Dear Yuletide Author 2017
Oct. 3rd, 2017 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladybird97Dear Yuletide 2017 Author,
Thank you! I'm already happy and flattered that you would take the time to write a gift for me.
All of my previous posts about Yuletide are public under my Yuletide tag, so you can see what kinds of stories I've received, written, and liked in the past.
Things I Love
Gen. Strong friendship. Found family. Romance. Bechdel-passing. Smart people getting to show their intelligence; competent people getting to do what they're best at. Stories that replicate the tone and style of the original. Stories about people making discoveries about themselves: discovering their inner strength, discovering that they're in love, discovering the strength of their friendship. Plot. Well-researched history. Snappy dialogue. Casefic. (if you write me casefic, I will be your friend forever!)
And, most of all, I love crossovers! If you find inspiration for a crossover, it would be an amazing Yuletide present! It can be a crossover between two of the fandoms I've requested, or with an outside one.
So, the Timeless crew lands in 1830s New Orleans and interacts with Benjamin January and Co. (Imagine Rufus hanging out with Benjamin!), or in 1960s Oxford where Endeavour Morse suspects that these folks really aren't from around here. Josh from Being Human goes on Masterchef or The Great British Bake Off. Endeavour investigates magical mishaps caused by some Hogwarts students on break; or discovers that another police officer is a wizard. (Is that why De Bryn is so cranky - because he's tired of having to hide that he's a wizard?)
Absolute Do Not Want
Explicit sex or violence. Rape, non-con, dubcon. Incest. Humiliation. (Seriously, I can't even watch The Office because humiliation makes me cringe so hard.) Sexual relationships between adults and teens. Violence against children, child abuse, or other children-in-peril. Physical or psychological torture. Misogyny, homophobia, and other bigotry. And please, no 'they act like they hate each other but that's actually because they're in love,' unless that's already been established in canon. I want "no" to mean "no."
Would Rather Not Have
The Five Things structure. Angst. Death. Plotless character studies. AUs. Non-canonical pairings that I haven't specified in my request.
My Requests
Benjamin January Mysteries. Rose Vitrac January, Dominique Vieillard, Hannibal Sefton, Benjamin January
I'm happy with a story about any or all of these characters, at any point during the series.
What I love about this series: The New Orleans setting: its social complexity, racial diversity, music, history. The emotional authenticity of everyone's strengths and weaknesses. The way it respects the characters' pasts. The complications of friendship and family. The way each mystery is so deeply embedded in the fabric of its society.
I also respect how the series doesn't look away from the legacy of slavery, racism, and trauma, both in the characters' lives and in the wider world. I absolutely understand that some of those elements need to be in this story if it's going to do justice to the original and the historical reality. However, I would strongly prefer a story that is not primarily about racism, slavery, or trauma.
About the characters specifically: I love Dominique's emotional intelligence, unabashed femininity, perceptiveness, and skillful navigation of New Orleans' racial divisions and her own place within them. I love Rose's intellect, gentleness, pragmatism, and the little flashes of daring and bravery that are getting more frequent as time goes on. (The cross-dressing is especially excellent.) I love Hannibal's loyalty, haplessness, accidental charisma, stealth competence, and fast-talking.
My first choice is a story in which Rose and Dominique team up to solve a case. Maybe it's while Benjamin is away; maybe it's a case that he can't investigate on his own: just as he takes on cases that other people can't (or won't) investigate, maybe Rose and Dominique have taken on one that Benjamin can't or won't. How do Rose and Dominique work together? What are their detective methods like? How do they rescue Hannibal (because you know he'll need to be rescued!)
If you'd like to do a solo story, I'd love to see Hannibal on his own. Maybe you could show what he was doing during one of the many times when he was offstage working on Benjamin's behalf, trying to bluff his way out of a tight situation.
Being Human, Sally, Josh, Aidan
What I Love About This Show: Found family. Domesticity. The way it always centered around, well, what it meant to be human: eating, loving, making connections.
I'd love a story about domestic life in the house, especially focusing on Josh and Sally. I loved the little domestic moments of roommate-hood: Josh cooking, Aidan organizing, Sally hovering. I especially liked the show's running theme of cooking/eating as it relates to humanity: things like Josh's need to cook even though he's the only one who eats, and Aidan's glee in food when he was briefly human.
If you want to do a solo story, my order of preference is Josh, Sally, Aidan.
As mentioned above, I'd love to see a crossover with a cooking show like Masterchef or Great British Bake Off: Josh has to deal with the full moon; or Aidan and Sally come the show for the friends-and-family day, and Josh has to figure out what he can cook for them that won't look too suspicious.
Something dealing with Josh's Jewish identity would be great too. A fluffy story, like him cooking for Chanukah at the house; or something more serious. For instance, I always thought it was going to be a Big Deal in S3 when he stopped wearing his Star of David, but the show never dealt with it - what's up with that?
Some Josh/Sally would make me extra happy. (I'm not really excited by Josh/Nora or Sally/Aidan - I don't strongly object, but I'd rather not have those relationships as the main focus of the story.)
For a Sally-focused story, I'd love to see her early days of ghost-hood, before Josh and Aidan came to the house. Or, dealing with her still-alive family, either right after she died or when her brother showed up later.
Endeavour: Endeavour Morse, Monica Hicks, Dorothea Frazil, Fred Thursday, Max De Bryn
I'd be happy with a story about any or all of the eligible characters.
What I Love About This Show: I love the puzzle-piece mysteries, the trails of complicated clues, the way Morse thinks around corners. I love the way Morse continually grapples with his past and present: he's still very much trying to figure out what kind of person he wants to be, and where his innate qualities lead him. I love that he's brilliant but also fallible: sometimes his leaps of intellect don't work, and sometimes he's trapped by his own preconceptions.
I would absolutely adore casefic that gets all of these characters working together, but I'd also be happy with a solo story for one of them, or for a story that only includes a couple of them. Here are some ideas:
- What was Monica doing when she was offstage? I am still hugely disappointed at the way the show shortchanged and ignored her. I'd love to see her get the narrative focus that she deserves, to see her working through Morse's abandonment, and to see her standing strongly on her own.
- Monica and De Bryn solving a medical mystery. I could absolutely see these two having a personality clash, but also respecting each other's competence.
- Dorothea solving a case of her own through her journalistic persistence and newspaper connections
- Some kind of supernatural occurrence, especially Morse and Thursday's skepticism pushing up against actual proof of the supernatural. A ghost story, a crossover or fusion with some other fandom that involves magic - Harry Potter, or Strange and Norrell. (There's DC Strange, after all...)
- Another literary fusion, along the lines of the Great Gatsby and Lion in Winter episodes. Shakespeare would be awesome - maybe Hamlet or Macbeth, since both of those feature murders? Or another play, if you feel inspired in that direction.
Timeless: Rufus Carlin, Lucy Preston, Wyatt Logan
I'd love a story about the whole team on a mission. But if you'd like to do a solo story, my order of preference is Rufus, Lucy, Wyatt.
What I Love About This Show: I love the teamwork, friendship, humor, ideals. I love that the show always remembers that time travel has consequences, and how it represents the complexity of important issues. It keeps asking the same questions over and over - Is it ever right to kill another person? Is it ever right to change history? What do you do with the pain in your past? - because there are never any simple answers, and there shouldn't be. There are always more layers to be uncovered. I love the sense of humor, and the ridiculous name-dropping of historical figures.
I respect that the show always remembers that it's less safe for Rufus and Lucy in the past, but doesn't constantly make them victims: it shows the segregated water fountains in 1934 Arkansas, but it doesn't make anything horrible happen to Rufus when he's arrested. And, conversely, I respect that the show remembers the social spaces where only Rufus and Lucy can go, and how Rufus draws on the history that Lucy and Wyatt haven't paid attention to - he knows about Katherine Johnson and Gregory Hayes.
What I love about Rufus: He's brilliant and funny and complex. He's terrified of physical violence, but fearless about confronting injustice and hypocrisy. He's always willing to ask the hard questions that need to be asked, and always willing to learn from the people he meets. He hasn't lost his sense of wonder. I adore his goofy pop culture references and his devotion to the people he loves.
What I love about Lucy: She's got strong ideals, but isn't so rigid that she refuses to look at other viewpoints. She's grown enough that she can conquer her fears when she absolutely needs to, but she hasn't been magically cured of her claustrophobia; she just knows how to deal with it. She's a terrible liar (mostly because she's such a fundamentally honest and idealistic person, I think!) but she's getting better. She's resourceful: she uses her knowledge of history to find the person who can best help the team when they're in a tight spot.
What I love about Wyatt: He's brave and practical. It's not easy for him to admit that he's made a mistake, but he's getting better at it. He understands the strengths of the people on his team, and helps them become the best versions of themselves.
I'm fine with some Lucy/Wyatt, but it's not obligatory. Giving Lucy a woman love interest would be awesome too: Emma, or some excellent historical woman, maybe. Please _don't_ include any Lucy/Flynn, though - that's not my thing. (I'm not a huge fan of Flynn in general. If you do include him, please don't make him a major part of the story.)
Some specific stories that would be awesome to see:
- a mission that takes them outside of North America and Europe. Yes, Rittenhouse is based in the US, but that doesn't mean that everything it needs is in the US, and Rittenhouse members must have gone all over the world.
- What would happen if Flynn were doing something that had a truly _good_ effect on history? Not just the general "blocking Rittenhouse is good," but something more specific: saving someone good or killing someone bad. What would the team do?
- Rufus being a brilliant engineer. I adored his blacksmithing in "Stranded" - I'd love to see more of that.
- Some of the effects of the shifting timeline. Have any other major people disappeared? What else has changed due to our team's actions? Is anyone else starting to notice that history is changing, and if so, how do they notice?
The Night Circus: Poppet and Widget
I'm always torn between wanting to continue living in the world and wanting to leave the story just as it is because it's complete already. I love the hazy boundary between magic and reality; I love the sense that there's infinitely more about the circus that we don't know; I love the way that the reveurs made the circus into a better place and the circus's makers into better people, just by loving it.
Poppet and Widget are my favorite characters. How does their relationship with time set them apart from the rest of the circus, and how do they deal with that over the years? What do they do after the book ends? Would they ever try to leave the circus?
This is an exception to my usual preference for heavily plotted stories, because it's the atmosphere and tone of The Night Circus that I love best. So, don't feel that you need to make a lot happen :) I'd be happy with a story set at any time during the book or after.
Thank you! I'm already happy and flattered that you would take the time to write a gift for me.
All of my previous posts about Yuletide are public under my Yuletide tag, so you can see what kinds of stories I've received, written, and liked in the past.
Things I Love
Gen. Strong friendship. Found family. Romance. Bechdel-passing. Smart people getting to show their intelligence; competent people getting to do what they're best at. Stories that replicate the tone and style of the original. Stories about people making discoveries about themselves: discovering their inner strength, discovering that they're in love, discovering the strength of their friendship. Plot. Well-researched history. Snappy dialogue. Casefic. (if you write me casefic, I will be your friend forever!)
And, most of all, I love crossovers! If you find inspiration for a crossover, it would be an amazing Yuletide present! It can be a crossover between two of the fandoms I've requested, or with an outside one.
So, the Timeless crew lands in 1830s New Orleans and interacts with Benjamin January and Co. (Imagine Rufus hanging out with Benjamin!), or in 1960s Oxford where Endeavour Morse suspects that these folks really aren't from around here. Josh from Being Human goes on Masterchef or The Great British Bake Off. Endeavour investigates magical mishaps caused by some Hogwarts students on break; or discovers that another police officer is a wizard. (Is that why De Bryn is so cranky - because he's tired of having to hide that he's a wizard?)
Absolute Do Not Want
Explicit sex or violence. Rape, non-con, dubcon. Incest. Humiliation. (Seriously, I can't even watch The Office because humiliation makes me cringe so hard.) Sexual relationships between adults and teens. Violence against children, child abuse, or other children-in-peril. Physical or psychological torture. Misogyny, homophobia, and other bigotry. And please, no 'they act like they hate each other but that's actually because they're in love,' unless that's already been established in canon. I want "no" to mean "no."
Would Rather Not Have
The Five Things structure. Angst. Death. Plotless character studies. AUs. Non-canonical pairings that I haven't specified in my request.
My Requests
Benjamin January Mysteries. Rose Vitrac January, Dominique Vieillard, Hannibal Sefton, Benjamin January
I'm happy with a story about any or all of these characters, at any point during the series.
What I love about this series: The New Orleans setting: its social complexity, racial diversity, music, history. The emotional authenticity of everyone's strengths and weaknesses. The way it respects the characters' pasts. The complications of friendship and family. The way each mystery is so deeply embedded in the fabric of its society.
I also respect how the series doesn't look away from the legacy of slavery, racism, and trauma, both in the characters' lives and in the wider world. I absolutely understand that some of those elements need to be in this story if it's going to do justice to the original and the historical reality. However, I would strongly prefer a story that is not primarily about racism, slavery, or trauma.
About the characters specifically: I love Dominique's emotional intelligence, unabashed femininity, perceptiveness, and skillful navigation of New Orleans' racial divisions and her own place within them. I love Rose's intellect, gentleness, pragmatism, and the little flashes of daring and bravery that are getting more frequent as time goes on. (The cross-dressing is especially excellent.) I love Hannibal's loyalty, haplessness, accidental charisma, stealth competence, and fast-talking.
My first choice is a story in which Rose and Dominique team up to solve a case. Maybe it's while Benjamin is away; maybe it's a case that he can't investigate on his own: just as he takes on cases that other people can't (or won't) investigate, maybe Rose and Dominique have taken on one that Benjamin can't or won't. How do Rose and Dominique work together? What are their detective methods like? How do they rescue Hannibal (because you know he'll need to be rescued!)
If you'd like to do a solo story, I'd love to see Hannibal on his own. Maybe you could show what he was doing during one of the many times when he was offstage working on Benjamin's behalf, trying to bluff his way out of a tight situation.
Being Human, Sally, Josh, Aidan
What I Love About This Show: Found family. Domesticity. The way it always centered around, well, what it meant to be human: eating, loving, making connections.
I'd love a story about domestic life in the house, especially focusing on Josh and Sally. I loved the little domestic moments of roommate-hood: Josh cooking, Aidan organizing, Sally hovering. I especially liked the show's running theme of cooking/eating as it relates to humanity: things like Josh's need to cook even though he's the only one who eats, and Aidan's glee in food when he was briefly human.
If you want to do a solo story, my order of preference is Josh, Sally, Aidan.
As mentioned above, I'd love to see a crossover with a cooking show like Masterchef or Great British Bake Off: Josh has to deal with the full moon; or Aidan and Sally come the show for the friends-and-family day, and Josh has to figure out what he can cook for them that won't look too suspicious.
Something dealing with Josh's Jewish identity would be great too. A fluffy story, like him cooking for Chanukah at the house; or something more serious. For instance, I always thought it was going to be a Big Deal in S3 when he stopped wearing his Star of David, but the show never dealt with it - what's up with that?
Some Josh/Sally would make me extra happy. (I'm not really excited by Josh/Nora or Sally/Aidan - I don't strongly object, but I'd rather not have those relationships as the main focus of the story.)
For a Sally-focused story, I'd love to see her early days of ghost-hood, before Josh and Aidan came to the house. Or, dealing with her still-alive family, either right after she died or when her brother showed up later.
Endeavour: Endeavour Morse, Monica Hicks, Dorothea Frazil, Fred Thursday, Max De Bryn
I'd be happy with a story about any or all of the eligible characters.
What I Love About This Show: I love the puzzle-piece mysteries, the trails of complicated clues, the way Morse thinks around corners. I love the way Morse continually grapples with his past and present: he's still very much trying to figure out what kind of person he wants to be, and where his innate qualities lead him. I love that he's brilliant but also fallible: sometimes his leaps of intellect don't work, and sometimes he's trapped by his own preconceptions.
I would absolutely adore casefic that gets all of these characters working together, but I'd also be happy with a solo story for one of them, or for a story that only includes a couple of them. Here are some ideas:
- What was Monica doing when she was offstage? I am still hugely disappointed at the way the show shortchanged and ignored her. I'd love to see her get the narrative focus that she deserves, to see her working through Morse's abandonment, and to see her standing strongly on her own.
- Monica and De Bryn solving a medical mystery. I could absolutely see these two having a personality clash, but also respecting each other's competence.
- Dorothea solving a case of her own through her journalistic persistence and newspaper connections
- Some kind of supernatural occurrence, especially Morse and Thursday's skepticism pushing up against actual proof of the supernatural. A ghost story, a crossover or fusion with some other fandom that involves magic - Harry Potter, or Strange and Norrell. (There's DC Strange, after all...)
- Another literary fusion, along the lines of the Great Gatsby and Lion in Winter episodes. Shakespeare would be awesome - maybe Hamlet or Macbeth, since both of those feature murders? Or another play, if you feel inspired in that direction.
Timeless: Rufus Carlin, Lucy Preston, Wyatt Logan
I'd love a story about the whole team on a mission. But if you'd like to do a solo story, my order of preference is Rufus, Lucy, Wyatt.
What I Love About This Show: I love the teamwork, friendship, humor, ideals. I love that the show always remembers that time travel has consequences, and how it represents the complexity of important issues. It keeps asking the same questions over and over - Is it ever right to kill another person? Is it ever right to change history? What do you do with the pain in your past? - because there are never any simple answers, and there shouldn't be. There are always more layers to be uncovered. I love the sense of humor, and the ridiculous name-dropping of historical figures.
I respect that the show always remembers that it's less safe for Rufus and Lucy in the past, but doesn't constantly make them victims: it shows the segregated water fountains in 1934 Arkansas, but it doesn't make anything horrible happen to Rufus when he's arrested. And, conversely, I respect that the show remembers the social spaces where only Rufus and Lucy can go, and how Rufus draws on the history that Lucy and Wyatt haven't paid attention to - he knows about Katherine Johnson and Gregory Hayes.
What I love about Rufus: He's brilliant and funny and complex. He's terrified of physical violence, but fearless about confronting injustice and hypocrisy. He's always willing to ask the hard questions that need to be asked, and always willing to learn from the people he meets. He hasn't lost his sense of wonder. I adore his goofy pop culture references and his devotion to the people he loves.
What I love about Lucy: She's got strong ideals, but isn't so rigid that she refuses to look at other viewpoints. She's grown enough that she can conquer her fears when she absolutely needs to, but she hasn't been magically cured of her claustrophobia; she just knows how to deal with it. She's a terrible liar (mostly because she's such a fundamentally honest and idealistic person, I think!) but she's getting better. She's resourceful: she uses her knowledge of history to find the person who can best help the team when they're in a tight spot.
What I love about Wyatt: He's brave and practical. It's not easy for him to admit that he's made a mistake, but he's getting better at it. He understands the strengths of the people on his team, and helps them become the best versions of themselves.
I'm fine with some Lucy/Wyatt, but it's not obligatory. Giving Lucy a woman love interest would be awesome too: Emma, or some excellent historical woman, maybe. Please _don't_ include any Lucy/Flynn, though - that's not my thing. (I'm not a huge fan of Flynn in general. If you do include him, please don't make him a major part of the story.)
Some specific stories that would be awesome to see:
- a mission that takes them outside of North America and Europe. Yes, Rittenhouse is based in the US, but that doesn't mean that everything it needs is in the US, and Rittenhouse members must have gone all over the world.
- What would happen if Flynn were doing something that had a truly _good_ effect on history? Not just the general "blocking Rittenhouse is good," but something more specific: saving someone good or killing someone bad. What would the team do?
- Rufus being a brilliant engineer. I adored his blacksmithing in "Stranded" - I'd love to see more of that.
- Some of the effects of the shifting timeline. Have any other major people disappeared? What else has changed due to our team's actions? Is anyone else starting to notice that history is changing, and if so, how do they notice?
The Night Circus: Poppet and Widget
I'm always torn between wanting to continue living in the world and wanting to leave the story just as it is because it's complete already. I love the hazy boundary between magic and reality; I love the sense that there's infinitely more about the circus that we don't know; I love the way that the reveurs made the circus into a better place and the circus's makers into better people, just by loving it.
Poppet and Widget are my favorite characters. How does their relationship with time set them apart from the rest of the circus, and how do they deal with that over the years? What do they do after the book ends? Would they ever try to leave the circus?
This is an exception to my usual preference for heavily plotted stories, because it's the atmosphere and tone of The Night Circus that I love best. So, don't feel that you need to make a lot happen :) I'd be happy with a story set at any time during the book or after.
