Yuletide? Already?
Oct. 21st, 2021 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
damkiannaI'm so glad you signed up for Yuletide, author! First things first: if you're not wild about long letters, feel free to close this tab immediately. Work off just the stuff in my signup, pretend my signup was completely blank—whatever works the best for you! I adore each and every one of these fandoms, and I don't have any DNWs; this letter is only here to elaborate on my signup, and to give you more thoughts and more prompts, if that's something you'd find helpful. If you get bored, or you already have an idea you really want to write, by all means forget this letter's even here! Give me 1k of whatever interests you about the fandom we matched on, and I will love it. :D
If you're actually interested in reading this letter, or at least skimming it, then good luck and godspeed. ♥ By all means ignore anything that doesn't apply to you or doesn't interest you—you won't be missing anything crucial! I get kind of carried away when it comes to exchanges, and I always have more to say than I thought I would. :'D I've tried to make this letter clear and easy to navigate, if not concise, and I hope you find something useful and/or inspiring in it somewhere.
I'm on the AO3 as![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Damkianna, and all my past exchange letters are posted to this journal, mostly under my Yuletide tag, Fandom5K tag, and FFFX tag. I basically never lose interest in anything, so if there's a prompt in any of my previous letters for a fandom I've requested here that works for you, but I didn't repeat that prompt in this letter, by all means write it anyway! (And don't feel bound by any of my old DNWs, either.)
In General | The Big Country (1958) | Dark Matter | Hellboy (movies)
Jeremiah (TV) | Siren (TV) | Tidelands (TV)
If you don't want to close this letter without looking at it, but you're also not looking forward to reading it, no worries! There is a bottom line: I love these fandoms, I'm stoked to share one with you, and I'd be thrilled to read whatever it is you want to write me. :D Whatever you consider opt-in, I'm opting into it—there's no topics, tropes, kinks, or headcanons you need to avoid, and whatever story you'd like to tell about these canons and characters, I'm so excited to receive it!
I love gen and shipfic, plot and PWP, the whumpiest angst and the softest most domestic fluff. I enjoy character studies and casefic, worst-timeline anti-fix-its and found families having a group hug. Pining? Friendship? Murder? Banter? Smut? Poetry? Terrible people doing terrible things to each other, good people doing terrible things for what they think are the right reasons, good people being kind to each other and eating a cake made out of rainbows together—anywhere on the scale, I'm there for it. I would love 1k of post-canon adventure just as much as 1k of worldbuilding via 100-word drabbles of epistolary extracts. Anything! By all means ignore my prompts and write the fic of your heart, because I would love to read it. :D Or go ahead and take a prompt, but turn it inside out. Give it a bad ending, rocks fall everyone dies? Subvert or invert the trope? Take the fix-it idea and blow a hole through the middle of it—or take the everything-goes-wrong AU and fix it? YES.
Basically, whatever it is that made you want to offer the fandom and characters we matched on, whatever it is that you'd most enjoy writing about them, give it to me! I want it! Sweet, weird, gory, kinky, scary, tragic, or none of the above, I am HERE FOR IT.
I adore and would be thrilled to receive:
• gen! By all means write about any of my requested characters individually, or give me the friendship/rivalry/platonic ensemble fic of your dreams, involving any one of them and any other character or characters from their canon. I love all the casts of all these canons, and am happy to have characters I didn't request appear in my gift!
:: Feel free to take any prompt I gave for a ship and turn it into gen, too—fake dating that really is a cover story, and no one's pining at all? Amnesia where the focus is on how it changes the character's platonic relationships with the rest of the ensemble, and on how it gets solved? Huddling for warmth, or hurt/comfort, or self-sacrifice + protectiveness, with absolutely zero UST? YES PLEASE.
:: And by all means tackle any part of canon, or before or after canon begins or ends, even if I didn't hit on your idea in a specific prompt. 1k of pre-canon backstory? Missing scenes? Post-canon going any which way you like? A quiet moment of connection between friends ... or enemies taunting each other? Introspection! A n y t h i n g.
• shipfic! I multiship in most of my fandoms, and I enjoy f/f, f/m, m/m, nonbinary or genderless characters being shipped, and poly in any configuration. In a lot of these fandoms, I've requested just one character—I've tried to prompt for as many ships as I can think of, but if I left your favorite off the list, feel free to write it anyway!
:: Which, for the record, if it's relevant: I'm definitely here for incest, age gaps, and messy or complicated relationships. I love enemies with UST who never make it to lovers, dubcon/noncon, and undernegotiated kink—and I also love earnest affection, quiet understated longing, h/c with kissing, and true love. ♥ So, yeah. Please feel free to include any ship you ship in my gift, and take that ship in any direction that suits you!
:: And don't worry at all about how shippy a gift you intended as shipfic turns out—I love UST and RST, pining that everyone's ignoring 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!
• free space! And by that I mean anything you'd love to write for me that I manage to fail to explicitly prompt for.
:: A particular premise you can never get enough of (arranged marriage! Accidental telepathy! Kidfic! Undercover as a couple!)?
:: Any kind of AU or AU-adjacent trope (A/B/O! Everyone works in a coffee shop! Roleswap canon divergence! Fusion with another fandom!)?
:: Or something funky or unusual that you've always hoped someone would ask for (a decuple drabble that comes out to 1k exactly! Second person in future conditional! Fake documentation! IN-UNIVERSE FICTIONAL SONG LYRICS ADDING UP TO 1K)?
Whatever it is, please please please give me it. :D
I like fluff and angst, sad endings and happy endings, tension and relief. I would love something precisely placed and canon-compliant just as much as OCs or a brand-new setting to explore, pre-canon blanks getting filled in or post-canon adventures that go whole new directions. I'm here for rare pairings of all stripes, alternate character interpretations or AU variations, and outsider POVs on relationships or on individuals. 1k of any part of canon you like best (or want to rewrite or take somewhere other than where it went canonically, or think is weird or creepy or funny even though canon didn't seem to mean it that way) would be awesome. First person! Interactive fiction! The zombie apocalypse! ANYTHING. Write it for me, whatever it is, and have a great Yuletide. ♥
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I just can't stop asking for this movie—I adore it, and also Jim and Steve (separately, together, or in alternating POV sections, for the record)! :D Jim is such an interesting character, and I love how competent and low-key and self-possessed he is; whatever story you want to tell about him, I'd be delighted to read it. Fill in his backstory out at sea, or tell me how he met and fell for Pat back east, or give me 1k of his evolving feelings for Julie. Or, of course, focus on Steve! He's a hot mess, bless his heart, and I'm equally here for him being an insecure, irritating jerk, or something set later in his character arc, when his loyalty, bravery, and growing willingness to admit when he's wrong start to show through. Where's he from, and how'd he start working for the Terrills anyway? Would he and Pat really be happy together? (Yes and no are both legitimate answers here!) How does he survive that gunshot wound—if he does?
And if you ship it, rest assured I would be thrilled with a Jim/Steve story, too! Anywhere on the scale from barely-acknowledged UST to dubcon porn would be amazing—set it during canon, with Steve fiercely trying to repress impulses "real men" don't have, telling himself it's just about wanting to knock Jim's teeth in? Turn that midnight fight into angry hatesex, Steve trying to wring some fury or fear out of Jim any way he can, and Jim refusing to give him the satisfaction, letting him keep on going instead of pushing him away? Or make it post-canon accidental domesticity, Jim taking on Big Muddy by himself and Steve lending him a hand, and really, he might as well stay the night, and oops, suddenly they're living together! Or an AU where Steve went after Jim to find him when he was "lost" all by himself, and Things Happened on their way back to the Terrills' together, but Steve won't acknowledge it afterward ... Anything!
I've gotten a bunch of truly awesome gifts for this movie already, but I just can't help but ask for it again—my greed cannot be satisfied! :D I'm so weak for Jim's particular brand of staunch self-possession, how thoughtful and patient he is, at the same time that he's so stubborn in his own way, and won't veer from what he thinks is right or best even if it might make things a lot easier for him. And Steve's arc was so satisfying to me—I loved his irritation with Jim and how much he disliked Jim at first, how obvious it was that he just didn't know what to do with a man who relied so little on other people's good opinions or on "performing" manliness in the ways he was used to; that he wants to fight Jim SO BADLY, and still ends up starting to see where Jim's coming from in time, however reluctantly. ♥
HELP I LOVE JIM SO MUCH. :D He's just so calmly and quietly sure of himself, so thoughtful and perceptive—and possibly a bit self-righteous and irritating now and then, bless, but it's so hard to hold it against him. I love that he's decided so clearly what should carry weight and what shouldn't, and that he cares so much about people at the same time that he cares so little about their opinions, and doesn't mind being thought of as a coward or a fool (why should he, after all, when he knows he isn't, and anyone who pays enough attention will know the same?). ♥ JIM ♥
• So I'd love pretty much anything you'd like to tell me about Jim!
:: Where did he grow up? When did he first go to sea, and why, and who was it who taught him navigation?
:: What happened to give him the perspective that he has on self-respect and proving oneself? (Was he once a little more like Steve—maybe more than he wants to admit?)
:: Was there some specific incident—maybe aboard ship, or ashore on leave—where social pressure and trying to "be a man" ended badly, and taught him something?
:: When and how did he become a captain? What did he think the rest of his life was going to look like, before the events of the movie?
• And of course I'd be happy for you to write about his relationship with Pat, too!
:: How did it begin? How did they meet, and fall in love? What was it about each other that first caught their eye?
:: What was their separation like for Jim, when Pat first returned to her family but Jim was still back east? (Did they write to each other? What might those letters have said?)
:: Did he have a certain sense of foreboding about coming west and seeing her again—a niggling feeling that things might not work out?
:: Or was he looking forward to learning more about where Pat came from, meeting her family, and understanding her better?
• I'd be delighted with anything about Jim set during the movie:
:: His romance with Julie was so lovely, and that wordless confessional moment between them in Blanco Canyon, g o d, MY HEART. So anything from Jim's first impressions of Julie to deeper feelings taking root, realizing she's been taken to relief at finding she's still alive ... totally on the table!
:: And Jim's POV on any part of canon, whether it's the "big country" in general when he arrives, or the Hannasseys/Ramón/the Terrills as he learns more about the situation—or, of course, Steve :D—would be fantastic.
:: Or! Any kind of missing scene you'd like to tackle that's Jim-centric would be awesome, too: alone on his ride, realizing he really can orient himself well before he's found by Steve ...
:: ... or a conversation with Pat or Julie, or even Henry Terrill, that we didn't see ...
:: ... or his relief when the standoff in the canyon is over!
• And post-movie Jim/Julie or gen of any kind would also be more than welcome!
:: I'd honestly be as happy to read about Jim (by himself, or with Julie) riding off and moving on to a new home, either out west or back east, far away from feuds and water rights ...
:: ... as about Jim (by himself, or with Julie) returning to Big Muddy and fixing the place up so it's a real ranch again (with actual details about ranching 100% optional; I know nothing about it, I won't notice if you fudge it! :D).
:: Or even further in the future—does he ever go to sea again? Does he marry Julie after all?
:: Or maybe 1k of Jim on his deathbed, thinking over the things he regrets (if only a little) and the things he doesn't. ♥
AND STEVE. :D I loved Steve's character arc so much—it's so easy to understand why he is the way he is, the rules he must be used to and the way he clearly perceives the world as working. And at the same time that it's understandable, it's so frustrating, because he's so rude and angry and difficult, and it's so unnecessary; he just doesn't know how else to act, and he's never had a reason to try to be different. But then Jim gives him one, even if he doesn't want it, and everything starts to change. :D His speech to the Major at the end! And then getting shot for him anyway! ;-; STEVE.
• So, point is: definitely here for 1k of any headcanon you might have about Steve's backstory!
:: Where's he from? How did he start working for the Terrills, and how did he end up foreman?
:: Was he sweet on Pat even before she went east? (Or might that have been more about Jim than it was about Pat, in some ways? :D)
:: Does he have any personal reasons to dislike the Hannasseys? (In typical feud fashion, was it "just because the Terrills do" at first, but then altercations resulted in personal grievances, and now it's A Thing?) Or is it all about the Terrills and his own stubborn loyalty?
• Or start a bit closer to the movie itself:
:: What might his reaction have been when Pat came back? Was she changed at all by her experiences back east, and if she was, did that bother him?
:: What does she or doesn't she tell him about Jim, before Jim arrives, and what does he think about it?
:: Pat and Julie have been friends for a long time, so Steve must know Julie—might they have talked to each other, about Pat or about this Jim of hers, before Jim arrived?
• And of course I'd be thrilled with 1k from Steve's perspective that's set during the movie, too!
:: Anything about his relationship with Pat would be great! He's clearly into her, or at least trying to make a point out of the possibility—what kind of future is he imagining for them? Did he have a real chance before Steve showed up, and now everything's gone wrong?
:: But I'm also definitely here for pre-slash of any kind at all—from only-if-you-squint to serious UST, from Steve in total denial to Steve grudgingly aware that he's got more than one reason to want to get up close and personal with Jim—would be awesome. :D
:: Something set during the early parts of the movie, where he's still resentful and dismissive of Jim? Or his POV during the search for Jim, and the resulting argument?
:: Or 1k of whatever he's thinking when he realizes it's Jim who's come into his room and woken him up, and the midnight fight? The moment Steve's understanding of Jim's philosophy began to change? The Blanco Canyon showdown, and getting shot?
• I'd love to read about whatever you think might happen to Steve after the movie:
:: If you'd like to write me the story where he dies of his bullet wound, regretful and too late to change what he did with his life, I will write you the best comment I can through my tears!
:: BUT feel free to let him live and tell me something else about him, too. :D What does he do—keep working for the Terrills?
:: Or maybe he marries Pat after all, both of them a little older and wiser now?
:: Or does he move on to another ranch, or even start up his own somewhere else, using the lessons he's learned to run it differently than the Terrills?
:: Would he choose to take on Big Muddy himself, if Jim and Julie didn't? Fixing it up, at the same time that he's now conscious of a need to better himself, too?
:: Or maybe Jim and Julie stay? Julie has a line about how you'd need a good foreman to run a place like that—would they ask Steve to take on that role? (And would he accept, or refuse?)
And the pairing's getting its own batch of prompts, because I had a few too many to fit up there. :D By the way, please rest assured that while I'd appreciate Julie and/or Pat being treated kindly or at least understandingly, if they do appear in your story—you don't need to spend the beginning of a Jim/Steve fic explaining to me how Jim and Julie broke up, if you don't want to! I'm happy to take it as read, if you like, and roll with Jim/Steve at any point during or after the movie without blinking. (You definitely can if you want to; just don't feel obligated, is all. :D)
• As I've mentioned elsewhere, you should feel free to give me anything that's pre-slash or ship-if-you-squint, and don't worry one bit that it's not shippy "enough"!
:: Something where Steve's been hearing all about Jim from Pat, irritated and resentful about having to listen to her talk about this other man ... and then Jim shows up, and OH NO, HE'SHOT EVEN WORSE THAN STEVE IMAGINED?
:: Or maybe Jim's the one who's heard a bit about Steve from Pat, and wasn't quite sure what to expect?
:: Their first meeting from either of their POVs—what they think before, whether they want to make a good impression or not, and what they think after?
:: Or either of their POVs on Jim's little field trip—Steve's frustration over having to try to track Jim down, whether Jim feels any real resentment that Steve won't believe he wasn't lost, or a conversation between them afterward that we didn't get to see, filled with simmering irritation and thinly-veiled UST?
• Or something a little later in the movie's events, that progresses a little further!
:: By all means, feel free to let that visit Jim makes to Steve's room end differently—whether that's a single furious impulsive kiss that takes them both a bit by surprise, or higher-rated territory!
:: And for the record, dubcon would be more than okay here, whether you think Steve might want to ~teach Jim a lesson, and then that impulse goes sideways on him ...
:: ... or maybe Jim sees something in Steve, rolls with a hunch and tries something other than punching, and Steve obviously can't let a dirty trick like that shake him—even if he also can't admit he's dying for it. :D
:: And I should mention as a side note that it makes a lot of sense to me for Steve—who's clearly pretty hung up on how men "ought" to be/what makes a man a "real" man—to have some internalized homophobia/biphobia, and/or be very uncomfortable with his own response to Jim. If that's something you're interested in exploring, I would be there for it! If not, no worries; you definitely don't have to include period-appropriate homophobia on either of their parts if you don't want to. Whatever works for you!
• And of course post-canon would be great, too. :D I love h/c so much, and I would read a thousand different takes on Jim involved in Steve's recovery from his gunshot wound! TEN THOUSAND.
:: Does Jim find him immediately afterward, injured, and bandage him up long enough to get him out of Blanco to a bed?
:: Or does Steve make it up and away with someone else's help, and hole up somewhere ... but Jim tracks him down and won't stop checking in on him?
:: Or something set a little further off: what if they met again after a few years? Steve helping Pat run the Terrill place, maybe, and Jim passing through?
:: Or Steve having had to go east for ~reasons (on business for Pat?) and running into Jim there?
:: Or what if Jim does stick around and takes on Big Muddy alone? I'm also weak for accidental domesticity, and I'd adore something where Steve starts showing up more and more often, with tools Jim needs or a little gruffly offered advice, or just as an extra pair of hands ... and then oh, no, a sudden storm, Steve had better stay the night ... and then maybe another night, and then all winter, and then ... :D
• Or basically anything else you're interested in writing me!
:: By all means, trap them together in bad weather, make them huddle for warmth; invent a sex pollen plant that grows only in the soil of Big Muddy, and Steve realizes (too late) that nobody warned Jim about it!
:: Give me 1k of the AU where there was some kind of outrageous mixup, and the bride Steve mail-ordered from back east ... is a quiet-spoken man who doesn't seem half as angry about the mistake as he should be. :D
:: Or maybe 1k of the AU where Jim never came west at all—started second-guessing his relationship with Pat and putting off the trip, until she sends Steve east to find out why he hasn't come yet ... but Steve was just supposed to go get him, not fall in love with him himself? :D
:: Or stick a little closer to canon: what if Steve had, without Jim noticing, come back early enough to catch Jim on Old Thunder? Would he started paying more attention to Jim a little sooner?
:: What if this were IN SPACE and the Terrills and Hannasseys owned competing mining outfits working the same asteroid belt? OR EVERYONE'S WEREWOLVES. STEVE GETS STUCK IN AN INEXPLICABLE TIME LOOP UNTIL HE LEARNS TO STOP BEING AN ASSHOLEand kisses Jim. *waves hands* Anything!
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I adore a whole lot of things about this show, and one of them is definitely Misaki—but rest assured I'd be glad to have as much or as little of the Raza crew involved as you want, and you should feel free to set this at any point during or to either side of the show's timeline, with as many or as few other characters as you care to include. Pre-canon fic on Zairon, with the canonical imperial family and Teku, when Akita was still captain of the guard ... or with the court and the rest of the imperial guard filled in with OCs? Yes! Something set during the show—early on, when she's still trying to track down Four, and probably also trying not to give Ishida Katsumi any reason to have her killed? Or later on, her POV on Ryo's return or on killing Nyx, planning her coup or Two killing her? EITHER. BOTH.
And of course I'd very much enjoy an AU centered around Misaki, too. Diverge anywhere you want—tell me the story where Misaki took the fall for the emperor's death and got exiled instead of Ryo, and ended up on the Raza with her memory wiped? Where she did marry Ryo, and it was everything she hoped it would be? (Or wasn't? Or she's over whatever feelings she once had for Ryo, but it's a lot easier to murder somebody who's within arm's reach?) I would also adore shipfic about Misaki and basically anyone, whether you can make it happen in a missing scene or you have to shuffle the pieces around a little, with or without a thread of Misaki/Ryo running through the background. And by all means feel free to write about Nyx's death and/or Misaki's own—or keep them both alive, or save just Misaki and give me her, post-canon, on the run from Zairon and the aliens at the same time. Whatever you like!
I still miss this show so much, and I'm always so excited to revisit the universe and the characters whenever I get the chance. ♥ There are so many things I love about Dark Matter, I can guarantee you I will like anything you want to throw at me—character study? Court intrigue? Psychological horror involving the blob aliens? The power of friendship and loyalty (even if it's from Misaki's disdainful and uncomprehending POV)? YES PLEASE. Whatever tone or genre you want to aim for, heist shenanigans or galactic politics, found family feels or desperation in the face of unstoppable alien invasion, this is 100% the canon for it, and I'm looking forward to it! (And I should mention—if you'd like to make use of supplementary canon like Joe Mallozzi's summaries of how the first few eps of S4 would have gone down, feel free! If you'd rather go a different direction post-canon and ignore all of that, I would love that also. Whatever works for you!)
OH MISAKI. I was interested in Misaki basically the very first time she appeared on screen, without even knowing who she was, and that didn't change at all as I got to know her better. :D Which, she is definitely violent and manipulative and unkind, and you don't need to pretend she isn't! I love the contrast between the face she sometimes presents (cool, pragmatic, reasonable, loyal) and the things she does when she has the chance (hold endless resentful grudges, pine but like in an angry murderous way, kill people, plan a coup). And! I'd adore anything you'd like to write me about her. The things she wants and what she'll do to get them, how unapologetic she is about it, the lines she crosses without looking back ... YES PLEASE.
• Backstory! Totally here for your headcanons about Zairon, or anything about a younger Misaki growing up in the imperial court. :D
:: 1k about her childhood? Any direction you'd like to take it, from court intrigue involving her family that a young Misaki is only just starting to understand ...
:: ... to other weirdly adorable pranks Ryo might have played on her when they were companions as children!
:: Her early training, and how she ended up joining or being recruited to the imperial guard in the first place?
:: Or once she's in the guard—how did she manage to rise to the point where she could take the captain's place after Four killed Akita?
:: Her perspective on Dowager Empress Katsumi, or on Ishida Tetsuya's death and Ryo's exile, or how her rivalry with Teku began?
• Or, of course, anything about Misaki set during canon would be fantastic. :D
:: What was it like in the imperial court when Hiro was emperor, and she was captain of his guard? How did she feel about him? Did she ever think about trying to orchestrate a coup to take his place?
:: What was she thinking or feeling when Ryo was captured, and to what degree was she expecting what happened in the throne room?
:: Did she interact with the Seers at all while they were serving Hiro? (Did she hate them and want them dead, or was she surprised by that part?)
:: Or! Please feel free to give me the most excruciating thousand words you can generate about what it was like for her to overhear that conversation between Nyx and Ryo, and her developing her plans to eliminate Nyx. ;-;
:: Or anything about the moment when Ryo discovered that she'd succeeded? The planning and execution of the coup, that fight with Two—the moment Misaki realized she wasn't going to win it?
• Obviously futurefic about Misaki requires a little footwork; I'm totally here for AUs where she didn't die, or there's a Misaki from another part of the canonical multiverse, or *waves hands* the crew finds a synthetic with (most of) Misaki's memories loaded into her!
:: I'd love "fix-it" from her perspective where Ryo can in fact be convinced to make her empress!
:: Or where her coup succeeds, and she takes command of Zairon's forces in the war against Pyr, and starts fighting it her way. (Was she right to think she could do better than Ryo? Or was she wrong?)
:: BUT I'd also love fix-it from everyone else's perspective—where the android shows up on the bridge a little earlier, maybe, and she and Nyx together are able to beat Misaki and take her prisoner? As a bargaining chip to use against Ryo, even?
:: Or diverge from canon anywhere else you like! If Ryo had succeeded in keeping and duplicating the blink drive, and Zairon's fleets utterly wrecked Pyr and rolled unstoppably through the galaxy—would Misaki ever have a reason to regret her decisions?
:: Or if she'd taken the fall for Ishida Tetsuya's death and been exiled instead of Ryo—could she have ended up on the Raza with her memory wiped, calling herself Four? :D
• And shipfic (or the beginnings of it) with Misaki involved would be more than welcome. :D Anything from UST to hatesex would be great, and I'd be delighted to receive Misaki/anyone that ignores Misaki/Ryo entirely ... or that acknowledges it one way or another, whether you like it as one-sided, reciprocated, or "actually Misaki's long since over it, but she brought it up to fuck with Ryo's head/uses it to justify stuff to herself".
:: If Nyx had managed to win her fight with Misaki—might Misaki have (however unwillingly) admired her for it? If Misaki were imprisoned on the Raza afterward, what else could that admiration have turned into? :D
:: Or, in a universe where Ryo had convinced Nyx to accept—might Misaki succeed in killing him, and then decide to keep his Seer Empress for herself? :D
:: Would Three be up for a round of hatesex? (Does he share his alternate counterpart's enjoyment of being hit and/or choked during sex? Because I can definitely see Misaki accidentally getting him going, and then choosing to see how far she can take it just to humiliate him ...)
:: In a universe where she didn't kill Nyx, or hadn't yet—could Two have ended up grudgingly reaching out to her (trying anything/everything to get the blink drive back from Ryo, maybe)?
:: Would Six try to redeem her (oh, Six :D)? Would she pretend it was working, and that she was ~in love to boot—but it had actually started working, just a little bit?
:: Or, venturing a bit sideways—might she ever have tried to seduce Hiro to make him easier to manipulate, while Ryo was gone?
:: I don't know how it would happen or whether you could get it to / in the end, but for the record, 1k of the android observing Misaki and trying to work out her reasoning for the things she does, in her blandly patient android way, would be A++. :D
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I love these movies so much, and I'd be delighted with anything you wanted to write me that leans into any part of their universe—the humor? The horror? The genuine warmth? How cruel and destructive humanity can be, or how kind, how full of awe and wonder, every now and then? How beautiful ancient eldritch magic can be, or how unutterably terrifying? GO WILD. For characters, I'm only requesting Nuala here, but I love the first movie as much as the second, and if you want to bring John back from Antarctica so he can rejoin the team, please do! Or, of course, focus on the second movie, and write whatever you want. Pre-canon about Nuala and the elven court! A missing scene with Nuala exploring the BPRD some more! An AU where she survives and leaves with the rest of the team, as they make their own way post-canon! Shipfic—dysfunctional Nuala/Nuada, pure Nuala/Abe fluff, Nuala/HB or Liz or John or any sort of team polygon with her involved? ANYTHING.
I'm also requesting the worldbuilding tag, because seriously, if you wanted to just give me 1k of solid worldbuilding about the elves and the ancient world before humans came into control of it, I would be SO THERE FOR IT. Elven culture, elven magic, the nature of the bond between Nuada and Nuala, what other secret terrible treasures might lie somewhere beneath the earth besides the Golden Army ... Or other magical species, and the ways they've dealt with humans throughout history? Or more about the hidden market—the goods for sale, the vendors, the kinds of non-monetary prices things can cost there? Or the BPRD in general: other non-human agents they've employed, their powers and backstories, or what it's like to work there when you're just a regular human, without even a pure heart to help you out. :D
Hellboy for me is just—it's like a BIG HUG. A big weird eldritch hug with too many hands, possibly, but still. :D I love all the characters so much, and all of their relationships with each other, the good and the bad and the ugly; the times when they're kind to each other and the times when they struggle to understand or to be understood, the moments that are sweet and the moments that are awkward. ♥ And the world itself, everything that's strange and lovely and potentially lethal hiding just underneath the surface of it, fighting horrors from legend in subway tunnels and mourning the death of a magical tree in the middle of an intersection. Plus I'm always weak for teams of people who care about each other facing down darkness way out of their league. ♥ SO YEAH. HELLBOY'S GREAT, THE END.
And of all the things I enjoyed about Golden Army, I particularly loved Nuala! She's just so interesting to me on so many levels—that she's this seemingly gentle, ethereal elf-princess, but in the end also the one foe Nuada didn't plan for and can't defeat; and where all else failed, every other safeguard toppled, she managed to keep her piece of the crown away from him and save the world ... which is to say the human world, a world that didn't know she existed and which she had no reason to value. There's just SO MUCH to explore there, and I'd love a thousand words focusing on just about any element of Nuala's character you like!
There's also a lot of room for worldbuilding here—there's a separate section below for worldbuilding prompts that don't involve Nuala. In this section, prompts that mention it are listed alongside prompts that don't, and you should feel free to ignore one and use the other, or mix and match!
• Pre-canon, there's definitely room for worldbuilding, if you like:
:: What was the world like when Nuala was a girl? Who was her mother? (Or do elves just grow new elves like trees?)
:: With more magic than humans, and the elves ascendant—what was the court of the elves like then, and how did she spend her time?
:: What adventures might she have gone on? Did she (and Nuada, if you'd like to include him) ever travel to visit other clans, or other creatures' courts?
:: Is there any particular reason why she might like humans more than Nuada does? Did she know any, back then, or befriend one once?
:: She was presumably around when the Army was created, and when Nuada was exiled—did she think her father was right or wrong? Did she fear the Army's potential from the start, or did it take time for her to begin thinking differently from Nuada?
:: What was the experience of Nuada's exile like, through their link? (Five wounds that showed up on her body while he was exiled, and how she thought he might have gotten them?)
:: Seriously, any headcanon you have or worldbuilding you want to indulge in about Clan Bethmoora, or other clans and intra-/inter-clan alliances and politicking, would be wonderful!
• Or tell me anything you like about Nuala or her perspective on events during the span of the movie!
:: I absolutely loved the tropey amazingness of her psychic abilities and her bond with Nuada, so anything from her POV that incorporates that and her being on the run from him (presumably trying not to think or feel anything that would lead him to her) would be wonderful!
:: Her POV on Nuada's return and her father's death—mixed feelings, I'm sure! Was she glad to see him? Torn between his sense of triumph and/or conviction and her own fear and mourning?
:: And I'd love to read anything about her flight from the court, meeting Abe, the BPRD, Hellboy and the Army and the duel ...
:: Tell me how she perceives the burden on her, knowing what's at stake and that her people are fading ... but also her sweetness and curiosity about the BPRD library, and Abe, and all these other new things. :D
:: Or, of course, break my heart! I'd guessed pretty early on what might happen to her, but oh, man, her resolve and bravery at the end there just KILLED me. ;-; Feel free to twist the knife!
• But naturally I'd also be thrilled if you felt like writing a bit of fix-it—or an AU where things turn out differently, if not necessarily better:
:: Could her link with Nuada have been broken at just the right moment to save her? Or replaced by a link with Abe?
:: She presumably experienced all Nuada's training with weapons, through the link—and of course she's the one person he wouldn't want to deal a serious wound to. Could she have dueled him herself?
:: Or secured all the pieces of the crown and won control of the Army? (Not necessarily a fix-it, depending on how you think she would use it once she had it; are good intentions enough, in that scenario?)
:: Or could something (like, say, Liz's fire) have destroyed her piece of the crown, so Nuada could never have completed it?
:: Or go the other way: what if Nuada had succeeded before she'd even had a chance to stop him? What would that future look like, for her and for everyone else?
• And of course I ship ALL THE THINGS, so if you'd like to write me shipfic that includes Nuala, have at it. :D
:: I'd absolutely love 1k of Nuala/Abe, fleshing out their understated canonical romance a bit more, with missing scenes or more conversation. Or! Some kind of *waves hands* tropey AU—like, the BPRD decides to try to forge an alliance with the elves to stop Nuada before he gets started = arranged marriage between an agent and an elven princess? :D?
:: (And for the record, I'm very here for Nuala/Abe + background HB/Liz, or HB/Liz/John—post-canon AU where Nuala's so happy with Abe, she's determined to make HB and Liz equally happy, and if that means going to find John and convincing him to come back, so be it? :D)
:: Or Nuala/Nuada! I'm here for this in any flavor you like: I read their connection as genuinely profound and meaningful to both of them, and Nuada's affection for her as at least some degree of sincere ... but of course that easily tips over into obsession, possessiveness, and manipulation, considering what he's like. Sweet, creepy, or both at once—go for it!
:: Nuala/HB? In a handwavy AU where Nuala lives and remains a guest of the BPRD ... HB is a prince! Maybe a curse or spell or something ends up requiring him to marry a princess? :D
:: Nuala/Liz? Honestly I'd be thrilled with 1k of missing scene where they get to talk a little, with only the barest shippy undertones! Or if Liz were, say, turned into a dragon, might a princess be the only one who could approach her safely? :D
:: (And feel free to make it HB/Liz/Nuala—trying to negotiate their way through either of the above + HB/Liz turns into a threesome that works better than it has any right to?)
:: And if you wanted to let Nuala survive and run away with the rest of the team at the end of Golden Army, and get swept up in some grand team Nuala/Abe/HB/Liz(/John) romance, that would be AMAZING. :D
As noted, I'd also absolutely love worldbuilding that only tangentially involves Nuala and/or the elves, or doesn't involve them at all. By all means, use canon characters I didn't request or make up OCs of your own—or take any other tack that makes sense to you, fictional in-universe documentation or snippets of in-universe reference books, a 1k extract from an elven epic poem with no apparent meter when translated into English :D or an escalating series of transfer requests from John as he tries to get himself out of Antarctica and back to the main BPRD office with HB. Anything!
• Feel free to use pretty much anything we see in either movie as a jumping-off point, and invent as much or as little as you want.
:: Tell me more about the dimension Hellboy came from—other gates he might be able to open, and other powers that might want him to open them? His childhood and adolescence with Professor Bruttenholm, and other issues or powers that manifested themselves?
:: Or Liz—are her powers a mutation, or is there a source she's tapping into, a kind of magic she doesn't even realize she's accessing? Are there other people like her, and does she ever find any of them? (Or is another born, and she can feel them, a dim point of heat in the distance?)
:: Or Abe! Are there any others like him? Any legends about his species that the BPRD just hasn't encountered yet—until they do? Do his powers have a limit? Could the wrong kind of psychic trace or impression hurt him ... or possess him?
:: Or John! What does being "pure of heart" in a way Abe can discern even mean? Is it useful—can he break spells, or see through illusions, or free people from the control of other forces? Or are there things out there that want pure hearts, that can use them or twist them—or eat them? (If yes, please feel free to send someone to his rescue, in a shippy way or a platonic h/c way!)
:: And by all means tackle the court of the elves from before the Golden Army's creation, before Nuada and Nuala were even born—their even-more-ancient kings and queens, whatever gods or powers they may have been familiar with, their legends and customs, stories so old even Nuala and Nuada never learned them ...
:: Or! Aaaaaanything you have in mind about other magical/eldritch species, either ones we've seen the team deal with, or ones that were in the market scene for two frames, or anywhere in between. BPRD reports or reference materials on them? Their own stories about themselves? Where they live, what they eat, how they survive on the margins of an increasingly human world?
:: And of course the BPRD itself is a great starting point for worldbuilding, too! :D What other agents, teams, or operations are they running? (What is John doing in Antarctica?) I would love a 1k glimpse into personnel files, disciplinary notes made about the canon characters, evaluations of OCs, psych profiles or agency directives (serious ones? Or "213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed To Do"-style? :D) ... anything!
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Jeremiah is one of my best-beloved nostalgia canons, and I still adore it so much—and one of my favorite characters in the whole show was absolutely Theo! She had me right from the pilot, and I was thrilled when she started showing up again later in the show. She's such a fascinating combination of ruthless, practical, resourceful, and unapologetic, and I'd love to read pretty much any story you'd like to tell me about her, from backstory before the show to anything she was doing offscreen between her appearances, post-canon speculation or AUs taking her any direction you can think of.
I also ship her with just about everybody, so if there's some Theo shipfic that lives in your heart that you've been waiting for an excuse to write (Theo/Erin? Theo/Markus? Theo/Jeremiah? Theo/Kurdy? Theo/Elizabeth? Theo/Libby?), by all means give it to me. :D And while there was no worldbuilding tag nominated, I'm incredibly weak for post-apocalyptic settings, so for the record, absolutely anything about the world of Jeremiah that you'd like to explore through a story about Theo would be amazing, from how she ended up in charge of Clairfield in the first place to attempting to forge an alliance with the other local leaders, or recovering post-canon after Daniel's army is defeated. Anything!
This show is probably where my abiding love for apocalypses and their aftermath comes from—it was so earnest (sometimes to the point of cringe, I admit) and I totally adore people doing their best to come together and build something new out of the ashes, even if they struggle with it, even when there are setbacks, which means it gave me just about everything I could have asked for. :D Which, I definitely do love both the effort and commitment and the struggles and setbacks, the times when the characters defaulted to cruelty or distrust and the times when they extended unexpected kindness, so darkfic and happy endings are both on the table!
THEO. :D Theo's arc has always been one of my favorite things about the show—starting off as much more of an antagonist than not, and gaining more and more nuance every time she reappeared. I love how smart and tough and difficult she is, that she's always looking out for herself but at the same time aware that there's more going on in the world, and that every now and then the latter tips her in new and unexpected directions. So, yeah. Any story you'd like to tell me about Theo, I'm here for it!
• Anything about Theo set before the show starts would be fantastic. :D
:: How did she end up in charge of Clairfield? (By all means run with everything she said about it in the pilot being basically true ... or decide she exaggerated or smoothed over a few things. :D)
:: What kinds of challenges had she faced before Jeremiah and Kurdy showed up, and how did she handle them?
:: How did she first learn about Thunder Mountain/"the end of the world"?
• And of course I'd love missing scenes and/or episode tags that fill in some of the gaps between Theo's various appearances on the show!
:: What happened to her between the pilot and 1.11? There's got to be more to it than she'd have admitted to anybody from Thunder Mountain ...
:: How did she handle the aftermath of the pilot, and what did or didn't change about the way she ran Clairfield?
:: Or between 1.11 and 1.18? Her position seems to have stabilized somewhat by 1.18—how did she pull that off?
:: Or between 1.18 and 2.04-2.05! How and when did she discover she was pregnant? Had she told anybody else, or was she trying to hide it and also maybe pretend it wasn't happening at all?
:: Or, of course, after 2.05! What's her response to the whole Daniel situation? What does she have her people do to prepare?
• Or! Post-canon adventures of any kind—or, well, leading into post-canon, because she's offscreen for the end of S2:
:: Where is she when Daniel's army shows up? Is she coordinating with Thunder Mountain in ways we just didn't see, or holding back, waiting to see who comes out on top?
:: How does she survive it—or does she go down fighting, scratching tooth and nail? ;-; OH THEO
:: What happens next? Does she come back and help start rebuilding in the aftermath—playing it like it's for her own benefit, but inwardly relieved there's still something left?
:: And I would 100% be there for a pregnancy fic that tackles what it's like trying to give birth safely—is she willing to go to Thunder Mountain for help? Does she try to handle it all herself?
• I'd be thrilled with an AU branching off from just about anywhere, too, or fixing anything you'd like to fix!
:: What if Theo had in fact discovered Thunder Mountain first, or had followed Jeremiah and Kurdy there? (Waited for them to leave, pretended to need help, and managed to get herself inside?)
:: Would she have taken it over/sabotaged it, or ended up won over by their mission and Markus's earnestness despite herself?
:: Or a role reversal, however you feel like you can swing it: how could she have ended up as a runner for Thunder Mountain, in another world?
:: What would Thunder Mountain look like if she'd been in Markus's place? (Better, worse, and somewhere in between are all 100% fair answers!)
:: "Fix it" from Theo's perspective: what would have happened if she'd succeeded in holding Jeremiah, Kurdy, and Simon until she could get some answers, and her people hadn't turned on her?
:: Or fix anything else about the show, with Theo involved—let her save Elizabeth? Let the leaders succeed in forging an alliance that can fend off Daniel's forces entirely? Whatever you like!
• And I'd be t h r i l l e d with Theo shipfic, too!
:: I can admit that I probably ship Theo the most intensely with Erin, on the strength of That One Conversation in 2.04—I would be delighted by the tropiest ever accidental domesticity fic where Erin does end up helping Theo through her pregnancy, and they share quarters in Thunder Mountain but it's Just Practical (it's not just practical), and feelings happen. :D
:: Or anything else you're interested in for them! Theo's pregnancy makes her horny = fuckbuddies? AU where they meet earlier (both captured in Milhaven, maybe)? WINGFIC. Anything!
:: BUT I'm also definitely here for Theo shipped with anybody else—say, Markus, perhaps intending to manipulate him at first, but oops real feelings happen?
:: Or give me Theo/Jeremiah—I adore how prickly their back-and-forth with each other can get, and how well they can keep up with each other when they try!
:: Or Theo/Elizabeth, with all the messiness of Simon's death hanging between them, Elizabeth's gentleness-but-strength vs Theo's sharp-edges-but-feelings?
:: Or Theo/Kurdy—maybe Theo hitting on him and him always refusing, doubly so after Elizabeth's death, becomes A Thing ... until one day he finally says yes instead? :D
:: Or anybody else you're interested in shipping her with! Theo/Jeremiah/Kurdy, Theo/Kurdy/Elizabeth, Theo/Erin/Markus ... Mr. Smith! Libby! HATESEX WITH LEE CHEN. Anything!
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I loved this show so much, and I was so sad when it got canceled (especially on such an unresolved note ;-;). It had so much relentless breakneck drama, bless, but it was also sweet and funny and full of beautiful little moments between the characters. And Ryn! I adore Ryn—I think one of the things this show did really well was portraying mermaids as complex predators who are genuinely dangerous, for starters. And Ryn in particular, her curiosity and confusion and intensity, the things she understands and the things she doesn't, what she loves about land and what she loves about the ocean, and the conflict she feels because she can't live in two places at once, it was all so well done. ♥
So, yeah, I would be thrilled with anything you'd like to write me about Ryn! :D I'd love pre-canon fic that delves into mermaid worldbuilding just as much as a missing scene from your favorite episode, or a thousand words of the most detailed interspecies smut that lives in your heart. Tell me about Ryn and Donna as sisters, hunting together—Cami's birth and childhood in the ocean, with her mother and aunt looking out for her. Or Ryn's perspective on anything from the show, Ben and Maddie or the military, the hybrid community or mermaid mating habits or the loss of her eggs, Ben's actions at the end of S2 or Maddie leaving them at the beginning of S3, Tia or Robb ... anything! Or post-canon where Ryn and Maddie manage to find Ben after all? I am definitely here for Maddie/Ben/Ryn as an OT3, or for focus on Maddie/Ryn or Ben/Ryn with acknowledgment of the OT3 in the background (whether before or after the breakup ;-;)—but I'd also love it if you wanted to write Ryn/Donna or Ryn/Katrina, Ryn/Levi or Ryn/Eliza, Ryn/Robb or Ryn/Tia, or any other ship you're interested in! (Or add Robb in there and make it an OT4. :D)
I honestly 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 with this show is Ryn + the Maddie/Ben/Ryn OT3, 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! ;-;)
AND RYN, help, I love her so much! She's such a fascinating study in contrasts—the unhesitating violence she's used to as a mermaid and a hunter vs her undeniable love for and genuine tenderness with Ben and Maddie; that she looks so small and harmless and is such an unbelievably powerful predator; how little she says, especially in the first season, and how few words she uses to do it, and yet how much she expresses, and how clear a sense there is that she comes from somewhere where things work very differently. She takes on so much responsibility, and tries SO HARD to keep everyone safe and happy and provided for—even when it means letting herself be experimented on. ♥ RYN ♥
• So! I'd love anything you'd like to tell me about Ryn that's set before the show, with as much or as little mermaid worldbuilding as you like! (And I realize the name thing complicates matters; feel free to use "Ryn" even though technically she wouldn't have adopted it yet, or invent a mermaid name of your own devising. :D)
:: What was the ocean like when she was young? How old is she—who were her parents, if she even knows? ("When Ryn was young, mother died" could mean just about anything; does she actually remember her mother, or not?)
:: Where else has she been, in the ocean? Does the clan migrate? Who taught her to hunt—was she good at it right away, or did it take time to master?
:: Who was in charge before Katrina? (Have Katrina and Ryn been at odds before?)
:: Did she have friends or companions besides Donna, or any other siblings? Had she ever been on land before?
:: Or, of course, her POV on Donna's capture, or the moment she realized Donna was gone and decided she had to follow!
:: And anything at all you'd like to tell me about mermaid packs/clans/tribes, their interactions with each other, caves full of ancient healing songs or how they choose their burial grounds, negotiating for the right to pass through another group's territorial waters, how they've handled any previous human intrusions—it's all very much welcome! (And feel free to use Robb's clan as a starting point, too, and tell me more about their traditions!)
• Or anything set during the show would be great:
:: Early in S1, when Ryn's just starting to figure out how things work on land, and getting to know Ben and Maddie—missing scenes where she learns something new about either or both of them, or other encounters she had with human norms and/or inventions she didn't understand?
:: 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 (Ryn not actually appearing in the fic, or only having a cameo, is absolutely fine if Ben and Maddie's focus is still on her!)
:: 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 mermaid mating habits, and all the feelings and struggles that brings along with it!
:: 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 pining, 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 does 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 ... and then fell gradually in love with their "test subject"?
:: 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 for Maddie/Ben/Ryn:
:: 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—fluff about traditional courting 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
• But I also ship plenty of other things!
:: I'm here for Ryn/any mermaid—including Donna, or even Cami, if mermaid incest is your jam! Maybe it's not a big deal for mermaids? Maybe it's just as taboo, but that's not enough to stop them?
:: Ryn/Katrina or Ryn/Tia hatesex or fightsex: mermaids can resolve disagreements by forcing each other to submit physically or sexually? :D
:: Or Ryn/Nicole Martinez, with all the messiness of Nicole's deceptions baked in—Nicole gradually starting to see the same thing Ben and Maddie see in Ryn, feeling guiltier and guiltier? Ryn trying to forge a connection with Nicole in the same way that worked with Ben and Maddie: kissing? :D
:: Or! Ryn/Xander—in S1, with Xander horrified but also sort of helplessly fascinated, drawn in despite himself? Or set it early in S2, when they actually manage to connect with each other at last, and make it sweet?
:: Ryn having an adventurous night with Calvin and Janine? :D
:: And by all means add someone else into the equation with Maddie/Ben/Ryn—Levi, who frankly seemed a little excessive in his admiration for Ben? Eliza? Xander, who could use some friends he trusts to help him get over his mermaid issues ... in bed?
:: Or, of course, Robb! I ended up really loving him by the end of S3, and I'd be delighted with 1k of the post-canon story where Maddie/Robb and Ben/Ryn end up drawn together into a blissful OT4. ♥
:: Or make it a heck of a polygon: elaborate on that mermaid mating party at the cabin, and let Ben and Maddie join in instead of awkwardly supervising from outside in the cold. :D
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There are SO MANY THINGS that interest me about this weird little show—but at the end of the day, Cal is my fave, and I'd be over the moon to get a gift about her! Anywhere you want to start, and anywhere you want to take it: missing scenes or episode tags? Backstory set during her childhood, while her dad was alive or when she first went to prison? Or whatever you think should happen next after that unbelievable cliffhanger of a finale? AU where Cal never went to prison! Or where she ended up at Orphelin Beach much earlier! Fix-it where NOBODY dies, thank you very much!
And I also ship basically all the things here, so if you'd like to write some 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 have a thing for mermaids in general, but also specifically for mermaids as wildly dangerous and/or kind of terrifying, 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 absolutely murdered me with bewilderment!
And one of my favorite things about it was definitely 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 THAT, 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 about 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, 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 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, say, 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 line up some allies and 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?
:: 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 (Including Cal and Adrielle each trying to whammy the other with it, until at last one of them has to submit ...)
:: 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
• And I'm adding an extra set of prompts, because despite the lack of a worldbuilding tag in the tagset, there is so. much. worldbuilding here that I'd love to see explored! So if you feel like digging into any of these elements some more, in combination with another prompt or standalone, that would be AWESOME:
:: I would LOVE anything you want to tell me about the sirens' history—more about the translation of the text on the artifact, the legends about the horn and armies of women from the sea ... 1k of fictional documentation about a couple pieces of the horn, or an excerpt from an analysis of several variations on the sirens' appearances in mythohistory? :D
:: 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?
:: Or maybe full-blooded sirens can 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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I can only hope you didn't get all the way down here by reading all of that, but if you did, I am so sorry. :'D Thank you for taking the time to slog through it, and here's to at least some of it having been helpful—seriously, enjoy yourself with this gift, and have a spectacular Yuletide! ♥
If you're actually interested in reading this letter, or at least skimming it, then good luck and godspeed. ♥ By all means ignore anything that doesn't apply to you or doesn't interest you—you won't be missing anything crucial! I get kind of carried away when it comes to exchanges, and I always have more to say than I thought I would. :'D I've tried to make this letter clear and easy to navigate, if not concise, and I hope you find something useful and/or inspiring in it somewhere.
I'm on the AO3 as
In General
If you don't want to close this letter without looking at it, but you're also not looking forward to reading it, no worries! There is a bottom line: I love these fandoms, I'm stoked to share one with you, and I'd be thrilled to read whatever it is you want to write me. :D Whatever you consider opt-in, I'm opting into it—there's no topics, tropes, kinks, or headcanons you need to avoid, and whatever story you'd like to tell about these canons and characters, I'm so excited to receive it!
I love gen and shipfic, plot and PWP, the whumpiest angst and the softest most domestic fluff. I enjoy character studies and casefic, worst-timeline anti-fix-its and found families having a group hug. Pining? Friendship? Murder? Banter? Smut? Poetry? Terrible people doing terrible things to each other, good people doing terrible things for what they think are the right reasons, good people being kind to each other and eating a cake made out of rainbows together—anywhere on the scale, I'm there for it. I would love 1k of post-canon adventure just as much as 1k of worldbuilding via 100-word drabbles of epistolary extracts. Anything! By all means ignore my prompts and write the fic of your heart, because I would love to read it. :D Or go ahead and take a prompt, but turn it inside out. Give it a bad ending, rocks fall everyone dies? Subvert or invert the trope? Take the fix-it idea and blow a hole through the middle of it—or take the everything-goes-wrong AU and fix it? YES.
Basically, whatever it is that made you want to offer the fandom and characters we matched on, whatever it is that you'd most enjoy writing about them, give it to me! I want it! Sweet, weird, gory, kinky, scary, tragic, or none of the above, I am HERE FOR IT.
I adore and would be thrilled to receive:
• gen! By all means write about any of my requested characters individually, or give me the friendship/rivalry/platonic ensemble fic of your dreams, involving any one of them and any other character or characters from their canon. I love all the casts of all these canons, and am happy to have characters I didn't request appear in my gift!
:: Feel free to take any prompt I gave for a ship and turn it into gen, too—fake dating that really is a cover story, and no one's pining at all? Amnesia where the focus is on how it changes the character's platonic relationships with the rest of the ensemble, and on how it gets solved? Huddling for warmth, or hurt/comfort, or self-sacrifice + protectiveness, with absolutely zero UST? YES PLEASE.
:: And by all means tackle any part of canon, or before or after canon begins or ends, even if I didn't hit on your idea in a specific prompt. 1k of pre-canon backstory? Missing scenes? Post-canon going any which way you like? A quiet moment of connection between friends ... or enemies taunting each other? Introspection! A n y t h i n g.
• shipfic! I multiship in most of my fandoms, and I enjoy f/f, f/m, m/m, nonbinary or genderless characters being shipped, and poly in any configuration. In a lot of these fandoms, I've requested just one character—I've tried to prompt for as many ships as I can think of, but if I left your favorite off the list, feel free to write it anyway!
:: Which, for the record, if it's relevant: I'm definitely here for incest, age gaps, and messy or complicated relationships. I love enemies with UST who never make it to lovers, dubcon/noncon, and undernegotiated kink—and I also love earnest affection, quiet understated longing, h/c with kissing, and true love. ♥ So, yeah. Please feel free to include any ship you ship in my gift, and take that ship in any direction that suits you!
:: And don't worry at all about how shippy a gift you intended as shipfic turns out—I love UST and RST, pining that everyone's ignoring 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!
• free space! And by that I mean anything you'd love to write for me that I manage to fail to explicitly prompt for.
:: A particular premise you can never get enough of (arranged marriage! Accidental telepathy! Kidfic! Undercover as a couple!)?
:: Any kind of AU or AU-adjacent trope (A/B/O! Everyone works in a coffee shop! Roleswap canon divergence! Fusion with another fandom!)?
:: Or something funky or unusual that you've always hoped someone would ask for (a decuple drabble that comes out to 1k exactly! Second person in future conditional! Fake documentation! IN-UNIVERSE FICTIONAL SONG LYRICS ADDING UP TO 1K)?
Whatever it is, please please please give me it. :D
I like fluff and angst, sad endings and happy endings, tension and relief. I would love something precisely placed and canon-compliant just as much as OCs or a brand-new setting to explore, pre-canon blanks getting filled in or post-canon adventures that go whole new directions. I'm here for rare pairings of all stripes, alternate character interpretations or AU variations, and outsider POVs on relationships or on individuals. 1k of any part of canon you like best (or want to rewrite or take somewhere other than where it went canonically, or think is weird or creepy or funny even though canon didn't seem to mean it that way) would be awesome. First person! Interactive fiction! The zombie apocalypse! ANYTHING. Write it for me, whatever it is, and have a great Yuletide. ♥
The Big Country (1958)
Any (James McKay, Steve Leech)
I just can't stop asking for this movie—I adore it, and also Jim and Steve (separately, together, or in alternating POV sections, for the record)! :D Jim is such an interesting character, and I love how competent and low-key and self-possessed he is; whatever story you want to tell about him, I'd be delighted to read it. Fill in his backstory out at sea, or tell me how he met and fell for Pat back east, or give me 1k of his evolving feelings for Julie. Or, of course, focus on Steve! He's a hot mess, bless his heart, and I'm equally here for him being an insecure, irritating jerk, or something set later in his character arc, when his loyalty, bravery, and growing willingness to admit when he's wrong start to show through. Where's he from, and how'd he start working for the Terrills anyway? Would he and Pat really be happy together? (Yes and no are both legitimate answers here!) How does he survive that gunshot wound—if he does?
And if you ship it, rest assured I would be thrilled with a Jim/Steve story, too! Anywhere on the scale from barely-acknowledged UST to dubcon porn would be amazing—set it during canon, with Steve fiercely trying to repress impulses "real men" don't have, telling himself it's just about wanting to knock Jim's teeth in? Turn that midnight fight into angry hatesex, Steve trying to wring some fury or fear out of Jim any way he can, and Jim refusing to give him the satisfaction, letting him keep on going instead of pushing him away? Or make it post-canon accidental domesticity, Jim taking on Big Muddy by himself and Steve lending him a hand, and really, he might as well stay the night, and oops, suddenly they're living together! Or an AU where Steve went after Jim to find him when he was "lost" all by himself, and Things Happened on their way back to the Terrills' together, but Steve won't acknowledge it afterward ... Anything!
I've gotten a bunch of truly awesome gifts for this movie already, but I just can't help but ask for it again—my greed cannot be satisfied! :D I'm so weak for Jim's particular brand of staunch self-possession, how thoughtful and patient he is, at the same time that he's so stubborn in his own way, and won't veer from what he thinks is right or best even if it might make things a lot easier for him. And Steve's arc was so satisfying to me—I loved his irritation with Jim and how much he disliked Jim at first, how obvious it was that he just didn't know what to do with a man who relied so little on other people's good opinions or on "performing" manliness in the ways he was used to; that he wants to fight Jim SO BADLY, and still ends up starting to see where Jim's coming from in time, however reluctantly. ♥
James McKay
HELP I LOVE JIM SO MUCH. :D He's just so calmly and quietly sure of himself, so thoughtful and perceptive—and possibly a bit self-righteous and irritating now and then, bless, but it's so hard to hold it against him. I love that he's decided so clearly what should carry weight and what shouldn't, and that he cares so much about people at the same time that he cares so little about their opinions, and doesn't mind being thought of as a coward or a fool (why should he, after all, when he knows he isn't, and anyone who pays enough attention will know the same?). ♥ JIM ♥
• So I'd love pretty much anything you'd like to tell me about Jim!
:: Where did he grow up? When did he first go to sea, and why, and who was it who taught him navigation?
:: What happened to give him the perspective that he has on self-respect and proving oneself? (Was he once a little more like Steve—maybe more than he wants to admit?)
:: Was there some specific incident—maybe aboard ship, or ashore on leave—where social pressure and trying to "be a man" ended badly, and taught him something?
:: When and how did he become a captain? What did he think the rest of his life was going to look like, before the events of the movie?
• And of course I'd be happy for you to write about his relationship with Pat, too!
:: How did it begin? How did they meet, and fall in love? What was it about each other that first caught their eye?
:: What was their separation like for Jim, when Pat first returned to her family but Jim was still back east? (Did they write to each other? What might those letters have said?)
:: Did he have a certain sense of foreboding about coming west and seeing her again—a niggling feeling that things might not work out?
:: Or was he looking forward to learning more about where Pat came from, meeting her family, and understanding her better?
• I'd be delighted with anything about Jim set during the movie:
:: His romance with Julie was so lovely, and that wordless confessional moment between them in Blanco Canyon, g o d, MY HEART. So anything from Jim's first impressions of Julie to deeper feelings taking root, realizing she's been taken to relief at finding she's still alive ... totally on the table!
:: And Jim's POV on any part of canon, whether it's the "big country" in general when he arrives, or the Hannasseys/Ramón/the Terrills as he learns more about the situation—or, of course, Steve :D—would be fantastic.
:: Or! Any kind of missing scene you'd like to tackle that's Jim-centric would be awesome, too: alone on his ride, realizing he really can orient himself well before he's found by Steve ...
:: ... or a conversation with Pat or Julie, or even Henry Terrill, that we didn't see ...
:: ... or his relief when the standoff in the canyon is over!
• And post-movie Jim/Julie or gen of any kind would also be more than welcome!
:: I'd honestly be as happy to read about Jim (by himself, or with Julie) riding off and moving on to a new home, either out west or back east, far away from feuds and water rights ...
:: ... as about Jim (by himself, or with Julie) returning to Big Muddy and fixing the place up so it's a real ranch again (with actual details about ranching 100% optional; I know nothing about it, I won't notice if you fudge it! :D).
:: Or even further in the future—does he ever go to sea again? Does he marry Julie after all?
:: Or maybe 1k of Jim on his deathbed, thinking over the things he regrets (if only a little) and the things he doesn't. ♥
Steve Leech
AND STEVE. :D I loved Steve's character arc so much—it's so easy to understand why he is the way he is, the rules he must be used to and the way he clearly perceives the world as working. And at the same time that it's understandable, it's so frustrating, because he's so rude and angry and difficult, and it's so unnecessary; he just doesn't know how else to act, and he's never had a reason to try to be different. But then Jim gives him one, even if he doesn't want it, and everything starts to change. :D His speech to the Major at the end! And then getting shot for him anyway! ;-; STEVE.
• So, point is: definitely here for 1k of any headcanon you might have about Steve's backstory!
:: Where's he from? How did he start working for the Terrills, and how did he end up foreman?
:: Was he sweet on Pat even before she went east? (Or might that have been more about Jim than it was about Pat, in some ways? :D)
:: Does he have any personal reasons to dislike the Hannasseys? (In typical feud fashion, was it "just because the Terrills do" at first, but then altercations resulted in personal grievances, and now it's A Thing?) Or is it all about the Terrills and his own stubborn loyalty?
• Or start a bit closer to the movie itself:
:: What might his reaction have been when Pat came back? Was she changed at all by her experiences back east, and if she was, did that bother him?
:: What does she or doesn't she tell him about Jim, before Jim arrives, and what does he think about it?
:: Pat and Julie have been friends for a long time, so Steve must know Julie—might they have talked to each other, about Pat or about this Jim of hers, before Jim arrived?
• And of course I'd be thrilled with 1k from Steve's perspective that's set during the movie, too!
:: Anything about his relationship with Pat would be great! He's clearly into her, or at least trying to make a point out of the possibility—what kind of future is he imagining for them? Did he have a real chance before Steve showed up, and now everything's gone wrong?
:: But I'm also definitely here for pre-slash of any kind at all—from only-if-you-squint to serious UST, from Steve in total denial to Steve grudgingly aware that he's got more than one reason to want to get up close and personal with Jim—would be awesome. :D
:: Something set during the early parts of the movie, where he's still resentful and dismissive of Jim? Or his POV during the search for Jim, and the resulting argument?
:: Or 1k of whatever he's thinking when he realizes it's Jim who's come into his room and woken him up, and the midnight fight? The moment Steve's understanding of Jim's philosophy began to change? The Blanco Canyon showdown, and getting shot?
• I'd love to read about whatever you think might happen to Steve after the movie:
:: If you'd like to write me the story where he dies of his bullet wound, regretful and too late to change what he did with his life, I will write you the best comment I can through my tears!
:: BUT feel free to let him live and tell me something else about him, too. :D What does he do—keep working for the Terrills?
:: Or maybe he marries Pat after all, both of them a little older and wiser now?
:: Or does he move on to another ranch, or even start up his own somewhere else, using the lessons he's learned to run it differently than the Terrills?
:: Would he choose to take on Big Muddy himself, if Jim and Julie didn't? Fixing it up, at the same time that he's now conscious of a need to better himself, too?
:: Or maybe Jim and Julie stay? Julie has a line about how you'd need a good foreman to run a place like that—would they ask Steve to take on that role? (And would he accept, or refuse?)
Jim/Steve
And the pairing's getting its own batch of prompts, because I had a few too many to fit up there. :D By the way, please rest assured that while I'd appreciate Julie and/or Pat being treated kindly or at least understandingly, if they do appear in your story—you don't need to spend the beginning of a Jim/Steve fic explaining to me how Jim and Julie broke up, if you don't want to! I'm happy to take it as read, if you like, and roll with Jim/Steve at any point during or after the movie without blinking. (You definitely can if you want to; just don't feel obligated, is all. :D)
• As I've mentioned elsewhere, you should feel free to give me anything that's pre-slash or ship-if-you-squint, and don't worry one bit that it's not shippy "enough"!
:: Something where Steve's been hearing all about Jim from Pat, irritated and resentful about having to listen to her talk about this other man ... and then Jim shows up, and OH NO, HE'S
:: Or maybe Jim's the one who's heard a bit about Steve from Pat, and wasn't quite sure what to expect?
:: Their first meeting from either of their POVs—what they think before, whether they want to make a good impression or not, and what they think after?
:: Or either of their POVs on Jim's little field trip—Steve's frustration over having to try to track Jim down, whether Jim feels any real resentment that Steve won't believe he wasn't lost, or a conversation between them afterward that we didn't get to see, filled with simmering irritation and thinly-veiled UST?
• Or something a little later in the movie's events, that progresses a little further!
:: By all means, feel free to let that visit Jim makes to Steve's room end differently—whether that's a single furious impulsive kiss that takes them both a bit by surprise, or higher-rated territory!
:: And for the record, dubcon would be more than okay here, whether you think Steve might want to ~teach Jim a lesson, and then that impulse goes sideways on him ...
:: ... or maybe Jim sees something in Steve, rolls with a hunch and tries something other than punching, and Steve obviously can't let a dirty trick like that shake him—even if he also can't admit he's dying for it. :D
:: And I should mention as a side note that it makes a lot of sense to me for Steve—who's clearly pretty hung up on how men "ought" to be/what makes a man a "real" man—to have some internalized homophobia/biphobia, and/or be very uncomfortable with his own response to Jim. If that's something you're interested in exploring, I would be there for it! If not, no worries; you definitely don't have to include period-appropriate homophobia on either of their parts if you don't want to. Whatever works for you!
• And of course post-canon would be great, too. :D I love h/c so much, and I would read a thousand different takes on Jim involved in Steve's recovery from his gunshot wound! TEN THOUSAND.
:: Does Jim find him immediately afterward, injured, and bandage him up long enough to get him out of Blanco to a bed?
:: Or does Steve make it up and away with someone else's help, and hole up somewhere ... but Jim tracks him down and won't stop checking in on him?
:: Or something set a little further off: what if they met again after a few years? Steve helping Pat run the Terrill place, maybe, and Jim passing through?
:: Or Steve having had to go east for ~reasons (on business for Pat?) and running into Jim there?
:: Or what if Jim does stick around and takes on Big Muddy alone? I'm also weak for accidental domesticity, and I'd adore something where Steve starts showing up more and more often, with tools Jim needs or a little gruffly offered advice, or just as an extra pair of hands ... and then oh, no, a sudden storm, Steve had better stay the night ... and then maybe another night, and then all winter, and then ... :D
• Or basically anything else you're interested in writing me!
:: By all means, trap them together in bad weather, make them huddle for warmth; invent a sex pollen plant that grows only in the soil of Big Muddy, and Steve realizes (too late) that nobody warned Jim about it!
:: Give me 1k of the AU where there was some kind of outrageous mixup, and the bride Steve mail-ordered from back east ... is a quiet-spoken man who doesn't seem half as angry about the mistake as he should be. :D
:: Or maybe 1k of the AU where Jim never came west at all—started second-guessing his relationship with Pat and putting off the trip, until she sends Steve east to find out why he hasn't come yet ... but Steve was just supposed to go get him, not fall in love with him himself? :D
:: Or stick a little closer to canon: what if Steve had, without Jim noticing, come back early enough to catch Jim on Old Thunder? Would he started paying more attention to Jim a little sooner?
:: What if this were IN SPACE and the Terrills and Hannasseys owned competing mining outfits working the same asteroid belt? OR EVERYONE'S WEREWOLVES. STEVE GETS STUCK IN AN INEXPLICABLE TIME LOOP UNTIL HE LEARNS TO STOP BEING AN ASSHOLE
Dark Matter (TV)
Misaki Han-Shireikan
I adore a whole lot of things about this show, and one of them is definitely Misaki—but rest assured I'd be glad to have as much or as little of the Raza crew involved as you want, and you should feel free to set this at any point during or to either side of the show's timeline, with as many or as few other characters as you care to include. Pre-canon fic on Zairon, with the canonical imperial family and Teku, when Akita was still captain of the guard ... or with the court and the rest of the imperial guard filled in with OCs? Yes! Something set during the show—early on, when she's still trying to track down Four, and probably also trying not to give Ishida Katsumi any reason to have her killed? Or later on, her POV on Ryo's return or on killing Nyx, planning her coup or Two killing her? EITHER. BOTH.
And of course I'd very much enjoy an AU centered around Misaki, too. Diverge anywhere you want—tell me the story where Misaki took the fall for the emperor's death and got exiled instead of Ryo, and ended up on the Raza with her memory wiped? Where she did marry Ryo, and it was everything she hoped it would be? (Or wasn't? Or she's over whatever feelings she once had for Ryo, but it's a lot easier to murder somebody who's within arm's reach?) I would also adore shipfic about Misaki and basically anyone, whether you can make it happen in a missing scene or you have to shuffle the pieces around a little, with or without a thread of Misaki/Ryo running through the background. And by all means feel free to write about Nyx's death and/or Misaki's own—or keep them both alive, or save just Misaki and give me her, post-canon, on the run from Zairon and the aliens at the same time. Whatever you like!
I still miss this show so much, and I'm always so excited to revisit the universe and the characters whenever I get the chance. ♥ There are so many things I love about Dark Matter, I can guarantee you I will like anything you want to throw at me—character study? Court intrigue? Psychological horror involving the blob aliens? The power of friendship and loyalty (even if it's from Misaki's disdainful and uncomprehending POV)? YES PLEASE. Whatever tone or genre you want to aim for, heist shenanigans or galactic politics, found family feels or desperation in the face of unstoppable alien invasion, this is 100% the canon for it, and I'm looking forward to it! (And I should mention—if you'd like to make use of supplementary canon like Joe Mallozzi's summaries of how the first few eps of S4 would have gone down, feel free! If you'd rather go a different direction post-canon and ignore all of that, I would love that also. Whatever works for you!)
Misaki Han-Shireikan
OH MISAKI. I was interested in Misaki basically the very first time she appeared on screen, without even knowing who she was, and that didn't change at all as I got to know her better. :D Which, she is definitely violent and manipulative and unkind, and you don't need to pretend she isn't! I love the contrast between the face she sometimes presents (cool, pragmatic, reasonable, loyal) and the things she does when she has the chance (hold endless resentful grudges, pine but like in an angry murderous way, kill people, plan a coup). And! I'd adore anything you'd like to write me about her. The things she wants and what she'll do to get them, how unapologetic she is about it, the lines she crosses without looking back ... YES PLEASE.
• Backstory! Totally here for your headcanons about Zairon, or anything about a younger Misaki growing up in the imperial court. :D
:: 1k about her childhood? Any direction you'd like to take it, from court intrigue involving her family that a young Misaki is only just starting to understand ...
:: ... to other weirdly adorable pranks Ryo might have played on her when they were companions as children!
:: Her early training, and how she ended up joining or being recruited to the imperial guard in the first place?
:: Or once she's in the guard—how did she manage to rise to the point where she could take the captain's place after Four killed Akita?
:: Her perspective on Dowager Empress Katsumi, or on Ishida Tetsuya's death and Ryo's exile, or how her rivalry with Teku began?
• Or, of course, anything about Misaki set during canon would be fantastic. :D
:: What was it like in the imperial court when Hiro was emperor, and she was captain of his guard? How did she feel about him? Did she ever think about trying to orchestrate a coup to take his place?
:: What was she thinking or feeling when Ryo was captured, and to what degree was she expecting what happened in the throne room?
:: Did she interact with the Seers at all while they were serving Hiro? (Did she hate them and want them dead, or was she surprised by that part?)
:: Or! Please feel free to give me the most excruciating thousand words you can generate about what it was like for her to overhear that conversation between Nyx and Ryo, and her developing her plans to eliminate Nyx. ;-;
:: Or anything about the moment when Ryo discovered that she'd succeeded? The planning and execution of the coup, that fight with Two—the moment Misaki realized she wasn't going to win it?
• Obviously futurefic about Misaki requires a little footwork; I'm totally here for AUs where she didn't die, or there's a Misaki from another part of the canonical multiverse, or *waves hands* the crew finds a synthetic with (most of) Misaki's memories loaded into her!
:: I'd love "fix-it" from her perspective where Ryo can in fact be convinced to make her empress!
:: Or where her coup succeeds, and she takes command of Zairon's forces in the war against Pyr, and starts fighting it her way. (Was she right to think she could do better than Ryo? Or was she wrong?)
:: BUT I'd also love fix-it from everyone else's perspective—where the android shows up on the bridge a little earlier, maybe, and she and Nyx together are able to beat Misaki and take her prisoner? As a bargaining chip to use against Ryo, even?
:: Or diverge from canon anywhere else you like! If Ryo had succeeded in keeping and duplicating the blink drive, and Zairon's fleets utterly wrecked Pyr and rolled unstoppably through the galaxy—would Misaki ever have a reason to regret her decisions?
:: Or if she'd taken the fall for Ishida Tetsuya's death and been exiled instead of Ryo—could she have ended up on the Raza with her memory wiped, calling herself Four? :D
• And shipfic (or the beginnings of it) with Misaki involved would be more than welcome. :D Anything from UST to hatesex would be great, and I'd be delighted to receive Misaki/anyone that ignores Misaki/Ryo entirely ... or that acknowledges it one way or another, whether you like it as one-sided, reciprocated, or "actually Misaki's long since over it, but she brought it up to fuck with Ryo's head/uses it to justify stuff to herself".
:: If Nyx had managed to win her fight with Misaki—might Misaki have (however unwillingly) admired her for it? If Misaki were imprisoned on the Raza afterward, what else could that admiration have turned into? :D
:: Or, in a universe where Ryo had convinced Nyx to accept—might Misaki succeed in killing him, and then decide to keep his Seer Empress for herself? :D
:: Would Three be up for a round of hatesex? (Does he share his alternate counterpart's enjoyment of being hit and/or choked during sex? Because I can definitely see Misaki accidentally getting him going, and then choosing to see how far she can take it just to humiliate him ...)
:: In a universe where she didn't kill Nyx, or hadn't yet—could Two have ended up grudgingly reaching out to her (trying anything/everything to get the blink drive back from Ryo, maybe)?
:: Would Six try to redeem her (oh, Six :D)? Would she pretend it was working, and that she was ~in love to boot—but it had actually started working, just a little bit?
:: Or, venturing a bit sideways—might she ever have tried to seduce Hiro to make him easier to manipulate, while Ryo was gone?
:: I don't know how it would happen or whether you could get it to / in the end, but for the record, 1k of the android observing Misaki and trying to work out her reasoning for the things she does, in her blandly patient android way, would be A++. :D
Hellboy (Movies 2004-2008)
Nuala & Worldbuilding
I love these movies so much, and I'd be delighted with anything you wanted to write me that leans into any part of their universe—the humor? The horror? The genuine warmth? How cruel and destructive humanity can be, or how kind, how full of awe and wonder, every now and then? How beautiful ancient eldritch magic can be, or how unutterably terrifying? GO WILD. For characters, I'm only requesting Nuala here, but I love the first movie as much as the second, and if you want to bring John back from Antarctica so he can rejoin the team, please do! Or, of course, focus on the second movie, and write whatever you want. Pre-canon about Nuala and the elven court! A missing scene with Nuala exploring the BPRD some more! An AU where she survives and leaves with the rest of the team, as they make their own way post-canon! Shipfic—dysfunctional Nuala/Nuada, pure Nuala/Abe fluff, Nuala/HB or Liz or John or any sort of team polygon with her involved? ANYTHING.
I'm also requesting the worldbuilding tag, because seriously, if you wanted to just give me 1k of solid worldbuilding about the elves and the ancient world before humans came into control of it, I would be SO THERE FOR IT. Elven culture, elven magic, the nature of the bond between Nuada and Nuala, what other secret terrible treasures might lie somewhere beneath the earth besides the Golden Army ... Or other magical species, and the ways they've dealt with humans throughout history? Or more about the hidden market—the goods for sale, the vendors, the kinds of non-monetary prices things can cost there? Or the BPRD in general: other non-human agents they've employed, their powers and backstories, or what it's like to work there when you're just a regular human, without even a pure heart to help you out. :D
Hellboy for me is just—it's like a BIG HUG. A big weird eldritch hug with too many hands, possibly, but still. :D I love all the characters so much, and all of their relationships with each other, the good and the bad and the ugly; the times when they're kind to each other and the times when they struggle to understand or to be understood, the moments that are sweet and the moments that are awkward. ♥ And the world itself, everything that's strange and lovely and potentially lethal hiding just underneath the surface of it, fighting horrors from legend in subway tunnels and mourning the death of a magical tree in the middle of an intersection. Plus I'm always weak for teams of people who care about each other facing down darkness way out of their league. ♥ SO YEAH. HELLBOY'S GREAT, THE END.
Nuala
And of all the things I enjoyed about Golden Army, I particularly loved Nuala! She's just so interesting to me on so many levels—that she's this seemingly gentle, ethereal elf-princess, but in the end also the one foe Nuada didn't plan for and can't defeat; and where all else failed, every other safeguard toppled, she managed to keep her piece of the crown away from him and save the world ... which is to say the human world, a world that didn't know she existed and which she had no reason to value. There's just SO MUCH to explore there, and I'd love a thousand words focusing on just about any element of Nuala's character you like!
There's also a lot of room for worldbuilding here—there's a separate section below for worldbuilding prompts that don't involve Nuala. In this section, prompts that mention it are listed alongside prompts that don't, and you should feel free to ignore one and use the other, or mix and match!
• Pre-canon, there's definitely room for worldbuilding, if you like:
:: What was the world like when Nuala was a girl? Who was her mother? (Or do elves just grow new elves like trees?)
:: With more magic than humans, and the elves ascendant—what was the court of the elves like then, and how did she spend her time?
:: What adventures might she have gone on? Did she (and Nuada, if you'd like to include him) ever travel to visit other clans, or other creatures' courts?
:: Is there any particular reason why she might like humans more than Nuada does? Did she know any, back then, or befriend one once?
:: She was presumably around when the Army was created, and when Nuada was exiled—did she think her father was right or wrong? Did she fear the Army's potential from the start, or did it take time for her to begin thinking differently from Nuada?
:: What was the experience of Nuada's exile like, through their link? (Five wounds that showed up on her body while he was exiled, and how she thought he might have gotten them?)
:: Seriously, any headcanon you have or worldbuilding you want to indulge in about Clan Bethmoora, or other clans and intra-/inter-clan alliances and politicking, would be wonderful!
• Or tell me anything you like about Nuala or her perspective on events during the span of the movie!
:: I absolutely loved the tropey amazingness of her psychic abilities and her bond with Nuada, so anything from her POV that incorporates that and her being on the run from him (presumably trying not to think or feel anything that would lead him to her) would be wonderful!
:: Her POV on Nuada's return and her father's death—mixed feelings, I'm sure! Was she glad to see him? Torn between his sense of triumph and/or conviction and her own fear and mourning?
:: And I'd love to read anything about her flight from the court, meeting Abe, the BPRD, Hellboy and the Army and the duel ...
:: Tell me how she perceives the burden on her, knowing what's at stake and that her people are fading ... but also her sweetness and curiosity about the BPRD library, and Abe, and all these other new things. :D
:: Or, of course, break my heart! I'd guessed pretty early on what might happen to her, but oh, man, her resolve and bravery at the end there just KILLED me. ;-; Feel free to twist the knife!
• But naturally I'd also be thrilled if you felt like writing a bit of fix-it—or an AU where things turn out differently, if not necessarily better:
:: Could her link with Nuada have been broken at just the right moment to save her? Or replaced by a link with Abe?
:: She presumably experienced all Nuada's training with weapons, through the link—and of course she's the one person he wouldn't want to deal a serious wound to. Could she have dueled him herself?
:: Or secured all the pieces of the crown and won control of the Army? (Not necessarily a fix-it, depending on how you think she would use it once she had it; are good intentions enough, in that scenario?)
:: Or could something (like, say, Liz's fire) have destroyed her piece of the crown, so Nuada could never have completed it?
:: Or go the other way: what if Nuada had succeeded before she'd even had a chance to stop him? What would that future look like, for her and for everyone else?
• And of course I ship ALL THE THINGS, so if you'd like to write me shipfic that includes Nuala, have at it. :D
:: I'd absolutely love 1k of Nuala/Abe, fleshing out their understated canonical romance a bit more, with missing scenes or more conversation. Or! Some kind of *waves hands* tropey AU—like, the BPRD decides to try to forge an alliance with the elves to stop Nuada before he gets started = arranged marriage between an agent and an elven princess? :D?
:: (And for the record, I'm very here for Nuala/Abe + background HB/Liz, or HB/Liz/John—post-canon AU where Nuala's so happy with Abe, she's determined to make HB and Liz equally happy, and if that means going to find John and convincing him to come back, so be it? :D)
:: Or Nuala/Nuada! I'm here for this in any flavor you like: I read their connection as genuinely profound and meaningful to both of them, and Nuada's affection for her as at least some degree of sincere ... but of course that easily tips over into obsession, possessiveness, and manipulation, considering what he's like. Sweet, creepy, or both at once—go for it!
:: Nuala/HB? In a handwavy AU where Nuala lives and remains a guest of the BPRD ... HB is a prince! Maybe a curse or spell or something ends up requiring him to marry a princess? :D
:: Nuala/Liz? Honestly I'd be thrilled with 1k of missing scene where they get to talk a little, with only the barest shippy undertones! Or if Liz were, say, turned into a dragon, might a princess be the only one who could approach her safely? :D
:: (And feel free to make it HB/Liz/Nuala—trying to negotiate their way through either of the above + HB/Liz turns into a threesome that works better than it has any right to?)
:: And if you wanted to let Nuala survive and run away with the rest of the team at the end of Golden Army, and get swept up in some grand team Nuala/Abe/HB/Liz(/John) romance, that would be AMAZING. :D
Worldbuilding
As noted, I'd also absolutely love worldbuilding that only tangentially involves Nuala and/or the elves, or doesn't involve them at all. By all means, use canon characters I didn't request or make up OCs of your own—or take any other tack that makes sense to you, fictional in-universe documentation or snippets of in-universe reference books, a 1k extract from an elven epic poem with no apparent meter when translated into English :D or an escalating series of transfer requests from John as he tries to get himself out of Antarctica and back to the main BPRD office with HB. Anything!
• Feel free to use pretty much anything we see in either movie as a jumping-off point, and invent as much or as little as you want.
:: Tell me more about the dimension Hellboy came from—other gates he might be able to open, and other powers that might want him to open them? His childhood and adolescence with Professor Bruttenholm, and other issues or powers that manifested themselves?
:: Or Liz—are her powers a mutation, or is there a source she's tapping into, a kind of magic she doesn't even realize she's accessing? Are there other people like her, and does she ever find any of them? (Or is another born, and she can feel them, a dim point of heat in the distance?)
:: Or Abe! Are there any others like him? Any legends about his species that the BPRD just hasn't encountered yet—until they do? Do his powers have a limit? Could the wrong kind of psychic trace or impression hurt him ... or possess him?
:: Or John! What does being "pure of heart" in a way Abe can discern even mean? Is it useful—can he break spells, or see through illusions, or free people from the control of other forces? Or are there things out there that want pure hearts, that can use them or twist them—or eat them? (If yes, please feel free to send someone to his rescue, in a shippy way or a platonic h/c way!)
:: And by all means tackle the court of the elves from before the Golden Army's creation, before Nuada and Nuala were even born—their even-more-ancient kings and queens, whatever gods or powers they may have been familiar with, their legends and customs, stories so old even Nuala and Nuada never learned them ...
:: Or! Aaaaaanything you have in mind about other magical/eldritch species, either ones we've seen the team deal with, or ones that were in the market scene for two frames, or anywhere in between. BPRD reports or reference materials on them? Their own stories about themselves? Where they live, what they eat, how they survive on the margins of an increasingly human world?
:: And of course the BPRD itself is a great starting point for worldbuilding, too! :D What other agents, teams, or operations are they running? (What is John doing in Antarctica?) I would love a 1k glimpse into personnel files, disciplinary notes made about the canon characters, evaluations of OCs, psych profiles or agency directives (serious ones? Or "213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed To Do"-style? :D) ... anything!
Jeremiah (TV)
Theo Coleridge
Jeremiah is one of my best-beloved nostalgia canons, and I still adore it so much—and one of my favorite characters in the whole show was absolutely Theo! She had me right from the pilot, and I was thrilled when she started showing up again later in the show. She's such a fascinating combination of ruthless, practical, resourceful, and unapologetic, and I'd love to read pretty much any story you'd like to tell me about her, from backstory before the show to anything she was doing offscreen between her appearances, post-canon speculation or AUs taking her any direction you can think of.
I also ship her with just about everybody, so if there's some Theo shipfic that lives in your heart that you've been waiting for an excuse to write (Theo/Erin? Theo/Markus? Theo/Jeremiah? Theo/Kurdy? Theo/Elizabeth? Theo/Libby?), by all means give it to me. :D And while there was no worldbuilding tag nominated, I'm incredibly weak for post-apocalyptic settings, so for the record, absolutely anything about the world of Jeremiah that you'd like to explore through a story about Theo would be amazing, from how she ended up in charge of Clairfield in the first place to attempting to forge an alliance with the other local leaders, or recovering post-canon after Daniel's army is defeated. Anything!
This show is probably where my abiding love for apocalypses and their aftermath comes from—it was so earnest (sometimes to the point of cringe, I admit) and I totally adore people doing their best to come together and build something new out of the ashes, even if they struggle with it, even when there are setbacks, which means it gave me just about everything I could have asked for. :D Which, I definitely do love both the effort and commitment and the struggles and setbacks, the times when the characters defaulted to cruelty or distrust and the times when they extended unexpected kindness, so darkfic and happy endings are both on the table!
Theo Coleridge
THEO. :D Theo's arc has always been one of my favorite things about the show—starting off as much more of an antagonist than not, and gaining more and more nuance every time she reappeared. I love how smart and tough and difficult she is, that she's always looking out for herself but at the same time aware that there's more going on in the world, and that every now and then the latter tips her in new and unexpected directions. So, yeah. Any story you'd like to tell me about Theo, I'm here for it!
• Anything about Theo set before the show starts would be fantastic. :D
:: How did she end up in charge of Clairfield? (By all means run with everything she said about it in the pilot being basically true ... or decide she exaggerated or smoothed over a few things. :D)
:: What kinds of challenges had she faced before Jeremiah and Kurdy showed up, and how did she handle them?
:: How did she first learn about Thunder Mountain/"the end of the world"?
• And of course I'd love missing scenes and/or episode tags that fill in some of the gaps between Theo's various appearances on the show!
:: What happened to her between the pilot and 1.11? There's got to be more to it than she'd have admitted to anybody from Thunder Mountain ...
:: How did she handle the aftermath of the pilot, and what did or didn't change about the way she ran Clairfield?
:: Or between 1.11 and 1.18? Her position seems to have stabilized somewhat by 1.18—how did she pull that off?
:: Or between 1.18 and 2.04-2.05! How and when did she discover she was pregnant? Had she told anybody else, or was she trying to hide it and also maybe pretend it wasn't happening at all?
:: Or, of course, after 2.05! What's her response to the whole Daniel situation? What does she have her people do to prepare?
• Or! Post-canon adventures of any kind—or, well, leading into post-canon, because she's offscreen for the end of S2:
:: Where is she when Daniel's army shows up? Is she coordinating with Thunder Mountain in ways we just didn't see, or holding back, waiting to see who comes out on top?
:: How does she survive it—or does she go down fighting, scratching tooth and nail? ;-; OH THEO
:: What happens next? Does she come back and help start rebuilding in the aftermath—playing it like it's for her own benefit, but inwardly relieved there's still something left?
:: And I would 100% be there for a pregnancy fic that tackles what it's like trying to give birth safely—is she willing to go to Thunder Mountain for help? Does she try to handle it all herself?
• I'd be thrilled with an AU branching off from just about anywhere, too, or fixing anything you'd like to fix!
:: What if Theo had in fact discovered Thunder Mountain first, or had followed Jeremiah and Kurdy there? (Waited for them to leave, pretended to need help, and managed to get herself inside?)
:: Would she have taken it over/sabotaged it, or ended up won over by their mission and Markus's earnestness despite herself?
:: Or a role reversal, however you feel like you can swing it: how could she have ended up as a runner for Thunder Mountain, in another world?
:: What would Thunder Mountain look like if she'd been in Markus's place? (Better, worse, and somewhere in between are all 100% fair answers!)
:: "Fix it" from Theo's perspective: what would have happened if she'd succeeded in holding Jeremiah, Kurdy, and Simon until she could get some answers, and her people hadn't turned on her?
:: Or fix anything else about the show, with Theo involved—let her save Elizabeth? Let the leaders succeed in forging an alliance that can fend off Daniel's forces entirely? Whatever you like!
• And I'd be t h r i l l e d with Theo shipfic, too!
:: I can admit that I probably ship Theo the most intensely with Erin, on the strength of That One Conversation in 2.04—I would be delighted by the tropiest ever accidental domesticity fic where Erin does end up helping Theo through her pregnancy, and they share quarters in Thunder Mountain but it's Just Practical (it's not just practical), and feelings happen. :D
:: Or anything else you're interested in for them! Theo's pregnancy makes her horny = fuckbuddies? AU where they meet earlier (both captured in Milhaven, maybe)? WINGFIC. Anything!
:: BUT I'm also definitely here for Theo shipped with anybody else—say, Markus, perhaps intending to manipulate him at first, but oops real feelings happen?
:: Or give me Theo/Jeremiah—I adore how prickly their back-and-forth with each other can get, and how well they can keep up with each other when they try!
:: Or Theo/Elizabeth, with all the messiness of Simon's death hanging between them, Elizabeth's gentleness-but-strength vs Theo's sharp-edges-but-feelings?
:: Or Theo/Kurdy—maybe Theo hitting on him and him always refusing, doubly so after Elizabeth's death, becomes A Thing ... until one day he finally says yes instead? :D
:: Or anybody else you're interested in shipping her with! Theo/Jeremiah/Kurdy, Theo/Kurdy/Elizabeth, Theo/Erin/Markus ... Mr. Smith! Libby! HATESEX WITH LEE CHEN. Anything!
Siren (TV)
Ryn
I loved this show so much, and I was so sad when it got canceled (especially on such an unresolved note ;-;). It had so much relentless breakneck drama, bless, but it was also sweet and funny and full of beautiful little moments between the characters. And Ryn! I adore Ryn—I think one of the things this show did really well was portraying mermaids as complex predators who are genuinely dangerous, for starters. And Ryn in particular, her curiosity and confusion and intensity, the things she understands and the things she doesn't, what she loves about land and what she loves about the ocean, and the conflict she feels because she can't live in two places at once, it was all so well done. ♥
So, yeah, I would be thrilled with anything you'd like to write me about Ryn! :D I'd love pre-canon fic that delves into mermaid worldbuilding just as much as a missing scene from your favorite episode, or a thousand words of the most detailed interspecies smut that lives in your heart. Tell me about Ryn and Donna as sisters, hunting together—Cami's birth and childhood in the ocean, with her mother and aunt looking out for her. Or Ryn's perspective on anything from the show, Ben and Maddie or the military, the hybrid community or mermaid mating habits or the loss of her eggs, Ben's actions at the end of S2 or Maddie leaving them at the beginning of S3, Tia or Robb ... anything! Or post-canon where Ryn and Maddie manage to find Ben after all? I am definitely here for Maddie/Ben/Ryn as an OT3, or for focus on Maddie/Ryn or Ben/Ryn with acknowledgment of the OT3 in the background (whether before or after the breakup ;-;)—but I'd also love it if you wanted to write Ryn/Donna or Ryn/Katrina, Ryn/Levi or Ryn/Eliza, Ryn/Robb or Ryn/Tia, or any other ship you're interested in! (Or add Robb in there and make it an OT4. :D)
I honestly 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 with this show is Ryn + the Maddie/Ben/Ryn OT3, 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! ;-;)
Ryn
AND RYN, help, I love her so much! She's such a fascinating study in contrasts—the unhesitating violence she's used to as a mermaid and a hunter vs her undeniable love for and genuine tenderness with Ben and Maddie; that she looks so small and harmless and is such an unbelievably powerful predator; how little she says, especially in the first season, and how few words she uses to do it, and yet how much she expresses, and how clear a sense there is that she comes from somewhere where things work very differently. She takes on so much responsibility, and tries SO HARD to keep everyone safe and happy and provided for—even when it means letting herself be experimented on. ♥ RYN ♥
• So! I'd love anything you'd like to tell me about Ryn that's set before the show, with as much or as little mermaid worldbuilding as you like! (And I realize the name thing complicates matters; feel free to use "Ryn" even though technically she wouldn't have adopted it yet, or invent a mermaid name of your own devising. :D)
:: What was the ocean like when she was young? How old is she—who were her parents, if she even knows? ("When Ryn was young, mother died" could mean just about anything; does she actually remember her mother, or not?)
:: Where else has she been, in the ocean? Does the clan migrate? Who taught her to hunt—was she good at it right away, or did it take time to master?
:: Who was in charge before Katrina? (Have Katrina and Ryn been at odds before?)
:: Did she have friends or companions besides Donna, or any other siblings? Had she ever been on land before?
:: Or, of course, her POV on Donna's capture, or the moment she realized Donna was gone and decided she had to follow!
:: And anything at all you'd like to tell me about mermaid packs/clans/tribes, their interactions with each other, caves full of ancient healing songs or how they choose their burial grounds, negotiating for the right to pass through another group's territorial waters, how they've handled any previous human intrusions—it's all very much welcome! (And feel free to use Robb's clan as a starting point, too, and tell me more about their traditions!)
• Or anything set during the show would be great:
:: Early in S1, when Ryn's just starting to figure out how things work on land, and getting to know Ben and Maddie—missing scenes where she learns something new about either or both of them, or other encounters she had with human norms and/or inventions she didn't understand?
:: 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 (Ryn not actually appearing in the fic, or only having a cameo, is absolutely fine if Ben and Maddie's focus is still on her!)
:: 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 mermaid mating habits, and all the feelings and struggles that brings along with it!
:: 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 pining, 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 does 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 ... and then fell gradually in love with their "test subject"?
:: 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 for Maddie/Ben/Ryn:
:: 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—fluff about traditional courting 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
• But I also ship plenty of other things!
:: I'm here for Ryn/any mermaid—including Donna, or even Cami, if mermaid incest is your jam! Maybe it's not a big deal for mermaids? Maybe it's just as taboo, but that's not enough to stop them?
:: Ryn/Katrina or Ryn/Tia hatesex or fightsex: mermaids can resolve disagreements by forcing each other to submit physically or sexually? :D
:: Or Ryn/Nicole Martinez, with all the messiness of Nicole's deceptions baked in—Nicole gradually starting to see the same thing Ben and Maddie see in Ryn, feeling guiltier and guiltier? Ryn trying to forge a connection with Nicole in the same way that worked with Ben and Maddie: kissing? :D
:: Or! Ryn/Xander—in S1, with Xander horrified but also sort of helplessly fascinated, drawn in despite himself? Or set it early in S2, when they actually manage to connect with each other at last, and make it sweet?
:: Ryn having an adventurous night with Calvin and Janine? :D
:: And by all means add someone else into the equation with Maddie/Ben/Ryn—Levi, who frankly seemed a little excessive in his admiration for Ben? Eliza? Xander, who could use some friends he trusts to help him get over his mermaid issues ... in bed?
:: Or, of course, Robb! I ended up really loving him by the end of S3, and I'd be delighted with 1k of the post-canon story where Maddie/Robb and Ben/Ryn end up drawn together into a blissful OT4. ♥
:: Or make it a heck of a polygon: elaborate on that mermaid mating party at the cabin, and let Ben and Maddie join in instead of awkwardly supervising from outside in the cold. :D
Tidelands (TV)
Calliope "Cal" McTeer
There are SO MANY THINGS that interest me about this weird little show—but at the end of the day, Cal is my fave, and I'd be over the moon to get a gift about her! Anywhere you want to start, and anywhere you want to take it: missing scenes or episode tags? Backstory set during her childhood, while her dad was alive or when she first went to prison? Or whatever you think should happen next after that unbelievable cliffhanger of a finale? AU where Cal never went to prison! Or where she ended up at Orphelin Beach much earlier! Fix-it where NOBODY dies, thank you very much!
And I also ship basically all the things here, so if you'd like to write some 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 have a thing for mermaids in general, but also specifically for mermaids as wildly dangerous and/or kind of terrifying, 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 absolutely murdered me with bewilderment!
Cal McTeer
And one of my favorite things about it was definitely 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 THAT, 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 about 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, 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 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, say, 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 line up some allies and 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?
:: 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 (Including Cal and Adrielle each trying to whammy the other with it, until at last one of them has to submit ...)
:: 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
• And I'm adding an extra set of prompts, because despite the lack of a worldbuilding tag in the tagset, there is so. much. worldbuilding here that I'd love to see explored! So if you feel like digging into any of these elements some more, in combination with another prompt or standalone, that would be AWESOME:
:: I would LOVE anything you want to tell me about the sirens' history—more about the translation of the text on the artifact, the legends about the horn and armies of women from the sea ... 1k of fictional documentation about a couple pieces of the horn, or an excerpt from an analysis of several variations on the sirens' appearances in mythohistory? :D
:: 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?
:: Or maybe full-blooded sirens can 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?)
I can only hope you didn't get all the way down here by reading all of that, but if you did, I am so sorry. :'D Thank you for taking the time to slog through it, and here's to at least some of it having been helpful—seriously, enjoy yourself with this gift, and have a spectacular Yuletide! ♥
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Date: 2021-12-31 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-31 03:39 am (UTC)