Dear Yuletide Author:

[fahye]

You'll notice I didn't give any particular guidelines other than character choice, because I like surprises and I believe in letting people work with pretty much whatever they can come up with. That said, I know that having nothing to go off can be frustrating, so here are a few more specifics:

Dexter

I love everything about this show, but I especially love Dexter's family dynamics. All of them. His childhood with Harry, his adult relationship with Deb, his kind-of-adopted-family with Rita & the kids, and especially anything to do with Rudy/Brian. I find Rudy Cooper to be an absolutely fascinating character, and anything that you could write around him, I would love and adore. His opinion of Deb. His childhood, both before and after their mother's death. The set-up of his long game 'courting' Dexter with the ice truck killings.

The things that make this fandom for me are the blurred morals, the humour of Dexter's internal monologue, and the vividness of each character's personality. But really: write absolutely anything to do with Deb, Dex, Rudy, or any permutation thereof, and I will be delighted.

Jekyll

Honestly? I doubt you could write anything in this fandom that I wouldn't like. Well, I wouldn't really be all that keen on slash, but I have been converted to unlikely pairings before on the strength of a single well-written fic, so I am open to being convinced if that's what you really want to write! Things I love about the series include:

- Detective Calender & Min
- anything to do with Claire, and what Hyde thinks of her, and why she's important
- the constant sense of danger & the complete unexpectedness of many of the plot devices
- the twins! why are they important?

If you stick with the sense of black humour & wild tension that the show conveys, you can't really go wrong here.

Philip Reeve - Larklight

This is tricky, because Starcross is just out and I haven't read it yet. Rest assured that I will read it, however, and you should feel free to either take the second book into consideration OR ignore it completely. I really don't mind. The Mumbys are my favourite: I love the absent scientific father and the otherwordly mother, I love Art's narration (if you can pull it off, I will sing your praises forever) and Myrtle's attempts to be a lady. I also love the pirates spies, and anything to do with Jack Havock and his crew, or Richard Burton & Ulla & the Secret Service, would be fantastic. Yes, yes, I also adore Jack/Myrtle and will devour any fic which contains their own ridiculous brand of courting.

Shakespeare Retold - Taming of the Shrew

I requested this fandom because a) I am a total Shakespeare nut, and so you can rest assured that any oblique or even obvious references to this play - or any other play, come to that - will make me squeal like a little girl and love you forever, and b) it's a perfect example of a relationship based almost entirely on shouting at each other, which I have something of a weakness for. I'd like to see how Katherine deals with her rise to the top of British politics, I'd like Petruchio to go shoe shopping, I'd like to see more of Bianca & Mrs Minola and their flighty ways. The abrasiveness of the canon warms my violent little heart: keep the shouting in, and you can't go wrong.

~

I like subtlety, moral ambiguity and fucking around with continuity. I like flawed relationships that work anyway, and friendly violence, and science & medicine, and mythology. I like interesting metaphors and fics that include sneaky meta commentary on the canon itself. I am not a romantic person, but romance with an edge to it - be it snarky, violent, amoral or begrudging - is one of my favourite things in the world.

I am not keen on rape/non-con, underage sex, bestiality...the standard fandom squicks, I guess. I actually don't read a whole lot of porn, on the whole, but if it's what you think the fic needs then go right ahead :)

(My own fic can be found at mercurial_wit, if you want to poke around a bit and get a feel for the kind of ideas I like to explore, but don't feel obliged to!)

And above all: have fun!