#anyway!! this one is basically curtainfic

[thevioletcaptain]

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

*throws whole bouquet at you*

So many roses!!! I'm going to interpret this as meaning you want something where flowers are mentioned, rather than a request for nine separate excerpts 😉 This is from a canon-divergent fic that kicks off at the tail end of Last Holiday just before Mrs Butters leaves, and swiftly turns into something with the working title A Charming B&B. It's basically curtainfic where the Chuck situation gets dealt with in a ridiculous way most comparable to how I dealt with the MoC in Phantom. This particular scene comes after Dean has presented Jack with a birthday cake.

It’s strange how quickly Dean got used to having someone else take care of the cleaning. The cake is mostly eaten—Jack had gone slightly overboard until Sam had put a stop to him taking a fifth slice—but the mess in the kitchen is waiting when Dean carries the leftovers to the fridge. Part of him wants to just leave it until the morning. His eyes are stinging, and his feet are aching, but the thought of having to deal with a sink-full of mixing bowls and measuring cups when he drags himself out of bed in five hours is enough to make him roll up the sleeves of his denim overshirt in defeat. The charred remains of the first cake he attempted are still stuck to the edges of a pan on the counter, and he fills it with water to soak in the sink while he starts on everything else. He’s not quite halfway done when his cell buzzes in his pocket, and he wipes his soapy hands off on a dish towel before he digs it free. It’s a little after three in the morning. The message is from Cas. I’m on my way home. I’ll have to stop for gas on the way, do you need anything? It makes Dean’s chest ache. Reminds him of his better months with Lisa; of driving home via the mini-mart to pick up bread or milk or a jar of instant coffee to tide them over in-between grocery runs. Of Lisa bringing home flowers for the kitchen table, because she saw them for sale on the side of the road on her way back from the yoga studio and thought they’d brighten the place up. His thumb hovers over Cas’ name on the screen as he tosses up between texting back and just calling. Cas has been gone almost a full month at this point, and the vast majority of their conversations since he left have been happening over text, partly out of convenience, but mostly because Dean’s been missing him so badly that he hasn’t wanted to hear his voice for fear that it would only make it worse. Those months after the last time Cas left had been hell.  Though this wasn’t the same as that—Cas had knocked on his door before leaving, had asked to borrow something to listen to in the car, to have a little variety in between replays of the tape Dean had made him—it’s still been hard. But he's coming home, now. He's coming home. Dean’s thumb makes the decision before his brain does. Cas answers on the second ring.

[for this ask meme | other responses here]

[naomitess]

Dear Yuletide Writer 2020

Dear Yuletide Author,

Thank you so much for writing a story for me! Yuletide has become one of my very favorite parts of Christmas; I love that we come together to tell each other stories and celebrate the fandoms we love, it’s amazing.

Things I love, in general: witty dialogue. Fic that gets the voices right. Everyday moments that mean more than they seem to on the surface. Characters who initially hate each other but come to love, like, or reluctantly respect each other. Female friendships. I like crossovers and AUs.

Things I’m not wild about, in general: Female characters being catty for no reason other than “girls are just awful.“ Mpreg stories are also a really hard sell for me. (Not completely out of the question, just a hard sell.) Rape, torture, dismemberment are generally not what I’m looking for in a Yuletide story. 

Specifics for the fandoms (and all optional details are optional; as a Yuletide writer, I love getting fairly specific requests for prompts, but don’t feel like you have to stick with mine):

Chalion series, Lois McMaster Bujold

I really love the Penric series, but Prisoner of Limnos set a whole new bar for me with these stories, because I adored Tanar Xarre and Surakos Bosha, and immediately wanted to see more of their complicated, intimate, not-exactly-romantic, not-exactly-not-romantic relationship. (I particularly love that at the age of six, she found him hiding terrified and bleeding in her treehouse, stitched him up with a sewing needle and cared for him, and this was in fact legitimately typical for their relationship going forward.) Anyway –  I really want them to get their own story. Some possibilities:

* Tanar does, as Bosha has suggested, run off and become a pirate queen.

* Or a bandit or a saint or a self-appointed ambassador to some country that apparently needed an emissary or the leader of a secretive cabal of assassins dedicated to taking out all the creepy-ass leaders of her country (they’re clearly awful on every possible level). Several of these could actually have been happening in the background when Nikys and Penric showed up.

* A story set when Tanar is younger, about some danger she gets into and how Bosha gets her out.

* A story in which Bosha is in danger and Tanar gets him out.

* The two of them rescuing each other.

* Curtainfic. (I mean, I have to figure that Bosha would spend the whole shopping trip waiting for someone to show up who he gets to has to kill.)

* Tanar goes on a pilgrimage and Bosha goes with her.

* Tanar and Bosha arrive in Orbas so that Tanar can marry (or at least have some serious opportunity to consider) Adelis. I kind of think that Tanar is too good for Adelis so by all means feel free to have her do this only to ditch Adelis for someone else. Or she could do this and Adelis could be off on some battle front or whatever. 

Calpurnia Tate

I want what I think everyone wants on reading The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate and The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate: I want Calpurnia to go to college. I’d love a story about that – fighting to go, going, being there, graduating, any element of it. Or, if you’d prefer, any story where she takes an important step toward getting a real education will make me happy. Or any story where she does science with her Grandfather, because those are my favorite parts of the books. Or you could use any item on that bucket list she writes at the end of the first book as a prompt. I would prefer not to get a story where Calpurnia’s grandfather dies in the story. If he’s died before the story starts (even quite recently) that’s OK. One of the things I really appreciate about these books is that Calpurnia never surrenders to the demands of femininity. She learns to cook and knit and do various other mandatory tasks because her mother forces her, but never says to herself, “oh, this isn’t so bad,” and the book never presents “becoming a LADY” as the inevitable response to maturity.

I love all the side characters and their relationships with Calpurnia, so feel free to use your favorites or make up some OCs for her to hang out with in college or whatever.

The “You’re Wrong About” Podcast

When I describe this podcast to friends I tell them that listening to it feels like being at brunch with two people you really like, and one of them has just learned all about something ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING and is going to tell you all about it while you sip a mimosa and eat French toast and periodically chime in to say things like “no!” or “that BASTARD” or “please tell me she got away from him???” I really enjoy it and have listened to every episode other than the one about the 2000 election.

So, what I would like is a pretend version of this podcast where Sarah and Michael unpack something that in our world is fictional but in the story world actually happened and is getting explained in basically the same form that they explain everything else (so, like, this could in fact be episode 8 of who-knows-how-many where they’re going over some tangential detail of whatever it is). FEEL FREE to cross this over with ANYTHING, and it’s totally fine if it’s a fandom I’m not particularly versed in. Alternately, feel free to just make something up. Or use an urban legend and either have them debunk it or say that in this fictional world it turned out to be true. 

Alternately, I would like a pretend version of the podcast where Sarah and Michael are debunking a weird story that in our world actually happened but in the fictional universe of the story did not. 

Humans are Space Orcs (meme)

I signed up for this because I saw it in the tags and thought “oh, I always love the Tumblr collective-fictionating-in-stacked-posts stuff like this.” I am honestly not sure how to prompt it, other than to say, “you know, like the meme, but ... something new.” 

Things that would make me happy: a series of thoughts on the ways in which humans might be the weird ones / scary ones (not necessarily in orc-like ways). A story where a bunch of aliens are sitting around something like a bar, topping each others’ stories about humans. I don’t know. Part of what I love about the meme as it circulates are people kicking ideas around, so feel free to just kick a bunch of ideas around.