lady_ragnell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lady_ragnell) wrote2020-10-18 12:03 pm
lady_ragnell) wrote2020-10-18 12:03 pm
Entry tags:
Dear Yuletide Author 2020
Dear Author,
It's Yuletide season once again! Thank you for writing for me, author, first of all--this exchange is always such a good note to end the year on, and I love getting to read about some tiny fandoms. I love all of these fandoms so much, and I am so excited to see what you come up with for wherever we matched.
If you're curious about my taste in stories or other fandoms, I am lady_ragnell on the AO3 and theladyragnell on tumblr!
General Likes and Dislikes
Likes
Dislikes
My overall guidance is that I'm fine with keeping the tone of and referencing dark things that happen in canon, up to canon-typical levels, but that I'm not very into focusing on those elements or making them any darker, but more specifically, I would prefer not to receive:
Fandom Specific Likes and Prompts
Barbie: Star Light Adventure (2016)
Characters: Barbie, Sal-Lee
Where to consume it: On Netflix, at least in the US! For a while this year, it was also on the official Barbie YouTube page, but I am not sure if that's still true.
This movie was somehow specifically calibrated to kill me. Brightly colored optimistic science fiction with no real villain, cool fashion and scenery, and plot-significant music! Everything about this world, with its castles in bubbles and nature reserve planets full of strange and interesting creatures and robots wandering around, is delightful to me. Barbie and Sal-Lee's progression from strangers to friends, Barbie trying to reach out and Sal-Lee reserved until she isn't, is really lovely. I like the way they confide in each other, how competitive Sal-Lee is and how honestly Barbie is impressed by her hoverboard skills. I ship it, but as always with me, I'm just as happy to read about their friendship.
Prompts:
-I'd love to see them dealing with the aftermath of the movie. Barbie is a princess now--does that make her Constantine's heir? Her life is going to be pretty different, especially when she's famous for saving the universe. I know it's a kids' movie, but I'd love something about her having to learn about politics and palace life, hopefully with some help from Sal-Lee.
-Another mission--they've saved the galaxy, but surely there are smaller but still important problems that still need fixing! Maybe they have to rescue someone who's been trapped somewhere, or find another strange creature. It can be just the two of them or the whole team, as you prefer! Or, also in this vein, I'd love something about them training together--again, just them or with Leo and Sheena and Kareena along.
-Barbie brings Sal-Lee home to Parra-den to spend some time with her dad and the animals, and to give Sal-Lee a break from traveling all the time, and Sal-Lee continues to grapple with having a friend (or more) and not just a competitor.
-On the other hand, maybe the two of them go on the competitive circuit together, where they are competitors and friends and meet at different points across time, in between the other things in their busy lives.
Killjoys (TV)
Characters: Dutch, Johnny Jaqobis
Where to consume it: This isn't streaming anywhere particularly convenient, unfortunately, at least not in the US. It's available with certain kinds of Hulu subscription, and is on the very bad SyFy player at least some of the time. But if your local library has DVDs, you might strike some luck there! (Time commitment: 50 45-minute episodes.)
I love this show so much, and these two are a good amount of the reason why (as well as the amazing other characters and the family they build together, any characters you feel like sprinkling in with these two are fine by me). I love all the love and loyalty and history between them, how well they know each other, how even though the show never goes to romance with them, it's clear that they are each other's best friends and most important people. If you do want to go for a post-canon romance, I'd definitely welcome that, but I am just as happy with gen!
Prompts:
-A post-canon reunion! John has his sabbatical from the RAC and then he comes back to Team Awesome Force. Where's he been? What's he been doing? How is Dutch's mission to eliminate the Lady's children from the universe going? I'd love to see them catch up and fall back into step together. John retiring with a family and some robot goats never quite sat right with me, so I'd prefer that not to be his post-sabbatical plan.
-"Warrior Princess Bride" is one of my favorite episodes of anything ever. I'd love to see, before canon started or in missing places in it, another time or three when Dutch and John pretended to be married! For a job, to extract John from trouble when flirting with someone, whatever excuse you find for it is great.
-If you're up for a canon divergence AU, I'd love to see one where Dutch and John met either before or after they did in canon. For before, maybe John ran away younger and ended up sneaking into the harem where Dutch was living, and they end up on the run together. For after, maybe he stole a different ship and she ran off alone, and they still end up in the RAC, or in the Quad. What's different? What's the same?
-A good old-fashioned bounty hunting job, with or without D'avin, Zeph, or the rest of the crew, where they get a warrant and execute it in true Team Awesome Force fashion.
Tom Corbett: Space Cadet - Carey Rockwell
Characters: Tom Corbett, Roger Manning, Astro
Where to consume it: These books are free on Project Gutenberg! The series order (as well as some recommendations for particularly good ones) is right here, and is complete with links. (Someday I will write a proper fandom primer and stop linking to an old Yuletide promo post.) There are seven short and easily readable novels available, but not all of them need to be read to get the idea.
These books are just such lovely optimistic sci fi! The worldbuilding, where the books choose to go into it, are such fun. I love that it tries to stick with the science of the times, even as it assumes the science of the times means there are canals of water on Mars and dinosaurs living on Venus. But more than anything else, I love the Polaris crew! Tom, our team leader, getting into some scrapes but good-natured and fun and so caring with his friends. Astro, so great at engineering, with a rich history implied to build from, a little touchy but affectionate too. And Roger, absolute human disaster, a cynical loner until he absolutely is not. Anything about the three of them is going to delight me! Ship-wise, I do ship it as an OT3, but am also happy with gen and any of the component ships of two!
Prompts:
-In nearly every book, there's a part where one of the three of them gets imperiled or injured, and the other two have to worry about and/or rescue and tend to him. I would absolutely love a hurt/comfort fic that leans on that habit!
-Future fic! They're cadets in the Solar Academy in the books. What happens when they graduate? Are they all assigned to the same ship, or do they have to figure out how to see each other in between assignments?
-A visit to one of their families. They talk a few times about visiting Tom's family on leave, so it would be fun to have a peek at one of those visits. Or a visit to Roger's widowed mother, or an invitation to take her up in the Polaris with them. Or another trip to Venus for the dinosaurs, since the last one turned out so disastrously--or even, if you want to go for some drama, a new family member finds Astro when he thought he was alone in the world!
-A lot of fandom classic tropes would be so fun with these three! Amnesia, accidental baby acquisition, marriage of convenience so they can get the same assignments after graduation ... honestly, any trope along those lines is going to be delightful with them, in ship or gen form.
UFO Victorian Ladies (eeBoo Jigsaw Puzzle)
Characters: any (the characters in the tagset are the three women in the top row and the middle one in the second one)
Where to consume it: Right here!
There, you have now consumed all the canon that I am aware of existing!
Every year, I make a tradition of going through the Yuletide tagset looking for a five-minute fandom I adore, and this is the one I found this year. Basically, I love everything that's going on here! The amazing headdresses! The floating plants at the bottom that look like something out of the Voynich Manuscript (and do feel free to cross that in, if you like)! The combinations of florals with more spacey imagery! Basically, whatever is happening in this picture, or the world this picture implies, I want to know what you think it is.
Prompts:
-The four women in the tagset (or any of the other women!) are a delegation to whatever aliens apparently contacted the Victorians. What are these aliens like? They seem benign, if people are adopting them into fashion, but what differences are there, and why were these women chosen for the mission? Plus--these 19th century women in space, suddenly learning a lot about it on an alien spaceship!
-One (or more) of the women is a milliner or dressmaker very much involved in integrating alien contact into the fashion of the era. A story about her work and her artistic choices, or about her being the first dressmaker to make a dress for the aliens.
-Letters between any of these women on the subject of the alien invasion and/or contact, either when it begins or as they're more integrated, and what these 19th century ladies who lunch might want to do about it. Anything from agonies over whether to pay a formal call to a spaceship (and invite them to the ball!) to spies attempting to stop an alien invasion would be great.
Happy writing, author! Thank you in advance for writing for me, and I can't wait to see whatever you come up with. <3
It's Yuletide season once again! Thank you for writing for me, author, first of all--this exchange is always such a good note to end the year on, and I love getting to read about some tiny fandoms. I love all of these fandoms so much, and I am so excited to see what you come up with for wherever we matched.
If you're curious about my taste in stories or other fandoms, I am lady_ragnell on the AO3 and theladyragnell on tumblr!
General Likes and Dislikes
Likes
- Stories about relationships, whether that means romance, or siblings, or friendships, or rivalries or co-workers. I love seeing characters play off of each other, whether that means reluctantly working together to get over mistrust or falling in love or anything else! And if it involves having some banter, that's always delightful too.
- Happy or hopeful endings! Angst along the way is just fine by me (I am a huge fan of hurt/comfort, especially with more focus on the comfort than the hurt), but I like everything to be okay in the end.
- Worldbuilding! I love anything that adds depth to the world of a canon, or explores something canon didn't have the time for. I'm also a huge fan of in-universe media: news articles, pop culture, anything along those lines.
- I'm also fond of AUs! This year, I'm enjoying the thought of a trip to space, since I've ended up requesting all sci fi, so I'd rather not go for a full setting change unless you've got an idea you can't shake, but canon divergence AUs are always amazing, or AUs that add things to the setting or change people's professions within the setting, etc. are fine.
- The spaces around canons--things that were implied to happen, or that will likely happen afterwards, but weren't shown in the piece of media. Missing scenes, future fic either about the immediate or long-standing consequences of canon events, or even public perception of canon events. I'm a fan of outsider POV, especially from canon characters.
- Some of my favorite tropes and story elements include: any and all marriage tropes (arranged, convenient, Vegas, fake), found family, hurt/comfort (especially in survival-type situations), anything about loyalty or fealty, pining, banter, dancing or Fancy Party Episodes, political/court intrigue, and epistolary.
- Any ratings, G to E! I'm perfectly happy to receive porn, if that's your wheelhouse, and also happy to read gen, or romance where they don't do any more than hold hands, so whatever makes you happy to write, I've got no preferences there! If you do go for porn, though, I would prefer that it be part of the story rather than the whole of the story, and for all characters involved to be older than 18.
- Other porn likes: characters having fun together during sex, light informal d/s or bondage (especially if partners switch off who's "in charge"), dub-con of the sex pollen type, oral.
Dislikes
My overall guidance is that I'm fine with keeping the tone of and referencing dark things that happen in canon, up to canon-typical levels, but that I'm not very into focusing on those elements or making them any darker, but more specifically, I would prefer not to receive:
- Character death, particularly through a terminal illness, especially where it's not present in the canon.
- Major illness in general (with exceptions for canonical character chronic illness or disability): usually this means I'd like to steer clear of fic about characters dealing with cancer, but this being 2020, I would also prefer not to read about COVID-19 or any fantasy/sci-fi/historical plagues.
- Abuse (emotional or physical, especially between partners), infidelity, incest, non-consensual sex/rape.
- Gore. I'm fine with violence at a canon level, duel scenes, that kind of thing, but not lingering details of injuries or dead bodies.
- Horror elements.
- Porn-specific DNWs: non-con, formal d/s arrangements, a/b/o, bloodplay, watersports.
Fandom Specific Likes and Prompts
Barbie: Star Light Adventure (2016)
Characters: Barbie, Sal-Lee
Where to consume it: On Netflix, at least in the US! For a while this year, it was also on the official Barbie YouTube page, but I am not sure if that's still true.
This movie was somehow specifically calibrated to kill me. Brightly colored optimistic science fiction with no real villain, cool fashion and scenery, and plot-significant music! Everything about this world, with its castles in bubbles and nature reserve planets full of strange and interesting creatures and robots wandering around, is delightful to me. Barbie and Sal-Lee's progression from strangers to friends, Barbie trying to reach out and Sal-Lee reserved until she isn't, is really lovely. I like the way they confide in each other, how competitive Sal-Lee is and how honestly Barbie is impressed by her hoverboard skills. I ship it, but as always with me, I'm just as happy to read about their friendship.
Prompts:
-I'd love to see them dealing with the aftermath of the movie. Barbie is a princess now--does that make her Constantine's heir? Her life is going to be pretty different, especially when she's famous for saving the universe. I know it's a kids' movie, but I'd love something about her having to learn about politics and palace life, hopefully with some help from Sal-Lee.
-Another mission--they've saved the galaxy, but surely there are smaller but still important problems that still need fixing! Maybe they have to rescue someone who's been trapped somewhere, or find another strange creature. It can be just the two of them or the whole team, as you prefer! Or, also in this vein, I'd love something about them training together--again, just them or with Leo and Sheena and Kareena along.
-Barbie brings Sal-Lee home to Parra-den to spend some time with her dad and the animals, and to give Sal-Lee a break from traveling all the time, and Sal-Lee continues to grapple with having a friend (or more) and not just a competitor.
-On the other hand, maybe the two of them go on the competitive circuit together, where they are competitors and friends and meet at different points across time, in between the other things in their busy lives.
Killjoys (TV)
Characters: Dutch, Johnny Jaqobis
Where to consume it: This isn't streaming anywhere particularly convenient, unfortunately, at least not in the US. It's available with certain kinds of Hulu subscription, and is on the very bad SyFy player at least some of the time. But if your local library has DVDs, you might strike some luck there! (Time commitment: 50 45-minute episodes.)
I love this show so much, and these two are a good amount of the reason why (as well as the amazing other characters and the family they build together, any characters you feel like sprinkling in with these two are fine by me). I love all the love and loyalty and history between them, how well they know each other, how even though the show never goes to romance with them, it's clear that they are each other's best friends and most important people. If you do want to go for a post-canon romance, I'd definitely welcome that, but I am just as happy with gen!
Prompts:
-A post-canon reunion! John has his sabbatical from the RAC and then he comes back to Team Awesome Force. Where's he been? What's he been doing? How is Dutch's mission to eliminate the Lady's children from the universe going? I'd love to see them catch up and fall back into step together. John retiring with a family and some robot goats never quite sat right with me, so I'd prefer that not to be his post-sabbatical plan.
-"Warrior Princess Bride" is one of my favorite episodes of anything ever. I'd love to see, before canon started or in missing places in it, another time or three when Dutch and John pretended to be married! For a job, to extract John from trouble when flirting with someone, whatever excuse you find for it is great.
-If you're up for a canon divergence AU, I'd love to see one where Dutch and John met either before or after they did in canon. For before, maybe John ran away younger and ended up sneaking into the harem where Dutch was living, and they end up on the run together. For after, maybe he stole a different ship and she ran off alone, and they still end up in the RAC, or in the Quad. What's different? What's the same?
-A good old-fashioned bounty hunting job, with or without D'avin, Zeph, or the rest of the crew, where they get a warrant and execute it in true Team Awesome Force fashion.
Tom Corbett: Space Cadet - Carey Rockwell
Characters: Tom Corbett, Roger Manning, Astro
Where to consume it: These books are free on Project Gutenberg! The series order (as well as some recommendations for particularly good ones) is right here, and is complete with links. (Someday I will write a proper fandom primer and stop linking to an old Yuletide promo post.) There are seven short and easily readable novels available, but not all of them need to be read to get the idea.
These books are just such lovely optimistic sci fi! The worldbuilding, where the books choose to go into it, are such fun. I love that it tries to stick with the science of the times, even as it assumes the science of the times means there are canals of water on Mars and dinosaurs living on Venus. But more than anything else, I love the Polaris crew! Tom, our team leader, getting into some scrapes but good-natured and fun and so caring with his friends. Astro, so great at engineering, with a rich history implied to build from, a little touchy but affectionate too. And Roger, absolute human disaster, a cynical loner until he absolutely is not. Anything about the three of them is going to delight me! Ship-wise, I do ship it as an OT3, but am also happy with gen and any of the component ships of two!
Prompts:
-In nearly every book, there's a part where one of the three of them gets imperiled or injured, and the other two have to worry about and/or rescue and tend to him. I would absolutely love a hurt/comfort fic that leans on that habit!
-Future fic! They're cadets in the Solar Academy in the books. What happens when they graduate? Are they all assigned to the same ship, or do they have to figure out how to see each other in between assignments?
-A visit to one of their families. They talk a few times about visiting Tom's family on leave, so it would be fun to have a peek at one of those visits. Or a visit to Roger's widowed mother, or an invitation to take her up in the Polaris with them. Or another trip to Venus for the dinosaurs, since the last one turned out so disastrously--or even, if you want to go for some drama, a new family member finds Astro when he thought he was alone in the world!
-A lot of fandom classic tropes would be so fun with these three! Amnesia, accidental baby acquisition, marriage of convenience so they can get the same assignments after graduation ... honestly, any trope along those lines is going to be delightful with them, in ship or gen form.
UFO Victorian Ladies (eeBoo Jigsaw Puzzle)
Characters: any (the characters in the tagset are the three women in the top row and the middle one in the second one)
Where to consume it: Right here!
There, you have now consumed all the canon that I am aware of existing!
Every year, I make a tradition of going through the Yuletide tagset looking for a five-minute fandom I adore, and this is the one I found this year. Basically, I love everything that's going on here! The amazing headdresses! The floating plants at the bottom that look like something out of the Voynich Manuscript (and do feel free to cross that in, if you like)! The combinations of florals with more spacey imagery! Basically, whatever is happening in this picture, or the world this picture implies, I want to know what you think it is.
Prompts:
-The four women in the tagset (or any of the other women!) are a delegation to whatever aliens apparently contacted the Victorians. What are these aliens like? They seem benign, if people are adopting them into fashion, but what differences are there, and why were these women chosen for the mission? Plus--these 19th century women in space, suddenly learning a lot about it on an alien spaceship!
-One (or more) of the women is a milliner or dressmaker very much involved in integrating alien contact into the fashion of the era. A story about her work and her artistic choices, or about her being the first dressmaker to make a dress for the aliens.
-Letters between any of these women on the subject of the alien invasion and/or contact, either when it begins or as they're more integrated, and what these 19th century ladies who lunch might want to do about it. Anything from agonies over whether to pay a formal call to a spaceship (and invite them to the ball!) to spies attempting to stop an alien invasion would be great.
Happy writing, author! Thank you in advance for writing for me, and I can't wait to see whatever you come up with. <3