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CHOCOLATE BOX 2021
HAPPY 2021! And, Happy Chocolate Box time!
I can be found as arbitrarily on AO3 and widespindriftgaze on Tumblr. I am requesting fic only for the fandoms and pairings below.
GENERAL LIKES
• unreliable narrators and/or characters who lie to themselves
• nonlinear storytelling, playing around with timelines, parallel storylines, anything wonky with structure
• character study
• morally gray characters and moral complexity and/or ambiguity
• backstory and pre-canon
• missing scenes
• outsider POV
• scene-setting and details from canon, especially if a historical or period piece, i.e., fashion, food, lush description
• epistolary fic, including emails, letters, fake articles, etc.
• super messy, complicated, and difficult to categorize relationships between characters, made all the better if/when they share a history and maybe probably repressed feelings
• friends or enemies or colleagues to lovers, or any other scrambled version of this, i.e., friends to enemies to lovers or enemies to lovers to friends
• intimacy in all forms, emotional and/or physical, from domestic and lived-in to unexpected, fraught, and inappropriate
• sexual tension, resolved or unresolved
• characters who have to reap what they sow and deal with the consequences of their actions, or alternatively, the desperate ends a character will go to in order to avoid said consequences
• aftermaths—guilt, PTSD, reactions to trauma, coping mechanisms both healthy and unhealthy
• secret relationships and secret affections (even better when that secret is kept even from themselves)
• dysfunctional families and dysfunctional relationships
• mentor/protege relationships
• blurring the line between professional and personal relationships
• codependency, both healthy and unhealthy
• loyalty and/or loyalty kink
• infidelity, as well as any guilt or shame associated with it
• power play and power struggles
• mind games, mindfuckery, manipulation
• betrayal or fear of betrayal
• identity porn, identity issues, undercover casefic
• on the road, travel, road trips, and the entire aesthetic/vibe that goes with it
• AUs*
*I am always all for canon-divergent AUs or AUs that turn on one detail in canon going differently and how the story could have unfolded as a result. I have also noted additional AU ideas I would be interested in receiving down below in the requests and prompts where they apply. For this exchange, however, I am not interested in receiving mundane AUs, i.e., coffeeshop AUs, high school/university AUs, or modern AUs for historical canons, unless otherwise specified.
SMUT LIKES
• casual sex, or sex before/as feelings develop
• first time
• overstimulation
• mutual masturbation
• choking and breathplay
• fingering, fingering after fucking
• oral sex, including rimming
• wet and messy, comeplay
• switching; I have no top or bottom preferences
• size kink
• size difference
• orgasm delay or denial
• dirty talk, both the good and the hilariously bad
• dub-con of the sex pollen/fuck or die/villains made us do it variety
• dub-con due to power imbalance, mutual antagonism, or ulterior motive
• marking via bruising or biting
• sex as ill-advised attempt at communication between characters
• sex as unhealthy coping mechanism
• drunk sex
• hate sex and/or rough sex and/or manhandling and/or fighting/arguing leads to sex
• voyeurism
• friends or enemies or colleagues (or, somehow, all of the above!) with benefits
• character study via porn
• intimacy and/or trust demonstrated via sex acts
• under-negotiated kink or D/s
DNWs: rape/non-con (dub-con is fine; see likes above for details); A/B/O or omegaverse; scat or watersports; formal or lifestyle BDSM; asexual or trans headcanons (unless requested); kid fic, either via de-ageing requested characters or focus on parenthood/raising kids (mention of canon children is fine); pregnancy/mpreg; poly relationships (unless requested); soulmates or soul marks or soul bonds
As a side note, any content typically found in the requested canons below—i.e., graphic violence—I am completely fine with receiving. And last (for real) there are spoilers throughout this letter, but especially for the most recent season of Fargo.
COLLATERAL (TV 2018)
Kip Glaspie/Sam Spence
• While this show was very grounded in realism, here is me requesting you go nuts fic-wise. Embrace and run with every trope your heart desires. Maybe they run into each other at random in London. Maybe Kip needs help on another case and she has no choice but to turn to the very last person she wants to ask for help. Maybe they collide again on another case and, maybe, the only way Kip is going to get answers on this one is through some off-book undercover work. Undercover is always and forever one of my favorite tropes, and if you want to write cool-headed Kip biting off way more than she can chew––either with the case, with Sam, with both––I would adore it.
• Speaking of undercover work and seeing as Sam works for MI-5, this is me saying I would 100% gobble up fic about him recruiting Kip. I'd go even crazier for spy shenanigans fic, lol. Like I said: feel free to run as tropey as you want and mine the list of likes above if you wish.
• Hate sex; you know I have to request it for these two. That scene between the both of them at The Tate was one of my favorite parts of this series, and if you wanted to take that mutual antagonistic tit-for-tat relationship, for lack of a better term, between them and transfer it to a sexual environment, I am all for it.
[As a side-note, I am more than fine with infidelity, either as an element of their relationship or as a kink itself, but I would also be more than fine if you wanted to write Kip as divorced or if you simply wanted to hand-wave or not mention her husband.]
DUBLIN MURDER SQUAD SERIES - TANA FRENCH
Frank Mackey/Stephen Moran
• My perennial favorites! If you want to plunk these two down in a pub for a couple pints and some heavily-loaded dialogue, I would adore every word of it.
• Maybe the first time that Frank and Stephen see each other again after St. Kilda’s is due to an Internal Affairs investigation that inevitably pits the both of them against each other. Unreliable narrators! The both of them recounting the same events differently, either to protect themselves or because they genuinely remember it in their own contrasting ways. If you want to play around with loyalty or loyalty kink, having that fidelity rear its head in unexpected ways between them would be absolutely wonderful.
• And speaking of St. Kilda's, I am all for missing scenes or a rewrite of some of their scenes in The Secret Place. The scenes where Frank tried to intimidate Stephen into backing off of Holly were easily some of my favorite parts of that book. More of that intimidation! And hey, if you're into it, maybe that intimidation evolves into something else or Frank plays a very different strategy and the world's tensest, most threatening and heavily loaded fucked-up hook-up occurs.
• Stephen has to work Undercover! Devise whatever reason you wish, or even hand-wave it, I won’t mind, but for whatever reason, Stephen is placed in the field and Frank is his handler. Maybe Frank knows he is deliberately placing Stephen in danger and has chosen to make that gamble. How much of the risk does Stephen know? Or if you really want to go wild, I’d gobble up a twisted retelling of The Likeness where Stephen is the undercover that Frank drops in. Frank and Stephen still have their history, but the dead body they find looks exactly like one Stephen Moran. Give me alllllll that push-and-pull of authority and obedience, Stephen both outside his element and falling under the thrall of pretending to be someone he isn't, all the phone check-ins with Frank, Frank both putting him out on a limb and trying to protect him—all of it!
• And speaking of undercover, again, I am all in on whatever morally-fucked shit these two might get up to. Bad Guys Made Them Do It? Of course! Fucking to save cover? Yes! I’d also be big into any sort of voyeuristic/exhibitionist content, like namely while Stephen is in the field he is wired and Frank is listening to everything. Maybe Stephen bites off more than he can chew, or he really steps into it, and in order to save his cover identity he has to sleep with the mark or the suspect or whoever, and Frank listens in to the whole thing. Cue the incredibly tense debrief session between Frank and Stephen after!
FARGO (TV)
Constant Calamita/Rabbi Milligan
• If you are interested in some way-too-detailed prompts and me rambling my head off about both this show and this pairing, I point you over to my Yuletide letter!
• Considering how this season ended for both of these characters, I am inviting you to AU this any which way you want to. Calamita hunting down Rabbi in Kansas goes an alternate route? Calamita is playing his own game, trying to divide and conquer the Fadda family by pitting brother against brother? A tenuous alliance that teeters on a knife's blade is forged between them? More murder and mayhem? All of the above?
• If you desire to get trope-y with it: trapped together! You've got those Midwest winters on your side––give me a blizzard and strand these two somewhere together, either alone or with enemies, unable to trust each other yet forced to try. Or, in canon it's been established that the Fadda family has ties to/answers to the New York syndicate, so ahead and give me the world's most intense road trip!
• One of my all-time favorite tropes is amateur wound care. Roughly twenty years of the both of them with the Fadda family, and with Constant as the enforcer and Milligan as another foot soldier for the family, you know they’ve had their rough scrapes before. Give me some of that weird antagonism and tension between them as one is forced to bandage up or care for the other, and I’ll love it all the more. Tangential to that, scars! Scarification, scar worship, the both of them leaving scars on each other—I’d eat either up with a spoon. Add to that Calamita’s canonical branding, and you have my attention.
• Please, lend as much gnarliness and nastiness to them as you want. Fucking as yet another power play between them? Calamita trying to assert power over Rabbi or Rabbi seeing sex as just another card for him to play? Absolutely. Or, alternatively and much less calculated, touch-starved and desperate Rabbi, unloved and never belonging anywhere or to anyone in his life, plenty aware that whatever this is isn't love or affection as it should be or as he should want it, but he'll take it. Or, maybe with Calamita affection manifests only through violence? Or, sex as demonstration of perverse loyalty? Why not! Hate sex? Obviously; I am all in for that.
• Time loop tornado! Or, if you wanted to run in the vein of the fantastic: TIME LOOP TORNADO. Rabbi is stuck repeating the same miserable mistakes of his life, “The Future is Now!” INDEED, as his future is now caught, like a tornado, running in circles with him trying to find some peace at the eye of a storm. Maybe each iteration involves Rabbi and Calamita killing each other, or maybe they have to work together––however you might want to play around with this particularly out there prompt, I guarantee you, I will love it.
Lemuel Cannon/Omie Sparkman
• Well, of course, first item on the menu here: fix-it fic! Maybe Omie makes it back from Kansas, in one piece or injured, but empty-handed and without Satchel. Does that leave him on the outs with the Cannon Limited? Is Lemuel maybe the only one willing to stand in his corner?
• I love canon-divergent AUs, and I feel like there are a great many you could play around with here. Maybe after the drive-by shooting attempt Loy, in his anger and his fear, pulls Leon off as Lemuel's muscle and installs Omie instead. I would love fic that depicted that push-and-pull between them, "the reluctant prince of a king too kind for his own good and the king's blood knight." Omie definitely strikes me as being much more resigned and practical as to the violent ways of both the world and their racket as opposed to Lemuel's idealism, and that contrast, as well as their contrast in their roles in the Cannon Limited, is just delicious to me.
• Omie teaching Lemuel to box. Lemuel forcing Omie to go out to a jazz club. Omie torn between Loy's bidding and what Lemuel actually wants. The daily ins-and-outs of the Limited, either during canon or before, Lemuel uninterested in any of it. ALL OF THE ABOVE? Please, and thank you.
• Post-canon: what happens now? Loy is dead, we know Satchel eventually grows up to become Mike Milligan, but what becomes of Lemuel and the men left of the Cannon Limited? I would love an AU where Omie makes it out alive and I would love to see some imagining of what happens next in canon, after Loy's death.
Gaetano Fadda/Josto Fadda
• Let me just preface this by saying, these two guys getting along for those final episodes of the season? Brilliant, I love them, I loved it, I'd love more of it. Everything about their dynamic is a delight to me, from their size difference to Gaetano's outright violence versus Josto's more passive play at it, Gaetano as the bull and Josto the snake––I would love any sort of missing scene set during the back half of the series, after Gaetano has been returned to the Faddas after being held by the Cannon Limited. The scene with the two of them talking in the car, waiting for Odis, was one of my favorite scenes of the both of them together, and if you wanted to build off of that (maybe avert Gaetano's death until later?), maybe have it veer in a completely inappropriate direction, I'd love it.
• Both of these dudes are pretty much canonically fucked-up in pretty major ways, Gaetano by living through fascist Italy and Josto by being traded to the Milligans as a boy, and, uh, I am all the way here for all of Josto's kinky interests when it comes to sex (these two and breathplay? AMEN). Whether you want to frame any intimacy, physical or emotional (or both!) that occurs between the two of them as the result of a heated (and most likely physical, knowing these two) argument or just drunken bonding, I would love either.
• If you want to get ugly with it, a series of escalating assassination attempts between them as they both jostle for power over the business their father left behind? YES, PLEASE. If you want to make it that Gaetano's truce with Josto after being returned by the Cannon Limited is just a front and he's really playing him, trying to turn the Fadda family against him, I would love that too.
GENERATION KILL
Brad Colbert/Ray Person
• I took a dive back into this fandom after a decade over the summer, and needless to say, I'm still here lol. I feel like these two are truly the platonic ideal for me when I imagine the perfect ship, lol. The shared history! The way they always seem to be buzzing on the same frequency even if the way they behave couldn't be any more different! They complement each other so well and there's an emotional fluency shared between them (that scene with the "Brad got dumped" conversation and "It's nice having friends" and the accompanying facial expressions and Gazing™ lives in my head and my heart rent-free) that makes me feel like my hair's on fire. Anything you write that reflects that easy and earned intimacy between the two of them while also cut through with that push-and-pull mutual (and loving?) antagonism that's more or less a cornerstone of their relationship, I am all in.
• I would love pre-canon fic, the days and weeks before the invasion, all that restless boredom as they wait. I would similarly love anything set during the invasion and immediately after. If you wanted to run in a post-canon future-fic direction, I would adore something set, like, a decade after Ray leaves the Corps and he and Brad finally figure it out and get their shit together (and get together).
• Time loop! I am never not here for time loop fic! Is the invasion the loop they're stuck in? Is it something else, entirely mundane and almost all the more maddening because of it?
• If you want to get hyper-specific in the AU territory, I present two (wildly different) AUs: Gideon the Ninth!AU. Ray as some kind of Gideon-adjacent, foul-mouthed, never-shuts-up shit-kicker cavalier to Brad’s cold-as-ice but weird-as-hell, this-is-serious-business necromancer? They should've sent a poet. Or, Green Room!AU. Green Room is one of my favorite movies, and the very thought of Brad and Ray and whoever else of your choosing planted into some scuzzy start-up punk band having to fight (and kill) their way out of the venue they just played at—it speaks to me, lol.
• Okay, I lied, one last AU: Band!AU. I would die for Reporter to do an actual story about them, as the band, for Rolling Stone. I live for outsider POV and the idea of seeing Brad and Ray and Brad/Ray (and the rest of the band, whomever you want to include in that) from an outsider lens and what he considers important enough to write down in his cover story feature of the band—my brain melts. Or! Maybe Reporter “embeds” with them and travels with them on their tour bus for what will be, unbeknownst to them, their final tour and he documents their rise and fall for the magazine.
[As a side-note, if you don't want to go the AU route but you do want to write outsider!POV via Reporter of Brad/Ray during the invasion, oh boy, but I would love that completely.]
STAR WARS RPF
Domhnall Gleeson/Oscar Isaac
• I 100% blame the new Dune trailer for leaving me in a state of oh no Oscar Isaac hot and I clearly want to deal with those feelings via fic, lol, so here we are again.
• I am a perpetual sucker, always and forever, for any and all takes on Friends With Benefits But Uh-Oh I'm Way More Attached And Into This Than I Have Any Intention Of Confessing To You (Let Alone To Myself.) However you might want to play with that, I guarantee you, I will be into it.
• I am similarly super into whatever the inciting incident is to get these two hooking up in the first place. Oscar starts rambling in great and graphic detail about sex one night while the two of them are drunk and Domhnall doesn't know what the fuck to do with any of that? Oscar, while fucking around with Domhnall's phone, accidentally stumbles upon a cache of really bad sexts? Nudes? One or the other walks in on the other jacking off? If the spirit moves you, I invite you to go to there, writer!
• Attached to all of the above: their sexual relationship is a series of escalating self-proclaimed non-events. The both of them have promised themselves that nothing is going on here and nothing is going to happen, so if conversations over the phone or by text start to devolve into phone sex or sexting, that's not a big deal. That's nothing. If the next time they see each other they decide to masturbate while seated next to each other, that's not really fucking. That's fine. And so on, and so forth lol.
• THEY DO ANOTHER PROJECT TOGETHER. Maybe it's another sci-fi, maybe it's a romance, maybe a rom-com--whatever it is, I am all in for the bleed between fiction and real as reality informs performance and performance begins to inform reality.
• Promo tours! On the road and all that travel as they play their role promoting their work. Set it during Ex Machina or any of the Star Wars or all of the above. Or I am all in for fic set during filming of any of the projects they actually have done together.
• Filth. Is that a legitimate thing for me to flat-out request? lol because I am. I AM HERE FOR ANY AND ALL THE FILTH where these two are involved. Messy, drunken blowjobs? Desperate frottage replete with jokey insults and banter? Long, gratuitous scenes of rimming or fingering? All of the above? If you're game, dear writer, so am I.
SUCCESSION (TV 2018)
Frank Vernon/Kendall Roy
• I find myself endlessly interested in the relationship that we see between them as portrayed in canon, particularly the way that Frank fills that paternal void in Kendall’s life. I would love if you explored that mentor/mentee relationship they have canonically, but taking it to a dirtybadwrong place (Kendall's self-sabotage of his interpersonal relationships rearing its ugly head!).
• I would love pre-canon fic if that was a direction you wanted to run in, particularly set before Kendall finally goes to rehab or when he was in Shanghai. Similarly, I would love anything that elaborated on canon events––does Kendall seek Frank out after the failed vote of no confidence seeking some sort of comfort. Or, after Frank re-enters the fold during the "Hunting Party" episode. After boar on the floor, maybe he and Kendall wind up sitting up together?
Kendall Roy/Roman "Romulus" Roy/Siobhan "Shiv" Roy
• I am especially interested in anything pre-canon. There is nothing more appealing to me than bored rich kids Kendall, Roman, and Shiv, whether it’s spending the summer wasting away at their father’s Summer Palace in the Hamptons or stuck at their mother’s in the dead of winter. That competition between them for their father’s love spilling over into how they each deal with one another and any affection they feel towards each other? Delicious. I would love more scenes like the boathouse scene before Shiv’s wedding, the three of them getting stoned and goofing around. On a completely different end of the spectrum, I would love fic set on the yacht after Kendall has offered himself up as "the blood sacrifice." Give me that last night before the gallows energy! Or, expand on this (cruelly!) cut scene from that episode!
• Post-Season 2 shenanigans! Each of them jockeying for what little power they can gather, Kendall on the outs, Shiv having dashed her chances, Roman the new heir apparent––I would love to see these dynamics play out, and honestly, for me, the uglier (or the more unexpectedly tender), the better.
Kendall Roy/Siobhan "Shiv" Roy
• Cliff notes here, but idk, somehow Kendall/Shiv has became my OTP for the show and I have numerous preexisting prompts for you to pick from in last year's Yuletide letter, and if any of these trigger your imagination, please! Run with it. Additionally, I have been staring at this photo like I am staring into the sun, so if you want to work that into any sort of fic or have it serve as inspiration, I will love both you and it forever.
• Season 2 fallout!!! Does Shiv side against him, or do they manage to work through their mutual shit (including betrayal on her end) and team up? If they do team up, how much doubt is there on either side? I'd be all about the two of them embarking on a completely ill-advised sexual relationship as both an exercise of mutual distrust but also in a bizarre bid to even the score between them. Maybe Kendall wants something rough from Shiv, his own form of penance. Or maybe it's Shiv for once, forcing herself to submit because that's the only way she can imagine herself asking forgiveness (without, of course, ever having to say the words out loud.)
• Alternate Season 2 where these two were fucking the entire time. My kingdom for it! Did it start after when Shiv comforted him? Tern Haven? All the way back at the Hamptons and Shiv's anger at Kendall took on a distinctly inappropriate and sexual bent? Does she still betray him at the end of the season, and if so, do either of them try to neutralize the other now that they have the worst possible ammunition against them? (And as a brief sidebar: when it comes to incest (and when it comes to these two), the guilt, the shame, and the horror (for lack of a better term) is definitely a feature not a bug for me. I’m not interested in it being accepted even by themselves or if others find out where they’re totally cool about it. The secrecy and the fear of others finding out coupled with self-disgust for wanting it? That’s what I’m definitely into, especially for these two.)
THIS WAY UP (TV)
Aine/Richard
• Of course, I have to ask for post-S1 fic! What happens next, after that phone call between Aine and Richard? What's that next tutoring session like that Monday?
• Tied to that: give me all the weird and awkward but delightful moments shared between the both of before, during, or after Etienne's tutoring sessions! Post-lesson drinks that go long into the night, the both of them trying to keep their voices down after Etienne has gone to bed. All the deliciously uncomfortable moments that pair in those very early UST moments where you're just getting to know someone and you really, really want to make out with them. Also, that burgeoning intimacy, both emotional and physical, and how every bit of it seems so monumental––I love that.
• Can you even begin to imagine the utter hilarious awkwardness that would be the both of them texting? I know I can't STOP imagining it, so please, if you feel similar, write that fic.
• Richard meets Shona; my kingdom for the likely hilarity of that encounter.
• dub-con due to power imbalance, mutual antagonism, or ulterior motive
• marking via bruising or biting
• sex as ill-advised attempt at communication between characters
• sex as unhealthy coping mechanism
• drunk sex
• hate sex and/or rough sex and/or manhandling and/or fighting/arguing leads to sex
• voyeurism
• friends or enemies or colleagues (or, somehow, all of the above!) with benefits
• character study via porn
• intimacy and/or trust demonstrated via sex acts
• under-negotiated kink or D/s
DNWs: rape/non-con (dub-con is fine; see likes above for details); A/B/O or omegaverse; scat or watersports; formal or lifestyle BDSM; asexual or trans headcanons (unless requested); kid fic, either via de-ageing requested characters or focus on parenthood/raising kids (mention of canon children is fine); pregnancy/mpreg; poly relationships (unless requested); soulmates or soul marks or soul bonds
As a side note, any content typically found in the requested canons below—i.e., graphic violence—I am completely fine with receiving. And last (for real) there are spoilers throughout this letter, but especially for the most recent season of Fargo.
COLLATERAL (TV 2018)
Kip Glaspie/Sam Spence
• While this show was very grounded in realism, here is me requesting you go nuts fic-wise. Embrace and run with every trope your heart desires. Maybe they run into each other at random in London. Maybe Kip needs help on another case and she has no choice but to turn to the very last person she wants to ask for help. Maybe they collide again on another case and, maybe, the only way Kip is going to get answers on this one is through some off-book undercover work. Undercover is always and forever one of my favorite tropes, and if you want to write cool-headed Kip biting off way more than she can chew––either with the case, with Sam, with both––I would adore it.
• Speaking of undercover work and seeing as Sam works for MI-5, this is me saying I would 100% gobble up fic about him recruiting Kip. I'd go even crazier for spy shenanigans fic, lol. Like I said: feel free to run as tropey as you want and mine the list of likes above if you wish.
• Hate sex; you know I have to request it for these two. That scene between the both of them at The Tate was one of my favorite parts of this series, and if you wanted to take that mutual antagonistic tit-for-tat relationship, for lack of a better term, between them and transfer it to a sexual environment, I am all for it.
[As a side-note, I am more than fine with infidelity, either as an element of their relationship or as a kink itself, but I would also be more than fine if you wanted to write Kip as divorced or if you simply wanted to hand-wave or not mention her husband.]
DUBLIN MURDER SQUAD SERIES - TANA FRENCH
Frank Mackey/Stephen Moran
• My perennial favorites! If you want to plunk these two down in a pub for a couple pints and some heavily-loaded dialogue, I would adore every word of it.
• Maybe the first time that Frank and Stephen see each other again after St. Kilda’s is due to an Internal Affairs investigation that inevitably pits the both of them against each other. Unreliable narrators! The both of them recounting the same events differently, either to protect themselves or because they genuinely remember it in their own contrasting ways. If you want to play around with loyalty or loyalty kink, having that fidelity rear its head in unexpected ways between them would be absolutely wonderful.
• And speaking of St. Kilda's, I am all for missing scenes or a rewrite of some of their scenes in The Secret Place. The scenes where Frank tried to intimidate Stephen into backing off of Holly were easily some of my favorite parts of that book. More of that intimidation! And hey, if you're into it, maybe that intimidation evolves into something else or Frank plays a very different strategy and the world's tensest, most threatening and heavily loaded fucked-up hook-up occurs.
• Stephen has to work Undercover! Devise whatever reason you wish, or even hand-wave it, I won’t mind, but for whatever reason, Stephen is placed in the field and Frank is his handler. Maybe Frank knows he is deliberately placing Stephen in danger and has chosen to make that gamble. How much of the risk does Stephen know? Or if you really want to go wild, I’d gobble up a twisted retelling of The Likeness where Stephen is the undercover that Frank drops in. Frank and Stephen still have their history, but the dead body they find looks exactly like one Stephen Moran. Give me alllllll that push-and-pull of authority and obedience, Stephen both outside his element and falling under the thrall of pretending to be someone he isn't, all the phone check-ins with Frank, Frank both putting him out on a limb and trying to protect him—all of it!
• And speaking of undercover, again, I am all in on whatever morally-fucked shit these two might get up to. Bad Guys Made Them Do It? Of course! Fucking to save cover? Yes! I’d also be big into any sort of voyeuristic/exhibitionist content, like namely while Stephen is in the field he is wired and Frank is listening to everything. Maybe Stephen bites off more than he can chew, or he really steps into it, and in order to save his cover identity he has to sleep with the mark or the suspect or whoever, and Frank listens in to the whole thing. Cue the incredibly tense debrief session between Frank and Stephen after!
FARGO (TV)
Constant Calamita/Rabbi Milligan
• If you are interested in some way-too-detailed prompts and me rambling my head off about both this show and this pairing, I point you over to my Yuletide letter!
• Considering how this season ended for both of these characters, I am inviting you to AU this any which way you want to. Calamita hunting down Rabbi in Kansas goes an alternate route? Calamita is playing his own game, trying to divide and conquer the Fadda family by pitting brother against brother? A tenuous alliance that teeters on a knife's blade is forged between them? More murder and mayhem? All of the above?
• If you desire to get trope-y with it: trapped together! You've got those Midwest winters on your side––give me a blizzard and strand these two somewhere together, either alone or with enemies, unable to trust each other yet forced to try. Or, in canon it's been established that the Fadda family has ties to/answers to the New York syndicate, so ahead and give me the world's most intense road trip!
• One of my all-time favorite tropes is amateur wound care. Roughly twenty years of the both of them with the Fadda family, and with Constant as the enforcer and Milligan as another foot soldier for the family, you know they’ve had their rough scrapes before. Give me some of that weird antagonism and tension between them as one is forced to bandage up or care for the other, and I’ll love it all the more. Tangential to that, scars! Scarification, scar worship, the both of them leaving scars on each other—I’d eat either up with a spoon. Add to that Calamita’s canonical branding, and you have my attention.
• Please, lend as much gnarliness and nastiness to them as you want. Fucking as yet another power play between them? Calamita trying to assert power over Rabbi or Rabbi seeing sex as just another card for him to play? Absolutely. Or, alternatively and much less calculated, touch-starved and desperate Rabbi, unloved and never belonging anywhere or to anyone in his life, plenty aware that whatever this is isn't love or affection as it should be or as he should want it, but he'll take it. Or, maybe with Calamita affection manifests only through violence? Or, sex as demonstration of perverse loyalty? Why not! Hate sex? Obviously; I am all in for that.
• Time loop tornado! Or, if you wanted to run in the vein of the fantastic: TIME LOOP TORNADO. Rabbi is stuck repeating the same miserable mistakes of his life, “The Future is Now!” INDEED, as his future is now caught, like a tornado, running in circles with him trying to find some peace at the eye of a storm. Maybe each iteration involves Rabbi and Calamita killing each other, or maybe they have to work together––however you might want to play around with this particularly out there prompt, I guarantee you, I will love it.
Lemuel Cannon/Omie Sparkman
• Well, of course, first item on the menu here: fix-it fic! Maybe Omie makes it back from Kansas, in one piece or injured, but empty-handed and without Satchel. Does that leave him on the outs with the Cannon Limited? Is Lemuel maybe the only one willing to stand in his corner?
• I love canon-divergent AUs, and I feel like there are a great many you could play around with here. Maybe after the drive-by shooting attempt Loy, in his anger and his fear, pulls Leon off as Lemuel's muscle and installs Omie instead. I would love fic that depicted that push-and-pull between them, "the reluctant prince of a king too kind for his own good and the king's blood knight." Omie definitely strikes me as being much more resigned and practical as to the violent ways of both the world and their racket as opposed to Lemuel's idealism, and that contrast, as well as their contrast in their roles in the Cannon Limited, is just delicious to me.
• Omie teaching Lemuel to box. Lemuel forcing Omie to go out to a jazz club. Omie torn between Loy's bidding and what Lemuel actually wants. The daily ins-and-outs of the Limited, either during canon or before, Lemuel uninterested in any of it. ALL OF THE ABOVE? Please, and thank you.
• Post-canon: what happens now? Loy is dead, we know Satchel eventually grows up to become Mike Milligan, but what becomes of Lemuel and the men left of the Cannon Limited? I would love an AU where Omie makes it out alive and I would love to see some imagining of what happens next in canon, after Loy's death.
Gaetano Fadda/Josto Fadda
• Let me just preface this by saying, these two guys getting along for those final episodes of the season? Brilliant, I love them, I loved it, I'd love more of it. Everything about their dynamic is a delight to me, from their size difference to Gaetano's outright violence versus Josto's more passive play at it, Gaetano as the bull and Josto the snake––I would love any sort of missing scene set during the back half of the series, after Gaetano has been returned to the Faddas after being held by the Cannon Limited. The scene with the two of them talking in the car, waiting for Odis, was one of my favorite scenes of the both of them together, and if you wanted to build off of that (maybe avert Gaetano's death until later?), maybe have it veer in a completely inappropriate direction, I'd love it.
• Both of these dudes are pretty much canonically fucked-up in pretty major ways, Gaetano by living through fascist Italy and Josto by being traded to the Milligans as a boy, and, uh, I am all the way here for all of Josto's kinky interests when it comes to sex (these two and breathplay? AMEN). Whether you want to frame any intimacy, physical or emotional (or both!) that occurs between the two of them as the result of a heated (and most likely physical, knowing these two) argument or just drunken bonding, I would love either.
• If you want to get ugly with it, a series of escalating assassination attempts between them as they both jostle for power over the business their father left behind? YES, PLEASE. If you want to make it that Gaetano's truce with Josto after being returned by the Cannon Limited is just a front and he's really playing him, trying to turn the Fadda family against him, I would love that too.
GENERATION KILL
Brad Colbert/Ray Person
• I took a dive back into this fandom after a decade over the summer, and needless to say, I'm still here lol. I feel like these two are truly the platonic ideal for me when I imagine the perfect ship, lol. The shared history! The way they always seem to be buzzing on the same frequency even if the way they behave couldn't be any more different! They complement each other so well and there's an emotional fluency shared between them (that scene with the "Brad got dumped" conversation and "It's nice having friends" and the accompanying facial expressions and Gazing™ lives in my head and my heart rent-free) that makes me feel like my hair's on fire. Anything you write that reflects that easy and earned intimacy between the two of them while also cut through with that push-and-pull mutual (and loving?) antagonism that's more or less a cornerstone of their relationship, I am all in.
• I would love pre-canon fic, the days and weeks before the invasion, all that restless boredom as they wait. I would similarly love anything set during the invasion and immediately after. If you wanted to run in a post-canon future-fic direction, I would adore something set, like, a decade after Ray leaves the Corps and he and Brad finally figure it out and get their shit together (and get together).
• Time loop! I am never not here for time loop fic! Is the invasion the loop they're stuck in? Is it something else, entirely mundane and almost all the more maddening because of it?
• If you want to get hyper-specific in the AU territory, I present two (wildly different) AUs: Gideon the Ninth!AU. Ray as some kind of Gideon-adjacent, foul-mouthed, never-shuts-up shit-kicker cavalier to Brad’s cold-as-ice but weird-as-hell, this-is-serious-business necromancer? They should've sent a poet. Or, Green Room!AU. Green Room is one of my favorite movies, and the very thought of Brad and Ray and whoever else of your choosing planted into some scuzzy start-up punk band having to fight (and kill) their way out of the venue they just played at—it speaks to me, lol.
• Okay, I lied, one last AU: Band!AU. I would die for Reporter to do an actual story about them, as the band, for Rolling Stone. I live for outsider POV and the idea of seeing Brad and Ray and Brad/Ray (and the rest of the band, whomever you want to include in that) from an outsider lens and what he considers important enough to write down in his cover story feature of the band—my brain melts. Or! Maybe Reporter “embeds” with them and travels with them on their tour bus for what will be, unbeknownst to them, their final tour and he documents their rise and fall for the magazine.
[As a side-note, if you don't want to go the AU route but you do want to write outsider!POV via Reporter of Brad/Ray during the invasion, oh boy, but I would love that completely.]
STAR WARS RPF
Domhnall Gleeson/Oscar Isaac
• I 100% blame the new Dune trailer for leaving me in a state of oh no Oscar Isaac hot and I clearly want to deal with those feelings via fic, lol, so here we are again.
• I am a perpetual sucker, always and forever, for any and all takes on Friends With Benefits But Uh-Oh I'm Way More Attached And Into This Than I Have Any Intention Of Confessing To You (Let Alone To Myself.) However you might want to play with that, I guarantee you, I will be into it.
• I am similarly super into whatever the inciting incident is to get these two hooking up in the first place. Oscar starts rambling in great and graphic detail about sex one night while the two of them are drunk and Domhnall doesn't know what the fuck to do with any of that? Oscar, while fucking around with Domhnall's phone, accidentally stumbles upon a cache of really bad sexts? Nudes? One or the other walks in on the other jacking off? If the spirit moves you, I invite you to go to there, writer!
• Attached to all of the above: their sexual relationship is a series of escalating self-proclaimed non-events. The both of them have promised themselves that nothing is going on here and nothing is going to happen, so if conversations over the phone or by text start to devolve into phone sex or sexting, that's not a big deal. That's nothing. If the next time they see each other they decide to masturbate while seated next to each other, that's not really fucking. That's fine. And so on, and so forth lol.
• THEY DO ANOTHER PROJECT TOGETHER. Maybe it's another sci-fi, maybe it's a romance, maybe a rom-com--whatever it is, I am all in for the bleed between fiction and real as reality informs performance and performance begins to inform reality.
• Promo tours! On the road and all that travel as they play their role promoting their work. Set it during Ex Machina or any of the Star Wars or all of the above. Or I am all in for fic set during filming of any of the projects they actually have done together.
• Filth. Is that a legitimate thing for me to flat-out request? lol because I am. I AM HERE FOR ANY AND ALL THE FILTH where these two are involved. Messy, drunken blowjobs? Desperate frottage replete with jokey insults and banter? Long, gratuitous scenes of rimming or fingering? All of the above? If you're game, dear writer, so am I.
SUCCESSION (TV 2018)
Frank Vernon/Kendall Roy
• I find myself endlessly interested in the relationship that we see between them as portrayed in canon, particularly the way that Frank fills that paternal void in Kendall’s life. I would love if you explored that mentor/mentee relationship they have canonically, but taking it to a dirtybadwrong place (Kendall's self-sabotage of his interpersonal relationships rearing its ugly head!).
• I would love pre-canon fic if that was a direction you wanted to run in, particularly set before Kendall finally goes to rehab or when he was in Shanghai. Similarly, I would love anything that elaborated on canon events––does Kendall seek Frank out after the failed vote of no confidence seeking some sort of comfort. Or, after Frank re-enters the fold during the "Hunting Party" episode. After boar on the floor, maybe he and Kendall wind up sitting up together?
Kendall Roy/Roman "Romulus" Roy/Siobhan "Shiv" Roy
• I am especially interested in anything pre-canon. There is nothing more appealing to me than bored rich kids Kendall, Roman, and Shiv, whether it’s spending the summer wasting away at their father’s Summer Palace in the Hamptons or stuck at their mother’s in the dead of winter. That competition between them for their father’s love spilling over into how they each deal with one another and any affection they feel towards each other? Delicious. I would love more scenes like the boathouse scene before Shiv’s wedding, the three of them getting stoned and goofing around. On a completely different end of the spectrum, I would love fic set on the yacht after Kendall has offered himself up as "the blood sacrifice." Give me that last night before the gallows energy! Or, expand on this (cruelly!) cut scene from that episode!
• Post-Season 2 shenanigans! Each of them jockeying for what little power they can gather, Kendall on the outs, Shiv having dashed her chances, Roman the new heir apparent––I would love to see these dynamics play out, and honestly, for me, the uglier (or the more unexpectedly tender), the better.
Kendall Roy/Siobhan "Shiv" Roy
• Cliff notes here, but idk, somehow Kendall/Shiv has became my OTP for the show and I have numerous preexisting prompts for you to pick from in last year's Yuletide letter, and if any of these trigger your imagination, please! Run with it. Additionally, I have been staring at this photo like I am staring into the sun, so if you want to work that into any sort of fic or have it serve as inspiration, I will love both you and it forever.
• Season 2 fallout!!! Does Shiv side against him, or do they manage to work through their mutual shit (including betrayal on her end) and team up? If they do team up, how much doubt is there on either side? I'd be all about the two of them embarking on a completely ill-advised sexual relationship as both an exercise of mutual distrust but also in a bizarre bid to even the score between them. Maybe Kendall wants something rough from Shiv, his own form of penance. Or maybe it's Shiv for once, forcing herself to submit because that's the only way she can imagine herself asking forgiveness (without, of course, ever having to say the words out loud.)
• Alternate Season 2 where these two were fucking the entire time. My kingdom for it! Did it start after when Shiv comforted him? Tern Haven? All the way back at the Hamptons and Shiv's anger at Kendall took on a distinctly inappropriate and sexual bent? Does she still betray him at the end of the season, and if so, do either of them try to neutralize the other now that they have the worst possible ammunition against them? (And as a brief sidebar: when it comes to incest (and when it comes to these two), the guilt, the shame, and the horror (for lack of a better term) is definitely a feature not a bug for me. I’m not interested in it being accepted even by themselves or if others find out where they’re totally cool about it. The secrecy and the fear of others finding out coupled with self-disgust for wanting it? That’s what I’m definitely into, especially for these two.)
THIS WAY UP (TV)
Aine/Richard
• Of course, I have to ask for post-S1 fic! What happens next, after that phone call between Aine and Richard? What's that next tutoring session like that Monday?
• Tied to that: give me all the weird and awkward but delightful moments shared between the both of before, during, or after Etienne's tutoring sessions! Post-lesson drinks that go long into the night, the both of them trying to keep their voices down after Etienne has gone to bed. All the deliciously uncomfortable moments that pair in those very early UST moments where you're just getting to know someone and you really, really want to make out with them. Also, that burgeoning intimacy, both emotional and physical, and how every bit of it seems so monumental––I love that.
• Can you even begin to imagine the utter hilarious awkwardness that would be the both of them texting? I know I can't STOP imagining it, so please, if you feel similar, write that fic.
• Richard meets Shona; my kingdom for the likely hilarity of that encounter.