lea_hazel / Dear Junetide Creator (Reply)

~~I am going to write stuff here, I promise. Just hang in there.~~

ETA 9/5: I kept my word! And it took less than a month. I get that there's a 50/50 chance that you've already started/finished/are well into your creation, so of course feel free to ignore anything in here, subvert/twist it as you see fit, or draw inspiration from it some other way.

I love fantasy. I am a sap for anything fantastical, especially constructed societies with surprising values. I love science fiction, too. I love reading about humans who are not quite like the humans I know, and I adore non-human creatures of any kind, especially if they have a POV: robots, aliens, mermaids, dragons, personifications, gods, you name it. When writing non-human characters I like seeing how their different bodies or physical environments affect the culture they create.

I like romance okay, sometimes. Honestly I'd be perfectly happy with a story/art with zero romance, it wouldn't feel like it was missing vital parts. Other relationships are as important/more important to me. That means family, especially troubled/ambiguous relationships, friendships, rivalries, and whatever sort of strange undefinable relationship you can come up with.

If you do want to write romance, I like it to have as little destiny as possible. Any sort of f/f relationship will make me happy, and any sort of polyamory, with or without a happy ending. OTPs are unnecessary, I can enjoy a relationship just as much if it's one of several, or if it ends with a breakup, or even if it starts with a breakup. Significant exes, that's one I forgot to put on my "other relationships" list. Ginormous love dodecahedrons are basically welcome, but more so if there's not a neat, two-by-two for all in the end. I like my relationships messy.

Moral ambiguity is cool, but I lean towards the kind where there's ambiguous justification/condemnation for all the characters, not just that the hero does as much bad crap as the villain. Evil in general is a concept I find it hard to wrap my head around. The best, most compelling villains have a talent for compartmentalizing. If a villain becomes redeemed, it feels most sincere if it's because they experienced clarity regarding their own cognitive dissonance.

Small things that always make me happy: characters having hobbies, characters having favorite hobbies, sister-sister or mother-daughter relationships, female mentors, non-action people being important in action settings, dragons(!!!!!), bisexuality, gender fluidity, characters being geeks, people who love their jobs, fictional sciences, words that can't be easily translated, snark, moments of grace in a basically dark setting, and strange metaphors.

I rambled. My apologies.