Yuletide 2019 Letter

[shinon]

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Hello! This is my first Yuletide and I am so excited to be matched with you. This is also my first exchange letter, so uh, please bear with me if it's not quite the thing! The volume of prompts for a given fandom/character is in no way proportional to how happy I'll be with that fandom/character, because I promise you, I am only requesting things that I am extremely stoked to read. Any apparent unevenness in interest levels across this letter is solely an artifact of my inexperience!

As a category note – I like gen of all kinds and will never be disappointed to see gen fic, if that's your speed! I'm only requesting one fandom (The Folk of the Air) for which I'm invested in any particular ship, and I'm still totally down for gen in that one. If you feel like going in a shippy direction, f/m, m/m, and f/f are all welcome here. I DNW explicit sex scenes, but offscreen / implied / fade-to-black / non-explicit sex is cool by me! I'm just not into the play-by-play.

Likes: Humor, friendship, adventure, worldbuilding, missing scenes, character study, angst or bittersweetness, complicated family dynamics, intrigue, fall or winter aesthetics.

I also have a weakness for deathfic, so while I'm not expressly prompting it below, take that as me opting in for Major Character Death. I'd prefer Jude Duarte not die, but I'm okay with any of my other requested characters getting killed, or any unrequested character. No pressure, because I like plenty of lighter stuff too, but the option is there! I am also fine with canon-typical levels of violence for any of my requests (I guess since FFVI is pixels, the violence level is a little obfuscated, but - eh, use your best judgment).

DNWs: Explicit sexual content, non-con, unrequested incest or adult/underage ships, pregnancy, non-canonical child characters, modern or mundane AUs, gender or sexuality as sources of angst/conflict, vomit, urine, feces

On to the specifics!

Final Fantasy VI
Character(s): Sabin
I didn't actually beat FFVI until this past winter. I got a SNES Classic a couple years ago, and only just noticed FFVI on there, and only just ended up, I dunno, letting it devour my whole year. God damn, this game is spectacular. I love everything about it – the balance of goofiness and pathos, the themes of finding hope and purpose in a hopeless world, the weird kinda steampunk/dieselpunk/post-apoc/all-purpose anachronism aesthetic – and I have barely scratched the surface of the fandom to date, so anything you want to throw at me is going to be novel to me.

The Woolsey translation is what I'm most familiar with, but I've read up on the GBA retranslated script as well. Please feel free to mix and match, or rely on whichever one you prefer!

I'm requesting Sabin for this exchange because he's my boy. I love his earnestness, optimism, and willingness to meet people where they're at; I love that he is prepared to throw down with anything or anyone as the situation arises; I love that he is very large and kinda dumb. He's a big dude with big feelings and I find that super endearing. I don't actively ship him with anyone, but if you want to go a shippy direction, I'm willing to be convinced! (As long as it doesn't violate a DNW – so, nothing with Edgar or one of the kids.)

Prompts:

• Sabin solo: Pre-canon, how did he end up training with Duncan? The trip out of the desert to South Figaro isn't exactly safe – how did he make that on his own? How did he decide he wanted to do martial arts? Midgame, what's he get up to during the timeskip after Kefka breaks the world? What's he doing postgame? Although not textually magical, Sabin's more advanced techniques look pretty mystical (and calculate damage using magic stats) – is he affected by the loss of magic? Or if not, would he want to share this with the party members who do lose magic? (If you want to use this to let magic in some form back into the world postgame, I'm for it.)
  
• With Edgar: Edgar is also my boy, and I will never get enough Figaro Bros Content. I love how in-game, after ten years apart, they instantly fall back into the most goofy sibling rapport, but I'm 100% down for a take that's more complicated and fraught, too. I'm super interested in the time around their father's death and Sabin's departure. Or: do they have any catching up to do after they reunite at Mt. Kolts (maybe some downtime at the Returners' base)? Do things change for them when Sabin figures out the trick with the coin toss?
  
• With Terra: I like to think Terra and Sabin hit it off pretty quickly; up to that point she's only been traveling with Edgar and Locke, who, while good dudes, are kind of a lot. And then Sabin's this big friendly goof who's up for whatever and has no weird expectations to place on her and is just... chill. She's got a lot to think about, and I bet he's a great sounding board. I'd love to see them being pals at any point during or after the game. If Gau is any indication, Sabin's good with kids – I bet he's a welcome visitor in Mobliz when the dust settles.
  
• With Cyan: I love Cyan and his grief and his anger and his stiff propriety, and I love that Sabin sees this guy starting out on a rampage of revenge and just decides, “welp! We're friends now!” Honestly, I just want even more of what we get in canon. Sabin being a supportive and nonjugmental friend. These two as Gau's New Dads; more on how they deal with the disappointment of Gau's biological dad (Gau's fine with it, but it seems like it'd hit these two both square in their respective Issues About Parents and/or Parenting). Doma and all its ghosts. One interesting echo is that they both lost family to the Empire specifically via poison; does this extremely depressing common ground affect their interactions at all?
  
• With Shadow: Sabin isn't rattled by Shadow's mysterious scary ninja assassin thing at all, but doesn't seem bothered when Shadow randomly leaves the party either. Does he have any sense of what's going on behind the mask? Does he try to draw Shadow out at all? (Does he make friends with Interceptor? Please say yes.) Postgame, does he wonder what happened to Shadow, or go looking for him?
  
• If Sabin knows Shadow's deal, does he try to talk to Relm after the guy disappears? If he doesn't know Shadow's deal, can he have some kind of interaction with Relm and/or Strago that is laden with twelve levels of dramatic irony?
  
• If you have thoughts on how Sabin gets along with any of the other party members – I may not have prompts, but I am curious and I want to see them!

The Worm Ouroboros
Character(s): Any (Lord Gro, Lady Prezmyra, Lady Mevrian, Brandoch Daha)

I picked this book up on a whim in high school because I was getting burnt out on Tolkien ripoffs (no shade, though; I got burnt out only because I read a lot in that vein) and wanted to try some high fantasy that predated his influence. I had no idea what I was getting into. Paragraphs of heady descriptions of blinged-out palaces on an alien planet, the improbable badassery of the Demons, all of Witchland's intrigues and betrayals and dark magic, mountaineering through the land of the dead, Mevrian's escape from Krothering, the final attack on Carcë – it's so lush, and so weird, and so cool. I love the atmosphere, the grandeur, the general loftiness... but I'd be just as pleased to get something more down-to-earth amid all these great doings.

Prompts:

• What is Gro's deal? I mean, yeah, a love of lost causes leading to Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, but like – on some level he's still loyal to Prezmyra even after defecting to the Demons. Why is that? Is he actually in love with her, or in love with the idea of being in love with someone who will never have him (that whole lost causes thing again)? When he does join the Demons, Gaslark wants to kick his ass and he has nothing to say for himself, just letting Juss and co. defend him – but what happens when his Demon lord buddies aren't there to intervene? I'd just love anything dealing with the frankly bizarre nature of his allegiances, which by all indications are totally sincere at the time (working with Gorice on that sending, for instance!) but which he's also totally ready to throw over for aesthetic purposes.
  
• I'd also be interested in something of Gro's journeys documenting all the hazardous wildlife of Mercury. Sounds both dangerous and nerdy!
  
• In a book full of extremely metal happenings, Prezmyra's suicide stands out to me as the most metal thing. This lady is a total badass in death; I'd also like to see more of her being a badass in life! Witchland court politicking? Falconry? Falconry as a medium for politicking? Her loyalty to her husband and her brother is admirable – have these loyalties conflicted before? What are her memories of Pixyland?
  
• For Gro or Prezmyra (or any other named Witchland character), what's the experience of getting resurrected at the end? Are they as ready to hash everything out again as the Demons are? Will they make the same choices the second time around? Any kind of time loop / canon divergence fuckery would be welcome here.
  
• Mevrian and Gro, back-to-back, swordfighting a whole bunch of dudes in the middle of nowhere, is another favorite scene of mine. More of Mevrian kicking ass is always welcome, whether with a sword or with freezing politeness. She and her brother seem to trust and rely on each other implicitly even though she's considerably younger – I'd love something on that sibling relationship. Maybe they've fought together before, or she's helped him out on some past adventure? Maybe she did something wild and reckless once that proved her mettle? What about her relationship to Krothering as a place, as her home, as a symbol of their family's power and honor? How does she feel about the weird of Ishnain Nemartra, which impacts her heavily too, through no fault of her own?
  
• Any interaction between Mevrian and Prezmyra would be absolutely excellent. (If you can find a way to make that shippy, I'm on board, but I recognize there are obstacles.)
  
• Brandoch Daha, that smartass fancyboy. I could get behind shipping him with Juss (maybe a quiet moment on their quest to find Goldry?) but I like their friendship as written, too. As the dingus who actually got himself cursed by the lady of Ishnain Nemartra, one assumes that the loss of Krothering, and not getting to take it back himself, was a huge blow to him – though his reaction is largely glossed over. Care to un-gloss it? I could also use a bunch more of him and Gro butting heads over Gro's underhanded tactics. Or really just Brandoch Daha butting heads with anyone for any reason.

The Folk of the Air
Character(s): Jude Duarte

I'm writing this at a time when Queen of Nothing is yet to be released, and I also haven't read the Taryn novella set during The Cruel Prince. I plan to have read both by the time of YT reveals; feel free to comply or not comply with them as you see fit!

Also, in case of confusion, my "modern or mundane AUs" DNW doesn't apply to anything where characters in this canon interact with the mortal world. Obviously that's gonna be modern, and that's fine! I just want the same magic level as in canon.

Anyway – Jude! She's great, and I love her. I don't necessarily want her to succeed in the things that she wants to succeed at, because she's really blinkered in a lot of ways and sometimes seems dead-set against her own happiness or best interests. But her anger and paranoia and defensiveness are understandable and super compelling. Watching her try to tough stuff out on her own is stressful, but it's a stress I love – and watching her put one over on someone is consistently fun as hell.

I'm also way more into Cardan/Jude than I anticipated. This convoluted “enemies to friends(?) to enemies to lovers to frenemies to secretly married to whatever the hell Cardan's up to going into book three” situation is kinda great. It's messy and complicated, because they're both messy and complicated and don't really know how to act like people, and they want to trust each other but they can't, and they like each other but that in itself is weird given this history of intense mutual antagonism...

In essence: [gestures at this entire canon] I like that. More of that.

Prompts:

• Jude with her family! There's, wow, there's a lot going on here. All three sisters, understandably, have a huge heap of conflicted feelings about Madoc. He's genuinely doing his best by them, but “his best” is filtered through the fact that he's also genuinely a monster. Jude in particular wants his approval but has no illusions about how dangerous he really is – and her game plan is to become even more dangerous than he is. I'd love something dealing with this! Did she ever think Madoc was playing her and Taryn off each other? (Was she right?) As a result of their upbringing all three sisters (and presumably also Oak, though he's young enough it's not obvious?) have some pretty janky morality and significant blind spots, each in their own way, and anything that digs into that would be great.
  
• Maybe a trip to the mortal world with Taryn and Vivi, before Jude and Taryn fall out over Locke? Maybe a trip that doesn't end in Jude assaulting a dude? (Or maybe it does, that's also fine.)
  
• Or something during the brief timeskip at the end of The Wicked King - Jude and Vivi both kinda failing to deal with their recent breakups, and all the recent drama in Faerie, and still take care of Oak.
  
• Or – one thing canon is never gonna give us, ha! – I'd like to see Jude get a chance to relax for once. Not that she'd likely take advantage of it, but maybe Vivi or the Bomb or the Roach tries to create some space for her to chill the hell out?
  
• On that note, Jude with the Court of Shadows! Learning spycraft, plotting and scheming, knives and poisons and stealth and finding a tense sort of camaraderie with this gang of misfits. Cardan's invited to this too, naturally. Maybe some spy shenanigans or political wrangling from early in Cardan's reign. Maybe another incident at one of his parties that could have gone very badly, but Jude and the Court of Shadows manage to avert disaster. I dig the idea of Jude, who's supposed to be the spy, running the kingdom while Cardan, who's supposed to be the king, is messing around learning how to pick pockets or do knife tricks or make explosives or whatever.
  
• Jude's attitude to other humans is so interesting, especially where they come into contact with Faerie – this blend of protectiveness and sympathy and contempt. She seems to see herself in them, or a reminder of how she isn't fully of either world. By book two she's laid down some rules about how mortals are to be treated; how does she feel about enforcing them? The issue is important to her, but leaning on it too hard just calls attention to her vulnerability and otherness. Has she had to make any difficult calls on those lines?
  
• If you just give me 1000 words of Cardan and Jude sniping at each other (with or without Jude's grudging acknowledgment that, oh no, this guy is actually fun), I will be fully content.