[ME]
Jun. 29th, 2025 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reverancepavaneThe chronic pain and resulting lack of sleep is sending me quite insane. This is not a figure of speech.
reverancepavane
Horizon Zero Dawn: The Forbidden West [game, review]
Jun. 22nd, 2025 12:21 pmelfsHorizon Zero Dawn: The Forbidden West is a sequel, and it feels like one. While the central storyline started in Horizon Zero Dawn is well-covered and well-pursued by this sequel, The Forbidden West,
For all that, I enjoyed my time with Aloy and company (and it is “and company” in a very wanna-be Mass Effect way).
The Forbidden West is slightly upgraded in terms of graphics and assets, and the overall effect is breathtaking. The Forbidden West is a very pretty game, even moreso than the remastered edition of the original. The new settings, including caves, underwater, underwater caves, swamps, and seashores are all beautifully and artfully designed and decorated, and running around inside them is a source of delight if you’re the sightseeing type.
The central storyline restarts with Aloy trying to track down a surviving copy of the GAIA files, the only AI capable of restoring the globe-spanning and now slowly decaying terraforming system. This leads her westward to locations where she can supposedly find one. As one expects, she does find one, but there are complications which involve adventures to all corners of the map to find other, missing parts of the system, which in turn lead to running into one or two Big Bads, with the usual plot complications of double-crosses, underhanded schemes, and hidden agendas all leading up to the big reveal, the boss battle, and the bigger reveal leading up to the next game; the usual mass of Plot that follows around any open-world game this big. There are more than a few laugh lines, wham lines, and just outright tearjerking to keep it all moving along.
And yet, there’s something weirdly empty about The Forbidden West. The first game [spoiler alert if you haven’t played the original Horizon Zero Dawn game] had four tribes: The Nora, the Carja, the Oseram, and the Banuk, and there were relationships from a century-deep backstory between these groups that carried plot and motive. The Carja were everywhere, the military heavies of the game, still recovering from a civil war which left rebel camps everywhere, the Oseram had divided feelings about the Carja, and so on. The core NPCs, such as Vala and Erend, had reasons for disliking the other tribes, and even individuals in the other tribes, but they also recognized the value of trading or learning from them. HZD’s setting felt alive, like things happened in it even when you weren’t paying attention.
There’s very little of that in The Forbidden West. The tribes of The Forbidden West don’t interact very much at all. The Carja and Oseram have a trading district on the north-east corner of the map, so you can visit them. The Oseram have a tradition of digging out the ruins of the past, “delving,” so you run into them in The Forbidden West quite a bit. The other tribes: the Tenakth, the Utaru, and the Quen, barely interact at all. They’re all depicted as xenophobic; Aloy, as is required of the main character, impresses them and gains their trust by plot complications that lead to her saving this city or that person or that tribe. But it definitely feels static; the world doesn’t change around you unless you’re the one making the change.
On the other hand the game is overflowing with “things to do.” The original game had a simple skills tree, some vaguely annoying crafting (“Collect three owl feathers and bring them, and I can make you a bigger pouch for your healing potions”), and a little mini-game in the form of the Hunter’s Training Grounds to help you upgrade your weapons and learn a few tricks.
The Forbidden West ratchets this up to 11, with an in-game mini board-game called Machine Strike, a sort of chess-means-Warhammer; an updated melee system with combo moves as complex as anything ever seen in Mortal Combat; “Melee Training Pits” that parallel the Hunter’s Training Grounds where you practice your melee skills and earn new upgrades; more Hunter’s Training Grounds; two different kinds of “blueshine” (here “greenshine” and “brimshine”); a massive and complex skill tree of skills trees; two different potion systems (potions and food); a complex crafting system involving a lot more collecting and doing, a lot of new weapons and weapon types to master; a brutal machine combat endurance arena for more earning of legendary weapons; a “valor” combat effectiveness score; a racing game… it was just too much game. I never finished the melee pits, never played more than the tutorial game of Machine Strike, did only one race, didn’t finish the last Hunter’s Ground, never mastered the new shields technology, all because they were just distractions from Aloy’s story.
On the third hand, the lore of the game manages somehow to be pathetic in both senses: invoking only a sense of horrified pity and sadness for the world before, and so skimpy and lifeless that it really doesn’t move you very much. You find the usual lost cell phones with last messages on them, or advertisements, or reminisces. The map is almost the same size as the original game, but it feel bigger, with two different valleys full of dead machines, on both sides, from the Last Battle of the California Salient, so you find a lot of flight recorders with last words of pilots or passengers just before they went down. Yet it doesn’t quite add up to the emotional impact of the few stories in the First Bunker of HZD, the one where Aloy found her focus, or the story told as you delved GAIA Prime.
One thing that really annoyed me: in settlements and cities the lines given to NPCs were fewer and more repeated, and it got old very, very fast. Worst, the lines about one rebel leader that you heard over and over were still being repeated at the same time you were being thanked for doing the defeating! Plus, the whole “Elizabeth Sobek is God and Aloy is Jesus” (“For the goddess so loved the world that gave her only manufactured daughter”) thing kinda got both more obvious, and less worthwhile, as the plot progressed. Also, oddly, they decided not to voice the kids at all. Children are everywhere in the settlements, but you never hear them; I guess they were less plot-relevant than the incessant praise from the adults.
I don’t use “fast travel” because it feels like cheating, like teleporting about in a world where foot travel is the most common way of getting anywhere. Unlike HZD, The Forbidden West has four or five points where you have to carry something precious from one end of the map to the other and you can’t afford to stop, but you still get XP if you strike an animal with your robot horse. The sound effects include a sickeningly meaty thud and sometimes a crunch. It’s awful to hear that several times during your desperate flight, but it’s even more grotesque that as you’re doing so the game announces
Horizon Zero Dawn felt like a world in which an important story was being told in a richly designed and carefully crafted world. The Forbidden West feels much more like a stage on which Aloy is an expression of the player’s desire to be the main character with a standard set of plot points along the way. Each member of your team has a loyalty mission but they don’t accompany you otherwise. It seems like not pursuing the loyalty mission would not change the outcome. And with all the side-stuff going on, it’s hard to know if any of the props on that stage are a Chekhovian gun.
Still, you get to hang out with Vala and Erend, meet new friends, and even recruit an old enemy, to your side by the end. You can stick to the main story, and even do the satisfying side quests and even most of the errands, and do just enough of the “activities” to keep your weapons sharp, and you can finish the game without having to do all the silly extras that have been shoved into this overstuffed glinthawk.
I liked it enough that I will be playing the sequel, if and when it comes out. I do want to know how it all ends.
Sony’s marketing messed up badly when it made two follow-ons to the original, The Frozen Wilds and The Forbidden West, that have the same initials.
the second game has so much going on that it’s hard to keep track of it all, and yet it has a weirdly vacant, empty world in which all of it is happening.For all that, I enjoyed my time with Aloy and company (and it is “and company” in a very wanna-be Mass Effect way).
The Forbidden West is slightly upgraded in terms of graphics and assets, and the overall effect is breathtaking. The Forbidden West is a very pretty game, even moreso than the remastered edition of the original. The new settings, including caves, underwater, underwater caves, swamps, and seashores are all beautifully and artfully designed and decorated, and running around inside them is a source of delight if you’re the sightseeing type.
The central storyline restarts with Aloy trying to track down a surviving copy of the GAIA files, the only AI capable of restoring the globe-spanning and now slowly decaying terraforming system. This leads her westward to locations where she can supposedly find one. As one expects, she does find one, but there are complications which involve adventures to all corners of the map to find other, missing parts of the system, which in turn lead to running into one or two Big Bads, with the usual plot complications of double-crosses, underhanded schemes, and hidden agendas all leading up to the big reveal, the boss battle, and the bigger reveal leading up to the next game; the usual mass of Plot that follows around any open-world game this big. There are more than a few laugh lines, wham lines, and just outright tearjerking to keep it all moving along.
And yet, there’s something weirdly empty about The Forbidden West. The first game [spoiler alert if you haven’t played the original Horizon Zero Dawn game] had four tribes: The Nora, the Carja, the Oseram, and the Banuk, and there were relationships from a century-deep backstory between these groups that carried plot and motive. The Carja were everywhere, the military heavies of the game, still recovering from a civil war which left rebel camps everywhere, the Oseram had divided feelings about the Carja, and so on. The core NPCs, such as Vala and Erend, had reasons for disliking the other tribes, and even individuals in the other tribes, but they also recognized the value of trading or learning from them. HZD’s setting felt alive, like things happened in it even when you weren’t paying attention.
There’s very little of that in The Forbidden West. The tribes of The Forbidden West don’t interact very much at all. The Carja and Oseram have a trading district on the north-east corner of the map, so you can visit them. The Oseram have a tradition of digging out the ruins of the past, “delving,” so you run into them in The Forbidden West quite a bit. The other tribes: the Tenakth, the Utaru, and the Quen, barely interact at all. They’re all depicted as xenophobic; Aloy, as is required of the main character, impresses them and gains their trust by plot complications that lead to her saving this city or that person or that tribe. But it definitely feels static; the world doesn’t change around you unless you’re the one making the change.
On the other hand the game is overflowing with “things to do.” The original game had a simple skills tree, some vaguely annoying crafting (“Collect three owl feathers and bring them, and I can make you a bigger pouch for your healing potions”), and a little mini-game in the form of the Hunter’s Training Grounds to help you upgrade your weapons and learn a few tricks.
The Forbidden West ratchets this up to 11, with an in-game mini board-game called Machine Strike, a sort of chess-means-Warhammer; an updated melee system with combo moves as complex as anything ever seen in Mortal Combat; “Melee Training Pits” that parallel the Hunter’s Training Grounds where you practice your melee skills and earn new upgrades; more Hunter’s Training Grounds; two different kinds of “blueshine” (here “greenshine” and “brimshine”); a massive and complex skill tree of skills trees; two different potion systems (potions and food); a complex crafting system involving a lot more collecting and doing, a lot of new weapons and weapon types to master; a brutal machine combat endurance arena for more earning of legendary weapons; a “valor” combat effectiveness score; a racing game… it was just too much game. I never finished the melee pits, never played more than the tutorial game of Machine Strike, did only one race, didn’t finish the last Hunter’s Ground, never mastered the new shields technology, all because they were just distractions from Aloy’s story.
On the third hand, the lore of the game manages somehow to be pathetic in both senses: invoking only a sense of horrified pity and sadness for the world before, and so skimpy and lifeless that it really doesn’t move you very much. You find the usual lost cell phones with last messages on them, or advertisements, or reminisces. The map is almost the same size as the original game, but it feel bigger, with two different valleys full of dead machines, on both sides, from the Last Battle of the California Salient, so you find a lot of flight recorders with last words of pilots or passengers just before they went down. Yet it doesn’t quite add up to the emotional impact of the few stories in the First Bunker of HZD, the one where Aloy found her focus, or the story told as you delved GAIA Prime.
One thing that really annoyed me: in settlements and cities the lines given to NPCs were fewer and more repeated, and it got old very, very fast. Worst, the lines about one rebel leader that you heard over and over were still being repeated at the same time you were being thanked for doing the defeating! Plus, the whole “Elizabeth Sobek is God and Aloy is Jesus” (“For the goddess so loved the world that gave her only manufactured daughter”) thing kinda got both more obvious, and less worthwhile, as the plot progressed. Also, oddly, they decided not to voice the kids at all. Children are everywhere in the settlements, but you never hear them; I guess they were less plot-relevant than the incessant praise from the adults.
I don’t use “fast travel” because it feels like cheating, like teleporting about in a world where foot travel is the most common way of getting anywhere. Unlike HZD, The Forbidden West has four or five points where you have to carry something precious from one end of the map to the other and you can’t afford to stop, but you still get XP if you strike an animal with your robot horse. The sound effects include a sickeningly meaty thud and sometimes a crunch. It’s awful to hear that several times during your desperate flight, but it’s even more grotesque that as you’re doing so the game announces
+35XP - Wildlife Kill. I must have gotten over 150XP just from trampling birds, foxes, mice, and other beasties on each ride.Horizon Zero Dawn felt like a world in which an important story was being told in a richly designed and carefully crafted world. The Forbidden West feels much more like a stage on which Aloy is an expression of the player’s desire to be the main character with a standard set of plot points along the way. Each member of your team has a loyalty mission but they don’t accompany you otherwise. It seems like not pursuing the loyalty mission would not change the outcome. And with all the side-stuff going on, it’s hard to know if any of the props on that stage are a Chekhovian gun.
Still, you get to hang out with Vala and Erend, meet new friends, and even recruit an old enemy, to your side by the end. You can stick to the main story, and even do the satisfying side quests and even most of the errands, and do just enough of the “activities” to keep your weapons sharp, and you can finish the game without having to do all the silly extras that have been shoved into this overstuffed glinthawk.
I liked it enough that I will be playing the sequel, if and when it comes out. I do want to know how it all ends.
Single Medieval Women talk in Auslan!
Jun. 20th, 2025 09:50 pmsister_raphael
This year at the Abbey Medieval Festival, my talk in the University Pavilion "Single Medieval Women: Who Were They And What Did They Do?" will have an Auslan interpreter, so I'm making some adjustments to my new talk to make it easier for our sign language person!
I was asked to provide a script of my talk, but often I don't stick to the actual notes. I made a version with more common language, rewording some academic speak into other words. I have made bold some phrases and quotes so the interpreter knows that these are specifically important.
It's not dumbing the talk down, but thoughtful rephrasing.
It also gives the interpreter a chance to ask questions beforehand if something seems unclear.
Wool hood progress.
Jun. 21st, 2025 09:34 pmsister_raphaelI've finished the grey hood except the buttons and buttonholes, but since they can be worn open anyway, that's it for now.
The liripipe (tail) is stitched on and I'm pretty pleased with it. It's a little patchy looking in some lights because the wool cloth was secondhand to start with. I'm still very happy with it.
Photo to follow.
The liripipe (tail) is stitched on and I'm pretty pleased with it. It's a little patchy looking in some lights because the wool cloth was secondhand to start with. I'm still very happy with it.
Photo to follow.
Progress is hard.
Jun. 22nd, 2025 09:32 pmsister_raphaelProgress is hard when you've mad sad discoveries about the thing you're working on. It kind of takes the will to do nice work and finish it.
I'm now sewing like mad on a green cloak. I unpicked the machine stitching to hand sew it and have discovered 9 tiny holes in the fabric. I knew it was recycled wool when I bought it, but hadn't seen all the holes until I started draping it and sewing on it, so now I'm sad that I paid a good price for a cloak that has holes in it already.
I had plans to put fancy jewelled brooches on it but I won't bother now, and it's already been dropped down to Not A Good Cloak already before it's even finished.
Sigh.
Photo to follow.
I'm now sewing like mad on a green cloak. I unpicked the machine stitching to hand sew it and have discovered 9 tiny holes in the fabric. I knew it was recycled wool when I bought it, but hadn't seen all the holes until I started draping it and sewing on it, so now I'm sad that I paid a good price for a cloak that has holes in it already.
I had plans to put fancy jewelled brooches on it but I won't bother now, and it's already been dropped down to Not A Good Cloak already before it's even finished.
Sigh.
Photo to follow.
Productivity
Jun. 18th, 2025 10:10 pmsister_raphaelAfter a slow start to the day, I did manage to get a lot of computer work done today. I like to make a stash of social media posts preplanned to advertise our activities at the next event we have coming up mid July.
I've made a heap of separate ones for all of our activities and some same-but-different ones with my Medieval Woman banner instead of the Ex Libris Living History banner.
Our activites this year are:
Friday July 11
10am - 2pm Medieval Paper Doll Making (camp)
10am - 2pm Medieval Medicine Preparation (camp)
Saturday July 12
8.00am Medical Display opens (all day in camp)
9.30am Bath & Hygiene display opens (after Grand parade all day in camp)
10.30am Surgical Arrowhead Removal (camp)
1.30pm Bath & Beauty Show & Tell (camp)
2.30pm Medieval Q&A (Ask An Expert at the Pageant wagon)
Sunday July 13
8am onwards Medical Display opens (all day in camp)
9.30am onwards Bath & Hygiene display opens (after Grand Parade all day in camp)
10am Single Women: Who were they and what did they do? (University pavilion)
10.30am Surgical Arrowhead Removal (camp)
1.30pm Bath & Beauty Show & Tell (camp)
2.25pm Sickness In The Middle Ages: More Than The Black Death (University pavilion)
2.45pm Medieval Q&A (Ask An Expert at the University pavilion)
This is a pretty decent amount of activity considering it's essentially two of us doing all of it. Michelle does the medical things, and I do the lady things. We both have someone to mind our displays while we are off doing talks in other places, and we both have an in camp formal demonstration which we host in our displays. I'm very fortunate that my helper has learned a lot about my display and is able to speak well and answer questions in my absence.
This year, my sister and her two teens are joining us, so there will be a few extra hands. The down side of this is that because it's the first year after an extended break (and a lot has changed in the world of re-enactment in Australia and festivals) I am supplying everything the three of them need: clothes, eating utensils and a place to stay and camp. If it turns out that things have changed so much and she doesn't want to do it next year, my sister won't have spent a lot of money kitting herself and two teens out. If she has a great time and is keen to come again, she will want to sew her own clothes. She is a skilled seamstress and has been involved in costuming for a dance school for years.
It also means I have a lot of extra infrastructure to bring this year as well and managing the logistics of where beds will go along with other needed supplies. It's challenging. I could just cut my display back a notch for this year, but I really want to have a great display so my sister and the kids can see what it is I've been doing and how much work it is, but how nice the results are. I also need quiet spaces for the neuro spicy.
There are compromises for this year, but all in all, I think I'm heading in the right direction. There's no way it will all go up in one trip though, so it will be multiple trips to the site for setting up, and it's an hour from home in good traffic. More like two in peak hour, which is when I'll be travelling.
Anyway, wish me luck. I'm a ball of stress and my brain won't turn off at night like I really need it to. I'll be posting about my activities and more information about them specifically (with the lovely blue Medieval Woman banners too) over the next few weeks.
I've made a heap of separate ones for all of our activities and some same-but-different ones with my Medieval Woman banner instead of the Ex Libris Living History banner.
Our activites this year are:
Friday July 11
10am - 2pm Medieval Paper Doll Making (camp)
10am - 2pm Medieval Medicine Preparation (camp)
Saturday July 12
8.00am Medical Display opens (all day in camp)
9.30am Bath & Hygiene display opens (after Grand parade all day in camp)
10.30am Surgical Arrowhead Removal (camp)
1.30pm Bath & Beauty Show & Tell (camp)
2.30pm Medieval Q&A (Ask An Expert at the Pageant wagon)
Sunday July 13
8am onwards Medical Display opens (all day in camp)
9.30am onwards Bath & Hygiene display opens (after Grand Parade all day in camp)
10am Single Women: Who were they and what did they do? (University pavilion)
10.30am Surgical Arrowhead Removal (camp)
1.30pm Bath & Beauty Show & Tell (camp)
2.25pm Sickness In The Middle Ages: More Than The Black Death (University pavilion)
2.45pm Medieval Q&A (Ask An Expert at the University pavilion)
This is a pretty decent amount of activity considering it's essentially two of us doing all of it. Michelle does the medical things, and I do the lady things. We both have someone to mind our displays while we are off doing talks in other places, and we both have an in camp formal demonstration which we host in our displays. I'm very fortunate that my helper has learned a lot about my display and is able to speak well and answer questions in my absence.
This year, my sister and her two teens are joining us, so there will be a few extra hands. The down side of this is that because it's the first year after an extended break (and a lot has changed in the world of re-enactment in Australia and festivals) I am supplying everything the three of them need: clothes, eating utensils and a place to stay and camp. If it turns out that things have changed so much and she doesn't want to do it next year, my sister won't have spent a lot of money kitting herself and two teens out. If she has a great time and is keen to come again, she will want to sew her own clothes. She is a skilled seamstress and has been involved in costuming for a dance school for years.
It also means I have a lot of extra infrastructure to bring this year as well and managing the logistics of where beds will go along with other needed supplies. It's challenging. I could just cut my display back a notch for this year, but I really want to have a great display so my sister and the kids can see what it is I've been doing and how much work it is, but how nice the results are. I also need quiet spaces for the neuro spicy.
There are compromises for this year, but all in all, I think I'm heading in the right direction. There's no way it will all go up in one trip though, so it will be multiple trips to the site for setting up, and it's an hour from home in good traffic. More like two in peak hour, which is when I'll be travelling.
Anyway, wish me luck. I'm a ball of stress and my brain won't turn off at night like I really need it to. I'll be posting about my activities and more information about them specifically (with the lovely blue Medieval Woman banners too) over the next few weeks.
Dear Just Married Author
Jun. 16th, 2025 01:46 pmbeatrice_otterI use the same name everywhere so I am beatrice_otter on AO3. Treats are awesome.
I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am not inspired that way." This letter is long with lots of suggestions and preferences if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am usually very happy with my gifts.
The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.
I have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.
Here are some other things to keep in mind:
Please no incest or darkfic. I define "darkfic" as stuff where there's a lot of suffering and no hope even at the end and all the characters are terrible. Angst with a happy ending is fine, I enjoy it, but there's gotta be a payoff. Even an ambiguous ending is fine! But there has to be some note of grace or redemption or hope somewhere, it can't just be "people are awful and the world sucks, the end." I define incest as siblings and/or parents, cousins don't count.
I love outsider perspectives and academic takes on things. In-universe meta (newspaper articles, academic monographs--especially with the sort of snarky feuding common in actual real-world academia, social media feeds in current day or future worlds) is awesome.
Also, I'm picky about European historical clothing details. You don't have to talk about it at all! In fact, if you don't know much about historical clothing, I would prefer if you didn't mention it at all. My pet peeve is corsets: no, they weren't a restrictive tool of the patriarchy, no, they didn't interfere with most women's daily lives, no, most women weren't wearing them so tight they couldn't breathe.
I like religion but I'm picky about it. Basically, Christianity is deeply weird compared to most other religions, and a lot of people whose only experience with religion is living in a culturally-Christian nation assume that what they know about Christianity is some sort of universal principle of What Religion Is Like, and that's just not the case. For example, in Christianity what you believe is more important than what you do. This is not to say we Christians don't teach and practice Christian ethics or have rituals we are very attached to, but rather that if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, it doesn't matter what rituals you participate in or what ethical things you do, you are not a Christian (although you may be a "cultural Christian"). Every Christian group has at least a minimal core theology that members must affirm, but participation in ritual is far less rigidly a requirement. Most other religions rank what you do (both ethically and ritually) as more important than what you believe, and it is often quite possible to be a member in good standing if you participate in the practices and rituals even if you believe none of the teachings. Anyway, point is, if you are doing worldbuilding for a fantasy or SF or otherwise non-Christian religion ... unless it is explicitly a Christian-analogue, it should be different from Christianity. Question your assumptions and see where that leads you, and I will be fascinated and thrilled.
Marriage Tropes and the Just Married Exchange
There are so many tropes in the tag set, and so many of them are hyper-specific, and I really hate what that does to matching and also to requesting tropes. For example, there's no way to say "yeah, I love me some time travel, anything with time travel will be awesome." Unless you want to completely throw open the gates and request any (not just "any time travel" but "any trope in the tag set"), in which case you can't DNW things you don't want. It's really limiting to both requestor and author! So if you're writing for me, I hereby declare the tropes as more suggestions than as Things You Absolutely Must Include. If you feel inspired by a trope tag I did not request, you're fine as long as I did not DNW it. So, for example, if you want to write Wimsey fic, and you want to write Peter and Harriet getting divorced, that's fine, because I have not DNWed it. But you couldn't write a fic where they're in Starfleet and Harriet is a Betazoid, because I have DNWed setting change AUs.
I love all these characters and desperately crave more Wimseyverse. If you want to do a casefic of some sort, that would be delightful; a casefic centering on Parker or Bunter as the main detective with Peter in a supporting role would be lovely. But I would also be absolutely thrilled with domestic fluff or relationship issues or just the characters sitting down to tea and chatting. (Especially if you can capture Peter's piffling style or the layering of literary references in his and Harriet's speech.)
Harriet/Peter: I love their canon arc, of him falling so deeply in love immediately but her being so deeply hurt by what she's going through--and then by the baggage of being grateful to him and all the baggage of being a professional woman in that era and having to work through that as she falls in love back before she can say yes to him. I would adore anything canon-compliant set anywhere along that trajectory, or things set after they're married--during the war, maybe. However, I would also love AUs! What if they met earlier in some different way? Maybe they were both at one of Marjorie's parties. Maybe he happened to visit Oxford while recovering from the War and met Harriet there. (She was born around 1900, so she would probably have been starting 1918-1919.)
Bunter/Peter/Harriet: There are so many interesting angles you could take this! However, please DON'T go for "Peter/Bunter are established, but Peter offers to dump Bunter for Harriet" or "Peter/Bunter are established, and nothing changes in Peter's courtship of Harriet." Peter and Bunter's relationship is so fraught in canon--they play-act at the normal master-servant relationships, but Bunter's care for Peter goes far beyond that, and Peter jokes about Bunter being his wife in a way that I read as a bit "don't look too closely because in some ways it's true, but we can only acknowledge it through mockery." If you add sex to that, you get something that is even closer to marriage than their canon relationship. Peter can drop his mistresses immediately because the relationship is not based on anything deeper than sex and entertaining companionship. Bunter is in a different category altogether. I would love to see how Peter falling in love with Harriet changes things, if he and Bunter were together already. Regardless of Peter having love-at-first-sight with Harriet, I don't think he'd propose in this case without first at least talking with Bunter, which means no jail proposal. Maybe Peter (or Bunter!) sounds out Eiluned and Sylvia to figure out if it's safe to tell Harriet everything? Maybe there's a lot of angst on Bunter's part about being replaced--or maybe this time Harriet doesn't want to marry him because she doesn't think it's fair that she gets the public acknowledgement as Peter's spouse when really, it should be Bunter? Or maybe it's Peter who is angsting over the whole thing and Harriet and Bunter being very pragmatic about figuring out a workable solution. I'd love either a V with Peter in the center or a triad where all three are together with all three. Or maybe Peter and Bunter aren't together before Peter and Harriet marry (deeply in love but can't acknowledge it because of both issues with homosexuality and class), and it's Harriet--who has lived among the bohemian set--who gets the ball rolling. Or, as with Peter/Harriet, you could do an AU where they all met earlier ... and then the issue of his two years "dead" on that case become even more interesting.
Peter/Harriet/Mary/Parker: this is a sedoretu quartet for me, so Peter and Mary share a moiety and are NOT fucking. The pairings would be Peter/Harriet, Peter/Charles, Charles/Mary, Mary/Harriet. Please don't infantilize Mary, as Sayers and the fandom often do; she's only 5 years younger than Peter and was 28 in Clouds of Witness, 35 when she and Charles get engaged (during Strong Poison, in which Harriet is about 30). I think Mary should keep her revolutionary politics, even after marrying the staid middle-class policeman that is Charles Parker. I think this would make the dynamics of Strong Poison--and the Peter/Harriet courtship over the next several years--fascinating. It would add so many layers. Charles facing up to the possibility of sharing a household/sedoretu with a woman he investigated for murder! Harriet getting to know Mary, and not everything being about her issues with Peter!
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
I love alien culture worldbuilding, boldly going, exploring, wacky science hijinks, time travel, AU shenanigans. I love the hope that we can become better than we are. I love cross-cultural romance (especially when it deals realistically with having to figure out compromises--love is not all you need, you also need a lot of hard work and communication).
As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into wacky tropes, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want. One of my favorite things about DS9, it dealt with consequences. If you want to take a canon event that you think didn't get enough exploration and run with it, that would be awesome.
Do not feel bound by the trope tags. You can write anything as long as you respect my DNWs. (See note in the General section of the letter.)
I'd love something that dove into Bajoran religion, and the more ALIEN it is the better. We've MET the prophet and they have such a fundamentally different perspective on EVERYTHING than us linear creatures, I don't want it to feel like another screed on What Is Wrong With Christianity In America. You could lean into the Prophets' timey-wimey non-linearity and what that means for a religion that worships them. Most Earth religions are heavily time-based, with regular repeating festivals that serve a lot of purposes both social and religious--how would that work (or not work) when worshiping beings who see everything happening at once? Or explore the Orbs! What other orbs are there besides Time and Prophecy, and what do they DO? You don't have to have any ritual or belief or ANYTHING to use them, if they have line-of-sight to you they can DO THINGS. Give you visions! Send you time traveling! Whatever it is the others do! No Earth religion has any artifact that is anything like that, and besides wondering what the other orbs even are/do, I'm curious as to how they shaped Bajoran religion, and how it was that the Bajorans ended up worshiping the ones who SENT the orbs instead of the orbs themselves. Especially given that the Prophets mostly ... don't seem to want to be gods or care about being worshiped or what's going on on Bajor or anything. So it's not like they were sending messages with the Orbs about who sent them and why, which leaves a lot of scope for interpretation on the part of the Bajorans who found them.
I love Dax's relationship with Sisko, that lasted three hosts. What about when Sisko and Jadzia were still getting to know each other? They went from one power dynamic (Ambassador with lots of political power mentors callow youth) to a very different one (Sisko is all grown up, and Dax's superior officer, and with more life experience than Dax's current host). Negotiating that change must have been interesting, particularly if you throw in marriage to one of the hosts.
I thought that Kira and the O'Briens had a lot of chemistry, but also they have such radically different backgrounds and expectations. Culture, religion, childhood trauma--all radically different. I'd like to see how they could make it work.
I love to hate Dukat. You can use him as a villain, but don't ever forget that he's a manipulative weasel who most often actively chooses to do the worst thing possible. Even if he's doing something good in the moment, the moment is temporary.
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
My favorite parts of Star Wars includes the PT, the OT, the Zahn trilogy (especially Mara Jade) and the X-Wing books, bits and pieces from the TV shows, Rey&Finn&Poe as the only contributions from the ST, and an ending where something new and better results after all the pain and trauma. (Or at least something different.) It's not that everything has to be perfect, but I want there to be at least some growth and change. If you are inspired by other corners of the Star Wars universe, feel free to bring them in, but those are my happy places, and I am perfectly fine with completely ignoring the ST or rewriting it to make it either less stupid or less depressing (or both).
I love Lando, and I think he was absolutely right to put the safety of his entire city and everyone living in it ahead of the well-being of a couple of old friends. He is smart, pragmatic, and responsible in the best possible way. Do Leia and Lando work together on political negotiations/shenanigans while Han plays house-husband and swoops in with the Falcon when they need backup? Do Han and Lando go off and make shady business deals and come home to Leia with intelligence she can use politically? Does Lando start up a new operation--maybe mining, maybe something else--or take over an existing one after the war is over, and become a respectable businessman? I was one of the contributors to the "What if Han became Emperor by accident" thread on tumblr a while back, and my contribution was "ooh, Lando would be his Grand Vizier!" and if you want to go that direction that would also be awesome. Also, Weird Jedi Shit is always fun. I didn't include many time travel/dimension travel/soul bond/SF tropes, feel free to use one of them instead of the tropes I picked.
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, Kylo Ren
The original Zahn trilogy and the X-Wing books are my favorite parts of the old Legends universe, but I like everything EXCEPT the Courtship of Princess Leia and the New Jedi Order stuff. (Teneniel Djo is awesome! Han kidnapping Leia is really really REALLY not. And I hated pretty much everything about the Vong.) I really like it when Luke is building a new Jedi community and rebuilding old traditions. You can bring in details from the PT and newer canon, if they don't contradict major parts of the Zahn trilogy.
Mara has such a complex past. I think she has trauma from her time with Palpatine that she can't admit even to herself--he was so good at grooming young people, so very manipulative, and even when you know your abuser did evil things to you, it's still hard to internalize. I think she has a unique perspective on the Force, and the Jedi, and galactic politics, that doesn't fit easily or neatly with the others but nevertheless is important to include if they don't want to re-make the mistakes of the past. It's about how do we remember the past while working to create a new future? How do we avoid making old mistakes? How do we heal? How do we build something better?
I love Lando, and I think he was absolutely right to put the safety of his entire city and everyone living in it ahead of the well-being of a couple of old friends. He is smart, pragmatic, and responsible in the best possible way. Do Leia and Lando work together on political negotiations/shenanigans while Han plays house-husband and swoops in with the Falcon when they need backup? Do Han and Lando go off and make shady business deals and come home to Leia with intelligence she can use politically? Does Lando serve as the practical "let's get support and resources for this new Jedi Order you're building" while Luke swans around being compassionate and heroic and saving the day? (But make sure that Lando's contributions are valued and not taken for granted.) I was one of the contributors to the "What if Han became Emperor by accident" thread on tumblr a while back, and my contribution was "ooh, Lando would be his Grand Vizier!" and if you want to go that direction that would also be awesome. Also, Weird Jedi Shit is always fun.
I think Lando and Mara would do very well together; both okay with shady stuff, but both with deep principles they will not compromise. My primary ship is Luke/Mara but I was livid when they retconned Lando/Mara out with "oh, no, they were never really together, it was just an undercover thing!" Even as a very sheltered middle class white teen, I could tell that was racist bullshit, and also smacked of that patriarchal extreme-monagamist trope where "if you love each other, your previous relationships can't have meant anything!" which always hits harder for women than men. No. People can decide a relationship isn't working and end it and start new ones without devaluing and denying the previous relationship. I would love Lando/Mara. I would love Luke/Mara where either she was never with Lando at all even for undercover purposes, or where Lando/Mara used to be together and broke up amicably. I would love Luke/Lando/Mara. I would be livid at "but Lando/Mara was never a real relationship!"
Plot bunnies: Standard Star Wars shenanigans where the fate of the galaxy is at stake and Our Heroes save the day. Is there critical knowledge in a hidden holocron they have to find? Is one of the other Hands (or an Inquisitor, or some other evil Force user) making trouble for Karrde and/or the New Jedi Order and/or the New Republic? Is the Empire threatening Lando's newest business venture (again)? Is there some situation where Lando's skills as a Respectable Businessman And Administrator are crucial to saving the day?
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, twincest, the "Lando and Mara were never really together, it was all a con/undercover thing!" retcon, Kylo Ren
I tend to prefer stories that go AU sometime in season 4, and where they DON'T choose to give up technology on the new Earth. However, there's also interesting things to be done with canon as is. I like Kara fine, but as the show progressed I got annoyed with the narrative focus on her and her Sooper Special Sekrit Destiny at the expense of other characters AND everything about her that wasn't related to that Special Destiny.
Lee/Dee/Kara/Sam is the obvious solution to the whole Lee/Kara drama, and yet it would cause almost as many problems as it would solve. I think Sam and Lee would get along ok, but Dee and Kara are like oil and water, and a poly relationship requires more communication, not less, and Kara sucks at communication. And they're all traumatized, but Kara especially acts out her trauma in really unhelpful ways. So! What would it do to their time on New Caprica? Were they split up as they were in canon? Were Kara and Sam on Pegasus, or Lee and Dee on New Caprica? What happens when Sam finds out he's a Cylon? What about Kara's mystical visions? (I always headcanoned that Kara's musician father that she had visions of was actually that one Cylon that the Ones got rid of completely, which would make her a hybrid like Hera.) Does having more people to help dealing with plot and emotional crises help, or does it just make things more difficult? If Dee doesn't die, does Felix still try for a coup?
If those ideas don't inspire you, here are some ideas I've had floating in the back of my head for two decades, mix and match as you like or feel free to ignore and do your own thing.
Plot bunnies: So, the show occasionally made nods to the supply problems, and I would be interested in something either dealing with the shortages or figuring out creative substitutions. I would be interested in stuff really exploring what it's like to be a Cylon and realizing the depth of how wrong they had been and what evil they had committed. I'd be interested in political wrangling and stuff dealing with religion (although please keep Baltar and Zarek to a minimum, and if you're going for the religion angle please don't go for "religion is bad and all believers are fundamentalists" angle). I'd be interested in day-in-the-life relationship stuff.
What if Kara's father was Daniel, the Cylon model the Ones got rid of when they got rid of the Five? What if the reason Cylons can't have babies is because the Ones douse the water supply with contraceptives? (They hate having biological bodies, betcha they hate the whole idea of children and reproducing that way.) What if Caprica Six hadn't miscarried? What if the jump at the end of the series, instead of going to a prehistoric Earth, took the fleet (and the Rebel Cylons) to the Twelve Colonies a couple of months before the Cylon attack? What if the kid Leoben dug up and claimed was his and Kara's actually WAS his and Kara's?
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, Dee committing suicide
What can I say, I just love Vulcans. Trip and T'Pol were hands down my favorite thing about the show. Also, I love the idea of that Enterprise that got thrown back in time and turned into a generation ship, and I would love to see more of them and what happened when they first got thrown back in time, and also what might have happened if Lorian's Enterprise had survived.
This is the couple that had not one but TWO kids neither knew about show up, Lorian and Elizabeth. What if either had lived? What if there was some OTHER shenanigans and they had a THIRD kid pop up, either through a normal pregnancy or some other SFnal shenanigans?
A note on worldbuilding: so much of the things we're told about Vulcans in Enterprise makes NO SENSE when compared with ... anything in any other Star Trek show ever. For example, how do you outlaw melds and telepathic contact when YOU NEED TELEPATHIC BONDS TO MATE EVERY SEVEN YEARS?!?!?!?!? You can either ignore the contradictions or lean into them and find explanations for them.
As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into the wacky tropes Star Trek was known for, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want with the time travel and travel to alternate universes and weird missions.
I love alien culture worldbuilding. I love boldly going and exploring and wacky science hijinks and time travel and alternate universe shenanigans. I love the hopeful attitude that we can become better than we are (but it might take a lot of work). I love cross-cultural romance (especially when it deals realistically with having to figure out what compromises each is going to make on what they expect out of a relationship--love is not all you need, you also need a lot of hard work and communication).
Prompts: what was life like when Enterprise was stuck back in time just waiting for things to come around so they could attack the Xindi weapon, knowing that Lorian was going to be the only one of them still alive when it happened? Pon Farr and its ramifications: if T'Pol has to go through Pon Farr with Trip how does that affect her relationship with them, both working and personal? IWhat about T'Pol's relationships with her family and friends back on Vulcan? What about T'Pol's neurological damage, how does that affect things? Or just a normal episode-like shenanigans!
Please ignore the last episode.
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, episode: "These are the Voyages ..."
I love alien culture worldbuilding, boldly going, exploring, wacky science hijinks, time travel, AU shenanigans. I love the hopeful attitude that we can become better than we are. I love cross-cultural romance (especially when it deals realistically with having to figure out what compromises each is going to make on what they expect out of a relationship--love is not all you need, you also need a lot of hard work and communication).
As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into wacky tropes, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want with the time travel and travel to alternate universes and weird missions.
Guinan is awesome, but please tone down the Magical Negro stereotype--she's not just The Wise Magic Advisor. She's got her own prejudices and traumas. I would love anything that dove into her past or her culture. Picard and Guinan have INCREDIBLE chemistry. Watch Time's Arrow and see the way he LOOKS AT HER. Something with time travel and meeting in the wrong order a la Time's Arrow would be interesting, but so would them hanging out together and being friends. Or an adventure from before they were together on Enterprise. Or an AU where Picard doesn't get back to the present in Time's Arrow because he stays with her, and then they have adventures trying to find a way to send him forward in time. I don't like most of the Picard TV show, but I do appreciate Picard and Guinan's stuff.
Riker/Ro: the episode where they have amnesia is amazing, I love stories that deal with what happened afterwards. Before that, they have such great conflict, because Riker is trying to manage Ro and not connecting with her, and Ro has Problems With Authority (unless she independently has come to respect the individual, as with Picard). Then they have amnesia and sleep together! And then they try to pretend it never happened.
Geordi was great. Professional in the face of all the wackiness Star Trek could throw at him, very smart, very compassionate. Aside from that one episode with the genetically engineered society, they didn't do much with his blindness besides "disabilities give you superpowers" with his visor. What are the downsides to it? What, if any, tradeoffs did he have to make, and was it his choice or something his parents decided for him? Does he ever get grief from fellow officers about "what happens if your visor gets knocked off, you'll be blind!" as if not being able to see would make him incompetent? He and Data have that wonderful friendship that is rock solid that I love to see explored and transmuted into romance.
Deanna Troi/Worf: This is three different cultures, and 'human' is the place in the middle that they both understand, but I'd be interested in something that explored the 'alien' cultures and didn't assume 'human' as normal. Klingon gender roles are that the women are loud and violent and the men read love poetry. Deanna's more the poetry type than the loud and violent type, and I'm not sure how much of a soft side Worf has. So neither of them quite 'fit' Klingon gender/sexual norms. Feel free to bring in the perspective Martok and the others had on mental illness when they were trapped in that Dominion prison camp, that mental illness is an enemy to fight and it takes a lot of strength to fight an enemy in your own head. From that perspective, Deanna is a weapons trainer for the mind.
Picard & Ro: I love the friendship and mentorship they have despite (or maybe because of) their differences, and the mutual trust they built. I'd be interested in an episode-type story set before she defected to the Maquis, or an AU where she didn't for some reason, or something after the Dominion War when she's no longer a terrorist. Or a role-reversal AU where Bajor is the perfect paradise world that's the founder of the Federation and provides most of the people for Starfleet, and Earth is the one conquered by the Cardassians. I absolutely LOVE Ro Laren, she's such a contrast to the rest of them.
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
Ah, the fandom of my youth! This was my first fandom that was mine, and not just something the family watched together. I love the layering of the themes, and how you can watch it on multiple levels (action/adventure, character arcs, political allegory, deeper themes about truth and freedom and who are you and what do you want and why are you here). The characters and their story arcs were all so compelling. One of the things I love about Babylon 5 is that there were so many characters where the fact that they were antagonists didn't mean they were stupid or bad people, just people with a different perspective honestly trying to do what is right.
I especially love Minbari culture. If you do worldbuilding for Minbari culture, past, present, or future, I will love you forever. I consider "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" canon and firmly believe that when Sinclair went into the past and became Valen, he found Catherine again after she was lost in time.
Stephen Franklin was a terribly underused character I love his warmth and the strong unbendable core of his ethics, and my two favorite people to see him with are Susan and Marcus. I love the playfulness of Marcus and Stephen together, although I headcanon Marcus as a romantic ace (or possibly demisexual). (Feel free to change Marcus' fate.) Maybe Marcus and Stephen get together on Mars when they're pretending to be a couple! Maybe Stephen saves Marcus' life when he tries to throw it away to save Susan, and that changes things between them.
What if Neroon survived somehow and had to learn to be religious caste? Or maybe something exploring his earlier career, or his relationship with Branmer, or the complexities and frustrations of his encounters with Delenn, or his time on the Gray Council.
I love John and Delenn together, but she is way too smart for him and I like it best when he knows he's a bit out of his league and a bit uncomfortable at all the alien stuff (and yet maybe a bit excited by it under the surface). The political implications of their relationship, on both Earth and Minbar, fascinate me.
Susan/Marcus! I think Susan would be much more comfortable with Marcus if all he wanted was a good screw, without all the feelings. I headcanon Marcus as a romantic ace or demi, so he'd be fine with no sex at all, but what he really wants is the feelings. How they negotiate this can be very interesting. (Feel free to change Marcus' fate.) Also, the religious tags aren't just for Minbari religion; you could do something of the two of them celebrating Jewish holidays or rituals.
How would Neroon and John get along as part of a marriage? What about John and Lennier? What if John were the only human in a four-person marriage, how would he handle that and how would the rest of them handle him? So many possibilities.
Is there a problem on Babylon 5 that needs to get solved? Is there some Minbari cultural rite or Earthforce political intrigue? Is the PsiCorps making trouble? I'd also love something post-series about peace-building.
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
Is sedoretu the norm at all levels of society? Do both Goblins and Elves practice it? What does it do to Varenechibel's marital history--were there two spouses he kept and he just kept swapping out the fourth?
Vedero and Maia as two parts of a sedoretu (sharing the same moiety, of course) means that any of the children born to the sedoretu are children of the Imperial line; does that mean that Vedero's child with Csevet or Nurevis (depending on which you write) could be the next Emperor? (What political shenanigans would that cause? What pressures? I bet a lot of people would then be wanting Maia and Csethiro to not have kids until after Vedero has had several ...) If Chavar could have gotten Nurevis in, he would have pushed that instead of his niece; would he have found that Nurevis was much less willing to bow to his wishes once he wasn't dependent on his father? What (if anything) would that do to Chavar's participating in a coup? Does it push it back until a few months after the wedding when it's clear it hasn't cemented his hold over Maia? If Chavar doesn't stage a coup, how does that change things (and how does Maia get rid of him when he's not just the Chancellor, but Maia's father-in-law)? If he does, what is that like, what does it do to the marriage?
Chenelo lives! There are so many possibilities. I'm fine with either "she was never sick" or "she got medical treatment she was denied in canon and got better" or pretty much anything. I'm interested in AUs where she was never relegated, or where she lived in relegation with Maia until he inherited, or even where she was relegated and then Varenechibel brought her back to court for some reason. (This is a perfect place for "villain has amnesia"--if Varenechibel hit his head and forgot everything, he'd still be a cold and unpleasant person; but if he didn't remember being in love with Pazhiro, he might not resent Chenelo as much, and might rank "diplomatic relationship with Barizhan" as more important than "my personal resentment".) Or maybe her half sister the pirate came and stole her and Maia away and they've lived quite happily in a foreign land until Varenechibel and his older sons died in the crash. Or maybe Varenechibel dies before she gets relegated, and then the Elvish court marries her off because they need a reason to keep her (and Maia) in the Ethuveraz, because while Maru would probably only want Maia as an heir because he doesn't have one, what if he wants Maia so that his heir will have a claim to the throne of the Ethuveraz ...
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
beatrice_otter on AO3. Treats are awesome.I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am not inspired that way." This letter is long with lots of suggestions and preferences if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am usually very happy with my gifts.
The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.
I have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.
General Likes and Dislikes
Here are some other things to keep in mind:
- I like stuff that takes side characters and puts them center-stage, especially when the characters and/or actors are marginalized. I enjoy seeing them come to life.
- I don't like it when marginalized characters get relegated to the sidekick/supporting/helper role so that it can be All About The White Dude.
- I like it when female characters are more than just the Strong Female Character(tm) or The Nurturer.
- I like fluff
- I like angst with a happy ending
- I like stories that make me think about things in a new way.
- I like to know that culture matters to people, and to see how different cultures interact and where the clashes are.
- I like unreliable narrators.
- I like acknowledgment that different people can have different points of view without either of them being wrong.
- I like stories that engage with problematic aspects of the source, and which deal with privilege in one way or another instead of sweeping it under the rug.
- Worldbuilding is my jam, I am pretty much always up for explorations of why the world is the way it is. I love hearing about the economics, the politics, the religion, the clothing, the history, the folklore, all of that kind of stuff. And I want to know why it matters--how is all this cultural background stuff affecting the characters, the plot, everything. You don't have to do deep worldbuilding, but I'll enjoy it if you do.
- I don't like it when plots hinge on characters being selectively stupid, or selectively unable to communicate. Like, if they are stupid or a himbo or whatever in general, or have problems communicating in general, that's fine! Or if they canonically have a blind spot in that area, again, it's fine. But if it's just "the only way I can think of for this plot to work is if the character spontaneously and temporarily loses half their intelligence and competence," then I'm going to spend the rest of the fic wondering why the character didn't just ____?
- I like AUs, but not complete setting AUs (i.e. no highschool or college or coffee shop AUs, and especially not mundane AUs--nothing where you keep characters but drop most of the worldbuilding). I like fork-in-the-road type AUs, where one thing is different and the changes all result from that one thing, and you explore what might have been if such-and-such happened.
- I like the concept of sedoretu marriages.
- I like historical AUs, but only when the author actually knows the history period in question and does thoughtful worldbuilding to meld actual culture of the time with the canon.
- Crackfic is really hit and miss for me, sometimes I love it and sometimes I can't stand it. Basically, if it's the characters we know and love in a ludicrous situation, that's great. If they're OOC or parodied in order to make something funny ... it's not funny to me.
Please no incest or darkfic. I define "darkfic" as stuff where there's a lot of suffering and no hope even at the end and all the characters are terrible. Angst with a happy ending is fine, I enjoy it, but there's gotta be a payoff. Even an ambiguous ending is fine! But there has to be some note of grace or redemption or hope somewhere, it can't just be "people are awful and the world sucks, the end." I define incest as siblings and/or parents, cousins don't count.
I love outsider perspectives and academic takes on things. In-universe meta (newspaper articles, academic monographs--especially with the sort of snarky feuding common in actual real-world academia, social media feeds in current day or future worlds) is awesome.
Also, I'm picky about European historical clothing details. You don't have to talk about it at all! In fact, if you don't know much about historical clothing, I would prefer if you didn't mention it at all. My pet peeve is corsets: no, they weren't a restrictive tool of the patriarchy, no, they didn't interfere with most women's daily lives, no, most women weren't wearing them so tight they couldn't breathe.
I like religion but I'm picky about it. Basically, Christianity is deeply weird compared to most other religions, and a lot of people whose only experience with religion is living in a culturally-Christian nation assume that what they know about Christianity is some sort of universal principle of What Religion Is Like, and that's just not the case. For example, in Christianity what you believe is more important than what you do. This is not to say we Christians don't teach and practice Christian ethics or have rituals we are very attached to, but rather that if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, it doesn't matter what rituals you participate in or what ethical things you do, you are not a Christian (although you may be a "cultural Christian"). Every Christian group has at least a minimal core theology that members must affirm, but participation in ritual is far less rigidly a requirement. Most other religions rank what you do (both ethically and ritually) as more important than what you believe, and it is often quite possible to be a member in good standing if you participate in the practices and rituals even if you believe none of the teachings. Anyway, point is, if you are doing worldbuilding for a fantasy or SF or otherwise non-Christian religion ... unless it is explicitly a Christian-analogue, it should be different from Christianity. Question your assumptions and see where that leads you, and I will be fascinated and thrilled.
Marriage Tropes and the Just Married Exchange
There are so many tropes in the tag set, and so many of them are hyper-specific, and I really hate what that does to matching and also to requesting tropes. For example, there's no way to say "yeah, I love me some time travel, anything with time travel will be awesome." Unless you want to completely throw open the gates and request any (not just "any time travel" but "any trope in the tag set"), in which case you can't DNW things you don't want. It's really limiting to both requestor and author! So if you're writing for me, I hereby declare the tropes as more suggestions than as Things You Absolutely Must Include. If you feel inspired by a trope tag I did not request, you're fine as long as I did not DNW it. So, for example, if you want to write Wimsey fic, and you want to write Peter and Harriet getting divorced, that's fine, because I have not DNWed it. But you couldn't write a fic where they're in Starfleet and Harriet is a Betazoid, because I have DNWed setting change AUs.
Peter Wimsey
I love all these characters and desperately crave more Wimseyverse. If you want to do a casefic of some sort, that would be delightful; a casefic centering on Parker or Bunter as the main detective with Peter in a supporting role would be lovely. But I would also be absolutely thrilled with domestic fluff or relationship issues or just the characters sitting down to tea and chatting. (Especially if you can capture Peter's piffling style or the layering of literary references in his and Harriet's speech.)
Harriet/Peter: I love their canon arc, of him falling so deeply in love immediately but her being so deeply hurt by what she's going through--and then by the baggage of being grateful to him and all the baggage of being a professional woman in that era and having to work through that as she falls in love back before she can say yes to him. I would adore anything canon-compliant set anywhere along that trajectory, or things set after they're married--during the war, maybe. However, I would also love AUs! What if they met earlier in some different way? Maybe they were both at one of Marjorie's parties. Maybe he happened to visit Oxford while recovering from the War and met Harriet there. (She was born around 1900, so she would probably have been starting 1918-1919.)
Bunter/Peter/Harriet: There are so many interesting angles you could take this! However, please DON'T go for "Peter/Bunter are established, but Peter offers to dump Bunter for Harriet" or "Peter/Bunter are established, and nothing changes in Peter's courtship of Harriet." Peter and Bunter's relationship is so fraught in canon--they play-act at the normal master-servant relationships, but Bunter's care for Peter goes far beyond that, and Peter jokes about Bunter being his wife in a way that I read as a bit "don't look too closely because in some ways it's true, but we can only acknowledge it through mockery." If you add sex to that, you get something that is even closer to marriage than their canon relationship. Peter can drop his mistresses immediately because the relationship is not based on anything deeper than sex and entertaining companionship. Bunter is in a different category altogether. I would love to see how Peter falling in love with Harriet changes things, if he and Bunter were together already. Regardless of Peter having love-at-first-sight with Harriet, I don't think he'd propose in this case without first at least talking with Bunter, which means no jail proposal. Maybe Peter (or Bunter!) sounds out Eiluned and Sylvia to figure out if it's safe to tell Harriet everything? Maybe there's a lot of angst on Bunter's part about being replaced--or maybe this time Harriet doesn't want to marry him because she doesn't think it's fair that she gets the public acknowledgement as Peter's spouse when really, it should be Bunter? Or maybe it's Peter who is angsting over the whole thing and Harriet and Bunter being very pragmatic about figuring out a workable solution. I'd love either a V with Peter in the center or a triad where all three are together with all three. Or maybe Peter and Bunter aren't together before Peter and Harriet marry (deeply in love but can't acknowledge it because of both issues with homosexuality and class), and it's Harriet--who has lived among the bohemian set--who gets the ball rolling. Or, as with Peter/Harriet, you could do an AU where they all met earlier ... and then the issue of his two years "dead" on that case become even more interesting.
Peter/Harriet/Mary/Parker: this is a sedoretu quartet for me, so Peter and Mary share a moiety and are NOT fucking. The pairings would be Peter/Harriet, Peter/Charles, Charles/Mary, Mary/Harriet. Please don't infantilize Mary, as Sayers and the fandom often do; she's only 5 years younger than Peter and was 28 in Clouds of Witness, 35 when she and Charles get engaged (during Strong Poison, in which Harriet is about 30). I think Mary should keep her revolutionary politics, even after marrying the staid middle-class policeman that is Charles Parker. I think this would make the dynamics of Strong Poison--and the Peter/Harriet courtship over the next several years--fascinating. It would add so many layers. Charles facing up to the possibility of sharing a household/sedoretu with a woman he investigated for murder! Harriet getting to know Mary, and not everything being about her issues with Peter!
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
DS9
I love alien culture worldbuilding, boldly going, exploring, wacky science hijinks, time travel, AU shenanigans. I love the hope that we can become better than we are. I love cross-cultural romance (especially when it deals realistically with having to figure out compromises--love is not all you need, you also need a lot of hard work and communication).
As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into wacky tropes, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want. One of my favorite things about DS9, it dealt with consequences. If you want to take a canon event that you think didn't get enough exploration and run with it, that would be awesome.
Do not feel bound by the trope tags. You can write anything as long as you respect my DNWs. (See note in the General section of the letter.)
I'd love something that dove into Bajoran religion, and the more ALIEN it is the better. We've MET the prophet and they have such a fundamentally different perspective on EVERYTHING than us linear creatures, I don't want it to feel like another screed on What Is Wrong With Christianity In America. You could lean into the Prophets' timey-wimey non-linearity and what that means for a religion that worships them. Most Earth religions are heavily time-based, with regular repeating festivals that serve a lot of purposes both social and religious--how would that work (or not work) when worshiping beings who see everything happening at once? Or explore the Orbs! What other orbs are there besides Time and Prophecy, and what do they DO? You don't have to have any ritual or belief or ANYTHING to use them, if they have line-of-sight to you they can DO THINGS. Give you visions! Send you time traveling! Whatever it is the others do! No Earth religion has any artifact that is anything like that, and besides wondering what the other orbs even are/do, I'm curious as to how they shaped Bajoran religion, and how it was that the Bajorans ended up worshiping the ones who SENT the orbs instead of the orbs themselves. Especially given that the Prophets mostly ... don't seem to want to be gods or care about being worshiped or what's going on on Bajor or anything. So it's not like they were sending messages with the Orbs about who sent them and why, which leaves a lot of scope for interpretation on the part of the Bajorans who found them.
I love Dax's relationship with Sisko, that lasted three hosts. What about when Sisko and Jadzia were still getting to know each other? They went from one power dynamic (Ambassador with lots of political power mentors callow youth) to a very different one (Sisko is all grown up, and Dax's superior officer, and with more life experience than Dax's current host). Negotiating that change must have been interesting, particularly if you throw in marriage to one of the hosts.
I thought that Kira and the O'Briens had a lot of chemistry, but also they have such radically different backgrounds and expectations. Culture, religion, childhood trauma--all radically different. I'd like to see how they could make it work.
I love to hate Dukat. You can use him as a villain, but don't ever forget that he's a manipulative weasel who most often actively chooses to do the worst thing possible. Even if he's doing something good in the moment, the moment is temporary.
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
SWOT
My favorite parts of Star Wars includes the PT, the OT, the Zahn trilogy (especially Mara Jade) and the X-Wing books, bits and pieces from the TV shows, Rey&Finn&Poe as the only contributions from the ST, and an ending where something new and better results after all the pain and trauma. (Or at least something different.) It's not that everything has to be perfect, but I want there to be at least some growth and change. If you are inspired by other corners of the Star Wars universe, feel free to bring them in, but those are my happy places, and I am perfectly fine with completely ignoring the ST or rewriting it to make it either less stupid or less depressing (or both).
I love Lando, and I think he was absolutely right to put the safety of his entire city and everyone living in it ahead of the well-being of a couple of old friends. He is smart, pragmatic, and responsible in the best possible way. Do Leia and Lando work together on political negotiations/shenanigans while Han plays house-husband and swoops in with the Falcon when they need backup? Do Han and Lando go off and make shady business deals and come home to Leia with intelligence she can use politically? Does Lando start up a new operation--maybe mining, maybe something else--or take over an existing one after the war is over, and become a respectable businessman? I was one of the contributors to the "What if Han became Emperor by accident" thread on tumblr a while back, and my contribution was "ooh, Lando would be his Grand Vizier!" and if you want to go that direction that would also be awesome. Also, Weird Jedi Shit is always fun. I didn't include many time travel/dimension travel/soul bond/SF tropes, feel free to use one of them instead of the tropes I picked.
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, Kylo Ren
SW Legends
The original Zahn trilogy and the X-Wing books are my favorite parts of the old Legends universe, but I like everything EXCEPT the Courtship of Princess Leia and the New Jedi Order stuff. (Teneniel Djo is awesome! Han kidnapping Leia is really really REALLY not. And I hated pretty much everything about the Vong.) I really like it when Luke is building a new Jedi community and rebuilding old traditions. You can bring in details from the PT and newer canon, if they don't contradict major parts of the Zahn trilogy.
Mara has such a complex past. I think she has trauma from her time with Palpatine that she can't admit even to herself--he was so good at grooming young people, so very manipulative, and even when you know your abuser did evil things to you, it's still hard to internalize. I think she has a unique perspective on the Force, and the Jedi, and galactic politics, that doesn't fit easily or neatly with the others but nevertheless is important to include if they don't want to re-make the mistakes of the past. It's about how do we remember the past while working to create a new future? How do we avoid making old mistakes? How do we heal? How do we build something better?
I love Lando, and I think he was absolutely right to put the safety of his entire city and everyone living in it ahead of the well-being of a couple of old friends. He is smart, pragmatic, and responsible in the best possible way. Do Leia and Lando work together on political negotiations/shenanigans while Han plays house-husband and swoops in with the Falcon when they need backup? Do Han and Lando go off and make shady business deals and come home to Leia with intelligence she can use politically? Does Lando serve as the practical "let's get support and resources for this new Jedi Order you're building" while Luke swans around being compassionate and heroic and saving the day? (But make sure that Lando's contributions are valued and not taken for granted.) I was one of the contributors to the "What if Han became Emperor by accident" thread on tumblr a while back, and my contribution was "ooh, Lando would be his Grand Vizier!" and if you want to go that direction that would also be awesome. Also, Weird Jedi Shit is always fun.
I think Lando and Mara would do very well together; both okay with shady stuff, but both with deep principles they will not compromise. My primary ship is Luke/Mara but I was livid when they retconned Lando/Mara out with "oh, no, they were never really together, it was just an undercover thing!" Even as a very sheltered middle class white teen, I could tell that was racist bullshit, and also smacked of that patriarchal extreme-monagamist trope where "if you love each other, your previous relationships can't have meant anything!" which always hits harder for women than men. No. People can decide a relationship isn't working and end it and start new ones without devaluing and denying the previous relationship. I would love Lando/Mara. I would love Luke/Mara where either she was never with Lando at all even for undercover purposes, or where Lando/Mara used to be together and broke up amicably. I would love Luke/Lando/Mara. I would be livid at "but Lando/Mara was never a real relationship!"
Plot bunnies: Standard Star Wars shenanigans where the fate of the galaxy is at stake and Our Heroes save the day. Is there critical knowledge in a hidden holocron they have to find? Is one of the other Hands (or an Inquisitor, or some other evil Force user) making trouble for Karrde and/or the New Jedi Order and/or the New Republic? Is the Empire threatening Lando's newest business venture (again)? Is there some situation where Lando's skills as a Respectable Businessman And Administrator are crucial to saving the day?
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, twincest, the "Lando and Mara were never really together, it was all a con/undercover thing!" retcon, Kylo Ren
BSG
I tend to prefer stories that go AU sometime in season 4, and where they DON'T choose to give up technology on the new Earth. However, there's also interesting things to be done with canon as is. I like Kara fine, but as the show progressed I got annoyed with the narrative focus on her and her Sooper Special Sekrit Destiny at the expense of other characters AND everything about her that wasn't related to that Special Destiny.
Lee/Dee/Kara/Sam is the obvious solution to the whole Lee/Kara drama, and yet it would cause almost as many problems as it would solve. I think Sam and Lee would get along ok, but Dee and Kara are like oil and water, and a poly relationship requires more communication, not less, and Kara sucks at communication. And they're all traumatized, but Kara especially acts out her trauma in really unhelpful ways. So! What would it do to their time on New Caprica? Were they split up as they were in canon? Were Kara and Sam on Pegasus, or Lee and Dee on New Caprica? What happens when Sam finds out he's a Cylon? What about Kara's mystical visions? (I always headcanoned that Kara's musician father that she had visions of was actually that one Cylon that the Ones got rid of completely, which would make her a hybrid like Hera.) Does having more people to help dealing with plot and emotional crises help, or does it just make things more difficult? If Dee doesn't die, does Felix still try for a coup?
If those ideas don't inspire you, here are some ideas I've had floating in the back of my head for two decades, mix and match as you like or feel free to ignore and do your own thing.
Plot bunnies: So, the show occasionally made nods to the supply problems, and I would be interested in something either dealing with the shortages or figuring out creative substitutions. I would be interested in stuff really exploring what it's like to be a Cylon and realizing the depth of how wrong they had been and what evil they had committed. I'd be interested in political wrangling and stuff dealing with religion (although please keep Baltar and Zarek to a minimum, and if you're going for the religion angle please don't go for "religion is bad and all believers are fundamentalists" angle). I'd be interested in day-in-the-life relationship stuff.
What if Kara's father was Daniel, the Cylon model the Ones got rid of when they got rid of the Five? What if the reason Cylons can't have babies is because the Ones douse the water supply with contraceptives? (They hate having biological bodies, betcha they hate the whole idea of children and reproducing that way.) What if Caprica Six hadn't miscarried? What if the jump at the end of the series, instead of going to a prehistoric Earth, took the fleet (and the Rebel Cylons) to the Twelve Colonies a couple of months before the Cylon attack? What if the kid Leoben dug up and claimed was his and Kara's actually WAS his and Kara's?
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, Dee committing suicide
Enterprise
What can I say, I just love Vulcans. Trip and T'Pol were hands down my favorite thing about the show. Also, I love the idea of that Enterprise that got thrown back in time and turned into a generation ship, and I would love to see more of them and what happened when they first got thrown back in time, and also what might have happened if Lorian's Enterprise had survived.
This is the couple that had not one but TWO kids neither knew about show up, Lorian and Elizabeth. What if either had lived? What if there was some OTHER shenanigans and they had a THIRD kid pop up, either through a normal pregnancy or some other SFnal shenanigans?
A note on worldbuilding: so much of the things we're told about Vulcans in Enterprise makes NO SENSE when compared with ... anything in any other Star Trek show ever. For example, how do you outlaw melds and telepathic contact when YOU NEED TELEPATHIC BONDS TO MATE EVERY SEVEN YEARS?!?!?!?!? You can either ignore the contradictions or lean into them and find explanations for them.
As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into the wacky tropes Star Trek was known for, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want with the time travel and travel to alternate universes and weird missions.
I love alien culture worldbuilding. I love boldly going and exploring and wacky science hijinks and time travel and alternate universe shenanigans. I love the hopeful attitude that we can become better than we are (but it might take a lot of work). I love cross-cultural romance (especially when it deals realistically with having to figure out what compromises each is going to make on what they expect out of a relationship--love is not all you need, you also need a lot of hard work and communication).
Prompts: what was life like when Enterprise was stuck back in time just waiting for things to come around so they could attack the Xindi weapon, knowing that Lorian was going to be the only one of them still alive when it happened? Pon Farr and its ramifications: if T'Pol has to go through Pon Farr with Trip how does that affect her relationship with them, both working and personal? IWhat about T'Pol's relationships with her family and friends back on Vulcan? What about T'Pol's neurological damage, how does that affect things? Or just a normal episode-like shenanigans!
Please ignore the last episode.
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, episode: "These are the Voyages ..."
TNG
I love alien culture worldbuilding, boldly going, exploring, wacky science hijinks, time travel, AU shenanigans. I love the hopeful attitude that we can become better than we are. I love cross-cultural romance (especially when it deals realistically with having to figure out what compromises each is going to make on what they expect out of a relationship--love is not all you need, you also need a lot of hard work and communication).
As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into wacky tropes, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want with the time travel and travel to alternate universes and weird missions.
Guinan is awesome, but please tone down the Magical Negro stereotype--she's not just The Wise Magic Advisor. She's got her own prejudices and traumas. I would love anything that dove into her past or her culture. Picard and Guinan have INCREDIBLE chemistry. Watch Time's Arrow and see the way he LOOKS AT HER. Something with time travel and meeting in the wrong order a la Time's Arrow would be interesting, but so would them hanging out together and being friends. Or an adventure from before they were together on Enterprise. Or an AU where Picard doesn't get back to the present in Time's Arrow because he stays with her, and then they have adventures trying to find a way to send him forward in time. I don't like most of the Picard TV show, but I do appreciate Picard and Guinan's stuff.
Riker/Ro: the episode where they have amnesia is amazing, I love stories that deal with what happened afterwards. Before that, they have such great conflict, because Riker is trying to manage Ro and not connecting with her, and Ro has Problems With Authority (unless she independently has come to respect the individual, as with Picard). Then they have amnesia and sleep together! And then they try to pretend it never happened.
Geordi was great. Professional in the face of all the wackiness Star Trek could throw at him, very smart, very compassionate. Aside from that one episode with the genetically engineered society, they didn't do much with his blindness besides "disabilities give you superpowers" with his visor. What are the downsides to it? What, if any, tradeoffs did he have to make, and was it his choice or something his parents decided for him? Does he ever get grief from fellow officers about "what happens if your visor gets knocked off, you'll be blind!" as if not being able to see would make him incompetent? He and Data have that wonderful friendship that is rock solid that I love to see explored and transmuted into romance.
Deanna Troi/Worf: This is three different cultures, and 'human' is the place in the middle that they both understand, but I'd be interested in something that explored the 'alien' cultures and didn't assume 'human' as normal. Klingon gender roles are that the women are loud and violent and the men read love poetry. Deanna's more the poetry type than the loud and violent type, and I'm not sure how much of a soft side Worf has. So neither of them quite 'fit' Klingon gender/sexual norms. Feel free to bring in the perspective Martok and the others had on mental illness when they were trapped in that Dominion prison camp, that mental illness is an enemy to fight and it takes a lot of strength to fight an enemy in your own head. From that perspective, Deanna is a weapons trainer for the mind.
Picard & Ro: I love the friendship and mentorship they have despite (or maybe because of) their differences, and the mutual trust they built. I'd be interested in an episode-type story set before she defected to the Maquis, or an AU where she didn't for some reason, or something after the Dominion War when she's no longer a terrorist. Or a role-reversal AU where Bajor is the perfect paradise world that's the founder of the Federation and provides most of the people for Starfleet, and Earth is the one conquered by the Cardassians. I absolutely LOVE Ro Laren, she's such a contrast to the rest of them.
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
Babylon 5
Ah, the fandom of my youth! This was my first fandom that was mine, and not just something the family watched together. I love the layering of the themes, and how you can watch it on multiple levels (action/adventure, character arcs, political allegory, deeper themes about truth and freedom and who are you and what do you want and why are you here). The characters and their story arcs were all so compelling. One of the things I love about Babylon 5 is that there were so many characters where the fact that they were antagonists didn't mean they were stupid or bad people, just people with a different perspective honestly trying to do what is right.
I especially love Minbari culture. If you do worldbuilding for Minbari culture, past, present, or future, I will love you forever. I consider "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" canon and firmly believe that when Sinclair went into the past and became Valen, he found Catherine again after she was lost in time.
Stephen Franklin was a terribly underused character I love his warmth and the strong unbendable core of his ethics, and my two favorite people to see him with are Susan and Marcus. I love the playfulness of Marcus and Stephen together, although I headcanon Marcus as a romantic ace (or possibly demisexual). (Feel free to change Marcus' fate.) Maybe Marcus and Stephen get together on Mars when they're pretending to be a couple! Maybe Stephen saves Marcus' life when he tries to throw it away to save Susan, and that changes things between them.
What if Neroon survived somehow and had to learn to be religious caste? Or maybe something exploring his earlier career, or his relationship with Branmer, or the complexities and frustrations of his encounters with Delenn, or his time on the Gray Council.
I love John and Delenn together, but she is way too smart for him and I like it best when he knows he's a bit out of his league and a bit uncomfortable at all the alien stuff (and yet maybe a bit excited by it under the surface). The political implications of their relationship, on both Earth and Minbar, fascinate me.
Susan/Marcus! I think Susan would be much more comfortable with Marcus if all he wanted was a good screw, without all the feelings. I headcanon Marcus as a romantic ace or demi, so he'd be fine with no sex at all, but what he really wants is the feelings. How they negotiate this can be very interesting. (Feel free to change Marcus' fate.) Also, the religious tags aren't just for Minbari religion; you could do something of the two of them celebrating Jewish holidays or rituals.
How would Neroon and John get along as part of a marriage? What about John and Lennier? What if John were the only human in a four-person marriage, how would he handle that and how would the rest of them handle him? So many possibilities.
Is there a problem on Babylon 5 that needs to get solved? Is there some Minbari cultural rite or Earthforce political intrigue? Is the PsiCorps making trouble? I'd also love something post-series about peace-building.
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
The Goblin Emperor
I love how hopepunk this series is: yes, terrible things have happened, and yes, there are genuinely evil people, and yes, there are people who aren't evil but are nonetheless really awful. And yet, despite it all, good people win. There are people who can be trusted to be good, and kind, and loyal. I love how three-dimensional everyone is, not just the heroes but the villains, too. If you wanted to bring in historical flourishes, I'd be happy with parallels to European history, but I'd be ECSTATIC if you brought in non-Western ideas, practices, structures, clothing styles, and institutions.Is sedoretu the norm at all levels of society? Do both Goblins and Elves practice it? What does it do to Varenechibel's marital history--were there two spouses he kept and he just kept swapping out the fourth?
Vedero and Maia as two parts of a sedoretu (sharing the same moiety, of course) means that any of the children born to the sedoretu are children of the Imperial line; does that mean that Vedero's child with Csevet or Nurevis (depending on which you write) could be the next Emperor? (What political shenanigans would that cause? What pressures? I bet a lot of people would then be wanting Maia and Csethiro to not have kids until after Vedero has had several ...) If Chavar could have gotten Nurevis in, he would have pushed that instead of his niece; would he have found that Nurevis was much less willing to bow to his wishes once he wasn't dependent on his father? What (if anything) would that do to Chavar's participating in a coup? Does it push it back until a few months after the wedding when it's clear it hasn't cemented his hold over Maia? If Chavar doesn't stage a coup, how does that change things (and how does Maia get rid of him when he's not just the Chancellor, but Maia's father-in-law)? If he does, what is that like, what does it do to the marriage?
Chenelo lives! There are so many possibilities. I'm fine with either "she was never sick" or "she got medical treatment she was denied in canon and got better" or pretty much anything. I'm interested in AUs where she was never relegated, or where she lived in relegation with Maia until he inherited, or even where she was relegated and then Varenechibel brought her back to court for some reason. (This is a perfect place for "villain has amnesia"--if Varenechibel hit his head and forgot everything, he'd still be a cold and unpleasant person; but if he didn't remember being in love with Pazhiro, he might not resent Chenelo as much, and might rank "diplomatic relationship with Barizhan" as more important than "my personal resentment".) Or maybe her half sister the pirate came and stole her and Maia away and they've lived quite happily in a foreign land until Varenechibel and his older sons died in the crash. Or maybe Varenechibel dies before she gets relegated, and then the Elvish court marries her off because they need a reason to keep her (and Maia) in the Ethuveraz, because while Maru would probably only want Maia as an heir because he doesn't have one, what if he wants Maia so that his heir will have a claim to the throne of the Ethuveraz ...
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, setting change AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
Brooch bling!
Jun. 17th, 2025 10:39 amsister_raphael
Another small job before the next event!
I bought this leaf green wool cloak which will be re stitched by hand, but I also will be sewing these jewelled brooches onto it. I had a mustard cloak I was going to use but it seemed like too much brown. Green is better, yes?
The brooches themselves were a very generous gift, and I absolutely can't believe they are for me! Here's what they will look like on the cloak:
