2019 Yuletide letter

[somethingdarker]

Still a WIP.

General things about my preferences:
I like time travel fix-its.
I like character backstory.
I like characters talking to each other.
I like characters being complicated in the ways that real people are.
I like friendship and chosen family.
I like people finding a way forward even when things are hard.
I don't mind romance but won't necessarily notice if it's entirely absent.
I like worldbuilding.
I like humor, fluff, and angst.
I prefer endings that have some hope.
What I write is not necessarily what I read.
I assume most characters are bi unless I have strong evidence to the contrary and possibly even then. I'm good with het, m/m, f/f, and/or poly relationships.
I like canon divergence AU and seldom like AUs that transplant the characters.
I like fantasy, SF, and conspiracy elements.
I don't like horror.
I like all ratings of fic.
I have no objection to OCs, even as POV characters.

Sky High (2005)
Characters: Ms. Peace, Josie Stronghold, Layla Williams's Mom, Principal Powers

I'm very curious about how the world we see in the movie came to be. The movie doesn't offer a lot of scaffolding for the worldbuilding, so parts of it wobble when I poke at it. If you feel like doing some worldbuilding, feel free to ignore my character requests (apart from the no Stitches bit). OCs would be fine for that.

I nominated Sue Tenny and then was offline due to illness during the nominations clarification period. I am still very interested in Sue but don't particularly want fic about Gwen unless it contains a lot about Sue|Royal Pain and no Stitches. I'm not requesting Gwen because I don't feel that me wanting only Sue would be fair to someone intending to offer movie era Gwen or post movie Gwen. If you want to write Sue, either on her own or with my requested characters, please feel free to.

I'm very curious about what it's like for these older female characters. Was it harder to become a superheroine when they graduated from Sky High? Did they all go to Sky High? There might well be other schools. Was there pressure to hang up the cape, pair off with guys with powers, and have more superpowered kids? Layla's unnamed mother, Ms Peace (Warren's mother), and Josie all made different choices in that regard, and we have no idea if Principal Powers ever married or had children. Maybe she's ace or has a same sex partner? Maybe she just chose career over marriage?

I'd love something with all of them interacting (a class together, one mentoring the others, Principal Powers meeting parents as part of the admission process or to discuss school issues, the four of them taking down a villain together or otherwise working together, anything really. Do they have a stitch and bitch group?), but I'd also enjoy something that has a short bit about each of them and their different choices in the face of similar pressures.

If your story ends up focusing more on one of these four women than on the others, I'll be fine with that. I think there are a lot of stories in their lives, and having one grab a writer more strongly than the others is a thing to be expected.

DNW: Explicit underage sex, child harm or death, Stitches, incest, cancer, drowning or detailed descriptions of being deep under water, death of requested characters, realistic violence at archive warning worthy levels

Hamster Princess Series - Ursula Vernon
Harriet Hamsterbone

I simply adore Harriet and her willingness to bulldoze through all of the nonsense that other people throw at her. I like her approach to problem solving being just that bit off angle from everyone else's assumptions about common sense.

DNW: sex, romance involving Harriet, child harm or death, cancer, drowning, death of anybody, explicit or mature rated fic, gore, archive warning worth violence, unhappy ending

(Please don't think I love Hamster Princess less for me having less to say about it! I want all the fic for this!)

Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
Any character (Jasra, Lintra, Martin, and Moire nominated)

I'm good with any of the nominated characters by themselves or in combination with the others (I'm not sure how Moire would have encountered Lintra, but if you can come up with something, have at it). I nominated these four because I felt that all of them were on the periphery of the story we got and that much of their personal stories consist entirely of blank spaces and of things that might be lies. I want to know more about all of these characters and about how they view the universe.

I'm fine with OCs here if you find them useful. We have very little information about people in Rebma or about Lintra's compatriots. Jasra's origins aren't that clear, either-- Was Dara telling the truth or not?

If you're writing Lintra, Moire, or Martin, feel free to ignore the Merlin books (or not). If you're writing Jasra, feel free to alter the Merlin books or to treat things said in those books as untrue as far as Jasra and her family go. I haven't been able to make the Merlin books make sense without some combination of Merlin lying, Merlin not understanding people, and Merlin simply not paying attention to inconvenient details.

I like a lot of the characters introduced in the Merlin books; I'm less convinced by the way events unfolded in his narrative. I won't object to a story that keeps all of the Merlin stuff canon, though.

I have played and run a lot of Amber diceless games, so I tend to be open to many different interpretations of the canon and the characters. I'm fine with canon divergence and with the characters not being exactly the people that Corwin thought they were and with the universe not working quite the way Corwin (or Merlin) thinks it does.

DNW: explicit underage sex, child harm or death, cancer, drowning (scenes in Rebma where no one's in danger of drowning are fine), graphic torture or gore, death of requested characters, PWP

The Pretender (TV)
Any character (Jarod, Miss Parker nominated)
I'm agnostic on the subject of Jarod/Miss Parker. I'm fine with them as a couple or as friends or as anything else that makes sense in the story. They've got a long and complicated history with each other that no one else is likely to understand.

If writing one of them without the other makes sense for the story you end up writing, I'm fine with that.

I don't mind other canonical characters showing up. I don't mind canon divergences, especially with later canon about The Centre becoming so confusing/convoluted, but I also don't mind keeping some or all of canon, including Emily and Ethan. I tend to think that the story broke a bit under the weight of needing to keep Jarod running and Miss Parker chasing.

DNW: in text child harm or death (references to canon are okay), incest, drowning, cancer, explicit underage sex, detailed torture or violence, death of requested characters, bashing Thomas, PWP

The Witch Family - Eleanor Estes
Any character (Amy, Clarissa, Hannah (the Little Witch Girl), and Lurie nominated)

I prefer to think that the witches and mermaids and such have some existence that isn't just in Amy and Clarissa's heads. I like Old Witch mellowing at the end of the story, but I also like that the story bears in mind that things are less fun/exciting/interesting if she's never bad at all.

I ignore the sequel book because, while it has Amy and Clarissa, it lacks the witches and mermaids and Malachi and all of that. It never even mentions them. I think it might well be an okay book, but it was hard to find. I had hoped for more about the witch girl, so I was disappointed.

(If you didn't know there was a sequel, don't worry about it as far as writing for me goes. If you're interested in it, I believe I discovered its existence through the author's Wikipedia page, and I know I ended up finding it via interlibrary loan. I'm not sure it's ever been reprinted. It involves a lost doll, a seaside vacation, and an odd storm-magic related repairman.)

Even with me ignoring the sequel, I'd be open to adventures involving a wider magical world. I like the idea of more about witch culture and schooling and such. I also like the idea of more intersections between the mundane world and the magical one.

I know that the canon says that the witch girl and the baby witch won't age, but I'm curious about what they'd be like if they did. Babies are darling, but part of the fun of them is seeing who they become. Would they try to emulate Old Witch as she used to be or would they find a different path?

DNW: sex, child harm, cancer, drowning (please be cautious if using the mermaids), character death, gore, violence, explicit or mature rated fic, anything resembling the end of "Puff the Magic Dragon" (Amy and Clarissa may grow up and away from the magical world, but I don't want that in the story. Especially not the part about the magical folks being hurt by it), sequel only material