Yuletide Letter 2018
ninety6tears |
ninety6tears
Hello and happy yuletide!
I love these fandoms and I love surprises. Please take as much or as little from my prompts that you want or need; I try to provide a mixed bag of ideas for different strokes.
- Basics: The whole spectrum from G-rated gen to explicit PWP is fine. I’ve got no preference over POV/tense/narrative style, just use whatever comes to you! I love pastiche for lit fandoms but something that feels more off the beaten path of the original style can also be fun.
- I love: Angst, pining, subtle UST, first times, or established relationships with some level of conflict to be resolved. Intense friendship stories. Protectiveness in close relationships as well as in those that wouldn’t obviously appear to be protective at first. A character or characters experiencing a type of attraction that isn’t the status quo for them. Relationships that had a falling-out and neither of them ever really got over it. Characterization that focuses on the nature & nurture of who people have grown to be and the unique ways they take care of or need other characters. Insecurity/hangups over worthiness. AUs*, whether they interact with our expectations from the original story or tell it in a thoughtfully different way, as a fork-in-the-road or a completely different genre/setting that strikes you as something that would bring some good stuff out of the characters/relationship(s). You are welcome to poke around my AO3 bookmarks or my tumblr or even my goodreads to see what fandoms I’m familiar with if the idea of doing a crossover or fusion* appeals to you (crossovers can get controversial but I say as long as big fandom characters don’t take center stage, anything is fair game). [*I would always love to see fusions etc. with: The Bone Clocks, Harry Potter, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (I like every version I've seen), It Follows, Old Kingdom, Pacific Rim (though I’m not as into PR as its own fandom, so more of a fusion than a crossover or less focus on its characters would be preferred). I’m rarely picky about AUs, but I’d always like to see: arranged marriage (good or bad, amiable or eventually passionate), college/high school - or the more rare school faculty AU, sci-fi, slavery as a non-kinky theme, sex work as a non-kinky theme (though i wouldn’t be offended by shippy hookerfic), historical settings, and good old fork-in-the-road ideas that bring a whole different set of conflicts and emotional moments.]
- I can handle: Underage, dubcon, noncon, torture and incest. Character death. Love triangles. Infidelity.
- I don’t want: Canon divergent fix-it scenarios unless prompted (AUs where the original conflict never happened doesn’t fall into that; I just don’t want “X didn’t die or make that big mistake” as a main premise). Soulbonding/magical soulmate tropes. Disputes centered around marriage as a show of commitment ("If you were really serious you'd have proposed by now rather than just wanting to live together" and all that). A/B/O, mpreg, or any body fluid kinks. More than a mention of Alzheimer’s/dementia.
You might look at this meme for a list list of kinks/tropes I’m into if you're feeling very thorough.
Attack the Block (2011)
Moses, Sam
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I'll say right off the bat that I do ship these two but only when adding on a few years, preferably with some space as well as time between the events of the film and some reunion between him and Sam. Maybe he does end up doing some time for whatever reason or gets sent into foster care, and ends up moving back into the block and is surprised to find Sam still there. Maybe they've been in touch just a couple times but it's still awkward trying to navigate the intensity of their connection, both with the bizarre events they survived and the way they first met.
I love stories that explore relationships formed by traumatic experiences, especially with phenomenons that the world might disparage or sweep under the rug, so that the people who really know what happened feel inexorably connected to each other even if that intimacy has an undercurrent of bad memories. Gen or ship-wise, I'd love to see that explored. Does their friendship confuse Sam’s partner, if she's still seeing him? (Is he not fully in the know of how they met?) Are there hints that Sam’s conventional relationships aren't giving her the kind of support she needs? Do they get together and stay in to drink on Guy Fawkes Night while the fireworks go off outside?
A reunion through less mundane circumstances would also be awesome, with the two of them having to face another alien threat.
Umm, no big deal but I would love it if Moses is good/experienced in bed (at least with girls) :D
I also like Moses/Tia, might get a kick out of Moses/Brewis, and wouldn't mind pairing Moses with an OC or crossover character, but I really don't ship him with anyone in his immediate clique.
BlacKkKlansman (2018)
Flip Zimmerman, Ron Stallworth
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This film had to get a lot on the table that was more important than developing a positive and potentially intense partnership between these characters, but I would love to get more of what little we saw--of Flip learning to mimic Ron, of their disagreements and accidentally getting personal, of one protecting the other, or just the complicated responsibility of having to keep up with whatever the other does/says as part of the operation as one shared cover. They have a simple loyalty between them by the end, and I'd love to get either small moments or big gestures when they shift into sensing they have each other's backs after Flip was at first more resentful about the burden. Oh, and I definitely ship them. Dealing with feelings for each other could be a complex issue for sure.
I just generally love partners being partners, or partners falling in love, so any of the less topical tropey things you might do with cops (doing a stakeout, joking and pranking at the office, being in tune with each other under stress, etc.) would hit the spot too.
Though the real Stallworth deserves all the admiration, I don't approach this as RPF and you certainly don't have to; Flip in particular is very much a character developed for the film’s purposes, and some of the major events didn't happen, so, I like to think this movie is wide open for non-historical interpretation. All that really means is for instance if you wanted to do an AU where the operation goes differently or lasts a lot longer, more than fine with me.
It's fine if Patrice makes an appearance/retains a complicated friendship with Ron (and possibly Flip), but I would prefer you treat them as broken up for good. Her anti-police stance is a deal-breaker I would rather she get to keep.
Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French
Cassie Maddox, Rob Ryan
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Cassie/Rob is one of my favorite things and anything to do with them would be great, whether it's a missing scene from their partnership or some situation that forces them back into the same room with each other in the future. I would love anything that kind of rounds out Rob by showing more of him through her perspective, like her first/ongoing impressions of him after she joins the squad. Or if you're into alternate universes I'd really love something a little out-there for these two (Something horror/sci-fi/fantasy that takes the hints of the supernatural a bit further? Irish War of Independence/Civil War AU? Dystopian detectives?). For the record even though I ship them pretty hard I do see it as so heavily built on what was a deceivingly simple but very real friendship and even in an AU setting I don't really see them blatantly crushing on each other from the start even if there is some subtle UST...Of course, if they were to somehow reconnect a few years into the future, it could be a different dynamic in a bittersweet way. I don’t think a swooning romance quite fits these two, so anything generally intense or ambiguous would be great if it’s more of a friendship or case fic, or even a pretty unhappy story.
I’ve requested this series every year in numerous ways, and wouldn’t say no to an appearance of other characters/relationships. if in doubt about whether I might enjoy anything a bit (or a lot) off the grid of my requests, I’d probably love it. I won’t spam you with potentially irrelevant prompts but any character or pairing I talked about in previous years is something I’d still be happy to see.
(My only NOTPs: Cassie/Sam having a blissful marriage, Scorcher getting back together with Laura.)
Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
Bathsheba Everdene, Gabriel Oak
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I really love these two as a kind of friends-to-lovers trope in a setting where men and women rarely had opportunities to just be friends. Some interpretations reduce Gabriel to the guy that’s just pining on the sidelines waiting for her to return his feelings, but I like how the professional relationship forms into a true companionship between confidants aside from his resignation on the possibility. I like that it’s never a sweeping passion for Bathsheba but she comes to hold his opinions and his regard for her as singularly important while taking forever to directly reconsider her feelings (even while absently imagining what it would be like to be married to him and considering him her first sweetheart, aww), and that in turn Gabriel doesn’t put her on a pedestal or sugarcoat things for her. I like that she’s treated as arrogant as a matter of forgivable fact, and that her being loved by him in vain is something she wants selfishly until it’s not actually in vain. I love that she’s authoritative in order to keep him at a distance but then pines for him to remain significant in her life.
Any moment from their working relationship that shows that Gabriel starts to fall even more in love with the real her, despite all reasons against it, would be great; or some moment from Bathsheba’s viewpoint that shows her neighborliness actually becoming a deeper trust…I don’t really approach this as a super-steamy ship but feel free to try to convince me there was some UST on a level that Hardy didn’t indulge in, or give me something in bed from the honeymoon period if that’s your thing (Would she have been pleasantly surprised by him, if Troy was not the most considerate partner? Did she have to take some control for not being the virgin?).
One AU scenario I wondered about: When Bathsheba has that talk with Gabriel (in chapter 51) about whether she should commit herself to Boldwood, and admits to herself after that she’d wanted him to give some indication he’d still be willing to marry her, I wonder how things would have gone around then if their mutual wanting had just slipped out…because wouldn’t it be more of a forbidden or at least ill-timed desire, considering Gabriel’s logic of a more dutiful commitment not being such a disrespect to her missing husband, and with the risk of the two of them driving Boldwood off the deep end? Or what might have happened if Gabriel had overheard the way Boldwood intimidated her into promising herself to him at the party? (Hardy handles his ~madness~ with some degree of sympathy, but feel free to treat Boldwood as just a jealous creep if that’s your angle, especially since I can’t imagine Gabriel being very sympathetic to him at that point.)
My one annoyingly lectury fandom-specific do-not-want: Please, please do not imply that Gabriel only reconsiders leaving at the end because of the marriage possibility. In the novel he clearly thinks twice about it just because of how much it upsets Bathsheba, but multiple adaptations screw this up.
The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
Peter McVries, Ray Garraty
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Oh, this disastrous OTP of mine…I always felt that Ray’s cold reaction to Pete popping the handjob question came from being hurt that Pete was basically making light of how close they were by offering what was either a total joke or something that would feel desperate and impersonal (he didn’t want him to do it in that way). It’s a very paradoxical ship in my mind, because it takes the intensity of the situation for this ruthless love to form between them, but because of their inability to express any of it in this vacuum the only sincere thing is the acknowledgment that any future involving both of them is impossible.
If you’re only interested in focusing on them as a friendship I would still be very happy, and I’m hardly demanding anything sexual; even though strange things do happen on the walk I would prefer nothing to get physical between them unless it happens outside of that situation. But in my mind Ray absolutely has some self-destructive anxiety about his masculinity/sexuality, and I’d like to see that at least not contradicted if it’s not a theme you’re going for.
Since we’re never in Pete’s head, it would be great to get anything detailing how his initial distance from Ray quickly erodes into the protectiveness he obviously can’t help over him, if there’s a spark of empathy there even before the first time Ray saves him, or what he’s really thinking or trying to say at some of his more cynical and cryptic moments. I wonder what it was that Parker said to him to imply he thought he and Ray were “queer for each other” and how this apparently was covered without McVries feeling the need to deny it?
I’d love an AU in which some revolt or rescue does manage to at least stave off danger for a time - some situation where there’s no real hope they won’t be found and killed but gives them time to interact outside of the rules, even if much of that amounts to passing out while huddled together, would be a nice bittersweet twist - but if you wanted to write a successful coup actually saving their lives and stopping the walk, I would love to see how their relationship remains in the aftermath; maybe Ray ends up staying with his girlfriend and they only meet up every once in a while because they share this traumatizing thing, and they have an essential but troubled friendship (and maybe they end up fucking a couple times but don’t really talk about it).
In the realm of more absolute alternate universes, I’m eager if it’s keeping intact the angst and the masculine insecurity and the very teenage conversations and McVries being such a defeated self-punishing sourpuss that his sweetness towards Ray feels like a small miracle. A bigoted boarding school atmosphere, an aggressive correctional camp, anything where a compulsive make-out might happen in the bunks or the showers and then be stiffly denied later on sounds like a backdrop I’d love for these boys if you want to do something bleak-but-not-as-mortally-bleak.
I prefer to think of McVries as having complicated depression that doesn’t just stem from girlfriend probems; I’d prefer you mention the incident with Priscilla as little as possible, but any focus on Pete’s scar is totally fine.