Yuletide 2015 letter
Oct. 17th, 2015 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitDear Yuletide writer,
First of all, thank you for writing for me. I'm thrilled that you share my interest in one of these fandoms, and I can't wait to read your story.
What follows is a little more information about what I like and don't like. But I want to say right away that I hope you will write a story you find interesting and enjoy writing, even if it goes in a different direction from the things I mention here. It could well turn out to be the story I didn't know I wanted.
The thing that appeals to me most in a fanfic is character exploration. I love getting to know characters with more depth and intimacy than in canon, as well as seeing them in a new light or from a new perspective. Character studies and stories that focus on emotional developments rather than outside events work well for me. I certainly would be happy to read something plotty if you enjoy writing plot (and if you do, I envy you!), but I look at plot as a bonus rather than a requirement.
Something else I adore is worldbuilding, whether it's a fantasy world with magic, an alternate history, or the real world we live in. I love the details of material culture (clothes and food and such) but also, or especially, the details of the social world: who's got what kinds of power, how people relate to one another, their jokes and superstitions and traditions and what they do for fun. I will happily wallow in this kind of stuff, so if you like worldbuilding, go wild!
I'm not terribly picky about genre, style, or tone. I like happy stories and melancholy stories, straightforward narratives and stylistic experiments, missing scenes and metafictions, canon-compliance and what-ifs, backstory and futurefic. Feel free to take an idea and run with it. One caveat, however: I'm not a big fan of AUs that completely change the premise of the canon (such as coffee shop AUs, high school AUs, or things like omegaverse or BDSM verses). I love the original settings too much to want to lose them in an AU. My exception to this preference is The Great British Bake-Off, where AUs are among my requests.
You'll notice from my prompts that I love male/male slash, but if that's not your cup of tea, gen is absolutely welcome. I've tried to give gen prompts as well as slashy ones. I'm not much interested in het, though, so I'd rather the story didn't focus on a heterosexual relationship.
If you choose to write slash for me, don't feel obliged to include a sex scene if you'd rather not or if you don't think it develops the characters or the emotional arc. Some stories need a sex scene and others don't; I'm not a huge fan of porn for porn's sake, and I'm every bit as happy with a nonexplicit story as a porntastic one. If you do include a sex scene, my tastes are pretty vanilla.
I should mention my two strong Do Not Wants. Please avoid any rape scenes or even offscreen rape as a focus of the story. Also, while I'm fine with stories including or addressing issues of homophobia and transphobia, I'd rather not receive something terribly bleak and hopeless that's all about the victimization of queer characters.
Requests:
1) Grantchester, Leonard Finch
The fandom: I love the strong lines of friendship holding the characters together, and the sense that they belong to a community, however imperfect and sometimes suffocating it may be. The postwar setting fascinates me, too: there's a feeling of a world that's just recovering from great upheaval and is also undergoing the first stirrings of the changes that will happen in the 1960s.
What intrigues me about Leonard in particular is a combination of several things: his intellect, his diffidence and shyness, his gayness, his femininity and lack of shame about that femininity, the depth of his moral thinking, and his faith. I'm not a Christian myself, but Christian faith and the Anglican tradition in particular are centrally important to Leonard, so I'd prefer a story that doesn't bash Christianity or assume that it's necessarily an oppressive force that Leonard should escape from.
My prompts:
Leonard is so much my favorite that even though "Anything about this character" is everyone's least favorite prompt, I have to say that I really would adore anything about Leonard. But I'll try to be more helpful.
I always love backstory, so I'd welcome something about pre-series Leonard, whether it's his adolescence and the first intimations of his sexuality, the war years (I'm very curious about what he did during the war--he seems not to have been a combatant, but was he in the military or doing some other kind of war work?), or his road to the priesthood.
Shipfic with either Sidney or Ben Blackwood (the young gay man Leonard befriends in episode 4) would be great; I think Leonard is still struggling to accept his sexuality and reconcile it with his faith, and I'd love to see that addressed, perhaps in contrast to Sidney's over-sunny reliance on "tolerance" or Ben's more defiant attitude. Alternatively, I'd also love friendship fic, especially if it's Leonard-Ben (there are not enough stories about gay men's friendships) or an exploration of the uneasy relationship between Leonard and Geordie. (And how much of that unease is actually jealousy--not necessarily erotic jealousy, but it could be--over Sidney?)
Leonard's relationships with other people don't have to be the focus, though. He's got, I think, a strong inner life, and doesn't find it easy to connect to others. An exploration of his complicated personality is more than enough for a story. Not that I object to plot! Leonard having an adventure or solving a mystery (with or without Sidney's help) would be great too.
2) The Great British Bake Off, Paul Hollywood
The fandom:
I love baking and cooking and I love that the show treats them as important skills worth mastering; at the same time, I love how civilized and gentle everyone is about it. Even Paul, while notoriously sharp-tongued, is usually helpful and encouraging, and both aspects of his personality appeal to me. I also really like what looks like a genuine friendship and regard between him and Mary Berry.
My prompts:
I'd be happy with either a relatively serious fic or a silly/cracky fic; for all prompts you should feel free to include Mary, Mel, and/or Sue. If you want to go serious, I'd love something actually about baking, about the craft and the skill of it; one of the things I like about Paul is that he cares so deeply about something that many people would consider trivial. (He cares to the point where he can be a jerk, so feel free to have him be a bit of a jerk in the story, if you like.)
On the sillier side, I'd love something where Paul and Mary interact in their jokey, mocking, affectionate way. They could drink tea and eat cake and vent about the tribulations of filming the Bake Off, or they could drink gin and set the kitchen on fire attempting to drunk!bake something horrendously complicated like a marjolaine. Or if you want to head for the stratosphere of silliness, I'd be very happy with an AU where Paul is secretly a supervillain (world domination through pies?) or not-so-secretly a mad scientist.
In between silly and serious, I'm quite taken with an idea I saw elsewhere about a Second World War AU. Paul could work for the Ministry of Food, struggling to create rationing-compliant recipes while the bombs fall around him. Mary could be working with him, if you like. And if you found a way to include Mel and Sue as rescue workers (like the women in Sarah Waters' Night Watch), I would be thrilled.
Gen is my preference for this fandom, though I wouldn't at all mind Paul flirting with men a little (just like he does onscreen!). I'd prefer that Paul's real offscreen life, such as his marriage and family, be kept out of the story as much as possible.
3) Points - Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett, Istre b'Estorr
The fandom:
I've been a fan of these books since Point of Hopes was published 20 years ago (!), and I could talk for ages about why I love them. The worldbuilding is fantastic: so rich and specific in its detail that it really feels like a world, not a backdrop. I especially love the way the world is based on a time and place--the northern European Renaissance--not often found in fantasy, and the way most characters are part of the urban middle class rather than nobles or peasants. It's a world that's imperfect, with poverty; crime; hierarchies of class, gender, and sexuality; political scheming and political unrest; but at the same time it's not a nightmare of oppression (it's far, far better than its real-history equivalent), and it's a world full of change and hope. In particular, it's a world where queerness is mostly accepted, despite legal inequality, and so the stories are full of queer characters living their lives and having adventures.
Of course I adore the characters, too. Like everyone, I love Nico and Philip, but they get all the fic, and in recent years my attention has turned more to the secondary characters, especially Istre b'Estorr.
My prompts:
Istre intrigues me and I always wish he was more of a presence in the books. I have tons of unanswered questions that could be the basis for a story. How exactly does necromancy work, how did he become a necromancer, what kind of research and teaching does he do at the university? (I would eat up an "academic politics in Astreiant" story like candy.) What was it like for him growing up in Chadron, where necromancy is taboo? What was the full story of his friendship with the late king of Chadron? What about his personal ghosts--who were they and why do they hang around him? What draws such a mild seeming man, and one who can see ghosts, to dueling? Does he have a leman or someone he's involved with? (If you address this, I'd strongly prefer that Istre's love interest be a man--I'm just not into het.) What about other friends besides Nico?
You're more than welcome to include other characters from the novels, including Rathe and Eslingen, so long as the story stays focused on Istre. I'd love to know more about Istre and Nico's friendship, for example, or whether Istre and Philip overcome their mutual caution and become real friends, which they seem to be moving towards in the most recent book.
4) Rejseholdet | Unit One, Allan Fischer, Thomas LaCour
The fandom:
The mysteries are interesting, but above all I love Rejseholdet for the characters. I like ensembles and team stories, and the unit makes a great team, working together and supporting each other even when there's sometimes tension. Furthermore, every character has their own story; nobody's just background or comic relief, everybody has a real personality with nuance and complexity.
The friendship of LaCour and Fischer speaks to me in both its ease and its intensity. I love how they banter and snark, how they play and amuse each other, how they save each other, how they confide in each other as in no one else, how they care for each other more than they can easily express. Each understands the other, and despite their personality differences they're well-suited: LaCour's reserve, calm (usually), and sensitivity balance Fischer's brashness, energy, and protectiveness. Their connection is so profound that they often shy away from it, leaving a lot unsaid, and that just makes them all the more interesting to me.
I ship them, and I'd like a story where their close relationship is central even if it isn't shipfic as such.
My prompts:
Futurefic after the series ends would be great: how do Fischer and LaCour take being separated again, especially after the peculiar intimacy of the undercover operation? Do they communicate and grow closer, do they lose touch and try to forget each other? Alternatively, what if after the events of S2, LaCour leaves the police or is kicked out?
I'm interested in LaCour's clairvoyance, both what it tells him and what it doesn't tell him, and the ways he sometimes misunderstands it. What if it started causing him real problems--what would he do, and what would Fischer do? For that matter, how does Fischer feel about his partner (in whatever sense you want to take that) having intuitions and visions? Is he worried about LaCour? Nervous of what LaCour might sense? Even envious?
If you write a pairing story, feel free to explore possible obstacles to their relationship such as internalized homophobia or the apparent homophobia of police culture, as well as plain old personality clashes and that sort of thing (including LaCour's incidents of violence towards Helene and what that might mean for a relationship with Fischer). My taste in romance is for realism rather than all sunshine and kittens, but I'd prefer to have a happy or at least optimistic ending.
5) The Thrilling Adventure Hour, Colonel Tick-Tock, Bob McCrumbs
The fandom:
It's just really fun. I adore the ridiculous plots, the pop culture references (like David Bowie!Tesla), the not-so-pop culture references (Gilbert and Sullivan jokes!), the strong element of affectionate Doctor Who parody, and the vague steampunk-ness of it all.
Colonel Tick-Tock starts out as a very one-note (and one-joke) character, but then becomes unexpectedly complex: he's a civilized and smug Victorian gentleman who's sometimes a little too fond of putting history back on its ugly path; a hero who saves the world but has a streak of selfishness and even cruelty; an incorrigible flirt who seems to have given his heart--what there is of it--to an ordinary man who works in a fish-and-chips shop. (But then, how ordinary is Bob? After all, he saved the world too.)
It's a canon with almost infinite room for stories.
My prompts:
We never canonically see Colonel Tick-Tock and Bob travelling together, so that's what I'd like. It doesn't have to a full-blown plotty adventure (though if you enjoy writing those, I'd be happy to read one!)--they could be having a little holiday in ancient Sumer or 32nd century Paris. I just want to see them together, either during the time when Bob was the Colonel's confederate or during the future I like to imagine where they get back together. (Maybe in the process they could help poor Patrick Wong get back to his own universe? Because I love Patrick but I don't think he's cut out to be a confederate.)
I think it's pretty clear from canon that they were a couple, so I'd at least like an acknowledgement of that even if the fic isn't particularly shippy in itself.
Funny is good, and so is serious; my favorite Tick-Tock episodes are the ones that have darker or more serious implications. Colonel Tick-Tock's missions aren't always pleasant, nor is he always nice, and I'd be interested to see an exploration of the consequences of his actions (either in history or towards Bob in leaving him behind). For a futurefic I'd prefer a slightly more optimistic take; perhaps he tries to be a better person for Bob's sake?
I'm open to crossovers with the Captain Laserbeam universe or the Sparks Nevada universe, or for that matter with classic Doctor Who--I'd love to see the Colonel meet the Doctor, especially the Second Doctor (with Jamie) or the bookverse Eighth Doctor (with Fitz).
Really the canon is so cracky that you could do almost anything with it and it would work. Have fun!
6) Tintin: Tintin, Captain Haddock
The fandom:
My favorite thing about Tintin is the relationship between Tintin and Haddock. It's a friendship built upon unpromising ground: what do a heroic boy reporter and a middle-aged alcoholic sailor have in common? But there's an instant affinity between them that I love. Tintin trusts Haddock absolutely even when circumstances and experience would advise him not to, and Haddock, for all his grumbling and complaining and his occasional very real failures, gives Tintin the most profound loyalty. Loyalty is one of my nearly-bulletproof kinks and this is a canon with plentiful opportunities for it.
Another thing that fascinates me about the canon is the moral growth in the storytelling itself. At their most serious, the Tintin stories are a long meditation on what justice means and how it can be achieved; I love that Tintin asks these questions and that the answers change for the better over the years. It's a far from unproblematic canon, and you should feel free to address its failings, but I love how often there's a layer of doubt, self-questioning, and irony among the adventure.
My prompts:
I'd especially love to see a story set in a time not covered in canon. A lost story from the Second World War would be great: are Tintin and Haddock in the resistance? Are they running an escape line for Allied airmen? Or I'd love to see them brought into the present. Is a 21st century Tintin blogging for great justice, or running his own version of Wikileaks? Or, for that matter, struggling for a voice as print journalism declines?
An adventure story is by no means necessary. Slice of life stories make me happy, and I'd be very very happy with that, especially if there's domesticity at Moulinsart (because I secretly love curtainfic for these two, and Haddock is a surprisingly domestic man).
I do ship them, but if you don't, friendship fic is great. (And you could age Tintin up a bit if the age difference bothers you; I accept Hergé's idea that Tintin is perpetually seventeen, but it would be fascinating to see him as an adult, dealing with growing up or even growing older.) Either way, I'd like the Tintin-Haddock relationship to be an important aspect of the story, because I love their dynamic, and I'd prefer not to see either of them paired with someone else.
I do have one DNW in this fandom that I should mention: I'd rather not see Haddock's drinking played for comedy. You could leave the drinking in the background, or set the story at a later period when Haddock has stopped drinking, or include his struggles with alcohol as part of the story (I'd rather it wasn't the main plot, though). I just find the funny!drunk stuff in the canon unfunny, sad, and disturbing.
First of all, thank you for writing for me. I'm thrilled that you share my interest in one of these fandoms, and I can't wait to read your story.
What follows is a little more information about what I like and don't like. But I want to say right away that I hope you will write a story you find interesting and enjoy writing, even if it goes in a different direction from the things I mention here. It could well turn out to be the story I didn't know I wanted.
The thing that appeals to me most in a fanfic is character exploration. I love getting to know characters with more depth and intimacy than in canon, as well as seeing them in a new light or from a new perspective. Character studies and stories that focus on emotional developments rather than outside events work well for me. I certainly would be happy to read something plotty if you enjoy writing plot (and if you do, I envy you!), but I look at plot as a bonus rather than a requirement.
Something else I adore is worldbuilding, whether it's a fantasy world with magic, an alternate history, or the real world we live in. I love the details of material culture (clothes and food and such) but also, or especially, the details of the social world: who's got what kinds of power, how people relate to one another, their jokes and superstitions and traditions and what they do for fun. I will happily wallow in this kind of stuff, so if you like worldbuilding, go wild!
I'm not terribly picky about genre, style, or tone. I like happy stories and melancholy stories, straightforward narratives and stylistic experiments, missing scenes and metafictions, canon-compliance and what-ifs, backstory and futurefic. Feel free to take an idea and run with it. One caveat, however: I'm not a big fan of AUs that completely change the premise of the canon (such as coffee shop AUs, high school AUs, or things like omegaverse or BDSM verses). I love the original settings too much to want to lose them in an AU. My exception to this preference is The Great British Bake-Off, where AUs are among my requests.
You'll notice from my prompts that I love male/male slash, but if that's not your cup of tea, gen is absolutely welcome. I've tried to give gen prompts as well as slashy ones. I'm not much interested in het, though, so I'd rather the story didn't focus on a heterosexual relationship.
If you choose to write slash for me, don't feel obliged to include a sex scene if you'd rather not or if you don't think it develops the characters or the emotional arc. Some stories need a sex scene and others don't; I'm not a huge fan of porn for porn's sake, and I'm every bit as happy with a nonexplicit story as a porntastic one. If you do include a sex scene, my tastes are pretty vanilla.
I should mention my two strong Do Not Wants. Please avoid any rape scenes or even offscreen rape as a focus of the story. Also, while I'm fine with stories including or addressing issues of homophobia and transphobia, I'd rather not receive something terribly bleak and hopeless that's all about the victimization of queer characters.
Requests:
1) Grantchester, Leonard Finch
The fandom: I love the strong lines of friendship holding the characters together, and the sense that they belong to a community, however imperfect and sometimes suffocating it may be. The postwar setting fascinates me, too: there's a feeling of a world that's just recovering from great upheaval and is also undergoing the first stirrings of the changes that will happen in the 1960s.
What intrigues me about Leonard in particular is a combination of several things: his intellect, his diffidence and shyness, his gayness, his femininity and lack of shame about that femininity, the depth of his moral thinking, and his faith. I'm not a Christian myself, but Christian faith and the Anglican tradition in particular are centrally important to Leonard, so I'd prefer a story that doesn't bash Christianity or assume that it's necessarily an oppressive force that Leonard should escape from.
My prompts:
Leonard is so much my favorite that even though "Anything about this character" is everyone's least favorite prompt, I have to say that I really would adore anything about Leonard. But I'll try to be more helpful.
I always love backstory, so I'd welcome something about pre-series Leonard, whether it's his adolescence and the first intimations of his sexuality, the war years (I'm very curious about what he did during the war--he seems not to have been a combatant, but was he in the military or doing some other kind of war work?), or his road to the priesthood.
Shipfic with either Sidney or Ben Blackwood (the young gay man Leonard befriends in episode 4) would be great; I think Leonard is still struggling to accept his sexuality and reconcile it with his faith, and I'd love to see that addressed, perhaps in contrast to Sidney's over-sunny reliance on "tolerance" or Ben's more defiant attitude. Alternatively, I'd also love friendship fic, especially if it's Leonard-Ben (there are not enough stories about gay men's friendships) or an exploration of the uneasy relationship between Leonard and Geordie. (And how much of that unease is actually jealousy--not necessarily erotic jealousy, but it could be--over Sidney?)
Leonard's relationships with other people don't have to be the focus, though. He's got, I think, a strong inner life, and doesn't find it easy to connect to others. An exploration of his complicated personality is more than enough for a story. Not that I object to plot! Leonard having an adventure or solving a mystery (with or without Sidney's help) would be great too.
2) The Great British Bake Off, Paul Hollywood
The fandom:
I love baking and cooking and I love that the show treats them as important skills worth mastering; at the same time, I love how civilized and gentle everyone is about it. Even Paul, while notoriously sharp-tongued, is usually helpful and encouraging, and both aspects of his personality appeal to me. I also really like what looks like a genuine friendship and regard between him and Mary Berry.
My prompts:
I'd be happy with either a relatively serious fic or a silly/cracky fic; for all prompts you should feel free to include Mary, Mel, and/or Sue. If you want to go serious, I'd love something actually about baking, about the craft and the skill of it; one of the things I like about Paul is that he cares so deeply about something that many people would consider trivial. (He cares to the point where he can be a jerk, so feel free to have him be a bit of a jerk in the story, if you like.)
On the sillier side, I'd love something where Paul and Mary interact in their jokey, mocking, affectionate way. They could drink tea and eat cake and vent about the tribulations of filming the Bake Off, or they could drink gin and set the kitchen on fire attempting to drunk!bake something horrendously complicated like a marjolaine. Or if you want to head for the stratosphere of silliness, I'd be very happy with an AU where Paul is secretly a supervillain (world domination through pies?) or not-so-secretly a mad scientist.
In between silly and serious, I'm quite taken with an idea I saw elsewhere about a Second World War AU. Paul could work for the Ministry of Food, struggling to create rationing-compliant recipes while the bombs fall around him. Mary could be working with him, if you like. And if you found a way to include Mel and Sue as rescue workers (like the women in Sarah Waters' Night Watch), I would be thrilled.
Gen is my preference for this fandom, though I wouldn't at all mind Paul flirting with men a little (just like he does onscreen!). I'd prefer that Paul's real offscreen life, such as his marriage and family, be kept out of the story as much as possible.
3) Points - Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett, Istre b'Estorr
The fandom:
I've been a fan of these books since Point of Hopes was published 20 years ago (!), and I could talk for ages about why I love them. The worldbuilding is fantastic: so rich and specific in its detail that it really feels like a world, not a backdrop. I especially love the way the world is based on a time and place--the northern European Renaissance--not often found in fantasy, and the way most characters are part of the urban middle class rather than nobles or peasants. It's a world that's imperfect, with poverty; crime; hierarchies of class, gender, and sexuality; political scheming and political unrest; but at the same time it's not a nightmare of oppression (it's far, far better than its real-history equivalent), and it's a world full of change and hope. In particular, it's a world where queerness is mostly accepted, despite legal inequality, and so the stories are full of queer characters living their lives and having adventures.
Of course I adore the characters, too. Like everyone, I love Nico and Philip, but they get all the fic, and in recent years my attention has turned more to the secondary characters, especially Istre b'Estorr.
My prompts:
Istre intrigues me and I always wish he was more of a presence in the books. I have tons of unanswered questions that could be the basis for a story. How exactly does necromancy work, how did he become a necromancer, what kind of research and teaching does he do at the university? (I would eat up an "academic politics in Astreiant" story like candy.) What was it like for him growing up in Chadron, where necromancy is taboo? What was the full story of his friendship with the late king of Chadron? What about his personal ghosts--who were they and why do they hang around him? What draws such a mild seeming man, and one who can see ghosts, to dueling? Does he have a leman or someone he's involved with? (If you address this, I'd strongly prefer that Istre's love interest be a man--I'm just not into het.) What about other friends besides Nico?
You're more than welcome to include other characters from the novels, including Rathe and Eslingen, so long as the story stays focused on Istre. I'd love to know more about Istre and Nico's friendship, for example, or whether Istre and Philip overcome their mutual caution and become real friends, which they seem to be moving towards in the most recent book.
4) Rejseholdet | Unit One, Allan Fischer, Thomas LaCour
The fandom:
The mysteries are interesting, but above all I love Rejseholdet for the characters. I like ensembles and team stories, and the unit makes a great team, working together and supporting each other even when there's sometimes tension. Furthermore, every character has their own story; nobody's just background or comic relief, everybody has a real personality with nuance and complexity.
The friendship of LaCour and Fischer speaks to me in both its ease and its intensity. I love how they banter and snark, how they play and amuse each other, how they save each other, how they confide in each other as in no one else, how they care for each other more than they can easily express. Each understands the other, and despite their personality differences they're well-suited: LaCour's reserve, calm (usually), and sensitivity balance Fischer's brashness, energy, and protectiveness. Their connection is so profound that they often shy away from it, leaving a lot unsaid, and that just makes them all the more interesting to me.
I ship them, and I'd like a story where their close relationship is central even if it isn't shipfic as such.
My prompts:
Futurefic after the series ends would be great: how do Fischer and LaCour take being separated again, especially after the peculiar intimacy of the undercover operation? Do they communicate and grow closer, do they lose touch and try to forget each other? Alternatively, what if after the events of S2, LaCour leaves the police or is kicked out?
I'm interested in LaCour's clairvoyance, both what it tells him and what it doesn't tell him, and the ways he sometimes misunderstands it. What if it started causing him real problems--what would he do, and what would Fischer do? For that matter, how does Fischer feel about his partner (in whatever sense you want to take that) having intuitions and visions? Is he worried about LaCour? Nervous of what LaCour might sense? Even envious?
If you write a pairing story, feel free to explore possible obstacles to their relationship such as internalized homophobia or the apparent homophobia of police culture, as well as plain old personality clashes and that sort of thing (including LaCour's incidents of violence towards Helene and what that might mean for a relationship with Fischer). My taste in romance is for realism rather than all sunshine and kittens, but I'd prefer to have a happy or at least optimistic ending.
5) The Thrilling Adventure Hour, Colonel Tick-Tock, Bob McCrumbs
The fandom:
It's just really fun. I adore the ridiculous plots, the pop culture references (like David Bowie!Tesla), the not-so-pop culture references (Gilbert and Sullivan jokes!), the strong element of affectionate Doctor Who parody, and the vague steampunk-ness of it all.
Colonel Tick-Tock starts out as a very one-note (and one-joke) character, but then becomes unexpectedly complex: he's a civilized and smug Victorian gentleman who's sometimes a little too fond of putting history back on its ugly path; a hero who saves the world but has a streak of selfishness and even cruelty; an incorrigible flirt who seems to have given his heart--what there is of it--to an ordinary man who works in a fish-and-chips shop. (But then, how ordinary is Bob? After all, he saved the world too.)
It's a canon with almost infinite room for stories.
My prompts:
We never canonically see Colonel Tick-Tock and Bob travelling together, so that's what I'd like. It doesn't have to a full-blown plotty adventure (though if you enjoy writing those, I'd be happy to read one!)--they could be having a little holiday in ancient Sumer or 32nd century Paris. I just want to see them together, either during the time when Bob was the Colonel's confederate or during the future I like to imagine where they get back together. (Maybe in the process they could help poor Patrick Wong get back to his own universe? Because I love Patrick but I don't think he's cut out to be a confederate.)
I think it's pretty clear from canon that they were a couple, so I'd at least like an acknowledgement of that even if the fic isn't particularly shippy in itself.
Funny is good, and so is serious; my favorite Tick-Tock episodes are the ones that have darker or more serious implications. Colonel Tick-Tock's missions aren't always pleasant, nor is he always nice, and I'd be interested to see an exploration of the consequences of his actions (either in history or towards Bob in leaving him behind). For a futurefic I'd prefer a slightly more optimistic take; perhaps he tries to be a better person for Bob's sake?
I'm open to crossovers with the Captain Laserbeam universe or the Sparks Nevada universe, or for that matter with classic Doctor Who--I'd love to see the Colonel meet the Doctor, especially the Second Doctor (with Jamie) or the bookverse Eighth Doctor (with Fitz).
Really the canon is so cracky that you could do almost anything with it and it would work. Have fun!
6) Tintin: Tintin, Captain Haddock
The fandom:
My favorite thing about Tintin is the relationship between Tintin and Haddock. It's a friendship built upon unpromising ground: what do a heroic boy reporter and a middle-aged alcoholic sailor have in common? But there's an instant affinity between them that I love. Tintin trusts Haddock absolutely even when circumstances and experience would advise him not to, and Haddock, for all his grumbling and complaining and his occasional very real failures, gives Tintin the most profound loyalty. Loyalty is one of my nearly-bulletproof kinks and this is a canon with plentiful opportunities for it.
Another thing that fascinates me about the canon is the moral growth in the storytelling itself. At their most serious, the Tintin stories are a long meditation on what justice means and how it can be achieved; I love that Tintin asks these questions and that the answers change for the better over the years. It's a far from unproblematic canon, and you should feel free to address its failings, but I love how often there's a layer of doubt, self-questioning, and irony among the adventure.
My prompts:
I'd especially love to see a story set in a time not covered in canon. A lost story from the Second World War would be great: are Tintin and Haddock in the resistance? Are they running an escape line for Allied airmen? Or I'd love to see them brought into the present. Is a 21st century Tintin blogging for great justice, or running his own version of Wikileaks? Or, for that matter, struggling for a voice as print journalism declines?
An adventure story is by no means necessary. Slice of life stories make me happy, and I'd be very very happy with that, especially if there's domesticity at Moulinsart (because I secretly love curtainfic for these two, and Haddock is a surprisingly domestic man).
I do ship them, but if you don't, friendship fic is great. (And you could age Tintin up a bit if the age difference bothers you; I accept Hergé's idea that Tintin is perpetually seventeen, but it would be fascinating to see him as an adult, dealing with growing up or even growing older.) Either way, I'd like the Tintin-Haddock relationship to be an important aspect of the story, because I love their dynamic, and I'd prefer not to see either of them paired with someone else.
I do have one DNW in this fandom that I should mention: I'd rather not see Haddock's drinking played for comedy. You could leave the drinking in the background, or set the story at a later period when Haddock has stopped drinking, or include his struggles with alcohol as part of the story (I'd rather it wasn't the main plot, though). I just find the funny!drunk stuff in the canon unfunny, sad, and disturbing.
