YULETIDE AAAAAAAA
HI. Aren't you the most amazing thing, I could just lie in wait with a dozen baited traps allllllllll season! *skulks* Now, please keep in mind that all of the mutterings below are just options and prompts and me amusing myself overmuch to help you along if you feel stuck for ideas. The only kind of story I really want is one that you enjoyed planning and writing. So! Reference all this for guidance or disregard it completely, it's all good. *kitty fais*
Starting off with an overview: I don't have any notable squicks! Gen, het and slash are all equally welcome! I love the worlds as much as I love the characters! And my single-character request isn't intended to restrict your options; that'd just be the one person I definitely hope to see making an appearance. Please don't force yourself to write 1000+ words about Lily in a glass box of her own thoughts when all you really want to do is pair her up with Jack or Darkness or Oona or Blix. Waitaminutewhat. Having said that, if a focused character study is in the cards, go for it! No matter what the outcome, I have a feeling that you will find some way to delight me. And so, onwaaaard to my redonkulous, self-indulgent requests.
Legend (1985)
Princess Lily
She has the aspect of one who moves easily between extremes. A selfish, petulant girl; a brave, haunted young woman. A princess singing to the sunspun forest; the queen of darkness eating rat skins from her lover's fingertips. Whether she chooses Darkness or Jack, I'd like to see her understand and deal with the idea that every day is another little battle with herself. On some level, the princess must know that she could still turn out to be a night-blooming flower. And even a dark queen might still secretly covet the colours of dawn.
Something I didn't realize until this year: one of my very favourite things about this movie is the presence of those unexpected but somehow-totally-appropriate disembodied ~sounds~ woven in with the music and narrative. Dolphin calls for the arrival of unicorns, a chanting chorus in the hellfire kitchen. It sets the atmosphere with such weird perfection, so sound might be a fun sense detail to explore.
Also. Watching this as a kid, Lily made me so mad. I mean, she was pretty and I loved her voice and thought it made perfect sense that she would want to spend her time in the forest rather than a dark, drafty castle. But when she insisted on touching the unicorn, when she tossed that ring over the cliff; SO MAD. And somehow, that made her even more fascinating. She was being stuck up, taking her royal privileges for granted in a context that didn't support them. She was arrogant and selfish, really, but she tried to make up for it later; and there was that moment in which the unicorn could easily have speared her and instead walked up to get a better look at her. I don't know, she just seems like a character who likes the idea of being seduced by a powerful force (by good, or evil, or love itself), so much that she can't immediately see that she's being greedy, or misled.
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Hellboy (movie)
Nuada
There have been many warrior princes in the past. Though Nuada remembers their names, he doesn't exalt them, doesn't want to be exalted with them. He makes his acts of war outside the battlefield. He makes himself a destroyer rather than a tragic hero, knowing that the kingdom of his ancestors has no place for such a creature. As for context: the years of his exile, maybe; or the life he had before, the fairytale he could never really seem to inhabit. Nuada/Nuala is welcome, but not required.
To me, Nuada is autumn. Maybe he wants to be winter, a stillness that locks the world in one state forever, but there's an odd sort of faltering warmth in him. His reaction to Wink's death comes to mind, of course, but his whole mission implies a skewed, sincere desire to nurture something sickly back to health. He seems to genuinely believe that he is saving the world, and while I'm sure he's planning to rule it himself in the end, he knows that he'll be ruling it as a tyrant. He killed his own kin and spent the life of a forest god in anger, just to test the strength of his enemies; he doesn't plan to be remembered as a hero.
I'm of half a mind to say that he is, in fact, hoping to fashion himself as a villain so that a truly typical hero can emerge, defeat him, rule the kingdom, golden age of the elves, prosperity and peace, happily ever after, etc. But Nuala complicates things. I can picture Nuada sacrificing anything for his cause - friends, allies, all the creatures he ostensibly intends to protect, even his father - but not her. Personally, I think the whole vengeance-upon-humanity and restoration-of-the-forest-empire thing was actually her idea, and he read the impulse and acted on it and considers her the founder of the entire crusade, and she's been watching him all this time, curious to see how far she would really be willing to go before realizing that everything has in fact gone much too far. But, uh. That is a thought that generally stays in-head where it belongs, because I can't even begin to sort out what I'm talking about right now.
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Legacy of Kain series
Kain
Kain is powerful and elegant and cruel. He needs few things and wants many. Maybe once he only wanted companions, people to indulge his vanities and distract him from the broken world whispering threats against his shoulder; but, even for him, forever is a frightening thing to face alone. Raziel as a touchstone and then a conspicuous absence, or Umah's hidden lessons on fear, admiration and the dangers of trusting a beautiful person.
Kain's such a spoiled brat. He does the lone wolf thing a lot, and loves no one more than himself, but whether he knows it or not he really does need sycophants. How else could he affirm his power for hundreds of years, or pretend to be blameless? In a council of creatures loyal to his aims, his strengths are revered and his weaknesses are always someone else's fault. Which, hey, probably sounded like a great idea for quite a while, but immortality means living with yourself and all you've done forever. It means not always remembering why you are exactly who you are, why you did what you did; it must mean wondering where you'll go when the world finally crawls off to die, and ultimately hoping on some level that - wherever you end up - you won't have to be alone.
I'm (still) (comfortably) undecided about his relationship with Raziel. They were, and are, drawn to each other repeatedly, often without understanding how or why. One always has something that the other needs, and it's both a lure and a danger. Slashy undertones abound, of course; I actually favour the idea that they surface exclusively when Raziel re-emerges as a wraith. He's just. So spectacularly gross. And we're talking about rotten, undead folks here, so wow.
I mention Umah in case you've played the Blood Omen arc and are more interested in working with that narrative. That, too, would be awesome. I love her, and I love Kain's almost-unwilling fascination with her, and I think she reeeeally enjoyed exercising a little superiority over him but never quite decided why. I seem to remember that she dropped the token line, "I wish it could have been otherwise between us," or whatever; well, so do I, sob.
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Heavenly Sword
Kai
Kai is much more insightful than people realize. She wanders and watches and sometimes she dreams. If she ever asked Nariko why the two of them can't run away to the mountains and live like wolves, maybe she'd just be doing it to find out if there are any wolves living in the mountains at all. Strange wisdom from a strange girl; or Kai as an adult, living her life while looking back on Nariko, Shen and even Flying Fox with fascination.
All of these people are insane. This is a game full of insane people, and how I love them all, but Kai's the best. She strikes me as being a prodigy, a lively mind. She could do anything if she'd been nurtured properly. Instead, her mother was killed in front of her and she was taken in by people fragmented by intangibles and prophecies, which is. So great for kids. It's no surprise that she takes refuge in a kind of amplified childishness. The fact that she remains capable and social and good-natured is unusual, but that's her appeal. She has every reason in the world to withdraw, and she chooses to explore, to head out and do things in her own way. To, uh, eat bugs and squirrels and things.
Her attachment to Nariko is pretty obvious and I think it's a great defining point for the both of them. There's the sisterly bond that neither would have been able to experience otherwise, and there's the clear opportunity for Nariko to act as a guardian and Kai to be nurtured again. But nariko lost her mother too, and I think it's often Kai who takes on the maternal role. She's mature for her age; she's aware of the way that Nariko is subtly shunned and she tries to provide another little social space for her to inhabit. What am I even talking about, I THINK THEY HANG OUT A LOT, that's what I'm getting at. I've got to say, too: I'm really curious to know how she deals with ideas like anger and defiance after being reminded of them so vividly. I mean, Flying Fox kept some of her mother's bones. And he tried to kill her! At least twice! And then he tried to kill Nariko! Kai seems like a pretty tolerant kid, but sometimes you've really got to unleash the beast.
Also, she's really cute with that hat and the face paint and her crossbow strapped to her back while she jumps around and knocks armoured men on their asses. Eeee.
WHY IS THIS SO ENORMOUSLY LONG I AM SORRY. That. Is enough out of me. Thank you pre-emptively! And enjoy the minty-keen Yuletide experience!