effervescible | Yuletide Letter

Dear Yuletide writer,

Hi! Preemptive thank you for writing for me, and I want to say upfront that if you have an idea for your story that doesn't match with the specific ideas or prompts below, cool—I'd very happy to receive a story that inspired you or that you just thought would be really fun.

Fic stuff I like in general: stuff that fits into canon (either missing scenes or things that work with the canon timeline to deepen character understanding), canon-divergent AUs of the "what if X was different?" style, both humor and angst, characters spending time together who don't do so much in canon, complicated emotional dynamics. Smut is good, especially with a strong sense of who the characters are, but I'm not specifically looking for that—if it fits with your story and you want to write it, cool, if not, cool. I tend to like het more than slash but not always, and gen is great too.

Fic stuff I don't like: AUs of the "characters are in high school/a coffee shop/etc" variety, character death or excessively unhappy endings (I don't know 100% happiness and sugar, but for Yuletide I'd prefer not to come away depressed), non-canon breakups.

I'm kind of neutral on crossovers, as they can be kind of dull if I only know one of the canons, but little easter eggs are very welcome. The Thrilling Adventure Hour would be an exception to this—I'm not specifically looking for a crossover between different segments, but obviously I'm familiar with all of them and would enjoy it if you went there.

Uncharted

Elena Fisher, *anyone

I picked Elena as my sole character to match on for Uncharted because 1) she is my favorite 2) there are just so many other characters I'd enjoy seeing her interact with, so the choice is yours! Or you could go totally solo if that stirs your fancy. Some ideas:

-Elena & Nate. I ship the fuck out of them, OTP forever in all their messiness. The two of them on adventure? Wrangling with dating/a serious relationship/the fallout of their estrangement/trying on weird domesticity (depending on canon point)? Banging furiously? There is probably nothing with them you could do that I wouldn't like.

-Elena & Chloe. I've often thought it's a shame we don't see them interact after Among Thieves, given that they won each other's respect (and were never super catty to begin with, which I love), and I think they have a lot of potential to have an interesting friendship, even if she's Nate's friend first. I'd love to see them hanging out, either because one or both of their lines of work brought them together, or for more chill reasons. (If you feel like going angsty, I'd be very intrigued by something pre-UC3, possibly where Chloe learns of the estrangement—there's no way she wasn't aware, but nothing in canon says she heard it from Nate.) My only request would be that they wouldn't only talk about Nate, though talking (and making fun of) him is fun.

-Elena & Sam/Sully/Charlie etc. (Er, those are options, not Elena and a really interesting threesome, though if you think you're up for it I'd be impressed.) I looooove Elena & Sully's relationship and the way we can see it has progressed without seeing the progression itself, and I'd love to see a post-game look at Elena & Sam learning to be family. And she knows Charlie somehow, so it'd be cool to see how they interact. (Can you tell that the character stuff matters more to me than plot? Though I love plotty stuff too. I'm easy to satisfy.)

Hark! A Vagrant

Nemesis, Pirate

Maybe it's because of all the fandom remixes I've seen of their comics, which make me laugh absolutely 100% of the time, but I really love these two. I'd love to see more of them and what makes their bond of enmity. Given the tone of the original comics, I'd especially enjoy something humorous, but I'm not averse to something more serious if that floats your boat. (Haha, see what I did there.) I'm also equally fine with them as an explicit pairing or just, you know, super devoted to going after each other.

A couple of specific plotty ideas:

-After a battle that took out both their ships, Pirate and Nemesis (feel free to give them names, or just go with those monikers!) end up on a deserted island together. Will they overcome their differences to help each other survive? Is their mutual enmity the very thing that does help them survive? Will there be beach smooching?

-One of very few exceptions to my dislike of non-canon divergent AUs. I'm kind of amused by the idea that their mutual burning enmity is so strong that it might have been reincarnated between them as different people in different lives in different times—it'd be fun to see a "history repeats itself" thing with them.

The Thrilling Adventure Hour

Sparks Nevada, The Red Plains Rider, Croach the Tracker

I should say upfront that I'm lukewarm on these characters as a threesome, mainly because a lot of the time people seem to use it as a solution to a love triangle and I see a good threesome as being an entirely different thing from any of the internal pairings within it, and also because people seem to take it for granted that Sparks and Croach already have True Love between them and personally I think they'd need more work to get there from canon. It's not a Do Not Want, but if you want to go for a threesome, I would love to see it get built up or already exist but have the story itself make me believe. As for two-person ships, I was pretty happy with both Red/Sparks and Red/Croach in canon. I also LOVE Ginny West and would be happy to see her too if you wanted to include her or set the story in later canon. Stuff that isn't shippy at all is just fine too.

Anyway! What I really love is the friendship between these three, no matter what their current romantic entanglements are, even when there's friction between them. (Is there ever not?) I would really enjoy a story where the three of them are brought together in some way, either through a big adventure or tracking down some robot rogue or maybe because of a Martian holiday. As in the canon, I'd love to see humor here, but I'm more open to drama too since SN has had some amazingly touching moments. Some stuff I like:

-Clashing human and Martian cultures, manners and expectations, especially considering Red comes from both worlds. I've really enjoyed Croach trying out human events (surprise event!) and exploring things like Red's Hee-Ros K’west in canon.

-Drunk Croach is just a good time if there is room for that.

-I haven't seen 99.9% of the surviving M Bar episodes, so I'm pretty canonblind when it comes to the pre-podcast era, and I think it'd be fun to see something from earlier in their lives, maybe when Sparks was settling into his tenure as marshal and getting to know Red and his new Martian sidekick.

-AU: What if Sparks really was the father of Red's real human baby, instead of Jib Janeen? I've always wondered how that would have gone. Could be a shippy thing or something where they learn to co-parent as friends.

I hope this letter is helpful to you—in my last Yuletide, I had no idea was doing and didn't give my writer much insight on my tastes and ideas, and I've been mortified ever since. At the same time, I do want you to enjoy writing, so don't stress about that—even if you come up with something wildly different from anything I've suggested here, I'm super interested to read it. Thanks so much, and happy Yuletide!

(P.S. I can also be found at effervescible.tumblr.com if you're looking for more about me, but it's mainly dumb video game images, fair warning.)