chronicbookworm (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chronicbookworm) wrote2025-02-14 08:25 pm
chronicbookworm) wrote2025-02-14 08:25 pm
Dear Builder of Worlds 2025,
Thanks for creating things for me! Should you so want, I can be found at both Tumblr and AO3 also as ChronicBookworm, for any stalking purposes.
In general, I like most things. I’m a multishipper, and I read slash, het, femslash, and gen. I also like most genres: fluff, angst, adventure, case fic, humour, get-together, established relationship, character study, slice of life/domestic, you name it – or a mix of them all! I’m very fond of long, plotty fic, but I’m equally happy with something short and sweet!
The prompts below are there to help, not box you in, so please feel free to write/make something different if none of my prompts below grab your imagination or inspiration strikes you in a different direction. I’m not very used to prompting for non-fic things, so if anything seems unclear or you want more information about the art likes, just reach out via the mods and I’ll do my best to answer any questions you may have.
I’m very fond of deep platonic relationships that are the most important to the characters and relationships that straddle the line between platonic and romantic. I also love relationships where there are lots of emotions and where there is lots of history messing things up and making things complicated. I love canon divergences of all forms.
I’m also up for you combining my freeform tags in interesting ways, or to combine unexpected character tags and freeforms—some freeforms seem like they would lend themselves to a particular character, but if you get an idea for another combination, run with it! I left them in the same request for a reason.
The length of the sections has nothing to do with how much I want the request, only with how many different prompts I have for each. I want to read them all very badly, so I’m sure I’ll love whatever you write!
This got quite long – feel free to just read the parts that are relevant to you.
General likes
DNWs
Narnia
Exandria Unlimited: Calamity
Hunger Games
Tortall
Emelan
Queen’s Thief
The Goblin Emperor
General likes
• found families
• loyalty and devotion, both strong, reciprocated loyalty, and more complicated forms such as conflicting loyalties, unreciprocated loyalty, loyalty to the undeserving, etc.
• ride or die friendships
• co-dependency (in the watered-down fandom sense, not in the clinical sense)
• “us against the world” plots and relationships (whether it’s true or just what the characters imagine)
• friends to lovers
• chivalry and courtly love
• arranged marriages (that can either lead to love or strong friendship)
• marriages of convenience (that can either lead to love or strong friendship)
• fake relationships (especially if they don’t end up in romance)
• lavender marriages and bearding (in the queer sense)
• pining
• hurt/comfort
• trauma recovery
• characters with low self-worth being loved and accepted
• characters being shown warmth and kindness when they’re expecting or used to being belittled or abused
• characters uniting forces against a common enemy
• complicated politics and shifting alliances
• characters navigating power differentials and power dynamics
• partisan and resistance movements, small groups of people going up against or being pursued by large, powerful governments or organisations
• complicated and messy relationships (can be platonic, romantic or familial)
• conflicts between characters based on differences in opinions, wants, and needs rather than misunderstandings or erroneous assumptions, conflicts between characters without easy solutions, conflicts between characters where neither side is completely right or completely wrong
• secrets (both kept and revealed)
• characters working with limited knowledge
• competent characters, characters being recognised for their competence
• women supporting other women
• time travel (both Peggy Sue style and physical time travel)
• worldbuilding
• canon divergence
• outsider POV
• case fic/mission fic
• canon-typical plot or themes
• longfic
DNWs
• explicit sex (fade to black or references to sex are fine)
• changes to human anatomy or physiology (such as mpreg, omegaverse, soulmarks, etc.)
• teacher/student (if it’s relevant, please set any romance sometime after they've stopped being teacher/student)
• non-canonical incest (including between adopted or foster family members and biological family members who don’t know they’re related. Cousin incest and canon-typical Targaryen incest are OK)
• infidelity or jealousy within relationships (real or imagined. Open relationships and jealousy as a path to feelings discovery are OK)
• more than 3-year age gaps for any ships involving characters 16 years or younger
• sex involving characters under 15, setting a date when the character is considered "old enough"/"legal" for sex and fixating on that date
• modern-day terminology for sexual and gender identities in historical or fantasy canons
• characters being ostracised by their friends and loved ones
• public embarrassment, humiliation
• character or ship bashing
• hopeless endings, grimdark tone
• unrequested setting change AUs (merging crossover universes into one or having characters from one universe dimension travel to the other by either hand-wavey or explained means are all fine)
Fandom-specific DNWs:
• Narnia: The rift between Susan and her family
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Chronicles of Narnia
Characters
• Edmund Pevensie
• Lucy Pevensie
• Peter Pevensie
• Susan Pevensie
Tags:
• Cultural differences within Narnia
• Talking Animal customs
• Golden Age Society
• Effects of the 100 Year Winter on the various peoples of Narnia
• Intelligence and Espionage in Narnia
• Narnian Politics
I would love to read more about the Golden Age, early days, middle days, or the end, it doesn’t matter. What was it like? What were the Pevensies like as Kings and Queens? How did society function? What were the political challenges they faced, what factions existed, and how did decisions get made? What sort of issues did the Pevensies deal with as monarchs? How did they get their information? Did they use Talking Animals as spies in other lands? Or in Narnia itself? How would one counter that? And in terms of daily life, what did people do with their time? How did they make a living, and how did they spend their leisure? Or did they even have that division?
I’d also love an exploration of the fact that there are so many diverse species within Narnia – how did the Pevensies balance the sometimes competing needs of their subjects? To what extent does each species have its own culture, and to what extent is there a unifying Narnian culture? How do the various species get on? How do the various animalistic instincts of the Talking Animals and their physiological features influence their behaviour and customs? Are there differences between geographical regions that cut across species? Which differences matter more, regional or between species? Or does it vary?
Regarding the 100 year winter, what effect did that have on different creatures, both the ones that are adapted to winter climates, and the ones that aren't? How did the grazers find food? And what about creatures like bears, who hibernate? A lot of animals have their young in the spring - was there a baby boom once the winter was over?
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Exandria Unlimited: Calamity
Characters
• Any or no characters
• Original Characters
• Nydas Okiro
• Eaedalus Okiro
Tags:
• Cathmoira between Replenishments
• The Replenishment
• The Gau Drashari during the Calamity
I would love to learn about Cathmoira! What’s the city like, how is it organised and run, what sort of occupations do people have? How much is magic a part of daily life – is it like Avalir where it’s omnipresent, or is it more low-key? Is there infrastructure for learning magic, or is that all in Avalir? How do residents of Cathmoira relate to its sister city? What is the wide open space on the mountaintop used for when Avalir isn’t there?
Or what is the Replenishment like when it doesn’t lead to the destruction of a continent? What celebrations are there? What does it look like and feel when Avalir deposits its gathered magic? How does that change Cathmoira, and how long does it last?
I’m also very interested in the Gau Drashari – what do they do when the purpose for their existence is gone? How do their abilities contribute to the fight against the Betrayer Gods? Do they travel around helping defend people against roving fiends, or do they find somewhere new to settle? Is this when they find the elemental rifts, and the Gau Drashari turn into the Ashari, even? Is it a conscious decision to seek out the rifts, or something that just happens?
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The Hunger Games (books/AMT)
Characters
• Original characters
• Any or no characters
• Finnick
• Betee
• Wiress
• Mags
• Lyme
Tags:
• Career training
• Past Hunger Games
• Past victors
• Smuggling in the districts
• Coordinating the Rebellion Across the Districts
• Mentor's work during the Hunger Games
• Victors and their relationship to their home districts
• Victors as Commodities in the Capitol
General thoughts:
I’m very interested in Career training: how did one get to the point of being happy and eager to risk one’s life in order to kill other children? Was there some kind of selection process, or did anyone who wanted receive training? If there was a selection process, who did the selecting? Who was selected/trained, and was it voluntary or forced? What sort of indoctrination did they go through? What sort of skills did they learn: obviously weapons and fighting, but did they also train survival or how to get sponsors? How organised was the training, and how official – was it an open secret, or was it a matter of pride, or something people did on the down-low? And how did the Volunteers get picked? Collins has one throwaway line that the Reaping could go on for hours in the inner districts – what happened during these hours? Who decided which teenagers would go to the Games and which didn’t – and what happened to the ones that didn’t? When did the first seeds to training tributes start in the career districts? How did Career training and attitudes towards Careers and Victors differ between the three districts? When did volunteering become a thing? How different were the career districts in their approach to training for the Games?
I’m also interested in past Hunger Games in general! What kinds of arenas did the Gamemakers come up with? How did they go wrong?
When did the culture of selling victors start? How much did the past Victors see each other when they were in the Capitol? How did they settle back into their home districts as Victors? Were they welcomed since they brought food, were they outsiders, to what extent could they settle back into their old community – presumably it varied between districts and between victor, but in what ways? How did they cope with mentoring, and how did they cope with bringing home new Victors knowing the fate that awaited them? What sort of duties did mentors have? How did they balance getting sponsorships with keeping an eye on the Game and making sure sponsor gifts got to the Tributes when they were needed? How did they find sponsors? How much control did they have over what gifts could be sent? Could the sponsors decide to send something against the will of the mentor?
Regarding smuggling in the districts, how did that work? How were contacts made between districts? How were the logistics sorted? Was D6 a hub, as the transport district, or did they arrange it some other way? How much did Victors get involved, since they could travel (to the Capitol at least) and potentially meet each other there? Were there Peacekeepers in on it for a take? What kind of goods were smuggled between districts? The same goods that were shipped to the Capitol, or different ones? Were there organised smuggling rings spanning multiple districts, or was it more disjointed and disorganised local efforts?
Similarly, how did the rebellion coordinate across the districts? I imagine there would be similar logistics issues as regards smuggling, them both being illegal operations over the district barriers. Who was involved in organising the rebellion? Who knew about the rebellion, and how did they communicate? How independent were the various district rebel cells? Were there several rebel factions in one district, and how did they get on? How much influence did District 13 have?
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Tortall
Characters
• Any or no characters
• Original characters
• Adalia of Mindelan
• Domitan of Masbolle
• Oranie of Mindelan
• Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie's Peak
• Fanche Weir
• Keladry of Mindelan
Tags
• WB: Collaboration between the Queen's Riders and King's Own (Tortall)
• WB: King's Own non-military tasks (Tortall)
• WB: King's Own recruitment practices (Tortall)
• WB: Women's Roles and Spaces (Tortall)
General Thoughts
The Tortall books are an old childhood favourite of mine, and I really like the worldbuilding, the strong heroines, and the politics (that Pierce often glosses over as her stories are more focused on protagonists who aren’t very interested in politics, but the bits we do get fascinate me). I like how the universe gets more and more complex as the series go on, how what starts as fairly straightforward good vs. evil becomes more complicated, and the characters become more complex in later stories, but they don’t lose their hope and their belief in the goodness of humankind.
With regards to women’s roles and spaces, I’d love to see either how the women of the nobility manage their day-to-day affairs, or commoners – merchants, farmers, artisans, etc. What was considered a woman’s task, what was considered a man’s, which tasks were shared? How did Thayet pick her ladies? What role did women at court have if they weren’t among Thayet’s ladies? Under what circumstances could women own and run businesses? Which crafts were acceptable for women? How did Alanna and/or Kel going for knighthood change the common perception of women’s roles?
With regards to the King’s Own, I was intrigued by the parts of Squire when they weren’t fighting: when they were acting as disaster relief, building up forts, helping villages, and I’d love to see more of that – or of the King’s Own in general! Coram was in the army – what is the difference between the army and the King’s Own? What sort of missions/tasks are given to each force? And where do the Riders fit in? Are there ever any problems when the Riders work with the King’s Own – are there companies that work better or worse together? What sort of teething problems did they have when they established their systems? Where do they pick up most of their recruits? For how long do people sign on? What are the terms for regular members and for officers? Are is there a certain rank you can’t reach unless you’re noble, and how high can commoners go?
Emelan
Characters
• Ambros fer Landreg
• Berenene dor Ocmore
• Niamara Bancanor
• Sandrilene fa Toren
Tags
• WB: Narmornese culture
General thoughts
Similarly, the Emelan books were very important to me growing up—I actually discovered them before Tortall! I loved the worldbuilding, and the idea of magic working through everyday objects, as well as the found family among the Circle and their tight bonds! I loved how competent they all were in their own fields, and how their competence was acknowledged and nurtured by their mentors.
I’d love some further exploration of Namornese culture and politics. What festivals do they celebrate? What gods exist in the Namornese religion, and how are they worshiped? To what extent does the Living Circle worship exist in Namorn, and to what extent is it tolerated? How is the balance of power between the crown, the nobles, and the merchants? Berenene seems to have gathered a lot of power to the crown at the expense of the nobles – did she have the merchants’ backing in this? How much is the war with Yanjing felt in everyday life – by nobles, by commoners, by merchants and farmers? How does the climate affect farming, culture, life in general?
Please don’t feel constrained by the questions I have asked: anything about Namorn would fascinate me!
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Queen’s Thief
Characters
• Eddis | Helen
• Eugenides
• The Magus
Tags
• WB: The Eruption of the Sacred Mountain
• WB: Relations between the Little Peninsula and the Continental Powers
• WB: The Role of the Magus of Sounis
General thoughts
I am quite intrigued by relations between the Continental Powers and the Little Peninsula: how did Eugenides react to their betrayal once the war was over? What kind of diplomatic relations did they have? How did they react to the Little Peninsula stopping the Mede progress, and taking part of Roa for his efforts? Do they try to repair the relationship, or does it remain frosty, and how does Eugenides respond to their overtures, whether friendly or hostile?
Regarding the role of the Magus of Sounis, what is that role? Is it just a special advisor? Does it come with any special duties, remnants from when the Magus used to have magic? What did they Magus do when it was a position for someone with magic?
With regards to the eruption of the Sacred Mountain, how did they evacuate? Sure, the people who fought against the Mede got lands, but what about the rest of them? What about the people who refused to move? What did they tell people? How did they organise the evacuation, and how did they prevent people from going back on the assumption it was a false alarm? How far from the end of the series did it happen? What consequences did it have for the rest of the peninsula, in terms of climate, folklore, or anything else? Did the gods have a role in any of this, aside from warning Helen in her dreams, either triggering or preventing the eruption, or lining events up so Eddis would be empty by the time the eruption occurred?
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The Goblin Emperor
Characters
• Chenelo
• Vedero
• Arbelan
• Csethiro
• Maia
• Ino
• Mireän
Freeform tags
• WB: women’s roles and spaces
• WB: how the Barizhan Court works
General thoughts
This is such a nice comfort read book! I loved Maia finding his feet in court, how he started to flourish and come into his own, and how he, through his kindness and consideration, managed to win people over and start making changes for the better! I also love the politics, how people use subtle cues to signal favour or disfavour, the thought that goes into appearances, and back-room deals where people trade favours with each other!
I’d also be incredibly interested in seeing how the women’s court functions, politics among the ladies—both their own politics, but also how they move things in the national politics that’s usually seen as the men’s domain, how they wield influence over other ladies and over men, the different factions among the women – not just Csoru’s faction and Csethiro’s, but what other factions, among the older ladies, and to what extent does it mirror the men’s factions, what Csethiro is like as the Empress, Vedero’s circle and who is included in it, and how it interacts with other factions in the women’s court, what role Arbelan has at court and how she fits in, or what role Chenelo would have in Maia’s court if she survived – or what role Chenelo or Arbelan had before their relegations, when they were the Empress? How have things changed by the time Ino and Mireän enter court?
What is the Barizhan court like, and how does in differ from the Ethuvereise court? How would a person steeped in Ethuvereise politics fit in in Barizhan, or vice versa? What are goblin politics like? What are the various factions, what do they want, and how do they work together or against each other to further their goals? Are there things that are decided by combat other than who becomes the Great Avar when there are no heirs, and how are these combats judged – how is the winner determined, what are the rules, and what are the penalties for breaking the rules? How are issues solved if it isn’t by combat – by consensus decision or by rulings, and by who? Does the Barizheise court have something similar to the Corazhas, and who is included in that, if so? Who is included in the Emperor’s Dav, and how do the various Davs relate to each other and work together or against each other? How do social functions work when relations between the nobility and their households are less formal? Are there still barriers in palace and codes of etiquette, and what are the sanctions (social or official) for breaking them?
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In general, I like most things. I’m a multishipper, and I read slash, het, femslash, and gen. I also like most genres: fluff, angst, adventure, case fic, humour, get-together, established relationship, character study, slice of life/domestic, you name it – or a mix of them all! I’m very fond of long, plotty fic, but I’m equally happy with something short and sweet!
The prompts below are there to help, not box you in, so please feel free to write/make something different if none of my prompts below grab your imagination or inspiration strikes you in a different direction. I’m not very used to prompting for non-fic things, so if anything seems unclear or you want more information about the art likes, just reach out via the mods and I’ll do my best to answer any questions you may have.
I’m very fond of deep platonic relationships that are the most important to the characters and relationships that straddle the line between platonic and romantic. I also love relationships where there are lots of emotions and where there is lots of history messing things up and making things complicated. I love canon divergences of all forms.
I’m also up for you combining my freeform tags in interesting ways, or to combine unexpected character tags and freeforms—some freeforms seem like they would lend themselves to a particular character, but if you get an idea for another combination, run with it! I left them in the same request for a reason.
The length of the sections has nothing to do with how much I want the request, only with how many different prompts I have for each. I want to read them all very badly, so I’m sure I’ll love whatever you write!
This got quite long – feel free to just read the parts that are relevant to you.
General likes
DNWs
Narnia
Exandria Unlimited: Calamity
Hunger Games
Tortall
Emelan
Queen’s Thief
The Goblin Emperor
General likes
• found families
• loyalty and devotion, both strong, reciprocated loyalty, and more complicated forms such as conflicting loyalties, unreciprocated loyalty, loyalty to the undeserving, etc.
• ride or die friendships
• co-dependency (in the watered-down fandom sense, not in the clinical sense)
• “us against the world” plots and relationships (whether it’s true or just what the characters imagine)
• friends to lovers
• chivalry and courtly love
• arranged marriages (that can either lead to love or strong friendship)
• marriages of convenience (that can either lead to love or strong friendship)
• fake relationships (especially if they don’t end up in romance)
• lavender marriages and bearding (in the queer sense)
• pining
• hurt/comfort
• trauma recovery
• characters with low self-worth being loved and accepted
• characters being shown warmth and kindness when they’re expecting or used to being belittled or abused
• characters uniting forces against a common enemy
• complicated politics and shifting alliances
• characters navigating power differentials and power dynamics
• partisan and resistance movements, small groups of people going up against or being pursued by large, powerful governments or organisations
• complicated and messy relationships (can be platonic, romantic or familial)
• conflicts between characters based on differences in opinions, wants, and needs rather than misunderstandings or erroneous assumptions, conflicts between characters without easy solutions, conflicts between characters where neither side is completely right or completely wrong
• secrets (both kept and revealed)
• characters working with limited knowledge
• competent characters, characters being recognised for their competence
• women supporting other women
• time travel (both Peggy Sue style and physical time travel)
• worldbuilding
• canon divergence
• outsider POV
• case fic/mission fic
• canon-typical plot or themes
• longfic
DNWs
• explicit sex (fade to black or references to sex are fine)
• changes to human anatomy or physiology (such as mpreg, omegaverse, soulmarks, etc.)
• teacher/student (if it’s relevant, please set any romance sometime after they've stopped being teacher/student)
• non-canonical incest (including between adopted or foster family members and biological family members who don’t know they’re related. Cousin incest and canon-typical Targaryen incest are OK)
• infidelity or jealousy within relationships (real or imagined. Open relationships and jealousy as a path to feelings discovery are OK)
• more than 3-year age gaps for any ships involving characters 16 years or younger
• sex involving characters under 15, setting a date when the character is considered "old enough"/"legal" for sex and fixating on that date
• modern-day terminology for sexual and gender identities in historical or fantasy canons
• characters being ostracised by their friends and loved ones
• public embarrassment, humiliation
• character or ship bashing
• hopeless endings, grimdark tone
• unrequested setting change AUs (merging crossover universes into one or having characters from one universe dimension travel to the other by either hand-wavey or explained means are all fine)
Fandom-specific DNWs:
• Narnia: The rift between Susan and her family
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Chronicles of Narnia
Characters
• Edmund Pevensie
• Lucy Pevensie
• Peter Pevensie
• Susan Pevensie
Tags:
• Cultural differences within Narnia
• Talking Animal customs
• Golden Age Society
• Effects of the 100 Year Winter on the various peoples of Narnia
• Intelligence and Espionage in Narnia
• Narnian Politics
I would love to read more about the Golden Age, early days, middle days, or the end, it doesn’t matter. What was it like? What were the Pevensies like as Kings and Queens? How did society function? What were the political challenges they faced, what factions existed, and how did decisions get made? What sort of issues did the Pevensies deal with as monarchs? How did they get their information? Did they use Talking Animals as spies in other lands? Or in Narnia itself? How would one counter that? And in terms of daily life, what did people do with their time? How did they make a living, and how did they spend their leisure? Or did they even have that division?
I’d also love an exploration of the fact that there are so many diverse species within Narnia – how did the Pevensies balance the sometimes competing needs of their subjects? To what extent does each species have its own culture, and to what extent is there a unifying Narnian culture? How do the various species get on? How do the various animalistic instincts of the Talking Animals and their physiological features influence their behaviour and customs? Are there differences between geographical regions that cut across species? Which differences matter more, regional or between species? Or does it vary?
Regarding the 100 year winter, what effect did that have on different creatures, both the ones that are adapted to winter climates, and the ones that aren't? How did the grazers find food? And what about creatures like bears, who hibernate? A lot of animals have their young in the spring - was there a baby boom once the winter was over?
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Exandria Unlimited: Calamity
Characters
• Any or no characters
• Original Characters
• Nydas Okiro
• Eaedalus Okiro
Tags:
• Cathmoira between Replenishments
• The Replenishment
• The Gau Drashari during the Calamity
I would love to learn about Cathmoira! What’s the city like, how is it organised and run, what sort of occupations do people have? How much is magic a part of daily life – is it like Avalir where it’s omnipresent, or is it more low-key? Is there infrastructure for learning magic, or is that all in Avalir? How do residents of Cathmoira relate to its sister city? What is the wide open space on the mountaintop used for when Avalir isn’t there?
Or what is the Replenishment like when it doesn’t lead to the destruction of a continent? What celebrations are there? What does it look like and feel when Avalir deposits its gathered magic? How does that change Cathmoira, and how long does it last?
I’m also very interested in the Gau Drashari – what do they do when the purpose for their existence is gone? How do their abilities contribute to the fight against the Betrayer Gods? Do they travel around helping defend people against roving fiends, or do they find somewhere new to settle? Is this when they find the elemental rifts, and the Gau Drashari turn into the Ashari, even? Is it a conscious decision to seek out the rifts, or something that just happens?
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The Hunger Games (books/AMT)
Characters
• Original characters
• Any or no characters
• Finnick
• Betee
• Wiress
• Mags
• Lyme
Tags:
• Career training
• Past Hunger Games
• Past victors
• Smuggling in the districts
• Coordinating the Rebellion Across the Districts
• Mentor's work during the Hunger Games
• Victors and their relationship to their home districts
• Victors as Commodities in the Capitol
General thoughts:
I’m very interested in Career training: how did one get to the point of being happy and eager to risk one’s life in order to kill other children? Was there some kind of selection process, or did anyone who wanted receive training? If there was a selection process, who did the selecting? Who was selected/trained, and was it voluntary or forced? What sort of indoctrination did they go through? What sort of skills did they learn: obviously weapons and fighting, but did they also train survival or how to get sponsors? How organised was the training, and how official – was it an open secret, or was it a matter of pride, or something people did on the down-low? And how did the Volunteers get picked? Collins has one throwaway line that the Reaping could go on for hours in the inner districts – what happened during these hours? Who decided which teenagers would go to the Games and which didn’t – and what happened to the ones that didn’t? When did the first seeds to training tributes start in the career districts? How did Career training and attitudes towards Careers and Victors differ between the three districts? When did volunteering become a thing? How different were the career districts in their approach to training for the Games?
I’m also interested in past Hunger Games in general! What kinds of arenas did the Gamemakers come up with? How did they go wrong?
When did the culture of selling victors start? How much did the past Victors see each other when they were in the Capitol? How did they settle back into their home districts as Victors? Were they welcomed since they brought food, were they outsiders, to what extent could they settle back into their old community – presumably it varied between districts and between victor, but in what ways? How did they cope with mentoring, and how did they cope with bringing home new Victors knowing the fate that awaited them? What sort of duties did mentors have? How did they balance getting sponsorships with keeping an eye on the Game and making sure sponsor gifts got to the Tributes when they were needed? How did they find sponsors? How much control did they have over what gifts could be sent? Could the sponsors decide to send something against the will of the mentor?
Regarding smuggling in the districts, how did that work? How were contacts made between districts? How were the logistics sorted? Was D6 a hub, as the transport district, or did they arrange it some other way? How much did Victors get involved, since they could travel (to the Capitol at least) and potentially meet each other there? Were there Peacekeepers in on it for a take? What kind of goods were smuggled between districts? The same goods that were shipped to the Capitol, or different ones? Were there organised smuggling rings spanning multiple districts, or was it more disjointed and disorganised local efforts?
Similarly, how did the rebellion coordinate across the districts? I imagine there would be similar logistics issues as regards smuggling, them both being illegal operations over the district barriers. Who was involved in organising the rebellion? Who knew about the rebellion, and how did they communicate? How independent were the various district rebel cells? Were there several rebel factions in one district, and how did they get on? How much influence did District 13 have?
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Tortall
Characters
• Any or no characters
• Original characters
• Adalia of Mindelan
• Domitan of Masbolle
• Oranie of Mindelan
• Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie's Peak
• Fanche Weir
• Keladry of Mindelan
Tags
• WB: Collaboration between the Queen's Riders and King's Own (Tortall)
• WB: King's Own non-military tasks (Tortall)
• WB: King's Own recruitment practices (Tortall)
• WB: Women's Roles and Spaces (Tortall)
General Thoughts
The Tortall books are an old childhood favourite of mine, and I really like the worldbuilding, the strong heroines, and the politics (that Pierce often glosses over as her stories are more focused on protagonists who aren’t very interested in politics, but the bits we do get fascinate me). I like how the universe gets more and more complex as the series go on, how what starts as fairly straightforward good vs. evil becomes more complicated, and the characters become more complex in later stories, but they don’t lose their hope and their belief in the goodness of humankind.
With regards to women’s roles and spaces, I’d love to see either how the women of the nobility manage their day-to-day affairs, or commoners – merchants, farmers, artisans, etc. What was considered a woman’s task, what was considered a man’s, which tasks were shared? How did Thayet pick her ladies? What role did women at court have if they weren’t among Thayet’s ladies? Under what circumstances could women own and run businesses? Which crafts were acceptable for women? How did Alanna and/or Kel going for knighthood change the common perception of women’s roles?
With regards to the King’s Own, I was intrigued by the parts of Squire when they weren’t fighting: when they were acting as disaster relief, building up forts, helping villages, and I’d love to see more of that – or of the King’s Own in general! Coram was in the army – what is the difference between the army and the King’s Own? What sort of missions/tasks are given to each force? And where do the Riders fit in? Are there ever any problems when the Riders work with the King’s Own – are there companies that work better or worse together? What sort of teething problems did they have when they established their systems? Where do they pick up most of their recruits? For how long do people sign on? What are the terms for regular members and for officers? Are is there a certain rank you can’t reach unless you’re noble, and how high can commoners go?
Emelan
Characters
• Ambros fer Landreg
• Berenene dor Ocmore
• Niamara Bancanor
• Sandrilene fa Toren
Tags
• WB: Narmornese culture
General thoughts
Similarly, the Emelan books were very important to me growing up—I actually discovered them before Tortall! I loved the worldbuilding, and the idea of magic working through everyday objects, as well as the found family among the Circle and their tight bonds! I loved how competent they all were in their own fields, and how their competence was acknowledged and nurtured by their mentors.
I’d love some further exploration of Namornese culture and politics. What festivals do they celebrate? What gods exist in the Namornese religion, and how are they worshiped? To what extent does the Living Circle worship exist in Namorn, and to what extent is it tolerated? How is the balance of power between the crown, the nobles, and the merchants? Berenene seems to have gathered a lot of power to the crown at the expense of the nobles – did she have the merchants’ backing in this? How much is the war with Yanjing felt in everyday life – by nobles, by commoners, by merchants and farmers? How does the climate affect farming, culture, life in general?
Please don’t feel constrained by the questions I have asked: anything about Namorn would fascinate me!
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Queen’s Thief
Characters
• Eddis | Helen
• Eugenides
• The Magus
Tags
• WB: The Eruption of the Sacred Mountain
• WB: Relations between the Little Peninsula and the Continental Powers
• WB: The Role of the Magus of Sounis
General thoughts
I am quite intrigued by relations between the Continental Powers and the Little Peninsula: how did Eugenides react to their betrayal once the war was over? What kind of diplomatic relations did they have? How did they react to the Little Peninsula stopping the Mede progress, and taking part of Roa for his efforts? Do they try to repair the relationship, or does it remain frosty, and how does Eugenides respond to their overtures, whether friendly or hostile?
Regarding the role of the Magus of Sounis, what is that role? Is it just a special advisor? Does it come with any special duties, remnants from when the Magus used to have magic? What did they Magus do when it was a position for someone with magic?
With regards to the eruption of the Sacred Mountain, how did they evacuate? Sure, the people who fought against the Mede got lands, but what about the rest of them? What about the people who refused to move? What did they tell people? How did they organise the evacuation, and how did they prevent people from going back on the assumption it was a false alarm? How far from the end of the series did it happen? What consequences did it have for the rest of the peninsula, in terms of climate, folklore, or anything else? Did the gods have a role in any of this, aside from warning Helen in her dreams, either triggering or preventing the eruption, or lining events up so Eddis would be empty by the time the eruption occurred?
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The Goblin Emperor
Characters
• Chenelo
• Vedero
• Arbelan
• Csethiro
• Maia
• Ino
• Mireän
Freeform tags
• WB: women’s roles and spaces
• WB: how the Barizhan Court works
General thoughts
This is such a nice comfort read book! I loved Maia finding his feet in court, how he started to flourish and come into his own, and how he, through his kindness and consideration, managed to win people over and start making changes for the better! I also love the politics, how people use subtle cues to signal favour or disfavour, the thought that goes into appearances, and back-room deals where people trade favours with each other!
I’d also be incredibly interested in seeing how the women’s court functions, politics among the ladies—both their own politics, but also how they move things in the national politics that’s usually seen as the men’s domain, how they wield influence over other ladies and over men, the different factions among the women – not just Csoru’s faction and Csethiro’s, but what other factions, among the older ladies, and to what extent does it mirror the men’s factions, what Csethiro is like as the Empress, Vedero’s circle and who is included in it, and how it interacts with other factions in the women’s court, what role Arbelan has at court and how she fits in, or what role Chenelo would have in Maia’s court if she survived – or what role Chenelo or Arbelan had before their relegations, when they were the Empress? How have things changed by the time Ino and Mireän enter court?
What is the Barizhan court like, and how does in differ from the Ethuvereise court? How would a person steeped in Ethuvereise politics fit in in Barizhan, or vice versa? What are goblin politics like? What are the various factions, what do they want, and how do they work together or against each other to further their goals? Are there things that are decided by combat other than who becomes the Great Avar when there are no heirs, and how are these combats judged – how is the winner determined, what are the rules, and what are the penalties for breaking the rules? How are issues solved if it isn’t by combat – by consensus decision or by rulings, and by who? Does the Barizheise court have something similar to the Corazhas, and who is included in that, if so? Who is included in the Emperor’s Dav, and how do the various Davs relate to each other and work together or against each other? How do social functions work when relations between the nobility and their households are less formal? Are there still barriers in palace and codes of etiquette, and what are the sanctions (social or official) for breaking them?
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