Dear Yuletide Writer
Oct. 20th, 2025 09:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tweagueFirst of all - thank you so much for offering to write something for me! Second of all - I wrote this letter hoping to show you the sort things I liked and spark some ideas about what you might enjoy making for me, but fundamentally what I most want is for you to have fun creating something featuring characters I love, and if you do I’m sure I’ll love it ^_^
General Likes
I love finding out what makes characters (or combinations of characters) tick. I love seeing how familiar dynamics operate in unfamiliar contexts. I love emotionally-unavailable characters being forced to confront how much they care for someone, and seeing how badly they cope with that. I love plonking characters down in situations of physical, mental or emotional hardship and seeing how they cope. I love physical proximity and minor physical contact as a proxy for feelings they find it hard to express otherwise. I love stoical characters lashing out to protect or avenge their loved ones. I love all the twisty complicated feelings between characters: I prefer it when authors embrace the complexity and awkwardness of the character relationships rather than immediately smoothing them off into happy endings (though I do love a happy ending in the end, even especially if it’s a complicated awkward one!) I love characters that know one another better than anyone else does, yet still somehow fail to understand how much they mean to each other. I love big expansive drama that draws out the big feelings, and I love how the big feelings are also expressed in the tiny minutiae of everyday life - leaning against someone's shoulder when tired, distracting them when they're worried, sharing a favourite piece of music. I’m happy with everything from a little slice-of-life fluff fic to a big plotty angst-filled casefic, and everything in between.
A specific thing I love in fics is when the author brings in their own particular interests and knowledge to help flesh out the world the characters are inhabiting. I'd love a story about Gimlet and Bertie and von Stalhein and their love of horses, or Bertie’s (probably haunted) antique coin collection! Do you live somewhere or have you visited somewhere that we never hear about the character going to? Take the characters there! What do they make of the landscape, the food, the people? Which plants and animals do they get implausibly menaced by? Give me six pieces of violin music von Stalhein plays through his life, give me a recipe book with the cakes he bakes for his variousprisoners guests with a star rating for how well each cake went down and a snippet of fic about the circumstances when he served them. Show me stuff that you know about and I don’t!
Note on gen and ship fics
I write and read a lot of ship fic, but I’m perfectly happy with fic that doesn’t go further than the shippiness of the canon content if that’s what you prefer! So long as the strong bonds between the characters stay important, I’ll be happy. In any case where I've suggested a pairing, I'm just as happy with a friendship-based (or frenemyship, or whatever) version - take it more as indication of the character interactions I'm especially interested in. Please, however, if you don't fancy writing for any of the ships I've suggested, don't write for an unrequested ship, as I can imagine a few pairings in canon that I don't think I'd enjoy.
If you are happy to write ship fic, I'm happy with any rating, and I read (and write) a fair range of smut so will probably be happy with most ‘standard’ content - feel free to look over the tags on my fics to see what I've written for.
General DNWs
I’d prefer not to have an entirely bleak or hopeless ending, so please don’t completely smash the strong bonds between the characters, and no permanent major character death / dismemberment etc (though eg. presumed dead, death in a redacted time-loop, death before some sort of Nebulous Sci-Fi Resurrection etc etc is fine). I also find child intense distress / injury / death tends to stop me enjoying a story, so I'd rather not have that in a gift fic, thanks.
In shipfic, please no underage (which in the UK is 16), and no explicit until 18 or over: I’m fine with people under 18 having sex if they’re all happily consenting, but I don’t want to read about it ^_^ No omegaverse, no obvious dead dove content (scat, core, waterspouts, etc etc), no unrequested pairings. No noncon within the requested ships (dubcon eg sex pollen, fuck or die etc generally fine) and no explicit noncon outside it - I'll read eg about the aftermath of sexual assault if it's really important to the story you want to tell, but I don't want to read about the act.
Reguest: Gimlet Series - WE Johns.
Requested characters: Any of:
Gimlet
Cub
Copper
Trapper
Sign-up optional details:I'd love fic featuring any or all of these characters, in any combinations! I'm very happy with gen or ship fic, and please feel free to add in any additional characters from this canon or W.E. Johns' related series (Biggles, Worrals etc) if you want to (though of course you don't have to!) I'd be especially excited to hear more about Gimlet, Copper and Trapper in their early days with the Commandos - when did they meet, how did they get on, how did they resolve themselves into the pattern we find in 'King of the Commandos'? - or more about how they all acclimatise to peace again after the war - especially Cub, who's had a pretty terrible experience of late adolescence and might well find it hard to adjust.
Additional rambling:
I love whumping Gimlet, he’s incredibly satisfying to traumatise <3 Feel free to throw him in a bog, put him in situations where he’s lost control and has to plough on regardless, have him go full murder-mode when his team are in danger, shoot him up a little bit and watch him carry on until he collapses. Whumping any of them is always a sound move, frankly, Copper and Trapper in particular should definitely be persecuted more and then suitably fussed over.
I also really enjoy Gimlet’s ridiculous poshness, which I am very happy to play for either angst or laughs. Fic about his relationship with Lorrington is always very welcome, especially when Lorrington comes into collision with quite-posh-but-feral Cub or really-not-posh-at-all Copper or fallen-off-the-end-of-the-social-scale Trapper. Village cricket match? School prize giving? Some sort of Wicker Man-esque May Day ritual murder? Or how about going under cover at a public school? Gimlet as the world’s most terrifying French master, Cub lightly traumatised at having to pretend to be a schoolboy again after four years in occupied France, Copper turning out to be a natural at rugby, and Trapper teaching the fourth formers to make pitfall traps.
As far as ships go, I’ll give anything a go for these four! Copper/Trapper I think is largely canon, and I’d love for them to have a chance to shine if you feel strong enough to brave the dialect - how does one react when the other’s injured or in danger? How did they get together? I’d love to see their trauma-bonding as they slogged back from Glamfjord! Copper/Trapper/Cub has the potential to be adorable. Gimlet/Cub is messed up on *so* many levels, but that doesn’t mean I won’t happily read it (though see DNWs below). Gimlet/Copper? Sure, why not! All four? Go for it! I’m happy with anything from some casual polyamory to a regular polycule. My standard pairing for Gimlet is Gimlet/Bertie, which I have written far too much fic for - so if you want to bring Bertie in, I’d be delighted! (And feel free to use any of my invented fanon history for them if you want to, or ignore it completely if you don’t.)
Gimlet-specific DNWs
While acknowledging the fact that the Commandos had a pretty terrifying remit and M.O., I’d rather not have *too* realistic a depiction of their war service - feel free to delve into the violence and trauma a bit more than WEJ does, but no atrocities, please.
No Gimlet/Cub where Cub is under 18, please; and while I’m fine with the concept of him fooling around with any of his friends at the Grey Fleas before that, I’d rather keep it pretty non-explicit, thanks!
Reguest: Steeley Series - WE Johns.
Requested characters: Any of:
Steeley
Tubby
Brian
Virginia
Sign-up optional details: I'd love fic featuring any or all of these characters, in any combinations! I'm very happy with gen or ship fic (including threesomes), and please feel free to add in any additional characters from this canon or W.E. Johns' related series (Biggles, Worrals etc) if you want to (though of course you don't have to!). I'd love more stories about Tubby and Steeley in the war; I'd love something about the missing year between 'Sky High' and 'Flies Again', either for Steeley + Virginia or Tubby + Brian (or both!); I'd love to hear about their ongoing nebulous police career (does it continue after WWII? Does Julia from ‘Nazis in the New Forest’ get recruited? (I loved Julia, feel free to bring her in if you feel like it!) Do they ever interact with the SAP??)
Additional rambling:
I love Tubby’s POV in the books and would be delighted to read more of it, but I’d also be happy to explore some alternatives - I feel like Steeley’s 1st person POV would be fascinating, he’s such a closed-off character in many ways, or a standard 3rd person would also be great.
If you’re a purely gen writer, please feel free to skip this bit ^_^ But if you’re a ship writer - I’d love to understand what on earth is going on with Steeley’s marriage! I liked Virginia, from the little we got to see of her, so I don’t want her thrown under a bus - but we never see her again, so we never really get a chance to find out what makes her and Steeley’s relationship tick. I’d be very happy to be convinced by a Steeley/Tubby/Virginia OT3, or a complicated greysexual situation where Steeley is astonished to find himself becoming vaguely attracted to a Girl for the first time while having been hopelessly in love with ostensibly-straight-and-totally-oblivious Tubby since the war, or a lavender marriage where Steeley and Virginia are just great pals, and Steeley gets to spend six months of the year ‘lodging’ with Tubby in London while Virginia goes to stay with her ‘sister’ in ‘New Zealand’, hem hem - whatever you fancy, really, I just want to find out more about it!
I’d also be very happy to read Tubby / Brian, or Steeley / Tubby / Brian, while acknowledging the distinct weirdness of the age difference and the start of the relationship - Brian has clearly had a very odd childhood, and has developed a more than slightly odd relationship with the idea of Steeley and Tubby that he’s evolved from the one photo he has of them with his father. I also have a personal headcanon that Tubby didn’t realise how deeply gone he was on Steeley until the end of ‘Sky High’, and spent much of the following year torching his comfortable playboy lifestyle and having a low-level breakdown, and that it was Brian who saw him through it - I adore their comfortable bickering by the start of ‘Flies Again’. If you’d like to play around with this period of their history, either in a ship or gen context, I’d love it!
(For what it’s worth, I don’t think ‘Wings of Romance’ is a great book, and I don’t think Tubby’s relationship with Anita is particularly convincing - and I suspect WEJ wasn’t too convinced by it either, considering how he ignores the whole mess in ‘Nazis in the New Forest’. Feel free to ignore it completely, or work out a Watsonian explanation for why it’s never mentioned again - did the marriage not happen? If it did, why doesn’t Tubby mention it? I don’t want it breaking up the basic Tubby-Steeley partnership - and neither apparently did WEJ!)
Steeley-specific DNWs:
As I said, I love Tubby’s POV, but I don’t want to read smut in it, thanks! So if you’re going to write ship fic, please either keep it non-explicit if you’re writing in 1st person, or write in 3rd person if you’re including explicit material. Unless you’re *really* confident you can write it without it feeling weird.
Reguest: Worrals Series - WE Johns.
Requested characters: All of:
Worrals
Frecks
Sign-up optional details: I love Worrals and Frecks! I love them as friends, I love them as a couple, I love them as a pair of daring spies / adventurers / international criminal masterminds, or at any rate as one daring spy / adventurer / criminal mastermind and one person who simply can't imagine *not* being with Worrals for the rest of her life no matter how uncomfortable it may sometimes be. Please feel free to add in any additional characters from this canon or W.E. Johns' related series (Biggles, Gimlet etc) if you want to (though of course you don't have to!). I love them fighting crime together, I love them righting wrongs together, I love them playing vicious lacrosse matches together at school or working out how to keep house together after the end of the war - give me more Worrals and Frecks stories, big or small ^_^
Additional rambling: I love how devoted to each other they are, and how awesome they think each other are, and I’d love to see more of that! I’m happy with stories from any time period, from school to wartime to their post-war freelancing / occasional police work.
School age - either something relatively high stakes like ‘Daisy Pulls It Off’ or ‘Murder Most Unladylike’ with murder and suspected German spies, or something more traditional school story (school play? Worrals would be *incredible* in a breeches role. Twisting an ankle before the most important hockey match of the season? We know Frecks is a demon for sports, after all.) I’d love to know more about how they learned to fly, and I’d love to hear more about how they felt about Worrals going away for her year in France - did they always plan to meet up again afterwards, or was it only the war that brought them back together?
Wartime / post-war - I’ve now read all the books (*small fanfare*), so feel free to pull in any side-characters or bits of continuity you fancy - I especially loved the French-set WWII books (loved Lucien and Raoul), I really enjoyed Nimrud from ‘Goes East’, loved Melinos from ‘Goes Afoot’. I also enjoy Bill Ashton a lot and find his relationship with Worrals very cute - so if you wanted to set them up as an occasional threesome, that’d be fine by me - though I can’t really imagine Worrals and Frecks settling down. I’d love something from their incredibly varied (not very-WAAF-compliant) war service - SOE-ferry service? Or can you think of a female-only environment you could shoe-horn into the plot that WEJ missed? I’d love plot, but I’m also mildly obsessed with Worrals + Frecks domesticity - tell me about drying stockings in front of the fire, about drinking cocoa in the evenings, about their post-war flat and how their different habits co-exist.
If you want a *really* specific request, I’ve been noodling recently around a future career for Worrals and Frecks as Stella Carstairs’ go-to pilots / publicity magnets / general fixers who she employs for various more-or-less-legal activities around the world, so if you fancied playing around with that continuity, that’d be amazing!
Worrals-specific DNWs:
Please no explicit material when they’re at school - I’m generally convinced that they’ve been together in some sense since they were at school together, but I’d be happier just reading about them kissing and holding hands until they’re with the WAAF, thanks! After that, filth positively encouraged <3
Reguest: Biggles Series - WE Johns.
Requested characters: Any of:
Biggles
von Stalhein
Bertie
Marcel Brissac
Sign-up optional details:I'd love fic featuring any or all of these characters, in any combinations! I'd be extra happy if you tried out some of the weirder combos - Erich and Bertie? Bertie and Marcel? All four? But I'd still be delighted with eg. a von Stalhein solo piece, or a classic Biggles and von Stalhein collision. I'm also very happy with gen or ship fic (though please see my letter for note on preferred configurations), and please feel free to add in any additional characters from this canon or W.E. Johns' related series (Biggles, Worrals etc) if you want to (though of course you don't have to!). I'd love to see how some of these characters interact, whether in a plotty casefic, a classic hurt-comfort set-up, or a story about Bertie and von Stalhein stuck in a bird hide in a marsh for twenty-four hours on a stake-out, trying to find things to talk about.
Additional rambling: I love all these characters, I would be happy with any or all of them in pretty much any branch of fic you care to name! How about a case-fic featuring the previous occasion when von Stalhein encountered Bertie before ‘Works It Out’, when Erich realised that he ‘looks and sounds the complete ass - but he isn’t’? Or some SAP-aided whump-recovery for Marcel following his awful time in ‘Chinese Puzzle’? Or Marcel dropping in on von Stalhein after the sale of the Moldavian Crown Jewels in Paris?
If you’re a ‘ship writer, here are a cornucopia of my preferred pairings for them: Biggles/von Stalhein, Biggles/Algy, Algy/von Stalhein, (though I also enjoy Biggles/von Stalhein/Marie, Biggles/Algy, Biggles/Major Mullen, von Stalhein/Algy, von Stalhein/Marie), Bertie/Gimlet (though I lean towards an aroace Bertie under most circumstances), and Marcel/literally anyone (though I think Bertie would probably politely refuse - though I’m willing to be convinced!). I’d prefer it if you didn’t write ships for these characters outside these possibilities, as I think there are some pairings I’d rather not be gifted.
Biggles-specific DNW:
I don't want the focus of the fic to be von Stalhein's career in WWII, though I don't mind if it's treated as a minor aspect of the story or referred to in retrospect; I don't want it glorified (obviously) and neither do I want it excused, but nor do I want von Stalhein to be shown to have had a career that would mean he entirely forfeits my sympathy later on. As WEJ makes this all pretty difficult for us, it’s probably it's best to steer clear.
Request: Ted Scott Series - Franklin W. Dixon
Requeste characters: All or selection of:
Ted Scott
Walter Hapworth
Paul Monet
Sign up optional details: I'll be brutally honest - I'm mostly here for the homoeroticism 😂 But if you're someone who just loves these books for the breathless adventure of it all, I'd be very happy with some breathless adventure featuring these characters too! If, however, you happen to want to write me some torrid OT3 material, I would be enchanted. I'm very fond of them as a threesome, but if you'd prefer to write any of the possible pairings, that'd be fine too - though I'd rather if a pairing didn't explicitly exclude third-party involvement on other occasions. Please see letter if you want more rambling!
Additional rambling: Honestly, feel like I’ve said it all in the initial sign-up 😂 Write whatever your heart desires about these ridiculous characters from these ridiculous books. If that’s Yet Another Impossible Mission for Ted Scott that can only be achieved with the support of his beloved friends, go for it! Feel free to write in canon style if you fancy it, or swerve into something a little more grown-up - bring on some semi-realistic consequences to the many times Ted is knocked unconscious, poisoned, attacked by bears, etc etc, dig into Walter and Paul as bored spoiled gilded age aristos, dragged into the thunderdome of Ted Scott’s charisma and suddenly realising that oh no, they actually *care* about something now - whatever you like. I’d love some backstory for Walter and Paul and how they became friends (or whatever else they may happen to be). I loved the book where Ted and Walter had to go and rescue Paul and Tom from the desert island with obligatory decapod - I’d love to see some h/c or shippy fall-out from that (desert island smut is a classic for a reason). Have lots of fun with it and go as self-indulgent as you like - these are deeply unserious books.
That was an *incredibly* long ramble, I'm so sorry, please feel free to ignore any or all of it. Really, I just want you to have fun writing for me, and I'll be delighted with whatever it is you write <3 <3
General Likes
I love finding out what makes characters (or combinations of characters) tick. I love seeing how familiar dynamics operate in unfamiliar contexts. I love emotionally-unavailable characters being forced to confront how much they care for someone, and seeing how badly they cope with that. I love plonking characters down in situations of physical, mental or emotional hardship and seeing how they cope. I love physical proximity and minor physical contact as a proxy for feelings they find it hard to express otherwise. I love stoical characters lashing out to protect or avenge their loved ones. I love all the twisty complicated feelings between characters: I prefer it when authors embrace the complexity and awkwardness of the character relationships rather than immediately smoothing them off into happy endings (though I do love a happy ending in the end, even especially if it’s a complicated awkward one!) I love characters that know one another better than anyone else does, yet still somehow fail to understand how much they mean to each other. I love big expansive drama that draws out the big feelings, and I love how the big feelings are also expressed in the tiny minutiae of everyday life - leaning against someone's shoulder when tired, distracting them when they're worried, sharing a favourite piece of music. I’m happy with everything from a little slice-of-life fluff fic to a big plotty angst-filled casefic, and everything in between.
A specific thing I love in fics is when the author brings in their own particular interests and knowledge to help flesh out the world the characters are inhabiting. I'd love a story about Gimlet and Bertie and von Stalhein and their love of horses, or Bertie’s (probably haunted) antique coin collection! Do you live somewhere or have you visited somewhere that we never hear about the character going to? Take the characters there! What do they make of the landscape, the food, the people? Which plants and animals do they get implausibly menaced by? Give me six pieces of violin music von Stalhein plays through his life, give me a recipe book with the cakes he bakes for his various
Note on gen and ship fics
I write and read a lot of ship fic, but I’m perfectly happy with fic that doesn’t go further than the shippiness of the canon content if that’s what you prefer! So long as the strong bonds between the characters stay important, I’ll be happy. In any case where I've suggested a pairing, I'm just as happy with a friendship-based (or frenemyship, or whatever) version - take it more as indication of the character interactions I'm especially interested in. Please, however, if you don't fancy writing for any of the ships I've suggested, don't write for an unrequested ship, as I can imagine a few pairings in canon that I don't think I'd enjoy.
If you are happy to write ship fic, I'm happy with any rating, and I read (and write) a fair range of smut so will probably be happy with most ‘standard’ content - feel free to look over the tags on my fics to see what I've written for.
General DNWs
I’d prefer not to have an entirely bleak or hopeless ending, so please don’t completely smash the strong bonds between the characters, and no permanent major character death / dismemberment etc (though eg. presumed dead, death in a redacted time-loop, death before some sort of Nebulous Sci-Fi Resurrection etc etc is fine). I also find child intense distress / injury / death tends to stop me enjoying a story, so I'd rather not have that in a gift fic, thanks.
In shipfic, please no underage (which in the UK is 16), and no explicit until 18 or over: I’m fine with people under 18 having sex if they’re all happily consenting, but I don’t want to read about it ^_^ No omegaverse, no obvious dead dove content (scat, core, waterspouts, etc etc), no unrequested pairings. No noncon within the requested ships (dubcon eg sex pollen, fuck or die etc generally fine) and no explicit noncon outside it - I'll read eg about the aftermath of sexual assault if it's really important to the story you want to tell, but I don't want to read about the act.
Reguest: Gimlet Series - WE Johns.
Requested characters: Any of:
Gimlet
Cub
Copper
Trapper
Sign-up optional details:I'd love fic featuring any or all of these characters, in any combinations! I'm very happy with gen or ship fic, and please feel free to add in any additional characters from this canon or W.E. Johns' related series (Biggles, Worrals etc) if you want to (though of course you don't have to!) I'd be especially excited to hear more about Gimlet, Copper and Trapper in their early days with the Commandos - when did they meet, how did they get on, how did they resolve themselves into the pattern we find in 'King of the Commandos'? - or more about how they all acclimatise to peace again after the war - especially Cub, who's had a pretty terrible experience of late adolescence and might well find it hard to adjust.
Additional rambling:
I love whumping Gimlet, he’s incredibly satisfying to traumatise <3 Feel free to throw him in a bog, put him in situations where he’s lost control and has to plough on regardless, have him go full murder-mode when his team are in danger, shoot him up a little bit and watch him carry on until he collapses. Whumping any of them is always a sound move, frankly, Copper and Trapper in particular should definitely be persecuted more and then suitably fussed over.
I also really enjoy Gimlet’s ridiculous poshness, which I am very happy to play for either angst or laughs. Fic about his relationship with Lorrington is always very welcome, especially when Lorrington comes into collision with quite-posh-but-feral Cub or really-not-posh-at-all Copper or fallen-off-the-end-of-the-social-scale Trapper. Village cricket match? School prize giving? Some sort of Wicker Man-esque May Day ritual murder? Or how about going under cover at a public school? Gimlet as the world’s most terrifying French master, Cub lightly traumatised at having to pretend to be a schoolboy again after four years in occupied France, Copper turning out to be a natural at rugby, and Trapper teaching the fourth formers to make pitfall traps.
As far as ships go, I’ll give anything a go for these four! Copper/Trapper I think is largely canon, and I’d love for them to have a chance to shine if you feel strong enough to brave the dialect - how does one react when the other’s injured or in danger? How did they get together? I’d love to see their trauma-bonding as they slogged back from Glamfjord! Copper/Trapper/Cub has the potential to be adorable. Gimlet/Cub is messed up on *so* many levels, but that doesn’t mean I won’t happily read it (though see DNWs below). Gimlet/Copper? Sure, why not! All four? Go for it! I’m happy with anything from some casual polyamory to a regular polycule. My standard pairing for Gimlet is Gimlet/Bertie, which I have written far too much fic for - so if you want to bring Bertie in, I’d be delighted! (And feel free to use any of my invented fanon history for them if you want to, or ignore it completely if you don’t.)
Gimlet-specific DNWs
While acknowledging the fact that the Commandos had a pretty terrifying remit and M.O., I’d rather not have *too* realistic a depiction of their war service - feel free to delve into the violence and trauma a bit more than WEJ does, but no atrocities, please.
No Gimlet/Cub where Cub is under 18, please; and while I’m fine with the concept of him fooling around with any of his friends at the Grey Fleas before that, I’d rather keep it pretty non-explicit, thanks!
Reguest: Steeley Series - WE Johns.
Requested characters: Any of:
Steeley
Tubby
Brian
Virginia
Sign-up optional details: I'd love fic featuring any or all of these characters, in any combinations! I'm very happy with gen or ship fic (including threesomes), and please feel free to add in any additional characters from this canon or W.E. Johns' related series (Biggles, Worrals etc) if you want to (though of course you don't have to!). I'd love more stories about Tubby and Steeley in the war; I'd love something about the missing year between 'Sky High' and 'Flies Again', either for Steeley + Virginia or Tubby + Brian (or both!); I'd love to hear about their ongoing nebulous police career (does it continue after WWII? Does Julia from ‘Nazis in the New Forest’ get recruited? (I loved Julia, feel free to bring her in if you feel like it!) Do they ever interact with the SAP??)
Additional rambling:
I love Tubby’s POV in the books and would be delighted to read more of it, but I’d also be happy to explore some alternatives - I feel like Steeley’s 1st person POV would be fascinating, he’s such a closed-off character in many ways, or a standard 3rd person would also be great.
If you’re a purely gen writer, please feel free to skip this bit ^_^ But if you’re a ship writer - I’d love to understand what on earth is going on with Steeley’s marriage! I liked Virginia, from the little we got to see of her, so I don’t want her thrown under a bus - but we never see her again, so we never really get a chance to find out what makes her and Steeley’s relationship tick. I’d be very happy to be convinced by a Steeley/Tubby/Virginia OT3, or a complicated greysexual situation where Steeley is astonished to find himself becoming vaguely attracted to a Girl for the first time while having been hopelessly in love with ostensibly-straight-and-totally-oblivious Tubby since the war, or a lavender marriage where Steeley and Virginia are just great pals, and Steeley gets to spend six months of the year ‘lodging’ with Tubby in London while Virginia goes to stay with her ‘sister’ in ‘New Zealand’, hem hem - whatever you fancy, really, I just want to find out more about it!
I’d also be very happy to read Tubby / Brian, or Steeley / Tubby / Brian, while acknowledging the distinct weirdness of the age difference and the start of the relationship - Brian has clearly had a very odd childhood, and has developed a more than slightly odd relationship with the idea of Steeley and Tubby that he’s evolved from the one photo he has of them with his father. I also have a personal headcanon that Tubby didn’t realise how deeply gone he was on Steeley until the end of ‘Sky High’, and spent much of the following year torching his comfortable playboy lifestyle and having a low-level breakdown, and that it was Brian who saw him through it - I adore their comfortable bickering by the start of ‘Flies Again’. If you’d like to play around with this period of their history, either in a ship or gen context, I’d love it!
(For what it’s worth, I don’t think ‘Wings of Romance’ is a great book, and I don’t think Tubby’s relationship with Anita is particularly convincing - and I suspect WEJ wasn’t too convinced by it either, considering how he ignores the whole mess in ‘Nazis in the New Forest’. Feel free to ignore it completely, or work out a Watsonian explanation for why it’s never mentioned again - did the marriage not happen? If it did, why doesn’t Tubby mention it? I don’t want it breaking up the basic Tubby-Steeley partnership - and neither apparently did WEJ!)
Steeley-specific DNWs:
As I said, I love Tubby’s POV, but I don’t want to read smut in it, thanks! So if you’re going to write ship fic, please either keep it non-explicit if you’re writing in 1st person, or write in 3rd person if you’re including explicit material. Unless you’re *really* confident you can write it without it feeling weird.
Reguest: Worrals Series - WE Johns.
Requested characters: All of:
Worrals
Frecks
Sign-up optional details: I love Worrals and Frecks! I love them as friends, I love them as a couple, I love them as a pair of daring spies / adventurers / international criminal masterminds, or at any rate as one daring spy / adventurer / criminal mastermind and one person who simply can't imagine *not* being with Worrals for the rest of her life no matter how uncomfortable it may sometimes be. Please feel free to add in any additional characters from this canon or W.E. Johns' related series (Biggles, Gimlet etc) if you want to (though of course you don't have to!). I love them fighting crime together, I love them righting wrongs together, I love them playing vicious lacrosse matches together at school or working out how to keep house together after the end of the war - give me more Worrals and Frecks stories, big or small ^_^
Additional rambling: I love how devoted to each other they are, and how awesome they think each other are, and I’d love to see more of that! I’m happy with stories from any time period, from school to wartime to their post-war freelancing / occasional police work.
School age - either something relatively high stakes like ‘Daisy Pulls It Off’ or ‘Murder Most Unladylike’ with murder and suspected German spies, or something more traditional school story (school play? Worrals would be *incredible* in a breeches role. Twisting an ankle before the most important hockey match of the season? We know Frecks is a demon for sports, after all.) I’d love to know more about how they learned to fly, and I’d love to hear more about how they felt about Worrals going away for her year in France - did they always plan to meet up again afterwards, or was it only the war that brought them back together?
Wartime / post-war - I’ve now read all the books (*small fanfare*), so feel free to pull in any side-characters or bits of continuity you fancy - I especially loved the French-set WWII books (loved Lucien and Raoul), I really enjoyed Nimrud from ‘Goes East’, loved Melinos from ‘Goes Afoot’. I also enjoy Bill Ashton a lot and find his relationship with Worrals very cute - so if you wanted to set them up as an occasional threesome, that’d be fine by me - though I can’t really imagine Worrals and Frecks settling down. I’d love something from their incredibly varied (not very-WAAF-compliant) war service - SOE-ferry service? Or can you think of a female-only environment you could shoe-horn into the plot that WEJ missed? I’d love plot, but I’m also mildly obsessed with Worrals + Frecks domesticity - tell me about drying stockings in front of the fire, about drinking cocoa in the evenings, about their post-war flat and how their different habits co-exist.
If you want a *really* specific request, I’ve been noodling recently around a future career for Worrals and Frecks as Stella Carstairs’ go-to pilots / publicity magnets / general fixers who she employs for various more-or-less-legal activities around the world, so if you fancied playing around with that continuity, that’d be amazing!
Worrals-specific DNWs:
Please no explicit material when they’re at school - I’m generally convinced that they’ve been together in some sense since they were at school together, but I’d be happier just reading about them kissing and holding hands until they’re with the WAAF, thanks! After that, filth positively encouraged <3
Reguest: Biggles Series - WE Johns.
Requested characters: Any of:
Biggles
von Stalhein
Bertie
Marcel Brissac
Sign-up optional details:I'd love fic featuring any or all of these characters, in any combinations! I'd be extra happy if you tried out some of the weirder combos - Erich and Bertie? Bertie and Marcel? All four? But I'd still be delighted with eg. a von Stalhein solo piece, or a classic Biggles and von Stalhein collision. I'm also very happy with gen or ship fic (though please see my letter for note on preferred configurations), and please feel free to add in any additional characters from this canon or W.E. Johns' related series (Biggles, Worrals etc) if you want to (though of course you don't have to!). I'd love to see how some of these characters interact, whether in a plotty casefic, a classic hurt-comfort set-up, or a story about Bertie and von Stalhein stuck in a bird hide in a marsh for twenty-four hours on a stake-out, trying to find things to talk about.
Additional rambling: I love all these characters, I would be happy with any or all of them in pretty much any branch of fic you care to name! How about a case-fic featuring the previous occasion when von Stalhein encountered Bertie before ‘Works It Out’, when Erich realised that he ‘looks and sounds the complete ass - but he isn’t’? Or some SAP-aided whump-recovery for Marcel following his awful time in ‘Chinese Puzzle’? Or Marcel dropping in on von Stalhein after the sale of the Moldavian Crown Jewels in Paris?
If you’re a ‘ship writer, here are a cornucopia of my preferred pairings for them: Biggles/von Stalhein, Biggles/Algy, Algy/von Stalhein, (though I also enjoy Biggles/von Stalhein/Marie, Biggles/Algy, Biggles/Major Mullen, von Stalhein/Algy, von Stalhein/Marie), Bertie/Gimlet (though I lean towards an aroace Bertie under most circumstances), and Marcel/literally anyone (though I think Bertie would probably politely refuse - though I’m willing to be convinced!). I’d prefer it if you didn’t write ships for these characters outside these possibilities, as I think there are some pairings I’d rather not be gifted.
Biggles-specific DNW:
I don't want the focus of the fic to be von Stalhein's career in WWII, though I don't mind if it's treated as a minor aspect of the story or referred to in retrospect; I don't want it glorified (obviously) and neither do I want it excused, but nor do I want von Stalhein to be shown to have had a career that would mean he entirely forfeits my sympathy later on. As WEJ makes this all pretty difficult for us, it’s probably it's best to steer clear.
Request: Ted Scott Series - Franklin W. Dixon
Requeste characters: All or selection of:
Ted Scott
Walter Hapworth
Paul Monet
Sign up optional details: I'll be brutally honest - I'm mostly here for the homoeroticism 😂 But if you're someone who just loves these books for the breathless adventure of it all, I'd be very happy with some breathless adventure featuring these characters too! If, however, you happen to want to write me some torrid OT3 material, I would be enchanted. I'm very fond of them as a threesome, but if you'd prefer to write any of the possible pairings, that'd be fine too - though I'd rather if a pairing didn't explicitly exclude third-party involvement on other occasions. Please see letter if you want more rambling!
Additional rambling: Honestly, feel like I’ve said it all in the initial sign-up 😂 Write whatever your heart desires about these ridiculous characters from these ridiculous books. If that’s Yet Another Impossible Mission for Ted Scott that can only be achieved with the support of his beloved friends, go for it! Feel free to write in canon style if you fancy it, or swerve into something a little more grown-up - bring on some semi-realistic consequences to the many times Ted is knocked unconscious, poisoned, attacked by bears, etc etc, dig into Walter and Paul as bored spoiled gilded age aristos, dragged into the thunderdome of Ted Scott’s charisma and suddenly realising that oh no, they actually *care* about something now - whatever you like. I’d love some backstory for Walter and Paul and how they became friends (or whatever else they may happen to be). I loved the book where Ted and Walter had to go and rescue Paul and Tom from the desert island with obligatory decapod - I’d love to see some h/c or shippy fall-out from that (desert island smut is a classic for a reason). Have lots of fun with it and go as self-indulgent as you like - these are deeply unserious books.
That was an *incredibly* long ramble, I'm so sorry, please feel free to ignore any or all of it. Really, I just want you to have fun writing for me, and I'll be delighted with whatever it is you write <3 <3