Dear Candy Hearts Writer 2024

[reconditarmonia]

Note: I'm trying out Dreamwidth for my letters because Tumblr keeps removing formatting possibilities. My previous letters, with the exception of Yuletide 2023 which is here on DW, can be found on Tumblr.)

Hi! Thank you for writing/drawing for me! I’m reconditarmonia here, on Tumblr and on AO3. Mods can contact me if you have any questions.

Blue Eye Samurai | Sleep No More

General likes:
– Loyalty kink! Trust, affectionate or loving use of titles, gestures of loyalty, replacing one’s situational or ethical judgment with someone else’s, risking oneself (physically or otherwise) for someone else, not doing so on their orders. Can be commander-subordinate or comrades-in-arms.
– Heists, or other stories where there’s a lot of planning and then we see how the plan goes.
– Femslash, complicated or intense relationships between women, and female-centric gen. Women doing “male” stuff (possibly while crossdressing).
– Relationships that aren’t built on romance or attraction. They can be romantic or sexual as well, but my favorite ships are all ones where it would still be interesting or compelling if the romantic component never materialized. Stories whose emotional climax or resolution isn’t the sex scene, if there is one.
– Uniforms/costumes/clothing.
– Stories, history, and performance. What gets told and how, what doesn’t get told or written down, behavior in a society where everyone’s consuming media and aware of its tropes, how people create their personas and script their own lines.
– Minority/diaspora feelings and themes.

Smut Likes: clothing, uniforms, sexual tension, breasts, manual sex, cunnilingus, grinding, informal d/s elements, intensity.

General DNW: rape/dubcon, torture, other creative gore; unrequested AUs, including “same setting, different rules” AUs such as soulmates/soulbonds; PWP; food sex; embarrassment; focus on pregnancy; Christmas/Christian themes; infidelity; unrequested polyamory; focus on unrequested canon or non-canon ships; unrequested trans versions of characters; breakups; jealousy; focus on grief; unequal levels of investment in a relationship (including concerns about same that turn out to be unwarranted), or the idea of a character accepting something they're unhappy with as the most they're going to get; characters who are written in a sexual context within the fic being ignorant about sex/anatomy (inexperienced is fine); the word "pussy"

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Fandom: Blue Eye Samurai
Ship(s): Madame Kaji/Mizu

The curse strikes again: I prefer an f/f rarepair in a fandom with a much more popular f/f ship! I loooooooved the interactions between Mizu and Madame Kaji - Madame Kaji showing Mizu some of the things on offer while telling her that denying desire is like cutting off your own limb and still thinking you can fight at your best (sort of putting it in a framing that Mizu would get), Mizu offering her services ("if it was his right hand, consider yourself avenged" / "name your desire") was VERY hot. They're both so ruthless and only allow themselves to care in very limited and specific ways if at all and I'd love to know what happens if Mizu kills or maims some more people for Madame Kaji (and if so, is this short term or long term? one job, or does she have an enforcer now?), if they figure out some more stuff about desire, or other postcanon stuff. (Would anything be different about this for Madame Kaji, too, or no?)

In terms of other characters appearing, if that's relevant to you, I'm more interested in Mizu's friendship/rivalry with Taigen ("I have to prevent other people from killing you so that I can one day kill you myself" is a great sidekick dynamic) than with Akemi.

Fandom-Specific DNW: references to Mizu being the receptive party in penetrative sex or to sex with Mikio.

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Fandom: Sleep No More
Ship(s): J. Fulton/Male Speakeasy Bartender, J. Fulton/Porter, Hecate/Female Speakeasy Bartender

I love all the small magic and folk magic on the 4th floor of the McKittrick, the precise little rituals that reach out to or guard against the world of darkness and magic that is Outside their town but also underlying/intertwined with it - but I also hung out with the Porter a lot a couple of visits ago and I love him now. I'm especially interested in how magic and outsider-ness and queerness all interact in the world of SNM - stuff like:

• the occasional recent cross-casting of Speakeasy Bartender! (side note: I'd read the character as a butch woman, learned afterwards that the performer is nb and uses she/they pronouns, but either way, it's interesting to me that this Speaks is a gender non-conforming character in a way the usual one is very much not. I'm also pretty psyched that some of the show ephemera now refers to the character in a gender-neutral way. Please take it as read in this letter that if I refer to f!Speaks I'm referring to the gender non-conforming version of this character.)
• the way that the Fulton/male!Speakeasy duet where they search each other for witch marks starts off like they're trying to pick each other up
• everything about the Porter, but especially his (her?) 1:1

An assortment of thoughts/prompts:

• the intense queerness of Fulton's trip to the speakeasy in versions where that is an extremely homoerotic encounter with a male Bartender that he may or may not have partly sought out. He's such a weird, messed-up little man that wants a lot of things he's afraid to want but sure does go for them anyway - at what point did that aspect of this visit become a thing for him? Did he go there thinking only that it would be to confront the forces of (sexy) evil and find that the sexual tension was much more than he expected? Or is Speakeasy someone who is already rumored/muttered in town to maybe not be straight? Is that part of the reputation of the bar itself, or just the guy who serves drinks and cleans up?
• Fulton and Porter never interact in canon but what with everything I've been saying about Fulton's sad fearful gay curiosity, plus Porter's sad gay sadness, maybe they could make each other happier. How do they meet and find that out about each other? (I could see this equally as friends-to-coming-out-to-lovers or anonymous-hookup-to-lovers.) I had initially prompted this in previous requests as applicable more in cases where Porter is a man than a closeted trans woman, but you know what, it would also be very cute and heartwarming if there's something that Fulton can do as a tailor to help her out with that.
• I love f!Speaks as Hecate’s creature/enforcer/weapon. How/why did Hecate choose Speakeasy and what does she think of or do with their devotion and service? (THE VIAL OF TEARS SCENE asdsjhasjkhd, it killed me.) And what’s f!Speaks’s story? Were her GNC presentation or sexuality a factor in her getting involved in the underground booze business and/or Hecate’s service, and how do they affect her dealings with people now? Did she do small magic before becoming Hecate’s familiar, or did that come after/as a result of it? How do she and Hecate think about each other - is Speakeasy in love with Hecate, is sex one of the ways Hecate controls her human pet? How does it work to be or to have a human familiar?
• other not-ship-specific things I like in this fandom: all of these characters' little charms and rituals, characters who are racial/ethnic minorities, the witches, the question of how people's powers actually work, magic/outsider places that are carved out from the "normal" world (like the apothecary shop)

Fandom-Specific DNWs/Exceptions (sorry this is a long list):

• if you write Hecate/f!Speakeasy, consider my DNW of unequal investment waived, as long as Speaks isn't under the impression that it is equal or upset by that. F!Speakeasy/Sexy Witch, Hecate/Agnes, Hecate/other witches are okay as concurrent background ships and would not violate my poly DNW, but please don't include/suggest any relationship negotiation or prioritization (trying to organize anyone's life around multiple relationships) or manipulation of Speakeasy's jealousy.


• If you write sex for f!Speaks/Hecate, please don't write a scene where Hecate subs to "let go" or is "service dommed"; I'm only interested in a D/s dynamic for them if Hecate is the dom.


• You don't need to act as though any of the unrequested f/m ships for the requested characters (eg. male Speaks/Sexy Witch, Fulton/Agnes) aren't canon, but I'd rather they not be focused on, please. If you have other questions about which ships can be present, please drop me a line.


• Please don't use singular "they" or neopronouns for Speaks even if you are envisioning them as nonbinary - they can be nonbinary even in a world where that hasn't entered the language.


• My preferred Porter is on the older, world-wearier side, so even if yours isn't, please don't explicitly lean into the idea of his youth or any childlike qualities.

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Thank you!