Dear yuletide writer:
Oct. 17th, 2026 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenDear yuletide writer,
Hi! Thank you for writing for me. I’m![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
singlecrow on the AO3, and I’m very much open to treats.
I like all sorts of stories; happy ones, sad ones, complicated ones. I love found family, competence, hurt/comfort; people quietly looking after each other. I like stories with sex and kink in them and stories without.
Do not wants: omegaverse, Christmas (you can mention Christmas! I just don’t like it when it’s a Christmas story), PWPs (which is to say, stories that are only sex – stories that have sex in them among other things, those I love), and kidfic.
Let me just tell you a bit of why I love these fandoms, and hopefully you’ll find something here to help you write for me, but if you have a story of your heart, please go write that, I look forward to reading it.
Shetland
Characters: Jimmy Perez, Duncan Hunter
This show has been the fandom of my heart this year, and if you want to want to delve in my tag there’s a fair bit there.
My unlikely love for Jimmy Perez has also been documented elsewhere (here!!) so I won’t repeat it here, but sweet, stoic Jimmy is my favourite. He’s so fucking sweet. What is he even doing as the lead of a grim Scandi noir detective show. We just don’t know. Jimmy, who loves his family, his friends and his islands so deeply, and is loved so deeply himself. I adore him.
Meanwhile, is Duncan the most complex character a BBC show has ever created by mistake? (I may be slandering the show’s writers there, who knows, maybe they planned it all along!) But all we know about Duncan to start with is he’s kind of a conman, a seedy sort of guy who cheated on and left his young wife, and abandoned his kid. What a choice, for the show to then invest a huge amount of its emotional heart in him. Firstly, it’s that Duncan actively decides to be a better father to Cassie, and over time is extremely successful; then he slips into that quiet emotional support role for Jimmy as well, for which there seems to be absolutely no detective-story narrative reason, and nevertheless there it is. Duncan worries about Jimmy, feeds him, cares for him, and, eventually, blows up his entire life out of love for him. (I also find it massively powerful, that he’s the one who has the emotional breakdown related to the bodies on the beach. He’s not often the show’s audience viewpoint character but it’s so wrenching when he is.)
Oh, I love this show! I love its setting, its care for community and family life, and that it doesn’t often forget how important Shetland’s history and culture is to these people who are so much part of where they are. It is so good at grief. Jimmy’s grief for Fran, never maudlin, never not present; Cassie’s too. It’s so good at unconventional families! Cassie’s weird but committed parents! It’s so good at love in all its guises. (Jimmy, once he discovers Drew is Tosh’s horrible mean ex, is just randomly abusive to the man for two whole seasons. I mean.)
I ship Jimmy and Duncan like crazy. If you want to put the rest of the cast in I love them all, especially Cassie, Tosh and Rhona. My only specific dnw for this fandom is, please can any story for this fandom be set at least partly on Shetland. The islands themselves are super important to me and I’d like to see them here. I have kidfic as a general dnw but if your dream is to write something where Cassie is a kid, please do!
Ludwig
Characters: John Taylor, Russell Carter
This show has been such a sleeper hit with me. I was still watching it as nominations opened, got to the season 1 finale and was like, wow, I love this, actually. It’s such an outlandish concept – how can a guy completely replace his twin brother in his job as a detective chief inspector, come on! – but it’s so charming and funny and sometimes, sad!
While I love the entire cast, I went for these two, because I love the real, strange friendship between John and Russell. It’s so interesting to me that of the season 1 cast, Russell is the only one who didn’t know James, and arguably he’s the one with the most straightforwardly affectionate relationship with John. (Lucy adores John, it’s just… yeah. They have their Thing. You know the Thing. What the hell is going on there.) I’m happy with friendship or something romantic/sexual, I think both would be interesting. It really struck me, how John’s sympathy and kindness over Russell’s grief is a hundred percent genuine (and of course Russell doesn’t know it to start, but John, Lucy and Henry are stuck in whether or not they should be grieving James). So is their genuine respect for each other – despite much provocation, Russell values what John does, and John clearly finds Russell’s competence not only laudable but, for him, completely out of reach, beyond the wit of man. And they’re so funny together, I love Russell needing a pen and reaching behind him to grab one from John’s inside pocket!
I really do love all the characters – both sets of junior detectives, also Henry, also Gareth, who is… well, I didn’t request him because to me, he is perfect and requires no amendment or addition. (Gareth DOES NOT WANT TO BE HERE HE IS NOT INVOLVED.) I love them all. And I also love the setting – I lived in Cambridge for years – and how lovingly they depict the bits where people live as well as the colleges.
Dept. Q
Characters: Carl Morck, James Hardy
Carl, my very problematic fave!! God, the guy’s such a fucking arsehole and I love him so much. No, do you know what, I love Carl because he is actually quite a justified arsehole a lot of the time, and softer than he makes out. He worries for Jasper, he’s kinder to Rose than her real boss is. He adores Hardy. Also, jesus, he is so fucking depressed and his therapist seems to be trying to make him worse and if you or I were in his place we’d be an arse too. I do love that Carl’s past is carried with him: that he has flashbacks and nightmares, this is just going to be where he lives for a while. And that he just can’t get to the point where he admits that THAT WAS BAD ACTUALLY. It was a very bad thing that happened to himm and that’s why he feels bad! (I would love anything, anything, about Carl dealing or not dealing with this.)
James Hardy, I adore you. I like that he is about the only non-arsehole in a show full of arseholes, that he seems to have a happy family life; that his struggle is much more visible than Carl’s but they’re both struggling in the same way. I love, also, that he’s kind. To Carl, to Rose, even to Anderson in flashback. This is a guy makes someone like Carl love him.
I do love these two together. Friendship, ship fic, I don’t mind. Carl’s very real care for Hardy is so remarkable in the other context of the show. Would Carl have stopped him from trying to hurt himself? Yes, a million times yes, though he’d have yelled the entire time. And I am just flabbergasted by the idea that Carl is alive because the bullet that went through him was slowed down in its passage through Hardy’s body. That is SO MUCH. No wonder they’re so weird. I would also be VERY WEIRD.
DNWs for this fandom: Rachel, and the hyperbaric chamber. (I AM A SENSITIVE SOUL, ok.)
And finally: I really like sad stories. I mean, I like happy stories! But if you want to write about Jimmy’s (or Russell’s) grief, or John’s fears or Carl and Hardy’s terrible trauma, I am here for it with bells on.
Thank you very much, again. See you on the other side.
Hi! Thank you for writing for me. I’m
I like all sorts of stories; happy ones, sad ones, complicated ones. I love found family, competence, hurt/comfort; people quietly looking after each other. I like stories with sex and kink in them and stories without.
Do not wants: omegaverse, Christmas (you can mention Christmas! I just don’t like it when it’s a Christmas story), PWPs (which is to say, stories that are only sex – stories that have sex in them among other things, those I love), and kidfic.
Let me just tell you a bit of why I love these fandoms, and hopefully you’ll find something here to help you write for me, but if you have a story of your heart, please go write that, I look forward to reading it.
Shetland
Characters: Jimmy Perez, Duncan Hunter
This show has been the fandom of my heart this year, and if you want to want to delve in my tag there’s a fair bit there.
My unlikely love for Jimmy Perez has also been documented elsewhere (here!!) so I won’t repeat it here, but sweet, stoic Jimmy is my favourite. He’s so fucking sweet. What is he even doing as the lead of a grim Scandi noir detective show. We just don’t know. Jimmy, who loves his family, his friends and his islands so deeply, and is loved so deeply himself. I adore him.
Meanwhile, is Duncan the most complex character a BBC show has ever created by mistake? (I may be slandering the show’s writers there, who knows, maybe they planned it all along!) But all we know about Duncan to start with is he’s kind of a conman, a seedy sort of guy who cheated on and left his young wife, and abandoned his kid. What a choice, for the show to then invest a huge amount of its emotional heart in him. Firstly, it’s that Duncan actively decides to be a better father to Cassie, and over time is extremely successful; then he slips into that quiet emotional support role for Jimmy as well, for which there seems to be absolutely no detective-story narrative reason, and nevertheless there it is. Duncan worries about Jimmy, feeds him, cares for him, and, eventually, blows up his entire life out of love for him. (I also find it massively powerful, that he’s the one who has the emotional breakdown related to the bodies on the beach. He’s not often the show’s audience viewpoint character but it’s so wrenching when he is.)
Oh, I love this show! I love its setting, its care for community and family life, and that it doesn’t often forget how important Shetland’s history and culture is to these people who are so much part of where they are. It is so good at grief. Jimmy’s grief for Fran, never maudlin, never not present; Cassie’s too. It’s so good at unconventional families! Cassie’s weird but committed parents! It’s so good at love in all its guises. (Jimmy, once he discovers Drew is Tosh’s horrible mean ex, is just randomly abusive to the man for two whole seasons. I mean.)
I ship Jimmy and Duncan like crazy. If you want to put the rest of the cast in I love them all, especially Cassie, Tosh and Rhona. My only specific dnw for this fandom is, please can any story for this fandom be set at least partly on Shetland. The islands themselves are super important to me and I’d like to see them here. I have kidfic as a general dnw but if your dream is to write something where Cassie is a kid, please do!
Ludwig
Characters: John Taylor, Russell Carter
This show has been such a sleeper hit with me. I was still watching it as nominations opened, got to the season 1 finale and was like, wow, I love this, actually. It’s such an outlandish concept – how can a guy completely replace his twin brother in his job as a detective chief inspector, come on! – but it’s so charming and funny and sometimes, sad!
While I love the entire cast, I went for these two, because I love the real, strange friendship between John and Russell. It’s so interesting to me that of the season 1 cast, Russell is the only one who didn’t know James, and arguably he’s the one with the most straightforwardly affectionate relationship with John. (Lucy adores John, it’s just… yeah. They have their Thing. You know the Thing. What the hell is going on there.) I’m happy with friendship or something romantic/sexual, I think both would be interesting. It really struck me, how John’s sympathy and kindness over Russell’s grief is a hundred percent genuine (and of course Russell doesn’t know it to start, but John, Lucy and Henry are stuck in whether or not they should be grieving James). So is their genuine respect for each other – despite much provocation, Russell values what John does, and John clearly finds Russell’s competence not only laudable but, for him, completely out of reach, beyond the wit of man. And they’re so funny together, I love Russell needing a pen and reaching behind him to grab one from John’s inside pocket!
I really do love all the characters – both sets of junior detectives, also Henry, also Gareth, who is… well, I didn’t request him because to me, he is perfect and requires no amendment or addition. (Gareth DOES NOT WANT TO BE HERE HE IS NOT INVOLVED.) I love them all. And I also love the setting – I lived in Cambridge for years – and how lovingly they depict the bits where people live as well as the colleges.
Dept. Q
Characters: Carl Morck, James Hardy
Carl, my very problematic fave!! God, the guy’s such a fucking arsehole and I love him so much. No, do you know what, I love Carl because he is actually quite a justified arsehole a lot of the time, and softer than he makes out. He worries for Jasper, he’s kinder to Rose than her real boss is. He adores Hardy. Also, jesus, he is so fucking depressed and his therapist seems to be trying to make him worse and if you or I were in his place we’d be an arse too. I do love that Carl’s past is carried with him: that he has flashbacks and nightmares, this is just going to be where he lives for a while. And that he just can’t get to the point where he admits that THAT WAS BAD ACTUALLY. It was a very bad thing that happened to himm and that’s why he feels bad! (I would love anything, anything, about Carl dealing or not dealing with this.)
James Hardy, I adore you. I like that he is about the only non-arsehole in a show full of arseholes, that he seems to have a happy family life; that his struggle is much more visible than Carl’s but they’re both struggling in the same way. I love, also, that he’s kind. To Carl, to Rose, even to Anderson in flashback. This is a guy makes someone like Carl love him.
I do love these two together. Friendship, ship fic, I don’t mind. Carl’s very real care for Hardy is so remarkable in the other context of the show. Would Carl have stopped him from trying to hurt himself? Yes, a million times yes, though he’d have yelled the entire time. And I am just flabbergasted by the idea that Carl is alive because the bullet that went through him was slowed down in its passage through Hardy’s body. That is SO MUCH. No wonder they’re so weird. I would also be VERY WEIRD.
DNWs for this fandom: Rachel, and the hyperbaric chamber. (I AM A SENSITIVE SOUL, ok.)
And finally: I really like sad stories. I mean, I like happy stories! But if you want to write about Jimmy’s (or Russell’s) grief, or John’s fears or Carl and Hardy’s terrible trauma, I am here for it with bells on.
Thank you very much, again. See you on the other side.