kimaracretak (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fiachairecht) wrote2019-08-01 12:39 pm
fiachairecht) wrote2019-08-01 12:39 pm
darkest night 2019
Hello friend, it is time for darkfic and I am so excited to see what you will write for me! If you want inspiration beyond this letter I am also ![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
kimaracretak, where I have a small but reflective-of-things-I-like set of bookmarks, and kimaracretak on 8tracks if you want #aesthetic musical inspiration.
I've by and large chosen canons I love for their worldbuilding and mytharcs as well as their characters and relationships, and I am easy to please as long as you stay away from my DNWs (both general and canon-specific), so don't feel like you Have to write any of my specific prompts. Don't read anything into relative lengths of sections, I am equally happy to get something for anything in this letter! Some of these prompts are reused from old letters, and if you have written them for me before, rest assured that I loved your fic, I am simply greedy and would like to see every possible take on my favourite scenarios.
I love everything from short introspection bits to long plotty missionfic to sex scenes as ways to explore character/setting/worldbuilding, and I don't need a lot of romance in my ships: sex for power, manipulation, or just between friends who want to have fun is also great. Please no unrequested ships unless specifically allowed for, but feel free to combine any compatible ones from my requested ones.
Likes || Smut Likes || DNWs || Changeling: The Lost || Critical Role || Crossovers || Once Upon A Fearytale - Snow White Bllod (Album) || The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien || The Magnus Archives || The Southern Reach Trilogy - Jeff Vandermeer || Under the Pendulum Sun - Jeanette Ng
General: CtL is the tabletop game of my whole entire heart and I just want to live in that world a bit more! I have a slight preference for stories set in Arcadia or the Hedge, but absolutely will not say no to Earth-set ones. Sourcebook-wise, I am most familiar with Dancers in the Dusk, Winter Masques, and Night Horrors. I especially love oneiromancy and am super weak for stories that contrast the deep sense of place/setting with changelings' very tenuous sense of self. Adhere as strictly or loosely to game mechanics as feels right for your story.
Requested Tags:
Ambrosia: Mm, characters who want to kill and eat and become theirgods Fae are always a weakness of mine, and Ambrosia is no different. I'd love to see something about her years of transformation - her trades with witches for Glamour, her heists to decorate her hollow, legends of the Gentry that she found and read, Summer Court balls that she went to. Mimicry and murder as acts of love and appreciation, Changelings that she found and ensnared, what happens when someone brings her a captured member of the Gentry. Femslash or gen equally welcome.
Liz Malloy: SO that bit in Night Horrors about how "her oath, however, is not with the Lost of the Emerald Court, but with the season of Spring itself, and Spring has not had its fill of Liz Malloy yet"? That whole entire thing is my favourite sort of thing, and I want to read all the stories about it. Bargaining with eldritch nature, sending mortals and Lost back to her Keeper.
Original Female Darkling or Original Female Elemental: I requested these two specifically because Darkling and Elemental are my two favourite seemings, but honestly - feel free to do whatever you like with this! Pick whatever kith you like, include whichever True Fae or other changelings or hobgoblins or Kindred you want to explore, write femslash or gen as the mood strikes you, I will be thrilled. In terms of specific scenarios, I like explorations of the Hedge, interactions between Changelings and their Fetches, dreamsharing/dreamwalking, and stories about the formation of Motleys. I tend to play ambiguously-willingly-self-destructing-into-True-Fae high-Wyrd/low-Clarity changelings, but am here for whichever combination of Wyrd/Clarity you want to write. Not to be the most predicatable but body horror super super encouraged. If you write shipfic, I would like it to be f/f, but you can pair the changeling with another changeling or a True Fae and make it as healthy or as unhealty/dubcon-y as you like(background m/m or m/f, eg between other members of the Changeling's motley, is totally fine, I just want whatever relationship the fic is About to be f/f).
Rogue Sister: Morpheans and dreamweirdness and betrayal, yes please! The Rogue Sister is my favourite of the lot, what with coming from the void of unfinished dreams and having the potential to break the Wyrd into pieces. What changelings does she bargain with, what stories are told about her, what dreams has she created and visited? Her name implies a connection to the Pale Brother - what does their relationship look like?
General: I consider the campaign guide, artbook, and anything said on Talks Machina nebulously canon at best (and don't know much of what's said on Talks, because I can neither watch live nor afford Alpha) so feel free to conform to/depart from what they say as you wish. I'm familiar with most wider D&D lore/sourcebooks/mechanics from 3.5e onwards, including 5e's unearthed arcana, if you want inspiration for additional worldbuilding/plotting (though I know 4e best). I like fics that take into account mechanical D&D limitations (e.g. characters saying they need to rest before doing any more magic) but DNW characters using the actual real-world terms (e.g. characters saying they're 'out of spell slots'). I adore 4e's epic destinies and would love it if you incorporated relevant ones for the requested characters (special love for World Tree Guardian!Keyleth, Master of the Eternal Hunt!Vex, and Archspell!Delilah with Finger of Death, but, yknow, go wild!). Canonverse Vampire!Cassandra and fey!Vex are welcome AUs for any of these ships. Campaign 1 requests are fairly focussed on dark versions of the protagonists, Campaign 2 requests are fairly focussed on the pirate arc and weird gods.
Tal'Dorei Campaign DNW: Scanlan, Percy, Percy/Vex even as a mention/background, ace!Keyleth
Wildemount Campaign DNW: Nott, Mollymauk, Avantika's E43 ending being treated as a permanent death.
Requested Tags: Tal'Dorei Campaign:
Allura Vysoren: We got some really great glimpses of her leadership during the campaign, so I would love fic of her time in Emon on the Council. I love how she's clever and stoic and sad and still so strong (wizards are v v good for whumpfic, what can I say). Abjuration wizards and political masks are such an interesting combination. How and why did she acquire that ring of mindshielding Matt said she was attuned to? How does Allura feel about the gods and about being married to a paladin? She always seemed to be more Keyleth-like than Kima-like in her relationship to the divine. Allura once said she didn't have 'much' in the way of teleportation circle connections outside of Tal'Dorei, so I'd love to read about connections she has in Vasselheim/Marquet/Wildemount. Allura is canonically an inventor as far as the arcane goes - both the binding on Thordak and the shield over Whitestone were homebrews from Matt - and I'd love fic about her coming up with/developing those spells. What work does she do with dream-magic and shields? What were her adventures with Kima and her old party like pre-Thordak?
Cassandra de Rolo: I love Cass infinitely and in all iterations: dutiful vampire Briarwood daughter, youngest and most lethal Vox Machina member, tired young lady of Whitestone trying to hold her already-fractured city together at the end of the world, dark queen of Whitestone with Raishan as her most trusted advisor. I love vampire!Cass, whether that's canonverse (I am extremely fond of Sylas and Delilah killing + resurrecting her over and over again) or in a VtR setting. Gen is great, femslash is great - I love her with Delilah, Vex, and as a third partner for established Allura/Kima, or with any other ladies you might think of! Cass as a Changeling and Sylas and Delilah as her keepers, space pirate Cass dismantles the Briarwoods' empire, post-escape Cass becomes an eldritch horror and returns to Whitestone as More than anyone planned.
Cassandra/Raishan: Consider: Dark Queen Cassandra regnant in Whitestone with Raishan as her trusted advisor. Or Raishan proving she can be a better mother/lady than Delilah. Cassandra allying with Raishan because it feels right to finally say yes to something like this, and Raishan understands how possessive she feels towards Whitestone. Raishan making a new lair in the forests by Whitestone and Cassandra stumbling upon her sometime post-canon. Raishan seduces/manipulates/convinces Vox Machina!Cassandra away from her friends and the two of them become villain queens.
Delilah/Cassandra: Cassandra as daughter/sacrifice/future Lady is endlessly fascinating to me. How cruel did she grow under the Briarwoods? Did she even mind? I'd love to see Delilah slowly introducing Cassandra to magic, to Vecna, to death. I really love the idea that Delilah might have killed and resurrected Cassandra more than once during their years together, all the better to prepare her to be a sacrifice to an Undying King. Whitestone as a semi-sentient city torn between two masters. Alternate takes on the Grey Hunt, anything involving vampire!Cassandra, Cassandra learning to manipulate her manipulator, AU where Cassandra chooses the Briarwoods for real during the ziggurat battle, AU where Whitestone was never retaken, and Delilah and Cassandra rule together. Cass/Delilah sex (dubcon or consensual) is definitely okay as long as she's 16+ and Sylas isn't involved - I like the disconnect between Delilah seeing her as a daughter but Cass seeing her more as a mentor/queen, and can see powerplay and D/s dynamics going either way. Feel free to OT3 them with Vex, Raishan, or Ripley if that's where your muse goes.
Delilah/Keyleth: There's so many murdered lovers between them that you know it's fair they get the chance to be each other's lover and/or attempted murderer! I am lowkey in denial about Delilah's last death and would love for Keyleth to find another of her clones, anywhere from a year to several hundred years in the future, I am also forever weak for stories about them stranded in the Shadowfell for reasons and stories where Delilah succeeds in turning Vex into her undead servant and Keyleth becomes Delilah's lover to watch over her friend. Dark!Keyleth stories welcome, especially if she's the one who succumbs to the Whitestone corruption effect instead of Percy.
Delilah/Vex: Who's still in denial about Delilah's final death, it's me! I really want there to be another clone hidden somewhere, and Vex finds her and punishes her. Or Delilah gets in over her head with something and somehow convinces Vex to help her. Marquesian adventures - what if they found her while looking for the cloak? Dark AU where Delilah succeeds in turning Vex into her undead servant. I know I mentioned Archspell!Delilah up above, but especially for this ship - she used Finger of Death so specifically and so consistently on Vex and I have all sorts of feelings about how death loves Vex and Delilah is just its instrument. Anything inspired by Cellar Darling's 'The Spell' [youtube link, lyrics in description].
Keyleth/Raishan: I'm obsessed with these vicious near-immortal sorceresses. There's the potential for anything, from hatesex to philosophical arguments, to the reluctant '.....shit we grew old together and you’re the only one left who knows everything about me' realisation. Polymorph/shapeshifting/wildshape sex is good. I like Keyleth domming Raishan if you're playing with D/s elements. There's so much to play with here with obsession and similarity and mirroring (either Keyleth or Raishan turning into each other during sex is um. The Best.) and honestly, feel free to go anywhere with this. I like Keyleth's anger and the amount of pleasure Raishan takes in winding her up. Raishan redemption arcs are fun. Neutral evil ancient dragon luring young true neutral durid into her lair is fun, roleswap AUs (neutral evil ancient druid Keyleth happening upon youngish true neutral dragon Raishan) are fun. I love alternate meeting AUs, or AUs where Raishan chose to infiltrate the Air Ashari in addition to/instead of the Fire Ashari. Raishan-survives AUs are also excellent, whether she survives as herself or as a dracolich/demigod/etc. Raishan using murder to flirt with Keyleth. Raishan coming back from the dead cured of her disease but Wrong(tm) in some other way. Keyleth helping Raishan become a god (questionably on purpose). Keyleth and Raishan take a trip to the Feywild for Reasons. Anything about their mutually complicated relationships with Melora. Loyalty kink stemming from obsession - once every couple decades they try, genuinely, to kill each other, but somehow never quite manage to do it (because they have Feelings) (it takes them like 300 years to figure it out) (they're so uniquely dumb about Feelings as opposed to literally any other aspect of their life I adore them).
Keyleth/Raishan/Allura: Raishan was obsessed with Keyleth and Allura during the fight in Opash's lair - Allura was unconscious twice and a lot of Allura's support was directly to Keyleth - and I would die for the AU where she succeeds in capturing them and having them to help her with whatever ritual she was planning, especially if it involves Keyleth and Allura comfort!sex with voyeur!Raishan. I love alternate-meeting ideas: Allura falling in with Raishan while looking for ways to raise her friends who died fighting Thordak, Raishan picking Keyleth up early in her Aramente and Allura fighting to get her protege back. Keyleth being torn between two mentors, Raishan being obsessed with Allura's hoard of knowledge and Keyleth's life. In canonverse, Raishan in search of godhood with two of the most godless characters in the show as her means of ascension, nhh, I love. Apotheosis, accidental or not. Dark!Keyleth and Dark!Allura (and fics where either/both of them slowly turn darker over the course of the story) are great. I love Changeling: The Lost AUs always, and am super interested in the AU where Raishan was Keyleth's Keeper and Allura is trying to rescue her.
Vesh/The Raven Queen: These two are my favourite of the divine/semi-divine that we meet in campaign 1, and I am absolutely in love with the idea of Vesh possibly playing a version of Nerull to this version of the Raven Queen. Which is to say: pre-Calamity worldbuilding! Did the Raven Queen marry and then displace Vesh? Were they mortal lovers/wives before the ascension to godhood forced them apart (was their marriage originally an attempt by one to save the other, with godhood as an unexpected side effect?) Vesh has a habit of marrying her chosen, and the Raven Queen was and is desperately lonely, I absolutely see her trying to take advantage of that loneliness. Any of these songs used as inspiration would be amazing.
Vex'ahlia: Vex was my first favourite, and I just want to see more of her and her prickly nature magic and determination to be the most. I super love AUs where she takes Saundor's deal, and really anything Feywild-set in general. I love twinsies gen and anything femslash and anything about the weird sort of equilibrium she finds with the Raven Queen. I mentioned in a couple of the ship prompts that necrotic damage seemed to target Vex specifically throughout most of the campaign, so something about her coming to terms with that (or turning into a villain because of it?) would be awesome. A dark take on Vex becoming Pelor's chosen, the twins carving out space for themselves in a VtR or CtL AU.
Requested Tags: Wildemount Campaign:
Avantika: Pirate warlock ladies who hate sleeves and love awakening eldritch horrors, what's not to love? I'm easy tbh, I just want Avantika to win things. Sea battles with other pirates, the last fight on Darktow, dominion over the eldritch drowned world in an AU where Darktow went differently, several nights with Beau in her bed - anything and everything! For shipfic, I like her with Vera, Beau, Jester, Fjord, or Uk'otoa.
Avantika/Beau:
Avantika/Jester:
Beau/Ophelia:
Beau/Dahilla: Marisha has a very specific 'I'm gonna fuck the sea-monster' look and you know what? Beau should get to fuck the sea monster. And do weird rituals with the sea monster. And become a sea monster herself to rise up out of the waves and punch sailors and other sea monsters alike in the face. Blood magic? Ocean horror? Beau cursed into a mermaid? Dashilla accidentally turning Beau into some avatar of Uk'otoa?
Jester & The Traveler: Jester is a character who just begs for all the creepyfluff to be written about her - remember how she was like "I want to open wounds that never close and poison people and maybe turn them into candy"? She should get to do that in all the fic! While starting cults to the Traveler and making out with Beau and painting magical dicks where magical dicks should not be painted and using Control Water in very chaos-inducing and non-mechanical ways. Epistolary fics would be really fun - Jester writing to the Traveler of all the chaos she's caused in his name and him writing back approvingly. Jester finds a ghost ship while the M9 are at sea and tries to convert the ghosts to worship the Traveler. Jester finds a ruined castle and turns it into TRAVELER HEADQUARTERS and witch-in-the-woods style lures people to her happy fun castle carnival. Anything and everything based off IAMX's 'Stalker'. Just, you know, chaos and murder and the specific version of death and the maiden you get when death raises the girl instead of capturing her.
General:
Requested Tags:
The Witch/The Witch: Both Hell to the Heavens (youtube, lyrics) and I'd Rather Burn (youtube, lyrics are super high up there in terms of favourite songs, and I enjoy the way they seem to be in dialogue with each other across the years (it's a delightful thing about symphonic metal - the genre as a whole is tending very self aware and is very good at building connections through history and myth and I'm not saying it's because women are better at metal than men but I'm not Not saying that, yknow?) Anyway. The witches have different reactions to being captured, even though they both claim revenge as their right, and I want to see them meeting/having philosophical debates/getting their revenge/rescuing each other/whatever you feel like! Time loops, nature magic, ghost/mortal girlfriends - anything's good.
Goldberry & Lalaith: Undead ghostbaby Lalaith is such a good Lalaith, and I would love to see anything with her and my favourite creepily cheerful river spirit! Goldberry helps Lalaith adjust to being dead, the two of them playing tricks on unwary travelers, Goldberry helping Lalaith get revenge - everything's good!
General: This album is basically 'fairytales, but more weird and more symphonic metal, so if any of those things sppeal to you you should check it out! I've provided youtube and lyric links for the songs in which my requested characters appear below, but the whole album is on the usual iTunes/Spotify/etc.
DNW Note: The age of the brother & sister is super vague, I'd be happy for them to be anywhere in the 10-18 range and that wouldn't hit my kidfic DNW.
Requested Tags:
The Brother & The Sister: These two are from "Shadows of Our Yesterdays" (youtube, lyrics), which is a very loose version of Hansel & Gretel that zeroes in on the 'siblings trapped in the woods and looking for revenge' aspect, i.e. my favourite aspect, so: lean into all the wonderful evil nature/survival horror elements! What creatures mundane and eldritch do they meet in the forest? Which sibling is the one who dies every night only to wake up with skin a little more like bark and fingers a little more like branches every morning? Who gets turned into a vampire first, or how does this story change if it's two Kindred children being abandoned by those who turned them? What ruins do they shelter in and what do they find there? The song implies this is pre-Witch, but hey, maybe it's post-Witch and they're looking for revenge! The siblings know each other almost better than they know themselves (which can be a problem in and of itself) but is their sibling really their sibling? Basically, write me the creepiest possible answer to the what will you do if no one hears your screams question the lyrics pose, and I will be super happy!
The Sleeper/The Wicked Fairy: These two, meanwhile, are from "Lullaby for the Undead" (youtube, lyrics), which is loosely Sleeping Beauty with bonus identity crises and from the POV of the sleeping girl, which is, you know, a direct arrow to my heart! It's heavily implied that she's addressing the fairy and waiting for her to come wake her up, and I am always all about versions where the fairy is both the one who curses and the one who saves - how do the two cope together if the fairy wakes the sleeper up? Does the sleeper - who's embracing her status as undead by the end of the song - even remember that the woman who saved her was also the one who cursed her? What happens to the dreamer while she's stuck in the realm of the undead? What eldritch horrors does she befriend/become? How many times does she die in the dream world that never stick from moment to moment? Something exploring the roses-and-thorns landscape of the dream world.
General: I love the lush expansiveness of Tolkien's work, the history and the care and the sheer amount of space characters are allowed to take up and that we are able to fill in. My favourite bits are the horror and the weird fey things, but moments of levity and happy couples dealing with supernatural things (happy couples murdering other things :D) are also excellent! Feel free to play pick-and-choose with various bits of history from the Silm/Unfinished Tales/etc as you like - I'm familiar with everything.
Requested Tags:
Galadriel: Best beloved morally compromised queen - I know I've requested her under LotR, but if you want to set fic with her in the First or Second Ages that's also fabulous! I especially love Galadriel-in-Doriath fics, learning magic and how to bend the environment to her will (Galadriel/Melian shipfic and creepy-fluffy mentorship always loved), but something about her first coming to Lorien and realising that her welcome from the Nandor and their forests is not a particularly kind one (Galadriel/Nimrodel enemy lovers?). Dark Queen Luthien and Dark Queen Galadriel AUs are both excellent - or both! They can be dark queens together! Just let her be terrifying and I'm happy.
Goldberry: I love my weird eldritch river-daughter and I especially love her when she's doing terrible things like drowning her lovers to have them for forever or enjoying her place at the centre of creepy hobbit folk-rituals. Is she bound specifically to the Withywindle, or can she slip into any river at will? What secret hauntings reside in her and Tom's house, and how many people had a much less pleasant stay there than the hobbits did? Whose dreams has she slipped into - Melian's, in Doriath? The lady who wore the blue brooch that was abandoned in the barrow-downs? Tom implies that she can be summoned or moved by song, so what about someone who's heard legends of her trying to summon/control her and it going very poorly for them? She's young and ageless all at once, and I'd love something that plays with that sort of time weirdness. If you're feeling shipfic, I'd prefer f/f - I don't hate Goldberry/Tom and I'm happy enough for their relationship (nice or murder-couple-y) to be in the background of any fic, but neither do I want a story that's about nothing else than shipping them.
Old Man Willow: Trees that want to eat you are my favourite trees, and Old Man Willow is no exception! Tell me about his history - was he an Ent or a Huorn or a trapped spirit? Did he learn magic, or teach other trees? When did he first meet Tom Bombadil and realise he could be controlled, how many hobbits has he ensnared, what does he think about Goldberry and other river-spirits? What happens to the people that he swallows? Something drawing inspiration from the barrow-wight's chant, or something involving the Mewlips - is underneath Old Man Willow's roots where the Mewlips dwell? But, yknow, creepy trees! I am pretty much impossible to disappoint.
General: I love horror canons and eldritch things and unconventional formatting and pretty much everything about this story! I read rather than listen and am only up to 115 where the official transcripts end so I'd prefer something set before then. Permanent death for anyone is totally fine here.
Requested Tags:
Melanie & Helen: I like their whole avatars-tying-to-maintain-humanity thing! So what if they don't get to remain human at all :} I like possession weirdness and dreamsharing and slowly - perhaps unknowingly - losing the bettle to retain a sense of who you used to be and accepting your new status as a part of an ancient horror. Adventures together where they're forced to make more use of their powers than they'd like, anything and everything worldbuilidng related.
Sasha/Helen: Haunted houses and wicked spirals and the sense of being Not-You, yes please. Maybe Sasha ends up somewhere Helen can find her after the Not-Them replaces her. Adventures in the labyrinth, what it means to replaced and how such replacement can be embraced. The horror of possession, only being real in your own dreams. Feel free to have Sasha here be Not-Sasha, or ambiguously-Sasha, and have Helen be as Spiral-y or not as you like!
General: I love them as a changeling story, I love them as a story of nature-as-entity, I love them as a story of how desolation is never bleak and usually alive. I would prefer you use the characters' professions to describe them (eg "the psychologist" ) in narration, rather than their names. I am fine with canon-consistent 'being eaten by Area X' for either of the requested characters but DNW them to die in any other way. The canon by nature is playing with some pretty dark questions about embodiment and environmental catastrophes and death, but there's plenty of potential for light and joy - there is plenty of light and joy for both the requested characters as they give themselves back over to Area X, so don't be afraid to lean into that. I've read all three books and my prompts do get kinda spoilery, but if you've only read Annihilation, I welcome fic based only off that. I love the journal style of Annihilation and epistolary fic is especially welcome for this fandom.
Requested Tags:
Original F!Expedition Member/Original F!Expedition Member: Honestly, feel free to do pretty much anything you like with this one! They can have whatever roles/professions you like (I think it'd be neat if one of them was a linguist, since the linguist didn't go with the 12th expedition, but you don't have to do that!). If you want to use this to just go pure Area X/Southern Reach worldbuilding, that's also super cool. Just something weird and horrifically gorgeous, please.
The Biologist & or / The Psychologist: Gods - anything and everything? Their scene together at the lighthouse wrecked me, and I'd love to see something where the Psychologist transforms same as the Biologist then, or an AU where the biologist didn't figure out the hypnosis commands, or a scene with them together before going into Area X.Collapse. Post-canon fic would be loved too -
The Biologist & Ghost Bird: Do you ever think about how Area X creates Ghost Bird in the image of the Biologist and then by the time Ghost Bird meets the Biologist the Biologist has become Area X? Because I think about that a lot and I'm emo about it and I just want something that dwells in that uneven furrow between the two creatures and their desires to be/love/consume each other. Something post-canon would be interesting, or perhaps Ghost Bird runs into the Biologist before she leaves Area X.
The Biologist & The Surveryor: They're an alliance-that-wasn't, and of course I'm obsessed with any relationship where both parties want to kill each other, and I'd love anything that gets into their fluctuating trust the more time they spend together, or stories where their doppelgangers meet.
The Biologist: I'd love a journal of hers from previous expeditions - especially in Rock Bay. I'm interested in her malleable sense of self, the way she feels the need to both wholly become and only observe her sites. I'd love to see more of her with the Psychologist or Ghost Bird, especially now that she and the Psychologist are weird Area X creatures. Post-Annihilation, what version of her husband does she find, if any - or what other creatures/remnants of old expeditions does she find?
The Surveyor: She's the one character who gets significant alone time in Annihilation whose head we never get into, and I would love something set during that span of time where she's alone in the ruins of the campsite, sitting next to the tower, dwelling over the anthropologist's body - what was she thinking, what creatures did she meet? Pre-series fic would be cool, as would be came back wrong fic or fic about an Area-X-doppelganger!Surveyor observing the events of the next two books, perhaps meeting Ghost Bird or the returned biologist.
General: This weird book about fucked-up missionary siblings in clockwork Fairyland snuck into my life and ruined me and I would love to be further ruined by any fic you write! I really, really loved the Changeling!Cathy faux-reveal and was a bit put out by its last-chapter reversal (all books can do with more weird changelings, lbr), so any Changeling!Cathy fic - or fic where she's human but grappling with the fact that she enjoyed elements of the time when she thought she was a soulless creature - is always adored. Canon-compliant deathfic for Ariel is fine - especially if it leads to Mab further manipulating/fucking with Cathy, and Cathy continuing to spiral about her identity, but I am also thrilled by any AU you come up with where she survives or is brought back. Feel free to combine any of these requests to make an OT3. Basically, just lean into the WEIRD and I will be super happy!
Requested Tags:
Ariel/Cathy: I would love some of Ariel's POV on the novel's events - she has a sort of resignation to liminality about her that I find fascinating. What if she had been given more time to convince Cathy she was a Changeling too? What if she tried to sell Cathy to Mab for Laon's safety (or, perhaps, Cathy tries it with her). Resurrection attempts? Ill-advised wanderings into the depths of Arcadia? We see glimpses of what Changelings think about Cathy and Laon's theology, but what kind of myths and religions of their own have they developed that Ariel and Cathy might stumble into in this land where everything's just a bit too real? Also intrigued by the possibility of them meeting in the mortal world sometime before Cathy travels to Arcadia - what would that meeting look like, what kind of traps might Ariel try to set (at Mab's encouraging?), would Cathy notice something off about her? Ariel and Cathy dressing each other up the morning before the Hunt. Murder is the highest form of aesthetic appreciation in Arcadia, so after the Hunt it falls upon Cathy to resurrect and marry Ariel, because they are obviously destined to be with each other. Some kind of time loop, either while they're waiting for Laon to come back or during the Hunt.
Ariel/Mab: How was Ariel summoned back from the mundane world? How did Mab 'lay claim' to her changeling - did she get any pushback form other Faerie lords? Did Ariel ever think about defecting to another court, or is that not allowed by Faerie laws? AU where she did defect to another court, and how that influenced her relationships with both Mab and Catherine. Is necromancy possible in Arcadia? Came back wrong fic would be delightful. Ariel - or whatever's left of her - confronting Mab about the Hunt, before or after it happens.
Cathy/Kasdaye: I mean - "Have you not wanted to speak to me all your life?" makes me want pre-Arcadia Cathy dreaming of/dreaming with Kasdaye, but I would also love an AU of the masquerade where Kasdaye does succeed in telling Cathy's fortune, and how everything changes unexpectly from there - would Cathy still kill Ariel, knowing Kasdaye had already seen her do so? Kasdaye trying to take over Ariel's position as Cathy's guide in Arcadia after the Hunt, or time that they spend post-canon together in Pivot. What are Kasdaye's fae friends like, what dream cults might she be a part of, what happens if she brings Cathy deeper into her world? Kasdaye's a super neat temptress-and-oracle fusion that gets right at all the things Cathy's upbringing has taught her to fear, but in a way that's canonically more appealing than Mab's presentation of the forbidden, so I'd love something that plays with that.
Cathy/Laon: Ah, yes, deeply co-dependent world-shaping/world-breaking twins with infinite capacity for guilt and also academic study: let it not be said that I do not have a type, or that these two did not wreck me. Honestly I haven't requested them before because I was so happy with what canon gave me, so: post-canon adventures? Or, perhaps, role reversal, with ambiguous Changeling!Laon - he and Cathy are roughly equal in their capacity for love, but he is so much worse at dealing with the strange, that would be something delightful to drop on his head (whether that's Laon was always the Changeling or some combination of Ariel/Cathy/Mab create a Changeling!Laon is totally up to you). Something that leans into their identity issues - they are an absolute disaster at handling the knots of sinner/twin/changeling they tie each other into, and I'm obsessed.
Cathy/Mab: Changeling Cathy! Either one where Mab made her before sending her off into the mortal world, or one where Mab decides to turn her into one at some point during/after the events of the book (look ... we don't know how Changelings are made, it's totally possible). I wasn't entirely sold on the 'Arcadia = literally Hell' conceit of the ending, so maybe something where that was Mab's real lie? Human Cathy becomes one of Mab's courtiers in exchange for Laon's life/freedom. But, look, Cathy killed someone she liked to spite Mab, even if Laon's soul was also playing some part in that decision, I am gonna be super into whatever you write for them! Arcadian adventures and rituals, Cathy-as-servant, Cathy-as-toy, Arcadian politicking ... all excellent. Post-canon time in Pivot or Elphane, Cathy discovering Arcadian myths and legends and sticking her nose in where it doesn't belong. What does Arcadian regional horror look like? Mab fucking around with Cathy's dreams - visiting her, pulling elements of her dreams into reality.
I've by and large chosen canons I love for their worldbuilding and mytharcs as well as their characters and relationships, and I am easy to please as long as you stay away from my DNWs (both general and canon-specific), so don't feel like you Have to write any of my specific prompts. Don't read anything into relative lengths of sections, I am equally happy to get something for anything in this letter! Some of these prompts are reused from old letters, and if you have written them for me before, rest assured that I loved your fic, I am simply greedy and would like to see every possible take on my favourite scenarios.
I love everything from short introspection bits to long plotty missionfic to sex scenes as ways to explore character/setting/worldbuilding, and I don't need a lot of romance in my ships: sex for power, manipulation, or just between friends who want to have fun is also great. Please no unrequested ships unless specifically allowed for, but feel free to combine any compatible ones from my requested ones.
Likes || Smut Likes || DNWs || Changeling: The Lost || Critical Role || Crossovers || Once Upon A Fearytale - Snow White Bllod (Album) || The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien || The Magnus Archives || The Southern Reach Trilogy - Jeff Vandermeer || Under the Pendulum Sun - Jeanette Ng
- Mentorship and loyalty dynamics, including ladies' suicidal world-saving or world-breaking devotion to other ladies, #unavailable older women in positions of authority
- Femslash and female friendship in both the foreground and the background
- Nature and cities and houses and spacecraft as characters (especially when they would like to eat you because they love you)
- Vampires, magic, witchcraft, rituals, eldritch things, fey things, eerie things
- Architectural horror, cosmic horror, eldritch horror, folk horror, psychological horror
- Feelings about embodiment and iconography, body horror (especially flowers growing out of people's bodies)
- Epistolary fics, IF, poems for poetry canons, song lyrics for song/album canons
- First- and second-person pov, unreliable narrators
- Politics, worldbuilding
- Flirting, domesticity, sensuality, friends-and-lovers
- Canon-divergent/what-if AUs, Aniara, Vampire: The Requiem, Changeling: The Lost, Scandinoir, and Star Wars Sith AUs
- Conflicted loyalties, moral ambiguity, hero/villain and villain/villain relationships, 'I am the only one allowed to hurt you' hero/villain relationships
- Darkfic
- Rebellion leaders and their shining girls that they dress up to die, best friends/lovers struggling with their willingness to sacrifice each other for their cause
- Arranged marriages, marriages of convenience, married by a technicality, marriages as part of a resurrection ritual, marriage out of guilt
- Relationships negotiated around characters' different vocabularies of trust and care
- 'I hate you I love you I would like to wear your skin as a sign of my devotion' types of relationships
- Getting back together after messy breakups
- Desire, women who aren’t afraid of desire, women who lean too far into desire, women who desire to kill and eat their gods
- Cons and heists, whether it's characters working together to con someone else or characters conning each other
- Porn as character work.
- Hair braiding, hair pulling
- Bathing, washing, bath/shower sex
- Painplay, bloodplay, knifeplay, wax play, edgeplay, edgeplay to the edge of death
- Mirror sex, identity porn
- Bondage, shibari/kinbaku, suspension, honour bondage, blindfolds, gags, D/s dynamics (though not 24/7 bdsm lifestyle setups)
- Jewellery and clothes kink
- Consent play, somnophilia
- Praise kink, loyalty kink, competency kink
- Public and semi-public sex, having to stay quiet
- Oral sex
- Overstimulation
- Biting, marking
- First time with each other
- Sex for manipulation/political gain/conversion to the other political-military side (success optional)
- Inappropriate use of magic and weapons
- Mutual masturbation
- One person in a threesome directing the other two and getting off watching them.
- Bad idea sex, sex as a bad coping mechanism
- Unrequested m/m or m/f ships
- Rape/noncon (dubcon is fine)
- Permanent death of female characters, except when fandom prompts say otherwise
- Kidfic, breeding, pregnancy including unconventional forms like fpreg/oviposition, age-regression and time-travel to see kid versions of characters
- Scat, watersports, emetophilia, enemas
- A/B/O
- Food in/on genitalia or used as sex toys, weight gain/stuffing kink (fantasy body horror and metaphors are fine)
- 'Only one destined true love' AUs like soulmates or hanahaki disease
- Detailed descriptions of injuries to feet, amputated feet (minor/referenced injuries are fine)
- Apocalypse and post-apocalypse fic, zombies
- *isms, issuefic
- 'It was all a dream' sort of mindfuckery
- 'I am too old to be loved' angst in age-gap ships
- Bodyswap fic, crackfic
- Sex involving under-16s.
General: CtL is the tabletop game of my whole entire heart and I just want to live in that world a bit more! I have a slight preference for stories set in Arcadia or the Hedge, but absolutely will not say no to Earth-set ones. Sourcebook-wise, I am most familiar with Dancers in the Dusk, Winter Masques, and Night Horrors. I especially love oneiromancy and am super weak for stories that contrast the deep sense of place/setting with changelings' very tenuous sense of self. Adhere as strictly or loosely to game mechanics as feels right for your story.
Requested Tags:
- Abandonment
- Abuse of Loyalty
- Accidental Apotheosis
- Accidentally Killed The Wrong Person
- Architectural Horror
- Betrayal
- Blood Magic
- Body Horror
- Captivity
- Character A dresses Character B up to die
- Character Becomes One With An Ancient Horror
- Character has identity issues due to their intense bond with another person
- Character keeps dying but it doesn't stick
- Doomed Ship/Vessel
- Dreams bleeding into reality
- Identity Issues
- Murder is Considered The Highest Form of Aesthetic Appreciation
- Nature Which Wants To Crawl Inside You And Never Come Out
- Nature Which Wants to Eat You
- Non-Consensual Apotheosis
- Oneiromancy
- ritual gone wrong
- Sentient Malevolent Nature
- There's something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls trope
- Tormented By Visions
- Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
- Unintended consequences of having your future told
Ambrosia: Mm, characters who want to kill and eat and become their
Liz Malloy: SO that bit in Night Horrors about how "her oath, however, is not with the Lost of the Emerald Court, but with the season of Spring itself, and Spring has not had its fill of Liz Malloy yet"? That whole entire thing is my favourite sort of thing, and I want to read all the stories about it. Bargaining with eldritch nature, sending mortals and Lost back to her Keeper.
Original Female Darkling or Original Female Elemental: I requested these two specifically because Darkling and Elemental are my two favourite seemings, but honestly - feel free to do whatever you like with this! Pick whatever kith you like, include whichever True Fae or other changelings or hobgoblins or Kindred you want to explore, write femslash or gen as the mood strikes you, I will be thrilled. In terms of specific scenarios, I like explorations of the Hedge, interactions between Changelings and their Fetches, dreamsharing/dreamwalking, and stories about the formation of Motleys. I tend to play ambiguously-willingly-self-destructing-into-True-Fae high-Wyrd/low-Clarity changelings, but am here for whichever combination of Wyrd/Clarity you want to write. Not to be the most predicatable but body horror super super encouraged. If you write shipfic, I would like it to be f/f, but you can pair the changeling with another changeling or a True Fae and make it as healthy or as unhealty/dubcon-y as you like(background m/m or m/f, eg between other members of the Changeling's motley, is totally fine, I just want whatever relationship the fic is About to be f/f).
Rogue Sister: Morpheans and dreamweirdness and betrayal, yes please! The Rogue Sister is my favourite of the lot, what with coming from the void of unfinished dreams and having the potential to break the Wyrd into pieces. What changelings does she bargain with, what stories are told about her, what dreams has she created and visited? Her name implies a connection to the Pale Brother - what does their relationship look like?
General: I consider the campaign guide, artbook, and anything said on Talks Machina nebulously canon at best (and don't know much of what's said on Talks, because I can neither watch live nor afford Alpha) so feel free to conform to/depart from what they say as you wish. I'm familiar with most wider D&D lore/sourcebooks/mechanics from 3.5e onwards, including 5e's unearthed arcana, if you want inspiration for additional worldbuilding/plotting (though I know 4e best). I like fics that take into account mechanical D&D limitations (e.g. characters saying they need to rest before doing any more magic) but DNW characters using the actual real-world terms (e.g. characters saying they're 'out of spell slots'). I adore 4e's epic destinies and would love it if you incorporated relevant ones for the requested characters (special love for World Tree Guardian!Keyleth, Master of the Eternal Hunt!Vex, and Archspell!Delilah with Finger of Death, but, yknow, go wild!). Canonverse Vampire!Cassandra and fey!Vex are welcome AUs for any of these ships. Campaign 1 requests are fairly focussed on dark versions of the protagonists, Campaign 2 requests are fairly focussed on the pirate arc and weird gods.
Tal'Dorei Campaign DNW: Scanlan, Percy, Percy/Vex even as a mention/background, ace!Keyleth
Wildemount Campaign DNW: Nott, Mollymauk, Avantika's E43 ending being treated as a permanent death.
Requested Tags: Tal'Dorei Campaign:
- Accidental Apotheosis
- Alternate Universe - Changeling: The Lost
- Alternate Universe - Vampire
- Alternate Universe - Vampire: The Requiem
- Alternate Universe - Villain Wins
- Blood Drinking
- Blood Kink
- Blood Magic
- Body Horror
- Character A dresses Character B up to die
- Character Becomes One With An Ancient Horror
- Character has identity issues due to their intense bond with another person
- Character keeps dying but it doesn't stick
- Cults
- Curses
- Died and came back wrong
- Enemy Lovers
- folk horror
- Identity Issues
- In-Universe Regional Horror
- Lovestruck villain uses murder to flirt with hero
- Moral Ambiguity
- Nature Which Wants to Eat You
- Non-Consensual Apotheosis
- Oneiromancy
- Protagonist Journey to Villain
- ritual gone wrong
- Ruined Castles and Fortresses
- Scars
- Sentient Malevolent Nature
- Sex in the Blood of their Enemies
- Steampunk Horror
- There's something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls trope
- Unintended consequences of having your future told
Allura Vysoren: We got some really great glimpses of her leadership during the campaign, so I would love fic of her time in Emon on the Council. I love how she's clever and stoic and sad and still so strong (wizards are v v good for whumpfic, what can I say). Abjuration wizards and political masks are such an interesting combination. How and why did she acquire that ring of mindshielding Matt said she was attuned to? How does Allura feel about the gods and about being married to a paladin? She always seemed to be more Keyleth-like than Kima-like in her relationship to the divine. Allura once said she didn't have 'much' in the way of teleportation circle connections outside of Tal'Dorei, so I'd love to read about connections she has in Vasselheim/Marquet/Wildemount. Allura is canonically an inventor as far as the arcane goes - both the binding on Thordak and the shield over Whitestone were homebrews from Matt - and I'd love fic about her coming up with/developing those spells. What work does she do with dream-magic and shields? What were her adventures with Kima and her old party like pre-Thordak?
Cassandra de Rolo: I love Cass infinitely and in all iterations: dutiful vampire Briarwood daughter, youngest and most lethal Vox Machina member, tired young lady of Whitestone trying to hold her already-fractured city together at the end of the world, dark queen of Whitestone with Raishan as her most trusted advisor. I love vampire!Cass, whether that's canonverse (I am extremely fond of Sylas and Delilah killing + resurrecting her over and over again) or in a VtR setting. Gen is great, femslash is great - I love her with Delilah, Vex, and as a third partner for established Allura/Kima, or with any other ladies you might think of! Cass as a Changeling and Sylas and Delilah as her keepers, space pirate Cass dismantles the Briarwoods' empire, post-escape Cass becomes an eldritch horror and returns to Whitestone as More than anyone planned.
Cassandra/Raishan: Consider: Dark Queen Cassandra regnant in Whitestone with Raishan as her trusted advisor. Or Raishan proving she can be a better mother/lady than Delilah. Cassandra allying with Raishan because it feels right to finally say yes to something like this, and Raishan understands how possessive she feels towards Whitestone. Raishan making a new lair in the forests by Whitestone and Cassandra stumbling upon her sometime post-canon. Raishan seduces/manipulates/convinces Vox Machina!Cassandra away from her friends and the two of them become villain queens.
Delilah/Cassandra: Cassandra as daughter/sacrifice/future Lady is endlessly fascinating to me. How cruel did she grow under the Briarwoods? Did she even mind? I'd love to see Delilah slowly introducing Cassandra to magic, to Vecna, to death. I really love the idea that Delilah might have killed and resurrected Cassandra more than once during their years together, all the better to prepare her to be a sacrifice to an Undying King. Whitestone as a semi-sentient city torn between two masters. Alternate takes on the Grey Hunt, anything involving vampire!Cassandra, Cassandra learning to manipulate her manipulator, AU where Cassandra chooses the Briarwoods for real during the ziggurat battle, AU where Whitestone was never retaken, and Delilah and Cassandra rule together. Cass/Delilah sex (dubcon or consensual) is definitely okay as long as she's 16+ and Sylas isn't involved - I like the disconnect between Delilah seeing her as a daughter but Cass seeing her more as a mentor/queen, and can see powerplay and D/s dynamics going either way. Feel free to OT3 them with Vex, Raishan, or Ripley if that's where your muse goes.
Delilah/Keyleth: There's so many murdered lovers between them that you know it's fair they get the chance to be each other's lover and/or attempted murderer! I am lowkey in denial about Delilah's last death and would love for Keyleth to find another of her clones, anywhere from a year to several hundred years in the future, I am also forever weak for stories about them stranded in the Shadowfell for reasons and stories where Delilah succeeds in turning Vex into her undead servant and Keyleth becomes Delilah's lover to watch over her friend. Dark!Keyleth stories welcome, especially if she's the one who succumbs to the Whitestone corruption effect instead of Percy.
Delilah/Vex: Who's still in denial about Delilah's final death, it's me! I really want there to be another clone hidden somewhere, and Vex finds her and punishes her. Or Delilah gets in over her head with something and somehow convinces Vex to help her. Marquesian adventures - what if they found her while looking for the cloak? Dark AU where Delilah succeeds in turning Vex into her undead servant. I know I mentioned Archspell!Delilah up above, but especially for this ship - she used Finger of Death so specifically and so consistently on Vex and I have all sorts of feelings about how death loves Vex and Delilah is just its instrument. Anything inspired by Cellar Darling's 'The Spell' [youtube link, lyrics in description].
Keyleth/Raishan: I'm obsessed with these vicious near-immortal sorceresses. There's the potential for anything, from hatesex to philosophical arguments, to the reluctant '.....shit we grew old together and you’re the only one left who knows everything about me' realisation. Polymorph/shapeshifting/wildshape sex is good. I like Keyleth domming Raishan if you're playing with D/s elements. There's so much to play with here with obsession and similarity and mirroring (either Keyleth or Raishan turning into each other during sex is um. The Best.) and honestly, feel free to go anywhere with this. I like Keyleth's anger and the amount of pleasure Raishan takes in winding her up. Raishan redemption arcs are fun. Neutral evil ancient dragon luring young true neutral durid into her lair is fun, roleswap AUs (neutral evil ancient druid Keyleth happening upon youngish true neutral dragon Raishan) are fun. I love alternate meeting AUs, or AUs where Raishan chose to infiltrate the Air Ashari in addition to/instead of the Fire Ashari. Raishan-survives AUs are also excellent, whether she survives as herself or as a dracolich/demigod/etc. Raishan using murder to flirt with Keyleth. Raishan coming back from the dead cured of her disease but Wrong(tm) in some other way. Keyleth helping Raishan become a god (questionably on purpose). Keyleth and Raishan take a trip to the Feywild for Reasons. Anything about their mutually complicated relationships with Melora. Loyalty kink stemming from obsession - once every couple decades they try, genuinely, to kill each other, but somehow never quite manage to do it (because they have Feelings) (it takes them like 300 years to figure it out) (they're so uniquely dumb about Feelings as opposed to literally any other aspect of their life I adore them).
Keyleth/Raishan/Allura: Raishan was obsessed with Keyleth and Allura during the fight in Opash's lair - Allura was unconscious twice and a lot of Allura's support was directly to Keyleth - and I would die for the AU where she succeeds in capturing them and having them to help her with whatever ritual she was planning, especially if it involves Keyleth and Allura comfort!sex with voyeur!Raishan. I love alternate-meeting ideas: Allura falling in with Raishan while looking for ways to raise her friends who died fighting Thordak, Raishan picking Keyleth up early in her Aramente and Allura fighting to get her protege back. Keyleth being torn between two mentors, Raishan being obsessed with Allura's hoard of knowledge and Keyleth's life. In canonverse, Raishan in search of godhood with two of the most godless characters in the show as her means of ascension, nhh, I love. Apotheosis, accidental or not. Dark!Keyleth and Dark!Allura (and fics where either/both of them slowly turn darker over the course of the story) are great. I love Changeling: The Lost AUs always, and am super interested in the AU where Raishan was Keyleth's Keeper and Allura is trying to rescue her.
Vesh/The Raven Queen: These two are my favourite of the divine/semi-divine that we meet in campaign 1, and I am absolutely in love with the idea of Vesh possibly playing a version of Nerull to this version of the Raven Queen. Which is to say: pre-Calamity worldbuilding! Did the Raven Queen marry and then displace Vesh? Were they mortal lovers/wives before the ascension to godhood forced them apart (was their marriage originally an attempt by one to save the other, with godhood as an unexpected side effect?) Vesh has a habit of marrying her chosen, and the Raven Queen was and is desperately lonely, I absolutely see her trying to take advantage of that loneliness. Any of these songs used as inspiration would be amazing.
Vex'ahlia: Vex was my first favourite, and I just want to see more of her and her prickly nature magic and determination to be the most. I super love AUs where she takes Saundor's deal, and really anything Feywild-set in general. I love twinsies gen and anything femslash and anything about the weird sort of equilibrium she finds with the Raven Queen. I mentioned in a couple of the ship prompts that necrotic damage seemed to target Vex specifically throughout most of the campaign, so something about her coming to terms with that (or turning into a villain because of it?) would be awesome. A dark take on Vex becoming Pelor's chosen, the twins carving out space for themselves in a VtR or CtL AU.
Requested Tags: Wildemount Campaign:
- Accidental Apotheosis
- Accidentally starting a cult to the wrong god
- Alternate Universe - Changeling: The Lost
- Alternate Universe - Star Wars Sith
- Alternate Universe - Vampire: The Requiem
- Alternate Universe - Villain Wins
- Arousal from Killing - Sexual
- Betrayal
- Body Horror
- Character A dresses Character B up to die
- Character Awakens Ancient Horror
- Character Becomes One With An Ancient Horror
- Character doesn't care about their own wellbeing
- Character keeps dying but it doesn't stick
- Cults
- Curses
- Doomed Ship/Vessel
- Drowning
- Eerily pristine abandoned places
- folk horror
- In-Universe Regional Horror
- Killing and eating your gods as a form of worship
- Nature Which Wants To Crawl Inside You And Never Come Out
- Nature Which Wants to Eat You
- Non-Consensual Apotheosis
- Ocean Horror
- Oneiromancy
- Ruined Castles and Fortresses
- Sentient Malevolent Nature
- Serial Killers
- Steampunk Horror
- There's something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls trope
- Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
- Unintended consequences of having your future told
Avantika: Pirate warlock ladies who hate sleeves and love awakening eldritch horrors, what's not to love? I'm easy tbh, I just want Avantika to win things. Sea battles with other pirates, the last fight on Darktow, dominion over the eldritch drowned world in an AU where Darktow went differently, several nights with Beau in her bed - anything and everything! For shipfic, I like her with Vera, Beau, Jester, Fjord, or Uk'otoa.
Avantika/Beau:
Avantika/Jester:
Beau/Ophelia:
Beau/Dahilla: Marisha has a very specific 'I'm gonna fuck the sea-monster' look and you know what? Beau should get to fuck the sea monster. And do weird rituals with the sea monster. And become a sea monster herself to rise up out of the waves and punch sailors and other sea monsters alike in the face. Blood magic? Ocean horror? Beau cursed into a mermaid? Dashilla accidentally turning Beau into some avatar of Uk'otoa?
Jester & The Traveler: Jester is a character who just begs for all the creepyfluff to be written about her - remember how she was like "I want to open wounds that never close and poison people and maybe turn them into candy"? She should get to do that in all the fic! While starting cults to the Traveler and making out with Beau and painting magical dicks where magical dicks should not be painted and using Control Water in very chaos-inducing and non-mechanical ways. Epistolary fics would be really fun - Jester writing to the Traveler of all the chaos she's caused in his name and him writing back approvingly. Jester finds a ghost ship while the M9 are at sea and tries to convert the ghosts to worship the Traveler. Jester finds a ruined castle and turns it into TRAVELER HEADQUARTERS and witch-in-the-woods style lures people to her happy fun castle carnival. Anything and everything based off IAMX's 'Stalker'. Just, you know, chaos and murder and the specific version of death and the maiden you get when death raises the girl instead of capturing her.
General:
Requested Tags:
- Character A is a ghost that only character B can see and touch
- Character keeps dying but it doesn't stick
- Curses
- Drowning
- Eldritch locations
- folk horror
- Identity Issues
- Memory Loss
- Moral Ambiguity
- Nature Which Wants To Crawl Inside You And Never Come Out
- Nature Which Wants to Eat You
- Oneiromancy
- Revenge
- ritual gone wrong
- Ruined Castles and Fortresses
- Sentient Malevolent Nature
- Unintended consequences of having your future told
The Witch/The Witch: Both Hell to the Heavens (youtube, lyrics) and I'd Rather Burn (youtube, lyrics are super high up there in terms of favourite songs, and I enjoy the way they seem to be in dialogue with each other across the years (it's a delightful thing about symphonic metal - the genre as a whole is tending very self aware and is very good at building connections through history and myth and I'm not saying it's because women are better at metal than men but I'm not Not saying that, yknow?) Anyway. The witches have different reactions to being captured, even though they both claim revenge as their right, and I want to see them meeting/having philosophical debates/getting their revenge/rescuing each other/whatever you feel like! Time loops, nature magic, ghost/mortal girlfriends - anything's good.
Goldberry & Lalaith: Undead ghostbaby Lalaith is such a good Lalaith, and I would love to see anything with her and my favourite creepily cheerful river spirit! Goldberry helps Lalaith adjust to being dead, the two of them playing tricks on unwary travelers, Goldberry helping Lalaith get revenge - everything's good!
General: This album is basically 'fairytales, but more weird and more symphonic metal, so if any of those things sppeal to you you should check it out! I've provided youtube and lyric links for the songs in which my requested characters appear below, but the whole album is on the usual iTunes/Spotify/etc.
DNW Note: The age of the brother & sister is super vague, I'd be happy for them to be anywhere in the 10-18 range and that wouldn't hit my kidfic DNW.
Requested Tags:
- Alternate Universe - Vampire: The Requiem
- Blood Magic
- Character Becomes One With An Ancient Horror
- Character has identity issues due to their intense bond with another person
- Character keeps dying but it doesn't stick
- Died and came back wrong
- Eldritch locations
- folk horror
- Killing Each Other Rather Than Facing A Worse Fate
- Memory Loss
- Moral Ambiguity
- Nature Which Wants To Crawl Inside You And Never Come Out
- Nature Which Wants to Eat You
- Oneiromancy
- Revenge
- Ruined Castles and Fortresses
- Sacrifice
- Sentient Malevolent Nature
- There's something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls trope
- Unintended consequences of having your future told
The Brother & The Sister: These two are from "Shadows of Our Yesterdays" (youtube, lyrics), which is a very loose version of Hansel & Gretel that zeroes in on the 'siblings trapped in the woods and looking for revenge' aspect, i.e. my favourite aspect, so: lean into all the wonderful evil nature/survival horror elements! What creatures mundane and eldritch do they meet in the forest? Which sibling is the one who dies every night only to wake up with skin a little more like bark and fingers a little more like branches every morning? Who gets turned into a vampire first, or how does this story change if it's two Kindred children being abandoned by those who turned them? What ruins do they shelter in and what do they find there? The song implies this is pre-Witch, but hey, maybe it's post-Witch and they're looking for revenge! The siblings know each other almost better than they know themselves (which can be a problem in and of itself) but is their sibling really their sibling? Basically, write me the creepiest possible answer to the what will you do if no one hears your screams question the lyrics pose, and I will be super happy!
The Sleeper/The Wicked Fairy: These two, meanwhile, are from "Lullaby for the Undead" (youtube, lyrics), which is loosely Sleeping Beauty with bonus identity crises and from the POV of the sleeping girl, which is, you know, a direct arrow to my heart! It's heavily implied that she's addressing the fairy and waiting for her to come wake her up, and I am always all about versions where the fairy is both the one who curses and the one who saves - how do the two cope together if the fairy wakes the sleeper up? Does the sleeper - who's embracing her status as undead by the end of the song - even remember that the woman who saved her was also the one who cursed her? What happens to the dreamer while she's stuck in the realm of the undead? What eldritch horrors does she befriend/become? How many times does she die in the dream world that never stick from moment to moment? Something exploring the roses-and-thorns landscape of the dream world.
General: I love the lush expansiveness of Tolkien's work, the history and the care and the sheer amount of space characters are allowed to take up and that we are able to fill in. My favourite bits are the horror and the weird fey things, but moments of levity and happy couples dealing with supernatural things (happy couples murdering other things :D) are also excellent! Feel free to play pick-and-choose with various bits of history from the Silm/Unfinished Tales/etc as you like - I'm familiar with everything.
Requested Tags:
- Body Horror
- Character keeps dying but it doesn't stick
- Cults
- Curses
- Eerily pristine abandoned places
- Eldritch locations
- folk horror
- Ghosts
- Haunted Houses
- Moral Ambiguity
- Nature Which Wants To Crawl Inside You And Never Come Out
- Nature Which Wants to Eat You
- Oneiromancy
- ritual gone wrong
- Ruined Castles and Fortresses
- Sentient Malevolent Nature
- Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Galadriel: Best beloved morally compromised queen - I know I've requested her under LotR, but if you want to set fic with her in the First or Second Ages that's also fabulous! I especially love Galadriel-in-Doriath fics, learning magic and how to bend the environment to her will (Galadriel/Melian shipfic and creepy-fluffy mentorship always loved), but something about her first coming to Lorien and realising that her welcome from the Nandor and their forests is not a particularly kind one (Galadriel/Nimrodel enemy lovers?). Dark Queen Luthien and Dark Queen Galadriel AUs are both excellent - or both! They can be dark queens together! Just let her be terrifying and I'm happy.
Goldberry: I love my weird eldritch river-daughter and I especially love her when she's doing terrible things like drowning her lovers to have them for forever or enjoying her place at the centre of creepy hobbit folk-rituals. Is she bound specifically to the Withywindle, or can she slip into any river at will? What secret hauntings reside in her and Tom's house, and how many people had a much less pleasant stay there than the hobbits did? Whose dreams has she slipped into - Melian's, in Doriath? The lady who wore the blue brooch that was abandoned in the barrow-downs? Tom implies that she can be summoned or moved by song, so what about someone who's heard legends of her trying to summon/control her and it going very poorly for them? She's young and ageless all at once, and I'd love something that plays with that sort of time weirdness. If you're feeling shipfic, I'd prefer f/f - I don't hate Goldberry/Tom and I'm happy enough for their relationship (nice or murder-couple-y) to be in the background of any fic, but neither do I want a story that's about nothing else than shipping them.
Old Man Willow: Trees that want to eat you are my favourite trees, and Old Man Willow is no exception! Tell me about his history - was he an Ent or a Huorn or a trapped spirit? Did he learn magic, or teach other trees? When did he first meet Tom Bombadil and realise he could be controlled, how many hobbits has he ensnared, what does he think about Goldberry and other river-spirits? What happens to the people that he swallows? Something drawing inspiration from the barrow-wight's chant, or something involving the Mewlips - is underneath Old Man Willow's roots where the Mewlips dwell? But, yknow, creepy trees! I am pretty much impossible to disappoint.
General: I love horror canons and eldritch things and unconventional formatting and pretty much everything about this story! I read rather than listen and am only up to 115 where the official transcripts end so I'd prefer something set before then. Permanent death for anyone is totally fine here.
Requested Tags:
- Alternate Universe - Changeling: The Lost
- Architectural Horror
- Body Horror
- Castaways in Time
- Character Becomes One With An Ancient Horror
- Character is possessed by a haunted house
- Character Turned Into Vampire
- Cults
- Died and came back wrong
- Eerily pristine abandoned places
- Eldritch locations
- folk horror
- Ghosts
- Haunted Houses
- In-Universe Regional Horror
- Memory Loss
- Moral Ambiguity
- Murder is Considered The Highest Form of Aesthetic Appreciation
- Oneiromancy
- Revenge
- Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
- Unhealthy Relationships
Melanie & Helen: I like their whole avatars-tying-to-maintain-humanity thing! So what if they don't get to remain human at all :} I like possession weirdness and dreamsharing and slowly - perhaps unknowingly - losing the bettle to retain a sense of who you used to be and accepting your new status as a part of an ancient horror. Adventures together where they're forced to make more use of their powers than they'd like, anything and everything worldbuilidng related.
Sasha/Helen: Haunted houses and wicked spirals and the sense of being Not-You, yes please. Maybe Sasha ends up somewhere Helen can find her after the Not-Them replaces her. Adventures in the labyrinth, what it means to replaced and how such replacement can be embraced. The horror of possession, only being real in your own dreams. Feel free to have Sasha here be Not-Sasha, or ambiguously-Sasha, and have Helen be as Spiral-y or not as you like!
General: I love them as a changeling story, I love them as a story of nature-as-entity, I love them as a story of how desolation is never bleak and usually alive. I would prefer you use the characters' professions to describe them (eg "the psychologist" ) in narration, rather than their names. I am fine with canon-consistent 'being eaten by Area X' for either of the requested characters but DNW them to die in any other way. The canon by nature is playing with some pretty dark questions about embodiment and environmental catastrophes and death, but there's plenty of potential for light and joy - there is plenty of light and joy for both the requested characters as they give themselves back over to Area X, so don't be afraid to lean into that. I've read all three books and my prompts do get kinda spoilery, but if you've only read Annihilation, I welcome fic based only off that. I love the journal style of Annihilation and epistolary fic is especially welcome for this fandom.
Requested Tags:
- Alternate Universe - Changeling: The Lost
- Alternate Universe - Vampire: The Requiem
- Blood Magic
- Body Horror
- Captivity
- Castaways in Time
- Character A dresses Character B up to die
- Character has identity issues due to their intense bond with another person
- Character keeps dying but it doesn't stick
- Character Will Not Let Another Character Die (Even When They Beg)
- Cults
- Curses
- Died and came back wrong
- Eldritch locations
- Identity Issues
- Insomnia
- Killing Each Other Rather Than Facing A Worse Fate
- Memory Loss
- Moral Ambiguity
- Nature Which Wants To Crawl Inside You And Never Come Out
- Nature Which Wants to Eat You
- Non-Consensual Apotheosis
- Non-Euclidean Topology
- Oneiromancy
- Partially Failed Resurrection
- ritual gone wrong
- Ruined Castles and Fortresses
- Sacrifice
- Sentient Malevolent Nature
- Tormented By Visions
- Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
- Unintended consequences of having your future told
Original F!Expedition Member/Original F!Expedition Member: Honestly, feel free to do pretty much anything you like with this one! They can have whatever roles/professions you like (I think it'd be neat if one of them was a linguist, since the linguist didn't go with the 12th expedition, but you don't have to do that!). If you want to use this to just go pure Area X/Southern Reach worldbuilding, that's also super cool. Just something weird and horrifically gorgeous, please.
The Biologist & or / The Psychologist: Gods - anything and everything? Their scene together at the lighthouse wrecked me, and I'd love to see something where the Psychologist transforms same as the Biologist then, or an AU where the biologist didn't figure out the hypnosis commands, or a scene with them together before going into Area X.Collapse. Post-canon fic would be loved too -
The Biologist & Ghost Bird: Do you ever think about how Area X creates Ghost Bird in the image of the Biologist and then by the time Ghost Bird meets the Biologist the Biologist has become Area X? Because I think about that a lot and I'm emo about it and I just want something that dwells in that uneven furrow between the two creatures and their desires to be/love/consume each other. Something post-canon would be interesting, or perhaps Ghost Bird runs into the Biologist before she leaves Area X.
The Biologist & The Surveryor: They're an alliance-that-wasn't, and of course I'm obsessed with any relationship where both parties want to kill each other, and I'd love anything that gets into their fluctuating trust the more time they spend together, or stories where their doppelgangers meet.
The Biologist: I'd love a journal of hers from previous expeditions - especially in Rock Bay. I'm interested in her malleable sense of self, the way she feels the need to both wholly become and only observe her sites. I'd love to see more of her with the Psychologist or Ghost Bird, especially now that she and the Psychologist are weird Area X creatures. Post-Annihilation, what version of her husband does she find, if any - or what other creatures/remnants of old expeditions does she find?
The Surveyor: She's the one character who gets significant alone time in Annihilation whose head we never get into, and I would love something set during that span of time where she's alone in the ruins of the campsite, sitting next to the tower, dwelling over the anthropologist's body - what was she thinking, what creatures did she meet? Pre-series fic would be cool, as would be came back wrong fic or fic about an Area-X-doppelganger!Surveyor observing the events of the next two books, perhaps meeting Ghost Bird or the returned biologist.
General: This weird book about fucked-up missionary siblings in clockwork Fairyland snuck into my life and ruined me and I would love to be further ruined by any fic you write! I really, really loved the Changeling!Cathy faux-reveal and was a bit put out by its last-chapter reversal (all books can do with more weird changelings, lbr), so any Changeling!Cathy fic - or fic where she's human but grappling with the fact that she enjoyed elements of the time when she thought she was a soulless creature - is always adored. Canon-compliant deathfic for Ariel is fine - especially if it leads to Mab further manipulating/fucking with Cathy, and Cathy continuing to spiral about her identity, but I am also thrilled by any AU you come up with where she survives or is brought back. Feel free to combine any of these requests to make an OT3. Basically, just lean into the WEIRD and I will be super happy!
Requested Tags:
- Alternate Universe - Vampire: The Requiem
- Blood Magic
- Body Horror
- Captivity
- Character A dresses Character B up to die
- Character Becomes One With An Ancient Horror
- Character has identity issues due to their intense bond with another person
- Character keeps dying but it doesn't stick
- Cults
- Eldritch locations
- Eldritch Marriage Ritual
- folk horror
- Identity Issues
- In-Universe Regional Horror
- Moral Ambiguity
- Murder is Considered The Highest Form of Aesthetic Appreciation
- Nature Which Wants To Crawl Inside You And Never Come Out
- Nature Which Wants to Eat You
- Oneiromancy
- ritual gone wrong
- Sacrificed for the other character's goals
- Sentient Malevolent Nature
- Steampunk Horror
- Unintended consequences of having your future told
Ariel/Cathy: I would love some of Ariel's POV on the novel's events - she has a sort of resignation to liminality about her that I find fascinating. What if she had been given more time to convince Cathy she was a Changeling too? What if she tried to sell Cathy to Mab for Laon's safety (or, perhaps, Cathy tries it with her). Resurrection attempts? Ill-advised wanderings into the depths of Arcadia? We see glimpses of what Changelings think about Cathy and Laon's theology, but what kind of myths and religions of their own have they developed that Ariel and Cathy might stumble into in this land where everything's just a bit too real? Also intrigued by the possibility of them meeting in the mortal world sometime before Cathy travels to Arcadia - what would that meeting look like, what kind of traps might Ariel try to set (at Mab's encouraging?), would Cathy notice something off about her? Ariel and Cathy dressing each other up the morning before the Hunt. Murder is the highest form of aesthetic appreciation in Arcadia, so after the Hunt it falls upon Cathy to resurrect and marry Ariel, because they are obviously destined to be with each other. Some kind of time loop, either while they're waiting for Laon to come back or during the Hunt.
Ariel/Mab: How was Ariel summoned back from the mundane world? How did Mab 'lay claim' to her changeling - did she get any pushback form other Faerie lords? Did Ariel ever think about defecting to another court, or is that not allowed by Faerie laws? AU where she did defect to another court, and how that influenced her relationships with both Mab and Catherine. Is necromancy possible in Arcadia? Came back wrong fic would be delightful. Ariel - or whatever's left of her - confronting Mab about the Hunt, before or after it happens.
Cathy/Kasdaye: I mean - "Have you not wanted to speak to me all your life?" makes me want pre-Arcadia Cathy dreaming of/dreaming with Kasdaye, but I would also love an AU of the masquerade where Kasdaye does succeed in telling Cathy's fortune, and how everything changes unexpectly from there - would Cathy still kill Ariel, knowing Kasdaye had already seen her do so? Kasdaye trying to take over Ariel's position as Cathy's guide in Arcadia after the Hunt, or time that they spend post-canon together in Pivot. What are Kasdaye's fae friends like, what dream cults might she be a part of, what happens if she brings Cathy deeper into her world? Kasdaye's a super neat temptress-and-oracle fusion that gets right at all the things Cathy's upbringing has taught her to fear, but in a way that's canonically more appealing than Mab's presentation of the forbidden, so I'd love something that plays with that.
Cathy/Laon: Ah, yes, deeply co-dependent world-shaping/world-breaking twins with infinite capacity for guilt and also academic study: let it not be said that I do not have a type, or that these two did not wreck me. Honestly I haven't requested them before because I was so happy with what canon gave me, so: post-canon adventures? Or, perhaps, role reversal, with ambiguous Changeling!Laon - he and Cathy are roughly equal in their capacity for love, but he is so much worse at dealing with the strange, that would be something delightful to drop on his head (whether that's Laon was always the Changeling or some combination of Ariel/Cathy/Mab create a Changeling!Laon is totally up to you). Something that leans into their identity issues - they are an absolute disaster at handling the knots of sinner/twin/changeling they tie each other into, and I'm obsessed.
Cathy/Mab: Changeling Cathy! Either one where Mab made her before sending her off into the mortal world, or one where Mab decides to turn her into one at some point during/after the events of the book (look ... we don't know how Changelings are made, it's totally possible). I wasn't entirely sold on the 'Arcadia = literally Hell' conceit of the ending, so maybe something where that was Mab's real lie? Human Cathy becomes one of Mab's courtiers in exchange for Laon's life/freedom. But, look, Cathy killed someone she liked to spite Mab, even if Laon's soul was also playing some part in that decision, I am gonna be super into whatever you write for them! Arcadian adventures and rituals, Cathy-as-servant, Cathy-as-toy, Arcadian politicking ... all excellent. Post-canon time in Pivot or Elphane, Cathy discovering Arcadian myths and legends and sticking her nose in where it doesn't belong. What does Arcadian regional horror look like? Mab fucking around with Cathy's dreams - visiting her, pulling elements of her dreams into reality.