how do you write like you're running out of time?

[sailor]

dear yuletide author,

hello and thank you so much for writing for me!! this is my third year doing yuletide and i'm so excited to get back into it. my ao3 is strickerbacks (formerly brampersandon), where you can see what i've written and received in past years. yuletide is always a ton of fun for me because it's the only time i really interact with fandom at large, and i've had nothing but good experiences with it. :')

in general, i'm not picky at all and am super easy to please, so no need to stress over anything. i am much happier to read a story that you wanted to write and enjoyed writing than giving stringent guidelines/dos and don'ts!! however, i have learned over the years that it is way easier as a writer to have some concrete details to bounce off of, so i do have a short list below of particular things i really love and things i avoid in fic.

things i love: found families, 5 things fics, banter/lots of dialogue, aus of almost all kinds (exceptions below), character studies, intense friendships, slice of life, codependency/loyalty kink, reincarnation, soulmates (including identifying marks/soulbonds/etc.), reunions, friends to lovers, enemies friends to lovers, telepathy (touch or otherwise), porn with plot, role reversals, pining (seemingly unrequited or actually unrequited), team dynamics, hurt/comfort, age difference, size difference, domesticity, dubcon, i stopped here because putting one after the other made me laugh really hard. domesticity AND dubcon at the same time!! why not.

do not wants: kidfic, issuefic, scenes of rape or self-harm, a/b/o, pwp, hard kink (scat/watersports/guro/etc.), genderswap, werewolf/vampire/other mythical creature aus, royalty/regency aus.

i've included suggestions-that-could-possibly-be-considered-prompts for each fandom, but once again, please don't feel like you need to adhere to those if they don't spark anything for you. i will happily read anything you write for me!

above all else, have fun!!





club de cuervos
requested characters: salvador "chava" iglesias jr., aitor cardoné

i think my favorite thing about club de cuervos is that it's as straight up ridiculous as football itself.

chava is legitimately terrible. he's a complete nightmare of a club president, he's manipulative and disingenuous and obnoxious, he's pathetic and whiny and i adore him. i love him because of how truly awful he is, not in spite of it. so feel free to make chava as annoying as you want!! i love that he doesn't know how to shut his mouth, and he's about 90/10 on bad ideas/good ideas but he does have little flashes of brilliance. i love that he loves football, and he loves his club... he just loves fame and fortune more. it's very human in the grossest way possible.

aitor is a dream come true for me. he's a mashup of like, five different footballers minimally, so he's just ridiculous beyond compare. i love that he's an exaggeration of every stereotype of a world famous footballer. i love that when he defines his sexuality, it's men, women and robots. if you know spanish football, you'd make my day, week, month, year by throwing in anything about aitor's past in la liga and especially on spain's national team. (i literally think about this all the time. aitor on the same team as sergio, as piqué, as nando, as iker, oh god poor iker. WHAT A DISASTER.) even just a throwaway mention of like, the time he and puyi shoved jordi in a locker or whatever would send me over the moon.

potential prompts:
- continuation of what happens after the final episode of the show — where does chava go? does he track down aitor in the u.s. (what team even went for aitor? THE GALAXY??) and show up all disheveled at his doorstep? I GOTTA KNOW, MAN.
- i'm gonna be super honest: it's a goddamn shame that there's no club de cuervos porn yet. if you are inclined that way, i'm absolutely down for aitor/chava smut. let's be real, aitor is into him (let's be real... aitor is into everyone) and there's just so much potential for dick-sucking there! maybe chava puts a caveat on the "no dicks" rule he gave aitor because one can only withstand that level of seduction for so long. canon-compliant gay panic from chava is perfectly fine, i'm totally down for that!!
- and if you aren't into shipping them, anything gen about aitor making chava's life hell both professionally and personally will make my day. i love the idea of somebody finally being more obnoxious than chava and him really not knowing how to deal with it because he's so used to being the most annoying person in the room. or even a rare moment of tenderness and genuine friendship between them, that would make me happy as a clam too!! i fully admit to crying when chava stood up for aitor during ~the scandal~ because i love when surface level douchebags have the capacity to be good people and especially good friends. also, their goodbye was surprisingly emotional. "you're too big for this town, chava."

i'm more than happy if you want to include other characters from the show! the cuervos' team dynamic and the chava/mary luz/isabel power struggle were some of my favorite parts of the show, so i'm absolutely down for any of the other characters making an appearance as well.





hamilton rpf
requested characters: lin-manuel miranda, jonathan groff

THEY'RE IN THE PLAY!!

so maybe you've heard of hamilton, the smash broadway musical-slash-cultural zeitgeist about founding father alexander hamilton. i've followed the development of this show for... an embarrassingly long time, and the cast's antics have always been hilariously adorable. but when groff joined the show as king george, things got real wacky, real fast.

basically, lin and groff like to pretend they're in a high school play together and it's become a long running joke.

it's my favorite thing because it's just so silly and ridiculous and they're both so committed to the joke. and also because i find their friendship painfully cute. the first time lin met groff was in 2007, the very day he put him in heights cool musical too, literally so he could rap about how cute he is and how you shouldn't look directly into his eyes. TRULY THE BEGINNING OF A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP. (don't worry, they then reprised this in 2015, because of course they did.) and it's just kind of spiraled out of control for me personally.

potential prompts:
- just go balls to the wall with the high school au lmm and groffsauce have been pretending they live for the past six months. either like, a literal high school au with the cast of hamilton (did you hear renée's dad is filming the show? / i hope it's not all renée... / I HOPE IT IS!!) being IN THE PLAY, or just a continuation of lmm and groffsauce's stupid let's-pretend-we're-still-in-high-school antics, because it's truly my favorite thing about this run of the show.
- HAM4HAM, the little mini-show lmm & co. do for the lottery sometimes. lmm and groffsauce doing a duet (there are just so many terrible/wonderful options and i'm happy with any of them, but my personal favorite to imagine for maximum misery is helen's etude from fun home. i know this type, this type of married guy...) and in the prep work for it, discovering ~feelings.~ i'm fully aware of how ridiculous this is, but so is musical theatre, so!!
- groffsauce is leaving the show for a month to go film the looking finale! andrew rannells is going to be IN THE PLAY!! how do they keep the ridiculous spark alive while groff's away?

if none of these appeal to you, i'm honestly good with anything about lmm and groffsauce's ultimate bromance (or romance, whatever you prefer, i am very much down for both). they share the idina menzel suite! you know they probably get up to a lot of shit. also, anthony ramos (who plays laurens/phillip) documented a two show day and included a note about how lin and groff have a special relationship (...but groff gets around) so everybody is clearly fully aware of how ridiculous they are together. it probably goes without saying, but i'm pleased as punch with cameos from the rest of the cast. they're all muffins and i adore them.

(a note: if you do end up writing this, i'd like to request that you please archive lock your fic. normally this doesn't bug me one way or the other for rpf, but since hamilton is currently at a cultural apex, the fandom is very enthusiastic and the young, internet-savvy cast loves to interact with them, it feels like a perfect storm for fourth wall-breaking. archive locking is definitely the safest bet for lmm & co. not finding out that somebody wrote about them kissing or whatever. thank you in advance!!)





nova
requested characters: sam alexander, uatu

god, i love nova.

as the story goes, i picked up nova on a whim with the intention of skimming it so that i could figure out how to write sam for my own project. it backfired and i fell completely in love with the series and with sam. i just find his character so charming; i have a soft spot for hot-headed dumbasses who try their best but don't always succeed. i love that he is undoubtedly good at what he does, but he still struggles with how exactly to be a teenage superhero and screws up his fair share. i love his dynamic with his family, his conflicted feelings about his dad but how his resolve to find him never wavered. I LOVE SAM ALEXANDER SO MUCH.

i have a special fondness for mentor/mentee relationships, and while sam and the watcher don't fit into this category perfectly, they are close enough to it for me to love their dynamic endlessly. i love that the watcher was the first one to believe in him and help him, and that sam came to him with all his whining and questions. and he called him his friend!! ahh, my heart. i love that when sam did something cool in front of cap and iron man, his first instinct was to ask if they thought the watcher saw him. i love that the watcher revealed his past to sam and spoke to him because he knew how important it was that sam find his father again. (original sin #0 is basically everything to me, if it wasn't already obvious.)

OF COURSE, AS WE KNOW, UATU IS SUPER DEAD. like, hella dead. yes, it happened in 2014. no, i still haven't emotionally recovered from it.

potential prompts:
- let me embrace cliché with all my heart and ask for fix-it fic. uatu comes back to life, you know... somehow. watcher immortality. marvel comics logic, who knows! sam gets to meet up with him again and fill him in on everything he's missed — he found his dad, he's an avenger now (which was... against uatu's advice hahaha), he's growing up and figuring this hero thing out.
- or maybe uatu comes back wrong somehow and sam finds he isn't the friend-who-lives-on-the-moon that he remembers? i'm also down for that! (happy endings are by no means necessary for me, i love to be miserable.)
- any kind of "filling in the gaps" fic — times sam visited uatu for advice or just to hang out! sam trying to explain his friend who lives on the moon to his mom, kaelynn, anyone! sam wheedling other heroes for more info on uatu's death or trying to solve it himself! basically anything, i'm easy.

if you choose to include other characters in the marvel universe, that's awesome!! i love everyone sam has already run up against (iron man, beta ray bill, the new warriors — especially kaine and aracely, doc green, rocket and gamora, etc.) so you have total freedom there. my only cameo-related caveat is i would prefer not to have richard rider appear. other than that, everyone is fair game!

in the end i just really, really love sam and will fawn over anything you write about him, guaranteed.





real madrid c.f. rpf
requested characters: toni kroos, gareth bale, luka modrić

i'll be the first to admit toni/gareth is a stealth ship that comes out of nowhere, but i just really like their dynamic. gareth is all about banter with the lads, and as we've been seeing more and more lately, toni is a dry, sarcastic little bitch. ("okay, english now, you can go, thank you.") i honestly think they're well-matched personality-wise — they're both a little more buttoned-up than the rest of their free-wheeling handsy squad, both love to tease and banter, they're both... still learning spanish... to varying degrees of success. also the stupid missed high five thing, they're just such awkward dorks, i love it.

luka and gareth have been close friends since luka came to tottenham in 2008, and it's honestly super adorable. ancelotti even said it himself: gareth plays better when luka is around; they have an easy and immediate partnership. they're both pretty quiet so it kind of creeps up on you, but then you suddenly realize they're always sitting together on planes, bothering each other during training, coordinating their outfits, etc. i just really, really love luka as gareth's best friend in every capacity. (maaaaybe my love for loyalty kink comes into play here kind of a little bit, kind of a lot.)

so ALL THAT SAID, i'm really into anything about these three!! toni/gareth as a ship with ever-present luka the supportive bff, or all three of them as platonic friends, either way. or if you feel more comfortable focusing on a combination of two rather than all three, that's cool too! i love it all. and you are of course welcome to throw in anyone else from the squad who strikes your fancy! please feel free. i love everyone in this club.

a general note if you do go down the toni/gareth shipping route (and i seriously love you forever for it, they're my rarepair otp and next to nothing exists for them) — i prefer toni in a dominant role! if you have any questions about particulars, my good friend diana is the only other person who loves this pairing and a great resource.

potential prompts:
- gareth is kind of having a hell of a season, isn't he? i have a lot of feelings about the pressure he's under, how the management views him, how fans treat him, his role in the bbc, etc. — but they can pretty much all be summed up by this. how does he handle all of this, how do both toni and luka handle him handling it, the ways they differ and the ways they're the same, etc.
- so FUN FACT that i learned really recently: gareth keeps a "low profile" and doesn't give out his number to his teammates. what... the fuck? gareth, what the fuck, honestly. luka seems to be an obvious exception because they've got seven years of friendship behind them, but anything dealing with gareth's awkwardness with people in general would be my jam. why is he so reclusive, how do they both break it down, etc.
- aus! as far as football rpf is concerned, i love aus. i think they can be less daunting to write than season-compliant fic, and i don't think they're a cop out at all. so if you love aus, good news: so do i! like i said in my general likes section, i love basically all aus with few exceptions, so i am happy for toni, gareth and luka (and the rest of the squad) in an au of any kind. i particularly love aus involving robots, space, ghosts, non-football professions, theatre/film, reincarnation, on and on and on. aus of all kinds! go crazy!!

i contain all of my football nonsense on a separate tumblr, wherein you'll find tags for both toni/gareth and gareth + luka. it kind of illustrates my slow motion breakdown over them!! (that tumblr in general is a mess, but probably a goldmine if we were somehow matched on this.)


and that about sums it up!! again, thank you so much. i can't wait to read what you write and inevitably gush all over it.

have a wonderful yuletide season!!

♥ cbran

Comments

[tacroy]

"i prefer toni in a dominant role!"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA
AHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

yuletide author, if you do decide to use me as a resource — i can tell you exactly how much of an understatement that is.

[sailor]

PLEASE RESPECT ME, YOU DON'T RESPECT ME I THINK