Dear Yuletide Letter 2015
[Regular flisters, this is just my annual far too long and incoherent Yuletide letter; feel free to wisely pass on by!]
Dear Yuletide Writer,
Firstly, you share a tiny fandom with me, so that makes you a person of taste and awesomeness as far as I'm concerned and I hope that you have fun writing for me.
I am a great believer in the story that you want to tell being the one that's going to be the most compelling to read, so please, write that story. If you are the sort of person who likes a concise letter and a free hand, just go for what you have in mind. All the extra details are for souls like me who want them. Do not attempt to give me everything below in one fic; you'd do yourself an injury. If anything seems contradictory, it's mostly because I like all sorts of different things at different times in different fandoms.
Likes: Humour, missing adventures, friendships, hurt/comfort, fantasy, history, mysteries, ghosts, plot, casefic, crossovers, gen, het, femslash. Despite some of the things listed below, I do enjoy some shippiness, and I adore reading about the subtleties, interactions and differing dynamics of relationships between people/groups, romantic or otherwise. (If you are shipping a pairing for me, then whatever feels right for those characters, non-explicit, emphasis on the lead in, sensation rather than technicalities, noticing/valuing the other person, banter, being better with the other person - but this isn't a checklist: what feels right for this particular pairing/characters involved is always going to be the key.)
Dislikes: graphic horror/violence, explicit pr0n, PWP, too-sugary sentimentality, incest, rape, or unending angst without hope. I'm not keen on unexpected character death (though, again, it depends on the fic and the fandom & again, canon death is canon and that's fine). If I love a fandom, I tend to love all of it, so I probably won't hate any characters or feel anything needs 'fixing', so bashing would upset me. I don't have any triggers, though, so please don't panic, and I can absolutely take some of these things if that's what the fic needs (as long as they're reasonably brief). As a note, a lot of my fandoms are British, as am I, so if you're not, you might want to make use of a Brit-picker.
In odd other things, I have 'squicks' regarding amnesia/memory loss (not in itself but if it's ever treated lightly/deliberately done to characters), and have a slight embarrassment squick (more humiliation/getting told off) and (though primarily visual) a thing about eating or drinking to excess/without any control/cannibalism. I can't imagine any of these things cropping up here, but just FYI, in case you would otherwise worry I might have an unexpected squick about potatoes or something. (I don't.)
Feel free to engage in any Yuletide stalking as you wish. A lot of the fannish things here are open, my fic is on AO3 under the same name, and you can check my recs tag here (or see my reccing stints on Calufrax and gensplosion) if any of that helps. But mostly... good luck, don't worry - and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
Just a note - I try very hard to make sure that I only request things I genuinely love and want, so please don't be put off if the fandom you're here for has less flaily writing than other fandoms - it honestly doesn't mean I wanted it less!
Enemy at the Door
Dieter Richter, Philip Martel
I love Richter & Martel and their relationship (that can't ever be a friendship, except it kind of is) & anything you want to give me regarding that would be marvellous, with bonus points for anything post-series, or even a post-war meeting for them.
I watched this 1978-80 series a few years ago with not much expectation and found myself with something that was indefinably the sort of TV I'd been looking for all my life. (Of course, I was probably biased by the fact that episode two is called "The Librarian" and actually features a librarian who is not a source of comedy and who clearly does a job I recognise, even 75 years on.) It's about the German Occupation of the Channel Islands in WWII, but it's also a shades-of-grey look at human beings at war trapped together. It's got some of the flaws of old UK TV (though a lot less than many other 70s shows), but basically I cried over it the first time (I was very ill, to be fair), found an odd reasssurance in it & keep coming back to it.
I've selected the two leads, because probably my favourite part of the series is their not-friendship as they interact in trying to keep Guernsey functioning (from frequently opposite angles). Their quiet respect for each other, the fact that they're two very different men but people who would surely become friends under any other circumstances, and the subtlety of that delights my heart. I'd love some more interaction between them of any sort, though I'm (contrarily, sorry) not angling for slash here. But anything up to and including the way that Richter pines for Dr Martel in his absence and gets up to devious shenanigans to get him back on the committee (in "Committee Man"), and his saving of Dr Martel's life in the awkward way that he does. Dr Martel getting to return the favour in some way as war progresses could also be great.
However, I really love the series and its ensemble cast, so please don't let that limit you. I would be delighted to find any of the regulars and most of the guest cast making an appearance or even stealing the show. I am especially fond of all the German Officers and their interactions and politicking and of Helen Porteous, who really should be in it more. (I have a long list of guest characters I love: Miss Cecily Brown, Marie, Betty Ridge, the two Generals in Treason (Enemy slash I would go for with all its Julius Caesar overtones), Lily, the chess playing woman and probably others, but, as I said, feel free to include anyone, except people from "The Raid" because I never rewatch that one.)
I would be equally glad to see fic about Richter and Martel separately - Richter dealing with other Islanders or his fellow officers, maybe even small mundane interactions with Island staff at the Feldkommandantur. I'm also intrigued by the sound of his wife Anna. I don't really want the action to go away from the Island, but I'd love to know more about her. Ditto Martel and his family (he and Olive are a very believable couple & I also love Clare and all her issues, & her different relationship with her two parents), with Clive, with Helen and Peter, with patients, or someone needing him to take an issue to the Germans.
I don't mind what you write - character vignettes, missing scenes, missing episodes or anything else you can think of. If you want to write post-canon, I would be thrilled with anything that might have been part of the never-made S3 (as matters got progressively worse for everyone), or a post-war meet up for Dr Martel & Richter.
Given the nature of canon, if you do feel the need to kill characters, for this fandom, I'm okay with that - just never go beyond canon in the level of bleakness etc. Honestly, though, I would be delighted with any fic for this fandom!
The Shadow of the Tower
Henry VII
I love this series and its version of Henry, so just give me some more would-be-Shakespeare(ish) historical fic for missing years/events, give me Henry/Elizabeth, give me all the Margaret & Henry, or Henry and his fascination with his various enemies, or anything else you can think of. (Lincoln in particular, but Warwick, Perkin, any of them.)
This is another 1970s TV series - this time a prequel to the BBC's Elizabeth R and The Six Wives of Henry VIII, made 1971/2, and still the only major film or drama based on Henry VII's reign. Unlike the first two, however, they seem to have made this one without a budget, but it is still wonderful once you get into it. (No, really!)
I love this version of Henry and all his paradoxes and fears that he is so-almost aware of and yet can't quite let himself be, his humour (and tiredness when no one else gets the jokes; it is so hard being king!), his intelligence, but also the uncertain background that leads to the need for control, a chilling paranoia and almost an edge of madness that we glimpse at times. Henry wants to be a good king, but the series would imply that you can't be; it's too much power - or that he certainly can't be. In many ways, it's a series about a man who wins and holds a kingdom and in the process, essentially defeats himself, and that kind of thing just chimes hard with me.
The series left some quite large gaps (there are about 7 years between eps 4 & 5, for instance). Write me an 'episode' or scene from that time! If you're willing to write Henry/Elizabeth, there are so many missing moments and plenty of historical anecdotes you could also use. (He has to hurry home from France because she misses him/he misses her etc. - and if you did SotT take on him giving her a lion, I would probably love you forever. We'll pretend by the magic of words that it's not a BBC pantomime lion/sound effect, but we will both know in our hearts it would be.) I love so much of their unspoken interaction; that in so many ways, she's one of the very few people in this version who 'gets' Henry, how much they care about each other, how uncertain they both are of each other sometimes (or Henry is), and how much it destroys him when she dies. (Or in short: it turns out that BBC 1970s Henry/Elizabeth presses all my buttons in what I like in a ship.)
I'd also have loved for SotT to do more with Margaret Beaufort - its (too few) scenes with Margaret and Henry are v interesting - there really could be so much more here, too, if you wanted to give me that. (In episode 6, there is a really intriguing exchange in particular & the two actors put a lot in unspoken that isn't picked up. Do pick it up! Margaret is an amazing historical character & Marigold Sharman's performance has grown on me hugely since my first watch - she's just not given the screen time here to build on it, but she puts a lot in her few scenes.)
If you want to do Henry interacting with his various rivals and prisoners (also including people not shown here), then there are obviously interesting relationships between him and Lincoln, Warwick, Perkin Warbeck, William Stanley and Peter Jeffrey's martyr. (Talking of the latter, I love SotT's willingness to be experimental. If you also want to experiment, in format, style or content, please do!) Also if you want more Jasper Tudor or Thomas Stanley, or anybody, that's fine too.
Historical fandoms + AUs seems to be a thing that often works well at Yuletide. I mean, I'm not sure what the Tower Coffee Shop would be like or Henry & Co in Space (in their very own cardboard spaceship probably), but I'm willing to find out if you feel so led. Just be happy to play with this fandom and I'll love you for it, I promise.
The one no-no here would be to have Henry in a relationship with anyone else, even post-canon. (Pre-canon is possible, but, as I said, I'm leaning towards things that fit in the (many) gaps in canon here.)
Dracula (TV 1968)
Lucy Weston, Mina Harker, John Seward
I love these three and their interactions - three respectable Victorians who get touched by vampirism one way or another during the course of this and how that affects them and changes their dynamics. And I think canon would suggest that those changes aren't actually coming out of nowhere, which makes it all the more interesting & I'd welcome any exploration of that, absolutely including shipping of any combination of the three.
This is yet more ancient TV, this time a 1&1/2hr ITV adaptation of Dracula for the Mystery and Imagination anthology series. It features Denholm Elliott, James Maxwell, Suzanne Neve, Corin Redgrave, Susan George, Bernard Archard & Joan Hickson and telescopes everything in the novel around Lucy and events in Whitby, dispensing with a couple of Lucy's suitors and amalgamating Harker with Renfield.
I am in this for all the variants on Mina/Lucy/John, basically. (I'd write Mina-Lucy-John but I think the canon undertones/events make the former more accurate, but you're welcome to take on their interactions in any way - there just needs to be some acknowledgement of the subtext of the source, as canon is clearly very aware of the whole vampirism/sex angle.)
Lucy/Mina: See these two gifsets? So, I would love more Lucy/Mina - maybe something happened before (maybe dressing/undressing for dinner/a party, I may have tiny Victorian dresses thing, okay. ♥); maybe a missing scene - after all, while John and Van Helsing wait in her crypt, Lucy's running about somewhere. I like that Lucy is the younger but the initiator, that Mina is less certain, but inevitably drawn in, and how her love for Lucy seems to be a greater pull than Dracula or Jonathan and what that says about her. Explore that any way you like, from either POV and from any point, before or during canon, as shippage, or as friendship that gets sexualised by Dracula's influence. Or an AU where that they run off together before Lucy is fully vampirised, or even both running off as vampires (although don't be too dark, please, I'm completely wimpish about horror) and maybe take Dr Seward as a snack (but treat him nicely; after all a Victorian gent is not just for Yuletide, if you're careful you can make him last all year.) Or any AU where a happier outcome is possible.
Mina/John: I think they have a very interesting relationship/connection to be played with - they're the ones who are more uncomfortable with the whole concept of vampirism, but unable to resist it (unlike Lucy and Jonathan who seem to revel in it - or Lucy does, and either Jonathan does or he's completely freaked out by it all!) and they both loved Lucy - and John gave Lucy blood while Mina was bitten by Lucy. So, that ending, with Mina left looking lustfully at his neck - what happens next? The most awkward and terrible attempt at seduction/resisting vampirism ever committed by two respectable Victorians? Does Dr Seward faint? Or do they enlist Van Helsing and win out (and, then optionally, get together while working through their grief)? Or Mina is cured, and they support each other platonically through their losses - it's up to you. *rudely ignores Jonathan/imagines him dying/falling off the cliff* (I have nothing against him, I just don't know where to fit him in my head. I think the Renfield aspect is emphasised so much, and this being my first Dracula, I had no automatic Mina/Jonathan default to counter that with? I'm really sorry, dear author! If you can meet my request and salvage poor Jonathan, or explore his reaction in the light of the others', feel free to do so.)
John/Lucy: I am dubious about their relationship in some ways, but on the other hand, they're both quite sweet and if you want to sell me on it, I love Susan George in this and James Maxwell in nearly anything, anyway, so I'd be up for that. Also, again, you have Lucy being inequal in every possible respect by the standards of the time but being the proactive one. (Somehow I imagine even before she was vampirised, she probably had to be...)
John/Lucy/Mina: any happy AU where they run off together away from annoying vampires, Jonathan and Dr Van Helsing would be great, or Jonathan just vanishes and no vampires happen or whatever you can come up with that works. Dr Seward may or may not know he's in an OT3; he's likely to be quite oblivious. Or if he does know, it's fine, because no matter how outraged/shocked he might be, he's 100% persuadable into doing everything he disapproves of.
Basically I love Lucy and Mina and I also love the fact that Dr Seward starts off as a rational Victorian gent (who is all about the mind and things being understood) and then finds himself faced with irrationality and blood and superstition and stresses out and faints and seems to be as influenced by Van Helsing* as Lucy is by Dracula, and is, despite being the one remaining potential alpha-male, in fact the snowflake of the piece. It's not (sadly) a super-feminist adaptation, even though it has some nice moments, but that makes up for a lot.
For a more straight-forwardly gen request - well, people fighting vampires is also cool! So, tackle what happens next with regards to more vampire fighting, or an AU where Van Helsing is much more sensible and uses John merely as a source of blood for Lucy and Mina as a vampire-fighting ally and things go much better (as it obviously would if the 19th C (and the 60s) weren't so sexist). I'm also open to crossovers and random AUs, if you've got any ideas. If you're here for this, thank you very much, and I'm sorry for being such an unreasonable recipient and, trust me, 1968 Dracula fic will make me squeak with glee simply from its mere improbable existence.
As long as you keep the focus on one or more of the requested characters in any combination with each other and don't hate on any of them, I'll be happy. I'm also absolutely good with the inevitable dub-con/non-con elements that go with vampire stories. (Vampirism infects respectable, rational Victorians and they have to deal with it and there's inevitable temptation/guilt/seduction/angst/surrendering. Yep.)
* (I'm not oblivious to the plausibility of John/Van Helsing, but let's not contemplate such a terrifying collision of facial hair for Yuletide. Also I suspect it'd be one-sided and despite the obvious suggestion that Van Helsing practised his mesmerism on John, which explains a lot this Van Helsing may be paralleled with Dracula, but I don't think he'd go through with non-con.)
Ripper Street
Rose Erskine
I love Rose and S3 did not have enough of her! So, I'd love Rose's rise to fame between S2 & 3, missing scenes at any point, Rose falling into more mysteries (she is a bit of a miner's canary sometimes, but I like that so why not?), Rose/Bennet if you feel inclined (I love Bennet, too), her friendship with Susan. How does she get on with Hermione? Bring in everybody else you want & ensemble fic that includes Rose would be amazing. I'll be happy with pretty much anything you can think of.
I don't know if this appeals, but I think that some sort of wintry/Christmas ghost story could work really well in this fandom - Rose-specific, or ensemble, (or - see below - Reid-centric). Snow & gaslight and disappointment, riches & poverty and things that can't be real...
I love the way Ripper Street consciously uses language; that everyone has distinct ways of speaking, the occasional poetry of it, and the weird way that everybody always talks in present tense. However, if that sounds daunting as applied to fic, don't worry - as long as you get the feel of the show and the characters, I'll be right there with you. But if that side of it appeals, please run with it.
That said, I was so torn between Rose or Reid, or requesting both, so if you selected 'any' and are now regretting it, I would also love any Reid-centric fic! Case-fic, him as an upright moral force yet that being so destructive to himself and others, and I love his love of progress/science that we see.
I love Ripper Street as a whole, and everybody's interactions, so please bring in any other characters as you wish. Plus, if you feel inclined to run with a crossover where any of the many detectives (or all of them) operating in late 19th C London find themselves on the same case, I would be all over that, taken seriously or comically.
The show can be quite violent & while I'm fine for similar events to happen in fic, I wouldn't enjoy reading graphically described violence and injury.
Adam Adamant Lives!
Adam Adamant, Georgina Jones
A suitably improbable missing adventure for this is always welcome, as is Adam/Georgie shippage (non-explicit) and domestic Adam-Georgie-Simms found family fic, culture clashes and the moments of heart that canon encompasses at times. For this fandom, feel free to apply ridiculous fanfic tropes for inspiration, if that appeals.
I discovered this just post Yuletide last year. It's a super-adorable 1960s BBC action/adventure series about an Edwardian crime fighter who's frozen in a block of ice and wakes up in the 1960s, where he's befriended by Georgina Jones, a swinging 60s nightclub DJ and together (along with Adam's manservant Simms) they fight crime and there are shenanigans! (And bondage. So much bondage!) It has an exclamation mark in the title!
Anyway, more crime-fighting shenanigans are always welcome, but I especially love when the show also demonstrates that it has heart - the understated but present acknowledgement that Georgie and Adam both seem to have no one else (presumably Simms doesn't, either?) so they're a little argumentative found family together. Or where Adam sees Louise again, or defends the 60s, because he knows the past wasn't a golden age, it was just life with all its inequalities, and Georgie and Adam when she gets arrested is also exactly the kind of thing I mean. I love Georgie having to explain things to Adam - all the comedy of manners side of things - and Adam getting knocked out (though I think we can skip the flashback now? Can we?) and tied/chained up, with bonus points if he's tied up with/to Georgie, of course. Extra bonus points for getting one up on the series and tying up Georgie, Simms and Adam at the same time. I love how small-time so many of the villains are, too. And also evil villains who are ladies, much to Adam's distress (especially if they're the mastermind themselves, as in the first two episodes). Give me all the evil ladies!
I do ship Adam/Georgie, I confess. (I find it sort of hard to in some ways, but almost impossible not to at the same time. If nothing else, Georgie seems to be the only woman Adam's ever likely to run into who's not evil!) Anyway, if you want to go post-series and get them together by means as tropey as you like (fake marriage/pretending to be a couple, maybe?), or non-tropey, of course, I'd adore it. (Nothing explicit, though - do think of Mr Adamant's delicate sensibilities!)
And if you can make any sense of The Face as a villain, I'm willing to hear it. (I haven't read the scripts of the missing eps. I'm being stupidly optimistic about lost TV being found one day.) This fandom is the kind of thing where crossovers could work well, too, if you have a good one in mind. (If it's not something I know, that's okay, but give me enough info to read it in ignorance.)
But, yes - shenanigans, heart, loneliness, ridiculous bondage*, unlikely villains, and charmingly adorable 1960s leads. ♥ *nods*
* I'm not sure I'm actually that into bondage, but AAL! is so ridiculously joyful about embracing it that I'm v amused and feel cheated if an episode fails to include it. (In fact, ridiculously joyful probably sums up most things about AAL.)
Availability
1. Enemy at the Door: Out on DVD (certainly in R1 & 2) and someone has the entire series (26x50mins) up on YouTube at the moment. Full info & links at the Fandom Promotion Post
2. The Shadow of the Tower: Again, out on DVD in both Region 1&2 and entire series (13x50mins) up on YouTube. Full info & links at the Fandom Promotion Post.
3. Dracula (TV 1968): On DVD (in at least R2 as part of the Mystery and Imagination anthology) & up on YouTube (c.90 mins). Full info & links at the Fandom Promotion Post. (This is also the shortest fandom on the list if the fandom we matched on isn't working for you.)
4. Ripper Street is a recent BBC/Amazon Prime series & should be available by your usual methods!
5. Adam Adamant Lives!: Out on DVD in R2; several people have the full (surviving eps of the) series on YouTube at the moment, e.g. here. You can listen to the wonderfully OTT theme tune here, and I made a Georgie & Adam vid that is (I like to think) a fun, non-spoilery intro to the show: Have You Met Miss Jones?
The whole thing is pretty delightful, although there are the usual 60s UK TV hang-ups - production values, occasional sexism, and two unfortunately racist early episodes, but it makes up for most of that by being completely adorable in pretty much every other possible respect. It was made by Sidney Newman and Verity Lambert, post Doctor Who, and while it sometimes suffers from being compared to The Avengers, it's very much its own thing & when taken as such, it's just a pleasure to get lost in.
So, there we are, author! Apologies for my long letter - tl;dr - I love lots of stuff and am looking forward to what you come up with. Please don't panic! And thanks & good luck - I hope you have a lovely Yuletide. ♥
N.B. I will be away for Christmas. I usually do have 'net access and hopefully will get to read and comment fairly quickly, but if anything happens, I may not be able to do so until the New Year, so don't worry if you don't get a response before then.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there:
Dear Yuletide Writer,
Firstly, you share a tiny fandom with me, so that makes you a person of taste and awesomeness as far as I'm concerned and I hope that you have fun writing for me.
I am a great believer in the story that you want to tell being the one that's going to be the most compelling to read, so please, write that story. If you are the sort of person who likes a concise letter and a free hand, just go for what you have in mind. All the extra details are for souls like me who want them. Do not attempt to give me everything below in one fic; you'd do yourself an injury. If anything seems contradictory, it's mostly because I like all sorts of different things at different times in different fandoms.
Likes: Humour, missing adventures, friendships, hurt/comfort, fantasy, history, mysteries, ghosts, plot, casefic, crossovers, gen, het, femslash. Despite some of the things listed below, I do enjoy some shippiness, and I adore reading about the subtleties, interactions and differing dynamics of relationships between people/groups, romantic or otherwise. (If you are shipping a pairing for me, then whatever feels right for those characters, non-explicit, emphasis on the lead in, sensation rather than technicalities, noticing/valuing the other person, banter, being better with the other person - but this isn't a checklist: what feels right for this particular pairing/characters involved is always going to be the key.)
Dislikes: graphic horror/violence, explicit pr0n, PWP, too-sugary sentimentality, incest, rape, or unending angst without hope. I'm not keen on unexpected character death (though, again, it depends on the fic and the fandom & again, canon death is canon and that's fine). If I love a fandom, I tend to love all of it, so I probably won't hate any characters or feel anything needs 'fixing', so bashing would upset me. I don't have any triggers, though, so please don't panic, and I can absolutely take some of these things if that's what the fic needs (as long as they're reasonably brief). As a note, a lot of my fandoms are British, as am I, so if you're not, you might want to make use of a Brit-picker.
In odd other things, I have 'squicks' regarding amnesia/memory loss (not in itself but if it's ever treated lightly/deliberately done to characters), and have a slight embarrassment squick (more humiliation/getting told off) and (though primarily visual) a thing about eating or drinking to excess/without any control/cannibalism. I can't imagine any of these things cropping up here, but just FYI, in case you would otherwise worry I might have an unexpected squick about potatoes or something. (I don't.)
Feel free to engage in any Yuletide stalking as you wish. A lot of the fannish things here are open, my fic is on AO3 under the same name, and you can check my recs tag here (or see my reccing stints on Calufrax and gensplosion) if any of that helps. But mostly... good luck, don't worry - and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
Just a note - I try very hard to make sure that I only request things I genuinely love and want, so please don't be put off if the fandom you're here for has less flaily writing than other fandoms - it honestly doesn't mean I wanted it less!
Enemy at the Door
Dieter Richter, Philip Martel
I love Richter & Martel and their relationship (that can't ever be a friendship, except it kind of is) & anything you want to give me regarding that would be marvellous, with bonus points for anything post-series, or even a post-war meeting for them.
I watched this 1978-80 series a few years ago with not much expectation and found myself with something that was indefinably the sort of TV I'd been looking for all my life. (Of course, I was probably biased by the fact that episode two is called "The Librarian" and actually features a librarian who is not a source of comedy and who clearly does a job I recognise, even 75 years on.) It's about the German Occupation of the Channel Islands in WWII, but it's also a shades-of-grey look at human beings at war trapped together. It's got some of the flaws of old UK TV (though a lot less than many other 70s shows), but basically I cried over it the first time (I was very ill, to be fair), found an odd reasssurance in it & keep coming back to it.
I've selected the two leads, because probably my favourite part of the series is their not-friendship as they interact in trying to keep Guernsey functioning (from frequently opposite angles). Their quiet respect for each other, the fact that they're two very different men but people who would surely become friends under any other circumstances, and the subtlety of that delights my heart. I'd love some more interaction between them of any sort, though I'm (contrarily, sorry) not angling for slash here. But anything up to and including the way that Richter pines for Dr Martel in his absence and gets up to devious shenanigans to get him back on the committee (in "Committee Man"), and his saving of Dr Martel's life in the awkward way that he does. Dr Martel getting to return the favour in some way as war progresses could also be great.
However, I really love the series and its ensemble cast, so please don't let that limit you. I would be delighted to find any of the regulars and most of the guest cast making an appearance or even stealing the show. I am especially fond of all the German Officers and their interactions and politicking and of Helen Porteous, who really should be in it more. (I have a long list of guest characters I love: Miss Cecily Brown, Marie, Betty Ridge, the two Generals in Treason (Enemy slash I would go for with all its Julius Caesar overtones), Lily, the chess playing woman and probably others, but, as I said, feel free to include anyone, except people from "The Raid" because I never rewatch that one.)
I would be equally glad to see fic about Richter and Martel separately - Richter dealing with other Islanders or his fellow officers, maybe even small mundane interactions with Island staff at the Feldkommandantur. I'm also intrigued by the sound of his wife Anna. I don't really want the action to go away from the Island, but I'd love to know more about her. Ditto Martel and his family (he and Olive are a very believable couple & I also love Clare and all her issues, & her different relationship with her two parents), with Clive, with Helen and Peter, with patients, or someone needing him to take an issue to the Germans.
I don't mind what you write - character vignettes, missing scenes, missing episodes or anything else you can think of. If you want to write post-canon, I would be thrilled with anything that might have been part of the never-made S3 (as matters got progressively worse for everyone), or a post-war meet up for Dr Martel & Richter.
Given the nature of canon, if you do feel the need to kill characters, for this fandom, I'm okay with that - just never go beyond canon in the level of bleakness etc. Honestly, though, I would be delighted with any fic for this fandom!
The Shadow of the Tower
Henry VII
I love this series and its version of Henry, so just give me some more would-be-Shakespeare(ish) historical fic for missing years/events, give me Henry/Elizabeth, give me all the Margaret & Henry, or Henry and his fascination with his various enemies, or anything else you can think of. (Lincoln in particular, but Warwick, Perkin, any of them.)
This is another 1970s TV series - this time a prequel to the BBC's Elizabeth R and The Six Wives of Henry VIII, made 1971/2, and still the only major film or drama based on Henry VII's reign. Unlike the first two, however, they seem to have made this one without a budget, but it is still wonderful once you get into it. (No, really!)
I love this version of Henry and all his paradoxes and fears that he is so-almost aware of and yet can't quite let himself be, his humour (and tiredness when no one else gets the jokes; it is so hard being king!), his intelligence, but also the uncertain background that leads to the need for control, a chilling paranoia and almost an edge of madness that we glimpse at times. Henry wants to be a good king, but the series would imply that you can't be; it's too much power - or that he certainly can't be. In many ways, it's a series about a man who wins and holds a kingdom and in the process, essentially defeats himself, and that kind of thing just chimes hard with me.
The series left some quite large gaps (there are about 7 years between eps 4 & 5, for instance). Write me an 'episode' or scene from that time! If you're willing to write Henry/Elizabeth, there are so many missing moments and plenty of historical anecdotes you could also use. (He has to hurry home from France because she misses him/he misses her etc. - and if you did SotT take on him giving her a lion, I would probably love you forever. We'll pretend by the magic of words that it's not a BBC pantomime lion/sound effect, but we will both know in our hearts it would be.) I love so much of their unspoken interaction; that in so many ways, she's one of the very few people in this version who 'gets' Henry, how much they care about each other, how uncertain they both are of each other sometimes (or Henry is), and how much it destroys him when she dies. (Or in short: it turns out that BBC 1970s Henry/Elizabeth presses all my buttons in what I like in a ship.)
I'd also have loved for SotT to do more with Margaret Beaufort - its (too few) scenes with Margaret and Henry are v interesting - there really could be so much more here, too, if you wanted to give me that. (In episode 6, there is a really intriguing exchange in particular & the two actors put a lot in unspoken that isn't picked up. Do pick it up! Margaret is an amazing historical character & Marigold Sharman's performance has grown on me hugely since my first watch - she's just not given the screen time here to build on it, but she puts a lot in her few scenes.)
If you want to do Henry interacting with his various rivals and prisoners (also including people not shown here), then there are obviously interesting relationships between him and Lincoln, Warwick, Perkin Warbeck, William Stanley and Peter Jeffrey's martyr. (Talking of the latter, I love SotT's willingness to be experimental. If you also want to experiment, in format, style or content, please do!) Also if you want more Jasper Tudor or Thomas Stanley, or anybody, that's fine too.
Historical fandoms + AUs seems to be a thing that often works well at Yuletide. I mean, I'm not sure what the Tower Coffee Shop would be like or Henry & Co in Space (in their very own cardboard spaceship probably), but I'm willing to find out if you feel so led. Just be happy to play with this fandom and I'll love you for it, I promise.
The one no-no here would be to have Henry in a relationship with anyone else, even post-canon. (Pre-canon is possible, but, as I said, I'm leaning towards things that fit in the (many) gaps in canon here.)
Dracula (TV 1968)
Lucy Weston, Mina Harker, John Seward
I love these three and their interactions - three respectable Victorians who get touched by vampirism one way or another during the course of this and how that affects them and changes their dynamics. And I think canon would suggest that those changes aren't actually coming out of nowhere, which makes it all the more interesting & I'd welcome any exploration of that, absolutely including shipping of any combination of the three.
This is yet more ancient TV, this time a 1&1/2hr ITV adaptation of Dracula for the Mystery and Imagination anthology series. It features Denholm Elliott, James Maxwell, Suzanne Neve, Corin Redgrave, Susan George, Bernard Archard & Joan Hickson and telescopes everything in the novel around Lucy and events in Whitby, dispensing with a couple of Lucy's suitors and amalgamating Harker with Renfield.
I am in this for all the variants on Mina/Lucy/John, basically. (I'd write Mina-Lucy-John but I think the canon undertones/events make the former more accurate, but you're welcome to take on their interactions in any way - there just needs to be some acknowledgement of the subtext of the source, as canon is clearly very aware of the whole vampirism/sex angle.)
Lucy/Mina: See these two gifsets? So, I would love more Lucy/Mina - maybe something happened before (maybe dressing/undressing for dinner/a party, I may have tiny Victorian dresses thing, okay. ♥); maybe a missing scene - after all, while John and Van Helsing wait in her crypt, Lucy's running about somewhere. I like that Lucy is the younger but the initiator, that Mina is less certain, but inevitably drawn in, and how her love for Lucy seems to be a greater pull than Dracula or Jonathan and what that says about her. Explore that any way you like, from either POV and from any point, before or during canon, as shippage, or as friendship that gets sexualised by Dracula's influence. Or an AU where that they run off together before Lucy is fully vampirised, or even both running off as vampires (although don't be too dark, please, I'm completely wimpish about horror) and maybe take Dr Seward as a snack (but treat him nicely; after all a Victorian gent is not just for Yuletide, if you're careful you can make him last all year.) Or any AU where a happier outcome is possible.
Mina/John: I think they have a very interesting relationship/connection to be played with - they're the ones who are more uncomfortable with the whole concept of vampirism, but unable to resist it (unlike Lucy and Jonathan who seem to revel in it - or Lucy does, and either Jonathan does or he's completely freaked out by it all!) and they both loved Lucy - and John gave Lucy blood while Mina was bitten by Lucy. So, that ending, with Mina left looking lustfully at his neck - what happens next? The most awkward and terrible attempt at seduction/resisting vampirism ever committed by two respectable Victorians? Does Dr Seward faint? Or do they enlist Van Helsing and win out (and, then optionally, get together while working through their grief)? Or Mina is cured, and they support each other platonically through their losses - it's up to you. *rudely ignores Jonathan/imagines him dying/falling off the cliff* (I have nothing against him, I just don't know where to fit him in my head. I think the Renfield aspect is emphasised so much, and this being my first Dracula, I had no automatic Mina/Jonathan default to counter that with? I'm really sorry, dear author! If you can meet my request and salvage poor Jonathan, or explore his reaction in the light of the others', feel free to do so.)
John/Lucy: I am dubious about their relationship in some ways, but on the other hand, they're both quite sweet and if you want to sell me on it, I love Susan George in this and James Maxwell in nearly anything, anyway, so I'd be up for that. Also, again, you have Lucy being inequal in every possible respect by the standards of the time but being the proactive one. (Somehow I imagine even before she was vampirised, she probably had to be...)
John/Lucy/Mina: any happy AU where they run off together away from annoying vampires, Jonathan and Dr Van Helsing would be great, or Jonathan just vanishes and no vampires happen or whatever you can come up with that works. Dr Seward may or may not know he's in an OT3; he's likely to be quite oblivious. Or if he does know, it's fine, because no matter how outraged/shocked he might be, he's 100% persuadable into doing everything he disapproves of.
Basically I love Lucy and Mina and I also love the fact that Dr Seward starts off as a rational Victorian gent (who is all about the mind and things being understood) and then finds himself faced with irrationality and blood and superstition and stresses out and faints and seems to be as influenced by Van Helsing* as Lucy is by Dracula, and is, despite being the one remaining potential alpha-male, in fact the snowflake of the piece. It's not (sadly) a super-feminist adaptation, even though it has some nice moments, but that makes up for a lot.
For a more straight-forwardly gen request - well, people fighting vampires is also cool! So, tackle what happens next with regards to more vampire fighting, or an AU where Van Helsing is much more sensible and uses John merely as a source of blood for Lucy and Mina as a vampire-fighting ally and things go much better (as it obviously would if the 19th C (and the 60s) weren't so sexist). I'm also open to crossovers and random AUs, if you've got any ideas. If you're here for this, thank you very much, and I'm sorry for being such an unreasonable recipient and, trust me, 1968 Dracula fic will make me squeak with glee simply from its mere improbable existence.
As long as you keep the focus on one or more of the requested characters in any combination with each other and don't hate on any of them, I'll be happy. I'm also absolutely good with the inevitable dub-con/non-con elements that go with vampire stories. (Vampirism infects respectable, rational Victorians and they have to deal with it and there's inevitable temptation/guilt/seduction/angst/surrendering. Yep.)
* (I'm not oblivious to the plausibility of John/Van Helsing, but let's not contemplate such a terrifying collision of facial hair for Yuletide. Also I suspect it'd be one-sided and despite the obvious suggestion that Van Helsing practised his mesmerism on John, which explains a lot this Van Helsing may be paralleled with Dracula, but I don't think he'd go through with non-con.)
Ripper Street
Rose Erskine
I love Rose and S3 did not have enough of her! So, I'd love Rose's rise to fame between S2 & 3, missing scenes at any point, Rose falling into more mysteries (she is a bit of a miner's canary sometimes, but I like that so why not?), Rose/Bennet if you feel inclined (I love Bennet, too), her friendship with Susan. How does she get on with Hermione? Bring in everybody else you want & ensemble fic that includes Rose would be amazing. I'll be happy with pretty much anything you can think of.
I don't know if this appeals, but I think that some sort of wintry/Christmas ghost story could work really well in this fandom - Rose-specific, or ensemble, (or - see below - Reid-centric). Snow & gaslight and disappointment, riches & poverty and things that can't be real...
I love the way Ripper Street consciously uses language; that everyone has distinct ways of speaking, the occasional poetry of it, and the weird way that everybody always talks in present tense. However, if that sounds daunting as applied to fic, don't worry - as long as you get the feel of the show and the characters, I'll be right there with you. But if that side of it appeals, please run with it.
That said, I was so torn between Rose or Reid, or requesting both, so if you selected 'any' and are now regretting it, I would also love any Reid-centric fic! Case-fic, him as an upright moral force yet that being so destructive to himself and others, and I love his love of progress/science that we see.
I love Ripper Street as a whole, and everybody's interactions, so please bring in any other characters as you wish. Plus, if you feel inclined to run with a crossover where any of the many detectives (or all of them) operating in late 19th C London find themselves on the same case, I would be all over that, taken seriously or comically.
The show can be quite violent & while I'm fine for similar events to happen in fic, I wouldn't enjoy reading graphically described violence and injury.
Adam Adamant Lives!
Adam Adamant, Georgina Jones
A suitably improbable missing adventure for this is always welcome, as is Adam/Georgie shippage (non-explicit) and domestic Adam-Georgie-Simms found family fic, culture clashes and the moments of heart that canon encompasses at times. For this fandom, feel free to apply ridiculous fanfic tropes for inspiration, if that appeals.
I discovered this just post Yuletide last year. It's a super-adorable 1960s BBC action/adventure series about an Edwardian crime fighter who's frozen in a block of ice and wakes up in the 1960s, where he's befriended by Georgina Jones, a swinging 60s nightclub DJ and together (along with Adam's manservant Simms) they fight crime and there are shenanigans! (And bondage. So much bondage!) It has an exclamation mark in the title!
Anyway, more crime-fighting shenanigans are always welcome, but I especially love when the show also demonstrates that it has heart - the understated but present acknowledgement that Georgie and Adam both seem to have no one else (presumably Simms doesn't, either?) so they're a little argumentative found family together. Or where Adam sees Louise again, or defends the 60s, because he knows the past wasn't a golden age, it was just life with all its inequalities, and Georgie and Adam when she gets arrested is also exactly the kind of thing I mean. I love Georgie having to explain things to Adam - all the comedy of manners side of things - and Adam getting knocked out (though I think we can skip the flashback now? Can we?) and tied/chained up, with bonus points if he's tied up with/to Georgie, of course. Extra bonus points for getting one up on the series and tying up Georgie, Simms and Adam at the same time. I love how small-time so many of the villains are, too. And also evil villains who are ladies, much to Adam's distress (especially if they're the mastermind themselves, as in the first two episodes). Give me all the evil ladies!
I do ship Adam/Georgie, I confess. (I find it sort of hard to in some ways, but almost impossible not to at the same time. If nothing else, Georgie seems to be the only woman Adam's ever likely to run into who's not evil!) Anyway, if you want to go post-series and get them together by means as tropey as you like (fake marriage/pretending to be a couple, maybe?), or non-tropey, of course, I'd adore it. (Nothing explicit, though - do think of Mr Adamant's delicate sensibilities!)
And if you can make any sense of The Face as a villain, I'm willing to hear it. (I haven't read the scripts of the missing eps. I'm being stupidly optimistic about lost TV being found one day.) This fandom is the kind of thing where crossovers could work well, too, if you have a good one in mind. (If it's not something I know, that's okay, but give me enough info to read it in ignorance.)
But, yes - shenanigans, heart, loneliness, ridiculous bondage*, unlikely villains, and charmingly adorable 1960s leads. ♥ *nods*
* I'm not sure I'm actually that into bondage, but AAL! is so ridiculously joyful about embracing it that I'm v amused and feel cheated if an episode fails to include it. (In fact, ridiculously joyful probably sums up most things about AAL.)
Availability
1. Enemy at the Door: Out on DVD (certainly in R1 & 2) and someone has the entire series (26x50mins) up on YouTube at the moment. Full info & links at the Fandom Promotion Post
2. The Shadow of the Tower: Again, out on DVD in both Region 1&2 and entire series (13x50mins) up on YouTube. Full info & links at the Fandom Promotion Post.
3. Dracula (TV 1968): On DVD (in at least R2 as part of the Mystery and Imagination anthology) & up on YouTube (c.90 mins). Full info & links at the Fandom Promotion Post. (This is also the shortest fandom on the list if the fandom we matched on isn't working for you.)
4. Ripper Street is a recent BBC/Amazon Prime series & should be available by your usual methods!
5. Adam Adamant Lives!: Out on DVD in R2; several people have the full (surviving eps of the) series on YouTube at the moment, e.g. here. You can listen to the wonderfully OTT theme tune here, and I made a Georgie & Adam vid that is (I like to think) a fun, non-spoilery intro to the show: Have You Met Miss Jones?
The whole thing is pretty delightful, although there are the usual 60s UK TV hang-ups - production values, occasional sexism, and two unfortunately racist early episodes, but it makes up for most of that by being completely adorable in pretty much every other possible respect. It was made by Sidney Newman and Verity Lambert, post Doctor Who, and while it sometimes suffers from being compared to The Avengers, it's very much its own thing & when taken as such, it's just a pleasure to get lost in.
So, there we are, author! Apologies for my long letter - tl;dr - I love lots of stuff and am looking forward to what you come up with. Please don't panic! And thanks & good luck - I hope you have a lovely Yuletide. ♥
N.B. I will be away for Christmas. I usually do have 'net access and hopefully will get to read and comment fairly quickly, but if anything happens, I may not be able to do so until the New Year, so don't worry if you don't get a response before then.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there: