brightknightie: With Hank and Diana in the lead, the children confront Tiamat. (Other Fandom D&D poster)
Amy ([personal profile] brightknightie) wrote2015-02-23 10:10 pm

2015 RarelyWritten "Dear Author" Letter

Dear [community profile] rarelywritten Ficathon Exchange Author,

Thank you for accepting my prompts in this game! And applause for your excellent taste in fandoms. :-)

I'll strive to keep this year's letter shorter than its predecessors. If you'd like oodles more details, I have a standing "Fanfic Likes and Dislikes" post (updated February 2015), and individual letters for past rounds of this game (2014, 2013, 2012) with different prompts in many of the same fandoms that you're welcome to recycle and choose instead.

Overall, my fannish tastes run to characters striving to be good and true in the face of obstacles and at a cost. Everything from grand adventures to quiet domesticity to wrenching tragedy is welcome. My favorite fandoms tend to grapple with themes of survivorship, identity and purpose; often, a motivating quest shapes canon.

  • I love canonicity, history and metaphor; steadfastness, longing and struggles for the good and right; friendships and chosen families; mutuality and equality; second chances ("seventy times seven" chances).

  • I avoid most things commonly called kinks; out-of-character, vulgarity and absurdity; lack of consequences; depictions of evil as admirable or even easily excused.

  • I believe that fandom too often overlooks its canonical women characters for many reasons, some purely gender-biased, and that this is sad. Yay, RarelyWritten!


Please mix, match or isolate the characters as suits your imagination.

I'm sure I'll enjoy and appreciate anything you're moved to write in our shared fandom!




(1) Forever Knight



Characters: Urs, Janette, Serena, Tracy, Cohen

Prompt option A: "Urs doesn't know her own strength." — Vachon, "Hearts of Darkness"

Prompt option B: "How can the earthen pot go with the metal cauldron? / When they knock together, the pot will be smashed." — Sirach (Eccelsiasticus) 13:2

Parameters: I'd love gen featuring any of these characters, or romance for Nick/Urs or Nick/Janette. (Otherwise, I'm sure I'd also enjoy Nick/Serena, Tracy/Vachon, Janette/Serena or Janette/Urs if romance is your thing and one of those couples is much more your style.) Please, don't go "dark" (that is, please don't celebrate vampirism or evil). Feel free to branch off from canon with a "What if?" — especially if avoiding or reshaping third season's present-day events.


(2) Young Blades



Characters: Jacqueline Roget (aka Jacques Laponte), Anne of Austria (Queen Anne), Emanuelle (the regular Cafe Nouveau waitress), Liana (from "Enchanted"), Pauline LaRue (referenced in "To Heir is Human;" I actually meant to nominate Celeste LaRue from that same episode; my mistake!)

Prompt option A: "But you exacted justice for your father! What holds you?" / "Justice for France." — Charles and Jacqueline, "The Exile"

Prompt option B: "France is an absolute monarchy, tempered by ballads." — Unknown, saying; first quoted in the 18th century by Nicolas Chamfort

Parameters: I'd love gen featuring any of these characters! Flirtation and UST/longing are welcome if romance is much more your thing. (I should say that I don't personally see Jacqueline sharing d'Artagnan's vision of them as a couple; being a wife and mother in their era would be a huge obstacle to her mission, never mind the price on her head and her disguise, besides personal inclinations. Yet she did seriously consider Charles.) Please don't blame Mazarin's evil on the Church; his evil is his own, while the Church is everyone else's, too, including Jacqueline's and mine. ~wry~


(3) Battlestar Galactica (1978)



Characters: Cassiopeia, Serina, Tinia (from "Baltar's Escape"), Athena, Sheba

Prompt option A: "A relationship based on possession isn't for me. I don't want to own Starbuck." — Cassiopeia, "Take the Celestra"

Prompt option B: "Somewhere the saving and putting away had to begin again and someone had to do the saving and keeping, one way or another, in books, in records, in people's heads..." — Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Parameters: I'd love gen starring Cassiopeia, Serina or Tinia, or romance for Starbuck/Cassiopeia. (Otherwise, I'd also enjoy gen featuring Athena or Sheba, or romance for Apollo/Serina or Adama/Tinia.) Please tread just a little carefully around Apollo/Sheba, if applicable; I've never felt wholly right about Sheba so swiftly stepping into Serina's family (and Boomer's job).

Note: Are you familiar with the Battlestar Galactica wiki? It's very handy.


(4) Dungeons and Dragons (cartoon) (1983-1985)



Characters: Diana (the Acrobat), Sheila (the Thief), Varla (from "The Last Illusion"), Martha (from "The Winds Of Darkness")

Prompt option A: "We're outnumbered ten to one!" / "All right, then. You take two; I'll take eighteen." — Eric and Diana, "The Traitor"

Prompt option B: "Violets for the grave of youth, / And bay for those dead in their prime; / Give me the withered leaves I chose / Before in the old time." — Christina Rossetti, "O roses for the flush of youth" in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862)

Parameters: I'd love gen starring any of these characters. I'd especially adore a plot from Diana or Sheila's perspective with scenes both on earth and in the Realm, whether while they're still teenagers or after they've grown up. (If romance is more your style than gen, any canon-sensitive, era-aware pairing that's age-appropriate could be wholly satisfying. (If you decide on f/f, please recall how that was different to the culture in the 1980s than it is today.) No underage sex, please! If your story goes that direction, please set it after the applicable eighteenth birthday(s).) I'm equally open to integrating or ignoring the unfilmed finale script, as best serves your idea.

Note: Are you familiar with the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon encyclopedia? It's awe-inspiring.


(5) Highlander: The Series



Characters: Tessa Noel, Randi McFarland, Angie Burke, Rachel MacLeod, Grace Chandel, Michelle Webster, Anne Lindsey, Annie Devlin, May-Ling Shen, Cierdwyn

Prompt option A: "I thought ridding the world of evil would feel better than this." — Tessa, "See No Evil"

Prompt option B: "Measure twice, cut once." — Unknown, saying; versions dating at least to 16th century

Parameters: I'd adore a Tessa story, with or without Duncan/Tessa romance! And I'd love gen featuring any of these characters. (Otherwise, I'd also enjoy Richie/Angie, Duncan/Anne, other canonical pairings, Randi/OC, Rachel/OC, if romance is your thing and one of those couples is much more your style than Duncan/Tessa.) Please don't include the Horsemen, but Methos alone is fine if your story needs him.


Re: YB - Jacqueline

(Anonymous) 2015-03-12 10:55 am (UTC)(link)
I recall reading that the actor said the slave-idea came from before casting, when they planned a black character (he used "African-American" but I can't remember if that was for actor or character, and I'm thinking a slave from the French Caribbean seems a little more likely than any sort of American, but I'm not sure if that's what was intended).