Dear Worldbuilding Exchange Author
Feb. 27th, 2024 06:29 pmI use the same name everywhere so I am ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beatrice_otter on AO3. Treats are awesome.
I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am not inspired that way." This letter is long with lots of suggestions and preferences if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am usually very happy with my gifts.
The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.
I have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.
Here are some other things to keep in mind:
I love outsider perspectives and academic takes on things. In-universe meta (newspaper articles, academic monographs--especially with the sort of snarky feuding common in actual real-world academia, social media feeds in current day or future worlds) is awesome.
Also, I'm picky about European historical clothing details. You don't have to talk about it at all! In fact, if you don't know much about historical clothing, I would prefer if you didn't mention it at all. My pet peeve is corsets: no, they weren't a restrictive tool of the patriarchy, no, they didn't interfere with most women's daily lives, no, most women weren't wearing them so tight they couldn't breathe.
I like religion but I'm picky about it. Basically, Christianity is deeply weird compared to most other religions, and a lot of people whose only experience with religion is living in a culturally-Christian nation assume that what they know about Christianity is some sort of universal principle of What Religion Is Like, and that's just not the case. For example, in Christianity what you believe is more important than what you do. This is not to say we Christians don't teach and practice Christian ethics or have rituals we are very attached to, but rather that if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, it doesn't matter what rituals you participate in or what ethical things you do, you are not a Christian (although you may be a "cultural Christian"). Every Christian group has at least a minimal core theology that members must affirm, but participation in ritual is far less rigidly a requirement. Most other religions rank what you do (both ethically and ritually) as more important than what you believe, and it is often quite possible to be a member in good standing if you participate in the practices and rituals even if you believe none of the teachings. Anyway, point is, if you are doing worldbuilding for a fantasy or SF or otherwise non-Christian religion ... unless it is explicitly a Christian-analogue, it should be different from Christianity. Question your assumptions and see where that leads you, and I will be fascinated and thrilled.
I love how hopepunk this series is: yes, terrible things have happened, and yes, there are genuinely evil people, and yes, there are people who aren't evil but are nonetheless really awful. And yet, despite it all, good people win. There are people who can be trusted to be good, and kind, and loyal. I love how three-dimensional everyone is, not just the heroes but the villains, too. If you wanted to bring in historical flourishes, I'd be happy with parallels to European history, but I'd be ECSTATIC if you brought in non-Western ideas, practices, structures, clothing styles, and institutions.
Despite the fact that Maia is explicitly religious and Thara is a religious professional, we get very little in the way of details about how things actually work, what people actually believe and do in their day to day lives, and so on and so forth. I would love to delve into that.
Prelate politics: we get told that the prelacy in Amalo is "a nest of vipers" and Thara is supposed to be at least TRYING to sort that out, but we get nothing about it beyond "the two most powerful people in his order are jerks who don't like him." I would love to see more! I'd also be interested to see what the aftermath of Tethimar's coup would be: all of a sudden, the Archprelate is no longer related to One Of The Most Powerful Families In The Land, he's related to a dead traitor. He personally was not involved ... but that's got to affect the balance of power both within the prelacy and also his dealings with powerful people outside the prelacy.
As for the other tags, I just find this world fascinating and want to know more. You could do OC slice-of-life stuff, you could have a case for Thara that involves a conflict between Goblin custom and Ethuveraseise law, you could have some scandal at the Untheileneise Court that Maia has to take note of that involves something to do with marriage customs, you could do "the investigation of the crash of the Wisdom of Choharo from the POV of the judicial witnesses," you could do a lot.
On marriage customs specifically, I find the case of Stano Bazhevin to be fascinating. She CAN'T be unique in having her fiance die between the engagement and the wedding, so why isn't there precedent for how to handle her case? Did the exchange of oath rings or whatever it is that makes her Drazhada used to happen at the marriage ceremony, and only recently got moved to earlier? Something else? What's changed, and why?
Treats are enabled and welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic,
The community-building aspect of the books is one. Peter goes out there and he gets to know people and he cares about them and builds relationships with them, and that opens up so many possibilities. It's not always easy--there are good reasons things became as fragmented as they were, and most of those reasons were directly the fault of the old Folly--but I love to see healing and reconciliation and new relationships growing.
I love Peter because of the way he's not naïve, he knows how bad the world can get and how much evil can be done by the institutions he is serving, and yet he firmly believes that they can do better and they should do better. I love how he is always building community and bringing people together. I love how he is willing to risk himself to help people. And I think that's what Nightingale sees in him, too. I think Nightingale sees in Peter something he didn't know he was missing all that time: a way to be and do better than the sins of the past he's been carrying around all these years. I think it's great that Nightingale's going to retire from the police to focus on teaching, I think that will allow much better scope for them both to grow, and yet still be working together. (Just in a different capacity.) I'm fine with a poly threesome with Bev. (But I don't really want a focus on Nightingale's backstory, because that's much less interesting to me than what he and Peter are doing now and going forward.)
Beverly Brook. I find her character hard to parse in the earlier books, and also, she's enough younger than Peter that the whole "suddenly we're pregnant and expecting kids!" and everyone's happy about it!" is ... weird to me. Like, Peter's in his mid-late 20s, and is settled in his career, but Bev is in university! I would have expected her to prefer to wait. So something exploring that dynamic from her perspective would be interesting. Her perspective on Peter, the Folly, and Thomas would also be really interesting to me. I love stories that bring up weird aspects of the demi-monde and magic which Peter then has to deal with.
I also love the secondary characters: the Rivers, Mamusu and Elsie (and I'd love to know how they met), Caroline Linden-Limmer and the Society of the Rose, Grace Yutani and the Sons (Daughters?) of Weyland, the list goes on. Something that explored Peter's relationship-building with them and their communities would be great. Or a meetup between Peter and Tobias Winter from Germany!
Caroline Linden-Limmer and Grace Yutani: I was fascinated by what we saw of them in Amongst Our Weapons. Flying! Magic Metalsmithing! Home for formerly abused magic victims! Caroline free and living away from her mother! (Lady Helena strikes me as one of those "of course I can't be racist, I'm a Good Liberal White Person Here To Uplift People." See, for example, the way she has more sympathy for the tiger than the local (African) children killed in that one story she tells about Growing Up In Africa.) And then there's Grace, and she's awesome too. Besides how well they work together, I'm also interested in the politics of what would it mean to have a member of the Society of the Rose marrying the Grand Master of the Sons of Weyland. And also, what has the Sons of Weyland been doing since they cut ties with the Folly? If they'd been active in the demi-monde, Nightingale or Peter would have found them earlier. Were they in their own separate bubble with no contact with outside practitioners or people with magic?
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
I especially love Minbari culture. If you do worldbuilding for Minbari culture, past, present, or future, I will love you forever. I consider "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" canon and firmly believe that when Sinclair went into the past and became Valen, he found Catherine again after she was lost in time.
What's the Worker Caste perspective on all of this? What if Neroon survived somehow and had to learn to be religious caste? What was Marcus' training like? What issues did Delenn and Sinclair have to handle when they were giving him command of the Anla'shok? (What was it like for Sinclair/Valen to create them in the first place? BTW, I like I consider "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" canon and firmly believe that when Sinclair went into the past and became Valen, he found Catherine again after she was lost in time.)
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
Here are some ideas I've had floating in the back of my head for two decades, mix and match as you like or feel free to ignore and do your own thing.
Plot bunnies: So, the show occasionally made nods to the supply problems, and I would be interested in something either dealing with the shortages or figuring out creative substitutions. I would be interested in stuff really exploring what it's like to be a Cylon and realizing the depth of how wrong they had been and what evil they had committed. I'd be interested in political wrangling and stuff dealing with religion (although please keep Baltar and Zarek to a minimum, and if you're going for the religion angle please don't go for "religion is bad and all believers are fundamentalists" angle). I'd be interested in day-in-the-life relationship stuff.
What if Kara's father was Daniel, the Cylon model the Ones got rid of when they got rid of the Five? What if the reason Cylons can't have babies is because the Ones douse the water supply with contraceptives? (They hate having biological bodies, betcha they hate the whole idea of children and reproducing that way.) What if Caprica Six hadn't miscarried? What if the jump at the end of the series, instead of going to a prehistoric Earth, took the fleet (and the Rebel Cylons) to the Twelve Colonies a couple of months before the Cylon attack? What if the kid Leoben dug up and claimed was his and Kara's actually WAS his and Kara's?
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, Dee committing suicide.
As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into the wacky tropes Star Trek was known for, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want with the time travel and travel to alternate universes and weird missions. Consequences! One of my favorite things about DS9, it dealt with consequences. If you want to take a canon event that you think didn't get enough exploration and run with it, that would be awesome.
I'd love something that dove into Bajoran religion, and the more ALIEN it is the better. We've MET the prophet and they have such a fundamentally different perspective on EVERYTHING than us linear creatures, I don't want it to feel like another screed on What Is Wrong With Christianity In America. You could lean into the Prophets' timey-wimey non-linearity and what that means for a religion that worships them. Most Earth religions are heavily time-based, with regular repeating festivals that serve a lot of purposes both social and religious--how would that work (or not work) when worshiping beings who see everything happening at once? Or explore the Orbs! What other orbs are there besides Time and Prophecy, and what do they DO? You don't have to have any ritual or belief or ANYTHING to use them, if they have line-of-sight to you they can DO THINGS. Give you visions! Send you time traveling! Whatever it is the others do! No Earth religion has any artifact that is anything like that, and besides wondering what the other orbs even are/do, I'm curious as to how they shaped Bajoran religion, and how it was that the Bajorans ended up worshiping the ones who SENT the orbs instead of the orbs themselves. Especially given that the Prophets mostly ... don't seem to want to be gods or care about being worshiped or what's going on on Bajor or anything. So it's not like they were sending messages with the Orbs about who sent them and why, which leaves a lot of scope for interpretation on the part of the Bajorans who found them.
Sisko's position as Emmisary is fascinating, and how it shaped his relationship with Kira, and how he came to be more comfortable with it as the show went on. What was that like for Bajorans? He's an outsider! He doesn't believe in the Prophets! At the best of times, that had to have been an issue, but especially after years of occupation and the Cardassians stealing the Orbs to experiment on, there's got to be more complexity to it than we saw on the show. And especially what was it like for the Bajorans who served on DS9, for whom he was both commanding officer and religious figure. The Federation/Starfleet perspective on that had to be interesting.
I haven't read the novels, but I'm interested in the idea that after the show ended Kira eventually became a Vedek and later Kai.
I love Jake, and I love that he is different from his father and his father loves and supports him. More Sisko Family stuff is always welcome, but also, for Jake, he grew up a lot during the series, and what he experienced on DS9 shaped him, and I'd love to see more of that.
I loathe Dukat. He's an awesome antagonist! It's fine if he is complex and nuanced and charming (because he is in canon). You're welcome to use him as a villain, but don't ever forget that he's a manipulative weasel who, despite having soft spots for specific people such as Ziyal, most often actively chooses to do the worst thing possible. Even if he's doing something good in the moment, you can't ever forget that the moment is temporary.
Treats are welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, Dukat as a good guy
As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into the wacky tropes Star Trek was known for, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want with the time travel and travel to alternate universes and weird missions.
My headcanon on Vulcans was shaped by 80s Trek novels but I also enjoy trying to fit the Star Trek: Enterprise Vulcans with ... everything else we know about Vulcans. One thing I will point out, though, is that while there are a lot of things about Vulcan culture that seem/are sexist, the most powerful Vulcans we see throughout the series are elderly women. I love Pon Farr, but mostly dealing with the implications of it (both before and after) and not the sex part.
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into the wacky tropes Star Trek was known for, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want with the time travel and travel to alternate universes and weird missions.
My headcanon on Vulcans was shaped by 80s Trek novels but I also enjoy trying to fit the Star Trek: Enterprise Vulcans with ... everything else we know about Vulcans. One thing I will point out, though, is that while there are a lot of things about Vulcan culture that seem/are sexist, the most powerful Vulcans we see throughout the series are elderly women. I love Pon Farr, but mostly dealing with the implications of it (both before and after) and not the sex part.
I love Spock/Uhura, they had such great chemistry in TOS (better, actually, than in the AOS). There's such mutual respect and such playfulness, it's wonderful. And TOS Kirk is such a geek that I think he and Nyota could really have fun geeking out over stuff together.
But much as I love Vulcans, they are not the only things I love about Star Trek! Tell me about linguistics and what Uhura's job is all about besides "hailing frequencies open!" Tell me about the women's poker game! Tell me about the transition from Pike's command of Enterprise to Kirk's, and how it affected everyone on board!
I also enjoy Ensign Nahrat in Duane's novels--he was such an interesting character. But I'd also be interested in OC Hortas and a different take.
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
beatrice_otter on AO3. Treats are awesome.I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am not inspired that way." This letter is long with lots of suggestions and preferences if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am usually very happy with my gifts.
The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.
I have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.
General Likes and Dislikes
General Likes and DislikesHere are some other things to keep in mind:
- I like stuff that takes side characters and puts them center-stage, especially when the characters and/or actors are marginalized. I enjoy seeing them come to life.
- I don't like it when marginalized characters get relegated to the sidekick/supporting/helper role so that it can be All About The White Dude.
- I like it when female characters are more than just the Strong Female Character(tm) or The Nurturer.
- I like fluff
- I like angst with a happy ending
- I like stories that make me think about things in a new way.
- I like to know that culture matters to people, and to see how different cultures interact and where the clashes are.
- I like unreliable narrators.
- I like acknowledgment that different people can have different points of view without either of them being wrong.
- I like stories that engage with problematic aspects of the source, and which deal with privilege in one way or another instead of sweeping it under the rug.
- Worldbuilding is my jam, I am pretty much always up for explorations of why the world is the way it is. I love hearing about the economics, the politics, the religion, the clothing, the history, the folklore, all of that kind of stuff. And I want to know why it matters--how is all this cultural background stuff affecting the characters, the plot, everything. You don't have to do deep worldbuilding, but I'll enjoy it if you do.
- I don't like it when plots hinge on characters being selectively stupid, or selectively unable to communicate. Like, if they are stupid or a himbo or whatever in general, or have problems communicating in general, that's fine! Or if they canonically have a blind spot in that area, again, it's fine. But if it's just "the only way I can think of for this plot to work is if the character spontaneously and temporarily loses half their intelligence and competence," then I'm going to spend the rest of the fic wondering why the character didn't just ____?
- I like AUs, but not complete setting AUs (i.e. no highschool or college or coffee shop AUs, and especially not mundane AUs--nothing where you keep characters but drop most of the worldbuilding). I like fork-in-the-road type AUs, where one thing is different and the changes all result from that one thing, and you explore what might have been if such-and-such happened.
- I like the concept of sedoretu marriages.
- I like historical AUs, but only when the author actually knows the history period in question and does thoughtful worldbuilding to meld actual culture of the time with the canon.
- Crackfic is really hit and miss for me, sometimes I love it and sometimes I can't stand it. Basically, if it's the characters we know and love in a ludicrous situation, that's great. If they're OOC or parodied in order to make something funny ... it's not funny to me.
I love outsider perspectives and academic takes on things. In-universe meta (newspaper articles, academic monographs--especially with the sort of snarky feuding common in actual real-world academia, social media feeds in current day or future worlds) is awesome.
Also, I'm picky about European historical clothing details. You don't have to talk about it at all! In fact, if you don't know much about historical clothing, I would prefer if you didn't mention it at all. My pet peeve is corsets: no, they weren't a restrictive tool of the patriarchy, no, they didn't interfere with most women's daily lives, no, most women weren't wearing them so tight they couldn't breathe.
I like religion but I'm picky about it. Basically, Christianity is deeply weird compared to most other religions, and a lot of people whose only experience with religion is living in a culturally-Christian nation assume that what they know about Christianity is some sort of universal principle of What Religion Is Like, and that's just not the case. For example, in Christianity what you believe is more important than what you do. This is not to say we Christians don't teach and practice Christian ethics or have rituals we are very attached to, but rather that if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, it doesn't matter what rituals you participate in or what ethical things you do, you are not a Christian (although you may be a "cultural Christian"). Every Christian group has at least a minimal core theology that members must affirm, but participation in ritual is far less rigidly a requirement. Most other religions rank what you do (both ethically and ritually) as more important than what you believe, and it is often quite possible to be a member in good standing if you participate in the practices and rituals even if you believe none of the teachings. Anyway, point is, if you are doing worldbuilding for a fantasy or SF or otherwise non-Christian religion ... unless it is explicitly a Christian-analogue, it should be different from Christianity. Question your assumptions and see where that leads you, and I will be fascinated and thrilled.
DNWs
DNWs- Darkfic. I define "darkfic" as stuff where there's a lot of suffering and no hope even at the end and all the characters are terrible. Angst with a happy ending is fine, I enjoy it, but there's gotta be a payoff. Even an ambiguous ending is fine! But there has to be some note of grace or redemption or hope somewhere, it can't just be "people are awful and the world sucks, the end."
- Bashing
- Incest. I have a strict definition of this; there must be an actual close biological relationship, or a formal legal relationship of similar closeness--sibling, parent/child, etc. I do not count cousins as an incest pairing. Growing up together since childhood doesn't count if they are not biologically or legally siblings.
- Major embarrassment/humiliation
- AUs that remove all the worldbuilding (for example, Modern AUs, Human/no powers AUs, that sort of thing
Goblin Emperor/Witness series
I love how hopepunk this series is: yes, terrible things have happened, and yes, there are genuinely evil people, and yes, there are people who aren't evil but are nonetheless really awful. And yet, despite it all, good people win. There are people who can be trusted to be good, and kind, and loyal. I love how three-dimensional everyone is, not just the heroes but the villains, too. If you wanted to bring in historical flourishes, I'd be happy with parallels to European history, but I'd be ECSTATIC if you brought in non-Western ideas, practices, structures, clothing styles, and institutions.
Despite the fact that Maia is explicitly religious and Thara is a religious professional, we get very little in the way of details about how things actually work, what people actually believe and do in their day to day lives, and so on and so forth. I would love to delve into that.
Prelate politics: we get told that the prelacy in Amalo is "a nest of vipers" and Thara is supposed to be at least TRYING to sort that out, but we get nothing about it beyond "the two most powerful people in his order are jerks who don't like him." I would love to see more! I'd also be interested to see what the aftermath of Tethimar's coup would be: all of a sudden, the Archprelate is no longer related to One Of The Most Powerful Families In The Land, he's related to a dead traitor. He personally was not involved ... but that's got to affect the balance of power both within the prelacy and also his dealings with powerful people outside the prelacy.
As for the other tags, I just find this world fascinating and want to know more. You could do OC slice-of-life stuff, you could have a case for Thara that involves a conflict between Goblin custom and Ethuveraseise law, you could have some scandal at the Untheileneise Court that Maia has to take note of that involves something to do with marriage customs, you could do "the investigation of the crash of the Wisdom of Choharo from the POV of the judicial witnesses," you could do a lot.
On marriage customs specifically, I find the case of Stano Bazhevin to be fascinating. She CAN'T be unique in having her fiance die between the engagement and the wedding, so why isn't there precedent for how to handle her case? Did the exchange of oath rings or whatever it is that makes her Drazhada used to happen at the marriage ceremony, and only recently got moved to earlier? Something else? What's changed, and why?
Treats are enabled and welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic,
Rivers of London
I love this series for many reasons: the snark! the vivid characters! the worldbuilding! the digressions! the wry-but-pointed social commentary on race and class and bureaucracy! the community and relationship building!. I've read/listened to most of the supplemental material so you can use any of that material if you want. Casefic is always welcome, but so is worldbuilding and exploring the demi-monde and magic, or character-focused stuff.The community-building aspect of the books is one. Peter goes out there and he gets to know people and he cares about them and builds relationships with them, and that opens up so many possibilities. It's not always easy--there are good reasons things became as fragmented as they were, and most of those reasons were directly the fault of the old Folly--but I love to see healing and reconciliation and new relationships growing.
I love Peter because of the way he's not naïve, he knows how bad the world can get and how much evil can be done by the institutions he is serving, and yet he firmly believes that they can do better and they should do better. I love how he is always building community and bringing people together. I love how he is willing to risk himself to help people. And I think that's what Nightingale sees in him, too. I think Nightingale sees in Peter something he didn't know he was missing all that time: a way to be and do better than the sins of the past he's been carrying around all these years. I think it's great that Nightingale's going to retire from the police to focus on teaching, I think that will allow much better scope for them both to grow, and yet still be working together. (Just in a different capacity.) I'm fine with a poly threesome with Bev. (But I don't really want a focus on Nightingale's backstory, because that's much less interesting to me than what he and Peter are doing now and going forward.)
Beverly Brook. I find her character hard to parse in the earlier books, and also, she's enough younger than Peter that the whole "suddenly we're pregnant and expecting kids!" and everyone's happy about it!" is ... weird to me. Like, Peter's in his mid-late 20s, and is settled in his career, but Bev is in university! I would have expected her to prefer to wait. So something exploring that dynamic from her perspective would be interesting. Her perspective on Peter, the Folly, and Thomas would also be really interesting to me. I love stories that bring up weird aspects of the demi-monde and magic which Peter then has to deal with.
I also love the secondary characters: the Rivers, Mamusu and Elsie (and I'd love to know how they met), Caroline Linden-Limmer and the Society of the Rose, Grace Yutani and the Sons (Daughters?) of Weyland, the list goes on. Something that explored Peter's relationship-building with them and their communities would be great. Or a meetup between Peter and Tobias Winter from Germany!
Caroline Linden-Limmer and Grace Yutani: I was fascinated by what we saw of them in Amongst Our Weapons. Flying! Magic Metalsmithing! Home for formerly abused magic victims! Caroline free and living away from her mother! (Lady Helena strikes me as one of those "of course I can't be racist, I'm a Good Liberal White Person Here To Uplift People." See, for example, the way she has more sympathy for the tiger than the local (African) children killed in that one story she tells about Growing Up In Africa.) And then there's Grace, and she's awesome too. Besides how well they work together, I'm also interested in the politics of what would it mean to have a member of the Society of the Rose marrying the Grand Master of the Sons of Weyland. And also, what has the Sons of Weyland been doing since they cut ties with the Folly? If they'd been active in the demi-monde, Nightingale or Peter would have found them earlier. Were they in their own separate bubble with no contact with outside practitioners or people with magic?
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
Babylon 5
Ah, the fandom of my youth! This was my first fandom that was mine, and not just something the family watched together. I love the layering of the themes, and how you can watch it on multiple levels (action/adventure, character arcs, political allegory, deeper themes about truth and freedom and who are you and what do you want and why are you here). The characters and their story arcs were all so compelling. I love the playfulness of Marcus and Stephen together, although I headcanon Marcus as a romantic ace (or possibly demisexual). (Feel free to change Marcus' fate.) One of the things I love about Babylon 5 is that there were so many characters where the fact that they were antagonists didn't mean they were stupid or bad people, just people with a different perspective honestly trying to do what is right.I especially love Minbari culture. If you do worldbuilding for Minbari culture, past, present, or future, I will love you forever. I consider "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" canon and firmly believe that when Sinclair went into the past and became Valen, he found Catherine again after she was lost in time.
What's the Worker Caste perspective on all of this? What if Neroon survived somehow and had to learn to be religious caste? What was Marcus' training like? What issues did Delenn and Sinclair have to handle when they were giving him command of the Anla'shok? (What was it like for Sinclair/Valen to create them in the first place? BTW, I like I consider "To Dream in the City of Sorrows" canon and firmly believe that when Sinclair went into the past and became Valen, he found Catherine again after she was lost in time.)
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
BSG
I tend to prefer stories that go AU sometime in season 4, and where they DON'T choose to give up technology on the new Earth. However, there's also interesting things to be done with canon as is. I like Kara fine, but as the show progressed I got annoyed with the narrative focus on her and her Sooper Special Sekrit Destiny at the expense of other characters AND everything about her that wasn't related to that Special Destiny.Here are some ideas I've had floating in the back of my head for two decades, mix and match as you like or feel free to ignore and do your own thing.
Plot bunnies: So, the show occasionally made nods to the supply problems, and I would be interested in something either dealing with the shortages or figuring out creative substitutions. I would be interested in stuff really exploring what it's like to be a Cylon and realizing the depth of how wrong they had been and what evil they had committed. I'd be interested in political wrangling and stuff dealing with religion (although please keep Baltar and Zarek to a minimum, and if you're going for the religion angle please don't go for "religion is bad and all believers are fundamentalists" angle). I'd be interested in day-in-the-life relationship stuff.
What if Kara's father was Daniel, the Cylon model the Ones got rid of when they got rid of the Five? What if the reason Cylons can't have babies is because the Ones douse the water supply with contraceptives? (They hate having biological bodies, betcha they hate the whole idea of children and reproducing that way.) What if Caprica Six hadn't miscarried? What if the jump at the end of the series, instead of going to a prehistoric Earth, took the fleet (and the Rebel Cylons) to the Twelve Colonies a couple of months before the Cylon attack? What if the kid Leoben dug up and claimed was his and Kara's actually WAS his and Kara's?
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, Dee committing suicide.
DS9
I love alien culture worldbuilding. I love boldly going and exploring and wacky science hijinks and time travel and alternate universe shenanigans. I love the hopeful attitude that we can become better than we are. All my feelings about Star Trek in general can be summed up with this vid. I love cross-cultural romance (especially when it deals realistically with having to figure out what compromises each is going to make on what they expect out of a relationship--love is not all you need, you also need a lot of hard work and communication).As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into the wacky tropes Star Trek was known for, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want with the time travel and travel to alternate universes and weird missions. Consequences! One of my favorite things about DS9, it dealt with consequences. If you want to take a canon event that you think didn't get enough exploration and run with it, that would be awesome.
I'd love something that dove into Bajoran religion, and the more ALIEN it is the better. We've MET the prophet and they have such a fundamentally different perspective on EVERYTHING than us linear creatures, I don't want it to feel like another screed on What Is Wrong With Christianity In America. You could lean into the Prophets' timey-wimey non-linearity and what that means for a religion that worships them. Most Earth religions are heavily time-based, with regular repeating festivals that serve a lot of purposes both social and religious--how would that work (or not work) when worshiping beings who see everything happening at once? Or explore the Orbs! What other orbs are there besides Time and Prophecy, and what do they DO? You don't have to have any ritual or belief or ANYTHING to use them, if they have line-of-sight to you they can DO THINGS. Give you visions! Send you time traveling! Whatever it is the others do! No Earth religion has any artifact that is anything like that, and besides wondering what the other orbs even are/do, I'm curious as to how they shaped Bajoran religion, and how it was that the Bajorans ended up worshiping the ones who SENT the orbs instead of the orbs themselves. Especially given that the Prophets mostly ... don't seem to want to be gods or care about being worshiped or what's going on on Bajor or anything. So it's not like they were sending messages with the Orbs about who sent them and why, which leaves a lot of scope for interpretation on the part of the Bajorans who found them.
Sisko's position as Emmisary is fascinating, and how it shaped his relationship with Kira, and how he came to be more comfortable with it as the show went on. What was that like for Bajorans? He's an outsider! He doesn't believe in the Prophets! At the best of times, that had to have been an issue, but especially after years of occupation and the Cardassians stealing the Orbs to experiment on, there's got to be more complexity to it than we saw on the show. And especially what was it like for the Bajorans who served on DS9, for whom he was both commanding officer and religious figure. The Federation/Starfleet perspective on that had to be interesting.
I haven't read the novels, but I'm interested in the idea that after the show ended Kira eventually became a Vedek and later Kai.
I love Jake, and I love that he is different from his father and his father loves and supports him. More Sisko Family stuff is always welcome, but also, for Jake, he grew up a lot during the series, and what he experienced on DS9 shaped him, and I'd love to see more of that.
I loathe Dukat. He's an awesome antagonist! It's fine if he is complex and nuanced and charming (because he is in canon). You're welcome to use him as a villain, but don't ever forget that he's a manipulative weasel who, despite having soft spots for specific people such as Ziyal, most often actively chooses to do the worst thing possible. Even if he's doing something good in the moment, you can't ever forget that the moment is temporary.
Treats are welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic, Dukat as a good guy
Star Trek
I love alien culture worldbuilding. I love boldly going and exploring and wacky science hijinks and time travel and alternate universe shenanigans. I love the hopeful attitude that we can become better than we are. All my feelings about Star Trek in general can be summed up with this vid. I love cross-cultural romance (especially when it deals realistically with having to figure out what compromises each is going to make on what they expect out of a relationship--love is not all you need, you also need a lot of hard work and communication).As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into the wacky tropes Star Trek was known for, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want with the time travel and travel to alternate universes and weird missions.
My headcanon on Vulcans was shaped by 80s Trek novels but I also enjoy trying to fit the Star Trek: Enterprise Vulcans with ... everything else we know about Vulcans. One thing I will point out, though, is that while there are a lot of things about Vulcan culture that seem/are sexist, the most powerful Vulcans we see throughout the series are elderly women. I love Pon Farr, but mostly dealing with the implications of it (both before and after) and not the sex part.
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
Star Trek TOS
I love alien culture worldbuilding. I love boldly going and exploring and wacky science hijinks and time travel and alternate universe shenanigans. I love the hopeful attitude that we can become better than we are. All my feelings about Star Trek in general can be summed up with this vid. I love cross-cultural romance (especially when it deals realistically with having to figure out what compromises each is going to make on what they expect out of a relationship--love is not all you need, you also need a lot of hard work and communication).As for plot ... it's Star Trek. If you want to play it serious, go for it. If you want to lean into the wacky tropes Star Trek was known for, that's great too. As long as everyone is in character, feel free to go as cracktastic as you want with the time travel and travel to alternate universes and weird missions.
My headcanon on Vulcans was shaped by 80s Trek novels but I also enjoy trying to fit the Star Trek: Enterprise Vulcans with ... everything else we know about Vulcans. One thing I will point out, though, is that while there are a lot of things about Vulcan culture that seem/are sexist, the most powerful Vulcans we see throughout the series are elderly women. I love Pon Farr, but mostly dealing with the implications of it (both before and after) and not the sex part.
I love Spock/Uhura, they had such great chemistry in TOS (better, actually, than in the AOS). There's such mutual respect and such playfulness, it's wonderful. And TOS Kirk is such a geek that I think he and Nyota could really have fun geeking out over stuff together.
But much as I love Vulcans, they are not the only things I love about Star Trek! Tell me about linguistics and what Uhura's job is all about besides "hailing frequencies open!" Tell me about the women's poker game! Tell me about the transition from Pike's command of Enterprise to Kirk's, and how it affected everyone on board!
I also enjoy Ensign Nahrat in Duane's novels--he was such an interesting character. But I'd also be interested in OC Hortas and a different take.
Treats welcome
DNW: bashing, incest, explicit sex, rape/noncon, major embarrassment/humiliation, modern AUs, human/no powers AUs, darkfic
