Dear NPT writer
Apr. 20th, 2016 02:10 am![[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: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Characters: Solas, Mythal
SPOILERS AHOY IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED THE ENTIRE GAME DO NOT READ THIS I MEAN IT JUST KEEP PAGING DOWNWARD
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 Trespasser ripping my heart out and stomping it into the ground.
What I'm looking for: Given the stuff Trespasser revealed about the elven past, I would really love to get something set back then, when Solas was operating as Fen'Harel. This could be him freeing slaves and removing the vallaslin from them, or him creating the Veil if you feel like getting your epic magic ritual on (at Skyhold, though it sounds like the actual fortress there is more recent than his day). Or maybe the watershed moment that caused him to become Fen'Harel -- whatever it was that made him decide that his mission in life was to free people from the control of the so-called gods.
I've included Mythal in my signup as a form of insurance; I'm crossing my fingers that anybody who offers her (separate from Flemeth) will be willing to write the ancient past. I'd love to see her interactions with Solas, since she seems to be the one "god" he had any fondness for. If you want to write about her murder, I'm fine with that, so long as she shows up as a character before she gets whacked -- I'd prefer if the fic didn't start with her already dead (or if it does, it has flashbacks to before). But if you have a really awesome fic idea where including Mythal would involve gratuitously crowbarring her in, I'm okay with you leaving her out.
In terms of the surrounding context, the more you can play up the differences between the world before the Veil and the world after, the better, as far as I'm concerned. :-) This is a time when spirits were a part of one's surroundings, when magic was everywhere in a fashion modern Thedas can't even conceive of. I'd like the gods to be impressive: they may be elven mages rather than actual deities (a fact which CRUSHED my Inquisitor's soul), but I don't want them to seem petty, y'know? They were awesome enough to be worshipped at a time when the world itself was already cranked up to 11. That ought to mean something.
If the thought of writing about the distant past like that intimidates you too much, I'm also okay with a story about Solas (sans Mythal) waking up in the modern world. He's weak, he's been asleep; this is the first time he's really seen the consequences of the Veil. I'd rather not get a fic about him going to Corypheus for help with the orb, but anything before that is fine.
***
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.)
***
Fandom: Rurouni Kenshin
Characters: Shinomori Aoshi, Makimachi Misao, Kashiwazaki Nenji | Okina
What I love about it: this was the first anime I ever really got into, and it remains one of my absolute favorites -- especially the Kyoto arc. I heart so many of the characters (pretty much anybody in the Kyoto season), and I like the questions it asks about violence, redemption, and other such topics. My personal interpretation is that it depicts a post-superheroic world, with Kenshin trying to put an end to the conditions that produced all these amazing badasses, because those conditions were awful and nobody should have to live through them.
I'll note in passing that I'm familiar with both anime and live-action movie canons, so you're welcome to use either of them, or even potentially mix and match -- just let me know in the author's notes at the beginning which approach to expect. I haven't read the manga, though, so while you can bring in elements of that if they fit, you'll need to establish them more clearly for me in the fic itself. (Also, I'm perfectly comfortable with the Japanese names for various things -- Oniwabanshuu, Hitokiri Battousai, Bakumatsu, etc -- and generally prefer those to the attempts to render them in English.)
What I'm looking for: Aoshi is the center of my request here. Depending on which of the following options you go with, you can choose to leave out either Misao or Okina.
Option number one is backstory, showing Aoshi when he was the brilliant young captain of the Oniwabanshuu. I'd love to see what made him so awesome, because it had to be more than just his skill with a pair of blades (and let's just pause here to admit that dual-wielding is always hot). The guys who are with him in the Kanyruu eps are intensely loyal; what did he do to win that kind of devotion? How did he earn his rank in the first place? What awesome things did he pull off during the defense of Edo Castle? Action is a plus here, but not a requirement. If you go this route, you can leave out Misao; I'm okay with their relationship later, but it would skeeve me out a bit to have her hero-worshipping Aoshi when she's even younger than in the main story.
Option number two is basically the "redemption is hard" story. :-) This would be set post-Kyoto, when Aoshi is trying to put his life back together after having thrown away pretty much everything in his quest to defeat Kenshin. How does that even work? How can he deal with the rest of the Oniwabanshuu, after what he did to Okina? What purpose does he even have in life at that point? I'm a huge sucker for that kind of story, a character who has done awful things trying to tiptoe his way back toward decency and forgiveness. Misao loves him enough to forgive him just about anything, but that doesn't mean everything between them is instantly peachy after Shishio dies. If you go this route, you can leave out Okina, but you're also welcome to include him; if memory serves, where things stand for him depends heavily on which canon you're using.
***
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. 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: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Characters: Solas, Mythal
SPOILERS AHOY IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED THE ENTIRE GAME DO NOT READ THIS I MEAN IT JUST KEEP PAGING DOWNWARD
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 Trespasser ripping my heart out and stomping it into the ground.
What I'm looking for: Given the stuff Trespasser revealed about the elven past, I would really love to get something set back then, when Solas was operating as Fen'Harel. This could be him freeing slaves and removing the vallaslin from them, or him creating the Veil if you feel like getting your epic magic ritual on (at Skyhold, though it sounds like the actual fortress there is more recent than his day). Or maybe the watershed moment that caused him to become Fen'Harel -- whatever it was that made him decide that his mission in life was to free people from the control of the so-called gods.
I've included Mythal in my signup as a form of insurance; I'm crossing my fingers that anybody who offers her (separate from Flemeth) will be willing to write the ancient past. I'd love to see her interactions with Solas, since she seems to be the one "god" he had any fondness for. If you want to write about her murder, I'm fine with that, so long as she shows up as a character before she gets whacked -- I'd prefer if the fic didn't start with her already dead (or if it does, it has flashbacks to before). But if you have a really awesome fic idea where including Mythal would involve gratuitously crowbarring her in, I'm okay with you leaving her out.
In terms of the surrounding context, the more you can play up the differences between the world before the Veil and the world after, the better, as far as I'm concerned. :-) This is a time when spirits were a part of one's surroundings, when magic was everywhere in a fashion modern Thedas can't even conceive of. I'd like the gods to be impressive: they may be elven mages rather than actual deities (a fact which CRUSHED my Inquisitor's soul), but I don't want them to seem petty, y'know? They were awesome enough to be worshipped at a time when the world itself was already cranked up to 11. That ought to mean something.
If the thought of writing about the distant past like that intimidates you too much, I'm also okay with a story about Solas (sans Mythal) waking up in the modern world. He's weak, he's been asleep; this is the first time he's really seen the consequences of the Veil. I'd rather not get a fic about him going to Corypheus for help with the orb, but anything before that is fine.
***
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.)
***
Fandom: Rurouni Kenshin
Characters: Shinomori Aoshi, Makimachi Misao, Kashiwazaki Nenji | Okina
What I love about it: this was the first anime I ever really got into, and it remains one of my absolute favorites -- especially the Kyoto arc. I heart so many of the characters (pretty much anybody in the Kyoto season), and I like the questions it asks about violence, redemption, and other such topics. My personal interpretation is that it depicts a post-superheroic world, with Kenshin trying to put an end to the conditions that produced all these amazing badasses, because those conditions were awful and nobody should have to live through them.
I'll note in passing that I'm familiar with both anime and live-action movie canons, so you're welcome to use either of them, or even potentially mix and match -- just let me know in the author's notes at the beginning which approach to expect. I haven't read the manga, though, so while you can bring in elements of that if they fit, you'll need to establish them more clearly for me in the fic itself. (Also, I'm perfectly comfortable with the Japanese names for various things -- Oniwabanshuu, Hitokiri Battousai, Bakumatsu, etc -- and generally prefer those to the attempts to render them in English.)
What I'm looking for: Aoshi is the center of my request here. Depending on which of the following options you go with, you can choose to leave out either Misao or Okina.
Option number one is backstory, showing Aoshi when he was the brilliant young captain of the Oniwabanshuu. I'd love to see what made him so awesome, because it had to be more than just his skill with a pair of blades (and let's just pause here to admit that dual-wielding is always hot). The guys who are with him in the Kanyruu eps are intensely loyal; what did he do to win that kind of devotion? How did he earn his rank in the first place? What awesome things did he pull off during the defense of Edo Castle? Action is a plus here, but not a requirement. If you go this route, you can leave out Misao; I'm okay with their relationship later, but it would skeeve me out a bit to have her hero-worshipping Aoshi when she's even younger than in the main story.
Option number two is basically the "redemption is hard" story. :-) This would be set post-Kyoto, when Aoshi is trying to put his life back together after having thrown away pretty much everything in his quest to defeat Kenshin. How does that even work? How can he deal with the rest of the Oniwabanshuu, after what he did to Okina? What purpose does he even have in life at that point? I'm a huge sucker for that kind of story, a character who has done awful things trying to tiptoe his way back toward decency and forgiveness. Misao loves him enough to forgive him just about anything, but that doesn't mean everything between them is instantly peachy after Shishio dies. If you go this route, you can leave out Okina, but you're also welcome to include him; if memory serves, where things stand for him depends heavily on which canon you're using.
***
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. 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!
