nenya_kanadka (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nenya_kanadka) wrote2017-10-08 04:42 pm
nenya_kanadka) wrote2017-10-08 04:42 pm
Dear Yulegoat
Dear Yuletide Author:
Thank you so much for writing a story for me! :D I hope at least some of the prompts and suggestions below are helpful to you, and that you have a generally excellent Yuletide this year. Hope this letter's not too tl;dr—is 7,000 words too much? enough?—optional details are always optional. I'm very excited for fic in the small fandom(s) of my heart. <3
General Likes:
Reading over my fandom comments below, it looks like I like at least three things: a) sci-fi weirdness b) flawed but goodhearted heroes with strong personalities and points of view c) having strong feelings about other people. That...sounds about right.
This Yuletide letter is really heavy on the femslash—I think it's my main request for three of my six fandoms and a major one in a fourth. Maybe this isn't a surprise since I'm a bi lady married to a lesbian, but usually I have a bit more variety in my requests! Anyway, whoo femslash. However, if you don't/can't write shipfic (femslash or otherwise) for the fandom we matched on, gen focused on the friendships involved is fantastic too. These are all characters and combinations of characters who make me smile, so tell me more about them and how they fit together and I'll be very happy.
For open canons with new installments coming out during the writing period (Questionable Content and possibly The Comfortable Courtesan), I will be caught up to date by the time stories go live if I'm not already, so feel free to use anything that's been published. On the other hand, if you write something that gets jossed (made AU because of a change in canon) between now and reveals, I will love the story just as much as if canon reads your mind, so don't stress out about that.
More things I like:
* Canon compliance, missing scenes, post-canon fic, prequels and backstories, worldbuilding extrapolation, canon-divergence ("Turn Left" or "what if X was Y") AUs, spaceship or superhero or magical AUs. Epistolary fiction and in-universe found-documents. Alternating character POVs, secondary-character POV (especially Eliza Ferraby!), outsider POV, non-linear stories, it's all good.
* Reunions. Narrow escapes. Unexpected moments of kindness, hope in dark places, relief from old worry. Comforting/distracting someone from their fear of heights/public speaking/thunderstorms. Food porn and costume porn. Tea Solves Everything. Families of choice. "I love nothing better than thee, and also I will go with thee to thy uncle's" – friends or lovers who would do anything for each other including the annoying, practical, difficult, or just plain weird things daily life throws up.
* Time-honoured shippy tropes like huddling for warmth, pretending to be married, dramatic and sexual tension with a rival, friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers. Sex pollen of the "we are into each other anyway but now we have no excuse to suppress our lust" sort (especially for Mirabile, Questionable Content, or The Invisible Library). Undercover as a couple; undercover as just about anything. They're oh so different, but Together They Fight Crime (/solve mysteries/save the day somehow).
* Competence kink: People just being really good at whatever it is they do, whether that's solving their friends' social crises, obsessing over media while not murderkilling (much), being a secret literary agent, untangling ecological disasters, or repairing robots. I like when characters have the flexibility to handle setbacks and come up with a creative solution and finally win out in the end. Genre awareness can go with this, or alternately a character can be thrown into a completely different genre than usual and turn out to be unexpectedly good at it (dramatic tragic character in a comedy, social hostess organizes a battle, minor bureaucrat's reference skills avert the apocalypse).
* Gay, bi, trans and nonbinary characters. I tend to assume that most characters are potentially bi unless they've been explicitly stated to be gay or asexual in canon. Please feel free to make canon het or unspecified characters queer, but please don't put canon gay characters in opposite-gender relationships. I very much enjoy bisexual/pansexual women whose primary or central romantic and sexual connections are with other women. If you're writing binary trans interpretations of characters, I would rather have ones that align with a character's canon gender—that is, making a woman who canon assumes is cisgender a trans woman rather than making her a trans man. Connections among queer people are awesome too ("not the only gay in the village").
* Polyamory, OT3s, and open relationships. (An F/F relationship doesn't need a man randomly added in even if one or both of the women is bi, but if a character has potential lovers of any gender, I'm of the "solve it with OT3s" school of thought most of the time.) I enjoy exploring all legs of a triad and the possible friendships between metamours, but characters who are "solo poly" or relationship anarchist or poly while having one current relationship are also great.
* Porn! Yes. I do like sex in my fic if it seems to flow with your concept for the story. I'd prefer there to be more plot than just a PWP sex scene, but I'm happy to have characters getting it on. Awkward sex, mindblowing sex, first-time sex, established-relationship sex, sex with a lot of visible reactions (fisting hands in sheets, biting one's lip, straining muscles, aroused noises, etc), sex in unexpected places or where they have to be quiet for fear of discovery, being turned on and having to wait to pounce their partner, sex on every available piece of furniture, women having sex that doesn't centre on penetration (some is fine).
* Kink: Power exchange, roleplay, and bondage are great too. I vastly prefer casual kink negotiations to formal detailed checklists; likewise for sexual consent. Under-negotiated kink ("A shoves B against the wall, B thinks it's hot and kisses A back, it's awesome"), characters discovering kinks for themselves without having gone to a seminar or being experts in BDSM terminology, power exchange without S&M (or vice versa), and kinky flirting are other things I really like. Changes in context-specific concepts and language for kink and sexuality really fascinate me too, so if you can get me into the head of an early 1800s courtesan or a far-future xenobiologist or an ex-military android who likes tea, that would be a really neat bonus. I also like men in submissive roles and women in dominant roles, and women who kink on submitting to other women.
* Art: Would be thrilled to receive art for Wrapping Paper treats! I'm more into expressiveness (a sense of motion or emotion) than hyper-realism, though I'm always impressed with artists who can draw things and people that are immediately recognizable. I love bright or interesting uses of colour. I love chibis and art nouveau especially, but I'm into all the pretties! Porny art is fine, though the only ships I can think of right off that I'm actively imagining it for are the Comfortable Courtesan ones. Dreamwidth/Livejournal icons, or art that can be used for that, are great too.
* Other media: Interactive fiction is cool, but please no audio/video for technical reasons. (My ears don't work right and my Internet bandwidth is severely limited, so I won't be able to enjoy audiovisual components properly.)
General DNWs:
* No character bashing, even if you know I hate the character. I'd rather you just left them out entirely. Likewise no bashing of rival ships, or reenactments of fandom wars over ships, character interpretations, etc.
* No character death, torture, brainwashing; zombies or werewolves; body horror including major focus on dysphoria; epidemics, natural disasters, or current American politics. No rape or sexual assault (whether of a character for traumatic backstory, or non-con between members of a ship) and no threats of rape or sexual assault, please.
* No unhappy endings ("hopeless endings of sadness" as my wife says); big misunderstandings that cause emotional pain but could have been cleared up on page 2 if people had talked to each other (silly misunderstandings are fine); bullying; intentional humiliation; self-harm; significant overt homophobia or transphobia as a plot point or motivator; love triangles; infidelity; unrequited love.
* No coffeehouse or highschool/college "modern AUs"; no serial-killer AUs. No AUs where the primary component is lifted from a larger fandom (daemon AUs, Pacific Rim drift AUs, etc).
* I'm happy with either first or third person (I/me or he/she/they) point of view, but prefer no second-person ("you open the door and see Murderbot kissing Frankie").
* No kidfic in the sense of "having a baby is what makes us a real family" or a great focus on the antics of little children. (Flora Ferraby has more leeway here than anyone else! Sleepy wombatts ftw.) No non-canon pregnancy and prefer not to focus on the mechanics of canon pregnancies or childbirth.
* I enjoy both gen and ship-fic, but tend to find the "smarm" and "pre-slash" categories very frustrating. If you aren't comfortable writing the characters I ship in a sexual/romantic (delete as appropriate) relationship with each other, please go ahead and write them as non-sexual friends/coworkers/rivals. (Background pairings or established relationships that aren't foregrounded because the main plot is something besides the relationship are fine; but I'd prefer not to get fic that's all hints and teases but doesn't go anywhere in terms of whether the characters get together or not.)
* Non-hetero and non-cisgender people have always been around, and a world that leaves queer people out doesn't feel right to me. But terminology and concepts change drastically with place and time, and many people don't describe their own experiences in terms of whatever the cutting-edge academic or activist language is. As none of my requested characters are modern-day sexuality activists, instructors, or bloggers, I don't want fic where characters explain modern sexuality terms to each other at length or re-fight intra-community battles over who gets to identify as what or what to call it. Likewise, I'm non-monogamous and am happy to see poly/open relationships in fic, but don't want fic where polyamory is talked up as better than monogamy or where poly people try to convince monogamous people to give it a try.
* I'd like my gay and bi characters to be actively interested in sexual and romantic relationships with the same gender. I don't want scenarios where a character is 99% straight but has "one exception" and the ship is that one exception (also known as "we're not gay, we just love each other"). I also don't want fic where the focus is on how a character is romantically into the same gender but sexually not, or sexually attracted to the same gender but just can't fall in love with them, especially if they are both sexually and romantically attracted to the opposite gender. Please no implication that asexuality is "purer" than sexual desire (or alternately that asexual people are broken somehow). Disparities in libido (high/low) are fine, as are first-time scenarios where a person is just figuring themselves out and doesn't have any previous same-gender experience, or a case where someone changes their self-identification over time. Bi characters also don't have to be exactly 50/50 into men/women (or 33.3% into men, women, and nonbinary people), but I tend to prefer them more into the same gender than into others. With one specified exception, I do not want fic where a canon gay character sleeps with someone of the opposite gender in the story.
* Kinks I don't want: Sex that focuses on body fluids (blood, semen, waste products), butch/femme dynamics, leashes and collars, body modification, heavy sadomasochism, vore, oviposition, rape roleplay (or actual rape), orgasm denial/control for women (for men = hot), het PIV as the centrepiece of a sex scene, M/f (male dominant/female submissive), daddy kink or mommy kink, incest, underage (age gaps between legal adults, or relationships between humans and immortals/robots/etc, are fine).
Prompts by Fandom:
Jump to:
The Comfortable Courtesan - Madame C- C-
The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
Mirabile - Janet Kagan
Grace and Frankie (TV)
Questionable Content (Webcomic)
The Comfortable Courtesan
I love everyone in this felicity-maximized bar. :D Eliza/Clorinda is the ship of my heart in this fandom, but I also love Gervase/Sandy and Maurice/Sandy, and I have a soft spot for Docket/Biddy Smith. Gen is also delightful and good, and I am happy with fic set in the historical time period or with modern historians rediscovering C-'s circle through documents—and if you have a sudden brainwave to write a spaceship AU of the series, feel free! ;-)
I should note that while I adore the period-specific language in The Comfortable Courtesan, I am by no means an expert in it, so if it doesn't come naturally to you please don't fret about getting every single detail perfect. (Likewise, I am 99% sure not to catch any history gaffes. I'll also probably not get classical literary references without explanation, so if you use them please leave me a helpful footnote or two. :D) I very, very much appreciate how the author quietly includes LGBT+ people all over the cast (we have always been here) and uses historical terminology for how they would have self-identified—anything you want to throw in on that score would be awesome. (I do prefer a minimum of outright homophobia/transphobia since this fandom is my happy place.)
I'm pretty conversant with the cast of thousands, and am happy to have various non-nominated characters show up as secondary characters in the story if you feel like it, especially the Ferraby kids, Clorinda's household, Belinda ("t'other Lady B-"), Viola's circle, Sandy's various acquaintances, and Matt Johnson. I'm happy with the first-initial convention (C-, G-R-, Lady T-, etc) or with full names, whichever works best for you.
Eliza/Clorinda(/Josiah): C-/Eliza (spymistress/wild girl!) is my favourite leg of this triangle, but Josiah can certainly come too. I'd love anything femslash and romantic here, and the triangle finding ways to be together despite the usages of society. I love how much Clorinda seems to adore Eliza, and vice versa—I get little hearteyes. Passionate (and practical) letters between Eliza and Clorinda? Eliza's diary entries? Clorinda demonstrating the contents of her professional toybox to Eliza and Josiah? Crossdressing adventures where Clorinda and Eliza have to pretend to be a het couple for reasons (and then come home and towsell-mowsell upon the sofa)? I know Clorinda basically considers herself married to the both of them: do they ever concoct some kind of private ceremony to mark that, since they can't do it publicly? Does Lady Jane or any of their other queer female connections ever find out about Eliza/Clorinda? I also love everything to do with Flora and their shared parentage there, and Clorinda's relationships with the other F- children. When and how do the other kids find out about their parents' relationship, and what are the contents of some of those "Apply to Aunty Clo for enlightenment" conversations?
My biggest DNW for this ship is anything that focuses on Eliza's and Josiah's deaths, or Eliza's final illness. That's just Too Damn Sad for me to deal with! So I'd prefer something set well before that, when they're all hale and happy. I'd also prefer to avoid much focus on that time Clorinda went vigilante on the blackmailer.
Sandy ships: I am fascinated by the class/power dynamics between Lord G- R- and Sandy, and how they navigate those over the years—equally, I'm interested in how different Sandy's relationship with Maurice is in that regard. I love the hints in canon about Sandy and Gervase getting up to some kinky stuff sometimes, and just generally how they might have constructed their sense of masculinity and homosexuality (eg we see that Sandy thinks of Maurice as being a totally different kind of gay man, at first). I'd love porn for either of these Sandy slash ships—especially early days with Gervase, all that UST and figuring out what each other likes. Feel free to use canon snippets or other fanfic as sexy inspiration (or indeed famous oldschool m/m stuff, just drop me an explanatory footnote). Did they ever have a threesome with any of their male friends (e.g. the ever-eager starstruck Geoffrey M-)? How did Sandy go about demonstrating his enthusiasm for sex with Gervase and convincing him that he wasn't just going along with it because G- was his boss? Does Sandy let Maurice apply his fashion sense to Sandy's wardrobe (and then peel him out of it)? Is Maurice ever painted as an African character after all? Should it strike your fancy, please explore pervertible uses of fencing, philosophy, political arguments, driving very fast behind the fam'd matcht blacks, period dress for men, symbolick heroick nudity in art or life, et cetera. (If inspiration is found here for the Clorinda ships above, feel free to use it there as well: eg bubbies + wombatts + female philosophy + clothes porn...)
I generally prefer Sandy & Clorinda kept platonic (because I do see Sandy as 99.9% gay), but a one-off Clorinda/Sandy/Gervase adventure where Sandy is able to explore his canonical slight curiosity in a safe environment could be quite hot, and I'm fine with references to That One Time with Signor Dildo. ;-)
Gen: Sandy/Clorinda friendship, including solving mysteries and discussing gothic novel plots. I'd love to see more of Sandy's various adventures promoting various political and revolutionary causes (a certain amount of that is outside what Clorinda records, I'm sure), and Docket's relationships with her proteges and the other ladies' maids. Something with Docket and Biddy Smith when they were younger and in service together, or their friendship (relationship?) over the years would also be neat to see. (I love that Biddy knows that Docket is trans and it doesn't seem to be an issue.) And, of course, anything with Clorinda and her friends and her stratagems to help them sort out their difficulties!
Other: I'm open to crossovers between this canon and others I know (time travel is fine) though I'd like the focus to be on this fandom. Have always had a secret hankering for some kind of connection between Mme C- and Phryne Fisher. (Is Phryne descended from Abby T- somehow? Does Phryne discover Clorinda's writing?) If you were to somehow engineer a meeting between Murderbot and Clorinda Cathcart (how is felicity maximized for a Murderbot?), I would be most intrigued. (Okay, utter crackfic I know, probably best as a treat. But somebody should write that someday!)
The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
The Murderbot who was a failure at murderkilling because it was obsessed with television! I feel like this is truly a hero for us all. I haven't read any of the teasers for book 2 yet, but if you want to include references to them that's okay, because I will catch up eventually.
I'm more interested in Murderbot itself than any of the human characters, though its interactions with humans (canonical or OCs) tend to shed light on Murderbot's conception of itself, so it's fine to include the odd human. Anything set during the canon time period is welcome to have Murderbot's team along for the ride. (I prefer "it" for Murderbot, because it's a nonhuman sentient machine, but if you want to go with a more humanoid pronoun, that's okay too. If you're comfortable with first-person POV, Murderbot calls itself "I" anyway, thus avoiding the question entirely.) I loved the strong, quiet theme of self-determination that ran through All Systems Red and how that meshes—or doesn't mesh—with the desire for friendship and community.
Prompt ideas: What would have happened if Murderbot had gone home with Dr. Mensah? (How would it have argued for its own independence, and how hard would it have had to fight to get well-intentioned people to actually give it its autonomy?) What actually happened in its backstory—was it as horrible as Murderbot makes out, was it worse, was it better? Are there other AIs who have hacked their governor modules, and does Murderbot meet them? Murderbot in fandom: Does it write fic, does it get into the equivalent of 57-page-long messageboard flamewars about minutiae, does it have a shrine to its favourite character who was written off Sanctuary Moon four seasons ago? Does it interact with media in some completely different, completely AI fashion?
Crossovers with other science fiction fandoms I'm in are welcome: Murderbot and the Doctor, Murderbot and Squirrel Girl, Murderbot and Star Trek characters (the genetically enhanced Julian Bashir, the raised by Vulcans but actually very human Michael Burnham, the deeply empathic but very emotional and extroverted Deanna Troi, etc—all of whom would have very different approaches to humanity & personhood than Murderbot does).
I'm generally pro-porn and pro-romance, but Murderbot is so thoroughly asexual (somewhere between bored by and squicked by it all) that I DNW anything but gen for this fandom.
The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
This series scratches a particular itch for me: Pan-dimensional, inter-dimensional secret organizations who help to balance the cosmos while running secret missions the average person doesn't know about—and it's all about books! I love the different parallel worlds (magical, historical, futuristic, etc) that Irene & the Librarians end up in, and I'd love to see more of the high-tech dragon world Irene visited that one time when she was looking for Kai. I love the Library oaths and tattoos and the mentor system and the intra-Librarian personal politics. I'm less interested in the big fae vs dragons conflict, in that I'm not especially invested in either fae or dragons per se, but I do like seeing the effects of high chaos vs high order worlds. And I love that "high chaos" means "everyone is a character in someone else's narrative."
Femslash: Ship and character wise, I'm fascinated by Irene's relationship with Bradamant, her cat-burglar-esque femme fatale rival. I feel like Irene is equally fascinated. Is there some foe-yay backstory there where they ended up in bed together during a mission? Would Irene like there to have been? (Answer: Yes please.) I'd love something that combines casefic/a Library mission with lots of UST; also dramatic outfits (Bradamant), awkwardness (Irene), dramatic behaviour (Bradamant), creative stubbornness (Irene), competence kink (both of them), and, if you're up for it, resolution of said sexual tension in the form of things like wall sex and snogging in stairwells and shagging at inappropriate points during the mission. (If you prefer a gen approach that's fine too: I'd just really love a focus on Irene and Bradamant.) All the secret agent tropes and "best enemy" rivalry tropes and "secretly, kind of fond of each other" tropes are very welcome here. Prefer no curtainfic or traditional happily-ever-after or vows of sexual exclusivity, but a sense that they do respect each other and that Bradamant is mostly worthy of Irene's trust by the end would be great.
It's okay to include Vale and Kai (I quite like them both), but I would prefer no on-screen het. I'm also not really into Alberich, the Big Bad who keeps coming after Irene—I'd prefer the dangers and adventures the heroes face to be more along the lines of "normal levels of weird shit that happen to Librarians," which I feel is probably pretty damn weird in and of itself.
For crossovers or fusions, I'd prefer to have Irene visit a parallel Earth that resembles some other genre or canon with the serial numbers filed off, rather than actually have the fic be a crossover or fusion. (Preference again for sci-fi canons since Irene has already spent so much time in Vale's Victorian-esque world.) The exception to this would be Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next novels, where Irene meeting Thursday would be pretty cool.
Mirabile - Janet Kagan
Total comfort read. Sort of a ten-minute fandom because it's six short stories strung together, each of which gives you a good sense of the characters and sci-fi worldbuilding. (Also it's apparently $5 at Baen right now—see link below.) I absolutely hands-down love the narrative voice of the main character, a middle-aged female biologist/ecological troubleshooter who sorts out Weird Shit on an alien planet as a descendent of an Earth generation ship. Weird shit as in, kangaroo/tyrannosaurus rex hybrids, or flowers whose seeds are insects, or the titular Loch Moose Monster of one of the short stories. Xenoecology! Weird, maybe-plausible, totally-batshit genetics! There's a real love of science and ecology in this series that comes through in Kagan's loving descriptions of the Dragon's Teeth and the ecosystem, and it made me want to google a million things about plants and animals. (I'm usually more on the maths/physics side when I science, and it still moved me.)
Alongside the ridiculous, intriguing, sometimes dangerous, never boring Weird Shit that Annie deals with are some neat culture details and some really wonderful characters. I love stuff like the way your career becomes part of your name (from bellmaker to child-raiser to explorer to Weird Biological Shit Wrangler aka "jason"), and how this can change over a lifetime. (I especially love that the solution to "we have a limited gene pool" is "have babies and have them raised by the people who love being parents" rather than the "all women must be pregnant and raising kids 24/7" which shows up in a lot of other fiction.) I love the hints about how cultural traditions have developed over the history of the generation ship and the colony (courting gifts! when did that start? what other things are "traditional" now?) and how gender equality seems to be pretty much the default. I'm curious too about their level of technology and if anyone ends up piecing together more of their digital archive over time.
There were no characters nominated in the tagset for this fandom, so I'm going to guess that whoever did the noms was in it more for the worldbuilding generally. I am wide open to whatever you want to write in this fandom whether it focuses on Mirabile and its ecology or on the characters or both, but I do have favourite characters and some ship feels. <3
Annie & Leo: OMG! I fell hard for Annie and her practical, wry approach to her epic lifelong calling to keep all hell from breaking loose, so I worried a little that the guy who showed up with a crush on her would be boring or somehow derail her plot. Nope! The romance is low-key and supports the main plot rather than running roughshod over it, and that describes Leo's approach to Annie too. The man's had a whole life by the time he meets her, and he's happy to get drawn into her world and help out rather than try to make her a satellite of himself. There's the kind of honest respect and affection between them that I've seen in real couples I admire (and some fun scenes with a woman of a certain age getting to have fabulous sex), and it really adds to the comfort-read aspect of the book for me.
I'd love something with Annie and Leo working together to sort out Dragon's Teeth, or some of his first big jasoning projects (or a look back at some of hers), or a look at how their personal relationship might keep developing. (Do they get married? Why yes/why no? Does she meet more of his family? Does Annie have offscreen relatives? (I actually can't remember if canon answers this.) What kinds of rituals might Mirabile society have for other stages of personal relationships? Does Annie ever retire (hahahaha)?) The romance needn't be front and centre but I'm certainly happy to have it be a plot thread—I love how the book weaves Annie's personal and professional life together. And what about Mabob—does it turn out to be more of a sentient being than they thought? GRONK!
Elly & her kids: Elly's kids are really fun characters in their own right, and keep deputizing themselves as Annie's science helpers whenever she comes to visit. I'm always happy to see them show up in fic, and Elly too. What does the next generation of the jason profession look like when Annie's turned most of it over to her proteges? What made Elly decide that raising kids was her life's passion? What other strange or interesting things does Elly's lodge see besides Annie's adventures?
Chie-Hoon: Chie-Hoon is a member of Annie's team, and a secondary character in a bunch of the stories. A competent problem-solver and, being a little younger than Annie, one of the people who'll keep doing the job after her. And, interestingly enough, Chie-Hoon is never referred to with gendered pronouns. It's very subtly done, no big hoopla about how gender is or isn't conceived of on Mirabile, but just...no "he" or "she" at all. Maybe this shouldn't have surprised me, but in a book from almost 30 years ago it did. Anyway, it piqued my interest and made me want to see Chie-Hoon show up in more stories. (Feel free to go with "they" if not using any pronouns at all gets to be too much of a pain in the ass—I like the way Kagan did it but I know it's difficult to do and doesn't fit everyone's writing style.)
Original characters: Absolutely welcome. If you'd prefer to focus on Mirabile and its Weird Shit more than the characters per se, or if you have a great story in mind that's populated largely or entirely with OCs or minor book characters, that's great. If you have decided that there are sexy tentacles on some plant or creature on Mirabile that should work their way into a smutty story, I am here for that. If you have an idea for a new kind of Dragon's Teeth that you want to run with, or a resurgence of an old one, knock yourself out. :D Generally, I love the characters listed above (especially Annie Masmajean <3), but if you love this world and this book, I'm almost certain to love anything you write about it.
Possibly useful links:
Mirabile in ebook at Baen Books
my Goodreads review
Jo Walton review at Tor (some good stuff in comments too)
TV Tropes page (spoilery reference page)
Grace and Frankie (TV)
Look, I know the premise of this show is that Grace's and Frankie's ex-husbands are now married, but Grace is getting very gay for Frankie herself by the end of season 3. It's pretty great. By the last few episodes she's in full-on "Don't leave me, I have so many feelings! Let me hire a hot-air balloon for you!" mode and I am here for this. Tropes and dramatic pining! I half expect them to start huddling for warmth any moment now. If you, too, are having "I just want femslash with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, is that so wrong?" feelings, read on—if not, feel free to skip the relevant subparagraphs. :D
I love Frankie's general weirdness and willingness to do offbeat things because they work for her. (Less so the white hippie cultural appropriation she sometimes falls into, but I'd be happy to leave that tendency out of a story.) I also like that while she's got a lot sorted out about herself, she still has failures of self-knowledge and times when she isn't as wise and zen as she'd like to think. I love her unconventionality and tenacious zest for life. Equally, I love Grace's backbone and drive, how much she's capable of accomplishing when she sets her mind to it, and one of my big joys on the show is watching her start to unwind from the over-the-top pressures she's accepted and put on herself over the years, and discover who she really is underneath all of that. I think she really is a good person and a good friend, despite the initial WASP-y perfectionist vibe.
Speaking of vibes, I love their new business. I love the whole subplot about older women's sexuality, whether that's talking to their friends or setting up the vibrator business or their various (mis)adventures in dating. I really like Jacob and Frankie/Jacob, so while I'm hoping for some Grace/Frankie I'd rather not have any Jacob bashing. I can see Frankie having some kind of open arrangement with both Grace and Jacob, but if you're not down for that, please just quietly leave him out rather than having a big breakup scene or making him out to be the bad guy. If you're going the non-femslash route, I'm happy to keep Frankie/Jacob as a background pairing. Frankie does genuinely seem to be into men, so a bi Frankie makes most sense to me here (whether she kissed a girl while high in 1973 and then ended up with Sol for years, or whether Grace assumes she's comfortable with being with a woman but Frankie's actually never really thought about it until Grace brings it up, or anything else that seems good to you—I'm open to a wide variety of options, though I'd prefer not to receive "only gay for you" even if Grace and Frankie are each other's first woman.)
For Grace, the show seems to be going in the direction of giving Frankie the satisfying love life and Grace the satisfying single life (none of Grace's boyfriends seem to have stuck for more than an episode or two). But with her major themes of self-discovery I can also see Grace realizing she's into women, maybe even more than she's into men. (Always been a lesbian, but closeted even to herself? She's fine with guys but discovering a late-flowering attraction to women? Wakes up one morning and realizes that, OH NO, she's got a crush on Frankie of all people, God help us all? Was Babe's adventurous approach to life instrumental in this at all? Does Grace not care about labels or does she want to minutely categorize every single feeling? (I take it as read that she'd bounce hard off Tumblr, but there are other resources out there.) Again, gay or bi or somewhere in between, defined or undefined, whatever works for you other than WNGWJLEO.)
Whether you go for femslash or gen, I'd love the two of them getting up to ridiculous odd-couple shit like they do on the show: extricating each other from complicated social situations or zany plots, further adventures with Frankie's paintings, getting a pet and arguing over it, the business takes off and they decide to (Frankie convinces Grace to?) take a vacation, the two of them out on the town with conflicting views on what partying means, unexpected reversal of roles where Frankie is cautious and Grace wants to try something new and adventurous, etc. If you want to take it to the femslash place, I'd love slow dawning revelations, Frankie and Grace being at different stages of coming out to themselves (but eventually sorting it all out), odd/emotional/intimate late-night talks on the beach, confessions in unexpected times or places, getting together and then realizing they're still just as much of an odd pairing as always (but they're also still best friends/crazy about each other). Undercover as a couple/fake dating turns to real dating is also a trope that would be fun with these two. I'm not really craving explicit sex scenes for this ship, or at least not porn for porn's sake—confessions, passionate feelings, handholding, kisses, awkward makeouts (basically, about the level of explicitness the show gives for the het ships) would be awesome.
Definitely open to other characters from the tagset making an appearance, especially Babe, Briana, and Bud. Those two are my favourite kids of the lot anyway. :-) I love how much Briana takes after Grace, and enjoy when Bud gets to be a bit weird too instead of always being the only sane man in the room (though he's a pretty great only-sane-man too). I don't like kids matchmaking their parents, but I can easily see Briana or Bud realizing what's going on before their mothers do. I'm not against Sol and Robert as a passing reference, but I'm much more interested in fic about Grace and Frankie this time out than in the guys.
Bonus favourite things: Grace's amazing sharp dress sense, Frankie's deadpan out-of-the-blue asides about weird/implausible things she's done, surprising tenderness and vulnerability from Grace, Frankie's version of the martini (a glass full of olives and hardly any gin at all). The pizza guy/electrician/EMT/whoever who assumes they're married. Lily Tomlin's amazing face. Jane Fonda's, too. :D
Questionable Content
Faye was one of the original three characters way back when, and Bubbles is a delightful recent addition to the cast. I really enjoy how Faye's slowly been getting her shit together over the last while; she seems to be so much happier a person than she used to be. (She's also looking SUPER cute in that "lesbian, lumberjack, or hipster" style she's got going on now. Biceps! Asymmetrical hair! Aw yeah.) And Bubbles is an utter darling (if you can say that about an eight-foot-tall giant ex-military android with memory issues—that you can say that about her is part of her charm). I love her forays into making friendships, her standing up to her old boss and the mysterious creepy AI people, and how much & how adorably she's into Faye.
I absolutely do ship Faye/Bubbles; I'm squeeful every time they share a scene, and I haven't had this "eee, please let them be canon, please please!" feeling about a ship in a long time. I also just like both of them a lot (with an admitted preference for Bubbles), and think they're really good for each other, so a friendship/gen option would also be awesome.
Bubbles is just such a pleasure as a character. I love the whole conceit of tea smelling amazing to the AI, just transporting them to a whole other world for a few minutes. Unicorns! Frolicking in the glade! et cetera. I like how we get to learn a few more worldbuilding things about the AI through Bubbles, and I like the understated iron woobie thing she has going on, with her tragic army past and the loss of her memories. I also find her height and her curves (mmmmboobies!) and her strength and her hairstyle and her various clothing choices (oh gosh, when she let Faye take off her armor! swoon) very attractive. The size difference between the two of them is both amusing and really cool to me, because I don't often get to see female characters who are that BIG—who just take up space in the world like it's not a thing. And of course this makes her blushing and her quiet, epic crush on Faye extra-adorable. (OMG, I just read the "You are beautiful" strip! I'M DED.)
Faye's kind of a dick sometimes. I enjoy her best when she's being snarky but not actually mean to people. (I don't think I'd be one of the coffee shop customers lining up for an insult!) But she's trying to do her best and the tough exterior is a form of self-protection, not because she's an asshole all the way through. I like when she gets to be big-sisterly, or kind of thump someone on the back and go "Yeah, bro, that sucked, didn't it." She's a lot of fun with characters like Hanners (who I love) that way, and she's hilarious when facing off with Pintsize (who's a genuine dick, and I choose the word advisedly, lol). The quality of her friends (and she has some great ones) says a lot about her in the end, I think.
The robot repair shop was a stroke of genius—I love seeing women in STEM and mechanical jobs, and it really lets both of them shine. It's also a fun new setting to see old characters in a new light. One of my favourite things about QC is the "twenty minutes into the future" aspect, where it's all coffee shops and libraries and indie bands—and, oh yeah, casually, robots and space stations. I'm pretty interested in the AI in general, though more for the possibilities they present for a different, quirky outlook than for deep philosophical meditations on the nature of personhood, so if you're into that that's cool. Alternately, if you're more into the human characters (plus Bubbles), I really like Marten/Claire, Eliot & the rest of the bakery crew, Hanners, and Sam the wild child. (I feel like we haven't seen that much of Dora et al in a while, but I happily ship her with Tai and enjoy scenes set at the coffee shop).
Prompts and ideas: Further developments in Bubbles expressing her feelings about Faye and Faye being into that. :3 More physical contact, yay. Bubbles explores non-armored fashion some more, with more-or-less good-natured running commentary from Faye. Trolling and counter-trolling, running jokes, practical jokes. Faye and Bubbles go on a picnic or a road trip—new experiences for Bubbles, and some downtime for Faye. They go to the Ellicott-Chatham space station for some reason, where Bubbles is more at home with the tech but maybe Faye knows how to handle a new social situation better. From a femslash angle, the traditional fic strategies for getting stoic characters to admit to feelings could come into play: rescues from danger, delirious/bedside confessions, one thinks the other is asleep/offline/not listening so they say what they feel (only to realize later that the other one totally heard), etc. We find out more about Bubbles's past, and Faye tells her about her dad. Faye takes Bubbles home to her family down south (as a friend or as a girlfriend): is it a bigger deal that she's a girl or that she's a robot? (And what do Marten, Dora, et al think?) Bubbles is canonically nice and warm, so what if they do lose heat and Faye just has to snuggle a bit? (I'd be into smut for these two if that's a thing that inspires you, but I think the big deal for me with them is ALL THE FEELINGS. So feelings with porn (or porn with feelings) would be definitely A+. Also, plenty of Bubbles admiring how Faye looks to her, and Faye being impressed with Bubbles's strength, stamina, etc, would be great in sexier fic. Sweet snarky lovin' is where it's at. :D)
Thank you again for writing fic for me! I hope some of this has been helpful, and I'd be happy to clarify through the mods or whatever if I've been confusing or haven't given you enough to work with. Onward! <3
Thank you so much for writing a story for me! :D I hope at least some of the prompts and suggestions below are helpful to you, and that you have a generally excellent Yuletide this year. Hope this letter's not too tl;dr—is 7,000 words too much? enough?—optional details are always optional. I'm very excited for fic in the small fandom(s) of my heart. <3
General Likes:
Reading over my fandom comments below, it looks like I like at least three things: a) sci-fi weirdness b) flawed but goodhearted heroes with strong personalities and points of view c) having strong feelings about other people. That...sounds about right.
This Yuletide letter is really heavy on the femslash—I think it's my main request for three of my six fandoms and a major one in a fourth. Maybe this isn't a surprise since I'm a bi lady married to a lesbian, but usually I have a bit more variety in my requests! Anyway, whoo femslash. However, if you don't/can't write shipfic (femslash or otherwise) for the fandom we matched on, gen focused on the friendships involved is fantastic too. These are all characters and combinations of characters who make me smile, so tell me more about them and how they fit together and I'll be very happy.
For open canons with new installments coming out during the writing period (Questionable Content and possibly The Comfortable Courtesan), I will be caught up to date by the time stories go live if I'm not already, so feel free to use anything that's been published. On the other hand, if you write something that gets jossed (made AU because of a change in canon) between now and reveals, I will love the story just as much as if canon reads your mind, so don't stress out about that.
More things I like:
* Canon compliance, missing scenes, post-canon fic, prequels and backstories, worldbuilding extrapolation, canon-divergence ("Turn Left" or "what if X was Y") AUs, spaceship or superhero or magical AUs. Epistolary fiction and in-universe found-documents. Alternating character POVs, secondary-character POV (especially Eliza Ferraby!), outsider POV, non-linear stories, it's all good.
* Reunions. Narrow escapes. Unexpected moments of kindness, hope in dark places, relief from old worry. Comforting/distracting someone from their fear of heights/public speaking/thunderstorms. Food porn and costume porn. Tea Solves Everything. Families of choice. "I love nothing better than thee, and also I will go with thee to thy uncle's" – friends or lovers who would do anything for each other including the annoying, practical, difficult, or just plain weird things daily life throws up.
* Time-honoured shippy tropes like huddling for warmth, pretending to be married, dramatic and sexual tension with a rival, friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers. Sex pollen of the "we are into each other anyway but now we have no excuse to suppress our lust" sort (especially for Mirabile, Questionable Content, or The Invisible Library). Undercover as a couple; undercover as just about anything. They're oh so different, but Together They Fight Crime (/solve mysteries/save the day somehow).
* Competence kink: People just being really good at whatever it is they do, whether that's solving their friends' social crises, obsessing over media while not murderkilling (much), being a secret literary agent, untangling ecological disasters, or repairing robots. I like when characters have the flexibility to handle setbacks and come up with a creative solution and finally win out in the end. Genre awareness can go with this, or alternately a character can be thrown into a completely different genre than usual and turn out to be unexpectedly good at it (dramatic tragic character in a comedy, social hostess organizes a battle, minor bureaucrat's reference skills avert the apocalypse).
* Gay, bi, trans and nonbinary characters. I tend to assume that most characters are potentially bi unless they've been explicitly stated to be gay or asexual in canon. Please feel free to make canon het or unspecified characters queer, but please don't put canon gay characters in opposite-gender relationships. I very much enjoy bisexual/pansexual women whose primary or central romantic and sexual connections are with other women. If you're writing binary trans interpretations of characters, I would rather have ones that align with a character's canon gender—that is, making a woman who canon assumes is cisgender a trans woman rather than making her a trans man. Connections among queer people are awesome too ("not the only gay in the village").
* Polyamory, OT3s, and open relationships. (An F/F relationship doesn't need a man randomly added in even if one or both of the women is bi, but if a character has potential lovers of any gender, I'm of the "solve it with OT3s" school of thought most of the time.) I enjoy exploring all legs of a triad and the possible friendships between metamours, but characters who are "solo poly" or relationship anarchist or poly while having one current relationship are also great.
* Porn! Yes. I do like sex in my fic if it seems to flow with your concept for the story. I'd prefer there to be more plot than just a PWP sex scene, but I'm happy to have characters getting it on. Awkward sex, mindblowing sex, first-time sex, established-relationship sex, sex with a lot of visible reactions (fisting hands in sheets, biting one's lip, straining muscles, aroused noises, etc), sex in unexpected places or where they have to be quiet for fear of discovery, being turned on and having to wait to pounce their partner, sex on every available piece of furniture, women having sex that doesn't centre on penetration (some is fine).
* Kink: Power exchange, roleplay, and bondage are great too. I vastly prefer casual kink negotiations to formal detailed checklists; likewise for sexual consent. Under-negotiated kink ("A shoves B against the wall, B thinks it's hot and kisses A back, it's awesome"), characters discovering kinks for themselves without having gone to a seminar or being experts in BDSM terminology, power exchange without S&M (or vice versa), and kinky flirting are other things I really like. Changes in context-specific concepts and language for kink and sexuality really fascinate me too, so if you can get me into the head of an early 1800s courtesan or a far-future xenobiologist or an ex-military android who likes tea, that would be a really neat bonus. I also like men in submissive roles and women in dominant roles, and women who kink on submitting to other women.
* Art: Would be thrilled to receive art for Wrapping Paper treats! I'm more into expressiveness (a sense of motion or emotion) than hyper-realism, though I'm always impressed with artists who can draw things and people that are immediately recognizable. I love bright or interesting uses of colour. I love chibis and art nouveau especially, but I'm into all the pretties! Porny art is fine, though the only ships I can think of right off that I'm actively imagining it for are the Comfortable Courtesan ones. Dreamwidth/Livejournal icons, or art that can be used for that, are great too.
* Other media: Interactive fiction is cool, but please no audio/video for technical reasons. (My ears don't work right and my Internet bandwidth is severely limited, so I won't be able to enjoy audiovisual components properly.)
General DNWs:
* No character bashing, even if you know I hate the character. I'd rather you just left them out entirely. Likewise no bashing of rival ships, or reenactments of fandom wars over ships, character interpretations, etc.
* No character death, torture, brainwashing; zombies or werewolves; body horror including major focus on dysphoria; epidemics, natural disasters, or current American politics. No rape or sexual assault (whether of a character for traumatic backstory, or non-con between members of a ship) and no threats of rape or sexual assault, please.
* No unhappy endings ("hopeless endings of sadness" as my wife says); big misunderstandings that cause emotional pain but could have been cleared up on page 2 if people had talked to each other (silly misunderstandings are fine); bullying; intentional humiliation; self-harm; significant overt homophobia or transphobia as a plot point or motivator; love triangles; infidelity; unrequited love.
* No coffeehouse or highschool/college "modern AUs"; no serial-killer AUs. No AUs where the primary component is lifted from a larger fandom (daemon AUs, Pacific Rim drift AUs, etc).
* I'm happy with either first or third person (I/me or he/she/they) point of view, but prefer no second-person ("you open the door and see Murderbot kissing Frankie").
* No kidfic in the sense of "having a baby is what makes us a real family" or a great focus on the antics of little children. (Flora Ferraby has more leeway here than anyone else! Sleepy wombatts ftw.) No non-canon pregnancy and prefer not to focus on the mechanics of canon pregnancies or childbirth.
* I enjoy both gen and ship-fic, but tend to find the "smarm" and "pre-slash" categories very frustrating. If you aren't comfortable writing the characters I ship in a sexual/romantic (delete as appropriate) relationship with each other, please go ahead and write them as non-sexual friends/coworkers/rivals. (Background pairings or established relationships that aren't foregrounded because the main plot is something besides the relationship are fine; but I'd prefer not to get fic that's all hints and teases but doesn't go anywhere in terms of whether the characters get together or not.)
* Non-hetero and non-cisgender people have always been around, and a world that leaves queer people out doesn't feel right to me. But terminology and concepts change drastically with place and time, and many people don't describe their own experiences in terms of whatever the cutting-edge academic or activist language is. As none of my requested characters are modern-day sexuality activists, instructors, or bloggers, I don't want fic where characters explain modern sexuality terms to each other at length or re-fight intra-community battles over who gets to identify as what or what to call it. Likewise, I'm non-monogamous and am happy to see poly/open relationships in fic, but don't want fic where polyamory is talked up as better than monogamy or where poly people try to convince monogamous people to give it a try.
* I'd like my gay and bi characters to be actively interested in sexual and romantic relationships with the same gender. I don't want scenarios where a character is 99% straight but has "one exception" and the ship is that one exception (also known as "we're not gay, we just love each other"). I also don't want fic where the focus is on how a character is romantically into the same gender but sexually not, or sexually attracted to the same gender but just can't fall in love with them, especially if they are both sexually and romantically attracted to the opposite gender. Please no implication that asexuality is "purer" than sexual desire (or alternately that asexual people are broken somehow). Disparities in libido (high/low) are fine, as are first-time scenarios where a person is just figuring themselves out and doesn't have any previous same-gender experience, or a case where someone changes their self-identification over time. Bi characters also don't have to be exactly 50/50 into men/women (or 33.3% into men, women, and nonbinary people), but I tend to prefer them more into the same gender than into others. With one specified exception, I do not want fic where a canon gay character sleeps with someone of the opposite gender in the story.
* Kinks I don't want: Sex that focuses on body fluids (blood, semen, waste products), butch/femme dynamics, leashes and collars, body modification, heavy sadomasochism, vore, oviposition, rape roleplay (or actual rape), orgasm denial/control for women (for men = hot), het PIV as the centrepiece of a sex scene, M/f (male dominant/female submissive), daddy kink or mommy kink, incest, underage (age gaps between legal adults, or relationships between humans and immortals/robots/etc, are fine).
Prompts by Fandom:
Jump to:
The Comfortable Courtesan - Madame C- C-
The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
Mirabile - Janet Kagan
Grace and Frankie (TV)
Questionable Content (Webcomic)
The Comfortable Courtesan
I love everyone in this felicity-maximized bar. :D Eliza/Clorinda is the ship of my heart in this fandom, but I also love Gervase/Sandy and Maurice/Sandy, and I have a soft spot for Docket/Biddy Smith. Gen is also delightful and good, and I am happy with fic set in the historical time period or with modern historians rediscovering C-'s circle through documents—and if you have a sudden brainwave to write a spaceship AU of the series, feel free! ;-)
I should note that while I adore the period-specific language in The Comfortable Courtesan, I am by no means an expert in it, so if it doesn't come naturally to you please don't fret about getting every single detail perfect. (Likewise, I am 99% sure not to catch any history gaffes. I'll also probably not get classical literary references without explanation, so if you use them please leave me a helpful footnote or two. :D) I very, very much appreciate how the author quietly includes LGBT+ people all over the cast (we have always been here) and uses historical terminology for how they would have self-identified—anything you want to throw in on that score would be awesome. (I do prefer a minimum of outright homophobia/transphobia since this fandom is my happy place.)
I'm pretty conversant with the cast of thousands, and am happy to have various non-nominated characters show up as secondary characters in the story if you feel like it, especially the Ferraby kids, Clorinda's household, Belinda ("t'other Lady B-"), Viola's circle, Sandy's various acquaintances, and Matt Johnson. I'm happy with the first-initial convention (C-, G-R-, Lady T-, etc) or with full names, whichever works best for you.
Eliza/Clorinda(/Josiah): C-/Eliza (spymistress/wild girl!) is my favourite leg of this triangle, but Josiah can certainly come too. I'd love anything femslash and romantic here, and the triangle finding ways to be together despite the usages of society. I love how much Clorinda seems to adore Eliza, and vice versa—I get little hearteyes. Passionate (and practical) letters between Eliza and Clorinda? Eliza's diary entries? Clorinda demonstrating the contents of her professional toybox to Eliza and Josiah? Crossdressing adventures where Clorinda and Eliza have to pretend to be a het couple for reasons (and then come home and towsell-mowsell upon the sofa)? I know Clorinda basically considers herself married to the both of them: do they ever concoct some kind of private ceremony to mark that, since they can't do it publicly? Does Lady Jane or any of their other queer female connections ever find out about Eliza/Clorinda? I also love everything to do with Flora and their shared parentage there, and Clorinda's relationships with the other F- children. When and how do the other kids find out about their parents' relationship, and what are the contents of some of those "Apply to Aunty Clo for enlightenment" conversations?
My biggest DNW for this ship is anything that focuses on Eliza's and Josiah's deaths, or Eliza's final illness. That's just Too Damn Sad for me to deal with! So I'd prefer something set well before that, when they're all hale and happy. I'd also prefer to avoid much focus on that time Clorinda went vigilante on the blackmailer.
Sandy ships: I am fascinated by the class/power dynamics between Lord G- R- and Sandy, and how they navigate those over the years—equally, I'm interested in how different Sandy's relationship with Maurice is in that regard. I love the hints in canon about Sandy and Gervase getting up to some kinky stuff sometimes, and just generally how they might have constructed their sense of masculinity and homosexuality (eg we see that Sandy thinks of Maurice as being a totally different kind of gay man, at first). I'd love porn for either of these Sandy slash ships—especially early days with Gervase, all that UST and figuring out what each other likes. Feel free to use canon snippets or other fanfic as sexy inspiration (or indeed famous oldschool m/m stuff, just drop me an explanatory footnote). Did they ever have a threesome with any of their male friends (e.g. the ever-eager starstruck Geoffrey M-)? How did Sandy go about demonstrating his enthusiasm for sex with Gervase and convincing him that he wasn't just going along with it because G- was his boss? Does Sandy let Maurice apply his fashion sense to Sandy's wardrobe (and then peel him out of it)? Is Maurice ever painted as an African character after all? Should it strike your fancy, please explore pervertible uses of fencing, philosophy, political arguments, driving very fast behind the fam'd matcht blacks, period dress for men, symbolick heroick nudity in art or life, et cetera. (If inspiration is found here for the Clorinda ships above, feel free to use it there as well: eg bubbies + wombatts + female philosophy + clothes porn...)
I generally prefer Sandy & Clorinda kept platonic (because I do see Sandy as 99.9% gay), but a one-off Clorinda/Sandy/Gervase adventure where Sandy is able to explore his canonical slight curiosity in a safe environment could be quite hot, and I'm fine with references to That One Time with Signor Dildo. ;-)
Gen: Sandy/Clorinda friendship, including solving mysteries and discussing gothic novel plots. I'd love to see more of Sandy's various adventures promoting various political and revolutionary causes (a certain amount of that is outside what Clorinda records, I'm sure), and Docket's relationships with her proteges and the other ladies' maids. Something with Docket and Biddy Smith when they were younger and in service together, or their friendship (relationship?) over the years would also be neat to see. (I love that Biddy knows that Docket is trans and it doesn't seem to be an issue.) And, of course, anything with Clorinda and her friends and her stratagems to help them sort out their difficulties!
Other: I'm open to crossovers between this canon and others I know (time travel is fine) though I'd like the focus to be on this fandom. Have always had a secret hankering for some kind of connection between Mme C- and Phryne Fisher. (Is Phryne descended from Abby T- somehow? Does Phryne discover Clorinda's writing?) If you were to somehow engineer a meeting between Murderbot and Clorinda Cathcart (how is felicity maximized for a Murderbot?), I would be most intrigued. (Okay, utter crackfic I know, probably best as a treat. But somebody should write that someday!)
The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
The Murderbot who was a failure at murderkilling because it was obsessed with television! I feel like this is truly a hero for us all. I haven't read any of the teasers for book 2 yet, but if you want to include references to them that's okay, because I will catch up eventually.
I'm more interested in Murderbot itself than any of the human characters, though its interactions with humans (canonical or OCs) tend to shed light on Murderbot's conception of itself, so it's fine to include the odd human. Anything set during the canon time period is welcome to have Murderbot's team along for the ride. (I prefer "it" for Murderbot, because it's a nonhuman sentient machine, but if you want to go with a more humanoid pronoun, that's okay too. If you're comfortable with first-person POV, Murderbot calls itself "I" anyway, thus avoiding the question entirely.) I loved the strong, quiet theme of self-determination that ran through All Systems Red and how that meshes—or doesn't mesh—with the desire for friendship and community.
Prompt ideas: What would have happened if Murderbot had gone home with Dr. Mensah? (How would it have argued for its own independence, and how hard would it have had to fight to get well-intentioned people to actually give it its autonomy?) What actually happened in its backstory—was it as horrible as Murderbot makes out, was it worse, was it better? Are there other AIs who have hacked their governor modules, and does Murderbot meet them? Murderbot in fandom: Does it write fic, does it get into the equivalent of 57-page-long messageboard flamewars about minutiae, does it have a shrine to its favourite character who was written off Sanctuary Moon four seasons ago? Does it interact with media in some completely different, completely AI fashion?
Crossovers with other science fiction fandoms I'm in are welcome: Murderbot and the Doctor, Murderbot and Squirrel Girl, Murderbot and Star Trek characters (the genetically enhanced Julian Bashir, the raised by Vulcans but actually very human Michael Burnham, the deeply empathic but very emotional and extroverted Deanna Troi, etc—all of whom would have very different approaches to humanity & personhood than Murderbot does).
I'm generally pro-porn and pro-romance, but Murderbot is so thoroughly asexual (somewhere between bored by and squicked by it all) that I DNW anything but gen for this fandom.
The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
This series scratches a particular itch for me: Pan-dimensional, inter-dimensional secret organizations who help to balance the cosmos while running secret missions the average person doesn't know about—and it's all about books! I love the different parallel worlds (magical, historical, futuristic, etc) that Irene & the Librarians end up in, and I'd love to see more of the high-tech dragon world Irene visited that one time when she was looking for Kai. I love the Library oaths and tattoos and the mentor system and the intra-Librarian personal politics. I'm less interested in the big fae vs dragons conflict, in that I'm not especially invested in either fae or dragons per se, but I do like seeing the effects of high chaos vs high order worlds. And I love that "high chaos" means "everyone is a character in someone else's narrative."
Femslash: Ship and character wise, I'm fascinated by Irene's relationship with Bradamant, her cat-burglar-esque femme fatale rival. I feel like Irene is equally fascinated. Is there some foe-yay backstory there where they ended up in bed together during a mission? Would Irene like there to have been? (Answer: Yes please.) I'd love something that combines casefic/a Library mission with lots of UST; also dramatic outfits (Bradamant), awkwardness (Irene), dramatic behaviour (Bradamant), creative stubbornness (Irene), competence kink (both of them), and, if you're up for it, resolution of said sexual tension in the form of things like wall sex and snogging in stairwells and shagging at inappropriate points during the mission. (If you prefer a gen approach that's fine too: I'd just really love a focus on Irene and Bradamant.) All the secret agent tropes and "best enemy" rivalry tropes and "secretly, kind of fond of each other" tropes are very welcome here. Prefer no curtainfic or traditional happily-ever-after or vows of sexual exclusivity, but a sense that they do respect each other and that Bradamant is mostly worthy of Irene's trust by the end would be great.
It's okay to include Vale and Kai (I quite like them both), but I would prefer no on-screen het. I'm also not really into Alberich, the Big Bad who keeps coming after Irene—I'd prefer the dangers and adventures the heroes face to be more along the lines of "normal levels of weird shit that happen to Librarians," which I feel is probably pretty damn weird in and of itself.
For crossovers or fusions, I'd prefer to have Irene visit a parallel Earth that resembles some other genre or canon with the serial numbers filed off, rather than actually have the fic be a crossover or fusion. (Preference again for sci-fi canons since Irene has already spent so much time in Vale's Victorian-esque world.) The exception to this would be Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next novels, where Irene meeting Thursday would be pretty cool.
Mirabile - Janet Kagan
Total comfort read. Sort of a ten-minute fandom because it's six short stories strung together, each of which gives you a good sense of the characters and sci-fi worldbuilding. (Also it's apparently $5 at Baen right now—see link below.) I absolutely hands-down love the narrative voice of the main character, a middle-aged female biologist/ecological troubleshooter who sorts out Weird Shit on an alien planet as a descendent of an Earth generation ship. Weird shit as in, kangaroo/tyrannosaurus rex hybrids, or flowers whose seeds are insects, or the titular Loch Moose Monster of one of the short stories. Xenoecology! Weird, maybe-plausible, totally-batshit genetics! There's a real love of science and ecology in this series that comes through in Kagan's loving descriptions of the Dragon's Teeth and the ecosystem, and it made me want to google a million things about plants and animals. (I'm usually more on the maths/physics side when I science, and it still moved me.)
Alongside the ridiculous, intriguing, sometimes dangerous, never boring Weird Shit that Annie deals with are some neat culture details and some really wonderful characters. I love stuff like the way your career becomes part of your name (from bellmaker to child-raiser to explorer to Weird Biological Shit Wrangler aka "jason"), and how this can change over a lifetime. (I especially love that the solution to "we have a limited gene pool" is "have babies and have them raised by the people who love being parents" rather than the "all women must be pregnant and raising kids 24/7" which shows up in a lot of other fiction.) I love the hints about how cultural traditions have developed over the history of the generation ship and the colony (courting gifts! when did that start? what other things are "traditional" now?) and how gender equality seems to be pretty much the default. I'm curious too about their level of technology and if anyone ends up piecing together more of their digital archive over time.
There were no characters nominated in the tagset for this fandom, so I'm going to guess that whoever did the noms was in it more for the worldbuilding generally. I am wide open to whatever you want to write in this fandom whether it focuses on Mirabile and its ecology or on the characters or both, but I do have favourite characters and some ship feels. <3
Annie & Leo: OMG! I fell hard for Annie and her practical, wry approach to her epic lifelong calling to keep all hell from breaking loose, so I worried a little that the guy who showed up with a crush on her would be boring or somehow derail her plot. Nope! The romance is low-key and supports the main plot rather than running roughshod over it, and that describes Leo's approach to Annie too. The man's had a whole life by the time he meets her, and he's happy to get drawn into her world and help out rather than try to make her a satellite of himself. There's the kind of honest respect and affection between them that I've seen in real couples I admire (and some fun scenes with a woman of a certain age getting to have fabulous sex), and it really adds to the comfort-read aspect of the book for me.
I'd love something with Annie and Leo working together to sort out Dragon's Teeth, or some of his first big jasoning projects (or a look back at some of hers), or a look at how their personal relationship might keep developing. (Do they get married? Why yes/why no? Does she meet more of his family? Does Annie have offscreen relatives? (I actually can't remember if canon answers this.) What kinds of rituals might Mirabile society have for other stages of personal relationships? Does Annie ever retire (hahahaha)?) The romance needn't be front and centre but I'm certainly happy to have it be a plot thread—I love how the book weaves Annie's personal and professional life together. And what about Mabob—does it turn out to be more of a sentient being than they thought? GRONK!
Elly & her kids: Elly's kids are really fun characters in their own right, and keep deputizing themselves as Annie's science helpers whenever she comes to visit. I'm always happy to see them show up in fic, and Elly too. What does the next generation of the jason profession look like when Annie's turned most of it over to her proteges? What made Elly decide that raising kids was her life's passion? What other strange or interesting things does Elly's lodge see besides Annie's adventures?
Chie-Hoon: Chie-Hoon is a member of Annie's team, and a secondary character in a bunch of the stories. A competent problem-solver and, being a little younger than Annie, one of the people who'll keep doing the job after her. And, interestingly enough, Chie-Hoon is never referred to with gendered pronouns. It's very subtly done, no big hoopla about how gender is or isn't conceived of on Mirabile, but just...no "he" or "she" at all. Maybe this shouldn't have surprised me, but in a book from almost 30 years ago it did. Anyway, it piqued my interest and made me want to see Chie-Hoon show up in more stories. (Feel free to go with "they" if not using any pronouns at all gets to be too much of a pain in the ass—I like the way Kagan did it but I know it's difficult to do and doesn't fit everyone's writing style.)
Original characters: Absolutely welcome. If you'd prefer to focus on Mirabile and its Weird Shit more than the characters per se, or if you have a great story in mind that's populated largely or entirely with OCs or minor book characters, that's great. If you have decided that there are sexy tentacles on some plant or creature on Mirabile that should work their way into a smutty story, I am here for that. If you have an idea for a new kind of Dragon's Teeth that you want to run with, or a resurgence of an old one, knock yourself out. :D Generally, I love the characters listed above (especially Annie Masmajean <3), but if you love this world and this book, I'm almost certain to love anything you write about it.
Possibly useful links:
Mirabile in ebook at Baen Books
my Goodreads review
Jo Walton review at Tor (some good stuff in comments too)
TV Tropes page (spoilery reference page)
Grace and Frankie (TV)
Look, I know the premise of this show is that Grace's and Frankie's ex-husbands are now married, but Grace is getting very gay for Frankie herself by the end of season 3. It's pretty great. By the last few episodes she's in full-on "Don't leave me, I have so many feelings! Let me hire a hot-air balloon for you!" mode and I am here for this. Tropes and dramatic pining! I half expect them to start huddling for warmth any moment now. If you, too, are having "I just want femslash with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, is that so wrong?" feelings, read on—if not, feel free to skip the relevant subparagraphs. :D
I love Frankie's general weirdness and willingness to do offbeat things because they work for her. (Less so the white hippie cultural appropriation she sometimes falls into, but I'd be happy to leave that tendency out of a story.) I also like that while she's got a lot sorted out about herself, she still has failures of self-knowledge and times when she isn't as wise and zen as she'd like to think. I love her unconventionality and tenacious zest for life. Equally, I love Grace's backbone and drive, how much she's capable of accomplishing when she sets her mind to it, and one of my big joys on the show is watching her start to unwind from the over-the-top pressures she's accepted and put on herself over the years, and discover who she really is underneath all of that. I think she really is a good person and a good friend, despite the initial WASP-y perfectionist vibe.
Speaking of vibes, I love their new business. I love the whole subplot about older women's sexuality, whether that's talking to their friends or setting up the vibrator business or their various (mis)adventures in dating. I really like Jacob and Frankie/Jacob, so while I'm hoping for some Grace/Frankie I'd rather not have any Jacob bashing. I can see Frankie having some kind of open arrangement with both Grace and Jacob, but if you're not down for that, please just quietly leave him out rather than having a big breakup scene or making him out to be the bad guy. If you're going the non-femslash route, I'm happy to keep Frankie/Jacob as a background pairing. Frankie does genuinely seem to be into men, so a bi Frankie makes most sense to me here (whether she kissed a girl while high in 1973 and then ended up with Sol for years, or whether Grace assumes she's comfortable with being with a woman but Frankie's actually never really thought about it until Grace brings it up, or anything else that seems good to you—I'm open to a wide variety of options, though I'd prefer not to receive "only gay for you" even if Grace and Frankie are each other's first woman.)
For Grace, the show seems to be going in the direction of giving Frankie the satisfying love life and Grace the satisfying single life (none of Grace's boyfriends seem to have stuck for more than an episode or two). But with her major themes of self-discovery I can also see Grace realizing she's into women, maybe even more than she's into men. (Always been a lesbian, but closeted even to herself? She's fine with guys but discovering a late-flowering attraction to women? Wakes up one morning and realizes that, OH NO, she's got a crush on Frankie of all people, God help us all? Was Babe's adventurous approach to life instrumental in this at all? Does Grace not care about labels or does she want to minutely categorize every single feeling? (I take it as read that she'd bounce hard off Tumblr, but there are other resources out there.) Again, gay or bi or somewhere in between, defined or undefined, whatever works for you other than WNGWJLEO.)
Whether you go for femslash or gen, I'd love the two of them getting up to ridiculous odd-couple shit like they do on the show: extricating each other from complicated social situations or zany plots, further adventures with Frankie's paintings, getting a pet and arguing over it, the business takes off and they decide to (Frankie convinces Grace to?) take a vacation, the two of them out on the town with conflicting views on what partying means, unexpected reversal of roles where Frankie is cautious and Grace wants to try something new and adventurous, etc. If you want to take it to the femslash place, I'd love slow dawning revelations, Frankie and Grace being at different stages of coming out to themselves (but eventually sorting it all out), odd/emotional/intimate late-night talks on the beach, confessions in unexpected times or places, getting together and then realizing they're still just as much of an odd pairing as always (but they're also still best friends/crazy about each other). Undercover as a couple/fake dating turns to real dating is also a trope that would be fun with these two. I'm not really craving explicit sex scenes for this ship, or at least not porn for porn's sake—confessions, passionate feelings, handholding, kisses, awkward makeouts (basically, about the level of explicitness the show gives for the het ships) would be awesome.
Definitely open to other characters from the tagset making an appearance, especially Babe, Briana, and Bud. Those two are my favourite kids of the lot anyway. :-) I love how much Briana takes after Grace, and enjoy when Bud gets to be a bit weird too instead of always being the only sane man in the room (though he's a pretty great only-sane-man too). I don't like kids matchmaking their parents, but I can easily see Briana or Bud realizing what's going on before their mothers do. I'm not against Sol and Robert as a passing reference, but I'm much more interested in fic about Grace and Frankie this time out than in the guys.
Bonus favourite things: Grace's amazing sharp dress sense, Frankie's deadpan out-of-the-blue asides about weird/implausible things she's done, surprising tenderness and vulnerability from Grace, Frankie's version of the martini (a glass full of olives and hardly any gin at all). The pizza guy/electrician/EMT/whoever who assumes they're married. Lily Tomlin's amazing face. Jane Fonda's, too. :D
Questionable Content
Faye was one of the original three characters way back when, and Bubbles is a delightful recent addition to the cast. I really enjoy how Faye's slowly been getting her shit together over the last while; she seems to be so much happier a person than she used to be. (She's also looking SUPER cute in that "lesbian, lumberjack, or hipster" style she's got going on now. Biceps! Asymmetrical hair! Aw yeah.) And Bubbles is an utter darling (if you can say that about an eight-foot-tall giant ex-military android with memory issues—that you can say that about her is part of her charm). I love her forays into making friendships, her standing up to her old boss and the mysterious creepy AI people, and how much & how adorably she's into Faye.
I absolutely do ship Faye/Bubbles; I'm squeeful every time they share a scene, and I haven't had this "eee, please let them be canon, please please!" feeling about a ship in a long time. I also just like both of them a lot (with an admitted preference for Bubbles), and think they're really good for each other, so a friendship/gen option would also be awesome.
Bubbles is just such a pleasure as a character. I love the whole conceit of tea smelling amazing to the AI, just transporting them to a whole other world for a few minutes. Unicorns! Frolicking in the glade! et cetera. I like how we get to learn a few more worldbuilding things about the AI through Bubbles, and I like the understated iron woobie thing she has going on, with her tragic army past and the loss of her memories. I also find her height and her curves (mmmmboobies!) and her strength and her hairstyle and her various clothing choices (oh gosh, when she let Faye take off her armor! swoon) very attractive. The size difference between the two of them is both amusing and really cool to me, because I don't often get to see female characters who are that BIG—who just take up space in the world like it's not a thing. And of course this makes her blushing and her quiet, epic crush on Faye extra-adorable. (OMG, I just read the "You are beautiful" strip! I'M DED.)
Faye's kind of a dick sometimes. I enjoy her best when she's being snarky but not actually mean to people. (I don't think I'd be one of the coffee shop customers lining up for an insult!) But she's trying to do her best and the tough exterior is a form of self-protection, not because she's an asshole all the way through. I like when she gets to be big-sisterly, or kind of thump someone on the back and go "Yeah, bro, that sucked, didn't it." She's a lot of fun with characters like Hanners (who I love) that way, and she's hilarious when facing off with Pintsize (who's a genuine dick, and I choose the word advisedly, lol). The quality of her friends (and she has some great ones) says a lot about her in the end, I think.
The robot repair shop was a stroke of genius—I love seeing women in STEM and mechanical jobs, and it really lets both of them shine. It's also a fun new setting to see old characters in a new light. One of my favourite things about QC is the "twenty minutes into the future" aspect, where it's all coffee shops and libraries and indie bands—and, oh yeah, casually, robots and space stations. I'm pretty interested in the AI in general, though more for the possibilities they present for a different, quirky outlook than for deep philosophical meditations on the nature of personhood, so if you're into that that's cool. Alternately, if you're more into the human characters (plus Bubbles), I really like Marten/Claire, Eliot & the rest of the bakery crew, Hanners, and Sam the wild child. (I feel like we haven't seen that much of Dora et al in a while, but I happily ship her with Tai and enjoy scenes set at the coffee shop).
Prompts and ideas: Further developments in Bubbles expressing her feelings about Faye and Faye being into that. :3 More physical contact, yay. Bubbles explores non-armored fashion some more, with more-or-less good-natured running commentary from Faye. Trolling and counter-trolling, running jokes, practical jokes. Faye and Bubbles go on a picnic or a road trip—new experiences for Bubbles, and some downtime for Faye. They go to the Ellicott-Chatham space station for some reason, where Bubbles is more at home with the tech but maybe Faye knows how to handle a new social situation better. From a femslash angle, the traditional fic strategies for getting stoic characters to admit to feelings could come into play: rescues from danger, delirious/bedside confessions, one thinks the other is asleep/offline/not listening so they say what they feel (only to realize later that the other one totally heard), etc. We find out more about Bubbles's past, and Faye tells her about her dad. Faye takes Bubbles home to her family down south (as a friend or as a girlfriend): is it a bigger deal that she's a girl or that she's a robot? (And what do Marten, Dora, et al think?) Bubbles is canonically nice and warm, so what if they do lose heat and Faye just has to snuggle a bit? (I'd be into smut for these two if that's a thing that inspires you, but I think the big deal for me with them is ALL THE FEELINGS. So feelings with porn (or porn with feelings) would be definitely A+. Also, plenty of Bubbles admiring how Faye looks to her, and Faye being impressed with Bubbles's strength, stamina, etc, would be great in sexier fic. Sweet snarky lovin' is where it's at. :D)
Thank you again for writing fic for me! I hope some of this has been helpful, and I'd be happy to clarify through the mods or whatever if I've been confusing or haven't given you enough to work with. Onward! <3
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