Dear Yuletide Author (2017)

[categranger]

This is my first Yuletide, although I wrote a pinch hit in 2014. I’ve never written an exchange letter before (I usually just lurk), so apologies if I get something wrong. In general, anything canon-style will make me quite happy, so if none of my prompts are interesting to you, please write something you enjoy and I’m sure I will too. ♥

My AO3 name is categranger, and the canons I’m requesting are:

Call the Midwife | Jackalope Wives Series - Ursula Vernon | Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Frederica - Georgette Heyer | The Grand Sophy - Georgette Heyer | Sylvester or the Wicked Uncle - Georgette Heyer

General likes:
- Canon-style tone.
- Worldbuilding.
- Fic set during the ‘happily ever after’. (Heyer books in particular end far too abruptly!)
- Couples being ridiculously in love with each other and all cute and affectionate.
- People looking all over town for the perfect gift for their partner. (Any occasion that would fit the canon is fine.)
- People who were used to being single having to adjust to being married/having someone else in their space all the time. (Both good adjustments and funny/awkward adjustments.)
- Gender headcanons. I don’t mean that the story has to be centered around them, or that I want anvilly issuefic, but I would be interested in a story in which Peter is nonbinary, for instance (perhaps their personal history gives them a clue that helps them solve a case?), or Frederica is a trans woman (perhaps that was one reason why she didn’t intend to marry, but Alverstoke doesn’t turn out to give a fig?), etc. However, for personal reasons please make any sympathetic character in the narrative be accepting.
- Fantasy creatures appearing in non-fantasy canons is always fun! I especially like when the fantasy creatures are not the usual vampires/werewolves/zombies, but more creative types like those in Jackalope Wives.
- Crossovers between any of my requested canons are more than welcome. St George, Peter, and/or Harriet meeting Grandma Harken and solving a mystery with her! Sophy and Frederica meeting and falling in love with each other!
- Honeymoons!

General DNWs:
- Breaking up canon pairings. (Exception: crossovers like the Sophy/Frederica example listed above. In those cases I’d prefer the canon pairing never happened, rather than the crossover pairing being set after either of the canon pairings broke up.)
- As referenced above, sympathetic characters being intolerant of queer characters. In general, I prefer my queer characters to face problems that don’t arise from their queerness.
- Animal abuse or death. (Except for canon-typical things in Jackalope Wives.)
- Child abuse or death (yes, even in murder mysteries. Please have any victim(s) be an adult.)
- I don’t think this will come up with the canons I’ve asked for, but just in case, please no focus on father-daughter relationships.
- Polyamory.

Call the Midwife
Characters: Bernadette | Shelagh Turner, Julienne (Call the Midwife), Phyllis Crane, Delia Busby

While I would be more than happy to read about all four of these characters in the same fic if that fit the story you wanted to tell, many of my prompts only include a subset of them, and in those cases please don’t feel obligated to shoehorn all four of them in if they don’t fit. Also, please don’t feel like you have to slavishly follow any of my prompts. As long as the story is canon-style (I’m not really into “Shelagh is a barista/astronaut/zombie/etc.”), if you have an idea of your own, or one based on one of my general likes, I’m sure I will like it.

My main interests in this fandom are Bernadette | Shelagh & Julienne, Phyllis, Phyllis & Delia, Phyllis & Barbara, and Delia/Patsy. I also love Sister Evangelina, although I didn’t have room to request her, so if you have a plotbunny about her, I’d be happy to read about her too.

Bernadette | Shelagh & Julienne
I love the mother-daughter relationship between them. It’s one of my favorite parts of the series, as Julienne watches Bernadette become Shelagh, and their relationship changes and grows over the years. When Shelagh asked Julienne to deliver her baby, and they went through her labour together, I cried, literally cried. It was so beautiful. Anything about the two of them would be wonderful. Is it hard for Julienne to watch Bernadette forsake her vows? What are her prayers for Shelagh over the years (is Shelagh’s baby an answer to them?) Does Shelagh ever miss being Bernadette, and the life she led with Julienne and the other Sisters? How did they meet for the first time? Did Bernadette or Shelagh ever comfort Julienne after a difficult day? What does Julienne miss most about Shelagh (or vice versa)?

Phyllis
Phyllis is probably my favourite character on the show. I love her empathy, her kindness, and her heart of gold. Anything from her POV, whether that be a character study, a day in her life at Nonnatus, her thoughts on her fellow midwives (or her patients), a glimpse into her backstory, or a canon-style midwifery case, would be wonderful. I would also enjoy a f/f romance for Phyllis with an OFC.

Phyllis & Delia
The bit in the show where Phyllis saw Delia & Patsy together and realised their secret, and then later consoled Delia with her book of poetry, really spoke to me. I would enjoy a story from Phyllis’s POV about Delia & Patsy’s romance, or a story in which Phyllis and Delia talked about it (either explicitly or obliquely). I think it would be great for Delia and Patsy to have someone on their side who they didn’t have to hide their relationship from. Or I’d also love a story where Phyllis & Delia became better friends (perhaps they work on a difficult case together?)

Phyllis & Barbara
Barbara asking Phyllis to be her bridesmaid was just so lovely. It meant so much to Phyllis to be asked, and the two of them were so cute together. Like with Delia, I’d love any story with Phyllis & Barbara bonding and becoming closer, whether before Tom proposed, during the wedding preparations, or after the wedding. Whether that bonding takes place during a case they share, at the clinic, or on a quiet evening at Nonnatus House, I’d enjoy it all. I’d also enjoy a futurefic in which Phyllis is Barbara’s midwife during her first pregnancy. (Though I know Barbara has no immediate plans for that!) [Oh, one note – while I don’t dislike Tom, I’d prefer his presence to be minimal, as I’m mostly interested in Phyllis & Barbara.]

Delia/Patsy
For Delia/Patsy, I have one main request: I want them to get that flat together! They deserve a place of their own where they can be happily domestic and in love and have hot morning sex before work/drink tea together at night/argue about whose turn it is to wash the dishes/etc. Does Patsy help Delia with her midwife studies? (How might she encourage her?) Does Delia eventually become a midwife and they end up working together? (Either in general or on a specific case?) A story about a day off they spend together, whether they stay at home or go out on the town, would be lovely too.

Jackalope Wives Series - Ursula Vernon
Characters: Grandma Harken

This series may just be my favourite thing I’ve read in all of 2017. Both stories are fantastic. I love Vernon’s worldbuilding, and her prose, and her fantastically rich characters (especially Grandma Harken, of course!) She’s one of my favourite authors, and the Jackalope Wives series might just be my favourite of her works. (Although it’s extremely hard to choose.)

Grandma Harken is a wonderful character, and I would adore pretty much any story about her and her adventures. There’s a history and affection between her and the Father of Rabbits – perhaps something about the two of them! (Was/is the Father of Rabbits in love with her? Were they friends? Allies?) What if the Father of Rabbits hadn’t been able to save Grandma Harken’s jackalope skin, and the jackalope wife had been stuck as a human? What might their relationship have been like? And did Grandma Harken’s first husband die a natural death, or did Grandma Harken have something to do with it? (Or the Father of Rabbits?)

I also love Spook-cat, and Eva (what’s it like to have a mother who’s a jackalope wife?), and polite Tomas with his polite mule. As for Anna, I do ship Grandma Harken/Anna, if that interests you, but I’m also interested in their friendship if you’re a gen person. All the worldbuilding about the train gods is fascinating, and I’d love to see more about that. Or about how Anna, the Mother of Trains, sees Grandma Harken, the jackalope wife. There’s a lot of respect there, mixed in with their friendship. I like how they consulted on the Marguerite problem and pooled their knowledge (over ripe tomatoes, of course).

As for the cholla-bone girl, what would it be like to have Grandma Harken as your teacher? The line about the cholla-bone girl being “more like Grandma Harken than either of them were like fully human folk” – what’s it like for the cholla-bone girl, raised among the priests of the trains, to come to Grandma Harken and find someone like her? What does Grandma Harken teach her? What sort of adventures does she have? (If the Father of Rabbits hadn’t had Grandma Harken’s skin, and the jackalope wife had stayed human and stayed with Grandma Harken, might she have fallen in love with the cholla-bone girl? What sort of life might they have forged together, preparing to take over for Grandma Harken when the desert reclaimed her?)

Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Character: Gerald Wimsey Viscount St George

I’ve always loved St George. He’s irrepressible and reckless, but he has a good heart. I find it a bit curious that his parents are Denver and Helen – he doesn’t seem to take after them much. No, who he resembles the most to me is a young male version of the Dowager Duchess! Crossed with a bit of Peter, since Peter has done his best to exert some influence on him.

Some ideas:

- St George gets involved somehow in a murder. (Is he in the wrong place at the wrong time? Romancing a young man in another college whose roommate ends up murdered? Accused of being an accessory after evidence is found hidden in his room?) Either he tries to solve it on his own first or calls in the cavalry immediately, but the ultimate upshot is that Peter and/or Harriet and/or Bunter arrive and they work it out together.
- St George falls in love with Jones of Jesus! Who in St George’s family is the first to figure out that the ‘friend’ Jerry brought back from Oxford is a bit more than a friend? (I’d love it if Peter wasn’t the first to notice.) [As I said in my general section, please don’t have any sympathetic characters be intolerant.]
- St George being an uncle to Bredon. What kind of influence is he? What kind of things do they get up to together?
- St George and his grandmother bonding. What adventures do they have together? Does either of them have any skill at detecting? (I think the Dowager does, at any rate, given her record in Clouds of Witness with Mary's charade.)

I’ve heard that Sayers said St George died in WWII, but I, unlike Sayers, don’t have a fascination with Peter becoming Duke of Denver, and I would very much like St George to stay alive. So please don’t kill him off. I also have no interest in St George having a het relationship.

Frederica - Georgette Heyer
Characters: Frederica Merriville, Vernon Dauntry Marquis of Alverstoke

I’m more than a little in love with Frederica. She may just be my favourite Heyer heroine (though I’d need to re-read all the books to confirm, as I like a lot of them). I adore how she’s so focused on her younger siblings, that love comes as an unlooked-for surprise. And Alverstoke! I love his character development over the course of the book – he starts as a total prick who only cares about himself and can’t even remember his nieces and nephews’ names, and then he slowly becomes more and more charmed by the Merriville family, until by the end he’s eating out of their hands. (Though he’s still a bit of a prick to other people, just not to them, which feels realistic and amuses me.) I like how his worst problem is that he’s bored and selfish, and that he falls in love not only with Frederica (though their romance is lovely), but with her entire family.

Some of the things I’d love to read about for this book:
- Heyer books always end too abruptly! What happened after Alverstoke’s proposal? What is life like during their engagement, as Jessamy and Felix’s adventures continue to roil the household and keep it interesting, but there are more Alverstoke/Frederica stolen kisses and speaking looks? What is their honeymoon like?
- Something happens and Charis is afraid that her wedding will have to be called off! How do Frederica and Alverstoke come to the rescue?
- How do Frederica and Alverstoke help Charles and Chloë’s romance succeed? It’s not a great alliance for Chloë (unless Charles does make it big in politics), so there might be some difficulties that need to be overcome.
- Alverstoke gets in a pickle, and this time it’s the Merrivilles who have to help/rescue him. (Set anytime during the book or after.)
- Alverstoke acts like a prick to someone, and he’s a bit worried he’s going to be scolded, but it turns out Frederica doesn’t mind at all.

The Grand Sophy - Georgette Heyer
Characters: Charles Rivenhall, Sophy Stanton-Lacy

Sophy is another fantastic Heyer character. I came out of The Grand Sophy wanting a few specific things:

- What were Sophy’s adventures like before coming to England? How did she become the Sophy who turned the Rivenhall household upside down?
- What does Sophy see in Charles? I’m not dissing him, I just mean that we don’t get to see things from her POV. What attracts her to him? When does she start to fall in love with him? How far in advance does she lay her plans? Does she ever worry that any of her plans won’t succeed?
- I would definitely be interested in Sophy overcoming Charles’s stern-ish exterior and them having all the cuddles and horse-races and flirtatious competitions.
- In general, I would love to see more of Sophy’s POV on things! She’s quite awe-inspiring beheld from the outside, but I’d love to get inside her head more.
- Further adventures with Sophy and/or Charles!
- Like I mentioned up in my general prompts, I’d enjoy crossovers as well. Which other Heyer heroine might Sophy fall in love with? (I’ve read and enjoyed all the Regency novels except for the Alastair-Audley series, so any of the non-AA heroines are fair game!) For crossover pairings, I am only interested in femslash.

Sylvester or the Wicked Uncle - Georgette Heyer
Character: Phoebe Marlow

I love this book! The capers in France are a bit too drawn-out for my tastes, but apart from that I really enjoy the characters and their adventures. Edmund is a delight (child characters can sometimes be wearingly precocious, but I think Edmund is pitched just right), and Phoebe is amazing. I love her poison pen and her skill at lampooning the ton. To have a runaway bestseller on your very first try! Well done, Phoebe.

Things I would love for Sylvester:
- Phoebe and Sylvester’s mother Elizabeth bonding over their literary skill. (The book mentions that Elizabeth has had multiple books of poetry published herself.) What does Elizabeth think of Phoebe’s effort, beyond the portrayal of her son? Does she have any ideas about what Phoebe might try to write next? (Because I definitely don’t want Phoebe to give up her writing upon marriage.)
- What does Elizabeth think of Phoebe more generally? She was quite worried at the beginning of the book about the way her son had developed – what does she think of him now, after Phoebe’s influence has changed him? How do she and Phoebe bond after Phoebe and Sylvester’s marriage?
- Lady Constance is such an evil stepmother. She makes me boil. I would love to see how a more confident Phoebe might handle her former tormentor once engaged or married to Sylvester. Does Phoebe put her into one of her books as the primary villain? Say something cutting that only Sylvester fully understands?
- Any adventures with Edmund and Phoebe (and Sylvester if you want). I love the two of them together.
- While I do ship Phoebe/Sylvester, I found the proposal, journey, and second proposal unsatisfying. Perhaps an AU where Tom doesn’t walk in on them during the first proposal, and during the rest of the uninterrupted fight Phoebe realises that he actually loves her? (Although I don’t like the trope of ‘man forcibly kisses woman and she likes it’, so please avoid that.) Or perhaps Sylvester respects her no and doesn’t push her, and when they get back to England Phoebe sets up house with her governess and writes her next novel, and only after that does Sylvester reappear in her life. (Maybe something in her second novel makes him think his cause is not entirely lost?)
- Like I mentioned in my other Heyer sections, I would also love a crossover between Sylvester and one of Heyer’s other books (any of the Regency novels except the Alastair-Audley series), in which Phoebe fell in love with one of Heyer’s other heroines. Which of them would she be particularly suited to? How might they meet, and what adventures might they have?

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Thank you for writing for me! If you have any questions, send them my way through the Yuletide mods and I would be happy to answer them. :) [If you aren't assigned to me and you just want to chat about one of the fandoms we share, I'm always happy to make a new fandom friend, so feel free to comment below.]