yuletide 2020.

[ineffabilities]

dear Yuletide writer, thank you for writing for me! copy-pasting from my previous Yuletide letters:

In general: I like both gen and ship fic in about equal measure, and will read pretty much any rating. I like reading about found families and their dynamics, whether they're an adventuring group that's been together for a while now or a bunch of asshole superheroes that are trying to make things work. I like hurt/comfort, I even like breaking a character (Winter Soldier AUs are my brand at this point) for lots of angst, but my one solid caveat is that there has to be a happy ending. It doesn't need to be completely happy, but I just want everyone to be alive. I love everybody lives AUs bc I'm a wimp who can't stand major character death. I love AUs in general. pls feed them to me.

Do Not Want: gore way above canon-typical violence, bathroom kinks, parent kink, A/B/O and BDSM AUs, bestiality, incest when it would seem OOC for the characters, underage sex where one character is underage and the other is not, graphically depicted noncon, permanent major character death, tentacles, mpreg, knotting

Jane the Virgin (TV)
Requested Characters: Jane Villanueva, Michael Cordero Junior, Rafael Solano

listen, for all its flaws, I love this show, it’s super charming and sweet. that having been said, holy shit did I want a threesome so so badly. why!! did they not!! just have a fuckin threesome!! it would’ve solved so many problems about the love triangle in one go!!!! also I want gen fic about them figuring out how to like, be a Family too. and maybe a fix to that amnesia plotline? it needed way more time to actually live up to all that angst potential in my opinion. also, I do not want Rose/Luisa, or character bashing of Jane’s family, including Petra. lord.

how would you have written the Michael with amnesia plotline? Winter Soldier-style AU? fake amnesia? real amnesia but somewhere other than Bumfuck Country Town? slow and steady reclamation of identity? anything goes!

role reversal AU: instead of Michael running into Rose that day, it was Jane. Michael has to deal with the seeming loss of his wife and having to help raise Mateo with Rafael, as well as perhaps finishing her novel, if she was working on one when she “died”. unexpectedly, though, he and Rafael fall in love as well, and start dating. then Rose tells Rafael that Jane’s alive...

growing pains of a polyamorous relationship when there’s a kid in the mix, go! would especially love to see it from Mateo’s perspective, the kid’s got some opinions.

The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Requested Characters: Elektra Natchios, Matt Murdock, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones

I love Netflix MCU with all my sad little heart. I especially love the dynamic between the four of them, what little we got of it, and in general I just really badly want team fic. pls let me see Matt, Jessica, Luke and Danny have to team up again to take down Stilt-Man. pls, I'm not kidding, if none of the below ideas strike your fancy, at least let me see these shits taking on Stilt-Man. preferably with Elektra in the mix bc I love her and she deserves so much better. also, regarding ships, I ship Matt with Foggy mostly, but I also love a good Matt/Elektra fic. Jessica/Luke and Jessica/Trish are literally my only Jessica ships. anyway:

role reversal AU: Matt's the one who died at the end of Daredevil s2, and Elektra picks up the mantle of Daredevil instead. how does this change the dynamics between the Defenders? what happens when the Hand starts to make their play, with a mysterious new assassin who can seemingly tell what they're going to do before they do it? how does Elektra interact with New York, and with the people that Matt left behind? how does she cope with her grief and what kind of hero does she become? what about Matt? how does he deal with suddenly being resurrected and pushed into killing people? does he break, does he get twisted like Elektra did, does he retain his humanity and conscience?

Matt and Jessica swap backstories and thus abilities: Matt loses his father at a young age bc of a car accident that also gave him super-strength, while Jessica saves some poor sucker from getting killed and gets radioactive waste in her eyes that blinds her but also turns her other senses all the way up. how do they develop from there? is Jessica still a private eye? is Matt still approached by the Chaste, or is that Jessica now? does Kilgrave still approach Jessica, or does he now go after helpful Matt Murdock who has a secret darkness inside him that could seem delicious? does Jessica still meet Luke, and how does their relationship go? or: does Matt meet Luke, and how does their relationship go? pls note that I do not want graphic noncon, but having a character deal with the aftermath of it is fine by me.

of all the Defenders, Jessica Jones is the only one who survives the Snap. give me what happens next, if she's the only one and half the supporting casts have vanished. would love to see Elektra too!

Arden (Podcast)
Requested Characters: Julie Capsom, Ralph Montgomery

GOD I love this podcast. it’s such a fun, irreverent poke at the true crime podcast genre and Shakespeare all at once, featuring fun protagonists and a case that astounded me with every twist and turn. however, it’s also very good at fleshing out its characters and grounding the fun and shenanigans with real pathos and real-life problems. me, I immediately beelined for Julie and Ralph’s love story, because it’s Romeo and Juliet only modernized and also, everyone LIVES, and I am a sucker for that. thank you Wheyface Industries for my fuckin life. anyway.

what I really want most is Julie and Ralph in the aftermath of the finale. like, we got SOME of it, but not quite exactly what I wanted? they have a kid now! Julie is not on super good terms with her father! Ralph has so much explaining to do! I want them to figure out where they’re going to go now and how they plan to stick together and keep their baby girl safe. they can’t run away again, can they? and how have they grown in the time since Julie disappeared ten years ago?

role reversal: Julie as an actress trying to make it big, Ralph as the rich heir to a throne he doesn’t actually want. how do things change? how do they stay the same? how are they perceived when they disappear off the face of the Earth?

what was their married life even like? I imagine that after the shine of eloping had worn off they had to figure out how to actually live with each other warts and all. considering they’ve stuck together for so long, they absolutely did, but I want to see the growing pains. arguments over small things and big things! problems with the house! problems with their daughter! homesickness! I want it ALL.

35mm: A Musical Exhibition - Oliver & Murphy
Requested Characters: Sara Berry, Julie Jenkins

The Ballad of Sara Berry is one of my favorite songs from this show. it's so catchy and the build-up to Sara's murder spree at prom is so full of tension that you're practically on the edge. Sara is a fascinating figure to me bc she's the typical Mean Girl Alpha Bitch of the high school, but part of her slippage into mass murder comes out of how her parents treat her, especially her father, placing unfairly high expectations on her. her obsession on taking the title of prom queen is the pivot on which the song turns, and her fury at Julie Jenkins, and all the other prom queen candidates, is the stuff of slasher films. also, I really love Julie despite the fact that you really don't get a whole lot of characterization on her: she lost a leg in a wreck, she's also in the running for prom queen, she's the one who puts a stop to Sara's murder spree. but we know very little about her, actually, that's not seen through Sara's eyes. I'd love to see Julie in her own right, and perhaps the other prom queen candidates as well!

what's Julie's take on the prom massacre? how did she manage to survive when all the other girls didn't? what does she tell the police about it? the prom queen candidates, were they the only people Sara was targeting, or was she cutting down anyone else in her way? did Julie suspect Sara was going to be doing something drastic, did she try to warn people about it? in the aftermath of it all, how does Julie deal with the trauma?

bear with me bc I'm gonna get a little pretentious here, but I'd love to see something playing with genre! I always imagined the first stanzas starting out in a very typical teen movie fashion, with Julie as the good girl protagonist and Sara as the mean girl antagonist, and the genre begins to shift towards something more slasher. is Julie aware of this shift or of the tropes she's supposed to play by, or is she blissfully ignorant? what about Sara? is her massacre somewhat motivated by her desire to claim what she sees as her rightful happy ending in accordance to the genre tropes she believes she's playing by?

in the grand tradition of horror movies everywhere: twenty years later at the high school reunion, Sara breaks out of the asylum and starts killing again. what has Julie done in the intervening twenty years to cope or not cope with the events of that night? what's her life like? what does she do when she realizes Sara's come back to kill again? what about Sara, what's her motivation behind all this? does she want revenge, or does she just want her crown back no matter what the cost?

I read Carrie and I am tbh a SUCKER for in-universe media exploring the events of prom night. I imagine it's even worse bc we can easily assume it happened in the modern day, so what's the social media like? how does online media regard the massacre? what are the tweets like? what's everyone's Twitter account like, what's their Tumblr blogs full of, what pictures are on their Instagram? does Sara livestream the massacre on Instagram or Twitch or is she caught on camera a couple times over the course of that night?

Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Requested Characters: Harleen Quinzel, Cassandra Cain, Renee Montoya, Ellen Yee

the only superhero movie in 2020 that matters t b h. I adore Harley Quinn in this movie bc she's such a fun character with notes of tragedy and solid determination to make her own way and become her own person, and I actually do like this movie's rendition of Cassandra Cain, for all the VERY significant differences between her and her comic book version! she's a smart kid who's very good at thievery, even if sometimes she overshoots her targets and gets herself in wild situations, and I would love to see a scenario where she blossoms as a thief and mayhem-maker under Harley's tutelage. also, I absolutely loved Renee, who goes from an underappreciated cop working in Gotham's police department to a vigilante running her own team of heroes and fighting against crime in a far more effective fashion! I would so love to see more of her and her ex Ellen, who I have a fondness for bc I watched Ali Wong's standup specials and I deeply adore her.

Harley and Cassandra heist fic!! I want to see how their mentor-apprentice relationship works now that they're Officially Partners and everything. how do they play their skills off each other? what do they do to case joints, how do they plan their heists? what happens if the heist goes wrong in ways they didn't expect—for example, Catwoman's sudden appearance, or the Birds of Prey show up? what's their dynamic like when they're in action?

tell me about Ellen Yee and Renee Montoya post-movie! do they run into each other while they're on the street by accident, and it's just awkward all around? do they meet back up because, Gotham being Gotham, Ellen finds herself caught up in a supervillain scheme and the Birds of Prey come to save the day? does Ellen get fed up with the inefficiency of the law herself and decide, fuck it, I'll feed Renee some info? are their interactions highly sexually charged? ok who am I kidding it totally is.

Cassandra Cain grows up to become a superhero! what kind of superhero does she become if she learns how to fight and steal under the tutelage of Harley Quinn? does she still become Batgirl, or does she become something new? would she ally with the Batfamily or oppose them?

Critical Role (Web Series) RPF
Requested Characters: Any

THIS IS THE BEST CAST I love them so much, I love that they love this game and the fans that have sprung up around it, I love their little found family dynamic and how ready they are to leap to each other's defense. they're such good people. (A NOTE: please do not involve the cast's kids or non-cast spouses as characters in any stories you might write for me. it's enough for me to know that they exist somewhere on the periphery. thank.)

this Tumblr post made me immediately want the fic where they're all immortals or, like, at least not quite mortal in some way. it also made me want the fic where none of them realize the others are Like Them until something crazy goes down and everyone's like WHAT. HOLY SHIT. WHAT. WHAT WAS THAT. possibly involving, like, Travis, bc of the whole cast I would absolutely buy Travis accidentally stumbling on some way to blow the cover off the whole immortality thing. Taliesin's too practiced at it by now.

I secretly want the crack fic where the cast accidentally swaps bodies with their characters, either Mighty Nein or Vox Machina, and has to figure out how to unswap bodies and also get back home. pls note that if Mighty Nein, I want Molly to be there, alive and whole and not dead. who knows, maybe Taliesin swaps with Caduceus and Molly just stumbles on the Mighty Nein and yells GUYS WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, and then has to help the assholes in his friends' bodies find their way back home. meanwhile, for either scenario, Matt is suddenly saddled with some very freaked out and suspicious adventurers, and also, it's Thursday. pls be gentle.