Dear author

Thanks so much for writing 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 relationships or other supporting characters 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 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 writing!

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
On-screen child harm (requested characters recalling their childhood trauma is fine)
AUs other than canon divergence (including trope AUs: please no omegaverse, 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!)

⭐ 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
besotted men; prickly, difficult, intimidatingly competent men who are Soft And Pathetic For Her
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
domesticity
politics, bureaucracy, propaganda
banter, snark, gallows humour
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, sickfic
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.

And a few of my forever favourite kinks, if a more specific starting point is helpful:

light femdom
intense, overwhelming desire
orgasm delay/denial, sexual frustration, begging
coming too quickly, loss of control, getting overwhelmed
rough sex, hate sex, power imbalances
on the other hand: tender, adoring, needy sex with lavish attention to each other's pleasure
clumsy, inexperienced but wildly enthusiastic sex
frottage, dry humping, clothed sex
sex pollen
different erogenous zones, being sensitive in non-genital places
anal sex (het, slash or femslash), double or multiple penetration
loss of virginity, inexperience, clumsy sex
praise kink
scar worship
under-negotiated kinks
any level of complex, problematic or questionable consent

Request details

Crossover Fandom

Ben Solo | Kylo Ren (Star Wars Sequels) & Worldbuilding (The Incandescent – Emily Tesh)
I’d dearly love to see a fusion of Ben/Kylo’s character into the Incandescent universe and its magic system. I mean, his whole backstory just adapts so well – he can be a freakishly powerful sorcerer from a family of notable magicians whose upbringing is indelibly marked by his stronger than usual connection to the demonic plane. Maybe there’s been a higher order demon sniffing around him since birth? Maybe he’s alienated from his family after a nasty incursion involving Uncle Luke that no one can quite believe wasn’t an intentional summoning? Maybe he has some really awful ideas about the potential power of magicians to sway world events, or is being radicalised by some obviously bad-news older magician, or is just generally kind of a young dickhead who wants to push his power to its limits and doesn’t care quite enough who gets caught in the crossfire.

I’d love to see him as a student at Chetwood (under Saffy’s tuition?) or at another magic school of your own invention if you’d rather have him elsewhere in the world. I’d equally love to meet him as an adult, maybe at university pursuing some terrifyingly ill-advised line of research for his dissertation, or as a qualified magician doing something highly unpleasant for the military or government. I’d prefer him not to be involved in any real-world conflicts or political turmoil, but I’m very amenable to fictional wars, terrorist events, extremist movements, corruption scandals, or any other upsets great or small that could be satisfyingly worsened by the involvement of my favourite human disaster.

If you’d like some shippy content to help along your wordcount, I love Reylo and think their whole fated enemies/soulmates/equals thing would translate really well into this fusion. Young Ben and Rey are two powerful sorcerers stuck in close quarters together at magic school or university? Rey is a scrappy warden trying to stop rogue magician Kylo Ren from summoning an apocalyptically huge demon? Or something more domestic – they’re both qualified adult magicians working in rival fields, or teaching in a school themselves, and they can’t get along but also can’t get each other out of their thoughts?

Other characters: Saffy and Laura are my favourites from the Incandescent side and I’d be thrilled to see them play a role – maybe Ben is there studying at Chetwood during their time? Or maybe he and Saffy were contemporaries at university? I’m equally happy if you populate the story entirely with Star Wars characters – anyone who can plausibly be alive and involved during Ben’s era is welcome to come too. I love Finn, Poe and Rose as sort of resentful acquaintances/frenemies who put up with Ben/Kylo for Rey’s sake but can’t quite bring themselves to like him. In addition to Reylo I ship Finnlo, and Finnreylo, and Kylo/any and all Resistance members in a big complicated semi-antagonistic poly puppy pile. I do not ship Kylux but find Hux and Kylo’s mutual hatred endlessly entertaining, and am also on board with Hux having a futile, one-sided hatecrush on Kylo. By all means bring along your other, nicher Star Wars blorbos as well. I’m fine with OCs filling small roles to move the plot along, but am not really interested in them as a focus – for major roles, please use canonical characters from either or both of the requested canons.

The Hurricane Wars - Thea Guanzon

Alaric Ossinast/Talasyn
The whole character of Alaric is basically pure, unadulterated id fodder for me. The tortured backstory, including literal systematic torture by his father! The loneliness! The touch starvation, kindness starvation, the dogged sense of duty and loyalty that persists no matter how he’s treated. I love his sweet tooth and his moments of boyishness. I love the intensity of his attraction to Talasyn, his empathy towards her own past traumas and his shame and self-loathing as he pines for her, believing that his soul-deep yearning is unrequited.

There are exactly two things my heart dearly wants:

1) Whump this poor beautiful man! Whump him so hard! I want more brutally abusive Gaheris. More Talasyn-will-never-love-me angst. More grief for his mother and fear for his nation’s future and exhaustion from the long, grinding war. I want to wallow in all the bad things canon has done to him and I want to see him suffer even worse things that will grind him down to his component atoms. He hurts so pretty.

2) Give this poor beautiful man a break! He has suffered so much and I want him to have all the nice things. More of him enjoying sugary treats and all the unfamiliar luxuries Nenavar has to offer. More of his relationship with Talasyn growing closer and more tender, more of him earning her respect, her trust, her love. More of her being his safe place. More of Sevraim making him smile against his will behind the mask.

Basically, if your work lands anywhere on the hurt/comfort spectrum – from all-hurt to all-comfort or anywhere in between – I’m going to be delighted.

The Love Hypothesis - Ali Hazelwood

Adam Carlsen/Olive Smith
This is the one canon where I veer much harder towards the fluffy end of my usual fic likes. That’s not to say I’m not a-okay with there being upsets along the way, but I’d really like a happy ending for these requests, and specifically for Adam and Olive to be settled together in a happy, functional way by the end (or for there to be a clear pathway for them to reach that happy, functional together place in the unwritten future).

Anyway, I adore this canon in its entirety and will be happy beyond measure with 10k of canon-typical shenanigans, fluffy humour, and Adam being a grumpy nerd whose life is on fire with the intensity of his love for Olive. I’d love to see them building their life together post-canon, enjoying all the ups and downs of a relationship, reaching big life milestones or maybe taking a holiday together at a location you know and love. I’d love to see Adam getting to know Olive’s friends, or read in detail about his life pre-canon, burying himself in work while secretly pining his ass off. But I’ve also been thinking up some larger-scale prompts in case you’re an author who (like me) needs more plot to be able to hit five digits. All is entirely optional! I just really, really love this book and these characters and want to read more about them.

What about an AU where The Night never happens, and Olive and Adam have to get together some other way? A few possibilities:

They meet through their shared love of sports and running. Maybe they’re both involved in the same fundraiser race; or somehow find time around their work to join the same amateur sports team; or maybe they just happen to be running the same track near campus one day, and one of them goes down with an injury and the other steps in to help.
For whatever reason, Olive decides she needs Dr Carlsen on her thesis committee after all, and he bungles his tactful refusal so badly that she becomes convinced he hates her personally, above and beyond his general well-known disdain for grads. Cue enemies to lovers plot!
For whatever reason, Adam HAS to work with Olive in a professional capacity even though he knows it’s a terrible idea. So their inevitable chemistry is even more problematic, and he can be all the more tortured by his anxieties about coercing or exploiting her.
They never end up getting together while Olive is in grad school, after all. Years later, they reconnect as professional equals, and Adam finally deems it appropriate to make her approach. This is about the last thing on earth Olive expected.
They get set up on a blind date somehow, I don’t know. Holden and Anh separately bully them into attending a speed dating event somewhere near but not too near Stanford, where there totally won’t be any colleagues to worry about running into, except OOPS.
They both get dragged separately into some random off-campus activity that neither of them is really into – a retreat, maybe? – and bond over being the only two people not “properly” participating.
A good old-fashioned Trapped Together story on campus or at a conference. A lab door gets jammed! An elevator malfunctions! An lockdown or freak weather event strands them both, the last two workaholics still at their desks, in the building overnight!

Or some post-canon fic that’s the OPPOSITE of canon-typical: now happily coupled up, Adam and Olive find themselves embroiled in a surprising, genre-shifting new adventure. Some ideas:

Turns out the supernatural is real, and they suddenly find themselves having to come to terms with the existence of vampires/ghosts/magic/whatever.
Spy shenanigans – some shadowy agency is trying to infiltrate Stanford, and they get caught up in it.
Superheroes – some weird, distant colleague invents a super-serum and goes rogue with it, and now faculty meetings have to include a discussion of the impending supersoldier takeover; aliens exist, and are coming; whatever other comic book type trope appeals to you.

Alternatively, you could transfer them to a different hyperspecific field of academia that you’re passionate about, and get really into the nitty-gritty professional details of their life and studies within your chosen discipline. I’m not interested in non-academia AUs but very happy for you to change their areas of expertise as drastically as you like; if you’ve ever yearned to write in loving detail about the struggle to decipher Linear A, or felt that the Homeric authorship debates would make the ideal backdrop for a romcom, then you have a willing audience in me!