dear yuletide writer

[fox]

Dear lovely patient Yuletide writer,

I don't know who you are, but in two months you will be one of my favorite people anywhere, because you will have written a story for me and that makes you splendid. :-D I don't normally have a lot to say in a letter that I haven't already said in the signup, but here goes.

Things I don't especially like in my fiction

• RPF
  
• character bashing (which I define loosely as giving characters negative traits that are not evident in the text—making nice people mean, or smart people stupid, or etc.)

That's about all that reliably makes me unhappy. I'm pretty easy to please.

Reading deeper,

Further thoughts and things I like in particular about the fandoms I requested

• Quantum Leap
  Prompt: A thing I noticed the last time I was watching a lot of this show was that Sam brings not only his own knowledge and experience to the people he leaps in to replace but preternatural charisma as well. It's because of Scott Bakula's type O screen chemistry, but it's there all the time and it beggars belief. Show me a time where Sam fell in love with someone in the leaped-into period and that person didn't in any way fall for Sam.
  Further thoughts: I suppose I've just, in a way, asked you to violate the second bullet above by making a fascinating person ordinary. :-} I do love Sam despite his extreme Mary Sueishness (I mean the whole show is about Sam-as-Mary-Sue, really, isn't it), and the idea of something not coming easily to him is tremendously appealing to me. Bring him back to the realm of the mortals, just for a minute.
  
  
• Star Wars Legends: X-Wing series
  Prompt: I love these guys. :-) Anything you give me in this world will please me. (I will try to be more helpfully prompty in my letter, sorry. Have to get this in by deadline.)
  Further thoughts: I love Wedge the best, as Stackpole and Allston (and other Extended Universe writers, I think) write him, but I also like Wes and Hobbie and even the whole panoply of original characters. I like the goofy caper plots they get up to on their missions. I like Rogue Squadron, the original badasses, and I like Wraith Squadron, which started out as more of a support group than a military unit but each of whose members grew into their various competencies. Basically in life and in fiction I really enjoy watching skilled people do things they're good at, so a story about any combination of X-wing pilots taking enemies (or one another!) to school would be right up my street.
  
  
• Hamlet
  Prompt: Tell me more about Horatio. He and Hamlet seem not to have been especially well acquainted at university, but Horatio becomes about the most important person in Hamlet's life by the end of the play. How does that happen?
  Further thoughts: I mean, the first time the audience sees Hamlet and Horatio in the same scene, Hamlet isn't a hundred percent sure he remembers Horatio's name. (Horatio obviously knows him a little better, but not socially—everyone "knows" him because he's the freakin' crown prince.) But they grow much closer over the course of the events in the play. Is that because Horatio is in love with Hamlet? and Hamlet exploits that? loves him back? can't even tell but manages to alienate (and endure, if not cause, the death of) everyone in the play he does know well (Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Gertrude, and arguably Claudius and Polonius) on his mad (?) way to putting all his trust in a relative stranger? ... I could make a case for any of these, and I'd love to see what you do with one of them.

Happy Yuletide!
love,
Fox