Candy Hearts Letter 2026

[withinadream]

Thank you for writing and/or drawing for me! I am within_a_dream on AO3, and you can read my previous letters here if you want to see some of my previous exchange requests! I have requested both fic and art for all fandoms.

Feel free to grab prompts from previous letters if you want – my DNWs have changed over the years, but my general likes and fandom prompts pretty much haven’t.

If I don’t DNW a ship, feel free to include it in the background of a gift, I have very few NoTPs. Also feel free to include multiple requested ships in a gift or make any relationships poly. Trans characters, trans headcanons, and trans AUs always welcome. I enjoy aromantic, no-romo, friends-with benefits takes on ships and characters with unusual or nontypical attitudes towards romance (although I prefer for historical characters not to explicitly use the word aromantic). I’m also down for any amount of character death, graphic violence, and/or noncon.

Don’t feel bound to my prompts if none of them catch your interest – I’ll be happy with anything about my ships that doesn’t contain my DNWs!

DNWs

• Pregnancy, childbirth, oviposition - mentions of canonical pregnancy are fine, but I don’t want art showing visibly pregnant characters or fics going into detail about pregnancy, related medical concerns, h/c related to pregnancy, etc.


• Trans characters having PIV sex - other types of vaginal penetration or uses of dicks are fine! Trans men post-phalloplasty using their dicks and trans women post-vaginoplasty using their vaginas also welcome.


• Unrequested noncon with a ship member as the perpetrator - past or onscreen noncon with an OC, or fuck-or-die/etc between my requested ships are always fine, as is one character being possessed and the thing doing the possessing using their body to noncon the other ship member/s


• AUs I DNW: Modern/mundane AUs, soulmate AUs (soulbonds are welcome!), BDSM AUs (regular BDSM is fine, I just don’t want the engrained/biological dom/sub roles), omegaverse (characters from non-human species having heats/ruts and knotting are both welcome, I just don’t want the alpha/omega/etc biological roles)

Fic Likes

• I love all tenses and POVs!


• Fic about canonical children, Accidental Child Acquisition of OC children (especially for characters who are not at all parental and have no idea what to do with kids)


• Casefic, with a loose definition of "case" that encompasses mysteries for mystery fandoms, paranormal investigations for fantasy canons, espionage for spy canons, etc


• Ghost stories! Particular favorites include the "ghostly hitchhiker" urban legend and the setup where characters need to spend the night in a haunted house for Reasons


• Recovery or aftermath – of canonical traumatic events or noncanonical torture, rape, murder attempts, etc


• Whump, hurt/comfort, hurt/no comfort


• 5+1 fics


• Epistolary fic


• Always-a-woman AUs (cis or trans women welcome!)


• Trans headcanons, trans characters, character-is-trans AUs


• Aromantic, noromo, etc relationships


• Internal or external homophobia

Art Likes

• I love any art styles and media!


• Ships sharing each other’s clothes


• Disheveled characters (whether from fights or sex or anything else)


• Clothing/costume porn


• Clothed/unclothed, or discrepancies in level of dress, for shippy art


• Limited color palettes


• Blood, bruises, marks

Smut Likes

• Feel free to include any of your favorite kinks if you are writing or drawing me smut! My only squicks are in my DNWs – anything else goes.
  
• Any and all sex acts (vaginal, anal, oral, manual, frottage, intercrural, fisting, double penetration, sounding, etc) are great! I have no top/bottom or dom/sub preferences.


• My favorite words for genitals are cock and cunt, but I have no objections to whatever you’d like to use


• Pretty much anything under the BDSM umbrella. I am especially into unnegotiated or undernegotiated kink, and characters falling into kinky dynamics or things they enjoy (especially with the younger characters). I have no dom/sub preferences


• I would love noncon for any of my requested characters or fandoms – if you want to know more about what I like in dubcon or noncon I have a general list of kinks and tropes here in my Consent Issues letter. I generally prefer noncon with an OC or canonical antagonist as the rapist, and "fuck or die" setups between my requested characters are also great!


• Roleplay – I am into both serious roleplay and goofy scenarios that the characters can’t quite take seriously, and I am especially fond of rape roleplay/consensual non-consent


• Group sex, orgies, and gangbangs


• Gunplay, especially fucking someone with a gun


• Watersports – I am mostly into it for humiliation or marking aspects, and am neutral about drinking piss (and would prefer if any drinking happens it’s someone having their mouth pissed in directly rather than just drinking a glass of pee/etc)

Operation Mincemeat – SpitLip

There's no legal way to see this show besides buying a ticket on the West End or Broadway, but there's a cast recording and I can provide you with this audio-only bootleg to fill in the plot gaps between songs. Prompts copied from my Yuletide letter, hence the lengthiness!

Ship:Hester Leggatt/Jean Leslie

So I love pretty much every character in this musical, but Jean & Hester had me hooked from the first time I heard Useful. So fascinated by the way Hester works within the confines of gendered expectations versus Jean's more open rebellion, and the way they move towards a middle ground throughout the show. I would so love to see more of them working together post-canon. I do love a good spy story, but I would read and love these two in a mundane office slice-of-life as well.

I would also really love to see what Jean and Hester do post-war, now that they've had this taste of being useful. (Presumably there is RL history to draw on, which you can use or ignore as you wish.) Do they chafe against the sexism of MI-5 even more now that they know they were instrumental in a vital operation that they can never tell anyone about? Do they find success in operating behind the scenes, or perhaps win glory and get their plaques while they're still alive?.

I ship these two like burning, and was stunned to find that no one who's posted fic for the musical on AO3 seems to share my vision. Hester says she will need to break Jean in! They have a duet! They both chafe in different ways against the sexist societal norms of 1940s Britain! Hester's got a secret tragic backstory and may think she will never love again! I think they should kiss and/or fuck and/or continue to do espionage-y stuff or other work activities together while kissing/fucking and I would like to humbly request your assistance in making this happen.

If you're going smutty, I love office sex, historical clothing, and nearly getting caught. I'm also very into the age difference and potential experience gap in either direction (I could see Hester having been around the block with women vs Jean just realizing her queer attraction, or Hester being a virgin vs a more sexually experienced Jean).

Some Like it Hot - Shaiman/Wittman & Shaiman/López & Ruffin

Another musical you can't watch legally from your home, and I don't even think it's currently on stage anywhere. But this time I have a bootleg to offer! And it really is a delightful show if I can tempt you into watching, with jazz, tap-dancing chase scenes, mobsters, and gender realizations.

Ships:Jerry | Daphne/Osgood Fielding III (SLIH Shaiman/Wittman), Jerry | Daphne/Osgood Fielding III/Sugar Kane/Joe (SLIH Shaiman/Wittman)

Rare is it that I come out of a musical so head over heels for the canon romance. Daphne and Fielding are so delightful and I so desperately want to see their life post-canon (more than we get told in the last scene, that is.) I'm using the name Daphne for simplicity, but I'm down with any pronouns/names (I read Jerry | Daphne as genderfluid in canon but I think the musical supports several readings).

If you want to roll with my niche headcanon, I'm in love with the concept of t4t Daphne/Osgood with transmasc Osgood. The musical takes places right around the time estrogen was first synthesized (1933) and right before testosterone was synthesized (1935), and I feel like Osgood is well-placed to be on the cutting edge of HRT for Daphne and/or him.

I'm also really into a post-canon foursome, especially with an added history of Daphne and Joe having been friends with benefits precanon if you feel so inclined, and Joe trying to figure out what his relationship with Daphne will be/might change now that she's out as trans and also married. (And I love Sugar and obvs we can't invite Joe to a polyamorous relationship and/or sex party and leave his girlfriend out!)

All Creatures Great and Small – James Herriot

Ship: Tristan Farnon/James Herriot (All Creatures books)

These books are so delightfully cozy, and I am lowkey obsessed with Tristan/James. The sexual tension that could sprout over delivering calves together...I am also lowkey obsessed with the emphasis on James' small hands (perfect for calf delivery) and canNOT stop thinking about Tristan having a kink for those hands (and perhaps some fisting). I would also just love some slice of life stories or sketches about the two of them falling for each other or being comfortably in love amidst their veterinary work.

I would also love to see the two of them trying to hide their relationship from Siegfried. I could see either Siegfried being entirely oblivious and not realizing the two of them are together even when he walks in on them kissing, or him catching on surprisingly quickly and his first worry being that his do-nothing little brother will fuck things up with Siegfried's protege (imagine Siegfried giving the shovel talk to Tristan instead of James).

And a few AU concepts! First, I can't stop thinking about a post-apocalypse AU told in the same cozy first-person style as the books. Just James telling us about his veterinary work and the steps necessary to fight off zombies.

I would also really love an always-a-woman AU for some femslash Tristan/James. James as a high achieving vet student (one of the first female vet students in the UK, I believe), and Tristan (Isolde?) as either a vet student or a party girl in the Dales (if you want to roll with my very specific headcanons, I have always imagined f!Tristan as in a lavender marriage with the very queer-coded Roland Partridge from All Things Bright and Beautiful). But don't feel like you need to hardcore worldbuild this gender change, I'm totally down for any excuse for historical vet femslash.