Dear Yuletide writer,
It’s that time of year again…
Thank you for doing this. I still can’t quite believe Yuletide happens and works every year, it feels like it’s wandered over from a more agreeably cooperative world where *flails* all of all this isn’t happening.
I tend to chuck in a few potential plot bunnies by way of potential inspiration and to give you a sense of what sort of things interest me about the fandom and characters - use or ignore entirely as you will.
General likes:
Plot. Worldbuilding. Casefic. Melodrama. Keeping your head whilst all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. Competence porn. Costume porn. Actual porn. Humour. Farce. Epistolary. Wordplay. Swordplay.
General Do Not Want:
Non-con
Tight focus on babies/pregnancy
Addiction plots front and center - like I know there are addicts in I think all of these canons, and that's fine, but I don't want a whole story about it.
RL contemporary politics - I know I’ve got a couple of fandoms here that are quite ‘political’ and I don’t think the characters deserve to have to deal with Trump, Farage, various Le Pens etc., much less the horrors in the Middle East.
Hilary Tamar Mysteries
One or more of:
Hilary Tamar
Julia Larwood
Selena Jardin
This is one of those canons where what I really want is more-of. I love Hilary’s narrative voice, I love the knots our heroes tie themselves with the red herrings and wrong genre savviness, and particularly any and all appearances by Julia where she gets to be her gloriously chaotic and occasionally surprisingly competent self (perish the thought that I might have a Julia in my own life, love ya T., never change).
Plot bunnies:
Hilary’s gender is never overtly specified, though I think it’s a bit difficult to read them as female given the setting, period, and the way they relate to the boys. That said, difficult is not impossible and I’ve never seen anyone write an explicitly female / nonbinary Hilary that I can recall.
Julia and Cantrip’s serial thriller being published. The reactions of the publisher’s legal reader, who of course would be someone who has daydreams about achieving the professional eminence these two clowns take totally for granted?
We very seldom see these barristers in court; some courtroom antics (especially if for sadistic reasons they’re way out of their professional comfort zone) would be fun.
Hilary being forced to do some actual work?
Selena has always reminded me of Douglas’ line from Cabin Pressure:
“Tell me, is there anything you’re not very good at”
“Well, there’s some things I’ve never tried, I suppose it’s possible I’m not very good at some of them”
Whilst Selena being unflappable is a delight, I’d be interested in her finding her limits, always assuming they exist - or maybe just the rest of the gang assuming she’s found them?
House of Cards (UK)
Oh for those more innocent days when if the PM’s family were caught insider-trading he would be expected to resign, the suggestion the government had connived at starting a small war would destroy the PM’s reputation, and blackmailing closeted politicians was portrayed as wrong even if they had awful politics. Really it only seems to be FU preventing the BBC version of 1990s England being a utopia [/s]. Though he’s a pretty big obstacle.
I think there’s a bit of a contradiction in what FU wants to do in power in S2-3; he wants to preserve everything in aspic the way it was in his youth, but on another level he gets bored and makes things happen almost for the hell of it, he can’t help keeping poking away when he could just leave well enough alone and stay peacefully on top. But then there wouldn’t be a plot, would there? And it’s very Richard III. Stamper has a bit of the same bug, I think - he wants so much to be FU (even more, I think, than he wants to fuck him, though probably that too) and he’s probably not quite sure why, or what he’d do if he ever became the dog that caught the car.
Come to think of it, there’s a plotbunny - the FU version of the Richard III Society. After all his misdeeds are public knowledge, some people will still argue that he was completely and totally in the right or at worst the lesser evil, not just his politics but personally… how, and why, and what do the survivors (including the ex-King) make of it? FU’s England will have avoided some of the real-life catastrophes of his chronologically-impossible reign (he serves 12 years as PM between 1991/2 and about 1998) and had some other, probably worse ones instead.
It’s noticeable that whilst FU tells us all the thinly-veiled caricatures of the potential Thatcher successors in S1 are bad people (except Collingridge who’s just weak), they don’t really do anything onscreen to justify that interpretation - we’re supposed to just supply that from their models’ general IRL unpopularity. Woolton’s having an affair with a much younger woman but that’s about the worst of it, and it’s Roger, not him, who makes skeevy remarks about her race. I don’t think FU sees anything particularly evil about racism, or xenophobia, or exhibitionism, he just thinks it’s déclassé to show them publicly.
Or give me a day in the life of the Urquhart administration when there’s no earth-shaking constitutional shenanigans going on.
Or throw an outside-context crossover at them - they can deal with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, wizards, first contact, etc.
Laundry Files
Honestly, this is easy. Write Laundry fic. I will love it. Case-fic, world-building, romance, horror, anything at all.
Just to be clear, I won’t have read Regicide Report by reveals time, I know that on past form there will be a few ARCs floating about by then, so *no spoilers please* though I reckon we can all guess what the broad strokes are going to be.
For the first time in the series I found Quantum of Nightmares genuinely off-puttingly bleak, some of the Chickentown scenes made me feel physically ill, if the body horror could not go quite that far I’d be grateful.
One of the things I enjoyed about the earlier instalments was the sense of the world being a very big place where there’s a lot of room behind the Masquerade and none of our protagonists have a good sense of all the possibilities. I think that got a bit lost in the actual collapse as Stross wanted to tell a story about the grimness of modern Britain which, well, I live in that already and I’m not sure Actually Existing Case Nightmare Green bears close examination anyway. So I’d be interested in any of Bob’s (or Mo’s, or even Iris’) adventures firefighting around the world, meeting interesting local mythology.
Or, slightly more seriously, Bob’s relationship with his own family and friends. Perhaps the conversation where he explains CNG to Mo, or his attempts to take vacations (played as serious or not as you like).
Crossovers here would be fine and shiny, if that's where your ideas are going. The Laundry seems to fit pretty naturally into any number of thriller-ish fandoms and quite a lot of near-future SF. I like how unreliable Bob's getting as a narrator, and how scary we occasionally realise he is when seen from anyone else's perspective; maybe a fic or crossover where the Laundry are the villains, or even the Big Bad? I can see that happening in any kind of police procedural or military thriller, for example.
Lord Peter Wimsey
I’ve requested Harriet, the Dowager Duchess and Gerry and I’d like something with any two of them, but I’m making a specific exception for Honoria Lucasta back-story even though by the linear nature of time it’s unlikely to have room for the other two.
Otherwise, anything with the Wimsey family dynamics would be lovely.
As would someone other than Peter doing some detecting - I do love a good case-fic, though I know they’re hard to write, and someone else trying their hands at playing Robert Templeton would be fun - I imagine they’d be very reluctant to go scurrying to Peter for advice (well, maybe not Gerry but certainly the other Wimseys) and would find Harriet a less alarming source.
Slings & Arrows
Any of Geoffrey and Ellen’s backstory pre-series would be delightful, as would adventures in Théatre Sans Argent v2. Backstage shenanigans of all kinds are very pleasing to this recovering stage manager, as is the grubby business of actually trying to make a living from theater - I’ve always felt fairly sympathetic towards Richard, for example.
I do find the writers being so much on Geoffrey’s side about theatre a little bit annoying, and I wonder if Ellen actually shares his very actor-first approach to directing, I can see there being tension between them if he suspects her of Darren- or even worse Richard-like tendencies when she’s in charge - obviously as an actor she’s not keen on regietheater being done to her but she’d not be the first to change her mind once she’s in charge, and she does seem a lot more attached than Geoffrey to the finer things in life, like food and hot water.
Again I’m quite keen on crossovers for this one, there are a lot of highly compatible backstage dramas - to take a few at random, Charles Paris turning up at New Burbage (with or without murder) or indeed changing his name to Cyril after some disastrous incident in the 1980s, Geoffrey’s stint on Extras, a very young Geoffrey or Ellen touring in Nothing On or a Franklin Sheppard production… endless possibilities and even if I don’t know the canon I’ll probably be delighted to go explore it.
Summary: A grim narrative of fraud, deception, false advertising, murders, robberies, puttings in fear and operating without a Board of Trade Certificate.
( Self-indulgent commentary under the cut )So my contribution to this year's Yuletide was epistolary historical fiction... for the Stan Rogers song "Barrett's Privateers'. I had a hell of a lot of fun researching and writing it, I resisted most of the impulses towards totally inappropriate crossovers, and whilst there were things I wanted to do that I couldn't make come off, I'm pretty happy with it:
"God Damned Them All"? Documenting the Loss of the Privateer Antelope - A grim narrative of fraud, deception, false advertising, murders, robberies, puttings in fear and operating without a Board of Trade Certificate.
(also a truly demented spot-the-reference game, from the summary onwards. I may have got a little silly.)
I received three fabulous gifts:
1) Set My Life Upon a Cast by Nomad (nomadicwriter) - House of Cards (UK) - Francis Urquhart is not a man to believe in visions other than his own.
I asked for, inter alia, FU dealing with the supernatural and got it in spades; Nomad captures his voice perfectly, as well as his reaction to seeing bits of his own future, which is very Richard III. A lovely appearance for Stamper too.
2) Vanished in a Breath by voleuse - A Year And A Day In Old Theradane - All of space-time is exquisitely balanced between existing and not. A year and a day (or so) in the life of Those Unseen.
If you haven’t read the original story, do. It’s a perfect little fantasy heist and as Scott Lynch shows no sign of providing more, fandom is occasionally stepping up. This is a perfect slice of what the main characters are up to immediately post-canon, including a couple of my favourite lines in a long, long time.
3) A Minute and a Second In New Theradane by Kantayra - A Year And A Day In Old Theradane - Every dictator falls eventually, even one as powerful and vengeful as Ivovandas. The Duchess Unseen finally completes the ultimate heist and unleashes a New Theradane, but to what end?
Instant headcanon for how the plot kicked off by canon had to end, not just a fitting ending but it feels like the only possible one.
And having read through the collection on many long journeys over the holidays, I have a few recs to add to those:
1) The Muppet Show feat. Special Guest Star Patrick O'Brian by Petra - Aubrey/Maturin series & The Muppet Show
You've heard of a naval captain dressed up as a bear? Well, get ready for a bear dressed up as a naval captain. There is also a weirdo, a pig, and a chicken. Such is life on the high seas Muppet Show.
Muppet crossovers are always fun and this one is the purest and most delightful crack - a whistle-stop tour of the silliest bits of the Aubreiad with added Muppetry.
2) Family, Found by ioanite - Calvin & Hobbes
During Calvin's first winter break back from college, his parents ask him to clean out his room. He tackles the task with less reluctance than he did when he was a kid, and in the process, stumbles across a familiar figure…
I’m not even a massive C&H fan but this is very, very sweet.
3) For the Love of Tea by fried_extracrispy_trenchcoat - Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Oh, what Arthur would do for a cup of tea…
Douglas Adams is very, very hard to write fic for and nearly everyone who tries, fails. This is one of the exceptions. Though the text adventure game brings back some horrific memories.
4) A Matter of Mettle by curtaincall - Lord Peter Wimsey
When one of the Cattery's typists fears that her sister is being defrauded by a motivational speaker of dubious rectitude, Miss Murchison is sent to investigate-but finds that she may not be the only one with a hidden agenda.
The Cattery are desperately underused in canon and this casefic is perfect - clearly very well-researched and exactly the sort of thing you’d hope Miss Climpson et al. are up to whilst Lord Peter isn’t asking anything particular of them. It properly works as a case too, as well as a slice of life.
5) Tea for Two by Beatrice_Otter - Lord Peter Wimsey
"I was complaining to my brother about how few friends I had, and he suggested that you might be an interesting person to know.” After Harriet is exonerated, she and Mary Wimsey meet for tea.
The first of two Lady Mary fics to two different prompts, both of which I loved. Harriet is notably less spiky in this than I imagine her being at that stage in canon, but it works for her.
6) The Company of Women by pensnest - Lord Peter Wimsey
Peter has many calls upon his time, but Harriet is able to fill his absence with female companionship. The Dowager Duchess is decorating, and Lady Mary has opinions about many things.
I am an absolute sucker for anything with Honoria Lucasta in it, this included - and it’s a very rare fic that acknowledges our favourite scatty old dowager has actual real flaws and can make terrible mistakes (other than marrying Gerald the elder). Some great exchanges between Harriet and Mary about the travails of being married to men who get into a great deal of danger then cause people to be executed.
7) The Future in the Instant by Assimbya - MacBeth
Lady Macbeth makes a choice. Canon divergence AU, set before 3.1.
Manages the almost impossible feat of giving the MacBeths something resembling a prospect of a happy ending without making them into different people. Though not very happy for e.g. Malcolm I think, nor perhaps for Scotland.
8) Cabin Pressure by htbthomas - Only Murders in the Building
Trapped on a private jet is definitely not the best place to find out Oliver and Charles' new relationship status.
Regrettably, this is not a John Finnemore crossover. Someone should write that, I have a horrid feeling the someone in question might be me. What it is, is very, very funny. Could be a missing chunk of an episode, if the network were just slightly braver.
9) Work-Life Balance by Philomytha - Rivers of London
The breach of the peace began in the traditional English woodland at Kew Gardens at a quarter to four in the afternoon on the first of May when the morris side 'Queens of May' struck up a dance called Princess Royal and invited the crowd of bewildered tourists to join in.
One of my favourite authors, one of my favourite series, casefic and Morris dancing. My cup runneth over. Clever and sweet and hilarious. I always knew there was something suspicious about folk musicians.
10) the architecture of the minotaur's heart by giallos - Saltburn
Saltburn demanded a sacrifice.
I so wanted to love the movie (not only because having done a show with the director is my best theatrical claim to fame). I did not love it. This more Gothic-horror version would have been a much better second half.
11) Wherein We Actually Say a Great Deal About the Dog by oddegg - Three Men In A Boat
A SIDE ADVENTURE – TUMULTUOUS ROMANTIC HISTORY OF MONTMORENCY – THE MANY SISTERS OF HARRIS – MALIGNING OF LAND NAVIGATION ABILITIES OF GEORGE – AN ENCOUNTER WITH RURAL TYKES – MALIGNING OF NEIGHBOUR OF J – A WAY FOUND – VINDICATION OF NEIGHBOUR OF J
Farce, holiday misadventures, and a bit with a dog. What’s not to love?
12) A Matter of Definition by Nomad (nomadicwriter) - Yes Minister
Early on in his time at the DAA, Jim attempts to pin down some important details about the department he now runs. Such as what it is that it actually does…
This is annoying as I have had this exact idea and executed it much less well. Not a lost Season 1 script but it easily could be.
Dear Yuletide writer,
It’s that time of year again…
Thank you for doing this. I still can’t quite believe Yuletide happens and works every year, it feels like it’s wandered over from a more agreeably cooperative world where *flails* all of all this isn’t happening.
I tend to chuck in a few potential plot bunnies by way of potential inspiration and to give you a sense of what sort of things interest me about the fandom and characters - use or ignore entirely as you will.
General likes:
Plot. Worldbuilding. Casefic. Melodrama. Keeping your head whilst all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. Competence porn. Costume porn. Actual porn. Humour. Farce. Epistolary. Wordplay. Swordplay.
General Do Not Want:
Explicit slash
Non-con
Tight focus on babies/pregnancy (OK, not such a problem for some of these)
Addiction plots front and center - like I know there are addicts in I think all of these canons, and that's fine, but I don't want a whole story about it.
RL contemporary politics - I know I’ve got a couple of fandoms here that are quite ‘political’ and I don’t think the characters deserve to have to deal with Trump, Brexit, Covid etc., much less the horrors in the Middle East.
A year and a day in Old Theradane - Scott Lynch
Any character
Available legally for free here: https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/a-year-and-a-day-in-old-theradane/. Even if we didn’t match on this, it’s short and accessible enough you might want to take a look at it anyway, I think there’s plenty for a Sarah Caudwell or John M. Ford fan in there.
This story is such a tiny glimpse of such a great fantasy setting that there’s amazing scope for anything you want to do and I’ll love all of it. I’m interested in the place of magic in the world, there’s a pretty heavy layer of magitek in there, an almost Discworld feeling of being right on the edge of an industrial revolution powered by minor wizardry. Maybe one that’s going to swallow the Parliament of Strife whole, if the gang don’t get it first. I also wonder how the rest of the world thinks of the crazy wizards poking holes in the fabric of spacetime.
I dearly love a good heist, but totally understand that they are very very hard to write and not everyone's cup of tea.
Some plot bunnies:
Backstory with one of the heists referenced in canon - or one you made up.
What happens if and when the gang actually win and suddenly the wizards aren’t ru[i/n]ning Theradane any more?
Or if the “sanctuary in reverse” thing works out and the gang have to start again, again? This has crossover potential into vaguely compatible settings if e.g. they buy their way into Lankhmar, Camorr, Lystourel … King’s Landing or Ankh-Morpork might be harder but I can see it?
Any worldbuilding around the economy/politics/history of Theradane. Shraplin’s not in the tagset but his emancipation is a lovely touch, let’s have the glory days of the Automaton Rights movement, or their revival?
Hilary Tamar Mysteries
One or more of:
Hilary Tamar
Julia Larwood
This is one of those canons where what I really want is more-of. I love Hilary’s narrative voice, I love the knots our heroes tie themselves with the red herrings and wrong genre savviness, and particularly any and all appearances by Julia where she gets to be her gloriously chaotic and occasionally surprisingly competent self (perish the thought that I might have a Julia in my own life, love ya T., never change).
Plot bunnies:
Hilary’s gender is never overtly specified, though I think it’s a bit difficult to read them as female given the setting, period, and the way they relate to the boys. That said, difficult is not impossible and I’ve never seen anyone write an explicitly female / nonbinary Hilary that I can recall.
Julia and Cantrip’s serial thriller being published. The reactions of the publisher’s legal reader, who of course would be someone who has daydreams about achieving the professional eminence these two clowns take totally for granted?
We very seldom see these barristers in court; some courtroom antics (especially if for sadistic reasons they’re way out of their professional comfort zone) would be fun.
Hilary being forced to do some actual work?
House of Cards (UK)
One or more of:
Francis Urquhart
The King
Tim Stamper
Oh for those more innocent days when if the PM’s family were caught insider-trading he would be expected to resign, the suggestion the government had connived at starting a small war would destroy the PM’s reputation, and blackmailing closeted politicians was portrayed as wrong even if they had awful politics. Really it only seems to be FU preventing the BBC version of 1990s England being a utopia [/s]. Though he’s a pretty big obstacle.
I think there’s a bit of a contradiction in what FU wants to do in power in S2-3; he wants to preserve everything in aspic the way it was in his youth, but on another level he gets bored and makes things happen almost for the hell of it, he can’t help keeping poking away when he could just leave well enough alone and stay peacefully on top. But then there wouldn’t be a plot, would there? And it’s very Richard III. Stamper has a bit of the same bug, I think - he wants so much to be FU (even more, I think, than he wants to fuck him, though probably that too) and he’s probably not quite sure why, or what he’d do if he ever became the dog that caught the car.
Come to think of it, there’s a plotbunny - the FU version of the Richard III Society. After all his misdeeds are public knowledge, some people will still argue that he was completely and totally in the right or at worst the lesser evil, not just his politics but personally… how, and why, and what do the survivors (including the ex-King) make of it? FU’s England will have avoided some of the real-life catastrophes of his chronologically-impossible reign (he serves 12 years as PM between 1991/2 and about 1998) and had some other, probably worse ones instead.
It’s noticeable that whilst FU tells us all the thinly-veiled caricatures of the potential Thatcher successors in S1 are bad people (except Collingridge who’s just weak), they don’t really do anything onscreen to justify that interpretation - we’re supposed to just supply that from their models’ general IRL unpopularity. Woolton’s having an affair with a much younger woman but that’s about the worst of it, and it’s Roger, not him, who makes skeevy remarks about her race. I don’t think FU sees anything particularly evil about racism, or xenophobia, or exhibitionism, he just thinks it’s déclassé to show them publicly.
What is the King up to by the time of The Final Cut? I’d quite like to see how he handles life post-abdication; is FU right that he’ll be irrelevant in politics, does he take it lying down or want to find out for himself?
Or give me a day in the life of the Urquhart administration when there’s no earth-shaking constitutional shenanigans going on.
Or throw an outside-context crossover at them - they can deal with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, wizards, first contact, etc.
The Dragon Waiting (John M. Ford)
Any Character
I really do mean any character here - don’t feel limited to the ones in the tagset; if you want to write about Margaret of Anjou, or Lorenzo de Medici, or everyone’s favourite freelance gunner Gregory, or those usurping Palaeologi, feel absolutely free.
I feel like on every page there’s another story that could spin off and be just as interesting as the main one, whether that’s vampirism as early-Renaissance AIDS metaphor, the life of a mercenary captain in the Space-Filling Byzantine Empire, any kind of shenanigans at the overstuffed “French” court (what a gorgeous setting for, well, anything), young Richard III in the bizarro Wars of the Roses, Owain Glyndwr calling spirits from the vasty deep with some expectation they’ll actually turn up (OK I admit it my sense of the Wars of the Roses owes more to Shakespeare than scholarship, OK hang on, TDW!Shakespeare?), Gregory and Hywel riding off into the sunset to fight the Empire somewhere else, and somewhere else after that, and so on until the Empire finally gets lucky…
Dear mystery author, Thank you for signing up, thank you for writing, whatever you give me will be deeply welcomed and appreciated. I apologise for whatever DW has done to the formatting of this post, it has gone completely kerflooey and I can't sort it out.
General likes:
Plot. Worldbuilding. Casefic. Melodrama. Keeping your head whilst all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. Competence porn. Costume porn. Actual porn. Humour. Farce. Epistolary. Wordplay. Swordplay.
General Do Not Want:
Explicit slash
Non-con
Tight focus on babies/pregnancy (OK, not such a problem for some of these)
Addiction plots front and center
Contemporary politics - obviously RoL is set in 2010s London including its political situation, and anything about rebellion and insurgency is going to resonate with the current situation in the Middle East, but I deal with both of those every day, more of either is not what I need right now.
Rivers of London:
Fanfiction; In-Universe Meta I kind of love how well the masquerade works in RoL and anything about how the demi-monde and beyond manages to exist in the real world, or how anyone in particular handles The Reveal, will be absolute catnip to me. What stories do people tell themselves to enable them to get along in 2010s London? How, if at all, will the magic-users of the rest of the world react to a Reveal which in canon will presumably start in London and involve at least Peter in a fairly central role (though come to think of it, making our beloved heroes react to magic being unveiled somewhere else first would be cool)?
Star Wars:
WB: Organizing an alliance made of rebels (SW:OT); WB: Imperial defectors in the Rebellion (SW:OT); WB: Different Rebel factions and ideologies (SW:OT); WB: Structure and logistics of the Rebellion (SWOT); WB: Day to day life on a Rebel base (SWOT); WB: Alderaan’s role in the Rebellion (SWOT)
Leia Organa (SWOT); Mon Mothma (SW:OT); Any or No Characters (Star Wars Original Trilogy)
Fanfiction; In-Universe Meta
So in light of <flails at last 23 years' global politics>, how do you be an effective rebel against the Empire and keep your soul (or not)? What does that do to your daily life, how you relate to people with different answers? Andor suggested some of these questions and answered some of them, but a fairly narrow and TV-friendly perspective. It's a big galaxy out there!WB: Women in the Bastard's Order (Chalion); WB: The White God's Seminary at Rosehall (Chalion); WB: Men in the Mother's Order (Chalion); WB: Women in the Son's Order (Chalion); WB: How Demons View Each Other (Chalion)
Any or No Characters (Chalion Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold); Penric kin Jurald; Desdemona (Chalion)
Fanfiction; In-Universe Meta
I adore the theology in this series and the Penric novellas have made it even better. It's a very humane theology, which as I am a horrible cynical person does mean I occasionally have flashes of wondering how it could be abused - but life is depressing enough already without getting too deep into that. On the different orders and how they work, I'd love to see someone try to make the Quadrenes make sense - like obviously their original portrayal is very hard not to see as a racist caricature of Al-Andalus but in-universe they do manage to function, apparently pretty well, despite their theology being objectively and demonstrably Wrong. Alternatively, how do you train divines of the Bastard's Order? It must be like herding cats; having spent enough time herding both regular academics and Christian seminarians, the job of head of the White God's seminary sounds like a gloriously nightmarish undertaking.
Vorkosigan Saga:
WB: Cetagandan Occupation (Vorkosigan Saga); WB: Stories about Earth during the Time of Isolation (Vorkosigan Saga); WB: Betan Viewpoints on Cordelia (Vorkosigan Saga); WB: Galactic politics and Barrayar (Vorkosigan Saga); WB: Blending traditional and modern (Vorkosigan Saga); WB: Yuri Vorbarra's Civil War (Vorkosigan Saga); WB: Who Re-Discovered Barrayar (Vorkosigan Saga); WB: Dorca's Conquest of Barrayar (Vorkosigan Saga)
Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan; Ezar Vorbarra; Piotr Pierre Vorkosigan; Olivia Vorbarra Vorkosigan; Dorca Vorbarra; Any or No Characters (Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold)
Fanfiction; In-Universe Meta
I adore the whole series, anything that springs to mind in any of those areas will be joyous. I'd be particularly interested in that brief, shining moment after the Rediscovery and before the Cetagandans turn up - what might have been without the Occupation, how Dorca was getting on managing the transition in an unprecedentedly peaceful time. The timeline has some fairly large holes in, in particular I can't work out how much of the cod-Stalinist setup we see Ezar ending at the end of Shards is how Dorca intended to deal with things and how much is post-Occupation (or a holdover from the Ceta puppet regime). Dorca, after all, is The Just, not 'The Good' or 'The Reasonable'.
Dear Yuletide writer,
Gosh, I haven’t written one of these in quite some time. 2016 I think was the last. Feels good to be back.
Thank you for doing this. I still can’t quite believe Yuletide happens and works every year, it feels like it’s wandered over from a more agreeably cooperative world where *flails* all of all this isn’t happening.
AO3 currently won’t let me update my requests so this is more comprehensive / thought-through than my Optional Details there, and takes precedence (bearing in mind that Optional Details Are, of course, Optional). I tend to chuck in a few potential plot bunnies by way of potential inspiration and to give you a sense of what sort of things interest me about the fandom and characters - use or ignore entirely as you will.
General likes:
Plot. Worldbuilding. Casefic. Melodrama. Keeping your head whilst all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. Competence porn. Costume porn. Actual porn. Humour. Farce. Epistolary. Wordplay. Swordplay.
I note I have only requested 2 female characters. This is due to the tagset and I’m slightly disappointed by it. Please do feel free to add in any of the awesome women from any of these fandoms who have unaccountably failed to attract nominations.
General Do Not Want:
Explicit slash
Non-con
Tight focus on babies/pregnancy (OK, not such a problem for some of these)
Addiction plots front and center - like I know there are addicts in I think all of these canons, and that's fine but I don't want a whole story about it.
Gentlemen Bastards Sequence - Scott Lynch
Any of:
Locke Lamora
Galdo Sanza
I dearly love a good heist, but totally understand that they are very very hard to write and not everyone's cup of tea.
For me the joy of this series and fandom is managing to absolutely commit and lean in to both “I steal because it’s heaps of fucking fun” and “I promise you a death-offering, brothers. I promise you an offering that will make the gods take notice. An offering in blood and gold and fire.” Sometimes both at the same time.
I really like the glimpses of Camorri religion we get, both the Nameless 13th and Aza Guilia (who if she exists is totally enjoying Jean's shenanigans).
Some plot bunnies:
Perhaps more of the boys' training trips after the one in Republic of Thieves?
The Bastards left behind when one is off having special lessons?
An AU where whatever Chains' plans were for the Bastards get fulfilled, "a ballista bolt through the fucking heart of the Secret Peace" without Capa Raza getting there first?
I have to admit I find maudlin!Locke slightly hard work but I did request him and the Twins, so some reminiscing (perhaps with hints of the future?) would not be amiss.
I also have a nagging feeling there was a reference somewhere in LLL to the Sanzas and Jean trying to actually plan something without Locke… I bet that went hilariously.
Cruel Intentions (1999)
Either of:
Sebastian Valmont
Kathryn Merteuil
These two are such a compelling pair, and in a way I think they might be more interesting trying to fill the gap they leave in each other's lives (no, not like that you filthy thing, unless you want it to be like that in which case by all means, pray continue).
Plot bunnies:
The sequel that would have happened if the producers could have afforded SMG?
How does Kathryn rebuild after staying out of jail (or not - prison epistolary fic?)
Either or both of them having to cope with not being rich any more?
If you know the novel or any of the stage adaptations of Dangerous Liaisons, your favourite bit that didn't make it into the movie?
Music - I’m never quite sure which bits of the soundtrack are diegetic, but let’s assume for Sebastian at least most of it is and whilst it suits the movie splendidly and I love it, I’m not sure how well it matches up with him?.
Oh, and I love the car, a cameo for the car would be very pleasing.
Alex Stern
Darlington
Pamela Dawes
Anything about Lethe and these two and their relationship with it will delight and overjoy me. As will any wider worldbuilding-type stuff - if anyone knows what organised magic looks like outside Yale, it's probably Pamela.
Darlington's stretch as Dante is such obvious fodder for fic that suggesting it as a prompt feels a bit of a cheat.
Any slice of life with Lethe working "as it's supposed to"? I feel like we got into the main plot so quickly in Ninth House that we sort of missed how interesting and cool the status quo was. Or hell, just Darlington being a normal student, he's supposed to be able to do that isn't he? He reminds me of that quote from Gibbon's autobiography about getting to Oxford with "an ignorance that would have shamed a schoolboy and a stock of erudition that would have puzzled a doctor" - like he's a genius in some areas but basically an autodidact, and in others he's presumably pretty ignorant. Not your average Yalie.
Yes Minister
Any Character
Give me a day in the Ministerial office, or maybe a fusion with Jim and Sir Humphrey in charge of the institution of your choice, whether that's USS Enterprise or Cambridge University (though whatever it is, I think they have to continue to be very British and institutionalised).
Or throw an outside-context crossover at the Department of Administrative Affairs - they can deal with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, wizards, first contact, etc.
If you're a politics geek, I always wondered what an election would look like on the show. I suspect Sir Humphrey regards purdah (oh, sorry, the pre-election restricted period) as something provided by a just and merciful God to reward Civil Servants.
The Hacker-develops-a-conscience episodes are all great (and ‘The Whisky Priest’ a rare good bit for Anne); I wonder what it would look like if Sir Humphrey developed one?
I think I would rather not have any contemporary politics in this setting - Hacker does not deserve to have to deal with Trump, Sunak et al. Much less Covid or the horrors in Israel and Palestine. Show-era RL politics is definitely fine though.
I also find the idea of any romance between the three principals either silly (Hacker/Sir Humphrey) or downright squicky (either/Bernard).
NB - AO3 and Yuletide are occasionally inconsistent about whether Yes Prime Minister is the same fandom or not. As far as I’m concerned it obviously is and if you want to write something with Hacker as PM, please do! I am not, however, a fan of the stage shows or the 2013 revival.
Aspects - John M. Ford
Any Character
I hardly know what to request here because it's such a tiny fragment of such a glorious, rich world that never got even close to finished. If you have the vision and gumption to take it on, I place myself entirely in your hands. There are so many mysteries left to resolve in the main plot and such a huge, awesome sandbox to play in. Go wild.
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aedh, via tree_and_leaf .Stolen from legionseagle who has also given me the topics
1. Comment on this entry saying Rhubarb!, and I'll pick three things from your profile interests or tags.
2.Write about the words/phrases I picked in your journal and link back here. Spread the love.
legionseagle 
timeasmymeasure
