Yuletide Letter!!!!!
Dear Yuletide writer,
Hi! And thank you for offering to write a story for me! I am really excited to see what you come up with - I love all these canons, and I hope you love whichever one we matched on. I’ve tried to give some guidance in what’s below, but it mostly boils down to “I want a story about these characters!” so if this letter doesn’t seem useful to you, don’t worry - write what you love, and I will probably love it too.
General likes and dislikes:
I love stories with plots and adventures and humor. I love het and gen and slash, both m/m and f/f. I am not opposed to character death, especially in a story that is in the process of ripping my heart out and jumping up and down on it. I’ve chosen these fandoms because I love the canon settings as well as the characters, so although I like canon-divergence AUs I would not want to see these characters transposed to a different setting altogether. In sex scenes, I prefer things to remain fairly vanilla at Yuletide. I love crossovers, although I haven’t provided any crossover prompts this year; if you have an amazing crossover idea for one of these fandoms, go ahead and ask me through the mods whether I know the other fandom.
My main DNWs, for Yuletide, are harm to children, noncon, D/s or related dynamics and incest.
Falco Series - Lindsey Davis
Character: Helena Justina
What I love about this series: Basically, everything. OK, to be more specific, I really love how this isn’t just a “mysteries set in ancient Rome” series, but also plays with the “hard-bitten loner private eye” genre, because (especially in the early novels) Falco is clearly trying really hard to play that role but keeps failing because he’s related to about a third of the people living on the Aventine, and even more because at heart he’s a big softie. I think Davis does a great job with the historical detail - there’s always enough for context without infodump. I love pretty much all the characters and the relationships between them, including the characters introduced in the Albia books.
What I’d love to see: I’m asking for a story about Helena Justina because I wanted to break out of Falco’s narration - I love it, but it does mean that we never see inside the other characters. I would love to know what the world looks like to Helena - either her opinion on one of the cases or some of the characters they encounter, or what she thinks about Albia’s choice of career, or about Albia and Faustus, or about Falco, or about anything, frankly. Is she ever amused that her totally unsuitable boyfriend ended up a respectable equestrian businessman? I would be happy with something from any period within the series, or with fic from before or after it, actually. Just make Helena the central character. And please don’t break up Falco and Helena! That would make me sad.
Humans (TV)
Character: Niska
What I love about this show: I was really blown away by the whole show - it was both entertaining and thoughtful and the ending was really satisfying without closing off the possibility of a sequel (which I believe is coming!) I really liked that it raised big philosophical questions without feeling too heavy-handed about them - because the questions were being raised by the characters themselves, as they grew and changed. And I LOVED so many of the characters. OK, actually, I loved ALL of the characters.
What I’d love to see: In the end I decided to request Niska on her own because she’s so isolated for so much of the series, and I couldn’t pick a single character I wanted her to interact with. I would love to see her interacting with Mia, for example, before the series or in a missing scene. I would love to see her and Leo dealing with what he did to her by leaving her in the brothel. I would love to see more of her with Sophie, because their interactions were really cute - and perhaps with more tension, her interactions with Maddie or Laura. I would love to see your take on what happens next to her - especially if, say, she and Maddie were to team up to release the program.
Niska suffers so much, and is so angry, and changes so much, and I just find her so fascinating.
In this particular case, because of the abuse Niska suffers during the show, I would really prefer a gen story. Or possibly f/f, now that I think about it. I could imagine, say, Niska/Mia or Niska/Laura.
Nashville (TV)
Characters: Rayna James, Juliette Barnes
What I love about this show: This is the trashy evening soap of my heart. I would draw sparkly hearts around it, but frankly it has enough sparkles all on its own. For me the heart of the show is the relationship between Rayna and Juliette, and in particular the mix of yearning and anger on Juliette’s part, which manifests as that weird mix of friendship and rivalry. I love how it’s clear almost from the start that Juliette doesn’t need Rayna to be some kind of substitute mother-figure for her - she wants to become Rayna, and so she seduces Deacon back in S1, and maintains her friendly relationship with Rayna’s daughters. I also love how in her better moments Rayna also wants Juliette to follow in her footsteps, but she’s worried about her own career and her own family too much to actually be any use to Juliette most of the time - and Juliette is too involved in what she thinks “being Rayna James” involves to see what she’s really like, most of the time.
What I’d love to see: As you can guess, a story about Ranya and Juliette. An attempt to patch things up between them, at some point? A scene of them hanging out during one of their friendly periods? Hatesex in S1 or later? I have to say that I would adore f/f here, and have no problem if you want to break up or ignore the canon ships to make it happen - although it’s OK if you don’t want to, too. I am kind of agnostic on Rayna/Deacon but am basically in favor of Juliette/Avery. But I would love to see Juliette seducing Rayna, and Rayna being completely overwhelmed by the experience. Or Juliette just seducing Rayna to make a point - if you wanted to write dubcon here, I would be absolutely fine with that.
And now for something completely different...
Strike Back
Characters: Michael Stonebridge, Damien Scott
What I love about this show: They shoot people and blow things up, and are totally heterosexual, no, really. Here, let us show you some tits to prove how heterosexual our main characters are, even though the most recent series ended with Michael and Damien riding off together on motorcycles with Damien’s son. To Vegas, so that they can get married, I guess. And even though the show regularly kills off their female romantic interests to keep them from coming between Damien and Michael’s one true love cause angst for the main characters. I actually think that the show is a great example of its genre, and I like that genre a lot (although like all military thriller shows, it has tons of politically objectionable esp. colonialist stuff going on in it, I know.) Sometimes Michael and Damien are really incompetent, and need their COs to get them out of whatever trouble they’ve managed to get into, and I like that the show takes the COs seriously and makes them into competent, effective leaders. I also think it does a great job with the female characters, many of whom have been nominated this year. (In fact, when I saw that Kim Martinez was nominated, I very nearly requested her instead. And so, Yuletide author, if you’ve been assigned me and you really, really want to write about Kim instead of Scott and Stonebridge, consider this my permission to do write that story instead. I would love a story about Kim Martinez.)
What I’d love to see: Well, I am really here for the slash this time around, but that does not mean that you need to write something sexual or romantic if you’d rather not - anything with their relationship as it is in the show would be great. I would adore an adventure story, especially one with wacky hijinks and a bit of humor, and one which included the other characters too. Explosions are great, I love bombs! I love shady, corrupt Home Secretaries who get in the way of our heroes’ totally necessary illegal military shenanigans! I would love a story where they have to pretend to be in a relationship, or any other old school slash cliché you want to use. And I am completely convinced that they both enjoy wearing lingerie in the bedroom.
This entry has also been posted at http://vaznetti.dreamwidth.org/51488.html, where it has
comments. Please comment here or there, as you like.
Hi! And thank you for offering to write a story for me! I am really excited to see what you come up with - I love all these canons, and I hope you love whichever one we matched on. I’ve tried to give some guidance in what’s below, but it mostly boils down to “I want a story about these characters!” so if this letter doesn’t seem useful to you, don’t worry - write what you love, and I will probably love it too.
General likes and dislikes:
I love stories with plots and adventures and humor. I love het and gen and slash, both m/m and f/f. I am not opposed to character death, especially in a story that is in the process of ripping my heart out and jumping up and down on it. I’ve chosen these fandoms because I love the canon settings as well as the characters, so although I like canon-divergence AUs I would not want to see these characters transposed to a different setting altogether. In sex scenes, I prefer things to remain fairly vanilla at Yuletide. I love crossovers, although I haven’t provided any crossover prompts this year; if you have an amazing crossover idea for one of these fandoms, go ahead and ask me through the mods whether I know the other fandom.
My main DNWs, for Yuletide, are harm to children, noncon, D/s or related dynamics and incest.
Falco Series - Lindsey Davis
Character: Helena Justina
What I love about this series: Basically, everything. OK, to be more specific, I really love how this isn’t just a “mysteries set in ancient Rome” series, but also plays with the “hard-bitten loner private eye” genre, because (especially in the early novels) Falco is clearly trying really hard to play that role but keeps failing because he’s related to about a third of the people living on the Aventine, and even more because at heart he’s a big softie. I think Davis does a great job with the historical detail - there’s always enough for context without infodump. I love pretty much all the characters and the relationships between them, including the characters introduced in the Albia books.
What I’d love to see: I’m asking for a story about Helena Justina because I wanted to break out of Falco’s narration - I love it, but it does mean that we never see inside the other characters. I would love to know what the world looks like to Helena - either her opinion on one of the cases or some of the characters they encounter, or what she thinks about Albia’s choice of career, or about Albia and Faustus, or about Falco, or about anything, frankly. Is she ever amused that her totally unsuitable boyfriend ended up a respectable equestrian businessman? I would be happy with something from any period within the series, or with fic from before or after it, actually. Just make Helena the central character. And please don’t break up Falco and Helena! That would make me sad.
Humans (TV)
Character: Niska
What I love about this show: I was really blown away by the whole show - it was both entertaining and thoughtful and the ending was really satisfying without closing off the possibility of a sequel (which I believe is coming!) I really liked that it raised big philosophical questions without feeling too heavy-handed about them - because the questions were being raised by the characters themselves, as they grew and changed. And I LOVED so many of the characters. OK, actually, I loved ALL of the characters.
What I’d love to see: In the end I decided to request Niska on her own because she’s so isolated for so much of the series, and I couldn’t pick a single character I wanted her to interact with. I would love to see her interacting with Mia, for example, before the series or in a missing scene. I would love to see her and Leo dealing with what he did to her by leaving her in the brothel. I would love to see more of her with Sophie, because their interactions were really cute - and perhaps with more tension, her interactions with Maddie or Laura. I would love to see your take on what happens next to her - especially if, say, she and Maddie were to team up to release the program.
Niska suffers so much, and is so angry, and changes so much, and I just find her so fascinating.
In this particular case, because of the abuse Niska suffers during the show, I would really prefer a gen story. Or possibly f/f, now that I think about it. I could imagine, say, Niska/Mia or Niska/Laura.
Nashville (TV)
Characters: Rayna James, Juliette Barnes
What I love about this show: This is the trashy evening soap of my heart. I would draw sparkly hearts around it, but frankly it has enough sparkles all on its own. For me the heart of the show is the relationship between Rayna and Juliette, and in particular the mix of yearning and anger on Juliette’s part, which manifests as that weird mix of friendship and rivalry. I love how it’s clear almost from the start that Juliette doesn’t need Rayna to be some kind of substitute mother-figure for her - she wants to become Rayna, and so she seduces Deacon back in S1, and maintains her friendly relationship with Rayna’s daughters. I also love how in her better moments Rayna also wants Juliette to follow in her footsteps, but she’s worried about her own career and her own family too much to actually be any use to Juliette most of the time - and Juliette is too involved in what she thinks “being Rayna James” involves to see what she’s really like, most of the time.
What I’d love to see: As you can guess, a story about Ranya and Juliette. An attempt to patch things up between them, at some point? A scene of them hanging out during one of their friendly periods? Hatesex in S1 or later? I have to say that I would adore f/f here, and have no problem if you want to break up or ignore the canon ships to make it happen - although it’s OK if you don’t want to, too. I am kind of agnostic on Rayna/Deacon but am basically in favor of Juliette/Avery. But I would love to see Juliette seducing Rayna, and Rayna being completely overwhelmed by the experience. Or Juliette just seducing Rayna to make a point - if you wanted to write dubcon here, I would be absolutely fine with that.
And now for something completely different...
Strike Back
Characters: Michael Stonebridge, Damien Scott
What I love about this show: They shoot people and blow things up, and are totally heterosexual, no, really. Here, let us show you some tits to prove how heterosexual our main characters are, even though the most recent series ended with Michael and Damien riding off together on motorcycles with Damien’s son. To Vegas, so that they can get married, I guess. And even though the show regularly kills off their female romantic interests to keep them from coming between Damien and Michael’s one true love cause angst for the main characters. I actually think that the show is a great example of its genre, and I like that genre a lot (although like all military thriller shows, it has tons of politically objectionable esp. colonialist stuff going on in it, I know.) Sometimes Michael and Damien are really incompetent, and need their COs to get them out of whatever trouble they’ve managed to get into, and I like that the show takes the COs seriously and makes them into competent, effective leaders. I also think it does a great job with the female characters, many of whom have been nominated this year. (In fact, when I saw that Kim Martinez was nominated, I very nearly requested her instead. And so, Yuletide author, if you’ve been assigned me and you really, really want to write about Kim instead of Scott and Stonebridge, consider this my permission to do write that story instead. I would love a story about Kim Martinez.)
What I’d love to see: Well, I am really here for the slash this time around, but that does not mean that you need to write something sexual or romantic if you’d rather not - anything with their relationship as it is in the show would be great. I would adore an adventure story, especially one with wacky hijinks and a bit of humor, and one which included the other characters too. Explosions are great, I love bombs! I love shady, corrupt Home Secretaries who get in the way of our heroes’ totally necessary illegal military shenanigans! I would love a story where they have to pretend to be in a relationship, or any other old school slash cliché you want to use. And I am completely convinced that they both enjoy wearing lingerie in the bedroom.
This entry has also been posted at http://vaznetti.dreamwidth.org/51488.html, where it has
comments. Please comment here or there, as you like.