mayhap | Dear Yuletide Author 2016 (Reply)

Dear Yuletide author,

I am so excited that we matched on one of these fandoms and I can’t wait to read whatever you write this Yuletide!

I enjoy a wide variety of stories, all year round but especially at Yuletide. I like short, punchy stories and longer, plottier stories, explicitly porny and/or kinky stories and coy stories that are all about the teasing and the implications, stories with some kind of meta angle to them and stories that engage with the source material 100% on its own level, stories with unusual pairings and stories that are strictly canon pairings only, if applicable.

Baseball RPF
Lorenzo Cain, Salvador Pérez

I love the close relationships among all the various Royals players, but the single most entertaining one for me would have to be the ongoing bromantic comedy starring Salvy and his beloved hermanito Lolo, now showing at an Instagram near you. I definitely ship it, but I would also adore a story about them as teammates. I love all the horseplay, the giggling, the amazing locker room music choices. I love the way Salvy gets hearts in his eyes and LoCain struggles to maintain a straight face as he tries to fend off the camera.

I also just love baseball and everything about it, so any and all baseball-specific stuff in a story would totally thrill me. I really enjoy RPF that incorporates various real life references along with the stuff that didn’t happen and is totally fictional and would prefer not to receive the sort AU where they are something other than baseball players.

The Professor - Charlotte Brontë
William Crimsworth, Frances Evans Henri, Hunsden Yorke Hunsden

I am fascinated the role that Hunsden Yorke Hunsden plays in this story, which is one of the things that makes it so different from Villette. From the beginning he alternates between needling William and performing these extremely thoughtful favors for him, although it's not always easy for him to get under William's skin since William perversely enjoys some of his bluntness. He brings out such an interesting side of Frances when he meets her, too -- I love that promptly she gets into three arguments with him in a row, and the third time she doesn't even believe in the argument she's making; she just wants to fight with him!

I'm particularly interested in a story set when William and Frances are living in England and Hunsden is their neighbor. I love how he has apparently latched onto their family in lieu of starting their own, especially the way he seems to practically be a coparent to Victor. I would love more about their daily life as it's sketched all too briefly in that last chapter, or a story about something that happens as Victor gets older and goes to school, as William worries about.

I would also love threesome fic! William would be almost hopelessly scandalized by the prospect, I think, and probably Frances too, but then with the dynamic both she and Hunsden have with William where they love to tease him I can imagine it working out somehow. I do love stories where characters fumble their way into unusual relationships or sexual practices without quite knowing what they're doing or having the usual vocabulary to talk about it, which is sort of what I would picture. But I also absolutely love them the way they already are together, so it is totally up to you.

The Woman in the Wall - Patrice Kindl
Anna Newland, Francis Albright

I'm especially interested in futurefic exploring how Anna interacts with the outside world, set any time after the events of the book. I love her highly distinctive perspective and her willingness to explore unfamiliar and intimidating things but also judge them. I'd be curious to see her navigating any or all of: a new home, the city of Chicago, the late 90s internet, and of course her new blended family. I don't have a strong preference for whether you get or keep Anna and Francis together, but I do find it fascinating that the first person Anna gets to know who is outside of her immediate family, which is such a huge step for her, ends up being brought into her immediate family after all, and how, if at all, she would explain the complexities of that relationship to outsiders.

Most of all I just love this very peculiar book, with its very implausible premise worked out in such extensive detail, and I'm interested in whatever story it should happen to inspire you to write.

I am