Dear InShipping author,
Dear author/podfic creator,
You got paired with me and my weird, eclectic taste - sorry about that! But I'm hoping that you're as enthusiastic about at least one of these beautiful ships as I am and that, therefore, you won't mind too much.
So, without further ado, here are the ships I've requested and some fun optional details you could incorporate into my gift!
If you are a wonderful creator of podfic, I am aware that my letter is mostly fic-specific and my comments on what I love about these ships may not be fully applicable if you've matched me and want to record an existing fic as podfic. In that case, don't sweat it in the least! I will include some more general likes/dislikes at the bottom of my letter which you can use as general guidance if you end up ignoring my more specific optional details/prompts.
First up,
Batman (comics) - Bruce Wayne/Dick Grayson
This is a ship that I have shipped for a ridiculously long time - since before I even knew what a ship was, honestly - and there are so many things that I love about it.
Bruce/Dick fic can never go wrong for me when it deals with their (perhaps uneasy) reunion after Dick has left to strike out on his own as Nightwing. There is something incredible in the stretch and pull of their new relationship with each other, whether it is focussed on nagivating past bitterness or acknowledgement of a desire which could not be addressed when Dick was Bruce's dependent and sidekick. I'm happy with this occurring at any point in any version of canon or in a canon-based AU if the many versions of the truth DC have offered are not enough for you. Dick as Nightwing or Dick after he's taken up the cowl or any other idea you've got for this, I am certainly on-board with.
I'm also more than happy with established relationship for this ship, snapshots of how they work together in any and all capacities. Outsider POV could be glorious for this.
Worth mentioning, too, that I know that Tim/Kon is a really popular backgound ship in fanon and I am fine with having them appear. References to canon ships are also good with me and there aren't any other characters I'm particularly for or against, though I'd obviously want to focus on Bruce and Dick.
Pacific Rim - Hercules Hansen/Chuck Hansen
Speaking of dysfunctional relationships which hurt my heart in the best way, let's talk about Herc Hansen/Chuck Hansen. I cannot count the ways I love them, there are so many. They are so gloriously wrapped up in each other and in what they do and they mind meld, does it get more incestuous than that?
Prompts-wise, I always love happy endings for these two - a world where Chuck lives and they go off and find new lives. I'd be all for their continuing to be Jaeger pilots in a world where the kaiju are still out there or come back but I am equally really interested in seeing them renegotiate their relationship without the drift. I would be very up for first-time fic where they find the only way to regain the symbiosis which has become the core of both of them is through touch.
If you don't want to go the post-canon/AU route though, I would love to see something set in or pre-canon exploring how desire, like a monster, crawls out of the lake and drags them in. I could definitely buy into a version of their relationship where a lot of Chuck's anger and resentment comes from an unfulfilled (but reciporcated and repressed) desire, possibly where he's been able to feel Herc respond to his feelings in the drift but where Herc has refused to acknowledge or discuss it. I would be okay with an angsty and unfulfilled ending to this or for a mutually satisfying resolution (with or without some reservation and uncertainty). I both love to see these two happy and to wallow in their misery and anger issues.
John Winchester/Dean Winchester - Supernatural
Following in the tradition of the other ships above, I offer you both a happy and an unhappy version of how this ship might go.
For happy fic, I would love to see ressurection fic where John comes back to life and finds Dean and maybe they realise something previously unspoken or fall back into old habits. They relearn each other and some things are different and others aren't at all. I would also be very happy with fic about the shifts and changes in their relationship pre-canon while Sam is at Stanford or fic set during canon which involves Dean reflecting on his relationship with John.
If I were going to indulge in maximum misery and angst though, I have a horrifying canon AU suggestion for you, which is an In My Time of Dying AU or similar where Sam is the one who's badly injured and where John chooses not to (or can't) make a deal to save him. This would leave John and Dean alone with themselves and a whole lot of misery and self-loathing - Dean probably feeling he let Sammy down, John harbouring worse secrets about Sam which he may or may not divulge. Yes, I am terrible, yes, I know.
As a note on canon and do/don't wants in this fandom: I haven't actually seen beyond about season 8, so anything thereafter will be news to me but I don't mind spoilers. My hard "do not wants" in this fandom are non-con or John being portrayed as an abusive asshole as the show occasionally paints him in later seasons - I see him as someone who really did his best, loved his boys and wanted them as safe and whole as they could be, even if he didn't always make ironclad great calls about what that looked like.
Ronan Lynch/Niall Lynch - The Raven Cycle
I feel a bit bad about this ship, given how young Ronan is when Niall dies but Ronan is so destroyed by Niall's death that there is definitely hero worship there at least.
I also think that there's just something about these two, how they're far from an ordinary family, and there's Niall Lynch, force of nature, to whom no ordinary laws apply, and there's Ronan who loves him so fucking much. And they're both dreamers, both used to transgressing the boundaries of what is conventionally real and what can be real, what can be done. So I'd be interested in seeing this as a consensual, ambiguously or unambiguously sexual relationship. Maybe they dream it and each of them thinks he's dreamed a version of the other and doesn't realise until after they've woken that it was real. Or maybe it's all one-sided on Ronan's side, at least as desire goes, or Ronan doesn't know whether it is just him or not.
If something does happen, I'd prefer that Ronan initiated it, for the obvious power imbalance reasons, or at least that you keep it obviously consensual.
I'd also be happy with a canon AU or post-canon fic where Ronan is able to pull Niall back out of his dreams or find him somewhere in Cabeswater or somewhere else entirely because what's the point in having the capacity for magic in canon if you can't use it in fic to fix your ship?
Ronan Lynch/Declan Lynch - The Raven Cycle
To me, Ronan/Declan is a glorious thing - not because they hate each other but because the only way they can cope with the fact that they still give a fuck about each other despite their differences is to bury their care beneath the ways they resent each other. He doesn't like that Declan runs around with all those different girls - and maybe that's partly jealousy but also it's because, for Ronan, love is religion and he can't allow for infidelity or casual affairs as anything other than destructive.
For Ronan, love is all-consuming, it isn't something you can just mess around with. And that's because that's the kind of love Ronan has had - Ronan, his father's favourite; Ronan, whose best friend would do almost anything for him. And Declan's never had that, Declan is the unloved son, no-one's favourite, and probably doesn't believe he could ever be anything to anyone, not really. So he messes around, sleeps around, doesn't let himself get attached. But he and Ronan love each other and that's where the resentment creeps in alongside the protectiveness and the fierce untameable things that Niall's sons can't help being. I love it. So, write about that, dear author, write me anything about that. Make it explicitly shippy or just make it about them and all the many things between them that still couldn't ever tear them apart.
I don't have any real thoughts of where this should sit with canon, so that's down to you. I'd be happy with their relationship remaining as destructive and possessively protective (only a Lynch can beat up a Lynch, after all) as it is or with them becoming better to and for each other, Ronan becoming the first person ever to put Declan first.
Also, as an aside, totally happy for you to bring Gansey into this, shippily or otherwise, and for other characters to appear (though I don't really ship anyone else with Ronan or Declan, except Ronan/Niall - see above).
General points & do not wants
Do not wants
- Non-con
-Mpreg
- A/B/O
- Underage as a kink or similar - I acknowledge that my ships may lead to a place where one of the characters is underage (at least marginally) and I am basically okay with that but I don't want to see that element played up as sexy. I would be okay with a little bit of timeline distortion to avoid underage, if that's also something you're not keen on writing.
General optional guidance on stuff I like
- As I've noted in my write-ups for most my fandoms above, I am equally down with both happy and angsty fic, so don't feel too worried about how things end up in that respect.
- I am more into fic which explores the emotional undercurrents of ships than I am into PWP but I am definitely okay with things going NC-17 if that's the way you want to go.
- Canon AUs are pretty much always fine but I'm less sure about really out-there AUs (say with career changes where they're astronauts or big era shifts to the 19th century or anything like that), so you might want to go through the mod to check with me if you have an idea for something like that.