Yuletide 2018
Oct. 20th, 2018 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lastwingedthingDear author, I'm so excited you're writing something for me!
Likes
I am generally pretty flexible with the things I like. Gen, het, femslash and slash are all awesome! Character-driven stories are awesome, plot-driven stories are awesome, explicit porn is awesome, G-rated fluff with hand-holding is awesome, angst and bleakness are awesome, happy endings are awesome, humor is awesome, domesticity is awesome! Etc.
A few of my favourite things are adventures, politics, worldbuilding, banter and humour, stoic girls with feeeeelings, road trips (spaceship trips... actual ship trips... etc), female antiheroes or villains with complex motivations, enemies forced to work together by circumstance, reluctant heroes, found families, unexpected/unconventional happy endings, tragedies that are more-or-less inevitable given the nature of the individuals involved, and people living in less-than-ideal or even actively hostile situations who manage to carve out some kind of happiness despite that, but by no means feel obligated to include any of these things!
Dislikes
I don't have any major DNWs and am ok with dubcon/noncon, violence, character death, etc - provided that it is warned for up front - though I would prefer that stories do not focus solely on trauma/horror/violence, and if these do come up as part of the story, I am more interested in the lead up and the aftermath than in dragging out the details of the act itself.
For these fandoms, I am not very interested in the kind of AU where characters are in a completely different universe where they are pirates or cowgirls or something. AUs that explore the ramifications of a change to canon (what if character x survived/won the battle/etc instead) are always fascinating to me, however - I absolutely adore stories that really go into the details of a scenario like this! "If X changed, what would be the consequences?" is a question that I always love to see explored.
On to the fandoms! I requested:
Alliance/Union requests: Ariane Emory II, Meg Kady, Sal Aboujid, Thomas Bowe-Hawkins
This is very much an OR request, not an AND request! Please feel free to write a story about any number of these characters in any combination - don't feel obliged to include all of them!
I've only recently discovered Cherryh, but her work is pretty much everything I love in science fiction - incredible worldbuilding, both in the wide scope of her alt-history and in the gritty little details of life in space; powerful and fascinating characters, particularly the women; high-stakes tension; complex questions about what it means to be human; intensely satisfying iddy narratives about found families and damaged loners finding their place in the universe...
I'm endlessly fascinated by Ari and honestly really love her, both in a happy id way (as of Regenesis she's living happily with all her friends in their pretty new home with the fish wall, how nice!) and in the way that I am fascinated by how Ari is a terrifying and unreliable narrator, and her work and relationships with the azi are deeply fucked up. I'd be happy on anything from that spectrum of fluff to angst! I'm particularly interested in her relationships with Florian and Cat (and I ship the three of them together), and with Justin and Grant (I don't... not ship it? If you wanted to go there I would definitely be intrigued); I'm also interested in how the books seem to be hinting that, long term, her weakness might be trusting people she cares about too much (as Ari I's weakness was not trusting anybody else enough) - it would be interesting to see where that goes!
While I only requested Ari II, I would also be interested in an Ari I story, particularly Ari I interacting with any of the other characters I requested. I would ALSO be very much up for an Ari III, Ari IV, etc story - how many times is Ari going to keep recreating herself? Is she going to keep remaking her friends along with her? Ari II is already a very different person from Ari I in so many ways - so what would Ari III or Ari IV or Ari V look like? Ari V or VI at the very end of 40,000 in Gehenna, or in the Faded Sun era, for example, could be fascinating...
The Hellburner crew develop an incredible found family, and I love them so much, (shipwise I am equally happy with them as as four friends/two couples as per canon, or as in some kind of complex poly arrangement - honestly with what we see of Fleet dynamics from Bet Yeager that second one seems very plausible!), but since I had to choose I'm particularly interested in Meg and Sal. I really love their relationship and how they look out for each other and survive in a hostile, deeply sexist environment. I'd love backstory for either/both of them, or missing scenes from the series, or what life is like in the Fleet - particularly in seeing how the Shepherds and soldiers of Sol System become Mazianni, as depressing as that will be. Word of God says the four of them end up on the Norway, which would be very interesting, but if you wanted to do something different I'd be interested in any possible future for them - taking a stand against how things were heading on the Africa or the Australia? Going AWOL? Captured by Union?
I'm also really, really fascinated by the Mazianni planet from Tripoint. Is that where the Hellburner crew end up? I'm really intrigued by the fact that the Fleet has split by that point - where did the faultlines happen? The idea that some of the Fleet have at least attempted to create something new, rather than just giving in to their inevitable destruction, is really fascinating to me - even though I suspect that their new society is still deeply fucked up (inevitable given the glimpses of what regular Fleet life is like from Bet Yeager in Rimrunners).
Which leads me to Thomas Bowe-Hawkins, who of course is a great way to explore the Tripoint planet and the Mazianni society more generally - what have they become, after several decades of raiding and isolation? What's going on with all the different factions? Anything about Thomas getting to the Tripoint planet and/or becoming a Navigator would be awesome - Capella is terrible, but also really compelling, and I want to know more about her and about Navigators! But I also really love his family relationships, as fucked up as they all are, and I'd love a character-driven story just as much. I find his relationship with his mother particularly compelling, as awful and unfair as it is, and I would love to see more of that uneasy balance between them - perhaps several years in the future? I do feel like Marie didn't get served particularly well by that ending - though the satisfaction of her taking over the Sprite is pretty great - and I'd like to see more of her. I also really liked Christian and Thomas's relationship - Christian is fairly terrible, but at least he has some self-awareness about it. On the other hand, while there are certainly some interesting stories I'd like to read about Thomas and his father, I really don't like him - he's not exactly the monster he seemed at first, he's just egotistical and a bit pathetic. Maybe Thomas taking over his father's ship in much the same way as Marie took over her brother's?
Alexander trilogy requests: Eurydike, Roxane, Stateira, Olympias
Note: this is another OR request, not an AND request - a story in which all characters appear would be lovely but unlikely; I'd be just as happy with a story about any single or combination of requested characters.
I've loved the first two books in the trilogy since I first read them in my early teens (Bagoas! Hephastion!), but once I'd finally read Funeral Games it turns out I'm even more interested in the complex, troubled, sometimes disturbing female characters that Mary Renault created. On one hand, she did a brilliant job of getting in people's heads and making them come alive as characters while staying true to what they might have thought and felt... but there are also those moments where you stare at the page and go Oh Mary Renault Why... Eurydike's downfall being explicitly due to her menstrual cycle in particular.
Regardless, all these characters are so vividly drawn and alive, and I just want more!
Eurydike was the most immediately compelling to me - she's actually written as sympathetic, if misguided, unlike many of Mary Renault's female characters - but she's also a character type I love: she's so brave, she's in way over her head and she knows it, and she just keeps going, right up until the end. There's a lot she doesn't know or understand, too, but she keeps trying. Things could have so easily gone a different way for her! And Olympias is fascinating in a different way - she's so often written as villainous and awful, except it's like Mary Renault can't help but be impressed by her despite herself. She's so powerful, and interesting, and so overwhelming in her personality - she's able to hold her own against her husband and son, after all! I can't help but want more.
Meanwhile I think I was supposed to think Roxane is a flat-out villain - and certainly poisoning Stateira was awful - but there's a lot of depth and complexity to her too. She's treated as a barbarian, as 'beneath' her husband and his 'real', high status wife, but she refuses to simply lie back, accept that attitude and be quietly, pleasantly grateful; she wants to play the game instead, and she's good at it. The fact that she kept her son alive so many years - even if the two of them were eventually killed - is credit to her resourcefulness and determination, and I'd love to see more of that and of her, either in a canon situation or in something different. Stateira, meanwhile, is good, and proper, and all of those things, but we don't really get a chance to see what else she might be before she's out of the picture. What does she really think about the conquest of her country, about Alexander and about his dream to create a new people out of his and her own?
I always find it fascinating to see characters interacting who may or may not have done so in canon, and I find it can often tell you more about each of them individually than a solo story would have done. For example - what would Eurydike and Roxane have thought of each other? Or Eurydike and Stateira, if they'd had the chance to meet? What was Roxane and Olympias's relationship really like? What if Eurydike and Olympias had met under different circumstances, or if Stateira had been the sole surviving (pregnant) wife of Alexander who came looking for Olympias's protection? We know how Stateira and Roxane's relationship ended, but was there ever anything different between them? And what would have happened if Alexander had lived?
In this fandom I am very partial to what-if AUs - that 'what if Alexander had lived for another ten or fifteen years' is a classic, but so fascinating! What would that have meant for his wives and family? (And his empire?) (WHAT IF HE HAD A DAUGHTER???) Or Eurydike-isn't-thwarted-by-her-menstrual-cycle AU? A different network of alliances after Alexander's death that sees Stateira surviving, or Eurydike on the same side as Roxane and/or Olympias?
I am always here for queering ladies in history, if you are also into that! I would happy read any femslash pairing out of these characters that you come up with, or indeed read about any of them with any other woman. Het and gen are both also fine.
A final note: while I'm all for Ladies Being Alive, and Ruling Things, and maybe Sleeping With Each Other, I'm okay with disappointment, failure and tragedy too - to the extent that in a way Funeral Games is my favourite of the trilogy. I'm okay with (canonical or otherwise) tragic endings, as long as the characters are true to themselves up until that point - honestly a perfectly 100% happy ending could easily feel contrived. None of these ladies are perfect, either, and I wouldn't want to read about them if they were.
Nirvana in Fire requests: Nihuang, Gong Yu, Banruo, Jingyan
Another OR, not AND fandom! I absolutely adore this show, and particularly the amazing complex layered characters, I'd be delighted to read a story about any of these characters! I've picked four favourites though really I'd be happy with a story about just about any character - though seeing as he got a whole series about him, I would prefer MCS not to be the protagonist of any story I receive. Perfectly happy for him to show up or even be a major character, I'd just prefer the focus to be a second character and perhaps their own feelings about MCS, rather than MCS himself? Not that I don't love him - I do! I'd just prefer to receive something a little different for Yuletide.
I really loved Nihuang right off the bat - stoic warrior woman with Feelings is always my jam - and while it was a serious disappointment how her character took the backseat/just wasn't there at all for a lot of the later episodes, I still adore her. I love her intelligence and her sense of duty; I love that duty and respect for other people's autonomy comes first with her no matter what, no matter how much it hurts her. (That last conversation with MCS, when she's asking him if he can keep his promise to her in his next life... I cried.) I ship her with MCS, and also with... basically all of the ladies? And her friendship with Jingyan is also lovely, though I generally don't ship them together romantically unless MCS is in the middle (I do definitely ship that!) Mostly I'd just love to see more about her, the kinds of things we didn't get to see in canon - what she does with her life after the series, how she developed from fairly naive young girl to stoic warrior general, her life in the army with Xia Dong, alternate universes where MCS lived, her relationships with other characters... anything!
Gong Yu is a different kind of stoic warrior woman with Feelings, but I love her just as much. We don't hear or see much about her, but I absolutely adore that she's not just Background Mysterious Sex Worker who exists to be mysterious and sexy, she actually does have a backstory and her own motivations. I'd really love to read more about her - whether that's about her past, how she met MCS and joined the Jiangzhou Alliance, or what she does after the end of the series. Just a quick note that I usually find F/M/F love triangles tiresome and I cannot express how uninterested I am in any kind of AU where Nihuang and Gong Yu are fighting over MCS. Shipping the two ladies together instead is my knee-jerk reaction - or just having them as friends - but really, whatever you do, just please don't go there?
Speaking of Gong Yu, one of the things that intrigues me most about her is her Hua background. As much as I love most of the show, the treatment of the Hua people is the one jarring note. Yes Banruo is often terrible and Xuanji did some monstrous things, but the Hua people were also treated monstrously, and the only resolution offered was more genocide. I would really love a more complex, nuanced look at the Hua people, and particularly Banruo and Gong Yu. I really loved the plotline where they came up against each other, and I'd love to see them together again; or a story about either one of them would be lovely too. Or, for characters not in the tagset, what about Prince Yu's wife and unborn child? What happens to them in the end? I know MCS kept talking about 'Prince Yu's son' but it would be so appropriate for that child to be a daughter, just saying...
Or I'd love to see some kind of proper resolution for Banruo, whether that's happy or sad - tragedy might be fitting, but I could believe that there's perhaps a chance for her to break out of the cycle of violence and revenge? I feel that a big part of NiF is about the difference between revenge and justice - both Xuanji and MCS are brilliant schemers who suffered enormous injustice, but while Xuanji eventually failed because she was sidetracked into revenge and hurting everyone who was affiliated with anyone who'd hurt her, MCS stayed focused on justice (with people like the Jiangzhuo Alliance and Consort Jing on his side) and thus succeeded - but there's also something a bit icky about the gendered, colonialist parallel - MCS is righteous and justified, but Xuanji is just evil? Really? Anyway, any way to resolve that - with or without Gong Yu and/or Banruo - would be awesome!
This is a fandom where I'm particularly fascinated by role reversals and AUs - there's always the classics, 'what if MCS lived' and 'what if the fake rebellion was stopped in time' and there's so many other possibilities as well! Perhaps an AU where Prince Yu's rebellion succeeded, and he and Banruo got everything she (thought she) wanted - and then what? Or a complete role reversal where a different group of characters were secretly Hua? Or where MCS was the disgraced Prince and Jingyan was the one thought dead?
Speaking of Jingyan, I love him so much, and the narrative really didn't treat him well. He's had so much suffering and so much to deal with, and he just keeps grimly, stubbornly putting his head down and doing his duty, doing what's right. I just want him to be happy!!! AUs are definitely one way to do that, and one I will never get tired of - I ship him and MCS quite a lot, on that subject! Though I also love them as really close, intimate friends. But honestly, I'd also love to see a canon postseries fic with him as Emperor, coming to terms with everything that's happened and becoming... happy? Falling in love with his wife (or someone else, I am pretty open minded when it comes to pairings!), developing and strengthening friendships with people like Nihuang, becoming a father, having the satisfaction of turning things around in Da Liang and bringing justice and prosperity back to the empire. Losing someone you love - particularly in Jingyan's circumstances, where he lost his best friend TWICE - is brutal and awful but it doesn't have to mean the end of everything, and I'd love to see something exploring that.
Lord Peter Wimsey requests: Peter Wimsey, Mervyn Bunter
I love both of these characters and would be thrilled to read a gen story (with or without background Peter/Harriet) or a slash story (again, with or without background Peter/Harriet), so long as it focused on the two of them and their relationship. As far as other background pairings go, I'm open to most things, but no Peter/Charles or Bunter/Charles, please; I ship Charles/Mary quite a lot and don't enjoy reading him paired with any other canon character.
I've loved this series for years and I've always loved the characters, but rereading the books over the past few years has really brought home how unusual Peter and Bunter are about each other. Part of it is twenty-first century eyes looking askance at the whole master-servant relationship; but what's interesting is that Sayers clearly knew there was something not quite right about an autonomous human being dedicating their whole life to service to each other, and she almost... lampshaded it in a way? Neither silly, foppish, over the top Lord Peter and hyper-competent, hyper-professional The Perfect Butler (tm) Bunter are real people - it's absolutely clear that these are constructed roles that both men are playing, and helping each other to play. They enjoy it! And then every now and again we see under the curtain that they're real people, Sergeant Bunter calls Peter a bloody little fool, and we see that the rigid roles are - not quite a game, they're more consuming than that - but they're still not completely real, either.
Except by emphasising that servants are real people with their own internal lives and motivations, it really brings forward the question - okay, why? Why does Bunter choose to devote himself utterly to Peter and to the role of Man to Peter's Master? And there's lots of answers to that question! Love could be one - romantic/sexual love, or something else - another part of it is surely that Bunter enjoys and appreciates the lifestyle he gets living with Peter: the good wine and food, the decoration of their flat, the indulgence of his expensive hobby (photography) - and he obviously enjoys the detection, too. I'd be interested in anything you come up with!
Moving to the specifics, I'd love to see some domesticity, or a case, or something about their wartime experiences or recovery of it - how did they settle into the life they're leading at the start of Whose Body? I love that in many aspects of their lives Bunter is the one in charge, and I'd love any story that focused on that, or on the two of them as equals; for all that they keep up the rigid boundaries of master-manservant even in their private lives - or at least the lives we see on the page - that's just the role they're playing, it's not the sum total of who they are.
If you wanted to write something explicit, there's the intense intimacy of a valet's role: Bunter spends a lot of time handling Peter's body, shaving him and dressing him, even choosing his clothes. If you wanted to take that somewhere sexual - even kinky - I would 100% be into that, though with the caveat that early twentieth century characters thinking about kink and sexuality in 21st century terms is a bit of a turnoff; try and keep it period-appropriate, if you can.
Also, if you write the two of them in a relationship, please don't play the master-servant relationship straight; I don't want to see Peter actively being the lordly superior master or telling Bunter what to do all the time, that's not how their relationship functions in the books and it's not something I'd enjoy reading. I'm more interested in their subversion of the master-manservant relationship, the way that 'Lord Peter Wimsey' and 'Perfect Butler Bunter' are just roles they play, and I see them as very much equals despite their positions.
I mentioned Harriet above, and if you wanted to bring her into the picture in some way I would be 100% into that - Busman's Holiday is my iddy favourite because it's all about Harriet, Bunter and Peter negotiating the terms of their relationships, even though Harriet and Peter are the only ones who actually explicitly climb into bed together. Though I have to say, rereading the bits on the wedding night where Bunter's lying downstairs alone but his imagination is with Peter all the way - and the bit later on where Harriet realises Bunter's packed her underwear for her - made me blink a bit. Sayers pointing out how sexually frustrated Bunter was at this point - throwing his boot at the cat! - didn't really seem to help; I know she meant it as a joke, but that doesn't mean I have to take it that way! Anyway, regardless, I adore Harriet and I'd be very happy to have her show up in any capacity, but she and Peter got four books about their relationship, two of which were pretty much solely about that relationship; I'd like more about Bunter and Peter, as well!
Thank you!
Likes
I am generally pretty flexible with the things I like. Gen, het, femslash and slash are all awesome! Character-driven stories are awesome, plot-driven stories are awesome, explicit porn is awesome, G-rated fluff with hand-holding is awesome, angst and bleakness are awesome, happy endings are awesome, humor is awesome, domesticity is awesome! Etc.
A few of my favourite things are adventures, politics, worldbuilding, banter and humour, stoic girls with feeeeelings, road trips (spaceship trips... actual ship trips... etc), female antiheroes or villains with complex motivations, enemies forced to work together by circumstance, reluctant heroes, found families, unexpected/unconventional happy endings, tragedies that are more-or-less inevitable given the nature of the individuals involved, and people living in less-than-ideal or even actively hostile situations who manage to carve out some kind of happiness despite that, but by no means feel obligated to include any of these things!
Dislikes
I don't have any major DNWs and am ok with dubcon/noncon, violence, character death, etc - provided that it is warned for up front - though I would prefer that stories do not focus solely on trauma/horror/violence, and if these do come up as part of the story, I am more interested in the lead up and the aftermath than in dragging out the details of the act itself.
For these fandoms, I am not very interested in the kind of AU where characters are in a completely different universe where they are pirates or cowgirls or something. AUs that explore the ramifications of a change to canon (what if character x survived/won the battle/etc instead) are always fascinating to me, however - I absolutely adore stories that really go into the details of a scenario like this! "If X changed, what would be the consequences?" is a question that I always love to see explored.
On to the fandoms! I requested:
Alliance/Union requests: Ariane Emory II, Meg Kady, Sal Aboujid, Thomas Bowe-Hawkins
This is very much an OR request, not an AND request! Please feel free to write a story about any number of these characters in any combination - don't feel obliged to include all of them!
I've only recently discovered Cherryh, but her work is pretty much everything I love in science fiction - incredible worldbuilding, both in the wide scope of her alt-history and in the gritty little details of life in space; powerful and fascinating characters, particularly the women; high-stakes tension; complex questions about what it means to be human; intensely satisfying iddy narratives about found families and damaged loners finding their place in the universe...
I'm endlessly fascinated by Ari and honestly really love her, both in a happy id way (as of Regenesis she's living happily with all her friends in their pretty new home with the fish wall, how nice!) and in the way that I am fascinated by how Ari is a terrifying and unreliable narrator, and her work and relationships with the azi are deeply fucked up. I'd be happy on anything from that spectrum of fluff to angst! I'm particularly interested in her relationships with Florian and Cat (and I ship the three of them together), and with Justin and Grant (I don't... not ship it? If you wanted to go there I would definitely be intrigued); I'm also interested in how the books seem to be hinting that, long term, her weakness might be trusting people she cares about too much (as Ari I's weakness was not trusting anybody else enough) - it would be interesting to see where that goes!
While I only requested Ari II, I would also be interested in an Ari I story, particularly Ari I interacting with any of the other characters I requested. I would ALSO be very much up for an Ari III, Ari IV, etc story - how many times is Ari going to keep recreating herself? Is she going to keep remaking her friends along with her? Ari II is already a very different person from Ari I in so many ways - so what would Ari III or Ari IV or Ari V look like? Ari V or VI at the very end of 40,000 in Gehenna, or in the Faded Sun era, for example, could be fascinating...
The Hellburner crew develop an incredible found family, and I love them so much, (shipwise I am equally happy with them as as four friends/two couples as per canon, or as in some kind of complex poly arrangement - honestly with what we see of Fleet dynamics from Bet Yeager that second one seems very plausible!), but since I had to choose I'm particularly interested in Meg and Sal. I really love their relationship and how they look out for each other and survive in a hostile, deeply sexist environment. I'd love backstory for either/both of them, or missing scenes from the series, or what life is like in the Fleet - particularly in seeing how the Shepherds and soldiers of Sol System become Mazianni, as depressing as that will be. Word of God says the four of them end up on the Norway, which would be very interesting, but if you wanted to do something different I'd be interested in any possible future for them - taking a stand against how things were heading on the Africa or the Australia? Going AWOL? Captured by Union?
I'm also really, really fascinated by the Mazianni planet from Tripoint. Is that where the Hellburner crew end up? I'm really intrigued by the fact that the Fleet has split by that point - where did the faultlines happen? The idea that some of the Fleet have at least attempted to create something new, rather than just giving in to their inevitable destruction, is really fascinating to me - even though I suspect that their new society is still deeply fucked up (inevitable given the glimpses of what regular Fleet life is like from Bet Yeager in Rimrunners).
Which leads me to Thomas Bowe-Hawkins, who of course is a great way to explore the Tripoint planet and the Mazianni society more generally - what have they become, after several decades of raiding and isolation? What's going on with all the different factions? Anything about Thomas getting to the Tripoint planet and/or becoming a Navigator would be awesome - Capella is terrible, but also really compelling, and I want to know more about her and about Navigators! But I also really love his family relationships, as fucked up as they all are, and I'd love a character-driven story just as much. I find his relationship with his mother particularly compelling, as awful and unfair as it is, and I would love to see more of that uneasy balance between them - perhaps several years in the future? I do feel like Marie didn't get served particularly well by that ending - though the satisfaction of her taking over the Sprite is pretty great - and I'd like to see more of her. I also really liked Christian and Thomas's relationship - Christian is fairly terrible, but at least he has some self-awareness about it. On the other hand, while there are certainly some interesting stories I'd like to read about Thomas and his father, I really don't like him - he's not exactly the monster he seemed at first, he's just egotistical and a bit pathetic. Maybe Thomas taking over his father's ship in much the same way as Marie took over her brother's?
Alexander trilogy requests: Eurydike, Roxane, Stateira, Olympias
Note: this is another OR request, not an AND request - a story in which all characters appear would be lovely but unlikely; I'd be just as happy with a story about any single or combination of requested characters.
I've loved the first two books in the trilogy since I first read them in my early teens (Bagoas! Hephastion!), but once I'd finally read Funeral Games it turns out I'm even more interested in the complex, troubled, sometimes disturbing female characters that Mary Renault created. On one hand, she did a brilliant job of getting in people's heads and making them come alive as characters while staying true to what they might have thought and felt... but there are also those moments where you stare at the page and go Oh Mary Renault Why... Eurydike's downfall being explicitly due to her menstrual cycle in particular.
Regardless, all these characters are so vividly drawn and alive, and I just want more!
Eurydike was the most immediately compelling to me - she's actually written as sympathetic, if misguided, unlike many of Mary Renault's female characters - but she's also a character type I love: she's so brave, she's in way over her head and she knows it, and she just keeps going, right up until the end. There's a lot she doesn't know or understand, too, but she keeps trying. Things could have so easily gone a different way for her! And Olympias is fascinating in a different way - she's so often written as villainous and awful, except it's like Mary Renault can't help but be impressed by her despite herself. She's so powerful, and interesting, and so overwhelming in her personality - she's able to hold her own against her husband and son, after all! I can't help but want more.
Meanwhile I think I was supposed to think Roxane is a flat-out villain - and certainly poisoning Stateira was awful - but there's a lot of depth and complexity to her too. She's treated as a barbarian, as 'beneath' her husband and his 'real', high status wife, but she refuses to simply lie back, accept that attitude and be quietly, pleasantly grateful; she wants to play the game instead, and she's good at it. The fact that she kept her son alive so many years - even if the two of them were eventually killed - is credit to her resourcefulness and determination, and I'd love to see more of that and of her, either in a canon situation or in something different. Stateira, meanwhile, is good, and proper, and all of those things, but we don't really get a chance to see what else she might be before she's out of the picture. What does she really think about the conquest of her country, about Alexander and about his dream to create a new people out of his and her own?
I always find it fascinating to see characters interacting who may or may not have done so in canon, and I find it can often tell you more about each of them individually than a solo story would have done. For example - what would Eurydike and Roxane have thought of each other? Or Eurydike and Stateira, if they'd had the chance to meet? What was Roxane and Olympias's relationship really like? What if Eurydike and Olympias had met under different circumstances, or if Stateira had been the sole surviving (pregnant) wife of Alexander who came looking for Olympias's protection? We know how Stateira and Roxane's relationship ended, but was there ever anything different between them? And what would have happened if Alexander had lived?
In this fandom I am very partial to what-if AUs - that 'what if Alexander had lived for another ten or fifteen years' is a classic, but so fascinating! What would that have meant for his wives and family? (And his empire?) (WHAT IF HE HAD A DAUGHTER???) Or Eurydike-isn't-thwarted-by-her-menstrual-cycle AU? A different network of alliances after Alexander's death that sees Stateira surviving, or Eurydike on the same side as Roxane and/or Olympias?
I am always here for queering ladies in history, if you are also into that! I would happy read any femslash pairing out of these characters that you come up with, or indeed read about any of them with any other woman. Het and gen are both also fine.
A final note: while I'm all for Ladies Being Alive, and Ruling Things, and maybe Sleeping With Each Other, I'm okay with disappointment, failure and tragedy too - to the extent that in a way Funeral Games is my favourite of the trilogy. I'm okay with (canonical or otherwise) tragic endings, as long as the characters are true to themselves up until that point - honestly a perfectly 100% happy ending could easily feel contrived. None of these ladies are perfect, either, and I wouldn't want to read about them if they were.
Nirvana in Fire requests: Nihuang, Gong Yu, Banruo, Jingyan
Another OR, not AND fandom! I absolutely adore this show, and particularly the amazing complex layered characters, I'd be delighted to read a story about any of these characters! I've picked four favourites though really I'd be happy with a story about just about any character - though seeing as he got a whole series about him, I would prefer MCS not to be the protagonist of any story I receive. Perfectly happy for him to show up or even be a major character, I'd just prefer the focus to be a second character and perhaps their own feelings about MCS, rather than MCS himself? Not that I don't love him - I do! I'd just prefer to receive something a little different for Yuletide.
I really loved Nihuang right off the bat - stoic warrior woman with Feelings is always my jam - and while it was a serious disappointment how her character took the backseat/just wasn't there at all for a lot of the later episodes, I still adore her. I love her intelligence and her sense of duty; I love that duty and respect for other people's autonomy comes first with her no matter what, no matter how much it hurts her. (That last conversation with MCS, when she's asking him if he can keep his promise to her in his next life... I cried.) I ship her with MCS, and also with... basically all of the ladies? And her friendship with Jingyan is also lovely, though I generally don't ship them together romantically unless MCS is in the middle (I do definitely ship that!) Mostly I'd just love to see more about her, the kinds of things we didn't get to see in canon - what she does with her life after the series, how she developed from fairly naive young girl to stoic warrior general, her life in the army with Xia Dong, alternate universes where MCS lived, her relationships with other characters... anything!
Gong Yu is a different kind of stoic warrior woman with Feelings, but I love her just as much. We don't hear or see much about her, but I absolutely adore that she's not just Background Mysterious Sex Worker who exists to be mysterious and sexy, she actually does have a backstory and her own motivations. I'd really love to read more about her - whether that's about her past, how she met MCS and joined the Jiangzhou Alliance, or what she does after the end of the series. Just a quick note that I usually find F/M/F love triangles tiresome and I cannot express how uninterested I am in any kind of AU where Nihuang and Gong Yu are fighting over MCS. Shipping the two ladies together instead is my knee-jerk reaction - or just having them as friends - but really, whatever you do, just please don't go there?
Speaking of Gong Yu, one of the things that intrigues me most about her is her Hua background. As much as I love most of the show, the treatment of the Hua people is the one jarring note. Yes Banruo is often terrible and Xuanji did some monstrous things, but the Hua people were also treated monstrously, and the only resolution offered was more genocide. I would really love a more complex, nuanced look at the Hua people, and particularly Banruo and Gong Yu. I really loved the plotline where they came up against each other, and I'd love to see them together again; or a story about either one of them would be lovely too. Or, for characters not in the tagset, what about Prince Yu's wife and unborn child? What happens to them in the end? I know MCS kept talking about 'Prince Yu's son' but it would be so appropriate for that child to be a daughter, just saying...
Or I'd love to see some kind of proper resolution for Banruo, whether that's happy or sad - tragedy might be fitting, but I could believe that there's perhaps a chance for her to break out of the cycle of violence and revenge? I feel that a big part of NiF is about the difference between revenge and justice - both Xuanji and MCS are brilliant schemers who suffered enormous injustice, but while Xuanji eventually failed because she was sidetracked into revenge and hurting everyone who was affiliated with anyone who'd hurt her, MCS stayed focused on justice (with people like the Jiangzhuo Alliance and Consort Jing on his side) and thus succeeded - but there's also something a bit icky about the gendered, colonialist parallel - MCS is righteous and justified, but Xuanji is just evil? Really? Anyway, any way to resolve that - with or without Gong Yu and/or Banruo - would be awesome!
This is a fandom where I'm particularly fascinated by role reversals and AUs - there's always the classics, 'what if MCS lived' and 'what if the fake rebellion was stopped in time' and there's so many other possibilities as well! Perhaps an AU where Prince Yu's rebellion succeeded, and he and Banruo got everything she (thought she) wanted - and then what? Or a complete role reversal where a different group of characters were secretly Hua? Or where MCS was the disgraced Prince and Jingyan was the one thought dead?
Speaking of Jingyan, I love him so much, and the narrative really didn't treat him well. He's had so much suffering and so much to deal with, and he just keeps grimly, stubbornly putting his head down and doing his duty, doing what's right. I just want him to be happy!!! AUs are definitely one way to do that, and one I will never get tired of - I ship him and MCS quite a lot, on that subject! Though I also love them as really close, intimate friends. But honestly, I'd also love to see a canon postseries fic with him as Emperor, coming to terms with everything that's happened and becoming... happy? Falling in love with his wife (or someone else, I am pretty open minded when it comes to pairings!), developing and strengthening friendships with people like Nihuang, becoming a father, having the satisfaction of turning things around in Da Liang and bringing justice and prosperity back to the empire. Losing someone you love - particularly in Jingyan's circumstances, where he lost his best friend TWICE - is brutal and awful but it doesn't have to mean the end of everything, and I'd love to see something exploring that.
Lord Peter Wimsey requests: Peter Wimsey, Mervyn Bunter
I love both of these characters and would be thrilled to read a gen story (with or without background Peter/Harriet) or a slash story (again, with or without background Peter/Harriet), so long as it focused on the two of them and their relationship. As far as other background pairings go, I'm open to most things, but no Peter/Charles or Bunter/Charles, please; I ship Charles/Mary quite a lot and don't enjoy reading him paired with any other canon character.
I've loved this series for years and I've always loved the characters, but rereading the books over the past few years has really brought home how unusual Peter and Bunter are about each other. Part of it is twenty-first century eyes looking askance at the whole master-servant relationship; but what's interesting is that Sayers clearly knew there was something not quite right about an autonomous human being dedicating their whole life to service to each other, and she almost... lampshaded it in a way? Neither silly, foppish, over the top Lord Peter and hyper-competent, hyper-professional The Perfect Butler (tm) Bunter are real people - it's absolutely clear that these are constructed roles that both men are playing, and helping each other to play. They enjoy it! And then every now and again we see under the curtain that they're real people, Sergeant Bunter calls Peter a bloody little fool, and we see that the rigid roles are - not quite a game, they're more consuming than that - but they're still not completely real, either.
Except by emphasising that servants are real people with their own internal lives and motivations, it really brings forward the question - okay, why? Why does Bunter choose to devote himself utterly to Peter and to the role of Man to Peter's Master? And there's lots of answers to that question! Love could be one - romantic/sexual love, or something else - another part of it is surely that Bunter enjoys and appreciates the lifestyle he gets living with Peter: the good wine and food, the decoration of their flat, the indulgence of his expensive hobby (photography) - and he obviously enjoys the detection, too. I'd be interested in anything you come up with!
Moving to the specifics, I'd love to see some domesticity, or a case, or something about their wartime experiences or recovery of it - how did they settle into the life they're leading at the start of Whose Body? I love that in many aspects of their lives Bunter is the one in charge, and I'd love any story that focused on that, or on the two of them as equals; for all that they keep up the rigid boundaries of master-manservant even in their private lives - or at least the lives we see on the page - that's just the role they're playing, it's not the sum total of who they are.
If you wanted to write something explicit, there's the intense intimacy of a valet's role: Bunter spends a lot of time handling Peter's body, shaving him and dressing him, even choosing his clothes. If you wanted to take that somewhere sexual - even kinky - I would 100% be into that, though with the caveat that early twentieth century characters thinking about kink and sexuality in 21st century terms is a bit of a turnoff; try and keep it period-appropriate, if you can.
Also, if you write the two of them in a relationship, please don't play the master-servant relationship straight; I don't want to see Peter actively being the lordly superior master or telling Bunter what to do all the time, that's not how their relationship functions in the books and it's not something I'd enjoy reading. I'm more interested in their subversion of the master-manservant relationship, the way that 'Lord Peter Wimsey' and 'Perfect Butler Bunter' are just roles they play, and I see them as very much equals despite their positions.
I mentioned Harriet above, and if you wanted to bring her into the picture in some way I would be 100% into that - Busman's Holiday is my iddy favourite because it's all about Harriet, Bunter and Peter negotiating the terms of their relationships, even though Harriet and Peter are the only ones who actually explicitly climb into bed together. Though I have to say, rereading the bits on the wedding night where Bunter's lying downstairs alone but his imagination is with Peter all the way - and the bit later on where Harriet realises Bunter's packed her underwear for her - made me blink a bit. Sayers pointing out how sexually frustrated Bunter was at this point - throwing his boot at the cat! - didn't really seem to help; I know she meant it as a joke, but that doesn't mean I have to take it that way! Anyway, regardless, I adore Harriet and I'd be very happy to have her show up in any capacity, but she and Peter got four books about their relationship, two of which were pretty much solely about that relationship; I'd like more about Bunter and Peter, as well!
Thank you!
