Jukebox 2022 Letter

[kiraly]

Dear Jukebox Creator,
Hello! Welcome to my music library (or, well, a tiny portion of it). I’m excited to see what you come up with, and I’m pretty easy to please. The prompts in this letter are to help get you started, but if you have an idea already, feel free to run with it! I’m sure I’ll love whatever it is, as long as you steer clear of my DNWs.

If you want to know more about me, feel free to poke around here (it’s mostly exchange letters, haha). You can also find me on Tumblr: worldsentwined or check out my AO3: Kiraly

General Likes:

I really love character-driven stories with a lot of emotion. I’m all about the fluff, but I also enjoy angst with a happy ending - and a lot of these songs probably lend themselves to angst more than fluff. For gen fics, I love to see characters building friendships, working together, going on adventures, getting into (and out of) trouble. Found family and loyalty are always welcome.

For romances, I have a huge weakness for cuddling, (mild) hurt/comfort, and, uh...characters getting soaked and having to snuggle to warm up, haha. Kisses are good (awkward or sweet or steamy). I’m also totally down for things like “there was only one bed”, “fake/pretend relationship”, or other situations where the characters kind of get thrown together and then develop feelings for each other. Also very here for friends-to-lovers, especially the kind that takes years to realize. Mutual pining is great, though I prefer it to end happily. Most of my ships in other fandoms can be summarized as “idiots to lovers” so feel free to make use of that dynamic.

I don’t really care if you keep the genders of the characters the same as listed in the song - I welcome characters of any genders and in any romantic combo (including trans and nonbinary characters). I’m also open to characters of any sexuality, including asexual or aromantic characters.

I’ve requested fic for all of these, but art treats are welcome!

Speculative: In general I’m a huge fan of any kind of sci-fi or fantasy setting, especially if there’s adventure and romance. A (non-exhaustive) list of character tropes I enjoy:

* superheroes/villains * ladies with swords * librarians * sailors * mermaids * selkies * cyborgs * artificial intelligence * bards/musicians * space pirates/crews * witches * magical creatures hiding in human form * dragons * fair folk * mothman * ghosts *

I enjoy the traditional versions of these character types, but in a lot of cases I’m even more excited to see them turned on their heads, with characters who are defying expectations.

I also enjoy stories set on ships (sailing ships, airships, spaceships - take your pick!), post-apocalyptic settings*, and fairy tales (especially with a twist). I also like stories where the setting is mostly our modern world, but with a hint of magic or supernatural elements. Quest-type adventures are great, but I also love quiet moments in between the action when characters can decompress together, regardless of the wider setting.

*although I like post-apocalyptic stuff, I’d prefer to avoid anything that touches too closely on our current situation. Far-future post-apocalypse is preferred, or people coping with some disaster other than a pandemic.

Contemporary: Although I’ve always been primarily a fantasy reader, over the past few years I’ve really gotten into the realm of real-world settings - stories set in coffee shops, offices, college, etc. So! If you’d prefer to focus less on worldbuilding and magic, and more on a couple of idiots figuring things out in our own world, by all means do so! Some of the specific prompts will have more details, but I love stories about longtime friends growing closer (and maybe falling in love), lonely people finding friendship for the first time, characters realizing that their weird bits are actually worth loving, and the messy complicated feelings that come from growing up in a small town or otherwise isolated.

Dislikes (Do Not Want):

Character death or maiming, including characters getting infected with some terminal disease. Some background violence is okay, but nothing too graphic (and no torture!) Abusive relationships. Incest. Sexual violence of any kind. Explicit sex (allusions to sex or situations that get kind of steamy are okay, just...keep it teen rated or lower, please). I’d prefer to steer away from homophobia or transphobia as predominant story themes, though it’s okay to include mentions of them. Dementia/permanent memory loss are also subjects to avoid. If possible, I’d prefer nothing with a completely hopeless ending.

Anyway, on to the songs!

Flares - The Script (Song)

Link Lyrics

This song gives me such a feeling of hope in dark times. I get a strong mental image of a huge, empty plain, with someone trying to figure out where to go, and suddenly lights flare up in the distance. Whether it’s a lonely adventurer finally finding companionship, or separated friends/lovers finally reuniting, there’s a lot of room for a happy ending here. The other elements of the song - smoke, losing something, breaking, crying - give plenty of opportunities for a sad setup. This song also has lots of references to light in the darkness, and again whether you choose to take that literally or metaphorically is up to you.


Danny, Dakota and the Wishing Well - A Silent Film (Song)

Link Lyrics

First off I’ll say that it’s totally fine to play around with the genders on this one - Dakota and Danny both feel like gender-neutral names to me, or you could name them something different altogether. On the surface, this song tells a story of childhood friends in an unrequited romance that may turn requited years down the road. I’d be happy to read that story, but if you want to go in a more fantastical direction, there are all these little hints that could point to Danny not being human, but some sort of fae, changeling, or some other entity. The fact that they met “looking deep into the wishing well” and that this mysterious well becomes the place where they always meet. The lines about Danny not being able to write (so Dakota taught him how to spell…are they spelling words, or is Dakota a witch of some sort teaching him magic spells?) and being unable to speak in response to Dakota’s love confession. Maybe Danny is a fae, or maybe he’s under a curse by one, but whatever the reason it caused a rift between them that sent Dakota away for years. The ending is ambiguous, so it’s not clear exactly where Danny and Dakota stand at the end - maybe they become lovers, maybe they renew their friendship, maybe they overthrow the monarch of the fae court and take over. Whichever direction you decide to take it, I’ll be happy to see where it goes as long as they do end up together and happy in some capacity.


Power Over Me - Dermot Kennedy (Song)

Link Lyrics

This song has great potential for like...twisty magic stuff, or fair folk, or simply someone who’s pining so hard after someone else that they can’t think about anything else. Maybe a magic user, in an attempt to reveal their true love, has accidentally cast a spell that makes them constantly think about the person they love but unable to admit their feelings unless the other person speaks first. Maybe a fae monarch wants to win over a human without using magic to seduce them and tries increasingly ridiculous methods. Or, a darker twist, a human learns their true name and the fae has to do their bidding or suffer...but the human has no idea, and ends up asking for something that puts them both in danger. There’s also an element of urgency to the song, so possibly the person under the spell will face consequences if their love isn’t returned within a certain amount of time.

I really like the “remember that lake in the moonlight” verse, so something involving that imagery would be amazing!


The Last Time - Juniper Vale (Song)

Link Lyrics

This song has a strong feeling of impending loss, though the scale of that loss is left ambiguous. The last time for what, exactly? It could range from a group of friends or romantic partners splitting off as one phase of life (high school, college, etc) ends and sends them in new directions, to “the world is ending tomorrow” levels of catastrophe. It’s also unclear when the song actually takes place - the opening line makes it seem like the narrator is looking back on something that has already happened, and others where the narrator seems to be regretting how things went, and still others where they are looking forward to an uncertain future. I think there is space to write something that jumps between time periods, either narratively (flashbacks, etc) or have literal time travel or time loops involved. A time loop would definitely fit some of the uncertainty; maybe this is about someone coping with the aftermath of a time loop, now that their predictable routine is gone. The only thing I ask is that if this is a time travel story, don’t let it end with “everything is lost anyway and nothing we did could prevent it/we actually caused it.” Nothing hopeless, in other words. Even though this song has a lot of sadness to it, it always strikes me that the narrator means to take action, even if they can’t fix what already happened.


Villains Pt. 1 - Emma Blackery (Song)

Link Lyrics

Confession time: I have a weakness for supervillain/superhero stories, especially when the heroes may not be as heroic as they think (or are, perhaps, working for the wrong people) and the villains are not as villainous as they appear at first glance. I think there is a lot of room for challenging the status quo with a villain protagonist - society is messed up in a lot of ways! Some people try to fix it by voting and recycling and community activism. Some people try to fix it by pointing a ray gun at corporate assholes. Anyway, this song feels like a story from the perspective of someone who’s suffered at the hands of the people in power and has decided to take matters into their own hands. Is this their dramatic villain monologue? Are they in a showdown with their archnemesis, the Hero? Because I’m also weak for romance, I’d love it if the hero and the villain either had a romance in the past or develop one as the story goes on. Or both! Maybe the “last love” the villain mentioned is actually the partner they left behind when they got out of the hero business, and now the two only get to see each other when they fight.


Laughter Lines - Bastille (Song)

Link Lyrics

This song gives me such a strong sense of childhood friends through the years - either sticking together through everything, or falling apart and reconnecting as they grow and change. It could either be a tale of friendship alone, or of friendship that expands into romance later. I love the imagery of the tree stump with its many rings, of that being someone’s favorite place on earth. I can easily see this being a story told in smaller scenes through the years, of the two characters coming together at the tree stump at different stages in their lives. If you want to add a bit of a speculative twist to it, the conviction in the chorus of “I’ll see you in the future when we’re older” could be read as something prophetic or fated.


Storm Song - Phildel (Song)

Link Lyrics

I don’t really know what is going on in this song, but I like to imagine some wild magic is involved somehow. It feels like one person (creature? entity?) searching for another, or maybe two people both searching for and dodging each other, each determined to be the One Who Finds rather than The One Who Is Found. There’s a lot of dramatic imagery that could come into play here: storms being sent, characters who are faster than trains or riding the wind, banshee cries and gambling with secrets. Now that I’m reading that list I think it could be cool to play with something set in the (American) Old West with magic added, but there are a lot of directions you could take.


I Will Follow You into the Dark - Death Cab for Cutie (Song)

Link Lyrics

Helloooo afterlife shenanigans! Obviously my usual “no character death” request is not as applicable here - I just ask that this story have a hopeful ending. This song gives me similar feelings to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, except in this version it seems like the goal is not to bring the dead lover back to life, but rather to go with them to whatever happens next. Still, I’m not opposed to the characters ending up alive again, after finding that neither heaven nor hell has space for them, if that’s where the story takes you. But I’d be equally happy seeing the characters travel through an underworld while they discover what their other options are. I’m also curious to see an exploration of the characters themselves, what they were like in life and how they might be different in death. What have they done to prevent them from going to either heaven or hell? Is it due to their actions in life, or their stubborn refusal to be separated from each other by death? I think that idea, the determination to stay together no matter what that leads to, is something I’d really like to see.



A note about the youtube links: They should all work in the U.S., but in the event that you’re located elsewhere and something is region-locked for you, feel free to leave me an anonymous comment and I’ll try to find a better version.