Yuletide Letter

[eponymous_rose]

Dear Yuletide Writer,

We've matched on at least one fandom! You must have impeccable taste. ;)

I say this every year, and I'll say it again: thank you in advance for anything you choose to write! The details that follow are totally, 100% optional - I know it can be frustrating to have too little guidance, so that's the only reason I've provided as much info as I have. Because, seriously, if you write me a story in any of these fandoms, I will be thrilled to bits. I've purposely picked fandoms where I am interested in all the characters and pairings for that reason - if you've got a different story rattling around your brain, by all means, write that story instead!

I apologize for the really wordy prompts. The problem with loving these fandoms so much is that I really just want to say "Write whatever makes you happy!" and leave it at that, but I know that's not helpful if you're looking for a prompt, so I wind up overcompensating. Hopefully one of these billions of suggestions catches your interest. I also didn't pick any characters in particular because, like I said, I purposely went for fandoms where I enjoy everyone. I hope that doesn't make this harder for you.

As you may have noticed from my prompts, I'm a big fan of gen. I love AUs and plotty missing-episodes and conversations and reflections and totally gratuitous action scenes. Having said that, while NC-17 usually isn't my thing, I don't have any particularly overwhelming OTPs, so I'll probably enjoy any and all pairings you want to include in your story - femslash, het, slash, it's all good!

Things I'm fond of: stories about awesome ladies being awesome, the aforementioned totally gratuitous action scenes, AUs (either as offshoots of canon or totally removed from it), happy endings, sad endings, bittersweet endings, the families we make, stories about good people in bad places (and it can go either way - either the good people make the bad place better, or the bad place destroys the good people). Don't worry about being too angsty or too cheerful. Either extreme - and everything in between - is fine by me. If you'd rather not write gen, I also like fics that acknowledge the fact that someone can love more than one person over their lifetime.

Things I'm not so fond of: character bashing, non-con, and PWPs, as mentioned before, aren't really my thing. Apart from that? Go nuts. Put the crew of DS9 aboard a pirate ship. Send the Mass Effect squaddies to work undercover at a restaurant. Have the Middleman operate in Victorian London. Write missing scenes, missing episodes. Have your two favourite characters fall in love.

Basically? If you write a story that makes you excited about the fandom in question, I can guarantee that'll show through in your writing, and I can also guarantee that I'll enjoy it even more because of that. Have fun with this.

I'm not sure what the etiquette is for this, but I think it might be okay if you need to leave an anonymous comment here? Ah, apparently elynross is acting as go-between. Let me know if I'm just not being helpful in the least, and I'll try to provide more info. Another link that may help is my rec tag, if you want an idea of the sorts of things I've enjoyed in the past. My fic might provide some help as well.

I really hope I haven't stressed you out even more, O Yuletide Writer! Thank you again for writing for me, and I can't wait to see what you come up with. ♥

Edit: Just copying the requests themselves, nothing else new.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (no characters specified)
I'd love to read about some of the characters that get less airtime - one of DS9's great strengths is its massive supporting cast - but I'm also inordinately fond of the regulars, especially Kira Nerys. I can't think of a single character or pairing in this fandom I *wouldn't* want to read about, but that's probably not too helpful, so here I go with the prompts. How about a glimpse into Kira's time with the Resistance? A series of lunches between Garak and Bashir? Five secrets Morn kept to himself? Or scenes featuring unexpected pairs of characters - Winn Adami and Jake Sisko talk theology, Kira and Worf are on a dangerous mission together, Dukat and Quark reminisce about old times, Garak and Jadzia talk about the different masks they've worn, Ezri and Odo talk about what it means to change shape, Sisko and Keiko talk about the pressures of Starfleet on family. So much of the Dominion War hinges on little details - I'd love to see any sort of AU, where someone made one little wrong decision and everything went to hell from there. Backstory fic for any character would also be lovely.

Mass Effect (no characters specified)
I'm generally less interested in stories featuring Shepard than I am in stories featuring the squaddies, but if you have a story you really want to tell about your Shepard, don't let that stop you! I'm fascinated by the gap between ME and ME2 - the most obvious character to come to mind is Garrus for that one, but I'd also love to see what Tali was up to, how Liara got to be where she is, what Kaiden or Ashley or Anderson or Wrex had to go through. I'd also love to see some of those little hints at backstory expanded - Mordin's encounter with farm equipment, the heroic mission that Jacob and Miranda got zero credit for, Samara and her daughters - basically, anything that helped shape the characters into the people they were during the games. Failing that, how about ensemble fic, about the crew of the Normandy (either one) either coming together as family or splitting apart into little internecine factions and going to war with each other?

The Middleman (TV) (no characters specified)
Middleman! At such a small complement of episodes, surely there's a lot of room in there for a missing episode, or at least a missing scene. Anything to expand this universe would make me endlessly happy in my face. I'm a big fan of Noser - maybe some glimpses into his ventriloquism-filled past? Lacey and Wendy moving in together for the first time? The Middleman, back when he was just starting out? If the show went on, to borrow a phrase from another show, for six seasons and a movie, what kind of plots would be going on? What would Pip be up to? Would Ida have mellowed? Where will everyone be in ten years? Twenty?