Dear Yuletide Writer 2022

[evewithanapple]

Here we are again!

First off, of course, thank you so much for writing for me - I've been doing this for twelve (!!!) years now, and I'm continually overjoyed to experience everyone coming together to share in our nerdiest, most niche fandom loves. This year I've got a bit of a melange going - books, movies, TV shows, old flames and new friends. It's wonderful to feel that fannish spark, isn't it?

I have a fairly diverse range of tastes when it comes to fanfic, but a mainstay for me is definitely hurt/comfort - give me a couple cuddling after someone gets wrecked and I will eat it up like a spoon. On the same note, I'm always, always down for sickfic. When I say "hurt/comfort," I mean emotional as well as physical - for some of the canons I'm requesting, the characters are recovering from emotional wounds, some from physical, and some from both. Basically I love to watch the healing process begin to unfold, and how much truth comes through in characters recognizing each others' pain and knowing how to help them. There's nothing more romantic than recognition.

I'm also down for fluff - again, it varies by canon, but pretty much all these characters could use a break. So if what you want to write is unabashed curtainfic of a couple having a lazy day in bed, that would make me MORE than happy.

Speaking of "in bed:" yuleporn would delight me in pretty much any of these fandoms. I feel like saying "here is a list of my smut likes" is of limited use in a multifandom letter, because smut is so variable by character, but in general I tend to enjoy:

• body worship
• tender sex
• frantic, clothes-ripping sex
• first time
• cunnilingus
• strap-ons
• orgasm delay

Other things I like: casefic, "everyone lives/nobody dies" AUs, character studies, loyalty kink, found families, religious mysticism.

Things I DNW: animal death/abuse, incest, character death, A/B/O, modern AUs (if canon is fantasy/historical), noncon/dubcon

Requests

Swordspoint Series
Artemisia Fitz-Levi, Katherine Talbert

I read Privilege of the Sword for the first time this year and was torn between utter delight at the book and despair that I hadn't read it in high school, when it would have absolutely changed my world. Katherine and Artemisia are not explicitly romantic in the book (although they certainly are capital-R Romantic, what with their roleplaying as doomed theatrical lovers) but: that's what fanfiction is for. I love the way the book blends fantasy of manners with high swashbuckling adventure, and I especially love how Katherine and Artemisia fall into these traditional "cavalier and his lady" roles - except, of course, gay. They're both just starting out in life and figuring out what it is they want, and whatever form that takes in canon, I think they're always going to be part of each others' journeys. Some fanfic prompts:

-more letter-writing, because that whole thing honestly tickled me. It's just so earnestly teenaged. 
- hurt/comfort - Katherine and Lucius are the only ones who really know what Artemisia went through, and the only ones she really feels safe with. I would love to see her unburdening herself to Katherine in an unguarded moment.
- high times at Tremontaine House! What are they going to do with it now that they've taken over? What does their day-to-day look like?
- what's the public perception of their relationship? Is Katherine widely seen as Artemisia's champion? When they go out together, what do people say?
- If you want to take it in a Yuleporn direction (and please feel free to) - obviously Artemisia's feelings about sex are complicated, and Katherine's just starting to figure out who she is and what she wants, but she is consistently very careful with Artemisia's feelings. I would love to see that dynamic play out in bed.

Operation Hyacinth
Robert Mzorowski, Arek Krajewski

So, I have a longstanding theory that film noir - with its emphasis on the margins, the unspoken, the inherent hypocrisy of polite society, and the violence done between the lines - is an inherently gay genre, but it hasn't had the chance to flourish because, well, Hollywood. This movie was an unexpected delight, which I found entirely by accident (someone on twitter recommended it as an antidote to that Harry Styles gay policeman movie) and I love it so much. "Characters deciding whether to try and fix the system within, or walk away from Omelas" is an absolutely bulletproof narrative kink for me, and this movie delivered in spades. It helps, as well, that Arek and Robert have such fantastic chemistry; there was never a moment where I doubted their attraction. And, of course, the movie ends on such a beautiful bittersweet note - but I want more! 

My big prompt is really just "WHAT HAPPENS NEXT." Do they make it out alive? Does Robert keep his promise and go after Arek? Where do they go, and what do they do? This could range anywhere from "the immediate aftermath as they try to flee Poland," to "catching up with them five years later in an apartment on the other side of the Berlin Wall." I just really want to see them get their happy ending. We deserve a soft epilogue, my love, &c.

Otherworld Series - Kelley Armstrong
Jaime Vegas, Jeremy Danvers, Lucas Cortez, Paige Winterbourne

This is a longstanding fandom for me - I read the books in high school, drifted away for awhile, and recently got back into them after my book club picked Dime Store Magic a few months ago. For all that this series is heavy on the heterosexual romance, there's also a real sense of found family to it; how a lot of the characters start from a place of trying to make themselves fit in a mold that doesn't work, or managing to make themselves fit but erasing themselves in the process, and end up rejecting what they were raised with in favour of people who love them for themselves. I think that's the biggest throughline of the characters I requested here - obviously Jeremy/Jaime and Paige/Lucas are at very different points in their lives, but they both start from a place of "this is how I was born and raised to be and it doesn't fit" and move to "this person who's the opposite of what I expected does fit."

So I guess what I'd like to read most, for both of them, is just vignettes - scenes from in between the big supernatural threat of the week. The quiet moments where they get to just enjoy each other. I love the adventures in these books, obviously, but the interplay between the characters is what always keeps me coming back.

That Inevitable Victorian Thing - E. K. Johnston
Helena Marcus, Princess Victoria-Margaret (That Inevitable Victorian Thing)

This book is SUCH a comfort read for me (it helps that I come from the part of Canada where it's set, so a lot of the setpieces are places I spent a significant chunk of my childhood.) It's so warm and sweet and unabashedly hopeful, I always pull it out when I need to feel better. Helena and Margaret are so sweet together, and so earnestly confident that they can change the world, it's just - I love it all. So my only real prompt is "what do their lives look like post-canon." Them settling into palace life, what their family structure looks like, how they all work together. (When I say "they all," I am including August, I just didn't put him in the requests.) Epistolary fic would be great for this fandom, as would stories that are told in a sort of "found footage" format, like a collection of news clippings/society pages related to the royal family. Basically, anything about their lives as a family unit would make me very happy. (This is also a fandom where I would be 110% open to kidfic.)

The Exorcist (TV)
Tomas Ortega, Marcus Keane

Oh best beloved show, I will never cease to mourn you. But yeah, this canon was absolutely TAILOR MADE for me (demonology and gay priests and prophet/disciple relationships and the embodiment of holiness at war with the structures of organized religion, oh YES) and I would love, love, love anything you wrote for Marcus and Tomas, either as a & or a /. Casefic! Road trips! Only one bed! Hurt/comfort! The possibilities are endless. Marcus's monologue at the end of season one ("I'm not dying for your church, I am dying for Him") and the line "you believe in God, I believe in you," both knock me flat on my back whenever I rewatch, so . . . do with that information whatever you please.