FFFX Letter 2023

[kitsunerei88]

Dear FFFX Creator,

Thank you for writing or arting for me! I’m really excited to see what you’ll come up with! I tend to ask for a lot, but I’m actually fairly easily pleased. Please don’t stress! If you have an idea, I’ll likely enjoy reading whatever you want to write, so don’t feel too pressured to follow any specific prompts. Also, some parts of this are going to be longer than others一please don’t take that as meaning I want one thing more than another thing, just that I have had more time to come up with prompts for some fandoms than others!

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. I also like guilt and trauma and PTSD. I like complicated characters!

• 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! Don’t worry about hitting potentially political issues with me.

• 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), strong D/s with femsub, impregnation and pregnancy.

I am always open to treats!

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, I DNW A/B/O, age play, humiliation, bloodplay, cannibalism or vore, watersports, scat, mpreg, snuff, or underage (<15).

Harry Potter

I have a few favourite tropes and kinds of fics for this, which come up all the time:

• Rule 63 is amazing for this fandom, because gender issues are sort of rife throughout the novels. Even in the more progressive areas, we can see that JKR hugely valorises motherhood (see: Molly Weasley), that she disrespects women who are openly feminine (see: treatment of Cho Chang and Fleur Delacour), and then there’s JKR’s comments on trans-persons.... There’s just so much to work with when you mess around with gender in this universe, and I love it.

• War: Look, there is a lot about the war in the books that just… isn’t realistic or doesn’t make sense. I would love if you took a perspective that made the war more realistic for me.

• Post-War and Redemption: Running a bit along the lines of the above, war is messy. Character relationships post-war are going to be equally messy! I love watching characters develop from the people they had to be during a hopefully realistic war and re-adapting to peaceful society—regardless of whether they were on the side of right or wrong. In order words, please, give me some realistic war trauma for some characters to work through.

• Worldbuilding: I’ll take pretty much anything for worldbuilding because there are So Many Questions and So Many Unsatisfactory Answers. High society pureblood culture is a good example, because while fanon often interprets this as aristocracy-like with arranged marriages and so on, I’m less convinced that is actually the case (or... make a case for it for me). Other options include the inner workings of the Ministry of Magic, international relations, relations with Muggles if any, how does the Statute of Secrecy Work…?

• In general, I will say here that I prefer worldbuilding that emphasizes that even with magic, witches and wizards are still human and are still eminently fallible. I tend to prefer worldbuilding that brings the wizarding world closer to the non-magical world, whether the people who are in it realize it or not--my headcanon is that until the Statute of Secrecy, wizards occupied the same world as we do, and that even afterwards, given a small population and continuing influx of Muggleborns and halfbloods, wizarding culture isn't far off from non-magical culture. I like stories that are about our shared humanity, and stories about how powerful and wonderful magic is tends to make me feel very depressed because, well, we're not magical.

Fandom-specific DNW:  I have a fandom-specific DNW of “narrative justification of pureblood supremacy or blood discrimination (i.e. if it appears it must be shown as being wrong)”. To clarify, I’ve seen some fics or fanon where pureblood supremacy is justified as being “we have to protect ourselves from Muggles or they’d kill us”, or “we’re just misunderstood, when we say “blood” we just mean “magic””. These are the sort of headcanons and fanons I’m DNWing here. So, for example, if you’re writing about Draco, I don’t want the narrative to be about how purebloods are Just Misunderstood And Not Actually Racist, but rather about how he comes to terms with having learned a set of ideals that are objectively harmful and wrong.

Onto specific prompts!

Percy Weasley and Percy Weasley Ships

So I have a big problem with Percy. Let’s talk about Percy, and why I think his character arc in the books is accurate even if painful, and why I think all the other characters failed Percy and not the other way around.

Let’s go back to the First Wizarding War. Percy is 4 years older than Harry, so he’s roughly 5 or 6 years old when Voldemort falls the first time. He’s got at least 3 younger siblings, likely 4, since Ron is older than Harry. He’s quite likely also the oldest child at home, because while JKR says the Weasley children are 2 years apart, I’m big on “the writer is dead” and she’s pretty much directly contradicted in the first canonical HP book. Charlie isn’t in school at Hogwarts when Harry starts, and he also can’t just have graduated because Hagrid says pretty clearly that Gryffindor hasn’t won the Quidditch Cup since Charlie Weasley was Seeker, with the implication that it’s been SOME TIME since Gryffindor has won the Cup. Therefore, Charlie is at minimum 3-4 years older than Percy, and Bill even older, and given they are also pretty established in their careers when Ron is 11… my feeling is that Charlie is 5-6 years older than Percy, leaving Percy as the oldest child at home during the First War.

So, about small children. Small children are loud. Molly Weasley has four children under the age of six in 1981. Does anyone think that she didn’t unreasonably rely on Percy during this time to look after his 2 troublesome twin brothers? And it’s the middle of a war, so Molly and Arthur Weasley themselves are almost certainly teaching Percy to Obey Authority Without Question, And If You Don’t, Bad Things Will Happen. And of course, Percy is only six years old, and this lesson sticks without him thinking too much about it.

(Sidenote: Anyone remember that horrifying MASH episode where Hawkeye has repeated flashbacks about the woman strangling a chicken for making too much noise and it’s Not A Chicken, his brain just revised the memory because the reality was too horrific?)

So Percy behaves exactly as he was taught to behave. This is further reinforced by Molly when he succeeds by obeying authority, obeying the rules一he obeys at school, he becomes a prefect. He does well enforcing rules, he becomes Head Boy. His parents are proud, he gets his very own owl. So when he obeys the Ministry of Magic, this is him behaving in a completely natural way that his parents have taught him to do for years. Essentially, when his family goes against him for not leaving the Ministry, the rug is pulled out under him一his entire way of How The World Works is thrown out the window. No one ever taught him to question authority, and that’s Molly and Arthur’s failure, not his.

In any case, I love Percy Weasley and I am a big fan of fics where… something different happens. There are a lot of fics where Percy is a spy for the Order, but (see above) I don’t think that’s the direction he would go considering the Order is a rebel against the Ministry. Some things I’d like to see:

• Is there a fix-it earlier on that would have changed early on? Even one previous experience of trusting authority and having that trust be seriously betrayed would have inoculated Percy against the Ministry一what would that look like? For example, would Percy being female have changed his course? 

• What does Percy do in the Ministry during the war? While I don’t think Percy was a spy or otherwise affiliated with the Order, I do think that Percy took actions to save people through other ways. Did he lose paperwork? Did he lose paperwork repeatedly? Did he forge family trees for people? Did he arrange visas or try to warn halfbloods, Muggleborns, and their families? There are so many things he could have done without the Order directing him or anything. As a side note, I’d love to see how regular Ministry employees fought against Voldemort too.

• Post-canon, while I don’t think Percy necessarily needs to redeem himself or atone, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t feel the need to redeem himself or atone for failing to be part of the Order. What does that look like? I love Pansy/Percy and Audrey/Percy as part of these processes, Pansy because she was a seventeen-year-old who suggested giving Harry Potter up to the Dark Lord and getting all of Slytherin booted, and Audrey because she’s a complete unknown. I strongly headcanon Audrey as being a Muggle, as someone who could accept Percy and all he did without prejudgement of the war, but really she could be anyone who was uninvolved with the war. Perhaps another Ministry employee who can relate to the trauma of being part of the Ministry at that time who may have done not-enough herself?

Draco Malfoy

For Draco, I also love redemption stories. I have a special soft spot for Healer!Draco stories especially, but I really would like to see where Draco goes from Book 7 and how he redeems himself through his actions. I’m also down with Auror!Draco, or pretty much any Draco that is… out and doing something. Even Draco who went to the Muggle world with much struggle (because he knows nothing about it) and found a living there would be interesting!

Alternatively, I’d also love to see genderbent, always-a-girl Draco, mostly because it’s clear that there are broad differences in how he would have been socialised. While I don’t necessarily think that pureblood culture was Regency-esque arranged marriages etc, it’s clear that there are some socialisation differences, and I’d like to see what they are. Also, how would Voldemort victimise a female Draco as opposed to a male Draco? Please note: I am fine with graphic violence and torture, and noncon/dubcon for this request. 

Petunia Evans Dursley

I think that Petunia was done wrong by her parents, if not the magical world. She’s the less-pretty, older daughter of a couple whose younger daughter has magic. Her parents obviously adored Lily, at the expense of Petunia, and it probably looked like Lily got everything while she had to scrap for even her parents’ affection. And then, Lily and her parents die, and she gets dumped with a second child and told to raise him to save a world that she can never join, that’s rejected her, and that she doesn’t even like.

So, for Petunia, I'd love a fix-it story where for whatever reason, Petunia doesn’t let her bitterness consume her, and as a result she’s a good parent to Harry. Maybe she also has magic; maybe she makes other choices in life where her lack of magic simply stops mattering to her (I love shoving her into the mold of 1980s-era feminists who fought for equality in the workplace!). Maybe Vernon goes too far with her or with Dudley one day and she wakes up, leaves, and works her arse off as a single mom. Maybe Dudley also has magic, and she has to recalibrate everything from when she realizes at whatever young age that both her kids are magical. I'd love all of these interpretations and would love to see where you take it!

Tortall

Tortall is one of my oldest fandoms, but I will say that I think my likes tend to put me more niche than most people who are in this fandom. I love Kel and the other protags, but I tend to also like to poke at things. Actually, that’s my entire fandom persona, let’s poke the fandom with a stick and see if it holds up. 

Matthias Tunstall and Sabine of Macayhill/Matthias Tunstall

For Tunstall, I never liked the ending of Mastiff. I don't think it's consistent with Tunstall's characterization, and I just... don't like it. Also, he was with Sabine for literal fucking years without getting married to her, why the fuck would this come up now? I doubt Sabine would have been like “let’s get married” unless it was like, “let’s go to the eastern hills and get married by your traditions and Tortallan traditions can go take a hike”. So please: fix it, or build up his perspective more so it does make sense, or something? 

I'm delighted with Sabine/Tunstall either as an addition to or as the focus of the fic--how do they deal with the fact that she is noble and he's a commoner? What does she have to respond to among people of her class? How do they present themselves to the world? What about their families? Obviously she isn't exactly conventional, but tell me about that quasi-forbidden love passion! 

Kora Ingensra/Ersken Westover

For these two, I'm interested in how they make it work given that she's with the Rogue and he's a Dog. Any romantic fic here would be great for me, from getting together to them negotiating the boundaries of their relationships, or anything else. What do they choose not to talk about? What does their life look like? What happens when they see each other on the opposite side of anything? Is there any point where this goes wrong?

Saraiyu Balitang/Zaimid Hetnim

What’s fascinating about this pairing is that it suggests that Sarai is actually pretty smart一she slipped everything past Aly, didn’t she? Heck, she had a whole relationship with Zaimid without anyone knowing, managed to plan an elopement, and … how? Or, alternatively, what does that suggest about Carthaki or Copper Isles courtships?

I’d really love a very traditional sort of courtship for these two, where they’ve barely held hands before getting on a boat and running away together. I just think it would be neat. Alternatively, what about that elopement and escape? I’m also very okay with first times kissing and wedding fic in Carthak and first-times sex, too. 

Old Kingdom

I’m fascinated by the entire period of the Interregnum, and how the Old Kingdom people survived during this time. How does Belisaere decline, if it did at all? What is life like through the Interregnum, both in Belisaere and elsewhere? How did people cope with the rising threats of the broken Charter Stones and the undead creatures through this time?

I’d love to hear something about one of the Regents who held the throne in this period, trying to keep the country together, or about the Abhorsens before Sabriel during this period.

I'd also love to hear about the Old Kingdom before the Interregnum; what world did Touchstone grow up in, compared to the one that he woke up in? From the books, we know a little about the palace, but little else. Alternatively—what is remembered about the Old Kingdom before the Interregnum afterwards? How do the people rewrite or imagine their own history? I’d love something Touchstone centred, but this is a fairly blank slate.

Romances of Arquitaine

I am absolutely mad about this series because there is so much potential in it. I have basically been attempting to build this fandom out of nothing, therefore all the fic on AO3 is either by me or written for me. 

How do I even begin describing my love of this series? It tickles so my id so hard, from concept to characterization to worldbuilding. To begin, there is Vianne di Rocancheil: hedgewitch, bookworm, and lady-in-waiting to Princesse Lisele d’Arquitaine. She’s also a royal byblow, but that doesn’t matter until it does, because there’s a coup that murders both the King and the Princesse.

Then, there’s Tristan D’Arcenne: the Captain of the King’s Guard, Left Hand of the King, desperately in love with Vianne. Like, obsessive, crazy, probable-stalker levels of in love with Vianne. With the coup, Vianne is now the Queen, if throneless, and yeah, that’s about all I can tell you. 

Vianne di Rocancheil/Tristan d’Arcenne

I love the characterization of Vianne, especially in The Hedgewitch Queen. As she said herself, she was specifically raised to be without ambition, and those lessons took. What I love the most about her is that she is exactly what one would expect of a lady-in-waiting to the Princesse—she’s intensely loyal to her Princesse, she has no idea what she’s doing, the whole point of her life thus far was the glittering Court social scene. She has no practical skills, and she’s thrown into the deep end with no skills to survive it. And on the other hand, there’s Tristan. Yeah. There’s Tristan and that says everything, insane obsessive fuck that he is.

So, onto my prompts!

• Canon divergence AU! I would love to see what would have happened if King Henri had realized that the price of Tristan’s loyalty was Vianne and given her to him. A straight-up arranged marriage fic would be great (in fact I got one as a raffle prize and it was wonderful!), but I’m especially interested in seeing what would happen with the coup if Tristan had gotten Vianne. What would Vianne’s life have looked like then?

• Another Canon Divergence idea—what if the coup went off exactly as planned? What if Vianne found herself on a one-way boat trip to Tiberia? I can’t imagine Vianne would have been very happy about this turn of events, but does she try to go back?

• I’d also love a dark fairy tale AU or fusion—I think this canon works really well for that, and tonally it’s very much got the right feeling. Note that the series itself is somewhat dark (there’s a canonical dubcon scene in book 2), so darker takes are welcomed!

Lisele d’Arquitaine

I admit I didn’t think much of Lisele until I got the arranged marriage fic but really: who was Lisele? On one hand, you have Vianne’s perspective, which is that Lisele was airheaded and needed her to look out for her; on the other, you have Lisele’s single action in all of The Hedgewitch Queen, which is to protect the Seal of Arquitaine and then entrust it to Vianne, which seems to act at odds with her described character. So: more about Lisele, please! I’d love an AU where she lived and took Vianne’s role, possibly because Vianne died for her or something (oh man, her problems with Tristan would be immense, but I somehow think she’d be better equipped to do it). Alternatively, if the coup never went off or failed, what is Lisele like as Queen?

Worldbuilding

In terms of general worldbuilding, go wild. I'd love more of the history and the stories that Vianne tells at the beginning of the book, or I'd love to see what life was like in Arquitaine at pretty much any point. I'd love to see something about how Adrien rebuilds the country and rules, or about Tiberia, or Arquitaine religion or pretty much anything else. This would also be great in the form of folktales or legends (expand on any that Vianne talks about in the beginning!) or religious texts. Enjoy!

Note I explicitly opt in to non-con/dubcon, graphic violence and torture, major character death and PWP for this request.

Numb3rs

I just loved this show and it is one of my absolute nostalgic comfort shows. I own the entire boxset and let me tell you… I drag out that DVD player and watch this show when I feel sad. It reminds me of when I was in college studying mathematics, which I was doing when this show was airing. On top of that, the show’s strong family feels really hits me in the right spot. I would love work that emphasised that team aspect.

Both of the ships I requested, I just think they would be neat! I love Colby一he got all the best self-reflective hilarious lines in the show, and it’s so obvious both that he is the muscle of the team and on the show (the way Nick Stokes is for CSI, and Derek Morgan is for Criminal Minds…), but there’s something about the fact that he knows it and comments on it that’s so hilarious to me. I like Amita because she’s a woman of character and at the time, having her be one of the main characters was really powerful and almost before the times. I also love that she’s allowed to be smart, pretty, and nerdy, and that none of these contradict each other. Finally, I think Nikki had big shoes to fill, since Megan was so integral to the team一but on rewatch, I really enjoyed how badass she is! I think she and Colby would get on amazing.

As a point of discomfort (and this is not a DNW), I am somewhat uncomfortable with Charmita because having been in academia, dating your thesis supervisor is just such an incredible no no that I’m… not that into it. I don’t mind it appearing either in the background or in the past, to be clear, but it’s just a point of real life vs story that hits me wrong.

Criminal Minds

So my Criminal Minds request is all about Spencer, everyone’s favourite whump cushion. There was the drug addiction early on, and that I felt like the series handled well, and then there was the prison arc. And I don’t feel like canon appropriately handled the aftermath of Spencer’s stay in prison, or the shit he did while in prison, other than the fact that afterwards his character is a little more…  unhinged? Steely? Messed up? He's not the same, there's an edge of innocence that his character loses and he ends up doing things that previously he'd never even have considered.

Essentially, I'd really love a fic that dug into those changes with him. He has changed after the prison arc, but what are those changes? There has to be some PTSD, but what about the way the system betrayed him, and how he ultimately got off because Emily lied? Does he lose faith in the justice system? Does he relapse into drug addiction?

Another interesting angle: what if the betrayal of the system ends up turning Spencer into a criminal? Not necessarily a serial killer (I don’t think he’d dirty his hands), but I could absolutely see him turning into a Moriarty-type criminal mastermind. In which case, I would be totally down with a crossover with any Sherlock Holmes franchise (Elementary is probably best just because it’s in New York) where Reid is the person that Sherlock is seeking.

Note I opt into graphic violence and torture, referenced non-con/dubcon (i.e. rape recovery), and major character death for this request!

I hope you enjoy creating!

<3 kit