Dear Yuletide Writer 2016!
This letter is for Napkins, which happens to be my AO3 name as well!
First off, thank you so, so much for signing up and for offering one of the fandoms we matched on! This is my second year doing Yuletide, and hopefully this letter will be useful to you! I’m generally really easy to please; I like the whole gamut of fiction and a whole mess of tropes in there.
The unofficial theme of this letter: just gals being pals! AKA the year I go full femslash. Female friendships that could be totally interpreted as more than friends but for Reasons the canon didn’t go there (or did!). There's a ship in each request and I would be so thrilled to get shipfic, but at their cores are nuanced friendship dynamics that are fascinating to me if you want to keep it platonic that I would be equally thrilled to receive fic about.
My dislikes are pretty few, so let’s start off with them: character death/permanent injury, pregnancy/kidfic, and serious issues not already brought up in canon (think homophobia, political stands, self-harm, abuse, trans headcanons, etc). I am all for sexual content, and rough sex is fine, but none of these relationships should be antagonistic, so no dubcon/noncon or sex with violence at its core, please. Also no bodily fluids that don't have a standard place in sexual encounters, please.
I’ll talk about the fandoms I requested and some specific prompts below, and please feel free to ignore or add anything as you want, but here are some general tropes and prompts I enjoy:
AUs of all shapes and sizes, fake dating, Christmas/other holidays, domesticity, hurt/comfort - especially with illnesses, character introspection/exploration, friends to lovers, banter that can easily accidentally slip into hints about actual feelings, and found family. I really will love anything that you write, this is more to give you an idea of my likes and reasons for them, so thank you so much again!
Love Live Sunshine!!
Requested Character: Hanamaru Kunikida
It was no surprise to me or anyone who knew me that Hanamaru was my favorite - the quietly unassuming girl who thinks her friends are amazing and will do anything to support them before disappearing back into the shadows is like character catnip for me, so those characters' moments to shine - especially literally in a series like Love Live - are so wonderful to me. I love that Hanamaru gets pulled out of her shell with everyone in Aquors; it’s clear she’s friendly with everyone in the community, but only the Aquors girls get her slightly sarcastic side - the one that will slap a hand over Yoshiko’s mouth to keep her from saying something unrelated. All of her attributes are quiet - being from a temple family, being an avid reader, not knowing much about technology - so those moments when she breaks - learning new things about technology, getting to go to Tokyo with everyone, being onstage - are so heartwarming to see. I’d love something that deals with her getting to experience something new - being center for a song, traveling somewhere new with Aquors, being taught how to use a smartphone. How did a girl from a temple family end up singing in a church choir rather than a general one? I think it might be a neat reversal that she’s the most likely of the girls - aside from Mari, possibly - to know the most about Christmas due to being in the church choir, which could be interesting since Christmas tends to be very secular. Does Aquors end up caroling?
I’m okay with any other characters being included, as long as Hanamaru is the focus. I don’t have any set ships for her, but I love her friendship with Ruby and Yoshiko, how she's so supportive of both of them in different ways, and before the series started airing, there were some comments that had a Hanamaru/Dia slant, which is especially fun now that Dia is able to drop her super-serious school council president facade and be more open about her personality and enthusiasm.
Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Requested Characters: Lark, Rosethorn
This series has been one that I’ve returned to time and time again, even though I get a different enjoyment out of it as an adult than as a preteen/teenager, obviously. Since the kids are the focus of the series, there’s a lot left to the imagination when it comes to their mentors! I’m especially drawn to the relationship between Lark and Rosethorn, whether you want to interpret their relationship as a deep platonic friendship or something more. I love how both of them embody strength and discipline in very different ways and how they are very much at the core of this found family, even as the kids start to split off and have their own adventures and apprentices. How’d this all start? I'm absolutely fascinated with the tidbits about Lark's early travels and adventures - maybe their paths crossed long before Winding Circle! How’d they decide that they wanted to stay at Discipline? How much changed after Rosethorn’s stroke? Did Lark have to find out the hard way how particular Rosethorn is about her garden? How do they find a moment’s peace/spend that moment together when the kids are around? This could be set any time in their friendship/relationship, really I just think it would be something neat to explore! If you do want to go shippy, I am all for sexual content here.
Uprooted
Requested Characters: Kasia, Agnieszka
This book was so imaginative and fun; I love fairy-tales and the origins of them, so the story of the creation of the Wood and the involvement of Baba Jaga’s magic made this book an instant love. I love magic rooted in very personal intentions - the way Agnieszka’s magic was closer to the old magics where the words themselves mattered less than the intention and the feeling of the rhythm was one of my favorite things about the worldbuilding, especially when it called back to the Wood and its origins.
The friendship between Kasia and Agnieszka was one of my favorite things - it felt really true to a good, strong friendship that really backed up the loving details that Agnieszka gave to Kasia in the beginning (I told you the character trope of one character saying how amazing their friends are while waving off their own strength and charms was a weakness). They both overcame so much for each other and literally bared their souls to each other! They’re both so dedicated to each other, all the more strongly for seeing the dark parts of each other’s thoughts. I do think there’s likely more than friendship between them, and I’d love to see Kasia come back and live with Agnieszka in the wood and help her rebuild it. Maybe down the line in the future, since they both have a much longer lifespan - do rumors start about the witch in the woods and her knightly guardian? Or something from their childhood - we know how Agnieszka thought Kasia was fairy-tale material and how Kasia carried some jealousy for Agnieszka’s home life and freedom - were there any moments where if they had known the signs, Agnieszka would have clearly been magical? Or Kasia’s thoughts between when Agnieszka was taken by the Dragon and when she returned to the village?
If you are okay writing them as a couple (I would also be okay with Agnieszka and Sarkan having an open relationship where Kasia lives with them and they all explore the magics that transformed Kasia and what it means for the Wood and Polnya, which is partly where I was expecting the book to go once I accepted that Agnieszka/Kasia was not going to be endgame), I’d love to see anything I mentioned before with a shippier slant! Maybe the healing/healed Wood is really comforting to Kasia when she returns from the seaside and she shows her appreciation to Agnieszka; or maybe it’s the feeling of Agnieszka’s magic in particular, since it’s so tied to the Valley and both of their homes.
Wynonna Earp
Requested Characters: Waverly, Nicole, Wynonna
This show was everything I wanted: gun-slinging, demon-hunting sisters with plenty of potential for other supernatural and eldritch creatures to pop up and cause trouble and enough unsolved mysteries left to have me clamoring for a second season and a re-watch the minute I finished the finale. I love that Wynonna is alternately trying to just put the past behind her while trying to make up for all the things she thinks are her fault. I love how Waverly starts off trying to fit into the box she thinks she should fill in Purgatory and stumbling out of it and just rolling with the changes and while she was always confident, it’s clear to see how much more easily she fits in her skin when she just goes with it. I love that Nicole was totally unprepared for a town with revenants rising and a whole mess of supernatural weirdness but also just rolls with it in order to protect the people she cares about.
You know there’s a giant sit-down with the whole Earp family history to initiate Nicole and while that conversation would be neat to see, the fallout could also be great: is Waverly more open about her insecurities about fitting into the family or not being the Earp heir with Nicole than she would be with Wynonna? As an outsider, does she have a better perspective into the dysfunctional way the Earps deal with problems and fixing them?
Not everyone requested has to feature heavily in the story, and please feel free to use the other characters in the tag set as well! I think Doc is also an interesting window into the Earp family history and way they deal with problems, so there’s a possibility there for Nicole to bond with him as the “this is what we have to deal with now” outsiders.