To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

[Note: I am icepixie across LJ, DW, and AO3.]

Dear Yuletide Writer,

THANK YOU for writing for me! I love all these fandoms and characters dearly, and I know I'll love whatever you come up with for them. I'm offering specific prompts for each fandom if you're the kind of writer who prefers them, but please don't feel constrained by them if you're not.

General likes: I love shippy fluff (or friendshippy fluff). I love slice of life stories. I really love humor, especially amusing dialogue (I live for banter). I also enjoy the odd madcap antic, snarky narration, plotty adventures, and just reading about characters who enjoy being with each other. As long as it's not relentlessly bleak, I can dig angst, particularly if it's bittersweet or wistful. Holiday stories of any tradition that would work for the characters are fine if you're so inclined. I'm familiar with the entire canons for all my requests, so spoilers are not an issue.

General dislikes: The big one is explicit sex. Innuendo is endlessly entertaining, but I'm all over fade-to-black after we hit, say, light R territory. I would also prefer no character death for any of my requested characters and no gender-bending.


China Beach
Colleen McMurphy and Dick Richard

THIS SHOW. I'd heard of it for years, but only watched it when my library got the DVDs last year, and...aaiiee, it's just so incredibly well-written, and the characters are so real, and I love them all in different ways. I'm not a connoisseur of war fiction, but I know enough to appreciate that it portrays the Vietnam War and its effects on the characters with a lot of nuance and sensitivity.

I never expected to fall in love with the idea of McMurphy/Richard, but I did. It's the way they snipe and snark at each other, but also, somewhat against their will, deeply respect and eventually fall in love with each other. In retrospect, that's the blueprint for a lot of pairings I ship, so I suppose it's no surprise. Plus, they are a wall of awesome competence, and they make such a good team, always in sync with each other as they work. I can well imagine that teamwork extending to their personal lives.

As long as it has them interacting, preferably with a bit of banter, I'll be 100% happy with whatever you come up with. However, here are some suggestions if you want them:

• In some alternate version of "I Could Have Danced All Night...," Beth Ann isn't in a car crash and Richard isn't called home. Do he and McMurphy actually get married? Do they still break up because it just doesn't work outside of the very particular time and location they're in? What does their relationship look like a month, a year, a decade, an [insert timespan here] later?


• Along those same lines, say the 1969 part of "I Could Have Danced..." occurred the way it did in the show, but McMurphy and Richard meet at a time when she's more receptive to seeing him than she was in "Juice." What happens?


• Any getting-together fic that doesn't rely on the events of "I Could Have Danced..." is more than welcome:


• Trapped together somewhere during a mortar attack? (Hurt/comfort is entirely acceptable here and anywhere else, BTW.)


• They don't give up quite so easily in "All About E.E.V." (and then FEELINGS come along)?


• Another Christmas together in Vietnam leads to something a bit more serious under the mistletoe?


• They each somehow actually manage to get some R&R outside the country and find themselves hanging out together? I would love to see the two of them returning to "the world" together either like this or after their tours are up. Their reactions would be so different. (P.S. OMG, McMurphy taking Richard mini-golfing. Can you imagine?)


• Seriously, if you just have them sitting in the Jet Set and talking, or working in the hospital and talking, or Richard dragging McMurphy off to the golf course and them bitching at each other talking, I will be thrilled.

Cupid (1998)
Trevor Hale and Claire Allen

It is criminal that this show didn't last longer than 15 episodes. The concept may have been light and ridiculous on the surface (a guest character romance-of-the-week orchestrated by someone who is either crazy or a Greek god without his powers, tag-teamed by his wet-blanket psychiatrist?), but it was the perfect mixture of hilarity, sweetness, and poignancy. And it was smart, too; funny as Claire and Trevor's banter was, and it's definitely funny and my favorite part, said banter was also full of incisive observations about fantasy versus reality in relationships. Yet there's still a gentleness to it (the banter and the show) that's very appealing, because Trevor and Claire both believe in love, they just think it takes different paths to get there. They're on the same side even when they argue.

Claire and Trevor are certainly the main draw for me—the CHEMISTRY, dude—and I want to see them interacting and sparking off each other in any situation you care to dream up. Go wild. Maybe you know Chicago well and want to have them do something Chicago-y together, maybe you like coming up with OCs for Trevor to get a bead out of, maybe you like Greek/Roman myths and can make hay with that, maybe Trevor decides to edit Claire's book about him, maybe they take a road trip, maybe they just have coffee together and bicker, maybe Trevor keeps making matches but that last bead stubbornly won't move until he finally realizes it's him and Claire he needs to match—I would honestly enjoy it all.

I lean toward the Trevor-is-Cupid theory and always like reading fics that come down on that side, but I also really enjoyed the ambiguity the show traded in. I loved the little hints like Trevor being able to throw a dart in the bullseye via the reflection in a beer glass, or writing down a time in Roman numerals, or speaking impeccable Latin, that were not completely incompatible with him being a delusional human, but certainly hinted at fallen godhood.


Northern Exposure
Maggie O'Connell and Joel Fleischman

[I received a lovely fic for this request a few years ago, but I will never not want MOAR FIC for this fandom and these characters, so I'm requesting it this year as well.]

This is the show of my heart. I love that the writers weren't afraid to tackle complex topics and incorporate philosophy, literature, religion, and other things that might be more at home in a college seminar than network TV. I also love the benign magical realism, and the feeling the show gives me that there's so much wonder out in the world, if we can just open our eyes to it. I did a fandom pitch a few years ago for smallfandomfest where I talked a lot more about what I like about this show in general.

What I really like about Maggie and Joel is their verbal back and forth. The more banter they get, the happier I am. I definitely ship them (though if you don't, that's cool, as I would love gen where they interact as well!), and I find them fascinating both when they're burning up the screen with UST and after they settle into a relationship later in the series. I've always found it interesting how the universe appears to push them together and indicate to the audience that they're meant to connect, from natural events such as the ice melt in "Spring Break" causing them to make out or the Coho winds leading to the events of "Ill Wind," to their significant dreams (like the Clue-inspired one in "What I Did for Love"), to their alter egos in "Cicely" and "Zarya" getting together. And it's cool that they never come right out and say the universe is pushing them together, because there are alternate explanations (i.e., their UST finally overwhelmed them :D). I like the subtlety, I guess, is what I'm saying.

Some specific prompts if you need them:

• What made Joel finally ask Maggie on a date in "Mite Makes Right"? It's always bothered me that there was no defining event that led him to that decision (other than that the episode aired during sweeps month).


• "Fish Story" is one of my favorite episodes, so it would be cool to see how they handle another holiday as an interfaith couple. If you're going for gen, something around a holiday and religious differences between them as friends/enemies/whatever you want them to be at this point in time would be lovely.


• How does being forced to work together on something, a la the election in "Democracy in America," bring out their differences and/or similarities? I always wanted to see them attempt a home improvement project of some sort together, for example.