I use the same name everywhere so I am ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beatrice_otter on AO3.
Lovely author, here is my theory about letters: how much detail people want in a letter is HIGHLY variable. Some people (such as myself) prefer if their recip gives LOTS of guidance on their wishes. Some prefer as little as possible so they can be free as a bird. Most are somewhere in between. So! Here's everything including the kitchen sink if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. 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 just not inspired that way."
I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am very rarely disappointed with my gifts. I write long and detailed Dear Author letters because I find such things helpful when I'm writing for other people; if you are like me, here you go! If your style is different and a detailed letter makes you feel hemmed-in, feel free to do what works for you.
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 just 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.
Specific fandom prompts:
Battlestar Galactica:
Ever since I first saw that moment in the finale where Kara keys in the jump from Hera's scribbles and they end up in orbit over New Earth, I have had the idea of "what if that jump took them back in time so they could fix things instead?" It is a perpetual plot bunny that I keep meaning to write but never get around to even starting. Usually I imagine that as having taken them to a couple of months before the show starts, with just enough time to derail the apocalypse, but there are multiple points in time where time travel would give a very satisfying or interesting thing. They could go back to the time of the Caprica TV series! They could go back to the moment after the first war when the Final Five arrived! So many different places. I would be interested in "the whole fleet goes back in time, jumping along with Galactica" but that might be a trifle ambitious for a ficathon story; talk about cast of thousands. But other time travel mechanisms and moments would be fun too.
I have also, since watching the Caprica TV show, longed for Admiral Adama to meet his older sister Tamara after her consciousness was uploaded into the internet. And guess what! With time travel, that would be possible! Allllll his issues around family and Cylons (and her issues around family and what happened to them after she died) would be interesting to explore.
I don't dislike any BSG characters, but I do get annoyed by Kara's drama and Baltar more than anyone else, and I hate Dee's death to make drama for Lee. I prefer Lee/Dee and Sam/Kara, or even a foursome, rather than Kara/Lee. I think Bill and Laura are great together and I love exploring times when they are at loggerheads and both have legitimately good points. I think internal Cylon dynamics are fascinating, particularly within the Final Five and within the Rebel Cylons. I think Saul Tigh/Caprica Six was all kinds of messed up but really compelling, and the death of Caprica Six's baby was a wasted opportunity. I think Felix and Dee both deserved better, and I love exploring their friendship (and legitimate disagreements with one another). I think both Boomer and Athena have really interesting relationships with the people on Galactica that I would love to see explored further.
DNW: Darkfic, incest
Imperial Radch
If you're doing Sphene/Minask, three plot bunnies spring to mind. Either Sphene goes back (either physically or just its AI) purely to save its beloved captain ... or Sphene gets ahold of the Presger gun and goes back to kill the Usurper before she can take over. Either could be really interesting. Or possibly Minask was frozen somewhere like Seivarden was and gets woken up and reunited with Sphene.
If it's just Breq going back in time, either physically or mentally, what's going to happen when she is an ancillary again, and one body out of many, only one part of the consciousness that is Justice of Toren? What's the <em>rest</em> of her going to think/feel when they learn what will happen if everything plays out as it did in the original timeline? Because I think that would be a very interesting dynamic to examine. Or ... is she not able to join up with JoT again for some reason? Does she choose not to because she can't trust that the whole ship would do what she thought they should, particularly considering the overrides Anaander has set? (Does she have the codes from Tisarwat so she can go in and ... remove all accesses?)
If it's Skaaiat Awer going back in time, that is ... that is interesting. Skaaiat is so politic, and knows so much about how things are done, and loves Awn, but has a totally different skillset and perspective than Breq does.
If it's Awn Elming coming forward in time, holy crap is she in for an adjustment! And so much of how she reacts depends on <em>when</em> you take her from her original timeline. Like, if you take her from just after she unravels the plot but before Anaander shows up on the planet, and plop her down in the Republic of Two Systems, that would be one thing; if you have her survive JoT's destruction and show up on Omaugh before Breq gets there, that would be a very different reaction. Any time and place you go with, it would be <em>very</em> interesting.
DNW: Darkfic, incest
Star Wars: All Media Types
I love Finn, Poe, Rey, and most of TFA. I think the ST as a whole is a mess and, in general, I prefer the old EU; but I am firmly committed to the belief that with a canon as labyrinthine and extensive as Star Wars, the only sane thing to do is to cherry-pick the bits you like and don't worry about the rest. So if you love the ST, feel free to bring as much of it in as you want, except Kylo/Rey. I think the ST people (even Poe) probably know very little of what actually happened to cause all the horrors they grew up with, due to one thing and another, and it would be very interesting to explore that mismatch as they try to fix things. OTOH, if you want to have them, say, crash-land on top of Palpatine and kill him accidentally (a la the Wizard of Oz) just after he killed his Sith Master, so that there are no Sith left, and the fic is all about exploring the relationships of people who wouldn't otherwise have met, that would be great too.
Finn is my favorite of the characters introduced in the ST, and I <em>love</em> the idea of Force-sensitive/Jedi Finn. I think he has so much courage and strength to realize how evil the First Order is despite years of literal brainwashing, and I think he's really compassionate and sweet. I ship Finn/Rey, but it's okay if you don't.
I think the Jedi Order as shown in the Prequels and the Clone Wars had a lot of flaws, but also a lot of good things, please don't Jedi-bash.
I love Lando, and I think he was absolutely right to put the safety of his entire city and everyone living in it ahead of the well-being of a couple of old friends. He is smart, pragmatic, and responsible in the best possible way.
DNW: Kylo/Rey, redeemed!Kylo, darkfic, incest
Babylon 5
I love Babylon 5, and I especially love Minbari culture. If you do worldbuilding for Minbari culture, past, present, or future, I will love you forever. I consider "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" canon and firmly believe that when Sinclair went into the past and became Valen, he found Catherine again after she was lost in time. And Sheridan doesn't deserve Delenn, but he knows it and she loves him anyway. I ship Sheridan/Delenn and Sheridan/Delenn/Lennier as a V. I also ship Delenn/Neroon.
I ship Susan/Marcus, but also just love Susan being awesome herself kicking ass and taking names.
I would be interested in any of these characters ending up either in their past (say, during the time of the Earth-Minbari War) or in the far past (say, during the last Shadow War) or in the future (any of the periods shown/hinted at in the show, or anything you want to come up with). Or you could have wacky hijinks caused by leftover/abandoned Vorlon tech (or tech from any of the other First Races. Maybe there's something strange under the surface of Epsilon II besides the Great Machine, or maybe it goes haywire! Maybe Draal watches all of time and space and figures out how to interfere in various points.
DNW: darkfic, incest
beatrice_otter on AO3.Lovely author, here is my theory about letters: how much detail people want in a letter is HIGHLY variable. Some people (such as myself) prefer if their recip gives LOTS of guidance on their wishes. Some prefer as little as possible so they can be free as a bird. Most are somewhere in between. So! Here's everything including the kitchen sink if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. 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 just not inspired that way."
I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am very rarely disappointed with my gifts. I write long and detailed Dear Author letters because I find such things helpful when I'm writing for other people; if you are like me, here you go! If your style is different and a detailed letter makes you feel hemmed-in, feel free to do what works for you.
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 just 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.
Please no incest or darkfic. I don't count cousin relationships as incestuous. 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."
Here are some other things to keep in mind:
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! 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 in the history of the human race, 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. Every Christian group has at least a minimal core theology that members must affirm, but participation in ritual is generally far less rigid a requirement. Most other religions rank what you do (both ethically and ritually) as more important than what you believe, and it is usually 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. And this is just one way in which Christianity is weird, there are many others. So if you are doing worldbuilding for a fantasy or non-Christian religion ... unless it is explicitly a Christian-analogue, it should be different from Christianity. Get creative! Have fun with it!
Please no incest or darkfic. I don't count cousin relationships as incestuous. 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."
Here are some other things to keep in mind:
- I like stuff that takes side characters and puts them center-stage, especially when they are characters of color or women. I enjoy seeing them come to life.
- I don't like it when characters of color or women 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 cultural diversity, and to know that culture matters to people, and to see how different cultures interact and where the clashes are.
- I like quirky characters.
- 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, 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 probably 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! 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 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 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 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! 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 in the history of the human race, 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. Every Christian group has at least a minimal core theology that members must affirm, but participation in ritual is generally far less rigid a requirement. Most other religions rank what you do (both ethically and ritually) as more important than what you believe, and it is usually 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. And this is just one way in which Christianity is weird, there are many others. So if you are doing worldbuilding for a fantasy or non-Christian religion ... unless it is explicitly a Christian-analogue, it should be different from Christianity. Get creative! Have fun with it!
I like crossovers, but am picky about them. I have to know both fandoms, and the the two fandoms mesh well in terms of worldbuilding. For example: I can buy the Doctor from Doctor Who popping up anywhere, because that's a feature of the show. I can buy Jack O'Neill from SG-1 meeting the Watchers from Buffy, because those two shows could plausibly exist in the same world. I can buy the Battlestar Galactica fleet stumbling into the Federation, because hey, the Colonies were settled by people whom the gods had relocated, and Star Trek has a history of aliens pretending to be "gods" and doing stuff like relocating whole populations. Babylon 5 showing up in the Star Trek universe would have to be extremely well-done for me to like it, because the worldbuilding, technology, history, and everything of the two shows are so different. If you want to know what fandoms I know and read, my AO3 bookmarks and pinboard bookmarks probably aren't a TOTALLY exhaustive list of fandoms I know, but pretty close.
Formats I'm open to: Traditional prose, narrative poetry, in-universe texts, and I would love art treats.Specific fandom prompts:
Battlestar Galactica:
Ever since I first saw that moment in the finale where Kara keys in the jump from Hera's scribbles and they end up in orbit over New Earth, I have had the idea of "what if that jump took them back in time so they could fix things instead?" It is a perpetual plot bunny that I keep meaning to write but never get around to even starting. Usually I imagine that as having taken them to a couple of months before the show starts, with just enough time to derail the apocalypse, but there are multiple points in time where time travel would give a very satisfying or interesting thing. They could go back to the time of the Caprica TV series! They could go back to the moment after the first war when the Final Five arrived! So many different places. I would be interested in "the whole fleet goes back in time, jumping along with Galactica" but that might be a trifle ambitious for a ficathon story; talk about cast of thousands. But other time travel mechanisms and moments would be fun too.
I have also, since watching the Caprica TV show, longed for Admiral Adama to meet his older sister Tamara after her consciousness was uploaded into the internet. And guess what! With time travel, that would be possible! Allllll his issues around family and Cylons (and her issues around family and what happened to them after she died) would be interesting to explore.
I don't dislike any BSG characters, but I do get annoyed by Kara's drama and Baltar more than anyone else, and I hate Dee's death to make drama for Lee. I prefer Lee/Dee and Sam/Kara, or even a foursome, rather than Kara/Lee. I think Bill and Laura are great together and I love exploring times when they are at loggerheads and both have legitimately good points. I think internal Cylon dynamics are fascinating, particularly within the Final Five and within the Rebel Cylons. I think Saul Tigh/Caprica Six was all kinds of messed up but really compelling, and the death of Caprica Six's baby was a wasted opportunity. I think Felix and Dee both deserved better, and I love exploring their friendship (and legitimate disagreements with one another). I think both Boomer and Athena have really interesting relationships with the people on Galactica that I would love to see explored further.
DNW: Darkfic, incest
Imperial Radch
If you're doing Sphene/Minask, three plot bunnies spring to mind. Either Sphene goes back (either physically or just its AI) purely to save its beloved captain ... or Sphene gets ahold of the Presger gun and goes back to kill the Usurper before she can take over. Either could be really interesting. Or possibly Minask was frozen somewhere like Seivarden was and gets woken up and reunited with Sphene.
If it's just Breq going back in time, either physically or mentally, what's going to happen when she is an ancillary again, and one body out of many, only one part of the consciousness that is Justice of Toren? What's the <em>rest</em> of her going to think/feel when they learn what will happen if everything plays out as it did in the original timeline? Because I think that would be a very interesting dynamic to examine. Or ... is she not able to join up with JoT again for some reason? Does she choose not to because she can't trust that the whole ship would do what she thought they should, particularly considering the overrides Anaander has set? (Does she have the codes from Tisarwat so she can go in and ... remove all accesses?)
If it's Skaaiat Awer going back in time, that is ... that is interesting. Skaaiat is so politic, and knows so much about how things are done, and loves Awn, but has a totally different skillset and perspective than Breq does.
If it's Awn Elming coming forward in time, holy crap is she in for an adjustment! And so much of how she reacts depends on <em>when</em> you take her from her original timeline. Like, if you take her from just after she unravels the plot but before Anaander shows up on the planet, and plop her down in the Republic of Two Systems, that would be one thing; if you have her survive JoT's destruction and show up on Omaugh before Breq gets there, that would be a very different reaction. Any time and place you go with, it would be <em>very</em> interesting.
DNW: Darkfic, incest
Star Wars: All Media Types
I love Finn, Poe, Rey, and most of TFA. I think the ST as a whole is a mess and, in general, I prefer the old EU; but I am firmly committed to the belief that with a canon as labyrinthine and extensive as Star Wars, the only sane thing to do is to cherry-pick the bits you like and don't worry about the rest. So if you love the ST, feel free to bring as much of it in as you want, except Kylo/Rey. I think the ST people (even Poe) probably know very little of what actually happened to cause all the horrors they grew up with, due to one thing and another, and it would be very interesting to explore that mismatch as they try to fix things. OTOH, if you want to have them, say, crash-land on top of Palpatine and kill him accidentally (a la the Wizard of Oz) just after he killed his Sith Master, so that there are no Sith left, and the fic is all about exploring the relationships of people who wouldn't otherwise have met, that would be great too.
Finn is my favorite of the characters introduced in the ST, and I <em>love</em> the idea of Force-sensitive/Jedi Finn. I think he has so much courage and strength to realize how evil the First Order is despite years of literal brainwashing, and I think he's really compassionate and sweet. I ship Finn/Rey, but it's okay if you don't.
I think the Jedi Order as shown in the Prequels and the Clone Wars had a lot of flaws, but also a lot of good things, please don't Jedi-bash.
I love Lando, and I think he was absolutely right to put the safety of his entire city and everyone living in it ahead of the well-being of a couple of old friends. He is smart, pragmatic, and responsible in the best possible way.
DNW: Kylo/Rey, redeemed!Kylo, darkfic, incest
Babylon 5
I love Babylon 5, and I especially love Minbari culture. If you do worldbuilding for Minbari culture, past, present, or future, I will love you forever. I consider "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" canon and firmly believe that when Sinclair went into the past and became Valen, he found Catherine again after she was lost in time. And Sheridan doesn't deserve Delenn, but he knows it and she loves him anyway. I ship Sheridan/Delenn and Sheridan/Delenn/Lennier as a V. I also ship Delenn/Neroon.
I ship Susan/Marcus, but also just love Susan being awesome herself kicking ass and taking names.
I would be interested in any of these characters ending up either in their past (say, during the time of the Earth-Minbari War) or in the far past (say, during the last Shadow War) or in the future (any of the periods shown/hinted at in the show, or anything you want to come up with). Or you could have wacky hijinks caused by leftover/abandoned Vorlon tech (or tech from any of the other First Races. Maybe there's something strange under the surface of Epsilon II besides the Great Machine, or maybe it goes haywire! Maybe Draal watches all of time and space and figures out how to interfere in various points.
DNW: darkfic, incest
