Little Black Dress Exchange 2020
May. 17th, 2020 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lucymonster
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Bleach: Byakuya
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Faith
Captain Marvel: Minn-Erva
Chronicles of Narnia (movies): Caspian
Descendants: Evie, Mal
MCU: Proxima Midnight
Pirates of the Carribbean: Norrington
Star Wars Sequel Trilogy: Ben/Kylo
Star Wars: Rebels: Arihnda Pryce
The Untamed: Xue Yang
Dear Stylist,
Thanks for creating for me! I'm so excited about this exchange - I've spent years in training, wearing head-to-toe black and multishipping my faves with promiscuous abandon. The length of each letter section reflects nothing except my chattiness on the day I wrote prompts for that fandom. My requested characters have all survived multiple rounds of culling to get in under the fandom limit, so whatever we've matched on, please know I'm going to be equally delighted!
I'm requesting fic and art for everything. I'm blanket opting in to crossovers between my requested characters, and into selfcest if you want to get into time travel, mirror versions or other magical shenanigans. While I've suggested some ships here and there, I not only understand but actively love the fact that these details are optional. If you've got a ship in mind that doesn't hit my DNWs, I can't wait to see it!
Other notes: I have no strong feelings about the line between gen and romance, so please don’t worry about your work not being shippy enough, or being dark rather than romantic, or anything. Past ships, background ships, love triangles and poly are all welcome (and m/f, f/f and m/m are fine for all these, regardless of the gender configuration I've requested for the main ship). If I haven't explicitly DNW'd a thing then you're welcome to include it. My prompts are there to help you, not to hem (heh) you in!
I'm![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
lucymonster on ao3.
Thanks again, and happy creating!
⛔ Do Not Want
📖 Fic likes and all-purpose prompts
👗 Kuchiki Byakuya
⛔ Fandom-specific DNW: filler arc canon, any mention of that one kenseikan-phone omake skit (feel free to reference any other omake, extras etc. from the manga or anime)
⚠️ DNW exceptions: re. incest - Byakuya/Rukia is very welcome, but only as incest. I'm not interested in AUs where he never adopted her, but I'm very here for their sibling relationship taking an unexpected badwrong turn.
Requested categories: F/M, F/M/M, M/M, M/M/M
Ships I don't want: Yoruichi, Senbonzakura
Ships I mostly don't want: Hisana, as a focus ship before her death or in a never-died AU. It's fine to include past Byakuya/Hisana along with another current-timeline ship. It's also fine to resurrect Hisana after her canon death and have them get back together (more on that in the prompts below).
Why he's a wardrobe staple: He's an asshole with a heart of gold, an emotional volcano trying to pass himself off as solid bedrock. I love the brutal lengths he'll go to for the people he cares about - tactical self-mutilation, anyone? - and how much love he expresses through his actions even when he can't bear to express a word of it aloud. I love what a challenge it is to get to know him, and how many layers of public face and duty and reticence you have to peel back before you glimpse anything resembling his true self.
In fic, I prefer to either resolve any power imbalance in Byakuya's favour or have him meet his partner/s on even footing. (I'm talking relationship dynamics, not top/bottom preferences. I don't mind who sticks what where.) I'm satisfied with how canon dismantled his pride in the Soul Society arc, and have no real appetite for seeing him humbled further. I do love self-driven character growth, where he calls out his own shortcomings or learns a new respect for someone he used to look down on. But I also love competence porn, respect, arm's length intimacy, complex hierarchies, and maybe just a cheeky pinch of spoilt-by-rich-lover fantasy for seasoning.
In art, I love his post-timeskip look with the collared haori, shorter hair and subtler hairpiece. I also never get tired of his cherry blossom motif.
How to wear him:
Give his love interest a glimpse of the endearing human vulnerability he works so hard to keep hidden in public: simple pleasure in a good meal or a deep sleep, fatigue after an intense battle, a joke that makes him (try not to) laugh, an indulgent erotic interest, a moment of offguardedness while reading or daydreaming or working on something immersive.
Let him show affection the only way he knows how: by getting horribly, heroically injured. Does he try to press on through the pain, concealing his wounds except for a limp or momentary wince that his eagle-eyed love interest picks up on? Or is he so badly hurt that he's forced to accept help - learning, in the process, that they don't love or respect him any less for needing them?
Let him show affection the only other way he knows how: by throwing lots of money, servants and/or political influence at the problem while staunchly refusing to admit he cares. I wasn't kidding about the spoilt-by-rich-lover fantasy, but I also love this played for (fond, non-ridiculing) laughs, whether because his idea of 'cheap trifles' is so wildly out of touch or because he's too OTT reserved to just come out and say 'I love you'.
Show off his skills to full effect by having him help someone train, or teach them some other skill - calligraphy? Tea ceremony? 'We're going to some kind of posh do together, here's some basic etiquette to help you not disgrace yourself'?
Explore the baggage of love after loss: he planned on a life with Hisana, prioritised her over everything else in his life, and spent 50 years frozen by grief after her death What does it look like for him to finally move past that and find someone new?
Bring Hisana magically back to life, and then do the same! Can they rebuild their marriage when she's still the same person she was when she died, and he's the older, wiser, sadder man who spent decades living with her loss? Complicated poly would also be amazing for this, like if he's together with someone else when her resurrection throws everything into chaos.
👗 Faith Lehane
Requested categories: F/F
Crossovers I'd like: Any female character from Angel: the Series
Ships I don't want: Buffy
Why she's a wardrobe staple: Faith is my eternal favourite character for this fandom, and there's no part of her story that I don't unreservedly love. I'm here for the early days where she's acting out out, or the later days where she's matured and calmed down and resolved to make amends, or canon-divergent AUs from any point in her arc. What gets me most about her character is the vulnerability and self-destructiveness: her yearning to belong and feel loved, and how badly it clashes with poor impulse control and her compulsive need to look tough and cool and self-sufficient at all times. I love how hard she works to establish her Brand with all the quirky slang and the swagger and the edgy-provocative wardrobe, and how transparent it is to basically everyone around her.
How to wear her:
Force her out of her comfort zone. We know Faith gets around, but has she ever been with a woman before? I'd love to see her working hard to keep up her usual bravado while feeling totally out of her depth in her new romance. Maybe her partner is older or more experienced, and she has to learn for the first time how to relax and let herself be led. Maybe she initiated her same-sex tangle for reasons of Hey Look Boys It's Your Faux-Lesbian Fantasy, and is totally blindsided when her attraction turns out to be sincere. Maybe men are for no-strings-attached fun, but women are where her emotions come out and she falls kicking and screaming into earnest, uncynical, painfully vulnerable love.
Conversely: let her be fun, free-spirited and blithely bisexual. Maybe she's the more experienced bad girl who takes her love interest out on the town to show them a good time. Or maybe she tries to do that, but due to her deficiencies in the planning department, it all goes pear-shaped and their date ends up ruined by an apocalypse, forcing Faith to multitask wildly as she tries to flirt and slay at the same time.
👗 Minn-Erva
Requested categories: F/F, F/F/F, F/M, F/F/M, F/M/M
Crossovers I'd like: Any character from the MCU, except for those that only appear in Ant-Man and the Wasp or Spiderman 2: Far From Home (haven't seen them, sorry!).
Ships I don't want: Thanos, Hope Van Dyne
Why she's a wardrobe staple: She's hot and snarky and lethally good at what she does. I love her calm competence in the face of danger, her unflinching willingness to kill, and her jealousy-driven cattiness towards Vers. I love fic that explores her past and motives: who is she behind all the swagger? Is she a perfectly indoctrinated Kree warrior, or does she have doubts? What does her inner moral code look like to support her on-screen ruthlessness? I loved the detail in the art book about her training as a doctor field/medic, and would be super into a gift that incorporates or mentions that side of her skillset.
My art likes are even simpler: hair porn, costume porn, wiry-muscular-could-strangle-me-to-death-between-her-thighs porn. Actual porn is also great if you're that way inclined.
How to wear her:
Some light ideas: Surviving the movie. Peaceful moments on Hala. Being an elite badass. Breaking free of the Kree machine. Reconnecting with Carol. Learning to love (or at least tolerate) humans and Skrulls and non-Kree in general. Fish-out-of-water antics on C-53. Being comforted after injury on a mission (or using her best bedside manner to comfort someone else).
Some heavier ideas: Brainwashing. Kree militarism. Anti-Skrull hatemongering. Space horror. Grim, rugged survival on Earth. Capture, imprisonment and torture (as either perpetrator or victim). Missions gone wrong.
👗 Caspian
⚠️ DNW exceptions: re. incest - Caspian/Prunaprismia is welcome, as is background Peter/Edmund (but please no pevencest involving the girls). re. underage - the Pevensies make the age thing super weird, and I'm all for leaning right into that if you involve them: how frustrating must it be to go from a mature adult body into a childish one that suddenly makes you too young for the guy you're attracted to? You're also welcome to use 'real time vs Narnia time' weirdness to age them back up again.
Requested categories: M/M, F/M
Crossovers I'd like: any character from bookverse
Ships I don't want: Cornelius, Ramandu's Daughter (she's fine for background appearances or mentions, and you don't have to AU the canon marriage out - I'm just not interested in receiving fic about them together)
Why he's a wardrobe staple: Caspian was one of my first true little black dresses! I've requested movieverse because I find the Ben Barnes version more to my shipping tastes, but other than keeping him broadly Ben Barnes shaped, feel free to dip into book canon as you please.
Prince Caspian era, I love the tension between his well-bred princely manners and his volatile young-man-with-a-sword temper, and all that angst about family and identity and whether or not he's fit to be king. Dawn Treader era, I love his adventurous spirit and his ride-or-die loyalty towards ... well, everyone. The Pevensies. His crew. The old lords from his childhood who he barely remembers. Whatever the reason for gratitude, dude honours his debts and I respect that.
How to wear him:
Explore his relationship with Glozelle or the other palace people before the betrayal. Caspian the young protege, smart and hardworking and good with a blade but prone to drifting off into unkingly daydreams about talking beasts and other such nonsense. Caspian the source of many pitying whispers as Miraz's usurper ambitions become gradually more obvious. Caspian who just really doesn't feel like a Telmarine king, and the people who are meant to be his servants and his royal guard aren't sure what to do with him.
Show me the early days of his rule as he deals with the immense logistical challenges of reintegrating Old Narnia after centuries of Telmarine suppression. If the Pevensies still there (before their canon departure, or in an AU where they get to stay), how does he balance drawing on their expertise against finding his own independent kingly footing? I'm into his bitter-rivals-turned-brothers (or lovers) dynamic with Peter, and his sweet, chivalrous romance with Susan. I'd love to see him get to know Edmund or Lucy better, and learn to take them seriously even though they look so very much younger than him.
Find him a few precious moments of privacy with someone on board the Dawn Treader, or on one of their layovers. I'd love to see more of their weird and wonderful adventures, including the bookverse stuff that didn't make it to film.
I suspect my chances of this are roughly one in a googolplex, but: Caspian/Prunaprismia, anyone? I'd be very here for the badwrong, guilt-wracked thrill of cheating on your husband with his younger, hotter nephew who's used to being shunted aside and made to feel inadequate. Maybe she tells herself she's making up for her husband's mistreatment and her own inability to step up as a genuine mother figure? Alternatively, she decides to stay in Narnia at the end of the movie, and they strike up a weird, fraught relationship now that Miraz is gone and the power dynamics are flipped on their head.
👗 Evie
👗 Mal
Requested categories: F/F, F/F/F
Crossovers I'd like: Any Disney heroine, any OC child of any Disney hero(ine).
Ships I don't want: None for this request!
Why they're wardrobe staples: The Descendants movies are my ultimate (not-so-)guilty pleasure. Every song, every costume change, every self-indulgent moment speaks directly to my id. I'm obsessed with the broken worldbuilding and the dystopian implications of a monarchy that just casually banishes all its difficult subjects to Magic Shithole Island where they and their kids and their great-great-grandkids shall rot in eternal penance. I dearly want to know how it goes when the kids take charge and let all the villains back into Auradon with no apparent plans for how to manage the reintegration - something tells me the answer is 'not well'. I want to see the kids grow up, find themselves outside of high school and experience the topsy-turvy world.
I love all the characters and will eat up any cameos, but Evie and Mal are the two who most captured my heart. Evie is a people-pleasing sweetheart; Mal is a well-meaning but unstable trashfire. I'd love a gift focused on either or both of them, together or with other female characters. Guest appearances by the boys are also extremely welcome.
Speaking of: my feelings toward the canon hetships are best described as placid neutrality. I'm not offended by them and don't mind if they're included, but I won't be mad if you break them up and likely won't even notice if you write them out.
How to wear them:
Join them on their gap year as they savour their freedom from classes, exams and the heavy burden of government.
Send them to university! Auradon must have a college campus, right? Worldbuilding around fairytale-style academic disciplines, student culture and future career prospects all warmly encouraged.
Have them deal with the fallout of bringing the barrier down. Some ideas: bitter villains taking their revenge. Resentment between the two populations. Awkward island/mainland culture clashes. The nitty-gritty of housing, social welfare and other administrative concerns.
Get right inside their (literal) wardrobes. The gratuitous hair and costume porn are among my very favourite things about this canon. Invite me into their beauty routines! Linger in lavish detail on their outfit choices! Have the LBD give the love interest a makeover! Take them shopping together! Pretend like you're on the editorial staff of Mall-Loving Teenage Girl Magazine and go for broke.
👗 Proxima Midnight
⚠️ DNW exceptions: re. incest - you're welcome to ship the Children of Thanos together, and treat the whole brother/sister thing as anywhere from an honorary title to an intimate family bond.
Requested categories: F/F, F/F/F
Ships I don't want: Ava Starr, Hope Van Dyne, Janet Van Dyne
Why she's a wardrobe staple: She's hot.
That's it. I got nothing else. She has big black horns and she kills things and she's hot. I like that bit in the Battle of Wakanda where she fights all the other women, and I'd like to see her tangle with all the other women again in a different way, if you know what I mean. (Sex. I mean sex. Because - I really can't stress this enough - Proxima Midnight is hot.)
THAT SAID, I am also extremely here for character development on topics other than her hotness, such as where she comes from, why she's loyal to Thanos and how she learned how to kill so hotly. I don't care one way or the other about her canon marriage to Corvus Glaive - I like what it implies about her ability to feel deeper emotions than her on-screen staples of Going To Choke You With Your Own Intestines and Look At My Very Tight Catsuit, so if you want to include it as a past or background ship, I'm sure to lap up their no doubt tragic backstory. But I have no actual attachment to Corvus Glaive as a character and equally don't mind if you break them up or ignore him completely.
Basically, any variety of darkly hot murderlady and/or harsh, militarised space worldbuilding is guaranteed to please.
How to wear her:
Explore her backstory, how she became a Child of Thanos and what keeps her loyal to his cause.
Have her train with Gamora and/or Nebula, or have them work together on a mission for Thanos.
Give her some cool cybernetic parts of her own.
Ignore one or both of her canon deaths, and instead strand her on Earth, either to avenge herself on her father's enemis or grit her teeth and accept their mercy.
At any point in the timeline, send her on an adventure in space. I love space horror, alien cultures and galactic-scale culture clashes. I also love space travel as a mundane, everyday part of people's lives, and the petty gripes that must go along with it (ugh, gravity's broken again; ugh, rocket fuel costs are up; ugh, it's so annoying having to lug this air tank everywhere on planets with non-breathable atmosphere).
👗 James Norrington
⛔ Fandom-specific DNW: Davy Jones-style body horror. Please no lingering visuals of barnacle crusts or detachable organs or sea creatures wriggling in and out of people.
Requested categories: M/M, M/M/M, F/M/M
Ships I don't want: Davy Jones, Bootstrap Bill
Why he's a wardrobe staple: Commodore Norrington Did Nothing Wrong 2kForever! I love this excruciatingly honourable prig of a man, and I love (to hate) the way the movies put him right on the cusp of getting everything he ever wanted out of life only to rip it all away. He's equally hot to me in both his powdered-wig and scraggly-drunk incarnations (and his sarcastic sense of humour is equally charming in both, as well).
I'm into pretty much all the main character ship configurations (not so much James/Elizabeth on their own, but James/Elizabeth/Will and James/Elizabeth/Jack are both great). I'm also totally on board for James/any EITC officer, James/any pirate, or the rarepair of your heart featuring that one character who's slipped by mind. Timeline-wise, I haven't seen On Stranger Tides or Dead Men Tell No Tales, so please stay somewhere in the vicinity of the first three movies - but by no means feel obliged to be faithful to them! Backstory, canon-divergent AUs and post-At World's End fic where Norrington survives are all very welcome.
How to wear him:
Hurt him more than he's already been hurt. Have him kidnapped by pirates or marooned on some godforsaken island. Follow him on his aimless drunken misery-journey after losing his commission. Put him on his knees in front of a rapey, blackmaily superior officer. Flog him. Humiliate him. Bring him to the brink of death. Hurt/comfort and aftermath are very welcome, but so is merciless whump.
Teach him to loosen up. Free him from the pressure and shame of his repressed sexuality. Bathe him, comb his hair, give him a sound night's sleep in a warm bed after months of living rough at sea. Feed him something delicious. Indulge him in frivolous sentimental and/or bodily pleasures that he's Totally Not Into as a proud officer of the British Royal Navy (but secretly, guiltily laps up anyway).
Respect him. Admire his combat skills, his tactical brilliance and his upright moral character. Give him a moment of heroism and let the other characters appreciate him in all his glory.
👗 Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
⛔ Fandom-specific DNW: sub!Kylo with any male darksider (I'd prefer him to be either dominant or vanilla with, for example, any of the Knights of Ren or male First Order officers - but femdom of any moral alignment is very welcome, as is Kylo subbing for male Resistance members.
⚠️ DNW exceptions: re. incest - background Luke/Leia is welcome.
Requested categories: F/M, F/F/M, F/M/M, M/M, M/M/M
Crossovers I'd like: Any character from ST-era comics and novels, Resistance, The Mandalorian, Jedi: Fallen Order or Battlefront II. Qi'ra from Solo. Any character from Rebels except for Rex or Ahsoka (I've hardly watched any TCW, so their no doubt excellent backstories are unfortunately lost on me).
Ships I don't want: Snoke, Palpatine, Hux on his own (but OT3s including Hux are welcome).
Why he's a wardrobe staple: All I want is for Kylo to tap every ass in the galaxy while still magically being a prickly, awkward virgin each time he does it. Is that too much to ask?
More seriously: Ben's character arc is everything I've ever wanted out of a villain redemption story. He's got sad childhood memories filled with feelings of inadequacy and abandonment. A catalogue of horrific, deliberately cruel and shocking past misdeeds. An imperfectly suppressed conscience screaming in protest each time he Does An Evil. He thinks he wants to be feared and obeyed, he actually wants to be loved and accepted, and he almost breaks his fork trying to eat both cakes at once. It's an act of selfless, unconditional love that finally gets through to him, and an act of selfless, unconditional love that ends his life when he embraces the light. I love that he dies with a smile on his face, bruised and bleeding but relieved beyond the reach of all pain that he's finally found his purpose. I also love that this is Star Wars and he can come back as a Force ghost boyfriend whenever he likes. I also love that canon is fake, and there are countless ways he can survive the ending of TROS and carry on with that magical-eternal-virgin ass-tapping project I mentioned.
I want to see him trying and failing to be a Dark Fuck Prince. I want to see him using sex to fill the void. I want to see him learning how to love in a healthier, less zero-sum way (and maybe fucking it up as he goes, because old habits are hard to break). I want to see him forging fragile, anxious bonds with people who thought they'd never be able to forgive him. I want to see him expressing affection in weird, broken ways. I want warts-and-all romance that doesn't shy away from what a flaming human trashfire he is, but gives him a chance at love and a chance to be better despite (or even because of) his many flaws.
How to wear him:
Play with his canon backstory. I love his special bond (Force bond?) with Tai, and his one-sided rivalry with Voe, how she's always trying to catch him and he's smugly unworried with his long headstart. I love the ridiculous starry-eyed crush he develops on Ren at literal first sight. I'd love to see his early travels with the Knights of Ren, as he tries to fit into the group and establish himself as a credible dark warrior as opposed to a terrified failboat with granddaddy issues.
Give him some non-canon backstory. Which member/s of the Resistance totally knew him as Ben Solo before he donned his black helmet? What early warning signs did he show, and what redeeming traits made him worth the effort of overlooking them?
Show him in full darkside swing, trying and failing to be a proper Big Bad (but still achieving more than enough horrific imact along his way). Showcase his volatile temper and emotional neediness in a twisted, toxic relationship with a fellow darksider or a good guy who he just can't manage to hate like he's supposed to.
Fly him to the moon and back! I'd love to see more of his piloting skills, and his fondness for dangerously fast and over-armed starfighter prototypes.
Indulge me with some worldbuilding about space travel, the dark side of the Force or his adventures in the Unknown Regions during the cold war.
Torture him. As revenge? As training? As the senseless evil deed of a faceless third party from whom his love interest/s must then heroically rescue him? I really, really love Kylo whump. He hurts so pretty.
Send redeemed Ben Solo on adventures with his new good guy allies. I love prickly, distrustful dynamics where no one's sure what to do with him or how much forgiveness to offer (and where, despite his best intentions, he's still damaged and difficult and maybe kind of an asshole sometimes). I love complicated redemption-in-progress, the lingering ache of old half-healed wounds and the hard-earned warmth of former enemies learning how to care for each other.
👗 Arihnda Pryce
Requested categories: F/F, F/F/F
Crossovers I'd like: Any female character from the OT, ST, ST-era comics or novels, Resistance, The Mandalorian, Jedi: Fallen Order or Battlefront II.
Ships I don't want: None for this request!
Why she's a wardrobe staple: I love everything about Pryce: her ruthless ambition, her baggy sleep-deprived eyes, her sadism, her ruler-straight bob, her badass combat skills. I love her self-confidence and her disdain for others. I love her when she's scared and threatened and lashing out. I love her cold satisfaction as she tortures Hera. I love that she chose to die for the Empire rather than accept an offer of help from a hated enemy. She's deliberately awful, makes no pretense of caring about anyone except herself, and won't let anyone stand between her and what she wants. I'm so into that.
How to wear her:
Pit her against a skilled rival in a game of political oneupmanship: a battle over disputed territory, a scramble for that next promotion, a mission on which her reputation rides. I'd love to see her meet an equal match and feel the thrill of not knowing who's going to win.
Redeem her whether she wants it or not. Have her survive the end of Rebels, or AU her over to the side of the Alliance at some point during the show - maybe the Imperial machine turns on her, and she defects to save her own skin, only to find herself getting gradually drawn into the cause?
Have her survive Rebels but continue being awful. Does she sneak off to become one of the many ex-Imperial warlords scattered around the galaxy? Does she join up with the First Order? Does she pursue a private mission of revenge against the people who destroyed her rule on Lothal?
👗 Xue Yang
Requested categories: M/M, M/M/M
Ships I don't want: None for this request!
Why he's a wardrobe staple: It's the food thing, okay? His tragic food-driven backstory speaks straight to my lizard brain, and his selfish obsession with compensating for the deprivations of his childhood leaves me simultaneously horrified and butter-soft. I love his cheeky grin, his boyish glee, and his profound spiritual talent that he draws on erratically with no apparent long-term goal in mind. I love how emotionally stunted he is, how he's incapable of empathising with others or even recognising his own more complex feelings. He's an utterly broken person and I want to glory in his brokenness. I'd also love to see what shape he'd take if someone bothered piecing him back together - I imagine it'd be pretty rudimentary, with a few key structural bits missing, but progress is progress!
How to wear him:
Feed him. Spoil him with sweets and pastries and hearty stews and fluffy dumplings and anything else delicious. Have him share a treat with someone he likes, or accept a bribe from someone who wants to take advantage of his powers. Have one of the good guys use food in an attempt to rehabilitate him through positive reinforcement. Dwell on his past hunger in indulgently angsty detail, and pay it off with a blissfully full stomach in the present day.
Fill his stomach, but leave his emotional void gaping empty. Show him trying to self-soothe with sweets, and growing more and more unstable as he fails.
Lean right into his warped worldview, and show how he believes himself sincere and reasonable within his own deranged parameters. Obviously his finger is worth more than a whole clan worth of human lives! Obviously it's fine for him to torment the people he cares about! Yes, he's merciless and invulnerable and has no feelings, yes he's also deeply wounded and self-pitying, no the two don't contradict each other and there's no cognitive dissonance going on at all.
Explore his powers. He's no Yiling Patriarch, but he has an innate flair for demonic cultivation that he could make a lot of if he only applied himself.
Bleach: Byakuya
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Faith
Captain Marvel: Minn-Erva
Chronicles of Narnia (movies): Caspian
Descendants: Evie, Mal
MCU: Proxima Midnight
Pirates of the Carribbean: Norrington
Star Wars Sequel Trilogy: Ben/Kylo
Star Wars: Rebels: Arihnda Pryce
The Untamed: Xue Yang
Dear Stylist,
Thanks for creating for me! I'm so excited about this exchange - I've spent years in training, wearing head-to-toe black and multishipping my faves with promiscuous abandon. The length of each letter section reflects nothing except my chattiness on the day I wrote prompts for that fandom. My requested characters have all survived multiple rounds of culling to get in under the fandom limit, so whatever we've matched on, please know I'm going to be equally delighted!
I'm requesting fic and art for everything. I'm blanket opting in to crossovers between my requested characters, and into selfcest if you want to get into time travel, mirror versions or other magical shenanigans. While I've suggested some ships here and there, I not only understand but actively love the fact that these details are optional. If you've got a ship in mind that doesn't hit my DNWs, I can't wait to see it!
Other notes: I have no strong feelings about the line between gen and romance, so please don’t worry about your work not being shippy enough, or being dark rather than romantic, or anything. Past ships, background ships, love triangles and poly are all welcome (and m/f, f/f and m/m are fine for all these, regardless of the gender configuration I've requested for the main ship). If I haven't explicitly DNW'd a thing then you're welcome to include it. My prompts are there to help you, not to hem (heh) you in!
I'm
Thanks again, and happy creating!
General info
- underage: explicit <18 sex, any <16 sex or any <13 romance
- unrequested incest
- 'hard' xeno (as a rule of thumb: human actor visible beneath prosthetics = yes please, but fursuit / puppet / tentacles / pincers / heavy CGI = no thanks)
- kinks based on extreme changes to human physiology (futa, womb fucking, mpreg, eggpreg, etc)
- scat, vore, emetophilia, bestiality
- 'no-no-yes' type noncon
- extreme gore, graphic organ damage, genital bleeding/cutting/tearing
- graphic depictions of needles, injections, transfusions or blood-drinking
- AUs other than canon divergence (including trope AUs: please no a/b/o, soulmates etc)
- pure fluff (fic only - cute, fluffy art is welcome)
- poetry
- unrequested identity headcanons (gay/straight/bi sexuality is fine for any character; fleshing out a non-Earth character's fictional ethnicity or religion is great, but please don't base it 1:1 on a real Earth identity)
- unwarned major character death (tag or author’s note appreciated!).
📖 Fic likes and all-purpose prompts
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
- dark/gritty/moody aesthetics
- imperfect happiness, bittersweet undertones, unfulfilled yearning
- ensemble casts, background characters, outsider POV
- mundane details, little moments of human vulnerability
- politics, bureaucracy, propaganda
- banter, snark, gallows humour
- guilty pleasures: denying them, suppressing them, and finally giving into temptation
- military kink: uniforms, weapons, ‘sir’
- harsh environments, brutal weather, survival/adventure stories
- redemption (or failed redemption)
- crack treated seriously
- non-standard formats: drabbles, non-linear, epistolary, social media, in-universe meta.
For reliably excellent results, apply these prompts to any requested ship:
📖 Admiration - of body, talents, superpowers, athleticism, moral character, etc. I love admiring my LBD characters through the eyes of their wearers. I also love seeing my LBDs overcome by their love and yearning for someone else.
📖 Forced proximity - stranded together, huddling for warmth, forced to work together, there's only one bed, etc. The more tension, animosity and baggage between the characters, the better. There's no permutation of the 'enemies to lovers' trope that I don't enjoy.
📖 LBD suffers [injury / illness / torture / poisoning / nightmare / exhaustion / flashback to past trauma / episode of crushing self-loathing]; love interest comforts. I especially love when comfort comes with caveats or complications, rather than the comforter being unconditionally supportive: maybe they're enemies. Maybe the hurt is wholly or partly the LBD's own fault. Maybe the comforter is also hurt, or juggling other problems while trying to care for the LBD.
📖 Flip the above prompt so the love interest is hurt and the LBD comforts them. In this case, I love emphasis on the LBD feeling out of their depth, or on the love interest coming to see the LBD in a new light as a result of their actions.
📖 LBD gets brought into an established relationship between plural love interests. I especially love if they've been pining from the outside, thinking they had no chance, only to learn their feelings are reciprocated after all. On the smut front, I love characters with an established sexual dynamic teaming up to seduce, spoil or torment the LBD.
📖 Food is never not relevant to my interests. Have the ship cook together or eat together or spoil each other with food-related gifts. Have them try something new and adventurous. Explore setting-specific cuisine. Stuff their faces after a physically demanding work day. Tell me what their comfort foods are. Take them on a picnic. Have them argue about what's pleasantly spicy vs physically painful, or what's too sweet, or which table manners can be cheekily ignored.
🎨 Art likes and all-purpose prompts
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 (canon examples: Kylo Ren's cracked helmet, Byakuya's cherry blossoms) 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 diffferent note, my fluff DNW very emphatically does not apply to art. I love chibis, cuddle piles and all manner of sugary cuteness in art. 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.
Here are some general prompts you can apply to any requested ship:
🎨 Love interest helps LBD by tending their wounds, supporting their weight or simply cradling their head while they lie hurt on the ground. My favourite kinds of visual whump include bruises, black eyes, split lips, bloodstains, lacerations, being trapped under something heavy or chained up.
🎨 Food - show the characters eating together, playfully handfeeding each other, wearing flourstained aprons or laying out a picnic blanket. I go soft for bulging cheeks, starry eyes, greedily wide open mouths and detailed drawings of the food itself. If it fits your style, I also adore that trend of tiny chibi characters with food items larger than they are.
🎨 A passionate kiss or hug with the characters holding each other tight enough to hurt.
🎨 LBD falls apart on love interest's shoulder (crying, or else sagging against them and looking exhausted.)
🎨 Poly love interests sandwich LBD between them for erotic or affectionate purposes.
🎨 LBD and love interest train or work out together. I love athleticism, action poses, weaponry, sweat, hair coming loose / falling in eyes and a general sense of movement.
🎨 Costume porn, especially of the black-on-black-on-black variety. Most of my requested characters are already rocking that trve kvlt black metal aesthetic, and the ones that aren't can be easily made to do so. I love straps and studs and buckles. I love leather, kevlar and coarse, tough fabric textures. I love red accents. I love armour and weapon carry. I love shaggy dark hair that falls in the eyes. I love goth power couples, but I equally love the visual contrast of 'A shops exclusively at Hot Topic' / 'B loves bubblegum pink and sparkles', adapted as relevant to how people in that canon tend to dress.
💀 Dark likes
Honestly, go as brutal and fucked-up as you like. There's no such thing as too dark. I love my horror 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 (a mix of fic-focused and totally art-able):
- noncon/dubcon (see my nonconathon letter for a laundry list of kinks I love)
- bad guys win, good guys go bad
- 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
Character-driven smut is my jam. I love sex that says something about the people involved, offbeat sex scenes, sex that's awkward and imperfect and humanising, unusual erogenous zones and intimate details about the characters' bodies. Favourite kinks include:
- orgasm delay/denial, sexual frustration, begging
- coming too quickly, loss of control, getting overwhelmed
- crying after sex
- rough sex, hate sex, power imbalances
- on the other hand: tender, adoring, needy sex with lavish attention to each other's pleasure
- humiliation, verbal insults, gendered slurs
- frottage, dry humping, clothed sex
- sex pollen, fuck-or-die
- different erogenous zones, being sensitive in non-genital places
- anal sex (het or slash), double or multiple penetration
- sounding, watersports, forced wetting
- public use, gangbangs
- loss of virginity, inexperience, clumsy sex
- praise kink
- scar worship
- uncomfortable, consensual-but-unpleasant type sex
- under-negotiated kinks
- any level of complex, problematic or questionable consent.
Requested fandoms
👗 Kuchiki Byakuya
⛔ Fandom-specific DNW: filler arc canon, any mention of that one kenseikan-phone omake skit (feel free to reference any other omake, extras etc. from the manga or anime)
⚠️ DNW exceptions: re. incest - Byakuya/Rukia is very welcome, but only as incest. I'm not interested in AUs where he never adopted her, but I'm very here for their sibling relationship taking an unexpected badwrong turn.
Requested categories: F/M, F/M/M, M/M, M/M/M
Ships I don't want: Yoruichi, Senbonzakura
Ships I mostly don't want: Hisana, as a focus ship before her death or in a never-died AU. It's fine to include past Byakuya/Hisana along with another current-timeline ship. It's also fine to resurrect Hisana after her canon death and have them get back together (more on that in the prompts below).
Why he's a wardrobe staple: He's an asshole with a heart of gold, an emotional volcano trying to pass himself off as solid bedrock. I love the brutal lengths he'll go to for the people he cares about - tactical self-mutilation, anyone? - and how much love he expresses through his actions even when he can't bear to express a word of it aloud. I love what a challenge it is to get to know him, and how many layers of public face and duty and reticence you have to peel back before you glimpse anything resembling his true self.
In fic, I prefer to either resolve any power imbalance in Byakuya's favour or have him meet his partner/s on even footing. (I'm talking relationship dynamics, not top/bottom preferences. I don't mind who sticks what where.) I'm satisfied with how canon dismantled his pride in the Soul Society arc, and have no real appetite for seeing him humbled further. I do love self-driven character growth, where he calls out his own shortcomings or learns a new respect for someone he used to look down on. But I also love competence porn, respect, arm's length intimacy, complex hierarchies, and maybe just a cheeky pinch of spoilt-by-rich-lover fantasy for seasoning.
In art, I love his post-timeskip look with the collared haori, shorter hair and subtler hairpiece. I also never get tired of his cherry blossom motif.
How to wear him:
Give his love interest a glimpse of the endearing human vulnerability he works so hard to keep hidden in public: simple pleasure in a good meal or a deep sleep, fatigue after an intense battle, a joke that makes him (try not to) laugh, an indulgent erotic interest, a moment of offguardedness while reading or daydreaming or working on something immersive.
Let him show affection the only way he knows how: by getting horribly, heroically injured. Does he try to press on through the pain, concealing his wounds except for a limp or momentary wince that his eagle-eyed love interest picks up on? Or is he so badly hurt that he's forced to accept help - learning, in the process, that they don't love or respect him any less for needing them?
Let him show affection the only other way he knows how: by throwing lots of money, servants and/or political influence at the problem while staunchly refusing to admit he cares. I wasn't kidding about the spoilt-by-rich-lover fantasy, but I also love this played for (fond, non-ridiculing) laughs, whether because his idea of 'cheap trifles' is so wildly out of touch or because he's too OTT reserved to just come out and say 'I love you'.
Show off his skills to full effect by having him help someone train, or teach them some other skill - calligraphy? Tea ceremony? 'We're going to some kind of posh do together, here's some basic etiquette to help you not disgrace yourself'?
Explore the baggage of love after loss: he planned on a life with Hisana, prioritised her over everything else in his life, and spent 50 years frozen by grief after her death What does it look like for him to finally move past that and find someone new?
Bring Hisana magically back to life, and then do the same! Can they rebuild their marriage when she's still the same person she was when she died, and he's the older, wiser, sadder man who spent decades living with her loss? Complicated poly would also be amazing for this, like if he's together with someone else when her resurrection throws everything into chaos.
👗 Faith Lehane
Requested categories: F/F
Crossovers I'd like: Any female character from Angel: the Series
Ships I don't want: Buffy
Why she's a wardrobe staple: Faith is my eternal favourite character for this fandom, and there's no part of her story that I don't unreservedly love. I'm here for the early days where she's acting out out, or the later days where she's matured and calmed down and resolved to make amends, or canon-divergent AUs from any point in her arc. What gets me most about her character is the vulnerability and self-destructiveness: her yearning to belong and feel loved, and how badly it clashes with poor impulse control and her compulsive need to look tough and cool and self-sufficient at all times. I love how hard she works to establish her Brand with all the quirky slang and the swagger and the edgy-provocative wardrobe, and how transparent it is to basically everyone around her.
I've watched all of BtVS and Angel and read Go Ask Malice, but I'm not across any of the comics canon. It's fine if you want to reference those events - I'll just be reading it as original material.
How to wear her:
Force her out of her comfort zone. We know Faith gets around, but has she ever been with a woman before? I'd love to see her working hard to keep up her usual bravado while feeling totally out of her depth in her new romance. Maybe her partner is older or more experienced, and she has to learn for the first time how to relax and let herself be led. Maybe she initiated her same-sex tangle for reasons of Hey Look Boys It's Your Faux-Lesbian Fantasy, and is totally blindsided when her attraction turns out to be sincere. Maybe men are for no-strings-attached fun, but women are where her emotions come out and she falls kicking and screaming into earnest, uncynical, painfully vulnerable love.
Conversely: let her be fun, free-spirited and blithely bisexual. Maybe she's the more experienced bad girl who takes her love interest out on the town to show them a good time. Or maybe she tries to do that, but due to her deficiencies in the planning department, it all goes pear-shaped and their date ends up ruined by an apocalypse, forcing Faith to multitask wildly as she tries to flirt and slay at the same time.
👗 Minn-Erva
Requested categories: F/F, F/F/F, F/M, F/F/M, F/M/M
Crossovers I'd like: Any character from the MCU, except for those that only appear in Ant-Man and the Wasp or Spiderman 2: Far From Home (haven't seen them, sorry!).
Ships I don't want: Thanos, Hope Van Dyne
Why she's a wardrobe staple: She's hot and snarky and lethally good at what she does. I love her calm competence in the face of danger, her unflinching willingness to kill, and her jealousy-driven cattiness towards Vers. I love fic that explores her past and motives: who is she behind all the swagger? Is she a perfectly indoctrinated Kree warrior, or does she have doubts? What does her inner moral code look like to support her on-screen ruthlessness? I loved the detail in the art book about her training as a doctor field/medic, and would be super into a gift that incorporates or mentions that side of her skillset.
My art likes are even simpler: hair porn, costume porn, wiry-muscular-could-strangle-me-to-death-between-her-thighs porn. Actual porn is also great if you're that way inclined.
How to wear her:
Some light ideas: Surviving the movie. Peaceful moments on Hala. Being an elite badass. Breaking free of the Kree machine. Reconnecting with Carol. Learning to love (or at least tolerate) humans and Skrulls and non-Kree in general. Fish-out-of-water antics on C-53. Being comforted after injury on a mission (or using her best bedside manner to comfort someone else).
Some heavier ideas: Brainwashing. Kree militarism. Anti-Skrull hatemongering. Space horror. Grim, rugged survival on Earth. Capture, imprisonment and torture (as either perpetrator or victim). Missions gone wrong.
In general: I'd love to see more about her past with Starforce in general, her missions, her training, her daily life on Hala. I'd love to see her meet any cosmic character pre-canon (maybe she's worked with Thanos and his children before? Maybe she once had a brush with an Asgardian?) I'd also love to see her survive the crash at the end of Captain Marvel: does she make her way back home, or is she stranded out on C-53? Is she remorseful for her actions, or hellbent on revenge? Would love to see her fall reluctantly in with the Avengers, who by this point are well and truly used to taking in alien strays.
👗 Caspian
⚠️ DNW exceptions: re. incest - Caspian/Prunaprismia is welcome, as is background Peter/Edmund (but please no pevencest involving the girls). re. underage - the Pevensies make the age thing super weird, and I'm all for leaning right into that if you involve them: how frustrating must it be to go from a mature adult body into a childish one that suddenly makes you too young for the guy you're attracted to? You're also welcome to use 'real time vs Narnia time' weirdness to age them back up again.
Requested categories: M/M, F/M
Crossovers I'd like: any character from bookverse
Ships I don't want: Cornelius, Ramandu's Daughter (she's fine for background appearances or mentions, and you don't have to AU the canon marriage out - I'm just not interested in receiving fic about them together)
Why he's a wardrobe staple: Caspian was one of my first true little black dresses! I've requested movieverse because I find the Ben Barnes version more to my shipping tastes, but other than keeping him broadly Ben Barnes shaped, feel free to dip into book canon as you please.
Prince Caspian era, I love the tension between his well-bred princely manners and his volatile young-man-with-a-sword temper, and all that angst about family and identity and whether or not he's fit to be king. Dawn Treader era, I love his adventurous spirit and his ride-or-die loyalty towards ... well, everyone. The Pevensies. His crew. The old lords from his childhood who he barely remembers. Whatever the reason for gratitude, dude honours his debts and I respect that.
How to wear him:
Explore his relationship with Glozelle or the other palace people before the betrayal. Caspian the young protege, smart and hardworking and good with a blade but prone to drifting off into unkingly daydreams about talking beasts and other such nonsense. Caspian the source of many pitying whispers as Miraz's usurper ambitions become gradually more obvious. Caspian who just really doesn't feel like a Telmarine king, and the people who are meant to be his servants and his royal guard aren't sure what to do with him.
Show me the early days of his rule as he deals with the immense logistical challenges of reintegrating Old Narnia after centuries of Telmarine suppression. If the Pevensies still there (before their canon departure, or in an AU where they get to stay), how does he balance drawing on their expertise against finding his own independent kingly footing? I'm into his bitter-rivals-turned-brothers (or lovers) dynamic with Peter, and his sweet, chivalrous romance with Susan. I'd love to see him get to know Edmund or Lucy better, and learn to take them seriously even though they look so very much younger than him.
Find him a few precious moments of privacy with someone on board the Dawn Treader, or on one of their layovers. I'd love to see more of their weird and wonderful adventures, including the bookverse stuff that didn't make it to film.
I suspect my chances of this are roughly one in a googolplex, but: Caspian/Prunaprismia, anyone? I'd be very here for the badwrong, guilt-wracked thrill of cheating on your husband with his younger, hotter nephew who's used to being shunted aside and made to feel inadequate. Maybe she tells herself she's making up for her husband's mistreatment and her own inability to step up as a genuine mother figure? Alternatively, she decides to stay in Narnia at the end of the movie, and they strike up a weird, fraught relationship now that Miraz is gone and the power dynamics are flipped on their head.
👗 Evie
👗 Mal
Requested categories: F/F, F/F/F
Crossovers I'd like: Any Disney heroine, any OC child of any Disney hero(ine).
Ships I don't want: None for this request!
Why they're wardrobe staples: The Descendants movies are my ultimate (not-so-)guilty pleasure. Every song, every costume change, every self-indulgent moment speaks directly to my id. I'm obsessed with the broken worldbuilding and the dystopian implications of a monarchy that just casually banishes all its difficult subjects to Magic Shithole Island where they and their kids and their great-great-grandkids shall rot in eternal penance. I dearly want to know how it goes when the kids take charge and let all the villains back into Auradon with no apparent plans for how to manage the reintegration - something tells me the answer is 'not well'. I want to see the kids grow up, find themselves outside of high school and experience the topsy-turvy world.
I love all the characters and will eat up any cameos, but Evie and Mal are the two who most captured my heart. Evie is a people-pleasing sweetheart; Mal is a well-meaning but unstable trashfire. I'd love a gift focused on either or both of them, together or with other female characters. Guest appearances by the boys are also extremely welcome.
Speaking of: my feelings toward the canon hetships are best described as placid neutrality. I'm not offended by them and don't mind if they're included, but I won't be mad if you break them up and likely won't even notice if you write them out.
How to wear them:
Join them on their gap year as they savour their freedom from classes, exams and the heavy burden of government.
Send them to university! Auradon must have a college campus, right? Worldbuilding around fairytale-style academic disciplines, student culture and future career prospects all warmly encouraged.
Have them deal with the fallout of bringing the barrier down. Some ideas: bitter villains taking their revenge. Resentment between the two populations. Awkward island/mainland culture clashes. The nitty-gritty of housing, social welfare and other administrative concerns.
Get right inside their (literal) wardrobes. The gratuitous hair and costume porn are among my very favourite things about this canon. Invite me into their beauty routines! Linger in lavish detail on their outfit choices! Have the LBD give the love interest a makeover! Take them shopping together! Pretend like you're on the editorial staff of Mall-Loving Teenage Girl Magazine and go for broke.
👗 Proxima Midnight
⚠️ DNW exceptions: re. incest - you're welcome to ship the Children of Thanos together, and treat the whole brother/sister thing as anywhere from an honorary title to an intimate family bond.
Requested categories: F/F, F/F/F
Ships I don't want: Ava Starr, Hope Van Dyne, Janet Van Dyne
Why she's a wardrobe staple: She's hot.
That's it. I got nothing else. She has big black horns and she kills things and she's hot. I like that bit in the Battle of Wakanda where she fights all the other women, and I'd like to see her tangle with all the other women again in a different way, if you know what I mean. (Sex. I mean sex. Because - I really can't stress this enough - Proxima Midnight is hot.)
THAT SAID, I am also extremely here for character development on topics other than her hotness, such as where she comes from, why she's loyal to Thanos and how she learned how to kill so hotly. I don't care one way or the other about her canon marriage to Corvus Glaive - I like what it implies about her ability to feel deeper emotions than her on-screen staples of Going To Choke You With Your Own Intestines and Look At My Very Tight Catsuit, so if you want to include it as a past or background ship, I'm sure to lap up their no doubt tragic backstory. But I have no actual attachment to Corvus Glaive as a character and equally don't mind if you break them up or ignore him completely.
Basically, any variety of darkly hot murderlady and/or harsh, militarised space worldbuilding is guaranteed to please.
How to wear her:
Explore her backstory, how she became a Child of Thanos and what keeps her loyal to his cause.
Have her train with Gamora and/or Nebula, or have them work together on a mission for Thanos.
Give her some cool cybernetic parts of her own.
Ignore one or both of her canon deaths, and instead strand her on Earth, either to avenge herself on her father's enemis or grit her teeth and accept their mercy.
At any point in the timeline, send her on an adventure in space. I love space horror, alien cultures and galactic-scale culture clashes. I also love space travel as a mundane, everyday part of people's lives, and the petty gripes that must go along with it (ugh, gravity's broken again; ugh, rocket fuel costs are up; ugh, it's so annoying having to lug this air tank everywhere on planets with non-breathable atmosphere).
👗 James Norrington
⛔ Fandom-specific DNW: Davy Jones-style body horror. Please no lingering visuals of barnacle crusts or detachable organs or sea creatures wriggling in and out of people.
Requested categories: M/M, M/M/M, F/M/M
Ships I don't want: Davy Jones, Bootstrap Bill
Why he's a wardrobe staple: Commodore Norrington Did Nothing Wrong 2kForever! I love this excruciatingly honourable prig of a man, and I love (to hate) the way the movies put him right on the cusp of getting everything he ever wanted out of life only to rip it all away. He's equally hot to me in both his powdered-wig and scraggly-drunk incarnations (and his sarcastic sense of humour is equally charming in both, as well).
I'm into pretty much all the main character ship configurations (not so much James/Elizabeth on their own, but James/Elizabeth/Will and James/Elizabeth/Jack are both great). I'm also totally on board for James/any EITC officer, James/any pirate, or the rarepair of your heart featuring that one character who's slipped by mind. Timeline-wise, I haven't seen On Stranger Tides or Dead Men Tell No Tales, so please stay somewhere in the vicinity of the first three movies - but by no means feel obliged to be faithful to them! Backstory, canon-divergent AUs and post-At World's End fic where Norrington survives are all very welcome.
How to wear him:
Hurt him more than he's already been hurt. Have him kidnapped by pirates or marooned on some godforsaken island. Follow him on his aimless drunken misery-journey after losing his commission. Put him on his knees in front of a rapey, blackmaily superior officer. Flog him. Humiliate him. Bring him to the brink of death. Hurt/comfort and aftermath are very welcome, but so is merciless whump.
Teach him to loosen up. Free him from the pressure and shame of his repressed sexuality. Bathe him, comb his hair, give him a sound night's sleep in a warm bed after months of living rough at sea. Feed him something delicious. Indulge him in frivolous sentimental and/or bodily pleasures that he's Totally Not Into as a proud officer of the British Royal Navy (but secretly, guiltily laps up anyway).
Respect him. Admire his combat skills, his tactical brilliance and his upright moral character. Give him a moment of heroism and let the other characters appreciate him in all his glory.
👗 Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
⛔ Fandom-specific DNW: sub!Kylo with any male darksider (I'd prefer him to be either dominant or vanilla with, for example, any of the Knights of Ren or male First Order officers - but femdom of any moral alignment is very welcome, as is Kylo subbing for male Resistance members.
⚠️ DNW exceptions: re. incest - background Luke/Leia is welcome.
Requested categories: F/M, F/F/M, F/M/M, M/M, M/M/M
Crossovers I'd like: Any character from ST-era comics and novels, Resistance, The Mandalorian, Jedi: Fallen Order or Battlefront II. Qi'ra from Solo. Any character from Rebels except for Rex or Ahsoka (I've hardly watched any TCW, so their no doubt excellent backstories are unfortunately lost on me).
Ships I don't want: Snoke, Palpatine, Hux on his own (but OT3s including Hux are welcome).
Why he's a wardrobe staple: All I want is for Kylo to tap every ass in the galaxy while still magically being a prickly, awkward virgin each time he does it. Is that too much to ask?
More seriously: Ben's character arc is everything I've ever wanted out of a villain redemption story. He's got sad childhood memories filled with feelings of inadequacy and abandonment. A catalogue of horrific, deliberately cruel and shocking past misdeeds. An imperfectly suppressed conscience screaming in protest each time he Does An Evil. He thinks he wants to be feared and obeyed, he actually wants to be loved and accepted, and he almost breaks his fork trying to eat both cakes at once. It's an act of selfless, unconditional love that finally gets through to him, and an act of selfless, unconditional love that ends his life when he embraces the light. I love that he dies with a smile on his face, bruised and bleeding but relieved beyond the reach of all pain that he's finally found his purpose. I also love that this is Star Wars and he can come back as a Force ghost boyfriend whenever he likes. I also love that canon is fake, and there are countless ways he can survive the ending of TROS and carry on with that magical-eternal-virgin ass-tapping project I mentioned.
I want to see him trying and failing to be a Dark Fuck Prince. I want to see him using sex to fill the void. I want to see him learning how to love in a healthier, less zero-sum way (and maybe fucking it up as he goes, because old habits are hard to break). I want to see him forging fragile, anxious bonds with people who thought they'd never be able to forgive him. I want to see him expressing affection in weird, broken ways. I want warts-and-all romance that doesn't shy away from what a flaming human trashfire he is, but gives him a chance at love and a chance to be better despite (or even because of) his many flaws.
How to wear him:
Play with his canon backstory. I love his special bond (Force bond?) with Tai, and his one-sided rivalry with Voe, how she's always trying to catch him and he's smugly unworried with his long headstart. I love the ridiculous starry-eyed crush he develops on Ren at literal first sight. I'd love to see his early travels with the Knights of Ren, as he tries to fit into the group and establish himself as a credible dark warrior as opposed to a terrified failboat with granddaddy issues.
Give him some non-canon backstory. Which member/s of the Resistance totally knew him as Ben Solo before he donned his black helmet? What early warning signs did he show, and what redeeming traits made him worth the effort of overlooking them?
Show him in full darkside swing, trying and failing to be a proper Big Bad (but still achieving more than enough horrific imact along his way). Showcase his volatile temper and emotional neediness in a twisted, toxic relationship with a fellow darksider or a good guy who he just can't manage to hate like he's supposed to.
Fly him to the moon and back! I'd love to see more of his piloting skills, and his fondness for dangerously fast and over-armed starfighter prototypes.
Indulge me with some worldbuilding about space travel, the dark side of the Force or his adventures in the Unknown Regions during the cold war.
Torture him. As revenge? As training? As the senseless evil deed of a faceless third party from whom his love interest/s must then heroically rescue him? I really, really love Kylo whump. He hurts so pretty.
Send redeemed Ben Solo on adventures with his new good guy allies. I love prickly, distrustful dynamics where no one's sure what to do with him or how much forgiveness to offer (and where, despite his best intentions, he's still damaged and difficult and maybe kind of an asshole sometimes). I love complicated redemption-in-progress, the lingering ache of old half-healed wounds and the hard-earned warmth of former enemies learning how to care for each other.
👗 Arihnda Pryce
Requested categories: F/F, F/F/F
Crossovers I'd like: Any female character from the OT, ST, ST-era comics or novels, Resistance, The Mandalorian, Jedi: Fallen Order or Battlefront II.
Ships I don't want: None for this request!
Why she's a wardrobe staple: I love everything about Pryce: her ruthless ambition, her baggy sleep-deprived eyes, her sadism, her ruler-straight bob, her badass combat skills. I love her self-confidence and her disdain for others. I love her when she's scared and threatened and lashing out. I love her cold satisfaction as she tortures Hera. I love that she chose to die for the Empire rather than accept an offer of help from a hated enemy. She's deliberately awful, makes no pretense of caring about anyone except herself, and won't let anyone stand between her and what she wants. I'm so into that.
How to wear her:
Pit her against a skilled rival in a game of political oneupmanship: a battle over disputed territory, a scramble for that next promotion, a mission on which her reputation rides. I'd love to see her meet an equal match and feel the thrill of not knowing who's going to win.
Redeem her whether she wants it or not. Have her survive the end of Rebels, or AU her over to the side of the Alliance at some point during the show - maybe the Imperial machine turns on her, and she defects to save her own skin, only to find herself getting gradually drawn into the cause?
Have her survive Rebels but continue being awful. Does she sneak off to become one of the many ex-Imperial warlords scattered around the galaxy? Does she join up with the First Order? Does she pursue a private mission of revenge against the people who destroyed her rule on Lothal?
👗 Xue Yang
Requested categories: M/M, M/M/M
Ships I don't want: None for this request!
Why he's a wardrobe staple: It's the food thing, okay? His tragic food-driven backstory speaks straight to my lizard brain, and his selfish obsession with compensating for the deprivations of his childhood leaves me simultaneously horrified and butter-soft. I love his cheeky grin, his boyish glee, and his profound spiritual talent that he draws on erratically with no apparent long-term goal in mind. I love how emotionally stunted he is, how he's incapable of empathising with others or even recognising his own more complex feelings. He's an utterly broken person and I want to glory in his brokenness. I'd also love to see what shape he'd take if someone bothered piecing him back together - I imagine it'd be pretty rudimentary, with a few key structural bits missing, but progress is progress!
How to wear him:
Feed him. Spoil him with sweets and pastries and hearty stews and fluffy dumplings and anything else delicious. Have him share a treat with someone he likes, or accept a bribe from someone who wants to take advantage of his powers. Have one of the good guys use food in an attempt to rehabilitate him through positive reinforcement. Dwell on his past hunger in indulgently angsty detail, and pay it off with a blissfully full stomach in the present day.
Fill his stomach, but leave his emotional void gaping empty. Show him trying to self-soothe with sweets, and growing more and more unstable as he fails.
Lean right into his warped worldview, and show how he believes himself sincere and reasonable within his own deranged parameters. Obviously his finger is worth more than a whole clan worth of human lives! Obviously it's fine for him to torment the people he cares about! Yes, he's merciless and invulnerable and has no feelings, yes he's also deeply wounded and self-pitying, no the two don't contradict each other and there's no cognitive dissonance going on at all.
Explore his powers. He's no Yiling Patriarch, but he has an innate flair for demonic cultivation that he could make a lot of if he only applied himself.
