Dear Writer Letter!
Nov. 16th, 2011 03:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wallwalker posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
personalapocalypseHello there, writer! Welcome to my letter!
(Just so you know, there are lots of spoilers in this letter - it was hard to avoid them, I'm afraid. So I've tried to add some extra spoiler space in case you haven't played all of these games. Also hoping to add some LPs in here, but honestly there are so many unfinished LPs that it's hard to find the completed ones. If I find any, I'll add them in. If anyone reading this knows of any, feel free to leave a comment and I'll edit them in gratefully. :D)
So, let me just jump right in here.
General Preferences
Things I love to see in fic:
- Thoughtful worldbuilding; little details that spring from a natural reason and that fit together to make a big, meaningful picture.
- Characters who interact with each other in interesting and natural ways, especially if they're characters who were never given as much opportunity to interact with each other in the source material.
- Dynamic characters who react to what's happening in the world around them and change with it.
- Action, adventure, and really wild things.
- Romance of just about any stripe (M/F, M/M, F/F, poly, other...) as well as close friendships, platonic relationships, tension-filled rivalries... really, I'm happy with just about any kind of relationship, as long as it makes sense for the two characters in the canon and/or has a realistic buildup in the fic. I'm generally okay with most kinks and tropes involving relationships that are respectful and mutual in some way or another, although I will say that I generally prefer consensual things.
And, since all of my requests are in VG fandoms, I can add this one:
- Fics that explain in real-world terms what game mechanics are, and use them as part of the worldbuilding. For instance: What are magic points? Are people only able to channel a certain amount of magic without being exhausted? How does it feel to be out of MP? I adore seeing meta about what these concepts mean to the people who live in that world, rather than to the player on the other side of the screen.
Dragon Quest 8
One of the older JRPG franchises. Released traditionally by Enix (now Square-Enix.) DQ8 was the PS2 release in the series, and like most of the games was fairly long. It's very much a traditional RPG, although it's definitely updated, but I found just about all of the characters impossibly charming, even the ones that didn't speak. It was amusing, had fun inter-party banter and relationships (and honestly, a game that will bother to give me banter between the party on a regular basis is already a winner for me,) and had surprisingly interesting subplots and such for such a traditional game.
Reference links: DQ-Web
Request: Yangus, Red, Hero - These three, post-game, together and trying to work out an acceptable arrangement.
Yangus was probably my favorite character in this game - I liked his forthright bumbling earnestness and his bad-guy-gone-good image and backstory, and I absolutely loved his complete devotion to the Hero, despite everything. (There's one particularly amusing scene, if you talk to him inside of a little house, where he basically says that he wants to settle down in a little quiet place like that someday, and he hopes that the Hero will be with him, maybe wearing a apron....) And I also liked his relationship with Red, and I'm pretty sure that everything she did in that game was her being too proud to tell him that she wanted to be with him and trying everything she could to get his attention.
So I'd really love to see the three of them, all together, trying to sort out their entanglements with each other and come to some sort of arrangement. I'm not picky about who ends up romantically involved with whom - any of them, or all three of them, in any combination - as long as the story is about them. Yangus says that he's basically running her legitimate business practices; maybe the Hero comes to help them with some big problem that they can't handle, or maybe Trode hires them to do some work for Trodain and Hero is there when they arrive. However you want to write the three of them together is fine with me.
FolksSouls | Folklore
One of the earlier PS3 titles, a supernatural story set in a small village in Ireland, where it is said that "the living can meet the dead." The plot centers around two people - Ellen, a young woman who is trying to find out about her mother, and Keats, a reporter dragged into the mystery by a strange phone call. But they both find out that things are even more complicated than they imagined. It's one of the prettiest games I've played, graphically, and the battle system is very fun; its internal mythology fascinates me, and I keep meaning to replay it (with all of the DLC this time) so that I can make more notes about it, because unfortunately this is about the only current-gen game I own that didn't have an in-game codex. It's definitely worth a look, since it's generally fairly easy to find used.
References: Game Script | Folklore Wiki | Let's Play Folklore pt. 1** by TheBulzomeGuides
**This isn't a complete LP, but so far it's the most complete one I've found, and will at least give a good idea of what the game looks like. Considering how much I love this game's general aesthetic, I want to share it. If I find a longer one, I'll post it as well.
Request:Ellen, Keats, Livane, Belgae - Anything exploring these four, and the parallels between the relationship between Ellen and Keats and the one between Livane and Belgae, would be fantastic.
Okay, yes, this request is sort of a big spoiler. Still. The four of them are set up to have a lot of parallels between each other, and I'd love to see some meta exploring that. I liked the sort of adversarial relationship that Livane and Keats had, and the mentoring sort of relationship that Keats had with Belgae; there wasn't as much between Ellen and those two, but what we saw was intriguing. I'd like to see more along those lines. Really, anything involving this four is going to make me happy.
InFAMOUS
Both games - the original game and its sequel - were released on the PS3, and follow the adventures of a man who, after surviving a mysterious explosion, finds that he's been given new, electricity-based superpowers and super parkour skills. (Of course, he can never go swimming again, but there's always a price.) [ETA: Also my SO would like you to know that he already had super parkour skills, which is true. He DID get the ability to fall long distances without dying, though!]
Both games are sandbox games; they're lots of fun to explore. There are a lot of details to the cities that you explore that I love, and it adds a lot of depth to the story, IMO. (Also, I admit that my request this year is slightly slanted towards the second game, to a large degree because the second game did what I thought would be impossible for me - it made me like Zeke and his bromance with Cole, even after what he'd done in the first game.)
Reference: InFAMOUS Wiki
Request: Cole, Zeke - Would love to see something following the Infamous ending (possibly an AU with Zeke becoming a Conduit?)
I realize that my plot prompt bears some explaining. Long story short, when we saw the ending of this game and the leadup to the final (evil karma) decision, the first thing both of the people in the room thought was this: "Okay, Beast, we'll take you up on that offer... on one condition. Find a way to make Zeke into a real Conduit!" I have no idea whether or not that would even be canonically possible, but hey, that's what fic is for, right?
So, here's a prompt if you'd like it: I want to see the AU where Zeke gets what he had wanted when he'd chosen to grab the Ray Sphere in the first game and run off with Kessler - not necessarily at that time and place, though. If the Beast at the end of InFAMOUS II can find a way to do it, or if it somehow happens at any other time, that's fine too. I want to see what he ends up capable of doing, how he reacts, how his relationship with Cole is affected, and whether or not he ends up on Cole's new quest to awaken all of the Conduits. How does he feel about what's happened to him?
If you'd rather not go that route, that's okay! Just give me anything about Zeke and Cole - what their lives were like before the Ray Sphere hit, what they were like in the original timeline (the one where Cole married Trish and Zeke was his best man,) what happened and how he kept things together in the days between the Ray Sphere incident and the start of the first game, how in the world he and Cole (either karmic path) started to have a decent relationship again after what Zeke had tried to do... really, anything along any of those lines would be great. Include whatever other characters or any sorts of relationships you'd like, but I'd like the focus to be on those two, please.
And that's it. Good luck, and have fun with it! :D
(Just so you know, there are lots of spoilers in this letter - it was hard to avoid them, I'm afraid. So I've tried to add some extra spoiler space in case you haven't played all of these games. Also hoping to add some LPs in here, but honestly there are so many unfinished LPs that it's hard to find the completed ones. If I find any, I'll add them in. If anyone reading this knows of any, feel free to leave a comment and I'll edit them in gratefully. :D)
So, let me just jump right in here.
General Preferences
Things I love to see in fic:
- Thoughtful worldbuilding; little details that spring from a natural reason and that fit together to make a big, meaningful picture.
- Characters who interact with each other in interesting and natural ways, especially if they're characters who were never given as much opportunity to interact with each other in the source material.
- Dynamic characters who react to what's happening in the world around them and change with it.
- Action, adventure, and really wild things.
- Romance of just about any stripe (M/F, M/M, F/F, poly, other...) as well as close friendships, platonic relationships, tension-filled rivalries... really, I'm happy with just about any kind of relationship, as long as it makes sense for the two characters in the canon and/or has a realistic buildup in the fic. I'm generally okay with most kinks and tropes involving relationships that are respectful and mutual in some way or another, although I will say that I generally prefer consensual things.
And, since all of my requests are in VG fandoms, I can add this one:
- Fics that explain in real-world terms what game mechanics are, and use them as part of the worldbuilding. For instance: What are magic points? Are people only able to channel a certain amount of magic without being exhausted? How does it feel to be out of MP? I adore seeing meta about what these concepts mean to the people who live in that world, rather than to the player on the other side of the screen.
Dragon Quest 8
One of the older JRPG franchises. Released traditionally by Enix (now Square-Enix.) DQ8 was the PS2 release in the series, and like most of the games was fairly long. It's very much a traditional RPG, although it's definitely updated, but I found just about all of the characters impossibly charming, even the ones that didn't speak. It was amusing, had fun inter-party banter and relationships (and honestly, a game that will bother to give me banter between the party on a regular basis is already a winner for me,) and had surprisingly interesting subplots and such for such a traditional game.
Reference links: DQ-Web
Request: Yangus, Red, Hero - These three, post-game, together and trying to work out an acceptable arrangement.
Yangus was probably my favorite character in this game - I liked his forthright bumbling earnestness and his bad-guy-gone-good image and backstory, and I absolutely loved his complete devotion to the Hero, despite everything. (There's one particularly amusing scene, if you talk to him inside of a little house, where he basically says that he wants to settle down in a little quiet place like that someday, and he hopes that the Hero will be with him, maybe wearing a apron....) And I also liked his relationship with Red, and I'm pretty sure that everything she did in that game was her being too proud to tell him that she wanted to be with him and trying everything she could to get his attention.
So I'd really love to see the three of them, all together, trying to sort out their entanglements with each other and come to some sort of arrangement. I'm not picky about who ends up romantically involved with whom - any of them, or all three of them, in any combination - as long as the story is about them. Yangus says that he's basically running her legitimate business practices; maybe the Hero comes to help them with some big problem that they can't handle, or maybe Trode hires them to do some work for Trodain and Hero is there when they arrive. However you want to write the three of them together is fine with me.
FolksSouls | Folklore
One of the earlier PS3 titles, a supernatural story set in a small village in Ireland, where it is said that "the living can meet the dead." The plot centers around two people - Ellen, a young woman who is trying to find out about her mother, and Keats, a reporter dragged into the mystery by a strange phone call. But they both find out that things are even more complicated than they imagined. It's one of the prettiest games I've played, graphically, and the battle system is very fun; its internal mythology fascinates me, and I keep meaning to replay it (with all of the DLC this time) so that I can make more notes about it, because unfortunately this is about the only current-gen game I own that didn't have an in-game codex. It's definitely worth a look, since it's generally fairly easy to find used.
References: Game Script | Folklore Wiki | Let's Play Folklore pt. 1** by TheBulzomeGuides
**This isn't a complete LP, but so far it's the most complete one I've found, and will at least give a good idea of what the game looks like. Considering how much I love this game's general aesthetic, I want to share it. If I find a longer one, I'll post it as well.
Request:Ellen, Keats, Livane, Belgae - Anything exploring these four, and the parallels between the relationship between Ellen and Keats and the one between Livane and Belgae, would be fantastic.
Okay, yes, this request is sort of a big spoiler. Still. The four of them are set up to have a lot of parallels between each other, and I'd love to see some meta exploring that. I liked the sort of adversarial relationship that Livane and Keats had, and the mentoring sort of relationship that Keats had with Belgae; there wasn't as much between Ellen and those two, but what we saw was intriguing. I'd like to see more along those lines. Really, anything involving this four is going to make me happy.
InFAMOUS
Both games - the original game and its sequel - were released on the PS3, and follow the adventures of a man who, after surviving a mysterious explosion, finds that he's been given new, electricity-based superpowers and super parkour skills. (Of course, he can never go swimming again, but there's always a price.) [ETA: Also my SO would like you to know that he already had super parkour skills, which is true. He DID get the ability to fall long distances without dying, though!]
Both games are sandbox games; they're lots of fun to explore. There are a lot of details to the cities that you explore that I love, and it adds a lot of depth to the story, IMO. (Also, I admit that my request this year is slightly slanted towards the second game, to a large degree because the second game did what I thought would be impossible for me - it made me like Zeke and his bromance with Cole, even after what he'd done in the first game.)
Reference: InFAMOUS Wiki
Request: Cole, Zeke - Would love to see something following the Infamous ending (possibly an AU with Zeke becoming a Conduit?)
I realize that my plot prompt bears some explaining. Long story short, when we saw the ending of this game and the leadup to the final (evil karma) decision, the first thing both of the people in the room thought was this: "Okay, Beast, we'll take you up on that offer... on one condition. Find a way to make Zeke into a real Conduit!" I have no idea whether or not that would even be canonically possible, but hey, that's what fic is for, right?
So, here's a prompt if you'd like it: I want to see the AU where Zeke gets what he had wanted when he'd chosen to grab the Ray Sphere in the first game and run off with Kessler - not necessarily at that time and place, though. If the Beast at the end of InFAMOUS II can find a way to do it, or if it somehow happens at any other time, that's fine too. I want to see what he ends up capable of doing, how he reacts, how his relationship with Cole is affected, and whether or not he ends up on Cole's new quest to awaken all of the Conduits. How does he feel about what's happened to him?
If you'd rather not go that route, that's okay! Just give me anything about Zeke and Cole - what their lives were like before the Ray Sphere hit, what they were like in the original timeline (the one where Cole married Trish and Zeke was his best man,) what happened and how he kept things together in the days between the Ray Sphere incident and the start of the first game, how in the world he and Cole (either karmic path) started to have a decent relationship again after what Zeke had tried to do... really, anything along any of those lines would be great. Include whatever other characters or any sorts of relationships you'd like, but I'd like the focus to be on those two, please.
And that's it. Good luck, and have fun with it! :D
