Fandom: Dear Yuletide Author 2022
Oct. 19th, 2022 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
escritoireazul10.29.22 Edit: I have the treat option enabled on AO3. Forgot that was a thing.
Dear Yuletide Author,
It’s my favorite fannish time of year: Yuletide.
Do Not Wants and general likes, followed by fandom-specific details, below. If there’s a discrepancy between the DNWs/general likes and the fandom-specific details, go with the fandom-specific. Mixing and matching fandoms and prompts more than welcome.
My absolute favorite things: werewolves, crossovers and alternate universes (the stranger and more unusual the better), and monsters and magic.
I’m![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
escritoireazul at AO3.
General Likes
+ stories about women, including f/f, gen, and het
+ chosen families, friends as family, strangers to friends to family through wild adventures, reluctant allies to friends, friends and family teaming up to save the world
+ alternate universes, a non-exhaustive list: werewolves, witches and witch hunters, IN SPACE, horror movies, haunted summer camps, ghost hunters, portal fantasies, monsters, canon divergence, weird west/wild west (I particularly like the outlaw feel of it, untamed and wild, big spaces with nowhere to hide, big woods claustrophobic around you, danger at every turn, as long as the AU avoids the magical Indian/savage Indian/white savior aspects of the trope)
+ threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes, in all configurations (so long as the woman/women are not ignored in favor of the men)
+ monsters of the week, casefic, adventure stories, mysteries
+ crossovers and fusions so long as my requested characters are the main characters
+ tropes, a non-exhaustive list: wilderness survival, huddling for warmth, forced proximity, friends to lovers, enemies to friends (to lovers), there’s only one bed oh no, fake dating, survival horror, abandoned ships, burial at sea, burial by fire, crashed on a deserted island, ghost ships, not-so-safe harbor, locked-room mysteries, came back wrong
+ kink (female top/dom only except for biting and bloodplay): biting, light bondage, impact play, rough body play, bloodplay for supernatural characters, fireplay, marking, sensory overload, orgasm denial/control, pegging
Do Not Wants
+ stories focused on dealing with discrimination (racism, sexism, biphobia, fat hate, ableism, etc.)
+ character bashing or villainizing
+ rape, non-con, and dub-con
+ embarrassment/humiliation
+ harm to a dog
+ permanent character death for my requested characters
+ incest
+ big age difference in romantic relationships (except for supernatural characters), particularly an older man/younger woman
+ a/b/o or werewolf stories with Big Tough Alpha Male tropes
+ pregnancy, including mpreg
Requests
Charlie’s Angels (2019): Elena Houghlin, Jane Kano, Sabina Wilson
The New Mutants (2020): Danielle Moonstar, Rahne Sinclair
Seance (2021): Camille Meadows, Helina
Sweetheart (2019): Jennifer Remming
United States of Asgard - Tessa Gratton: any (Astrid Glyn, Glory | Fenris Wolf, Signy Valborn, Soren Bearstar)
Willow (1988): Sorsha
Charlie's Angels (2019): Elena Houghlin, Jane Kano, Sabina Wilson
What I Like About the Source Material: The movie is a lot of fun. I love the characters, their backgrounds and friendships, the way they argue and support each other, the humor, the competence, Elena's awe over Jane, Sabina, their skills, and all the fancy gear, so many Angels from all around the world teaming up at the end.
Prompts:
Post-canon adventures: Chosen family all the way. More heists, more saving the world, more taking down men in power doing terrible things, more recruiting and training other women to fight and save themselves.
Slice of life: Quiet family times, making a home together now that there are three of them, celebrating birthdays, Elena finishing her training, important and silly milestones.
AUs: Women werewolf pack. Monster hunters. Teaming up to survive horror movie scenarios and save the girls (summer camp killers, haunted houses, cursed objects). Angels in Space. Jaeger pilot triplets, elite athletes going for gold, scientists fighting underground monsters.
Ship-driven: Awkward flirting, kink exploration (Sabine with that crop made an impression, plus all the bondage), two of them get together and all three of them have to navigate how that impacts the team, all three of them learn to date each other, romance on the road, fake dating for a job turns real.
I ship all three characters in any combination as well as Jane/Langston.
Seance (2021): Camille Meadows, Helina
What I Like About the Source Material: The looming creepiness of the setting, boarding school horror, angry school pranks and vicious, competitive girls, the quiet, gentle moments between Camille and Helina, mundane murders within a real ghost story.
Prompts:
Post-canon adventures. Camille and Helina meet again, this time with Camille as her true self. Helina is one of the last survivors of the group and must continue on at school without Camille. The hauntings at the school get worse after all the additional deaths. Camille stays, and she and Helina have a boarding school romance.
AUs: Camille and Helina run away together after everything. The girls are werewolves, witches, monsters, monster hunters. Instead of a haunted boarding school, they go through other horror story scenarios (cursed objects, summer camps, monstrous alien clowns, man-eaters). Jaeger pilots falling in love, superheroes avenging not just a friend but the entire world.
Ship-driven: Second chance romance when they find each other again. Stolen kisses between hauntings, finding comfort in each other while people die around them, love letters, stolen private moments, awkward first times.
I ship Camille/Helina, but Camille has chemistry with every single girl.
Sweetheart (2019): Jennifer Remming
What I Like About the Source Material: Jenn carries the bulk of this movie by herself, and she is a wonderful protagonist, smart and strong, driven to survive, and completely engaging. The horror is nicely handled, the threat of the creature, the difficulty of surviving being stranded on a deserted island even without the creature.
Prompts:
Post-canon adventures: Jenn becomes a cryptozoologist and tries to create ways for creatures and humans to live in peace. The way the creature wounds her infects her with strength and speed and enhanced senses and she has to fight new monstrous desires. Everywhere she goes, Jenn now looks for creatures -- and finds them. Jenn finds other survivors of creature attacks, and they bond, they team up, they fall in love.
AUs and crossovers: Survival horror on deserted (or “deserted”) planets. Haunted spaceships, creatures picked up on alien planets. Jenn lives through your favorite urban legend. Mermaids come to Jenn’s aid, but they are also fanged and angry and tempting. Jaeger pilots, cave divers, time travelers, monster hunters, dinosaur parks.
Ship-driven: Jenn finds and falls in love with survivors of other creatures. Jenn has to explain to her next partner why she avoids the water and wakes up from nightmares of being dragged down into the dark and deep.
United States of Asgard - Tessa Gratton: any (Astrid Glyn, Glory | Fenris Wolf, Signy Valborn, Soren Bearstar)
What I Like About the Source Material: The way the Norse gods are real and present in modern-day life, the worldbuilding baked into that premise, the three teenagers who save the world in different ways and a god who is a wolf who is a girl.
Mostly, though, I love the characters. They are young and strong and weak and fierce, afraid and brave and driven, loved and loving, and, always, hungry to make the world better in whatever way that means to them. I love all of these characters, and would love to see their adventures, together and apart.
Prompts:
General:
Post-canon adventures: Though there are guns and more modern weapons, a lot of fighting is still done with swords, battle axes, steel weapons. I would love to see more of that, the way they fight holmgang instead of going to court, to protect their honor, to protect someone else’s. There are caravans and carnivals of Loki followers, rife with adventures and ghosts.
AUs: There’s already monsters and magic and gods and great swaths of wilderness lost to the trolls! Space adventures, gods in the stars, stolen spaceships. Glory hunts her way through werewolf canons. Horror stories, urban legends, Jaeger pilots, wishes turning into new worlds.
Characters:
Astrid Glyn:
The thing I love most about Astrid is that she weaves herself back into the strands of fate after she’s been pulled from them to become Idun. She makes her own fate, and gives herself adventures, and finds a way to be both a goddess and a girl.
Missing scenes: Astrid spent a lot of time with her mother before her mother disappeared. Road trips! Seething together! What life was like in the Lokiskin camps and carnivals. How Astrid learned to harness her power and see the future. What she sees for the future after the series once she weaves herself back into the world, visceral and dangerous and amazing.
Slice of life: How does she make life work, being both a goddess and a girl. She finds a way for Idun to publicly love the Sun’s Berserk, the same way that Astrid loves Soren, but that changes a lot of things for them. How do their lives, together and apart, look now? Astrid is interested in making Idun more available to the public; does she ever manage that? What sort of adventures does she get up to now that she is maybe not quite so tied to her orchard but also accepts that she wants to be there with her trees?
Ship-driven: I ship Astrid and Soren hard, and would love to see more of them together during any of the books or after, the way they build their lives together, a girl goddess and a very public berserker who would rather not be public at all. I also ship the two of them with Baldur, both during the first book, when he is mortal and gentled without his memories, but also after, when he’s back to being his glorious, flirtatious, overwhelming self. While I love any two of them together as well as all three, the core of this for me is how Astrid and Soren love each other, and I prefer that reflected no matter what else is going on. Astrid has a stream of gods and goddesses who come through her orchard and become close to her, as friends and as lovers. I’d love to see the friendships/lovers Astrid builds now that she’s determined not to lock herself away from the world. What does it look like, for a goddess who is also a girl to be friends with the gods? She and Glory spark off each other, and Glory is, for a long time, forbidden from Astrid’s orchard because of her hunger. Astrid opens her orchard to all, including the elf-as-a-trollmother, and I would love to see more of that in the future, and Glory being welcomed, too.
Glory | Fenris Wolf:
Glory is basically a werewolf, and she’s fated to devour the sun and signal Ragnarok. She’s bound to teenage girl shape, and her hunger rages unchecked. She is amazing.
Pre- and post-canon adventures: Glory’s been alive a long, long time, and I would love to see the different ways the world looks to her at different times. She’s seen the rise and fall of countries, the changes to the ways the valkyries get to be valkyries, Soren becoming the first berserker in New Asgard history to swear to a god other than Odin; she’s seen and she’s done and she’s become bored of so many things. What sparked her interest, historically? What will catch her eye in the future? What does it look like, when she finally breaks free of her chains and devours Baldur, the sun?
Ship-driven: She’s viciously sexual and violent and only lets the people she’s going to fight or fuck call her Fenris. Her hunger rages in all things. Show me these moments, painful, hot, dangerous, fucking and fighting, violence in the sex. Who does she fuck or fight? What does it take for a human to draw her attention? Soren intrigues her, but who else and what else can (even if only temporarily) sate her hunger? In short: vicious, violent, sexual, basically-a-god werewolf. I ship Glory with everyone in her canon and every werewolf woman not in her canon.
Signy Valborn:
Signy is pretty much the most brutal human character in the series, and far more brutal than even a lot of the gods as they are. She fights hard to prove herself as a Valkyrie, and she writes her rage into battle and blood and poetry, and she loves and hates in equal measure.
Post-canon adventures: We get to see her quest to take the heart of troll mother to earn her place. This involves brutal training and terrible, vicious fights that nearly kill her more than once and leave many of the people she loves dead. She wants to bring back the brutal, bloody, death-filled ways of the Valkyries of old. What else does she do to fight that? With what she’s learned, does she find new ways to convince people to embrace this change? What fights does she get up to after? What does she hunt? She fights with Soren, with him and with him by her side. She loves the Berserkers, their anger and their hunger and their rage the same as her own. What does she hunt with bands of them, particularly as the trolls come back after The Apple Throne?
Ship-driven: I ship Signy and Glory, Signy and Soren, Signy and her band of Berserkers, and Signy with other angry, hungry, fierce women, in the series or crossovers. Brutal sex, fighting as foreplay, swordmaidens and battle lovers.
Soren Bearstar:
My love for Soren grows each time I reread the books (which is often). He’s so scared of his own power and rage, and he fights to control it and, when it breaks free, to focus it in a way that does the least amount of damage. I love that about him. He’s described a couple of times of holding to a path once he chooses it until fate itself bends to what he wants; he doesn’t choose between what fate has given him (and fate is very literally in this world), but makes his own strands (options) to choose. He changed the world by remembering Astrid and by becoming the Sun’s Berserk, and he is wonderful.
Post-canon adventures: He has these grand adventures with the main characters, and they all end up loving him in one way or another. He’s rescued a missing god, faced a powerful troll mother, fought a damn dragon: what don’t we get to see? Glory is terribly fond of him, and I’d love to see her drag him off onto more adventures. What sort of monsters does he fight? How else does he change the world?
Berserker worldbuilding: He’s very different from all the other berserkers in a lot of ways, but at least one wants him to be his mentor. Signy once tells Soren that people push him away because he shuts them out first. Does he ever find any comfort with the berserkers? He is not the only “strange” one now, what with Vider not only being the only female berserker in generations, but eventually leaving her training to make her own life as a berserker. Do Soren and Vider start a trend of some berserkers finding their own way? (Soren’s father rebelled as well, for Soren and his mother, and was punished for it so harshly it triggered his berserker rage and ended badly. I hope Soren and Vider have happier endings.)
Ship-driven: I ship Soren and Astrid with all the fire of a billion suns, and would love to see more of then. At the end of the third book, Astrid-as-Idun has fought for an even better way to have Soren in her life and to be public about it, has fought to make herself a place in the world after Astrid the girl has been ripped out of it to become Idun. Now that they are public, now that Soren is tied so strongly to the gods Baldur and Idun, what does that change for him? What does Astrid and Soren’s relationship look like as they get older? Now that they can be public, do they dance at the gods’ feasts? Do they date? Are they the subject of all the gossip rags?
I also ship the two of them with Baldur, both Baldur when he is both a god and a vulnerable mortal in the first book, but also as the series continues. Astrid loves the gods in wonderful, terrible ways, but Soren only learns to love them through Baldur, and I love the three of them together. Baldur is gentled when he is mortal in the first book, and I would love to see their deep friendship, their commit, explored further, but he’s glorious and flirtatious and overwhelming when he gets his memories back, and I would love to see how he, Soren, and Astrid figure out the new boundaries of their commit.
I think that though Astrid is the core of Soren’s heart, and he of hers, that they each have the freedom to take other lovers away from each other. I’m not entirely convinced Soren would actually act on this (except for Baldur, see above, and always with Astrid as their third, even if she’s not physically there), but I think the opportunity is there, and I’m curious as to whether he ever became comfortable enough in his own strength and rage and control to act on it.
Willow (1988): Sorsha
What I Love About the Source Material: Everything. Sorsha and her swords, her prowess in battle, her drive to prove herself to a mother who disregards her at every turn and uses her only for her power. How shocked she is when Madmartigan compliments her while he’s under the spell, and her anger when it goes away. The way she turns on her mother to save the world. The worldbuilding, the magic and warriors and brave Willow and just everything.
Prompts:
Pre- and post-canon adventures: Sorsha and Madmartigan are raising and protecting Elora Danan by the end of the movie. As the child grows, surely others will come for her, too, eager to control that power and the prophecies that may rise around her. Sorsha the awkward parent and Madmartigan (and Airk, if this is a he survives AU) the completely competent parent. Sorsha and Mardmartigan go into battle again and again. Magic brings new monsters and battles. Willow needs their help. Sorsha (and Airk) go off to war leaving Madmartigan to protect Elora Danan and their home. Terrible storms come onto the lands and they must find a way to survive. Sorsha the warrior queen, Madmartigan and Airk her devoted (snarky) right and left hand warriors. All the ways Sorsha tried to impress her mother throughout her life. There are cursed objects everywhere and they must find a way to make the castle safe.
AUs: Sorsha and all the women warriors from other fandoms. Spaceships and strange, alien planets, being banished into worlds unknown. Weird west. They’re turned into wolves instead of pigs, or another predator, and the traits of that predator lingers. Bavmorda banishes Elora, and Sorsha and the team have to find another way to defeat her. Superheroes. Hunting monsters, becoming monsters. Sorsha the werewolf. Madmartigan and/or Airk the werewolf or werebear or wereboar. Bavmorda at least temporarily wins and they run the resistance, Madmartigan and Airk are captured and Sorsha has to rescue them and then hurt/comfort after. Superheroes. Jaeger pilots. Haunted camps, road trips with monsters, possessions.
Complicated families: Sorsha’s life while following her mother. How Sorsha feels about being the fierce warrior, her mother’s sword dripping blood. Bavmorda trying to mold Sorsha into exactly the weapon she wants and all the ways Sorsha didn’t fit the mold. The pain of growing outside what your parent, your queen, demands of you, the difficulty of leaving that behind. Sorsha before the movie, so desperate for her mother's approval, fighting (and fucking?) her way through the world. Sorsha, Madmartigan, and/or Airk struggle to find their way in a new world where peace and love happen more often than fighting.
Ship-driven: We survived celebratory sex. Fighting turns to fucking. We’re raising a princess and have a castle at our disposal, how many places can we fuck without being caught. Sorsha topping the hell out of Madmartigan, and Madmartigan loving it. Sorsha topping the hell out of both Madmartigan and Airk, Mardmartigan loving it, and Airk loving it despite himself. Enemies to lovers. Sex magic. And all the tropes, of course. Huddling for warmth, bed sharing, enemies to friends to lovers, arranged marriage, fake dating, it’s all good.
I ship Sorsha/Madmartigan, Sorsha/Madmartigan/Airk, and Sorsha with warrior women from other canons.
Dear Yuletide Author,
It’s my favorite fannish time of year: Yuletide.
Do Not Wants and general likes, followed by fandom-specific details, below. If there’s a discrepancy between the DNWs/general likes and the fandom-specific details, go with the fandom-specific. Mixing and matching fandoms and prompts more than welcome.
My absolute favorite things: werewolves, crossovers and alternate universes (the stranger and more unusual the better), and monsters and magic.
I’m
General Likes
+ stories about women, including f/f, gen, and het
+ chosen families, friends as family, strangers to friends to family through wild adventures, reluctant allies to friends, friends and family teaming up to save the world
+ alternate universes, a non-exhaustive list: werewolves, witches and witch hunters, IN SPACE, horror movies, haunted summer camps, ghost hunters, portal fantasies, monsters, canon divergence, weird west/wild west (I particularly like the outlaw feel of it, untamed and wild, big spaces with nowhere to hide, big woods claustrophobic around you, danger at every turn, as long as the AU avoids the magical Indian/savage Indian/white savior aspects of the trope)
+ threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes, in all configurations (so long as the woman/women are not ignored in favor of the men)
+ monsters of the week, casefic, adventure stories, mysteries
+ crossovers and fusions so long as my requested characters are the main characters
+ tropes, a non-exhaustive list: wilderness survival, huddling for warmth, forced proximity, friends to lovers, enemies to friends (to lovers), there’s only one bed oh no, fake dating, survival horror, abandoned ships, burial at sea, burial by fire, crashed on a deserted island, ghost ships, not-so-safe harbor, locked-room mysteries, came back wrong
+ kink (female top/dom only except for biting and bloodplay): biting, light bondage, impact play, rough body play, bloodplay for supernatural characters, fireplay, marking, sensory overload, orgasm denial/control, pegging
Do Not Wants
+ stories focused on dealing with discrimination (racism, sexism, biphobia, fat hate, ableism, etc.)
+ character bashing or villainizing
+ rape, non-con, and dub-con
+ embarrassment/humiliation
+ harm to a dog
+ permanent character death for my requested characters
+ incest
+ big age difference in romantic relationships (except for supernatural characters), particularly an older man/younger woman
+ a/b/o or werewolf stories with Big Tough Alpha Male tropes
+ pregnancy, including mpreg
Requests
Charlie’s Angels (2019): Elena Houghlin, Jane Kano, Sabina Wilson
The New Mutants (2020): Danielle Moonstar, Rahne Sinclair
Seance (2021): Camille Meadows, Helina
Sweetheart (2019): Jennifer Remming
United States of Asgard - Tessa Gratton: any (Astrid Glyn, Glory | Fenris Wolf, Signy Valborn, Soren Bearstar)
Willow (1988): Sorsha
Charlie's Angels (2019): Elena Houghlin, Jane Kano, Sabina Wilson
What I Like About the Source Material: The movie is a lot of fun. I love the characters, their backgrounds and friendships, the way they argue and support each other, the humor, the competence, Elena's awe over Jane, Sabina, their skills, and all the fancy gear, so many Angels from all around the world teaming up at the end.
Prompts:
Post-canon adventures: Chosen family all the way. More heists, more saving the world, more taking down men in power doing terrible things, more recruiting and training other women to fight and save themselves.
Slice of life: Quiet family times, making a home together now that there are three of them, celebrating birthdays, Elena finishing her training, important and silly milestones.
AUs: Women werewolf pack. Monster hunters. Teaming up to survive horror movie scenarios and save the girls (summer camp killers, haunted houses, cursed objects). Angels in Space. Jaeger pilot triplets, elite athletes going for gold, scientists fighting underground monsters.
Ship-driven: Awkward flirting, kink exploration (Sabine with that crop made an impression, plus all the bondage), two of them get together and all three of them have to navigate how that impacts the team, all three of them learn to date each other, romance on the road, fake dating for a job turns real.
I ship all three characters in any combination as well as Jane/Langston.
Seance (2021): Camille Meadows, Helina
What I Like About the Source Material: The looming creepiness of the setting, boarding school horror, angry school pranks and vicious, competitive girls, the quiet, gentle moments between Camille and Helina, mundane murders within a real ghost story.
Prompts:
Post-canon adventures. Camille and Helina meet again, this time with Camille as her true self. Helina is one of the last survivors of the group and must continue on at school without Camille. The hauntings at the school get worse after all the additional deaths. Camille stays, and she and Helina have a boarding school romance.
AUs: Camille and Helina run away together after everything. The girls are werewolves, witches, monsters, monster hunters. Instead of a haunted boarding school, they go through other horror story scenarios (cursed objects, summer camps, monstrous alien clowns, man-eaters). Jaeger pilots falling in love, superheroes avenging not just a friend but the entire world.
Ship-driven: Second chance romance when they find each other again. Stolen kisses between hauntings, finding comfort in each other while people die around them, love letters, stolen private moments, awkward first times.
I ship Camille/Helina, but Camille has chemistry with every single girl.
Sweetheart (2019): Jennifer Remming
What I Like About the Source Material: Jenn carries the bulk of this movie by herself, and she is a wonderful protagonist, smart and strong, driven to survive, and completely engaging. The horror is nicely handled, the threat of the creature, the difficulty of surviving being stranded on a deserted island even without the creature.
Prompts:
Post-canon adventures: Jenn becomes a cryptozoologist and tries to create ways for creatures and humans to live in peace. The way the creature wounds her infects her with strength and speed and enhanced senses and she has to fight new monstrous desires. Everywhere she goes, Jenn now looks for creatures -- and finds them. Jenn finds other survivors of creature attacks, and they bond, they team up, they fall in love.
AUs and crossovers: Survival horror on deserted (or “deserted”) planets. Haunted spaceships, creatures picked up on alien planets. Jenn lives through your favorite urban legend. Mermaids come to Jenn’s aid, but they are also fanged and angry and tempting. Jaeger pilots, cave divers, time travelers, monster hunters, dinosaur parks.
Ship-driven: Jenn finds and falls in love with survivors of other creatures. Jenn has to explain to her next partner why she avoids the water and wakes up from nightmares of being dragged down into the dark and deep.
United States of Asgard - Tessa Gratton: any (Astrid Glyn, Glory | Fenris Wolf, Signy Valborn, Soren Bearstar)
What I Like About the Source Material: The way the Norse gods are real and present in modern-day life, the worldbuilding baked into that premise, the three teenagers who save the world in different ways and a god who is a wolf who is a girl.
Mostly, though, I love the characters. They are young and strong and weak and fierce, afraid and brave and driven, loved and loving, and, always, hungry to make the world better in whatever way that means to them. I love all of these characters, and would love to see their adventures, together and apart.
Prompts:
General:
Post-canon adventures: Though there are guns and more modern weapons, a lot of fighting is still done with swords, battle axes, steel weapons. I would love to see more of that, the way they fight holmgang instead of going to court, to protect their honor, to protect someone else’s. There are caravans and carnivals of Loki followers, rife with adventures and ghosts.
AUs: There’s already monsters and magic and gods and great swaths of wilderness lost to the trolls! Space adventures, gods in the stars, stolen spaceships. Glory hunts her way through werewolf canons. Horror stories, urban legends, Jaeger pilots, wishes turning into new worlds.
Characters:
Astrid Glyn:
The thing I love most about Astrid is that she weaves herself back into the strands of fate after she’s been pulled from them to become Idun. She makes her own fate, and gives herself adventures, and finds a way to be both a goddess and a girl.
Missing scenes: Astrid spent a lot of time with her mother before her mother disappeared. Road trips! Seething together! What life was like in the Lokiskin camps and carnivals. How Astrid learned to harness her power and see the future. What she sees for the future after the series once she weaves herself back into the world, visceral and dangerous and amazing.
Slice of life: How does she make life work, being both a goddess and a girl. She finds a way for Idun to publicly love the Sun’s Berserk, the same way that Astrid loves Soren, but that changes a lot of things for them. How do their lives, together and apart, look now? Astrid is interested in making Idun more available to the public; does she ever manage that? What sort of adventures does she get up to now that she is maybe not quite so tied to her orchard but also accepts that she wants to be there with her trees?
Ship-driven: I ship Astrid and Soren hard, and would love to see more of them together during any of the books or after, the way they build their lives together, a girl goddess and a very public berserker who would rather not be public at all. I also ship the two of them with Baldur, both during the first book, when he is mortal and gentled without his memories, but also after, when he’s back to being his glorious, flirtatious, overwhelming self. While I love any two of them together as well as all three, the core of this for me is how Astrid and Soren love each other, and I prefer that reflected no matter what else is going on. Astrid has a stream of gods and goddesses who come through her orchard and become close to her, as friends and as lovers. I’d love to see the friendships/lovers Astrid builds now that she’s determined not to lock herself away from the world. What does it look like, for a goddess who is also a girl to be friends with the gods? She and Glory spark off each other, and Glory is, for a long time, forbidden from Astrid’s orchard because of her hunger. Astrid opens her orchard to all, including the elf-as-a-trollmother, and I would love to see more of that in the future, and Glory being welcomed, too.
Glory | Fenris Wolf:
Glory is basically a werewolf, and she’s fated to devour the sun and signal Ragnarok. She’s bound to teenage girl shape, and her hunger rages unchecked. She is amazing.
Pre- and post-canon adventures: Glory’s been alive a long, long time, and I would love to see the different ways the world looks to her at different times. She’s seen the rise and fall of countries, the changes to the ways the valkyries get to be valkyries, Soren becoming the first berserker in New Asgard history to swear to a god other than Odin; she’s seen and she’s done and she’s become bored of so many things. What sparked her interest, historically? What will catch her eye in the future? What does it look like, when she finally breaks free of her chains and devours Baldur, the sun?
Ship-driven: She’s viciously sexual and violent and only lets the people she’s going to fight or fuck call her Fenris. Her hunger rages in all things. Show me these moments, painful, hot, dangerous, fucking and fighting, violence in the sex. Who does she fuck or fight? What does it take for a human to draw her attention? Soren intrigues her, but who else and what else can (even if only temporarily) sate her hunger? In short: vicious, violent, sexual, basically-a-god werewolf. I ship Glory with everyone in her canon and every werewolf woman not in her canon.
Signy Valborn:
Signy is pretty much the most brutal human character in the series, and far more brutal than even a lot of the gods as they are. She fights hard to prove herself as a Valkyrie, and she writes her rage into battle and blood and poetry, and she loves and hates in equal measure.
Post-canon adventures: We get to see her quest to take the heart of troll mother to earn her place. This involves brutal training and terrible, vicious fights that nearly kill her more than once and leave many of the people she loves dead. She wants to bring back the brutal, bloody, death-filled ways of the Valkyries of old. What else does she do to fight that? With what she’s learned, does she find new ways to convince people to embrace this change? What fights does she get up to after? What does she hunt? She fights with Soren, with him and with him by her side. She loves the Berserkers, their anger and their hunger and their rage the same as her own. What does she hunt with bands of them, particularly as the trolls come back after The Apple Throne?
Ship-driven: I ship Signy and Glory, Signy and Soren, Signy and her band of Berserkers, and Signy with other angry, hungry, fierce women, in the series or crossovers. Brutal sex, fighting as foreplay, swordmaidens and battle lovers.
Soren Bearstar:
My love for Soren grows each time I reread the books (which is often). He’s so scared of his own power and rage, and he fights to control it and, when it breaks free, to focus it in a way that does the least amount of damage. I love that about him. He’s described a couple of times of holding to a path once he chooses it until fate itself bends to what he wants; he doesn’t choose between what fate has given him (and fate is very literally in this world), but makes his own strands (options) to choose. He changed the world by remembering Astrid and by becoming the Sun’s Berserk, and he is wonderful.
Post-canon adventures: He has these grand adventures with the main characters, and they all end up loving him in one way or another. He’s rescued a missing god, faced a powerful troll mother, fought a damn dragon: what don’t we get to see? Glory is terribly fond of him, and I’d love to see her drag him off onto more adventures. What sort of monsters does he fight? How else does he change the world?
Berserker worldbuilding: He’s very different from all the other berserkers in a lot of ways, but at least one wants him to be his mentor. Signy once tells Soren that people push him away because he shuts them out first. Does he ever find any comfort with the berserkers? He is not the only “strange” one now, what with Vider not only being the only female berserker in generations, but eventually leaving her training to make her own life as a berserker. Do Soren and Vider start a trend of some berserkers finding their own way? (Soren’s father rebelled as well, for Soren and his mother, and was punished for it so harshly it triggered his berserker rage and ended badly. I hope Soren and Vider have happier endings.)
Ship-driven: I ship Soren and Astrid with all the fire of a billion suns, and would love to see more of then. At the end of the third book, Astrid-as-Idun has fought for an even better way to have Soren in her life and to be public about it, has fought to make herself a place in the world after Astrid the girl has been ripped out of it to become Idun. Now that they are public, now that Soren is tied so strongly to the gods Baldur and Idun, what does that change for him? What does Astrid and Soren’s relationship look like as they get older? Now that they can be public, do they dance at the gods’ feasts? Do they date? Are they the subject of all the gossip rags?
I also ship the two of them with Baldur, both Baldur when he is both a god and a vulnerable mortal in the first book, but also as the series continues. Astrid loves the gods in wonderful, terrible ways, but Soren only learns to love them through Baldur, and I love the three of them together. Baldur is gentled when he is mortal in the first book, and I would love to see their deep friendship, their commit, explored further, but he’s glorious and flirtatious and overwhelming when he gets his memories back, and I would love to see how he, Soren, and Astrid figure out the new boundaries of their commit.
I think that though Astrid is the core of Soren’s heart, and he of hers, that they each have the freedom to take other lovers away from each other. I’m not entirely convinced Soren would actually act on this (except for Baldur, see above, and always with Astrid as their third, even if she’s not physically there), but I think the opportunity is there, and I’m curious as to whether he ever became comfortable enough in his own strength and rage and control to act on it.
Willow (1988): Sorsha
What I Love About the Source Material: Everything. Sorsha and her swords, her prowess in battle, her drive to prove herself to a mother who disregards her at every turn and uses her only for her power. How shocked she is when Madmartigan compliments her while he’s under the spell, and her anger when it goes away. The way she turns on her mother to save the world. The worldbuilding, the magic and warriors and brave Willow and just everything.
Prompts:
Pre- and post-canon adventures: Sorsha and Madmartigan are raising and protecting Elora Danan by the end of the movie. As the child grows, surely others will come for her, too, eager to control that power and the prophecies that may rise around her. Sorsha the awkward parent and Madmartigan (and Airk, if this is a he survives AU) the completely competent parent. Sorsha and Mardmartigan go into battle again and again. Magic brings new monsters and battles. Willow needs their help. Sorsha (and Airk) go off to war leaving Madmartigan to protect Elora Danan and their home. Terrible storms come onto the lands and they must find a way to survive. Sorsha the warrior queen, Madmartigan and Airk her devoted (snarky) right and left hand warriors. All the ways Sorsha tried to impress her mother throughout her life. There are cursed objects everywhere and they must find a way to make the castle safe.
AUs: Sorsha and all the women warriors from other fandoms. Spaceships and strange, alien planets, being banished into worlds unknown. Weird west. They’re turned into wolves instead of pigs, or another predator, and the traits of that predator lingers. Bavmorda banishes Elora, and Sorsha and the team have to find another way to defeat her. Superheroes. Hunting monsters, becoming monsters. Sorsha the werewolf. Madmartigan and/or Airk the werewolf or werebear or wereboar. Bavmorda at least temporarily wins and they run the resistance, Madmartigan and Airk are captured and Sorsha has to rescue them and then hurt/comfort after. Superheroes. Jaeger pilots. Haunted camps, road trips with monsters, possessions.
Complicated families: Sorsha’s life while following her mother. How Sorsha feels about being the fierce warrior, her mother’s sword dripping blood. Bavmorda trying to mold Sorsha into exactly the weapon she wants and all the ways Sorsha didn’t fit the mold. The pain of growing outside what your parent, your queen, demands of you, the difficulty of leaving that behind. Sorsha before the movie, so desperate for her mother's approval, fighting (and fucking?) her way through the world. Sorsha, Madmartigan, and/or Airk struggle to find their way in a new world where peace and love happen more often than fighting.
Ship-driven: We survived celebratory sex. Fighting turns to fucking. We’re raising a princess and have a castle at our disposal, how many places can we fuck without being caught. Sorsha topping the hell out of Madmartigan, and Madmartigan loving it. Sorsha topping the hell out of both Madmartigan and Airk, Mardmartigan loving it, and Airk loving it despite himself. Enemies to lovers. Sex magic. And all the tropes, of course. Huddling for warmth, bed sharing, enemies to friends to lovers, arranged marriage, fake dating, it’s all good.
I ship Sorsha/Madmartigan, Sorsha/Madmartigan/Airk, and Sorsha with warrior women from other canons.
