Worldbuilding Exchange 2026
Mar. 16th, 2026 09:31 pmHello, and thank you for considering writing something for me! Treats in any medium are welcome. I'm aguntoaknifefight (swirlingvoid) on ao3. Fandoms are organized alphabetically.
DNW: setting change AUs (defined here as changing the location and/or time period of canon; pre-canon or future fic is fine!)
Stylistically, I particularly enjoy:
General themes I particularly like:
The Magnus Archives
Functioning of the Magnus Institute throughout history
(Jonah Magnus)
What does it actually take to keep the Magnus Institute running for 200 years on a practical level? How and when do departments and hiring practices change? Is there a particular decade of struggle or triumph?
The Magnus Institute's reputation in academia
(Any or No Characters, OCs)
Their reputation is poor, sure, but specifically in what way? What about before the statements were leaked in 1999? Does the Institute produce research? It has a wealth of historical documents; do any undergraduates (or professional academics) use it as the basis for their papers? (Can I see the papers?)
The Silmarillion
(Any or No Characters, OCs, Celebrimbor, Maedhros)
Cross-Species Pregnancy
IIRC, all of the multiracial children we see have a mother from a more powerful species and a father from a less powerful species, with zero exceptions. Why does this happen? Is it a gap in the record or a biological rule? How does that translate to other species? I'm interested in both the biological process of pregnancy and cultural traditions surrounding it.
Disability in Elvish Societies
Broadly, I think Elvish societies are fairly ableist, but I would love to see an exploration of specifically how that ableism does (and doesn't) manifest, as well as what gets considered a disability or not. While Elves highly value beauty and symmetry, they are hardy, long-lived, and involved in quite a few conflicts across the Ages. Presumably a high number of Elves are going to survive injuries that would kill a human. Where, then, are the disabled Elves? Also, how are congenital disabilities viewed, especially if they're immediately evident? (I'm interested in both congenital and acquired disabilities, as well as both physical and mental disabilities.)
Elvish Funerary Customs
What do they do with the bodies? (Cremation, burial, something else?) How does this change in Cuivienen/Valinor/Beleriand? What gets carried forward through the Ages and what doesn't? What do mourning traditions look like? How does this differ for the various groups of Elves?
Queerness in Elvish Societies
I'd love to see the big and little ways this shows up in people's lives. I am not particular about which queer identities are focused on. I am intrigued by the structure LaCE establishes as a starting point, especially given that in-universe it isn't written by an Elvish author. That said, there's so many ways to explore this, and if you're drawn in a different direction, I would love to see it!
What cultural stories/methods of being exist for various queer people? How does that shape queer identities, particularly the boundaries or lack thereof between ones we might consider completely different? Having children is such a big part of marriage that it feels implausible to me that same-sex marriage would exist, but is there a lot of homosociality that may or may not shade into romance and sex, even if it’s not understood as that?
How does the belief that the body reflects the soul and not the other way around impact trans people? Will their bodies start to spontaneously transition? Is medical or magical transition seen as an affront to Eru’s work? If so, is social transition acceptable? How does this impact nonbinary people? How does transness impact people’s ability to inherit (since women don’t seem to be in the running for kingship)? Can they marry only if they’ll be able to produce children with their spouse? Do any specific nonbinary identities exist? (Also, for Elves who are in relationships with Maiar, is there a belief that Maiar reflect the gender of their Vala/r? Is this true?)
Are Elves by default demisexual, or do they just act like they are? How does that shift a baseline understanding of asexuality or allosexuality? What about aroallo characters? Aroace characters? Does a specific asexual(-esque) identity arise in response to other cultures? Is there an association with religion? Immaturity? What about sex-repulsed characters? How does the belief that sexual desire will naturally arise once engaged/married impact characters?
Re-embodiment
What is this like, psychologically? Temporally, it must feel at least a little like time travel to the future, even if spirits have some knowledge of what’s been going on in the world while they’ve been dead. What is the nitty-gritty of being prepared for release like? Are there specific customs for welcoming people back?
Implications of Surviving Rape in a Society Which Believes It's Impossible
I feel like this one really speaks for itself. However, a couple questions I'm particularly interested in: How do Elvish rapists conceptualize what they’re doing? (I’m particularly interested in this for marital rape, whether after marriage or as a way to force it.) How is the messaging around rape transmitted? Is there a legal punishment for rape that isn't entwined with murder or is it impossible to prosecute a rapist who hasn't also killed their victim? How do victims connect with each other? How do victims conceptualize what has happened to them, particularly for assaults that didn't involve direct physical violence?
The Time Master Series
(Tarod, Yandros, OCs, Any or No Characters)
Changes to laypeople's religious practices after Equilibrium
So we see how the Castle and Initiates change in the Chaos Gate trilogy, but what does it look like for ordinary people? Is there a melding in how people conceptualize Aeoris and Yandros (and/or the rest of the gods), or is a strict mental division between Order and Chaos maintained even when worship is shared? Is Tarod worshiped individually, or merely seen as an extension of Chaos? What traditions change and what stay the same? Since the choice is (in theory) individual, what does this look like within family units and within communities?
Link to my Candy Hearts promo post and where to find canon!
DNW: setting change AUs (defined here as changing the location and/or time period of canon; pre-canon or future fic is fine!)
General likes
Stylistically, I particularly enjoy:
- Outsider POV
- Second and third person POV
- Pre- & post-canon fics
- 5 + 1 things
- Character studies
- Unreliable narrators
- In-universe documents of any kind
- Happy endings, ambiguous endings, & bittersweet endings, as well as endings that the narrator/character thinks are happy but the reader doesn’t
- Symbolism
- Art nouveau
- Art styles that mimic canon or in-universe forms of art (including ones like textiles)
- Moments that parallel each other through time
- Color contrasts
- The colors teal and orange
- Art which is monochrome except for one specific detail in (a different) color
- Characters (of any gender) being put into Very Pretty Dresses (I particularly enjoy long skirts)
- Gloves and masks and cloaks
- Fragmented images
- Mirrors
- Men with long hair
- Situations where a character is forced to reckon with perceptions of themselves or their relationships, including but certainly not limited to:
- time travel
- time loops
- amnesia
- dimension travel
- truth serum
- de-aging (both physical-only and physical-and-mental)
- bodyswaps
- Feelings realization
- Getting together
- Complicated relationships & complicated emotions
- Hard conversations
- Dramatic irony & the calm before the storm
- Identity porn
- Forced proximity
- Hurt/comfort (any hurt:comfort ratio)
- Grief/mourning (this includes for deceased characters but also for absent ones or more abstract griefs like for periods of life or a sense of selfhood that can no longer be returned to)
- Crack treated seriously
- When applicable to canon, queerphobia existing as a social structure, even if it doesn't come up interpersonally
- Period-typical and/or internalized homophobia
- Asexual and/or aromantic characters of any kind
- For trans characters, attention to how gender functions and is conceptualized in their society, what types of transition is or isn't available, how transition impacts ability to inherit (in relevant canons)
- I also like when nonbinary characters have a specific gender beyond "nonbinary," even when the label isn't mentioned in text
- Disabled characters (whether canonically or as a result of injuries/trauma that were fine in canon)
- Non-sexual kink, if it fits the canonical relationship dynamic
- Romance as horror & horror as romance
- Characters who are trying to hold it together but fraying at the edges
- Cracking a stoic character open like a clam (emotionally, though it can certainly be done through physical means)
- Emotionally significant names and titles (and thee/thou as a marker for intimacy where canon-appropriate)
- Relationships that are hard to classify or ping other characters as weird
- Characters who are torn between loyalty to an individual and their ideals
- Unresolvable moral conflicts between two characters/groups the reader is meant to find relatively sympathetic
- Characters doing their best in tough situations, especially when "their best" is quite bad
- In-universe politics (for non-real world settings)
- Characters being betrayed by their bodies
- Coughing up blood
- Passing out dramatically in another character's arms
- Hiding (and failing to hide) medical issues
- Characters who are isolated (socially/emotionally, though it can include physically as well)
- Cannibalism
- Incest smarm (ie: it's unclear whether these relations are having sex or just particularly close and the fic is luxuriating in that ambiguity, often from an outside POV. "Weirdcest" is a Supernatural-fandom specific variant of this)
- Shapeshifters & their relationships to their bodies
Smut likes
General themes I particularly like:
- Un(der)negotiated kink & kink discovery (as long as it’s not DNW’d, it doesn’t matter which specific kink it is)
- Porn as character study
- Top or Dom POV
- Bottom or sub POV
- Unresolved emotional tension & pining while fucking
- Repression & attempts to control the uncontrollable
- “Oh god why do I find this hot”-flavored sex of any consent level
- Kinking on shame (whether external or internal) and/or violating cultural taboos
- Kinking on inexperience (or pretended inexperience)
- Psychological aspects of kink
- Characters or societies which believe penetration = dominance = masculinity and all the ways that can be subverted or upheld
- In this same vein, characters (especially men) getting off on their own passivity, particularly the mindset of being "acted upon"
- Sub tops with dom bottoms and/or submissive sadists with dominant masochists
- Same-generation incest
- Dubcon (defined here as "consent is ambiguous or not given, but no one feels assaulted afterwards")
- Characters with nullified genitals (whether natal/surgical/magical)
- Characters who like their nullified genitals
- I particularly enjoy when characters are still able to achieve their desired level of arousal/orgasm
- Xeno genitals of any kind
- Characters justifying why the sex* they’re actively having doesn’t count as sex* & other intricate rituals-type things
- *or kink or incestuous relationship
- Sex that does not read as sex to characters outside the relationship
- Words used for genitalia that feel appropriate to the POV character (including archaic, vague, childish, and clinical language)
- Break the haughty
- Sex pollen (and other aphrodisiac-type things), especially for how it can emphasize or flip a power dynamic, lead to a realization or confession of feelings, and/or break a character’s facade
- Sex chicken (in the game sense)
- Erotic horror
- Voyeurism of any type
- Watersports
- Particularly pissing inside someone anally or vaginally, submissive wetting (including in non-omegaverse settings), kinking on the sensation of pissing or watching someone else do so, and the usage of chamber pots
- Proxy sex (examples for requested pairing A/B, where C is either a canonical character or an OC):
- A has sex with C while thinking about B
- an A/B/C threesome has C in the middle as an excuse to legitimize the sex A/B are(n’t) having
- A or C is monitoring and/or directing the couple having sex, including physically maneuvering them
- Non-penetrative sex & penetrative sex
- Mutual masturbation & guided masturbation
- Condescending praise
- Manhandling
- Grinding, frotting, and/or tribadism (anywhere on the body but particularly thighs, stomachs, and boots)
- Intercrural sex
- Oral sex
- Somnophilia
- Consensual non-consent
- Coming in pants & clothed or partially-clothed sex
- (Non-literal) dollification (particularly when combined with ageplay where the owner is a child or teen) and statue kink with an emphasis on being a cherished/precious object
- Honor bondage
- Sounding
- Latex or cloth gloves
- Public sex
- One character sitting in another's lap during (any form of) sex
- Collars
- Feminization, including for female characters
- Characters being told how wet they are, regardless of genitals/gender
- Corsets
- Monsterfucking & shapeshifting
- Biting & blood-drinking (especially in a supernatural context)
- Slapping the inside of a character's thigh to make them open their legs
- Involuntary or uncontrollable orgasms (with or without trigger words)
- I also enjoy the variant of this with piss
- Telepathic sex
- Eggpreg, particularly with a large number of small eggs, including:
- Impregnation/oviposition
- Expulsion
- Caviar stripping
- Multiple orgasms
- "Just the tip" (whether it actually stays the tip or escalates to full penetration)
- Magic sex toy linked to another character's body
Opt-ins
- Suicidal thoughts and attempts
- Abortion or miscarriage; unwanted or horrifying pregnancy
- Period sex
- Sex with sapient animals, or with a shapeshifter in animal form
- Vomiting (sexual or non-sexual)
- Infidelity (not between nominated pairing)
- Mentions or discussions of past canonical relationships
- For requested omegaverse, I love alpha/alpha and omega/omega pairings, and particularly enjoy when only one of multiple sapient species in a setting has dynamics
The Magnus Archives
Functioning of the Magnus Institute throughout history
(Jonah Magnus)
What does it actually take to keep the Magnus Institute running for 200 years on a practical level? How and when do departments and hiring practices change? Is there a particular decade of struggle or triumph?
The Magnus Institute's reputation in academia
(Any or No Characters, OCs)
Their reputation is poor, sure, but specifically in what way? What about before the statements were leaked in 1999? Does the Institute produce research? It has a wealth of historical documents; do any undergraduates (or professional academics) use it as the basis for their papers? (Can I see the papers?)
The Silmarillion
Tolkien-specific likes
- Ominous foreshadowing in otherwise light-hearted fics
- Politics, particularly relationships (sexual, romantic, queerplatonic, or platonic) as extensions of politics
- Messy and complicated family dynamics (incestuous or otherwise)
- The insane amount of time Elves are alive for and how that affects history for them and everyone else
- Grief and inevitability and memory
- Alien Maiar and Valar, including alien psychology
- Setting-appropriate/plausible prejudice or baggage around gender, sexuality, disability, and race
- Laws and Customs Among the Eldar being a set of social expectations and ideals
- Post-Years of the Trees Valinor and the complexities of being re-embodied
- Religion and cultural traditions
- Elvish hair kink
(Any or No Characters, OCs, Celebrimbor, Maedhros)
Cross-Species Pregnancy
IIRC, all of the multiracial children we see have a mother from a more powerful species and a father from a less powerful species, with zero exceptions. Why does this happen? Is it a gap in the record or a biological rule? How does that translate to other species? I'm interested in both the biological process of pregnancy and cultural traditions surrounding it.
Disability in Elvish Societies
Broadly, I think Elvish societies are fairly ableist, but I would love to see an exploration of specifically how that ableism does (and doesn't) manifest, as well as what gets considered a disability or not. While Elves highly value beauty and symmetry, they are hardy, long-lived, and involved in quite a few conflicts across the Ages. Presumably a high number of Elves are going to survive injuries that would kill a human. Where, then, are the disabled Elves? Also, how are congenital disabilities viewed, especially if they're immediately evident? (I'm interested in both congenital and acquired disabilities, as well as both physical and mental disabilities.)
Elvish Funerary Customs
What do they do with the bodies? (Cremation, burial, something else?) How does this change in Cuivienen/Valinor/Beleriand? What gets carried forward through the Ages and what doesn't? What do mourning traditions look like? How does this differ for the various groups of Elves?
Queerness in Elvish Societies
I'd love to see the big and little ways this shows up in people's lives. I am not particular about which queer identities are focused on. I am intrigued by the structure LaCE establishes as a starting point, especially given that in-universe it isn't written by an Elvish author. That said, there's so many ways to explore this, and if you're drawn in a different direction, I would love to see it!
What cultural stories/methods of being exist for various queer people? How does that shape queer identities, particularly the boundaries or lack thereof between ones we might consider completely different? Having children is such a big part of marriage that it feels implausible to me that same-sex marriage would exist, but is there a lot of homosociality that may or may not shade into romance and sex, even if it’s not understood as that?
How does the belief that the body reflects the soul and not the other way around impact trans people? Will their bodies start to spontaneously transition? Is medical or magical transition seen as an affront to Eru’s work? If so, is social transition acceptable? How does this impact nonbinary people? How does transness impact people’s ability to inherit (since women don’t seem to be in the running for kingship)? Can they marry only if they’ll be able to produce children with their spouse? Do any specific nonbinary identities exist? (Also, for Elves who are in relationships with Maiar, is there a belief that Maiar reflect the gender of their Vala/r? Is this true?)
Are Elves by default demisexual, or do they just act like they are? How does that shift a baseline understanding of asexuality or allosexuality? What about aroallo characters? Aroace characters? Does a specific asexual(-esque) identity arise in response to other cultures? Is there an association with religion? Immaturity? What about sex-repulsed characters? How does the belief that sexual desire will naturally arise once engaged/married impact characters?
Re-embodiment
What is this like, psychologically? Temporally, it must feel at least a little like time travel to the future, even if spirits have some knowledge of what’s been going on in the world while they’ve been dead. What is the nitty-gritty of being prepared for release like? Are there specific customs for welcoming people back?
Implications of Surviving Rape in a Society Which Believes It's Impossible
I feel like this one really speaks for itself. However, a couple questions I'm particularly interested in: How do Elvish rapists conceptualize what they’re doing? (I’m particularly interested in this for marital rape, whether after marriage or as a way to force it.) How is the messaging around rape transmitted? Is there a legal punishment for rape that isn't entwined with murder or is it impossible to prosecute a rapist who hasn't also killed their victim? How do victims connect with each other? How do victims conceptualize what has happened to them, particularly for assaults that didn't involve direct physical violence?
The Time Master Series
(Tarod, Yandros, OCs, Any or No Characters)
Changes to laypeople's religious practices after Equilibrium
So we see how the Castle and Initiates change in the Chaos Gate trilogy, but what does it look like for ordinary people? Is there a melding in how people conceptualize Aeoris and Yandros (and/or the rest of the gods), or is a strict mental division between Order and Chaos maintained even when worship is shared? Is Tarod worshiped individually, or merely seen as an extension of Chaos? What traditions change and what stay the same? Since the choice is (in theory) individual, what does this look like within family units and within communities?
Link to my Candy Hearts promo post and where to find canon!