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damkiannaI always say this, because it's always true: this letter is very long, and you do not have to read it. If you think it might be helpful to you, feel free to take a look at it; I've tried to make it easy to navigate! But you should also feel free to skim it, pick out just the bits that catch your fancy and call it a day, or ignore it completely. I have no DNWs you need to worry about, and whatever it is you would like to make for me, PLEASE DO. I wrote this letter in case you wanted more to work with than was in my signup, and also because I was stoked to have the opportunity to yammer on about some of my favorite fandoms. But if you don't want or need any extra info, then by all means close out of this and pretend my signup was blank! Have a blast with whichever request it is you're filling, and enjoy your FFFX. :D ♥
If you actively enjoy long letters, though, then I just hope this one suits your needs and tells you everything you wanted to know! :D I'm on the AO3 as![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Damkianna. This journal is now mostly exchange letters (most recently, in my Yuletide tag and my Fandom5K tag), but by all means take a look back through it if you want to; and if you spot a prompt you love somewhere in one of my past letters that applies to one of these fandoms, absolutely go ahead and use it, even if I happen not to have repeated it this time around! I'm still interested in anything and everything I've ever asked for in my fandoms—and you don't need to worry about abiding by any of my past DNWs, either.
In General | Dark Matter (TV) | The Huntsman (movies)
Motherland: Fort Salem | Siren (TV) | Tidelands (TV)
If you're really not looking forward to slogging through this, but you didn't feel comfortable flat-out ignoring it—no worries, there is a bottom line! GIVE ME ANYTHING. Whatever you were looking forward to getting to write 10k or put together a comic about when you decided to offer the fandom we matched on, DEFINITELY DO THAT. :D I'm interested in basically anything you'd like to create about these canons and characters! An adventure in the same vein as an episode? A coffeeshop AU? A sequence of canon-compliant missing scenes? Or A/B/O fuckbuddies pining for each other, and it turns out someone has secret wings? I love fluff, whump, and h/c—or angst, horror, and deathfic. Porn! Friendship! Betrayal! Amnesia! Any or all of the above! Please consider this me opting into whatever you consider opt-in (and whatever you consider opt-out, too, for that matter); that includes kinks, material requiring an Archive warning, and everything else tags and warnings might not cover.
Basically, make me the thing you want most to make me, and I will be here for it. :D I'm also requesting specific pairings in some fandoms and individual characters in others, but no matter which I picked, please know that I adore and would be delighted to receive:
• shipfic! I ship all kinds of things, and I'm here for m/m, f/f, and m/f; background ships of all types are a-okay to include, and poly is more than welcome. (And don't feel any need to worry about how shippy a gift you intended as shipfic needs to be—I love friendship fic and enemyship fic, UST and RST, pining that everyone's trying not to acknowledge and hatesex where characters are fucking but not kissing ... So if you end up with something that's full of feelings but no touching, or touching but no kissing, or fucking but no feelings, rest assured that any or all of that is fantastic and I will be thrilled about it!)
• gen! Anything you'd like to write about my requested characters, separately or together or within an ensemble, would be awesome. Backstory? Futurefic? Canon-day character study? Episode tags that add up to 10k? I love loyalty, I love friendship; I love biting antagonism, I love betrayal; I love angst and drama and whump, shenanigans and quiet moments and introspection. Whatever you're interested in, I'm there for it!
• free space! Which is to say anything that I've left off the metaphorical bingo card here. The super iddy concept living in your heart that you haven't had an excuse to unleash? Your very favorite trope in all the world? The weird idea you suspect absolutely no one else is interested in? I want that thing too, whatever it is! :D Unusual POVs, tenses, or formats; epistolary fic, fake in-universe documentation, CYOA; your post-modernist take on time loops, written in future conditional—or your Cubist interpretation of forty panels of a dream sequence. I WANT IT. GIVE IT TO ME. *grabby hands*
I'm into adventures and action, banter and dialogue, or characters stranded alone with nothing to do but think. Five things/five times? Missing scenes or episode tags? The canon-divergent AU where everything goes worse than canon—or the fix-it where nothing went wrong in the first place? Your thoughts on canon-compliant worldbuilding, dressed up in a narrative suit ... or everyone reimagined in the Old West. Seriously, whatever it is you want to make for me, I'm here for it, and so excited about it. :D!
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To be frank, I'd be thrilled with basically anything about pretty much any combination of these characters, with as much or as little shippiness as you're inclined to include! A canon-style plotty adventure with the tiniest hint of shippy feelings somewhere in the background is just as welcome as full-on shippy tropes that end in a pile of smut. And feel free to place it at any point during the show, too: backstory where it turns out Kal Varrick and Marcus Boone had a run-in? Job-of-the-week way back in S1 when Three and Six are still trying to figure themselves out? Nyx finding her place on the ship and starting to think it might turn out to be home, in S2? A post-canon AU fixing anything you please? YES.
Or! What might have happened if Two had fought Misaki on the bridge instead of Nyx? If Three had uncovered Six's GA background before he could turn them all in? By all means break my heart by revisiting canonical deaths or causing new ones ... or let people be rescued and have their happy endings. 100% here for any shippy trope you'd like to indulge in (h/c? even more amnesia? fuckbuddies catching feelings?), and for as much or as little worldbuilding as you'd like to do (corporate politics? Zairon? synthetics? the blob-alien dimension? or none of those things at all!). Anything goes!
I still miss this show so much, and G O D that cliffhanger ;-; my HEART. So! I would love more of this universe any way I can get it—and please rest assured I'm into all kinds of different elements of the show, the danger and uncertainty and struggle to make hard choices, but also all the tropey shenanigans and humor and people redefining themselves as crew and as a kind of family. :D Dark and angsty and difficult, silly and sweet and affectionate, I'm there for it either way!
I still ship this so hard, help—I love how equally matched they are as fighters, and I love all the parallels between them (that they both were parts of "experiments", in a sense, and that they both managed to escape those experiments and get away from everybody who wanted to use them, and have to figure out who they are and how to live their lives), and also they are both super hot and I am super shallow. /o\ :D I am equally here for having my heart broken by Two mourning Nyx's loss, or a totally self-indulgent fix-it about everyone being alive and no problems and *waves hands* fucking all night long in the sparring room on the Raza. Whatever you're interested in!
• Anything you'd like to write about a job-of-the-week/heist-of-the-week, or people-needing-help-of-the-week, that has Nyx/Two undertones or a Nyx/Two angle would be wonderful!
:: Pretending to be married for cover purposes, and having feelings about it? :D
:: Getting in a tight spot and refusing to leave each other behind? :D
:: I'm easy for h/c and rescues—Nyx getting nabbed by the Seers again and Two charging after her ...
:: ... or Two getting recaptured by Alex Rook and Dwarf Star and Nyx going after her?
• Or any other sort of tropey shenanigans you're interested in, because the show left the door wide open!
:: Another time loop, but this one gives Two a chance to save Nyx from Misaki and stop Eos-7 from blowing up, if she can just figure out how?
:: Amnesia, but this time it's Nyx who's lost her memory!
:: Trapped on a zombie apocalypse planet, or in the Marauder—I adore forced proximity, huddling for warmth, and Two giving up oxygen for people, just tossing that out there. :D
:: Or maybe Nyx does take that Shadow Devon gave her ... and starts having longer and more detailed premonitions, which happen to be of banging Two into next Tuesday?
• And if you're interested in writing canon-divergence, fork off as near or far from canon as you like:
:: Is there a universe where Dwarf Star's interested in the Seers, so Nyx ends up in the same facility as Rebecca?
:: Or where Nyx escaped from them earlier, and Portia Lin picked her up? (Where Nyx and Portia Lin had a thing but it was weird and messed-up, and then Nyx runs into this woman who's totally Portia but claiming not to remember anything ... except Nyx can't predict her anymore, because all her "data" was on Portia, so maybe it's true after all?)
:: What if Nyx had been able to rescue Milo after all—could the two of them together have seen what was coming, and done something about it?
:: Or if she'd never escaped the Seers in the first place! Would Ryo have wanted to keep her for himself even if he still killed the rest of them ... and could Two have found her in the imperial palace and freed her, and taken her back to the Raza? :D
• In terms of fix-its, of course, the obvious suggestion is to save Nyx—which can never happen too many times or too many different ways, as far as I'm concerned!
:: Could the android have downloaded her/taken an imprint the way they did with Sarah? Maybe Two could get her an android body ...
:: Or could Two perhaps use her upgraded nanites to heal Nyx—except they have to stay in physical contact for an extended period of time for it to work? *waggles eyebrows*
:: Or tell me what might have happened if Nyx had never been on the bridge at all: if she'd accepted Ryo's offer and left the Raza to marry him ... and then contacted Two secretly from Zairon, to coordinate stealing back the blink drive or sabotaging his fleet?
:: Or just skip ahead and give me Two/Nyx in S3—no need to explain it, just have her alive and well and let her help Two open that lockbox and find her daughter!
• But by all means linger on what actually happened, or make it even worse (I don't know how you would, but I'd be excited to find out)!
:: Pining mourning Two! ;-; I really am here for any level of shippy feelings, so I would be delighted with Two hiding her unrequited feelings in silence, while Nyx is still struggling with what happened to Four/Ryo.
:: Two continuing to be haunted by hallucinations of Nyx—or even chasing after them, withdrawing from everything else? ;-;
:: Grieving Two encountering a Nyx from an alternate universe (maybe one who lost her own Two—or has had run-ins with her own Portia Lin)?
:: Did the alien possessing Two at the end of S3 uses Nyx's likeness to interact with her? (Is that creepier in a universe where Nyx is dead and Two knows this isn't her but maybe doesn't care ... or in a universe where Nyx made it to S3? D:)
:: And of course I'd be DELIGHTED with any Two-focused canon-compliant epic about dealing with the alien invasion, as long as there are shades of Two's lingering feelings for Nyx included!
I also ship this ridiculously hard, because I love everything about Three (his douchery! his heart of gold! his denial that his heart of gold is a thing!) and I love everything about Six (his glorious angsty backstory! his betrayals and regrets and desire to always do better!), and all the twists and turns in their relationship with each other just kill me—that they've been at odds so much but also had to rely on each other, and when the chips are down they're crew, aaaaaa. (Also that scene in the facility with the alien rift where Three's panicking and basically climbing Six like a tree, and Six reluctantly holds him still so he can be sedated, jeeeeeesus. *____*)
• Seriously, set this anywhere during canon that you like, and I'll eat it up with a spoon:
:: S1 Three and a Six who thinks he used to be Griffin Jones, or just found out about his real identity as Kal and the GA?
:: S2 Six trying to earn back Three's trust?
:: That episode where they were stuck in the Marauder together, with Three still pissed off and Six trying to talk it out, was gold—if you'd like to roll with that but bring it to a shippier and/or pornier conclusion, that would be amazing.
:: Or any x-of-the-week plot that lets Three try real hard to throw himself on a grenade, but Six won't let him ...
:: ... or, say, Six and Three run into acquaintances of Marcus Boone's, who learn that "Kal" is ex-GA and are expecting Three to beat Six up, and Six does let him? Y E S
• Or indulge in any other tropey shenanigans you'd enjoy!
:: Trap them on a planet together, and force them to care for or protect each other?
:: Or get Three arrested by the GA, so Six has to go undercover as himself to get him out, and Three assumes it's just that he betrayed them again! ;-;
:: Or Six stays stuck in that simulation during 3.07, and Three has to actually go in there and convince him it's not real? :D
:: Accidental telepathy (maybe Three's exposure to the aliens + Six's exposure to the aliens = oops, mindlink)?
:: Time loop, except it's Six instead of Three ... but Three believes him and is genuinely helpful, thanks to Three's own past experience? :D
• And by all means diverge from canon anywhere you please:
:: What might have happened if either one of them had accidentally gotten re-imprinted with their memories during S1?
:: Or both of them, for that matter (Kal aware that he's GA and undercover! Boone watching him all the time, not sure why Portia hasn't killed him yet!)?
:: What if Six had decided not to betray the crew to the GA? (What might have changed his plans?)
:: If Kal Varrick had never gone undercover, how else might he have encountered the crew, and Three, eventually?
:: Or if Marcus Boone had stayed with Tanner's gang instead of joining up with Portia—could he have met the rest of them in prison? How would he have felt about their GA "ally"?
:: Or if they'd learned who he was before he could—how would Three have reacted, and how would the crew have dealt with it?
• Or, of course, take that cliffhanger and keep going!
:: The finale didn't necessarily kill Six, but it easily could have—feel free to ruin my life with piles of Three learning what he did and being a mess over it!
:: ... Or tell me all about the future where it didn't and he's just stuck in the wrong dimension. Can Six get himself back through, and find the crew again?
:: Or does Three, with all his unfortunate alien-induced trauma, end up linked to some more aliens—and "see" where Six is, and realize they have to rescue him?
:: And please feel free to emphasize the dynamic going either direction: actually going to the alien dimension, filled with traces of their presence, fucks Three up horribly!
:: OR Six got himself captured/mentally eaten away at, and there's lots of Three bitching him out for it but also taking care of him! ;-;
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The fandom tag includes both movies, but for the record, you do NOT need to have watched Winter's War to give me a Ravenna/Snow White gift I will love! By all means feel free to use whatever bits of either movie you like or are interested in, and leave the rest. During SWatH, with zero references to any background stuff from WW, or post-SWatH but deliberately taking things in a different direction than WW? YES. During or after WW, or referencing the parts of Ravenna's backstory that are depicted there? ALSO YES. Either way!
I ship this like burning, and I'd be thrilled with anything you've got in mind! Post-canon quests and adventures for Queen Snow White—retrieving Ravenna from death or from the mirror, or simply overshadowed with the relentless memory of her? AU where Snow White is the one Ravenna manipulated into marrying her, except it doesn't go the way Ravenna expects it to? Dubcon or noncon set during canon (while Snow White's imprisoned? While Ravenna's still disguised as William?) ... that slow-burns its way into something more real? Or stays creepy? And if you'd like to delve into Snow White's connection to the land, or Ravenna's ravens-and-shadows magic, or the nature of the mirror, that would be AWESOME. :D
I love these movies so very much, help—they are so dramatic and glorious and just 100% my fairytale aesthetic, with just enough realism for the characters to feel like people and not just archetypes, but still full of magic and adventure and true love. ♥ Danger, adventure, quests; beauty, bravery, defeating evil ... plus Charlize Theron, and Kristen Stewart in silver armor. WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE, REALLY. :D
This ship was basically made for me, on so many different levels: viciously powerful queen, obsessed with virtuous princess! Ravenna, in all her bitter murderous rage and resentment, and Snow White and her calm steady compassion, good but not soft, gentle but not weak, determined to save her kingdom. ALSO THEY KISSED, TECHNICALLY. So, yeah. Anything you'd like to write me about them, I would love to read! (And I should note here that I do like William and the huntsman, and am also intrigued by Ravenna's weirdly intense relationships with Finn and/or Freya, so. Feel free to include interactions with any of them in the background—or, you know, have Ravenna murder them one by one, the better to keep Snow White all to herself. Whichever. ;D)
• I would love love love more adventures in the same general mold as either or both movies, with any degree of shippiness!
:: Post-movie Queen Snow White with a new quest to undertake, remembering/thinking about/dreaming of Ravenna?
:: Or, if you do want to bring Ravenna back/remove her from the mirror—what might Snow White need to do, to get her out again without going mad?
:: Would she be tempted to leave Ravenna imprisoned in there? Find a way to get in and out herself, and talk to Ravenna? (Who I'm sure would be thrilled to see her. :D)
:: Or perhaps Snow needs to retrieve Ravenna from the dead instead (by traveling east of the sun and west of the moon? Or walking a pair of iron shoes off her feet? Or any other fairytale method you please!)
:: Or maybe some kind of magical accident resurrects Ravenna—would she try to hide herself from Snow White, or disguise herself and walk right back into Snow White's court?
:: Would she want Snow White's help to die again? And if she did, would Snow White agree to give her what she was asking for, or not?
:: Might she have amnesia, or be cursed, and need to set out on a quest of her own to undo it? Or be forced to reluctantly accept Snow White's equally reluctant offer to help her?
• Or! Branch off anywhere, and make things better ... or much, much worse!
:: Feel free to lean into the horror elements of these movies and write me the story where Ravenna wins—cuts Snow White's heart out and eats it, and rules a deathless empire!
:: ... but starts seeing Snow White in the mirror? Dreaming of her? Or is haunted by her, and can't forget about her? :D
:: Or what if Ravenna had stayed disguised as William for longer than she did in canon, and traveled with Snow White and the huntsman much further than she intended to?
:: Or if Snow White had realized something was wrong with Ravenna!William more quickly—if they'd been able to take Ravenna prisoner somehow?
:: If Ravenna had been busy ruling a kingdom of her own, rather than looking for a new one to take over—would she still have learned about Snow White from the mirror? Gone looking for her, and insisted on her hand in marriage?
:: Or decided to just seduce Snow White to her side (FOR EASIER ACCESS TO HER UNARMORED BODY, YOU UNDERSTAND)! Would she succeed? Or find it more difficult and yet also more rewarding than she'd anticipated? :D
• I would also love any idea you'd like to tackle that might give them a chance to slow-burn their way toward genuine romance:
:: Hatesex, or dubcon/noncon, while Snow White is Ravenna's prisoner, that gradually takes on a life of its own and turns into something it wasn't supposed to?
:: Might Ravenna have misunderstood the spell she intends to work, and whatever ritual she does with Snow White finally in her grasp results not in Snow White's heart tearing itself from her chest ... but in a soulbond? :D
:: Or that perennial classic, a time loop: Ravenna kills Snow White over and over and over, but keeps waking up that same day anyway, until at last she's so desperate she has to try something else?
:: Transformations! Curses! Beast!Ravenna and Beauty!Snow White—and of course true love's kiss, as long as we're in the middle of a fairytale.
• And in the background of any other prompt you'd like to follow, I'm super here for any and all worldbuilding you want to do!
:: Ravenna's backstory—other kingdoms she's conquered or ruled, legends that have risen up in her wake and names she's been given?
:: Does she miss other places she once ruled, people or things; art, music, stories, so old no one else remembers they once existed?
:: Anything with Finn and/or Freya, where their magic comes from and how they each discovered their talent for it?
:: Whether Ravenna studied it or stole it or just gradually learned to use it, and how her understanding of it has changed over the years?
:: I'm also FASCINATED by the stuff about the true king/queen, and their apparent connection to the health and bounty of the land they rule—anything about what that means and the history of that bond would be awesome!
:: How does it feel to Snow White—can she tell it's there? Did the land dying under Ravenna's rule hurt, or fray that connection when she was only just starting to realize it was there?
:: Are there ways to strengthen it? As queen at last, is it essential that she go down to the fields and shove her hands in the dirt sometimes? :D
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I started watching this show on a whim and then fell completely in love with it; I'm weak for alternate history, especially alternate history with magic involved, and it's so delightfully committed to the amazingness of its premise! And while I managed to narrow down my request to just a few of my favorite Abigail ships, I'm interested in pretty much all of the characters, and would be thrilled with any direction you wanted to go—lots of Bellweather Unit team feelings? Missing scenes? AU? Post-canon? YES. GOOD. ANYTHING.
I love the slow burn between Abigail and Raelle, the way they go from grudging and frustrated to actively protective of and affectionate toward each other, and I'd adore any direction you want to take that: letting it progress even further, in keeping with canon, or, like, AU where they are "stuck" in a witch-witch arranged marriage, or anywhere in between. I also love Tally, their dynamic as a team, and their obvious and remarkable power when they're working together, so if you'd like to make it an OT3 instead, PLEASE DO. And Abigail's rivalry with Libba was so intense and full of friction; if you'd like to let Abigail save her, that would be amazing! Or maybe retrieve her from the witch afterlife? :D
This show is amazing and ridiculous and dramatic, and I love basically every single thing about it, and can't wait for S2! (Which, I don't think we'll need to worry about S2 airing during the creation period for this exchange, but if it does—I'll definitely be keeping up, and if you'd like to use elements of S2, you will not need to worry about spoiling me. :D) I adore the military aesthetic, but also the intermittent horror vibe (making people jump to their deaths! Putting birds in dead people's throats to talk with! EVIL SPREE BALLOONS IN MIRRORS D:), and I love that it's neither as simple as "military good, Spree bad" OR "military bad, Spree good". SO I'm happy to have you lean into team feelings and successful missions and the wonders of magic, but also moral and ethical uncertainty, violence, unfixable mistakes, and the incredibly creepy shit you can do with magic. :D
(Oh, and side note: do whatever suits you with Scylla! If you'd like to break her and Raelle up earlier than in canon, to put together one of my Raelle ships instead, that's fine; if you'd like to just ignore her/make it a tacit AU where Raelle's mother has another strategy in the works, that's fine also. Either way! And I don't mind Raelle/Scylla appearing in the background of an Abigail/Libba work in the least.)
This ended up being one of my favorite relationships on the whole show, and I love them both so much! I'm always kind of weak for opposites, and people who get off on the wrong foot but are stuck with each other, and start to get to know each other kind of despite themselves. ♥ Add in the insults, protectiveness, and whatever the heck they did by holding hands in the finale, and I'm SOLD. Toss in an "I love you, shitbird" at a pivotal moment in your work, and I will be at your mercy. :D
• I would love anything you wanted to set in and around canon—missing scenes, episode tags, post-canon ...
:: Seriously, pile on the UST, anywhere during the show—I very much enjoy the idea of Raelle as Abigail's bi/lesbian awakening, that she knows intellectually that women sleep with women, but she's never had any reason to think about that in the context of herself, until Raelle makes it impossible not to. :D
:: Or, of course, that cliffhanger! Where are Abigail and Raelle, and what does it have to do with the fungus wall???
:: How do they get back from wherever it is they seem to be? Is there a new connection between them when they do?
:: Are they a unit of two, with Tally taken away from them to serve as a biddy? Are they willing to accept a new third member, or not?
:: Or go further in the future: where are they and what's happening, in ten or fifteen years?
:: I'm a sucker for reunions! Frex, Abigail, injured on the front lines, not realizing until Raelle's in front of her again that that's who's going to be working on healing the damage ... (Did they part on good terms? Bang, but Abigail got weird about it and everything went sour? Break up, and they're exes?)
• Or, of course, AU me in any direction you'd like to go:
:: What if it had been one of them who died, not Libba, and the one who's left is struggling to cope, grieving with Tally?
:: Having dreams ... that might not just be dreams? Or calling the other back the same way Porter was called back, to make a final confession of feelings and then let go? ;-;
:: Or maybe Abigail was too injured for even the mycelium or whatever to fix, and it's her ghost Raelle's walking hand in hand with, but Raelle doesn't know it—yet? D:
:: I'll gratefully swallow absolutely any excuse you can come up with for it to somehow be necessary for a Bellweather to marry a representative from the Chippewa Cession—awkward, unexpectedly hot wedding nights that they agreed in advance wouldn't be repeated, slow burn and pining for the person who's already your spouse, just trope it to hell and back and I will love you forever. *______*
:: Or! Let them meet earlier? I would love an AU where, like, the very last night before the draft, Raelle went out and met a hot girl in a bar, a girl who turned out not to be as straight as she'd told Raelle she was ... and then oops, they come face-to-face at Fort Salem, worst morning after ever. :D
:: Or later? Give me a version of Abigail who's already on the front lines, and the Fixer assigned to her battalion is this incredibly difficult shitbird who seems to be trying to get herself killed!
• Or run with any other trope that suits your fancy!
:: Might witches accidentally soulbond? Or be linked telepathically by mistake? (Maybe healing the same person repeatedly can forge a connection, even?)
:: I love the classics: sex pollen, time shenanigans, going undercover—Raelle, trying to infiltrate the Spree, and Abigail there as backup, in disguise, having to pretend to be her girlfriend? :D :D :D
:: Maybe next year the Reel at Beltane brings them to each other, so many times in a row that even they can't ignore it?
:: Or maybe there are other witchy rituals or ceremonies that yield revelations or start wheels turning?
:: If you'd like to send them to War College, I would absolutely love to see what you think that might look like!
:: Or just stick them in training scenarios resulting in h/c, or in deliberate telepathic bonds that work a little too well ...
I'm easy for teams, and while Abigail and Raelle and the friction between them obviously stand out, I love Tally, and would be absolutely thrilled with anything that brought all of them together in an OT3. :D! Tally is earnest enough and open enough to get Raelle to talk to her, but with enough steel underneath to stand up to Abigail when she needs to—and I am so, so weak for their obvious power as a unit, when they're actually working together. ♥
• Again, please feel free to work during or around canon, by all means:
:: Missing scenes, increasing UST, getting to know each other and starting to feel ~something ...
:: As for Abigail/Raelle, I am super weak for the idea of Abigail/Raelle/Tally as the first time Tally's ever given serious thought to girls, having always treated boys as the default assumption (and being even less experienced than Abigail, to boot). So if you want to lean into that and explore Tally's gradual understanding that she's feeling something she can't attribute to friendship/teamwork/loyalty, I would adore that!
:: Or go post-canon with all three of them—is it possible for them to break whatever it is that binds Tally to Alder as a biddy, once Alder's out of immediate danger? (Would they need to replace that connection with a new one—to the two of them? :D)
:: How might they learn Raelle's mother is alive, and where she is—how would they react, and what would they do about it?
:: Or at some future point, might something happen to Alder that sets Tally free? Are Abigail and Raelle there waiting for her, or not? (Or is one of them the new Alder, so to speak?)
• Or, of course, AU things any direction you like!
:: What if Raelle had been Spree to start with, and Abigail and Tally were captured? (I am here for this in either a bittersweet fucked-up way, or a "Raelle wavers and helps them escape and it all works out" way. :D)
:: Or any one of them, or even two, had been killed when Citydrop turned into a real mission? Give me the other two clinging to each other in the aftermath—or the lone survivor, wishing they'd had more time! *weeping openly*
:: Giving all of them an earlier meeting point is a little tough, but I would absolutely adore, say, officer!Abigail who's been working her way up the ranks, being handed Tally Craven and thinking she's naive but learning she can rely on her?
:: And then, of course, they end up in deep shit but some Fixer comes out of nowhere and mends both of them at once, and Abigail insists on getting Raelle assigned to them permanently even if she is infuriating, because Bellweathers won't settle for less than the best ...
• And by all means, use magic and/or worldbuilding to set them up together any way you please!
:: Is there some unit-bonding ceremony that's basically a marriage, or barely second to it, or involves a Beltane-type unit-only orgy (and maybe they're supposed to have enjoyed it but not dwell on it ... except they can't stop wanting to do it again?)
:: Escalating bedsharing! Comfort in the trenches, or so they tell themselves, but it doesn't end when their tour of duty does!
:: Three-way bodyswap? :D
:: Increasingly frequent premonitions of future intimacy that are disconcerting/hot/a comfort by turns?
:: One of them is captured by the Spree, and the other two turn the world upside down to get her back!
:: Also, for the record, I enjoy both three-way first-time get-togethers, AND two of a threesome getting together first + the third one pining for the couple/the couple pining for the third, with bonus everyone feeling weird about it (plus or minus the couple dirty-talking each other by invoking the third, if you're into that *waggles eyebrows*). So with any of the prompts above, feel free to restructure around whichever emotional dynamic you prefer!
This rivalry was AMAZING, even if it didn't last as long or get as much time onscreen as I wanted it to, and then the show STABBED ME IN THE HEART AND TWISTED THE KNIFE with Abigail breaking down over Libba's death and that spectacularly shippy eulogy, omfg. Whether you'd like to stick to canon and leave Libba dead/kill her all over again, or fix it for me, EITHER WAY I'M SO THERE.
• So! I would love some Abigail/Libba, no matter when you'd like to set it:
:: When did they meet, and did they start hating each other just because they knew they were supposed to, or did a particular incident make it genuinely personal?
:: (Did one of them make a move, once, and get rejected not out of malice but just out of uncertainty ... but it hurt anyway, and they're holding a grudge? :D)
:: They must have known they'd both be at Fort Salem; did they seek each other out when they arrived to have a confrontation we didn't see, or just wait until they happened across each other?
:: If you'd like to tell me all about how they were confronting each other regularly in empty hallways/darkened corners of the grounds, to slam each other into things and bite out insultsand have hatesex a bunch of times, you have my attention. *chinhands*
:: And by all means make me cry all over again about Libba's death. ;-; If you'd like to dig deeper into Abigail's feelings about it during and after that mission-gone-wrong, and in the runup to the memorial service, go for it!
:: And I'll accept any excuse for them to interact after Libba's death, too: does her ghost haunt Abigail? (In a creepy way, or in a funny way? Or both!)
:: Does Abigail decide she needs the closure of speaking to the dead, and figure out how to make that happen (with or without help from Tally and Raelle)?
• But! You should also feel free to let Abigail save Libba, however you want to make that happen. :D
:: In the moment, and almost dying herself because of it?
:: Or afterward—give me straight-up Orpheus-and-Eurydice, or pick your own witch underworld and send Abigail questing through it to bring Libba back!
:: If Abigail succeeds, or seems to ... is it still Libba who comes back with her, or not?
:: Does she have to make a deal with questionable powers to make it happen?
:: Or perhaps magic can cross dimensions, and another universe's Libba shows up?
:: And of course you can take me to the future of an AU where Libba's fine without telling me how it happened, too!
:: I would adore their petty-rivalry-that's-actually-backwards-loyalty persisting through their careers, whatever you think those might look like—trying to one-up each other's service records and accomplishments, but also maybe saving each other's lives (obviously just because they want to beat each other fair and square, and not have somebody else take one of them out instead).
:: A hatesex thing that crosses years, until they're finally maaaaaaybe able to admit there's actual feelings involved, would be 100% my jam!
• And third verse same as the first: by all means use magic, or convenient bits of the setting like Beltane, or whatever other tropes you like, to maneuver Abigail and Libba into any scenario you please!
:: Meeting AU versions of themselves, or waking up married in the future/an alternate universe?
:: An older, wiser, bitterer Abigail (perhaps from an especially bad future) using time travel to go back and save Libba—arriving a little early, and having to try to remember how to act?
:: Magical dreamsharing, or deaging, or truth spells?
:: Are they forced to get married, in an attempt to mend the rift between their families—and they still totally "hate" each other, but damn, the sex is good?
:: Or maybe they're alphas, in an A/B/O AU? :D
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I love this show and everything about it! The drama of it all is so breakneck sometimes, bless—and yet there's so much genuine beauty in it, too, in the possibility of connection between people who are so different from each other, and all the wonder and earnest warmth and loyalty. I adore Ben and Maddie and Ryn, and I'd love more about them any way I can get it: early in the show, or after the break-up; in the future, whatever you think that might look like, or in another universe entirely! :D
SO. Please give me just about anything you'd like to give me involving this ship, and I'll be over the moon. I'd love more about what you think their lives were like in the various gaps/breaks between parts of the show—more about mermaid mating habits and Maddie and Ben trying to deal with Ryn's assumptions and expectations (or trying to let go of their own)? All the break-up angst and pining and awkwardly trying to be good exes, while still having feelings? Ryn and Maddie in the aftermath of S3, unable to stay away from each other for long ... and managing to find Ben after all? Anything!
I wasn't expecting to like this show as much as I did—I heard about it and figured I'd give it a try? And then suddenly I was invested! And I couldn't stop watching it! I'll admit that the main draw for me is Maddie/Ben/Ryn, and I struggled a little bit when it came to S3, which seemed to want to give me absolutely anything else; but there were a lot of really interesting plot developments packed in there, and I ended up kind of loving both Robb and Tia, so you don't have to ignore it or undo it if you don't want to! I'll love a canon-compliant post-S3 gift just as much as a fix-it or an AU or whatever else, I promise. :D (And frankly I'd love something set during S3 that really made me feel their break-up, where there was some intensity and lingering heartache! ;-;)
I love these three, and hearing that they were canon was the thing that got me to check out this show, idly wondering whether I'd like it at all, in the first place! Their relationship is so delightful to me; I adore how even-handed it was as it developed, with Ryn equally intrigued by Ben and Maddie, and equally ready to invade their personal space. S1 and S2 especially felt like they gave equal amounts of time to each of them, and to each of their relationships with each other, and I found that incredibly gratifying. ♥ And while I was definitely bummed that they broke up, I appreciate that they all obviously still love each other, and are there for each other when the need arises!
• I'd be thrilled with something set pretty much whenever you want to set it:
:: Early in S1, when they're all only just starting to maaaaaaybe think it's a possibility?
:: I adore threesomes in a nervous early stage—Ben and/or Maddie feeling weird and greedy for wanting Ryn, too, and trying to figure out how to admit it to each other ... or accidentally ending up dirty-talking each other through the possibilities, if Ryn were with them? :D
:: What was it like for Ryn going back to the water without them? (Was she almost glad for the overfishing, in a weird way, because it gave her a reason to return?)
:: And the singing! Aaaanything about the singing, what it was like to realize it had hurt Ben, and then to be allowed to sing to Maddie but only with the noise-cancelling headphones—whether Ryn wants to do it, how it feels to her when she does ...
:: Or the lead-up to S3, trying to help Ryn have a baby, and all the feelings and struggles that brings along with it for all of them!
:: Or the break-up! ;-; I would love a deeper look into how they all feel about it and deal with it, and if you were inclined to give me buckets and buckets of Ben and Ryn pining for Maddie, and vice versa, I would be thrilled!
• And post-canon speculation would be awesome, too. :D
:: Working off the situation at the end of S3—by all means let Ryn and Maddie succeed in finding Ben!
:: Is he alive, but transformed, and needs lots of time and rehabilitation to recover and survive on land again?
:: Or maybe Maddie needs to follow in his footsteps and start taking those injections, in order to help Ryn look—and it's Ryn who's going to have to coax both of them back out of the water?
:: Or go further! What if they stay apart, five or ten years ... and then Ryn finally gets an indication that Ben's still alive, and has to figure out how to get in touch with Maddie?
:: Or it's Maddie, still working with Robb on his ocean cleanup project, who realizes what they've got caught in their equipment is Ben, and has to get him out safely and find Ryn?
• Or go AU, whether for better or worse!
:: By all means indulge me with the ridiculous sappy AU where Ryn actually did manage to get pregnant, by any of the means they tried in canon, and Ben and Maddie are there to help her, and it turns into a big pile of cozy domestic pre-kidfic fluff. :D
:: Or! What if the AU we were handed in the S2 finale weren't just in Ben's imagination?
:: Or go back further: what if Ryn had been the one caught by the military, not Donna? Could she have escaped, and met Maddie and/or Ben while trying to find her way back to the water?
:: What if Ryn and Maddie and Ben were all merpeople?
:: Or Maddie and Ben had become marine biologists with convenient military clearance, and had been called in as consultants on a very unusual project?
:: What if mermaids had conquered humanity a long time ago, and humans were considered dull brutes to be used for minor labor and boring land-based tasks—but Ryn found herself weirdly drawn to a couple of them? :D
• And of course I'd love any other tropey shippy options you're interested in exploring, too.
:: The thing where Ryn had started dreaming turns out to be a prelude to dreamsharing, among all three of them?
:: Or aaaaanything to do with mermaid mating stuff—drawn-out fluff about some incredibly lengthy traditional courting process involving gifts?
:: Angst where Ryn knows she's not supposed to drag either of them into the water to bite them too hard and hit them with her tail, but she really really wants to?
:: Or, conversely, Ben and Maddie finding themselves helplessly kinking on Mermaid Things: on biting, on throat-grabbing, on glowing Ryn and the whole idea of mating season?
:: I'd be so, so weak for any kind of kink-discovery angst based on Ben and Maddie's totally legitimate bad reaction to the surprise choking during the stress-hormone incident—Ryn assuming that that means that's Never Allowed, Ben and Maddie thinking about it way too much and feeling weird for it ...
:: Or get into the X-rated details of Ryn exploring her land body's differences/Ryn fucking people in water with loving xenobiological descriptions of how that works when she's shifted!
:: More pregnancy experiments yield results: turns out alpha mermaids can impregnate human men AND human women, if they've sung to them and then fuck them in water? JUST A THOUGHT. :D
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It was honestly tough to figure out who to request here, because there are SO MANY THINGS that interest me about this show—but at the end of the day, Cal is my fave, and a gift about her that's just for me would be a dream come true. :D So! Missing scenes or episode tags, backstory adventures or whatever you think should happen next after that RIDICULOUS cliffhanger of a finale? AU where Cal never went to prison, or where she ended up with the Tidelanders much earlier? Fix-it where NOBODY dies, thank you very much?
I ship basically all the things here, so if you'd like to give me essentially canon-compliant Cal/Dylan or Cal/Corey, definitely do that—more sex with accidental siren powers involved? All the feelings conversations they didn't get to have during the show? BUT I would also love some messy power-tripping manipulative Cal/Adrielle, or Cal/Augie not-technically-incest-but-it-still-feels-like-it-is, or Cal/Leandra or Cal/Violca seduction or hatesex. And if you want to delve into more siren lore, or tell me all your headcanons about summonings and water magic and what sirens actually think of their abandoned half-human children, feel free!
I'll admit I'm on a bit of a murder mermaids kick, and this show fascinated me—there's some pretty soapy twists and turns, and also some hilariously unnecessary sex. But at the same time it did such an intriguing job with the Tidelanders and their community, its structure and its (sometimes terrifying) rules, the sirens and the Tidelanders' longing for them. The whole show is so appropriately moody and beautiful and kind of wild, and I ended up really loving it. (Even if that finale was ... I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO CALL IT. ??? !!!)
And! I particularly loved Cal. :D Her angsty backstory is so amazing and messed-up in all my favorite ways, and her homecoming is so believably awkward and difficult and painful. ♥ Her journey toward starting to learn some of the secrets that have been kept from her, and starting to understand herself—being able to use her powers, and even wanting to, and the push-pull between enjoying it and being terrified of it ... I LOVED ALL OF IT, and Cal is great, the end.
• So! Anything you'd like to explore about Cal and her life at any point—I'm here for it!
:: Her childhood while her dad was still alive, not knowing where she'd come from; were there hints that piled up, despite her dad keeping her away from water?
:: Or the fire, and going to prison, adjusting to it—and then having to try to figure out how to live life outside of it again?
:: Or, of course, Cal's perspective on the Tidelanders! Does she feel drawn to Dylan, to Adrielle, to L'Attente? Is it reassuring or scary—or both—to finally understand why she's never quite felt like she belonged?
:: Or the runup to the ending! Anything digging into what it's like to make that guy drown himself, realizing that she liked it, admitting it to Augie—stabbing Adrielle, trying to save Augie and Bijou, the sirens ...
• And I would love to know what you think about what might happen next, too!
:: Obviously the cliffhanger gives you a jumping-off point, if you want it—what do the sirens do? Who lives, and who dies?
:: Are the sirens willing/intrigued to have been summoned ... or not so much?
:: How do the Tidelanders react? Has Adrielle strengthened her position as queen—or does it become clear the sirens came for Cal, not her?
:: But feel free to go further and tackle new problems, and let me piece together what must have happened on that beach retroactively!
:: More struggles in dealing with the remains of Augie's ... business? Trying to survive whatever Adrielle's got in mind next, now that she has in fact succeeded in her original goal?
• Or go in another direction entirely:
:: What if Cal had never gone to prison—if Augie had taken the fall with a false confession?
:: Or if she'd fled from the police (and ended up stumbling all the way to the Tidelanders, maybe)? How else might she have learned what she was?
:: What if Dylan had decided to full-on side with Cal over Adrielle earlier?
:: Or if Violca had recruited her in an effort to defy Adrielle sooner?
:: Or if she'd been able to save poor Colton—or met Gilles and Bijou earlier, and Bijou's drawings had helped her guess a few more things that were coming?
:: What if she actually had killed Adrielle—how would the rest of the Tidelanders have reacted to her as queen? (I'm equally interested in principled queen Cal who's not going to make people gouge each other's eyes out anymore ... or a darker Cal who starts to indulge the part of her nature that enjoyed making a man helplessly drown himself. :D)
:: Or, of course, fix it: let her succeed in forcing Corey's blood back inside him and keeping his heart beating, in the morgue! Let Dylan leave Adrielle to die and stick with Cal! Let her save Bijou and Augie! (With the sirens' help?)
• And I'd love it if you were interested in shipping Cal with ... just about anybody, really!
:: I absolutely ship Cal with both Corey and Dylan, so I'm here for either pairing, or both continuing to occur at once in a V, or an actual straight-up poly formation where Corey and Dylan also bang!
:: I'm also weak for incest and pseudo-incest, and Augie and Cal have such a compellingly strong relationship with each other—they trust each other SO MUCH, and that entire rescue + holding each other + Cal confessing to him that she'd made that guy drown and liked it, ffff, MY HEART
:: AND THEN ALSO I would be delighted to read about fucked-up manipulative Cal/Adrielle (such a UST vibe! Adrielle like half trying to win Cal over and half trying to achieve some kind of control over the potential threat she poses! *_____*)
:: Or! Cal/Violca where Violca's trying to get someone else to take Adrielle on first so she can step forward in the aftermath? (Does it work? Or does Cal do better than expected, and suddenly Violca's got to keep her favor instead?)
:: Cal/Leandra? Maybe Leandra finds Cal first in the morgue, not Corey, and Cal uses her abilities to force Leandra to submit to her? How does that change the endgame of the show?
:: For any of the pairings above, if you want to play up the whole "queen" thing/potential additional Tidelander powers in a femdom way, feel free. :D
:: Or go any other tropey direction you like: do Tidelanders grow secret sex pollen plants? Soulbond to each other, or to humans? Have soulmates? :D
• If you felt like digging into the worldbuilding some more, either in the background of another prompt/concept or on its own, that would be fantastic:
:: I would LOVE to know whatever headcanon you have about the sirens—the scenes with Adrielle getting a translation of the text on the artifact, and the "historical" legends about the horn and armies of women from the sea, man, it was all such catnip!
:: Anything with Cal involved that delves a little deeper into the nature of sirens and where they come from (if there are no siren dudes, and when they bang human dudes they dump the babies ... can select Tidelanders be made into full sirens, if the sirens choose to do so? Or is it more mythological—sirens carve new sirens out of stone, or something?).
:: Or just dive in and tell me all about the original mythohistorical conflict, what happened and how; the original breaking of that horn and who did it, the scattering of the pieces ...
:: Or anything focused on the Tidelanders and their community: how separate they are, how separate they feel, the juxtaposition of the desperation to reach out for their mothers and the awareness that their mothers abandoned them.
:: The massacre! Their social structure! Their rules are so interesting, and obviously also kind of creepy/brutal: the eye-gouging, Adrielle's determination to make them all believe they can't have kids with humans, succession among queens ...
:: Or their magic! The water-lock on Adrielle's little basement of surprises was super cool—please tell me all about how it feels to control water, including the water in blood, and to breathe it. Or to entrance people, for that matter!
:: And then there's Bijou and Genoveva, with their apparent precognition; how does that work? Are there other "extra" talents that some Tidelanders have and others don't? (Can full-blooded sirens see the future even more clearly? Is that why they came to the shore for Cal and not for Adrielle—because they saw that it would be her, and that mattered somehow?)
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If you got here by reading that whole thing, I can only attempt to apologize. /o\ Thank you so much for your patience and your interest; I hope at least some of that was useful, and that you have an absolutely wonderful FFFX! ♥
If you actively enjoy long letters, though, then I just hope this one suits your needs and tells you everything you wanted to know! :D I'm on the AO3 as
In General
If you're really not looking forward to slogging through this, but you didn't feel comfortable flat-out ignoring it—no worries, there is a bottom line! GIVE ME ANYTHING. Whatever you were looking forward to getting to write 10k or put together a comic about when you decided to offer the fandom we matched on, DEFINITELY DO THAT. :D I'm interested in basically anything you'd like to create about these canons and characters! An adventure in the same vein as an episode? A coffeeshop AU? A sequence of canon-compliant missing scenes? Or A/B/O fuckbuddies pining for each other, and it turns out someone has secret wings? I love fluff, whump, and h/c—or angst, horror, and deathfic. Porn! Friendship! Betrayal! Amnesia! Any or all of the above! Please consider this me opting into whatever you consider opt-in (and whatever you consider opt-out, too, for that matter); that includes kinks, material requiring an Archive warning, and everything else tags and warnings might not cover.
Basically, make me the thing you want most to make me, and I will be here for it. :D I'm also requesting specific pairings in some fandoms and individual characters in others, but no matter which I picked, please know that I adore and would be delighted to receive:
• shipfic! I ship all kinds of things, and I'm here for m/m, f/f, and m/f; background ships of all types are a-okay to include, and poly is more than welcome. (And don't feel any need to worry about how shippy a gift you intended as shipfic needs to be—I love friendship fic and enemyship fic, UST and RST, pining that everyone's trying not to acknowledge and hatesex where characters are fucking but not kissing ... So if you end up with something that's full of feelings but no touching, or touching but no kissing, or fucking but no feelings, rest assured that any or all of that is fantastic and I will be thrilled about it!)
• gen! Anything you'd like to write about my requested characters, separately or together or within an ensemble, would be awesome. Backstory? Futurefic? Canon-day character study? Episode tags that add up to 10k? I love loyalty, I love friendship; I love biting antagonism, I love betrayal; I love angst and drama and whump, shenanigans and quiet moments and introspection. Whatever you're interested in, I'm there for it!
• free space! Which is to say anything that I've left off the metaphorical bingo card here. The super iddy concept living in your heart that you haven't had an excuse to unleash? Your very favorite trope in all the world? The weird idea you suspect absolutely no one else is interested in? I want that thing too, whatever it is! :D Unusual POVs, tenses, or formats; epistolary fic, fake in-universe documentation, CYOA; your post-modernist take on time loops, written in future conditional—or your Cubist interpretation of forty panels of a dream sequence. I WANT IT. GIVE IT TO ME. *grabby hands*
I'm into adventures and action, banter and dialogue, or characters stranded alone with nothing to do but think. Five things/five times? Missing scenes or episode tags? The canon-divergent AU where everything goes worse than canon—or the fix-it where nothing went wrong in the first place? Your thoughts on canon-compliant worldbuilding, dressed up in a narrative suit ... or everyone reimagined in the Old West. Seriously, whatever it is you want to make for me, I'm here for it, and so excited about it. :D!
Dark Matter (TV)
Nyx Harper/Two | Portia Lin, Six | Griffin Jones/Three | Marcus Boone
To be frank, I'd be thrilled with basically anything about pretty much any combination of these characters, with as much or as little shippiness as you're inclined to include! A canon-style plotty adventure with the tiniest hint of shippy feelings somewhere in the background is just as welcome as full-on shippy tropes that end in a pile of smut. And feel free to place it at any point during the show, too: backstory where it turns out Kal Varrick and Marcus Boone had a run-in? Job-of-the-week way back in S1 when Three and Six are still trying to figure themselves out? Nyx finding her place on the ship and starting to think it might turn out to be home, in S2? A post-canon AU fixing anything you please? YES.
Or! What might have happened if Two had fought Misaki on the bridge instead of Nyx? If Three had uncovered Six's GA background before he could turn them all in? By all means break my heart by revisiting canonical deaths or causing new ones ... or let people be rescued and have their happy endings. 100% here for any shippy trope you'd like to indulge in (h/c? even more amnesia? fuckbuddies catching feelings?), and for as much or as little worldbuilding as you'd like to do (corporate politics? Zairon? synthetics? the blob-alien dimension? or none of those things at all!). Anything goes!
I still miss this show so much, and G O D that cliffhanger ;-; my HEART. So! I would love more of this universe any way I can get it—and please rest assured I'm into all kinds of different elements of the show, the danger and uncertainty and struggle to make hard choices, but also all the tropey shenanigans and humor and people redefining themselves as crew and as a kind of family. :D Dark and angsty and difficult, silly and sweet and affectionate, I'm there for it either way!
Nyx/Two
I still ship this so hard, help—I love how equally matched they are as fighters, and I love all the parallels between them (that they both were parts of "experiments", in a sense, and that they both managed to escape those experiments and get away from everybody who wanted to use them, and have to figure out who they are and how to live their lives), and also they are both super hot and I am super shallow. /o\ :D I am equally here for having my heart broken by Two mourning Nyx's loss, or a totally self-indulgent fix-it about everyone being alive and no problems and *waves hands* fucking all night long in the sparring room on the Raza. Whatever you're interested in!
• Anything you'd like to write about a job-of-the-week/heist-of-the-week, or people-needing-help-of-the-week, that has Nyx/Two undertones or a Nyx/Two angle would be wonderful!
:: Pretending to be married for cover purposes, and having feelings about it? :D
:: Getting in a tight spot and refusing to leave each other behind? :D
:: I'm easy for h/c and rescues—Nyx getting nabbed by the Seers again and Two charging after her ...
:: ... or Two getting recaptured by Alex Rook and Dwarf Star and Nyx going after her?
• Or any other sort of tropey shenanigans you're interested in, because the show left the door wide open!
:: Another time loop, but this one gives Two a chance to save Nyx from Misaki and stop Eos-7 from blowing up, if she can just figure out how?
:: Amnesia, but this time it's Nyx who's lost her memory!
:: Trapped on a zombie apocalypse planet, or in the Marauder—I adore forced proximity, huddling for warmth, and Two giving up oxygen for people, just tossing that out there. :D
:: Or maybe Nyx does take that Shadow Devon gave her ... and starts having longer and more detailed premonitions, which happen to be of banging Two into next Tuesday?
• And if you're interested in writing canon-divergence, fork off as near or far from canon as you like:
:: Is there a universe where Dwarf Star's interested in the Seers, so Nyx ends up in the same facility as Rebecca?
:: Or where Nyx escaped from them earlier, and Portia Lin picked her up? (Where Nyx and Portia Lin had a thing but it was weird and messed-up, and then Nyx runs into this woman who's totally Portia but claiming not to remember anything ... except Nyx can't predict her anymore, because all her "data" was on Portia, so maybe it's true after all?)
:: What if Nyx had been able to rescue Milo after all—could the two of them together have seen what was coming, and done something about it?
:: Or if she'd never escaped the Seers in the first place! Would Ryo have wanted to keep her for himself even if he still killed the rest of them ... and could Two have found her in the imperial palace and freed her, and taken her back to the Raza? :D
• In terms of fix-its, of course, the obvious suggestion is to save Nyx—which can never happen too many times or too many different ways, as far as I'm concerned!
:: Could the android have downloaded her/taken an imprint the way they did with Sarah? Maybe Two could get her an android body ...
:: Or could Two perhaps use her upgraded nanites to heal Nyx—except they have to stay in physical contact for an extended period of time for it to work? *waggles eyebrows*
:: Or tell me what might have happened if Nyx had never been on the bridge at all: if she'd accepted Ryo's offer and left the Raza to marry him ... and then contacted Two secretly from Zairon, to coordinate stealing back the blink drive or sabotaging his fleet?
:: Or just skip ahead and give me Two/Nyx in S3—no need to explain it, just have her alive and well and let her help Two open that lockbox and find her daughter!
• But by all means linger on what actually happened, or make it even worse (I don't know how you would, but I'd be excited to find out)!
:: Pining mourning Two! ;-; I really am here for any level of shippy feelings, so I would be delighted with Two hiding her unrequited feelings in silence, while Nyx is still struggling with what happened to Four/Ryo.
:: Two continuing to be haunted by hallucinations of Nyx—or even chasing after them, withdrawing from everything else? ;-;
:: Grieving Two encountering a Nyx from an alternate universe (maybe one who lost her own Two—or has had run-ins with her own Portia Lin)?
:: Did the alien possessing Two at the end of S3 uses Nyx's likeness to interact with her? (Is that creepier in a universe where Nyx is dead and Two knows this isn't her but maybe doesn't care ... or in a universe where Nyx made it to S3? D:)
:: And of course I'd be DELIGHTED with any Two-focused canon-compliant epic about dealing with the alien invasion, as long as there are shades of Two's lingering feelings for Nyx included!
Six/Three
I also ship this ridiculously hard, because I love everything about Three (his douchery! his heart of gold! his denial that his heart of gold is a thing!) and I love everything about Six (his glorious angsty backstory! his betrayals and regrets and desire to always do better!), and all the twists and turns in their relationship with each other just kill me—that they've been at odds so much but also had to rely on each other, and when the chips are down they're crew, aaaaaa. (Also that scene in the facility with the alien rift where Three's panicking and basically climbing Six like a tree, and Six reluctantly holds him still so he can be sedated, jeeeeeesus. *____*)
• Seriously, set this anywhere during canon that you like, and I'll eat it up with a spoon:
:: S1 Three and a Six who thinks he used to be Griffin Jones, or just found out about his real identity as Kal and the GA?
:: S2 Six trying to earn back Three's trust?
:: That episode where they were stuck in the Marauder together, with Three still pissed off and Six trying to talk it out, was gold—if you'd like to roll with that but bring it to a shippier and/or pornier conclusion, that would be amazing.
:: Or any x-of-the-week plot that lets Three try real hard to throw himself on a grenade, but Six won't let him ...
:: ... or, say, Six and Three run into acquaintances of Marcus Boone's, who learn that "Kal" is ex-GA and are expecting Three to beat Six up, and Six does let him? Y E S
• Or indulge in any other tropey shenanigans you'd enjoy!
:: Trap them on a planet together, and force them to care for or protect each other?
:: Or get Three arrested by the GA, so Six has to go undercover as himself to get him out, and Three assumes it's just that he betrayed them again! ;-;
:: Or Six stays stuck in that simulation during 3.07, and Three has to actually go in there and convince him it's not real? :D
:: Accidental telepathy (maybe Three's exposure to the aliens + Six's exposure to the aliens = oops, mindlink)?
:: Time loop, except it's Six instead of Three ... but Three believes him and is genuinely helpful, thanks to Three's own past experience? :D
• And by all means diverge from canon anywhere you please:
:: What might have happened if either one of them had accidentally gotten re-imprinted with their memories during S1?
:: Or both of them, for that matter (Kal aware that he's GA and undercover! Boone watching him all the time, not sure why Portia hasn't killed him yet!)?
:: What if Six had decided not to betray the crew to the GA? (What might have changed his plans?)
:: If Kal Varrick had never gone undercover, how else might he have encountered the crew, and Three, eventually?
:: Or if Marcus Boone had stayed with Tanner's gang instead of joining up with Portia—could he have met the rest of them in prison? How would he have felt about their GA "ally"?
:: Or if they'd learned who he was before he could—how would Three have reacted, and how would the crew have dealt with it?
• Or, of course, take that cliffhanger and keep going!
:: The finale didn't necessarily kill Six, but it easily could have—feel free to ruin my life with piles of Three learning what he did and being a mess over it!
:: ... Or tell me all about the future where it didn't and he's just stuck in the wrong dimension. Can Six get himself back through, and find the crew again?
:: Or does Three, with all his unfortunate alien-induced trauma, end up linked to some more aliens—and "see" where Six is, and realize they have to rescue him?
:: And please feel free to emphasize the dynamic going either direction: actually going to the alien dimension, filled with traces of their presence, fucks Three up horribly!
:: OR Six got himself captured/mentally eaten away at, and there's lots of Three bitching him out for it but also taking care of him! ;-;
The Huntsman (movies)
Ravenna/Snow White
The fandom tag includes both movies, but for the record, you do NOT need to have watched Winter's War to give me a Ravenna/Snow White gift I will love! By all means feel free to use whatever bits of either movie you like or are interested in, and leave the rest. During SWatH, with zero references to any background stuff from WW, or post-SWatH but deliberately taking things in a different direction than WW? YES. During or after WW, or referencing the parts of Ravenna's backstory that are depicted there? ALSO YES. Either way!
I ship this like burning, and I'd be thrilled with anything you've got in mind! Post-canon quests and adventures for Queen Snow White—retrieving Ravenna from death or from the mirror, or simply overshadowed with the relentless memory of her? AU where Snow White is the one Ravenna manipulated into marrying her, except it doesn't go the way Ravenna expects it to? Dubcon or noncon set during canon (while Snow White's imprisoned? While Ravenna's still disguised as William?) ... that slow-burns its way into something more real? Or stays creepy? And if you'd like to delve into Snow White's connection to the land, or Ravenna's ravens-and-shadows magic, or the nature of the mirror, that would be AWESOME. :D
I love these movies so very much, help—they are so dramatic and glorious and just 100% my fairytale aesthetic, with just enough realism for the characters to feel like people and not just archetypes, but still full of magic and adventure and true love. ♥ Danger, adventure, quests; beauty, bravery, defeating evil ... plus Charlize Theron, and Kristen Stewart in silver armor. WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE, REALLY. :D
Ravenna/Snow White
This ship was basically made for me, on so many different levels: viciously powerful queen, obsessed with virtuous princess! Ravenna, in all her bitter murderous rage and resentment, and Snow White and her calm steady compassion, good but not soft, gentle but not weak, determined to save her kingdom. ALSO THEY KISSED, TECHNICALLY. So, yeah. Anything you'd like to write me about them, I would love to read! (And I should note here that I do like William and the huntsman, and am also intrigued by Ravenna's weirdly intense relationships with Finn and/or Freya, so. Feel free to include interactions with any of them in the background—or, you know, have Ravenna murder them one by one, the better to keep Snow White all to herself. Whichever. ;D)
• I would love love love more adventures in the same general mold as either or both movies, with any degree of shippiness!
:: Post-movie Queen Snow White with a new quest to undertake, remembering/thinking about/dreaming of Ravenna?
:: Or, if you do want to bring Ravenna back/remove her from the mirror—what might Snow White need to do, to get her out again without going mad?
:: Would she be tempted to leave Ravenna imprisoned in there? Find a way to get in and out herself, and talk to Ravenna? (Who I'm sure would be thrilled to see her. :D)
:: Or perhaps Snow needs to retrieve Ravenna from the dead instead (by traveling east of the sun and west of the moon? Or walking a pair of iron shoes off her feet? Or any other fairytale method you please!)
:: Or maybe some kind of magical accident resurrects Ravenna—would she try to hide herself from Snow White, or disguise herself and walk right back into Snow White's court?
:: Would she want Snow White's help to die again? And if she did, would Snow White agree to give her what she was asking for, or not?
:: Might she have amnesia, or be cursed, and need to set out on a quest of her own to undo it? Or be forced to reluctantly accept Snow White's equally reluctant offer to help her?
• Or! Branch off anywhere, and make things better ... or much, much worse!
:: Feel free to lean into the horror elements of these movies and write me the story where Ravenna wins—cuts Snow White's heart out and eats it, and rules a deathless empire!
:: ... but starts seeing Snow White in the mirror? Dreaming of her? Or is haunted by her, and can't forget about her? :D
:: Or what if Ravenna had stayed disguised as William for longer than she did in canon, and traveled with Snow White and the huntsman much further than she intended to?
:: Or if Snow White had realized something was wrong with Ravenna!William more quickly—if they'd been able to take Ravenna prisoner somehow?
:: If Ravenna had been busy ruling a kingdom of her own, rather than looking for a new one to take over—would she still have learned about Snow White from the mirror? Gone looking for her, and insisted on her hand in marriage?
:: Or decided to just seduce Snow White to her side (FOR EASIER ACCESS TO HER UNARMORED BODY, YOU UNDERSTAND)! Would she succeed? Or find it more difficult and yet also more rewarding than she'd anticipated? :D
• I would also love any idea you'd like to tackle that might give them a chance to slow-burn their way toward genuine romance:
:: Hatesex, or dubcon/noncon, while Snow White is Ravenna's prisoner, that gradually takes on a life of its own and turns into something it wasn't supposed to?
:: Might Ravenna have misunderstood the spell she intends to work, and whatever ritual she does with Snow White finally in her grasp results not in Snow White's heart tearing itself from her chest ... but in a soulbond? :D
:: Or that perennial classic, a time loop: Ravenna kills Snow White over and over and over, but keeps waking up that same day anyway, until at last she's so desperate she has to try something else?
:: Transformations! Curses! Beast!Ravenna and Beauty!Snow White—and of course true love's kiss, as long as we're in the middle of a fairytale.
• And in the background of any other prompt you'd like to follow, I'm super here for any and all worldbuilding you want to do!
:: Ravenna's backstory—other kingdoms she's conquered or ruled, legends that have risen up in her wake and names she's been given?
:: Does she miss other places she once ruled, people or things; art, music, stories, so old no one else remembers they once existed?
:: Anything with Finn and/or Freya, where their magic comes from and how they each discovered their talent for it?
:: Whether Ravenna studied it or stole it or just gradually learned to use it, and how her understanding of it has changed over the years?
:: I'm also FASCINATED by the stuff about the true king/queen, and their apparent connection to the health and bounty of the land they rule—anything about what that means and the history of that bond would be awesome!
:: How does it feel to Snow White—can she tell it's there? Did the land dying under Ravenna's rule hurt, or fray that connection when she was only just starting to realize it was there?
:: Are there ways to strengthen it? As queen at last, is it essential that she go down to the fields and shove her hands in the dirt sometimes? :D
Motherland: Fort Salem
Abigail Bellweather/Raelle Collar, Abigail Bellweather/Raelle Collar/Tally Craven, Abigail Bellweather/Libba Swythe
I started watching this show on a whim and then fell completely in love with it; I'm weak for alternate history, especially alternate history with magic involved, and it's so delightfully committed to the amazingness of its premise! And while I managed to narrow down my request to just a few of my favorite Abigail ships, I'm interested in pretty much all of the characters, and would be thrilled with any direction you wanted to go—lots of Bellweather Unit team feelings? Missing scenes? AU? Post-canon? YES. GOOD. ANYTHING.
I love the slow burn between Abigail and Raelle, the way they go from grudging and frustrated to actively protective of and affectionate toward each other, and I'd adore any direction you want to take that: letting it progress even further, in keeping with canon, or, like, AU where they are "stuck" in a witch-witch arranged marriage, or anywhere in between. I also love Tally, their dynamic as a team, and their obvious and remarkable power when they're working together, so if you'd like to make it an OT3 instead, PLEASE DO. And Abigail's rivalry with Libba was so intense and full of friction; if you'd like to let Abigail save her, that would be amazing! Or maybe retrieve her from the witch afterlife? :D
This show is amazing and ridiculous and dramatic, and I love basically every single thing about it, and can't wait for S2! (Which, I don't think we'll need to worry about S2 airing during the creation period for this exchange, but if it does—I'll definitely be keeping up, and if you'd like to use elements of S2, you will not need to worry about spoiling me. :D) I adore the military aesthetic, but also the intermittent horror vibe (making people jump to their deaths! Putting birds in dead people's throats to talk with! EVIL SPREE BALLOONS IN MIRRORS D:), and I love that it's neither as simple as "military good, Spree bad" OR "military bad, Spree good". SO I'm happy to have you lean into team feelings and successful missions and the wonders of magic, but also moral and ethical uncertainty, violence, unfixable mistakes, and the incredibly creepy shit you can do with magic. :D
(Oh, and side note: do whatever suits you with Scylla! If you'd like to break her and Raelle up earlier than in canon, to put together one of my Raelle ships instead, that's fine; if you'd like to just ignore her/make it a tacit AU where Raelle's mother has another strategy in the works, that's fine also. Either way! And I don't mind Raelle/Scylla appearing in the background of an Abigail/Libba work in the least.)
Abigail Bellweather/Raelle Collar
This ended up being one of my favorite relationships on the whole show, and I love them both so much! I'm always kind of weak for opposites, and people who get off on the wrong foot but are stuck with each other, and start to get to know each other kind of despite themselves. ♥ Add in the insults, protectiveness, and whatever the heck they did by holding hands in the finale, and I'm SOLD. Toss in an "I love you, shitbird" at a pivotal moment in your work, and I will be at your mercy. :D
• I would love anything you wanted to set in and around canon—missing scenes, episode tags, post-canon ...
:: Seriously, pile on the UST, anywhere during the show—I very much enjoy the idea of Raelle as Abigail's bi/lesbian awakening, that she knows intellectually that women sleep with women, but she's never had any reason to think about that in the context of herself, until Raelle makes it impossible not to. :D
:: Or, of course, that cliffhanger! Where are Abigail and Raelle, and what does it have to do with the fungus wall???
:: How do they get back from wherever it is they seem to be? Is there a new connection between them when they do?
:: Are they a unit of two, with Tally taken away from them to serve as a biddy? Are they willing to accept a new third member, or not?
:: Or go further in the future: where are they and what's happening, in ten or fifteen years?
:: I'm a sucker for reunions! Frex, Abigail, injured on the front lines, not realizing until Raelle's in front of her again that that's who's going to be working on healing the damage ... (Did they part on good terms? Bang, but Abigail got weird about it and everything went sour? Break up, and they're exes?)
• Or, of course, AU me in any direction you'd like to go:
:: What if it had been one of them who died, not Libba, and the one who's left is struggling to cope, grieving with Tally?
:: Having dreams ... that might not just be dreams? Or calling the other back the same way Porter was called back, to make a final confession of feelings and then let go? ;-;
:: Or maybe Abigail was too injured for even the mycelium or whatever to fix, and it's her ghost Raelle's walking hand in hand with, but Raelle doesn't know it—yet? D:
:: I'll gratefully swallow absolutely any excuse you can come up with for it to somehow be necessary for a Bellweather to marry a representative from the Chippewa Cession—awkward, unexpectedly hot wedding nights that they agreed in advance wouldn't be repeated, slow burn and pining for the person who's already your spouse, just trope it to hell and back and I will love you forever. *______*
:: Or! Let them meet earlier? I would love an AU where, like, the very last night before the draft, Raelle went out and met a hot girl in a bar, a girl who turned out not to be as straight as she'd told Raelle she was ... and then oops, they come face-to-face at Fort Salem, worst morning after ever. :D
:: Or later? Give me a version of Abigail who's already on the front lines, and the Fixer assigned to her battalion is this incredibly difficult shitbird who seems to be trying to get herself killed!
• Or run with any other trope that suits your fancy!
:: Might witches accidentally soulbond? Or be linked telepathically by mistake? (Maybe healing the same person repeatedly can forge a connection, even?)
:: I love the classics: sex pollen, time shenanigans, going undercover—Raelle, trying to infiltrate the Spree, and Abigail there as backup, in disguise, having to pretend to be her girlfriend? :D :D :D
:: Maybe next year the Reel at Beltane brings them to each other, so many times in a row that even they can't ignore it?
:: Or maybe there are other witchy rituals or ceremonies that yield revelations or start wheels turning?
:: If you'd like to send them to War College, I would absolutely love to see what you think that might look like!
:: Or just stick them in training scenarios resulting in h/c, or in deliberate telepathic bonds that work a little too well ...
Abigail Bellweather/Raelle Collar/Tally Craven
I'm easy for teams, and while Abigail and Raelle and the friction between them obviously stand out, I love Tally, and would be absolutely thrilled with anything that brought all of them together in an OT3. :D! Tally is earnest enough and open enough to get Raelle to talk to her, but with enough steel underneath to stand up to Abigail when she needs to—and I am so, so weak for their obvious power as a unit, when they're actually working together. ♥
• Again, please feel free to work during or around canon, by all means:
:: Missing scenes, increasing UST, getting to know each other and starting to feel ~something ...
:: As for Abigail/Raelle, I am super weak for the idea of Abigail/Raelle/Tally as the first time Tally's ever given serious thought to girls, having always treated boys as the default assumption (and being even less experienced than Abigail, to boot). So if you want to lean into that and explore Tally's gradual understanding that she's feeling something she can't attribute to friendship/teamwork/loyalty, I would adore that!
:: Or go post-canon with all three of them—is it possible for them to break whatever it is that binds Tally to Alder as a biddy, once Alder's out of immediate danger? (Would they need to replace that connection with a new one—to the two of them? :D)
:: How might they learn Raelle's mother is alive, and where she is—how would they react, and what would they do about it?
:: Or at some future point, might something happen to Alder that sets Tally free? Are Abigail and Raelle there waiting for her, or not? (Or is one of them the new Alder, so to speak?)
• Or, of course, AU things any direction you like!
:: What if Raelle had been Spree to start with, and Abigail and Tally were captured? (I am here for this in either a bittersweet fucked-up way, or a "Raelle wavers and helps them escape and it all works out" way. :D)
:: Or any one of them, or even two, had been killed when Citydrop turned into a real mission? Give me the other two clinging to each other in the aftermath—or the lone survivor, wishing they'd had more time! *weeping openly*
:: Giving all of them an earlier meeting point is a little tough, but I would absolutely adore, say, officer!Abigail who's been working her way up the ranks, being handed Tally Craven and thinking she's naive but learning she can rely on her?
:: And then, of course, they end up in deep shit but some Fixer comes out of nowhere and mends both of them at once, and Abigail insists on getting Raelle assigned to them permanently even if she is infuriating, because Bellweathers won't settle for less than the best ...
• And by all means, use magic and/or worldbuilding to set them up together any way you please!
:: Is there some unit-bonding ceremony that's basically a marriage, or barely second to it, or involves a Beltane-type unit-only orgy (and maybe they're supposed to have enjoyed it but not dwell on it ... except they can't stop wanting to do it again?)
:: Escalating bedsharing! Comfort in the trenches, or so they tell themselves, but it doesn't end when their tour of duty does!
:: Three-way bodyswap? :D
:: Increasingly frequent premonitions of future intimacy that are disconcerting/hot/a comfort by turns?
:: One of them is captured by the Spree, and the other two turn the world upside down to get her back!
:: Also, for the record, I enjoy both three-way first-time get-togethers, AND two of a threesome getting together first + the third one pining for the couple/the couple pining for the third, with bonus everyone feeling weird about it (plus or minus the couple dirty-talking each other by invoking the third, if you're into that *waggles eyebrows*). So with any of the prompts above, feel free to restructure around whichever emotional dynamic you prefer!
Abigail Bellweather/Libba Swythe
This rivalry was AMAZING, even if it didn't last as long or get as much time onscreen as I wanted it to, and then the show STABBED ME IN THE HEART AND TWISTED THE KNIFE with Abigail breaking down over Libba's death and that spectacularly shippy eulogy, omfg. Whether you'd like to stick to canon and leave Libba dead/kill her all over again, or fix it for me, EITHER WAY I'M SO THERE.
• So! I would love some Abigail/Libba, no matter when you'd like to set it:
:: When did they meet, and did they start hating each other just because they knew they were supposed to, or did a particular incident make it genuinely personal?
:: (Did one of them make a move, once, and get rejected not out of malice but just out of uncertainty ... but it hurt anyway, and they're holding a grudge? :D)
:: They must have known they'd both be at Fort Salem; did they seek each other out when they arrived to have a confrontation we didn't see, or just wait until they happened across each other?
:: If you'd like to tell me all about how they were confronting each other regularly in empty hallways/darkened corners of the grounds, to slam each other into things and bite out insults
:: And by all means make me cry all over again about Libba's death. ;-; If you'd like to dig deeper into Abigail's feelings about it during and after that mission-gone-wrong, and in the runup to the memorial service, go for it!
:: And I'll accept any excuse for them to interact after Libba's death, too: does her ghost haunt Abigail? (In a creepy way, or in a funny way? Or both!)
:: Does Abigail decide she needs the closure of speaking to the dead, and figure out how to make that happen (with or without help from Tally and Raelle)?
• But! You should also feel free to let Abigail save Libba, however you want to make that happen. :D
:: In the moment, and almost dying herself because of it?
:: Or afterward—give me straight-up Orpheus-and-Eurydice, or pick your own witch underworld and send Abigail questing through it to bring Libba back!
:: If Abigail succeeds, or seems to ... is it still Libba who comes back with her, or not?
:: Does she have to make a deal with questionable powers to make it happen?
:: Or perhaps magic can cross dimensions, and another universe's Libba shows up?
:: And of course you can take me to the future of an AU where Libba's fine without telling me how it happened, too!
:: I would adore their petty-rivalry-that's-actually-backwards-loyalty persisting through their careers, whatever you think those might look like—trying to one-up each other's service records and accomplishments, but also maybe saving each other's lives (obviously just because they want to beat each other fair and square, and not have somebody else take one of them out instead).
:: A hatesex thing that crosses years, until they're finally maaaaaaybe able to admit there's actual feelings involved, would be 100% my jam!
• And third verse same as the first: by all means use magic, or convenient bits of the setting like Beltane, or whatever other tropes you like, to maneuver Abigail and Libba into any scenario you please!
:: Meeting AU versions of themselves, or waking up married in the future/an alternate universe?
:: An older, wiser, bitterer Abigail (perhaps from an especially bad future) using time travel to go back and save Libba—arriving a little early, and having to try to remember how to act?
:: Magical dreamsharing, or deaging, or truth spells?
:: Are they forced to get married, in an attempt to mend the rift between their families—and they still totally "hate" each other, but damn, the sex is good?
:: Or maybe they're alphas, in an A/B/O AU? :D
Siren (TV)
Maddie Bishop/Ben Pownall/Ryn
I love this show and everything about it! The drama of it all is so breakneck sometimes, bless—and yet there's so much genuine beauty in it, too, in the possibility of connection between people who are so different from each other, and all the wonder and earnest warmth and loyalty. I adore Ben and Maddie and Ryn, and I'd love more about them any way I can get it: early in the show, or after the break-up; in the future, whatever you think that might look like, or in another universe entirely! :D
SO. Please give me just about anything you'd like to give me involving this ship, and I'll be over the moon. I'd love more about what you think their lives were like in the various gaps/breaks between parts of the show—more about mermaid mating habits and Maddie and Ben trying to deal with Ryn's assumptions and expectations (or trying to let go of their own)? All the break-up angst and pining and awkwardly trying to be good exes, while still having feelings? Ryn and Maddie in the aftermath of S3, unable to stay away from each other for long ... and managing to find Ben after all? Anything!
I wasn't expecting to like this show as much as I did—I heard about it and figured I'd give it a try? And then suddenly I was invested! And I couldn't stop watching it! I'll admit that the main draw for me is Maddie/Ben/Ryn, and I struggled a little bit when it came to S3, which seemed to want to give me absolutely anything else; but there were a lot of really interesting plot developments packed in there, and I ended up kind of loving both Robb and Tia, so you don't have to ignore it or undo it if you don't want to! I'll love a canon-compliant post-S3 gift just as much as a fix-it or an AU or whatever else, I promise. :D (And frankly I'd love something set during S3 that really made me feel their break-up, where there was some intensity and lingering heartache! ;-;)
Maddie Bishop/Ben Pownall/Ryn
I love these three, and hearing that they were canon was the thing that got me to check out this show, idly wondering whether I'd like it at all, in the first place! Their relationship is so delightful to me; I adore how even-handed it was as it developed, with Ryn equally intrigued by Ben and Maddie, and equally ready to invade their personal space. S1 and S2 especially felt like they gave equal amounts of time to each of them, and to each of their relationships with each other, and I found that incredibly gratifying. ♥ And while I was definitely bummed that they broke up, I appreciate that they all obviously still love each other, and are there for each other when the need arises!
• I'd be thrilled with something set pretty much whenever you want to set it:
:: Early in S1, when they're all only just starting to maaaaaaybe think it's a possibility?
:: I adore threesomes in a nervous early stage—Ben and/or Maddie feeling weird and greedy for wanting Ryn, too, and trying to figure out how to admit it to each other ... or accidentally ending up dirty-talking each other through the possibilities, if Ryn were with them? :D
:: What was it like for Ryn going back to the water without them? (Was she almost glad for the overfishing, in a weird way, because it gave her a reason to return?)
:: And the singing! Aaaanything about the singing, what it was like to realize it had hurt Ben, and then to be allowed to sing to Maddie but only with the noise-cancelling headphones—whether Ryn wants to do it, how it feels to her when she does ...
:: Or the lead-up to S3, trying to help Ryn have a baby, and all the feelings and struggles that brings along with it for all of them!
:: Or the break-up! ;-; I would love a deeper look into how they all feel about it and deal with it, and if you were inclined to give me buckets and buckets of Ben and Ryn pining for Maddie, and vice versa, I would be thrilled!
• And post-canon speculation would be awesome, too. :D
:: Working off the situation at the end of S3—by all means let Ryn and Maddie succeed in finding Ben!
:: Is he alive, but transformed, and needs lots of time and rehabilitation to recover and survive on land again?
:: Or maybe Maddie needs to follow in his footsteps and start taking those injections, in order to help Ryn look—and it's Ryn who's going to have to coax both of them back out of the water?
:: Or go further! What if they stay apart, five or ten years ... and then Ryn finally gets an indication that Ben's still alive, and has to figure out how to get in touch with Maddie?
:: Or it's Maddie, still working with Robb on his ocean cleanup project, who realizes what they've got caught in their equipment is Ben, and has to get him out safely and find Ryn?
• Or go AU, whether for better or worse!
:: By all means indulge me with the ridiculous sappy AU where Ryn actually did manage to get pregnant, by any of the means they tried in canon, and Ben and Maddie are there to help her, and it turns into a big pile of cozy domestic pre-kidfic fluff. :D
:: Or! What if the AU we were handed in the S2 finale weren't just in Ben's imagination?
:: Or go back further: what if Ryn had been the one caught by the military, not Donna? Could she have escaped, and met Maddie and/or Ben while trying to find her way back to the water?
:: What if Ryn and Maddie and Ben were all merpeople?
:: Or Maddie and Ben had become marine biologists with convenient military clearance, and had been called in as consultants on a very unusual project?
:: What if mermaids had conquered humanity a long time ago, and humans were considered dull brutes to be used for minor labor and boring land-based tasks—but Ryn found herself weirdly drawn to a couple of them? :D
• And of course I'd love any other tropey shippy options you're interested in exploring, too.
:: The thing where Ryn had started dreaming turns out to be a prelude to dreamsharing, among all three of them?
:: Or aaaaanything to do with mermaid mating stuff—drawn-out fluff about some incredibly lengthy traditional courting process involving gifts?
:: Angst where Ryn knows she's not supposed to drag either of them into the water to bite them too hard and hit them with her tail, but she really really wants to?
:: Or, conversely, Ben and Maddie finding themselves helplessly kinking on Mermaid Things: on biting, on throat-grabbing, on glowing Ryn and the whole idea of mating season?
:: I'd be so, so weak for any kind of kink-discovery angst based on Ben and Maddie's totally legitimate bad reaction to the surprise choking during the stress-hormone incident—Ryn assuming that that means that's Never Allowed, Ben and Maddie thinking about it way too much and feeling weird for it ...
:: Or get into the X-rated details of Ryn exploring her land body's differences/Ryn fucking people in water with loving xenobiological descriptions of how that works when she's shifted!
:: More pregnancy experiments yield results: turns out alpha mermaids can impregnate human men AND human women, if they've sung to them and then fuck them in water? JUST A THOUGHT. :D
Tidelands (TV)
Calliope "Cal" McTeer
It was honestly tough to figure out who to request here, because there are SO MANY THINGS that interest me about this show—but at the end of the day, Cal is my fave, and a gift about her that's just for me would be a dream come true. :D So! Missing scenes or episode tags, backstory adventures or whatever you think should happen next after that RIDICULOUS cliffhanger of a finale? AU where Cal never went to prison, or where she ended up with the Tidelanders much earlier? Fix-it where NOBODY dies, thank you very much?
I ship basically all the things here, so if you'd like to give me essentially canon-compliant Cal/Dylan or Cal/Corey, definitely do that—more sex with accidental siren powers involved? All the feelings conversations they didn't get to have during the show? BUT I would also love some messy power-tripping manipulative Cal/Adrielle, or Cal/Augie not-technically-incest-but-it-still-feels-like-it-is, or Cal/Leandra or Cal/Violca seduction or hatesex. And if you want to delve into more siren lore, or tell me all your headcanons about summonings and water magic and what sirens actually think of their abandoned half-human children, feel free!
I'll admit I'm on a bit of a murder mermaids kick, and this show fascinated me—there's some pretty soapy twists and turns, and also some hilariously unnecessary sex. But at the same time it did such an intriguing job with the Tidelanders and their community, its structure and its (sometimes terrifying) rules, the sirens and the Tidelanders' longing for them. The whole show is so appropriately moody and beautiful and kind of wild, and I ended up really loving it. (Even if that finale was ... I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO CALL IT. ??? !!!)
Cal McTeer
And! I particularly loved Cal. :D Her angsty backstory is so amazing and messed-up in all my favorite ways, and her homecoming is so believably awkward and difficult and painful. ♥ Her journey toward starting to learn some of the secrets that have been kept from her, and starting to understand herself—being able to use her powers, and even wanting to, and the push-pull between enjoying it and being terrified of it ... I LOVED ALL OF IT, and Cal is great, the end.
• So! Anything you'd like to explore about Cal and her life at any point—I'm here for it!
:: Her childhood while her dad was still alive, not knowing where she'd come from; were there hints that piled up, despite her dad keeping her away from water?
:: Or the fire, and going to prison, adjusting to it—and then having to try to figure out how to live life outside of it again?
:: Or, of course, Cal's perspective on the Tidelanders! Does she feel drawn to Dylan, to Adrielle, to L'Attente? Is it reassuring or scary—or both—to finally understand why she's never quite felt like she belonged?
:: Or the runup to the ending! Anything digging into what it's like to make that guy drown himself, realizing that she liked it, admitting it to Augie—stabbing Adrielle, trying to save Augie and Bijou, the sirens ...
• And I would love to know what you think about what might happen next, too!
:: Obviously the cliffhanger gives you a jumping-off point, if you want it—what do the sirens do? Who lives, and who dies?
:: Are the sirens willing/intrigued to have been summoned ... or not so much?
:: How do the Tidelanders react? Has Adrielle strengthened her position as queen—or does it become clear the sirens came for Cal, not her?
:: But feel free to go further and tackle new problems, and let me piece together what must have happened on that beach retroactively!
:: More struggles in dealing with the remains of Augie's ... business? Trying to survive whatever Adrielle's got in mind next, now that she has in fact succeeded in her original goal?
• Or go in another direction entirely:
:: What if Cal had never gone to prison—if Augie had taken the fall with a false confession?
:: Or if she'd fled from the police (and ended up stumbling all the way to the Tidelanders, maybe)? How else might she have learned what she was?
:: What if Dylan had decided to full-on side with Cal over Adrielle earlier?
:: Or if Violca had recruited her in an effort to defy Adrielle sooner?
:: Or if she'd been able to save poor Colton—or met Gilles and Bijou earlier, and Bijou's drawings had helped her guess a few more things that were coming?
:: What if she actually had killed Adrielle—how would the rest of the Tidelanders have reacted to her as queen? (I'm equally interested in principled queen Cal who's not going to make people gouge each other's eyes out anymore ... or a darker Cal who starts to indulge the part of her nature that enjoyed making a man helplessly drown himself. :D)
:: Or, of course, fix it: let her succeed in forcing Corey's blood back inside him and keeping his heart beating, in the morgue! Let Dylan leave Adrielle to die and stick with Cal! Let her save Bijou and Augie! (With the sirens' help?)
• And I'd love it if you were interested in shipping Cal with ... just about anybody, really!
:: I absolutely ship Cal with both Corey and Dylan, so I'm here for either pairing, or both continuing to occur at once in a V, or an actual straight-up poly formation where Corey and Dylan also bang!
:: I'm also weak for incest and pseudo-incest, and Augie and Cal have such a compellingly strong relationship with each other—they trust each other SO MUCH, and that entire rescue + holding each other + Cal confessing to him that she'd made that guy drown and liked it, ffff, MY HEART
:: AND THEN ALSO I would be delighted to read about fucked-up manipulative Cal/Adrielle (such a UST vibe! Adrielle like half trying to win Cal over and half trying to achieve some kind of control over the potential threat she poses! *_____*)
:: Or! Cal/Violca where Violca's trying to get someone else to take Adrielle on first so she can step forward in the aftermath? (Does it work? Or does Cal do better than expected, and suddenly Violca's got to keep her favor instead?)
:: Cal/Leandra? Maybe Leandra finds Cal first in the morgue, not Corey, and Cal uses her abilities to force Leandra to submit to her? How does that change the endgame of the show?
:: For any of the pairings above, if you want to play up the whole "queen" thing/potential additional Tidelander powers in a femdom way, feel free. :D
:: Or go any other tropey direction you like: do Tidelanders grow secret sex pollen plants? Soulbond to each other, or to humans? Have soulmates? :D
• If you felt like digging into the worldbuilding some more, either in the background of another prompt/concept or on its own, that would be fantastic:
:: I would LOVE to know whatever headcanon you have about the sirens—the scenes with Adrielle getting a translation of the text on the artifact, and the "historical" legends about the horn and armies of women from the sea, man, it was all such catnip!
:: Anything with Cal involved that delves a little deeper into the nature of sirens and where they come from (if there are no siren dudes, and when they bang human dudes they dump the babies ... can select Tidelanders be made into full sirens, if the sirens choose to do so? Or is it more mythological—sirens carve new sirens out of stone, or something?).
:: Or just dive in and tell me all about the original mythohistorical conflict, what happened and how; the original breaking of that horn and who did it, the scattering of the pieces ...
:: Or anything focused on the Tidelanders and their community: how separate they are, how separate they feel, the juxtaposition of the desperation to reach out for their mothers and the awareness that their mothers abandoned them.
:: The massacre! Their social structure! Their rules are so interesting, and obviously also kind of creepy/brutal: the eye-gouging, Adrielle's determination to make them all believe they can't have kids with humans, succession among queens ...
:: Or their magic! The water-lock on Adrielle's little basement of surprises was super cool—please tell me all about how it feels to control water, including the water in blood, and to breathe it. Or to entrance people, for that matter!
:: And then there's Bijou and Genoveva, with their apparent precognition; how does that work? Are there other "extra" talents that some Tidelanders have and others don't? (Can full-blooded sirens see the future even more clearly? Is that why they came to the shore for Cal and not for Adrielle—because they saw that it would be her, and that mattered somehow?)
If you got here by reading that whole thing, I can only attempt to apologize. /o\ Thank you so much for your patience and your interest; I hope at least some of that was useful, and that you have an absolutely wonderful FFFX! ♥