Yuletide Letter (2018)

[millepertuis]

Dear Writer,

Hello! I am super excited for this year’s yuletide and very much looking forward to reading your gift. Just know that I love all the characters I requested so much and am so interested in reading more about them, that any of the additional details are just icing on the cake. If you need directions you’re welcome to pick and choose anything that strikes your interest here, but if you already have something in mind, forge on ahead and have fun!


LIKES:

best friends in love, antagonists in love, mutual obsession!!, codependency, domesticity, female friendships, female agency, found families, messed-up families, slow build, character studies, unreliable narrators; i have a preference for canon or canon divergence settings rather than complete AUs, but it's definitely not absolute

on the more light-hearted side of things, i love banter and silly antics and domesticity—and domestic polyamory—and i love all the usual cliché tropes (mutual pining, mistaken to be dating, fake relationship, accidental relationship, accidental marriage, arranged marriage, marriage of convenience, bed-sharing, mistaken identity shenanigans, etc.)

on the more serious side of things: loyalty kink!!, king and lionheart dynamics, people on a mission, morally gray characters, amoral characters, righteous characters, where do you put the line and what do you believe in and what are you willing to compromise on and what are you wiling to sacrifice, just the different ways people relate to right and wrong and guilt and responsibility and all that jazz; unhealthy dynamics as long as they're recognized as such by the text if not by the characters; characters who aren't quite there yet—there being a healthy dynamic or being good or happiness—but want to work together or push each other towards it



DISLIKES:

unhappy or generally depressing endings, character bashing, rape/non-con, major character deaths, unrequited love, cheating, nominated characters being romantically or sexually involved with people outside of the ships requested

• ALTERED CARBON; quellcrist falconer, takeshi kovacs, reileen kawahara

i really liked the concept of the show, but most of all QUELL. QUELL QUELL QUELL. i need so much more about her. the revolutionary leader of my heart and soul. quell who gave all of herself to her war, quell who—/nadia/ who wanted so badly to see the stars and let the corruption in, created the stacks and doomed them, who will do anything to atone.
and tak the bereaved soldier who wakes up in a world where his war and his love and idol and general have been lost for two hundred and fifty years and who still can’t move on; tak who doesn’t care about anything anymore except he does, he really does. and rei who wanted to live, who wanted tak to live, and who drenched herself in blood to survive and tried to cut weakness out of her, who missed tak like a limb for two hundred and fifty years and didn’t feel whole until he was with her again.

there's just this amount of complete and utter devotion in those three—tak and rei to each other, tak to quell, quell to her cause—and it is. so much. give me everything about that tbh.
i'd love any combination of quell/tak/rei, romantic or not. tak who wanted so badly to believe in something, and for someone to believe in, and quell who was alone in her fight for so long, and they found each other and gave each other exactly what they needed; and made a love that would transcend even death.
tak and rei who put loyalty to each other above everything else, who always came back for each other, tak who loved rei so much and wanted so badly to save her until the end, and rei who loved him obsessively, rei who was corrupted beyond saving and who would have done and did anything to get him back.
even quell/rei has so much potential! because rei learned from and must have admired quell, and quell must have believed in rei and trusted her; and rei betrayed her and her cause completely and yet still saved her, kept her stack all this time and why?

in short anything that dives into these dynamics is already perfect to me. set pretty much at any point you want in canon—if you’ve got anything in mind definitely just go for it and have fun.
otherwise a few leads if you need them: pre-canon fic, post-season fic where tak finds quell, future fic where the two (three?) of them are reunited and quell is leading another uprising. tak alone and grieving and looking for quell and all the ghost apparitions and dream sequences your heart might want.
canon divergence is also fine with me: what if rei had been caught before she could betray the uprising. what if rei hadn’t died at the end of the season (or has she?)? what if rei had met quell alone first, or earlier?

also, just because i'm physically incapable of not bringing it up, this?

(source)
 

tak literally, physically giving his beating heart to quell is what my dreams are made of.

honorable mention to I love you so much, I could eat you up because it fucked me up, badly

• CRAZYHEAD; amy, raquel francis, suzanne

i absolutely /loved/ the zany spirit of the show, so anything playing off that would be great, but i'd also welcome a more serious approach to these characters, their trauma, their issues. or both. both at once is also good.

i'd particularly love anything set post-s1, maybe some amy/raquel where amy realizes her 'i love you' wasn't as platonic as she had thought, or the three of them trying to somehow lead a normal life even with suzanne being undead (which can totally have amy/suzanne or be a gen fic), or some silly demon-slaying shenanigans in the spirit of the show (bonus if someone has to make up a lie on the spot to hide the existence of the supernatural and fails spectacularly)

or an AU inspired by the dark days club books—no prior knowledge required—that might be fun if canon doesn’t particularly inspire you: demon-slaying shenanigans in regency england

(i’d be perfectly happy with gen fic but i also ship both amy/raquel and amy/suzanne, though very much in an either/or way, please no poly situation or unrequited love scenario.)

if you happen to be interested in writing amy/raquel or amy/suzanne fic, i'm adding additional details i put for them on another exchange, if anything inspires you:

Was Amy lying when she later told Raquel she had meant it as friendly love, or in denial? Does Raquel secretly wish Amy had meant it? Or perhaps a more partners-to-lovers approach, something dealing with the dangerous situations they find themselves in and the trust they have in one another, and the codependency that might result from that.

We see Susanne is (un)alive at the end of the finale, but where do they go from there? Does Amy feel guilty over everything that happened to Susanne? Does Susanne feel guilty over being used to bait Amy and almost hurting her? Do they just go back to being best friends and roommates? Were they always in love, or did they only know it after Susanne died and came back and died again (and came back again)? Does Amy keep feeding Susanne her blood??

• POWERLESS; emily locke, jackie

i loved the concept of the show and i enjoyed their dynamic /so much/. the emotionally distant apathetic cynic being reluctantly won over by the bubbly overenthusiastic idealist!

i'd love something where emily determinedly keeps up her campaign of winning jackie's friendship and jackie realizes she's falling in love with her—really, anything (platonic or romantic) that involves jackie being prickly and only showing affection covertly while emily sees right through her would be wonderful.

or something involving jackie's new powers. does some supervillain eventually kidnap emily to try and make jackie do something for them? or some canon divergence where jackie already had her powers when they met and had sort of ended up being a vigilante and there are some identity issues shenanigans?

or any of the usual tropes! fake dating! jackie got dosed with truth serum and she can't help but say nice things and is very annoyed about it! jackie's ex is fighting for custody and she'd have a better chance if she was in a committed relationship, guess who volunteers to marry her! inconvenient bed-sharing!

in lieu of or in addition to, i’d love anything playing with the potential of the show, with superheroes and supervillains and supercatastrophes in the background while these regular people are trying to live their regular lives.*

*oh, maybe something that plays with no consequence day, or something in that same spirit!

• THE QUEEN'S THIEF; attolia, costis ormentiedes, eugenides

i love love love these books and these three and the love and—again!—devotion there is between them, and anything leaning into that would be amazing. king and queen and lionheart dynamics!!

i’d love anything set around or directly after the king of attolia but that’s definitely not a requirement (though i… still haven’t gotten around reading thick as thieves, so please no spoilers!). gen being gen. costis miserably pining after his queen and king. pre-relationship or established relationship fic where costis and irene are madly in love with gen and frankly annoyed about it. political/court intrigue, ridiculous shenanigans, intradiegetic mythology, epic romance, etc., i love all the aspects of the books and would be happy with anything.

i'm also open to canon divergence or alternate universes. attolia/eugenides arranged marriage AU (with or without pining costis!)! regency setting (with or without pining costis, which you can consider as applying everywhere)! space opera setting! modern politics AU!

(i’d love poly fic but i’m also super fine with gen or only attolia/gen. i joke about pining costis but please no unrequited love, happy endings only. and i’d also be fine with something costis/gen-centric, but please no cheating or breaking up attolia/gen or killing off irene)