dear santa....
Hi Santa!
I am unfortunately forced to write this letter quickly, so I'm going to be very lazy. I wrote a very long 'Dear Santa' letter last year, and my general likes and dislikes have not changed. So I'm just going to leave you a link. Check here for the first part of the letter and more general stuff, then I'll hit the details of my requests below.
Hockey RPF - I am wide open with this request: any characters, any team. My team is the Blackhawks, but I also watch the Bolts and Bruins, and pick up games with other teams from time to time, so feel free to write some other team if that's what floats your boat. I would prefer that you avoid Vancouver, the Flyers, and the Kings. My favorite player is Jonathan Toews, but if you're also a Hawks fan and would prefer to do something with some of the lesser-known players on the team (Carcillo, Kruger, and Leddy have all grown on me lately), that would be cool. I tend to like goalies from just about any team (I have a vast and unholy love of Tuukka Rask throwing temper tantrums), and I like players who contribute offensively but also bother to play defense. So yeah, pretty much anything you could write here will make me happy!
I've watched every single game the Hawks have played for the last four years, and a whole lot of games for other teams, so just about anything you can write in this fandom will make my heart swell three sizes. If you are not a hockey fan, I am so sorry, because I'm betting that most of that prompt won't make much sense at all to you. But if you somehow matched me on this one, then I would be thrilled to have anything hockey related. Like I said above, I love goalies, so something about the guys who stand between the pipes would be awesome. If you're interested, Ken Dryden's The Game is a super book to help you get inside the head of an NHL netminder, and is full of odds and ends that would probably never occur to anyone if a goalie didn't point them out. But really, anything hockey would be awesome. (I am writing this on the night that Crosby came back, so I'm a little bit high on the game right now. Forgive me if everything I wrote above is a giant ramble.)
The Borgias - The relationship between Cesare and Lucrezia was my favorite thing about this show, so a story about them being all way-too-close and clever and sneaky would be loved. Whether it's them plotting the downfall of Lucrezia's husband by letter or working together towards the expansion of papal power, anything about the relationship between these two will be wonderful.
I have always had a soft spot for characters that plot and scheme, and then succeed. Gossip Girl's Chuck Bass. Rome's (TV) Octavian. And now both Cesare and Lucrezia fit the scheme! Plus they have all sorts of inappropriate chemistry, and all sorts of fascinating historical events happening around them, and lovely, sensual costuming and setting details. They probably could not have tailor-made a historical drama that would be more up my alley. I adore intrigue and veiled threats that are backed up with real power. I eat up manipulation, and I love it when characters know that they're being manipulated but let it happen anyway because it suits their ends as well (a la the King of France). Or even just a quiet day in their garden when Lucrezia is unexpectedly innocent and Cesare is a doting big brother. I'm on tenterhooks for this show to return, so a Christmas-time fix of it would be amazing.
Secret Circle (TV) - What I would really, really like in this fandom is a story about what might have happened if Nick didn't die, and Jake came back anyway. From that premise, you could go anywhere with the story that you wanted. Nick and Melissa's budding relationship was one of the better parts of the show, so something about the two of them would be neat. Or something about how Jake would fit into the Circle if his brother was still a member. Perhaps Faye being futilely snarky in Jake's direction. I'd like something not Cassie-centric, since she's often the dullest part of the show for me.
Secret Circle and I have a complicated relationship. I want to like it as teen-soap-a-licious brain candy, but it sometimes throws me out of the mindless fun, whether with flat acting choices or poor writing decisions and plot holes. Overall, I like it, though, enough to be curious about what might have been if certain things hadn't happened. Which was pretty much what my prompt was about. Now, I realize that this is a lot more specific than I usually get with prompts, and there's a reasonably good chance that the places that my poor Santa wants to poke the story with fanfic, and the places that I want to poke it with fanfic, may not be the same places at all. Which is why, on this prompt especially, I emphasize the 'Optional details are optional!' rule of Yuletide. If nothing I described above turns your crank, then by all means, please write something that will be fun for you! Like I said, I like this series enough to be curious about the what-ifs and might-have-beens that fanfic pretty much fills in, so I'm actually much easier on this prompt than I'm sure like it sounds. Don't stress out over this one, if it's Nick and Jake, I'll be happy.
Okay, that was a giant, long post. Maybe something in it helped my writer (I hope so!). Above all, have fun with Yuletide, dear writer. I always have a blast with this fic exchange, so I really hope that you do too!