Dear Ficcer in a Box

[extrapenguin]

I'm ExtraPenguin, and this is my ficinabox letter.

Navigation:
Likes
DNWs
Children of Time series - Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Long Earth series - Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
The Expanse series - James S. A. Corey
Uplift series - David Brin
Knights of the Old Republic
Star Wars: the Old Republic

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.
• 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.
• Experimental things. Weird stuff.
• 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.
• Motherhood (childcare etc) as a woman's sole or main motivation or purpose.
• Unrequested het between humans or humanoid creatures. (People having parents is fine, the fabric of society being canonical and het-enabling is fine. Bit part OCs in het relationships are also fine.)
• PIV sex.
• 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.)
• Alternate character origin story AUs.
• Kinking on bodily fluids
• Under-15s having sex. People under 18 having sex with people older than 18.

Getting up to speed on the canons

Children of Time: Trilogy consisting of the books Children of Time, Children of Ruin, and Children of Memory. You should be able to write about the stomatopods and other terraforming projects just based on the first one.
Long Earth series: A five-book series. You could, in a pinch, just read the first book and then explore worlds to the East.
Expanse series: A nine-book series. My requests focus more on the stuff found/explained in the later books.
Uplift series: 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.
Knights of the Old Republic: Two video games. My requests are based on the first one. Available natively for Windows and Mac, 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 Acina, while you do encounter her after Makeb in the Seeker Droid missions Imp side, you need the KOTET expansion, for which you need to subscribe for at least one month – 13€, last time I checked.

Children of Time series - Adrian Tchaikovsky

Fanfiction
Listen: I am a sucker for uplift narratives. I love the spiders, but I also love the sheer potential of the universe exposed to the Rus-Califi virus. Spider society as born from pre-sentience spider behavior was great, and I'd love to see how other species form societies, as well as the steady rise to sentience.

Stomatopod History & Culture

• Tell me anything! How did the stomatopods make first contact with the spiders? What do they think of their spider neighbors?
• What to they think about space and the humans that came from there?
• What ocean-things weigh on their minds and occupy their collective cultural consciousness?
• Do they get included in the space project at some point? Perhaps after the octopodes have been integrated?

Other abandoned terraforming projects

• We see one unintended success state and one failure state – how else could the terraforming projects fail? Go nuts!
• Something like Solaris, or a multi-sentient species-kill-species world, or something where the virus did not quite work as intended and there were even more unforeseen consequences?
• Something where the virus ends up making everything look more like Ediacaran biota due to interaction with alien virus-equivalents?
• Or colonists from Earth on a ship like the Gilgamesh or Enkidu turning up on a world that may or may not have life?

Other Imir Engine Builder Artefacts
Imir Engine Builder Motivations
Imir Engine Builder Technology

• Who are they? Are they still around?
• First contact with the Portiid-Human-etc culture?
• What is the purpose of all those engines? Is the one on Imir performing its intended purpose, or is it malfunctioning somehow?
• Honestly just give me all the archaeology of ancient aliens, I will eat it up with a spoon

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The Long Earth series - Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter

Fanfiction
I really like the concept of the Long Earth itself, as well as that of the Long Mars and other Long worlds briefly visited in The Long Cosmos. I like the exploration potential and the way things become even less like the Datum the further we go, in plants, animals, and even geography. I'm not a big fan of most of the human characters, but Lobsang is interesting. I'd also really like stepping (heh) out of the footprint of the continental US to have the fic set anywhere else on Earth.

Sally Linsay

• My favorite human! I like how she's a cranky misanthrope who eventually takes it upon herself to become the law of the Long Earth.
• I'd love to read about her adventures – pre-Step Day, when it's just her, her family, and some natural steppers around?
• Or her little surveying jaunts, like how she picked the silver beetle world for Lobsang and Agnes. What sorts of things does she look at? How often does the Long Earth throw her a curveball?
• Or the times she plays vigilante. How did she get to be so good at it?
• Or simply one of her sabbaticals! What places draw her to them? How long does she stay? Tell me of the night that is long and full of promise and the way the Long Earth sings to her like a siren.

Lobsang

• Honestly he's fascinating. I would like something related to his embodiment and him existing and how he interacts with the Buddhist community
• I am also really interested in the tension between him as an autonomous sentient being and yet something whose body is owned. Him achieving autonomy from the dude and corp that owns him?
• Or his time in the simulation of a Tibetan monastery, with his friends. How was it organized? Are the people in there his friends out of the simulation as well? What was his life like?
• Or just anything that foregrounds his Buddhism!

Soft places

• More about them – how does imagining them into existence feel? What is the easiest type to use?
• Has anyone done a cartography of soft places in the Long Earth?
• Is it possible to create a soft place between two worlds, like Earth and one of the other Long worlds introduced later on?
• Or just anything that takes advantage of travel through soft places!

Joker worlds

• We've seen a few, but I'd love more! Someone on a journey of discovery stumbling across an all-new one and being baffled?
• Or someone from a survey team trying to figure out what made this Earth so unique? A giant geological calamity? Something else?
• Sentient life that isn't primates or the beagles?

Exploration of the Long Earth

• I'd like anything, from a detailed study of one Earth to a survey twain going through the numbers East or West
• Tell me about how the character of the worlds changes through the thousands and thousands of steps, the broad patterns of the shoreline and vegetation
• Or of the world that makes them stop – a joker? Or maybe just a world that looks typical for its sheaf, chosen at random to be a representative?
• Or an exploration where stepping North or South will take you from each world – is it even possible on every world? How many Long worlds fold upon each other like tangled necklaces in a box?

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The Expanse series - James S. A. Corey

Fanfiction
I loved the sweeping sense of space adventure and the sense of mystery wrt the Builders and their toys and why they died, as well as the existential horror of the attacks on reality that use of their toys caused. I loved the puzzles and the solutions presented.

Bulder Society & Culture & Technology

• Honestly I'll take anything.
• How did they end up coming up with the energy source?
• What led them down their technological path? Is there more Builder tech of a completely novel type that has yet to be discovered?
• Did they realize what was happening to them, at the end, and why?

Ring Gate Entities

• Honestly I'll take anything.
• The Ring Gate entities get hurt/annoyed by the Builders' energy source drawing off their universe. What does this all look like from their perspective? Did they ever realize that the new species doing dumb stuff to them was not the old species?

Ring Worlds

• We see a few worlds and hear about a few more, and they range from Earth-like save for weird details to the truly alien/constructed artefacts. I'd love to hear more about either type!
• Settlers turning up on something that looked Earth-like but turns out to be extremely weird instead/in addition?
• Scientists (Elvi Okoye or others) going on a trip to a ring world that looks to be really exotic and then investigating it?
• Archaeological expedition to some odd Builder artefacts?

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Uplift series - David Brin

Fanfiction
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. 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.

I've opted in to haiku series and in-universe poetry. I would love some trinary haiku, either as part of a fic or as a standalone piece!

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! Creideiki/Hikahi is 100% welcome.)
• 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?

Trinary

• 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?

The Whale Dream

• I'd love to see some sort of opening up of what it is and what it means, and how it's reflected in modern Trinary!
• 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?
• 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?

Buyur plan for Jijo

• 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 are they?
• What was the method to their choice of things to leave behind? Was there one?

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Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic

I really enjoyed the reveal and companions' reactions to that. The potential for identity stuff/doubting one's recollections is super cool. I also love the Jedi and their vaguely Buddhist philosophy and telekinetic powers.
Revan preferences: Light Side-ish, or at least not the "kicks puppies for fun" type of darksider. Pragmatic. Charismatic. Competent. Please ignore the Revan novel and SWTOR.

Other than the requested, I also like T3-M4, Juhani, and Jolee.

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 e.g. 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!

Female Revan/Yuthura Ban

• Revan and Yuthura going on a grand mission of slave liberation!
• I love the redemption/"was Sith, now no longer" thing they have in common. Did Yuthura recognize this was Revan? What did she think, when the Dark Lord herself told her to return to the Light Side? Did she have a crush on Revan with her mask and helmet?
• Revan takes Yuthura with her to face the threat in the Unknown Regions. (Please ignore the Revan novel and all of The Old Republic. Feel free to disregard as much of the rest of the EU as you wish.)
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

Forn Dodonna/Female Revan

• What did Forn think, working together with Revan to face down the Star Forge? Did they face off during Revan's journey to the Dark Side?
• Post-canon, does Forn pick Revan's brain about tactics and strategy? Does Revan bond with this Admiral who might give her something of a new start in life?
• The threat in the Unknown Regions that Kreia spoke about – it makes sense to appraise an Admiral in the Republic Fleet about that, right? (Please ignore the Revan novel and all of The Old Republic. Feel free to disregard as much of the rest of the EU as you wish.)
• 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 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.

On the Consular side, I really enjoyed the Tython/Coruscant bits of ancient archaeology and going through Belsavis for Hallow Voice! My Consular is a bit more recent, but I've done the class story, and I have another character current with Republic-side plot. My Consular is a Human, but I like Zabraks and the "Imperial" (Chiss, Rattataki) aliens as well. Please don't call the Consular the Barsen'thor in narration. Please no DS Consular.

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/Empire?
• Visiting Ziost and its Sith tombs before the Cataclysm? Visiting Ziost after the Cataclysm? How much has survived, buried beneath the soil?
• Investigating Nathema before or after the re-greening?
• 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
• Archaeology field trip to some ancient temple! Sith space, neutral regions, wherever. Just the requested characters doing 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!

Talos Drellik & Female Sith Inquisitor
I like Talos! He is great and 100% suited for the archaeology bromance.

• Talos getting more of those archaeology experiences that made him quit the Imperial Reclamation Service and run off to the Inquisitor's ship!
• Honestly just. Archaeology. Write me Talos and the Inquisitor nerding it over artefacts and I'll be a happy penguin.
• Mishaps with the ancient Sith/Rakatan/Gree artefacts and having to deal with them.
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

Female Jedi Consular
I love the whole diplomacy thing and also the start with the ancient relics.

• I liked the holocron hunting on Tython – more of that, maybe, coupled with some philosophical discussions?
• Mishaps with the ancient Sith/Rakatan/Gree artefacts and having to deal with them.
• Meeting with a mind-controlled Master or Master Syo after the plotline has been resolved.
• Any and all master-padawan schmoop.
• The Consular asking Master Yuon for advice on teaching Nadia.
• Archaeology of the Rakatan stuff on Belsavis or Voss stuff, either during the questline or after the situation's been resolved.
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

Female Jedi Consular & Yuon Par
I like the whole lineage ensemble of the Consular, Master Yuon, Nadia, and Qyzen.

• I liked the holocron hunting on Tython – more of that, maybe, coupled with some philosophical discussions?
• Mishaps with the ancient Sith/Rakatan/Gree artefacts and having to deal with them.
• Master Yuon visiting the Consular's ship after the Consular's achieved Masterhood.
• Any and all master-padawan schmoop.
• The Consular asking Master Yuon for advice on teaching Nadia.
• Archaeology of the Rakatan stuff on Belsavis or Voss stuff, either during the questline or after the situation's been resolved.
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

Qyzen Fess & Female Jedi Consular
I like the whole lineage ensemble of the Consular, Master Yuon, Nadia, and Qyzen.

• Qyzen is such an interesting companion to the Consular – he seems to deal well with running around with a very Jedi Jedi, but how does the Consular adjust to having a Trandoshan hunter with her?
• I really liked the Trandoshan cultural stuff, so, more of that? Qyzen brings the Consular on a traditional hunt as a mirror to all those times the Consular brought him with on Jedi business?
• Or some sort of comparison about running around with Master Yuon vs running around with the Consular?
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

Nadia Grell & Female Jedi Consular
I like the whole lineage ensemble of the Consular, Master Yuon, Nadia, and Qyzen.

• I liked the holocron hunting on Tython – maybe the Consular brings Nadia to do some as well?
• Mishaps with the ancient Sith/Rakatan/Gree artefacts and having to deal with them.
• Any and all master-padawan schmoop.
• The Consular sharing her favorite Jedi- and Force-related places with Nadia.
• Archaeology of the Rakatan stuff on Belsavis or Voss stuff, either during the questline or after the situation's been resolved.
• Mix and match with adventure prompts as needed!

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