yule 2020
Hi, dear writer, thank you for writing me a fic!
Things I like:
-Tropes all day, give me “oops there’s only one bed,” give me “oh we have to fake a relationship for reasons,” and it’s good if characters fall for each other in the midst of it, and also extremely good if they don’t fall for each other at all because they’re fundamentally not attracted to each other but now they’re having fun keeping that secret while everyone thinks they’re together.
-Queerness! It’s being lgbtqia+, yeah, but queerness is also living outside of heteronormativity and the schedule of Significant Life Events demanded by it, because you have to make up important parts of life all on your own. I love reading about characters figuring out what’s meaningful in their relationships and establishing that themselves, rather than having it imposed upon them. (Also women who love women are awesome and great and make me happy.)
-Casefic. It's fun, and it's such a great opportunity for compentence porn, which for the record: I LOVE COMPETENCE PORN.
-Anti-dystopia. Good lord, are there enough YA stories out there about the world ending and society collapsing, and having lived in 2020, I personally am sick to my teeth of that kind of narrative. Give me people who hope, people who are determined to build something better, people who know that the only way to create anything of lasting value is through the connections they have to others.
DNWs: uh, the usual shit- prefer not to have noncon/dubcon, incest, a/b/o, animal harm, love triangles that should have been lovely polyamory. I also ask that you avoid going into really detailed depictions of grief- I know there’s some potential for grief about a character’s death in these fandoms, and that’s okay, but like feel free to tell not show here, I guess?
And now, onto the fandoms!
His Fair Assassin (Annith, Mortain)
Look, here’s the idea that smacked me in the face, the second time I read Mortal Heart: Annith and Balthazar get together, get mortal, and head home to run the abbey. Which is full to the brim with daughters of Mortain. Just, an absolutely ridiculous number of daughters. Who have never had much luck with father figures. All extremely interested in meeting their real dad.
If you’re going “wait, that sounds like the basis of a real wacky sitcom but with a lot of lethal weaponry,” then I think we’re of a mind. I mean, it doesn’t have to be sheer comedy, that’s not the tone of the books for sure, but you have to admit: there is comedy baked right in, no matter how solemn you make it. Annith, who is still processing everything she’s learned about who she is and what her relationship to Mortain has been, now is confronted with all the girls she’s been raised as sisters and who suddenly are not.
If you’re just not feeling any of that, though, I will welcome really anything between the two of them; I really enjoyed their slow journey from suspicion to coming to trust each other, and the gradual movement into love. I love competence porn, and Annith delivers it in spades; she and Balthazar are just so capable, even when they’re not sure where they’re going. The decision that Balthazar made to give up the god parts of himself was major, and yet somehow the obvious choice, and I’m sure it takes him a long time to understand what that means- especially in an abbey that has more things in it that could kill a person than things that couldn’t. The end of Mortal Heart is really the beginning of something new, and while the duology that followed explored some of that post-Mortain world, there’s so much of it left to explore.
Dickinson (Sue, Emily, Ben)
I really liked Emily and Ben’s relationship, and was sad that Ben died and it didn’t continue, so if you wanted to write a canon departure where he didn’t, that would be lovely. Otherwise, whether you stick to canon or not, just generally I’m especially in love with how the two of them anti-married and found themselves on the same page with having what is…. kind of a queer relationship? Certainly a relationship that ran very counter to the hetero expectations put on them that they tried so hard to escape, and found a way to do so through this friendship that was romantic and yet ran the direct opposite of romance. I can see a future where they married and Sue and Austin married and it all allowed them the freedom for Emily and Sue to be together (and maybe Ben and Austin?) while also being this just incredibly intimate thing between them, to not be heterosexual.
Strange Trails - Lord Huron (album)
I've been playing this album every time I drive in the woods for years and years; I never thought of this being a fandom til I saw it nominated, and once I read the lyrics, as well as Ben Schneider talking about the characters he was writing about in these songs, I was fascinated. I love this small group of people with their loves and hates and wins and losses, in the midst of some cosmic and existential upheaval. I'd have a lot of fun reading about the relationships between Buck Vernon, Frankie Lou, Johnny, Danielle, and the rest not really pausing for death and haunting being as common as presence in life. Also, the world is ending, and maybe they're going to do something about it, and maybe the ghosts and the cursed know how to set things right?
Again, thank you so much for writing; I can't wait to read it!