Yuletide Letter 2021

[spacegandalf]

Hello!! Thank you for agreeing to write something for me. <3 I'm signed up to Yuletide as facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf) and if you're writing me a treat, please gift it there. Optional details are optional, of course, and I'd love to see whatever you come up with! Some of these have more stuff about them than others but that's not because I'm less enthusiastic about the others! My brain is just so very empty. (The Blaseball one is so much bigger than the others just because Blaseball is so much bigger as a canon, oops! I promise I am jazzed about the others as well.)

I am open to crossovers (see +here for a list of fandoms I'm familiar with and anything I've written or bookmarked except for Hibike! Euphonium and Supergirl) and interactive fiction.

Table of Contents

General Likes
DNWs
Blaseball (Video Game) (Any of: Tot Clark, Chorby Soul, Sebastian Telephone, Mike Townsend)
Fandom for Robots - Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Any)
Got fun Nekomeh | God of Vengeance - Asch (Manke, Rifke)
I Built An Unethical Zoo On the Moon (Youtube Game Play Video) (Any)
Score: A Hockey Musical (2010)(Moose)
Yudah Cohen Series - Rebecca Fraimow (Any)

General Likes

• Worldbuilding
• Cultural differences
• Roleswaps
• Fix-its
• Character/relationship studies/genfic
• Canon divergence
• Established relationship
• Getting together
• People finding something soft and/or something that makes them happy even when the world is going to shit
• Hurt/Comfort
• Fake Dating
• Humour
• Tenderness
• Politics
• Plottiness
• Angst
• Fluff
• Mutual Pining
• Outsider POV
• Time travel, time loops
• Queer characters
• Missing scenes
• Found Family
• Unconventional formats
• Comedy of errors
• Crack treated seriously
• Judaism

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Do Not Wants

• Unhappy endings
• Non-canonical Major Character Death
• Noncon
• Omegaverse
• Pregnancy
• Smut (fade to black totally fine)
• Humiliation
• Big age gap (7 years-ish? i'm not going to be a massive stickler on this, it's more a power imbalance that's a problem)
• Significant power imbalance or mentor/mentee romance/sexual relationship
• Unrequited love
• Incest
• Highschool/college AU
• Permanent amnesia
• Infidelity (polyam is fine with consent of all parties)
• Readerfic (2nd person is fine as long as it's meant to be a specific character)
• Cancer/other terminal illness
• Suicide
• Queer tragedy
• Painful breakups (reference to past breakups is fine)
• Christmas and Christianity
• Covid

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Blaseball (Video Game)

Blaseball is a free absurdist baseball simulator featuring fights against evil gods, an ever-changing rulebook and character death via incineration by rogue umpire. It's on hiatus at the moment but you can experience the magic through Before. The characters are entirely made up by the fans (though the names, stats and game performance are canon) and the narrative arcs are basically the fans taking the results of the Random Number Generator and weaving them into a story. The Blaseball Wiki is a good place to start if you're interested in that side of things! The Blaseball Roundup gives a helpful and hilarious overview of the events of the game. It also has an (un)official band, the garages, which releases AMAZING music, all of which can be found here. Three out of four of the nominated characters have canonically died at least once and if you want to kill off Mike Townsend, I'm happy to waive my no MCD.

If you'd prefer to write a fic that doesn't feature the tagset characters, then I'm happy with that as long as it's more of a worldbuilding or team ensemble-type deal rather than going in deep on a specific character UNLESS that character is a non-player entity, e.g. the Commissioner, the Microphone, the Monitor, the Anchor, the Ticker, the Coin. (That said, I'm also cool with you writing about any of the Garages players.) If it's a team ensemble, I'm happy with any team! There are lots that I know nothing about and learning more about them would be rad.

Blaseball-specific DNWs:

• Blaseball players not in the league (so not in a setting AU or set before they joined the league)
• Fic focused on romance (side plot/mentions totally fine)

Tot Clark (happy with any pronouns)
king tot's lament absolutely got me feeling emotions about Tot. I'd not thought of them much before these last few seasons but as everyone started to die, I got so. How tragic must it be to watch everyone around you die!!! Some ideas:

• When Tot finally got incinerated after being unstable so many times, what was it like? I'm also happy for it to be a fic about Tot's death and the other Garages reacting to it, especially the Final Four (Theodore Duende, Arturo, Malik and Oliver Mueller who was redacted only days later).
• Tot being unstable -- what is instability? Does everyone treat Tot differently? When it was via Jaylen, how did that feel?

Chorby Soul (she or they please!)

• What was it like returning to Blaseball in s15 after being incinerated in s3? Things changed so much.
• Getting incinerated so many times :((( 
• Getting chomped constantly!! Did Chorby have feelings about being an edensity mammoth?
• Was part of Chorby in the replicas? 
• What is a soulscream and why is Chorby's so long?

Sebastian Telephone (he or they please!)

• I looooove Blaseball the Musical: The Deaths of Sebastian Telephone and anything about his whole plot there would be great! I'm happy to waive my no romance focus here if you wanted to write Sebastian/Conor.
• What's his relationship with Jessica? How did he deal with her fame? 
• How did he deal with all of his deaths? 

Mike Townsend (he please!)

• What was returning to Blaseball from the Shadows like? 
• What about that last season when he was redacted? We all saw it coming, what was that fear like?
• What was his relationship with the other Garages like? How did he go from a Disappointment to a Credit to the Team?

General Worldbuilding

• What is it like to exist in the universe of blaseball but you're not a player? I love sincerely, the collateral and would love to see fic in that vein.
• The Hall -- what's it like? What's the Monitor like? What happens when a player is necromanced? 
• What is being in Debt like? Do players regret being brought back?
• What on earth was going on behind the scenes with the Coin? Who is Namerifeht? 
• Can the Anchor and the Monitor unionise? They deserve a union.
• Blaseball players union!!!
• What are replicas? 
• What is the Hellmouth? What was Moab falling into the Hellmouth like? How does the Hellmouth affect visitors or players who are new to the team?
• Are there other locations that are Weird like the Hellmouth? How so? 
• If you have a team you want to write an ensemble love letter to then that sounds awesome!

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Fandom for Robots - Vina Jie-Min Prasad

Fandom for Robots is a short story available here about a robot who Definitely Doesn't Have Emotion Circuits but is definitely obsessed with an anime called Hyperdimension Warp Record that he then writes fanfic about. It's so charming and has so much potential for fic!!!

• Obviously I love Computron. Anything about him would be great. I'd love to see more of his friendship (or more?) with Bjorn.
• Does Computron eventually come clean about being a literal robot? I mean, not that he's trying to hide it that much, but Bjorn still thinks he's just RPing.
• Or maybe some of Computron's fic (bonus points if it's the ones where he hasn't quite worked out how to write humans yet)
• Does Computron get into other fandoms?
• Does Computron get to talk enthusiastically with a fan of Hyperdimension Warp Record at the museum? Two wholesome nerds nerding out!!
  
• Or maybe some outsider POV on Computron! Bjorn or a museum visitor, perhaps.
• You could do some really fun stuff with different formats/media

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Got fun Nekomeh | God of Vengeance - Asch (Manke, Rifke)

This is a 1906 Yiddish play that's available for free in English translation here. It's remarkable for having canon lesbians (!) who kiss on stage (!!) portrayed sympathetically (!!!) and no one dies at the end. Sure, it's not a happy ending, but that has nothing to do with the gayness and all to do with the fact that the villain of the play is misogyny. It's the tragedy of a man who goes mad and his daughter who ends up as the target. But there's so much opportunity to play here!!! I'm happy for the characters to be OR instead of AND, if you wanted to just focus on one of them.

• Fix-it! Perhaps Manke and Rifke run away together! The Pale of Settlement is big and they could find a place to re-invent themselves.
• Fuck halacha, have them get married. Perhaps Hindel gets Shloyme to borrow a siddur from the rabbi to study the brachot, and Manke and Rifke can have a ceremony, even if it's only in front of Hindel.
• How did Rifke and Manke get together?
• Has Rifke studied (or tried to study) any Torah? 
• Does anyone try to help Rifke after the end of the play? 
• Does Rifke's mother know about her and Manke and she just never said anything?

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I Built An Unethical Zoo On the Moon (Youtube Game Play Video)

This is a 15-minute short film available here that looks like it's going to be a Let's Play of a zoo simulator but very quickly becomes So Much More. I have no idea how the creator made this short film inside Planet Zoo but I am in awe. I'm so glad I discovered it via the Yuletide tagset.

• The Terminator Bears. What's their deal? What's their goal? Do they hate this one zoo creator (the owner of the zoo in-world, perhaps?) or do they plan to take over the world? What do they gain by following Grace to the moon? 
• The Giraffe(s). They suffer so much. What's their understanding of what's going on? What if they were telepathic? What if they were in league with the Terminator Bears, though they're unable to help with the mission? What if all the giraffes are a hivemind that remembers the brutal death of each giraffe? What if one or more of them escaped?
• Commander Grace. Someone help her!!! How was she chosen to go to the moon? Was she just a normal zoo employee before this? What if she hadn't released the Terminator Bears? 
• The Moon goblins. What's their relationship with the Terminator Bears? What did they want with the moon base and/or Grace? What's their civilisation like? 
• Outsider POV of everything happening from a zoo employee or a visitor -- how ominous is it to visit a zoo with a counter of how many days since an animal death? What do orangutan tears taste like? Do the employees try to rebel against management? Do they succeed?

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Score: A Hockey Musical (2010)
I watched this film and immediately edited my Yuletide signup to include it. It's a Whole Experience and I highly recommend watching it for free on Youtube! If "hockey musical" doesn't sell you, there's a glorious promo post here. It inexplicably stars Patrick from Schitt's Creek and Olivia Newton John. Nelly Furtado is there. I simply cannot express in words How Much this film happens.

• I love my son Moose. We see him go on a whole journey about what intricate rituals you need to construct to touch the skin of other men and I'd love to see something exploring that!
• I also ship Farley/Moose. Does it happen before the whole Farley doesn't fight scandal or after? Is Moose, known Sensitive Guy, already aware/comfortable with his queerness? Or does he have to work through it with Farley? 
• What's the conversation like when the Blades have that discussion about violence and refused to let Coach Donk in? 
• Does Moose ever meet Farley's parents (as a friend or boyfriend)? How does that go?
• They're not in the tagset, but if you wanted to write a fic where Coach Donk and Darryl are secretly married.......... I sure as hell wouldn't stop you. (It would be hilarious if they're not even trying to hide it, they're just Like That. but deliberately hiding it would also be delicious.) Or any Donk/Darryl content.
• A Do Not Want: please don't have Farley and Eve together! Eve deserves someone better. I love her. (Mentions of her crush on Farley are fine.)

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Yudah Cohen Series - Rebecca Fraimow

This is a series of short stories available for free:
“Further Arguments in Support of Yudah Cohen’s Proposal to Bluma Zilberman” by Rebecca Fraimow
Shaina Rubin Keeps Her Head Under Circumstances Nobody Could Have Expected
Gitl Schneiderman Learns to Live With Her In-Laws

They share a universe that's Jewish with a little magic! Yudah Cohen argues that Bluma should marry him because he could help with her mother who is definitely not a werewolf. It's just so charming and so full of possibility!

• Yudah arriving in Vilna, becoming part of the community, finally free to be who he is. How does that feel?
• Tante Leah -- what's her life as a werewolf like? How did it go with Yudah saying he already knew? Was she planning to confess? Who else knows? Is this just a secret that everyone pretends to keep to avoid making Leah uncomfortable? Does Shaina ever find out?
• Yudah/Bluma -- what's their courtship like? Their marriage? If you wanted to write some smut for this, I'd be happy to receive it, though preferably not PWP. And the baby! What's living in Lodz like? Are there any unexpected surprises with the baby being a quarter demon?
• Shaina -- her life is truly so hard. I'd love to see more of her and Bluma, or her friendship with Gitl, or her visiting Lodz. And when people start making noise about her needing to get married, does she want to or does she perhaps go to Yudah for help on how to avoid that? (She read to me as ace, but I'm happy for whatever interpretation you bring!)
• A legal proceding/some talmud/etc. from this world would be amazing, since we know that demons have brought court cases.
• Gitl and Mirele -- did Gitl love her husband or was it actually Mirele? Or did she love them both? What is her life like with Mirele now that they've run off to the theatre?
• More of Yudah encountering magic -- he's been visited by dybbuks before; how did that go? What other creatures does he encounter?