yuletide letter 2025
Oct. 22nd, 2025 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maidenjediYuletide, baby!
Thank you for signing up, dear writer, and thank you for offering in one of these fandoms. I know I will love whatever you write, and I hope you have fun!
Some general likes: character pieces, thoughtful world-building, plot that explores alternate beginnings and endings. Angst with happy or at least resolved endings. Closed door sex but public flirting and maybe even some cheeky foreplay. Dialogue. Apocalypse is always fun. Crossovers!
Some general dislikes: alternate settings unless requested, explicit sex, real-world politics unless it's a real-world property to begin with. Non-requested character deaths. Gore.
Specifics under individual cuts.
Let's say upfront, this is both a top-five novel for me and a top-five mini-series, so feel free to draw inspiration from either! Weirdly, what I'd be interested in this year would be killing off John Thornton, sometime after the events of the novel. How Margaret, Hannah, and Fanny all deal with the loss, what would happen to Marlborough Mills, etc. Do Margaret and John's mother find themselves an unlikely team? Do Margaret and Fanny? Is there a war between these women over what happens next? Anachronistic placement of women in important business roles could be great, especially if Margaret runs the mill with her mother-in-law backing her up in the face of public disapproval.
Alternately, a forced marriage scenario where Margaret has to agree to marry John Thornton to save her reputation, or forced proximity leads to a compromise, something like that. I like the understated, repressed Victorian-era romance of it all, but kissing on the train platform and holding hands indecorously are always great.
Finally, redeem Fanny for me, give her something useful to do. Have her storm London and in her spoiled, ignorant way, become quite the lady of society, and have it all help Marlborough Mills in some way.
Imagine Alice Underwood and Carla Goldsmith meeting. Or imagine the ways Randall Flagg influences their choices over the years. Flagg gives Alice's husband the liquor and he's the drunk driver who kills Carla's son Fred. They never meet but their lives are intertwined and they face similar fates. Change their fates and let them survive Captain Trips. Where do they go, who do they gather along the way? Visions of a future neither got to have, grandmothers who interfere and fuss too much. Randall Flagg is Larry's real father, or Fran's. Or both! Or let the grace of misunderstood mothers bring his ass down.
For Lucy's twins, I think I'd love to see just about anything in which they are happy and thriving. A pilgrimage somewhere, learning about their father. But it would also be interesting to see them have to deal with a different Flagg, and how that might go for them. Keep it Stephen King, you know?
Also, I know this is unorthodox, but for other ideas (including characters who weren't in the tagset this year but who I'd love fic for anyway), see last year's letter.
Hal and Kate in good times, or as good as it gets. Glancing at their marriage from the outside and seeing the ways they can't quit each other. Kate is VP and Hal has to be second gentleman and doesn't get to be ambassador or any kind of high-ranking anything. Kate becomes VP before Rayburn dies, or Hal does. Hal dies in the bombing and Kate becomes VP or she's sent to be ambassador in a place filled with memories of Hal. A public divorce before the events of season three, and how it works differently than their canon arrangement.
Grace and Todd. I want to see their marriage before Grace's political career took off; maybe even before there was a political career. I'd like to see the quiet moments they have in the midst of the crazy. Marriage that works in spite of it all. Or, lean in to Todd's obvious discontent. He wants to support her, he knows he can and should, but it's hard, and why that is. Goofy moments between them as young politicos. Another idea: just tell me about Grace, and being president when moments before it happened she had real reason to believe she'd be brought down by the HMS Courageous thing.
It's going to be Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne when the world ends. That's it, that's the prompt.
Please leave drug use at the door (or in the past) for this request.
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Thank you for signing up, dear writer, and thank you for offering in one of these fandoms. I know I will love whatever you write, and I hope you have fun!
Some general likes: character pieces, thoughtful world-building, plot that explores alternate beginnings and endings. Angst with happy or at least resolved endings. Closed door sex but public flirting and maybe even some cheeky foreplay. Dialogue. Apocalypse is always fun. Crossovers!
Some general dislikes: alternate settings unless requested, explicit sex, real-world politics unless it's a real-world property to begin with. Non-requested character deaths. Gore.
Specifics under individual cuts.
Let's say upfront, this is both a top-five novel for me and a top-five mini-series, so feel free to draw inspiration from either! Weirdly, what I'd be interested in this year would be killing off John Thornton, sometime after the events of the novel. How Margaret, Hannah, and Fanny all deal with the loss, what would happen to Marlborough Mills, etc. Do Margaret and John's mother find themselves an unlikely team? Do Margaret and Fanny? Is there a war between these women over what happens next? Anachronistic placement of women in important business roles could be great, especially if Margaret runs the mill with her mother-in-law backing her up in the face of public disapproval.
Alternately, a forced marriage scenario where Margaret has to agree to marry John Thornton to save her reputation, or forced proximity leads to a compromise, something like that. I like the understated, repressed Victorian-era romance of it all, but kissing on the train platform and holding hands indecorously are always great.
Finally, redeem Fanny for me, give her something useful to do. Have her storm London and in her spoiled, ignorant way, become quite the lady of society, and have it all help Marlborough Mills in some way.
Imagine Alice Underwood and Carla Goldsmith meeting. Or imagine the ways Randall Flagg influences their choices over the years. Flagg gives Alice's husband the liquor and he's the drunk driver who kills Carla's son Fred. They never meet but their lives are intertwined and they face similar fates. Change their fates and let them survive Captain Trips. Where do they go, who do they gather along the way? Visions of a future neither got to have, grandmothers who interfere and fuss too much. Randall Flagg is Larry's real father, or Fran's. Or both! Or let the grace of misunderstood mothers bring his ass down.
For Lucy's twins, I think I'd love to see just about anything in which they are happy and thriving. A pilgrimage somewhere, learning about their father. But it would also be interesting to see them have to deal with a different Flagg, and how that might go for them. Keep it Stephen King, you know?
Also, I know this is unorthodox, but for other ideas (including characters who weren't in the tagset this year but who I'd love fic for anyway), see last year's letter.
Hal and Kate in good times, or as good as it gets. Glancing at their marriage from the outside and seeing the ways they can't quit each other. Kate is VP and Hal has to be second gentleman and doesn't get to be ambassador or any kind of high-ranking anything. Kate becomes VP before Rayburn dies, or Hal does. Hal dies in the bombing and Kate becomes VP or she's sent to be ambassador in a place filled with memories of Hal. A public divorce before the events of season three, and how it works differently than their canon arrangement.
Grace and Todd. I want to see their marriage before Grace's political career took off; maybe even before there was a political career. I'd like to see the quiet moments they have in the midst of the crazy. Marriage that works in spite of it all. Or, lean in to Todd's obvious discontent. He wants to support her, he knows he can and should, but it's hard, and why that is. Goofy moments between them as young politicos. Another idea: just tell me about Grace, and being president when moments before it happened she had real reason to believe she'd be brought down by the HMS Courageous thing.
It's going to be Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne when the world ends. That's it, that's the prompt.
Please leave drug use at the door (or in the past) for this request.
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