Yuletide Letter!
Hello, Yuletide writer! Let me say right off that I'm going to be delighted with whatever story you write; I love these characters and the prospect of getting a story about them fills me with glee.
I'm a big fan of plot; I love rescue missions and jailbreaks and jobs that go bad. I love characters doing stupid, reckless things to save people they care about; characters being beside themselves with worry even if (let's be honest here, especially if) they're the type who wouldn't admit it under torture.
I'm good with sex, good with violence but not crazy about non con, at least not with these fandoms.
On to the fandoms!
Human Target
Human Target is about a former assassin-turned-good-guy named Christopher Chance (the Captain America looking guy in the chair.) If someone is trying to kill you, Chance is who you want to call; he'll crawl through vents, fly jets upside down and generally do what it takes to keep you alive, up to and including acting as a human shield. The big, stern-looking guy on the left is Winston; he takes care of the business side of things while Chance is out there free-climbing skyscrapers. Winston is a former police detective who quit the force when he finally got sick of hacking his way through red tape, although he still has plenty of contacts on that side of the law. (The doggie is Carmine. He's a good doggie.)
And then there's my favorite, the guy in the glasses on the right: that's Guerrero, a criminal jack-of-all trades who freelances for Chance and Winston's operation. He used to belong the the same assassin group as Chance and the two have seemingly known each other forever; unlike Chance though, it's clear that Guerrero is still actively a criminal, with people on his payroll and contacts everywhere (at one point they were able to get Chance out of a sticky situation because Guerrero was already blackmailing the person they needed leverage on.) He's the guy Winston and Chance turn to when they need IDs faked, bombs disarmed and networks hacked; if he can't do it personally he can generally find someone who can. Guerrero talks like a surfer (count the number of times he says "dude" in an episode) and will shoot you in the back without batting an eye; the show makes it clear that he is a bad guy who happens to be hanging around with the good guys.
The list of things we know about Guerrero is pretty small: we know he's been to prison (although not where or why) and that the prospect of going back freaks him out; we know he has a kid, although no more detail than that; and we know that when a bad guy he was in the middle of killing told him,"You can't protect him (Chance) forever," Guerrero just answered, "We'll see."
Request: I'd like a story where Guerrero gets in over his head and Chance and Winston have to mount a rescue. It doesn't matter who grabs him, enemies from the old days, a present-day job gone wrong, people trying to get information on Chance, as long as Chance has to work against the clock. Chance being desperate and dark siding a bit is always a plus, especially if Winston is there to pull him back. Torture is fine, non con is not.
What I'm really interested here is the friendship between these guys, especially Guerrero and Chance. It's canon that Chance has trouble being rational when his friends are in danger, and for all the bickering Winston and Guerrero do I'd like to see how Winston would react if the guy was actually in trouble.
Human Target is a pretty gen fandom for me; I can get behind Chance and Guerrero having messed around but it's not where I turn to for deathless romance.:)
Mobile Suit Gundam: 0083 Stardust Memory
0083 is set three years after the One Year War; all you need to know is that Earth's space colonies united under the flag of Zeon and went to war for independence --- and lost, partially because they were lead by crazy people and partially because the Earth Federation had an experimental new type of mobile suit called a Gundam, technology Zeon couldn't touch.
0083 picks up with a small group of Zeon loyalists, chiefly (for our purposes) Anavel Gato, an ace pilot and that stylish gentleman on the right. They come up with a plan to sneak onto a Federation base and steal one of the experimental new Gundams being tested there, one equipped with a nuclear warhead. The plan goes off without a hitch --- well almost; rookie Federation pilot Kou Uraki (on left) blunders onto the theft, steals the second Gundam and heads off in pursuit. Helping Kou is Nina Purpleton (center), the designer of the new Gundams who's in deeper than she's telling: the reason Gato was able to know about the experimental Gundams was she'd had a relationship with him on Luna while he was hiding from Federation authorities after the War.
I love this series. It was my introduction to the Gundam franchise and is still my favorite installment, a fantastic standalone that balances the relationships with the politics and doesn't require you to deal with Amaro Ray's whining or Char's nonsense, much as I love both those characters. I especially like how the dynamic between Kou and Gato develops over the series; in their first fight Gato actually gives Kou advice because he's so woeful but towards the end they respect each other as soldiers and equals. Then throw in Nina, in love with both these idiots; the scene where her history with Gato comes out is terrifically intense. When Gato dies at the end I was so upset I asked a Gundam fanboy friend if there was any chance he shows up later and pretty much got the answer, "Of course not. He explodes."
Which brings us to my request, "What if he hadn't?":)
Request: Kou and Nina find out that Gato didn't die at the end of Operation Stardust. However they find out is fine with me, whether Gato shows up at their door having escaped from Feddie custody, whether they get a tip that the Federation's had him all this time and they have to bust him out, etc, etc, as long as the decision to help him brings them under serious fire from the Earth Federation. I'd really love for this to go in a Kou/Nina/Gato direction, if at all possible.
Forgotten Realms: The Sellswords
On the right is Artemis Entreri, the world's premier assassin and possessor of an intelligent, magic dagger that can kill with a single hit. The sexy beast on the left is Jarlaxle Baenre, a drow (dark elf) mercenary who has a magic item for every occasion and is always the smartest guy in the room. Together, they fight crime.
Wait, no. They commit crime. Awesome, awesome crime.
I have a confession to make: I'm not really crazy about R.A. Salvatore as a writer sometimes. Don't feel the need to force your story to stick to series canon if you're not feeling it; a story set any time post-Servant of the Shard is A-OK with me. I just love these two, Artemis and his trust issues and his obsession with being the best contrasted with Jarlaxle's flamboyant ruthlessness. Jarlaxle is quite literally the only friend Artemis has had in his entire life, and the man is around forty when when we meet him. For his part, Jarlaxle enjoys trying to coax emotion out of Entreri and roping him into complicated schemes, the crazier and more annoying to Entreri the better.
Like I said, love these two. Love them as friends, love them as more-than-friends.
Request: I'd love Jarlaxle and Entreri on a caper-gone-bad. Depending where in canon you're working from they don't need to have both been involved in the job to start with (or frankly, be on the same side at all) as long as they end the story as friends (or more.) They're better together than apart and it's high time they realized it.:)
The (Dark) Avengers
On the left is Robert "The Sentry" Reynolds, a superhero with the power of a thousand exploding suns, the most powerful being in the Marvel universe. On the right is The Void, The Sentry's implacable villain...or he would be, if they weren't actually the same person.
The Tommy Lee Jones-looking fellow with the crazy person hair on the left is Norman Osborn, one of the smartest people in the Marvel U. On the right is the Green Goblin, psychotic Spider-man villain extraordinaire most famous for throwing Gwen Stacy off a bridge. They're (say it with me now) the same person.
Some background: a while back Nick Fury did a bad bad thing and couldn't lead SHIELD anymore. When the smoke cleared Osborn found himself appointed to be in charge of HAMMER (the replacement for SHIELD) despite his well-known history of psychotic breaks and pumpkin-bomb throwing alternate personality. He put together an Avengers team largely made up of villains, dressed them up as the Avengers they were replacing and recruited The Sentry as his heavy hitter. And for a while, things actually worked out okay.
I was a big, big fan of Dark Reign and especially of The Sentry and Norman Osborn. For all the manipulation going on from Osborn I loved how he was the only one who understood what was going on with Bob because he was going through the exact same thing. Bob really believed Osborn was his friend and I'm not at all sure he was wrong. My favorite issue of the entire run is when the Void takes over and throws a tantrum in the middle of New York; virtually the entire issue is Osborn talking him down, not with threats or powers but just by talking. These two were always a dance, Osborn trying to keep Bob's loyalty (for all that he essentially has a dark spirit in him, Bob Reynolds is an innocent in a lot of ways) while bringing out the Void when he needs a little extra destruction.
Request: Anything Osborn/Sentry (and Void/Goblin and all the various combinations that come up with these two). Pre-Siege, post-Siege, doesn't matter (although post obviously requires a little more tap dancing) I like stories where Norman is threatened and Bob is pushed, but as long as things are Sentry-and-Osborn centric I'll be happy. Throw in all the manipulation and darkness and dubious mind screws you like, as long as at the end of the day there's something true going on there underneath all the dysfunction.
Thank you, Mysterious Writer! Have a great Yuletide!
I'm a big fan of plot; I love rescue missions and jailbreaks and jobs that go bad. I love characters doing stupid, reckless things to save people they care about; characters being beside themselves with worry even if (let's be honest here, especially if) they're the type who wouldn't admit it under torture.
I'm good with sex, good with violence but not crazy about non con, at least not with these fandoms.
On to the fandoms!
Human Target
Human Target is about a former assassin-turned-good-guy named Christopher Chance (the Captain America looking guy in the chair.) If someone is trying to kill you, Chance is who you want to call; he'll crawl through vents, fly jets upside down and generally do what it takes to keep you alive, up to and including acting as a human shield. The big, stern-looking guy on the left is Winston; he takes care of the business side of things while Chance is out there free-climbing skyscrapers. Winston is a former police detective who quit the force when he finally got sick of hacking his way through red tape, although he still has plenty of contacts on that side of the law. (The doggie is Carmine. He's a good doggie.)
And then there's my favorite, the guy in the glasses on the right: that's Guerrero, a criminal jack-of-all trades who freelances for Chance and Winston's operation. He used to belong the the same assassin group as Chance and the two have seemingly known each other forever; unlike Chance though, it's clear that Guerrero is still actively a criminal, with people on his payroll and contacts everywhere (at one point they were able to get Chance out of a sticky situation because Guerrero was already blackmailing the person they needed leverage on.) He's the guy Winston and Chance turn to when they need IDs faked, bombs disarmed and networks hacked; if he can't do it personally he can generally find someone who can. Guerrero talks like a surfer (count the number of times he says "dude" in an episode) and will shoot you in the back without batting an eye; the show makes it clear that he is a bad guy who happens to be hanging around with the good guys.
The list of things we know about Guerrero is pretty small: we know he's been to prison (although not where or why) and that the prospect of going back freaks him out; we know he has a kid, although no more detail than that; and we know that when a bad guy he was in the middle of killing told him,"You can't protect him (Chance) forever," Guerrero just answered, "We'll see."
Request: I'd like a story where Guerrero gets in over his head and Chance and Winston have to mount a rescue. It doesn't matter who grabs him, enemies from the old days, a present-day job gone wrong, people trying to get information on Chance, as long as Chance has to work against the clock. Chance being desperate and dark siding a bit is always a plus, especially if Winston is there to pull him back. Torture is fine, non con is not.
What I'm really interested here is the friendship between these guys, especially Guerrero and Chance. It's canon that Chance has trouble being rational when his friends are in danger, and for all the bickering Winston and Guerrero do I'd like to see how Winston would react if the guy was actually in trouble.
Human Target is a pretty gen fandom for me; I can get behind Chance and Guerrero having messed around but it's not where I turn to for deathless romance.:)
Mobile Suit Gundam: 0083 Stardust Memory
0083 is set three years after the One Year War; all you need to know is that Earth's space colonies united under the flag of Zeon and went to war for independence --- and lost, partially because they were lead by crazy people and partially because the Earth Federation had an experimental new type of mobile suit called a Gundam, technology Zeon couldn't touch.
0083 picks up with a small group of Zeon loyalists, chiefly (for our purposes) Anavel Gato, an ace pilot and that stylish gentleman on the right. They come up with a plan to sneak onto a Federation base and steal one of the experimental new Gundams being tested there, one equipped with a nuclear warhead. The plan goes off without a hitch --- well almost; rookie Federation pilot Kou Uraki (on left) blunders onto the theft, steals the second Gundam and heads off in pursuit. Helping Kou is Nina Purpleton (center), the designer of the new Gundams who's in deeper than she's telling: the reason Gato was able to know about the experimental Gundams was she'd had a relationship with him on Luna while he was hiding from Federation authorities after the War.
I love this series. It was my introduction to the Gundam franchise and is still my favorite installment, a fantastic standalone that balances the relationships with the politics and doesn't require you to deal with Amaro Ray's whining or Char's nonsense, much as I love both those characters. I especially like how the dynamic between Kou and Gato develops over the series; in their first fight Gato actually gives Kou advice because he's so woeful but towards the end they respect each other as soldiers and equals. Then throw in Nina, in love with both these idiots; the scene where her history with Gato comes out is terrifically intense. When Gato dies at the end I was so upset I asked a Gundam fanboy friend if there was any chance he shows up later and pretty much got the answer, "Of course not. He explodes."
Which brings us to my request, "What if he hadn't?":)
Request: Kou and Nina find out that Gato didn't die at the end of Operation Stardust. However they find out is fine with me, whether Gato shows up at their door having escaped from Feddie custody, whether they get a tip that the Federation's had him all this time and they have to bust him out, etc, etc, as long as the decision to help him brings them under serious fire from the Earth Federation. I'd really love for this to go in a Kou/Nina/Gato direction, if at all possible.
Forgotten Realms: The Sellswords
On the right is Artemis Entreri, the world's premier assassin and possessor of an intelligent, magic dagger that can kill with a single hit. The sexy beast on the left is Jarlaxle Baenre, a drow (dark elf) mercenary who has a magic item for every occasion and is always the smartest guy in the room. Together, they fight crime.
Wait, no. They commit crime. Awesome, awesome crime.
I have a confession to make: I'm not really crazy about R.A. Salvatore as a writer sometimes. Don't feel the need to force your story to stick to series canon if you're not feeling it; a story set any time post-Servant of the Shard is A-OK with me. I just love these two, Artemis and his trust issues and his obsession with being the best contrasted with Jarlaxle's flamboyant ruthlessness. Jarlaxle is quite literally the only friend Artemis has had in his entire life, and the man is around forty when when we meet him. For his part, Jarlaxle enjoys trying to coax emotion out of Entreri and roping him into complicated schemes, the crazier and more annoying to Entreri the better.
Like I said, love these two. Love them as friends, love them as more-than-friends.
Request: I'd love Jarlaxle and Entreri on a caper-gone-bad. Depending where in canon you're working from they don't need to have both been involved in the job to start with (or frankly, be on the same side at all) as long as they end the story as friends (or more.) They're better together than apart and it's high time they realized it.:)
The (Dark) Avengers
On the left is Robert "The Sentry" Reynolds, a superhero with the power of a thousand exploding suns, the most powerful being in the Marvel universe. On the right is The Void, The Sentry's implacable villain...or he would be, if they weren't actually the same person.
The Tommy Lee Jones-looking fellow with the crazy person hair on the left is Norman Osborn, one of the smartest people in the Marvel U. On the right is the Green Goblin, psychotic Spider-man villain extraordinaire most famous for throwing Gwen Stacy off a bridge. They're (say it with me now) the same person.
Some background: a while back Nick Fury did a bad bad thing and couldn't lead SHIELD anymore. When the smoke cleared Osborn found himself appointed to be in charge of HAMMER (the replacement for SHIELD) despite his well-known history of psychotic breaks and pumpkin-bomb throwing alternate personality. He put together an Avengers team largely made up of villains, dressed them up as the Avengers they were replacing and recruited The Sentry as his heavy hitter. And for a while, things actually worked out okay.
I was a big, big fan of Dark Reign and especially of The Sentry and Norman Osborn. For all the manipulation going on from Osborn I loved how he was the only one who understood what was going on with Bob because he was going through the exact same thing. Bob really believed Osborn was his friend and I'm not at all sure he was wrong. My favorite issue of the entire run is when the Void takes over and throws a tantrum in the middle of New York; virtually the entire issue is Osborn talking him down, not with threats or powers but just by talking. These two were always a dance, Osborn trying to keep Bob's loyalty (for all that he essentially has a dark spirit in him, Bob Reynolds is an innocent in a lot of ways) while bringing out the Void when he needs a little extra destruction.
Request: Anything Osborn/Sentry (and Void/Goblin and all the various combinations that come up with these two). Pre-Siege, post-Siege, doesn't matter (although post obviously requires a little more tap dancing) I like stories where Norman is threatened and Bob is pushed, but as long as things are Sentry-and-Osborn centric I'll be happy. Throw in all the manipulation and darkness and dubious mind screws you like, as long as at the end of the day there's something true going on there underneath all the dysfunction.
Thank you, Mysterious Writer! Have a great Yuletide!