Press Start 2021 Dear Creator letter
Jul. 9th, 2021 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weakinteractionFirst of all, thank you for creating for me! This is yet another iteration of almost exactly the same Press Start letter. This has been cobbled together and adjusted over the years so please, please don't read anything into differing lengths of different sections about me having a secret preference for one prompt over another; everything here is something I'd be absolutely thrilled to receive.
Details-wise, my AO3 name is weakinteraction and I'm requesting fic, art or vids for all of these fandoms.
General likes
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 if we matched on a single character or a worldbuilding tag, or as a background pairing in a work for a relationship tag we matched on. (In general, I am more than happy to handwave that Everyone Is Bi And Poly for the purposes of fanworks.)
Tropes-wise, I am particularly fond of time travel, canon-divergent AUs, people with issues relating to identity (in the sense of things like secret identities and amnesia) and telepathy. In terms of relationship dynamics, I like all sorts of things but particularly: 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 epistolatory 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.)
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. 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 (e.g. something for TNG having an LCARS interface around it) 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.
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.
DNWs
Marathon
Characters: Durandal, Leela, Tycho | Group: Durandal & Leela & Tycho
I'm very open to other characters appearing, whether in the tag set or not, but for this fandom I'm craving something AI-centric, so I've only requested these three.
Prompts: life for the three of them on board the Marathon during the voyage. Backstory/ies (what exactly was Strauss up to, for example?). Explorations of different facets of Rampancy (three AIs, three stages ...). Post-canon (what happened next for Durandal after Infinity? What was it like for Leela in the Vylae network? Interesting art/vid possibilities there, it seems to me, what does an FTL computer network look like from the inside?).
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
General note: I am extremely agnostic about Alien Crossfire; feel free to do any of ignore it, incorporate it, or borrow some elements from it while ignoring others completely.
I love this game. I still get shivers every time the first fungus pops and the first interlude from the Book of Planet comes up when I start a playthrough. Anything at all that gets at the sense of the strangeness, difficulty but also beauty of life on a new planet would be very cool.
Vidding: this might be a very out-of-left-field idea, but apart from the usual sort of idea of a fanvid, inventing a new Secret Project and making the cutscene for it would be awesome. If you do fancy doing that, feel free to ignore all my prompts.
Group: 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.
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.
KotOR I and II
General Star Wars likes: I am always here for pilots and their ships, lightsabers, galactic politics/diplomacy and weird alien planets (either in-keeping-with-the-films single biome efforts, as the games go for, or ones that try to be more "realistic"). I tend to find that I can take or leave the intricacies of the internal bureaucracy of evil organisations like the Sith, but I am so here for the Dark Side in terms of fallen Jedi abusing the trust of their former friends and stuff like that so "X goes Dark Side" AUs (in terms of the KotOR games, taking the Dark Side ending) are very welcome. If you're going down the smutty route, any and all types of Force Sex are good with me.
I am up for whatever interpretation of how the game might have played out that you want to go for, including going fully down the Dark Side route if that's the way inspiration takes you -- I have played both of them far too many times with different alignments/character motivations I was RPing in my head even though none of the dialogue choices quite fit/etc.
For all the shippy tags I've requested female PCs, but I'm fine with male PCs appearing if you're going for one of the other options (e.g. in an HK-centric fic, or for the Team Jedis KotOR II prompt). Also, feel free to strategically ignore anything a later game says about an earlier one (i.e. don't take KotOR II as gospel on what happened next if you're writing about the KotOR I characters, and feel free to ignore the MMORPG entirely -- I still haven't played it, though I have no objection if you do want to incorporate elements from it; I have osmosed a few things).
KotOR I
Female Revan/Bastila
What I find interesting about these two is their bond through Bastila having saved Revan's life, and how it pulls them together (against Bastila's better judgement given that she knows who Revan is all along, but also her devotion to Jedi beliefs about love being bad). And of course the mirroring of their arcs, with Bastila eventually going to the Dark Side as Revan did (but then coming back, if you play Light Side and choose the right dialogue options).
Prompts: Force bonds. Victory celebrations. "I would stand by your side gladly, as your lover and apprentice!"
Female Revan/Juhani
There's a similar mirroring thing going on here, given that Revan initially meets Juhani when the Council are trying to make a point to her about the dangers of the Dark Side. However, there's also history given the revelation that it was Revan, on the way through Taris, who inspired Juhani to become a Jedi in the first place.
Prompts: Helping each other stay on the Light Side. Post-canon mission fic. Dark Side Revan turns Juhani at the Temple instead of killing her. And an oddly specific one: on one playthrough, I managed to get some shippy dialogue (by the standards of what Bioware managed to sneak in) with Juhani on board the Ebon Hawk towards the very end of the game that I'm fairly sure I've never seen before. However, despite having played my conversation choices just right in that regard, somehow along the way I messed up several important other conversations that ended in me failing to redeem other characters and having to kill them instead (Dustil, and worst of all when I got to the Star Forge, Bastila), which left it feeling like a rather bittersweet victory at best. So I'd be into a take on these two that looked at the cost of victory/the fragility of redemption/etc.
Female Revan/Yuthura Ban
No particular preference on Dark Side or Light Side here. (Obviously Yuthura starts off Dark Side ...)
Prompts: Redemption. Fall. Treachery and double crossing. Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Revan trying to redeem Yuthura while Yuthura tries to corrupt Revan. Amnesiac Revan going to the Sith Academy on Korriban straight after the Jedi Academy on Dantooine to decide for herself who's got the right idea. Revan going to Korriban after the Leviathan (and no one believing her; I find that hilarious even if it is for obvious plot purposes).
Kotor II
Group: Atris/Female Exile
I don't necessarily see this as actually leading to anything happening (though if you can make that work, I will eat it up with a spoon) but something exploring the complicated feelings they have towards each other would be fascinating. The game gives quite a bit of information about how she felt about Exile (particularly to those willing to work through Handmaiden's enormous dialogue trees) but also leaves a lot of questions about exactly what was going on there, especially from Exile's side; one of my favourite things about the game is the way it lets you react to things about your past and set your characterisation as you go, so feel free to take any interpretation that works for you.
Prompts: That's my lightsaber! Learning about each other through combat. The Sith holocrons see that Exile has gone DS and try to manipulate them into being master and apprentice. AU: Atris is so troubled by what happened in the Council chamber that she follows Exile out of civilised space.
Details-wise, my AO3 name is weakinteraction and I'm requesting fic, art or vids for all of these fandoms.
General likes
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 if we matched on a single character or a worldbuilding tag, or as a background pairing in a work for a relationship tag we matched on. (In general, I am more than happy to handwave that Everyone Is Bi And Poly for the purposes of fanworks.)
Tropes-wise, I am particularly fond of time travel, canon-divergent AUs, people with issues relating to identity (in the sense of things like secret identities and amnesia) and telepathy. In terms of relationship dynamics, I like all sorts of things but particularly: 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 epistolatory 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.)
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. 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 (e.g. something for TNG having an LCARS interface around it) 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.
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.
DNWs
- extremely fluffy fluff so that essentially all that happens is the characters exchange endearments you'd never hear them use in canon
- character bashing (these are all canons where I like the rest of the characters too)
- any kind of AU apart from canon-divergent
- pregnancy/kidfic (I don't mind occasional appearances by canonical children, but please don't focus on them to the exclusion of all else)
- major character death (exceptions: deaths that happened in canon, but even there I'd prefer not to have a huge focus on characters grieving afterwards or similar; or deaths happening offscreen if a lot of time has passed since the time the character was around in canon, i.e. you don't have to make everyone immortal if you're writing futurefic; also this doesn't apply to apocalyptic canon-divergent AUs, because an apocalypse that everyone happens to survive doesn't really make sense)
- violent non-con (I'm fine with sf/fantasy type noncon like mind control for pairings it would suit, or dubcon of various stripes)
- as far as porn goes, I am generally fine with most stuff; the only things I'd ask you to avoid are breathplay, watersports, bloodplay, vore, scat, and emetophilia.
- incest and under-16s having sex (none of these pairings are anywhere near fitting the bill for either of these, but please no background incest pairings or revealing characters to have been related all along or anything like that)
Marathon
Characters: Durandal, Leela, Tycho | Group: Durandal & Leela & Tycho
I'm very open to other characters appearing, whether in the tag set or not, but for this fandom I'm craving something AI-centric, so I've only requested these three.
Prompts: life for the three of them on board the Marathon during the voyage. Backstory/ies (what exactly was Strauss up to, for example?). Explorations of different facets of Rampancy (three AIs, three stages ...). Post-canon (what happened next for Durandal after Infinity? What was it like for Leela in the Vylae network? Interesting art/vid possibilities there, it seems to me, what does an FTL computer network look like from the inside?).
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
General note: I am extremely agnostic about Alien Crossfire; feel free to do any of ignore it, incorporate it, or borrow some elements from it while ignoring others completely.
I love this game. I still get shivers every time the first fungus pops and the first interlude from the Book of Planet comes up when I start a playthrough. Anything at all that gets at the sense of the strangeness, difficulty but also beauty of life on a new planet would be very cool.
Vidding: this might be a very out-of-left-field idea, but apart from the usual sort of idea of a fanvid, inventing a new Secret Project and making the cutscene for it would be awesome. If you do fancy doing that, feel free to ignore all my prompts.
Group: 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.
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.
KotOR I and II
General Star Wars likes: I am always here for pilots and their ships, lightsabers, galactic politics/diplomacy and weird alien planets (either in-keeping-with-the-films single biome efforts, as the games go for, or ones that try to be more "realistic"). I tend to find that I can take or leave the intricacies of the internal bureaucracy of evil organisations like the Sith, but I am so here for the Dark Side in terms of fallen Jedi abusing the trust of their former friends and stuff like that so "X goes Dark Side" AUs (in terms of the KotOR games, taking the Dark Side ending) are very welcome. If you're going down the smutty route, any and all types of Force Sex are good with me.
I am up for whatever interpretation of how the game might have played out that you want to go for, including going fully down the Dark Side route if that's the way inspiration takes you -- I have played both of them far too many times with different alignments/character motivations I was RPing in my head even though none of the dialogue choices quite fit/etc.
For all the shippy tags I've requested female PCs, but I'm fine with male PCs appearing if you're going for one of the other options (e.g. in an HK-centric fic, or for the Team Jedis KotOR II prompt). Also, feel free to strategically ignore anything a later game says about an earlier one (i.e. don't take KotOR II as gospel on what happened next if you're writing about the KotOR I characters, and feel free to ignore the MMORPG entirely -- I still haven't played it, though I have no objection if you do want to incorporate elements from it; I have osmosed a few things).
KotOR I
Female Revan/Bastila
What I find interesting about these two is their bond through Bastila having saved Revan's life, and how it pulls them together (against Bastila's better judgement given that she knows who Revan is all along, but also her devotion to Jedi beliefs about love being bad). And of course the mirroring of their arcs, with Bastila eventually going to the Dark Side as Revan did (but then coming back, if you play Light Side and choose the right dialogue options).
Prompts: Force bonds. Victory celebrations. "I would stand by your side gladly, as your lover and apprentice!"
Female Revan/Juhani
There's a similar mirroring thing going on here, given that Revan initially meets Juhani when the Council are trying to make a point to her about the dangers of the Dark Side. However, there's also history given the revelation that it was Revan, on the way through Taris, who inspired Juhani to become a Jedi in the first place.
Prompts: Helping each other stay on the Light Side. Post-canon mission fic. Dark Side Revan turns Juhani at the Temple instead of killing her. And an oddly specific one: on one playthrough, I managed to get some shippy dialogue (by the standards of what Bioware managed to sneak in) with Juhani on board the Ebon Hawk towards the very end of the game that I'm fairly sure I've never seen before. However, despite having played my conversation choices just right in that regard, somehow along the way I messed up several important other conversations that ended in me failing to redeem other characters and having to kill them instead (Dustil, and worst of all when I got to the Star Forge, Bastila), which left it feeling like a rather bittersweet victory at best. So I'd be into a take on these two that looked at the cost of victory/the fragility of redemption/etc.
Female Revan/Yuthura Ban
No particular preference on Dark Side or Light Side here. (Obviously Yuthura starts off Dark Side ...)
Prompts: Redemption. Fall. Treachery and double crossing. Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Revan trying to redeem Yuthura while Yuthura tries to corrupt Revan. Amnesiac Revan going to the Sith Academy on Korriban straight after the Jedi Academy on Dantooine to decide for herself who's got the right idea. Revan going to Korriban after the Leviathan (and no one believing her; I find that hilarious even if it is for obvious plot purposes).
Kotor II
Group: Atris/Female Exile
I don't necessarily see this as actually leading to anything happening (though if you can make that work, I will eat it up with a spoon) but something exploring the complicated feelings they have towards each other would be fascinating. The game gives quite a bit of information about how she felt about Exile (particularly to those willing to work through Handmaiden's enormous dialogue trees) but also leaves a lot of questions about exactly what was going on there, especially from Exile's side; one of my favourite things about the game is the way it lets you react to things about your past and set your characterisation as you go, so feel free to take any interpretation that works for you.
Prompts: That's my lightsaber! Learning about each other through combat. The Sith holocrons see that Exile has gone DS and try to manipulate them into being master and apprentice. AU: Atris is so troubled by what happened in the Council chamber that she follows Exile out of civilised space.
