Dear Yuletide Writer 2021

[evewithanapple]

Favourite tropes:
-loyalty kink
-found families
-hurt/comfort
-casefic
-sickfic
-general spookiness, especially gothic-style spookiness
-historical detail, especially history bleeding into the present
-mutually supportive couples
-huddling for warmth
-weird religions shenanigans (mysterious healing powers, visions, etc)

DNWs:
-animal death/abuse
-incest
-character death
-A/B/O
-modern AUs (if canon is fantasy/historical)
-noncon/dubcon

Stigmata (1999)
Andrew Kiernan, Frankie Paige

This is a longstanding comfort food fandom for me: I cannot honestly say that I consider the movie good, but it plays around with so many of my favourite tropes and character types, it has a special place in my heart. I'm really into 1. relictant messiahs, 2. female messiahs, 3. messiah/disciple relationships, and 4. the convergence of all three, which is what this movie has. So basically I'd like anything about their relationship, and how Frankie deals with "HOLY SHIT I'M A PROPHET???" and how Andrew deals with "holy shit I'm not a priest anymore and also I have a girlfriend???" (I mean the movie doesn't specify, but I'm pretty sure choking a representative of the Vatican is grounds for excommunication.) What do they do? Where do they go? Do they have a lot of vaguely sacreligious sex? (Probably they do.)

The Alienist (TV)
Mary Palmer

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 (TV)
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.

A Charm of Magpies Series - KJ 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.