Oct. 19th, 2014 01:29 pm
dear yuletide writer
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chicafrom3Dear Yuletide Writer:
First of all, YOU'RE AWESOME. For real. Everything in this letter is completely optional; trust me, just the fact that you are writing in one of the fandoms I requested makes you awesome.
(It also means you have great taste in fandoms. So well done!)
And just to repeat, everything except for fandom/characters is optional. Write the story that's in your heart! For any of these, I'll be thrilled just to have more in the fandom. ♥
General stuff:
On AO3: chicafrom3
Likes: Gen/het/femslash/slash, in no particular order. Character studies. Plot. AUs, both of the canon divergence and alternate setting kinds. Crossovers. Slice-of-life. Fluff. Angst. Crack. Futurefic. Backstory. Missing scenes. Outsider POV. ... More that I'm probably forgetting.
Dislikes: Explicit sex. Torture porn.
The Requests:
Everworld Series - K.A. Applegate (Jalil Sherman)
Jalil, that's my name. People assume it's an African name. It's not. It's Hindi, and it means "godlike." Sometimes irony takes a while to develop.
Quick note: For this fandom I would prefer not to receive an alternate setting AU. Canon divergent AUs are still fine.
I am fascinated by Jalil. I have a form of OCD that was at its worst when I was a teenager, which is when I first read these books, so that's one reason I connected so strongly to him; but more than that, there's the simple fact that this is a guy who got dropped into a world of mythical gods and monsters and heroes, and he immediately started trying to figure out the source code of the universe. He sold electricity and telegraphs to fairies, blackmailed African gods with the destruction of their world because they wanted him to do something he didn't want to do, volunteered to get shot as part of a Xanatos Gambit, introduced new mining techniques to dwarves as a bargaining chip -- Jalil's brain is amazing.
The two things that fascinate me most are Jalil's methods of coping with Everworld and Jalil's relationship with the rest of the group. He's got a very strict, ordered way of looking at things that clashes severely both with his surroundings and his teammates.
So it probably won't surprise you that I'm most interested in fic exploring Jalil in Everworld, either during canon or after the final book, though I would not turn down backstory or real-world fic if that's the way you want to go. If you want to write post-canon but go AU, that's fine; if you want to stick to the canon ending, that's cool too. Gen is great; if you'd prefer to write shippy fic, that's awesome too -- my favorite Jalil ships are Jalil/Christopher and Jalil/April, but I'm an easy sell on everything; you want to write Jalil/David or Jalil/Idalia or Jalil/Miyuki or whatever else, you go for it and I'll be happy. Jalil's relationship with Senna is ripe for ficcing, both pre-canon and in Everworld itself. Jalil figuring out the rules of Everworld and using them against their enemies would be awesome, or anything involving Jalil and magic. Or setting up an empire of his own in Everworld, based on SCIENCE! Or smaller scale: how Jalil's coping methods affect him longer-term, or the dissolution of his relationship with his family as he's split between the real world and Everworld, or the awful trade-off of losing his OCD in exchange for a universe that makes no rational sense, or how he feels once the rest of the group finds out about his OCD; we never do get his POV on that. Or go super tropey with it; Everworld has magic and gods and aliens and an anything-goes approach to bizarre stuff happening -- accidental soulbonds, bodyswapping, going undercover as a couple, amnesia, forced marriage, whatever -- and Jalil awkwardly trying to make it make scientific sense while dealing with it in the moment. Basically I will take anything with Jalil as a central focus.
Ghostwriter (Jamal Jenkins, Lenni Frazier)
"I should've been watching where I was going." "Nah. I should've been watching where I was standing."
I grew up with Ghostwriter on PBS. Some of my clearest childhood memories are of sitting in front of the TV with my pen on a necklace and composition notebook, taking careful notes on the mysteries and trying to figure out whodunnit along with the characters. Going back to it as an adult, the mysteries are somewhat less absorbing, but the characters and their relationships are still wonderful.
Jamal and Lenni are the first two to see Ghostwriter, and they're drawn together by Ghostwriter. That's true of the whole team to an extent, but being the first two provides a particular connection between Jamal and Lenni. She's the one who reassures him that he's not crazy! And then the two of them fill that role for every subsequent member of the team. Even outside of their respective roles on the Ghostwriter team, they're extremely well-suited to each other; they're both smart, friendly, driven people, with an endearingly similar dorkiness. (If you can watch Lenni's You Gotta Believe music video without grinning you are a more stoic person than I.)
So I'd really love fic exploring their relationship, either in a romantic sense or platonic one, as they grow up. The last few serials of the show indicate drastically different directions for them -- Jamal heading for the High School Of Science and Lenni aiming for pop/rap stardrom -- but given everything they've been through together, I can't imagine that keeping them apart. (Yes, I am the starry-eyed idealist who thinks they also keep in touch with Rob despite his living in Australia. In my head the Ghostwriter team bond is unbreakable.) But by necessity their relationship will have to change and evolve as their lives change; how do they hurdle that? And as they each find success (or not!) how does the role of the Ghostwriter team in general change for them? For that matter, how does the very existence of Ghostwriter and the team affect their futures? Come on, going through puberty solving mysteries with the help of a ghost who rearranges letters to communicate has to influence the direction of your whole life.
Alternately, canon-era fic! There's a lot of space to explore there, too. Casefic in the style of canon? Or one thing that's always interested me is that the kids evidently don't know each other very well pre-Ghostwriter -- Alex and Gaby are siblings, obviously, and Lenni knows the Fernandezes due to their living arrangements, but they don't seem to be close friends, and they only know Jamal by name -- but very quickly after Ghostwriter comes into their lives they're basically best friends. How do the people around them -- their families, their other friends -- react to the sudden change in their social circles? Or just exploring what happens when they're not in the middle of a case and there's nothing super exciting going on; how do Jamal and Lenni spend their time together when they're not taking down arsonists or competing in comic book contests or entrapping art thieves?
Girl Meets World (Maya Hart, Cory Matthews)
And if something beautiful happens, draw me a picture.
Speaking of shows I grew up on, I was only a little younger than the Boy Meets World characters, and I very much grew up with the characters. So when a sequel series was announced? I was all over that. And it has not disappointed; I've very quickly fallen in love with the new characters, and with Cory and Topanga as parents, and the cameos from Boy Meets World alums have been wonderful with the promise of more in the future.
I'm requesting Cory and Maya because their relationship is one of my favorite things in the show. On the one hand he's projecting all over her -- he so clearly sees himself and Shawn in Riley and Maya's friendship, and so all of the faith and hope and fear he always had for Shawn is being projected on to Maya -- but he's also known her nearly her whole life; she's his daughter's best friend, and he adores her, and he wants what's best for her. And in reverse, he (and the rest of the Matthews family) is symbolic of all the stability Maya wants but doesn't have in her life. She wants to live up to the best idea he has of her; she's just never very sure that she can.
So basically I want all the fic about Cory and Maya bonding. Pre-show, expanding on an episode, missing scenes, far in the future, whatever; I just want more of their relationship. Show me Maya going to Cory with a crisis, or something she's afraid he'll be disappointed in her for, or Cory seeking out Maya to reassure her over an issue she didn't want to bother anyone with. Maybe Cory giving her relationship advice when she's older, or flashback to when he first began taking a protective stance over her, or his reflecting on how her relationship with Riley both does and doesn't reflect his relationship with Shawn. Or invert their usual relationship dynamic: show me Cory panicking over failing her in some way, or Maya helping him out with a crisis of his own. Or an outside perspective: how does their not-quite-father/daughter-bond look to the people around them? Does Maya's mother resent or appreciate that her daughter seeks out her best friend's father to fill the parental role in her life? Bringing in other characters (especially Riley, Topanga, and/or Shawn) would be a bonus but is certainly not required; I just want more about Cory's hopes for her and Maya's fears of disappointing him.
(And I would also like to make a point of noting the difference between disappointing Cory and pissing Cory off, because Maya clearly has no problems with the latter. She gets that little thrill from irritating him as an authority figure, but when he's disappointed in her you can see all her defiance drain away. She can't be Riley, and she doesn't want to be Riley, but she wants to make them proud.)
Gone Series - Michael Grant (The Artful Roger, Edilio Escobar)
For several minutes he just couldn't speak. His heart felt ten times its normal size. He had given up. A voice in his head berated him: 'Why did you give up, Edilio? After all that's happened, didn't you learn not to give up?'
I came to the Gone series late, like I come to so many fandoms. I've had it on my reading shortlist for ages, because so many people recommended it to me (largely based on my love of Animorphs and Everworld, true, but also on the quality of the books themselves). I finally sat down and read them earlier this year and fell in love almost immediately. They're really intense, harrowing, stressful reads, and completely worth it. I knew pretty much immediately that I was going to be requesting it for Yuletide.
It took me a while to narrow down specifically who I was going to be requesting.
In the end I chose Edilio and Roger because a) I love them both, individually and together; Edilio's character arc, from the overlooked new kid to the unpowered hero of the FAYZ, is one of the series' best features, and while Roger is much more of a supporting character, we get to see him being badass too, with my personal favorite moment being his sewing Jack's arteries back together to save his life, and as a couple Roger gives Edilio a personal focus, both something to make each crisis more immediate and someone to take the pressure away when the crisis isn't threatening, and Edilio gives Roger a source of hope and strength, someone to rely on and look to; and b) so much of their story is left in the margins, untold. How did they go from Edilio vaguely recognizing that guy Justin's dragging along behind him to people speculating on the exact nature of their relationship to Edilio considering Roger the single most important person in the FAYZ?
And what happens after, when Roger wakes up in the hospital? We're told that Edilio was waiting for him, but not much else. Life outside the FAYZ for the two of them can't ever be the same as it was inside; even putting aside the fact that life in the normal world doesn't usually involve murderous, mutated alien viruses, psychopaths with tentacle whips, daily starvation, and superpowered shootouts, they've both got to be dealing with massive amounts of PTSD. Edilio's gone from being the head of a ragged army forced to decide between life and death for other people to living with his family and signing autographs for cops. Roger watched the kid he loved like a little brother die in front of his eyes and then spent an extended period wandering the woods on the verge of death. (Hey, that's another thing I wondered about, while reading Light: did Edilio and Roger have any contact with Justin's family? How did that go down?) How do they deal with everything? How do they help each other deal with it? How do they adjust (or, more likely, not really adjust) to living with laws and regulations and easy access to luxuries like food and medical care and all that other stuff that was missing in the FAYZ?
I guess what I'm really asking for is your idea of what fills in the blank spots in their relationship. Take it from there.
Hellblazer (Gemma Masters, Cheryl Masters)
John, I'm ready to bloody well smack you one. Now what sort of badness've you been putting in my little girl's head, for God's sake?
Hellblazer is pretty much tailored to my interests. Complicated magic systems, mythological kitchen sink, morally ambiguous protagonist, varied and interesting supporting cast, punk aesthetic -- it's fantastic and right up my alley. And I really love the fact that John is perceived as one of the most feared and powerful magicians around, while mostly not really using magic and just trading on his reputation and ability to bullshit people ... and that while he markets himself as an unfeeling badass, when he lets himself care about people, he really, deeply cares about them.
I'm requesting specifically Gemma and Cheryl because their role in the story of John Constantine fascinates me. They're so peripheral to him so much of the time, but when their lives intersect it always involves major life-changing trauma -- and it's as frequently not his fault as it is directly his fault. So that's what I'd really like to see explored in fic, whether that's coping with the aftermath of one of the canon incidents or what their lives are like when he's not around. I'd also really love further exploration of their relationship with one another; Cheryl only wants her daughter to be safe, and Gemma's fascination with the occult scares the hell out of her. And it's Cheryl's death and subsequent decision to stay in Hell that drives Gemma's lasting resentment of and anger with her uncle.
If you'd prefer to focus on one character or the other, that is also okay with me! I'd love to see more of Cheryl and John's childhood, or what brought Cheryl and Tony together, or how being a Constantine affects Cheryl's life (John isn't the only one cursed with that lineage); or how Gemma's desire for magical power influences and is influenced by her desire for normality, or how Gemma deals with the aftermath of her encounter with the Demon Constantine, or whether or not Gemma does end up carrying on the Constantine curse. I'd also love to see either or both characters interacting with other Hellblazer characters, like Chas, Renee, John's various girlfriends, Map, Clarice, Tefé Holland (if you're familiar with Swamp Thing), or others, if you're so inclined to include them.
I find one of the most interesting things, narratively speaking, about Cheryl and Gemma to be how they represent, in a very direct way, that the damage John carries around with him doesn't stop being there just because he leaves. They're the ones who have to deal with the fallout once he's moved on to the next crisis, and it shapes their lives -- Gemma, in particular, is massively influenced by all the supernatural events that have happened to her due in no small part to being John Constantine's niece -- but we mostly only get to see them when John happens to pop in on their lives, and I'd love to see what it's like for them when he's not there.
In The Heights - Miranda (Graffiti Pete, Sonny)
"No one know about this but you and me. You got that?!"
Sonny and Pete and the specific stereotypes they embody and defy is something that continually fascinates me. Particularly Pete; since Usnavi is our narrator and our POV character, he defines the way we see many of the characters, and up until the ending he sees Pete as that stereotype: the criminal, the thug, the dropout deadbeat, the bad influence on Sonny. But Pete is an artist, and Sonny is an activist, and they support and encourage and help each other to become better.
Seriously, one of my favorite pieces of In The Heights is in the finale when Usnavi sees the mural Pete painted of Abuela and is struck speechless for a moment -- Pete's immediate response is "he hates it", and Sonny just as immediately assures him that "he's forming an artistic opinion". It's such a tiny thing, frequently played for laughs, but it's Sonny telling Pete that he sees Pete's work as art, not vandalism, and that other people will too. Oh, and then there's Pete, in the middle of a blackout, racing to the bodega to get Sonny out safely -- and, when Sonny refuses to leave, risking his own life to defend the bodega with him rather than leave him alone. It would've been easy for him to get to safety without thinking of Sonny in the first place, and almost as easy to walk away when he realizes Sonny's not going to leave and look after himself, but he doesn't; he sticks around to help his friend. Their friendship is one of my favorite parts of the whole show.
So I would really like fic exploring their relationship. How did they become friends? The descriptions in the cast breakdown seems relevant: Sonny is described as "an extremely intelligent young man who strives to emulate Usnavi", while "Usnavi is unhappy that Sonny and Graffiti Pete are friends because Graffiti Pete epitomizes everything that Usnavi hopes that Sonny will not grow up to be". Sonny thinks the world of Usnavi's opinion, so why is his friendship with Pete the thing he's willing to defy Usnavi over? At the end of the show, with the Abuela mural, Usnavi seems ready to change his mind about Pete's character; does that influence their friendship in some way? And what happens to the two of them in the future; do either or both end up leaving the neighborhood? Do they stay friends? Find a way to change the world, together or separately?
If you're interested in including any of the rest of the barrio, go for it, because I love all the characters. How do they perceive Sonny and Pete's friendship, do they share Usnavi's POV on Pete, how do they feel about these two young men as they watch them grow up?
(Side note: Yes, I ship it. No, you don't have to. Platonic BFF-y stuff would make my year.)
To conclude: Write the story you want to write. Optional details are optional. These are fandoms in which I desperately crave fic, period, so just the act of writing for one of these will endear you to me forever.
Thank you, and have a lovely Yuletide!
- Chica
First of all, YOU'RE AWESOME. For real. Everything in this letter is completely optional; trust me, just the fact that you are writing in one of the fandoms I requested makes you awesome.
(It also means you have great taste in fandoms. So well done!)
And just to repeat, everything except for fandom/characters is optional. Write the story that's in your heart! For any of these, I'll be thrilled just to have more in the fandom. ♥
General stuff:
On AO3: chicafrom3
Likes: Gen/het/femslash/slash, in no particular order. Character studies. Plot. AUs, both of the canon divergence and alternate setting kinds. Crossovers. Slice-of-life. Fluff. Angst. Crack. Futurefic. Backstory. Missing scenes. Outsider POV. ... More that I'm probably forgetting.
Dislikes: Explicit sex. Torture porn.
The Requests:
Everworld Series - K.A. Applegate (Jalil Sherman)
Jalil, that's my name. People assume it's an African name. It's not. It's Hindi, and it means "godlike." Sometimes irony takes a while to develop.
Quick note: For this fandom I would prefer not to receive an alternate setting AU. Canon divergent AUs are still fine.
I am fascinated by Jalil. I have a form of OCD that was at its worst when I was a teenager, which is when I first read these books, so that's one reason I connected so strongly to him; but more than that, there's the simple fact that this is a guy who got dropped into a world of mythical gods and monsters and heroes, and he immediately started trying to figure out the source code of the universe. He sold electricity and telegraphs to fairies, blackmailed African gods with the destruction of their world because they wanted him to do something he didn't want to do, volunteered to get shot as part of a Xanatos Gambit, introduced new mining techniques to dwarves as a bargaining chip -- Jalil's brain is amazing.
The two things that fascinate me most are Jalil's methods of coping with Everworld and Jalil's relationship with the rest of the group. He's got a very strict, ordered way of looking at things that clashes severely both with his surroundings and his teammates.
So it probably won't surprise you that I'm most interested in fic exploring Jalil in Everworld, either during canon or after the final book, though I would not turn down backstory or real-world fic if that's the way you want to go. If you want to write post-canon but go AU, that's fine; if you want to stick to the canon ending, that's cool too. Gen is great; if you'd prefer to write shippy fic, that's awesome too -- my favorite Jalil ships are Jalil/Christopher and Jalil/April, but I'm an easy sell on everything; you want to write Jalil/David or Jalil/Idalia or Jalil/Miyuki or whatever else, you go for it and I'll be happy. Jalil's relationship with Senna is ripe for ficcing, both pre-canon and in Everworld itself. Jalil figuring out the rules of Everworld and using them against their enemies would be awesome, or anything involving Jalil and magic. Or setting up an empire of his own in Everworld, based on SCIENCE! Or smaller scale: how Jalil's coping methods affect him longer-term, or the dissolution of his relationship with his family as he's split between the real world and Everworld, or the awful trade-off of losing his OCD in exchange for a universe that makes no rational sense, or how he feels once the rest of the group finds out about his OCD; we never do get his POV on that. Or go super tropey with it; Everworld has magic and gods and aliens and an anything-goes approach to bizarre stuff happening -- accidental soulbonds, bodyswapping, going undercover as a couple, amnesia, forced marriage, whatever -- and Jalil awkwardly trying to make it make scientific sense while dealing with it in the moment. Basically I will take anything with Jalil as a central focus.
Ghostwriter (Jamal Jenkins, Lenni Frazier)
"I should've been watching where I was going." "Nah. I should've been watching where I was standing."
I grew up with Ghostwriter on PBS. Some of my clearest childhood memories are of sitting in front of the TV with my pen on a necklace and composition notebook, taking careful notes on the mysteries and trying to figure out whodunnit along with the characters. Going back to it as an adult, the mysteries are somewhat less absorbing, but the characters and their relationships are still wonderful.
Jamal and Lenni are the first two to see Ghostwriter, and they're drawn together by Ghostwriter. That's true of the whole team to an extent, but being the first two provides a particular connection between Jamal and Lenni. She's the one who reassures him that he's not crazy! And then the two of them fill that role for every subsequent member of the team. Even outside of their respective roles on the Ghostwriter team, they're extremely well-suited to each other; they're both smart, friendly, driven people, with an endearingly similar dorkiness. (If you can watch Lenni's You Gotta Believe music video without grinning you are a more stoic person than I.)
So I'd really love fic exploring their relationship, either in a romantic sense or platonic one, as they grow up. The last few serials of the show indicate drastically different directions for them -- Jamal heading for the High School Of Science and Lenni aiming for pop/rap stardrom -- but given everything they've been through together, I can't imagine that keeping them apart. (Yes, I am the starry-eyed idealist who thinks they also keep in touch with Rob despite his living in Australia. In my head the Ghostwriter team bond is unbreakable.) But by necessity their relationship will have to change and evolve as their lives change; how do they hurdle that? And as they each find success (or not!) how does the role of the Ghostwriter team in general change for them? For that matter, how does the very existence of Ghostwriter and the team affect their futures? Come on, going through puberty solving mysteries with the help of a ghost who rearranges letters to communicate has to influence the direction of your whole life.
Alternately, canon-era fic! There's a lot of space to explore there, too. Casefic in the style of canon? Or one thing that's always interested me is that the kids evidently don't know each other very well pre-Ghostwriter -- Alex and Gaby are siblings, obviously, and Lenni knows the Fernandezes due to their living arrangements, but they don't seem to be close friends, and they only know Jamal by name -- but very quickly after Ghostwriter comes into their lives they're basically best friends. How do the people around them -- their families, their other friends -- react to the sudden change in their social circles? Or just exploring what happens when they're not in the middle of a case and there's nothing super exciting going on; how do Jamal and Lenni spend their time together when they're not taking down arsonists or competing in comic book contests or entrapping art thieves?
Girl Meets World (Maya Hart, Cory Matthews)
And if something beautiful happens, draw me a picture.
Speaking of shows I grew up on, I was only a little younger than the Boy Meets World characters, and I very much grew up with the characters. So when a sequel series was announced? I was all over that. And it has not disappointed; I've very quickly fallen in love with the new characters, and with Cory and Topanga as parents, and the cameos from Boy Meets World alums have been wonderful with the promise of more in the future.
I'm requesting Cory and Maya because their relationship is one of my favorite things in the show. On the one hand he's projecting all over her -- he so clearly sees himself and Shawn in Riley and Maya's friendship, and so all of the faith and hope and fear he always had for Shawn is being projected on to Maya -- but he's also known her nearly her whole life; she's his daughter's best friend, and he adores her, and he wants what's best for her. And in reverse, he (and the rest of the Matthews family) is symbolic of all the stability Maya wants but doesn't have in her life. She wants to live up to the best idea he has of her; she's just never very sure that she can.
So basically I want all the fic about Cory and Maya bonding. Pre-show, expanding on an episode, missing scenes, far in the future, whatever; I just want more of their relationship. Show me Maya going to Cory with a crisis, or something she's afraid he'll be disappointed in her for, or Cory seeking out Maya to reassure her over an issue she didn't want to bother anyone with. Maybe Cory giving her relationship advice when she's older, or flashback to when he first began taking a protective stance over her, or his reflecting on how her relationship with Riley both does and doesn't reflect his relationship with Shawn. Or invert their usual relationship dynamic: show me Cory panicking over failing her in some way, or Maya helping him out with a crisis of his own. Or an outside perspective: how does their not-quite-father/daughter-bond look to the people around them? Does Maya's mother resent or appreciate that her daughter seeks out her best friend's father to fill the parental role in her life? Bringing in other characters (especially Riley, Topanga, and/or Shawn) would be a bonus but is certainly not required; I just want more about Cory's hopes for her and Maya's fears of disappointing him.
(And I would also like to make a point of noting the difference between disappointing Cory and pissing Cory off, because Maya clearly has no problems with the latter. She gets that little thrill from irritating him as an authority figure, but when he's disappointed in her you can see all her defiance drain away. She can't be Riley, and she doesn't want to be Riley, but she wants to make them proud.)
Gone Series - Michael Grant (The Artful Roger, Edilio Escobar)
For several minutes he just couldn't speak. His heart felt ten times its normal size. He had given up. A voice in his head berated him: 'Why did you give up, Edilio? After all that's happened, didn't you learn not to give up?'
I came to the Gone series late, like I come to so many fandoms. I've had it on my reading shortlist for ages, because so many people recommended it to me (largely based on my love of Animorphs and Everworld, true, but also on the quality of the books themselves). I finally sat down and read them earlier this year and fell in love almost immediately. They're really intense, harrowing, stressful reads, and completely worth it. I knew pretty much immediately that I was going to be requesting it for Yuletide.
It took me a while to narrow down specifically who I was going to be requesting.
In the end I chose Edilio and Roger because a) I love them both, individually and together; Edilio's character arc, from the overlooked new kid to the unpowered hero of the FAYZ, is one of the series' best features, and while Roger is much more of a supporting character, we get to see him being badass too, with my personal favorite moment being his sewing Jack's arteries back together to save his life, and as a couple Roger gives Edilio a personal focus, both something to make each crisis more immediate and someone to take the pressure away when the crisis isn't threatening, and Edilio gives Roger a source of hope and strength, someone to rely on and look to; and b) so much of their story is left in the margins, untold. How did they go from Edilio vaguely recognizing that guy Justin's dragging along behind him to people speculating on the exact nature of their relationship to Edilio considering Roger the single most important person in the FAYZ?
And what happens after, when Roger wakes up in the hospital? We're told that Edilio was waiting for him, but not much else. Life outside the FAYZ for the two of them can't ever be the same as it was inside; even putting aside the fact that life in the normal world doesn't usually involve murderous, mutated alien viruses, psychopaths with tentacle whips, daily starvation, and superpowered shootouts, they've both got to be dealing with massive amounts of PTSD. Edilio's gone from being the head of a ragged army forced to decide between life and death for other people to living with his family and signing autographs for cops. Roger watched the kid he loved like a little brother die in front of his eyes and then spent an extended period wandering the woods on the verge of death. (Hey, that's another thing I wondered about, while reading Light: did Edilio and Roger have any contact with Justin's family? How did that go down?) How do they deal with everything? How do they help each other deal with it? How do they adjust (or, more likely, not really adjust) to living with laws and regulations and easy access to luxuries like food and medical care and all that other stuff that was missing in the FAYZ?
I guess what I'm really asking for is your idea of what fills in the blank spots in their relationship. Take it from there.
Hellblazer (Gemma Masters, Cheryl Masters)
John, I'm ready to bloody well smack you one. Now what sort of badness've you been putting in my little girl's head, for God's sake?
Hellblazer is pretty much tailored to my interests. Complicated magic systems, mythological kitchen sink, morally ambiguous protagonist, varied and interesting supporting cast, punk aesthetic -- it's fantastic and right up my alley. And I really love the fact that John is perceived as one of the most feared and powerful magicians around, while mostly not really using magic and just trading on his reputation and ability to bullshit people ... and that while he markets himself as an unfeeling badass, when he lets himself care about people, he really, deeply cares about them.
I'm requesting specifically Gemma and Cheryl because their role in the story of John Constantine fascinates me. They're so peripheral to him so much of the time, but when their lives intersect it always involves major life-changing trauma -- and it's as frequently not his fault as it is directly his fault. So that's what I'd really like to see explored in fic, whether that's coping with the aftermath of one of the canon incidents or what their lives are like when he's not around. I'd also really love further exploration of their relationship with one another; Cheryl only wants her daughter to be safe, and Gemma's fascination with the occult scares the hell out of her. And it's Cheryl's death and subsequent decision to stay in Hell that drives Gemma's lasting resentment of and anger with her uncle.
If you'd prefer to focus on one character or the other, that is also okay with me! I'd love to see more of Cheryl and John's childhood, or what brought Cheryl and Tony together, or how being a Constantine affects Cheryl's life (John isn't the only one cursed with that lineage); or how Gemma's desire for magical power influences and is influenced by her desire for normality, or how Gemma deals with the aftermath of her encounter with the Demon Constantine, or whether or not Gemma does end up carrying on the Constantine curse. I'd also love to see either or both characters interacting with other Hellblazer characters, like Chas, Renee, John's various girlfriends, Map, Clarice, Tefé Holland (if you're familiar with Swamp Thing), or others, if you're so inclined to include them.
I find one of the most interesting things, narratively speaking, about Cheryl and Gemma to be how they represent, in a very direct way, that the damage John carries around with him doesn't stop being there just because he leaves. They're the ones who have to deal with the fallout once he's moved on to the next crisis, and it shapes their lives -- Gemma, in particular, is massively influenced by all the supernatural events that have happened to her due in no small part to being John Constantine's niece -- but we mostly only get to see them when John happens to pop in on their lives, and I'd love to see what it's like for them when he's not there.
In The Heights - Miranda (Graffiti Pete, Sonny)
"No one know about this but you and me. You got that?!"
Sonny and Pete and the specific stereotypes they embody and defy is something that continually fascinates me. Particularly Pete; since Usnavi is our narrator and our POV character, he defines the way we see many of the characters, and up until the ending he sees Pete as that stereotype: the criminal, the thug, the dropout deadbeat, the bad influence on Sonny. But Pete is an artist, and Sonny is an activist, and they support and encourage and help each other to become better.
Seriously, one of my favorite pieces of In The Heights is in the finale when Usnavi sees the mural Pete painted of Abuela and is struck speechless for a moment -- Pete's immediate response is "he hates it", and Sonny just as immediately assures him that "he's forming an artistic opinion". It's such a tiny thing, frequently played for laughs, but it's Sonny telling Pete that he sees Pete's work as art, not vandalism, and that other people will too. Oh, and then there's Pete, in the middle of a blackout, racing to the bodega to get Sonny out safely -- and, when Sonny refuses to leave, risking his own life to defend the bodega with him rather than leave him alone. It would've been easy for him to get to safety without thinking of Sonny in the first place, and almost as easy to walk away when he realizes Sonny's not going to leave and look after himself, but he doesn't; he sticks around to help his friend. Their friendship is one of my favorite parts of the whole show.
So I would really like fic exploring their relationship. How did they become friends? The descriptions in the cast breakdown seems relevant: Sonny is described as "an extremely intelligent young man who strives to emulate Usnavi", while "Usnavi is unhappy that Sonny and Graffiti Pete are friends because Graffiti Pete epitomizes everything that Usnavi hopes that Sonny will not grow up to be". Sonny thinks the world of Usnavi's opinion, so why is his friendship with Pete the thing he's willing to defy Usnavi over? At the end of the show, with the Abuela mural, Usnavi seems ready to change his mind about Pete's character; does that influence their friendship in some way? And what happens to the two of them in the future; do either or both end up leaving the neighborhood? Do they stay friends? Find a way to change the world, together or separately?
If you're interested in including any of the rest of the barrio, go for it, because I love all the characters. How do they perceive Sonny and Pete's friendship, do they share Usnavi's POV on Pete, how do they feel about these two young men as they watch them grow up?
(Side note: Yes, I ship it. No, you don't have to. Platonic BFF-y stuff would make my year.)
To conclude: Write the story you want to write. Optional details are optional. These are fandoms in which I desperately crave fic, period, so just the act of writing for one of these will endear you to me forever.
Thank you, and have a lovely Yuletide!
- Chica
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