Dear Chocolatier Letter - 2020

Dear Fabulous Chocolatier,

Thank you so much for creating for me! I'm very excited to explore our shared fandom(s) and favorite characters with you!

I am heavily cannibalizing my Yuletide letter for this, so apologies if you've also looked at that one. I’m ellida on AO3  and pearlsthatwereeyes on tumblr. (Tumblr says that my account may contain sensitive media—as near as I can tell, it’s mad about something I posted 7 years ago, and I haven’t had the patience to sort out what that is.)

 

As you might be able to tell from my requested canons, I love angsty, complicated, badass female characters. True to form, I mostly write angsty, lady-character-centric gen fic and enjoy reading it as well, but don’t worry if that’s not your thing! I’m also a big fan of f/f romance (both smutty and not), complicated plots, slice-of-life, fluff, humor, and friends-as-found-family fics—I just don’t write them very often. 

 

Regardless of the canon/medium, I’m here for the characters. I will eat up anything you can tell me about their internal thoughts and motivations and their relationships with each other. I also love worldbuilding and atmosphere—I love reading stories that play around in and build out the canon world. And finally, I’m here for THE FEELS. Whatever those feels are! Angst, tragedy, comedy, romance, happy endings, bittersweet endings, TERRIBLE WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME endings—they’re all welcome!

 

I've provided a bunch of prompts, but if there's a different story that you're dying to tell me about these characters and their relationships, by all means go for it! I'm a pretty eclectic fic reader, and a lot of my favorites are things I would never have thought to wish for.

General Likes (some shamelessly stolen from other people's letters): Gen, femslash, women pinning other women against walls, women being awesome lady friends who have each other's backs, actually just women being awesome in general, the grumpy one is soft for the sunshine one, found families, strong-but-complicated family relationships, snark and banter, world building, origin stories, backstory, unresolved sexual tension, enemies to lovers
 

General DNWs: rape/noncon, dubcon, incest, any mention of characters under the age of 18 having sex with adults over the age of 21, explicit depictions of characters under 18 having sex with each other (fade to black is fine), water sports/scat, A/B/O, unrequested alternate settings, non-canonical character death, references to COVID-19 or othe

 

On to my canon-specific prompts!

 

The Serpent Gates: Csorwe & Talasseres Charossa

 

I love this book for its fascinating worldbuilding and its combination of gut-wrenching angst with completely ridiculous humor, but most of all, I love it for the characters. They’re all my beautiful queer garbage children.

I’d prefer pre-canon or missing scene/changed POV of canon—I’m not as interested in speculating about what comes next or in AU’s for this canon!

 

I really love Csorwe’s and Tal’s snarky, antagonistic but familiar, frenemies-except-on-second-thought-that-sounds-too-close-to-friends-let’s-just-stick-with-enemies-except-I-guess-I-will-grudgingly-have-your-back-sometimes-maybe-if-I-feel-like-it relationship. I’d love to see some of the gaps in their history between Csorwe’s arrival in Tlaanthothe and their trip to Qarsazh filled in. If you’d like a more specific prompt, a story about one of the other times Tal wrote Csorwe a “No hard feelings!” note would pretty much make my life.

 

Canon-Specific DNW: Post-canon speculation, details about the canon plagues (mentions ok, but no details beyond that please)

 

Bright Smoke, Cold Fire: Juliet Catresou/Mahyanai Runajo

 

I love these books for the unabashed Shakespearean mash-up (Shakespeare totally wishes he’d thought of putting blood-sacrifice nuns in R & J), the atmosphere, the complicated politics, the angst, the stabby-and-would-definitely-kill-you girls, and the queer subtext.

 

I particularly love Juliet’s and Runajo’s relationship, how complicated and fraught and angsty it is, as their different traumas and goals rub up against each other and they try to survive their world (and each other). I love how much they hurt each other and how much they still care about each other despite themselves. And they have hella queer subtext, so I’d love some fic that explores that relationship. How might they first realize they care about each other? How do they even begin to build a relationship after Runajo helps force Juliet to slaughter her own family?

 

The Red Devil and Heroine Su: Heroine Su/Red Devil

 

This short film is so tantalizing, and I just want to know more about the Red Devil, Heroine Su, their relationship with each other, and their world. If you’d like more specific prompts: How did the Red Devil and Su first meet/come into conflict? How does their relationship develop? What happens between them in between scenes? Has the Red Devil actually joined Su and is just wistful about the idea of a world where Su would come over to her side instead, or is she actively trying to persuade Su to change her mind and/or working to sabotage Su? Why does Su always work alone? Is the Red Devil working alone when we meet her, or is she part of a larger group of allies?

 

The Daevabad Trilogy: Aqisa/Zaynab al-Qahtani; Nahri e-Nahid& Yaqub; Alizayd al-Qahtani/Nahri e-Nahid & Yaqub 

 

Okay, so I love these books. I love the intricate worldbuilding, the complicated politics, the complex characters and their thorny relationships with each other, and the way they get SO CLOSE to happiness until someone else (or five someone elses) with their own plans and agendas and ridiculous political schemes crash in on them and RUIN EVERYTHING ALL OVER AGAIN.

 

Aqisa/Zaynab al-Qahtani: As much as I love this canon, there are a few things missing for me. And those things are more Aqisa, more Zaynab, and more of them together. I love each of them separately—Aqisa’s sheer competence, badassery, and loyalty; Zaynab’s elegance, political savvy, and love for her entire fucked up family—and I love their whole warrior woman/princess dynamic. 

 

I’d love a story that explores their relationship with each other and fills in some of the gaps. If you want more specific prompts, what was their first meeting like? How did Aqisa offering to teach Zaynab to fight go down, and how did those lessons go? What was their flight from the palace like, and what happened during their time walled off in the combined Geziri/Shafit quarter in the aftermath of the invasion? How did their romantic relationship develop? What adventures do they get up to after the Empire of Gold? Does Zaynab ever learn to summon fire to Ali's zulfiqar? When does Aqisa realize she's switched her allegiance from Ali to Zaynab? But seriously, I’ll be excited to read anything you write me about them!

 

Nahri e-Nahid & Yaqub: I really loved Yaqub and his relationship with Nahri and would love to see more of them together! Tell me about how they first met, or a time they had to work together to treat a complicated patient! Has Nahri met Yaqub's family before <em>Empire of Gold</em>? Has he told them about her?

Alizayd al-Qahtani/Nahri e-Nahid & Yaqub: I really enjoyed these three's canon interactions--particularly since Yaqub has trouble remembering Ali exists from one moment to the next--what comedy! I would absolutely love to see anything from a canon-divergence AU where Nahri and Ali stay in Cairo to help Yaqub with his apothecary shop. Tell me about their early days settling in! Give me a slice of life from several years down the road once Ali and Nahri have become part of Yaqub's family and the Cairo community and have little kids of their own (or not)! 

Xena: Warrior Princess: Xena & Eve|Livia

I love Xena's relationship with her daughter--both pre- and post-ice cave--and would just really love to see it explored more.

The moments where Xena had to figure out how to keep her baby daughter safe during a battle were some of my favorite parts of Season 5, and I would eat up literally anything you want to draw me or write me about Xena being mom and warrior at the same time! (Eve being the perennial "baby thrown into the air away from swords" is a particular favorite trope of mine, but again, I am here for literally anything.)

I also really loved the glimpses we got of Xena helping adult!Eve come to terms with and atone for her past and wanted so much more of that! I'd love fix-it fic for "Path of Vengeance" that really digs into the ways that Eve's past crimes against the Amazons rubs up against Xena's history with them (both as destroyer and as friend and protector). What is it like for Xena to realize that her daughter has quite literally followed in her footsteps? How does she navigate her daughter having killed people she considered friends and allies, people whom she herself had deeply wronged? I'm also interested in the tension between Eve's manner of atonement--devotion to the prophet Eli and letting her religious faith assuage a lot of her guilt--versus Xena's stalwart determination to carry the weight of her past by herself. 

For adult!Eve & Xena art, I'd love to see a moment where Xena is comforting Eve about her past, a slice-of-life moment, or a fighting (Livia) or sparring (Eve) moment! I just love them figuring out their post-ice cave relationship together.