Yuletide letter

[psocoptera]

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Hi! I'm excited to be coming back to Yuletide after taking a year off last year. This will be my fourth Yuletide and I've been reading advice about how to write better request letters so... hopefully something here will sound like fun? Also I have tried to be more diverse about media in my requests so I have a book, a movie, a graphic novel, and a commercial.

General Info
I have no particular squicks or triggers you need to avoid. My one big general request is for no setting-change AUs (like coffee shop AUs, high school AUs, A/B/O AUs). I read those stories happily in my big fandoms but in my teensy Yuletide fandoms I want the characters to have their canonical backstories.

The Golem and the Jinni

A book by Helene Wecker; I reviewed it here.

I'm requesting Chava but would honestly be just as happy with a story about Ahmad (or Schaalman, or Sophia...). I would love a little glimpse of part of Chava's future, whether that was shortly after the book or many years later. (Heh, I suppose Chava is the one character who could really plausibly end up working in a modern-day coffee shop and have that not be an AU.) I love Chava with Ahmad as a romance, as friends, as partners in crime-fighting (as I said in my review, two sleepless, bored, super-powered beings in New York City looking for something to do at night, hmmm) but I would also be happy to see Chava, I don't know, finding peace or purpose or sexual satisfaction with some unlikely historical figure (male or female) from the 20th century, if that sounded more fun than writing Chava/Ahmad. Or complete gen is also great, something about different jobs she's worked, or a time someone suspected she wasn't human, or if she ever travels outside of NYC. There's always the AU where she and Ahmad do end up bound in service to Schaalman, and are finding and raising his next incarnation... I would love to read even one scene from that story... or if anything post-book is just not what you're feeling, maybe tell me the creepy story of where Schaalman got her eyes?

Belle

A movie that came out in 2014 in the United States. I wrote about it here.

I requested Dido because Dido is the best. I know "write me anything!" prompts are unhelpful but really I would be happy to get to see more of any part of her life. Dido as a child. Dido as a mother. If you are into doing research, Dido reacting to any interesting historical/cultural event of her time. If you're more like "research, ack", maybe Dido and John (fluff, smut, romance, whatever)? Or something with Dido talking to Mabel. Regarding race, please feel free to foreground or middle-ground or background it as seems appropriate to your story; race is so central to Dido's story but I realize race and the racism of that time period can be uncomfortable to write about. (If you're really feeling stuck, right after I saw the movie I wrote up a bunch of plot bunnies here. These are NOT good Yuletide prompts, they're more like half-outlined stories, but if any single idea in there jumps out at you, feel free to use it and completely ignore everything else, go in a completely different direction with it, etc.)

Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant

A graphic novel. I wrote about it here. You can read the first half online here.

Delilah! Selim! I love them and I just want a story, any story, in which they're doing something together, whether that's more like "having an adventure" or more like "having a conversation". I am happy for them to be comrades in adventure, or close personal friends, or friends who have fun sex sometimes, or in love but not sure it will work out, or lifelong committed romantic partners, however you would like to write them so long as they appreciate and respect each other. When I try to picture what they might be doing in this story I keep picturing them on, in, or near the water for some reason - fighting an octopus? diving for treasure from a sunken shipwreck? driven by a storm onto a tiny deserted island? discovering that they have very different ideas about how to spend a nice day at the beach? None of those is a must-have, possibly I just like picturing them in various states of water-related undress. I really like that Delilah is the taller, bolder action hero and Selim is the quieter, more sensitive one - maybe she can rescue him from something and he can make her some excellent tea or find her a perfect apple or scrounge together a meal out of nothing or something like that.

Evolve "Playthings" gun safety PSA

A thirty-second commercial. I wrote briefly about it here and you can watch it here.

So, obviously optional details are optional, but I'll be honest that what I'm hoping for here is a story in which something sexual happens between these two women that somehow (however tangentially) involves the sex toys. Call it the law of Chekhov's vibrator - if this is the first act, then in the *third* act... you get the idea. Although I don't mind explicit description of parts and what's going where, I guess what I really most want to read about is the character interaction? Like, which one of them makes the pass, and how? How long after the scene we see in the commercial? What's the mood of this sex scene, is it more like silly, experimental, passionate, instructional? Is one of them significantly more experienced than the other in some way? Are they likely to ever do it again? I would be really squicked by blackmail or similar coercion but am okay with the "one woman is nervous/embarrassed/dubious and the other is talking her into it because she thinks they'll actually have a great time" kind of dynamic, if everyone does in fact end up having a good time. Or you can't go wrong with mutual enthusiasm.

Christmas

I have two small children and we'll be crammed into my parents' house where I'll have no privacy and non-stop demands on my attention. I will read your story absolutely as soon as I can finagle some time but I can't promise when exactly that might be, and I might have to leave a very short thank-you from my phone or something and then come back and write a proper appreciative comment later. I just want to reassure you in advance that it's not you, it's the 5-year-old, the 2-year-old, and their grandma.