Dear Yuletide Author 2018!

[azurish]

Dear Yuletide Author,

Hello! =) Thanks so much for offering to write for Yuletide and matching with me - I’m already super excited to read anything you write, as well as to meet you after Yuletide ends.  You're making my Yuletide just by existing, especially given how small some of these fandoms are, so thanks for that. :D  The letter below is just intended to give you some ideas, so I’m really hoping it doesn’t stress you out and actually proves useful.  (On that note, please don't hesitate to get in touch via the mods or whatever if something I've written is confusing!  I reuse chunks of my letter from year to year, so although I try to proofread carefully, mistakes can happen.  As a fellow participant who's obviously also writing, I totally get how intense Yuletide can seem at times, so my #1 goal is for this letter NOT to add additional stress. =))  And, of course, Optional Details Are Optional, so if this is as far as you read, thanks again for writing for me and I look forward to getting to read your fic!

Some General Thoughts

My tumblr is here; my AO3 is here.  My letter begins with a general likes/DNWs section and then I talk about what I love about each fandom and provide prompts that range in specificity from “any idea you have that highlights [this thing I like]” to “a particular set-up that I’d really enjoy reading”.  I love all the prompts I've included equally and promise that I'd be v. delighted and grateful to receive anything about any of them, so please don't worry that the ~length/specificity of a prompt means I love it more~ or something.  Feel free to skip around to whatever helps you with writing, whether that’s gushing about the canons or prompt ideas: I know different Yuletide participants find different sorts of letters useful, and because I’ve never been accused of brevity and was Too Excited by the chance to talk about these fandoms to stop myself at a reasonable point, I just decided to include everything. :P  The prompts I’ve included are really just intended to give you places to jump off from/to provide lots of options and inspiration, so I hope they help with that!  On the same note, the likes are just a list of stuff I tend to enjoy reading about; I would be delighted by fic that features any one of them, but I've also enjoyed many, many fics with none of these at all, so please don't feel constrained by them.

Likes:

☀  Hurt/comfort, with an emphasis the comfort (emotional and/or physical comfort are both great!)
✩  Generally, hurt that emerges from or is exacerbated by trust/control issues, and comfort that addresses those
✩  H/c where the injured character isn’t sure they can trust the comforter but doesn’t have any choice
✩  Iron woobies who hide emotional/medical/etc. isssues and are gruff/stoic or obfuscatingly sarcastic/quippy until they finally melt and receive h/c
✩  Self-sacrificing characters who have incurred harm for the sake of others getting comforted

☀  Characters learning to be loved; characters learning to trust 

☀  Vulnerability 
✩  Power imbalances that exacerbate vulnerability

☀  Trust issues, control issues, and abandonment issues
✩  Characters who have grown to ~expect the worst~ learning to trust others
✩  Characters projecting some sort of front - stoicism, sarcasm, etc. - to hide their feelings and protect themselves from emotional vulnerability
✩  Characters anticipating the worst and preemptively self-sabotaging in an effort to avoid being abandoned or taken advantage of
✩  Misunderstandings due to past trauma - for instance, characters misinterpreting kind gestures because they lack a frame of reference for them

☀  Big reveals - I am utterly delighted by the moments in canon or fic where everyone else realizes that our main character is a Hidden Badass 

☀  Pining (as long as it gets resolved!)

☀  Family bonds, both among biological families and families of choice
✩  Mentors providing parental support/care
✩  Deep sibling ties

☀  Protectiveness
✩  Protectiveness within families and found families =)
✩  Characters actually literally getting the chance to protect each other: rescuing each other; dropping everything to come fight for each other, threatening enemies for each other; violating social conventions to defend each other; etc.

☀  Enemies-to-friends-to-lovers

☀  Really trope-y AUs
✩  Space AUs with fun space opera adventures
✩  Fandom AUs and superhero AUs, especially with silly identity porn shenanigans (link is totally worksafe!)
✩  Regency AUs in which everyone is 100% chill about The Gays
        ❄  Regency marriages of convenience (especially with power imbalances!) that morph into ~true love~
✩  Non-mundane modern AUs (e.g., modern AUs in which everyone still has magic, or in which the modern world is composed of the canon countries in modern times/not just our world, etc.)
✩  Steampunk AUs or gaslamp fantasy AUs (i.e., Victorian/Edwardian settings with a fantasy twist)

☀  General fluff and iddy tropes

Dislikes/DNWs:

☀  Depictions of major depressive episodes, suicidality, and self-harm

☀  Homophobia

☀  Gore - mutilation, cannibalism, body horror, etc.

☀  Explicitly breaking up the ships I name in my prompts (in other words, I’d much prefer gen over either a different set of ships or characters reflecting on how their relationship is impossible due to death/incompatible orientations/whatever =))

☀  Mpreg

☀  Discussions of disordered eating or weight

☀  Infidelity

☀  Depictions of academia
✩  Characters in professional research environments, like universities; the day-to-day work lives of people like researchers, grad students, professors, lab techs, etc.
✩  Characters engaging in schoolwork (which isn't to say that high school/college AUs are a no-go, but if you do want to write one, I'd prefer to avoid reading about characters talking in depth about research/writing/homework/grades/etc., thanks =))

☀  Main character death

☀  Incest

☀  Unhappy endings, darkfic, or melancholy angst without a fluffy resolution (angst that leads into fluff is totally great, though!)

Specific Fandom Stuff

Enola Holmes

 Poor little Lady Cecily, who wanted only to read, draw, think, and do some good in the world, to spend her life at the dubious mercy of Viscountess Otelia and Baroness Aquilla?
“Harpies,” I muttered. “Vipers. They must be defeated.” My unlucky lady must be saved.

As I knelt beside her, Cecily gave a little sigh, blinked, opened her eyes, and as her gaze fixed on my face, joyous amazement dawned. With greatest wonder she whispered, “Enola?”
How strangely it affected me to hear her say my true name in that way. Gripped by emotion, I could neither move nor speak.
“Enola?” Her hands faltered towards me. “You, again, can it be?”
“Shhh.” Her touch made me want to weep, but I quite needed to function.

[Cecily's] charcoal drawings, you see, had strangely affected me. Touched some deep recognition in me. Almost as if she and I could be soul-mates.
Perhaps, just perhaps, she might similarly recognise me.

I shivered with fear.
Of my brother Sherlock, whom I adored.
He was my hero. He was my nemesis. I very nearly worshiped him. But if he tracked me down, I would lose my freedom forever.
Yet – he was distraught on my account?
I could no longer tell myself that I had hurt nothing except his pride.
But what to do? If I gave Sherlock Holmes the slightest hint of my well-being, he would somehow use it to entrap me.

Sherlock’s gaze, hawklike, flew to me. “Enola!” he cried with the most intense excitement and fixity of expression.
Because I could not stop looking at him, yet could not stay, I stumbled backwards up the steps, retreating.
But my brother Sherlock did not move. “Enola,” he called. “Stop. Wait. Trust me. Please.”
But I truly heard his words only afterwards, like an echo in my dishevelled mind as I tore myself away, fleeing like a deer.

Characters: Cecily, Enola, Sherlock

What I Love in the Canon: I was incredibly excited to see this turn up in the tagset my first year, and I've nom'd it every year since, because this series is just so great! :D I love the feminist elements and I love all the dashing derring-do and fun action-adventure escapades.  Mostly, I just adore Enola, in her wonderful, brilliant, prickly, independent glory, and her relationships with everyone else.  Just generally, I really want someone to give Enola lots of hugs: I mean, we're talking about a girl who spends the entire book series on the run from her only living family, who figures out that a message supposedly from her mother is a trap because her mum would never sign it "love", who nevertheless is a hilarious, irreverent, brave heroine who just wants to help out others! <3

I love her relationship with Cecily - I love how she’s so protective of her (literal Victorian lesbian action hero of my heart, swooping in to ~save her girl~), I love Cecily's fiery idealism and Enola's delight at it, I love how they're two of the only people who really understand each other, I love how each of them both subverts and works within period conceptions of femininity in different but complementary ways, and I love how each of them thinks the other is just ~awesome~ and ~amazing~.  They think of each other as soulmates!  Both of them are totally swoon-worthy and I love them swooning over each other. :D

I also love Enola’s relationship with her brothers, especially Sherlock - how she adores him but can’t let him help her, for fear of his sending her off to finishing school; how he grows to respect and love her, and how he eventually just wants to defend her from Mycroft/finishing schools/Victorian expectations, but she doesn't trust him enough to let him help; and how well the two of them mesh together, as semi-rival detectives who are intensely proud of each other and share an irreverent attitudes towards society.  They're both outsiders, in their own way, observers who flout society's conventions and are fairly isolated - although canon never lets us forget how gender and age impact their capacity to stand aloof from the world.  I loved this canon’s characterization of Sherlock, especially as filtered through Enola's evolving viewpoint on him: the flashes we got of this kind, big-hearted man who cares a lot but can’t express it well, can easily come off as brusque, supercilious, and high-handed, and deals with episodes of melancholy/depression were just perfect.

And, of course, I love BIG REVEAL moments, so the times when other characters realized what a badass Enola was and who she was are some of my favorites.

Fic Thoughts: First off, I’m explicitly releasing you from the requirement to write all the requested characters: I’d be thrilled with fic that incorporates Enola and either one of the other two characters, as opposed to wanting fic that has to have all three of them. Primarily, I’d love either some Enola/Cecily femslash or some gen fic about Enola’s relationship with Sherlock. However, if you wanted to toss them all together - for instance, Enola and Sherlock bonding over both being ~super gay~ - that would be really cool, too. =)  Also, just generally, I'm super weak for Gaslamp Fantasy settings, so any sort of fic that added in magic to the canon setting (something like Sorcery and Cecilia or Mairelon the Magician) would be fantastic.  Similarly, a steampunk AU would be wonderful!  Or a space AU, in which the seedy back alleys of London are replaced by the seedy back alleys of [Spaceport Wherever] or something, sounds awesome.

For Enola/Cecily, I'd love anything from adorable domestic fluff to casefic to canon or post-canon hurt/comfort.  Post-canon slice of life fluff with them would be adorable (badass lesbian Victorian detectives, living happily together in some sort of Boston Marriage! <3)  Similarly, I'd be thrilled by anything about Enola rescuing Cecily from some new nefarious scheme.  I also think it's clearly a crying shame that we didn't get a proper femslash reunion in the aftermath of Enola's rescue of Cecily in The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan, so a post-canon h/c-y coda in which Cecily expresses how head-over-heels she is for her gallant heroine or Enola conveys how relieved she is that Cecily is all right and how much she cares for her would be wonderful.  Something that reverses their usual dynamic, with Cecily saving Enola, could also be fascinating - Cecily seems more integrated into high society than Enola is, given her more conventional upbringing, so seeing her save Enola from some society scheme she doesn't actually know how to navigate would be really neat.  A regency AU or even a canon-era-but-queer-relationships-are-totally-OK AU in which Enola and Cecily have to get married For Reasons and then there's lots of pining or even distrust (if they don't already know each other) that leads to fluff would be amazing, too.  Also, a regency AU could provide a neat opportunity to see the two of them finding their way around a different set of weird and/or stifling social conventions - it would be super fun to see Enola scandalizing the beau monde or Cecily developing her radical political consciousness in a post-Napoleonic period. How do they get together?  What does a day in their adult lives look like?  Do they work cases together, à la Holmes and Watson?  Do they have kids?  What happened right after the end of the series, when Enola went to visit Cecily?

For Enola & Sherlock, Sherlock --> Enola h/c would be ~amazing~.  I really liked reading about Sherlock being protective of Enola, especially as he came to appreciate her properly, and was worrying about her not because she was his ~foolish little sister~ but because she was a brave young woman whose refusal to be inactive in the face of injustice could seriously endanger her.  I really, really love the tension in the period when Sherlock pretty much just wants to help her, but Enola doesn’t think she can trust him - her learning to accept his help/trust him would be amazing, omg (sort of a platonic enemies-to-friends-to-sibling-bffs).  H/c fic during that period in which Enola gets injured during a case or captured by villains or found by Mycroft or something like that, and Sherlock steps in to defend her, would be lovely.  While I enjoyed the last book, I do wish that the moment when Enola and Sherlock finally met on equal terms had been a bit more emotionally fraught for both of them, so I wouldn’t be averse to some sort of canon divergence AU in which the stakes of Enola trusting Sherlock are much higher.  Or fluffy future sibling bonding would also be sweet!  I feel like the two of them have never really gotten to develop a day-to-day siblingly relationship - Sherlock having always been away and then Enola having been on the run - and a post-canon fic could provide an intriguing chance to see how they settle into a closer relationship.  Especially given Enola's hang-ups about emotional intimacy, given Eudoria's attitude during her upbringing and the dangers she faced during canon, and Sherlock's own difficulty expressing his affection and pride, seeing them grow closer together would be lovely.  What happens to them after canon?  Could Enola ever grow to live comfortably/happily with him?  Do the two of them delight in teasing Mycroft together - or would Mycroft and Enola ever team up to surprise Sherlock?  Do they help each other out on cases - or what happens if they get assigned the same case again?  What would have happened if Enola had gotten into more serious danger during canon and had been forced to rely on Sherlock?  What if Lord Rodney hadn't come around and been reasonable during Cryptic Crinoline and Sherlock had needed to charge in and rescue Enola?

Fandom specific notes and DNWs: I would prefer if you wouldn’t mind avoiding focusing on Eudoria’s death/the process of grieving a parent, sorry!  Also, although I really like how Nancy Springer writes about Sherlock's "melancholia," anything that delves deeply into his battles with mental illness is a DNW.  If you do write historical femslash, I’d very much appreciate it if you mostly glossed over the period’s homophobia and gave them a very happy ending; I don’t really want to see them in loveless marriages of conveniences with dudes and cheating on their spouses with each other or being separated by their families or whatever.  Finally, small and persnickety thing, but I pretty much always default to reading Sherlock Holmeses as queer, so I'd probably prefer fic that doesn't explicitly contradict that/give Sherlock a female love interest, if you don't mind.

Nimona

 

Characters: Nimona, Ballister, Ambrosius

What I Love in the Canon: Nimona was basically my recipe for a perfect webcomic: whimsical, steampunk-stew-of-anachronisms worldbuilding; characters who care deeply about each other but are terrible at expressing their emotions; a tight tonal balance between the hilarious humorous bits and the emotional arcs that actually get quite serious/mature; a woobie!mistaken-for-villain!hero who is really just mostly trying to Save the World but has terrible PR; a canon queer romance that starts out with Antagonistic Tragic Exes and makes its way back together at the end; and, at its heart, a close platonic relationship between two outcasts with trust issues who have no one else to rely on. Perfect.

Ballister is pretty much my favorite woobie (he's trying so hard! but everyone misunderstands/hates him! bless), and the fact that he ends up as both Nimona and Goldenloin's morality pet/moral anchor at times is perfect. Gingerhaze came right for my id with that scene where the Director tortures him and both Nimona and Goldenloin completely lose it; both/either of them being protective over Ballister is my ultimate iddy joy.

I love all the delicious angst in his relationship with Goldenloin - the hints about the precarious, bittersweet nature of their youthful relationship (with Ballister's behind-the-scenes sacrifices to make their shitty childhood situation as idyllic as it could be and Ambrosius's hero worship/innocent trustfulness); the fact that they really have hurt each other in the past, in almost-unforgivable ways, and the slow but satisfying road to Ambrosius's apology and repentant character development.  Above all, I love how deeply they care about each other, despite everything - how threatening Ballister is what makes Ambrosius finally stand up to the Director, repeatedly; how the two still clearly trust each other enough to be talking behind the scenes and surreptitiously making sure the other is OK (as in Chapter 7); how Ballister can't bring himself to really hurt Ambrosius during their fight in that same chapter; and how Ambrosius seems almost to take for granted Ballister's goodness, even when Ballister himself seems unsure.

Meanwhile, I was absolutely charmed by Ballister's relationship with Nimona.  I love how Nimona is actually far more powerful, but still needs Ballister just as much as he needs her. The mismatch between their apparent roles and their actual power levels is great - Ballister is Nimona's boss-cum-substitute-dad, on the one hand, but on the other, Nimona is more than capable of both defending him and cleaning his clock, if she wanted to.  I love them being best friends and getting up to hijinks together - participating in Evil Schemes that actually aren't villainous enough for Nimona's tastes but help undermine the Institute.  I like the ways in which both are a bit broken, and I like how they fit together (but, uh, not romantically, please, sorry). I love how Ballister earnestly tries so hard to connect with his "sidekick" - both when he deftly and maturely helps her deal with her trauma and when he (realistically!) screws up and upsets her.  And I love Nimona's deflecting - both when it's played for laughs and when it's really, really not.  Nimona teasing Ballister is hilarious and sweet, and I'm always charmed when Ballister gets ruffled by her jokes.

Fic Thoughts: I've been practically spoiled in past Yuletides with some really, really lovely post-canon fic, but my <3 for this fandom is insatiable/everlasting, and so I'd be delighted with any more fic that focuses on Ballister/Ambrosius or on Ballister & Nimona.  Fic about all three would be delightful, especially if it featured Nimona and Ambrosius having to negotiate the hilariously awkward relationship engendered by the fact that both would die for Ballister but also neither trusts the other at all.  But I'd also love fic with just Ballister and either of the two, so don't feel obligated to write about all three.  In general, I'd absolutely adore any sort of Ballister-centric h/c.

Ballister/Ambrosius hurt my heart right up until it totally didn't, and then I wanted ALL OF IT and a proper fix-it conversation. I'd love post-canon or canon divergence fic for them.  The fact that Ballister's well-being is the one absolutely non-negotiable sticking point that leads Ambrosius to find his courage and defy the Director is endlessly fascinating to me.  Fic in which Ambrosius reaches that breaking point and defects earlier would be amazing - but so would post-canon fic in which everything isn't all right immediately after the events of the graphic novel.  Ballister getting attacked as a catalyst for post-canon reconciliation would be lovely - even after the events of the graphic novel, they still have a lot of issues to work out, and there are sure to be grudge-holding Institute agents around somewhere who could serve as convenient plot devices. ;)  Really, lots of tropey set-ups to force them to work through their issues could be great.  The two of them get trapped somewhere together following a battle pre-canon and have to huddle for warmth/work together to survive the wilderness/etc.!  Ballister gets injured/captured/somehow ends up at Ambrosius's mercy, and the two have to face the reality that they really don't want to hurt each other anymore!  As part of the post-canon rebuilding effort, even though they still haven't talked through their issues, they end up on a diplomatic mission and are given quarters with only one bed/mistaken for husbands/etc.!  A visiting foreign dignitary/secret Institute double agent/random hot dude scientist starts flirting with Ballister, and Ambrosius gets all guilty and jealous, because he no longer has any solid claim on Ballister's affections!  Feel free to pull out all the idfic stops, basically, because I will definitely enjoy it. :D  How would Ambrosius have reacted if the Director had captured Ballister sooner, without Nimona to rescue him?  How do they actually go about the difficult emotional work of rebuilding trust/earning forgiveness?  Who admits their feelings first - and under what circumstances?

Meanwhile, if writing Ballister/Ambrosius isn't your jam, something about Ballister and Nimona's dynamic would also be great.  I'd totally love any sort of cracky fluff with affectionate camaraderie, as well as h/c fic or a post-canon reconciliation fix-it.  Ballister gently trying to help Nimona deal with her issues and Nimona bluntly helping Ballister deal with his would both be great - I'm always charmed by the juxtaposition between their emotional approaches to situations.  Nimona going into full over-protective mode over her "boss" is also catnip to me, especially when Ballister is also trying to protect her (as in the panel above, where he's trying to reassure her even as he's being tortured).  I also love when Nimona reveals the extent of her badassery (see: my love for big reveals), so anything about their enemies underestimating her would be great.  What triggers Nimona's return post-canon?  Is Ballister the one who reaches out and goes looking for her, to help her deal with any feelings of betrayal?  Or would she come back looking for him if something Went Wrong - if someone tried to throw him in jail or assassinate him in the new world order?  How would she react to the whole Ballister/Ambrosius situation?  What would her reaction be if someone fell for their face-level narrative roles and thought that she was merely a sidekick - if they tried to threaten her to get to Ballister or didn't even bother to deal with her when they tried to take out Ballister, on the assumption that she was powerless?  If events had played out differently in canon when the Institute captured Ballister as bait, could she and Ambrosius set aside their differences for long enough to work together?  

Fandom specific notes and DNWs: I don't really enjoy Ballister/Nimona, sorry.  Also, if you do end up writing pre- or mid-canon Ballister/Ambrosius, I'd prefer fic that leads to a happy ending with them together - I'm a fluff monster who can't deal with angst, basically, so I'd love for them to be happy at the end (although acknowledging that they still have things to work through is fine!). :D

 

The Squire’s Tales

 “Is it you indeed, my friend? I am overjoyed,” the Moor said.
“What are you doing here? Didn’t you go to Camelot?” Dinadan asked, dismounting and embracing the Moor.
“No, my friend. Before I had gone a furlong I realized that I did not wish to continue without you.” Dinadan blinked, then smiled. “So, my friend, I have been waiting for you,” Palomides explained. 

“But what about Camelot? Weren’t you going to go there to see the greatest knights in the land?”
Palomides reined in his horse and looked fondly at Dinadan. “I need not go to Camelot for that, my lord Dinadan. I have found what I came for, and now I may return. Will you ride with me to the coast?”
Stunned, Dinadan could only nod, and they turned south toward Dover

“I could have taken them myself, you know,” Dinadan replied, lowering his rebec and returning the smile.
“Indeed?” Palomides asked politely. “Then why did you not pick up the guard’s spear when he dropped it at your feet?”
It hadn’t occurred to Dinadan. “What, stop at that point in the music? In the middle of the secondary theme?”
Palomides’ smile broadened. “Yes, of course. Unthinkable.” 

Characters: Palomides, Dinadan

What I Love in the Canon: I started reading these books as a kid and finished up the last book near the end of high school, and wow, I cried buckets.  Morris’s Gawain is my Platonic ideal of Gawains, and I really adore the tone of the books, with their careful balance of serious emotions and humor.  I love how they can be light-hearted and even silly at times without undercutting the epic feel of the Arthurian tale.

Dinadan/Palomides is one of the OTPs of my heart.  Their adventures together were fun but also really moving; they were always hilarious and affectionate with each other, but each also had their own hidden depths, and it often seemed to me like each was the only person the other trusted his deepest thoughts to. There was something about their both being outsiders and musicians that facilitated a deep connection between the two of them and led to some of the most quiet, affecting scenes in the series. Each of them had such a uniquely incisive outsider’s view on Arthur’s court - Palomides was Moorish and occasionally unfamiliar with the norms of Arthurian society, but also a very skilled and eventually respected knight, while Dinadan was British and had been born into the Arthurian courtly culture, but didn’t always seem to fit in with or be respected by his fellow knights and couldn't really perform chivalraic masculinity quite ~right,~ in the eyes of men like his father.

I also just really love both of them as characters.  Palomides so stoic and calm on the outside, but the hints of his deep frustration with injustice, anger on behalf of the downtrodden, and hyper-awareness of his outsider status under the surface are lovely.  His quiet nobility and genuine chivalry make him one of my favorite heroes in the series.  Meanwhile, I love Dinadan's light-heartedness and capacity to goof around - but I also really enjoy his occasional flashes of bitterness and distress, and the incisive criticism he expresses in some of his songs.  He's certainly not a sad clown character/just hiding some deep unhappiness beneath his sarcasm, but he does share some of that deep-down anger about injustice that Palomides has, because both of them seem so empathetic and uniquely positioned to see things that other, more-insider knights overlook.

Fic Thoughts: I’ve received several absolutely amazing Dinadan/Palomides fics in past Yuletides, but I am a greedy soul who still would be 100% thrilled to have another fic to add to my endless reread cycle. :D  I’ve provided some prompts about them in canon-era and in AUs below, but if you already have an idea for something you want to write for them already, go for it! I am certain I will love it. =)

I would be totally into canon era fic.  Some intense adventurefic about them being knights, or something silly about them being musicians, or something else entirely - go wild!  Palomides saving Dinadan with his Actual Serious Knightly Skills would be excellent, just saying. ;) Any sort of Palomides --> Dinadan h/c, of the emotional (feelings about knightliness! feelings about Tristram omg!) or physical (see again: Palomides rescuing Dinadan from peril) variety would be great.  Dinadan and Palomides reflecting on how occasionally painfully senseless and unjust British Arthurian society is, and how each wishes the other didn’t have to put up with certain aspects of it, would be amazing - as would be each of them helping the other get through it.

Get together fic would also be amazing.  Neither of them is very emotionally transparent, which seems like a great set-up for some high quality mutual pining.  Palomides seems to play his emotions very close to the chest, and put great stock in chivalraic stoicism, and seeing him relax into trusting Dinadan with glimpses of his real emotional state would be gorgeous.  Meanwhile, Dinadan's a bit more of an emotional hot mess, but he seems to play it off with quips and obfuscating charm, and he obviously has a fairly thorny history with emotional vulnerability.  Given these emotional barriers, I feel like watching them stumble their way together through a sea of mutual pining would be delightfully angsty and fluffy!  How do they get together?  Who admits his feelings first?

Canon AUs in which they meet under different and less ideal circumstances also seem like they’d be loads of fun!  Given how cautious each can be about sharing his ~inner depths~, a canon AU in which they had a more enemies-to-friends-to-lovers dynamic with confused mutual pining would be intriguing.  If they started out without any real camaraderie, I could imagine lots of misunderstandings and bad faith, especially given how each can present a bit of a false persona around people they don't trust (I could imagine Palomides finding Dinadan's callous/carelessly cynical clowning shallow or abrasive, and I could see Dinadan resenting or being suspicious of Palomides's reserved, stoic politeness and apparent perfect chivalry (I mean, turns out Palomides really is that great, but I can see Dinadan having a hard time believing that, given the hollowness of character exhibited by many other knights he meets, so Dinadan realizing that this guy is For Real perf would be wonderful)).  Just as long as they do eventually come to love each other, I’d be super about anything you might want to do with this sort of set-up!

And then, of course, setting AUs are certainly very welcome! I am a sucker for fun tropey AUs, and I definitely think “medieval knights” translates well to other settings.  A superhero AU for the two of them would be the most amazing thing ever, for instance (and there are all sorts of great tropes you could play around with for a superhero AU for them - identity porn! music superpowers! etc.). But also - fandom AU! I feel like the fact that both Dinadan and Palomides are creative-types would transfer really well to a fun fandom AU, and once again: opportunities for the kind of great identity porn set-ups for which I am weak (Palomides doesn’t realize that that hilarious crack fic author in his fandom is actually the brother of his super annoying coworker with the terrible love life! Dinadan falls in love with that filker with the amazing voice, but doesn't know he's actually his upstairs neighbor! etc.).  And space AUs might give you the chance to play out pieces of the Arthurian legend with a happy ending this time - or to transfer normal knightly duties to space and write an adventurefic in a different setting, if you want.  Also regency AUs could give you a chance to play with other fun, silly romantic tropes (marriage of convenience! mocking a different set of stifling conventions together!).

Fandom specific notes and DNWs: Dinadan/Brangienne would be a hard Do Not Want, sorry.  I actually really adore Brangienne (feel absolutely free to include her if you adore her too - I’d very much enjoy seeing her interact with Palomides, actually!), and I’m totally into queer!Brangienne and queer!Dinadan being the best of friends, but I’m a little bit uncomfortable with the ~unbearable heterosexuality~ of the Middle Ages in Morris’s work. I’d also super appreciate it if any mention of period-accurate homophobia doesn’t take center stage.  Finally, if you do write post-Camelot fic, I’d prefer fic that was more hopefully optimistic than bittersweet and melancholy; I’m still a little torn up over the great Arthurian tragedy of it all and would prefer fic that didn’t dwell on that. =)

Comments

[choirwoman]

I like this list! Especially the DNW part. Mind if I steal it? (I don't mind academia; all the rest is spot-on for me, too.) I intend to do my very first Yuletide this year.