Dear Cardiologist

[extrapenguin]

I'm ExtraPenguin, and this is my highadrenalineexchange letter! Have fun while screaming!

For this letter, I have taken a slightly different tack! For a bunch of fandoms, I have separated out General Adventure Prompts, which are more focused on external plot, and character-/relationship-specific prompts that are focused on emotional dynamics and/or inner growth – or just character specific. Please mix and match to your heart's content! Prompts for A solo are also fair game for A/B and A & B requests, and feel free to mix and match for the TPM/TCW/PT set of things.

Navigation:
Likes
DNWs
The Phantom Menace [SAFETY]
Knights of the Old Republic
Star Wars: the Old Republic
Star Wars Prequel Trilogy & The Clone Wars
Uplift

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. Action/adventure.
• Comedy of Errors -type things.
• [record scratch SFX] So You're Probably Wondering How I Got Into This Situation: the fic
• Madcap adventure
• 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 infrastructure design stuff.
• Failure analysis/unraveling the causes of catastrophe, e.g. "why did the plane crash?" (yes, I like Mayday and Admiral Cloudberg)
• 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.
• 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)
• Christianity, mentions of "sinning".
• Humiliation, especially public.
• Unrequested incest, including foster/adopted and master/padawan relationships. (Exception: Anakin/Obi-Wan 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.
• Requested characters dying.
• Stories where the characters have never loved or could never love anyone but each other, incl. soulmates, demisexuality, single-target sexuality, etc. (Exception: soulmate-bestowing geese/geese bullying characters into getting together with someone is okay.)

Getting up to speed on the canons

Knights of the Old Republic I & II: Two video games. Available natively for Windows and Mac, with II also available for Linux, cost about 10€ each the last time I checked. Available on GOG and Steam. Screenshot LP for I, all game dialogue for I, screenshot LP for II, all game dialogue for II. Time to completion should be about 30-40 hours each.
Star Wars: The Old Republic: A MMO. You can get the class stories (incl. Sith Inquisitor) as a free to play player – they take about 30-40 hours too, I think. For the Sith Inquisitor/Darth Zash request you can do with just the class story. For Acina, while you do encounter her after Makeb, you need the KOTET expansion, for which you need to subscribe for at least one month – 13€, last time I checked.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: 133-episode TV series; episode length 25 minutes. It's owned by Disney so streaming options are probably country-dependent.
Star Wars Prequel Trilogy: 3 movies, each about 2 hours long. Again, owned by Disney.
Uplift: Series of 6 books and a sequel novella. For Creideiki, you can probably just read book #2, Startide Rising. For the worldbuilding prompts, you probably also want to read books #5 (Infinity's Shore) and #6 (Heaven's Reach) plus the novella Temptation. Chissis and Tkett appear in Temptation, but you'll want to read books #2, #5, and #6 at least.

The Phantom Menace

I came out of the movie with immense sympathy for Shmi and really liked the lightsaber battles. I did not vibe with the pod race, though.

WRT the "stories about motherhood" DNW: Anakin is allowed to exist; just give the fic a plot that isn't about Shmi raising Anakin and give her motivations unrelated to him.

Shmi Skywalker
I have a huge preference for Force-sensitive Shmi. I also like it when she has more rough edges and despite doing her best to raise Anakin isn't just a saintly self-sacrificing mother.

• It is a lovely day on Tatooine and the Hutts are about to discover that Shmi Skywalker is a horrible goose
• Maul finds Shmi and Anakin first, and wowed by Anakin's power in the Force, decides to pretend to be a Jedi so he can take them on as apprentices. None of them have any knowledge of what a Jedi is beyond osmosis. It's glorious.
• Or a Jedi who isn't Qui-Gon Jinn is the one given the Naboo mission and thus the one finding her and Anakin. (Any of the ones in the movie, or just invent an OC.) What changes?
• Shmi is from a non-Jedi Force sect! What sort of Force traditions does she have?
• Or what if Qui-Gon freed Shmi as well/Shmi freed herself and left Tatooine with Anakin?

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Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic I & II

I really enjoyed the reveal and companions' reactions to that. The potential for identity stuff/doubting one's recollections is super cool; I'd appreciate a chance for Revan to yell at the Jedi Council.
Revan preference: Light Side(-ish) but not necessarily aligned with the Jedi Council/forging her own path. Not the distracted from mission to kick all the puppies type DS actions that a DS playthrough involves, at any rate. Please ignore any EU material from outside the game. My favorites among the companions are Juhani and Jolee. My least favorite is Carth.

Adventure Experience Prompts

• 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
• AU in which the Jedi Council thinks Yuthura should join Revan in her quest to find the Star Maps. Do they need to go look for an extra Star Map after the canon ones prove inconclusive?
• They land on an island – only to discover that it's actually a mat of carnivorous floating vegetation anchored to a volcano by a tree
• Post-canon exploration of the Uncharted World.
• Or a smaller mishap, like them ending up in the rakghoul-infested sewers of Taris by accident and having to find their way out or something.

Female Revan

• It is a lovely day on Korriban and Revan is a horrible goose
• Revan takes people/a different set of people with her to face the threat in the Unknown Regions. (Please ignore all of The Old Republic. Feel free to disregard as much of the rest of the EU as you wish.)
• Revan having a long and hard conversation about the memory wipe stuff with the Council
• The Dantooine Council made all the Revan Decisions on their own, without consulting the main Jedi Council on Coruscant. Revan sics Coruscant on Dantooine and watches the evisceration
• Revan gets her memories back on Taris and decides to troll the fuck out of everyone on Dantooine
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

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Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic

SWTOR! I got into the MMO in Feb 2021; the Sith Inquisitor was the first character I played and I have mine current with all content (so no need to fear spoilers). I liked the [electrocute] options and the hilarious quantities of sass and snark, as well as the focus on ancient mysteries and Sith archaeology. Like, seriously, write me a 10k fic that is just the Inquisitor investigating Rakatan ruins and I will be ecstatic. Please refer to the Inquisitor as Darth Nox/Occlus/Imperius if set at an appropriate place in the timeline. My personal Inquisitor is a Zabrak, but I like the other alien options as well. I'm not really into Zakuul or Valkorion family drama.

Adventure Experience Prompts

• Maybe a visit to a Sith Temple at some point in the timeline – ancient artefacts for the defeat of the Republic?
• Visiting Ziost and its Sith tombs before the Cataclysm? Visiting Ziost after the Cataclysm? How much has survived, buried beneath the soil?
• Investigating Nathema's suitability to be an Imperial outpost?
• Or something more war-related – I'll be caught up with the upcoming expansion once it's been released; feel free to use stuff from there if you want.
• They land on an island – only to discover that it's actually a mat of carnivorous floating vegetation anchored to a volcano by a tree
• Sith archaeology field trip to some ancient temple! Korriban, Dromund Kaas, wherever. Just the Inquisitor & company doing evil archaeology together.
• Or a smaller mishap, like them ending up in the rakghoul-infested sewers of Taris by accident and having to find their way out or something.

Darth Acina/Female Sith Inquisitor
I like Acina! I like the opportunity here for Empress/perhaps-loyal Right Hand, with the Inquisitor (Nox, Occlus, Imperius) the head of Ancient Mysteries and being a nice and loyal Imp, sure, but they're Sith, there's always that "well what if she betrays me?" thing in the background. If you want to write an AU where someone else is the Outlander and the Inquisitor remained in the Empire, playing politics and potentially getting Acina the throne: go ahead!

• Acina's the questgiver for the Dread Seeds mission, so something with Acina going along with her new colleague on the Dark Council to capture all the Dread Seeds and stop the Dread Masters?
• Actually, Acina and the Inquisitor dealing with the Dread Masters story arc, Explosive Conflict to the Dread Seeds to Oricon to the Oricon ops. Just – that.
• Or, once Acina is Empress, some rival (Vowrawn? Ravage?) has established a base somewhere, time to go in with her right-hand woman to eliminate them?
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

Female Sith Inquisitor/Darth Zash
Please have Zash be in her original body, not Khem's. Thank you!

• "Here is the lightsaber I had when I was an apprentice! Now assassinate my enemies for me" is 100% exactly what I want in my femslash ships. So, uh, more of proud Sith master Zash setting achievable murder targets for the Sithquisitor?
• AU where Zash gets her eternal youth not through body snatching but through some dark side sex ritual.
• AU where the ritual Zash comes up with doesn't necessitate either her or Khem dying, but manages to reconstitute her body along the way, and all the awkward reactions that ensue.
• Zash said she almost forsook the ritual – what if she had? Zash and the Inquisitor shopping for a new body for Zash together?
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

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Star Wars Prequel Trilogy + The Clone Wars

I merged these sections because of the character and likes overlap, but if you matched on the PT, I am 100% not expecting you to watch all 133 episodes of TCW! Just trust me when I say that I'm not fussy if you end up writing a PT-era take if we matched on a TCW tag and vice versa.
Anyway! I really enjoyed the prequels in all their ridiculous glory, especially the lightsaber fights and the sense of sweeping world and the Jedi and the Jedi Temple. I love the space wizards and their vaguely Buddhist philosophy and telekinetic powers. I really like people figuring out their place in the universe and helping others on their journeys. So here are a bunch of prompts for a variety of Jedi. I also love slash, femslash and milSF!

Characters I like, other than the requested: Shmi Skywalker, Shaak Ti, Depa Billaba

If you want to write about Shmi Skywalker: The Phantom Menace is my safety fandom but I won't be fussed if you write fic about her using all of TCW/PT as well.

Note regarding the Jedi: Please no Jedi bashing or Jedi Council bashing. They can be acting on bad/misleading information, but I'd like them to be well-intentioned and not be on a mission to be petty and rude to Anakin Skywalker. Canon-compliant fic is 100% fine, but please nothing set in or after a canon-compliant Order 66.

On how to deal with Padmé: you can set your fic in an AU where she and Anakin never got together, they broke up offscreen pre-fic, or just never mention her.

Adventure Experience Prompts

• All the weird Force bantha poodoo! Someone touches an artefact and oops, now there's a Force bond? Time travel to the KOTOR era/Revan turning up in the PT/TCW era?
• Discovering ancient Rakatan devices! Trying to figure out WTF happened with them! Anything dealing with the legacy of the Infinite Empire.
• A new Separatist stronghold has been discovered! Who's in charge? Grievous? A tactical droid? Some all-new non-droid General Count Dooku hired after one more disappointment from Grievous? What horrible trouble could befall our heroes this time?
• Someone gets kidnapped and potentially ransomed! One or more Jedi get sent to rescue/negotiate/pay the ransom.
• Completely by happenstance, they're at a location when Something Interesting happens, and since they're Jedi, the local authorities ask them to solve the murder mystery/high-profile theft/terrorist attack.
• Or the interesting happens to them! A large diplomatic event between two planets that attach supreme importance to pod racing, Separatists attacking someplace and the only their legion is close enough to respond, a bizarre Force Ghost starts haunting the Temple basement, etc!
• Or a smaller mishap, like them ending up in the rakghoul-infested sewers of Taris by accident and having to find their way out or something.
• They land on an island – only to discover that it's actually a mat of carnivorous floating vegetation anchored to a volcano by a tree

Anakin Skywalker

• In an effort to protect Anakin from Sith Grooming Experiences, the Force sends him on Adventure Suffering Experiences! Lots of them. Constantly. Anakin would like to take a nap please?
• Anakin's dad is not the Force, but rather a Sith holocron his mom discovered. The holocron comes to dispute custody. (Bonus points for the Sith in the holocron being female, nonhuman, and utterly unlike Anakin.)
• Anakin gets raised by another master. (Mace Windu, Agen Kolar, Shaak Ti, Kit Fisto, Depa Billaba, Revan...)
• Anakin is basically a Mad Engineer of sorts. Have him use that Mad Engineering for something!
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano

• I like how Anakin's very protective of his padawan, even if Ahsoka chafes against it a bit at the start, and then grows to trust her, so: saving each other from trouble!
• Any and all padawan raising schmoop! I am 100% here for it.
• At Anakin's insistence, they get sent on a mission with as little to do with the war as possible. Tracking down an ancient Sith artefact? Sent to investigate ruins with a strong Force presence?
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

Anakin Skywalker & Mace Windu

• If you are aware of the Mace Windu Unfucks the Timeline tumblr post? That. I am 100% here for another take on that idea.
• Relatedly, anything involving Anakin as Mace's padawan.
• Anakin's mission assignments go differently (Padmé stays on Coruscant/someone else escorts her to Naboo), so he's part of the Geonosis rescue planning team with Mace.
• In preparation for solo missions, Mace takes Anakin with him on a mission somewhere!
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

Anakin Skywalker/Mace Windu
Please nothing set before Anakin's Knighting. Thank you!

• Let's be real: Mace definitely deserves a hot young knight to give him a shoulder massage, and Anakin has a Thing for authority. This is definitely a good idea!
• Anything in the genre of "Anakin and Mace go on an adventure together and end up getting together". Levels of peril and number of witnesses up to your discretion.
• A manifestation of the Force in the shape of a goose (or just a horrible goose from the local park) decides they're soulmates and must kiss. Immediately. Or there will be consequences.
• Mace gets trapped in the clutches of the Senate Budget Committee. Anakin stages a daring rescue.
• Mace decides to try teaching Vaapad to Anakin; Anakin has a crisis over how hot Mace is
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
I want Anakin and Obi-Wan's complicated relationship where Obi-Wan's best wasn't actually good enough but now that he's a Knight, Anakin has forgiven him for it. Like, Obi-Wan Kenobi's B+ to D- Parenting* plus Anakin still loving him, because, well, that's his brother/dad and Anakin's issues are around losing people, of course he wants to keep Obi-Wan! (* F-level parenting also acceptable, as long as someone intervenes.)

• Obi-Wan and Anakin visit a wish-granting temple. Obi-Wan wishes he'd cuddled his baby padawan more, while Anakin wishes Obi-Wan had gotten help with his grief/self-destructive impulses when he got a padawan. As a result, adult Knight Anakin swaps places with baby 9-year-old Anakin for a while. (Young Obi-Wan being declared unfit to care for a padawan optional.)
• Obi-Wan and his desire to turn Anakin into a diplomat vs Anakin's class etc issues
• Something where Obi-Wan, prompted or unprompted, realizes he should get Anakin working with judicial or something instead, since his padawan is not a diplomat at all
• Anything set soon post-TPM where it turns out that oops, Knight Kenobi is not at this point in time capable of taking care of this padawan – Obi-Wan is a sarcastic shit at the best of times, and he just had his father figure die traumatically in front of him so he's not really in a position to properly support his newly-freed slave of a padawan who's left behind everything he knew
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

Obi-Wan Kenobi/Darth Maul

• Obi-Wan is the one to find Maul on Lotho Minor!
• Due to Dooku, Sidious, or forces of nature, Obi-Wan and Maul are stranded somewhere and can only get out if they cooperate.
• Maul decides that actually, he also wants vengeance on Sidious, and the best way to get that is via the Jedi. Now, if only Kenobi would believe him...
• Before killing his beloved nemesis, Maul absolutely needs to monologue at him about how he ruined his life. Then monologue some more, because he can only kill his nemesis once, so he better say everything he's ever wanted to say first. Wait, that turned out much too personal and revealing, abort – why can't he kill Kenobi? What is this colossal betrayal of his hand???
• Maul's revenge quest is, like all revenge quests, awfully personal. What if it took a turn for the physical/erotic? Obi-Wan decides to try flirting with him to get out of this and oh look, suddenly the sexual tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife and serve it for dinner?
• Obi-Wan comes to the tragic conclusion that Maul is hot when they're fighting with lightsabers and also really hard to kill. Maybe he should try redeeming the guy instead? You know, just to minimize collateral damage. Anyway, here's his comm code, please call first if you feel the urge to kill anyone, Maul!
• Time travel! Rebels/TCW-era Obi-Wan/Maul travels back to TCW/TPM and tries to convince himself/the other one to change approach, with varying levels of success.
• A manifestation of the Force in the shape of a goose (or just a horrible goose from the local park) decides they're soulmates and must kiss. Immediately. Or there will be consequences.
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

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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. I liked Chissis and Tkett's 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. I'm grouping the Chissis and Tkett prompts and the Creideiki and Hikahi prompts together, since they're sort of different cast herds, but the pre-canon prompts in the Creideiki+Hikahi set should work just as well for any subgroup – feel free to mix and match. WRT hetships, Creideiki/Hikahi and Chissis/Tkett are both OK, as are the & variants of both.

Chissis & Tkett

• 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
Note: Please don't dwell on Creideiki's head injury. It's okay if he has it, but I don't want a fic that's All About him having a head injury and how he copes with it – I'd prefer fic about his adventures instead.

• 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 Chissis's and Tkett's) favorite wordplays?
• Do they have some additional encounters with Galactic bureaucracy, either before or after the whole "everyone wants to murder Earthclan" thing?

Worldbuilding

• What's it like to think in Trinary all day? What sort of poetic imagery is most popular? What sorts of things count as undertones of Primal that e.g. Makanee is worried about Brookida displaying?
• How did Trinary form exactly? (Dolphins finding haikus cool and just unilaterally to only communicate using them?)
• How does thinking in Trinary affect dolphin views of art? What are the images that are considered most poetic, and why?
• How often do they use Trinary to subtly or not-so-subtly troll humans?
• What does a Trinary courtship look like? What're dolphins' favorite wordplays?
• I'd love to see some sort of opening up of what the Whale Dream is and what it means, and how it's reflected in modern Trinary! Is the Whale Dream something found without, to be sought in the oceans, or something found within, carried with the fins to the ends of the galaxy? Do our spacegoing fins miss the song of the humpbacks of Earth's oceans?How much of the Whale Dream is cultural and how much is ... not?
• What were the Progenitors like? Why did they make the choices they did? Did they unifiedly disappear one day, or was there fractiousness? Why did they leave?
• How did First Contact between the Progenitors go? What sorts of traps did they leave behind?
• Is the Buyur plan for Jijo 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 are they? What was the method to their choice of things to leave behind? Was there one?

* Hands and fire?
      Hands and fire!
* Use them, use them
      To leap higher!
* Dreams and song?
      Dreams and song!
* Use them, use them
      To leap-long! *

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