skew_whiff (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skew_whiff) wrote2013-10-14 08:41 pm
skew_whiff) wrote2013-10-14 08:41 pm
Dear Yuletide Writer
Hello there, Yuletide writer!
Firstly, as always, thank you. You're clearly a person with excellent taste, and chances are I'll be thrilled with whatever you write. Still, if you're looking for more details to help you get started, here's a few pointers I hope that'll help.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I love backstory fic, and canon suggests Ford has plenty of it. Tell me the tales of his chequered past as a Guide researcher - the highs, the lows, the strange food he's consumed, the terrible places he's stayed and the deals he's made when the money's run out, not to mention how all of that compared to the reports he eventually ended up sending back. Or, alternatively, his experience of integrating into Earth culture (not that he ever did it especially well) and why, of all the people he could have met, that the only friend he appeared to make there was someone as quiet and utterly unremarkable as Arthur Dent.
HHGTTG is a fandom very close to my heart - I listened to the radio series and read the books over and over as a kid, and stumbling across fic for it in my mid-teens was my introduction to the world of fanfiction. As mentioned, it's the books and the radio version which I'm fondest of and most familiar with, but if there's another version of the canon you'd rather work with, be my guest (whether that be TV series, film, or even one of the more niche variations like the comics or the text-based computer game. Actually, I'd be really impressed if anyone wrote anything based on the game, and not just because it's so damn difficult that I've never been able to get past the first puzzle - it's free to play here if you've got time to spare and a masochistic streak).
Anyway, yeah; as per the prompt, I'm looking for something Ford-centric, but feel free to include any other characters or OCs. Mock Guide entries - perhaps examples of some of Ford's early drafts? - are always fun, and I can see there being plenty of opportunity to send up phenomena which weren't around when the original was written, such as edit wars over Guide entries and planetary ambassadors posting fake reviews on the galactic equivalent of TripAdvisor.
Shippiness is entirely optional, but I do have a soft spot for Ford/Arthur, if you want to go in that direction.
The Ten Stupidest Things I've Heard Since Richard III's Remains Were Identified (Blog Post)
I hadn't even heard of this blog post until I saw this turn up in the tag sets, but as soon as I saw it, I knew it had to go in. For reference, I'm pretty sure it's this: http://www.susanhigginbotham.com/blog/posts/the-ten-stupidest-things-ive-heard-since-richard-iiis-remains-were-identified/
Choose any of them! Choose all of them! There's all kinds of hilarious starting points for stories in there, from time-travelling Tudor spies, to Daily Mail journalists using necromancy to bother Richard's ancestors for a quote, to the concept of using cloning technology to create a kind of Jurassic Park full of historical monarchs.
I don't think I have anything to add to this prompt - this is the most open-ended of the subjects I picked this year. Maybe just one thing - I was born and raised in the East Midlands, very close to Leicester (my dad used to work just across the road from where Richard III's bones were found), so if you're at all familiar with the area, I will be endlessly amused by gratuitous local references.
Judge Dredd (comics)
One of my favourite things about the comics is Megacity One itself, in all its vast scale and overwhelming weirdness.
What's the Christmas season like there? Do people go on homicidal killing sprees from hearing Jingle Bells played on a loop for three months solid? Does Black Friday lead to the residents of Eric Morecambe Block going to war with the residents of Ernie Wise Block over the last remaining supplies of this year's must-have toy? Are there black market mince pie smugglers, Dark Santas from parallel universes, festive deals on half-price assisted suicides for those for whom the pressure's all too much?
Or if you're not into festive fic, I always enjoy stories exploring a sci-fi setting from a different perspective, something which the comics often do very well. What's it like being an ordinary citizen, or even an ordinary Judge? What's 'ordinary' in Mega-City One anyway?
As per the above, I'm fine with original characters, though any canon characters you'd like to use as viewpoints/centre the story around are fine by me - Dredd, Anderson, Hershey; heck, even Walter the Wobot.
Again, I think the prompt covers pretty much everything here - I'm interested in something exploring the setting, and details such as characters, rating, genre and suchlike are up to you. I should note that as I've been very slowly collecting the big chunky Case Files TPBs over the years, I'm a lot more familiar with the early late 70s/early 80s strips than I am with later stuff, but I have absolutely no objections if you want to use something from a more recent plotline as your starting point. Also, I would prefer anything I receive for this fandom to be gen, or at least not with a relationship as the main focus.
The Flash (comics)
I adore Barry, so I'd be easily pleased by anything with him in a starring role - any version of continuity, any genre, any style, whether it's fighting baddies with the JLA, a romantic evening with Iris (with or without interruptions from supervillains) or even a slice of life focussing on how the fastest man alive gets through a regular, boring, non-superheroic day.
Any support characters you choose to throw in are up to you, though I adore Jay Garrick and most of the Rogues (esp. Captains Cold and Boomerang). Likewise, whether it's gen or shippy is up to you, and I do think Iris is pretty fantastic - but while it might possibly be pushing things a bit, I won't deny that Barry/Hal slash would make my day.
Superhero comic canons being as confusingly complicated as they are, I'll get the technicalities out of the way first - I haven't been reading the New 52 comics (not out of any moral objection, I just mostly read comics in TPB format rather than as they come out), so I'm not familiar with that continuity, although it's not a problem if that's your preferred 'verse; I get the impression that's there more than enough similarities that I'll be able to follow it. (Unlike the Earth-2 stuff - I'd nearly requested Jay Garrick instead, but I genuinely am only familiar with old-guy-in-a-winged-hat Jay and not this parallel universe whippersnapper who's replaced him, and didn't want to completely stump someone who'd been matched to me but was the other way around and didn't know the first thing about the original version of Jay.)
If anything, I actually prefer pre-Crisis continuity to all the changes and reboots that followed, and with Barry I'm more familiar with his Silver Age stories than anything else that followed - not that you have to do something in that style, although a pastiche of/homage to the kind of sci-fi wackiness that went on in the 60s would be pretty fantastic.
Of all the fandoms I've picked this year, I think this is the one I'd most like to receive shipfic (or smutfic) for - Barry/Iris and Barry/Hal are my favourites, but I'm open-minded. Barry/the Dibnys? Barry/Dinah Lance (makes sense if you've read JLA: Year One)? Some awful misguided encounter with Ollie Queen? Something else? Go for it! My only stipulation is that I'd rather not receive fic that pairs him with Wally, Bart, or anyone else significantly younger.
Right, those are the specifics. As for more general guidance - I prefer my fic light-hearted (or at least blackly comedic, when the canon or the plot make a nice simple happy ending implausible), and while violence is fine, I would rather not receive a story that involves explicit torture, sexual assault or major character death (with the exception of that Richard III one, where he's dead to begin with). I am equally happy with gen, het, slash and femslash, although that last one might be a bit of a stretch in the circumstances. I love Christmas stories, and AUs, and stories that do unusual things with style or format -
But I think I've said enough. I hope that's helpful and that whatever you come up with is fun to write, rather than frustrating (though I've done enough Yuletides now to know it's generally both, even in fandoms I love). Thank you again, and happy Yuletiding!
Firstly, as always, thank you. You're clearly a person with excellent taste, and chances are I'll be thrilled with whatever you write. Still, if you're looking for more details to help you get started, here's a few pointers I hope that'll help.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I love backstory fic, and canon suggests Ford has plenty of it. Tell me the tales of his chequered past as a Guide researcher - the highs, the lows, the strange food he's consumed, the terrible places he's stayed and the deals he's made when the money's run out, not to mention how all of that compared to the reports he eventually ended up sending back. Or, alternatively, his experience of integrating into Earth culture (not that he ever did it especially well) and why, of all the people he could have met, that the only friend he appeared to make there was someone as quiet and utterly unremarkable as Arthur Dent.
HHGTTG is a fandom very close to my heart - I listened to the radio series and read the books over and over as a kid, and stumbling across fic for it in my mid-teens was my introduction to the world of fanfiction. As mentioned, it's the books and the radio version which I'm fondest of and most familiar with, but if there's another version of the canon you'd rather work with, be my guest (whether that be TV series, film, or even one of the more niche variations like the comics or the text-based computer game. Actually, I'd be really impressed if anyone wrote anything based on the game, and not just because it's so damn difficult that I've never been able to get past the first puzzle - it's free to play here if you've got time to spare and a masochistic streak).
Anyway, yeah; as per the prompt, I'm looking for something Ford-centric, but feel free to include any other characters or OCs. Mock Guide entries - perhaps examples of some of Ford's early drafts? - are always fun, and I can see there being plenty of opportunity to send up phenomena which weren't around when the original was written, such as edit wars over Guide entries and planetary ambassadors posting fake reviews on the galactic equivalent of TripAdvisor.
Shippiness is entirely optional, but I do have a soft spot for Ford/Arthur, if you want to go in that direction.
The Ten Stupidest Things I've Heard Since Richard III's Remains Were Identified (Blog Post)
I hadn't even heard of this blog post until I saw this turn up in the tag sets, but as soon as I saw it, I knew it had to go in. For reference, I'm pretty sure it's this: http://www.susanhigginbotham.com/blog/posts/the-ten-stupidest-things-ive-heard-since-richard-iiis-remains-were-identified/
Choose any of them! Choose all of them! There's all kinds of hilarious starting points for stories in there, from time-travelling Tudor spies, to Daily Mail journalists using necromancy to bother Richard's ancestors for a quote, to the concept of using cloning technology to create a kind of Jurassic Park full of historical monarchs.
I don't think I have anything to add to this prompt - this is the most open-ended of the subjects I picked this year. Maybe just one thing - I was born and raised in the East Midlands, very close to Leicester (my dad used to work just across the road from where Richard III's bones were found), so if you're at all familiar with the area, I will be endlessly amused by gratuitous local references.
Judge Dredd (comics)
One of my favourite things about the comics is Megacity One itself, in all its vast scale and overwhelming weirdness.
What's the Christmas season like there? Do people go on homicidal killing sprees from hearing Jingle Bells played on a loop for three months solid? Does Black Friday lead to the residents of Eric Morecambe Block going to war with the residents of Ernie Wise Block over the last remaining supplies of this year's must-have toy? Are there black market mince pie smugglers, Dark Santas from parallel universes, festive deals on half-price assisted suicides for those for whom the pressure's all too much?
Or if you're not into festive fic, I always enjoy stories exploring a sci-fi setting from a different perspective, something which the comics often do very well. What's it like being an ordinary citizen, or even an ordinary Judge? What's 'ordinary' in Mega-City One anyway?
As per the above, I'm fine with original characters, though any canon characters you'd like to use as viewpoints/centre the story around are fine by me - Dredd, Anderson, Hershey; heck, even Walter the Wobot.
Again, I think the prompt covers pretty much everything here - I'm interested in something exploring the setting, and details such as characters, rating, genre and suchlike are up to you. I should note that as I've been very slowly collecting the big chunky Case Files TPBs over the years, I'm a lot more familiar with the early late 70s/early 80s strips than I am with later stuff, but I have absolutely no objections if you want to use something from a more recent plotline as your starting point. Also, I would prefer anything I receive for this fandom to be gen, or at least not with a relationship as the main focus.
The Flash (comics)
I adore Barry, so I'd be easily pleased by anything with him in a starring role - any version of continuity, any genre, any style, whether it's fighting baddies with the JLA, a romantic evening with Iris (with or without interruptions from supervillains) or even a slice of life focussing on how the fastest man alive gets through a regular, boring, non-superheroic day.
Any support characters you choose to throw in are up to you, though I adore Jay Garrick and most of the Rogues (esp. Captains Cold and Boomerang). Likewise, whether it's gen or shippy is up to you, and I do think Iris is pretty fantastic - but while it might possibly be pushing things a bit, I won't deny that Barry/Hal slash would make my day.
Superhero comic canons being as confusingly complicated as they are, I'll get the technicalities out of the way first - I haven't been reading the New 52 comics (not out of any moral objection, I just mostly read comics in TPB format rather than as they come out), so I'm not familiar with that continuity, although it's not a problem if that's your preferred 'verse; I get the impression that's there more than enough similarities that I'll be able to follow it. (Unlike the Earth-2 stuff - I'd nearly requested Jay Garrick instead, but I genuinely am only familiar with old-guy-in-a-winged-hat Jay and not this parallel universe whippersnapper who's replaced him, and didn't want to completely stump someone who'd been matched to me but was the other way around and didn't know the first thing about the original version of Jay.)
If anything, I actually prefer pre-Crisis continuity to all the changes and reboots that followed, and with Barry I'm more familiar with his Silver Age stories than anything else that followed - not that you have to do something in that style, although a pastiche of/homage to the kind of sci-fi wackiness that went on in the 60s would be pretty fantastic.
Of all the fandoms I've picked this year, I think this is the one I'd most like to receive shipfic (or smutfic) for - Barry/Iris and Barry/Hal are my favourites, but I'm open-minded. Barry/the Dibnys? Barry/Dinah Lance (makes sense if you've read JLA: Year One)? Some awful misguided encounter with Ollie Queen? Something else? Go for it! My only stipulation is that I'd rather not receive fic that pairs him with Wally, Bart, or anyone else significantly younger.
Right, those are the specifics. As for more general guidance - I prefer my fic light-hearted (or at least blackly comedic, when the canon or the plot make a nice simple happy ending implausible), and while violence is fine, I would rather not receive a story that involves explicit torture, sexual assault or major character death (with the exception of that Richard III one, where he's dead to begin with). I am equally happy with gen, het, slash and femslash, although that last one might be a bit of a stretch in the circumstances. I love Christmas stories, and AUs, and stories that do unusual things with style or format -
But I think I've said enough. I hope that's helpful and that whatever you come up with is fun to write, rather than frustrating (though I've done enough Yuletides now to know it's generally both, even in fandoms I love). Thank you again, and happy Yuletiding!
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