Dear Yuletide Writer

[hellabaloo]

First off, hi, hello! Thank you for writing for me! Second, thinking of prompts and putting together my letter are some of my favorite parts of Yuletide and I can throw out A LOT of ideas, but what I want most to read is a story you want to write. It could be one you’ve been tinkering with for years or maybe one of my ideas catches your imagination. Whatever the case, please think of these prompts as guidelines: there if you need them, but don’t worry about writing all them in one fic or following them down to the letter.

Have fun writing and I’m looking forward to reading what you come up with!

General Information

My AO3 handle is heyoh, and I'm still mostly hanging around on tumblr as historiograph on tumblr.

Previous Yuletide letters: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012

If you have any questions or want any clarification on a part of my letter or sign-up, please reach out through the mods!

⇒ Jump to:
Jelle's Marble Runs │ Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Perry Mason │ Ted Lasso │ Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist

General Likes:

An incomplete list of things I like:

I love longfics that are sprawling epics and I love tight, short fics that are perfectly contained little morsels. I love casefic and gapfillers and slice-of-life fic that give you real sense of the characters and the atmosphere of canon. I love AUs: canon divergence/for-want-of-a-nail/what-if type things! organized crime/hitmen! cowboy/Western! regency! daemon/HDM! mecha/space colonies! boarding school! political thriller! secret royalty! art thief! parallel universes! magic! time travel! tattoo artist! and many more!

I love tropes: any version of fake dating/pretend relationships, pining, soulmates/soulmarks/soulbonds (especially if they come with a side of mental connection/telepathy), presumed dead with a dramatic reappearance, bodyswaps, woke up married, amnesia (classic fandom-style and Memento-style anterograde amnesia), clothes-sharing, costume porn, anything hurt/comfort, friends to lovers, enemies to lovers to friends, UST (ALL THE UST!), huddling for warmth, bed-sharing, groundhog day/time loops, loyalty kink, competency kink, etc. I’m also always intrigued when tropes are subverted or my expectations for how something is going to play out are upended.

I love gen and friendship-focused fics and I love shippy fics and porn. See the Yuleporn section below for more in-depth kinks and squicks lists!

General Dislikes:

Please no rape/non-con, necro, mpreg, scat, major character deaths, terminal illness, infidelity, or animal death or cruelty. Further fandom-specific DNWs are included in their respective sections, if I have them.

AU's I'm not a fan of: high school or college AUs, coffee shop AUs, omegaverses, and zombie apocalypses.

Tropes I’m not a fan of: match-making by overly-invested friends or family, miscommunication as a plot device, and whump.

Yuleporn

I love many flavors of porn: vanilla, with feelings, wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am PWPs—it's all good!

Kink Likes: fun giggly sex, intercrural, inexperienced (but not necessarily virginal) characters enjoying themselves and having premature orgasms, spanking, touch starvation, kink discovery (e.g. one partner starts dirtytalking because they’re being funny and the other partner’s reaction can be summed up as “fuck, that’s hot”), mutual masturbation and masturbating for a partner, anything size difference related (especially forehead kisses!), size kink, frottage and coming in pants, pain play, hair-pulling, sex pollen/heats, breathplay, somnophilia, playing with power differentials, accidental stimulation, edging, watersports (particularly of the controlling/"I'll tell you when and how you can go" variety) and ass-worship.

Squicks: total power exchange or 24/7 BDSM relationships (elements of d/s or bondage are fine), animal/pet play, and infantilization/age play.

Requested Fandoms

⇒ Jelle's Marble Runs │ Red Eye, Speedy, & Kinnowin; This is an amazing crack-treated-seriously concept (who knew I could get so invested in marbles ""competing""??) and I love everything about it and I will love anything that you may write about it. Please feel free to treat this as 'OR' matching and include any of my requested characters or their teams. Or get weird with Marblearth/Marble League worldbuilding, how does any of this even work in-universe??

Available on Youtube.

Thank goodness for John Oliver and Last Week Tonight shouting these guys out, because Jelle's Marble Runs has been a consistent bright spot for me this year. I'll admit to being a total bandwagon fan, but there's just so much commitment from the set-up of the events, to the commentary, to the fans getting all legit sports fannish about marbles of all things that it was impossible for me not to fall in love. There's so much word of god and fanon lore on the wiki and the subreddit to explore, but don't feel like you need to incorporate any of that—I'm still learning bits and bobs of trivia and history myself!

Very shallowly, I picked Crazy Cat's Eyes to root for because I think they're the prettiest marbles, but what a season they had! I was expecting some totally average finish, but a top 5 finish is completely respectable and our best finish yet! And way to show the doubters they're more than just models and belong in the league. I love a rivalry narrative, and man, did O'rangers and Savage Speeders deliver this year. Savage Speeders making an incredible comeback to snatch away the league and I almost feel bad for O'rangers when it was looking like they'd make up for their disappointing 2019 Marble League finish. (Almost, because O'rangers fans are so dramatic about everything, even when their team is doing well ;)

There has been some incredible fan art of the various Marble League teams that re-imagine them as either sports anime style characters or cartoony, vaguely humanoids, so feel free to treat the characters as not!marbles. But I also love bits like the marble's eye view and how straight everything is played, so if you want to get into marble infrastructure or how marble sex works, I AM HERE FOR IT.

Do Not Want: COVID-19/pandemics (or the Marblearth equivalent), sports league "bubbles," or forced to quarantine

‣ Prompts

◊ I'd love basically anything about Red Eye or the Crazy Cat's Eyes in general. Backstory and history, training, early hopes for the season, team bonding, the early high points of the Halfpipe and Longjump events to the controversial resolution of the Marble Marathon, whatever! Pick your favorite sports movie trope and run with it!

◊ What's the in-universe sports coverage like? Is the Marble League super popular or is it a niche sport like bowling or darts? Do the team twitter accounts get into The Bantz? Who's calling into their local sports talk radio with hot takes about individual marbles' performances and their teams? (I'm imagining something like Jason Concepcion's Sports Guy bit, but there are so many possibilities!)

◊ I love the set up for the Winner's Room trope in Hockey RPF fandom—how could that translate to the Marble League? Do the marbles even have sex?

◊ Time loops are one of my very favorite AU situations in a sports fandom. The agony of needing to experience a heartbreaking loss over and over, the ecstasy of finally making a break through and not only changing a bad result but also learning or accepting something along the way. Who's in the loop? What result are they trying to change? How do they break out?

◊ Fic that digs into the Savage Speeders/O'rangers rivalry! Is it purely sporting? Historical or recent? Exacerbated by free-agents switching between the two teams? Is there a personal rivalry between Kinnowin and Speedy?

◊ I love that other support characters were also nominated: what are the interactions between the Ball Bearings and the teams like? Is Speedy a known Diva? Did Red Eye once get suspended for threatening a Security marble once? Does Kinnowin have a pet conspiracy theory about them? Give me all the behind-the-scenes league gossip!

◊ 2021 Marble League predictions! Is there a draft or do teams scout rookies on their own? Who's making a fool of themselves in the offseason? Who's posting their workout to instagram? Who's taking the best vacation photos of themselves and their teammates on a tropical beach somewhere?

(back to top)

⇒ Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World │ William Blakeney; Will Blakeney is such an interesting character and I'd love any sort of fic about him! From a gapfiller set during the movie or post-canon as he continues on with his career, anything! I particularly like the canon setting and would prefer something set during the Napoleonic period. I ship Will/Peter and Jack/Stephen.

Available streaming on Hulu and for rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, and YouTube.

Master and Commander is one of those movies I find myself rewatching on the regular because it's got great characters and a fun, satisfying story. I love the emphasis on how the ship is akin to a floating slice of England and how it's this mass of interconnected and sometimes conflicting people, all with their own duties, wants, and needs. There's an aspect of found family to it all that I find really appealing.

There's so much depth to William Blakeney that sometimes I forget he's only supposed to be what, thirteen or fourteen? He goes through so much—from losing his arm and needed to learn how to be a midshipman without it to and striving to be useful to Dr. Maturin with his collecting and eventually losing what's obviously his closest friend, both in age and feeling—but there's always this sense of calmness and rationality about him that I find really quite astounding.

I totally love how both Stephen and Jack relate to Will; they're both sort of in the father-figure category, and yet very different as you might expect. But I wish we got to see more of Will and his other superior officers: Pullings and Mowett and Allen. What was life was like in the midshipmen's berth aboard the Surprise?

I love Will & Peter both as friends and fumbling teenagers figuring out how these 'more than friends' feelings work. I also ship Jack/Stephen if you want to include hints of it in the background. I've read the first few books if you want to include any references to actions or cruises.

Do Not Want: more than canon-typical violence, body horror, emphasis on Blakeney's amputation (mentions are fine), fic heavily emphasizing period-typical homophobia

‣ Prompts

◊ More Will backstory! There's a brief line that suggests he's not only gentry, but aristocracy. Despite this, his father was a Navyman and he's following in those footsteps to his mother's chagrin. Is Will actually like an Earl? Does the crew know? Do his family connections help him get promoted? Can he use them to help get Jack out of a tight spot or put in a good word for Tom?

◊ Blakeney and Dr. Maturin finally present the discovery of the flightless cormorant to the Royal Society.

◊ I loved Jack visiting Will in the infirmary and doing his best to be comforting and little moments like him holding Blakeney's sextant and would love anything more about Will and Jack through the years—the engagement that gets Will promoted to acting lieutenant, Will getting promoted to master and commander and taking command of his own ship, Will visiting Jack in his retirement, anything!

◊ Will feels obligated to personally return Peter's trunk of belongings back to his family after the Surprise docks in England.

◊ I am a sucker for pining and messy feelings and would love for some melancholic Will/Peter pining or after Peter's death Will transferring his feelings to either Stephen or Jack who have to let him down gently.

◊ Do you have a favorite historical fact about the British Navy in the Napoleonic Wars or do you love a particular maritime superstition? Lay it on me!

◊ I am totally down for a crossover, set concurrently with the movie or at some nebulous time in the future: Will meets (serves under?) Captain Wentworth, or he's on transport duty and argues the relative merits of the Army vs Navy with Colonel Fitzwilliam, he has a run-in with Jonathan Strange or Mr. Norrell, or he meets Captain Laurence and Temeraire!

(back to top)

⇒ Perry Mason │ Perry Mason; I adore characters like Perry—strong moral compasses and compassion hidden under a veneer of cynicism and and general pricklyness except to the people he's close with. I'd love any fic that focuses on Perry, his backstory or what it's like moving from investigator to lawyer, or anything about any of his relationships with Della, E.B., Pete, Lupe, or Hamilton (the two latter of which, I definitely ship him with).

Available on HBO.

I loved the original Perry Mason series and was initially worried about it getting an HBO makeover. But because they're so different—in tone, with how they handle Perry's backstory, his relationship to Della and Paul—it was easy to fall in love with this new iteration on its own merits. And there are a ton of them: I love the show's slow build of the Dodson trial, showing exactly how long these things take, focusing on a single case and getting into all the dirty, nitty-gritty of it, and how the different characters, and our understanding of them, evolve over the series, to name a few.

There's so much about this Perry Mason that I love. The WWI, shellshocked soldier backstory, his fraught relationship with his ex-wife and desire to be there for his son, how he shoulders all of the responsibility even when the weight is killing him, deciding to become a lawyer because the whole system is stacked against Emily Dodson and it's the right thing to do, it's so good!

And then, on top of all that, I think they nailed the updates of Della Street and Paul Drake. The two of them are so important to that classic Perry Mason dynamic I love and contribute really different perspectives to the investigation and trial strategy. The origin story for Mason & Associates that this season turned into made me really invested in how the team all came together and then how they'll all work together moving forward.

I ship Perry with both Lupe and Hamilton and don't have any strong feelings about Perry's sexuality.

Do Not Want: pandemics, forced to quarantine, or heavy emphasis of period-typical homophobia (canon-style mentions and/or allusions are fine)

‣ Prompts

◊ Canon was not stingy with the Perry whump, but I'd like to see a little more of the comfort portion of the hurt/comfort equation. Any character can do the comforting, platonic or romantic, I just want Perry forced to be vulnerable, admit he's hurt, and be taken care of! How would Della deal with him? Paul? Hamilton?

◊ Casefic! Twisty and serious or light and breezy, I'd love any sort of casefic as Perry, Della, and Paul set out on their own. Or even a typical day at Mason & Associates.

◊ I love Perry and Della's friendship and want more. What was their first meeting like? When was the first time Della called Perry because she knew she could count on him? What's is like for Della to be working for Perry vs E.B.?

◊ That look Paul gives Perry, when Perry misunderstands his comment about the prostitute was brilliant and terrible because it gave me a taste of what this partnership could be in the future, but it came so late in the game! So, I'd love anything post-season one: Perry and Paul doing more investigating together, Paul introducing Perry to Clara, Perry being slow on the uptake, anything really!

◊ Anything Perry/Hamilton, I ship it like burning. Maybe kink discovery—Perry strikes me as someone who knows what certain kinks are, but has never experienced them and Hamilton ferrets them out?

◊ Lupe's pursuit of the Mason dairy farm was a great subplot and I'd love more of her and Perry's relationship, how they met, and started sleeping together. Or PWP, it's all good!

◊ I wanted that imagined scene, where Perry gets Detective Ennis to confess on stand a la the classic, dramatic Perry Mason courtroom confession to be real so badly! So, a fic where Perry does actually get someone to confess dramatically on the stand (and maybe Hamilton is wildly turned on by Perry's competent lawyer schtick y/y?).

◊ If you're up for it, I'd love any sort of crossover (meet in a bar, Perry's representing someone's case, even just cameos!) with other 1930's crime in LA canons like Chinatown or L.A. Confidential or with Hollywood stars like Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford, or your favorite from the period.

(back to top)

⇒ Ted Lasso │ any (Ted Lasso, Rebecca Welton, Keeley Jones, Roy Kent, Jamie Tartt, Sam Obisanya); I LOVE EVERYONE IN THIS BAR. Seriously, I will be happy with anything you write for this one- team!feels, AU where they weren't relegated, character study, porn, whatever! I love Ted and how he's cheerful and optimistic but not naive. I love Rebecca and her plan to ruin Richmond, but oh no, she actually likes these losers? I love how Keeley is so much more than a WAG and knows what she wants and goes for it. I love old man Roy who knows his glory years are behind him and still keeps playing. I love Sam trying to find his feet and just how good he is. And I even love Jamie, asshole that he is, who tries so hard to cling to his image.

Available on Apple TV+.

How on earth they managed to make such a warm, delightful show out of such a ridiculous premise, I will never know. But I was charmed! Am still utterly charmed! And I want all the fic! Literally anything you want to write, I will love! I totally appreciated how none of the characters are one note, that each of them has their own narrative going, and how those narrative all intersect and ripples from one character doing something affects more than the characters in their immediate circle, sometimes in unexpected ways.

And I'm invested in everyone getting what they want, it's kind of ridiculous. I want Rebecca to succeed in using AFC Richmond to get back at Rupert (how did she manage to get the team in the first place??), while wanting Ted to become the best damn Premier League manager in history. I want Keeley to get everything (and everyone) she wants, and can totally see her succeeding at anything she really puts her mind to. And I want Sam, Jamie, and Roy—all footballers at different stages in their careers—to get the recognition they all deserve and succeed off the pitch, just as much as on it.

I love the sportsball-ness of the show, and how they ground it in the real world—Scott Van Pelt and Sports Center cameos! Arlo White is tweeting out faux match-day commentary prep! They have an away-game against Everton curse!—but please don't feel like you have to incorporate any of that if you're uninterested in the sports aspects of the show.

Do Not Want: career-ending injuries (mentions of Roy's injury from the last episode are fine), sports league "bubbles," COVID-19/pandemics, or forced to quarantine

‣ Prompts

◊ We've seen Ted and AFC Richmond in the Premiership, what about next season in the Championship?? I'd love anything post-canon essentially: Ted learning about competing in the FA Cup and League Cup at the same time as the regular season, Sam doing so well a big club comes asking about a loan, Roy officially retiring and working through what to do with his life if he isn't a footballer, or whatever!

◊ I have a stupid soft spot for characters like Jamie—assholes who work so hard to hide their gooey centers. I'd love fic about him adjusting to life back at Man City (missing Richmond? the team?? Ted???) or maybe he learns Ted really wasn't behind his leaving (and in fact was very upset about it) or more about his relationship with his mom.

◊ Keeley as a character completely surprised and delighted me and I want more! Backstory fic about her previous footballer boyfriends or how she became a celebrity or fic about the branding deals she does with the Richmond players. She may not care about the sport, but what if she's picked up a lot by being around it and becomes an agent and is damn good at her job?

◊ How they managed to make Roy/Keeley feel like slowburn and yet resolve the UST in a handful of episodes is straight up witchcraft. I loved the progression of their relationship and how just grown-up they are together and would love to see more! Keeley getting Roy to confess his kinky desires, Roy cooking for Keeley, AU where she's not a WAG and they meet come other way, I will take anything.

◊ I love the odd couple friendship between Sam and Roy—Roy giving Sam pointers about playing to the crowd, Sam reminding Roy how much fun football can be, all of it! I love fics about players adjusting to new places and finding family in their teams and/or older players sharing hard-earned wisdom with younger players and would love something about Sam settling into Richmond or Sam and Roy kindling a friendship during really different parts of their careers.

◊ Keeley and Rebecca were such an unexpected and delightful pair and I want more of them! Romantic, platonic, whatever! Keeley goes back to Rebecca's hotel room instead of Roy's in Liverpool or Rebecca's in the midst of midlife discovery that she's not exactly straight and Kelley is there for her or Rebecca thinks Keeley is just a gal being a pal when she compliments Rebecca but Keeley is dying because all her regular moves aren't working, or insert your favorite trope here!

◊ I can't decide if I ship Ted and Rebecca romantically, but their relationship is a huge part of why I love this show. Rebecca's journey from hiring Ted as an act of sabotage to being reluctantly charmed to deciding to stick with him through relegation IS SO GOOD. And Ted! His loyalty and general support of her is (beating Rupert at darts! bringing in the busker at the gala! the biscuits!) is something I didn't know I wanted until this show. So! Give me more of Ted and Rebecca! How are they planning for next season? Do they have a bonding session over their divorces? Or, if you do ship them, feel free to convince me I should ship them too :3

◊ B O D Y S W A P fic :D Imagine the chaos. I'd love to see this with any two characters: Jamie and Roy (what does Roy do with Jamie's younger knees? what does Jamie do when he can't rely on his athleticism?), Ted and Rebecca (has Rebecca secretly always wanted to be a manager and this is actually a sweet gig? Ted can coach a team, but he's never wanted be an owner less after walking a mile in Rebecca's shoes), Nate and Sam (??? I honestly don't have idea what their reactions might be), or whoever!

◊ Apple did a promo for the show with Jose Mourinho and I want more of the Ted Lasso Charm Offensive and him turning to his fellow Premier League managers for advice and camaraderie.

(back to top)

⇒ Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist │ Zoey Clarke, Simon Haynes, Joan, Ava Price; Feel free to treat this request like 'OR' matching and write any combination of my requested characters- I ship Zoey/Simon and Ava/Joan but would also love gen! This is such a fun show—except when it's not and I love how it keeps the two balanced throughout the season. I'd love any sort of gapfiller set during the season, backstory set pre-canon, or imagining where season 2 might go.

Available on NBC and Hulu.

Zoey, as someone who's a. not super in-touch with her own emotions and b. not someone who's very pop-culture savvy a really interesting choice for a "superpower" like hearing people's inner songs. And I like how throughout the show she's gotten better at interpreting and helping people, without fixing their problems for them.

Usually, I am not into characters like Simon. But I really liked the way the show handled his relationship with Jessica and their subsequent breakup and the development of his relationship with Zoey—they showed it all in its messy glory. We haven't gotten much of it in canon, but I wouldn't mind a darker exploration of Zoey manipulating Simon with her superpower. But I would also love a light-hearted take on them and get them together!

I love to see two women, engineering managers in tech and I love how different Joan and Ava are: in their approaches, personalities, ultimate goals, and what they're willing to do to get the job done. And yet there are similarities and parallels to each other that I wish had gotten more exploration on the show. I loved the implied history between them and want all the backstory fic that explains how they got to where they are in canon.

I don't mind Zoey/Max, but I'd prefer Zoey/Simon to be endgame in any shippy fic including Zoey. (And that scene where Max calls Simon to tell him about Zoey's dad? Ngl, made me consider an OT3.) If that's not your thing, I'd be more than happy with gen too!

Do Not Want: COVID-19/pandemics or forced to quarantine. While I have general DNW for major character death and terminal illness, for this fandom, I mean I don't want fic focusing exclusively on these topics. Mentioning canonical deaths, grief, how characters are processing their emotions, or the practical realities of terminal illness are all fine, I just don't want that to be the only (or even major) focus of a story.

‣ Prompts

◊ I mean, I have to prompt for songfic right? This is the one fandom where it's actually canonical, SO. Is there a song you wish they'd done? Who is Zoey meant to be helping? Are they singing in a totally different style or language (Bollywood! Opera! Kpop!) that makes it hard for Zoey to help or understand what they're singing about?

◊ Anything Zoey/Simon, basically! AU where Simon was never engaged or Zoey tries dating Max and they just don't work out or whatever! Would be completely happy with PWP for these two!

◊ More Simon! Backstory, gapfiller from his perspective, Zoey telling him about her superpower and his reaction to it, anything!

◊ I love when characters re-evaluate their sexuality later in life, and post-divorce, I'd love a fic about Joan discovering or feeling free to explore her sexuality in way she never could while married. (Would love for this to end in Joan/Ava, but it doesn't need to!)

◊ There were a couple moments in canon that made me think Joan and Ava have a much longer history together than just working at SPRQ Point together. Did they first meet in college? Have they been working in Silicon Valley since the first dot com boom and bust? Did they use to be friends and then had a falling out?? I'd love a bad-breakup backstory and make-up post Joan's divorce sort of fic!

◊ I want to know everything about Ava, tbh. How did she get into tech/computer programming? Has she always been ruthless or did she learn it was a way to get ahead in a competitive industry?

◊ So Zoey can hear people's "heartsongs." What if she was the outside POV on something else incredibly tropey and fanficcy like a time loop or soulmarks?

◊ I think Zoey's got some great relationships and would love anything friendship-focused with Mo or mentor related with Joan. I don't really have a specific prompts, but I love both of those friendships and would love anything focused on them!

(back to top)

And if you've made it this far, you are my people, thanks for reading, and happy Yuletide!