holli

It's that time again! THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR.

Dearest, darlingest Yuletide writer: odds are pretty good I am going to be delighted with whatever you write. There are some specific things I would love to see, but by no means should you feel bound by those suggestions; I wouldn't have asked for these fandoms if I didn't love a ton of things about them. So don't worry. You got this.

Top Ten is one of my absolute favorite comics, and this is not the first year I've requested it for Yuletide. The Forty-Niners, its prequel, is probably in my all-time top five. I love the setting, the art, the characters-- basically all of it. I love that it's retro without being backwards, with awesome women and queer characters (and sentient robots) getting the representation they didn't get in actual comics of the period. I love that it's a fantastic, super-powered world packed with small, mundane details. I love Joan of Arc's tiny spaceship. (If you have an explanation for that tiny spaceship, I would love it too.) I would be happy with any aspect of the Top Ten world being explored, but especially the Forty-Niners and ESPECIALLY Steve and Wulf. Seeing how their relationship survives and thrives into the present day would be AMAZING. Other things I would be thrilled to see: modern-day Top Ten characters like Irma or Joe Pi, any kind of time-travel story (modern-day characters pulled back to '49, perhaps?), stuff that has fun with the breadth and variety of superhero history.

Pushing Daisies: I'm not gonna lie. The lack of Pushing Daises fix-it fic is an absolute TRAVESTY. If you're willing to write me a story where Ned and Chuck get to touch (and, uh, do some other stuff besides touch) I will be eternally grateful. That said, I love all the characters, as well as the whimsically morbid fairy-tale tone, so there are plenty of other potential stories here that would make me happy. Casefic would be great, a peek at the characters further down the road would be great-- there are lots of options here.

Matilda was one of my favorite books as a kid, and she remains one of my patron saints of children's literature. I would seriously adore a story that features a grown-up Matilda, because I'm really curious about the kind of adult she turns out to be-- I mean, awesome, obviously, but in what way? I'm also intrigued by the idea of a story in which an adult Matilda crosses paths with any members of her birth family. Anything about her life with Miss Honey would also be awesome.

WWII RPF: Okay, so I've talked about this a bit before, but here's the deal. As you may know, TV chef Julia Child worked in covert operations for the OSS during WWII, and was 6'2" tall. Also, children's author Roald Dahl was a fighter pilot in the war, and later a spy-- he was sent to the US before we entered the war to, basically, seduce secrets out of politicians' wives, because he was tall (6'6"!) and handsome and had a sexy accent. While all that was going on, 6'4" actor Christopher Lee was serving as a commando in Finland.

What I propose is a team-up. An improbably tall team-up. In my head, Julia's the brains, Roald is the charm, and Christopher keeps forgetting to leave one man alive to question. If you can work in Third Doctor John Pertwee, who was 6'2" and apparently got up to some serious James Bond shit, so much the better.

Pleasantville is one of my all-time favorite movies. I love the aesthetics of the 50s (though not the values) and this movie does an amazing job of using an SF premise to show how stifling and narrow-minded the era really was, no matter how nice it looked. The story I'd really love to see here is kind of a tall order, so I completely understand if you write something else. With that caveat: I would be really interested in a story about the first non-white people to come to Pleasantville after the events of the movie. I think-- I hope-- that the transformation into Technicolor affected the town in ways that would make them more welcoming to people who haven't found much acceptance in the rest of 1950s America. Their grayscale bubble insulated them from forming preconceptions about people who are different from them, and they've already had a pretty thorough lesson on the dangers of demonizing people who don't look like them. They'd be clumsy and ignorant and say a lot of stupid shit, definitely, but I don't think Pleasantville could ever bee a sundown town after what they went through. And I love outsider POV, so I'd love to see what someone from outside the town would think of them-- especially when they keep expecting to run into societal walls that, within Pleasantville, might not exist.

So those are the fandoms. I would ask that you not write anything super dark, as these are all things I enjoy because they are fairly light-hearted; if you do write anything explicit I should note that I am not a fan of dubious consent or power imbalances. Other than that, go nuts. I am fond of a wide variety of tropes, including but not limited to mistaken identities, secret identity shenanigans of all kinds, fish-out-of-water stories, unexpected superpowers, outsider perspectives, found families, teams forming in adverse circumstances and succeeding despite the odds. I love worldbuilding, and will cheerfully roll around forever in the details of a well-built world. I would be equally happy with gen, het, or slash (although I have to admit I would be slightly startled by anything but gen for Matilda). I am almost guaranteed to like whatever you write, and I am already grateful to you for writing it. Thank you in advance!

ets: And on the off-chance anyone is bookmarking this letter for treat-writing purposes, i am hollimichele on AO3. (And if you are, you're the best!)