Fandom-specific dear creator letter

[jammerific]

Grishaverse

I enjoy a wide variety of AU premises here. Role/power swaps, what if Alina had been discovered earlier, what if the Darkling won, what if Alina stayed and married Nikolai, etc etc etc. The worldbuilding and character interactions are what draw me in here, so I'm not particularly interested in setting AUs.

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool multishipper and ship all combinations of Alina, Nikolai, the Darkling, and Zoya (with a little bit of Mal sprinkled in there). And I'm up for any of them having a bad time in the service of interesting plot.

Things I like about some of the characters:

Alina: deserved better. Doesn't want to be here doing any of this, which is so relatable of her. Would probably have had a much better time if she'd just hooked up with Zoya. I love her stubbornness and grumpiness and loyalty and idealism and dry wit. I love her friendships and banter with the other characters, and the push/pull of her relationship with the Darkling. I wish we'd got to see her really grow into her power (in both senses of the word) rather than getting hard reset back to nothing. I love AUs where she gets to go mad with power instead, there was so much potential to that little taste of it she got in canon.

The Darkling: A+ weird little spiteful gremlin. I love how he came from this place of vulnerability and trauma and good intentions and is now centuries deep into a sunk cost fallacy of his own making that he's never going to dig himself out of without significant outside pressure. I love how much Alina tilts him, and how emotionally stunted and petty he is, and his utterly bizarre relationship with his mother, and how after being resurrected he has absolutely zero fucks left to give about anything and is operating entirely on 'what would be funny to me personally'. I enjoy him most when he's being pushed out of his comfort zone somehow but I'm also up for a situation where he's being gleefully terrible and fully in control of things, or one where he's begrudgingly forced to play nice.

Show!Darkling: Less detached and more emotional, though still a control freak and a dramatic, spiteful bitch. I feel like this version could probably have been coaxed around to behaving in a less insane manner, if things hadn't immediately fallen apart, but I also enjoy him defeated and pathetic and furious and somehow still an incurable simp.

Nikolai: ticks every single box on the Mary Sue list and I love that. His whole life is a performance and his book!canon timeline is impossible improbable. Strikes the perfect balance between arrogance and insecurity. Literally a prince, but *so desperate* to be loved for himself that he's willing to settle for being Alina's second or third choice. Such an obvious narrative foil to the Darkling that they aren't allowed to interact for more than a few lines of text at a time. I want him to be happy, but unfortunately for him he hurts so prettily. (Feel free to give me him being happy though!)

Zoya: yet another person set up on a path to parallel the Darkling. She's hot and powerful (which is hot) and an unapologetic bitch (which is also hot). She has a thousand-year-old celt and a dragon living in her head, post-KoS, which has got to be weird. Says what she means and knows what she wants (until that thing is Nikolai, apparently). I enjoy her getting to be sexy and/or a badass, but I also liked her having to eat humble pie when she comes back to Alina and would be interested in seeing more of that dynamic!

(Mal: I actually do enjoy his friendship vibe with Alina when he isn't being the world's biggest dickbag about her powers. Show!Mal is sweet. I lament book!Mal's complete lack of growth, so anything investigating giving him some is good with me. I primarily ship him with Confusion Over His Sexuality, and as part of triads with Alina.)

The Locked Tomb

I love the entire vibe of this series. The extensive mythology references/parallels combined with the self-aware lame millenial humor and the bombastic cast of characters? Perfect. I like how many themes/fronts there are to play with here - colonialism and cultural memory, the destructive nature of capitalism, religion, the inherent cruelties of war, etc etc.

I love how John is this gigantic self-mythologising liar putting on this 'nice guy' front, how his only friends are also his subordinates and deeply complicit in his crimes, but also sort of not because he resurrected them all and mind-wiped/renamed them!

I love the terrible thousands-of-years-old middle aged people and their terrible threesome, and how Augustine and Mercy have hated each other for so long that it's kind of looped back around into something else. I love the conflicting feelings of worship and betrayal they both struggle with wrt John.

I love how prickly and guilt-ridden Harrow is, how tea with biscuits is Too Much Flavor for her, her belligerent tension with Gideon. I love how Gideon isn't stupid but she *is* a massive jock with an unironic love of swords and tits, and how deeply she actually feels things under that facade. I love the intensely fucked-up dynamic between Ianthe and Corona (and Babs, but who cares about Babs). I love most of the characters, tbh, with the exception of the Eighth who kind of bore me.

I love that we've had three different flavors of unreliable narrator: barely paying attention, experiencing a break from reality, and I'm six months old (and what is this), with bonus unreliable narration via John in the NtN flashbacks.

And I love that we're at least initially seeing everything from the perspective of the villains (everything about necromancy is giving 'Hans... are we the baddies?'), and the focus then pulls back to show everyone else and you realise how fucked up the Houses really are. I really, really love the fact that almost everyone in this series is awful, but in different and interesting ways. I support women's rights and women's wrongs etc etc.

Legend of Zelda

I love the immersiveness of all the Zelda settings, and the light touch with the worldbuilding gives so much scope for delving into things. What is Gerudo culture like? Rito? What might Hyrule be like in the modern era? What if they kept in contact with the Twilight Realm?

But I especially love the cyclical, mythical vibe of this series. These three just wearing a groove in the universe, playing out over and over and over again this conflict of two deities. What would happen if the roles got switched sometimes? What would happen if the three of them all actually worked together (or ended up all romantically involved)? Don't be afraid to go dark with this franchise, the Sheikah and Hylian royal family clearly have sinister secrets and there are all kinds of creepy in-universe things to play with like the skull kids, the mask salesman, and the Fierce Deity etc.

I generally prefer Ganondorf as a more nuanced antagonist, or even a troubled good guy in an AU setting. Is he aware of this generational curse? There's some neat potential for parallels with Zelda there, who often struggles with her own status as a descendant/vessel of the goddess. What would happen if Power went to a Ganondorf with different values? A Ganondorf who is genuinely trying to do his best by his people is my jam.

Zelda, I love her determination and heart across all her incarnations. The insecurity and anguish of the BOTW version of her (and her interest in science!), the stoic hopefulness of Twilight Princess Zelda, the bright bubbly nature of Tetra, and the soft tenderness of Skyward Sword's version. Her romance with Link shifting tone across incarnations is fun.

Link, I love the elements of devotion and fate and how he chooses Zelda every time... but what does choice even mean in this context? I love the hints of humor we get from the BOTW version of him, and his insane tenacity and essential goodness in all incarnations. I love the idea of him challenging Ganondorf in a triad setup, keeping him on his toes.

I also adore Midna and her impish sense of humor and how staggeringly hot she is in her real form. I ship her with both Link and Zelda (and Link-and-Zelda)! And I have a massive soft spot for Groose, who is an enormous idiot but whom I love anyway.