Yuletide 2023!

Dear Yuletide author,

Wow, that year went by incredibly fast, huh? I always love seeing what comes out of this fic exchange, and I'm especially excited for what you'll write for me! I'm pretty feral for all of these fandoms and would love to spend some more time with these characters/worlds (even if all of them feel doomed now that I'm looking at my list here.) In the past, I've written long paragraphs outlining my taste in fiction, but if I'm honest I'm a pretty omnivorous reader in terms of genre and tone. The most important thing really is just to say what I tend to put in my letters because it's always true: the prompts below are guidelines more than demands, just avoid my DNWs and write whatever plot bunny gets your enthusiasm going. I really am looking forward to see what you create! (Also some of these prompts are more rambly than others but I love/want all of these fandoms equally!)

DNWs: cancer, bug infestations, death of pets

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An Unauthorized Fan Treatise - Lauren James
Characters: Any in the tagset

What is it? Epistolary novel that combines obsessive fandom writeups (think the Msscribe story) with a murder mystery thriller. Available for free here.

Okay, this was everything. I lost sleep over it. I texted everyone about it. When I finished I went back to the start to reread it and look for hints/clues/foreshadowing. I especially loved the epistolary aspect of it and how thoroughly it incorporated social media. Would love to see more epistolary takes on this world! Any or all tagset characters can show up. For this particular canon I count random people online talking about them as "showing up."

Prompts:

• The weird after life this fandom kerfluffle would have had! The bulk of the action takes place in 2018, and then there's a prologue set pretty far in the future. What about the time in between? I'm thinking of things like /r/HobbyDrama writeups, people writing troll AITA posts (the way they sometimes take scenarios from shows and try to pass them off as real over there), reddit talk in general, 90 minute long youtube videos called things like "that time a 17 year old fanfic writer led to the star of a hit tv show getting murdered," podcasts that start out about the topic but spiral off into being about the hosts' own drama etc etc.
• Also what do the memes related to all that look like?
• The text messages and posts we didn't get to see! i.e. what would some of those lost Livejournal posts from Robb look like?
• ANYA'S SIDE OF FANDOM. Or really any other parts of the Loch and Ness fandom that aren't about shipping the two main guys. What did their tumblr posts look like when the bulk of all this was happening?
• How would the news media or whatever report this (thinking of things like "the mysterious hacker 4 chan!") because I feel like a lot of this would be incomprehensible to people not neck deep in fandom. 
• Are there buzzfeed quizzes like "which unhinged moment from the gottiespeaks saga are you?"

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The Idylls of the Queen - Phyllis Ann Karr
Characters: Kay, Mordred

What is it? Murder mystery that answers everyone's question: "what the hell would happen if the two most unpopular knights in King Arthur's court had to go on a roadtrip together to try and find out the truth behind the muder?" Available in libraries. Karr also recently published a book of Arthuriana short stories, none of which are explicitly Idylls canon but do feature a great deal of her takes on Kay and Mordred so it's very fun if you loved the original book the way I do.

BOOK OF ALL TIME??? For me at least. I reread it every few years and proceed to lose my mind over it for weeks or months or a time after. I'll level with you... I do really ship these two cantankerous weirdos and probably would scream if I got something with them bitchily buying curtains together at IKEA or whatever. BUT if you just want to write them as platonic worsties that's totally fine. Really I just want both of them there being snarky, and terrible, and going between arguing with each other and jumping to the other's defense when they anyone else dares to pick a fight with one or both of them.

Prompts:

• Honestly anything from their relationship during Mordred's "two good years." Kay is a bit vague about it but I'm so intrigued by him saying their senses of humor were very similar even when Mordred was the paragon of knightly virtues otherwise. How did that even work? Did they hang out against the wall during feasts and quietly talk shit about others together? I must know!
• Unreliable narrator Kay <3 My favorite thing about this book is how it's so focused on Kay's POV. That means we get his incredibly biased reads on various characters. During the first half, Mordred is also hinting constantly about how much he suspects Kay but all of it goes WHOOOOSH over Kay's head. He also withholds stuff from the reader (the chapter where Mordred confesses his Tragic Past... we barely get any prose letting us know what Kay was thinking during the whole monologue.) It just has me wondering what else he's not seeing or not including in this recounting. Either during the roadtrip or other times.
• What the hell happens next? Seriously. Kay knows an incredible amount of secrets about the Orkney clan and Mordred's shared his soul with him multiple times. It would be so hard to go back to the status quo they apparently had going for 18+ years, but they also suck at communication so... what next??
• Karr's book of short stories mentioned she wanted to write a sequel where Kay is suspected of a murder and it kills me that we'll never get that. But yeah, would love to see any take on this.
• Canon divergence where Mordred doesn't hear the Horrible No Good Very Bad Prophecy until a couple years after her canonically does and he and Kay have more time to become even closer friends? 
• Mordred POV in general actuallyyyy. He is so incredibly funny but also alarming and I want to trap him under a jar and study him. Prose from his POV would be so excellent!
• Seriously, you really could have them navigate a grocery store together and I would be entertained.

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The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
Characters: Ray Garraty and Peter Mcvries AND/OR Worldbuilding

What is it? A novel TOTALLY NOT BY STEPHEN KING where every year a fascist government has 100 teenage boys walk at a certain speed nonstop. If you fall below it they kill you. It keeps going until there's one participant left. Available through libraries.

So, this was a book I first read about 12 years ago and liked it. Then I reread it again this year and time has transformed it into one of my favorites. It's just... so dreary and thought provoking and really makes you feel the main characters' physical exertion and degrading mental states. The horrifying moments just hit SO hard. But it also has moments where the characters really connect in spite of everything. It makes you care so much about the characters it chooses to highlight, even if some of them die early on. Both times I read it, I was touched by the relationship between Garraty and Mcvries and kept wishing they would both have been able to make it. This is another one I ship, but I'm also fine with platonic as long as the importance of their relationship is front and center. There are so many intriguing glimpses of the society outside the long walk too, and I'd also love if you want to explore the worldbuilding of this book. If you just want to focus on worldbuilding and not so much Mcvries and Garraty, that's totally cool with me. If you want to write about the two characters I do want both of them to appear together in some way. 

Prompts:

• This book was written and takes place well before the internet, but it's interesting how there's some glimpses of fandom style behavior like you'd see online today. For example, we know that there are bets in Vegas on which participant will be the survivor. Are there also communities that geek out over stats over the years. I'm thinking of things like Eurovision statistic communities or... really any competitive reality show has this kind of numbers based following (like someone calculated if cooking risotto really does doom someone on Top Chef and the answer is... kind of?)
• In a similar vein, the Handmaid's Tale book famously ends with an academic treatise investigating the claims made in Offred's account (and overall detached from the emotions of Offred's writing). If the Long Walk continues on into the internet age, what kind of legacy does this particular walk have? Did Garraty set a record that online fans keep wondering if someone will beat? Are their ironic memes about how Garraty outsold your faves for fifty years or whatever? Feel free to get as weird and ghoulish with this as you want! One of the most potent sources of horror in this book is how the crowd becomes Crowd and I can only imagine how the internet would make this work.
• On the flipside, what about all that comes before? What does the application process look like? One of the most fucked up/intriguing parts of this book is how the boys all volunteer. How do you end up qualifying? Is it really all about physical fitness? Do the powers that be try to put together an intriguing "cast?" (if so, what do the notes from that look like.)
• On a related note, the characters don't meet until the day of the walk for the most part... but what if they did during the qualifying process? What would that be like? Would the powers that be notice that Garraty and Mcvries have an instant connection and decide they have to be in the walk for the entertainment of the crowd?
• Another AU idea: I was reading this HobbyDrama writeup on the history of dance marathons and WOW do those sound wretched. It would be really interesting to see an AU where instead of a walking marathon where almost everyone dies it's a dance marathon where only one duo can survive. Would love to see Garraty and Mcvries unraveling during something like that.
• Anything from Mcvries's point of view on the whole odreal really. Sometimes I feel really sure I know what his deal is and sometimes he's just such an enigma. He seems to be more street smart than Garraty and less likely to be repressing... all kinds of things. But he also does wildly self sacrificing things like keeping Garraty alive when he otherwise would die multiple times.
• Some sort of future fic with Garraty. I think it's likely he probably dies a few moments after the book ends, but it would be so thorny and complicated if he did survive. How do you go through life after something like that? Are there other survivors of the Long Walk? For most of these prompts I want Mcvries and Garraty together but for this I'm fine if it's just Garraty having thoughts about Mcvries.

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Okay, that's all! Thank you once again (either for offering one of these fandoms and ending up as my author or for being intrigued by my fandoms and checking this out. I hope you have a great yuletide season!)