kimaracretak (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fiachairecht) wrote2019-09-16 11:12 pm
fiachairecht) wrote2019-09-16 11:12 pm
trick or treat 2019
Hello friend, it is Samhain and time for spooky things 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 love these canons for the 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. A lot of my prompts are very horror-slanted, but if you're shipfic-inclined, happy couples murdering their enemies also definitely counts as a trick for me >:)
I love everything from atmospheric character studies to 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 || Dark Likes || Smut Likes || DNWs || An Enchantment of Ravens - Margaret Rogerson || Aniara - Harry Martinsson || Changeling: The Lost || Dare Me - Megan Abbott || Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti || The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson || The Southern Reach Trilogy - Jeff Vandermeer || Under the Pendulum Sun - Jeanette Ng
General: I adore the worldbuilding madly and would love something that gets into all the Craft and glamour and politics of the world, or something with one of the fairy characters that explores their lives and relationships before Isobel started working with/for them. Shipwise I love Isobel/Hemlock, Isobel/Lark, Isobel/Gadfly, and Isobel/Rook, and any gen combinations of the four requested characters + any other character.
Gadfly: I am fascinated by his age and relationship with eternity - well, all the fae's relationships with age and eternity, but specifically his given how much of the book's plot he masterminded. For Gadfly/Isobel shipfic, especially interested in what it means to force yourself to fall in love, and how hard it is to maintain those feelings when you can't escape the knowledge that they're partially artificial.
Hemlock: Hemlock is the love of my life and I want to spend infinitely more time with her! Hunts that she and her dogs have undertaken, first meetings with Rook, more dreamsharing with Isobel and all the AUs where she survives and becomes Isobel's Huntmistress post-canon, all the AUs where Isobel fails and is doomed to be Hemlock's quarry for eternity. Just ... Hemlock.
Isobel: I am obsessed with AUs where she drinks from the Green Well, slowly becoming more and more strange at first willingly and then with growing horror as she realises she can't recognise what she's become - and with Lark and Hemlock and Gadfly and Rook there to offer either enabling or suffering. Canonverse post-canon is also excellent, of course - all the bits of ruling that she wasn't prepared for.
Lark: I love how well she plays with and embraces the line between curious and cruel. Especially interested in pre-canon fic for her - various bargains she's made and enchantments created.
General: The full text in English translation is here, for reference or if you're just curious. I love that it's a poem about beauty in emptiness, about connection and perception and ways to make the void meaningful. If you want to bring in things from pre-existing adaptations, I am most familiar with Seventh Wonder's 'The Great Escape' (youtube, lyrics), Andreas Kleerup's Aniara which is on Spotify, and the movie. I lowkey ship Isagel/The Blind Poetess and Isagel/f!narrator, but gen is also great. In the most optional of optional lands, if you feel like extra Scandi-lit nerdery and looking for further reading, Eric O. Johannesson's 'Aniara: Poetry and the Poet in the Modern World' [google drive link] has more on Martinson's life and other poetry.
Fandom-specific DNW: Male narrator.
Isagel: My forever girl with the unlocked mystery / she’d neatly solved, but which was falling with her - gods, I love her so, I love her clever and unmoored and aching and curious. I am weak for pilots who are one with their ship in every possible way - I would love anything about her relationship with Aniara. We get flashes of the intricacies of her mind but nothing really from her POV, so retellings of certain scenes from her perspective would be lovely.
The Mima: Catch your girl sobbing in the corner about sad AIs, okay. She's deified to such an extent by the crew really I will be delighted by anything from her point of view - how she feels about the crew, the memories she's tasked with keeping, the role she's asked to play. Self-invented, self-sustaining, ultimately unable to bear all that she's asked to - tell me all her stories.
The Blind Poetess: Her introduction reminds me of the Mima's, in a way, the sort of dizzying, dazzling distraction-relief that's mostly just a mask to cope with having to be the personal bearer of profound horror. I would love equally something pre-canon with her at home in the forests of Rind or something on the Aniara. And practices of grace, how hard to grasp / for one who’s never spoken with the dead makes me want fic of her with ghosts - in the forest, on the tundras of Mars, in space. Or shipfic with Isagel and contemplation of their differing views of heaven - the final scene of the opera is Isagel dancing whilst the poetess sings of the joy of death, and anything that works with that as inspiration would be loved.
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.
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. Her wiki page, for reference.
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. Pretty body horror where she slowly becomes a tree or some other symbol of Spring.
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? Rogue Sister/Pale Brother shippiness (ot like - whatever 'ship' looks like for Morpheans) is totally welcome.
General: Man this is sort of my ur-obsession book, isn't it? Codependent teenage best friends AND not-not sexual obsession with #unavailable older women in positions of authority, I am immensely catered to. I'd love something that leans into the fever-dream horror of consumption of it all. All the obsession, all the clinical-sensual interest in what bodies can do, all the levels of genuinely caring mentorship that ultimately can't do anything but fail. I ship any/all of the girls with each other, as well as Addy/Colette and Beth/Colette. Sex involving under 16s DNW waived for this fandom.
Addy: Addy's such a fun narrator, especially in how she manages to convince herself she's clear-eyed about all the things she doesn't get, and think that she misses everything that she actually understands, if not quite consciously. I'd love post-canon fic, with Beth or not.
Beth: Oh, Beth. Scheming, planning, empty and hungry and so lonely, turning herself into a black hole for lack of anything else, completely lacking any sorts of words to explain why she feels Addy betrayed her. I'd like to see her post-canon, perhaps getting revenge on Addy, perhaps ruining herself with other girls.
Colette: So I get, storywise, why it makes sense for her to be straight. But I also have such a difficult time believing that she's straight. I'd love something about her sexual relationships with other women, pre-canon or with Addy or Beth post-novel. If you're not feeling that, genfic with her daughter and how they rebuild their lives post-novel would also be lovely.
Emily, RiRi: I don't really have specific prompts for these three, just that I'd love something from any of their POVs - about the novel's events, or about the next year when they're Addy's lieutenants, how they settle into that role.
Tacy: Gods I'm obsessed with how willing she is to be a pawn in the girls' power games - all for a chance to claw her way out into her own world? Because she genuinely enjoys it? Something exploring either of those facets of her would be great.
General: The poem is relatively short and here for easy reference, or if you are feeling unenthused about the request of mine you initially matched on and want to do something different. I love the way the poem plays with obsession and adoration and change and how people are dragged into and out of the weird spaces between life and death. I have a slight preference for gen here, but I'm open to any ships between the requested characters or requested character/OFC ships. I am also 100% here for an IN SPACE AU for this poem, so if you too would like a goblin market IN SPACE feel free to run with that! Any of the prompts in the Goblin Market section of last year's Darkest Night letter are fair game, including the setting-change AU ones. I am fine with permadeath of any of the requested characters here.
Jeanie: I'm equally happy for fic with her to be set pre-death, or for her to come back (wrong) somehow. Ghost, vampire, etc ... I especially like the idea that flowers don't grow on Jeanie's grave because they have gone inside the dirt and into Jeanie's corpse and are gonna crawl up hungry. I'm interested in how she died, whether by goblin magicks or by choice, and I'm interested in how she lives on as legend. I like reading a Jeanie who's strong but flawed, clear-sighted yet doomed, and I like reading her ghost/otherwise undead self taking advantage of the myths she spawned. I love her with the sisters - how close were they? Did she try to warn them, or did she want to drag them down with her?
Lizzie: Okay ngl the image of Lizzie standing fiery and unmoving amidst a sea of goblins was hashtag-formative, and I'm obsessed with that immense strength that frankly-bordering-on-stupid strength drawn from loving another person so much you nearly cease to exist. Lean into the horror of such an obsessive clever devotion and break my heart, please.
Laura: Oh, Laura, the things she learnt! I always found it fascinating that the deeper Laura sunk into her goblin-fruit stupor the less-and-more she seemed to know - not quite a mythical fruit of knowledge (in fact she loses the ability to see and hear the goblins in the regular world) yet she also quite clearly fades into another world at the same time. What does she find there, in the shadow-world? If Lizzie's obsessive devotion is to her sister Laura's is to something else entirely (knowledge? movement? sensations?) - what impact does that have on their relationship?
General: Haunted house story of my dreams! I love spooky things about the house as character, and possession, and characters slowly becoming the House/the house's allies without quite realising it. Fic that leans into the ghost/not ghost ambiguity is fantastic, especially when contrasted with how the book itself seems to be so clear-eyed about what's actually happening without ever letting us know what it sees. I ship awful dysfunctional Eleanor/Theo and (as awful as you like, as dysfunctional as you like) Theo/her friend that she was living with.
The Companion: Historyfic! Everything about who she was and her relationship with Abigail. Was she even a companion, or was she a manifestion of Hill House?
Eleanor: Post-canon fic is of course excellent - ghost!Eleanor, house!Eleanor, all of those excellent things. I'd especially love fic about her meeting/discovering the remains of the companion, something with a returned Theo (or! future visitors to the House!), or an AU where she doesn't quite die but her body is repaired using pieces of the House. Any and all fic where she becomes the House, an exploration of what the picnic is/was. Fucked-up manipulative Eleanor/Theo, in porn or genfic.
Hill House: Sentient malevolent houses always and forever! I would love the house's perspective through the years, other people it's eaten or considered eating; its own perspective on its building or the events of the novel or futurefic when it's settled into some equilibrium with Eleanor.
Mrs Montague: I'm interested in how she got into ghosts/the supernatural in the first place, as well as what might happen if she returned to Hill House. Something that explores her relationship with Eleanor, some kind of possessionfic, how she takes her experience with Hill House into future explorations.
Theo: I love Theo! Please make her miserable :D I like things that explore her relationship with the picnic and the thing she saw there that made her scream, fics about how she goes home but can never actually leave Hill House. Something, anything about her psychic abilities and how they manifest, if they're real. Eldritch horror!Theo.
General: I love these books 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. Canon-compliant deathfic for any of these characters is fine.
The Anthropologist: First to die and perhaps the first of the 12th expedition to understand Area X - what were her last moments like? What was her relationship with the Psychologist like, shippy or not? Feel free to take this as a request for an Area X doppleganger of her too!
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?
Ghost Bird: I love clones/bits of sentient nature coming into themselves as their own creatures and I love Ghost Bird. I'd like to get inside her head, during her time alone in Rock Bay, sometime post-series with Grace in the new world that is wholly Area X, while meeting what the Biologist has become. I would especially love some way for her to meet the psychologist - time is weird! The Psychologist is in a weird not-dead/not-Area-X limbo! It is so possible, and I would love it.
Grace Stevenson: Graaaaaaace, hard-edged and uncompromising and unapologetic and just as much a fave as those more deeply tied to the Weird. Especially interested in post-canon adventures with her (and Ghost Bird?) trying to find her way in the newly-swallowed world.
The Psychologist: I'm obsessed with the image of her walking towards the Southern Reach carrying the barrier that we got in Authority - it's vague whether it was her or a simulacrum imo, but regardless of the answer I'd love something that dwells in that moment from her POV - what it means to come forward like that, to carry her old home to her new. I'd also love her take on the events of the 12th expedition, what it means to her to hold the full weight of knowledge, how she planned, how it felt to hypnotise the other team members. Documentary/epistolary fic - anything that brings to life her notes, her files, all the threads she wove through the Reach and all the things she couldn't keep after the barrier came down. Something post-'death', since death is so Odd inside the border. Pre-Annihilation fic about her building the base, her first expedition alone.
Original F!Expedition Member: Honestly, feel free to do pretty much anything you like with this one! She can have whatever role/profession you like (linguist would be neat, since the linguist didn't go with the 12th expedition, but a psychologist/expedition member would also be excellent). 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.
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. I ship any femslash as well as Cathy/Laon and Kasdaye/Penemue. Loads of ship prompts in previous requests for this book
Ariel Davenport: Changeling stories are my favourite in all universes, and I love Ariel madly. She clearly has some history with Arcadia's lies and masques, and I'd love any glimpse of it. Alternatively, what was life like for her in the mortal world? I'd love Ariel's POV on the novel's events, how she handles Cathy's potential Changeling status - she has a sort of resignation to liminality about her that I find fascinating. What if she tried to sell Cathy to Mab for Laon's safety (or, perhaps, Cathy tries it with her?).
Kasdaye: Kasdaye as temptress-and-oracle is so incredibly My Thing and I want more of her! Life in court, life with her brother, telling fortunes and breaking rules. Fae parties and rituals, how she came to Mab's court, other courts she was with before, what it means to read fates and fortunes in a land where the line between spoken word and reality is incredibly malleable.
Laon: I surprised myself with how much I like him! He totally lacks Cathy's capacity to deal with the Weird, which makes me want to see how the story would go if it were him who was the maybe-Changeling. His liminal space as prophet to/prophet of the Fae has so much potential for exploration, especially in post canon adventures with Cathy, Mab, or an improbably alive Ariel.
Mab | The Pale Queen: I love Mab so godsdamnned much, she's so extra in such a calculated way, and absolutely malevolent in such a gloriously fake-careless way and I want to dwell in her mind and her court forever. How did she build her court, what is her life like in Pivot, what other interactions has she had with humans, has she ever been to the mortal world, what are her relationships with other Fae lords like? I just want to know EVERYTHING about Mab and Arcadia, so do all the worldbuilding you like!
The Salamander: I love questionably compassionate Riddler-Fae and I love the Salamander! I would especially love fic with her and Elizabeth down in the kitches, but anything pre-canon about Arcadian worldbuilding and life at Mab's court would be equally loved. Or surprise me with something!
I love these canons for the 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. A lot of my prompts are very horror-slanted, but if you're shipfic-inclined, happy couples murdering their enemies also definitely counts as a trick for me >:)
I love everything from atmospheric character studies to 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 || Dark Likes || Smut Likes || DNWs || An Enchantment of Ravens - Margaret Rogerson || Aniara - Harry Martinsson || Changeling: The Lost || Dare Me - Megan Abbott || Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti || The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson || 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), architectural horror
- Vampires, magic, witchcraft, rituals, eldritch things, fey things, eerie things, cosmic horrors
- 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
- Arranged marriages, marriages of convenience, married by a technicality
- 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
- 'You don't get to save me but you will kill me' types of relationships, especially when the killing doesn't actually happen and they both have to live with that
- 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
- Porn as character work.
- Accidental apotheosis, non-consensual apotheosis
- Blood magic, blood kink, blood rituals, blood as art medium
- Body horror
- Conflicted loyalties, abuse of loyalties, loyalty leading people into really bad decisionmaking
- Died and came back wrong, died multiple times and comes back wronger each time
- Doomed ships, ghost ships, ships that should be abandoned but aren't, cursed ships (spaceships/airships/sailing ships all good!)
- Eerily pristine abandoned places, ruined castles/fortresses/villages, other eldritch places
- Folk horror
- Ghosts
- Human sacrifice, ritual scarification, what happens when sacrifices to higher powers aren't accepted
- Identity Issues, especially those stemming from close bonds with another person
- In-universe regional horror, myths, (urban) legends, and folklore
- Killing and eating your gods as a form of worship
- Memory loss
- Nature that wants to crawl inside you and never come out, nature that wants to eat you, sentient malevolent nature
- Necromancy, the unpleasant aftereffects/costs of necromancy
- Oneiromancy, dreamsharing, dreams that bleed into reality, cursed dreams, prophetic dreams
- One character dressing another up to die
- Repeatedly killed and resurrected
- Ritual gone wrong
- There's something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls trope
- Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
- Unintended consequences of having your future told
- 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.
- 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.
An Enchantment of Ravens - Margaret Rogerson
General: I adore the worldbuilding madly and would love something that gets into all the Craft and glamour and politics of the world, or something with one of the fairy characters that explores their lives and relationships before Isobel started working with/for them. Shipwise I love Isobel/Hemlock, Isobel/Lark, Isobel/Gadfly, and Isobel/Rook, and any gen combinations of the four requested characters + any other character.
Gadfly: I am fascinated by his age and relationship with eternity - well, all the fae's relationships with age and eternity, but specifically his given how much of the book's plot he masterminded. For Gadfly/Isobel shipfic, especially interested in what it means to force yourself to fall in love, and how hard it is to maintain those feelings when you can't escape the knowledge that they're partially artificial.
Hemlock: Hemlock is the love of my life and I want to spend infinitely more time with her! Hunts that she and her dogs have undertaken, first meetings with Rook, more dreamsharing with Isobel and all the AUs where she survives and becomes Isobel's Huntmistress post-canon, all the AUs where Isobel fails and is doomed to be Hemlock's quarry for eternity. Just ... Hemlock.
Isobel: I am obsessed with AUs where she drinks from the Green Well, slowly becoming more and more strange at first willingly and then with growing horror as she realises she can't recognise what she's become - and with Lark and Hemlock and Gadfly and Rook there to offer either enabling or suffering. Canonverse post-canon is also excellent, of course - all the bits of ruling that she wasn't prepared for.
Lark: I love how well she plays with and embraces the line between curious and cruel. Especially interested in pre-canon fic for her - various bargains she's made and enchantments created.
Aniara - Harry Martinson
General: The full text in English translation is here, for reference or if you're just curious. I love that it's a poem about beauty in emptiness, about connection and perception and ways to make the void meaningful. If you want to bring in things from pre-existing adaptations, I am most familiar with Seventh Wonder's 'The Great Escape' (youtube, lyrics), Andreas Kleerup's Aniara which is on Spotify, and the movie. I lowkey ship Isagel/The Blind Poetess and Isagel/f!narrator, but gen is also great. In the most optional of optional lands, if you feel like extra Scandi-lit nerdery and looking for further reading, Eric O. Johannesson's 'Aniara: Poetry and the Poet in the Modern World' [google drive link] has more on Martinson's life and other poetry.
Fandom-specific DNW: Male narrator.
Isagel: My forever girl with the unlocked mystery / she’d neatly solved, but which was falling with her - gods, I love her so, I love her clever and unmoored and aching and curious. I am weak for pilots who are one with their ship in every possible way - I would love anything about her relationship with Aniara. We get flashes of the intricacies of her mind but nothing really from her POV, so retellings of certain scenes from her perspective would be lovely.
The Mima: Catch your girl sobbing in the corner about sad AIs, okay. She's deified to such an extent by the crew really I will be delighted by anything from her point of view - how she feels about the crew, the memories she's tasked with keeping, the role she's asked to play. Self-invented, self-sustaining, ultimately unable to bear all that she's asked to - tell me all her stories.
The Blind Poetess: Her introduction reminds me of the Mima's, in a way, the sort of dizzying, dazzling distraction-relief that's mostly just a mask to cope with having to be the personal bearer of profound horror. I would love equally something pre-canon with her at home in the forests of Rind or something on the Aniara. And practices of grace, how hard to grasp / for one who’s never spoken with the dead makes me want fic of her with ghosts - in the forest, on the tundras of Mars, in space. Or shipfic with Isagel and contemplation of their differing views of heaven - the final scene of the opera is Isagel dancing whilst the poetess sings of the joy of death, and anything that works with that as inspiration would be loved.
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.
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. Pretty body horror where she slowly becomes a tree or some other symbol of Spring.
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? Rogue Sister/Pale Brother shippiness (ot like - whatever 'ship' looks like for Morpheans) is totally welcome.
Dare Me - Megan Abbott
General: Man this is sort of my ur-obsession book, isn't it? Codependent teenage best friends AND not-not sexual obsession with #unavailable older women in positions of authority, I am immensely catered to. I'd love something that leans into the fever-dream horror of consumption of it all. All the obsession, all the clinical-sensual interest in what bodies can do, all the levels of genuinely caring mentorship that ultimately can't do anything but fail. I ship any/all of the girls with each other, as well as Addy/Colette and Beth/Colette. Sex involving under 16s DNW waived for this fandom.
Addy: Addy's such a fun narrator, especially in how she manages to convince herself she's clear-eyed about all the things she doesn't get, and think that she misses everything that she actually understands, if not quite consciously. I'd love post-canon fic, with Beth or not.
Beth: Oh, Beth. Scheming, planning, empty and hungry and so lonely, turning herself into a black hole for lack of anything else, completely lacking any sorts of words to explain why she feels Addy betrayed her. I'd like to see her post-canon, perhaps getting revenge on Addy, perhaps ruining herself with other girls.
Colette: So I get, storywise, why it makes sense for her to be straight. But I also have such a difficult time believing that she's straight. I'd love something about her sexual relationships with other women, pre-canon or with Addy or Beth post-novel. If you're not feeling that, genfic with her daughter and how they rebuild their lives post-novel would also be lovely.
Emily, RiRi: I don't really have specific prompts for these three, just that I'd love something from any of their POVs - about the novel's events, or about the next year when they're Addy's lieutenants, how they settle into that role.
Tacy: Gods I'm obsessed with how willing she is to be a pawn in the girls' power games - all for a chance to claw her way out into her own world? Because she genuinely enjoys it? Something exploring either of those facets of her would be great.
Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti
General: The poem is relatively short and here for easy reference, or if you are feeling unenthused about the request of mine you initially matched on and want to do something different. I love the way the poem plays with obsession and adoration and change and how people are dragged into and out of the weird spaces between life and death. I have a slight preference for gen here, but I'm open to any ships between the requested characters or requested character/OFC ships. I am also 100% here for an IN SPACE AU for this poem, so if you too would like a goblin market IN SPACE feel free to run with that! Any of the prompts in the Goblin Market section of last year's Darkest Night letter are fair game, including the setting-change AU ones. I am fine with permadeath of any of the requested characters here.
Jeanie: I'm equally happy for fic with her to be set pre-death, or for her to come back (wrong) somehow. Ghost, vampire, etc ... I especially like the idea that flowers don't grow on Jeanie's grave because they have gone inside the dirt and into Jeanie's corpse and are gonna crawl up hungry. I'm interested in how she died, whether by goblin magicks or by choice, and I'm interested in how she lives on as legend. I like reading a Jeanie who's strong but flawed, clear-sighted yet doomed, and I like reading her ghost/otherwise undead self taking advantage of the myths she spawned. I love her with the sisters - how close were they? Did she try to warn them, or did she want to drag them down with her?
Lizzie: Okay ngl the image of Lizzie standing fiery and unmoving amidst a sea of goblins was hashtag-formative, and I'm obsessed with that immense strength that frankly-bordering-on-stupid strength drawn from loving another person so much you nearly cease to exist. Lean into the horror of such an obsessive clever devotion and break my heart, please.
Laura: Oh, Laura, the things she learnt! I always found it fascinating that the deeper Laura sunk into her goblin-fruit stupor the less-and-more she seemed to know - not quite a mythical fruit of knowledge (in fact she loses the ability to see and hear the goblins in the regular world) yet she also quite clearly fades into another world at the same time. What does she find there, in the shadow-world? If Lizzie's obsessive devotion is to her sister Laura's is to something else entirely (knowledge? movement? sensations?) - what impact does that have on their relationship?
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
General: Haunted house story of my dreams! I love spooky things about the house as character, and possession, and characters slowly becoming the House/the house's allies without quite realising it. Fic that leans into the ghost/not ghost ambiguity is fantastic, especially when contrasted with how the book itself seems to be so clear-eyed about what's actually happening without ever letting us know what it sees. I ship awful dysfunctional Eleanor/Theo and (as awful as you like, as dysfunctional as you like) Theo/her friend that she was living with.
The Companion: Historyfic! Everything about who she was and her relationship with Abigail. Was she even a companion, or was she a manifestion of Hill House?
Eleanor: Post-canon fic is of course excellent - ghost!Eleanor, house!Eleanor, all of those excellent things. I'd especially love fic about her meeting/discovering the remains of the companion, something with a returned Theo (or! future visitors to the House!), or an AU where she doesn't quite die but her body is repaired using pieces of the House. Any and all fic where she becomes the House, an exploration of what the picnic is/was. Fucked-up manipulative Eleanor/Theo, in porn or genfic.
Hill House: Sentient malevolent houses always and forever! I would love the house's perspective through the years, other people it's eaten or considered eating; its own perspective on its building or the events of the novel or futurefic when it's settled into some equilibrium with Eleanor.
Mrs Montague: I'm interested in how she got into ghosts/the supernatural in the first place, as well as what might happen if she returned to Hill House. Something that explores her relationship with Eleanor, some kind of possessionfic, how she takes her experience with Hill House into future explorations.
Theo: I love Theo! Please make her miserable :D I like things that explore her relationship with the picnic and the thing she saw there that made her scream, fics about how she goes home but can never actually leave Hill House. Something, anything about her psychic abilities and how they manifest, if they're real. Eldritch horror!Theo.
General: I love these books 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. Canon-compliant deathfic for any of these characters is fine.
The Anthropologist: First to die and perhaps the first of the 12th expedition to understand Area X - what were her last moments like? What was her relationship with the Psychologist like, shippy or not? Feel free to take this as a request for an Area X doppleganger of her too!
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?
Ghost Bird: I love clones/bits of sentient nature coming into themselves as their own creatures and I love Ghost Bird. I'd like to get inside her head, during her time alone in Rock Bay, sometime post-series with Grace in the new world that is wholly Area X, while meeting what the Biologist has become. I would especially love some way for her to meet the psychologist - time is weird! The Psychologist is in a weird not-dead/not-Area-X limbo! It is so possible, and I would love it.
Grace Stevenson: Graaaaaaace, hard-edged and uncompromising and unapologetic and just as much a fave as those more deeply tied to the Weird. Especially interested in post-canon adventures with her (and Ghost Bird?) trying to find her way in the newly-swallowed world.
The Psychologist: I'm obsessed with the image of her walking towards the Southern Reach carrying the barrier that we got in Authority - it's vague whether it was her or a simulacrum imo, but regardless of the answer I'd love something that dwells in that moment from her POV - what it means to come forward like that, to carry her old home to her new. I'd also love her take on the events of the 12th expedition, what it means to her to hold the full weight of knowledge, how she planned, how it felt to hypnotise the other team members. Documentary/epistolary fic - anything that brings to life her notes, her files, all the threads she wove through the Reach and all the things she couldn't keep after the barrier came down. Something post-'death', since death is so Odd inside the border. Pre-Annihilation fic about her building the base, her first expedition alone.
Original F!Expedition Member: Honestly, feel free to do pretty much anything you like with this one! She can have whatever role/profession you like (linguist would be neat, since the linguist didn't go with the 12th expedition, but a psychologist/expedition member would also be excellent). 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.
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. I ship any femslash as well as Cathy/Laon and Kasdaye/Penemue. Loads of ship prompts in previous requests for this book
Ariel Davenport: Changeling stories are my favourite in all universes, and I love Ariel madly. She clearly has some history with Arcadia's lies and masques, and I'd love any glimpse of it. Alternatively, what was life like for her in the mortal world? I'd love Ariel's POV on the novel's events, how she handles Cathy's potential Changeling status - she has a sort of resignation to liminality about her that I find fascinating. What if she tried to sell Cathy to Mab for Laon's safety (or, perhaps, Cathy tries it with her?).
Kasdaye: Kasdaye as temptress-and-oracle is so incredibly My Thing and I want more of her! Life in court, life with her brother, telling fortunes and breaking rules. Fae parties and rituals, how she came to Mab's court, other courts she was with before, what it means to read fates and fortunes in a land where the line between spoken word and reality is incredibly malleable.
Laon: I surprised myself with how much I like him! He totally lacks Cathy's capacity to deal with the Weird, which makes me want to see how the story would go if it were him who was the maybe-Changeling. His liminal space as prophet to/prophet of the Fae has so much potential for exploration, especially in post canon adventures with Cathy, Mab, or an improbably alive Ariel.
Mab | The Pale Queen: I love Mab so godsdamnned much, she's so extra in such a calculated way, and absolutely malevolent in such a gloriously fake-careless way and I want to dwell in her mind and her court forever. How did she build her court, what is her life like in Pivot, what other interactions has she had with humans, has she ever been to the mortal world, what are her relationships with other Fae lords like? I just want to know EVERYTHING about Mab and Arcadia, so do all the worldbuilding you like!
The Salamander: I love questionably compassionate Riddler-Fae and I love the Salamander! I would especially love fic with her and Elizabeth down in the kitches, but anything pre-canon about Arcadian worldbuilding and life at Mab's court would be equally loved. Or surprise me with something!