Dear Yuletide Writer 2020

[suburban_sun]

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thanks for signing up for this superfun exchange! This is the seventh year I’ve participated now, and I’ve always enjoyed it– I hope you do, too.

Below you’ll find the following:

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

My Requests:

• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - Rebecca Bunch, Greg Serrano
• Crooked Media RPF - Jon Lovett, Ronan Farrow
• Mad Men - Peggy Olson, Stan Rizzo
• 9-1-1 Lone Star - TK Strand, Carlos Reyes
• Clueless - Cher Horowitz
• Red White & Royal Blue - Alex Claremont-Diaz, Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor

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. On Tumblr, my tags for each of my requested fandoms can be found here:

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend | Crooked Media | Mad Men | 9-1-1 Lone Star | Clueless | Red White & Royal Blue


General Likes/Kinks:

I’m a big trope fan in general– faves include rivals/enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, bed-sharing, trapped together, mutual pining, secret dating/sneaking around, slow burn, FWBs that turns into something more. Subversions of tropes are also great, so don’t feel like you have to go the obvious route if you choose to write something tropey!

I have a great love for Secret Service/bodyguard/witness protection AUs and private eye AUs, and these days I’m (perhaps unhealthily) invested in US politics/news in my everyday life, so if you want to have any of my requested characters run for office or work on a campaign, I’d never turn that down. And I’m always a sucker for a vampire slayer AU.

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

Smut is cool and fun and here are some kinks that I like to read: Teasing. Phone sex/sexting. Semi-public sex (not actually getting caught though). Workplace sex. Dirty talk. Oral sex. Playfulness/joking around during sex.


General DNWs:

Superangst and sad endings. Babyfic/kidfic/pregnancy in general. Self-harm. Abuse. Noncon/dubcon. A/B/O, mpreg, incest, bestiality, hard kink. Poly/threesomes/orgies. Members of my ships being paired romantically with other people (unless it’s just briefly, on the way to an OTP-happy ending). First person POV (except in epistolary elements). COVID-related fic. 


Fandom Specifics/Prompts:

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Rebecca Bunch, Greg Serrano

I loved this show from beginning to end. It’s clever, it’s feminist, it’s funny, it’s real (even as it features elaborate musical sequences!), and the characters are so flawed but so great.

I shipped Rebecca and Greg so hard in the early seasons, before he left. When I read that they were bringing the character back but recasting, I was a bit suspicious– how would that work? Would it diminish my love for the ship? Reader, it did not diminish anything, and in fact made me kind of love them even more. Skylar Astin’s performance of Greg, a little grown up and a little more put together, made me swoon. And I began to see how they could make an adult relationship work. Naturally, things went awry during the course of the final season, but I think the finale left us with so much hope that they would find their way back to each other.

I love all the other characters, so feel free to mix them in– especially Paula!

Prompts:

• Rebecca and Greg find their way back to each other! How does it happen?
• Rebecca/Greg + any number of tropes– stuck somewhere together; inconvenient bed-sharing; fake dating, the works.
• Maybe West Covina has run its course for both of them, and they decide– together or separately– to move somewhere else. Maybe Rebecca decides it’s time for her to go back to New York to give her Broadway dreams a try? Maybe Greg tags along? Or maybe it’s fate, and just as she’s made the choice to head back East, he gets a job offer there, too, so they’re both moving to NYC but aren’t technically together, and how does that work?
• It’s the holidays in West Covina, and Greg gets Rebecca’s name in the friend group's gift exchange. How does he find the perfect present that says both “I’m still kind of sort of in love with you” and also “I spent no time on this whatsoever because pssh who cares?”

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Crooked Media RPF
Jon Lovett, Ronan Farrow

Oof these two. I’ve been indoctrinated into the Crooked Media way of life since early 2017 and I remember how for so long, we subsisted on little tiny crumbs in ad reads— were they actually together? Were they just golf buddies? Then, much later, I got my Catch & Kill pre-order on my Kindle at midnight and DIED at the “For Jonathan,” and then was resurrected when I flipped to the proposal. I think I was happier for them than I ever would be at any hypothetical engagement of my own. They seem so well-suited for each other, smoothing out each other's edges and offering up what the other needs (unless it’s basic household management, in which case, who needs it, anyway?). Anyway, I just love them.

**I love everyone in the Crooked universe so all are welcome, but if you were to mention any background relationships, I’d prefer them to be paired with their real-life partners. And if you do write for this fandom, I would appreciate it if you archive-locked the fic!

Prompts:

• I’d be super interested in reading about how they may have met— whether it’s an account based on things we actually know (I’ll never be over the idea of Ronan just sliding into Lovett’s DMs), or a completely fictionalized version of how they COULD have met back in DC in that era.
• Bicoastal life lends itself well to building a love story in phone calls, text messages, Zooms before Zoom was cool, mismatched time zone videogames, etc.
• Maybe Ronan finally makes an appearance on one of the cooking IG lives?
• Wedding on the moon! Pundit in a spacesuit!

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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.

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 absolutely 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?
• What are things like now that Peggy and Stan are working together and being together (and possibly living together)? It’s got to be frustrating at times but worth it in the end, right?

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9-1-1 Lone Star
TK Strand, Carlos Reyes

I was so hesitant to give this show a try, but some fandom friends were watching it back in January when it began, and I figured why not watch along with them? And wowww it is so ridiculous but so much fun. And actually has some pretty solid character and relationship building! I love TK and Carlos so much, both separately and as a couple. TK is such a sweet, loyal puppy who always just wants to be better, and Carlos is so open and honest and sensitive, and together they’re just so cute (and hot). I’m really excited that in season 2, we’re going to hopefully get to see more of their courtship phase, and especially more development of Carlos’ character and backstory, so those are definitely things I'd love to see explored in fic!

Prompts:

• I love the found family aspects of the show too, and I really love anything where the Fire Fam (or on Carlos’ end, Michelle) are playing matchmaker or teasing the boys about each other.
• They seem to be together in some capacity at the end of season 1, but how comfortable is TK with their relationship status? Is he ready to call Carlos his boyfriend, or does he get a little freaked out at his own feelings, or when someone calls them out for acting like a couple?
• They both have such challenging schedules— what happens after a long stretch of time when their work schedules just didn’t sync up, and they’ve been missing each other?
• What happens the first time Carlos brings TK home to meet the family?

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Clueless
Cher Horowitz

This is one of my favorite nostalgia movies, and such a fun watch even all these years later. Maybe especially all these years later! Cher is such a great character. She’s smart and idealistic and good at communicating her ideas and being a connector of people, and so what if she’s also into fashion and stuff like that?

I ship Cher and Josh, obvs, but I’m a lot more interested in her, so if you choose to write them paired up, that’s totally fine! And if you’d rather leave him out, that’s totally fine too!

Prompts:

• I’d love to get a look at Cher as an adult— what job does she end up having? Does she follow her dad’s footsteps into law, or maybe even go into politics?
• I mentioned I’ll never tire of a vampire slayer AU, and that’s the truth. So— Cher the Vampire Slayer?
• What happens when Cher goes off to college? Does she end up getting involved in clubs, or student government?

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Red White & Royal Blue
Alex Claremont-Diaz, Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor

My friend told me I’d love this book, and when the wait at the library was months-long, she decided I shouldn’t wait and shipped her copy to me to read. And it did not disappoint! I’ve since reread it twice, both times during the COVID era, and it has brought me immense joy and delight in light of all the awful shit going on in the world. My favorite part of the book, and of Alex and Henry’s relationship, is the era when they’re flirting and texting and maybe even hooking up but haven’t (at least on Alex’s end) really let themselves acknowledge their feelings for each other; while I adore the whole story, I could LIVE in that time period.

Prompts:

• More from that aforementioned time period! Missing moments or scenes, additional late-night texts that turn just a tad flirtier than anticipated, maybe an unexpected phone call in the middle of campaign or royal business.
• What if Zahra and Shaan orchestrated another Henry visit to DC to really solidify the bromance— perhaps around Christmastime (so before their first kiss, but after they’d started talking on the phone and texting selfies from bed)? Would they do fun festive things around the city (ice skating! The national tree lighting!) that are totally, definitely, not at all dates?
• I love Alex’s POV, but I’d also be interested in Henry’s POV on either moments in the book or new moments you come up with! How hard is it for him to be so attracted to this infuriating American? Does he ever feel like Alex might have some latent feelings for him too?

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So, that’s that! I really hope you enjoy the whole process this Yuletide season, and thanks for participating! Happy writing!