Dear Yuletide Author!
Dear Yuletide Author:
Hey hi hey! How are you? Good to hear. Awesome. Nice.
First of all you should be aware that this is my first Yuletide. No pressure or anything, but let's just kick that elephant out of the way right off the bat and mix our metaphors and get down to business.
(I know, I can't believe I've never done it before either but what can I say, I was always in college before. Now unemployment is actually a good thing? Sort of. Not really but anyway.)
You should also know that you're a fantastic person. Probably generally, in terms of who you are as an individual (just assuming) but also because you're going to write something as a gift for me, yay! Now since this is my first Yuletide and I've never done this before, I'm making a conscious effort to be as thorough as I possibly humanly can and cover every single base that has ever established itself inside my brain, but please don't feel like you have to take all of this into account. This is all info for you to use/not use at your own leisure.
So seriously don't sweat the details too much, as long as you hit one of my fandoms I'm gonna be psyched. I love you! Thank you! Have a cookie! You're awesome!
Now to the nitty gritty (fair warning, I talk a lot, settle in, enjoy that cookie):
Things I Do Not Like
The very most important thing is rape/non-con. None of that, if you please. It's not a trigger, exactly, but it makes me super uncomfortable, so if you could not write about that I'd be grateful.
(Dub-con is okay, however. And by that I mean any situation in which there are consent issues - power imbalances, intoxication/altered state, sex pollen, etc.)
I really do not enjoy apocalypse/dystopia/end of the world tropes at all. I don't know why, I know it makes me like, the odd one out in every single fandom but I just don't like it. Maybe it's because I watched Resident Evil when I was 15 and had nightmares about zombie dogs and killer laser hallways for two months? Or maybe it's that time I got stuck in a Target overnight with my friends and we almost got arrested? Who knows. I just find it boring and creepy and ew. So yeah.
Other tropes I'm not crazy about: soupy candy fluff (like over the top happy happy joy joy, just - ugh, I'm way too cynical to appreciate it), straight up porn without plot (I really like plot, okay, plot is my very best friend), Dom/Sub Universe (you know where everybody is one or the other?), coming out plotlines (anything where one of the characters is struggling with their queerness in some way - not that I don't enjoy that sometimes, but it's just super overdone) and "gay for only you" (where the person is still straight EXCEPT for that one person they're in love with).
Things I Do Like
Anything else! LOLOLOLOLOL - *cough*
Honestly, I am pretty easy going, contrary to what that huge DO NOT LIKE section implies. I dig a lot of things. Like a lot of things. If it's not on that list up there, odds are that I'm gonna dig it. And then bury it again so I can dig it more than once.
That said, here are some things I really, really, really, super dig:
Rule 63! Or, always-a-____. Love that. Super love that. Especially when you take a dude and turn him into a lady. Because I love ladies, and there aren't nearly enough of them in the major fandom ships, in my opinion.
Lady Gaga has offered to demonstrate this concept for your convenience.
Humor! I like funny things because I like to think I'm funny. Whether or not I actually am is open to interpretation but it pleases me to read things that make me giggle hysterically to myself in the darkened interior of my office.
Crossovers! Anything. Cross it with anything and I will love it. I don't even care if I don't know the fandom, if you find a clever interesting way to do it then by God I will Wikipedia that mother and read the crap out of it and draw hearts around it in my diary because THAT'S AWESOME.
Flangst! Fluff and angst. That's what that means. Let's not talk about how long it took me to figure that out. Basically that one storyline that every fandom loves, where one is in love with the other and thinks that they don't love them back EVEN THOUGH THEY DO and spend a lot of time being sad and lonely and OBVIOUSLY THEY WILL NEVER BE HAPPY but then surprise, happy ending! I know it's a cliche but I love it. I literally have never met a story with that plot that I didn't want to roll around in like a baby puppy forever and ever amen.
Ladies! I like them. And I think we always need more of them. Of all the fandoms I'm requesting there's only one where the main characters are two guys, so if you're going to take on pretty much any of the other ones then PLEASE CONSIDER THE LADIES! WE ALL LOVE THE LADIES!
presented without comment
And hey, there are ladies in Common Law, too. I sometimes forget about them because I am too blinded by the otherworldly luminescence of Michael Ealy's glittering blue orb soul windows but they are totally there.
AND: I'm familiar with the entirety of all these fandoms, and even if I wasn't I don't mind spoilers, so don't worry about that.
Okay enough of this, when I break out the gifs you know I'm getting carried away.
FANDOMS!
Common Law
Travis Marks and Wes Mitchell are police detective partners with wildly differing personalities. Marks is a charmer with the ladies and Mitchell is a methodical former lawyer. They can't stand one another. Their boss, fed up with conflict, sends them off to have couples therapy. (x)
Okay so this show is adorable and I don't even care if shipping is too easy for it I LOVE IT. And it has recently become my sacred mission from God to create more excitement for it in the hope that it gets renewed for a season two.
There is Wes, and there is Travis. They are hot, they fight, and they need to be having lots of sex. It just needs to happen. It is literally a fact of the universe that they need to be doing it.
I would literally love anything for this pairing. Like, at all. Anything. Seriously. I already wrote the Avengers crossover but if you want to expand on my idea, go for it. Or if you have a different idea of how to explain Wes being on the bridge of the Helicarrier, go for that too. WHATEVER YOU WANT.
Or if you want to do something totally different, awesome. Maybe Travis is in angsty unrequited love with Wes and they slept together once AND GASP THAT'S WHY WES ~REALLY GOT DIVORCED! Or maybe Wes is the one in angsty unrequited but actually it's requited because of course it is love SURE I LIKE THAT TOO! (I actually like the idea of Wes pining more, maybe because I'm attracted to Wes woobie. Or maybe because it seems more in character for him to pine silently whereas Travis would probably put up or shut up about it.)
And really all capslock aside, I really honestly dig the Vitriolic Best Buds trope, so if you don't want to slash them, that's fine too. A gen story about these two would be pretty sweet as well.
Some definite prompts, if you want some more aside from the capslocky ones I gave above:
- fork in the road AU: what if Wes and Alex had had a child? How would that have changed their divorce/Wes's life post-divorce/Wes's partnership with Travis? What would Travis's relationship be like with the kid?
- it's only really hinted/joked about in canon, but I've always thought it would be super interesting to read something that takes on the idea of Wes actually having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I would write this myself, but I'm way afraid of accidentally acting like an asshole, so I haven't. If you want to take this on, bravo and I'm super psyched to read it.
- meet the family! What the hell is up with Wes's mom, is what I wanna know. Who is she and what's she all about and let's see what's going on with her!
- Therapy group! Maybe one of the couples decide to have a re-commitment ceremony/actual wedding and Travis and Wes are roped into going? Or some other situation where they're all together outside of the structure of the sessions? One thing I love about the group scenes is that everybody is so up in each other's business, not because they're nosy, but because they're supposed to be (lol, that's a Worst Nightmare that I share with Wes).
Tin Man
A fierce tornado rips DG (Zooey Deschanel) from her clock-watching life as a waitress in the Midwest and deposits her with a shocking bump on the "other side." The Outer Zone (O.Z.) is a fantastical land rife with wonder but oppressed by dark magic. The O.Z. has been plunged into a decade-long night of fear by the sorceress Azkadellia (Kathleen Robertson). Aided by her Longcoat storm troopers and winged Mobat (monkey-bat) spies, she has seized power from her own mother, the rightful queen known as Lavender Eyes (Anna Galvin), and compromised such once-potent Ozian leaders as the Mystic Man (Richard Dreyfuss). Even the tiny but fierce Resistance Fighters of the Eastern Guild are losing hope that the sorceress can be stopped. Heeding the whisper of her own emerging memories, DG realizes that only she can halt Azkadellia's twisted master plan. (x)
WOOOOOOO I LOVE THIS MINISERIES. It's so adorable and the acting is a little ~heh but the special effects are killer and the scenery, holy shit. And it hints at all these super creepy issues (AZKADELLIA WHOA) and it's super dark and creepy and has SO much potential for fic. Like a lot.
I have to confess, I do ship Cain/DG. I don't know, I have a random May-December kink. But I also really, really obsessively loved The Consort and A Delicate Situation and I really dig the idea of Cain becoming DG's Consort later on down the line, and how that friendship would slowly turn into more. Because I don't really see these two as the ~instant love forever type, but rather as being really close friends and partners who naturally develop something more later on down the road.
reunited and it feeeeels so goooood (x)
If you don't dig that, anything else in this universe would be awesome. I cannot even comprehend the TRAGIC AWFUL OH MY GOD involved in Azkadellia's situation. Holy shit, if you want to take that on, go ahead, I will bring my tissues. And there are lots of questions too that the series left unanswered: how does the Zone recover from annuals of evil Witch-rule? How exactly did the Witch-as-Az take over the Zone and WHY DIDN'T THE QUEEN get the Witch out of her? There wasn't anything she could do? Did she tell the kingdom what was happening or did everyone think that the Crown Princess just woke up evil one morning? And what the hell, DG grew up her entire life thinking two robots are her parents and they got reprogrammed by an evil witch and she's supposed to just replace them with these two strangers and also deal with the fact that it's technically her fault that her sister was possessed by an evil witch and turned into a dictator and oh yeah she also might be the queen one day? Talk about a bad day.
an accurate depiction of me in that exact situation
Anything really digging into the mythology of this world would be awesome. I really love this miniseries, like all parts of it, so anything you want to do would be great.
Some additional prompts!
- Azkadellia post-series. WHAT. OH MY. I CAN'T. OH AZ. D':
- Glitch post-series! He had his literal personality ripped out of him. Is that even fixable? Would he even want it to be fixed? If it can be fixed would it be erasing Glitch and replacing him with Ambrose? Or is there something new on the other side, a new person that combines both?
- The love story of the Queen and the Slipper Ahamo. Now that has got to be an epic romance that never got told.
- Queen DG. How the hell is that gonna work? How do Cain, Glitch and Raw fit in? What about her parents (Hank and Emily, not the Queen and Ahamo)?
- Who was the Mystic Man? Was he related to the royal family? Why was he such a threat that the Witch had him drugged up? But not so much of a threat that she didn't imprison him like she did Tutor? (Seriously, why lock up the magic teacher and not the "potent Ozian leader"?)
Eli Stone
High-powered attorney Eli Stone thought he had it all - great job, cool car, the perfect fiancée - until he started hearing unexplained music everywhere he went. Thanks to some wild and astonishing visions, Eli is trading in his big-money clients to represent the little guys. As his hallucinations grow more vivid, he is propelled to answer the larger question of his true destiny. (x)
So I already explained my adoration of this show here, if you're interested in reading about why I LOVE EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF IT. ALL OF IT. I LOVE IT. So honestly, I don't really know what to put here.
I would worship at the feet of anything written about this show. I seriously, seriously love all of it, every character. I think it's one of the best examples of television ever. There is no part of it that I don't like. Did I mention that I love all the parts? ALL THE PARTS. ALL OF THEM.
BECAUSE I LOOOOOOVE YOUUUUU (x)
Any ship, any character you want: go for it. I love all the ideas contained in this article (which is about possible storylines the writers would have implemented had the show not been cancelled) so maybe there's a plot there you want to explore? I love the idea of Grace/Eli, I thought their episode was one of the best (also, Katie Holmes, my queen, let me love you). Jordan is probably my favorite. Matt and Taylor are adorable. KEITH! And PATTI!
I know I'm being super vague and a little ridiculous but it's just one of those shows that is so close to my heart that any little bit of it I can consume, I adore. And there is very little of it out there, which is why I nominated and asked for it for Yuletide. It's a crime that nobody knows about this show. A CRIME.
So really I would love anything. <333333333 (I'm being such a hypocrite because I hate it when I sign up for exchanges and the person I get says this, but I really mean it I swear.)
Additional prompts (if you can call that whole mess above "prompts"):
- Eli in the future, as "the prophet". How does that work, what is happening there. Are Maggie and her kid really Eli's family, or Nate's, like the E! article said? And what if that was just one possible future? Are Eli's visions always right, or do they just show possibilities?
- Back story on Jordan. Who was his first wife (Taylor's mom)? His second wife? His relationship with the other partners in law school?
- Catastrophe visions! What if Eli were to have a vision of something he truly could not do anything about? Like he's predicted big things before, like earthquakes and Jordan's accident, but he's always been able to ~change something, somehow. What would happen if he truly couldn't? If something bad is going to happen, and there's just no way for him to get there in time?
- KEITH! Just - yeah. More about Keith. I love Keith. Back story on him at the public defender's office? Getting into law school? His decision to sue based on racial discrimination? And his decision to join Jordan's firm?
- Something addressing the spirituality of the show, which I think is a really awesome element to it. God as Sigourney Weaver? Yes please.
Other Things! (Links!)
- Stuff I've Written! (AO3 or LJ)
- My AO3 bookmarks (I don't do it often, but I have bookmarked random things That I Like...so. Yeah?)
- My Tumblr (which should give you a fairly capslocky idea of Things I Like)
- and of course you can click around my DW or my LJ - most things are locked, but there are also public entries on random things.
Good luck and Godspeed, fair writer, and oh God I'm sorry this is so long what is wrong with me I just have so many feelings I hope you're still here WHAT D:
aaand let's bring it on home with a dancing cat
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