Dear Yoda

Thanks so much for creating for me!

In general, I’m easy to please and hard to disappoint. As long as my gift features something I’ve mentioned wanting, I’m going to be delighted no matter where else inspiration takes you along the way – so please don't stress about whether your idea is too dark, too niche, not shippy enough, whatever. I'm also fine with any past or background ships you want to include. If you're looking at my letter thinking 'hmm, she hasn't mentioned [thing], but it doesn't seem wildly out of line with her tastes' - your instincts are good, you should include the thing, I bet I'll love it. :D

If a prompt seems to suggest a longer story, I’d also be thrilled with a short scene or excerpt based on that concept. Ditto, if a prompt sounds fic-oriented, please feel free to adapt it to your preferred use. I'm requesting both fic and art for everything, and am totally open to treats in other media.

If anything is unclear in this letter, or you’d like more information about something, I’m always happy to answer questions through the mods.

Thanks so much, and happy creating!

lucymonster

General info

⛔ Do not want

Underage: explicit <18 sex, any <16 sex, any <13 romance
Unrequested incest
Extreme gore
Any mention of child death, including pregnancy loss
Child harm, except as angsty backstory for requested characters
AUs other than canon divergence (incl trope AUs: please no a/b/o, soulmarks etc)
Unrequested alignment-change AUs ('on-screen' alignment changes during the course of a fic are welcome)
Unrequested identity headcanons
Poetry
Infidelity (as in deception - but poly, open relationships etc are welcome)
Unwarned major character death (tag or author’s note appreciated!)

⭐ Story likes
In general, my favourite stories are the ones where the characters feel like real, live, messy and imperfect people. I love fics that are thought-provoking or uncomfortable to read. I love to relax into well-earned (or not-so-well-earned) moments of happiness for my otherwise beleaguered faves. I love to laugh. Favourite themes include:

anything with a strong character focus
characters who are flawed and abrasive and challenging to love; difficult or dysfunctional relationships
any level of shippiness or non-shippiness: pre-ship, relationships that don't work out or gennish plot-based fic with my requested ship as a secondary focus are all a-okay with me
dark/gritty/moody aesthetics
imperfect happiness, bittersweetness, unfulfilled yearning
complicated, bittersweet twists on seemingly fluffy premises
ensemble casts, background characters, outsider POV
competence porn, especially of the ’walking human disaster is also breathtakingly competent’ variety
mundane details, little moments of human vulnerability
politics, bureaucracy, propaganda
banter, snark, gallows humour, quippiness
guilty pleasures: denying them, suppressing them, and finally giving into temptation
tropes: hurt/comfort, enemies to lovers, forced proximity, huddling for warmth, fake relationships, bodyswap
descriptions of food, characters eating or sharing food, food as comfort
kidfic: the ups and downs of new parenthood; characters with fraught pasts determined to do better for their kids; tough guys going soft over little ones; dwelling in lavish, messy, sticky, smiley detail on how cute babies are (biokids, surprise acquisitions, OCs or canonical kids drawn however implausibly into my ship's care are all good)
military details
harsh environments, brutal weather, survival/adventure stories
redemption (or failed redemption)
religion
meta-fic stuff: subversions, tongue-in-cheek use of tropes, crack treated (semi-)seriously, genre-savvy characters, narratorial asides, really anything that engages playfully with the fictional world we're sharing
non-standard formats: creative POVs, drabbles, non-linear narratives, social media, in-universe meta.

💀 Dark likes
I love my dark themes both overt and covert - if you're not feeling the in-your-face disasterfest, by all means creep me out with subtle insinuations or dark twists to sweet-seeming premises. Some favourite themes:

unreliable narrators
characters doing terrible things for sympathetic reasons
grey morality, antiheroes, villain-centred morality
extremist politics, callous bureaucracies, the mundane horrors of life under the jackboot
'ugly' mental illness: violence, paranoia, self-destructiveness, warped thinking
self-harm, suicide attempts or ideation
psychological horror
coercion, blackmail, abuse of power
victim blaming
self-harm, self-destructiveness, suicide attempts
physical torture: flogging, beating, burrning, bone-breaking, electrocuting
psychological/'enhanced interrogation' style torture: sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, stress positions, extreme noise and temperature, deliberate humiliation.

🍑 Smut likes
In general I love sex that says something about the people involved, that's awkward and imperfect and humanising. Specific sex acts are less important to me than characterisation: I'm ready and eager to be sold on pretty much any kink if it's being used as a lens to bring my faves’ desires, beliefs, motives, hangups and relationship skills (or lack thereof) into focus.

🎨 Art likes
Any of my fic likes that can translate visually are just as relevant to my taste in art. For any of my ficcier prompts or favourite tropes, I'd be over the moon to receive an illustration from the hypothetical fic that fills them. I love dark, shadowy colour palettes and goth/metal/industrial styles and an overall moody gloom. I love symbolism and meaningful visual motifs, and I'm open to oblique, metaphorical depictions of ships just as much as pictures of people kissing. (But I am also, to be clear, still very keen on pictures of people kissing.)

On a different note, fluffy art is also amazing. I love chibis, cuddle piles and all manner of sugary cuteness. Polka dots or rainbows in the background just because? You son of a bitch, I'm in. My ship holds hands in the background while their new pet hamster frolics across most of the canvas? Just make sure that little guy's cheeks are as chubby as they come! Throw my grumpy black-clad faves into a scene of lollipops and sparkles? I'll squeal so much that even my ship's new pet hamster will think I'm shrill. I also adore that trend of tiny chibi characters with food items larger than they are.

Request details

Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Voe
Ben Solo | Kylo Ren & Voe

Frenemies with benefits at the temple. Frenemies without benefits at the temple. Forced to work together on a training exercise gone wrong. Fake dating for Reasons (the reasons are probably something stupid to do with claustrophobic small-school politics and/or Skywalker family drama). Sticking together just because there are so few other people to choose from. Becoming adults together, with all the messiness and missteps that entails.

Voe surviving the Minemoon and joining the Resistance. Voe surviving the Minemoon and falling to the dark side in a quest for vengeance against her would-be killer. Voe surviving the Minemoon and turning her back on the Force altogether until someday, somehow, her path and Ben's cross again. Redeemed Ben being forced to face Kylo Ren's first true victim.

Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Jacen Syndulla
Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren & Finn/Rose Tico & Poe Dameron/Jacen Syndulla

Ben survives Exegol. Now comes the really awkward part: figuring out how to live with the other half of his dyad and her friends who he's given every possible reason to hate him. Team missions to clean up what's left of the First Order? Dysfunctional New New Republic politics? Quiet but unavoidably enmeshed civilian lives? I'm up for anything!

I'm pretty relaxed about relationship configurations here. Ensemble of allies with their black sheep ex-enemy is what I'm after and I've picked the tags I think best lend themselves to that, but I'm fine with focusing more on certain subsets of characters than others, and with lopsided or non-mutual poly if you're creating for one of those tags. Some sub-dynamics I particularly like are Rey and Ben having a volatile but irresistible connection (whether or not they work out romantically), the trio having some form of three's-a-crowd energy (Poe and Finn uniting under the 'wtf is Rey doing with Kylo' banner; Finn as the peace-loving middleman between Rey and Poe's frenemy tendencies; Poe struggling to understand Rey and Finn's shared Force sensitivity; etc), Jacen and Poe having history, Jacen and Ben having history, and Rose 'doing talking' Tico feeling out of her depth among all these slightly larger-than-life personalities.

Also relevant to my interests: AU Ben who never technically fell to the dark side but is still complicated and kind of a jerk. I especially love stories where he takes more after his father than his mother vis-à-vis respectable career/lifestyle choices.

Voe/Any Female Character
Suralinda Javos/Any Female Character
Qi'ra/Any Female Character
Hera Syndulla/Any Female Character
Carise Sindian/Any Female Character
Bo-Katan Kryze/Any Female Character
Bazine Netal/Any Female Character

Rare femslash grab-bag! I'm totally down for ships of one, ships that have never met before, ships that have never even appeared in the same property - go as wild as you like! I am into xeno only in its very mildest forms (firmly humanoid aliens like Suralinda and Hera yes please, but Wookiees or Dowutins or Yaddle are not so much my thing); age gaps are welcome, consent issues are welcome, rival or enemy ships are welcome and encouraged. Strong-willed, flawed, difficult women in fraught relationships are my flavour of choice. If you can hit that note, I'm basically guaranteed to love whatever you're cooking. :D

Leia Organa/Luke Skywalker/Han Solo & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Rey
Leia Organa/Luke Skywalker/Han Solo & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Leia Organa & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren

The trio parent Ben together even though not one of them is equipped for the job. The trio parent Ben together and it works just well enough to stop him falling. The trio parent Ben together and it doesn't stop him falling, but instead of scattering in the aftermath, they weather the tragedy by each other's sides. The trio (or parts thereof) and Ben survive the sequel trilogy and search for a way to mend what's broken.

Leia moves heaven and earth to bring her son home. Leia faces Kylo Ren on Starkiller instead of Han. Leia comes to terms with the ways she failed her son and the ways he failed her. Ben comes in from the cold, and Leia does whatever it takes to keep him out of prison/permanent exile/death row because she's sacrificed everything else for the sake of the galaxy but she will not sacrifice him. Leia lives to see that her son still loves her. Leia and Ben both live to reconcile in whatever fraught, painful, desperate way is still possible for them.