Just Unrequited Letter

[embraidery]

Hello potential creator!!

All of these likes are super optional. If you think I’ll like your idea based off just what I said about a specific ship or a freeform I requested, or even if it is just what you are really excited to write about for the ship (and you don’t see it in a completely opposite way to me), I bet I am going to like what you write. Also, many of these tropes won’t apply to the ship we matched on! It’s more important to me that you write something that makes sense for the characters than that you hit my general likes. But if you would like more information, I can provide!

A few rock solid topics/tropes I like off the top of my head.

Casual sex, friends with benefits, enemies with benefits… Ambiguous and/or undefined relationships… Arranged marriages and marriages of convenience. Proxy sex. Complicated feelings: love and hate, love and resentment, or hey, lust and hate. Pre-ship, post-breakup (with or without hope of reconciliation)… Characters deeply attracted to others but not knowing what it is they’re feeling. Suppressing it whether or not they know what it is. and

Unrequited attraction, which needs its own bullet point! Some ships I’ll feel strongly that it would only be unrequited in one direction, but if so, I’ll specify. Otherwise, go for your life. If A loves B: I love A carrying that secret, angstily or not; I love B knowing it, whether A knows they know or not; I love it being a source of strain and/or just another facet of a friendship. I love A and C bonding over their mutual feelings for B (which, for me, is a great fit for an A/B request!) or bonding over saying they both deserve better, or B deserves better. I love it all. I once got a fic in which A, knowing B had unrequited feelings for them, asked B for a handjob while framing it as “letting” B do it. I ate that shit up with a spoon.

Which I guess leads me to manipulation. I am especially into manipulation where the manipulatee knows what’s happening, but lets it happen for some reason (and the reason can be that it’s effective even when they recognise it as manipulation). Power! Leverage! Complicated motives!!

Intimacy, vulnerability, and caretaking! Particularly when any of these things are reluctant and/or forced. I have a soft spot for hair care of many kinds (tender or tension filled hair washing/combing/braiding/shaving) and wound care, but it’s all about the emotion, you know? Oh, and wing care! Wing care is great. Give a fictional lil guy wings and someone to look after them and I’m there.

Which leads me to AUs! I love them. Obviously, since it’s on this list. I particularly love an AU that casts a new light on a canon situation, but I also just love playing dress up with AUs. I’m fond of settings like Wild/Weird West, in space, regency England, and urban fantasy, but don’t be afraid to come up with your own! It’s also totally cool to do an AU of another canon, like a Pacific Rim or The Witcher or Heated Rivalry, whether or not I know it. I’m also into mermaid, vampire, and wing AUs, or, again, get creative with some other kind of creature AU. I like monsterfucking/xeno, including xeno genitalia and knots. (Not particularly into werewolves.)

Body horror!! I love transformations, willing and unwilling, ones that leave the transformee’s sense of self intact and those that change it beyond recognition or subsume it into a collective mind or break it entirely. I love plants and mushrooms being where they’re not meant to be (like in and on people).

And here are a few tags from this year’s Bulletproof that don’t fit in any of these categories, to give you a smattering of my other interests (but again, I love so many things and this is one tiny piece).

Rescued By Someone They Don’t Trust

Once dangerous enemy now at main character’s mercy

Captor and Prisoner/Hostage must work together to survive external threat while captor tries to maintain feeling of control over prisoner [this one I’d also love for enemies not in a hostage situation; enemies temporarily working together is just so tasty]

Characters A and B dislike each other but A encourages B to take care of themself so they can take good care of C (who they both care for)

Character A can’t help their devotion to character B despite knowing character B is bad news

Character A asks B to mercy kill them; B reluctantly complies

Also note that, as much as I love all these things, I also love happy and uncomplicated G-rated fluff, or uncomplicated smut, or whatever in between.

For this exchange specifically:

-levels of knowledge about the feelings. A has a crush on B. Does B know? Does A know B knows? Does B know A knows B knows? Maybe they’re wrong in assuming someone knows something and it comes out in an awkward and/or heartbreaking and/or funny way. (A: Why didn’t you tell me you were dating someone? B: I didn’t want to hurt your feelings! A: Why would it hurt my feelings? B: Because…you like me? Or, B: Why did you book us separate hotel rooms? We could have shared one. A: I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. B: Why would that make me uncomfortable? A: Because…I like you?) 

-finding out, directly or indirectly, about the crush or about who knows what. A thought they were being subtle but overhears C talking about it. A and B are looking at something on A’s phone together when someone messages A something that gives away their crush on B. B hears A talking to C, asking their advice on how to deal with bottling up feelings, or asking advice on how to confess. (Maybe C has a thing for B, too, now or in the past.) Or direct confessions, however that goes! Don’t be afraid to make it uncomfortable!

-forced proximity! Fake relationship for whatever reason and needing to kiss to make it convincing, classic kissing to make bad guys overlook them, huddling for warmth. A’s reluctance to do something in case they’re “taking advantage” of B, who ends up leading the way. Complicated feelings—A wanted to do this someday but only if B wanted it, but they can’t help enjoying it, but they feel bad for enjoying it…

-A’s agony of being attracted to B, who isn’t attracted to people of their gender. The agony of being attracted to B, who is attracted to people of A’s gender, but just not A. Liking someone in a relationship or a superior or inferior or someone too old or too young. Guilt about feeling attraction they don’t think they should feel. Internalised homophobia.

-Discomfort or guilt about not returning feelings, or wishing they could return them, but not being able to. (Or being fine with not returning them!)

-A being involved with someone else as a proxy for B, especially if the someone else is close with B, too. A and C bonding over their similar feelings for B, or pretending their relationship isn’t about B at all.