the_wavesinger | Little Black Dress Letter

Dear Little Black Dress Author,

This is the first time I’m doing this exchange, and I am very excited!

The prompts in this letter are more character/plot element focused than ship focused, but that’s because I’m not picky at all about ship dynamics when it comes to my little black dress faves, and will be very happy with whatever you give me! Iam very open to anything that I haven’t DNW’d, no matter how big or small the ship is, or whether it’s a canon ship or complete crack. I’m super excited to see what ship you’ll write for me!

If you want to know more about me, you can find me on AO3 The_Wavesinger, and Tumblr the-wavesinger. My previous exchange letters are all in this tag.

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DNWs

General Likes

A Song of Ice and Fire

A World of Ice & Fire/Fire & Blood

The Lord of the Rings

DNWs:

Horror.
Zombies, vampires, werewolves etc unless specifically requested.
Gore, necrophilia.
Torture of animals. (Humans/humanoids/other sapients being tortured is more than fine!)
Graphic descriptions of nausea/vomiting (i.e. anything beyond “X was feeling nauseated/threw up”).
Reader inserts.
Unrequested depowered/non-powered AUs, unrequested modern AUs.
A/B/O
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!)
Age regression, de-ageing, or, unless requested, AUs in which one character is suddenly older than a previously older-than-them character (ageswap?).
Girl!penis. (Trans characters are fine, but not cis women possessing penises.)
Tentacles etc.
Extreme underage (pre-pubertal children), unrequested smut for underage relationships
Anachronistic discussions of sexuality and other issues.

General Likes:
Tropes, Genres, and (for fic) Story Elements

Angst. Drama. Politics. Tragedy.
I love canon divergence AUs, and For Want Of A Nail and other what-if scenarios.
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.
Fake dating and arranged marriage within the canon setting.
Time travel and time loops, especially timefuckery where everything is fucked up!
M/M mpreg! Especially (but not limited to) mpreg as body horror
Similarly, F/F fpreg! (I prefer pregnancies in F/F and M/M to pregnancies in F/M.)
In-world mythology.
Cultural differences and clashes that occur due to cultural differences.
Worldbuilding in general.
Lovers to enemies and 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 really like characters struggling with the mores and norms of the societies they live in, whether involving some form of societal bigotry or not.
And characters struggling with morality and right and wrong, whether their own internal code of ethics or external expectations.
Generally I love seeing how characters are shaped by the time and place they live in and how it interacts with the core of their identity.

Character and Relationships Dynamics

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
- Characters finding ways to move past the fucked-upness and the relationships end up flourishing
- moving past fucked-up-ness and leaving what they don't want behind
- 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.
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?
I love characters with flaws and unpleasant qualities!
I like relationships that are fated to end in tragedy.

Stylistic Things for Fic

I like all kinds of fic, so go wild—linear narrative, flashbacks, epistolary; whatever you think of is lovely, the more daring the better. I especially adore faux-historical documents and faux academia.
Relatedly, interactive fiction!
Characters teasing and bantering with each other.
I don’t mind any type of POV (including second person!). In fact, POV switches and outside POVs on relationships would be lovely.

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 and art 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.

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A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin

Fandom-specific things: Genderswapping any female characters to male to ship with m!Rhaegar is perfectly fine with me. I am also opting in to genderswapping any other characters for F!Rhaegar.

Rhaegar Targaryen/M, Female!Rhaegar Targaryen/M + Female!Rhaegar Targaryen/F

Personally, I see Rhaegar as a prophecy-obsessed Hot Mess^TM who grew up in a very messed up family with a lot of expectations on his shoulders (and I love him a lot for it), but if you have a different view of his relationships go for it.
For non-genderswapped Rhaegar, my main headcanon is that Rhaegar is Very Very Gay (maybe possiblye hasn’t admitted it even to himself). I would love to see what complications this creates.
His obsession with prophecy! Summerhall clearly shaped his life deeply, with the weight on his shoulders and the loss of so much of his family before he even knows them. How does that translate to his prophecy obsession? Why is he so obsessed with the Prince Who Was Promised anyway?
There’s a very specific view of him and even people who have many good reasons to hate him seem to weirdly respect him—I would love to see what it is about him that elicits this.
How does his role as crown prince affect his relationships with people? How does him being a Targaryen and specifically Aerys’ and Rhaella’s son shape who he is?
AU concepts:
- He escapes the end of Robert’s Rebellion and decides to fuck off somewhere and settle down with his boyfriend
- A variation on the events at Harrenhal, with a man instead of Lyanna
- He becomes king after Duskendale
- Rhaegar defeats Robert at the Trident
- Rhaegar lives, and flees to Essos with Dany and Viserys
- Viserys is the older son, and Rhaegar younger than him
For F!Rhaegar:
- How does this change the power dynamics? Is Viserys still a boy in this AU? Is there ever a point at which F!Rhaegar is presumed to be Aerys’ heir?
- Either way she would probably have married a prominent noble to consolidate power—how does this change (or not) from canon?
- I would like the core of Rhaegar’s character, wrt the prophecy, to have a similar character theme if that’s something you want to do—how does that happen?

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A World of Ice & Fire/Fire & Blood - George R. R. Martin

Fandom-specific things: Genderswapping any male characters to female to ship with the requested characters is perfectly fine with me!

Daena Targaryen/F

Daena in the Maidenvault: how does she cope, or not? How do her almost-escapes happen? How does that affect her relationships, both at the time and later?
Daena’s passion for the outdoors and her love of archery; I would love to see more of that, how she trained with the bow, maybe bonding with someone over that.
Daena would…probably not have been a great queen tbh, but she was denied even a chance to learn how to rule and not given a fair chance to press her claim against Viserys, which to me is the tragedy of her story, if that’s the kind of thing you want to explore.
AU ideas:
- What would have happened if Daeron hadn’t died? Would she have lead a more fulfilling life, or would she still have been unhappy because of the world she lives in?
- What if Daemon had been born a girl? How would Daena’s life after Baelor died have been different if her bastard by Aegon was a girl instead of a boy?
- On a related but different note, I would love to see Daena lives AUs in general.
- One of the things I’m pretty sure wouldn’t have happened is Daemon marrying so young, so how does that change things?
- How does the Blackfyre Rebellion change in particular? Does Daena encourage/support her son? (And if so how does support from a legitimate Targaryen who was once a Queen and in consideration to be ruler change things?) Or if she doesn’t support Daemon, how does lack of support from his own mother change things?
- Also v. cool with AUs where Daena just fucks off and the Blackfyre stuff happens anyway, but she gets to live her life with her lover away from it all.

Nymeria of Nym Sar/F

Her voyage to Westeros, with all its perils and darknesses
- The image of ten thousand ships setting out in a desperate flight is so evocative, and playing around that would be great
- I love the glimpses of darkness and horror, the destruction the Valyrian Freehold wrecked on the lands of the Rohyne, the curse Gavin called down, so many ships lost at see, Sothyros and the mystery of Yeen, Naath and its illness, all the terrible luck dogging them—expanding upon any of that would be great.
- The sheer willpower and strength it must have taken to keep going and keep her people going on that voyage must have been astounding. Who did she lean on to keep going; who supported her through it all?
After she landed in Westeros how did her own people feel about her? The orphans of the Greenblood, at least, didn’t much like her never look back philosophy all that much, apparently. What was the culture the exiles of the Rohyne built in Dorne? How did Westeros change her relationship with her people, both on an individual level and as a queen?
Nymeria’s conquest of Dorne is very different from the dragonlords’ senseless destruction in the manner of her arrival and in how she allied with some of the people of Dorne, but I do find it interesting that she fled from a conquering force only to (inadvertently or not) become a conqueror herself, and would love an exploration of that.
Nymeria’s childhood in Nym Sar on the branches of the Rohyne, and growing up into a war she wasn’t ready for—any exploration of that would be great. Maybe an idyllic moment with a lover? (I’m very interested in all the worldbuilding and lore for Nymeria fic!)
Her legacy as a warrior-queen not coming from her personal martial ability but from her ability to lead and strategize—I would love to see more of Nymeria as a general and as a ruler.

Rhaenyra Targaryen/F

I like that she wasn’t exactly a good person. Aegon II was definitely a bad person too even though the supposed maesters writing the chronicles glossed over that, but I like that she’s done cruel terrible things to fulfill her ambitions and isn’t a nice person generally.
(That being said, at the start of the Dance, it was the Greens who fired the opening shots and who drew first blood, and she seemed a lot more politically savvy at the start when she was crowned on Dragonstone but was gathering her allies—what changed later? Why did things start going downhill, and why did she start making terrible decisions?)
The men in Rhaenyra’s life all seem to be massive dicks with the possible exception of Laenor and Corlys. How does that shape how she sees the world? Would things have changed if Daemon had been kept away from her somehow? And why does Criston Cole dislike her that much anyway?
I would love to see the politics and the battles of the Dance, Rhaenyra governing (well or badly) and the toll the Dance took on all of them—Rhaenyra lost her children in the war, after all, and that must have affected her. Who else did Rhaenyra lose, in the war, and was there anyone she gained?
AU ideas:
- Aemon doesn’t die, and Rhaenys becomes queen. Rhaenyra would be ‘only’ a daughter of the cousin of the king then—how does that change things for her? Is she still ambitious, and does she still want to be queen? Does Daemon still try to groom her? What is her position in court and her relationship with Rhaenys in this AU?
- Rhaenyra marries a noblewoman to pacify Alicent/strengthen her claim—whether that works and whether the woman is willing is up to you.
- What would have happened if Viserys never married Alicent, either married someone else or remained unmarried? Being her father’s only child, would that have forestalled a civil war, or were there too many people meddling and it was always going to come to war?
- Is there any way Alicent would have warmed to Rhaenyra? If her children had all been girls, or if she hadn’t had children, would things have been different? If Viserys had made more effort to get them to reconcile would it have worked?
- In general if Viserys had made more of an effort to fortify Rhaenyra’s claim to the throne would that have helped Rhaenyra in the long run?

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Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis

Fandom-specific things: DNW Peter/Edmund

Peter Pevensie/M + Peter/Aslan, Peter/Narnia, Peter/Lucy

Peter is kind of a cryptic character in the books, I feel, especially in HHB but also in the other books. We see a lot of his relationship with his siblings, but we don’t really get to see much through his eyes, and I would be interested in reading that! (Also, I would prefer bookverse characterization. Bringing in some movie plot elements is fine as long as the characterization is based on the books.)
The many wars Peter fought; some of them were self-defense and some of them more dubious morally, but Peter seemed to have been fighting endless wars. How does that affect him? Does all the blood he sheds, his own and others’, affect Narnia itself?
I tend to think of Peter as very gay, and his being very gay as something he knew about himself pre-Narnia (though of course if you want to take it in a different direction you’re welcome to!).
What is Peter’s relationship with Aslan and how does he feel about Aslan? And what is involved in him being High King anyway? It doesn’t seem clearly defined and doesn’t start out as High King over all other Kings and Queens.
And Narnia and Peter—what is their relationship like, both the people and things of Narnia and the country of Narnia?
This next bit involves religion and is 100% completely definitely optional. The parallels with St. Peter are very interesting and I don’t know quite what to make of them, if that’s something you want to play with (and the parallels are not subtle; I think Peter is the only Pevensie sibling with a name with explicit and obvious religious connotations). The whole ‘upon this rock I will build my kingdom’ thing in the Bible—are there parallels with Peter and Aslan? How does all of this affect Peter’s ties to Narnia differently from the others’? How does he see faith and spirituality? (I am very atheist and will not be offended by any kind of interpretation of the religious elements of the books so go wild!)

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Doctor Who (2005)

Fandom-specific things:I am fine with genderswapping any female character to male or vice versa, and also fine with genderswapping Jack to female. DNW Jack/Ianto as a focus, Jack being the Face of Boe, and the Doctor being the Timeless Child.

Jack Harkness/F + Jack Harkness/M

One of the fascinating things about Jack for me is that he’s such a part of Earth and its people, especially Torchwood, but still that little bit apart from everyone and everything by virtue of both his immortality and everything about his life before he landed on Earth, and I’d love an exploration of that.In particular, how do people around him view him as, and how does he see himself?
I don’t see Jack as a good person, really. A person who tries to do the right thing no matter what the cost is, maybe (and even then not always, not even after he meets the Doctor), but not a particularly nice or morally upstanding person. He was willing not only to sacrifice his grandson but to sacrifice other children to save the world after all. (That bit in Small Worlds chills me every time, because Jack of all people must have known how much of a non-answer the fairies’ answer to his question is. I mean, she will live forever isn’t exactly she won’t suffer, as Jack can probably tell.) So I’d love to see Jack making the hard choices and having to live with them
Both pre- and post-Torchwood, do people on Earth ever discover his immortality? What are the consequences of that discovery?
All the lives Jack has lived, the people he’s loved and left behind and been left by.
And I’d love to see more exploration of how Jack’s immortality works and what the Vortex did to him.

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Game of Thrones (TV)

Fandom-specific things: Genderswapping any male characters to female to ship with Dany is perfectly fine with me!

Daenerys Taragreyen/F + Barristan/Daenerys, Jaime/Daenerys, Jorah/Daenerys, Oberyn/Daenerys

I would love to see Dany actually being happy. I don’t think the Iron Throne would bring her happiness—what would? What would make her happy (or not)?
Dany inspires so much personal loyalty in the people around her and I’d love to see more of that.
I would also love to see her involved in politics and war and ruling, and learning from the people around her.
The dragons and Dany being a Targaryen, and everything that comes with that.
AU ideas:
- S8 fix-its where either Dany doesn’t go evil or she becomes evil in a way that actually makes sense
- Dany takes her people back to Vaes Tolorro and makes the dead city bloom, or where she finds her way back to the house with the red door (i.e. a bookverse fusion)
- Resurrection AU!
- Dany’s Westeros allies don’t all conveniently get taken out of commission early on
- When Jon tries to kill Dany he fails—does she go even more Darth Dany or does she peace out and fly away into the sunset with Drogon?
- Time travel! S8 Dany travels back in time, early show Dany ends up in S7/8, time loops, reincarnation, I would love to see anything and everything related to time travel.
- Aerys is still killed but Dany ends up staying in Westeros for some reason (one of her brothers takes the throne? She ends up being held hostage?)
- Either Rhaella or Willem Darry live, but they’re still in exile.
- Dany decides to leave Westeros and go back to Essos—what kind of catalyst would this need?

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The Borgias (Showtime TV)

Fandom-specific things: for F!Cesare, genderswapping any character to F or M, to ship with Cesare or otherwise, is fine! For M!Cesare, genderswapping any character to male to ship with Cesare is fine. DNW Cesare/Micheletto for non-genderswapped fic. The intergenerational incest DNW does not apply for this fandom.

Cesare Borgia/M + Charlotte/Cesare, Caterina/Cesare, F!Cesare Borgia/F + F!Cesare Borgia/M

The creation of the Borgia myth! (The show itself is a continuation of the myth, tbh, which I actually find really interesting, what we know of what actually happened vs. what we see in the show, if that’s something you want to explore.)
I would love to see a glimpse of what happens post-show, Micheletto returning and Rodrigo’s or Cesare’s death (or his last meeting with Lucrezia or his imprisonment) or Lucrezia outliving all of them.
Cesare’s relationships with the people he’s close to are so super intense, and he himself is really intense, and I would love to see an more of that.
AU ideas:
- Cesare's muderplan for Juan gets interrupted and Juan lives
- Lucrezia becomes regent of Naples as Cesare plans (which would change things up quite a bit post-show)
- Alfonso isn't murdered/doesn't commit suicide-by-Cesare
- Rodrigo dies from the poisoning
- Charlotte and Cesare reunite somehow
- Cesare isn’t the older brother, Juan is
- Cesare doesn’t get to quit being a cardinal at the end of season 2, for whatever reason
- The show itself is one giant AU of history so if you want to take that and run with it I'd love to see it general, especially if you want to diverge (even more) from history post-canon
For F!Cesare:
- Genderswapping Cesare would change the dynamics of all of Cesare’s relationships and plots so much and I’m very interested in seeing where that goes
- I would like F!Cesare to still be ambitious, to want to fight and protect her family
- Does that happen more from the shadows, with politics and plots? Or is f!Cesare still determined to go to war and take on the world outright?
My main want for this canon is that Cesare, genderswapped or canonverse, isn’t happy with settling or obscurity, isn’t happy to fade into the background and just live a normal life; I see his drive and the fight as a central part of the show’s characterization of Cesare. (If you want to explore the effects of having to fade in the background etc, go for it! I just would prefer not to see him content about it.)

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The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien

Fandom-specific things: opting into genderswapping any male character to female to ship with Éowyn or F!Aragorn, and genderswapping any female character to male to ship with any version of Aragorn. The intergenerational incest DNW does not apply to Aragorn.

Aragon/M, F!Aragorn/M + F!Aragorn/F

Aragorn spent 20 years of his life thinking of himself as Elrond’s foster-son and not knowing who he truly is, and then he’s suddenly Chieftain of the Dúnedain. What do the other Dúnedain think of him when he’s first introduced to them? In what ways does he have to change/adjust/learn? How does his role as Chieftain intersect with all of this? How do his relationships with the people he grew up with in Rivendell change?
The world needs more Aragorn mpreg! Look, he’s the Heir of Isildur and Super Speshul^TM, he can get pregnant, okay?
His story kind of struck me as incredibly sad, because he’s ushering Gondor into a new Age but at the same time he’s one of the last of a dying people, and that has to be incredibly lonely.
I really want to know more about his life pre-LotR, his travels and his time as Chieftain of the Dúnedain. He’s led such an interesting life, there’s so much potential there, and the entire concept of the Dúnedain and Isildur’s Heirs--protecting ordinary people against dark things while hidden in the shadows, fighting without thanks, being hunted with malice by an enemy far more powerful and with far more resources than you--is so fascinating. The Dúnedain of the North seem to be hardy and powerful and before the last of a dying people but still valiant and noble and I want to see more of them. And in general so much of Aragorn’s backstory is tantalizing, with so many bits and pieces, and I’d love to see any kind of exploration of his past.
He walks around the wilds hunting servants of Sauron without a functional sword which is…impressive, but makes me curious; what other weapons/powers does he have? (He does have some kind of psychic power which he used on the Mouth of Sauron. Unless I guess his glare is just that scary.)
For F!Aragorn:
- So much would change and so much wouldn’t for f!Aragorn and I’d be very interested in seeing Aragorn genderswapped.
- How would that change the whole Isildur’s Heir thing? The male line would have died out with Arathorn, after all.
- Does f!Aragorn still go around Ranger-ing? How does she end up part of the quest?

Éowyn/F + Éowyn/M

Éowyn’s relationship with Rohan and her people, and how that intersects with her duty, what she takes on as her duty and what she’s ‘supposed’ to do.
The stories and songs she must have grown up with that had her dreaming of/longing for being a warrior.
Éowyn had enough training in the arts of war to hold her own—how did that happen? Was she given lessons as the King’s niece? Did she join her brother and cousin in their lessons? Did she learn in secret, alone or helped by someone else?
I would love to see AU-ish fic where Éowyn heals and learns to cope with everything she’s been through and faced, but she’s still a shieldmaiden, just not one who fights out of desperation anymore.
How does Éowyn’s reputation change in Gondor and in Rohan after she kills the Witch-King? How do people react to her? How does she change, afterwards?
How did her life change after her mother’s death, and then again (though it was only for a short time) after her cousin’s?
Both Théoden and Éomer die in battle, either both of them on the Pelennor or Éomer later at the Black Gate, and Éowyn suddenly becomes Queen of Rohan.
I would love to see any of the male characters genderswapped to female to ship with Éowyn—so much of her story is tied into her being a woman that I feel that would change a lot of things and change relationship dynamics in interesting ways.

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