Dear Yuletide Writer (2017)
Sep. 27th, 2017 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scioscribeThank you so much for writing for me! Yuletide is my favorite time of year to be a fan--I love the excitement and the generosity of spirit and, obviously, my ability to suddenly find fic for obscure micro-fandoms. I hope you find something here that’s of interest to you, but you’ve already delighted me by wanting to write one of these fandoms at all. ODAO, so feel free to go your own way on this and disregard anything here that’s not helpful to you. And again, thanks, and I hope you have a wonderful Yuletide. If you want to get a general sense of me, I’m scioscribe on Tumblr and on AO3.
Likes
enemies-to-lovers, enemies-to-friends, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, opposites attract, conflicting worldviews and priorities, emotional vulnerability, hurt/comfort, emotional hurt/comfort, fix-its, sympathetic bad guys/terrible people with moments of goodness or vulnerability, redemption, pining, obvious feelings that don’t quite get admitted to, unconventional gestures of affection, partnerships, power dynamics, ambiguously intense relationships, found family, first-time stories, betrayal with reconciliation, character death, amnesia, characters forced to cooperate, forced proximity, bedsharing, huddling/cuddling for warmth, 5 + 1 fics, slow-burns, fake/pretend relationship, arranged marriage/marriage of convenience, power couples, worldbuilding, magical realism, undercover work, loyalty, complicated relationships, codependency, morally gray characters, moral complexity, long relationships that go through a lot of changes, canon-divergence AUs
Historical- and canon-typical language, violence, attitudes, and darkness-levels all okay to include.
Sex Likes/Kinks
BDSM, spanking (including breasts, thighs, and pussy), clothed sex, wall-sex, rough sex, dubcon/consent play/ambiguous consent, teasing, anal play/sex, oral sex, frottage, fingering, gags, dirty talk, hand and finger kink, nipple play, characters giving orders/instructions, roleplay, talking during sex, emotional sex, enthusiastic sex, tenderness, bad/awkward sex (either charmingly funny or depressing), coming untouched, coming in pants, exhibitionism, collaring, people getting mussed, orgasm delay/denial, overstimulation, edging, begging, historical period- or location-specific sex, sex toys, praise kink, marking/bruising/biting
DNW
explicit sex for characters under sixteen, ageplay, modern AUs, mundane AUs, hospitalization, knotting, scat, vore, sex scenes for BoJack Horseman
BoJack Horseman: Beatrice Horseman, Honey Sugarman
Season four: the season of having emotions about horse families. I would be happy with a story featuring either Beatrice or Honey; you don’t have to worry about fitting in both if your idea tends more towards one than the other.
I love some of the tragic, dark, and poignant routes the show takes; I love the satire, the background jokes (the banners!), and the fun of all the animal-related worldbuilding (like Beatrice doing dressage at her debutante coming-out party). I like the way the characters fuck up badly, hurt each other, and ruin their own lives, and do it all while still being sympathetic and recognizably human (or equine, in this case). So I am all here for sad horses making bad choices, suffering personal devastation, and/or failing to connect with the people they love.
Prompts
* To start off bleak, I would love anything that deals with Honey after her lobotomy, especially from her perspective--her confusion, her disorganized memories, her continued deep emotion, her struggle to connect with and parent her daughter, her (extremely troubled) relationship with her husband, her grief over Crackerjack. I’m good with either a realistic portrayal or one that uses more poetic license (similar to how the show portrays Beatrice’s eventual dementia). How do Beatrice and Honey continue to try to love each other, and show that love? (Maybe something set around the time of Beatrice’s debut?) Or do they pull away from each other, disconcerted or adrift in memories?
* And there are so many similar things I would love to see with Beatrice. Her perspective on some missing scene that happened while she was staying with BoJack and Hollyhock? The complicated, awful relationship between her affection for Hollyhock and her drugging of her? Or something focused on her relationship with BoJack, like the disconnect between how she treats him and how she thinks and talks of him when he’s not there (wanting to give him the painting, liking to watch his show)? What are some of their few good moments together over the years? What’s a time that he hurt her, even if he didn’t realize it?
* We see a little bit of happiness between Beatrice and Butterscotch before things go horribly wrong, and I would love to stop in at any point along that continuum, whether it’s in their honeymoon phase, during the time when they’re souring on each other but haven’t committed to hating each other, or during the period of domestic Cold War.
* Happy, painful, or bittersweet: this is a fandom and a set of characters where I’d really love seeing a five-things style fic about alternate Sugarman/Horseman possibilities, checking in on them if Honey hadn’t married Joseph, if Crackerjack hadn’t died, if Honey hadn’t been lobotomized, if Beatrice had taken BoJack and left Butterscotch, if Honey had taken Beatrice and left Joseph, if Beatrice had separated herself completely from her father, and so on, in any direction. Are there any ways that could have worked out in favor of them being happy? In favor of Beatrice and Honey having a good relationship? BoJack and Beatrice? If you want to bring in the rest of the cast, I love them all, and I also love seeing spread-out consequences of canon-divergences, whether they’re wacky (Beatrice becomes fully estranged from her father and somehow that leads to Todd being governor?) or poignant (BoJack doing Ibsen).
* And I also just love the show’s worldbuilding and would love to dive into the world of the horses, so I would just be delighted to see anything involving races, dressage, snooty Lipizzaners, patrician horses looking down on mules, the wild horses in the desert, etc., and Beatrice and/or Honey interacting with those things.
The Chronicles of Prydain: Eilonwy
I had a wonderful time rereading this series over the summer. These books really resonate with me: grand adventures but also a sense of the cost of those adventures, a very real feeling of growing up and dealing with disappointment and shame as well as success, mercy and sympathy, leadership, and an appreciation of craft are all here, and I love them. And I want to see Eilonwy experiencing and dealing with all those things to get center-stage, in part because I had somehow misremembered The Castle of Llyr as being “the Eilonwy book” that dealt entirely with her adventures. So I’m left missing the Eilonwy stories that could have been and would be delighted to get a glimpse of them.
I love Eilonwy: her penchant for unusual but often apt similes, her tartness, her loyalty, her determination to be included, her matter-of-fact use of strategies both social and martial. And while I’m perfectly happy with Eilonwy on her own, or with OCs, I also love her canon relationships and her general sense of camaraderie, so feel free to include or not include as you wish.
Prompts
* Eilonwy on Mona, learning about needlework and politics and very definitely liking the latter more than the former. Queen Teleria teaching her how to politely outmaneuver people to get her own way! Embroidery lessons with the court ladies she seems to find exasperating! Is she lonely? Epistolary fic as her letters back to Caer Dallben during this time would also be cool.
* Canon-divergence where she continues to study enchantment from Achren, either as her ward or through visits to Caer Dallben’s scullery while Achren is there. I’d prefer no full-on Dark Eilonwy, but I’d love to see her being tempted or struggling and making bad, potentially harmful decisions--she is, after all, llearning about her power from someone with very few scruples regarding how its used. I would also just love to see her interacting more with her “aunt” and seeing some kind of connection--prickly and ambivalent, but potentially deep--develop between them.
* Eilonwy Wanderer, maybe in some kind of imagined pause before The High King? I’d love to see her roaming Prydain, trying out different interests and vocations and making new connections (and although I love Eilonwy/Taran, it would be great to see her having an f/f flirtation/fling in there somewhere). I love coming-of-age and self-discovery stories.
* Eilonwy as queen! I’d love anything from “an ordinary day in the life”--planning a banquet, dealing with petitioners, etc.--to her handling crisis or war. Or, given how much time Gwydion spent roaming around Prydain and Fflewdur’s habit of disappearing from his kingdom for months at a time, what about Eilonwy taking up a quest of her own once she’s an adult and a monarch?
* If Eilonwy’s journeying, I’m also always happy to see a kind of classic Lloyd Alexander side-adventure, with her encountering a strange problem or threat and resolving it, learning something about herself--good, bad, or neutral--in the process. What would be her equivalent of Taran’s time with Craddoc, leading to her having to recognize some bitter truth about herself and move on from that? Or what little village would she become a heroine to by virtue of fixing some kind of odd problem?
* Feel free to add in other characters to any of these (or to any other idea). Eilonwy hanging out with Rhun while she’s on Mona, and conspiring with him to escape certain ceremonial obligations? Eilonwy getting used to Caer Dallben and assuming control of its scullery, complete with her interacting with Dallben and Coll? Running into Fflewddur or Gwydion while journeying? Shipfic is also great, and I could go for Eilonwy/Taran (I’m especially interested in seeing them getting used to being married to each other), Eilonwy/Rhun, Eilonwy/OFC, or--if you wanted to do a crossover--Eilonwy/Susan Pevensie, Eilonwy/Aravis, or Eilonwy/Keladry of Mindelan.
* If you're here from Femslash Festivus, I'm throwing in some additional prompts for those crossover pairings! I love arranged marriages and marriages of convenience, so an alliance between fantasy kingdoms cemented by an Eilonwy marriage would be awesome. Ditto any adventuring, in either fandom, or love letters passed between worlds/countries! Would Kel sometimes take Eilonwy with her on trips? I could just see them in co-command of an outpost. And I love bodyguard tropes, so the two of them meeting through Kel being assigned to protect Eilonwy while she's on a diplomatic trip would be great! For Eilonwy/Susan, I love the idea of weird culture clashes between fantasy-England and fantasy-Wales, and between Susan's status as a queen of a major kingdom and Eilonwy's as princess of a tiny, backwater realm. Or how does Susan respond to Eilonwy's magic, when most of the sorceresses she's known have been nothing but trouble? Or do they meet when Achren breaks into Narnia/forges a pact with Jadis or the White Witch? For Eilonwy/Aravis, I also love the culture clashing (there's a more significant difference between their respective kingdoms, and one of them would have to make a choice about giving up their home), and maybe a little bit of a rockier relationship evolution. Does Aravis have trouble taking her seriously at first? Do they fall in love on a road trip through Calormen?
The Dark Tower: Susan Delgado
This series is such a fic goldmine--I can’t really think of a corner of it I don’t want to see explored. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Susan: her relationship with her aunt, the pleasure and independence that she’s having taken away from her just as she’s coming into it, her whirlwind romance with Roland, her bravery, and all the possibilities she could have had. And she comes with a great dose of Mid-World worldbuilding, from Maerlyn’s Rainbow to gilly-girls to charyou tree. I loved getting that longer look at Roland’s world before it (completely) moved on.
I’m requesting just Susan because I want her as the focus, but I love this tagset and would be happy to see Susan interacting with anyone in it, so even if I don’t have specific prompts for them, feel totally free to include as you like. I ship Susan/Roland, Susan/Cuthbert, Susan/Susannah, Susan/Eddie/Susannah, and Susan/Eddie/Susannah/Roland. And ambiguous, fucked-up Susan/Man in Black.
Prompts
* What if--for whatever reason or according to whatever twist of circumstances you like--Roland died in Mejis instead of Susan? I would absolutely love to see any part of an aftermath to this. Susan journeying back to Gilead with Cuthbert and Alain to tell Roland’s parents of his death? Is she pregnant, and if so, how does she feel about that? Does she want to become a lady of Gilead? Would it be possible for her to become, however unconventionally, a gunslinger? Or could she make a getaway with Olive Thorin and Sheemie and try to live peacefully somewhere else, with the world getting ever stranger around them? Does she go off alone and steal/raise horses and have adventures?
* Any kind of fix-it AU that has Susan questing for the Tower. Susan and Roland, power couple, trying to stop the world from falling apart? Susan getting to interact with Susannah, Eddie, and Jake, whether it’s her in Roland’s place in a Roland-dies situation or her and Roland together. How does her presence change the ka-tet’s dynamics? What is she like as a fish out of water in New York? What are her interactions with the man in black like, when he doesn’t have all the history with her that he does with Roland? It would be awesome to see any of their adventures, whether as a twist on something from the books or as something entirely new.
* I’m really interested in Susan’s relationship with Aunt Cordelia: that cocktail of tension, bitterness, envy, loyalty, and obligation. It would be great to see anything that dealt with the two of them. What were things like between them before Susan’s father died? How did Cordelia first make the arrangements with Thorin? Is there any scenario in which Cordelia would have come to her senses and gotten Susan out of Mejis before everything went to hell? Or just any scene in their history together, whether it’s a relatively sweet one or something far more doom-laden, full of bad faith and missed chances?
* What if Roland had never come to Mejis and Susan had fulfilled her obligation with Thorin? Would she have been able to build a friendship of sorts with Olive, and raise the Thorin heir more with her than with the mayor? What would her position in society have been like? How would her relationship with Cordelia change? Would Cordelia feel guilty, superior, smug, ashamed? What would it be like when she got to walk away from all that and resume running the ranch and raising horses, knowing her child was somewhere else?
* And yet another AU! What if Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain had come to Mejis before Susan made her contract with Thorin? How would things have gone if either Roland or Cuthbert (because Susan did say she might have loved him if she’d met him first) had had the chance to court her openly? I’d love to see her going back to Gilead with them and just diving more into Arthurian-society-with-guns.
Only Ever Yours: megan
I love dystopian novels where the revolution never comes because I’m fascinated by how people survive in terrible, restrictive societies and how they continue to have lives within them. One of my favorite things about Only Ever Yours is that even as unrelentingly dark as the world is, O’Neill provides just enough detail that we can see how some people are able to live lives they would describe as happy, even if we can see they’re horrific. Darwin’s mother remembers her friend fondly enough to have his son bring her a letter even though they can never meet again. The chastities have full net access and can learn and pursue interests. The girls who become concubines are delighted to get the chance to continue to live with their friends.
No one manages the awfulness of their world better than megan—but she’s spent her whole life mastering one very particular and very defined social environment, and at the end of the novel, she’s moving into an entirely new one. She’s “married” to a boy who dislikes her and whose social standing is dependent upon the patronage of his demanding and abusive father. She’s been trying to win, but what happens after she does? What is her life like once she has everything she ostensibly wanted? I’m really interested in what happens to the perfect winner and survivor once the nature of the competition has radically changed, and what happens to the “high school bully” after she grows up.
Prompts
* If you want to include Darwin, what is the megan/Darwin marriage like? Incredibly bleak and unhappy, occasionally bittersweet, eventually surprisingly amiable? Does he continue to visit brothels, and if so, how does she feel about it? They offer an especially dark and riveting take on arranged marriages that gives high-stakes drama to the smallest of romantic or sexual interactions, so any look at the process of them becoming more familiar and intimate with each other, whether they end up liking each other or not, would be great.
* Social standing and worldbuilding! How does megan, the queen of the School, fare in the adult world of the companions? What’s her daily life like? Does she have any friends, or does the competition remain cutthroat even after the “victory” of being chosen? What are her obligations as Darwin’s companion?
* Nightmarish pregnancy/fertility scenarios. Is the pressure on immediately for her to start having sons? What is she like as a mother and how does she think of her children? Or does all her Machiavellian scheming hit a wall when she and Darwin have trouble conceiving? Would she risk a discreet affair in case she might have better luck with someone else? If there are no children, will she be put aside sooner, or even sent to the basement?
* How does she deal with the Judge? Play the obliging, charming daughter-in-law? Gradually grow defensive of Darwin? Given what we see with the Father and isabel, it would be utterly unsurprising if the Judge pressured Darwin to choose megan because he wanted access to her himself; given how cutthroat she can be, it would also be unsurprising if she welcomed that or even pursued it on her own. If so, does she find it damaging, whether or not she’s capable of recognizing that? Or is she just a winner in search of another winner?
* megan is unapologetically vicious throughout the whole novel, but she’s also a seventeen year-old locked in a competition that will determine the rest of her life. She’ll die young, but she’ll grow up a little first, and I’d love to check in on her as she matures, whether she begins to develop regrets and a conscience or just responds to different challenges. Does she ever look back on what happened with freida and isabel and feel differently about it?
Underworld USA: Kemper Boyd, Ward Littell
The great love story of American Tabloid, my favorite Ellroy novel. The book has his typical combination of brutality of empathy, and I love how it gets down into the mud and blood of its secret history. It has grandeur--tragedy, betrayal, assassination--and pettiness--ordinary incompetence, corruption, and hustling. I love its massively flawed protagonists. I can never get enough of Characters Who Do Genuinely Terrible Things but Also Have Moments of Loyalty or Tenderness, so Ellroy is obviously my kind of author.
I find the relationship between Kemper and Ward amazingly shippy. Endlessly charismatic quadruple-agent out for himself in a doomed friendship with a dweeby moral crusader with an emerging dark side? Sold. I love how everyone in the novel crushes on Kemper (“Kemper Boyd arrested me once, it was awesome”--Pete Bondurant, probably) and disdains Ward, while Kemper goes out of his way to do favors for Ward and emphasizes how great he thinks he is. Everything I adore about them as a ship also translates well to a friendship-only portrayal, if you prefer: there’s still the opposites attract spark, the eventual reversal in their stations, the combination of affection and judgment, the murder.
Prompts
* Any expansion on the early days of their partnership? The anecdotes about it open up some fascinating windows. How far does Kemper push Ward, and how far is Ward willing to be pushed? How do they open up to each other and get to know each other better? Is Ward disillusioned when he realizes all the shit Kemper pulls, or unsurprised, or even excited?
* Kemper’s undercover work and complicated gamesmanship of everyone is made for both drama and comedy. I’m completely up for awkward scenes of Kemper and Ward getting interrogated by Hoover when they both know they have secrets to hide, or for Ward having to play along with undercover work he doesn’t have all the details of. How do they help each other out, and when do they refuse to? And I’ll shoehorn in here that I love all forms of hurt/comfort, so injuries in the line of duty, identity slippage from undercover assignments, and bouts of depression are welcome.
* How does Ward respond to Kemper’s Jack Kennedy fixation, and how does Kemper respond to Ward’s Bobby fixation? Jealousy, amusement, concern? All three? What if there had been a confrontation between them when Kemper was minimizing contact with Ward when Ward was in his downward spiral? Or if Ward had reached out when Kemper was at his rock bottom? What might have happened if they’d run at the end? I’m always open to bittersweet fix-it fic.
* Some beloved shipfic and porn tropes that would hit a lot of my buttons for this pairing: undercover as gay/fake relationship/fake-out make-out, secret relationships, voyeurism, role play, BDSM with either character taking either role (control freak Ward wanting to express his distaste for Kemper’s amorality, Kemper wanting Ward to relax, Ward wanting to be punished to satisfy his own sense of guilt, both of them loving praise), 1950s sex toys, internalized homophobia, sex with paper-thin deniability (“oh, but we didn’t get undressed,” “but it didn’t go all the way,” “but we didn’t kiss”), and clothes/suit porn.
You’re the Worst: Gretchen Cutler, Lindsay Jillian
My most beloved style of romance is “assholes in love.” You’re the Worst provides a wonderful canon version with Gretchen/Jimmy, and I would love to see fic fulfill my deep-seated desire for Gretchen/Lindsay. I love their petty awfulness and garbage-monster behavior, from the abuse of a froyo sample policy to an attempted turkey-baster baby-trap. They have the potential for great dramatic tension, with Gretchen trying at least a little to grow and change and Lindsay mostly being content to wallow (until they veer towards switching roles), and they also have a great, long history. I really loved Lindsay comforting Gretchen during her season two depression and being the person she turns to when nothing else in her life is working. Even when Lindsay is oblivious and Gretchen is witheringly sarcastic, there’s a genuine warmth and affection between them. Also, they’re both incredibly hot. Porn is more than welcome.
(I do like Jimmy, so I’d rather he not be any more “the worst” than these two—unless it’s immediately after the season three finale—but I’m fine with break-ups or them just having never dated in the first place.)
Prompts
* College days! Lindsay specifically mentions watching Gretchen deal with her depression back then, and it would be interesting and even touching to see how she first clued in and then tried to help. (Knowing Lindsay, probably with a combination of drugs and attempted magical healing sex.)
* Also backstory-related: when Gretchen talks about being a part of “Heather, Gretchen, Bernadette, Justine, and Corey,” she remembers it fondly, but Lindsay doesn’t so much (“Oh, yeah. I haven’t seen those basic hos in a minute.”) and they seem to have been Gretchen’s friends more than hers. How did Gretchen and Lindsay become friends, and was it before or after she had this group friendship? Did Lindsay drive a wedge in an established dynamic, or was she the old friend who got jealous over being temporarily ousted?
* What if Gretchen, feeling down after Becca’s wedding in the pilot, had gone home with Lindsay instead of Jimmy? (Lindsay can just… not be married to Paul, if you like, or else, in true You’re the Worst fashion, their divorce can be hastily ensured by Lindsay bringing Gretchen home for a boozy and torrid one-night stand with her husband literally right there.) Would they be able to connect romantically too? They both have mutual terribleness and shared fluctuating levels of conscience and regret. What would one of the show’s storylines look like filtered through them instead of Gretchen/Jimmy?
* An AU where Lindsay is one of Gretchen’s publicity clients, maybe a spoiled and ditzy former backup singer now trying to make it on her own? I have a weak spot for really tropey romance novel plots like this one, so free to take that admission to rewrite the most Harlequin of Harlequin scenarios, whatever you can think of, and I’ll probably eat it up with a spoon. Rich-Lindsay and personal assistant-Gretchen? Both of them as sugar baby hangers-on to rich guys who find themselves more and more interested in each other?
* Any kind of post-season three get-together fic, when they're both single and living together in a tiny apartment. What sets off a change in their relationship? Does Gretchen start to think of Lindsay in a different light when she sees her at work, competent for once? Does a fight over their mutual frustrations lead to one of them jumping the other's bones? I can just see Gretchen impulsively sleeping with Lindsay to get out of a conversation about why she's still not leaving the apartment, or seeing her as a slightly healthier alternative to doing some more crack. Basically, just all the simmering tension exploding into hot sex and feelings.
* Any of the above, with porn, or just porn, ideally with feelings mixed in. Oral? Strap-ons? Wild, wacky, and sometimes wildly successful experimentation with different positions and toys? Costumes? Dirty talk? Public sex? (Hooking up in season two's haunted house?) Anal? Some casual BDSM?
Likes
enemies-to-lovers, enemies-to-friends, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, opposites attract, conflicting worldviews and priorities, emotional vulnerability, hurt/comfort, emotional hurt/comfort, fix-its, sympathetic bad guys/terrible people with moments of goodness or vulnerability, redemption, pining, obvious feelings that don’t quite get admitted to, unconventional gestures of affection, partnerships, power dynamics, ambiguously intense relationships, found family, first-time stories, betrayal with reconciliation, character death, amnesia, characters forced to cooperate, forced proximity, bedsharing, huddling/cuddling for warmth, 5 + 1 fics, slow-burns, fake/pretend relationship, arranged marriage/marriage of convenience, power couples, worldbuilding, magical realism, undercover work, loyalty, complicated relationships, codependency, morally gray characters, moral complexity, long relationships that go through a lot of changes, canon-divergence AUs
Historical- and canon-typical language, violence, attitudes, and darkness-levels all okay to include.
Sex Likes/Kinks
BDSM, spanking (including breasts, thighs, and pussy), clothed sex, wall-sex, rough sex, dubcon/consent play/ambiguous consent, teasing, anal play/sex, oral sex, frottage, fingering, gags, dirty talk, hand and finger kink, nipple play, characters giving orders/instructions, roleplay, talking during sex, emotional sex, enthusiastic sex, tenderness, bad/awkward sex (either charmingly funny or depressing), coming untouched, coming in pants, exhibitionism, collaring, people getting mussed, orgasm delay/denial, overstimulation, edging, begging, historical period- or location-specific sex, sex toys, praise kink, marking/bruising/biting
DNW
explicit sex for characters under sixteen, ageplay, modern AUs, mundane AUs, hospitalization, knotting, scat, vore, sex scenes for BoJack Horseman
BoJack Horseman: Beatrice Horseman, Honey Sugarman
Season four: the season of having emotions about horse families. I would be happy with a story featuring either Beatrice or Honey; you don’t have to worry about fitting in both if your idea tends more towards one than the other.
I love some of the tragic, dark, and poignant routes the show takes; I love the satire, the background jokes (the banners!), and the fun of all the animal-related worldbuilding (like Beatrice doing dressage at her debutante coming-out party). I like the way the characters fuck up badly, hurt each other, and ruin their own lives, and do it all while still being sympathetic and recognizably human (or equine, in this case). So I am all here for sad horses making bad choices, suffering personal devastation, and/or failing to connect with the people they love.
Prompts
* To start off bleak, I would love anything that deals with Honey after her lobotomy, especially from her perspective--her confusion, her disorganized memories, her continued deep emotion, her struggle to connect with and parent her daughter, her (extremely troubled) relationship with her husband, her grief over Crackerjack. I’m good with either a realistic portrayal or one that uses more poetic license (similar to how the show portrays Beatrice’s eventual dementia). How do Beatrice and Honey continue to try to love each other, and show that love? (Maybe something set around the time of Beatrice’s debut?) Or do they pull away from each other, disconcerted or adrift in memories?
* And there are so many similar things I would love to see with Beatrice. Her perspective on some missing scene that happened while she was staying with BoJack and Hollyhock? The complicated, awful relationship between her affection for Hollyhock and her drugging of her? Or something focused on her relationship with BoJack, like the disconnect between how she treats him and how she thinks and talks of him when he’s not there (wanting to give him the painting, liking to watch his show)? What are some of their few good moments together over the years? What’s a time that he hurt her, even if he didn’t realize it?
* We see a little bit of happiness between Beatrice and Butterscotch before things go horribly wrong, and I would love to stop in at any point along that continuum, whether it’s in their honeymoon phase, during the time when they’re souring on each other but haven’t committed to hating each other, or during the period of domestic Cold War.
* Happy, painful, or bittersweet: this is a fandom and a set of characters where I’d really love seeing a five-things style fic about alternate Sugarman/Horseman possibilities, checking in on them if Honey hadn’t married Joseph, if Crackerjack hadn’t died, if Honey hadn’t been lobotomized, if Beatrice had taken BoJack and left Butterscotch, if Honey had taken Beatrice and left Joseph, if Beatrice had separated herself completely from her father, and so on, in any direction. Are there any ways that could have worked out in favor of them being happy? In favor of Beatrice and Honey having a good relationship? BoJack and Beatrice? If you want to bring in the rest of the cast, I love them all, and I also love seeing spread-out consequences of canon-divergences, whether they’re wacky (Beatrice becomes fully estranged from her father and somehow that leads to Todd being governor?) or poignant (BoJack doing Ibsen).
* And I also just love the show’s worldbuilding and would love to dive into the world of the horses, so I would just be delighted to see anything involving races, dressage, snooty Lipizzaners, patrician horses looking down on mules, the wild horses in the desert, etc., and Beatrice and/or Honey interacting with those things.
The Chronicles of Prydain: Eilonwy
I had a wonderful time rereading this series over the summer. These books really resonate with me: grand adventures but also a sense of the cost of those adventures, a very real feeling of growing up and dealing with disappointment and shame as well as success, mercy and sympathy, leadership, and an appreciation of craft are all here, and I love them. And I want to see Eilonwy experiencing and dealing with all those things to get center-stage, in part because I had somehow misremembered The Castle of Llyr as being “the Eilonwy book” that dealt entirely with her adventures. So I’m left missing the Eilonwy stories that could have been and would be delighted to get a glimpse of them.
I love Eilonwy: her penchant for unusual but often apt similes, her tartness, her loyalty, her determination to be included, her matter-of-fact use of strategies both social and martial. And while I’m perfectly happy with Eilonwy on her own, or with OCs, I also love her canon relationships and her general sense of camaraderie, so feel free to include or not include as you wish.
Prompts
* Eilonwy on Mona, learning about needlework and politics and very definitely liking the latter more than the former. Queen Teleria teaching her how to politely outmaneuver people to get her own way! Embroidery lessons with the court ladies she seems to find exasperating! Is she lonely? Epistolary fic as her letters back to Caer Dallben during this time would also be cool.
* Canon-divergence where she continues to study enchantment from Achren, either as her ward or through visits to Caer Dallben’s scullery while Achren is there. I’d prefer no full-on Dark Eilonwy, but I’d love to see her being tempted or struggling and making bad, potentially harmful decisions--she is, after all, llearning about her power from someone with very few scruples regarding how its used. I would also just love to see her interacting more with her “aunt” and seeing some kind of connection--prickly and ambivalent, but potentially deep--develop between them.
* Eilonwy Wanderer, maybe in some kind of imagined pause before The High King? I’d love to see her roaming Prydain, trying out different interests and vocations and making new connections (and although I love Eilonwy/Taran, it would be great to see her having an f/f flirtation/fling in there somewhere). I love coming-of-age and self-discovery stories.
* Eilonwy as queen! I’d love anything from “an ordinary day in the life”--planning a banquet, dealing with petitioners, etc.--to her handling crisis or war. Or, given how much time Gwydion spent roaming around Prydain and Fflewdur’s habit of disappearing from his kingdom for months at a time, what about Eilonwy taking up a quest of her own once she’s an adult and a monarch?
* If Eilonwy’s journeying, I’m also always happy to see a kind of classic Lloyd Alexander side-adventure, with her encountering a strange problem or threat and resolving it, learning something about herself--good, bad, or neutral--in the process. What would be her equivalent of Taran’s time with Craddoc, leading to her having to recognize some bitter truth about herself and move on from that? Or what little village would she become a heroine to by virtue of fixing some kind of odd problem?
* Feel free to add in other characters to any of these (or to any other idea). Eilonwy hanging out with Rhun while she’s on Mona, and conspiring with him to escape certain ceremonial obligations? Eilonwy getting used to Caer Dallben and assuming control of its scullery, complete with her interacting with Dallben and Coll? Running into Fflewddur or Gwydion while journeying? Shipfic is also great, and I could go for Eilonwy/Taran (I’m especially interested in seeing them getting used to being married to each other), Eilonwy/Rhun, Eilonwy/OFC, or--if you wanted to do a crossover--Eilonwy/Susan Pevensie, Eilonwy/Aravis, or Eilonwy/Keladry of Mindelan.
* If you're here from Femslash Festivus, I'm throwing in some additional prompts for those crossover pairings! I love arranged marriages and marriages of convenience, so an alliance between fantasy kingdoms cemented by an Eilonwy marriage would be awesome. Ditto any adventuring, in either fandom, or love letters passed between worlds/countries! Would Kel sometimes take Eilonwy with her on trips? I could just see them in co-command of an outpost. And I love bodyguard tropes, so the two of them meeting through Kel being assigned to protect Eilonwy while she's on a diplomatic trip would be great! For Eilonwy/Susan, I love the idea of weird culture clashes between fantasy-England and fantasy-Wales, and between Susan's status as a queen of a major kingdom and Eilonwy's as princess of a tiny, backwater realm. Or how does Susan respond to Eilonwy's magic, when most of the sorceresses she's known have been nothing but trouble? Or do they meet when Achren breaks into Narnia/forges a pact with Jadis or the White Witch? For Eilonwy/Aravis, I also love the culture clashing (there's a more significant difference between their respective kingdoms, and one of them would have to make a choice about giving up their home), and maybe a little bit of a rockier relationship evolution. Does Aravis have trouble taking her seriously at first? Do they fall in love on a road trip through Calormen?
The Dark Tower: Susan Delgado
This series is such a fic goldmine--I can’t really think of a corner of it I don’t want to see explored. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Susan: her relationship with her aunt, the pleasure and independence that she’s having taken away from her just as she’s coming into it, her whirlwind romance with Roland, her bravery, and all the possibilities she could have had. And she comes with a great dose of Mid-World worldbuilding, from Maerlyn’s Rainbow to gilly-girls to charyou tree. I loved getting that longer look at Roland’s world before it (completely) moved on.
I’m requesting just Susan because I want her as the focus, but I love this tagset and would be happy to see Susan interacting with anyone in it, so even if I don’t have specific prompts for them, feel totally free to include as you like. I ship Susan/Roland, Susan/Cuthbert, Susan/Susannah, Susan/Eddie/Susannah, and Susan/Eddie/Susannah/Roland. And ambiguous, fucked-up Susan/Man in Black.
Prompts
* What if--for whatever reason or according to whatever twist of circumstances you like--Roland died in Mejis instead of Susan? I would absolutely love to see any part of an aftermath to this. Susan journeying back to Gilead with Cuthbert and Alain to tell Roland’s parents of his death? Is she pregnant, and if so, how does she feel about that? Does she want to become a lady of Gilead? Would it be possible for her to become, however unconventionally, a gunslinger? Or could she make a getaway with Olive Thorin and Sheemie and try to live peacefully somewhere else, with the world getting ever stranger around them? Does she go off alone and steal/raise horses and have adventures?
* Any kind of fix-it AU that has Susan questing for the Tower. Susan and Roland, power couple, trying to stop the world from falling apart? Susan getting to interact with Susannah, Eddie, and Jake, whether it’s her in Roland’s place in a Roland-dies situation or her and Roland together. How does her presence change the ka-tet’s dynamics? What is she like as a fish out of water in New York? What are her interactions with the man in black like, when he doesn’t have all the history with her that he does with Roland? It would be awesome to see any of their adventures, whether as a twist on something from the books or as something entirely new.
* I’m really interested in Susan’s relationship with Aunt Cordelia: that cocktail of tension, bitterness, envy, loyalty, and obligation. It would be great to see anything that dealt with the two of them. What were things like between them before Susan’s father died? How did Cordelia first make the arrangements with Thorin? Is there any scenario in which Cordelia would have come to her senses and gotten Susan out of Mejis before everything went to hell? Or just any scene in their history together, whether it’s a relatively sweet one or something far more doom-laden, full of bad faith and missed chances?
* What if Roland had never come to Mejis and Susan had fulfilled her obligation with Thorin? Would she have been able to build a friendship of sorts with Olive, and raise the Thorin heir more with her than with the mayor? What would her position in society have been like? How would her relationship with Cordelia change? Would Cordelia feel guilty, superior, smug, ashamed? What would it be like when she got to walk away from all that and resume running the ranch and raising horses, knowing her child was somewhere else?
* And yet another AU! What if Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain had come to Mejis before Susan made her contract with Thorin? How would things have gone if either Roland or Cuthbert (because Susan did say she might have loved him if she’d met him first) had had the chance to court her openly? I’d love to see her going back to Gilead with them and just diving more into Arthurian-society-with-guns.
Only Ever Yours: megan
I love dystopian novels where the revolution never comes because I’m fascinated by how people survive in terrible, restrictive societies and how they continue to have lives within them. One of my favorite things about Only Ever Yours is that even as unrelentingly dark as the world is, O’Neill provides just enough detail that we can see how some people are able to live lives they would describe as happy, even if we can see they’re horrific. Darwin’s mother remembers her friend fondly enough to have his son bring her a letter even though they can never meet again. The chastities have full net access and can learn and pursue interests. The girls who become concubines are delighted to get the chance to continue to live with their friends.
No one manages the awfulness of their world better than megan—but she’s spent her whole life mastering one very particular and very defined social environment, and at the end of the novel, she’s moving into an entirely new one. She’s “married” to a boy who dislikes her and whose social standing is dependent upon the patronage of his demanding and abusive father. She’s been trying to win, but what happens after she does? What is her life like once she has everything she ostensibly wanted? I’m really interested in what happens to the perfect winner and survivor once the nature of the competition has radically changed, and what happens to the “high school bully” after she grows up.
Prompts
* If you want to include Darwin, what is the megan/Darwin marriage like? Incredibly bleak and unhappy, occasionally bittersweet, eventually surprisingly amiable? Does he continue to visit brothels, and if so, how does she feel about it? They offer an especially dark and riveting take on arranged marriages that gives high-stakes drama to the smallest of romantic or sexual interactions, so any look at the process of them becoming more familiar and intimate with each other, whether they end up liking each other or not, would be great.
* Social standing and worldbuilding! How does megan, the queen of the School, fare in the adult world of the companions? What’s her daily life like? Does she have any friends, or does the competition remain cutthroat even after the “victory” of being chosen? What are her obligations as Darwin’s companion?
* Nightmarish pregnancy/fertility scenarios. Is the pressure on immediately for her to start having sons? What is she like as a mother and how does she think of her children? Or does all her Machiavellian scheming hit a wall when she and Darwin have trouble conceiving? Would she risk a discreet affair in case she might have better luck with someone else? If there are no children, will she be put aside sooner, or even sent to the basement?
* How does she deal with the Judge? Play the obliging, charming daughter-in-law? Gradually grow defensive of Darwin? Given what we see with the Father and isabel, it would be utterly unsurprising if the Judge pressured Darwin to choose megan because he wanted access to her himself; given how cutthroat she can be, it would also be unsurprising if she welcomed that or even pursued it on her own. If so, does she find it damaging, whether or not she’s capable of recognizing that? Or is she just a winner in search of another winner?
* megan is unapologetically vicious throughout the whole novel, but she’s also a seventeen year-old locked in a competition that will determine the rest of her life. She’ll die young, but she’ll grow up a little first, and I’d love to check in on her as she matures, whether she begins to develop regrets and a conscience or just responds to different challenges. Does she ever look back on what happened with freida and isabel and feel differently about it?
Underworld USA: Kemper Boyd, Ward Littell
The great love story of American Tabloid, my favorite Ellroy novel. The book has his typical combination of brutality of empathy, and I love how it gets down into the mud and blood of its secret history. It has grandeur--tragedy, betrayal, assassination--and pettiness--ordinary incompetence, corruption, and hustling. I love its massively flawed protagonists. I can never get enough of Characters Who Do Genuinely Terrible Things but Also Have Moments of Loyalty or Tenderness, so Ellroy is obviously my kind of author.
I find the relationship between Kemper and Ward amazingly shippy. Endlessly charismatic quadruple-agent out for himself in a doomed friendship with a dweeby moral crusader with an emerging dark side? Sold. I love how everyone in the novel crushes on Kemper (“Kemper Boyd arrested me once, it was awesome”--Pete Bondurant, probably) and disdains Ward, while Kemper goes out of his way to do favors for Ward and emphasizes how great he thinks he is. Everything I adore about them as a ship also translates well to a friendship-only portrayal, if you prefer: there’s still the opposites attract spark, the eventual reversal in their stations, the combination of affection and judgment, the murder.
Prompts
* Any expansion on the early days of their partnership? The anecdotes about it open up some fascinating windows. How far does Kemper push Ward, and how far is Ward willing to be pushed? How do they open up to each other and get to know each other better? Is Ward disillusioned when he realizes all the shit Kemper pulls, or unsurprised, or even excited?
* Kemper’s undercover work and complicated gamesmanship of everyone is made for both drama and comedy. I’m completely up for awkward scenes of Kemper and Ward getting interrogated by Hoover when they both know they have secrets to hide, or for Ward having to play along with undercover work he doesn’t have all the details of. How do they help each other out, and when do they refuse to? And I’ll shoehorn in here that I love all forms of hurt/comfort, so injuries in the line of duty, identity slippage from undercover assignments, and bouts of depression are welcome.
* How does Ward respond to Kemper’s Jack Kennedy fixation, and how does Kemper respond to Ward’s Bobby fixation? Jealousy, amusement, concern? All three? What if there had been a confrontation between them when Kemper was minimizing contact with Ward when Ward was in his downward spiral? Or if Ward had reached out when Kemper was at his rock bottom? What might have happened if they’d run at the end? I’m always open to bittersweet fix-it fic.
* Some beloved shipfic and porn tropes that would hit a lot of my buttons for this pairing: undercover as gay/fake relationship/fake-out make-out, secret relationships, voyeurism, role play, BDSM with either character taking either role (control freak Ward wanting to express his distaste for Kemper’s amorality, Kemper wanting Ward to relax, Ward wanting to be punished to satisfy his own sense of guilt, both of them loving praise), 1950s sex toys, internalized homophobia, sex with paper-thin deniability (“oh, but we didn’t get undressed,” “but it didn’t go all the way,” “but we didn’t kiss”), and clothes/suit porn.
You’re the Worst: Gretchen Cutler, Lindsay Jillian
My most beloved style of romance is “assholes in love.” You’re the Worst provides a wonderful canon version with Gretchen/Jimmy, and I would love to see fic fulfill my deep-seated desire for Gretchen/Lindsay. I love their petty awfulness and garbage-monster behavior, from the abuse of a froyo sample policy to an attempted turkey-baster baby-trap. They have the potential for great dramatic tension, with Gretchen trying at least a little to grow and change and Lindsay mostly being content to wallow (until they veer towards switching roles), and they also have a great, long history. I really loved Lindsay comforting Gretchen during her season two depression and being the person she turns to when nothing else in her life is working. Even when Lindsay is oblivious and Gretchen is witheringly sarcastic, there’s a genuine warmth and affection between them. Also, they’re both incredibly hot. Porn is more than welcome.
(I do like Jimmy, so I’d rather he not be any more “the worst” than these two—unless it’s immediately after the season three finale—but I’m fine with break-ups or them just having never dated in the first place.)
Prompts
* College days! Lindsay specifically mentions watching Gretchen deal with her depression back then, and it would be interesting and even touching to see how she first clued in and then tried to help. (Knowing Lindsay, probably with a combination of drugs and attempted magical healing sex.)
* Also backstory-related: when Gretchen talks about being a part of “Heather, Gretchen, Bernadette, Justine, and Corey,” she remembers it fondly, but Lindsay doesn’t so much (“Oh, yeah. I haven’t seen those basic hos in a minute.”) and they seem to have been Gretchen’s friends more than hers. How did Gretchen and Lindsay become friends, and was it before or after she had this group friendship? Did Lindsay drive a wedge in an established dynamic, or was she the old friend who got jealous over being temporarily ousted?
* What if Gretchen, feeling down after Becca’s wedding in the pilot, had gone home with Lindsay instead of Jimmy? (Lindsay can just… not be married to Paul, if you like, or else, in true You’re the Worst fashion, their divorce can be hastily ensured by Lindsay bringing Gretchen home for a boozy and torrid one-night stand with her husband literally right there.) Would they be able to connect romantically too? They both have mutual terribleness and shared fluctuating levels of conscience and regret. What would one of the show’s storylines look like filtered through them instead of Gretchen/Jimmy?
* An AU where Lindsay is one of Gretchen’s publicity clients, maybe a spoiled and ditzy former backup singer now trying to make it on her own? I have a weak spot for really tropey romance novel plots like this one, so free to take that admission to rewrite the most Harlequin of Harlequin scenarios, whatever you can think of, and I’ll probably eat it up with a spoon. Rich-Lindsay and personal assistant-Gretchen? Both of them as sugar baby hangers-on to rich guys who find themselves more and more interested in each other?
* Any kind of post-season three get-together fic, when they're both single and living together in a tiny apartment. What sets off a change in their relationship? Does Gretchen start to think of Lindsay in a different light when she sees her at work, competent for once? Does a fight over their mutual frustrations lead to one of them jumping the other's bones? I can just see Gretchen impulsively sleeping with Lindsay to get out of a conversation about why she's still not leaving the apartment, or seeing her as a slightly healthier alternative to doing some more crack. Basically, just all the simmering tension exploding into hot sex and feelings.
* Any of the above, with porn, or just porn, ideally with feelings mixed in. Oral? Strap-ons? Wild, wacky, and sometimes wildly successful experimentation with different positions and toys? Costumes? Dirty talk? Public sex? (Hooking up in season two's haunted house?) Anal? Some casual BDSM?