Fandom: Dear Yuletide Author Letter
Edited November 14, 2019: I always feel intimidated participating in something like the Wrapping Paper challenge for art treats because I don't have the right words to talk about art clearly, but I decided to give it a go this year. My comment is here.
Edited November 3, 2019, to add a Batwoman request now that I've started watching the show and fallen in love.
Dear Yuletide Author,
Yuletide is my favorite fannish time of the year, and I can’t wait to see what you create. It brings me great joy to write stories for people for Yuletide, and I hope that you have a lot of fun and a wonderful experience this Yuletide.
Below, I’ve provided some general likes and Do Not Wants, as well as a few thoughts about why I like specific fandoms and characters. If there is a discrepancy between the general likes and DNWs and the fandom-specific information, go with the fandom-specific information.
My absolute favorite things: werewolves, crossovers and alternate universes, and monsters and magic.
You can find me on DW, LJ, and AO3 as escritoireazul.
Likes
+ stories about women, including f/f, gen, and het
+ werewolves, werewolf packs as families, and werewolf alternate universes in any canon
+ chosen families and adoption stories where adoption is treated as totally normal, adoption and chosen families = real families, and the adoption is not a BIG DRAMATIC SECRET
+ alternate universes, a non-exhaustive list: werewolves, witches and witch hunters, IN SPACE, horror movies, haunted summer camps, ghost hunters, portal fantasies, monsters, canon divergence, weird west/wild west (I particularly like the outlaw feel of it, untamed and wild, big spaces with nowhere to hide, big woods claustrophobic around you, danger at every turn, as long as the AU avoids the magical Indian/savage Indian/white savior bullshit that can show up in weird west and westerns in general)
+ polyam families, threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes, in all configurations (Vs, triangles, dodecahedrons)
+ monsters of the week, casefic, adventure stories, mysteries
+ friends and family teaming up to save the world, particularly on road trips
+ crossovers and fusions so long as my requested characters are the main characters
+ tropes, a non-exhaustive list: wilderness survival, huddling for warmth, forced proximity, friends to lovers, enemies to friends (to lovers), there’s only one bed oh no, fake dating, survival horror, abandoned ships, burial at sea, burial by fire, crashed on a deserted island, ghost ships, not-so-safe harbour, locked-room mysteries, came back wrong
+ kink (female top/dom only except for biting and bloodplay): biting, light bondage, impact play, rough body play, bloodplay for supernatural characters, fireplay, marking, sensory overload, orgasm denial/control, pegging
Do Not Want
+ characters dealing with racism, sexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, fat hate, or ableism within the story
+ character bashing
+ rape, non-con, and dub-con
+ embarrassment/humiliation
+ animal cruelty or death
+ permanent character death for my requested characters
+ incest
+ big age difference in romantic relationships (except for supernatural characters), particularly an older man/younger woman
+ a/b/o or werewolf stories with Big Tough Alpha Male tropes
+ pregnancy, including mpreg
+ poetry
Requests
There are spoilers below for each of my requests, which are:
Batwoman (TV 2019): Kate Kane | Batwoman
The Ghost and the Darkness: John Patterson, Helena Patterson
The Mummy series: Evy Carnahan O’Connell
Touchstone Series - Andrea K. Höst: any (Zan Namara, Zee Annan, Laura Devlin, Ys)
United States of Asgard - Tessa Gratton: any (Astrid Glyn, Glory | Fenris Wolf, Signy Valborn, Soren Bearskin)
Willow (1988): Sorsha
Batwoman (TV 2019): Kate Kane | Batwoman
What I Like About the Source Material: Kate Kane. Everything else is pretty great, too, but Kate Kane owned my heart approximately two seconds after she appeared onscreen. I love how reluctant she is to become the bat, I love how raw her feelings toward Sophie are still, I love her obsession with finding her sister and how Alice is twisting it and twisting it, I love her complicated relationship with Mary and how Mary adores her, I love how strong and brutal Kate is when she fights, I love her growing friendship with Luke Fox and his awe of all the things Bruce Wayne left behind, I love how Kate is narrating this story for Bruce, I love how she chooses to become the bat and make the sacrifices because Gotham is worth it, something you don't hear very often, I love the over the top ridiculousness of the Magpie as a villain especially compared to Alice's darkness, I love that moment when the little girl touches Batwoman's face with awe, I love how Mary is just overwhelmed when she meets Batwoman, I love how Mary is smart and brave and a social butterfly influencer who loves pretty things, I love how Kate wants to fight back against gentrification in Gotham as Kate just as she's fighting for Gotham as Batwoman -- just everything, I love everything.
Prompts:
Adventures! Kate helps Mary save Gotham in her own way. Kate's training and adventures during the years she was gone. Kate and Sophie getting up to shenanigans at the academy. More delightful and somewhat ridiculous villains and villain teamups. Kate and Alice take each other on again and again. Kate and Luke create new, greater weapons and gadgets.
AUs and crossovers! IN SPACE! Werewolves come to Gotham. Weird west with Kate the gunslinger. Kate was doing science and fought the Meg during those missing years. When Alice says Beth is down the rabbit hole, she means it literally and Kate has to descend to get her back.
Love and romance and sex! Kate/every woman ever, basically, but my favorites are Kate/Sophie when they were younger, Kate/Reagan, and Kate/Magpie. Kate the female Bruce Wayne, awesome, hilarious, handsome, and the women who enjoyed her company while she was gone from Gotham. I dislike infidelity stories, so if you write Kate/Sophie in the present, I prefer either Sophie leaving the husband before getting involved with Kate again or a consensual open marriage situation.
The Ghost and the Darkness: John Patterson, Helena Patterson
What I Like About the Source Material: John Patterson in all his love for his wife, Africa, and building bridges, and how he comes in, bright eyed and a little naive but learns to love the area for what it is, not what he thinks Africa itself should be. Helena Patterson in her love for her husband and his obsessions, and how strong she is in letting him go do the things he loves, in having a baby on her own with her beloved husband so far away, in traveling to him alone with a baby because she wants him to see his son and she wants to see him and the great things he builds. Their love for each other is overwhelming.
I also enjoy John’s relationships with Samuel and Charles Remington, particularly how he has to learn to work with each of them in very different ways.
Prompts:
Adventures! John continues to build bridges and adore his wife and child; Helena goes with him to more and more locations. Things always go wrong, and sometimes John solves them and sometimes Helena does. They see beautiful, remote locations. Samuel travels with them and finds all sorts of things for them to do. Samuel calls them back for help when something else goes wrong. John and Helena must survive some great disaster in their travels, relying on each other to save themselves and the people around them.
AUs and crossovers! IN SPACE! The Ghost and the Darkness are supernatural creatures and all the ways that changes the story and doesn’t change the story. Their bites, their scratches, turn people into monsters. Weird west vibes in different locations. John and Helena travel the world building bridges and hunting monsters, maybe with Samuel and/or Charles Remington, who manages to survive, even if he becomes a monster himself.
Love and romance and sex! John/Helena forever. Their romance before their marriage and in the early years after. Long letters back and forth filled with emotion and desire. The moments they snatch together between his jobs. The freedom they have on location when propriety and the eyes of their society are very far away. John worships Helena, and she tops the hell out of him in all sorts of ways.
The Mummy Series: Evy Carnahan O’Connell
What I Like About the Source Material: Evy’s love of her work and Egypt and adventures, and her sheer confidence in herself even if the face of people dismissing her. The easy way she falls in love with Rick. The ways she’s tied to him and Ardeth. How much she wants to spend her time in Egypt where she feels at home. How she constantly gets them into trouble.
Prompts:
Adventures! Evy finding more and more artifacts to search for and protect. Evy accidentally raising the dead in other places. Evy in the jungle, or the forest, or deep in the ice and snow trying to stop people from raising the dead. Cursed objects, haunted places, and all the trouble she can get into.
AUs and crossovers. IN SPACE! And all the alien artifacts she could find on other worlds. Weird west. Evy hunting monsters with Rick and Ardeth. Time travel. Reliving the same day until she figures out how to get it right. Werewolf pack coming together.
Love and romance and sex! We survive celebratory sex. Ancient sex magic and rituals. Slow build threesome. Out of nowhere threesome. They’re tied together throughout lifetimes as lovers and friends.
I ship Evy/Rick and Evy/Rick/Ardeth.
Touchstone Series - Andrea K. Höst: any (Zan Namara, Zee Annan, Laura Devlin, Ys)
What I Like About the Source Material: A delightful portal fantasy/sci-fi romp across three main books, one epilogue, and one follow-up book from a different POV. The three main books, Stray, Lab Rat One, and Caszandra, are told from the perspective of Cassandra Devlin, an Australian teenager who accidentally walks through a portal into another world on her way home from exams one day. The adventures she has next start as wilderness survival and turn into a mix of future technology, superheroes, and the monsters that lurk just out of sight.
I love the worldbuilding in this series, particularly around the special talents some people have and how they recruited a bunch of teenagers to go fight monsters over and over and over again. I love how awkward Cassandra is, but how hard she works to adapt, the issues of privacy and autonomy and government that the story touches on more than once, and the way she really builds a chosen family in a world very unlike her own.
Prompts:
General:
What happens next! They’ve just made official contact with Earth at the end of the fourth book, and gift earth with tech that can cure cancer and most other illnesses, puts a computer in your head that lets you download languages, slows aging, all sorts of things, as well as people who can fly, read emotions, move objects with their minds, and on and on and on. Young people, teens and young adults, who have been fighting an unending fight to keep their entire world alive.
Now that they’re on Earth, they face new complications, societies they don’t understand, people who will want to use them and their technology, people who will fear them, people who will try to buy their loyalty.
Once regular back and forth travel is established, Earth will be able to provide things to Muina, too. What can humanity offer such an advanced society? Cultural things, and history, and survival knowledge.
What does that do to Muina, and its monsters and its powers and its technology almost indistinguishable from magic?
Adventures! On Earth or on Muina, survival can be difficult. The early years before Muina can be resettled had it filled with monsters and these teenage fighters exploring it in short, frightening time periods. Earth might have the memories of monsters, human and otherwise, lingering around it, and might require fighting them off in order to keep contact between the worlds alive.
Missing scenes! We see a narrow slice of canon from the protagonist’s first person diary POV, but there is a lot going on around her, both back home on Earth and in the monster hunters Cassandra finds herself supporting. Hurt/comfort after a bad battle. People teaming up to protect Cassandra from the worst parts of their monitored society and its obsession with her. What the battles looked like before Cassandra arrived to strengthen the fighters.
There’s a ton of time before Cassandra arrives where a bunch of teenagers are hunting monsters that keep regenerating. Some of them die. Some of them are left behind. They’re all hurt and heartbroken and struggling. What was it like for them, their triumphs and the failures, the hardcore training, the way their talents strengthen them but make them more vulnerable at the same time.
Things are Wrong! There’s a theory at one point that much like the characters are actually fighting a parasite world, Muina itself was a parasite world of Earth. Dark takes on this being true, the damage done to Earth and all the ways it could go wrong. Or another parasite world attaches itself to Muina and Earth, trying to drain power, to use certain people, the touchstones, to power a new world.
AUS and crossovers! Alternate universes. IN SPACE (or, you know, in actual space versus the sci-fi portal fantasy space-like aspect of the existing universe). Weird west. Supernatural monsters on Muina or on earth. Superheroes. The Muinans are gods.
Love and romance and sex! Fraught, power-driven sex. Emotional breakdowns. Hurt/comfort. Oh my god we survived. Plants on Earth act like sex pollen. Sex as planetary exchange.
Characters
Zee Anan: One of the older Setari, she fought the monsters for a long, long time, saw friends die, saw friends break down in all that death. She is, at least once, basically described as a goddess of fury and light. She’s powerful, and smart, and loyal, and loving. She has to adjust to no longer being at war when she’s one of the people who has been fighting the longest. She has to adjust to opening up to people who are less likely to die because of these fights. She went through rigorous training and dealt with horrifying things during the war. She now has a new world opened to her, strange new things coming from Earth.
I ship Zee with her canon love interest, Nils, along with Cassandra, Cassandra and Kaoren, Cassandra and Nils, and Zan. I also love her friendship with Cassandra, and with the rest of first and second squad, particularly Maze.
Laura Devlin: Cassandra’s mother thought she was dead for a long time only to learn that her daughter was alive, and on an alien planet, and suddenly a mother and a wife. When Laura joins Cassandra in this new world, there are hundreds, thousands, of new things for her to learn and a romance with a man who sent Cassandra and all the other teen fighters into danger for years. She brings a very different perspective to this new world than Cassandra did, and I’d love to see more of how she experiences it, of what she learns about it that Cassandra didn’t.
I ship Laura with Gidds, but I also love her relationship with her sisters, both the one who came with her and the one who stayed behind, and want to see what new friends she makes outside of Cassandra’s large family.
Zan Namara: The first person who spends a lot of time with Cassandra, training her and being very proper and polite, which makes Cassandra want to break through those walls. Cassandra worries about her quite a bit because her squad is harsh with her, but that changes as she proves herself a strong, smart leader. What’s it like for her the first few times she takes her squad out to fight monsters knowing they don’t yet trust her? How does she feel about having to work with the Stray before Cassandra’s powers fully reveal themselves? Cassandra thinks she’s in love with one of the other captains who ends up marrying someone else, and Cassandra wants to play matchmaker, though she never really does. What sort of romance does Zan get to have? How does she feel about Muina being open to them? What does she do once the overall war is done?
I ship Zan with Maze, the previously mentioned captain, as well as Cassandra, Cassandra and Kaoren, Zee, and any of the younger Setari except for those on her squad.
Ys: One of Cassandra’s adopted children, Ys is smarter than almost everyone around her, and devours new information as fast as she can. She’s awkward and antisocial and obsessed with learning. She’s also been thrust into a new world, new technology, and new society, in some ways even stranger to her than it was to Cassandra. What’s she like as she grows up? Does she find friends and lovers who can keep up with how fast her mind burns? What does she discover and change for their world, for Earth, for all the worlds they reach in the future?
I don’t ship Ys with anyone in particular, and once she’s older, I don’t think any of them would be a match even then, though I could be convinced. I do ship her with genius girls from other canons or potentially original characters.
United States of Asgard - Tessa Gratton: any (Astrid Glyn, Glory | Fenris Wolf, Signy Valborn, Soren Bearskin)
What I Like About the Source Material: A three novel and three novella series about a world where the Norse gods are real and present in modern-day life. It is mostly the story of three teenagers who change their world, and the characters, gods and mortals alike, who surround them. I love the ways the gods are and are not involved with the human world, I love how they can and can’t be trusted, all at the same time, I love the details of how the world has changed because the gods are real and active and what that means for the USA. (One thing I hate is the treatment of the indigenous people and [lack of] characters; though there are a handful of references to what happened when the Norse gods and their followers came over, mostly they are erased from the narrative, with the exception of Soren’s Pacific Islander ancestry.)
Mostly, though, I love the characters. They are young and strong and weak and fierce, afraid and brave and driven, loved and loving, and, always, hungry to make the world better in whatever way that means to them. I love all of these characters, and would love to see their adventures, together and apart.
Prompts:
General:
Crossovers and alternate universes! Weird West -- there’s already monsters and magic and gods and great swaths of wilderness lost to the trolls! IN SPACE! The easy crossovers are with other fandoms that have werewolves (Glory + all other werewolves ever, please and thank you) or that have Norse mythology somewhere in them, but all sorts of crossovers would work.
Adventures! Though there are guns and more modern weapons, a lot of fighting is still done with swords, battle axes, steel weapons. I would love to see more of that, the way they fight holmgang instead of going to court, to protect their honor, to protect someone else’s. There are caravans and carnivals of Loki followers, rife with adventures and ghosts.
Characters:
Astrid Glyn:
The thing I love most about Astrid is that she weaves herself back into the strands of fate after she’s been pulled from them to become Idun. She makes her own fate, and gives herself adventures, and finds a way to be both a goddess and a girl.
Missing scenes! Astrid spent a lot of time with her mother before her mother disappeared. Roadtrips! Seething together! What life was like in the Lokiskin camps and carnivals. How Astrid learned to harness her power and see the future. What she sees for the future after the series once she weaves herself back into the world, visceral and dangerous and amazing.
Slice of life! How does she make life work, being both a goddess and a girl. She finds a way for Idun to publicly love the Sun’s Berserk, the same way that Astrid loves Soren, but that changes a lot of things for them. How do their lives, together and apart, look now? Astrid is interested in making Idun more available to the public; does she ever manage that? What sort of adventures does she get up to now that she is maybe not quite so tied to her orchard but also accepts that she wants to be there with her trees?
Love and romance and sex! I ship Astrid and Soren hard, and would love to see more of them together during any of the books or after, the way they build their lives together, a girl goddess and a very public berserker who would rather not be public at all. I also ship the two of them with Baldur, both during the first book, when he is mortal and gentled without his memories, but also after, when he’s back to being his glorious, flirtatious, overwhelming self. While I love any two of them together as well as all three, the core of this for me is how Astrid and Soren love each other, and I prefer that reflected no matter what else is going on. Astrid has a stream of gods and goddesses who come through her orchard and become close to her, as friends and as lovers. I’d love to see the friendships/lovers Astrid builds now that she’s determined not to lock herself away from the world. What does it look like, for a goddess who is also a girl to be friends with the gods? She and Glory spark off each other, and Glory is, for a long time, forbidden from Astrid’s orchard because of her hunger. Astrid opens her orchard to all, including the elf-as-a-trollmother, and I would love to see more of that in the future, and Glory being welcomed, too.
Glory | Fenris Wolf:
Glory is basically a werewolf, and she’s fated to devour the sun and signal Ragnarok. She’s bound to teenage girl shape, and her hunger rages unchecked. She is amazing.
Adventures! Glory’s been alive a long, long time, and I would love to see the different ways the world looks to her at different times. She’s seen the rise and fall of countries, the changes to the ways the valkyries get to be valkyries, Soren becoming the first berserker in New Asgard history to swear to a god other than Odin; she’s seen and she’s done and she’s become bored of so many things. What sparked her interest, historically? What will catch her eye in the future? What does it look like, when she finally breaks free of her chains and devours Baldur, the sun?
Sex! She’s viciously sexual and violent and only lets the people she’s going to fight or fuck call her Fenris. Her hunger rages in all things. Show me these moments, painful, hot, dangerous, fucking and fighting, violence in the sex. Who does she fuck or fight? What does it take for a human to draw her attention? Soren intrigues her, but who else and what else can (even if only temporarily) sate her hunger? In short: vicious, violent, sexual, basically-a-god werewolf.
Signy Valborn:
Signy is pretty much the most brutal human character in the series, and far more brutal than even a lot of the gods as they are. She fights hard to prove herself as a Valkyrie, and she writes her rage into battle and blood and poetry, and she loves and hates in equal measure.
Adventures! We get to see her quest to take the heart of troll mother to earn her place. This involves brutal training and terrible, vicious fights that nearly kill her more than once and leave many of the people she loves dead. She wants to bring back the brutal, bloody, death-filled ways of the Valkyries of old. What else does she do to fight that? With what she’s learned, does she find new ways to convince people to embrace this change? What fights does she get up to after? What does she hunt? She fights with Soren, with him and with him by her side. She loves the Berserkers, their anger and their hunger and their rage the same as her own. What does she hunt with bands of them, particularly as the trolls come back after The Apple Throne?
Love and romance and sex! I ship Signy and Glory, Signy and Soren, Signy and her band of Berserkers, and Signy with other angry, hungry, fierce women, in the series or crossovers.
Soren Bearstar:
My love for Soren grows each time I reread the books (which is often). He’s so scared of his own power and rage, and he fights to control it and, when it breaks free, to focus it in a way that does the least amount of damage. I love that about him. He’s described a couple of times of holding to a path once he chooses it until fate itself bends to what he wants; he doesn’t choose between what fate has given him (and fate is very literally in this world), but makes his own strands (options) to choose. He changed the world by remembering Astrid and by becoming the Sun’s Berserk, and he is wonderful.
Adventures! He has these grand adventures with the main characters, and they all end up loving him in one way or another. He’s rescued a missing god, faced a powerful troll mother, fought a damn dragon: what don’t we get to see? Glory is terribly fond of him, and I’d love to see her drag him off onto more adventures. What sort of monsters does he fight? How else does he change the world?
Berserkers! He’s very different from all the other berserkers in a lot of ways, but at least one wants him to be his mentor. Signy once tells Soren that people push him away because he shuts them out first. Does he ever find any comfort with the berserkers? He is not the only “strange” one now, what with Vider not only being the only female berserker in generations, but eventually leaving her training to make her own life as a berserker. Do Soren and Vider start a trend of some berserkers finding their own way? (Soren’s father rebelled as well, for Soren and his mother, and was punished for it so harshly it triggered his berserker rage and ended badly. I hope Soren and Vider have happier endings.)
Love and romance and sex! I ship Soren and Astrid with all the fire of a billion suns, and would love to see more of then. At the end of the third book, Astrid-as-Idun has fought for an even better way to have Soren in her life and to be public about it, has fought to make herself a place in the world after Astrid the girl has been ripped out of it to become Idun. Now that they are public, now that Soren is tied so strongly to the gods Baldur and Idun, what does that change for him? What does Astrid and Soren’s relationship look like as they get older? Now that they can be public, do they dance at the gods’ feasts? Do they date? Are they the subject of all the gossip rags?
I also ship the two of them with Baldur, both Baldur when he is both a god and a vulnerable mortal in the first book, but also as the series continues. Astrid loves the gods in wonderful, terrible ways, but Soren only learns to love them through Baldur, and I love the three of them together. Baldur is gentled when he is mortal in the first book, and I would love to see their deep friendship, their commit, explored further, but he’s glorious and flirtatious and overwhelming when he gets his memories back, and I would love to see how he, Soren, and Astrid figure out the new boundaries of their commit.
I think that though Astrid is the core of Soren’s heart, and he of hers, that they each have the freedom to take other lovers away from each other. I’m not entirely convinced Soren would actually act on this (except for Baldur, see above, and always with Astrid as their third, even if she’s not physically there), but I think the opportunity is there, and I’m curious as to whether he ever became comfortable enough in his own strength and rage and control to act on it.
Willow (1988): Sorsha
What I Like About the Source Material: Everything. Sorsha and her swords, her prowess in battle, her drive to prove herself to a mother who disregards her at every turn and uses her only for her power. How shocked she is when Madmartigan compliments her while he’s under the spell, and her anger when it goes away. The way she turns on her mother to save the world.
The worldbuilding, the magic and warriors and brave Willow and just everything.
Prompts:
Adventures! Sorsha and Madmartigan are raising and protecting Elora Danan by the end of the movie. As the child grows, surely others will come for her, too, eager to control that power and the prophecies that may rise around her. Sorsha and Mardmartigan go into battle again and again. Magic brings new monsters. Willow needs their help. Terrible storms come onto the lands and they must find a way to survive.
AUs and crossovers! Sorsha and all the women warriors from other fandoms. IN SPACE! Weird west. They’re turned into wolves instead of pigs, or another predator, and the traits of that predator lingers. Bavmorda banishes Elora, and Sorsha and the team have to find another way to defeat her. Superheroes. Monster hunters.
Love and romance and sex! We survived celebratory sex. Fighting turns to fucking. We’re raising a princess and have a castle at our disposal, how many places can we fuck without being caught. Sorsha topping the hell out of Madmartigan, and Madmartigan loving it. Sorsha topping the hell out of both Madmartigan and Airk, Mardmartigan loving it, and Airk loving it despite himself. Enemies to lovers. Sex magic.
I ship Sorsha with Madmartigan and Madmartigan and Airk.
This entry was original posted at https://escritoireazul.dreamwidth.org/474231.html with
comments. Reply here or there.
Edited November 3, 2019, to add a Batwoman request now that I've started watching the show and fallen in love.
Dear Yuletide Author,
Yuletide is my favorite fannish time of the year, and I can’t wait to see what you create. It brings me great joy to write stories for people for Yuletide, and I hope that you have a lot of fun and a wonderful experience this Yuletide.
Below, I’ve provided some general likes and Do Not Wants, as well as a few thoughts about why I like specific fandoms and characters. If there is a discrepancy between the general likes and DNWs and the fandom-specific information, go with the fandom-specific information.
My absolute favorite things: werewolves, crossovers and alternate universes, and monsters and magic.
You can find me on DW, LJ, and AO3 as escritoireazul.
Likes
+ stories about women, including f/f, gen, and het
+ werewolves, werewolf packs as families, and werewolf alternate universes in any canon
+ chosen families and adoption stories where adoption is treated as totally normal, adoption and chosen families = real families, and the adoption is not a BIG DRAMATIC SECRET
+ alternate universes, a non-exhaustive list: werewolves, witches and witch hunters, IN SPACE, horror movies, haunted summer camps, ghost hunters, portal fantasies, monsters, canon divergence, weird west/wild west (I particularly like the outlaw feel of it, untamed and wild, big spaces with nowhere to hide, big woods claustrophobic around you, danger at every turn, as long as the AU avoids the magical Indian/savage Indian/white savior bullshit that can show up in weird west and westerns in general)
+ polyam families, threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes, in all configurations (Vs, triangles, dodecahedrons)
+ monsters of the week, casefic, adventure stories, mysteries
+ friends and family teaming up to save the world, particularly on road trips
+ crossovers and fusions so long as my requested characters are the main characters
+ tropes, a non-exhaustive list: wilderness survival, huddling for warmth, forced proximity, friends to lovers, enemies to friends (to lovers), there’s only one bed oh no, fake dating, survival horror, abandoned ships, burial at sea, burial by fire, crashed on a deserted island, ghost ships, not-so-safe harbour, locked-room mysteries, came back wrong
+ kink (female top/dom only except for biting and bloodplay): biting, light bondage, impact play, rough body play, bloodplay for supernatural characters, fireplay, marking, sensory overload, orgasm denial/control, pegging
Do Not Want
+ characters dealing with racism, sexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, fat hate, or ableism within the story
+ character bashing
+ rape, non-con, and dub-con
+ embarrassment/humiliation
+ animal cruelty or death
+ permanent character death for my requested characters
+ incest
+ big age difference in romantic relationships (except for supernatural characters), particularly an older man/younger woman
+ a/b/o or werewolf stories with Big Tough Alpha Male tropes
+ pregnancy, including mpreg
+ poetry
Requests
There are spoilers below for each of my requests, which are:
Batwoman (TV 2019): Kate Kane | Batwoman
The Ghost and the Darkness: John Patterson, Helena Patterson
The Mummy series: Evy Carnahan O’Connell
Touchstone Series - Andrea K. Höst: any (Zan Namara, Zee Annan, Laura Devlin, Ys)
United States of Asgard - Tessa Gratton: any (Astrid Glyn, Glory | Fenris Wolf, Signy Valborn, Soren Bearskin)
Willow (1988): Sorsha
Batwoman (TV 2019): Kate Kane | Batwoman
What I Like About the Source Material: Kate Kane. Everything else is pretty great, too, but Kate Kane owned my heart approximately two seconds after she appeared onscreen. I love how reluctant she is to become the bat, I love how raw her feelings toward Sophie are still, I love her obsession with finding her sister and how Alice is twisting it and twisting it, I love her complicated relationship with Mary and how Mary adores her, I love how strong and brutal Kate is when she fights, I love her growing friendship with Luke Fox and his awe of all the things Bruce Wayne left behind, I love how Kate is narrating this story for Bruce, I love how she chooses to become the bat and make the sacrifices because Gotham is worth it, something you don't hear very often, I love the over the top ridiculousness of the Magpie as a villain especially compared to Alice's darkness, I love that moment when the little girl touches Batwoman's face with awe, I love how Mary is just overwhelmed when she meets Batwoman, I love how Mary is smart and brave and a social butterfly influencer who loves pretty things, I love how Kate wants to fight back against gentrification in Gotham as Kate just as she's fighting for Gotham as Batwoman -- just everything, I love everything.
Prompts:
Adventures! Kate helps Mary save Gotham in her own way. Kate's training and adventures during the years she was gone. Kate and Sophie getting up to shenanigans at the academy. More delightful and somewhat ridiculous villains and villain teamups. Kate and Alice take each other on again and again. Kate and Luke create new, greater weapons and gadgets.
AUs and crossovers! IN SPACE! Werewolves come to Gotham. Weird west with Kate the gunslinger. Kate was doing science and fought the Meg during those missing years. When Alice says Beth is down the rabbit hole, she means it literally and Kate has to descend to get her back.
Love and romance and sex! Kate/every woman ever, basically, but my favorites are Kate/Sophie when they were younger, Kate/Reagan, and Kate/Magpie. Kate the female Bruce Wayne, awesome, hilarious, handsome, and the women who enjoyed her company while she was gone from Gotham. I dislike infidelity stories, so if you write Kate/Sophie in the present, I prefer either Sophie leaving the husband before getting involved with Kate again or a consensual open marriage situation.
The Ghost and the Darkness: John Patterson, Helena Patterson
What I Like About the Source Material: John Patterson in all his love for his wife, Africa, and building bridges, and how he comes in, bright eyed and a little naive but learns to love the area for what it is, not what he thinks Africa itself should be. Helena Patterson in her love for her husband and his obsessions, and how strong she is in letting him go do the things he loves, in having a baby on her own with her beloved husband so far away, in traveling to him alone with a baby because she wants him to see his son and she wants to see him and the great things he builds. Their love for each other is overwhelming.
I also enjoy John’s relationships with Samuel and Charles Remington, particularly how he has to learn to work with each of them in very different ways.
Prompts:
Adventures! John continues to build bridges and adore his wife and child; Helena goes with him to more and more locations. Things always go wrong, and sometimes John solves them and sometimes Helena does. They see beautiful, remote locations. Samuel travels with them and finds all sorts of things for them to do. Samuel calls them back for help when something else goes wrong. John and Helena must survive some great disaster in their travels, relying on each other to save themselves and the people around them.
AUs and crossovers! IN SPACE! The Ghost and the Darkness are supernatural creatures and all the ways that changes the story and doesn’t change the story. Their bites, their scratches, turn people into monsters. Weird west vibes in different locations. John and Helena travel the world building bridges and hunting monsters, maybe with Samuel and/or Charles Remington, who manages to survive, even if he becomes a monster himself.
Love and romance and sex! John/Helena forever. Their romance before their marriage and in the early years after. Long letters back and forth filled with emotion and desire. The moments they snatch together between his jobs. The freedom they have on location when propriety and the eyes of their society are very far away. John worships Helena, and she tops the hell out of him in all sorts of ways.
The Mummy Series: Evy Carnahan O’Connell
What I Like About the Source Material: Evy’s love of her work and Egypt and adventures, and her sheer confidence in herself even if the face of people dismissing her. The easy way she falls in love with Rick. The ways she’s tied to him and Ardeth. How much she wants to spend her time in Egypt where she feels at home. How she constantly gets them into trouble.
Prompts:
Adventures! Evy finding more and more artifacts to search for and protect. Evy accidentally raising the dead in other places. Evy in the jungle, or the forest, or deep in the ice and snow trying to stop people from raising the dead. Cursed objects, haunted places, and all the trouble she can get into.
AUs and crossovers. IN SPACE! And all the alien artifacts she could find on other worlds. Weird west. Evy hunting monsters with Rick and Ardeth. Time travel. Reliving the same day until she figures out how to get it right. Werewolf pack coming together.
Love and romance and sex! We survive celebratory sex. Ancient sex magic and rituals. Slow build threesome. Out of nowhere threesome. They’re tied together throughout lifetimes as lovers and friends.
I ship Evy/Rick and Evy/Rick/Ardeth.
Touchstone Series - Andrea K. Höst: any (Zan Namara, Zee Annan, Laura Devlin, Ys)
What I Like About the Source Material: A delightful portal fantasy/sci-fi romp across three main books, one epilogue, and one follow-up book from a different POV. The three main books, Stray, Lab Rat One, and Caszandra, are told from the perspective of Cassandra Devlin, an Australian teenager who accidentally walks through a portal into another world on her way home from exams one day. The adventures she has next start as wilderness survival and turn into a mix of future technology, superheroes, and the monsters that lurk just out of sight.
I love the worldbuilding in this series, particularly around the special talents some people have and how they recruited a bunch of teenagers to go fight monsters over and over and over again. I love how awkward Cassandra is, but how hard she works to adapt, the issues of privacy and autonomy and government that the story touches on more than once, and the way she really builds a chosen family in a world very unlike her own.
Prompts:
General:
What happens next! They’ve just made official contact with Earth at the end of the fourth book, and gift earth with tech that can cure cancer and most other illnesses, puts a computer in your head that lets you download languages, slows aging, all sorts of things, as well as people who can fly, read emotions, move objects with their minds, and on and on and on. Young people, teens and young adults, who have been fighting an unending fight to keep their entire world alive.
Now that they’re on Earth, they face new complications, societies they don’t understand, people who will want to use them and their technology, people who will fear them, people who will try to buy their loyalty.
Once regular back and forth travel is established, Earth will be able to provide things to Muina, too. What can humanity offer such an advanced society? Cultural things, and history, and survival knowledge.
What does that do to Muina, and its monsters and its powers and its technology almost indistinguishable from magic?
Adventures! On Earth or on Muina, survival can be difficult. The early years before Muina can be resettled had it filled with monsters and these teenage fighters exploring it in short, frightening time periods. Earth might have the memories of monsters, human and otherwise, lingering around it, and might require fighting them off in order to keep contact between the worlds alive.
Missing scenes! We see a narrow slice of canon from the protagonist’s first person diary POV, but there is a lot going on around her, both back home on Earth and in the monster hunters Cassandra finds herself supporting. Hurt/comfort after a bad battle. People teaming up to protect Cassandra from the worst parts of their monitored society and its obsession with her. What the battles looked like before Cassandra arrived to strengthen the fighters.
There’s a ton of time before Cassandra arrives where a bunch of teenagers are hunting monsters that keep regenerating. Some of them die. Some of them are left behind. They’re all hurt and heartbroken and struggling. What was it like for them, their triumphs and the failures, the hardcore training, the way their talents strengthen them but make them more vulnerable at the same time.
Things are Wrong! There’s a theory at one point that much like the characters are actually fighting a parasite world, Muina itself was a parasite world of Earth. Dark takes on this being true, the damage done to Earth and all the ways it could go wrong. Or another parasite world attaches itself to Muina and Earth, trying to drain power, to use certain people, the touchstones, to power a new world.
AUS and crossovers! Alternate universes. IN SPACE (or, you know, in actual space versus the sci-fi portal fantasy space-like aspect of the existing universe). Weird west. Supernatural monsters on Muina or on earth. Superheroes. The Muinans are gods.
Love and romance and sex! Fraught, power-driven sex. Emotional breakdowns. Hurt/comfort. Oh my god we survived. Plants on Earth act like sex pollen. Sex as planetary exchange.
Characters
Zee Anan: One of the older Setari, she fought the monsters for a long, long time, saw friends die, saw friends break down in all that death. She is, at least once, basically described as a goddess of fury and light. She’s powerful, and smart, and loyal, and loving. She has to adjust to no longer being at war when she’s one of the people who has been fighting the longest. She has to adjust to opening up to people who are less likely to die because of these fights. She went through rigorous training and dealt with horrifying things during the war. She now has a new world opened to her, strange new things coming from Earth.
I ship Zee with her canon love interest, Nils, along with Cassandra, Cassandra and Kaoren, Cassandra and Nils, and Zan. I also love her friendship with Cassandra, and with the rest of first and second squad, particularly Maze.
Laura Devlin: Cassandra’s mother thought she was dead for a long time only to learn that her daughter was alive, and on an alien planet, and suddenly a mother and a wife. When Laura joins Cassandra in this new world, there are hundreds, thousands, of new things for her to learn and a romance with a man who sent Cassandra and all the other teen fighters into danger for years. She brings a very different perspective to this new world than Cassandra did, and I’d love to see more of how she experiences it, of what she learns about it that Cassandra didn’t.
I ship Laura with Gidds, but I also love her relationship with her sisters, both the one who came with her and the one who stayed behind, and want to see what new friends she makes outside of Cassandra’s large family.
Zan Namara: The first person who spends a lot of time with Cassandra, training her and being very proper and polite, which makes Cassandra want to break through those walls. Cassandra worries about her quite a bit because her squad is harsh with her, but that changes as she proves herself a strong, smart leader. What’s it like for her the first few times she takes her squad out to fight monsters knowing they don’t yet trust her? How does she feel about having to work with the Stray before Cassandra’s powers fully reveal themselves? Cassandra thinks she’s in love with one of the other captains who ends up marrying someone else, and Cassandra wants to play matchmaker, though she never really does. What sort of romance does Zan get to have? How does she feel about Muina being open to them? What does she do once the overall war is done?
I ship Zan with Maze, the previously mentioned captain, as well as Cassandra, Cassandra and Kaoren, Zee, and any of the younger Setari except for those on her squad.
Ys: One of Cassandra’s adopted children, Ys is smarter than almost everyone around her, and devours new information as fast as she can. She’s awkward and antisocial and obsessed with learning. She’s also been thrust into a new world, new technology, and new society, in some ways even stranger to her than it was to Cassandra. What’s she like as she grows up? Does she find friends and lovers who can keep up with how fast her mind burns? What does she discover and change for their world, for Earth, for all the worlds they reach in the future?
I don’t ship Ys with anyone in particular, and once she’s older, I don’t think any of them would be a match even then, though I could be convinced. I do ship her with genius girls from other canons or potentially original characters.
United States of Asgard - Tessa Gratton: any (Astrid Glyn, Glory | Fenris Wolf, Signy Valborn, Soren Bearskin)
What I Like About the Source Material: A three novel and three novella series about a world where the Norse gods are real and present in modern-day life. It is mostly the story of three teenagers who change their world, and the characters, gods and mortals alike, who surround them. I love the ways the gods are and are not involved with the human world, I love how they can and can’t be trusted, all at the same time, I love the details of how the world has changed because the gods are real and active and what that means for the USA. (One thing I hate is the treatment of the indigenous people and [lack of] characters; though there are a handful of references to what happened when the Norse gods and their followers came over, mostly they are erased from the narrative, with the exception of Soren’s Pacific Islander ancestry.)
Mostly, though, I love the characters. They are young and strong and weak and fierce, afraid and brave and driven, loved and loving, and, always, hungry to make the world better in whatever way that means to them. I love all of these characters, and would love to see their adventures, together and apart.
Prompts:
General:
Crossovers and alternate universes! Weird West -- there’s already monsters and magic and gods and great swaths of wilderness lost to the trolls! IN SPACE! The easy crossovers are with other fandoms that have werewolves (Glory + all other werewolves ever, please and thank you) or that have Norse mythology somewhere in them, but all sorts of crossovers would work.
Adventures! Though there are guns and more modern weapons, a lot of fighting is still done with swords, battle axes, steel weapons. I would love to see more of that, the way they fight holmgang instead of going to court, to protect their honor, to protect someone else’s. There are caravans and carnivals of Loki followers, rife with adventures and ghosts.
Characters:
Astrid Glyn:
The thing I love most about Astrid is that she weaves herself back into the strands of fate after she’s been pulled from them to become Idun. She makes her own fate, and gives herself adventures, and finds a way to be both a goddess and a girl.
Missing scenes! Astrid spent a lot of time with her mother before her mother disappeared. Roadtrips! Seething together! What life was like in the Lokiskin camps and carnivals. How Astrid learned to harness her power and see the future. What she sees for the future after the series once she weaves herself back into the world, visceral and dangerous and amazing.
Slice of life! How does she make life work, being both a goddess and a girl. She finds a way for Idun to publicly love the Sun’s Berserk, the same way that Astrid loves Soren, but that changes a lot of things for them. How do their lives, together and apart, look now? Astrid is interested in making Idun more available to the public; does she ever manage that? What sort of adventures does she get up to now that she is maybe not quite so tied to her orchard but also accepts that she wants to be there with her trees?
Love and romance and sex! I ship Astrid and Soren hard, and would love to see more of them together during any of the books or after, the way they build their lives together, a girl goddess and a very public berserker who would rather not be public at all. I also ship the two of them with Baldur, both during the first book, when he is mortal and gentled without his memories, but also after, when he’s back to being his glorious, flirtatious, overwhelming self. While I love any two of them together as well as all three, the core of this for me is how Astrid and Soren love each other, and I prefer that reflected no matter what else is going on. Astrid has a stream of gods and goddesses who come through her orchard and become close to her, as friends and as lovers. I’d love to see the friendships/lovers Astrid builds now that she’s determined not to lock herself away from the world. What does it look like, for a goddess who is also a girl to be friends with the gods? She and Glory spark off each other, and Glory is, for a long time, forbidden from Astrid’s orchard because of her hunger. Astrid opens her orchard to all, including the elf-as-a-trollmother, and I would love to see more of that in the future, and Glory being welcomed, too.
Glory | Fenris Wolf:
Glory is basically a werewolf, and she’s fated to devour the sun and signal Ragnarok. She’s bound to teenage girl shape, and her hunger rages unchecked. She is amazing.
Adventures! Glory’s been alive a long, long time, and I would love to see the different ways the world looks to her at different times. She’s seen the rise and fall of countries, the changes to the ways the valkyries get to be valkyries, Soren becoming the first berserker in New Asgard history to swear to a god other than Odin; she’s seen and she’s done and she’s become bored of so many things. What sparked her interest, historically? What will catch her eye in the future? What does it look like, when she finally breaks free of her chains and devours Baldur, the sun?
Sex! She’s viciously sexual and violent and only lets the people she’s going to fight or fuck call her Fenris. Her hunger rages in all things. Show me these moments, painful, hot, dangerous, fucking and fighting, violence in the sex. Who does she fuck or fight? What does it take for a human to draw her attention? Soren intrigues her, but who else and what else can (even if only temporarily) sate her hunger? In short: vicious, violent, sexual, basically-a-god werewolf.
Signy Valborn:
Signy is pretty much the most brutal human character in the series, and far more brutal than even a lot of the gods as they are. She fights hard to prove herself as a Valkyrie, and she writes her rage into battle and blood and poetry, and she loves and hates in equal measure.
Adventures! We get to see her quest to take the heart of troll mother to earn her place. This involves brutal training and terrible, vicious fights that nearly kill her more than once and leave many of the people she loves dead. She wants to bring back the brutal, bloody, death-filled ways of the Valkyries of old. What else does she do to fight that? With what she’s learned, does she find new ways to convince people to embrace this change? What fights does she get up to after? What does she hunt? She fights with Soren, with him and with him by her side. She loves the Berserkers, their anger and their hunger and their rage the same as her own. What does she hunt with bands of them, particularly as the trolls come back after The Apple Throne?
Love and romance and sex! I ship Signy and Glory, Signy and Soren, Signy and her band of Berserkers, and Signy with other angry, hungry, fierce women, in the series or crossovers.
Soren Bearstar:
My love for Soren grows each time I reread the books (which is often). He’s so scared of his own power and rage, and he fights to control it and, when it breaks free, to focus it in a way that does the least amount of damage. I love that about him. He’s described a couple of times of holding to a path once he chooses it until fate itself bends to what he wants; he doesn’t choose between what fate has given him (and fate is very literally in this world), but makes his own strands (options) to choose. He changed the world by remembering Astrid and by becoming the Sun’s Berserk, and he is wonderful.
Adventures! He has these grand adventures with the main characters, and they all end up loving him in one way or another. He’s rescued a missing god, faced a powerful troll mother, fought a damn dragon: what don’t we get to see? Glory is terribly fond of him, and I’d love to see her drag him off onto more adventures. What sort of monsters does he fight? How else does he change the world?
Berserkers! He’s very different from all the other berserkers in a lot of ways, but at least one wants him to be his mentor. Signy once tells Soren that people push him away because he shuts them out first. Does he ever find any comfort with the berserkers? He is not the only “strange” one now, what with Vider not only being the only female berserker in generations, but eventually leaving her training to make her own life as a berserker. Do Soren and Vider start a trend of some berserkers finding their own way? (Soren’s father rebelled as well, for Soren and his mother, and was punished for it so harshly it triggered his berserker rage and ended badly. I hope Soren and Vider have happier endings.)
Love and romance and sex! I ship Soren and Astrid with all the fire of a billion suns, and would love to see more of then. At the end of the third book, Astrid-as-Idun has fought for an even better way to have Soren in her life and to be public about it, has fought to make herself a place in the world after Astrid the girl has been ripped out of it to become Idun. Now that they are public, now that Soren is tied so strongly to the gods Baldur and Idun, what does that change for him? What does Astrid and Soren’s relationship look like as they get older? Now that they can be public, do they dance at the gods’ feasts? Do they date? Are they the subject of all the gossip rags?
I also ship the two of them with Baldur, both Baldur when he is both a god and a vulnerable mortal in the first book, but also as the series continues. Astrid loves the gods in wonderful, terrible ways, but Soren only learns to love them through Baldur, and I love the three of them together. Baldur is gentled when he is mortal in the first book, and I would love to see their deep friendship, their commit, explored further, but he’s glorious and flirtatious and overwhelming when he gets his memories back, and I would love to see how he, Soren, and Astrid figure out the new boundaries of their commit.
I think that though Astrid is the core of Soren’s heart, and he of hers, that they each have the freedom to take other lovers away from each other. I’m not entirely convinced Soren would actually act on this (except for Baldur, see above, and always with Astrid as their third, even if she’s not physically there), but I think the opportunity is there, and I’m curious as to whether he ever became comfortable enough in his own strength and rage and control to act on it.
Willow (1988): Sorsha
What I Like About the Source Material: Everything. Sorsha and her swords, her prowess in battle, her drive to prove herself to a mother who disregards her at every turn and uses her only for her power. How shocked she is when Madmartigan compliments her while he’s under the spell, and her anger when it goes away. The way she turns on her mother to save the world.
The worldbuilding, the magic and warriors and brave Willow and just everything.
Prompts:
Adventures! Sorsha and Madmartigan are raising and protecting Elora Danan by the end of the movie. As the child grows, surely others will come for her, too, eager to control that power and the prophecies that may rise around her. Sorsha and Mardmartigan go into battle again and again. Magic brings new monsters. Willow needs their help. Terrible storms come onto the lands and they must find a way to survive.
AUs and crossovers! Sorsha and all the women warriors from other fandoms. IN SPACE! Weird west. They’re turned into wolves instead of pigs, or another predator, and the traits of that predator lingers. Bavmorda banishes Elora, and Sorsha and the team have to find another way to defeat her. Superheroes. Monster hunters.
Love and romance and sex! We survived celebratory sex. Fighting turns to fucking. We’re raising a princess and have a castle at our disposal, how many places can we fuck without being caught. Sorsha topping the hell out of Madmartigan, and Madmartigan loving it. Sorsha topping the hell out of both Madmartigan and Airk, Mardmartigan loving it, and Airk loving it despite himself. Enemies to lovers. Sex magic.
I ship Sorsha with Madmartigan and Madmartigan and Airk.
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