dear author yuletide 2021

[writerproblem193]

Hi! I'm delighted to see what you whip up, these are all tiny fandoms that I crave more from as I'm sure you know because you're here too.

General Likes

• People having fun! Shenanigans! I like when characters are fond of each other and genuinely enjoy spending time with each other.
• Found family! Found family! Especially queer found family!
• Secret relationships, and the ways people still connect though they're publicly not affiliated
• Deep trust and connection and loyalty, knowing people very well and showing it
• Future fic! A few years / months after the canon, dealing with all of what just happened? Beautiful. Kid characters aged up? Hell yeah. (Though I would prefer not to have the adults become very old or dead)
• Small details! Things people are passionate about that creep into the story/narration are my JAM
• Pining. So much pining. They're all empty headed and can't tell the other person is pining after them too... haha unless?
• Established relationships where people are still deeply in love

General DNW

• Angst that stays miserable — hurt/comfort is more than fine, but I'd like it to end in a happy place instead of a miserable one
• Permanent major character death, so time loops/fantasy/scifi stories that bring them back is fine as long as it doesn’t send the other characters to a really dark place
• Totally normal modern AUs (e.g. coffee shop, university, high school). All the canons this year I really love for the specifics of the setting/worldbuilding as well as the characters
• "It was all a dream!"
• Crossovers that go beyond wider canon (e.g. Kristin Cashore wider works for the Kristin Cashore? Sure! More American Girls in American Girls? Sure! Otherwise, no)
• Infidelity/cheating (being poly or having a fake spouse who's in on it doesn't count as this)
• Terminal illness, or pandemics/plagues
• Body shaming / weight as a joke
• Graphic and gratuitous violence (by which I mean, none of these fandoms are horror fandoms! Canon typical violence is fine.)
• Wedding fic
• Texting aus
• De-ageing
• Soulmates

Specifically sexual DNW:

• scat/watersports/bloodplay
• A/B/O
• daddy/mommy kink
• Okay and this is very specific and very petty, but please no sexy clothes ripping — especially in historical/quasi-historical canos,  the amount of effort that goes into creating clothing even now... wow!
• tentacle sex
• Noncon

American Girls: Samantha

As a kid I saved up for years to get Samantha and Nellie and I still adore them. Now I’m grown up and queer and projecting heavily, and would adore to see stories with Samantha/Nellie being period queer. As you can tell, I think stories with them in love would be awesome, but I’d also be delighted with them being queer and just friends. If you’re not onboard the queer Samantha and Nellie train, I’m absolutely down for friendship shenanigans. Most of these prompts skew towards aged up characters, but having them at canon ages or not adults yet is also completely fine!

• Samantha is absolutely the women’s suffrage type, she always struck me as the kind of kid who grows up to be a political nightmare for her relatives. Samantha (and Nellie) vs the world!
• “Ah yes Nellie is definitely my ladies maid,” says Samantha, standing in the doorway so you can’t see that Nellie’s servants quarters are dusty because Nellie’s been sleeping in Samantha’s bed because period lesbianism cloaked in the “she’s just my servant that’s why she’s always around and living with me!” excuse. Not that you have to use that exact quote, more of a #vibe suggestion.
• Samantha using her upper class position to be a radical and sneak around to help worker/suffrage/any and all social justice movements. Nellie using being overlooked to do similar things!
• Samantha or Nellie in a violet/lavender marriage (marries a queer man to keep them both safe) and life like that.
• Period queer culture and them having other queer friends, and if you want to airlift some other American Girls into the world as their queer friends that's a-okay and I would be delighted

I’m very transparent in that I love secret relationships, queerness, period politics, and shenanigans. Any of those or any combination of those would delight me.

Specific DNW

• Samantha or Nellie dying
• If Grandmary is in the story and super controlling, please don’t frame that as positive. I don't mean that she has to be the villain or that Samantha has to hate her, but if she's railroading Samantha's life I don't want the story framing it as her knowing best over Samantha's unhappiness (especially if this is aged up!)
• Writing the characters younger than canon/precanon
• Samantha or Nellie as in love with men as main aspects of the story — background relationships are okay, but I would prefer not a wingwoman sort of story.

Strange Angels

This series... oh man. I was really into it way back when and even after I've become a LOT more aware of the problems with it (the racism, the slurs) it still holds a place in my heart. Also, I'm gay now which means my agenda... has changed.

• Nat being a sort of bodyguard/companion for Dru is a very gay setup I'm just saying. Let Them Be Queer.
• On the not queer side, I'm also down for found family and Dru getting to be friends with a big raucous family. We got to see a little of that in canon, and I adored it.
• Casefic! Either them as friends or them as something more running around with cool swords fighting vampires etc. Always a good time.

Specific DNW

• The R-slur. Extremely do not. Please. It's in the series and it always makes me flinch. Please just... don't. Even to address the usage of it, I don't want a sort of issuefic addressing the use of it in the series. 
• The anti-Asian racism towards Graves stuck out to me even as a kid. I like Graves, if he's in the story that's totally fine! Just try to not describe him as weirdly and fixatedly as canon does.
• Kidnapping by vampires or other bad things happening in a sort of casefic/shenanigans way is totally fine, but I don't want whump/angst.

Sunshine

This is one of my favourite books I've read recently that feels like I read it a thousand years ago. I love the world, the way it manages to stay low-stakes-feeling even as the stakes ratchet up, and the complicatedness of the characters. I've requested Sunshine, Constantine, and Onyx Blake as my characters because that was what I felt was one of the biggest... well, not holes because the book very clearly addressed what it wanted to address and left the rest hanging on purpose, but I was dying to know where Sunshine's father was, how Constantine knew/knew of him, and what he would think of her now. Especially since he seemed to be involved in the fight against vampires? What HAPPENED? I will say though, if you want to swap out Sunshine's father for Sunshine's grandmother, I'm also down for that!

• Sunshine's father turns up. Obviously Constantine is hanging around and stalking Sunshine because of course he is. Nonsense ensues.
• Sunshine tracks down her father because of... reasons? MAGIC reasons. A very weird reunion ensues.
• Sunshine's father is in town for other things and since Sunshine and Con are ass deep in magic nonsense, he ends up running into them and going HEY WAIT WHAT THE FUCK.
• In the case of swapping out Onyx for Sunshine's grandmother, there could be SO many interesting conversations about how Sunshine's magic has evolved and what she's learned.

Specific DNW

• I'm fine with Sunshine/Constantine but I like it more as a lowkey thing,so though it's fine and fun to include I don't want a ship-centred fic if that makes sense?
• I'd prefer not to get anything smut-related for this fandom.