Dear Yuletide Writer 2018
Hi, and thanks for your interest in my letter, whether you're considering writing for me or just curious about my prompts!
This year for Yuletide, I've asked for:
Crossovers or fusions between these fandoms, or between one of these fandoms and another rare fandom I know, are welcome.
On AO3 my username is Morbane.
Do-Not-Wants: harm to hands, addiction and substance abuse, amnesia.
I would prefer not to receive interactive fiction. My ideal gift length is between 200 and 20,000 words; if you're thinking of writing a drabble for me, then the thought is appreciated, but someone else might enjoy your effort more - drabbles are hit-or-miss for me.
General likes
I love original characters, outsider character perspectives, and worldbuilding. I love competence and loyalty. I like uplifting and hopeful messages, and protagonists who champion them. I also like genuinely terrible characters and tragic arcs, and villains with strong motivations and critiques of the protagonists' goals. Characters are welcome in any shade of grey. I like seeing characters screw up and then learn (or not) from their mistakes. I love magical realism, dramatic weather, trains, telepathy, and dragons. I like getting a strong sense of time or place. For porn, I love xeno, voyeurism, dubcon, noncon, telepathy, praise kink, and awkward-but-not-emotionally-disastrous sex; intense oh-god-I-can't-believe-it's-so-good sex; gentle and loving sex. I love emotional intimacy whether or not it comes with physical intimacy. I love mentors and protegé(e) relationships, and relationships between characters who are juggling multiple identities. I love seeing the relationship between two characters at one point in time, and then seeing it again when the relationship is very different. I'm just as interested in break-ups as get-togethers. I like Big Damn Hero moments, and also days in the life, or stories about people who are just trying to make it by in a weird world. I love it when authors incorporate something about which they have enthusiasm or specialized knowledge, however mundane or weird that thing is.
You're welcome to write in past or present tense, and in first, second, or third person. Epistolary and found-media formats are welcome.
Drive Angry (2011)
John Milton (Drive Angry), The Accountant (Drive Angry)
From my sign-up: This B-movie is simultaneously completely over the top and absurdly nonchalant about its plot and the things it expects you to take in its stride. I love that John Milton gets more and more blasé and deadpan the more ridiculous his activities are, from a mid-coitus gunfight to trying to stop the end of the world with... a car.
I also love The Accountant: his complete lack of concern for human propriety combined with flashes of empathy and immense curiosity. I love that he has fun on the job.
And he and John have immense chemistry. Please, please, take the Accountant's curiosity in a natural direction. Or maybe John tries to seduce his way out of Hell. Or they have to work together and their differences only add to the sexual tension.
Porn & shipping welcome - but also, not required. I'd love a worldbuilding fic that tackled such things as, what IS that gun, is Hell similar for everyone, how did King know how to start an apocalypse... I'd love action and further adventure.
More prompts:
More general thoughts:
I realise I've typed John all the way through this but, in the movie, he's far more often referred to as Milton. Whoops. Please use whatever feels the most natural to you, author!
Go for Yulebuild? Or Yuleporn? Or Two for One?
The Shadow (1994)
Characters: Margo Lane, Lamont Cranston
From my sign-up: TELEPATHS IN LOVE. Wow I love these two together. I love how strong-willed they both are, and yet how each of them can change his or her mind and concede to the other. I love how clearly they realise that each has skills they can use.
I would love a story in which they look fabulous and are competent. I would love to see them working together; would love to see Margo develop her powers; would love days in the life. I get a sense from the movie of Margo as a character, how she thinks and reacts, but what does she do all day?
Optionally, would also love Shiwan Khan to be a part of the story. Because the Shiwan/Lamont chemistry was through the roof. How about Shiwan does convince Lamont to rule the world with him, and Margo, part of a Resistance, believes that she can seduce Lamont back to the light?
Overall this is a great canon for darker fic or fic that explores the ethical underbelly of vigilantism. Lamont can control minds. When is he most tempted to abuse that? And on the lighter side of dark, does he ever try to make amends in Tibet, or only through his actions in New York?
More prompts:
More general thoughts:
This would be an especially good canon for Yuleporn and/or Crueltide? :D? Especially using telepathy, hidden identities, and dubcon.
Simoun (Anime)
Characters: Amuria, Neviril, Dominuura, Paraietta
From my sign-up: Please consider this an OR request - you don't have to include all characters. I just picked some I'm fascinated about.
Amuria obviously has a huge impact on the story even though we get to know so little about her. I'd love pre-canon fic that filled out her and Neviril's feelings for each other - or just how she feels about piloting a Simoun, herself.
Neviril didn't grab me on my first watch, but on my second watch, I've become really fond of her. She has so much to do to balance everyone's expectations of her and her own needs. Pre-canon fic, and how she earned her reputation for amazing flying? How she comes to return Aer's feelings?
Paraietta so often is placed in the position of holding everyone else together - though her own feelings are obviously so messy. I'd love a story of what life was like for her in Choir Tempest before the catastrophe at the start of the series. I'd also love more exploration of how she gets to the point we see her at at the end of the series. We do get to see her actions and opinions but I feel like a story that focuses on her would be interesting and awesome. Paraietta/Neviril shipping only if unrequited please.
Dominuura! When she showed up with her mysterious faction connections I thought she was going to be some sort of villainess; I'm still fascinated about her political ties. What was it like for her to join Choir Tempest? What was her previous choir like? What else about sybillae did she learn from her grandfather? Please no Dominuura/Limone sex while Limone is younger than mid teens, and please don't focus on that relationship overall.
And please, more about the world! More about what life is like in Simulacrum generally, on the ground - what the sybillae know of that world, and what that world knows of them. Be my guest if you want to explore gender issues in this canon; the set-up is so fascinating. Time-travel canon-divergent AUs would also be awesome!
More prompts:
More general thoughts: I would also be okay with a story in which none of my requested characters appeared! I should really have put that in my sign-up. Sorry. You have my word as mod. Anyway, I repeat, this would be a great canon for worldbuilding (As part of the Yulebuild challenge, or not, as you wish)!
There's something oddly pleasing to me about the combination of a canon with time travel and a canon where people are born without a fixed gender, and can/must choose it; it gives an extra poignancy to what if, when people know they could have made a different choice, on multiple levels. I don't expect you to make anything of that thought but perhaps it is helpful!
Solitaire - Kelley Eskridge
Characters: Jackal, Snow
From my sign-up: I'd love a story about Snow and Jackal and their world, their place in it. Snow and Jackal early in their relationship, against the background of Ko, back when Jackal knew where she belonged in Ko? Snow and Jackal after the end of the book, figuring out what things will look like for the long term? Snow and Jackal figuring out what their life on Ko prepared them for - and what it didn't?
More about the united world order, and its actual ongoing politics and problems, would be great. What do the other Hopes get up to? Are they indeed all show ponies or pawns or do some of them effect positive change? I'd be interested to see what would happen if Jackal's life crossed paths with those of a Hope again. Or, canon divergence in which she continued to be a Hope and found out later, or in a different way.
A story about further effects and uses of the accelerated dream-state technology would also be great.
More prompts:
More general thoughts: I really liked the minutiae of project management. I also loved the scenes where Jackal redecorated her new apartment.
Jackal was taught to value authority and the system; it would be interesting to see her push back against that further.
Good fits: the Yulebuild challenge, Misses Clause.
Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman
Fatale, Lily
From my sign-up: Please consider this an or request if you prefer - you don't have to include both characters.
Events from Lily's perspective would be rad. What kind of things did she get up to in her villain phase? What did the school and university years look like to her? Is there a kernel of truth to her supervillain origin story? I would love Fatale & Lily hanging out: maybe give me missing scenes in canon that take on more significance later, though I'd also love to see them meet up months or years after the book, on a different footing to how we left them.
And way more for/from Fatale! She's in a better place at the end of the book than at the start, but she's not exactly happy. I'd love to see her next steps, or maybe a few years down the track as someone more confident and reconciled to her identity - or more embittered, perhaps, if you want to give her a different emotional arc.
I'm not a comics reader but I've osmosed a lot of comics superheroes hijinks - if you throw in obvious comics expies, I may not recognize them, but I will probably enjoy them anyway. Please feel free to introduce a wacky villain plot or another overcomplicated plan - or go more serious if you like about the worldbuilding consequences of real superheroes and supervillains.
I'm open to any/all ships.
More prompts:
More general thoughts:
I find everyone in this novel really poignant. There's an obvious theme of us vs. them, where sometimes that's heroes vs. villains, and sometimes it's the superpowered vs. mundane, and sometimes it's those who're part of the clique and those who aren't - and there's an ongoing feeling of anger and threat and defiant isolation. I'd love to see those edges softened into humanity and fulfilment. I'd like: to see the characters do things; to see the characters in happier places; to see more of the characters and their worlds. Go for the Yulebuild challenge? Or Misses Clause?
Sucker Punch (2011)
Rocket, Sweet Pea
From my sign-up: Things I love here: the costumes, the womens' individual aesthetics in the different worlds, the soundtrack. I love the world-switching, and the central idea of facing your problems in a different setting, where the problems are no less difficult, but the rules are different. I love how well that logically and visually supports the Rule of Cool, and that our protagonists face awesome trials but, in these alternate worlds, have awesome strengths.
I love the sisterhood parallel between Baby Doll & her sister, and Sweet Pea & Rocket. It devastated me, the way that played out, and I want ALL THE BACKSTORY and ALL THE FIX-IT. (I also enjoyed the way it devastated me, and exploring the themes of sacrifice and battle in a different way would be fine! People can still die!!) (And for fix it, small is fine - just fix-it for small things or giving deaths more meaning. Or maybe, Sweet Pea gets away.... and one day she comes back for Baby Doll.)
I'd love a story that played straight with the world-hopping and the rest: what was it like for the other women to be picked up and dropped into other worlds? What were the stories, before and after, of the worlds whose conflicts they entered? (Is Baby Doll's dancing truly mesmerizing, or is that only a metaphor/coincidence?)
I want to know so much more about Sweet Pea's and Rocket's history and what brought them here. And for Blondie and Amber too - as long as there's a hint of that for Sweet Pea and Rocket, a story mostly about Blondie's and Amber's lives to this point would be amazing.
I'd love a story that twisted up the worldbuilding. So maybe the asylum is the real, and only real, world: what does that mean for the characters? Or, the club? Or is there a way for them to find a world that isn't always at war and that suits them all? Is there a way to worldhop that saves all the dead characters?)
More prompts:
More general thoughts:
This is a polarising movie and I'm one who really enjoys it. I love the different fantasy worlds and the bitter, brutal glamour of the club; I love Baby Doll's and Sweet Pea's grief and anger that carries through the asylum setting. I love the way the themes of self-actualization and sacrifice are used.
You're welcome to disregard the final scene between Baby Doll and the High Roller; I prefer what the film said without it, and as it was unrated, it wasn't part of the movie I saw first in cinemas.
OK with Sweet Pea/Rocket shipping but please don't give me a Sweet Pea/Rocket PWP - something else as well, please!
This would be a good canon for the Two for One challenge - in the Crossovering exchange, I've previously requested Sucker Punch with Bad Blood - Taylor Swift (Music Video), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Jupiter Ascending (2015), Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Labyrinth (1986), Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena - but please take those merely as a starting point, rather than a restriction. It would also be a good canon for Yulebuild and Misses Clause. This entry is also posted at https://morbane.dreamwidth.org/40711.html. There are
comments. Please comment either here or there.
This year for Yuletide, I've asked for:
- Drive Angry, a supernatural/action B-movie
- The Shadow, a superhero movie based on a radio drama + pulp novels (I only know the movie)
- Simoun, a 26-episode fantasy/war anime
- Solitaire, a light sci-fi novel by Kelley Eskridge
- Soon I Will Be Invincible, a light sci-fi/superhero novel by Austin Grossman
- Sucker Punch, a fantasy/action movie
Crossovers or fusions between these fandoms, or between one of these fandoms and another rare fandom I know, are welcome.
On AO3 my username is Morbane.
Do-Not-Wants: harm to hands, addiction and substance abuse, amnesia.
I would prefer not to receive interactive fiction. My ideal gift length is between 200 and 20,000 words; if you're thinking of writing a drabble for me, then the thought is appreciated, but someone else might enjoy your effort more - drabbles are hit-or-miss for me.
General likes
I love original characters, outsider character perspectives, and worldbuilding. I love competence and loyalty. I like uplifting and hopeful messages, and protagonists who champion them. I also like genuinely terrible characters and tragic arcs, and villains with strong motivations and critiques of the protagonists' goals. Characters are welcome in any shade of grey. I like seeing characters screw up and then learn (or not) from their mistakes. I love magical realism, dramatic weather, trains, telepathy, and dragons. I like getting a strong sense of time or place. For porn, I love xeno, voyeurism, dubcon, noncon, telepathy, praise kink, and awkward-but-not-emotionally-disastrous sex; intense oh-god-I-can't-believe-it's-so-good sex; gentle and loving sex. I love emotional intimacy whether or not it comes with physical intimacy. I love mentors and protegé(e) relationships, and relationships between characters who are juggling multiple identities. I love seeing the relationship between two characters at one point in time, and then seeing it again when the relationship is very different. I'm just as interested in break-ups as get-togethers. I like Big Damn Hero moments, and also days in the life, or stories about people who are just trying to make it by in a weird world. I love it when authors incorporate something about which they have enthusiasm or specialized knowledge, however mundane or weird that thing is.
You're welcome to write in past or present tense, and in first, second, or third person. Epistolary and found-media formats are welcome.
Drive Angry (2011)
John Milton (Drive Angry), The Accountant (Drive Angry)
From my sign-up: This B-movie is simultaneously completely over the top and absurdly nonchalant about its plot and the things it expects you to take in its stride. I love that John Milton gets more and more blasé and deadpan the more ridiculous his activities are, from a mid-coitus gunfight to trying to stop the end of the world with... a car.
I also love The Accountant: his complete lack of concern for human propriety combined with flashes of empathy and immense curiosity. I love that he has fun on the job.
And he and John have immense chemistry. Please, please, take the Accountant's curiosity in a natural direction. Or maybe John tries to seduce his way out of Hell. Or they have to work together and their differences only add to the sexual tension.
Porn & shipping welcome - but also, not required. I'd love a worldbuilding fic that tackled such things as, what IS that gun, is Hell similar for everyone, how did King know how to start an apocalypse... I'd love action and further adventure.
More prompts:
- The Accountant needs John's help with another breakout
- The Accountant needs John's help with a supernatural threat of an entirely different magnitude - maybe a new supernatural war
- The Accountant has an enemy; unlikely though it may be, John is the only one who can defend or rescue him
- The Accountant is (presumably) an immortal or near-immortal being whose relationship to time is unknown; it might be fun to give them another adventure together in a far-future setting or in the past
- John's granddaughter grows up and learns how to summon John back from the dead
- Someone else somehow summons John from Hell, as one might summon a demon
- John's back in his cell in Hell, but the Accountant is still fascinated by him (escape by seduction/)
- On their way back to Hell, John and the Accountant end up somewhere entirely strange - Faery? Another timeline? A land of demons?
- Crossovers!!
- More about the structure of Hell, the relationship between this universe's Hell and Heaven, Satan's characterization
- The events of the movie have gone a small way towards balancing John's account. Hell is therefore a different experience the second time around.
- John keeps breaking out of Hell. An exasperated Satan gives John and the Accountant something like a soulbond so that the Accountant can keep track of him
- Sex to satisfy curiosity, sex to prove a point or as a competition of prowess, sex where John knows the Accountant could break him in half and/or the Accountant knows that John is a threat to him too, but the danger just makes it better
More general thoughts:
I realise I've typed John all the way through this but, in the movie, he's far more often referred to as Milton. Whoops. Please use whatever feels the most natural to you, author!
Go for Yulebuild? Or Yuleporn? Or Two for One?
The Shadow (1994)
Characters: Margo Lane, Lamont Cranston
From my sign-up: TELEPATHS IN LOVE. Wow I love these two together. I love how strong-willed they both are, and yet how each of them can change his or her mind and concede to the other. I love how clearly they realise that each has skills they can use.
I would love a story in which they look fabulous and are competent. I would love to see them working together; would love to see Margo develop her powers; would love days in the life. I get a sense from the movie of Margo as a character, how she thinks and reacts, but what does she do all day?
Optionally, would also love Shiwan Khan to be a part of the story. Because the Shiwan/Lamont chemistry was through the roof. How about Shiwan does convince Lamont to rule the world with him, and Margo, part of a Resistance, believes that she can seduce Lamont back to the light?
Overall this is a great canon for darker fic or fic that explores the ethical underbelly of vigilantism. Lamont can control minds. When is he most tempted to abuse that? And on the lighter side of dark, does he ever try to make amends in Tibet, or only through his actions in New York?
More prompts:
- I would adore references to any real-life events or locations or communities in New York. The film has a nice sense of era - I'd love for you to build on it!
- What is Lamont supposed to be doing all day, and what about Margo? Further glimpses of them playing their roles in society would be neat. Does Margo have hobbies? Causes?
- Margo and Lamont out together when Lamont is acting his apparent role of rich layabout.
- They meet in a completely different way. Any version of 'two telepaths meet each other and develop an attraction, and figure things out' with identity porn or without, is catnip to me.
- Slow-burn; maybe it takes them a while after the end of the movie to become lovers, rather than just crime-fighting partners and secret-keepers
- Lamont teaching Margo to use her powers - and possibly developing his own.
- One of them has to confuse the other for reasons of a mission - for example, Lamont needs Margo to temporarily forget she knows him. (Amnesia DNW waived for this and similar plots.)
- Clothing porn. Margo's white dress and green dress were both so pretty. I would eat up descriptions of similar clothing.
- There's a throwaway reference to The Shadow having a network not just in New York or even America, but all around the world. How about he and Margo travel together? Does he ever make reparations more directly in Tibet?
- AU: Shiwan Khan convinces Lamont to rule the world with him. Margo attempts to seduce the Shadow back to the path of goodness. Or assassinate him.
- AU: Shiwan Khan hasn't lost all of his powers. Slowly recovering, he seeks to turn Margo and Lamont against each other.
- I love that Margo isn't afraid of Lamont. But it might be wise for her to take his background at least a little seriously. Explore that?
- Lamont goes almost too far, in convincing Margo she should be afraid of him.
- What does Margo think of the Shadow's "I saved you, so you owe your life to me?" idea?
- Would love to see Margo making contact with/ use of some part of the Shadow's network.
- Messed-up V-shaped relationships also welcome.
- Here's a piece of my id: in a New York under an evil spell, there's a Lamont Cranston who acts as second-in-command to the new ruler... and a Shadow who aids the resistance. What's Margo to think when she learns they're one and the same?
- Acting on a strange impulse, a younger (but powerfully gifted) Margo travels to Tibet to meet someone she is convinced is the key to her future.
- Role reversal whereby troubled socialite Lamont comes to learn of mysterious, shadowy vigilante Margo would be awesome (perhaps keep Lamont's past with Lamont, though)
More general thoughts:
This would be an especially good canon for Yuleporn and/or Crueltide? :D? Especially using telepathy, hidden identities, and dubcon.
Simoun (Anime)
Characters: Amuria, Neviril, Dominuura, Paraietta
From my sign-up: Please consider this an OR request - you don't have to include all characters. I just picked some I'm fascinated about.
Amuria obviously has a huge impact on the story even though we get to know so little about her. I'd love pre-canon fic that filled out her and Neviril's feelings for each other - or just how she feels about piloting a Simoun, herself.
Neviril didn't grab me on my first watch, but on my second watch, I've become really fond of her. She has so much to do to balance everyone's expectations of her and her own needs. Pre-canon fic, and how she earned her reputation for amazing flying? How she comes to return Aer's feelings?
Paraietta so often is placed in the position of holding everyone else together - though her own feelings are obviously so messy. I'd love a story of what life was like for her in Choir Tempest before the catastrophe at the start of the series. I'd also love more exploration of how she gets to the point we see her at at the end of the series. We do get to see her actions and opinions but I feel like a story that focuses on her would be interesting and awesome. Paraietta/Neviril shipping only if unrequited please.
Dominuura! When she showed up with her mysterious faction connections I thought she was going to be some sort of villainess; I'm still fascinated about her political ties. What was it like for her to join Choir Tempest? What was her previous choir like? What else about sybillae did she learn from her grandfather? Please no Dominuura/Limone sex while Limone is younger than mid teens, and please don't focus on that relationship overall.
And please, more about the world! More about what life is like in Simulacrum generally, on the ground - what the sybillae know of that world, and what that world knows of them. Be my guest if you want to explore gender issues in this canon; the set-up is so fascinating. Time-travel canon-divergent AUs would also be awesome!
More prompts:
- Paraietta's backstory; how she became a sibylla; her childhood friendship with Neviril; what it was like to be a member of Chor Tempest before war broke out.
- Paraietta's thoughts on spirituality.
- Paraietta's thoughts on her eventual chosen gender.
- Any kind of canon divergence featuring Paraietta, if you have a plot idea you want to explore with her.
- Dominuura's backstory; how she became a sibylla; life in her own Chor before she joined Chor Tempest.
- Dominuura's connections with / history with political factions!
- Dominuura's thoughts on spirituality vs war.
- Chor Tempest as it appeared to her when she joined.
- Conversations between Dominuura and her grandfather!
- Amuria's pre-series feelings for Neviril
- Neviril's pre-series feelings for Amuria
- An AU in which both of them survive to enter the war, both with doubts and hopes
- Wrench my heart, author, with a pre-canon interaction between Amuria and Neviril that makes a later scene so much more poignant
- Amuria lives instead of Neviril!
- How Neviril became the Sibylla Aurea - her early training and exploits
- A story about Yun, where Paraietta or Dominuura are mentioned only briefly, is welcome - exploring her decisions, or what life is like for her when she takes on Onassia's role.
- WORLDBUILDING. Normal life in Argentum! Normal life in Plumbum! Normal life in Simulacrum! Exploration of the gender set-up is of course welcome.
- In the ordinary course of events, how do retiring sibyllae choose their path in life?
- What's courtship like for ordinary people in this world?
- The Emerald Ri Majon of course has the most awe-inspiring effect; are there other Ri Majon with specific unusual effects?
- How do sibyllae learn Ri Majon? Neviril mentions books - are there training manuals? A kind of dictionary?
- The peacetime uses of other Ri Majon - we've seen Ri Majon for funerals and farewells, what are some others? This would be a great subject for a ~five times fic
- What does it feel like to fly?
More general thoughts: I would also be okay with a story in which none of my requested characters appeared! I should really have put that in my sign-up. Sorry. You have my word as mod. Anyway, I repeat, this would be a great canon for worldbuilding (As part of the Yulebuild challenge, or not, as you wish)!
There's something oddly pleasing to me about the combination of a canon with time travel and a canon where people are born without a fixed gender, and can/must choose it; it gives an extra poignancy to what if, when people know they could have made a different choice, on multiple levels. I don't expect you to make anything of that thought but perhaps it is helpful!
Solitaire - Kelley Eskridge
Characters: Jackal, Snow
From my sign-up: I'd love a story about Snow and Jackal and their world, their place in it. Snow and Jackal early in their relationship, against the background of Ko, back when Jackal knew where she belonged in Ko? Snow and Jackal after the end of the book, figuring out what things will look like for the long term? Snow and Jackal figuring out what their life on Ko prepared them for - and what it didn't?
More about the united world order, and its actual ongoing politics and problems, would be great. What do the other Hopes get up to? Are they indeed all show ponies or pawns or do some of them effect positive change? I'd be interested to see what would happen if Jackal's life crossed paths with those of a Hope again. Or, canon divergence in which she continued to be a Hope and found out later, or in a different way.
A story about further effects and uses of the accelerated dream-state technology would also be great.
More prompts:
- More uses of the dream technology! More of how Jackal feels about the dream technology.
- More of Jackal's education on Ko, and connections and friends she made there, and things they all learned
- Early scenes from Jackal's web. Was it predicted that Jackal would pair up with Snow? Did they defy prediction?
- At the end of the book, Jackal had a brief respite, but the world media's still after her. What are the issues of the day? How does she handle it?
- Snow gets involved in a project that strains her ethics, and Jackal's.
- Someone else who survived Jackal's web gets in contact.
- Other Hopes are curious about Jackal. Other Hopes have journeys of their own.
- The united World Government needs Jackal. Why, and is it worth helping?
- Decades down the track, Jackal is confronted by a request to help Ko
- Jackal and Neill. His hopes, his goals, his values; whether he did care about her; how he felt as she fell.
- Snow and anything outside of Jackal: her own hopes and aspirations, her parents, what might happen for her far beyond canon
- Snow during Jackal's incarceration
- 50 years down the track, Snow and Jackal old together, or either of them old with someone else - what matters to them, how the world has changed
- Other corporation-states? More corporation-states?
- annnnnything else about worldbuilding
More general thoughts: I really liked the minutiae of project management. I also loved the scenes where Jackal redecorated her new apartment.
Jackal was taught to value authority and the system; it would be interesting to see her push back against that further.
Good fits: the Yulebuild challenge, Misses Clause.
Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman
Fatale, Lily
From my sign-up: Please consider this an or request if you prefer - you don't have to include both characters.
Events from Lily's perspective would be rad. What kind of things did she get up to in her villain phase? What did the school and university years look like to her? Is there a kernel of truth to her supervillain origin story? I would love Fatale & Lily hanging out: maybe give me missing scenes in canon that take on more significance later, though I'd also love to see them meet up months or years after the book, on a different footing to how we left them.
And way more for/from Fatale! She's in a better place at the end of the book than at the start, but she's not exactly happy. I'd love to see her next steps, or maybe a few years down the track as someone more confident and reconciled to her identity - or more embittered, perhaps, if you want to give her a different emotional arc.
I'm not a comics reader but I've osmosed a lot of comics superheroes hijinks - if you throw in obvious comics expies, I may not recognize them, but I will probably enjoy them anyway. Please feel free to introduce a wacky villain plot or another overcomplicated plan - or go more serious if you like about the worldbuilding consequences of real superheroes and supervillains.
I'm open to any/all ships.
More prompts:
- Lily's origin story from her own perspective.
- Lily and Fatale having an honest conversation.
- Fatale and Dr. Impossible having an honest conversation.
- Lily and Dr. Impossible having an honest conversation.
- Back when Lily and Dr. Impossible were dating.
- Of Lily, Fatale, and Dr. Impossible, two are forced into an unlikely team-up against the other.
- Lily, Fatale, and Dr. Impossible are tangled up with a magical artefact, and equally baffled by it.
- Somehow, it's Lily and Fatale who have to save the world.
- Space trip!
- Someone tries to make more cyborgs modelled after Fatale.
- Fatale needs Dr. Impossible's help on behalf of a cyborg friend, not as well designed as she is.
- Lily/Fatale shipping of some kind.
- Against all probability, Lily/Fatale/Dr. Impossible.
- Encounters with any throwaway-line character or event, like the private investigator with centaur hooves, or various jaunts around the solar system!!!
- Lily and non-superhero friends. Maybe she kept in touch with someone she knew as Erica?
- Fatale and non-superhero friends. Maybe she saves someone and they get in touch and it's not as awkward as she expected? Maybe she's giving an interview to a journalist and the journalist is surprisingly on her side?
- Fatale, a decade on, more comfortable in herself.
- Alternately, write me something about Galatea.
More general thoughts:
I find everyone in this novel really poignant. There's an obvious theme of us vs. them, where sometimes that's heroes vs. villains, and sometimes it's the superpowered vs. mundane, and sometimes it's those who're part of the clique and those who aren't - and there's an ongoing feeling of anger and threat and defiant isolation. I'd love to see those edges softened into humanity and fulfilment. I'd like: to see the characters do things; to see the characters in happier places; to see more of the characters and their worlds. Go for the Yulebuild challenge? Or Misses Clause?
Sucker Punch (2011)
Rocket, Sweet Pea
From my sign-up: Things I love here: the costumes, the womens' individual aesthetics in the different worlds, the soundtrack. I love the world-switching, and the central idea of facing your problems in a different setting, where the problems are no less difficult, but the rules are different. I love how well that logically and visually supports the Rule of Cool, and that our protagonists face awesome trials but, in these alternate worlds, have awesome strengths.
I love the sisterhood parallel between Baby Doll & her sister, and Sweet Pea & Rocket. It devastated me, the way that played out, and I want ALL THE BACKSTORY and ALL THE FIX-IT. (I also enjoyed the way it devastated me, and exploring the themes of sacrifice and battle in a different way would be fine! People can still die!!) (And for fix it, small is fine - just fix-it for small things or giving deaths more meaning. Or maybe, Sweet Pea gets away.... and one day she comes back for Baby Doll.)
I'd love a story that played straight with the world-hopping and the rest: what was it like for the other women to be picked up and dropped into other worlds? What were the stories, before and after, of the worlds whose conflicts they entered? (Is Baby Doll's dancing truly mesmerizing, or is that only a metaphor/coincidence?)
I want to know so much more about Sweet Pea's and Rocket's history and what brought them here. And for Blondie and Amber too - as long as there's a hint of that for Sweet Pea and Rocket, a story mostly about Blondie's and Amber's lives to this point would be amazing.
I'd love a story that twisted up the worldbuilding. So maybe the asylum is the real, and only real, world: what does that mean for the characters? Or, the club? Or is there a way for them to find a world that isn't always at war and that suits them all? Is there a way to worldhop that saves all the dead characters?)
More prompts:
- Alllllll the backstory for Sweet Pea or Rocket or both.
- Rocket fix-it! EVERYBODY FIX-IT.
- More exploration of the connection between Sweet Pea and Baby Doll
- Flip the tables on which world is real! Maybe neither the asylum nor the club is.
- Rocket or Sweet Pea's perspective on the worlds their battles take place on.
- One of the girls isn't real, or is a ghost, or, not all of them exist in the same world at the same time.
- The club is a brief mission, not an extended one.
- Superheroine AU. Changeling/ Dark faerie AU. Time travel shenanigans. Groundhog day. Angels and demons AU. Circus AU.
- Rocket/Baby Doll shipping; Sweet Pea/OFC shipping.
- Crossovers. Whether or not you save anyone else, I'd love to see Sweet Pea turn up in some other canon after the events of the film. Or, the Sucker Punch women turn up in another canon for one of their battles!
- 4th-wall-breaking! I love the idea of characters saving themselves by literally refusing to be part of a narrative.
- I love the idea of characters saving themselves by saving others. I love the idea of characters saving others by saving themselves.
More general thoughts:
This is a polarising movie and I'm one who really enjoys it. I love the different fantasy worlds and the bitter, brutal glamour of the club; I love Baby Doll's and Sweet Pea's grief and anger that carries through the asylum setting. I love the way the themes of self-actualization and sacrifice are used.
You're welcome to disregard the final scene between Baby Doll and the High Roller; I prefer what the film said without it, and as it was unrated, it wasn't part of the movie I saw first in cinemas.
OK with Sweet Pea/Rocket shipping but please don't give me a Sweet Pea/Rocket PWP - something else as well, please!
This would be a good canon for the Two for One challenge - in the Crossovering exchange, I've previously requested Sucker Punch with Bad Blood - Taylor Swift (Music Video), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Jupiter Ascending (2015), Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Labyrinth (1986), Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena - but please take those merely as a starting point, rather than a restriction. It would also be a good canon for Yulebuild and Misses Clause. This entry is also posted at https://morbane.dreamwidth.org/40711.html. There are
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