Dear Ficcer in a Box

[extrapenguin]

Letter for ficinabox. Contains: Guardian, The Luminous Dead, Uplift, Knights of the Old Republic II (KOTOR 2).

Likes

• Same-sex relationships, especially F/F.
• Narratives of reconstruction: fixing something, whether that be a country, a piece of equipment, a relationship, or a person. (Examples: Nirvana in Fire, Zuko's arc in Avatar: the Last Airbender)
• Journeys of discovery, whether the discoverers be the characters or the reader.
• Redemption arcs. Rehabilitative justice.
• Narratives where something happens; plot. External conflicts. Casefic.
• Comedy of Errors -type things.
• Crack taken seriously.
• Untitled Goose Game crossovers of the type where the goose comes to visit the canon.
• Alien settings: Dyson spheres, ringworlds, planets tidally locked to their red dwarf stars, artificial habitats on otherwise inhospitable planets, planets with large axial tilts, planets that are actually moons of gas giants, etc.
• Engineering, especially of the sort that keeps civilization running – sewage, maintenance, transport etc – plus fault analysis and infrastructure design stuff.
• Characters expressing caring for each other by feeding each other/giving each other tea.
• Established relationships.
• Good mentor figures/teachers who have their students' best interests at heart and succeed.
• Class issues and other tensions between origins and current presentation (eg. alien whose species is considered monsters in disguise as a human).
• Worldbuilding!
• Weird physics.
• Tea.
• Competence porn.
• Enthusiasm in general.
• Xenobiology, aliens, very alien aliens.
• Loyalty, loyalty kink, people loyal way past the point of reasonableness.
• Loving descriptions of small details/of how systems run; insertion of Shown Their Work details.
• Happy endings.

I like both shipfic and gen. If you're choosing between something you think the characters would do in a situation and something on my likes list, please err on the side of what you feel is right for the characters and story in general.

DNW

• Setting change AUs (eg: Hogwarts AU, Coffee Shop AU) (exception: In Space AUs of canons not already In Space are fine)
• Christianity, mentions of "sinning".
• Humiliation, especially public.
• Incest, including foster/adopted relationships. (Unless requested – Shen Wei/Ye Zun is fine.)
• Stories about motherhood.
• Unrequested het between humans or humanoid creatures. (Dolphins are fine, spiders are fine, people having parents is fine, the fabric of society being canonical and het-enabling is fine.)
• Requested characters being presented as/rendered utterly helpless; the "damsel in distress" trope; woobiefication.
• Stories about mourning unwelcome changes to/realizations about the body, with "body" defined broadly, (ex: acquiring a disability, infertility, weight gain) and the associated grief/angst.
• Stories about mourning a dead person.
• Stories where the characters have never loved or could never love anyone but each other, incl. soulmates, demisexuality, single-target sexuality, etc.

Vid preferences

Music: My fanmix tag; my music tag. I generally like rock and (symphonic) metal. I've included a few bunch of song suggestions for each fandom. Please no unrequested screamy vocals, growly vocals, or rap.
Dialogue: No.
Sound effects: If necessary. I'm not into sound effects qua sound effects, but sometimes they fit.
Coloration: I like monochrome and selective coloring, chiaroscuro, and my favorite color is blue. I also like "canon-typical"/minimally color edited footage.
Conceptual focus: I like more thematic/motif-like things, for which I've provided some suggestions for the fandom, and constructed narratives, for which see fic prompts and general likes. Some semblance of narrative progression would be nice. I'm not into "retell the canon" -type things.
Please see notes for vids for Guardian and KOTOR2.

Where to find the canons

Guardian: 40-episode TV series; episode length 45 minutes. Available engsubbed on viki or here (needs community membership, but membership is open).
The Luminous Dead: Standalone novel.
Uplift: Series of 6 books and a sequel novella. For Creideiki and Hikahi, you can probably just read book #2, Startide Rising. Chissis and Tkett are from the novella Temptation, though you'd need to read books #2 (Startide Rising), #5 (Infinity's Shore), and #6 (Heaven's Reach) to properly get it.
Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: Video game, playthrough time about 30-40h. Available natively for Windows, Mac, and Linux; costs about 10€ last I checked. Please install the Restored Content Mod, and if you want to get the Handmaiden with F!Exile, the same-sex romance mod that allows just that.

镇魂 | Guardian (TV)

I loved the heart of the show, about how the aliens aren't that different really and should be treated humanely, as well as Zhao Yunlan's smarts, the identity porn of the start, Shen Wei's internal conflict and the pressure of his secrets against the weight of Zhao Yunlan's deep well of curiosity. Ye Zun is also a favorite, and I loved how he could still realize he was wrong and redeem himself, even at the end, after all those millennia of hatred. I'm really into aliens amongst us always, and here there are bonus identity issues from Shen Wei being removed from time for so long, leaving him without a place to belong. Dixing is fascinating, too – a cave society, removed from the light!

Misc preferences
Porn: yes. Top/dom Zhao Yunlan if going there, breathplay (hand to the throat), knifeplay, loyalty kink (incl. unhealthy amounts of loyalty), bondage, overstimulation. No permanent physical harm, no brain damage, no cutting the skin. In the realm of M/M sex acts, I like anal. Please no rimming.
Tone: Canon-typical. The sort of tone one would imagine on an action/adventure thing?
Vids: I'd love something that looks at the Black-Cloaked Envoy being vulnerable, Shen Wei coughing up blood, Zhao Yunlan being a BAMF, or some sort of identity porn mind trip that has the premise that Shen Wei and Ye Zun are the same person. Music suggestions: Amaranthe - Inferno, Battle Beast - Eden, Beast in Black - True Believer, Delain - We Had Everything, Epica - Banish Your Illusion, Sirenia - Fifth Column, Vienna Teng - Never Look Away, Within Temptation - Holy Ground

Solo: Worldbuilding (Guardian (TV))

• What sorts of natural cycles does Dixing have? Are there calendars based on lava flows, algae blooms, etc? What about hourglass-turning and the Lord of Dixing's fiat? Something specific to dark energy? Is there sectarian schism between people who measure time by one means and people who use another?
• What are Dixing powers based on? What is dark energy, anyway? Did the original Dixingians bring over idk nanobots that suffuse the planet and which Dixingians can connect to and use to alter the environment? Are Dixing powers genetic, and if so, why do Shen Wei and Ye Zun have different ones, or do they actually have the same root power but use it differently?
• What are the limits of Dixing powers? We know dark energy powers (like the visions Zhao Yunlan gets) can violate causality, so is someone's power faster than light travel? Is anything conserved – momentum, energy, mass, etc? Could someone's Dixing power be transforming spin ½ particles into spin 1 particles? Altering probability wavefunctions?
• What is the genetic relationship between Dixingians and Yashou and humans? Given all the remarks about e.g. Lai Su having Dixingian blood and mirror Zhou Weiwei not thinking infertility would ever be an issue in her marriage, I suppose crossbreeding is possible and Dixingians (and Yashou?) are very humanoid. Are they the same species, and if so, why? Why aren't the Dixingians and Yashou more alien? What's the difference that lets Yashou and Dixingians use dark energy? Are Shen Wei and Ye Zun and their cohort significantly different genetically to Chu Shuzhi and all the other modern-day Dixingians?
• Who were the alien forebears of the Dixing and Yashou? What were they like, why did they come to Haixing, and why are their descendants so humanoid? Were there two species already on the spaceship, or did they only diverge on contact? Is there a particular reason they chose to look like humans? Are the modern Dixingians and Yashou even descended from the aliens who came here, or did the aliens instead genetically modify human populations to be their legacy due to reasons?

Yè Zūn/Zhào Yúnlán (Guardian (TV))
Shen Wei & Ye Zun (Guardian TV)
Shěn Wēi/Zhào Yúnlán (Guardian TV)
Shěn Wēi/Yè Zūn (Guardian TV)
Shěn Wēi/Yè Zūn/Zhào Yúnlán (Guardian TV)
(Grouped together because I want similar things for all of them and am not that fussed about which dicks are booping in which prompt.)

• Ye Zun tries to hold Dragon City for ransom and Shen Wei negotiates with him to keep him fed in return for the humans' safety, nd then it turns into a bit of the Thousand and One Nights as Shen Wei struggles to keep Ye Zun both fed and not bored
• Shen Wei and Ye Zun reconcile pre-canon under the influence of Cheng Xinyan, and Shen Wei runs afoul of SID Chief Zhao Yunlan when gathering Hallows to get Ye Zun out of the pillar
• Fake dating where Zhao Yunlan brings home Zhu Jiu out of SPITE to make his dad shut the fuck up, while Zhu Jiu goes along with it to get at the Hallows; cue comedy of errors. Endgame ship whatever you wish from the set of Shen Wei, Ye Zun, Zhao Yunlan, and Zhu Jiu, incl. poly.
• Scenarios where Zhao Yunlan meets Ye Zun first (either in the present, or in the past due to e.g. the Hallows dumping him onto baby Ye Zun instead of baby Shen Wei)? Or something post-canon-ish where Shen Wei and Ye Zun end up in the same body? Zhao Yunlan is bored and asks the pillar guy why he's doing what he's doing, then has an opportunity to talk his captive audience down (and figure out how to get him out of the pillar; also, wtf Shen Wei, you have a twin brother and weren't telling)? Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei have a Relationship Chat earlier-on where Zhao Yunlan establishes that it'd be very useful if Shen Wei didn't hide important knowledge from him and then figures out an action plan on redeeming his brother-in-law? Ye Zun decides that everything gege's is his as well, sets out to seduce Zhao Yunlan, and gets shown that actually, the world can be kind and forgiving, and his issues can be dealt with? I like both triangle and V-shaped arrangements.
• Anything where the twins reconcile. Canon divergence where Ye Zun rants at Shen Wei about why he hates him, or Shen Wei comes across Ye Zun much earlier, or just – anything. (Feel free to include other characters in on the getting them to communicate thing!) And then they rebuild, with Ye Zun still raw over the things gege did/didn't do, Shen Wei trying to figure out how to be a responsible big brother as an adult in the future, full of awkward mutual caring. Or something fraught canon-ish where Ye Zun tries to break the timeline and Shen Wei tries to keep the timeline intact?
• Casefic! I love casefic. Maybe something where everyone thought it was a guy from Dixing, but the guy's actually human/Yashou? Or just a random Dixingian turning up to cause trouble. Stuff caused by the Regent?
• The baiji river dolphins didn't actually go extinct; they were all Baiji Tribe Yashou and they shapeshifted into their human form and walked out of the Yangtze when it wasn't satisfactory anymore. Then they ... get involved with Dragon City/the SID somehow.

The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling

I absolutely loved the caves and caving and the sheer horror of resources running out and feeling like one is being watched. I enjoyed Gyre as a protagonist, bitter and desperate and willing to do a great many things but with a moral core. Em worked very well as a narrative foil for her, both women driven to extremes due to the fact that their mothers left, and thus consequently understanding each other well.

Misc preferences
Porn: yes. Gyre should keep her suit on. However, the suit probably has some functionality that can be diverted for such things, right? And Em would no doubt be completely up to it.
Tone: canon-typical dark cave exploration horror.

Gyre Price & the cave (The Luminous Dead)

• I have a lot of canon divergence ideas! Gyre finds Em's mother's corpse?
• At Camp Four, instead of emptiness, Gyre comes across a very alive Eli?
• Due to Tunneler presence, the cave's collapsed/Gyre for other reasons can't take a route she takes in canon, and has to go exploring in the cave system?
• Or, more about the Tunnelers! If you have always wanted to write a worldbuilding infodump about Tunnelers, please do. What do they eat? What do the researchers do with the data they got from Gyre's encounter? What sort of stuff has Em collected into her company's archives?
• Why did Gyre feel the call to go deeper into the cave? Was it just psychological things, or the cave? Is it common to all caves, or just this one?
• After going offworld, does Gyre still feel a pull to caves, either in general or the one she visited in specific?

Uplift series - David Brin

My very favorite dolphins! I love the setting with its "and even the kitchen sink" attitude towards space opera worldbuilding eg the five different means of FTL travel, and the fact that the universe is vast and wondrous and has umpteen billion alien species in it. Pragmatic Hikahi and Creideiki the wily philosopher were the standout stars of Startide Rising, and Chissis and Tkett, both mad in their own ways, were of Temptation.

Misc preferences
Porn: no, please.
Tone: canon-typical "even the kitchen sink" crunchy SF where things can be dark for a bit, but our scrappy heroes will prevail.

Chissis & Tkett (Uplift)

• Chissis and Tkett were the outstanding stars of Temptation for me! I'd gladly read more of their adventures exploring Jijo, maintaining things in the face of entropy, Tkett doing science (and founding a scientific journal just to get a place to publish it in?), and Chissis clawing her way back to sentience!
• Is the Buyur plan simply what they said it would be in Temptation, or is there yet another layer hidden there? Do they have things hidden on Jijo beyond the things mentioned in Temptation? What was the method to their choice of things to leave behind?
• How does being stuck on Jijo affect Trinary? Do the alien shores mean their favorite imagery in Trinary changes? Their favorite wordplays? Their views on art
• What's it like to be mad in a completely unique way?
• What else is there that lurks in Jijo's depths?

Creideiki/Hikahi (Uplift)
Note: Please don't dwell on Creideiki's head injury. Mentions are fine if relevant, but don't write a fic centered on it.

• I'd love to see more of Creideiki & co's galactic escape adventure! How do they reach Earth?
• Does their escape adventure/some training cruise of Creideiki's go through E-Space, and perhaps yield them with some new knowledge of how E-Space works? Or do they actually encounter a mad sentient who prefers it to other modes of hyperspace travel?
• Are there still Progenitor relics to be found? Did the Progenitors all unifiedly disappear one day, or did they gradually fade out? Does their find in the Shallow Cluster lead them to another set of clues, or did Creideiki's hunch to investigate the Shallow Cluster come from some prior experience with Progenitor relics?
• How did Creideiki and Hikahi first meet? (I do ship it!)
• Do they stumble across some (illegal) Uplift process? Or a failure/"failure" of an Uplift process?
• What's it like to think in Trinary all day? What does a Trinary courtship look like? What are Creideiki's (and Hikahi's and Keepiru's) favorite wordplays?
• Do they have some additional encounters with Galactic bureaucracy, either before or after the whole "everyone wants to murder Earthclan" thing?

Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

I am very much into the "there's something intrinsically metaphysically wrong and horrifying about the Exile and that makes them UNSTOPPABLY COMPELLING TO EVERYONE THEY MEET" schtick, so leaning into that is very welcome! I really enjoyed the tone of the thing and the colossal loyalty kink possibilities, plus the slow unfolding of the premise and realizations.
Exile preference: inscrutable and mysterious, ideally Light Side(-ish). Light Is Not Nice -type stuff is welcome if that inspires you. Meetra Surik is an acceptable name, though please ignore any EU material from outside the game. My favorites among the companions are Visas, Handmaiden, Bao-Dur and T3-M4. My least favorites are G0-T0 and Atton.

Misc preferences
Porn: yes. Top/dom Exile if going there, 100% for misuse of the Force, breathplay (Force choking or choking with a hand to the throat), knifeplay (but no lightsabers), loyalty kink (incl. unhealthy amounts of loyalty), cavalier but not careless uses of personal power. No permanent physical harm, no brain damage, no cutting the skin. In the realm of F/F sex acts and terminology, I like the word "cunt" and the acts of tribbing and fingering. I'm not into cunnilingus.
Tone: canonically dark and gloomy. Here I'm into being the unflinching cold light in the darkness, if that makes any sense.
Vids: My favorite appearances for the Exile are the 4th, 6th, and 7th from the left in this image, I like the Zeison Sha armors, and prefer one lightsaber – whether it's single- or double-bladed is immaterial, as is its color. I'd love something that goes into fighting as one/battle couple stuff, or about the Force bond thing, or the Handmaiden/Visas being lured in yet mystified by the Exile. Music suggestions: Amaranthe - Exhale, Battle Beast - Dancing with the Beast, Beast in Black - No Surrender, Delain - One Second, Sirenia - Nos Heures Sombres, Within Temptation - Raise Your Banner, Xandria - Sisters of the Light

Female Jedi Exile/Brianna | Handmaiden (KOTOR2)

• Breaking the oath. How did the Handmaiden fall for the Exile, when did she realize it, and would she treat it as a fall (from the light, from morality, etc)?
• Dark F/F where the Exile is like the lure on an anglerfish, and the Handmaiden cannot help but fall.
• Missionfic of something unknown, either during or after canon. The tomb of a Sith Lord? Some political snare? Has Czerka regrouped to threaten the Ithorians again?
• Post-canon fic with the Exile and her followers/students reforming the Jedi Order
• Does the Handmaiden sneak off to join the Exile to confront the threat in the Unknown Regions? What is the threat, and what must be done about it? (Please ignore all of The Old Republic. Feel free to disregard as much of the rest of the EU as you wish.)

Female Jedi Exile/Visas Marr (KotOR2)

• As above: breaking the oath. After only just meeting her, Visas already considers the Exile a paradise valley. How? Why? Does she realize it's a reflection of the Exile being a wound in the Force, creating Force bonds with all?
• Visas falls from the darkness to the light, in a way. What is it like to fall in that direction?
• A fully-trained Jedi is a dangerous thing, as the denizens of Dantooine would no doubt inform you. After serving Darth Nihilus for so long, what would Visas expect from the Exile she now serves? How does the exile compare to the expectations?
• Dark F/F where the Exile is like the lure on an anglerfish, and Visas cannot help but fall.
• Missionfic of something unknown, either during or after canon. The tomb of a Sith Lord? Some political snare? Has Czerka regrouped to threaten the Ithorians again?
• Post-canon fic with the Exile and her followers/students reforming the Jedi Order
• Does Visas sneak off to join the Exile to confront the threat in the Unknown Regions? What is the threat, and what must be done about it? (Please ignore all of The Old Republic. Feel free to disregard as much of the rest of the EU as you wish.)