Dear Creator Letter: All But Romance 2026
May. 25th, 2026 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scribefindegilHello and thank you for creating for me! I'm so excited to be a part of this exchange :)
DNWs: No noncanonical romantic relationships (unless they're there to make a point about amatonormativity), no AU settings (canon-divergence is okay except for LotR)
Things I Like:
Explorations of platonic intimacy, in all forms but especially involving sci-fi or fantastical elements (possession, mind-melding, telepathic communication, neural links between a spaceship and its crew, etc). As an ace person, I really enjoy when intimacy is allowed to be very intense but not sexual, and especially when things get a little weird with it! I like the whole range of feelings about it, too, from intensely positive to uncomfortable but cathartic to Intimacy As Horror. Relatedly, love me an intense platonic relationship that's allowed to have depth and complexity, or a nebulous "whatever those two have going on" relationship that defies easy categorization, or when a platonic relationship gets a little codependent and fucked up. I also just like it when characters are friends!
I love aspec portrayals of characters, especially ace ones! Explorations of aspec identities as expressions of autonomy really get me; I love when characters realize they are allowed to Not Want something, even and especially if they don't have a concept of asexuality or aromanticism as identities. I also really enjoy queer solidarity and expressions of support between characters with different identities.
I like explorations of disability, whether it's temporary or permanent. Caretaking and recovery can be a really interesting lens for exploring character relationships, intimacy, and autonomy. Also it's really fun to take away one of a character's default skills and see how they navigate a situation without being able to rely on what they usually do. This also ties into my enjoyment of whump and hurt/comfort; I like it when characters get hurt, but I want to see the consequences!
In terms of themes/structure, I love casefic, missing scenes, post-canon stories, and character exploration. I like bringing background characters into the spotlight (especially if they're women), and one of my favorite things is setting up a problem that seems like it requires a specific Protagonist Skillset and making characters who don't have that skillset solve it. I also really enjoy the juxtaposition of fantastical elements and big dramatic circumstances with small mundane concerns: mending clothes during the apocalypse, packing bug spray when you go on a doomed expedition to the evil woods, worrying about how the magical calamity befalling your city is going to affect your insurance policy. Domesticity not as fluff but as the everyday details of life that go on no matter what else is happening.
Format-wise, I'm a sucker for weird and unusual narrative formats, including epistolary, use of in-universe documents, poetry, non-standard pov choices, inclusion of paratexts and footnotes . . . all kinds of stuff! If that isn't your jam I also love more standard stories, but if you've been looking for an excuse to try something less conventional, you have my blessing to go wild!
Fandom-specific prompts and thoughts:
Mob Psycho 100:
There are so many good friendships in this show and I love all of them! Also, even more than usual this is a fandom where you could make basically any character aspec and I would clap and cheer (though I have thoughts on some interpretations I'm especially fond of below). This fandom is great for casefic, and I especially love characters without psychic powers coming in clutch in situations where you'd expect psychic powers to be necessary.
The fact that Mob and Tsubomi become proper friends after she rejects him is SO important to me! Any post-canon exploration of that would be great. Maybe she comes back to visit, or Mob ends up near her new city on a job, or she experiences some kind of haunting of her own and asks him for advice. What's it like for the two of them to be comfortable as friends when people are still making jokes and assumptions that any boy Tsubomi spends time with must be a romantic interest? How do they navigate developing their friendship when Mob still has his crush on her? I really enjoy aspec Tsubomi headcanons so would be really happy to see that incorporated.
Dimple is one of my favorite MP100 characters and I really just want to see him be appreciated! He cares about people and they care about him! I like to see him being helpful and I especially like to see other characters expressing care and appreciation for him. The Mob and Dimple friendship is SO central to the show and I can never get enough of it. I love Dimple protecting Tome in the spin-off manga. And I have a LOT of feelings about the Dimple and Reigen relationship: how they come to care about each other because they both care about Mob, how they're honest with each other in a way they aren't with other characters, how (especially when Serizawa isn't around) they're really the two adult characters in a show about children and they take that responsibility seriously. I also love queerplatonic Reigen and Dimple and aspec stuff with them ("But does love require sexual desire?" the throwaway line that I will never let go of.) Some things I really like to see in Dimple fics include Possession As Intimacy, Dimple possessing an injured character to stabilize them or manage their pain, and Dimple being cared for (I think people wildly underutilize the possibility of ghost whump).
The rest of my requested relationships focus on Tome, my dearest beloved, the weirdgirl ever. I am always hungry for more Tome content, with either the other S&S folks or with her friends (both the Telepathy Club and her group of high school girl friends from the spinoff). Maybe something with Tome and some of her friends getting up to shenanigans and ending up in over their heads, especially if Tome is able to save the day herself even without psychic powers. Or a Tome-centric casefic where she gets to be clever and resourceful and contribute something that the adults/espers couldn't. Also, I think that Tome and any of her guys friends (I'm thinking Mob or Inukawa primarily) would be great candidates for my favorite trope that no one writes: Actually Fake Dating, where characters have to pretend to be dating due to plot circumstances despite not having any romantic feelings for each other. And then they continue to not have any romantic feelings for each other but maybe the experience brings them closer as friends.
Fandom-specific DNWs: giving psychic powers to characters who don't have them in canon, Mogami trauma
Imperial Radch:
Prompts and Ideas: Really love the weird nebulous queerplatonic Thing that Breq and Seivarden and Mercy of Kalr have going on by the end of the trilogy! Would love some further exploration of that dynamic. Seeing how it continues to develop after Ancillary Mercy or some outsider pov trying to figure out what's going on there (and probably failing) or the other two teaming up to find Breq some new songs. Alternatively: cousins :) Gimme all the weird AI-to-AI gossip.
Lord of the Rings:
DNWs: No noncanonical romantic relationships (unless they're there to make a point about amatonormativity), no AU settings (canon-divergence is okay except for LotR)
Things I Like:
Explorations of platonic intimacy, in all forms but especially involving sci-fi or fantastical elements (possession, mind-melding, telepathic communication, neural links between a spaceship and its crew, etc). As an ace person, I really enjoy when intimacy is allowed to be very intense but not sexual, and especially when things get a little weird with it! I like the whole range of feelings about it, too, from intensely positive to uncomfortable but cathartic to Intimacy As Horror. Relatedly, love me an intense platonic relationship that's allowed to have depth and complexity, or a nebulous "whatever those two have going on" relationship that defies easy categorization, or when a platonic relationship gets a little codependent and fucked up. I also just like it when characters are friends!
I love aspec portrayals of characters, especially ace ones! Explorations of aspec identities as expressions of autonomy really get me; I love when characters realize they are allowed to Not Want something, even and especially if they don't have a concept of asexuality or aromanticism as identities. I also really enjoy queer solidarity and expressions of support between characters with different identities.
I like explorations of disability, whether it's temporary or permanent. Caretaking and recovery can be a really interesting lens for exploring character relationships, intimacy, and autonomy. Also it's really fun to take away one of a character's default skills and see how they navigate a situation without being able to rely on what they usually do. This also ties into my enjoyment of whump and hurt/comfort; I like it when characters get hurt, but I want to see the consequences!
In terms of themes/structure, I love casefic, missing scenes, post-canon stories, and character exploration. I like bringing background characters into the spotlight (especially if they're women), and one of my favorite things is setting up a problem that seems like it requires a specific Protagonist Skillset and making characters who don't have that skillset solve it. I also really enjoy the juxtaposition of fantastical elements and big dramatic circumstances with small mundane concerns: mending clothes during the apocalypse, packing bug spray when you go on a doomed expedition to the evil woods, worrying about how the magical calamity befalling your city is going to affect your insurance policy. Domesticity not as fluff but as the everyday details of life that go on no matter what else is happening.
Format-wise, I'm a sucker for weird and unusual narrative formats, including epistolary, use of in-universe documents, poetry, non-standard pov choices, inclusion of paratexts and footnotes . . . all kinds of stuff! If that isn't your jam I also love more standard stories, but if you've been looking for an excuse to try something less conventional, you have my blessing to go wild!
Fandom-specific prompts and thoughts:
Mob Psycho 100:
There are so many good friendships in this show and I love all of them! Also, even more than usual this is a fandom where you could make basically any character aspec and I would clap and cheer (though I have thoughts on some interpretations I'm especially fond of below). This fandom is great for casefic, and I especially love characters without psychic powers coming in clutch in situations where you'd expect psychic powers to be necessary.
The fact that Mob and Tsubomi become proper friends after she rejects him is SO important to me! Any post-canon exploration of that would be great. Maybe she comes back to visit, or Mob ends up near her new city on a job, or she experiences some kind of haunting of her own and asks him for advice. What's it like for the two of them to be comfortable as friends when people are still making jokes and assumptions that any boy Tsubomi spends time with must be a romantic interest? How do they navigate developing their friendship when Mob still has his crush on her? I really enjoy aspec Tsubomi headcanons so would be really happy to see that incorporated.
Dimple is one of my favorite MP100 characters and I really just want to see him be appreciated! He cares about people and they care about him! I like to see him being helpful and I especially like to see other characters expressing care and appreciation for him. The Mob and Dimple friendship is SO central to the show and I can never get enough of it. I love Dimple protecting Tome in the spin-off manga. And I have a LOT of feelings about the Dimple and Reigen relationship: how they come to care about each other because they both care about Mob, how they're honest with each other in a way they aren't with other characters, how (especially when Serizawa isn't around) they're really the two adult characters in a show about children and they take that responsibility seriously. I also love queerplatonic Reigen and Dimple and aspec stuff with them ("But does love require sexual desire?" the throwaway line that I will never let go of.) Some things I really like to see in Dimple fics include Possession As Intimacy, Dimple possessing an injured character to stabilize them or manage their pain, and Dimple being cared for (I think people wildly underutilize the possibility of ghost whump).
The rest of my requested relationships focus on Tome, my dearest beloved, the weirdgirl ever. I am always hungry for more Tome content, with either the other S&S folks or with her friends (both the Telepathy Club and her group of high school girl friends from the spinoff). Maybe something with Tome and some of her friends getting up to shenanigans and ending up in over their heads, especially if Tome is able to save the day herself even without psychic powers. Or a Tome-centric casefic where she gets to be clever and resourceful and contribute something that the adults/espers couldn't. Also, I think that Tome and any of her guys friends (I'm thinking Mob or Inukawa primarily) would be great candidates for my favorite trope that no one writes: Actually Fake Dating, where characters have to pretend to be dating due to plot circumstances despite not having any romantic feelings for each other. And then they continue to not have any romantic feelings for each other but maybe the experience brings them closer as friends.
Fandom-specific DNWs: giving psychic powers to characters who don't have them in canon, Mogami trauma
Imperial Radch:
Prompts and Ideas: Really love the weird nebulous queerplatonic Thing that Breq and Seivarden and Mercy of Kalr have going on by the end of the trilogy! Would love some further exploration of that dynamic. Seeing how it continues to develop after Ancillary Mercy or some outsider pov trying to figure out what's going on there (and probably failing) or the other two teaming up to find Breq some new songs. Alternatively: cousins :) Gimme all the weird AI-to-AI gossip.
Lord of the Rings:
Prompts and Ideas: There are so many great platonic relationships in LotR but I'm not here for any of the big ones: I want the Conspirator who stayed home and also various minor women.
Ioreth, the busybody of a healer woman in Minas Tirith, has always delighted me. Would love something with her and the unnamed friend she's talking to at the coronation, or one of the other healers, or just an OC who hasn't experienced any of this directly and now gets to have everything explained to her in long and rambling detail.
For Frodo and Lobelia, I'm especially interested in their relationship post-Quest when they're both kind of miserable and broken but trying to help the Shire as best they can. What is it like for her to finally be appreciated and cared for by the people around her, and to care about the community instead of just herself? Do she and Frodo feel a kinship while everyone else is trying to rebuild and celebrate and they just feel lost and broken? What do they talk about when she hands Bag End back over to him? Something silly from before Frodo left where she's just the funny Annoying Relative is fine too!
And I love the Conspiracy so much, for for Merry and Fredegar I really like to think about Merry introducing him to the Conspiracy and the planning period where they were figuring things out and being Very Secretive about it. It's just such a shenanigans-filled period and I really enjoy contemplating it. Frodo and Fredegar are interesting because Fredegar was canonically one of his closest friends before he left on the Quest but we know almost nothing about their relationship. A fun lacuna to contemplate!
Fandom-specific DNW: nothing from movie canon, please! Just stick to the books. Also no canon-divergence AUs for this one.
