SmutSwap Letter

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Hi! Thank you so much for offering to write for me! I love smut, I love all these ships and all these kinks, and I’m so looking forward to whatever you choose to write.

Here's where to find me, if you're interested in more information:
AO3: Brigdh
Tumblr: Brigdh
Livejournal: wordsofastory
Dreamwidth: Brigdh

Here’s a link to my previous exchange letters, if that’s a thing you’re interested in reading. Most of them are longer than this letter, ha, since I’m trying to be brief for once.

Here's a list of general kinks that I'm interested in. I didn't actually request any of these because I didn't have specific prompts for them, but feel free to include them in your story, for any of these ships, if you want to. You can either make them a background detail or the whole focus of the story, if you prefer that to what we actually matched on! ‘Thank God We're Alive' Sex, Banter, Begging, Biting, Breathplay, Clothing Kink, Cunnilingus, Desperate Arousal/Sexual Frustration, Established Relationship, Forced Orgasm, Hand Kink, Lazy/Gentle Sex, Orgasm control/edging, Obedience, Overstimulation, Pegging, Praise Kink, Roleplay, Rough sex, Sex for Warmth/Sharing Body Heat, Something Made Them Do It, Trying to Stay Quiet, Verbal Bondage/Honor Bondage, Wall Sex

My requests:
Benjamin January
Ships: Benjamin January/Hannibal Sefton, Benjamin January/Rose Vitrac January/Hannibal Sefton
Kinks: Alternate Universe - Canonical Male Character is Always a Girl, Bath Sex, Omega Verse, Writing on the Body, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Crossdressing, Hair Kink

Alternate Universe - Canonical Male Character is Always a Girl: I would totally love an AU where Ben had always been a girl. I’d love to see how that would have changed his family and society’s expectations of him, his personality (or not), and his goals in life. Would he have become a placée, for example? If I was writing the story, I’d keep Rose and Hannibal as their canonical genders, but feel free to play around with whatever works for you.

Bath Sex: I love bath sex in pretty much all my fandoms, but something about historical fandoms adds an extra appeal. There’s all the work of actually setting up a bath: carrying water, heating it, bringing the tub out of storage, setting it up near a fireplace for warmth (well, maybe that last one isn’t necessary in NOLA, but it’s such a pretty image!). Anything from rustic desperate baths (in a river?) to fancy elaborate ones (they’re staying in an expensive hotel for some reason?) is awesome. If you want to add in a H/C element, with the one bathing being sick or injured, and the other providing care, that would be delicious but isn’t necessary.

Omega Verse: YES IT IS MY FAVORITE RIDICULOUS TROPE. I see Hannibal as an omega, Rose as an alpha, and Ben as either a beta or an alpha, depending on how you write the world-building. But don’t feel obligated to stick with that! I’d love to see what you come up with. The elements of omegaverse that I’m most interested in are heats (SO HOT), pheromones/scents, instincts, and social roles and people who don’t fit them. I’m less interested in the mpeg part of it, so feel free to drop that or just not dwell excessively on it, if you can.

Writing on the Body: All of these characters are so literate, so given to reciting quotations (in many, many languages), that this just seems like a natural fit for them. I've got no preference for who is writing and who is being written on, so go wild.

Fake/Pretend Relationship: I would especially like this if Hannibal and Rose were in the pretend relationship, and there was a lot of pining and awkwardness because Rose/Ben are established, before ending in a happy OT3 (with lots of sex!). Feel free to set this during ‘Crimson Angel’ when there is actually a fake relationship setup (HAMBLY I LOVE YOU) or during some invented other time. If you’d prefer a different set-up, though, feel free! I love any and all variations of this trope.

Crossdressing: Rose and Hannibal have both canonically crossdressed – I need the sexy version of that! Or Ben can crossdress too, that would also be great. Whether it’s for reasons of solving some mystery, or they just decide to dress up for fun, I love it all. Possibly combine this with pegging and/or roleplaying for extra kinks.

Hair Kink: To me, “hair kink” means a character (or characters) doing stuff to another character’s hair: brushing, washing, cutting, braiding, putting it up with pins and combs, taking it down from an elaborate hairstyle, etc. Rose and Hannibal have long hair, so they seem like the natural recipients of such attention, but if you can come up with fun stuff for them to do to Ben’s hair, I would be totally down with that too. I just like the gentleness, the care and affection and physical animal pleasure of having hair played with.



The Road to El Dorado (2000)
Ships: Chel/Miguel/Tulio (note: this is the only ship I officially requested, but I also ship all possible combinations of two out of these three characters, so if you want to focus on just two of them, that’s fine)
Kinks: Dirty Talk, Drug-Induced Sex/Sex Pollen, Dom/sub, Service Kink, Ritual Sex, Danger

Dirty Talk: they’re all three fast-talking, slick, con artists! I want to see how they use those skills in bed. Name-calling is fine, as long as all characters are into it. Lots of funny banter would be excellent as well.

Drug-Induced Sex/Sex Pollen: this is a trope that I always love, and this canon seems like just the sort of vague fantasy that would be a good fit for it! Whether it’s magic, or a mysterious new plant/herb/spice/whatever, I’d love to see these three accidentally get sex-pollened. Awkward mornings after would be a big bonus, but I’d prefer the tone to be hot, light, and fun, and not so much with the potential consent issues in such a situation.

Dom/sub, Service Kink: I’d love Chel as the top and Miguel and/or Tulio as the subs, but however you want to arrange them is fine by me. I’d prefer to see this as something new to them, something that they’re slowly exploring and figuring out. A lot of arguing about who gets to top and tricking the others into bottoming would be ideal!

Ritual Sex: Okay, so: imagine if the new ‘gods’ had had to prove their divine status by having sex with the priestess. HOT, RIGHT? You can either have this be an actual myth in El Dorado, or something that Chel makes up and tells the other two for her own benefit.

Danger: One of the characters realizes that the danger of a con turns them on; the other(s) helps them out. Or even one of them likes to have sex in dangerous places: semi-public, on a roof, in a church, after being arrested, whatever. I would also love to see them interrupting themselves during a con by getting too caught up with flirting with one another, until they let the potential mark slip away in their distraction. (If you could work in fake relationships or secret relationships to such a scenario, that would be awesome!)



Leverage
Ships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Kinks: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Handcuffs, Lipstick on men, Roleplay, Injured Sex, Danger

Fake/Pretend Relationship: I would especially like this if Eliot and Parker were in the pretend relationship, and there was a lot of pining and awkwardness because Parker/Hardison are established, before ending in a happy OT3 (with lots of sex!), but however you want to write this is fine by me. I love any and all variations of this trope.

Handcuffs: Mmmm, yes, super hot. I don’t have a preference for who’s in the handcuffs and who’s on top, so feel free to do your own thing!

Lipstick on men: Either Harrison or Eliot (or both!) as the one wearing the makeup is fine. I’d love lots of focus on choosing the makeup, applying it, the finished appearance, and then mussing it up. Whether this is part of a con or just for fun is up to you.

Roleplay: There’s so much roleplaying as part of their cons! I’d love to see one of them realizing that some role turns the other on, and taking it into the bedroom (not necessarily literally - hallway sex or car sex or whatever is totally welcome as well!). There was the time Parker was a nun, the time Harrison was a Cockney diamond thief and the other time he was a violin musician, Eliot as art critic or journalist or basically any time he had to wear glasses (ELIOT IN GLASSES IS SO HOT), really, take any example from canon or make up some new ones of your own and I’ll love it!

Injured Sex: I’d love this as H/C fic, with one character having been injured on the job, and the other(s) very carefully sexing them up, trying to avoid making the injury worse. If you want to include lots of pining and “I almost lost you!”, that would be great! On the other hand, I could also see them (Parker especially) treating the injury as no big deal, or even a fun challenge to figure out how to have sex around.

Danger: One of the characters realizes that the danger of the job turns them on; the other(s) helps them out. I have a slight preference for this being Parker, but any of the three would be excellent.

Reading Wed– Thursday

What did you just finish?
The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders. So, one day last week I had quite a bit of reading time scheduled (multiple long subway rides, eating lunch out – I have no problem eating in restaurants by myself, but I like to have a book when I do it so that I'm not just staring blankly at a wall the whole time – waiting for meetings, etc) and of course it was only after I was in another part of town that I realized I had forgotten my Nook at home and had nothing to read with me. Obviously the answer to this problem was to buy a new book. Luckily I was right by a bookstore; unluckily it was what I refer to as a "hipster" bookstore (Racheline argued that I should call it a "literary genre" bookstore instead because they tend to be more aimed at middle-aged people than the young, but in my opinion, hipster and literary genre are basically the same thing when it comes to bookstores). What I mean is those bookstores that don't have sci-fi or fantasy or romance or mystery sections, that cater primarily to people who want to be seen reading more than they want to actually read, that have huge displays of poetry and Camus and arty coffee-table books but don't sell anything on the NYT bestseller list. And therefore when I went through my fairly extensive list of books I want to read that I have on my phone, they weren't carrying any of them.

But! All was not lost. I noticed a copy of The Invention of Murder on a shelf, and remembered seeing it recced fairly often on FFA, and so managed to give the dumb bookstore some of my money despite their best attempts to avoid a sale. The book is totally shameless true crime, but I suppose the long subtitle makes it look academic and therefore respectable.

To get on with the actual review: The Invention of Murder actually covers a period a bit wider than the Victorian Era, encompassing all of the 1800s, with a few of the murders discussed even going back all the way to the 1700s. Flanders's focus isn't just on the crimes themselves (though she does cover the crimes, the trials, and the executions), but more how each specific case was reacted to by society. She looks at things like newspaper articles, broadsides, ballads, children's rhymes, Punch & Judy shows, short stories and novels (including quite famous ones; Dickens shows up multiple times, stealing plots and names from real cases, as does Wilkie Collins, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, William Makepeace Thackeray, and others), plays, puppet shows, exhibits at Madame Tussaud's, and on and on.

The book is vaguely organized in chronological order, allowing Flanders to look at how public perception changed over the 1800s, but she also takes several specific strands of change: the increasing use of science in trials and investigations (especially in regards to tests to detect the presence of poisons), attitudes towards the police, the influence of new technologies like trains, the telegraph, and photographs. She makes the point that public perception of crime often has little to do with the reality – murders have always been hugely uncommon, despite their frequency in newspapers and novels. Ultimately she argues (I am HUGELY simplifying here, just to be clear) there's three periods of how people both understood real crimes and depicted crime in fiction: the early 1800s were the melodrama period, where criminals are bad because they're villains and villains are bad because they're criminals and there's nothing more to understand, where the focus is mostly on the victims (who are of course always beautiful and pure and kind and probably poor). Then comes the period of Sensation FIction, where the focus is more on a secret being revealed – though not yet through deliberate investigation, but usually through coincidence or providence. The focus tends to be on how ~horrible~ the crime was, and both villain and victim are often middle class. Then finally we hit the end of the century with the emergence of detective fiction, when the focus is on the hunt, on the riddle, on figuring out what happened. The main "characters" are either the detective or the criminal, who is often seen as upper class, cunning, even artistic; the victim may be entirely forgotten, or not even appear on-page at all. Flanders argues that the enduring appeal of the Jack the Ripper cases, compared to the many other cases she discusses in the book, is that it fits the tropes of detective fiction so perfectly: permanently unsolved, with a literally infinite number of suspects and motives to guess at.

I enjoyed the book a lot; one drawback was that, since Flanders covers literally dozens and dozens of cases, there are way too many names to keep track of, and I often forgot who everyone was as soon as she moved on to the next case – which, since she often called back to previous cases to make comparisons, was kind of a problem. But that's not too big of a deal. Her style was easy to read, with frequent black humor asides that – I admit it – totally made me laugh, even if it was sometimes a bit ghoulish. There were lots of little interesting details to discover too: I was particularly pleased by the information that stories about female detectives have been popular from the 1860s on (long before the British police actually employed woman), and the sheer number and shamelessness of... I suppose you have to call them death tourists. If you think it's inappropriate for news channels to show funerals today, wait until you read about people stealing bloody furniture for souvenirs. or buying porcelain figurines of murders.

Overall, I recommend it highly, as long as you're into a fairly macabre history.

What are you currently reading?
The Mountain and the Wall by Alisa Ganieva. Still working on this! Since I got interrupted by the quite long Invention of Death.