Dear Yuletide Writer

I use the same name everywhere so I am beatrice_otter on AO3. Treats are awesome.

I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am not inspired that way." This letter is long with lots of suggestions and preferences if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am usually very happy with my gifts.

The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.

I have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.

I have signed up for Chromatic Yuletide, Three Turtle Doves, Two for One, and Wrapping Paper mini-challenges.

General Likes and Dislikes:

Here are some other things to keep in mind:

• I like stuff that takes side characters and puts them center-stage, especially when the characters and/or actors are marginalized. I enjoy seeing them come to life.
• I don't like it when marginalized characters get relegated to the sidekick/supporting/helper role so that it can be All About The White Dude.
• I like it when female characters are more than just the Strong Female Character(tm) or The Nurturer.
• I like fluff
• I like angst with a happy ending
• I like stories that make me think about things in a new way.
• I like to know that culture matters to people, and to see how different cultures interact and where the clashes are.
• I like unreliable narrators.
• I like acknowledgment that different people can have different points of view without either of them being wrong.
• I like stories that engage with problematic aspects of the source, and which deal with privilege in one way or another instead of sweeping it under the rug.
• Worldbuilding is my jam, I am pretty much always up for explorations of why the world is the way it is. I love hearing about the economics, the politics, the religion, the clothing, the history, the folklore, all of that kind of stuff. And I want to know why it matters--how is all this cultural background stuff affecting the characters, the plot, everything. You don't have to do deep worldbuilding, but I'll enjoy it if you do.
• I don't like it when plots hinge on characters being selectively stupid, or selectively unable to communicate. Like, if they are stupid or a himbo or whatever in general, or have problems communicating in general, that's fine! Or if they canonically have a blind spot in that area, again, it's fine. But if it's just "the only way I can think of for this plot to work is if the character spontaneously and temporarily loses half their intelligence and competence," then I'm going to spend the rest of the fic wondering why the character didn't just ____?
• I like AUs, but not complete setting AUs (i.e. no highschool or college or coffee shop AUs, and especially not mundane AUs--nothing where you keep characters but drop most of the worldbuilding). I like fork-in-the-road type AUs, where one thing is different and the changes all result from that one thing, and you explore what might have been if such-and-such happened.
• I like the concept of sedoretu marriages.
• I like historical AUs, but only when the author actually knows the history period in question and does thoughtful worldbuilding to meld actual culture of the time with the canon.
• Crackfic is really hit and miss for me, sometimes I love it and sometimes I can't stand it. Basically, if it's the characters we know and love in a ludicrous situation, that's great. If they're OOC or parodied in order to make something funny ... it's not funny to me.

I like plotty, gen stories, and plotty stories in general. I don't care for explicit sex, particularly when it's just thrown in for teh porn. I'm asexual; a lot of the time I don't even bother to read the sex scenes. Romance is awesome (as long as both are in character and the romantic plot doesn't hinge on one or both of them being an idiot). I love it when friendship is held up as important and not secondary to romantic relationships and blood ties.

Please no incest or darkfic. I define "darkfic" as stuff where there's a lot of suffering and no hope even at the end and all the characters are terrible. Angst with a happy ending is fine, I enjoy it, but there's gotta be a payoff. Even an ambiguous ending is fine! But there has to be some note of grace or redemption or hope somewhere, it can't just be "people are awful and the world sucks, the end." I define incest as siblings and/or parents, cousins don't count.

I love outsider perspectives and academic takes on things. In-universe meta (newspaper articles, academic monographs--especially with the sort of snarky feuding common in actual real-world academia, social media feeds in current day or future worlds) is awesome.

Also, I'm picky about European historical clothing details. You don't have to talk about it at all! In fact, if you don't know much about historical clothing, I would prefer if you didn't mention it at all. My pet peeve is corsets: no, they weren't a restrictive tool of the patriarchy, no, they didn't interfere with most women's daily lives, no, most women weren't wearing them so tight they couldn't breathe.

I like religion but I'm picky about it. Basically, Christianity is deeply weird compared to most other religions, and a lot of people whose only experience with religion is living in a culturally-Christian nation assume that what they know about Christianity is some sort of universal principle of What Religion Is Like, and that's just not the case. For example, in Christianity what you believe is more important than what you do. This is not to say we Christians don't teach and practice Christian ethics or have rituals we are very attached to, but rather that if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, it doesn't matter what rituals you participate in or what ethical things you do, you are not a Christian (although you may be a "cultural Christian"). Every Christian group has at least a minimal core theology that members must affirm, but participation in ritual is far less rigidly a requirement. Most other religions rank what you do (both ethically and ritually) as more important than what you believe, and it is often quite possible to be a member in good standing if you participate in the practices and rituals even if you believe none of the teachings. Anyway, point is, if you are doing worldbuilding for a fantasy or SF or otherwise non-Christian religion ... unless it is explicitly a Christian-analogue, it should be different from Christianity. Question your assumptions and see where that leads you, and I will be fascinated and thrilled.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

I love the timey-wimey goodness of this show, and the brain-breaking nature of it. I love the complexity of the characters, and the meditations on good and evil and fate and free will. I love the way the show weaves the present and future together. I love the way people are from different timelines but may not realize that. I love how people can have their own agendas. I love Sarah trying to be a good mom while knowing she has to raise him as a child soldier. I love Derek's protectiveness of his family and loved ones. I love how screwed up and traumatized they all are, and how they still keep trying to change things. I have a lot of sympathy for Jesse, even though she did something really terrible.

Prompts: What happened after the series end, both for John in the future and Sarah and Ellison et al in the past? What is Catherine Weaver trying to do, and in what ways does Ellison both help and foil her? Do she and John Connor ever come back, and if they don't, what changes? What if you go AU from an earlier point in the series so they don't travel to the future? What if Jesse had a different plan, or changed her plan? What is she up to, because I assume she does something with herself after fleeing. What's Savannah's perception of the whole thing, and if "Catherine" had stayed (or came back) what would that relationship have been as she grew? (What did Catherine think of Savannah?) Did Ellison take over ZeiraCorp after Weaver jumped in time? Regardless, I'd love to see something of him using his FBI training and/or contacts in the fight against Skynet. Maybe they go find Danny Dyson! What happened to him, is he OK? Did he get recruited by somebody on either side? Does Terissa have some other part to play in preventing the apocalypse? And what about Jesse? What does she do after she flees and Derek tries to kill her? Or maybe an AU where things go differently with her and Riley. And I'd love either John Connor in the future with a Derek and Kyle who don't know him, or Kyle from another timeline comes back.

Go nuts. Write what happens after the last episode! Write about another time jump! Write a missing episode! Write an AU jumping off from some point in canon! Write about what's going on in the future/some characters' pasts! Write about anything that takes advantage of the central premise of canon!

Terminator/Star Trek: What would Cameron think of the Borg? What would Sarah Connor et al think about them? Is there a connection between the Borg and the formation of Skynet, or vice versa? Is Judgment Day part of World War III?

Terminator/Battlestar Galactica: Is Skynet the Cylons re-evolving, like the last episode of BSG said they would? Or is Sarah and John et al's earth the one that the Galactica finds destroyed in the middle of season 4? What if the Colonial Fleet found Earth and it was Sarah and John's earth, instead of one with only primitive humanoids?

Terminator/Buffy: what happens when the Terminator characters meet the Buffybot? Is Judgment Day an apocalypse Buffy and the Slayers help prevent? What happens to slayers after Judgment Day?

Terminator/ArchAndroid: I don't have specific prompts for this, but there's gotta be interesting stuff in "computers/robots that destroyed and enslaved humanity" vs. "androids that are enslaved by humanity"

Terminator/Batman Beyond: If anyone could survive Judgment Day, it would be Batman. When John goes forward in time, does he meet Terry?

Terminator/Doctor Who/Torchwood: time travel and apocalypses, sounds like an awesome time for the Doctor or Jack Harkness or someone to get involved in saving the world!

RoL/Terminator: If Judgment Day happens, and Terminators have microchips, all of a sudden being a wizard is a superpower to save the world. On the other hand, what if Sarah and John et al ended up in Britain and got tangled up in a case? What would Peter make of time travel?

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

Rivers of London

The snark! the vivid characters! the worldbuilding! the digressions! the wry-but-pointed social commentary on race and class and bureaucracy! the community and relationship building! Casefic is always welcome, but so is worldbuilding and exploring the demi-monde and magic, or character-focused stuff. I love stories that bring up weird aspects of the demi-monde and magic which Peter then has to deal with.

I love community-building. Peter goes out there and he gets to know people and builds relationships with them, and that opens up possibilities. There are good reasons things became fragmented, mostly the fault of the old Folly--but I love to see healing and reconciliation and new relationships growing.

Peter's not naïve, he knows how bad the world can get and how much evil can be done by the institutions he is serving, and yet he firmly believes that they can and should do better. I love how he is willing to risk himself to help people. I think Nightingale sees in Peter something he didn't know he was missing: a way to be and do better than the sins of the past he's been carrying around all these years. I think it's great that Nightingale's going to retire from the police to focus on teaching, I think that will allow much better scope for them both to grow, and yet still be working together. (Just in a different capacity.)

I find Beverly hard to parse in the earlier books. She's enough younger than Peter that the whole "suddenly we're pregnant and expecting kids!" and everyone's happy about it!" is weird to me. Peter's in his mid-late 20s, and is settled in his career, but Bev is in university! I would have expected her to prefer to wait. And then there's the fact that she's a goddess, and a geographical feature, and to some degree a reincarnation of a previous deity. So something exploring that dynamic from her perspective would be interesting. Her perspective on Peter, the Folly, and Thomas would also be really interesting to me. I love stories that bring up weird aspects of the demi-monde and magic.

Mamusu & Nightingale: She has such a forceful personality, and deeply loves Peter (even if their relationship is complicated). I think Thomas probably respects her a great deal. What if something happened to Peter and the two of them had to figure it out? What if, somehow, she were the one who became an apprentice, when she was younger, instead of being a janitor? What if the Jazz Vampires had killed Richard instead of just draining him/giving him brain damage leading to addiction, AND what if the Nightingale had been investigating? And Mamusu (either with bb!Peter or without, if she hadn't had him yet) becomes his apprentice so she can become a witch finder? Or Thomas felt guilty over not catching the jazz vampires sooner, and she needs a place to stay, so he offers her one of the many empty rooms in the Folly while she's getting her feet back under her. Or maybe she leveraged her friendship with Elsie "Hatbox" Winstanley and got a librarian or archivist job instead of cleaning, and somehow that connected with a case of Nightingale's? Or maybe she just folds Nightingale in to the large extended family she keeps track of and they get together for coffee regularly or something to gossip about Peter and Beverly and stuff. What if she had some magic training from her own tradition back in Sierra Leone? What if she became friends with the Rivers earlier, before Peter was an apprentice, and they used her as a go-between when dealing with the Folly?

Mamusu & Elsie: Ever since A Rare Book of Cunning Device came out, I've been curious about how those two met, whether in London or in Africa. I headcanon that Mamusu was one of those Africans who was a professional back home but couldn't get anything but janitorial work in England because racism (and also because, in her case, she was taking care of a husband and kid and didn't have time to fight through the system). But what if she could have gotten a job as a librarian, and she and Elsie worked together in special collections? Or you could do something odd-couple-ish where the major events of both lives are the same, but they're still friends who do stuff together despite the vast differences in their backgrounds and lives. Also, I would totally be down for some femslash.

Also, I'd be thrilled to get either a story about magic becoming public knowledge (oh, the conspiracy theories!) or an AU where it has been all along and an exploration of how that changed. Or a story where Ettersberg never happened and the Folly is a large institution and Thomas is one wizard among many. Or a story where Peter is the lone survivor of the old Folly, 100 years old, and Nightingale is the young new apprentice.

RoL/Young Wizards: Wizardry is so different in these two series, how do you reconcile it? How do they fit together? What would happen if Peter was investigating the same problem Nita and Kit were investigating?

RoL/The Old Guard: There are lots of different types of immortal (or, at least, really old) people in the RoL universe. How do the Old Guard fit?

RoL/Terminator: If Judgment Day happens, and Terminators have microchips, all of a sudden being a wizard is a superpower to save the world. On the other hand, what if Sarah and John et al ended up in Britain and got tangled up in a case? What would Peter make of time travel?

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

Dirty Commputer

(Available for free on Youtube)

As usual with Janelle Monae's work, the worldbuilding is GORGEOUS and I would LOVE something that explored it. The underground subculture that they're part of has so much richness to it. And, like, where's the money for those amazing outfits coming from? What do they do BESIDES hang out and party and be queer and subversive? Is this a post-scarcity world where everyone has a universal basic income? If there's such uber-tight control over society, how does the Pynk rest-inn stay in business? Is the tight social control universal, or only in some places? Could Jane and Zen have stayed in Pynk, but only if they were willing to never see Che again? Is Zen some kind of religious leader, and if so, how does that fit into everything? The Cleaners were some kind of hellish concatenation of bureaucracy and religion, how does that work and how does the religious part of it affect Jane and Zen's experiences? What was it like for Jane and Zen in there OUTSIDE of the cleaning? Are there lasting repercussions of the nevermind, physically or neurologically (how does disability affect things in this world)? Or you could do future-fic where they're political activists working to subvert the system. Or you could just do happy poly threesome!

Dirty Computer focuses far more on queer themes than on racial themes than Janelle's previous work, but there are still racial themes present. It can't be an accident that the people running the cleaning (both the cleaners and the mother superior) were white, and the three victims we saw were black. It hearkens back to all the times white people have decided that people of color were dangerous and subhuman and evil and needed to be made more like the white people. The destruction of memories was a literal version of things white culture has metaphorically been trying to do for centuries. The renaming, the "it's for your own good," all of it.

I love the songs of this album. Django Jane and I Like That are my favorites, but Screwed and Pynk are also awesome and I love the lush, lyrical way they feed into one another, the visuals and the lyrics and the beat together. I also love the themes: love, and being true to yourself, and at the end refusing both to give in and to respond violently. Please, please, please, give some sort of a happy ending. Like, you don't have to magically wave a magic wand and make all the screwed up things of this society go away, but I want the three to end up happy together.

If you delve into the religious aspects, the cleaners and Virgin Victoria are modeled on the worst parts of Christianity, and Jane and Zen's religious/spiritual stuff should be distinct and different.

Potential Crossovers:
Dirty Compupter/The Archandroid (Janelle Monae's first dystopian SF/F concept): Does the time-traveling android find herself dodging Cleaners as well as the Time Bureau? Is Cyndi Mayweather a reincarnation of Jane 57821 in some way?

Dirty Computer/Star Trek: is the Dirty Computer world part of the Eugenics Wars and/or WWIII?

Dirty Computer/Murderbot: Is the dystopian world of Dirty Computer part of the Corporation Rim?

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

Sense8

I love the worldbuilding and the characters, and what I most want is what happens NEXT. And I'm curious for both the immediate lives of the cluster (I love them all), but also for the larger world of sensate clusters. Do they start building their own culture, now that it's safer? What scars have been left by the corporate exploitation and murder? What continuing steps are needed to get rid of the lingering influence of BPO? Does the larger world ever learn about sensates, and what happens to the cluster then?

I love Sun's contradictions and complexity, I love Capheus's heart and courage, I love Lito's drama and sweetness, I love Nita and Nomi's trust and mutual devotion (and Amanita's quick thinking), I love the way Lito and Hernando's relationship grew and the way Daniela became a true partner for them and they have a relationship with her that's as important as a marriage but not romantic/sexual in the traditional sense. I love the way all of the cluster interacts and how together they are so much more than the sum of their parts, and I love watching all of them grow and become more truly themselves as they become entiwned in one another. (And I wonder what it would be like for clusters that weren't so well-suited, if that might be part of where Whispers came from.)

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band

I could go for slash, queerplatonic relationship, or complete gen, as long as the two are important to each other.

Prompts: the story of their first meeting is kind of mythologized by now (it's in two songs, plus lots of interviews!), another retelling of it would be great. Or an AU where Clarence wasn't in that car accident and went into the NFL and they still became close. Or an angsty fic about how they're in love but too afraid to add "living together openly as interracial queers" to "interracial queer kiss on stage." Or fluffy slice of life with the two of them together, either on tour or between tours. Or a fic where they're each the emotional center of the other's life, but they both have relationships with other people, too. (Please make it polyamory and not cheating.) Or a fic that's all about them Challenging Racism And Homophobia Together.

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic

Oh My General

(Available with English subs on Youtube)
This is the queer poly family I didn't know I needed. The larger plots of the show are okay, but my favorite part is the stuff of Ye Zhao, Zhao Yujin, and the three concubines together as a family. I headcanon Ye Zhao as bi/pan, and possibly genderfluid in some way. I love the idea of her and the Prince sharing the concubines (but only if the concubines are okay with the idea.) If you happen to know enough about queerness in pre-19th Century China to feel comfortable writing it, I would be thrilled if historical details got brought in. I'm also interested in the way the household is adapting its ideas of gender/status and roles within the household (is Concubine Yang fulfilling some of the household roles that the wife would normally do, because Ye Zhao is occupied with her military duties?) But I would also just love general slice-of-life stuff with them as a household and learning about each other and caring for one another. I'd love to see Ye Zhao and Yang and Xuan'er and Mianning becoming friends. Or you could have an AU where Ye Zhao marries Hu Qing and they are very happy together and just really good friends with the Prince and the concubines. (I love Hu Qing and like him far more for Ye Zhao than I like her with the Prince, but then I don't get her wonderful dynamic with the concubines, and I do appreciate how Ye Zhao and Zhao Yujin grow together and learn to trust one another over the course of the series.)

I like the Prince, but I also find his petulance and immaturity a bit annoying, and I like him most when he is growing and becoming more responsible and considerate.

Now, the thing about this story is that canon depends on Ye Zhao sexually harassing the Prince to get him to accept her as his wife and sleep with her. And that's pretty gross, especially as canon doesn't condemn it, just treats it as funny because it's a woman doing it. And I would be fine with a story that just pretended that aspect of things didn't happen and everyone had full consent for everything; I would be fine with a story that went AU and got them together some other way; I would be fine with a story that dealt with the fact that what she did was not okay and she learns that. I would *not* want a fic with canon-typical levels of sexual harassment.

Crossover Prompts: 将军在上 | Oh My General/Xena Warrior Princess: these two shows have, as far as I can tell, about the same amount of historical accuracy, and the same amount of lesbian subtext, and the same amount of Warrior Princesses. And we know Xena went to China! So make her and Ye Zhao meet!

Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, sexual harassment treated as normal/okay