General Letter 2024

[firebatvillain]

Dear Author/Artist,

Thank you so much for writing or drawing for me!

This is a general-purpose, higher-detail list of likes and dislikes. This is focused on my likes in writing, and also contains my likes in art.

I am excited for anything you create. Stuff I include in letters, aside from my short list of DNWs, are optional. Prompts are just suggestions to help motivate or inspire you. Create whatever speaks to you and gets things working!

I put together this post to try to cover my general likes, which I've found myself rewriting a lot for letters. It's basically a list of tags and ideas that I like or dislike, and it goes into more detail than the letter I write for exchanges. This is mostly a list of things I like! Please feel like this opens new avenues for you, rather than closing them off. Feel free to surprise me and bring in new dynamics that drive you as a creator. A lot of why I'm into exchanges is that I never quite know what I'm going to get, and the chance to be delighted by something new and interesting.

Hopefully this helps inspire you.

Thank you for writing or drawing for me :)


Likes

• action scenes
• aging up characters
• ambition (positive or negative)
• angst
• art media: digital art, including unusual forms of digital art such as pixel art, animated gifs, and so on
• art media: traditional media, including watercolor, charcoal, pencil, and others
• art contents: portraits, characters hugging, characters looking fierce, characters floating against abstract or watery/space-ey backgrounds
• art mood: I like moods that are cozy, happy, fierce, or exciting, but I don't like moods in art that are dismaying, horrifying, or depressing.
• art character depictions/styles: feel free to draw characters in any style you like, including diverging from straightforward direct physical depiction. I care more for them being striking than being exactly like they appear in the original media
• art explicitness: I'm comfortable with and enjoy all levels of explicitness/maturity in fics and art.
• AU Canon Divergence
• AU Historical, or Historical settings particular fondness for 1790 through 1900
• AU Science Fiction
• AU Worldbuilding-ey stuff
• betrayal
• body horror that doesn't involve needles
• canon-compliant, post-canon, pre-canon, "missing scene" type fics, etc
• canon reworks/rewrites that change everything
• case fic
• characters dealing with canon/setting/era-typical bigotry, classism, sexism, etc
• characters dealing with fraught and hopeless situations
• characters taking part in awful situations and doing terrible things for reasons they can justify or rationalize to themselves
• clash of ideals
• class issues
• comedy and humor, particularly when it's wry or tongue in cheek (as opposed to mean-spirited)
• competence porn
• competitions
• darkfic
• desperation driving characters to new heights or depths, revealing things about them
• devotion
• discussions about religion, the nature of the universe, etc
• endings: angry or sad, but with a spark of hope.
• endings: happy or bittersweet
• endings: haunting
• enemies to lovers
• fake dating
• fantasy politics
• Faustian bargains
• fight scenes
• forbidden love
• forlorn hope (and actions taken in service of it)
• - similar forlorn hope type pointless actions but focused on honor, goodness, heroism
• format: 5+1 things, n thing
• format: in-universe documents / in-universe meta
• format: in-universe reddit posts or internet drama
• gallant characters, characters driven by duty even when it's unwise
• horror
• hurt/comfort
• "I can make him worse" or dysfunction as a relationship that works
• marriage of convenience
• mourning your past self
• non-canonical ships
• obsession
• omegaverse, when creative, especially sexy "body AU"s, like lobstermegaverse or ratkingmegaverse
• one-sided relationships / desire
• pride (positive or negative)
• psychological horror
• redemption, the worse the better
• rogue-ish characters
• ruthlessness
• sacrifice of self or of others
• science
• slapstick
• space politics
• time loops or time travel (a particular love for fix-it fic)
• trickster MC
• unhealthy relationships
• unusual POVs: first person, second person, outsider/OC POVs, etc
• wordplay
• worldbuilding in general

NSFW Likes

• both enjoying it
• corruption / fucked into liking it
• dubcon
• embarrassed
• first time
• having sex is a bad idea but they do it anyway
• noncon/rape
• oral sex
• power differential
• sex in non-traditional but private locations
• sex at a surprising or unusual time
• they're experienced but not with each other

Go For It (common DNWs that I don't DNW)

• canonical major character death
• crossovers with canons I know and like
• format: epistolary, non-linear narratives
• gore
• hurt/comfort without comfort
• permanent injuries to major characters
• incest other than parent/child incest
• slavery

 
Things I tend to dislike, but aren't actually DNWs

• cheating
• crossovers, unless I know and like the other canon
• eating disorders
• mundane AUs without some kind of fun twist. "wild west AU" or "Mongol invasion of Bulgaria and Serbia AU" for example is fun, but just "modern AU" doesn't cut it for me. If you're going to take Draco and Harry out of a magical world, at least give them guns or make one of them a Serbian Duke and the other a Mongol steppe nomad warrior or something.
• unrequested non-canonical major character death - canonical major character death is fine (ex, Hamlet or Ophelia dying in a Hamlet fic)
• parent/child incest
• unrequested non-canon plot lines related to weight gain or loss

 
DNWs

• authorial monarchist apologia - I quite enjoy many characters who are monarchs or monarchists, but I don't like the feeling that the author is trying to personally convince me that monarchy is superior to democracy
• in art: depictions of needles breaking skin
• in fic: vivid descriptions of needles
• extreme underage (pre-puberty). underage sex is fine if characters are at least the age that people start having sex IRL during puberty
• pregnancy