positivelyvexed

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thanks for writing for me! I hope you have fun writing, and don't feel obligated to use my prompts if there's something else you feel really inspired to write. As long as it respects my DNWs and is in the vicinity of my likes, I will enjoy it. Some of my fandom sections will be longer than others, but that's just a reflection of how many ideas I have for each, I'd be excited to receive fic for any of these! If you have any questions for me, feel free to ask through the mod. I'm always open to receiving treats.

My AO3 username is PositivelyVexed.

Have a great Yuletide season!

Requested Fandoms
The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
Dark Matter - Michelle Paver
Disco Elysium


General Likes

• Enemies-to-lovers
• Unlikely team-ups
• Characters who don’t quite trust each other being forced to rely on each other
• Characters who get each other better than anyone else does
• Characters who struggle to express their feelings or express their feelings in unconventional ways
• Stoic or repressed characters having moments of vulnerability
• Characters deluding themselves, especially about their feelings
• Characters being zealously committed to an ideology or system that doesn’t serve them
• Finding hope and moments of shared humanity in dystopian societies
• Hurt/comfort
• Characters learning new skills or revealing hidden talents
• Road trips, camping, staying in roadside motels
• Slice-of-life in an unconventional setting
• Us-against-the-world, fighting back-to-back
• Lost in the wilderness, Canadian Shack
• Bed-sharing tropes: Only One Bed, huddling for warmth, falling asleep on someone's shoulder, exhausted and falling into bed together after a long day, etc.
• Internalized homophobia, repressed desires, period-typical attitudes toward sexuality, canon-typical darkness
• Cats, characters petting cats
• Winter (Christmas themes are fine to include), fall, snow, storms of all kinds, descriptions of bad weather
• Wilderness and urban decay
• In-universe urban legends
• Time loops, time travel
• “Came Back Wrong”-type tropes
• The apocalypse
• Journeys into the underworld to retrieve a loved one
• Ghosts, hauntings, ambiguous "maybe it's ghosts or maybe it's just going insane from grief" stories
• Cosmic horror, eldritch beings, alien geometry
• Unusual formats, epistolary fic, interactive fiction, etc.

Porn/kink likes, if you're so inclined:

• Oral sex, fingering, handjobs, frottage, anal sex, rimming
• Clothed/semi-clothed sex, outdoor sex, semi-public sex
• Loss of virginity, first times, first-time-with-the-same-sex sex
• Eagerness, desperation
• Bed-sharing and/or heat-sharing leads to sex
• Cuddling
• Praise, body worship
• Hair-pulling, hair-petting
• Hands around someone's neck
• Shoving someone up against a wall
• Characters unexpectedly stumbling into kink together, informally negotiated kink or un-negotiated kink
• D/s dynamics
• Sex Pollen, Fuck or Die
• Bondage: ropes, handcuffs, getting tied up with whatever’s lying around
• Manhandling, rough sex, bruises, biting, spanking
• Bloodplay, gunplay, knifeplay, breathplay

Do Not Want:

• Noncon (dubcon is fine, canon-typical references to rape are fine)
• Unrequested noncanon ships for my requested characters (but don't feel like you need to pretend someone has never had a past relationship before, mentions of OC exes are fine)
• Non-canon pregnancy or babies, heavy focus on canon pregnancy or babies
• Completely alternate-setting AUs (modern, mundane, in space, Regency, whatever)
• A/B/O
• Breeding kink
• Trans or ace headcanons for my requested characters
• Explicit sex involving characters under 16
• Pets dying or suffering
• 1st-person POV, except in epistolary fic (edited to add: 1st-person POV for Jack Miller is fine even if not explicitly epistolary)
• Heavily-negotiated BDSM (contracts, checklists, safe words, traffic light system, constant check-ins), characters using BDSM jargon like "subspace"

The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
Ray Garraty, Peter McVries

This is such a haunting, memorable story, with a surprisingly touching, doomed friendship (or maybe more?) at the center of it. One of the most affecting things for me is how these boys who signed up for a walk to the death still instinctively try so hard to help and support each other, so I'd love any more vignettes that lean into those moments of kindness and solidarity in the face of extreme dehumanization, or those instincts leading to any desperate last stands and uprisings. I'd really be interested in any story that leans into the unreal undercurrents of the latter half of the novel, going full-on surreal or supernatural: the walkers just keep on walking even after they die? The dark figure in the last paragraph as an actual entity? Ray’s mind breaks down even further post-victory, and has trouble distinguishing reality from dreams?

I'd love any fix-it you care to write, no matter how unlikely or fantastical: Groundhog Day scenario? Ray’s winning wish is to turn back time? Walker uprising? Maybe there are more cracks in the Major's hold on the society and the military than we see? Weather emergency or act of war or well-timed plague apocalypse allow the boys to escape? Deal with the devil?

I’d be very interesting in more worldbuilding touches concerning the state of the dystopia and the role the Walk plays in it. Ray encountering past winners after his victory, and discovering what horrific state they’re in.

I ship Garraty/McVries, and with even the most handwavey of explanations of how they escaped the Walk alive, I would love to read about them on the run or holed up in some rat-trap hotel, tending to each other’s injuries, cuddling up and enjoying the most-well deserved sleep of their lives, or getting up to more than that. Basically anything that explores how they might relate to each other outside of the intense certain-death-for-at-least-one-of-them circumstances their bond formed in. What might their friendship or a burgeoning romantic relationship look like with them actually able to survive together? I'm equally interested in dark takes on this ship that keeps the tragic canon ending intact: denial and internalized homophobia, confessions of desire or self-realization that comes too late, a surviving Garraty haunted by dreams of how it could have been, Garraty takes McVries up on his proposal, and there are Furtive Handjobs in the night, or alternatively, Exhibitionist Handjobs of Defiance in front of the crowd. McVries is a ghost who haunts a traumatized Garraty after the novel's ending, with sexy, angsty and/or spooky results.

Anything dealing with Ray's internalized homophobia and his issues around what happened with the neighbor boy all those years back would also be welcome: I'm fine with either framing the encounter with the neighbor boy as nonconsensual (further confusing his feelings about McVries) or consensual but a source of intense denial and shame. (And, uh, I wouldn't object if you wanted to give Pete and his scar a different backstory than the one he tells Ray in the book.)

Dark Matter - Michelle Paver
Gus Balfour, Jack Miller, The Ghost

The extremity of the arctic darkness and isolation makes this the perfect wintertime horror story for me, and I’d love some horror or fix-its (or both!) this Yuletide. In particular, I’d love anything with Jack and Gus having a harrowing experience with the ghost. I'd love to read an AU where somehow Jack and Gus both survive the fall into the water, but end up trapped in Gruhuken alone, awaiting rescue and struggling to survive. Or a canon divergent AU where Gus doesn't get appendicitis or they otherwise end up staying in Gruhuken. What happens? Do they end up admitting to each other that they've seen a ghost? Awkward mutual pining while being too afraid to bring up the whole ghost thing? Does the ghost, realizing their connection, try to use their repressed feelings to hurt each other? Also, feel free to have the interactions between all three happen by dreams at any point during or post-canon, or Jack being haunted by both Gus and the ghost post-canon. I’d also be interested in an AU where they all become ghosts, and the encounters future travelers have with them.

I’m interested in any spookiness you want to explore with the ghost: visions, invasions of their privacy and messing with their sense of perception, more moments where they have visions of the ghost’s past and re-live its suffering. I love what a figure of pure malevolence the ghost is, but I’d be interested in anything where there may be some uncomfortable moments of empathy or identification. Jack uneasily seeing something of himself in a despised loner and outsider? I’d love to see more of how Gus in particular would relate to the ghost over a longer period. Creepy, trippy threesome vibes? I don't know how, but I'd be interested.

I'd also love to see some hurt/comfort and hope amidst the darkness! There are so many possibilities for fix-its scenarios in this novel, and I'm interested in any you’d like to explore. I very much ship Jack and Gus, and on the softer, shippier side of things, I love huddling for warmth, sharing body heat, shivering, hypothermia, There Was Only One Bed, and all manner of cold weather-related tropiness. I'd also be interested in more things dealing with the class divide between Jack and Gus, as well as Jack's intense loneliness and isolation and his difficulty opening up to someone else.

The epistolary style of the novel is delightful, and I would love to read anything written in the same style, or scrapbook style with found documents, but don't feel obligated to go that direction if you don’t feel like it.

Disco Elysium
Harry Du Bois, Kim Kitsuragi

This game grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. I love these character and the broken-down but beautiful city they inhabit and the bizarre, doomed world they’re trying to make a difference in. I love Harry’s struggles, how much the game doesn’t pull its punches with his addiction and self-loathing, but how hard he’s trying and how he can begin to take the first tentative steps towards building a better version of himself, if he chooses. I also love what a delightful mix of dorky and cool Kim is, how much he enjoys and unexpectedly bonds with a Harry who’s good to him, how well he responds to Harry drawing him out of his shell. I love his loneliness, his pettiness, his quiet sarcasm, and I’m fascinated by the way he’s a cop through and through, for good and ill—and is still treated like an outsider in his own city.

I ship them and would love to read about them at any stage in a potential relationship--getting together, the uncertain early stages of coupledom, established domesticity, facing death or the end of the world together. Even with gen fic, I'd prefer they still care deeply about each other and enjoy each other's company.

The worldbuilding of Elysium is fascinating, and I’d love anything else fleshing out the city or the world. I love how creepy and thematically rich the pale is, and would be thrilled with any story you want to tell about them discussing or interacting with the pale. Lost in the pale together, their memories being merged or swapped in the pale, BODY SWAP IN THE PALE (okay, the pale doesn’t work like that, but I’m willing to handwave), forming more entroponetic theories and finding more swallows throughout Revachol, or investigating any of the ways that people in Elysium live with and make peace with the pale—or don’t make peace with it.

Hurt/comfort would be great. I’m down for either emotional or physical hurt, and would be especially interested in the challenges both of them face making the rocky transition from Martinaise to Jamrock, the struggles of working with a precinct full of people who remember Harry better than he does and seem to be waiting for him to slip up. Dealing with the trauma, the baggage, the rampant homophobia and casual -isms in the RCM and what that means for a potential relationship between them? Or Injury on a case? Harry struggling with a relapse? Kim dealing with his own dead partner trauma and how that relates to his feelings about Harry? Captured and whumped by someone with an old grudge? Harry discovering unsavory things about his own past? Dealing with lingering aftereffects of the Tribunal?

More vignettes of them exploring Revachol and its various subcultures! I'd be particularly interested in something that has them exploring Revachol's homo-sexual underground (undercover at a gay bar??) Stereo-investigations, cryptid-hunting, making a positive difference in people's life even if they'll never be able to fix the System. Harry speaking to the city, Kim having his own different, but very real, bond with the city. I also really liked all the side characters we meet in Martinaise, and would enjoy anything that had Harry and Kim run into them again. Return to the Church to see how the Ravers and Soona are doing? More of Harry's adorable crush on the Smoker? Car funeral with Lilienne? Running into Garte at some other bar he manages? Somehow crossing paths with Ruby or Klaasje again, or seeing how Evrart’s power play is working out?

I have a serious soft spot for AUs that explore them having met before the events of the game. Anything from pre-game drunken bar hook-ups (leading to the mother of all “oh no…” moments for Kim in Martinaise) to hunting for lost treasure as young children in the catacombs of La Royaume.

For shipfic specifically, I'd love Harry figuring out his bisexuality, mutual pining, care-taking as an expression of love, and being domestic together. I'm also down for anything focused on Harry having sex with a man for the first time, any masculine hang-ups he might have about it or just how it piques his curiosity and willingness to explore. Also... It's canon that Kim is able to make Harry his thrall with an eyebrow quirk. So, if you're up for it... D/s? I would love any kind of kinky exploration for these two or tender sex between two very lonely and touch-starved middle-aged men. If you’re interested in writing kink or anal sex, I have a strong preference for dom and top Kim, but otherwise I’m open to anything.

I welcome incorporating the skills or other game mechanics (thought projects, tasks) to any degree you want. Feel free to experiment with new formats: interactive fiction, epistolary, etc.

Canon-specific DNWs: Harry or Kim being shipped with anyone else in Precinct 41, including as a past or one-sided thing. Racist or fascist Harry.

Dear author,

Thanks for writing for me, I'm very much looking forward to seeing what you come up with! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me through the mods.



 General likes

• Loyalty, intense emotional connections
• Shared senses of humor, banter
• Characters who just get each other better than anyone else does
• Characters struggling to express their feelings or expressing their feelings in unconventional ways
• Stoic, repressed, or asshole characters forced to show vulnerability
• Characters deluding themselves, especially about their feelings
  
• Characters as products of a particular time period and setting
• Characters trying to work within a flawed system or trying to find a way to resist
• Hurt/comfort, especially if the characters struggle to offer and receive comfort
  
• Physical injuries, whump
  
• Competence porn, characters learning new skills or revealing hidden talents or depths
• Rescues, escapes, heists
• Road trips, camping, staying in roadside motels
• Us-against-the-world, fighting back-to-back
• Lost in the wilderness, Canadian Shack
• Bed-sharing tropes: Only One Bed, huddling for warmth, falling asleep on someone's shoulder, exhausted and falling into bed together after a long day, etc.
• Internalized homophobia, repressed desires, period-typical attitudes toward sexuality, religious guilt where applicable
• Cats, characters petting cats, catboys, catboy/dogboy romance
• Winter (Christmas themes are fine to include if you feel like it), fall, snow, storms of all kinds, descriptions of weather
• Wilderness and urban decay
• Characters telling in-universe legends and urban legends
• “Came Back Wrong”-type tropes
• The apocalypse (zombie, plague, nuclear etc.)
• Journeys into the underworld to retrieve a loved one
• Ghosts, haunted places, ambiguous "maybe it's ghosts or maybe it's just insanity" stories
• Cosmic horror, eldritch beings
  

Porn/kink likes, if you're so inclined:

• Characters being really into whatever they're doing
• Oral sex, fingering, handjobs, frottage, anal sex, rimming
• Clothed/semi-clothed sex, outdoor sex, semi-public sex
• Loss of virginity, first times, first-time-with-the-same-sex sex
• Eagerness, desperation
• Bed-sharing and/or heat-sharing leads to sex
• Cuddling
• Praise, body worship
• Hair-pulling, hair-petting
• Hands around someone's neck
• Shoving someone up against a wall
• Characters unexpectedly stumbling into kinks that really work for them both
• Informally negotiated kink or unnegotiated kink
• D/s dynamics
• Cockwarming
• Sex pollen, Fuck or Die, Bad Guys Made Them Do It*
• Consensual but not Safe or Sane
• Bondage: ropes, handcuffs, getting tied up with whatever’s lying around
• Manhandling, rough sex, bruises, biting, spanking
• Bloodplay, gunplay, knifeplay, breathplay

*(I'm down for any level of dubcon or noncon for these scenarios, as long as it's not "A is on board with fucking to survive but B is not, so A forces B"--I want them working together, even if it's miserable for both)


Do Not Want:

• Explicit noncon (fuck or die scenarios are fine, dubcon is fine as long as both parties want it and enjoy it on some level)
• Completely alternate-setting AUs (modern, mundane, in space, Regency, whatever)
• A/B/O, breeding kink, pregnancy
• Unrequested trans headcanons
• Heavily-negotiated BDSM (contracts, checklists, safe words, traffic light system, constant check-ins)
• Unrequested ships involving my requested characters (except for past canon ships or random OC exes)
• Sub!Kim
• Racist/fascist/misogynist Harry

Disco Elysium
Harry/Kim


Tags: Accidental Bond Means Sharing Thoughts and Physical Sensations, Aftermath of Torture - Character trying to hold it together is clearly low-key fraying at the edges, Amnesia - Both Amnesiac and Falsely Assume They Are In A Relationship, BDSM - Undercover At A BDSM Club, A and B aren't together and travel to alternate dimension where their evil counterparts are a couple, Lost/trapped together in a strange/spooky/dangerous place, Make them a catperson, "Thank Fuck You're Alive!" Emotions Turn Into Frantic Fucking, Lovingly Detailed Descriptions of Penetration, Touch Starved - Long-Buried Craving for Touch Reawakened, Touch-starved character comes from gentle foreplay alone, A Stumbles Into Alternative Universe; Gets Sexily Menaced By An Evil Version Of B, Undercover - Undercover character forced to torture loved one who fully understands what's going on, Case Fic - Investigating a Crime in LGBT Community Leads to Getting Together, Casual Cock Warming for Comfort, Characters Have Trouble Sleeping Apart After Shared Traumatic Captivity, A framed for a crime they didn't commit; B determined to prove their innocence, Hurt/Comfort - Character isn't used to being loved and shown tenderness/affection, Bad Guys Make Them Do It, how do i politely ask him/her to slam me against a wall and make out with me?, Pulling a character in by their tie for a kiss, Captivity - Trapped with someone in need of medical attention, One character shaves another's chest/pubic hair with a straight razor, D/s - under-negotiated or unnegotiated but mutually enjoyed dynamic, Desperate clothed humping with coming in pants, Fuck or Die with mutual pining, Handcuffs, What Passes for Normalcy When You Know You're in a Cosmic Horror Story, Time Loop, Bodyswap can only be reversed with sex, Characters Have Trouble Sleeping Apart After Shared Traumatic Captivity, Character is ashamed of their kinks, Hurt/Comfort - Captured and tortured together & doing their best to help each other through it, Size Kink: Little Guy with a Giant Cock Tops Big Guy with a Tight Hole, Pining - Character reveals their feelings while not quite lucid (hurt/drunk/etc.), Usually-Composed A Degrades and Dirty-Talks B While Feral and Horny, Sex Pollen


I adore this game. The humor, the existential dread, the politics, the world-building, it’s all incredible. And I adore the relationship between Harry and Kim. I live for the rare times Kim's composure cracks and it becomes obvious just how much he enjoys Harry's antics. I also love how highly Harry thinks of Kim, and how cool he thinks Kim is. (Few, if any, other characters seem to notice Kim's coolness, but Harry does, and I love that for them.)

I ship it very hard, and would love to see them at any stage in a potential relationship--getting together, working out how to be a couple, domestic established relationship. I'm always down for them being tender, pining, having fun together, working well together, or struggling and working through conflict. With any fic, I'd prefer a Harry who's at least trying to get sober and get his life back on track (struggles and backsliding are fine).

Tag-wise, I'd be thrilled to receive any of these. All of these are extremely iddy for me and I'm curious to see what someone does with them. A few general notes:

-For the porn and kink tags, I prefer Kim domming, and topping when it comes to anal sex. Otherwise, I'm down for whatever take on these you feel like. PWP is great, although I'm always here for feelings-heavy sex where the focus is more on what it means for them emotionally.

-For the hurt/comfort tags, I'm down for absolutely anything (as long as there's comfort at the end). Serious physical hurt, emotional hurt. Tortured at the hands of bad guys. Either of them as the hurt party. Or both of them! Both is good. 

-For the spooky/supernatural/horror-themed tags, I love Pale-related weirdness and would eat that up with a spoon.

-Some of these tags are pretty... high concept and imply something elaborate and plotty, and while I'd love elaborate and plotty if you're up for it, I'm equally fine with shorter things that are just a juicy scene or two with the setup and plot heavy-lifting handwaved. In media res is fine!

I love 2nd person POV or the skills voices/video game mechanics for this canon, but 3rd person is great too.

Dear Horror Author,

Thanks for writing for me! I'm really looking forward to reading what you create for this, and if you're unsure about anything feel free to ask through the mod. I'm open to all types of endings for this exchange, from the darkest and bleakest endings to the bittersweet and hopeful to the ambiguous and haunting, and I always have a fondness for characters who've been put through the wringer earning themselves some kind of happy ending. Whatever you feel is appropriate, I look forward to it.

I'm really excited to see what you come up with!

My AO3 username is PositivelyVexed.


Requested Fandoms

Red Dead Redemption
Sharp Objects
True Detective
Us
The Wicker Man



General likes

• Enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, unlikely team-ups, characters who don’t quite trust each other being forced to rely on each other
• Unexpected loyalty or kindness between unlikely characters
• Emotionally repressed characters having a vulnerable moment
• Hurt/comfort, especially with characters who are bad at comforting and/or uncomfortable with being comforted
• Competence porn, characters learning new skills or revealing hidden talents or depths
• Adventures, daring rescues, daring escapes, daring heists
• Road trips, camping, staying in roadside motels
• Us-against-the-world, fighting back-to-back
• Survival stories, lost in the wilderness, Canadian Shack
• Bed-sharing, huddling for warmth, falling asleep against each other, etc.
• Roaring rampages of revenge
• Internalized homophobia, repressed desires, period-typical attitudes toward sexuality, religious guilt
• Scenery porn
• Cats
• Horses
• Winter, snow, deserts, islands, mountains, storms of all kinds, descriptions of weather

Horror likes

• Emphasis on atmosphere and building unease
• Characters being confronted with their own insignificance in an indifferent universe
• Characters having their worldviews shattered and dealing with the fallout
• Trouble distinguishing between dreams and reality
• Small-town Americana with a corrupt, sinister underside
• Isolated communities with secrets
• Evil corporations or churches
• Characters faced with their own complicity in the community-wide evil
• "Driven mad by the revelation"
• Vast conspiracies
• Characters telling in-universe legends and urban legends
• "Motif of harmful sensation" - books that can drive you mad, songs that make you want to kill yourself, etc.
• Abandoned settings that reveal some kind of increasingly horrifying story about what happened through the objects left behind
• “Came Back Wrong”-type tropes
• Isolated wilderness settings
• The apocalypse (zombie, plague, nuclear, etc.)
• Journeys into the underworld
• Labyrinths
• People, families and societies repeating the same cycle of sins over and over
• Ghosts, hauntings, ambiguous "maybe it's ghosts or maybe it's just going mad from grief" stories
• Eldritch horrors
• Harvests, scarecrows, fog creeping across fields, rotting cemeteries

Porn/kink likes, if you're so inclined:

• Oral sex, fingering, handjobs, frottage, anal sex
• Clothed/semi-clothed sex, outdoor sex, semi-public sex
• Loss of virginity, first times, first-time-with-the-same-sex sex
• Eagerness, desperation, characters being so overcome with desire that it forces them to push through their intense sexual repression and shame about being so into it
• Bed-sharing and/or heat-sharing leads to sex
• Cuddling
• Hair-pulling, hair-petting
• Shoving someone up against a wall
• Characters unexpectedly stumbling into kinks that really work for them, especially if it's a source of intense embarrassment or guilt to be so turned on by that
• Informally negotiated kink or unnegotiated kink
• D/s dynamics, struggles for dominance
• Bondage: ropes, handcuffs, characters getting tied up with whatever’s lying around
• Manhandling, rough sex, bruises, biting, spanking
• Bloodplay, gunplay, knifeplay, breathplay

Do Not Want:

• Explicit noncon. Dubcon is fine. Canon-typical references to rape are fine.
• Non-canonical pregnancy or babies, heavy focus on canonical pregnancy or babies
• Completely alternate-setting AUs (modern, mundane, in space, Regency, whatever)
• A/B/O, D/s-verse, breeding kink, infantilization
• Scat, watersports
• Unrequested gender/sexual identity headcanons
• Explicit sex involving characters under 16
• On-page child abuse or torture
• Pets dying or suffering, explicit depictions of humans sadistically torturing animals (canon-typical violence to animals, like hunting in Red Dead, is fine)
• Fingernail/toenail or eye trauma, de-gloving or flaying
• Total mindbreak of requested characters (loss of personality, will to resist, sentience)
• Permanent memory wipes
• Serial Killer/Otherwise Evil AU versions of requested characters (naturally, this DNW does not apply to canon serial killer/otherwise evil requested characters!)

Red Dead Redemption
Fic (Medium) - Not Emphasizing Sexual Content
Kieran Duffy & Arthur Morgan, Kieran Duffy, Arthur Morgan
Survival Horror, Folk Horror, Paranormal Horror, Monster Horror

I adore the themes in this game of an encroaching civilization that’s bearing down on the characters and about to wipe out their way of life. I also adore all the weird hints of the supernatural and the general darker, creepier corners of this world, how tragic and brutal it is and how easy it is to stumble across heartbreaking reminders of that brutality in the world.

Kieran Duffy, Kieran Duffy & Arthur Morgan

I can't explain why I love this doomed, sadsack stable boy as much as I do, but he's such a sweet character, and I'm fascinated by the contrast between the wry, nervous gentleness of his personality and all the gang violence he keeps getting swept up in, and I'd be delighted by anything that plays that for horror. Colm O'Driscoll's gang as monsters or werewolves, and Kieran the lone human among them? Kieran's long-term starvation by the Van der Lindes or torture at the hands of the O'Driscolls played for realistic survival horror?

Kieran's death also seems like such fertile grounds for horror, and I'd love any kind of "came back wrong" angle on his death. After Kieran's death, Arthur hears tales of a headless horseman roaming the countryside, wreaking vengeance upon O'Driscolls? (Or just like, hanging out with horses and brushing them?) Kieran gets caught in a time loop of getting captured and dying repeatedly?

Also, one of my favorite tropes, like, ever, is “member of the enemy team gets captured and eventually awkwardly integrated into the team, but no one really trusts him even though he genuinely has changed loyalties and wants to be one of them now.” So I had all these vague hopes that Arthur’s dislike towards Kieran was leading towards some payoff where Kieran actually gets to prove himself to Arthur’s satisfaction and a glorious “I guess we’re awkward friends who respect each other now” outcome.

...That didn’t happen in canon. But I managed to blue-ball myself with wanting it, and I still crave it. So... let them be friends? I'm down for pretty much anything here, as long as you start them out from a place of their canon distrust and explore their relationship in the context of a horror story.

Arthur Morgan

I love Arthur so much, and I would be interested in literally anything spinning out any of the creepier easter eggs or side missions in this game into horror.

A darker AU spin on the serial killer mission where Arthur doesn't escape so easily, or there's a different, more supernatural culprit behind the killings, and things take a much darker turn?

The Darkness haunting Butcher’s Creek is a real entity, not just a Scooby Doo ploy, and the forces behind it do not appreciate Arthur meddling.

Taking the mask from the pagan ritual has grave consequences, and leads to Arthur suspecting he's being followed by the people who performed the pagan ritual. Maybe he's next?

The Saint Denis Vampire turns Arthur, and he can't stay away from the gang, even as his hunger grows.

Honestly, there's far too many random creepy easter eggs in this game to mention. I'd be delighted by explorations of any of them.



Sharp Objects (TV)
 Fic (Medium) - Not Emphasizing Sexual Content, Fic (Medium) - Emphasizing Sexual Content
Amma Crellin/Camille Preaker
Gothic Horror, Psychological Horror, Killer Horror, Folk Horror, Medical Horror

I love how hypnotic this show is, and the emphasis on trauma and the ways it breeds violence directed inward and outward.

I'd love to explore the Southern (Missourian?) Gothic of the whole town and community. Calhoun Day's only scratching the surface of Wind Gap's creepy customs. Cults, ritualistic murders, anything else.

I'd love anything dealing with what happens post-canon. How Camille deals with the revelation of what Amma's done. How Amma expects Camille to deal with it. Amma's jealousy and idolization for Camille. The horror and tension of it all. Camille being sent back into self-destructive habits. I don't want her actively aiding Amma in her murders, but deeply tormented Camille would be great. Camille haunted by Amma's victims.

I loved the slipperiness with time and memory in the show, and would love anything that implied Camille is actually coming unstuck in time, losing her ability to find her way back to her own time.

Anything blurring the lines of hurt/comfort and manipulation between Amma and Camille, post-canon. Camille getting badly injured soon after discovering Amma's secret, and Amma taking it upon herself to care for her. Creepy tenderness, unnerving vulnerability, Camille trying to hide her horror and fear of Amma, Amma trying to convince Camille to trust her. They both have so many weird issues bound up in sickness and care from their past--I'd love to see that explored in as creepy a way as possible.



True Detective
Fic (Medium) - Not Emphasizing Sexual Content, Fic (Medium) - Emphasizing Sexual Content
Rustin "Rust" Cohle/Martin "Marty" Hart, Tom Purcell/Roland West


Rustin "Rust" Cohle/Martin "Marty" Hart
Cosmic (Lovecraftian) Horror, Institutional Horror, Psychological Horror, Killer Horror, Folk Horror, Religious Horror

The atmosphere is almost a character itself in Season 1, and I'd love anything that digs more into the Southern atmosphere with the hints of decay and corruption underneath.  More of Rust seeing symbols and making sinister connections in them that no one else sees. I enjoyed that '95-era dynamic of Rust being pessimistic and weird and Marty being all "the fuck you say?" and would enjoy that dynamic in the context of them confronting something where the Lovecraftian elements are more than just hinted at.

I adore the creepiness of Carcosa. Something where it's an actually or ambiguously supernatural place with pathways and tunnels that seem stretch on for impossible lengths the deeper they get inside it. (a la House of Leaves?) Rust and Marty end up lost in there. Or, they die in Carcosa, and are forced to wander there eternally. They survive, but are forced return there in dreams.

Anything dealing with the cult being an actual cult with religious beliefs and potential connection to eldritch powers that they may not understand or be able to fully control.

Creepy fuck or die scenarios in Carcosa. Sex pollen or Childress Made Them Do It, with as much drugged out, trippy, violating weirdness as you like. (It's definitely fine to cross the line into noncon here.)

Cosmic horror of any stripe, either of the "actual eldritch abominations" variety or just staring down an indifferent universe. Anything that gives Rust's hard-boiled nihilist philosopher perspective a chance to shine.


Tom Purcell/Roland West
Folk Horror, Institutional Horror, Psychological Horror, Religious Horror, Paranormal Horror

I just can't get over how Tom's life is the Actual Worst, or the tenderness, sadness and betrayal that end up defining his and Roland's relationship.

Roland, in a bad place, grieving for Tom after 1990, and becoming convinced that Tom is still haunting him. It's not a benevolent haunting.

Any kind of psychological horror digging into Tom's grief over his children and the emotional betrayal at Roland's hands, his repressed sexuality and ultimately fruitless attempts to drown himself in religion and alcohol to numb his pain. Prophetic nightmares. Ongoing trauma.

Anything where the vague hints in the early toward folk horror were actually leading somewhere: those dolls actually were placed there by a creepy satanic cult or a Blair Witch type folklore figure? Devil's Den has been the site of many mysterious ritual murders?

The cult from Season 1 is behind the disappearance of the Purcell children, with Roland and Wayne struggling to unravel the mystery and Tom eventually realizing who Lucy sold the kids to.

Tom pulls a Pet Sematary and brings back Will out of sheer grief-stricken desperation. He comes back wrong.

Instead of killing him in the Pink Rooms, Harris James seals Tom inside. Tom's mental decline as he fights to free himself and his mind battles ghosts.



Us (2019)
Fic (Medium) - Not Emphasizing Sexual Content, Fic (Medium) - Emphasizing Sexual Content
Adelaide/Red
Body Horror, Dark Fantasy, Institutional Horror, Psychological Horror

I love both of these characters and empathize with both of them while also finding them both wonderfully chilling. I would love to see them sharing sexual tension or creepy violations of boundaries or dance-fighting-leads-to-fucking or any other kind of sexual encounter between them. Pre-film fic where Tethering gives them a degree of sexual intimacy that they both simultaneously hate and are reluctantly turned on by? (The film is vague about how Tethering actually works, and especially vague about how it works for two doppelgangers who've switched places, so I'd love to see them discover they have some kind of a two-way control over the other's movements). The two of them sharing sensations or weird dreams? I'm very into exploring the potential horror in the increasingly blurred identities and experiences between these two.

The weird half-autonomous culture of the Tethered, both pre- and post-Red's influence, is such fertile ground for folk horror, and the blend of symbolism, and pop culture icons they adopt under Red are something I'd love to see explored more. Their beliefs, her vision for remaking the world when they rise again. Trippy hints of how horrifying life as the Tethered was like, in the spirit of Red's fairy-tale-like story she tells the Wilsons?

What if Adelaide had taken Red with her that night they met? What if that has its own creepy consequences? The two of them developing their own unnatural bond, corrupting each other, developing a love/hate relationship.

What if Adelaide doesn't succeed in killing Red and never gets out of the tunnels at the end of the film, and they end up trapped together in an intense cat and mouse game?

More of the bizarre underworld, if it gets increasingly otherworldly and strange as it goes on and the bizarre customs lifestyles that develop in there. Scenes of America, post-Tethered take over, in an AU where Red won, or with the Wilsons on the run and trying to survive.



The Wicker Man
Fic (Medium) - Not Emphasizing Sexual Content, Fic (Medium) - Emphasizing Sexual Content
Neil Howie/Lord Summerisle
Folk Horror, Cosmic Horror, Religious Horror, Body Horror

I love the clash of worldviews represented by the uptight, virginal Christian Sgt. Howie and the seductive and charming pagan Lord Summerisle, and would love to see their dynamic turned shippier and creepier.

There are certain rites that must be completed before Howie can be sacrificed. Public sexual rites. (I'm okay with non-con for this ship, but I would like Howie to be very turned on by anything that happens.)

It's left kind of an open question if Lord Summerisle believes what he's selling. Anything dealing with the Islanders turning on Lord Summerisle next, as Howie predicts, played for horror.

Howie miraculously survives the Wicker Man. He takes this as a sign of God's intervention. The islanders take another meaning from it, and have other plans for him.

Instead of burning, or prior to burning, a ritual of transformation is performed. I'm fascinated that image of the rabbit in Rowan's coffin, and it left me intrigued by the idea of forcible animalistic transformation being part of the islanders' beliefs. So... something where Howie is transformed, partially or wholly, into something more animal than human?

When the Wicker Man in burned, something is summoned from the sea by the ritual that belongs to neither the pagan world or the Christian world, but is much older, and much more dangerous.

Dear Yuletide Author,

Thanks for writing for me; I'm thrilled you offered to write one of these fandoms. I hope you have fun writing, and I love it when authors write what they enjoy, so if there's something you've been itching to write for one of these fandoms/characters beyond what’s in my prompts, feel free to! If you have any questions, feel free to contact me through the mods.

My AO3 username is PositivelyVexed.

Requested Fandoms
Us
True Detective
The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Entrance - Gerald Durrell
Old Town Road (Music Video)

General likes

• Enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, unlikely team-ups, characters who don’t trust each other being forced to rely on each other
• Unexpected loyalty or kindness between unlikely characters
• Hurt/comfort, especially with characters who are bad at comforting and/or uneasy with being comforted
• Competence porn, characters learning new skills or revealing hidden talents or depths
• Adventures, daring rescues, daring escapes, daring heists
• Con artists and con jobs
• Road trips, camping, staying in roadside motels
• Loyalty kink, us-against-the-world, fighting back-to-back
• Survival stories, lost in the wilderness, Canadian Shack
• Bed-sharing, huddling for warmth, falling asleep against each other, etc.
• Roaring rampages of revenge
• Journeys into the underworld
• Internalized homophobia, repressed desires, period-typical attitudes toward sexuality, religious guilt where applicable
• Ghosts, monsters, eldritch abominations, werewolves, “Came Back Wrong”-type tropes
• The apocalypse (zombie or otherwise)
• Small towns with secrets, creepy carnivals, curses, deals with the devil, etc.
• Characters telling stories, in-universe legends and urban legends
• Weird west AUs
• Scenery porn
• Deserts, mountains, forests, seasides, storms of all kinds, loving descriptions of bad weather
• Autumnal themes: harvests, Halloween, fog creeping across fields, apple orchards, leaves changing colors
• Winter themes: snow, roaring fires, blizzards, characters getting bundled up, Christmas (especially if the Christmas stuff is juxtaposed with darker or angstier themes)

Porn/kink likes, if you're so inclined:

• Oral sex, fingering, handjobs, frottage, anal sex
• Clothed/semi-clothed sex, outdoor sex, semi-public sex
• Loss of virginity, first times, first-time-with-the-same-sex sex
• Eagerness, desperation, characters really, really liking whatever they’re doing
• Bed-sharing and/or heat-sharing leads to sex
• Cuddling
• Hair-pulling, hair-petting
• Shoving someone up against a wall
• Characters unexpectedly stumbling into kinks that really work for them
• Informally negotiated kink or unnegotiated kink
• D/s dynamics, struggles for dominance
• Bondage: ropes, handcuffs, characters getting tied up with whatever’s lying around
• Manhandling, rough sex, bruises, biting, spanking
• Bloodplay, gunplay, knifeplay, breathplay

Do Not Want:

• Noncon. Dubcon is fine as long as both parties enjoy it and want it on some level and no one is left feeling traumatized. Canon-typical references to rape are fine.
• Heavy focus on canon pregnancy or babies, non-canonical pregnancy or babies
• Infidelity or poly involving my requested ships
• Completely alternate-setting AUs (modern, mundane, in space, Regency, whatever)
• A/B/O, D/s-verse
• Breeding kink
• Heavily negotiated BDSM, characters using modern-day BDSM jargon
• Unrequested gender/sexual identity headcanons
• Scat, watersports
• Explicit sex involving characters under 16

Us (2019)
Adelaide, Red

I loved this movie and both of these characters, and I've been craving fic about them ever since. 

With Adelaide, I loved the twist revealing her past: the secret depths of her ruthlessness, the lengths she went to in order to escape her original life, and I love how hard she is to dislike in spite of all that. I want more of her going to extreme lengths trying to protect the life she has created and the family that she's made. I'm also so curious about what her feelings about the other Tethered are. Does she ever feel any lingering loyalty or sympathy for them? What happens to her and her family next after the end of the film? Post-apocalyptic survival with the rest of the family is welcome, but I'd be equally interested in AU takes on things, where, for instance, she doesn't win during her showdown with Red and instead is taken captive. I'd also be equally interested in fic focusing on her life as one of the Tethered, before the two girls meet, or her acclimation to the world above after she first escapes.

With Red, I loved her even before I realized her history--and learning her origin story was such a gut punch. I want to know everything about this girl who had a normal life before being stolen away into captivity and then growing up to become the murderous revolutionary messiah of a whole nation of underground dwellers. It's inspiring, really! I'm just so fascinated by the journey she went on there. How she got from--presumably--being terrified of this horrifying new world to deciding that she's the messiah who's going to lead everyone in this world to freedom, and that the world of her childhood needs to be destroyed. Does Red have some lingering Tether control over Adelaide, at least in the early days after they switched places? I just love zealous, slightly insane revolutionaries with sympathetic backstories and kind-of-admirable-kind-of-horrifying goals, and Red scratches that itch in a big way for me.

For the two of them, I'd be particularly interested in a film ending AU where, for instance, Adelaide doesn't win during her showdown with Red and instead is taken captive, or Red kills Adelaide and has to deal with her surprise grief about that? I'd also be particularly interested in something that explored Red's suggestion at the end of the movie: what if Adelaide had taken Red with her that night they met, instead of switching places? Especially if that doesn't fix things in a straightforward way and has its own negative or creepy consequences--maybe in this AU Adelaide is still ruthless, and Red still has a streak of messianic fervor, but now the two of them are navigating life together, and now whoever was in charge of the Tethered knows that one of them has escaped?

If you're amenable to doppelcest, I would love Adelaide/Red: more of their showdown in the film, with bonus sexual tension and creepy flirtatious overtones? Dance-fighting-leads-to-fucking? Pre-film fic where being Tethered together, and both being aware of that fact, gives them a degree of sexual intimacy that they both simultaneously hate and are reluctantly turned on by? (The film is vague about how Tethering actually works, and especially vague about how it works for two doppelgangers who've switched places, so I'd love to see them discover they have some kind of a two-way connection and control over the other's movements). The two of them sharing sensations or experiences or weird dreams? Just give me all the doppelcest for these two!



True Detective
Tom Purcell, Roland West

I really enjoyed the time period and setting in the third season, and I love the emphasis on how this one tragic crime's effects ripple out to affect the entire town and have so many more tragic effects over the years. I would love any focus on that, or anything that incorporates the canon elements of unreliable memory and nonlinear storytelling. I'd also be really interested in any AU that introduces a supernatural or occultic bent to this season: some kind of It-esque Small Town With a Horrifying Evil at the Center Targeting Children is really behind the Purcell kids' disappearances? The Lovecraftian overtones of Season 1 return?

With Tom Purcell, his life is just the most miserable thing ever, and I really want more of it. His guilt, his self-destructive grief, his prickly defensiveness, his willingness to jump into fights that he can't win, his repressed sexuality and desperate attempts to drown himself in religion and alcohol.... yeah. Any and all of that, please. More of his life between 1980 and 1990, especially whatever that hole he was in that Roland pulled him out of in 1985. Also, because I'm still not over how cold his death was, I am totally down for canon-divergent fix-it AUs. Tom survives his encounter with Harris James and the case gets solved in 1990? When Will is found in that cave, he's only mostly dead, and we get to see an AU where Tom is reunited with his kids?

I also love Roland and his relationship with Tom and Wayne: the mixture of surprising kindness and "beating suspects up in a barn" belligerence, his loyalty to the people he cares about, the fact that when Tom dies he immediately pays his respects by going out and getting drunk and picking a fight he can't win. I love it all. I'd read anything about his life alone in the woods with dogs.

Shipping-wise, I'm very fond of Tom/Roland. The scene where Roland takes Tom home and lets him sleep on his couch basically made me ship it, and I would happily read any missing scene of what might have happened between them that night, or any other Tom/Roland scene that involves one or both of them getting their asses kicked in barfights, sharing some hurt/comfort, drinking too much, and bed-sharing. I'd also love to read a happier or more hopeful take on their relationship, with survival and even maybe a happier resolution to the kidnapping. I'd be fascinated by any Tom/Roland AU where Tom survives that focuses on the emotional aftermath of that interrogation scene for both of them. Through handwavey reasons, Tom and Julie are reunited, and Roland ends up hanging around helping Tom be a single parent?

I'm also fond of Wayne/Roland. I really liked the chemistry and dynamic between these two, the way they needle each other and yet seem so at ease with each other, the way they work together, the way the Purcell case seems to change everything for them, eventually forcing them apart. I really like the melancholy of the two of them reconnecting in 2015 and trying to play detective one last time, and how much Roland still seems to care deeply about Wayne all those years after being ghosted by him. I'd love any hurt/comfort between them at any stage of their relationship (especially seeing them together in the immediate aftermath of Roland's shooting in 1980, or Roland watching out for Wayne in 2015 and helping him remember himself). Scenes of their first meeting or their first case together? The two of them hanging around that junkyard or otherwise just shooting the shit together? Wayne trying to teach Roland tracking?

I'm only officially requesting these two, but I like all the characters in the tagset and would be very happy with any of them making appearances or interacting with Tom and/or Roland.


The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
Ray Garraty, Peter McVries


I just want more. One of the most affecting things about this story was how these kids who signed up for a walk to the death still instinctively try so hard to help and support each other, so I'd love any more vignettes of those moments of kindness and solidarity in the face of this dehumanizing regime, or desperate last stands and futile uprisings. I'd really be interested in anything that leans into the unreal undercurrents of the latter half of the novel, going full-on surreal or supernatural: the semi-catatonic walkers are literal zombies? The walk continues in the afterlife? The dark figure is a very literal and malevolent entity?

In the more cheerful spirit of the season, I would also love to read a fix-it scenario for this canon, and I will take any vaguely plausible excuse for one. Parker acted earlier, and this time he was able to successfully rally the boys in an uprising? Maybe there are more cracks in the Major's hold on the society and the military than we see? An act of insurrection comes from outside and disrupts the Walk? Weather emergency or military in-fighting allow the boys to escape? I’m also down for supernatural elements being used for fix-it purposes. Sudden outbreak of zombie apocalypse actually give the walkers a real shot at escape? Peggy Sue or Groundhog Day AU where Garraty or McVries wake up before the walk and has a chance to do things differently? Sure!

I ship Garraty/McVries, and with even the most handwavey of explanations of how they escaped the Walk alive, I would love to read about them on the run or holed up in some rat-trap hotel, tending to each other’s injuries, cuddling up and enjoying the most-well deserved sleep of their lives, or getting up to more than that. Basically anything that explores how they might relate to each other outside of the intense certain-death-for-at-least-one-of-them circumstances their bond formed in. What might their friendship or a burgeoning romantic relationship look like with them actually able to survive together? I'm equally interested in dark takes on this ship that keeps the tragic canon ending intact: denial and internalized homophobia, confessions of desire or self-realization that comes too late, a surviving Garraty haunted by dreams of how it could have been, Garraty takes McVries up on his proposal, and there are Furtive Handjobs in the night, or alternatively, Exhibitionist Handjobs of Defiance in front of the crowd. McVries is a ghost who haunts a traumatized Garraty after the novel's ending, with sexy, angsty and/or spooky results.


Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly
Blondie, Tuco Ramirez

I love these assholes and their screwed-up relationship (and I ship it madly) and would be down for anything that explores the dark, funny possibilities of their partners-to-enemies-to-who-even-knows dynamic. I am down for all the grudging hurt/comfort, competence and general ridiculous Spaghetti Western badassery, forced team-ups, competitiveness (including competitve sex, if you're down to take this in a shippy direction), banter, huddling for warmth around the campfire, sharing a smoke, spending their ill-gotten fortunes together, learning about each other's pasts, and weird incongruous cuteness in the vein of playing with a kitten (!) in the film.

Shipping-wise, I'm not really looking for anything too, too fluffy with these two: they're assholes who try to murder each other repeatedly, and that's what I love about them. But I'm really into the idea that they do like each other, deep down, so any moments of grudging fondness and camaraderie would make me very happy.

On a darker note, I'd love to read all of the revenge, deception and manipulation, mindgames, dubcon, murder attempts. I also find all the death and destruction of the Civil War a fascinating backdrop in the film, and would love more about how the warfare keeps way-laying their plans and sweeping them up in a much larger bloody conflict that unsettles even these hardened killers.

If you want to give this a Weird West twist, I am 100% down for that. Blondie not being entirely mortal, everything in the Sad Hill graveyard not being entirely dead, zombie soldiers, gunslinging ghosts, the graveyard-is-purgatory. I am down for absolutely anything putting a supernatural spin on this canon.


The Entrance - Gerald Durrell
Gideon de Teildras Villeray, Peter Letting

This is such a memorably creepy story, with so many horror story elements that I find irresistible: an epistolary format, a possibly unreliable narrator, a remote and isolated snowbound setting, vaguely slashy undertones, and an absolutely terrifying monster at its center.

There are so many dangling questions, and I’d love any answers you'd care to provide (or even just further creepy questions). I'd love to know more about that mirror world, and that mirror monster. Where did they come from? How extensive is the mirror world? Are there other houses involved? Does any other non-mirrored being else live there besides the monster? We know the monster can travel to our world, is it possible for something to travel from our world to it?

My dream is fix-it fic for Peter and Gideon. I am open to anything that will allow this to happen: An AU where Gideon ends up trapped in the house with Peter, and they have to deal with the mirror world together? The monster is Gideon, and Peter manages to get through to him instead of killing him? Gideon/the monster is only wounded, and hurt/comfort ensues? I am interested in anything you want to do to fix this and give them a happy (or at least hopeful) ending. Feel free to take this in either a shippy or non-shippy direction. Alternatively, I’d still love something that keeps the bleak ending intact, especially if it makes the sexual tension between them explicit. More horror and scares in the vein of the original story is very welcome.

I’m just generally intrigued by Peter, with his disastrously reckless curiosity about the mirror monster, and poor, haunted Gideon, with his traumatic past with his uncle and his questionable motives toward Peter. What kind of emotional terror did his uncle inflict on him? Did he serve his uncle by procuring victims for the mirror? (Was seduction involved in this?) Was that his ultimate plan for Peter? I assume he was involved in his uncle’s death: how, and why then?

Also, I am down for any touches of antiquarian bookseller/wealthy patron lifestyle porn you want to include: snowy nights alone in a French chateau drinking wine by the fireplace, long carriage rides through the countryside, rare book cataloging by candlelight? Yes, please.


Old Town Road - Lil Nas X ft. Billy Ray Cyrus (Music Video)
Lil Nas X, Billy Ray Cyrus

Watch it here!

I am a sucker for goofy wild west adventures and portal time travel stories; combine the two and I will be there. So this music video just hit the spot for me. I am very fond of the song itself, too, so feel free to incorporate references to it, but don't feel like you need to pull in references to other country or trap music or the music industry as a whole. I'm using the performers' names here, but feel free to give them different, more plausible names for the fic if you'd like. Or just keep them the same, no explanation necessary!

So, I love friends following each other through otherworldly portals and finding each other again and being the only other person who knows them from their previous life and the only other person who knows what getting plucked out of their time is like, so if you want to play this for totally earnest time travel angst and hurt/comfort and heartwarming Power of Friendship cuteness, go for it!  Otherwise, I'm down for anything. These two getting up to fish-out-of-water antics in the present day? Going back for adventures in the Old West with their newly acquired knowledge of the future? Lil Nas X's horse displaying more supernatural feats of speed? Has anyone else slipped through that portal? More adventures with any of the people from the bingo hall or the neighborhood Lil Nas X first lands in? Show me whatever heist they pulled to get those totally-real bags of money and what they did to get Chris Rock and his posse on their trail?

I'd love to see these two get shipped together! I'm fine with gen too, and I'd be down for any kind of dynamic between them--mentor/mentee thing with Billy Ray as the more experienced partner to the talented upstart Lil Nas X? Former rivals forced to team up? Odd couple best buddies? A couple of entertainers who just want to make music, who were forced into the outlaw game to support their dreams? Any kind of backstory for these two could be fun.

Dear Trick or Treat Author,

Thanks for writing for me! I hope you have fun, and if there's something you've been itching to write for one of these fandoms/characters beyond what’s in my prompts, feel free to! Some of my prompts sections are going to be longer than others, but I would be thrilled to get any of these. I’ve prompted both tricks and treats, and I’m happy with any tone for any prompt, and feel free to mix and match trick and treat elements if you want.


My AO3 username is PositivelyVexed.


Requested Fandoms

Us
True Detective
The Hateful Eight
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Red Dead Redemption


General likes

• Enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, unlikely team-ups, characters who don’t quite trust each other being forced to rely on each other
• Ideological conflicts
• Unexpected loyalty or kindness from unlikely characters
• Hurt/comfort, especially with characters who are bad at comforting and/or uncomfortable with being comforted
• Characters who are bad at expressing their feelings, characters expressing their feelings in unconventional ways
• Competence porn, characters learning new skills or revealing hidden talents or depths
• Adventures, daring rescues, daring escapes, daring heists
• Con artists and con jobs
• Road trips
• Loyalty kink, us-against-the-world, fighting back-to-back
• Survival stories, lost in the wilderness, Canadian Shack
• Bed-sharing, huddling for warmth, falling asleep against each other, etc.
• Roaring rampages of revenge
• Internalized homophobia, repressed desires, period-typical attitudes toward sexuality, religious guilt
• Ghosts, monsters, eldritch abominations, curses, deals with the devil, “Came Back Wrong”-type tropes, the apocalypse (zombie or otherwise)
• Characters telling stories, in-universe legends and urban legends
• Scenery porn
• Winter, snow, fall/autumn, deserts, mountains, storms of all kinds

Porn/kink likes, if you're so inclined:

• Oral sex, fingering, handjobs, frottage, anal sex
• Clothed/semi-clothed sex, outdoor sex, semi-public sex
• Loss of virginity, first times, first-time-with-the-same-sex sex
• Eagerness, desperation, characters really, really liking whatever they’re doing
• Bed-sharing and/or heat-sharing leads to sex
• Cuddling
• Hair-pulling, hair-petting
• Shoving someone up against a wall
• Characters unexpectedly stumbling into kinks that really work for them
• Informally negotiated kink or unnegotiated kink
• D/s dynamics, struggles for dominance
• Bondage: ropes, handcuffs, characters getting tied up with whatever’s lying around
• Manhandling, rough sex, bruises, biting, spanking
• Bloodplay, gunplay, knifeplay, breathplay

Do Not Want:

• Noncon. Dubcon is fine as long as both parties enjoy it and want it on some level. Canon-typical references to rape are fine.
• Pregnancy, babyfic (mentions of canonical pregnancies and babies are fine, but I'd prefer them to not be a major focus)
• Completely alternate-setting AUs (modern, mundane, in space, Regency, whatever)
• A/B/O, D/s-verse
• Breeding kink
• Heavily negotiated BDSM, characters using modern-day BDSM jargon
• Unrequested gender/sexual identity headcanons
• Scat, watersports
• Readerfic or OC-centric fic
• Explicit sex involving characters under 16

Us (2019)
Tricks, Fic
Adelaide, Red

This was some of the most fun I've had at the movies in years, and I've been craving more about this story ever since. I love the home invasion horror, the bizarre underworld, the apocalyptic ending, the somewhat slippery question of what the Tethered are, the dark humor, the emphasis on mirroring and coincidences: all of that would be very welcome in any fic you want to write. If you want to dig into world-building for this movie and explore more about where the Tethered actually came from (is Red mistaken about their origin story?) or show us more of the underworld that apparently stretches across the US, feel free. I'd love to see what happens now that the Tethered have risen up. (What's their plan after they get tired of standing in a human chain across the country?) If you're amenable to doppelcest, I would love Adelaide/Red: more of their showdown in the film, with bonus sexual tension and creepy flirtatious overtones? Dance-fighting-leads-to-fucking? Pre-film fic where being Tethered together, and both being aware of that fact, gives them a degree of sexual intimacy that they both simultaneously hate and are reluctantly turned on by? (The film is vague about how Tethering actually works, and especially vague about how it works for two doppelgangers who've switched places, so I'd love to see them discover they have some kind of two-way connection). The two of them sharing sensations or experiences or weird dreams? I'd also be particularly interested in something that explored Red's suggestion at the end of the movie: what if Adelaide had taken Red with her that night they met, instead of switching places? (Especially if that doesn't fix things in a straightforward way and has its own negative or creepy consequences--maybe in this AU Adelaide is still ruthless, and Red still has a streak of messianic fervor, but now the two of them are navigating life together, and now whoever was in charge of the Tethered knows that one of them has escaped?)


Adelaide
Throughout the movie, I was rooting for her: her drive to survive, her love for her family, her sense of humor and her resourcefulness. She makes a great POV character. And then we find out what she did to Red when they were little girls, and she became fascinating to me. The depths of her ruthlessness and the lengths she went to in order to escape her original life? Yeah. I want more of her ruthlessly trying to protect the life she has created and the family that she's made. I'm also so curious about what her feelings about the other Tethered are. Does she ever feel any lingering loyalty or sympathy for them? What happens to her and her family next after the end of the film? Post-apocalyptic survival with the rest of the family is welcome, but I'd be equally interested in AU takes on things, where, for instance, she doesn't win during her showdown with Red and instead is taken captive. I'd also be equally interested in fic focusing on her life as one of the Tethered, before the two girls meet, or her acclimation to the world above after she first escapes.

Red
I have so many feelings about Red. I loved her even before I realized her history--and learning her origin story was such a gut punch. I want to know everything about this girl who had a normal life before being stolen away into captivity and then growing up to become the murderous revolutionary messiah of a whole nation of underground dwellers. It's inspiring, really! I'm just so fascinated by the journey she went on there. How she got from--presumably--being terrified of this horrifying new world to deciding that she's the messiah who's going to lead everyone in this world to freedom, and that the world of her childhood needs to be destroyed. Does Red have some lingering Tether control over Adelaide, at least in the early days after they switched places? She seems to resent being bound to her Tethered family against her will, and yet they have a pretty functional and even sorta affectionate dynamic going on. Scenes of her struggling to hang onto aspects of her past and learning to connect with the people she's surrounded with? Scenes of her rallying the Tethered to her side? I just love zealous, slightly insane revolutionaries with sympathetic backstories and kind-of-admirable-kind-of-horrifying goals, and Red scratches that itch in a big way for me. I'd love anything about her.


True Detective
Tricks, Treats, Fic

I really liked the atmosphere and setting and cast of characters in the third season, and the emphasis on how this one tragic crime's effects ripple out to affect the entire town and have so many more tragic effects over the years. AUs are very welcome, especially anything that introduces a supernatural or occultic bent to this season. Some kind of It-esque Small Town With a Horrifying Evil at the Center Targeting Children is really behind the Purcell kids' disappearances? The Lovecraftian overtones of Season 1 return?


Tom Purcell
Tom’s life is just the most miserable thing ever, and I want more of it. His guilt, his self-destructive grief, his prickly defensiveness, his willingness to jump into fights that he can't win, his repressed sexuality and desperate attempts to drown himself in religion and alcohol.... yeah. Any and all of that, please. More of his life between 1980 and 1990, especially whatever that hole he was in that Roland pulled him out of in 1985. Also, because I'm still not over the tragedy of his death, I am totally down for Treats that give me all the canon-divergent fix-it AUs. Tom's kids don't die, and he is reunited with them *handwavey gesture* somehow? AU where Julie gets rescued early in her captivity, or the search for her ends more successfully in 1990, and the two of them are reunited and have to figure out how to live a normal life now that they're the only members of their family left? Maybe he manages to fight off Harris James in the Pink Rooms, but kills him in the process, effectively putting him in Roland and Wayne's shoes with a dark secret about the man he killed?

Shipping-wise, I really like Tom/Roland. The scene where Roland takes Tom home and lets him sleep on his couch basically made me ship it, and I would happily read any missing scene of what might have happened between them that night, or any other Tom/Roland scene that involves one or both of them getting their asses kicked in barfights, sharing some hurt/comfort, drinking too much, and bed-sharing.

Roland West
I really wasn’t expecting to like Roland as much as I did, but he just won me over completely. The care he shows for those around him, his loyalty to Wayne, the fact that he talks like an asshole sometimes but is capable of a lot of kindness, the fact that when Tom dies he immediately pays his respects by going out and getting drunk and picking a fight he can't win. I love it all. I'd read anything with his life alone in the woods with dogs, or another case fic with him and Wayne. I’d love to read something with Tom/Roland or Wayne/Roland. I’d also be down with anything that explores either or both of those relationships in a gen context too. I'd also totally be down for supernatural elements. Maybe out alone in the woods, Roland starts seeing things, or starts to suspect he's being haunted by Tom? (Or Harris James, for that matter?)

Wayne Hays
I really like the eeriness and sadness of a detective losing himself in the jungles and hallways of his own mind as the years pass, and I'd love to see that explored more. Leaning into the tragedy or low-key horror of that? Giving him some small victories over the encroaching darkness? Any hurt/comfort themed moments with Roland (or with adult Julie during their brief meeting, or, heck, even ghost Amelia)?  I’d also be interested in anything Memento-ish where Wayne’s holes in his memory are revealed to hide increasingly dark secrets about himself. (Or, on a shippy note, significant moments in his and Roland’s relationship that he’s forgotten?) I also really like the brief hints that the various Waynes of 1980, 1990, and 2015 are crossing paths with each other and able to subtly influence the other’s eras in ways that only he can perceive. I really like the potential for time travel shenanigans implied by that, so anything that leans into that would be amazing. Wayne being haunted by the ghosts of the past, or ghosts of his past selves?

I don't have any prompts for her, but I also find Amelia really interesting, and I think there’s a lot about the whole macabre “everything about this marriage is tied up in a missing children case” that has a lot of potential. It's mostly a source of conflict in the show, but I'd love to see a scene of how their mutual obsessions with tragedies and unsolved mysteries is something that they connect over and help them understand each other.

Julie Purcell
One of the lingering unanswered questions at the end of the show is how much adult Julie even knows about her own past. We know Mike recognizes her and marries her, but we don't even know if she recognizes him or ever recovers her memories. (For the sake of this fic, please let her remember him if they get married.) I'd really love to get more on her dealing with the aftermath of what happened: her process of recovering her memories from before her kidnapping, lingering trauma from her confused and weird past. (If you want to get really ambitious, something that draws parallels between her own fraught relationship with her own mind and memories and Wayne's would fascinate me.) I'd really love to read something where Julie herself takes on the role of detective and starts unraveling all the unanswered questions she has about her own past: what really happened to her, why she can't remember, who was to blame. Her figuring out what really what happened to her parents and realizing that her father was desperately trying to find her and was murdered when he got too close to the truth, and finding a way to clear his name? Her recognizing Wayne when they meet from her own investigations into her kidnapping? I'd be interested in anything that actually explores Julie's kidnapping from Julie's POV and how she deals with that as an adult. (Note: I'm kind of squicked by stories that treat characters having secrets kept from them for their own good as a happy ending, so I'd really prefer if Julie either knows about her past, figures it out over the course of the fic, or at least isn't actively having the truth withheld from her by Mike or any of the other characters.)


The Hateful Eight
Treats, Tricks, Fic
Marquis Warren, Chris Mannix

I would love anything about these two very awful people. Of the two of them, I’m more interested in Warren’s background. I love him correctly deducing so much of what’s going on, living on his own (assholish) terms and doing what he needs to survive in a world that’s deeply hostile to him, and I’d be really interested in learning more about his background, his time in the war, and how he found his way to Wyoming, and how he climbed the ranks of the Union cavalry in a time when he shouldn't be able to do that at all.

I love what an eager and obedient partner/sidekick Mannix is to Warren. He’s an awful little shit, but a weirdly charming one, and I’m really interested in how his internal conflict plays out between what he’s been raised to think and desire and what he clearly does want, and all the ways Warren is a strangely edifying corrupting influence on him.

I am a complete sucker for hurt/comfort between these two, especially if it involves bad weather or other mean bastards or both.  I'm also down for teamwork, loyalty kink, porn, BDSM, the two of them being forced together by ridiculous circumstances, conning people together, parting ways and then being reunited, storytelling and bullshitting, and competence porn. I’d also be interested in anything where they meet under different circumstances than in the film: Warren's horse doesn't die, and Mannix hails him down for help alone? Mannix comes out west with a bounty on his head and Warren has to take him in alive? They're both taken prisoner for their various crimes and have to escape handcuffed together, The Defiant Ones-style? I'm also interested in pretty much all of the characters who appear in this film, and would love to see more pre-canon or canon-divergent AU fic with Warren and/or Mannix interacting with any of the rest of the cast.

I love supernatural horror/dark fantasy twists on this canon, and would be interested in seeing pretty much anything in that vein: forced soulbonding (some magical mean bastard with a sick sense of humor thinks it'd be funny?) The two of them slowly figuring out they're in hell or purgatory? Getting cursed with immortality and taking all kinds of chaotic advantage of that? Mannix being haunted by Erskine Mannix’s angry specter? Ravenous fusion with wendigos and cannibalism? An AU where Warren hunts shapeshifters or ghosts instead of bounties? State-mandated ghost hunter AU? Alternatively, West World AU where the events of the film are just another story in the park, the whole cast are hosts, and either Warren or Mannix start to wake up?



Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly
Tricks, Treats, Fic
Tuco Ramirez, Blondie

Tuco
Tuco is such a fun character, I love his sleaziness, his excitability and complete lack of shame about turning on a dime from murderous to ingratiating when it suits him. I like how he's simultaneously the comic relief character who wears his (slimy, conniving) heart on his sleeve but also has hidden wellsprings of competence and badassery.

Blondie
Blondie’s a bit more of a mystery, and I’m okay with him staying that way. I like him being a iconically cool badass and I enjoy both his dickishness and some of his low-key fleeting moments of humanity, including kitten-petting (!) and his willingness to play along with Tuco about his relationship with his brother. I like the idea that he’s developed enough a fondness of Tuco, or at least of their whole antagonistic dance, that he spares his life, but can’t resist the opportunity to humiliate him one last time at the end of the movie. How did he end up running these two-bit con jobs, anyway? Does he have any other con artist tricks up his sleeve, or will he keep milking this one?

I ship the hell out of these two, and I am down for all the grudging hurt/comfort, competence and general ridiculous Spaghetti Western badassery, forced team-ups, competitiveness (including competitve sex, if you're down to take this in a shippy direction), banter, huddling for warmth around the campfire, sharing a smoke, spending their ill-gotten fortunes together, learning about each other's pasts, and weird incongruous cuteness in the vein of playing with a kitten (!) in the film. Something where Tuco blows through his money after the film and finding himself in need of his old partner to pull off one last scheme.

I've requested treats, but I'm not really looking for anything too, too fluffy with these two: they're assholes who try to murder each other repeatedly, and that's what I love about them. But I'm really into the idea that they do like each other, deep down, so any moments of grudging fondness and camaraderie would make me very happy. Trickwise, I'm into revenge, deception and manipulation, mindgames, dubcon, murder attempts. I love these assholes and their screwed-up relationship (and I ship it madly) and would be down for anything that explores the dark, funny possibilities of their partners-to-enemies-to-who-even-knows dynamic. I also find all the death and destruction of the Civil War a fascinating backdrop in the film, and would love more about how the warfare keeps way-laying their plans and sweeping them up in a much larger bloody conflict that unsettles even these hardened killers.

If you want to give this a Weird West twist, I am 100% down for that. Blondie not being entirely mortal, everything in the Sad Hill graveyard not being entirely dead, zombie soldiers, gunslinging ghosts, the graveyard-is-purgatory. I am down for absolutely anything putting a supernatural spin on this canon.


Red Dead Redemption

I adore the themes of an encroaching civilization that’s bearing down on the characters and about to wipe out their way of life. I love the emphasis on the natural beauty of the landscape and the sense of encroaching modernity on all sides slowly transforming the world into something more recognizable to us, with hints of all the social, political, and technological changes that are right around the corner (Women’s suffrage! Cubist art! Modern warfare! Uh… giant robots!) I also adore all the weird hints of the supernatural (fics taking things into full-on horror or Weird West territory is 100% welcome) and the general darker, creepier corners of this world, how tragic and brutal it is and how easy it is to stumble across heartbreaking reminders of that brutality in the artifacts left behind.

I love the gang and their dynamics, this sense that they’re a ragtag group of people who all have their own loyalties and histories and grudges and affection for one another, and I even love the tragedy of watching so much of that unravel as the gang starts to fall apart.

Arthur Morgan
I love Arthur, in all his gruff, tough, morally complex, horse-patting glory. Can we just take a moment to appreciate how great Arthur is? He’s just the best. I would love to read more about him interacting with the world or any random creepy easter egg or monster, especially if it involves him being gruff and snarky, or riddled with guilt about what a bad man he is, or preferably both. On the shipping front, I discuss quite a few of the rare m/m ships I like for Arthur in this past letter here, and I would still welcome fic for any of these ships, or gen interactions between them. On the het-inclusive side, I also quite like Sadie/Arthur, Arthur/Mary-Beth, and Arthur/John/Abigail. When it comes to gen interactions, I’m down for absolutely anything as long as it’s with canon characters. (Please, no Readerfic or OC-focused fic.) Also, in the spirit of the Halloween season, I would take literally anything with Arthur exploring more of the world and getting into spooky trouble or uncovering the secrets of this world. Also, AUs of some of the creepier missions? Like, maybe the serial killer that Arthur hunts isn’t just a blathering shopkeeper-looking guy, but something actually supernatural? Maybe the Darkness haunting Butcher’s Creek is a real curse, and not just a Scooby Doo ploy by a mining company? Maybe taking the mask from that pagan ritual has grave consequences? The Saint Denis Vampire turns Arthur? He catches a ride on the ghost train? Or just anything where Arthur does more to investigate all the crazy, creepy shit he keeps uncovering (pagan ritual with human sacrifice! Time-travel rock carvings! Giant skeletons! UFOs! What does he think about all this crazy stuff?)

I’m fine with Arthur being high-honor, low-honor, or most preferred, somewhere in between. Regardless, what I find most interesting about the character is the tension between his worst impulses and his better impulses.

Kieran Duffy
Much like the Van der Linde gang and Rockstar itself, I seem to enjoy watching Kieran Duffy suffer.

Unlike Rockstar and the Van der Linde gang, I also just want him to be okay in the end. I like that for all he’s been kicked around by life, he seems to be a fundamentally kindhearted and amiable person, with an optimistic streak that is ultimately tragically misplaced. I find the multitude of indignities he suffers at the gang’s hands (getting rocks thrown at him by a five-year-old! Get headbutted for pronouncing Colm’s name correctly!) kind of darkly funny and also heartbreaking at the same time, and it makes me desperately want a version of the game where there was an actual arc to his story, building towards him winning the gang’s respect or trust. Let him do something useful or grow as a person? Maybe by proving that as a former O'Driscoll lackey he actually has some valuable knowledge they can exploit?  Also, whether it's plausible or not, the fanon of Kieran Duffy: Horse Whisperer is incredibly charming to me, so anything where he’s remarkably in-tune with or skilled with horses would delight me. Having him develop as a fighter or an outlaw while still essentially remaining his dorky self would also make me very happy. I’d enjoy seeing him interacting with pretty much any gang member, including ones he never really interacts with in canon. Shipping-wise, I think Kieran/Mary-Beth is incredibly cute, and I wouldn’t be averse to Kieran/Bill where they’re both appalled and disgusted with themselves for being into him, and there’s lots of confusion and fear on Kieran’s end and attraction-sublimated-into-threats on Bill’s, and eventual clumsy bad-idea sex. (I’m really not into this ship as fluffy romance, though.) One-sided fic where Bill’s got a creepy thing for an alarmed Kieran is fine too. Most of all, though, I’d really love something that forces Arthur and Kieran to bond (in either a shippy or gen way, I’m fine with either) and allows them to come to appreciate and understand each other. I enjoy exploring what might provoke Arthur or any of the gang members to see him in a new light, and develop a better understanding of him.

Also, if you want to combine him with supernatural happenings, I would love that.  Arthur finds and breaks a ghost horse and Kieran has to figure out how to take care of a horse that's insubstantial and keeps disappearing into other dimensions? Afterlife as a headless horseman? Trapped in a time loop of trauma that he has to figure out how to break out of? Haunting another character after his death? Being reunited with Branwen in the afterlife? I'll take anything that that allows him some measure of peace or satisfaction, even if he has to be dead for it to happen.


Black Belle
Ah, our elder stateswoman gunslinger we meet once in a side mission and then never see again. But I just really love her, okay, and I would love to see some more adventures with her at any point in her long and illustrious career. When she was young and just falling into the life? I like her verve for life and her ability to survive, and I like that she's happy to keep running for as long as she can, and seems like she might be smart enough and ruthless enough to do it into the 20th century, so more of how she evades the law and changes (or doesn't change) with the times? Some vignettes from her heyday when she was dealing with posers like Jim Boy Calloway? Snippets of her life, as told and distorted by dime novel writers over the years? What does she do after she and Arthur part ways? AU where she runs into Arthur again? (Maybe she decides she’s all married out, but she wouldn’t be averse to just having some no-strings-attached-fun with him?) Maybe Sadie ends up on her trail at some point in the epilogue, and it’s a showdown between these two larger-than-life lady gunslingers who've lived hard and lost a lot of loved ones in their lives? Maybe there's some fraught bounty hunter/outlaw UST too?

Dear author,

Thanks for offering to write for one of these fandoms! I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Please feel free to contact me through the mods if you have any questions.

I'm a big fan of hurt/comfort. Feel free to whump characters hard as long as there's some comfort to go along with the whump. I also really enjoy characters struggling to give/receive comfort because circumstances make it physically hard to give comfort, or because they're just not emotionally comfortable with giving or accepting comfort. Awkward or prickly comforters are my jam, and so are stoic or rough-edged comfortees. I find characters trying to help each other but being too beat up or weakened themselves to do it properly to be absolute catnip. For this exchange, I'd prefer happy endings, or at least ambiguous endings that keep a little hope alive.

My AO3 username is PositivelyVexed.


General likes

• Enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, unlikely team-ups, characters who don’t quite trust each other being forced to rely on each other
• Ideological conflicts
• Unexpected loyalty or kindness
• Characters who are bad at expressing their feelings, characters expressing their feelings in unconventional ways
• Competence porn, characters learning new skills or revealing hidden talents or depths
• Adventures, daring rescues, daring escapes, daring heists
• Con artists and con jobs
• Road trips
• Loyalty kink, us-against-the-world, fighting back-to-back
• Survival stories, lost in the wilderness, Canadian Shack
• Bed-sharing, huddling for warmth, falling asleep against each other, etc.
• Roaring rampages of revenge
• Internalized homophobia, repressed desires, period-typical attitudes toward sexuality, religious guilt where applicable
• Ghosts, monsters, eldritch abominations, curses, deals with the devil, “Came Back Wrong”-type tropes, the apocalypse (zombie or otherwise)
• Characters telling stories, in-universe legends and urban legends
• Scenery porn
• Winter, snow, fall/autumn, deserts, mountains, storms of all kinds

Porn/kink likes, if you're so inclined:

• Oral sex, fingering, handjobs, frottage, anal sex
• Clothed/semi-clothed sex, outdoor sex, semi-public sex
• Loss of virginity, first times, first-time-with-the-same-sex sex
• Eagerness, desperation, characters really, really liking whatever they’re doing
• Bed-sharing and/or heat-sharing leads to sex
• Cuddling
• Hair-pulling, hair-petting
• Shoving someone up against a wall
• Characters unexpectedly stumbling into kinks that really work for them
• Informally negotiated kink or unnegotiated kink
• D/s dynamics, struggles for dominance
• Bondage: ropes, handcuffs, characters getting tied up with whatever’s lying around
• Manhandling, rough sex, bruises, biting, spanking
• Bloodplay, gunplay, knifeplay, breathplay

Do Not Want:

• Noncon. Dubcon is fine as long as both parties enjoy and want it on some level. Canon-typical references to rape are fine. 
• Pregnancy, babyfic, kidfic
• Completely bleak endings
• Completely alternate-setting AUs (modern, mundane, in space, Regency, whatever)
• A/B/O, D/s-verse
• Breeding kink
• Unrequested ships
• Heavily negotiated BDSM, characters using BDSM jargon
• Unrequested gender/sexual identity headcanons
• Scat, watersports
• Explicit sex involving characters under 16

The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
Ray Garraty/Peter McVries (both hurt)

Requested tags: Bonding Over Shared Trauma, Canadian Shack, canonical injuries, Character is haunted, Character Planned to Die but Didn't, Comes Back Wrong, Comforter Physically Incapable of Providing Adequate Comfort, Exhaustion, Fainting, Huddling For Warmth, On the Run, Salving Wounds, Wanting To Help Hurt Character But Not Knowing How To Do It, Prickly Relationship Between Comforter and Comfortee

I'd just love more fic about these doomed boys and their intense connection and impossible relationship. I will take any vaguely plausible excuse for a fix-it that allows them to get away from the Walk and get some hurt/comfort.

Walker uprising? Maybe there are more cracks in the Major's hold on the society and the military than we see? Weather emergency or act of war or well-timed zombie apocalypse allow the boys to escape? I would love to read about them on the run or holed up in some rat-trap hotel, tending to each other’s injuries, trying to tend to each other but lacking the skills or strength to help, huddling for warmth. Basically anything that explores how they might relate to each other outside of the intense certain-death-for-at-least-one-of-them circumstances their bond formed in. What might their friendship or a burgeoning romantic relationship look like with them actually able to survive together? If Pete really thought he was going to die and expected it and then survived after all, how would he deal with it? Feel free to take things in a literal Canadian Shack direction, since escaping dystopian America across the border seems like as good a way as any to get out of this totalitarian death trap.

I'd also be interested in anything dealing with Ray's internalized homophobia and his issues around what happened with the neighbor boy all those years back: I'm fine with either framing the encounter with the neighbor boy as something he really didn't want, and which confuses his feelings about McVries all the more, or something he maybe did want, but has since convinced himself he didn't want out of internalized homophobia. (And, uh, I wouldn't object if you wanted to give Pete and his scar a different, less skeevy, backstory than the one he tells Ray in the book, if you can think of a compelling reason for why he'd lie about that? Although feel free to just not mention it if you'd rather.)

I'd also be interested in any kind of post-canon supernatural hurt/comfort scenarios: McVries is a ghost, or Comes Back Wrong, and there's undead hurt/comfort and longing for what might have been?

(Edit, 3/8/19: Feel free to acknowledge Jan and give that relationship some closure if you like. All I ask is no cheating on her while Ray is actively in a relationship with her. "We're on the run now, so I guess she and I are through, let's have sex," is fine. Ray continuing to date her while actively cheating on her is not.)


Dark Matter - Michelle Paver
Gus Balfour/Jack Miller (hurt Jack)
Gus Balfour/Jack Miller (hurt Gus)
Gus Balfour/Jack Miller (both hurt)

Requested tags: blizzard, Canadian Shack, Character is haunted, Character isn't used to being loved and shown tenderness/affection, Comes Back Wrong, Comforter Physically Incapable of Providing Adequate Comfort, CPR/Rescue Breathing, Dreams and Nightmares, Fix-It - Surviving near-death experience, Huddling For Warmth, Hypothermia, Sharing a bed while mutually pining, Taken Off Guard By Small Displays Of Affection, Touch-Starved, Treatment Of Injury Leads To Inconvenient Arousal In Injured Party, Wilderness Survival, Shivering


I love the creepiness of this canon, the emphasis on the extreme darkness and isolation of the setting, and I love these two characters. I love Jack's hunger to escape the drudgery of London and prove himself, his inability to turn off his feelings and his self-consciousness about his class, and I love how thoroughly Gus disarms him with his upright Boy's Own adventurer enthusiasm. Things end pretty bleakly for these two, so I'd love to see some hurt/comfort between them instead. There are so many possibilities for fix-its scenarios in this novel, and I'm interested in all of them. And boy oh boy, do both of these two need some comfort after the events of the book. I'd love to read an AU where somehow Jack and Gus both survive the fall into the water, but end up trapped in Gruhuken alone, awaiting rescue and struggling to survive. Or a canon divergent AU where Gus doesn't get appendicitis or they otherwise end up alone in Gruhuken. What happens? Do they end up admitting to each other that they've seen a ghost? Awkward mutual pining while being too afraid to bring up the whole ghost thing? Does the ghost, realizing their connection, try to use their repressed feelings to hurt each other? I'd also be interested in any "Gus comes back wrong" or as a ghost scenario. Can Jack get through to him? Can they still connect? Anything involving communicating in dreams, dream sex, an Orpheus scenario where Jack finds a way to rescue Gus from the afterlife.

I love huddling for warmth, sharing body heat, shivering, hypothermia, Svalbard Shack scenarios, and all manner of cold weather-related tropiness. I'll gladly read anything you want to write in that vein. I'd also be interested in more things dealing with the class divide between Jack and Gus, as well as Jack's intense loneliness and isolation, and how that might make Jack in particular uncomfortable with accepting comfort and admitting weakness. But he's so touch-starved, and being touched by Gus feels so good.... (Porn is also very welcome.)

I love the epistolary style of the novel, and would love to read fic written in the same style (or branching out into something written from Gus's POV), but don't feel obligated to go that direction if you'd rather not.



The Hateful Eight
Chris Mannix/Marquis Warren (hurt Warren)
Chris Mannix/Marquis Warren (hurt Chris)
Chris Mannix/Marquis Warren (both hurt)

Requested Tags: Amnesia, Badass in Distress, blizzard, Blood Loss, Both Captured - Forced to Work Together to Escape, Character's worldview is irreparably shattered, Cleaning/treating wounds, Comes Back Wrong, Comforter Physically Incapable of Providing Adequate Comfort, Gunshot Wounds, hair petting, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt in the wilderness, Non-Consensual Bondage, Protectiveness, Rape Recovery, Refuse to Leave Other Character's Side, Resurrecting cock power also soul-bonds the one who's back alive to the one with the power, Time Loop of Trauma, unexpected tenderness

Optional Tags: Time Loop - Character A Keeps Failing to Save Character B, Time Loop - Looping Character Keeps Dying, accidental soul bond

I can't resist the dynamic between these two, and they lend themselves surprisingly well to hurt/comfort. Anything with them being protective of each other (and hating it) and awkwardly patching each other up or looking out for each while vocally denying it will make me very happy.

I love that "resurrecting cock causes soul-bond" tag, since it basically combines two tropes I find irresistible for these two, with built in awkward and inappropriately sexual hurt/comfort potential. (Though, feel free to make it "healing cock" rather than "resurrecting cock"--especially since that opens up ongoing sexual hurt/comfort opportunities). I'm down for pretty much any kind of supernatural scenario for these two (time loops! so much possibility for trapped in a loop of trauma and comfort!) Or amnesia fic where they're together, then one of them loses all memory of it and the other is more heartbroken by that than they expected?

Any post-canon "how'd they get down the mountain in that blizzard?" story is welcome. I also just generally love all manner of bad weather and western-themed hurt (gunshot wounds, knife wounds, thrown from a horse, etc) so any "getting in danger in the wilderness and having to work together to survive" or "they get in over their head with mean bastards and get whumped and have to work together to survive" fic would make me happy. Or fic that focuses on how Mannix deals with losing faith in his awful family and cause, and Warren feeling deeply ambivalent about offering him any comfort about that.

I also feel like Warren has just been through a lot of terrible shit in his life and could really use some comfort, so anything with him being a badass iron woobie who just needs a comforting blowjob and a warm blanket (and Mannix giving them to him) would make me happy.

For Rape Recovery, if you want to go whole hog on "they get captured and bad things get done to one or both of them in front of each other and then some kind of roaring rampage of revenge and sex on their own terms ensues," I will eat it up with a spoon. (Feel free to disregard my noncon DNW for this one.)

Dear Chocolate Box Author,

Thanks for writing for me; I'm thrilled you offered to write one of these fandoms. I hope you have fun writing for me, and I love it when authors write what they enjoy, so if there's something you've been itching to write for one of these fandoms/characters beyond what’s in my prompts, feel free to!

My AO3 username is PositivelyVexed.


Requested Fandoms
The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
The Hateful Eight
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.
Chicago
Original Work

General Likes

• Enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, frenemies-to-lovers
• Complicated relationships between morally shady people
• Banter
• Unlikely team-ups; characters who don’t quite trust each other being forced to rely on each other
• Ideological conflicts
• Unexpected loyalty or kindness
• Sex first and feelings later, characters trying not to fall in love and failing
• Characters who are bad at expressing their feelings, characters expressing their feelings in unconventional ways
• Competence porn, characters learning new skills or revealing hidden talents or depths
• Adventures, daring rescues, daring escapes, daring heists
• Con artists and con jobs
• Road trips
• Loyalty kink, us-against-the-world, fighting back-to-back
• Survival stories, lost in the wilderness, characters eking out a living on the edge of society
• Bed-sharing, huddling for warmth, falling asleep against each other, etc.
• Roaring rampages of revenge
• Hurt/comfort, especially with an inexperienced or rough-edged comforter and a tough comfortee
• Internalized homophobia, repressed desires, period-typical attitudes toward sexuality, guilt, shame
• Canon-typical violence and darkness
• Ghosts, monsters, eldritch abominations, curses, deals with the devil, “Came Back Wrong”-type tropes, the apocalypse (zombie or otherwise)
• Characters telling stories, in-universe legends and urban legends
• Scenery porn
• Winter, snow, fall/autumn, storms of all kinds

Porn/kink likes, if you're so inclined:

• Oral sex, fingering, handjobs, frottage, anal sex
• Clothed/semi-clothed sex, outdoor sex, semi-public sex
• Loss of virginity, first times, first-time-with-the-same-sex sex
• Eagerness, desperation, characters really, really liking whatever they’re doing
• Bed-sharing and/or heat-sharing leads to sex
• Cuddling
• Hair-pulling, hair-petting
• Shoving someone up against a wall
• Competitive sex
• Characters unexpectedly stumbling into kinks that really work for them
• Informally negotiated kink or unnegotiated kink
• D/s dynamics, struggles for dominance
• Bondage: ropes, handcuffs, characters getting tied up with whatever’s lying around
• Manhandling, rough sex, bruises, biting, spanking
• Bloodplay, gunplay, knifeplay, breathplay

Do Not Want:

• Noncon. Dubcon is fine; as long as both parties enjoy and want it on some level and aren't traumatized afterward, we're good.
• Pregnancy, babyfic, kidfic
• Completely alternate-setting AUs (modern, mundane, in space, Regency, whatever)
• A/B/O, D/s-verse
• Breeding kink
• Unrequested noncanon ships
• Body modification (including tattoos, piercings, and scarification--regular old scars are fine)
• Heavily negotiated BDSM, BDSM jargon
• Explicit sex between characters under 16
• For my Civil War-adjacent fandoms, please don't frame the Confederacy as romantic or, like, good

The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
Ray Garraty/Peter McVries


I'd just love more fic about these doomed boys and their intense connection and impossible relationship. Anything dealing with Ray's internalized homophobia and his issues around what happened with the neighbor boy all those years back would be welcome: I'm fine with either framing the encounter with the neighbor boy as something he really didn't want, and which confuses his feelings about McVries all the more, or something he maybe did want, but has since convinced himself he didn't want out of internalized homphobia. (And, uh, I wouldn't object if you wanted to give Pete and his scar a different, less skeevy, backstory than the one he tells Ray in the book, if you can think of a compelling reason for why he'd lie about that? Although feel free to just not mention it if you'd rather.)

I've had great luck asking for fix-its (or at least hopeful AUs) and would still love more, and will take any vaguely plausible excuse for one: Walker uprising? Maybe there are more cracks in the Major's hold on the society and the military than we see? Weather emergency or act of war or well-timed zombie apocalypse allow the boys to escape? I would love to read about them on the run or holed up in some rat-trap hotel, tending to each other’s injuries, cuddling up and enjoying the most-well deserved sleep of their lives, or getting up to more than that. Basically anything that explores how they might relate to each other outside of the intense certain-death-for-at-least-one-of-them circumstances their bond formed in. What might their friendship or a burgeoning romantic relationship look like with them actually able to survive together? What would the fallout of the Walk and them disappearing have on their long-term future and families?

I'm also fine with fic where they never make it out of the Walk. I'd love any more vignettes of these two boys (and the other Musketeers) trying to help each other and showing moments of kindness and solidarity, or desperate last stands and futile uprisings. I'd really be interested in anything that leans into the unreal undercurrents of the latter half of the novel, going full-on surreal or supernatural: The walk continues in the afterlife? The dark figure is a very literal and malevolent entity? McVries is a ghost, or Comes Back Wrong? I'm equally interested in dark takes on this ship that keeps the tragic canon ending intact: denial and internalized homophobia, confessions of desire or self-realization that comes too late, a surviving Garraty haunted by dreams of how it could have been, Garraty takes McVries up on his proposal, and there are Furtive Handjobs in the night, or alternatively, Exhibitionist Handjobs of Defiance in front of the crowd.



The Hateful Eight
Marquis Warren/Chris Mannix

For these two, I'm all about reading hurt/comfort, loyalty kink, ideological conflicts, murderous teamwork, Warren bossing Mannix around, both of them telling stories and getting to show off their smarts, competence porn, and porn porn.

For hurt/comfort themed fic, if you want to go whole hog on "they get captured and bad things get done to one or both of them in front of each other and then some kind of roaring rampage of revenge ensues," I will eat it up with a spoon. I'd also be interested in fic where someone catches them together. I'd be down with that going in pretty much any conceivable direction--they kill someone for giving them shit about it, Bad Things happen to them as a result of getting caught, their loyalty to each other is tested, or anything else.

Something with card games, gambling with the devil, someone reading their fortune, or or playing each other at poker. Or for that matter, Warren wagering Mannix at poker.

 I’m interested in learning more about Warren’s background: I love him correctly deducing so much of what’s going on, living on his own (assholish) terms and doing what he needs to survive in a world that’s deeply hostile to him, and I’d be really interested in learning more about his background, his time in the war, and how he reinvented himself as a bounty hunter. I'm also fascinated by how Mannix is changed by being around Warren, and love anything that delves into his internal conflict between what he’s been raised to believe and how his relationship with Warren upends that. I'd also be interested in seeing them trying out new careers (they open a saloon or try out running Minnie's themselves?) retiring and living a quiet life. Or alternatively, Warren turns his forging skills to good use and becomes a dealer in counterfeit War memorabilia or some other criminal enterprise.

I am immensely fond of supernatural horror/dark fantasy twists on this canon, and would enjoy seeing pretty much anything in that vein: time loops (especially with both of them stuck in a loop together), unwanted soulbonding, waking up in hell or purgatory, cursed with immortality, haunted by ghosts or becoming ghosts after the bloodbath at Minnie’s, haunted by Erskine Mannix’s undead spector, Ravenous fusion with wendigos and cannibalism, or an AU where Warren hunts shapeshifters or ghosts instead of bounties. Anything with forcible soul-bonding (like, maybe an AU where that's a thing the US government does to prisoners to keep them in line, and they're both people the government wants to keep in line and punish with each other's presence?)



Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly
Blondie/Tuco Ramirez

I love this film. I love the sunburnt vistas and the cynicism and I love these assholes and their screwed-up relationship and would be down for absolutely anything that explores their partners-to-enemies-to-reluctant-allies-to-who-even-knows dynamic.

I’m desperately curious about what happens after the film. I have trouble believing Tuco won’t go after Blondie looking for revenge (in the same violent, kinky vein that all their revenge attempts have taken), and I would love to read that story. I’m interested in any “what happens after the movie” scenario. Maybe Tuco goes after Blondie, and gets the upper hand, but then squanders it because he can't stop gloating? Maybe Blondie gets the upper hand again and more kinkiness ensues? Maybe they find themselves up against mutual enemies and have to work together to get out alive? Does Tuco blow through his money and find himself in need of his old partner to pull off one last scheme? I'd love to read all of the chases, revenge, deception and manipulation, dubcon, murder attempts, or grudging team-ups.

I'd also love more scenes from their early partnership together. TV Tropes claims that Eastwood and Wallach had to share a bed throughout filming as a bit of enforced method acting by Sergio Leone. So I’m willing to take that as confirmation that Blondie and Tuco canonically shared a bed. And I'm curious how some forced bed sharing would work for the characters. Yes, it leading to porn would be marvelous, but not required. Mostly, I imagine them both being terrible bedmates and rapidly escalating battles over who controls the bedsheets, but maybe they’re surprisingly cozy together and absolutely do not talk about it during the day? Maybe them reluctantly patching each other up after a con gone wrong?

If you’re inclined to include him, I’m also really curious about the history between Blondie and Tuco and Angel Eyes. They all seem to know each other. What’s the history there?

If you want to give this a Weird West twist, I am 100% down for that. Blondie not being entirely mortal, everything in the Sad Hill graveyard not being entirely dead, zombie soldiers, gunslinging ghosts, the graveyard-is-purgatory. I am down for absolutely anything putting a supernatural spin on this canon.

When in doubt, I am always, always up for bondage and breathplay between these two.


The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.

Lord Bowler/Brisco County Jr

Ah, this sweet, quirky weird western with all its cockeyed optimism for the future, and Bruce Campbell is at his best here. My favorite part of this show was the journey from rivals to reluctant allies to partners to BFFs that Brisco and Bowler go through over the course of the season, and I would love something that explores their bond in the context of a romantic relationship. I'm a little more into the early days when they're still rivals, and would love something where Brisco's optimism comes up against Bowler's grumpy loner thing and then romance ensues. Give me all the tropey sweetness: huddling for warmth leads to more, hurt/comfort leads to more, captured by bad guys and needing to protect each other leads to more. Having them get up to any tropey Western fun, or any of the more out there fantastical time travel and supernatural shenanigans from the show would be welcome.

Lord Bowler/Brisco County Jr/Pete Hutter

I also just really enjoyed Pete Hutter, in all his slimy, weirdly endearing glory, and am 100% into him being Brisco and Bowler's weasely frenemy who keeps popping up and working with them while still being untrustworthy. Which leads me, perhaps irrationally, to... threesome? Maybe Brisco and Bowler are in an established thing and Pete somehow weasels his way into the team and then into their bed? Messed up gunplay? Maybe Pete runs afoul of dark forces again and goes to them for protection? And awkward seduction attempts ensue? Supernatural explanations for Pete's apparent immortality are very welcome. (Maybe he's a werewolf? Maybe he's cursed?)

I find Brisco/Dixie pretty charming in canon, and wouldn't be averse to that relationship being referenced, but I'd prefer if this was set after they amicably part ways.


Chicago
Roxie Hart/Velma Kelly

I forgot how much fun this movie was, and I'd love to see these singing-and-dancing murderesses banging and lying and scheming their way through the Jazz Age together. I'm mostly picturing post-canon enemies-to-partners-to-lovers fic here, with working together leading to some unexpected appreciation for each other's talent for stagecraft and ruthlessness, leading to sex. And maybe, just maybe, it tips over into outright liking each other after they spend enough time being the person who most gets the other?

I'd love to see what happens with their dual act as the years march on. I imagine their notoriety is bound to fade at some point (or they'll run up against hard times once the Depression and the War hits). What do they do to keep their act fresh and their names in the paper? Do they have to take more extreme steps to pay the bills and stay in the spotlight? Will they go back to murder, either for the attention or just because there's a lot of guys who have it coming?

Alternatively, if you'd like to set things in prison during the film and keep things at the level of bitter hate-fucking to try to play each other, that's fine too (maybe Velma's proposal to Roxie about them partnering up takes a kinky turn when Roxie decides to let her twist on the line a bit more, or maybe there's manipulative hatesex earlier, when Velma is the one with the upper hand taking advantage of a still-naive Roxie?)

Please feel free to include all the Jazz age debauchery and twenties-era crime and corruption you like. I love it.


Original Works
Male Teenage Runaway/Male Criminal Driving Cross-Country


Honestly, there are so many dynamics I can see this scenario having, and I'm interested in all of them: desperate and naive young runaway (just looking for adventure, or maybe hoping to escape a disapproving conservative family) out alone in the big world for the first time, seduced by a dangerous and manipulative criminal. Or the teenage runaway slowly revealing himself to be the more dangerous and ruthless of the two. Or them both being ruthless villains and discovering a kindred spirit. Or the two of them both sort of loners running from a hostile society who find some unexpected connection with each other. Mindgames, stays in sleazy rundown roadside motels, fucking on the car hood, escapes from the law, reports on the radio about an escaped killer on the loose who may be the criminal, or may be another guy with a grudge against the criminal... I'm down for anything from rough and mean dubcon to unexpected romance. All I ask is no out-and-out rape/noncon between the characters, and neither of them killing each other (or graphic depictions of them murdering innocent people).

I admit, I picture this as mid-20th century Americana with hot desert highways rolling by, but I'm down for any historical or contemporary setting you care for. Spooky supernatural/magical realist/post-apocalyptic undertones are also very welcome. (I would prefer no high fantasy or in spaaaaace settings, please.)