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the_wavesinger) wrote2019-03-31 09:33 pm
Jukebox Letter
Dear Jukebox Author,
This is the second year I’m doing this exchange, and I loved everything about this last year, and I am excite! I know this letter looks overwhelming, but that's because I like so many things. I'm generally very easy to please, and will love whatever you write for me ♥.
If you want to know more about me , I’m The_Wavesinger,
the-wavesinger and The Wavesinger (Silmarillion Writers’ Guild) on my fannish haunts. You can also find me here on DW, and as
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the_wavesinger on LJ, but I don’t frequent those places often. I If you want more on my fic preferences (however unlikely that is, after this very long letter!), my fic rec tag on Tumblr and my AO3 bookmarks may be of some use.You may also want to poke through my previous exchange letters.
This letter has a list of DNWs and general likes , and also song/vid-specific prompts. However, please don't feel obliged to stick to my prompts—as long as you don't include my DNWs, I'm sure I'll love whatever you write.
DNWs:
- Gore/guro/vore.
- Necrophilia.
- Torture of animals. (Humans/humanoids/other sapients being tortured is more than fine!)
- Graphic descriptions of nausea/vomiting.
- Reader inserts.
- Mundane AUs.
- Unrequested depowered/non-powered AUs.
- Non-femslash A/B/O; femslash for this trope is fine!
- Crossovers/fusions between fandoms I haven't asked for. (Crossover within any fandom in my letter or previous exchange letters, along with mythology and folklore, are more than fine!)
- AUs with modern settings are no-no’s unless there’s a reasonable canon explanation (eg-: Tolkien, people cursed to be reborn again and again into mortal forms). Even then, please no high school or coffee shop AUs.
- Please no age regression, de-ageing, or AUs in which one character is suddenly older than a previously older-than-them character (ageswap?).
- Girl!penis. (Trans characters are fine, just please no inexplicable g!p.)
- For smut, I'd prefer not to see bloodplay, scat, watersports, age play (including daddy/mommy kink), and any sort of permanent marking/scarring/body modification (scarring and permanent markings outside smut is perfectly fine) unless I've prompted these things for the specific pairing.
- H/C fics centering on characters with depression and/or anxiety, and/or characters who self-harm or have eating disorders are not my favourite thing. (All of these things are more than fine in non-H/C fic, but not as things which can be hugged/cuddled better, please.)
- Genderswap which makes F/F or M/M canon pairings or F/F or M/M pairings I've requested F/M.
- Unrequested relationships as the main focus of a fic (side pairings/non-endgame relationships are fine).
- Unrequested parent/child incest.
- Smut for underage relationships unless otherwise requested.
- Extreme underage (pre-pubertal children) unless otherwise requested.
- Anachronistic discussions of sexuality and/or characters lecturing other characters on SJ issues.
General Likes:
Tropes, Genres, and (for fic) Story Elements
- Angst. Drama. Politics. Tragedy.
- Philosophical ponderings!
- I love canon divergence AUs, and For Want Of A Nail and other what-if scenarios. I'd love both longer fic (for fic) and art/ficlets as snapshots of what could have been, all the things that could've happened, but didn't.
- Soulmates! Not necessarily soulmate AUs (although that'd be more than fine), but soulmates as in 'I knew you the moment I saw you', or 'I felt you in my soul' or any other version of that—the electric connection is something I adore. Soulmate things I love include in every version of every reality, in another life, fated to be separated again and again.
- Regency AUs.
- Fake dating within the canon setting.
- Arranged marriage within the canon setting.
- Time travel and time loops, especially timefuckery where everything is fucked up!
- (For femslash only) A/B/O
- In-world mythology.
- Cultural differences and clashes that occur due to cultural differences.
- Worldbuilding in general.
- Battle couples!
- Lovers to enemies.
- Enemies to lovers.
- Trope subversions.
- I have A Thing for sister/sister, and focusing on the sister aspects of the relationship—how they're alike and how they're different, and just how they're sisters.
- Competence porn!
- I also adore people being messes and general failboats, because, uh, contradictions?
- I have zero problems with fics dealing with misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism etc. I like realism, but not fics centered on issues at the expense of characterization (i.e., I'd prefer fic that is period-typical and not anachronistic/using modern terminology and manifestations of bigotry for non-modern canons). I like tortured internal angst and the character(s) learning to live with themselves and their loved ones, or the consequences of the bigotry they face and how it affects their lives, rather than discussions of the issues they face in modern SJ terms. (So, for example, for Hamilton/Washington, internalized homophobia angst affecting their relationship or being discovered by someone else and the consequences, rather than, say, conversations about being gay.)
- All the things that could've happened, but didn't.
Tone, Setting, and Miscellaneous Things
Character and Relationships Dynamics.
- Characters who and relationships which fall just short of the mark, the almost-most-not-quite. I think the closest word to this would be hamartia in its original sense?
- Hurt, and not necessarily comfort.
- Fucked-up families and messy friendships which really, really aren't good for the characters, but they love each other very much anyway. I don't mind either characters finding ways to move past the fucked-upness and the relationships end up flourishing, or moving past fucked-up-ness and leaving what they don't want behind, but I also don't mind a constant cycle of messing up.
- Found families!
- Intense friendships which play a central role in the characters' lives.
- For longer works, plotty fics are always welcome!
- Stoic and/or emotionally incompetent characters
- Characters finding ways to come to terms with themselves, with their pasts, and with their loved ones and/or finding their place in the world (think Circle of Life).
- Characters who're broken, characters who're tired, characters who're lost, characters who refuse to be found, characters who're hurt over and over again, characters who never ever win, characters who've given up. And characters who love, characters who give, characters who're selfless and kind even after everything they've been through, characters who give their all and then some more to people they love, characters who never give up, characters who keep on hoping and keep on fighting even beyond the bitter end. And characters who're a mixture of both types.
- I love characters with flaws and unpleasant qualities! Awesome ladies can be awesome and flawed :).
- I like relationships that are fated to end in tragedy, but I also really don't mind a pinch of humor with my angst, if that's your thing.
Stylistic Things
Smut Likes
- I will always want F/F or M/M smut, even if I haven't explicitly requested it! Femsub is preferred for F/M D/s smut, though I'm down for femdom if that's your thing, too.
- I prefer a balance between sensuality, emotions, and physical sensations. Anything from playful to creepy is more than fine (although there are a few things I'd prefer not to see, as outlined in the kink DNWs).
- Helplessness and humiliation. These are the two main things I love in kinky smut, and everything else derives from there.
- Bantering and laughing during sex is lovely, as is gentleness.
- And banter between the dom and the sub in D/s scenes (which can edge towards slightly cruel on the dom's part!).
- Angry sex/hatesex, smut that gives off vibes of slightly creepy but in a way that can't be pinpointed
- Dubcon and emotional manipulation!
- Explorations of power dynamics. I especially like service submission, and power dynamics based on the characters' titles/positions! (I do confess to having a kink for honorifics and titles!)
- Doms having control over the sub's everyday minutiae (although for short periods of time—24/7/365 high-protocol D/s is a turn-off)
- Punishment play, especially unusual forms of discipline! (I don't like erotic spanking in and of itself, but spanking as punishment is great! And whatever interesting punishments you can come up with.)
- Corner time, especially kneeling on rice/somehow having to display themselves/after a spanking.
- In general, being put on display/having to put themselves on display.
- Tickling! Both playful tickling and tickle torture (bondage + tickling = yessss).
- Gags and other ways to prevent speech. And weirdly specific, but fingers of one character in the other's mouth.
- Groping, especially pulling breasts out of tops (and sometimes letting them just hang there, if you're into humiliation).
- Orgasm denial, especially chastity devices.
- Fuck-or-die scenarios.
- Creative bondage (including predicament bondage. No, strike that, especially predicament bondage, and especially if the predicament is partly psychological).
- Similarly, ordering a partner to stay still/hold a certain pose.
- Incest kink.
- Hairpulling.
- Directed masturbation (one character instructing the other how to masturbate).
- Dirty talk (including long distance dirty talk).
- Navels, inner things, ribs, and kinks for these body parts.
- (Not really a like, but I'm afraid my AO3 bookmarks won't say much about my smut likes, because I have a separate account for smutty bookmarks. Sorry.)
Darker Likes
- Dark places and enchantments which entrap people without their knowledge
- Getting lost in creepy surroundings
- Corruption and decay
- Explorations of the darker side of magic (or its equivalent), especially magic that's considered 'good'.
- Exploration of the supernatural aspects of the canons.
- Nature being eerily alive and dangerous.
- Child soldiers, trauma, and really ugly, messy wars.
- Characters trapped in vicious cycles.
- Characters who think they're 'not good enough' for their partner(s).
- Situations where characters are blackmailed/coerced into doing things they don't want to do.
- Fucked-up families and friendships and relationships; people codependent to the point of almost-insanity, and far beyond anything healthy.
- Looking into messed-up characters' thought processes.
- Terrible things being done in the name of good by characters who see themselves as good.
- Perversion of the 'good' side of magic to do evil things.
- Mindfucks and powerplay.
- Torture for the sake of torture, and characters being stoic through torture.
- Noncon. I like both works focused on sexy (for fic purposes) noncon as well as more seriously-dealt with noncon and noncon aftermath.
- Pregnancy due to F/F or M/M noncon.
- Badtouch that doesn't lead to noncon, it's just there and creepy. (Especially when coupled with emotional fuckery and mindgames.)
- Relationships where one characters is in love, but the other isn't.
- Partners doing terrible things to each other.
- Characters who hate themselves and lash out at the world and do fucked-up things as a result.
- Really, really dark stories which end in the 'everyone dying' sort of tragedy.
- AUs where everything goes wrong.
- For darkfic especially, I love outsider PoVs—it makes everything 100% more terrible for me.
< p>Genre Prompts AKA things that wouldn’t fit anywhere else
Action/Adventure: fight scenes between individuals ◈ big battle scenes ◈ going on quests/missions ◈ fighting bad guys together ◈ period-typical/canon-typical weapons ◈ characters being very very good at fighting/tactics/strategy ◈ strategy and tactics in general ◈ movements of large armies ◈ end-of-the world scenarios ◈ high-stakes battles or missions ◈ covert operations ◈ supernatural elements being involved in the mix in canons with supernatural/magical elements ◈ fighting techniques ◈ plotty missionfic
Angst: musings on futility □ hopeless situations and things falling apart □ characters' flaws getting the better of them □ battles being lost □ stuck in situations without support □ forced to deceive loved ones □ unhappy endings □ everything that could go wrong going wrong □ (internalized or otherwise) homophobia □ struggles with religion/faith/belief □ ethical/moral dilemmas □ misunderstandings □ feeling unloved □ being forced to hurt loved ones and do other bad things □ having to compromise on their ideals □ Hobson's choice situations □ betrayals of trust □ star-crossed lovers or the platonic version of this □ the world changing and leaving the characters behind □ things being lost to the ravages of time
AU – Genre Shift: in spaaaace ◎ different canon format (eg: musicals –> TV scripts) ◎ tone changes (eg: drama to comedy, tragedy to romance) ◎ crackification ◎ adding magic/supernatural elements to canons ◎ focusing on a different aspect of a story than the canon does
Character Development: again, probably self-explanatory! I'd just love to see the characters grow and change (whether in personality or outlook or traits or opinions or ideology or attitude or...) through the fic. This doesn't have to be positive, either—characters regressing or going in a darker direction is also great.
Established Relationship: arguments and fights ○ vicious cycles ○ drama ○ compromising and learning to live together ○ date nights ○ banter and flirting ○ falling into bed together after a long day ○ characters organizing their lives around each other ○ unhealthy, obsessive relationships ○ smut ○ meeting the family ○ acquiring pets and/or kids and/or property
Getting Together: meet-cutes (including canon divergence AUs) ◌ angst about each others' feelings ◌ obstacles that have to be overcome ◌ A is convinced B doesn't like them ◌ characters who haven't met in canon meeting for the first time ◌ fake dating leads to real dating ◌ fucking for the greater good ◌ something makes them do it ◌ enemies to lovers ◌ friends to lovers ◌ soulmate AUs ◌ reincarnation AUs ◌ slow burn ◌ hey I just met you this is crazy ◌ one night stands to lovers ◌ angst over not being allowed to be together ◌ A has been hurt by other people in the past and has to slowly fall for B ◌ unrequited love turning requited ◌ A falls for B, who's been nursing a crush on A since forever
Hurt/Comfort: noncon aftermath ◘ torture aftermath ◘ recovering from an abusive relationship ◘ other kinds of post-abuse trauma ◘ injury aftermath ◘ characters stitching themselves together ◘ partner/other person hurting character and then comforting them ◘ PTSD (in a canon-appropriate way) ◘ contrast between current gentleness and past violence ◘ the comfort not helping with certain instinctual reactions (touch aversion, flinching, hyperawareness, hypersensitivity etc.) ◘ comforter feeling helpless in the face of comfortee's issues ◘ two hurt/fucked-up characters trying to comfort each other ◘ attempts to comfort/make things better backfiring ◘ comfortee refusing to accept comfort
Interpersonal Drama: miscommunication ◍ wanting different things in life ◍ wanting different things from each other ◍ betrayal ◍ lying to friends/partners ◍ arguments ◍ blow-ups that have been a long time coming ◍ deliberate miscontsructions ◍ deliberately hurting each other ◍ unintentionally hurting each other
Mystery/Procedural: I'd love to see characters trying to solve a canon-typical mystery. If you want to entangle politics in with your mystery-solving I'd love that too!
Slice of Life:I love seeing glimpses into character's everyday lives in canon-appropriate ways. I love slice-of-life fics as insight into characters' backstories and histories, as well as as looks into their heads and as ways to figure out what's making them tick, or to make it clear that the characters' everyday lives are immensely atypical/fucked up. I also love these kinds of fic as worldbuilding vehicles.
Blurred Lines – Postmodern Jukebox (Song)
This is a bluegrass barn dance (yes, you read that right, bluegrass barn dance) cover of Pharrell's and Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines, and I confess to liking it much better than the original.
Femslash, please! I'd love to see anything to do with the narrator and the woman she's singing the song to. I'm thinking of this song along the internalized homophobia angle, but if you want to interpret this another way, that's fine, too. I'd just love to see more about the narrator and the woman she's singing to.
Who is the woman she's singing to? A princess or queen trapped in an unhappy marriage? An ordinary woman trapped in an unhappy marriage, whether modern-day or historical? A prisoner with Stockholm Syndrome who's now in love with her captor? And how does she know the narrator? Is there lengthy flirting? Tortured evasions and denials of her feelings for the narrator on the part of the woman? UST?
Unhappy or happy or bittersweet endings are all fine! I'd just love to see the story behind this song, who it's been sung to and why she's so reluctant to let go off her relationship with her boyfriend. (If you want to go in the non-con direction for the F/F instead of mutual attraction that's great too!)
Fernando – ABBA (Song)
Fernando is my favourite ABBA song, and I've never gone looking for the meaning because it's so much more interesting to imagine all the scenarios the singer could be talking about. I love the atmosphere of this song, a feeling of a brief respite of calm before a storm, and the nostalgia.
I don't mind whether the Fernando the narrator is talking about is male or female. (I mean, I know it's generally a male name, but it can be a surname for a woman too! Or just an unusually named woman.) I also don't mind either gen or shippy fic.
What war were they fighting in? They seem to have been either a part of a rebel faction or a losing side of a war, and they seem to have been making a last stand or fleeing, and finding a moment of peace in the midst of the war. A historical or pseudo-historical war or fantasy or post-apocalyptic setting or in spaaaace are all fine.
I'd love to see either a moment in the war they were fighting (how did it end? How did they make it out, because they obviously did?) or the two of them meeting again after the war, or not meeting again but thinking of each other as they rebuild their lives. Or time loops! With the 'if I had to do the same again' taken literally.
Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen (Song)
Hallelujah is one of those old classic songs I should be tired of by now but somehow aren't tired of. It's so good, still. I prefer the version I linked above (this is one singer whose voice gets better with age IMP), but whatever changes to the lyrics Cohen makes through time is fine, as long as it's a Cohen version of the song.
Gen and shipfic are all fine. I do prefer M/M for shippiness (or F/F), but if you want to do F/M that's also fine.
I love the Biblical imagery and the sense of scope and the hauntingness of the song, and of despair and faith through the ages. Whether you choose to take it in a religious direction (and a story about keeping and losing faith, for whatever religion or a fantasy/sci-fi religion would be very interesting), or make it about love (or anything else—the rise and fall of empires, politics, and somehow I kind of think of someone trying desperately to do the right thing in a horrible situation), I don't mind. I'd just love the atmosphere of the song—both the uplifting joy and the terrible despair—to be translated to fic.
I love the discrete series of images and stories and episodes that make up this song, and the common thread linking all of them—if you want to include the episodic storytelling format in your fic that'd be great (though I wouldn't mind a more continuous story either).
Mercy of the Fallen – Dar Williams (Song)
This song feels very fantasy-ish to me, a sort of hero’s journey or going on a quest thing.
Gen would be great for this, but if you’re writing romance I’d prefer F/F or M/M, please. And for gen or F/F I’d love a female protagonist just because that’s what I imagine when I think of this song.
I love the idea of finding yourself when you’re lost, and the aid and the grace of people who aren’t themselves the strongest or more powerful—the idea of light in the dark, I guess.
Why is the singer travelling on her journey? Was she exiled (maybe of her own choice/reason), as the song suggests? If so, is she looking for a way back home? Or was she on a quest or mission of some sort? Or maybe she wasn’t exactly exiled but left of her own accord in shame? Or is she chasing someone or something? And for that matter, who is she? A knight errant? A princess or noblewoman? An ordinary farmer or craftswoman? A trader or merchant? Some kind of mage? Or maybe it’s actually a group of people, or maybe multiple people travelling independently but linked by fate?
Who are all the people she meets along the way? What are all the deeds she does, and all the places she stays at? What failures and disappointments and joys and triumphs does she find?
Rude – Kina Grannis (Song)
This is another cover of a song that I like so much better than the original, and which has potential for a thousand different scenarios. And I love that this cover is played straight, but if you want to go in a cracky direction I wouldn't mind either!
I'd like femslash for this song, please, since the central theme of the song is a F/F relationship and dealing with the narrator's partner's father-in-law's homophobia.
So yeah. I'd love to see how the narrator and her fiancée got together (in college/university? At a bar? Accidentally stumbling into each other?) or how they deal with the fiancée's father's refusal to marry her. (If you don't want to go in the homophobia direction for that, I'm sure there could be another explanation!) Or I'd love to see their wedding, with or without the father and his approval. Or a fantasy-ish setting, maybe? Urban fantasy/steampunk?
Or, if you want to do a series of episodic short things that'd be great too, since what this song reminds me the most of is the Irish marriage equality ad set to “All I Want”, with the man knocking on doors all over the country to ask random strangers' permission to marry his girlfriend.
She Keeps Me Warm – Mary Lambert (Music Video)
I like the Macklemore song the bridge/chorus is from just fine, but I love this song so much. It's cute and hits me straight in the feels every time.
Femslash, please! I'm sure I'll love whatever you choose to write about Mary Lambert's character and her butch girlfriend ♥.
I'd love to see more about their relationship and how they take it from the point we leave them in the music video. Do they go slow, or do they take it fast? What are their dates like? Do they move in together eventually? What sort of fights do they have? Or I'd love to see five or ten or fifteen years into their future, where they are in their lives and what they're doing.
Or I'd love to hear more about Mary Lambert's character and why she frequents that cafe, other than to hit on cute girls. Or more about the girlfriend! Does she have a secret superhero identity and does she go out and rescue people and cats in her off hours, perhaps? Or maybe she's an ordinary barista, I'd love to see that too.
Sixteen Going On Seventeen – Andrew Keenan-Bolger & Jay Armstrong (Song)
Unlike with my other requests, I do adore the original version of this song—I grew up with the Sound of Music, in an otherwise-not-big-on-musicals household—but I also adore the Broadway Backwards cover, because it's hilarious and also so very cute.
M/M, please. Whatever else you choose to do with this is fine, as long as you keep the M/M.
While I would enjoy a Sound of Music-style fic, that is by no means the only thing I'd love for this song. I'd love to see any interpretation as to how these two met, in whatever period (modern day? Historical? Urban fantasy? Sci-fi-ish future?), and how they got to the point of the song. I really like how adorable the older boy's protectiveness is, and if you want it to be misguided but understandable teenagerness, that's great! If you want to go in a more skeevy/manipulative direction, that's also great!
Or have Andrew Keenan-Bolger's character be a drag queen! I'd love that too. Or going meta, and having the song be performed by two Broadway actors (not RPF though, please, for this song) who have UST but aren't together IRL? With parallels to the song for extra angst/hilarity?
Sleepover – Hayley Kiyoko (Music Video)
This video! This video is layers upon layers of dreaming and I love it so much. I love Hayley Kiyoko and this video is very relatable to me.
Gen about Hayley Kiyoko's character is great, as is femslash! I'd just love to see more about the character's life beyond the daydream/dream we saw in the video.
The character's fantasies of her crush (?? or imaginary crush?) are yesss, and if that's your thing, I'd love to see more of them. Or the character getting over her inhibitions and getting together with her crush and the two of them being happy (or finding that they're not suited for each other and parting mutually understandingly if you want). Or UST between the character and her crush, or flirting and banter.
Alternately, I'd also love to see the character coming to terms with her sexuality and exploring it, maybe with another girl who's not her crush, or figuring herself out on her own terms in any other way. Or I'd love to see her in the future, as an adult, and what's happened to her life then. Or whatever else you want to write about her!
Son of a Preacher Man – Tom Goss (Music Video)
This music video just—it was so painful, but it also touched me in a way that I can't really explain at all. This is another cover of a song that makes it M/M (why yes there this is a theme) and it's so heartwrenchingly good.
I'm so glad neither of the two boys died, and I'm so, so glad they got a happy-ish ending. So I don't mind however bleak the fic goes, but I'd prefer that they're both alive and hopeful at the ending, please.
I'd love to see more of the boys growing together pre-kiss if that's your thing, their childhood and struggling with who they are in the midst of their very intolerant backgrounds but also finding joy in one another. Or I'd love to see future fic. The two of them walked out of the church hand in hand (the hug! The relief on both their faces!), but that's obviously not a forever happily ever after. What happens to them afterwards? How do they survive? Do they have relatives to take them in, or do the parents of the boy who's not the pastor's son come around enough to shelter them both? Or do they have to get by on their own? How does their relationship survive if so? Do they still struggle with their sexuality?
Or something in the far future, please. And they don't necessarily have to end up together, and they don't necessarily have to have completely satisfying lives, but I'd love to see them on cordial terms with each other. Or if they're still together (wedding and/or kids if so? Or reconciling with their parents, or accepting that that's never going to happen? The boy with the baby sister trying to reach out to her?), that's great too!
The Traitor – Martha Wainwright (Song)
This is another cover which genderswaps a song (the pattern is strong I know). I couldn't find a studio recorded version of this to link, sorry, but it's a very beautiful, haunting song and I love it.
Femslash, please, because, again, the central relationship of the song is F/F and it's the femslash which captured my imagination.
I love the ethereality of this song, the feeling of disconnect, and how the lady and her lover seem to be in a bubble separate from reality. It has a kind of haunting quality to it, and a bittersweet nostalgia, and I love the thread of doom and judgement and tragedy running through it, and the air of fantasy and the narrator's devotion to her lover. The atmosphere is my favourite thing about this song and I'd love it if you could preserve that, please.
However you choose to interpret the story this song tells is fine by me. (That's one of my favourite things about Cohen's lyrics, the richness of meaning and interpretation.) Who are the lady and her lover? Is the army a figurative or literal army? What cause is the narrator betraying by staying by the side of her lover's sleeping body? How did she betray the cause of love? Whether you make this a fantasy or pseudo-historical setting, however you interpret this song, I'll love it.