this is a dear yuletide santaperson letter.
hello! I am smercy and I ramble a lot. I tend to write overwhelmingly long and overdetailed yuletide letters. (I like to err on the side of too much information.)
I have a tag! it is called "yuletide letter", this post is also tagged with it. should you want more details about me and what I like, I probably have a novella's worth stuck in there and this year I am not exactly rolling around in free time, so I'm aiming for the shortest letter ever.
I'm including information about all of the fandoms, how long they are, that sort of thing, should you be interested in maybe checking the non-matched ones out. (they all obviously have my seal of approval.) I'm going to repeat the prompts and then give a few more details and shove it all under a cut and if you have any questions feel free to show up anon and ask anything.
MOST IMPORTANT: I have one inflexible requirement: no non-con. no dub-con, either. basically, if consent is in question I will generally not like it. (sort of exception: la femme nikita. I'll explain there.)
other things that might be important: I am a huge fan of ladies, especially super competent ladies being all badass and awesome. this is the thread that holds all of my fannish pursuits together. so I'd like it best if the story had a lady as the main character and focus. I prefer characterization to plot and this year I'm kind of craving fic about the tiny details and day-to-day lives of folks. should you want to write an au where everybody's a pirate, that's super great, but maybe throw in some stuff about how they're actually navigating the pirate ship.
to the requests!
1. Batman Beyond - Barbara Gordon
I love Babs. I had a paragraph about how much I love her, but I figure that's a bit overkill. She's probably my favorite person in all of the DCU. But I especially love her in Batman Begins. So, she's super great. And Batman Begins is super great! I love the vision of the future filtered through the 90s with all of those tiny floppy discs. I am most interested in Babs being a super badass Commissioner. I think that the transition from Batgirl to Commissioner is fascinating. And since there isn't a whole lot of canon about what happens between the Tim thing and the beginning of the show, there's tons of stuff to focus on. Babs was a librarian, how did she end up on the police force? How did she become comfortable using those fancy laserguns? Or stuff going on during the series or post the series would also be super cool. I really like her husband Sam, so please no bashing or having her settle for a dude that she doesn't actually love because of soap opera cliches. Including the Batfamily is awesome. I am cool with Babs/Bruce and Babs/Tim and if you want to delve into that emotional minefield I would be super thrilled. Honestly, the only bit of backstory about Babs that I'm not comfortable reading about is what happens when Alfred dies. Whenever I think about how there's no Alfred, my chest hurts, and I wouldn't like to dwell on that. And I'd err on the side of "The Killing Joke" didn't happen in this verse. Or maybe you could include something with what the JL is doing in the future. But I'd just really like to see Babs doing something Police Commissioner-y and being super competent and just all-around the best. (I'm biased.)
IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS BEFORE: it's an animated show from the 90s. it had 3 seasons. episodes are 20 minutes long. the opening credits are a work of art. 52 episodes in total, although babs wasn't even in half of them. I can come up with a list of every episode she's in should you want it. and there is 1 movie sequel called batman beyond: return of the joker that's pretty essential for her characterization.
OTHER STUFF: did I mention that I love max? I do. I love her. and also ace the batdog. and babs's husband. I think the thing that I would be most disappointed to read would be if the fic was about bruce sitting alone in the batcave in the dark getting all manpainy about how he misses babs. if we're talking about the batgirl and batman relationship, I care about her feelings on the matter about 100,000 times more than his.
Continuum - Sonya Valentine, Alec Sadler, Kiera Cameron
REQUEST HAS SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN. So I should be honest and say that I devoured the entire season in 2 days and spent most of the time freaking out about how it treats ladies so well and the worldbuilding. That is some seriously impressive worldbuilding, I'm just saying. So I don't have a ton of thoughts that aren't part of a big amorphous blob of feelings. But I've got to be honest, I don't really care about the time-travel theory. I love time-travel, but I don't think there's enough data to figure out exactly what kind the show is using. But if you want to write about it, more power to you. I just don't really require that. I'm really interested in characterization. I'd be happy with the fic set in any time period so long as it doesn't try and explain what exactly is going on with the overarching mytharc. So I find Sonya Valentine super fascinating, especially her particular brand of loyalty to Kigame. I also really love the dynamics of how Liber8 set themselves up in '12 Vancouver. But I also really love Kiera and her tendency to find danger and then run straight into it. If the story is Kiera-centric and about her job on the '12 policeforce, I definitely like Betty best out of all of the cops. And I love how Kiera and Carlos are platonic. And I don't really have any strong feelings about Kellog either way. I really like Alec, but I think that the Alec I like best is the Cigarette Smoking Dude from the future with his puppet strings all over everything. Uh, I hope that was helpful and not overwhelmingly specific. When in doubt, go for characterization and lots of ladies, that's what I think.
IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS BEFORE: continuum is a canadian scifi show. it's got 1 season of 13 episodes and another one on the way but it won't be here until at least next summer. episodes are 42 minutes long. it's easy to bust out in a weekend: that's what I did.
OTHER STUFF: FULL OF MORE SPOILERS. so I forgot to mention in the request that I chose these three characters because I think that they are sort of the lynchpins of what's going on. kiera's the law and order, sonya's liber8, and alec is the dude manipulating the fabric of spacetime to get what he wants. so they are all going to influence each other no matter what happens. stuff about my time period preferences: because it's super complicated. I like anything preseries in '77 and in '12. I am cool with anything that happens during the course of the show. I am super interested in what happens between '12 and '77 so long as it's not about what happens to the characters on the show. I want the show to tell me what's going to happen next. I prefer the micro to the macro for this show. boom, summarized it!
La Femme Nikita - Madeline
So, I love Madeline. But the part of her that I love the best is her ruthless pragmatism. I think I'd prefer something about her singularly and not so much about her relationship with other people. And honestly, she is one of those characters where you could write a fic about her murdering babies and I'd buy it. I'd rather err on the side of darkness, too. Any time period is fine. I'd be interested to read something about what her job duties actually are. She does mission planning, she oversees and sometimes administers the interrogation of prisoners, she assesses agents on their job fitness, she does that creepy therapy thing, she's the second-in-command, and in the early seasons she had a full wardrobe in her office. I have no idea what her job description would be and I think that's super fascinating. A big action-y plot isn't a huge necessity, I'd just like to see Madeline be all horrible and emotionless for Section.
IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS BEFORE: the show ran for 5 seasons but only the first 4 matter. it was on in the 90s and it is very much of that era. 22 episodes per season, 42 minutes per episode. madeline was not a main character, I can provide a list of all of her episodes at request. it was about spies and was basically like what would happen if alias and dollhouse had a baby that was run by bill adama and his emotionless robot girlfriend. (madeline being the emotionless robot, of course.)
OTHER STUFF: so I know this show does not especially get along too well with the logic. but I love it. I also love logic. when they fight, I generally pick the side that makes madeline the most badass. I don't care about time periods or about the characters involved (so long as it's not about her star-crossed romance with walter or something) I do think I would prefer something set in section rather than an action-y mission.
WHAT THIS HAS GOT TO DO WITH NON-CON: madeline is a torturer. by definition, she's doing painful stuff to people against their will. it's not a safewords situation. I'm okay with reading about her torturing random folks. I'm less okay with her getting tortured and then doing something super badass like stopping her own heart to blackmail the dude in charge. I'm not okay with much else. her relationship with operations is complicated, especially the arc at the end of s3. I think that the weird sort of abusive turn it took was a double-cross and she was in on it the whole time, therefore making it part of an evil plan and consensual. but umm. ugh, this is difficult to word. it's not a nice show. it's a very mean universe. I like that about it. I just don't want to see the characters I love getting massively hurt, especially in a way that involves sexual trauma. this is not the fandom for a h/c fic.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day - Sarah Connor
I would really like to see a story about the mechanics of how Sarah Connor runs her operation. How does she get all of her guns? Where does she store those guns and how does she decide on the places? What does she do about potential allies? Where does she get her fake IDs? That sort of thing. I don't really care if it's pre or post-movie. Ideally, this fic would ignore the movie sequels, but I'm a huge fan of the tv show so I'd be fine with that being included. Futurefics would be cool too, although I would prefer something pre-apocalypse. What happens when Sarah finds out about the GPS trackers that they put on pets to make sure they don't get lost? Oh, and please no cancer. But honestly, so long as Sarah is the focus of the story and she gets to be a stone cold badass, I will be really happy.
IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS BEFORE: it's a movie. it's less than 3 hours and I am too lazy to google the exact running time. it's a sequel, so there's a predecessor that's also less than 3 hours. there are 2 movie sequels that I give precisely zero fucks about because they involve no sarah. there's a tv show that I loved with my entire heart. (2 seasons, 31 episodes total, 42 minute running time) you don't need to watch the tv show to write a fic. I'd suggest it, but I'm biased and I don't know how much free time you have, unknown writer person.
OTHER STUFF: sarah connor is the best. I think the thing that fascinates me the most is how she transformed herself from a waitress to somebody who has caches of illegal arms stored in the desert presumably in multiple countries. it's been a while since I saw the first movie, but I'm pretty sure it only spanned a few days, during which time she got all of her information about the future while staring at a hot dude. I'm pretty sure she didn't have a tape recorder. she had to memorize everything he said and then make a plan to try and stop the apocalypse from just that knowledge alone while raising a kid. ugh, she's one of my competency heroes. ugh, not sure how to phrase this properly so bear with me and ask questions if necessary, but it seemed like in the movies sarah and john lived a very blue-collar life and in the tv show they were comfortably middle-class. I'm way more interested in how they live their life if they don't have a comfortable income and money to spend all over the place. and I really love linda hamilton's portrayal of sarah. and do whatever you want about the asylum stuff so long as it isn't a ton of flashbacks about the abuse she suffered there.
in conclusion: awesome ladies kicking ass! competency! how, exactly, these ladies kick all of that ass! characterization! competency!
in final conclusion: thank you.
I have a tag! it is called "yuletide letter", this post is also tagged with it. should you want more details about me and what I like, I probably have a novella's worth stuck in there and this year I am not exactly rolling around in free time, so I'm aiming for the shortest letter ever.
I'm including information about all of the fandoms, how long they are, that sort of thing, should you be interested in maybe checking the non-matched ones out. (they all obviously have my seal of approval.) I'm going to repeat the prompts and then give a few more details and shove it all under a cut and if you have any questions feel free to show up anon and ask anything.
MOST IMPORTANT: I have one inflexible requirement: no non-con. no dub-con, either. basically, if consent is in question I will generally not like it. (sort of exception: la femme nikita. I'll explain there.)
other things that might be important: I am a huge fan of ladies, especially super competent ladies being all badass and awesome. this is the thread that holds all of my fannish pursuits together. so I'd like it best if the story had a lady as the main character and focus. I prefer characterization to plot and this year I'm kind of craving fic about the tiny details and day-to-day lives of folks. should you want to write an au where everybody's a pirate, that's super great, but maybe throw in some stuff about how they're actually navigating the pirate ship.
to the requests!
1. Batman Beyond - Barbara Gordon
I love Babs. I had a paragraph about how much I love her, but I figure that's a bit overkill. She's probably my favorite person in all of the DCU. But I especially love her in Batman Begins. So, she's super great. And Batman Begins is super great! I love the vision of the future filtered through the 90s with all of those tiny floppy discs. I am most interested in Babs being a super badass Commissioner. I think that the transition from Batgirl to Commissioner is fascinating. And since there isn't a whole lot of canon about what happens between the Tim thing and the beginning of the show, there's tons of stuff to focus on. Babs was a librarian, how did she end up on the police force? How did she become comfortable using those fancy laserguns? Or stuff going on during the series or post the series would also be super cool. I really like her husband Sam, so please no bashing or having her settle for a dude that she doesn't actually love because of soap opera cliches. Including the Batfamily is awesome. I am cool with Babs/Bruce and Babs/Tim and if you want to delve into that emotional minefield I would be super thrilled. Honestly, the only bit of backstory about Babs that I'm not comfortable reading about is what happens when Alfred dies. Whenever I think about how there's no Alfred, my chest hurts, and I wouldn't like to dwell on that. And I'd err on the side of "The Killing Joke" didn't happen in this verse. Or maybe you could include something with what the JL is doing in the future. But I'd just really like to see Babs doing something Police Commissioner-y and being super competent and just all-around the best. (I'm biased.)
IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS BEFORE: it's an animated show from the 90s. it had 3 seasons. episodes are 20 minutes long. the opening credits are a work of art. 52 episodes in total, although babs wasn't even in half of them. I can come up with a list of every episode she's in should you want it. and there is 1 movie sequel called batman beyond: return of the joker that's pretty essential for her characterization.
OTHER STUFF: did I mention that I love max? I do. I love her. and also ace the batdog. and babs's husband. I think the thing that I would be most disappointed to read would be if the fic was about bruce sitting alone in the batcave in the dark getting all manpainy about how he misses babs. if we're talking about the batgirl and batman relationship, I care about her feelings on the matter about 100,000 times more than his.
Continuum - Sonya Valentine, Alec Sadler, Kiera Cameron
REQUEST HAS SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN. So I should be honest and say that I devoured the entire season in 2 days and spent most of the time freaking out about how it treats ladies so well and the worldbuilding. That is some seriously impressive worldbuilding, I'm just saying. So I don't have a ton of thoughts that aren't part of a big amorphous blob of feelings. But I've got to be honest, I don't really care about the time-travel theory. I love time-travel, but I don't think there's enough data to figure out exactly what kind the show is using. But if you want to write about it, more power to you. I just don't really require that. I'm really interested in characterization. I'd be happy with the fic set in any time period so long as it doesn't try and explain what exactly is going on with the overarching mytharc. So I find Sonya Valentine super fascinating, especially her particular brand of loyalty to Kigame. I also really love the dynamics of how Liber8 set themselves up in '12 Vancouver. But I also really love Kiera and her tendency to find danger and then run straight into it. If the story is Kiera-centric and about her job on the '12 policeforce, I definitely like Betty best out of all of the cops. And I love how Kiera and Carlos are platonic. And I don't really have any strong feelings about Kellog either way. I really like Alec, but I think that the Alec I like best is the Cigarette Smoking Dude from the future with his puppet strings all over everything. Uh, I hope that was helpful and not overwhelmingly specific. When in doubt, go for characterization and lots of ladies, that's what I think.
IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS BEFORE: continuum is a canadian scifi show. it's got 1 season of 13 episodes and another one on the way but it won't be here until at least next summer. episodes are 42 minutes long. it's easy to bust out in a weekend: that's what I did.
OTHER STUFF: FULL OF MORE SPOILERS. so I forgot to mention in the request that I chose these three characters because I think that they are sort of the lynchpins of what's going on. kiera's the law and order, sonya's liber8, and alec is the dude manipulating the fabric of spacetime to get what he wants. so they are all going to influence each other no matter what happens. stuff about my time period preferences: because it's super complicated. I like anything preseries in '77 and in '12. I am cool with anything that happens during the course of the show. I am super interested in what happens between '12 and '77 so long as it's not about what happens to the characters on the show. I want the show to tell me what's going to happen next. I prefer the micro to the macro for this show. boom, summarized it!
La Femme Nikita - Madeline
So, I love Madeline. But the part of her that I love the best is her ruthless pragmatism. I think I'd prefer something about her singularly and not so much about her relationship with other people. And honestly, she is one of those characters where you could write a fic about her murdering babies and I'd buy it. I'd rather err on the side of darkness, too. Any time period is fine. I'd be interested to read something about what her job duties actually are. She does mission planning, she oversees and sometimes administers the interrogation of prisoners, she assesses agents on their job fitness, she does that creepy therapy thing, she's the second-in-command, and in the early seasons she had a full wardrobe in her office. I have no idea what her job description would be and I think that's super fascinating. A big action-y plot isn't a huge necessity, I'd just like to see Madeline be all horrible and emotionless for Section.
IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS BEFORE: the show ran for 5 seasons but only the first 4 matter. it was on in the 90s and it is very much of that era. 22 episodes per season, 42 minutes per episode. madeline was not a main character, I can provide a list of all of her episodes at request. it was about spies and was basically like what would happen if alias and dollhouse had a baby that was run by bill adama and his emotionless robot girlfriend. (madeline being the emotionless robot, of course.)
OTHER STUFF: so I know this show does not especially get along too well with the logic. but I love it. I also love logic. when they fight, I generally pick the side that makes madeline the most badass. I don't care about time periods or about the characters involved (so long as it's not about her star-crossed romance with walter or something) I do think I would prefer something set in section rather than an action-y mission.
WHAT THIS HAS GOT TO DO WITH NON-CON: madeline is a torturer. by definition, she's doing painful stuff to people against their will. it's not a safewords situation. I'm okay with reading about her torturing random folks. I'm less okay with her getting tortured and then doing something super badass like stopping her own heart to blackmail the dude in charge. I'm not okay with much else. her relationship with operations is complicated, especially the arc at the end of s3. I think that the weird sort of abusive turn it took was a double-cross and she was in on it the whole time, therefore making it part of an evil plan and consensual. but umm. ugh, this is difficult to word. it's not a nice show. it's a very mean universe. I like that about it. I just don't want to see the characters I love getting massively hurt, especially in a way that involves sexual trauma. this is not the fandom for a h/c fic.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day - Sarah Connor
I would really like to see a story about the mechanics of how Sarah Connor runs her operation. How does she get all of her guns? Where does she store those guns and how does she decide on the places? What does she do about potential allies? Where does she get her fake IDs? That sort of thing. I don't really care if it's pre or post-movie. Ideally, this fic would ignore the movie sequels, but I'm a huge fan of the tv show so I'd be fine with that being included. Futurefics would be cool too, although I would prefer something pre-apocalypse. What happens when Sarah finds out about the GPS trackers that they put on pets to make sure they don't get lost? Oh, and please no cancer. But honestly, so long as Sarah is the focus of the story and she gets to be a stone cold badass, I will be really happy.
IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS BEFORE: it's a movie. it's less than 3 hours and I am too lazy to google the exact running time. it's a sequel, so there's a predecessor that's also less than 3 hours. there are 2 movie sequels that I give precisely zero fucks about because they involve no sarah. there's a tv show that I loved with my entire heart. (2 seasons, 31 episodes total, 42 minute running time) you don't need to watch the tv show to write a fic. I'd suggest it, but I'm biased and I don't know how much free time you have, unknown writer person.
OTHER STUFF: sarah connor is the best. I think the thing that fascinates me the most is how she transformed herself from a waitress to somebody who has caches of illegal arms stored in the desert presumably in multiple countries. it's been a while since I saw the first movie, but I'm pretty sure it only spanned a few days, during which time she got all of her information about the future while staring at a hot dude. I'm pretty sure she didn't have a tape recorder. she had to memorize everything he said and then make a plan to try and stop the apocalypse from just that knowledge alone while raising a kid. ugh, she's one of my competency heroes. ugh, not sure how to phrase this properly so bear with me and ask questions if necessary, but it seemed like in the movies sarah and john lived a very blue-collar life and in the tv show they were comfortably middle-class. I'm way more interested in how they live their life if they don't have a comfortable income and money to spend all over the place. and I really love linda hamilton's portrayal of sarah. and do whatever you want about the asylum stuff so long as it isn't a ton of flashbacks about the abuse she suffered there.
in conclusion: awesome ladies kicking ass! competency! how, exactly, these ladies kick all of that ass! characterization! competency!
in final conclusion: thank you.