Fandom Growth Exchange 2019

[narya_flame]

Dear Creator,

 

Hi! It's time to explore some fandom roads less travelled. I love minor characters, new perspectives and relationships that aren't frequently explored, so I can't wait to see what you come up with.

 

I'm very monofandom so have basically requested various flavours of Tolkien – within that, I'm easy to please, and I enjoy all kinds of fanwork content. Essentially, if it's not in my DNWs, I will undoubtedly love it!

 

If you would like more ideas, here are some general things I love and an assortment of prompts for the tags I picked out, but these are 100% optional (and don't read anything into the various prompt lengths, I would be equally happy with any of the fandoms or characters I've chosen). I don't want this to be stressful, so if my suggestions don't appeal, please just follow your muse and enjoy.

 

General Likes

 

Fic

 

- Complex character dynamics

- Conflicting motivations

- Found families/families of choice

- Canon divergence and “fix it” AUs

- Grief and tragedy

- Hope, redemption and reconciliation

- In-world myths and legends

- Unusual perspectives, minor characters, original characters and textual ghosts

- Unreliable narrators and quirky narrative structures – for example, epistolary, fragmented narratives, stories told through found documents, framing devices, stories told out of chronological order

- Twist endings/a sting in the tail

 

Art

 

- Maps! Maps are amazing! (Tricky for this exchange since it is character focused, but if you can make it work, brilliant.)

- Clothing, jewellery and hair

- Close ups of tiny details like stitching, beading, engraving, etc.

- Depictions of the natural world

- Facial expressions conveying more than one emotion at once

- Unusual perspectives – through a window, over a gate, down a tunnel, from a distance...

- Anything that plays with colour, light, shadow, space and movement.

 

Either

 

- Worldbuilding details

- Objects and places with special significance – a “sense of history”

- Food, drink and celebration

- Battle scenes and/or aftermath

- Storytelling, riddles and poetry

- Candlelight

- Libraries, archives and other knowledge repositories

- Myth, folklore and fairy-tale

- The supernatural and uncanny – ghosts, magic, telepathy...

- Fusions of science and magic

 

Relationship Likes

 

- Developing friendships and budding romances

- Pre-ship feeling navigation

- Bedsharing – platonic or otherwise

- “The little things” - light brushes with fingertips, smiles across a room...

- Forehead kisses

- Fierce loyalty and devotion

- Deep platonic friendship (especially male-female)

- Hurt/comfort (feel free to go heavy on the hurt, e.g. slow recovery from a serious illness or injury)

- Situational relationships – enemies having to work together, or people who wouldn't normally be drawn to each other forming a bond through circumstance

- Occasional hookups/“friends and a bit more”

- Emotional reunions after long separations

- Friendship developing into romance

- Friends or lovers working together in battle

- Enemies/rivals to lovers

- Pining

- UST

- Navigating bumps (or major mountains) in the road

- Tempestuous, complex or unhealthy relationships (see section on darker stuff); passionate encounters between individuals who would be terrible together long term, but can't resist each other in the here and now

- First times

- Quiet moments

- Depictions of happy, long term relationships/growing old together/very old friends looking back on their shared history

 

Smut Likes

 

No obligation at all here – write or draw whatever you're comfortable with.

 

- Breath play

- Blood play

- Knifeplay

- Biting and scratching

- Helplessness

- Bathing

- Swimming

- Sex in or near water

- Hair brushing/washing/braiding

- Sex exploring power dynamics and/or deeply informed by characters' history together

- Comfort sex

- Sleepy sex

- Neck kissing

- Foreplay

- “Thank god you're alive” sex

- Sex after serious injury

- Gags

- Blindfolds

- Light bondage

- Aftercare

- Feathers

- Ice

- Piercings

- Differing experience levels

- Enthusiastic consent

- Reading erotic literature together

- Fem dom

- Orgasm delay/denial

 

Darker Stuff

 

If your muse takes you down a more disturbing path, I'm fine with that. I do appreciate stories and artwork that deal with more difficult themes, although as with the smutty stuff, there's no expectation to go here if you don't want to.

 

- Whump/hurt without comfort, including terminal illness or fatal injury

- Mental illness, including depression and suicidal thoughts

- Substance abuse

- Death and grief

- Torture

- Psychological manipulation and abuse

- Unhealthy relationships/relationships with troubling dynamics, including obsession, jealousy and co-dependency

- Possession

- Dark magic and curses

- Corruption and decay

- Sentient nature

- Resurrection and necromancy

- Being trapped in a small dark space, possibly with something terrifying lurking nearby

- Ghost and horror stories

 

DNWs

 

Same as in my signup, but including here for reference.

 

- Character bashing (I'm A-OK with one character criticising another's actions, or characters arguing or disliking one another, but please no shoehorning of personal dislikes.)

- Crack fic

- Explicitly described rape

- Focus on scat, vomit or bodily fluids (blood from injuries is OK)

- Childbirth or pregnancy, except a passing mention

- A/B/O

- Heavy/lifestyle BDSM

 

(This should go without saying, but for the record, it's not that I don't think these things should exist. I do in fact enjoy fic about some of these things, but I'm choosy about the how and the wherefore, so it's easier for exchanges if I just opt out of them.)

 

Requests

 

The Silmarillion

 

Anairë/Eärwen/Finarfin

 

In my head I'm picturing this as something that initially happened in the aftermath of the Darkening, but if your idea is different then by all means run with it. I like the idea of the three of them comforting one another and eventually forming a triad. (Up to you what the Valar and other remaining Elves make of it, or just don't have it come up if that isn't something you're interested in exploring.)

 

Curufin & Galadriel

 

Why isn't there more fic with these two? It feels to me like they might have been good friends in Aman, once – or maybe there was a bit of a love/hate relationship going on, and they were fierce rivals. Did they work on any secret projects together, now lost to the mists of time? How about once they got to Middle-earth? What was their first meeting like, after Galadriel had crossed the Ice? Or, if you feel like playing with a story-inside-a-story, how about Galadriel in Ost-in-Edhil, in the Second Age, sharing some memories of Curufin with Celebrimbor?

 

Elemmakil/Voronwë

 

I am trying my hardest to grow this rare pair canoe, I love them together. That scene at the Outer Gate gives me chills every time I read it. How did they become lovers? (I'm a sucker for pining and UST.) What was going through Elemmakil's head when Voronwë returned with Tuor? What happened to Elemmakil when Gondolin fell?

 

(If you're making art, I would love to see a depiction of Gondolin in its full glory...)

 

Maglor & Nimrodel

 

A pair of heartbroken wanderers. I like to imagine they'd meet and forge a friendship, despite some initial wariness, certainly on Nimrodel's side and maybe on Maglor's too. There's loads of potential for hurt/comfort goodness here, physical or emotional, as well as culture clash, working together against the odds to survive, exploring Middle-earth together...over to you!

 

Varda/Ungoliant

 

Love, love, love this pairing – deities of Light and Dark, loving and hating, from before the beginning until after the end. I have seen vore prompts for this pairing before and would definitely be down with that; it's not stretching canon much to imagine Ungoliant wanting to devour Varda. Exploration of the evolution of myths and folk tales about these two would be fascinating too, or, for something completely different, an imagining of what they might have become as the Ages passed. Would Varda fade and diminish as people cease to believe in her? Are there fragments of Ungoliant lurking dormant in in some of our modern arachnids, waiting...?

 

The Lord of the Rings

 

Arwen & Erestor

 

I think of Arwen as a sharp scholar, very politically savvy, and of Erestor as her tutor and mentor. I'd love to see the two of them working together – maybe Erestor providing advice and support during her early years as Queen of Gondor, or Arwen helping him research something in the archives of Imladris. (Have I mentioned I have a thing for libraries?) If you fancy a bit of speculation – what's Erestor's history? Who is he descended from, and how did he come to Imladris?

 

I imagine their relationship as a little snarky and teasing, but very affectionate. I love Arwen's parents and brothers too, and Glorfindel, so feel free to have them appear.

 

Éothain

 

The horselords were my first fandom love, and I have a disproportionate amount of ideas and feelings about Éothain, the member of Éomer's éored who scoffed at the existence of hobbits. I'd be up for anything about him – his relationship with Éomer, his family, his childhood, why and how he became a soldier – and about Rohan more broadly – social structures, cultures and customs, games and celebrations, food and drink. I also love seeing canon events from different viewpoints, so how about showing one of the battles through his eyes?

 

Fram; Scatha

 

Pre-LOTR Third Age is something I'm fascinated by and don't see enough of. And I love dragons! I don't have any specific prompts so will leave this one entirely in the hands of my lovely creator – rest assured that I will love whatever you're inspired to make.

 

Gilmith

 

There's no canon basis for it, but I can't help wondering whether Gilmith was offered the choice of the Peredhel, and which kindred she would choose to align with. Perhaps she went looking for her mother, which is why we don't hear any more of her in the canon texts? Maybe they're still around, a mother-daughter team continuing to explore the world and its wonders.

 

Vidumavi

 

The Northmen of Rhovanion fascinate me. What was Vidumavi's role in the royal household? What was she like before her marriage – a hunter? A healer? A dreamer? How did her relationship with Valacar begin, and flourish? I'd also be really interested in something exploring the tension between her culture and her husband's, and the shadow that her shorter lifespan undoubtedly cast over their relationship.

 

The Hobbit: Jackson Movies

 

Betsy Butterbur

 

She's not named in the films, and her appearance is blink-and-you'll-miss-it, but I appreciated PJ putting her in and I bet she's seen some interesting things in her time. Who might she encounter, running The Prancing Pony for all those years? And what stories might she pass on to her son Barliman?

 

I love the potential of pubs and inns as gathering places, as catalysts for plot (meeting strangers; overhearing wicked plans; seeing something one shouldn't...), as places of rest and recuperation – crosssroads, and gateways to adventure. How many D&D campaigns, after all, begin with the adventuring party gathered in a tavern drinking ale? How many adventures in Middle-earth began the exact same way? Did Betsy ever go on an adventure of her own?

 

Sellic Spell

 

Tolkien wrote fanfic too! (I'm sure some Tolkien scholars would throw their hands up in horror and insist that no, this was a rigorous academic exercise – and it was, and is. But it's also fanfiction. Ahem. Anyway.)

 

It's a strange little story, however you think of it. It was published with Tolkien's translation of Beowulf, and the cover tells us that it's Tolkien's reconstruction of the original folk tale that perhaps lies beneath the text of Beowulf that survives today. It is that, to an extent, but it also has the feel of the kind of fairy tale that Andrew Lang might have collected, and I can easily imagine it being told in a Victorian nursery.

 

I don't mind at all what you want to do with this – a more detailed exploration of one of the scenes or characters, maybe? (I'm especially interested in depictions of monstrousness and otherness, so perhaps something about Grinder or his dam, their origins, and their perspective on events?) Alternatively, feel free to re-interpret and re-frame the story yet again, or take a look at events from a different viewpoint – maybe through the eyes of the Queen of the Golden Hall. If you want to draw on Beowulf itself as well, I'm more than fine with that.

 

The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun

 

I read this poem for the first time this year, and I'm in love. (If you haven't read it I thoroughly recommend it; it doesn't take long to read through.) The Breton setting! The creepy Corrigan! Curses! Bargains! Magic! There's so much you could do with this, and I'd be thrilled to get something really dark here – non-con is more than OK, and I'd love to see blood magic explored through the lens of sex.

 

Alternatively, how about a bit of post-canon exploration? I can't help thinking that Aotrou and Itroun's twin children might one day go looking for revenge on the wicked fairy whose tricks and wiles caused their parents' deaths. Flipped POV is always fascinating, too. Perhaps the Corrigan isn't so wicked as all that. Maybe she has a story of her own to tell...

 

The Father Christmas Letters

 

I love the worldbuilding in The Father Christmas Letters and would be equally happy with something about any of the characters. If you need further inspiration, here are some prompts from my Worldbuilding Exchange letter earlier this year:


Cave Art at the North Pole – I love the glimpses of this we get in the book! If you're making art, it would be amazing to see more of it. Or maybe Ilbereth or one of the other Elves goes to study the paintings? (Maybe they try to study them but those naughty, lovable bear cubs get in the way and cause trouble?) I'd love an exploration of what some of the strange creatures depicted are, too.

Goblin Invasions – Anything with goblin tunnels (including The Hobbit) makes me think of George MacDonald's dark and magical fairy story, The Princess and the Goblin. I'd love to know what the goblins are planning, and whether they're related to the goblins of Middle-earth. Does Father Christmas know more about them than he lets on to the Tolkien children? Are the goblins hoping to reach the “real world” through Father Christmas's realm – and if they are, what for? If you're making art, pictures of their underground realm would be amazing, and for meta, maybe there are some dusty records somewhere at the North Pole of their historic invasions and attacks?

The Nature of the Green Brother – I can't help wondering if the Green Brother is an “older” version of Father Christmas – the version we see dressed in green robes and crowned with holly, before Clement Clarke Moore clad him in red? Or maybe he's some kind of summer spirit, or Green Man. What's his relationship with Father Christmas like? Where is his domain?

Relations between the Bears and the Elves; the powers of the Bears and the Elves – like a lot of Tolkien fans, I wonder how similar the Elves of the North Pole are to the Elves of Middle-earth. (Maybe some of them even remember the Elder Days?) If there's any similarity at all between them, perhaps they have more affinity with the bears (including the mysterious Great Bear) than the Letters explicitly state – although something light-hearted, with Ilbereth getting frustrated with the bears' lack of common sense and penchant for mischief, would be delightful.

 

RPF

 

Mabel Tolkien

 

Not so long ago, I went to the Tolkien exhibit at the Morgan in NYC, and one thing I hadn't appreciated was how much influence Mabel Tolkien had on her son. I knew that she passed her faith onto him and its impact on his work is well-documented, but I hadn't realised, for example, how much she loved linguistics and fairytales, that she gave Ronald his love of plants, or that her handwriting was so incredibly beautiful - they had a couple of her letters from South Africa on display, and the script is ornate and precise and really tiny. The building blocks for so much of Tolkien's work came from her, and yet I don't really see her discussed much; I even did a Tolkien module at university, and my tutor didn't bring her up once.

 

I'm not really expecting to match on this tag, but maybe the recent Tolkien biopic has sparked more interest in his background and family. If that sounds like you, and you're up for it, I would love to see her life and interests explored.