Yuletide 2022

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.