Yuletide Letter 2013
[This letter still has a couple of sections missing, but I wanted to get it up before I go and faceplant into bed. More will be added later.]
Fandoms are in alphabetical order, and shorter sections tend to reflect shorter canons rather than less interest on my part. (There's just not as much for me to talk about with a 3-minute song or a single sketch from a comedy show!)
Likes
I'm open to all ratings; gen, slash, femslash, het, poly; and a variety of genres - from fluff to casefic, angst to adventure, hurt/comfort to kinky porn. Mainly I'm just excited by the idea of something new in a fandom I love.
I love the canon eras, but I also love AUs. Whether standard genres (steampunk! space! pirates!) or fusion AUs (Hogwarts! Borrowers! daemons!), or even Alpha/Beta/Omega, I am definitely down with that. What I'm really interested in is the characters' interactions and personalities, so don't worry that you need to get absolutely every historical detail correct. (Of course, if you love historical details and/or research, you can definitely go to town on them.)
Dislikes
Character death, gore, bloodplay, watersports, scat.
Ancient History RPF
Julius Caesar, Mark Antony
I have a ridiculous number of feelings about these two, both as individuals and as a pair. I hope you'll forgive me gushing about them, but with a canon as broad as two people's entire lives I feel like it would help for me to highlight the specific events or the facets of their personalities that most interest me.
I think Caesar is pretty awe-inspiring and I love how complex he was. A military genius, a master strategist and a great risk-taker, he wielded huge amounts of power as sole dictator, yet he introduced laws that benefitted the ordinary people of Rome over his fellow senators. After being ransomed by pirates as a young man, he swore to return and destroy them (which he did), but had a policy of forgiving his political enemies. He seems to have been very intelligent and practical, but he was also a bit of a dandy, and one of his hobbies was writing poems - which were apparently neither particularly serious nor particularly good, which really amuses me. I so wish they'd survived, because one of the tiny snippets we have includes the phrase "we lubricate our bodies". Also, he once cried over a statue of Alexander the Great, which just makes me giggle, I'm sorry. He also had more human frailties, like being afraid of cats. And he probably suffered from epilepsy.
Meanwhile, Antony has a reputation as a useless drunk, an uncontrollable lech, even a violent warmonger - but the more research into him I did, the less true that seemed, and the more sympathetic I began to find him. I love his moments of kindness, like refusing to allow Ptolemy XII to slaughter those captured at Pelusium, or lending huge amounts of money to people despite his own debt problems. He does actually seem to have been both a brave and a competent soldier (and if you couldn't tell from my squealing over Caesar, I really like competency), but I also like that some of the spectacularly ridiculous things he got up to. He supposedly had a chariot pulled by lions. He wore his tunics scandalously short to show off his powerful thighs. And he was once so hungover that he actually threw up in the senate, which I will find hilarious forever. Despite his reputation, the words people actually use to describe him are ones like "laidback", "generous", even "childlike" - the times when he acted otherwise, though I may disapprove of them, make him more complex and thus more real and interesting to me. So although I don't want to see him portrayed as a villain, you really don't need to make him spotless.
On the surface they seem like very different people but they apparently got along very well, and which brings us back around to the theme of complexity again. I also have a massive thing about loyalty, and Antony seems to have been epically loyal to Caesar, from his time as one of Caesar's officers in Gaul, through the civil war, and even long after Caesar's death. In fact their friendship seems to have been one of the most important relationships in both of their lives. Antony was one of the few people Caesar could trust, and Caesar was one of the few people who really seemed to believe in Antony. Caesar gave him a chance to prove himself when Antony was a young officer with little experience and a negative reputation - tarnished since childhood by the legacy of a father who produced a spectacular military defeat and then promptly died, leaving the eleven-year-old Antony to inherit so much debt that he plunged straight into bankruptcy.
Whether it was platonic or romantic or sexual or somewhere in between, I'm really interested in the relationship between the two of them, so I would love fic that revolves around it. I will admit that I ship them, and it doesn't seem entirely unlikely to me that they could have been a thing. (Caesar could never quite shake the rumours that he'd let the King of Bithynia bed him when he was a young man, and the young Antony is alleged to have had a sexual relationship with his friend Curio. Also, Cicero once declared that Antony was Caesar's Helen of Troy, which I will never stop finding hilarious.) But if you don't want to write slash, I would love some gen that examines their friendship - maybe about how they first got to know each other.
That said, please don't imply that the relationship between the two guys was the only important one in their lives. The themes and tropes of the Caesar/Antony relationship appeal to me the most, but I do ship both of them with Cleopatra, as well as Caesar/Cornelia and Antony/Fulvia. You don't have to mention any of these in the fic, but to state that my OTP was definitely and completely the most special ship would actually make me sad, rather than happy.
Possible prompts:
Da Vinci's Demons
Leonardo da Vinci, Zoroaster
[Coming soon]
Horrible Histories
Blenkinsop, Maltravers
[Coming soon]
Slash is great, but I'm also fine with friendshippy gen (especially if you're writing a story where they're still at school), but I basically ship these two exclusively with each other so please don't pair them up with other people.
Possible prompts:
Jolene - Dolly Parton (Song)
Narrator, Jolene
This song is one of those that I can listen to on repeat for hours and never get tired of. I love the soulfulness of it, of the narrator bearing her heart and confessing everything to this other woman. The narrator's sensual descriptions of Jolene get me every time, and I can't help but suspect that there are some repressed lesbian feelings there. I definitely ship Narrator/Jolene, but you could totally do this request as gen; I would just love to see some more interaction between these two women, whether that's Jolene giving her a disinterested response, them negotiating some kind of polyamorous arrangement, or Jolene seducing the narrator all by herself.
As a note, normally I prefer fics to stick to third person, but this is a canon where first person or even second person could work really well. (It'd mean you don't have to give the narrator a name, for a start!)
Possible prompts:
Papers Please
Jorji Costava
I never expected to like this game as much as I do, or to find Jorji quite so adorable. But I love how relentlessly positive he is, how he never seems to get angry or take anything personally, and how he just doesn't give up. I'm also amused by his wonderfully bad passport, the misspelled one that it looks like he drew himself with crayon. (But don't worry, it's pre-approved! Just stamp here!) And his actions on Day 29 give me so many feels, he's just so sweet. Basically, I love him cheerfully breezing through this repressive dystopian society, in total contrast to everyone else around him.
As with Jolene above, this is a canon where I'm comfortable receiving a fic written in first or second person; I'm already used to the game being from the inspector's POV so I wouldn't find it off-putting. Or, as the game is so document-focused, you could continue with that style: police files about Jorji's arrests, newspaper articles about his exploits, scribbled notes from his pocket, ticket stubs or fliers or even Jorji's own diary - anything in an epistolary format could work well here. But equally you could stay with the more standard third person. It's really up to you!
Possible prompts:
The Yogscast
Lewis Brindley | Xephos, Simon Lane | Honeydew
[Coming soon]
Fandoms are in alphabetical order, and shorter sections tend to reflect shorter canons rather than less interest on my part. (There's just not as much for me to talk about with a 3-minute song or a single sketch from a comedy show!)
Likes
I'm open to all ratings; gen, slash, femslash, het, poly; and a variety of genres - from fluff to casefic, angst to adventure, hurt/comfort to kinky porn. Mainly I'm just excited by the idea of something new in a fandom I love.
I love the canon eras, but I also love AUs. Whether standard genres (steampunk! space! pirates!) or fusion AUs (Hogwarts! Borrowers! daemons!), or even Alpha/Beta/Omega, I am definitely down with that. What I'm really interested in is the characters' interactions and personalities, so don't worry that you need to get absolutely every historical detail correct. (Of course, if you love historical details and/or research, you can definitely go to town on them.)
Dislikes
Character death, gore, bloodplay, watersports, scat.
Ancient History RPF
Julius Caesar, Mark Antony
I have a ridiculous number of feelings about these two, both as individuals and as a pair. I hope you'll forgive me gushing about them, but with a canon as broad as two people's entire lives I feel like it would help for me to highlight the specific events or the facets of their personalities that most interest me.
I think Caesar is pretty awe-inspiring and I love how complex he was. A military genius, a master strategist and a great risk-taker, he wielded huge amounts of power as sole dictator, yet he introduced laws that benefitted the ordinary people of Rome over his fellow senators. After being ransomed by pirates as a young man, he swore to return and destroy them (which he did), but had a policy of forgiving his political enemies. He seems to have been very intelligent and practical, but he was also a bit of a dandy, and one of his hobbies was writing poems - which were apparently neither particularly serious nor particularly good, which really amuses me. I so wish they'd survived, because one of the tiny snippets we have includes the phrase "we lubricate our bodies". Also, he once cried over a statue of Alexander the Great, which just makes me giggle, I'm sorry. He also had more human frailties, like being afraid of cats. And he probably suffered from epilepsy.
Meanwhile, Antony has a reputation as a useless drunk, an uncontrollable lech, even a violent warmonger - but the more research into him I did, the less true that seemed, and the more sympathetic I began to find him. I love his moments of kindness, like refusing to allow Ptolemy XII to slaughter those captured at Pelusium, or lending huge amounts of money to people despite his own debt problems. He does actually seem to have been both a brave and a competent soldier (and if you couldn't tell from my squealing over Caesar, I really like competency), but I also like that some of the spectacularly ridiculous things he got up to. He supposedly had a chariot pulled by lions. He wore his tunics scandalously short to show off his powerful thighs. And he was once so hungover that he actually threw up in the senate, which I will find hilarious forever. Despite his reputation, the words people actually use to describe him are ones like "laidback", "generous", even "childlike" - the times when he acted otherwise, though I may disapprove of them, make him more complex and thus more real and interesting to me. So although I don't want to see him portrayed as a villain, you really don't need to make him spotless.
On the surface they seem like very different people but they apparently got along very well, and which brings us back around to the theme of complexity again. I also have a massive thing about loyalty, and Antony seems to have been epically loyal to Caesar, from his time as one of Caesar's officers in Gaul, through the civil war, and even long after Caesar's death. In fact their friendship seems to have been one of the most important relationships in both of their lives. Antony was one of the few people Caesar could trust, and Caesar was one of the few people who really seemed to believe in Antony. Caesar gave him a chance to prove himself when Antony was a young officer with little experience and a negative reputation - tarnished since childhood by the legacy of a father who produced a spectacular military defeat and then promptly died, leaving the eleven-year-old Antony to inherit so much debt that he plunged straight into bankruptcy.
Whether it was platonic or romantic or sexual or somewhere in between, I'm really interested in the relationship between the two of them, so I would love fic that revolves around it. I will admit that I ship them, and it doesn't seem entirely unlikely to me that they could have been a thing. (Caesar could never quite shake the rumours that he'd let the King of Bithynia bed him when he was a young man, and the young Antony is alleged to have had a sexual relationship with his friend Curio. Also, Cicero once declared that Antony was Caesar's Helen of Troy, which I will never stop finding hilarious.) But if you don't want to write slash, I would love some gen that examines their friendship - maybe about how they first got to know each other.
That said, please don't imply that the relationship between the two guys was the only important one in their lives. The themes and tropes of the Caesar/Antony relationship appeal to me the most, but I do ship both of them with Cleopatra, as well as Caesar/Cornelia and Antony/Fulvia. You don't have to mention any of these in the fic, but to state that my OTP was definitely and completely the most special ship would actually make me sad, rather than happy.
Possible prompts:
- Any kind of show of loyalty, or trust, or just generally knowing or understanding each other really well would make me squeal with joy. As a subordinate, Antony had to trust his life to Caesar's strategies. As a leader, Caesar had to trust that Antony wouldn't betray him. Maybe you could show them preparing for battle, or preparing to part ways for a time, or reuniting after time apart. Maybe privately discussing some delicate matter - whether political or personal. Maybe one of them being angry about some kind of disrespect shown to the other, like when Antony tried to use his tribune's veto and the senate threw him out instead. Or just the kind of easy banter that can develop between people that comfortable with each other.
- There could be a lot of delicious pining and angsting and longing happening here, whether they're friends or already friends-with-benefits. I think it would be very easy for Caesar to believe that Antony's general lack of emotional commitment meant he didn't have any feelings for him, and likewise easy for Antony to believe that somebody as brilliant as Caesar wouldn't be interested in someone like him. What happens if there's an accidental confession and/or an explosion of feelings?
- I love hurt/comfort, and as soldiers there was always the possibility of physical injury or trauma. From some serious bruising to an actual wound, one of them could easily end up in the kind of pain that's difficult to ignore. Maybe the comfort wouldn't come so easily - depending on how bad the injury was, how close the two of them had become, or which way around it was, maybe the comfort would be hesitant, or maybe it would end up being given under the pretense that this was definitely not comfort at all. There are other scenarios you could build some comfort around too: one of them experiencing a terrible hangover, or receiving bad news, or Caesar struggling with his epilepsy. (But if you go for the latter of these, please be sensitive and do some research?)
- There are a lot of sources, both historical and modern, which suggest that Antony was submissive. (And by "suggest" I mean "literally describe him as submissive, dominated and/or obedient".) As Antony seems to be someone who generally lacked self-control, and Caesar was the commanding leader who gave him a purpose, I'd be interested to see you cast that kind of light on their relationship. From a non-sexual setup with Caesar giving Antony guidance and direction, to a hardcore sexual D/s relationship with a whole host of attendant kinks, or somewhere in between, I would love anything along those lines.
Da Vinci's Demons
Leonardo da Vinci, Zoroaster
[Coming soon]
Horrible Histories
Blenkinsop, Maltravers
[Coming soon]
Slash is great, but I'm also fine with friendshippy gen (especially if you're writing a story where they're still at school), but I basically ship these two exclusively with each other so please don't pair them up with other people.
Possible prompts:
- Like many people, my headcanon is that these two were at boarding school together. That setting has all kinds of associated tropes you could dip into: midnight feasts, cricket matches, whispered conversations in the library, terrible school dinners, telling ghost stories in the dorm, struggling with Latin homework, dealing with bullies, strict teachers, sports days, coming back after the holidays, looking forward to Christmas, studying for exams... Any one of those, or anything else they might encounter, could make for a great fic. Homesickness, scraped knees, or suffering through the flu are all possible sources for hurt/comfort.
- Or show me what the war is like for them. Maybe the terrible things they see result in nightmares that have to be chased away with tender cuddles. Maybe they still manage to find little pieces of happiness in a beautiful sunrise, or letters from home, or just seeing one another smile. Maybe the only thing they worry about more than the war itself is whether it's alright to have feelings for another chap, and whether those feelings are returned.
- What happens to them after the war? Are they left with physical scars - or with mental ones? Are there still nightmares? Do they find it hard to readjust? There could be angst about the friends they've lost. There could be early mornings, made complicated by a new disability that means one of them needs help dressing. There could be cold winter nights, stretched out by insomnia. But even here you could still do fluff, with them settling into a cosy domestic routine of buttered toast and afternoon tea and Sunday roasts. Maybe they buy an old cottage and labour over the garden, delighting in the new life springing up. Maybe they babysit nieces or nephews. Maybe they get a mischievous dog that has to be kept under control and taken for walks twice a day. (Maybe they get a sensible dog that takes them for walks twice a day instead.)
- I'd be happy to receive porn about these two, but I suspect their tastes would be quite vanilla so a lot of the kinks I usually like reading about probably don't apply here. That said, I think they'd be a great pairing for things like slow and gentle sex, surreptitious sex in semi-public places, or loss-of-virginity stories. You could also concentrate on other first times, or more innocent displays of affection: kissing, cuddling, holding hands, etc. Basically, just these two being adorable together.
Jolene - Dolly Parton (Song)
Narrator, Jolene
This song is one of those that I can listen to on repeat for hours and never get tired of. I love the soulfulness of it, of the narrator bearing her heart and confessing everything to this other woman. The narrator's sensual descriptions of Jolene get me every time, and I can't help but suspect that there are some repressed lesbian feelings there. I definitely ship Narrator/Jolene, but you could totally do this request as gen; I would just love to see some more interaction between these two women, whether that's Jolene giving her a disinterested response, them negotiating some kind of polyamorous arrangement, or Jolene seducing the narrator all by herself.
As a note, normally I prefer fics to stick to third person, but this is a canon where first person or even second person could work really well. (It'd mean you don't have to give the narrator a name, for a start!)
Possible prompts:
- The most obvious setting would probably be smalltown America, but the song doesn't actually have any details about where it takes place. Maybe they live on a space station, and Jolene is an alien who literally has "flaming locks". Or maybe Jolene is an adventuring airship captain who stops to refuel at the airborne city where the narrator lives. Or perhaps it's still modern America, but Jolene and the man are filmstars playing lovers, and the narrator is worried their on-screen romance is creeping into real life. Or Jolene could be a vampire. Or they're all Hogwarts students. Or... Seriously, you can go wild here - whatever you think you would work best for the story you want to tell.
- The song doesn't specify how well the narrator knows Jolene either. It would take on a totally different tone depending on whether Jolene was a stranger, a long-time rival, or even the narrator's best friend. Maybe Jolene has secretly pined for the narrator for years; maybe they're headed straight towards hatesex; maybe they're going to slowly discover each other and the kind of relationship they want to have.
- Jolene comforting the narrator after the song would work for both gen and femslash. Regardless of whether she has any actual interest in the man, I don't like to imagine Jolene as the villain here - as conflicted, maybe, but I'd rather the two women not be set up against each other. So perhaps when the narrator comes to her, Jolene provides hugs or tissues or just some gentle words.
- If you want to go the femslash route, you could tease out some of the things from the lyrics and really develop the sensuality of them, up to whatever rating you're comfortable with. Maybe the narrator daydreams about running her hands through Jolene's hair, or can't resist tugging on it when they're actually in bed together. Maybe the narrator explores the feel of that ivory skin, all the different areas of it and the different reactions she can draw out. Or maybe the narrator kinks hard on Jolene's voice - this could involve anything from dirty talk to phone sex, from cries of satisfaction to dom!Jolene giving orders, or just the more experienced Jolene urging the hesitant narrator on. You could show their first time, or skip ahead to an established relationship; this is really just a fandom where I'm interested in all the possibilities.
Papers Please
Jorji Costava
I never expected to like this game as much as I do, or to find Jorji quite so adorable. But I love how relentlessly positive he is, how he never seems to get angry or take anything personally, and how he just doesn't give up. I'm also amused by his wonderfully bad passport, the misspelled one that it looks like he drew himself with crayon. (But don't worry, it's pre-approved! Just stamp here!) And his actions on Day 29 give me so many feels, he's just so sweet. Basically, I love him cheerfully breezing through this repressive dystopian society, in total contrast to everyone else around him.
As with Jolene above, this is a canon where I'm comfortable receiving a fic written in first or second person; I'm already used to the game being from the inspector's POV so I wouldn't find it off-putting. Or, as the game is so document-focused, you could continue with that style: police files about Jorji's arrests, newspaper articles about his exploits, scribbled notes from his pocket, ticket stubs or fliers or even Jorji's own diary - anything in an epistolary format could work well here. But equally you could stay with the more standard third person. It's really up to you!
Possible prompts:
- Is Jorji as competent at everything as he is at forging his own passports? Maybe his sales patter is hilariously bad, or he has to keep dodging past customers because the drugs he sells are total rubbish. Maybe he just muddles through daily life, not really understanding anything but trying hard all the same.
- How would he interact with other characters from the game? All those times he could be detained - how would Calensk deal with his eternal optimism? Or Sergiu? Or perhaps he could end up chatting to other people while in the queue. Maybe Elisa tells him her story, and he tries to give her a bit of hope. Or an EZIC agent tries to convert him to their cause. You could bounce him off practically anyone.
- What happens if Jorji and the inspector encounter each other again after Day 31? If it's a universe where Ending 18 happened, maybe they become neighbours in Obristan and strike up a friendship. Perhaps the inspector joins Jorji in his business ventures, or Jorji helps him to find some other kind of job. Or if it was Ending 16 instead, perhaps Jorji tries to comfort the inspector over his choices and soothe any guilt or fear. (You could even slash them if you felt so inclined, although I'm not sure I'd want porn about them?)
- Or, if it's the world of Ending 20 and things continue as they were, does Jorji keep coming back? Can he keep up his business? Even expand it? Or does it start to fail, resulting in less money for bribes and leaving him unable to worm his way out of being arrested? Or does he otherwise come face to face with some kind of consequence for his drug dealing? Maybe the inspector gets to witness Jorji's optimism finally wavering.
The Yogscast
Lewis Brindley | Xephos, Simon Lane | Honeydew
[Coming soon]