#i think hacking spells would be a super neat concept

[barbielezbian]

Last minute read Spellhacker by M.K. England (you may recognize them from The Disasters!) And wow!!!!! Obsessed with this magic system; having the different strains and having to weave them in different combinations was a really cool idea. Plus I love that these were "criminals" at the beginning. There were some twists I saw and some I didn't- the end was an insane epic proportion. Some thing fell short - the end handled the romance weirdly, some stuff didn't make sense (scientifically and otherwise), etc. But! Very great diversity and struggle and realistic anger, still a very neat read!!

[princegabriel]

Dear Rule 63 Writer

Welcome to the party, pal!

For this particular exchange, since I’ve been fortunate lately to have found and consumed media that mostly has gender dynamics I like, I’m mostly interested in seeing “the further adventures of character A and character B” except that one or both of them has a different gender. Doesn’t mean I don’t think anything would change about them, and I don’t mean to stifle your creativity, it’s just that there’s no specific Thing I want to see w/r/t gender. 

Here are some general things I really like:

Matter-of-fact declarations of love/friendship.

People being productive while pining–either acknowledging their feelings but realizing they still have important things to do, or straight up burying the feelings in work.

Women And Nonbinary People Getting Stuff Done

Fake dating

Black comedy

Silly comedy and bad puns

Conversely, people being very extra and having THE MOST feelings, in the style of 19th century romance

Stories where STUFF happens due mostly to people just being people

Places with secrets

Game narratives, as in, the MC(s) are playing some kind of immersive, fantastical, high-stakes game. See: The Game of Sunken Places, Doctor Who: The Ghost Monument. IDK how that would apply here, but they are neat and if you come up with a concept that you think would work, I bet it would be cool!

I know I didn’t put this in my sign-up, but here are some general DNWs:

Rape/dubcon/torture porn

Major character death

Tooth injuries

Misgendering

Characters’ defining characteristic being “in love with this person”

Unrequested non canonical ships

Diet talk

A/B/O dynamics

Any bodily waste products being used for sex

Unrequested AUs

Now for the specifics:

1. The Magnus Archives

Rating: G-M

Ships: F!Gerard Keay & Gertrude Robinson, Sasha James/F!Tim Stoker, F!Robert Montauk & Julia Montauk, F!Michael "Mike" Crew & Jude Perry, F!Adelard Dekker/Gertrude Robinson, F!Trevor Herbert & Julia Montauk

I love Gertrude Robinson very much. She’s a stone-cold badass and I love how straightforward she is when it comes to resolving some problems (just blow up the building where the ritual is, duh) and how sneaky her approach is to other problems (”why the tape recorders, you ask? well, I'm just an old-fashioned lady, haha!”). 

I’m a big fan of her mentorship with Gerry, and how she is explicitly not a mother figure. Like she has more experience and Gerry is a baby but they’re colleagues, really. I wouldn’t mind Gerry having some complicated feelings regarding Gertrude as a surrogate parental figure, though. I love Gerry being whip-smart and capable but still lacking in things that come from a healthy upbringing (you know, where one of your parents doesn’t murder the other and then recruit you into their spooky magic plots).

I’ve chosen to extrapolate from the bits and pieces we get that Gertrude and Adelard are the kind of close friends where even if they don’t speak for years they know where they stand with each other and can pick right back up. Of course, we also know that Gertrude didn’t let very many people get close to her, so there’s a pretty wide spectrum of possibility in there. In the case of a romantic relationship, I think Gertrude would not really want to talk about it while Adelard would. I also like how Adelard is characterized as terse and efficient in the “Distant Cousin” episode but more poetic in letters and statements to Gertrude. 

Sasha/Tim is just cute. I’d love to read more of their banter, maybe see them working closely together while researching a statement, or see what they’re like outside of work. I’d rather this be set during season 1 or earlier, or have an AU where Sasha doesn’t get got by the Not-Them. There are some lovely fics where Tim is trying to figure out how accurate his memories of Sasha really are, but they are very sad and I can’t read them all the time.

Oohoohoo, Julia Montauk. I love Julia Montauk. She goes from having a seemingly normal childhood to her mom disappearing, but that’s okay because her remaining parent takes good care of her, then that rug gets pulled out from under her, and everything is wrong. And she really tries to be normal, and then Trevor saves her and not only is normal not really an option any more, weird and horrible is so much more fulfilling. 

I’m not a big serial killer fan, but Robert Montauk is just trying to keep Julia safe in a world that is so much worse. How do you do that, how do you kill that many people, after losing your wife, and still come home to your kid and make sure she’s safe and happy and has no idea what you do when you say you’re going to work?

And then there’s Trevor Herbert—homeless, recovering from addiction, and risking incarceration and worse because there are things out there that people don’t understand that can and will kill them. Trevor Herbert, who saves and inadvertently adopts an adult to form a little monster-killer family.

Mike Crew and Jude Perry: I just really like the idea of their being buds and hanging out or comparing stories of tormenting innocent people. Or maybe they have a weird symbiotic relationship—how do the Desolation and the Vast relate to each other? Are they rivals? Or do they have their own (Leitner) book club?

In terms of changing names, the only one I’d feel super weird about keeping the same is Robert—could be shortened or turned into Roberta, whatever works.

2. The Penumbra Podcast

Ah yes, my one-stop gender shop. I love the way this show approaches gender and sexuality, that even if characters don’t spell out theirs (which I think only happens once, with Jet), we can usually assume they’re not both straight and cis. Also, despite the show being a noir/scifi story set hundreds of years in the future, it feels very realistic w/r/t identity and personal interactions. Fandom-specific DNW: coming out. One of my favorite things about Penumbra is that everyone just knows everyone else’s pronouns. It’s not that people can’t or don’t realize their gender identity or sexuality later in life—they do even in the show, it’s just that I like the way canon covers it so much that I’m all set.

Rating: G-M

Ships: Juno Steel & NB!Rita, Buddy Aurinko & F!Jet Sikuliaq, F!Peter Nureyev/F!Juno Steel

I love Juno’s and Rita’s friendship so much. Would love to see them working together, especially after the events of Soul of the People, when Juno finally, explicitly starts treating her better. I love seeing characters getting to exercise their competence, so Rita’s hacking combined with Juno’s detective skills: *chef’s kiss.* Are they solving a case? Are they working a heist? Is it a heist that turns into a case?? Alternately, maybe they’re just hanging out. Juno needs a better work/life balance, and Rita’s a lot better at that. 

Buddy and Jet are also very much friendship goals. I love how Jet has Buddy’s back no matter what, which definitely includes calling her out when she’s doing something destructive, and Buddy loves and appreciates Jet for that. They know each other and accept each other, but they also grow and change together. Meeting when they were both in a really unsteady place could have helped that. I’d love to see one of them comforting the other during a difficult time, or doing a job together either before or during season 3.

Peter/Juno: I mean. This is my jam. Maybe something set during season 1 that plays up the thief/detective dynamic? Maybe something set during season 3 when they’re trying to navigate their relationship in a healthy way when they’re both simultaneously terrified and also just want to make out already? Pairing specific DNW: please please please no Peter alone in the hotel room at the end of or just after Final Resting Place.

Rating E:

Peter/Juno: I mean. This is my jam. Everything above applies here. Smut likes: praise kink, frottage, masturbation, phone sex, teasing, edging, sex when the characters are def supposed to be doing something else, sex in public places where other people probably can’t actually see them but it *feels* risqué.

3. Wolf 359

Ship: F!Daniel Jacobi/F!Warren Kepler

GOOD SHIP. The trust. The loyalty. The King Lear quote when they meet! I love the rare occasion when Kepler lets Jacobi in. I love how they try to let each other know how they feel through actions rather than words. I’d love another time-out from the job like in Mission Mishaps: No Complaints, or a high-stakes situation where they have to defuse a bomb or blow something up, or something in between.

Thanks for writing for me! I hope you have fun with this!