Dear Yuletide Writer

[evewithanapple]

Thank you for writing for me!

Favourite tropes:

-loyalty kink

-found families

-hurt/comfort

-casefic

-general spookiness, especially gothic-style spookiness

-historical detail, especially history bleeding into the present

-mutually supportive couples

-huddling for warmth

-"everybody lives" fix-its

 

DNWs:

-animal death/abuse

-incest

-character death

-A/B/O

-modern AUs (if canon is fantasy/historical)

-noncon/dubcon

 

The Alienist
Mary Palmer (The Alienist TV)

So I blazed through this show in about two days, flipped several tables when I got to the end of episode eight, wrote several posts and made a video about my feelings, and now here we are. I think it just about goes without saying that she got the short end of the stick in canon, and I'm hungry for any and all content about her, especially fic that fills in some of the gaps and/or gives her a more active role in the story. She has such an interesting backstory! She's survived so much, and it gives her a really unique perspective on the events of the show. How much does she know about Kreizler's work at the Institute, and how does she feel about it? (After all, criminal psychology is basically what got her out of prison; she must have some thoughts on the matter.) Does she have any friends outside the house? She must have learned sign language somwhere - did she go to school? I would love a fic about her getting to join the team, or even just her watching from a distance and thinking about what's going on.

 

If you want to write Mary/Kreizler, I'm also on board for that - I think there's something to the relationship, where there's this mutual support and comfort (he saved her from prison, she helps him with the things he can't do because of his hand - it's also made explicit in the book that she's the only person he's confided in about his father, which is fascinating and says so much about the levels of trust involved) and also, he seems to make her happy, and I'm very invested in her being happy. 

Copper
Annie Reilly

I'm pretty sure you can draw a direct line from my love of Annie Reilly to my love of Mary Palmer and vice versa - she is such a fascinating character, so damaged and yet still such a survivor. She's not necessarily always a nice character, but everything she does and everything she is springs from the very understandable trauma she still carries from her experiences. I would love anything about her perspective and her life after she leaves New York - what is farm life like for her? Who does she grow up to be? Does she ever meet up with Kevin again, and what does she think of him from a distance of 10+ years? (Not romantically, please. I love the father/daughter aspect of their relationship, but romance between them is very Do Not Want.)

I would also be very excited for - if you're interested at all in writing crossovers - a story about Annie and Mary interacting. The timeline would require a bit of fudging (you'd have to move Annie to 1896 or Mary back to the 1860s) but they have so much in common, I would love to see what they'd make of each other.

Overlord
Edward Boyce, Jacob Rosenfeld

This was such a FUN movie, kind of a bloodier throwback to nineties adventure movies like The Mummy. The team had delightful chemistry, and I am ON BOARD with reading about their further adventures. I was also getting definite Boyce/Rosenfeld vibes, so please do feel free to go in that direction, if the spirit moves you.

Moulin Rouge!: The Musical - Various/Logan
Christian (Moulin Rouge Musical), Satine (Moulin Rouge Musical)

One of the things - one of the several things - that I really love about the way that the stage musical updated the movie is the amount of interiority and agency Satine is given within the narrative. She has friends! She has a backstory! She has goals and a struggle and inner conflicts about what she wants vs. what she feels like she has to do to survive! I would love a fic of her perspective on the events of the musical, about her own mortality, about Christian and what being part of a "love story" means to her, how she feels about performing (does she like it? Or is it just another thing she does to survive?) about what she wishes her life could look like if she had a choice in the matter. I would also be very happy with fix-it fic (you don't necessarily die of tuberculosis right away! You can live for a long time with it! Doc Holliday lasted fifteen years!) and seeing what she might do after the events of the show if she did live.

Also: you know what would be absolutely incredible for this fandom? Rule 63 where everyone's lesbians. The historical Moulin Rouge was notable for having a thriving gay subculture, which was documented in the paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec (see here and here) and I would LOVE to see that in fic. 

A Charm of Magpies Series - K. J. Charles
Ben Spenser, Jonah Pastern

God, I love all the Magpie characters, but I think I picked these two because they're, oddly, the happiest/most domestic of the bunch - I expected from the book's summary that it was going to be very dark and twisted, and instead they moved to the seaside and got adopted by a widow and her children. (That's not a complaint.) So - anything about their new, domestic lives and their place in the community.