narya_flame

Hello, fellow dragon-lover!

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter. I'm very excited we're a match; I love the whole concept of this exchange, so honestly, you can't go wrong here whatever you decide to make.

First, there are a few things I would prefer not to see for this exchange:

Fanworks rated M or E for sex. I'm usually fine with it but it's not what I'm after here. (M or E for violence/dark themes is fine.)
Focus on bodily fluids and functions (exception: blood from injuries)
Focus on pregnancy, childbirth or babies
Inflation, stuffing, over- or under-eating, discussion of weight, or anything to do with eating disorders or disordered eating in general
Totally hopeless/grimdark tone. I am definitely up for thorny material and I don't need a happy ending, but please let there be at least a sliver of light and beauty in there too.

And with that out of the way, onto the very long “yes please” list!

General Likes

A strong sense of place/setting as character - feel free to take this literally, I love sentient nature and architectural horror
Adventure and peril
Anything to do with languages, linguistics and alphabets
Battle plans, battle scenes and/or aftermath
Buildings brought to life in loving detail, whether that's a castle, a fortress, a barn, an unusual house, or a cosy cottage
Candlelight
Canon divergence AUs
Complex character dynamics
Conflicting motivations
Fic inspired by my own fanworks: remixes, based on, set in the same 'verse, using the same plotline, borrowing an OC, etc.
Food, drink and celebration
Fusions of science and magic
Games, contests and competition
Ghosts, hauntings (literal and metaphorical) and liminal places
Grief and tragedy
Hope, redemption and reconciliation
Hurt/comfort
In-world meta, e.g. scholarship, literary criticism and analysis, contracts and agreements, laws and proclamations...
In-world myths and legends
Learning a craft or skill
Libraries, archives and other knowledge repositories
Loyalty and sacrifice; carrying on against impossible odds
Mercy/pity
Music and musical instruments
Mysteries and investigations
Myth, folklore and fairy-tale
Objects and places with special significance – a “sense of history”
Philosophical musings; academic discussions and debates
Politics, on any scale
Roaring fires
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
Unreliable narrators and quirky narrative structures – for example, epistolary, fragmented narratives, stories told through found documents, framing devices, stories told out of chronological order
Unusual perspectives, minor characters, original characters and textual ghosts
Witchy, fey and eldritch beings
Wry humour; finding something to smile over when times are bleak

Darker Likes (if relevant)

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
Dark magic and curses
Dreams bleeding into reality
Dubious consent
Incest
Malevolent ghosts and hauntings
Memory loss, or memories being fake/unreliable
Possession
Resurrection and necromancy
Ritual and sacrifice
Seances
Sentient nature
Torture
Unhealthy relationships/relationships with troubling dynamics, including obsession, jealousy and co-dependency

A Word About My Personal Interpretations and Preferences

One of the greatest delights to me as a fan is stumbling across interpretations of characters and plots and motifs that I'd never considered; in an exchange, I am always keen to know how other creators see the stories I love. Please write or draw the occupants of these magical worlds in any way that you wish. Diverse skin tones; disabilities; different body types; trans, intersex and genderqueer headcanons – go for it.

I am quite happy for unrequested characters to put in an appearance – I like almost everyone. I'm especially fond of Middle-earth characters wandering into non-Middle-earth Tolkien canons, but if you want to stay focused on the requested canons only, I will be delighted by that too!

Given the very specific focus of the exchange and the nature of the tags I've asked for, I haven't gone into lots of detail about things I like to see in ship-focused fanworks. That said, I am happy to receive shippy (though not explicit) fic or art, and have included some ideas in previous exchange letters if you're inclined to go in that direction. I am also open to unrequested relationships of all kinds, so if you have a precious rare pair/OT3+ that you never get to write and it's compatible with one of my requests, please include it if you wish.

If Maglor appears, I do have a preference for him being capable and compos mentis, rather than feral, broken, or weeping by the sea forever more.

[FANDOM SPECIFIC PROMPTS TBA]