ao3: aroberuka
Gifts enabled; treats of any length are welcome, including art treats!

Hello and happy Yule! Thank you for taking the time to read this letter ^^ I hope you find something to inspire you!

Likes

In general:

• friendship;
• families of choices;
• hurt/comfort;
• character studies;
• backstories and backstory reveals;
• episode tags and missing scenes;
• worldbuilding.

In relationships (both & and /):

• characters getting to know each other;
• pre-relationship;
• loyalty;
• protectiveness;
• stoic or otherwise closed-off characters and the one person they open up to;
• odd friendships;
• reunions;
• secret or private relationships;
• established couple woos / is wooed by third party;
• unconventional relationships in general (poly, married couple with a more casual third, long-distance that remains long-distance by choice, platonic but committed, "I don't know what the fuck we are but we certainly are", etc).

Do Not Wants

• smut;
• non-canonical character death;
• 1st person narration (epistolary is fine, including journals/any kind of in-universe documents);
• omegaverse;
• direct references to current events.

I’ve been in an unpleasant funk for the past couple weeks, but I finally got around to reading my rarepair exchange gift and it put a smile on my face at least:

long-distance relationship by [anonymous] (1,139 words, NAWA)

Nie Huaisang visits Yue Qingyuan after Maigu Ridge.

(... it features Nie Huaisang being the older and more experienced Sect Leader of the two, which I never thought about before but am now thinking about very hard and listen! I love it so much!! I kinda want to write a whole fic’s worth of Nie Huaisang being Yue Qingyuan’s reluctant long-distance mentor now 'xD)

This made me realize that I completely forgot to rec my Seasons of Drabbles’ Summer Round gifts! Here they are:

hawks and cranes by oisanite (The Bride’s Stories, Tileke & Amira)

Tileke is fascinated by the new bride’s daemon.

Hack by syrupwit (Scum Villain System, Shen Qingqiu & Shang Qinghua)

Shang Qinghua's cheap tricks cause trouble.

Remnants by LookingForDroids (Homestuck, Aradia & Feferi)

Exploring the dream bubbles, Aradia encounters one more familiar ghost.

... so I disappeared into a BG3-shaped hole xD I completely failed to be reasonable and keep it for when I had more time, and tbh I regret nothing, I’m having so much fun with it. They somehow managed to translate the concept of tabletop improv into gameplay, and it’s amazing - there’s a lot of things that I’m still getting used to, but the combat feels so dynamic and impredictable with all the jumping and climbing to higher ground and looking for inflammable surfaces I’ve been doing.

I’m not very far in yet, because I ended up trying out a couple of different combinations before settling on a PC:

She’s a Forest Gnome because I really wanted Speak With Animals and a Bard because her starting luth is bigger than she is and I just couldn’t resist. Tbh she’s probably the least bard to ever bard - she keeps failing her knowledge rolls, and I keep forgetting she has bard stuff she can do. I like her that way though; it fits with the vague idea that I had in mind going in, which was ‘busker who picked up some magic and called it a day’, and I love that I’ve been able to play her that way so far without feeling like I’m missing out or playing the game wrong.

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Something incredible happens to Wenbin's face when he - she? - writes. Like a flower unfurling: the lips slacken, the jaw loosens, even the eyes look softer; slowly, the shoulders and wrist relax, until the brush is all but dancing, light and airy, tracing ink-black steps on a paper stage. She - he? - probably doesn't even realize how much tension she's usually carrying, but to anyone who cares to notice, the difference is staggering. Now fully relaxed, he - she? - aahh, never mind. All of that can wait.

Lexuan finds the seat with the best view, and settles to watch a master at work.

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I had so much trouble with this one, but you know? It’s alright.

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I really like this scene. I feel like it’s a perfect snapshot of who these three are as characters:

Yu Lexuan, who's been pretty well established as a carefree, cheerful person, who never seems to hold on to any grudges but lets everything roll off him, tries to put up a good front as he comes to terms with the fact that his entire life was just yanked out from under him…

… Feng Chengjun, who has learned over the course of the show to challenge his own assumptions, and who's always been willing to wait and listen, question, learn, before drawing his own conclusions, just sits with him in silence and waits for him to decide how he wants to handle this…

... and Lei Zexin, who has spent the last ten years of his life with anger at every injustice boiling under his skin, keeps pacing back and forth and basically spends the entire scene just begging someone to give him an excuse to punch an asshole.

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So, this fic. This fic has overshadowed my life for almost a year. It started life as a little file titled ‘my 5k love letter to Qi-ge’, and then it kept growing and growing until the full rough draft pushed past 20k. I really want to use this summer to get the bulk of the edits done, and I figure sharing each scene as I go is as good a way as any to give myself some structure.

The fic has 21 scenes of various lengths (seriously - some, like this one, are just a couple hundred words. Some are a couple thousands). The plan right now is to post one of them every week until I’m all caught up with what I have, at which point I’ll just start posting them whenever they’re ready. Note that this is still a WIP/draft - I’ll definitely be looking for beta-readers once I get the full thing done, but in the meantime don’t hesitate to point out typos and internal inconsistencies.

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ao3: aroberuka
Gifts enabled; open to treats! No art for this exchange, please.

Hello, hope you’re having a great hcex! Whether you’re here for an assignment or out of curiosity, thank you for checking out my letter ^^

In general, my fic likes tend towards gen, character-driven stories. I often gravitate towards secondary/minor characters and relationships, or relationships that can be extrapolated from canon but don’t get any on screen development, so I love most anything that involves characters getting to know each other: first impressions, learning something new, finding you were wrong about someone, etc. I do like a bit of canon divergence, especially for Homestuck and its infinite branching timelines, but what I’m looking for most of all is any kind of fill-in-the-gaps fic: backstory exploration, post-canon picking up the pieces, missing scenes, canon-typical adventures… I love adventure fic, especially as a way to build trust: give me characters on a quest / lost in the wilderness / trapped in a cave / etc. figuring out how to work together in a pinch!

When it comes to Hurt/Comfort, I’m more interested in the aftermath than the hurt itself: I only have a few hard limits on how bad the hurt should get (basically, no terminal illnesses and no permanent brain damage), but it’s not really what I’m here for either.

On the Physical Hurt/Comfort side, I enjoy all kinds of minor-to-gruesome flesh wounds, especially when Circumstances mean proper medical care isn’t available, or has to be delayed to take care of a more immediate threat. I’m not the biggest fan of sickfic, but poison, heatstroke, hypothermia, and mind-numbing exhaustion are all great sources of hurt.

On the Emotional Hurt/Comfort side, I’m always there for stories dealing with loneliness, longing for home or family, grief/mourning, and adjusting to a new normal in big or small ways. I also love anything that plays with public v. private life: holding it together until you can break down in private, letting your guard down before [trusted person], and so on.

The truest thing I can say about my preferences for the comfort side of things is “Yes”, but I do have a sweet spot for the more subtle and indirect forms of comfort: discreet shows of silent support, taking someone’s mind off the hurt even for just a minute, doing what you can from a distance when you can’t be there in person, and so on.

Do Not Wants: smut; 1st person narration; omegaverse; direct references to current events; cancer; severe traumatic brain injury (a concussion is fine, as are typical action movie head injuries with none of the serious consequences they’d likely have in real life).

Opt-ins: graphic violence.