Dear Yuletide Author,
Hi! Thank you so much for signing up to write a story for me. This is currently a placeholder post, but I will fill it with actual suggestions and requests very shortly.
Regards,
Satchelfoot
Dear Yuletide Author,
First of all, thank you so much for signing up to write me a fandom story. I look forward to doing this every year, and I’m glad you’ve signed up too, whoever you are. Second, I’m sorry it took me so long to put up this letter to you. As you know, Yuletide assignments appeared shortly before Thanksgiving, and I’ve been cooking, working, and polishing off leftovers since then.
So, preamble aside, here are some definite (but flexible!) preferences of mine that I hope might be useful to you when you write:
I’m generally not really interested in explicit sex scenes, canonical or non-, especially within the fandoms I’ve chosen this year. Light innuendo and suggestiveness are fine, but anything beyond that is generally not for me. That said, if you have an absolutely great idea that can only work if we closely follow that characters’ sex lives, go for it. I’ll deal.
Fandoms! My favorite Jeeves stories include Right Ho, Jeeves and “Jeeves and the Impending Doom.” I generally find the rural stories funniest: the ones where Bertie and Jeeves go out to Aunt Dahlia’s place or somewhere for a bit of fresh air. Physical comedy is a plus, especially if it involves Bertie being chased by an irate goose or other animal. The deeper the hole Bertie digs himself before Jeeves shimmers in and saves the day, the better. My favorite secondary characters are Gussie Fink-Nottle, Tuppy Glossop, and the aunts (mainly Dahlia).
If you signed up for The Graveyard Book, please write me a story about Silas and/or the permanent graveyard residents. Silas intrigues me no end. If you have any ideas about his past, or about where he goes and what he does after the events of The Graveyard Book, that’s awesome. If you want to write something involving Liza Hempstock or Ghoulheim or others in the graveyard, I’m good with that as well. And hey, I love Bod, too, so if you really want to write about him, that’ll work.
If you’re writing about Gotham Central, I have very clear biases about which characters are most interesting. I like ensemble stories with Montoya, Allen, and Captain Sawyer in the foreground. I like most of the other detectives too, but I find Driver and Chandler kind of bland, so I’d prefer that they be kept in the background as much as possible. (Though if you want to write a story set in the past, when Driver was partnered with Charlie Fields and Chandler was working with Nate, that would be cool.) If you want to bring in Batman or any other superheroes, please keep it to very short appearances, but feel free to use super-villains to your heart’s content. I love whodunits involving major villains. And if you happen to have Crowe and Sarge bickering in the background at some point, that is also one of my favorite things.
And I think that’s it. If any of my details and suggestions feel too restrictive, please feel free to toss them and write whatever you enjoy writing, and I’ll enjoy reading it. Have fun, and I’m looking forward to reading your story!
Regards,
Satchelfoot
yuletidesatchelfoot 