Dear Yuletide Writer,
Hi! It appears we share one of the tiny fandoms below so great! Thank you so much for volunteering to write me a story! This is my first Yuletide and… it’s also my first time really writing fanfiction. I’ve been aware of Yuletide for a few years now because of friends who are involved in fandom, but apart from reading the occasional fic that some friend was gushing about I’ve not been involved. Some story contests that I entered years ago for a game I used to play I guess are technically considered fanfiction; I uploaded one of them to AO3 just to see how it worked.
Which I guess is a long-winded way of saying that I’m brand-new to all of this and I don’t know what to expect. I don’t want to step on your creative toes, but I suppose I should mention some of the things I do like and don’t like about the fanfiction I have read. I like stuff that plays alongside or inside of canon, like missing episodes or different perspective on things we’ve seen or what happens after canon is finished or before it started (‘What else?’ instead of ‘What if?’). In general I like banter; you’ll notice that all of my fandoms are high on the witty banter scale. I’m not a big fan of alternate universes where things are just randomly different; instead I like things that diverge from canon. Think Star Trek (2009) as opposed to “some of the characters are robots”. However for crossovers I kind of like it the opposite; I much prefer “X as Y” instead of “X meets Y”. So Pacific Rim as portrayed by the Muppets is hilarious while Sherlock Holmes meets the Phantom of the Opera doesn’t hold as much interest for me (that being said, I have read a few crossovers that I enjoyed, .
Romance is fine, innuendo is fun, explicit sex doesn’t interest me, and while I have no qualms with same-sex or intersex or anything beyond the basic binary gender/sexual-identity dynamic I prefer it be developed naturally from the canon characterization rather than shoehorned in.
If it helps at all, let me fill in a little bit about myself. There’s a fair amount of public entries on my journal so feel free to go back and look at some of those. I play the violin, I keep an aquarium with African dwarf frogs, I’d like to move to Scotland some day (somewhere along the line between Edinburgh and Dunkeld), and I work in theater doing lighting and scenery and other production work. I’ve started to browse the AO3 archives and bookmarked some fanfic that I particularly like. I recently moved from the shores of Lake Erie to the Bay Area. On Labor Day I shattered both of my elbows in a bicycle accident and had to have them replaced so I’m currently using dictation software. I hope to be typing, at least one handed, by Thanksgiving.
And in no particular order here are some other movies, television shows, books, etc. that I also enjoy: Doctor Who, Farscape, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Coupling, Night at the Museum, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Harold & Kumar go to White Castle, the Harry Potter books (I wasn’t as thrilled with the movies), the Discworld (particularly the Watch novels), Hawkeye by Matt Fraction & David Aja, The Avengers, Sherlock, Leverage, Scotland PA, Kung Fu Hustle, Wallace and Gromit, the Muppets, Pirates of the Caribbean, LA Story, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Eddie Izzard, Dara O’Briain, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (movie and books), Troll Hunter, Rare Exports, Spider-man (comics and the first two Raimi movies), To Say Nothing of the Dog, Star Wars, Star Trek, Pacific Rim, Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap, Digger by Ursula Vernon, MythBusters, Top Gear, Secret of the Gnomes, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), Picasso at the Lapine Agile.
The Thrilling Adventure Hour
– Frank Doyle, Sadie Doyle
I grew up listening to old-time radio shows (on the actual radio! Thanks CHUM-FM!) so when I discovered this podcast I was thrilled. I love everything about this show, and now that I live in California I hope to see it live someday soon. I particularly enjoy Beyond Belief; the inebriated banter between Frank & Sadie Doyle is wonderful, I love the fact that they are so much in love with each other that the rest of the world is just a distant concern behind themselves and liquor, and I love the hilariously funny supernatural situations they find themselves in.
I listed Frank & Sadie to make matching easier but if possible I’d really like to see a story involving Dave & Donna Henderson as well, either singly or together. Maybe Frank & Sadie and Dave & Donna are at dinner together. Maybe it’s a story about how they all met. Or perhaps a story about how Dave or Donna became the unholy creatures of the night that they are. Or maybe Donna is trying to convince Sadie to babysit little Michelle for the afternoon. Or maybe we can “Join the Doyles next time when they once again walk Beyond Belief in a frightful episode titled”:
32. Tomb to Tango
37. Seven Brides for Seven Horrors
42. Zombies, Tramps, and Thieves
48. From Fear to Eternity
54. Slaughter on the 23rd Floor
59. Curiosity Drank the Cat
63. Healthy, Wealthy, and Dead
68. Death Be A Lady Tonight
76. Dial ‘E’ for Evil
80. Clear Eyes, Pure Heart, Can Murder
93. The Autobiography of Malcolm Hex
96. My Grave-ite Year
101. Murder O’Clock
109. The Curious Case of Skeleton Button
114. Death by Death-west
116. Happy Anniver-Sorcery
122. April Showers Bring May Murders
125. The Joy of Six-Six-Six
129. Monster of the House
133. Bride and Dead-ujidice
If you feel you really really can’t do a Frank & Sadie Doyle story, I’d also be happy to receive a story about Cactoid Jim and Croach the Tracker chasing down some bad guy across the Martian plains. Bonus points if this story takes place after Croach left Sparks Nevada in the marshal station. With Jim’s genial nature and Croach’s uncertain gender there’s a lot of directions that story could go.
Links:
– Donna: #25, #48, #68
– Dave: #54, #106
– My favorite ‘Beyond Belief’, the one I use to get people hooked
– Frank & Sadie sing: ‘Heres to Us’, ‘Our Love is the Best’
The Thin Man
– Nick Charles, Nora Charles
This too is inebriated banter, but with protagonists who are a quite a bit more aware of the world around them. Again I love the fact that Nick & Nora are absolutely in love with each other. Since I now live in the Bay Area I’d love to see a story set in San Francisco, ideally co-starring the excitable Lt. Abrams. An actual honest-to-goodness mystery would be awesome, but I’d be happy with just about anything. Before the movies, between the movies, after the movies, it doesn’t matter.
Links:
– Trailer for the first movie
– Some ‘Best of’ moments from the first three movies
The Adventures of Brisco County Jr
– Lord Bowler, Dixie Cousins
What’s not to love about this awesome television show? Bruce Campbell, John Astin, Julius Carry, Kelly Rutherford (I had such a crush on her…), steampunk western, banter, adventure, time travel… the list goes on. I’d love to see a piece exploring the relationship between Lord Bowler and Dixie Cousins. No romance please. (Dixie doesn’t think of Bowler like that and Bowler respects Brisco too much to try and get in the way of his and Dixie’s relationship. That’s not to say that Bowler won’t flirt back just as much as he gets, despite not being very good at it). Maybe Dixie and Bowler are catching up after not seeing each other for a while, and Brisco is wandering in and out of scene while fighting with some bad guy. Or maybe Bowler finally has his winery and Dixie has come by to pick up a few bottles cases for a party when someone tries to rob the place.
Links:
– Opening and closing credits
– Catchphrases!
– And if you know Spanish, there are several full episodes on YouTube under the title ‘Las Aventuras de Brisco County Jr’
Better off Ted
– Veronica Palmer, Linda Zwordling, Dr. Bhamba, Ted Crisp
My wife and I absolutely loved this show; unfortunately, we didn’t discover it until it was already off the air. We watched the entire first season on Netflix in one night. When the second season became available we watched it over two nights. We loved the fake commercials that opened each episode, we rooted for Ted and Linda to finally get it together and get together, and we loved watching Veronica do, well… whatever it was she was going to do. Be awesome, usually. I asked for Ted and Linda and Veronica and Dr. Bhamba because I think there’s no end to the stories you can tell with those four characters. They can be in a meeting. They could be in the lab. They could be crawling through ventilation ducts trying to escape the violent cyber-duck that Dr. Bhamba accidentally unleashed. If you want to include some romance or sexual tension I think it goes something like this: Ted is attracted to Linda, Linda is attracted to Ted, Veronica isn’t actually attracted to either but she likes to play power and/or mind games, and Dr. Bhamba is a horrible lech.
Links:
– Trailer, 2
– Great clips: 1, 2, 3,
– Outtakes from the classic “Offensive Language” episode
And that’s that. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to leave an anonymous comment below. I’ll turn off IP logging for the rest of the year so I won’t have any idea of where the comments come from. Good luck, and thank you so much for writing a story in one of these worlds.