Past Imperfect Future Unknown
Dec. 15th, 2019 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
st_aurafinaThank you for creating a time-travel fanwork for me!
Generalities
I love time travel, I love the twisty-turny timey-wimey nature of time travel stories, I love the way it changes a story, and I love the weird and unexpected patterns it throw out when you apply it to characters you know really well. I love time travel!
Ratings: I am fine with receiving gen and g-rated fic, I'm fine with explicit fic.
Kink likes: I like D/s overtones, negotiated relationships, stories about drop and aftercare and all the practicalities of a kink-based relationship. I really like characters knowing what they like and being able to ask for it. I don't have really specific kinks, so much as I enjoy it when kinks are woven into the storyline and fit the narrative. I'm not a fan of bodyfluid kinks, body horror/anatomically improbable kinks like stuffing or vore.
Ships: I love femslash, het and male slash. I have my OTPs but I'm always on board to read ships I haven't mentioned, or, indeed, ships I never thought of. There are a few exceptions listed for some fandoms (Imperial Radch, for example) where I have ships I don't want to see, but otherwise, you're not going to ruin Christmas by mashing two characters together. If I don't want it, I will have said so, and anything else is fair game. Avoid my DNWs, and things will be sweet. I am always happy with non-shippy fic – I love gen, I love world building, I love everything about the fandoms I've requested. But if you're a shipper, I've listed pairings I enjoy for each fandom.
DNW: Noncon, age gap, teacher/student, employer/employee, incest. Specific DNW for cancer storylines and partner bereavement.
Captive Prince
Ships: Damen/Laurent, Damen/Auguste (but as always, friendship fic is also good.)
Character From Future Tries To Convince Current Enemy To Work Together
Character From Future Tries To Convince Current Enemy They Will Be Friends/Allies In Future
Character meets a younger version of their love interest
Character meets a younger version of themselves
I'd love to see Damen or Laurent travelling back in time accidentally or deliberately. Once in the past, they could act to divert timelines, so that the war, or Auguste's death or the abuse by the Regent (Oh, man, imagine tiny Laurent and his big guardian Damen!) or some other future-shaping event doesn't take place. I think it would be a really interesting dynamic to explore: the time traveller knows the other is very important to him, and the other, at this stage of life, would happily see the time traveller killed.
Time Loop - Antagonist Is Also Looping
Time Loop - Becomes Creepier with Every Loop
Time Loop - can only get broken by kissing love interest
Time Loop - Character and Enemy Are the Only People Aware of Looping
Time Loop - Character Loops Until They Learn That People Care About Them
Time Loop - Character takes a long time to notice that they're looping
Laurent would be so pissed to be caught in a groundhog day situation, or any sort of time loop. I would presume a magical reason for looping in this canon? And if one person can loop, another one can too. I'd love to see Laurent pitted against the Regent in a time battle: who do they recruit and what do they seek to change?
Person of Interest
Ships: Harold/John, various poly combinations of John, Nathan, Grace and Harold, Root/Shaw
Character A travels backward to fix love interest B's death and now on there are two of A
Time Travel Fix-it - Multiple Characters Trying To Fix Different Things
Character Gets Stranded With A Past or Future Version of Themselves
I'd love a bit of rescue fic for Root and Shaw, something to reverse the horrible outcome of S5. I don't mind who is duplicated, though there being two of Root would explain a lot how she is able to pop up at the most inopportune times. If there were two of Shaw, you know they're going to throw down for a fight. Basically a happy ending fic for Root and Shaw through time travel hijinks would be lovely.
Alternate Universe - Canon Character Is Secretly A Time Traveler From The Future
Kind of always suspected Harold was a Time Lord type entity, to be honest. Maybe his time machine is the Library? Maybe Greer is an evil opponent? I would imagine that time traveller Harold would not have expected to fall in love in this or any timezone not his origin point. Does this have implications for the people he's left behind? How do John and Nathan and Grace fit into this iteration? Are there collections of odd and eccentric time travellers hidden in niches all over the city? How does it work?
Time Travel Fix-It
Timehopping To Rescue Others From The Moments Of Their Deaths
Adjusting to a Different Era
Dressing in Period-Appropriate Hair and Clothing for Time Travel
If Harold could, I think he absolutely would time-hop to save his loved ones from death (or in Grace's situation, loneliness.) Honestly, I would adore Harold and John (and Grace? And Nathan?) escaping to the past, for the sheer indulgent pleasure of them settling into the Victorian or Regency era or the 1950's or any time when they can live out the rest of their lives in (period-specific costume-wearing) peace. They've had their vaccinations. They know enough history to avoid wars or disasters and to generally make a living from profitable investments. Can John avoid saving peoples' lives? Can Harold stop himself from tinkering with era-specific technologies? Can Grace avoid running off to meet her artistic idols? Can Nathan prevent himself from trying to save the world from the horrors of the future? Most importantly, who looks the best in period dress?
Imperial Radch
Possible Ships: I don't really have any beyond the canon ones, like Awn/Skaiat, Seivarden/Ekalu but I'm open to possibilities, except for one caveat: I don't see Breq/Seivarden in a sexual relationship for all I think it's actually Breq's most important relationship.
Character Accidentally Undoes An Important Historical Event
Character Invents Time Travel to Save Dead Loved One
I think Sphene would do anything for her captain, and wouldn't give two figs for the damage that would be done to the fabric of time in the process. I'd love to see it going into battle, taking the (Provisional) Republic of Two Systems of the future with Miaanai of the past, and how that would play out.
Bureaucracy in a Time Travel Institution
Because if anyone can create bureaucracy, it's the Radch. If there's a future for the Radch, I'd love to see how it all works when these presumably even more civilised Radchaai come back to the past. Or, alternatively, perhaps the Radch has always been a time-travelling civilisation, in which case the paperwork and hierarchical nightmares must be amazing.
Time Travel Back - Character mentors younger self
Mental Time Travel to Past - Sharing Body With Past Self
I immediately thought of Breq mentoring Justice of Toren and wondered how that would work – Breq is older and presumably better at understanding humans, but Justice of Toren has a massive crew and computing power. And after all, Breq is just one segment, if a very independent one. I'm sure there would be friction? Breq is probably going to be quite surprised to find she doesn't think about things the same way. Or to find that her previous self had flaws in the way that it chose to do things.
Sharing Body with Past Self is a tag that makes sense to me in this context – it seems like it would be a thing that would happen, when you shove all that complicated tech into someone's head and then use Gates to get around.
Sanctuary
Ships: Helen/Kate, Declan/Watson, The Five interchangeably with each other (But friendship fic is also great.
Physical Time Travel to Past
Temporal Rift
Time Travel Back - Character visits lost friend
Future Character Deliberately Tells Past Character Their Fate to Change History
Time Travel to fix an apocalyptic future
Time Travel to Fix Problems Caused By Previous Time Travel
Time Travel Fix-it - Multiple Characters Working Together To Carry Out A Plan
Time Travel Back - Younger character travels to older character's childhood
Sanctuary has played with time-travel in canon but I would love to see more or different variations on the theme. Imagine Helen's team in the modern day were sent back to the past, and have to get in good with the Five, or work their way inside the Sanctuary. How would Kate Freelander convince the Five to work with her?
Character Gets Stranded With A Past or Future Version of Themselves
Helen and Helen! I think if you asked Helen how well she'd deal with her past self, she'd claim that they'd both be completely rational about the matter. I'm pretty sure they'd actually be picking each other's mistakes to pieces in a moment. Helen has always been very hard on herself.
Group: Bucky Barnes, Donna Noble
Ship: Honestly, ship them if you want. Give me touch-starved Bucky and unabashedly attracted Donna. (I think she loves a bit of hunky man.) But I'm great with friendship fic.
Castaways in time have chance to go home
Character is unstuck from time
Multiple Travelers - Character Realizes They’re Not The Only Time Traveler Present
I discovered that I'm a huge fan of Bucky Barnes in other people's canons, no matter how unlikely. (Bucky in Narnia, Bucky on Sakaar, Bucky in Westeros, etc, etc.) I guess it's partly competence porn, and partly a reaction to the weird, time-hopping life he's led, that I think he would deal with the incredibly weird better than most people. The same goes for Donna Noble: she is rarely flustered and always ready to deal with problems, often with a sharp slap to the face.
I'd love to see some adventure where they are thrust together into a situation that requires their broad range of skills to get through. I don't mind how – make it timey-wimey as you need to. I don't mind when, either: it could be First Avenger era, it could be Winter Soldier. I'm not up to date with MCU – I haven't seen Endgame. I should say that I like all fannish permutations for Bucky: cocky and self assured, bewildered and brainwashed, calm and competent.
Black Sails
Ships: Thomas/James/Miranda, Thomas/James
With Black Sails, I'm primarily here for the Thomas/James/Miranda. I was so delighted at the reveal in S2, and I'd love to see more of their relationship, especially in happier times. (Save them! I don't really mind how, just let them be all together again!)
Time Travel Forward - Competent Character Struggles With New Context
Time travel as a form of imprisonment
Time Travel Forward - Discovering New Social and Political Freedoms of the Future
I see this tag as a kind of time travel transportation – instead of sending prisoners to North America, they get shoved in a time portal, so James is transported to our time or even the far future. What other convicts are there in this future? Do Thomas and Miranda manage to go too? How do they all deal with contemporary or far future tech?
Time travel might be a character hallucinating
Character Time Travels When They Sleep
Unusual Ways To Communicate Through Time
Thomas and James while separated, can somehow communicate through time, and can support each other through the hardest and most lonely moments, and perhaps find their way back to each other. I'm sure James would write it all off as hallucination or possibly a haunting, but Thomas might be a bit more experimental with it, just in case he really is communicating with James.
Miscellanea:
I have talked about some fandoms more than others, but that does not indicate a preference of any sort. I would be happy with fic or art from any of these fandoms.
I've used additional tags as suggestions, you're welcome to use prompts for different characters than I discussed.
My partner islilacsigil or ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
laraleftlane and she will be happy to sneakily answer any questions about my likes and dislikes. She will keep this secret from me, (possibly forever, because that's how she rolls.)
For stalking purposes, you can find me most places under st_aurafina. I'm![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
st_aurafina and st-aurafina.
All my previous Dear Author letters are here: Dear Author.
Thank you so much for writing for me! I hope you have a timey-wimey exchange!
Generalities
I love time travel, I love the twisty-turny timey-wimey nature of time travel stories, I love the way it changes a story, and I love the weird and unexpected patterns it throw out when you apply it to characters you know really well. I love time travel!
Ratings: I am fine with receiving gen and g-rated fic, I'm fine with explicit fic.
Kink likes: I like D/s overtones, negotiated relationships, stories about drop and aftercare and all the practicalities of a kink-based relationship. I really like characters knowing what they like and being able to ask for it. I don't have really specific kinks, so much as I enjoy it when kinks are woven into the storyline and fit the narrative. I'm not a fan of bodyfluid kinks, body horror/anatomically improbable kinks like stuffing or vore.
Ships: I love femslash, het and male slash. I have my OTPs but I'm always on board to read ships I haven't mentioned, or, indeed, ships I never thought of. There are a few exceptions listed for some fandoms (Imperial Radch, for example) where I have ships I don't want to see, but otherwise, you're not going to ruin Christmas by mashing two characters together. If I don't want it, I will have said so, and anything else is fair game. Avoid my DNWs, and things will be sweet. I am always happy with non-shippy fic – I love gen, I love world building, I love everything about the fandoms I've requested. But if you're a shipper, I've listed pairings I enjoy for each fandom.
DNW: Noncon, age gap, teacher/student, employer/employee, incest. Specific DNW for cancer storylines and partner bereavement.
Captive Prince
Ships: Damen/Laurent, Damen/Auguste (but as always, friendship fic is also good.)
Character From Future Tries To Convince Current Enemy To Work Together
Character From Future Tries To Convince Current Enemy They Will Be Friends/Allies In Future
Character meets a younger version of their love interest
Character meets a younger version of themselves
I'd love to see Damen or Laurent travelling back in time accidentally or deliberately. Once in the past, they could act to divert timelines, so that the war, or Auguste's death or the abuse by the Regent (Oh, man, imagine tiny Laurent and his big guardian Damen!) or some other future-shaping event doesn't take place. I think it would be a really interesting dynamic to explore: the time traveller knows the other is very important to him, and the other, at this stage of life, would happily see the time traveller killed.
Time Loop - Antagonist Is Also Looping
Time Loop - Becomes Creepier with Every Loop
Time Loop - can only get broken by kissing love interest
Time Loop - Character and Enemy Are the Only People Aware of Looping
Time Loop - Character Loops Until They Learn That People Care About Them
Time Loop - Character takes a long time to notice that they're looping
Laurent would be so pissed to be caught in a groundhog day situation, or any sort of time loop. I would presume a magical reason for looping in this canon? And if one person can loop, another one can too. I'd love to see Laurent pitted against the Regent in a time battle: who do they recruit and what do they seek to change?
Person of Interest
Ships: Harold/John, various poly combinations of John, Nathan, Grace and Harold, Root/Shaw
Character A travels backward to fix love interest B's death and now on there are two of A
Time Travel Fix-it - Multiple Characters Trying To Fix Different Things
Character Gets Stranded With A Past or Future Version of Themselves
I'd love a bit of rescue fic for Root and Shaw, something to reverse the horrible outcome of S5. I don't mind who is duplicated, though there being two of Root would explain a lot how she is able to pop up at the most inopportune times. If there were two of Shaw, you know they're going to throw down for a fight. Basically a happy ending fic for Root and Shaw through time travel hijinks would be lovely.
Alternate Universe - Canon Character Is Secretly A Time Traveler From The Future
Kind of always suspected Harold was a Time Lord type entity, to be honest. Maybe his time machine is the Library? Maybe Greer is an evil opponent? I would imagine that time traveller Harold would not have expected to fall in love in this or any timezone not his origin point. Does this have implications for the people he's left behind? How do John and Nathan and Grace fit into this iteration? Are there collections of odd and eccentric time travellers hidden in niches all over the city? How does it work?
Time Travel Fix-It
Timehopping To Rescue Others From The Moments Of Their Deaths
Adjusting to a Different Era
Dressing in Period-Appropriate Hair and Clothing for Time Travel
If Harold could, I think he absolutely would time-hop to save his loved ones from death (or in Grace's situation, loneliness.) Honestly, I would adore Harold and John (and Grace? And Nathan?) escaping to the past, for the sheer indulgent pleasure of them settling into the Victorian or Regency era or the 1950's or any time when they can live out the rest of their lives in (period-specific costume-wearing) peace. They've had their vaccinations. They know enough history to avoid wars or disasters and to generally make a living from profitable investments. Can John avoid saving peoples' lives? Can Harold stop himself from tinkering with era-specific technologies? Can Grace avoid running off to meet her artistic idols? Can Nathan prevent himself from trying to save the world from the horrors of the future? Most importantly, who looks the best in period dress?
Imperial Radch
Possible Ships: I don't really have any beyond the canon ones, like Awn/Skaiat, Seivarden/Ekalu but I'm open to possibilities, except for one caveat: I don't see Breq/Seivarden in a sexual relationship for all I think it's actually Breq's most important relationship.
Character Accidentally Undoes An Important Historical Event
Character Invents Time Travel to Save Dead Loved One
I think Sphene would do anything for her captain, and wouldn't give two figs for the damage that would be done to the fabric of time in the process. I'd love to see it going into battle, taking the (Provisional) Republic of Two Systems of the future with Miaanai of the past, and how that would play out.
Bureaucracy in a Time Travel Institution
Because if anyone can create bureaucracy, it's the Radch. If there's a future for the Radch, I'd love to see how it all works when these presumably even more civilised Radchaai come back to the past. Or, alternatively, perhaps the Radch has always been a time-travelling civilisation, in which case the paperwork and hierarchical nightmares must be amazing.
Time Travel Back - Character mentors younger self
Mental Time Travel to Past - Sharing Body With Past Self
I immediately thought of Breq mentoring Justice of Toren and wondered how that would work – Breq is older and presumably better at understanding humans, but Justice of Toren has a massive crew and computing power. And after all, Breq is just one segment, if a very independent one. I'm sure there would be friction? Breq is probably going to be quite surprised to find she doesn't think about things the same way. Or to find that her previous self had flaws in the way that it chose to do things.
Sharing Body with Past Self is a tag that makes sense to me in this context – it seems like it would be a thing that would happen, when you shove all that complicated tech into someone's head and then use Gates to get around.
Sanctuary
Ships: Helen/Kate, Declan/Watson, The Five interchangeably with each other (But friendship fic is also great.
Physical Time Travel to Past
Temporal Rift
Time Travel Back - Character visits lost friend
Future Character Deliberately Tells Past Character Their Fate to Change History
Time Travel to fix an apocalyptic future
Time Travel to Fix Problems Caused By Previous Time Travel
Time Travel Fix-it - Multiple Characters Working Together To Carry Out A Plan
Time Travel Back - Younger character travels to older character's childhood
Sanctuary has played with time-travel in canon but I would love to see more or different variations on the theme. Imagine Helen's team in the modern day were sent back to the past, and have to get in good with the Five, or work their way inside the Sanctuary. How would Kate Freelander convince the Five to work with her?
Character Gets Stranded With A Past or Future Version of Themselves
Helen and Helen! I think if you asked Helen how well she'd deal with her past self, she'd claim that they'd both be completely rational about the matter. I'm pretty sure they'd actually be picking each other's mistakes to pieces in a moment. Helen has always been very hard on herself.
Group: Bucky Barnes, Donna Noble
Ship: Honestly, ship them if you want. Give me touch-starved Bucky and unabashedly attracted Donna. (I think she loves a bit of hunky man.) But I'm great with friendship fic.
Castaways in time have chance to go home
Character is unstuck from time
Multiple Travelers - Character Realizes They’re Not The Only Time Traveler Present
I discovered that I'm a huge fan of Bucky Barnes in other people's canons, no matter how unlikely. (Bucky in Narnia, Bucky on Sakaar, Bucky in Westeros, etc, etc.) I guess it's partly competence porn, and partly a reaction to the weird, time-hopping life he's led, that I think he would deal with the incredibly weird better than most people. The same goes for Donna Noble: she is rarely flustered and always ready to deal with problems, often with a sharp slap to the face.
I'd love to see some adventure where they are thrust together into a situation that requires their broad range of skills to get through. I don't mind how – make it timey-wimey as you need to. I don't mind when, either: it could be First Avenger era, it could be Winter Soldier. I'm not up to date with MCU – I haven't seen Endgame. I should say that I like all fannish permutations for Bucky: cocky and self assured, bewildered and brainwashed, calm and competent.
Black Sails
Ships: Thomas/James/Miranda, Thomas/James
With Black Sails, I'm primarily here for the Thomas/James/Miranda. I was so delighted at the reveal in S2, and I'd love to see more of their relationship, especially in happier times. (Save them! I don't really mind how, just let them be all together again!)
Time Travel Forward - Competent Character Struggles With New Context
Time travel as a form of imprisonment
Time Travel Forward - Discovering New Social and Political Freedoms of the Future
I see this tag as a kind of time travel transportation – instead of sending prisoners to North America, they get shoved in a time portal, so James is transported to our time or even the far future. What other convicts are there in this future? Do Thomas and Miranda manage to go too? How do they all deal with contemporary or far future tech?
Time travel might be a character hallucinating
Character Time Travels When They Sleep
Unusual Ways To Communicate Through Time
Thomas and James while separated, can somehow communicate through time, and can support each other through the hardest and most lonely moments, and perhaps find their way back to each other. I'm sure James would write it all off as hallucination or possibly a haunting, but Thomas might be a bit more experimental with it, just in case he really is communicating with James.
Miscellanea:
I have talked about some fandoms more than others, but that does not indicate a preference of any sort. I would be happy with fic or art from any of these fandoms.
I've used additional tags as suggestions, you're welcome to use prompts for different characters than I discussed.
My partner is
lilacsigil or For stalking purposes, you can find me most places under st_aurafina. I'm
All my previous Dear Author letters are here: Dear Author.
Thank you so much for writing for me! I hope you have a timey-wimey exchange!
no subject
Date: 2019-12-15 06:56 am (UTC)(I really love the general trope of "character goes back in time and takes an instant dislike to their younger self because their younger self is CLEARLY AN IDIOT.")
no subject
Date: 2019-12-18 08:14 am (UTC)Yes, this!! This exactly - and I think the problem will be that Justice of Toren will also be quite taken aback by this very independent ancillary segment that has *gasp* opinions.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-16 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-18 08:16 am (UTC)I think they would be terrifyingly competent in their own ways, it's an excellent combination. I didn't think of the crossover but when I saw it, I knew I'd be requesting it.