morbane

This is my letter for the Jukebox fanworks exchange. Thanks for reading!

General likes
I love competence, loyalty, and trust. I like uplifting and hopeful messages, and protagonists who champion them. I also like genuinely terrible characters and tragic arcs, and villains with strong motivations and critiques of the protagonists' goals. Characters are welcome in any shade of grey. I like seeing characters screw up and then learn (or not) from their mistakes. I like reading about characters doing constructive tasks together, for example to relax or to solve problems. I love original characters, outsider character perspectives, and worldbuilding. I love magical realism, dramatic weather, trains, telepathy, and dragons. I like getting a strong sense of time or place. For porn, I love xeno, voyeurism, dubcon, noncon, telepathy, praise kink, and awkward-but-not-emotionally-disastrous sex; intense oh-god-I-can't-believe-it's-so-good sex; gentle and loving sex. I love emotional intimacy whether or not it comes with physical intimacy. I love mentors and protegé(e) relationships, and relationships between characters who are juggling multiple identities. I love seeing the relationship between two characters at one point in time, and then seeing it again when the relationship is very different. I'm just as interested in break-ups as get-togethers. I like Big Damn Hero moments, and also days in the life, or stories about people who are just trying to make it by in a weird world. I love it when authors and artists incorporate something about which they have enthusiasm or specialized knowledge, however mundane or obscure that thing is.

You're welcome to write in past or present tense, and in first, second, or third person. Epistolary and found-media formats are welcome.

Art likes
I really love highly stylised designs in art - geometric patterns, decorative patterns, fancy borders and framings. I like skylines and a sense of distance. I love being able to get a sense of weather from a scene. I love costume details, or character studies done through faces or poses. I like seeing characters in doorways or on stairways. I especially like like jewel tones and earth tones, and muted colours alongside greys. Though neons and rainbows can also be fun! I love art in the style of stained glass, or Art Deco. Playing cards can be fun. Mocked-up documents (handwritten letters, personnel files with pictures) can be fun. Please ignore these notes if they don't give you helpful ideas - as I'm not a visual artist, I have no idea what I'd find helpful as prompts.

Prompts by medium
Fanfic	Fanart
All Moments Leading to This - Lucid 3 (Song)	All Moments Leading to This - Lucid 3 (Song)
Brother - Kodaline (Song)	Falcon in the Dive (The Scarlet Pimpernel) - Wildhorn/Knighton (Song)
The Chain - Fleetwood Mac (Song)	Spectrum - Florence + the Machine (Song)
Falcon in the Dive (The Scarlet Pimpernel) - Wildhorn/Knighton (Song)
Gold Dust Woman - Fleetwood Mac (Song)	Podfic
My Trigger - Miike Snow (Music Video)	All Moments Leading to This - Lucid 3 (Song)
Serenade - Steve Miller Band (Song)
Sons & Daughters - The Decemberists (Song)
Spectrum - Florence + the Machine (Song)

All Moments Leading to This - Lucid 3 (Song)

YouTube
Lyrics
Fanart, Fanfic, Podfic

From sign-up:

All moments leading to this
We take the salt from the water's edge and blow it into the wind
All in awe of the season's swing
Pushing out the winter verging into spring

I love the sense of hope and purpose in this song, the sense of outwardly ordinary but inwardly significant change, the sense that decisions have come to fruition. I am also enthralled by the way that the narrator is enthralled by the sky and seasons - it gives me the sense of steadiness and calm that comes from thinking about the order and beauty in something so much larger than one's own decisions and problems.

I love that whatever the narrator is doing, they are doing it with their friends.

Fanart
Any interpretation of the lyrics and tone is welcome! If you want prompts, though, what I specifically imagined when I prompted it is something that conveys the relationship between the narrator & friends and their landscape/journey. A road leading away from a city at sunset. A group of silhouetted figures looking up at the stars. A group or a person on a beach, bending down to touch the waves as they come in. That's the kind of thing I imagined, but seriously, having a piece of extra media to think of when I listen to this song would make me really happy, so do NOT feel bound by those themes specifically.

Fanfic
Write me a story of a warrior (or other person who serves others in some way) who must swear an oath; tell me about someone going back to their home town after college; make this as fantastical or as prosaic if you like. I'll love anything you write if you gesture to the kind of tone I hear in this song, of purpose and awe and community and quiet, shared strength.

Podfic
My fanfic ideas apply here too; as an optional suggestion, it might be nice to incorporate ocean or wind noise.

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Brother - Kodaline (Song)

YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic

From sign-up:

If I was dying on my knees
You would be the one to rescue me

I adore the trope of two people whose lives have diverged but who both have a rock-solid certainty that the other person will be there for them in need. So please, give me all of that.

Fanfic
What are they doing now? When did they start to part ways? Is the narrator right to believe that one or the other of them is (or will soon be) in trouble? If one of them does end up rescuing the other, what form does that rescue take? And if there is no need for a dramatic (or subtle) rescue, how do they come back 'together' when they're old?

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The Chain - Fleetwood Mac (Song)

YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic

From sign-up:

And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you say you will never break the chain

I love the slow gather and build of this song, the references to the light and weather that make everything seem bigger than the narrator, and of course the stakes and drama.

Fanfic
Why the ultimatum? Why this last chance? I want an answer to the questions this song raises. Some that occur to me: a fairy-tale like task whereby one lover must recognise or claim the other at a certain moment, or forever forfeit them; or, two people are forced to keep up the outward appearances of a relationship (and are thus 'chained' together) while their private feelings are a lot more complicated.

When I first heard this song, I thought that the addressee had to *break* the chain (some other loyalty or compulsion affected them) in order to love the narrator. (For example, someone pleading with their lover to break up with the lover's current partner and be with them instead.) But the lyrics 'chain, keep us together' suggests otherwise, and that 'I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain' is an accusation from the narrator that the addressee has broken their promise. Is it either of those, or something stranger, or simpler?

Something fantastical would be hugely welcome, or a study of these characters that makes them both sympathetic and flawed. I've seen other takes on this song, but I would love even more.

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Falcon in the Dive (The Scarlet Pimpernel) - Wildhorn/Knighton (Song)

YouTube
Lyrics
Fanart, Fanfic

From sign-up:

I wasn't born to sack and slaughter
But on my soul, I wasn't born
To stoop, to scorn, and knuckle under

There is amazing imagery in this song! I'm not looking for Scarlet Pimpernel fic, but I am looking for a sense of timeless antagonists, high emotion and stakes, and the wider context of order and ordinary lives that is almost within the narrator's grasp at times.

Fanart
There's so much to work with here, so seize upon what you enjoy, but my imagination is particularly caught by the idea of bird's-eye views of a town or streets; a crowd fleeing; stars glittering coldly above houses and halls; some juxtaposition of streaming rivers and distant green hills with the harsh city; barred gates; and of course the combination of falcon and man: perhaps a person in silhouette with a larger falcon image behind them? Something that involves the spear, or them rising, or, of course, them diving?

Fanfic
On a prosaic level, there's so much emotion here - the narrator frames his quest as one he must either succeed in or perish; either his prey falls or he will. Tell me about what brought things to such a pass - and about the narrator's distant dream! On a fantastical level, there's a suggestion that the man being hunted is superhuman - perhaps not a man at all - and you can also turn the falcon metaphor into magic and involve actual transformation. I'm particularly intrigued by the narrator's determination not to 'knuckle under' - is the man he pursues a former oppressor?

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Gold Dust Woman - Fleetwood Mac (Song)

YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic

From sign-up:

Rock on, ancient queen
Follow those who pale in your shadow

You almost have to work harder to make this song follow a mundane story than a fantastical one - and I am here for either choice, or something ambiguous! Just please lean into the emotions.

Fanfic
I'd be down for something mundane and bitter and jealous and passionate - I can't tell if "did she make you cry" is sympathetic or gloating, and maybe it's both. The song could be full of terrible people, or at least include a person who projects their own issues onto others. (Though, no focus on drugs please.)

And I'd also love a fantasy epic that foregrounds a clash between a reign and a romance. One thing this makes me imagine is a deposed queen who has survived and is on a quest to regain her throne, and has fallen in with some traders-cum-bandits, preferably led by a woman. After initial loathing, each gains the grudging respect of the other! Sparks fly!

Can the pale, lethal dragon-woman love someone and hold onto her power?

Ancient queen makes me imagine a reincarnation subplot... or perhaps the gold dust woman is indeed inhuman. I mean, she could be a shapeshifting dragon. The option's there.

Please don't feel bound by these very specific prompts. The only things I really, really want are a sense of strong emotion and high stakes.

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My Trigger - Miike Snow (Music Video)

YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic

From sign-up:

I'm in the graveyard if looks could kill
But murder ain't your thing, you just shoot to thrill
But if you did, put you in my will, will

Although the music video is amazing and ripe for exploration, you're welcome to write me something about the song on its own - the above lyrics, for example, read as kinky and intense to me.

Fanfic
I admit I know very little about Kennedy, Khrushchev, or the Cuban Missile Crisis, but please go wild in either expanding the alternate all-dancing all-dove-ing world of the video, or working in actual historical references. Is this a soulbond? Or do all world leaders have the potential for a kind of resonant telepathy? What other conflicts get solved with dancing?

Off-the-cuff lyrics-based idea - the combination of death & sex, and the line 'take a spin', makes me imagine that the narrator has hooked up with an android who was designed both for extreme combat and sexual gratification. I'd like this to end happily for the android at the very least. That's just one idea, though! And the 'portal where peace begins' invites something trippy and spiritual.

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Serenade - Steve Miller Band (Song)

YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic

From sign-up:

Wake up and look around you
We're lost in space and the time is our own

Lost in space is a time-honoured trope, but I'm especially interested in the interwoven references to time and music and non-space environments with wind, the Earth, etc. I get the sense there's something more going on here, and I'd like to know what it is.

Fanfic
This lends itself to a story in which a space crew wake up after a strange experience and find themselves somewhere/somewhen else. What happened, how do they get back, DO they get back? Or lean into the references to music and love in the air - maybe, whether this is actually in space or not, the characters are experiencing anything from hallucinations to some kind of spiritual revelation. Please don't let these prompts box you in, though - I'd love something that draws on the atmosphere of the song, however it strikes you, whether or not you interpret the lyrics closely.

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Sons & Daughters - The Decemberists (Song)

YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic

From sign-up:

We'll make our homes on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon now

I'm fascinated by the hopeful, warm tone of the song - borne out by the sense of a family together, and the traditions evoked by 'cinnamon'; contrasted strongly by bunkers, bombs, dirigibles. I have all the obvious questions about what's going on here, and what history and the future is to these characters.

Fanfic
Are these people fleeing war - or waging it? Is this a religious group fleeing persecution, or civilians caught in crossfire, or people with some kind of supernatural connection to the water? Again, I love how evocative 'cinnamon' is - it paints a picture for me of people with a strong sense of tradition, and connection to each other, seeking somewhere where they can transplant and nourish their traditions. I don't have any particularly inventive prompts here - I'd just like to see this world expanded (though you're still welcome to leave parts ambiguous).

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Spectrum - Florence + the Machine (Song)

YouTube
Lyrics
Fanart, Fanfic

From sign-up:

And when we come for you
We'll be dressed up all in blue
With the ocean in our arms
Kiss your eyes and kiss your palms

I love the combination here of intense emotion - we will never be afraid again - and what seems like pure, mystical nonsense. Something fantastical, including horror, would be welcome, though I would also be fascinated to see a take that made simple mundane sense of these lyrics. Or of course anything in between!

Fanart
Each individual verse feels like a good starting point to me (of course, I'm not an artist), especially with their strong colour themes. I'm particularly intrigued by the idea of arriving spirits (?) who are paper thin and clear and somehow cold. This also seems like a good opportunity for my general art like of stained-glass-style images. And for the importance of 'say my name' - maybe stylised script incorporated into an image somehow? People made of words?

Fanfic
Why will they never be afraid again? And is this a good thing? The 'we' in the song seem potentially benevolent, but also potentially terrifying. I get the sense of spirits begging to be set free - or maybe demons. I'm also curious about the relationship between the single entity whose name is to be spoken, and the 'we' that she/he/? is part of. But it's also totally fine if your take expands on some of the lyrics and ignores others - go with what catches your imagination most.

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