Dear Author: Yuletide 2021

[burglebezzlemen]

Happy Yuletide! I always enjoy the Yuletide season, and I look forward to seeing what you come up with. :)

I love all of these canons, and I will be delighted to get a gift for any of them. I’m also here for something different, if you have a story you’d love to tell about one of the characters (or worlds! worldbuilding!) I’ve requested (provided it doesn’t run into a DNW). Some of my favorite gifts have been ones I would never have thought to prompt! And I hope you also feel free to mix and match, take part of a prompt and leave the rest, etc.

GENERAL LIKES | DNWs | HIVE MIND | LOCK IN | UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT

General Likes

• Slice of life


• Domestic scenes


• Cooking and food


• General shenanigans and hijinkery


• Outdoor activities and the great outdoors


• Get-together fic


• Established relationships


• Characters solving problems


• Small towns, whether heartwarming or creepy


• Ghost stories


• Cryptids


• Cursed objects


• Thrift score/eBay purchase gone wrong


• Someone gets turned into an unusual animal


• The Hangover and/or Waking Up In Vegas and/or accidental marriage plotlines


• Someone is accidentally drugged; someone else takes care of them


• Gothic themes, whether subverted or played straight


• Exploring new places together


• Vacations gone awry


• Groundhog Day/time loop


• Cross-time communication, where something like a journal/letterbox/website/whatever is able to let characters communicate across time


• Alternate universe body swap, where characters from the canon universe we know are swapped or transferred to an alternate universe and have to find their way back


• Stuck in the bathroom/elevator/wherever


• Characters coming up with MacGyver-style solutions to problems


• Trapped/stranded by the weather


• Abandoned houses, whether exploring or fixing them up


• Five Times fic


• Urban legend AUs or fic involving in-universe urban legends


• State-Mandated Ghost Hunting AU


• Undercover as a couple


• Casefic, especially unusual cases


• That fic where the characters have to go to a remote island or resort, possibly while pretending to be a couple, in order to investigate a haunting/why everyone has been invited and someone’s killing them off one-by-one/other mystery here

DNWs

I tend to prefer canon-typical levels of sexual content, which for these canons would mean nothing particularly explicit. I’m not interested in smut/porn as the main focus of the fic.

My DNWs for these canons:

• Dubcon, noncon, underage, or fic focusing on explicit porn/kink content (see Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt for canon-specific clarifications on this)


• Major character death. Temporary MCD or minor character death in service of a casefic are fine.


• Unrequested poly, open relationships, or incest


• Serious or terminal illness (including in the backstory) - please see Lock In for canon-specific clarifications


• Cannibalism


• Animal harm/cruelty


• Ghost cats


• For Lock In: Use of neopronouns or "it" for Chris Shane

Hive Mind

Hive Mind: Worldbuilding

I adore this series, and I’ve loved every new book more than the one before. Borderline did some amazing things with the canon (and if you haven’t read it, I’m very sorry, but these prompts are full of spoilers).

I’m super-excited for Hive Mind 5, which is sounding like it will not be out until after Yuletide reveals based on Edwards’ website.

I am very happy with gen, ship, or something more world-building focused, like an in-universe document, story, etc. If you want to include ships: I’m fine with relationships of equals between characters still on Teen Level, although I do not want to see explicit fic/porn for them. In terms of other ships, I adore Amber/Lucas and would prefer to not see them break up. For other characters I particularly enjoy, I love everyone in Amber’s unit, and I’m particularly fond of Amber, Lucas, Beckett, Nicole, and Buzz. I’d also love to see more of Gregas trying to deal with Wesley, or see Gregas in his new Teen Level corridor. Or I’d be 100% down for a new set of OCs - really, the world is the star here!

-What are the Teen Games for the Law Enforcement area teens?

-I’d love to see more of the milk run operations, where everything goes smoothly! What do more typical runs look like? What kinds of places do they get to go? I’d also love to see a run from another character’s perspective, like Lucas or Nicole, since we don’t get to see that in canon!

-We've seen several urban legends the Hive uses to encourage specific behavior (“Level 99,” the fear of the outside, etc.). What other urban legends does the Hive have? Do any of our characters ever have to invent/establish an urban legend while doing their jobs?

-What other "deviant" pressure-relief communities like the Ramblers does the Hive have?

-The Hive seems committed to furthering engineering, the arts, and biosciences, but not to other types of knowledge. Does anyone in the Hive try to hold on to historical knowledge, whether of pre-Hive times or of the Hive itself? Is that allowed by the Hive as one of their pressure-relief communities, or is that something the Hive cracks down on?

-The team comes across someone who's been hiding or suppressing full telepath abilities — maybe on purpose, maybe not. What's it like, especially if they're older? What happens if Amber is confronted with them during a run?

-I love the way this series and the Hive system includes people with all different abilities, including sometimes-invisible disabilities like Nicole’s. Did Nicole ever worry that her physical restrictions would prevent her from working a job she loves? How did that affect settling into Amber’s team (if it did)?

-Emergency response-related fic is my jam, and I’ve really enjoyed what we’ve seen in canon. I’d love to see more of our team responding to emergencies! Are there ever storms outside large enough that they affect the inside of the Hive?

-What types of stories do the Teen Level Law Enforcement teens tell about Light Angel? And how does Gregas cope with knowing that’s his sister? Does he ever let the secret slip?



Lock In

Lock In: Chris Shane, Worldbuilding

I adore the world of Lock In, and I'd love to get some fic exploring the world.

I've requested Chris Shane for my requested character. I would like to note that I am happy with any amount of Chris. Outsider POV? Fic in the form of narrative investigative journalism article about one of Chris's cases, where Chris shows up briefly? Online message board where people discuss Chris? All good! Or a first-person story from Chris' POV. Also good!

For other characters, I like Leslie, Chris's parents, and Chris's housemates, and I'd be happy to see any of them show up, or even to see a story from one of their perspectives in which Chris is a side character. I'm also open to OCs. I don't ship Chris with anyone in the books currently, but if you do want an old flame OC of whatever gender to show up with a new problem, or in a casefic, that could be interesting!

I like what Scalzi did with keeping Chris' gender undefined. My preference would be keeping things similar to canon, where Chris doesn't have on-screen assigned pronouns at all. I get that it's tricky to do that, though! If you do end up needing to give Chris a pronoun, I would prefer they over he or she. I DNW Chris referred to by "it" or neopronouns.

A note about my serious illness/death DNW, in light of the canon here: I am fine with people having had illnesses in the past, people living with Haden’s syndrome, etc. I am fine with discussions of how the epidemic affected the world of Lock In. What my DNW covers here is e.g. angsty fic about someone dying slowly, fic about a past death, etc.

-Vann and Chris get assigned to the Lock In universe's version of The X-Files! I would imagine Vann does NOT want to believe. :D What type(s) of cases might they be looking at?

-Urban legends! I love urban legends, and I especially love seeing them in worlds where they get wrapped up into the worldbuilding. We got to see someone die IRL when their threep got killed in Head On. What other urban legends might come true and require Chris and Leslie's attention? Or what urban legends might Chris unwittingly or deliberately inspire? What ghost stories do Hadens tell?

-More tales of Chris destroying threeps! Are there super-heavy-duty threep companies that approach Chris as a test user? How do the tests go wrong? Something like an internal report about all of Chris’s prior threep destruction could also be hilarious.

-How do Hadens prepare for emergencies? Like snow storms, blackouts, hurricanes, etc.? I'd imagine they're more vulnerable to power cuts -- is that something Chris and his housemates are prepared for?

-Justin & Justine. I know Scalzi well enough as an author to suspect that he's never going to explain this one. I'd love to see your take on it! What's going on there?

-I also really enjoyed Tayla and Tony, if you want to write something more slice-of-life, about the housemates and what things are like when Chris isn't in the middle of a case that's going to end in destruction.



Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

ANY (of Kimmy, Lillian, Xan, and Worldbuilding)

I love where the series left them before the interactive special, and I especially loved seeing Xan’s realization that Kimmy was K. C. Schmidt. :D

Gen is awesome. If you’re into ship, I do ship Kimmy/Xan, so if you want to write them getting together a little later on (maybe after Xan’s graduated from college?), I’m here for that as well. Something focusing on just Kimmy, just Lillian, or just Xan would also be awesome. Or I would also adore something focusing on worldbuilding with none of these characters included!

I’ve played through one round of the interactive special, and I’m fine if you want to take or leave anything from that. I haven’t read the tie-in Legends of Greemulax book, so feel free to go nuts and invent anything you need for that.

With respect to my underage/non-con DNW: I understand that these are baked into the backstory of the canon and I don't expect you to AU that away. However, I would prefer that the story not focus on that.

-What about a future where Xan’s become an academic, and works with K. C. Schmidt scholars professionally, but can’t bring herself to admit that she knows K. C. Schmidt and has a character in the book based on her? And then maybe she and Kimmy get unexpectedly thrown together at a K. C. Schmidt convention…. 

-Or really, anything about K. C. Schmidt fandom and how it operates would be amazing! I love fic about fandom drama.

-Murder on the Orient Express, but make it Murder on the Rocket Blimp! Or really any crime on a rocket blimp. Jewel heist? Air piracy?

-I love the hints we got in S3 and then (SPOILER) in an Easter Egg in the special about a Yuko uprising. How might Kimmy, Xan, and/or Lillian fight the uprising? Did Xan’s father have his business partner program some sort of failsafe into the Yukos for his family and if so, could Xan have unexpected powers over the Yukos?

-Lillian’s apartment building has two ghosts already — Lillian’s late husband Roland, and Titus disguising himself in a sheet to come eat her food — and scenes where Lillian encounters either could be great. Or what other secrets might the apartment building (which is totally not a tugboat) be hiding? How would Lillian react to Kimmy trying to throw a haunted house party for the neighborhood’s kids? 

-I’m always here for Lillian versus the hipsters. Or something about Lillian’s distrust of the future and technology could be fun, too! Maybe Lillian tries to use social media in her next campaign, or maybe Artie gets her something to make her life easier, but it backfires in some way, or works too well.

-Bunny & Kitty! what is Bunny and Kitty? Is this a TV show in Kimmy’s universe? Is it someone’s YouTube channel?

-The puppets. O.o I don’t know what is up with the puppets on this show. But maybe you do!