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.
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 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 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. 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 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. Anyway, point is, 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.
Rivers of London:
Abigail Kamara, Mamusu "Rose" Grant, Elsie Winstanley
You do not have to include every character. I would be perfectly fine with any two of these.
I love this series for many reasons (the snark! the vivid characters! the worldbuilding! the digressions! the wry-but-pointed social commentary on race and class and bureaucracy!). I've read/listened to most of the supplemental material so you can use any of that material if you want. Worldbuilding is great--I'd love to know more about the foxes and their history, or about how the demimonde works, how things are different (and similar) in Sierra Leone, or just in general the characters interacting with magical people/places.
Prompts:
Abigail and Mamusu: Abigail obviously knows who Peter is from the very beginning, but the first time he sees her in Moon Over Soho he doesn't recognize her as anything other than another kid from the estate who is possibly related to him. But they're first cousins! I get that there's a big family, but still, it seems odd to me. So something about Abigail and Mamusu and the relationships between Abigail's immediate family and Mamusu's immediate family would be very interesting. Or something about Mamusu telling everyone on the estate that Peter is a witchfinder now, and Abigail reacting to that. Or something about Mamusu helping out with Abigail's brother in a pinch.
Mamusu and Elsie. Ever since A Rare Book of Cunning Device came out, I've been curious about how those two met. If you want to have the two of them having Librarian Adventures as young women in Sierra Leone, I would be thrilled. Or, 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? Also, I would totally be down for some femslash.
Elsie and Abigail: Abigail can always use Awesome Adults as mentors. She has Simon's mum for government-and-spy stuff, she has Thomas for magic, I think she could use Elsie to fill in the academia end of things. There could be adventures, there could be research help, there could be wading through academic bullshit.
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrasment/humiliation, darkfic, AUs in which the worldbuilding or the setting massively changes (historical AUs, omegaverse, mundane AUs, everyone is a werewolf, etc), reader-insert fic
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.
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrasment/humiliation, darkfic, AUs in which the worldbuilding or the setting massively changes (historical AUs, omegaverse, mundane AUs, everyone is a werewolf, etc), reader-insert fic
Dirty Computer--Janelle Monae
Jane, Zen, Che
Dirty Computer is an "emotion picture," an album with an album-long music video. It is available 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.
Crossover prompts:
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 World War III?
Dirty Computer/Batman Beyond: the dystopian/cyberpunk aspect of the Cleaning fits well with the more dystopian/cyberpunk aspects of Batman Beyond. Is that happening in the America that Terry lives in, and he's just never had to notice because he's white, straight, and a billionaire's protege?
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrasment/humiliation, darkfic, AUs in which the worldbuilding or the setting massively changes (historical AUs, omegaverse, mundane AUs, everyone is a werewolf, etc), reader-insert fic
Caprica (TV)
Tamara Adama.
Things what I would love (pick any, all, or none as you like): something exploring Tauron culture, and culture clashes thereof. We know all about Joseph and Sam Adama's delicate relationship with their homeland, and a little bit about the first William Adama's relationship with all things Tauron, but not much about Tamara and Tauron. So, that would be great, and not even that much about her relationship with her family. Going deeper there would be really interesting. Also! Cylons! I want to know what happens with the Cylons! We know (basically) what happened with Lacy and Zoe after the show ended, and their interaction with Cylons, but Tamara didn't get a new body and she didn't become the Reverend Mother, so what happened to her? Was she still around during the Cylon War, and if so what was her role? Was she still there, a ghost in the machine, when the Final Five showed up? What was her role in the Cylon culture? Not to mention, what does she think of her Dad and his new family? If you wanted to do something about her and Bill Adama from BSG meeting--particularly in some kind of complicated plot involving the Rebel Cylons and the Final Five--that would probably not be in the spirit of Yuletide but I would not complain. At all.
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrasment/humiliation, darkfic, AUs in which the worldbuilding or the setting massively changes (historical AUs, omegaverse, mundane AUs, everyone is a werewolf, etc), reader-insert fic
Inside Daisy Clover
Daisy Clover
(Available for rent or purchase on Amazon or Apple TV)
There are a number of ways you could go here. You could lean into the dystopian nature of the Hollywood studio system, or you could have a post-canon fluffy fic about Daisy having escaped that world and made a new life for herself. You could lean into the queer themes and explore queerness in Hollywood's golden age (maybe using Debbie Reynolds or Natalie Wood as models, they were beards for any number of queer men). Or maybe Daisy's queer herself, in some way! I could see her as a lesbian, or bi, or what we would call transgender and/or nonbinary, but which they didn't really have words for. What would Daisy and Wade's marriage have been like? I'm good with bi or ace or queerplatonic or just her being a beard. Again, this could be either angsty or fluffy, depending on how you take it. You could lean into the mental illness and childhood trauma themes, bringing our modern knowledge of how such things affect people into the story. You could focus on her legal battles with the studio post-canon. The last lines of the film ("somebody declared war") are so metal. Or maybe everybody thinks she's dead and she starts completely over. I'd be fine with crossovers to real Golden Age Hollywood people and/or classic movies set in this era.
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrasment/humiliation, darkfic, AUs in which the worldbuilding or the setting massively changes (historical AUs, omegaverse, mundane AUs, everyone is a werewolf, etc), reader-insert fic
The Swan (1954)
Alexandra
(Available on Amazon)
The fascinating thing about this story is that it's set in 1910. There's all this scheming to get a crown back in the family, and we-the-audience know that in less than a decade most of the monarchies of Europe are going to crumble. Maybe Prince Albert's nation will be one of the few exceptions! ... but probably not. And if she's married him because of his crown, what's that going to do to their marriage when he hasn't got one? These are not people for whom love/romance is a necessary or expected part of marriage; a solid partnership with mutual goals where you don't dislike your spouse is the ideal for them. But still, knocking out the foundation "we'd be good ruling a country together" would be a big change for anybody.
A few notes on characterization: Albert can be as quirky as you like (maybe he's autistic?) but for me that moment of insight and compassion at the end says everything. He's not as oblivious as he seems, and he does care. Also, the fact that he nudged her to test her reaction before picking up her arm to escort her in and didn't just assume he was entitled says good things about him. As for Alexandra, you can just see her taking that swan metaphor to heart, and while it helped her get through in that moment I wonder about the long-term repercussions of having that as your self-image would be. (Wonder if it's part of Albert's self-image, and that's why he thought of it?) Alexandra's mother is awful, but her brothers are fun and I like her relationship with them.
Prompts:
AU where she does run away with Agi: Talk about a huge life change! What would it be like? How does she adapt? Are they happy together? What does his family think of it? Does her family completely disown her? Or futurefic! Everybody thought it was a stupid thing to do, then WWI happened, and now she's the one with the solid life teaching her family how to live when they've lost even more power and wealth and there aren't any royal relatives around willing to prop them up and possibly marry them. Or where she and Agi have to help Albert figure out what to do now he's no longer Crown Prince/King (threesome, maybe?). Or just Alexandra getting used to living a middle-class life.
Canon Post-WWI: she and Prince Albert have to figure out what to do as former-royals. Or, maybe their royal family keeps the crown by the skin of their teeth, and she's still the swan looking good out on the lake while on solid ground the changes of the 20th Century happen around her. Maybe in the 1930s Dr. Agi has a kid who comes to the palace for something (politician? tutor for the next generation of royals? expert in something or other?) and thinks it's funny how Queen Alexandra shows up so often when he's around and asks questions about his childhood and how his father is--awful lot of attention for someone who was only a tutor for a few years two decades ago.
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrasment/humiliation, darkfic, AUs in which the worldbuilding or the setting massively changes (historical AUs, omegaverse, mundane AUs, everyone is a werewolf, etc.), reader-insert fic
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.
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 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, 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! 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 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. 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 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. Anyway, point is, 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.
Rivers of London:
Abigail Kamara, Mamusu "Rose" Grant, Elsie Winstanley
You do not have to include every character. I would be perfectly fine with any two of these.
I love this series for many reasons (the snark! the vivid characters! the worldbuilding! the digressions! the wry-but-pointed social commentary on race and class and bureaucracy!). I've read/listened to most of the supplemental material so you can use any of that material if you want. Worldbuilding is great--I'd love to know more about the foxes and their history, or about how the demimonde works, how things are different (and similar) in Sierra Leone, or just in general the characters interacting with magical people/places.
Prompts:
Abigail and Mamusu: Abigail obviously knows who Peter is from the very beginning, but the first time he sees her in Moon Over Soho he doesn't recognize her as anything other than another kid from the estate who is possibly related to him. But they're first cousins! I get that there's a big family, but still, it seems odd to me. So something about Abigail and Mamusu and the relationships between Abigail's immediate family and Mamusu's immediate family would be very interesting. Or something about Mamusu telling everyone on the estate that Peter is a witchfinder now, and Abigail reacting to that. Or something about Mamusu helping out with Abigail's brother in a pinch.
Mamusu and Elsie. Ever since A Rare Book of Cunning Device came out, I've been curious about how those two met. If you want to have the two of them having Librarian Adventures as young women in Sierra Leone, I would be thrilled. Or, 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? Also, I would totally be down for some femslash.
Elsie and Abigail: Abigail can always use Awesome Adults as mentors. She has Simon's mum for government-and-spy stuff, she has Thomas for magic, I think she could use Elsie to fill in the academia end of things. There could be adventures, there could be research help, there could be wading through academic bullshit.
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrasment/humiliation, darkfic, AUs in which the worldbuilding or the setting massively changes (historical AUs, omegaverse, mundane AUs, everyone is a werewolf, etc), reader-insert fic
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.
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrasment/humiliation, darkfic, AUs in which the worldbuilding or the setting massively changes (historical AUs, omegaverse, mundane AUs, everyone is a werewolf, etc), reader-insert fic
Dirty Computer--Janelle Monae
Jane, Zen, Che
Dirty Computer is an "emotion picture," an album with an album-long music video. It is available 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.
Crossover prompts:
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 World War III?
Dirty Computer/Batman Beyond: the dystopian/cyberpunk aspect of the Cleaning fits well with the more dystopian/cyberpunk aspects of Batman Beyond. Is that happening in the America that Terry lives in, and he's just never had to notice because he's white, straight, and a billionaire's protege?
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrasment/humiliation, darkfic, AUs in which the worldbuilding or the setting massively changes (historical AUs, omegaverse, mundane AUs, everyone is a werewolf, etc), reader-insert fic
Caprica (TV)
Tamara Adama.
Things what I would love (pick any, all, or none as you like): something exploring Tauron culture, and culture clashes thereof. We know all about Joseph and Sam Adama's delicate relationship with their homeland, and a little bit about the first William Adama's relationship with all things Tauron, but not much about Tamara and Tauron. So, that would be great, and not even that much about her relationship with her family. Going deeper there would be really interesting. Also! Cylons! I want to know what happens with the Cylons! We know (basically) what happened with Lacy and Zoe after the show ended, and their interaction with Cylons, but Tamara didn't get a new body and she didn't become the Reverend Mother, so what happened to her? Was she still around during the Cylon War, and if so what was her role? Was she still there, a ghost in the machine, when the Final Five showed up? What was her role in the Cylon culture? Not to mention, what does she think of her Dad and his new family? If you wanted to do something about her and Bill Adama from BSG meeting--particularly in some kind of complicated plot involving the Rebel Cylons and the Final Five--that would probably not be in the spirit of Yuletide but I would not complain. At all.
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrasment/humiliation, darkfic, AUs in which the worldbuilding or the setting massively changes (historical AUs, omegaverse, mundane AUs, everyone is a werewolf, etc), reader-insert fic
Inside Daisy Clover
Daisy Clover
(Available for rent or purchase on Amazon or Apple TV)
There are a number of ways you could go here. You could lean into the dystopian nature of the Hollywood studio system, or you could have a post-canon fluffy fic about Daisy having escaped that world and made a new life for herself. You could lean into the queer themes and explore queerness in Hollywood's golden age (maybe using Debbie Reynolds or Natalie Wood as models, they were beards for any number of queer men). Or maybe Daisy's queer herself, in some way! I could see her as a lesbian, or bi, or what we would call transgender and/or nonbinary, but which they didn't really have words for. What would Daisy and Wade's marriage have been like? I'm good with bi or ace or queerplatonic or just her being a beard. Again, this could be either angsty or fluffy, depending on how you take it. You could lean into the mental illness and childhood trauma themes, bringing our modern knowledge of how such things affect people into the story. You could focus on her legal battles with the studio post-canon. The last lines of the film ("somebody declared war") are so metal. Or maybe everybody thinks she's dead and she starts completely over. I'd be fine with crossovers to real Golden Age Hollywood people and/or classic movies set in this era.
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrasment/humiliation, darkfic, AUs in which the worldbuilding or the setting massively changes (historical AUs, omegaverse, mundane AUs, everyone is a werewolf, etc), reader-insert fic
The Swan (1954)
Alexandra
(Available on Amazon)
The fascinating thing about this story is that it's set in 1910. There's all this scheming to get a crown back in the family, and we-the-audience know that in less than a decade most of the monarchies of Europe are going to crumble. Maybe Prince Albert's nation will be one of the few exceptions! ... but probably not. And if she's married him because of his crown, what's that going to do to their marriage when he hasn't got one? These are not people for whom love/romance is a necessary or expected part of marriage; a solid partnership with mutual goals where you don't dislike your spouse is the ideal for them. But still, knocking out the foundation "we'd be good ruling a country together" would be a big change for anybody.
A few notes on characterization: Albert can be as quirky as you like (maybe he's autistic?) but for me that moment of insight and compassion at the end says everything. He's not as oblivious as he seems, and he does care. Also, the fact that he nudged her to test her reaction before picking up her arm to escort her in and didn't just assume he was entitled says good things about him. As for Alexandra, you can just see her taking that swan metaphor to heart, and while it helped her get through in that moment I wonder about the long-term repercussions of having that as your self-image would be. (Wonder if it's part of Albert's self-image, and that's why he thought of it?) Alexandra's mother is awful, but her brothers are fun and I like her relationship with them.
Prompts:
AU where she does run away with Agi: Talk about a huge life change! What would it be like? How does she adapt? Are they happy together? What does his family think of it? Does her family completely disown her? Or futurefic! Everybody thought it was a stupid thing to do, then WWI happened, and now she's the one with the solid life teaching her family how to live when they've lost even more power and wealth and there aren't any royal relatives around willing to prop them up and possibly marry them. Or where she and Agi have to help Albert figure out what to do now he's no longer Crown Prince/King (threesome, maybe?). Or just Alexandra getting used to living a middle-class life.
Canon Post-WWI: she and Prince Albert have to figure out what to do as former-royals. Or, maybe their royal family keeps the crown by the skin of their teeth, and she's still the swan looking good out on the lake while on solid ground the changes of the 20th Century happen around her. Maybe in the 1930s Dr. Agi has a kid who comes to the palace for something (politician? tutor for the next generation of royals? expert in something or other?) and thinks it's funny how Queen Alexandra shows up so often when he's around and asks questions about his childhood and how his father is--awful lot of attention for someone who was only a tutor for a few years two decades ago.
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrasment/humiliation, darkfic, AUs in which the worldbuilding or the setting massively changes (historical AUs, omegaverse, mundane AUs, everyone is a werewolf, etc.), reader-insert fic
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Date: 2021-10-15 11:53 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2021-10-16 12:14 am (UTC)From: