Dear Yulegoat

[sathinfection]

Thank you for writing for me! And if you're not my assigned writer, thank you for thinking about writing for me! I hope you find something that you like here. I am generally easy to please - I want you to have a good time writing for me! Just please avoid my DNWs. 

I'm Sath on AO3 and sathinfection on Tumblr. 

general likes:
 

• I’m extremely open to different formats! I love the standard close third-person character-centered fanfic, but I’m equally thrilled to receive docufic, acafic, interactive fiction, or epistolary works. If you're feeling like writing fic in first or second person, go for it.
• Science, the uncanny, and uncanny science make up a lot of my interests. I’m into aliens, monsters, eldritch abominations, weird anatomy, field surgery, medicine, experimentation, blood, people grimly coping with injuries whilst soldiering on, xeno, and body horror.
• Porno! Simmering sexual tension that eventually resolves into great sex. Shipfic overall. 
• Gen and worldbuilding. I really, really love worldbuilding. Brooding, significant landscapes. Getting into the dark underside of a city, and going down every alley. 
• For any ship, I absolutely love fic where both characters are in a dangerous situation where it's just the two of them and they have to work together to make it through. 
• Pretend relationship leads to real relationship is something I don't get tired of. 
• Undercover plots in general, because it's a great way to make characters have to rely on each other.
• I love loyalty and service kink. 
• People being temporarily cursed to be in animal bodies. Ladyhawke was formative for me, what can I say? 
• Doom. Darkness. Looming foreboding. Frozen hellscapes. The crumbling ruins of forgotten empires. Weltschmerz. That sort of feeling you get when you read the Anglo-Saxon poem, The Wanderer. Vengeance. Blood feuds. 
• On the lighter side, I love humorous stuff too. Make the characters have to do something truly ridiculous, like rescue a small dog in exchange for a huge reward. Bizarre insurance scams, truly weird legal rules, or bureaucratic comedy. 
• Weird magic. Strange artifacts. Steampunk. Alien technology. Strange illnesses that a character has to cure through unconventional means. 
• I totally dig on OCs, as well as outsider POV. 
• Exploration! Mystery! The unknown!
• F/F and M/M.
• Fics of any length. Whether you write 1000 words or 30,000, I'll be so happy you wrote for me. 

 

General do not wants: 

 

• AUs (i.e. mundane, modern, gender, magical, etc.), except for canon divergence and ones specifically requested.
• Kids. Babies. Pregnancy of any sort in anyone. Infantilization. 
• Unrequested crossovers and fusions. 
• Cancer. 
• Noncon and underage. Domestic abuse.
• BDSM and D/s.  
• Polyamory/OT3s. Unrequested non-canon side pairings. M/F. Infidelity.
• Genderswap. 
• A/B/O. Heats/ruts in general. 
• Fic focusing on gender dysphoria, misogyny, homophobia, self-care, or self-harm.  
• Characters being sex-repulsed. 

Porn wants and do not wants are at the end of the letter. 
 

And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side - James Tiptree Jr.

 

This is one of my favorite short stories, because it packs a massive punch in very few words, and is quite literally about one of my favorite subjects: humans wanting to fuck aliens. You can read it for free here. It’s a pretty brutal skewering of scifi machismo and critical of period-typical racism (there is one use of a racial slur by an unsympathetic character). I talk a little bit about the author and her general approach in the pimping post. What I want here is worldbuilding/exploration, which is why I didn’t nominate any characters. 

 

Here’s my favorite excerpt: “We’ve hit the supernormal stimulus. Man is exogamous—all our history is one long drive to find and impregnate the stranger. Or get impregnated by him; it works for women, too. Anything different-colored, different nose, ass, anything, man has to fuck it or die trying. That’s a drive, y’know, it’s built in. Because it works fine as long as the stranger is human. For millions of years that kept the genes circulating. But now we’ve met aliens we can’t screw, and we’re about to die trying. . . .” 

 

It’s such a deeply colonialist statement, and like all Tiptree’s best work, it’s possible to take it uncritically. Yeah, humanity wants to go out and fuck things and we’ve found the unfuckable and now we’re all gonna die, fuckless. But actually, it’s such a good swipe at hypermasculine scifi. There’s also a criticism of the fear of miscegenation and immigration, presenting it as fruitless and perverted. Another theme that comes up is homophobia, as the engineer fearfully recalls that it didn’t matter that the Yyeir was male. 

 

I’d love to read a deconstruction of this, exploring what Tiptree started - perhaps the perspective of one of the aliens on humans? You could follow the newsman as he gets to meet aliens for himself. Or what if the story was set in 2017? (Please no references to the current political horror story, though) You could also write a story exploring the direct setting: alien sex addiction. What really would happen if humanity became obsessed with fucking aliens and no longer wanted to reproduce itself? How would the world end? You could also reset the story in a number of historical settings, which would be fascinating. Aliens and Genghis Khan? Aliens and Anglo-Saxons? Aliens arrive at Cusco before the conquistadors? 

 

I’m also totally down with Original Female Alien/Original Female Human or Original Male Alien/Original Male Human. What sort of cultural and sexual difficulties do they have? Do they end up having to tragically part ways, or are they able to stay together? 

Deeply Strange Deep Sea Animals

 

Any: Eyeball-Eating Phosphorescent Copepod, Greenland Shark, Whale Fall, Giant Isopod

 

Is there anything more horrifying than the frigid depths of the ocean? You're living in total darkness under crushing pressure, without even the sweet release of early death. For a better idea of what I’m asking for, check out the pimping post I made on the comm. 

 

I want any and all fic  about these critters. I'm particularly curious as to their inner thoughts. What's it like for the Greenland shark as the copepod starts to take hold in its eyes and slowly eats them? Is the shark distressed? Does it wonder when the eating will stop? Does it miss its eyesight, or does it even notice that it's lost a sense? And how does the copepod feel? Does it wish it had a more exciting host (does it know there are more exciting hosts?) or does it have a sincere love for the shark? Do Greenland sharks, when they reach sexual maturity at age 150, experience love? 

 

Does a hagfish have dreams above its station - like, does it ever think it would like to try fresh whale over decaying whale, but is sad that it’s not strong enough to swim to the upper layers of the ocean, and also it’s blind and full of snot? Perhaps you could write the POV of the decaying whale, and how it loves the community it feeds. 

 

Maybe there really were three giant isopods eating Doritos on someone’s floor. How did the isopods get there? Maybe Giant Isopods have their own advanced society under the ocean and we just haven’t found it yet. Perhaps a Giant Isopod decides to explore the surface, and becomes a celebrity. 

 

Or for another angle, who was the first person who ate Greenland shark and got wasted on sharkmeat? Were they then obsessed with the mystery of how to make the shark more edible? Consider: Greenland sharkmaids. Greenland shark selkies. I’m actually completely serious that I would love an F/F romance involving a Greenland sharkmaid and a scientist. Or maybe a romance between an male Icelandic bartender and a male Greenland shark selkie, after the bartender accidentally makes hakarl out of the shark selkie’s discarded skin and now he’s got a houseguest with an extremely low metabolism, bad eyesight, and memories of the 18th century. You could also reverse the gender setups of either these scenarios, as long as there is no M/F. 

 

Fallen London | Echo Bazaar  

I love the setting of Fallen London so much. Normally, I’m very ‘eh’ about Victoriana and the assorted tropes, but the Neath has its Hellish, fungal charms. I’m most fond of the Brass Embassy, the devils (particularly the Quiet Deviless), the urchins, and the Tomb-Colonists. Also, any of the material that overlaps with Sunless Sea is great. For Fallen London, I prefer F/F but also like gen scenarios. This fandom is excellent for body horror, cannibalism, death being omnipresent yet impermanent, and also very very large, yet morose, spiders. 

The Silk-Clad Expert

 

While the Silk-Clad Expert didn’t have anywhere near the amount of content I wanted (a passionate romance with potential spider transformation, to be exact), what we got was completely charming. I loved how the Expert would play with your sorrow-spider, imitating the spiders eight-legged movements with her meager two arms. Her honey dreams of becoming a spider, and her fascination with how to become as spider-council. How did the Expert get to be the way she was? Is she a normal woman obsessed with spiders? Or is she a spider, forced into a human body and trying to return? A character study and origin story for her would be great. 

 

I would love it if instead of leaving after her quest sequence was done, the Expert pursues a romance with a female PC, or enlists the PC as her friend to help her in her search for more knowledge of spider-councils. Perhaps the Expert and the PC go to Zee, or explore the frozen North or go to Venderbight in the quest for knowledge. Maybe the Expert tries to make her lover/friend into a spider (like herself - perhaps the Expert was a spider-council all along), or she tries to transform herself into a spider. Maybe, after learning enough, the Expert decides that humanity is enough. Obviously, I cannot get enough body horror for this pairing, and weird sex would be a bonus to anything. You can get reaaaaally spidery with it. Suddenly eight eyes? Spinnerets? Venomous fangs? Some blood-drinking? You could also just write regular human sex; I’m game. 

 

The Expert and the PC could also get into all manner of other mysteries in the Neath - exploring whatever storylines you find interesting or pulling from the various scenarios I’ve put in my general likes. Fusions/crossovers with Sunless Sea are welcome. There's also the option of pairing the Expert with various female NPCs!

Gentlemen Bastard Sequence

 

I don't normally read fantasy books thick enough that they could be used as a doorstop, because I never love the characters enough. That was absolutely not the case as I read all 3 of these books in short succession. I love the confidence games the Bastards run, where the purpose is to defraud the hell out of the rich. Jean and Locke have a wonderful dynamic that keeps getting more and more codependent as the books go on. I'm pretty sure that Scott Lynch has a hurt/comfort and service kink going on, based on how books 2 and 3 both start with Jean taking care of Locke while he's mostly helpless and being pathetic. I ship them intensely, but it’d be easy to make any of my ship prompts gen and I’d still be happy. 

 

Locke Lamora, Jean Tannen

 

Locke is both incredibly capable and incredibly good at fucking things up, which I love. I'm obsessed with the trope of 'villain gets amnesia and turns good,' which Republic of Thieves delivered to me in yet another moment where I felt like Scott Lynch was out to get me right in all my narrative kinks. Locke being haunted by the past he can't remember (potentially having flashbacks to how he was 'born,’ or his old life) would be a great setup for angst between him and Jean. Jean is such a great character, particularly since he combines a lot of kindness, caring, and literary nerdiness with a bad temper and having the build of the Stereotypical Bruiser. The books really explore his loyalty to Locke, though they never quite fully explain why Jean’s life has to revolve around him, so digging into why he’s so loyal would be fascinating. Perhaps it has something to do with Locke’s secret evil undead wizardry, and Locke is bewitching Jean without realizing it?

 

I love Camorr, so I'd be happy to read fic set while the Bastards were there. I'm really fond of the Sanzas, sharks, and toxic honor culture.There's also so much about Tel Verrar and the time spent gaming the Sinspire that'd be worth exploring. If you're also into Jean/Locke, I'm super interested in canon divergence where they got together while the Sanzas and Bug were still alive, or if something made the ship happen during the second book. I'm not interested in fic set when Jean and Locke were teens.

 

Pretend relationship turning to real relationship would work well with a con, and is a trope I love. Locke and Jean getting trapped in a small space while hiding out from something and then boners happen. Locke and Jean go to Emberlain and it’s terribly snowy and Locke gets hypothermia and jean takes care of him and then they have sex. Maybe Locke gets creatively poisoned again, and he thinks he's dying and deals with his feelings by having sex with Jean, but then it turns out Locke wasn't dying after all. So many possibilities! You also don’t have to write getting-together fic - I’d be happy with established relationship where they go on some sort of adventure or just have some good sex. I’d prefer that if you write anal sex, Locke bottoms, but I’m not super attached to the idea. 

 

I would also deeply appreciate fic where Locke has to crossdress for a job, which results in Jean coming to terms with the fact that he wants to fuck his friend, and Locke realizes that he loves wearing dresses/skirts and also wants to fuck his friend. You could also go for a light-hearted roleplay element in it, like Locke is practicing his role for the con as ‘sexy forgetful maid’ and Jean is the ‘serious-minded tough’ and they end up taking it further than expected (to sex). Crossdressing or no, any sort of roleplaying (or practice roleplaying) for a scheme that ends up in sex would be great.

 

Note: I would totally dig any sort of crossover or fusion of the Gentlemen Bastards with the Dishonored or Fallen London universes, provided that the focus is on Jean and Locke rather than the characters from the other verses. Check out my ToT letter for ideas. 

 

General porn wants:

 

I'm generally pretty vanilla, outside of my xeno kink, but I like receiving explicit fic. Here's the kinks I asked for in a past Smut Swap that I'd be interested in seeing for this exchange: crossdressing, clothing kink, clothed sex, anal sex, oral sex, hand jobs, consensual drunk sex, xeno, injured sex, intercrural sex, size difference, biting, size kink, manhandling/shows of athleticism during sex, licking, wall sex, awkward sex, and roleplay. Also, I know some people shy away from the word 'cunt' in femslash, but I have no problem with the word. 

 

General porn do not wants:

 

rough nipple play, humiliation, bestiality, rimming, watersports, vomit, scat, vore (only in a sexual way, though - like, eating someone alive and everyone being turned on is a no, general eating people because you are a shark is fine), fisting, kink negotiation, stuffing/inflation/feeder kink, foot kink, penis in vagina intercourse

Comments

[cahn]

So -- drive-by to say, I requested Tiptree last year and I got really amazing fic, one of which is actually a sequel to the story you nominated this year -- though it doesn't have any aliens in it. (Unless people are aliens.) (Which the story might implicitly argue.)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/8886352

(I also got another Tiptree story that I also really like: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9014833
which isn't related to this story but which you might enjoy because you like Tiptree. I can't tell you how psyched I am that you nominated this story! I LOVE Tiptree.)

[sathinfection]

Oh gosh, thank you for the recs! They were both great.

I was really shocked to find so many other Tiptree fans - looking forward to this Yuletide quite a lot. :D