Dear Chocolatier,
Thank you for writing for me! This time around, it's monsters in love, historical costuming, shapeshifting, and magical powers that can be used for all sorts of morally ambiguous reasons. I hope you have a great Chocolate Box!
General Notes
- Not a big fan of the "rocks fall, everyone dies" ending but feel free to add non-excessive angst when needed. So if a character would logically be upset in a situation, cool. If the fic's nothing but people being sad and angsty and everything ends horribly without some bit of hope, it's not going to be something I'm really into.
- I love humor in stories, especially the darker forms of comedy, but no crack fic please.
- I don't have very strong preferences about narrative perspective or styles, except for not really liking second person POV.
- I enjoy canon, but I appreciate AUs quite a bit - all of my requests this year have room to play around in.
DNWs:
- No permanent nominated character death - characters can be near death, mistakenly thought dead, or supernatural beings brought to undead life through curses, magic, or people commiting acts of dubious science, but I want them to be consciously aware and capable of physically interacting with the world (no ghosts of nommed characters, please). Also, death of any characters not nominated is fine - that includes characters in the tagset that I didn't choose.
- No animal harm, extreme underage, bodily fluids (blood is fine). For things like Dark Shadows or The Frankenstein Chronicles, I'm fine with some gore/bloody violence since it's part and parcel of them, and for Welsh Mythology, I recognize that the Mabinogi gets pretty graphic in describing Llew's flesh rotting away from the poison, so that's fine too.
- No focus on unrequested pairings involving nominated characters. I'm fine with minor characters being paired off (including canon parents of characters) and references to past canon relationships are fine, as long as characters aren't wishing they were with someone else instead - exception made for Welsh Mythology, since I'm asking for gen and Blodeuwedd's betrayal is a major plot point.
Dark Shadows (1966)
Characters: Angelique Bouchard/Quentin Collins (Dark Shadows)
Barnabas Collins/Quentin Collins (Dark Shadows 1966)
Angelique Bouchard Collins/Quentin Collins/Barnabas Collins (Dark Shadows 1966)
I recently fell down the rabbit hole of Dark Shadows and completely fell in love with the show, and especially with Quentin. I absolutely adore him, his constant smirking, drinking, and intense staring at people, and his evolution from Turn of the Screw expy to someone so integral they gave him multiple versions just to keep him in the show. That said, I'd prefer using the original one from the 1890s that got to be werewolf Dorian Gray.
Also, I really love his relationship with both Barnabas and Angelique since time travelling supernatural murderers are great too! - I know those two orbit each other in a love/hate/vampire curse and death cycle but Quentin adds a fun bit of oh, you're useful and hot and maybe I love you or just want to kill you which is the same thing in this show. So I don't mind if you include one or both, as long as Quentin is involved in the ship.
Prompts:
So I definitely enjoyed that Quentin's attitude towards finding out Barnabas was a vampire was, well, that makes a lot of sense and I should probably kill my brother because I need Barnabas, and equally, Angelique's initial zombification of him and then temporary murder a week later is met with a "oh, you're with Barnabas? Can you help me murder my immortal sister-in-law?" So what I'm saying is that Quentin definitely has a boner for the homicidal/supernatural and I'd love to see that explored - maybe someone's blackmailing one of them and they solve it the standard way with gruesome death and flirting?
It's delightfully soapy that Angelique has been engaged to both Barnabas and Quentin at some point, and I would love for the last side to be completed - maybe Barnabas and Quentin have to be engaged (magic? curse? weird Collins tradition?) or maybe all three of them end up in some sort of polyamorous homicidal murder threesome where they're all cool with everyone having their own outside love interests, but they still keep gravitating towards each other as the years go by (feel free to canon diverge - DS never met a parallel timeline it didn't want to throw its actors at).
The Grant thing was kind of dumb, but there was so much potential over Barnabas and/or Angelique getting their hands on an amnesiac Quentin for nefarious, possibly sexy reasons. I mean, the Amanda thing was nicely tragic, but how much more fun would it have been if Barnabas was doing his Leviathan thing and "Grant" was just wandering around, unwittingly foiling his plans. Or Angelique ends up marrying him rather than Sky, and then they still end up getting involved in the eldritch shit because it's Barnabas and no one stays away from him for long.
The Frankenstein Chronicles (TV)
Characters: Daniel Hervey/John Marlott
This show got me and it got me good right at the end of the first season when John's waking up from being dead and Daniel's just gazing at him in adoration, like he doesn't care that John's been trying to foil his plans this entire season (whether he knew it or not), because this is the best thing he could have ever done in his life and oh, he's just so lovely and perfect and hey, I cured your venereal disease while I was at it too! He's just so happy about it and meanwhile John is naked and thinking “I hate my life.” It's just so beautiful.
So give me mad science and corpse detectives that can see ghosts and creepy supernatural mysteries with answers that seem to tie back to people meddling with life after and death and above all, John and Daniel and their connection as creator and creation. I really loved how John is definitely older than Daniel, and yet Daniel is the one that takes on the role of father in many respects, being the one that brought him back to life.
I haven't really mentioned Jemima - I'm definitely fine with her being in the picture, whether as a living sister or a dead memory/ghost that haunts the two of them, but I would like the focus (and any romantic interaction if you go that way) to be on the two of them.
Prompts:
John's a complete blank slate when he's brought back to life, which means he doesn't remember anything about the man who's smiling at him and holding him tight. And Daniel, for his part, decides why risk such a pristine creation by letting it ever go free?
John doesn't die to the gallows, but Daniel still gets a hold of him regardless - maybe John never investigates the murders, but does stumble into his clutches because of his disease. And Daniel isn't one to waste a good man.
I'd also love something where they've known each other for years - who knows how they met, but it means that when John realizes just what his old companion is up to, it hurts that much more. And Daniel, for his part, is deeply regretful and will definitely make it up to him. John just has to die first.
Welsh Mythology
Characters: Gwydion & Llew Llaw Gyffes (Welsh Mythology)
Whomever initially nominated this, I love you, because I had no idea how wonderful this was until I saw it in the tagset and decided to check it out. I mean, Gwydion takes Llew as his child and then proceeds to do whatever it takes to make sure that Llew gets everything he deserves - which, of course, in mythological terms, means trickery, magic, and making people out of flowers. Surely, nothing can go wrong from that.
By which I mean, everything goes wrong, but it does so in the way that I love - a parent searching for his child, trying to save him and bring him home. Sadly, the Mabinogi is a little short on the hurt/comfort details, though (at least Evangeline Walton gave me some in her adaptation) so I'd love to see something delving into that. There's a lot to be explored in between hey, Llew almost died and became an eagle until Gwydion found him to "and then he got his revenge and the throne and his wife became an owl."
Prompts:
So how do you go from being a poisoned, rotting eagle to being a perfectly healthy king who easily throws a spear and kills his usurper? Feel free to go deep into the recovery process here - how does Gwydion take care of Llew and nurse him back to health? I doubt it's as simple as waving a wand and saying, okay, you're all better now.
Or something about all is said and done and the throne has been won. I mean, Llew is never going to get married again - his mom saw to the human part through the curse and he's probably not keen on letting Gwydion have another crack at creating a magical wife again. So is there resentment there? Longing? Painful conversations with his uncle about living the rest of your life alone, knowing that every time you hear an owl, it's a reminder of all that you've lost.
I'd also be down with an AU retelling of this story - modern, sci-fi, other fantasy setting.
Wu Assassins (TV)
Characters: Uncle Six/Kai Jin (Wu Assassins)
Uncle Six & Kai Jin (Wu Assassins)Fanfiction
Honestly, if you asked me to describe this show, I think I would probably say, there's five ancient elements possessed by evil people and the main hero has to fight them, and hey, Lagertha from Vikings is a cop, but most importantly, Byron Mann is smoking hot even in terrible flashback wigs or suffering from having his Wu removed. I may have gotten into the show because of the martial arts, but I stayed and loved it because of Uncle Six's relationship with Kai.
I've included both the gen and ship versions because I'm equally fine with both. If you want to take it in a father and son track, I'm very cool with that - I love that he's so supportive of Kai, even when Kai tries to kill him, because he knows he's a good person who's destined to do great things. I'm also very cool with them developing a romantic relationship, complete with angst over he used to be a father figure (Kai) and I don't want to corrupt him (Six) and doesn't the world still need to be saved (both of them)?
Prompts:
We only see a little bit in the show, but I would love more exploring how Six raised Kai - there's clearly a lot of trust on both of their ends and I still love that Six wanted to keep Kai close, but still shied away from getting Kai's hands dirty. Maybe something where Kai's in trouble, Six saves him, and it's clear to the one enemy left alive that it was a terrible idea to fuck with Kai in the first place.
That road trip - easily my favorite episode because yeah, so much goodness there. There's plenty of missing time and scenes to take it in any direction you want to - family bonding and taking care of your sick father figure? Or sexy times in a cheap motel room where everyone comes to terms with their increasingly complicated relationship and how good the other person looks in a fight.
Canon divergence would also be welcome - Six doesn't die! Or he comes back to life! Or... look, I just want a happy ending for him and Kai and if it means having to rewrite the rules of space and time to do it, I will take it.