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[personal profile] minutia_r
Dear Jukebox DJ,

Hi there! May I compliment you on either your excellent taste in music or your willingness to try something new and write fic about it, or both? In any case, I’m really looking forward to reading what you come up with.

(I've only requested fic for my main gift, but I would be thrilled to receive either fic or art treats! Podfic is not really my thing, so if you're thinking, "I would like to make a nice thing for Minutia, I wonder what she'd like?" the answer is probably not "Podfic"--but if you're thinking "I have been seized with inspiration by one of these prompts, I must do a podfic for it, it is my artistic vision, but wouldn't it be weird to gift podfic to someone who just said she doesn't like podfic?" then the answer is that I will be very flattered and listen to it and probably like it.)

I don’t expect you to treat every line of the song/frame of the video as canon the way you might for a book or TV show. If you want to do a close reading of the text, that’s cool! If some phrase or image or mood from the song or video suggests a story to you, then run with that and don’t worry too much about contradicting or fitting the rest of the canon in around it--and especially don’t worry about the prompts in this letter, which are really just there to give you ideas in case you’re stuck.

However, I do have a few Do Not Wants:

DNW (general):

-Long fic. Anything more than about 5000 words or so and I start getting anxious about reading and commenting in a timely fashion while still giving the story the attention it deserves, so I’d just rather you didn’t.
-Purely introspective stories with no action or character interaction
-Choose-Your-Own-Adventure/interactive/game-style fic
-Body image issues. I don’t mind brief mentions, but please don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on a character hating their body.
-It-was-only-a-dream type endings

DNW (smut):

-Sounding
-Infantilization
-That thing where one or more of the people involved doesn’t know what sex is or realize they’re having it
-Religion kink--like, naughty nuns and priests and what have you (sex with gods, devils, demons, or while being a god is OK though)
-One partner calling out another’s name during orgasm

General likes (fic): I really like all kinds of fic, from silly fluff, action and adventures and worldbuilding to smut and hurt/comfort. Feel free to take it darker, too: violence, character death, betrayal, consent issues sexual and otherwise, bad things happening to characters I like AND characters I like doing bad things. I’m open to different POVs and tenses, and unusual fic formats like poetry and epistolary/documentary fic. In terms of romance and/or sex, I like any number of participants (as long as there are few enough that you can keep track of all the anatomy) and any gender combination. In general, I'm open to alternate gender interpretations of characters in the songs/videos.

A brief and really not exhaustive list of story elements I especially like: Comfort after a nightmare, self-sacrifice, loyalty and trust issues, elections, platonic bed-sharing, hugs, language geekery, communication issues, breakups (either the kind where the original relationship is eventually patched up, or where the people involved manage to forge a different but still mutually satisfactory type of relationship afterward, or where nothing is okay again and everything hurts), ethical dilemmas, food porn and food preparation, parenting/childcare, exploration of canon-appropriate religious themes.

General likes (art): Bright palettes with jewel tones, especially turquoise and rose, but also monochrome with lots of shading. Curves, soft bellies and big noses; also, hair. The kind of character portrait where a lot of thought has gone into details of clothing, hairstyle, etc even if nothing in particular is happening. Loose sketchy comick-y things that illustrate a character moment or interaction. Hair-touching, face-touching, hand kissing, forehead kissing, hugs from behind. I also like things that incorporate text and images in various ways, like calligraphy, comics, maps and diagrams, and I’m really fond of watercolors and Art Nouveau-inspired stylings.

If you want to make me smut, here are a few of my (many) favorite kinks: D/s dynamics, informal kink negotiation that feels true to the dynamic of those particular characters (although under-negotiated kink or the assumption that the negotiation has taken place offscreen are also a-ok), magic/superpowers/highly advanced technology or whatever unique features of the setting or characters being used for sexual purposes, improvised restraints and sex toys, blades, slicing/tearing off clothes, fingers in mouths, loyalty kink, trust kink, praise kink--especially the kind where the praised party is somewhat reluctant or embarrassed to accept the praise (creepy praise kink like e.g. in scenario where a rapist praises their victim for being good while threatening them is also great), one or more participants not getting off during the scene but enjoying it anyway, semi-public or outdoor sex, awkward sex, situations where different participants have different understandings of what’s going on (as in, A thinks the sex is consensual but B is actually mind-controlled, or A is putting on a show for C, who unbeknownst to B is watching the whole thing, or A thinks it’s a casual hookup but B is in love and afraid to mention it because they don’t want to ruin what they’ve got, or whatever.) In general, I like a lot of weird stuff (and vanilla stuff too!) so if there’s something you want to write or draw, unless I’ve specifically DNW’d it, it’s probably okay.

Crossovers with outside fandoms aren't encouraged in this exchange, but if you wanted to cross over two or more of the songs I'm requesting, I wouldn't mind at all. (For instance, I can easily see Howlin' Bones and Sweet Jezebel taking place in the same universe, featuring some of the same characters, or giving different perspectives on the same events).

The Shrine / An Argument - Fleet Foxes (Music Video)

What this looks like to me is that the ungulate is the sole survivor of a massacre, and they are on a quest to avenge their people, and the wolf and humanoids and serpent-creatures are their enemies. I'd love to see the whole background of that fleshed out, especially the ungulate’s relationship with the creature whose severed head they lick at the beginning--were they lovers or parent and child or comrades or rivals or what? The whole bit after the serpent pulls the ungulate down into the water is ambiguous and full of possibilities, too. Is it a vision the ungulate sees while drowning, and what does it mean? Who is the humanoid who emerges from the ungulate’s body after it’s ripped apart--another representation/form of the ungulate’s personality, or a separate person altogether? I am intrigued by the idea that, whoever they are, they're the one telling the story. Does the way it ends mean triumph or failure for the ungulate, or some combination of both?

Oleander - Sarah Harmer (Song)

Is the narrator of this song singing to a woman, or to a houseplant? If you just look at the words, it might be a houseplant--but it's a houseplant she's got weirdly intense feelings towards. I like to think that this is the story of a human woman and her nature-spirit ex-girlfriend who she would like to get back together with. I like the sense that the narrator has realized and learned from the mistakes that she made the first time around, and I would be interested in either a happy or bittersweet ending.

The End is the Beginning - Two Steps From Hell (Song)

I really like the weird and epic feel of this song, the sense of the vast scale of the worldbuilding and the tragedy. It might be a story of an attempt at colonizing a new planet that went wrong, the ensuing conflict, and the return to space of the survivors? On the other hand, the dancing dead remind me of the Cherokee myth of the deluge, with its own cataclysmic themes.

Howlin' Bones - Hannah Aldridge (Song)

I like to think that the narrator of this song is an actual malevolent supernatural entity--maybe even the capital-D Devil?--or a necromancer, and that the interlocutor thinks he's gotten the better of her in some bargain, but is about to discover how mistaken he is. I really enjoy the Weird West feel of it, and the contrast between the intimate scale of the events (with the repeated references to "this town") and the possibly cosmic powers of the narrator.

Rich in Love - Colin Linden (Song)

This seems like a song about a mortal/standard human in a relationship with a fairy? Or other supernatural creature? Who has to go on a dream quest to his lover from some sort of supernatural malady. I really like the mythological and fairy-tale resonances of it--it brings to mind stories like Orpheus and Eurydice and the Twelve Dancing Princessess. I'm curious about the nature of the trouble that the lover is having, what the mortal finds in the dream world, and how it ends for them--in tragedy, in a break-up, in a successful (and perhaps mutual) rescue?

Mean Well - Dear Reader (Music Video)

The lyrics suggest someone suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, or an experiment of Mad Science abandoned by their creator. I really dig the old-timey monster-movie aesthetic of the video, and the juxtaposition of the creepy and the mundane; the jerky and repetitive images might hint at the narrator being somehow unglued in time, stuck in a time loop or plagued by visions of the future/past? I'm interested in the relationship between the narrator and the individual they're addressing, and also about the people/other creatures attached to the "eyes everywhere" and if, in fact, they mean well.

Sweet Jezebel - Mean Mary (Song)

I am here for hot woman-on-demonic-guitar action, although if you wanted to give Jezebel an alternate humanoid form for smut purposes, that would be cool too. Shipping aside, I'm wondering about Jezebel's point of view on this--how does she feel about being a temptation, to be used and heroically cast aside? What's her relationship with the mysterious Devil-like stranger? Like I said above, I'm not really interested in an interpretation where all these events are a hallucination of some kind--even if the narrator's life seemingly picks up where it left off, I'd like to see some indication that the events of the song are real on some level, and that the narrator and Jezebel made some kind of lasting impression on each other, even if they never see each other again. Alternatively, I'd be intrigued by a scenario where they were somehow reunited, for better or for worse.

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