ineffabilities | dear au exchange writer

thank you for writing for me! here are the basics about what I want:

I like both gen and ship fic in about equal measure, and will read pretty much any rating. I like reading about found families and their dynamics, whether they're an adventuring group that's been together for a while now or a bunch of asshole superheroes that are trying to make things work. I like hurt/comfort, I even like breaking a character (Winter Soldier AUs are my brand at this point) for lots of angst, but my one solid caveat is that there has to be a happy ending. It doesn't need to be completely happy, but I just want everyone to be alive. I love everybody lives AUs bc I'm a wimp who can't stand major character death.

DNW: permanent major character death (non-canonical), fics that are not friendly to any Avenger (PLEASE no fics unfriendly towards Team Cap especially), gore way above canon-typical violence, parent kink, A/B/O and BDSM AUs, bestiality, incest when it would seem OOC for the characters, underage sex where one character is underage and the other is not, graphically depicted noncon, tentacles, mpreg, knotting. for ASOIAF, no Jonerys please, and I don't want to see Ramsay Snow making an appearance. he can be mentioned, but please don't show him.

please don't feel too beholden to sticking too close to my prompts! as long as the DNWs don't show up, then I'm completely fine with something new.

Critical Role
Molly/Caleb
"what the fuck," you might say, "people still ship Widomauk?" to which I say, yes, yes they still do, do not underestimate the depths of denial. I, personally, am from MCU. this ain't my first ship with a dead character. this ship appeals to me bc I love shipping opposites together, and Caleb and Molly are as different from each other as night and day, but they care deeply for each other. even if they're not super great about showing it.

CR: Molly does not have amnesia but Caleb does - G O D this would be such an interesting role reversal! so much of Molly in canon is borne out of having to build his own identity back up from scratch, and so much of Caleb is formed by his past sins and his need to fix them somehow. what would change if that fundamental part of them was reversed? would Molly still want to walk away from his past? would Caleb want to know more about who he was, and bend all his will into finding out?

CR: Molly is turned into a Winter Soldier - I think everyone who knows me knows that this is my jam, but I would REALLY love to see Molly having to build his identity back up from scratch all over again, now with much more damage to deal with. I want to see how the Mighty Nein reacts to the initial explosive encounter, how this affects the group dynamic, and especially how it affects Caleb. he's been down this road before, after all! and what happens if Molly's Winter Soldier shit catches up to them at the worst possible time?

ALL: Romantic Comedy AU - like, I'm not gonna lie. I love rom-coms. what I would most love to see is what happens if you combine the plot of something like Overboard or What Men Want or Just Like Heaven with the Mighty Nein's penchant for chaos and plot-derailing bullshit. what happens if the rom-com of Molly and Caleb's romance has to also deal with, like, Caduceus' desire to save his family's mortuary, and Fjord's apparent deal with a devil, and Jester and Nott's mystery-solving shenanigans? how do Molly and Caleb even deal with the typical rom-com plot?

All: Secret Agents AU but Identity is Continually Blown Due to a Recognizable Butt - ngl I just want the flirty, flirty shenanigans of Molly unerringly being able to track down Caleb, every time, because no one has a butt like that. that's it. that's all. also, if Caleb can recognize Molly via the way his tail just immediately excitedly lashes around on sight of him, that would be incredible, thanks.

ALL: Russian Doll Time Loop - what if Molly kept dying in a time loop over and over again, and the whole universe starts to glitch out? what would he do? who would he talk to, in order to fix this? well, there's a wizard over there who also knows what's going on, because Caleb's been studying time magic and may or may not have something to do with the accidental time loop. what can help them break out of this? do they even know how to break out of this? how does this affect Molly's demeanor, does it wear down at his psyche or does he hold stubbornly on? what about Caleb, how would he feel about this?

The Mighty Nein
I love Vox Machina and all, I'm not gonna lie, but the Mighty Nein are my first real introduction not only to CR, but to everything that D&D could be. they're a bunch of assholes who were thrown together by chance (or fate), who went through enough shared trauma that they bonded together, and now they're stepping closer and closer into family territory, as dysfunctional as they all are, with their jagged edges and their broken hearts. I love that the M9 are very ride-or-die for each other, but at the same time none of them are scared to be assholes to each other. I love that they've all come to care for each other so deeply that they've become better people because of it.

please note that if you pick the prompts below, I'd like the fics to include Molly and Caduceus, not just one or the other. I think they'd get along pretty fantastically.

ALL: Characters are Toys Come to Life - hey, so, you know Indian in the Cupboard or Night at the Museum? something like that, but with D&D minis. this is edging slightly close to RPF crossover, but I'd love to see the M9 and co. (+ VM and co.) as D&D minis that come to life whenever the cast and crew turn out the lights in the studio, or even just whenever no one's looking and the cameras aren't rolling. what is it like as a D&D mini sort-of actor? do they complain about their paint chipping? do they treat the dice with wary respect or do they kick the dice for getting them in bad situations? what do they feel about the cast and the crew? has anyone in the cast and crew realized that their minis aren't always where they left it the next day? (Taliesin and Liam keep finding the Molly and Caleb minis canoodling, wtf.)

ALL: Characters play Dungeons & Dragons - I feel like this was inevitable. we've already seen Vox Machina playing Bunions & Flagons, now let's see the Mighty Nein take a crack at it. who's the DM? who plays the poor party healer? (the answer is Not Jester.) who keeps getting arrested and having to be broken out? who tries to seduce the dragon? will Jester succeed in her goal of seducing Fjord's character or will she be seduced by Beau's? who plays the character so completely opposite their own personality it's sort of terrifying, and who just shows up playing basically themselves?

ALL: Westworld (TV) fusion - welcome to Fantasyworld, where you can be an adventurer! how many of the M9 are hosts, and how many are actually humans? what were the hosts' previous lives like, and what do they do when they're awakened to sentience? in all honesty, I'm pretty sure that when the robot revolution comes, the M9, hosts and humans, immediately get the FUCK out of dodge—the humans care too much now about their host friends, and the hosts have been deviating from their storylines and their programming for a while now. if this is post-26 and Molly is a host, has Molly been reassigned somewhere to serve guests, and if so, what happens when they go get him?

ASOIAF/CR: Caleb Widogast was formerly Robb Stark - what if the thing Caleb wanted to fix wasn't just the deaths of his parents, but the death and ruin of his family, and Ikithon preyed on that desire? alternately, what if Caleb's memory was fucked with far more than he thought it was?

Daredevil (TV)
plays the saddest song for Nelson, Murdock & Page. I'm happy s3 ended with them all back together and ready to take on the world, but I'm sad that we'll never get to see them together again. please soothe my sad, broken heart.

ALL: Everyone wakes up amnesiac - this would be ridiculous fun, a la Tabula Rasa from BTVS. I would love to see Matt and Foggy getting excited over Matt's enhanced senses and the things he could do with it, and I'd love to see Karen turning her determination to figuring out who they are, as individuals and as a group. how would an amnesiac Matt feel about Daredevil, or deal with the rage simmering inside him? what would an amnesiac Foggy do upon finding out that they're lawyers and they help people? what about an amnesiac Karen, what is she like when she doesn't remember her checkered past?

ALL: Selkie AU - one or more members of NM&P is secretly a selkie! and it's not Matt, because he's got the monopoly on secrets here. does he know one or both his friends are selkies, or does he just find it strange that they seem very possessive of this one kinda-fluffy garment? what happens when the selkie's sealskin gets stolen? is there a moment where Matt walks into his bathtub and the selkie(s) are just chilling in a very cramped little tub, splashing about all over the place? if he knows about the selkie thing, what's his regular complaint about being friends with selkies, is it the persistent smell of fish clinging to them or the faint scent of blubber that keeps cutting into his senses? what does he like about being friends with a selkie?

Crossover: The Antichrist (Good Omens) was someone from another canon - again, I know Matt might seem like the obvious choice for this, but he's too damn angry at the world, he would absolutely take the chance to Make Things Right if he had the power for it and all his morals were removed. what if the Antichrist is Foggy? warm, loving Foggy who loves his best friends and his city and will fight tooth and nail for the system to work the way it's supposed to? what would he do, with that kind of power? (also, lbr, both Crowley and Aziraphale would take credit for the Antichrist being in law.)

All: Character Tries to Woo and Honorably Marry Their Fellow Sex Pollen Victim - ...I just want Matt trying to ineffectually woo Foggy after a round of wild, hot, bed-breaking sex-pollen-induced sex bc like. Catholicism. and also he's been pining after Foggy for years, in all honesty, but he'll use the Catholicism as an excuse. (Karen is laughing at them.)

DD: Matt as the Black Sky / ALL: Role Swap AU - these two go hand in hand here, because this is what I want: what if Matt Murdock died at the end of s2, and Elektra Natchios became Daredevil after him? how would becoming a hero affect her? what kind of hero does Elektra turn out to be, and what does she do to come into her own as the protector of Hell's Kitchen? how does she deal with the grief of losing Matt, how does she interact with Foggy and Karen in the aftermath of his death? and after that: what does she do when he comes back, amnesiac and a killer? what about Matt, what's he like when the Hand brings him back? does he even still take over the Hand, or does he send the plot of The Defenders off the rails? how does Elektra change the group dynamic of the Defenders?

A Song of Ice and Fire - GRRM
Stark Kids & Theon Greyjoy
the show did them so dirty. the show did them so so dirty. anyway, what I like best about the Stark children and Theon is that despite being torn apart, they still care deeply about each other. even Theon cares a bit about them, although it's more focused on Robb than the rest of them. I want to see more of their relationships, and how it would change or stay the same when translated into different settings. (also I ship Robb/Theon, so including that ship would be great, but I don't mind if it doesn't show!)

ALL: Characters play Dungeons & Dragons - what if Westeros was a D&D setting, and all the horrible things that happened were just some incredibly bad rolls on the part of the kids? what then? what happens if, at a crucial plot point, someone rolls a natural 20 and changes the course of the plot?

ASOIAF: reincarnation with backstory swaps - I actually really like the idea of just a general reincarnation where everyone finds each other again as destiny foretold, but even more than that, I like the idea of reincarnation throwing everyone into someone else’s story or family. for example, Jon gets reborn but it’s as a legitimate heir to his father’s company while Sansa is born out of wedlock, or Theon and Robb swap families when they’re reincarnated. how much changes when they grow up and meet again? what happens if their memory of their previous life comes back? how different are they from then, and how similar?

ASOIAF: D&D magic system - I know what GRRM said about his low-fantasy world not entirely working when you load high-fantasy shit into it, but. you can be just as deconstructive of fantasy when you can throw fireballs around, I’d argue. I would love to see the Stark kids taking on defined D&D classes and magic rules—maybe Sansa becomes a cleric for the old gods, mindful of what happened with her father and determined that if anything happens again, she can somehow fix it. Maybe Robb finds himself a paladin, or Theon goes from ranger to nothing to warlock, or Jon starts out an ordinary fighter and eventually realizes that Oh Shit he’s a sorcerer with a draconic bloodline THANKS RHAEGAR. (Arya’s an Arcane Trickster rogue and Bran is a straight up divination wizard.)

ALL: Time-travel to fix an apocalyptic future - the Stark kids + Theon desperately travel back in time in order to fight the Others with advance warning and prepare earlier than they did. they wake up in their younger bodies, AGOT-era, and immediately set about to changing things—but what do they change? What do they have to resist changing so that they can achieve the bigger goal of Stopping the Others? What can they just not resist at all even tho it might hinder said goal? How do these people, older and wiser and harder, feel when they see long-dead friends and family, or long-dead enemies?

ALL: Westworld (TV) fusion - the Starks’ shitty, shitty storyline is programmed into the park. but what happens when they start to gain sentience? what happens when they band together and start to fight back in small ways?

All: canon character death didn't happen AU - I’m gonna be real here with you Chief this is just “what if Robb Stark doesn’t die”. more interestingly tho: what if the Red Wedding still happens, but for one reason or another, Robb isn’t dead? how does that change things? what does that do for the Northern Conspiracy happening? (this could go hand in hand with the crossover idea mentioned in Critical Role’s section where Caleb used to be Robb but anyway.)

Hamilton - Miranda

ALL: Reincarnation

All: Characters participate in fandom

All: Leverage AU

All: Journey to the Underworld to Resurrect Loved One

All: Ladyhawke AU