Rule 63 2022 Letter
May. 30th, 2022 11:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitsunerei88Dear Rule 63 Creator,
Thank you for creating for me! This is one of my absolute favourite exchanges, so I'm really excited to see what you'll create for me! If something in here is unclear, chances are it's me and not you, so feel free to ask the mods to reach out to me.
GENERAL
General Likes:
I am always open to treats and have treats enabled!
General Dislikes:
In general, unless specifically requested, I don't tend to enjoy crack fic, soapbox fic/issuefic, amnesia fic, body swaps, cringe comedy, and plots based on miscommunication or jealousy. If there is hurt, I usually like comfort, or I often just can't get through it—same goes for angst (unless explicitly requested, of course). That said, these are general dislikes—they're not DNWs, I have liked fics with all these, and I have sometimes requested these things. If you have an idea that you’re worried might come close to one of these, don’t worry and go for it.
Hard DNWs:
Please note that these are my general hard DNWs. In some cases, there may be sections where some (or all!) of them won't apply, and in that case follow what was in the sign up.
HARRY POTTER
I love Harry Potter for the R63 exchange because canon is so incredibly gendered. Even if JKR is a feminist, you see a lot of ingrained sexism in her books—consider the valorisation of motherhood through Molly and Lily, and her treatment of any woman who chooses to be feminine. That doesn’t even start with her transphobic comments, and it would tickle me pink to make one of her characters trans.
In general, I’m looking for fic that is heavy on character development and an exploration of how gender affects characterization, how people treat the character differently, or how their relationships play out differently.
Prompts:
For art, I’d love portraits, or group shots of them having fun, like candid photos or something like that. I also love black Hermione!
For this exchange, I'm fine with graphic violence, non-con, and dub-con if it's in the context of the wars.
TORTALL
For this request, I’d really love to see more of the old-world Tortall from SotL. I think there’s a really good argument that King Roald V is a terrible king. We see right in ITHOTG that he’s prepared to cede territory because he doesn’t want to fight a war, and that he bans the Tortallan troops from crossing the Drell; we also know that he’s blind to Duke Roger’s machinations, and that in fact when Thom raises him from the dead, he immediately restores all of Duke Roger’s lands and titles and forgives him. We also know that he kills himself as a result of Lianne dying when Jonathan is only in his early 20s.
Reading between the lines, we also see that King Roald hosted nightly feasts, because Alanna is assigned to serve Sir Myles every single night as opposed to the PotS era where “the royal family dines privately for the most part”. Further, throughout SotL, Sir Myles is both a respected historian but also the court drunk; in the PotS, he’s the official spymaster and a highly regarded court advisor. That’s actually a huge change, and it makes me wonder what was in in SotL that had Sir Myles drinking and disrespected by the court. Had he pointed out too many times King Roald’s failures, as historians are wont to do?
In any case, I think all of these Rule 63 swapped characters give a great window into that era! A F!Jonathan probably faces the brunt of that era’s conservatism around women’s roles; is she in a position to inherit, or is it very much “don’t worry your pretty little head about it?” Is an F!Jonathan engaged to Duke Roger, keeping the throne in the family, and encouraged to basically fuck off and do nothing until something opens her eyes, and she realizes that she needs to do something to keep the country together? Does F!Jonathan lead the coup for her throne in this AU?
What about F!Roger? Aside from the fact that F!Roger may have a whole bunch of legitimate issues with the Crown, how does she go about her plans for taking the throne differently? How does she go about attracting followers? What about M!Delia? Is he a knight in this era? What happens differently with M!Delia? In canon, we know that Delia was imprisoned at the end of SotL—does Jonathan order the execution for a M!Delia?
RIVERS OF LONDON
I'm only requesting F!Thomas, because his backstory would be so interesting if he was always a woman. We know that he was born at the turn of the century, and we know that he lived through the wars. We know that he's grown up in a century of huge social change, sweeping from the late Victorian to the present-day. So, how does that affect him?
How did a female Thomas Nightingale experience the war? Was she educated in magic in the same way, or did she have to steal knowledge from someone or somewhere else? Was she on the battleground at Ettersberg? How did she win her position in the Met, or at the Folly?
How did she react to the various waves of feminism? Was she there, or did she lead them? Conversely, having been born in 1900, was she totally opposed to them? And, if so, how does she react when she starts aging backwards?
Thank you for creating for me! This is one of my absolute favourite exchanges, so I'm really excited to see what you'll create for me! If something in here is unclear, chances are it's me and not you, so feel free to ask the mods to reach out to me.
GENERAL
General Likes:
- Fics that are character-focused, character-driven, and deal with character exploration or character development. Show me aspects of a character I never considered before, or explorations of how a character's upbringing influences their worldview! I also especially love minor characters, particularly BIPOC characters!
- Fics as challenge, whether it be a challenge on canon, on fanon, on fandom, or a comment on our own reality. Basically, I like literary shit, don’t be afraid to go literary and write reflective shit that talks about politics.
- A focus on relationships, particularly how a character interacts with the world around them, and other characters based on their upbringing and worldview.
- Thematically, I love when characters are put in a tough spot, moral ambiguity, and themes around honour, duty, and responsibility.
- All flavours of AU. Canon-divergence, Modern AUs, Mundane AUs, crossovers, etc, especially if it interacts with one of the above. I especially like Rule 63 AUs because of the potential for exploring gender and how it impacts and socializes characters.
- Worldbuilding, especially through in-universe documents (please consider this an opt-in to pretty much whatever in-universe document or weird in-universe storytelling device you can dream up).
- Alongside the worldbuilding, I really like accuracy and real-life details. My favourite fics have included discussions of 9/11, I’ve written fic where R2P is a big deal, I suspect I’m known for my legal shit, and so—if you have specialized knowledge of something, I love seeing it!
- Romance of all varieties: fluff, happy endings, drunken confessions, friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, fake dating, fake marriage, arranged marriages, established relationships, slow-burn, shovel talk, and pining (mutual or otherwise). In general, I prefer M/F pairings, but I don’t mind M/M or F/F pairings and prefer them if canon.
- Smut-wise, I love first times, gentle sex, rough sex, possessive themes, mild BDSM (e.g. bondage, spanking with a hand), D/s with femsub, impregnation and pregnancy.
I am always open to treats and have treats enabled!
General Dislikes:
In general, unless specifically requested, I don't tend to enjoy crack fic, soapbox fic/issuefic, amnesia fic, body swaps, cringe comedy, and plots based on miscommunication or jealousy. If there is hurt, I usually like comfort, or I often just can't get through it—same goes for angst (unless explicitly requested, of course). That said, these are general dislikes—they're not DNWs, I have liked fics with all these, and I have sometimes requested these things. If you have an idea that you’re worried might come close to one of these, don’t worry and go for it.
Hard DNWs:
Please note that these are my general hard DNWs. In some cases, there may be sections where some (or all!) of them won't apply, and in that case follow what was in the sign up.
- Character bashing. In general, I like to imagine that all characters are like people—they're complex, and they have an array of good points and bad points.
- Harm or death to pregnant women, children or small animals (background mentions or past references is fine, as are things like statistics—I just don’t want to be dragged through it in detail, like please don’t make this a central point of the fic).
- Except otherwise indicated, non-canonical major character death, graphic violence and torture (graphic being “more than what is in canon”), non-con or dub-con, PWP or large age differences (>15 years)
- Adultery or infidelity (specifically, this is mostly about the betrayal--if you have a plot where two people are married for convenience and happen to have other relationships, that wouldn't trigger as long as everyone knows and doesn't care)
- Smut-wise, unless it’s indicated above in my likes, I’m likely not going to appreciate anything kinky. To be more specific, I DNW A/B/O, age play, humiliation, bloodplay, cannibalism or vore, watersports, scat, mpreg, snuff, or underage (<15).
HARRY POTTER
I love Harry Potter for the R63 exchange because canon is so incredibly gendered. Even if JKR is a feminist, you see a lot of ingrained sexism in her books—consider the valorisation of motherhood through Molly and Lily, and her treatment of any woman who chooses to be feminine. That doesn’t even start with her transphobic comments, and it would tickle me pink to make one of her characters trans.
In general, I’m looking for fic that is heavy on character development and an exploration of how gender affects characterization, how people treat the character differently, or how their relationships play out differently.
Prompts:
- Gender in the Weasley family is weird and clearly important. Molly Weasley had kids until she had a daughter, and obviously she raised Ginny very differently than her brothers—see, for example, that her sons played Quidditch quite regularly while Ginny had to break into the broom shed to play. So, I have questions about what would have happened had Ron, Percy, or the twins been girls—would Molly have stopped having kids? Or would there be more? What if any of these three are transswapped rather than cisswapped? How does the Weasley family handle this?
- For Percy in particular, how does her stick-in-the-mud personality work for her as a girl as opposed to otherwise? How deeply does she identify with Molly? How conventionally feminine is she? Is she prim and proper, and how does that play out for her?
- For the twins, I would really love to see the kind of conflict Molly has with them if they’re both rambunctious girls instead of rambunctious boys. I think Molly gives the twins a certain amount of leeway with the pranking and leaving school because they are boys and you know, boys will be boys—but what is her relationship with them like if they are girls? Similarly, I doubt much changes in their actual characters, but how do people at school react to them differently?
- I’m curious about F!Severus Snape, especially with her combative relationship with the Marauders or her relationship with the Death Eaters. Do the Marauders treat her the same way as a girl as otherwise? Alternatively, what about her experiences in Slytherin House, or joining Voldemort? Obviously Voldemort accepts women—but we see far fewer female Death Eaters than male. Why? Do Voldemort and his followers go out of their way to recruit her as a poor, if gifted, halfblood girl as opposed to a boy? What about Slughorn, or her relationship with Lily?
- For F!Draco, I think it is clear that there are some differences in how pureblood women are treated and expected to behave as opposed to pureblood men (or are they? Persuade me otherwise!). So I think F!Draco Malfoy was probably raised very, very differently than her canon counterpart. How does that play out? Is she highly feminine and has she ever played Quidditch (there is one mention in PS that the Slytherin Quidditch Team is all boys)? Is she intent on making a good match for her family? Better yet, how does Voldemort victimizes F!Draco as opposed to Draco? Does he still force F!Draco into trying to kill Dumbledore or does he punish her in the stead of her family in other ways?
- For F!Tom Riddle | Voldemort, I note that she was born and raised in an earlier time, probably WW2 or thereabouts. How does a F!Tom Riddle handle the world? How does she deal with Horace Slughorn, how does she gain followers, and what does her path to conquest look like compared to Voldemort’s?
- For either F!Neville or F!Cedric, I’d really just love to see how this changes things in the canon, or even if they do!
- For M!Petunia, I’m really intrigued by how this might have changed Petunia’s attitude towards both magic and Lily. Even if he doesn’t have magic, I can see M!Petunia feeling very differently because he has male privilege and was probably told to look after his younger sister from a young age—I think the relationship between M!Petunia and Lily would be very different! Does he even care about the magic thing when he’s expected to go to university and all that? How does he react to Lily’s death and to suddenly having Harry dumped in his arms?
- I love the potential in M!Hermione/F!Draco! Aside from my comments on F!Draco above, I wonder if M!Hermione feels like he has less to prove than the Hermione of canon? Is he more quietly bookish rather than a know-it-all, and how does that impact his friendships? How does this interact with F!Draco—do her parents even care that M!Hermione is beating her in all her classes?
- I’m open to any of these characters being transswapped instead of cisswapped, and would generally love to see that realization and the reaction of people around them!
For art, I’d love portraits, or group shots of them having fun, like candid photos or something like that. I also love black Hermione!
For this exchange, I'm fine with graphic violence, non-con, and dub-con if it's in the context of the wars.
TORTALL
For this request, I’d really love to see more of the old-world Tortall from SotL. I think there’s a really good argument that King Roald V is a terrible king. We see right in ITHOTG that he’s prepared to cede territory because he doesn’t want to fight a war, and that he bans the Tortallan troops from crossing the Drell; we also know that he’s blind to Duke Roger’s machinations, and that in fact when Thom raises him from the dead, he immediately restores all of Duke Roger’s lands and titles and forgives him. We also know that he kills himself as a result of Lianne dying when Jonathan is only in his early 20s.
Reading between the lines, we also see that King Roald hosted nightly feasts, because Alanna is assigned to serve Sir Myles every single night as opposed to the PotS era where “the royal family dines privately for the most part”. Further, throughout SotL, Sir Myles is both a respected historian but also the court drunk; in the PotS, he’s the official spymaster and a highly regarded court advisor. That’s actually a huge change, and it makes me wonder what was in in SotL that had Sir Myles drinking and disrespected by the court. Had he pointed out too many times King Roald’s failures, as historians are wont to do?
In any case, I think all of these Rule 63 swapped characters give a great window into that era! A F!Jonathan probably faces the brunt of that era’s conservatism around women’s roles; is she in a position to inherit, or is it very much “don’t worry your pretty little head about it?” Is an F!Jonathan engaged to Duke Roger, keeping the throne in the family, and encouraged to basically fuck off and do nothing until something opens her eyes, and she realizes that she needs to do something to keep the country together? Does F!Jonathan lead the coup for her throne in this AU?
What about F!Roger? Aside from the fact that F!Roger may have a whole bunch of legitimate issues with the Crown, how does she go about her plans for taking the throne differently? How does she go about attracting followers? What about M!Delia? Is he a knight in this era? What happens differently with M!Delia? In canon, we know that Delia was imprisoned at the end of SotL—does Jonathan order the execution for a M!Delia?
RIVERS OF LONDON
I'm only requesting F!Thomas, because his backstory would be so interesting if he was always a woman. We know that he was born at the turn of the century, and we know that he lived through the wars. We know that he's grown up in a century of huge social change, sweeping from the late Victorian to the present-day. So, how does that affect him?
How did a female Thomas Nightingale experience the war? Was she educated in magic in the same way, or did she have to steal knowledge from someone or somewhere else? Was she on the battleground at Ettersberg? How did she win her position in the Met, or at the Folly?
How did she react to the various waves of feminism? Was she there, or did she lead them? Conversely, having been born in 1900, was she totally opposed to them? And, if so, how does she react when she starts aging backwards?
