SpecRecs Letter 2021
Feel free to combine any of the pairings Iāve asked for, to create friendship groups or poly relationships.
Any time Iāve offered or asked for female versions of Shepard or Ryder, Iām happy with male or NB versions instead - Iām only specifying a gender because the site makes me.
If Iāve asked for romance, Iād also like a platonic version of the same relationship.
Likes:
Focus on friendship and mutual support.
Ensemble casts (background pairings are fine).
Humour.
Angst without hopelessness.
Action scenes.
Alien biology and culture.
Interesting, non-anime-elf quarian designs.
Genders other than 21st-century Western male and female (SF or real-world).
Consideration of the settingās politics and economics.
Player characters being OCs with their own personality (Iām not fussed about what they look like, but I want a personality).
Human characters with cultural backgrounds. (Any cultural background. Sure, representation never hurts, but āIām an Anglo-American from New York so my Shepard is an Anglo-American from New Yorkā is a perfectly good background.)
Religious characters.
Coping with disability.
Fic that repairs canon plotholes.
Destroy Ending AUs with EDI and the geth surviving. (Shepard surviving in one piece is good, Shepard winding up disabled and having to get a new job is good, Shepard dying nobly is also good.)
Canon divergence AUs.
Stories about rebuilding after the Reaper War.
No Reapers AUs.
Porn likes:
Treatment of sex as a fun collaborative thing, and not taking it too seriously.
Necks as an erogenous zone. Also ears, if the character has external ear flaps.
Cuddling and massage.
Admiring partnerās body (regardless of whether theyāre conventionally attractive).
Non-idealised sex, and things going wrong without ruining the sex.
Safe sex (whatever that means in contextā¦ contraception, avoiding fluid-bonding for disease prevention or due to allergies, being careful about using your fangs on soft squishy aliens, being careful when using your electricity powers on any kind of alien, being careful when tying up your partner to make sure they donāt sprain something, quarian issuesā¦)
Light BDSM (particularly wrestling, spanking or biting). Focussed on fun for everyone involved, and nothing too hardcore.
Weird alien genitalia. Letās get creative!
-particularly interested in knotting, tentacles, or cisgendered male characters who have some sort of sensitive sperm-producing orifice instead of a penis.
Quarian porn where they keep their suits on, and nerve-stim programs in general.
I like the idea of mating cycles, but only if everyone keeps all their mental faculties, everything stays 100% consensual, and the biology makes sense.
Dislikes:
Excessive/inappropriate romantic jealousy from characters who are supposed to be sympathetic.
Infidelity. (Iām fine with Shepard re-partnering after Horizon ā Iāll count Horizon as a breakup.)
AUs in a totally different setting, particularly modern or Regency AUs.
Suicide, unless the context is someone sacrificing themselves for a good cause or as a final defiance.
āMy true love died - this means I will spend the rest of my life mourning them, and can never love again!ā Or any otherĀ variation on āyou can only have one true love, ever.ā Especially if itās played as alien psychology!
Anything soulmate-related.
Batarians being innately and inevitably evil.
Turian society being male-dominated.
āMost salarians actually do have sex drives - they just pretend they donāt because their society is so repressive and anti-sex.ā (Iām happy with individual salarians having sex drives, as long as itās an odd individual quirk.)
Generic-feeling, ānon OCā Shepards or Ryders. (The default names and character designs are fine, I just want a personality.)
Interspecies reproduction, unless itās the canonical asari variety.
The sort of kidfic that acts like children are rewards for getting married/the inevitable next step after marriage, rather than their own people.
Iām OK with Shepard having a sexual assault backstory, addiction issues, or infertility angst - but only if theyāre coping fairly well with it and itās not the focus of the fic.
Porn dislikes:
Humiliation/degradation type kinks.
Taboo roleplaying ā eg doctor/patient, police officer/criminal or teacher/student (especially if actual doctors or police are involved).
Dubcon or noncon, unless youāre deliberately going for āthis is messed up and horribleā. Rape roleplay is OK, as long as itās clearly roleplay in-universe.
Porn that feels like an X-rated parody of canon.
A/B/O or seme/uke stereotypes, in either slash or het.
Turian romance dislikes:
Female humans being objectively better in bed than female turians, or male turians as objectively better than male humans. (Iām fine with characters who prefer aliens ā just make sure itās played as āthis character has a weird kink,ā not āthe aliens are objectively betterā).
Implications that they āmate for lifeā in a way humans donāt.
Implications that theyāre innately violent during sex or that they donāt understand cuddling.
Anything portraying them as mentally/emotionally savage and animalistic, or implying itās OK for them to lose control and do things their partner didnāt agree to.
Iām generally pro-biting, but can we please treat it under BDSM rules (eg, only if your partner wants to be bitten)? And if thereās blood or permanent scarring, then unless it was an accident and the next paragraph involves first aid and a lot of apologies, thatās too hardcore for me.
