Fic in a Box 2020

[lucymonster]

Dear creator,

Thanks so much for creating for me! I hope you'll find me an easy recipient: this letter includes a selection of my favourite things for inspiration, but I’m very open to anything you’d like to do.

 

I have no strong feelings about the line between gen and shipfic, so please don’t worry at all about whether your work is shippy enough. If you're inspired to work in a more worldbuilding-focused medium, that disclaimer applies even harder. Maybe your creator's notes mention that my ship once walked the halls represented in your architectural sketch. Maybe your recipe book includes a few scrawled instructions from character A to character B. Basically, if you give me something cool that I can incorporate into a daydream about my ship, I'm 100% happy to BYO it with the actual romance.

I love (and have blanket opted into) fic of all lengths, from drabbles to epics and through all the pleasingly symmetrical nominated wordcounts along the way. All my medium opt-ins are blanket for the whole exchange, and my general likes section includes some details about the kinds of non-fic gifts I'd love to receive. Feel free to swap prompts, mix media, and otherwise let your creative whim guide you. Also on the topic of opt-ins: if it's not on my DNW list, I'm open to it. Dark themes, kinks, past/background/poly ships, love triangles, go wild and have fun!

I'm lucymonster on ao3.

Thanks again, and happy creating!

General info

⛔ Do Not Want

• underage: explicit <18 sex, any <16 sex or any <13 romance
• parent-child incest
• 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)
• 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!).

⭐ 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
• 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, quippiness
• guilty pleasures: denying them, suppressing them, and finally giving into temptation
• tropes: hurt/comfort, enemies to lovers, forced proximity, huddling for warmth, fake relationships, bodyswap
• descriptions of food, characters eating or sharing food, food as comfort
• military kink: uniforms, weapons, ‘sir’
• harsh environments, brutal weather, survival/adventure stories
• redemption (or failed redemption)
• crack treated seriously.

💀 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:

• 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
• psychological horror
• coercion, blackmail, abuse of power
• victim blaming
• 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
• 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.

🎨 Art likes

Any of my fic likes that can translate visually are just as relevant to my taste in art. For any of my ficcier prompts or favourite tropes, I'd be over the moon to receive an illustration from the hypothetical fic that fills them. I love dark, shadowy colour palettes and goth/metal/industrial styles and an overall moody gloom. I love symbolism and meaningful visual motifs, and I'm open to oblique, metaphorical depictions of ships just as much as pictures of people kissing. (But I am also, to be clear, still very keen on pictures of people kissing.)

On a diffferent note, fluffy art is also amazing. I love chibis, cuddle piles and all manner of sugary cuteness. Polka dots or rainbows in the background just because? You son of a bitch, I'm in. My ship holds hands in the background while their new pet hamster frolics across most of the canvas? Just make sure that little guy's cheeks are as chubby as they come! Throw my grumpy black-clad faves into a scene of lollipops and sparkles? I'll squeal so much that even my ship's new pet hamster will think I'm shrill. I also adore that trend of tiny chibi characters with food items larger than they are.

📽️ Other media opt-ins
Here's a list of the tags I've requested (all apply to every request):

• Any in-universe documents
• Any technical drawing
• AO3 based fanfic exchange
• Comics
• Costume design
• Excerpts from a character's journal/notebook/sketchbook
• Fanart
• Fanart cover/illustration of my fic
• Interactive fiction
• List of things (character) is not allowed to do
• Propaganda poster
• Recipe book
• Recursive fic of any of my works in the fandom
• Remix - art remix of my fic
• Remix - fic remix of my fic.

There is no level of dry worldbuilding that's too dry for me. Bureaucratic paperwork? Legal statutes? Academic journals? All amazing. Highly technical weapon schematics, ship floorplans or planetary maps? It's going on my wall. I just love anything that makes the GFFA feel a bit more real and fleshed out.

On the other hand, I also love lurid in-universe propaganda, media and political or pop-culture miscellany. I'd love to see in-universe memes, tabloid magazines, social media chatter, conspiracy theories posted on obscure web forums, anything. I have a deep weakness for in-universe entertainment media, so a blurb for whatever show or book my faves have been consuming lately would be very cool. 

On my proverbial third hand, cracky meta-jokes are never not RTMI. There is no character in existence who I don't want to read a Skippy's list for, and I'd love to see what my faves would create for each other if for some reason they all got involved in multifandom exchanges.

For recipe books, I'm down for either in-universe food worldbuilding or real fandom-inspired recipes. If the former, get as weird and alien as you like - I have no food aversions or squicks. If the latter, I tragically cannot consume chicken, pork, chickpeas, dark spirits, or wine except in negligible splash-in-the-pot-for-flavour quantities. Everything else is fair game.

And as for remixes and recursive fanworks - anything I've written is up for grabs. I am 0% possessive of or sensitive about my fic, so take as many liberties as you like! If I've written no fic for a given ship, feel free to take fic starring someone else and shake it up to be all about our shared faves.

Requested fandoms

Star Wars - All Media Types

💙 Baby Yoda & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren 

‘He’d probably just put him in front of the TV so he could do what he needed to do. He’d be a negligent caretaker.’ – Adam Driver, 2019

 

I dearly want to see workaholic, ostentatiously eviller-than-thou Kylo Ren find himself suddenly responsible for the care and feeding of a weird adorable alien critter-child. Does Adam Driver have it right, or would Kylo warm up to his new charge? Would that miraculous strength in the Force catch his interest? Would – dare I even suggest it – Baby Yoda’s innate instinct for the light side be enough to touch the heart of a man who has committed himself so wholly to the dark?

Opt-in media ideas:

• Remixes and recursive fanworks: this Space Hogwarts AU features Baby Yoda as a teacher (or 'teacher') at the Jedi temple where Ben trains. I'd be so thrilled to see another creator's take.
• Fanart: enough said, right? Baby Yoda is the cutest, and he's even cuter when being resentfully lugged around by a heavily armed, ill-tempered minder.
• Recipe book: what does the little dude eat? What does he very emphatically not eat, no matter how long you leave him strapped in his high chair or how many aeroplanes (starfighers?) you offer him?
• List of things character is not allowed to do: toddler!Skippy antics aboard Kylo's very important military flagship. Alternatively: list of desperate measures Kylo is no longer allowed to take in order to get the damn green kid off his case.

💙 Cara Dune/Sabine Wren
Two Rebel badasses, both with great hair and both with some hefty family baggage. Maybe they meet during the war and go on high-stakes crazy missions together! Or maybe they cross paths afterwards, while Sabine is on clean-up and Cara is drifting away into the underworld. Does Sabine help anchor Cara to the cause, or does Cara lure Sabine away with her? (They'd make an unbelievably cool mercenary couple.) I'd also love to see them bond over the weight of disappointed parental expectations - Cara too much of a warrior, Sabine not enough of one.

Or post-The Mandalorian, maybe the darksaber brings them together. Cara needs to know what the hell Moff Gideon was holding, and who better to ask than one of the last known warriors to wield it?

Some opt-in media ideas:

• Fanart: maybe Sabine paints some armour for Cara? Or maybe she paints a portrait of Cara herself - with lavish attention paid to those gorgeous arm muscles, naturally.
• In-universe documents: Cara's research on the darksaber and the various hands it's passed through over the years. Official write-ups for misbehaviour while in Rebel Alliance service. Diary/sketchbook entries about each other.

💙 Finn/Kazuda Xiono

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

 

Opt-in media ideas:

• Propaganda posters: because I can hardly think of two less likely poster children for the Resistance cause. It would be glorious.
• Technical drawings or in-universe documents: schema for the Colossus or Resistance ships, miscellany from Yeager's workshop, mission reports - so many cool options!
• Journal/sketchbook excerpts: Kaz is absolutely the kind of character to keep a diary. It's probably full of top secret Resistance intelligence that no one with a lick of common sense would ever have committed to writing.

💙 Phasma/Qi'ra

Two fiery, ruthless survivors who've left behind everything they ever knew and loved to safeguard their futures and secure their ambitions. I'm into this ship for its cutthroat potential, mutual convenience and the chance for these hardened warriors to expose one or two of their deeply buried vulnerabilities - or forcibly expose each other's.

 

What would an alliance between them look like? Maybe Qi'ra finds her cartel working for the First Order? Or maybe Phasma's luck with the Order runs out, and she enlists with Crimson Dawn for another chance to make a life for herself and put her warrior's skills to use?

💙 Qi'ra/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren

Qi'ra is a smart, ambitious survivor who's willing to use sex and intimacy to get what she wants. Kylo is a handy source of power and also a bottomless pit of easy-to-manipulate emotional needs. I'd love to see virgin Kylo with older woman Qi'ra, or maybe Qi'ra indulging her nurturing side with a younger and more energetic toyboy. Maybe she's using him to get to Snoke, or to keep the First Order out of her private cartel business. Or maybe she sees herself as a mentor figure of sorts, an early exponent of letting the past die and becoming who you were meant to be.

 

I'm heavily into the Oedipal potential here: is Kylo hyper-aware that he's fucking his dad's ex? Is Qi'ra nostalgic for Han? Does it bother either of them that she's old enough to be his mother? Please feel free to lean into the age gap and keep-it-in-the-family vibe as hard as you like.

 

Alternatively: redeemed (ish) Ben Solo walks away from the Order but isn't quite ready to join the Fight Against Evil. Working for Qi'ra is a decent morally grey option.

Opt-in media ideas:

• Remixes and recursive fanworks: I've written this ship twice (1, 2). Dismantle for parts at your leisure!
• In-universe documents: I bet the First Order keeps extensive records on all persons of interest, and what is Qi'ra if not interesting?
• Propaganda poster: both Crimson Dawn and the First Order have striking logos, distinctive aesthetics and highly brand-friendly visual identities that I'd love to see brought to life.

Star Wars: Rebels

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

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

Some opt-in media ideas:

• Propaganda posters: Empire vs Alliance never gets old!
• In-universe documents: ISB records, mission reports, Jacen's adoption papers, Kallus's increasingly desperate pleas to r/Relationships for advice on this whole complex being-in-love thing.
• Remixes and recursive fic: I'm just saying, I regret the lack of Hera in my Space Hogwarts fic. What's she up to while Jacen is off at jedi school?

Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

Otherwise known as the Great Force Dyad/Trio Poly Mashup Extravaganza. If it helps, I also ship all four of these characters one-on-one with each other, and am happy for you to lean more on certain pairings than others or configure the relationships any which way. While I've tried to give each pairing some prompts of its own, they're all quite interchangeable and boil down to the same favourite dynamics of mine: fraught canon soulmate Reylo, rock-solid freedom fighter power couple Finnrey and Finnpoe, cheerfully antagonistic Rey/Poe, and much-less-cheerfully antagonistic Finnlo and Kylo/Poe.

Some opt-in media ideas:

• In-universe documents: Ben's post-redemption psych evaluation would be one hell of a read, lol. I'd also love to know about his legal and identity status after the First Order implodes - is there a war crimes trial? A media outcry? Some very clever behind-the-scenes bureaucratic work to keep him off the public radar? Does he get to read all about his own 'death' from in hiding?
• List of things character is not allowed to do: honestly, all four of these characters deserve a good Skippy shaming. What increasingly outlandish ground rules do they have to lay in order to keep the peace now that their lives have gotten all tangled together?
• Remixes and recursive fanworks: here's a link to my works page filtered for any combo of these requested characters. By all means take any fic about a two-person ship and make it poly.

💜 Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
I will never, ever get tired of Ben surviving TROS and having to integrate into Rey's life with her friends/lovers who he variously tortured and brutalised. I'll take literally any spin on this scenario. Slightly prickly but ultimately healthy and uplifting poly? Toxic disaster foursome held together by nothing but lust and sheer stubbornness? Group adventures taking down what's left of the First Order? Team visits to the max sec prison Ben gets locked in after the war?

I love AUs where Ben defects earlier in canon, or where he never goes dark in the first place and instead shows up as the bad-tempered, difficult son of General Leia. Does he fight for the cause voluntarily, or show up now and then to lend a grudging helping hand? How differently does the war with the First Order go without him there to act as Snoke's enforcer?

Or, if Ben is still Kylo, I also love forced-to-work-together and redemption-by-seduction tropes.


💜 Finn/Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren

All of them have the Force now! Let's see Ben, alive or as a Force ghost, helping train Finn in the use of his powers while introducing him to all the weird bits of life with the Force that the books and old masters don't tell you about. Let's see Finn coming to terms with this new part of his identity - maybe he doesn't even want to be a Jedi! Maybe he's seen enough of where that path leads, and is content to live his life as a normal guy who just has flashes of intuition now and then. Let's see Rey explore two completely different kinds of connection: the togetherness-whether-you-like-it-or-not of her Force bond with Ben, verses her voluntary kindred-spirit intimacy with Finn.

Or, pre-Bendemption, drag Finn into the weird spooky sort-of relationship Rey and Kylo have going. (If you're interested in my remix/recursive opt-ins, I have a whole little series about Finn getting roped into the Force Bond that I'd love to see reworked or expanded!) 

 

💜 Poe Dameron/Finn/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren

I love established Finn/Poe with Kylo pining from the outside. I love historic Ben/Poe where they've known each other since long before Finn was in the picture. I love background Reylo (or intense platonic Rey & Kylo Force bond) with Kylo/redeemed Ben setting out to make things right with her friends and accidentally catching feelings in the process. I love prickly forced cooperation, stranded-together, allies-by-circumstance type stories. I love love love to linger on how much Kylo has hurt both Finn and Poe, whether it's background baggage in a lighthearted shipfic or an all-out wallow in the horrors of past torture and attempted murder. I love banter and antagonistic not-really-romance.

 

Some ideas:

• The First Order is defeated and the galaxy is at peace, but Finn and Poe are still haunted by the war. Like, literally. The ghost of Kylo Ren keeps showing up wherever they go.
• TROS missing scene: after Rey flees the Death Star ruins in her stolen TIE, Finn and Poe are approached by an unarmed, dripping wet Ben Solo who wants their help getting to Rey 'before it's too late'.
• Poe has history with Ben from back before he turned to the dark side. When Rey brings a redeemed Ben back from Exegol, that old baggage comes to the fore, leaving Finn suddenly afraid of becoming a third wheel in his own relationship with Poe.
• AU where Ben defects pre-Supreme Leader ascension, and Finn and Poe find themselves reluctantly in charge of the new prisoner-cum-Resistance-member.

💜 Poe Dameron/Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
I love that they're all three fairly quick-tempered, adrenaline-wired personalities with wicked pilot skills and a penchant for reckless do-or-die maneuvers.

Maybe Rey and Poe have a bantery, mostly friendly rivals-with-benefits arrangement that gets upset by a much less friendly rivalry with Ben. Maybe Ben and Rey are already together, and a threesome with Poe is the quickest way to get him on board with an alliance that he's otherwise deeply suspicious of. Maybe Ben and Poe have history from having both grown up in Core World-based, Alliance-loyal circles. Maybe they all bond over their love of very spaceships (maybe it's an AU where the war never happened and they're all racers or smugglers or New Republic navy fighter pilots or something). The possibilities are endless! I just want the pretty people to kiss and snark at each other a lot.

Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren

🧡 Ben/Voe
Voe is my favourite new character from this miniseries, and it's taken me up until pretty much right now to put my finger on exactly what I want for her (besides, you know, everything). I love her quick temper and determination, her competitive streak and her bitter struggle to fit herself into the serene Jedi mould. I love how her own insecurities cause her to uncritically buy into the Ben Solo, Super Special Skywalker Descendant mythos, and how it's her need to prove herself against him that puts them on uneven footing as much as any innate gift on his part. And Ben's so casually dismissive about 'her place in the way of things'. It makes me MAD for her but in a way I enjoy being mad, if that makes sense, lol.

I'd love to see more of her and Ben's one-sided rivalry during their temple days. Maybe, as they get older, their raging hormones and limited social circle make a bad idea look more like a good one. Maybe Voe's drive to match Ben's power morphs into a more general (albeit resentful) admiration - we know Ben's a flaming human trashfire, but she doesn't. Or maybe she does. Maybe she senses the darkness brewing in Ben, but her foresight gets mistaken for jealousy. Maybe sex is the only arena where she feels like she can get the upper hand (sub Ben is good!) or maybe even there she ends up feeling less than (failboaty wannabe-Dom Ben who's clearly driving without a licence is also good!).

I'm very fond of the other students, so any kind of ensemble fic or outside POV on the relationship is very welcome. I love all the potential for petty highschool/college drama made more volatile by the fact that every single student in their tiny school has superpowers. Bring me gossip, top secret diary entries and all permutations of young Jedi taking themselves far too seriously. What does keen-eyed empath Tai make of what's going on between two of his closest friends? How about Hennix, when he looks up from his logic puzzles? For that matter, how full are Luke's hands dealing with his brood of headstrong young adults who he swears were biddable children five minutes ago?

Or later, once everything's gone to hell, let Voe survive. Let her claw her way off Mimban somehow and come back as Kylo's first failed attempt to kill his past. Does she make her way to the Resistance and devote herself to bringing him down? Does the rage and trauma turn her to the dark side? Or does she strike out on her own, grey-dark and driven by a need for revenge? Maybe she becomes a thorn in Kylo's side as he tries to establish himself with the Knights of Ren and the First Order. Or maybe she comes back years later, post-TROS, forcing redeemed and still-alive Ben to confront the first act of true senseless evil he ever committed.

Opt-in media ideas:

• Journal/sketchbook excerpts: Ben had that calligraphy set in his hut for a reason, right? Maybe Voe has similar. Maybe Luke teaches all his students to write by hand, and they use the skills to doodle and navel-gaze about each other.
• In-universe documents: could work with my 'Voe survives post-canon' prompt? The traces she's left of her continued existence, any appearances she's made in Kylo's orbit over the years, the records she keeps of his activities as she tracks him. Alternatively: textbooks/Jedi scriptures/whatever from Luke's curriculum. What nonsense marginalia might Ben and Voe have left for each other?
• Technical drawings: please, give me any and all worldbuilding for this little corner of the fandom! The layout of Luke's training temple? Ben and Poe's lightsaber designs? Ship schematics for the Grimtaash?