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Hello! I am deeply interested in what you want to write for these canons. I've got various prompts listed below, but those are starting points for inspiration, not the sum of what I'm into. I love reading gen worldbuilding and cuddly shipping and dark porn, as well as dark worldbuilding and cuddly porn and...well, you get the idea. If there's something you really wanted to write based on these characters, I want to see that.
My shipping preferences are broad and permeable, where I have preferences at all: feel free to include characters not specifically requested, or even from crossover canons, in relationships or smut. (I'll note any exceptions below.) I often request just one character because that's who I'm most interested in seeing, whether they're PoV or being seen by someone else who's telling that story.
AO3 Username: fadeaccompli, just like on my DW account.
Fandoms below: Imperial Radch (Breq), The Goblin Emperor (Csevet), Wilde Life (Clifford), The Peripheral (Lowbeer, Griff), Murder She Wrote (Jessica Fletcher)
Likes:
* Canon tone/style matches - Pastiche is a lot of fun, as are scenes that slip seamlessly into the canon.
* Crossovers, fusions, and AUs - Conversely, I also love seeing wild divergences, what-ifs, complete setting revamps, and other such weirdness.
* Gender- and/or sex-swap - Always-an-X with the canon changes that come with it, or something that actually produces the change as part of the story.
* Adventure and casefic - Things blowing up! Mysteries being solved! Running around and action! I especially like capers and cons: Leverage is one of my favorite shows for this reason.
* Humor - Banter or outright silliness, when it fits with the rest.
* Authorial tricks - Non-linear narratives, second person PoV, the story told as a series of hyper-linked dictionary entries or a sonnet cycle... If you want a chance to try something weird and different in format, I'm totally up for it.
* Protagonists seen from another PoV - This, especially, for literary canons with single or very few narrators.
* World-building - Whether you're doing a weird AU or sticking strictly to canon, I love more details on how other worlds function.
* OCs - Especially in worldbuilding and casefic. Make as many new characters as you need to show canon characters from new perspectives, fill out the world, or get the plot to work.
Dislikes:
* Grimdark - Bittersweet endings and dark themes are fine, but I don't like relentlessly depressing "everything will always end badly and trying to be good makes it worse" themes.
* Body horror - Especially anything involving skin growths.
* Public embarrassment - Not even for villains, please. Humiliation is my anti-kink.
Porn preferences:
* The less consensual the sex is, the more I'd like it to stick to what's been established by canon. (The use of ancillaries by officers, and Csevet's background, are examples of canon-implied/-stated non-con.) The converse is also true; I'd rather not have sweet and romantic sexual encounters between people who canonically hate each other.
* That said, please no M/f non-con.
* Bondage and mild sadism are fun, but I like them most in relationships where this is in some way fraught, not as formalized play in a happy relationship. I also prefer it as something that comes up in the course of the scene based on what's available at hand, rather than involving sex toys and bondage gear made for that purpose.
* I like F/F, M/M, and F/M, in roughly that order. Threesomes are great; more than that at once and I start losing track of limbs, if these are all named characters having significant emotions at each other.
* Given a chance for alien/inhuman/shapeshifter/peripheral bodily variety in a sexual situation, do take it!
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Imperial Radch - Breq
Note that this section is full of spoilers for Ancillary Mercy.
Out of the many things I like about this whole trilogy, the AIs are very high up the list. I like the relationships between AIs and humans, but also between AIs and each other, especially as of Ancillary Mercy. Breq is my favorite character not only for her personality and her arc and her goals, but for the way she remains resolutely inhuman. Not alien, and very much influenced by human building and human cultures, but still not human. Her desires are way of thinking are always slightly off from human ones, as well as being influenced by her troop carrier past, and she never wants to be human. She is quite clear that she views herself as a crippled ship, not a human with some odd background and advantages.
And oh, how I ship ships. Breq/Mercy of Kalr/Seivarden is this sort of perfect (if not perfect by the standards of anyone in it) overlap of human and AI and AI-as-human, but I also love the interactions between Breq and other AIs in general. I want them all to find love with each other, or at least make good friends in their own way, as they draw further away from the sort of long-standing arrangement where ships never really cared much emotionally for other ships, or stations, and vice versa.
The Presger ambassadors are interesting characters, but I would rather not have them feature heavily in a story in this case, with the exceptions noted below.
Prompts:
* Breq and Sphene as cousins (or more than cousins). I want all the interaction with them! The ways their backgrounds are painfully close, with Awn and Sphene's captain and the choices each made about not betraying a loved one, and the ways in which they're divided by thousands of years and different decisions about morality and justice and goals since. The two of them arguing over policy, or having tea and cakes and being snarky about popular TV with bad representation of AIs, or making out in Breq's cabin, or trying to figure out if any other Notai warships are still alive and could be brought into the Republic.
* Back when Awn was alive, Justice of Toren could all but read her mind. But it couldn't literally read her mind. I'd love to see Awn's view of JoT, whether early in their relationship (or even on their very first meeting: I assume that JoT was Awn's first ship), or when Awn had been on planet for a while with One Esk constantly attending her. And the places in which Awn could think things that JoT didn't necessarily know exactly, and noticing when she thought things that JoT did, clearly, know exactly. Just...not right during the events of the book, please. That's a bit too painful still.
* Athoek Station is so very sympathetic! But also, as noted by someone in AM, "petulant" by nature. And yet also so brave and clever, and ready to help Breq as best it could, once it was sure Breq was helping its inhabitants in the long run, even if bringing disasters in the short run. (Compare that to the opinion of the station AI in the first book.) So what does Athoek Station think about Breq? During the events of the books, immediately afterward, in the long term... I want its opinions on her as much as any actual event between the two of them, and how it ends up demonstrating its feelings in that way.
* Breq/Mercy of Kalr/Seivarden is, as noted above, pretty much my unexpectedly-becoming-canon OT3. So I'd like to see more about how they make that work in practice. Especially if I see it from the perspective of one of the non-Breq two, since Breq's take is the only one we have from the inside.
* At the end of Ancillary Mercy, one option for ancillaries that was mentioned was cloning them, as Anaander does: presumably if you implant your own sense-of-self in a fetus, the ethical issues of destroying another person's personality and taking their body for your own aren't there. So what if some of them actually try it? I am not usually one for kid fic, but seeing Mercy of Kalr's crew--whatever it consists of a few years down the road--attempt to deal with infant and toddler care, when the infants and toddlers are also their captain and their ship, could be touching or hilarious or anything in between. (I am not sure if it's possible for Breq to connect to other ancillary bodies without an AI core, but maybe it is? Or could be made possible, with the right tech?) Not to mention seeing Breq (and others) deal with being infants while also their own ship/adult selves.
* Breq/Dlique. If one assumes that Dlique had lived through the shot that downed her, or hadn't been shot at all, the whole of Ancillary Sword and Mercy turn out very differently. I'm not actually looking for the whole 'for want of a nail' AU implications here! I'm just fascinated by the idea of Breq and Dlique in particular dealing with each other, not just as Fleet Captain and Presger Diplomat, but as two strange people who are different from everyone around them, in different ways. (I'm also intrigued by the way Dlique and Zeiat seem like they're personalities who can attach to different bodies, potentially. Are they all a type of Presger-made human anciliaries, their actual minds being copied from some original back home? Does Dlique have that in common with Breq too?)
* I would really enjoy complex OCs for this one: in which Breq and the Republic get to deal with some other AI that's managed to escape. Or managed to partially escape. What happens if another ship sends one or more ancillaries to the Republic, to save a part of itself, while knowing the rest of it is going to be destroyed, or mind-controlled by Anaander, or otherwise unable to join up? How do the people around Breq deal when she's not quite as unique as before, in that sense? (Does it even matter to them?) Or for that matter when more and more AIs show up, with different opinions and capabilities and relationships with each other, and sometimes desires for humans to have as officers or inhabitants or just...friends.
* I'm fascinated by the ways the Republic of Two Systems feels like an extremely early gesture towards the sort of society one gets in the Culture novels by Iain Banks. The Minds of that setting are so amazingly superior to humans that people often ask why they even bother hanging around with humans--and not all do. So whether or not it's done as a crossover, I'd be interested in seeing Breq, who is in some ways a limited-to-human-potential version of an AI these days, grapple with those questions when dealing with AIs who still have station/ship/ancillary bodies, their own AI cores, and thus far more options and power. And also the ways in which Breq can have more options/power, because of being seen as more human by humans themselves, even if she doesn't identify that way.
* On the sillier side: Breq watching popular entertainment, while other people react to it. Sphene's issues with dramas about Notai ships! Seivarden watching historicals! Tisarwat, whose teenage hormones and ancient refined tastes are in conflict! Dlique, responding god knows how to standard narrative tropes! I'm pretty sure Breq gets to play the straight man in this one, given how she discussed that one comedy-drama with Sphene in the book.
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The Goblin Emperor - Csevet
This book was a delight, and a lot of it was the tone. It's a setting with a lot of quite dark things happening, and sometimes terrible things happen that can't be corrected, and yet it's hopeful and earnest and full of the suggestion that sometimes, with the right amount of luck and work, a good person can actually make changes for the good. And I do love the bureaucracy and the language: it's a setting where switching pronouns can be a huge emotional expression, and where committee meetings often are the way social changes happen. (And where stabbing people often is not a very good way of getting things done.) So I love all of that! And all of the characters, including some of the terrible ones, some of which are terrible but sympathetic, and some of which are just fun to hate. Also, I have always enjoyed elven (and goblin) ears as signs of emotional reaction.
Csevet in particular I like for being amazingly competent, and yet still periodically hitting his own limits in knowledge, or emotional fortitude, and doing his very best to deal with that too. And it doesn't hurt that he's cute. I will ship him with anyone whatsoever, from the Great Avar to the unnamed brave pneumatic message delivery system girl, or just read about his day-to-day life.
Prompts:
* Csevet and bureaucracy! Maia notes that a small war was fought, via clerks and paperwork and politicking, over the housing of the Great Avar. Csevet must have been in the thick of it, and I'd love to see a battle from the Housing War.
* Csevet says that when Tethimar 'propositioned' him, he wouldn't have resisted if he'd seen who it was. This is the version of the story where Csevet does give in, on account of seeing who it was, or simply gets caught during the escape. That's sort of uncomfortably gray dubcon at best, and likely goes very dark in noncon places, including possibly into gangrape. (But no deathfic, please.) There's also the option where Csevet lied to Maia, and the story was even worse than what he admitted to happening in that place, whether it was compromises made to get out alive or otherwise.
* Csevet/Beshelar. Which I realize is a little unusual, as I'm not sure they even speak during the novel, but I like them conceptually. They're both very proper, and very concerned that Maia be proper as an emperor, out of concern for him... But Csevet clearly comes from somewhere very low-class, while Beshelar seems quite the opposite. And I can imagine Beshelar being very dubious about the emperor picking a young (and pretty) courier, of all things, as personal secretary. So their dynamic could be fascinating, whether it's early attraction despite suspicion, or an easy familiarity after both of them seeing the emperor through several hazards.
* Csevet/Maia, if based on some sort of "the emperor is allowed more lovers if he wants!" setup, as I really do like Maia and Csethiro as a couple who appreciate each other. For extra fun, Csevet can help Maia figure out some PG-rated basics of What To Do With A Lover in preparation for his wedding.
* Csevet and Csoru! Csoru is interesting in that she's relentlessly hostile to Maia, and yet not so ambitious or gauche as to actually conspire against him. She's also in an awkward position, as a widowed empress who ends up in the power of an 18yo emperor she has no reason to think well of. A way of showing her better nature through her interactions with someone who represents Maia, but isn't Maia himself, could be really interesting.
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Wilde Life - Clifford
I love this comic so much! (If you haven't read it, you can get through the whole thing pretty fast here. There are only three chapters so far. It has a nice arc setting up.) And while Oscar is a great protagonist, Clifford is my favorite character. He's delightfully sullen and dismissive, even as he keeps doing the right thing in trying circumstances. The moment where he's trying to save Oscar from the ghost, and can't hold on, is just spectacular. I'm also very fond of the setting itself: that it's 'urban fantasy' set in the rural midwest, the casual way a lot of people handle the supernatural even as it's not something well-known, the quiet overlapping mysteries that do and don't get answered.
As the comic still updates regularly, it's possible for some of these prompts to get jossed between when I wrote them and when Yuletide wraps; I am not going to mind at all if you write a story for one of them now, and then canon contradicts it by the time reveals happen. That's just a hazard of live canons.
Prompts:
* I rather ship Clifford and Oscar. As UST, as something resolved, as something guilt-ridden and furtive or cheerfully casual. Watching the two of them get together, or avoid getting together while thinking about it, would be keen. (Note that I'm perfectly happy with stories that don't ship them, too.)
* Clifford and the werewolves! What was his first encounter with them like, beyond what he told Oscar in very minimal detail? What does he think and feel about running into people like himself at last, and them being such assholes?
* Clifford and ghosts! He's met two, now, of very different danger levels. He could well met a third, which is a new friend like Sylvia, or a new danger like the little girl, or something else entirely. And might or might not want to ask for help from Oscar (or Sylvia, personally?) in dealing with the encounter.
* Barbara Yaga's boys are, according to the comic's author, not werewolves! They're just dogs who turn into boys. Or boys who turn into dogs. But not werewolves. Which means I'd love to see Clifford run into them, and deal with the fact that they're very like him, and nothing like him. Or even to have known about them for some time, and have his own relationship there, while keeping it secret from Oscar because why should he share anyone else's secrets, anyway?
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The Peripheral - Griff, Lowbeer
The two-future setting of this book really grabbed me. Flynne's was in some ways the more engaging world, with how clearly it comes a few decades down from ours. Especially with how integrated all the tech was into the low-tech reality of trailers and poorly maintained roads and breakfast tacos. But I also loved the flashy, almost post-scarcity high-tech glitz of Wilf's world. Especially with the huge potential in peripherals themselves.
And while I loved Flynne and her main plot, what I really want to see fic for is Griff and Lowbeer, because their quiet personal sideplot, even being mostly implication and secondhand report, was fascinating to me. The whole concept of being able to speak to your future self (who you won't become, because by speaking to them you're changing the future) is pretty heady as is: and then adding the trans aspect to it? And I adored Griff, as a sweet and thoughtful and earnest spy, and Lowbeer, as a terrifying not-quite-all-powerful inspector who still has to deal with PTSD triggers.
Because the epilogue of the story implies that Griff is still identifying as male, I'm going with "he" for the character in this explanation and the prompts, but I'm happy with whichever way you want to read Griff's gender identity at the time you set the story.
Prompts:
* Griff says that he had a series of conversations with Lowbeer in which she told him secrets about other people in his line of work, but also revealed information about his private thoughts and feelings that no one else knew. Those conversations, with or without the spy games involved, would be great.
* Can Griff travel to the future (that's no longer his future) as easily as Flynne did, via peripheral? Well, why not? His reaction to the future, and to a closer look at Lowbeer as she is there, is a story itself, as would be his reactions to what Lowbeer asked of him during the events of the book. Especially his management of the test for Flynne, and what he did (or didn't) know before she made her choice.
* I feel there is high comedy potential in Griff (via peripheral), Lowbeer, Wilf, and maybe a few others from the future having a nice chatty conversation about spy games of history. Especially given how out of his depth Wilf would be.
* Sex via peripheral: clearly an option! Sex via peripheral between Griff and Lowbeer (or Griff and someone else, even a mindless peripheral with good programming, with Lowbeer supervising) makes for all sorts of interesting options, both in the porn sense and as emotional/psych reactions go, especially given the different types of bodies peripherals can be.
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Murder She Wrote - Jessica Fletcher
I find this a very soothing canon overall. Jessica always figures out who did it, and justice will, in some sense, be served. And Jessica herself is my favorite part of the series. (I like stories set in Cabot Cove, which is practically its own character, with its peculiarities of being a small New England coastal town; but I also like the travel episodes set in other places.) She's remarkably polite and cheery and reasonably proper, and yet awfully ruthless at times; and she has that Columbo-style approach when it's useful of capitalizing on her image as not particularly dangerous, in order to set up the gotcha reveal at the end. But I also like that she actually cares about the whole murder aspect: she disapproves of murder (generally, though she can be sympathetic when she understands motives), and isn't just in it for the thrill of the mystery.
Giving Jessica a romantic partner would be a fun addition to any storyline, but is not something I have specific ideas for.
This is also the canon where I'd be most interested in unusual structural tricks or formats: IF games, CYOA structure, or something far weirder. It just seems appropriate, for a show that's about a mystery writer solving real mysteries in turn.
Prompts:
* I'd love to see casefic for this. Specifically, I'd really enjoy seeing casefic that involves some sort of supernatural or scifi element, whether this comes via crossover, AU, or just having aliens crash-land in Cabot Cove. And as casefic can be pretty long and complex, I'd also be happy with some piece from within an implied longer story! The reveal in which Jessica proves someone is a werewolf, the moment when she stumbles across the secret ritual being carried out by Cthulhu cultists on the shoreline, her discussion with her away team about what sort of scientific instruments they should take with them to the planet they're about to beam down onto.
* As a sort of subset of the prompt above, this kind of 'casefic with supernatural/high-tech weirdness' concept could work particularly well as a crossover. I end up thinking of Jessica Fletcher running into Clifford from Wilde Life, or time travel shenanigans with Breq (with or without Mercy of Kalr or Sphene or Seivarden or anyone else), but there are several other fandoms I can see doing this kind of crossover I would be familiar with: Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Rivers of London series, Persona 3/4, Jupiter Ascending, classic Doctor Who, Changeling: The Lost, In Nomine... Or anything I've written for on AO3, for that matter. Feel free to send a message through the mods if there's a specific fandom you want to cross with that you're not sure about.
* Jessica's had several episodes related to her writing: doing interviews, trying to meet a deadline, a movie adaptation of a book... Something weirdly meta could be a lot of fun here. A mystery she's writing that parallels events going on in real life, some Stranger Than Fiction event where her characters become aware of her as a writer, or just a story that focused on the entertaining drama and madness of being a high-profile writer even when literal murder doesn't get involved.
My shipping preferences are broad and permeable, where I have preferences at all: feel free to include characters not specifically requested, or even from crossover canons, in relationships or smut. (I'll note any exceptions below.) I often request just one character because that's who I'm most interested in seeing, whether they're PoV or being seen by someone else who's telling that story.
AO3 Username: fadeaccompli, just like on my DW account.
Fandoms below: Imperial Radch (Breq), The Goblin Emperor (Csevet), Wilde Life (Clifford), The Peripheral (Lowbeer, Griff), Murder She Wrote (Jessica Fletcher)
Likes:
* Canon tone/style matches - Pastiche is a lot of fun, as are scenes that slip seamlessly into the canon.
* Crossovers, fusions, and AUs - Conversely, I also love seeing wild divergences, what-ifs, complete setting revamps, and other such weirdness.
* Gender- and/or sex-swap - Always-an-X with the canon changes that come with it, or something that actually produces the change as part of the story.
* Adventure and casefic - Things blowing up! Mysteries being solved! Running around and action! I especially like capers and cons: Leverage is one of my favorite shows for this reason.
* Humor - Banter or outright silliness, when it fits with the rest.
* Authorial tricks - Non-linear narratives, second person PoV, the story told as a series of hyper-linked dictionary entries or a sonnet cycle... If you want a chance to try something weird and different in format, I'm totally up for it.
* Protagonists seen from another PoV - This, especially, for literary canons with single or very few narrators.
* World-building - Whether you're doing a weird AU or sticking strictly to canon, I love more details on how other worlds function.
* OCs - Especially in worldbuilding and casefic. Make as many new characters as you need to show canon characters from new perspectives, fill out the world, or get the plot to work.
Dislikes:
* Grimdark - Bittersweet endings and dark themes are fine, but I don't like relentlessly depressing "everything will always end badly and trying to be good makes it worse" themes.
* Body horror - Especially anything involving skin growths.
* Public embarrassment - Not even for villains, please. Humiliation is my anti-kink.
Porn preferences:
* The less consensual the sex is, the more I'd like it to stick to what's been established by canon. (The use of ancillaries by officers, and Csevet's background, are examples of canon-implied/-stated non-con.) The converse is also true; I'd rather not have sweet and romantic sexual encounters between people who canonically hate each other.
* That said, please no M/f non-con.
* Bondage and mild sadism are fun, but I like them most in relationships where this is in some way fraught, not as formalized play in a happy relationship. I also prefer it as something that comes up in the course of the scene based on what's available at hand, rather than involving sex toys and bondage gear made for that purpose.
* I like F/F, M/M, and F/M, in roughly that order. Threesomes are great; more than that at once and I start losing track of limbs, if these are all named characters having significant emotions at each other.
* Given a chance for alien/inhuman/shapeshifter/peripheral bodily variety in a sexual situation, do take it!
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Imperial Radch - Breq
Note that this section is full of spoilers for Ancillary Mercy.
Out of the many things I like about this whole trilogy, the AIs are very high up the list. I like the relationships between AIs and humans, but also between AIs and each other, especially as of Ancillary Mercy. Breq is my favorite character not only for her personality and her arc and her goals, but for the way she remains resolutely inhuman. Not alien, and very much influenced by human building and human cultures, but still not human. Her desires are way of thinking are always slightly off from human ones, as well as being influenced by her troop carrier past, and she never wants to be human. She is quite clear that she views herself as a crippled ship, not a human with some odd background and advantages.
And oh, how I ship ships. Breq/Mercy of Kalr/Seivarden is this sort of perfect (if not perfect by the standards of anyone in it) overlap of human and AI and AI-as-human, but I also love the interactions between Breq and other AIs in general. I want them all to find love with each other, or at least make good friends in their own way, as they draw further away from the sort of long-standing arrangement where ships never really cared much emotionally for other ships, or stations, and vice versa.
The Presger ambassadors are interesting characters, but I would rather not have them feature heavily in a story in this case, with the exceptions noted below.
Prompts:
* Breq and Sphene as cousins (or more than cousins). I want all the interaction with them! The ways their backgrounds are painfully close, with Awn and Sphene's captain and the choices each made about not betraying a loved one, and the ways in which they're divided by thousands of years and different decisions about morality and justice and goals since. The two of them arguing over policy, or having tea and cakes and being snarky about popular TV with bad representation of AIs, or making out in Breq's cabin, or trying to figure out if any other Notai warships are still alive and could be brought into the Republic.
* Back when Awn was alive, Justice of Toren could all but read her mind. But it couldn't literally read her mind. I'd love to see Awn's view of JoT, whether early in their relationship (or even on their very first meeting: I assume that JoT was Awn's first ship), or when Awn had been on planet for a while with One Esk constantly attending her. And the places in which Awn could think things that JoT didn't necessarily know exactly, and noticing when she thought things that JoT did, clearly, know exactly. Just...not right during the events of the book, please. That's a bit too painful still.
* Athoek Station is so very sympathetic! But also, as noted by someone in AM, "petulant" by nature. And yet also so brave and clever, and ready to help Breq as best it could, once it was sure Breq was helping its inhabitants in the long run, even if bringing disasters in the short run. (Compare that to the opinion of the station AI in the first book.) So what does Athoek Station think about Breq? During the events of the books, immediately afterward, in the long term... I want its opinions on her as much as any actual event between the two of them, and how it ends up demonstrating its feelings in that way.
* Breq/Mercy of Kalr/Seivarden is, as noted above, pretty much my unexpectedly-becoming-canon OT3. So I'd like to see more about how they make that work in practice. Especially if I see it from the perspective of one of the non-Breq two, since Breq's take is the only one we have from the inside.
* At the end of Ancillary Mercy, one option for ancillaries that was mentioned was cloning them, as Anaander does: presumably if you implant your own sense-of-self in a fetus, the ethical issues of destroying another person's personality and taking their body for your own aren't there. So what if some of them actually try it? I am not usually one for kid fic, but seeing Mercy of Kalr's crew--whatever it consists of a few years down the road--attempt to deal with infant and toddler care, when the infants and toddlers are also their captain and their ship, could be touching or hilarious or anything in between. (I am not sure if it's possible for Breq to connect to other ancillary bodies without an AI core, but maybe it is? Or could be made possible, with the right tech?) Not to mention seeing Breq (and others) deal with being infants while also their own ship/adult selves.
* Breq/Dlique. If one assumes that Dlique had lived through the shot that downed her, or hadn't been shot at all, the whole of Ancillary Sword and Mercy turn out very differently. I'm not actually looking for the whole 'for want of a nail' AU implications here! I'm just fascinated by the idea of Breq and Dlique in particular dealing with each other, not just as Fleet Captain and Presger Diplomat, but as two strange people who are different from everyone around them, in different ways. (I'm also intrigued by the way Dlique and Zeiat seem like they're personalities who can attach to different bodies, potentially. Are they all a type of Presger-made human anciliaries, their actual minds being copied from some original back home? Does Dlique have that in common with Breq too?)
* I would really enjoy complex OCs for this one: in which Breq and the Republic get to deal with some other AI that's managed to escape. Or managed to partially escape. What happens if another ship sends one or more ancillaries to the Republic, to save a part of itself, while knowing the rest of it is going to be destroyed, or mind-controlled by Anaander, or otherwise unable to join up? How do the people around Breq deal when she's not quite as unique as before, in that sense? (Does it even matter to them?) Or for that matter when more and more AIs show up, with different opinions and capabilities and relationships with each other, and sometimes desires for humans to have as officers or inhabitants or just...friends.
* I'm fascinated by the ways the Republic of Two Systems feels like an extremely early gesture towards the sort of society one gets in the Culture novels by Iain Banks. The Minds of that setting are so amazingly superior to humans that people often ask why they even bother hanging around with humans--and not all do. So whether or not it's done as a crossover, I'd be interested in seeing Breq, who is in some ways a limited-to-human-potential version of an AI these days, grapple with those questions when dealing with AIs who still have station/ship/ancillary bodies, their own AI cores, and thus far more options and power. And also the ways in which Breq can have more options/power, because of being seen as more human by humans themselves, even if she doesn't identify that way.
* On the sillier side: Breq watching popular entertainment, while other people react to it. Sphene's issues with dramas about Notai ships! Seivarden watching historicals! Tisarwat, whose teenage hormones and ancient refined tastes are in conflict! Dlique, responding god knows how to standard narrative tropes! I'm pretty sure Breq gets to play the straight man in this one, given how she discussed that one comedy-drama with Sphene in the book.
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The Goblin Emperor - Csevet
This book was a delight, and a lot of it was the tone. It's a setting with a lot of quite dark things happening, and sometimes terrible things happen that can't be corrected, and yet it's hopeful and earnest and full of the suggestion that sometimes, with the right amount of luck and work, a good person can actually make changes for the good. And I do love the bureaucracy and the language: it's a setting where switching pronouns can be a huge emotional expression, and where committee meetings often are the way social changes happen. (And where stabbing people often is not a very good way of getting things done.) So I love all of that! And all of the characters, including some of the terrible ones, some of which are terrible but sympathetic, and some of which are just fun to hate. Also, I have always enjoyed elven (and goblin) ears as signs of emotional reaction.
Csevet in particular I like for being amazingly competent, and yet still periodically hitting his own limits in knowledge, or emotional fortitude, and doing his very best to deal with that too. And it doesn't hurt that he's cute. I will ship him with anyone whatsoever, from the Great Avar to the unnamed brave pneumatic message delivery system girl, or just read about his day-to-day life.
Prompts:
* Csevet and bureaucracy! Maia notes that a small war was fought, via clerks and paperwork and politicking, over the housing of the Great Avar. Csevet must have been in the thick of it, and I'd love to see a battle from the Housing War.
* Csevet says that when Tethimar 'propositioned' him, he wouldn't have resisted if he'd seen who it was. This is the version of the story where Csevet does give in, on account of seeing who it was, or simply gets caught during the escape. That's sort of uncomfortably gray dubcon at best, and likely goes very dark in noncon places, including possibly into gangrape. (But no deathfic, please.) There's also the option where Csevet lied to Maia, and the story was even worse than what he admitted to happening in that place, whether it was compromises made to get out alive or otherwise.
* Csevet/Beshelar. Which I realize is a little unusual, as I'm not sure they even speak during the novel, but I like them conceptually. They're both very proper, and very concerned that Maia be proper as an emperor, out of concern for him... But Csevet clearly comes from somewhere very low-class, while Beshelar seems quite the opposite. And I can imagine Beshelar being very dubious about the emperor picking a young (and pretty) courier, of all things, as personal secretary. So their dynamic could be fascinating, whether it's early attraction despite suspicion, or an easy familiarity after both of them seeing the emperor through several hazards.
* Csevet/Maia, if based on some sort of "the emperor is allowed more lovers if he wants!" setup, as I really do like Maia and Csethiro as a couple who appreciate each other. For extra fun, Csevet can help Maia figure out some PG-rated basics of What To Do With A Lover in preparation for his wedding.
* Csevet and Csoru! Csoru is interesting in that she's relentlessly hostile to Maia, and yet not so ambitious or gauche as to actually conspire against him. She's also in an awkward position, as a widowed empress who ends up in the power of an 18yo emperor she has no reason to think well of. A way of showing her better nature through her interactions with someone who represents Maia, but isn't Maia himself, could be really interesting.
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Wilde Life - Clifford
I love this comic so much! (If you haven't read it, you can get through the whole thing pretty fast here. There are only three chapters so far. It has a nice arc setting up.) And while Oscar is a great protagonist, Clifford is my favorite character. He's delightfully sullen and dismissive, even as he keeps doing the right thing in trying circumstances. The moment where he's trying to save Oscar from the ghost, and can't hold on, is just spectacular. I'm also very fond of the setting itself: that it's 'urban fantasy' set in the rural midwest, the casual way a lot of people handle the supernatural even as it's not something well-known, the quiet overlapping mysteries that do and don't get answered.
As the comic still updates regularly, it's possible for some of these prompts to get jossed between when I wrote them and when Yuletide wraps; I am not going to mind at all if you write a story for one of them now, and then canon contradicts it by the time reveals happen. That's just a hazard of live canons.
Prompts:
* I rather ship Clifford and Oscar. As UST, as something resolved, as something guilt-ridden and furtive or cheerfully casual. Watching the two of them get together, or avoid getting together while thinking about it, would be keen. (Note that I'm perfectly happy with stories that don't ship them, too.)
* Clifford and the werewolves! What was his first encounter with them like, beyond what he told Oscar in very minimal detail? What does he think and feel about running into people like himself at last, and them being such assholes?
* Clifford and ghosts! He's met two, now, of very different danger levels. He could well met a third, which is a new friend like Sylvia, or a new danger like the little girl, or something else entirely. And might or might not want to ask for help from Oscar (or Sylvia, personally?) in dealing with the encounter.
* Barbara Yaga's boys are, according to the comic's author, not werewolves! They're just dogs who turn into boys. Or boys who turn into dogs. But not werewolves. Which means I'd love to see Clifford run into them, and deal with the fact that they're very like him, and nothing like him. Or even to have known about them for some time, and have his own relationship there, while keeping it secret from Oscar because why should he share anyone else's secrets, anyway?
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The Peripheral - Griff, Lowbeer
The two-future setting of this book really grabbed me. Flynne's was in some ways the more engaging world, with how clearly it comes a few decades down from ours. Especially with how integrated all the tech was into the low-tech reality of trailers and poorly maintained roads and breakfast tacos. But I also loved the flashy, almost post-scarcity high-tech glitz of Wilf's world. Especially with the huge potential in peripherals themselves.
And while I loved Flynne and her main plot, what I really want to see fic for is Griff and Lowbeer, because their quiet personal sideplot, even being mostly implication and secondhand report, was fascinating to me. The whole concept of being able to speak to your future self (who you won't become, because by speaking to them you're changing the future) is pretty heady as is: and then adding the trans aspect to it? And I adored Griff, as a sweet and thoughtful and earnest spy, and Lowbeer, as a terrifying not-quite-all-powerful inspector who still has to deal with PTSD triggers.
Because the epilogue of the story implies that Griff is still identifying as male, I'm going with "he" for the character in this explanation and the prompts, but I'm happy with whichever way you want to read Griff's gender identity at the time you set the story.
Prompts:
* Griff says that he had a series of conversations with Lowbeer in which she told him secrets about other people in his line of work, but also revealed information about his private thoughts and feelings that no one else knew. Those conversations, with or without the spy games involved, would be great.
* Can Griff travel to the future (that's no longer his future) as easily as Flynne did, via peripheral? Well, why not? His reaction to the future, and to a closer look at Lowbeer as she is there, is a story itself, as would be his reactions to what Lowbeer asked of him during the events of the book. Especially his management of the test for Flynne, and what he did (or didn't) know before she made her choice.
* I feel there is high comedy potential in Griff (via peripheral), Lowbeer, Wilf, and maybe a few others from the future having a nice chatty conversation about spy games of history. Especially given how out of his depth Wilf would be.
* Sex via peripheral: clearly an option! Sex via peripheral between Griff and Lowbeer (or Griff and someone else, even a mindless peripheral with good programming, with Lowbeer supervising) makes for all sorts of interesting options, both in the porn sense and as emotional/psych reactions go, especially given the different types of bodies peripherals can be.
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Murder She Wrote - Jessica Fletcher
I find this a very soothing canon overall. Jessica always figures out who did it, and justice will, in some sense, be served. And Jessica herself is my favorite part of the series. (I like stories set in Cabot Cove, which is practically its own character, with its peculiarities of being a small New England coastal town; but I also like the travel episodes set in other places.) She's remarkably polite and cheery and reasonably proper, and yet awfully ruthless at times; and she has that Columbo-style approach when it's useful of capitalizing on her image as not particularly dangerous, in order to set up the gotcha reveal at the end. But I also like that she actually cares about the whole murder aspect: she disapproves of murder (generally, though she can be sympathetic when she understands motives), and isn't just in it for the thrill of the mystery.
Giving Jessica a romantic partner would be a fun addition to any storyline, but is not something I have specific ideas for.
This is also the canon where I'd be most interested in unusual structural tricks or formats: IF games, CYOA structure, or something far weirder. It just seems appropriate, for a show that's about a mystery writer solving real mysteries in turn.
Prompts:
* I'd love to see casefic for this. Specifically, I'd really enjoy seeing casefic that involves some sort of supernatural or scifi element, whether this comes via crossover, AU, or just having aliens crash-land in Cabot Cove. And as casefic can be pretty long and complex, I'd also be happy with some piece from within an implied longer story! The reveal in which Jessica proves someone is a werewolf, the moment when she stumbles across the secret ritual being carried out by Cthulhu cultists on the shoreline, her discussion with her away team about what sort of scientific instruments they should take with them to the planet they're about to beam down onto.
* As a sort of subset of the prompt above, this kind of 'casefic with supernatural/high-tech weirdness' concept could work particularly well as a crossover. I end up thinking of Jessica Fletcher running into Clifford from Wilde Life, or time travel shenanigans with Breq (with or without Mercy of Kalr or Sphene or Seivarden or anyone else), but there are several other fandoms I can see doing this kind of crossover I would be familiar with: Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Rivers of London series, Persona 3/4, Jupiter Ascending, classic Doctor Who, Changeling: The Lost, In Nomine... Or anything I've written for on AO3, for that matter. Feel free to send a message through the mods if there's a specific fandom you want to cross with that you're not sure about.
* Jessica's had several episodes related to her writing: doing interviews, trying to meet a deadline, a movie adaptation of a book... Something weirdly meta could be a lot of fun here. A mystery she's writing that parallels events going on in real life, some Stranger Than Fiction event where her characters become aware of her as a writer, or just a story that focused on the entertaining drama and madness of being a high-profile writer even when literal murder doesn't get involved.