Dear Yuletide Writer

[eglantiere]

Dear Yuletide writer, welcome! Thank you for sharing my taste in fandoms, and I hope you have fun with my prompts.

I'm going to list some general likes and some specific prompts for every fandom, but if none of the specifics work for you, feel free to mix and match or just ODAO and go for whatever tickles your fancy; I'm sure there are things I haven't thought about that would be super exciting, and as long as DNWs are met, everything else is fair game.

Some links for Yule stalking:
egelantier
egelantier
My AO3 bookmarks
Previous Dear Author letters, reveals, recs and so on

Things I like:
- Hurt/comfort in all its forms is always a sure bet. All the hurt/comfort, you can't do wrong (or be too hardcore) with it. Physical h/c, emotional h/c, captivity scenarios, caretaking, whipping, dungeons, bullet wounds, wilderness survival, whatever. I love hurt/comfort mostly within the context of a relationship (not necessarily romantic - filial ties, friendship, brothers-in-arms comradeship, whichever fits), as an opening for one character to be hurt and for the other to be outraged/terrified/comforting on their behalf. The only thing I'm particular about is who in a particular gets whumped. 
- Found families, tight friendships, us-against-the-world, people finding and keeping each other, providing kindness and warmth against the dark.
- Hope and kindness, Clair universes, stories where the entropy tries its hardest but doesn't win.
- Loyalty in all forms! From ritualized (oaths, kneeling, ring-kissing, knights and bodyguards and henchmen and so on) to more casual ways, like standing up for your friends.
- Self-sacrifice (metaphorical and quite literal) and martyrdom (ditto).
- Tropey AUs - space opera! high fantasy! historical! pirates!
- Outsider POVs.

DNWs:
- Character death.
- Infidelity and partner betrayal of any kind.
- Hurt without comfort.
- A/B/O universes and mpreg.
- Mundane AUs
- PWPs.
- Grimdark stories and unhappy endings.

镇魂 | Guardian (TV)
Zhào Yúnlán, Shěn Wēi

Guardian is my newest obsession, and I adore those two and their deep, unshakable, staggeringly important love for each other. This entire show was an unexpected gift to some deep and unplumbed depths of my id - the loyalty, the longing, the identity porn, the mutual protectiveness, the mutual adoration, people getting tied to the pillars and whipped left and right, self-sacrifice, grand gestures and domestic comforts. I love the mix of ridiculous hijinks and darker themes and full-on grand drama intensity. I love Shen Wei's unapologetic intensity and his rather horrible attempts at subterfuge, I love Zhao Yunlan's frank adoration and ferocious protectiveness, I love their ridiculous team and overall found family vibes, and I just want all the stories. All of them.

So, for example: 

- Shen Wei was waiting for his Kunlun for 10,000 years, and so when he meets Zhao Yunlan, the deal is sealed - but Zhao Yunlan falls so quickly and hopelessly despite seeing him for the first time, despite being suspicious of him, and I would literally read anything dealing with that.
- That scene in one of the earlier episodes where SW allows himself to be robbed with stoic dignity so to keep his incognito made me want all the fics where he allows himself to be hurt in some complicated SID-related clusterfuck (a hostage situation?) to protect the others and hide himself. While ZYL watches, of course.
- ZYL having complicated, intense feelings both for the Black Envoy and for Professor Shen in that brief period where SW still miraculously managed to keep his secrets, and trying to deal with his confusion.
- (There's also that timeline bit where ZYL learns the truth, and it's pretty heavily implied that they've began dating and/or living together, but the team doesn't know yet that SW=BE, and so they get concerned that ZYL is not treating Professor Shen right. I will read literally thousands, thousands of words with that premise.)
- "Kunlun" and young SW, having adventures and saving each other and falling in love in the past, with ZYL helplessly smitten and yet missing SW from his own timeline.
- SW's beaming declaration of "It's good I'm used to getting injured" and his uncomplicated delight in being able to protect ZYL at his own cost, and ZYL trying to deal with it and his own deep feeling of inadequacy to such devotion - preferably with many, many practical demonstrations.
- In particular, ZYL cluing in earlier on the implications of SW sharing his energy with him to heal his eyes and beginning to deteriorate - maybe after SW overstretches himself and collapses, or coughs blood up dramatically - and trying frantically to save him.
- SW, for some reason, being forced to become the king of the underworld, for all it implies, and ZYL embarking on a journey to free him.
- Frankly, I would read a comfort tag to just about every episode where they got into trouble - after coming down from that mountain, and after rescuing SW from the pillar, and after the ending -
- Which brings us to ALL THE FIX-IT FICS, all of them, literally all of them. Fix that ending! Or cancel it altogether! Or make it into something different! They spent so many episodes establishing Guo for the Wick candidate, only to change it abruptly at the last moment - go for it! I would also accept a happily ever after and each and every casefic thereof.

On the whole, I also adore the team - both as the bickering found family and as great (and hilarious) outside POV sources, and I similarly love how Professor Shen's students obviously dote on him (and dread the day he'll get stolen by SID in full). And I would love for the fics that, mm, translate the things that we got onscreen due to budget and time limitations etc, like tiny claustrophobic settings and idiot ball decisions, into being actually grand. Like team being actually competent, or the underground being an imposing, creepy and beautiful place, or Ye Zun being actually threatening, ahem.

Fandom-specific DNW caveat: while I will fully endorse you if you'd like to drop the show's censor-predicated veil of 'science' (it's also 100% ok if you don't!) in favor of more coherent worldbuilding (be it the myth-based setting from the novel, the same sci-fi but with better logic, or something else altogether; feel free to also ignore all the character deaths at will), I've only watched the drama and would prefer its version of characterization and dynamic between ZYL and SW.

バチカン奇跡調査官 | Vatican Miracle Examiner
Hiraga Josef Kou, Roberto Nicholas

VME continues to be my delight and joy; I'm reusing my previous requests because they already netted me some great fics and I want more. So; VME being sparkly, completely ridiculous, somehow deadly serious despite being completely ridiculous, and full of gorgeous, warm, feelings-filled devotion between Roberto and Hiraga, and I loved each of its weird and wonderful story beats. It's also hella whiplashy in tone, and I guess my prompts will reflect that. In general: bring on candlelit dinners, creepy and twisted cases, true and false miracles, Roberto whump, pining, science, tears and hugs.

In particular:

- Casefics, casefics, all the casefics, all the deliciously weird casefics with all the life-and-death situations you can think of. Cave-ins! Blizzards! Death traps rooms! Ambushes and kidnappings! Cuddling for warmth! Protecting each other! More snakebites and weird amazing hallucinations! Evil cultists! Helpful application of sulphuric acid!
- Alternately, I have this craving for the strange domesticity of their Vatican life; maybe Roberto and Hiraga moving together and navigating the shores of their life together? Dinners and shopping and taking care and this easy, benign understanding they have for each other (honestly, I was dead and gone on the canon from their very scene together, where Hiraga admits to playing his game for the whole night in hopes that it would somehow help his little brother, and Roberto just going with it without missing a beat - and then, well, going to clean and iron for Hiraga, as one does).
- For some reason, I'd really love an old-fashioned sickfic for this fandom. Fever, pain, tender care, gentle blanket-tucking… It just feels like it would really suit. (Somehow I feel it combines well with the previous option)
- I'm sure this wasn't the last time Julia had tried to convert them both to his case, and the events in the finale will most definitely come back to haunt them. So, how?
- Somebody once described Roberto's feelings for Hiraga as 'pining while already being in a committed relationship,' and just. Yes. Hiraga is at once so obviously full of love, and so oblivious of it, that there are endless possibilities for angst here, and I want all of them.- …on unrelated note, I feel like this is the canon where I can actually mention, in Yuletide, that I have a crucifixion kink a mile wide. So, I have a crucifixion (h/c) kink a mile wide, and Roberto is an ideal candidate.
- Bonus option: If you like to serious-ify a cracky canon, go for it! The show uses a very anime kind of Catholicism, mostly aesthetics and trappings, but I'm fascinated with how injecting a bit of the real deal will change things (or not): the actual everyday application of faith, you know? For example, we know from the novels that Hiraga is a true believer but Roberto mostly treats his position as a job that gives him access to old books; I wonder if the canon events changed it, for both of them. 

If you like Lauren, I'm of the opinion that Lauren makes everything better (and makes for an ideal outsider's POV).

Fandom-specific DNW caveat: For me, the allure of this relationship, given that both of them are priests, is that they are completely devoted to each other, but they're also at peace with being celibate. I'd prefer to see the same setup in fic - so, no sex between them, and also no angst about having to be celibate.

Psmith - P. G. Wodehouse
Rupert Psmith, Mike Jackson

Those books are my perennial favorites; I adore the kind hilarity of them, and the intensity of the relationship (whether it's taken as friendship or romance). Psmith is one of my most favorite characters of all time. I love his surety and his unflappability, his low key but endless loyalty and protectiveness, the way he manages to warp the world around himself but does it with benevolence, the way the narrative pokes fun at him but allows him to stand unhumiliated. And I love that Mike is his foil but never the butt of the narrative joke, that Mike's intrinsic value is never questioned or doubted, by the text or by each other. I love how different they are and how wholeheartedly they embrace each other nevertheless, neither trying to change or undermine each other, how much they just - adore and accept and support each other. 

And so!

- "Like canon but more of it": yes good please. Especially if it includes some version of friends-to-lovers, pining and happy endings. 
- Futurefic: becoming adults together, growing old together, their lives changing and evolving and still orbiting around each other. 
- ...Having said what I did about Psmith self-surety, I would also read a lot about Psmith secretly having doubts about himself and his own worth in relation to Mike and trying to let Mike go for his own good (family, career, etc.), and Mike having none of it.
- And also literally all the stories about Psmith getting into some trouble he can't get himself out of (ideally on Mike's behalf), and trying to hide it or make light of it, and Mike becoming the rescuer and taking care of him. I always thought that Psmith would make an awesome 'pay no attention to my troubles, have a languid anecdote' kind of iron woobie - iron woobie in a velvet glove? Is it a thing? In any case, yes. 
- (For example, I could give or take Mike's domestic happiness in later books, but I loved Psmith's descent from rich heirdom to self-supporting poverty and the way he tried to deal with it by himself and without burdening anybody. Take it to the extreme, and I'll be here with bells on.)
- But also something with a more action/adventure bent and injuries, kidnappings, and accident (see: Psmith, Journalist, only sans racism and Mike is actually there). 
- Psmith Hides A Supernatural Secret (he's an elf! he's a selkie! he's an alien!) And Why Would Mike Care No Really. 
- The super self-indulgent slavefic option: Mike the bewildered owner rescuing a languid, seemingly unconcerned slave!Psmith and slowly discovering the depths of trouble that will bring? Psmith the jaded, high-ranking slave taking a newly enslaved Mike under his wing and getting into all the trouble trying to keep him safe (and, being Psmith, probably engineering a revolution in the process?)
- Also all the setting AUs! Be it high fantasy or space opera or high sea piracy, those two trampling through it would be amazing.
- A completely optional bonus cracky option: if you like crossovers, Mike and Psmith in literally any canon I've ever requested for Yuletide would be incredible, be it a pastiche fusion or them just dropping into whatever it is, solving some particular thorny issue in their inimitable style, and dropping out.

And that's it! Have a great Yule, and I can't wait to see you in December ♥

Comments

[naye]

I want someone to write you ALL THOSE GUARDIAN FICS because yes I'd read the hell out of al of the above. Mmm. Shen Wei and his stoic self-sacrificing side... Yesss good stuff.

Meanwhile I have decided I am throwing all my fix-it ideas into the monster of a story I've sunk uuuh oh god it's 22k words now?? Anyway. That. (It is terrible and evil and could still do with more h/c. I have no idea how I've gotten this far without tying anyone up and whippin them. Or making them run from natural disasters.)

[eglantiere]

somebody should, indeed, write all of them for me! for example, you :PPPP

(the blasphemy, dude, the blasphemy! tie somebody to the pillar and whip them RIGHT NOW, or else.)

[tinny]

i know yuletide letters are probably not meant to be commented on... but how can you come up with so many wonderful Guardian prompts? Anytime my brain has to think about plot there's just white noise. /o\

I very much hope there will be many people writing Guardian and I can see these prompts come to life!

[eglantiere]

if you strip most of the plot away, the two of them do have a very coherent and clearly defined emotional arc, and it helps :D

there's a lot of lovely requests and hopefully a lot of offers, and i hope for ALL THE FICS.