Okay, I think it's Done. These are all... Guidelines *Pirates of the Caribbean voice*. If you want to write (or art) A Thing for this pairing/relationship combo, go for it. Feel very free to hit up the mods if you have any questions or want to check something. Good luck! :D
General loves: I've got a lightly rotating list from yuletide that you can check out via the tags. For a challenge like this, where the emphasis is a little more on 'short and sweet', I'm very here for, say, a sex/afterglow scene that showcases the characters, or something else utterly mundane to hang a vignette from (making a meal, sharpening a weapon, making something). I love Actual Drabbles (100 words! I will die on this hill! etc), 5 things (or as-many-or-as-few-as-you-like things) fics, basically you do not have to do a plot here, ever. Unless you want to. Feel free to grab a concept from another fandom/prompt here and apply it to whatever we matched on, too.
Things I love in my sex scenes: laughter and affections; consensual and enthusiastic: power play, pain play, boundary play; worship and adoration.
ART: I flounder still some about what makes a useful art prompt for the Original Works area. I love vibrant colours, digital art, watercolours, um. Things I like to see! Characters being happy and content together, or excited/pleased about [a thing]. I love detailed backgrounds, but ha, that seems like a mean thing when the fic expectations start as low as 300, so don't fret about that.
DNWs: Hmm, Character death (unless it's UnDeadwood or otherwise canonical), excessive violence, characters getting their hopes up and then getting those hopes dashed (basically, if you could describe a character as 'crestfallen' I'm going to be unable to keep reading, unless I know it turns out all okay in the end, or that the character gets to process it properly. Yeah, I don't know why, either. I think it's a weird mutation of an embarrassment squick).
The last of us
Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Ellie/Riley (The Last of Us)
Ellie/Original Female Character (The Last of Us)
Specific loves about TLOU: I love stories about the sort of steel-forged-bonds (sexual and/or gen equally) that form between people after they've Gone Through Traumatic Shit together. I also really like seeing the communities that form, figuring out the practicalities of life after the apocalypse together. I also really like the atmosphere of abandoned places that was so present in the TLOU game (see also the trailer for The Quiet Place Part 2, it's amazing for that) -- of being in places and areas of the world that are supposed to be full of people, now empty.
For all that this is a not-quite zombie apocalypse, I'd prefer less graphic violence this time around. Aftermath of (and comfort from) violence/sexual assault/traumatic Thing, I'm here for. Also happy with gen cameos from Joel, or Tommy, or whoever wants to wander through ;)
Brief ideas:
Dina/Ellie -- Dina Is Fine. Or maybe rescued after a TLOU2 traumatic experience (I'm very here for hurt/comfort, honestly), but is fundamentally fierce and Alive, take that, hopefully deliberately misdirecting, unsettling trailer :D I love them together, and -- just watched the trailer again for the first time in a bit, and goddamn, how fierce and forward Dina is, and that achingly hopeful and pleased and disbelieving smile of Ellie's and fuck everything. Thank you Naughty Dog for this content. So, idea if you want it: Dina gets Taken, and Ellie burns down the world to get her back, successfully. They are both fucked up in various ways, and figuring out a new relationship when they'd barely started the first...
Ellie/OFC -- ohhh, I'd love the story of Ellie getting that tattoo from her then-current girlfriend, Kat (says the official cosplay write up). Why that tattoo for Ellie? Tell me about Kat -- that's some skilled work she's done there! (if also telling me their breakup, amicable breakup infinitely preferred)
Ellie/Riley -- oh god. The DLC was the most amazing, heartwrenching thing I watched in a while (I was Let's Playing all the way). I'm good with Fuckit, She Lives. Or Ellie processing her loss, or letters between them while Riley's away before the DLC, or an additional DLC scene etc.
ORIGINAL WORKS *deep breath* here we go...
Anchoress/Woman Outside Her Cell (Original Work) --ohhhh so if we matched on something else, and you’re wondering wtf an anchoress is, try this: https://catvalente.livejournal.com/371419.html a woman who develops comparatively immense power and respect, locking herself away to study to do it. The rules say no man in your cell after midnight, but we all know that’s because women fly entirely under the radar. So, women come to her for advice, and one woman in particular takes it upon herself to care for and serve the anchoress, and maybe to learn all many, many things the anchoress is interested in teaching... Things I freaking love: religious iconography/rituals. Secular rituals, intimate, secret rituals that build up between two people. Here for a little consensual sadomasochism, given the whole flagellation concept, too, if that’s also your cup of tea.
Psychic Kids On The Run & Protective Sentient Location (Original Work): Seeing![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija’s Chocolate Box letter was in fact the whole nudge that got me to sign up, so I’m going to hopefully not rudely C&P her thing here, lightly modified for my particular jams (um, I wave, in the extremely unlikely, hilarious eventuality that we matched here), because it sums up my feels about this ‘pairing’, such as it is, perfectly:
I love kids on the run and having to cope without adults, and kids with cool powers that mean Mean People are After Them. I am deeply into sentient, protective locations of basically any stripe including, as Rachel says: kids being protected by the local haunted house/sentient spaceship/abandoned theme park/etc. Please have fun describing their powers, how they bond with each other, how the sentient location makes things cozy for them or they make it cozy, how they and it fight back against their enemies, the comfort of finally feeling safe, etc. I am totally okay with the “badies slink away without confrontation/cut to after the battle” if you don’t want to get too deeply into the politics of the rest of the world building. Happy ending very much preferred here.
Dragon & Human Child (Original Work) Does the child wander in for the weekends? Is the child lost? Wandered in from Away to stay? A village sacrifice? Is the dragon fantasy equivalent of snapchatting their friends with a “That’s not my human child…/I didn’t own a human child, now apparently, I do.” How does the dragon adapt to the child? How does the child adapt to the dragon? What do they teach each other?
Preferred no grieving parents/the child being taken away from the grieving dragon at the end. Hard no to ‘Puff the magic dragon’, endings here. Bonus points for the “child grows up and leaves the nest with the dragon proudly waving them off,” type vibes, but not compulsory, obv.
Female Knight/Female Bath Attendant with a Crush (Original Work) I’m very here for hypercompetent, physically strong, queer female knight, bruised and exhausted from battle, being tended for by skilled attendant (in as many ways ‘cared for’ as you like… ;), seriously, as gen hurt/comfort, or as explicitly sexual, or both! as you like…)
Governess in Gothic Mansion/Female Ghost Super here for gothic mansion tropes, but also competent governess who isn’t (too) freaked out by the spectral going ons. Also here for night/dream visitations, willing possessions (“how long has it been, since you’ve had a body?” etc).
Gay Pirate Assassin/Gay Pirate Assassin (Original Works) Adventures on the high seas! Daggers in the back! I realized this one doesn’t specify gender/s. Go for your life, women/men/non-binary people on the high seas. Maybe working together on the same ship, or on different ships meeting up to exchange information. Or, as I so brilliantly saw it on tumblr “Dearly detesteds…” where they’re in competition and ‘hate’ each other, but also would grieve terribly if one were to die… (I super love enemies-to-lovers, as a datapoint)
Lady locked in a tower/Lady who turns into a hawk Why is the lady locked in the tower? Can the hawklady turn back and forth at will, or is she spending most of her time as an especially smart seeming bird? Is there maybe an actual Ladyhawk/beauty and the beast thing going on? Any answer to any of these questions would delight me.
Shelter Dog & Nonconformist Witch I have no idea what nonconformist witch means here, but go nuts with it. Does it mean she's off doing her own rituals without a coven and/or not being a traditionalist Wiccan? Because I'm here for that. Or here bog standard Wiccan/Pagan, too. I'm deeply here for witchy aesthetics and mundane spellcasting and the like. Also SUPER here for Shelter Dog being kind of fucked up and gradually gradually learning how to trust each other. (Doesn't even have to be a shelter dog, honestly. I could see a 'shivering, soaked dog appearing on her back porch, and the "that's not my dog/I didn't *have* a dog..." snapchats :D) just as equally as casting a spell to call for her familiar in a crowded animal shelter. Up to you! https://maharetr.tumblr.com/tagged/magic and related tags have some pointers if you're after aesthetic ideas.
Vampire Queen/Female Vampire Hunter Posing As Lady's Maid (Original Work) Super fucking here for the power dynamic that appears horribly unequal (employer vs employee for eg), but is made far more equal by employee's secret Skills. Obv the maid starts hesitating about killing this gorgeous vampire... (does the vampire know there's a hunter in her mansion/castle? etc)
Wandering Lady Knight/Far-Away Princess she writes letters to (OW) Here's one where I'd be willing to go a touch of homophobia, or at least a good splash of forbidden romance, maybe -- the knight has been banished from the kingdom for her illicit affair with the princess, as an example, and is clandestinely writing letters home, sneaking them through a network of spies/supporters, and then the princess's replies, ostensibly about other things, to other people, but threaded through with the knowledge of who she's actually writing for...
His Dark Materials (TV series)
Lyra Belacqua & Ma Costa (His Dark Materials (TV))
Lee Scoresby & Hester (His Dark Materials (TV))
Lyra and Ma Costa -- I'm weak for 'I didn't birth you, but you're My Child now'. (see also Molly Weasley etc). Lyra learning how to live on a boat, learning the Gyptian ways, and generally being cosy would suit me down to the ground, if you wanted a leaping off point. Or wherever you wanted to take it.
Lee & Hester -- We didn't get to see a whole lot of Hester in the TV show, but I still ping so hard off how calm and mature Hester is from the books, honestly, and how that could contrast SO WELL with brash less-apparently mature Lin's Lee. I love their relationship, and how ... well, she's looking out for him. What about him looking out for her, a little? How much do we know about *her* as a daemon? Does his brashness rub off on her? what does that look like? If you wanted to roll it into canon Events of the second book, and (redacted in case you're not familiar with it etc), I'm very here for it, but obviously not required.
UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Aloysius Fogg/Clayton Sharpe (Undeadwood)
Miriam Landisman/Arabella Whitlock (Undeadwood)
Fanfiction
Miriam Landisman/Arabella Whitlock (Undeadwood) -- oh god, all the comfort fic after the canon ending. As physical or as emotional or both as you like.
Aloysius Fogg/Clayton Sharpe (Undeadwood) -- Welp. As fix-it or as brutal canon as you want. And as sexually explicit or just laden-glances as you want. Two smokingly hot, burningly competent men, yes please. Some possible leaping off points.
-- Sharpe braced for death but also desperately -- for ALL the reasons including 'dude, I thought we had a Thing together' -- trying to get through to Fogg during the duel. Fuck.
-- Fogg alone now, regaining his feelings -- ALL of them -- for Sharpe, six days later... ow. I'm here for it, though.
-- or as Fixit as you want, however you want. Maybe Fogg never loses his feelings. Maybe they figure out a way to fake Sharpe's death and ride off into the sunset together with the profits and/or meet up years later. Maybe Fogg real respectfully turns his back and lets Sharpe go?
General loves: I've got a lightly rotating list from yuletide that you can check out via the tags. For a challenge like this, where the emphasis is a little more on 'short and sweet', I'm very here for, say, a sex/afterglow scene that showcases the characters, or something else utterly mundane to hang a vignette from (making a meal, sharpening a weapon, making something). I love Actual Drabbles (100 words! I will die on this hill! etc), 5 things (or as-many-or-as-few-as-you-like things) fics, basically you do not have to do a plot here, ever. Unless you want to. Feel free to grab a concept from another fandom/prompt here and apply it to whatever we matched on, too.
Things I love in my sex scenes: laughter and affections; consensual and enthusiastic: power play, pain play, boundary play; worship and adoration.
ART: I flounder still some about what makes a useful art prompt for the Original Works area. I love vibrant colours, digital art, watercolours, um. Things I like to see! Characters being happy and content together, or excited/pleased about [a thing]. I love detailed backgrounds, but ha, that seems like a mean thing when the fic expectations start as low as 300, so don't fret about that.
DNWs: Hmm, Character death (unless it's UnDeadwood or otherwise canonical), excessive violence, characters getting their hopes up and then getting those hopes dashed (basically, if you could describe a character as 'crestfallen' I'm going to be unable to keep reading, unless I know it turns out all okay in the end, or that the character gets to process it properly. Yeah, I don't know why, either. I think it's a weird mutation of an embarrassment squick).
The last of us
Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Ellie/Riley (The Last of Us)
Ellie/Original Female Character (The Last of Us)
Specific loves about TLOU: I love stories about the sort of steel-forged-bonds (sexual and/or gen equally) that form between people after they've Gone Through Traumatic Shit together. I also really like seeing the communities that form, figuring out the practicalities of life after the apocalypse together. I also really like the atmosphere of abandoned places that was so present in the TLOU game (see also the trailer for The Quiet Place Part 2, it's amazing for that) -- of being in places and areas of the world that are supposed to be full of people, now empty.
For all that this is a not-quite zombie apocalypse, I'd prefer less graphic violence this time around. Aftermath of (and comfort from) violence/sexual assault/traumatic Thing, I'm here for. Also happy with gen cameos from Joel, or Tommy, or whoever wants to wander through ;)
Brief ideas:
Dina/Ellie -- Dina Is Fine. Or maybe rescued after a TLOU2 traumatic experience (I'm very here for hurt/comfort, honestly), but is fundamentally fierce and Alive, take that, hopefully deliberately misdirecting, unsettling trailer :D I love them together, and -- just watched the trailer again for the first time in a bit, and goddamn, how fierce and forward Dina is, and that achingly hopeful and pleased and disbelieving smile of Ellie's and fuck everything. Thank you Naughty Dog for this content. So, idea if you want it: Dina gets Taken, and Ellie burns down the world to get her back, successfully. They are both fucked up in various ways, and figuring out a new relationship when they'd barely started the first...
Ellie/OFC -- ohhh, I'd love the story of Ellie getting that tattoo from her then-current girlfriend, Kat (says the official cosplay write up). Why that tattoo for Ellie? Tell me about Kat -- that's some skilled work she's done there! (if also telling me their breakup, amicable breakup infinitely preferred)
Ellie/Riley -- oh god. The DLC was the most amazing, heartwrenching thing I watched in a while (I was Let's Playing all the way). I'm good with Fuckit, She Lives. Or Ellie processing her loss, or letters between them while Riley's away before the DLC, or an additional DLC scene etc.
ORIGINAL WORKS *deep breath* here we go...
Anchoress/Woman Outside Her Cell (Original Work) --ohhhh so if we matched on something else, and you’re wondering wtf an anchoress is, try this: https://catvalente.livejournal.com/371419.html a woman who develops comparatively immense power and respect, locking herself away to study to do it. The rules say no man in your cell after midnight, but we all know that’s because women fly entirely under the radar. So, women come to her for advice, and one woman in particular takes it upon herself to care for and serve the anchoress, and maybe to learn all many, many things the anchoress is interested in teaching... Things I freaking love: religious iconography/rituals. Secular rituals, intimate, secret rituals that build up between two people. Here for a little consensual sadomasochism, given the whole flagellation concept, too, if that’s also your cup of tea.
Psychic Kids On The Run & Protective Sentient Location (Original Work): Seeing
rachelmanija’s Chocolate Box letter was in fact the whole nudge that got me to sign up, so I’m going to hopefully not rudely C&P her thing here, lightly modified for my particular jams (um, I wave, in the extremely unlikely, hilarious eventuality that we matched here), because it sums up my feels about this ‘pairing’, such as it is, perfectly:I love kids on the run and having to cope without adults, and kids with cool powers that mean Mean People are After Them. I am deeply into sentient, protective locations of basically any stripe including, as Rachel says: kids being protected by the local haunted house/sentient spaceship/abandoned theme park/etc. Please have fun describing their powers, how they bond with each other, how the sentient location makes things cozy for them or they make it cozy, how they and it fight back against their enemies, the comfort of finally feeling safe, etc. I am totally okay with the “badies slink away without confrontation/cut to after the battle” if you don’t want to get too deeply into the politics of the rest of the world building. Happy ending very much preferred here.
Dragon & Human Child (Original Work) Does the child wander in for the weekends? Is the child lost? Wandered in from Away to stay? A village sacrifice? Is the dragon fantasy equivalent of snapchatting their friends with a “That’s not my human child…/I didn’t own a human child, now apparently, I do.” How does the dragon adapt to the child? How does the child adapt to the dragon? What do they teach each other?
Preferred no grieving parents/the child being taken away from the grieving dragon at the end. Hard no to ‘Puff the magic dragon’, endings here. Bonus points for the “child grows up and leaves the nest with the dragon proudly waving them off,” type vibes, but not compulsory, obv.
Female Knight/Female Bath Attendant with a Crush (Original Work) I’m very here for hypercompetent, physically strong, queer female knight, bruised and exhausted from battle, being tended for by skilled attendant (in as many ways ‘cared for’ as you like… ;), seriously, as gen hurt/comfort, or as explicitly sexual, or both! as you like…)
Governess in Gothic Mansion/Female Ghost Super here for gothic mansion tropes, but also competent governess who isn’t (too) freaked out by the spectral going ons. Also here for night/dream visitations, willing possessions (“how long has it been, since you’ve had a body?” etc).
Gay Pirate Assassin/Gay Pirate Assassin (Original Works) Adventures on the high seas! Daggers in the back! I realized this one doesn’t specify gender/s. Go for your life, women/men/non-binary people on the high seas. Maybe working together on the same ship, or on different ships meeting up to exchange information. Or, as I so brilliantly saw it on tumblr “Dearly detesteds…” where they’re in competition and ‘hate’ each other, but also would grieve terribly if one were to die… (I super love enemies-to-lovers, as a datapoint)
Lady locked in a tower/Lady who turns into a hawk Why is the lady locked in the tower? Can the hawklady turn back and forth at will, or is she spending most of her time as an especially smart seeming bird? Is there maybe an actual Ladyhawk/beauty and the beast thing going on? Any answer to any of these questions would delight me.
Shelter Dog & Nonconformist Witch I have no idea what nonconformist witch means here, but go nuts with it. Does it mean she's off doing her own rituals without a coven and/or not being a traditionalist Wiccan? Because I'm here for that. Or here bog standard Wiccan/Pagan, too. I'm deeply here for witchy aesthetics and mundane spellcasting and the like. Also SUPER here for Shelter Dog being kind of fucked up and gradually gradually learning how to trust each other. (Doesn't even have to be a shelter dog, honestly. I could see a 'shivering, soaked dog appearing on her back porch, and the "that's not my dog/I didn't *have* a dog..." snapchats :D) just as equally as casting a spell to call for her familiar in a crowded animal shelter. Up to you! https://maharetr.tumblr.com/tagged/magic and related tags have some pointers if you're after aesthetic ideas.
Vampire Queen/Female Vampire Hunter Posing As Lady's Maid (Original Work) Super fucking here for the power dynamic that appears horribly unequal (employer vs employee for eg), but is made far more equal by employee's secret Skills. Obv the maid starts hesitating about killing this gorgeous vampire... (does the vampire know there's a hunter in her mansion/castle? etc)
Wandering Lady Knight/Far-Away Princess she writes letters to (OW) Here's one where I'd be willing to go a touch of homophobia, or at least a good splash of forbidden romance, maybe -- the knight has been banished from the kingdom for her illicit affair with the princess, as an example, and is clandestinely writing letters home, sneaking them through a network of spies/supporters, and then the princess's replies, ostensibly about other things, to other people, but threaded through with the knowledge of who she's actually writing for...
His Dark Materials (TV series)
Lyra Belacqua & Ma Costa (His Dark Materials (TV))
Lee Scoresby & Hester (His Dark Materials (TV))
Lyra and Ma Costa -- I'm weak for 'I didn't birth you, but you're My Child now'. (see also Molly Weasley etc). Lyra learning how to live on a boat, learning the Gyptian ways, and generally being cosy would suit me down to the ground, if you wanted a leaping off point. Or wherever you wanted to take it.
Lee & Hester -- We didn't get to see a whole lot of Hester in the TV show, but I still ping so hard off how calm and mature Hester is from the books, honestly, and how that could contrast SO WELL with brash less-apparently mature Lin's Lee. I love their relationship, and how ... well, she's looking out for him. What about him looking out for her, a little? How much do we know about *her* as a daemon? Does his brashness rub off on her? what does that look like? If you wanted to roll it into canon Events of the second book, and (redacted in case you're not familiar with it etc), I'm very here for it, but obviously not required.
UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Aloysius Fogg/Clayton Sharpe (Undeadwood)
Miriam Landisman/Arabella Whitlock (Undeadwood)
Fanfiction
Miriam Landisman/Arabella Whitlock (Undeadwood) -- oh god, all the comfort fic after the canon ending. As physical or as emotional or both as you like.
Aloysius Fogg/Clayton Sharpe (Undeadwood) -- Welp. As fix-it or as brutal canon as you want. And as sexually explicit or just laden-glances as you want. Two smokingly hot, burningly competent men, yes please. Some possible leaping off points.
-- Sharpe braced for death but also desperately -- for ALL the reasons including 'dude, I thought we had a Thing together' -- trying to get through to Fogg during the duel. Fuck.
-- Fogg alone now, regaining his feelings -- ALL of them -- for Sharpe, six days later... ow. I'm here for it, though.
-- or as Fixit as you want, however you want. Maybe Fogg never loses his feelings. Maybe they figure out a way to fake Sharpe's death and ride off into the sunset together with the profits and/or meet up years later. Maybe Fogg real respectfully turns his back and lets Sharpe go?
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