Dear Yuletide Author

[diaphenia]

 

Dear Yuletide author,

 

I am so excited for yuletide this year! This is my sixth year participating (see still-relevant letters from 2012 and 2013 and 2014 and 2015 and 2016) and I am always impressed by the quality of work with these exchanges.

 

I'm Diaphenia on AO3.

 

Let’s talk about things I like and dislike, generally.

 

Love: Getting together stories. Tropes, especially for comedy fandoms (think roadtrips, broken elevators, anything that requires characters to spend time together). Ensemble fic, even more than shippy stuff (with an exception or two). Related, but found families are my thing, and most fandoms I read reflect that love. Spy AUs: a total bulletproof fandom kink. Banter. Flirting. Friends setting up friends. Hijinx. Groundhog's Day AUs.

 

No: Baby/pregnancy fic, or spending much time with canon children. Major OCs— I nominate fandoms because I want to spend time with the characters I love. Kink fic, since I’m extraordinarily picky about kink!fic. Religion.  Incest. Rape/Non-con. Character-bashing. Gross-out humor. Miracles.

 

Additional details: I’m fine with sexytimes, as long as it’s not PWP. Or fading to black is totally cool too. Action scenes make my eyes glaze over. And I’m not big on alternative POVs on canon scenes. I love fusions.

 

If you want to see what fic I’ve written, click here. If you want to see my tumblr, click here, and if you want to see an occasionally-contradictory list of fic things I love, click here.

 

 

Since some of my canons are live this year, please don’t worry about getting canonballed. I also may pop back in to throw more prompts down, but I’ll clearly label them as new. Also, I am throwing you a dozen prompts and tropes, but if you think of something you’d love to write, do it!

The Good Place

Eleanor

Chidi

Listen, I never request the same fandom twice, but here we are in the midst of season two and the heart wants what the heart wants, and what the heart wants is all the soulmate stuff. This show, two episodes into season two, has now combined soulmate AUs with a Groundhog’s Day AU, as well as the forced-to-spend-time-together trope. This is catnip, and there’s already a hundred ways this season could go.

I’m requesting Eleanor and Chidi, and I ship them so so much, but feel free to add anyone from the cast or to focus your energies in a more gen way.

Prompts:

Eleanor knows about the sex tape. Chidi does not. How does he find out? Is he hurt? Turned on? Mad that he’s turned on?

Or! Eleanor knows about the tape. Does she watch it? Is it burning a hole in her drawer? Does it make her want something she can’t have? How does her knowing about the tape affect how she treats Chidi?

They had 802 opportunities to find each other and they did every time. Tell me about one or more of those times. Stick to the ones we saw or make up your own.

As a condition of joining Team Cockroach, the gang (or just Eleanor) demand their memories back from all the resets. What do they learn?

I saw a comment on AVClub that was someone speculating that Chidi didn’t belong in The Bad Place, but was only there because he is actually soulmates with Eleanor and she’s the reason he’s there. I don’t buy it (he drank almond milk!) but I love it as a concept to play with. What happens to Chidi if he realizes he has a soulmate (yay!) but she’s literally the reason he’s in TBP (boo!)?

Conversely, are soulmates real, or is it something Michael made up to play with in TGP? What happens if Chidi and Eleanor find out soulmates are just a joke?

This would be such a great fandom for five times stories. Five times Chidi helped Eleanor! Five times Eleanor asked Chidi to spend the night! Five times neither of them remember because they got reset! Five times they do remember because they all happen during the 803rd imaginary reset!

Availability: Season one is on Netflix (US) and season two is on Hulu.

Still Star-Crossed

Benvolio

Rosaline

This show is completely absurd and absolutely delicious. All the best parts were focused on Benvolio and Rosaline, who went through every possible trope. Hate to love! Forced to marry! One bed! Pretending to be together! I loved their relationship.

A lot of the rest of the show... didn’t work for me. Feel free to jetson most of it, or at least keep most of it offscreen. I do still love Isabella and Livia, so include them if you’d like. Or Romeo and Juliet, in whatever capacity. They seemed like cool kids, level-headed.  

Prompts:

AUs! Modern day college kids on a double date with their still-alive cousins. Young business people from rival companies who have to pretend to date for reasons that are barely outlined! They fall in love at the original ball after both their cousins stay home sick! Rival spies! Boarding school youths who sneak out together for Reasons!

Roseline gets further along in the joining the nunnery process when she meets a hot dude who both infuriates but also makes her reconsider her decision.

Five times they have to pretend to kiss

They hook up that night they share a room. It doesn’t go as planned.

Write something in the season two we will never get. Does Benvolio escape? Do they get secretly married? Grab Livia and start a new life somewhere else in Italy?

Or! Do they meet Benedick and Beatrice? Get lost in a forest with the kids from Midsummer? Go to school with Hamlet? I’m pretty Shakespeare-friendly, so if you’d love to do a crossover or fusion or something, that would be super fun!

 

Availability: all seven hour-long episodes are on Hulu

Superstore

Amy

Jonah

This show has been getting better and better. I thought season two was wonderful, and I have high hopes for season three. The cliffhanger of the Amy/Jonah kiss sent me into a summer of agony.

I love everyone on the show, and ship Garrett/Dina’s weird sort of relationship. I love Jeff, and enjoyed him with Mateo, but assume they aren’t getting back together anytime soon. Sandra is the absolute best, obviously. Feel free to focus on Amy and Jonah, or throw in as many characters as you want. While I generally love AUs, I think the retail environment is so central to their plight that I’d only want an AU that would capture that sense of futility-- if you go AU, they have to still be minimum wage workers.  

Prompts:

Last year blithers requested the gang as “workaday superheroes” and I think about that prompt weekly. I have no idea what she’s requesting this year, but I too would love to see that story.

Amy, dressed as a minion, suggested “jokingly” that she Jonah should have sex. What if she followed through on this? What if it happened at Garret’s apartment?

What holiday(s) do they celebrate in the breakroom in between customers?

Jonah loves the idea of Amy, but I don’t think he always understands the reality of what dating a divorced woman with a kid would be like. What expectations does he have, and how are they thwarted?

Amy comes to Jonah to suggest they bang it out, but she’s got a huge list of demands, including that this is totally casual, not serious, just sex, etc.

Amy and Jonah are hooking up, and they keep getting almost caught by their coworkers.

Availability: Seasons one and two are on DVD, and season three is on Hulu

That should be everything! If you need additional clarification, please feel free to reach out to throwingpens/iloveyouandilikeyou. She may write her answer in all caps, but she gets me, fandom-wise.

Thanks!

Diaphenia