Dear Fandom 5K Writer, 2017
Hello, I’m polkad0tting (polkadot on AO3). Welcome to my little world! You’re already my new favorite person for volunteering to write 5K in one of my fandoms. ;)
I have lots of old letters from many different exchanges, so if you’d like more insight and/or ideas about what I enjoy (particularly in sports-fic), please do feel free to poke through them.
Like list:
I think the most basic like I have is “affection”. That can take both platonic and romantic forms. If you write me a story about people who have genuine affection for each other, I’ll love it no matter what the plot is. Platonic friendships full of laughter, falling-in-love, comfortable established relationships - I love it all. Banter and bromance and bro-romances are all my jams. (Using bromance as gender-neutral here - sismance sounds quite strange.)
• Basic: SPORTS, friends-to-lovers, falling in love, comfortable established relationships filled with affection and in-jokes, couples kicking butt together and saving the team (and then picking up the drycleaning on the way home), people knowing each other really well, banter, emotional support, plans, plans that don’t go according to plan, working together and using different strengths, coming-out stories, five-times fics, sports (did I mention sports?!)
• In romance: Snark, banter, fond teasing, zaniness, affection laced with humor, snuggling in bed, having sex on sports equipment.
• In porn: Kissing, exploring a partner’s body, unexpected erogenous zones, talking during sex, sex that doesn’t go quite right but they run with it and make it awesome anyway, incoherent noises, morning sex, well-developed biceps and shoulders, fingering that's enjoyed for itself, wall-sex, multiple orgasms, laughter.
Squick list
• Basic: Infidelity, bullying, cruel jokes, noncon, dubcon, incest, bestiality, underage, character death, graphic descriptions of character injury, Ryan Lochte.
• In romance: One-sided pining, both people pining but never getting together, gaslighting, characters who are in love but don’t seem to really like each other very much, A/B/O.
• In porn: Pain being inflicted as a kink, bad dirty talk (if not joked about by the participants), someone not caring about their partner's comfort and pleasure.
One final general note - Infidelity is in my squick list. In cases where a character has a RL partner, I would prefer for this exchange that we pretend that the RL relationship never existed, or ended amicably some time before. (If writing a shippy fic, that is. If it’s gen, RL partner can exist but please only be mentioned in passing.)
My requests:
* A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV) --- Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender & Hook-Handed Man
* Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies) --- Queenie Goldstein/Jacob Kowalski
* NFL RPF --- Ezekiel "Zeke" Elliott/Dak Prescott, Odell Beckham Jr./Dez Bryant, Odell Beckham Jr./Jarvis Landry, Odell Beckham Jr./Victor Cruz
* Tennis RPF --- Andy Murray/Rafa Nadal, Gaël Monfils/Stan Wawrinka, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga/Stan Wawrinka, Novak Djokovic/Andy Murray
A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV)
Relationship - Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender & Hook-Handed Man
Genres - Action/Adventure, AU - Canon Divergence, Canon Style Plot, Humor, Mystery/Procedural, Worldbuilding
Watching this series, I of course loved baby Sunny and enjoyed Count Olaf’s dastardliness and had all the usual reactions, but I also really, really fell in love with Count Olaf’s henchpeople. Their actors were all fantastic and their parts, while usually small and overshadowed by NPH’s larger-than-life performance, were intriguing and made me want more.
So! Here is where I ask for “more”. :D
My favorite henchpeople were the Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender and the Hook-Handed Man (although I enjoyed the others too and am happy to see them in background/secondary roles), so they’re the ones I’ve asked for. What is their relationship like? Are they friends? Rivals? Friendly rivals? Does their relationship change over time (either set before the series or during)? Do they eventually end up dating? (I asked for gen but am okay with shippy too.) How did they first meet? (Was it working for Count Olaf, or sometime before?) Or are they related?
* Perhaps they met in a different acting troupe somewhere. Did one of them/both commit a crime, and it was in fleeing the law that they fell in with Olaf?
* How did the Hook-Handed Man lose his hands?
* What are the life goals of either/both? How are they trying to achieve them by working for Olaf?
* Canon-divergence AU in which (somehow) they end up being a Baudelaire child’s/the Baudelaire children’s guardians together (without Olaf) and create a weird, wacky, but oddly functional family. (I’m not asking for them to be whitewashed - I’d rather they still be criminals, although level of criminality (murderers or petty criminals?) is negotiable - but for them to count the Baudelaires as allies rather than marks.)
* Non-Baudelaire related criminal shenanigans together, with or without Olaf.
* Baudelaire-related criminal shenanigans from the POV of the henchpeople and/or worldbuilding.
Relevant info:
- I’m okay with whatever names you like (feel free to come up with your own!), or with keeping their epithets. I read the Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender as nonbinary and would prefer “they” pronouns for them.
- I’m equally fine with treating only the Netflix series as canon, and with bringing in canon from the books. If you want to rely solely on the Netflix series and ignore everything else, I’m more than fine with that. I’m also fine with taking bits you like from the books and leaving out other bits. (So you can take or leave the Hook-Handed Man’s backstory that is revealed in later books, take just his name, etc.) Exception: I’d rather not have a fic that focuses on the Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender’s death from the books, or whatever the Hook-Handed Man’s grieving might be. I’m here for happy/happy-ish stuff. (If you can say that in this canon…)
~
Fantastic Beasts
Relationship - Queenie Goldstein/Jacob Kowalski
Genres - Action/Adventure, Canon Style Plot, Character Development, Fix-it fic, Fluff, Getting Together, Humor
I am quite possibly the last person alive to see this movie, haha. But I finally did, and I loved it! It’s one of those movies though that I’m only fannish in the “need fic now” kind of way about certain things, and in this case, that means Queenie/Jacob. They’re fantastic and I adore them and I want all the cute adventures and falling-in-love and magical derring-do and inspired baking creations. :D
I am definitely only interested in happy endings for them. However you’d like to get there is up to you, though! How does their relationship develop the second time around? When/how do Queenie’s little bakery visits morph into full ‘fuck it’ wooing of Jacob? What adventures do they have, either magical or No-Maj? How does Queenie eventually tell him about magic again?
* Do Queenie & Jacob move to the UK or Europe and fight Grindelwald together? (Even as a No-Maj, Jacob can help the cause. And after all, if nothing else, even wizards need to eat.)
* A magical bakery (once Jacob is in on the magic secret, and probably after they’ve moved where their interstatus relationship will be accepted) sounds delicious! And he could make ‘exotic’ No-Maj/Muggle recipes and market them to wizards!
* Five times Queenie almost told Jacob about magic, and one time she found out he already knew.
* Or how about a fun mashup of genres in which Jacob (accidentally) becomes a superhero and now it’s a superhero/witch relationship and they fight Grindelwald together!
* Jacob’s first visit to Hogwarts, to visit their daughter.
* Queenie shows Jacob how magic can be used ~in bed.
* Queenie and Jacob become activists for wizard/No-Maj relationships in the USA.
* Five times Jacob almost kissed Queenie, and one time she kissed him first.
~
NFL RPF
Relationships - Ezekiel "Zeke" Elliott/Dak Prescott, Odell Beckham Jr./Dez Bryant, Odell Beckham Jr./Jarvis Landry, Odell Beckham Jr./Victor Cruz
Genres - Action/Adventure, AU - Canon Divergence, Canon Style Plot, Fix-it fic, Fluff, Getting Together, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Smut
My teams are actually the Vikings and the Chiefs, but somewhere along the line I developed an unshakeable affection for Dak Prescott, Zeke Elliott, and Odell Beckham Jr. Last year was a lot of fun (and broke my heart when both of their teams flamed out), and I’m hoping this next year will be even better! :)
In general, I would prefer a fic in which the two players are happy together, rather than anything heavy. For example, Odell gets a lot of homophobic abuse and taunts from opposing players to throw him off his game and goad him into fighting back and getting flags thrown. While you don’t need to erase that if it happens to come up, I’d prefer that not to be a primary focus. (Unless it’s an offscreen precursor to emotional hurt/comfort. Odell getting a bit of praise-kink from his boyfriend after a rough game sounds pretty great.) I’d love for the plot to focus instead either on getting-together/first-time (a trope that never gets old for me), or on adventures that my ship can indulge in together. (Whether in the bedroom, on the field, etc.)
Prompts!
* Clandestine locker-room affection, whether that’s knowing glances, inside jokes, a little oomph on the buttslaps, or snatched kisses when nobody’s around.
* Work hard, party hard!
* Bromances and team bonding, and how an actual romance can masquerade among it.
* How a friendship deepens into love.
* Five times X almost kissed Y, and one time he did. (And other such five-times fic!)
* Five times X & Y won a football game, and one time they won each other. (Etc. I can go on all day in this vein, haha.)
* Strength and athleticism in bed as a major turn-on.
* Pranks, shenanigans, tricks, goofing-off, etc.
* A pair having to figure out what it means that they keep falling into bed together.
* Competition bets - not monetary, but forfeits or sex bets.
* Coming-out fic (privately or publicly).
* First-time fic.
* What’s it like to be in a relationship with a competitor?
* Happily-ever-after fic! In every sports fandom, I’m a sucker for “what if X’s every sporting dream came true?” (Either in the future, or a canon-divergence AU in which one of their teams won the Super Bowl last year.)
* Hurt/comfort after an injury.
* Hurt/comfort after a loss or bad performance.
* Athletes being competitive about sex (because they obviously have competitive personalities).
Note: You definitely don’t need to sand down the edges of Odell’s personality. I’m aware that he’s a firebrand, and I don’t need that erased. While I’m after happy-fic/happy endings, I don’t need everybody to be perfect cinnamon rolls. ;)
~
Tennis RPF
Relationships - Andy Murray/Rafa Nadal, Gaël Monfils/Stan Wawrinka, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga/Stan Wawrinka, Novak Djokovic/Andy Murray
Genres - AU - Canon Divergence, Canon Style Plot, Established Relationship, Fix-it fic, Fluff, Getting Together, Humor, Smut
Ah tennis, my old friend. <3 If you know me at all (or look at my AO3 profile), you know that I love tennis! I’ve asked for four relationships here that are especially dear to me, and will love a fic about any of them in any of the genres I’ve asked for.
For Gaël/Stan and Jo/Stan, please see my recent ship primer, which has exhaustive background, excessive squee, and lots of prompts. :D
In general, I love reading about sports and athletes. I love the nobbly bits and strategy and head-games and breathtaking moments. I love the muscles and locker-room bonding, referees and ice-baths, underdogs and rivalries and tempests in teapots. I love competition and fire, and the friendships/relationships that flourish in spite of competitive fire.
Things I would be interested in reading about for any of the ships, in no particular order:
* Laughter and banter.
* A slice of tennis life, and how a relationship with another player would fit into the rhythms of the tour; the pull between on-court competitiveness and off-court closeness.
* Strength and athleticism in bed as a major turn-on.
* Locker-room pranks, shenanigans, tricks, goofing-off, etc.
* A pair having to figure out what it means that they keep falling into bed together.
* Bets made on matches/stats - not monetary, but forfeits or sex bets
* How did a couple first get together?
* Coming-out fic (to friends, to the team, to the public, whatever level)
* Five-times fic (five times a caught himself staring at b, and one time he let b see him looking; five times a pranked b, and one time b got his own back; five times a & b got interrupted before they got around to having sex, and one time they weren't; etc.) I am a sucker for this format.
* Rafa winning Roland Garros again! Or Wimbledon! Gaël or Jo winning their first Slam!
* Athletes being competitive about sex (because they obviously have competitive personalities).
* There is a mystery of some kind going on in the tennis world, and X/Y will get to the bottom of it!
Note: Please no mention of Donna Vekic or any other WAGs.
~
Thank you for writing for me! <3 I’m really excited. :D
I have lots of old letters from many different exchanges, so if you’d like more insight and/or ideas about what I enjoy (particularly in sports-fic), please do feel free to poke through them.
Like list:
I think the most basic like I have is “affection”. That can take both platonic and romantic forms. If you write me a story about people who have genuine affection for each other, I’ll love it no matter what the plot is. Platonic friendships full of laughter, falling-in-love, comfortable established relationships - I love it all. Banter and bromance and bro-romances are all my jams. (Using bromance as gender-neutral here - sismance sounds quite strange.)
• Basic: SPORTS, friends-to-lovers, falling in love, comfortable established relationships filled with affection and in-jokes, couples kicking butt together and saving the team (and then picking up the drycleaning on the way home), people knowing each other really well, banter, emotional support, plans, plans that don’t go according to plan, working together and using different strengths, coming-out stories, five-times fics, sports (did I mention sports?!)
• In romance: Snark, banter, fond teasing, zaniness, affection laced with humor, snuggling in bed, having sex on sports equipment.
• In porn: Kissing, exploring a partner’s body, unexpected erogenous zones, talking during sex, sex that doesn’t go quite right but they run with it and make it awesome anyway, incoherent noises, morning sex, well-developed biceps and shoulders, fingering that's enjoyed for itself, wall-sex, multiple orgasms, laughter.
Squick list
• Basic: Infidelity, bullying, cruel jokes, noncon, dubcon, incest, bestiality, underage, character death, graphic descriptions of character injury, Ryan Lochte.
• In romance: One-sided pining, both people pining but never getting together, gaslighting, characters who are in love but don’t seem to really like each other very much, A/B/O.
• In porn: Pain being inflicted as a kink, bad dirty talk (if not joked about by the participants), someone not caring about their partner's comfort and pleasure.
One final general note - Infidelity is in my squick list. In cases where a character has a RL partner, I would prefer for this exchange that we pretend that the RL relationship never existed, or ended amicably some time before. (If writing a shippy fic, that is. If it’s gen, RL partner can exist but please only be mentioned in passing.)
My requests:
* A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV) --- Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender & Hook-Handed Man
* Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies) --- Queenie Goldstein/Jacob Kowalski
* NFL RPF --- Ezekiel "Zeke" Elliott/Dak Prescott, Odell Beckham Jr./Dez Bryant, Odell Beckham Jr./Jarvis Landry, Odell Beckham Jr./Victor Cruz
* Tennis RPF --- Andy Murray/Rafa Nadal, Gaël Monfils/Stan Wawrinka, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga/Stan Wawrinka, Novak Djokovic/Andy Murray
A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV)
Relationship - Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender & Hook-Handed Man
Genres - Action/Adventure, AU - Canon Divergence, Canon Style Plot, Humor, Mystery/Procedural, Worldbuilding
Watching this series, I of course loved baby Sunny and enjoyed Count Olaf’s dastardliness and had all the usual reactions, but I also really, really fell in love with Count Olaf’s henchpeople. Their actors were all fantastic and their parts, while usually small and overshadowed by NPH’s larger-than-life performance, were intriguing and made me want more.
So! Here is where I ask for “more”. :D
My favorite henchpeople were the Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender and the Hook-Handed Man (although I enjoyed the others too and am happy to see them in background/secondary roles), so they’re the ones I’ve asked for. What is their relationship like? Are they friends? Rivals? Friendly rivals? Does their relationship change over time (either set before the series or during)? Do they eventually end up dating? (I asked for gen but am okay with shippy too.) How did they first meet? (Was it working for Count Olaf, or sometime before?) Or are they related?
* Perhaps they met in a different acting troupe somewhere. Did one of them/both commit a crime, and it was in fleeing the law that they fell in with Olaf?
* How did the Hook-Handed Man lose his hands?
* What are the life goals of either/both? How are they trying to achieve them by working for Olaf?
* Canon-divergence AU in which (somehow) they end up being a Baudelaire child’s/the Baudelaire children’s guardians together (without Olaf) and create a weird, wacky, but oddly functional family. (I’m not asking for them to be whitewashed - I’d rather they still be criminals, although level of criminality (murderers or petty criminals?) is negotiable - but for them to count the Baudelaires as allies rather than marks.)
* Non-Baudelaire related criminal shenanigans together, with or without Olaf.
* Baudelaire-related criminal shenanigans from the POV of the henchpeople and/or worldbuilding.
Relevant info:
- I’m okay with whatever names you like (feel free to come up with your own!), or with keeping their epithets. I read the Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender as nonbinary and would prefer “they” pronouns for them.
- I’m equally fine with treating only the Netflix series as canon, and with bringing in canon from the books. If you want to rely solely on the Netflix series and ignore everything else, I’m more than fine with that. I’m also fine with taking bits you like from the books and leaving out other bits. (So you can take or leave the Hook-Handed Man’s backstory that is revealed in later books, take just his name, etc.) Exception: I’d rather not have a fic that focuses on the Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender’s death from the books, or whatever the Hook-Handed Man’s grieving might be. I’m here for happy/happy-ish stuff. (If you can say that in this canon…)
~
Fantastic Beasts
Relationship - Queenie Goldstein/Jacob Kowalski
Genres - Action/Adventure, Canon Style Plot, Character Development, Fix-it fic, Fluff, Getting Together, Humor
I am quite possibly the last person alive to see this movie, haha. But I finally did, and I loved it! It’s one of those movies though that I’m only fannish in the “need fic now” kind of way about certain things, and in this case, that means Queenie/Jacob. They’re fantastic and I adore them and I want all the cute adventures and falling-in-love and magical derring-do and inspired baking creations. :D
I am definitely only interested in happy endings for them. However you’d like to get there is up to you, though! How does their relationship develop the second time around? When/how do Queenie’s little bakery visits morph into full ‘fuck it’ wooing of Jacob? What adventures do they have, either magical or No-Maj? How does Queenie eventually tell him about magic again?
* Do Queenie & Jacob move to the UK or Europe and fight Grindelwald together? (Even as a No-Maj, Jacob can help the cause. And after all, if nothing else, even wizards need to eat.)
* A magical bakery (once Jacob is in on the magic secret, and probably after they’ve moved where their interstatus relationship will be accepted) sounds delicious! And he could make ‘exotic’ No-Maj/Muggle recipes and market them to wizards!
* Five times Queenie almost told Jacob about magic, and one time she found out he already knew.
* Or how about a fun mashup of genres in which Jacob (accidentally) becomes a superhero and now it’s a superhero/witch relationship and they fight Grindelwald together!
* Jacob’s first visit to Hogwarts, to visit their daughter.
* Queenie shows Jacob how magic can be used ~in bed.
* Queenie and Jacob become activists for wizard/No-Maj relationships in the USA.
* Five times Jacob almost kissed Queenie, and one time she kissed him first.
~
NFL RPF
Relationships - Ezekiel "Zeke" Elliott/Dak Prescott, Odell Beckham Jr./Dez Bryant, Odell Beckham Jr./Jarvis Landry, Odell Beckham Jr./Victor Cruz
Genres - Action/Adventure, AU - Canon Divergence, Canon Style Plot, Fix-it fic, Fluff, Getting Together, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Smut
My teams are actually the Vikings and the Chiefs, but somewhere along the line I developed an unshakeable affection for Dak Prescott, Zeke Elliott, and Odell Beckham Jr. Last year was a lot of fun (and broke my heart when both of their teams flamed out), and I’m hoping this next year will be even better! :)
In general, I would prefer a fic in which the two players are happy together, rather than anything heavy. For example, Odell gets a lot of homophobic abuse and taunts from opposing players to throw him off his game and goad him into fighting back and getting flags thrown. While you don’t need to erase that if it happens to come up, I’d prefer that not to be a primary focus. (Unless it’s an offscreen precursor to emotional hurt/comfort. Odell getting a bit of praise-kink from his boyfriend after a rough game sounds pretty great.) I’d love for the plot to focus instead either on getting-together/first-time (a trope that never gets old for me), or on adventures that my ship can indulge in together. (Whether in the bedroom, on the field, etc.)
Prompts!
* Clandestine locker-room affection, whether that’s knowing glances, inside jokes, a little oomph on the buttslaps, or snatched kisses when nobody’s around.
* Work hard, party hard!
* Bromances and team bonding, and how an actual romance can masquerade among it.
* How a friendship deepens into love.
* Five times X almost kissed Y, and one time he did. (And other such five-times fic!)
* Five times X & Y won a football game, and one time they won each other. (Etc. I can go on all day in this vein, haha.)
* Strength and athleticism in bed as a major turn-on.
* Pranks, shenanigans, tricks, goofing-off, etc.
* A pair having to figure out what it means that they keep falling into bed together.
* Competition bets - not monetary, but forfeits or sex bets.
* Coming-out fic (privately or publicly).
* First-time fic.
* What’s it like to be in a relationship with a competitor?
* Happily-ever-after fic! In every sports fandom, I’m a sucker for “what if X’s every sporting dream came true?” (Either in the future, or a canon-divergence AU in which one of their teams won the Super Bowl last year.)
* Hurt/comfort after an injury.
* Hurt/comfort after a loss or bad performance.
* Athletes being competitive about sex (because they obviously have competitive personalities).
Note: You definitely don’t need to sand down the edges of Odell’s personality. I’m aware that he’s a firebrand, and I don’t need that erased. While I’m after happy-fic/happy endings, I don’t need everybody to be perfect cinnamon rolls. ;)
~
Tennis RPF
Relationships - Andy Murray/Rafa Nadal, Gaël Monfils/Stan Wawrinka, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga/Stan Wawrinka, Novak Djokovic/Andy Murray
Genres - AU - Canon Divergence, Canon Style Plot, Established Relationship, Fix-it fic, Fluff, Getting Together, Humor, Smut
Ah tennis, my old friend. <3 If you know me at all (or look at my AO3 profile), you know that I love tennis! I’ve asked for four relationships here that are especially dear to me, and will love a fic about any of them in any of the genres I’ve asked for.
For Gaël/Stan and Jo/Stan, please see my recent ship primer, which has exhaustive background, excessive squee, and lots of prompts. :D
In general, I love reading about sports and athletes. I love the nobbly bits and strategy and head-games and breathtaking moments. I love the muscles and locker-room bonding, referees and ice-baths, underdogs and rivalries and tempests in teapots. I love competition and fire, and the friendships/relationships that flourish in spite of competitive fire.
Things I would be interested in reading about for any of the ships, in no particular order:
* Laughter and banter.
* A slice of tennis life, and how a relationship with another player would fit into the rhythms of the tour; the pull between on-court competitiveness and off-court closeness.
* Strength and athleticism in bed as a major turn-on.
* Locker-room pranks, shenanigans, tricks, goofing-off, etc.
* A pair having to figure out what it means that they keep falling into bed together.
* Bets made on matches/stats - not monetary, but forfeits or sex bets
* How did a couple first get together?
* Coming-out fic (to friends, to the team, to the public, whatever level)
* Five-times fic (five times a caught himself staring at b, and one time he let b see him looking; five times a pranked b, and one time b got his own back; five times a & b got interrupted before they got around to having sex, and one time they weren't; etc.) I am a sucker for this format.
* Rafa winning Roland Garros again! Or Wimbledon! Gaël or Jo winning their first Slam!
* Athletes being competitive about sex (because they obviously have competitive personalities).
* There is a mystery of some kind going on in the tennis world, and X/Y will get to the bottom of it!
Note: Please no mention of Donna Vekic or any other WAGs.
~
Thank you for writing for me! <3 I’m really excited. :D