Dear Yuletide Author 2021

[firstlovelatespring]

Dear Yuletide Author,

Thanks in advance for writing for me! I’m firstlovelatespring on ao3. I’m requesting Attachments - Rainbow Rowell, The Longshot - Katie Kitamura, and New York Mets RPF. I’m so excited about all three of these fandoms that I’m sure I’ll love anything you write, but I do have many thoughts and prompts about them.

DNW

• Explicit sexual content between characters younger than 16
• Setting-change AUs
• Toilet humor

General likes

• 5+1 times
• Forced proximity
• Getting together
• Missing scenes

Attachments - Rainbow Rowell

Beth Fremont, Jennifer Scribner-Snyder, Lincoln O’Neill

No need to include all of my requested characters! Just Beth and Jennifer or just Beth and Lincoln is fine, but of course all three would also be welcome. I’m not really interested in Jennifer/Lincoln or Beth/Jennifer/Lincoln, though.

I read this for the first time when I was in high school, and since then it’s been the absolute comfort food of books. I just really love the characters and the world they live in; anything that plays around in their universe for a thousand more words would be a delightful gift. But here are some specific prompts and other thoughts, if you want:

Role reversal: Beth and Jennifer work at the IT desk, and Lincoln is a movie reviewer.

Missing scene from Lincoln’s housewarming party, or the first party he and Beth throw together

Beth and Jennifer end up together instead of Beth and Lincoln. Look, I know this would require a lot of shuffling around. Shuffle however you like, but these are my vague ideas: Mitch never existed, Chris is still Chris, we still see the development of their relationship from Lincoln’s outsider POV.

Could also go for established Beth/Jennifer from Lincoln’s POV. Maybe they got together in college?

Inject some minor magic or supernatural happening into the proceedings. Like, Beth’s apartment is haunted, and she tells an increasingly-less-skeptical Jennifer about it over email. Or one of them gets bit by a vampire and describes the process of turning.

A lot of these prompts suggest email!fic, but I am of course also interested in Lincoln-narrated fic. Can we get Beth, Jennifer, Lincoln, and Christine in the same room? Or have Beth meet all of Lincoln’s D&D friends, or Justin, or Lincoln’s mom?

After Lincoln quits working for The Courier, there was a line about how he kept on reading Beth’s movie reviews, trying to gauge how her love life was going based on how hard she was on romantic comedies or something. It would be very cool to read the progression of their relationship interspersed with excerpts from her movie reviews. Or, more generally, movie reviews like missing scenes set during the book!

The Longshot - Katie Kitamura

Cal, Riley

I didn’t know anything about MMA fighting before reading this book (and really still don’t), but the spare prose and comeback narrative captivated me. I loved the simple facts of the days leading up to the fight as much as the emotional weight behind it. Tell me more about the world they live in, if you know about MMA or enjoy research. But really, tell me more about their relationships.

Until we heard about Cal’s wife, I did kind of read his disinterest in the waitress as disinterest in women in general. I guess that’s meant to be more indicative of the tunnel vision that develops in anticipation of the fight than anything else, but still. Adding a sexual element to his relationship with Riley would really complicate things. Riley clearly feels responsible for Cal, having recruited him out of high school and trained him all these years, and would also be responsible for what he may feel was the corruption of a young man. I can’t really see Riley intentionally manipulating Cal, like, explicitly making this a condition of his training and mentorship, but I’m certainly not averse to taking their relationship to an ethically gray area. Or to Cal thinking this is a condition of his training.

I would also love a getting-back-together story, where they were involved when Cal was training right out of high school, but then Cal lost to Rivera and got a life, but now that they’re getting ready for this comeback fight, it’s like he’s 18 again. And, like. He knows everything now, but he’s also still foolishly hopeful, thinks things will be different with Riley like he thinks they’ll be different with Rivera.

New York Mets RPF

Francisco Lindor, Jeff McNeil

I’ve been a baseball fan my whole life, but it’s only in the past couple years that I got into RPF, and only this year that I ever dreamed of writing or requesting it. I have a lot of thoughts on these guys, but I am so totally open to different interpretations of them. I realize that if you’re a Mets fan you probably know all the information that follows, but I include it anyway, to hopefully show what I most enjoy about these guys and their dynamic.

It always takes me a while to warm to offseason acquisitions, but Francisco Lindor became my new favorite player before spring training was even over. He gave this interview, Gary Cohen called him “effervescent,” and he won over me and probably everybody else with his smile. He didn’t hit so much this year, especially not in the first half, but he played sparkling defense and ran the bases intelligently, even inducing balks from third base. He introduced clubhouse rituals even as a newcomer, and seems exceptionally well liked, a real presence on the team even when he was injured. And, did I mention: his smile.

Jeff McNeil is my former favorite player. His “throwback” hitting style has always made him exciting to watch: when he came up in 2019 he proved himself adept at hitting the ball wherever the infielders were not, a slap hitter who rarely struck out. Then later on he started to hit for a little more power, at the expense of his batting average, which I did not like so much. He started strong in 2021, but had a somewhat worse second half after returning from injury. He also has a tendency to react badly when he strikes out. Not exactly Pete Alonso snapping a bat over his knee levels of reacting badly, but he’ll curse and throw his batting helmet down, just generally get angry. I can’t stand watching this on television but love it for fanfiction purposes. Also, let’s get this out of the way: I know Jeff McNeil looks like a squirrel. Jeff McNeil knows he looks like a squirrel. But then sometimes he looks like this:

When they were both healthy, and before the Mets acquired Javy Báez, Lindor and McNeil were the starting double play combination. Lindor is a gold-glove shortstop; McNeil is an average second baseman (he also does an average job in left field). Early in the season, they failed to turn a few double plays from the shift. The Mets shift a lot, and it seems to be pretty effective, but it also means the shortstop and second baseman aren’t playing where they’re accustomed to, and the split-second hesitation caused by unfamiliar positioning (along with some old-fashioned and literal dropping of the ball) can and did cost them a few double plays. This, combined with the stress of hitting so poorly, culminated in a between-innings fight in the tunnel leading to the dugout. They must have been really getting into it, because players crowded around the tunnel, and Michael Conforto (and/or Dom Smith?) ran in to break things up. It was fairly obvious to the TV-watching audience what had happened, but when asked about it during the post-game press conference, Lindor and McNeil both told the same story, that they had seen a rodent in the clubhouse and argued over whether it was a rat or a raccoon. (Luis Rojas, the Mets’ manager, had none of it. He came right out and admitted what happened, and said he wished his players had owned up to it instead of making up an obvious lie.) That was the last of the open hostilities, and McNeil got injured pretty soon after anyway.

There you have it. That’s the basis of all my RPF thoughts about the two of them. From the interviews I’ve seen, Lindor is gregarious and well liked and optimistic, even when he’s hitting just over .200; and McNeil is intense and seems kind of scatter-brained, and takes failure very personally. I like to imagine the double play combination bond as very serious, and that on-field trust and synergy has to come from off-field trust and affection, or at least familiarity.

I know that McNeil is married and Lindor is engaged. Any of these options for dealing with that is fine with me: not mentioning it either way, explicitly pretending they were never married/engaged, or including angst about cheating. What I don’t want is a big presence of the wife/fiancée in the story (which would maybe be against the rules anyway, seeing as neither is a public figure), or a story that ends with either of them planning to break off the marriage/engagement. I also don’t really like an acknowledged arrangement where the wife/fiancée knows about things with other players and is supportive about it. Basically, you don’t have to mention being unfaithful to a wife/fiancée, but if you do, I want the guy to feel bad about it.

Getting together is typically my favorite type of story, but I don’t mind if you write established relationship, or if you want to end the story in a tragic breakup or unrequited love or something; I am very open to these things! What I’m not interested in is setting-change AUs that make them not baseball players or not on the same team, or stories about coming out. I don’t mind if teammates find out or are told about it, but definitely nothing public.

In terms of prompts, well… fill in any of the gaps! What was it like during spring training, when they were getting to know each other and Lindor was getting to know the team? During the beginning of the season, leading up to the “rat or raccoon” argument? And when they were both struggling to hit and dealing with it in different ways. And afterwards, when the tension seemed to be diffused, or at least when they got better at hiding it. I like to imagine the “rat or racoon” argument as either a boiling-over of tension and the starting point to their relationship, or an acrimonious post-breakup argument.

Could also go for conflict caused by the Mets’ acquisition of Javy Báez. I like Báez a lot, but you can see how McNeil might not be thrilled to be shunted to left field, or that an old friend (or an old flame?) of Lindor’s is newly around and taking up all his attention.