extrapenguin

Hi, I'm

ExtraPenguin. Here's my Yuletide letter! Likes, DNWs, and prompts beneath the cut. Fandoms listed: Uplift Saga, Memory of Water, Módào Zǔshī (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) the book. Minichallenge links: Yulebuilding.

Likes

SCIENCE FICTION :D
engineering, especially of the sort that keeps civilization running – sewage, maintenance, transport etc – plus fault analysis and infrastructure design stuff
narratives of reconstruction: fixing things, setting right what once was wrong, rebuilding
plotty stuff! I love it when something happens
narratives about women and their relationships with each other, whether platonic or romantic
same-sex relationships – F/F and M/M – in general
achieving greatness via wanting to do something, then doing it so hard one becomes great in the process
competence porn
loyalty, loyalty kink, people loyal way past the point of reasonableness
tea
humor, fun, zaniness
comedy of errors -type things
exposition
loving descriptions of landscapes, space, whatever
enthusiasm
Shown Their Work details
xenobiology, aliens, very alien aliens
generic nerdery and science feels
academia and assorted academic pissing contests and infighting when played for humor
transhumanism
happy endings

I tend to prefer fics that are about an (external) thing happening (eg. There is an engineering malfunction!) more than fics that are about a trope (eg. Accidental Baby Acquisition or what-have-you). I appreciate this can be a fuzzy line to tread, but I hope this helps you in your ficcraft.

DNWs

grimdarkification or other substantial departures from canon tone
setting change AUs (eg coffee shop AUs, Hogwarts AUs)
Christianity, mentions of "sinning"
angst (esp. in a mourning context), depression
humiliation, especially public
embarrassment
incest, including between adopted or foster family (exception: Wei Wuxian/Jiang Cheng)
pregnancy/children/motherhood, infertility (Noria is still allowed to exist, but please no fic centered on Lian raising her)
violence to fingers or eyes
noncanonical permanent disability or the acquiring of such
animal harm (especially negative outcomes for horses)
sexism, homophobia, racism, etc and narratives built solely around them
noncon, dubcon
plots based entirely on miscommunication
pure introspection/character study/slice of life or angst
possessiveness/claiming/jealousy in a romantic context
requested characters being presented as/rendered utterly helpless; the "damsel in distress" trope

And now, the prompts! Feel free to mix and match within fandoms. Some have longer sections, but I love them all equally.

Teemestarin kirja | Memory of Water - Emmi Itäranta

Lian Kaitio

(Note: I read this in Finnish so some of my terminology may be off.) I love the setting and the writing style and the way it's a dystopia, yes, but there is still some semblance of order rather than idk raving zombie hordes, and civilization is still there. I'm requesting Lian Kaitio as a way of angling at some worldbuilding, as well as her viewpoint as a scientist.

She traveled from Kuusamo all the way to Xinjing by train – what was the train journey like? What did she see out the window? A Siberia without snow, the saltwater coast encroaching inland, desertification. What does she think, when she sees all of that?
After Sanja brings her the CDs of evidence, what does she do with them? An expedition into the Lost Lands? Does she go to some friendly authority, like Mikoa had Bolin, and ask for assistance? (100% here for Lian/OFC femslash traversing the landscape and figuring out how to fix things!)
What is the situation like, and how bad is it? What sorts of things are they currently working on to make stuff better? Are they aiming for some sort of solarpunk future, or something else?
How much does the government snoop, and how does it affect how Lian communicates with her daughter and husband once she's gone back to Xinjing?
Does the war being waged elsewhere connect to drinkable water, or is there a war going on at all?
What drove Lian into her profession? How much does she know about the world, and how much does she get to discover about it?
Did Lian move to faraway Kuusamo because she'd discovered too much, and had to get out of Xinjing to avoid further negative consequences? If so, what changed to make it safe for her to return?
How could the situation be fixed? Either the police state or the climate catastrophe. Are they contemplating some large-scale eco-engineering projects to decrease the temperature of the planet? Feel free to be as grandiose as you please!

The publisher, HarperCollins, has a free sampler e-book; the full version should be available wherever you acquire your books.

Uplift Series - David Brin

Creideiki

Okay so first up, a fandom-specific DNW:

Do not focus your fic on Creideiki's head injury. Mentions are fine, but don't write a fic centered on it.

My very favorite dolphin, the wily philosopher! I love the setting with its "and even the kitchen sink" attitude towards space opera worldbuilding eg the five different means of FTL travel, and the fact that the universe is vast and wondrous and has umpteen billion alien species in it. I love the dolphins, Creideiki and Hikahi and Keepiru, and Trinary and poetry.

I'd love to see more of Creideiki & co's galactic escape adventure! How do they reach Earth?
Does their escape adventure/some training cruise of Creideiki's go through E-Space, and perhaps yield them with some new knowledge of how E-Space works? Or do they actually encounter a mad sentient who prefers it to other modes of hyperspace travel? What sorts of things would a dolphin see in E-Space?
Are there still Progenitor relics to be found? Did the Progenitors all unifiedly disappear one day, or did they gradually fade out? Does their find in the Shallow Cluster lead them to another set of clues, or did Creideiki's hunch to investigate the Shallow Cluster come from some prior experience with Progenitor relics?
In general, what were the pre-canon adventures of Creideiki and/or the Streaker?
How did Creideiki and Hikahi first meet? (I do ship it!) What sorts of prior adventures did they have?
Do they stumble across some (illegal) Uplift process? Or a failure/"failure" of an Uplift process? What would such processes look like, and what would the ramifications be for our protagonists?
What's it like to think in Trinary all day? What does a Trinary courtship look like? What are Creideiki's (and Hikahi's and Keepiru's) favorite wordplays? Do they all have different favorite types of Trinary haiku imagery?
Do they have some additional encounters with Galactic bureaucracy, either before, after, or during the whole "everyone wants to murder Earthclan" thing?
Do they run across someone who've committed some ecological no-no or otherwise run afoul of the galactic rules? Do they try to bring them to justice? Can they?

Parts of the book are available on Google Books, should you wish to check for haiku inspiration, and of course it's available in print and as an e-book through the usual channels.

* Hands and fire?
      Hands and fire!
* Use them, use them
      To leap higher!
* Dreams and song?
      Dreams and song!
* Use them, use them
      To leap-long! *

魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù

Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng

Okay so first up, some fandom-specific DNWs:

Do not include any donghua-only elements, incidents, details, characterization points, or attire; I am requesting the novel only.
Do not use CamelCase for characters' names etc. Instead, use standard Hanyu Pinyin romanization as used on the wiki (style guide with examples). Ie, Jiang Cheng, Wei Wuxian, Lianfang-zun, Zangse Sanren, Suibian.
Don't write Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian, or go out of your way to state Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian will happen immediately after the fic ends/my ship will eventually break up so Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian can happen. The same applies to Lan Xichen/Jiang Cheng and Lan Sizhui/Jin Ling.
Don't write a fic where Wei Wuxian is the product of infidelity. His father, biologically and otherwise, is Wei Changze.

I love the setting and the way the characters are so real and plausibly human and affected by their childhoods and circumstances. I'm also 100% here for Wei Wuxian and his analytical mindset of "how do I solve this" and the fact that he's basically a mad scientist except kind and earnest, and I love his relationship with Jiang Cheng and the mass of class issues there. He's from a really dysfunctional growth environment and places himself last, but he's still brilliant and I love him. I'm requesting both Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng for matching purposes, but would be 100% OK with a fic with just Wei Wuxian, as I would be with a fic that's Wei Wuxian/Jiang Cheng or Wei Wuxian & Jiang Cheng.

AU where Wang Lingjiao's demands stop at whipping Wei Wuxian, so he's left with siding with Yu Ziyuan against Jiang Cheng and Jiang Fengmian about whether or not whipping him was a justified decision in that situation, and how the family dynamics are affected by that.
Or, what if Zangse Sanren and Wei Changze return with their son in tow, and it turns out the Wei Wuxian we know is just some random kid Jiang Fengmian picked up from the streets? How would that affect the dynamics of this house of evil bees? (Please give the actual Wei son a courtesy name that isn't "Wuxian". The Wei Wuxian we know can here be the kid of someone else entirely.)
What sorts of youthful misadventures did Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng get into? Jiang Cheng asks "You want to stuff him into a bag and beat him up again?" so Wei Wuxian must've stuffed Wen Chao into a bag and beat him up at some point, and the boys of the Lotus Pier do shit like "lying in the water with faces covered in blood pretending to be floating corpses", so please, write me the most extra OTT trouble Wei Wuxian got into during his youth! And Jiang Cheng rolling his eyes and grumbling at him while following him into it, as always.
What if, somewhere along the line, Jiang Fengmian came across the little Xue Yang, and took him in, so Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng have to help raise their Cruel Seventh Shidi? Or perhaps he didn't go all evil yet and is instead just a traumatized bun with a missing finger. Or a bun who got adopted before Chang Ci'an ran a carriage over all his fingers! He'd be around 9 when the Lotus Pier is massacred; how would lugging around a nine-year-old affect the following pieces of plot?
Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng trying to fix each other! They're a dysfunctional mess, just like the rest of the household, but Wei Wuxian really tries to make Jiang Cheng feel better and not feed his inferiority complex and improve his confidence; I'd love to see him succeed a little bit more than in canon (idk, maybe they get sent off somewhere away from Jiang Cheng's parents?), or for Jiang Cheng to reciprocate and try to get Wei Wuxian to stop the self-sacrificing and stop placing himself last (by scolding him, because this is Jiang Cheng).
Anything that gets Jiang Cheng to realize that their relationship is not one of equals, and his reaction to that: anger? doubt? bitter disappointment? What would the resulting argument with Wei Wuxian look like, and what would the fallout be? I'd love an exploration of the class issues they have!
I ship these two as Wei Wuxian/Jiang Cheng, and a get-together would be nice! Perhaps Wei Wuxian trying to reassure Jiang Cheng with some nice body worship, and oops they fall into bed? I really like service top Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng finally getting the chance to lower his hackles and relax and be loved, reaffirmations of friendship that turn into something more, unspoken feelings finally being hinted at, and happy endings. Please have them be at least 14.
SPOILER prompts below! Don't read the rest of this list if you don't want to be spoiled.
Jiang Cheng finds out Wei Wuxian gave him his golden core earlier, before their falling out. How does he react to his best friend keeping this a secret from him?

And some Wei Wuxian solo prompts beneath, no spoilers. (You're allowed to include Jiang Cheng in those as well, but Jiang Cheng is optional, especially if you go the Wei Wuxian/someone else route.)

What if instead of being picked up by Jiang Fengmian, he'd been picked up by Baoshan Sanren and only descended the mountain at idk age 17? I recognize he'd be pretty much unrecognizable what with the different formative environment, but this might be a fun characterization take. I like fish out of water! Relatedly, what if his parents lived to raise him, or returned from the dead at some point?
Wei Wuxian discovers more about his long-dead shibo, Yanling Daoren! Or maybe he's not so dead, after all. Or Wei Wuxian brings him back to life?
Wei Wuxian invents something! What is the thought process of his that went into his inventions? What things did he almost invent but not have the time for?
I also ship Wei Wuxian/Wen Ning, Wei Wuxian/Lan Qiren, and Wei Wuxian/Mo Xuanyu, with Wei Wuxian on top for all, so feel free to put any of those ships in the fic. Here are some get-together ideas to add to any of the above:
- Wen Ning goes all "make me your weapon" and offers his body to his resurrector. Or, should you wish to set your fic in happier times, Wen Ning attaches himself to his hero Wei Wuxian after the discussion conference where they met, and eventually blushily asks him to his bed.
- A Lan Qiren get-together I'd prefer to be after the guest student arc, maybe when Wei Wuxian is 16+. Perhaps Lan Qiren can be charmed by the cultivational artefacts like the Compass of Evil, or the skill displayed at archery, or simply by how Wei Wuxian is handling the aftermath of the destruction of the Jiang sect? Wei Wuxian could try to shave off old fuddy-duddy's beard again, or perhaps yoink off his forehead ribbon by accident, only to be told about what it means?
- Mo Xuanyu is perhaps trickiest, since he's, like, 11 when Wei Wuxian dies, but perhaps he doesn't sacrifice his body for Wei Wuxian, and instead draws an array to summon himself a boyfriend? How would things progress from there?

This canon's english translation is available for free online! The Chinese original is here. Assume I'm up-to-date with the english translation.