nighthuntermoppet | Dear Yuletide Writer 2021

Hello, Yuletide writer! Happy end-of-2021 - if you're living on the same planet as me, we've had a hell of a couple of years, so take it easy. I've been doing Yuletide for quite a few years and I always look forward to it and I know I'll be thrilled with whatever you come up with. We already matched on things we like! Just have fun and I'd love to read the fic of your dreams. ♥

My only hard DNW is explicit underage (under 18) sex, which is listed on my signup. For everything else I am pretty open-minded and you can use your judgment: in general, if it's in line with the tone of canon, I am good with it, and I am honestly a pretty big fan of a lot of dark and angsty work so don't feel afraid to explore very dark themes if that strikes your interest. These are all pretty tragic or bittersweet pairings that I've requested, at best, so I'm ready for tragedy. I like unhappy endings. I also like happy endings, depending. The sky/the abyss is the limit.

I'll just copy over my request text here for each, with any short canon-specific preference notes underneath:

Fate/Zero: For me, Waver and Iskandar's relationship is the emotional heart and grace note of Fate/Zero but they get such precious little time together: I'd love to give them more, whether in the form of a fix-it, an AU with an expanded timeline, some way of crossing paths in the future or the past, or anything else. I love the purpose and meaning that Waver finds in his strange, ancient, irreconcilable-to-modern-values-and-life connection to his king; I love the asymmetry of it, and the totality and devotion, - the bittersweet charge of their connection and the meaning it has at the beginning of Waver's life and the end of Iskandar's - I just want more for them. I ship the hell out of them, so romance and gen are both fine and so is any rating.

I love Fate/Zero as a standalone thing of its own and I also love any mythical or historic bigger narratives you'd like to weave it into. I'm indifferent-to-open to including references to things from Fate/Stay Night: UBW continuity, but I'd prefer to avoid Fate/Grand Order or El-Melloi Case Files continuity as I'm mostly unfamiliar.

The Folk of the Air: What transpired between Madoc and Eva (and Justin, and Oriana, separately - but centrally Madoc and Eva) is the tragic foundation on which the Folk of the Air books is built. I love Madoc so much as a character in all his half-honorable, half-disgusting glory, and the ways in which he can't help but be exactly and sincerely what he is and the ways in which he lies to himself; I'm really intrigued by the hints of who Eva was, how she fit in in Elfhame and how she didn't. I'd love backstory for them. I find their story both horrendous and tragic and kind of fucked-up romantic, but even if you don't read any degree of past genuine love into their relationship, I'm interested in any read on their backstory together. (I also love ghosts and hauntings, real or psychological. >_>) Any rating is good!

I'm also really interested in the world of Elfhame (the new 'Worldbuilding' tag kept tempting me a lot!) and I'm curious about a lot of supporting characters and would love to get to know them too, including Justin, Oriana, Liriope, Asha, Val Moren, Grima Mog - my only qualifier is that while I'm really invested in Jude, Taryn, Vivienne, Cardan, etc., I'm really focused on the parents' generation (inasmuch as that exists in Elfhame) for this prompt and would prefer them included primarily as kids if at all, in relation to their elders.

Hadestown:Hades and Persephone's relationship is such a compelling presence in the world of Hadestown and it really underlies everything that happens in the story. The show has such an interesting take on them, on the horror and also pathos and bittersweet romance of their relationship, on Hades as a menacing Bluebeard figure that reveals himself as fearful and jealous and wretched, as Persephone as charismatic and sunny and volatile and depressed, compassionate and careless at turns. There are a lot of interesting ways to approach fic for Hadestown and I'm pretty open to any, but I'm especially interested in the future of Hades and Persephone. Did Orpheus and Eurydice's story move them to anything, or is this a doomed cycle? What other stories do they find themselves caught up in?

I recently saw Hadestown live and I was taken aback by how interesting and nonliteral or ambiguous the staging was, and swept away by the charisma of the performers--I loved the dissonance between lyrics describing "tickets" or a train, and the blocking with coins for Charon and a pit opening up in the ground. I'll be really interested however you render the world depicted in Hadestown in written form.