maybetwice

Dear Critter!

Thank you so much for signing up for this exchange, and thank you in advance of whatever you make from the prompts here! I adore all of the characters requested here, and I am absolutely sure I am going to adore whatever you make. Aside from the DNWs listed below, please feel free to use the likes as a rough guide, and absolutely chase bliss while creating for this challenge.

Some overall likes/dislikes:

Likes:
- Non-conventional relationship dynamics. Anything that explores beyond the "monogamistic, alloromantic, married for life" pipeline - I love those, too, but QPRs and consensually nonmonogamous relationships and everyone getting what they want and need out of their relationships is very my jam.
- deep, abiding friendships
- inside jokes & character banter
- happy endings
- working through gray and difficult scenarios (especially when someone has to fight to retain their principles!)
- fluff
- slow burns and slowly building a romance (especially from friendship!);
- relationships taking mutual work because it's worth it to all parties
- alternate universes of basically all kinds. I am... a huge lover of the AU. Canon AUs/Universe Alterations? Yes. AUs of your favorite other stuff? YES. Modern AUs of all sorts? ALWAYS. Do you have a fun and maybe niche AU you're in love with and want to do? I WANT TO READ IT.
- cheerfully consensual sex
- mysteries and intrigues of all kinds
- future fic! background fic! slice of life! missing scenes! I will love it all.

Dislikes/DNW:
- non-consensual sex of any kind
- child endangerment or abuse
- character humiliation
- on-screen character death, or non-canon character death of any kind
- unhappy endings
- unresolved angst
- character bashing

In case it's not obvious by my sign-up selections, I love Orym... a lot. I love that he's a steady, hopeful, inherently good person trying to drag himself back up out of the ruins of his life. I that he struggles with melancholy occasionally, but that reconnecting with other people and forming friendships seems to have done more for him and his optimism than five years wandering Exandria did. I love that he has absolute principles to protect and care for other people, that his first instinct is to seek a non-violent solution and defuse a situation if he can, and I love the carefree, sort of dry goofiness we occasionally see peeking out from the clouds as he comes out of his shell around people he loves and cares about. A hopeful hero, indeed.

I think a lot about the opening lines to Lady Chatterley's Lover when I think about Orym - "Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins . . . It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the fugure: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen. That quote more or less encapsulates so much of how I think about his struggle, his growth arc, and the ways he engages other people who are at different points in their journeys with similar troubles (and the ways he learns from people who are further along in theirs, or have outlooks so different from his that they widen his perspective).

But, my adoring nattering about Orym aside, here are some notes on the pairings and prompts I offered up. Please feel free to take or leave these as you see fit.

Orym/Will: I was already quasi-inclined to love Will before, had already written him a couple of times, and in-absentia a few others. The hole he leaves in Orym's life is one shaped like an absolute, steadying, foundational sort of love, upon which everything we know about Orym is built. And so, seeing Orym smile wistfully whenever he talks about Will (or grabbing his moon tattoo whenever he's in an emotionally tense conversation and wants a little comfort, or talking about his relationships with his in-laws and what they mean to him) is all so sweet and bittersweet for me.
- ...you could write fix-it fic of some kind! An AU of any kind where they're still happy and together! My heart will always want to see them happy and together, and so that's my first request.
- For that matter, I'd also love slice-of-life or even major things that happened in their lives. Will's proposal! Being childhood sweethearts and what that means as they transition from friends to lovers! Their wedding and all that comes after! What were their dreams and aspirations and hopes for their life together?
- Supernatural-y, maybe a little weird afterlife fic? Will-as-ghost that only Orym can see and interact with? Get a little funky and weird, but ultimately sweet and hopeful, with it!

Orym/Fearne (Orym & Fearne): UGH OKAY. So, I love their dynamic just... in general, but my favorite part about it is how casually they've settled into a mutually fond and loving bond. I love them as romantic, platonic, settling into a happy QPR, or especially just not bothering to define who or what they are at all. I love how easily they accept each other, look out for each other, and how easy it is to imagine them continuing to adventure together for a long time to come.
- Future fic! Would love to see what their dynamic is like later. Maybe they actually do get that house they talked about, with their soup and a space for all their friends around Exandria to come and go and always know they have a place to be.
- Adventures! I would love to see Orym and Fearne's adventures together, whether to the side of the current campaign, or adventures between ExU s1 and c3, or in the future. Would love to see Orym seeing Fearne's home in the Feywild, and relying on her to navigate the norms of that realm the same way she relies on him to help navigate Exandrian norms.
- LITERALLY ANYTHING. I love them, I'd love to read fic about their dynamic.

Orym & Opal: These two are so, so special and important to me, and not only because Liam and Aimee have kept up the bit in their personal interactions. I think very often about how Orym and Opal spent months! literally months! at the front of the vardo together, having roadtrip talk about their lives. I have to assume Opal did a vast majority of the talking, because Orym's a good and encouraging sort of listener, but it's not a difficult leap to imagine that Opal probably knows a fair bit more about Orym than most of the other Crown Keepers and more than the other Hells, excepting maybe Fearne and Dorian. I love the way Orym holds space for Opal to be herself and doesn't ever make her feel bad for being brash and unrestrained and nineteen. When she loses control after the kidnapping attempt in Niirdal-Poc, he silently and gently takes the head out of her hands and leads her home, and that made an impression on me.
- I would love a story about their conversations, whether on the road or in Byroden after ExU, or even seeing each other again at some point in the future when they cross paths again. I think there are so many beautiful stories that could be told comparing and contrasting their life experiences, Opal trying to make sense of her life with the circlet after having left home to make it on her own, and Orym who's similarly seen his dreams for his future torn to pieces, but who left home under very different circumstances.
- Shenanigans! Some good, fun Crown Keeper shenanigans in general would delight me, but especially centering on Opal and Orym; Opal encouraging him to loosen up and do something a little silly and Orym keeping it on the fun side of stupid.

Orym/Dorian/Fearne: OH BOY, OKAY. So, number one favorite thing about these three is how cozy they are together, how easily they've bonded, how we've gotten them all to CANON BED-SHARING AND I LOVE YOU'S. Given where they started, with Fearne's casual, fey disinterest in being attached to people, and Dorian not really having personal relationships at all, and Orym being a widower pulling his life back together? I'm living for the way these three have found each other, how there's a very real sense that all three of them think they're looking out for the others, are willing to do so much to take care of each other, will literally follow each other across the world. You can take whatever interpretation you like of their relationship and how they fit together, I've seen all sorts, I've written all sorts, but as long as the central assumption is that they love one another and are devoted to one another, then I shall be extremely happy.
- GIVE ME A REUNION FIC. I'd love to see them reunite with Dorian, whether with Dorian returning, or even Fearne and Orym wrapping up their business in Marquet and returning to Tal'Dorei to find their boy. Just sweet, tender, comfy reunions, and maybe a little unfounded fear that maybe they won't fit together as well now that they've all had separate adventures. (But it's fine, truly.)
- FEYWILD STUFF. Any fey shit at all, and Dorian and Orym especially interacting with this world that Fearne hails from and knows and understands. But fey shit just... in general... would delight me.
- My kingdom for really anything at all about them. Adventures, AUs, their lives together, their futures together, anything.

Orym/Ashton/Dorian: I JUST THINK THEY'RE NEAT. There are a lot of ways to interpret their dynamic, and I would love to see any of them! My favorites are when they're all intermeshed together, how that changes their dynamics with one another. I don't really approach triad ships as "pairing plus a third," and so I tend to imagine their dynamic to be entirely different than any of the component ships. It takes some work - I think all three of them rub up against each other (ba dum tiss) in ways that can be both positive and affirming and loving, and also ping some of their individual insecurities. There's a lot of interesting relationship work that can happen here to balance it all out. Especially with characters like Dorian and Ashton, who have deep, deep insecurities and either don't know how or have never needed to work for something (or believe that they'll never be worth that work to someone else). This ship is especially one where I'd love to see that hard work of building a relationship explored. (And, I mean, yes, it's hot. You could just write me white-hot smut and I'd be extremely happy - we all deserve more of these three in general.)
- Anything really exploring the work of forming and balancing out this triad, exploring the ways that it works AND the ways where it takes more effort. And yeah, you could just straight up write porn here, I'd be happy! But anything really delving into the characters and exploring all the ways their rough edges bump up against eachother, or fit together comfortably, will be really interesting and fun for me.
- I would give my left and right arm both for an espionage, spy vs. spy vs. spy sort of deal with these three. I'm already half-convinced Orym has been doing quasi-intel work for the Ashari in canon, but with Ashton's underworld connections and revolutionary inclinations, and Dorian coming from a somewhat insular society that almost definitely would have trained him for some sort of diplomacy... I feel like there's a there there, and I would absolutely die to get to experience it.

This is all so, so much more than I thought I was going to write when I set out to write this letter, so I will close out much the way I started: Thank you so, so much for absolutely whatever you choose to create for this exchange. Please have absolutely as much fun chasing your personal bliss for it as possible, because I am going to love the end result no matter what.

- Ama / maybetwice