RarePair Letter 2015

[rosedamask]

Dear RarePair Author,

First of all, you’re a glorious human being for offering any of these pairings - I already have complete trust in your taste and talent and judgement, and I’m absolutely sure that I’ll love whatever you end up writing. I'm
rosedamask on DW and LJ/
damask_and_dark on AO3, if you'd like to do some more reading around, but this letter is going to get absurdly long (oh god it’s over 5k), so if you want to just run off and start writing now, go for it. I'm really omnivorous as a reader with no real triggers to speak of, and I'm really easy for these ships, so if you’d like to stay for the Director’s Cut on why I requested them, that’s fabulous, but if you already have something in mind, that’s equally fabulous. So, without further ado, here is my (ridiculously long) letter - written with the best efforts to keep things from getting too Wall of Text.

General

Likes:
fics of all ratings, gen/het/slash/femslash, women in power, falling in love, falling from grace, sex with a focus on characterisation, seduction, kink, surprising attractions, distinctive/atmospheric settings, period detail, fairytales and mythology, supernatural elements (if the canon lends itself to them), allusions and homages to literature, character introspection, domesticity (whether it’s a mundane home or something more bizarre), affection, banter, characters knowing each other well (in either a well-worn friendship way or a more devious and Machiavellian way), schemes and intrigues, master/apprentice relationships, characters defying conventions or having complex feelings about what their societies expect from them.

Dislikes:
A/B/O, relationships where one character thinks of the other as being wholly their inferior, rape/noncon, mundane AUs for weird canons, extreme humiliation/degradation in kink.

Hannibal (TV)
(Abigail Hobbs/Bedelia du Maurier)

Abigail Hobbs/Bedelia du Maurier:

I'm bringing this one back from my ShipSwap letter, because the first few episodes of season three have done NOTHING to alleviate my inclinations towards Abigail/Bedelia as a not-quite-crackship. Actually seeing Bedelia's past and the aftereffects of Hannibal's persuasion was terrible and wonderful, and also really gratifying from a "kindred spirits identified" femslash perspective - I mean, you’ve got Hannibal using the exact same lines he used on Abigail, and Bedelia becomes such a frighteningly perfect photo negative of Abigail, when all her icy control begins to fissure. There's so much untapped potential in a meeting between Abigail and Bedelia, and I'm really sad it didn't happen in the world of the show - so yes, I'd love to see absolutely anything that finally brings them together, and any scenarios you can come up with for them would make me ridiculously happy.

Prompt-wise, I'd especially love an AU ending to season two where Hannibal left for Europe with Abigail and Bedelia, and the women find themselves turning to each other in their gilded murder cage. Or maybe something where ghost!Abigail takes a break from hanging around cathedrals with Will and goes to check in on Hannibal and Bedelia, or even an AU where Bedelia didn't retire and became one of Abigail's psychiatrists, following the death of Garrett Jacob Hobbs. But honestly, anything to bring them in the same room together would be wonderful, and I'd be beyond fascinated to see how things might play out between them however they meet. They're both so clever and challenging and confrontational with their penchants for manipulation and their approach to the world, yet with so much darkness and ambiguity hanging over them and so much that they keep hidden from everyone else, and I'd love to read anything that gives a taste of what they might have to say each other.

On one level, I could see them having a very headily suspenseful, Hitchcockian kind of courtship where they're both on guard around each other, constantly dancing around the edges of their pasts and wondering what they could be to each other (as fellow victims of manipulation, or as fellow killers, or anything in between), and that would be total catnip for me. And yet when all the tower-climbing is over and done with, I think they could understand each other in a way the no one else ever has, because they're just so beautifully matched when it comes to their fascination with and scars from their involvement with Hannibal Lecter. Beyond that, they're also both women who define and protect themselves through their distance and reserve, and I'd absolutely love any fic where they eventually figure out that they can be allies, that they can recognise their own ambiguities in each other and find a way of relating through the way that both their lives have been overshadowed by the arts of persuasive murder. And if they got to the point where they realised that underneath all the masks and the mysteries, there's something that binds them together, then I would devour that like noiresque femslash candy. In a nutshell, ALL THE ABIGAIL/BEDELIA would be a beautiful thing, and I'm all yours for however you want to do it.

Crossovers (Shakespeare)
(Lady Macbeth/Goneril, Lady Macbeth/Ophelia, Ophelia/Titania, Ophelia/Juliet Capulet)

Lady Macbeth (Macbeth)/Goneril (King Lear):

I think Goneril might actually be my favourite character in King Lear, though I love all the daughters' storylines - I'm always really intrigued by how the weight of life as the daughter of Lear seems to hang heaviest over her, as his eldest child, and by the all the ways she tries to carry this burden throughout the play. She's hardened and ruthless, yet there's so many hints of fear and bitterness and resignation when it comes to her dealing with her father's penchants for mind games and with her having the threat of debasement held over her head all the time, and I've always felt like there was a lot of potential for emotional nuance in her eternal wariness and her desperation to have someone on her side. So, in light of this, I'd be really fascinated to see how her pragmatism and ambition might complement that of Lady Macbeth. Any kind of handwavey alternate history fic that explores some kind of alliance between Lady Macbeth's Scotland and Goneril's Albany would be grand, as would any kind of more radical AU that gets them in the same universe as each other, however you’re moved (Macbeth and King Lear both seem to attract lots of apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic stagings - maybe something in dystopian AU where they're queens of the ashes together?). Basically, I'd just really like to see Goneril and Lady Macbeth effectively meeting their match when it comes to ruthlessly competent yet psychologically complex queendom, and if they get to take over the world/small parts of a tiny wet island together and femslash it up in the process, I am 1000000% here for it.

I tend to really enjoy dark power couples in all their incarnations, and though I dearly love Macbeth/Lady Macbeth in that regard, I feel like Goneril/Lady Macbeth could also embody this dynamic beautifully. They both seem so deeply dependent on the realisations of all their keen, glittering ambitions as a way of attaining emotional fulfilment or being able to tell themselves that they’ve received their dues in life, and I’d love to see anything that looks at the kind of "grac'd palace" they might preside over if they ever got the chance to team up. But I also love how the sharp edges of their characters are offset by the glimpses of pain and thwarted yearning, so I’d be equally excited by anything that explores the kind of understanding they could come to together as far as their parallel would-be-queen crises of subjectivity are concerned. For Goneril, her assertions of power in Albany seem very much a desperate grab for control over something in her life, or a way of proving to herself that all of Lear’s fatherly manipulations can’t wholly strip her of her worth in life or life of its whole worth to her, so I'd be really intrigued by what she might make of Lady Macbeth's more darkly rapturous insistence on "sovereign sway." On the one hand, Lady Macbeth's calling on "spirits that tend on mortal thoughts" and her cravings for everyone to be "the same in act and valour" as they are in their hearts seems to mirror a lot of what Goneril found attractive in Edmund, but I think Lady Macbeth would also be able to understand her on a whole other level ("Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done't" - oh maaaaaan), and I’d love to see how that kind of dynamic might work. tl;dr Goneril could use someone on her wavelength and on her side, is what basically I'm saying with this prompt, and you write any of this happening with Lady Macbeth, I'll love it forever, so I'm wide open for anywhere you'd like to take this.

Lady Macbeth (Macbeth)/Ophelia (Hamlet):

I know this is beyond self-indulgent crackshipping, and arbitrarily informed by saying "welp, I can hypothetically throw any of my favourite Shakespeare ladies together for crossover requests," but... I actually do think the fic for this could be absolutely amazing, if you're inspired to write it, so I'm going ahead and putting this out there. For me, a lot of the power in Ophelia's storyline comes from the way she can only reveal her malcontention with society and its constraints in the extremity of her alleged madness (whether it's the genuine unravelling of her character or a striking kind of political performance or something in between), in ways that could be really complementary to Lady Macbeth's renunciation of humanity and her subsequent torment. So although Ophelia’s kind of been absorbed into literary culture as a symbol of fragile, blighted innocence, I think she and Lady Macbeth could be particularly fascinating together, as a study in women who’ve pushed against the boundaries of acceptable femininity and who’ve both found themselves on the cutting edge of human existence.

Ophelia chooses a mermaid's waters as her final native element, Lady Macbeth asks for murderous spirits to turn her milk to gall, and both of them get frozen in these supernaturally-tinged moments of abdication from their plays' human worlds - but in their scenes of sleepwalking/madness, both of them are plagued by their knowledge that "we know what we are, but know not what we may be," so if you'd like to write anything where they get chance to put their uneasy minds together, I'd LOVE to read it. Maybe in an AU timeline, Ophelia is sent to the Scottish court at around the time Laertes is in France, and she gets some kind of Corrupt the Cutie arc when Lady Macbeth realises she's the perfect audience for her "look the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't" pro-tips. (And if so, how does that compare to the way Ophelia has to perform at the Danish court? Is it just as terrible, or does Lady Macbeth's urgings toward duplicity help her actually grasp the things she wants, for once?) Or maybe Claudius and Gertrude try to ship a mad Ophelia towards England like Hamlet before her, only for her to wash up on the shores of Lady Macbeth’s Scotland - and for Lady Macbeth to find herself a sibyl/Foolesque voice of conscience in the meads. (Hey, if the trailer’s anything to go by, Marion Cotillard's Lady Macbeth seems to spend a lot of her time wandering around in Pre-Raphaelite fields, so it could work!) Like I say, I'm really open for anything with these two. Courtly intrigue and prophecies, madness and guilt, "affliction, passion, hell itself," old men with so much blood in them and all the ways Ophelia and Lady Macbeth try to deal with the stains they leave behind - it's all super relevant to my iddy Shakespearian interests, and you’d be amazing for going there with this ridiculous prompt, so I’m 10000% sure that I'll love anything you come up with for this pairing. <3

Ophelia (Hamlet)/Titania (A Midsummer Night’s Dream):

Okay, this feels like another totally self-indulgent request (~follow for more soft floral trippy angst~), but: I love how the fairy world of A Midsummer Night's Dream seems to move effortlessly from the beautiful and the disquieting, especially in relation to their interventions with the mortal world, and I would be absolutely fascinated to see what it might look like if crossed over with a tragic universe like Hamlet's Elsinore. And I'd REALLY love something where Ophelia's storyline is interwoven with this - especially if it involves Titania finding another worthy votaress of her order, or otherwise taking Ophelia as a favourite. Ophelia's madness as something partially inspired by elixirs from a fairy mistress, or visions of another world, her death scene AUed as a fairy abduction, flowers from fairy revels in Elsinore - seriously, anything for these two would be gorgeous.

The poetic iconographies of Titania and Ophelia are so beautifully matched, with the lushness of Titania’s bower given just a bit edge with the Philomel lullabies and snakes underfoot, and Ophelia masking her thoughts and affliction in song and petals - I’d love to see something where the alleged "prettiness" of Ophelia’s flower-scattering days is given some darker, more forceful overtones of magical weirdness, and I’d especially love it if this occurred through a bond with the queen of night-rule herself. Thinking of Ophelia’s story in parallel to that of Hamlet, I'd just be really fascinated to see anything where Ophelia is likewise transformed by supernatural encounter with a creature that lives in "darkness like a dream," and if Titania gets a changeling to match the boy she lost to Oberon, so much the better, because I'm 100000% here for all variants on the themes of femslash and magical queens. Titania makes such a glorious fairy queen, yet I particularly love her when we hear little hints of how she loved the mother of the changeling boy - it's so gorgeously tender and in some ways very human, yet also so intriguingly framed by the idea of votaresses and orders, and I'd really love to see any fic that explored her through that lens. It could be as AU/handwavey of Ophelia's death as you'd like, or maybe be something openly tragic with Titania mourning another votaress and reflecting on what it means to be the supernatural party in these connections, and either would be fantastic - I'd just really love to see anything with these two together, and any way you want to go with this would be amazing.

Ophelia (Hamlet)/Juliet Capulet (Romeo and Juliet):

This is very much Shakespeare Crossover Femslash Requests: The Tragic Maidens Who Deserved Better From Life Edition. (Although thinking about it that way makes me sad that I ran out of nomination space before getting Cordelia in the mix.) Because I love Ophelia and Juliet as two somewhat wary romantics who tried so hard to persevere, despite being constantly batted around by others' politics, and I'd love to see what might come of them being thrown together. They're both so bright and passionate, even when they’re tangled up in all the trapping of tragedy, and I think they could contrast and complement each other in some really fascinating ways.

I could definitely see Juliet’s dreamy, philosophical qualities being attractive to Ophelia, with her tendencies towards "music vows," and I'd be really curious as to what Juliet would make of Ophelia. Their characters are both so shaped by their conflicting doubts and desperations when it comes to love (Juliet's "swear not by the moon" manifesto/Hamlet's "doubt thou the stars are fire..." poem to Ophelia), and they’re also both girls who have to play the pawn to their families in increasingly awful ways, and I think anything that looked at how they might relate to each other on those levels would be gorgeous. Ophelia seems to be the more cautious and introverted of the two, the more painfully aware of the limits of pawndom and the more likely to champion a delicate approach to courtly machinations, but there’s so much defiance and pain that comes out in her "mad" scenes, and I'd love to see some of that explored next to the more open kind of quickness and fieriness that we in Juliet. So, do they have a wildly AU arranged marriage that actually works out, as they get to know each other and overcome all their scepticisms together? Or do they meet at some court revel or otherwise by chance, and form a much more perilous kind of attachment? If so, does Juliet's deviousness and Ophelia's caution see them through, or does Juliet still have cause to say "I should kill thee with much cherishing"? Or does entirely different transpire between them? Anything for these two would be lovely, and I love all that's dark and bright in their characters, so definitely take this prompt any way you'd like, and I'll be completely thrilled. :D

Mad Max
(Furiosa/The Splendid Angharad, The Valkyrie/The Splendid Angharad, The Dag/The Valkyrie, The Dag/Cheedo, Nux/Capable)

Furiosa/Angharad:

Furiosa and Angharad had one of the most intriguing relationships in the entire film, for me, and I would really love to see either pre-movie fic that looked at the makings of the rebellion from a tragic femslash perspective, or any kind of Angharad Lives AU fic that explores what they might do together after they've stormed the Citadel and have the chance to salvage their own corner of the world. Because I love Furiosa's quiet intensity and the desperation for redemption that she keeps simmering away even as she’s clawing her way to the top of a kingdom of bones, and I especially love this in contrast to Angharad;s white-hot defiance and the keen, visionary qualities that underscore her role as the figurehead of rebellion. Basically, I feel like all Furiosa's heavily-armoured heartsickness and longing for long agency has the potential to be beautifully offset by the all the bright, beatific intensity of Angharad, and I'd be so excited by any fic that draws out their relationship.

For canon compliant fic, I’d be completely here for anything that explores their pre-escape relationship. As far as the wives go, Angharad seems to be one with the most direct relationship with Furiosa in the film, but how did they get to know each other? What does Furiosa teach Angharad about the world beyond the Citadel, or surviving life under the rule of Immortan Joe, and how does her bitterly-earned pragmatic knowledge play off against Angharad's education from Miss Giddy and her fierce questioning of "who killed the world"? Did anything ever happen between them pre-escape, or was it all on the level of not-quite-crushed yearning, with Furiosa telling herself that it isn't safe to even think about anyone that way until they were far away in the Green Place? And, when it came to hatching the escape plot itself, what part did their relationship to each other play in how things unfolded? Out of all the wives, it's always Angharad that Furiosa addresses up until her death, so is there a measure of intimacy involved for Furiosa, taking part in Angharad's plans? What would being loved by Furiosa mean to Angharad, in her determination to have her human value be known and respected and to no longer be treated as an object?

Furiosa finding herself slowly (and perhaps painfully) reawakened by Angharad's uncompromising idealism is just total id candy to me, so pre-movie fic exploring those aspects of their relationship and looking at Furiosa as an ally to the still-captive Angharad would be wonderful. But I'd also love to see literally any kind of Angharad Lives AU, and I'd be equally here for fic that explores how their relationship might have developed, had Angharad survived and been there for the return to the Citadel. As Imperator, Furiosa is a natural leader of the new regime in the Citadel, but Angharad just glows with queenliness, and since she's the most-revered wife of Immortan Joe, I also wonder whether she has a legendary status of her own with the people at large - so, what are they going to do together in this new world they're building, and what’s the balance of power between them? Does Angharad stay as the figurehead of the rebellion, with Furiosa wanting to step back into the shadows as her enforcer? If so, how does Angharad deal with what being raised up on what is (to a certain extent) another pedestal - would it be a source of contention between herself and Furiosa, or would they make it work? Or, do they have equal partnership/some kind of symbolic co-queen marriage, with Angharad's son raised as non-warlord heir? Basically, any kind of fix-it fic where Angharad gets a taste of what she fought so hard for would be sublime, and if she gets to enjoy it at Furiosa’s side, that would make me very happy, so go wherever you want with this, because FURIOSA/ANGHARAD HELL YES. :D

Angharad/The Valkyrie:

Buuut, moving beyond Angharad with Furiosa, I also think any kind of Valkyrie and Angharad Live AU where they’re paired together could be absolutely amazing. Angharad just has so much faith in the Green Place and the Many Mothers, and I'd love to see anything where she interacts with the women of Vuvalini - especially any fic that looks at how she might have bonded with Valkyrie in particular. Because despite the vast differences in their respective worlds, I'm really fascinated by how they seem to occupy similar positions in their communities, and the ways they parallel each other in their construction of their survivalist personas.

As the leader of the wives, Angharad's power often seems to come from her readiness to weaponise her own vulnerability, and turn the dynamics of her subjugation into something destructive to her oppressors - like when she shields Furiosa from Immortan Joe, and uses the commodification of her pregnant body to her own advantage. And with Valkyrie, I feel like there’s a kind of similarly steely subversion of the princess-in-the-tower trope with her hanging out as bait up in the Vuvalini territory. In some ways her life is framed as being very opposite to Angharad's, with her desert-weathered Action Girl character design providing such an obvious visual contrast to the white-gowned celestialness of Angharad, but I find it really intriguing that Valkyrie is nevertheless a woman who makes choices similar to those that Angharad makes in her bids for freedom, and I'd be fascinated by anything that featured them together.

If Angharad's there with the rest of the wives when Furiosa finds what remains of the Many Mothers, does Valkyrie trace the scars on her face and recognise a kindred spirit while the rest of the women are admiring the softness of Dag and Cheedo's skin? Does Angharad have any moments of disillusionment parallel to Dag’s "thought somehow you girls were above all that," or is she thrilled when Valkyrie offers to teach her how to be a crackshot? If Angharad steps up as the figurehead for the wives’ rebellion, then does the Valkyrie do something similar for the Vuvalini? When she's done with the "siren song" routine, she is the first to go down and effectively act as ambassador to visitors who aren’t overtly hostile, after all - so does she maybe get together with Angharad as part of a political allegiance between the Citadel and the Many Mothers? Also, at this point I just wanted to throw it out there that I love all the allusions to Norse mythology in this movie, so if you wanted to do anything with Angharad as the Freja to Valkyrie’s... well, valkyrie, GO FOR IT.

The Dag/The Valkyrie:

Looking at The Valkyrie's "siren song" from another angle, I’d also love to see anything with her and The Dag. The Dag’s so captivating as a kind of otherworldly presence among the wives, with a weird sort of grace and brutality underlining how she holds herself and how she behaves throughout the film, and I think Valkyrie could also mirror her in some really fascinating ways. They’re both women who are given a kind of far-sighted, oracular role in their communities, with Valkyrie keeping lookout for the Vuvalini, and Dag's cryptic observations giving a strangely preternatural undertone to her interactions with the rest of the wives ("Angharad, is that just the wind, or is that a furious vexation?"), so if you'd like to write any kind of magic and weird/mythologically shaded femslash for Mad Max, I'd love to see something that plays with this aspect of their characterisation. Has Dag ever had any premonitions about finding herself a Valkyrie, and promptly unnerved Valkyrie by sharing them as soon as they meet for real? Did they take a watch together on the night before they rode out on the bikes, and what bizarre stories might they have for each other? If Valkyrie lived to see the return to the Citadel, would she and Dag work together as lookouts, and keep their new world protected as siren and prophetess (and, y'know, women who are really handy in a fight and who won't take any fucking around from anyone)?

On an earthier level, I'm also really intrigued by the way that Dag seems to have the most intense/developed relationship with the Green Place and the Many Mothers out of all the surviving wives, and I'd by completely down for any kind of missing scene or Valkyrie Lives AU that has her learning more about the Vuvalini from Valkyrie. I noticed that she and Valkyrie are sharing a bike when they set out to cross the dried ocean, and that Dag's got herself some Vuvalini scarves, so I'd especially love anything that builds on those details, either telling the story of how they prepared for the journey together and how Dag reacted to sharing this taste of the Vuvalini life with Valkyrie, or as a post-canon AU where Dag develops a taste for biking in lots of glorious black drapery and gets herself a girlfriend who’ll gladly indulge this propensity with her. :DD

The Dag/Cheedo:

As far as wives femslash goes, I was particularly intrigued by Dag/Cheedo, just because they’re so often stood together in the film and seem to have some kind of especially poignant unspoken bond - the easy physical intimacy, the co-ordinated gloves, the way they’re like night and day in terms of how they deal with the world but there's never any doubt how much they care for each other - and I'd love to see anything that elaborates on this, or showed more of them being fabulous desert girlfriends together. I love Cheedo's whole arc in the film, where you can see her figuring out how she’s going to survive in the world, wondering whether it’s better to be a live thing or a dead human after she loses Angharad, and slowly learning to let her own cunning and cleverness be her shelter, rather than relying on Joe to keep her as his "treasure" - and I love how Dag's there for her through all of it. Thinking a bit more about Dag's eerie and lovely mix of harshness and grace, I feel like the scene with she’s telling Cheedo "wring your hands and tear your hair, but you’re not going back to him" is a really gorgeous example of that, with the way she drapes herself over Cheedo in protection/solidarity even as she wrestling her back towards the War Rig. Basically, I just really love the interplay between gentleness and intensity that comes across in their interactions with each other, and I'd be so excited for a more sustained look at their relationship in fic, whether it's looking at the bond they forge in Joe's harem or post-movie fic that tells us what they might be doing in the Citadel together.

For pre-movie fic, one of things I'd really love to see for this pairing is anything that just shows Dag being won over by Cheedo, or explores how their relationship began. Was Dag's admiration/affection for Cheedo's still mostly-unhardened heart the driving force behind their film bond, or did Cheedo ever hero-worship Dag for her outspokenness and ferocity? Did Cheedo's readiness to embrace people mean that she was completely undeterred by the Dag's outsiderness, and did she worm her way into Dag's heart with these overtures of friendship, or was Dag just naturally fascinated by all Cheedo's layers of sweetness and complexity, falling for her after her lots of close, intent observation? When they’re not studying with Miss Giddy, do the wives have any games they play to pass the time in Joe's harem, and has Dag ever noticed Cheedo's trickstery tendencies before they escaped? What's become of their relationship, now they’re back in the Citadel? Does Cheedo come to help with the seeds, or raising Not Warlord Jr? Does Dag still hover around Cheedo like a guardian wraith, even though Cheedo gets better and better at handling herself with each passing day? Do they work together as Furiosa's enforcers and develop a kind of good cop/bad cop dynamic, quashing any disgruntled War Boy coup d'états or hostile invasions with the unstoppable combination of Cheedo's winsome surface fragility and Dag’s oddball aggression? Literally any Cheedo/Dag would be glorious, and I'm really open for anything focused on their relationship - just give me more of Cheedo growing strong and Dag being Dag, and I'll love it. :D

Capable/Nux:

Aagh, Nux and Capable were so blisteringly precious on-screen that I feel as though I can't really add anything meaningful to say here. The delicacy of their body language together, Capabl'’s instant tenderness when she goes to get a moment to herself (to grieve for Angharad as much as to fix the War Rig?) and finds an equally devastated War Boy, how gently and naturally she shows Nux a better alternative to Immortan Joe’s toxic kamikaze cult, and how heartbreakingly eager Nux is to serve her and the wives after switching sides... everything about them was basically the loveliest. Trying to be more helpful with prompts, instead of just flailing and yelling "MOAR NUXABLE PLS" - for canon-compliant fic, I'd love to read your take on any missing scenes between these two, especially looking at what happened after the bit we saw from their "I'd say it was your manifest destiny not to" conversation, or what they talked about when they were snuggling under the stars with the Vuvalini crew. Did Capable get chance to share any treasures from her education with Nux, and distract him from thoughts of Valhalla by singing to him/sharing other myths or stories with him/telling him more about what the earth was like before it was killed (and what it will be again, if she and the wives have anything to do with it)? Or did she ask Nux to tell her more about his life as a War Boy, or let him help her with fixing the War Rig and listen to stories of what kind of wrecks he's got into on previous drives?

Following up on that last thought, I love how Capable is often framed as the heart and the hands of the rebellion, with her and Toast as the two most battle-comfortable and mechanically savvy wives, and I'd be really intrigued by anything that explored how this affinity with the trappings of wardom might be at play in her relationship with Nux. Obviously she’s the most overtly dominant/protective figure in that relationship, and Nux is glorious woobie material on so many levels, but he’s also fought so hard to distinguish himself in the culture of the War Boys, and I'd love to know more about what Capable makes of that. Is it something they talk about, in one of their unseen moments together, and does Capable still find something to admire in how Nux has managed to survive so long? In a Nux Lives AU, would Capable spend a lot of time hanging around the War Boys parts of the Citadel, being adorably begoggled and interested in learning the mechanics of their battle-centric old lifestyle even though she hangs onto her principles of creation over violence? Parallel to this, I'd also love to see more of Nux getting to share some of Capable's world, and for a Nux Lives AU, any scenes of Citadel domesticity with Nux/Capable hanging out with books and pianos would be completely adored.

Aside from post-rebellion Citadel-based Nux Lives AU scenarios, a terrible part of me would also be fascinated by any kind of AU timelines where Nux was marginally more successful in attempting to bring back some of the wives, and ended up trying to return to the Citadel with Capable after either of their encounters in the War Rig. Would Capable be able to change his mind on the road, or otherwise manoeuvre them away from the rest of Joe's crew, or would she be returned to Immortan Joe only for her challenging of the cult to start really germinating in Nux's mind once they’re back, making them plot some other kind of rebellion together? (Although if you did go with a "Capable is actually taken back to Immortan Joe" scenario, I'd like the focus to be on Nux and Capable's growing conspiracy, rather than just unalleviated angst/horror with Capable back in the harem.) Also, throwing this out there as another prompt, I love the weird echoes of courtly love/chivalric Arthurian romance that come through in Nux's devotion to Capable (he even gets to wear that white strip from what I’m assuming is her dress wrapped around his wrist!). So, I’d slightly guiltily love to see any fic that plays around with that. Maybe Capable has some medieval court literature that's miraculously survived the apocalypse, and it's a kind of roleplaying thing for them, with Capable giving Nux more strips from her dress to wear as favours, or - as a more ridiculously iddy, trope-based prompt - I’d also be really down for a full-on medieval Nux/Capable AU. Nux and Capable are just total darlings whatever universe they’re in, though, and I'll honestly love anything you come up with for them, so go wild. <3

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Thank you so much for reading, and for writing these characters - I really hope there's something here that you'll enjoy working on, and that you have a fabulous RarePair exchange in general. See you on the other side!