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damkiannaI'm so very thrilled you've signed up for Yuletide, author! :D Apologies in advance for the length of this letter—please don't feel obligated to read the whole thing. Or any of it, for that matter! I'm delighted by all of my fandoms and have no hard DNWs or triggers you need to worry about; this letter's only here to provide more detail if you want it. By all means X away and give me anything, and have yourself an excellent Yuletide. ♥
If you like having a few prompts to work with ... I still owe you an apology, probably. /o\ I've done my utmost to make this readable and reasonably organized, and hopefully it's not too hard to navigate!
RL was a bear this year and there's not much to see in any of these places, but I'm on the AO3 at Damkianna, I crosspost to LJ/DW at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
damkianna/damkianna, and I ... well, used to kind of have a tumblr at ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
damkianna, too. :D
Other letters I've written can be found in my Yuletide tag, my rarewomen/rarelywritten tags, and my Fandom 5K tag. If there's a prompt in any of those letters for a fandom I've requested here that appeals to you, but I didn't repeat that prompt in this letter—please feel free to write it anyway!
In General | The Big Country (1958) | Dark Matter (TV)
Hellboy (movies) | The Huntsman (movies) | King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
If you don't want to read this whole thing, or at least not any more of it than you have to, here's the super-quick bottom line: everything I said up top was 100% sincere! There's nothing you need to try to avoid giving me, and nothing you need to worry I won't like. :D
I'm here for gen, shipfic, smut, introspection, worldbuilding, horror, deathfic, action, violence, fluff ... I'm not always great at coming up with prompts for all of those things (especially darkfic, oops), but I'm more than happy to receive them! So if there's anything you really want to write for a fandom we matched on, but you have second thoughts about giving it as a gift unprompted—tell those second thoughts to eff off, I WANT TO READ IT. \o/
More specifically, I adore and would be delighted to receive any/all/any combination of:
• shipfic! I multiship in most of my fandoms, and am absolutely interested in m/m, m/f, f/f, and poly of any configuration. Any ship you ship, in the foreground or the background, is a-okay with me. :D (Pre-shippiness or shippy-if-you-squint is awesome, too. And 1k of PWP would be WONDERFUL, never fear!)
• gen! I'm also absolutely interested in friendship fic or solo fic about any group of characters or individual character I've requested (which, here is your explicit permission statement: you do NOT have to fit all the characters I've requested into your fic. Any, all, or any subgroup is totally okay with me!). A snippet of casefic, a missing scene or movie/episode tag, introspection—anything!
• free space! By which I mean anything this letter manages to leave off your metaphorical bingo card: AUs of any kind (canon divergence! Everyone's a shapeshifter! It's all IN SPACE!), your favorite tropes or clichés (hurt/comfort! Sex pollen! Wingfic! The zombie apocalypse!), or anything weird/experimental you kind of want to try (interactive fiction! Epistolary fic! Future tense! Second person!). GO FOR IT.
I like quiet fic and plotty fic, long fic and short fic, backstory fic and futurefic, sad fic and fix-it fic. OCs are welcome, as are unusual formats, alternate character interpretations, and rarepairs. I like fic that's canon-compliant and fic that goes a totally different direction, fic about people making bad decisions and fic about people making good decisions—and fic about people who make both. :D Pick a thing that interests you and write me 1k about it (or a series of ten perfect drabbles! A five-things fic made up of double-drabbles! *waves hands*), and ENJOY YOURSELF. ♥
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Jim! Steve! This movie! I enjoy everything about The Big Country a lot—from Jim's quiet unobtrusive competence to Steve's hot temper and reluctant loyalty, from the inter-ranch politicking to the sheer scenery of the "big country"—so anything you want to write about either or both of these guys is more than welcome. Including, of course, Jim/Steve! Tell me about Jim's time on the sea, how he fell in love with Pat (and then fell out again), how he learned such staunch self-respect; or Steve's anger and insecurity, how he came to work for the Terrills, the process by which his perspective starts to change because of Jim; or give me 1k of pure post-movie Jim/Steve hurt/comfort, Jim insisting that Steve stay with him at the Big Muddy while he recovers from that gunshot wound, and Steve being a terrible patient. :D
I watched this movie for the first time this year, and liked it so much I knew immediately that I wanted to ask for it for Yuletide! :D Jim is just so wonderfully calm and perceptive, so self-possessed and patient—but also, of course, stubborn and frustrating, and possibly just a little self-righteous now and then. And Steve! I absolutely loved his persistent irritation with Jim, and how it said so much more about him than about Jim. Especially in combination with him staying out all night to look for Jim, and of course their midnight fight—and how he finally comes around to seeing Jim's side of things by the end of the movie, though he can't quite convince himself to let Henry Terrill ride into that canyon alone. ♥
JIM. ♥________♥ I'm almost always easy for characters played by Gregory Peck, and this movie's no exception! /o\ :D He's just so quietly sure of himself, and has such a clear and thoughtful perspective, such carefully-staked-out lines dividing what matters to him from what doesn't. That he cares so much about everyone's welfare that he'll buy Big Muddy from Julie, and yet so little about everyone's opinions that he doesn't rise to Steve's baiting is just *clenches fist* SO FANTASTIC. JIM.
• SO. Tell me about Jim! The way he conducts himself feels so deliberate, even earned—did something happen to make it that way? Maybe before he became a captain, or immediately afterward when he still didn't have much experience; some incident aboard ship, social pressure and macho bullshit that ended badly? When did he first go to sea, and why? Who taught him navigation? Was he once a little more like Steve—maybe more than he wants to admit?
• Totally happy for you to explore his relationship with Pat—how did it begin? How did they fall in love? What was their separation like for Jim, when Pat first returned to her family but Jim was still back east? Did he have a certain sense of foreboding about it, a niggling feeling that things might not work out? Or was he looking forward to learning more about where Pat came from, and understanding her better?
• Or anything about Jim set during the movie! I love basically everything about his romance with Julie (THAT WORDLESS CONFESSIONAL LOVE-STARE *_____*), so by all means feel free to write about the two of them. :D His POV on their first meeting or early interactions, or on the Hannasseys/Ramón/the Terrills as he learns more about the situation with the water, or, of course, on Steve, would all be great! Or any sort of missing scene, the standoff in the canyon—or even 1k of his jubilation at getting to ride out of there safely with Julie!
• Post-movie gen or Jim/Julie would also be lovely. I feel like the ending can be read more than one way (... though I may just not be remembering it clearly), and I'd be as happy to read about Jim (by himself, or with Julie) riding off and finding somewhere else to be happy, far away from feuds and water rights, as about Jim (by himself, or with Julie) returning to Big Muddy and getting to work running it like a real ranch again (with actual details about the ins and outs of ranching totally optional, because I know nothing about it :D).
Oh, Steve. :D Steve's character growth was basically everything I wanted—I'd hoped Charlton Heston wasn't going to be wasted on pure petty antagonism, and it was a joy to be right! Steve is basically my favorite kind of character: he's rude, he's confrontational, he's difficult, but he doesn't have to be—he doesn't necessarily even want to be, he just doesn't know how else to act; he's never thought about it, never been given a reason to figure himself out or to look at things another way. And then he DOES and he GETS IT and it's just so SATISFYING. STEVE. ♥
• SO YEAH. Totally here for any headcanon you happen to have about Steve's backstory—where's he from? How did he start working for the Terrills? Did he have a thing for Pat even before she went east? (Or was that possibly a little more about Jim than it was about Pat, in some ways?) Does he have any personal reasons to dislike the Hannasseys, or is that just another thing he hasn't spent too much time thinking about?
• Or, a little closer to the beginning of the movie: what does he think when Pat comes back? What does she or doesn't she tell him about Jim, before Jim arrives, and what does he think about it? Pat and Julie have been friends for a long time, so Steve must know Julie—might they have talked to each other, about Pat or about this Jim of hers, before Jim arrived?
• I would absolutely love anything from Steve's perspective about basically any part of the movie. :D (And if you'd like to make this pre-slash to any degree—from only-if-you-squint to serious UST, from Steve in total denial to Steve grudgingly aware that he's got more than one reason to want to get his hands on Jim—that would be more than welcome!) From the early parts where he still disdains Jim, the search for Jim, the argument, to the midnight fight and Steve's change in perspective, or anything in between!
• Also totally happy to read about post-movie fic focused on Steve solo! What does he do—keep working for the Terrills, or move on? If Jim and Julie do leave the area, might he take on Big Muddy? If they stay, Julie has that line about how you'd need a good ranch manager; might they ask Steve to take on that role? (Would he accept, or refuse?)
I'm giving the pairing its own set of bullets, because I ship it so hard it's a little ridiculous. /o\ :D Oh, and while I'd hugely appreciate Julie (and Pat, for that matter) being dealt with kindly, please don't feel any need to spend hundreds of words carefully explaining how Jim and Julie break up first! (You absolutely can if you'd like! But you definitely don't HAVE to.) I'm totally happy to accept that any post-movie Jim/Steve is set in an AU where Jim and Julie care about each other but never quite made it to love, and they're just *waves hands* friends who like to talk philosophy and go on horseback rides. Whatever works for you!
• I would be DELIGHTED with anything set early in the movie, or pre-movie + the beginning of the movie, that's pre-slash or ship-if-you-squint—where Steve's sick of hearing about Jim from Pat, grumpily imagining the worst of this guy, and then Jim arrives and he'shot, oops EXACTLY AS ANNOYING AS STEVE THOUGHT, GDI. :D Or Jim's heard a little about Steve from Pat, didn't quite know what to expect, and Steve's belligerence frustrates him because he just wants Steve to understand, he wants Steve to get him, and why does that matter so much to him anyway? :D :D :D
• Or anything you wanted to place a little further in! Canon-compliant and just filling in their perspectives with unexpressed UST, all the way to "that visit Jim makes to Steve's room in the middle of the night ... ends differently :D". (As a side note, it's very easy for me to imagine Steve, with all his nonsense about how men ~ought to act, having to wrestle with some internalized homophobia/biphobia, and/or some shame over how good touching Jim makes him feel. If that interests you, feel free to explore it! If not, that's completely fine—there is zero need to include period-appropriate homophobia on my account.)
• I would also absolutely love something set post-canon! I enjoy h/c and caretaking a lot (especially bad patients + determined gentle caretakers! :D :D :D), so anything about Steve's recovery from that gunshot wound he got in Blanco Canyon, Jim insistent on looking after him and Steve being all prickly about it, still wrestling with old habits of defensiveness; enforced closeness, and soothing touches that are grudgingly accepted, and Jim having to take Steve's shirt off to change a bandage, and just EVERY TROPEY THING. *_____*! But I'd also be delighted with anything more contemplative—them meeting again after a few years, perhaps? Or Jim taking on Big Muddy alone and Steve starting to come by on a weirdly regular basis with advice/to help him fix the place up/&c &c (as an understated way to apologize, even, which Jim eventually picks up on?). :D
• Or anything else you want to write about these guys! What if the search had gone a little better, and Steve had found Jim himself, and they'd had a chance to talk together on the ride back? What if Steve had, without Jim noticing, come back early enough to catch Jim on Old Thunder? What if this were IN SPACE and the Terrills and Hannasseys owned competing mining outfits working the same asteroid belt? WHAT IF JIM HAD WINGS. Anything at all that captures the tension, the frustration, or any part of their slow transition from antagonism to deeper understanding will be 200% my jam. \o/
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This is definitely an unusual character combination, so let me say right up front that you do NOT have to get all four of these people into the same fic! I'd love to read about any one of them by themselves, or any combination or subgroup you're interested in. :D In case you aren't caught up on S3 just yet, I'll confine spoilers to my letter! But as a baseline: please feel free to tell me anything you like about Nyx's past, her life with the Seers and her escape, how she gradually became comfortable on the Raza; or all Six's terrible guilty feelings, how determined he is to do better, and by all means roll around in his rocky return to the ship post-S1. Or Three and his delightful affection for Five, his willingness to get himself left behind for people, how terribly strange it is interacting with computer!Sarah (especially when she knows Marcus Boone better than she knows Three, in some ways). Or Two! By which I mean Two or Rebecca or Portia, of course—anything from any part of Two's backstory would be wonderful, or her present; how much she cares about the crew, how much it hurts to lose them or come close to it (One, Four, Six, Nyx ...), the peculiarities of being synthetic. Anything! (And any of these people paired with any of the others is a-okay with me. *_____*!)
This show! This show continues to ruin my life, and I continue to let it. /o\ WHY. Rest assured that I enjoy lots of different things about it and will love all sorts of different takes on it—from coldly violent Portia POV on killing people and stealing things to super creepy fic about Three and the lingering effects of goo-influence/alien voices in his head ... or charming fluffy group-hug fic about the crew during downtime, hanging out and making fun of each other. :D If you'd like to write a setting AU, that's totally fine; but I'd like it best if the crew + amnesia + criminals aspects could be retained!
Oh, Nyx. /o\ WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DIE. (I know, I know, you were in Misaki's way and that's never a good place to be. STILL.) While I was thrilled to get to see Nyx again at the beginning of S3, and would be delighted by 1k of Two hallucinating about kissing her some more, please feel free to ignore Nyx's death or AU it away in any manner you please—or write me 1k of deathfic and rip my heart out all over again, of course. :D
• Backstory! If worldbuilding is your jam, please know that it's also my jam, and I would love any Seer headcanons you'd like to share. :D Anything about Nyx as a child, the first time she was placed in the Seers' machinery, what it's like being linked up and seeing so many possible futures at once—when she first decided to escape, whether there were unsuccessful attempts before the one that finally worked. Did she have friends, relationships with other Seers (besides Milo)? Or was keeping herself isolated from the rest of them a deliberate strategy to prevent them from knowing enough about her to be able to predict her decisions?
• I'd also love to read about her perspective on pretty much anything during the show—being in prison, her outsider's POV on the crew when they first arrive there, her thought process leading up to going after Milo (did she feel at all bad about not telling them what she was really after? Did she want to trust them, but Milo was just too important to risk it? Or was she still half-expecting to leave the ship pretty soon anyway, at that point?). Anything from her perspective about the slow transition to being part of the crew, getting to know her way around the ship, learning to think of it as home; Four turning back into Ryo, the corporate war. ANYTHING. :D
• You should absolutely feel free to write me deathfic (NYYYYYYYYX :C), but I'd also be delighted by 1k where that doesn't happen, for basically any reason you like. :D Could she have accepted Ryo's offer to make her empress, and if so, might she have found a way to survive? Could her foresight have changed the way the war turned out/prevented the uprising or coup? Or could the android have reached the bridge soon enough to help Nyx out in the fight? Could Nyx have seen Ryo coming (knowing how much he wanted the blink drive) a few seconds before he'd boarded the Raza, and gone down to the engine room, so he'd find her there?
• Or! Feel free to write about absolutely any Nyx pairing that interests you. :D Nyx/Devon? I hugely enjoyed Devon's ridiculous angsty doctor backstory, so if emotional h/c is your thing, feel free to indulge! (Could Nyx have caught some extra bit of information that gave her a flash of vision about the attack that killed him—could she have found him in time to save him?) Nyx/Two? *_______* They have to pretend to be married for a job! Nyx's foresight starts acting up, so she sees them banging repeatedly before it happens! Nyx/Three? Three offers to be her sparring partner after Ryo's left, and Nyx kicks his ass but totally appreciates the gesture! Whenever Three gets drunk he starts telling Nyx how pretty she is in relentless earnest detail! :D (Nyx/Two/Three: ALSO AN A++ CHOICE.) Nyx/Four and/or Nyx/Ryo is a-okay; let it get weird and sad and strained, as in canon, or find a happier way to end it (or let Nyx end up with a Hiro who doesn't die, who frankly seems like he'd be a better match than Ryo-with-his-memories). Nyx/Six—early in S2, was she maybe easier to talk to than anyone from the S1 crew, for Six? Did he repay the favor by listening to her talk about Milo? (... I'll admit I see this as a slower burn, so 1k of them interacting with some light UST would TOTALLY work for me. :D)
SIX. THAT CLIFFHANGER. /o\ AUGH. I absolutely love Six, his whole backstory and all his guilt, his struggles to figure out how to do the right thing in a universe that's not interested in making it easy to decide what "the right thing" even is, his careful patient apologizing all through S2—I just adored how determined he was about it, that he was sorry but not shrinking, so deferent to Two and willing to do what it took to earn her trust back, but very clear about not letting Three treat him like shit. SIX. ♥ So, yeah, I will be thrilled to read anything you want to write me about Six! :D
• Anything about any part of Six's life you want to delve into would be great—just starting out at the GA, early moments from his friendship with Anders, his relationship with his wife (anything you're interested in, the beginning to the rocky parts we saw him flash back to in 3.07), going undercover with the General and the aftermath of that, all the way up to going undercover again as Griffin Jones on the Raza (how did he convince Portia to let him join up? What did he know about the crew beforehand, and did meeting them change his perspective?). ANYTHING.
• Or, of course, whatever you'd like to tell me about Six during the show! S1 to S3, anything goes—uncovering more about Griffin Jones and then about Kal Varrik, and how he felt about each of his past selves, whether he wanted to be them again or not; just when it was he got in touch with the GA, and whether he wavered at any point before the S1 finale. The whole glorious arc of him earning forgiveness in S2, any part of that process with Two or Three or Five, or even the android; leaving the Raza again but this time for a better reason, and if you have any interest in space politics feel free to tell me aaaaaaall about the colonies and their attempts to secure independence! :D Or about coming back to the ship, his reaction to the late-S3 ALIEN INVASION developments, to what happens to Three or to Ryo's return or just anything. GO WILD.
• 1k of him surviving that explosion (maybe tossed to the other side of the rift, having to find his way back to the right dimension?) would honestly be STELLAR and make my Yuletide. Or! Any other sort of AU from any point or futurefic you want to write about Six. If he'd tried to make it work with the GA—like, let the crew escape, at the beginning of S2, but hadn't gone with them? Would he still have found his way back to them sooner or later? (Could he have brought Anders with him?) Or, all the way at the other end of the show: if he'd realized the explosion might be a trick and hadn't gone through with it. What else might the aliens have tried? Could he and the crew have found a way to stop them?
• And, of course, I'm definitely here for Six shipfic! :D In any and all flavors I can think of, and if I miss your favorite Six ship, by all means give it to me anyway. Six/Anders—surely at SOME point in their GA careers, they had to go undercover in a gay space bar, am I right? Six/One—as the ones who didn't go to prison at the start of S2, if One hadn't died, would they have stuck together? Banged away the loneliness of missing the rest of the crew so badly? Six/Two—I was ALL OVER the process of him, like, re-establishing/proving his loyalty to her in S2, and would adore any tropey thing with similar overtones about him getting hurt for the crew and her ~coming for him when he didn't think she would. *_____* Six/Three—accidental baby acquisition? :D They swap places with their married selves in an alternate universe? :D Hurt/comfort or lifesaving or sex pollen? :D (Six/Two/Three? YES PLEASE.) Any conversation about how to make good choices, or make up for making bad ones, with Six/Four or Six/Ryo undertones, would be amazing! Six/android—frankly, the two of them just talking about ethics in the infirmary for 1k would be spectacular. /o\ :D
Three! Three is all my self-sacrifice-loving h/c-encouraging wisecracking angstbucket dreams come true, bless his heart. ♥ I'm so, so easy for characters who are really emotional and easily hurt but try hard to hide it, especially when they fail—which describes basically everyone in Dark Matter, lbr, but Three's particularly transparent and I love him for it. :D So whatever you want to tell me about Three, I'm here for it!
• His backstory is so angsty and terrible and I love it so much. :D Anything you wanted to explore would be great! How did he cope with the death of his parents? Did he know it was Tanner all along, or was he in denial about it? If the first, why did he stick with Tanner for so long, and what was that like for him? If the second, what was it that finally got him to acknowledge the truth staring him in the face? Was Marcus Boone actually intending to use that signal beacon? Or had he kept it without activating it precisely because being on the Raza got him away from Tanner at last?
• Anything from his perspective during any of the show's seasons would be awesome! From the paranoia of early S1 to his anger over Six's betrayal of them in S2, to his goo experience and the weird connection he seems to have with the aliens as a result—Four's departure, Sarah's quasi-resurrection and departure, One's death or Nyx's death, something set during the time loop ... THE SHOW IS YOUR OYSTER. Missing scenes, episode tags, or Three's perspective on any moment that didn't quite strike you as fully explored—I'd be delighted to read any of it!
• Or, of course, futurefic or AUs working from any point! Feel free to write me SUPER CREEPY unreliable-narrator fic about the potential consequences of aliens reaching into Three's head. (Or, of course, tell me about the future where he can use that against them somehow!) What might have happened if he had ever chosen to take Marcus Boone's imprint back—or if something had gone awry that led to the same result? If Ryo had spilled the beans about Sarah's illness earlier? If Three had convinced Five to leave him and then had been taken by the GA in 2.11? I would LOVE 1k of ensemble feelings about the rest of the crew following and rescuing him! :D
• And by all means, any Three ship you ship, I'm there! I got some wonderful Three shipfic last year, but that only served to make me hope I can get even more. :D 3.01 made me cackle with delight—1k of AU where Three convinces Anders to leave with him instead of going back to the GA during that ep (plus or minus UST) would be wonderful. :D Or! Give me 1k of AU where One didn't die; where Three thinks he did but he didn't, or where the beginning of S2 just plain happened differently. Three/Two! Tell me all about the world where they didn't manage to break off the fuckbuddy thing successfully, or must pose as married SOME MORE for ~reasons! Three/Four, which I'll admit I mostly see as angsty—Three admired Four's badassery so much in S1! Tell me all about how Four taking Ryo's imprint back and then avoiding him hurt his feelings. /o\ :D And I kind of already mentioned this when I talked about Six shipfic, but seriously, any of your favorite shipfic tropes applied to Six/Three would be beautiful! Three hitting on Six during that time loop because he's lost all his reasons not to, or Six's mental projections of Three doing something ... unexpected, during one of those virtual scenarios he was stuck in during 3.07. :D Or, of course, Three/the android! I just love the change in Three's feelings over time, from finding her creepy and calling her names to caring about her and learning French from her and ... still probably calling her names. ;D
TWO! ♥ Two is so many different things I love, an iron woobie and a leader and a badass, dedicated but uncertain, physically almost invulnerable but emotionally so squishy—she cares SO MUCH about her crew and her ship, and her whole existential struggle in 3.01 with the title drop, how difficult it can be to make good choices, how much it can wear you down to try and fail, AAAAA. I ate that up with a spoon. :DDDDDDDD! So, yeah. Whatever you want to write about Two, I'll read!
• There is SO MUCH to work with in Two's backstory, especially thanks to some of the later episodes in S3! :D By all means explore any part of her life that interests you: her time as Rebecca in the Dwarf Star facility (feel free to go creepy) to her time with Shaw (feel free to go fluffy) and her escape, her transition to Portia, how she managed to secure the Raza for herself (well, or for her daughter's sake, at least if you believe Ryo) and how the crew joined her (or did she recruit them?). Anything!
• Or dive into any part of the show that interests you! I loved S1 and everybody trying to figure themselves out and get a handle on things just as much as all the increasingly complicated shenanigans in S3, so by all means set your fic at any point. :D Two's perspective on discovering some of the more unusual things about herself, or that first encounter with Dwarf Star, or any differences she can feel between her old nanites and the upgraded ones; on their back-and-forth quasi-alliance with Truffault, or Four leaving, Adrian or Solara or that time jump in 3.09. What she was thinking when she cast that deciding vote concerning Ryo's fate—what it was like to be possessed by the goo-alien (could she perceive herself doing everything? Or not?). Anything!
• Or, of course, tell me about all kinds of things that could have happened, but didn't/won't. Could she have forced that alien out of her, if she'd had a little more time, and saved Six? (Or write me 1k of post-canon, the crew realizing what's wrong with her and trying to fix it and figure out whether Six is still alive at the same time.) What if she'd decided that instead of executing Ryo, they could wipe him again? Or if she'd decided she needed to take Portia's imprint back—if she does decide that, post-canon, because maybe Portia knows where her daughter is (if the strongbox yielded no answers, that is) ...
• And of course shipfic about Two and pretty much anybody is more than welcome! Two/One—notdead!AU, or just canonical grieving punched up a little (I absolutely loved her stonefaced and vengeful, shooting Jace Corso in the head; and what a gutpunch it must have been, to kill someone who looks so exactly like One! /o\ OH TWO). I already talked a little about Two/Three under Three's section, but seriously, so here for this in any flavor! Could having both been controlled by aliens give them some kind of mental link? (Or go in an angstier direction: does Three start having the same reactions to Two that he had to the anomaly, even after the alien's removed from her? D:) Two/Four, with all sorts of horribly sharp edges now that Four's gone and Two's demonstrated more than once that she's willing to kill Ryo! ;-; Two/Six—huddling for warmth? (Two keeping Six warm, even, since she's the one with nanites that presumably can regulate her temperature!) Rescues? Loyalty kink of any kind? *______* And oh, did the end of S3 ever give us a wealth of angles on Two/Android, Two/Shaw, Two/Android/Shaw ... :D (Anything from porn to a 1k meditation on the nature of artifice and personhood with vaguely shippy implications would be A++!)
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These movies! The whole aesthetic of these movies is such a persistent delight to me, and I enjoy the combination of humor, heroism, striving in the face of difficulty, and magical weirdness SO MUCH. I'm only asking for Nuala this year, but I love all the characters a lot and would be delighted with ensemble fic, as long as Nuala's in it somewhere! 1k of a missing scene from anywhere in Golden Army, Nuala trying to decide who to trust or at the BPRD talking to Abe; AU where she lives and things work out differently, or what it feels like to die, knowing Nuada is dying too, hoping she's made the right choice but unable to be sure. I'd be as interested in a thousand words of elven worldbuilding just as much as I would be in Nuala/Nuada, Nuala/Abe, Nuala/HB, Nuala/Liz, Nuala/John (or team OT4, Nuala/Abe/HB/Liz! ... OT5, EVEN), or anything else that strikes your fancy!
These movies are such a wonderful combination of characters I love (gruff and/or angry and/or otherwise constrained people pretending they don't have feelings and failing!), worldbuilding I love (a magical world ~JUST UNDER THE SURFACE, with weird amazing things bursting out of the shadows!), and plots I love (ragtag teams of misfit toys defeating eldritch horrors or arrogant genocidal elf-princes who aren't entirely wrong!). In conclusion: *_________*! There's basically nothing you could write me about any corner of this universe that I wouldn't enjoy one way or another. :D
And one of my favorite things about Golden Army in particular was Nuala! There's so much about her character that's fascinatingly contradictory: she's so soft-spoken, so apparently delicate, especially by comparison to Nuada's pride and anger and violence; and yet she successfully threatens people, manages to keep her piece of the crown reasonably safe, and, in the end, does what no one else can do—defeats Nuada in a way he can't see coming, can't prevent. So, yeah, I would be thrilled to read anything you wanted to write me about Nuala. :D
• "Backstory" covers a whole lot of ground, for someone who's lived as long as she has! If you enjoy worldbuilding, then BY ALL MEANS go wild—there's so much Golden Army doesn't tell us about the elven court, but I would LOVE to hear it. :D What was the world like when Nuala was younger, when there were fewer humans and so much more magic, when everything was wilder and newer and stranger? What adventures might she have had? (Is there a reason why she likes humans better than Nuada does—did she befriend one once, a long time ago?) Who was her mother? What was her perspective on the creation of the Golden Army, or on Nuada's exile, especially with their link intact the whole time? Any headcanon you have about Clan Bethmoora, or other clans/inter-clan relations and politicking, is more than welcome!
• Or! Anything during the movie, by all means. :D Her perspective on basically anything that happens—incorporating her magical/psychic abilities and her connection to Nuada—would be wonderful, from her brother's return and her father's death to escaping the court, the BPRD, Abe, the duel and the Army's reactivation ... I'm particularly interested in her POV as distinctly nonhuman, ancient and powerful and perhaps a little weary, conscious of the fact that her efforts to preserve humanity are only going to perpetuate the slow decline and death of everything she knows—but I'm also here for her curiosity and interest in human things and in this weird BPRD team, and any of the movie's lighter moments!
• And of course you should feel free to write me AUs and futurefic, which are in some ways the same thing when it comes to Nuala! Any way you can come up with for her to survive is a-okay with me, whether it's a matter of breaking her link with Nuada at a crucial moment (replacing it with a link with Abe, perhaps?), or a matter of Nuada surviving and prevailing, and an exploration of what the future he wants to achieve might look like for everyone else. Or! AU from other points: what if she had managed to secure all the pieces of the crown and take control of the Golden Army? What if the BPRD had found a way to destroy her piece (with Liz's fire, perhaps?), so the Army could never be used by anyone?
• Fleshing out Nuala/Abe a little more would be wonderful—they're adorable, and I'd love to see them getting to know each other, psychically or empathically or just by talking a little more. :D (You can also rip my heart out with canonical angst, or feel free to give this a happy ending, however AU!) Or! Give me any other Nuala pairing (or moresome) that strikes your fancy. I'm here for Nuada/Nuala that's founded on the profundity of their connection and genuine affection and respect for each other that no one else can quite equal ... or for onesided, vaguely obsessive, or otherwise creepy Nuada/Nuala. HB/Nuala—HB's a prince, after all! :D Might some sort of curse or other supernatural problem require him to marry a princess? Liz/Nuala—okay, so it's for a totally different reason, but Liz gets what it's like to pose a danger in ways you wish you didn't, just by existing! (And also what it's like to have suicide feel like the only way to solve the problem, most likely. OH LIZ.) Also, anything that takes advantage of Liz being the dragon to Nuala's princess would be amazing. :D And I love the BPRD team, and would be equally thrilled by Nuala surviving and platonically joining them/running away alongside them, or some kind of amazing HB/Liz/Abe/Nuala(/John) group romance, if either of those is your jam!
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First off, while these movies are tagged as a group, I want to say you absolutely DO NOT need to have seen Winter's War to write me a Ravenna fic I'll love! :D Feel free to use whatever bits of either or both movies you like and set aside the rest. Pre-SWatH, during, set between movies, set after SWatH and ignoring Winter's War, during or after Winter's War—anything goes! Ravenna's youth and past history, other kingdoms she's toppled, where/how she discovered/learned to use her magic? A missing scene or something from her perspective about SWatH, losing Finn or kissing Snow, or the moment of her death? AU where she survives—or post-canon where she's in the mirror and succeeds in driving Snow White mad? Ravenna/Snow, Ravenna/Freya, or any other pairing you're interested in totally welcome!
These movies are ridiculous and pretty and I kind of adore them. :D There are a lot of things about them that I like—the aesthetics! The fairytale framework! The weird and sometimes inexplicable magic that you have to keep an eye out for if you want to not die!—but despite the stiff competition, one of the big things that keeps me rewatching them is DEFINITELY Ravenna. Everything about her, her anger and her magnetism and her whole gleaming murderous raven-feathered aesthetic, the slow smug way she smiles to herself while people die around her, is fantastic and awful and I love it.
SO YEAH. By all means, write me something about Ravenna! And while I would be delighted by an AU where she manages to find herself something not unlike a happy ending (perhaps despite herself, and no doubt it would take her time to recognize it for what it is), please don't feel any need to soften her or smooth down her sharp edges. There's a lot about Ravenna that's vicious and petty and unkind, despite the ways in which I think she's genuinely been wronged, and I'm perfectly happy to see her think she's justified in her actions when she absolutely isn't. /o\ :D OH RAVENNA.
• Backstory! Lots of room for backstory, whether you want to use Winter's War or not—I would absolutely love to read more about her childhood, her youth with Finn and/or Freya, how they related to each other and connected to each other, the circumstances of Ravenna's first use of magic or first killing (or both, if they were the same moment). If you like to worldbuild, by all means feel free to fill in some blanks; where is the Duchy of Blackwood, anyway? What other kings and queens has Ravenna destroyed? Where did she get that mirror, and when? Is she ruling in absentia, other countries or empires—what stories follow her, what do other nations' people say about her? (Even a five-things fic: five names Ravenna's been given in other lands, and one she earned?)
• Or! Something set during either movie, or between them. :D Her perspective on basically any part of SWatH, or a missing scene, would be wonderful! How does King Magnus's kingdom compare—does she miss others she once ruled? People, places, art and music and books that once existed, dances no one else remembers the steps to (except maybe Finn)? Does she truly hate Snow White, or is she almost relieved to be run through, to have the long exhausting march of "too many lives" end? Between movies—what is it like inside the mirror, looking out at Snow White from it? What is it like in Winter's War, to step out of it again and be almost alive, to see Freya again at last (and then watch her die)?
• Or AU me any way you like! Ignore Winter's War completely; what might have happened if Snow White had spared Ravenna instead? Or use the mirror thing but no more—if Snow White had realized Ravenna was in there, and found a way to get her out? If Ravenna had succeeded in tricking her, driving her slowly mad? If Freya had come down from the north herself to get the mirror? If Ravenna had reached Snow White's kingdom a little later, and found not King Magnus but Queen Snow White on the throne—would she still have tried to trick the queen into marrying her?
• And of course I'm all over Ravenna shipfic. :D I tend to have more specific ideas for f/f in this fandom, oops, but for the record, Ravenna/Finn, Ravenna/Huntsman, or Ravenna/William are all a-okay with me if you feel inspired! (I loved the codependence and mental connection between Ravenna and Finn, so anything leaning on that would be wonderful; and 1k of Ravenna being SUPER CREEPY or 1k of the beginning of sincere slow burn Ravenna/Huntsman or Ravenna/William would be great.) As you may have inferred, incest is totally fine with me and I would love Ravenna/Freya—the whole spectrum from Ravenna insisting they can only trust each other and manipulating Freya to sincere affection (or both at once) is absolutely open to you. :D Could Ravenna have tired of disposable kings a little earlier, and chosen to install Freya as her eternal silver sister-queen instead? Or, as ever, Ravenna/Snow White! In absolutely any flavor: canonical obsessiveness tinged with UST, or 1k of any sort of AU or your favorite f/f trope—could Ravenna, queen of some other kingdom, have come to Magnus asking for his daughter's hand? (With the threat of a black glass army at her back if he didn't agree?) Could they have discovered they were soulmates, or accidentally magically bonded? (If there's one thing that could keep Ravenna from carving Snow White's heart out, it might be the knowledge that doing so would kill Ravenna herself ...)
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This movie was lovely and pretty and slick and just a tremendous amount of fun to watch, and I was so thrilled to see that it got nominated! While I painstakingly forced myself to narrow things down to just the mage, rest assured that I'd be thrilled with any sort of ensemble fic that includes her or is from her POV—her observations of Arthur and his gang, or of Bedivere and the resistance, of Vortigern or the sword or the kingdom. Or! Any headcanon you have about her backstory, where she came from and how she joined up, how her magic works; where she ends up post-movie, or shipfic of her and ... well, lots of people! Arthur? Maggie? Catia, in an AU where she lives (or can be retrieved from the syrens' magical waters)? (If you want to go by behind-the-scenes stuff and consider her Guinevere, that's fine by me! Or is she Merlin, reincarnated? A relation or alternate manifestation of the Lady of the Lake? Someone else entirely?)
I enjoyed this movie SO MUCH, and I liked basically everything about it, but this letter's already so long that I told myself I had to pick ONE character I really really cared about and definitely wanted to see in my gift, and, well: the mage! :D But I loved Arthur, I loved Vortigern, I loved all the minor characters, and I'd be more than happy to see anybody else you'd like to include in my gift, no worries!
The mage was just so great—I loved her irreverence, her awesomely weird abilities, her brusque and vaguely hostile competence, everything. So, yeah. As long as she's in my gift somewhere, I'll be more than happy! And feel free to do any worldbuilding necessary to fill in the blanks the movie left around the mage, and also to NOT do any research; historical accuracy is not at all necessary (though totally appreciated, if you happen to feel like it).
• Pre-canon welcome! IIRC there wasn't a whole lot of information in the movie about the mage's background, but given the situation—mages in general feared and hated, and her position with the resistance—there's no doubt she's led a pretty interesting life. :D Where is she from? How did she end up where she is? (Visions? Simple certainty as to where she needed to be and when? Was she determined to find Arthur—or disgruntled about needing to?) Has she ever quested her way to that altar (or some other similarly magical site), and if so, what did she discover about herself? When did she first learn she had the ability to control or communicate with/direct animals, and what else has she used it for?
• Or! Basically anything about her during the movie, from her POV or anyone else's. (I don't mind at all if you call her "the mage" even from her own POV, if you'd rather not name her!) A missing scene during their travels, approaching the altar or leaving it again, trying to understand what Arthur saw. Were there other moments when she touched or interacted with the sword, other dreams of Arthur's that she experienced? What was it like for her, enlarging and controlling that snake in the throne room? Does her connection with Excalibur extend beyond the moments when she's specifically trying to interact with it—did she feel anything when Arthur tried to throw it away, or when the Lady of the Lake gave it back to him?
• And of course post-movie is more than welcome! Does Arthur knight her, too? (If he tried to, would she let him?) Does she have to stick around to help them clean up the remains of Vortigern's magical equipment; to talk to the syrens, negotiate a new deal, or to deal with the wreckage of Vortigern's tower? Or does she leave—and then come back at the head of a delegation of mages? Does she become Arthur's court mage or magical advisor? Or is that much too official for her taste, and instead she just hangs out in the woods and Arthur has to come looking if he needs her help? :D
• Feel free to combine any mage ship you favor with any of the prompts above, or go off in a totally different direction! The movie's hints of the mage/Arthur came in exactly the right amount to make me ship it, and I'd accept all sorts of magical shenanigans as trope foundations—sex pollen is TOTALLY plausible in this universe; or soulbonding, or dreamsharing, or accidental telepathy! If the mage came at the head of that delegation, would it be to propose a marriage of convenience, to cement a new alliance between Arthur and the mages? :D :D :D (I can imagine her being SO matter-of-fact about it, and Arthur all ??? EXCUSE ME WHAT.) Or! Give me a world where she and Maggie meet and interact, and are able to appreciate each other's stone-cold unflinching willingness to do what ought to be done! Could she retrieve Catia somehow from the waters, or go on a quest to bring her back, if what Vortigern did to her left traces, stains, that needed to be lifted? They led such tremendously different lives, and Catia is so sweet vs. all the mage's sharp edges—I would love love love to see them interact. Or the mage/Bedivere! He's spent a lot of time with mages! How well do they know each other, anyway? ;D ... The mage/Vortigern, in some kind of mildly unhealthy femdom arrangement, if he's captured instead of dying at the end? THE MAGE/KUNG FU GEORGE. *waves hands* GO WILD.
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If you got all the way down here by actually reading that whole thing, please allow me to a) apologize yet again, and b) applaud you heartily. /o\ :D Thank you so very much for entertaining the idea of filling one of my ridiculous requests, and may you have a truly wonderful Yuletide! ♥ ♥ ♥
If you like having a few prompts to work with ... I still owe you an apology, probably. /o\ I've done my utmost to make this readable and reasonably organized, and hopefully it's not too hard to navigate!
RL was a bear this year and there's not much to see in any of these places, but I'm on the AO3 at Damkianna, I crosspost to LJ/DW at
damkianna/damkianna, and I ... well, used to kind of have a tumblr at Other letters I've written can be found in my Yuletide tag, my rarewomen/rarelywritten tags, and my Fandom 5K tag. If there's a prompt in any of those letters for a fandom I've requested here that appeals to you, but I didn't repeat that prompt in this letter—please feel free to write it anyway!
In General
If you don't want to read this whole thing, or at least not any more of it than you have to, here's the super-quick bottom line: everything I said up top was 100% sincere! There's nothing you need to try to avoid giving me, and nothing you need to worry I won't like. :D
I'm here for gen, shipfic, smut, introspection, worldbuilding, horror, deathfic, action, violence, fluff ... I'm not always great at coming up with prompts for all of those things (especially darkfic, oops), but I'm more than happy to receive them! So if there's anything you really want to write for a fandom we matched on, but you have second thoughts about giving it as a gift unprompted—tell those second thoughts to eff off, I WANT TO READ IT. \o/
More specifically, I adore and would be delighted to receive any/all/any combination of:
• shipfic! I multiship in most of my fandoms, and am absolutely interested in m/m, m/f, f/f, and poly of any configuration. Any ship you ship, in the foreground or the background, is a-okay with me. :D (Pre-shippiness or shippy-if-you-squint is awesome, too. And 1k of PWP would be WONDERFUL, never fear!)
• gen! I'm also absolutely interested in friendship fic or solo fic about any group of characters or individual character I've requested (which, here is your explicit permission statement: you do NOT have to fit all the characters I've requested into your fic. Any, all, or any subgroup is totally okay with me!). A snippet of casefic, a missing scene or movie/episode tag, introspection—anything!
• free space! By which I mean anything this letter manages to leave off your metaphorical bingo card: AUs of any kind (canon divergence! Everyone's a shapeshifter! It's all IN SPACE!), your favorite tropes or clichés (hurt/comfort! Sex pollen! Wingfic! The zombie apocalypse!), or anything weird/experimental you kind of want to try (interactive fiction! Epistolary fic! Future tense! Second person!). GO FOR IT.
I like quiet fic and plotty fic, long fic and short fic, backstory fic and futurefic, sad fic and fix-it fic. OCs are welcome, as are unusual formats, alternate character interpretations, and rarepairs. I like fic that's canon-compliant and fic that goes a totally different direction, fic about people making bad decisions and fic about people making good decisions—and fic about people who make both. :D Pick a thing that interests you and write me 1k about it (or a series of ten perfect drabbles! A five-things fic made up of double-drabbles! *waves hands*), and ENJOY YOURSELF. ♥
The Big Country (1958)
Any (James McKay, Steve Leech)
Jim! Steve! This movie! I enjoy everything about The Big Country a lot—from Jim's quiet unobtrusive competence to Steve's hot temper and reluctant loyalty, from the inter-ranch politicking to the sheer scenery of the "big country"—so anything you want to write about either or both of these guys is more than welcome. Including, of course, Jim/Steve! Tell me about Jim's time on the sea, how he fell in love with Pat (and then fell out again), how he learned such staunch self-respect; or Steve's anger and insecurity, how he came to work for the Terrills, the process by which his perspective starts to change because of Jim; or give me 1k of pure post-movie Jim/Steve hurt/comfort, Jim insisting that Steve stay with him at the Big Muddy while he recovers from that gunshot wound, and Steve being a terrible patient. :D
I watched this movie for the first time this year, and liked it so much I knew immediately that I wanted to ask for it for Yuletide! :D Jim is just so wonderfully calm and perceptive, so self-possessed and patient—but also, of course, stubborn and frustrating, and possibly just a little self-righteous now and then. And Steve! I absolutely loved his persistent irritation with Jim, and how it said so much more about him than about Jim. Especially in combination with him staying out all night to look for Jim, and of course their midnight fight—and how he finally comes around to seeing Jim's side of things by the end of the movie, though he can't quite convince himself to let Henry Terrill ride into that canyon alone. ♥
James McKay
JIM. ♥________♥ I'm almost always easy for characters played by Gregory Peck, and this movie's no exception! /o\ :D He's just so quietly sure of himself, and has such a clear and thoughtful perspective, such carefully-staked-out lines dividing what matters to him from what doesn't. That he cares so much about everyone's welfare that he'll buy Big Muddy from Julie, and yet so little about everyone's opinions that he doesn't rise to Steve's baiting is just *clenches fist* SO FANTASTIC. JIM.
• SO. Tell me about Jim! The way he conducts himself feels so deliberate, even earned—did something happen to make it that way? Maybe before he became a captain, or immediately afterward when he still didn't have much experience; some incident aboard ship, social pressure and macho bullshit that ended badly? When did he first go to sea, and why? Who taught him navigation? Was he once a little more like Steve—maybe more than he wants to admit?
• Totally happy for you to explore his relationship with Pat—how did it begin? How did they fall in love? What was their separation like for Jim, when Pat first returned to her family but Jim was still back east? Did he have a certain sense of foreboding about it, a niggling feeling that things might not work out? Or was he looking forward to learning more about where Pat came from, and understanding her better?
• Or anything about Jim set during the movie! I love basically everything about his romance with Julie (THAT WORDLESS CONFESSIONAL LOVE-STARE *_____*), so by all means feel free to write about the two of them. :D His POV on their first meeting or early interactions, or on the Hannasseys/Ramón/the Terrills as he learns more about the situation with the water, or, of course, on Steve, would all be great! Or any sort of missing scene, the standoff in the canyon—or even 1k of his jubilation at getting to ride out of there safely with Julie!
• Post-movie gen or Jim/Julie would also be lovely. I feel like the ending can be read more than one way (... though I may just not be remembering it clearly), and I'd be as happy to read about Jim (by himself, or with Julie) riding off and finding somewhere else to be happy, far away from feuds and water rights, as about Jim (by himself, or with Julie) returning to Big Muddy and getting to work running it like a real ranch again (with actual details about the ins and outs of ranching totally optional, because I know nothing about it :D).
Steve Leech
Oh, Steve. :D Steve's character growth was basically everything I wanted—I'd hoped Charlton Heston wasn't going to be wasted on pure petty antagonism, and it was a joy to be right! Steve is basically my favorite kind of character: he's rude, he's confrontational, he's difficult, but he doesn't have to be—he doesn't necessarily even want to be, he just doesn't know how else to act; he's never thought about it, never been given a reason to figure himself out or to look at things another way. And then he DOES and he GETS IT and it's just so SATISFYING. STEVE. ♥
• SO YEAH. Totally here for any headcanon you happen to have about Steve's backstory—where's he from? How did he start working for the Terrills? Did he have a thing for Pat even before she went east? (Or was that possibly a little more about Jim than it was about Pat, in some ways?) Does he have any personal reasons to dislike the Hannasseys, or is that just another thing he hasn't spent too much time thinking about?
• Or, a little closer to the beginning of the movie: what does he think when Pat comes back? What does she or doesn't she tell him about Jim, before Jim arrives, and what does he think about it? Pat and Julie have been friends for a long time, so Steve must know Julie—might they have talked to each other, about Pat or about this Jim of hers, before Jim arrived?
• I would absolutely love anything from Steve's perspective about basically any part of the movie. :D (And if you'd like to make this pre-slash to any degree—from only-if-you-squint to serious UST, from Steve in total denial to Steve grudgingly aware that he's got more than one reason to want to get his hands on Jim—that would be more than welcome!) From the early parts where he still disdains Jim, the search for Jim, the argument, to the midnight fight and Steve's change in perspective, or anything in between!
• Also totally happy to read about post-movie fic focused on Steve solo! What does he do—keep working for the Terrills, or move on? If Jim and Julie do leave the area, might he take on Big Muddy? If they stay, Julie has that line about how you'd need a good ranch manager; might they ask Steve to take on that role? (Would he accept, or refuse?)
Jim/Steve
I'm giving the pairing its own set of bullets, because I ship it so hard it's a little ridiculous. /o\ :D Oh, and while I'd hugely appreciate Julie (and Pat, for that matter) being dealt with kindly, please don't feel any need to spend hundreds of words carefully explaining how Jim and Julie break up first! (You absolutely can if you'd like! But you definitely don't HAVE to.) I'm totally happy to accept that any post-movie Jim/Steve is set in an AU where Jim and Julie care about each other but never quite made it to love, and they're just *waves hands* friends who like to talk philosophy and go on horseback rides. Whatever works for you!
• I would be DELIGHTED with anything set early in the movie, or pre-movie + the beginning of the movie, that's pre-slash or ship-if-you-squint—where Steve's sick of hearing about Jim from Pat, grumpily imagining the worst of this guy, and then Jim arrives and he's
• Or anything you wanted to place a little further in! Canon-compliant and just filling in their perspectives with unexpressed UST, all the way to "that visit Jim makes to Steve's room in the middle of the night ... ends differently :D". (As a side note, it's very easy for me to imagine Steve, with all his nonsense about how men ~ought to act, having to wrestle with some internalized homophobia/biphobia, and/or some shame over how good touching Jim makes him feel. If that interests you, feel free to explore it! If not, that's completely fine—there is zero need to include period-appropriate homophobia on my account.)
• I would also absolutely love something set post-canon! I enjoy h/c and caretaking a lot (especially bad patients + determined gentle caretakers! :D :D :D), so anything about Steve's recovery from that gunshot wound he got in Blanco Canyon, Jim insistent on looking after him and Steve being all prickly about it, still wrestling with old habits of defensiveness; enforced closeness, and soothing touches that are grudgingly accepted, and Jim having to take Steve's shirt off to change a bandage, and just EVERY TROPEY THING. *_____*! But I'd also be delighted with anything more contemplative—them meeting again after a few years, perhaps? Or Jim taking on Big Muddy alone and Steve starting to come by on a weirdly regular basis with advice/to help him fix the place up/&c &c (as an understated way to apologize, even, which Jim eventually picks up on?). :D
• Or anything else you want to write about these guys! What if the search had gone a little better, and Steve had found Jim himself, and they'd had a chance to talk together on the ride back? What if Steve had, without Jim noticing, come back early enough to catch Jim on Old Thunder? What if this were IN SPACE and the Terrills and Hannasseys owned competing mining outfits working the same asteroid belt? WHAT IF JIM HAD WINGS. Anything at all that captures the tension, the frustration, or any part of their slow transition from antagonism to deeper understanding will be 200% my jam. \o/
Dark Matter (TV)
Nyx Harper, Six, Three, Two
This is definitely an unusual character combination, so let me say right up front that you do NOT have to get all four of these people into the same fic! I'd love to read about any one of them by themselves, or any combination or subgroup you're interested in. :D In case you aren't caught up on S3 just yet, I'll confine spoilers to my letter! But as a baseline: please feel free to tell me anything you like about Nyx's past, her life with the Seers and her escape, how she gradually became comfortable on the Raza; or all Six's terrible guilty feelings, how determined he is to do better, and by all means roll around in his rocky return to the ship post-S1. Or Three and his delightful affection for Five, his willingness to get himself left behind for people, how terribly strange it is interacting with computer!Sarah (especially when she knows Marcus Boone better than she knows Three, in some ways). Or Two! By which I mean Two or Rebecca or Portia, of course—anything from any part of Two's backstory would be wonderful, or her present; how much she cares about the crew, how much it hurts to lose them or come close to it (One, Four, Six, Nyx ...), the peculiarities of being synthetic. Anything! (And any of these people paired with any of the others is a-okay with me. *_____*!)
This show! This show continues to ruin my life, and I continue to let it. /o\ WHY. Rest assured that I enjoy lots of different things about it and will love all sorts of different takes on it—from coldly violent Portia POV on killing people and stealing things to super creepy fic about Three and the lingering effects of goo-influence/alien voices in his head ... or charming fluffy group-hug fic about the crew during downtime, hanging out and making fun of each other. :D If you'd like to write a setting AU, that's totally fine; but I'd like it best if the crew + amnesia + criminals aspects could be retained!
Nyx Harper
Oh, Nyx. /o\ WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DIE. (I know, I know, you were in Misaki's way and that's never a good place to be. STILL.) While I was thrilled to get to see Nyx again at the beginning of S3, and would be delighted by 1k of Two hallucinating about kissing her some more, please feel free to ignore Nyx's death or AU it away in any manner you please—or write me 1k of deathfic and rip my heart out all over again, of course. :D
• Backstory! If worldbuilding is your jam, please know that it's also my jam, and I would love any Seer headcanons you'd like to share. :D Anything about Nyx as a child, the first time she was placed in the Seers' machinery, what it's like being linked up and seeing so many possible futures at once—when she first decided to escape, whether there were unsuccessful attempts before the one that finally worked. Did she have friends, relationships with other Seers (besides Milo)? Or was keeping herself isolated from the rest of them a deliberate strategy to prevent them from knowing enough about her to be able to predict her decisions?
• I'd also love to read about her perspective on pretty much anything during the show—being in prison, her outsider's POV on the crew when they first arrive there, her thought process leading up to going after Milo (did she feel at all bad about not telling them what she was really after? Did she want to trust them, but Milo was just too important to risk it? Or was she still half-expecting to leave the ship pretty soon anyway, at that point?). Anything from her perspective about the slow transition to being part of the crew, getting to know her way around the ship, learning to think of it as home; Four turning back into Ryo, the corporate war. ANYTHING. :D
• You should absolutely feel free to write me deathfic (NYYYYYYYYX :C), but I'd also be delighted by 1k where that doesn't happen, for basically any reason you like. :D Could she have accepted Ryo's offer to make her empress, and if so, might she have found a way to survive? Could her foresight have changed the way the war turned out/prevented the uprising or coup? Or could the android have reached the bridge soon enough to help Nyx out in the fight? Could Nyx have seen Ryo coming (knowing how much he wanted the blink drive) a few seconds before he'd boarded the Raza, and gone down to the engine room, so he'd find her there?
• Or! Feel free to write about absolutely any Nyx pairing that interests you. :D Nyx/Devon? I hugely enjoyed Devon's ridiculous angsty doctor backstory, so if emotional h/c is your thing, feel free to indulge! (Could Nyx have caught some extra bit of information that gave her a flash of vision about the attack that killed him—could she have found him in time to save him?) Nyx/Two? *_______* They have to pretend to be married for a job! Nyx's foresight starts acting up, so she sees them banging repeatedly before it happens! Nyx/Three? Three offers to be her sparring partner after Ryo's left, and Nyx kicks his ass but totally appreciates the gesture! Whenever Three gets drunk he starts telling Nyx how pretty she is in relentless earnest detail! :D (Nyx/Two/Three: ALSO AN A++ CHOICE.) Nyx/Four and/or Nyx/Ryo is a-okay; let it get weird and sad and strained, as in canon, or find a happier way to end it (or let Nyx end up with a Hiro who doesn't die, who frankly seems like he'd be a better match than Ryo-with-his-memories). Nyx/Six—early in S2, was she maybe easier to talk to than anyone from the S1 crew, for Six? Did he repay the favor by listening to her talk about Milo? (... I'll admit I see this as a slower burn, so 1k of them interacting with some light UST would TOTALLY work for me. :D)
Six
SIX. THAT CLIFFHANGER. /o\ AUGH. I absolutely love Six, his whole backstory and all his guilt, his struggles to figure out how to do the right thing in a universe that's not interested in making it easy to decide what "the right thing" even is, his careful patient apologizing all through S2—I just adored how determined he was about it, that he was sorry but not shrinking, so deferent to Two and willing to do what it took to earn her trust back, but very clear about not letting Three treat him like shit. SIX. ♥ So, yeah, I will be thrilled to read anything you want to write me about Six! :D
• Anything about any part of Six's life you want to delve into would be great—just starting out at the GA, early moments from his friendship with Anders, his relationship with his wife (anything you're interested in, the beginning to the rocky parts we saw him flash back to in 3.07), going undercover with the General and the aftermath of that, all the way up to going undercover again as Griffin Jones on the Raza (how did he convince Portia to let him join up? What did he know about the crew beforehand, and did meeting them change his perspective?). ANYTHING.
• Or, of course, whatever you'd like to tell me about Six during the show! S1 to S3, anything goes—uncovering more about Griffin Jones and then about Kal Varrik, and how he felt about each of his past selves, whether he wanted to be them again or not; just when it was he got in touch with the GA, and whether he wavered at any point before the S1 finale. The whole glorious arc of him earning forgiveness in S2, any part of that process with Two or Three or Five, or even the android; leaving the Raza again but this time for a better reason, and if you have any interest in space politics feel free to tell me aaaaaaall about the colonies and their attempts to secure independence! :D Or about coming back to the ship, his reaction to the late-S3 ALIEN INVASION developments, to what happens to Three or to Ryo's return or just anything. GO WILD.
• 1k of him surviving that explosion (maybe tossed to the other side of the rift, having to find his way back to the right dimension?) would honestly be STELLAR and make my Yuletide. Or! Any other sort of AU from any point or futurefic you want to write about Six. If he'd tried to make it work with the GA—like, let the crew escape, at the beginning of S2, but hadn't gone with them? Would he still have found his way back to them sooner or later? (Could he have brought Anders with him?) Or, all the way at the other end of the show: if he'd realized the explosion might be a trick and hadn't gone through with it. What else might the aliens have tried? Could he and the crew have found a way to stop them?
• And, of course, I'm definitely here for Six shipfic! :D In any and all flavors I can think of, and if I miss your favorite Six ship, by all means give it to me anyway. Six/Anders—surely at SOME point in their GA careers, they had to go undercover in a gay space bar, am I right? Six/One—as the ones who didn't go to prison at the start of S2, if One hadn't died, would they have stuck together? Banged away the loneliness of missing the rest of the crew so badly? Six/Two—I was ALL OVER the process of him, like, re-establishing/proving his loyalty to her in S2, and would adore any tropey thing with similar overtones about him getting hurt for the crew and her ~coming for him when he didn't think she would. *_____* Six/Three—accidental baby acquisition? :D They swap places with their married selves in an alternate universe? :D Hurt/comfort or lifesaving or sex pollen? :D (Six/Two/Three? YES PLEASE.) Any conversation about how to make good choices, or make up for making bad ones, with Six/Four or Six/Ryo undertones, would be amazing! Six/android—frankly, the two of them just talking about ethics in the infirmary for 1k would be spectacular. /o\ :D
Three
Three! Three is all my self-sacrifice-loving h/c-encouraging wisecracking angstbucket dreams come true, bless his heart. ♥ I'm so, so easy for characters who are really emotional and easily hurt but try hard to hide it, especially when they fail—which describes basically everyone in Dark Matter, lbr, but Three's particularly transparent and I love him for it. :D So whatever you want to tell me about Three, I'm here for it!
• His backstory is so angsty and terrible and I love it so much. :D Anything you wanted to explore would be great! How did he cope with the death of his parents? Did he know it was Tanner all along, or was he in denial about it? If the first, why did he stick with Tanner for so long, and what was that like for him? If the second, what was it that finally got him to acknowledge the truth staring him in the face? Was Marcus Boone actually intending to use that signal beacon? Or had he kept it without activating it precisely because being on the Raza got him away from Tanner at last?
• Anything from his perspective during any of the show's seasons would be awesome! From the paranoia of early S1 to his anger over Six's betrayal of them in S2, to his goo experience and the weird connection he seems to have with the aliens as a result—Four's departure, Sarah's quasi-resurrection and departure, One's death or Nyx's death, something set during the time loop ... THE SHOW IS YOUR OYSTER. Missing scenes, episode tags, or Three's perspective on any moment that didn't quite strike you as fully explored—I'd be delighted to read any of it!
• Or, of course, futurefic or AUs working from any point! Feel free to write me SUPER CREEPY unreliable-narrator fic about the potential consequences of aliens reaching into Three's head. (Or, of course, tell me about the future where he can use that against them somehow!) What might have happened if he had ever chosen to take Marcus Boone's imprint back—or if something had gone awry that led to the same result? If Ryo had spilled the beans about Sarah's illness earlier? If Three had convinced Five to leave him and then had been taken by the GA in 2.11? I would LOVE 1k of ensemble feelings about the rest of the crew following and rescuing him! :D
• And by all means, any Three ship you ship, I'm there! I got some wonderful Three shipfic last year, but that only served to make me hope I can get even more. :D 3.01 made me cackle with delight—1k of AU where Three convinces Anders to leave with him instead of going back to the GA during that ep (plus or minus UST) would be wonderful. :D Or! Give me 1k of AU where One didn't die; where Three thinks he did but he didn't, or where the beginning of S2 just plain happened differently. Three/Two! Tell me all about the world where they didn't manage to break off the fuckbuddy thing successfully, or must pose as married SOME MORE for ~reasons! Three/Four, which I'll admit I mostly see as angsty—Three admired Four's badassery so much in S1! Tell me all about how Four taking Ryo's imprint back and then avoiding him hurt his feelings. /o\ :D And I kind of already mentioned this when I talked about Six shipfic, but seriously, any of your favorite shipfic tropes applied to Six/Three would be beautiful! Three hitting on Six during that time loop because he's lost all his reasons not to, or Six's mental projections of Three doing something ... unexpected, during one of those virtual scenarios he was stuck in during 3.07. :D Or, of course, Three/the android! I just love the change in Three's feelings over time, from finding her creepy and calling her names to caring about her and learning French from her and ... still probably calling her names. ;D
Two
TWO! ♥ Two is so many different things I love, an iron woobie and a leader and a badass, dedicated but uncertain, physically almost invulnerable but emotionally so squishy—she cares SO MUCH about her crew and her ship, and her whole existential struggle in 3.01 with the title drop, how difficult it can be to make good choices, how much it can wear you down to try and fail, AAAAA. I ate that up with a spoon. :DDDDDDDD! So, yeah. Whatever you want to write about Two, I'll read!
• There is SO MUCH to work with in Two's backstory, especially thanks to some of the later episodes in S3! :D By all means explore any part of her life that interests you: her time as Rebecca in the Dwarf Star facility (feel free to go creepy) to her time with Shaw (feel free to go fluffy) and her escape, her transition to Portia, how she managed to secure the Raza for herself (well, or for her daughter's sake, at least if you believe Ryo) and how the crew joined her (or did she recruit them?). Anything!
• Or dive into any part of the show that interests you! I loved S1 and everybody trying to figure themselves out and get a handle on things just as much as all the increasingly complicated shenanigans in S3, so by all means set your fic at any point. :D Two's perspective on discovering some of the more unusual things about herself, or that first encounter with Dwarf Star, or any differences she can feel between her old nanites and the upgraded ones; on their back-and-forth quasi-alliance with Truffault, or Four leaving, Adrian or Solara or that time jump in 3.09. What she was thinking when she cast that deciding vote concerning Ryo's fate—what it was like to be possessed by the goo-alien (could she perceive herself doing everything? Or not?). Anything!
• Or, of course, tell me about all kinds of things that could have happened, but didn't/won't. Could she have forced that alien out of her, if she'd had a little more time, and saved Six? (Or write me 1k of post-canon, the crew realizing what's wrong with her and trying to fix it and figure out whether Six is still alive at the same time.) What if she'd decided that instead of executing Ryo, they could wipe him again? Or if she'd decided she needed to take Portia's imprint back—if she does decide that, post-canon, because maybe Portia knows where her daughter is (if the strongbox yielded no answers, that is) ...
• And of course shipfic about Two and pretty much anybody is more than welcome! Two/One—notdead!AU, or just canonical grieving punched up a little (I absolutely loved her stonefaced and vengeful, shooting Jace Corso in the head; and what a gutpunch it must have been, to kill someone who looks so exactly like One! /o\ OH TWO). I already talked a little about Two/Three under Three's section, but seriously, so here for this in any flavor! Could having both been controlled by aliens give them some kind of mental link? (Or go in an angstier direction: does Three start having the same reactions to Two that he had to the anomaly, even after the alien's removed from her? D:) Two/Four, with all sorts of horribly sharp edges now that Four's gone and Two's demonstrated more than once that she's willing to kill Ryo! ;-; Two/Six—huddling for warmth? (Two keeping Six warm, even, since she's the one with nanites that presumably can regulate her temperature!) Rescues? Loyalty kink of any kind? *______* And oh, did the end of S3 ever give us a wealth of angles on Two/Android, Two/Shaw, Two/Android/Shaw ... :D (Anything from porn to a 1k meditation on the nature of artifice and personhood with vaguely shippy implications would be A++!)
Hellboy (movies)
Nuala
These movies! The whole aesthetic of these movies is such a persistent delight to me, and I enjoy the combination of humor, heroism, striving in the face of difficulty, and magical weirdness SO MUCH. I'm only asking for Nuala this year, but I love all the characters a lot and would be delighted with ensemble fic, as long as Nuala's in it somewhere! 1k of a missing scene from anywhere in Golden Army, Nuala trying to decide who to trust or at the BPRD talking to Abe; AU where she lives and things work out differently, or what it feels like to die, knowing Nuada is dying too, hoping she's made the right choice but unable to be sure. I'd be as interested in a thousand words of elven worldbuilding just as much as I would be in Nuala/Nuada, Nuala/Abe, Nuala/HB, Nuala/Liz, Nuala/John (or team OT4, Nuala/Abe/HB/Liz! ... OT5, EVEN), or anything else that strikes your fancy!
These movies are such a wonderful combination of characters I love (gruff and/or angry and/or otherwise constrained people pretending they don't have feelings and failing!), worldbuilding I love (a magical world ~JUST UNDER THE SURFACE, with weird amazing things bursting out of the shadows!), and plots I love (ragtag teams of misfit toys defeating eldritch horrors or arrogant genocidal elf-princes who aren't entirely wrong!). In conclusion: *_________*! There's basically nothing you could write me about any corner of this universe that I wouldn't enjoy one way or another. :D
Nuala
And one of my favorite things about Golden Army in particular was Nuala! There's so much about her character that's fascinatingly contradictory: she's so soft-spoken, so apparently delicate, especially by comparison to Nuada's pride and anger and violence; and yet she successfully threatens people, manages to keep her piece of the crown reasonably safe, and, in the end, does what no one else can do—defeats Nuada in a way he can't see coming, can't prevent. So, yeah, I would be thrilled to read anything you wanted to write me about Nuala. :D
• "Backstory" covers a whole lot of ground, for someone who's lived as long as she has! If you enjoy worldbuilding, then BY ALL MEANS go wild—there's so much Golden Army doesn't tell us about the elven court, but I would LOVE to hear it. :D What was the world like when Nuala was younger, when there were fewer humans and so much more magic, when everything was wilder and newer and stranger? What adventures might she have had? (Is there a reason why she likes humans better than Nuada does—did she befriend one once, a long time ago?) Who was her mother? What was her perspective on the creation of the Golden Army, or on Nuada's exile, especially with their link intact the whole time? Any headcanon you have about Clan Bethmoora, or other clans/inter-clan relations and politicking, is more than welcome!
• Or! Anything during the movie, by all means. :D Her perspective on basically anything that happens—incorporating her magical/psychic abilities and her connection to Nuada—would be wonderful, from her brother's return and her father's death to escaping the court, the BPRD, Abe, the duel and the Army's reactivation ... I'm particularly interested in her POV as distinctly nonhuman, ancient and powerful and perhaps a little weary, conscious of the fact that her efforts to preserve humanity are only going to perpetuate the slow decline and death of everything she knows—but I'm also here for her curiosity and interest in human things and in this weird BPRD team, and any of the movie's lighter moments!
• And of course you should feel free to write me AUs and futurefic, which are in some ways the same thing when it comes to Nuala! Any way you can come up with for her to survive is a-okay with me, whether it's a matter of breaking her link with Nuada at a crucial moment (replacing it with a link with Abe, perhaps?), or a matter of Nuada surviving and prevailing, and an exploration of what the future he wants to achieve might look like for everyone else. Or! AU from other points: what if she had managed to secure all the pieces of the crown and take control of the Golden Army? What if the BPRD had found a way to destroy her piece (with Liz's fire, perhaps?), so the Army could never be used by anyone?
• Fleshing out Nuala/Abe a little more would be wonderful—they're adorable, and I'd love to see them getting to know each other, psychically or empathically or just by talking a little more. :D (You can also rip my heart out with canonical angst, or feel free to give this a happy ending, however AU!) Or! Give me any other Nuala pairing (or moresome) that strikes your fancy. I'm here for Nuada/Nuala that's founded on the profundity of their connection and genuine affection and respect for each other that no one else can quite equal ... or for onesided, vaguely obsessive, or otherwise creepy Nuada/Nuala. HB/Nuala—HB's a prince, after all! :D Might some sort of curse or other supernatural problem require him to marry a princess? Liz/Nuala—okay, so it's for a totally different reason, but Liz gets what it's like to pose a danger in ways you wish you didn't, just by existing! (And also what it's like to have suicide feel like the only way to solve the problem, most likely. OH LIZ.) Also, anything that takes advantage of Liz being the dragon to Nuala's princess would be amazing. :D And I love the BPRD team, and would be equally thrilled by Nuala surviving and platonically joining them/running away alongside them, or some kind of amazing HB/Liz/Abe/Nuala(/John) group romance, if either of those is your jam!
The Huntsman (movies)
Ravenna
First off, while these movies are tagged as a group, I want to say you absolutely DO NOT need to have seen Winter's War to write me a Ravenna fic I'll love! :D Feel free to use whatever bits of either or both movies you like and set aside the rest. Pre-SWatH, during, set between movies, set after SWatH and ignoring Winter's War, during or after Winter's War—anything goes! Ravenna's youth and past history, other kingdoms she's toppled, where/how she discovered/learned to use her magic? A missing scene or something from her perspective about SWatH, losing Finn or kissing Snow, or the moment of her death? AU where she survives—or post-canon where she's in the mirror and succeeds in driving Snow White mad? Ravenna/Snow, Ravenna/Freya, or any other pairing you're interested in totally welcome!
These movies are ridiculous and pretty and I kind of adore them. :D There are a lot of things about them that I like—the aesthetics! The fairytale framework! The weird and sometimes inexplicable magic that you have to keep an eye out for if you want to not die!—but despite the stiff competition, one of the big things that keeps me rewatching them is DEFINITELY Ravenna. Everything about her, her anger and her magnetism and her whole gleaming murderous raven-feathered aesthetic, the slow smug way she smiles to herself while people die around her, is fantastic and awful and I love it.
Ravenna
SO YEAH. By all means, write me something about Ravenna! And while I would be delighted by an AU where she manages to find herself something not unlike a happy ending (perhaps despite herself, and no doubt it would take her time to recognize it for what it is), please don't feel any need to soften her or smooth down her sharp edges. There's a lot about Ravenna that's vicious and petty and unkind, despite the ways in which I think she's genuinely been wronged, and I'm perfectly happy to see her think she's justified in her actions when she absolutely isn't. /o\ :D OH RAVENNA.
• Backstory! Lots of room for backstory, whether you want to use Winter's War or not—I would absolutely love to read more about her childhood, her youth with Finn and/or Freya, how they related to each other and connected to each other, the circumstances of Ravenna's first use of magic or first killing (or both, if they were the same moment). If you like to worldbuild, by all means feel free to fill in some blanks; where is the Duchy of Blackwood, anyway? What other kings and queens has Ravenna destroyed? Where did she get that mirror, and when? Is she ruling in absentia, other countries or empires—what stories follow her, what do other nations' people say about her? (Even a five-things fic: five names Ravenna's been given in other lands, and one she earned?)
• Or! Something set during either movie, or between them. :D Her perspective on basically any part of SWatH, or a missing scene, would be wonderful! How does King Magnus's kingdom compare—does she miss others she once ruled? People, places, art and music and books that once existed, dances no one else remembers the steps to (except maybe Finn)? Does she truly hate Snow White, or is she almost relieved to be run through, to have the long exhausting march of "too many lives" end? Between movies—what is it like inside the mirror, looking out at Snow White from it? What is it like in Winter's War, to step out of it again and be almost alive, to see Freya again at last (and then watch her die)?
• Or AU me any way you like! Ignore Winter's War completely; what might have happened if Snow White had spared Ravenna instead? Or use the mirror thing but no more—if Snow White had realized Ravenna was in there, and found a way to get her out? If Ravenna had succeeded in tricking her, driving her slowly mad? If Freya had come down from the north herself to get the mirror? If Ravenna had reached Snow White's kingdom a little later, and found not King Magnus but Queen Snow White on the throne—would she still have tried to trick the queen into marrying her?
• And of course I'm all over Ravenna shipfic. :D I tend to have more specific ideas for f/f in this fandom, oops, but for the record, Ravenna/Finn, Ravenna/Huntsman, or Ravenna/William are all a-okay with me if you feel inspired! (I loved the codependence and mental connection between Ravenna and Finn, so anything leaning on that would be wonderful; and 1k of Ravenna being SUPER CREEPY or 1k of the beginning of sincere slow burn Ravenna/Huntsman or Ravenna/William would be great.) As you may have inferred, incest is totally fine with me and I would love Ravenna/Freya—the whole spectrum from Ravenna insisting they can only trust each other and manipulating Freya to sincere affection (or both at once) is absolutely open to you. :D Could Ravenna have tired of disposable kings a little earlier, and chosen to install Freya as her eternal silver sister-queen instead? Or, as ever, Ravenna/Snow White! In absolutely any flavor: canonical obsessiveness tinged with UST, or 1k of any sort of AU or your favorite f/f trope—could Ravenna, queen of some other kingdom, have come to Magnus asking for his daughter's hand? (With the threat of a black glass army at her back if he didn't agree?) Could they have discovered they were soulmates, or accidentally magically bonded? (If there's one thing that could keep Ravenna from carving Snow White's heart out, it might be the knowledge that doing so would kill Ravenna herself ...)
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
The Mage
This movie was lovely and pretty and slick and just a tremendous amount of fun to watch, and I was so thrilled to see that it got nominated! While I painstakingly forced myself to narrow things down to just the mage, rest assured that I'd be thrilled with any sort of ensemble fic that includes her or is from her POV—her observations of Arthur and his gang, or of Bedivere and the resistance, of Vortigern or the sword or the kingdom. Or! Any headcanon you have about her backstory, where she came from and how she joined up, how her magic works; where she ends up post-movie, or shipfic of her and ... well, lots of people! Arthur? Maggie? Catia, in an AU where she lives (or can be retrieved from the syrens' magical waters)? (If you want to go by behind-the-scenes stuff and consider her Guinevere, that's fine by me! Or is she Merlin, reincarnated? A relation or alternate manifestation of the Lady of the Lake? Someone else entirely?)
I enjoyed this movie SO MUCH, and I liked basically everything about it, but this letter's already so long that I told myself I had to pick ONE character I really really cared about and definitely wanted to see in my gift, and, well: the mage! :D But I loved Arthur, I loved Vortigern, I loved all the minor characters, and I'd be more than happy to see anybody else you'd like to include in my gift, no worries!
The Mage
The mage was just so great—I loved her irreverence, her awesomely weird abilities, her brusque and vaguely hostile competence, everything. So, yeah. As long as she's in my gift somewhere, I'll be more than happy! And feel free to do any worldbuilding necessary to fill in the blanks the movie left around the mage, and also to NOT do any research; historical accuracy is not at all necessary (though totally appreciated, if you happen to feel like it).
• Pre-canon welcome! IIRC there wasn't a whole lot of information in the movie about the mage's background, but given the situation—mages in general feared and hated, and her position with the resistance—there's no doubt she's led a pretty interesting life. :D Where is she from? How did she end up where she is? (Visions? Simple certainty as to where she needed to be and when? Was she determined to find Arthur—or disgruntled about needing to?) Has she ever quested her way to that altar (or some other similarly magical site), and if so, what did she discover about herself? When did she first learn she had the ability to control or communicate with/direct animals, and what else has she used it for?
• Or! Basically anything about her during the movie, from her POV or anyone else's. (I don't mind at all if you call her "the mage" even from her own POV, if you'd rather not name her!) A missing scene during their travels, approaching the altar or leaving it again, trying to understand what Arthur saw. Were there other moments when she touched or interacted with the sword, other dreams of Arthur's that she experienced? What was it like for her, enlarging and controlling that snake in the throne room? Does her connection with Excalibur extend beyond the moments when she's specifically trying to interact with it—did she feel anything when Arthur tried to throw it away, or when the Lady of the Lake gave it back to him?
• And of course post-movie is more than welcome! Does Arthur knight her, too? (If he tried to, would she let him?) Does she have to stick around to help them clean up the remains of Vortigern's magical equipment; to talk to the syrens, negotiate a new deal, or to deal with the wreckage of Vortigern's tower? Or does she leave—and then come back at the head of a delegation of mages? Does she become Arthur's court mage or magical advisor? Or is that much too official for her taste, and instead she just hangs out in the woods and Arthur has to come looking if he needs her help? :D
• Feel free to combine any mage ship you favor with any of the prompts above, or go off in a totally different direction! The movie's hints of the mage/Arthur came in exactly the right amount to make me ship it, and I'd accept all sorts of magical shenanigans as trope foundations—sex pollen is TOTALLY plausible in this universe; or soulbonding, or dreamsharing, or accidental telepathy! If the mage came at the head of that delegation, would it be to propose a marriage of convenience, to cement a new alliance between Arthur and the mages? :D :D :D (I can imagine her being SO matter-of-fact about it, and Arthur all ??? EXCUSE ME WHAT.) Or! Give me a world where she and Maggie meet and interact, and are able to appreciate each other's stone-cold unflinching willingness to do what ought to be done! Could she retrieve Catia somehow from the waters, or go on a quest to bring her back, if what Vortigern did to her left traces, stains, that needed to be lifted? They led such tremendously different lives, and Catia is so sweet vs. all the mage's sharp edges—I would love love love to see them interact. Or the mage/Bedivere! He's spent a lot of time with mages! How well do they know each other, anyway? ;D ... The mage/Vortigern, in some kind of mildly unhealthy femdom arrangement, if he's captured instead of dying at the end? THE MAGE/KUNG FU GEORGE. *waves hands* GO WILD.
If you got all the way down here by actually reading that whole thing, please allow me to a) apologize yet again, and b) applaud you heartily. /o\ :D Thank you so very much for entertaining the idea of filling one of my ridiculous requests, and may you have a truly wonderful Yuletide! ♥ ♥ ♥
