Dear NPT Writer
Apr. 19th, 2015 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swan_towerLet me apologize up front for the fact that this is a terrifyingly long Dear Writer letter. :-) It's because I've let my inner fan off the leash, and she likes to squee all over the page. There are lots of suggestions in here, but if reading them makes you think of something else entirely you suspect I'd enjoy, then go for it! At this point I have a decent number of fics posted on AO3, plus gifts I've received in the past, so you can divine from their entrails if you need more clues. (And I have some more general notes at the end.)
The fandoms are in alphabetical order. Each has only one character requested because they're what I really care about, but you are more than welcome to include other people in the story.
***
Fandom: Agent Carter
Character: Peggy Carter
What I love about it: Uh, everything? Seriously. Come see Peggy Carter be awesome and punch sexism in the face! Yes, I know reality is more complicated than that -- but this is two-fisted pulp adventure. It is not the place for subtlety. And I love that, because sometimes, subtlety is not what I want.
What I'm looking for: There's a weird narrative benefit you can get in a narrative about sexism, which is that it makes all the relationships between men and women very charged. I'd love a story about Peggy interacting with one or more of the men around her; there are three I find particularly interesting. (Note that in two of these three cases, I don't ship them in the standard sense: it's the non-romantic dynamic that fascinates me.)
Jarvis -- does it make sense to say I ship them and at the same time never want them to hook up? I absolutely melt for the bond between Peggy and Jarvis, and I think they are a good deal more important to each other than just friends . . . but I also melt for the way Jarvis is utterly devoted to his wife, and have zero desire to see that messed with. Anything that is about their teamwork would be fabulous, and Jarvis steadfastly supporting Peggy (while sometimes being pulled the other way by his loyalty to Howard Stark). Plus, them being politely British at one another. :-)
Sousa -- this is the only one I ship in the usual way. I could see Peggy getting together with Sousa, though canon indicates she winds up married to somebody else (one of the Howling Commandos, I think?). I really enjoy the way Sousa sees Peggy, much more clearly than the other guys at SSR do, and I love how they both have ambiguous positions in the organization -- they have to prove themselves above and beyond the usual. Anything playing with that would be great.
Thompson -- he'd have to do a lot more growing as a person before I could see Peggy dating with him. :-P But that's actually what I enjoy about this relationship: outwardly he's the golden boy, but inside he knows he really isn't that awesome. And yet he feels has to maintain the image, never let the guys see his weakness. After the business in Russia, I feel like Peggy is the one person he might be able to show that to, precisely because she doesn't fit in normally at SSR. I'd love a story about that disjunct, and how Peggy knows more about him than the others do.
Other things that are cool include Ridiculous! Science!, Angie, Howard Stark being over-the-top, and the future founding of SHIELD.
***
Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Character: Solas
SPOILERS AHOY IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED THE GAME DO NOT READ THIS I MEAN IT
What I love about it: Bioware always does great characters, and Solas, for all his faults -- maybe because of them -- is one of my favorites. Also omgwtfbbq that final scene.
What I'm looking for: Seriously, Bioware? You drop that final scene on us and then make us wait however many years for the next game to deal with it?
I was playing a Dalish Inquisitor, in a romance with Solas. Then the &$#@$! breaks up with me and vanishes after the final battle, and I never get to deal with the truth in-character. I have to write mental fanfic about my Inquisitor hunting him down and strong-arming him into giving some answers (after which she's all GAME ON and goes off to help him, because my Inquisitor was Team Elf Pride).
I'm not asking you to write that fanfic. In fact, I'm asking you not to write that fanfic, because the Inquisitor who lives in my head is not the one you would be writing about, and the disjunct would throw me out of the story. But writing about Solas? Yes please.
There are a lot of things about him that are ambiguous. My impression is that he is not, like Flemeth, somebody carrying the spark of a god; he is actually Fen'Harel (cf his comments about "waking up," presumably from the elven sleep of uthenera). Is Fen'Harel actually a god per se, or just an elf who managed to trick the gods? When exactly did he wake up -- was it recently, or a really long time ago and he still has a degree of immortality? It seems like he locked the gods away in the belief that doing so would help the elven people, and then woke up to find out he'd actually screwed them over, but we don't know details. And what exactly did he take from Flemeth at the end? Was that the Mythal "spark," the Urthemiel "spark," her "power" in a sense separate from those divine essences, or what?
The designer notes (which somebody hacked out of the game; these are comments they put in for the animators and such, to make it clear what's going on) indicate that "in his drive to restore the elven people he will kill anyone -- even [Flemeth/Mythal]." I'll be honest: I really hope that doesn't mean he's Anders 2.0, because then we would have not one but two stories about how trying to fight for the betterment of oppressed people turns you into a murderer. And that's a little problematic. Plus, I basically map Fen'Harel to Loki . . . and since my introduction to Loki was Diana Wynne Jones' Eight Days of Luke, I can never quite believe in him as malevolent.
I'd love any story that addresses some of these questions: him tricking the gods and locking them away (but apparently not Mythal, since somebody had murdered her? what the hell is up with that?), him waking up to find the world changed (my god that would be sad), him after he leaves the Inquisitor and kills Flemeth (assuming you believe she's actually dead, which I'm not sure I do), whatever. Maybe he interacts with Cole? Their banter was fantastic, once it became apparent just how much Cole understood without ever saying it outright. Tragic!Solas is fine; conflicted!Solas is fine; clever trickster!Solas is awesome (c'mon, he's gotta have that side, even if we don't see it as much in the game). Just don't give me evil!Solas. Fade dreams would be fabulous, though!
***
Fandom: Highlander
Character: Methos
True story -- back in the Stone Age of Compuserve et al, when I had only seen a few episodes of Highlander, I was nosing around on internet fansites and came across references to Methos: the Oldest Immortal Alive! He’s Five Thousand Years Old!!! And I rolled my eyes because my god did that sound like a terrible idea.
Then I saw an episode with Methos in it, and realized he's the best character in the show.
So, um. The tl;dr version is METHOS YES PLEASE. The rest of this is me fangirling about why I like him, followed by some vague nods to what I'm keen on seeing.
What I love about it: uh, Methos being awesome? The writers avoided the pitfalls I automatically expected when I saw “five thousand years old, world’s oldest living immortal.” He’s not some uber-powerful demigod; he’s just a guy, and not even the strongest one out there. He’s also not some wise, enlightened elder -- though they poke at that idea entertainingly in “The Messenger.” He isn’t weighted down by the angst of his life; he has a fabulous sense of humour (that extends to mocking himself), and I loved how they handled the relationship with Alexa. So often, immortal characters (vampires, etc) moan about how they can’t get attached because the people they love will die and then it’ll be grief foreeeeeever; with Alexa, Methos is all, “Let’s date! Wait, you’re dying of cancer? NO TIME TO LOSE THEN” instead of flinching away from the pain. At the same time, man does he have some trauma and angst in his past (Horsemen, anybody?), which I am very much a sucker for. He doesn’t put dignity (or sometimes even honor) ahead of his own survival; yet on the other hand he will risk himself for his friends -- and also, every so often, this sort of masochistic or even self-destructive streak rears its head. He nearly suicides to Duncan in his first appearance (which, to be fair, is mostly because the writers originally intended him to be a one-off character), and then in “Comes a Horseman,” when he’s trying to squirm out of the conversation and Duncan won’t let him, he turns around and just starts twisting the knife in himself, talking about his own past in the most unforgiving way possible. And yet, there are moments where the wisdom comes out. I love the exchange between him and Duncan at the end of “The Valkyrie,” about who judges whom, and his epic speech at Amanda in “Methuselah’s Gift” is sheer brilliance. (The plot of that episode is Macguffin Ahoy! from one end to the other, but it’s worth it just for that speech.)
Basically, I love every episode he’s in and everything they do with the character (though I don’t remember season six very well), so if you have a Favorite Methos Moment, odds are I like it, too. Hanging out with Byron? Shooting Duncan in the head? His confrontation with Kristin at the end of “Chivalry?” (“A man born long before the age of chivalry” -- that was a nicely chilling moment.) Awesomesauce, all of it. :-D
What I'm looking for: Now that mini-dissertation is out of the way . . . I'm open for pretty much anything, but there are a few approaches I’d prefer you to avoid:
1) Anything that flat-out contradicts canon. Unless I specifically ask for an AU or crossover or fixit fic, etc, I like receiving things that fit into the world and history presented in canon. This doesn’t mean you have to drive yourself batty double-checking every last detail for fear of contradicting one (I probably wouldn’t notice the contradiction anyway), but it does mean I’m not keen on “the Horsemen team up again in the twenty-second century” or whatever.
2) Shippy fic or porn. Although I like his relationship with Alexa, I’m not that interested in a fic that focuses on it, nor do I really want to see him slashed with Duncan/Joe/Richie/whoever. Which is not to say you have to avoid relationships like the plague; if it would fit your story to have Methos be involved with some character of your own devising, that’s fine. (Female or male. I read him as straight, but open-minded enough that he wouldn’t say no to other kinds of fun. Especially if he were in a time and place where that sort of thing was mainstream, e.g. ancient Greece or pre-Meiji Japan.)
3) Horsemen-era stuff. I’m not hugely averse to this, so if you have a brilliant idea for something in that time period, go for it. But Horsemen-era Methos is not yet the complex character I love, so he’s less interesting to me. Also, I’m an archaeologist, so the TV version of the Bronze Age makes me roll my eyes. Though if you can do a more realistic Bronze Age, rock on!
Since now I feel like that makes me sound choosy, let me say that beyond those three things, I really am up for just about anything! Emo fic about some tragedy in Methos’ past; hilarious fic about a ridiculous caper; introspective fic musing on immortality and being thousands of years older than everybody around you; grimdark fic about the Gathering actually coming down. If you have a time period you really like, feel free to set the story there; if it’s a time period you know a crap-ton about, yes please. I adore historical fiction full of chewy little period details.
(If it’s a historical period in which -isms become an issue: you’re welcome to address them or sweep them under the narrative rug, whichever suits you better. I kind of think that Methos, with that range of experiences under his belt, has probably learned not to make snap judgments about people based on externalities, but that doesn’t mean he’s 100% free of prejudice. I also know that the prejudices we’re familiar with are very much an inheritance of the last few centuries, and that racism and sexism in, say, republican Rome operated in different ways than ours. So basically, do whatever serves the story best/you are okay with writing; I don’t particularly need this to be issuefic, nor am I driven off by characters acting in less than fully enlightened ways.)
***
As for more general notes . . . .
Things That Are Yay: plot! (Casefic, etc. If you have the time and energy -- I know it can be a lot of work.) Exploration of character motivations, exploration/expansion of the setting. Fic that could fit into canon. Drama, up to and including aaaaaangst. Characters getting whumped on. Witty humour, especially if it's used as the jab to set up the dramatic roundhouse that follows.
Things That Are A-okay: violence, up to a point (see below). Non-explicit sex. AUs of the "what if this event went differently?" sort. Inclusion of nominated characters I didn't request. Inclusion of canonical characters who haven't been nominated. Original characters as needed for the story. Most povs, tenses, narrative formats, etc.
Things That Are Meh: straight-up character introspection. Nonfiction-style worldbuilding. Pure fluff. Second person pov without a really good reason.
Things That Are Nay: radical AUs like coffee shop, genderswaps, a/b/o, etc. Explicit smut and its associated kinks/tropes. "Five Things"-type stories (I've read some good ones, but that format rarely does it for me; I much prefer one continuous tale). Requested characters having only a cameo in the story, unless otherwise specified in the prompt. Gross-out humour. Humiliation. Characters being flat-out stupid. Character bashing. Torture porn, especially with female victims. Women being sidelined in general.
***
As mentioned before, I'm russian_blue on AO3, so feel free to look at what I’ve got there if you need more data on what I like. And above all: have fun!
The fandoms are in alphabetical order. Each has only one character requested because they're what I really care about, but you are more than welcome to include other people in the story.
***
Fandom: Agent Carter
Character: Peggy Carter
What I love about it: Uh, everything? Seriously. Come see Peggy Carter be awesome and punch sexism in the face! Yes, I know reality is more complicated than that -- but this is two-fisted pulp adventure. It is not the place for subtlety. And I love that, because sometimes, subtlety is not what I want.
What I'm looking for: There's a weird narrative benefit you can get in a narrative about sexism, which is that it makes all the relationships between men and women very charged. I'd love a story about Peggy interacting with one or more of the men around her; there are three I find particularly interesting. (Note that in two of these three cases, I don't ship them in the standard sense: it's the non-romantic dynamic that fascinates me.)
Jarvis -- does it make sense to say I ship them and at the same time never want them to hook up? I absolutely melt for the bond between Peggy and Jarvis, and I think they are a good deal more important to each other than just friends . . . but I also melt for the way Jarvis is utterly devoted to his wife, and have zero desire to see that messed with. Anything that is about their teamwork would be fabulous, and Jarvis steadfastly supporting Peggy (while sometimes being pulled the other way by his loyalty to Howard Stark). Plus, them being politely British at one another. :-)
Sousa -- this is the only one I ship in the usual way. I could see Peggy getting together with Sousa, though canon indicates she winds up married to somebody else (one of the Howling Commandos, I think?). I really enjoy the way Sousa sees Peggy, much more clearly than the other guys at SSR do, and I love how they both have ambiguous positions in the organization -- they have to prove themselves above and beyond the usual. Anything playing with that would be great.
Thompson -- he'd have to do a lot more growing as a person before I could see Peggy dating with him. :-P But that's actually what I enjoy about this relationship: outwardly he's the golden boy, but inside he knows he really isn't that awesome. And yet he feels has to maintain the image, never let the guys see his weakness. After the business in Russia, I feel like Peggy is the one person he might be able to show that to, precisely because she doesn't fit in normally at SSR. I'd love a story about that disjunct, and how Peggy knows more about him than the others do.
Other things that are cool include Ridiculous! Science!, Angie, Howard Stark being over-the-top, and the future founding of SHIELD.
***
Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Character: Solas
SPOILERS AHOY IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED THE GAME DO NOT READ THIS I MEAN IT
What I love about it: Bioware always does great characters, and Solas, for all his faults -- maybe because of them -- is one of my favorites. Also omgwtfbbq that final scene.
What I'm looking for: Seriously, Bioware? You drop that final scene on us and then make us wait however many years for the next game to deal with it?
I was playing a Dalish Inquisitor, in a romance with Solas. Then the &$#@$! breaks up with me and vanishes after the final battle, and I never get to deal with the truth in-character. I have to write mental fanfic about my Inquisitor hunting him down and strong-arming him into giving some answers (after which she's all GAME ON and goes off to help him, because my Inquisitor was Team Elf Pride).
I'm not asking you to write that fanfic. In fact, I'm asking you not to write that fanfic, because the Inquisitor who lives in my head is not the one you would be writing about, and the disjunct would throw me out of the story. But writing about Solas? Yes please.
There are a lot of things about him that are ambiguous. My impression is that he is not, like Flemeth, somebody carrying the spark of a god; he is actually Fen'Harel (cf his comments about "waking up," presumably from the elven sleep of uthenera). Is Fen'Harel actually a god per se, or just an elf who managed to trick the gods? When exactly did he wake up -- was it recently, or a really long time ago and he still has a degree of immortality? It seems like he locked the gods away in the belief that doing so would help the elven people, and then woke up to find out he'd actually screwed them over, but we don't know details. And what exactly did he take from Flemeth at the end? Was that the Mythal "spark," the Urthemiel "spark," her "power" in a sense separate from those divine essences, or what?
The designer notes (which somebody hacked out of the game; these are comments they put in for the animators and such, to make it clear what's going on) indicate that "in his drive to restore the elven people he will kill anyone -- even [Flemeth/Mythal]." I'll be honest: I really hope that doesn't mean he's Anders 2.0, because then we would have not one but two stories about how trying to fight for the betterment of oppressed people turns you into a murderer. And that's a little problematic. Plus, I basically map Fen'Harel to Loki . . . and since my introduction to Loki was Diana Wynne Jones' Eight Days of Luke, I can never quite believe in him as malevolent.
I'd love any story that addresses some of these questions: him tricking the gods and locking them away (but apparently not Mythal, since somebody had murdered her? what the hell is up with that?), him waking up to find the world changed (my god that would be sad), him after he leaves the Inquisitor and kills Flemeth (assuming you believe she's actually dead, which I'm not sure I do), whatever. Maybe he interacts with Cole? Their banter was fantastic, once it became apparent just how much Cole understood without ever saying it outright. Tragic!Solas is fine; conflicted!Solas is fine; clever trickster!Solas is awesome (c'mon, he's gotta have that side, even if we don't see it as much in the game). Just don't give me evil!Solas. Fade dreams would be fabulous, though!
***
Fandom: Highlander
Character: Methos
True story -- back in the Stone Age of Compuserve et al, when I had only seen a few episodes of Highlander, I was nosing around on internet fansites and came across references to Methos: the Oldest Immortal Alive! He’s Five Thousand Years Old!!! And I rolled my eyes because my god did that sound like a terrible idea.
Then I saw an episode with Methos in it, and realized he's the best character in the show.
So, um. The tl;dr version is METHOS YES PLEASE. The rest of this is me fangirling about why I like him, followed by some vague nods to what I'm keen on seeing.
What I love about it: uh, Methos being awesome? The writers avoided the pitfalls I automatically expected when I saw “five thousand years old, world’s oldest living immortal.” He’s not some uber-powerful demigod; he’s just a guy, and not even the strongest one out there. He’s also not some wise, enlightened elder -- though they poke at that idea entertainingly in “The Messenger.” He isn’t weighted down by the angst of his life; he has a fabulous sense of humour (that extends to mocking himself), and I loved how they handled the relationship with Alexa. So often, immortal characters (vampires, etc) moan about how they can’t get attached because the people they love will die and then it’ll be grief foreeeeeever; with Alexa, Methos is all, “Let’s date! Wait, you’re dying of cancer? NO TIME TO LOSE THEN” instead of flinching away from the pain. At the same time, man does he have some trauma and angst in his past (Horsemen, anybody?), which I am very much a sucker for. He doesn’t put dignity (or sometimes even honor) ahead of his own survival; yet on the other hand he will risk himself for his friends -- and also, every so often, this sort of masochistic or even self-destructive streak rears its head. He nearly suicides to Duncan in his first appearance (which, to be fair, is mostly because the writers originally intended him to be a one-off character), and then in “Comes a Horseman,” when he’s trying to squirm out of the conversation and Duncan won’t let him, he turns around and just starts twisting the knife in himself, talking about his own past in the most unforgiving way possible. And yet, there are moments where the wisdom comes out. I love the exchange between him and Duncan at the end of “The Valkyrie,” about who judges whom, and his epic speech at Amanda in “Methuselah’s Gift” is sheer brilliance. (The plot of that episode is Macguffin Ahoy! from one end to the other, but it’s worth it just for that speech.)
Basically, I love every episode he’s in and everything they do with the character (though I don’t remember season six very well), so if you have a Favorite Methos Moment, odds are I like it, too. Hanging out with Byron? Shooting Duncan in the head? His confrontation with Kristin at the end of “Chivalry?” (“A man born long before the age of chivalry” -- that was a nicely chilling moment.) Awesomesauce, all of it. :-D
What I'm looking for: Now that mini-dissertation is out of the way . . . I'm open for pretty much anything, but there are a few approaches I’d prefer you to avoid:
1) Anything that flat-out contradicts canon. Unless I specifically ask for an AU or crossover or fixit fic, etc, I like receiving things that fit into the world and history presented in canon. This doesn’t mean you have to drive yourself batty double-checking every last detail for fear of contradicting one (I probably wouldn’t notice the contradiction anyway), but it does mean I’m not keen on “the Horsemen team up again in the twenty-second century” or whatever.
2) Shippy fic or porn. Although I like his relationship with Alexa, I’m not that interested in a fic that focuses on it, nor do I really want to see him slashed with Duncan/Joe/Richie/whoever. Which is not to say you have to avoid relationships like the plague; if it would fit your story to have Methos be involved with some character of your own devising, that’s fine. (Female or male. I read him as straight, but open-minded enough that he wouldn’t say no to other kinds of fun. Especially if he were in a time and place where that sort of thing was mainstream, e.g. ancient Greece or pre-Meiji Japan.)
3) Horsemen-era stuff. I’m not hugely averse to this, so if you have a brilliant idea for something in that time period, go for it. But Horsemen-era Methos is not yet the complex character I love, so he’s less interesting to me. Also, I’m an archaeologist, so the TV version of the Bronze Age makes me roll my eyes. Though if you can do a more realistic Bronze Age, rock on!
Since now I feel like that makes me sound choosy, let me say that beyond those three things, I really am up for just about anything! Emo fic about some tragedy in Methos’ past; hilarious fic about a ridiculous caper; introspective fic musing on immortality and being thousands of years older than everybody around you; grimdark fic about the Gathering actually coming down. If you have a time period you really like, feel free to set the story there; if it’s a time period you know a crap-ton about, yes please. I adore historical fiction full of chewy little period details.
(If it’s a historical period in which -isms become an issue: you’re welcome to address them or sweep them under the narrative rug, whichever suits you better. I kind of think that Methos, with that range of experiences under his belt, has probably learned not to make snap judgments about people based on externalities, but that doesn’t mean he’s 100% free of prejudice. I also know that the prejudices we’re familiar with are very much an inheritance of the last few centuries, and that racism and sexism in, say, republican Rome operated in different ways than ours. So basically, do whatever serves the story best/you are okay with writing; I don’t particularly need this to be issuefic, nor am I driven off by characters acting in less than fully enlightened ways.)
***
As for more general notes . . . .
Things That Are Yay: plot! (Casefic, etc. If you have the time and energy -- I know it can be a lot of work.) Exploration of character motivations, exploration/expansion of the setting. Fic that could fit into canon. Drama, up to and including aaaaaangst. Characters getting whumped on. Witty humour, especially if it's used as the jab to set up the dramatic roundhouse that follows.
Things That Are A-okay: violence, up to a point (see below). Non-explicit sex. AUs of the "what if this event went differently?" sort. Inclusion of nominated characters I didn't request. Inclusion of canonical characters who haven't been nominated. Original characters as needed for the story. Most povs, tenses, narrative formats, etc.
Things That Are Meh: straight-up character introspection. Nonfiction-style worldbuilding. Pure fluff. Second person pov without a really good reason.
Things That Are Nay: radical AUs like coffee shop, genderswaps, a/b/o, etc. Explicit smut and its associated kinks/tropes. "Five Things"-type stories (I've read some good ones, but that format rarely does it for me; I much prefer one continuous tale). Requested characters having only a cameo in the story, unless otherwise specified in the prompt. Gross-out humour. Humiliation. Characters being flat-out stupid. Character bashing. Torture porn, especially with female victims. Women being sidelined in general.
***
As mentioned before, I'm russian_blue on AO3, so feel free to look at what I’ve got there if you need more data on what I like. And above all: have fun!
