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damkiannaThanks so much for signing up for Yuletide, author! I'll be upfront: this letter is very long. I've done my best to organize it and make it as readable as possible, but a) you absolutely do not have to read the whole thing, and indeed, b) you don't have to read it AT ALL. I love all my fandoms equally and have no triggers or hard DNWs—feel free to close out right now and give me anything you please! This is all extra info that's only here to be helpful to you; if you don't need or want it, then SKIP IT. No worries!
If you like long letters, then I'm still a little sorry about this—but knock yourself out. :D I haven't been very active this year, oops, but I'm on the AO3 as Damkianna, crosspost to LJ/DW as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
damkianna/damkianna, and am intermittently on Tumblr as ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
damkianna. Feel free to explore my movies tag, my books tag, and my TV shows tag if you're interested in more of me yammering about my opinions. Though after you've looked through this letter, I struggle to imagine you will be! /o\
Other letters I've written can be found in my Yuletide tag, and also in my rarewomen/rarelywritten tag. If there's a prompt in one of those that you love for a fandom I'm asking for this year, feel free to run with it even if I didn't repeat the prompt here!
In General | Banlieue 13 (movies) | Dark Matter (TV)
The Huntsman (movies) | Mara: Daughter of the Nile | Push (2009)
I'm 100% serious about having no hard DNWs. If there's anything in particular you've been DYING to write for any of these fandoms but have been hesitant about making into a gift for someone, THIS IS YOUR MOMENT. \o/
With that out of the way, though, I'll admit that I don't usually prompt for works with a lot of suffering and zero light at the end of the tunnel. Canon-typical violence and/or darkness is completely fine—I just don't personally get a lot out of exceeding those levels, most of the time. 100% bleak and terrible is not my Yuletide jam (though 100% creepy totally can be, depending on the fandom).
But aside from that caveat, I'm flexible! I am absolutely interested in receiving any/all/any combination of the following:
• shipfic! I multiship in most of my fandoms and am equally here for m/m, f/f, het, and poly of any configuration. Pretty much any ship you ship can sail in my gift; if I have any exceptions to this rule in a fandom, I'll note them in that fandom's section.
• gen! I love introspection, missing scenes, day-in-the-life, casefic, friendship fic ... I'm interested in my requested characters in any and all platonic combinations AND by themselves, so anything you'd like to write about any of them where romantic developments are not involved would be awesome! (And, per the rules, here is your explicit permission statement: you do NOT have to include all of my requested characters in my gift. Any, all, or any combination is fine by me!)
• AUs! All kinds of AUs, AUs where one or several canonical choices are made differently and/or random chance intervenes or AUs where everyone is a FIGHTER PILOT or a REBEL MAGE or it is all suddenly STEAMPUNK. I will 100% prompt for canonical scenarios, and some canonical settings are harder to set aside than others, but I'm here for changing things up!
• tropes and clichés! Soulmarks? Fake dating? The end of the world? A time loop? *grabby hands* YES GOOD. Everyone has superpowers! Wingfic! Arranged marriage! STRAIGHT-UP HURT/COMFORT. Nothing can be done too many times or in too many different ways, IMO, and gen takes on any of these things would be just as awesome as shippy takes.
• experimentation! Anything you might otherwise worry is too gimmicky or weird—IT IS NOT TOO GIMMICKY FOR ME. Ten interlinked drabbles? A five-things fic? Interactive fiction, fictional documentation, epistolary fic? YES PLEASE. First or second person? Present tense—or future, or past conditional? Script format? I'M IN. Be my guest!
I like long fic and short fic, plotty fic and introspective fic, domestic fic and spooky fic; fic that could be spliced right into canon and fic that takes the characters in a totally new direction; fic about people who are kind of awful and fic about people who are kind of great, and fic about people who are both at once. OCs and worldbuilding are totally welcome, as are alternate character interpretations or fix-its, pre-canon backstory or post-canon futurefic. SERIOUSLY, HAVE A BLAST. That's all I really ask. :D (And while you aren't supposed to deanon yourself, and if assigned to me are technically intended to ask the mods any questions you may have—let me just take this moment to say anon comments are on.)
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These movies are my happy place and I adore them! I love the near-future setting, the edge of dystopia, just as much as I love the way the characters come together in the face of those dystopian elements to work together and make things better—and I love Damien's stubbornness, Leïto's determination, Lola's strength, and Tao's attitude. So anything about any of these characters would be great! Pre-canon backstory for any of them, Damien in police training or Leïto and Lola when the wall first went up, how Tao rose through the ranks of her gang; missing scenes or alternate perspectives on canon events; post-canon Damien/Leïto or Damien/Lola or anybody/Tao. A thousand words where all this is happening IN SPACE. Anything!
I've received absolutely lovely gifts in this fandom already, but apparently that only makes me greedier. /o\ For me, these movies strike precisely the right balance between acknowledging all the ways in which people can be awful to each other and highlighting + valorizing all the ways in which people can be wonderful to each other—even people who have no reason to be wonderful to each other, even people you wouldn't necessarily expect to be wonderful to other people. The first movie is a little more subtle about this where the second feels free to drop an anvil, but that anvil speaks to my id so hard that I've never minded having it land on me. :D
Oh, Damien! I love Damien as the bulldog, his commitment to justice in the abstract so strong that it's capable of overriding his commitment to the police as a concrete institution—and so strong that it's capable of getting him to go undercover in terrible wigs and neon-pink dresses with ass windows. :D I also love his belief and trust in his superiors, that he almost makes an awful mistake because of that; people trying their best and still fucking up, and then dealing with it, is like catnip to me. CATNIP. So please tell me anything you like about Damien:
• pre-canon! Why did Damien decide to become a cop, and when? What is police training like, in the universe of B13? Did his fellow trainees like Damien? Hate him? Has he done other amazing/ridiculous undercover work?
• mid-canon! And by that I mean any sort of missing scene from either movie, or anything set between them. What was Damien thinking when he went undercover in the prison—when he first met Leïto, when Leïto cuffed him to that steering wheel? Where was he between movies, and what sequence of events kept him away from B13? Why did he still have a working number for Leïto in B13:U, and just how confident was he that Leïto would come for him?
• post-canon! Feel free to write me something post-B13 that ignores B13:U—Damien really does get put in charge of getting the wall taken down, and Leïto and Lola agree to help him get it right! Or something post-B13:U about reconstruction, the banlieue starting with a clean slate: does Damien stick with the police, after everything—but get himself assigned to the new station going up in B13? Does he move to B13 and take on a different role?
• Or anything else you like. Fork-in-the-road AU: what if Damien had lived in B13, too? Or if he had worked in the B13 station—he'd never have let another cop give Lola to Taha without kicking up a fuss, even a superior officer. Setting AU: Damien is imperial navy, Leïto is a pirate? :D
• Or shipfic! Adding Damien/Leïto to any prompt is 100% okay (seriously, a thousand words of them making out on a roof = YES PLEASE), as is post-B13 Damien/Lola (does he help her with rehab and her post-Taha recovery?), or post-B13:U Damien/Tao (her mild antagonism toward him for being a cop is GOLD, okay, and I would love all the grudging friendship/grudging attraction fic as he helps with the banlieue reconstruction! :D). Damien/Leïto/Lola pining! Damien/Leïto/Lola/Tao sedoretu, in a fantasy AU where it behooves them, as the new leaders of the banlieue, to quadruple-marry! GO WILD.
Leïto! I love how closed-off Leïto is in some ways—not all that talkative, not initially willing to trust Damien—and yet how open he is in others, how deeply he cares about Lola and the banlieue, how much things matter to him. He's so tough on the outside but such an idealist on the inside, wanting the world to be better so hard, believing not only that it should be but that it can be, even after the life he must have had growing up in B13. ♥
• Anything about Leïto's backstory would be awesome! His youth in B13, his parents (if he even knew them, that is), trying to stay alive and out of trouble, out of the gangs, while keeping himself and Lola safe at the same time ... Did he learn parkour from someone else, or (apropos, given that we're talking about David Belle) did he invent it himself?
• Or any scene you particularly loved from Leïto's POV—running from Taha's guys? Crashing through Taha's skylight with that knife in his hand? Finding Lola on that roof, or getting Damien's message, or the moment the president started pressing those red buttons?
• Or anything post-canon! Setting aside B13:U for a minute, tell me Leïto's feelings about the wall coming down, or the banlieue's recovery—what does he do? What job does he get? (Does he join the police, seeing via Damien's example that there can be a place there for people who don't quite follow the rules?) Or, incorporating B13:U, how does he feel about the movie's ending? Does he expect to feel sad about agreeing that the banlieue needed to be reborn, but instead feel relieved? Or the other way around?
• Could Leïto have met Damien earlier—before the wall went up, at a club where Damien was undercover? Or a superpowers AU: Leïto is telepathic, Damien can make people tell him the truth, and Lola is pyrokinetic!
• As noted, total sucker for Damien/Leïto. :D Undercover gay, reincarnated soulmates, don't-realize-they're-dating, anything. I actually am also completely here for Leïto/Lola (though I prefer I-care-about-you-too-much + angst to anything overtly manipulative or harmful to Lola, as Leïto is so protective that I can't see him going there), or Damien/Leïto/Lola as an equilateral triangle. Or Leïto/Tao! What's their history? How do they know each other, and why does Leïto trust her as much as he does?
LOLA. Lola is so fierce and angry and so unwilling to take anybody's shit—that moment where she makes that guy eat her panties at gunpoint is so perfectly Lola to me. And it is also perfectly Lola to me that after being drugged and abused by Taha over the long term and chained up on that roof, her first instinct is still resistance—trying to fuck with his plans, to have that bomb go off when she chooses instead of when he does.
• In some ways Lola's backstory is of a piece with Leïto's, but THAT'S OKAY. Anything about their childhood together from her perspective would be lovely, and anything about her in particular—how she got that job at the grocery, what she does in her spare time, whether she likes to climb and run and jump too, even if she doesn't have Leïto's skill.
• Basically anything from Lola's POV would also be great—what she might have been thinking during that car ride to Taha's in the back seat, or as she turned the gun around on K2, or watching Damien and Leïto fight about the bomb, and tackling Damien at the end!
• And of course anything you'd like to say about her post-B13! Where was she in B13:U? What did she do between movies? It seems fair to assume she's moved out of the banlieue—where to? Is she going to school, or working (or both)? Living alone, or with a friend? Does Damien visit her, or she him?
• What might have changed if she'd seen K2 coming, or had been warned, and had gotten out of the grocery store safely? Or if she'd escaped Taha while Leïto was still in prison? ... Or in an AU where unsanctioned magic is illegal, and Lola is a hidden mage? :D
• As noted, I have no problem at all with Leïto/Lola, though it makes the most sense to me as too much affection + unrealized pining. Or with Damien/Lola, because, oh, the look on his face right after she kisses him. :D A thousand words of their first awkward-awesome date would be a delight! And of course I will never, ever get enough of Lola/Tao, NEVER—they both have such sharp edges, but Lola runs so hot and Tao so cool, and yet they have so much common ground, having grown up in the banlieue at about the same time. Anything where they even meet would be a delight!
Tao = instantaneous stars in my eyes, always. That sequence where she beats people up with her hair is ridiculous and amazing and I love it so much, sometimes I just watch it on a loop and clap. :D Everything about her is great, from how deliberately rude she is to Damien to her perfect icy confidence, and I am so intrigued by her ability to bring so many banlieue gangs together—just how many favors do they all owe her, anyway?
• Backstory for Tao would be amazing—how she got where she is, what she had to do to get there, the relationships she's forged with the other gang leaders and how she did it. How does Leïto know her? Why is she willing to help him, and to let a cop into her space on the strength of his word?
• Tell me what Tao thinks about anything canonical: about Leïto, about Damien, about how their story adds up and how they plan that assault, her perspective on what's happening outside the banlieue and on the decision to, in the end, blow it up.
• Or, of course, what happens afterward—how does she handle the end of the movie? Her gang presumably won't continue to operate the same way, but what do they do, and how does she manage the transition? What does rebuilding the banlieue involve, and what part does she play in it?
• What might have happened if they'd gotten in touch with her earlier—if Leïto had asked for her help getting Damien out of prison?—or later? Or if Tao could see the future, and knew they were coming ...
• For shipfic, seriously, I will buy Tao/anybody, because, um, TAO. Tao and Damien have such delightful surface antagonism, even though when the chips are down Tao is willing to work with him just fine; and Tao and Leïto clearly have SOME kind of prior acquaintance which I'd be more than happy for you to delve into. And, as above—Lola and Tao just in the same space for a thousand words would be a wonderful, wonderful gift!
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I realize this is kind of an odd combination of characters, so right up front: you do NOT have to get all of these people in the same story! I'm interested in any combination of them that you can make work or in any of them alone. :D I love Dark Matter for its space piracy shenanigans and found family vibe—and also for its galactic politics and potentially complex character dynamics. So! Anything from Two's affection for her crew to her creepy backstory, Three's big-brother push-pull with Five to HIS creepy backstory, Misaki's childhood closeness with Ryo to her sword-wielding stone-faced present-day self, Nyx's gradual acceptance on the crew to HER creepy backstory. Any part of this universe or these people that you'd like to explore more closely would be amazing!
This show kind of took me by surprise! I binge-watched the first season last year and enjoyed it much more than I'd expected, and then the cliffhanger KILLED me. And then Season 2 happened and oh, look, they got me again. /o\ WHATEVER, I'M FINE. I love Dark Matter for its complicated aspects AND its uncomplicated aspects—how earnestly the main characters are trying to do the right thing and how wholeheartedly they've learned to care about each other, but also all the ways they fail and things go wrong or can't be controlled despite their best efforts. So no matter what you want to focus on, fluff or sadness, affection or manipulation, it will work for me in this fandom. I will say that I'm not quite as interested in setting AUs here, unless they retain the basic crew + amnesia + wrong-side-of-the-law elements—those are just so fundamental to the characters and how they interact, for me.
TWO. If you'd told me I'd love Two even more after the second season than I did after the first, I would have told you that wasn't possible. AND YET HERE I AM. The more we learn about Portia Lin—and about Rebecca—the more intrigued I am by Two, by the differences and the similarities, what changes and what stays the same. I especially love how it highlights the way Two cares, and how much she lets it show compared to Portia's practiced indifference. ♥ So much angst and loyalty and leadership and badassery! TWO.
• Anything about any part of Two's backstory would be great! Very early Rebecca POV, on the lab or her education or her first escape, how she goes on the run and transitions into Portia; or, once she's Portia, how she ended up on the Raza—did she steal it? Was she the beginning of everything, the first crewmember, or was there another captain she displaced because she didn't care for how they ran things?
• Or something during the show! A missing scene or episode tag of any kind, first season or second season, early days or in prison or post-escape; how she feels about any of the other characters, One after his death or Three after they stop being fuckbuddies, Four at the end of S2 or Five when she tells them about the key. Six at the beginning of S2! The android, once Two learns about the hand Portia had in shaping who the android is. Anything!
• I also have ZERO problem with futurefic, if you want to take a stab at unraveling that cliffhanger—or AUing it away with a fix-it, for that matter. :D Or fork-in-the-road me from any point you like: if Six had gone to Two and explained what he'd learned about his own backstory, instead of betraying them? If Four had talked to Two before deciding to reincorporate Ryo's imprint? If Five or the android (or both) had come to Two about the simulation/the android's concerns? IF TRUFFAULT ENDED UP ON THE RUN SOMEHOW AND JOINED THE CREW. Seriously, go nuts!
• I also ship Two with just about everybody (though given that, IIRC, this season reveals that Five is sixteen, I'd prefer to keep any Five/Two as a crush/pining or otherwise abstract). One/Two (set in the past or an AU where No One Dies)? Yes! Love One's wide-eyed niceness contrasted with Two's ... Twoness. :D Two/Three? Yes! Love their loyalty issues + past fuckbuddy history + mutual insistence that it's not a big deal. (Or One/Two/Three, for that matter.) Two/Four would take a bit more work but I'm still happy to go there, and Two/Six with Six's whole loyalty-redemption-forgiveness thing sounds DELICIOUS. Two/Android, by all means! Two/Nyx, ABSOLUTELY. TWO/MISAKI HATE-UST FIGHT-FLIRTING. *waves hands*
Oh, Three. I adore Three's whole callous jackass shtick, it's so gloriously transparent! CRACK THE DOUCHEY COATING AND HE IS SQUISHY ALL THE WAY DOWN. ♥ 2.11 was an absolute goldmine—his attempts to ~drive Five away~ were so ridiculous and great, oh, my heart. /o\ S2 really, really enjoyed beating Three up and making him bleed for his crew basically every chance it got, and I loved it. :D Rest assured, I will read ALL KINDS OF THINGS about Three!
• His backstory is so tropey and I love it so much—tell me anything you like about his blissful childhood, how he coped after the loss of his parents, when exactly he started to get suspicious of Tanner and how he handled it. Did Marcus Boone intend to actually use that beacon after recovering fully/finding a cure for Sarah? Or was his apparent death + the Raza his chance to get away from Tanner permanently, and he knew it?
• Anything from during the show would also be awesome! Your favorite parts of the first season are absolutely fair game, as is anything from S2—his struggle to really forgive Six, or that moment when he was about to shoot himself in the head. What was it like to be possessed by that creepy black goo-thing? (He didn't seem to remember afterward, but does he get flashes of it later, perhaps?) What other pranks have he and Five played on each other?
• And of course anything you want to write about things that could happen later in the show—ignore the cliffhanger and any/all deaths, if you want, and give me a thousand words of a job-of-the-week, or of the beginning of the corporate war/revolution, or anything else you like! Three taking care of his guns, or acquiring a new one; hanging out with Nyx (deciding it's creepy that she knows what he's going to do before he does) or the android (awkwardly apologizing for having been almost prepared to shoot her in the head), or just on the bridge in the middle of ship's night with some booze and his thoughts.
• To be honest, I also ship Three with basically everyone. If you'd like to bring One back from the dead for this, that is a-okay with me; any job-of-the-week with grumpy flirting or saving each other or h/c would be awesome. Or linger on Three's leftover pining feelings + anger over his death, aaaa. Two/Three and soulbonding (NANITE SHENANIGANS, NEURAL LINK MALFUNCTIONS, I don't know), or accidental baby acquisition, or renewing their fuckbuddy arrangement! Three/Four that turns weird and sharp and sad once Four takes Ryo's imprint back. Three/Six, with Three's antagonism over Six's betrayal coming from a more personal place than Six had realized! :D A thousand words of the awkward beginnings of Three/Android. Three/Nyx (Three obviously has a thing for women who could kill him onehanded, y/y?)!
Oh, boy. Complicated, closed-off, angry women who engage in a lot of violence are fascinating to me, and every second Misaki is on screen is a second where I am RIVETED. She is not a nice person and there are at least a half-dozen things she's done that I really, really wish she hadn't done, and that's fascinating, too. She gives the impression of being so cool and controlled, and yet she's also obviously wrestling with a huge ugly ball of long-running emotions when it comes to Ryo and the emperorship and the future of Zairon.
• Asking for pre-canon Misaki is basically asking for any and all imperial space worldbuilding you want to do regarding Zairon, and I am SO THERE for it. That memory she shared with Ryo was oddly sweet, given everything else we've seen of her in the show—what was her childhood like? Her training? How exactly did someone who seems to be relatively young become next-in-line after Akita for captaincy of the guard? What did she think of the pre-canon events with Ryo and Hiro and their father's death?
• I would also LOVE her perspective on Hiro's time as emperor, on his mother and her scheming (which I doubt Misaki could have been COMPLETELY oblivious to, given her position in the imperial household), on Ryo's attempted coup and capture, on that awful scene in the throne room or on that conversation between Ryo and Nyx + her plans for that fight as she poisoned her blade. (Is poisoning an honorable way to kill someone? It seems unlikely, but I could be convinced—or does she no longer care?)
• Futurefic or AUs are also very welcome! Does killing Nyx do her any good—could she in fact become empress herself? Does Ryo ever find out what she did, or does she keep it secret from him forever? If he does find out, what happens—does he exile her? (Could she even end up on the Raza, having nowhere else to go?) What might her life be like, in a world where Ryo keeps the blink drive and Zairon's armies do indeed roll unstoppably through the galaxy—does she ever come to regret her decisions?
• It might not get past weird hate-UST, in a thousand words, but for the record I would happily read about Misaki/Two, Misaki/Three, Misaki/Six, or Misaki/Nyx, under basically any circumstances where you feel you can plausibly make it happen or hint at it. One-sided Misaki/Ryo is canon, and I don't mind dwelling on it one bit; however, I also wouldn't mind a mildly fluffy AU where Misaki finds herself developing a softer variety of affection for Hiro, during all that time Ryo is gone.
NYX. :C YOU WILL LIVE FOREVER IN MY HEART. I love everything about Nyx and am currently busy pretending she's totally fine with all my might—if you HAVE to break my heart with deathfic, you can, and I'll write you a typo-filled comment through my tears. /o\ ANYWAY. She delights me in a lot of the same ways Two and Three delight me: she's so tough and sharp and no-nonsense when she thinks she has to be, except underneath that she cares so deeply about Milo, tries so hard to help Devon, is so hurt and uncomfortable when Four becomes half a stranger on her without warning. NYX.
• Oh, look, more creepy backstory! I'm here for anything you want to tell me about being part of the Seers—one of many pieces of that strange huge collective computer-mind, and then getting ripped out of it and only being your own tiny self again, unable to calculate more than a few seconds ahead at a time. Nyx escaped, yes, but was there a part of her that missed that power, that clarity, that understanding? Or did she hate every moment of it? How did she end up in prison—was it a deliberate attempt to be unpredictable so the Seers couldn't find her? Or was Milo keeping them off her tail, and she knew it?
• Or anything set during the show! What are her powers like for her on a day-to-day basis? Is she hoping from the very beginning that she and Milo might be able to make a home on the Raza, or is the crew just a means to an end, and then her intentions change? She obviously loves sparring with Four, and is equally obviously discomfited by his transition partway back to Ryo—what is that like? (Does he tell her right away? Or does she realize something's changed because she can't predict him in a fight the same way—because her data isn't up-to-date?)
• What could happen, in a universe where she said yes to Ryo's offer? (Would it be a sincere yes? Or would she see what might be coming, and say yes because that way she has a chance to affect the results?) Or a universe where they'd gotten the blink drive working first and met the Seers after, and had been able to get away with Milo safely? Or (THE OBVIOUS ONE) if she hadn't died, dammit? (If Ryo had said something, given her a little data about Misaki, and she'd managed to see it coming?)
• Oh, look, another person on this show I multiship! :D I would love a thousand words of Nyx and One, actually, in that Not Dead AU; I also absolutely ship Nyx/Two (slow growth of trust between equally-matched fighters! Nyx seeing Two touch her before it happens, and letting it happen every time!), Nyx/Three (she would be SO UNIMPRESSED with his jokes and his douchery, but would SO VALUE his loyalty!), and Nyx/Six (she has all this terrible stuff going on, with her brother and with Four, and he's so calm and level-headed and understanding!). Nyx/Four with a HAPPY ENDING, SHOW. Or Nyx steps up in the throne room to stop Ryo and becomes Hiro's glorious precognitive empress instead! :D Nyx/Android—after the Seers, does Nyx understand a little bit about what it's like, being kind of a computer and kind of not?
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So it turns out I'm just as easy for Winter's War as I was for Snow White and the Huntsman, surprising probably no one at all. /o\ I loved getting more Ravenna backstory, I loved Freya, I loved their whole terrible complex messed-up relationship with each other and with everyone around them, and I'd read anything about either or both of them. :D Anything about Freya, her loves and losses and the ways she does and doesn't change (that she can't wholly kill her capacity for love, even though she tries), or Ravenna's whole glorious golden murderous aesthetic (plus or minus Ravenna/Snow, as always!) would be absolutely wonderful. Pre-SWatH, during SWatH, between movies, in Winter's War—your choice!
I could watch these movies on a loop all year long and I'd probably still ask for them for Yuletide at the end. /o\ I don't know, there's just something so fascinating to me about the pain that lies behind all the violence and creepy magic, these great and terrible queens and their anger—and of course the creepy magic itself, this weird and wild fairytale world where all kinds of beautiful, awful things are waiting to kill you if you can't kill them first. IDEK I JUST LOVE IT SO MUCH. (Creepy fic 200% welcome in this fandom, by the by.) I'm interested in basically everybody who was nominated, but I HAD TO NARROW IT DOWN. /o\ GOD THIS LETTER IS SO LONG.
Where to begin? I love Freya's sadness and bitterness, her determination to not allow herself to be hurt again and to teach others the same lesson she's been taught—and her TOTAL FAILURE to self-assess and realize that she's surrounding herself with hundreds of children and spending years taking care of them and looking after them and trying to keep them happy, by her own admittedly messed-up definition. Such incredible queenly power, and yet such a perfectly human failure to wholly understand herself. ♥
• I would love to read anything about her youth with Ravenna (and of course you can include Finn, if you like, or just focus on the sisters). Her perspective on Ravenna, as the admiring younger sister—whether she finds anything unsettling about Ravenna or not; traveling from kingdom to kingdom with her, even, watching her conquer and move on, the rationales Ravenna gave her for all of it and whether she believed them, or wanted to.
• Or! Anything set during the movie—during the prologue/opening, the horror of betrayal and the sensation of that first blast of ice-magic (if it was the first; did she have her power already but just didn't use it/it wasn't as strong when she was happy?), a longer conversation with Ravenna before or afterwards and Freya establishing her queendom in the north; or anything during the longer section of the movie that incorporates what we learn at the end about Sara—how Freya brought Sara back into the fold, the tug-of-war between her affection for her warriors and her obsession with not caring, her POV on any part of that final fight scene.
• Post-canon's tough if you're not interested in AUing away her death! But if you are—she was SO CLOSE to understanding, and in that moment where she'd fallen and she and Sara were staring at each other, I wanted them to manage to connect somehow SO BADLY. /o\ I'd also love something that allowed Freya to sort of re-form out of the frost afterward, or let her become some kind of spirit—still looking after her "children", perhaps, until all of them pass on and she can finally rest.
• As far as AUs go, I have to admit most of the prompts that spring to mind are kind of also shippy, oops. :D I do not mind Freya/Ravenna sistercest one bit, especially in the near-mythic paired-queens kind of way that their imagery lends itself to—once Ravenna is the only person left that Freya trusts, once Freya has manifested power that maybe can't match Ravenna's immediately but certainly could ... might Ravenna, tired of disposable kings anyway, install Freya as her silver sister-queen?
• Or give me an AU of SWatH where Freya was there, too, alongside Finn—where she's moved by Snow White, melted, or isn't; or, post-movie but sort of pre-Winter's War, where she comes looking for her sister's killer (for revenge? Just to learn who it was, and what they did, and why? ... To ask them to kill her, too?)
• Creepy manipulative Freya/Sara or totally earnest ~true love~ Freya/Sara also completely welcome! I'm just as much of a sucker for queen/lady knight fealty stuff as for the idea of Freya having a thing for Sara that she can't let herself acknowledge but also can't let go of ...
Oh, Ravenna. *shakes tiny fist at Charlize Theron* STOP DOING THIS TO MEEEEEE There's nothing about Ravenna that I am not transfixed by; her rage and her beauty and her perfect glittering awfulness, how even (what I think is) genuine love for Freya can't stop Ravenna from manipulating and controlling her when the opportunity arises. That chess game, my god, her sweet slow smile and that toppling king and DEATH. *flails arms* RAVENNA. She is so terrible, and I love her so much.
• Pre-canon, anywhere your muse takes you! I would love to read about a younger Ravenna, the first kingdom she takes and how she does it, where she starts; where she got that mirror, whether she knew what it was/what it would do; her perspective on Freya, whether she valued Freya's trusting nature in her own way but knew it wouldn't (she couldn't permit it to) last, or whether she always thought Freya was foolish for it.
• Or anything from during either movie! Ravenna's obsession with Snow White and with life and death is fascinating to me, and anything about her rulership (the death of the land—as queen, can she feel it? Does it bother her? If you want to worldbuild, does she already have plans to move on, and where to?) or her conflict, what Finn's death felt like to her, whether she was afraid or glad to follow, would be great. As would anything about what it's like to be inside that mirror, what she/they (her + whatever was already in there) were saying or doing to try to drive Snow White mad, how it feels to emerge from it again only to watch her sister fall ...
• Feel free to write a post-SWatH AU that totally ignores WW—Ravenna surviving somehow, either because Snow White spares her or because she does go into the mirror (and then Snow White realizes what's happened and figures out how to get her out again? She steps out herself once she's strong enough—changed, even, by days and days of watching Snow White, or talking to her, from the mirror? Less angry, or more so?) Or include as much or as little from WW as you like. :D
• As noted above, totally here for Freya/Ravenna if that's what you're into—creepy behind-closed-doors I'm-the-only-one-who-won't-betray-you, or ritualized public we-are-your-god-empress-sister-queens, or anything in between. And of course, as always, I ship Ravenna/Snow White like BURNING. Unsettling and one-sided, the beginnings of tropey ~love conquers all~ (and you have a wealth of magical and feudal shenaniganry at your disposal: soulbonding or magic links, Ravenna as queen of her own lands demanding Princess Snow White's hand in marriage from King Magnus, in order to get at her heart, and then ~changing her mind~ ...) Whatever you want!
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This book is a delight and I'm so glad to see it in the tagset! I narrowed my request down to just Mara and Inanni because they were my favorite part (and I would love some Mara/Inanni), but I am also totally here for Mara/Sheftu, never fear. :D I love Mara's cleverness and willpower, but also her pride and her temper; I love Inanni's sweetness and generosity, but also her timidity and uncertainty. And I'd be thrilled with anything about either or both of them! Mara post-canon, adjusting to being a countess, or in a quiet moment in the royal gardens, thinking of Sheftu. Inanni talking to that weaver-woman from Syria, or on the trip to Egypt, or finally getting to go home afterward. A thousand words of them talking together! ANYTHING.
I actually only read this book for the first time this year, but I enjoyed it a lot—the main characters are so well-rounded, everybody with their own skills and flaws and blind spots, and even the ~dastardly Hatshepsut gets a moment to be awesome at the end! I should note that historical accuracy is welcome but absolutely not required; our current knowledge of Hatshepsut's reign (at least as I understand it) ... um, differs somewhat from the book's presentation. :D So just running with the foundation the book provides is totally fine with me, and you definitely shouldn't feel like you have to do any extra research to write me a Mara gift I'll love!
Mara contains multitudes: she's so smart but also so shortsighted, thoughtful sometimes and unkind other times, impulsive and dramatic but brave and determined. And how much does my id love her gorgeous blue eyes, sass, and self-sacrificial silence even under the pain of a whipping? SO MUCH, is the answer. :D Her confidence and cleverness are so wonderful, but I adore her all the more for her imperfections—how overwhelmed she is by her feelings for Sheftu, how little she minds lying, how ambitious and unapologetic she is. MARA.
• Honestly, I'd love anything about her daily life around or before the beginning of the book—her skill with Babylonian and other ways it's served her, times and places she's snuck off to read, more pranks she's played like her mockery of the man in the street and her stealing those cakes. Any previous friends she's made (and then lost, if they were sold)? Acquaintances she's had, daydreams she's dreamed, trouble she's gotten into?
• Most of the book is in her POV—but there are parts that aren't, and/or timeskips where I would love to see missing scenes filling in the gaps! Dive into part of that early montage of her and Sheftu traveling on the river-boat, or deeper into her arrival at the palace, adjusting to the pretense of nobility! Did she get to know or talk to any of Inanni's other attendants at any point? What quiet moments did she have, in the palace or at the inn, and how did she fill them?
• Post-canon, as I mentioned, adjusting to the change in circumstances—I can see her immediately buying herself every luxurious thing she can think of just as easily as I can see her continuing to run around barefoot all the time. Sheftu's presumably still an advisor to Thutmose; do he and Mara get embroiled in additional court shenanigans? Or something simpler: the day Mara has to say goodbye to Inanni?
• Or fork-in-the-road this from any point—what other ways could Mara and Sheftu have met, if Mara had never been sold; if the revolution had gone ahead anyway, and had gone well? Or had gone badly? If they'd met when they were older, Mara even less trusting and Sheftu even cagier?
• ... Hopefully that last bullet makes this pretty clear, but: totally here for Mara/Sheftu! I adore their whole prickly tempestuous/teasing dynamic, especially the struggle they go through trying to sort out how much they can trust each other, with that glorious tropey conclusion. ♥ As noted, Mara/Inanni is also on the table—they're so different from each other, and their friendship is so charming, Mara (somewhat belatedly) learning to be considerate of Inanni and Inanni trying to take care of Mara as best she's able.
Inanni! I loved Inanni basically the moment she appeared on-page; I can only imagine how bewildering it was for her to be in this unfamiliar place with all these customs she doesn't understand and no one who's willing or able to explain, and her sheer relief at meeting Mara was just so relatable. ♥ She tries so hard but is so shy, wants so much to just go home—and then, over the course of the book, grows that least bit more sure of herself, starts to understand what's going on under the surface around her and figures out how to help Mara in what small ways she can.
• Please do not in any way feel obligated to do research! I would be thrilled to get pre-canon fic about earlier parts of Inanni's life in ancient Syria, but I realize that is a thing the book really didn't get into or establish a baseline for, so no pressure. Anything about her family or her life, her relationships with her handmaids (how was her entourage for the trip to Egypt chosen? Did she have any input?) would be lovely, but only if you want to!
• Anything from during the book would be GREAT. Way less of the story is told from Inanni's POV than Mara's, obviously, so anything you wanted to tell me about her trip to Egypt, how her maids helped (or didn't help) her handle it, what bliss it was to finally have a translator who could explain what the hell was going on; or what she thought of the palace and of Thutmose during that first meeting, from her perspective; or what was happening to her/whether she had any idea what was going on elsewhere at the end of the book—seriously, I would love to read that.
• Or, of course, post-book! Does she actually get to go home to Canaan? (Is Thutmose considering trying to pass her along to some lesser prince or noble to marry, maybe as a bargaining chip to use against Canaan politically ... and then Mara and Sheftu intervene, because they know she doesn't want that?) What is the trip back like for her, and what's changed by the time she returns—what does she tell her family/her people about her trip and Thutmose's refusal to marry her? (Is it a problem or not?)
• For Inanni shipfic, I'm mostly here for Mara/Inanni, and/or Mara&Inanni; getting to know each other better, sharing stories from their childhoods, Mara helping Inanni with her hair or showing her how to put on Egyptian makeup ... (I also would never say no to Mara/Sheftu/Inanni, for that matter, in futurefic where she stays or they visit her in Canaan—hints of pining + three-way handholding, or just Mara&Sheftu&Inanni. I WANT INANNI TO BE HAPPY AND HAVE FRIENDS, OKAY. AND ALSO MAYBE MAKE OUT WITH PRETTY PEOPLE WHO CARE ABOUT HER.)
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How thrilled was I to see Kira had been nominated? SO VERY, VERY THRILLED. I love everything about this movie (and that absolutely encompasses Cassie and Nick, so no worries if you want to include them), but basically whenever I get a chance, I always ask for Kira! She's just such a puzzle; for most of the movie we're still trying to figure out what's really going on, what actually happened and whose side Kira is on—and she's trying to figure that out, too. (Perfect opportunity to play around with unreliable narration and the fallibility of memory, if those are techniques/themes that appeal to you!) I'm interested in all kinds of things about Kira: her childhood, the first time she ever pushed anybody; her POV as she's pushed and pushes back, is wiped and remembers, throughout the movie; what she does when she gets off that plane. Kira/Nick, Kira/Cassie, OT3, or Kira/Pop Girl all totally welcome!
This movie combines a whole bunch of things I love (conspiracies! superpowers! REBELLION AGAINST THE SYSTEM) into a totally delightful whole, and I've probably watched it at least ten times by now. :D Basically anything about people who are somehow unusual trying to be normal—trying to understand what that is, trying to reach it and realizing they can't or don't actually want to—or trying to make sure that what's unusual about them can't be used to hurt anyone = YES GOOD. TELL ME MORE. And that's kind of Push in a nutshell!
There are so many different sides of Kira, the girl who's on the run and the girl who hung out with Nick so happily on Coney Island, the girl who had her own memory wiped and the girl who personally pushed Carver to his death; and I'll read anything about ANY of them! It must be so strange and terrible to live with a power like hers, especially after it's been augmented, and to have to try to plan so many steps ahead and go to such lengths to keep herself from being used.
• Pre-movie, go wild! The sequence of events re: Coney Island and Kira being augmented is a little less than clear—tell me anything you like about how Nick and Kira first met, whether and how much they knew about each other's powers at the time, how Kira was taken. Or go earlier! When did Kira discover her power, as a child? How did she manage to avoid a dive straight into supervillainy, with an ability like that? (Has she set herself rules for how and when she's allowed to use it? Has she ever broken them?)
• Give me any missing scene or canonical sequence from Kira's POV! ... Which I realize is actually kind of a challenge, given how what she knows/remembers/believes is real changes over the course of the movie, but I'd be thrilled to read it if you wanted to give it a shot anyway. :D Even something about the change in her power, any difference in the way it feels to her before and after she's injected, would be awesome!
• Post-canon, I'd love to know what she does when that plane lands—escape? Keep pretending to be Division? Successfully join up with Cassie and Nick again? Or go further, and tell me a thousand words about the aftermath of taking down Division, what she does afterward and where she goes from there (or if she doesn't know; if she's spent so long fighting she doesn't know who to be without it).
• I'd also be delighted with a thousand words of AU where it's Nick who was taken and Kira who has to team up with Cassie; or where Kira, still believing herself to be Division, took Nick into custody before he could manage to inject himself, and he has to try to convince her she's wrong. Or, heck, Nick's the one who gets pushed near the end of the movie, and Kira could push him back but doesn't let herself—or does, and then has to deal with the consequences of having knowingly messed with his head like that, even if he agrees it was necessary.
• OR ship Kira with basically anyone at all! Absolutely here for Kira/Nick, their past history that keeps getting half-erased, bubbling back up, being rewritten, except they never quite lose sight of each other; first meeting, first kiss—or reuniting post-movie, both of them finally sure about goddamn Coney Island. :D BUT I'm also interested in Kira/Cassie—futurefic where they've actually had a chance to get to know each other and Cassie isn't thirteen anymore, dramatically saving each other from Division or in a quiet moment on the run. Kira/Nick/Cassie, us against the world! Or even Kira/Pop Girl, if you don't mind filling in a whole lot of blanks! :D How could they have met? Might Pop Girl have joined the resistance herself, in time? Has she ever seen Kira—sketched her face, found herself lingering over the details? (Pop Girl POV is totally fine, though I'd like for Kira to appear in person at SOME point if at all possible.)
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I dearly hope you DIDN'T read that entire thing, but in case you did, please allow me to apologize again for going on like that, yikes! And of course to applaud you for reaching the end. ;D Thank you so, so much for your patience with me, and I hope you have an amazing Yuletide! ♥
If you like long letters, then I'm still a little sorry about this—but knock yourself out. :D I haven't been very active this year, oops, but I'm on the AO3 as Damkianna, crosspost to LJ/DW as
damkianna/damkianna, and am intermittently on Tumblr as Other letters I've written can be found in my Yuletide tag, and also in my rarewomen/rarelywritten tag. If there's a prompt in one of those that you love for a fandom I'm asking for this year, feel free to run with it even if I didn't repeat the prompt here!
In General
I'm 100% serious about having no hard DNWs. If there's anything in particular you've been DYING to write for any of these fandoms but have been hesitant about making into a gift for someone, THIS IS YOUR MOMENT. \o/
With that out of the way, though, I'll admit that I don't usually prompt for works with a lot of suffering and zero light at the end of the tunnel. Canon-typical violence and/or darkness is completely fine—I just don't personally get a lot out of exceeding those levels, most of the time. 100% bleak and terrible is not my Yuletide jam (though 100% creepy totally can be, depending on the fandom).
But aside from that caveat, I'm flexible! I am absolutely interested in receiving any/all/any combination of the following:
• shipfic! I multiship in most of my fandoms and am equally here for m/m, f/f, het, and poly of any configuration. Pretty much any ship you ship can sail in my gift; if I have any exceptions to this rule in a fandom, I'll note them in that fandom's section.
• gen! I love introspection, missing scenes, day-in-the-life, casefic, friendship fic ... I'm interested in my requested characters in any and all platonic combinations AND by themselves, so anything you'd like to write about any of them where romantic developments are not involved would be awesome! (And, per the rules, here is your explicit permission statement: you do NOT have to include all of my requested characters in my gift. Any, all, or any combination is fine by me!)
• AUs! All kinds of AUs, AUs where one or several canonical choices are made differently and/or random chance intervenes or AUs where everyone is a FIGHTER PILOT or a REBEL MAGE or it is all suddenly STEAMPUNK. I will 100% prompt for canonical scenarios, and some canonical settings are harder to set aside than others, but I'm here for changing things up!
• tropes and clichés! Soulmarks? Fake dating? The end of the world? A time loop? *grabby hands* YES GOOD. Everyone has superpowers! Wingfic! Arranged marriage! STRAIGHT-UP HURT/COMFORT. Nothing can be done too many times or in too many different ways, IMO, and gen takes on any of these things would be just as awesome as shippy takes.
• experimentation! Anything you might otherwise worry is too gimmicky or weird—IT IS NOT TOO GIMMICKY FOR ME. Ten interlinked drabbles? A five-things fic? Interactive fiction, fictional documentation, epistolary fic? YES PLEASE. First or second person? Present tense—or future, or past conditional? Script format? I'M IN. Be my guest!
I like long fic and short fic, plotty fic and introspective fic, domestic fic and spooky fic; fic that could be spliced right into canon and fic that takes the characters in a totally new direction; fic about people who are kind of awful and fic about people who are kind of great, and fic about people who are both at once. OCs and worldbuilding are totally welcome, as are alternate character interpretations or fix-its, pre-canon backstory or post-canon futurefic. SERIOUSLY, HAVE A BLAST. That's all I really ask. :D (And while you aren't supposed to deanon yourself, and if assigned to me are technically intended to ask the mods any questions you may have—let me just take this moment to say anon comments are on.)
Banlieue 13 (movies)
Damien, Leïto, Lola, Tao
These movies are my happy place and I adore them! I love the near-future setting, the edge of dystopia, just as much as I love the way the characters come together in the face of those dystopian elements to work together and make things better—and I love Damien's stubbornness, Leïto's determination, Lola's strength, and Tao's attitude. So anything about any of these characters would be great! Pre-canon backstory for any of them, Damien in police training or Leïto and Lola when the wall first went up, how Tao rose through the ranks of her gang; missing scenes or alternate perspectives on canon events; post-canon Damien/Leïto or Damien/Lola or anybody/Tao. A thousand words where all this is happening IN SPACE. Anything!
I've received absolutely lovely gifts in this fandom already, but apparently that only makes me greedier. /o\ For me, these movies strike precisely the right balance between acknowledging all the ways in which people can be awful to each other and highlighting + valorizing all the ways in which people can be wonderful to each other—even people who have no reason to be wonderful to each other, even people you wouldn't necessarily expect to be wonderful to other people. The first movie is a little more subtle about this where the second feels free to drop an anvil, but that anvil speaks to my id so hard that I've never minded having it land on me. :D
Damien Tomaso
Oh, Damien! I love Damien as the bulldog, his commitment to justice in the abstract so strong that it's capable of overriding his commitment to the police as a concrete institution—and so strong that it's capable of getting him to go undercover in terrible wigs and neon-pink dresses with ass windows. :D I also love his belief and trust in his superiors, that he almost makes an awful mistake because of that; people trying their best and still fucking up, and then dealing with it, is like catnip to me. CATNIP. So please tell me anything you like about Damien:
• pre-canon! Why did Damien decide to become a cop, and when? What is police training like, in the universe of B13? Did his fellow trainees like Damien? Hate him? Has he done other amazing/ridiculous undercover work?
• mid-canon! And by that I mean any sort of missing scene from either movie, or anything set between them. What was Damien thinking when he went undercover in the prison—when he first met Leïto, when Leïto cuffed him to that steering wheel? Where was he between movies, and what sequence of events kept him away from B13? Why did he still have a working number for Leïto in B13:U, and just how confident was he that Leïto would come for him?
• post-canon! Feel free to write me something post-B13 that ignores B13:U—Damien really does get put in charge of getting the wall taken down, and Leïto and Lola agree to help him get it right! Or something post-B13:U about reconstruction, the banlieue starting with a clean slate: does Damien stick with the police, after everything—but get himself assigned to the new station going up in B13? Does he move to B13 and take on a different role?
• Or anything else you like. Fork-in-the-road AU: what if Damien had lived in B13, too? Or if he had worked in the B13 station—he'd never have let another cop give Lola to Taha without kicking up a fuss, even a superior officer. Setting AU: Damien is imperial navy, Leïto is a pirate? :D
• Or shipfic! Adding Damien/Leïto to any prompt is 100% okay (seriously, a thousand words of them making out on a roof = YES PLEASE), as is post-B13 Damien/Lola (does he help her with rehab and her post-Taha recovery?), or post-B13:U Damien/Tao (her mild antagonism toward him for being a cop is GOLD, okay, and I would love all the grudging friendship/grudging attraction fic as he helps with the banlieue reconstruction! :D). Damien/Leïto/Lola pining! Damien/Leïto/Lola/Tao sedoretu, in a fantasy AU where it behooves them, as the new leaders of the banlieue, to quadruple-marry! GO WILD.
Leïto
Leïto! I love how closed-off Leïto is in some ways—not all that talkative, not initially willing to trust Damien—and yet how open he is in others, how deeply he cares about Lola and the banlieue, how much things matter to him. He's so tough on the outside but such an idealist on the inside, wanting the world to be better so hard, believing not only that it should be but that it can be, even after the life he must have had growing up in B13. ♥
• Anything about Leïto's backstory would be awesome! His youth in B13, his parents (if he even knew them, that is), trying to stay alive and out of trouble, out of the gangs, while keeping himself and Lola safe at the same time ... Did he learn parkour from someone else, or (apropos, given that we're talking about David Belle) did he invent it himself?
• Or any scene you particularly loved from Leïto's POV—running from Taha's guys? Crashing through Taha's skylight with that knife in his hand? Finding Lola on that roof, or getting Damien's message, or the moment the president started pressing those red buttons?
• Or anything post-canon! Setting aside B13:U for a minute, tell me Leïto's feelings about the wall coming down, or the banlieue's recovery—what does he do? What job does he get? (Does he join the police, seeing via Damien's example that there can be a place there for people who don't quite follow the rules?) Or, incorporating B13:U, how does he feel about the movie's ending? Does he expect to feel sad about agreeing that the banlieue needed to be reborn, but instead feel relieved? Or the other way around?
• Could Leïto have met Damien earlier—before the wall went up, at a club where Damien was undercover? Or a superpowers AU: Leïto is telepathic, Damien can make people tell him the truth, and Lola is pyrokinetic!
• As noted, total sucker for Damien/Leïto. :D Undercover gay, reincarnated soulmates, don't-realize-they're-dating, anything. I actually am also completely here for Leïto/Lola (though I prefer I-care-about-you-too-much + angst to anything overtly manipulative or harmful to Lola, as Leïto is so protective that I can't see him going there), or Damien/Leïto/Lola as an equilateral triangle. Or Leïto/Tao! What's their history? How do they know each other, and why does Leïto trust her as much as he does?
Lola
LOLA. Lola is so fierce and angry and so unwilling to take anybody's shit—that moment where she makes that guy eat her panties at gunpoint is so perfectly Lola to me. And it is also perfectly Lola to me that after being drugged and abused by Taha over the long term and chained up on that roof, her first instinct is still resistance—trying to fuck with his plans, to have that bomb go off when she chooses instead of when he does.
• In some ways Lola's backstory is of a piece with Leïto's, but THAT'S OKAY. Anything about their childhood together from her perspective would be lovely, and anything about her in particular—how she got that job at the grocery, what she does in her spare time, whether she likes to climb and run and jump too, even if she doesn't have Leïto's skill.
• Basically anything from Lola's POV would also be great—what she might have been thinking during that car ride to Taha's in the back seat, or as she turned the gun around on K2, or watching Damien and Leïto fight about the bomb, and tackling Damien at the end!
• And of course anything you'd like to say about her post-B13! Where was she in B13:U? What did she do between movies? It seems fair to assume she's moved out of the banlieue—where to? Is she going to school, or working (or both)? Living alone, or with a friend? Does Damien visit her, or she him?
• What might have changed if she'd seen K2 coming, or had been warned, and had gotten out of the grocery store safely? Or if she'd escaped Taha while Leïto was still in prison? ... Or in an AU where unsanctioned magic is illegal, and Lola is a hidden mage? :D
• As noted, I have no problem at all with Leïto/Lola, though it makes the most sense to me as too much affection + unrealized pining. Or with Damien/Lola, because, oh, the look on his face right after she kisses him. :D A thousand words of their first awkward-awesome date would be a delight! And of course I will never, ever get enough of Lola/Tao, NEVER—they both have such sharp edges, but Lola runs so hot and Tao so cool, and yet they have so much common ground, having grown up in the banlieue at about the same time. Anything where they even meet would be a delight!
Tao
Tao = instantaneous stars in my eyes, always. That sequence where she beats people up with her hair is ridiculous and amazing and I love it so much, sometimes I just watch it on a loop and clap. :D Everything about her is great, from how deliberately rude she is to Damien to her perfect icy confidence, and I am so intrigued by her ability to bring so many banlieue gangs together—just how many favors do they all owe her, anyway?
• Backstory for Tao would be amazing—how she got where she is, what she had to do to get there, the relationships she's forged with the other gang leaders and how she did it. How does Leïto know her? Why is she willing to help him, and to let a cop into her space on the strength of his word?
• Tell me what Tao thinks about anything canonical: about Leïto, about Damien, about how their story adds up and how they plan that assault, her perspective on what's happening outside the banlieue and on the decision to, in the end, blow it up.
• Or, of course, what happens afterward—how does she handle the end of the movie? Her gang presumably won't continue to operate the same way, but what do they do, and how does she manage the transition? What does rebuilding the banlieue involve, and what part does she play in it?
• What might have happened if they'd gotten in touch with her earlier—if Leïto had asked for her help getting Damien out of prison?—or later? Or if Tao could see the future, and knew they were coming ...
• For shipfic, seriously, I will buy Tao/anybody, because, um, TAO. Tao and Damien have such delightful surface antagonism, even though when the chips are down Tao is willing to work with him just fine; and Tao and Leïto clearly have SOME kind of prior acquaintance which I'd be more than happy for you to delve into. And, as above—Lola and Tao just in the same space for a thousand words would be a wonderful, wonderful gift!
Dark Matter (TV)
Two, Three, Misaki Han-Shireikan, Nyx Harper
I realize this is kind of an odd combination of characters, so right up front: you do NOT have to get all of these people in the same story! I'm interested in any combination of them that you can make work or in any of them alone. :D I love Dark Matter for its space piracy shenanigans and found family vibe—and also for its galactic politics and potentially complex character dynamics. So! Anything from Two's affection for her crew to her creepy backstory, Three's big-brother push-pull with Five to HIS creepy backstory, Misaki's childhood closeness with Ryo to her sword-wielding stone-faced present-day self, Nyx's gradual acceptance on the crew to HER creepy backstory. Any part of this universe or these people that you'd like to explore more closely would be amazing!
This show kind of took me by surprise! I binge-watched the first season last year and enjoyed it much more than I'd expected, and then the cliffhanger KILLED me. And then Season 2 happened and oh, look, they got me again. /o\ WHATEVER, I'M FINE. I love Dark Matter for its complicated aspects AND its uncomplicated aspects—how earnestly the main characters are trying to do the right thing and how wholeheartedly they've learned to care about each other, but also all the ways they fail and things go wrong or can't be controlled despite their best efforts. So no matter what you want to focus on, fluff or sadness, affection or manipulation, it will work for me in this fandom. I will say that I'm not quite as interested in setting AUs here, unless they retain the basic crew + amnesia + wrong-side-of-the-law elements—those are just so fundamental to the characters and how they interact, for me.
Two
TWO. If you'd told me I'd love Two even more after the second season than I did after the first, I would have told you that wasn't possible. AND YET HERE I AM. The more we learn about Portia Lin—and about Rebecca—the more intrigued I am by Two, by the differences and the similarities, what changes and what stays the same. I especially love how it highlights the way Two cares, and how much she lets it show compared to Portia's practiced indifference. ♥ So much angst and loyalty and leadership and badassery! TWO.
• Anything about any part of Two's backstory would be great! Very early Rebecca POV, on the lab or her education or her first escape, how she goes on the run and transitions into Portia; or, once she's Portia, how she ended up on the Raza—did she steal it? Was she the beginning of everything, the first crewmember, or was there another captain she displaced because she didn't care for how they ran things?
• Or something during the show! A missing scene or episode tag of any kind, first season or second season, early days or in prison or post-escape; how she feels about any of the other characters, One after his death or Three after they stop being fuckbuddies, Four at the end of S2 or Five when she tells them about the key. Six at the beginning of S2! The android, once Two learns about the hand Portia had in shaping who the android is. Anything!
• I also have ZERO problem with futurefic, if you want to take a stab at unraveling that cliffhanger—or AUing it away with a fix-it, for that matter. :D Or fork-in-the-road me from any point you like: if Six had gone to Two and explained what he'd learned about his own backstory, instead of betraying them? If Four had talked to Two before deciding to reincorporate Ryo's imprint? If Five or the android (or both) had come to Two about the simulation/the android's concerns? IF TRUFFAULT ENDED UP ON THE RUN SOMEHOW AND JOINED THE CREW. Seriously, go nuts!
• I also ship Two with just about everybody (though given that, IIRC, this season reveals that Five is sixteen, I'd prefer to keep any Five/Two as a crush/pining or otherwise abstract). One/Two (set in the past or an AU where No One Dies)? Yes! Love One's wide-eyed niceness contrasted with Two's ... Twoness. :D Two/Three? Yes! Love their loyalty issues + past fuckbuddy history + mutual insistence that it's not a big deal. (Or One/Two/Three, for that matter.) Two/Four would take a bit more work but I'm still happy to go there, and Two/Six with Six's whole loyalty-redemption-forgiveness thing sounds DELICIOUS. Two/Android, by all means! Two/Nyx, ABSOLUTELY. TWO/MISAKI HATE-UST FIGHT-FLIRTING. *waves hands*
Three
Oh, Three. I adore Three's whole callous jackass shtick, it's so gloriously transparent! CRACK THE DOUCHEY COATING AND HE IS SQUISHY ALL THE WAY DOWN. ♥ 2.11 was an absolute goldmine—his attempts to ~drive Five away~ were so ridiculous and great, oh, my heart. /o\ S2 really, really enjoyed beating Three up and making him bleed for his crew basically every chance it got, and I loved it. :D Rest assured, I will read ALL KINDS OF THINGS about Three!
• His backstory is so tropey and I love it so much—tell me anything you like about his blissful childhood, how he coped after the loss of his parents, when exactly he started to get suspicious of Tanner and how he handled it. Did Marcus Boone intend to actually use that beacon after recovering fully/finding a cure for Sarah? Or was his apparent death + the Raza his chance to get away from Tanner permanently, and he knew it?
• Anything from during the show would also be awesome! Your favorite parts of the first season are absolutely fair game, as is anything from S2—his struggle to really forgive Six, or that moment when he was about to shoot himself in the head. What was it like to be possessed by that creepy black goo-thing? (He didn't seem to remember afterward, but does he get flashes of it later, perhaps?) What other pranks have he and Five played on each other?
• And of course anything you want to write about things that could happen later in the show—ignore the cliffhanger and any/all deaths, if you want, and give me a thousand words of a job-of-the-week, or of the beginning of the corporate war/revolution, or anything else you like! Three taking care of his guns, or acquiring a new one; hanging out with Nyx (deciding it's creepy that she knows what he's going to do before he does) or the android (awkwardly apologizing for having been almost prepared to shoot her in the head), or just on the bridge in the middle of ship's night with some booze and his thoughts.
• To be honest, I also ship Three with basically everyone. If you'd like to bring One back from the dead for this, that is a-okay with me; any job-of-the-week with grumpy flirting or saving each other or h/c would be awesome. Or linger on Three's leftover pining feelings + anger over his death, aaaa. Two/Three and soulbonding (NANITE SHENANIGANS, NEURAL LINK MALFUNCTIONS, I don't know), or accidental baby acquisition, or renewing their fuckbuddy arrangement! Three/Four that turns weird and sharp and sad once Four takes Ryo's imprint back. Three/Six, with Three's antagonism over Six's betrayal coming from a more personal place than Six had realized! :D A thousand words of the awkward beginnings of Three/Android. Three/Nyx (Three obviously has a thing for women who could kill him onehanded, y/y?)!
Misaki Han-Shireikan
Oh, boy. Complicated, closed-off, angry women who engage in a lot of violence are fascinating to me, and every second Misaki is on screen is a second where I am RIVETED. She is not a nice person and there are at least a half-dozen things she's done that I really, really wish she hadn't done, and that's fascinating, too. She gives the impression of being so cool and controlled, and yet she's also obviously wrestling with a huge ugly ball of long-running emotions when it comes to Ryo and the emperorship and the future of Zairon.
• Asking for pre-canon Misaki is basically asking for any and all imperial space worldbuilding you want to do regarding Zairon, and I am SO THERE for it. That memory she shared with Ryo was oddly sweet, given everything else we've seen of her in the show—what was her childhood like? Her training? How exactly did someone who seems to be relatively young become next-in-line after Akita for captaincy of the guard? What did she think of the pre-canon events with Ryo and Hiro and their father's death?
• I would also LOVE her perspective on Hiro's time as emperor, on his mother and her scheming (which I doubt Misaki could have been COMPLETELY oblivious to, given her position in the imperial household), on Ryo's attempted coup and capture, on that awful scene in the throne room or on that conversation between Ryo and Nyx + her plans for that fight as she poisoned her blade. (Is poisoning an honorable way to kill someone? It seems unlikely, but I could be convinced—or does she no longer care?)
• Futurefic or AUs are also very welcome! Does killing Nyx do her any good—could she in fact become empress herself? Does Ryo ever find out what she did, or does she keep it secret from him forever? If he does find out, what happens—does he exile her? (Could she even end up on the Raza, having nowhere else to go?) What might her life be like, in a world where Ryo keeps the blink drive and Zairon's armies do indeed roll unstoppably through the galaxy—does she ever come to regret her decisions?
• It might not get past weird hate-UST, in a thousand words, but for the record I would happily read about Misaki/Two, Misaki/Three, Misaki/Six, or Misaki/Nyx, under basically any circumstances where you feel you can plausibly make it happen or hint at it. One-sided Misaki/Ryo is canon, and I don't mind dwelling on it one bit; however, I also wouldn't mind a mildly fluffy AU where Misaki finds herself developing a softer variety of affection for Hiro, during all that time Ryo is gone.
Nyx Harper
NYX. :C YOU WILL LIVE FOREVER IN MY HEART. I love everything about Nyx and am currently busy pretending she's totally fine with all my might—if you HAVE to break my heart with deathfic, you can, and I'll write you a typo-filled comment through my tears. /o\ ANYWAY. She delights me in a lot of the same ways Two and Three delight me: she's so tough and sharp and no-nonsense when she thinks she has to be, except underneath that she cares so deeply about Milo, tries so hard to help Devon, is so hurt and uncomfortable when Four becomes half a stranger on her without warning. NYX.
• Oh, look, more creepy backstory! I'm here for anything you want to tell me about being part of the Seers—one of many pieces of that strange huge collective computer-mind, and then getting ripped out of it and only being your own tiny self again, unable to calculate more than a few seconds ahead at a time. Nyx escaped, yes, but was there a part of her that missed that power, that clarity, that understanding? Or did she hate every moment of it? How did she end up in prison—was it a deliberate attempt to be unpredictable so the Seers couldn't find her? Or was Milo keeping them off her tail, and she knew it?
• Or anything set during the show! What are her powers like for her on a day-to-day basis? Is she hoping from the very beginning that she and Milo might be able to make a home on the Raza, or is the crew just a means to an end, and then her intentions change? She obviously loves sparring with Four, and is equally obviously discomfited by his transition partway back to Ryo—what is that like? (Does he tell her right away? Or does she realize something's changed because she can't predict him in a fight the same way—because her data isn't up-to-date?)
• What could happen, in a universe where she said yes to Ryo's offer? (Would it be a sincere yes? Or would she see what might be coming, and say yes because that way she has a chance to affect the results?) Or a universe where they'd gotten the blink drive working first and met the Seers after, and had been able to get away with Milo safely? Or (THE OBVIOUS ONE) if she hadn't died, dammit? (If Ryo had said something, given her a little data about Misaki, and she'd managed to see it coming?)
• Oh, look, another person on this show I multiship! :D I would love a thousand words of Nyx and One, actually, in that Not Dead AU; I also absolutely ship Nyx/Two (slow growth of trust between equally-matched fighters! Nyx seeing Two touch her before it happens, and letting it happen every time!), Nyx/Three (she would be SO UNIMPRESSED with his jokes and his douchery, but would SO VALUE his loyalty!), and Nyx/Six (she has all this terrible stuff going on, with her brother and with Four, and he's so calm and level-headed and understanding!). Nyx/Four with a HAPPY ENDING, SHOW. Or Nyx steps up in the throne room to stop Ryo and becomes Hiro's glorious precognitive empress instead! :D Nyx/Android—after the Seers, does Nyx understand a little bit about what it's like, being kind of a computer and kind of not?
The Huntsman (movies)
Freya, Ravenna
So it turns out I'm just as easy for Winter's War as I was for Snow White and the Huntsman, surprising probably no one at all. /o\ I loved getting more Ravenna backstory, I loved Freya, I loved their whole terrible complex messed-up relationship with each other and with everyone around them, and I'd read anything about either or both of them. :D Anything about Freya, her loves and losses and the ways she does and doesn't change (that she can't wholly kill her capacity for love, even though she tries), or Ravenna's whole glorious golden murderous aesthetic (plus or minus Ravenna/Snow, as always!) would be absolutely wonderful. Pre-SWatH, during SWatH, between movies, in Winter's War—your choice!
I could watch these movies on a loop all year long and I'd probably still ask for them for Yuletide at the end. /o\ I don't know, there's just something so fascinating to me about the pain that lies behind all the violence and creepy magic, these great and terrible queens and their anger—and of course the creepy magic itself, this weird and wild fairytale world where all kinds of beautiful, awful things are waiting to kill you if you can't kill them first. IDEK I JUST LOVE IT SO MUCH. (Creepy fic 200% welcome in this fandom, by the by.) I'm interested in basically everybody who was nominated, but I HAD TO NARROW IT DOWN. /o\ GOD THIS LETTER IS SO LONG.
Freya
Where to begin? I love Freya's sadness and bitterness, her determination to not allow herself to be hurt again and to teach others the same lesson she's been taught—and her TOTAL FAILURE to self-assess and realize that she's surrounding herself with hundreds of children and spending years taking care of them and looking after them and trying to keep them happy, by her own admittedly messed-up definition. Such incredible queenly power, and yet such a perfectly human failure to wholly understand herself. ♥
• I would love to read anything about her youth with Ravenna (and of course you can include Finn, if you like, or just focus on the sisters). Her perspective on Ravenna, as the admiring younger sister—whether she finds anything unsettling about Ravenna or not; traveling from kingdom to kingdom with her, even, watching her conquer and move on, the rationales Ravenna gave her for all of it and whether she believed them, or wanted to.
• Or! Anything set during the movie—during the prologue/opening, the horror of betrayal and the sensation of that first blast of ice-magic (if it was the first; did she have her power already but just didn't use it/it wasn't as strong when she was happy?), a longer conversation with Ravenna before or afterwards and Freya establishing her queendom in the north; or anything during the longer section of the movie that incorporates what we learn at the end about Sara—how Freya brought Sara back into the fold, the tug-of-war between her affection for her warriors and her obsession with not caring, her POV on any part of that final fight scene.
• Post-canon's tough if you're not interested in AUing away her death! But if you are—she was SO CLOSE to understanding, and in that moment where she'd fallen and she and Sara were staring at each other, I wanted them to manage to connect somehow SO BADLY. /o\ I'd also love something that allowed Freya to sort of re-form out of the frost afterward, or let her become some kind of spirit—still looking after her "children", perhaps, until all of them pass on and she can finally rest.
• As far as AUs go, I have to admit most of the prompts that spring to mind are kind of also shippy, oops. :D I do not mind Freya/Ravenna sistercest one bit, especially in the near-mythic paired-queens kind of way that their imagery lends itself to—once Ravenna is the only person left that Freya trusts, once Freya has manifested power that maybe can't match Ravenna's immediately but certainly could ... might Ravenna, tired of disposable kings anyway, install Freya as her silver sister-queen?
• Or give me an AU of SWatH where Freya was there, too, alongside Finn—where she's moved by Snow White, melted, or isn't; or, post-movie but sort of pre-Winter's War, where she comes looking for her sister's killer (for revenge? Just to learn who it was, and what they did, and why? ... To ask them to kill her, too?)
• Creepy manipulative Freya/Sara or totally earnest ~true love~ Freya/Sara also completely welcome! I'm just as much of a sucker for queen/lady knight fealty stuff as for the idea of Freya having a thing for Sara that she can't let herself acknowledge but also can't let go of ...
Ravenna
Oh, Ravenna. *shakes tiny fist at Charlize Theron* STOP DOING THIS TO MEEEEEE There's nothing about Ravenna that I am not transfixed by; her rage and her beauty and her perfect glittering awfulness, how even (what I think is) genuine love for Freya can't stop Ravenna from manipulating and controlling her when the opportunity arises. That chess game, my god, her sweet slow smile and that toppling king and DEATH. *flails arms* RAVENNA. She is so terrible, and I love her so much.
• Pre-canon, anywhere your muse takes you! I would love to read about a younger Ravenna, the first kingdom she takes and how she does it, where she starts; where she got that mirror, whether she knew what it was/what it would do; her perspective on Freya, whether she valued Freya's trusting nature in her own way but knew it wouldn't (she couldn't permit it to) last, or whether she always thought Freya was foolish for it.
• Or anything from during either movie! Ravenna's obsession with Snow White and with life and death is fascinating to me, and anything about her rulership (the death of the land—as queen, can she feel it? Does it bother her? If you want to worldbuild, does she already have plans to move on, and where to?) or her conflict, what Finn's death felt like to her, whether she was afraid or glad to follow, would be great. As would anything about what it's like to be inside that mirror, what she/they (her + whatever was already in there) were saying or doing to try to drive Snow White mad, how it feels to emerge from it again only to watch her sister fall ...
• Feel free to write a post-SWatH AU that totally ignores WW—Ravenna surviving somehow, either because Snow White spares her or because she does go into the mirror (and then Snow White realizes what's happened and figures out how to get her out again? She steps out herself once she's strong enough—changed, even, by days and days of watching Snow White, or talking to her, from the mirror? Less angry, or more so?) Or include as much or as little from WW as you like. :D
• As noted above, totally here for Freya/Ravenna if that's what you're into—creepy behind-closed-doors I'm-the-only-one-who-won't-betray-you, or ritualized public we-are-your-god-empress-sister-queens, or anything in between. And of course, as always, I ship Ravenna/Snow White like BURNING. Unsettling and one-sided, the beginnings of tropey ~love conquers all~ (and you have a wealth of magical and feudal shenaniganry at your disposal: soulbonding or magic links, Ravenna as queen of her own lands demanding Princess Snow White's hand in marriage from King Magnus, in order to get at her heart, and then ~changing her mind~ ...) Whatever you want!
Mara: Daughter of the Nile
Mara, Inanni
This book is a delight and I'm so glad to see it in the tagset! I narrowed my request down to just Mara and Inanni because they were my favorite part (and I would love some Mara/Inanni), but I am also totally here for Mara/Sheftu, never fear. :D I love Mara's cleverness and willpower, but also her pride and her temper; I love Inanni's sweetness and generosity, but also her timidity and uncertainty. And I'd be thrilled with anything about either or both of them! Mara post-canon, adjusting to being a countess, or in a quiet moment in the royal gardens, thinking of Sheftu. Inanni talking to that weaver-woman from Syria, or on the trip to Egypt, or finally getting to go home afterward. A thousand words of them talking together! ANYTHING.
I actually only read this book for the first time this year, but I enjoyed it a lot—the main characters are so well-rounded, everybody with their own skills and flaws and blind spots, and even the ~dastardly Hatshepsut gets a moment to be awesome at the end! I should note that historical accuracy is welcome but absolutely not required; our current knowledge of Hatshepsut's reign (at least as I understand it) ... um, differs somewhat from the book's presentation. :D So just running with the foundation the book provides is totally fine with me, and you definitely shouldn't feel like you have to do any extra research to write me a Mara gift I'll love!
Mara
Mara contains multitudes: she's so smart but also so shortsighted, thoughtful sometimes and unkind other times, impulsive and dramatic but brave and determined. And how much does my id love her gorgeous blue eyes, sass, and self-sacrificial silence even under the pain of a whipping? SO MUCH, is the answer. :D Her confidence and cleverness are so wonderful, but I adore her all the more for her imperfections—how overwhelmed she is by her feelings for Sheftu, how little she minds lying, how ambitious and unapologetic she is. MARA.
• Honestly, I'd love anything about her daily life around or before the beginning of the book—her skill with Babylonian and other ways it's served her, times and places she's snuck off to read, more pranks she's played like her mockery of the man in the street and her stealing those cakes. Any previous friends she's made (and then lost, if they were sold)? Acquaintances she's had, daydreams she's dreamed, trouble she's gotten into?
• Most of the book is in her POV—but there are parts that aren't, and/or timeskips where I would love to see missing scenes filling in the gaps! Dive into part of that early montage of her and Sheftu traveling on the river-boat, or deeper into her arrival at the palace, adjusting to the pretense of nobility! Did she get to know or talk to any of Inanni's other attendants at any point? What quiet moments did she have, in the palace or at the inn, and how did she fill them?
• Post-canon, as I mentioned, adjusting to the change in circumstances—I can see her immediately buying herself every luxurious thing she can think of just as easily as I can see her continuing to run around barefoot all the time. Sheftu's presumably still an advisor to Thutmose; do he and Mara get embroiled in additional court shenanigans? Or something simpler: the day Mara has to say goodbye to Inanni?
• Or fork-in-the-road this from any point—what other ways could Mara and Sheftu have met, if Mara had never been sold; if the revolution had gone ahead anyway, and had gone well? Or had gone badly? If they'd met when they were older, Mara even less trusting and Sheftu even cagier?
• ... Hopefully that last bullet makes this pretty clear, but: totally here for Mara/Sheftu! I adore their whole prickly tempestuous/teasing dynamic, especially the struggle they go through trying to sort out how much they can trust each other, with that glorious tropey conclusion. ♥ As noted, Mara/Inanni is also on the table—they're so different from each other, and their friendship is so charming, Mara (somewhat belatedly) learning to be considerate of Inanni and Inanni trying to take care of Mara as best she's able.
Inanni
Inanni! I loved Inanni basically the moment she appeared on-page; I can only imagine how bewildering it was for her to be in this unfamiliar place with all these customs she doesn't understand and no one who's willing or able to explain, and her sheer relief at meeting Mara was just so relatable. ♥ She tries so hard but is so shy, wants so much to just go home—and then, over the course of the book, grows that least bit more sure of herself, starts to understand what's going on under the surface around her and figures out how to help Mara in what small ways she can.
• Please do not in any way feel obligated to do research! I would be thrilled to get pre-canon fic about earlier parts of Inanni's life in ancient Syria, but I realize that is a thing the book really didn't get into or establish a baseline for, so no pressure. Anything about her family or her life, her relationships with her handmaids (how was her entourage for the trip to Egypt chosen? Did she have any input?) would be lovely, but only if you want to!
• Anything from during the book would be GREAT. Way less of the story is told from Inanni's POV than Mara's, obviously, so anything you wanted to tell me about her trip to Egypt, how her maids helped (or didn't help) her handle it, what bliss it was to finally have a translator who could explain what the hell was going on; or what she thought of the palace and of Thutmose during that first meeting, from her perspective; or what was happening to her/whether she had any idea what was going on elsewhere at the end of the book—seriously, I would love to read that.
• Or, of course, post-book! Does she actually get to go home to Canaan? (Is Thutmose considering trying to pass her along to some lesser prince or noble to marry, maybe as a bargaining chip to use against Canaan politically ... and then Mara and Sheftu intervene, because they know she doesn't want that?) What is the trip back like for her, and what's changed by the time she returns—what does she tell her family/her people about her trip and Thutmose's refusal to marry her? (Is it a problem or not?)
• For Inanni shipfic, I'm mostly here for Mara/Inanni, and/or Mara&Inanni; getting to know each other better, sharing stories from their childhoods, Mara helping Inanni with her hair or showing her how to put on Egyptian makeup ... (I also would never say no to Mara/Sheftu/Inanni, for that matter, in futurefic where she stays or they visit her in Canaan—hints of pining + three-way handholding, or just Mara&Sheftu&Inanni. I WANT INANNI TO BE HAPPY AND HAVE FRIENDS, OKAY. AND ALSO MAYBE MAKE OUT WITH PRETTY PEOPLE WHO CARE ABOUT HER.)
Push (2009)
Kira Hudson
How thrilled was I to see Kira had been nominated? SO VERY, VERY THRILLED. I love everything about this movie (and that absolutely encompasses Cassie and Nick, so no worries if you want to include them), but basically whenever I get a chance, I always ask for Kira! She's just such a puzzle; for most of the movie we're still trying to figure out what's really going on, what actually happened and whose side Kira is on—and she's trying to figure that out, too. (Perfect opportunity to play around with unreliable narration and the fallibility of memory, if those are techniques/themes that appeal to you!) I'm interested in all kinds of things about Kira: her childhood, the first time she ever pushed anybody; her POV as she's pushed and pushes back, is wiped and remembers, throughout the movie; what she does when she gets off that plane. Kira/Nick, Kira/Cassie, OT3, or Kira/Pop Girl all totally welcome!
This movie combines a whole bunch of things I love (conspiracies! superpowers! REBELLION AGAINST THE SYSTEM) into a totally delightful whole, and I've probably watched it at least ten times by now. :D Basically anything about people who are somehow unusual trying to be normal—trying to understand what that is, trying to reach it and realizing they can't or don't actually want to—or trying to make sure that what's unusual about them can't be used to hurt anyone = YES GOOD. TELL ME MORE. And that's kind of Push in a nutshell!
Kira Hudson
There are so many different sides of Kira, the girl who's on the run and the girl who hung out with Nick so happily on Coney Island, the girl who had her own memory wiped and the girl who personally pushed Carver to his death; and I'll read anything about ANY of them! It must be so strange and terrible to live with a power like hers, especially after it's been augmented, and to have to try to plan so many steps ahead and go to such lengths to keep herself from being used.
• Pre-movie, go wild! The sequence of events re: Coney Island and Kira being augmented is a little less than clear—tell me anything you like about how Nick and Kira first met, whether and how much they knew about each other's powers at the time, how Kira was taken. Or go earlier! When did Kira discover her power, as a child? How did she manage to avoid a dive straight into supervillainy, with an ability like that? (Has she set herself rules for how and when she's allowed to use it? Has she ever broken them?)
• Give me any missing scene or canonical sequence from Kira's POV! ... Which I realize is actually kind of a challenge, given how what she knows/remembers/believes is real changes over the course of the movie, but I'd be thrilled to read it if you wanted to give it a shot anyway. :D Even something about the change in her power, any difference in the way it feels to her before and after she's injected, would be awesome!
• Post-canon, I'd love to know what she does when that plane lands—escape? Keep pretending to be Division? Successfully join up with Cassie and Nick again? Or go further, and tell me a thousand words about the aftermath of taking down Division, what she does afterward and where she goes from there (or if she doesn't know; if she's spent so long fighting she doesn't know who to be without it).
• I'd also be delighted with a thousand words of AU where it's Nick who was taken and Kira who has to team up with Cassie; or where Kira, still believing herself to be Division, took Nick into custody before he could manage to inject himself, and he has to try to convince her she's wrong. Or, heck, Nick's the one who gets pushed near the end of the movie, and Kira could push him back but doesn't let herself—or does, and then has to deal with the consequences of having knowingly messed with his head like that, even if he agrees it was necessary.
• OR ship Kira with basically anyone at all! Absolutely here for Kira/Nick, their past history that keeps getting half-erased, bubbling back up, being rewritten, except they never quite lose sight of each other; first meeting, first kiss—or reuniting post-movie, both of them finally sure about goddamn Coney Island. :D BUT I'm also interested in Kira/Cassie—futurefic where they've actually had a chance to get to know each other and Cassie isn't thirteen anymore, dramatically saving each other from Division or in a quiet moment on the run. Kira/Nick/Cassie, us against the world! Or even Kira/Pop Girl, if you don't mind filling in a whole lot of blanks! :D How could they have met? Might Pop Girl have joined the resistance herself, in time? Has she ever seen Kira—sketched her face, found herself lingering over the details? (Pop Girl POV is totally fine, though I'd like for Kira to appear in person at SOME point if at all possible.)
I dearly hope you DIDN'T read that entire thing, but in case you did, please allow me to apologize again for going on like that, yikes! And of course to applaud you for reaching the end. ;D Thank you so, so much for your patience with me, and I hope you have an amazing Yuletide! ♥
