Yuletide 2019

[positivelyvexed]

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.