Beta Lyrae

Letter under construction—pardon the dust! Everything from my signup should be here, plus general likes; I may add some more prompts up until assignments go out.

I'm Sheliak on AO3 too.

This time around I'm requesting fanfic for everything.

Treats are always, always welcome!

I'm a slow commenter, so please don't take the lack of a comment early on as an indication I hate what you made me!

DNWs
Likes
Original Work
SCP Foundation
Vespertine
X-Men


DNWS

General DNWs:
• Time loops (including both stable time loops and Groundhog Day style time loops)
  
• Rape/noncon
  
• Hopeless endings
  
• Unrequested setting-change AUs (as opposed to canon divergence, which is pretty much always welcome)
  
• Porn without plot
  
• Mundane AUs
  
• Omegaverse
  
• Hanahaki
  
• Soulmates
  
• Characters begging to come/for sex acts

DNWs specific to X-Men:

• The Phoenix Force being portrayed as an intrinsically evil being.
  
• Trevor Fitzroy.
  
• Selene, the Shadow King, or Mojo playing a large role (exception: if I'm requesting Spiral, Mojo is okay then).
  
• Any romantic pairings involving Empath.
  
• Ororo/T'Challa--please don't even mention the marriage, even to say they're divorced.
  
• Mutant!Moira.
  

Likes

General Likes:
• Time travel, including: time travel fixit; time travel with the glorious angst of knowing you're overwriting your future to give the past a chance; time travel that results in forming new kinds of relationships with people, like becoming friends with someone who was an enemy in the old timeline.
  
• Strict honor codes.
  
• Worldbuilding.
  
• Alien POV.
  
• A sense of wonder.
  
• Loyalty.
  
• Characters temporarily putting aside their weapons or sources of power as a show of trust.
  
• Best enemies, who might kill each other someday but fundamentally respect and trust each other, perhaps more than they do their nominal allies. Rivals and enemies becoming friends, or allies, or lovers, or swearing loyalty to one another.
  
• Kneeling. Physical gestures of loyalty or affection.
  
• Unexpected mercy. Mercy in general, too.
  
• Heroism in desperate straits, characters choosing to be heroic even in a dystopia or doomed world.
  
• Magical abilities/superpowers in daily life.

Worldbuilding Likes:
• Culture! I really love a piece that gets into the POV of the culture it's depicting.
  
• Family structure. How do people see their relationships? Which ones do they prioritize?
  
• Craft details!
  
• Clothing, cloth, fibers, weaving, spinning... Also jewelry. Who wears it? What does it indicate (e.g., gender, status, ...?)
  
• Architecture, how homes and public buildings reflect a culture.
  
• Food! What do people eat? How do they store food for the times when they can't farm/hunt/forage for more? Do they trade for food?

Hurt/Comfort Likes:
• Leaders slowly earning the trust of traumatized people who have every reason to fear the worst from the world in general and possibly them in particular.
  
• A character is disparaged by their own allies, but an unlikely person (such as an honorable enemy or captor) recognizes their excellence and tells them so.
  
• I already mentioned unexpected mercy, but it goes here too: I love a buildup of fear and then relief, mercy from someone who (as far as the character knows) has absolutely no reason to be merciful.
  
• Characters who have no mercy for themselves, but can have it for others, or whose friends and lovers disagree with their self-judgement.
  
• Characters pushing themselves to their limits and beyond, and others being there to catch them when they do.
  
• Characters going to great lengths to help one another.
  
• The less-hurt person also being in some distress, and struggling with it, and perhaps taking comfort in their own ability to help others.
  
• Characters who are convinced that they don't matter and no one cares learning that actually someone does care and does think they matter.
  
• Rescues! Rescues where the rescuee is convinced no one's coming, implacable rescuers overcoming terrible obstacles to save their friends/lovers.

Original Work
Request 1: Gen

Relationship: Girl who Defeated the Dark Lord & Dark Lord's Minions (hurt minions)
Freeforms:
• (ex-)slave is saved; expecting hurt but receives kindness/love/mercy instead
  
• Begging for Mercy On Behalf of Third Party (Mercy Granted)
  
• Character expects power imbalance abuse but receives mercy/kindness instead
  
• Character expects to be punished but is unexpectedly comforted instead
  
• Character Who Believes They'll Be Tortured/Killed Begs Mercy For Another
  
• Unexpected Mercy - Character Expects To Be Tortured/Killed; Begs Mercy For Another But Not Self
  
• Brainwashed/Mind Controlled minion(s) of villain get help from hero despite all they didHurt
  
• Chars work for Big Villain; band together to take BV down when they realize they’re wrong
  
• Mistreated Villain Switches Sides; Surprised to Be Treated Kindly by Heroes
  
• Slavery AU - Slave Expects Hurt From Reluctant New Master; Receives Comfort Instead
  
• Child King struggling with responsibility
  
• Character makes a mistake and expects the worst due to past experiences; is met with gentle kindness
  
• A Surrenders to Enemy B to save Loved One C… now A and C are at B’s (Surprisingly Tender) Mercy

Prompts:
• I’m picturing the Girl who Defeated the Dark Lord as a kid/teen hero, well-meaning, maybe from this world and maybe not. She knew what she was doing on the quest, but maybe she wasn’t expecting what came after.
  
• The Dark Lord’s minions—did they sign up willingly, were they forced into the roles when the Dark Lord conquered their area, or did the Dark Lord make them from scratch?
  
• I bet the Dark Lord was a terrible boss, and his minions were expecting the worse from both his enemies and his potential successors. This is kinda both, so they’re doomed, right?
  
• Or maybe the minions switched sides earlier, either because they thought the Dark Lord was doing bad things or because they thought this would be safer for their fellow-minions!
  
• I have a thing for characters in terrible situations trying to protect each other, so I’d like if the minions were close to each other, tried to protect each other from the Dark Lord and assume they’ll be doing more of the same now.

Request: F/m

Relationships:Conquering Female Warlord/Male Tribute She Didn't Ask For (hurt Tribute)

• Honorable Female Warlord & Prince Given To Her As Tribute (hurt Prince)
  
• Female Adventurer/Male Drow She Captured Who Wants Her To Keep Him (hurt Drow)
  
• Honorable Female Captor & Male Captive Mistreated By Her Allies (hurt Captive)
  
• Honorable Female Captor & Male Captive Mistreated By His Own Former Allies (hurt Captive)
  
• Honorable Female Warlord & Clever Low-Status Male Captive (hurt Captive)
  
• Honorable M General Serving the Dark Lord/F Resistance Leader Who Takes Him Captive (hurt General)
  
• Powerful Young Female Mage/Ancient Magical Male Slave She Inherited (hurt Slave)
  
• Woman Obligated To Marry Her Sister's Widower/Her Sister's Abused Husband (Hurt Husband)

Freeforms:

• terrified character sent as a peace offering to a warlord
  
• Royal Marriage - Marrying your enemy to protect your people
  
• Misunderstandings - Hurt character initially believes comforter is there to hurt them more
  
• Culture Shock from Arranged Marriage
  
• Marriage of Convenience - Claiming Enemy as Spoils of War to Protect Them
  
• Forced marriage - character receives unexpected comfort from new spouse
  
• Forced Soulbond
  
• Forced To Marry Your Enemy
  
• Female character protective toward physically or emotionally hurt man
  
• Characters in Arranged Marriage Expect Hurt But Receive Kindness Instead
  
• Character Who Believes They'll Be Tortured/Killed Begs Mercy For Another
  
• character is comforted by their captor
  
• Character A offers sex for protection; B thinks it's consensual (they realize before it's too late)

Prompts:
• For this one, the tags are prompts; you can also take my likes list up top as a starting point!
  
• But: I really like powerful women, women holding power over men, matriarchies, loyalty, and unexpected mercy (particularly in situations where it makes sense for one character to be very worried that the other one will do something unpleasant to them.) Anything built around one or more of those things is great.
  
• Some settings I'm into: space opera, planetary romance (a la Pern or Barsoom), secondary world fantasy in general, sword & sorcery. In general I’m really into worldbuilding.
  
• Unexpected mercy leads to loyalty?

SCP Foundation

Fandom Notes:

• Previous requests for this fandom here.
  
• Thoughts that didn't quite fit in the prompts section: I love all the Klavigars and Halyna Ieva and Lucien Dutoit too.
  
• I love the physicality these characters have—I mean body horror is part of it, but also shapeshifting as a way of reclaiming their own bodies, literally recreating themselves, being their own weapons and choosing which scars to keep.

Request: Orok

Relationships:
• Grand Karcist Ion & Klavigar Orok (hurt Orok)
  
• Grand Karcist Ion/Klavigar Orok (hurt Orok)
  
• Klavigar Lovataar & Klavigar Orok (hurt Orok)
  
• Klavigar Nadox & Klavigar Orok (hurt Orok)

Freeforms:
• Aftermath of Slavery
  
• Dehumanized and Abused Character is Shown Genuine Love and Affection
  
• Recovery from Long-Term Dehumanization
  
• Rehumanization
  
• you're better than you think you are
  
• Person Used to Being Treated Like a Weapon Gets Rescued & Treated Like a Person Again
  
• Character used to being alone has trouble relying on newly formed friendships
  
• Character Volunteering for Trauma Because They're Used to It
  
• Character thinks they only have worth as a protector/weapon for their "more important" allies
  
• Character believes it's obvious that they're the expendable one; other characters strongly disagree
  
• Slow and gory process of magically restoring a character's dismembered body
  
• Lonely Character Finds a CommunityRescued by Someone They Don't Trust
  
• Trauma - A tries to gently touch B; B flinches like they're about to be hit
  
• Characters who Survived Traumatic Event Together Reunite for First Time without the One(s) Who Died
  
• Culture Shock

Prompts:
• For Orok, I'm really intensely into the slave gladiator/bodyguard part of his backstory—I found the tale in which pre-Ion he had exactly one experience of someone being nice to him super iddy. How does he adjust to the rebellion after that? To “normal” life in Adytum? To being allowed to have opinions and preferences, to having people care about him as a person and not a tool?
  
• Orok joined the first person who ever acted like his opinions could matter and then had to deal with free will and real loyalty for the first time.
  
• I find him most interesting when he’s culturally Daevite, like Nadox and Lovataar—are they drawn to each other because of that, especially as time goes on and more and more of Ion’s followers grow up Kalmaktama (even Saarn, kind of)? All of them are foreign to the empire they built and the paradise they hope for…
  
• At first he’s deeply suspicious of Lovataar (reasonable!) and later they’re friends—I’d like to see them bonding, either of them trying to help the other.
  
• Was he similarly suspicious of Nadox at first? Nadox never held power in the old empire, but he was a free Daevite. On the other hand he’s still visibly marked as Daevite outcast
  
• That millennia-long coma and having to come to terms with a modern world that does not include Ion afterwards. (Also, if he was out of it that long, waking/healing him might be a pretty complicated process.

Request: Lovataar

Relationships:
• Klavigar Lovataar & Klavigar Orok (hurt Lovataar)
  
• Klavigar Nadox & Klavigar Lovataar (hurt Lovataar)
  
• Grand Karcist Ion/Klavigar Lovataar (hurt Lovataar)

Freeforms:
• you're better than you think you are
  
• Pretending to Betray Someone to Save them
  
• A must pretend to be about to rape/torture B to rescue B
  
• Undercover - Much To Their Distress Good Guy A Is Surprisingly Good At Pretending To Be Evil
  
• Hurt/Comfort While Undercover
  
• Reformed former bad guy has to go undercover as a bad guy
  
• Undercover - Forced to hurt friend or loved one to keep cover
  
• Self-Worth Issues
  
• Character A is delirious and begs B for forgiveness for something B bears no grudge for
  
• Character A insists they hate Character B; also insists on providing comfort
  
• Character believes it's obvious that they're the expendable one; other characters strongly disagree
  
• Character has done truly terrible things; is desperate for someone to throw them a lifeline
  
• Lonely Character Finds a Community
  
• Characters who Survived Traumatic Event Together Reunite for First Time without the One(s) Who Died
  
• Loyalty - Character willing to die for someone being asked to live for them
  
• Culture Shock
  
• Overcoming self-hate and self-loathing via caring for someone else

Prompts:
• I love Lovataar’s conflict as a Daevite noblewoman who gave everything she knew up for Ion and the Kalmaktama, who struggles with culture shock and self-hatred, but still holds onto some Daevite things (her golden jewelry, for one).
  
• The idea of Lovataar going undercover in the Daevite Empire, as exactly the kind of evil noblewoman she really used to be, is delicious to me. (Especially if Orok or Nadox reach out to her afterwards and she’s shocked because she expects them to hate her as much as she hates herself. Also especially if she has to pretend to betray or harm them, and it sends her into a guilt spiral that she’s surprised they care about.)
  
• At first Orok is deeply suspicious of Lovataar (reasonable!) and later they’re friends—I’d like to see them bonding, either of them trying to help the other.
  
• This woman who thinks of herself as inherently evil (even before she switched sides!) is also the classic redemption story for a religion. I wonder if figuring that out was a step towards accepting herself

Vespertine

Fandom Notes:

• Previous requests here in case that's helpful.

Request:

Relationships:
• Artemisia & the Revenant & Any Other Revenant & Traditional Vespertine (hurt Other Revenant)
  
• Artemisia & the Revenant & Any Other Revenant (hurt Other Revenant)

Freeforms:
• Eldritch monster traumatized after being trapped for ages
  
• Captor and Captive Equally Trapped by Circumstances and in Need of Comfort
  
• character is comforted by their captor
  
• They thought no one was coming; got rescued by unexpected person
  
• Misunderstandings - Hurt character initially believes comforter is there to hurt them more
  
• Emotional and Psychological Trauma from Prolonged Solitary Confinement
  
• Emotional Distress From Being Imprisoned

Prompts:
• Artemisia’s revenant is kinda traumatized from having been imprisoned in the relic/the previous traditional vespertines. I bet so are the other surviving revenants!
  
• I'd love to see Artemisia and the revenant meeting with another revenant—maybe Artemisia the living saint has enough authority in the church to push for reforms in the way spirits are treated?
  
• How does a human go about talking with a spirit not bound to her? Does Artemisia have to let another revenant possess her—what does her revenant think of that? Or does someone else volunteer, or does she have to go through an existing, traditional vespertine?
  
• Maybe Artemisia has to convince a traditional vespertine to try treating her revenant kindly? (Would a traditional vespertine be horrified, or would she instead envy/want the kind of bond Artemisia and her revenant have? Or both?)
  
• Okay, Artemisia becoming the next fantasy pope would be self-indulgent but also cool. And in that situation she would DEFINITELY have the power to change the way the other revenants are treated.
  
• Does the revenant actually know where all the other revenants are? Maybe it's wrong about e.g. Cahethal having committed suicide—maybe it escaped with its vessel instead.
  
• The other revenants would presumably be pretty annoyed with the main one for its part in setting up their current situation.
  
• I really love the relationship Artemisia and her revenant have—it reminds her to eat! she comforts it when it's scared of the dark!—and it'd be such a contrast (and maybe enviable/aspirational?) to a more "normal" revenant-vespertine relationship.

X-Men

Fandom Notes:

• 
  

DNWs specific to X-Men:

• The Phoenix Force being portrayed as an intrinsically evil being.
  
• Trevor Fitzroy.
  
• Selene, the Shadow King, or Mojo playing a large role (exception: if I'm requesting Spiral, Mojo is okay then).
  
• Any romantic pairings involving Empath.
  
• Ororo/T'Challa--please don't even mention the marriage, even to say they're divorced.
  
• Mutant!Moira.
  

Request: Hope & Exodus

Relationships:
• Bennet du Paris & Hope Summers (hurt Bennet)
  
• Bennet du Paris & Hope Summers (hurt both)
  
• Bennet du Paris & Hope Summers (hurt Hope)

Freeforms:
• Character feels religious devotion toward character they are comforting
  
• Character endures hurt because they perceive it as divine punishment
  
• Character endures hurt because they perceive it as their god's will

Prompts:
• I’m so into Hope and Exodus’s relationship during Krakoa—he literally worships her and she rolls with it without being overwhelmed. Dude thinks she’s god? She thinks he’s nuts but she can deal. Dude wants her on the council because she’s god? Sure, she can roll with this. (And even her post-evil-future rejection of him reads to me less as anger over a future-possible betrayal than as horror at the ways they enabled each other to be their absolute worst selves first.)
  
• The fallout from their messiah-friendship breakup—and/or finding a way to make up, even knowing the worst possibilities for this relationship?
  
• And I loved the bit of her helping him walk off his breakdown after that—like, even after she's lost it with him, she's still the one who reaches out. She's probably the closest thing to a friend he's got in this era.
  
• He’s from the medieval era, she grew up in the apocalyptic future—they’re both people out of time. He’s high drama and she’s pretty down to earth; it’s a fun contrast.
  
• So: I would love them comforting each other through a personal crisis, or rescuing each other from *insert superhero drama here*, with the complicating factor that he does still think of her as his messiah (whether she’s at the point where she’s rolling with it or at the point where she’s angrily rejecting where that can lead them both). If he’s comforting her, then that’s bound up in worship; if it’s the other way around, he views kindness from her as divine blessing and anger or rejection as divine punishment.

Request: Madelyne

Relationship: Madelyne Pryor & Outback Era X-Men Team (hurt Madelyne)
Freeforms:
• Telepathic Character Enters Hurt Character’s Nightmares to Help Them
  
• Dreamworld featuring worst memories/fears
  
• Experiencing Another's Pain Through Psychic Bond

Prompts:
• I just think psychic bonds are neat (and the kind of thing Madelyne could do/create based on being a clone of a telepath)
  
• Likewise, the idea of the X-Men being pulled into Madelyne's dreams/nightmares is really iddy, especially given that S'ym approached her via dreams—what if she hadn't been alone there?
  
• I'm really interested in fixit--while I loved some of the buildup to Inferno (Maddy was great in Genosha), I really hate what ended up happening to her in that storyline, and I'd love to see her come back from that (maybe with the aid of an old friend from the X-Men?) or take another path to begin with.
  
• Reconnecting with old friends after having been enemies; reaching out to help someone you used to be close with despite everything that's happened since.