Mistletoe Exchange Letter 2020

[thrillingdetectivetales]

Hello, Mistletoe Fanworker!

Thank you for participating in the Mistletoe Exchange! It's my first year participating and I'm very looking forward to it. I hope you are too! To make your life a little easier, I’ve compiled a couple of general lists of my favorite tropes and my DNW’s for easy perusal, with fandom-specific requests underneath:

YES-PLEASES

• friends-to-lovers
• getting together fic
• didn’t know they were dating
• fake/pretend relationships
• werewolves/shapeshifter AUs
• soulmate AUs
• person questioning/figuring out their sexuality (whether vanilla “I never thought I wasn’t straight until now” all the way to “turns out I’m really into being sexually submissive in a very kinky way, who knew?”)
• building queer communities
• experienced characters showing inexperienced characters the ropes (metaphorically, or literally if you want to go the bondage route ;) )
• character wrestling with their sexuality/religion

DO-NOT-WANTS

• major focus on character death
• non-canon/unrequested character death in general
• graphic depictions of torture/injury
• A/B/O
• pregnancy/mpreg
• non-canon child characters/kidfic
• scat/watersports
• slave!fic
• infidelity
• treating female characters as villains/ malicious hindrances to queer male romance
• infantilazation (including daddy kink)
• pedophilia
• explicit non-con/rape*
• vore
• fat-shaming
• degrading dirty talk (i.e.: "You're a filthy little slut" etc.)
• somnophilia/paralysis
• necrophilia
• modern AUs of period media
• gay bashing

Most other stuff is fair game. If you have a question about a particular trope/kink/topic, I’m always open to answering questions.

*Dub-con, of the flavor where a character is unsure but willing to go with it, or like, sex-pollen/drunk/etc. variety is fine, so long as there's not explicit focus on someone feeling taken advantage of.

Alright! Now let’s get on the fandom specific requests, shall we? (I’m pretty open to whatever at the end of the day, so long as enough legwork/worldbuilding/character development has been done to make me believe that a certain scenario would actually happen, so feel free to use the below as guidelines more than strict rules.)

BON COP BAD COP: David Bouchard/Martin Ward, David Bouchard/Suzy/Martin Ward

Oh man. Give me post-film one where Martin and David get suspended and Martin winds up crashing on David’s couch because of trauma. Give me an AU where David is a private investigator or an actual criminal informant and not just pretending to be one. Give me both of them getting fired and starting their own PI business and slowly falling in love. Give me Martin and Suzy becoming friends and David being THE MOST JEALOUS and then all three of them realizing that there's something there. Give me David coaxing Suzy post-movie to bring Martin to be with them while he convalesces and a slow-burn romance kindling from there. Give me a total AU where Suzy and Martin meet completely separate of David and start dating, where it becomes readily apparent that Suzy's hard-to-shake, poorly behaved ex isn't going anywhere anytime soon and also that there's a surprising amount of chemistry between the three of them. Double extra bonus points for Suzy!POV fic, because outsider POV is one of my absolute favorite genres.

GOON (2011): Doug Glatt/Xavier LaFlamme, Eva/Doug Glatt/Xavier LaFlamme

For this one, I would love to see established Eva/Doug with Xavier feeling a bit like he's on the outskirts and slowly figuring out that the couple has been stealth-dating him for months. Likewise, would thoroughly enjoy a sort of frenemies-with-chemistry relationship between Xavier and Eva, who are "competing" to look after Doug while trying desperately not to betray his trust by sleeping together even though they can both feel that it would be electric and then Doug is eventually like "oh, I thought we could all three just...yeah?" while the two of them reel from being smacked about the head and face by a clue-by-four. ALSO! I'm very here for service top Doug who loves it when Xavier or Eva or both boss him around and let him take care of them. I'm very down for AU fic here, too. Pre-canon fic where Doug and Eva are, for some reason, involved in getting Xavier through rehab. Three-way soulmate fic! Outside POV from the other characters in the film. Go wild!

SCHITT'S CREEK: Alexis Rose/Twyla Sands, Patrick Brewer/Stevie Budd/David Rose, Patrick Brewer/David Rose

Okay okay okay. I am weak beyond belief for Alexis/Twyla, which there just isn't enough of out in the world. My kingdom for a slow burn fic where Twyla visits Alexis in New York after she moves away and becomes an even more intimate confidant until eventually all the Roses and Alexis's roommates and whoever are like, "so, you DO realize you guys are totally dating right?" (Please no hating on Ted. It was unfortunate that things didn't work out with them, but I don't tend to enjoy when exes are used to catch ire from new ships.) I would also love canon divergence fic where Alexis decides to seduce Twyla for some reason. Maybe she's trying to get back at Mutt for something or maybe Klair is her ex and Alexis claims that Twyla is her girlfriend and figures out along the way that she's actually super into Twyla. Maybe the Roses don't lose all their money but Alexis eventually hits a wall because she lives such a wild life and she flees to disappear in the middle of nowhere and befriends Twyla who gives her a place to stay and a job at the diner and they fall in love. There's a lot of real estate here, is what I'm saying, and I'm open to all of it.

For Patrick/Stevie/David, I would prefer a dynamic where it's like, "Hi I'm Patrick, this is my husband David and his girlfriend/wife/long-term life partner Stevie" where Patrick and Stevie bro down the hardest and like the occasional cuddle but aren't sexually intimate with each other. I'm open to bisexual Patrick, too, but I relate a lot to a character figuring out that they're gay in their adult life without the heterosexual relationships they had when they were younger being traumatic or diminished and Patrick seems uniquely primed for just such a thing. As you've probably guessed by now, I'm also very down for "we didn't know we were dating" in this context, where Stevie keeps showing up at Patrick and David's place between jet-setting business trips for the Rosebud Motel Group and having dinner and crashing in their guest room (sometimes with David, if they stay up late drinking wine and gossiping, and it's weird that it doesn't bother Patrick, but hey, they've been friends for a long time) and eventually Ray or someone is like, "Oh, I just assumed you were in a queerplatonic throuple! My mistake!"

If we're talking Patrick/David, I'm generally supremely satisfied with canon so I'd love to see some AU stuff. The Roses lose their money even earlier, but Johnny bought Schitt's Creek for David's thirteenth birthday or something so now he gets to transfer to a new high school for his senior year that baseball star Patrick just so happens to attend. (One of the rare times I'd be interested in a HS AU, tbh.) Or something where Patrick is visiting NY with his family and takes a detour to David's gallery and David grabs him and whispers, "PLEASE JUST GO WITH THIS I'LL PAY YOU THANKS" and pretends Patrick is his long-term boyfriend bc Sebastien Raine is there looking to make a fool of David as he does. Patrick surprises himself by not only rolling with it but upping the ante and agreeing to go to dinner with Sebastien and his new partner on a double date, and then he and David fall in love for real. I don't know, surprise me!

Hopefully that gives you a pretty good taste of what I enjoy. I know I listed quite a few tropes up top but honestly, totally mundane curtain fic is good too, so long as everyone is having a good time.

Thanks again and happy writing!
-Tec