Dear creator

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 except Rivers of London, where a few of my requests are fic-only - but I've marked those clearly below. I'm totally open to treats in other media for any canon.

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
Incest
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 identity headcanons
Poetry
Unwarned major character death (tag or author’s note appreciated!)
Art-specific DNW: extreme gore (blood/cuts/bruises good, innards bad).

DNW clarification: With 'incest', I was really only thinking about abuses of authority by elder relatives. My DNW used to say 'parent-child incest'; I wanted to broaden it to also rule out grandparents, aunts, uncles, manipulative older siblings, etc, but I've broadened it a bit too far. Cousins are fine. Other peripheral relatives are fine. Siblings who didn't grow up together are fine. Siblings who did grow up together and are mutually consenting may very likely also be fine, but I'm slightly picky about close sibling ships so please ask through the mods first on that one.

⭐ 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.

Some dynamics I’m reliably weak for:

I can’t believe I get to touch this exquisite goddess, I’m so overwhelmed
Ugh this jerk drives me mad but I can’t seem to keep my hands off them
I’m an actual human disaster and this sex is going to have to make up for the therapy I’m not getting
This love is forbidden and could ruin my life but I just can’t resist.

🎨 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 shadowy colour palettes and dark/gothy/edgy 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.) Action scenes are great. Weapons are great. Costume porn is great. Cool locations and eye-catching props or backgrounds are great.

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.

For explicit art, I've no objection to seeing genitals, but they're never really the main draw for me, if that makes sense? I'm more interested in what's going on with the characters' bodies overall, the feelings of intimacy and need and desire between them, and most especially in the expressions on their faces. I prefer natural, “flawed” bodies over Hollywood-perfect ones, so please feel free and encouraged to include details that a Playboy photographer might have preferred to airbrush out!

Request details

The Locked Tomb

(Fic and art)
Nona & Our Lady of the Passion
Our Lady of the Passion & Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead
Our Lady of the Passion/The Messenger
Our Lady of the Passion/Coronabeth Tridentarius

I came away from Nona absolutely obsessed with Blood of Eden in general and Pash in particular. I love love love the whole idea of this mundane(-ish) rebel militia out there in Magical Topsy-Turvy Necromancer World, fighting a hopelessly asymmetrical war against an enemy that can literally eat planets for breakfast. I love the desperation, the anger, the extremism, the incredible courage and the devastating corrosion of the Edenites' humanity as they push themselves to such heartless lengths for such a noble, sympathetic cause. I love Pash for her toughness, her fanaticism, her shitty attitude, her abrasive persona, her inability to get along with basically anyone - and, despite all that, the loyalty she commands from her soldiers and the trust from her superiors. I love the jarring contradictions she embodies of defiance and obedience, of coolness and uncoolness, of ego and self-sacrifice, of callousness and a love for the cause so deep that she's willing to stake everything she has on it. I love her machetes and her blue hair and her facial scars. (Artists: I really, really love her machetes and her blue hair and her facial scars.)

I hardly even know where to begin prompting for this fandom - I just want more of it all! I want to hear more about Nona's adorable one-sided crush on Pash. More about Pash's Edenite upbringing and her relationship with Wake - Wake, who was cold enough to deploy her own child as a weapon but warm enough to inspire such intensely personal devotion in her niece. More of Pash bickering and sniping and with Aim and pretending they both disdain each other as people while really being quietly, wholeheartedly committed to each other. More of Pash bickering and sniping even harder with Crown - an interpersonal tension that can clearly only be resolved with passionate hatesex. I'm sorry not to have more specific ideas for prompts here but I'm really, truly open to anything you want to do - if it features Pash and BoE, you've already won my whole heart.

The Love Hypothesis

(Fic and art)
Adam Carlsen/Olive Smith

I know and love that this is reskinned Reylo, but I actually ship it pretty differently from how I ship Reylo. So please don't look to my Reylo prompts for inspiration in this canon - they will lead you astray! I am basically here for three things:
1) Adam ~~Driver~~ Carlsen being all darkly, weirdly handsome and intimidating and professionally competent and emotionally useless.
2) pining pining pinING PINING PINING PINING PIN-
3) All the trappings of academia and the nitty-gritty details of academic life.

Some fic ideas:
- An AU set in a different academic field of your choice. I'm down to read about these two in any discipline - the more pedantic details included, the better!
- An AU where The Kiss never happens and Adam has to stew in his yearning for that much longer. How else might they have ended up together? Maybe they finally (officially) meet because Olive ends up needing him on her dissertation committee, thus making the ethical issues that much worse? Or maybe she finishes her PhD and ends up on staff?
- A scene from early in their (real) relationship, as they adjust to no longer having to pretend they're just doing each other a favour with all the dates.

Some art ideas:
- Olive watching Adam moving the truck.
- Olive watching Adam playing ultimate frisbee.
- Adam just being all gooey-eyed at Olive no matter what she's doing.
- The two of them out for coffee on one of their Fake Dating Wednesdays.
- Honestly, any scene from the book illustrated. I want the whole thing in pictures! <3
- A quiet night in, super casual and cosy. Olive in a messy bun and her daggiest PJs. Adam in his Mathletes shirt.
- Olive's graduation.
- The two of them working in the lab together.

Rivers of London

DNW clarifications for this canon:
- Lesley's wrecked face emphatically does not count under my gory art DNW! I would LOVE a picture of Lesley's wrecked face!!
- Oblique allusions to canonical child harm/death are okay, but please no direct discussion of it. What I mean is, I'm not asking you to AU anything out - it's fine to mention incidents that we both know full well involved serious child harm, but please don't actually specify what happened during the incidents or dwell on them in depth.

Also, please note I've only read the first seven novels (Rivers of London through to Lies Sleeping. Feel free to mention content from the later novels or for any of the novellas as needed - I'm not worried about spoilers - but I'm probably not the best audience for any fic/art that relies on proper knowledge of those other works.

(Fic and art)
Lesley May & Thomas Nightingale
Lesley May & Martin Chorley

I adore every single thing about Lesley and, while I was happy with the direction her story took, I really wanted more depth and detail about - well, pretty much all of it. What was it like for her working with Chorley? How did she handle the cognitive dissonance, all the "lesser" evils she made herself complicit in for the sake of what she'd decided was the greater good? How did her training progress? What contingencies did she have in place against him, knowing what tended to happen to allies who outlived their usefulness?

I'm also very wistful for the Lesley-comes-in-from-the-cold story we didn't get. Surely her abilities mean all bets are off as far as prosecution or disciplinary action go, especially now that she's been outside Nightingale's supervision for so long, learning fuck knows what from Chorley. The Folly has got to be the only place for her, right? And Nightingale the only person qualified to imprison/debrief/rehabilitate her?

Art-wise, I would dearly love to see Lesley's injured face - is the "fix" really permanent, or is she still disfigured underneath the glamour? Or something that plays around with her mask as a motif, or the unnaturalness that Peter noticed about her magically restored appearance.

(Fic only)
Martin Chorley & Thomas Nightingale
Martin Chorley & Albert Woodville-Gentle
Martin Chorley & Little Crocodiles

Chorley and the Little Crocodiles hit my very specific "going off to university and discovering forbidden occult secrets while surrounded by the lofty trappings of academia" narrative kink, and Chorley's whole shtick of remorseless evil hidden behind a cultured, personable, tastefully geeky mask just absolutely fascinates me. So I'd love to see those things explored in more detail: posh dinners full of subtly cutthroat networking; hours spent scouring old Latin tomes for ever deeper and more awful knowledge; visits to the Strip Club of Doctor Moreau; fever dreams of an overly romanticised, loosely Tolkien-inspired dark age where (rich, white, well-connected) men could aspire to deeds worthy of song. Please lean aaall the way in to how fundamentally corrupted these men's worldview is and yet how fervently they believe it. The horror elements surrounding both Faceless Men really worked for me, too, so feel free to get as twisted and awful with their crimes as you like.

I'm also super into the contrast between Chorley's utterly selfish approach to magic and Nightingale's devotion to duty; the way Chorley interprets his privilege as making him better than other people while Nightingale's makes him responsible for them; the idealised view Chorley holds of the conflict-ravaged past against the indelible scars Nightingale bears from having lived it. I just think they're fantastic foils for each other, and canon came nowhere near slaking my thirst to see them clash. Maybe Chorley doesn't die at the end of Lies Sleeping, and Nightingale is forced to fight him again? Or maybe he's taken into custody at the Folly?

Star Wars AMT

(Fic and art)
Grogu & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren

Consider my disbelief utterly suspended. I do not care that Grogu must be having the galaxy’s longest toddlerhood, nor how contrived the reasons are for him being in Kylo’s care - I just want my dark, grumpy fave to have to deal with a tiny and irrepressible little green dude, with all the humour, cuteness and absurdity that entails.

Does he hide under Kylo’s cloak during missions? Try on Kylo’s helmet, fiddle with his lightsaber? Cause mayhem at Supreme Council meetings? Or is he involved in Ben’s turn back to the light - Somehow(TM) present on the Death Star Wreckage, riding with him in the TIE on the way to Exegol, helping to defeat Palpatine once and for all? Maybe Ben survives the end of TROS and little Grogu helps him retrain in the ways of the Force. Or maybe protecting Grogu is part of Ben’s penance. Whatever happens, I assume that sooner or later Ben/Kylo’s heart will start to melt towards him. Because the only thing more annoying than getting lumped with a telekinetic toddler is realising that actually this is your life now because there's no way you can bear to get rid of him.

Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

(Fic and art)
Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Finn/Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Finn/Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Rose Tico
Rey/Ben Solo/Rose Tico

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, the trio having some form of three's-a-crowd energy (Poe and Finn uniting under the 'wtf is Rey doing with Kylo Ren' 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); and Rose just, like, really truly hating Ben's guts. But also wanting to climb him like a tree. But also hating him. But being sucked irresistibly into his drama despite herself. But hating him.

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.

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