Cerulean Blue

Hello dear writer!

So, it was harder for me to come up with things to request for this challenge, as opposed to offering. I don't know why that was! This letter, in turn, may be less helpful to you than ones I've written before, but I'm just going to dive in and see what comes up.

My favorite things to read about female characters, in most fandoms, are friendship stories. Stuff that has characters we love bonding over the mundane, discovering they have more in common than previously assumed, overcoming barriers to friendship, etc. This exchange excites me because it's a solid shot at seeing a lot of that sort of thing, and I picked the fandoms I did with that in mind.

All my choices are technically historical fiction, and each is set in a very different period. Each one is going to be a bit problematic in some ways. I love historical fiction that includes attention to period details (whether it be the cadence of spoken language, period-specific atmosphere, discussions of then-current events, etc) and doesn't overlook historical reality. Something to consider: how do the women in these stories overcome their realities, or work within them?

I specified in my sign-up that I'm not interested in AUs like coffee shop, high school/college, etc. BUT! I love canon-divergence AUs in the sense of changing meet-cutes, specific relationship details, alter the timeline of a story, etc. And while I'd prefer you don't lift these characters into completely different time periods (no Scarlet O'Hara at Henry VIII's court, for example), in each one, reading about the characters as younger or older women in the context of the written time period is interesting to me (Prissy, all grown-up with a home of her own in post-Reconstruction South, Ellen Sue Gotlander congratulating Hank Aaron on his homerun record, Paige Jennings watching the Berlin Wall falling, etc).

I'm not really interested in any romantic pairings for these fandoms (the exceptions being Melanie Wilkes with Ashley and Dottie Hinson being with Jimmy Dugan, more about that below).

Okay, canon-specific prompts, thoughts under the cut. Feel free to take them and run with them, or ignore them outright. I'm good with whatever!! THANK YOU, DEAR WRITER!

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