Chocolate Box Letter

[lirillith]

Hello, writer, artist, or any random passers-by! Since this place is basically only for exchange letters anymore, it feels a little silly to copy over all the boilerplate greeting stuff from Yuletide when you could just go to the journal index and scroll down. I'm not the most trope-minded person, but it's not out of some dislike of tropeyness, it's just not how I think of fic. I tend to hang prompts on points in canon where I want to see things fleshed out, but I'm always happy to get post-canon fic, and I'm also perfectly happy with fics that disregard my prompts entirely and go off in their own direction.

And while that intro was pretty fic focused, I love art. Oh my god do I love art. Part of the reason my DW presence is a barren wasteland is that I loved Tumblr for its ease of sharing art, and it's hard for me to go back. So artists, please don't feel unloved - it's just that writing is all I can do so it's my default way of thinking of gift ideas.

General Fic Likes:

• Missing scenes that slot seamlessly into canon
• Dialog, strong character voices, banter, flirting
• Character and relationship studies
• Worldbuilding, from small details that make the world feel more lived in to big elaborations on things canon just doesn't touch
• Magic meta, discussion of the minutia of learning and casting magic, how it feels to cast a spell or have one cast on you, studying magic from a scholarly or hands-on perspective
• Food porn and drink porn
• Ensemble/team relationships
• Seasonal themes — the weather, the mood, seasonal or holiday food and drinks (not just for winter, either, though I do really love winter)
• Humor
• Angst that ends up in a happy or hopeful place
• Bittersweet endings
• Happy endings
• Hurt/comfort
• Exploration of the subject a really dedicated character is into — whether that's a mage talking magic, an artist dealing with art block, an athlete discussing their sport or a baker getting really in-depth about bread
• The creative process, especially when it goes wrong, or when a character's struggling with it
• 5 Times fics, 5 + 1, other variants on that structure
• Outsider POV

Shippy/Smutty Likes:

• Pining! Oblivious mutual pining is the very best, unless the very best is pining leading into guilty fantasizing and masturbation, or pining + h/c, or... you get the idea. Pining tropes are good!
• Laughing during sex
• Holding hands during sex
• Hand kink in general: noticing the size of someone's hands, the shape of their fingers, their scars or calluses; wearing or removing gloves
• Facial hair, stubble, and shaving — feel free to imagine stubble or shaving routines for clean-shaven dudes, let men get scruffy at times, or run with Sabin's mountain man beard from some of the Amano art
• Hair in general, in a touch sense — washing hair, braiding it, scalp rubs, running hands through a partner's hair
• Clothing kink (one partner wearing some of the other one's clothing; a character wearing clothes that are unusual for them, more formal or more casual or more revealing or whatever; in a modern setting, men in suits)
• Any stage of relationship development from UST to fucking like bunnies
• Partially-clothed sex
• Wall sex
• Awkward sex (the kind where it's ultimately good for both of them, after the one who got kneed in the throat by accident when they tried to 69 is able to breathe again)
• Non-dirty talk during sex — bickering, bantering, just trying to continue the pre-sex conversation though they're getting increasingly distracted from it

Art Likes:

• Limited palettes
• Art nouveau design
• Tarot card themes and designs (whether you want to put a character in a Rider-Waite card or come up with your own card design)
• Hair: one character brushing, braiding, tying ribbons in, or otherwise grooming the other's hair
• Hands (I know they're difficult, but still) - characters holding hands, the detail of what hands are doing and where they are while a couple kisses, etc.
• Characters laughing together
• Cuddling and snuggling
• Characters in alternate costumes: winter clothing (or bathing suits or kimono or lingerie or ballgowns or whatever) reminiscent of their characteristic designs; AU costumes (Western AU, space opera AU); characters wearing each other's clothes; characters wearing clothes or costumes from related titles (i.e. dressing everyone from FF6 in the job-system outfit that seems to best suit them)
• Since this is a shippy exchange, WEDDINGS. Wedding finery from non-Western cultures a plus but any kind of wedding will have me over the moon.
• Relatedly, dancing! Especially paired dancing for couples.
• Elemental effects from magic or superpowers
• That thing where a man has a dress shirt and tie and a vest/waistcoat, and he has the sleeves rolled up to about his elbows, and it's the hottest thing a man can possibly do and yet men don't all dress that way all the time for some crazy reason? Yeah. That thing.
• Flowers and flower motifs; I know the language of flowers is complete nonsense, plus everything always means "love" anyway, but I enjoy it.
• There are a lot of AUs (Western, IN SPACE, sports team, whatever) that I'll enjoy in art but not want in fic
• Smutty art is A++++++ and will not offend me one tiny bit. You can draw me SO MUCH smutty art if the mood strikes you.

Do Not Want:

• Severe and graphic harm to children or real-world animals
• Embarrassment squick
• Focus on OCs
• Incest
• Sexual content featuring anyone under the age of 15
• Graphic or highly detailed descriptions of bodily fluids or focus on them
• Unrequested polyamory, open relationships, or infidelity
• Vividly described gore
• AUs other than canon divergence (no changes of setting, profession, etc.)
• Non-canon character death, particularly death of requested characters, or any children
• Non-canon or unrequested pronouns
• Identity headcanons (gender ID, sexuality, etc.)
• Unrequested crossovers
• Use of "mommy" or "daddy" in sex scenes
• Cockroaches

Clarification/elaboration on DNWs - I wanted to keep it compact in my signup, but some things like embarrassment squick are very subjective.

Finally, the fandom-specific section!

FF6

Fandom-specific DNW - Please, no mention of Locke/Celes, even as a past, implied, or background pairing.

Locke/Terra - My forever OTP. I loved Locke's early protectiveness of Terra, and essentially, I looked at that spark of interest in the beginning — Locke telling her she wasn't entirely without a significant other, telling her not to let Edgar near her, promising to stay by her side — and I refused to let go. I'd love something early-game, with Locke crushing on or pining for an oblivious Terra and trying to convince himself it's just that she reminds him of Rachel. Or something during the game, even just Locke thinking about Terra as he goes about his World of Ruin quest for the Phoenix, or dealing with the implications of her potentially sacrificing herself to save the world.

First-time smut would be perfect, too, whatever the setting. If you want to allow for the possibility of past trauma with Kefka, it's not going to upset me (it's hard for me to see him as doing anything other than creeping on her, in the slave crown scene, and I can't see it as a consensual relationship if anything beyond creepiness happened) but I also fully understand the desire to steer clear of that and just keep things as uncomplicated as they can be with Locke "Girlfriend in a Coma" Cole involved.

Cyan/Sabin - I've always thought of the Veldt trio as a family unit, with Sabin and Cyan co-parenting Gau, but recently I made the leap from that to shipping Sabin and Cyan. I fell for this pairing hard. Gau is of course welcome to come along where appropriate! I'd love some kind of emotional h/c for Cyan, or physical h/c (magical or otherwise.) First-time smut, with angst and guilt about Elayne? I can't decide whether Sabin's been celibate for years or had a past thing with Vargas or what, but inexperience could cause varying types of angst too. Or post-canon fic — how do they make a life after defeating Kefka? Do they go back to Figaro, or try to rebuild Doma, or move to Mobliz? It might do Gau some good to be around all those kids, and Terra could probably use some help. Or maybe they go somewhere else, for a fresh start — there are a lot of places that need rebuilding.

Edgar/Setzer - They both maintain a hedonistic image while harboring hidden depths and sorrows, which is like catnip to me when it's just one guy, let alone two. They both love to get deep into engine guts, and I'd love to see them bonding over something like that - Setzer wanting to see more of the Figaro castle engines and getting a personal tour, Edgar asking questions about airship development - and this naturally leads to making out. Or more. And then oh oops I guess we fell in love somewhere during all the engine-room fucking?

Edgar/Celes - I love that these two both keep people at arms' length, in very different ways, but somehow she's managed to find out about the two-headed coin anyway. I think there's a ton of potential just around that, and the way her refusal to put up with his bullshit could force him to drop the act a bit, or maybe she grudgingly tolerates his flirting because she figures he never really means it? This is one of my newer ships for this game, and I'm still working out how I see them or what I'd like to see - right now what I want to see is "anything" or "your version."

Tiger & Bunny

Fandom-specific DNW: No singular "they" for Nathan in narration, please! My own preference is he/him pronouns, but if you don't feel comfortable with that, I'd be fine with ze/zem/zir or ey/em/eir.

Nathan/Antonio - I like Nathan/Antonio where their long friendship is foregrounded and the groping and shrieking is almost a running joke between them. Though it'd also be kind of nice to see Nathan lay off the ass-grabs and Antonio be all "it's not like I miss it, but what gives?" and it's actually because Nathan's catching feelings. Maybe they have a casual FWB thing going and Antonio gets freaked out because he wants to keep it on the down-low, or maybe Antonio has always ruthlessly repressed his attraction to guys and Nathan, all "more man than you'll ever be and more woman than you'll ever have," is confusing him on several levels.

(Nathan tops the hell out of Antonio, I refuse to believe anything different. I don't interpret every relationship that way, but this is a relationship with a definite top, and it's Nathan.)

Nathan/Ryan - I was deeply disappointed when the Rising movie didn't give Nathan so much as a single chance to feel Ryan up. I mean, I was glad that it dropped the "sexual harassment as funny joke" element, but I also wanted to see Nathan go for the grope and, ideally, Ryan would just go, "Yeah, it's a really great ass, isn't it?" But it was not to be. I'd still like to see these two interact in some way - I don't think they're a romance for the ages or anything like that, but it'd be nice to see them spark off each other, and they might have fun.

Kotetsu/Barnaby - Maybe some kind of movie tag where they deal with the fallout of Rising, and Barnaby finally gives Kotetsu a piece of his mind for that "I will break up with you for your own good" stunt, and one of them finally admits he's in love with the other? There's so much out there for this pairing, but I've basically given up on looking for fic for them; I do have a preference for Kotetsu on top, which was kind of hard to find at one time.

I love these two being idiots together. I love Kotetsu being silly during sex, or any other time, and Barnaby facepalming with fondness and exasperation in a mixture varying based on the context, and I love when the two of them fail at communication and then get it sorted out, and I love their working partnership. I'd love just about anything with these guys, from the beginning of their relationship to established-relationship sex or domesticity. You can touch on as much or as little of the heavy stuff from canon as you see fit, but I'd prefer nothing significantly darker than canon.

Note that while I cut the OT3 part of my request, I do like both of them with Karina (whether as an OT3 or in either of the component couples) so I'd prefer no Karina-bashing, little to no Barnaby-trolling-Karina, etc.

Ikemen Sengoku

Hideyoshi/Mitsuhide - Having just replayed Nobunaga's route to get the Eternal ending, I'm shipping these two as hard as I ever have - their wall-slamming UST in that one was what made me start shipping them in the first place. I always feel a little like a homewrecker when I play a Hideyoshi route in a story event and Mitsuhide turns up to snark at me or be my wingman. I'd love something with angst and pining and keeping secrets, a la the Nobunaga-route situation, but I'd also be game for something fluffier - they're pulling off awesome battle moves as a pair by the time Mitsunari's route rolls around, after all, and I'm always a sucker for banter. Or for two hot warlords having sex. Smut would be very very welcome.

I didn't request art for this fandom because I'm starving for fic, but I'd still welcome art treats!

I think that covers all the bases, but since it's shorter than the saga I penned for Yuletide, I can't help worrying. If this feels insufficient, please feel free to check out previous letters - not much has changed since I wrote my last Chocobox letter, and even less has changed since Yuletide.