Dear Yulegoat...
Actual letter finally added 2am, Dec 3. I really should have done this sooner.
Dear Yuletide Writer,
First of all, I would like to apologize for taking so long to get this posted. Second, you signed up to write in one of my little fandoms, and that makes you awesome no matter what. Please don't be intimidated by my wall of text here, because I am fully aware that optional details are optional. Any plots or additional characters are mentioned purely as possible points of inspiration, and I will be perfectly happy if you don't use any of it. I want you to have fun doing this, not stress about it, so if nothing that you read here seems helpful to you, then feel free to ignore it all and do your own thing. Thirdly, due to holiday family stuff, I might not be able to read and comment on yout story until a few days after the archive goes live. It's not that I will have forgotten or that I will be ignoring you. It's just that quiet time, privacy, and internet access may all be in short supply. I am eagerly anticipating whatever it is that you choose to write for me, and I will read it as soon as possible.
For my general preferences, I would rather that the rating to not go above R. I like backstory, missing scenes, and post-series stories. I like stories that explore the thought process of a character. I like competent characters being competent. Plot is always appreciated but it isn't necessary if you want to make the story be a character driven piece instead. I like the kind of AU that shows how one small change to canon can lead to a wildly differently outcome and generally dislike the kind where all the characters are in highschool together or all the characters are vampires in space or anything like that. The two exceptions to that which I am quite fond of are zombie apocalypses and AUs in which all the characters have daemons like in His Dark Materials. For tone, light and happy, dark and sad, or a bittersweet mixture are all equally appealing. I like family (can be found family rather than blood ties) and friendship relationships. For pairings, in most cases, I would prefer gen over non-cannon relationships, and I'm not particularly interested in reading explicit sex scenes. My main squicks are incest and scat/watersports. I also have a bit of an embarrassment squick, but it's mostly visual, so as long as you aren't specifically writing about one character getting off on the humiliation of another I should be okay. I really dislike it when non-con or dub-con are portrayed in a positive light, and I'm not too fond of hate!sex.
Yuletide sign-up name: Zath_Chauvert
Fandom: Luther (TV)
Character: Alice Morgan
Optional Details Which Are Optional: For this fandom, I would love to see where Alice goes after series two. Does she visit any of the places which she and John talked about, or does she go somewhere else entirely? Pick someplace, send Alice there, and show me what she does during her visit. Does she love it? Does she hate it? How does she fund her travels? How long can a sociopathic (or psychopathic depending on your interpretation of her character) genius physicist play tourist before she kills someone out of sheer boredom? Is there anywhere where she would be truly out of her element, and how would she react if she were? Is Alice capable of culture shock? Does she send John postcards or bizarre souvenirs? She couldn't get John to abandon London forever to travel the world with her, but maybe at some point she could convince him to go on holiday for a little while and join her somewhere, with or without Jenny. Or maybe, having failed to secure John as a traveling companion, Alice decides to drag Mark along on her world tour instead, whether he wants to go with her or not.
If exploring the concept of Alice wandering the globe doesn't appeal to you, then I would also be happy with a story that focuses on Alice's life before she killed her parents or during the period of time between series one and two. Or maybe a story about Alice returning to London at some point in the future, either because John needed her help or simply because she missed it and thought she could come back without getting caught. Or maybe Jenny gets hold of Luther's phone and discovers that, yes, John really does have a psycho killer girl on speed dial, and then the two women end up having whatever Alice's version of "girl talk" might be.
More Rambling: If we didn't match on this one and you're curious, this is a British police procedural show focusing on one DCI John Luther, played by Idris Elba. Alice Morgan is a genius physicist who starts out as a suspect in the double homicide of her parents (and it's not much of a spoiler to say yes, she did it) and ends up as a sort of smaller and prettier Hannibal Lecter (minus the cannibalism) to Luther's bigger and scarier Clarice Starling. The show's Wikipedia page is here, and its TV Tropes page is here.
I love Alice's bizarre relationship with John, but I'm even more fascinated by her interactions with Mark and how they might feel about each other in the aftermath of series one. I mean, she started out threatening his girlfriend to spite another man, then moved on to having him beaten up by a bunch of teenage girls and trying to destroy his relationship, and then ended up killing someone at his say-so. Where do you go from there? I'm also curious what sort of further interaction Alice might have ended up having with Zoe if Zoe hadn't died. A story that focuses entirely on Alice and no one else would be cool too. I really just want a look at the workings of Alice's mind, with her intelligence, her brutal pragmatism, and her skewed values. I would love to see the world through her eyes as she travels, but she has such a unique perspective on things that a story about her doing just about anything could be quite interesting, even just people-watching at a train station or sitting at a desk and typing up a proposal for a research grant.
Fandom: Sons of Anarchy
Character: Tig Trager
Optional Details Which Are Optional: Anything focusing on Tig will make me happy, especially if you really get inside his head and show me what makes him tick. As far as interpersonal interactions go, I'm most interested in his relationships (and I don't mean this in a romantic sense) with Gemma, Clay, and Kozik, but if you wanted to explore his relationship with any of the other members of SAMCRO, or his daughters, or Tara, or Chucky, or Unser, that would be cool too. Since this is Tig that we're talking about, I can't really say no necrophilia or bestiality. However, I do ask that if you decide to write about Tig/corpse or Tig/Oswald's horse or anything like that, please DO NOT go into graphic detail. Honestly, for this request I'm more interested in the bonds of brotherhood and whatever you want to call what Tig has going with Gemma than in sex or romance.
For some possible plot suggestions:
- Tig trying to find a way to make amends to Opie for killing Donna, either before or after his confession and subsequent beating.
- What led Tig to join the Sons?
- How did he end up with the nickname "Tig" in the first place? The stranger the explanation, the better.
- Why is he so terrified of dolls?
- Have him get stuck in an elevator with Margaret Murphy for a few hours. What would they say to each other? Actually, him stuck in an elevator with anyone could be interesting, especially if it's someone he doesn't particularly get along with.
- What exactly had he been doing that led to an outstanding warrant for his arrest for "assault and indecent exposure in a livestock transport," and why had he thought that the charges had been squashed?
- What happened to Missy that made Tig hate Kozik for so long?
- It's Halloween, or Thanksgiving, or Christmas/Hanukkah at the clubhouse. Does Tig get festive?
- Whatever the SAMCRO equivalent of curtain fic would be.
- Semi-cracktastic meta!fic in which Gemma and/or Tara charge Tig with the sacred duty of keeping all the Mary Sues away from Jax.
More Ramblings: If we didn't match on this one and you're curious, this is a drama (or, as I like to think of it, a primetime soap opera with extra testosterone) about a group of bikers in the fictional town of Charming, CA, who call themselves the Sons of Anarchy. It's very loosely based on Hamlet. The first three seasons are available on DVD (possibly Netflix on demand also), and the fourth season is almost finished airing on the FX network. The show's Wikipedia page is here, and its TV Tropes page is here.
I love how Tig is such a deeply messed up person on some levels but has surprising moments of tenderness, and I love how, despite all the horrible things he does on behalf of the club, there are still certain lines he doesn't want to cross. I loved watching him almost be destroyed by guilt after killing Donna and not being able to begin to put himself back together until he finally confessed and let Opie beat him bloody. I love that his long festering feud with Kozik was over a dog. I love Tig's need to be needed by other people.
I'm currently caught up with all episodes that have aired (ep 4x13 right now) and expect to remain that way through the end of the season, so you shouldn't have to worry about spoilers. That being said, since this appears to be even more of an "anyone can die" season than usual, if the worst (at least from my fannish POV) should happen and Tig ends up not surviving the season finale, then I expect to be firmly in denial until some time next year and therefore unlikely to appreciate any fic that focuses on his demise. Death fic (canonical or not) for anyone else in the show is fine.
Fandom: 19th Century Science RPF
Characters: Mary Anning and Gideon Mantell
Optional Details Which Are Optional: I really want to see a story where Mary Anning and Gideon Mantell meet (preferably before Gideon's carriage accident), fall in love, and run away to hunt fossils together happily ever after for significantly longer than they lived in real life. If you don't want to rewrite history that much, then I would be happy with any story where Mary and Gideon have at least some sort of communication with each other, either in person or through correspondence, about their discoveries, their theories, and their general enthusiasm for paleontology. And since optional details are optional, I'll also throw in the idea that if you wanted to add some action/fantasy to the mix, then you could have them get called in as expert consultants to the government when living dinosaurs begin attacking various cities around England, or make them members of a super secret group of crime-fighting scientists, or whatever else you think would be entertaining.
More Ramblings: If we didn't match on this one and you're curious, Mary Anning and Gideon Mantell were important to the field of paleontology in the early/mid 19th century. Mary's Wikipedia page is here, and Gideon's is here. They also tend to turn up in any books about paleontology during that era.
My desire for this pairing all started over a year ago when I was reading a book (whose name I have since forgotten) about the many advances in the field of paleontology in the 19th century. The book followed the lives of several people who made major discoveries, including Mary Anning and Gideon Mantell. The book told their stories in parallel to each other, in such a way as to feel like it was all leading up to a grand meeting which would in turn lead to an important collaboration or maybe even a romance between the two. The only problem was that the grand meeting never happened. If it had been a novel, they would have come together, recognized their shared interests, and then overcome their shared obstacles. However, being a nonfiction book, they were instead shown to have had much less happy endings, without any indication of them ever communicating with each other at all, and that just felt like a crime of fate. I would really like you to fix that. You can make their relationship romantic, platonic, or purely professional. I just want to see them having any sort of interaction lasting long enough to be called a relationship. Wikipedia claims that Gideon did visit Mary's fossil shop at least once, but doesn't go into any details, so you could use that as a starting point or ignore it as you see fit. Also, if you are going for the romance angle, please don't demonize Gideon's wife. If you happen to feel the need for a villain, I was never very fond of Richard Owen.
Fandom: Jekyll (TV)
Character: n/a
Optional Details Which Are Optional: I didn't pick any characters for this one because I would be genuinely happy with anybody on the list, or even anybody who wasn't on the list but had a speaking part on the show, seriously anybody at all. If we matched on this fandom, then write the story you dreamed of writing when you typed "Jekyll" into the offer box, and I'm sure that I will be thrilled to read it. If you didn't actually have anything in particular in mind and are hoping for inspiration, then keep reading for some totally optional details.
Gen stories are great, but if you want to focus on romance, I ship Miranda/Min, Claire/Tom, Tom/Claire/Hyde, Jekyll/Alice, and Benjamin/Christopher. I like Claire/Hyde more when it is treated as an extension of Claire/Tom than when it is treated as infidelity on Claire's part. I like to think of Katherine as having a sort of dysfunctional sibling-style relationship with Hyde.
For some possible plot suggestions:
- Hyde is back from the dead, for whatever reason. Can he actually handle a life of monogamy, suburbia, child-rearing, and not killing anybody?
- Tom and Peter, the university years.
- What does Claire do when she isn't taking care of the boys? Does she have any hobbies or maybe even a job?
- A transcript of a week's worth of dictaphone messages between Tom and Hyde.
- Min and Miranda investigate some case that has nothing to do with the Jackman family.
- Why did Tom's mother pick Katherine for the job?
- Katherine, Hyde, and a stack of Disney DVDs.
- Some situation where Tom gets to ask Hyde, "What, you can't do that?" instead of the other way around.
- Claire finds out Kline & Utterson made more than one clone of Alice Cameron, a lot more.
- What are some of the weirder examples of Kline & Utterson controlling Tom's life without him noticing?
- Post-series, Claire and Katherine get together for tea/coffee and conversation.
- Miranda helps Min to get properly licensed as a private investigator so that they don't have to argue every time Min claims, "I'm a detective too."
- Christopher tries to convince Benjamin that some silent movies are worth watching.
- What are the twins like as teenagers or adults?
- Hyde having any kind of interaction with Min and/or Miranda.
More Ramblings: If we didn't match on this one and you're curious, this is a six part modern day sequel/reinterpretation of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which was shown on the BBC in 2007. Its Wikipedia page is here, and its TV Tropes page is here. There isn't much else to say for this one. Write about whoever/whatever interests you the most, any characters, any genre. Worldbuilding, death fic, crack, strange crossover, quiet character piece with no action at all. Anything.
Dear Yuletide Writer,
First of all, I would like to apologize for taking so long to get this posted. Second, you signed up to write in one of my little fandoms, and that makes you awesome no matter what. Please don't be intimidated by my wall of text here, because I am fully aware that optional details are optional. Any plots or additional characters are mentioned purely as possible points of inspiration, and I will be perfectly happy if you don't use any of it. I want you to have fun doing this, not stress about it, so if nothing that you read here seems helpful to you, then feel free to ignore it all and do your own thing. Thirdly, due to holiday family stuff, I might not be able to read and comment on yout story until a few days after the archive goes live. It's not that I will have forgotten or that I will be ignoring you. It's just that quiet time, privacy, and internet access may all be in short supply. I am eagerly anticipating whatever it is that you choose to write for me, and I will read it as soon as possible.
For my general preferences, I would rather that the rating to not go above R. I like backstory, missing scenes, and post-series stories. I like stories that explore the thought process of a character. I like competent characters being competent. Plot is always appreciated but it isn't necessary if you want to make the story be a character driven piece instead. I like the kind of AU that shows how one small change to canon can lead to a wildly differently outcome and generally dislike the kind where all the characters are in highschool together or all the characters are vampires in space or anything like that. The two exceptions to that which I am quite fond of are zombie apocalypses and AUs in which all the characters have daemons like in His Dark Materials. For tone, light and happy, dark and sad, or a bittersweet mixture are all equally appealing. I like family (can be found family rather than blood ties) and friendship relationships. For pairings, in most cases, I would prefer gen over non-cannon relationships, and I'm not particularly interested in reading explicit sex scenes. My main squicks are incest and scat/watersports. I also have a bit of an embarrassment squick, but it's mostly visual, so as long as you aren't specifically writing about one character getting off on the humiliation of another I should be okay. I really dislike it when non-con or dub-con are portrayed in a positive light, and I'm not too fond of hate!sex.
Yuletide sign-up name: Zath_Chauvert
Fandom: Luther (TV)
Character: Alice Morgan
Optional Details Which Are Optional: For this fandom, I would love to see where Alice goes after series two. Does she visit any of the places which she and John talked about, or does she go somewhere else entirely? Pick someplace, send Alice there, and show me what she does during her visit. Does she love it? Does she hate it? How does she fund her travels? How long can a sociopathic (or psychopathic depending on your interpretation of her character) genius physicist play tourist before she kills someone out of sheer boredom? Is there anywhere where she would be truly out of her element, and how would she react if she were? Is Alice capable of culture shock? Does she send John postcards or bizarre souvenirs? She couldn't get John to abandon London forever to travel the world with her, but maybe at some point she could convince him to go on holiday for a little while and join her somewhere, with or without Jenny. Or maybe, having failed to secure John as a traveling companion, Alice decides to drag Mark along on her world tour instead, whether he wants to go with her or not.
If exploring the concept of Alice wandering the globe doesn't appeal to you, then I would also be happy with a story that focuses on Alice's life before she killed her parents or during the period of time between series one and two. Or maybe a story about Alice returning to London at some point in the future, either because John needed her help or simply because she missed it and thought she could come back without getting caught. Or maybe Jenny gets hold of Luther's phone and discovers that, yes, John really does have a psycho killer girl on speed dial, and then the two women end up having whatever Alice's version of "girl talk" might be.
More Rambling: If we didn't match on this one and you're curious, this is a British police procedural show focusing on one DCI John Luther, played by Idris Elba. Alice Morgan is a genius physicist who starts out as a suspect in the double homicide of her parents (and it's not much of a spoiler to say yes, she did it) and ends up as a sort of smaller and prettier Hannibal Lecter (minus the cannibalism) to Luther's bigger and scarier Clarice Starling. The show's Wikipedia page is here, and its TV Tropes page is here.
I love Alice's bizarre relationship with John, but I'm even more fascinated by her interactions with Mark and how they might feel about each other in the aftermath of series one. I mean, she started out threatening his girlfriend to spite another man, then moved on to having him beaten up by a bunch of teenage girls and trying to destroy his relationship, and then ended up killing someone at his say-so. Where do you go from there? I'm also curious what sort of further interaction Alice might have ended up having with Zoe if Zoe hadn't died. A story that focuses entirely on Alice and no one else would be cool too. I really just want a look at the workings of Alice's mind, with her intelligence, her brutal pragmatism, and her skewed values. I would love to see the world through her eyes as she travels, but she has such a unique perspective on things that a story about her doing just about anything could be quite interesting, even just people-watching at a train station or sitting at a desk and typing up a proposal for a research grant.
Fandom: Sons of Anarchy
Character: Tig Trager
Optional Details Which Are Optional: Anything focusing on Tig will make me happy, especially if you really get inside his head and show me what makes him tick. As far as interpersonal interactions go, I'm most interested in his relationships (and I don't mean this in a romantic sense) with Gemma, Clay, and Kozik, but if you wanted to explore his relationship with any of the other members of SAMCRO, or his daughters, or Tara, or Chucky, or Unser, that would be cool too. Since this is Tig that we're talking about, I can't really say no necrophilia or bestiality. However, I do ask that if you decide to write about Tig/corpse or Tig/Oswald's horse or anything like that, please DO NOT go into graphic detail. Honestly, for this request I'm more interested in the bonds of brotherhood and whatever you want to call what Tig has going with Gemma than in sex or romance.
For some possible plot suggestions:
- Tig trying to find a way to make amends to Opie for killing Donna, either before or after his confession and subsequent beating.
- What led Tig to join the Sons?
- How did he end up with the nickname "Tig" in the first place? The stranger the explanation, the better.
- Why is he so terrified of dolls?
- Have him get stuck in an elevator with Margaret Murphy for a few hours. What would they say to each other? Actually, him stuck in an elevator with anyone could be interesting, especially if it's someone he doesn't particularly get along with.
- What exactly had he been doing that led to an outstanding warrant for his arrest for "assault and indecent exposure in a livestock transport," and why had he thought that the charges had been squashed?
- What happened to Missy that made Tig hate Kozik for so long?
- It's Halloween, or Thanksgiving, or Christmas/Hanukkah at the clubhouse. Does Tig get festive?
- Whatever the SAMCRO equivalent of curtain fic would be.
- Semi-cracktastic meta!fic in which Gemma and/or Tara charge Tig with the sacred duty of keeping all the Mary Sues away from Jax.
More Ramblings: If we didn't match on this one and you're curious, this is a drama (or, as I like to think of it, a primetime soap opera with extra testosterone) about a group of bikers in the fictional town of Charming, CA, who call themselves the Sons of Anarchy. It's very loosely based on Hamlet. The first three seasons are available on DVD (possibly Netflix on demand also), and the fourth season is almost finished airing on the FX network. The show's Wikipedia page is here, and its TV Tropes page is here.
I love how Tig is such a deeply messed up person on some levels but has surprising moments of tenderness, and I love how, despite all the horrible things he does on behalf of the club, there are still certain lines he doesn't want to cross. I loved watching him almost be destroyed by guilt after killing Donna and not being able to begin to put himself back together until he finally confessed and let Opie beat him bloody. I love that his long festering feud with Kozik was over a dog. I love Tig's need to be needed by other people.
I'm currently caught up with all episodes that have aired (ep 4x13 right now) and expect to remain that way through the end of the season, so you shouldn't have to worry about spoilers. That being said, since this appears to be even more of an "anyone can die" season than usual, if the worst (at least from my fannish POV) should happen and Tig ends up not surviving the season finale, then I expect to be firmly in denial until some time next year and therefore unlikely to appreciate any fic that focuses on his demise. Death fic (canonical or not) for anyone else in the show is fine.
Fandom: 19th Century Science RPF
Characters: Mary Anning and Gideon Mantell
Optional Details Which Are Optional: I really want to see a story where Mary Anning and Gideon Mantell meet (preferably before Gideon's carriage accident), fall in love, and run away to hunt fossils together happily ever after for significantly longer than they lived in real life. If you don't want to rewrite history that much, then I would be happy with any story where Mary and Gideon have at least some sort of communication with each other, either in person or through correspondence, about their discoveries, their theories, and their general enthusiasm for paleontology. And since optional details are optional, I'll also throw in the idea that if you wanted to add some action/fantasy to the mix, then you could have them get called in as expert consultants to the government when living dinosaurs begin attacking various cities around England, or make them members of a super secret group of crime-fighting scientists, or whatever else you think would be entertaining.
More Ramblings: If we didn't match on this one and you're curious, Mary Anning and Gideon Mantell were important to the field of paleontology in the early/mid 19th century. Mary's Wikipedia page is here, and Gideon's is here. They also tend to turn up in any books about paleontology during that era.
My desire for this pairing all started over a year ago when I was reading a book (whose name I have since forgotten) about the many advances in the field of paleontology in the 19th century. The book followed the lives of several people who made major discoveries, including Mary Anning and Gideon Mantell. The book told their stories in parallel to each other, in such a way as to feel like it was all leading up to a grand meeting which would in turn lead to an important collaboration or maybe even a romance between the two. The only problem was that the grand meeting never happened. If it had been a novel, they would have come together, recognized their shared interests, and then overcome their shared obstacles. However, being a nonfiction book, they were instead shown to have had much less happy endings, without any indication of them ever communicating with each other at all, and that just felt like a crime of fate. I would really like you to fix that. You can make their relationship romantic, platonic, or purely professional. I just want to see them having any sort of interaction lasting long enough to be called a relationship. Wikipedia claims that Gideon did visit Mary's fossil shop at least once, but doesn't go into any details, so you could use that as a starting point or ignore it as you see fit. Also, if you are going for the romance angle, please don't demonize Gideon's wife. If you happen to feel the need for a villain, I was never very fond of Richard Owen.
Fandom: Jekyll (TV)
Character: n/a
Optional Details Which Are Optional: I didn't pick any characters for this one because I would be genuinely happy with anybody on the list, or even anybody who wasn't on the list but had a speaking part on the show, seriously anybody at all. If we matched on this fandom, then write the story you dreamed of writing when you typed "Jekyll" into the offer box, and I'm sure that I will be thrilled to read it. If you didn't actually have anything in particular in mind and are hoping for inspiration, then keep reading for some totally optional details.
Gen stories are great, but if you want to focus on romance, I ship Miranda/Min, Claire/Tom, Tom/Claire/Hyde, Jekyll/Alice, and Benjamin/Christopher. I like Claire/Hyde more when it is treated as an extension of Claire/Tom than when it is treated as infidelity on Claire's part. I like to think of Katherine as having a sort of dysfunctional sibling-style relationship with Hyde.
For some possible plot suggestions:
- Hyde is back from the dead, for whatever reason. Can he actually handle a life of monogamy, suburbia, child-rearing, and not killing anybody?
- Tom and Peter, the university years.
- What does Claire do when she isn't taking care of the boys? Does she have any hobbies or maybe even a job?
- A transcript of a week's worth of dictaphone messages between Tom and Hyde.
- Min and Miranda investigate some case that has nothing to do with the Jackman family.
- Why did Tom's mother pick Katherine for the job?
- Katherine, Hyde, and a stack of Disney DVDs.
- Some situation where Tom gets to ask Hyde, "What, you can't do that?" instead of the other way around.
- Claire finds out Kline & Utterson made more than one clone of Alice Cameron, a lot more.
- What are some of the weirder examples of Kline & Utterson controlling Tom's life without him noticing?
- Post-series, Claire and Katherine get together for tea/coffee and conversation.
- Miranda helps Min to get properly licensed as a private investigator so that they don't have to argue every time Min claims, "I'm a detective too."
- Christopher tries to convince Benjamin that some silent movies are worth watching.
- What are the twins like as teenagers or adults?
- Hyde having any kind of interaction with Min and/or Miranda.
More Ramblings: If we didn't match on this one and you're curious, this is a six part modern day sequel/reinterpretation of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which was shown on the BBC in 2007. Its Wikipedia page is here, and its TV Tropes page is here. There isn't much else to say for this one. Write about whoever/whatever interests you the most, any characters, any genre. Worldbuilding, death fic, crack, strange crossover, quiet character piece with no action at all. Anything.