Id Pro Quo 2020 Letter
Feb. 10th, 2020 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rose_stonewallHi, writer! Thanks for writing for me - I'm super excited to see what you end up creating. Normally I'd start out with a general likes section, but in constructing this letter I've realised that a lot of the things I'd usually put in a general likes section are things that I only specifically want for one or two sections of this letter, so those are going to end up a bit spread out. But I have come up with a few extremely general general likes, so:
Fandoms: Harry Potter MCU The Creature Court Original Work
I have three separate signups for this one, so I'll be dividing my thoughts accordingly. Generally speaking, though, this is not a canon where I care a whole lot about sticking to canon. I love this world and all the building blocks it gave us... but they're building blocks. It's like a movie set made of Legos. If I'm writing I have a tendency to steal bricks and start building my own, more interesting sets, and I see no reason to hold others to a different standard. Make up weird new kinds of magic! Build political structures! Invent historical incidents! Or don't, it's all cool. Also, for the record, I haven't seen Fantastic Beasts or Cursed Child or read Pottermore since back when the potions game was on it, but I've probably osmosed enough via ficreading to understand what's going on if you want to include canon from any of them.
It may seem like this section is a weird mish-mash strangely fixated on Ginny Weasley and that is for a REASON. Canon seems to suggest that Ginny just got over her possession and that's nice I guess? It's probably very good for her healthwise? But that is not what i'm looking for. I am here for a Ginny who is NOT over it; she's fucked up and has a head full of stuff she can't talk about because it'll make her family worry, especially since it's actually kind of interesting. Tom was a psychopath but he was a psychopath who knew vast amounts about magic, especially the kinds a good girl isn't supposed to like, and as a result she knows a bunch of horrible spells she doesn't want to use (except maybe on Tom) and a bunch of illegal spells she doesn't want to use (except that everything Tom knew about them made them sound incredibly fascinating. And dangerous, but she's survived possession already, right?) and also legilimency, which she didn't really have a choice about using until she managed to figure out how to keep herself from invading the minds of everyone around her.
And then! Tom's back to ruin everything! And she just so happens to have a brain full of spells she could use against him, taught to her by him for maximum irony. And maybe they wouldn't kill him but like... does she care? He hurt her. She's fully ready to hurt him back.
Potential scenarios, for those that are looking for promptier prompts, could include:
As far as specific pairings go:
Ginny/Pansy and Ginny/Draco - look okay I am very into Gryffindor/Slytherin pairings, because it gives opportunities for lovely angsty stuff like "oh no, my parents are Death Eaters, what do". I think there's a lot of places that Pansy or Draco's characterisation could go. Horrified by what the Death Eaters are doing, but unsure how to get out? Reluctantly committed to the cause because they have family in already and just trying not to think too hard about what's going on? Doing their best not to get involved? My preference would be that they end up involved in the fight against Voldemort/societal forces/whatever else by the end, though 'reluctantly involved thanks to their relationship/blackmail/something else' is fine. I would prefer they didn't start out as a fully committed Death Eater.
Harry/Ginny - Harry gets an awful lot put on his shoulders in canon. What might he end up looking like if that weight ended up getting to him and he rebelled against the things he's supposed to do - and not do? Or if he realised everything he and his friends and schoolmates went through defeating Voldemort was all for nothing, because the status quo was determined to stay that way? Or if Ginny straight-up seduced him to dark magic?
Hermione/Ginny - What If They Go Bad Together. I personally feel that Hermione cares more about the image of being a good rule-abiding girl than actually following rules. Especially if the rule is "don't do or learn about these types of magic because they're Bad. No, we won't tell you why they're bad, they just are. Drop it." I don't... think that would go well. I especially don't think that would go well if a Hermione who was busily investigating something that's technically illegal ran face-first into a Ginny who was on a Mission Of Revenge against a dude who'd happily murder Hermione. Maybe they should, I don't know, make out, destroy Voldemort, and then destroy the Ministry. Just a thought.
Ginny/Severus - I should note for the record that I'm not into the age difference of Ginny/Severus; this ship is in here basically because like... what if Ginny time-travelled to try to fuck up Tom's first attempt at a rise to power and ended up running into Snape and decided to recruit him into her anti-Tom efforts, taking advantage of his desire to get Lily to like him again, and then like... brainfuck manipulation power-differential. Possibly with a side of Severus desperately wanting Ginny and hating himself for it because he knows she's bad for him and he's in love with Lily and Ginny's getting him deeper into the Dark Arts which isn't exactly going to help him convince Lily he's a good guy now, and he hates himself and he hates Ginny but also: he really, really doesn't hate Ginny. (And then like... dark magic. Fucking with Tom. etc.)
(I feel a bit like this is railroad-y but honestly writing this has made me realise the appeal of this ship for me is the power differential being totally opposite what you'd expect of this ship and I honestly don't know how you'd get that without the time travel. Like... the age difference, the fact that he's her teacher, that would very firmly put the power differential on the other foot and that's not iddy for me at all. Also past!Severus is, as I see it, very vulnerable to manipulation: the Marauders harass him everywhere except Slytherin, and the Slytherins harass him there because he's friends with Lily and all the most powerful people in the House at that point are pro-Voldemort, and even when he pretends to be one of them to try to minimise the conflict there's always going to be a gap. And I just don't see the Slytherins picking him up immediately after he'd fucked things up with Slytherin. He'd just be sitting there, lonely and angry and desperate for someone who cared, and along comes a Ginny who's so desperate to stop Tom she'd do just about anything...)
Okay, sure, Harry's childhood being very miserable is extremely British Children's Book of him. Very traditional! But like... what if it wasn't that?
When I say "any", I really and truly very literally mean Any. For the purposes of ensuring his childhood is actually happy, I'm ruling out those AUs where a Death Eater manages to get custody of him and raises him to be Evil, since those could technically still include a happy childhood. But otherwise? Go fuckin' wild.
Request-specific DNWs: Harry raised by a Death Eater to become a Death Eater/follow Voldemort (regretful DE trying to get away from his or her past shitty choices is AOK); Harry ending up inexplicably badass/with skills he could not reasonably have gained given his age; incest.
For those who would prefer something promptier:
I am very fond of redemption fics. AU where Petunia was a better caregiver? Sure, go for it. Cracky (or non-cracky) AU where Pettigrew decides that yeah, he fucked up a lot but he's still a better potential parent than the Dursleys? Yes! (Obviously in this scenario he'd be not raising Harry to be evil, but instead awkwardly avoiding the question of what happened to Harry's parents, since what happened to them was, well, him.)
Also: time travel. What if one of his friends ends up thrown back in time and adopts him? Or family (Dudley?) Or a rival (what if... Draco Malfoy? Who desperately does not want this job but can't work out a better option...)
A let's-kidnap-Harry fic from someone the right age to do so? Yeah, that's great too. Sirius? Remus? Rita Skeeter? (Yes. I mean that. I actually tried to work out how to swing that one once and couldn't work out a motivation for her not to just exploit Harry for articles. If you can work something out, then absolutely go for it.)
Basically: happy Harry.
SORTING AUs. I love these! They're the perfect marriage of a) canon divergence AUs (ranging from fairly mild to extremely wild) and b) CHARACTERISATION. Oh boy do I love characterisation. A lot.
For this request I have nominated ANY. Obviously this covers a few people and pairings; I am totally happy for any permutation of characters in the tagset, whether it's shipfic, turning an existing ship tag into &, choosing a single person from any of those shiptags, doing an ensemble, etc. Also for the record, I am happy for literally any character in the canon to show up in the fic, though I can obviously only officially ask for characters who're actually in the tagset. So if you're writing a Slytherin Harry AU and happen to have some great ideas for a Slytherin Cedric that you want to fit into the background? Go for it! I am also very happy to read AUs containing characters who don't canonically have magic attending Hogwarts.
Potential prompts:
Anything from "introspective stuff inside a character's head" to "here is a list of ways this minor difference led to a series of wild changes in canon" would be awesome.
What if [Character] being in [House] somehow fucked up every single one of Voldemort's plans in the most ridiculous way possible?
Compare and contrast of potential houses [Character] could be in and how they could be better or VASTLY WORSE than canon. Which could probably work as a modified 5 Times fic, or you could throw in 'what if they went to Beauxbatons/Durmstrang/were homeschooled/didn't have magic/refused to believe the letter' to complete the set.
Outsider POV... the Hat? A teacher? Rita Skeeter writing about someone who made some great change in the social fabric, being as much of a bitch as she always is?
If you have a yearning to write a fic with in-universe meta or other non-standard formats, this is the time. Because I love that and am extremely fascinated by the idea of like... a history book entry about [Character], or a series of letters, or newspaper articles, etc. (see: Rita Skeeter above.)
Unlike my earlier requests, this is a bit of a catch-all for various ships and freeforms. For simplicity, I'm breaking it up by freeforms.
Also, a quick note: while I'm doing my best to come up with at least a few ideas per ship/freeform, there's a lot here, so they should by no means be considered The Only Thing I Want. I just only have so much brain for coming up with prompts, especially when there's this many ships and freeforms. If you have other ideas that work/think that Prompt X would actually work better with Ship Y/want to throw a bunch of freeforms into a blender and see what happens, please feel free to do so!
Thor/Jane - Jane beating dudes up with Mjolnir? Great. Jane trying to work out how the hell Mjolnir works? Also great. Thor dealing with the fact that he really likes Jane but she has what he wants? DEFINITELY great.
Jane/Darcy - probably not dissimilar to the above, Jane-wise. But the idea of Darcy screwing around with Mjolnir, maybe buckling down to try to find out what else it could do... maybe doing so in a way that makes Jane look at her as an equal, rather than as the intern who inexplicably knew nothing about astronomy or physics...
Steve/Tony - I like the idea of Mjolnir having a mind of its (her?) own. Maybe as it's soaring over Midgard it notices a human undergoing some kind of trial that's making him worthier by the moment, and decides to help out... and so Tony escapes the Ten Rings with Mjolnir instead of/in addition to Iron Man, and then canon changes from there. Or maybe instead Mjolnir notices someone who's definitely worthy but trapped in a coffin of ice, and so Steve wakes up several years early, cold, holding some kind of flying hammer and confused as hell.
Bucky/Darcy - What if the person trapped in an icy prison Mjolnir goes to rescue is Bucky instead? What does the famed Winter Soldier do when gifted a magic hammer with a mind of its own? Or - what does Darcy do when she finds a seemingly brainwashed dude surrounded by Nazis? Did she find him by accident, or did Mjolnir lead her there?
Steve/Darcy - prompts given for either of these characters above still apply, really. In addition - how does Steve meet Mjolnir!Darcy? Does it go well, or badly? And if it's Steve who ended up with Mjolnir - how does Darcy deal with that if she's friends with Thor?
Steve/Darcy/Bucky - prompts given above for any of these characters still apply. In addition - Steve or Darcy wrecking Hydra? Bucky showing up to the Battle of New York with Mjolnir, much to Steve's confusion?
Darcy/Natasha - I cannot imagine that Natasha "Red In My Ledger" Romanov would believe that Mjolnir chose her because she was worthy. How would Darcy react to meeting the woman who a) stole Thor's hammer, b) is definitely worthy of it, and c) doesn't believe that? Or - how does Natasha react to meeting Mjolnir!Darcy at the Battle of New York? Everyone else there has some amount of training, practical experience, or instinct-driven fighting skill; Darcy appears to be nothing more than a university student (who's spent the last little while hiding an alien from the government, and making him decent-quality fake IDs...)
SHIELD Agent Darcy Lewis
I'm putting these together because... they mostly all apply to Darcy? Because I love the fics where she's a SHIELD agent, or secretly a master thief/con artist/hacker/genius/undercover in Hydra/has some other secret talent from a Mysterious Past (which may or may not actually be mysterious, whatever). What can I say? I like it when the Seemingly Ordinary character turns out to not be that.
So like... Badass Darcy. Backstory is welcome. Not backstory is also welcome! I accept any badasses.
("Quitting your job by forwarding their misdeeds to the other authorities" doesn't fit quite as well as the others, but it's the funniest possible way I could imagine fake!Hydra!Darcy quitting (or even just plain Hydra!Darcy). Don't just quit your job; burn the place down on your way out.)
Potential prompt ideas:
This is good shit. Why are they pretending to be evil? Is it for a good or a bad reason? If it's a bad reason, do they know that, or have they convinced themselves it's a fantastic idea? Does anybody else know, or are they living a double life? Does it fall apart, and how?
Specific prompts:
My original thought for this freeform was Steve/Darcy or Bucky/Darcy potentially leading to Steve/Bucky/Darcy, with one of two vague ideas. The first started out as Darcy/Steve after Bucky came to live with the Avengers; Darcy worried Steve would fall straight into bed with Bucky, who nobody was really confident was totally de-brainwashed yet, so of course it was her patriotic duty to bang him first so he couldn't make a horrible mistake (right?) Steve, on the other hand, kept seeing Darcy looking at Bucky and biting her lip, which obviously meant she wanted to sleep with him... could he let her do that? No! Of course not! (Bucky, meanwhile, grows more and more exasperated as his memories return. They're sleeping together, and also clearly looking at his abs. There's a solution to this, goddammit, if they weren't both clearly trying to stop the other from sleeping with him!)
Or: Darcy runs into a Bucky who's escaped and is putting himself back together. Darcy's very concerned that Bucky's semi-obsession with Steve will lead him into something he isn't ready for, Bucky's very concerned that Darcy's clear feelings for Steve may put her at risk of spilling the secret (and he's not concerned about himself here, just about the problems it might cause her if the Avengers find out she's been lying to them)... clearly the only possible solution here is for both of them to self-sacrificially lie back and try not to think too hard about how hot their partner is, and how much they'd like to go out on a date... kiss... maybe hold hands...
And then I had thoughts about other ships! After consideration I realised every idea I came up with was the same dynamic - "Oh No, In Order To Protect This Person I Must Bang Them And Not Let On That I Have Feelings Because Clearly They Don't", potentially with a side of threesomes. (Note - if you're writing a fic with this freeform and want to turn it into a non-nominated OT3/other poly relationship, that's fine by me, I'm basically always down for that. Exception here is Thor/Loki.)
Thoughts about specific ships and scenarios that could apply:
Steve/Tony - Tony's broken up with Pepper for whatever reason, but they both still feel fairly strongly about each other and Tony's worried they'll end up falling back into bed together and hurting each other. After Steve finds out, he concludes his only option is to spend more time with Tony to stop him from making bad choices (and maybe wear overly tight shirts to distract him? Flex some? Accidentally fall into bed with him?) Or - Bucky's back, Tony's freaking out, his worry makes Steve think Tony's interested in him (of course not! That's ridiculous, right?) and of course Tony has to go along with it to protect Steve, even though he definitely isn't interested in Steve at all, no matter what Pepper and Rhodey think...
Darcy/Jane - Aliens are dangerous. What if Thor has alien STDs? Or he knocks Jane up with an alien baby that ends up killing her? (Or Darcy. Jane's seen her porn, she knows she's interested in cut blond dudes. She can't let her grad student sleep with someone who might have a non-human-standard dick! What if he hurts her by accident?)
Jane/Thor - Loki's around. Maybe he was never evil in this AU, maybe he's hanging around the Avengers as part of his jail sentence/probation, maybe he's done his redemption and keeps dropping in on Thor to annoy him. He seems like he'd appreciate Jane's mind and maybe know some more esoteric stuff about magic that Thor wasn't ever interested in... and Thor finds his habit of hanging around Jane unnerving. But he knows better than to try to forbid Jane from doing anything, so he has to be sneaky... and maybe take his shirt off to distract her. Or: Jane doesn't believe Loki's reformed, Thor does, and she's determined to keep him away from his brother (and Darcy has some at best questionable advice for how she should do that).
Darcy/Natasha - And now I realise I don't actually have prompts for every ship for this freeform. Natasha just seems too competent? Maybe I'm looking at this tag wrong but it feels to me like it requires a certain level of bad decision-making, in that there are much easier ways to keep someone away from Dangerous C than seducing them. Darcy would trust that Natasha's competent enough to protect herself; Natasha would just tell Darcy what the problem was....
or maybe it's an elaborate honeypot, allowing Dangerous C to think that Darcy was stupid enough to try to seduce Natasha's cover identity in order to protect her when in actuality they're collecting information to bring C down... hmm.
Identity Porn
I love identity porn! As you might have guessed by the sprinkles of it throughout the letter so far. And identity porn and pining go together really well.
Frankly I like all identity porn but I am trying to be more specific here, so: one type of identity porn I really like is where both characters have a secret identity that the other doesn't know (whether this means superhero shenanigans, You've Got Mail/The Shop Around the Corner shenanigans, spies/fandom pseudonyms/etc. shenanigans...) and they have feelings for both the civilian identity and the secret identity. Especially if a) both characters are sadly pining... how could they ever choose... there's just no way... and/or b) A's civilian identity knows B's secret identity and vice versa and they're both struggling to choose whether they should ask the other out in which guise and/or c) A is under the impression that B is dating B's secret identity and sadly pining... this is all good shit
I don't have many specific prompts here; a lot of what I prompted earlier in this section would also fit with these freeforms. I do have a few, though:
Undercover - Undercover as a couple while pining and have to convince skeptics
Look. Who doesn't love some tropey undercover pining/whoops we're married shenanigans? It's great stuff!
I don't have any specific prompts here; potential scenarios could include undercover in or around Hydra, other enemies of SHIELD, or in space. (If it's space, though, I'm pretty sure "oh, whoops, that was legally binding! Haha can't undo it now" is just Jane and Thor's excuse to Odin when they get back to Asgard. They can't split up! It'd create a diplomatic problem! They'll just have to stay married!)
In my general likes section I noted I was up for cracky fic. And there's plenty of cracky prompts scattered throughout my letter! But this... this is what that like was there for. I'm normally very bad at coming up with cracky ideas - they tend to go angsty and serious when I'm not looking - but this one just keeps piling it up.
The odds that anyone will match on this itty bitty book fandom are tiny so my only hope is to write about it as interestingly as possible in the hope someone will say "hey that sounds batshit, i wanna read it, what the fuck" which is ESPECIALLY important in this exchange because finishing my reread just as id pro quo came up made me realise a significant portion of my id is derived directly from this glorious fever dream of a trilogy. A very basic description of the series would be, "a seemingly ordinary young woman discovers she has magical powers, and also a responsibility to use them to defend her city against evil." This leaves out... a lot.
Reasons It Is Great:
Which brings me to: Livilla/Velody/Ashiol, dubcon voyeurism or dubcon voyeurism to consensual threesome.
There are two possible scenarios I see here (though you may see others, obviously). Option A: some kind of fuck or die. Maybe some horrible murderthing comes from the sky (let's be real: there are a lot of horrible murderthings that fall from the sky, and many of them have weird-ass cures. This could genuinely be canon) and infects either Ash or Velody and the ONLY POSSIBLE CURE is to fuck a King. Oh no! Obviously Velody can't break her oath! They'll just have to fuck in front of Livilla. How awful.
Option B: Livilla wasn't (only) operating on spite. She was also operating on the desire to fuck Velody, who she assumed Would Never, and therefore her only chance to ever even get near her naked is to watch her fucking Ashiol instead... so when she asks Velody for that oath, she also gives a time limit in which Velody and Ash have to fuck. This clearly isn't a choice that could come back to bite her in the ass at all - for example, by making her even hornier, or pissing off Velody and forever ruining her chances to sleep with her, or by making Velody aware of her feelings...
These are all basically excuses for identity porn because despite being my #1 iddy trope of all time for some reason I couldn't fit it into a lot of these ships. Identity porn is great and I'd honestly enjoy it in any form, from the very specific ships/tags I've requested, to your traditional superhero-y kinds of identity porn, to "The Shop Around the Corner"-type shenanigans; these are mostly intended as suggestions/a guideline to the kinds of things I enjoy. Some of these prompts have ended up more specific because I had a strong idea of what could be interesting when I nominated; don't feel the need to stick to that if you have other ideas.
What if... they were dating. What if they were neighbours pining over each other. What if they were co-workers who got set up on a blind date. What if htey keep having to run out on their dates to fight/create Crime. What if they keep fighting/creating each other's Crime? What happens when they find out?
The thing about being a superperson is that you need to keep your Household Name identity separate from your normal person identity. The thing about having superpowers as a kid, and also knowing someone else who had superpowers as a kid, is that maybe you don't do such a good job of that. But that's okay! Because you're both on the same side, right? You're gonna go off and fight/create Crime together when you grow up! And maybe you spend a little too much time Not Looking at each other, because you are a pair of heterosexual girls with a totally platonic relationship of Sisters In Arms. And maybe you never actually discussed your plans to fight/create crime together, but that's okay becuase you don't need to. It's all fine to leave it unspoken!
And then maybe you grow up and this all turns out to have been bullshit, because apparently you were on totally different sides the whole time, but you can't reveal her secret identity because what if she retaliated (and because you can't quite let go of that little fantasy, or the way she looked slowly waking up the morning of a sleepover, her hair in her eyes and her shirt ridden up just enough to make you want to touch - which was CLEARLY ALL A PLOT)... but which all makes fighting/creating crime in these circumstances significantly more difficult than it ought to be. Something has to be done.
Identity Porn
Identity Porn - Characters A & B are FWBs but don't know their alternate identities are enemies
Identity Porn - nemeses A & B just found out their secret identities are married to each other
Pining - Denial of feelings even though it's very obvious
"Oh No They're Even Hotter Now"
And to finish off, a general list of fun tropes. The identity porn tags are here both as a general idea of what else could be interesting and as a broader overview of potential places identity porn could go than the fairly specific OW ships above; pining because it pairs super well with any kind of identity porn (like. c'mon. People mistaking other people's identities/dating situations and then pining for them is practically a cornerstone of the trope!); "Oh No They're Even Hotter Now" is really just here for fun.
- Identity porn - both the traditional superhero-comics type and a more sort of... thoughts about identity thing? Like, is this character lying about themselves? Are they lying just to the people around them, or have they started to believe the lie too? If they have - what happens if that breaks down? Who gets to see behind the mask? Have they become the mask? - etc.
- Morally grey characters doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, or the right thing for the wrong reasons. Or maybe they're lying to themselves about which parts are right or wrong.
- In het pairings, I prefer the female character be on top/dominant if there's some kind of power imbalance in play.
- As far as rating goes, I'm open to anything from G to E, though there are definitely a few requests here where one of those would make significantly more sense than the other.
- For some reason, this exchange is really making me want crackfic. So if you have an idea that tends in that direction, go for it!
Fandoms: Harry Potter MCU The Creature Court Original Work
Harry Potter
I have three separate signups for this one, so I'll be dividing my thoughts accordingly. Generally speaking, though, this is not a canon where I care a whole lot about sticking to canon. I love this world and all the building blocks it gave us... but they're building blocks. It's like a movie set made of Legos. If I'm writing I have a tendency to steal bricks and start building my own, more interesting sets, and I see no reason to hold others to a different standard. Make up weird new kinds of magic! Build political structures! Invent historical incidents! Or don't, it's all cool. Also, for the record, I haven't seen Fantastic Beasts or Cursed Child or read Pottermore since back when the potions game was on it, but I've probably osmosed enough via ficreading to understand what's going on if you want to include canon from any of them.
Part One - Ginny Weasley Fics
It may seem like this section is a weird mish-mash strangely fixated on Ginny Weasley and that is for a REASON. Canon seems to suggest that Ginny just got over her possession and that's nice I guess? It's probably very good for her healthwise? But that is not what i'm looking for. I am here for a Ginny who is NOT over it; she's fucked up and has a head full of stuff she can't talk about because it'll make her family worry, especially since it's actually kind of interesting. Tom was a psychopath but he was a psychopath who knew vast amounts about magic, especially the kinds a good girl isn't supposed to like, and as a result she knows a bunch of horrible spells she doesn't want to use (except maybe on Tom) and a bunch of illegal spells she doesn't want to use (except that everything Tom knew about them made them sound incredibly fascinating. And dangerous, but she's survived possession already, right?) and also legilimency, which she didn't really have a choice about using until she managed to figure out how to keep herself from invading the minds of everyone around her.
And then! Tom's back to ruin everything! And she just so happens to have a brain full of spells she could use against him, taught to her by him for maximum irony. And maybe they wouldn't kill him but like... does she care? He hurt her. She's fully ready to hurt him back.
Potential scenarios, for those that are looking for promptier prompts, could include:
- Oh no, looks like Voldemort's winning, better get out there and fuck him up
- Oh no, looks like Voldemort's won, better get out there and fuck everyone up
- Oh no, we beat Voldemort but actually everything's still pretty awful because the Ministry is full of rich old purebloods who mostly cared about Voldemort because he was interfering with their livelihoods and who are quite happy to go back to the bigoted status quo. Perhaps it's time to fuck everything up?
As far as specific pairings go:
Ginny/Pansy and Ginny/Draco - look okay I am very into Gryffindor/Slytherin pairings, because it gives opportunities for lovely angsty stuff like "oh no, my parents are Death Eaters, what do". I think there's a lot of places that Pansy or Draco's characterisation could go. Horrified by what the Death Eaters are doing, but unsure how to get out? Reluctantly committed to the cause because they have family in already and just trying not to think too hard about what's going on? Doing their best not to get involved? My preference would be that they end up involved in the fight against Voldemort/societal forces/whatever else by the end, though 'reluctantly involved thanks to their relationship/blackmail/something else' is fine. I would prefer they didn't start out as a fully committed Death Eater.
Harry/Ginny - Harry gets an awful lot put on his shoulders in canon. What might he end up looking like if that weight ended up getting to him and he rebelled against the things he's supposed to do - and not do? Or if he realised everything he and his friends and schoolmates went through defeating Voldemort was all for nothing, because the status quo was determined to stay that way? Or if Ginny straight-up seduced him to dark magic?
Hermione/Ginny - What If They Go Bad Together. I personally feel that Hermione cares more about the image of being a good rule-abiding girl than actually following rules. Especially if the rule is "don't do or learn about these types of magic because they're Bad. No, we won't tell you why they're bad, they just are. Drop it." I don't... think that would go well. I especially don't think that would go well if a Hermione who was busily investigating something that's technically illegal ran face-first into a Ginny who was on a Mission Of Revenge against a dude who'd happily murder Hermione. Maybe they should, I don't know, make out, destroy Voldemort, and then destroy the Ministry. Just a thought.
Ginny/Severus - I should note for the record that I'm not into the age difference of Ginny/Severus; this ship is in here basically because like... what if Ginny time-travelled to try to fuck up Tom's first attempt at a rise to power and ended up running into Snape and decided to recruit him into her anti-Tom efforts, taking advantage of his desire to get Lily to like him again, and then like... brainfuck manipulation power-differential. Possibly with a side of Severus desperately wanting Ginny and hating himself for it because he knows she's bad for him and he's in love with Lily and Ginny's getting him deeper into the Dark Arts which isn't exactly going to help him convince Lily he's a good guy now, and he hates himself and he hates Ginny but also: he really, really doesn't hate Ginny. (And then like... dark magic. Fucking with Tom. etc.)
(I feel a bit like this is railroad-y but honestly writing this has made me realise the appeal of this ship for me is the power differential being totally opposite what you'd expect of this ship and I honestly don't know how you'd get that without the time travel. Like... the age difference, the fact that he's her teacher, that would very firmly put the power differential on the other foot and that's not iddy for me at all. Also past!Severus is, as I see it, very vulnerable to manipulation: the Marauders harass him everywhere except Slytherin, and the Slytherins harass him there because he's friends with Lily and all the most powerful people in the House at that point are pro-Voldemort, and even when he pretends to be one of them to try to minimise the conflict there's always going to be a gap. And I just don't see the Slytherins picking him up immediately after he'd fucked things up with Slytherin. He'd just be sitting there, lonely and angry and desperate for someone who cared, and along comes a Ginny who's so desperate to stop Tom she'd do just about anything...)
Part Two: But What If Harry's Childhood Didn't Suck
Okay, sure, Harry's childhood being very miserable is extremely British Children's Book of him. Very traditional! But like... what if it wasn't that?
When I say "any", I really and truly very literally mean Any. For the purposes of ensuring his childhood is actually happy, I'm ruling out those AUs where a Death Eater manages to get custody of him and raises him to be Evil, since those could technically still include a happy childhood. But otherwise? Go fuckin' wild.
Request-specific DNWs: Harry raised by a Death Eater to become a Death Eater/follow Voldemort (regretful DE trying to get away from his or her past shitty choices is AOK); Harry ending up inexplicably badass/with skills he could not reasonably have gained given his age; incest.
For those who would prefer something promptier:
I am very fond of redemption fics. AU where Petunia was a better caregiver? Sure, go for it. Cracky (or non-cracky) AU where Pettigrew decides that yeah, he fucked up a lot but he's still a better potential parent than the Dursleys? Yes! (Obviously in this scenario he'd be not raising Harry to be evil, but instead awkwardly avoiding the question of what happened to Harry's parents, since what happened to them was, well, him.)
Also: time travel. What if one of his friends ends up thrown back in time and adopts him? Or family (Dudley?) Or a rival (what if... Draco Malfoy? Who desperately does not want this job but can't work out a better option...)
A let's-kidnap-Harry fic from someone the right age to do so? Yeah, that's great too. Sirius? Remus? Rita Skeeter? (Yes. I mean that. I actually tried to work out how to swing that one once and couldn't work out a motivation for her not to just exploit Harry for articles. If you can work something out, then absolutely go for it.)
Basically: happy Harry.
Part Three: Sorting AU
SORTING AUs. I love these! They're the perfect marriage of a) canon divergence AUs (ranging from fairly mild to extremely wild) and b) CHARACTERISATION. Oh boy do I love characterisation. A lot.
For this request I have nominated ANY. Obviously this covers a few people and pairings; I am totally happy for any permutation of characters in the tagset, whether it's shipfic, turning an existing ship tag into &, choosing a single person from any of those shiptags, doing an ensemble, etc. Also for the record, I am happy for literally any character in the canon to show up in the fic, though I can obviously only officially ask for characters who're actually in the tagset. So if you're writing a Slytherin Harry AU and happen to have some great ideas for a Slytherin Cedric that you want to fit into the background? Go for it! I am also very happy to read AUs containing characters who don't canonically have magic attending Hogwarts.
Potential prompts:
Anything from "introspective stuff inside a character's head" to "here is a list of ways this minor difference led to a series of wild changes in canon" would be awesome.
What if [Character] being in [House] somehow fucked up every single one of Voldemort's plans in the most ridiculous way possible?
Compare and contrast of potential houses [Character] could be in and how they could be better or VASTLY WORSE than canon. Which could probably work as a modified 5 Times fic, or you could throw in 'what if they went to Beauxbatons/Durmstrang/were homeschooled/didn't have magic/refused to believe the letter' to complete the set.
Outsider POV... the Hat? A teacher? Rita Skeeter writing about someone who made some great change in the social fabric, being as much of a bitch as she always is?
If you have a yearning to write a fic with in-universe meta or other non-standard formats, this is the time. Because I love that and am extremely fascinated by the idea of like... a history book entry about [Character], or a series of letters, or newspaper articles, etc. (see: Rita Skeeter above.)
MCU
Unlike my earlier requests, this is a bit of a catch-all for various ships and freeforms. For simplicity, I'm breaking it up by freeforms.
Also, a quick note: while I'm doing my best to come up with at least a few ideas per ship/freeform, there's a lot here, so they should by no means be considered The Only Thing I Want. I just only have so much brain for coming up with prompts, especially when there's this many ships and freeforms. If you have other ideas that work/think that Prompt X would actually work better with Ship Y/want to throw a bunch of freeforms into a blender and see what happens, please feel free to do so!
Thor Lands Somewhere Else and Somebody Else Gets Mjolnir
Thor/Jane - Jane beating dudes up with Mjolnir? Great. Jane trying to work out how the hell Mjolnir works? Also great. Thor dealing with the fact that he really likes Jane but she has what he wants? DEFINITELY great.
Jane/Darcy - probably not dissimilar to the above, Jane-wise. But the idea of Darcy screwing around with Mjolnir, maybe buckling down to try to find out what else it could do... maybe doing so in a way that makes Jane look at her as an equal, rather than as the intern who inexplicably knew nothing about astronomy or physics...
Steve/Tony - I like the idea of Mjolnir having a mind of its (her?) own. Maybe as it's soaring over Midgard it notices a human undergoing some kind of trial that's making him worthier by the moment, and decides to help out... and so Tony escapes the Ten Rings with Mjolnir instead of/in addition to Iron Man, and then canon changes from there. Or maybe instead Mjolnir notices someone who's definitely worthy but trapped in a coffin of ice, and so Steve wakes up several years early, cold, holding some kind of flying hammer and confused as hell.
Bucky/Darcy - What if the person trapped in an icy prison Mjolnir goes to rescue is Bucky instead? What does the famed Winter Soldier do when gifted a magic hammer with a mind of its own? Or - what does Darcy do when she finds a seemingly brainwashed dude surrounded by Nazis? Did she find him by accident, or did Mjolnir lead her there?
Steve/Darcy - prompts given for either of these characters above still apply, really. In addition - how does Steve meet Mjolnir!Darcy? Does it go well, or badly? And if it's Steve who ended up with Mjolnir - how does Darcy deal with that if she's friends with Thor?
Steve/Darcy/Bucky - prompts given above for any of these characters still apply. In addition - Steve or Darcy wrecking Hydra? Bucky showing up to the Battle of New York with Mjolnir, much to Steve's confusion?
Darcy/Natasha - I cannot imagine that Natasha "Red In My Ledger" Romanov would believe that Mjolnir chose her because she was worthy. How would Darcy react to meeting the woman who a) stole Thor's hammer, b) is definitely worthy of it, and c) doesn't believe that? Or - how does Natasha react to meeting Mjolnir!Darcy at the Battle of New York? Everyone else there has some amount of training, practical experience, or instinct-driven fighting skill; Darcy appears to be nothing more than a university student (who's spent the last little while hiding an alien from the government, and making him decent-quality fake IDs...)
SHIELD Agent Darcy Lewis
Canonically nonpowered character has a badass skill/talent nobody knows about
Accidental Superpower Acquisition
Character Hides/Doesn't Mention Special Abilities, Later Must Reveal Abilities Due to Necessity
Quitting your job by forwarding their misdeeds to the other authorities
I'm putting these together because... they mostly all apply to Darcy? Because I love the fics where she's a SHIELD agent, or secretly a master thief/con artist/hacker/genius/undercover in Hydra/has some other secret talent from a Mysterious Past (which may or may not actually be mysterious, whatever). What can I say? I like it when the Seemingly Ordinary character turns out to not be that.
So like... Badass Darcy. Backstory is welcome. Not backstory is also welcome! I accept any badasses.
("Quitting your job by forwarding their misdeeds to the other authorities" doesn't fit quite as well as the others, but it's the funniest possible way I could imagine fake!Hydra!Darcy quitting (or even just plain Hydra!Darcy). Don't just quit your job; burn the place down on your way out.)
Potential prompt ideas:
- Natasha recruits Darcy to spy on a mysterious agency she's just discovered (did she catch Darcy doing something questionably legal? Bribe her by offering her a place in SHIELD?). They bond over unexpected Nazis.
- Or - Darcy ends up with superpowers as a result of getting caught up in Hydra's experiments during her time there. How do they deal with that?
- Darcy finds Bucky while undercover in Hydra.
- Darcy has a secret double life as a vigilante. One day, she runs into Steve.
Character has to fake being evil for reasons
This is good shit. Why are they pretending to be evil? Is it for a good or a bad reason? If it's a bad reason, do they know that, or have they convinced themselves it's a fantastic idea? Does anybody else know, or are they living a double life? Does it fall apart, and how?
Specific prompts:
- Tony (or Iron Man) is fake evil. Maybe he's infiltrating Hydra way way ahead of schedule, maybe Iron Man accidentally got a bad rap early in his career that just wouldn't go away. Captain America keeps running into Iron Man and he actually seems like a decent dude? Or - he runs into Tony, works out what he's doing, and then has to sneakily work out how to help him without making it obvious. Or Tony stumbles into dating Steve, who he believes is a nice totally normal dude, and has to juggle his growing feelings with the evil stuff he has to do for completely legitimate reasons, and also avoid getting caught by this new superhero Captain America...
- As far as other characters go - I can't see Steve doing well at being fake evil. I suspect he'd go rogue as soon as he was asked to stand by and watch evil being done by someone else. That said, someone could probably get some decent crack out of it? For a serious take on it, he'd be better being the straight man opposite, say, fakeHydra!Darcy, or Bucky going undercover in Hydra.
- Natasha would obviously do a good job, and now that I'm thinking about it I'm imagining some ridiculous scenario where she's pretending to be interested in Darcy because she thinks she's spying for Hydra, except that Darcy's actually collecting deliberately terrible information so she can spy on Hydra, who find out about Natasha's apparent interest in her and order Darcy to date her, so they end up in an increasingly ridiculous game of lesbian chicken...
- I am thinking about Jane and/or Thor in the context of this tag and getting nothing, primarily because I think Jane wouldn't do fake evil - if she went bad, she'd go all the way - and I just can't picture Thor in that context at all, but like... if you have an idea, author? Go the fuck for it.
A sleeps with B to keep them away from dangerous C
My original thought for this freeform was Steve/Darcy or Bucky/Darcy potentially leading to Steve/Bucky/Darcy, with one of two vague ideas. The first started out as Darcy/Steve after Bucky came to live with the Avengers; Darcy worried Steve would fall straight into bed with Bucky, who nobody was really confident was totally de-brainwashed yet, so of course it was her patriotic duty to bang him first so he couldn't make a horrible mistake (right?) Steve, on the other hand, kept seeing Darcy looking at Bucky and biting her lip, which obviously meant she wanted to sleep with him... could he let her do that? No! Of course not! (Bucky, meanwhile, grows more and more exasperated as his memories return. They're sleeping together, and also clearly looking at his abs. There's a solution to this, goddammit, if they weren't both clearly trying to stop the other from sleeping with him!)
Or: Darcy runs into a Bucky who's escaped and is putting himself back together. Darcy's very concerned that Bucky's semi-obsession with Steve will lead him into something he isn't ready for, Bucky's very concerned that Darcy's clear feelings for Steve may put her at risk of spilling the secret (and he's not concerned about himself here, just about the problems it might cause her if the Avengers find out she's been lying to them)... clearly the only possible solution here is for both of them to self-sacrificially lie back and try not to think too hard about how hot their partner is, and how much they'd like to go out on a date... kiss... maybe hold hands...
And then I had thoughts about other ships! After consideration I realised every idea I came up with was the same dynamic - "Oh No, In Order To Protect This Person I Must Bang Them And Not Let On That I Have Feelings Because Clearly They Don't", potentially with a side of threesomes. (Note - if you're writing a fic with this freeform and want to turn it into a non-nominated OT3/other poly relationship, that's fine by me, I'm basically always down for that. Exception here is Thor/Loki.)
Thoughts about specific ships and scenarios that could apply:
Steve/Tony - Tony's broken up with Pepper for whatever reason, but they both still feel fairly strongly about each other and Tony's worried they'll end up falling back into bed together and hurting each other. After Steve finds out, he concludes his only option is to spend more time with Tony to stop him from making bad choices (and maybe wear overly tight shirts to distract him? Flex some? Accidentally fall into bed with him?) Or - Bucky's back, Tony's freaking out, his worry makes Steve think Tony's interested in him (of course not! That's ridiculous, right?) and of course Tony has to go along with it to protect Steve, even though he definitely isn't interested in Steve at all, no matter what Pepper and Rhodey think...
Darcy/Jane - Aliens are dangerous. What if Thor has alien STDs? Or he knocks Jane up with an alien baby that ends up killing her? (Or Darcy. Jane's seen her porn, she knows she's interested in cut blond dudes. She can't let her grad student sleep with someone who might have a non-human-standard dick! What if he hurts her by accident?)
Jane/Thor - Loki's around. Maybe he was never evil in this AU, maybe he's hanging around the Avengers as part of his jail sentence/probation, maybe he's done his redemption and keeps dropping in on Thor to annoy him. He seems like he'd appreciate Jane's mind and maybe know some more esoteric stuff about magic that Thor wasn't ever interested in... and Thor finds his habit of hanging around Jane unnerving. But he knows better than to try to forbid Jane from doing anything, so he has to be sneaky... and maybe take his shirt off to distract her. Or: Jane doesn't believe Loki's reformed, Thor does, and she's determined to keep him away from his brother (and Darcy has some at best questionable advice for how she should do that).
Darcy/Natasha - And now I realise I don't actually have prompts for every ship for this freeform. Natasha just seems too competent? Maybe I'm looking at this tag wrong but it feels to me like it requires a certain level of bad decision-making, in that there are much easier ways to keep someone away from Dangerous C than seducing them. Darcy would trust that Natasha's competent enough to protect herself; Natasha would just tell Darcy what the problem was....
or maybe it's an elaborate honeypot, allowing Dangerous C to think that Darcy was stupid enough to try to seduce Natasha's cover identity in order to protect her when in actuality they're collecting information to bring C down... hmm.
Identity Porn
Identity Porn - flirting while in disguise
Pining - Mutual Pining
Pining - Character thinks another ship is happening (but it isn't)
I love identity porn! As you might have guessed by the sprinkles of it throughout the letter so far. And identity porn and pining go together really well.
Frankly I like all identity porn but I am trying to be more specific here, so: one type of identity porn I really like is where both characters have a secret identity that the other doesn't know (whether this means superhero shenanigans, You've Got Mail/The Shop Around the Corner shenanigans, spies/fandom pseudonyms/etc. shenanigans...) and they have feelings for both the civilian identity and the secret identity. Especially if a) both characters are sadly pining... how could they ever choose... there's just no way... and/or b) A's civilian identity knows B's secret identity and vice versa and they're both struggling to choose whether they should ask the other out in which guise and/or c) A is under the impression that B is dating B's secret identity and sadly pining... this is all good shit
I don't have many specific prompts here; a lot of what I prompted earlier in this section would also fit with these freeforms. I do have a few, though:
- Steve somehow ends up with a second secret identity... Nomad.
- Tony keeps the fact that he's actually Iron Man a secret, which complicates his feelings for Captain America/Nomad/Totally Normal Guy Steve Rogers.
- Thor lands somewhere else, manages to learn enough about Midgard to blend in, and ends up running into Jane and Darcy while he searches for Mjolnir. He doesn't tell them he's an alien... yet.
- Bucky manages to escape from Hydra, finds somewhere safe to live, and begins blowing up Hydra's bases as revenge. He ends up teaming up with another couple of vigilantes - Nomad and powered!Darcy.
Undercover - Undercover as a couple while pining and have to convince skeptics
Accidental Marriage - Married to Each Other While Undercover Becomes Legally Binding
Look. Who doesn't love some tropey undercover pining/whoops we're married shenanigans? It's great stuff!
I don't have any specific prompts here; potential scenarios could include undercover in or around Hydra, other enemies of SHIELD, or in space. (If it's space, though, I'm pretty sure "oh, whoops, that was legally binding! Haha can't undo it now" is just Jane and Thor's excuse to Odin when they get back to Asgard. They can't split up! It'd create a diplomatic problem! They'll just have to stay married!)
MCU: Weregoat Bucky
In my general likes section I noted I was up for cracky fic. And there's plenty of cracky prompts scattered throughout my letter! But this... this is what that like was there for. I'm normally very bad at coming up with cracky ideas - they tend to go angsty and serious when I'm not looking - but this one just keeps piling it up.
- Brainwashing does not work on Bucky's goat form, because goats are Just Like That. Scheduling assassinations around the time of the full moon is a problem. If they get it wrong, they end up with a goat headbutting everything and also eating everything in sight.
- The headbutting is even more of a problem because his metal limb in his goat form is, illogically enough, his horns
- Pre-serum Steve spent years being bullied by a goat. It was very frustrating then, but it means he knows exactly how to predict Bucky's actions now: whatever would be the most annoying to him and everyone else.
- He brings a mentally-exhausted, still partially brainwashed Bucky home to the Avengers. They are very surprised to see a goat chasing Steve across the compound next full moon, yelling at him about a) his diet b) his sleep cycle c) his habit of getting into fights he can't win d) anything and everything else...
- Weregoat Bucky maybe bites some Avengers. Thanos makes the mistake of invading on a full moon.
- Goats eat anything they can handle. Weregoats probably do worse. What happens if one of them eats the Infinity Gauntlet?
- Quoting from myself - "Something horrible happens and the weregoats converge... they do not have the id-controlling ability to consider matters like "what if using the infinity stones makes things worse". They have no plan but chaos. and the avengers wake up and have to deal with it."
The Creature Court
The odds that anyone will match on this itty bitty book fandom are tiny so my only hope is to write about it as interestingly as possible in the hope someone will say "hey that sounds batshit, i wanna read it, what the fuck" which is ESPECIALLY important in this exchange because finishing my reread just as id pro quo came up made me realise a significant portion of my id is derived directly from this glorious fever dream of a trilogy. A very basic description of the series would be, "a seemingly ordinary young woman discovers she has magical powers, and also a responsibility to use them to defend her city against evil." This leaves out... a lot.
Reasons It Is Great:
- This series is super duper gay. It would genuinely be harder to list off characters who are (probably) straight than ones who aren't.
- It's FASCINATINGLY fucked-up. Are you in the market for people making terrible life choices due to trauma? People having intensely close and fucked-up relationships as a result of a combination of being essentially brothers-in-arms in a secret war and also having been manipulated by the same people as teenagers? Horrible plagues as a result of oathbreaking? Entire cities being eaten by evil? Someone turning into a sentient city? (did i mention the "fever dream" part because there are genuinely bits of this i don't think i could explain. they make sense in context! without context... not so much.)
- If you like me enjoy scenes where the author is like "so you thought this nonpowered female side character was here purely to show the protagonist drawing away from her normal life? well GUESS AGAIN MOTHERFUCKERS SHE HAS POWERS TOO" then guess what motherfuckers you'll like this series too
- Also for any Classics people reading this, a large part of the inspiration for this series was the author going "so hey what would it look like if instead of picking the most appropriate festivals to celebrate, the Romans did EVERY SINGLE ONE of them" and then answering that question.
- It is also. very sexy. 100% of the reason I'm nominating this is because I was rereading, expecting I'd reinforce my existing Velody/Ashiol/Garnet ship but also expecting it'd turn out I'd read a lot into the book that wasn't there. I had not. There is literally a scene where Velody and Ashiol are almost fucking on a table while Velody fantasises about Garnet (Ashiol's ex). That exists. But you know what ELSE exists? A scene where Velody (the main character) has to bribe Livilla into doing something and the bribe she asks for is that, should Velody and Ashiol ever fuck, she gets to watch. This is in CANON. (In canon she's doing it to spite Ashiol because she knows he really wants to fuck Velody and that Velody Would Never re: exhibitionism. This is fandom though and we ship what we like.)
Which brings me to: Livilla/Velody/Ashiol, dubcon voyeurism or dubcon voyeurism to consensual threesome.
There are two possible scenarios I see here (though you may see others, obviously). Option A: some kind of fuck or die. Maybe some horrible murderthing comes from the sky (let's be real: there are a lot of horrible murderthings that fall from the sky, and many of them have weird-ass cures. This could genuinely be canon) and infects either Ash or Velody and the ONLY POSSIBLE CURE is to fuck a King. Oh no! Obviously Velody can't break her oath! They'll just have to fuck in front of Livilla. How awful.
Option B: Livilla wasn't (only) operating on spite. She was also operating on the desire to fuck Velody, who she assumed Would Never, and therefore her only chance to ever even get near her naked is to watch her fucking Ashiol instead... so when she asks Velody for that oath, she also gives a time limit in which Velody and Ash have to fuck. This clearly isn't a choice that could come back to bite her in the ass at all - for example, by making her even hornier, or pissing off Velody and forever ruining her chances to sleep with her, or by making Velody aware of her feelings...
Original Work
These are all basically excuses for identity porn because despite being my #1 iddy trope of all time for some reason I couldn't fit it into a lot of these ships. Identity porn is great and I'd honestly enjoy it in any form, from the very specific ships/tags I've requested, to your traditional superhero-y kinds of identity porn, to "The Shop Around the Corner"-type shenanigans; these are mostly intended as suggestions/a guideline to the kinds of things I enjoy. Some of these prompts have ended up more specific because I had a strong idea of what could be interesting when I nominated; don't feel the need to stick to that if you have other ideas.
Civilian Identity of Superheroine/Civilian Identity of Supervillainess
What if... they were dating. What if they were neighbours pining over each other. What if they were co-workers who got set up on a blind date. What if htey keep having to run out on their dates to fight/create Crime. What if they keep fighting/creating each other's Crime? What happens when they find out?
Childhood Friend Superheroine playing dumb/Childhood Friend Supervillainess playing dumb
The thing about being a superperson is that you need to keep your Household Name identity separate from your normal person identity. The thing about having superpowers as a kid, and also knowing someone else who had superpowers as a kid, is that maybe you don't do such a good job of that. But that's okay! Because you're both on the same side, right? You're gonna go off and fight/create Crime together when you grow up! And maybe you spend a little too much time Not Looking at each other, because you are a pair of heterosexual girls with a totally platonic relationship of Sisters In Arms. And maybe you never actually discussed your plans to fight/create crime together, but that's okay becuase you don't need to. It's all fine to leave it unspoken!
And then maybe you grow up and this all turns out to have been bullshit, because apparently you were on totally different sides the whole time, but you can't reveal her secret identity because what if she retaliated (and because you can't quite let go of that little fantasy, or the way she looked slowly waking up the morning of a sleepover, her hair in her eyes and her shirt ridden up just enough to make you want to touch - which was CLEARLY ALL A PLOT)... but which all makes fighting/creating crime in these circumstances significantly more difficult than it ought to be. Something has to be done.
Superheroine/Supervillainess
Identity Porn
Identity Porn - Characters A & B are FWBs but don't know their alternate identities are enemies
Identity Porn - nemeses A & B just found out their secret identities are married to each other
Pining - Denial of feelings even though it's very obvious
"Oh No They're Even Hotter Now"
And to finish off, a general list of fun tropes. The identity porn tags are here both as a general idea of what else could be interesting and as a broader overview of potential places identity porn could go than the fairly specific OW ships above; pining because it pairs super well with any kind of identity porn (like. c'mon. People mistaking other people's identities/dating situations and then pining for them is practically a cornerstone of the trope!); "Oh No They're Even Hotter Now" is really just here for fun.
