melannen | Dear Yuletide 2022

Hello Yuletide writer! Thank you for writing for me! Treats are also accepted!

This is yet another year where I requested what I thought was a set of very assorted fandoms, wrote my signup, looked back at my prompts, and said "Oh. I guess I had a theme." So I seem to be in a nesting mood this winter, I requested a bunch of stuff about people finding homes, making homes, making the best of homes, finding people who are homes, leaving homes, being stuck in toxic homes, etc. So if you're the sort of person who just wants a broad idea to get you started, there you are, you can stop reading here!

I am happy with lots of other things too, though. I really would be happy with just any new fic at all in these fandoms (and where there's nominated characters I didn't request, it's because I wasn't confident coming up with prompts, not because I don't want to see them.) If you want to write one of my prompts in a way that doesn't line up with that overall theme, that's also great (like I said, it was inadvertent!) But I don't usually do much of a likes list on these because I like nearly everything - all kinds of tropes, AU, genres, ships, kinks, unusual POV and formats, it's all good - and I am hereby opting in to all the official opt-in-only things. I especially like crossovers and I'm not picky about what with - several of my fandoms this year would be good for crossovers with each other or other stuff. I didn't put in any porn-specific prompts but if you want to write me porn of any kind for any of my prompts I'm up for it. And if there's something that's not in this letter or my signup that turns out to be what you really want to write, I don't mind ODAO either.

The yuletide letter link you have followed led you to my yuletide tag on this dreamwidth, which goes back 20 years; it should also include previous posts I've made about this year's requested fandoms. Feel free to poke around on this journal if you want to know more about me, or feel free to ignore it if you'd rather not.

I don't have any DNWs, really truly - all the things on the standard DNW lists are things I'm okay reading, if that's where your story leads you (I'm not particularly looking for noncon incest bestiality genocide torture death fic this year, my prompts came out pretty wholesome overall, but if it's where my prompts or your heart leads you or you need a place to drop off a treat for someone who doesn't DNW your kinks, as long as it's not intentionally OOC I will probably enjoy it. I really do just want anything at all for these fandoms!)

The only thing I really want to put under DNW is that if you write the SMPEarth fandom, please keep it focused on SMPEarth, and not as worked into the lore of a different SMP. There's plenty of fanfic already for other things Phil and Techno have done, and for SBI generally (Sleepy Bois Inc didn't even exist yet when SMPEarth started!) so while I'm fine if you pull in elements from elsewhere - it's hard to write this kind of fandom without doing that a little - and fine to thematically work with how what they did in SMP Earth made them the people they were later, that's something I find interesting too - please write something that is fundamentally centered in SMP Earth and doesn't twist SMP Earth lore to make it fit better with other SMPs' lore or make SMP Earth subordinate to them, and if you do write me a crossover for SMP Earth fandom, please don't cross over with any of the too-large-for-YT Minecraft fandoms. (You can crossover my other requested fandoms with the big Minecraft fandoms though, that's fine! Hannibal and Scipio would do great in any Minecraft world I'm pretty sure.)

Here's a copy of my signup:

Request 1 by melannen
Fandom:SMPEarth

I would love any kind of worldbuilding for SMPEarth! I'm mostly interested in stuff that follows the internal logic of SMPEarth, not that tries to bring it in line with later SMPs and canon, but do bring in backstory and deviate from what's onscreen as needed if you're trying to make it more coherent!

I'm super intrigued by the Antarctic stronghold, the triumph of finding and claiming it (in defiance of the server owners), exploring it and trying to make it a home, and then the extremely creepy discovery that no animals will grow or breed there.

I also love Techno and Phil in this, how Techno is clearly doing a lot of more advanced survival world stuff as a beginner and in awe of Phil's experience, while Phil, spending time with Techno, is getting in touch with his inner warrior after so long alone (and possibly going a bit overboard on the massacres.) (Pete is also fun, and so are all the other people on the SMP, if you want to bring any of them in or even center on them it's fine.)

Request 2 by melannen
Fandom:Punic Wars RPF
Hannibal Barca (Punic Wars RPF)Scipio Africanus (Punic Wars RPF)

So I am not expert-level knowledgeable about the history here, but I have been seduced by all the little anecdotes about the respect the two of them had for each other across the divide of nations and war, the way they each found a kindred spirit in the least convenient place. Fic about that is great, historical or setting-swap AU.

I always appreciate it if they fake their deaths and run away together, of course. Romantically or not. (And I'd also love a story where at some point after they fake their deaths, they discover they are immortal, and live forward through history as friends, either meeting other immortal characters from fandom of you choice or just seeing what happens to the world by living in it.)

I'd also love a story about either one of them individually during that period after the war when they were both getting older and becoming disillusioned by their nations, even if they don't fake their deaths; something bittersweet but quiet, or angry, or hopeful, or tired, or what do you feel when you saved your country and now they want your honor?

Request 3 by melannen
Fandom:Wulf and Eadwacer

I have always loved this poem since I found it decades ago, and even did my own translation, but the thing I love about it is that you get such a clear idea of the emotions of the people in it while everything else is unclear. And similarly, I love how evocative the description of the land where they live is, for so few words. So write me something about the fen-wrapped island, the woods and rainy weather, or being enwrapped in war-bold arms, or the whelp in the woods, or whatever else in the poem calls to you. Or write me your version of what might have happened here, who Eadwacer was and why she waits and a version of all the detail that's not in the poem.

Writing it in alliterative verse is fine, but so is normal modern prose! My West Saxon is no longer good enough to do without a modern English translation though.

Request 4 by melannen
Fandom:Perilous Gard - Elizabeth Marie Pope
Christopher Heron

What I want more than anything for this fandom right now is water meadows. Christopher telling Kate about draining them, while in durance vile? Their captors listening in and trying to make sense of it by their worldview? Christopher exploring them and learning about them from the people who live near them long before canon, Christopher talking about them at length to people other than Kate who are not interested, Christopher learning the technology from an OC who cares just as much? Kate and Christopher after canon, moving there, making a home around the dreams those long talks underground built for them? Christopher getting very into the modern engineering of it, while Kate has to deal with the things-that-are-(maybe)-not-people who (maybe) live there already and don't want their homes changed? Kate and Christopher dealing with a flood on their land, not underground?

Request 5 by melannen
Fandom:The Ordinary Princess - M.M. Kaye

The first fanfic I ever started was a post-canon fic for The Ordinary Princess that followed up on the very ending of the book that summarizes Amy and Perry's Happy Ever After. I never finished it, but would you write me that? Please write me something about Amy and Perry learning how to be married, making a life together, learning how to lead a kingdom, getting advice from her parents (who did, after all, try their very best, even if they weren't always right), making the castle theirs (or maybe a cottage in the woods), wanting to run away again, not running away (or only doing it in the sorts of ways kings are allowed to run away), being parents, dealing with their own kids' fairy messes, working to transition the kingdom to democratic constitutional monarchy, etc. Any and all of that would be great!

Request 6 by melannen
Fandom:Nimona (Webcomic)
Ballister Blackheart

I'd love a story about Ballister learning how to be a villain, or figuring out home maintenance on a villain lair, or Ballister post-canon learning how to not be a villain and how to build and run an accessible, non-villainous lab, or Ballister's relationships with any of the other characters. Or any Nimona fic at all.

(Dear writer, looking at it laid out this way, my prompts for Nimona seem much shorter, but it is not that I want it less, just that I have canon less memorized and didn't get a chance to review it first, so didn't want to put in any detail that might be misremembered. But I promise I love it just as much and would like anything about Ballister. Or anyone else.)

And if you want to know more about the canons:

SMPEarth is a Minecraft multiplayer server that was played on by a group of video game streamers c. 2019. It happened right before a lot of them became way more popular with the explosion in Minecraft streamer fandom early in the pandemic, so it's kind of a look at the very beginning of the modern Minecraft ecosystem. This is probably a terrible fandom to pick up just for Yuletide, but I am invested in sucking other people into it anyway, so if you want to get started, Technoblade's SMP Earth playlist is the reasonably-sized starting point, and if that makes you want more, you can sample his archived SMP Earth livestreams and Ph1lza's archived SMP Earth livestreams, which will give you more than enough for my prompts, and by that time it will be too late for you anyway.
The Punic Wars are the wars between Rome and Carthage, during the Roman Republic. For this prompt you want the second one, in the 3rd century BCE. Polybius (not the video game) wrote a book about it. Hannibal was Carthage's genius undefeated general, taking much of Italy with impunity, until a young unknown named Scipio on the Roman side rose up to be his equal at military command. It was all very romantic and dramatic and a lot of people died around them. There is actually very little recorded history about them, so it doesn't take much to get caught up on the backstory, but every bit of it is somehow building the evidence that they were secret soulmates. (soulmate AU yes? please?) Here is a previous post by me on the topic, here are some background resource posts from dhampyresa who got me into it.
Wulf and Eadwacer is a very short English poem from about the 9th century AD, from the first-person POV of a woman who has been troubled in love. This is probably your best option if you want to pick up one of these fast! You can probably read it faster than I can summarize. Here is teenage me's translation and commentary which I still mostly endorse, here is the academic paper that inexplicably decided to analyze Teenage Me alongside a bunch of professional translations (also in the paper). For some reason a lot of academia likes to treat this poem as a Great Enigma but? it's just a poem about some people? That's why it doesn't have simple obvious interpretations, it's about people.
The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope is an older YA/Middle Grade novel set in Elizabethan England and loosely based on the legend of Tam Lin: Our Heroine Kate is sent to a remote keep and discovers a fairy cult (or possibly actually fairies?) who take her captive and are planning to sacrifice Christopher Heron as a tithe to their gods. Kate and Christopher are both very not fairy-story sorts of people and they and the fairies come up against a lot of blankly mutual incomprehension, but eventually Kate and Christopher manage to escape the fairy underworld (or possibly secret cult caves?) together to get a happy-ever-after, but changed forever and tinged with a bit of regret for losing the fairy world. If you can find a copy it's definitely worth a read.
The Ordinary Princess by M. M. Kaye is another older YA/Middle Grade novel, this one set in a classic fairy tale world. Princess Amethyst of Ambergeldar is cursed as a baby by a not-exactly-evil-but-kind-of-cranky fairy to be Ordinary, so she grows up as a perfectly ordinary little girl who happens to be living in a castle with her parents and her princess sisters. She has mousy brown hair that doesn't grow very long, freckles, and no particular talents other than living a fairly ordinary life, but it works OK until she gets old enough for her parents to think about marriage, at which point she runs away and lives wild in the forest for most of a year. Eventually she needs money for clothes so she becomes and ordinary kitchenmaid at a neighboring castle, where she meets and falls for an ordinary young serving man named Perry who, of course, turns out to be a prince in disguise. It's a delightful little fairy tale about running around the woods shoeless and nut-brown, and about the value of the ordinary and the extraordinary, and is also definitely worth a read if you can find a copy!
Nimona is a comic by N. D. Stevenson (now better known for things like She-Ra) that originally ran on Tumblr. It has since been put out by a major publisher as a graphic novel and you should be able to find it that way, and unfortunately most of comic is no longer online, but you can still find bits and pieces on Tumblr to get a taste of it. It's set in a sort-of-medieval, sort-of-steampunk, sort-of-SF world, about a mysterious shapeshifter who is generally shaped like a mischievous young girl, who has appointed herself sidekick to an evil (but not really) villain/mad scientist/former knight, who opposes the Institute who trained him and the Knights he trained with that support it. It is also excellent and worth a read if you can get your hands on it!