potentialities

We're running perilously short of football. Soon we will be entirely out.

( divisional games )

( championship games )

The NFL got me a Wild Card Weekend for my birthday but they neglected to put a Patrick Mahomes in it. Don't think Roger Goodell read my wishlist very carefully, probably because he was too busy concocting evil schemes like blowing out the TV ratings record by making the Chiefs play the Cowboys on Thanksgiving and scheduling us into a bunch of other inconvenient times and places. Oh well, nothing left to do now but watch and root for the teams that I hate the most to lose to the teams that I hate at least somewhat less.

( hate ratings, or hatings, if you will )

The Chiefs defense played a one hour Dungeons & Dragons one-shot together. I can relate because when my team is out of the playoffs, I also want to retreat to a world of fantasy and maybe try to kill some people!

There's a teaser on Instagram if you're curious but not a one-hour video curious.

Dear Yuletide author,

I am so pleased that we share an interest in one of these fandoms and I can’t wait to read what you write for me this Yuletide!

I enjoy a wide variety of stories, all year round but especially at Yuletide. I love short, punchy stories and longer, plotter stories, explicitly smutty and/or kinky stories and coy stories that are all about the teasing and the implications, stories with some kind of meta angle to them and stories that engage with the source material 100% on its own terms, stories with ships that are canon and stories with ships that aren’t.

I am mayhap on AO3 as well. I have checked to make sure I have gifts enabled.

L’art du crime | The Art of Crime (TV)
Alexandre Pardo
Antoine Verlay
Florence Chassagne

I came here for the art history and the murders but they sucked me into the will-they-won’t-they relationship! Sometimes it starts feeling strained or contrived when the characters keep not getting together for so long, but with Antoine and Florence I can believe it—they’re both being utterly ridiculous, of course, but Antoine is so alienated from his own emotions and Florence is so overwhelmed by hers, it’s plausible they keep getting in their own way. I do very much want to see them them get together, but I also enjoy the pining and the denial. Established relationship fic that breezes through the actual get-together part is another great option!

Feel free to put in as much or as little of both art history and murders as you like. I really love the device of Florence’s imagined conversations with artists, if there’s anyone you’d like to have offer her their input. The fact that Antoine still doesn’t know that they shared a childhood connection with the little boy in the Monet painting is still hanging out there, waiting to perhaps be resolved at some point. The Louvre is one of the greatest locations in the world and any amount of time spent there with anything in the collection is always a delight.

I’m also extremely fond of Alex! The premise requires something to keep Antoine in OCBC in spite of the fact he so clearly does not belong, but he accomplishes this role so delightfully. I love that he’s determined to save Antoine from himself at the cost of bringing utter chaos into his own department, and he really rocks the combination of the dapper vests and eternally put-upon expressions. I’d really enjoy a story where he continues to be substantially involved in mediating their relationship, maybe even getting even more deeply enmeshed somehow. However, if that aspect doesn’t speak to you or you just have other ideas you want to explore, I don’t want to box you in at all, since I’d also be perfectly happy with a story where he is not a main character or doesn’t appear.

Character exception: okay to write a story that either doesn’t focus on or doesn’t include Alex.


Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli RPF
Eli Manning
Peyton Manning

The Manningcast is, to me, the best thing to happen to televised football since the computer-generated first down line, and I’ve gotten much more fond of both Manning brothers, their sibling dynamic, their post-NFL career choices, and their roles within the larger Manning Football Universe. I’d love a fic that does something with that dynamic , whether it be directly depicting the production or filming of the broadcast or something more closely connected by being based on the version of themselves and their schtick that they put out on selected Monday nights. I love the bickering, the rivalry, the goofiness, and also the parts where they’re just watching football with us.

What, precisely, you do with all of this is entirely up to you. Feel free to use any real people (or fictional characters, for that matter, why not?) as potential guests on the show—it wouldn’t need to be someone I’m personally a fan of to work in this context! The thing where Eli absolutely torments Tom Brady merely by existing will never not be funny to me. Bill Belichick might not want to come back on the show since he has been very busy imploding his whole life, but what if he did, or what if they at least tried unsuccessfully to get him on? That “ManningCast: The Musical” promo video they did last year is incredible and I particularly enjoyed it because I also happen to love musical theatre, but you could channel that same energy with anything equally off the wall and it’d be fitting. Or, if anyone is interested in changing one letter to change a fandom, I would love to delve into the forbidden realm of Manningcest. Draw up whatever play you like here and feel free to audible.


Plain Girl — Virginia Sorenson
Esther Lapp
Mary

I love how delicately and yet powerfully this book explores Esther’s thoughts and feelings—about her family, the Amish community, their way of life, and of course about her new friend Mary, whom she finds so beautiful, not just for her pretty dresses, but also things like her silky hair and her dimpled elbows as well as her wonderful kindness and tact in welcoming her to school and becoming her bosom friend. It’s written as a seduction and that seduction is a good thing, a fountain that sends forth sweet water and not bitter. I see flashes of an eroticism as well, like Esther touching Mary’s hair and finding it so beautiful that a shiver goes through her fingers and her heart starts to beat very fast, or Mary showing Esther her petticoat when they’re planning to change clothes with each other, which I find really lovely.

Even though they don’t end up wearing each other’s clothes at school they must do it eventually, somewhere, sometime! I’d love for that to be explored in a story, at any age or perhaps more than once, as they get older. Anything exploring their relationship and how it develops in the future would be wonderful. There’s a lot of potential for angst and difficulty but also for love and sharing. Esther, of course, has her new sister-in-law and her brother in her corner when it comes to blending the old and the new, with her parents much more tentatively open, but Mary’s family is wide open for exploration, and so are the rest of their peers. I’d love gen or getting together or established relationship or pre-ship fic all equally.

The Professor — Charlotte Brontë
Frances Evans Henri
Hunsden Yorke Hunsden
William Crimsworth

I am fascinated the role that Hunsden Yorke Hunsden plays in this story, who is of the things that makes it different from Vilette, which is essentially a heavily-revised second draft of The Professor. From the beginning he alternates between needling William and performing these extremely thoughtful favors for him, although it's not always easy for him to get under William's skin as William perversely enjoys some of his bluntness. He brings out such an interesting side of Frances when he meets her, too—I love that promptly she gets into three arguments with him in a row, and the third time she doesn't even believe in the argument she's making; she just wants to fight with him!

I'm particularly interested in a story set when William and Frances are living in England and Hunsden is their neighbor. I love how he has apparently latched onto their family in lieu of starting their own, especially the way he seems to practically be a coparent to Victor when he’s at home. I would love more about their daily life as it's sketched all too briefly in that last chapter, or a story about something that happens as Victor gets older and goes to school, which William worries about.

I would also love threesome fic! William would be almost hopelessly scandalized by the prospect, I think, and surely Frances too, but then with the dynamic both she and Hunsden have with William where they love to tease him I can imagine it working out somehow. I do love stories where characters fumble their way into unusual relationships or sexual practices without quite knowing what they're doing or having the usual vocabulary to talk about it, which is sort of what I would picture here. But I absolutely would be just as happy with a story that explores the dynamic among them some other way.

We learned this week on New Heights that Jason Kelce has a conspiracy theory that Gritty is actually a ripoff of himself, because a.) he was introduced after Jason made a big impression with his famous Super Bowl parade speech and b.) he has substantial eyebrows. (Travis doesn’t buy this theory because c.) literally everything else about Gritty’s appearance.)

Had this bombshell been revealed before Yuletide, I would have needed to do a fair bit of revision to incorporate it into my story, but since it wasn't, I shan't.

We also learned that, sadly, Travis has never taken Pat to a hockey game. This is the NHL’s fault for not maintaining a franchise in Kansas City, which would be the most convenient location for them to go on bro dates. Travis yearns to share his love of hockey!

…but when they do, they get fucking annihilated lmao fml

People thought that the 2024 Chiefs were frauds. People thought that Patrick Mahomes wasn’t a top three quarterback in the league and didn’t deserve to go to the Pro Bowl. People thought that Josh Allen was the dangerous one when he used his legs. People thought that this year could actually be the Bills’ year. People thought that their prayers to be spared seeing the Chiefs in the Super Bowl again this year might be answered by some kind of merciful deity. People thought a lot of things.

The Chiefs are going back to the Super Bowl. That's already farther than any other back-to-back winners have made it in the third year. Obviously I would prefer to complete the threepeat, but I think we're doing pretty okay so far.

Commanders @ Eagles — This game really got out of hand by the end and thus did not hold a lot of interest for the neutral fan. It did end up introducing quite a lot of more casual viewers to the concept of the palpably unfair act which is found in the NFL rulebook. Good times!

Bills @ Chiefs — People find it ridiculous when Chiefs fans say that the Chiefs will simply start playing better in the playoffs, but here's the thing: they legitimately do. They've adopted a paradigm whereby they play a twenty game preseason in order to prepare for a three- to four-game season.

This game was nothing like our regular season game against the Bills. Not that they wouldn't have liked to win that game, and they tried to win that game, but not the same way that they tried to win this game. It helped that we’d gotten various offensive and defensive players back, of course, but we were also doing things like calling Patrick Mahomes designed runs, which never happens in a mere preseason game. (I've seen fans of other teams not realize that Andy isn't calling any of these runs. Pat is just so good at reading the defenses and knowing when he can scramble successfully that it seems like it might have been designed.) Xavier Worthy made the Bills live to regret trading back with us to let us draft him. On the other side of the ball, Spags was calling blitzes so exotic that I think you might need a license to keep them. Genuine works of art.

They had to go ahead and be dazzling, because the Bills are a good team with a really good quarterback who happens to be living in his own personal timeloop hell. This is the fourth time in five years that he's had his postseason ended by the Chiefs and frankly he looked like a hollow shell of a man in the postgame. He seems like a pretty nice guy and it’s fun to watch him play, especially if I don’t need him to lose for seeding purposes, but honestly, I feel like it gives us an edge in each subsequent postseason game when he sees our uniforms and flashes back to the previous losses and that’s so helpful. Don't really feel bad for a lot of Bills fans, though, especially the ones who attacked our players with snowballs last year and hanged a Mahomes muppet in effigy. I hope they, specifically, never experience joy.

There was an adorable moment after Pat ran in his second touchdown when he tried to spike the ball and completely muffed it, possibly because Travis was all up in his personal space. I think he was just being proactive, lest any Bills players try to start something with Pat like they did when he ran in his first touchdown and Trav had to fend them off. ❤️

It's kind of wild that we’re rerunning our matchup against the Eagles after we already had a rematch with the 49ers last year. Jason has already committed to rooting for the Eagles against his own brother, much to Travis’s disgust. That subplot should be entertaining!

Another batch of six wild card games are in the books and five of them were blowouts won by the home team. Sure, that sounds boring and perfunctory, but when you bear in mind that the Chargers were two-and-a-half point favorites as the away team because everyone involved in setting that line apparently forgot that they were dealing with the Chargers, one third of the games were upsets!

Chargers @ Texans — it's a testament to how fundamentally cursed the Chargers are as a franchise that I'm incapable of taking them seriously as a division rival even when they find themselves in the playoffs. Watching them get absolutely buried by a Texans team that had been largely left for dead engendered more secondhand embarrassment than glee, honestly. Justin Herbert threw more interceptions in this single playoff game (four) than he did in an entire seventeen-game regular season (three). That fun fact will be the entire legacy of the 2024 Chargers.

This game caused much weeping and gnashing of teeth on tumblr, a bizarre pocket mirrorverse where the Chargers are one of the most popular teams in the NFL, second only to the Joe Burrow Bengals. This lies in sharp contrast to the real world, where a woman became a viral superstar for attending a Chargers game and being discernibly invested in the outcome and people suggested she could be a plant.

Steelers @ Ravens — I had hoped that something interesting, maybe even an upset, might happen here, purely because this was a divisional matchup and sometimes those can get weird, but nah. Just another blowout.

Broncos @ Bills — The seven seed is an abomination. The Broncos did not belong here at all and it showed. I did enjoy seeing them get demolished, though. That is a true division rivalry, where hatred springs eternal.

Packers @ Eagles — You know this was not an entertaining game when it causes concern that the Eagles offense didn't do more in a game that they won 22-10. Again, seven seeds simply should not be here. I do also hate the Packers so I didn't totally object to seeing them lose.

Commanders @ Buccaneers — This is it! The game that was exciting for a neutral fan! The Commanders upset the Bucs by a field goal that doinked through the uprights as time expired. It could hardly have been any closer, and since I was quite neutral, I was entertained.

Vikings @ Rams — I don't know why I ever bother to get even a little bit invested in a Vikings team. All they ever do when they do well is find new ways to disappoint. I have to say, going 14-2 with a chance to seize the one seed and the bye in their final game only to get blown out, stuck in the five seed, and get blown out again in the wild card round was certainly new. I have to say, it was very considerate of Sam Darnold to turn back into a pumpkin in plenty of time to avoid creating a quarterback controversy. The most fun Vikings team to make an improbable run behind an unexpectedly-elevated backup quarterback before ending their season in a playoff blowout is still the 2017 Case Keenum Vikings, anyway.

It's been twenty long days since I saw a meaningful snap of Chiefs football. I can't wait for Saturday afternoon.

This year the Chiefs gave me the delightful gift of a non-stressful win for Christmas. No one-score margins of victory, no wacky antics as time expires, just a nice 29-10 stomping of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who are a playoff team, even, although I think they were already fading down the stretch before we got there, but whatever.

With Hollywood Brown back, we've finally realized the vision for what the offense was supposed to be, albeit with DeAndre Hopkins filling in for what Rashee Rice would have been doing, and that trade didn't even cost us that much. If we'd had this offense all year, those games wouldn't have been so stressful to watch in the first place. Regardless, we went 15-1 and locked up the one seed, even though the schedulers absolutely tried to kill us with the excessively-early week six bye and the late three games in eleven days gauntlet, and it's not like the wins count any less if they're crazy and stressful. Now with nothing left to play for until the divisional round we have a ton of time to rest our starters, get healthy, game plan, etc.

This must be absolutely infuriating to watch if you're a fan (or a player, or a coach…) of another team. It's so much fun for me, though!

The good news is that the Chiefs improved to 13-1 and still control the one seed! The bad news is that my poor baby Pat has sprained an ankle again. We already had one ankle scare a month and a half ago against the Bucs, although he refused to come out of that game and afterwards Andy told the media that he has, and I quote, “the loosest ankles in America,” which honestly sounds like an old-timey way of calling him a slut. This time it was bad enough that allowed himself to be removed from remainder of the game, albeit ungraciously, but he says that it’s not as bad as the sprain in the divisional round against the Jags in 2023 that he played through in the AFCCG and then the Super Bowl.

The most annoying thing is that it didn’t need to happen in the first place, like, at all. The Chiefs were already playing with a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency offensive line with Joe Thuney sliding over to left tackle because all the actual tackles are too hurt or too untrusted at the moment. It was suboptimal, but combined with some nifty play calling that had Pat constantly dancing out of danger, they were definitely getting away with it in the first half. It helped that Jameis, being Jameis, absolutely could not stop turning the ball over, so while the Chiefs offense was literally being pressured, in the larger, more metaphorical sense, there was very little pressure on them at all. In the second half, even though the Browns defense clamped down on the run and Pat was dropping back a million miles, chucking incompletion after incompletion and getting knocked around constantly, the Chiefs were still up 21-7 with five minutes left to play when Andy made the fateful decision to go for it on fourth and three. Pat dropped back to attempt yet another pass and got folded up like an origami crane.



He wants to play on Saturday because of course he does. It's not like I don't believe he can play through a sprained ankle, because, I mean, I've already seen him win a Super Bowl on a sprained ankle in 2023. I just didn't particularly want to test whether that feat was repeatable, especially since we're already rerunning the minimum viable receiver talent experiment of 2024. Doing both at once feels…challenging. Especially since then we have the accursed Netflix Christmas Day game on an even shorter week.