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, too shippy/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 I'm 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
Incest involving different generations or large age gaps
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, first person POV (unless in an unconventional format such as epistolary)
Unwarned major character death (tag or author’s note appreciated!)
Art-specific DNW: extreme gore (blood/cuts/bruises good, innards bad).

⭐ 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

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

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); Jacen having history with Ben and/or Poe; 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.

Finn/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren

I love these two as enemies drawn together by circumstance, as foils to each other's best and worst traits, as lost souls with a shared (albeit lopsided) background in the First Order doing their best to leave that influence behind. I love pre-canon stories where stormtrooper Finn stumbles into his scariest commander's orbit (only to find that maybe he isn't so scary after all?). I love post-canon or divergent stories where Ben defects to the Resistance and Finn helps him find his footing on the new terrain. I love happy endings and bleak disasters and bittersweet could-have-beens. Honestly, if these two are interacting, I'm happy.

Finn/Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren

My dream Finnrey is slightly messy, ride-or-die, "we both love each other to death and mean well but one of us grew up feral and the other one is an ex-child soldier and neither of us really knows how to Do Relationships" Finnrey. I love how easily compatible they are in so many ways, but I also love how a deepening relationship between them throws up so many opportunities for their baggage to cause issues.

On the other hand, their dynamic is a whole lot healthier than whatever the hell Rey and Ben were doing right up until the end there. :D

Some ideas:

Love after loss. Finn and Rey get together post-Exegol while Rey comes to terms with her grief for Ben.

Nosy Force ghost! Finn and Rey get together post-Exegol while Finn comes to terms with having his girlfriend's dead ex constantly dropping in on them.

Ben survives, but the whole "dyad in the Force" thing doesn't actually end up translating all that well into a romantic relationship. Maybe they try it and have a devastating breakup. Maybe they peacefully agree they're just better off as friends/platonic soulmates/whatever. Maybe the feelings are there but Ben is just too much of a mess to date right now and Rey moves on.

Ben survives and helps Finn figure out what to do with his Force sensitivity.

Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Rose Tico

I'm really into the ethical clash between these two: Kylo with his love of power and his violent authoritarian leanings, Rose with her sense of justice and compassion for the underdog. I'd love to see the two of them build a relationship of some kind, either with Kylo in full First Order meltdown mode or redeemed Ben Solo cooperating with the Resistance afterwards.

Some prompts:

Kylo thinks Rose's morals are naive. She's too young and idealistic to correctly process the trauma of her upbringing and embrace totalitarianism as the natural solution to all the galaxy's problems.

Redeemed, conflicted Ben needs someone to lean on as he sorts out what the hell he's doing in a post-Evil Meltdown world. Rose is there - to listen? To argue political philosophy? To smack him back into shape?

Neither of them can stand each other, but somehow they keep ending up in bed when the beers and bad decisions come out.

A stray plot device strands the two of them on a hostile planet where they're forced to work together for survival.

Rose struggles to reconcile the irreconcilable reality that her sister died fighting the man she's now crushing on/sleeping with/getting close to.

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.

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. Serious and heartfelt is good. Feelgood everyone-lives comedy of errors is good. AU where there's no war at all and they're all just a messy, unconventional family trying to find their way in a weird and wonderful galaxy is good.

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.

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.

Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren & Grogu

As above, but with added Reylo! Maybe Rey is actually the one who first stumbles across Grogu, as she's searching for ways to continue her training after Luke's death. Or maybe she's not chasing the Force at all, but the Resistance makes contact with the Mandalorians while looking to rebuild after Crait, and this one weird guy they meet has this one weird kid... :D Maybe Ben knew Grogu way back in the day through Luke's temple but lost track of him when he fell to the dark side, and is nonplussed when he comes back to the light only to find a familiar face waiting for him by Rey's side. I love toddler!Grogu to tiny little pieces but am also on board with him having aged at a canon realistic rate - so long as he's still just as eccentric, playful and chaotic as we know his species-mate remained even at the ripe old age of nine hundred.

Luke Skywalker & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren & Hennix & Tai & Voe & Jacen Syndulla & Grogu

As if poor Luke didn't have his hands full enough trying to run a training temple with his canonical student roll - let's add Jacen to the mix! And Grogu, who maybe regrets walking away from his Jedi education and has come back to try again. (Timelines, shmimelines. They can all be whatever age works for you.)

You can do whatever you like with this ensemble and I'll be thrilled, but here are a few ideas:

Comics Luke has talked about grooming Ben into a more leadership-oriented role in the temple. How does that play out with Voe, who already can't stand the advantage he has over her? How about Jacen, with whom I like to imagine Ben enjoys a robust mutual rivalry/antagonism?

For that matter, how is Luke coping with being effectively the sole guardian of a complex ancient tradition in which he only barely received training himself? I feel like there's probably a bit of a gulf between how his students view his authority and how confident he actually feels.

For better or worse, Grogu brings his Mandalorian weapons training into the mix. It's hard to maintain discipline as a teacher when your smallest, greenest charge keeps teaching the other kids foreign battle-cult tactics at recess.

How differently might the Great Temple-Burning Disaster and its aftermath have gone if Jacen and Grogu were also among the survivors?

A field trip to look for more Jedi artifacts turns into a very chaotic adventure. Maybe the Knights of Ren show up to cause trouble again. Or maybe they get more than they bargained for out of the artifact itself. Whatever happens, Luke suddenly finds himself in a position to assess exactly how well his lessons translate into a real action scenario - whether he wants to or not!

Other faces who are especially welcome to make an appearance (y'know, if you're finding the tagged character list too small and restrictive): Ezra, Sabine, Hera, Leia, Finn, Rey, Din, Bo-Katan, Ahsoka.

Tamara Ryvora & Finn

I just so badly want these two to meet up and talk about the whole First Order thing. They were both exploited by the regime in different ways, and they're both determined to turn what they learnt back on the people who taught them and bring the whole thing crumbling down. Maybe they link up sometime in the year between TLJ and TROS. Or maybe they meet after Exegol. I'd love to see them deal with the fact that countless other people with good hearts are also lost in the First Order machine, many of them with little or no choice about having ended up there. Maybe they can work together to deal with the inevitable flood of prisoners and defectors once the tide of the war have turned. Feel free to throw in Jannah as well and they can have themselves a little defectors-turned-freedom-fighters party!

Finn/Kazuda Xiono

Finn and Kaz have a certain sense of overwhelmed-ness in common: they abandoned the strictures of their respective upbringings, they fell into their Resistance roles more or less by accident, they have a tendency to talk talk themselves up and then come unstuck when it's time to deliver, and they're both starry-eyed about Poe Dameron but not quite able to live up to his level of effortless heroic strut. They're both adorable failboats who nonetheless make themselves indispensable to the Resistance cause, and I'd love to see what would happen if a shared mission or a coincidence ever caused them to meet.

Tamara Ryvora/Synara San
Tamara Ryvora/Synara San & Kazuda Xiono

I'm obsessed with the amazing chemistry Tam and Synara had, the bitter heartbreak of Tam's back-and-forth defection, and the closure the two of them never got. I'd love to see them tentatively inching their way towards a relationship before Tam leaves, or struggling to reconcile when she comes back, or fighting side by side in the last big push against the First and Final Orders and achieving their necessary catharsis via the medium of Blowing Shit Up. I'd also love to see them working to reestablish the Colossus as a comfortable civilian place to live after its stint as a fugitive warship, and mending their own wounds by mending their home.

As for Kaz: the only thing that can improve on a really intense, heartfelt scene between Tam and Synara is this absolute failboat butting his head in to ruin the mood. :D I'd love to see Kaz being his usual oblivious self. Maybe he hasn't had his 'Harold, they're lesbians' moment yet and still thinks he has a chance with Synara, or maybe he just thinks he's helping defuse a tense situation and straighten Tam's path back for her. Hell, maybe he really is helping. Maybe a little bit of Kaz is exactly what the two of them need to bring down the wall between them.

Rey/Voe & Tamara Ryvora/Synara San
Rey & Tamara Ryvora & Synara San & Voe

Concept: Voe is still alive, maybe as an impassioned Resistance fighter, maybe as an embittered fugitive hiding out on the Colossus, maybe as a morally grey wildcard who is fucked up from what Kylo Ren did to her and hates his guts on a personal level but feels like the bigger picture First Order vs The Galaxy stuff isn't her problem. But in any case she gets roped into the story by this irrepressible self-made Jedi girl who's soulbonded to her murderer but somehow still above all his bullshit, and they go on adventures together with my other favourite lesbians who are navigating the fallout of Tam's betrayal and return. Would love missionfic or first meetings fic or "we all get drunk on a girls' night and air our laundry" fic, or even a canonverse AU where instead of fighting wars they all run off together to be smugglers or piloting aces or whatever.

Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey & Tamara Ryvora & Synara San & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren & Kazuda Xiono
Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren & Tamara Ryvora/Synara San & Finn/Kazuda Xiono

THEY SHOULD ALL MEET. That's pretty much as far as I've gotten. Team Colossus and Team Resistance and the very contrite tyrant who once tried to kill them all should meet and have very awkward adventures together trying to take down the First Order or reestablish the New Republic or bail the Colossus out of its latest predicament or just generally figure out what their lives are going to look like post-war. Please feel free to borrow from any of my other prompts, or go in completely your own direction - I'm honestly up for anything here. I just want them all to meet.

Oh, and by the way, any of the other Colossus crew are welcome to come too! There's no one on that show I don't love.

Alexsandr Kallus/Hera Syndulla

Hera is one of my favourite badasses in the GFFA. Kallus is one of my favourite redemption cases. Hera can offer Kallus comfort and reconnection after his defection from the Empire! Kallus can offer Hera comfort and reconnection after Kanan's death! If anything happens between them while Kanan is still alive, please don't have it happen behind Kanan's back or in a way that implies a major problem for Hera and Kanan's budding romance if he found out. Maybe sexual exclusivity isn't a thing in space, or Kanan isn't the jealous type, or you just don't mention him at all and I form my own conclusions. Basically complex relationships and offhand it's-all-fine-here nonmonogamy are :D :D :D, but malicious infidelity is :(.

I love the idea of the two of them finding peace in each other once the war is over. Maybe they settle down and raise Jacen together. Maybe there are some teething issues as two veterans who've seen hell and lost loved ones adjust to civilian life. Maybe something happens to drag them back into the mess, and they get to swing into action as a badass new power couple. Or maybe they're not a thing yet, and the sorely missed adrenaline is what tips them over.

Kanan Jarrus/Alexsandr Kallus/Hera Syndulla

I'm incurably weak for 'longer-term couple with deep bond and entangled history/pet trainwreck they accidentally picked up somewhere along the way'. I'd love to see how Kallus might fit into the existing Hera/Kanan dynamic, fraught and complex as it already is; I'd equally love equal-but-different poly, blatantly lopsided/asymmetric poly, or an ill-defined ambiguous mess between three people with a freighter's worth of emotional baggage between them. Canon timeline or Kanan Lives AUs are equally good. Some ideas:

Mum/dad/black sheep uncle, aka. what on earth do the rest of the crew make of the developing triad? Do any of them actually clock that it's happening, or do they each have their own entertainingly off-base theories about why Kanan, Kallus and Hera are all acting different around each other and keep disappearing together?

Pre-redemption: Kallus and/or Hera are guiltily hot for the horrible no-good ISB agent who's hellbent on hunting them down and destroying everything they love.

Post-redemption awkwardness as Kallus finds his place aboard the Ghost.

Missionfic! Send them off together on some dangerous quest or other and let them all be dazzlingly competent at fighting the Empire yet hopelessly inept at navigating their feelings.

Mae Aniseya/Yord Fandar

Listen, I just think this could be so funny. Mae the wildchild seduces this absolute dweeb who takes his Jedi chastity so so so seriously and is probably already aghast at himself just for having noticed that she's attractive. (They are both so attractive. Like it's funny, but let's be real, it's also just straight up hot.) I'm equally here for him thinking she's Osha or knowing full well she's Mae and being that much more cut up about it. Mess with the timelines or the characters' fates as much as you like. Is their affair a terrible secret that Yord carries inside him right up until his canon end? Do they run away together and thus escape death? Or does the love of the galaxy's least hip Jedi melt a hole in Mae's heart and bring her into the fold? As long is Yord is having an absolute crisis, I'm here for it.