Happy Yuletide 2012!
Hello to my favorite Yuletide writer!
First of all thank you so much for being awesome and volunteering to write in these fandoms! I love you already for even knowing them and enjoying them enough to want to explore them more. I hope this Yuletide is absolutely wonderful for you and nothing in my list stresses you out. If it does? Do what makes you happy. You being happy makes me happy.
What I like in general: slice-of-life, missing scenes, people being dorks under stress, characters staying true to themselves. I'm a total sucker for sibling and sibling-like relationships.
I love family interactions, traditions, the little things that bind families together. I like character exploration and mockery and snark, and I like characters that like each other, that strengthen each other just by virtue of their presence and support. I would never demand anything crazy plotty though if that is inspiring you, I totally enjoy that too.
Bittersweet tends to be my favourite tone but I am totally okay with either fluff or something darker. However if you’re going dark (and most of these fandoms definitely don’t shy away from the darkness), I would like some measure of light or hope at the end of the tunnel.
I'm not a fan of reading pwp or incest fics, and I'm honestly not huge on graphic smuttiness. I definitely don't need a fic solely focused on a ship - which is probably already obvious by my 'likes,' but ships can definitely be awesome as long as they don't take sole priority over other established relationships.
Newsflesh Trilogy - Mira Grant
Character: Mahir Gowda
Zombie political thriller with bloggers. As an elevator pitch, this series sounds like it’d be not good at all. But it's one of my top two series of books from recent years (Montmaray being the other one). I enjoy everything about this world Grant created. It's so intricate & in-depth, and I love exploring it as much as possible! I love the Masons to pieces, but their canonical ending completely satisfies me. So I’m requesting my other favorite character in Mahir. He’s an incredibly smart, badass, and brave guy who takes a job as a Newsie and ends up helping take down a worldwide conspiracy. And somewhere in the middle, he got fired, was on the run, was rehired, and got married. So how could I not love him? Anything with Mahir being smart and effective and an intellectual badass would make me so happy.
As far as prompts go, I’d love to see the first time Mahir ‘met’ Georgia. Or maybe the first time he met Shaun? What about what happened to Mahir after George fired him or his thoughts on having to deal with everything from afar. I’d be excited to see Mahir post-canon too. Where does he go after Blackout? How does After the End Times function post-Masons?
If none of that appeals to you, anything that involves Mahir’s brilliant and wry perspective on life and the world with zombies would make me incredibly happy. Interactions with Becks, Buffy, Maggie, anyone. I’d love it.
Montmaray Journals - Michelle Cooper
Characters: Henry FitzOsborne, Sophie FitzOsborne, Veronica FitzOsborne
The FitzOsborne ladies are flat out awesome. I could type out another fifteen superlatives without even feeling like I’m touching their degree of amazing. Anything you could write with more FitzOsbornes in it would make me incredibly happy. I love all the FitzOsbornes & their people so add in whoever speaks to you. Feel free to focus on just one of the ladies or a particular combination of them - all three aren’t necessary.
I’d love to see what Henry got up to in the Wrens or her life at boarding school. For Veronica & Sophie, post-canon fic would be great - maybe future summers on Montmaray or coping with Toby, Simon and Julia’s household? Veronica dealing with the Foreign Office or Sophie getting pulled back into one of the Colonel’s schemes could be really interesting. Which isn’t to say that the war wouldn’t be excellent too - as long as FitzOsbornes at War is, so many stories aren’t told. What really happened on one of Veronica’s trips to Spain? How did Veronica and Sophie (and sometimes Henry!) pass the time in their bomb shelter? What about those potato pamphlets?
And the FitzOsbornes seem ripe for crossovers so if you want to run that way, I’m all for it. The Pevensies or one of the Fossils from Ballet Shoes, Peggy Carter or one of the Bletchley Circle ladies or someone from Code Name Verity. It would be awesome.
If you haven't read Code Name Verity, don't click this cut! Seriously, this is a book that you want to go into unspoiled!
Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein
Characters: Julie Beaufort-Stuart | Verity, Maddie Brodatt | Kittyhawk
I just read this book - I’d been meaning to read it for months because I kept hearing how great it was, but now that I have, I desperately want fic about Julie and Maddie. You definitely don’t have to AU the end at all, but if you did, I wouldn’t mind. (Seriously, ALL THE TEARS. ALL OF THEM) On the other hand, I’d love to see Maddie after the war. What happened when she went to Julie’s home? I both ship Julie & Maddie & love them as ‘just’ friends - either way they’re a sensational team.
Please don’t let Maddie fall apart completely. She seriously needs to be okay and keep flying the plane. Slice of life stuff with Julie & Maddie during the war would be fantastic as well. Basically just awesome women being completely awesome in some way. I’m so sorry for this one being so short! It’s not indicative of a lack of interest or something - I just haven’t had time to really process my love for this book beyond “OH GOD, AREN’T THESE GIRLS WONDERFUL? HOW CAN I READ MORE ABOUT THEM?” Anything about them would make me so very happy.
Drina Series - Jean Estoril
Characters: Drina Adams, Rose Conway, Ilonka Lorencz
As much as I like Drina, I’d really like a story that centers on one of the other girls. The books - especially the later books - focus on Drina to the exclusion of other fantastic characters. And then there’s the weird ‘suddenly Rose hates Drina’ thing in Drina Ballerina and I really can’t deal with that! So I’d love something with Rose or Ilonka, maybe focusing on Ilonka adapting to England or Rose dealing with the class differences between her family & the world of the Dominick. There’s such an assortment of Issues that could be delved into here.
I wonder if the Dominick is really as upper middle class as Drina seems to think. Drina has such a narrow range of experience and is (as much as we like her) rather snobbish about anyone who does things differently. It’d just be fantastic to see the Company - or the school - from a different point-of-view. How do people who aren’t the Bright Hope of the Dominick do things?
I've read these books so many hundreds of times that it's getting to the point of not even being funny. They’re my ‘I can’t concentrate on anything else’ books to read in bed. They weren't my first introduction to ballet, but they're probably why I know about ballets like Petroushka and Sylvia. I even dressed up as Drina for Halloween when I was 9. I treasured that scarlet cloak! Which is incredibly dorky, I know, but so it goes...
Thank you, Yuletide writer! Thank you so much. Above all, write a story you love and are happy with, and I'll love it too. If my ideas or ramblings don't make sense to you, feel free to disregard them. I know I'll love whatever you come up with.
Yay Yuletide!