• messy relationships; unhealthy aspects of relationships not being brushed over (but the characters also not trying to fix them); relationships that by modern western standards (and maybe the standards of a large portion of the cast) would be considered unacceptable; social mores that don’t match the modern western world, and characters whose social mores don’t match each others’
• “us against the world” narratives; “we were always going to end up here” narratives; “no one understands you like i do” narratives; characters making the best of their situations, not unhappy, but not living Happily Ever After, either
• father/child and sibling incest (portrayed romantically), pseudo-incest between unrelated characters, mentor/protégé relationships and big-p Platonic teacher/student relationships, erastes/eromenos and dominus/deliciae relationships; age difference, size difference, experience difference, power imbalance, underage (adult/minor and minor/minor)
• ideas about sex, sexuality, marriage, gender identity, etc that may differ wildly from our own ideas and between characters; historical or dated constructs of gender/sexuality; arranged marriages considered normal/not inherently abusive
• medical realism and its consequences: persistent and permanent injuries, realistic and semi-realistic recovery, healing magic having limitations (and exploring what those are); not shying away from less pretty parts of sex, pregnancy, birth, or having a body in general
• emphasis on character voice, characterization, motive, morals, ethics; culture clash; worldbuilding (especially specific medical and legal worldbuilding); character studies; unreliable narrators; limited POVs, outsider POVs, POVs missing context that would recontextualize events considerably
• feel free to look at our unconventional fanworks exchange letter for weird format likes!

• romance: established relationships, courting, letter-writing, wedding plans, elopement, family planning; helping pregnant partner give birth, being stuck anxiously/excitedly in the waiting room while pregnant partner gives birth
• domesticity: dancing together, playing instruments together/performing duets, doing arts and crafts together, playing chess together, doing tarot spreads, cooking together, helping each other dress or do makeup; tired mornings and late nights, not putting on airs for each other
• slice of life: teaching partner how to dance/play an instrument/draw/paint/cook/play chess/etc; taking turns with household responsibilities (chores, childcare, etc); new/first time parents trying their best and maybe doing an okay job of it; (consensual and appropriate) public displays of affection, between lovers or friends
• emotionally significant friendships and close friends/confidants; characters having people they can/do go to other than their lover (friends or supportive family); close relationships between female characters and an emphasis on the friendships of female characters; positive sibling relationships and mother/child relationships

• consent issues: noncon (where requested), dubcon, consensual but a bad idea, consensual but it shouldn’t be, and messy/unclear combinations of several of these; power/experience/age imbalances; somnophilia (including comatose characters), necrophilia, and possession
• manipulation: gaslighting, mutual manipulation, seduction, “you’re so mature for your age” and similar ploys; unclear lines between victims and aggressors, victims manipulating their abusers/assailants back; stockholm syndrome, lima syndrome, trauma bonding; chess as a mind game/power play, specifically, and chess moves portrayed as acts of violence between the players
• forced intimacy: playing at domesticity, nonconsensual PDA, nonconsensual kissing, sleeping beside each other/spooning, rapists performing oral, rapists comforting victims, victims forced to comfort rapists
• pain and fear kink: crying/dacryphilia, screaming, uncomfortably detailed loving descriptions of both or either, painful sex, characters in pain kinking on it, characters in pain not kinking on it (their loss!)
• injuries or physical trauma: lovingly described acts of violence (consensual and otherwise), genital trauma or mutilation (perineal tearing, episiotomy, castration, fgm/c, tearing from sex, sharp object insertion), amount of blood/injury exaggerated for kink purposes, eye trauma, broken limbs, internal bleeding, childbirth related injuries and medical complications (symphysiotomy or breaking the pelvis for childbirth, broken clavicle or limbs in newborns, emergency hysterectomy, congenital birth defects, low APGAR, etc), short- and long-term medical care and aftermath of injury, trauma, or disability
• dark pregnancy-related kinks/topics: (threat of) traumatic miscarriage, forced abortion, unsafe abortions (coathangers, ingesting poisons, trying to induce miscarriage through injury to self)
• trouble at home: abusive, controlling, or disapproving (grand)parents, tense home environments, arguments about arranged marriages, inheritance, keeping the baby, childrearing (between parents/children or between coparents or partners)
• harm to children: characters who are underage depicted in fic with appropriate neurological development for their ages and developing trauma appropriate to the events of the canon and/or the fic; child soldiers, CSA victims, etc normalizing what they’ve been through, not having the neurological development to understand the impact of events, not understanding their own feelings, enacting their trauma on other children or adults
• aftermath: of rape or CSA, of abuse, of wartime or other nonsexual trauma, of injury; impact of trauma on mental and physical health; medical treatment, being forced to deal with the authorities, trying to hide trauma or ‘go back to normal’

• oral fixations: smoking, making out, lip biting, hickies, biting in general, finger sucking, cunnilingus, cockwarming, emetophilia (gag reflexes! morning sickness!)
• hand and finger kink: manual stimulation, calluses, pinching breasts, fingering after fucking, weaponizing fingernails, fingers in mouths
• intercrural, incomplete penetration/“just the tip”, eunuchs/castration, soft cock kink, small or soft cock handjobs, sex you might have the impulse to call “sex*” or “sex(?)” - where coming isn’t necessarily the goal, where the people involved may not have bodies in the traditional sense, where the people involved may not have sex drives or even understand what sex is
• marking/possessiveness: bruising, comeplay, breeding kink, postpartum sex (and kinking on the physical affects of childbirth), gaping, somnophilia
• blood and injury: bloody hands, bloody teeth, nosebleeds, tearing from sex or birth, menstrual blood, spotting, episiotomies, postpartum bleeding, amount of blood and injury exaggerated or (bordering) dangerous for kink purposes
• romantic incest kink, dd/lg, sibcon, characters who aren’t related acting like they are for horny reasons; kinking on a character’s youth or presumed youth and physical markers typically associated with it (virginity, flat/small breasts, small cock, etc); kinking on a character’s sexual inexperience (in general, with a specific act, with another character’s gender, etc)
• medfet: take everything from the general likes list about medical accuracy and apply it to pornography! partners being possessively horny at the OB-GYN, nobody but the reader being horny over lovingly detailed descriptions of medical exams, realistic birthing (but being horny about it), weirdly detailed interludes about period birth control methods? you name it, we’re probably into it

• DNW any on-screen, referenced, or implied
  • skin-related mutilation like flaying, burning, or branding
  • harm to animals including meat-eating (just not mentioning what a character is eating is fine)
  • shower/bath/rain sex, one character washing or grooming another non-infant character (even consensual aftercare), or onscreen bathing of any kind
  • petting, brushing, or playing with hair as a form of consensual intimacy (pulling on it during sex is fine; doing someone’s hair without intimate subtext is fine; intimacy played as horror is fine)
  • maternal incest or mommykink
  in any capacity. If you think 'surely this isn't enough to count for the DNW', it is.

• unrequested romantic relationships; unrequested rape/non-con between members of a requested ship; unrequested trans headcanons or rule 63; cis mpreg and futanari
• altered states (drugged, drunk, sex pollen, etc)
• formal BDSM, including safewords or the stoplight system and kink negotiation scenes (sex going wrong and agreeing in the moment not to do something particular again is fine)
• AUs that drastically change the setting or the core rules of the setting (modern AUs, A/B/O, soulmark AUs, etc… canon divergence AUs including pre-canon divergence points are fine; using 3.5 or 5e rules in a BG3 fic is fine)
• “bad ends” (no chance at escape, mindbreak, etc); scat kink (changing a baby’s diaper is fine); onscreen, explicit sexual contact under age 10 (implied or fade to black is fine)

Where can you find the canon? FF12 is available on PC, PS2, PS4, XBox One, and the Switch. You can also watch a full cutscene compilation on Youtube (about 6 1/2 hours long) - personally, privately, as someone who doesn't find the gameplay itself very fun, this is my recommendation.

What do we like about it? Politics! FF12 has a lot of political drama and intrigue and fancy people insinuating things, which we tend to find more fun than straightforward confrontation! There's also a lot of really rancid interpersonal dynamics that are begging to be explored (Larsa's upbringing and Basch and Gabranth's whole deal really stand out here), and we love the MENA-inspired setting. Digging into those inspirations for worldbuilding is always appreciated. The bittersweet/tragic ending is also a huge plus for us.

Other characters and relationships we enjoy: Vayne/Larsa, Gabranth/Larsa, Gabranth/Basch and Basch&Gabranth Cid/Venat, Cid&Balthier, Larsa&Penelo is also a really fun lens to explore Larsa's particular issues with - he hasn't really had a childhood or been around peers before, not to mention the class disparity and culture clash.

This is a ship that is just begging a character study, if you ask me. We've been interested for ages in digging into the postgame dynamic in particular: Basch taking on Gabranth's role, and Larsa wanting more from him than Basch can give. Basch learning things about his brother that he doesn't like.

This could lean closer into an & ship, with uncomfortable sexual overtones or Larsa attempting to take things further (or trying to bait Basch into taking things further and failing to understand why he won't), or it could be written with an overt sexual or romantic relationship. We'd love to see Larsa as the instigator and Basch at best dubiously consenting out of a misplaced sense of duty and honor, or not even able to stomach that - Larsa may not have a healthy enough concept of boundaries and consent to take stock in Basch's discomfort... he is Basch's lord. Basch pledged himself to him. Larsa is a thirteen year old boy with untold social/political power, absolutely no good role models, and, well, the libido of a teenage boy. Past Gabranth/Larsa (actual or maybe just pining) and/or Vayne/Larsa would be a lot of fun to explore here. Far postgame with a more grown Larsa, years into this dynamic with Basch (whatever it looks like) would also be welcome! 

Angst or horror or a bittersweet ending would be great - maybe characters grow for the better, but the past can't be undone. Maybe characters grow for the worse. Maybe Basch-as-Gabranth begins to lose himself in the role. Maybe he refuses to, and rips the bandaid off whether or not Larsa is ready to be confronted with the reality of this situation and how he was raised. Opting into rape/non-con for this ship, but dubcon and "consensual but it shouldn't be" situations are great too! 

Where can you find the canon? You may have heard of the critically-acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV with an expanded free trial where you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn as well as the award-winning Heavensward and Stormblood expansions up to level 70 for free with no restrictions on playtime! Available on PC, Mac, PS4, PS5, and XBox One. The requested characters are exclusive to a single job sidequest chain, and I have a 60,000 word ship write-up of all quests, retconned lore, and other relevant additional information here, because I want to get people into my OTP but I don't want to force them to play a live service subscription game that takes 1000+ hours. 

What do we like about it? What don't we? There's soap opera level interpersonal drama in noble families, there's political intrigue and assassination plots and heirs missing at sea, there's arranged child marriage worldbuilding, it's at turns funny and tragic, there's an age gap size difference ship, there's a very sad elf boy who's also charmingly stupid and flirts his way out of (or into) problems... Truly, what more could you ask for?

Other characters and relationships we enjoy: Anything to do with the drama in House Durendaire; Carvallain&Jannequinard, Charlemend/Edmont de Fortemps, past Rufin Byrde/Jannequinard; digging into Leveva's Sharlayan heritage (was her marriage arranged to an OC? A Leveilleur? Some other minor Sharlayan NPC? Janne himself?), including potential relationships between the Byrde and Leveilleur, Baldesion, etc families, platonic or romantic.

Jannequinard and Leveva are the OTP. The blueprint. The unsinkable ship. We'd read pretty much anything about these two: we're into deep dives into Jannequinard's trauma surrounding the death of his old lover, Leveva's father, we're into the idea of them getting married so Jannequinard can't be compelled to testify against Leveva before the Sharlayan Forum for treason, we're more generally always up for a canon divergence AU after Lv58, we're into them getting married just... because they want to get married, and Leveva having to deal with Ishgardian high society, wedding planning, unfathomably shitty in-laws, and officially converting to Elf Catholicism. We're into the horrifying implications of everything the game has ever said about House Durendaire (what was going on in that house that Carvallain decided he'd rather be a captive on a pirate ship than return home, and even as an adult seems terrified of Charlemend? what about the mess with Jannequinard maybe being Charlemend's son, maybe his nephew?) We're into pregnancy and kidfic and cute getting-together fic. We're into Janne being Leveva's godfather, or the man her hand in marriage was sworn to in infancy because her father knew his own star-crossed lover would never treat his daughter poorly, or the only thing tying them together being the stars.

Literally pretty much anything you could think of writing about these two? We're sold. Fluff? Humor? Angst? Curtainfic? Follow your heart wherever it leads and you cannot go astray.

Where can you find the canon? FFXV is on PS4, XBox One, and PC, plus... Amazon Prime for the tie-in film and anime, I think? You can also find cutscene compilations on Youtube - this one is 7 1/2 hours.

What do we like about it? Obsessive devotion! Tragedy! Social media! The fact that the protagonist is magic royalty and his favorite video game is canonically Assassin's Creed? Impeccable. 

Other characters and relationships we enjoy: Noctis and Prompto's friendship, Lunafreya/Ravis.

Honestly, the #1 thing we'd like to see for this ship in this exchange is something building on the "fantasy based on reality" and the full implications of that. By which, of course, I mean RPF shippers. Duh. Protagonists who exist in a world with a concept of celebrity is just begging for outsider POV. Give us an in-universe ship manifesto! Students at Noct and Prompto's high school! Paparazzi photos! Twitter threads! 2-hour long youtube videos titled like "Brothers or Lovers?: A Chronically Online Deep Dive Into Insomnian Royalty"! Is Noct allowed to run his own social media accounts? Who the hell is responsible for his PR? Just go in hard on the worldbuilding premise, and have fun!

Where can you find the canon? BG3 is available on PC, Mac, PS5, and XBox Series X/S. Some relevant scenes to the requested relationships can be found on Youtube or elsewhere: here's Wyll's romance on Karlach origin, although Karlach's dialogue options are provided only in Italian; here's Karlach's act 3 romance scene on Wyll origin; another Wyll origin scene with Karlach; meeting Wyll as Karlach origin; Wyll origin Avernus ending; Astarion romance on Karlach origin (this player didn't fix her engine, and unfortunately I can't find a clip of this romance on Karlach origin with a fixed engine, but there's no sex scene either way); Karlach romance on Astarion origin, and we'll ignore the fact they Ascended him; here's a collection of other endings (spawn Astarion can only go to Avernus with Karlach on a Karlach origin playthrough - on Astarion origin, they both burn on the docks); here's a twitter thread of various Wyll and Astarion scenes that may be of interest (including Karlach and Astarion being horny together about Wyll's new look); here's Gale talking about Raphael's offer; here's what happens when Raphael is alive in the God of Ambition ending; bg3.wiki is also a very useful resource, particularly for finding the text of books/notes in game and the flavor text on weapons (which often has interesting lore - the Helldusk armor namedrops the forgemaster of Avernus, who presumably installed Karlach's heart, Rhapsody has an absolutely horrifying anecdote about Cazador in the days before he became a vampire, etc); as for wider D&D lore, from 5E Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, Murder in Baldur's Gate, and Descent into Avernus are useful and interesting resources, and from 3.5 (which I'm partial to) is Libris Mortis, an undead-specific sourcebook with some great stuff in it.

What do we like about it? Honestly, the best way to answer this question might be to say what we didn't like, or rather, what we wanted more of - more negative repercussions for our actions (everything from "we shouldn't be able to heal Astarion" to "the party members should be more hostile to each other" - especially with a Sharran in the party and a druid&undead matchup - to "Wyll should lose his magic immediately if he chooses to break the pact in act 3" and "spurning Shar in the middle of the Shadowfell while your only healer is a Sharran cleric is a terrible idea, and if you do it, there should be severe consequences, and choosing not to is pretty understandable"), relationships between origin characters building more slowly or in different ways than the game has the room for on its own, characters having to work harder to earn trust or being unable to because of their situations, etc. Basically: it's a great game, and a lot of fun to play, and we'd love to see the stuff that would have made it probably a lot less enjoyable to play but make for interesting stories in fanfic! 

Other characters and relationships we enjoy: While we're not requesting Karlach/Wyll or Astarion/Wyll on their own, those ships are great (there's just plenty of great fic of them already), and if you write the OT3 you should feel absolutely free to write it as a proper ménage à trois rather than a V-shaped triad; Lae'zel is my perfect darling baby girl, light of my life, I'm so sorry I let you get permanently brain damaged at the crèche; background horror ships are always welcome (Karlach/Zariel, Mizora/Wyll, Astarion/Cazador et al); the wider infernal cast (including everyone in the House of Hope - especially Hope herself) and the Szarr family, including the other spawn, Amanita, Vellioth, hell, the other relatives named in Amanita's letters; Gale/Mystra probably goes without saying; Tara, of course, is a joy and we'd love to see more of her.

Let's start with Gale/Raphael. We like our Gale kind of shitty and power-hungry and too depressed to shave after having flown too close to the sun and been presented with his failures then left to clean up his mess by his girlfriend to boot. This ship makes sense to us in the context of Gale on his bad end/God of Ambition arc (and, to be clear, we do consider this his bad end), or at least getting close to it, but if you have ideas that allow for Gale to ultimately make amends with Mystra (or even rekindle that mess of a relationship!) and make an enemy of Raphael in the process, please feel free to play around with it! The draw of this is Gale's clear interest in Raphael from day dot, and of course they're a rival ship - they can flirt and they can fuck but at the end of the day one of them is going to get the Crown and achieve his goals, and the other one won't, and neither one of them would hesitate to leave the other behind in the dirt. Or, y'know, maybe offer concubinage as a boon, I guess. We also think they'd have absolutely atrocious sex (Raphael being canonically terrible in bed, and I can't really see Gale having experience with actual sex, and not tantric soul-merging in the Weave). Over and done in 90 seconds. It's very endearing. 

On Karlach/Astarion: It's them! The gayest hetship you've ever seen! We love these two together. The touch-averse/touch-starved contrast, their unparalleled ability to understand each other and their respective Horrors (something that stands out to me especially is that they were both in slavery until RIGHT AT the beginning of the game, becoming free through luck alone, and now have suddenly gained everything while standing to imminently lose it - and have to figure out how to act like people again) without devolving into awkward and uncomfortable pity, their shared enthusiasm for bloodshed and somewhat questionable ethics (while Karlach certainly is trying her best to be Good, she's incredibly gung-ho about murder, and let's not forget that she eats souls - and if you try to cut her off, she does, like, fully threaten to kill you about it)... Even when they're not romancing each other, one of their first overworld dialogues is about going on a date in the Upper City, and Astarion shows real concern for her wellbeing when you choose between them (and only for her - every other companion he mocks).

Meanwhile, Karlach has this to say.

Anyway! Love them, love their romance, would absolutely love to see more of it. We're suckers for tragic romance, and there's something so appealing about the fact that their needs are kind of opposed? Spawn Astarion in Avernus doesn't have to worry about the sun, or about food, but Karlach has to give up going home, and if she finds a cure, has to wrestle with what it means to ask him to give up a lot of freedom. And if they don't go to Avernus... when playing through the game for the first time, we kept coming back around to the idea of Karlach not giving up on the idea that they could both be cured. Her heart could be fixed! Astarion hasn't been dead long enough he can't be properly resurrected (assuming you have 25000gp worth of diamonds and a veryyyy fancy cleric, anyway), if they could figure out a way to keep his memories intact/restore them to a newly-raised 39yo Astarion! But, well... they're living on borrowed time, for both of them, really, and without a solution for Karlach's heart, he'll lose her. And just like how Karlach can handle to go back to Avernus, if it's with someone she loves at her side, maybe Astarion can handle a lifetime in darkness so long as he has her. The days after she burned were... bad.

These are depressing concepts, but I swear we're connoisseurs of fluff, too! We love tragedy and bittersweet endings and we love curtainfic too, especially if they've had a really hard time getting to that happy ending in the first place (please feel free to make them earn it). There's also plenty of room for mid-canon fic of all sorts, or probably pre-canon alternate meeting stuff if you're creative? If you like writing upsetting character studies through porn, there's definitely something that could be done with the fact that, while their romance can even be completely sexless, Karlach becoming able to touch people again right at the same time she finds out she's dying and Astarion is having his "actually I don't think I want to have sex" realization makes for some big messes potentially - it's so very easy to convince yourself Karlach's owed this, after everything she's been through, and anyway, she's dying. He won't have to keep having sex he doesn't want for that long, will he? SO MANY OPTIONS. Go wild, really.

On Karlach/Wyll/Astarion: Everyone's seen this clip by now, right? Take everything I said above, and add Wyll into the mix! Does he come with them to the Hells? Is he utterly miserable in Baldur's Gate, lying to himself that he can help people the most by being the Grand Duke, and that he's happy here? Free of his pact, or still entrapped? I'm a big fan of Wyll having to deal with his very strict, LG worldview where it comes up against the fact the people he loves are... not that. It's all well and good to be a monster hunter who thinks monsters are hot, but it's a different thing to try and build a life with one. And while Wyll is very quick to flip the switch from 'monster' to 'victim' in his estimation of people, well, at some point you've gotta realize that it's not that simple. Astarion obviously isn't a good person, and again, Karlach is very bloodthirsty in her own right! And eats souls! And at some point the honeymoon period is gonna be over and this relationship is going to have to do some growing, or else.

Fandom-specific DNW exceptions: for navigating the animal harm DNW with Astarion, brief, non-detailed allusions to his canonical pre-game diet are fine, and eating bugs is fine. Drinking the blood of thinking creatures (consenting or otherwise) is also totally fine and can be written in detail if you so desire. 

Fandom-specific DNWs: Tav or Durge; EA Wyll or Gale, Ascended Astarion, Mindflayer Karlach, or Selunite Shadowheart (Shadowheart failing to become a Dark Justiciar is fine, even losing her faith, but we'd rather not see her rebounding with Selune or receiving divine magic from her for Plot Reasons); Astarion’s issues with sex and intimacy resolved by either Cazador’s death or True Love (him pretending they are and hurting himself in the process is fine); Gale having been groomed from childhood by Mystra (their having a toxic relationship/power imbalance is fine).

Where can you find the canon? It's available on Amazon Prime, and if you're in the US and your library is affiliated with hoopla, you can find it there for free!

What do we like about it? Look, we aren't generally Catholicism kink people, but the UST of these gay priests who live together and make home cooked meals and clearly want to bang just so, so bad, and whose love gets dream sequence affirmed by the angels? I'm picking up what they're putting down. The longing! The vows of chastity! The absolute fucking insanity of the casefic! Roberto's horrifying backstory! This show is an incredible romp and we loved it.

Do you want to write domestic fluff? Go for it. 10k of pining? Go for it. Casefic? Sure! Whump one of them in front of the other? Why not! 

For an actual prompt... I present you with this tweet:

@robmanuel · May 11
The Vatican are allowed to take part in Eurovision and really it's a missed opportunity that they don't - either gag entries like the Pope rapping from the Pope mobile - or take it 100% serious and write a new hymn every year for square kids to sing at school.

Do with this what you will.

Opting in to art fills for this request! 

So, the field of nuclear semiotics is all about figuring out how to communicate to people 10000 years in the future "nuclear waste is buried here and it will kill you". It's super cool, and has lots of incredibly fun quotes - you've probably seen This is not a place of honor. No great deeds were commemorated here. This is a simple request: we'd love to see what you'd do with a far, far future archaeological dig uncovering one of these nuclear waste repositories or something of a similar design, and dig into how it's being interpreted! Is it widely assumed that this is some sort of religious message, a supposed magical curse trapped below like the Minotaur? The bodies of plague victims? Do they take it seriously? Are these messages irrelevant for some reason, like the archaeologists in question being members of some alien or genetically modified race that doesn't have trouble with plutonium and finds all this superstition quaint or misguided? 

Worldbuild as much as you want, in whatever direction you want. Have a romance of some sort to explore alongside this dig site? Cool! There's a lot of great sci-fi potential in nuclear semiotics and we'd love to see what you come up with.

Opting in to art fills for this request!

• messy relationships; unhealthy aspects of relationships not being brushed over (but the characters also not trying to fix them); relationships that by modern western standards (and maybe the standards of a large portion of the cast) would be considered unacceptable; social mores that don’t match the modern western world, and characters whose social mores don’t match each others’
• “us against the world” narratives; “we were always going to end up here” narratives; “no one understands you like i do” narratives; characters making the best of their situations, not unhappy, but not living Happily Ever After, either
• father/child and sibling incest (portrayed romantically), pseudo-incest between unrelated characters, mentor/protégé relationships and big-p Platonic teacher/student relationships, erastes/eromenos and dominus/deliciae relationships; age difference, size difference, experience difference, power imbalance, underage (adult/minor and minor/minor)
• ideas about sex, sexuality, marriage, gender identity, etc that may differ wildly from our own ideas and between characters; historical or dated constructs of gender/sexuality; arranged marriages considered normal/not inherently abusive
• medical realism and its consequences: persistent and permanent injuries, realistic and semi-realistic recovery, healing magic having limitations (and exploring what those are); not shying away from less pretty parts of sex, pregnancy, birth, or having a body in general
• emphasis on character voice, characterization, motive, morals, ethics; culture clash; worldbuilding (especially specific medical and legal worldbuilding); character studies; unreliable narrators; limited POVs, outsider POVs, POVs missing context that would recontextualize events considerably
• feel free to look at our unconventional fanworks exchange letter for weird format likes!

• romance: established relationships, courting, letter-writing, wedding plans, elopement, family planning; helping pregnant partner give birth, being stuck anxiously/excitedly in the waiting room while pregnant partner gives birth
• domesticity: dancing together, playing instruments together/performing duets, doing arts and crafts together, playing chess together, doing tarot spreads, cooking together, helping each other dress or do makeup; tired mornings and late nights, not putting on airs for each other
• slice of life: teaching partner how to dance/play an instrument/draw/paint/cook/play chess/etc; taking turns with household responsibilities (chores, childcare, etc); new/first time parents trying their best and maybe doing an okay job of it; (consensual and appropriate) public displays of affection, between lovers or friends
• emotionally significant friendships and close friends/confidants; characters having people they can/do go to other than their lover (friends or supportive family); close relationships between female characters and an emphasis on the friendships of female characters; positive sibling relationships and mother/child relationships

• consent issues: noncon (where requested), dubcon, consensual but a bad idea, consensual but it shouldn’t be, and messy/unclear combinations of several of these; power/experience/age imbalances; somnophilia (including comatose characters), necrophilia, and possession
• manipulation: gaslighting, mutual manipulation, seduction, “you’re so mature for your age” and similar ploys; unclear lines between victims and aggressors, victims manipulating their abusers/assailants back; stockholm syndrome, lima syndrome, trauma bonding; chess as a mind game/power play, specifically, and chess moves portrayed as acts of violence between the players
• forced intimacy: playing at domesticity, nonconsensual PDA, nonconsensual kissing, sleeping beside each other/spooning, rapists performing oral, rapists comforting victims, victims forced to comfort rapists
• pain and fear kink: crying/dacryphilia, screaming, uncomfortably detailed loving descriptions of both or either, painful sex, characters in pain kinking on it, characters in pain not kinking on it (their loss!)
• injuries or physical trauma: lovingly described acts of violence (consensual and otherwise), genital trauma or mutilation (perineal tearing, episiotomy, castration, fgm/c, tearing from sex, sharp object insertion), amount of blood/injury exaggerated for kink purposes, eye trauma, broken limbs, internal bleeding, childbirth related injuries and medical complications (symphysiotomy or breaking the pelvis for childbirth, broken clavicle or limbs in newborns, emergency hysterectomy, congenital birth defects, low APGAR, etc), short- and long-term medical care and aftermath of injury, trauma, or disability
• dark pregnancy-related kinks/topics: (threat of) traumatic miscarriage, forced abortion, unsafe abortions (coathangers, ingesting poisons, trying to induce miscarriage through injury to self)
• trouble at home: abusive, controlling, or disapproving (grand)parents, tense home environments, arguments about arranged marriages, inheritance, keeping the baby, childrearing (between parents/children or between coparents or partners)
• harm to children: characters who are underage depicted in fic with appropriate neurological development for their ages and developing trauma appropriate to the events of the canon and/or the fic; child soldiers, CSA victims, etc normalizing what they’ve been through, not having the neurological development to understand the impact of events, not understanding their own feelings, enacting their trauma on other children or adults
• aftermath: of rape or CSA, of abuse, of wartime or other nonsexual trauma, of injury; impact of trauma on mental and physical health; medical treatment, being forced to deal with the authorities, trying to hide trauma or ‘go back to normal’

• oral fixations: smoking, making out, lip biting, hickies, biting in general, finger sucking, cunnilingus, cockwarming, emetophilia (gag reflexes! morning sickness!)
• hand and finger kink: manual stimulation, calluses, pinching breasts, fingering after fucking, weaponizing fingernails, fingers in mouths
• intercrural, incomplete penetration/“just the tip”, eunuchs/castration, soft cock kink, small or soft cock handjobs, sex you might have the impulse to call “sex*” or “sex(?)” - where coming isn’t necessarily the goal, where the people involved may not have bodies in the traditional sense, where the people involved may not have sex drives or even understand what sex is
• marking/possessiveness: bruising, comeplay, breeding kink, postpartum sex (and kinking on the physical affects of childbirth), gaping, somnophilia
• blood and injury: bloody hands, bloody teeth, nosebleeds, tearing from sex or birth, menstrual blood, spotting, episiotomies, postpartum bleeding, amount of blood and injury exaggerated or (bordering) dangerous for kink purposes
• romantic incest kink, dd/lg, sibcon, characters who aren’t related acting like they are for horny reasons; kinking on a character’s youth or presumed youth and physical markers typically associated with it (virginity, flat/small breasts, small cock, etc); kinking on a character’s sexual inexperience (in general, with a specific act, with another character’s gender, etc)
• medfet: take everything from the general likes list about medical accuracy and apply it to pornography! partners being possessively horny at the OB-GYN, nobody but the reader being horny over lovingly detailed descriptions of medical exams, realistic birthing (but being horny about it), weirdly detailed interludes about period birth control methods? you name it, we’re probably into it

• mediums and styles/movements: pen, pencil, charcoal, etching, woodcut, watercolor, oils, digital art, sequential art, mosaic, tapestry; art deco, art nouveau, baroque, expressionism, fauvism, precisionism/cubist realism, surrealism
• color and shading: black & white, spot color, limited palettes, flat color, black-figure (greek technique); hatching, line contouring, stippling
• imagery: symbolism, occult imagery (tarot, etc), historical composition techniques, pastiches of saints’ iconography for canons that play with christian imagery
• subjects: (see domestic, darker, & smut likes) — technically nonsexual art that still feels kinky somehow, in your bones; hands and fingers and dynamic hand positions (playing instruments, smoking, fingers in mouths, etc); artistic and heavily stylized violence

• any on-screen, referenced, or implied
  • skin-related mutilation like flaying, burning, or branding
  • harm to animals including meat-eating (just not mentioning what a character is eating is fine)
  • shower/bath/rain sex, one character washing or grooming another non-infant character (even consensual aftercare), or onscreen bathing of any kind
  • petting, brushing, or playing with hair as a form of intimacy (touching or pulling on it during sex is fine; doing someone’s hair without intimate subtext is fine)
  • maternal incest or mommykink
  in any capacity. If you think 'surely this isn't enough to count for the DNW', it is.
• unrequested romantic relationships; unrequested rape/non-con; unrequested trans headcanons or rule 63; cis mpreg and futanari
• AUs that drastically change the setting or the core rules of the setting (modern AUs, A/B/O, soulmark AUs, etc… canon divergence AUs including pre-canon divergence points are fine)
• “bad ends” (no chance at escape, mindbreak, etc); scat kink (changing a baby’s diaper is fine); onscreen, explicit sexual contact under age 10 (implied or fade to black is fine)
• altered states (drugged, drunk, sex pollen, etc; off-hand references to characters drinking wine is fine)
• art DNWs: furries and candy gore; exaggerated breast size, OTT ahegao (stuff like heart shaped pupils or gasping open-mouthed is fine), graphic depiction of unclothed erections (soft cocks ok - nonsexual nudity, castration, HRT all welcome!)

• messy relationships; unhealthy aspects of relationships not being brushed over (but the characters also not trying to fix them); relationships that by modern western standards (and maybe the standards of a large portion of the cast) would be considered unacceptable; social mores that don’t match the modern western world, and characters whose social mores don’t match each others’
• “us against the world” narratives; “we were always going to end up here” narratives; “no one understands you like i do” narratives; characters making the best of their situations, not unhappy, but not living Happily Ever After, either
• father/child and sibling incest (portrayed romantically), pseudo-incest between unrelated characters, mentor/protégé relationships and big-p Platonic teacher/student relationships, erastes/eromenos and dominus/deliciae relationships; age difference, size difference, experience difference, power imbalance, underage (adult/minor and minor/minor)
• ideas about sex, sexuality, marriage, gender identity, etc that may differ wildly from our own ideas and between characters; historical or dated constructs of gender/sexuality; arranged marriages considered normal/not inherently abusive
• medical realism and its consequences: persistent and permanent injuries, realistic and semi-realistic recovery, healing magic having limitations (and exploring what those are); not shying away from less pretty parts of sex, pregnancy, birth, or having a body in general
• emphasis on character voice, characterization, motive, morals, ethics; culture clash; worldbuilding (especially specific medical and legal worldbuilding); character studies; unreliable narrators; limited POVs, outsider POVs, POVs missing context that would recontextualize events considerably

• romance: established relationships, courting, letter-writing, wedding plans, elopement, family planning; helping pregnant partner give birth, being stuck anxiously/excitedly in the waiting room while pregnant partner gives birth
• domesticity: dancing together, playing instruments together/performing duets, doing arts and crafts together, playing chess together, doing tarot spreads, cooking together, helping each other dress or do makeup; tired mornings and late nights, not putting on airs for each other
• slice of life: teaching partner how to dance/play an instrument/draw/paint/cook/play chess/etc; taking turns with household responsibilities (chores, childcare, etc); new/first time parents trying their best and maybe doing an okay job of it; (consensual and appropriate) public displays of affection, between lovers or friends
• emotionally significant friendships and close friends/confidants; characters having people they can/do go to other than their lover (friends or supportive family); close relationships between female characters and an emphasis on the friendships of female characters; positive sibling relationships and mother/child relationships

• consent issues: noncon, dubcon, consensual but a bad idea, consensual but it shouldn’t be, and messy/unclear combinations of several of these; power/experience/age imbalances; somnophilia (including comatose characters), necrophilia, and possession
• manipulation: gaslighting, mutual manipulation, seduction, “you’re so mature for your age” and similar ploys; unclear line between victim and aggressor, victims manipulating their abusers/assailants back; stockholm syndrome, lima syndrome, trauma bonding; chess as a mind game/power play, specifically, and chess moves portrayed as acts of violence between the players
• forced intimacy: playing at domesticity, nonconsensual PDA, nonconsensual kissing, sleeping beside each other/spooning, rapist performing oral, rapist comforting victim, victim forced to comfort rapist
• pain and fear kink: crying/dacryphilia, screaming, uncomfortably detailed loving descriptions of both or either, painful sex, characters in pain kinking on it, characters in pain not kinking on it (their loss!)
• injuries or physical trauma: lovingly described acts of violence (consensual and otherwise), genital trauma or mutilation (perineal tearing, episiotomy, castration, fgm/c, tearing from sex, sharp object insertion), amount of blood/injury exaggerated for kink purposes, eye trauma, broken limbs, internal bleeding, childbirth related injuries and medical complications (symphysiotomy or breaking the pelvis for childbirth, broken clavicle or limbs in newborns, emergency hysterectomy, congenital birth defects, low APGAR, etc), short- and long-term medical care and aftermath of injury, trauma, or disability
• dark pregnancy-related kinks/topics: (threat of) traumatic miscarriage, forced abortion, unsafe abortions (coathangers, ingesting poisons, trying to induce miscarriage through injury to self)
• trouble at home: abusive, controlling, or disapproving (grand)parents, tense home environments, arguments about arranged marriages, inheritance, keeping the baby, childrearing (between parents/children or between coparents or partners)
• harm to children: characters who are underage depicted in fic with appropriate neurological development for their ages and developing trauma appropriate to the events of the canon and/or the fic; child soldiers, CSA victims, etc normalizing what they’ve been through, not having the neurological development to understand the impact of events, not understanding their own feelings, enacting their trauma on other children or adults
• aftermath: of rape or CSA, of abuse, of wartime or other nonsexual trauma, of injury; impact of trauma on mental and physical health; medical treatment, being forced to deal with the authorities, trying to hide trauma or ‘go back to normal’

• oral fixations: smoking, making out, lip biting, hickies, biting in general, finger sucking, cunnilingus, cockwarming, emetophilia (gag reflexes! morning sickness!)
• hand and finger kink: manual stimulation, calluses, pinching breasts, fingering after fucking, weaponizing fingernails, fingers in mouths
• intercrural, incomplete penetration/“just the tip”, eunuchs/castration, soft cock kink, small or soft cock handjobs, sex you might have the impulse to call “sex*” or “sex(?)” - where coming isn’t necessarily the goal, where the people involved may not have bodies in the traditional sense, where the people involved may not have sex drives or even understand what sex is
• marking/possessiveness: bruising, comeplay, breeding kink, postpartum sex (and kinking on the physical affects of childbirth), gaping, somnophilia
• blood and injury: bloody hands, bloody teeth, nosebleeds, tearing from sex or birth, menstrual blood, spotting, episiotomies, postpartum bleeding, amount of blood and injury exaggerated or (bordering) dangerous for kink purposes
• romantic incest kink, dd/lg, sibcon, characters who aren’t related acting like they are for horny reasons; kinking on a character’s youth or presumed youth and physical markers typically associated with it (virginity, flat/small breasts, small cock, etc); kinking on a character’s sexual inexperience (in general, with a specific act, with another character’s gender, etc)
• medfet: take everything from the general likes list about medical accuracy and apply it to pornography! partners being possessively horny at the OB-GYN, nobody but the reader being horny over lovingly detailed descriptions of medical exams, realistic birthing (but being horny about it), weirdly detailed interludes about period birth control methods? you name it, we’re probably into it

• mediums and styles/movements: pen, pencil, charcoal, etching, woodcut, watercolor, oils, digital art, sequential art, mosaic, tapestry; art deco, art nouveau, baroque, expressionism, fauvism, precisionism/cubist realism, surrealism
• color and shading: black & white, spot color, limited palettes, flat color, black-figure (greek technique); hatching, line contouring, stippling
• imagery: symbolism, occult imagery (tarot, etc), historical composition techniques, pastiches of saints’ iconography for canons that play with christian imagery
• subjects: (see domestic, darker, & smut likes) — technically nonsexual art that still feels kinky somehow, in your bones; hands and fingers and dynamic hand positions (playing instruments, smoking, fingers in mouths, etc); artistic and heavily stylized violence

• DNW any on-screen, referenced, or implied
  • skin-related mutilation like flaying, burning, or branding
  • harm to animals including meat-eating (just not mentioning what a character is eating is fine)
  • shower/bath/rain sex, one character washing or grooming another non-infant character (even consensual aftercare), or onscreen bathing of any kind
  • petting, brushing, or playing with hair as a form of intimacy (touching or pulling on it during sex is fine; doing someone’s hair without intimate subtext is fine)
  • maternal incest or mommykink
  in any capacity. If you think 'surely this isn't enough to count for the DNW', it is.
• unrequested romantic relationships involving requested characters having significant screentime (mentions and past lovers appearing as bioparents are fine, but if the relationship is unrequested they should not be coparenting or considering coparenting in any capacity); rape/non-con between requested ships (IRL or in-universe legal inability to consent is fine, but characters should both consider themselves and each other consenting); unrequested trans headcanons or rule 63; cis mpreg and futanari
• AUs that drastically change the setting or the core rules of the setting (modern AUs, A/B/O, soulmark AUs, etc… canon divergence AUs including pre-canon divergence points are fine)
• “bad ends” (no chance at escape, mindbreak, etc); scat kink (changing a baby’s diaper is fine); onscreen, explicit sexual contact under age 10 (implied or fade to black is fine)
• altered states (drugged, drunk, sex pollen, etc)
• art dnws: furries and candy gore; exaggerated breast size, OTT ahegao (stuff like heart shaped pupils or gasping open-mouthed is fine), graphic depiction of unclothed erections (soft cocks ok - nonsexual nudity, castration, HRT all welcome!)

Abuse of Authority - Do As Your Monarch Commands You
Aftermath - Aggressor believes victim enjoyed it despite evidence otherwise
Cooperation - To Avoid Hurting Aggressor
Crying - Aggressor Cries During Xcon
Intimacy - Victim Forced to Comfort Aggressor Afterward
Motive - Aggressor has normalized their own past abuse
Scenario - Victim Endures Unwanted Sex To Spare Unknowing Aggressor's Feelings

So, what we were thinking of with this one is, Basch is the new Judge Gabranth. Wonderful! Only one problem: he’s a better person than his brother was, and Larsa expects certain things from his Judge that Basch doesn’t want to give him. Not that it matters, really.

Maybe this is immediately post-game, and Larsa’s grief over Gabranth the first’s death and lack of any models for healthy boundaries and relationships get Basch in over his head. Maybe this is years on, and Larsa’s old enough now that he can understand what’s wrong here, if only Basch could admit to Larsa that he’s never been a consensual party to this.

We’re always glad to see background/past (Noah) Gabranth/Larsa, Vayne/Larsa, and/or Basch/Gabranth; if other background relationships feel useful for exploring the mental health situation here (with other canon characters or with OCs, even), go for it!

Abuse of Authority - Mentor/Trainee Relationship
Aftermath - Xcon Sexual Relationship Leads to Feelings
Attitude - Victim Unwilling to Admit They Want More
Cooperation - Society Expects Victim to Submit to Aggressor
Cooperation - Victim Tries to Make Xcon Feel Good for Aggressor
Cooperation - Victim(s) Initiate Sex to Control Encounter
Misunderstandings - Attempts at Flirting Mistaken for Threats
Motive - Victim is a Reward for Aggressor
Violence - Aggressor is less scary after Xcon

When Menenius was 15 (what appears to be Garlean age of majority) Lyon was 28. Menenius was also most likely still, eh, 4’10” on a good day, while Lyon was a close confidant of the man who pressured his father into marrying his mother and adopting him. So while today they’re clearly an old married couple, the early days of their relationship may have been a bit… messier. The tags pretty much speak for themselves here, with anything from the first months or years they were together, when Menenius might have found himself set up with a brash older mentor, with all the expectations of sexual favors therein.

Request-specific DNW(s): Lyon presented at the end as irredeemable.

Abuse of Authority - Aggressor Takes Advantage of Subordinates
Attitude - Aggressor is totally nonchalant about xcon
Attitude - Aggressor's Morality Does Not Fit Societal Norms
Attitude - Victim Feels Honored
Cooperation - Victim's Pride Won't Let Them Say No
Dynamic - Attempting to Mutually Manipulate Each Other
Medical - Medical/Scientific Examination
Praise - Condescending
Scenario - Xcon as Part of Job Duties

We really don’t have much to say here - we love when the ancients are depicted as particularly inhuman/possibly even disembodied completely (weenwoons are cooler than tall people), so go as weird as you like; we personally like to imagine these two literally invented and then patented the concept of sex for the purpose of creating a child, so sky’s the limit. Making Athena the older of the two (Lahabrea actually taking over from his wife, the previous Lahabrea, as the first set of raids seemed to imply) would be super cool, creepy teacher/student is always beloved. These tags contain a pretty wide range of potential dynamics, so pick your favorite.

DNW any reference to/implication of either Lahabrea or Athena doing anything incestuous with Eric, please!

Attitude - Victim Unsure of Own Consent
Betrayal - Aggressor realizes it's xcon in the middle of the act
Dynamic - Codependency
Inexperience - Sexually Inexperienced Aggressor
Inexperience - Victim Doesn't Know What They're Consenting To
Inexperience - Victim Doesn't Know What Sex Is
Motive - Aggressor Doesn't Know Victim is Incapable of Consent

Unukalhai as the aggressor here is such an interesting angle to explore, especially with the state Elidibus is in around 5.x. And after Pandaemonium, we feel like you could make a pretty good argument that Elidibus doesn’t know what sex is at all (no, sweetheart, Hesperos doesn’t want to be Lahabrea’s son, he wants Lahabrea to be his daddy), never mind his ‘current’ state.

Any point in the timeline here would be lovely, from the original loss of the Thirteenth up through 5.3, even a post-EW “no, he’s not dead, don’t ask how, just go with it”. Just have fun! Want to make Unukalhai a shard of Azem and so Elidibus has a weird crush he doesn’t totally understand? Go for it! Have another idea? We’d love to see it! Follow your heart.

(Canon-compliant mindbreak is totally fine here.)

Archive Warnings: Underage

Aftermath - Aggressor horrified by own actions
Aftermath - Xcon Sexual Relationship Leads to Feelings
Betrayal - Aggressor doesn't realize victim feels obligated to offer sex
Betrayal - Aggressor is unaware it's xcon and victim tries to shield them from the truth
Betrayal - Aggressor realizes it's xcon in the middle of the act
Coercion - Victim Goads Partner Into Xconning Them
Dynamic - Aggressor and Victim Have Romantic Feelings For Each Other
Inexperience - Aggressor doesn't know what sex is
Magic - Spell/curse makes victim unable to say no to sex even when they want to
Motive - Aggressor Doesn't Know Victim is Incapable of Consent
Scenario - Aggressor never finds out it's xcon
Scenario - Victim Endures Unwanted Sex To Spare Unknowing Aggressor's Feelings

There’s a lot of overlap between this and the other request (Anthy xcons Utena), and we’re also more than glad to see a sort of mutual lack of respect or understanding of consent. I’d say ‘boundaries’, too, but what boundaries? This ship doesn’t have boundaries.
 

We love all of the messy potentials of aftermath, all of the awful things that can come from Anthy’s role as the Rose Bride (is her obedience and tractability just centuries of abuse at work, or is she actually magically bound to whatever her betrothed wishes?), all of the super weird symbolism and dreamsharing stuff RGU really lets you go ham with.
 

We’re always glad to see background ships! Akio ships, Utena/Wakaba, etc…

For this fandom’s purposes, Hanahaki and other soulmate AU type tropes do not constitute DNW breaking so long as they aren’t a normal, everyday thing: e.g., Anthy can get Hanahaki Disease, but it shouldn’t have an entry in the encyclopedia. We’re also fine with Altered States - Dream Sex specifically where requested.