Fandom 5K 2026

[lucymonster]

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

On a related note, I've listed my requested additional tags here in my letter for completeness' sake, but they are very loose vibes and I'm not attached to any of them - if in any doubt, please preference my prompts over a vague genre label.

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
• Incest
• 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)
• Death of requested characters

⭐ 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

Deliver Me - Ashley Hawthorne

(Additional tags: AU - Canon Divergence, Canon-Style Plot, Character Development, Established Relationship, Interpersonal Drama, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Slice of Life)

Mia Anderson/Gabriel Myers

DNW exception for this canon: It is fine to talk about Gabriel's underage experiences, his girlfriend's forced abortion and any teenage or older deaths he may have witnessed during his time with Seth. Please no graphic underage sex scenes though, and no death or extra noncanonical harm of children younger than their teens.

So, this is one of those canons where I've fallen head over heels for the concept - the incredibly dark backstory of abuse and human trafficking, the treatment of religious faith, and above all the central relationship, which I'll get into below - but I'm not, um, especially married to the details or the specific execution. Feel free to change things up, whether to add realism or to wring some deeper angst and romance out of the premise.

On Gabriel's side - I mean, the guy's in prison. He's been in prison for more than a decade. No visitors, no letters, no nothing. His whole life is grim, grey concrete monotony, menial labour in the prison's factory, terrible food, hours and hours and hours of boredom, a cellmate he barely likes but can't escape. And now he's got a girlfriend! A real, live girlfriend writing him real handwritten letters full of details about life outside the prison cage, talking to him like he's an equal instead of an inmate, sending him very PG photos of herself that he can masturbate over furiously while his cellmate politely pretends to be deaf because he has zero privacy and zero other sexual outlet. He has literally nothing else good in his life to think about excepting her. And then on the other hand there's Mia who lives this sheltered, churchy life, who has received nothing but abstinence-only sex ed and has grown up expecting to become a pastor's wife and raise armfuls of children at home while her husband preaches, and now she's having this intense sexual awakening with a guy who she can't even physically access. You guys, this is so fucking hot. The DESIRE. The YEARNING. And as steamy and iddy and tragic-romantic as it all is, I also love that the book doesn't end on Gabriel's release from prison and they don't just ride off into the sunset together. Readjustment is really, really hard. Gabriel has never been a free adult, never had to develop the life skills anyone else takes for granted, never received any kind of treatment for his ongoing PTSD. The guy is a mess. Having a swoonworthy distance romance is one thing; learning to live your day-to-day life together as a couple, with one of you badly dysfunctional and the other one hopelessly naive, is another altogether.

Those are my feelings in a nutshell; I'd really love to receive a gift that delves deeper into any of it, either pre- or post-release.

The Hurricane Wars - Thea Guanzon

(Additional tags: Established Relationship, AU - Canon Divergence, Canon-Style Plot, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Fluff, Horror, Interpersonal Drama, Character Development)

Alaric Ossinast/Talasyn
Character: Alaric Ossinast
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

(Additional tags: Established Relationship, AU - Canon Divergence, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Slice of Life, Canon-Style Plot, Fluff, Interpersonal Drama, Character Development)

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 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. All prompts are entirely optional! I just really, really love this book and these characters and want to read more about them.

Some other ideas:

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!

Character: Adam Carlsen
I'd love a deeper dive into Adam's pre-canon character development and backstory. His fraught relationship with his parents, his abusive grad school experience, his friendships with Tom and Holden, his early days at Stanford, any of these would be amazing to expand on.

I'd also be thrilled with a during or post-canon story where Adam/Olive is happening in the background but the focus is on Adam figuring out how to get along with one or more of Olive's friends. Or with other staff and students in general - happy to see more of the side of him that Olive's rose-tinted glasses have softened, lol.

I know these prompts are way shorter than the Adam/Olive ones, but I promise there's no disparity of interest! I just already had that huge big wodge of Adam/Olive prompts to copy/paste from another longfic exchange, while I'm drafting these Adam-specific ones off the cuff in a hurry. Basically I just really love him and would love to see more of him, whether in flattering or very non-flattering lights.