Femslash Exchange 2021 Letter

[narya_flame]

Dear Femslash Creator,

I am so sorry, I've had an epic fail this week and did not complete my letter when I promised to, so let me say up front that I am very easy to please - even less than usual, don't feel bound to anything contained in this letter. As long as you keep out of the DNWs in my signup, I will love what you make; really I just want something - anything - featuring one of my requested ships.

Since the letter is late, I haven't given specific prompts by ship as I don't want you to feel pressured to change an idea you may already have had, but I've added a list of likes in case they're helpful, and a list of the requested canons and ships for ease of reference, in case whatever we originally matched on has lost its appeal. I have requested many of these canons and characters before; if you should happen to have the time and energy to dig further, I'll link my Innumerable Stars, Smut4Smut, Darkest Night and Every Woman letters, but I have no expectation that you will trawl through these for prompts - it's genuinely just if you're interested.

Finally, please don't read anything into how many ships are listed for a particular canon, or whether I've requested a specific canon or ship in a recent exchange. If it's in my signup, I definitely wanted and would be delighted to receive it.

DNWs

My general DNWs are as follows:

- Crack;

- Focus on bodily fluids and functions (exception: blood from injuries);

- Unrequested AU that significantly changes the canon setting - for example, A/B/O or mermaid AU. (Canon divergence is great, as is post-canon exploration.)

Pregnancy, babies and menstruation are iffy and canon-dependent; I am fine with it for Sellic Spell or Aotrou and Itroun, because I think the dynamics at play there could be fascinating, but please avoid elsewhere (though if we've matched on MCU, I'm fine with Yelena discussing or reflecting on her sterilisation, or with Wanda's supernatural pregnancies as part of a larger story arc). Basically I don't want fluffy pregfic/kidfic or anything about the mundane mechanics of childbirth, but if you're using it to explore the othering of a female character or for supernatural/horror purposes, I will in all likelihood be fine with it.

If we've matched on a Middle-earth canon, then please avoid writing the Noldor as wicked villains and/or the Ainur as perfect and infallible. I love the complexity of these characters, and even Tolkien wrote later that he wasn't sure the Valar were right to take the Elves to Aman. (In-world beliefs and opinions about these character groups are, of course, fine.)

Art Likes

• Abstract art (could maybe work for Tolkien's Ainur?)
• Action shots
• Art as character study, or illustrating the dynamics of a relationship
• Basically anything that plays with colour, light, shadow, space and movement
• Beams of light; strangely shaped shadows
• Calligraphy/illumination/runework
• Close ups of tiny details like stitching, beading, engraving, etc.
• Clothing, jewellery and hair
• Comic panels; sets of linked drawings that tell a story
• Craft and sculpture
• Depictions of the natural world; tiny characters in vast landscapes
• Facial expressions conveying more than one emotion at once
• Fashion design
• Focus on a part of the body that isn't the face, e.g. a character's fingertips lightly brushing their lover's ear
• Group shots
• Intricate detailing on weaponry, armour, buildings, engravings, musical instruments...
• Limited colour palette; jewel tones; monochrome
• Maps, architectural drawings, floor plans, designs for a toy or new invention, etc.
• Portraits
• Unusual perspectives – through a window, over a gate, down a tunnel, from a distance...

Fic Likes

• Adventure and peril
• Anything to do with languages, linguistics and alphabets
• Canon divergence AUs, whether they make things better or worse
• Complex character dynamics
• Conflicting motivations
• Fairy tale motifs
• Found families/families of choice
• Grief and tragedy
• Hope and reconciliation
• In-world myths and legends
• In-world meta (see section below)
• Mercy/pity
• Mysteries and investigations
• Philosophical musings; academic discussions and debates
• Politics, on any scale
• Solace
• Unexpected friends/allies/relationships
• Unreliable narrators and quirky narrative structures – for example, epistolary, fragmented narratives, stories told through found documents, framing devices, stories told out of chronological order; playing with canon narrative bias/intent
• Unusual perspectives, minor characters and textual ghosts
• Wry humour; finding something to smile over when times are bleak

In-Universe Meta

• “Filling in the gaps” e.g. fragments of documents complete with in-world commentary
• Bestiaries and spellbooks
• Catalogues
• Contracts and agreements
• Diary entries; project journals
• Essays
• Etymology
• History
• In-world scholarship
• Instructions and recipes
• Laws and proclamations
• Letters
• Literary criticism and analysis
• Marginalia
• Working papers and project notes

General Likes

• A sense of history and wonder
• Animals
• Battle plans, battle scenes and/or aftermath
• Candlelight
• Castles, fortresses, palaces and grand houses
• Cosy cottages (or hobbit holes!)
• Dragons!
• Fic, art etc. inspired by my own fanworks: remixes, based on, set in the same 'verse, using the same plotline, borrowing an OC, podfic recording, etc.
• Fog and mist
• Food, drink and celebration
• Forests; rivers; the sea
• Fusions of science and magic
• Games, contests and competition
• Ghosts, hauntings (literal and metaphorical) and liminal places
• Learning a craft or skill
• Libraries, archives and other knowledge repositories
• Liminal places; the borders of the numinous
• Loyalty and sacrifice; carrying on against impossible odds
• Magic
• Music and musical instruments
• Myth, folklore and fairy-tale
• Post canon exploration - e.g. for Tolkien, Elves/Ainur in history; for Hill House, what happened after Eleanor drove her car into the tree; etc..
• Objects and places with special significance
• Original characters
• Quiet moments
• Roaring fires
• Setting as character - feel free to take this literally, I love sentient nature and architectural horror
• Shining a light into places canon doesn't show us, or barely touches on – going off the edge of the map
• Starlight
• Storytelling, riddles and poetry
• Suggestion and implication, whether this is hints of backstory, a figure hiding in the shadows, or a slightly ambiguous ending – I love it when my imagination can get to work filling in the gaps
• The supernatural and the uncanny
• Unprompted crossovers between requests. If you want to send Ungoliant to Hill House, then please be my guest.
• Villages, towns and cities, especially their unusual defining features
• Witchy, fey and eldritch beings

Relationship Likes

• Ambiguous relationships
• Banter and teasing
• Bedsharing; huddling for warmth
• Characters being utterly fascinated by one another (doesn't have to be romantic; could be admiration of craft/skill, or being impressed by someone's intellect, or something else altogether)
• Developing friendships – especially unlikely friendships
• Emotional reunions after long separations
• Enemies/rivals to lovers/friends
• Fierce loyalty and devotion, to the point of one character doing something incredibly stupid to help or save somebody they love
• Fighting back-to-back
• Forehead kisses
• Grey relationships that don't sit neatly in a box
• Hurt/comfort
• Quiet moments between people who care about each other, especially during or after huge events shaking their world
• Situational relationships – enemies having to work together, or people who wouldn't normally be drawn to each other forming a bond through circumstance
• “The little things” - light brushes with fingertips, smiles across a room...
• Tempestuous, complex or unhealthy relationships (see section on darker stuff)

Smut Likes

• Aftercare
• Banter in bed
• Bathing
• Biting and scratching
• Blood play
• Breath play
• Comfort sex; sex between friends who are just having fun
• Differing experience levels
• Drinking wine in bed together
• Enthusiastic consent
• Gags; blindfolds; light bondage
• Hair brushing/washing/braiding
• Helplessness
• Knifeplay
• Neck kissing; collarbone kissing
• Nipple play
• Orgasm delay/denial
• Piercings
• Pillow talk
• Porn as character study
• Reading erotic literature together
• Sensation play
• Sex exploring power dynamics and/or deeply informed by characters' history together
• Sex in or near water
• Swimming
• “Thank god you're alive” sex; sex after serious injury

Darker Stuff

• Abandoned places; ruins; haunted houses/objects
• Being trapped in a small dark space, possibly with something terrifying lurking nearby
• Body horror. Especially pretty body horror, like flowers growing out of bodies, or being consumed from the inside by starlight.
• Body modification
• Canon divergence that initially seems like it will fix things but then makes everything worse.
• Character death. Most of these canons are somewhere on the scale from sad to tragic; death, loss and grief make them all the more powerful, so I'm happy for it to be explored
• Corruption and decay
• Dark magic and curses
• Dreams bleeding into reality
• Dubious consent
• Horror! Most forms of horror, to be honest. I'm rarely bothered by gore and I like being scared.
• Hurt without comfort, including terminal illness or fatal injury
• Malevolent ghosts and hauntings
• Memory loss, or memories being fake/unreliable
• Mental illness, including depression and suicidal thoughts
• Possession
• Psychological manipulation and abuse
• Resurrection and necromancy
• Ritual and sacrifice
• Seances
• Sentient nature
• Substance abuse
• Torture
• Unhealthy relationships/relationships with troubling dynamics, including obsession, jealousy and co-dependency

Requested Ships By Canon


(All requests are for either fic or art, although other media would be amazing for treats.)


The Silmarillion

Elbereth Gilthoniel | Varda Elentári/Ungoliant (Silm)
Arien/Original Female Balrog (Silm)
Nienna/Thuringwethil (Silm)
Ilmarë/Thuringwethil (Silm)
Tar-Míriel/Uinen (Silm)
Míriel Þerindë | Míriel Serindë/Vairë the Weaver (Silm)

The Lord of the Rings

Original Female Elf/The River-Woman (Tolkien books)
Goldberry/Wandlimb | Fimbrethil (Tolkien books)
Goldberry/Lady of the Blue Brooch (Tolkien books)
Goldberry (Tolkien)/Original Female Character (Tolkien books)
Gilraen/Goldberry (Tolkien books)
The River-Woman/Wandlimb (Tolkien books)
Original Entwife/Original Entwife (Tolkien books)

The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun

Itroun/Original Female Character
Changeling/Original Female Character
Daughter of Itroun/Changeling
Corrigan/Daughter of Itroun
Corrigan/Changeling
Itroun/Corrigan

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Lady Bertilak/Morgana le Fay

Sellic Spell

The Queen of the Golden Hall/Grinder's Dam

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil

The Shadow-Bride/Fíriel

Star Wars

Amilyn Holdo/Leia Organa (SW AMT)
Barriss Offee/Seventh Sister (SW AMT)

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Yelena Belova/Original Female Character
Agatha Harkness/Wanda Maximoff
Peggy Carter/Dottie Underwood

The Haunting of Hill House

Theodora/Eleanor "Nell" Vance

Crossovers

The Shadow-Bride (Adventures of Tom Bombadil)/Thuringwethil (Silmarillion)
The River-Woman (LotR books)/Lalwen (Silmarillion)
The Lady of the Blue Brooch (LotR books)/Fíriel (Adventures of Tom Bombadil)
Arwen (LotR books)/Ilmarë (Silmarillion)