deadfinch | all-purpose exchange letter

Last updated 9/02/24.

Treats are always welcome in any medium. "Late" treats are squeed over and adored.

DNWs:

Bodily wastes described in detail or appearing at all in a sexual context.
Omegaverse.
Detailed descriptions of eye injuries, nail injuries, nipple injuries, genital injuries, and/or flaying/skinning.
Unrequested on-screen non-consensual sex. Non-con is defined for the purposes of this DNW as:
- any instance where a character is physically forced, threatened, or blackmailed into sexual activity that they explicitly and unambiguously do not want to have; or
- any instance where a character is severely or totally incapacitated, did not explicitly consent to sexual activity in that altered state beforehand, and someone who is more sober/cognizant than them engages in sexual activity with them anyway (e.g., they're asleep and didn't explicitly agree to a partner using their unconscious body for sexual gratification beforehand; they’re drugged beyond the ability to communicate and/or comprehend reality and also didn’t consent to altered-state sex beforehand).
Anything short of these two situations fall under "dubcon" for the purposes of my requests and are totally fair game!
Unrequested on-screen painful and/or unaroused sex. "Painful sex" refers specifically to genital pain. Other types of pain during sex are welcome, especially if they serve to heighten the experiencer's arousal.
Unrequested on-screen sexual activity involving anyone under the age of 16.
Unrequested on-screen penis-in-vagina sex. Strap-ons are fine! To be clear, this DNW targets the specific sex act, not what type of genitalia characters may have.
Unrequested pregnancy (that is, characters being or becoming pregnant in the work; discussion of past or planned future pregnancy is alright so long as it is not the primary focus.)

As a general note: if you're hesitant to include something because it "skirts close" to a DNW, don't be! Unless something is ruled out by the exact, literal wording of my DNWs, it's fine. I phrased them carefully.

Common "opt-ins" that I am perfectly comfortable with:

Major character death, whether canonical or non-canonical.
Graphic violence, body horror, and just horror in general.
Dubious consent, which for me is basically anything short of the two scenarios described in my non-con DNW. Sex pollen? Dubcon. Character is blackmailed into sex but is still maybe-kind-of-reluctantly into it? Dubcon. Character is high to the point of severely impacting their judgment but is still saying "yes" to sex? Also dubcon. (I love dubcon. Go crazy with the dubcon.)
Depictions of and references to incest, even if I'm not specifically requesting any incest ships.
Depictions of and references to setting-accurate bigotry, including depictions that might be darker or more explicit than what's canon-typical.
Unhappy/bittersweet/ambiguous endings.
Non-monogamy within a requested ship, including consensual polyamory, situations of infidelity, or anything that might fall in between those two nodes.
Unrequested background ships, including "rival" ships for any ships I request. I'm a very open-minded multishipper. If there's any ship in the fandom I really don't want to see, I'll explicitly DNW it.
Unrequited attraction within a requested ship.
Gender AUs, especially when they serve to transform M/M and M/F ships into F/F. This includes both trans AUs/headcanons and "always a cis X"-type genderbending.

Fiction likes (include, but are not limited to):

Ambiguous relationships, self-aware "smarm," and understated shipfic are one of my (many) happy places. I love the lingering tension and all the things that are left to implication. I love relationships that are just on the cusp of something, where we get to see the before but don’t quite follow to the after; I also love relationships that are strange and intense and not-quite-romantic but also not-quite-platonic and altogether impossible to define. I love when a character's longing comes out in unique, hard-to-parse ways. I love when it’s clear that something’s going on, but the characters involved won’t admit to it, perhaps even internally; maybe they’re scared of what it would mean for them if they said it out loud, or maybe it’s something they want but that they know they shouldn’t have. Maybe it's something they're already doing, but calling it what it is would make it all too dangerously real.
Smut is also lovely, if you're in the mood to write it! Some of my (non-exhaustive!) smut likes include: guilty/taboo sex, comfort sex, displays of possessiveness/ownership, soulbonds/mind-melds/any kind of psychic feedback, emphasis on canonical age gaps and disparities of power, an older or more experienced/powerful character being dominated by a younger or less experienced/powerful character, teasing, edging, overstimulation, agonizingly slow sex, consensual non-consent, marriage/dating roleplay between characters who can't or shouldn't have that kind of relationship (or feel like they can't/shouldn't), coerced feminization/butchification, in-denial characters justifying why the gay sex they're having doesn't count as gay sex, stone tops getting "melted" by their one exception, stone tops remaining stone the whole way through, feral/animalistic sex, bloodplay, knife/gun/weaponplay, breathplay, biting/scratching, bondage, sensory deprivation, violence underpinned by affection, encounters that blur the boundary between fighting and having sex, sex while high/drunk/in whatever altered state you can imagine, praise as degradation, praise played totally straight, cunnilingus, vaginal fingering, scissoring, frottage, kissing/making out, loss of virginity, and creative uses of magic/technology/other speculative elements of the canon.
Complicated relationship dynamics that range from actually-pretty-healthy-given-the-circumstances to deeply, unhingedly dysfunctional. People who genuinely love each other but have fucked-up ways of showing it due to their insane worldviews? That's my Goldilocks zone.
Relationships with significant power imbalances: teachers and their students, queens and their knights, captains and their lieutenants, bosses and their employees, parents and their children, clerics and their gods.
Family dynamics, especially mother-daughter relationships.
Tropes that force or catalyze intimacy. This is really broad, and includes things like accidental soulbonds, sex pollen, sex rituals, only-one-bed, undercover-as-a-couple, arranged marriage, truth potions, etc.
Displays of vulnerability and trust.
Displays of loyalty, especially if it's unexpected or hard-earned (e.g., the characters in question used to be enemies and betrayal was still a lingering expectation).
Outsider POV on characters and relationships. "Normies must think the Winchesters are serial killers" and its ilk are catnip to me. I love it every time.
Competence, i.e., characters being really, really good at the things they're supposed to be good at.
Characters solving problems in clever, satisfying, unexpected, and/or delightfully on-brand ways.
Ensemble presence. Even for character- or ship-focused requests, I'm always happy when the rest of the cast is relevant and prominent.
Exploration of the ramifications of trauma.
Death, grief, mortality, and all the varying ways a character might cope with these things. If there is canonical character death, feel free to dig your fingers into it.
Hurt/comfort - especially mutual hurt/comfort - with an emphasis on the hurt. Get whumpy! Some of my favorite elements include body horror, ad-hoc/unprofessional emergency medical care, needles, drowning/strangulation/anything in that “can’t breathe” sphere of things, eating disorders/difficulty eating in general, nausea/vomiting, characters overworking themselves, characters taking drugs (or fantasy equivalent) and then going through withdrawal, hallucinations, dissociation/depersonalization, blackouts/memory loss/memory alteration, magical injury/exhaustion/basically anything related to magic, characters being self-destructive in order to prove something/protect others/pursue an obsession, characters feeling emotionally isolated (due to trauma, the burden of their station, their own increasingly messy decisions, etc.) despite having a genuinely caring support group… to name but a few!
Changes in allegiance: bad guys learning to be good; good guys getting "corrupted" and falling, slowly, to the bad side.
Characters who are bad at being good. Some examples of what I mean by this include (but are very much not limited to): reformed (or reforming) villains struggling to deprogram their fucked up perspective and making hurtful decisions as a consequence, in spite of their best efforts; maybe-not-so-reformed villains struggling to be kind and tender with the one person they have, against all odds, come to love; the high school bully trying to extend a genuine gesture of friendship and still managing to be as convoluted, mindgamey, and backhanded about it as possible–maybe because that’s just what friendship looks like to her, or maybe she realizes it’s not quite right, but she still just doesn’t know any other way to be.
"Goodness" and "badness" deconstructed as concepts as characters grapple with their moral philosophies in nuanced ways.
Shapeshifting and animal transformation, especially if the character retains some quirky animalistic psychological traits even in their human form.
Possession and body-sharing, à la Eddie and Venom from Venom or the Yamis from Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monsters.
In-universe religion: religious conflicts; religious imagery & symbolism; individual character perspectives on religion and mythology; religious trauma and crises of faith.
In-universe politics.
SFF worldbuilding and anthropology of the fantastic.
Fictional academia.
Languages and linguistics. This is my field in real life, so you're encouraged to get really nerdy with this.
Casefic/missionfic or anything that hooks the character and relationship development on some kind of outstanding quest, mystery, or plot.
Mundanity and moments of quiet, particularly as it sits in juxtaposition to heavy conflict and intensity. I especially enjoy watching characters who we typically only see in high-stakes situations navigate the minutiae of daily life.
Locations that breathe and have weight and personality and all the delicious imagery that comes with it.
Playing with tropes and genre expectations. Deconstructions and reconstructions of children's fantasy and fairytale story logic are especially iddy to me. A lot of my fandoms are nostalgia canons that I enjoy picking apart with adult fingers.
Non-standard and/or experimental narrative styles. Familiar examples include things like second person narration, epistolary, pesterfic, in-universe social media posts, non-chronological scene order and interactive fiction, but it’s definitely not limited to those. If you have an idea that’s kind of off-the-wall and you’ve been wanting to experiment with it but haven’t found a good opportunity to do so, consider me your guinea pig.
Pre-canon fic, post-canon fic, codas, time-skip fic, missing scenes, episode tags, etc.
Canon divergence AUs.
AUs that keep the canon setting but tweak some element of its premise. "Harry Potter, but with Neville as the Boy Who Lived," "Supernatural, but Sam and Dean are monsters instead of hunters," and "Star Trek, but the cast are space EMTs instead of a starship crew" are all examples.
AUs that tie unexpectedly back into canon. An example of this might be a story where we think it's a mundane AU, but it's really that a character is stuck inside a lotus-eater machine reality; or we think there's been some kind of fundamental setting change, but really it's just a long domino effect from a clever canon divergence point. I understand that this sort of story can be time-consuming and often beyond the scope of a small exchange, but if you happen to be itching to write this sort of plot, know that I would make for a delighted audience!
Stories that the author clearly had fun writing. Do none of these bullet points spark joy? No worries! Optional details are optional. Write what you love and I'll probably love it, too.

Art likes (include, but are not limited to):

Interesting color palettes. I am especially drawn to palettes that edge to one or the other extreme, e.g. I like ultrasaturated color explosions just as much as I like palettes that have a dusty, desaturated feel.
Moody, playful, or extreme/experimental lighting.
Fun compositions that really play with the space.
Art that feels very "textured."
Parodies/pastiches of famous works or styles. That trend where people draw their OTP as The Kiss is a great example.
Alternative costumes, redesigns, fashions spreads, etc. I especially love seeing a character's style "translated" into another setting, e.g., a fantasy wizard's costume translated into 1990s streetwear. Simplistic character designs rendered "fancy" are also really fun.
Mini-comics, whether they be serious or silly. (Meme recreations are cute.)
Pixel art.
Scene illustrations for non-visual canons.
Prose, poetry, quotes, and/or other forms of text incorporated into the visuals.
Non-human subjects like animals, objects, architecture, and landscapes.
In-universe media such as travel posters for fictional destinations or anatomical diagrams of fictional fauna.
Icons, phone backgrounds, and other "practical" aspect ratios are a real treat. (Then I get to look at the gift art all the time!)