skippy

Dear Yuletide writer,

Hello! I’m really glad we both love at least one of these canons, and it’s great to sort-of-meet you. Predictably, I’m also suitablyskippy on AO3.

First of all, please don’t worry about writing something I wouldn’t enjoy! I always have a wild old time doing Yuletide, and I’ll be very happy just to receive fic for any of my requested canons. This year I have four requests, with two characters requested in each fandom, and so long as the relationship between those characters is the focus then I’d be more than happy with ship fic or gen, in any fandom.

I’ll give some very general likes/dislikes at the top here, and get more specific in my individual requests.

General likes:

• humour!!! I’ve requested some pretty dark fandoms this year, but I love black comedy, so please feel free to treat that dark content just as irreverently as you like.
• weird and wacky tropes showing up in serious (or not-so-serious) settings: bodyswaps, time loops, trapped-in-a-confined-space... the weirder the better, as far as I’m concerned
• missing scenes, missing episodes, missing chapters
• pre-canon and post-canon
• road trips
• lotus-eating machines
• case fic
• canon-divergent AUs
• ensemble casts
• a strong sense of setting
• anything that feels like it could slot right into canon, in one way or another
• bad endings – all kinds, any kinds: unhappy endings, downer endings, abandon-hope-all-ye-who-enter-here endings, endings where the characters are happy but under the circumstances they really shouldn’t be, endings where all seems well but the reader has the context to know things will soon get worse...

Relationship likes – all apply to both ship & gen:

• generally speaking: THE WORSE THE BETTER, I like toxic character dynamics that stay toxic (and/or get even more so); I’m not really interested in unhealthy relationships getting healthier.
• co-dependency
• obsessiveness (mutual or one-sided)
• intense claustrophobic intimacy of all sorts
• manipulation – overt, covert, emotional, for a specific purpose, purely for the hell of it, etc.
• relationships which are damaging to one or both parties involved, but they don’t know or don’t care, and won’t stop
• people who don’t much like each other but still can’t stay away
• people who are so different they just can’t/won’t understand each other
• people who are the worst possible influences on each other
• all of the above at once at the exact same time
• and just to reiterate, I like all of these exactly as much for gen relationships as for ship dynamics! I’ve requested four pairs of characters who all have more or less nightmarish relationships to each other in their respective canons, and in all cases I love the level of dysfunction that canon already provides.

Things I don’t want:

• PWP, graphic sex scenes, fic that’s heavily focused on porn, etc.
  • I don’t mind sexual content in fic, especially not if canon already contains it! But that isn’t what I read fic for, so I’d prefer not to receive fic of any kind that’s primarily pornographic.
• non-canon character death (of requested characters)
• AUs which change the setting of canon (e.g. in space, coffee shop)
• crossovers 

 ~

( Letter under the cut )

Dear Yuletide writer,

Hello! I’m really glad we both love at least one of these canons, and it’s great to sort-of-meet you. Predictably, I’m also suitablyskippy on AO3.

First of all, please don’t worry about writing something I wouldn’t enjoy! I’ve always had a great time doing Yuletide (this will be my seventh!), and I’ll be very happy just to receive fic for any of my requested canons. This year I have four requests: two I’ve requested before (Basic Eight, We Have Always Lived in the Castle), and two new ones (Arrested Development, Beyond Black). I’ve requested two characters in each fandom, and so long as the relationship between those characters is the focus, then I’d be equally happy with ship fic or gen, in any fandom.

I’ll give some very general likes/dislikes at the top here, and get more specific in my individual requests.

Likes: canon-style tone; all sorts of humour in all sorts of circumstances (for light-hearted canons, for grimdark canons, for anything and everything); weird & wacky tropes showing up in serious (or not-so-serious) settings: bodyswaps, time loops, trapped-in-a-confined-space – the more peculiar the better; missing scenes, and/or missing episodes/chapters; road trips; case fic; canon-divergent AUs; a strong sense of setting; anything that feels like it could slot right into canon.

I love gen and ship fic equally, and I enjoy all the same character dynamics in both: generally speaking, the worse it is the more I like it! I like co-dependency, obsessiveness (mutual or one-sided), and very intense claustrophobic intimacy of all sorts; I like relationships which are damaging to one or both parties involved, but they don’t know or don’t care, and won’t stop; I like people who don’t much like each other but still can’t stay away, people who are so different they just can’t/won’t understand each other, people who are the worst possible influences on each other – I like just about all sorts of possible complications! I’m not so keen on pure fluff; even if something is completely feel-good, I still prefer it with weirdness lurking underneath.

Things I don’t want: porn fic (except for the Basic Eight; please see the specific request!), non-canon character death, AUs which change the setting of canon (e.g. in space, coffee shop), crossovers.

And last of all, if you think you’d like to write something that matches the spirit of the prompt but not the letter, please feel free! I’m very fond of all the characters and canons that I’ve nominated, and I’d be equally happy to receive fic for any of them.

~

Arrested Development

George Michael Bluth, Maeby Funke

I love the bizarre high-speed ruthlessness of Arrested Development’s comedy, and the shameless callousness of the characters to each other, the narrator to the characters, and the storyline in general to everyone with the misfortune to become entangled with the Bluth family. The characters are merciless and the comedy itself is merciless, too... and yet in the middle of all that is George Michael, inexplicably as sweet and earnestly good as can be, who could be living such a nice normal life in a completely different sitcom if only he didn’t have the family he has, and if only he weren’t infatuated with his own reckless nightmare of a cousin.

It’s too bad for George Michael that he’s the only member of his entire family who possesses both a moral compass and any internalised sense of the incest taboo, because you know that if literally any other Bluth wanted to get with a family member they wouldn’t feel a moment of shame or hesitation before making it known to that family member (...and have previously done so). I love that Maeby is absolutely a self-absorbed, self-interested Bluth to the core; she’s sly and manipulative and conniving and she’s frequently very good at it, which already sets her apart from most of her other equally nightmarish relatives. She’s a more-than-usually terrible girl, and George Michael is a more-than-usually virtuous boy; Maeby lacks all sense of shame or morality but luckily George Michael has double the normal amount, to compensate – they’re the perfect, awful balance.

I really, really love George Michael/Maeby, and I’d love to receive ship fic for this fandom! Fic where any feelings remain unrequited on Maeby’s side, or deliberately not acted on, is also very welcome; I love how unstoppable George Michael’s crush remains in the face of so many failures, and how every tiny encouragement renews his hopes sky-high anyway. Canon has covered requited, unrequited, and every messy moment in between, so I’d be happy with any flavour of relationship between them so long as that relationship, whatever it is, is the focus.

What I especially love about George Michael/Maeby is the way that it’s played like such a sweetly ordinary crush on George Michael’s side: he does everything Maeby wants, hangs off her every word, starts blushing and stammering around her, constantly embarrasses himself trying to impress her; he’s re-treading the same ground as so many tired old sitcom storylines about a teenage boy making a fool of himself for his crush, and he’s such a sweet, normal boy that compared to the rest of his family his storylines really do seem sweet... except it’s incest. Wacky, unlikely situations are always managing to push him into proximity with Maeby, like any other cheesy old sitcom crush storyline... except it’s incest. He’s a nice, normal teenage boy with a nice, normal teenage crush... except it’s incest.

It’s that clash between the superficial innocence of his puppy love and the fact it’s incest that I love best about it, and I’d love to read anything that takes that puppy love and runs with it! Any other classic sitcom teen crush storylines that can be made awful, Arrested Development-style? Maeby and George Michael go on a school trip? Michael suggests a character-building weekend of family camping, and he knows of course Maeby and George Michael will want to share a tent, being cousins and such good friends? Maeby decides to run away from home to make her parents notice her, and George Michael at once accepts that the time has come to fake his death, abandon his father, and commit to life on the road with Maeby forever and ever, or at least until she gets bored of it next week? Maeby pulls George Michael in as a last-minute extra for her latest blockbuster? An incredibly unlikely series of events leads to a masquerade event at the high school, which in turn leads to thrilling plausible deniability for cousin kissing in public? Maeby acquires an alarming new hobby, so George Michael immediately acquires it too? Maeby gets herself arrested for any of a number of frankly very likely crimes, so George Michael promptly vows to pursue a life of crime too?

I’m also much more interested in fic set during seasons 1-3, while they’re both still teenagers in that scandalous on-again, off-again relationship territory.

One of the main things I love about Arrested Development is how readily (and how often) it goes joyfully for the crushing downer ending – no lessons learned, everyone’s plans frustrated, all hopes squashed, no one’s situation improved, no one changing unless it’s for the worse – so please don’t feel any need to go for a happy ending here, either!

~

Basic Eight - Daniel Handler

Flannery Culp, Natasha Hyatt

I love the surreal and awful pitch-black humour of this book, I love the endless layers of weird meta tricksiness, I love how vivid the prose is, I love Flan’s preoccupation with pedantry over remorse and/or responsibility, I love how she constantly butts in on the past with the present to remind us that where she is now she obviously knows everything already, I love how shamelessly she keeps reminding us about her own unreliable narration but still somehow turns out to have been a hundred times more unreliable than you ever could have guessed. I just really love this book, and I’d be overjoyed with anything written for it at all!

As for Flan and Natasha, I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything more painfully charged with unrequited sexual tension in my entire life than the scene in Flan’s bedroom before V__’s party, when they’re watching each other get changed – and I’d seriously love ship fic for these two, never mind the logistics (especially since Flan herself clearly didn’t, given how often they’re physical together in canon). I love the sensuality of their relationship, and how often Flan’s diary slides sideways into just admiringly describing Natasha’s sex appeal; I love how much they love each other, and how often they tell each other that they do. Their relationship is so intimate that it feels like they’re locked together in their own intense and passionate little codependent bubble long before the truth about Natasha comes out, and it gets so much worse/better on rereads: how often Natasha talks about how she’ll always be there for Flan, how she’ll do anything for her, her brashness and aggression towards everyone else compared to her tenderness with Flan... The layers of nightmarish dramatic irony go about five miles deep, and I love it; it breaks my heart for them but I love every last word of it.

Some specific prompts (although literally anything involving them would make me incredibly happy): more unrequited sexual tension, requited sexual tension, missing scenes, assorted parties they’ve been to, slice-of-life scenes that would be entirely ordinary if it weren’t for how bizarre their relationship is, snapshots of other past moments when their ultra-intense friendship has nearly overbalanced on the brink of becoming something more... I really like the surreal being treated like it’s completely normal, so I’d especially love anything that dives into the bizarre reality of Flan-and-Natasha with a totally straight face. Flan might be oblivious to the nature of Natasha’s existence, but everyone around her can see exactly what’s going on, and it’s nothing like the way Flan herself perceives it.

I also listed smut fic in my DNWs, but please feel free to ignore that here! I’d be totally down with canon-typical sexual content, and in fact I’m pretty curious about how the two of them could pull it off if they ever let that unrequited sexual tension get a little more requited – both logistically, and also just in terms of the convoluted mental hoops Flan would have to create and then jump through in order to convince herself it was actually happening at all. Does any awareness of the reality break through? How would she reframe it all to avoid acknowledging the truth, either in the moment or after the fact?

If possible, I’d prefer something set before or during canon, rather than afterwards – I prefer Flan with Natasha, rather than without. (Present!Flan narrating events in past!Flan’s life with the awareness that she’s going to lose Natasha anyway is fine, though! More than fine, in fact – I’m fully down with her canon-typical loneliness for Natasha.)

~

Beyond Black - Hilary Mantel

Alison Hart (Beyond Black - Hilary Mantel), Colette (Beyond Black - Hilary Mantel)

This whole book is like a layer cake of human cruelty, and that’s what I love so much about the relationship between Colette and Alison. Of all the horrors Alison’s experienced in her lifetime, Colette is one of the least of them – but that’s hardly saying much. The spiteful, envious bullying, the mockery, the resentment, the vicious petty acts of control and humiliation, the way that it started off so happily between them and brought both of them genuine friendship and success, and then went so rotten so fast, and continued on for years only growing more and more rotten all the time, both of them openly believing Alison would be useless now without Colette... Their relationship is foully toxic in all the most excruciatingly mundane kind of ways; it’s mutually beneficial and mutually damaging all at once, and I’m as obsessed with it as they are with each other.

They live together, work together, travel together, rarely spend time with anyone but each other, are constantly exposed to the worst of each other: their lives are reduced to each other, by their own mutual choice, and Colette is swift to pin all her own regret and resentment for all her own choices onto Alison. Anything set during those claustrophobic years of their near-constant road-tripping around the ringroads of Middle England would be fantastic – the tense, forced intimacy of more nights on the road? The aftermath of a show gone very well, or very poorly? I’d also really like to see anything that focuses on the clash between the happy, successful honeymoon period after they first got together, and the sour misery of later years.

For most of the book I was on the edge of my seat wondering if Alison/Colette was actually going to happen – and though it didn’t, technically, I still feel that there’s a whole lot of space for it to have happened between the lines of canon anyway! I’d really love ship fic for this fandom, in whatever rotten, dysfunctional way you’d like to write it – not necessarily romance, unless the romance is awful too. An ill-advised drunken one-night hook-up, which Colette aggressively blames on Alison while explaining that she is of course so physically revolted by Alison that obviously it couldn’t have been her own fault...? Or the lingering aftermath of that hook-up: does Colette keep bringing it up for months as her newest source of resentment to hurl at Alison, or does she refuse to talk about it and only obsess over it in private instead, adding it to the pile of reasons to hatefully fixate on her? It’s easy to imagine their painful emotional intimacy overspilling into something else, which would have felt real and meaningful to both of them at the time but which Colette, being Colette, would later reject and repress and despise Alison for, because the alternative is self-examination.

Colette’s obsessive focus on Alison’s body, on that advert for lesbian anal fun, on the way so many people assume they’re in a lesbian relationship, on the terrible risk that Alison really might be a lesbian and/or attracted to her, on her own years-dead failure of a relationship with a man she never even liked to begin with: all of it adds up, and to me it feels a lot like she’s in denial of even the possibility of attraction to women – particularly to that woman. And with Alison’s kindness, and perceptiveness, and unwillingness to protect herself from acts of kindness even knowing they might hurt her, I can easily see how she might take steps to indulge Colette’s interest, knowing it was what Colette wanted but knowing that Colette would never ever act on it herself.

I also love the pitch black comedy of this novel, and the sense of dry mockery running below just about everything that happens. The level of precise and mundane detail in the setting is something else I love, too: the relentless grinding banality of these characters’ lives surrounds them in every possible way, and the grey, exacting accuracy of the scenery descriptions is very beautiful to me.

If there's sex involved, I'd prefer that it's not the detailed focus of the fic, in line with the vagueness of the sexual content in the novel too. And just to add: there’s obviously a huge amount of physical/emotional/sexual child abuse in this novel, and while I don’t have a problem with any of that content if you want to touch on it in some way, I’d strongly prefer that it isn’t the focus of any fic.

~

We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson

Merricat Blackwood, Constance Blackwood

Last Yuletide I both wrote and received fic for this fandom, but it’s one of my favourite books of all time and I can’t get enough, so here I am again! I love everything about it: the very black comedy, the obsessive, claustrophobic intimacy, the way Merricat and Constance make their unbelievable levels of co-dependency look so sweet and gentle and tenderly devoted, the rare glimpses of how objectively horrific their relationship is to anyone but the two of them… It’s so intense, and so funny and so awful, and so long as the relationship between Merricat and Constance is the focus then I’d be overjoyed with literally anything for this fandom! I’d also be equally happy with ship fic or gen, so please feel free to take any of my prompts in either direction.

I really love how, at first glance, Merricat seems to be vastly more unstable, disconnected from reality, and obsessively fixated on her sister than Constance is in return, but as time goes on it gets ever clearer that they’re exactly as bad as each other. Neither of them can function without the other, and neither of them wants to learn, because neither of them ever intends to leave the other anyway. Merricat kills their family to be alone with Constance, Constance rejects all possibility of marriage and social rehabilitation to be alone with Merricat, and at last they both reject the whole world and everything in it to be alone together forever. They’re a hell of a lot closer than sisters should be, they’re closer than romantic partners should be – they’re closer than anyone should ever be, frankly, and I love how that alarming intimacy saturates every weird moment of their everyday life together.

So as for prompts: I’d really love to see the Blackwood version of curtain fic, at any point in time! They’re both utterly absorbed by this lovely dream of sweet, fluffy domesticity they're living in together... and it is sweet and fluffy; it’s just also immensely fucked up, in ways they adore each other too much to notice or care about. How do they celebrate birthdays? Holidays? What gestures of weird, obsessive intimacy do either of them consider normal sisterly affection? Merricat repeatedly experiences furious jealousy over anyone else daring to interact with Constance and contaminate her with the outside world - what else has made her jealousy flare up before now, and what happened?

Or maybe pre-canon! They’ve already been shrinking the borders of their world for a long time before canon starts – were there any particular events that pushed them into new levels of isolation? How long ago did Merricat drop out of school, and why? Or even further back: what was their relationship like before the final family dinner? Things surely must have been pretty intensely dysfunctional between them already, given that Merricat planned her crime specifically so that Constance would be the sole survivor, and that Constance was willing to take all blame, punishment, and responsibility without ever implicating Merricat – and yet Constance was already in her early twenties while Merricat still wasn’t even in her teens, which makes the whole thing even stranger still. Is the relationship we see in canon the way it always was between them? How has life changed for them as Merricat’s grown up, and in what ways? 

I really love the vast gulf between how happy, normal, and well-adjusted they both perceive their life to be, compared to how unsettling it actually is, and ship fic feels like the perfect opportunity to ramp that dissonance up even higher! And let’s be real: there are so, so many things wrong already with the Blackwoods; this would really just be another drop in the ocean... The trouble is that they’re already so wrapped up in each other that I genuinely find it hard to imagine what kind of difference to their lives it would even make – so if that’s something you’d like to explore, then I’d really love to read it! What would change, if anything? What exactly constitutes Merricat’s idea of romance? (How many of Constance’s kitchen utensils have to be buried in secret rituals first?) And Constance is very committed to her pursuit of peaceful, picture-perfect domestic harmony, despite the bizarre reality of her circumstances; would she be just as devoted to the pursuit of wholesome, traditional romance, despite… everything about Merricat?

~

Happy Yuletide, mystery author! <3 

Skippy