Yuletide Letter 2017

[nomadicwriter]

Dear Yuletide writer,

Hi, and thanks for writing for me! I'm Nomad (nomadicwriter) on AO3. Please don't worry too much about trying to stick too closely to my prompts: in general my tastes in fic are very broad, and I'm happy to read pretty much anything, from fluff and humour to tragedy and darkfic. I love gen fic and am also flexible about reading my favourite characters paired with all sorts of people. All of these prompts are very much optional and just to offer some ideas, so if you've got a story idea that you'd rather write, please do.

Things I Love

• Enemies teaming up to work together against some greater threat, or showing each other moments of respect and compassion.


• Forced intimacy scenarios where characters who wouldn't voluntarily hang out are stuck with each other due to plot shenanigans. (Sharing a room, trapped in an elevator, handcuffed together, etc.)


• Characters who are bad at recognising or acknowledging their own feelings, and tiny, trivial gestures that are made meaningful by the fact they come from someone who isn't usually demonstrative.


• Relationships with a lot of history to them, and how people's feelings and opinions of each other gradually evolve over the years. Characters who think they already have each other all figured out learning to see each other differently.


• Late-blooming gay or bi characters who don't figure out or properly acknowledge their sexuality until they're already well into adulthood, and how they navigate that shift in identity (or the fact that it doesn't change as much as they'd always thought it would).


• Banter, verbal fencing, and snappy dialogue; touches of humour and lightness in otherwise dark or angsty fics.


• Casefic and canon-style adventures or wacky hijinks.


• Canon-divergent AUs that explore what might have happened if one small thing had gone differently.

Things I'm Not Really Into

• Explicit sex scenes or PWPs.


• Established relationship fics or non-canon background pairings. (I'm flexible about pairings, but I like the story to show me how the relationship developed.)


• Coffee shop or "everyone's a mermaid" type AUs that that change the era/setting, rules of the canon universe, or basic canon facts like characters' relative ages and family relationships.


• Scenes where characters unknowingly humiliate themselves. (It's okay if they're too shameless/self-absorbed to care, but watching people who are going to be mortified obliviously dig themselves deeper makes me cringe.)

Fandom specifics:

Arrested Development

- any character (out of Buster, Gob, Lucille & Tony Wonder)

Ridiculous shenanigans, please! I'd prefer at least a touch of comedy and absurdity in this fandom, even if it's really dark humour. I love all the recurring jokes, and I really dug the device in season four of characters unknowingly crossing each other's paths and influencing each other's stories. I nominated these four characters as my personal favourites and would be happy to read about them in any combination. I'm up for Gob/Tony or either of the two of them paired with other guys, or any canon pairings. Not really after outright incest pairings here, but canon levels of pseudo-incestuous antics are fine.

Some prompt ideas:

• Gob comes out, but everyone in the family thinks it's a stunt (copying Tony Wonder? Avoiding a Bluth company discrimination scandal?) or they weren't listening and then have to act fake blasé when he shows up with a boyfriend.


• Gob becomes a surprise success as Bluth Company president when his panicked avoidance of making decisions gets mistaken for good delegating and tough negotiating.


• The story behind Tony's decision to get into the fake gay magician business (and whether he was aware that it being "fake" was a double bluff).


• Tony and Lucille meeting somewhere and hitting it off without realising they're both talking about Gob.


• One of the others visiting Buster in prison after the season 4 cliffhanger.


• Some sort of brotherly bonding moment between Buster and Gob. (Maybe kid Buster helping Gob with a magic act, or Buster coming to work for him at the Bluth Company?)


• An AU where Buster went into the military for real, and how the family reacts.


• Lucille punishing Buster for abandoning her by deciding to make Gob her new favourite child.

Additional Info

Okay, I had to narrow it down to four characters somehow, but I love everybody in this bar. Feel free to include any of the extended cast you want to play with: I'd love to see more of some of the less-explored family relationships (Gob and/or Buster's relationships with Lindsay, Buster as an uncle to George-Michael and Maeby, Oscar and his apparent belief that Gob can do real magic) or Tony Wonder meeting some more of the cast. (I feel like Tobias would end up repeatedly catching Gob and Tony in compromising positions and mistaking it for something innocent every time.) If you're feeling ambitious, I'd be up for any take on the "What Happened To Lucille 2?" cliffhanger, or I could totally go for some Lucille/Lucille 2 femslash. (I'm not the only one who ships this rivalry, right?) Really, I'm up for almost anything here.

From Eroica With Love

- Klaus von dem Eberbach

I'm up for anything from wacky hijinks and screwball comedy fluff to dark espionage thrillers in this fandom. I would love any kind of spy movie tropes, whether played silly or straight: brainwashing, truth serums, evil doubles, people faking their deaths, characters being poisoned with 24 hours to find the antidote, etc. And I love any exploration of how other people see Klaus (his neighbours, NATO coworkers, staff at the Schloss?) or glimpses into his past or possible future when he gets old. I love Klaus/Dorian but am also happy to read gen or other m/m ships involving Klaus, including Klaus/Z, Klaus/G, and original characters.

Some prompt ideas:

• The characters stumble on something supernatural or sci-fi-ish: maybe NATO are after the inventor of a time machine, or Dorian steals something from a guy who turns out to be a vampire, or Klaus becomes the world's most hilariously disgruntled werewolf.


• An AU where Klaus and Dorian first meet as schoolboys or otherwise earlier than in canon.


• Klaus's early days at NATO when he was first putting together his band of Alphabets. (How on Earth did he ever end up with G on his team?)


• A story about how Klaus handles getting older and the prospect of retirement when the job has always been his life, or how he would cope with a serious injury that interferes with his fitness.


• Bed-sharing shenanigans where there are only two beds between three or four of them, and Klaus doesn't want to share with Dorian and/or G, but also isn't comfortable leaving Dorian and G sharing, and also doesn't want either of them corrupting Z...


• A romantic farce where Klaus tries to set Dorian up with another guy to distract his attention, but the guy thinks it's Klaus who's interested, and Dorian gets jealous.

Additional Info

I love the whole extended cast, if you want to use any of them too. In particular, I like Polar Bear as an adversary or temporary ally, love Klaus's relationship with his sentimental old butler, and have an inexplicable soft spot for James. I'm also really fascinated by the little hints we get of Klaus's relationship with his father, so I would love any exploration of that. Or how about delving into the stories of Klaus's other Alphabets that we don't get to see so much of? There are like 22 others that we don't know much about. Whatever you want!

Infamous Iron Man

- Victor von Doom

I love this series' take on the idea of a 'heroic' Victor von Doom: the way that although he might have shifted his focus from conquest to less villainous ways of solving the world's problems, he still fundamentally doesn't quite get that other people's opinions matter and maybe he should find out what they actually want instead of deciding for himself how to fix their lives. (I am so here for Doom determinedly going around doing good deeds for people who would much rather he left them alone.) I'd love to see him interacting with any of the other nominated characters or indeed anyone else; gen is fine, or I'm happy to read Doom shipped with anyone in the tagset aside from Riri.

Some prompt ideas:

• How does Doom feel about having his scars healed after all of these years? Does he sometimes forget? How does his ego cope with suddenly being an anonymous face in the crowd? Is it liberating not to have to be Doom, or does he itch to go supervillain on people?


• Fic contrasting past Doom with current Doom. (Doom vs Doombot clash? AU Doom appears? Doom has to wear the old armour for some reason?) How do people react? Have they maybe already started to see him differently without realising it? Or how does someone like Riri or Amara who never knew supervillain Doom view the contrast between the stories and the man they met?


• Something exploring his relationship with Ben: how about a scene of the two of them at college together, or a time-travel adventure that takes them back to those days? What's the story behind that photo that Doom kept of him and Ben and Reed together?


• Victor remembers the alternate universe of Secret Wars where he was friends with Stephen Strange for years. Does Strange sense something has changed? What happens if Victor tries to recreate their friendship?


• Amara's pregnancy: is the kid Doom's? If so, how did things develop from the last time we saw Amara to the point of them sleeping together? Or is Tony the father? Is Doom just going to work his way across the Marvel universe becoming a godfather to all the heroes' kids?


• Future Tony's message: "When they come for you, it's important that you are not Iron Man, but..." Who's coming? Why can't he be Iron Man? What was the "but"?

Additional Info

I'm pretty familiar with Doom's appearances in other comics, so if you want to incorporate stuff from other series, go right ahead. I particularly like Doom's portrayal in Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four run and Secret Wars, plus the backstory from Books of Doom. I'm not super up-to-date on current events in the wider Marvel universe, but I'm familiar with most comics characters, and would be up for any fic of other heroes encountering the new 'good' Doom and how they react. I'm also interested in the old-school Latverian supporting cast: how does his faithful old retainer Boris view this change? Is his childhood friend the original Valeria alive again in this new universe? (Because the portrayal of Doom in "Unthinkable" was complete BS and if you want to retcon her death out of existence, I am on board.) I also love Doom's godfather relationship to Valeria Richards and would enjoy seeing any of the Richards family reacting to the new Doom.

You can find my reviews/recaps of the Infamous Iron Man issues at doomfans here.

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In summary: please don't sweat it when it comes to following any of these prompts particularly closely - I'm happy to read almost anything about my favourite characters and really very easy to please. Hope you enjoy writing for me!