CHOCOLATE BOX 2017
This is my first time doing Chocolate Box and I’m excited! I’m requesting fic for all the fandoms below, and thank you for writing for me. I cannot wait to read what you come up with! Before we get to the fandoms I’ve requested, some generalities. I’m cool with any rating, from G to Explicit, and all the below are just suggestions and ideas.
Some other general likes: unreliable narrators; nonlinear storytelling; dialogue; moral complexity; super messy and complicated relationships between characters (made all the better if they have a shared history and maybe some repressed feelings); sex as power play; power play in general; outsider POVs; infidelity; slow burn; codependency (both healthy and unhealthy); unexpected intimacy; case fic; darkfic; psychological horror, AUs (both of the canon divergence variety and of the “hey, now they’re in the outer space!” variety); hurt/comfort, fake dating.
If you decide to write ship fic or porn, I prefer when sex in a story is character-driven and rooted in emotional stakes for the characters involved rather than PWP. Other things I like: sexual tension, friends to lovers, enemies to friends to lovers (or just straight-up enemies to lovers; feelings can come later, if at all); first time; orgasm denial, workplace sex, rough sex, hate sex, drunk sex, dub-con of the hate sex/sex pollen/fuck or die/villians made us do it variety; breathplay; voyeurism/exhibitionism; sex as ill-advised coping mechanism; sex as ill-advised attempt at communication between characters.
And some general DNW’s: non-con; A/B/O; scat or watersports; kid!fic (unless canonically they have kids); non-canonical major character death; on the other end of the scale, fluff (I like happy stories! but fluff, not so much) (most of these lend themselves to some dark material, and I am more than fine with that (and in fact encourage it!)).
Spoilers for all the canons below!
REQUESTS:
BLACK SAILS
Billy Bones/Captain Flint
Man, these two, all unforgiving and weighed down by their shared history. I like Billy and Flint together best when there’s that knife’s edge of antipathy between them. Feel free to go all-in on hate sex or a fight/argument that leads to sex, as violent as you see befitting them. I find especially fascinating Billy’s complicated, often un-self-examined feelings where Flint is concerned: he’s tired of his rule, he believes he stands by his side only because he and the men need him, yet when Flint is presented with the possibility of death during his duel with Teach, Billy is clearly conflicted. More of that conflict would be great to read - either Billy as an unreliable narrator still up to his eyeballs in his own self-denial or Billy working his way through it, via whatever conduit or catalyst. Other ideas: trope-wise, “patching up each other’s wounds” is totally a soft-spot for me and I’d gobble it up. Similarly, any sort of plot or setting that traps the two of them in close confines (are they captured? jailed for the night and sharing the same cell?). Or, maybe the two of them having an increasingly drunken discussion late one night? All for it. Feel free to set the fic after Season 3 (what happens when Flint encounters Billy when he returns to Nassau?) or as a missing scene from the preceding seasons (I’d totally love fic set right after Billy returns from the dead). Barring that, I'm all for backstory, in particular, when Billy was first brought aboard the Walrus.
LA LA LAND (2016)
Mia Dolan/Sebastian Wilder
I loved this movie so, so much, and I am hungry to read just about anything. In particular, I'd love to see missing scenes from the movie filled in, all the bits of their relationship we missed along the way. The early awkward “courtship” days when they’re still just learning each other (and if you want to go smutty, learning each other in bed)! We saw a lot of Sebastian teaching Mia to love jazz, but I'd to see her have a similar effect on him where it comes to film. Something I loved about the movie was how clearly influenced it was by Old Hollywood, and if you found a way to include similar influences or references, that’d be awesome too (though not expected!).
And a total left field prompt here, the end of this movie reminded me so much of the end of Roman Holiday, in particular the look on Gregory Peck’s face as he walked away from Audrey Hepburn, so if you wanted to do some sort of Roman Holiday!AU or just an ~Old Hollywood era AU, by all means, go right ahead!
If you wanted to go for a darker, sadder strain of fic, I’d also totally be down with post-film fic. Do they have an affair? Does Mia return alone to his club? What if they were to meet again?
UTOPIA (TV 2013)
Milner/The Assistant
I miss this show so much! All I ever truly want is more of these two plotting to take over the world in the 1970s! Or, what’s their backstory? When and how did they meet? Were they both spies beforehand? I’m deeply, deeply fascinated by the relationship between the two of them - in particular, his fierce and unending loyalty to the point of voluntary scarification of his own body to protect her. I will greedily gobble up ANYTHING you give me about the two of them. The history of them! How did they come to be a team! Write about their early MI-5 days, as spies! Missions they went on! Or go beyond that and beyond what is shown of them in the Season 2 ep - what do they do after Carvel’s disappearance? I'd love to read about the immediate events after the Three Mile Island disaster, as the two of them hunt for Carvel together. Or about the weird curious domesticity that develops between them as they themselves become part of British bureaucracy. What becomes of them, how do they get to the point where we meet them again in S1, in the present-day? Or you could even do a sort of “missing scene” story from their 1970s-set episode - I’d love it. As I mentioned, I love the one-sided loyalty kink here, where there is nothing The Assistant would not do for Milner. And if you wanted to complicate that, I'd love to read that. What if The Assistant meets this limit and a confrontation occurs between him and Milner about how much she has expected from him while giving nothing back.
And if you want to go the bonkers AU route with these two, I present to you, a Westworld!AU - what if Milner had been the architect (Carvel had been her partner), and The Assistant is a host who has quietly been developing his own sentience. How does his loyalty to her change as a result. Does it?
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN (MOVIES)
James Norrington/Elizabeth Swann
I feel like I'm indulging young teenage me by requesting these two, and I love it. These two set up the possibility of canon-divergent AUs galore, and I say, go to town! What if she had married him, but then eventually left him for the sea (because it’s Elizabeth Swann and piracy was always going to be her endgame)? Or what if their marriage quietly evolved from what initially felt like an obligation into something more? I'd be all about for that wedding night fic (or in general Elizabeth and her sexuality, how that's another form of power she learns to wield). Or, instead, what if a wounded Norrington is rescued by Elizabeth’s crew and he more or less winds up joining her piracy on the high seas. And/or they get stranded on a deserted island! Cue all the tropes galore! Or Norrington stays the straight and narrow while Elizabeth becomes a captain pirate and they’re sworn enemies, with him chasing after her fleet, but there’s also something more going on? Or if you want to stick within the confines of canon, I will take any and all missing scene fic that comes to mind. (Practice sword-fighting! Sparring that gets out of hand! Drunk in a tavern! Lizzie as a corrupting influence on Norrington! Norrington being a surprisingly corrupting influence on Lizzie!).
MR. ROBOT (TV)
Dominique DiPierro/Angela Moss
My big takeaway from this past season of Mr. Robot was how much more I wanted I absolutely loved both the scene when Dom cornered Angela at her desk at E Corp and even more when she showed up at Angela’s apartment - that dark, intimidating (vaguely sexual???) vibe between the two of them as Dom both warned and threatened Angela. An interrogation scene between the two of them would be amazing. An unofficial interrogation scene that ends in sex? PLEASE. A wild game of cat and mouse that ensues between Dom and Angela following the events of Season 2, the two of them meeting up occasionally for tense conversations in public settings, maybe meeting up in less public settings for way less conversation? ABSOLUTELY. Beyond the porn potential, I also think there’s a shared thread of loneliness between both of these characters - whether it’s Angela singing karaoke in a crowded bar or Dom’s late-night chats with Alexa, they have that in common, and I would love to read that explored in some, or any, capacity.
CROSSOVER SHIPS
Nina Sayers(Black Swan)/Claire Robbins (Flesh and Bone)
The second I saw this in the tagset, my brain immediately began spiraling out over how desperately I want to read this, haha. Dark, ambitious, complex and self-tortured ballerinas! Go as dark as you want with this one, bend both canons to your will. I'd love to see fic of them where they are rivals, engaged in a campaign of mutually-assured destruction and self-promoting sabotage. I think juxtaposing their differing presentations of steely fragility and those hidden ugly depths would be absolutely fascinating. I will legit read anything you invent with these two. (And if you really want to go bonkers, NINA AS A GHOST, haunting Claire after she joins the company; go nuts!).
Thank you again for writing for me, mystery author! I'm arbitrarily at AO3 and widespindriftgaze at tumblr.