sailor | cope and seethe livecels, real deadchads only

Dear Yuletide Author,

Hello and thank you so much for writing for me!! ♥ You're a gem, and I'm so excited to read what you end up writing.

My AO3 is strikerbacks (formerly brampersandon), where you can see what I've written/received in past Yuletides or peruse my bookmarks for more of an idea of what I read on the regular.

In general, I'm not picky at all and am super easy to please, so no need to stress over anything. I do have my general likes/dislikes which are applicable across the board, and I've included potential prompts for each fandom, but please don't feel like you need to adhere to those prompts if they don't spark anything for you. I'm much happier reading a story that you wanted to write and enjoyed writing. If you're having fun, I'm having fun!

ETA: Per the mod recommendation to add, my AO3 settings are enabled for anyone to gift me works!

Things I Love

Found families and team dynamics — especially in a group of unlikely characters who may not always get along but absolutely do love each other

Intense relationships — you and me against the world (even in small, mundane ways — two characters finding an understanding in each other that they can't find in anyone else), mentor/mentee relationships (platonic or shippy), codependency/loyalty kink, the friends to lovers trope, pining (seemingly unrequited or actually unrequited)

Character studies — whether it's introspection or a study of how the character relates to their world/the other characters around them, anything that delves deeper into what makes a character tick is my jam

Reunions — possibly my biggest weakness in any narrative, I love characters coming back together, realizing what they missed (or didn't) about one another, distance being forced between them OR deliberately chosen by one or both, reunions that don’t go well, everything about it really

AUs of almost all kinds (exceptions below) — I have a special fondness for anything involving robots, ghosts, reincarnation, soulmates (including identifying marks/soulbonds/etc.), telepathy (touch or otherwise), space, theatre/film, mundane professions, etc.

Banter/lots of dialogue, 5 things fics, non-linear narratives, starting fic in medias res, exposition and world-building

Domesticity — more in terms of the concept of home than in the minutiae of actual home-making, I love characters working to settle in and feel at home in unfamiliar environments, missing home, finding homes in unconventional places (or people!), etc.

Porn with plot — some things I enjoy reading are age difference, breathplay, dubcon, edging, over-stimulation, begging, praise kink, lots of talking, frottage, size difference, voyeurism, role reversals, rough sex, dom/sub dynamics, light (not overly-negotiated) bondage, characters discovering things they didn't know they were into

Do Not Wants

Kidfic — both characters being aged down into children or adult characters somehow acquiring children if they do not already have in them in canon

Issuefic — addressing/depicting social issues is totally fine, I more mean the preachy sort that makes the issue being depicted the central conceit and moral of the story

Scenes of rape or self-harm

A/B/O, hard kink (petplay/lifestyle BDSM/scat/guro/watersports/etc.)

PWP — I love porn, but I prefer for it to be part of the bigger picture rather than the sole focus

Some AUs — genderswap, high school/university, werewolves/vampires/other mythical creatures, royalty/regency

Polar Explorer RPF
Ernest Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott

Ahh, my favorite rivalship in polar exploration! It's funny, because usually pure rivalships don't appeal to me at all. The lightbulb moment for me with Shackleton and Con was realizing that it's not that they hated each other, it's just that they never understood each. They had a foundation of mutual respect, even friendliness before things went wrong on Discovery — but at their cores, they were such fundamentally different men that they never saw eye to eye when it mattered.

That's the crux of everything I love about them, really, and why they've given me terminal brain worms. I'm so fascinated by their strange, tenuous friendship on Discovery, the way things fell apart in pursuit of the pole, their petty fights when they both made it back to England, all of it. I think there's so much depth there to mine — all the ways they're so different, the few ways they're very much the same but how impossible it is for them to realize it because of their roles. Anything you choose to explore will make my day, truly.

Potential Prompts:

Literally anything about their time on Discovery together. I'm particularly fond of this story relayed by Ford to Sir Edmund Hillary, about Shackleton beating up one of the merchant navy men who wouldn't follow Scott's orders. Shackleton basically acting as an attack dog for Scott?? YES PLEASE. I am WEAK. But also, anything about them feeling each other out on their first expedition — Scott trying to effectively lead and Shackleton realizing he wants to be a very different kind of leader! Bonding over their shared love of poetry! Whatever the hell happened on the way to and from furthest south! (You know, besides scurvy.) You could throw me the most meager Discovery scraps and I'd eat them up because I am desperate for anything about their time together, before they both fell lock-step into their own narratives.

I'm more or less always thinking about AUs for polar explorers so I'm definitely down for that. I'm equally fond of AUs that are more firmly tied into the time and place of the expeditions — what if Shackleton hadn't been sent home early from Discovery? what if Shackleton got the noble failure death during Nimrod before Scott could? what if Scott's ghost haunts him after Terra Nova? — as I am of totally untethered AUs — rival football team captains! the worst drift partners imaginable! sentinels and guides! time loops! — so if any kind of alternative take on them strikes your fancy, no matter how big or small, I can promise I'll love it.

I'm equally happy with gen fic about their friendship-turned-rivalry as I am with shippy fic! Honest to god, if you manage to devise a way to make them kiss I will already be over the moon. Constantly rotating in my head what Cherry said about Scott: "I have never known anybody, man or woman, who could be so attractive when he chose." Bro?? Shackleton being inexplicably charmed by Scott despite how irritating he finds him is my JAM. Or hey! Make them get nasty with each other after everything falls apart! I may want to smash them together and make them kiss but I also want absolutely rotten angerbanging in equal measure. They... are complicated. :')) Sidenote: If you go the shippy route and would also like to fold in their love triangle with Bill Wilson, please feel free — I love that tangled mess on Discovery and am totally down for its inclusion!

Shackleton (TV)
Ernest Shackleton, Frank Hurley, Frank Wild, Frank Worsley

Shackleton and his Franks!! I'm so emotional about them all the time. :(( I was already on the Wild/Shackleton/Worsley train before watching the miniseries, but then the specialest little boy treatment they gave Hurley catapulted me into full Shackleton/Frank harem hell. I just love how vastly different all three of the Franks are, and how all of their relationships to Shackleton differ — stalwart, quiet Wild always a permanent fixture at Shackleton's side; affable and chaotic Wuzzles sweeping in and charming Shackleton despite their rocky start; fearless, boundlessly determined Hurley who takes no shit and isn't afraid to stand up to Shackleton. They couldn't be more different, but Shackleton loves them all so much, and through that their bonds with each other are forged too.

I think that's what I love most about them — every permutation of this foursome has its own unique dynamic, so all combinations fascinate me just as much. Obviously the miniseries had to skim over some parts by necessity, but you can absolutely feel free to draw on what we know about them outside of the miniseries — like the fact that Wild and Hurley had their long walk and talks around Elephant Island, or how Wuzzles always went along with Hurley on his photography jaunts. In such a brutal and hopeless situation, they all just adored each other so much, man. ;~;

Potential Prompts:

Obviously Shackleton and Wild were already besties before Endurance, but I think it's so funny how both Worsley and Hurley got off to a bad start with them — Wuzzles because he couldn't captain the ship for shit, Hurley because he showed up and immediately threw a strop about money and started causing trouble. And yet both of them endeared themselves to both Shackleton and Wild over time. The miniseries doesn't delve much into that (despite my conspiracy theory that the entire reason it was made was to rehabilitate Hurley's image lol they still gloss over how Shackleton comes to be so unbearably fond of him) and I'd love love looove any fic that explores those early months on the ship together, how both of them work their way into Shackleton and Wild's favor and eventually become this inseparable group.

AUs apply here as well! I'm pretty much always remembering how desperately Worsley wished they could have served in WWI together — so add in the fact that Shackleton and Wild were originally supposed to be WWI spies in Spitsbergen together, and Hurley was a WWI photographer, and you've got the perfect setup for that AU. Really, you could put them in any situation and I would be absolutely thrilled — the Frank harem on a space station is hilarious to me, the Endurance crew being a football club occupies 98% of my waking thoughts every single day, reincarnation and ghosts will ALWAYS hurt so good, on and on. The four of them occupy such unique roles that I think they slot nicely into just about any AU and I'm happy to read whatever strikes your fancy!!

I'm not kidding when I say I love any possible combined ship here. Shackleton/Wild are Thee Polar Soulmates for me (buried next to each other facing south!! roars) but I love how Worsley and Hurley worm their way into it too. And to be honest, the miniseries made Shackleton/Hurley EXTREMELY real, so I have a special weakness for them. But god, just... everybody in this foursome has such good chemistry, you can't go wrong. If you want to include any two of them as a background ship, I'll love it. If you want to go whole hog and have all four of them kissing, I'll love it. I'll truly love anything about Shackleton and his Franks. :'))

Terra Nova - Tally
Lawrence Oates

This play, man. THIS PLAY. How can you make the march to and from the South Pole more harrowing? Add Roald Amundsen as a spectre of death! The vague, unsettling magical realism of this play is exaaaactly what I want out of polar exploration narratives, honestly. Antarctica is a weird place already, why not get weirder with it? So really, feel free to lean into that as hard as you want — you can absolutely take it farther than Tally did if you'd like and I'll be DELIGHTED.

Oates is my favorite member of the Terra Nova crew, and his characterization in this play is... something! I'm not looking for rehabilitation exactly, because I do genuinely think this version of Oates is interesting, but I'd love fic that approaches him with a little more nuance if possible. :')) Just because a man is a taciturn bastard doesn't mean he's cruel, necessarily. But I'll also cover this more in one of my prompts! Regardless, ultimately what I want is More Oates in this strange version of the Antarctic.

Potential Prompts:

MISSING SCEEEEENES!! I already love missing scenes fic, and it's such a perfect fit for fic about a play. The central conceit of the play is obviously Scott, his flashbacks with Kathleen and his conversations with Amundsen, so the rest of the polar party isn't as fleshed out as they could be. I'd love any missing scenes focusing on them! Or a scene of Oates alone after he leaves the tent? Oh, that would kill me. Oates becoming an actual spectre of death, like Amundsen but worse! That could even carry over to a missing scene that takes place after the play, when the rescue party finds the tent — they never found Oates, after all. Basically, if you're able to fill in those blanks with any missing scenes I will die happy!!

Hear me out: time loops. Because what is a play but one big time loop? The same script, the same actions, repeated over and over. The narrative is predetermined. But there has never been a man who wished he could remove himself from the narrative more than Oates. Tally already made Antarctica weird as hell in the play, and I love the meta of layering theatre being weird as hell over that. Oates slowly becoming more self-aware of the fourth wall? Oates going against his characterization and trying to break out of the loops, of the play? Any of the other characters also becoming aware of the play loops? Scenes getting shuffled around, Amundsen appearing to more of the characters besides just Scott, alternative endings? I'm so down for all of it and more.

This is the least formed of all of my (admittedly already very vague) prompts, but... he punch Taff. Fix it please. :(((( Didn't expect to become an Oates/Taff truther but the oddball characterization of Terra Nova sure did that for me! Kiss and make up maybe. Man. :((

And that about wraps 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!!

♥ Caitlin

cope and seethe livecels, real deadchads only

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