Dear Yuletide 2023 author

Thank you for writing for me!

I'm pretty easygoing about what type of fic you want to write for me. I read fic of any rating, and would be equally happy with plotty genfic or something very shippy. I read gen, femslash, het and slash, although I have a slight preference towards femslash, het, and gen that focuses on female characters. I mainly read fic to find out what happens to characters after the final page has turned or the credits have rolled, so I would particularly love to have futurefic of some kind. Don't feel you have to limit yourself to the characters I specifically mention — I'm happy with others being included if they fit with the story you want to tell.

Feel free to have a look around my Ao3 profile, as it should give you a good idea of the types of things I like to read. You can also look at my Yuletide tag, which includes past letters, and recs posts of my previous gifts and other fic I've enjoyed in previous Yuletide colletions.

I have treating enabled on Ao3 and would be delighted to receive treats for any of my requests.

( General likes )

( DNWs )

Fandom-specific prompts:
( The Bone Season — Samantha Shannon )

( The Pagan Chronicles - Catherine Jinks )

( Tochmarc Étaíne )

Don't feel you have to stick rigidly within the bounds of my prompts. As long as your fic is focused on the characters I requested, I will be thrilled to receive anything you write for me, as these really are some of my most beloved fandoms of the heart, and the existence of any fic for them will make me extremely happy.

Did those angels ever sing?

I'm not really feeling it when it comes to soothing Sunday journalling, to be honest. There's too much that has happened recently when it comes to politics and geopolitics — in my country of origin, and elsewhere — that boils down to people failing to recognise others' humanity, failing to recognise others' pain and fear as real, and choosing to double down on this in a variety of contexts, and honestly, it makes me want to lie down and die. I'll crawl out of this pit of despair eventually (taking concrete action that helps other people is the best way to do this), but not right now.

It's been a cold, clear weekend. Yesterday Matthias and I squelched our way across 10km of muddy fields on a walk to Stretham — a village to the south of Ely — where we had an extremely mediocre lunch in an aesthetically pleasing pub. The crops have all been cut and harvested at this point in the year, so the fields were just a mess of mud and stalks (and a huge pile of corn husks which seemed to have been devoured by wild animals), bisected by hedgerows full of rose hips and withered blackberries. The mud caked our shoes, and was only wiped off by an unintentional final twenty minutes walking through long wet grass along the verge of the main road, where we ended up after following a poorly signposted 'public footpath' that petered out in the middle of a field with no indication of where to go next. This is a typical occurrence when walking in this part of the world.

Today I've been swimming (the experience enlivened by some unexpected excitement when the fire alarm went off — during my 37th lap of 40 — and we all had to get out of the water), cooked crepes, picked up fresh bread, written my Yuletide Dear Author letter and added it to the app, and done all the other usual little Sunday morning tasks. My plans for the afternoon include a walk around the river in the clear afternoon sunshine, a yoga class (I want something slow, stretchy, and mainly low to the ground), and cooking something slow, fragrant, and using the free quince that were being given away in a neighbour's front garden for dinner. I suppose all of it could be summed up as nourishment of one kind or another.