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weakinteractionThanks so much for creating for me! I'm really looking forward to this round.
The most important thing to say is that I would, very genuinely, be delighted with anything created for any combination of character and worldbuilding tags I've picked (as long as it avoids my DNWs). Many of the worldbuilding tags do seem to me to be prompts in and of themselves, to be honest, so if you've already got ideas, please do just go for it, but this letter is here if you do want more detail.
My AO3 name is weakinteraction -- exactly the same as this dreamwidth account. I'm requesting Fic, Art or In-Universe Meta for all of the fandoms below; please note that in some cases I have suggested certain characters that might fit well with particular worldbuilding tags, but that shouldn't be taken as meaning I'm not open to them being explored in other ways. (In all the fandoms, I've requested the worldbuilding-by-itself-is-fine "Any or No Characters" tag, so I really am open to anything.)
Spoiler Warnings for recent/current canons: the Doctor Who section mentions the New Year's episode; the Foundryside section hints at spoilers towards the end of the book; and the Discovery section is spoilery up to S2E2.
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General likes
DNWs
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Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
General note: I am intensely agnostic about SMAX. I have no preference at all as to whether you include ideas from it, ignore it completely, or treat it as a source of inspiration without feeling bound to the details.
Characters: Corazon Santiago, Deirdre Skye, Any or No Characters, Original Character(s)
(I ship Corazon/Deirdre.)
I would in general be happy with explorations of the worldbuilding from the perspective of any of the faction leaders, not just the ones in the tag set, or OCs from the factions. Or things with no characters at all, especially on the meta front.
Worldbuilding: Impact of discovery of human psi powers on society, Previous Flowerings, Religion on Planet, Social Engineering, Transcendent Thoughts
Impact of discovery of human psi powers on society -- The game does jump quite quickly from the early mind worm attacks revealing that psi powers are real to empaths everywhere, and there are later bits that imply the far future implications, like the Telepathic Matrix, but especially in the early days it must have caused huge ructions in a society that was already only precariously clinging on in an alien world. What does it mean for ideas about privacy? How does it affect people's view of what it means to be human? Do some factions shun telepaths? (Or are they just too useful even in the ones that we might imagine would be suspicious, especially in fighting mind worms? And obviously all the faction leaders seem to turn out to be powerful telepaths, given the connections they form with Planet.) Or were there hints that there was something to it even back on Earth? (maybe all those '60s parapsychology experiments caught on to something?) For art, I would be very up for something that gets at the same type of vibes as some of the related Secret Project videos (from the creepiness of the Empath Guild one to the outright horror of the Psychic Amplifier to the everything's-great-or-is-it Telepathic Matrix one).
Religion on Planet -- How does life on a new world affect religious views? The Gaians are an obvious candidate here: the Weather Paradigm is a very early project and comes with its own Gaian prayer. But what sort of belief systems existed among Deirdre's followers on board the Unity? What is Deirdre's role, and how comfortable is she with it? That sort of thing. If you're up for doing fictional Christian theology, I'm also intrigued by how the Believers adapt their take on things. There are implications in some of the in-game quotes that they put the expulsion from paradise front and centre, but then there's also all the endgame "We Must Dissent" stuff. But I'd also be interested in, e.g. how the University (which I kind of assume is at least officially atheist) handles rituals around major life events, death, etc. or whatever weird rituals the Hive use to help people "extend [their] awareness outward, beyond the self of body, to embrace the self of group and the self of humanity", and so on. Art-wise for this, I'd love some religious art from Planet.
Social Engineering -- the social engineering screen is seriously my favourite game mechanic ever; none of the later Civ takes on the same idea have quite given me the same feeling of pressing a lever here and getting an outcome over there but also an unintended consequence to deal with in the corner. How do the faction leaders weigh up these choices? (Given that these often determine diplomacy as well -- what do they do if their neighbour is pushing for something that isn't necessarily what they would go for?) Or taking a more ordinary citizen's level view of things, what's it like to go through an upheaval? (The fact that you just have to pay a bunch of money for it with none of the disorder in Civ II suggests that the Psych Chaplains and similar are doing a lot of stuff to people to get them to accept new models, for example.) Art-wise, some sort of chart or diagram representing connections between different areas? Or a map produced by a probe team of the likely willingness of an enemy population to adopt certain models? Or a propaganda poster?
Previous Flowerings -- this one seems most obvious as a match to Planet character-wise, but if you want to have one of the human characters discussing it with Planet/having some sort of psychic vision/etc. go for it. But I would love to know more about what Planet thinks in those moments of godhood before the dieback. Is it all quite philosophical, or is it a desperate attempt to try to survive? Art-wise, something representing the connections within the fungus all across the planet, maybe?
Transcendent Thoughts -- What are they, anyway? In some games, I seem to have an awful lot of them. I would be up for anything here from pure philosophy to invented science. Art-wise, any sort of numinous representation of a transcendent thought itself would be awesome, or something about the Transcendi -- how they seem themselves vs their reality of living inside a computer, somehow?
A lot of these tags could definitely be combined together. (e.g. how do the Believers integrate the existence of psi into their theology? To what extent do the musings of the Transcendi recapitulate Planet's millions-of-years-earlier thoughts?)
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Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
General note: I really am happy with you including as much or as little as you like from the various supplementary sources, even ones that are only Who-adjacent.
Characters: Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, Sarah Jane Smith, The Doctor, Davros
(I have far too many Who ships to list, but Doctor/TARDIS is always a key one.)
Worldbuilding: changes to Dalek history, non-linear encounters between the Time Lords and the Daleks, History of UNIT
Changes to Dalek history/non-linear encounters between the Time Lords and the Daleks -- the Daleks have time travel from their third appearance onwards, and it features in most but not all stories after that, but the sophistication of it varies greatly. Genesis shows that the Doctor and the Daleks can definitely meet out of order, so is it possible that the DARDIS-enabled Daleks of The Chase and Masterplan are much further along the Dalek timeline, trying to stop the Doctor early on in his timeline? Is the Dalek timeline constantly being rewritten by the Time Lords/the Daleks themselves? What did Davros have planned for the Hand of Omega?
History of UNIT -- A lot of my specifically requested characters would fit easily here, and I'd be very happy with anything (up to and including resolving/complicating further the UNIT Dating Controversy), but the specific inspiration for nominating this tag was the little bit in Resolution about UNIT being shut down. I'm really interested in how that ties in to the various sort-of successor organisations to UNIT in some of the spinoffs (like UNISYC in some of Lawrence Miles's books).
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Metropolis Suites - Janelle Monáe
Characters: Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Cindi Mayweather, DJ Crash Crash
Worldbuilding: Android history and culture, Metropolis cityscape, Queer android underground, Time travel
Android history and culture -- how long have androids been around by Cindi's time? When did they first come into existence? On the culture side, I'm particularly intrigued by the DJ Crash Crash segments on Electric Lady, but presumably that only represents one aspect of it. Are there older model androids who disapprove of the sort of things Electro Phi Beta get up to, for example?
Metropolis cityscape -- what does Metropolis actually look like? We get a few hints from some of the liner illustrations, but anything about this would be great. What are the Sectors mentioned in Many Moons, for example? (This could definitely be a map-ish art prompt, I'm thinking.)
Queer android underground -- this is kind of an expansion of a specific point of the first one, I guess? But anything/everything related to this particular aspect would be fantastic.
Time travel -- this is my shoot-for-the-moon prompt, but the liner notes set up the framing story with Janelle in the Palace of the Dogs receiving visions from Cindi in the future (so I think this puts the Tightrope video on topic), and the Time Council Representative in the Q.U.E.E.N. video is speaking on a screen branded with the Metropolis Droid Control logo, so I think there's an argument to be made for including that in the narrative too. (There's also the student from Time University who calls in to DJ Crash Crash with his Cindi-is-the-Archandroid conspiracy theorising that gets quickly shut down.) Basically, any sort of grand unified theory of how all the cross-time links work would be amazing. (If you really, really want to go all out and bring in Dirty Computer as well, I'm definitely open to that. Jane and Cindi sharing a number can't just be coincidence, can it?)
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Marvel Secret Wars Battleworlds
Characters: Victor von Doom, Stephen Strange, Owen Reece, Susan Storm, Valeria, Any or No Characters, Original Character(s)
(I ship Victor/Stephen.)
Worldbuilding: boundaries between patches of different universes, altered memories, building of the world, Doom radiation, role of the Foundation
Building of the world -- Anything about what was going on when they first built Battleworld would be awesome. From how it's described in canon, it seems to have been very difficult to get the different patches of reality to coexist (see the next two prompts!); I'd love something about what that looked like in practice. On the meta level, something about the legends the inhabitants later tell of that time would be fascinating. Art-wise, something showing Doom exerting his power, or Stephen doing magic, or anything like that, would be great.
Altered memories -- Most people in most parts of Battleworld seem to accept their new reality. How is this maintained? What exactly are the new memories that Doom gave them like? What happens when the old memories start to poke through?
Boundaries between patches of different universes -- How exactly does this work? How significant are the effects and do they persist in a significant way even at the time that the miniseries takes place?
Doom radiation -- Do areas of Battleworld that Doom doesn't know much about have a sketchier quality to their existence than others? (This could lend itself to some interesting art, I think, if you take "sketchier" fairly literally.) Is this why Stephen is seen reporting on lots of minutiae in his Sheriff role in the early issues? What happens when Doom really wants to exert his power?
Role of the Foundation -- Where does Valeria's Foundation sit in relation to Stephen's operations? Exactly how much influence does she have over Doom? Caseficcy type stuff of them investigating Battleworld would be great. For art, diagrams of gadgets Valeria invents?
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The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Characters: Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Diziet Sma, The Excession, Flere-Imsaho, GSV Sleeper Service, Skaffen-Amtiskaw
Worldbuilding: far future, the Reality, what drones get up to when humans aren't around
Far future -- What happens in "the end"? There are hints in some of the last few books that the Culture is potentially hanging around too long as a High Level Involved civ for its own and the wider galaxy's good. Does the entire Culture eventually Sublime, or does it invent a new role for itself that no one's ever really gone for before? Do increasingly large subsets of Cultureniks form new factions a la the Zetetic Elench that do Sublime, eventually leaving behind effectively a continuity Culture made up only of those who refused to do so? Or does something even weirder than that happen? (On a slightly less abstruse level, does the Sleeper Service actually make it to Leo II, and what does it find when it gets there? Does it ever decide to come back?)
The Reality -- Banks already gives us quite a bit of worldbuilding on this, with the Grid and infraspace and ultraspace and the whole thing with the reality being a toroid that universes move across the surface of, but there's definitely room for lots more, I think. (How different are all the other universes?) And of course, there's the Excession which acts as a bridge between different levels of it (I'll be completely honest -- you can just write me 1000 words like the epilogue and I'll be very happy indeed)
What drones get up to when humans aren't around -- We very rarely see drones except in the context of their contact with one or more humans. How do they socialise with each other? What are their leisure activities? We see a bit of drone-to-drone communication from an external POV a few times; what's it like to them?
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Machineries of Empire
Characters: Ajewen Cheris, Garach Jedao Shkan, Kujen, Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Rhezny Brezan, Tseya
(I ship dirtybadwrong Jedao/Kujen, and if I'm honest Cheris/pretty much any woman who crosses her path.)
Worldbuilding: Calendrical mechanics, Cultural importance of games, Family relationships with multiple spouses, Pre-Heptarchate history, Servitors
Calendrical mechanics -- anything and everything about how it works very welcome. What is the intersection between belief systems and playing with the laws of physics? Obviously Kujen would be an obvious candidate for exploring this, as the inventor of the whole system, but how Cheris organised her new calendar would also be interesting, or anything about the day-to-day maintenance of the high calendar, either from the Rahal point of view (towers, remembrances, etc.), the Vidona one, or from the point of view of people like the Mwennin, maintaining their traditions surreptitiously while paying lip service to the outward forms.
Cultural importance of games -- obviously this applies most to the Shuos, but it seems that everyone takes various games fairly seriously. Are there variations between the factions in how these things are viewed? How is the significance of games viewed in Cheris's new regime?
Family relationships with multiple spouses -- One of the few parts about the hexarchate's social setup that isn't horribly depressing is the widespread acceptance of a wide range of family structures. How do people navigate that? Does the high language have specific vocabulary that allows you to differentiate when you're talking about your parents based on how many of them you have? What happens if relationships go wrong?
Pre-Heptarchate history -- How did things end up the way they did? It seems that the systems that became part of the heptarchate/hexarchate are part of a wider human diaspora, who now seem very different as far as the hexarchate characters are concerned, but are there actually-alien aliens out there and if so what happened when humanity met them? How did space exploration get started before the invention of the moth drive? And so on -- anything diving deep into the backstory would be fantastic.
Servitors -- we find out a lot more about the servitors in Revenant Gun, but I would love to know even more. What do they do in their "time off"? What are their real opinions of the humans who order them around all day? How many other agendas have they got on the go? For art, I'd love a picture of a servitor, or even better, a whole group of servitors with different forms having a meeting.
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Harry Potter - Wizarding World (No Pottermore)
Characters: Any or No Characters
Worldbuilding: Wizarding Economics
Wizarding Economics -- I'm basically reusing this prompt whole from last year, even though the tag has moved sideways from the books only fandom to the wider WW one. I've been rereading HP quite a bit over the last couple of years, and every time anything about Gringott's comes up I start scratching my head again (most recently: Hermione buying things in Diagon Alley with money from her parents in Azkaban -- this means there must be a Muggle-money/Galleons exchange rate, right?).
So: How does money work in the wizarding world? How many things do people actually need to trade, or is it more that if you want a good version of something, you need to go to someone who's a specialist? Since they can magic up almost anything, how does the wizarding world end up with stores of value that are seemingly so similar to the Muggle world's? Is it one of the exemptions to Gamp's Law, and if so how? Are the goblin inscriptions on the coins actually some sort of enchantment that means that they will work as a currency? (Part of me wonders if it's some sort of magical equivalent of cryptocurrency. Is the fact that the numbers of Knuts in a Sickle and Sickles in a Galleon are both prime significant in some arithmantic way?)
Some slightly more specific prompts if you're that way inclined: What does Harry end up doing with all the money he inherited? (I would prefer this not to go down a Lord Potter route, though.) Were the Weasleys always poor or did one of Ron's ancestors make poor investments? Does Hermione ever find herself in trouble with Gringott's for creating the fake Galleons used by the DA?
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Foundryside - Robert Jackson Bennett
Characters: Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Berenice Grimaldi, Claudia, Clef, Gregor Dandolo, Sancia Grado
(I definitely ship the canon Sancia/Berenice but before Berenice appeared I was already shipping Sancia/Claudia.)
Worldbuilding: other parts of the Tevanni Commons, Scrived devices other than those shown in canon, the Hierophants and the Occidental Empire
Other parts of the Tevanni Commons -- we really only see a few areas, but the Commons are implied to sprawl all around the merchant quarters, so there must be other parts that we don't know much about. What goes on there? Presumably the Scrappers have hideouts all over the place. Or Sancia on a job? Art-wise, I could definitely imagine a map of Tevanne here, if you're up for it.
Scrived devices other than those shown in canon -- there must be all sorts of other scrived conveniences around, and other hacks the Scrappers use to circumvent them. What are they? Or go all out and combine this with the next one and describe another hierophantic artefact that we haven't encountered yet. I could definitely imagine art here, with all the sigillums, etc.
The Hierophants and the Occidental Empire -- we find out quite a bit by the end of the book, but there must be a lot more to tell. What was day to day life like for citizens of the Occidental Empire? What did the Hierophants do with their time before they got involved in the war with their own creation? (This is another one where I could imagine maps, for what it's worth. What was the extent of the empire? Exactly how out of the way was modern-day Tevanne from their point of view?)
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Star Trek: Discovery
General note: I am keeping up with canon week by week; as a general rule, if anything in my prompts/the ideas you come up with ends up contradicted by later episodes of the season feel free to blithely ignore it/AU the hell out of things/etc.
Characters: Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Saru, Paul Stamets, Mirror Philippa Georgiou, Sylvia Tilly, Michael Burnham, Katrina Cornwell
Worldbuilding: After-effects of the Klingon War, Culture of the Mirrorverse, Kelpien Biology and Culture, Sarek's various attempts to integrate Vulcans and humans, Section 31 in the 23rd Century, The Spore Drive
After-effects of the Klingon War -- obviously S2 is exploring this to some extent, but they must have been extensive considering how close the Klingon fleet came to destroying Earth. How badly underresourced is Starfleet at the moment? (Cornwell could be a good character for exploring this, perhaps.) How have things changed for civilians? Has there been any impact on diplomatic relations with other powers/individual worlds? (e.g. "we were going to join the Federation but now we're not so sure ...")
Culture of the Mirrorverse -- Anything at all! What's it like as a citizen of the Terran Empire? Or an alien kept enslaved (or free and either on the run or fighting against the regime)? One thing that really intrigues me is that the Terran Empire is so outwardly similar to the Prime universe (especially in Mirror, Mirror in TOS), given that the Terran Empire has had access to the Defiant and its technology for the best part of a century. (And of course by the time DS9 rolls around the Terran Empire has been destroyed.) Is there some in-universe explanation for the close parallels? Especially given the number of assassinations in the Mirror verse, the fact that the same people are around in roughly the same roles seems very surprising. Is there some sort of process driving such convergence? (In terms of the various requested characters, feel free to use either or both of their normal universe and Mirror universe selves here.)
Kelpien Biology & Culture -- Short version: I love Saru, tell me more about him and where he comes from. Slightly longer version: I love the idea of a sentient species that has evolved from prey instead of predator. What differences has that caused in biological and/or cultural senses? We get a few hints from some of Saru's statements and his attitude to things, but there's definitely more to dig into here, I feel. How does the sensing-death thing work, and how abstract can the threat be before it doesn't register? (And why didn't it work with Mirror Lorca?) And why are there so few Kelpiens around in the prime universe?
Sarek's various attempts to integrate Vulcans and humans -- Discovery definitely seems to be going for this being a big project that Sarek is deliberately running. What's his motivation? What other irons has he got in the fire? Shoot-for-the-moon prompt: bring in Spock's other sibling-he-never-talks-about and explore how Sybok felt about Michael's arrival ...
Section 31 in the 23rd Century -- we saw them in the little tag to S1 recruiting Mirror Georgiou. What are they up to during this era? Trying to work out how they can manipulate L'Rell? Worried by the Romulans' long silence? Are there any Section 31 agents aboard the Discovery, and if so how do they feel about things like the Spore Drive?
The Spore Drive -- How exactly does it work beyond "insert fungus and sentient navigator"? What exactly happened so that it didn't become ubiquitous later on? (Recent episodes have definitely started to hint at some possible fairly dark explanations for this; feel free to roll with this or invent some other reason.) Art-wise, schematics etc. would be awesome.
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Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson
General note: For the purpose of worldbuilding requests, I guess I am pretty version-agnostic but I find that the original concept album makes both Freddie and Anatoly quite a bit more asshole-ish than the other ones I know, in ways I don't enjoy quite as much (they are assholes, especially Freddie, but in most other versions they're also somewhat more victims of circumstance; one thing I particularly like is when the version has the King's Indian Defence conversation, which makes it clear that they do both have a genuine passion for chess underneath everything else that's going on*). And the quite drastic re-arrangement of things in the original Broadway version doesn't really work for me.
Characters: Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Alexander Molokov,
Anatoly Sergievsky, Florence Vassy, Frederick Trumper, Walter de Courcey
(I definitely multiship all over the place in this fandom. Florence is the character I have the largest number of feels about, but that's because it's a very large number; I have a lot of feels about the others too.)
Worldbuilding: Files kept by intelligence agencies, How Freddie revitalised chess single-handed, Media coverage of Anatoly's defection(s), The Merchandisers' various chess-branded products
Files kept by intelligence agencies -- on any of the characters, specifically in the tag set or otherwise. What do Molokov and/or de Courcey's personnel files look like? How detailed are the KGB's notes on Freddie? Who, exactly, knows what about Florence's father? etc.
How Freddie revitalised chess single-handed -- Anatoly credits him with being "the man who revitalised chess single-handed" in his discussion/argument with Molokov early on, but what exactly did he do? (Obviously, this is part of Freddie being based on Bobby Fischer, so feel free to take as much or as little inspiration as you want from that quarter -- but in at least some versions, Fischer is named among previous champions in the choral bit during Endgame; if you want to go all out on reconciling that, feel free.)
Media coverage of Anatoly's defection(s) -- obviously, we see some aspects of this when Freddie interviews Anatoly, but what was the reaction immediately after Act 1, rather than a year later? (How badly garbled do the sentiments he expresses in Anthem become in the hands of the press?) Or how was his return portrayed? I'd be equally interested in either side of the Iron Curtain for this.
The Merchandisers' various chess-branded products -- this one definitely feels like it could lend itself to art (adverts, fashion sketches?) or meta (minutes of a pitch meeting?), but it could equally well be fic about how one or more of the characters react to the merchandising overload. Feel free to either elaborate on the various things we hear about in the song, or come up with even more ridiculous cash-ins.
*I am indebted to Borusa's thoughts about this in their Yuletide letter for helping me clarify my own thinking around it.
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The most important thing to say is that I would, very genuinely, be delighted with anything created for any combination of character and worldbuilding tags I've picked (as long as it avoids my DNWs). Many of the worldbuilding tags do seem to me to be prompts in and of themselves, to be honest, so if you've already got ideas, please do just go for it, but this letter is here if you do want more detail.
My AO3 name is weakinteraction -- exactly the same as this dreamwidth account. I'm requesting Fic, Art or In-Universe Meta for all of the fandoms below; please note that in some cases I have suggested certain characters that might fit well with particular worldbuilding tags, but that shouldn't be taken as meaning I'm not open to them being explored in other ways. (In all the fandoms, I've requested the worldbuilding-by-itself-is-fine "Any or No Characters" tag, so I really am open to anything.)
Spoiler Warnings for recent/current canons: the Doctor Who section mentions the New Year's episode; the Foundryside section hints at spoilers towards the end of the book; and the Discovery section is spoilery up to S2E2.
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General likes
- I love worldbuilding in all its forms; my favourite canons split pretty evenly into ones where the worldbuilding feels all wonderfully detailed and I just want even more of it, and ones where I have a ton of nagging questions that I want filling in/inconsistencies I want to see resolved.
- That said, I am definitely not averse to shipping if you want to include it. I have listed for each fandom any ships I particularly ship among the selected characters, but I am in general open to being persuaded on any given pairing. I multiship all over the place and don't have any hard NOTPs.
- I love canon-divergent AUs; if you want to explore the worldbuilding in question by taking a road-not-travelled approach, that's A-OK with me.
- Fic: I am in general happy with many different types of fic; Just the characters doing something that they're stated to do in canon but with the details glossed over would be fine with me, if there's more detailed exploration of how they do it to show the worldbuilding. But I genuinely have no restrictions on things like person, tense, and am very open to epistolary fic, interactive fiction, and so on. Again, go with your inspiration.
- In-universe meta: I basically consider this "also fic", but yes please to anything and everything that fits in the category of things you might find in that universe. Encyclopedia entries, newspaper articles, instruction manuals, teaching materials, etc. Even better, something that takes this a layer deeper, like a historical overview presenting bits and pieces from different sources and pointing out the contrasts/conflicts between them. I particularly love the sort of thing that presents a distorted view of the version we "know" from canon, but that you can see where it's come from (slightly random example if you know it: "Living Witness" from Voyager). But in general, anything you can imagine that would fit into the meta category would be great.
- Art: I'm open to any and all types of worldbuilding art. Maps! Diagrams! Fictional landscapes! Portraits of characters illustrating worldbuilding elements (fashion, gadgets they're holding, etc.)! If you're inclined to include them, I do love Easter-Egg-y type stuff in art, and for some of these fandoms I would really love something that reproduced the feel of being from that universe, where appropriate (e.g. for Star Trek, something that had bits of LCARS interface round the side). I'll be honest -- I don't feel like I'm very good at prompting for art. I've tried to provide some more specific ideas where they occur to me, but they really are just suggestions; if they're absent/not working for you, but something I've put in the other bits of the details has sparked off an idea, go with it by all means.
DNWs
- character or ship bashing (in particular, where there are conflicting canon ships for any ships you might be writing, quietly ignoring them/AU-ing them away/handwaving everyone as being happily poly are all far preferable to me to devoting large chunks of the fic to demonstrating that the canon love interest is The Worst and breaking them up; OTOH, angst where everybody feels bad about it can work just fine)
- non-canon-divergent AUs like coffee shops, A/B/O, etc. (canon-divergent ones, on the other hand, are a big yes as mentioned above)
- pregnancy/kidfic
- watersports
- scat
- emetophilia
- bloodplay
- breathplay
- vore
- violent non-con (coercion/mind control/etc. are fine)
- incest
- underage (my definition isn't quite the same as AO3's: what I don't want is people under 16 having sex; for characters in the 13-15 range I am OK with it being mentioned that they're sexually active if that's plausible given their canon circumstances, but I wouldn't want it front and centre)
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Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
General note: I am intensely agnostic about SMAX. I have no preference at all as to whether you include ideas from it, ignore it completely, or treat it as a source of inspiration without feeling bound to the details.
Characters: Corazon Santiago, Deirdre Skye, Any or No Characters, Original Character(s)
(I ship Corazon/Deirdre.)
I would in general be happy with explorations of the worldbuilding from the perspective of any of the faction leaders, not just the ones in the tag set, or OCs from the factions. Or things with no characters at all, especially on the meta front.
Worldbuilding: Impact of discovery of human psi powers on society, Previous Flowerings, Religion on Planet, Social Engineering, Transcendent Thoughts
Impact of discovery of human psi powers on society -- The game does jump quite quickly from the early mind worm attacks revealing that psi powers are real to empaths everywhere, and there are later bits that imply the far future implications, like the Telepathic Matrix, but especially in the early days it must have caused huge ructions in a society that was already only precariously clinging on in an alien world. What does it mean for ideas about privacy? How does it affect people's view of what it means to be human? Do some factions shun telepaths? (Or are they just too useful even in the ones that we might imagine would be suspicious, especially in fighting mind worms? And obviously all the faction leaders seem to turn out to be powerful telepaths, given the connections they form with Planet.) Or were there hints that there was something to it even back on Earth? (maybe all those '60s parapsychology experiments caught on to something?) For art, I would be very up for something that gets at the same type of vibes as some of the related Secret Project videos (from the creepiness of the Empath Guild one to the outright horror of the Psychic Amplifier to the everything's-great-or-is-it Telepathic Matrix one).
Religion on Planet -- How does life on a new world affect religious views? The Gaians are an obvious candidate here: the Weather Paradigm is a very early project and comes with its own Gaian prayer. But what sort of belief systems existed among Deirdre's followers on board the Unity? What is Deirdre's role, and how comfortable is she with it? That sort of thing. If you're up for doing fictional Christian theology, I'm also intrigued by how the Believers adapt their take on things. There are implications in some of the in-game quotes that they put the expulsion from paradise front and centre, but then there's also all the endgame "We Must Dissent" stuff. But I'd also be interested in, e.g. how the University (which I kind of assume is at least officially atheist) handles rituals around major life events, death, etc. or whatever weird rituals the Hive use to help people "extend [their] awareness outward, beyond the self of body, to embrace the self of group and the self of humanity", and so on. Art-wise for this, I'd love some religious art from Planet.
Social Engineering -- the social engineering screen is seriously my favourite game mechanic ever; none of the later Civ takes on the same idea have quite given me the same feeling of pressing a lever here and getting an outcome over there but also an unintended consequence to deal with in the corner. How do the faction leaders weigh up these choices? (Given that these often determine diplomacy as well -- what do they do if their neighbour is pushing for something that isn't necessarily what they would go for?) Or taking a more ordinary citizen's level view of things, what's it like to go through an upheaval? (The fact that you just have to pay a bunch of money for it with none of the disorder in Civ II suggests that the Psych Chaplains and similar are doing a lot of stuff to people to get them to accept new models, for example.) Art-wise, some sort of chart or diagram representing connections between different areas? Or a map produced by a probe team of the likely willingness of an enemy population to adopt certain models? Or a propaganda poster?
Previous Flowerings -- this one seems most obvious as a match to Planet character-wise, but if you want to have one of the human characters discussing it with Planet/having some sort of psychic vision/etc. go for it. But I would love to know more about what Planet thinks in those moments of godhood before the dieback. Is it all quite philosophical, or is it a desperate attempt to try to survive? Art-wise, something representing the connections within the fungus all across the planet, maybe?
Transcendent Thoughts -- What are they, anyway? In some games, I seem to have an awful lot of them. I would be up for anything here from pure philosophy to invented science. Art-wise, any sort of numinous representation of a transcendent thought itself would be awesome, or something about the Transcendi -- how they seem themselves vs their reality of living inside a computer, somehow?
A lot of these tags could definitely be combined together. (e.g. how do the Believers integrate the existence of psi into their theology? To what extent do the musings of the Transcendi recapitulate Planet's millions-of-years-earlier thoughts?)
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Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
General note: I really am happy with you including as much or as little as you like from the various supplementary sources, even ones that are only Who-adjacent.
Characters: Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, Sarah Jane Smith, The Doctor, Davros
(I have far too many Who ships to list, but Doctor/TARDIS is always a key one.)
Worldbuilding: changes to Dalek history, non-linear encounters between the Time Lords and the Daleks, History of UNIT
Changes to Dalek history/non-linear encounters between the Time Lords and the Daleks -- the Daleks have time travel from their third appearance onwards, and it features in most but not all stories after that, but the sophistication of it varies greatly. Genesis shows that the Doctor and the Daleks can definitely meet out of order, so is it possible that the DARDIS-enabled Daleks of The Chase and Masterplan are much further along the Dalek timeline, trying to stop the Doctor early on in his timeline? Is the Dalek timeline constantly being rewritten by the Time Lords/the Daleks themselves? What did Davros have planned for the Hand of Omega?
History of UNIT -- A lot of my specifically requested characters would fit easily here, and I'd be very happy with anything (up to and including resolving/complicating further the UNIT Dating Controversy), but the specific inspiration for nominating this tag was the little bit in Resolution about UNIT being shut down. I'm really interested in how that ties in to the various sort-of successor organisations to UNIT in some of the spinoffs (like UNISYC in some of Lawrence Miles's books).
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Metropolis Suites - Janelle Monáe
Characters: Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Cindi Mayweather, DJ Crash Crash
Worldbuilding: Android history and culture, Metropolis cityscape, Queer android underground, Time travel
Android history and culture -- how long have androids been around by Cindi's time? When did they first come into existence? On the culture side, I'm particularly intrigued by the DJ Crash Crash segments on Electric Lady, but presumably that only represents one aspect of it. Are there older model androids who disapprove of the sort of things Electro Phi Beta get up to, for example?
Metropolis cityscape -- what does Metropolis actually look like? We get a few hints from some of the liner illustrations, but anything about this would be great. What are the Sectors mentioned in Many Moons, for example? (This could definitely be a map-ish art prompt, I'm thinking.)
Queer android underground -- this is kind of an expansion of a specific point of the first one, I guess? But anything/everything related to this particular aspect would be fantastic.
Time travel -- this is my shoot-for-the-moon prompt, but the liner notes set up the framing story with Janelle in the Palace of the Dogs receiving visions from Cindi in the future (so I think this puts the Tightrope video on topic), and the Time Council Representative in the Q.U.E.E.N. video is speaking on a screen branded with the Metropolis Droid Control logo, so I think there's an argument to be made for including that in the narrative too. (There's also the student from Time University who calls in to DJ Crash Crash with his Cindi-is-the-Archandroid conspiracy theorising that gets quickly shut down.) Basically, any sort of grand unified theory of how all the cross-time links work would be amazing. (If you really, really want to go all out and bring in Dirty Computer as well, I'm definitely open to that. Jane and Cindi sharing a number can't just be coincidence, can it?)
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Marvel Secret Wars Battleworlds
Characters: Victor von Doom, Stephen Strange, Owen Reece, Susan Storm, Valeria, Any or No Characters, Original Character(s)
(I ship Victor/Stephen.)
Worldbuilding: boundaries between patches of different universes, altered memories, building of the world, Doom radiation, role of the Foundation
Building of the world -- Anything about what was going on when they first built Battleworld would be awesome. From how it's described in canon, it seems to have been very difficult to get the different patches of reality to coexist (see the next two prompts!); I'd love something about what that looked like in practice. On the meta level, something about the legends the inhabitants later tell of that time would be fascinating. Art-wise, something showing Doom exerting his power, or Stephen doing magic, or anything like that, would be great.
Altered memories -- Most people in most parts of Battleworld seem to accept their new reality. How is this maintained? What exactly are the new memories that Doom gave them like? What happens when the old memories start to poke through?
Boundaries between patches of different universes -- How exactly does this work? How significant are the effects and do they persist in a significant way even at the time that the miniseries takes place?
Doom radiation -- Do areas of Battleworld that Doom doesn't know much about have a sketchier quality to their existence than others? (This could lend itself to some interesting art, I think, if you take "sketchier" fairly literally.) Is this why Stephen is seen reporting on lots of minutiae in his Sheriff role in the early issues? What happens when Doom really wants to exert his power?
Role of the Foundation -- Where does Valeria's Foundation sit in relation to Stephen's operations? Exactly how much influence does she have over Doom? Caseficcy type stuff of them investigating Battleworld would be great. For art, diagrams of gadgets Valeria invents?
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The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Characters: Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Diziet Sma, The Excession, Flere-Imsaho, GSV Sleeper Service, Skaffen-Amtiskaw
Worldbuilding: far future, the Reality, what drones get up to when humans aren't around
Far future -- What happens in "the end"? There are hints in some of the last few books that the Culture is potentially hanging around too long as a High Level Involved civ for its own and the wider galaxy's good. Does the entire Culture eventually Sublime, or does it invent a new role for itself that no one's ever really gone for before? Do increasingly large subsets of Cultureniks form new factions a la the Zetetic Elench that do Sublime, eventually leaving behind effectively a continuity Culture made up only of those who refused to do so? Or does something even weirder than that happen? (On a slightly less abstruse level, does the Sleeper Service actually make it to Leo II, and what does it find when it gets there? Does it ever decide to come back?)
The Reality -- Banks already gives us quite a bit of worldbuilding on this, with the Grid and infraspace and ultraspace and the whole thing with the reality being a toroid that universes move across the surface of, but there's definitely room for lots more, I think. (How different are all the other universes?) And of course, there's the Excession which acts as a bridge between different levels of it (I'll be completely honest -- you can just write me 1000 words like the epilogue and I'll be very happy indeed)
What drones get up to when humans aren't around -- We very rarely see drones except in the context of their contact with one or more humans. How do they socialise with each other? What are their leisure activities? We see a bit of drone-to-drone communication from an external POV a few times; what's it like to them?
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Machineries of Empire
Characters: Ajewen Cheris, Garach Jedao Shkan, Kujen, Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Rhezny Brezan, Tseya
(I ship dirtybadwrong Jedao/Kujen, and if I'm honest Cheris/pretty much any woman who crosses her path.)
Worldbuilding: Calendrical mechanics, Cultural importance of games, Family relationships with multiple spouses, Pre-Heptarchate history, Servitors
Calendrical mechanics -- anything and everything about how it works very welcome. What is the intersection between belief systems and playing with the laws of physics? Obviously Kujen would be an obvious candidate for exploring this, as the inventor of the whole system, but how Cheris organised her new calendar would also be interesting, or anything about the day-to-day maintenance of the high calendar, either from the Rahal point of view (towers, remembrances, etc.), the Vidona one, or from the point of view of people like the Mwennin, maintaining their traditions surreptitiously while paying lip service to the outward forms.
Cultural importance of games -- obviously this applies most to the Shuos, but it seems that everyone takes various games fairly seriously. Are there variations between the factions in how these things are viewed? How is the significance of games viewed in Cheris's new regime?
Family relationships with multiple spouses -- One of the few parts about the hexarchate's social setup that isn't horribly depressing is the widespread acceptance of a wide range of family structures. How do people navigate that? Does the high language have specific vocabulary that allows you to differentiate when you're talking about your parents based on how many of them you have? What happens if relationships go wrong?
Pre-Heptarchate history -- How did things end up the way they did? It seems that the systems that became part of the heptarchate/hexarchate are part of a wider human diaspora, who now seem very different as far as the hexarchate characters are concerned, but are there actually-alien aliens out there and if so what happened when humanity met them? How did space exploration get started before the invention of the moth drive? And so on -- anything diving deep into the backstory would be fantastic.
Servitors -- we find out a lot more about the servitors in Revenant Gun, but I would love to know even more. What do they do in their "time off"? What are their real opinions of the humans who order them around all day? How many other agendas have they got on the go? For art, I'd love a picture of a servitor, or even better, a whole group of servitors with different forms having a meeting.
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Harry Potter - Wizarding World (No Pottermore)
Characters: Any or No Characters
Worldbuilding: Wizarding Economics
Wizarding Economics -- I'm basically reusing this prompt whole from last year, even though the tag has moved sideways from the books only fandom to the wider WW one. I've been rereading HP quite a bit over the last couple of years, and every time anything about Gringott's comes up I start scratching my head again (most recently: Hermione buying things in Diagon Alley with money from her parents in Azkaban -- this means there must be a Muggle-money/Galleons exchange rate, right?).
So: How does money work in the wizarding world? How many things do people actually need to trade, or is it more that if you want a good version of something, you need to go to someone who's a specialist? Since they can magic up almost anything, how does the wizarding world end up with stores of value that are seemingly so similar to the Muggle world's? Is it one of the exemptions to Gamp's Law, and if so how? Are the goblin inscriptions on the coins actually some sort of enchantment that means that they will work as a currency? (Part of me wonders if it's some sort of magical equivalent of cryptocurrency. Is the fact that the numbers of Knuts in a Sickle and Sickles in a Galleon are both prime significant in some arithmantic way?)
Some slightly more specific prompts if you're that way inclined: What does Harry end up doing with all the money he inherited? (I would prefer this not to go down a Lord Potter route, though.) Were the Weasleys always poor or did one of Ron's ancestors make poor investments? Does Hermione ever find herself in trouble with Gringott's for creating the fake Galleons used by the DA?
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Foundryside - Robert Jackson Bennett
Characters: Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Berenice Grimaldi, Claudia, Clef, Gregor Dandolo, Sancia Grado
(I definitely ship the canon Sancia/Berenice but before Berenice appeared I was already shipping Sancia/Claudia.)
Worldbuilding: other parts of the Tevanni Commons, Scrived devices other than those shown in canon, the Hierophants and the Occidental Empire
Other parts of the Tevanni Commons -- we really only see a few areas, but the Commons are implied to sprawl all around the merchant quarters, so there must be other parts that we don't know much about. What goes on there? Presumably the Scrappers have hideouts all over the place. Or Sancia on a job? Art-wise, I could definitely imagine a map of Tevanne here, if you're up for it.
Scrived devices other than those shown in canon -- there must be all sorts of other scrived conveniences around, and other hacks the Scrappers use to circumvent them. What are they? Or go all out and combine this with the next one and describe another hierophantic artefact that we haven't encountered yet. I could definitely imagine art here, with all the sigillums, etc.
The Hierophants and the Occidental Empire -- we find out quite a bit by the end of the book, but there must be a lot more to tell. What was day to day life like for citizens of the Occidental Empire? What did the Hierophants do with their time before they got involved in the war with their own creation? (This is another one where I could imagine maps, for what it's worth. What was the extent of the empire? Exactly how out of the way was modern-day Tevanne from their point of view?)
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Star Trek: Discovery
General note: I am keeping up with canon week by week; as a general rule, if anything in my prompts/the ideas you come up with ends up contradicted by later episodes of the season feel free to blithely ignore it/AU the hell out of things/etc.
Characters: Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Saru, Paul Stamets, Mirror Philippa Georgiou, Sylvia Tilly, Michael Burnham, Katrina Cornwell
Worldbuilding: After-effects of the Klingon War, Culture of the Mirrorverse, Kelpien Biology and Culture, Sarek's various attempts to integrate Vulcans and humans, Section 31 in the 23rd Century, The Spore Drive
After-effects of the Klingon War -- obviously S2 is exploring this to some extent, but they must have been extensive considering how close the Klingon fleet came to destroying Earth. How badly underresourced is Starfleet at the moment? (Cornwell could be a good character for exploring this, perhaps.) How have things changed for civilians? Has there been any impact on diplomatic relations with other powers/individual worlds? (e.g. "we were going to join the Federation but now we're not so sure ...")
Culture of the Mirrorverse -- Anything at all! What's it like as a citizen of the Terran Empire? Or an alien kept enslaved (or free and either on the run or fighting against the regime)? One thing that really intrigues me is that the Terran Empire is so outwardly similar to the Prime universe (especially in Mirror, Mirror in TOS), given that the Terran Empire has had access to the Defiant and its technology for the best part of a century. (And of course by the time DS9 rolls around the Terran Empire has been destroyed.) Is there some in-universe explanation for the close parallels? Especially given the number of assassinations in the Mirror verse, the fact that the same people are around in roughly the same roles seems very surprising. Is there some sort of process driving such convergence? (In terms of the various requested characters, feel free to use either or both of their normal universe and Mirror universe selves here.)
Kelpien Biology & Culture -- Short version: I love Saru, tell me more about him and where he comes from. Slightly longer version: I love the idea of a sentient species that has evolved from prey instead of predator. What differences has that caused in biological and/or cultural senses? We get a few hints from some of Saru's statements and his attitude to things, but there's definitely more to dig into here, I feel. How does the sensing-death thing work, and how abstract can the threat be before it doesn't register? (And why didn't it work with Mirror Lorca?) And why are there so few Kelpiens around in the prime universe?
Sarek's various attempts to integrate Vulcans and humans -- Discovery definitely seems to be going for this being a big project that Sarek is deliberately running. What's his motivation? What other irons has he got in the fire? Shoot-for-the-moon prompt: bring in Spock's other sibling-he-never-talks-about and explore how Sybok felt about Michael's arrival ...
Section 31 in the 23rd Century -- we saw them in the little tag to S1 recruiting Mirror Georgiou. What are they up to during this era? Trying to work out how they can manipulate L'Rell? Worried by the Romulans' long silence? Are there any Section 31 agents aboard the Discovery, and if so how do they feel about things like the Spore Drive?
The Spore Drive -- How exactly does it work beyond "insert fungus and sentient navigator"? What exactly happened so that it didn't become ubiquitous later on? (Recent episodes have definitely started to hint at some possible fairly dark explanations for this; feel free to roll with this or invent some other reason.) Art-wise, schematics etc. would be awesome.
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Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson
General note: For the purpose of worldbuilding requests, I guess I am pretty version-agnostic but I find that the original concept album makes both Freddie and Anatoly quite a bit more asshole-ish than the other ones I know, in ways I don't enjoy quite as much (they are assholes, especially Freddie, but in most other versions they're also somewhat more victims of circumstance; one thing I particularly like is when the version has the King's Indian Defence conversation, which makes it clear that they do both have a genuine passion for chess underneath everything else that's going on*). And the quite drastic re-arrangement of things in the original Broadway version doesn't really work for me.
Characters: Any or No Characters, Original Character(s), Alexander Molokov,
Anatoly Sergievsky, Florence Vassy, Frederick Trumper, Walter de Courcey
(I definitely multiship all over the place in this fandom. Florence is the character I have the largest number of feels about, but that's because it's a very large number; I have a lot of feels about the others too.)
Worldbuilding: Files kept by intelligence agencies, How Freddie revitalised chess single-handed, Media coverage of Anatoly's defection(s), The Merchandisers' various chess-branded products
Files kept by intelligence agencies -- on any of the characters, specifically in the tag set or otherwise. What do Molokov and/or de Courcey's personnel files look like? How detailed are the KGB's notes on Freddie? Who, exactly, knows what about Florence's father? etc.
How Freddie revitalised chess single-handed -- Anatoly credits him with being "the man who revitalised chess single-handed" in his discussion/argument with Molokov early on, but what exactly did he do? (Obviously, this is part of Freddie being based on Bobby Fischer, so feel free to take as much or as little inspiration as you want from that quarter -- but in at least some versions, Fischer is named among previous champions in the choral bit during Endgame; if you want to go all out on reconciling that, feel free.)
Media coverage of Anatoly's defection(s) -- obviously, we see some aspects of this when Freddie interviews Anatoly, but what was the reaction immediately after Act 1, rather than a year later? (How badly garbled do the sentiments he expresses in Anthem become in the hands of the press?) Or how was his return portrayed? I'd be equally interested in either side of the Iron Curtain for this.
The Merchandisers' various chess-branded products -- this one definitely feels like it could lend itself to art (adverts, fashion sketches?) or meta (minutes of a pitch meeting?), but it could equally well be fic about how one or more of the characters react to the merchandising overload. Feel free to either elaborate on the various things we hear about in the song, or come up with even more ridiculous cash-ins.
*I am indebted to Borusa's thoughts about this in their Yuletide letter for helping me clarify my own thinking around it.
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