Dear Yuletide author,
I am so pleased that we share an interest in one of these fandoms and I can’t wait to read whatever you write for me this Yuletide!
I enjoy a wide variety of stories, all year round but especially at Yuletide. I love short, punchy stories and longer, plotter stories, explicitly smutty 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 terms, stories with ships that are canon and stories with ships that aren’t.
I am
mayhap on AO3 as well. I have checked to make sure I have gifts enabled.
Chronos (Austins) Series — Madeleine L’EngleZachary GrayI adore Zachary in all his messy, self-sabotaging glory. I think L’Engle must have felt something similar, since she brought him back in another book to enact virtually same scenario all over again, and then did it twice more in the Kairos books for good measure. I eat it up with a spoon every single time.
I’d love any any Zach-centric fic, especially one that explores what he might do next. I’ve always been particularly interested in his relationship with Vicky, which affected him profoundly and set the pattern that he gets caught up in repeating. I don’t necessarily think they would or should see each other again after what happened between them, but I do think it could be fascinating if they did, having both experienced more of life in the interim, if you wanted to explore that possibility. I’d love to see Uncle Douglas follow up on the desire he expressed to paint Zach; I feel like he could be a really interesting, positive figure in his life. But of course it’s completely up to you which other characters you want to include, if any.
I’ve requested this under Chronos, but of course Zachary is one of the characters who cross and connect Chronos and Kairos. Feel free to handle that canonical crossover in any way you like—you could fully disregard the books set in Kairos, fully incorporate the events, characters, and more fantastical elements from the Kairos books, or anything in between. Any of these approaches would interest me equally.
National Football League RPFPatrick Mahomes
Travis KelceWhat happens when you pair a tight end who always gets open with a quarterback with a particular gift for extending plays? I try not to take the virtuosity of the Mahomes-to-Kelce connection for granted, but it can be hard when they’re so busy making the incredible look routine. They’re both so skilled at reading defenses and adjusting to what they see on the fly that sometimes it virtually amounts to mind reading. I love the big flashy plays, like the time they plotted together to get into field goal range to tie the divisional round game against the Bills, but I also love when Kelce is just the biggest, comfiest safety blanket when Mahomes needs to make a play over and over again. I love how they hype each other up on the field, and I love how they party it up together off the field. They seem like a couple of fun dudes who really enjoy each other’s company!
I’d love any kind of fic about them hooking up with each other, in the football sense or the romantic one. Maybe they really can hear each other’s thoughts, or they unlock that ability from playing together, and shenanigans ensue. Maybe they wake up married in Vegas when they’re partying there after winning the Super Bowl. Maybe Travis somehow ends up babysitting Pat’s kid(s) like they keep joking is a terrible idea that should never ever happen. Travis has definitely matured a lot since the days when he routinely racked up unsportsmanlike conducts for objectively hilarious but ill-advised things like flagging a ref; maybe Pat, a ray of human sunshine who speaks like he started media training in kindergarten, had some part in that. Or if there are any other ideas that inspire you, I want to read them!
DNWs: mentions of wives and girlfriends in pairing fic (if gen, do whatever you prefer!); mentions of Tyreek Hill off the field (as a teammate is fine, where applicable); AUs where Mahomes and Kelce aren’t football players
Plain Girl — Virginia SorensonEsther Lapp
MaryI love how delicately and yet powerfully this book explores Esther’s thoughts and feelings—about her family, the Amish community, their way of life, and of course about her new friend Mary, whom she finds so beautiful, not just for her pretty dresses, but also things like her silky hair and her dimpled elbows as well as her wonderful kindness and tact in welcoming her to school and becoming her bosom friend. It’s written as a seduction and that seduction is a good thing, a fountain that sends forth sweet water and not bitter. I see flashes of an eroticism as well, like Esther touching Mary’s hair and finding it so beautiful that a shiver goes through her fingers and her heart starts to beat very fast, or Mary showing Esther her petticoat when they’re planning to change clothes with each other, which I find really lovely.
Even though they don’t end up wearing each other’s clothes at school they must do it eventually, somewhere, sometime! I’d love for that to be explored in a story, at any age or perhaps more than once, as they get older. Anything exploring their relationship and how it develops in the future would be wonderful. There’s a lot of potential for angst and difficulty but also for love and sharing. Esther, of course, has her new sister-in-law and her brother in her corner when it comes to blending the old and the new, with her parents much more tentatively open, but Mary’s family is wide open for exploration, and so are the rest of their peers. I’d love gen or getting together or established relationship or pre-ship fic all equally.
The Professor — Charlotte BrontëFrances Evans Henri
Hunsden Yorke Hunsden
William CrimsworthI am fascinated the role that Hunsden Yorke Hunsden plays in this story, who is of the things that makes it different from Vilette, which is essentially a heavily-revised second draft of The Professor. 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 as 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 when he’s at home. 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, which William worries about.
I would also love threesome fic! William would be almost hopelessly scandalized by the prospect, I think, and surely 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 here. But I absolutely would be just as happy with a story that explores the dynamic among them some other way.
The Story Girl series — L.M. MontgomeryFelicity King
Sara StanleyI really appreciate the group dynamics among the six cousins and their two other playmates in these books but especially the simmering tension between Felicity and the Story Girl. Even though Felicity’s beauty and cookery are pitted against the Story Girl’s charisma and fancy clothes, I like that it’s not that they’re competing with each other over a love interest; they both want
everyone to be more attracted to them than to their rival.
I’d love another childhood story set during the books, or something set when they see each other again some time in the future. If you fancy doing something with outsider POV, it could be particularly delightful to have Beverley narrate when there are things going on between them that go over his head entirely, but of course he needn’t even be involved at all. If you want to make me cry buckets, you could write something set around Cecily’s funeral, although conversely I’d happily join you in denial that she’s even consumptive in the first place. If you don’t end up writing Felicity/Story Girl then do feel free to let Felicity end up with Peter, if it’s something that comes up. I’d love, say, Felicity hand-feeding the Story Girl all her favorite good old-fashioned Canadian baked goods that she couldn’t get in France, or the Story Girl discovering that she likes sharing her Parisian silks with Felicity when she's the only one who gets to look at her wearing them, or anything that inspires you.
Trouble series — Stephanie TromlyPhilip Digby
Zoe WebsterI want to go back to Planet Digby! I ship Zoe/Digby like it was written specifically for me, which it might as well have been, and I crave more. The bickering is amazing, obviously, but I also love the combination of earnestness and irony when it comes to things like mental health and feelings, and the mixture of grounded realistic details and handwave-y rule of cool when it comes to their adventures.
I’d love some coping with long-distance relationships, or meeting up for dates (and/or pursuing leads) in New York City, or really anything at all as long as it’s set in the future and Zoe and Digby are together. The fade to black in the books is already scorchingly hot to me, so if you want to write pure porn with little to no plot, I would also be utterly thrilled. Zoe’s offhand mention of fandom in the first book never really comes up again, but if you wanted to pick that thread up and do a story with more fandom in it, it’d be fun (and I definitely approve of her taste in dark Harry Potter femslash!). Really, anything would be great.