DEAR YULETIDE WRITER of 2020 ♥
I would like to believe this letter is intelligible, funny, charming. I suppose we'll have to settle for it being written in English.
LIKES
• Dialogue! Banter! Character dynamics, especially of the friendship variety. (I cannot ever have enough of characters taking the time to hang out with their friends in the middle of the A-plot.)
• Plot. It doesn’t have to be the world’s most involved plot, but I vastly prefer a plot-driven story to a pure character study.
• Subverted tropes. I would forsake oxygen for it.
• Humour. Something light and snarky in tone, regardless of whether the subject-matter is the consistency of soufflé or banana cake.
• AUs. Go totally wild.
• Happy endings.
DISLIKES
• Character bashing. If there’s a character you don’t like, I am totally on board with acting as if they don’t exist. No need to even mention their name.
• Egregious clichés (secondary characters being dumb or intellectual cannon fodder, secondary characters of any gender becoming a Draco In Leather Pants, oblivious mutual pining to an absurd degree).
• There Was Only One Bed. Because I think we should normalise consenting adults being able to share a bed without everything being about sex.
• Eurocentric fantasy.
• PWP or a whole lot of graphic sex. (Sex can totally happen! Lots of it! But fifty-percent offscreen, please.)
• Excessive angst, character death, unmoderated fluff.
FANDOM SPECIFIC THINGS
ALL ABOUT EVE (1950) • tumblr tag
What I Like About It:
• It’s about the triumph and amazingness of older women. Older women being petty, egoistic, in love, schemey.
• The dialogue is so sharp and smart and incisive.
• The little non-judging breakfast club of Margo, Karen, Bill and Lloyd (who turns out to be pretty useless, but I still love him).
• Addison as their Big Bad. (Very proto-Gossip Girl.)
What I’d Like to Read About (optional):
• Margo and Karen (and their respective love interests, if you’re not opposed to it) working together on a play. The things that go wrong, the things that go right, the things that get sabotaged.
• Margo and Karen growing old together. One is already obsessed with age and the other is devoted to the first one, so I’d love to know what they get upto when they’re dowagers for real.
• Addison DeWitt versus the Talkies. (Bonus if Margo is involved in some way.)
• Eve and her little protégée (Phoebe iirc) take on Addison. (I love him to kingdom come, but does he honestly stand a chance?)
BULBBUL (2020) • tumblr tag
Undead or post-movie Bulbbul only, please, if you write me something for this fandom.
What I Like About It:
• This is the movie that made me believe that mind-reading is real because how else would someone create absolutely everything I want to see in a movie?
• I love present day Bulbbul. Present day Bulbbul is my perfect villain, especially the shots of her being the coolly supercilious lady of the house.
• Her friendship with Dr. Sudip is perfect as it is, for me. I don’t ever need to see them go any further. I bask in how he makes her so happy just as her friend.
• Binodini… damn.
• On the same note, I am very fond of Satya as a character, so I would absolutely not mind if you threw him in as well.
What I’d Like to Read About (optional):
• Post-movie Bulbbul and Dr. Sudip team up to hunt monster men.
• Film noir AU. YES.
• Bulbbul’s writing aspirations. (Bonus if the book is well and truly ridiculous and/or terrible).
THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (2011) • tumblr tag
What I Like About It:
• Horror movies are not my thing. I find them difficult to watch because (a) they seem plotless (b) even jump scares terrify me, let alone the eldritch evil in the climax okay.
• As you can imagine, this is the sole and only horror movie that I love until the last third when they start killing off all the great characters.
• The bureaucracy humour is excellent. Also grown men screaming incoherently at little girls who defeat a ghost with the power of friendship.
• The five-man band being sensible and normal and genuinely good friends with each other? Sign me tf up. Possibly my favourite moment with the group was when even the out-of-it stoner Marty sticks up for Jules against the gas station kook. • They’re friends, you guys. It’s actually shown how close they all are.
What I’d Like to Read About (optional):
• I have no prompts to offer, except that I was gutted by how the movie ended and hoped the first half could continue forever.
Please write something in the vein of the first half so that it continues forever.
• Pre-movie is also good! The actual movie runs on so many references and traditions and conventions that it’ll be interesting to see how it all began. (And just how many tries it took to get it right.)
• SITTERSON. And the whole scientist gang, if you can. If not, doesn’t matter. I AM HAPPY WITH JUST MORE SITTERSON.
THE GODFATHER (1972, 1974, 1990) • tumblr tag
What I Like About It:
• This is where I confess I’m a fake fan and that I’ve only seen the first movie. The other two got too depressing to watch.
• On the other hand, I’m a superfan of the book. It may be written like the OG airport paperback, but I want to marry that version of Sonny.
• My friend Meg once said, “Do you think Sonny makes Sandra wear men’s shirts during sex and calls her ‘Tom’?” and I think about that a lot.
• I think about them in their purely platonic capacity, too. So much that the ‘Tom finds out’ scene in the book has wrecked me.
What I’d Like to Read About (optional):
• This another of the movies where I just want to bask in the happy fun times together.
• Such as Michael, Sonny and Tom being brothers. Evil brothers who casually plot murder together, and I have no idea why they exclude Connie because she’d fit right in in the room.
• Sonny and Tom’s relationship from the movie. Because somehow, it’s even better than in the book. I will gladly give up my firstborn in exchange for more scenes of Sonny getting impatient with Tom, the conversation escalating into a screaming match, and Sonny always being the one who simmers down first and awkwardly tries to make peace. (The time he yelled at Tom for not being a wartime consigliore and then inviting him to lunch was my favourite.)
• You guessed it: more of Connie and Sonny. Their relationship is the bedrock of this movie, to me. So much happens (and so much is lost) because Connie married a guy Sonny brought home, and how much Sonny loves his sister. Which makes it sound like Connie has no agency, but I am told she casually becomes a black widow in the later sequels.
• As you can see, I have absolutely no concrete or useful prompts to offer.
• I would like to know what happens when the Corleone family tries to buy a newspaper.
JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE • tumblr tag
What I Like About It:
• How this movie has managed to gloss over how several parts of it are really, REALLY racist. Kevin Hart’s character is the designated punchline of every single joke, and Danny Glover is a non-talking horse. Who also flies away at the end. Very nice.
• In light of the above, it is unfair how some parts of the movies are really, really good.
• I would like to focus on only those parts at the moment, please.
What I’d Like to Read About (optional):
• Bethany and Alex Vreeke after the first movie. That plotline was resolved in exactly the most realistic fashion, and I wish they could pay Colin Hanks to appear for more than two scenes per instalment because I was DYING to find out more about them in the sequel.
• I realise there is literally no way to write anything about Bethany and Alex without a bucketload of angst, but I would love it if it stayed in heartwarming to bittersweet territory.
• Something something they end up in the game together again, but this time it’s fun and games for Jefferson and Shelly Oberon with baggage!
• Really, more of Shelly Oberon because I think it’s an excellently written comic relief character, and Bethany’s fondness for this avatar is the best.
• Also something something Alex is in the PTA of Bethany’s school (despite having no schoolgoing children) or an adult chaperone/volunteer for a bake sale.
• Future fic with older Bethany and Alex. Especially because they’re the two people (besides Fridge) who don’t have the most positive experiences with Jumanji. It’s not escapism for them like it is for the others, and Bethany and Alex return to the game even less voluntarily than everyone else in the sequel.
• Future fic romance with older Bethany and Alex.
SUCCESSION (TV 2018) • tumblr tag
What I Like About It:
• See above. See tumblr tag. I have no coherent commentary to offer. I genuinely believe this is the best show on television right now, and it is my favourite piece of fiction of all time.
What I’d Like to Read About (optional):
Preferably not Greg/Tom or Gerri/Roman as ships.
• Connor: For someone who’s so disconnected from reality, Connor manages to be one of the slimiest characters on the show. I’m in awe of it. I’d love to see more of his doomed presidential campaign, or maybe he gets called away from his ranch to arbitrate a spectacularly petty (or horrific) family dispute among Kendall, Roman and Shiv.
• Gerri: Gerri would fit right into All About Eve, prove me wrong. The way she pulls everyone’s strings, the fact that she’s both cowed by and capable of managing Logan Roy, the fuckall way she treats every member of that family… Truly my role model. More of Gerri in her capacity as General Counsel, please. Her work relationship with Karolina fascinates me (mostly because Karolina fascinates me), as well as how she pushes around the rest of the team. More Gerri versus office politics!
• Jess: I love how this girl always goes where Kendall goes. (He takes her along to his sister’s wedding where he’s plotting to torpedo his whole family.) Maybe something epistolary? The Much Onslaughted Inbox of Jess Jordan. Jess and the other Waystar employees, and how they manage work crises and have pretty exciting lives outside the Roys. (I, for one, fully believe that Eva had the right attitude about Shiv.)
• Kendall: If you write me literally anything about Kendall, I will scream incoherently and promptly die. (Bonus: if Rava is involved in any capacity.)
• Shiv: For a show that has exactly five women, it writes all 5 of them so well. Shiv’s competence rapidly unravelling the more she gets embroiled with her family? Peak comedy. Shiv’s word choice + delivery when she tells Nate, “I tried playing with you. You broke.” Bone-chilling. I have no real suggestion to offer about a Shiv fic except that I love her characterisation, and anything that brings out her cold-blooded side. Or her nice side, when she schemes with Roman. Or her swinging-for-the-big-leagues side when she tries to take on Marcia. Any of her multifaceted sides, really.
• Stewy: Literally I don’t understand how Kendall repeatedly sets himself up to get front-stabbed by Stewy. Stewy has never been anything but open about his flexible loyalties, which is honestly an A+ way to manipulate someone like Kendall. Evil Stewy aside, though, I would love love love more of the Buckley Years or the Harvard Years or the Post-Season Years. In short, either when they have it all, or when Stewy is coolly on top of the world and Kendall is trying very hard to be king of the yard.
• Tom: I have nothing Tom-specific to say, except that I love his relationship with every member of the Roy family. I love his dialogue. I love the painfully awkward and poisonous side of his personality, and how scorpion-and-the-toad he tries to be wherever he goes. Tom struggling to keep up with his in-laws is my favourite Tom, second only to Tom at ATN.
• Willa: Willa deserves more screentime. That is all.
• Anything pre-series. Especially, if it involves the Roy siblings being a group of dysfunctional adults.
• Anything involving the secondary characters. From Colin always quietly cleaning up after the Roys, to characters like Cyd and Eva and Marcia snarking about the others, to more episode-style shenanigans.
• The familial or familial-adjacent relationships: Roman and Shiv being so close, Kendall and Roman sticking up for each other, Frank being Kendall’s godfather, Gerri supposedly being Shiv’s godmother, et al.
PLEASE REMEMBER
You never have to include all of my requested characters or follow my prompts to the letter.
And when in doubt, know that I would live and die for genfic.