cattreats | Dear Author Letter (Chocolate Box 2015)

Hey, fellow Chocolate Boxer! Looks like we matched up on one (or more) fandoms, or you're browsing and saw that we had one in common — that's awesome! Just for your linking convenience, my username is

WIN on Archive of Our Own; you can take a look at the tiny handful of things I have posted so far to get a handle on what I like to write, and at my slightly-larger bookmarks section to see what I like to read. (All the stuff in my bookmarks is stuff I adore, and if we matched on any of the lady-centric fandoms, you probably will, too!)

I don't think I've ever gotten any kind of gift fic I haven't liked, so don't worry too much about trying to include everything (or even a lot of things) I add in my optional details sections! If you're writing for the relationship I've requested and you avoid my DNWs, there's a 99.999% I'm going to love it and make all my friends read it. Go wild!

This is my first time writing one of these letters, so I might come back to it a few times and tweak the format/add pictures, but I don't think I'll be changes anything too drastic in the prompts or likes/dislikes section.

So, onto the rest of my letter! (ETA: The cut's giving me all kinds of grief and it's late, so I'm leaving it as-is for now. Sorry if you stumbled onto this journal before I fixed it!)

GENERAL WOULD-LIKES

Fanart or fanfic! Both are equally great for all of the prompts I've selected, which I think you can tell from the assignment, if I'm not mistaken. But it definitely bears repeating that I'd adore anything you'd like to gift me. I'll probably be just as likely to print out your fanfic and hang it on my fridge as I would a piece of your fanart, so do whatever you'd like and I promise I'll adore it. I wrote most of these prompts as suggestions for fic because it's what I'm more used to thinking in, but a lot of them could easily just be pieces of art with those themes/scenes, too!
Found families and teams-as-family! Close supportive friendships! Friends as the most important people in each others' lives! (You have no idea how much I cried because of Harry Potter positioning Ron as Harry's most important person in the Triwizard Tournament.) Anything that portrays characters with a healthy support system and brings in people in their lives that they love or care about, even outside of just the relationships I've selected, is an instant tearjerker for me. Even if it's not sad! I love this concept that much and I'm a very emotional person when it comes to emotional bonds!
Any of the relationships I've listed in each fandom co-existing within their fandom! Some of them I've grouped together because they have overlap, but even with the ones I haven't, feel free to bring them together in complementary relationships! For ones outside of the same fandom, that brings me to...
Crossovers! I'm very well-read on most Marvel comics and I've seen all the movies, if you wanted to go there for either Marvel continuity, including the Netflix series, and am comfortable with you blending them together; I've loved just about every animated movie and cartoon made in the West in the last fifty years, if you wanted to cross over Lilo & Stitch with something else and have her go on adventures with fun-seeking characters like Mabel or Coraline or Juniper Lee; and I love superhero/magical girl/sentai anime like Samurai Flamenco and Sailor Moon with a passion, so don't be afraid to rope in series for any My Hero Academy teamups you would want to write! I prefer when they're grounded in similar universes but don't need them to be exactly the same; I just don't like "fell through the portal into a totally different world" stuff, generally, but I'm open to changing my mind on that!
Domestic/mundane daily life fic. Fic where they just sit around and talk, don't do much of anything but enjoy each others' company, fic where they go to walk the dogs and buy some groceries at the supermarket and it's nice. This is especially great in canons where everything is action-packed and loud when it tips its hat to that; a story about a quiet, peaceful day in the middle of a character's otherwise-chaotic life is wonderful to me.
Original characters! Obviously, I want the central ones to be the relationships/characters I've picked, but don't be afraid of creating some new, weird baddies for the My Hero Academy kids to take down or invent teenage superhero fans to adore the cast of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the case of the Nani/Original Female Character ship, this is especially true! Feel free to invent a whole family/set of friends/assorted host of aliens(?) for Nani's girlfriend!
Epistolary fic! Think text messages, letters, journals, postcards, academic journals, gossip magazines, tabloids, newspapers, blogs, social media, the whole shebang! My favorite fics are the ones that are told either entirely through these alternative formats or ones that balance that with a look behind the "screen" into the characters' lives as they're reading/writing them, but really, you could just include a couple of fake Tweets and I'd be over the moon.

GENERAL DO-NOT-WANTS

Homophobia being a central theme or homophobic characters playing a huge role in the story. I kind of skim when this stuff comes up in fic because I deal with homophobic people entirely too often in real life, and I'm really bored of having to hear it, and I'd feel awful skimming over a gift someone wrote for me! Casual homophobia is completely OK with me when it's addressed, though!
Any kind of depicted rape/noncon/abuse. This includes what a lot of people would consider dubcon, e.g. drugged/drunken sex where one party isn't really coherent or is at all coerced into it for other purposes. If you're not sure, it's probably better to rework it; for Jessica Jones, specifically, mentions of Kilgrave and Jessica's (or Trish's, or anyone's) recovery process and brief nightmares about what happened are totally fine, as long as they're not the only thing happening in the fic! I really, really, don't want any of this anywhere near any of the fandoms with children (Lilo & Stitch, My Hero Academy), at all, though.
Incest. Again, there's a semi-"exception" for this in Jessica Jones; while I consider, say, Adventure Time's Finn and Jake to be siblings who simply aren't blood-related, I don't read Trish's mother as someone who ever wanted to create a family or Jess and Trish to be people who ever considered each other as anything other than best friends.
Genderbends/Rule 63/the "woke up a woman/man" trope. I'm totally cool with characters experimenting with gender or presentation and would love to read that, but I don't care for, "Well, I woke up with this different set of standard human genitals I didn't ever want or wish for and I'm completely fine with that, so I better go out and change my entire life/wardrobe/personality to suit them!"
Porn. I went back and forth on this for a while, because I’d be perfectly happy reading it for some canons yet not at all comfortable with others, but eventually just decided that I’d rather lay down a “No” on it for now. Sorry! I’d prefer only fics that you could comfortably rate a G or a T on the Archive, please, so fade-to-black scenes and making out that involves canonical adults (i.e., not children/teenagers who’ve been aged up) are great, feel free to include them at your own discretion!
Most F/M ships. The only real exceptions for this is Lilo & Stitch, where I do really love Cobra/David/Nani as a three-way ship, and Jessica Jones, because Luke is an absolutely wonderful guy and I'd be content if you wanted to reference Jess's past relationship with him, but most other F/M ships are things I'm not wild about. This especially applies with Ochako (My Hero Academy), Lilo (Lilo & Stitch), and Natasha (Marvel Cinematic Universe); I don't have any interest whatsoever in them having crushes on or dating guys, as a general rule.

JESSICA JONES (TV)
Jessica Jones/Trish Walker ||| Jessica Jones & Trish Walker

These two, augh. I love Jessica, I love Trish, I love Jessica and Trish! I love that their relationship developed so much over the course of the series and it went from a woman who didn't call her best friend to one who almost definitely has her number on speed dial. I love the measures they each took to keep themselves safe, and I'd really like to see something like maybe the two of them getting together and moving into Trish's house and how that'd affect their relationship. I'd also love a fic set post-series where the two of them just have time to relax and kick back, maybe grab a movie or go on a dinner date, and how they explore their relationship changing after so many years but not seeming that different.

Although I did say that I don't really consider them sisters or think they consider themselves that, I'm 100% open to reading a genfic where the two of them are just incredibly close best friends who (now, if they didn't always) know they can count on each other when the chips are down. Jess could tell Trish about what Luke was like, maybe, or they could hang out with Malcolm and start branching out/advertising the business seriously! Or maybe Trish uses her connections to get Jess a nicer office that isn't her house and forces her to take it? Maybe Claire stops by and they all hang out together! You can also feel free to cross this fandom over with Daredevil as much as you'd like and include whichever Daredevil characters you want, as long as the central two are still Jess and Trish! My favorite characters in Jessica Jones are those two, Claire, Luke, and Malcolm, but (other than Kilgrave) I have a soft spot for everyone in the show, especially Malcolm!

BROOKLYN NINE-NINE (TV)
Rosa Diaz/Amy Santiago ||| Rosa Diaz/Gina Linetti ||| Gina Linetti/Amy Santiago ||| Rosa Diaz & Amy Santiago

I lumped these all together as one general request for letter purposes because I want the same thing out of all of these requests — any kind of relationship between the three of them, or a subset of their trio! (So yes, even though the trios weren't nominated and I couldn't request them, I'd be just as happy with OT3 shipping here as I would a genfic with any of them just hanging out and talking shit about their respective significant others.) But don't get me wrong, I love all of these two-person ships as their own independent relationships! My favorite things about Rosa/Amy are the gaps in their personality and how those fit together; the idea of Rosa flirting in her own obviously direct way but Amy still not always picking up on it; respect for each other and their work. My favorite things about Gina with anyone are just how bizarre she can get, but how Rosa understands that Gina's gotta be Gina and Amy... Amy, maybe not so much, but she loves Gina anyway. And Amy tries so hard to make things better without always hitting the mark, but she always, always means well for everyone!

As far as more general prompts for any of these pairings go, I'd love getting-together fic if you're writing shipfic. What are their first dates like? Can Amy and/or Gina handle Rosa's motorcycle? Does Gina invite Amy and/or Rosa to the weirdest restaurant they've ever been to? Do the rest of their coworkers tag along out of worry, and how does that go down if they get caught? Or for genfic, maybe they're all having a movie night and dishing gossip about work, but Amy's incredibly bad at it and Gina is inhumanly good? Maybe Rosa teaches Amy and/or Gina how to wield weapons! Maybe Amy organizes Gina and/or Rosa's desk and they can't find anything, but the organization system makes perfect sense to everyone else? Ensemble fic is more than welcome, as long as the focus stays on the two or three women you're writing about. I'm really fond of every character in the show, so you can include any of the main guys or side characters you'd like, and I'm also open to any fake cases you'd like to write up that incorporate how weird (but still super genuinely heartfelt) some of the show's plotlines can get!

Kevin Cozner/Ray Holt

I can't think of a fic you could write me with these two that I wouldn't like. Complete AU where they're space-dwelling colonists who fall in love? Amazing! Coffee shop AU where Kevin forgets he needs to move so more people can order because the barista is just that charming? Awesome! Backstory on their earlier stages of relationship, or a casual night in watching their favorite documentaries, or future fic where they've grown old together and are reminiscing? All of those are right up my alley! This relationship is just incredibly heartfelt and wonderful and I love both of them so much that writing this paragraph is making me tear up. (It's really and truly a problem.) My favorite aspect of their relationship is the idea that they're long-term partners, so anything that plays that up or experiments with timelines is great. Maybe Ray gave Kevin his first impressions on the squad (set around the start of the show) and then goes back to update him as he learns more about them (in later episodes)? How did Kevin and Ray find even ground on their relationship and Ray being a cop? I'd prefer no death for this ship unless it's from old age.

BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA | MY HERO ACADEMY (ANIME/MANGA)
Iida Tenya & Midoriya Izuku & Uraraka Ochako

If you like this canon for the gen relationships and are fond of the main three kids, then I'd be delighted to read anything about their escapades you'd be willing to cook up! Future fic would be a huge plus here, either in the distant future where they're all adults who've stayed close friends or in the near future where they're getting acclimated to their lives post-graduation and take a day to just hang out. I love all three of these kids equally, especially the contrast between their reasons for heroism and how they really all stem from love of the people that are important in their lives — I'm actually a huge fan of Uraraka's reasoning for wanting to be a hero (to make money and support her parents with it) since my logic would probably be pretty similar in that situation, so anything that addresses or mentions the team's love of their families playing out in different ways would be awesome! I'm neutral on anything shippy of Uraraka with any guy, even background or as a crush, but I'd adore it if you paired her up with one of the girls.

Iida Tenya/Midoriya Izuku

If you are interested in writing shipfic, then I'm really fond of these two awkward, embarrassing messes and how sweet they are together! I'd love to read how they might balance their superheroing lives with something like going on dates. Do their classmates know they're dating? Does Uraraka tease them about how they act around each other constantly? What are the things they like about each other that bring out the best in them, or alternatively, what bad habits do they pick up from each other without even realizing it? I'd prefer it if Uraraka wasn't sidelined and stayed just as involved in their lives as she is in canon, so you could even write about them trying to figure out how to make time for normal friendgroup hangouts and capital-d Dates. Maybe she has a girlfriend (like Invisible Girl) and they double-date! As long as it's still G- or T-rated, future fic where they get married and it checks in on their lives years later would warm my heart like you wouldn't believe.

MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE (MOVIES)
Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov & Sam Wilson ||| Natasha Romanov & Sam Wilson ||| Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson

The second Captain America movie is probably my favorite Marvel movie so far, and it's entirely because the dynamic between these three was such a wonderful building block to grow the rest of the movie on. Since the next Captain America movie won't be released until May 6 this year, you could explore where they went after the end of the second movie and how they came to the point they seem to be at (based on trailers) in the third. I also really love where they were at the finale in the most recent Avengers movie, so what are their hijinks as a team like? Natasha and Steve seem to be the leaders; is leadership easy to get used to, or is it so different from flying solo and commanding soldiers that they're having a hard time getting used to it? Maybe Sam could step in and help Natasha as a friend or Steve as a supportive boyfriend, and maybe he ends up being so good at the job that they declare him the new leader of the Avengers, much to his chagrin!

Or, if you're going with AUs here, I'm particularly fond of thinking of this trio in a high school setting! Maybe Natasha's the exchange student who terrified everyone into thinking she's a spy, and Steve's the theater geek who designs all their crops but has picked fights with their resident bully/bullies every day for a year, and Sam's the guy who won't stop showing people pictures of his pet bird(s) but he's such a great guy everyone lets him get away with it? Or a mundane office AU would be incredibly hilarious. Anything that involves the three of them would be fantastic, but I'm also just down for Natasha and Sam hanging out and eating breakfast in their pajamas, or Steve trying to court Sam really awkwardly with lines he got off the internet, or maybe college roommates Sam and Steve or childhood friends Natasha and Sam! (Did they have a teenage band? Was it awful? Tell me about it and its limited-release demo album. Or it could have been great, and it's a band AU, which I would also adore!) If you're only here for one of the duos, I'd prefer it if Sam and Natasha didn't get completely ignored when they're not the featured characters, but that all depends on how the story flows when you're writing it — if it doesn't feel organic to include them, you don't have to!

MARVEL 616 (COMICS)
Luke Cage/Danny Rand

I don't know when I got so fond of these two ending up in a relationship, but I blame the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon — that dynamic of Luke trying to keep everything together without letting too much on and Danny just kind of letting everything happen and how it works out so well is something I'm genuinely charmed by. Your fill for this could be something that's set before Luke and Jessica get together, maybe, or in an alternate timeline where they just don't get together for whatever reason? I'd prefer for her not to be killed off just so they could get together and I also wouldn't like Luke and Jess to be on bad terms at the end of their relationship, so you could also turn to AUs for this one to avoid that! Maybe they're both amusement park face characters for another franchise, like Disney or DC, and commiserate after work about how awful their jobs are! Maybe they work in the same law firm and Danny is the guy who quits when Luke gets fired out of solidarity! Maybe they're neighbors, or roommates, or international space pirates. Really, I'm just fond of their dynamic being one that's based on mutual respect and love, so any kind of AU where they bond (and maybe go on hijinks?) here!

Misty Knight/Colleen Wing

I love, love, love Misty and Colleen, and I love them working together! How about their time as detectives? What was that like for them? Are there any cases you could see them going on, or maybe, what would their detective agency have been like if they'd been dating for a while when they opened it? Who asked who out, or how did it start? Casually? With a big proclamation of love? What would their wedding be like, if they had one, big and superhero-y or small and limited to friends and family? Do they have a fanbase, and if so, what does their fanbase think of them? Like I mentioned in the Would-Likes, I love any fics that incorporate things like Twitter accounts or fake newspaper articles or talk show interviews, and I've love to see the kinds of things people say about Colleen and Misty online — or what kinds of things would they have to say? Maybe one of them runs a blog for their detective agency and they have a strong media presence! Maybe it's an MCU AU where they're superhero bloggers who met online! The sky is the limit, but I love how incredibly clever and witty both of them are, so the more playful and loving banter involved, the better!

LILO & STITCH (MOVIES)
Cobra Bubbles/David Kawena/Nani Pelekai

Every time I think of the three of them in all their family's vacation photos together I feel so inexplicably fond! This is something I thought would be great when I was younger and I'm still incredibly touched by the idea even now, so when I saw it nominated, I definitely had to pick it as something I'd be happy to receive. I'd like to know a little bit more about all those vacations they took and what it was like for the three of them to look after a kid and three aliens who act a lot like kids! Was it stressful? A good bonding experience? A chance for them to learn a little more about each other under duress? More than anything, I'd like it if this was an equal triangle of a relationship; we know how Nani met Cobra and David and what she thought of each of them, but what were Cobra and David's first impressions of each other, in hindsight? Does Cobra also think David's hair is fancy? How do they all function living together in the same house, and what's it like when Cobra's job takes him to such distant places in the world, or when Nani has to constantly look after her sister (or so she thinks), or David literally juggles fire? Maybe they all go surfing together! I'd be most content with aforementioned vacation memories or a day-to-day life reflection for this pairing, but anything's fantastic as long as it showcases their unique relationships with each other.

Lilo Pelekai & Nani Pelekai

I wanted to include this in case you wanted to write any kind of gen, because I absolutely adore the relationship between Lilo and Nani as it exists in just about every piece of Lilo & Stitch media! It's my favorite sibling relationship in anything Disney's ever created, and it set the stage for a lot of what I look for in supportive family relationships as I got older, because it's not perfect but both of them are trying their best to understand the other's very, very different point of view. You could write pre-movie fic for this about what things were like even closer to the time of the accident, maybe, about Nani deciding to take care of Lilo completely by herself and what that decision meant for her. This is the perfect canon to really explore a really sad fic, because the circumstances of their parents' accident really weren't kind, and things were almost certainly pretty rough in their lives for a while. But if you wanted to write something happy, I'd be just as delighted by a fic set after the end of the movie when things picked up for them considerably and their house got more crowded than ever, or a fic that explored the timeline of their life with both the good and the bad, or a fic that was set in a total different AU that was all about Nani (still) trying to make life better for her little sister!

Myrtle Edmonds/Lilo Pelekai

This ship is all my interest in "growing up and learning and changing as a person" brought to life, because I think Myrtle could definitely be read as someone who has a crush on Lilo and just isn't sure how to deal with it! So future fic is the perfect thing, for this; I'd prefer they're aged-up at least a little bit (think teen years or older) for anything you write, but I'd take childhood interactions as long as it's balanced out with plenty that happened when they're older! Where do they go to school? What's their school life like? Do they have to take a boat to get to another island, and if so, does that trip leave Myrtle and Lilo with plenty of time to talk privately? Does Myrtle ever feel bad for treating Lilo the way she did and genuinely change? And on Lilo's part, how does she feel about Myrtle? Does she grow up and not bother spending time with her anymore? Does she like Myrtle and try to ask her out? Are they surprisingly well-matched dancers who perform well together?

Nani Pelekai/Original Female Character

For this pairing, the sky's the limit! Whatever you'd like to write, I'm good with. You can feel free to run wild with any AUs or slightly-altered canons you might want in this section, because I like any just about kind of character trope when it's applied to femslash! Maybe Cobra has a charming coworker who invites herself along with him on his next checkup? Maybe an alien fan tracks down Lilo's "weird dog" and wants to ask them some questions about it, but is way more interested in Nani when she meets her? What does Lilo think of Nani's new girlfriend? Is she afraid of Stitch, or does she love him right away, or does he take some getting used to? I'm good with just about anything! You could even include this alongside the Cobra/David/Nani prompt and make it a four-person household, if you're so inclined, and use one of the tropes I mentioned there to stretch the story out some more!

And, in advance: thank you for whatever you write!!! I promise I'm going to be incredibly thrilled about it, no matter how much you adhere to the prompts or choose to do your own awesome thing, and I can't wait to see what that is!