Dear Yuletide Writer letter 2.0
(ETA: This post keeps eating my paragraph breaks. I keep fixing it, coming back a day later, and it's stuffed again. So weird. So I apologise if it's still a wall of text.)
(ETA2: Thank you, pinch hitter. You rock.)
Dear Yuletide Writer,
Thank you so much for offering/pinch-hitting one of my fandoms and writing for me! I've done Yuletide every year so far, and it's just made every Christmas so much more exciting. I’m so looking forward to whatever you choose to write for me.
In the end, it’s that you’re choosing to write for me that is the most exciting, happy thing, so please only take the following as help if you’re left guessing as to what to write or not, not as a shopping list that must be filled! I’m going to be thrilled with whatever you come up with.
Just to clear up any starting ambiguity, because it is always my first question when I check letters, as far as pairings (or not) go I would welcome f/f for the characters I've chosen (although T&T are be definition m/f), and it’s also absolutely fine if you’re more comfortable writing gen - I genuinely like gen, I'm not just saying it to be a good recipient. :D If there’s any sexual content, I am far more comfortable with f/f than either m/m or het, and I’m not fond of PWP, bdsm, sex toys, anything that spanks of yiff or crude words. I prefer sex to be 100% consensual and take place in a context of love, however messed-up and confused or resentful that love. There’s absolutely no compulsion to include sexual content at all.
Things I love: Explorations of character. Humour. Blurring the boundaries between friendship and love. Plot. Stories that capture the feel and voice of canon, or that find deeper emotions behind canon. Stories that take canon respectfully with all its quirks - or affectionately make fun of it.
My absolute trigger “please nots” are rape (including non- and dub-con), miscarriage or abortion, children or teens sexually involved with adults (teens exploring their sexuality together is fine), homophobic, fatphobic and ableist slurs
Things that are apparently asked a lot: I'm not keen on AUs of the "They're all in university in New York - oh, and zombies!" type, metafic or genderswaps. I really don't like mpreg. I have no problem with characters celebrating any holiday that seems culturally appropriate. Consensual poly sensitively handled is fine, infidelity tends to upset me. I actually like coming out stories. I'm fine with OCs. Crossovers I like only if they make sense and aren't the whole point - but I figure Agatha Christie's books are all in the same universe anyway, because Miss Marple knows Mrs Dane Calthrop who shares a book with Ariadne Oliver who knows Poirot, Battle and Race, and so forth.
On to the requests!
Agatha Christie - Tommy and Tuppence (Tommy Beresford, Tuppence Beresford)
Tommy and Tuppence happily married - going on adventures, chasing spies, solving mysteries, or just being their adorable, devoted selves. Light and fluffy and easy on the angst!
I have so much affection for the way the Young Adventurers remain devoted and in love and keep their adventurous spirits throughout their lives. I love Tuppence's madcapness and her elaborate lies, and Tommy's more steadfast approach. I actually love them even more when they are older - "N or M?", in which they have matured enough to feel sympathy for "the other side" and not discount the consequences, is actually my favourite Tommy and Tuppence book, but I also have much love for Christie's whole subgenre of Bright Young Things on Adventures, so if you prefer them younger and newly married, I'd love that, too.
I'd love them chasing spies or solving mysteries - if you don't feel up to your own mystery plot, something set during one of their known escapades would also be wonderful. I'm also curious about the long stretches of missing years, especially when their first two children were young, or having adopted their daughter in middle age.
Given the above, it probably goes without saying, but I have a strong preference for book!Tommy and Tuppence, and not the thwarted alcoholic housewife and repressed absent husband we got under their names in "Miss Marple's By the Pricking of My Thumbs."
Agatha Christie- Poirot (Felicity Lemon)
I would love to see Miss Lemon solving a mystery, or being super-efficient, or falling in love, or being awesome in general - either going above and beyond her duty in helping a private detective, or doing something that is actually to do with her own life and wants and not those of her employer, or falling in love. Canon-wise, I would be equally happy with book!Miss Lemon or tv!Miss Lemon.
My request basically boils down to "Miss Lemon being awesome" and getting the spotlight. The only complicated thing is that there are two distinct "Poirot" canons in my head: book!canon and tv!canon, and I love Miss Lemon in both, but she is entirely not the same character. If you're assigned this, I don't know which is the Miss Lemon of your heart, and I want you to know that i would be equally delighted with a story about either one.
As far as book!Miss Lemon goes, I think Christie is very clear that the inhuman machine who exists only to serve Poirot's needs exists mostly in his own head, and that Miss Lemon is a real woman with her own life and feelings. I'd love to see that - I would squee over her solving a mystery herself or proving her awesomeness in some other way, or something that shows her emotional and separate life.
Tv!Miss Lemon is just adorable. In my head canon in the TV show Poirot, Hastings, Miss Lemon (and possibly Japp) all kind of live in a happy, (probably platonic) kind of group marriage. Everything I've said I wanted for book!Miss Lemon still applies, but I also love the bits in the TV show that are just silly fluffy characterisation, like the Monopoly game, so something like that would also be fabulous.
Angela Brazil - A Fourth Form Friendship (Aldred, Mabel)
What happens when idealistic Mabel finds out that Aldred has not simply had one little lapse in character in accepting credit where it is due and avoiding blame where it is equally due, but that it’s something she does all the time? Mabel/Aldred or gen, please.
This is one of my favourite Angela Brazils because it’s so unusual in school stories to have a protagonist who is distinctly not straight - irony intended or not.:) Aldred is just so utterly, consistently dreadful, yet somehow very sympathetic, and you spend the whole time on tenterhooks waiting for her awfulness to catch up with her. When it does, it’s a bit glossed-over due to the whole saving Mabel from a burning building thing. The thing is, I can’t really see her having any miraculous turnaround and becoming the soul of honour, or Mabel losing her own somewhat pathologically high standards. Their friendship is a recipe for disaster. Yet, they really do love each other to death.
I’d really like something which negotiates the problems that the clash between Mabel’s idealism and Aldred’s weak character would cause. I am absolutely 100% okay with their friendship taking on a romantic nature, but also with gen - just don’t end with them deciding to break off their friendship, because that would really make me sad!
The book is available (legally) for free in most ebook sites that carry out-of-copyright books, including on Amazon, Gutenburg and Manybooks
Jem and the Holograms (Constance “Clash” Montgomery)
I never really got over the childhood sadness of “Video Wars” being Clash’s final episode, and her heartbreaking exit. Please fix it for me and bring back the brash, outgoing Clash of earlier seasons. Gen or f/f, please!
Clash is one of my perennial unfilled requests. My request says it all, really - I was left heartbroken by how pathetic Clash is in her final scenes, having managed to screw it up with the Holograms out of loyalty to the Misfits, and then betrayed and abandoned by them, and unable through her own jealousy and bitterness to patch things up with her cousin Video - who really does seem sad about it. A really unfortunate ending given the cheeky and self-confident mistress of disguise we had with earlier Clash - she’s completely crushed when we last see her.
By “fix it”, I mean any number of things. Give her a girlfriend, either a Misfit (obviously her dream come true) or a Hologram (Raya or Aja, maybe?) or someone else (Graphix? Danse?). Let her win her way back into the Misfits’ favour as their groupie and unofficial fifth member. Let her actually take up the friendship offered her by the Holograms - after all, she did save Raya’s life. Reconcile her with Video, shippily or not. Get her involved in some grand scheme of Eric’s. Just… don’t leave her the way the show did! Give her some ray of hope!
I will say that in my mind Clash is very definitely a lesbian, so if you don’t go the f/f route with her - gen is absolutely fine - please don’t go the het route either, stick to gen. Respect little girl Kanna who knew that Clash was in love with the Misfits. As in, any or all of them. :
I hope this is of some help if you’re stuck what to write. But really, don’t fret over the details. I’m going to love it
Thank you again!
XX Kanna