Fandom 5K Letter

[galadriel1010]

Dear Author, window-shoppers and the generally curious,
It's lovely to meet you. Open invitation, if you're in any of my fandoms (especially the tiny baby ones but really any of them) please, please feel free to contact me here, Discord, Twitter, wherever you find me. I'm on Twitter as Galadriel1010 and floating around the Exchange servers as Gala or Galadriel and represented by a massive pair of rainbow heart eyes. Also gratefully accepting recs if you've seen anything you think might take my fancy.
For now, without further ado, the nominations. Drumroll pl… no, wait, that's the wrong show.

Requests:
Raffles - E. W. Hornung
* Group: A. J. Raffles/Bunny Manders

David Blaize - E. F. Benson
* Group: David Blaize/Frank Maddox
* Group: Frank Maddox & Margery Blaize

Crossover Fandom
* Group: Greg Lestrade (Sherlock) & Any members of the Bunghole Defence Squad (Class)
* Group: Margery Blaize (David Blaize)/River Song (Doctor Who)
* Group: Greg Lestrade (Sherlock) & Peter Grant (Rivers of London)

Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
* Group: Abigail Kamara & Thomas Nightingale
* Group: Beverley Brook & Thomas Nightingale
* Group: Peter Grant & Thomas Nightingale
* Thomas Nightingale (Rivers of London)

Class (TV 2016)
* Group: Any members of the Bunghole Defence Squad
* Group: Charlie Smith/Matteusz Andrzejewski

Doctor Who (2005)
* Clara Oswin Oswald (DW 2005)
* Eleventh Doctor (DW 2005)
* Group: Clara Oswin Oswald/The Doctor's TARDIS
* Group: The Doctor & Jack Harkness
* Group: Thirteenth Doctor/River Song

Sherlock (TV)
* Group: Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade


General DNWs:
Permanent death of requested characters, extreme cold, injuries to feet, explicit sex scenes

General likes:
Casefic/episodic/pastiche, Action/adventure, Power Couples, Loyalty, Competence, Excessive research and detail, Sense of place, Non-sexual intimate touch, Angst, Yearning, Sense of Sonder, Complicated but loving families, Art Deco, Arts and Crafts, Palladian and Georgian architecture, Archaeology, Obscure museums and off-beat dates, Fade to black, Cricket

Detailed requests
Raffles - E. W. Hornung - Group: A. J. Raffles/Bunny Manders
Raffles is the Gentleman thief and Bunny his stalwart companion and accomplice. It's a short series of short stories and one novel by E.W. Hornung, Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law and cricketing teammate, and they're available at Gutenberg here

This is the only ship I've ever written and, in the editing process, thought to myself "Hmm, needs to be gayer and have more cricket references". I love Raffles' competence, their mutual obsession, Bunny's jealousy, the push and pull and the way they so often end up on different pages but still getting there in the end. I'm fascinated by this period of history, too, with London expanding fast and the suburbs we're so familiar with yet to fill in the gaps between the new villages. I'd be over the moon with a fixit, whether you avoid their fateful trip to South Africa or find them a way out of it, but any opportunity to explore their world, whether at cricketing weeks at country houses or cricketing tours to Australia or cricketing… Ahem
The Gentleman V Players thing is really interesting (wind me up and watch me go on the politics of amateur sport in the Victorian era).
If you want to throw them into crossovers, I'm always up for adventures into different canons. If you really want to go to town, they appear in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, and you could use that version of them instead, because that's giving me some hilarious ideas. In general I'd love heist or casefic with them, in the existing universe or an AU, but I'd love it if you can retain that friction where Raffles would rather turn to crime than be seen as taking payment for his cricket and the loss of social status that involves.


David Blaize - E. F. Benson
Recommended to me as being very homoerotic and having too much cricket. The recommendation is wrong on one of these counts – there is no such thing as too much cricket. But oh my god, this book. David Blaize is available on Gutenberg, but the sequel (David of Kings, or David Blaize of Kings) isn't yet on Gutenberg but is available as part of a 99p Complete Works of E.F. Benson on Kindle. And if you love David and Frank, which I'm sure you will, then David of Kings is well worth reading. If you've ever wanted to read an intensely homoerotic tennis match, then David of Kings is well worth reading.
David Blaize is semi-autobiographical, by E.F. Benson, a prolific writer of both satire and ghost stories. He was also an archaeologist (his accounts of his digs in Greece are available free on a few academic sites, I have a PDF if you're really bored), and gay. As were his mother, his sister and at least one of his brothers. His father was the Archbishop of Canterbury and his other brother caused scandal by converting from being a vicar in the Church of England to a priest in the Roman Catholic Church. (Again, wind me up and watch me go).

Group: David Blaize/Frank Maddox
Frank is canonically gay and in love with David. David is… clueless, bless him. Benson leaves them at the end of their days at university, somewhere in the 1920s, with their lives spread ahead of them. I'd love to see David finally get a clue, or see them go off on digs together (Frank is an Archaeologist, David read Classics and appears to be fluent in Greek), or just have more japes and rags like they had during their years at school together. Obviously I'd be over the moon if you gave me cricket (either in universe or a modern version), but I know that my attempts to take over fandom with cricket have stalled somewhat… (Please join me in fangirl hell. We have lesbians and everything, and sometimes my county win things!) It's just a lovely, sweet canon, though, and I could read David and Frank wandering aimlessly down a street and chattering about nothing for hours.

Group: Frank Maddox & Margery Blaize
Margery doesn't appear in David of Kings, sadly, possibly because Benson's sister, Margaret, had sadly died before it was published. She was, like Frank and her brother, an archaeologist. In fact, she was the first woman to get a government licence to conduct a dig in Egypt, and the first published female Egyptologist. She met her partner, Janet, on a dig, when Janet was her dig assistant.
I think you can see where I'm going with this. Gay pining archaeologists on digs together? I'm quite fond of the idea of the pair of them entering a lavender marriage, especially if their partners (David and ?) enter into a parallel lavender marriage and the four of them live happily ever after in the heart of London's literary society, hosting salons and generally having a whale of a time. But I just want to see these two interact, because they're lovely and deserve nice things.

Crossover Fandom
I love my crossovers 'well-blended'. Two universes that could very easily coexist just crashing into each other and ruining (or making) someone's day.

Group: Greg Lestrade (Sherlock) & Any members of the Bunghole Defence Squad (Class)
Group: Greg Lestrade (Sherlock) & Peter Grant (Rivers of London)
This would be on the 'ruining' side of the equation. Because what Greg Lestrade's life really needs to make it simpler is either aliens or magic or, if you're feeling really cruel, both :D
I ship Mycroft/Lestrade, DNW John/Sherlock, but I'm not fussed about any of the Holmeses appearing. Although the idea of Mycroft teaming up with Lady Ty is both terrifying and awesome.
It'd be great to see Lestrade drawn into either of these worlds, either as a drinking buddy to Peter or as a semi-father figure to Charlie and Matteusz. He could even have kids their age…
I'm supposed to be giving you ideas here, not me.

Group: Margery Blaize (David Blaize)/River Song (Doctor Who)
WLW archaeologists… in space? Or in Egypt. Or in Egypt and in space. I don't know, I've not got further with this thought than a pair of rainbow heart eyes. I genuinely think this could be a good Doctor Who episode, or Big Finish story.

Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Group: Abigail Kamara & Thomas Nightingale
Group: Beverley Brook & Thomas Nightingale
Group: Peter Grant & Thomas Nightingale
Thomas Nightingale (Rivers of London)
DNW Peter/Nightingale, anything else goes. This is possibly my favourite detective series ever, I love the amount of detail Aaronovitch is able to go into by making it weird. London is fantastically detailed and gloriously multicultural, and every song is like a love letter to the city – or a particularly well-aimed insult, depending on what mood Peter is in. I absolutely love London, even the bits I don't like, and I miss it desperately, so if you take me back there I will love you forever. Worldbuilding, character development, a guided tour of a random corner – did you know Mudchute is surprisingly nice? And Woolwich is surprisingly grim. And TFL have boats!
Oh god, she's off again.

Class (TV 2016)
Group: Any members of the Bunghole Defence Squad
Group: Charlie Smith/Matteusz Andrzejewski
Heard of it? No, no one has. Class was the little spin-off that, as it turned out, couldn't. But it's a travesty that it didn't get a second series. Charlie Smith is an alien prince, the last survivor of his race living as a refugee in Shoreditch and pretending he's from Sheffield (unconvincingly), and Matteusz is his Polish boyfriend. They are two of the five members of the Bunghole Defence Squad, which is basically Torchwood but with a smaller budget and more emotional maturity, if Torchwood had to fit saving the world in around their A levels.
What do I love about it? I can't imagine. Weeps
You could pick up after That Cliffhanger and resolve the minor issue in the office (curious yet?) or handwave it away and pick up with them a few years later, take them to somewhere safe for university, like Cardiff. Again, I'm just going to cry for a bit about how much I love and miss London. Casefic, angst, Charlie or Matteusz in peril and needing to be rescued. There's a Big Finish audio drama where they shout "I love you" at each other, increasingly angrily, to try to sacrifice themselves to save the other one. Teenage angst, it's beautiful.

Doctor Who (2005)
Clara Oswin Oswald (DW 2005)
Doctor Who (2005) - Eleventh Doctor (DW 2005)
Doctor Who (2005) - Group: Clara Oswin Oswald/The Doctor's TARDIS
Doctor Who (2005) - Group: The Doctor & Jack Harkness
Doctor Who (2005) - Group: Thirteenth Doctor/River Song

Adventures? I love Doctor Who for its flexibility and the way you can do literally any genre within the same story. I'm not into horror, but detective stories, adventure, urban and high fantasy, pseudo-non-fiction, Mills and Boon style romances, all very much up my street. If you're looking at Clara/TARDIS I love them as Rivals to Lovers, and for Doctor&Jack I'd prefer 11,12 or 13, or even the War Doctor. I really want to see his cocktail lounge, and that is not a euphemism.

Sherlock (TV)
Group: Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade
Please destroy me emotionally. I have such a thing for these two being on the wrong page when it really matters and everything going to shit around them, but I cannot write it for toffee. Lestrade being unfailingly loyal to Mycroft and thinking it isn't reciprocated or even recognised until someone tries to use him to get to Mycroft, the pair of them having a massive row right before one of them gets kidnapped and whumped to hell and back, idiots pining for years not realising that the other is doing exactly the same thing… Or just Greg realising in his 40s that he's not as straight as he thought he was and having no idea what to do about it. If you're going down that line, I haven't seen enough of Mycroft being the experienced one and the first bloke Greg's slept with.
DNW John/Sherlock, or Greg's wife being an evil harpy. Ignore her if you like, but I am a big fan of a slightly awkward amicable breakup between two people who still like each other and have to negotiate family events around Britain's labyrinthine divorce legislation and London's absurd property prices.