Yuletide 2018

[christycorr]

Hi, mystery author!

Thank you for signing up for these fandoms! :D They each made this dumpster fire of a year a little better for me, and I'm glad you enjoy them too. I have done my best to come up with helpful ideas that would not be overly detailed or constraining, but please feel free to go 100% Optional Details Are Optional regarding anything and everything in the prompts below. If these canons inspire you to write something in a totally different direction, I'll be delighted to read it.

Things I love: UST, banter, angsty and/or fucked-up characters and interactions, clever characters actually being clever, open relationships and/or interesting poly dynamics, found families, awesome female characters, unusual worldbuilding, dubcon, infidelity, kidfic, domesticity, post-break-up second chances, fake relationship, hatesex, denial/delay, voyeurism, pining, and soulbonds.

I love short PWPs and long plotty fics alike; go for any tense, rating and genre you prefer. I'm equally happy with gen and shippy fic. Feel free to go full-on AU if you wish, or to stick closely to canon; I'll never mind either way. Also, regarding ships: I'm a multishipper at heart and will never be unhappy about your shipping choices, no matter what you go for.

Things I dislike: gratuitous character bashing, 'making love,' 'cum,' watersports, scat, rape as plot device to lead to h/c.

In case you happen to want to poke around my accounts, have at it: christycorr; christycorr; christycorr; christycorr.

Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik

Miryem Mandelstam, The Staryk Lord

I adored absolutely everything about the character dynamics in this book. The careful interweaving of obligations and favours was absolutely mesmerising, and watching the Staryk Lord slowly, grudgingly grow to value and even have feelings for Miryem was perhaps the best of all. But then it got me thinking. What would romantic development look like for those two, in the future? They danced around each other so much throughout the entire book—every morsel of admiration had to be bargained for, and they had such an impossible time understanding each other's perspectives. How does that go, now that their arrangement has changed?

I'd also be happy to see something set in the timeskip before the departure/proposal, if you prefer, while they're building their relationship! That would be very interesting as well.

Some ideas (but by all means please go with something else if you prefer):

• Slice of life: what's their daily life like? I'd love a glimpse into their future meals, or trips, or relationships with others. How do they learn to talk to each other more? To touch each other, to lean on each other?


• Exploring limits: what are the limits of Miryem's newly expanded powers in peacetime? How can they interact with the Staryk Lord's? What can they do together when they set out to try, now that they're more in sync?


• Kink discovery, negotiations, consent play: this has the potential to be completely hilarious or very intriguing, with someone with such rigid concepts on what/how to say, and of the consequences of it. Miryem might well feel tempted to explore various kinks just to see what will happen. (Or to get under his skin, let's be honest here.)

If you'd prefer to write gen, I'd love to read any kind of character study of either character, and/or their relationship with others who are connected or bound to them. The way this book handles ideas of (self-)worth, respect and boundaries is so fascinating to me, and I'd be thrilled to see them explored in a family or a friendship context, too.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson

Baru Cormorant, Tain Hu

This book! This book stole my heart away and shattered it into a million pieces and I loved every second of it. The admin side of a rebellion! Mapping revolt with a sneaky census rider! Fierce queerness despite a world that hates literally everything about it! Morality so convoluted you don't even realise you don't really know who you're actually rooting for at any point in time! Masks behind masks behind masks and you can never trust anyone! Be still my heart, this thing is like everything I've ever wanted. Holy shit.

And then in the middle of it all: Baru and Tain Hu. I was so there for this ship from the very first moment they met, and they did not disappoint, even until the very end. I don't begrudge Baru her decision—at that point, what's one more horror to her tally when she's already decided what's worth more than anything whatsoever—but, god, there's so much they could've done together if they only had a little bit longer. If they'd only met in different circumstances. If only things had gone slightly differently. What else might've happened? So: fic!

Here are some ideas, and please feel free to take this in any other direction you want. I don't necessarily need a happy ending here, by the way, though that would be perfectly fine too—I'm perfectly satisfied with them hating each other, or with a sad ending, or with a character study focused mostly on either one of them where the other just happens to feature briefly. I'm just fascinated by their personalities and how they play off of each other, and influence one another.

• They meet in Aurdwynn when Baru is already older and part of the Throne. How does Baru react to temptation in the form of a hostile Duchess that she doesn't need to use?


• What was Tain Hu's point of view during the journey east to the Elided Keep? She heard a lot about Baru; how did she process it? How did she decide to tell Baru what she ended up saying when they met?


• Tain Hu kills Apparitor and impersonates him. What do she and Baru do together?

(Note: I will definitely read the sequel once it comes out, so feel free to include spoilers if you want. If you read the book and it gives you any ideas based on brand new characters, relationships or situations: yes, please!)

Terra Ignota - Ada Palmer

Mycroft Canner

Terra Ignota has what is probably my favourite worldbuilding in ages, so if there's literally any part of this 'verse that you find interesting—anything at all, from languages to the census, from the Hiveless to the Reservations—and you want to explore, by all means feel free to throw the ideas below out the window. I'm completely onboard. These are just some random thoughts that the books haven't explored in-depth yet, but there are so many other possibilities! (Of course, you're very welcome to ignore any and all elements of canon to write your own wholly independent thing if you like.)

I love how the books make use of unreliable narrators to reveal plot details gradually, so that the initial picture is nearly always misleading. It makes it so we can never quite trust Mycroft, even as we can't really help feeling some empathy for the character. So here are some random ideas for some stories regarding Mycroft that I'd love to see—though I'd welcome any others you can come up with, and honestly, if you prefer to go with any other character, feel free; Mycroft was just the easiest one to list prompts for.

• Mycroft's sensayer sessions with Julia — how did they go over time? What do you think they talked about or did together in the years prior to the first book?


• The murder of the Mardi bash' or their interactions with the Mardi bash' before the murders — what was that like? You're welcome to make this as gory or not as you wish; I have no issue with graphic violence. I would love to see Apollo Mojave in particular — perhaps earlier with young Cornel Mason, or perhaps the conversation that took place before that last battle with Apollo, Seine, Mycroft and Saladin. What was it like for the real Apollo to talk to Mycroft before they were a hallucination? What kind of connection did they have exactly?


• If you're in the mood for an AU: what would it have been like for Mycroft and Apollo to plan Apollo's war together? We know Mycroft was weirdly close to the Mardi bash'; what if they were close enough to help?


• What were Mycroft and Saladin like when they were younger? How did their codependency develop over time? What kinds of rough edges have they had with each other over time as they experimented and grew? As mentioned above, I have no issue with violence, and I've done my time reading Hannibal fic, so honestly, there's nothing you can do with this pair that will shock me. So if you want to go for shock value, cannibalism or some such, by all means have at it.