Yuletide Letter 2015
Oct. 17th, 2015 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breathedoutI don't use my Dreamwidth account for anything but these letters; I know that can be kind of a drag if you want to poke around my internet home, so feel free to take a gander at my Tumblr and/or, obviously, my AO3 page to get a sense of who I am and what I'm into.
If you just want the tl;dr: I am a more-or-less lesbian bibliophile recently relocated from the Pacific Northwest to sunny southern California. Particular loves of mine include: formidable yet complex women being formidable and complex together; sex writing that is emotionally nuanced and/or ratchets up the narrative tension more than it resolves it; unreliable narrators; atmospheric settings; lovely turns of phrase; strong narrative voices, and weird narrative tricks.
Squicks: My huge, body-horror-level squick is pregnancy and babies; please avoid them if at all possible. Also I'd love it if you'd avoid animal cruelty or death. Other than that, I'm up for pretty much whatever, including dub-con or even non-con as long as they're portrayed as such within the context of the story. I write a ton of porn and I love to read it, but it's in no way required or expected, so just follow your muse!
Feel free to disregard fandom-specific ramblings; but if you're interested, I've gone into a bit more detail below. Thanks again for writing me a thing! You rock. :-D
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: I adore basically all the characters on this show (how can you not?), but the one for whom I find myself craving more screen time and narrative attention is definitely Mac, so I'd love something that puts her front and center. How you choose to do that is totally up to you. I love her long-standing best-friendship with Phryne; I'd love to see her get an actual, for-real girlfriend who doesn't die; I am intrigued by how she relates to Jack vis-à-vis Phryne (it seems like they have a great potential for relating both to one another's love/appreciation for, and also one another's frustration/anxiety/longing surrounding the unstoppable force of nature that is Miss Fisher—I adore the idea of them as drinking-and-commiserating buddies and could even see some kind of complicated and tenuous threesome arrangement evolving, though that's probably outside the scope of a Yuletide gift). I love Mac's wry sense of humor and her dapper fashion sense. Basically give me something Mac-centric and you can't go wrong.
Scott & Bailey: Oh man, Scott & Bailey. Gill Murray/Julie Dodson is one of the SHIPS OF MY HEART, and if you felt inclined to write anything at all about their relationship, whether you see it as a friendship of long standing or a sexual relationship or both simultaneously or something complicated or in the process of transition, I would absolutely eat that up with a spoon. What I particularly adore about them is how tangible and hardy their relationship with one another is; they don't have to be careful with each other, and they give each other a hard time but you never for a second doubt the strength of their love for one another. So: Gill/Julie getting a drink together after or during a case, Gill/Julie dirty smut (Gill's HANDS, nggghhh), Gill/Julie reminiscing about their shared past, Gill or Julie dispensing their trademark variety of hard-edged teasing comfort in the face of life challenges; Gill or Julie coming to the defense of the other one even though she'd say she doesn't need it; pretty much anything involving Gill and Julie will have me swooning.
Killers Kill; Dead Men Die: There are really so many intriguing figures in this spread, so if you feel like branching out from my character choices I will very probably love whatever you feel called to do with it. I adore noir in general, the atmosphere and the double-crosses and the stylized hard-boiledness. That said, probably the relationship I'm most taken by is the one between the Helen Mirren and Judi Dench characters. The little snippets provided by Vanity Fair claim that they're half-sisters; I, unsurprisingly, read them as something more like mobster wives. But I am very open to either of those or basically any other interpretation you want to put on a moment in their relationship. Maybe the half-sisters story is a fabrication designed to misdirect suspicion? Maybe they're heads of rival crime families with a secret alliance? Whether they're running heists together, intimidating Johnny-come-latelies trying to horn in on their territory, or otherwise collaborating to pull the wool over the eyes of everyone around them, I'll dig it.
The Fall: Stella fucking Gibson, is pretty much what I have to say here. So, of course I eat up her chemistry with Reed both before and during the kiss/near-miss in the hotel (their reenactment of the murder scene, ooh la la!), and would love something exploring that further. I also think her evolving relationship with Danny is really interesting, especially since it started with an interaction that could be read as a power play (Danny telling Stella that she'd disposed of the evidence that Stella had had company)—was that a power play? Did Stella think it was? What does it mean that Danny now wants to get back on the street? An exploration of the subtleties of either of those relationships would be delicious.
Archer: I just really love all the horrible assholes on this show okay, but Pam Poovey and her relationship with Cheryl Tunt hold a special place in my heart. Moments of Pam & Cheryl being semi-reluctant friends (with benefits?), conspirators, travel companions, drinking buddies, etc., are always the highlights of episodes for me, so... more o' that, I guess, is what I'm looking for here. (As a side note, I can't believe that the teaser montage in "White Elephant" gave us Pam in livery driving a towncar yelling "We started a damn coup!", with Cheryl in a flowing white evening gown and a rocket launcher behind her, AND THEN DIDN'T FOLLOW IT UP in the rest of the season. Possibly because nothing they could come up with lived up to the amazing promise of those two seconds. If you feel called to prove them wrong, I'm all ears.)
Scandal: I have reached a point where I pretty much ship all the female characters on this show with all the other female characters, think some of the male characters are all right but not as interesting as the female characters, and heartily wish Fitz would just go jump in a lake, never to be heard from again. So, ahahaha: if you could downplay or avoid him, that'd be great! Other than that, almost literally any combination of ladies, either sexually involved and/or collaborating (possibly reluctantly) to effectively run the country despite the best efforts of their homicidal relatives and mopey chief of staff, would be right up my alley. Olivia/Mellie is maybe my favorite ship on this show, either as hatesex or as slow-burn reluctantly respectful clear-eyed power-hungry realists who surprise themselves by happening into occasional tenderness. But Olivia/Abby? Also amazing. Mellie/Elizabeth? Crazy hot and at this point I don't want to say practically canon, but: practically canon. Mellie/Abby? After that scene on the veranda of the White House, I'm so on board. Mellie and Bitsy Cooper smoking a joint together on the Truman balcony? OMG, hook me up. Anything, sexual or non-sexual, where the ladies of Scandal get shit done or have substantive interactions with one another, will be golden.
