everywoman 2023

[kimaracretak]

Hello friend, it is time for fic about ladies and I am so excited to see what you will write for me! If you want inspiration beyond this letter I am also kimaracretak, where I have a small but reflective-of-things-I-like set of bookmarks, and kimaracretak on 8tracks if you want #aesthetic musical inspiration.

I love these canons for the worldbuilding and mytharcs as well as their characters and relationships, and I am easy to please as long as you stay away from my DNWs, so don't feel like you Have to write any of my specific prompts. Don't read anything into relative lengths of sections, I am equally happy to get something for anything in this letter! Some of these prompts are reused from old letters, and if you have written them for me before, rest assured that I loved your fic, I am simply greedy and would like to see every possible take on my favourite scenarios. Though I've loads of specific dark- & smut-focussed likes, don't feel obliged to pull from those lists. That being said, I'm extremely not into plotless/conflictless fluff, and would prefer you avoid it.

I love everything from short introspection bits to long plotty missionfic to sex scenes as ways to explore character/setting/worldbuilding. I'm here for the horror and while I'm generally open to any f/f in the background or foreground of fics and have some shippy prompts, I'm not really expecting it here! Where it is prompted for, I don't need a lot of romance in my ships: sex for power, manipulation, on the weird platonic-romantic-maybe-I-just-want-to-be-you line, or between friends who want to have fun is great.

Likes

• Arranged marriages, marriages of convenience, married by a technicality


• Canon-divergent/what-if AUs, Vampire: The Requiem, Changeling: The Lost, Scandinoir, Morrowind, and Star Wars Sith AUs


• Conflicted loyalties, moral ambiguity, hero/villain and villain/villain relationships, 'I am the only one allowed to hurt you' hero/villain relationships


• Conversations in mundane liminal spaces, conversations in liminal spaces on the border between one world and another


• Darkfic


• Femslash and female friendship in both the foreground and the background


• Flirting, domesticity, sensuality, friends-and-lovers


• Mentorship and loyalty dynamics, including ladies' suicidal world-saving or world-breaking devotion to other ladies, #unavailable older women in positions of authority


• Nature and cities and houses and spacecraft as characters (especially when they would like to eat you because they love you), architectural horror


• Vampires, magic, witchcraft, rituals, eldritch things, fey things, eerie things, cosmic horrors


• Feelings about embodiment and iconography, body horror (especially flowers growing out of people's bodies)


• Epistolary fics, interactive fiction


• First- and second-person pov, unreliable narrators


• Politics, worldbuilding


• Philosophical, legal, and academic debates


• Relationships negotiated around characters' different vocabularies of trust and care


• 'I hate you I love you I would like to wear your skin as a sign of my devotion' types of relationships


• 'I kind of want to kill you but also I would be sad if you were gone so let's fuck about it instead' relationships


• 'Look what I can make you do to me' kinds of emotional manipulation in relationships


• 'You don't get to save me but you will kill me' types of relationships, especially when the killing doesn't actually happen and they both have to live with that


• Getting back together after messy breakups


• Reunions with former lovers in general, no matter what they look like - casual/platonic over coffee, ill-advised one-night stands, etc


• Desire, women who aren't afraid of desire, women who lean too far into desire, women who desire to kill and eat their gods


• Porn as character work.


• Time loops with both characters trapped, time loops while one character is trapped and the other is there to help or hinder but can leave whenever they want.

Dark Likes

• Accidental apotheosis, non-consensual apotheosis


• Arousal from killing, sex in the blood of their enemies


• Blood magic, blood kink, blood rituals, blood as art medium


• Body horror


• Conflicted loyalties, abuse of loyalties, loyalty leading people into really bad decisionmaking


• Died and came back wrong, died multiple times and comes back wronger each time


• Doomed ships, ghost ships, ships that should be abandoned but aren't, cursed ships (spaceships/airships/sailing ships all good!)


• Eerily pristine abandoned places, ruined castles/fortresses/villages, other eldritch places


• Flowers growing out of people's bodies, flowers growing out of people's empty eye sockets


• Folk horror


• Ghosts


• Human sacrifice, ritual scarification, what happens when sacrifices to higher powers aren't accepted


• Identity Issues, especially those stemming from close bonds with another person


• In-universe regional horror, myths, (urban) legends, and folklore


• Killing and eating your gods as a form of worship


• Memory loss


• Nature that wants to crawl inside you and never come out, nature that wants to eat you, sentient malevolent nature


• Necromancy, the unpleasant aftereffects/costs of necromancy


• Non-fatal and oddly romantic vivisection


• Not recognising your own reflection


• One character dressing another up to die


• Oneiromancy, dreamsharing, dreams that bleed into reality, cursed dreams, prophetic dreams


• Repeatedly killed and resurrected


• Ritual gone wrong


• 'That's not Character A (oh no)'


• 'There's something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls' trope


• Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms


• Unintended consequences of having your future told

Smut Likes

• Bathing, washing, bath/shower sex


• Biting, marking


• Bloodplay, knifeplay, wax play, edgeplay, edgeplay to the edge of death


• Bondage, shibari/kinbaku, suspension, honour bondage, blindfolds, gags, D/s dynamics (though not 24/7 bdsm lifestyle setups)


• Consent play


• Dressing or undressing each other


• First time with each other


• Fucked with the hilt of a weapon/barrel of a gun


• Hair braiding, hair pulling


• Jewellery and clothes kink


• Mirror sex, identity porn


• Mutual masturbation


• Needleplay, sewing pretty patterns into people's skin, sewing a partner to the bed


• One person in a threesome directing the other two and getting off watching them


• One person sitting between their partner's legs/in their partner's lap and getting fingered


• One person trying to read, their partner getting more and more distracting until they put their book away & then they fuck


• Oral sex


• Overstimulation


• Painplay, manipulating broken bones, wound fingering


• Praise kink, loyalty kink, competency kink


• Semi-public sex (especially under-desk cunnilingus), having to stay quiet


• Sex for manipulation/political gain/conversion to the other political-military side (success optional)


• Sex that does not fix problems but is nice anyway


• Sex that does not fix problems and in fact actively makes some problems worse


• Somnophilia


• Spanking, especially as a show of forgiveness or as penance for fucking up at work


• Temperature play


• Thigh riding, especially if the one riding her partner is wearing a skirt with her underwear pulled aside.

Do Not Want

• Apocalypse & post-apocalypse AUs (exploration of canon-typical ruins of past civilisations fine).


• Bodyswap fic, crackfic


• Breeding, pregnancy including unconventional forms like fpreg/oviposition, age-regression, ageplay


• Characters under 13 unless requested (mentions of childhood happenings are fine), de-aging


• Characters magically conjuring themselves dicks/being given dicks/giving other people dicks (sex toys like strap-ons are fine)


• Fictional police forces having the same history/current issues/social norms as real-world American police forces.


• Food in/on genitalia or used as sex toys, weight gain/stuffing kink (fantasy body horror and metaphors are fine)


• 'I am too old to be loved' angst.


• Issuefic, non-canonical trans or ace interpretations of characters unless requested, fic focussing on characters' romantic/sexual/gender identities, characters describing themselves with canon-atypical or anachronistic romantic/sexual/gender identity terms


• 'It was all a dream' / 'none of that actually happened' sort of endings (dreams as part of the story are excellent).


• Mentions of/references to Brexit (explicit Remain-won AUs welcome but not necessary, just let me pretend)


• Omegaverse, any type of biologically determined heats/'must fuck now' situations including sex pollen


• 'Only one destined true love' AUs like soulmates or hanahaki disease, single-target sexuality where the characters have never been and will never be sexually/romantically attracted to anyone else (you don't need to explicitly reference past relationships, just no 'Now I finally know what romantic love is and I will never feel it for anyone else ever' sort of things.)


• Unrequested m/m or m/f ships, unless specified.


• Rape/noncon (dubcon is fine)


• Permanent death of female characters unless otherwise specified (ghosts fine unless otherwise specified, references to pre-canon dead female characters fine).


• Permanent amputation of body parts unless otherwise requested (limbs removed + put back together as part of body horror scenes fine, limbs being replaced with plants as part of body horror scenes fine).
  
• Safeword/colour checkins, extensive kink/relationship negotiation.


• Scat, watersports, emetophilia, enemas.


• Sex involving under-16s.

Borgen

General: I want to say something intelligent about this show but I'm extremely 'no thought head Birgitte and Hanne and Katrine' about it, so feel free to combine these three in any way you wish - I'd be delighted by, say, Birgitte/Katrine & Hanne. I generally prefer fic set closer to 2013 than present-day in post-canon fic, and DNW the contemporary European political landscapes in futurefic — I'd like a Denmark that was kept more thoughtfully & compassionately to the left because of Birgitte's politics, a UK that didn't leave the EU, that sort of thing (this does not apply to American politics, keep those as is or go alt-history as you wish). I have not seen series 4 but I am broadly spoiled for it, so use it or not as you wish, I trust your judgement.

Note: Referenced/past Birgitte/Phillip, Kasper/Katrine, and Hanne/her ex are fine. I'd prefer if you pretended Birgitte/Jeremy never happened, even if we didn't match on a Birgitte ship.

Birgitte and Katrine: Did I love what season 3 gave me? Yes. Do I want more? Also yes.

• AUs where Katrine is Birgitte's ex, instead of Kasper's. Either romantic ex or an Anne-Sophie type figure, and what that means for their (re)developing relationship after the Moderates are elected.


• Post-s3, Birgitte back as Staatsminister in a leftist government with Katrine as her spin doctor.


• Fic set in one of the between-seasons gaps - Katrine covering an event Birgitte is speaking at, a legislation-of-the-week fic like some of the early s1 episodes.


• AUs where Birgitte's ill-advised one night stand is with Katrine instead of her driver.

Birgitte and Hanne: Also known as: the scene early in s1 where someone was like 'no one wants to hire Hanne anymore' and Birgitte responded by giving her the first question made a much bigger impact on me than anyone intended.

• They choose the same bathroom/hallway to hide out in during some boring event.


• Anything set in the s2-s3 timeskip.


• Pre-canon one night stand when Birgitte was younger & the relationship not as potentially scandalous, and how that affects their new professional relationship (reunions + reminiscing over coffee?).

Hanne and Katrine: Their relationship is hands-down the best part of s2, and I love that they both truly need each other and are good friends to each other in a way that transcends their (theoretical) mentor-student positions.

• Post-canon, covering the new administration, Katrine readjusting to news journalism after her time with the New Democrats.


• Post-canon, Katrine continues working with Birgitte, Hanne stays in news journalism, and what effect that has on their relationship.


• Working on a story together in the s1-s2 timeskip.


• An exception to my kidfic DNW: the two of them with Gustav post-canon, Katrine offering Hanne the chance to develop some kind of relationship with him the way she didn't get to with her own daughter.


• Uncomplicated friends-with-benefits arrangements.

Fate: The Winx Saga

General: Did I think this would be a fun way to waste six hours while watching Lesley Sharp be hot and morally ambiguous in a trenchcoat? Yes. Did I end up with many more feelings than I had planned for? Also yes. I like worldbuilding and fucked-up codependency, know nothing about the anime(?) this was based on, and have not seen series 2.

Farah and Rosalind: So if you look at my past prompts for these two you can probably tell I really genuinely believe they fucked in canon and think they should fuck more in fic, but please don't take that to mean I would be disappointed to get not-smut! Sex or no I cannot BELIEVE how specifically every single part of this ship was calculated to appeal to me, specifically. Like ... what part of 'We were the first fairies to combine our magic, I have a mentorship complex the size of the moon and accidentally committed war crimes for you, and then locked you in my basement for sixteen years out of guilt and love before you failed to kill me because you, also, have more grief and love than you know how to identify or deal with' was I supposed to not fall in love with? They're ridiculous. I'm obsessed.

• Pre-canon first times, especially ones that lean into the mentorship aspect of their relationship. Night before battle sex, how the hell did we survive that sex, first time they kill a Burned One together, first time Rosalind compliments Farah.


• I firmly believe Farah did not die in the graveyard regardless of what season 2 says, and I'm really curious if they've played around with the very thin line between life and death before, whether that's risky sex, edgeplay, or full-on death-and-resurrection.


• Rosalind reaching out from her prison to touch Farah's mind - whether that goes in a dreamsharing direction or a 'Rosalind instructing Farah how to get herself off, and Farah guiltily going along with it because she misses her so much' direction.


• Miscellaneous song prompts for the Vibes(tm): Katatonia's 'We Must Bury You' (Forgive me for covering my eyes / Forgive me for not saving you / Forgive me for being so unwise / Forgive me for letting this be true), Blackbriar's 'Walking Over My Grave' (Is that you dancing in front of my future headstone? / You will be the death of me, I feel it in my bones / I might as well dance along with you), Lord of the Lost's 'Cut Me Out' (Fear casts the longest shadow / Turning your heart into glass / No, don't you move or we both will break)

Jordskott

General: Witchy murderforest of my whole entire heart and all the women and girls it loves! This show has so many beautiful things to say about love and care and loss and obsession and it's eaten me as surely as Silverhojd has eaten Josefine. Tell me stories about witches and women and love and life and forests and I will be so, so happy. I would be totally happy with gen, but I ship Eva/Jeanette, Eva/Klara, Eva/Laila, Eva/Zara, Laila/Zara, Esme/Linus, and Esme/Maja, if you want to write something shippy. I headcanon Linus as nonbinary, but don't feel beholden to that if you involve him in fics. If you're writing post-s2 fic, I strongly prefer resurrected Klara or canon divergence so that she never died, but you can also just not mention her.

Fandom-specific DNW: Eva/Bahar, Bahar being married to a man, romantic/sexual ships involving Ida, Josefine, or Kalem

Bahar: She would not be paid enough for what s2 put her through even if she'd taken that promotion. I love her, I love how she's a little bit of an asshole but just genuine and self-aware enough for it to be a mostly good thing, I love her stubbornness and kindness and her refusal to let her belief in order make her do what she believes to be wrong.

• Anything pre-canon, about her life and career pre-Eva.


• Eva and Bahar post-s2, developing into a deeper partnership & friendship with fewer secrets between them. Eva takes Bahar to the forest, as part of making amends for her secret-keeping - maybe she even introduces her to Josefine's tree.


• Post-s2 casefic, if you're feeling like plotty things.


• Anything involving her getting more comfortable with the supernatural, realising that it doesn't necessarily conflict with her worldview as much as she'd thought it might. Whether she seeks out Ylva to better understand how to help Eva, bonds with Ida, or something else.

Klara: Deserved more! The back half of series 2 would've been better with her, honestly, and she is full of so much life that could be explored!

• Anything pre-canon. Meeting Ylva, learning what it means to be one of the hulderfolk, meeting other children of the forest (either the ones we've seen, like Muns and the other changelings, or anything/anyone else you want to draw from Scandifolk mythology).


• Fic in the s1-s2 timeskip. Building a garden with Esme. Keeping in cautious, careful touch with Eva, providing her a link back to the forest. Tending to Josefine's tree. Studying with Ylva.


• Anything with Esme in general, in the timeskip or in an AU where she never died, because witches and mentorships and how Esme grew from the rightfully distrustful lonely girl she was to someone who uncomplicatedly called Klara her foster mother and left that heartbreaking voicemail have my whole heart.


• Post-s2 AU where Esme takes Klara to Stockholm to show her why she found the city so important, or maybe Klara has friends/contacts somewhere else in Finland/Norway/Scotland/wherever that she takes Esme to meet.


• Shipfic with Eva. They're less different than they'd like to think, and I really, really wish they'd had more time together in canon. I especially like the idea of a season 1 AU where Klara finds Eva before Ylva - how would Eva handle learning about the forest from someone who initially appears much more similar to herself than from someone who slots more easily into the crone-witch archetype.


• Speaking of archetypes, Klara-Eva-Esme as crone-mother-maiden is deeply intriguing, as is Ylva-Eva-Klara as crone-mother-maiden, and I love that there's space to play with both. Take advantage of it!


• Resurrection fic, with Esme or Ylva bringing Klara back and helping her readjust to life above ground. Whether the forest gives Klara back (slightly wrong?) or someone brings her back, I'd love anything dealing with improbable survival and learning to live again.

Laila: Sad murderous witchbaby who just needs a friend: a not-uncommon theme in this show! Also why I love everyone so much. I love Laila's anger, and I want good things for her.

• Well, she mostly-murdered Eva so because I am me I ship her with Eva now. Post-canon reconnections in unexpected forms, letters written and sent or not, Laila's return.


• I'd also like to see her try to fashion something list a happy ending for herself post-season 2. Whether that's in Sweden or not - and whether it's happy for anyone around her - is up to you. Original characters, human or not, absolutely welcome here.


• An exploration of what her life would have looked like if someone like Ylva or Klara had found and helped her earlier, whether they succeeded or not. If they find her after her mother, what does the healing process look like?


• Something mid-season where she and Bahar bond over working with Eva - so many secrets and tension there that I would love to see!

Ylva: I was stunned by how much love the show had for Ylva the first time around, she's such a rare, joyful embrace of all the most wonderful things about the crone archetype despite the pain she's gone through.

• Historical fic. She's a couple hundred of years old at minimum, so there's loads of time to play with. Anything about the way myth and history have interacted in Sweden throughout the years, women she's loved, supernatural creatures she's mentored, how Silverhojd was founded.


• Mentorship fic with Klara. I will never say no to resurrection fic (especially if Esme is also involved), but pre-canon as well, meetings throughout the years, magic lessons, helping Klara understand who she is.


• Ylva and the Josefine tree! Stories of all the times she visits Josefine, stories that she tells Josefine, explorations of what might have happened if she found Josefine during the missing years.


• Meeting and mentoring Bahar. Bahar would not be paid enough for what s2 put her through even if she'd taken that promotion, and I would love for her to find Ylva and become more acquainted with the forest.


• Ylva and Laila, whether an AU where Ylva finds Laila much earlier and helps her fashion a better life for herself, or whether she helps Laila closer towards a happy ending after s2.

Esmeralda and Eva: Two very different women thrown headfirst into the supernatural with ... well, not even that different of outcomes. They don't get a lot of alone time together - always mediated through Klara or Ylva - and I'd like to see something that centres the two of them together. Esme coming up to the house during the s1-s2 break, writing letters to each other, all of the odd closeness where they care about each other, they could easily fall into a mother-daughter dynamic but they don't and their relationship is better for it.

Ida and Josefine: They understood each other when no one else did, in a way that no one else did, and I'm obsessed with how the forest functions a conduit between them and what affect the Ida-is-a-changeling reveal might have on that. I don't need Josefine to be in human form for this, and honestly it would be super cool if she wasn't. Lean into all the weird wonderful inhuman love and special care these girls have for each other!

• I'd love to see something that acknowledges that Josefine is continuing to grow - Ida sneaking off to the forest to sit by Josefine's tree and draw her pictures, maybe.


• Dreamsharing! I am super into dreamsharing for them.


• Something about Ida's art & activism and how she shares that. I love how Ida acts as voice for Josefine and the forest both, and how Josefine, in human or tree form, might help bring some of Ida's own visions to life in return.


• I'd love to see them meeting one of Bahar's kids and expanding their witchy little friendship circle. It's Silverhojd. Bahar does Not have four NormalTM children.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent

General:

Alex: Alex is my favourite and I know I will love whatever you choose to write! I do read her as into women (no prefernce on whether she's also into men), and even if you don't write femslash I would prefer nothing that makes her explicitly straight.

• Eames/Barek is my CI OTP and I would love shipfic. We were robbed of more Barek, frankly, and I want more of her being clever or soft or prickly or sexy or terrifying with Alex. Casefic or scenes-from-casefic where she and Alex were always partners. Drinks after work. Casual friends-with-benefits hookups. AUs where Barek doesn't leave, and what that changes. Not necessarily looking for romance/happily-ever-after but not opposed to it. Bonus for Bobby being quietly happy for them.


• Alex & driving. Yes I think this should get an & like a proper relationship. Drag racing as a teenager? Taking someone on a roadtrip? Yes.


• I live for AUs where she's the one Nicole Wallace latches on to, rather than Bobby. I'd especially love to this in a world with established Eames/Barek, just because it would fascinate Nicole (and therefore also me).


• Alex & Bobby. I love their banter and their friendship and would love to see some of them just hanging out.


• Season 9 AUs where she doesn't leave. What does Alex in command look like? How does she get on with the new detectives? How does it change or not change her relationship with Bobby?

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

General: I dropped out of the active fandom for this ages ago, and am definitely more of an early-seasons fan (through the end of 13), but if you want to set it somewhere more recent in the timeline - I've watched everything but the latest season, though I've been broadly spoiled for it. SVU has a really particular sort of mood, a cold comfort that's not quite bleak and not quite hopeful, and I'm really interested in the ways in which the women of the show negotiate their particular vocabularies of justice and care.

Olivia: I love her, and I am going to love whatever you write about her. I have prompts for both solo/gen-y stuff as well as some of my favourite relationships of hers, so write whatever Liv story your heart desires! I'm gonna be real, I don't love her with a kid, but in later-seasons fic I don't have objections to Noah, like, existing in her life, but I would prefer not to get Liv & Noah fic.

• Olivia & Serena. I have a lot of thoughts about Olivia talking to her mother's ghost. I have a lot of thoughts about Olivia's mother's ghost visiting her, because that is (canonically!) a thing that happens in the L&O-verse now! I don't believe in the flattened 'Serena was 100% awful 100% of the time' narrative recent seasons tended towards, and I would prefer something that gets into the complexity of their relationship. Or, alternatively, Serena-lives AUs, or Serena-dies-later AUs. [holds up horrible fraught mother-daughter relationship] I just think it's neat.


• Speaking of ghosts ... what IS a Detective Benson these days but a miserable pile of ghosts (affectionate). Go absolutely wild with your paranormal horror dreams!


• Scenes from a casefic. I love folk horror so you can never go wrong with cults, but anything about the day-to-day administrivia that the show skips over.


• Olivia/Alex. I am not kidding when I say Loss/Ghost rewired my brain when I was fourteen, like, this ship fundamentally reshaped how I interact with all media and I want more of them. More of their decades of being grounding, important, loved presences in each others' lives, more making the world better, more connecting and reconnecting over and over again. More hugs that don't need ... whatever 'Sunk Cost Fallacy' was leading up to them. I love that theirs is a relationship that takes work that they're committed to, that it starts and stops and looks different throughout the years without ever losing importance.


• Olivia & Casey, hanging out at a bar or a softball game or ... something. You know that solarpunk utopia meme that gets passed around, 'society if [x] happened?' Well, society if Olivia Benson was allowed to be friends with one (1) other professional woman who didn't turn out to be evil or just vanish.


• 'Everything is the same but also there's vampires now'. What, it's one of my favourite AUs, I have to prompt it everywhere. Liv would make a really hot vampire. Or a Changeling: The Lost AU, the squad as detectives in a Manhattan freehold.

River

General: Gods, this show has so many beautiful things to say about love and loss and grief and I just want to dwell in it a while longer. I interpret Chrissie has having been in love with Stevie but not having recognised/admitted it even to herself until after she'd died, and a lot of my prompts do stem from that interpretation, but you don't need to follow it (one-sided, requited, or nonromantic interpretations are all great). I also ship Chrissie/Rosa, so if you're going post-canon, feel free to include that! Permanent death for Stevie as per canon is fine here.

Chrissie and Stevie: John's grief over Stevie takes centre stage for most of the show, so if you go for mid- or post-canon, I would really like something that moves the focus over onto Chrissie and her grief here.

• Anything where Chrissie sees Stevie like River does. So much of what we know - think we know - about Stevie is actually just how River remembers Stevie, so ... what might we learn from the version of her Chrissie creates? What changes?


• Pre-canon almost-get-togethers - slightly drunken kisses that Chrissie pretends can't mean anything, Stevie staying over at Chrissie's a little too late, sleeping on her couch one night too often, the two of them going out with the kids one time too many.


• What does it mean to recognise you were in love with your best friend when you'd convinced yourself you'd forgotten how to be in love? What does Chrissie re-evaluate about the way she approaches affection and care, and how does that affect a future relationship with Rosa?


• Post-canon newly established Chrissie/Rosa where Rosa helps Chrissie work through her feelings about Stevie.


• Chrissie spends the whole show coming to terms with Stevie's loss - what if it wasn't permanent? I am also super up for any paranormal/horror take on this where Stevie comes back wrong, or as a vampire, or comes back too right, and Chrissie tries to come to terms with that, too.

Scott & Bailey

General: I'll fight Sally Wainwright in the Tesco's car park for many reasons, but this messy show about messy people is so close to my heart, and I'd love anything about these women and their relationships. I love all sides of the Julie-Gill-Janet-Rachel square, so feel free to write about any combination in any platonic/romantic/messy-undefineable-middle-bit way you feel like (e.g. Gill/Julie & Janet/Rachel, past Gill/Janet + present Janet/Rachel, Janet/Rachel + Rachel & Gill). I've read and enjoyed all three books - use book canon or not as you like. If writing pre-canon fic, I'm fine with period-typical homophobia, and actually prefer that it get mentioned as something they have to be aware of, but I don't want the entire fic built around it (e.g. casefic about homophobic hate crimes or the whole fic being about them worrying what Dorothy would think).

Fandom-specific DNW: Season 5 canon, Rachel/Kevin happening the way it did in canon (Rachel & Janet can fall out over anything else)

Gill and Janet: Twenty years of friendship! I know established relationships are not everyone's cuppa but there's something so joyful and warm about the way they've kept each other close for so long.

• I'd love something that follows them over the years, a five-times drabble sequence or set of vignettes. Them as a sort of friends-and-lovers who keep connecting and reconnecting as they work their way up the ranks. Five drinks they had, five times they didn't sleep together (& one they did), letters and emails they wrote to each other.


• If writing shippy fic, I don't see them as super romantic/particularly exclusive/necessarily endgame! I would more than love an on-again/off-again relationship, occasional sexual comfort after bad cases that exists mostly-uncomplicatedly alongside established Gill/Julie, 'we tried it and it was nice but it that aspect of our friendship just sort of faded as we saw other people', that sort of thing.


• That being said, endgame-for-now pre-canon fic in 80s/90s Manchester, maybe in a world where Gill dumped Dave earlier and stayed on at the Crime Faculty and Janet never met Ade would also be amazing.


• Seriously, AUs where she dumps Dave earlier and stays at the Crime Faculty a little longer. Her 'I was good at that job, I loved it' in the Bristol episode just kills me in its simple profound grief, and I wonder a lot what her relationship with policing but also with Janet, specifically would look like if she spent longer there.


• More of Gill's birthday parties. You KNOW Janet has more stories.


• Giving each other relationship advice - Janet to Gill about Julie, Gill to Janet about Rachel. It being them, of course, that advice need not necessarily be good, and hilarity may ensue.

Rachel and Janet: I love them as friends-and-lovers and I think trying to pin down the line between the two for them is ... useless at best and counterproductive at worst. They and the show are at their best when their relationship is allowed to be the most important thing to each of them, and just ... lean into that. More of women getting to say yes to each other & having that being fulfilling!

• I live for their friendship, and would love to see them in a friends-and-lovers situation. Or, as the freeform tag goes, '#Let's Not Worry About Defining This Relationship Let's Just Keep Kissing'. Canon, but they keep managing to steal kisses and not think too hard about it until something (Sean's proposing?) makes them.


• But also, I'm not even super invested in any type of romance! The kid of setup where they're each other's most important person, they sometimes have great sex, and that's all there needs to be for them to be happy with each other - I love that too. It possibly requires a bit more introspection from Rachel than we're used to, but I believe in her, and in Janet's ability to help her get there.


• Any type of canon divergence where Rachel dumps Sean instead of marrying him. I know making the worst possible choice is just Rachel being Rachel sometimes, but I'd like her to not have to for once - to take a step back and realise that won't end well, or for Janet to maybe realise she's projecting her own feelings about (the loss of) marriage onto Rachel and she doesn't have to.


• Like, I mean, 'Do you really want to stay at ours' she wanted to say yes so badly let Rachel say yes to Janet - friendship, sex, romance, any/all/weirdly in between those things - instead of saying yes to a man because she thinks she has to.


• Casefic, and, if you're wanting a specific prompt, what casefic centred on them looks like in the aftermath of Helen Bartlett's death. S2 touched a bit on what the failure of system does to Rachel specifically, but Helen's case was a failure of Gill's, who Janet and Rachel not only trust but model themselves on, and while s4 gestured at some answers ... I'm not completely satisfied with them. So.


• Rachel making a pass at Janet, instead of bringing Kevin home, and Janet's fear of adding - or acknowledging - that dimension of their relationship leading to their fight.


• The potentially disasterous intersection between 'Rachel's entire authority THING' and 'that point in s3 where Janet is absolutely her superior officer'. Because, look, 'I can call you ma'am now if you like' x all those times Rachel's knelt in front of Janet's desk ... that has lived in my head for the better part of a decade at this point. I refuse to be the only one.

Rachel/Gill: Rachel would throw herself off a building just to get Gill Murray to look at her in Just the way she wants and I'm extremely into it (their canon dynamic is basically the foundation of my #unavailable older women in positions of authority like). They're on such a thin fine line between kindness and witholding, what happens when reckless devotion meets restrained care, and I'd love really anything that explores that.

• Post-season 4 fic that explores their relationship once Gill's retired. What changes? What doesn't change? Where do they go after I'm so proud of you?


• Any porn exploring their power dynamics. Rachel wanting orders but not wanting to ask for them, Gill enjoying - perhaps too much? - the extra dimension of power that gives her.


• AU where Rachel gets to take her Sergeant's exam the first time and what that changes.

Shetland

General: I've not seen the latest season, and may or may not have seen it by the time this reveals, but as it's not got Rhona and I'm only asking for Rhona, I'm not too fussed about it. I like selkie!Rhona AUs, fics that explore the challenges of Shetland life vs mainland life, gratuitous digs at Calmac ferries, and Scottish mythology. Explicit Remain-won AUs are delightful, but not necessary as long as I can pretend Remain won and there's no Brexit. Background/mentioned Jimmy/Duncan welcome.

Fandom-specific DNW: Rhona permanently moving away from Shetland.

Rhona Kelly: Okay, look, I thought about nominating & requesting all the Rhona groups possible, but choices are hard, especially for my favourite. Really I just want more of Rhona, with whoever else sparks joy in your heart. I've given some options here, but feel free to completely ignore them if you've other things you want to explore. Also feel free to mix & match - I would be very happy with, for instance, a story about Rhona navigating the beginnings of a new relationship with Asha while still sorting out her feelings about how things ended with Phyllis.

• For this canon specifically, I also adore selkie!AUs, in addition to the AUs in my general likes. Whether that's selkie!Rhona balancing her life on the island and in the water, or human!Rhona who happens to befriend/love a selkie woman, you cannot go wrong with selkies.


• Rhona/Phyllis in whatever form, including breakup fic. Mildly unpopular opinion, perhaps, but I do genuinely love them as a ship that didn't work out, two people who care so much about each other coming to the realisation that, actually, they can't move forward together.


• If you're wanting happier Rhona/Phyllis things, stories about their reconciliation - the work Phyllis has to do to regain trust, the slow rebuilding of friendship first, maybe something that starts and stops and has steps backward - or anything pre-canon: getting together, travels around Scotland, negotiating Rhona's move, the first time Phyllis visited, meeting Phyllis' family.


• Rhona-centric casefic! Whether that's adapting one of the book mysteries or coming up with something else. Case as the main priority or case as scaffolding for the character drama, either is great.


• Rhona / or & Anke Strom, the Norwegian detective from season 4. They're both dealing with massive professional fallout and personal betrayals (I definitely saw Lars as as close to a friend as Anke had at work) and I think they could bond over that.


• Rhona/OFC, either pre-Phyllis or post-Phyllis. Pre-canon uni girlfriend? Excellent. First time dating someone she works with? Also excellent! A friend-with-benefits after Phyllis is gone forever? Also excellent! Selkie girlfriend in a magic AU? As you may have guessed by now, also exellent!


• Rhona & or / Cassie, over the years pre-canon or sometime during canon. I love that Cassie has Rhona as a friend who's never expected to be a mother or even really a mother figure to her, and I'd love more of them, especially as Rhona goes from seeing Cassie as her mate's kid to seeing Cassie as a person all her own! Nice picnics on the beach, running into each other and birdwatching on the ferry, bonding over heartbreak at the beginning of season 4, Rhona as Cassie's first kiss with a woman in a couple years.


• Rhona & Jimmy, because I love their friendship infinitely. Something epistolary would be lots of fun - emails, paperwork, the like. Jimmy teasing her about her relationship with Phyllis in the early days, Jimmy letting her get drunk and cry on his shoulder at the beach after they break up.


• Rhona & or / Tosh, in any/all forms - first meetings, mentorship snapshots, helping Tosh feel comfortable in her body again post-s3.


• Series 3 AUs where Asha's fling is with Rhona instead of Jimmy. Whether Rhona's cheating on Phyllis or they were never together, I'd love to see what that changes.


• Or anything (platonic or romantic) with Asha post-season 3. I think a lot about Asha's 'a life worth living' line and I suspect it would also be at the forefront of Rhona's mind at that time too - so something about them finding that meaning/(re)connecting to Shetland-as-a-place would be nice.


• Scottish law has something called the right to roam, which gives everyone rights of access over land and inland water throughout Scotland (with a few exceptions, and as long as they behave responsibly). It's something I'm deeply passionate about and it's something that I like to think Rhona cares a lot about as well, being a fiscal and someone who lives in Shetland. I'd love it if this came up - as part of a case, as something Rhona worked on in the past (The Land Reform (Scotland) Act that codified it was from 2003), anything like that.


• Other assorted gen/solo ideas: Rhona and her dog on a long vaguely-spooky but ultimately lovely walk on the beach, the first time the lads at the station invite Rhona to the pub with them, Rhona celebrates her first Hogmany on Shetland

The Witcher

General: I'm requesting the TV show because that is where the majority of Tissaia + Yennefer content lives these days, but I've read the books and played the games so feel free to mix and match canon. I am especially fond of the book canon that Yen loses her sight rather than her magic post-Sodden, so if you want to include that please do!

Tissaia and Yennefer: I am sad to this day over Tissaia's book ending, and I cannot believe the show gave me such an incredible relationship that I have to watch knowing there is probably tragedy in the canon future. With that in mind, all I'm asking for is something happy. Not something that sands down the (perfect!) rough edges of their journey towards trusting & caring for each other, just, yknow, something that doesn't end in death. I ship them, but if you want to centre platonic Tissaia & Yen that would also be lovely - my prefered other ships in that case are Tissaia/Rita and Yen/Triss.

Y Gwyll

General: I watched the Welsh version of this on S4C (though I've tried to supply American Netflix episode numbers too), and fic in/incorporating Welsh is welcomed if you speak it! Mentions of/references to any of the canon m/f ships is fine (including past ships), though I'd prefer they not be the focus and DNW present-day or future Mared/John. Character death DNW waived for OFC victims in casefic and canon deaths, though I do have a slight preference for Catrin-survives AUs in post-canon fic unless otherwise prompted. I love everything about this show's thesis that trying is important even/especially when it's not enough, and I would be delighted by anything that focuses on how each of these relationships illustrate that.

Agnes and Catrin: File under: relationships that absolutely break my heart.

• Scenes from Catrin's visits to the hotel over the years.


• Agnes visiting Catrin in hospital, helping her recover - maybe even to the point Prosser doesn't manage to push her to suicide.


• It's not the most realistic, but: post-canon cottagecore dreams where Catrin survives and they revive the hotel together. Agnes remembering why she loved the place, Catrin reclaiming the old children's home, maybe Jenny's even there and she and Catrin redevelop a healthier, happier relationship. It's one of those things where I'd hate it if canon actually went there but it would be so so lovely in fic, yknow?

Jenny and Catrin: Their relationship is the backbone of the whole show, and I would love to see more of it from their perspectives.

• Fic during the time between Pontarfynach and Helen's murder. I'm fond of epistolary - including unsent letters and journals - as well as the angst of almost-meetings and missed meetings. Thinking so much of each other that they mistake other people in their lives for them until they turn around, planning to meet but not together enough or brave enough to follow through.


• On the happier side, AUs where Catrin survives. They both have so much healing to do, together and separately, and Catrin at least was making a lot of progress before she died. Any steps they're able to take together.


• I really loved Agnes, from the Devil's Bridge hotel, and the way her stewarship of the place mimics the rise & fall of characters' connections to the land & each other so — Agnes as unexpected connection-facilitator is something I would love to see. Let the three of them revive & reclaim the hotel together, improbably cottagecore-dreamy as it may seem.


• On the other end of things, if you choose to keep to canon, ghost!Catrin visiting Jenny, Jenny dreaming of Catrin.

Mared and Siân: These two immediately caught me from the moment Sian tried to slink in late to the team's first briefing. I'm obsessed with how, despite the very real tensions between them, they're still quite close - the same Siân who makes it obvious repeatedly that she would rather be in Cardiff also chose repeatedly to stay and work specifically with Mared, and looks out for her during the investigation in s3. Despite everything they work well together and are concerned with protecting each other, and, not to repeat exactly what I said above and make it obvious I've a type, they're a really lovely illustration of the show's thesis that trying is important even/especially when it's not enough (but it's really nice when it is!) Things I would love include:

• Casefic, especially of the semi-low stakes cases that have almost more to do with the interpersonal dynamics of Aberystwyth communities than anything specifically criminal sort.


• Things dealing with Welsh mythology! Whether you want to go full-on mythology AU, or they're just discussing their favourite stories, mythology of any sort will delight me.


• Late-night quiet conversations of the friendship- or relationship-building sort — bad office coffee at 11pm, complaining about their colleagues' terrible filing habits, &c.


• Also excellent conversations to have if they end up going to Cardiff for reasons. Yes they are some of my favourite characters. Yes I am encouraging you to inflict the particular torture of the A470 on them. Ships & friendships alike need roadtrips, and North-South travel in Wales is a whole Thing. Or, if you want them to have longer conversations, stick them on a train. Average Aber-to-Cardiff train is over four hours (not direct).


• Anything about the small town/city dynamic in general. Sian showing Mared her favourite places/things, Mared dealing with her feelings of being displaced/overwhelmed.


• Pre-canon fic and first meetings, first case worked together, first times, etc


• Post-canon fic where they deal with the fallout from the s3 finale.


• I very much like the idea that they were together pre-series, recently broken up as of 1x01, and grow back together over the course of the show. It's far from the only take on their relationship that I like, but it is a super under-explored one, and I'd love to see your take on it!


• Following on from above, you know what an exceptionally good dynamic is? 'Yes we broke up ages ago. Yes we're still having sex. No we're not talking about what that means'. Think about what the entire show looks like if you assume that's what's going on with them, and explore it!


• I know it's a lot to ask to get them to talk about their feelings, but I think a lot about the end of 3x02 (3x01 on the American Netflix version) where Siân asks Mared if they're still a team, and Mared says yes ... and then leaves her alone. The lingering shot on Hannah Daniel's face is an absolute gut-punch, and I'd really like something that builds on that. Mared proving Siân's belonging in words or actions, Siân struggling with her trust in Mared, her lack of trust in Tom, and Mared's trust in Tom.