Auctions, As Threatened Letter

[straightforwardly]

AO3: straightforwardly

Table of Contents
   ★ General Likes
   ★ DNWs

   ★ Cinderella Phenomenon
   ★ Fire Emblem Fates
   ★ The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System
   ★ Star Ocean: The Second Story

General Likes [↑]
• blood, blood-drinking, characters coughing up blood.
• canon settings.
• canon divergence AUs.
• castles, shrines, abandoned ruins, dark forests, haunted locations, places with a deep sense of atmosphere and/or history.
• competency & competency kink.
• dysfunctional or otherwise complicated relationships, especially if the people involved genuinely care about one another.
• fevers, feverish confessions.
• ghosts ghosts ghosts GHOSTS.
• gothic horror.
• grief/mourning.
• hair kink, loving descriptions of long hair, hair brushing, hair petting.
• hanahaki for repressed (as opposed to unrequited) emotions
• hand-holding, casual touching, any focus on hands.
• catching someone as they collapse
• characters not realizing how bad shape they’re in until they’ve collapsed
• exhaustion
• loneliness
• a physically injured character comforting/trying to comfort a character who’s emotionally distressed about that injury
• silent suffering that’s forced out into the open
• well-earned emotional breakdowns
• outsider POV
• pet monsters, monsters that inexplicably decide that they like you, pet cats, cats that invite themselves into your life and never leave, pet snakes, foxes (wild foxes, foxes as friends and companions, just foxes in general! ♥), bees & beekeeping.
• tea and tea-drinking.
• trapped together / huddling for warmth scenarios.
• any time-related shenanigans: time travel, time loops, peggy sue, etc.
• unusual formats (e.g., epistolary, interactive fiction, non-linear storytelling, second person POV, etc.)
• winter/autumn settings and atmosphere (e.g., snow, autumn leaves, pumpkins, fog, tea, etc.)
• worldbuilding.

Do Not Wants [↑]
• eye injuries
• zombies / any of the rotting undead
• cannibalism / anything getting eaten alive
• rattlesnakes
• pregnancy, lactation, requested characters having children (including canonical children; just pretend it never happened), kidfic, small children & babies in general
• first person POV (exception: I have no problem with this in the case of in-universe documents, e.g. epistolary)
• unrequested setting-change AUs, mundane AUs, omegaverse & similar AUs based around defined biological roles
• serial killers

• for Fire Emblem Fates specifically: deeprealms / the canon cast having children
• for Scum Villain specifically: unhappy endings for BingQiu, including them breaking up, never getting together, or being shipped with other characters (Shipping Bing-ge with others doesn’t count for this), SJ being referred to as “A-Jiu”, the Shen twins headcanon / Shen Jiu and Shen Yuan being family in any way, LBH referring to SQQ with any variation of the name “Shen Yuan”, SQQ thinking of himself as “Shen Yuan” post-transmigration, YQY finding out that SQQ isn’t SJ.
• for Star Ocean: The Second Story specifically: Welch. If you’re familiar with a version of the game where she exists, please pretend she doesn’t, as she didn’t in the version I know.

Cinderella Phenomenon [↑]

Requests: Karma/Lucette

Please no spoilers for Cinderella Evermore! I’ve somehow gotten stuck in this loop where I keep replaying Cinderella Phenomenon in preparation for playing Evermore for the first time, and then… not playing Evermore…, but I do still very much want to be able to play it unspoiled.

I love these two so much! Lucette is my favorite character, and was absolutely the highlight of this game for me. I find her so incredibly compelling, and I’m fascinated by how well the game shows how her fucked-up upbringing shaped her into the person she is at the start of the game. I love her in all of her prickliness, loneliness, and well-hidden vulnerability.

But also, Karma! I adore him too, in all of his highs and lows—how charming and talented he is (gotta love a good swordsman! especially a pretty long-haired crossdressing swordsman) and his moments of insight, but also his tendencies towards vanity, moodiness, and selfishness. I loved how well he could understand Lucette’s journey (because he had to make a similar journey too!)—and how he’s one of the few characters (and the only LI from the initial routes!) who is able to recognize how messed up Lucette’s childhood was, even if that moment was all-too brief for my tastes.

Also, the crossdressing delights me. ♥

There’s so much that I’d be interested in seeing for these two. I’d love canon divergence AUs and alternate getting-together scenarios, but I’m also equally into exploration of their post-canon established relationship, albeit with the Evermore-related caveat stated above. I’d also love more early game bonding! Especially if it also deals with more of Lucette revealing some detail of her childhood that she doesn’t realize is horrifying, but Karma does. Honestly, anything dealing with Lucette’s past is guaranteed to delight me, regardless of when it’s set.

Other things I’d be here for:
• All of the undercover-as-a-couple scenarios! (Or, if it’s post-canon, simply them having to go undercover.) Especially if it stars both of them crossdressing—I can’t help but think that Lucette would make an awfully dashing nobleman.
• Erotically charged scenes where either (or both!) of them are doing the other’s make-up?
• There’s a tweet from the developers which says that Karma’s a mopey drunk, which delights me. So maybe something about that, with a side of Lucette Not Having It?
• I’m also always up for politics, sorting out Lucette’s tangled relationships with her family, either of them being exhausted/overworking themself, and swords and sword-fighting—especially if it features the two of them fighting at one’s another’s side! ♥

Fire Emblem Fates [↑]

Requests: Laslow & Selena & Odin, Laslow/Selena/Odin, Solo: Laslow

I have a truly ridiculous amount of feelings about these three. I already really liked them in Awakening, and getting to see them again in Fates was… amazing. Plotwise, I cry a lot about how underutilized their plotline was in Revelations after having spent all that effort setting it up, but in terms of characterization and relationships, I am awash in both emotion and iddy delight.

I loved seeing how they’ve grown and matured as people over the years, and I also loved seeing the ways in which their relationships with each other have also changed and grown. I love the concept of the three of them being strangers in a strange world together, with no one else familiar with their pasts and histories but each other. The Awakening kids are already a small group of time-traveling survivors from a post-apocalyptic world, and adding dimensional travel into the mix is just… these three have lived through so much. I have a lot of feelings about how, between growing up in a post-apocalyptic hellscape, time travel, and dimension travel, these three have basically lived through like three wars, starting from a very young age. And the only ones who can truly share in and understand the entirety of those experiences are the other two members of this trio. The kind of bond something like that must create fascinates me—and Odin & Laslow’s S-Support really got to me in part because of that.

On top of that, I also just have an iddy love of secrets and the potential for secrets being revealed, and their plotline is absolutely perfect for that. If you want to play with a secret reveal or other characters Noticing Something Off, or anything that explores these three’s experience of being in a different world, please feel absolutely free to do so. Worldbuilding, cultural differences, the burden of the secrets they keep, memories from their old world (both the timeline they were born in & the new one they helped create!) coming back to haunt them, the sense of connection that being literally the only people from their own world in this place creates… anything along those lines and more would be excellent.

Also: heartbreaking Birthright route content. I am always here for that. Relatedly, I’m a little obsessed with how Laslow’s the only one of the three who can canonically die in-story. Maybe something dealing with Odin & Selena mourning Laslow after he dies during the Birthright route? Alternatively, how does a Laslow who survives those events deal with the aftermath—particularly if he’s the only one left standing (i.e. Peri dies alongside Xander, but he doesn’t)?

I also have a looooooooooooot of iddy feelings about the loyalty they feel towards & the relationships they have with their liege lords (as well as Odin’s relationship with Niles), so if you want to play with those relationships your fic as well, I’d be very here for that!

As for Laslow on his own: Inigo was already one of my faves in Awakening, and Fates just sealed my fate on that front. I love him so much. I love the interplay between his flirting and attempted confidence with his sensitivity and how so very flustered he can get. I love his relationship with his mom! I love his dancing, and how intensely private he gets about it. And I’m a little obsessed with his line from the end of Awakening about how he can’t think of anything worse than dying alone, and how that informs his character.

The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System [↑]

Requests: Solo: Ning Yingying, Ning Yingying/Sha Hualing, Ning Yingying/Little Palace Mistress

NYY is one of my absolute favorite characters in this novel—I love her character growth so much and am endlessly fascinated by the differences between her and who she was in PIDW. Her dynamic with both SQQs also intrigue me, particularly since she’s one of the only characters to have a good relationship with both of them. Anything that explores any of those ideas would be excellent in my book.

I love the idea of NYY becoming SQQ’s succeeding disciple! Anything playing with that concept would be a delight. Or if you’re not interested in that, I’m up for pretty much any fic where Ning Yingying gets to do her own thing and be her own person. Or mission fic! I love mission fic in general, and I’d love to see NYY have her own adventures, whether that’s out and about in the world or within the confines of Cang Qiong Sect.

I’d love to see NYY interact with most any of the canon cast, but I will mention that I’m not particularly interested in Liu Mingyan. I don’t dislike her, and she can definitely appear in the fic, but I’d appreciate it if the main focus isn’t her interactions with NYY.

More on NYY/SHL: I also love SHL dearly! She’s both hot and fun to read about. I love her breezy scarlet outfits, the jingling bracelets she wears, her casual, laughing cruelty and very demonic morality… and her status as an overworked employee, haha. If NYY becomes SQQ’s succeeding disciple: Maybe it turns out that in a world where The Resentment of Chunsan is widespread knowledge, a peak lord’s succeeding disciple and a demon lord’s overworked employee have a surprising amount of reasons for needing to meet with each other? Both for serious or ridiculous reasons would be great. Or, for something more serious, maybe an encounter between these two during those five years when SQQ’s dead and tensions between Cang Qiong and Luo Binghe are at an all-time high?

Or maybe they have to get married For Reasons. Ridiculous, fun, tropey reasons! I’m also always up for anything involving the weird flora and fauna of this world (or weird traditions and/or rituals).

For NYY/Little Palace Mistress: This is a relatively new ship for me, but in hindsight, I’m surprised that I wasn’t shipping it sooner. Their canon interactions are quite interesting to me; they react so strongly to one another, & I’m intrigued by the ways in which the Little Palace Mistress brings out facets of NYY that we usually don’t see! I’d love to see that explored further, particularly in the context of other feelings making things even messier and more complicated.

Star Ocean: The Second Story [↑]

Requests: Solo: Rena, Dias & Rena, Dias/Rena, Celine/Rena

I’ve only ever played the PSX version of this game, though I was also quite fond of the anime adaptation when I was younger. I do intend to play the Switch remake one day, but it hasn’t happened yet!

Star Ocean: The Second Story is quite possibility the nostalgia canon of my heart (to the extent that just opening up the in-game menu made me literally teary-eyed with feelings when I last revisited it, haha), and Rena has always been my favorite character. I’m endlessly fascinated with her backstory: she grows up on a very low-tech planet, but then it turns out that not only is she actually a child from the highest tech society there ever was, but due to time/space shenanigans her parents have literally been dead for millenia! Growing up while being (unknowingly) an alien on a planet that doesn’t even know that aliens are a thing which can exist, with weird powers (and very blatantly non-Expellian ears!!) that no one else around her has… I’m very into it, and would love anything that explores those concepts further. Also, she’s a healer who punches things! Always a concept I’m here for. <3

I’m also down for Rena getting to have post-canon adventures of any sort! Alternatively: I’ve always found Rena’s dynamic with Gyoro & Ururun cute, and am kind of into the idea of an AU where she’s the one who gets them attached to her back instead of Ashton. Though her interacting with them while they’re still attached to Ashton is also great!

The relationship between Rena & Dias has always been so important to me, regardless of what form it takes. I eat up the angst in their backstory like catnip. I love how powerfully they react to one another when they reunite, and I love how Rena refuses to let Dias drown himself in his own guilt. All those scenes where she chases him down are just <333. Anything that deals with the depth of history between them would be a delight, particularly if it fleshes out Cecille &/or remembers that Rena had been friends with her too.

Possibilities: post-canon fic where they travel the world together, or where Dias finally visits Arlia again. Or—in my first playthrough as an adult, Dias was the hostage in the Field of Love trial and I ate that up with a spoon. Maybe something about the aftermath of that? Canon divergences in general are also great!

Celine/Rena is also SUCH a ship for me. I love their interactions so much, and I’m so intrigued by their mutual interest in universities. Maybe they attend one together post-canon? Or anything about them studying and learning more about magic together! I’d also love to see them go treasure-hunting together!

Some more general notes about my feelings about this canon: I love Claude! His & Rena’s friendship is one my favorite relationships in the whole game—but specifically in the context of friendship. I think they’re so good for each other, and I love the ways in which they support and encourage one another. I’m also rather fond of Leon, Ashton, and, of course, Gyoro & Ururun. <3