Dear yuletide author
Oct. 14th, 2025 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenDear yuletide author,
I'm![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
singlecrow on the AO3. Thank you very much for writing for me, I will be happy and excited about whatever you write! I am also open to and excited about treats, should anyone wish to write me any.
My general do not wants are violence against women and omegaverse, with a caveat about "The Day After The Revolution", see below. But that aside, I read very broadly. I enjoy sad and dark stories, happy stories, love stories, stories with sex in, stories without. I don't do Christmas, so would prefer a story not be entirely about the characters celebrating it. Other festivals are marvellous.
One thing I really love, in sad and happy stories alike, is people being quietly kind to one another. I also really like people being competent, and found families of all sorts.
Fandom-specific stuff follows.
Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Characters: Janet Chant
So, for reasons, I've got massively into the Chrestomanci books again this year (having last read them about 15 years ago - you'll see one Chrestomanci fic from me in the Archive from 2011, ouch). I have some gripes with this series but really do love it, mostly because of the gorgeous setting: the Related Worlds! the nine-lived enchanters! Chrestomanci's astonishing dressing gowns! etc.
My favourites are Christopher and Millie but I've gone for Janet this year because she is so interesting to me, this girl in the wrong world who somehow doesn't get a lot of space in canon devoted to her, when you consider how dramatic her entrance into the story is. I'm super interested in her relationship with her family, not just Cat but also Chrestomanci and Millie. They're not her parents; Chrestomanci isn't her cousin, like he is Cat's; instead, he's... the cousin of a girl who looks like her from another universe, and the cousin she would have had who looked like him was never born. What's that like, to have this weirdness instead of parents? Does she miss her real parents? Who helps her with periods and careers and teenage angst? Does she miss things left behind, like electricity and hard science? We never hear about this, and it really makes me wonder. Imagine going from having TV and radio and the start of the internet, to none of those things, just magic when you yourself don't have it. It's interesting to me also that in her own world, at least she'd be able to say she shared Chrestomanci's and Cat's DNA - but that isn't something available to her where she is.
I'm also interested in what it's like for her, once she's finished growing up. She's the one without magic - the one who has family ties and nothing else her linking the Castle. Does she work for the department without magic? Does she do go away and do something completely different? Does she bring boyfriends or girlfriends home to meet the Castle folk? What does she think her life is going to be like when Cat is Chrestomanci?
These are all meant to be potentially helpful thoughts, but not prescriptive! My broad preference is for Janet and the other kids to be a little older than they are in canon; otherwise any exploration of this extremely rich universe makes me happy.
The Day Before The Revolution - Ursula K. Le Guin
Character: Laia Asieo Odo
This, in case you haven't come across it, is a short story by Ursula K Le Guin in her collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters. Laia is an old woman, exhausted and furious and disoriented, who is surrounded by a society in transformation and feels that she's getting left behind. Of course, if you've read The Dispossessed, you know that this is Odo - the founder of the anarchist society of Anarres, who brought planetary revolution without ever actually seeing it for herself. I love this story of Le Guin's, because Odonianism entirely disdains the individual, talks about people "egoizing", tells you individual stories don't matter - and then gives us this story about Odo, still known as Laia which was her name when she was a human person rather than the spearhead of a political movement. Laia is old and tired, and she's won, that's the thing, she fought and endured and went to prison for this, and it's all about to change, but she's fed up anyway. She misses her husband and it all hurts so much. That contrast, between the personal and political which for once, are not at all the same thing - it really touches me.
As for a story - please give me anything at all about this remarkable woman who of course Le Guin gave us several decades before anyone else might have. Laia when younger, in prison, on the barricades? Her relationship and marriage? Maybe by time travel/magic she gets to see the society on Anarres that arose after her death? What about AUs of different places, societies, times? What does Earth in 2025 make of Odo?
Also, if you want to give me elements from The Dispossessed I'm really happy to see them; if you don't, then that's good by me as well.
[Re my dnw from above - yes, violence against women does happen in a violent revolution and I understand why it might appear here. If you do include violence against Odo and other women in a story for this, please could it not be graphic, lingered on. I wouldn't want it to be the whole point of the story.]
The Saint of Steel - T Kingfisher
Characters: Bishop Beartongue and Marguerite Florian
So this is sort-of a repeat request - I've had it filled in the past, but I always want more. I love this series, but my favourite bit is always the workings of the Temple of the White Rat, its quiet commitment to quirky, hilarious social justice that nevertheless reads like the real work of public lawyers and community organisers. Beartongue is my favourite character in the series, followed by Marguerite. I am a sucker for women in power, especially women in unremarkable administrative power that is a burden to wield. I love her compassion, her cynicism, the way she wields that power always to others' benefit, I love how her religious faith is real and it drives everything she does, I love the paladins and others are starting to sound like her ("No one is here is selling their body before we talk to the Bishop!") and most of all, I love that bit in Paladin's Grace where Stephen describes her as "the nearest he would ever come to true greatness".
So, honestly, you could fill this request just by writing something about Beartongue, I would love anything about her. A day in her life, a day from her past, how things are going now she's trying to destabilise the economy of an entire continent, something about her friendships, something about her vulnerabilities. But that brings us to Marguerite, again: I find it fascinating that Marguerite is the only other character in the series to notice fear or vulnerability in Beartongue, and perhaps the only woman she doesn't have some kind of duty to protect. Marguerite, after all, is a dangerous and terribly clever spy. Well, she thinks we don't know that. I love how she just can't resist taking care of people regardless. So if you want to write Beartongue and Marguerite getting it on, or being odd but good friends, or perhaps pen-pals during the journey across the continent, I would love that too.
(Also, like Beartongue I am a public lawyer, which I mention only because if you want to write The White Rat Goes To Court, I am here for that with bells on.)
That's it - as above, I read many things, and I'm thrilled that you're writing for me! I hope you have a wonderful yuletide.
Cheers,
raven
I'm
My general do not wants are violence against women and omegaverse, with a caveat about "The Day After The Revolution", see below. But that aside, I read very broadly. I enjoy sad and dark stories, happy stories, love stories, stories with sex in, stories without. I don't do Christmas, so would prefer a story not be entirely about the characters celebrating it. Other festivals are marvellous.
One thing I really love, in sad and happy stories alike, is people being quietly kind to one another. I also really like people being competent, and found families of all sorts.
Fandom-specific stuff follows.
Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Characters: Janet Chant
So, for reasons, I've got massively into the Chrestomanci books again this year (having last read them about 15 years ago - you'll see one Chrestomanci fic from me in the Archive from 2011, ouch). I have some gripes with this series but really do love it, mostly because of the gorgeous setting: the Related Worlds! the nine-lived enchanters! Chrestomanci's astonishing dressing gowns! etc.
My favourites are Christopher and Millie but I've gone for Janet this year because she is so interesting to me, this girl in the wrong world who somehow doesn't get a lot of space in canon devoted to her, when you consider how dramatic her entrance into the story is. I'm super interested in her relationship with her family, not just Cat but also Chrestomanci and Millie. They're not her parents; Chrestomanci isn't her cousin, like he is Cat's; instead, he's... the cousin of a girl who looks like her from another universe, and the cousin she would have had who looked like him was never born. What's that like, to have this weirdness instead of parents? Does she miss her real parents? Who helps her with periods and careers and teenage angst? Does she miss things left behind, like electricity and hard science? We never hear about this, and it really makes me wonder. Imagine going from having TV and radio and the start of the internet, to none of those things, just magic when you yourself don't have it. It's interesting to me also that in her own world, at least she'd be able to say she shared Chrestomanci's and Cat's DNA - but that isn't something available to her where she is.
I'm also interested in what it's like for her, once she's finished growing up. She's the one without magic - the one who has family ties and nothing else her linking the Castle. Does she work for the department without magic? Does she do go away and do something completely different? Does she bring boyfriends or girlfriends home to meet the Castle folk? What does she think her life is going to be like when Cat is Chrestomanci?
These are all meant to be potentially helpful thoughts, but not prescriptive! My broad preference is for Janet and the other kids to be a little older than they are in canon; otherwise any exploration of this extremely rich universe makes me happy.
The Day Before The Revolution - Ursula K. Le Guin
Character: Laia Asieo Odo
This, in case you haven't come across it, is a short story by Ursula K Le Guin in her collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters. Laia is an old woman, exhausted and furious and disoriented, who is surrounded by a society in transformation and feels that she's getting left behind. Of course, if you've read The Dispossessed, you know that this is Odo - the founder of the anarchist society of Anarres, who brought planetary revolution without ever actually seeing it for herself. I love this story of Le Guin's, because Odonianism entirely disdains the individual, talks about people "egoizing", tells you individual stories don't matter - and then gives us this story about Odo, still known as Laia which was her name when she was a human person rather than the spearhead of a political movement. Laia is old and tired, and she's won, that's the thing, she fought and endured and went to prison for this, and it's all about to change, but she's fed up anyway. She misses her husband and it all hurts so much. That contrast, between the personal and political which for once, are not at all the same thing - it really touches me.
As for a story - please give me anything at all about this remarkable woman who of course Le Guin gave us several decades before anyone else might have. Laia when younger, in prison, on the barricades? Her relationship and marriage? Maybe by time travel/magic she gets to see the society on Anarres that arose after her death? What about AUs of different places, societies, times? What does Earth in 2025 make of Odo?
Also, if you want to give me elements from The Dispossessed I'm really happy to see them; if you don't, then that's good by me as well.
[Re my dnw from above - yes, violence against women does happen in a violent revolution and I understand why it might appear here. If you do include violence against Odo and other women in a story for this, please could it not be graphic, lingered on. I wouldn't want it to be the whole point of the story.]
The Saint of Steel - T Kingfisher
Characters: Bishop Beartongue and Marguerite Florian
So this is sort-of a repeat request - I've had it filled in the past, but I always want more. I love this series, but my favourite bit is always the workings of the Temple of the White Rat, its quiet commitment to quirky, hilarious social justice that nevertheless reads like the real work of public lawyers and community organisers. Beartongue is my favourite character in the series, followed by Marguerite. I am a sucker for women in power, especially women in unremarkable administrative power that is a burden to wield. I love her compassion, her cynicism, the way she wields that power always to others' benefit, I love how her religious faith is real and it drives everything she does, I love the paladins and others are starting to sound like her ("No one is here is selling their body before we talk to the Bishop!") and most of all, I love that bit in Paladin's Grace where Stephen describes her as "the nearest he would ever come to true greatness".
So, honestly, you could fill this request just by writing something about Beartongue, I would love anything about her. A day in her life, a day from her past, how things are going now she's trying to destabilise the economy of an entire continent, something about her friendships, something about her vulnerabilities. But that brings us to Marguerite, again: I find it fascinating that Marguerite is the only other character in the series to notice fear or vulnerability in Beartongue, and perhaps the only woman she doesn't have some kind of duty to protect. Marguerite, after all, is a dangerous and terribly clever spy. Well, she thinks we don't know that. I love how she just can't resist taking care of people regardless. So if you want to write Beartongue and Marguerite getting it on, or being odd but good friends, or perhaps pen-pals during the journey across the continent, I would love that too.
(Also, like Beartongue I am a public lawyer, which I mention only because if you want to write The White Rat Goes To Court, I am here for that with bells on.)
That's it - as above, I read many things, and I'm thrilled that you're writing for me! I hope you have a wonderful yuletide.
Cheers,
raven