongol Queens is super accessible and is the best English-language resource you’re going to find-- try your local library.
I’m not looking for anyone to become an expert in the subject overnight-- hell, I’m certainly not an expert! This is just fanfiction, after all. What I’ll be requesting (and hoping to write!) is fictionalized takes on events that we’re pretty sure actually happened, as well as events that never actually took place-- things that might have been. If this sounds at all interesting to you, please come play in this sandbox with me and don’t let the idea of historical research put you off! I got into this on Christmas Eve last year because someone’s prompt got into my head and I couldn’t quite think of a good way to fill it...until I listened to the Missed In History podcast episode on Khutulun.
I’ve labelled the prompts for this section, as well, in case you just want to skip ahead to those.
Khutulun
If you’ve heard of any of these figures, it’s probably Khutulun. She’s relatively well-known in the Western world, for a simple reason: Marco Polo met her on his expedition (in addition to a whole bunch of other people, but the one we’re familiar with in the West is Marco Polo).
The basics: after the Mongol Empire began to fracture and collapse into civil war, Khutulun (Genghis Khan's great-great granddaughter) fought alongside her father, Kaidu Khan. She also reportedly was an amazing wrestler and would not marry a man unless he could best her at wrestling, and won 10,000+ horses from men who tried to win her hand in marriage. There’s an additional, even more unsubstantiated story about how an assassin came to Kaidu Khan’s camp, intending to kill Kaidu Khan, but Khutulun stopped him. The nameless assassin then swore his service to Kaidu Khan and stayed there for many years... eventually marrying Khutulun (without beating her in wrestling).
Prompts: Anything about Khutulun winning 10000 horses through wrestling, or about why she vowed not to marry a man who could not best her at wrestling. Or maybe something about that assassin-- how did Khutulun stop him? How did they fall in love? Was the assassin actually a man-- maybe they were really a woman (disguised or not) and that’s exactly what Khutulun was waiting for.
Primers/Resources:
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/wrestler-princess
https://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/khutulun
https://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/khutulun.htm
+footnotes and bibliographies of the above
Toregene Khatun & Fatima
I’m talking about these women together because their stories are intertwined. Warning, though: I’m not talking in detail about it here, but any in-depth discussion of these women is going to touch on some pretty nasty stuff, including torture.
Now, Toregene was married to a useless prince who became Great Khan, and she basically held the empire together. In fact, after his death, she consolidated power and remained as empress-- with her loyal servant Fatima by her side.
Notably, Fatima and Toregene shared a tent and "intimate confidences", and Toregene named Fatima queen. Does that mean they were together? Well, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to know the sexuality of any historical figure if we don’t have their own words, and historical conceptions of sex and sexuality were different than our own (although LGBTQ+ people have always existed!). None of that actually matters though, because this is fanfiction, and you are free to make shit up. And in my opinion, Toregene and Fatima are very shippy.
Their lives ended in tragedy-- they retired together in quiet, but Fatima was accused of witchcraft and executed shortly thereafter, and Toregene died of unknown causes. But while they lived, they were both pretty badass (and I totally ship them).
Prompts: Fix-it fic, where Fatima and Toregene both live out their quiet retirement in peace? Or maybe Fatima really was a witch-- and between Toregene’s political maneuvering and her own powers, they never needed to give up ruling the empire at all.
Resources/Primers:
https://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/toregene-khatun
https://web.archive.org/web/20060709022543/https://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=4601
+footnotes and bibliographies of the above
Mandukhai Khatun
She was also known as Queen Monduhai the Wise and she was the first person since Ghengis Khan (who died 200 years before her birth!) to unite the warring Mongol clans.
She was married to the Khan, and after he died she adopted an orphan who also just happened to be the last living descendant of Genghis Khan (I’d explain how Mandukhai is related but that’s a twisted family tree. Just know that Genghis wasn’t an only child.), raised the kid, married him when he became an adult, and named him Dayan Khan, or “Great Khan”. Under their leadership, the Mongol Empire was reunited for the first time in centuries. (Seriously, this is a huge deal!)
And she didn’t just sit back and lead from her tent-- she fought battles, even while pregnant! The Ming Dynasty of China expanded the Great Wall to contain Mandukhai! Historically, we know that she (probably) died of natural causes, but there were rumors that circulated that Ming agents assassinated her...
Prompts: Mandukhai vs Ming assassins! Or maybe something about her relationship with Dayan Khan? Or literally anything-- snippets, 5+1 scenes, introspection-- about how she helped reunite the Mongol Empire.
Primers:
http://thefemalesoldier.com/blog/mandukhai-khatun
http://brewminate.com/queen-manduhai-the-wise/
(Sorry, I think the main resource for Mandukhai is The Secret History of the Mongol Queens!)
Rowan, Bel
My ships: Rowan/Bel
I love all the characters in this series, but I’m only requesting Rowan and Bel because they’re my absolute favorites. Please feel free to include anyone else you like! (I’ve got a special soft spot for Will and his interactions with the two women, especially in light of how much he’s changed.)
I’d usually say I’m not a fan of overexplaining things like magic, but Steerswoman is the exception to the rule. I just adore every passage of Rowan figuring things out through questions, observation, and logic. The chapters in the demons’ city gives me absolute chills, and the passages where Rowan tries to learn from Will about what “magic” is through the few shared terms and analogies they have is absolutely perfect.
Even more than her logical mind, I love Rowan’s sense of honor and how strictly she adheres to the Steerswomens’ rules-- her difficulty with any form of deception, especially in the first book, only makes her more fun for me. And I love seeing her through others’ eyes: the passages from Steffie and Will’s points of view are great.
And of course, I adore Bel. She plays off of Rowan just perfectly, with a similar sense of honor but an entirely different way of expressing it. And she’s so passionate about protecting her people-- all of her people-- from outside harm. And of course, I’m a sucker for a woman with a sword. Rowan and Bel see the world entirely differently, but they work together super well.
I’d love some missing scenes! Give me some small, quiet moments when they were in the Outlands, or the time they spent together in the time in between books 3 and 4, while traveling. Or maybe an outside POV on one or both of them, or a look at what might happen next.
Artemisia Fitz-Levi, Katherine Talbert
My ships: Artemisia/Katherine
I’m a sucker for stories about women crossdressing and women fighters and revenge stories and this book hits me right in the id.
The kiss between Katherine and the Black Rose, and Katherine's sexual awakening! Cross-dressing! Artemesia repeatedly comparing to Katherine Tyrian and Fabian- and Katherine called Artemesia Stella! (I know it's from the play, and the two are using it as code, but I think their silliness about these characters makes it a bit more romantic.) Katherine saving Artemesia from marrying her rapist!
I'd love to see Katherine and Artemesia get together; maybe as a canon divergent AU where the girls get together at the end, or maybe something post-canon, where Katherine is Duchess Tremontaine. Honestly, I'd love anything set in this universe where these two get together properly.
If you don't want to write a shipfic for these two, I'd love to see Katherine putting her skills with a sword to work, fighting for those who can't speak up for themselves, similar to how she did for Artemisia. Or tell me: what does Artemisia do now?
I haven’t read any other books in the Swordspoint universe, so while I don’t mind references to other characters and events, just know that I will probably miss the references entirely.
I'm sure I'll like whatever you make for me, so just have fun! I know this letter got a little long, and there are some canons that have more prompts than others, but that just means I had a lot of ideas for those (or had a past letter to copy & paste from). If I requested a character or canon, I would be happy to see just about anything for them!
Please don’t feel like you have to include all of my requested characters.
I’m saiditallbefore on AO3.
Things I like:
- Competency (being really good at Their Thing)
- Outsider POV
- Hurt/Comfort
- Friends-to-Lovers
- Enemies-to-Lovers
- Families of Choice
- Angst with a happy ending
- Pretend dating or secretly dating
- Casefic
- Porn with plot
- Happy or happy-for-now endings
- Non-mundane AUs (ex: Regency, dragon riders, fantasy, state-mandated ghost hunters)
- Heists (ex: Leverage, Ocean’s 11)
- Sedoretu
- Language barriers
- Timeloops
- Loyalty kink
- Time travel, dimension travel/dimension hopping
- Stranded together/forced to work together
- Arranged marriage/political marriage/marriage of convenience
- Fpreg (especially in conjunction with arranged marriage, etc.)
- Ghost sex
Smut Likes:
Porn is welcome for all ships I’ve requested, unless otherwise specified.
- Bondage
- Phone sex
- Dom/sub
- Cunnilingus
- Pain mixed with pleasure (intentional or unintentional)
- Orgasm denial
- Hate sex
- Object insertion (vaginal only)
- Nipple play
- Spanking
See below for more specific prompts!
DNWs:
- Character death
- Unprompted crossovers or fusions
- Levels of violence that are graphic or extreme beyond canon
- Unrequested non-con (dub-con or non-con in requested scenarios is A-OK)
- Brainwashing/mental horror
- Unrequested pairings
- Breathplay
- Blowjobs
- Anal sex
- Homophobia
- Focus on the breakup of canon relationships (please just say it didn't work out or it never happened; don't make a Big Thing about it)
- Poetry
Jane, Unlimited - Kristen Cashore
Jane, Ivy Yellan, Kiran Thrash
My ships: Jane/Ivy, Jane/Kiran
This book is weird and trippy as fuck and I love it. I love the branching universes and how it’s almost a CYOA but not quite and how each ending reveals new information for the next ending, so that the reader slowly becomes privy to everything going on in the background, even if this version of Jane doesn’t know anything about what’s up.
Jane
I love Jane! I love her Doctor Who pajamas and the care she puts into her umbrellas and how much she misses her Aunt Magnolia and how out of place she feels in Tu Reviens. And I would love more adventures! I like all the paths, but my favorites were The Missing Masterpiece, Lies Without Borders, and Jane Unlimited. What happens after those, though? When the secrets are out? What does Jane do next?
Ivy
I love Ivy, with her camera and her secrets and her desire to find her own path and not one that her family has determined for her. I’d love something pre-canon for her, about her and Kiran and Patrick and Tu Reviens. Or something post-canon with her and Jane, branching out from whichever path you like, or maybe something entirely new!
Kiran
Kiran is prickly and a lot harder to like than either Ivy or Jane, but that’s part of what makes her interesting! I like her friendships with Jane and Ivy, and how gung-ho she is when she’s presented with a sense of purpose for her life. Something pre-canon would be fun, especially about her friendships with Jane and Ivy and everyone else, or about her relationship with her mother, or something post-canon that explores how she’s changed and what she does next.
Mongolian Royalty RPF
Fatima, Khutulun, Mondukhai Khatun, Toregene Khatun
My ships: Toregene/Fatima, Khutulun/OC
If you’ve been hanging around spaces that talk about exchanges for the past year, you’ve probably heard me mention Mongolian History RPF already. If not... welcome to my TED talk! ;D
I’ll be listing some online resources and primers for the curious at the bottom of this post, but if you really want to dive deep, Jack Weatherford’s The Secret History of the Mongol Queens is super accessible and is the best English-language resource you’re going to find-- try your local library.
I’m not looking for anyone to become an expert in the subject overnight-- hell, I’m certainly not an expert! This is just fanfiction, after all. What I’ll be requesting (and hoping to write!) is fictionalized takes on events that we’re pretty sure actually happened, as well as events that never actually took place-- things that might have been. If this sounds at all interesting to you, please come play in this sandbox with me and don’t let the idea of historical research put you off! I got into this on Christmas Eve last year because someone’s prompt got into my head and I couldn’t quite think of a good way to fill it...until I listened to the Missed In History podcast episode on Khutulun.
I’ve labelled the prompts for this section, as well, in case you just want to skip ahead to those.
Khutulun
If you’ve heard of any of these figures, it’s probably Khutulun. She’s relatively well-known in the Western world, for a simple reason: Marco Polo met her on his expedition (in addition to a whole bunch of other people, but the one we’re familiar with in the West is Marco Polo).
The basics: after the Mongol Empire began to fracture and collapse into civil war, Khutulun (Genghis Khan's great-great granddaughter) fought alongside her father, Kaidu Khan. She also reportedly was an amazing wrestler and would not marry a man unless he could best her at wrestling, and won 10,000+ horses from men who tried to win her hand in marriage. There’s an additional, even more unsubstantiated story about how an assassin came to Kaidu Khan’s camp, intending to kill Kaidu Khan, but Khutulun stopped him. The nameless assassin then swore his service to Kaidu Khan and stayed there for many years... eventually marrying Khutulun (without beating her in wrestling).
Prompts: Anything about Khutulun winning 10000 horses through wrestling, or about why she vowed not to marry a man who could not best her at wrestling. Or maybe something about that assassin-- how did Khutulun stop him? How did they fall in love? Was the assassin actually a man-- maybe they were really a woman (disguised or not) and that’s exactly what Khutulun was waiting for.
Primers/Resources:
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/wrestler-princess
https://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/khutulun
https://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/khutulun.htm
+footnotes and bibliographies of the above
Toregene Khatun & Fatima
I’m talking about these women together because their stories are intertwined. Warning, though: I’m not talking in detail about it here, but any in-depth discussion of these women is going to touch on some pretty nasty stuff, including torture.
Now, Toregene was married to a useless prince who became Great Khan, and she basically held the empire together. In fact, after his death, she consolidated power and remained as empress-- with her loyal servant Fatima by her side.
Notably, Fatima and Toregene shared a tent and "intimate confidences", and Toregene named Fatima queen. Does that mean they were together? Well, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to know the sexuality of any historical figure if we don’t have their own words, and historical conceptions of sex and sexuality were different than our own (although LGBTQ+ people have always existed!). None of that actually matters though, because this is fanfiction, and you are free to make shit up. And in my opinion, Toregene and Fatima are very shippy.
Their lives ended in tragedy-- they retired together in quiet, but Fatima was accused of witchcraft and executed shortly thereafter, and Toregene died of unknown causes. But while they lived, they were both pretty badass (and I totally ship them).
Prompts: Fix-it fic, where Fatima and Toregene both live out their quiet retirement in peace? Or maybe Fatima really was a witch-- and between Toregene’s political maneuvering and her own powers, they never needed to give up ruling the empire at all.
Resources/Primers:
https://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/toregene-khatun
https://web.archive.org/web/20060709022543/https://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=4601
+footnotes and bibliographies of the above
Mandukhai Khatun
She was also known as Queen Monduhai the Wise and she was the first person since Ghengis Khan (who died 200 years before her birth!) to unite the warring Mongol clans.
She was married to the Khan, and after he died she adopted an orphan who also just happened to be the last living descendant of Genghis Khan (I’d explain how Mandukhai is related but that’s a twisted family tree. Just know that Genghis wasn’t an only child.), raised the kid, married him when he became an adult, and named him Dayan Khan, or “Great Khan”. Under their leadership, the Mongol Empire was reunited for the first time in centuries. (Seriously, this is a huge deal!)
And she didn’t just sit back and lead from her tent-- she fought battles, even while pregnant! The Ming Dynasty of China expanded the Great Wall to contain Mandukhai! Historically, we know that she (probably) died of natural causes, but there were rumors that circulated that Ming agents assassinated her...
Prompts: Mandukhai vs Ming assassins! Or maybe something about her relationship with Dayan Khan? Or literally anything-- snippets, 5+1 scenes, introspection-- about how she helped reunite the Mongol Empire.
Primers:
http://thefemalesoldier.com/blog/mandukhai-khatun
http://brewminate.com/queen-manduhai-the-wise/
(Sorry, I think the main resource for Mandukhai is The Secret History of the Mongol Queens!)
Steerswoman Series - Rosemary Kirstein
Rowan, Bel
My ships: Rowan/Bel
I love all the characters in this series, but I’m only requesting Rowan and Bel because they’re my absolute favorites. Please feel free to include anyone else you like! (I’ve got a special soft spot for Will and his interactions with the two women, especially in light of how much he’s changed.)
I’d usually say I’m not a fan of overexplaining things like magic, but Steerswoman is the exception to the rule. I just adore every passage of Rowan figuring things out through questions, observation, and logic. The chapters in the demons’ city gives me absolute chills, and the passages where Rowan tries to learn from Will about what “magic” is through the few shared terms and analogies they have is absolutely perfect.
Even more than her logical mind, I love Rowan’s sense of honor and how strictly she adheres to the Steerswomens’ rules-- her difficulty with any form of deception, especially in the first book, only makes her more fun for me. And I love seeing her through others’ eyes: the passages from Steffie and Will’s points of view are great.
And of course, I adore Bel. She plays off of Rowan just perfectly, with a similar sense of honor but an entirely different way of expressing it. And she’s so passionate about protecting her people-- all of her people-- from outside harm. And of course, I’m a sucker for a woman with a sword. Rowan and Bel see the world entirely differently, but they work together super well.
I’d love some missing scenes! Give me some small, quiet moments when they were in the Outlands, or the time they spent together in the time in between books 3 and 4, while traveling. Or maybe an outside POV on one or both of them, or a look at what might happen next.
Swordspoint Series (The Privilege of the Sword) - Ellen Kushner
Artemisia Fitz-Levi, Katherine Talbert
My ships: Artemisia/Katherine
I’m a sucker for stories about women crossdressing and women fighters and revenge stories and this book hits me right in the id.
The kiss between Katherine and the Black Rose, and Katherine's sexual awakening! Cross-dressing! Artemesia repeatedly comparing to Katherine Tyrian and Fabian- and Katherine called Artemesia Stella! (I know it's from the play, and the two are using it as code, but I think their silliness about these characters makes it a bit more romantic.) Katherine saving Artemesia from marrying her rapist!
I'd love to see Katherine and Artemesia get together; maybe as a canon divergent AU where the girls get together at the end, or maybe something post-canon, where Katherine is Duchess Tremontaine. Honestly, I'd love anything set in this universe where these two get together properly.
If you don't want to write a shipfic for these two, I'd love to see Katherine putting her skills with a sword to work, fighting for those who can't speak up for themselves, similar to how she did for Artemisia. Or tell me: what does Artemisia do now?
I haven’t read any other books in the Swordspoint universe, so while I don’t mind references to other characters and events, just know that I will probably miss the references entirely.
