skieswideopen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skieswideopen) wrote2022-03-06 11:59 pm
skieswideopen) wrote2022-03-06 11:59 pm
Entry tags:
Dear Unsent Letters Writer
Dear Unsent Letters Author,
Thank you so much for writing for me! I'm really looking forward to reading whatever you come up with.
I've provided some general preferences below along with some prompts for each fandom. Hopefully something here will inspire you! But optional details are optional; go ahead and write the story you want to write. Alternately, if you're in search of more inspiration than I've provided here, I've requested all of these fandoms before in other exchanges. Feel free to scroll through my dear author tag to look for ideas.
I'm skieswideopen at AO3 as well.
General Likes:
* Competence. So much love for competent characters being competent!
* Secrets coming out, by choice, chance, or necessity.
* Friends to lovers.
* Equal partnerships in romantic relationships.
* Brief moments of emotional vulnerability from generally stoic or reserved characters.
* Heroic characters being heroic: protecting people, risking their lives for others, etc.
* Outsider POV.
* Stories that pick up dropped plot threads.
* First times of various kinds (first kiss, first date, first encounter, first day on the job, etc.).
* Forced proximity (handcuffed together, snowed in, trapped together in an elevator, etc.).
* Truth serum/in vino veritas/midnight confessions. (See my above love of secrets coming out.)
* Undercover as a couple (or spontaneously posing as a couple to avoid detection).
* Post-apocalyptic, disaster, or trapped-in-the-wilderness survival scenarios.
* Time loops and dealing with the consequences when the loop ends.
* Heading home for weddings, funerals, high school reunions, holidays, etc. Alternately, family or old friends showing up.
Note: I know some of those likes aren't really suited to an epistolary exchange. Feel free to use any of those ideas if you can make them work, of course, but I'd be completely content with a character study or something else along those lines.
Do Not Wants:
* AUs that alter the premise, setting, or character roles or identities.
* Infidelity within requested relationships. This includes both the characters cheating on each other and cheating on someone else to be with each other.
* Unrequested poly involving requested relationships.
* Significant, permanent mental or physical injuries to requested characters that don't occur in canon, especially any sort of amputation. (However, killing requested or major characters is fine unless otherwise noted.)
* Extended text message or social media conversations. (Short exchanges are fine.)
Other Things:
* I'm flexible on both genre and rating: plot-driven, character-driven, action, introspection, mission fic, slice of life … it's all good. So is anything from G to E.
* Background non-con is fine if it's helpful for the story, but I'd rather not read a story that focuses on a requested character being raped or the aftermath thereof. Dubcon is fine as long as it doesn't leave anyone horribly traumatized.
* I'm okay with references to the pandemic.
* I enjoy happy, hopeful and bittersweet endings.
* I dislike plots that revolve around misunderstandings that could be cleared up with a simple conversation or that hinge on characters making foolish mistakes that they wouldn't make in canon.
Fandom: Covert Affairs
Requested relationship: Annie Walker/Eyal Lavin
Annie and Eyal are both ridiculously competent, with the multiple languages, the ability to improvise a cover story at the drop of a hat, and generally being able to talk or fight their way out of every situation, and I love that about them. I enjoy the early tension, when there's attraction but also competition, and I love the deep friendship and absolute trust that develops between them later. I'm particularly fond of the way Eyal habitually looks out for Annie without demanding that she never put herself in danger, and the way they both walk each other back from doing things they shouldn't.
There are obviously a few geopolitical obstacles to their being together as a couple as long as they work for their respective agencies, with formal rules against it and also the knowledge that a relationship could be used as leverage. Those obstacles can be addressed or ignored as you like. I'd just love to see them together, whether it's a story about how they get together, trying to maintain a relationship while keeping their careers, or something post-series where one or both of them has moved on from the spy business, allowing them to be openly together.
If you want to go post-series, feel free to have Eyal's reconciliation with his ex-wife and Annie's relationship with Ryan McQuaid just not work out, or otherwise have the out of the picture.
Prompts:
* A relationship in code: Keeping in touch between visits without their agencies catching on.
* Their relationship begins not through their joint missions, but through the letters/emails they send each other in between.
* If you're feeling more melancholy: love letters written and burned, unsent.
* Letters written during a disaster (held prisoner? trapped by a natural disaster? on the run? After an apocalypse?) that one never expects the other to read.
* Sharing emails of everyday life while apart.
* Exploring how letters or journal entries play a role in bringing them together.
* Telling the story of their relationship through letters to third parties (Annie's sister, Eyal's mother, a friend, a different relative)
Fandom: Only Lovers Left Alive
Requested relationships: Adam/Eve
I love Adam and Eve, both separately and together: the long history, their intense love for each other, their interest in music and books and their hoarding of related objects, Adam's concern about the state of the world, Eve's list of all the things that make life worth living. I'd love to read some of the letters (or emails) they must have sent over the years during times when they were apart, or any sort of diary or journal entries they may have kept, discussing their lives or each other.
Prompts:
* How did they first meet?
* A glimpse into one of their many weddings.
* Love letters exchanged across the world.
* Writing to each other during desperate times (e.g., while preparing to flee a war zone).
* What happens after they leave Detroit?
* A slice of daily (vampire) life for them.
* Gossip about historical figures.
* The very first letters they wrote to each other.
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Requested relationships: Charles Vance & none, Laira Rillak & none
I really enjoy Vance's character, tough but fair, idealistic and compassionate, and completely willing to fire on Discovery and kill the crew if it's necessary to save the Federation. And Rillak is interesting in her extremely hands-on approach to Starfleet, and her clear dedication to the Federation, including a couple of decades of diplomatic service.
I'd love anything that provides a little more insight into either of them, or fills in their background a bit, or illuminates the relationships between them. A character study through their personal or professional logs? News articles about one of them? Excerpts from books or articles they wrote?
I said "none" for both Vance and Rillak, but if you want to explore the characters through messages exchanged with someone else--Vance's wife or daughter, Rillak's partner, an old friend, a parent--I will happily read that too.
Prompts:
* Either Vance's or Rillak's take on their first meeting, or another behind-the-scenes negotiation. (J'Vini? The meeting on Ni'Var about joining the Federation? The DMA? A entirely new scenario?)
* A profile on or interview with Rillak during or just after the election.
* A profile on Vance when he first becomes commander-in-chief.
* Vance's personal log when he's deciding to send away his family.
* Personal or official log entries from any point before or during the show, as a character study.
* Letters written/messages recorded going into a desperate situation, to be remembered by.
* Messages exchanged with a friend about events/life/each other.
Thank you so much for writing for me! I'm really looking forward to reading whatever you come up with.
I've provided some general preferences below along with some prompts for each fandom. Hopefully something here will inspire you! But optional details are optional; go ahead and write the story you want to write. Alternately, if you're in search of more inspiration than I've provided here, I've requested all of these fandoms before in other exchanges. Feel free to scroll through my dear author tag to look for ideas.
I'm skieswideopen at AO3 as well.
General Likes:
* Competence. So much love for competent characters being competent!
* Secrets coming out, by choice, chance, or necessity.
* Friends to lovers.
* Equal partnerships in romantic relationships.
* Brief moments of emotional vulnerability from generally stoic or reserved characters.
* Heroic characters being heroic: protecting people, risking their lives for others, etc.
* Outsider POV.
* Stories that pick up dropped plot threads.
* First times of various kinds (first kiss, first date, first encounter, first day on the job, etc.).
* Forced proximity (handcuffed together, snowed in, trapped together in an elevator, etc.).
* Truth serum/in vino veritas/midnight confessions. (See my above love of secrets coming out.)
* Undercover as a couple (or spontaneously posing as a couple to avoid detection).
* Post-apocalyptic, disaster, or trapped-in-the-wilderness survival scenarios.
* Time loops and dealing with the consequences when the loop ends.
* Heading home for weddings, funerals, high school reunions, holidays, etc. Alternately, family or old friends showing up.
Note: I know some of those likes aren't really suited to an epistolary exchange. Feel free to use any of those ideas if you can make them work, of course, but I'd be completely content with a character study or something else along those lines.
Do Not Wants:
* AUs that alter the premise, setting, or character roles or identities.
* Infidelity within requested relationships. This includes both the characters cheating on each other and cheating on someone else to be with each other.
* Unrequested poly involving requested relationships.
* Significant, permanent mental or physical injuries to requested characters that don't occur in canon, especially any sort of amputation. (However, killing requested or major characters is fine unless otherwise noted.)
* Extended text message or social media conversations. (Short exchanges are fine.)
Other Things:
* I'm flexible on both genre and rating: plot-driven, character-driven, action, introspection, mission fic, slice of life … it's all good. So is anything from G to E.
* Background non-con is fine if it's helpful for the story, but I'd rather not read a story that focuses on a requested character being raped or the aftermath thereof. Dubcon is fine as long as it doesn't leave anyone horribly traumatized.
* I'm okay with references to the pandemic.
* I enjoy happy, hopeful and bittersweet endings.
* I dislike plots that revolve around misunderstandings that could be cleared up with a simple conversation or that hinge on characters making foolish mistakes that they wouldn't make in canon.
Fandom: Covert Affairs
Requested relationship: Annie Walker/Eyal Lavin
Annie and Eyal are both ridiculously competent, with the multiple languages, the ability to improvise a cover story at the drop of a hat, and generally being able to talk or fight their way out of every situation, and I love that about them. I enjoy the early tension, when there's attraction but also competition, and I love the deep friendship and absolute trust that develops between them later. I'm particularly fond of the way Eyal habitually looks out for Annie without demanding that she never put herself in danger, and the way they both walk each other back from doing things they shouldn't.
There are obviously a few geopolitical obstacles to their being together as a couple as long as they work for their respective agencies, with formal rules against it and also the knowledge that a relationship could be used as leverage. Those obstacles can be addressed or ignored as you like. I'd just love to see them together, whether it's a story about how they get together, trying to maintain a relationship while keeping their careers, or something post-series where one or both of them has moved on from the spy business, allowing them to be openly together.
If you want to go post-series, feel free to have Eyal's reconciliation with his ex-wife and Annie's relationship with Ryan McQuaid just not work out, or otherwise have the out of the picture.
Prompts:
* A relationship in code: Keeping in touch between visits without their agencies catching on.
* Their relationship begins not through their joint missions, but through the letters/emails they send each other in between.
* If you're feeling more melancholy: love letters written and burned, unsent.
* Letters written during a disaster (held prisoner? trapped by a natural disaster? on the run? After an apocalypse?) that one never expects the other to read.
* Sharing emails of everyday life while apart.
* Exploring how letters or journal entries play a role in bringing them together.
* Telling the story of their relationship through letters to third parties (Annie's sister, Eyal's mother, a friend, a different relative)
Fandom: Only Lovers Left Alive
Requested relationships: Adam/Eve
I love Adam and Eve, both separately and together: the long history, their intense love for each other, their interest in music and books and their hoarding of related objects, Adam's concern about the state of the world, Eve's list of all the things that make life worth living. I'd love to read some of the letters (or emails) they must have sent over the years during times when they were apart, or any sort of diary or journal entries they may have kept, discussing their lives or each other.
Prompts:
* How did they first meet?
* A glimpse into one of their many weddings.
* Love letters exchanged across the world.
* Writing to each other during desperate times (e.g., while preparing to flee a war zone).
* What happens after they leave Detroit?
* A slice of daily (vampire) life for them.
* Gossip about historical figures.
* The very first letters they wrote to each other.
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Requested relationships: Charles Vance & none, Laira Rillak & none
I really enjoy Vance's character, tough but fair, idealistic and compassionate, and completely willing to fire on Discovery and kill the crew if it's necessary to save the Federation. And Rillak is interesting in her extremely hands-on approach to Starfleet, and her clear dedication to the Federation, including a couple of decades of diplomatic service.
I'd love anything that provides a little more insight into either of them, or fills in their background a bit, or illuminates the relationships between them. A character study through their personal or professional logs? News articles about one of them? Excerpts from books or articles they wrote?
I said "none" for both Vance and Rillak, but if you want to explore the characters through messages exchanged with someone else--Vance's wife or daughter, Rillak's partner, an old friend, a parent--I will happily read that too.
Prompts:
* Either Vance's or Rillak's take on their first meeting, or another behind-the-scenes negotiation. (J'Vini? The meeting on Ni'Var about joining the Federation? The DMA? A entirely new scenario?)
* A profile on or interview with Rillak during or just after the election.
* A profile on Vance when he first becomes commander-in-chief.
* Vance's personal log when he's deciding to send away his family.
* Personal or official log entries from any point before or during the show, as a character study.
* Letters written/messages recorded going into a desperate situation, to be remembered by.
* Messages exchanged with a friend about events/life/each other.