FFFX 2024 Letter

[seal_nonnie]

Hello FFFX creator!
On AO3, I go by Brachylagus_fandom, and I'm excited to see what you'll create for me! I love all these fandoms, and have requested all four medium options for all requests.

DNWs

• Porn without plot
• Gore
• Animal cruelty
• Totally unhappy endings (angst is great, I'd just like a happy or bittersweet end to it)
• Change of setting aus (e.g., High School AU - canon divergence is great) - for fandoms other than Crossover Fandom
  
  

Likes

• Hurt/Comfort
• Humor
• Crack treated seriously
• Hijinks and misadventures
• Mystery
• Character study
• Worldbuilding and logistics
• Canon Divergence (especially of the "butterfly flaps its wings" sort)
• Outsider POV
• Complicated and intense relationships
• Characters being competent in their area of expertise
• Playing with tropes or implications of canon
• All sorts of "weird" stylistic choices (flowery prose, first or second person POV, non-past tense, etc.)
  
  

Crossover Fandom

 

Finn  & Creator's Choice of Jedi Council Member(s) 

• There's so many ways this could be extremely messy, depending on when Finn and when the Council are coming from, all of which would be fun. So many chances to fix things, of course, but also so much room for misunderstandings. Do Finn and the council member get along, or are they at odds?
• For Finn, I'm betting his knowledge of pre-Empire history is limited, but he definitely recognizes that white plastoid armor walking around if the clones are in play, and that definitely would affect his assessment of the situation. It would also be really interesting for him to see a full Jedi order and the differences between trying to rebuild an order the way Luke or Rey would have been doing and running an established, large organization the way the council members are. (And also the ways knowledge of the Force has shifted and been lost, by the loss of the Jedi Order, especially if Finn is force sensitive himself.)
• And, from the Council's side, they obviously have no knowledge of the future, and the First Order's harkening back to a regime that is still after their time. Should the council member be punted to the future, how do they understand the lay of the land?

Finn & Poe & Rey & Anakin & Padmé & Obi-Wan 

• And speaking of chaos… Why not set those thrusters to max on a prequels/sequels crossover? I could see both these sets working together against a mutual threat, but if they ended up on opposite sides they'd be good opponents, I think.
• For Finn, a lot of my thoughts on a crossover with a council member still apply here; he's the one with a stormtrooper background, and it would not be a hard line for him to draw from the prequel clones to the OG clones to what he was trained to become. 
• For Rey, I think exposure to someone classically trained in the Jedi understanding of the force (and a Master/padawan pair, no less, which are a bit unorthodox by standards of the time but much more orthodox compared to her or Luke's training) would be interesting for her, and definitely someone to bounce ideas off of and have ideas bounced off of her. I think there's also a pretty obvious parallel between her and Anakin as desert children, strong in the Force but starting their training late, and I think that could be interesting to play off of.
• For Poe, I'm sure that he'd have some interesting bonding points with Anakin over flying/piloting, but I also think he's got a significant role in the sequels trio as "the one most likely to have had at least one history class" (like, the other two know Palpatine is the one who mysteriously returned, and probably Anakin is Vader, but I'm not sure they have much detail beyond that), and thus the one most able to put the prequels crew in context.
• And I think of the prequels crew, it'd probably be Padme and her political experience. I'd love to see her political maneuvering in a setting removed from the Senate, and her training with her handmaidens would provide grounding for some fun identity shenanigans (maybe swapping places with Poe or Rey.)
• Obi-Wan would also be going hard into understanding where the sequels crew came from, but I could see him focusing more on what happened to the Jedi and what's up with the force in the future, providing some interesting context for the Force (and contrast with what Old Obi-Wan told Luke, as passed down to Rey), as well as the direct political angle.
• And Anakin… well, Anakin has a whole new mess to be dumped into, and some interesting people (who probably know who he becomes, and the timeline to him becoming that) to bond with, and I'd love to see how he combines the two.

Jessica Fletcher (Murder She Wrote) & Dave Rossi (Criminal Minds)

• Jessica is a mystery writer and citizen sleuth; Rossi is a true-crime writer and FBI agent. I'd love to see them interact from either half of that equation.
• For the writing, do they have arguments over whose genre is best? Do they have opinions on each other's work? Are said opinions positive or negative?
• For the crime, I'd love to see Jessica stumble into a BAU case (either during Criminal Minds or before it, during Rossi's first tenure at the BAU). Does she help or hurt the investigation? Does Rossi end up wondering if she was the real serial killer after all? It could also be interesting to have Jess on as a consultant when their unsub of the week decides to riff on mystery tropes/her work specifically.
• Or maybe combine the two! Writer's retreat/conference/dinner by their mutual publisher gets snowed in, lights go out, bodies hit the floor, and now they must work together to solve the case.

Worldbuilding (ASoUE TV & MBS TV)

• The aesthetics of these two canons mesh really well (which makes sense, given their directors), and I think their worlds do, too. The Emergency is a very Snicketesque piece of satire, as is the Institute, and I'd love to see how the Mysterious Benedict Society characters interact with Snicket's world. Maybe Sticky's quiz show trust is held by Mulctuary Money Management, and he has to deal with Mr. Poe, or maybe Kate's circus is really Caligari Carnival.
• I'd also really love to see how VFD fits into the Mysterious Benedict Society world. Which of the adults know, and how did they learn of it? Which side of the schism are they on, or are they on no side at all? There's a couple obvious picks for this - in addition to those mentioned below, Dr. Pernalian would be an excellent choice as an amoral scientist, and I'd love to see Number Two's family drama respun as VFD-tinged - but I'd love for it to be someone totally unexpected, with the more obvious choices entirely oblivious. (How did Miss Perumal learn to hotwire a motorcycle, anyhow, and did she and Reynie ever discuss the central theme of Anna Karenina?) How does VFD tie into the Emergency; it's causing panic at the moment, but the end goal is a quiet world (under Curtain's thumb), and I could see that as justification for either side to do it. Is the Institute a recruiting ground? Boatwright Academy? How would the Whisperer affect an organization with a powerful love for truth like the fire-fighters?
• The Baudelaires ending up with Mr. Benedict is a common trope, and I'd love to see another rendition of it here. How does the adjustment period go? How do they like him as a guardian, and how do they fit into the Benedict-Number Two-Rhonda(-Constance) dynamic? I know that the appeal of this trope, as with most Baudelaire adoption crossovers, is that Mr. Benedict is the One Competent Adult, but I'd also enjoy seeing him as a failboat guardian, unable to stop Olaf from pursuing the Baudelaires or, for all his preparation, not recognizing the evil he lets in. It could also be really interesting to see the Baudelaires get a different guardian in the Mysterious Benedict Society world, from Milligan to the Two family to Sticky's aunt and uncle (now that would be a tirefire) to the Perumals to either of the boarding schools shown to Curtain's cult compound. (Or maybe they end up adopted by Martina's tetherball team as mascots. The options are wide open!)
• I also think the Baudelaires would bond well with the Society, either in a high-stakes situation with Olaf or over shared interests like mechanics and the themes of Anna Karenina.
• Tony Hale plays Jerome Squalor in ASOUE, so there could be some fun gags about that. I'm reminded of the Denouement triplets - one good, one evil, and (in this case) one clueless about the rest of the chaos. (Did they end up in the orphanage because their house mysteriously burned down as children?)
• Of course, I'd be sorely remiss without mentioning the ways in which both shows discuss how orphans - too young to have legal agency, and lacking a competent and trustworthy person to have it in their stead - are vulnerable and often treated as disposable. I'd love to see the ways both shows do this - the looming threat of Count Olaf and need to take fate into their own hands, they ways in which only orphans and other parentless children can be used to infiltrate the Institute (and, in the books, how the Institute also abducts those children with no one to look for them) - being interlinked. Maybe the Baudelaires (or Quagmires!) look for a special opportunity, or perhaps Olivia Caliban or a VFD member did many years ago. Maybe Reynie learns his parents held secret fortunes and then meets his geographically nearest relative, a man named Olaf…

Worldbuilding (Leverage & Heist Society)

For this request, I'm down to receive either OG Leverage or Leverage: Redemption era fic (or anywhere in between).

• Two thief canons for the price of one! I love all the characters in both of these, and it would be great to see any set of them interact with the others. Both series follow honorable thieves; it could be interesting to see how those similar sets of morals end up clashing (or not) up close, especially if both teams have slightly different goals. How is Leverage regarded by the general thief community, and how does the team regard them in turn?
• Given Kat's "thief for a cause" self-discovery arc in Heist Society, I think it'd be really fun to see her interact with the "bad guys make the best good guys" Leverage crew (especially if they're in a "are we the bad guys?/yeah!" phase at the moment). Maybe a Leverage mark is also in possession of Nazi art, and Kat has to work around Leverage (and vice versa) to steal it, or maybe they butt heads over something the other group considers beyond the pale. (Or maybe they pretend to, but it's the third-act twist of the episode, with a fake heel turn to boot.) Maybe, in addition to Kat, Marcus calls on Leverage Consulting in Perfect Scoundrels! 
• I'd also love an interaction between more secondary characters. Maybe Sterling has to work with Amelia Bennett on the Bishop family's latest exploit (or Kat has to work with him/Interpol to repatriate some stolen art). Maybe Archie is friends with Uncle Eddie, or related to him. Maybe IYS gets called in to deal with Hale Industries. Maybe one of Bobby's (or Kat's) schemes gets foiled by still-an-insurance-investigator!Nate, or maybe Simon's dad and a young Hardison bond over counting cards in Vegas. Or maybe you've got a completely different idea as to how this could go, in which case I am very excited to see it!

Worldbuilding (Leverage & One Piece Live Action), Worldbuilding (Leverage & One Piece Anime)

For this request, I'm down to receive either OG Leverage or Leverage: Redemption era fic (or anywhere in between).

• Let's go steal a pirate crew! These canons have very different worldbuilding, but both center getting justice in spite of rather than through the law, and bad guys making the best good guys. How would each crew come together in the other's world, and find their type of justice within it?
• I do think that giving the two crews each other's enemies would be wonderfully chaotic. The Strawhats tend to engage their antagonists very directly, whereas the Leverage crew uses subterfuge and cons, and it'd be interesting to see how a pirate boss used to shooting first and asking questions later would respond to a grift, or a typical Leverage mark to being punched in the face. How well would it work, and what would happen if the crews needed to get out of their general MO and act like the other?
• And, of course, we have specialized crews: hacker, hitter, grifter, thief, mastermind and captain, fighter, thief, sharpshooter, chef. It would be very interesting to have people with equivalent roles on the crews working together (or coming into conflict!), or comparison and contrast if the groups get mixed up somehow.
• And our secondary characters! Kuro being a Sophie-type grifter except he kills his marks, the other Supernovas completely fucking shit up in a totally unexpected way, Jack Hurley stumbling himself into working for someone shady again, Taggart and McSweeted as Cipher Pol operatives… the list goes on.

 

Leverage

 

Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer

• This OT3 is so shippy, and I'd love to see more from them! I love how well they work as a team for the cons and how dedicated they are to each other.
• I'd love to see the work they did in the interim between the original show and Leverage: Redemption, learning to function as a crew without Nate and Sophie to help. Did they end up calling anyone else in, like in The Last Dam Job, or calling Tara for help, like when Sophie was on leave? How did their romantic relationship affect how they worked as a con team?
• I'd also love to see them working together in the original show (dealing with the season 3 finale could be a fun source of angst), or acting outside of a con altogether. I really loved Hardison and Eliot's dynamic wrt the brewpub, and that could be fun to see more of.

Maggie Collins

• Maggie is such a fun character, on her own and in the ways she interacts with the crew, and I'd love to see more of her. What's her day-to-day life like, before, during, or after the show? (It'd be really interesting to see her perspective on the first season of Leverage and its immediate leadup, I feel. So many conflicting feelings, and so many heavy nonconflicting ones.) Does she ever have to deal with blowback/attention from Leverage's schemes, or is everyone convinced that she and Nate are totally estranged? 
• How does she interact with either Nate & Sophie or Leverage International post-finale? What's that like? I'd also really love to see her and part or all of the Redemption crew interact, as a client, accomplice, or just friend. Is she someone Breanna knows, at least by reputation? (Or, given her career, is she someone Harry knows from a time she was doing art curation for a particularly terrible client?)

Todd McSweeten

• McSweeten is such a McSweetheart! I'd love to see more of him, as a newbie in S1 to the experienced agent who asks Parker to help with his dad to his role as a director in Redemption and beyond.
• How did McSweeten decide to join the FBI? What are some things he's done without the Leverage crew around? (Imagine if he'd had to work with Nate and Sterling on a fraud case, or with Maggie on an art fraud!)
• What does McSweeten do outside of his job? How has that changed as he's developed his relationship with the Leverage crew and grown over the years?
• I love every time Parker & Hardison pose as FBI agents. When/how does McSweeten figure out they're not who they say they are? How does he react? What are their interactions like in jobs not shown in the OG Leverage and after the finale? He's a director by the time of Redemption; did Parker and Hardison's work help get him there? How has he lent aid to Leverage International over the years?

Nate Ford & Jim Sterling

• These two have such a messy relationship, and I'd love to see it explored in more detail.
• What was it like when they were at IYS? What was Sterling's initial reaction to Sam's illness/death and Nate's subsequent downward spiral?
• How does their relationship shift over the course of the series, and what's it like post-finale? How does he react to Nate's death?

James Sterling

• He's a magnificent magnificent bastard. Just… so much bastard in such a convenient package. I love all of his appearances on the original show, how he's always one step ahead of the team just as they're always one step ahead of the mark, and I'd love his perspective on any of those appearances (or any time they crossed swords off-screen). What is his day-to-day like at IYS or Interpol?
• I'd love to learn more about Sterling's backstory. How did he get to his position at IYS? What drove him to be the person he is in the show? What's his relationship with his daughter like, and how has it changed over the years? Nate's described as always being supportive of IYS's office staff; what was Sterling's relationship with them like?
• His appearance in the finale is just… chef's kiss. What was going through his head at that moment? Did he have similar subtle aid moments with Leverage International, or was it a one-and-done thing? I'd love to see Sterling interacting with the Redemption cast. Maybe he's Breanna's childhood boogieman, maybe Olivia is a client (or mark), or maybe one of their cases goes international and hey, guess who's still working at Interpol…

One Piece Live Action

 

Nami

• My blorbo! I love the way she's harsh to avoid vulnerability, so ruthlessly cunning until she starts to care.
• The 100 million berries! How has Nami earned them? What schemes has she pulled off prior to meeting Luffy and Zorro? (And, had she been further from her goal at the time, how would she have dealt with that and them simultaneously?)
• Her horror at Orange Town is so visceral, I have to imagine it comes from personal experience and/or nightmares, and I'd love an exploration of the way her time with Arlong informs her reaction here.
• Her relationship with Cocoyashi! So extremely and perfectly isolating. I'd love to see how that relationship has changed and developed and devolved as Nami got older, the way that Nami going to Arlong herself affects their view of her, the facade she puts up for them (and Arlong) versus what she really feels.
• And, relatedly, Nami's relationship with Bellemere. What would her life have been like, had Bellemere lived? Would she still have gone to Arlong, or would that plan have fallen through somehow? How did Nami's relationship with her mother change as she grew up, before and after Bellemere died, and how has the way Nami thinks about her (and thinks Bellemere would have considered her) changed post-Arlong. (Imagine Bellemere getting resurrected somehow, hearing her daughter has joined/been abducted by pirates, and having to deal with that. Especially if no one differentiates between the Strawhats and the Arlong Pirates.)

Nami & Creator's Choice of Arlong Pirates

• This is such a twisty, messy relationship, especially with Nami willingly joining but kept there by force, a member in good standing by the time of the series but also an outsider. I'd love to see how Nami's relationship to the other Arlong pirates changes over the years, especially if there's some crew turnover in that time so some of the people she's fleecing at poker don't know about how she came to join the crew. 
• And, obviously, bad times abound, but what about the good times? The times where this was the place Nami didn't quite belong, but felt most accepted?

Strawhats

• Luffy, Nami, Zorro, Sanji, and Usopp! I love them all so much, and I feel like all of their relationships to each other are distinct but cohere so well. They're also all so intense for each other, which I really love.
• These characters are a group that'd come together regardless of circumstances, and I'd love to see how that works if circumstances were different. What if they were all Marines, as Garp so strongly expected Luffy to become? What if Usopp really was Captain Usopp, and the crew formed around him? What happens if their backstories are switched around?
• I'd also love to see this group in downtime or in a new adventure. How do things work out when they aren't running towards a crisis? How does their ability to work together in a fight improve or change as they get more experience?

Monkey D. Luffy/Nami/Roronoa Zoro/Sanji/Usopp

• And the Strawhats as a ship! I like the same things about these characters as an OT5 as I do in their platonic variations: their intensity for each other, the way they seem to very quickly mesh onto the same wavelength, the way that they're all together but their personalities and relationships are still distinct. (And Luffy being so physically affectionate! He's all over everyone, like a cat, and I love it.)
•  I could see this going a lot of different ways, from smarm to a just-this-one-time scenario (perhaps involving sex pollen) that develops into something more to something they fall into over time, kind of a natural outgrowth of their platonic affection, to something that's normal and perhaps even expected on pirate crews given the lack of other partners when the ship's not at port.

Worldbuilding

• There's so much compelling worldbuilding here, and I'd love to see some more of it.
• The Warlords! Is Garp calling in Mihawk here something expected, with the Warlords being more mercenaries than privateers, or is this unusual? How did this system come about, and how does it function normally?
• I'd also love a deeper look into the military here. How does its bureaucracy works? How much of Morgan's control over Shellstown normal versus an abuse of power? (As a tangent, how did Morgan lose his arm?) How much oversight by Vice Admirals like Garp is expected for an outlying base like this? How does the stringent information control we see with the map translate to other areas of operations?
• The implications of fishmen treatment elsewhere! Especially in the context of Nami's complicated relationship with Arlong's crew.

A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV)

 

Kit Snicket & Lemony Snicket & Jacques Snicket (ASoUE TV)

• The Snicket siblings! A relationship we only see via the loss of it, because we only see the siblings alone. I'd love to see the happier times of that relationship, with the siblings all together, and how it falls apart when Lemony must fake his death.
• Do either of Lemony's siblings know the death is faked? Does he attempt to contact him, and if so, do they attempt to reply?
• I'd love to see a fix-it for Jacques where Kit or Lemony unexpectedly comes to the rescue… and the aftermath once the rescue's over and now they're in a confined space together with their feelings that they can't talk about.

Oth: Worldbuilding (ASoUE TV)

• There's so much twisty worldbuilding in this show, and I'd love to see it explored.
• How did VFD get started, and how did the various adults get involved in it? How did the schism take place, and why did it bring the organization so close to the edge of destruction? What does VFD proper look like when Olivia Caliban joins, and what's it like when the Baudelaires return?
• The tech! The tech VFD has, and the codes and cyphers and elaborate facades that it uses. I oogle all of it.
• The legal system here is a real clusterfuck, and I lack expertise in that area but I'd love to see that explored.