Dear Yuletide Personage
Oct. 14th, 2018 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
melmilloHello, dear writer!
Wow, it's Yuletide again! How did that happen? :D I'm sure I'll love whatever you end up creating for me, so please don't stress out so much that you ruin Yuletide and the holiday season for yourself--I genuinely love each canon and character I've requested, and will be over the moon to get a fic about them.
I do not have much of a text-blogging presence in fandom namespace any longer, but my AO3 name is melmillo, and I quietly tumblr under the name smallmonday.
Below is some basic blab about my reading preferences, and reposts of my official requests plus some specific thoughts on each request/fandom.
General thoughts:
--I have no real preferences in terms of POV or tense, as long as it's consistent and clear. First-, second-, and third-person POVs are all fine. I love character studies and meditative pieces just as much as plottier stories, and I'm also happy with various forms of stories like five-times fics and document/epistolary fics and so on.
--I'm okay with stories that deal with unpleasant or depressing themes, or don't have 100% happy endings. However, I'd appreciate it if you'd steer away from all-out wallowing in complete darkness or bleakness, or ending a story with everyone miserable and/or dead. Or, to put it another way--I'm totally fine with a dark fic, but I'm not fine with a grimdark fic.
- I'm fine (sometimes more than fine!) with things like uneven power dynamics, mentions of mistreatment/captivity/torture of people, creepy imagery, gore that isn't extreme, etc. My general DNWs and squicks are:
- blatant character-bashing
- mundane/modern AUs
- A/B/O of any kind
- body fluids besides blood, sweat, and tears
- damage to eyes, teeth, fingernails, and inner ears
- incredibly detailed descriptions of insects and arachnids (general mentions are fine!)
- graphic violence to/torture of animals (again, not a problem if it's mentioned or described generally--I just don't want the gory details)
If you want more guidance about some other squick (or like/kink), please feel free to get in touch with me through the mods, or drop an anon comment here!
--I don't this this one will apply much this year, as most of my requests lean towards being gen-flavored, but if you're writing something shippy or involving a romantic/sexual relationship, actual sex scenes are great but absolutely not required! If your writing preference is for UST or fade-to-black then please don't make yourself go bonkers trying to churn out something explicit--I would much rather you not make yourself miserable trying to write something that's beyond your comfort level. Unless otherwise specified in a request itself, consent of all levels, dub-con, and non-con are all fine. (Given the choice between dub- or non-con my preference leans more toward the former, but non-con is also okay and won't squick me.)
--Remember, optional details are optional! I want this to be a good Yuletide for you, and that means writing something you're excited about. If you think you have a great idea that fits the fandom/characters I've asked for but isn't mentioned in my babble, go for it!
Fandom: The Wolf of Winter - Paula Volsky
Characters: Varis, Shalindra
What it is and where to find it: A single-volume fantasy novel by Paula Volsky, centered on a Russian-esque kingdom with a tradition of dangerous and forbidden necromantic magic and told from the points of view of the villain-protagonist-turned-antagonist Varis and his niece (and more straightforward protagonist) Shalindra. Much of the book has them entirely separate as Varis intrigues and necromances his way to the top of the political heap while Shalindra and her brother flee to other lands for safety, but the last quarter of the book brings them together as captor and captive--by which time Shalindra's just happened to learn a little necromancy herself....
Out of print, alas, but many used copies are available on Amazon and elsewhere.
Official request and further thoughts:
I'm requesting both Varis and Shalindra as characters, but I don't need them both to appear on-screen or in POV--what I'm really just dying to get is some kind of fic that gives me another taste of their interactions with and impact on each other. Their time together is one of the most interesting parts of the book for me, but necessity of pacing means that the weeks of time Shalindra spends as Varis's hostage/'guest' gets swept past rather quickly, so a fic expanding on that time period is one thing I'd love to see. A couple of sentences, for examples, mention that once Shalindra is being kept in better conditions she and Varis usually dine together, so what did that look like? What did they talk about? (Dinner scenes that are tense or emotionally charged in some way are one of my favorite things to read, so this is one of those skimmed-over details that I desperately wish we had an actual example of in the book!) I have to admit I'm also darkly tempted by the thought of an AU where the proposed marriage went through for whatever reason--how in the world would both of them have navigated that relationship?--or where Shalindra didn't quite have the strength to ask Varis to take her out of the crypt, and gave in to the unspoken offer of further instruction in necromancy.
Varis's POV scene during some point of Shalindra's captivity could be really interesting, too. We only get a few scenes from his perspective in the latter part of the novel, but the couple of times we do his thoughts about Shalindra are very striking--particularly that scene were he's in a post-necromancy waking nightmare and thinks of her face and her voice as a point of light and sanity in the madness. Something about his first impressions of her once she's been captured, maybe, or his thoughts after the crypt scene?
Or I'd love to see some kind of Shalindra fic set post-canon, as the conclusion is a pretty interesting happy-yet-not ending--Shalindra's been too changed to celebrate her brother's victory and Varis's defeat the way she once would have, and certain elements of her world are already starting to feel grating, unsatisfying, or dull to her. So I always wonder: what is she going to do from now on? Is she truly going to manage to resist the lure of necromancy for the rest of her life? Or would she take advantage of her new position and resources--a titled noble, with time and money and the research skills that come from her years as an enforced scholar at Fruce--and begin exploring the forbidden art again?
Given the situation Varis is in at the book's conclusion (spifflicated in that shack in the woods and so ragged and dishelved that the few patrols who've come across him haven't recognized him), it's very unlikely that Shalindra will encounter him again after the book's end--but if she did turn back to necromancy and let a sufficient number of years pass, might she able to summon his ghost? Would she try to do it, if only to assuage her own curiosity about him and why he'd let her go? I don't know how lucid a ghost!Varis would be--I can't remember if we see any ghosts of spifflicates in the book--but the two of them having one last conversation and their previous power dynamic of captor/captive being so completely reversed into necromancer/ghost is an idea I can't get out of my brain.
If I've got my dates right I would have read The Wolf of Winter when I was about 11 or 12, and it left a huge number of chilly skeletal bone-prints all over my impressionable young mind. I think it was one of the first'grown-up' fantasy novels I read that wasn't drawing solely on Standard Medieval Western Europe for its setting, and also probably the first one that centered so heavily on necromantic magic as a plot element. And it was peppered with certain narrative devices and tropes that I'd later come to love wholeheartedly: a cold but somewhat sympathetic protagonist growing into an antagonist; stretches of affiability/understanding between the protagonist and the antagonist even if they're working at cross-purposes; a good character being truly, truly tempted by something the antagonist offers them. Looking back at it these days it has its flaws, but it's a book that's always stuck with me and is a frequent reread--I still have the original paperback copy that I first read ages ago.
And Shalindra and Varis and their interaction left such an impression that I always find it surprising that their actual time together comes so late in the book, and is barely more than 100 pages of content. The impact the two of them have on each other feels so strongly drawn in that small amount of space! In spite of their antagonism they have points of similarity and common aspects in their histories/personalities/experiences that they've never found echoed in another person. You understand why Shalindra is uneasily drawn to Varis and finds him easy to talk to about personal and painful things even though she knows better; why Varis, who goes through the entire book manipulating everyone with an ice-cool lack of emotion, feels an unspoken--affinity? affection?--for Shalindra, enough to let her go at the end even though it dooms him. And you understand why the memory of her and that moment can still break through his madness at the end, just a little, and why Shalindra feels somehow bereft once he's gone. It's a short but potent portrayal of two semi-kindred spirits getting pulled into each other's orbit for a little bit before fate and their own actions yank them apart again, and I wish there'd been just a tiny bit more of it.
So, yes, any story that draws on this stuff that I can't stop blabbing about would make me a happy reader. :D
Fandom: Planescape: Torment
Characters: Fall-from-Grace
What it is and where to find it: What it is and where to find it: Computer RPG considered one of the greatest video games of all time! (It really is pretty great.) The plot centers around an amnesiac, immortal man (The Nameless One, TNO for short) traveling through the city of Sigil and various planes of existence to recover his memories and find out why he can't die. Fall-From-Grace is one of his potential companions, a chaste succubus and proprietress of a brothel for satisfying intellectual (not physical) lusts. Both the original game (released in 1999) and the Enhanced Edition (released in 2017) are available on Steam and GOG; the Enhanced Edition smooths out the graphics and fixes some bugs and is easier to play on modern computers, but in terms of plot there aren't any major differences AFAIK.
Official request and further thoughts:
There's so much mentioned or hinted at with Grace that doesn't get fully explored that I hardly know where to start with possible prompts! We learn that she supposedly won her way out of slavery in a contest of improvisation and innovation with a pit fiend, using her chaotic nature to overcome the baatezu orderliness--what did the contest look like? What was the idea that cinched the win for her? Or maybe something about her being a cleric? She mentions her 'faith' in one of her spellcasting lines, and says what she believes in is experience--what does that actually mean for her? What about her physical appearance? One exchange she can have with Nordom suggests she could look different if she wanted to (which make sense, since she's a succubus) and that she takes her in-game form because it's the most comfortable for her, but is that the real reason why? Has she looked like this ever since she won her freedom, or did it take a while for her to settle on what look felt right? Does she change her appearance every now and then to keep herself and her experiences fresh--or maybe even just every now and then for a day of fun? And just what is in that diary of hers that we never get to read?
How about her membership with the Sensates? You have to submit a unique sensory experience to be admitted, so what did Grace offer up? (There *is* a sensory stone with a succubus in there, but it's from the victim's point of view.) Does she make much use of the sensory stones herself? If so, which are her favorites?
I'd also be happy to get a fic about Grace and the brothel. We know why she set it up, according to her, but what's the day-to-day business of running it like? Does she handle all the accounts and little details herself? How did she end up with her current group of students--Dolora's creator deliberately set her up her the develop her mind and personality, but what about the other girls? Does Grace seek them out, or are women in Sigil so eager to get in that she never lacks for students? How does she choose them? Are there interviews? Also, I've always been a little sorry we didn't really get to see Grace interacting with the students herself in the game--what is she like with them, and what are they like with her? The majority of the ladies seem as well-mannered as she is, and she and Yves seem to be friendly (since Grace has promised her own story Yves before Grace passes on), but what about the sharper-tongued ones like Kimasxi or Marissa?
I'm intrigued by the interaction she can have with Vrischika at the curiosity shop--it's some real nastiness on Vrischika's side and frostiness on Grace's. How do they know each other, and why do they dislike each other so much? Grace says it's because of the types of fiends they are, but is that really the case? Vrischika implies that Grace's escape from slavery never happened at all--that Grace is still in servitude in some way, and that the brothel is her school for training women as agents that can feed her information from across the planes. Grace calmly denies it all, but is she telling the truth, or is Vrischika--or maybe it's a little of both...?
I'd also love to see more of Grace interacting with some of the other party companions, whether during the game or post-canon. My usual party is Morte, Annah, Dak'kon, and Nordom, and Grace has interesting little bits of banter with each of them. She's kind to Dak'kon, friendly with Morte, curious about Nordom....Annah in particular could be really interesting--their banters are really, well, unpleasant on Annah's side, but when TNO asks Grace's opinion of her Grace says she regrets that she didn't run across Annah earlier and take her as a student. That could be amazing to explore--either as something mid-canon or post-canon where Grace attempts to give Annah some guidance (Is it the expected disaster? Does Grace manage to teach her something? Or does Grace learn something from Annah? Or both!), or as an AU where Grace really did find Annah years before and took her under her wing (ahem).
As for post-canon ideas, there's always the fact that Grace promise to find TNO and save him from his endgame fate. I'd love to see something from that, whether it's her gathering together the rest of the party and preparing, or just a scene from the expedition, or the whole expedition itself. This would be a great chance to drop the party into some of the places and planes that were mentioned in the game that we didn't get to see. Or, if you don't feel up to taking on the Blood War (and, really, who could blame you? :D) any kind of general interaction between Grace and any of the others post-game. She does extend an invitation that Morte stay at the brothel for a while due to his verbal skills--which I would love to see, because it has the potential to be both touching and HILARIOUS--but do any of the others happen to wander by as well, and for what reasons?
As a character, Grace is a delight to me. Her recruitment is one of my very favorite parts of the game (I used to keep a save file specifically so I could play through it whenever I felt like it), and I find her to be one of the most intriguing party members in the game. When you first meet her she seems like she's the most steady and well-adjusted, but we know that TNO draws tormented characters to him, and Ravel hints that Grace might be the most tormented one of all in the group. When questioned she'll eventually admit that hasn't really dealt with the separation from her kind as well as she claims--and then very firmly but politely ends the conversation. We get so many little details about her and her life that the game doesn't have room to fully explore, and any fic that delved into them would be wonderful.
Or I really would be equally as happy to get a story about Grace and the companions, or her day-to-day life before TNO showed up! I love most of the banters Grace can have with the rest of the party (like Morte joking with her that he's the Head of Vecna, or Grace calling Nordom 'the cutest little rogue modron'), so it really would be neat to see more interactions along those lines. Sigil and the setting of the various planes in general are also one of my favorite RPG/tabletop settings of all kinds--portals everywhere! pregnant alleys! people getting debated out of existence! towns sliding into one plane or another based on their overall alignment!--so if there's any details you want to work in for flavor, whether it's from the actual Planescape campaign setting or your own imagination, feel free to go for it!
Extra notes: I almost always play a TNO who's some flavor of neutral or chaotic good. If TNO appears in your fic I don't mind if you want to venture away from that a little, but I'd prefer not to see a TNO who's fully on the murdering, selling-companions-into-slavery, keeps-the-Grimoire-of-Pestilential-Thought-for-light-bedtime-reading evil side. I also usually don't lean too much into the game's romantic options (such as they are); I don't mind if your fic has Grace (or Annah, or both) having feelings for TNO, but I'd like for TNO-centric romance not to be the sole focus.
Fandom: Dragonlance - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Characters: Laurana Kanan
What it is and where to find it: Long-running shared-world D&D-based fantasy franchise based mostly but not entirely around various novel series. Now numbers about a zillion novels and short stories (okay, it's really about 200). The Chronicles part of the timeline (which most of my request centers around) was the original trilogy of the franchise, about nine companions teaming up with good dragons to fight bad dragons, defeat the goddess of evil, save the world, etc. It's absolutely what you're thinking and yet has definite stretches of good writing and character development. Laurana is one of the companions--a sheltered eleven princess who joins them for reasons of her own and very quickly gets hit with a megaton of danger and responsibility. Available on Amazon (here, here, and )here in various formats, and probably at any used bookstore you might wander into. :D
Official request and further thoughts:
I was so excited to see Laurana in the tagset this year--she's absolutely my favorite character in the original Chronicles series. I'd love to see any fic that explores more of of her time traveling with her section of the companions or as the Golden General. Something set post-Dragons of Winter Night with her trying to recover from the trauma of Sturm's death and her experiences from the orb? Something expanding on her experiences during the Vingaard Campaign--the battles, the logistics of leading an army and strategizing, her interactions with the troops? Really, almost anything that expands on these elements, or touches on the parts of that growth and persistence that we didn't get to fully see in the canon, would be wonderful.
For another idea--well, I felt vindicated when I learned that Margaret Weis got into a major argument with Tracy Hickman because she was convinced that in Dragons of Spring Dawning Laurana wouldn't have abandoned her troops to go rescue the supposedly-captured Tanis, and that things only went Hickman's way because the plot required Laurana to get captured. I'd love to see a fic that runs with Weis's idea instead, whether it's just a single scene or something exploring the fuller repercussions of how that choice might have resulted in the end of the story playing out.
I'd also be happy to see a fic about her interactions with some of the other companions. There's already a lot of Laurana and Sturm in canon, but their relationship was so touching and well-drawn that I'd love to get another dose of it. (If it were a different canon I might ask for angsty shipfic for them, but I'm pretty sure Sturm Would Never. Although if you really want to take a run at it, I certainly won't stop you...:D) Or Laurana and Flint? Even though they're in the same group for much of the Chronicles books, they usually get split so it's Laurana and Sturm, and Flint and Tas. Flint might be 99% Stereotypical Dwarf, but seeing more of him as the experienced old warrior and Laurana as the woman who's just starting to find her feet in dealing with battlefields and violence might be interesting. Or Tika! They don't get to talk a lot in canon, but there's that sweet exchange of compliments when they first meet, and Laurana's letting Tika take Laurana's mother's armor, and I've always loved the bit at the very end of Spring Dawning where they both meet right after the fighting is over, and for a moment Tika feels incredibly self-conscious about how disheveled she looks next to Laurana's regal appearance...and then they both laugh it off and smile and hug each other. It'd be nice to see them learning to interact more as friends, either during the canon or immediately after it. And, honestly, while it feels a bit like going for the obvious option, I'd kind of love another scene with Laurana and Raistlin. Again, they don't interact a lot in the canon, but when they do it has a lot of weight--there's the meeting scene in Qualinost where we learn in seeing Laurana Raistlin's cursed eyes are finally seeing something beautiful because she isn't decaying, and then their two scenes in Tarsis, the first where they have an actual conversation about Raistlin's past and he almost touches her hair but pulls away because he sees his own hand withering, and the second where she helps him prepare a potion and then he very coolly explains it's so they can fake their deaths and not be horrificallu tortured by the draconians when they're captured. I don't know where it'd happen or what they'd talk about, but I'm sure it'd be interesting!
For non-companion ideas, something I'd love to see is Laurana and A DRAGON. It seems very unfair that Laurana flies into battle on dragonback during the fight over Palanthas but we don't get her POV on doing so, or really see her interacting with any dragons in their dragon form! Silvara would probably be easiest, given the relationship they form when Silvara's in her human shape, or Laurana's dragon battle-mount (named Quallathan, IIRC?), but honestly, seeing her interact with ANY dragon-shaped dragon would be lovely.
And totally bonkers matchup idea: Laurana and Kitiara, the one part of the Laurana - Tanis - Kitiara triangle that I actually AM interested in. Their few meetings in the books are pretty great, but I'd love to see them interacting in a situation where one of them isn't trying to murder the other. IDK where or how it'd happen, but I love the idea too much to let it go. One of them manages to successfully subdue and capture the other during the fight that happens in Dragons of the Highlord Skies? One of them somehow sways the other over to their side during the war? Some sort of post-canon meeting? If this prompt is making any idea percolate for you at all, go wild! (Also, anything that gives Kitiara a less horrific ending than she gets in canon would be a nice bonus. Also also, would not mind if you felt like going in a femslash direction with this.)
Just in case I haven't made it clear enough: I LOVE LAURANA. I'd put that in big blinky text if I didn't know it'd annoy people. :D One of my very favorite types of plots is a female character getting into a situation where she's out of her depth, and then through her own determination and skills and hard work succeeding at the challenges that are thrown at her, and Laurana was one of my first encounters with that--she gets involved with the main plot of the original trilogy by making an understandable but foolish and dangerous decision, and then decides that she's going to stay and be useful, and does it, goes beyond everyone's expectations (including her own). She starts out determined but naive, goes through absolute hell in six months, losing (in one way or another) her home and family and beloved and friends, facing the constant risk of capture and death, and yet she keeps on pushing ahead. She draws on her initial strengths (her independence, her tenacity, her understanding of politics and the importance of diplomacy) and finds new ones as she struggles onwards. Time and time again she steps up to be the one to do something because no one else can or will: stealing the dragon orb and dragonlance from her father; using the dragon orb even though it risks her life and sanity; taking command of the armies and leading them to victories even though she'd never commanded troops in the field and her appointment as general was essentially a political move. And yet she's smart enough to not buy into illusions of heroism or glory--she still gets frightened and sorrowful and bitter and angry at all the horrible things she's seen and experienced. Almost anything you want to write about her during the Chronicles timeline or the immediate aftermath would be a delight to me.
As a general statement of...reassurance?...I read these books at the prime tween/teen age for schlocky fantasy novels, so my nostalgic love for them easily glosses over the fact that they're pretty cliched and cheesy. Don't feel like you have to majorly subvert the tone and style of the books--feel free to lean into the cheese if that'll let you have more fun with it.
Extra notes: I read almost all of the Dragonlance books that were around in the early 90s, including the story anthologies, but after that my knowledge of them is a lot more scattered--I never got to Dragons of Summer Flame or the Chaos War stuff, for example. It's possible that something I've requested here already gets touched on in some side novel or story that I haven't read. If that's so, please don't let stop you from writing an idea you're interested in! I'm sure you can come up with something just as entertaining (or even more so) as the official franchise writers! :D It also means I really only know about what happens to Laurana in the later canon (like her attempts to foster a permanent diplomatic union between humans and elves, and her time as the Queen Mother in Qualinesti) through osmosis. I don't mind if you want to draw on those later elements in some way, but you might have to lay them out a little more explicitly for me to properly appreciate them.
Also, as I alluded to in my request, Laurana/Tanis and the whole Laurana - Tanis - Kitiara triangle are pretty boring to me. I don't dislike it as much as I used to, but I still kind of feel like both women deserve a little better. However, I'm totally fine with the relationship and love triangle being mentioned or acting as an element of a story--given its importance to Laurana as a character and depending on what you choose to write, it might be difficult NOT to include some aspect of it, and that's fine! I'd just kind of prefer not to get a fic that's 100% focused on Laurana and Tanis exchanging sweet nothings. (Or, well, tortured declarations or love, I suppose. :D)
I've certainly rambled for far too long, but if there's anything I can clarify, don't hesitate to drop a comment or ask via the mods. Lots and lots of thanks to you, dear writer, and have a lovely holiday season!
Wow, it's Yuletide again! How did that happen? :D I'm sure I'll love whatever you end up creating for me, so please don't stress out so much that you ruin Yuletide and the holiday season for yourself--I genuinely love each canon and character I've requested, and will be over the moon to get a fic about them.
I do not have much of a text-blogging presence in fandom namespace any longer, but my AO3 name is melmillo, and I quietly tumblr under the name smallmonday.
Below is some basic blab about my reading preferences, and reposts of my official requests plus some specific thoughts on each request/fandom.
General thoughts:
--I have no real preferences in terms of POV or tense, as long as it's consistent and clear. First-, second-, and third-person POVs are all fine. I love character studies and meditative pieces just as much as plottier stories, and I'm also happy with various forms of stories like five-times fics and document/epistolary fics and so on.
--I'm okay with stories that deal with unpleasant or depressing themes, or don't have 100% happy endings. However, I'd appreciate it if you'd steer away from all-out wallowing in complete darkness or bleakness, or ending a story with everyone miserable and/or dead. Or, to put it another way--I'm totally fine with a dark fic, but I'm not fine with a grimdark fic.
- I'm fine (sometimes more than fine!) with things like uneven power dynamics, mentions of mistreatment/captivity/torture of people, creepy imagery, gore that isn't extreme, etc. My general DNWs and squicks are:
- blatant character-bashing
- mundane/modern AUs
- A/B/O of any kind
- body fluids besides blood, sweat, and tears
- damage to eyes, teeth, fingernails, and inner ears
- incredibly detailed descriptions of insects and arachnids (general mentions are fine!)
- graphic violence to/torture of animals (again, not a problem if it's mentioned or described generally--I just don't want the gory details)
If you want more guidance about some other squick (or like/kink), please feel free to get in touch with me through the mods, or drop an anon comment here!
--I don't this this one will apply much this year, as most of my requests lean towards being gen-flavored, but if you're writing something shippy or involving a romantic/sexual relationship, actual sex scenes are great but absolutely not required! If your writing preference is for UST or fade-to-black then please don't make yourself go bonkers trying to churn out something explicit--I would much rather you not make yourself miserable trying to write something that's beyond your comfort level. Unless otherwise specified in a request itself, consent of all levels, dub-con, and non-con are all fine. (Given the choice between dub- or non-con my preference leans more toward the former, but non-con is also okay and won't squick me.)
--Remember, optional details are optional! I want this to be a good Yuletide for you, and that means writing something you're excited about. If you think you have a great idea that fits the fandom/characters I've asked for but isn't mentioned in my babble, go for it!
Fandom: The Wolf of Winter - Paula Volsky
Characters: Varis, Shalindra
What it is and where to find it: A single-volume fantasy novel by Paula Volsky, centered on a Russian-esque kingdom with a tradition of dangerous and forbidden necromantic magic and told from the points of view of the villain-protagonist-turned-antagonist Varis and his niece (and more straightforward protagonist) Shalindra. Much of the book has them entirely separate as Varis intrigues and necromances his way to the top of the political heap while Shalindra and her brother flee to other lands for safety, but the last quarter of the book brings them together as captor and captive--by which time Shalindra's just happened to learn a little necromancy herself....
Out of print, alas, but many used copies are available on Amazon and elsewhere.
Official request and further thoughts:
I'm requesting both Varis and Shalindra as characters, but I don't need them both to appear on-screen or in POV--what I'm really just dying to get is some kind of fic that gives me another taste of their interactions with and impact on each other. Their time together is one of the most interesting parts of the book for me, but necessity of pacing means that the weeks of time Shalindra spends as Varis's hostage/'guest' gets swept past rather quickly, so a fic expanding on that time period is one thing I'd love to see. A couple of sentences, for examples, mention that once Shalindra is being kept in better conditions she and Varis usually dine together, so what did that look like? What did they talk about? (Dinner scenes that are tense or emotionally charged in some way are one of my favorite things to read, so this is one of those skimmed-over details that I desperately wish we had an actual example of in the book!) I have to admit I'm also darkly tempted by the thought of an AU where the proposed marriage went through for whatever reason--how in the world would both of them have navigated that relationship?--or where Shalindra didn't quite have the strength to ask Varis to take her out of the crypt, and gave in to the unspoken offer of further instruction in necromancy.
Varis's POV scene during some point of Shalindra's captivity could be really interesting, too. We only get a few scenes from his perspective in the latter part of the novel, but the couple of times we do his thoughts about Shalindra are very striking--particularly that scene were he's in a post-necromancy waking nightmare and thinks of her face and her voice as a point of light and sanity in the madness. Something about his first impressions of her once she's been captured, maybe, or his thoughts after the crypt scene?
Or I'd love to see some kind of Shalindra fic set post-canon, as the conclusion is a pretty interesting happy-yet-not ending--Shalindra's been too changed to celebrate her brother's victory and Varis's defeat the way she once would have, and certain elements of her world are already starting to feel grating, unsatisfying, or dull to her. So I always wonder: what is she going to do from now on? Is she truly going to manage to resist the lure of necromancy for the rest of her life? Or would she take advantage of her new position and resources--a titled noble, with time and money and the research skills that come from her years as an enforced scholar at Fruce--and begin exploring the forbidden art again?
Given the situation Varis is in at the book's conclusion (spifflicated in that shack in the woods and so ragged and dishelved that the few patrols who've come across him haven't recognized him), it's very unlikely that Shalindra will encounter him again after the book's end--but if she did turn back to necromancy and let a sufficient number of years pass, might she able to summon his ghost? Would she try to do it, if only to assuage her own curiosity about him and why he'd let her go? I don't know how lucid a ghost!Varis would be--I can't remember if we see any ghosts of spifflicates in the book--but the two of them having one last conversation and their previous power dynamic of captor/captive being so completely reversed into necromancer/ghost is an idea I can't get out of my brain.
If I've got my dates right I would have read The Wolf of Winter when I was about 11 or 12, and it left a huge number of chilly skeletal bone-prints all over my impressionable young mind. I think it was one of the first'grown-up' fantasy novels I read that wasn't drawing solely on Standard Medieval Western Europe for its setting, and also probably the first one that centered so heavily on necromantic magic as a plot element. And it was peppered with certain narrative devices and tropes that I'd later come to love wholeheartedly: a cold but somewhat sympathetic protagonist growing into an antagonist; stretches of affiability/understanding between the protagonist and the antagonist even if they're working at cross-purposes; a good character being truly, truly tempted by something the antagonist offers them. Looking back at it these days it has its flaws, but it's a book that's always stuck with me and is a frequent reread--I still have the original paperback copy that I first read ages ago.
And Shalindra and Varis and their interaction left such an impression that I always find it surprising that their actual time together comes so late in the book, and is barely more than 100 pages of content. The impact the two of them have on each other feels so strongly drawn in that small amount of space! In spite of their antagonism they have points of similarity and common aspects in their histories/personalities/experiences that they've never found echoed in another person. You understand why Shalindra is uneasily drawn to Varis and finds him easy to talk to about personal and painful things even though she knows better; why Varis, who goes through the entire book manipulating everyone with an ice-cool lack of emotion, feels an unspoken--affinity? affection?--for Shalindra, enough to let her go at the end even though it dooms him. And you understand why the memory of her and that moment can still break through his madness at the end, just a little, and why Shalindra feels somehow bereft once he's gone. It's a short but potent portrayal of two semi-kindred spirits getting pulled into each other's orbit for a little bit before fate and their own actions yank them apart again, and I wish there'd been just a tiny bit more of it.
So, yes, any story that draws on this stuff that I can't stop blabbing about would make me a happy reader. :D
Fandom: Planescape: Torment
Characters: Fall-from-Grace
What it is and where to find it: What it is and where to find it: Computer RPG considered one of the greatest video games of all time! (It really is pretty great.) The plot centers around an amnesiac, immortal man (The Nameless One, TNO for short) traveling through the city of Sigil and various planes of existence to recover his memories and find out why he can't die. Fall-From-Grace is one of his potential companions, a chaste succubus and proprietress of a brothel for satisfying intellectual (not physical) lusts. Both the original game (released in 1999) and the Enhanced Edition (released in 2017) are available on Steam and GOG; the Enhanced Edition smooths out the graphics and fixes some bugs and is easier to play on modern computers, but in terms of plot there aren't any major differences AFAIK.
Official request and further thoughts:
There's so much mentioned or hinted at with Grace that doesn't get fully explored that I hardly know where to start with possible prompts! We learn that she supposedly won her way out of slavery in a contest of improvisation and innovation with a pit fiend, using her chaotic nature to overcome the baatezu orderliness--what did the contest look like? What was the idea that cinched the win for her? Or maybe something about her being a cleric? She mentions her 'faith' in one of her spellcasting lines, and says what she believes in is experience--what does that actually mean for her? What about her physical appearance? One exchange she can have with Nordom suggests she could look different if she wanted to (which make sense, since she's a succubus) and that she takes her in-game form because it's the most comfortable for her, but is that the real reason why? Has she looked like this ever since she won her freedom, or did it take a while for her to settle on what look felt right? Does she change her appearance every now and then to keep herself and her experiences fresh--or maybe even just every now and then for a day of fun? And just what is in that diary of hers that we never get to read?
How about her membership with the Sensates? You have to submit a unique sensory experience to be admitted, so what did Grace offer up? (There *is* a sensory stone with a succubus in there, but it's from the victim's point of view.) Does she make much use of the sensory stones herself? If so, which are her favorites?
I'd also be happy to get a fic about Grace and the brothel. We know why she set it up, according to her, but what's the day-to-day business of running it like? Does she handle all the accounts and little details herself? How did she end up with her current group of students--Dolora's creator deliberately set her up her the develop her mind and personality, but what about the other girls? Does Grace seek them out, or are women in Sigil so eager to get in that she never lacks for students? How does she choose them? Are there interviews? Also, I've always been a little sorry we didn't really get to see Grace interacting with the students herself in the game--what is she like with them, and what are they like with her? The majority of the ladies seem as well-mannered as she is, and she and Yves seem to be friendly (since Grace has promised her own story Yves before Grace passes on), but what about the sharper-tongued ones like Kimasxi or Marissa?
I'm intrigued by the interaction she can have with Vrischika at the curiosity shop--it's some real nastiness on Vrischika's side and frostiness on Grace's. How do they know each other, and why do they dislike each other so much? Grace says it's because of the types of fiends they are, but is that really the case? Vrischika implies that Grace's escape from slavery never happened at all--that Grace is still in servitude in some way, and that the brothel is her school for training women as agents that can feed her information from across the planes. Grace calmly denies it all, but is she telling the truth, or is Vrischika--or maybe it's a little of both...?
I'd also love to see more of Grace interacting with some of the other party companions, whether during the game or post-canon. My usual party is Morte, Annah, Dak'kon, and Nordom, and Grace has interesting little bits of banter with each of them. She's kind to Dak'kon, friendly with Morte, curious about Nordom....Annah in particular could be really interesting--their banters are really, well, unpleasant on Annah's side, but when TNO asks Grace's opinion of her Grace says she regrets that she didn't run across Annah earlier and take her as a student. That could be amazing to explore--either as something mid-canon or post-canon where Grace attempts to give Annah some guidance (Is it the expected disaster? Does Grace manage to teach her something? Or does Grace learn something from Annah? Or both!), or as an AU where Grace really did find Annah years before and took her under her wing (ahem).
As for post-canon ideas, there's always the fact that Grace promise to find TNO and save him from his endgame fate. I'd love to see something from that, whether it's her gathering together the rest of the party and preparing, or just a scene from the expedition, or the whole expedition itself. This would be a great chance to drop the party into some of the places and planes that were mentioned in the game that we didn't get to see. Or, if you don't feel up to taking on the Blood War (and, really, who could blame you? :D) any kind of general interaction between Grace and any of the others post-game. She does extend an invitation that Morte stay at the brothel for a while due to his verbal skills--which I would love to see, because it has the potential to be both touching and HILARIOUS--but do any of the others happen to wander by as well, and for what reasons?
As a character, Grace is a delight to me. Her recruitment is one of my very favorite parts of the game (I used to keep a save file specifically so I could play through it whenever I felt like it), and I find her to be one of the most intriguing party members in the game. When you first meet her she seems like she's the most steady and well-adjusted, but we know that TNO draws tormented characters to him, and Ravel hints that Grace might be the most tormented one of all in the group. When questioned she'll eventually admit that hasn't really dealt with the separation from her kind as well as she claims--and then very firmly but politely ends the conversation. We get so many little details about her and her life that the game doesn't have room to fully explore, and any fic that delved into them would be wonderful.
Or I really would be equally as happy to get a story about Grace and the companions, or her day-to-day life before TNO showed up! I love most of the banters Grace can have with the rest of the party (like Morte joking with her that he's the Head of Vecna, or Grace calling Nordom 'the cutest little rogue modron'), so it really would be neat to see more interactions along those lines. Sigil and the setting of the various planes in general are also one of my favorite RPG/tabletop settings of all kinds--portals everywhere! pregnant alleys! people getting debated out of existence! towns sliding into one plane or another based on their overall alignment!--so if there's any details you want to work in for flavor, whether it's from the actual Planescape campaign setting or your own imagination, feel free to go for it!
Extra notes: I almost always play a TNO who's some flavor of neutral or chaotic good. If TNO appears in your fic I don't mind if you want to venture away from that a little, but I'd prefer not to see a TNO who's fully on the murdering, selling-companions-into-slavery, keeps-the-Grimoire-of-Pestilential-Thought-for-light-bedtime-reading evil side. I also usually don't lean too much into the game's romantic options (such as they are); I don't mind if your fic has Grace (or Annah, or both) having feelings for TNO, but I'd like for TNO-centric romance not to be the sole focus.
Fandom: Dragonlance - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Characters: Laurana Kanan
What it is and where to find it: Long-running shared-world D&D-based fantasy franchise based mostly but not entirely around various novel series. Now numbers about a zillion novels and short stories (okay, it's really about 200). The Chronicles part of the timeline (which most of my request centers around) was the original trilogy of the franchise, about nine companions teaming up with good dragons to fight bad dragons, defeat the goddess of evil, save the world, etc. It's absolutely what you're thinking and yet has definite stretches of good writing and character development. Laurana is one of the companions--a sheltered eleven princess who joins them for reasons of her own and very quickly gets hit with a megaton of danger and responsibility. Available on Amazon (here, here, and )here in various formats, and probably at any used bookstore you might wander into. :D
Official request and further thoughts:
I was so excited to see Laurana in the tagset this year--she's absolutely my favorite character in the original Chronicles series. I'd love to see any fic that explores more of of her time traveling with her section of the companions or as the Golden General. Something set post-Dragons of Winter Night with her trying to recover from the trauma of Sturm's death and her experiences from the orb? Something expanding on her experiences during the Vingaard Campaign--the battles, the logistics of leading an army and strategizing, her interactions with the troops? Really, almost anything that expands on these elements, or touches on the parts of that growth and persistence that we didn't get to fully see in the canon, would be wonderful.
For another idea--well, I felt vindicated when I learned that Margaret Weis got into a major argument with Tracy Hickman because she was convinced that in Dragons of Spring Dawning Laurana wouldn't have abandoned her troops to go rescue the supposedly-captured Tanis, and that things only went Hickman's way because the plot required Laurana to get captured. I'd love to see a fic that runs with Weis's idea instead, whether it's just a single scene or something exploring the fuller repercussions of how that choice might have resulted in the end of the story playing out.
I'd also be happy to see a fic about her interactions with some of the other companions. There's already a lot of Laurana and Sturm in canon, but their relationship was so touching and well-drawn that I'd love to get another dose of it. (If it were a different canon I might ask for angsty shipfic for them, but I'm pretty sure Sturm Would Never. Although if you really want to take a run at it, I certainly won't stop you...:D) Or Laurana and Flint? Even though they're in the same group for much of the Chronicles books, they usually get split so it's Laurana and Sturm, and Flint and Tas. Flint might be 99% Stereotypical Dwarf, but seeing more of him as the experienced old warrior and Laurana as the woman who's just starting to find her feet in dealing with battlefields and violence might be interesting. Or Tika! They don't get to talk a lot in canon, but there's that sweet exchange of compliments when they first meet, and Laurana's letting Tika take Laurana's mother's armor, and I've always loved the bit at the very end of Spring Dawning where they both meet right after the fighting is over, and for a moment Tika feels incredibly self-conscious about how disheveled she looks next to Laurana's regal appearance...and then they both laugh it off and smile and hug each other. It'd be nice to see them learning to interact more as friends, either during the canon or immediately after it. And, honestly, while it feels a bit like going for the obvious option, I'd kind of love another scene with Laurana and Raistlin. Again, they don't interact a lot in the canon, but when they do it has a lot of weight--there's the meeting scene in Qualinost where we learn in seeing Laurana Raistlin's cursed eyes are finally seeing something beautiful because she isn't decaying, and then their two scenes in Tarsis, the first where they have an actual conversation about Raistlin's past and he almost touches her hair but pulls away because he sees his own hand withering, and the second where she helps him prepare a potion and then he very coolly explains it's so they can fake their deaths and not be horrificallu tortured by the draconians when they're captured. I don't know where it'd happen or what they'd talk about, but I'm sure it'd be interesting!
For non-companion ideas, something I'd love to see is Laurana and A DRAGON. It seems very unfair that Laurana flies into battle on dragonback during the fight over Palanthas but we don't get her POV on doing so, or really see her interacting with any dragons in their dragon form! Silvara would probably be easiest, given the relationship they form when Silvara's in her human shape, or Laurana's dragon battle-mount (named Quallathan, IIRC?), but honestly, seeing her interact with ANY dragon-shaped dragon would be lovely.
And totally bonkers matchup idea: Laurana and Kitiara, the one part of the Laurana - Tanis - Kitiara triangle that I actually AM interested in. Their few meetings in the books are pretty great, but I'd love to see them interacting in a situation where one of them isn't trying to murder the other. IDK where or how it'd happen, but I love the idea too much to let it go. One of them manages to successfully subdue and capture the other during the fight that happens in Dragons of the Highlord Skies? One of them somehow sways the other over to their side during the war? Some sort of post-canon meeting? If this prompt is making any idea percolate for you at all, go wild! (Also, anything that gives Kitiara a less horrific ending than she gets in canon would be a nice bonus. Also also, would not mind if you felt like going in a femslash direction with this.)
Just in case I haven't made it clear enough: I LOVE LAURANA. I'd put that in big blinky text if I didn't know it'd annoy people. :D One of my very favorite types of plots is a female character getting into a situation where she's out of her depth, and then through her own determination and skills and hard work succeeding at the challenges that are thrown at her, and Laurana was one of my first encounters with that--she gets involved with the main plot of the original trilogy by making an understandable but foolish and dangerous decision, and then decides that she's going to stay and be useful, and does it, goes beyond everyone's expectations (including her own). She starts out determined but naive, goes through absolute hell in six months, losing (in one way or another) her home and family and beloved and friends, facing the constant risk of capture and death, and yet she keeps on pushing ahead. She draws on her initial strengths (her independence, her tenacity, her understanding of politics and the importance of diplomacy) and finds new ones as she struggles onwards. Time and time again she steps up to be the one to do something because no one else can or will: stealing the dragon orb and dragonlance from her father; using the dragon orb even though it risks her life and sanity; taking command of the armies and leading them to victories even though she'd never commanded troops in the field and her appointment as general was essentially a political move. And yet she's smart enough to not buy into illusions of heroism or glory--she still gets frightened and sorrowful and bitter and angry at all the horrible things she's seen and experienced. Almost anything you want to write about her during the Chronicles timeline or the immediate aftermath would be a delight to me.
As a general statement of...reassurance?...I read these books at the prime tween/teen age for schlocky fantasy novels, so my nostalgic love for them easily glosses over the fact that they're pretty cliched and cheesy. Don't feel like you have to majorly subvert the tone and style of the books--feel free to lean into the cheese if that'll let you have more fun with it.
Extra notes: I read almost all of the Dragonlance books that were around in the early 90s, including the story anthologies, but after that my knowledge of them is a lot more scattered--I never got to Dragons of Summer Flame or the Chaos War stuff, for example. It's possible that something I've requested here already gets touched on in some side novel or story that I haven't read. If that's so, please don't let stop you from writing an idea you're interested in! I'm sure you can come up with something just as entertaining (or even more so) as the official franchise writers! :D It also means I really only know about what happens to Laurana in the later canon (like her attempts to foster a permanent diplomatic union between humans and elves, and her time as the Queen Mother in Qualinesti) through osmosis. I don't mind if you want to draw on those later elements in some way, but you might have to lay them out a little more explicitly for me to properly appreciate them.
Also, as I alluded to in my request, Laurana/Tanis and the whole Laurana - Tanis - Kitiara triangle are pretty boring to me. I don't dislike it as much as I used to, but I still kind of feel like both women deserve a little better. However, I'm totally fine with the relationship and love triangle being mentioned or acting as an element of a story--given its importance to Laurana as a character and depending on what you choose to write, it might be difficult NOT to include some aspect of it, and that's fine! I'd just kind of prefer not to get a fic that's 100% focused on Laurana and Tanis exchanging sweet nothings. (Or, well, tortured declarations or love, I suppose. :D)
I've certainly rambled for far too long, but if there's anything I can clarify, don't hesitate to drop a comment or ask via the mods. Lots and lots of thanks to you, dear writer, and have a lovely holiday season!
