Dear Yulewriter 2023

Dear Yuletide writer, welcome and may your winter be kind. Yuletide has been a part of my holiday season for almost 15 years now and I appreciate you working to help keep the tradition alive.

My requests this year break down into Horror and Quiet Life Traveling Anime

General DNW: Suicidal Ideation; Possession by outside force, onpage sexual or child abuse

General love to have: Characters who are kind, even when they make mistakes and aren't necessarily moral. Disability and Mental issues shown Onpage.
Religious horror or really anything where characters grapple with the difference between the life defined for them and the one they want or choose.
Nontraditional narrative structure, second person, time skips, series of drabbles, letters and news clippings, whatever floats your boat. While I'm fine with tradition structure I like to get a feel for the world that isn't always possible in chronological limited third POV.


Girl With All the Gifts
Loved this story and have if as a comfort listen even though I rarely make it though the whole thing on every relisten. Would love something post book. Between it's ending and the Epilogue in Boy on the Bridge. How do they make the new world from all the children? Do they go back for the kids at the base? What's it like for Melanie when she understands what she did? Is she guilty or does she see it as still justified. At the end Helen Justineau says that she's showing the kindness she understood from how she was treated by the adults at the base. Where does that lead their relationship?


Mister Magic

This was a break out love for me. I'm picky about my horror and have a soft spot a mile wide of lapsed christians dealing with religious horror. And new I had to read this from her children's book series. Absurdist stories are another fave. Val is amazing throughout.

I'd love something post book or set in a canon divergent AU. Maybe Val doesn't get pulled out? Does she find a way out got herself and the others? What if Isaac found her earlier, before the reunion got set up?

For after I loved the epilogue. How does Val do as the new Mr Magic? What powers does she learn to share with the Humm? How does her version of Mr. Magic change the children both in and out of the Humm. I loved how the story brought in the stories of all the non protagonists. How does Isaac adjust?

Kingdom of Needle and Bone
My comfort companion after the last couple of hard years. I've had it on my car radio once every couple months.

I'd love something focused on the Islands. Either Isabelle who knows what's going on with the knowledge we get in the ending. Or one or all the other women on the Island. We have a really big time skip when the narrative zooms out to the world scale where I'd love to see how they build and live and change themselves. For added spice maybe something they deals with the mythologization we already see happening with the name of Kingdom of Needle and Bone. How does that effect religion and teaching the children how to be so separate from the outside world. How does that effect the adults who make that kind of decision.

葬送のフリーレン | Sousou no Frieren | Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (Manga)

This one I fell into right before Yuletide so I'm not as well versed in the canon, but I love the vibes. And the idea of showing your love for those you lost by raising their kids and following the path you once took. Frieren is both very distant from those around her and is trying so hard to learn how to reconnect even as she says it doesn't come naturally to her species.

Something set in either journey or swapping back and forth as in canon would be lovely. Or an AU where she comes back earlier for the horn and gets more than a single short visit with the original party. Do they go on a memory trip of their own?

Banished from the Hero's Party
So this one's is kinda borderline between horror and after the story ends anime. I'd love something that leans into the more horror elements. Red and Rits Destinies have pretty much already been fulfilled but Red at least seems to acknowledge how that fact is related to their Destinies being more limited. There don't seem to be any other Guardians in the demon horde for Red to kill and go stronger. Rit's is overtaken by her brothers.

In Ruti and Tisse's story we see the darker side of wanting to escape your Destiny but not being able to. I love the girls growing friendship, particularly Tisse's willingness to meet Ruti where she is. I'd love something that focuses on either pair. Or all four together. Particularly would love Ruti's POV. We don't get a lot of her first person version of events. So much of all the plot rotating around her decisions.

Violet Evergarden
Would prefer pre movie. I love her traveling and growing into herself after the army. Forcing people to see her as more of a person than a military dog or instrument for their own voice.

And how in seeing others aknowledging her humanity she finds it for herself. Followup ok one of her letters or a new job. Or just her around the postal service learning to do things for herself and her own wants. Also so much love for any discussion of her disability as more than a passing change in her prosthetics.