#ive always cherished stories that focused on the relationship between two characters

[devine-fem]

Understand that I am crazy and then read: This game changed what I thought games could be. This changed what I thought Batman could be, what the Batman and Jokers relationship could be. The take on them and making Joker a glorified Robin, showing the player the absolute tragedy that is their relationship, showing me how desperate and gross either side can become. Like Bruce has to prove to himself that what he’s doing, his code and his way is right and the Joker is the product of that… he’s the product of all of this - HIS CHARACTER is THAT. I was never the same after this, this rewired my brain. This will forever rival any Batman depiction I ever see. I’m new after this in the way that I have to mourn the person I once was before playing this. Call it a ship, a game, or a superhero story - I call this art. I’m gonna sit here for the next few months being upset at the fact that now that I’ve played this I’ll never find anything else like it.

[theunconcernedembalmer]

what’s the issue with elisop? is it just bc you hc aesop as ace? im so concerned by seeing ppl adamantly opposed to mlm/wlw ships but im also genuinely curious about why you dislike it and other lgbt ships so much lol

hmm. that is a strong accusation, n i find it just a bit odd. are you new here? or perhaps you are taking personal offense at my dislike towards a favourite ship of yours and using the lgbt argument as moral high ground?

whatever the case may be, i thank you for asking. if u r truly looking for an answer, its below the cut n it is very very long. mind u these are all my personal opinions n i am in no way policing how others enjoy ships. just in case this wasnt clear; i dont wish to start discourse on this blog, especially since my takes are probably... unpopular.

firstly i would like to address the “disliking lgbt ships” bit, because this has very strong implications in itself. i have nothing against lgbt ships. i enjoy them, even. if the two characters have chemistry between each other, i ship it. however, the moment characterization is broken for the sake of romance, i lose interest. this is generally my stance on ships in general, n this applies for both straight n lgbt ships. 

the ships themselves are fine. however, i do have issues with the ship dynamics, so ill let u in on that.

i want to touch on mlm ships in particular; i believe u are familiar with the top/bottom dynamic that is rampant in these kinds of ships? (i wont deny that this dynamic can be found in other types of ships, but for arguments sake i will be focusing on gay ships because i feel that this occurs more commonly here) its such a popular dynamic that is prone to stripping the personality from one if not both characters, only for them to be reduced to being dominant/submissive. for a character to be pigeonholed into a stereotypical category based on... preferred sexual positions? its just downright insulting, never mind the larger more problematic implications of it. top/bottom is not indicative of someones personality, by the way. flattening multi dimensional characters into these stereotypes is so so so insulting.

unfortunately this is The Most Popular portrayal of just about any gay ship around. ive seen it being used everywhere in so many fandoms n it just about becomes apparent to me that ppl come to stories looking for a Ship. not the stories, nor the characters, just a ship. while id like to say theres nothing wrong with that, keep in mind not everyone is just looking for 2 characters that look pretty next to each other. if i ship something, i see interesting n meaningful interactions between 2 characters, which is so often not the case once u bring in the top/bottom dynamic. why is it so popular? because somehow this is what ppl like from a gay ship n hence it sells. ppl want the drama, characterizations be damned. ppl want to see the big kiss that happens in the end, n maybe the sexy parts that come after. characterizations be damned.

so u can say im a little wary of gay ships when they cross my feed. hell, as a joseph aesop shipper i see this trope everywhere n im pretty disappointed as well. small tangent but i feel like this is the reason why zh0ngli n ch1lde is so popular in g3nshin. i try to see the appeal, i really do, but after a long while of analyzing their respective characters i dont think they have as much chemistry as ppl think they do. dont even get me started on how incredibly ooc they make either of these very interesting n unique characters in ship portrayals. all because of the top/bottom dynamic that ppl want to see. i say this for that particular ship, but this is pretty much the case for a lot of ships out there, n the latter part is painfully true even when the 2 characters do have potential between each other. ill say it again im disgusted by the blatant disrespect to the characterizations if all ppl ever want is 2 pretty puppets to mush lips together. cos thats what theyre essentially reduced to this way.

n its so obvious to see when an artist subscribes to this rhetoric, because u can so clearly see it in the way they draw their characters. the “top” generally has sharper features to go with their “dominating personality”, while the “bottom” has disturbingly softer, feminine, dare i say sometimes child like features “to submit”. n thats where the uwu soft gay trope comes from, i believe. which, in case u still dont know, i hate with a burning passion.

so again for ppl with impaired reading comprehension, im fine with ships, including lgbt ones, but the moment u break characterization for the sake of the ship, im not that okay with it. u want to do it for a short crack comic? fine. but if thats the only way ur portraying the 2 characters then im immediately wary of ur content. ill still look at it cos usually the art is really good, but im very very wary. so im not “adamantly opposed”, just very critical of how the ships are being portrayed. if other ppl want to enjoy their ships like that, sure. just dont expect me to join in on something i dont agree on.

.

now id like to address not shipping “because i hc aesop as ace”. for ppl who are new to the blog (hello there), im an ace in a romantic relationship, so thats definitely not the reason i dont ship elisop. its more of being in a relationship has largely shaped my views towards romance as a whole. even before i met my boyfriend, i hated the romance genre in stories n media. most of it comes off as incredibly forced, especially those love triangles they seem to love putting into teen novels. thats one reason why i stopped reading when i was younger, but i digress.

did i partake in shipping when i was younger? i did. for a gay ship too (if anyone really wants to know, its kurotsukki from haikyuu. at least this was one that i can remember, i was mostly working on my 20 odd ocs for the longest time). i also used to write little short romance ficlets that i never posted anywhere cos i hated (n still do hate) my writing. but writing romance when u dont have experience was really just a way of projecting n probably a way of coping for myself, not that i knew at that time. but after i actually started a relationship with my boyfriend (whom i love n cherish a lot thank u very much), i began to see how much all these have skewed my views towards romance n have actually done some harm to our relationship. the bullshit that the general media feeds u constantly doesnt help in the slightest either.

quick topic shift to elisop in particular (about time, right?). i already stated that i only ship characters if i sense chemistry between the two personalities, n if u have seen the part where i dont ship elisop then u must have seen how agonized i am over not being able to have a concrete personality for eli. that is the main problem i have with elisop: eli does not feel like a solid character to me. n that is a huge problem, because if he doesnt have any defining characteristics besides being mild n nice, then he can be whoever i want him to be. (i have done this in my exorcist comics, i will admit this. n the fact that i can just do that... it really does not sit well with me personally.)

n that is dangerous.

back to young me doing lil ship things. i think its also pretty safe to say when u really do ship 2 characters, chances are u kinda really relate very very hard to at least one of them. that very quickly can turn into projecting, n shipping therefore is not “exploring the relationship between 2 characters” n it becomes “my preferred dating simulator 101″. of course this isnt always the case, but at least it was for me, n subconsciously it might be for lots of ppl too. n since this is ur mental playground, u call the shots, n there is no consequences if u slightly (or even entirely) alter one or both personalities to fit ur desired narrative. n u wouldnt even notice or know, cos ur blind to ur own biasness.

we bring our perceived notions into real life, im sure u know that. so when ur partner does not become that perfect knight in shining armour, or when they get upset at things that u do (which is a very normal thing by the way), n u think (very subconsciously), That isnt what my otp would do, something is wrong here (nothing is wrong, actually its just ur skewed perception of a stable romantic relationship). why wouldnt ur otp do this? because u are both halves of ur otps, there is no hidden secrets between them (apart from the pining part but thats irrelevant), n again they have been altered to fit ur preferred narrative. 

a real relationship requires a lot of communication between parties, because newsflash, liking someone doesnt mean that u have to like every single thing they do, they will make mistakes n it will hurt u, n guess what, the reverse is also true. if u do go with absoutely anything that they would do with 0 objections whatsoever, ur not crushing on someone, ur idolizing them, n that power imbalance is detrimental to a relationship. these things are not obvious to ppl, especially when the whole climate is hell bent on getting into romantic relationships by a certain age or some bullshit. communication is key n is pretty much the only way to solve relationship issues, because the other person has a lot that u r not seeing n vice versa. as similar as 2 ppl can be, i doubt u can have 100% the same thoughts on all things. i dont make the rules.

so in ur mental playground u focus on the fluffy parts, maybe there is communication, but rarely is there any meaningful conflict. thats unrealistic, n if u bring that mindset to an actual relationship, thats not going to end well. i say meaningful conflict, because yes, generally u shouldnt have conflicts with ur significant other. but inevitably when ur with each other for long enough, u will realize that there are habits that u must change in order to be with the other person. habits that are harmful to the other person directly, or harmful habits towards yourself that indirectly harm the other person. these are meaningful in a sense that if left alone, it will manifest into larger problems that will harm u, the other person n the relationship as a whole. its meaningful to the relationship.

all these is made even worse if ur neurodivergent. maladaptive coping practices, self sabotaging behaviours, inherent disabilities. all these must be adjusted n addressed. im so incredibly thankful for my boyfriend for being incredibly patient with me when working all these out, n it has not been easy for me to work on myself n all my problems, n im still not done working on them. this aspect is often not explored in romance in general (or properly), n there is a very good chance i would have still been stuck in the unhealthy mindset of “this isnt like my otp, maybe we’re not meant to be”. because loving someone is a choice. no one is made for each other, it is a conscious choice made between 2 ppl to make things work. this is how arranged marriages work, i am told, n i do see the appeal, not that it actually does appeal to me culturally.

special mention to the kurotsukki ship, cos from there i found a very, very good fic that explored their relationship before n after getting together, n it actually showed aspects of this problem in the incredibly slow burn of (at that time) 20+ chapters. it was just one fic (n a very good one at that, i believe it was called Leviticus), but it had a lesson i never thought i needed to learn, n learn it i did, with a lot of help from my dear. 

this is also probably the reason why i dont really want to delve too much into romance now. i know its a lot of work, n everything (mostly) that the media feeds u is really false advertising, but ppl eat that shit up n so it remains one of the most popular genres to date. im just very wary that if i do start on a romantic story, i want to be able to show it in a way like that fic did, the truths of relationships, because i dont want to make something that sells, i want to make something that meaningful to me, if a little indulgent. n that also includes being very careful in how the respective characterizations will change in a relationship. almost too careful now that i think about it, but its not something that i mind. i was never one for romance from the start, n now im very careful about shipping because of what happened to me persoanlly.

okay enough about me, lets talk about aesop. in any au u put the character in, the essence of the character must remain despite the change in environment. so lets say we have ur typical modern au. dead mom, check. shitty mentor doing illegal stuff? also check. autistic boy with social anxiety? we’re good to go. all these have implications on aesop as a character, n while ppl are aware of this, again the way they go about portraying it can go, in my personal opinion, very wrong. ppl who immediately woobify aesop completely because he has autism annoy me. ppl who reduce him to uwu soft boi cos he has social anxiety do not know how the disorder really works n as someone who has that i hate it to the core. ppl who do all these for the sake of ship have lost my respect. its insulting.

remember the top/bottom dynamic? not that elisop is completely free from that (even if i dont know much about eli, to put him in either one of those stereotypes feels very insulting to his character. i wont even say anything about doing it to aesop its so upsetting), but its not entirely made up of either. but now i want to introduce another trope i am very wary of, which is “i can fix him”. im sure u guys have seen the meme going around poking fun at this trope (for those who havent, its along the lines of “u can fix him? well i can be his worst nightmare”) n no doubt yall would have seen it n gotten sick of it in some forced hetero romantic bullshit. we have one damsel in distress with a saviour that solves all their problems just by existing n being romo with each other.

remember “my preferred dating simulator 101″? this is not mutually exclusive n from my point of view this is dangerously close to this trope. lets be real, if it was actually a thing that all ur deep rooted trauma magically disappears if someone were to waltz into ur life, we would want it. definitely. no painfully dissecting ur own problems n constantly facing them head on. real life states that this is not the case, but it will not stop us from dreaming. n so this trope is born n lives n will go on.

(finally) pulling aesop n eli into this, at least in my mind, u have one severely traumatized boy with lots of issues n u have this. nice mild guy who can be anything u want him to be. i hope u can see where im going with this, n thats the direction i see some elisop heading towards (i dont read a lot of elisop to be fair). if u came from my eli character talk, i mentioned that it is incredibly one sided. this is exactly what im talking about.

putting it all together in case u havent already, aesop is the damsel in distress, whose problems magically disappear because of elis godly kindness n little to no work on improving himself, n they lived happily n gayly ever after.

can u tell how much that does not appeal to me. 

never mind the butchering of character that inevitably happens somewhere somehow, the unrealistically perfect themes n implications of this trope makes me so viscerally uncomfortable. this is, of course, due to personal reasons, n i definitely see the appeal of this dynamic because i would probably have been interested in this once upon a time as well. but as i am now, with everything i have explained up there n everything i have been through, i would politely rather not.

n its difficult to think of another dynamic, because of how little i know about eli apart from him being this saint, which easily makes him a candidate for being aesops trauma panacea. never mind aesop rarely, if ever, does anything for eli as a character in return, n its so damaging to buy into this rhetoric, where a person like this who would solve all ur issues no strings attached exists somewhere in the world. they really dont. a relationship has to be mutually benefitting, or it will be draining n disastrous. maybe u say, Oh its nice to imagine it once in a while. n yeah, i agree, except once in a while is a little difficult to keep track of n that is sort of what happened to me. id rather stay as far away as possible from this kind of unrealistic fantasy, i just got this shit sorted out with myself n my boyfriend.

i have some other reasons, but theyre more personally problematic, so i wont go into them here. but this is mostly n generally why i do not ship elisop romantically. if u do, u do u, and have fun, but again dont expect me to join u. thank u for coming to my ted talk, this took a lot longer than expected.

[laughingpinecone]

Yuletide letter

I am laughingpineapple on AO3  

Hello dear author! I hope you’ll have fun with our match. Feel free to draw from general or fandom-specific likes, past letters, and/or follow your heart.

Likes: worldbuilding, slice of life (especially if the event the fic focuses on is made up but canon-specific), missing moments, 5+1 and similar formats, bonding and emotional support/intimacy, physical intimacy, lingering touches, loyalty, casefic, surrealism, magical realism, established relationships, future fic (when in doubt, tell me what’s happening to them five, ten, twenty years in the future!), hurt/comfort, throwing characters into non-canon environments, banter, functional relationships between dysfunctional individuals, unexplained mysteries, bittersweet moods, journal/epistolary fic, dreams and memories and identities, tropey plots that are already close enough to characters/canon, outsider POV, UST, resolved UST, exploring the ~deep lore, leaning on the uniqueness of the canon setting/mood, found families, characters reuniting after a long and/or harrowing time, friends-to-lovers, road trips, maps, mutual pining, cuddling, wintry moods, the feeling of flannel and other fabrics, ridiculous concepts played entirely straight, sensory details, places being haunted, people being haunted, the mystery of the woods, small hopes in bleak worlds, electricity, places that don’t quite add up, mismatched memories, caves and deep places, distant city lights at night, emphasis on non-human traits of non-human characters (gen-wise, but also a hearty yes xeno for applicable ships), emphasis on inhuman traits of characters who were human once and have sort of shed it all behind

Cool with: any tense, any pov, any rating, plotty, not plotty, IF, unrequested characters popping up.

DNW: non-canonical rape, non-canonical children, focus on children, unrequested ships (background established canon couples are okay, mentions of parents are okay!), canon retellings, consent issues, actual covid (fantasy plagues are okay)

Les Cités Obscures: any

This is a very general “please, anything in the style of canon, just maybe with less thoughtless sexism” request. I want to lose myself in these cities again, and in the strange lands that connect them. I’d be happy to follow any of the known characters and/or OCs, or eschew characters altogether and write about the cities themselves. What caught your imagination in Brüsel, Xhystos, Taxandria, Alaxis...? The history of some cool building that was only marginally featured in one of the stories? Or an OC city! If you’ve got a favourite European city that doesn’t already have its obscure counterpart, please tell me all about it! Go big, go wild! What strange and classically surrealist happenings take place within its walls? Or even... outside Europe... Nerding out about architecture is of course very welcome. I would also love to read a story based on any Schuiten illustration, contextualizing it as if it were part of this ‘verse. Here’s a bunch of them, for example!

Ghost Trick: Cabanela

You know.. him. Dazzlingly OTT, untiring, rock-solid self-esteem, loyal to a fault, following a rhythm of his own, flawless intuition until it fails and it all burns down… him. I just want to see more of him doing stuff! The way he’s chill and open toward new people (like Sissel and Missile in ch15) makes him perfect to throw at most other characters and see how they react to the sparkles… I’d love some focus on how ridiculous his aesthetic is, half Saturday Night Fever half hardboiled detective half bubbly preteen (for a total of 150%) and yet he makes it work. Or how ruthless he can be, possibly for the sake of the people he cares for. The quote “The intimacy of big parties”. Him and Alma in the new timeline bonding over knowing (once Jowd has spilled the beans) but not remembering that terrible timeline. Some tropey scenario on the job. Snark-offs with Pigeon Man, by which I mean PM snarks and it bounces off him like water off a spotless white goose’s back.

Ship-wise it’s only Cabanela/Jowd whenever it’s not infidelity, Cabanela/Alma in what-ifs also if it’s not infidelity and Cabanela/Alma/Jowd for me (and Lynne/Memry and Yomiel/fianSissel on the side). There are a bunch of shippy prompts in all my past letters - I would however reiterate here that Jowd. is. the worst tease. always. Like, just saying, but assume he’s pining big time and Jowd and Alma figure it out - they’d make a national sport out of excruciatingly protracted teasing.

Conversely, Cabanela/Lynne and Cabanela/Yomiel are NOTPs especially from Cabanela’s side. So while I appreciate the thick tension of a good Yomiel VS Cabanela confrontation like everyone and their cat, and also really appreciate a roughed-up Cabanela, and I do love Yomiel in his own right… I don’t want Cabanela being into it. Adrenaline junkie he may be but this hurts and his coat’s a mess and there’s no perfect winning scenario so he hates every second of it. (JOWD being super into Cabanela being roughed up is another matter altogether and he should probably mind his own business. ...incompatible kinks, truly tragic. they’ll have to find some other common ground. they’re smart, resourceful, playful fellows, I’m sure they’ll manage)

Kentucky Route Zero: Donald kentuckyroutezero

I love everyone in the cast, all acts and interludes, and I am extremely into all the themes this incredible work of art ended up exploring. Agreeing with the overall doom and gloom up to Act IV, I was blown away by Act V’s strong affirmation of the importance of the arts and of the bonds we make and of carving up spaces for ourselves in capitalism’s wake. Donald was, indeed, not a part of any of that. Even the final interlude updates us on Lula and mentions Joseph, but the big guy is nowhere to be seen. So, you know, there’s fanfiction! He’s so static, defeated. I am fascinated by the chain of metaphysical spaces that goes surface -> Zero -> Echo -> Dogwood and even within that framework, the hall of the mountain king is like a hopeless dead end. Dude’s terminally stuck. So - once again, in the spirit of transformative works, how could he get... you know... unstuck? Did Lula’s momentous appearance in Act III shake him? Having a functioning Xanadu again, perhaps? How could he interrogate that oracle, what recursive wonders would it show him? If he decides to leave, what does it feel to be on the surface again after so long, or on the river perhaps? Maybe he is forced to leave by the flood, if not this one, the next... Having him meet any other character would be amazing. Past or future time spent with Weaver... seeing Conway again, changed... programmer guy chatting up musician androids... did he know Carrington from his college days or was Carrington only a friend of Lula’s?

As for Lula herself and Joseph too: “Flipping through the pages, Conway is able to gather that it’s a story about three characters: Joseph, Donald, and Lula. It’s something like a tragic love triangle, but much more complex. Some kind of tangled, painfully concave love polygon.” 😔 I ship them as a full triad, if you can nudge them in that direction, good. But I’m very open to non-romantic resolutions as well, going past their messy feelings to find each other as friends after so many years maybe. Or... a start. idk.

I’d be interested in fic that leans on the game’s adjacent genres: wanna go full-on American Gothic? Dip into surrealism? Take a leaf from Twin Peaks with tulpa / split narratives to explore the characters’ issues? I’m also open to AUs, real or through Xanadu. This also feels like a good place to stress that I really, really like caves.

And now for something completely different: FAQ:  The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Thesis Defense is in the tagset this year. I’d say that the crossover with the snake portion of Here and there along the Echo writes itself, but it would not be correct, as in fact I would like you to write it for me. Feel free to not feature Donald if you focus on this crossover instead!

Uru would be a fun crossover too, for Donald specifically. He’s very DRC-shaped in how he tilts at doomed projects which just so happen to be deep underground.

Pyre: Volfred Sandalwood

This is a Volfred solo, Volfred&literally anyone or Volfred/Tariq, /Oralech or /Tariq/Oralech request. I adore everyone in that Blackwagon+Dalbert+Celeste, so if you want to add a Nightwing or two to any prompt, please do! I also love all the Scribes and find Erisa a compelling tragic figure, while out of the other triumvirates, I’m “love to hate them” for Manley, Brighton, Udmildhe and Deluge and would not like to see them featured in sympathetic roles. fwiw I also enjoy Jodi/Celeste and Bertrude/Pamitha a lot!

I feel deeply for all of Pyre’s main themes - literacy, degrees of freedom, the fragile time that is the end of a historical cycle, nobodies rising up to the occasion, building a better society, and of course found family, “distance cannot separate our spirits” and all that jazz, and Volfred is squarely rooted at the center of all of them. I really really love everything he stands for, even if he’s overbearingly smug in standing for it. Just please tell me things about my fave. His relationship to the Scribes (as a historian, a some kind of vision, via *ae or once he’s a star himself)? A ‘forced vacay’ Downside ending where he looks at the Union from afar and keeps living in this strange transformational place? Life in a cramped Blackwagon that was meant for like 5 people tops and is currently eight Nightwings, a herald and an orb? Since he picked him for the job to begin with, does he respect and cherish Hedwyn as he dang well should? What does it feel like to try and Read a herald? Was he ever in danger, in the Commonwealth or in the Downside? What daring act of resistance did he and Bertrude pull off at some point in their past? It’d be cool if one of his old pamphlets came up at some point. Does he puff up as prime minister because he’s nervous, and who can see past his hyper-professionalism and lend a hand? Please roast him big time about the votes he assigns to the various Nightwings in his planner? What’s his attitude toward the flame’s purification (what with being a tree but mostly like, as a general concept. He did nothing wrong!) (well he definitely said some things wrong and sometimes oftentimes the ego jumps out, but his intentions did nothing wrong)? When did his calculating approach fail him? Something with Pamitha along the lines of that edit that goes “Can we talk, one ten to another?“/"I am an eleven, my girl, but continue”? Dude could easily be voted sexiest voice in the Downside - how much is he aware of it? Does he sing? I love how he bears his ‘reader’ brand proudly. And speaking of scars, I have to wonder, looking at Manley for comparison, if the shape of his head, with that massive crack, isn’t also due to injuries.

As a refrain from my general likes: emphatically yes xeno to both shippy interactions at all ratings and to gen explorations of what a Sap is like… I’d love to read all your headcanons.

Ship-wise, I enjoy him with Tariq as this kind of esoteric connection of minds, guarded words full of secret meanings, long contemplative walks together (is any external pov watching...?), Volfred’s Reader powers brushing against Tariq’s mind and getting weak in the knees at the starlit expanse he finds there, so unlike mortal thoughts. Tariq finds his individuality learning from him; Volfred presumably gets a transcendent glimpse of the Scribes. And I enjoy him with Oralech as pretty much the opposite of that, Oralech is so very mortal compared to him, such a precious, fleeting, burning life especially after his fall. Oralech’s idealism is very dear to me, it was their plan, their shared revolutionary spirit, I find it deeply moving. And I am very interested in seeing them rebuild their connection now that Oralech is back, changed, and in some ways he can learn to let go of his misconceptions and slowly open himself to Volfred’s love again, but in other ways that’s who he is now, with this deep-set anger, and what does it even feel to realize that you’re the symbol of the end of an era (the end of the Rites, the fading of the Scribes). I’m interested in both topside and downside endings for all of them, as long as they end up on the same side, the revolution was peaceful and they don’t angst too much about the side they ended in. Tariq can ‘find his way home’ in the near post-canon somehow or even be summoned again, as a different aspect of the same ‘moonlit vision’ that once inspired Soliam Murr.

Strandbeest: any

https://www.strandbeest.com/

I would just like words to go with these, please and thank you so very much. Worldbuild to your heart’s content! Specifically: I’m fascinated by the premise that the strandbeest are living creatures that evolve and adapt to their ecosystem. A world where life is just wind stomachs and sandy joints, and the tide that can catch you unaware. I would like a story that feels distinctly inorganic. The wonder that is the existence of these creatures. Their unique struggles. Weird and experimental if you like. With a mechanical focus, maybe?

I nominated four critters as a selection of the different cool things they can do - Percipiere Excelsus is huge and has the hammer mechanism, Suspendisse’s tail senses the hardness of the sand, Uminami is my fave caterpillar and the caterpillars overall feel like a new paradigm after a mass extinction event, Ader straight-up flies... but they’re all wonderful. If you want to focus on different strandbeest, please do!

Twin Peaks: Lucy Moran

Case fic but they don’t find out jack shit, someone disappears, David Bowie was there, it’s complicated. Fragmented, shifted, mirrored identities. New Lodge spaces. The risks of staring into the void for too long. Gentle illusions. Transcendence. The moon. Static buzzing. Any title from the s3 ethereal whooshing compilation used as a prompt, actually. Whatever goes on on Blue Pine mountain or the even more mysterious things that go on on White Tail mountain where exactly zero canon locations are found. Twin Peaks is all about the mystery to me, the awe of mystery and unknowability and the human drive to look beyond and the risks of getting a peek, and about shared consciousness and trauma taking physical form in an uncaring world. Go wild with the ethereal whooshing! But I also love the human warmth at the heart of it all, and sometimes it’s enough to anchor these characters and let them have a nice day. A fic entirely focused on some instance of coziness against the cold chaotic background of canon would be great too.

For Lucy specifically, a big draw for me is how canon (...s2 need not apply) empathizes with her way of processing the world. Not just Peaks, but On the Air’s protag who is basically a Lucy expy also gets the narrative completely on her side and that’s great. And I love how in s3, her focus on the small things around her is always echoed by bigger, climactic events beyond her horizon (bunnies / Jack Rabbit’s palace, chair order / Garland’s chair, her first scene talking about the two sheriffs / doubles everywhere...). It feels to me like some kind of off-kilter mindfulness and I love it. She’s also got a loving husband and an amazing son, which, in this economy and also this canon? Damn. The one functional family, imagine that. I am not interested in focus on family dynamics, but singularly, either Lucy/Andy or Lucy&Wally are great - in particular, I’m interested in how strange they are and yet they make it work. With the ruthless critique of traditional family structure that’s all over canon, maybe they make it work specifically because they’re not doing any of that. A bit like the Addams family... but... not goth...? Anyway. I’d love to see Lucy interact with and maybe strike a friendship with any character she’s never shared a scene with in canon! In the tagset, there’s Diane for some secretaries bonding, Audrey because??? why not?, Albert because it’d be an epic enemies to friends slowburn, some version of Laura in the future, if we’re feeling really daring maybe even some version of Coop in the future, still fragmented... or anyone you want! Outside the tagset I’d be curious about Hawk, Margaret and maybe Doris in particular, I think, and Phil, and Nadine and the Invitation to Love fandom in general (Frost says it still airs - did it get as weird as TP s3 did?), but if you have an idea with someone else, absolutely go for it!

Canon-specific DNWs: any singular Dreamer being the ‘source’ of canon, BOB (let alone Judy) being forever defeated in the finale, Judy being an active malevolent presence in the characters’ lives, clear explanations for canonical ambiguities, ‘Odessaverse’ being the reality layer, the Fireman’s House by the Sea being the White Lodge, whatever Twin Perfect’s on about, Cooper/Audrey, Cooper/Laura