Dear Yuletide Writer 2025

[suburban_sun]

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thanks for signing up for this always-fun exchange! I'm looking forward to reading whatever you write! (And for anyone else stumbling across this letter, know that treats are always welcomed.)

Below you’ll find the following:

• My Requests
• About Me
• General Likes
• General DNWs
• Fandom Specifics/Prompts

My Requests:

• Game Changers Series - Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander
• Mad Men - Peggy Olson, Stan Rizzo
• Midcentury NYC - Eddie O'Leary, Mark Bailey

I’ve tried to list some varied prompts for each fandom, but please don’t feel like you have to stick to what I’ve come up with. If the rest of my letter gives you another idea you’d like to write, I’d love to read it!


A little about me to start:

My AO3 name is SuburbanSun; you can also check out my Tumblr if you’d like: unbreakablejemmasimmons.


General Likes:

Fave shippy tropes:

• Rivals/enemies to lovers
• Secret dating/sneaking around
• FWBs that turns into something more
• Fake dating
• Mutual pining
• “The love is requited they’re just idiots"/idiots to lovers
• Truth serum/in vino veritas
• "I love you ain't that the worst thing you've ever heard"

Fave gen tropes and story elements:

• Found family dynamics
• Competency/mutual respect
• Shenanigans/heists
• Time travel
• Time loops
• Snappy banter and dialogue

Subversions of tropes are also great!

Most of my prompts tend toward canon universe ideas because that’s just what I tend to think of first, but I enjoy AUs too, and here are a few types that I’m always a sucker for:

• Secret Service/bodyguard/witness protection AUs
• Private eye AUs
• Politics AUs (like my requested characters running for office or working on a campaign)
• Vampire slayer AUs
• Food truck or food critic AUs

Epistolary style, either as a small part of a story or as all of it, is always fun to me, if it’s up your alley. Phone calls! Emails! Letters! Post-It notes! I love it all!

General DNWs:

DNWs: Superangst and sad endings. Babyfic/kidfic/pregnancy. First person POV (except in epistolary elements).

Fandom Specifics/Prompts:

Game Changers Series
Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander

This one has been a recent wild ride. I hopped aboard the Heated Rivalry train when I heard it was being made into a TV show, reading it in roughly 26 hours, followed by Role Model, The Long Game, Game Changers, then a reread of Heated Rivalry and The Long Game each-- all over the course of about a week and a half. And the trailer for the show dropped amidst all that! An embarrassment of riches.

I am an absolute sucker for enemies or rivals to lovers, and Heated Rivalry was such a good version of it. The denial, the slow burn, the yearning, the pining! The sex scenes were hot but also SO good at furthering the relationship and their individual character development.

Additional notes: I have not yet read Tough Guy or Common Goal, and while I am feral to watch the series when it airs, I'm not in Canada so depending on int'l streaming rights and my skills at getting around them, I may or may not be caught up when Yuletide ends. But I imagine it'll follow the book closely enough that that doesn't really matter here.

Prompts:

• Since the rivals to lovers aspect is what drew me in, I'd love something that takes place during the time they still (at least pretend) to hate each other.
• Maybe an alternate version of a scene in the book-- what if Shane had stayed on tuna melt night, or what if they had hooked up on the roof after Shane won Rookie of the Year at the NHL Awards? How would that play out, or how would it change the trajectory of their relationship?
• Throughout Heated Rivalry, I kept half expecting Shane to secretly learn just enough Russian to understand one of Ilya's secret sweet nothings and call him out on it (or silently freak the hell out).

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Mad Men
Peggy Olson, Stan Rizzo

 

I love and miss this show so much. It was so smart and made me feel so many things, and in truth, Peggy Olson is one of my favorite characters in all of fiction. I know I request this show and these characters every year, but I truly always want more of these two!

Peggy/Stan is such a great ship, to me, and one I was on board with from the very beginning. Omitting his boorish behavior early on, once they established a rapport, they were such equals, and he seemed to respect her so much, and vice versa. They got on each other’s nerves and knew how to push each other’s buttons, but that’s just because they connected so well and really got each other.

 

Prompts:

• I adore the time period where they’re basically phone buddies. Maybe an AU where they get together earlier in the series, during that time? How their phone conversations evolve from discussing work to discussing everything to falling for each other (or realizing they already had)? Phone sex (or getting ever-so-close to it before realizing they’re in the office and it’s inappropriate) is a-okay here too.
• In the same vein, epistolary fic could be really fun to play around with here. Maybe a story told through a series of interoffice memos, messages, notes in the margins of copy pitches and along the edges of spec art?
• They’re working through the weekend on some pitch or another, holed up in the office with a stash of booze and half-empty cartons of Chinese food, but they can’t focus on work ALL night, can they?

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Midcentury NYC
Eddie O'Leary, Mark Bailey

This book! I just loved it. The slow burn of the romance between Mark and Eddie was so beautiful, and I loved everything about the setting-- old timey journalism! Baseball! I really really loved the dynamic of Mark being a bit in denial about his feelings, Eddie's true feelings, their relationship, to protect himself, while Eddie was just so openly on board. And like, I just love this bit so much:

"I love you," Eddie says.

"You're a nightmare," Mark returns, in precisely the same tone of voice.

I've also read and loved We Could Be So Good, so cameos from Andy or Nick (or any other characters from either book) are welcome! And for this one, I'd love something set in the canon universe more than an AU.

Prompts:

• What was Eddie thinking early on, like when he first met Mark? What was going on in his head?
• More of Eddie and Mark sneaking around during the long stretch of away games!
• I really love a bickery, bantery exchange, so anything that takes place when that was the dynamic between the two of them is more than welcome.

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So, that’s that! I really hope you enjoy the whole process of writing and receiving something in return, and thanks for participating! Happy writing!