yuletide 2017 letter!

[delga]

dear yuletider, thank you so much for your eagerness! i know i’m a little behind the curve this year. i’m pretty excited about shenanigans, though, so let’s mosey on.

first of all, please know that i am super pumped that we have some shared interests. this automatically makes you A-OKAY. i hope you have fun writing for the challenge this year - yt should be mellow as all get out, and to wit, please know that all optional details truly are optional. i am going to be p s y c h e d whatever you write so if the below does not gel with you, skip it for the story you’ve got bubbling away. that you’re writing for me at all is a gift; thank you, and go easy on yourself.

i consider myself to be a fairly relaxed reader of fic? i don’t have a lot of no’s as such, but as a general rule of thumb: my squicks are zombies and vomit. yeah. real sexy. i am pretty grossed out by some straightforward things like misogyny and racism, but otherwise, the things i love are deep-dives into characters. character > plot, though i looooove plotty fics too. I like angst-with-a-happy-ending, pining, AUs, lols, srs fic. i like stories that run straight; i like stories that play on form. (i feel like last year’s letter has a pretty good handle on this stuff, so please go back a post if you want more info.)

every year i have to go back and look up what i actually requested. every year!

killjoys. this show is such a fucking riot; i love it so much! it's just the right side of nonsense mixed with some heavy-duty character and plot work. the way season 2 handles mythology and reality lit me up from the inside. i love stories that handle mythology because the realm of myth is supposed to be a level up from the people, right? except it is people. that's brilliant, and the show did a fantastic job of handling that.

really what i would love is anything that fills in the gaps. the show does a good job of going back and giving you the backstories, but, like, what was dutch and alvis' deal pre-show? how does johnny get from being ditched by his brother to crawling onto lucy? what is it that makes him and dutch such a tight unit?alternatively, that's a ship with a lot of emotions bottled up on it, right? lucy's crew have a LOT of feelings, and they leak them everywhere they go. how do they handle the fallout from one of dutch's schemes? what does it mean to the brothers that dutch has history with alvis? who are these people without the defining moments of their lives?

seriously: go wild. tell the big story.

timeless. I ATE THIS SHOW IN A SINGLE WEEKEND so if you didn't match on it and are looking for something else, hit this up.

i am obsessed with time travel stories, and how reality does or does not waver in your absence, and timeless really trips into that. i enjoyed the intense! emotional! gambits! everyone makes, from the trio through to garcia, through to anyone who gets involved with them. no-one has any chill. no-one. not an ounce.

i think i threw out a bunch of suggestions in my sign-up: what if these people never met? what if they stopped garcia the first time around? what if lucy didn't lose her sister? what if she was indoctrinated into rittenhouse early on? what if wyatt succeeded in saving his wife? why does rufus trust any of these people they are all kind of terrible?

pick an event; write a story around it. pick an episode; write a story around that. write about how people and history are complex, and how you don't get one without the other. anything. anything!

justified. look, i cheated a bit here because the character set was woefully incomplete, and the characters i actually care about were not on the list. i love tim and rachel, and if you're up for it, please check out last year's letter for details. otherwise: loretta! loretta is fantastic. i love anny story where she goes toe-to-toe with someone and comes out top by virtue of being smarter and keener and 100% free of bullshit. i recently rewatched the first couple episodes of season 2, and dang, that girl was young. where does she come from? the show is kind of the birth of who she becomes, but what came before that? where does it lead her? what are the woulda-coulda-shoulda's in her life?

will also be glad of: episode tags; five times stories; family histories; the rest.

king arthur: legend of the sword. i always like to include a film request because if nothing else takes your fancy, you can watch a film pretty quickly. THIS FILM IS BONKERS. it's ostensibly a trip into mytharc via...lad culture? i guess? but it's also a story about what you inherit and why. arthur inherits a magic sword and, well, a fucking kingdom, but he's also inheriting expectations, which is a lot to put on a dude.

i actually really, really loved the mage, and it seemed to me that she had already gone through her own version of that journey before having to lead this man-child by the hand out into the light. she isn't gentle about it, either; the stakes are pretty high for her. the mage has to have blind faith in arthur, and arthur has to trust her completely, which he is pretty bad at to begin with. what does it take to fortify something that tenuous? all the big feelings in the room.

i would enjoy reading a parallel between the two of them as they grow up - the things that make them different, and the things that make them the same. but i also like coming-of-age stories in general, and fleshing out the growing-up montage is always a resounding yes from me.

star trek: discovery. wow, this show sure has gone places since the pilot. i like it! it's just not what i thought it was going to be? not a bad thing.

that said, the story i wanted from the show, and wanted from the pilot, is the story of phillipa georgiou. my request is pretty straightforward: the life and times of phillipa georgiou, captain of the federation starfleet vessel shenzou.

strike. ahahaha, oh my gosh, i was not at all ready for the many buttons this show pushed for me. i am verrrry big on the character work here - the way the two of them can't help but look at one another with fondness. yes, strike is a mess; yes, robin has something tucked away in her past, but! but. they're steely in their own ways, and they're tender towards one another. it's incredibly endearing, and i want to roll around in it forever

i guess this year's theme is: big feelings.

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this is normally the part where i share a bunch of links but i am horrific at tagging on tumblr, so i don't even know if there are links worth looking at. just in case: these are my previous yt letters; this is my tumblr. i write at a03 under delgaserasca, and if you need to ask someone about things i dig in fic, hit up hestia8 or sonictoaster.

HAVE FUN FRIEND. I DEMAND IT. (kindly.)

xoxo delga