weakinteraction (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
weakinteraction) wrote2020-02-29 09:50 am
weakinteraction) wrote2020-02-29 09:50 am
Entry tags:
Space Swap 2020 letter
Hi. (... And sorry not to have managed to get this up before assignments came out.) Thanks for looking at my letter; I hope you find it helpful -- however, I would like to lay out very clearly that I'm a very firm believer in ODAO, so if you want to ignore all of it apart from the DNWs (which are all in the AO3 sign up, though I've provided a bit of amplification for some of them here), go right ahead.
My AO3 name is weakinteraction -- same as this dreamwidth account. I'm requesting fic (including IF), art, or vids for all of these fandoms.
I am up for a wide range of types of fanworks, and equally happy with ratings anywhere on the scale.
I genuinely do equally like all of gen, slash, het and femslash. On the shipping side of things, I don't really have NOTPs in any of these fandoms, so any combination of characters that you're interested in is absolutely fine with me, and I don't have any objection to requested and/or unrequested characters in background pairings. (As a general note, if you are going in a shippy direction I am more than happy to handwave that Everyone Is Bi And Poly for the purposes of fanworks.)
In terms of tropes and dynamics and so on, I am keen on:
Fic likes: Overall, I am honestly very easy to please; I genuinely like pretty much all types of fic, from humorous vignettes, to angsty introspection, to twisty plotty adventure stories, casefic, slice of life, or digging into the canon's worldbuilding, and all points in between. I do want to make a positive point of the fact that fic-wise I'm always up for non-standard formats, anything from epistolary or verse through to stories presented through documentary evidence, 1st/2nd person, present/future tense, IF, etc. etc. Again, if it works for what you want to do, I'll lap it up. (This is not to say that I don't enjoy reading third person, past tense, because I definitely do! I just don't want you to be put off doing other things if your inspiration takes you in that direction.)
IF likes: I am equally happy with both parser-based and CYOA IF. I'm happy for it to land anywhere on the various axes of "game" vs "simulation" vs "story"; I do enjoy puzzles, as long as they aren't insanely difficult to work out. On the more story-ish end, I do enjoy it when there isn't an obvious "good ending", or at least where it's left open to interpretation whether any particular ending is good or not. On the fanworks end, I do enjoy little details in how things are presented that call back to canon, if that makes sense (e.g. making the interface look like something in-universe), though I realise that's very tricky so it's very much an optional extra!
Art likes: I do like use of light and shade in a picture, and interesting Easter-egg-y type stuff going on in the background (if there is one). An action scene that's a snapshot from an adventure, the characters in the middle of kicking ass. Goofy hijinks when the characters are off-duty. Portrayals of canon-divergent AU versions of the characters very, very welcome if the inspiration strikes you. For shippier stuff, little moments of intimacy: stolen kisses, hurt/comfort type stuff (but please not too much on the hurt front), that sort of thing. (I have no problem receiving NSFW art, fwiw.) I am also definitely up for things like diagrams, maps, etc. In the same Easter-egg-y vein mentioned earlier, things like that presented with in-universe trappings would be lovely. I've provided some specific art prompts where I can think of them, but in cases where I haven't I hope at least some of my more general prompts lend themselves to being illustrated. Also, I am very happy to receive things like complex diagrams of overlapping timelines and schematics of time machines or whatever along those lines, as well as more "traditional" illustrations.
Vid likes: When it comes to vids I like interesting/surprising/amusing juxtapositions (either between one scene and the next or between what's happening and the music), and having fun with pacing (e.g. the cuts getting faster and faster towards the end before slowing down again). I am very broad-minded in my musical taste; I would much rather go with the music you think fits than have a vid shoehorned in to my favourite song if you're not feeling it. And to be honest, my "favourite song" is something which changes on about an hourly basis. That said, if you do want to know, the two places my music collection/Youtube playlist gravitates towards most strongly are British indie circa 1995-1997 (I hesitate to use the term "Britpop" but, yeah, basically Britpop) and female singer-songwriters from the last decade or so. Some general vid prompts: Action (a pairing against the universe? lovers-to-enemies types doing battle?). Longing looks. Sweeping landscapes. (For Star Wars) Canon-style wipe transitions.
DNWs
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
(Canon 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.)
Relationship: Corazon Santiago/Deirdre Skye -- The "canon" story that comes out in the Datalinks quotes and wonders videos implies a war where the Gaians eventually completely overrun the Spartans with mind worms, and I would definitely be up for darkfic along those lines if the inspiration strikes you. In general, the screaming pain sphere thing that captured leaders get put in when you defeat a faction and all the "swear a pact to serve me" stuff if you let them capitulate has quite strong BDSM-y overtones to me. A few random prompts: "Symbols are the key to telepathy." Arguments in the planetary council leading to a continued discussion (or "discussion") in private. "Very well, but you must swear a pact to serve me." Conquest victory: spoils of war. Economic victory: counting the cost. Diplomatic victory: embracing the new world leader. Transcendence victory: one last night of being human.
Character: Planet -- anything/everything from Planet's POV, whether combined with any of the other tags here or just something completely different, would be absolutely awesome. I love the idea of how alien Planet's thought processes, distributed across an entire planet and stretching back into deep time, are.
Worldbuilding: 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).
Worldbuilding: 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.
Worldbuilding: 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?
Worldbuilding: 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?
Worldbuilding: 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?
Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky
(Canon note: for what it's worth, I have obtained Children of Ruin and plan to have read it before reveals, so if you want to include elements from it, feel free; on the other hand, you should feel equally free to deliberately ignore/contradict it, too.)
Worldbuilding: Stomatopod History & Culture -- the book mentions them once or twice and then basically sticks to exploring life on land. But what are the Giant (? - presumably by the same nanovirus logic as the spiders) Shrimp People up to underwater? What do they make of events later in the novel? (As far as I can tell there's no mention of them being on the starship at the end, which strikes me as a great pity. Feel free to take this prompt as "Stomatopod involvement in the space program" instead, if you want.)
Worldbuilding: The Old Empire -- either from its own point of view, or that of the humans of the post-Ice-Age era. The book seems to me to be positing a society teetering right on the cusp of a possible hard take-off singularity that rebels against that possibility and ends up falling. What other technology apart from things like Kern's experiments were the NUN types against? What was the solar system like by the end -- there certainly seems to have been widespread colonisation.
Worldbuilding: Other abandoned terraforming projects -- either in their own right, or being visited by the characters we see at the very end of the novel. Further exploration of Fungus World (a natural grey goo disaster?) also welcome. (Entirely from the blurb, I'm guessing that this is the prompt that interacts most with Children of Ruin -- just to reiterate, you are welcome to ignore or include it as you see fit. It wasn't even out when I nominated these tags, after all ...)
Worldbuilding: Life on Earth during the Ice Age -- how inhospitable were things? Were people reduced to completely subsistence level existence or did certain aspects of Old Empire technology/supplies survive? How did people understand their past? (I'm particularly intrigued -- given the emphasis on "the Messenger" in the book -- by what they would have made of the left-behind satellites that were presumably visible. What sort of astrological beliefs would they arrive at with that sort of stimulus?)
Worldbuilding: Guyen's cult -- another "humans in very limited circumstances" prompt. What exactly did they understand their situation to be? What did they believe? What happened to people who questioned those beliefs? etc.
Relationship: Isa/Holden -- The weirdness of their asynchronous relationship really appeals to me. This can be as sweet or fucked up as you want, depending on where in canon you place it/how you handle their reactions to the stress of their environment.
Relationship: Star Nest Portia/Star Nest Fabian -- I really like the little glimpses we get of these two during the expedition, and would love to know more about what led up to it, either the immediate preparations or their previous relationship before the project started. Explorations of spider gender politics through the prism of the ship very welcome too. (NB: character death is not one of my DNWs, and if you want to go down an "expanding on canon" route you're welcome to flesh out how Fabian sacrifices himself for Portia, then that's fine.)
Star Wars (Marvel Comics>
(Canon note: I am a bit behind on canon, but planning to catch up by reveals. Please do feel free to treat my prompts as even more ODAO than usual if you are inspired by events I haven't got to yet, or my prompts don't make sense in light of revelations I haven't got to, etc.)
Relationship: Chelli Lona Aphra/Magna Tolvan
Aphra rapidly became my new Star Wars fave when I belatedly started reading the Darth Vader comics. I love how spiky she is, her hidden depths, her ability to bullshit her way through pretty much any situation, and her reluctant moments of something approaching morality. The canon enemies-to-lovers trajectory of this ship has been extremely pleasing to me, so anything that builds on that would be fantastic. My fave things about Tolvan are how ambiguous she seems to feel about almost everything (the Empire, Aphra, her cybernetics) and the fact that she's quietly a tactical genius. Some prompts: Reluctant-to-not-so-reluctant team-up. One or other of them getting the upper hand (Tolvan blackmailing and/or capturing Aphra seems like a fairly obvious option, but I think Aphra's work with Vader must have given her some sort of insight into how to mess around with the Imperial hierarchy). Ending up on the run together. How they both adjust after RotJ. Some sort of exploration of Tolvan's backstory would be great too (especially why she has all those cybernetics, and I also love that she's a tactical genius; any sort of situation where she's using those skills would be fun).
Marvel Cinematic Universe
(Canon note: I've only requested tags related to Captain Marvel, but I'm familiar with the rest of the cinematic MCU and some bits of TV canon, so if you want to draw from elsewhere, feel free.)
Worldbuilding: Origins of the Kree Supreme Intelligence, Relationship: Minn-Erva/Kree Supreme Intelligence, Relationship: Carol Danvers/Kree Supreme Intelligence
I'm going to bundle all these together since what they have in common is the SI. I would love anything/everything about it, whether from its POV or that of someone else, either the other character in the ship tags, or any other canon or original character if you're not going shippy. Going deeper into the whole "what do you see when you commune with it?" thing very welcome. (I have a headcanon that Minn-Erva sees herself, for what it's worth, but don't feel bound by that.) For Minn-Erva, I sort of see it in terms of loyalty kink that the SI manipulates; with Carol, I'm happy for you to go for something pre-canon, during canon (the various confrontation scenes*), or post-canon with Carol keeping her promise of coming to end it all.
*typing that parenthesis has earwormed me with Come as You Are. That scene made a big impression on me. Just saying.
Before the Disco and TNG sections, two general canon notes about Trek:
1) the only reason I decided not to request Picard is that it's an ongoing canon and I didn't want half my prompts to be Jossed by midway through the creating period. But I am watching it pretty religiously and as far as I'm concerned you are very welcome to incorporate things from it if it fits with what you're doing.
2) in the last half a year or so, I have got very into Star Trek Timelines, which is a fairly silly mobile game in which all of Trek ever is happening at once thanks to temporal anomalies. If you're familiar with it, do feel free to play around with its setting elements etc. (I may even start nominating it at some point, especially for exchanges with worldbuilding tags. How everyone deals with so many different versions of themselves and each other running around fascinates me.)
Star Trek: Discovery
Worldbuilding: Discovery's erasure from the records -- we see at the end of S2 all of the people who remainedexplaining why it's not a continuity error they never mentioned any of this in TOS keeping their silence. But how much does the Federation know and/or speculate? Does Section 31 keep its own, separate files? Do the people like Pike and Spock who stayed behind ever get together in private to discuss it?
Worldbuilding: Xahea (ST: Discovery) -- I really, really like Po and would love to know more about the culture that produced her. (I have a bit of a thing about teenage queens, see also Padmé being my favourite SWPT character.) Living on top of something you know is a critical resource to the galaxy at large must have some sort of cultural impacts, right?
Worldbuilding: Mirror Universe history (DISC) -- Anything/everything about Georgiou's rise to power, the different politics of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, etc. very welcome. (What happened with the Romulans? Was there a war in the same way as the prime universe had?) On a completely different level, I would love to know how with the high assassination/genocide rate, the same people keep popping up in the other universe rather than being butterflied away. Feel free to incorporate ENT elements with the Defiant making a huge difference to their tech development and so on, or DS9 for the eventual fate of the Empire.
Character: Zora (ST: DSC) -- anything/everything about her would be amazing. The idea of the empty Discovery drifting in space, its computer slowly developing sentience, is both beautiful and tragic all at the same time. (One specific but very out there idea: there seems to me to be a link with Emergence from TNG, and I almost wonder if all Federation starships evolve towards sentience, given time/the right stimuli.)
Relationship: Airiam/Keyla Detmer/Joann Owosekun -- Definitely one of those "did not know I needed this until I saw it in the tag set" things. If you nominated this or otherwise have ideas for it, please do go wild with whatever it was you were thinking when you did. Other than that, I really liked the glimpses we saw of them in the Mess Hall interacting with other characters. (NB Character death is not one of my DNWs; if you want to do something about Detmer and Owo dealing with the aftermath of "Project Daedalus", feel free.)
Star Trek: The Next Generation
I'm going to split this into a big Beverly-centric section, and then other prompts for the other tags I've requested, . (She is my fave, but very much in a primus inter pares way; the whole TNG crew are one of my favourite ensemble casts in any medium ever.)
Character: Beverly Crusher, Relationship: Beverly Crusher/Jean-Luc Picard, Relationship: Beverly Crusher/Vash, Relationship: Beverly Crusher/Deanna Troi, Worldbuilding: Beverly's plays
Genuinely, anything fitting any/all of these tags would be great. Exploration of Bev's backstory, her time at Starfleet Medical, etc. just as welcome as stuff set during her appearances in canon. (One of my favourite things in canon is when she goes all Quincy, so if you want to do Beverly the Science Detective stuff feel free.) For the shippy stuff, Crusher/Picard is absolutely catnip to me with the "we want each other but we have reasons for not acting on it" thing. (If you want to include the idea of past Jean-Luc/Jack/Beverly, I will not object.) With Troi, I see it more as a FWB thing, in line with the 24th century in general just being very relaxed, and Betazoids even more so -- perhaps some fun cultural differences stuff there. For Crusher/Vash, I don't mind if you go down quite a twisted jealousy route if that works for you, but it could equally be "I see what Jean-Luc likes about you" or just an AU where Captain's Holiday worked out differently. (Re: my kidfic DNW, canon levels of Wesley are fine, up to and including him saving the ship if you want.)
Character: Subcommander Taris -- Taris is probably my favourite one-off character (Romulans are my fave Trek aliens, Contagion is one of my fave episodes for the ancient-galaxy worldbuilding, and Carolyn Seymour has long been one of my favourite actors) so I was thrilled to see her in the tag set. (Feel free to make Toreth from Face of the Enemy Taris, either as an AU or in a Picard-style "haha, you see, everything in Romulan society is secret, of course she was going under another name" way if you want, since the production team only created Toreth because they'd misremembered the end of Contagion.)
Worldbuilding: Earth's economy -- how are resources allocated? which things are unlimited vs. which things do you still need to "earn"/present a case for/etc.? Given the replicator and the energy resources available, it would seem that most stuff would be easy to obtain if you wanted it, so is it more of an etiquette thing about not splurging resources needlessly/defacing the environment (either natural or ancient-built)?
Worldbuilding: cultural differences between Federation species -- I'm eternally fascinated by this whenever there's even a little bit of stuff about the various different Federation members. Obviously we know a lot about how Vulcans and humans interact in particular, but I'm very much interested in any/all combinations. (There's a fair bit in TNG about Betazoid culture, albeit largely played for laughs, but how does an entirely telepathic society interact with people who aren't used to that?) It seems that Federation members get to maintain their cultural traditions, even if they're the sort of thing that many others might disapprove of, but
Worldbuilding: recreation aboard the Enterprise -- this could, obviously, tie into the Beverly's plays prompt above, but it's much more general than that. 24th Century people seem to have lots of hobbies they take pretty seriously, which I guess makes sense in a post-scarcity society. Are there people who are relatively junior but a big deal in certain areas because they're the ones who organise the concerts etc.? What things don't make it into canon? (Almost everything we see being performed is out-of-copyright for obvious reasons, but given how obsessed with the 20th century everyone seems to be, there must be rock bands and re-enactments of whatever TV shows survived and whatever else, right?) And obviously there's the holodeck ...
The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Worldbuilding: splinter factions of the Culture -- there seem to be increasing numbers of these over time (obviously). What's the relationship between them and the main Culture, and between each other? The Culture proper still seems to feel responsible for, eg, keeping the Peace Faction safe, but is that any different to other interventions to try to make the galaxy a better place? Also, which factions (eventually) Sublime? 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. Do increasingly large subsets of Cultureniks form new factions that do Sublime, eventually leaving behind effectively a continuity Culture made up only of those who refused to do so?
Worldbuilding: convergent evolution (Culture - Banks) -- I really like the fact that Banks goes with having "panhumanity" but then doesn't stop there, with there being other types of body plan that also pop up repeatedly (the big armoured tripedal thing with the Idirans and the Homomda, the gas bags with the Affront and their original patrons, etc.). What are the driving forces behind this? Do the Morthanveld have a similar relationship to other waterworld species? etc.
Doctor Who
(Canon notes:
1) Here be (vague) spoilers.
2) I am familiar at least in summary with most branches of the spinoffery, so feel free to include elements from there if you want to/it works.)
Character - Yasmin Khan -- The one thing that makes me not feel terrible that I was so late with my letter was that I can talk about how great she was in the S12 finale, because OMG she was great. Walking straight through the boundary like that! (And that little scene with Graham was fantastic.) One thing I really like in canon is the relatively subtle way that Yasmin's police training is portrayed -- even thrown into completely unfamiliar situations, she's instinctively employing the sort of de-escalation tactics she would have been taught. Backstory stuff (either about her early life in general, or expanding on the revelations of Can You Hear Me?) very welcome too, as is projecting things forward into the future. How/when does Yasmin leave? (She does seem to me to be slipping into the Rose/Clara mode of "won't ever leave willingly". But does she end up stranded somewhere and having to make a new life for herself? Or will she get the Nyssa style ending of realising that there's somewhere she can make a difference?) For what it's worth, I do ship Yasmin/Thirteen, though I generally like Doctor/companion ships best when they're in a moth-that-gets-too-close-to-the-flame mode.
Character: The TARDIS -- The best Ship. :D No strong feelings at all about which (if any) Doctors and companions you include alongside this tag, if any. Even my least favourite Team TARDISes are still at the "yeah, they're pretty great, aren't they?" level. A few prompts: architectural reconfiguration. Four (or higher)-dimensional awareness. What do TARDISes do when they meet each other? Is the TARDIS aware of anything when the Doctor and companions are having things translated for them? Times the TARDIS has been under extreme stress (eg the Mind Robber, the time the Master had it at the end of S3, Ancestor Cell, etc.).
Character: Susan -- Pre-canon, during canon and post-canon all equally fine for this. Playing up her alienness particularly welcome. (The unaired pilot is great for this; feel free to treat its characterisation as just as canonical as what we actually got.) I like her interactions with all of the Doctor, Ian and Barbara, and also the various guest characters. ... And if you want to work out how Susan being the Doctor's grandchild fits in with the revelations in S12E10 feel free.
(Note: if you want to combine two or all three of these requests, do feel very free to do so! Susan runs into Yaz at some point after she's stopped travelling with the Doctor, the TARDIS telepathic circuits contain echoes of everyone including both of them, etc.)
My AO3 name is weakinteraction -- same as this dreamwidth account. I'm requesting fic (including IF), art, or vids for all of these fandoms.
I am up for a wide range of types of fanworks, and equally happy with ratings anywhere on the scale.
I genuinely do equally like all of gen, slash, het and femslash. On the shipping side of things, I don't really have NOTPs in any of these fandoms, so any combination of characters that you're interested in is absolutely fine with me, and I don't have any objection to requested and/or unrequested characters in background pairings. (As a general note, if you are going in a shippy direction I am more than happy to handwave that Everyone Is Bi And Poly for the purposes of fanworks.)
In terms of tropes and dynamics and so on, I am keen on:
- time travel, in all sorts of different variations
- canon-divergent AUs, whether caused by time travel or otherwise
- people with issues relating to identity (in the sense of things like secret identities and amnesia)
- telepathy
- A whole raft of different relationship dynamics, eg friends-to-lovers, friends-with-benefits, enemies-to-lovers, lovers-to-enemies(-who-are-maybe-occasionally-still-lovers-against-their-better-judgement), loyalty kink, and you-and-me-against-the-universe sorts of situations
- Many (but not quite all) of my favourite characters share traits of being competent and getting on with their jobs/vocations/whatever, particularly in the sense of Doing The Right Thing over their strong personal preferences to do the opposite and/or against a general angsty background.
Fic likes: Overall, I am honestly very easy to please; I genuinely like pretty much all types of fic, from humorous vignettes, to angsty introspection, to twisty plotty adventure stories, casefic, slice of life, or digging into the canon's worldbuilding, and all points in between. I do want to make a positive point of the fact that fic-wise I'm always up for non-standard formats, anything from epistolary or verse through to stories presented through documentary evidence, 1st/2nd person, present/future tense, IF, etc. etc. Again, if it works for what you want to do, I'll lap it up. (This is not to say that I don't enjoy reading third person, past tense, because I definitely do! I just don't want you to be put off doing other things if your inspiration takes you in that direction.)
IF likes: I am equally happy with both parser-based and CYOA IF. I'm happy for it to land anywhere on the various axes of "game" vs "simulation" vs "story"; I do enjoy puzzles, as long as they aren't insanely difficult to work out. On the more story-ish end, I do enjoy it when there isn't an obvious "good ending", or at least where it's left open to interpretation whether any particular ending is good or not. On the fanworks end, I do enjoy little details in how things are presented that call back to canon, if that makes sense (e.g. making the interface look like something in-universe), though I realise that's very tricky so it's very much an optional extra!
Art likes: I do like use of light and shade in a picture, and interesting Easter-egg-y type stuff going on in the background (if there is one). An action scene that's a snapshot from an adventure, the characters in the middle of kicking ass. Goofy hijinks when the characters are off-duty. Portrayals of canon-divergent AU versions of the characters very, very welcome if the inspiration strikes you. For shippier stuff, little moments of intimacy: stolen kisses, hurt/comfort type stuff (but please not too much on the hurt front), that sort of thing. (I have no problem receiving NSFW art, fwiw.) I am also definitely up for things like diagrams, maps, etc. In the same Easter-egg-y vein mentioned earlier, things like that presented with in-universe trappings would be lovely. I've provided some specific art prompts where I can think of them, but in cases where I haven't I hope at least some of my more general prompts lend themselves to being illustrated. Also, I am very happy to receive things like complex diagrams of overlapping timelines and schematics of time machines or whatever along those lines, as well as more "traditional" illustrations.
Vid likes: When it comes to vids I like interesting/surprising/amusing juxtapositions (either between one scene and the next or between what's happening and the music), and having fun with pacing (e.g. the cuts getting faster and faster towards the end before slowing down again). I am very broad-minded in my musical taste; I would much rather go with the music you think fits than have a vid shoehorned in to my favourite song if you're not feeling it. And to be honest, my "favourite song" is something which changes on about an hourly basis. That said, if you do want to know, the two places my music collection/Youtube playlist gravitates towards most strongly are British indie circa 1995-1997 (I hesitate to use the term "Britpop" but, yeah, basically Britpop) and female singer-songwriters from the last decade or so. Some general vid prompts: Action (a pairing against the universe? lovers-to-enemies types doing battle?). Longing looks. Sweeping landscapes. (For Star Wars) Canon-style wipe transitions.
DNWs
- character or ship bashing (in particular, where there are conflicting canon ships for these characters, 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)
- 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)
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
(Canon 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.)
Relationship: Corazon Santiago/Deirdre Skye -- The "canon" story that comes out in the Datalinks quotes and wonders videos implies a war where the Gaians eventually completely overrun the Spartans with mind worms, and I would definitely be up for darkfic along those lines if the inspiration strikes you. In general, the screaming pain sphere thing that captured leaders get put in when you defeat a faction and all the "swear a pact to serve me" stuff if you let them capitulate has quite strong BDSM-y overtones to me. A few random prompts: "Symbols are the key to telepathy." Arguments in the planetary council leading to a continued discussion (or "discussion") in private. "Very well, but you must swear a pact to serve me." Conquest victory: spoils of war. Economic victory: counting the cost. Diplomatic victory: embracing the new world leader. Transcendence victory: one last night of being human.
Character: Planet -- anything/everything from Planet's POV, whether combined with any of the other tags here or just something completely different, would be absolutely awesome. I love the idea of how alien Planet's thought processes, distributed across an entire planet and stretching back into deep time, are.
Worldbuilding: 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).
Worldbuilding: 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.
Worldbuilding: 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?
Worldbuilding: 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?
Worldbuilding: 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?
Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky
(Canon note: for what it's worth, I have obtained Children of Ruin and plan to have read it before reveals, so if you want to include elements from it, feel free; on the other hand, you should feel equally free to deliberately ignore/contradict it, too.)
Worldbuilding: Stomatopod History & Culture -- the book mentions them once or twice and then basically sticks to exploring life on land. But what are the Giant (? - presumably by the same nanovirus logic as the spiders) Shrimp People up to underwater? What do they make of events later in the novel? (As far as I can tell there's no mention of them being on the starship at the end, which strikes me as a great pity. Feel free to take this prompt as "Stomatopod involvement in the space program" instead, if you want.)
Worldbuilding: The Old Empire -- either from its own point of view, or that of the humans of the post-Ice-Age era. The book seems to me to be positing a society teetering right on the cusp of a possible hard take-off singularity that rebels against that possibility and ends up falling. What other technology apart from things like Kern's experiments were the NUN types against? What was the solar system like by the end -- there certainly seems to have been widespread colonisation.
Worldbuilding: Other abandoned terraforming projects -- either in their own right, or being visited by the characters we see at the very end of the novel. Further exploration of Fungus World (a natural grey goo disaster?) also welcome. (Entirely from the blurb, I'm guessing that this is the prompt that interacts most with Children of Ruin -- just to reiterate, you are welcome to ignore or include it as you see fit. It wasn't even out when I nominated these tags, after all ...)
Worldbuilding: Life on Earth during the Ice Age -- how inhospitable were things? Were people reduced to completely subsistence level existence or did certain aspects of Old Empire technology/supplies survive? How did people understand their past? (I'm particularly intrigued -- given the emphasis on "the Messenger" in the book -- by what they would have made of the left-behind satellites that were presumably visible. What sort of astrological beliefs would they arrive at with that sort of stimulus?)
Worldbuilding: Guyen's cult -- another "humans in very limited circumstances" prompt. What exactly did they understand their situation to be? What did they believe? What happened to people who questioned those beliefs? etc.
Relationship: Isa/Holden -- The weirdness of their asynchronous relationship really appeals to me. This can be as sweet or fucked up as you want, depending on where in canon you place it/how you handle their reactions to the stress of their environment.
Relationship: Star Nest Portia/Star Nest Fabian -- I really like the little glimpses we get of these two during the expedition, and would love to know more about what led up to it, either the immediate preparations or their previous relationship before the project started. Explorations of spider gender politics through the prism of the ship very welcome too. (NB: character death is not one of my DNWs, and if you want to go down an "expanding on canon" route you're welcome to flesh out how Fabian sacrifices himself for Portia, then that's fine.)
Star Wars (Marvel Comics>
(Canon note: I am a bit behind on canon, but planning to catch up by reveals. Please do feel free to treat my prompts as even more ODAO than usual if you are inspired by events I haven't got to yet, or my prompts don't make sense in light of revelations I haven't got to, etc.)
Relationship: Chelli Lona Aphra/Magna Tolvan
Aphra rapidly became my new Star Wars fave when I belatedly started reading the Darth Vader comics. I love how spiky she is, her hidden depths, her ability to bullshit her way through pretty much any situation, and her reluctant moments of something approaching morality. The canon enemies-to-lovers trajectory of this ship has been extremely pleasing to me, so anything that builds on that would be fantastic. My fave things about Tolvan are how ambiguous she seems to feel about almost everything (the Empire, Aphra, her cybernetics) and the fact that she's quietly a tactical genius. Some prompts: Reluctant-to-not-so-reluctant team-up. One or other of them getting the upper hand (Tolvan blackmailing and/or capturing Aphra seems like a fairly obvious option, but I think Aphra's work with Vader must have given her some sort of insight into how to mess around with the Imperial hierarchy). Ending up on the run together. How they both adjust after RotJ. Some sort of exploration of Tolvan's backstory would be great too (especially why she has all those cybernetics, and I also love that she's a tactical genius; any sort of situation where she's using those skills would be fun).
Marvel Cinematic Universe
(Canon note: I've only requested tags related to Captain Marvel, but I'm familiar with the rest of the cinematic MCU and some bits of TV canon, so if you want to draw from elsewhere, feel free.)
Worldbuilding: Origins of the Kree Supreme Intelligence, Relationship: Minn-Erva/Kree Supreme Intelligence, Relationship: Carol Danvers/Kree Supreme Intelligence
I'm going to bundle all these together since what they have in common is the SI. I would love anything/everything about it, whether from its POV or that of someone else, either the other character in the ship tags, or any other canon or original character if you're not going shippy. Going deeper into the whole "what do you see when you commune with it?" thing very welcome. (I have a headcanon that Minn-Erva sees herself, for what it's worth, but don't feel bound by that.) For Minn-Erva, I sort of see it in terms of loyalty kink that the SI manipulates; with Carol, I'm happy for you to go for something pre-canon, during canon (the various confrontation scenes*), or post-canon with Carol keeping her promise of coming to end it all.
*typing that parenthesis has earwormed me with Come as You Are. That scene made a big impression on me. Just saying.
Before the Disco and TNG sections, two general canon notes about Trek:
1) the only reason I decided not to request Picard is that it's an ongoing canon and I didn't want half my prompts to be Jossed by midway through the creating period. But I am watching it pretty religiously and as far as I'm concerned you are very welcome to incorporate things from it if it fits with what you're doing.
2) in the last half a year or so, I have got very into Star Trek Timelines, which is a fairly silly mobile game in which all of Trek ever is happening at once thanks to temporal anomalies. If you're familiar with it, do feel free to play around with its setting elements etc. (I may even start nominating it at some point, especially for exchanges with worldbuilding tags. How everyone deals with so many different versions of themselves and each other running around fascinates me.)
Star Trek: Discovery
Worldbuilding: Discovery's erasure from the records -- we see at the end of S2 all of the people who remained
Worldbuilding: Xahea (ST: Discovery) -- I really, really like Po and would love to know more about the culture that produced her. (I have a bit of a thing about teenage queens, see also Padmé being my favourite SWPT character.) Living on top of something you know is a critical resource to the galaxy at large must have some sort of cultural impacts, right?
Worldbuilding: Mirror Universe history (DISC) -- Anything/everything about Georgiou's rise to power, the different politics of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, etc. very welcome. (What happened with the Romulans? Was there a war in the same way as the prime universe had?) On a completely different level, I would love to know how with the high assassination/genocide rate, the same people keep popping up in the other universe rather than being butterflied away. Feel free to incorporate ENT elements with the Defiant making a huge difference to their tech development and so on, or DS9 for the eventual fate of the Empire.
Character: Zora (ST: DSC) -- anything/everything about her would be amazing. The idea of the empty Discovery drifting in space, its computer slowly developing sentience, is both beautiful and tragic all at the same time. (One specific but very out there idea: there seems to me to be a link with Emergence from TNG, and I almost wonder if all Federation starships evolve towards sentience, given time/the right stimuli.)
Relationship: Airiam/Keyla Detmer/Joann Owosekun -- Definitely one of those "did not know I needed this until I saw it in the tag set" things. If you nominated this or otherwise have ideas for it, please do go wild with whatever it was you were thinking when you did. Other than that, I really liked the glimpses we saw of them in the Mess Hall interacting with other characters. (NB Character death is not one of my DNWs; if you want to do something about Detmer and Owo dealing with the aftermath of "Project Daedalus", feel free.)
Star Trek: The Next Generation
I'm going to split this into a big Beverly-centric section, and then other prompts for the other tags I've requested, . (She is my fave, but very much in a primus inter pares way; the whole TNG crew are one of my favourite ensemble casts in any medium ever.)
Character: Beverly Crusher, Relationship: Beverly Crusher/Jean-Luc Picard, Relationship: Beverly Crusher/Vash, Relationship: Beverly Crusher/Deanna Troi, Worldbuilding: Beverly's plays
Genuinely, anything fitting any/all of these tags would be great. Exploration of Bev's backstory, her time at Starfleet Medical, etc. just as welcome as stuff set during her appearances in canon. (One of my favourite things in canon is when she goes all Quincy, so if you want to do Beverly the Science Detective stuff feel free.) For the shippy stuff, Crusher/Picard is absolutely catnip to me with the "we want each other but we have reasons for not acting on it" thing. (If you want to include the idea of past Jean-Luc/Jack/Beverly, I will not object.) With Troi, I see it more as a FWB thing, in line with the 24th century in general just being very relaxed, and Betazoids even more so -- perhaps some fun cultural differences stuff there. For Crusher/Vash, I don't mind if you go down quite a twisted jealousy route if that works for you, but it could equally be "I see what Jean-Luc likes about you" or just an AU where Captain's Holiday worked out differently. (Re: my kidfic DNW, canon levels of Wesley are fine, up to and including him saving the ship if you want.)
Character: Subcommander Taris -- Taris is probably my favourite one-off character (Romulans are my fave Trek aliens, Contagion is one of my fave episodes for the ancient-galaxy worldbuilding, and Carolyn Seymour has long been one of my favourite actors) so I was thrilled to see her in the tag set. (Feel free to make Toreth from Face of the Enemy Taris, either as an AU or in a Picard-style "haha, you see, everything in Romulan society is secret, of course she was going under another name" way if you want, since the production team only created Toreth because they'd misremembered the end of Contagion.)
Worldbuilding: Earth's economy -- how are resources allocated? which things are unlimited vs. which things do you still need to "earn"/present a case for/etc.? Given the replicator and the energy resources available, it would seem that most stuff would be easy to obtain if you wanted it, so is it more of an etiquette thing about not splurging resources needlessly/defacing the environment (either natural or ancient-built)?
Worldbuilding: cultural differences between Federation species -- I'm eternally fascinated by this whenever there's even a little bit of stuff about the various different Federation members. Obviously we know a lot about how Vulcans and humans interact in particular, but I'm very much interested in any/all combinations. (There's a fair bit in TNG about Betazoid culture, albeit largely played for laughs, but how does an entirely telepathic society interact with people who aren't used to that?) It seems that Federation members get to maintain their cultural traditions, even if they're the sort of thing that many others might disapprove of, but
Worldbuilding: recreation aboard the Enterprise -- this could, obviously, tie into the Beverly's plays prompt above, but it's much more general than that. 24th Century people seem to have lots of hobbies they take pretty seriously, which I guess makes sense in a post-scarcity society. Are there people who are relatively junior but a big deal in certain areas because they're the ones who organise the concerts etc.? What things don't make it into canon? (Almost everything we see being performed is out-of-copyright for obvious reasons, but given how obsessed with the 20th century everyone seems to be, there must be rock bands and re-enactments of whatever TV shows survived and whatever else, right?) And obviously there's the holodeck ...
The Culture - Iain M. Banks
Worldbuilding: splinter factions of the Culture -- there seem to be increasing numbers of these over time (obviously). What's the relationship between them and the main Culture, and between each other? The Culture proper still seems to feel responsible for, eg, keeping the Peace Faction safe, but is that any different to other interventions to try to make the galaxy a better place? Also, which factions (eventually) Sublime? 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. Do increasingly large subsets of Cultureniks form new factions that do Sublime, eventually leaving behind effectively a continuity Culture made up only of those who refused to do so?
Worldbuilding: convergent evolution (Culture - Banks) -- I really like the fact that Banks goes with having "panhumanity" but then doesn't stop there, with there being other types of body plan that also pop up repeatedly (the big armoured tripedal thing with the Idirans and the Homomda, the gas bags with the Affront and their original patrons, etc.). What are the driving forces behind this? Do the Morthanveld have a similar relationship to other waterworld species? etc.
Doctor Who
(Canon notes:
1) Here be (vague) spoilers.
2) I am familiar at least in summary with most branches of the spinoffery, so feel free to include elements from there if you want to/it works.)
Character - Yasmin Khan -- The one thing that makes me not feel terrible that I was so late with my letter was that I can talk about how great she was in the S12 finale, because OMG she was great. Walking straight through the boundary like that! (And that little scene with Graham was fantastic.) One thing I really like in canon is the relatively subtle way that Yasmin's police training is portrayed -- even thrown into completely unfamiliar situations, she's instinctively employing the sort of de-escalation tactics she would have been taught. Backstory stuff (either about her early life in general, or expanding on the revelations of Can You Hear Me?) very welcome too, as is projecting things forward into the future. How/when does Yasmin leave? (She does seem to me to be slipping into the Rose/Clara mode of "won't ever leave willingly". But does she end up stranded somewhere and having to make a new life for herself? Or will she get the Nyssa style ending of realising that there's somewhere she can make a difference?) For what it's worth, I do ship Yasmin/Thirteen, though I generally like Doctor/companion ships best when they're in a moth-that-gets-too-close-to-the-flame mode.
Character: The TARDIS -- The best Ship. :D No strong feelings at all about which (if any) Doctors and companions you include alongside this tag, if any. Even my least favourite Team TARDISes are still at the "yeah, they're pretty great, aren't they?" level. A few prompts: architectural reconfiguration. Four (or higher)-dimensional awareness. What do TARDISes do when they meet each other? Is the TARDIS aware of anything when the Doctor and companions are having things translated for them? Times the TARDIS has been under extreme stress (eg the Mind Robber, the time the Master had it at the end of S3, Ancestor Cell, etc.).
Character: Susan -- Pre-canon, during canon and post-canon all equally fine for this. Playing up her alienness particularly welcome. (The unaired pilot is great for this; feel free to treat its characterisation as just as canonical as what we actually got.) I like her interactions with all of the Doctor, Ian and Barbara, and also the various guest characters. ... And if you want to work out how Susan being the Doctor's grandchild fits in with the revelations in S12E10 feel free.
(Note: if you want to combine two or all three of these requests, do feel very free to do so! Susan runs into Yaz at some point after she's stopped travelling with the Doctor, the TARDIS telepathic circuits contain echoes of everyone including both of them, etc.)