Yuletide 2020
Oct. 25th, 2020 01:27 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. Character-driven stories are awesome, plot-driven stories are awesome, explicit porn is awesome, angst and bleakness are awesome, happy endings are awesome, humor is awesome! Etc.
Some of my favourite things include:
-Canon divergence AUs!
-Time travel shenanigans, particularly characters going back in time to change their own past (I always love a good Peggy Sue!)
-Politics, history and worldbuilding
-Road trips (or spaceship trips, actual ship trips, etc)
-Stoic women with repressed feelings
-Female antiheroes or villains with complex motivations
-Enemies forced to work together by circumstance
-Unexpected and unconventional happy endings
-Bittersweet endings
-Tragedies that are more-or-less inevitable given the nature of the individuals involved
-People living in less-than-ideal or even actively hostile situations who manage to carve out some kind of happiness despite that.
Porn likes include rough/frantic sex, emphasising nonhuman strengths/capabilities/anatomy for nonhuman or superpowered characters, dirty talk, mild D/s, and bondage/restraints.
I am generally okay with violence, noncon, 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.
If you need to work your way around a canon relationship of any configuration to write a pairing I've requested (or just like writing it), I do generally enjoy poly and open relationships! "They were together and then they broke up" and "don't even mention it" are also fine. Infidelity is also fine in most circumstances, I'm cool with reading about requested characters doing morally dubious things - as long as the cheated-on party doesn't get written as an OTT villain to justify it!
General DNWs:
-Modern/mundane and genre-shift AUs - basically anything that takes the requested characters/pairings out of their canon setting
-Soulmates and soulmark universes
-Lengthy descriptions of violence/horror/noncon/major character death (as noted above)
-Noncon between requested characters (dubcon of the "don't want to want it, but I do" variety is fine - where one character really does desire the other, they just have something standing in their way that would normally prevent them from saying yes)
-Non-canon character death of requested characters (and if a requested character's canon character death is averted, please don't then kill them off in a different way!)
-M/f D/s
-Unrequested, non-canon m/m or m/f ships (unrequested f/f is fine)
-Unrequested kinks
-Unrequested, non-canon incest
-Explicit underage (I'm fine with older teenagers having sex with each other, or with mentions of underage, I just don't want explicit adult/child sex)
-Unrequested, non-canonical gender or sexuality identities for requested canon characters.
Fandom-specific DNWs:
-Perryn - brief mentions for plot purposes are okay but nothing more than that
-Romantic Jill/Nevyn
-An explicitly male, female or nonbinary Hilary Tamar - please keep Hilary's gender ambiguous!
-Lucien Vaudrey/Stephen Day
-Daine/Numair - I'm fine with background/mentions, or with Daine/Rikash/Numair as requested, just not Daine/Numair on their own together as the primary pairing.
As for the fandoms, pairings and AUs, I requested:
Deverry Cycle - Katharine Kerr
Any characters requested. Tagset includes:
Jill
Dallandra
Rhodry Maelwaedd
Gwin
I've loved this series since I was a kid, and pretty much any story about any character would delight me! A character study would be lovely - or a missing scene from canon - or ship fic - or a canon divergence AU exploring the ramification of a small change, or making someone's life better. Basically, go wild, it will almost certainly thrill me!
Pairing-wise, I'm pretty agnostic, except that I don't want to read any romantic Jill/Nevyn; I can see that their initial, mentor-student relationship would have become one of equals as Jill got older and mastered her powers, but I still wouldn't want to see it go in a romantic direction! (Ned/Branna is fine as a pairing, but I'm also not particularly interested in it.)
Otherwise, I would be really happy about most possible combinations of characters in the tagset, or really any pairing involving the characters in the tagset, or gen - whether focused on one character or a group. I shipped Jill/Rhodry a lot as a teenager; these days I have more mixed feelings about it (and about the eighties romance novel trope of the hero proving his devotion by his jealousy, ICK), but I still have a soft spot for them. I also really like Rhodry/Dallandra's casual, friends-with-benefits relationship, I liked how they could have fun and still be friends. Gwin/Rhodry was a tragedy in canon and if you wanted to fix it and give them some time to be happy together that would be delightful! And I loved Jill and Dallandra's friendship in canon, they were so great together (even though, again, it ended in tragedy), and again if you'd like to write them as having had something more between them I would love it! And if it's relevant, some of the other ships involving these characters I enjoy include: Rhodry/Evandar, Rhodry/Evandar/Dallandra, Jill/Ebany/Rhodry, Rhodry/Yraen.
Jill was one of my formative fictional heroines, and a story set in pretty much any era of her life would be great. I'd particularly like to see what her life was like as a dweomermaster - learning to shapechange, perhaps, or learning about her past lives, or having an adventure on her own, or just what her daily life was like. And I also love Jill as a determined little tomboy learning the sword with her father - something set in the missing years between the pig war and meeting Rhodry would be great!
I also love Dallandra, I love the understated tragedy of all her lost years, and I'd particularly love to see something exploring that further. It's more obvious with Aderyn, of course, but by the end of the main series Dallandra is centuries younger than everyone she grew up with - how on earth would that feel? But I'd also love to see missing scenes from any era, or an adventure with her and Jill or Rhodry, or maybe even her meeting Rhodry or Jill's next incarnations?
I do have a soft spot for Rhodry still - particularly old, jaded, half-mad Rhodry - and again, I'd be fascinated by a story about him in any era. Particularly something exploring Dallandra telling him the truth about reincarnation after Jill's death - the implication is that it's the first step on the road to the dweomer. It doesn't really go anywhere in the books, but I'd be fascinated to see Dallandra as Rhodry's teacher - maybe in his next incarnation?
I love Gwin so much, and canon treated him so badly! It's such a tragedy that he spent half his life in love with a man who really did love him back, he just didn't have the self-awareness or courage to say so until years after Gwin was dead, it's awful. So an AU where Gwin and Rhodry did get together would be great! But any Gwin story would be lovely, really. Maybe just a slice of life finding happiness in Aberwyn some other way, or something about his childhood?
Canon divergence AUs are one of my all time favourite things and I feel like Deverry would be ripe for them! An AU where Rhys wasn't infertile, for example - this would mean that Rhodry would never be recalled, and maybe that the Old One would never use him as the centre of his Bardek plot - what would Jill and Rhodry's lives be like if they spent their lives on the road? Would Jill still find her way to the dweomer? Would Rhodry still find out the truth about his father?
Or what about an AU where Gwin survives his illness and goes on the road with Rhodry when he has to leave Aberwyn? An AU where Jill met Dallandra before she met Nevyn? Really, go wild!
Hilary Tamar mysteries - Sarah Caudwell
Desmond Ragwort
Julia Larwood
Michael Cantrip
Selena Jardine
Everything about this fandom is just charming and delightful (except for the murders, I guess? Also the tax dodging in the third book has... not aged well) and I'd love any kind of story that gave me more of these characters, more of their relationships and hijinks and absurdity.
This is an AND not an OR request - while I love all the characters and I love pretty much all possible combinations and pairings, the thing I most want to see is the four of them together in some way - interacting, working together, whatever you like. Mostly because the thought of any one or two of them getting left out would make me really sad! I would be equally thrilled by gen, by ship fic involving any subset of the four, or by poly.
I'd love a casefic/adventure, I'd love some kind of missing scene from any of the books, I'd love slice-of-life - honestly just a standard evening of bickering and sarcasm over dinner would make me very, very happy. All the characters and their relationships with each other are just so hilarious and great. Selena's calm competence as she takes care of Julia is delightful - as is Julia herself, in all her scatty wildness. I really love how the two of them interact! Ragwort and Cantrip spend a lot of time bickering and not enough time working together, for my taste - I love the brief hints in canon that they do actually care about each other and I'd love to see more of that! Cantrip and Julia's bickering sibling-esque relationship is also fantastic - particularly their novel! And I love that Julia is the sexually-active pursuer and Ragwort is the one delicately holding onto his virtue in their relationship. I feel like Selena and Cantrip didn't interact as much - or if they did, it was less memorable - but I'd love to see more of them together!
I love Hilary too and would be delighted if Hilary showed up - outsider POV on the four of them, deus ex machina, just general busybodying - though please don't gender Hilary if you do. (I realise this is kind of tricky with pronouns, I am fine with using 'they' in a gender-neutral way or slightly awkward phrasing to avoid pronouns altogether).
Julia/Selena and Cantrip/Ragwort are probably my favourite subpairings, if you wanted to write shipfic, but honestly any of the het possibilities would be lovely too. And I'd absolutely adore some kind of poly fic, or an orgy - I feel like they'd all be up for it, and the kind of slightly-absurd scenario required to (figuratively) get them all into bed together seems like it would be perfectly in line with the books.
I do love a good trope, too, so if you wanted to do something like 'forced to get married (for the tax benefits!) AU' or 'sedoretu AU' - or 'forced to get married as a sedoretu (for the tax benefits!) AU' - I would absolutely adore it.
Finisterre: The Nighthorses - C. J. Cherryh
Danny Fisher
The setting of these books is so immediately harsh and memorable, but as is usual for Cherryh, it's the characters that have stuck with me. I like pretty much every character in the tagset and would enjoy a story where any of them appeared - but I do like Danny as a protagonist, and would really like to read more about him.
Danny's an interesting, and interestingly flawed, protagonist - in some ways he's the standard 'teenage boy in over his head, succeeds anyway' but Cherryh does also show him failing in some interesting and unexpected ways. And by the second book, he's definitely taking on more of a mature, adult role; I'd like to see what he'd become after a few more years of experience - perhaps taking on a mentor role for another younger rider, or having some kind of adventure with another character, or just his life with Cloud. I love his relationship with Cloud, Cloud is so great! A story about their first meeting, and Danny's very early days as a rider, would also be lovely.
I've got to say, I also found Danny's character a lot more interesting if I read him as closeted and queer, with a massive crush on Guil (and later I can definitely see Carlo as having a crush on Danny!) If Danny and Carlo end up partners, it could well be in the way that Guil and Aby were partners, and I would be very interested in reading about that.
I could definitely read Danny's constant fixation on 'oh no, what if these intimidatingly competent older men do ~something terrible~ to me once we're out in the wilderness together' as actually subconsciously wanting that thing to happen, too - though given it's Cherryh, a straight-up fear of sexual assault would also be reasonable! And I can see a bit of a parallel to common queer experiences in Danny's experience of his teenage awakening that drives him away from his fundamentalist, religious family into a dangerous but alluring life on the margins of society. The riders are certainly more sexually open and free than the religious townspeople, even if I don't remember any explicitly queer characters coming up.
Either way, given that a large part of this story is 'cowboys in space' I'd love to see something a bit queer about it, whether that's Danny and Carlo together as partners after the end of the second book, or Danny and Guil having some kind of moment together, or really any m/m ship involving Danny! But I'd also love a gen relationship between Danny and Carlo, or Danny and Guil.
If you'd like to write porn, there's some great possibilities with the canon influence of nighthorses in heat - it would be really interesting to see how different gender combinations among the horses or the humans would affect how that went, too! We've seen what happens when a male horse and rider meet a female horse and rider, but what happens when the gender configurations aren't so neatly heterosexual?
I am familiar with Cherryh's Alliance/Union books (I haven't read Alliance Rising or most of the Chanur books) and would absolutely adore some kind of crossover, if you'd like to write that!
A Charm of Magpies series - KJ Charles
Frank Merrick
Lucien Vaudrey
I enjoyed this series, and found the central romance to be fine... but honestly the only ship I really cared about was Frank and Lucien. I'm doing gay romance wrong, haha! Their backstory is just so fascinating to me, and so is their current relationship dynamic - master and servant on the surface, but almost equals by this point, which I do really love. I definitely have a thing for individuals who are trapped in rigid societal roles (class, in this case) and still do their best to live as equals together.
I would honestly be equally happy with a relationship between them or with gen, so long as it was focused on the two of them and their partnership. If you do write gen, though, please no Lucien/Stephen, even as background; the canon books gave me enough of their relationship, I'm not interested in reading any more. I don't mind Frank/Jenny as background, but it also doesn't interest me very much.
I feel like the backstory between Lucien and Frank is just so epic! Like, they were both sent to the other side of the world as lost teenagers, with only each other to rely on; they went through some pretty dark places, only to pull themselves up and build a life where they could use their skills and be happy. I love it so much - any story set from any part of this period would be fantastic, there's so much potential for adventures, getting together, realising how much one character trusts and needs the other...
Alternatively, if you wanted to write something set in the canon era, maybe the plot of the first book didn't happen the same way, and Lucien just came back to England with Frank to work through his feelings about his father and his inheritance without the whole magical side plot involving Stephen? I would love to see more about Frank's POV on them coming back together (and then eventually choosing to leave for good).
But really, any story between the two of them would be amazing!
The Immortals series - Tamora Pierce
Daine Sarrasri
Rikash Moonsword
It's been more than twenty years and I'm still gutted by what happened to Rikash. I loved him and his snark so much! And I loved his gradual, tentative friendship with Daine - how they both hated that they were becoming friends, but couldn't help how much they liked each other - and how that friendship was the path to Daine becoming more tolerant and understanding of the immortals - and then he died. And I cried.
"Enemies forced to work together by circumstances" and "enemies to friends" are two of my favourite tropes, and I love how good Daine and Rikash are for these them! They're both so clever and competent, and I love how much they respect each other even when they still can't stand each other. And then when they finally end up working together on the same side, it's so good - canon just didn't give me enough!
I would love, love, love a fix it! Maybe Rikash was only mostly dead. Maybe he was dead, but the Graveyard Hag brought him back. Maybe, a decade after the Immortals War, Daine stumbles across a Rikash who has been resurrected by means unknown. Maybe there was weird time travel involved. I don't really mind how you do it, I would just love to see him come back!
But honestly, I would love just as much to see something more happening between Daine and Rikash in canon - a missing scene, a missing moment, a small adventure - just a bit more than what we were able to get in the books. And I am fine with mentions of Rikash's canonical death, but I would prefer that it's not the primary focus of any fic I receive.
Pairing-wise, I would be equally happy with shipfic or gen - I ship them a lot, but I also just love their friendship, either would make me very happy. I don't love Daine/Numair on its own, but the idea of a Daine/Rikash/Numair poly relationship fascinates me, and if you wanted to explore that I would be thrilled! (I am also fine if Daine/Numair appears as background to a Daine&Rikash friendship fic, as long as the focus is on Daine&Rikash not Numair.)
I am okay with Daine/Rikash porn, if you want to get creative! Or maybe as part of his resurrection, Rikash is temporary turned into a human? (Though to be honest, even if that did happen, I can't see him staying human for long - there's already a canon way for a human to turn into a Stormwing, after all!)
Basically, any Daine and Rikash story would make me happy!
Thank you so much for writing for me!
Likes
I am generally pretty flexible with the things I like. Character-driven stories are awesome, plot-driven stories are awesome, explicit porn is awesome, angst and bleakness are awesome, happy endings are awesome, humor is awesome! Etc.
Some of my favourite things include:
-Canon divergence AUs!
-Time travel shenanigans, particularly characters going back in time to change their own past (I always love a good Peggy Sue!)
-Politics, history and worldbuilding
-Road trips (or spaceship trips, actual ship trips, etc)
-Stoic women with repressed feelings
-Female antiheroes or villains with complex motivations
-Enemies forced to work together by circumstance
-Unexpected and unconventional happy endings
-Bittersweet endings
-Tragedies that are more-or-less inevitable given the nature of the individuals involved
-People living in less-than-ideal or even actively hostile situations who manage to carve out some kind of happiness despite that.
Porn likes include rough/frantic sex, emphasising nonhuman strengths/capabilities/anatomy for nonhuman or superpowered characters, dirty talk, mild D/s, and bondage/restraints.
I am generally okay with violence, noncon, 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.
If you need to work your way around a canon relationship of any configuration to write a pairing I've requested (or just like writing it), I do generally enjoy poly and open relationships! "They were together and then they broke up" and "don't even mention it" are also fine. Infidelity is also fine in most circumstances, I'm cool with reading about requested characters doing morally dubious things - as long as the cheated-on party doesn't get written as an OTT villain to justify it!
General DNWs:
-Modern/mundane and genre-shift AUs - basically anything that takes the requested characters/pairings out of their canon setting
-Soulmates and soulmark universes
-Lengthy descriptions of violence/horror/noncon/major character death (as noted above)
-Noncon between requested characters (dubcon of the "don't want to want it, but I do" variety is fine - where one character really does desire the other, they just have something standing in their way that would normally prevent them from saying yes)
-Non-canon character death of requested characters (and if a requested character's canon character death is averted, please don't then kill them off in a different way!)
-M/f D/s
-Unrequested, non-canon m/m or m/f ships (unrequested f/f is fine)
-Unrequested kinks
-Unrequested, non-canon incest
-Explicit underage (I'm fine with older teenagers having sex with each other, or with mentions of underage, I just don't want explicit adult/child sex)
-Unrequested, non-canonical gender or sexuality identities for requested canon characters.
Fandom-specific DNWs:
-Perryn - brief mentions for plot purposes are okay but nothing more than that
-Romantic Jill/Nevyn
-An explicitly male, female or nonbinary Hilary Tamar - please keep Hilary's gender ambiguous!
-Lucien Vaudrey/Stephen Day
-Daine/Numair - I'm fine with background/mentions, or with Daine/Rikash/Numair as requested, just not Daine/Numair on their own together as the primary pairing.
As for the fandoms, pairings and AUs, I requested:
Deverry Cycle - Katharine Kerr
Any characters requested. Tagset includes:
Jill
Dallandra
Rhodry Maelwaedd
Gwin
I've loved this series since I was a kid, and pretty much any story about any character would delight me! A character study would be lovely - or a missing scene from canon - or ship fic - or a canon divergence AU exploring the ramification of a small change, or making someone's life better. Basically, go wild, it will almost certainly thrill me!
Pairing-wise, I'm pretty agnostic, except that I don't want to read any romantic Jill/Nevyn; I can see that their initial, mentor-student relationship would have become one of equals as Jill got older and mastered her powers, but I still wouldn't want to see it go in a romantic direction! (Ned/Branna is fine as a pairing, but I'm also not particularly interested in it.)
Otherwise, I would be really happy about most possible combinations of characters in the tagset, or really any pairing involving the characters in the tagset, or gen - whether focused on one character or a group. I shipped Jill/Rhodry a lot as a teenager; these days I have more mixed feelings about it (and about the eighties romance novel trope of the hero proving his devotion by his jealousy, ICK), but I still have a soft spot for them. I also really like Rhodry/Dallandra's casual, friends-with-benefits relationship, I liked how they could have fun and still be friends. Gwin/Rhodry was a tragedy in canon and if you wanted to fix it and give them some time to be happy together that would be delightful! And I loved Jill and Dallandra's friendship in canon, they were so great together (even though, again, it ended in tragedy), and again if you'd like to write them as having had something more between them I would love it! And if it's relevant, some of the other ships involving these characters I enjoy include: Rhodry/Evandar, Rhodry/Evandar/Dallandra, Jill/Ebany/Rhodry, Rhodry/Yraen.
Jill was one of my formative fictional heroines, and a story set in pretty much any era of her life would be great. I'd particularly like to see what her life was like as a dweomermaster - learning to shapechange, perhaps, or learning about her past lives, or having an adventure on her own, or just what her daily life was like. And I also love Jill as a determined little tomboy learning the sword with her father - something set in the missing years between the pig war and meeting Rhodry would be great!
I also love Dallandra, I love the understated tragedy of all her lost years, and I'd particularly love to see something exploring that further. It's more obvious with Aderyn, of course, but by the end of the main series Dallandra is centuries younger than everyone she grew up with - how on earth would that feel? But I'd also love to see missing scenes from any era, or an adventure with her and Jill or Rhodry, or maybe even her meeting Rhodry or Jill's next incarnations?
I do have a soft spot for Rhodry still - particularly old, jaded, half-mad Rhodry - and again, I'd be fascinated by a story about him in any era. Particularly something exploring Dallandra telling him the truth about reincarnation after Jill's death - the implication is that it's the first step on the road to the dweomer. It doesn't really go anywhere in the books, but I'd be fascinated to see Dallandra as Rhodry's teacher - maybe in his next incarnation?
I love Gwin so much, and canon treated him so badly! It's such a tragedy that he spent half his life in love with a man who really did love him back, he just didn't have the self-awareness or courage to say so until years after Gwin was dead, it's awful. So an AU where Gwin and Rhodry did get together would be great! But any Gwin story would be lovely, really. Maybe just a slice of life finding happiness in Aberwyn some other way, or something about his childhood?
Canon divergence AUs are one of my all time favourite things and I feel like Deverry would be ripe for them! An AU where Rhys wasn't infertile, for example - this would mean that Rhodry would never be recalled, and maybe that the Old One would never use him as the centre of his Bardek plot - what would Jill and Rhodry's lives be like if they spent their lives on the road? Would Jill still find her way to the dweomer? Would Rhodry still find out the truth about his father?
Or what about an AU where Gwin survives his illness and goes on the road with Rhodry when he has to leave Aberwyn? An AU where Jill met Dallandra before she met Nevyn? Really, go wild!
Hilary Tamar mysteries - Sarah Caudwell
Desmond Ragwort
Julia Larwood
Michael Cantrip
Selena Jardine
Everything about this fandom is just charming and delightful (except for the murders, I guess? Also the tax dodging in the third book has... not aged well) and I'd love any kind of story that gave me more of these characters, more of their relationships and hijinks and absurdity.
This is an AND not an OR request - while I love all the characters and I love pretty much all possible combinations and pairings, the thing I most want to see is the four of them together in some way - interacting, working together, whatever you like. Mostly because the thought of any one or two of them getting left out would make me really sad! I would be equally thrilled by gen, by ship fic involving any subset of the four, or by poly.
I'd love a casefic/adventure, I'd love some kind of missing scene from any of the books, I'd love slice-of-life - honestly just a standard evening of bickering and sarcasm over dinner would make me very, very happy. All the characters and their relationships with each other are just so hilarious and great. Selena's calm competence as she takes care of Julia is delightful - as is Julia herself, in all her scatty wildness. I really love how the two of them interact! Ragwort and Cantrip spend a lot of time bickering and not enough time working together, for my taste - I love the brief hints in canon that they do actually care about each other and I'd love to see more of that! Cantrip and Julia's bickering sibling-esque relationship is also fantastic - particularly their novel! And I love that Julia is the sexually-active pursuer and Ragwort is the one delicately holding onto his virtue in their relationship. I feel like Selena and Cantrip didn't interact as much - or if they did, it was less memorable - but I'd love to see more of them together!
I love Hilary too and would be delighted if Hilary showed up - outsider POV on the four of them, deus ex machina, just general busybodying - though please don't gender Hilary if you do. (I realise this is kind of tricky with pronouns, I am fine with using 'they' in a gender-neutral way or slightly awkward phrasing to avoid pronouns altogether).
Julia/Selena and Cantrip/Ragwort are probably my favourite subpairings, if you wanted to write shipfic, but honestly any of the het possibilities would be lovely too. And I'd absolutely adore some kind of poly fic, or an orgy - I feel like they'd all be up for it, and the kind of slightly-absurd scenario required to (figuratively) get them all into bed together seems like it would be perfectly in line with the books.
I do love a good trope, too, so if you wanted to do something like 'forced to get married (for the tax benefits!) AU' or 'sedoretu AU' - or 'forced to get married as a sedoretu (for the tax benefits!) AU' - I would absolutely adore it.
Finisterre: The Nighthorses - C. J. Cherryh
Danny Fisher
The setting of these books is so immediately harsh and memorable, but as is usual for Cherryh, it's the characters that have stuck with me. I like pretty much every character in the tagset and would enjoy a story where any of them appeared - but I do like Danny as a protagonist, and would really like to read more about him.
Danny's an interesting, and interestingly flawed, protagonist - in some ways he's the standard 'teenage boy in over his head, succeeds anyway' but Cherryh does also show him failing in some interesting and unexpected ways. And by the second book, he's definitely taking on more of a mature, adult role; I'd like to see what he'd become after a few more years of experience - perhaps taking on a mentor role for another younger rider, or having some kind of adventure with another character, or just his life with Cloud. I love his relationship with Cloud, Cloud is so great! A story about their first meeting, and Danny's very early days as a rider, would also be lovely.
I've got to say, I also found Danny's character a lot more interesting if I read him as closeted and queer, with a massive crush on Guil (and later I can definitely see Carlo as having a crush on Danny!) If Danny and Carlo end up partners, it could well be in the way that Guil and Aby were partners, and I would be very interested in reading about that.
I could definitely read Danny's constant fixation on 'oh no, what if these intimidatingly competent older men do ~something terrible~ to me once we're out in the wilderness together' as actually subconsciously wanting that thing to happen, too - though given it's Cherryh, a straight-up fear of sexual assault would also be reasonable! And I can see a bit of a parallel to common queer experiences in Danny's experience of his teenage awakening that drives him away from his fundamentalist, religious family into a dangerous but alluring life on the margins of society. The riders are certainly more sexually open and free than the religious townspeople, even if I don't remember any explicitly queer characters coming up.
Either way, given that a large part of this story is 'cowboys in space' I'd love to see something a bit queer about it, whether that's Danny and Carlo together as partners after the end of the second book, or Danny and Guil having some kind of moment together, or really any m/m ship involving Danny! But I'd also love a gen relationship between Danny and Carlo, or Danny and Guil.
If you'd like to write porn, there's some great possibilities with the canon influence of nighthorses in heat - it would be really interesting to see how different gender combinations among the horses or the humans would affect how that went, too! We've seen what happens when a male horse and rider meet a female horse and rider, but what happens when the gender configurations aren't so neatly heterosexual?
I am familiar with Cherryh's Alliance/Union books (I haven't read Alliance Rising or most of the Chanur books) and would absolutely adore some kind of crossover, if you'd like to write that!
A Charm of Magpies series - KJ Charles
Frank Merrick
Lucien Vaudrey
I enjoyed this series, and found the central romance to be fine... but honestly the only ship I really cared about was Frank and Lucien. I'm doing gay romance wrong, haha! Their backstory is just so fascinating to me, and so is their current relationship dynamic - master and servant on the surface, but almost equals by this point, which I do really love. I definitely have a thing for individuals who are trapped in rigid societal roles (class, in this case) and still do their best to live as equals together.
I would honestly be equally happy with a relationship between them or with gen, so long as it was focused on the two of them and their partnership. If you do write gen, though, please no Lucien/Stephen, even as background; the canon books gave me enough of their relationship, I'm not interested in reading any more. I don't mind Frank/Jenny as background, but it also doesn't interest me very much.
I feel like the backstory between Lucien and Frank is just so epic! Like, they were both sent to the other side of the world as lost teenagers, with only each other to rely on; they went through some pretty dark places, only to pull themselves up and build a life where they could use their skills and be happy. I love it so much - any story set from any part of this period would be fantastic, there's so much potential for adventures, getting together, realising how much one character trusts and needs the other...
Alternatively, if you wanted to write something set in the canon era, maybe the plot of the first book didn't happen the same way, and Lucien just came back to England with Frank to work through his feelings about his father and his inheritance without the whole magical side plot involving Stephen? I would love to see more about Frank's POV on them coming back together (and then eventually choosing to leave for good).
But really, any story between the two of them would be amazing!
The Immortals series - Tamora Pierce
Daine Sarrasri
Rikash Moonsword
It's been more than twenty years and I'm still gutted by what happened to Rikash. I loved him and his snark so much! And I loved his gradual, tentative friendship with Daine - how they both hated that they were becoming friends, but couldn't help how much they liked each other - and how that friendship was the path to Daine becoming more tolerant and understanding of the immortals - and then he died. And I cried.
"Enemies forced to work together by circumstances" and "enemies to friends" are two of my favourite tropes, and I love how good Daine and Rikash are for these them! They're both so clever and competent, and I love how much they respect each other even when they still can't stand each other. And then when they finally end up working together on the same side, it's so good - canon just didn't give me enough!
I would love, love, love a fix it! Maybe Rikash was only mostly dead. Maybe he was dead, but the Graveyard Hag brought him back. Maybe, a decade after the Immortals War, Daine stumbles across a Rikash who has been resurrected by means unknown. Maybe there was weird time travel involved. I don't really mind how you do it, I would just love to see him come back!
But honestly, I would love just as much to see something more happening between Daine and Rikash in canon - a missing scene, a missing moment, a small adventure - just a bit more than what we were able to get in the books. And I am fine with mentions of Rikash's canonical death, but I would prefer that it's not the primary focus of any fic I receive.
Pairing-wise, I would be equally happy with shipfic or gen - I ship them a lot, but I also just love their friendship, either would make me very happy. I don't love Daine/Numair on its own, but the idea of a Daine/Rikash/Numair poly relationship fascinates me, and if you wanted to explore that I would be thrilled! (I am also fine if Daine/Numair appears as background to a Daine&Rikash friendship fic, as long as the focus is on Daine&Rikash not Numair.)
I am okay with Daine/Rikash porn, if you want to get creative! Or maybe as part of his resurrection, Rikash is temporary turned into a human? (Though to be honest, even if that did happen, I can't see him staying human for long - there's already a canon way for a human to turn into a Stormwing, after all!)
Basically, any Daine and Rikash story would make me happy!
Thank you so much for writing for me!
