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CandyHeartsExchange letter
Dear Candy Hearts Exchange creator!
Hi, welcome! It feels like it's been a bit since I did an exchange, and getting excited about writing again has been such a joy and relief. I hope you're feeling excited too :)
A lot of this letter is a consolidated copy of my sign up, as a heads up, with fandom-specific rambling (if you're not here for TLOU, I have equal amounts of love [and angst] for all my fandoms, it's just that TLOU was a big game, with much in the way to process...). Short version, though: if you have an idea, do a quick check against my DNWs, and run with it! Seriously, whatever you're excited to write will shine through, and I'd love to read it. If you're after any pointers, though, read on for details.
General loves (as relevant)!
- a sex/afterglow scene that showcases the characters
- something else utterly mundane to hang a moment on (cooking a meal, sharpening a weapon, making something).
- People being immensely competent at something, (and also kind in teaching others).
- Hurt/comfort, both emotional and physical, especially after some sort of trauma. Finding a new/better/different way to be in the world after wrenching change. Patching each other up after fights, tending to bruises and cuts etc
- That *Oh* romance moment – either startling realisation of "I'm in love with them", or esp in already established relationships – where Character A looks at B and thinks: I adore you.
- Characters shaving/brushing hair/tending to each other as quiet acts of devotion or service. Esp if one can't do it themselves because of injury etc, but also just because maybe they're exhausted or had a bad day, and having someone take care of you is deeply soothing.
- Having or making cosy/habitable spaces esp in post-apoca settings or settings of scarcity: no stable home, or in the middle of a ruin etc
Happy-sex-scene places, should it be relevant: laughing during sex, happy intimate smiling moments. Edging and overstimulation. Pleasurepain. "Forced" orgasms, of the consensual "character A's already come X times and is exhausted and character B leans in and is all 'one more?' and makes them, type. Restraining people using body weight, or just hands. Manhandling. Praisekink. Being tender to someone in subspace. Threesome territory: character A praising and talking character B through character C deliciously wrecking B. Both A and C deliciously wrecking B. Aftercare, esp the: "okay, we all need electrolytes and to pass out together after that" type. I'm entirely okay with not explicitly negotiating kink/intense sex. By all means, tag it with 'consensual kink', and I'll gladly believe they talked about it off-camera. I'm honestly okay with flatout under-negotiated kink, as long as everyone ends up having a good time. I vastly prefer the word 'come' rather than 'cum' in allll uses. I'm not a fan of humiliation talk (slut/whore etc).
General DNW: Fatphobia. As a weirdly specific thing, I find it excruciating to see characters be crestfallen.
Fandoms!
The Bastard Son and the Devil Himself
Gabriel Boutin/Nathan Byrn/Annalise O'Brien (TBSatDH)
Gabriel Boutin/Nathan Byrn (TBSatDH) Gabriel Boutin & Annalise O'Brien (TBSATDH) Nathan Byrn/Annalise O'Brien (TBSatDH)
Gabriel Boutin & Mercury (TBSatDH)
Ceelia & Nathan Byrn (TBSatDH)
I fell so hard for this show, and I'm excited for basically any fic for it. Go nuts! <3 But if you're after specific pointers, see below:
Things I love about this fandom: cool powers! generational rituals! magic and spells and alchemy! And thing that is not stated in the text but infuses every word: abuse, and if we'd been able to get a season 2 (fuck you Netflix), starting to process that trauma and trying to work towards recovery or some form of peace: Annalise after the finale, holy shit, or in the case of the guys, what they want their lives to be now they're not being actively abused or controlled. Um, this fandom pinged many of my dark recovery buttons, basically.
A respite from the dark is equally welcome! A cosy time together on the boat (minus traumatic twin deaths!), a few more fic-days with the Blood witches in France and that bed. Or that quiet night in, in a squat or an apartment somewhere: bad movies, takeaway, and safety, god they deserve that.
If you wanted to follow me down that darker rabbit hole...that moment where someone looks at their abuser and realises that person doesn't have the same control over them anymore -- that the victim is now a survivor, and both of them know it. Triple points for friends/lovers supporting and backing the survivor up. The three of them being fucked UP in their own ways, and finding comfort in each other and a little bubble of okay, if they can let their guards down enough to receive it.
With Gabriel & Mercury in particular with the above point: Fuck, all that memory fuckery, and Gabriel knowing he can't trust his own fucking memory, and trying to find a way to be okay. Making memories that he wants to hold on to with Nathan and Annalise, and not wanting Mercury in them, ugh. Wanting to rescue her latest victim. There's a wallop of psychological and emotional abuse going on, and I feel like the show was also strongly hinting at sexual abuse there that was potentially continuing into adulthood, but no need to go there (unless you want to. I'm here for it if you are).
Within the context of the threesome: Nathan and also never having known a life that wasn’t being brutally controlled and monitored. And his relationship with Ceelia (who I adore embarrassingly a lot), who controlled and abused Nathan for all of his known life (she probably didn't do it *willingly* but still, that doesn't make it any less traumatic for him, obv). What's it like for them as equals--or probably Nathan as now *stronger* than she is, assuming [finale assumption redacted]?
For Annalise, holy fuck girl, that finale was A LOT. She who'd been doing comparatively trauma-free growing up and then WELP. Are the others there to catch her? How do they do it?
Sidenote: the nominated pairings only included Gabriel Boutin & Annalise O'Brien (TBSATDH) rather than including Gabriel Boutin/Annalise O'Brien (TBSATDH), but I’m equally here for either, should you want the confirmation ;)
The Last of Us (Video Games)
I fell so hard for this game, and I'm excited for basically any fic for it. Go nuts! <3 But if you're after specific pointers, see below:
Abby & Lev (The Last of Us)
I loved watching them become ride or die through the Seattle days, and then there's also the *months* of helping each other survive in that slave camp. Suggestions I LOVE about this friendship: shared trauma. Sure, it's the zombie apocalypse, everyone's got trauma. But these two now have very specific triggers (smells, tastes, times of day, who knows) that they know how to tread around and/or help each other through. Comforting each other through nightmares and flashbacks and helping each other into a new normal is my jam. Other pleasing things: Lev still finding comfort and meaning in Seraphite rituals, even (or esp) if he's presumably doing them on the quiet now. Fireflies helping Lev into the world outside the Seraphites. Side note: I think texts can depict homophobia/transphobia and not *be* said phobic, and the game did it really, really well. I'm totally okay with, say, flashback depictions of transphobia from the Santa Barbara assholes (I am 1000% sure that say, someone found out about Lev being trans, and Abby flat out murdered them before they could blab and make Lev a point of Interest). I'd much rather the Fireflies as a whole being entirely accepting of Lev's transness. He deserves safety and peace and a place to flourish.
Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
God, they're so good to together, and such messes. If you wanted to emotionally deep-delve: I feel like we got Ellie's pov on their relationship in the game, obv, but I'd love to know Dina's. Where/when/why Dina falling in love (and falling into ride-and-die So Hard) before the game started. Like, that's some fucking de-VOTION girl. Ino the Doylist take is that Ellie needed a sidekick (and THANK you, ND for the lesbians), but tell me that Watsonian take.
Did she take Ellie back after the end? There's so many conflicting signs -- the bracelet back on Ellie's hand, yes, but also all her stuff still at the house, welp. If Dina did, what did Ellie do to regain Dina's trust? If Dina didn't, how does she feel about Ellie now? (vastly prefer an ending of both of them making peace with wherever each of them end up)
If you wanted to go cosy and/or short: I loved the farm sequence, but watched it on tenterhooks the whole time, feeling like it was a fragile, pretending-things-were-okay existence, even before Tommy offered Ellie that fix (I like the analogy that I think Neil made about how Dina *knew* she was in a relationship with someone with hefty substance issues, and it was only going to be a matter of time...). So, WAY post-game, their relationship kintsugi-ed back together and whole again in a new shape. What does actual peace look like for them?
Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
i SOB. Joel was a fucking terrible person, and also such a good dad to Sarah and then Ellie. Troy mentioning that the moment where Abby turns the tables on them was an "ah. fuck. I let my guard down and now my past is catching up to me." type moment. But he DID get those years in Jackson of seeing another, less-violent way of being able to live, and Ellie seeing all the ways he did that as she wanders around his house, After. Fucks me up. all of it fucks me up. Ellie wondering if Joel even knew she was there when he died kills me. Ellie wondering if it made it better or worse for him if he did know D E S T R O Y S me.
The two of them together in their snarky profound love for each other is my kryptonite. The entire museum birthday sequence kills me (Ellie still managing to be so 'young' and having fun and happy and making faces in the mirror and Joel getting that whole entire day so perfect and *screams into pillow*). The idea that they spent years(years? TOO LONG) not speaking because of their rift KILLS ME.
Ugh. Actual prompts, hi, sorry. Okay. If you wanted to go light and fluffy and have them traveling together patrolling infected or just hanging out in Jackson together with zero rift, I'm 100% for the balm to my soul. If you wanted to give me Joel's dying thoughts, I'm also here for something that brutally real.
If you're after something specific: I kind of love the implication in Ellie's journal that the entirety of Jackson knew that Cat and Ellie were dating (side-side note: Ellie staying up all night, watching, terrified that she's infected Cat after they kiss for the first time? oh my HEART) and that Joel was the only one who didn't know. Idk what it says about me that I like the idea that Joel would have been homophobic before Ellie came out to him, and that's *why* she's worried about how he'll react. He strikes me as the masculine macho type for whom queers (derogatory) were Over There. Who'd just never questioned macho-maleness and had in fact benefited the fuck out of it. And then Ellie comes along and is like "so I'm kinda really fucking queer (positive)" not that she would necessarily have those words, but still. I'd love to see the 180 his brain and worldview would have to do to come all the way around to him awkwardly but fiercely defending her at the dance. Which he *does* because it's *Ellie* (heart DESTROYED, again). Permission granted to totally sidestep the 'did you lie to me about the Fireflies'? plot thread if you want. It can totally happen well before she confronts him about the Fireflies. Or layer it in for added, agonizing angst! :D).
Original works!
You’ve probably got your own ‘nnngh’ feelings about the below setups, at which point, go nuts! <3 (Mind my DNWs)
Retired Superhero/His Supervillain Nemesis Who Keeps Seeking Him Out Because He Misses Him (M/M)
Retired Supervillain/His Superhero Nemesis Who Keeps Seeking Him Out Because He Misses Him (M/M)
Tropes I LOVE about this setup: hypercompetent violence/*skills* lurking beneath the surface of an outwardly unremarkable-looking person. Shared history, even if none of it was willing or fun (although by the time someone gets to being your nemesis, I imagine there’s a pleasure, or a familiarity there that’s comfortable, even if they’re not saying it out loud to anyone, or to themselves.) “Only person who gets to hurt/try and kill you is *me*. How DARE anyone else try and do that.” Etc. EPIC points for A turning up on B’s doorstep, the more bedraggled and injured the better: ‘I didn’t have anywhere else to go,’ and B lets them in. I’m cool with them not necessarily being a couple at the end of the fic, but I don’t want one of them being left or still Sad, you know?
Child & Monster Under Their Bed (Original Work)
Tropes I LOVE about this setup: Child devising mental and/or physical defences and traps to defend against the monster. A+ points if they’re actually at least a little effective. Does the monster start out legit wanting to harm the child and then softens? Becomes protective? Doublebonus points for the monster growing or willing staying with the child as said child ages/moves house/moves out.
A-OK if they try and tell their parents and their parents don’t believe them, ever. But I prefer the monster to be entirely, and always, real. Also, deeply DNW any Puff The Magic Dragon endings where the child grows up and *leaves*. (Mutual departure and goodbyes are fine)
Experienced Flirty Actress/Shy Stuntwoman Who Works With Her
Tropes I LOVE about this setup: people who are *deeply* competent at their possibly narrow field of expertise, and being able to help their someone who might be needing to fake it (heh) accordingly. Nerves and fluster (and excitement!) when they’re outside said comfort, competence zone and walking into someone else’s. Doubleplus ponts for Skills in X transferring surprisingly well across into new (ahem) environments. Totally okay with actual-virgin stutwoman, or 'first time with another woman' stuntwoman, or Just Shy stuntwoman, or asexual-stuntwoman, even, as you wish. Also good with as gen or as explicit as you wish.
Hi, welcome! It feels like it's been a bit since I did an exchange, and getting excited about writing again has been such a joy and relief. I hope you're feeling excited too :)
A lot of this letter is a consolidated copy of my sign up, as a heads up, with fandom-specific rambling (if you're not here for TLOU, I have equal amounts of love [and angst] for all my fandoms, it's just that TLOU was a big game, with much in the way to process...). Short version, though: if you have an idea, do a quick check against my DNWs, and run with it! Seriously, whatever you're excited to write will shine through, and I'd love to read it. If you're after any pointers, though, read on for details.
General loves (as relevant)!
- a sex/afterglow scene that showcases the characters
- something else utterly mundane to hang a moment on (cooking a meal, sharpening a weapon, making something).
- People being immensely competent at something, (and also kind in teaching others).
- Hurt/comfort, both emotional and physical, especially after some sort of trauma. Finding a new/better/different way to be in the world after wrenching change. Patching each other up after fights, tending to bruises and cuts etc
- That *Oh* romance moment – either startling realisation of "I'm in love with them", or esp in already established relationships – where Character A looks at B and thinks: I adore you.
- Characters shaving/brushing hair/tending to each other as quiet acts of devotion or service. Esp if one can't do it themselves because of injury etc, but also just because maybe they're exhausted or had a bad day, and having someone take care of you is deeply soothing.
- Having or making cosy/habitable spaces esp in post-apoca settings or settings of scarcity: no stable home, or in the middle of a ruin etc
Happy-sex-scene places, should it be relevant: laughing during sex, happy intimate smiling moments. Edging and overstimulation. Pleasurepain. "Forced" orgasms, of the consensual "character A's already come X times and is exhausted and character B leans in and is all 'one more?' and makes them, type. Restraining people using body weight, or just hands. Manhandling. Praisekink. Being tender to someone in subspace. Threesome territory: character A praising and talking character B through character C deliciously wrecking B. Both A and C deliciously wrecking B. Aftercare, esp the: "okay, we all need electrolytes and to pass out together after that" type. I'm entirely okay with not explicitly negotiating kink/intense sex. By all means, tag it with 'consensual kink', and I'll gladly believe they talked about it off-camera. I'm honestly okay with flatout under-negotiated kink, as long as everyone ends up having a good time. I vastly prefer the word 'come' rather than 'cum' in allll uses. I'm not a fan of humiliation talk (slut/whore etc).
General DNW: Fatphobia. As a weirdly specific thing, I find it excruciating to see characters be crestfallen.
Fandoms!
The Bastard Son and the Devil Himself
Gabriel Boutin/Nathan Byrn/Annalise O'Brien (TBSatDH)
Gabriel Boutin/Nathan Byrn (TBSatDH) Gabriel Boutin & Annalise O'Brien (TBSATDH) Nathan Byrn/Annalise O'Brien (TBSatDH)
Gabriel Boutin & Mercury (TBSatDH)
Ceelia & Nathan Byrn (TBSatDH)
I fell so hard for this show, and I'm excited for basically any fic for it. Go nuts! <3 But if you're after specific pointers, see below:
Things I love about this fandom: cool powers! generational rituals! magic and spells and alchemy! And thing that is not stated in the text but infuses every word: abuse, and if we'd been able to get a season 2 (fuck you Netflix), starting to process that trauma and trying to work towards recovery or some form of peace: Annalise after the finale, holy shit, or in the case of the guys, what they want their lives to be now they're not being actively abused or controlled. Um, this fandom pinged many of my dark recovery buttons, basically.
A respite from the dark is equally welcome! A cosy time together on the boat (minus traumatic twin deaths!), a few more fic-days with the Blood witches in France and that bed. Or that quiet night in, in a squat or an apartment somewhere: bad movies, takeaway, and safety, god they deserve that.
If you wanted to follow me down that darker rabbit hole...that moment where someone looks at their abuser and realises that person doesn't have the same control over them anymore -- that the victim is now a survivor, and both of them know it. Triple points for friends/lovers supporting and backing the survivor up. The three of them being fucked UP in their own ways, and finding comfort in each other and a little bubble of okay, if they can let their guards down enough to receive it.
With Gabriel & Mercury in particular with the above point: Fuck, all that memory fuckery, and Gabriel knowing he can't trust his own fucking memory, and trying to find a way to be okay. Making memories that he wants to hold on to with Nathan and Annalise, and not wanting Mercury in them, ugh. Wanting to rescue her latest victim. There's a wallop of psychological and emotional abuse going on, and I feel like the show was also strongly hinting at sexual abuse there that was potentially continuing into adulthood, but no need to go there (unless you want to. I'm here for it if you are).
Within the context of the threesome: Nathan and also never having known a life that wasn’t being brutally controlled and monitored. And his relationship with Ceelia (who I adore embarrassingly a lot), who controlled and abused Nathan for all of his known life (she probably didn't do it *willingly* but still, that doesn't make it any less traumatic for him, obv). What's it like for them as equals--or probably Nathan as now *stronger* than she is, assuming [finale assumption redacted]?
For Annalise, holy fuck girl, that finale was A LOT. She who'd been doing comparatively trauma-free growing up and then WELP. Are the others there to catch her? How do they do it?
Sidenote: the nominated pairings only included Gabriel Boutin & Annalise O'Brien (TBSATDH) rather than including Gabriel Boutin/Annalise O'Brien (TBSATDH), but I’m equally here for either, should you want the confirmation ;)
The Last of Us (Video Games)
I fell so hard for this game, and I'm excited for basically any fic for it. Go nuts! <3 But if you're after specific pointers, see below:
Abby & Lev (The Last of Us)
I loved watching them become ride or die through the Seattle days, and then there's also the *months* of helping each other survive in that slave camp. Suggestions I LOVE about this friendship: shared trauma. Sure, it's the zombie apocalypse, everyone's got trauma. But these two now have very specific triggers (smells, tastes, times of day, who knows) that they know how to tread around and/or help each other through. Comforting each other through nightmares and flashbacks and helping each other into a new normal is my jam. Other pleasing things: Lev still finding comfort and meaning in Seraphite rituals, even (or esp) if he's presumably doing them on the quiet now. Fireflies helping Lev into the world outside the Seraphites. Side note: I think texts can depict homophobia/transphobia and not *be* said phobic, and the game did it really, really well. I'm totally okay with, say, flashback depictions of transphobia from the Santa Barbara assholes (I am 1000% sure that say, someone found out about Lev being trans, and Abby flat out murdered them before they could blab and make Lev a point of Interest). I'd much rather the Fireflies as a whole being entirely accepting of Lev's transness. He deserves safety and peace and a place to flourish.
Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
God, they're so good to together, and such messes. If you wanted to emotionally deep-delve: I feel like we got Ellie's pov on their relationship in the game, obv, but I'd love to know Dina's. Where/when/why Dina falling in love (and falling into ride-and-die So Hard) before the game started. Like, that's some fucking de-VOTION girl. Ino the Doylist take is that Ellie needed a sidekick (and THANK you, ND for the lesbians), but tell me that Watsonian take.
Did she take Ellie back after the end? There's so many conflicting signs -- the bracelet back on Ellie's hand, yes, but also all her stuff still at the house, welp. If Dina did, what did Ellie do to regain Dina's trust? If Dina didn't, how does she feel about Ellie now? (vastly prefer an ending of both of them making peace with wherever each of them end up)
If you wanted to go cosy and/or short: I loved the farm sequence, but watched it on tenterhooks the whole time, feeling like it was a fragile, pretending-things-were-okay existence, even before Tommy offered Ellie that fix (I like the analogy that I think Neil made about how Dina *knew* she was in a relationship with someone with hefty substance issues, and it was only going to be a matter of time...). So, WAY post-game, their relationship kintsugi-ed back together and whole again in a new shape. What does actual peace look like for them?
Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
i SOB. Joel was a fucking terrible person, and also such a good dad to Sarah and then Ellie. Troy mentioning that the moment where Abby turns the tables on them was an "ah. fuck. I let my guard down and now my past is catching up to me." type moment. But he DID get those years in Jackson of seeing another, less-violent way of being able to live, and Ellie seeing all the ways he did that as she wanders around his house, After. Fucks me up. all of it fucks me up. Ellie wondering if Joel even knew she was there when he died kills me. Ellie wondering if it made it better or worse for him if he did know D E S T R O Y S me.
The two of them together in their snarky profound love for each other is my kryptonite. The entire museum birthday sequence kills me (Ellie still managing to be so 'young' and having fun and happy and making faces in the mirror and Joel getting that whole entire day so perfect and *screams into pillow*). The idea that they spent years(years? TOO LONG) not speaking because of their rift KILLS ME.
Ugh. Actual prompts, hi, sorry. Okay. If you wanted to go light and fluffy and have them traveling together patrolling infected or just hanging out in Jackson together with zero rift, I'm 100% for the balm to my soul. If you wanted to give me Joel's dying thoughts, I'm also here for something that brutally real.
If you're after something specific: I kind of love the implication in Ellie's journal that the entirety of Jackson knew that Cat and Ellie were dating (side-side note: Ellie staying up all night, watching, terrified that she's infected Cat after they kiss for the first time? oh my HEART) and that Joel was the only one who didn't know. Idk what it says about me that I like the idea that Joel would have been homophobic before Ellie came out to him, and that's *why* she's worried about how he'll react. He strikes me as the masculine macho type for whom queers (derogatory) were Over There. Who'd just never questioned macho-maleness and had in fact benefited the fuck out of it. And then Ellie comes along and is like "so I'm kinda really fucking queer (positive)" not that she would necessarily have those words, but still. I'd love to see the 180 his brain and worldview would have to do to come all the way around to him awkwardly but fiercely defending her at the dance. Which he *does* because it's *Ellie* (heart DESTROYED, again). Permission granted to totally sidestep the 'did you lie to me about the Fireflies'? plot thread if you want. It can totally happen well before she confronts him about the Fireflies. Or layer it in for added, agonizing angst! :D).
Original works!
You’ve probably got your own ‘nnngh’ feelings about the below setups, at which point, go nuts! <3 (Mind my DNWs)
Retired Superhero/His Supervillain Nemesis Who Keeps Seeking Him Out Because He Misses Him (M/M)
Retired Supervillain/His Superhero Nemesis Who Keeps Seeking Him Out Because He Misses Him (M/M)
Tropes I LOVE about this setup: hypercompetent violence/*skills* lurking beneath the surface of an outwardly unremarkable-looking person. Shared history, even if none of it was willing or fun (although by the time someone gets to being your nemesis, I imagine there’s a pleasure, or a familiarity there that’s comfortable, even if they’re not saying it out loud to anyone, or to themselves.) “Only person who gets to hurt/try and kill you is *me*. How DARE anyone else try and do that.” Etc. EPIC points for A turning up on B’s doorstep, the more bedraggled and injured the better: ‘I didn’t have anywhere else to go,’ and B lets them in. I’m cool with them not necessarily being a couple at the end of the fic, but I don’t want one of them being left or still Sad, you know?
Child & Monster Under Their Bed (Original Work)
Tropes I LOVE about this setup: Child devising mental and/or physical defences and traps to defend against the monster. A+ points if they’re actually at least a little effective. Does the monster start out legit wanting to harm the child and then softens? Becomes protective? Doublebonus points for the monster growing or willing staying with the child as said child ages/moves house/moves out.
A-OK if they try and tell their parents and their parents don’t believe them, ever. But I prefer the monster to be entirely, and always, real. Also, deeply DNW any Puff The Magic Dragon endings where the child grows up and *leaves*. (Mutual departure and goodbyes are fine)
Experienced Flirty Actress/Shy Stuntwoman Who Works With Her
Tropes I LOVE about this setup: people who are *deeply* competent at their possibly narrow field of expertise, and being able to help their someone who might be needing to fake it (heh) accordingly. Nerves and fluster (and excitement!) when they’re outside said comfort, competence zone and walking into someone else’s. Doubleplus ponts for Skills in X transferring surprisingly well across into new (ahem) environments. Totally okay with actual-virgin stutwoman, or 'first time with another woman' stuntwoman, or Just Shy stuntwoman, or asexual-stuntwoman, even, as you wish. Also good with as gen or as explicit as you wish.