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Dear Chocolaterie,
Greetings! I'm so excited! I hope you are, too, and that you have fun with this.
This got embarrassingly long. In my weak defense, I've got one fandom with a good hundred hours of content and a bunch of complicated, context-heavy relationships, and fandoms of a music video of to-be-named characters, and "ooh, neat" pairing ideas. In retrospect, this letter is the first time I've tried to organise my thoughts about The Last of Us, and, welp. I'm sorry/hope we mesh somewhere. If we somehow didn't match on said game, note that there's Major Spoilers for TLOU part 2 under the cut. If we did match somewhere else, know that I'm delighted to read your fic! I just haven't had the same hundreds of hours of game play worth of thinking about it under my belt...
BUT! Before you venture under the cut: If you signed up with one of these fandoms/pairings because you had An Idea, write it. Hit up my DNWs just in case? But WRITE IT. Have fun with it! If you're after ideas. um. I have a lot of feelings.
Concept ideas, from last year's letter: I've got a lightly rotating list from my dear creator/dear writer tags that you're welcome to check out. 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.
Happy places:
Hurt/comfort, both emotional and physical, especially after some sort of trauma. Finding a new/better/different way to be in the world after wrenching change.
Characters hurling themselves into harm's way/doing terrible things rather than having a loved one take the hit/be forced to do the thing.
Characters shaving/brushing hair/tending to each other as quiet acts of devotion or service. Esp if one can't do it themselves because of injury etc, but also just because maybe they're exhausted or had a bad day, and having someone take care of you is deeply soothing.
Making spaces cosy/habitable esp in post-apoca settings or settings of scarcity: no stable home, or in the middle of a ruin etc)
Happy-sex-scene places: laughing during sex, happy intimate smiling moments. Edging and overstimulation. Pleasurepain. "Forced" orgasms, of the consensual "character A's already come X times and is exhausted and character B leans in and is all 'one more?' and makes them, type. Restraining people using body weight, or just hands. Manhandling. Praisekink. Being tender to someone in subspace. Threesome territory: character A praising and talking character B through character C deliciously wrecking B. Both A and C deliciously wrecking B. Aftercare, esp the: "okay, we all need electrolytes and to pass out together after that" type.
My list of DNWs is never esp long, but it's even shorter this year. Several of these fandoms have the potential to be or are already mired in dark places, and I'm not adverse to you going there, especially if it's in past tense and the characters are processing it in the present (see that H/C up there). This is up to and including being okay with rape/non-con, homophobia and transphobia, family violence, child abuse, off-screen death of a loved one, etc.
About the only hard limit I've got, honestly, is 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).
I vastly prefer the word 'come' rather than 'cum' in allll uses. I'm not a fan of humiliation talk (slut/whore etc). I'm also entirely okay with not explicitly negotiating kink/intense sex. I'm entirely okay with 'it's tagged consensual kink, therefore they talked about it off-camera' and/or okay with flatout under-negotiated kink, as long as everyone ends up having a good time.
Fandoms:
The Last of Us
I watched the game via Christopher Odd's streaming. Before I started on the endgame section, I wrote on tumblr that I desperately wanted Abby & Lev to find happiness, and I wanted Ellie to find peace, but I didn't think that was going to happen for either/any of them. Mainly because I'd been convinced that Ellie was going to kill Abby. I really didn't want her to kill Abby. I fucking LOVEHATELOVE that Ellie burning her relationship with Dina to go and kill Abby meant that Ellie saved Abby's (and Lev's) life, and that the implication was they did in fact hopefully all find that.
Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us).
God, they're so good to together, and such messes. If you wanted to emotionally deep-delve: I feel like we got Ellie's pov on their relationship in the game, obv, but I'd love to know Dina's. Where/when/why Dina falling in love (and falling into ride-and-die So Hard) before the game started. Like, that's some fucking de-VOTION girl. Ino the Doylist take is that Ellie needed a sidekick (and THANK you, ND for the lesbians), but tell me that Watsonian take.
Did she take Ellie back after the end? There's so many conflicting signs -- the bracelet back on Ellie's hand, yes, but also all her stuff still at the house, welp. If Dina did, what did Ellie do to regain Dina's trust? If Dina didn't, how does she feel about Ellie now? (vastly prefer an ending of both of them making peace with wherever each of them end up)
If you wanted to go cosy and/or short: I loved the farm sequence, but watched it on tenterhooks the whole time, feeling like it was a fragile, pretending-things-were-okay existence, even before Tommy offered Ellie that fix (I like the analogy that I think Neil made about how Dina *knew* she was in a relationship with someone with hefty substance issues, and it was only going to be a matter of time...). So, WAY post-game, their relationship kintsugi-ed back together and whole again in a new shape. What does actual peace look like for them?
Dina/Ellie/Jesse (The Last of Us)
I love Jesse so much. I love his ribbing of Ellie at the start of the game, and the momentous (to me) way he framed his question about Dina's pregnancy "Do you know if she's going to keep it?"/"I don't" felt so much ... "it's her body, her choice" doesn't even come close to how much both of them saw Dina's autonomy as paramount. I was, and am, so impressed. I don't know how you felt about it, obviously. I don't think there was ever time for Jesse to let on that he knew Dina was pregnant. If you're willing, a conversation between the two of them that maintains that epic level of bodily autonomy would blow my mind with the happy. Where it's necessary for Dina to be like "yes, I want you to be dad as well as father to this baby." And Jesse being sobbingly relieved, I imagine, but also having been willing to hear 'I'm having an abortion' or 'no you don't get to be a part of this'.
I am EXTREMELY here for, say, Dina still wanting both of them, and Jesse being very open to that idea, and Ellie gradually getting comfortable with shifting from Jesse as friend and trusted teammate to lover. Bonus points for Ellie and Jesse bonding over how much Dina drives them nuts <3. Bonus points with chocolate on top for say, Jesse teaching Ellie the finer points of knowledge from his lengthy relationship with Dina, *on* Dina ;) Feel very free to stretch out the days they spent in the theatre as long as you damn well want. The revenge dramas can totally take the way back seat to the relationship dramas ;) Hell, totally here for Dina and Jesse actually persuading Ellie that happiness is more important than revenge, dammit, and the three of them post-apoca road tripping home, Jesse and Ellie fussing over Dina the whole way.
(Less interested in, say, identity crises based on the gender of the person they're sleeping with. I lean towards "people have sex/relationships/love with people" type queerness, no 'am I gay/straight/whatdoesit~mean' required)
If you're writing these threesome I'd *really* rather a canon-divergence where Jesse doesn't die. If you wanted to stick a bit closer to canon: I legit thought Abby had shot Tommy dead, right up until he appeared at the farmhouse. Maybe Jesse also isn't shot quite so fatally as we thought. Maybe Tommy crawls over, also grievously wounded, and keeps both of them in the 'grievously wounded, permanently maimed' category, rather than the fatal... What would post-game life look like with Jesse alive, and Dina/Jesse/Ellie in a relationship together? Does JJ's name change? Does Ellie still leave?
Abby & Lev (The Last of Us)
I loved watching them become ride or die through the Seattle days, and then there's also the *months* of helping each other survive in that slave camp. Suggestions I LOVE about this friendship: shared trauma. Sure, it's the zombie apocalypse, everyone's got trauma. But these two now have very specific triggers (smells, tastes, times of day, who knows) that they know how to tread around and/or help each other through. Comforting each other through nightmares and flashbacks and helping each other into a new normal is my jam. Other pleasing things: Lev still finding comfort and meaning in Seraphite rituals, even (or esp) if he's presumably doing them on the quiet now. Fireflies helping Lev into the world outside the Seraphites. Side note: I think texts can depict homophobia/transphobia and not *be* said phobic, and the game did it really, really well. I'm totally okay with, say, flashback depictions of transphobia from the Santa Barbara assholes (I am 1000% sure that say, someone found out about Lev being trans, and Abby flat out murdered them before they could blab and make Lev a point of Interest). I'd much rather the Fireflies as a whole being entirely accepting of Lev's transness. He deserves safety and peace and a place to flourish.
Bonus suggestion: when the leaks first came out, I very carefully didn't look too close, but did see ppl complaining the game was transphobic. For a large chunk of my first watch through, I thought Abby was trans, and was braced for "she's got the strength of a man still! And can therefore do things other women can't!" transphobia. Which, obviously and to my great relief, didn't happen. I'd be very curious in a TLOU Abby & Lev where Abby is also trans, and the Fireflies are that accepting of transness that she just Is (Her dad saying "That's my girl/daughter" in the flashbacks hits esp pleasingly. And as a medical person, he and colleagues assisting her with transitioning still maps so fucking well.)
Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
i SOB. Joel was a fucking terrible person, and also such a good dad to Sarah and then Ellie. Troy mentioning that the moment where Abby turns the tables on them was an "ah. fuck. I let my guard down and now my past is catching up to me." type moment. But he DID get those years in Jackson of seeing another, less-violent way of being able to live, and Ellie seeing all the ways he did that as she wanders around his house, After. Fucks me up. all of it fucks me up. Ellie wondering if Joel even knew she was there when he died kills me. Ellie wondering if it made it better or worse for him if he did know D E S T R O Y S me.
Suggestion: I...I don't actually believe in ghosts, ftr, but I like the idea of them very much, esp the 'dying suddenly/violently binds you to earth for a while". It sounds hokey as *fuck* writing it down, but maybe a story of Joel watching Ellie, grief-shattered and wandering Joel's house, and Joel...knowing he can't talk to her, but trying to leave her messages/signs anyway. What would he say? How would he say it?
Other suggestion: I kind of love the implication in Ellie's journal that the entirety of Jackson knew that Cat and Ellie were dating (side-side note: Ellie staying up all night, watching, terrified that she's infected Cat after they kiss for the first time? oh my HEART) and that Joel was the only one who didn't know. Idk what it says about me that I like the idea that Joel would have been homophobic before Ellie came out to him, and that's *why* she's worried about how he'll react. He strikes me as the masculine macho type for whom queers (derogatory) were Over There. Who'd just never questioned macho-maleness and had in fact benefited the fuck out of it. And then Ellie comes along and is like "so I'm kinda really fucking queer (positive)" not that she would necessarily have those words, but still. I'd love to see the 180 his brain and worldview would have to do to come all the way around to him awkwardly but fiercely defending her at the dance. Which he *does* because it's *Ellie* (heart DESTROYED, again). Permission granted to totally sidestep the 'did you lie to me about the Fireflies'? plot thread if you want. It can totally happen well before she confronts him about the Fireflies. Or layer it in for added, agonizing angst! :D).
Call it dreaming
Male fighter & Male guitarist (Call it dreaming)
Female hiker & Male guitarist (Call it dreaming)
Female guitarist/Female guitarist's girlfriend/Male harmonica player (Call it dreaming)
Female guitarist/Female guitarist's girlfriend & Male harmonica player (Call it dreaming)
Female guitarist/Female guitarist's girlfriend (Call it dreaming)
Music video is here
I love this song so much. It's so comforting and filled with found family and finding ways to make things okay now (because they weren't before).
I both want to know the day-to-day routine, and never want to find out the why, of what is up with that *truck*? Does it need refueling? Can it go forever, but when it has passengers it lets them fill it up, as a treat for both parties? Do they need to pay for the gas? Does the truck seek out people in need? How long do people stay onboard? Does the truck seek people out when the dog needs company? About the only ending I don't want here is 'they're all dead and heading for the afterlife'. And, probably obviously, no dog death (dog harm, as if in: dog needs minor medical care, so the dog and the truck pick up the male guitarist who can buy the first aid kit and generally kickstart this iteration of passengers, A-OK)
With the various relationships, I'm super interested in the reasons they get on the road, or what brought the truck to them (them to the truck? who knows) And the reasons they're openly willing to talk about, and the reasons they initially want to keep to themselves. Like, absolutely, hiker, you went on a hike and got very lost. But any car could have helped her out there. The truck picked you up because reasons. Maybe you stay long enough to talk about the real reasons, maybe you just spend a while, get (whatever it is she needs) and leaves refreshed, or with a Decision Made, or life altered in someway... Maybe the truck drops her off at [thing she's been avoiding, but is now ready to face] Or maybe she develops connections with [other characters]. Ditto any of the pairings that catch your (the writer's!) eye...
Feel free to interweave any of the pairings/stories, or just focus on one etc etc I hesitated about nominating the male guitarist in ship pairings because that feels surprisingly close to RPF in my head. But if you wanted to give them a not-Sam name and a non-band backstory, you're welcome to turn those friendships/connections to relationships should the whim take you.
Crossover fandom
Lara Croft (Tomb Raider Legend Timeline)/Diana Prince | Wonder Woman (DCEU)
The ART. Stjepan Sejic's done a bunch, feel free to use any or all of it. I'm wildly here for Diana losing her invincibility for a bit, and Lara being like: "oh, first time getting shot, huh? cool, here's what we do." and Lara patching her up. EXTREMELY here for the lasso of truth, and *thank you* Chris Pine for making it look like it hurt to be on the receiving end of, and Lara being into both those things. See the happy things list above, if you're after more.
Original works
Space Rover Whose Battery is Almost Dead & Rescuer (OW)
Oh god. So there's this XKCD comic on the Spirit rover that genuinely makes me so upset every time I see it, and then I saw this prompt pairing and please a rescuer (female astronaut?) to tenderly clean off her solar panels, wake her up, and tell her what a good job she did?
Greetings! I'm so excited! I hope you are, too, and that you have fun with this.
This got embarrassingly long. In my weak defense, I've got one fandom with a good hundred hours of content and a bunch of complicated, context-heavy relationships, and fandoms of a music video of to-be-named characters, and "ooh, neat" pairing ideas. In retrospect, this letter is the first time I've tried to organise my thoughts about The Last of Us, and, welp. I'm sorry/hope we mesh somewhere. If we somehow didn't match on said game, note that there's Major Spoilers for TLOU part 2 under the cut. If we did match somewhere else, know that I'm delighted to read your fic! I just haven't had the same hundreds of hours of game play worth of thinking about it under my belt...
BUT! Before you venture under the cut: If you signed up with one of these fandoms/pairings because you had An Idea, write it. Hit up my DNWs just in case? But WRITE IT. Have fun with it! If you're after ideas. um. I have a lot of feelings.
Concept ideas, from last year's letter: I've got a lightly rotating list from my dear creator/dear writer tags that you're welcome to check out. 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.
Happy places:
Hurt/comfort, both emotional and physical, especially after some sort of trauma. Finding a new/better/different way to be in the world after wrenching change.
Characters hurling themselves into harm's way/doing terrible things rather than having a loved one take the hit/be forced to do the thing.
Characters shaving/brushing hair/tending to each other as quiet acts of devotion or service. Esp if one can't do it themselves because of injury etc, but also just because maybe they're exhausted or had a bad day, and having someone take care of you is deeply soothing.
Making spaces cosy/habitable esp in post-apoca settings or settings of scarcity: no stable home, or in the middle of a ruin etc)
Happy-sex-scene places: laughing during sex, happy intimate smiling moments. Edging and overstimulation. Pleasurepain. "Forced" orgasms, of the consensual "character A's already come X times and is exhausted and character B leans in and is all 'one more?' and makes them, type. Restraining people using body weight, or just hands. Manhandling. Praisekink. Being tender to someone in subspace. Threesome territory: character A praising and talking character B through character C deliciously wrecking B. Both A and C deliciously wrecking B. Aftercare, esp the: "okay, we all need electrolytes and to pass out together after that" type.
My list of DNWs is never esp long, but it's even shorter this year. Several of these fandoms have the potential to be or are already mired in dark places, and I'm not adverse to you going there, especially if it's in past tense and the characters are processing it in the present (see that H/C up there). This is up to and including being okay with rape/non-con, homophobia and transphobia, family violence, child abuse, off-screen death of a loved one, etc.
About the only hard limit I've got, honestly, is 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).
I vastly prefer the word 'come' rather than 'cum' in allll uses. I'm not a fan of humiliation talk (slut/whore etc). I'm also entirely okay with not explicitly negotiating kink/intense sex. I'm entirely okay with 'it's tagged consensual kink, therefore they talked about it off-camera' and/or okay with flatout under-negotiated kink, as long as everyone ends up having a good time.
Fandoms:
The Last of Us
I watched the game via Christopher Odd's streaming. Before I started on the endgame section, I wrote on tumblr that I desperately wanted Abby & Lev to find happiness, and I wanted Ellie to find peace, but I didn't think that was going to happen for either/any of them. Mainly because I'd been convinced that Ellie was going to kill Abby. I really didn't want her to kill Abby. I fucking LOVEHATELOVE that Ellie burning her relationship with Dina to go and kill Abby meant that Ellie saved Abby's (and Lev's) life, and that the implication was they did in fact hopefully all find that.
Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us).
God, they're so good to together, and such messes. If you wanted to emotionally deep-delve: I feel like we got Ellie's pov on their relationship in the game, obv, but I'd love to know Dina's. Where/when/why Dina falling in love (and falling into ride-and-die So Hard) before the game started. Like, that's some fucking de-VOTION girl. Ino the Doylist take is that Ellie needed a sidekick (and THANK you, ND for the lesbians), but tell me that Watsonian take.
Did she take Ellie back after the end? There's so many conflicting signs -- the bracelet back on Ellie's hand, yes, but also all her stuff still at the house, welp. If Dina did, what did Ellie do to regain Dina's trust? If Dina didn't, how does she feel about Ellie now? (vastly prefer an ending of both of them making peace with wherever each of them end up)
If you wanted to go cosy and/or short: I loved the farm sequence, but watched it on tenterhooks the whole time, feeling like it was a fragile, pretending-things-were-okay existence, even before Tommy offered Ellie that fix (I like the analogy that I think Neil made about how Dina *knew* she was in a relationship with someone with hefty substance issues, and it was only going to be a matter of time...). So, WAY post-game, their relationship kintsugi-ed back together and whole again in a new shape. What does actual peace look like for them?
Dina/Ellie/Jesse (The Last of Us)
I love Jesse so much. I love his ribbing of Ellie at the start of the game, and the momentous (to me) way he framed his question about Dina's pregnancy "Do you know if she's going to keep it?"/"I don't" felt so much ... "it's her body, her choice" doesn't even come close to how much both of them saw Dina's autonomy as paramount. I was, and am, so impressed. I don't know how you felt about it, obviously. I don't think there was ever time for Jesse to let on that he knew Dina was pregnant. If you're willing, a conversation between the two of them that maintains that epic level of bodily autonomy would blow my mind with the happy. Where it's necessary for Dina to be like "yes, I want you to be dad as well as father to this baby." And Jesse being sobbingly relieved, I imagine, but also having been willing to hear 'I'm having an abortion' or 'no you don't get to be a part of this'.
I am EXTREMELY here for, say, Dina still wanting both of them, and Jesse being very open to that idea, and Ellie gradually getting comfortable with shifting from Jesse as friend and trusted teammate to lover. Bonus points for Ellie and Jesse bonding over how much Dina drives them nuts <3. Bonus points with chocolate on top for say, Jesse teaching Ellie the finer points of knowledge from his lengthy relationship with Dina, *on* Dina ;) Feel very free to stretch out the days they spent in the theatre as long as you damn well want. The revenge dramas can totally take the way back seat to the relationship dramas ;) Hell, totally here for Dina and Jesse actually persuading Ellie that happiness is more important than revenge, dammit, and the three of them post-apoca road tripping home, Jesse and Ellie fussing over Dina the whole way.
(Less interested in, say, identity crises based on the gender of the person they're sleeping with. I lean towards "people have sex/relationships/love with people" type queerness, no 'am I gay/straight/whatdoesit~mean' required)
If you're writing these threesome I'd *really* rather a canon-divergence where Jesse doesn't die. If you wanted to stick a bit closer to canon: I legit thought Abby had shot Tommy dead, right up until he appeared at the farmhouse. Maybe Jesse also isn't shot quite so fatally as we thought. Maybe Tommy crawls over, also grievously wounded, and keeps both of them in the 'grievously wounded, permanently maimed' category, rather than the fatal... What would post-game life look like with Jesse alive, and Dina/Jesse/Ellie in a relationship together? Does JJ's name change? Does Ellie still leave?
Abby & Lev (The Last of Us)
I loved watching them become ride or die through the Seattle days, and then there's also the *months* of helping each other survive in that slave camp. Suggestions I LOVE about this friendship: shared trauma. Sure, it's the zombie apocalypse, everyone's got trauma. But these two now have very specific triggers (smells, tastes, times of day, who knows) that they know how to tread around and/or help each other through. Comforting each other through nightmares and flashbacks and helping each other into a new normal is my jam. Other pleasing things: Lev still finding comfort and meaning in Seraphite rituals, even (or esp) if he's presumably doing them on the quiet now. Fireflies helping Lev into the world outside the Seraphites. Side note: I think texts can depict homophobia/transphobia and not *be* said phobic, and the game did it really, really well. I'm totally okay with, say, flashback depictions of transphobia from the Santa Barbara assholes (I am 1000% sure that say, someone found out about Lev being trans, and Abby flat out murdered them before they could blab and make Lev a point of Interest). I'd much rather the Fireflies as a whole being entirely accepting of Lev's transness. He deserves safety and peace and a place to flourish.
Bonus suggestion: when the leaks first came out, I very carefully didn't look too close, but did see ppl complaining the game was transphobic. For a large chunk of my first watch through, I thought Abby was trans, and was braced for "she's got the strength of a man still! And can therefore do things other women can't!" transphobia. Which, obviously and to my great relief, didn't happen. I'd be very curious in a TLOU Abby & Lev where Abby is also trans, and the Fireflies are that accepting of transness that she just Is (Her dad saying "That's my girl/daughter" in the flashbacks hits esp pleasingly. And as a medical person, he and colleagues assisting her with transitioning still maps so fucking well.)
Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
i SOB. Joel was a fucking terrible person, and also such a good dad to Sarah and then Ellie. Troy mentioning that the moment where Abby turns the tables on them was an "ah. fuck. I let my guard down and now my past is catching up to me." type moment. But he DID get those years in Jackson of seeing another, less-violent way of being able to live, and Ellie seeing all the ways he did that as she wanders around his house, After. Fucks me up. all of it fucks me up. Ellie wondering if Joel even knew she was there when he died kills me. Ellie wondering if it made it better or worse for him if he did know D E S T R O Y S me.
Suggestion: I...I don't actually believe in ghosts, ftr, but I like the idea of them very much, esp the 'dying suddenly/violently binds you to earth for a while". It sounds hokey as *fuck* writing it down, but maybe a story of Joel watching Ellie, grief-shattered and wandering Joel's house, and Joel...knowing he can't talk to her, but trying to leave her messages/signs anyway. What would he say? How would he say it?
Other suggestion: I kind of love the implication in Ellie's journal that the entirety of Jackson knew that Cat and Ellie were dating (side-side note: Ellie staying up all night, watching, terrified that she's infected Cat after they kiss for the first time? oh my HEART) and that Joel was the only one who didn't know. Idk what it says about me that I like the idea that Joel would have been homophobic before Ellie came out to him, and that's *why* she's worried about how he'll react. He strikes me as the masculine macho type for whom queers (derogatory) were Over There. Who'd just never questioned macho-maleness and had in fact benefited the fuck out of it. And then Ellie comes along and is like "so I'm kinda really fucking queer (positive)" not that she would necessarily have those words, but still. I'd love to see the 180 his brain and worldview would have to do to come all the way around to him awkwardly but fiercely defending her at the dance. Which he *does* because it's *Ellie* (heart DESTROYED, again). Permission granted to totally sidestep the 'did you lie to me about the Fireflies'? plot thread if you want. It can totally happen well before she confronts him about the Fireflies. Or layer it in for added, agonizing angst! :D).
Call it dreaming
Male fighter & Male guitarist (Call it dreaming)
Female hiker & Male guitarist (Call it dreaming)
Female guitarist/Female guitarist's girlfriend/Male harmonica player (Call it dreaming)
Female guitarist/Female guitarist's girlfriend & Male harmonica player (Call it dreaming)
Female guitarist/Female guitarist's girlfriend (Call it dreaming)
Music video is here
I love this song so much. It's so comforting and filled with found family and finding ways to make things okay now (because they weren't before).
I both want to know the day-to-day routine, and never want to find out the why, of what is up with that *truck*? Does it need refueling? Can it go forever, but when it has passengers it lets them fill it up, as a treat for both parties? Do they need to pay for the gas? Does the truck seek out people in need? How long do people stay onboard? Does the truck seek people out when the dog needs company? About the only ending I don't want here is 'they're all dead and heading for the afterlife'. And, probably obviously, no dog death (dog harm, as if in: dog needs minor medical care, so the dog and the truck pick up the male guitarist who can buy the first aid kit and generally kickstart this iteration of passengers, A-OK)
With the various relationships, I'm super interested in the reasons they get on the road, or what brought the truck to them (them to the truck? who knows) And the reasons they're openly willing to talk about, and the reasons they initially want to keep to themselves. Like, absolutely, hiker, you went on a hike and got very lost. But any car could have helped her out there. The truck picked you up because reasons. Maybe you stay long enough to talk about the real reasons, maybe you just spend a while, get (whatever it is she needs) and leaves refreshed, or with a Decision Made, or life altered in someway... Maybe the truck drops her off at [thing she's been avoiding, but is now ready to face] Or maybe she develops connections with [other characters]. Ditto any of the pairings that catch your (the writer's!) eye...
Feel free to interweave any of the pairings/stories, or just focus on one etc etc I hesitated about nominating the male guitarist in ship pairings because that feels surprisingly close to RPF in my head. But if you wanted to give them a not-Sam name and a non-band backstory, you're welcome to turn those friendships/connections to relationships should the whim take you.
Crossover fandom
Lara Croft (Tomb Raider Legend Timeline)/Diana Prince | Wonder Woman (DCEU)
The ART. Stjepan Sejic's done a bunch, feel free to use any or all of it. I'm wildly here for Diana losing her invincibility for a bit, and Lara being like: "oh, first time getting shot, huh? cool, here's what we do." and Lara patching her up. EXTREMELY here for the lasso of truth, and *thank you* Chris Pine for making it look like it hurt to be on the receiving end of, and Lara being into both those things. See the happy things list above, if you're after more.
Original works
Space Rover Whose Battery is Almost Dead & Rescuer (OW)
Oh god. So there's this XKCD comic on the Spirit rover that genuinely makes me so upset every time I see it, and then I saw this prompt pairing and please a rescuer (female astronaut?) to tenderly clean off her solar panels, wake her up, and tell her what a good job she did?
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