morbane

This is my letter for the Once Upon Fic exchange! (once_upon_fic).

Dear writer, as ever, I am very excited for this exchange! Thank you for considering my prompts.

General fairy tale ideas
For stories written for fairy tales, I welcome:
-A sense of awe or the numinous, or uncanny things. I love seeing characters take in the sheer consciousness-expanding weirdness of magic. I love it when the presence of magic adds to the sense of atmosphere.
-(in contrast, I also welcome) Characters whose familiarity with magic affects their perspective on the world. It's fun to explore characters who take prosaically for granted things that would amaze us.
-Stories that play around with characters' genders or sexualities. Trans, ace, nonbinary, etc, characters all welcome. (Please also see DNWs.)
-A romantic story reinterpreted as non-romantic - or a non-romantic story reinterpreted as romantic.
-Stories that loosely blend elements of more than one fairy tale to create a new story. As long as at least one story I've requested plays a prominent part, you're welcome to draw ideas from stories I didn't request this year. (Please also see DNWs.)
-Stories that focus on or give backstories to magical artefacts and architecture and landscapes. I love glass mountains and golden bridles and enchanted knives.
-Setting AUs! Mundane, in space, in a particular country or time, centred on a particular industry or career - go wild! I really enjoy seeing how the shape of a fairy tale comes through in a very different context. Exception: please no mundane AUs for Heer Halewijn.
-Canon divergence AUs.


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 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.


Do-Not-Wants:
Harm to hands, amnesia, substance abuse; crack; narrators breaking the fourth wall; issuefic where the story and characters are the vehicle for a modern social issue that does not come up in canon.

To be clearer (hopefully!) about crack & narrators breaking the fourth wall: although I've seen this done well, I'm really picky about the execution, so please avoid stories in which the narrator knows all fairy tales and is commenting on them from a point of elevated knowledge. I'm fine with a narrator - especially an unreliable narrator! - who is also a character, and who has a specific, personal reason for telling a story. Crack taken seriously is welcome, but instead of pure crack, I'd prefer humour that is grounded in the events of stories and the characters' natural reactions to those events, or humour that preserves a sense of depth, wonder, and strangeness.

To be clearer (hopefully!) about issuefic: I'm happy to get conflict and resolution around issues like gender equality, or the horror of war, or capitalism, or religious tolerance, where it suits the characters or fairy tale. However, please also give the characters goals and struggles that relate to other things. If you're writing a story about a social issue like these, I'd prefer the protagonists have flaws, and the opportunity to grow and change, rather than being perfect mouthpieces for morality (or being lectured by other perfect mouthpieces for morality).

If my DNWs are unclear, sorry, and please feel free to ask for clarification through my co-mod, Rosencrantz.


( The Bear )

( The Colony of Cats )

( East of the Sun and West of the Moon )

( The Groac'h of the Isle of Lok )

( Heer Halewijn )

( Kemp Owyne )

( The Lute Player )

( The Princess and the Pea )

( Rumpelstiltskin )

This is my letter for the crossovering | Crossovering fic and art exchange for crossover works. We're coming to the end of sign ups - if you love crossovers, go check it out! This is one of my favourite exchanges for the year.


Dear my author, and anyone else who's curious,

This letter is intended to complement my prompts for specific crossovers and fusions. Those prompts can be found on the middle of this page.

General likes

For crossovers and fusions specifically: My favourite things are stories that take note of both canons' worldbuilding and underlying rules and remix them together. I love original characters and outsider viewpoints in crossover fic, and I love stories that create a world that bridges two canons rather than representing one or the other fully faithfully. After that, I most enjoy fusions, and stories that either imply that the two canons always took place in the same world, or use canon-plausible portals/travel.

More generally: I love competence and loyalty. I like uplifting and hopeful messages, and protagonists who champion them. I also like antagonists with strong motivations and critiques of the protagonists' goals. Characters are welcome in any shade of grey. People screwing up and then learning from their mistakes is also welcome. I love magical realism, dramatic weather, trains, telepathy, dragons. For porn, I love dubcon, noncon, telepathy, touch starvation, praise kink, and awkward-but-not-emotionally-disastrous sex. I love mentors and protegé(e)s, and identity porn. (In the context of this exchange, identity porn where a character was always from another universe and has been hiding it for a while might be fun!) I love Big Damn Hero moments, and people who are just trying to make it by in a weird world. I love it when authors incorporate something about which they have a lot of specialized knowledge.

Please don't feel constrained by either my AO3 prompts or my fandom notes. I like a lot of things, and I look forward to receiving something I didn't expect as much as I look forward to you fulfilling my specific prompts.

General dislikes

DNWs: Amnesia; substance abuse, addition, really self-destructive behaviour based on substance abuse; graphic harm to hands.
Exceptions: amnesia is fine in canons where it's already present, such as The Good Place, Interstella 5555, and Dollhouse, if you use it in a similar way to how it's used in canon. I don't want to be surprised by it popping up in a new way that doesn't follow from existing worldbuilding, and I don't want to see it involved with romantic tropes. I hope that leaves you plenty of room to work!

Specific canons

( Canons below cut )

Hi, and thanks for your interest in my letter, whether you're considering writing for me or just curious about my prompts!

This year for Yuletide, I've asked for:

• Drive Angry, a 2011 standalone supernatural/action B-movie;


• Pegasus, a YA fantasy novel that is the first book, but probably the only book, in an incomplete trilogy by Robin McKinley;


• The Shadow, a 1994 superhero movie based on a radio drama + pulp novels (I only know the movie);


• Simoun, a 26-episode fantasy/war anime from 2006;


• Soon I Will Be Invincible, a standalone light sci-fi/superhero novel by Austin Grossman;


• and Sucker Punch, a 2011 standalone fantasy(?)/action movie.

Crossovers or fusions between these fandoms, or between one of these fandoms and another rare fandom I know, are welcome.

On AO3 my username is Morbane.


Do-Not-Wants: harm to hands, addiction and substance abuse, amnesia.

General likes

I love original characters, outsider character perspectives, and worldbuilding. I love competence and loyalty. 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 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 incorporate something about which they have specialized knowledge, however mundane 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.


( Drive Angry (2011) )

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( Pegasus - Robin McKinley )

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( The Shadow (1994) )

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( Simoun (Anime) )

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( Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman )

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( Sucker Punch (2011) )

This letter is for the crossovering annual fanfiction challenge. Sign-ups are open through the 17th of July.

This letter has three parts. Part I gives general likes and dislikes, Part II gives notes on individual fandoms, and Part III gives possible prompts for the crossovers I've requested.

( Part I - General preferences )

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( Part II - Fandoms )

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( Part III - Requests and optional prompts )


In conclusion: if there's something in my prompts you can use, fantastic; if not, go your own way and I look forward to reading something that's a complete surprise. I hope you have fun.

[aka: my 'letter' to the person assigned to create a gift for me in the Jukebox exchange, or anyone considering creating a treat for me. If you don't know what I'm talking about, consider investigating Jukebox! It's kind of a gateway drug to original fic if you're in fandom, or a gateway drug to fandom & fanworks if you write original stuff. And it's open to visual & podfic artists this year.]

( Letter below! )