Dear Yuletide Writer 2014
[Note: I am icepixie across LJ, DW, and AO3.]
Dear Yuletide Writer,
THANK YOU for writing for me! I love all these fandoms and characters dearly, and I know I'll love whatever you come up with for them. I'm offering specific prompts for each fandom if you're the kind of writer who prefers them, but please don't feel constrained by them if you're not. Follow your inspiration wherever it takes you.
General likes: I love shippy fluff (or friendshippy fluff). I love slice of life stories. I really love humor, especially banter and amusing dialogue. I also enjoy the odd madcap antic, snarky narration, plotty adventures, and just reading about characters who enjoy being with each other. As long as it's not relentlessly bleak, I can dig angst, particularly if it's bittersweet or wistful. Holiday stories of any tradition that would work for the characters are fine if you're so inclined. I'm familiar with the entire canons for all my requests, so spoilers are not an issue.
General dislikes: The big one is explicit sex. Innuendo is endlessly entertaining, but I'm all over fade-to-black after we hit, say, light R territory. I would also prefer no character death for any of my requested characters and no gender-bending.
China Beach
Colleen McMurphy and Dick Richard
THIS SHOW. I'd heard of it for years, but only started to watch it when my library got the DVDs this year, and...aaiiee, it's just so incredibly well-written, and the characters are so real, and I love them all in different ways. I'm not a connoisseur of war fiction, but I know enough to appreciate that it portrays the Vietnam War and its effects on the characters with a lot of nuance and sensitivity.
I never expected to fall in love with the idea of McMurphy/Richard, but I did. It's the way they snipe and snark at each other (and enjoy every minute of it!), but also, somewhat against their will, deeply respect and eventually fall in love with each other. In retrospect, that's the blueprint for a lot of pairings I ship, so I suppose it's no surprise. Plus, they are a wall of awesome competence, and they make such a good team, always in sync with each other as they work. I can well imagine that teamwork extending to their personal lives.
As long as it has them interacting, preferably with a bit of banter, I'll be 100% happy with whatever you come up with. However, here are some suggestions if you want them:
Corner Gas
Karen Pelly and Davis Quinton
Karen and Davis are such buddies, and it warms the very cockles of my heart when they tease/insult/exasperate one another and yet still stick up for each other when push comes to shove. I always enjoy Karen being uber-serious about random not-serious things and Davis being oblivious and weird in his special Davis way.
Also, I ship it. I ship it like FedEx. I will not complain at all if you write something where they're more than just friends, or where they become so. :D
I really like the sense of community that comes through on the show, so while Karen and Davis are my favorites, I'm happy to see the other characters wander in and out.
Specific prompts are hard, because one of the real strengths of this show was the writers' ability to make a funny story out of any old mundane thing, as well as the way they could inject weirdness into those stories. So I really think you could go anywhere with this request, and I'll adore it. Anything from shenanigans on the curling team to ridiculous police fundraisers (Davis wants to bling out the cruiser!) to, I don't know, weird weather making everyone nuts could be mined for awesome.
But if you're totally stumped, it would be fun to see the other characters read some innocuous interaction between Karen and Davis as romantic (like the earrings in "Census Sensibility"), and then because K&D don't want the real reason behind whatever they were doing to get out, they have to pretend to be together. Depending on whether you ship them or not, this could lead to actual romance. :)
Northern Exposure
Maggie O'Connell and Joel Fleischman
[I received a lovely fic for this request a couple years ago, but I will never not want MOAR FIC for this fandom and these characters, so I'm requesting it this year as well.]
This is the show of my heart. I love that the writers weren't afraid to tackle complex topics and incorporate philosophy, literature, religion, and other things you don't usually find on network TV. I also love the benign magical realism, and the feeling the show gives me that there's so much wonder out in the world, if we can just open our eyes to it. I did a fandom pitch a few years ago for smallfandomfest where I talked a lot more about what I like about this show in general.
What I really like about Maggie and Joel is their verbal back and forth. The more banter they get, the happier I am. I definitely ship them (though if you don't, that's cool, as I would love gen where they interact as well!), and I find them fascinating both when they're burning up the screen with UST and after they settle into a relationship later in the series. I've always found it interesting how the universe appears to push them together and indicate to the audience that they're meant to connect, from natural events such as the ice melt in "Spring Break" causing them to make out, to their significant dreams (like the Clue-inspired one in "What I Did for Love"), to their alter egos in "Cicely" and "Zarya" getting together.
Some specific prompts if you want them:
Robson Arms
Sault Ste. Marie
This show won my heart because it manages to walk the line between wacky/zany/blackly hilarious and oddly affecting, without ever going too far in either direction. I also like the multiplicity of relationships portrayed, from parent/child, to roommate, to friend, to enemy, to etc., and the way that alliances and relationships change over the years.
And oh my god, I love Sault. She is such a snarky, insecure, utterly wacky trainwreck. I think the actress once said that Sault voices the things that we'd all like to say at one time or another and bears the consequences of it, and that is so true. She makes me want to laugh, groan, and hug her all at the same time.
I would love to see more of her painful adjustment to Vancouver or her awkward attempts to make friends even though she basically hates everyone. Perhaps she can give a party (that turns into a disaster)? Or be shanghaied into babysitting little Robbie Briggs (and it ends disastrously)? Or hey, she could pull a Nancy Drew and investigate why the hell these mysterious Troubadours keep lounging around the apartment complex and singing all the time (and probably it ends disastrously)!
As long as the focus remains on Sault, feel free to include whoever else from the cast you want. FWIW, my other favorites are Geoff, Stanley, Toni, Grandma Tan, Nick, and Hal, but I can imagine a great fic being written that features Sault and any other character(s).
This entry was originally posted at http://icepixie.dreamwidth.org/955254.html. It has
comments over there.
Dear Yuletide Writer,
THANK YOU for writing for me! I love all these fandoms and characters dearly, and I know I'll love whatever you come up with for them. I'm offering specific prompts for each fandom if you're the kind of writer who prefers them, but please don't feel constrained by them if you're not. Follow your inspiration wherever it takes you.
General likes: I love shippy fluff (or friendshippy fluff). I love slice of life stories. I really love humor, especially banter and amusing dialogue. I also enjoy the odd madcap antic, snarky narration, plotty adventures, and just reading about characters who enjoy being with each other. As long as it's not relentlessly bleak, I can dig angst, particularly if it's bittersweet or wistful. Holiday stories of any tradition that would work for the characters are fine if you're so inclined. I'm familiar with the entire canons for all my requests, so spoilers are not an issue.
General dislikes: The big one is explicit sex. Innuendo is endlessly entertaining, but I'm all over fade-to-black after we hit, say, light R territory. I would also prefer no character death for any of my requested characters and no gender-bending.
China Beach
Colleen McMurphy and Dick Richard
THIS SHOW. I'd heard of it for years, but only started to watch it when my library got the DVDs this year, and...aaiiee, it's just so incredibly well-written, and the characters are so real, and I love them all in different ways. I'm not a connoisseur of war fiction, but I know enough to appreciate that it portrays the Vietnam War and its effects on the characters with a lot of nuance and sensitivity.
I never expected to fall in love with the idea of McMurphy/Richard, but I did. It's the way they snipe and snark at each other (and enjoy every minute of it!), but also, somewhat against their will, deeply respect and eventually fall in love with each other. In retrospect, that's the blueprint for a lot of pairings I ship, so I suppose it's no surprise. Plus, they are a wall of awesome competence, and they make such a good team, always in sync with each other as they work. I can well imagine that teamwork extending to their personal lives.
As long as it has them interacting, preferably with a bit of banter, I'll be 100% happy with whatever you come up with. However, here are some suggestions if you want them:
- In some alternate version of "I Could Have Danced All Night...," Beth Ann isn't in a car crash and Richard isn't called home. Do he and McMurphy actually get married? Do they still break up because it just doesn't work outside of the very particular time and location they're in? What does their relationship look like a month, a year, a decade, an [insert timespan here] later?
- Along those same lines, say the 1969 part of "I Could Have Danced..." occurred the way it did in the show, but McMurphy and Richard meet at a time when she's more receptive to seeing him than she was in "Juice." What happens?
- Any getting-together or UST-ful fic that doesn't rely on the events of the last season is more than welcome: Trapped together somewhere during a mortar attack? (Hurt/comfort is entirely acceptable here and anywhere else, BTW.) They don't give up on their fling quite so easily in "All About E.E.V." (and then FEELINGS come along)? Another Christmas together in Vietnam leads to something a bit more serious under the mistletoe? They each somehow actually manage to get some R&R outside the country and find themselves hanging out together? I would love to see the two of them returning to "the world" together either like this or after their tours are up. Their reactions would be so different. (P.S. OMG, McMurphy taking Richard mini-golfing. Can you imagine?)
- Seriously, if you just have them sitting in the Jet Set and talking, or working in the hospital and talking, or Richard dragging McMurphy off to the golf course and them bitching at each other talking, I will be thrilled.
Corner Gas
Karen Pelly and Davis Quinton
Karen and Davis are such buddies, and it warms the very cockles of my heart when they tease/insult/exasperate one another and yet still stick up for each other when push comes to shove. I always enjoy Karen being uber-serious about random not-serious things and Davis being oblivious and weird in his special Davis way.
Also, I ship it. I ship it like FedEx. I will not complain at all if you write something where they're more than just friends, or where they become so. :D
I really like the sense of community that comes through on the show, so while Karen and Davis are my favorites, I'm happy to see the other characters wander in and out.
Specific prompts are hard, because one of the real strengths of this show was the writers' ability to make a funny story out of any old mundane thing, as well as the way they could inject weirdness into those stories. So I really think you could go anywhere with this request, and I'll adore it. Anything from shenanigans on the curling team to ridiculous police fundraisers (Davis wants to bling out the cruiser!) to, I don't know, weird weather making everyone nuts could be mined for awesome.
But if you're totally stumped, it would be fun to see the other characters read some innocuous interaction between Karen and Davis as romantic (like the earrings in "Census Sensibility"), and then because K&D don't want the real reason behind whatever they were doing to get out, they have to pretend to be together. Depending on whether you ship them or not, this could lead to actual romance. :)
Northern Exposure
Maggie O'Connell and Joel Fleischman
[I received a lovely fic for this request a couple years ago, but I will never not want MOAR FIC for this fandom and these characters, so I'm requesting it this year as well.]
This is the show of my heart. I love that the writers weren't afraid to tackle complex topics and incorporate philosophy, literature, religion, and other things you don't usually find on network TV. I also love the benign magical realism, and the feeling the show gives me that there's so much wonder out in the world, if we can just open our eyes to it. I did a fandom pitch a few years ago for smallfandomfest where I talked a lot more about what I like about this show in general.
What I really like about Maggie and Joel is their verbal back and forth. The more banter they get, the happier I am. I definitely ship them (though if you don't, that's cool, as I would love gen where they interact as well!), and I find them fascinating both when they're burning up the screen with UST and after they settle into a relationship later in the series. I've always found it interesting how the universe appears to push them together and indicate to the audience that they're meant to connect, from natural events such as the ice melt in "Spring Break" causing them to make out, to their significant dreams (like the Clue-inspired one in "What I Did for Love"), to their alter egos in "Cicely" and "Zarya" getting together.
Some specific prompts if you want them:
- What made Joel finally ask Maggie on a date in "Mite Makes Right"? It's always bothered me that there was no defining event that led him to that decision (other than that the episode aired during sweeps month).
- "Fish Story" is one of my favorite episodes, so it would be cool to see how they handle another holiday as an interfaith couple. If you're going for gen, something around a holiday and religious differences between them as friends/enemies/whatever you want them to be at this point in time would be lovely.
- How does being forced to work together on something, a la the election in "Democracy in America," bring out their differences and/or similarities? I always wanted to see them attempt a home improvement project of some sort together, for example.
Robson Arms
Sault Ste. Marie
This show won my heart because it manages to walk the line between wacky/zany/blackly hilarious and oddly affecting, without ever going too far in either direction. I also like the multiplicity of relationships portrayed, from parent/child, to roommate, to friend, to enemy, to etc., and the way that alliances and relationships change over the years.
And oh my god, I love Sault. She is such a snarky, insecure, utterly wacky trainwreck. I think the actress once said that Sault voices the things that we'd all like to say at one time or another and bears the consequences of it, and that is so true. She makes me want to laugh, groan, and hug her all at the same time.
I would love to see more of her painful adjustment to Vancouver or her awkward attempts to make friends even though she basically hates everyone. Perhaps she can give a party (that turns into a disaster)? Or be shanghaied into babysitting little Robbie Briggs (and it ends disastrously)? Or hey, she could pull a Nancy Drew and investigate why the hell these mysterious Troubadours keep lounging around the apartment complex and singing all the time (and probably it ends disastrously)!
As long as the focus remains on Sault, feel free to include whoever else from the cast you want. FWIW, my other favorites are Geoff, Stanley, Toni, Grandma Tan, Nick, and Hal, but I can imagine a great fic being written that features Sault and any other character(s).
This entry was originally posted at http://icepixie.dreamwidth.org/955254.html. It has
comments over there.