Dear Yuletide Santa
It's Yuletide time! Hooray!
Hello and thank you for offering one of my fandoms! I'm looking forward to whatever you write, and if you want to completely ignore the rest of this letter, or pick and choose just a few things, that's totally fine. I've tried to write a shorter letter this year. If you want more information click here for previous years' letters. Anything I've asked for before I would still love to get.
AO3 name: Brigdh
Basics
- I love all ratings, from G to NC-17. A lot of the prompts I give below are focused on ships, but feel free to write me the characters as platonic friends instead if that's what you prefer. Gen and PWPs are both awesome!
- Feel free to include injury, illness, major character death, infidelity, racism, homophobia, classism, etc, as needed for your story. Or feel free to ignore such elements of the canons below! I'm good either way.
- A lot of my requested canons are historical fiction. I DO NOT require you to have done research to write them. Trust me, I won't care if you use a modern word or describe the wrong style of clothing. I'm not an expert either.
- For each of my requests, the characters are very much OR instead of AND. Want to write a story about Rose without Hannibal, Rosalee without Cato, etc? Go ahead! You could probably guess this from the prompts I give below, but I wanted to be clear about it.
- Weird stylistic writing choices, like second person POV, a series of linked drabbles, unreliable narrators, five times fic, etc, are all totally okay. I enjoy reading experiments!
DNWs
- amnesia
- de-aging
- mpreg (I do love A/B/O fic; if you want to write that, feel free to mention mpreg in the worldbuilding. Just please don't make it the main focus of the fic)
- Groundhog Day AUs
- 24/7 lifestyle BDSM
Yes, please!
- AUs, especially: modern AU, historical AU (as in, any historical period other than the one in canon), A/B/O, pirates, Wild West, cyberpunk, postapocalypse, circuses, canon-divergence
- found families, families of choice, and loyalty kink. I especially love it when there are reasons why it's difficult or unusual for the characters to have a relationship, but they defy expectations by being devoted to one another anyway.
- I LOVE one character risking their life/sacrificing themselves to protect another. "I thought you were dead!" is also an excellent trope
- casefic would be great, especially if you could combine it with slowburn get-together of one of my ships. I realize that’s a lot to ask of a writer. But just in case you want to write long casefic: I would love to receive it!
- hurt/comfort of all kinds, especially if the comfort leads to a deepening relationship. People getting ill, people getting beat up, people choosing to be tortured to protect someone else, people hiding injuries while trying to soldier on, people enduring long-term poor conditions (especially cold! I HATE being cold, and so I deeply identify with a character barely avoiding hypothermia), last minute rescues, confessions of feelings due to thinking you're about to die, caretaking, giving the hurt character a bath (especially hair washing!), and characters learning to be loved.
- iron woobies, always and forever
- established relationships are my jam. Show me how comfortable people have gotten with each other, how they know one another well enough to know all of their jokes and triggers and erogenous zones. And established doesn't have to mean problem-free! There's all sorts of troubles that tend to come up in relationships long after the first time. For example, I'd love a story about a fight and working through it.
- arranged marriages/marriages of convenience and fake dating are some of my favorite stories. I love all of it: the awkwardness, the enforced intimacy, the pining over 'my feelings are real but yours are pretend', the trust despite the difficulty, the teaming up to put on a good show for outside observers.
- slice-of-life, domesticity, missing scenes, and curtain-fic are all wonderful. I am totally fine with a very low-stakes story, as long as I get to see my favorite characters going about a normal day, enjoying themselves with one another, making jokes, etc.
- I adore all sorts of silly fanfic tropes, but here are some of my favorites: Genderswap (particularly of the "always-a-girl/boy" type rather than "woke up one morning" type), crossdressing, roadtrips, huddling for warmth, masquerades/disguises/undercover, trapped together (snowed in cabin, handcuffs, etc), friends-to-lovers and especially FWB to more, sex pollen, and platonic bed sharing.
Porn: I love everything from PWP to fade-to-black to gen. If you want specifics, here's a link to my Yuleporn post.
Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly - Benjamin, Rose, Hannibal
My ships: Ben/Rose/Hannibal (either as a true triangle or as a V), Ben/Hannibal, Ben/Rose, Rose/Hannibal, Hannibal/Dominique
My request: Some of my favorite things about this series are the amazing historical detail and world-building, the treatment of complex real-world issues, and the kindness and respect and love of the characters for one another, as well as their humor and total dorkiness. I love how huge the world is; you could write a story about any background character and I would be fascinated by it. With Rose, I love her determination and stubbornness to have the life she wants, and how she's capable of being utterly ruthless when the situation calls for it. I also love her awkward, logical kindness. She tends to prefer books to people, and I am SO THERE with her. I love how cool and unemotional she is in a crisis, and her wry sense of humor at others' more dramatic emotions.
With Hannibal, I love that he is SUCH a fucking failbucket, and yet utterly aware of it, and how he's so grateful to those who are friends with him anyway. I really like the times when he manages to subtly undercut the privileges of his position compared to the others. I love how he makes friends with absolutely everyone he meets, and I love the slow growth over the series of his natural empathy, from a passive, fatalistic sympathy to actively going out of his way to do what he can for others.
With Ben, I love how he is justly angry about the world he lives in, and yet how he manages to take that anger and turn it into working to make change happen. He has intense abandonment issues, and I love how important friends and family are to him, and how he is constantly striving to build a community around himself. I love his sense of pride, the way his desire to be seen as proper and respectable conflicts with his frequent attraction to people who are outcasts in one way or another. I love how good he is at code-switching and making people see what they want to see; he is a good man, but godDAMN he is sneaky when he needs to be.
Optional Prompts:
- I would love a first-time, getting together fic for my OT3 set immediately after Crimson Angel. It’s such a dramatic book, with a ton of lovely tender moments between all three of them and so many fun tropes (Rose pretending to be Hannibal’s concubine! Ben thinking Hannibal was dead! Dramatic rescues! Bullet wounds!) and I really would love to indulge in even more of it. I’d also love for you to explore how the three of them make it back to New Orleans. Is it easy? Tough? Does one or more of them have to get a job in Jamaica to raise the fare? Do they hang out with pirates?
- I love canon-divergence AUs. One idea I was considering: if Ben had stayed in Paris (whether Ayasha was alive or not), how would Hannibal and Rose have handled the events of Fever Season? Perhaps, after Rose is forced to leave New Orleans, they flee to Paris together and meet Ben there? That would be so cool! Another suggestion: what if Rose hadn’t been pregnant at the time of The Shirt on His Back? Would she have traveled with the others to Oregon? Or would Hannibal have stayed in New Orleans with her, leaving Ben and Shaw on their own? I would LOVE to see crossdressed Rose exploring the Wild West, but Rose and Hannibal forced to deal with his withdrawal on their own and despite societal disapproval would be excellent too.
- EPISTOLARY FIC PLZ. I always love it when Hambly includes notes written by the characters in the books; I’m so fascinated even by little details like how they address one another (‘amicus meus’ is so cute it kills me) or how they manage to include secret messages that outside observers wouldn’t understand (whether that’s slipping into Latin or Greek, or codewords, or Shakespeare quotations). They do send a lot of letters and short notes in the books, and I’d love to see more of them: Hannibal’s letters from Mexico, Ben’s letters from Oregon or Washington DC, short notes during a normal day around the city, whatever.
- Loyalty kink: there’s a lot of moments in the books where one character has to simply trust that another won’t betray them, because they’re unable to talk directly due to outsiders listening in or them being separated. There are so many societal factors holding these characters apart, and I love how they work around them (usually subtly and sneakily, but sometimes very blatantly!) to maintain their trust and friendship. This is my JAM. Especially if one character goes through a period of angst, believing they might have been betrayed or abandoned, before the other(s) proves their loyalty by coming through with a happy ending. Examples from canon: when Ben is afraid Hannibal has abandoned him in Sold Down the River, before finding out that Hannibal was really kidnapped; in Dead Water, when Ben and Hannibal are unable to speak directly to one another to maintain their cover story, and are confronted by Molloy and Davis unexpectedly. The way they manage to back up each other despite having no plan is delicious. I just want to wallow in a ton of angst and loyalty and trust.
- I realize she’s not nominated, but I would also LOVE to get fic from Livia’s POV. Either backstory (a story about her as a child, as a young woman, from when her children were young, etc) or her view on a scene from canon. Or what does she think about Rose, about Hannibal, about the OT3?
Hadestown - Mitchell - Hades, Persephone
My ships: Hades/Persephone, Persephone/Eurydice, Persephone/Orpheus. Orpheus/Eurydice is great, but I’d prefer that as a background ship and not the main focus of the story
My request: I am familiar with both the album and the theater production (specifically, the NYC production from earlier this year). I prefer the show, but I realize that a lot less people had access to that, so if your writing is based on the album, that is totally okay.
I love the setting, the 1920-30s sound of the music and look of the costumes, Hades as a factory town, Orpheus as a penniless poet, Persephone as a drunk flapper. Worldbuilding that elaborates or expands on any of this would be awesome.
I love Greek myth, and if you want to bring in some other god or myth, that would be great. What does Athena look like in this world? Dionysus, Aphrodite, the Trojan Horse - go crazy!
Optional Prompts:
- I am absolutely fascinated by Persephone and her role as Queen of the Underground. I’d love a fic that explores that. The way she pushes alcohol on the souls makes me think of the river Lethe and its ability to grant forgetfulness. After all, what stops you from escaping more than a little temporary relief? Is she as sympathetic to Orpheus as she seems, or does she know all along that he’s going to look back? How complicit is she in the mortals’ fates?
- Persephone/Hades origin story would be AMAZING. Either stick to just their first time, or show me how it all fell apart and they got to the hate-fucking place they are currently.
- Some of the way Persephone and Hades work out their own issues through Orpheus and Hades strikes me as the gods fighting a cold war, using the poor mortals as proxy combatants. Is that the case? If so, have they done this same thing more than once? There’s a theme in the show about cycles happening over and over again, and while the mortals only experience it once, the gods must witness it over and over again. What do they think about that?
- Persephone/Eurydice or Persephone/Orpheus! I don’t even know how this would work or when it would fit into the storyline, but I’d love to see Persephone bang one of the mortals.
- I’d love a Hades POV story about what he sees in Persephone. How does he feel about her treating him as a jailer? Does he relish or dread dragging her back down the the Underworld every year? How have they both changed since they first met?
Underground (TV) - Cato, Noah, Rosalee
My ships: Cato/Noah/Rosalee (either as a true triangle or as a V), Cato/Noah, Cato/Rosalee, Noah/Rosalee, Rosalee/Elizabeth
My request: This is my favorite television discovery of the year! I love the heist take on the material, I love the big action sequences, the huge twists in practically every episode, the gray morality and that there are no clear lines between "good" characters and "bad" characters.
In terms of the characters, I love Rosalee’s slow growth of confidence in herself, as she goes from shy and sheltered to independant and completely kickass. I love how loyal she is, the way she’s willing to sacrifice herself to protect others.
Cato is probably my favorite character (though I love the others as well!). He’s completely self-serving, manipulative, cunning, and I love that about him. I love his dry sarcasm and the way he’s constantly pushing at Noah and testing him. I love how he refuses to trust anyone else, and the way we learn he’s been hiding a deep loss all along. I love how he looks down on Rosalee until she shocks him with her skills. More of that, please!
Noah is brave and smart and loving and just a true hero in every sense. I love how determined he is to be free, and how he manages to learn or plan for or work past every single obstacle that the world throws at him. I love his friendship/brotherhood with Henry.
Optional Prompts:
- I would love a fic about the three of them finding their way back to one another after the season finale. I realize that this would probably require longfic, and while that would be AWESOME I do not require it. Feel free to use a timeskip or a series of short scenes or anything that works!
- Backstory about any of them would be great, but I’m especially interested in Cato, since we know so little of his past. What was his relationship like with Noah before Episode One? Had he ever interacted with Rosalee before (it seems likely, since they both have relatively elevated positions)? What about his family or childhood?
- The episode where Cato and Rosalee dressed up and pretended to be rich was THE BEST THING EVER. I would love a missing scene set during that time, or an AU where they had to stretch the deception out longer. What if they’d had to spend the night together? Just tell me more about their awkward intimacy! :D
- An AU with them in some more happy life would be excellent. I’d love to see them running a heist in the modern day! Or they could still be traveling from Georgia to Canada, but this time they’re driving a car and complaining about bad fast food.
- On a different note, Rosalee/Elizabeth fic would also make my day. Either set during the finale, or in the future, or in some AU, I don’t care; I just ship it and would love to see them together. Feel free to completely ignore Elizabeth’s husband.
The Ballad of Black Tom - Victor LaValle - Charles Thomas Tester
My ships: nothing really, though if you have an idea for a ship, I’d love to see it!
My request: I love how this novella stays true to so many elements of Lovecraft, while flipping other aspects completely on their head. I love how “Black Tom” is given a voice, agency, and a central role in the narrative. I love 1920s New York City as a setting in general, especially with the addition of Great Old Ones and witches and demons. The tragedy of the middle part of the story was so well-done, and such a shock to me - despite being far too common.
I love Tom himself, and would happily read an entire series of books about him. He's such an engaging character: funny, cunning, and brave, dealing adeptly with monsters and magic despite being an utterly normal human himself. His relationship with his father is sweet, relatable, and heartbreaking.
Optional prompts:
- I loved the Tom we got to see in the early parts of the book: confident, charming, utterly in his element. I would ADORE a story focused on him pre-book dealing with a normal element of his job: confronting a ghost, finding mysterious artifacts, exorcising a demon, anything like that! A crossover with another Lovecraft story would be cool, as would bringing in something from another canon (urban legends - does Tom meet Bigfoot? Creepypastas - Tom faces off against Slenderman? Tom meets some famous historical figure of 1920s NYC who turns out to have a horrifying backstory?), or you can make up something entirely original. I’m also happy for this story to have any sort of tone: light-hearted and funny, scary, tragic, etc. Whatever works for you is good by me.
- What does Tom do after the end of the book? He seems to be all revenged-out, at least for the moment, but now he has these new powers - where does he go? What does he do?
- Backstory about Tom’s childhood and his father would be great. His father seems to have some sort of power of his own (the song he teaches Tom) - where did that come from? Why did he never teach it to Tom before this? What else does he know that he never had time to teach Tom?
- Cthulhu POV! What does the Great Old One think of this human he’s made a deal with? Tom doesn’t seem the type to actually worship Cthulhu, so what sort of relationship do they have? And does this change over time, as decades pass?
- Horror-fic with post-book Tom as a dark, menacing figure - perhaps hunting down wrongdoers? Perhaps obligated by whatever deal he made to kill innocents? - could be lots of creepy fun. Maybe urban legends grow up around him, and he survives as a story told by New Yorkers. How does his legend develop and change over the years? Something meta (like “the 70s grindhouse horror film based on the story of Black Tom!” or “internet websites researching Black Tom sightings!”) could be awesome.
This entry was originally posted at http://brigdh.dreamwidth.org/27229.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Hello and thank you for offering one of my fandoms! I'm looking forward to whatever you write, and if you want to completely ignore the rest of this letter, or pick and choose just a few things, that's totally fine. I've tried to write a shorter letter this year. If you want more information click here for previous years' letters. Anything I've asked for before I would still love to get.
AO3 name: Brigdh
Basics
- I love all ratings, from G to NC-17. A lot of the prompts I give below are focused on ships, but feel free to write me the characters as platonic friends instead if that's what you prefer. Gen and PWPs are both awesome!
- Feel free to include injury, illness, major character death, infidelity, racism, homophobia, classism, etc, as needed for your story. Or feel free to ignore such elements of the canons below! I'm good either way.
- A lot of my requested canons are historical fiction. I DO NOT require you to have done research to write them. Trust me, I won't care if you use a modern word or describe the wrong style of clothing. I'm not an expert either.
- For each of my requests, the characters are very much OR instead of AND. Want to write a story about Rose without Hannibal, Rosalee without Cato, etc? Go ahead! You could probably guess this from the prompts I give below, but I wanted to be clear about it.
- Weird stylistic writing choices, like second person POV, a series of linked drabbles, unreliable narrators, five times fic, etc, are all totally okay. I enjoy reading experiments!
DNWs
- amnesia
- de-aging
- mpreg (I do love A/B/O fic; if you want to write that, feel free to mention mpreg in the worldbuilding. Just please don't make it the main focus of the fic)
- Groundhog Day AUs
- 24/7 lifestyle BDSM
Yes, please!
- AUs, especially: modern AU, historical AU (as in, any historical period other than the one in canon), A/B/O, pirates, Wild West, cyberpunk, postapocalypse, circuses, canon-divergence
- found families, families of choice, and loyalty kink. I especially love it when there are reasons why it's difficult or unusual for the characters to have a relationship, but they defy expectations by being devoted to one another anyway.
- I LOVE one character risking their life/sacrificing themselves to protect another. "I thought you were dead!" is also an excellent trope
- casefic would be great, especially if you could combine it with slowburn get-together of one of my ships. I realize that’s a lot to ask of a writer. But just in case you want to write long casefic: I would love to receive it!
- hurt/comfort of all kinds, especially if the comfort leads to a deepening relationship. People getting ill, people getting beat up, people choosing to be tortured to protect someone else, people hiding injuries while trying to soldier on, people enduring long-term poor conditions (especially cold! I HATE being cold, and so I deeply identify with a character barely avoiding hypothermia), last minute rescues, confessions of feelings due to thinking you're about to die, caretaking, giving the hurt character a bath (especially hair washing!), and characters learning to be loved.
- iron woobies, always and forever
- established relationships are my jam. Show me how comfortable people have gotten with each other, how they know one another well enough to know all of their jokes and triggers and erogenous zones. And established doesn't have to mean problem-free! There's all sorts of troubles that tend to come up in relationships long after the first time. For example, I'd love a story about a fight and working through it.
- arranged marriages/marriages of convenience and fake dating are some of my favorite stories. I love all of it: the awkwardness, the enforced intimacy, the pining over 'my feelings are real but yours are pretend', the trust despite the difficulty, the teaming up to put on a good show for outside observers.
- slice-of-life, domesticity, missing scenes, and curtain-fic are all wonderful. I am totally fine with a very low-stakes story, as long as I get to see my favorite characters going about a normal day, enjoying themselves with one another, making jokes, etc.
- I adore all sorts of silly fanfic tropes, but here are some of my favorites: Genderswap (particularly of the "always-a-girl/boy" type rather than "woke up one morning" type), crossdressing, roadtrips, huddling for warmth, masquerades/disguises/undercover, trapped together (snowed in cabin, handcuffs, etc), friends-to-lovers and especially FWB to more, sex pollen, and platonic bed sharing.
Porn: I love everything from PWP to fade-to-black to gen. If you want specifics, here's a link to my Yuleporn post.
Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly - Benjamin, Rose, Hannibal
My ships: Ben/Rose/Hannibal (either as a true triangle or as a V), Ben/Hannibal, Ben/Rose, Rose/Hannibal, Hannibal/Dominique
My request: Some of my favorite things about this series are the amazing historical detail and world-building, the treatment of complex real-world issues, and the kindness and respect and love of the characters for one another, as well as their humor and total dorkiness. I love how huge the world is; you could write a story about any background character and I would be fascinated by it. With Rose, I love her determination and stubbornness to have the life she wants, and how she's capable of being utterly ruthless when the situation calls for it. I also love her awkward, logical kindness. She tends to prefer books to people, and I am SO THERE with her. I love how cool and unemotional she is in a crisis, and her wry sense of humor at others' more dramatic emotions.
With Hannibal, I love that he is SUCH a fucking failbucket, and yet utterly aware of it, and how he's so grateful to those who are friends with him anyway. I really like the times when he manages to subtly undercut the privileges of his position compared to the others. I love how he makes friends with absolutely everyone he meets, and I love the slow growth over the series of his natural empathy, from a passive, fatalistic sympathy to actively going out of his way to do what he can for others.
With Ben, I love how he is justly angry about the world he lives in, and yet how he manages to take that anger and turn it into working to make change happen. He has intense abandonment issues, and I love how important friends and family are to him, and how he is constantly striving to build a community around himself. I love his sense of pride, the way his desire to be seen as proper and respectable conflicts with his frequent attraction to people who are outcasts in one way or another. I love how good he is at code-switching and making people see what they want to see; he is a good man, but godDAMN he is sneaky when he needs to be.
Optional Prompts:
- I would love a first-time, getting together fic for my OT3 set immediately after Crimson Angel. It’s such a dramatic book, with a ton of lovely tender moments between all three of them and so many fun tropes (Rose pretending to be Hannibal’s concubine! Ben thinking Hannibal was dead! Dramatic rescues! Bullet wounds!) and I really would love to indulge in even more of it. I’d also love for you to explore how the three of them make it back to New Orleans. Is it easy? Tough? Does one or more of them have to get a job in Jamaica to raise the fare? Do they hang out with pirates?
- I love canon-divergence AUs. One idea I was considering: if Ben had stayed in Paris (whether Ayasha was alive or not), how would Hannibal and Rose have handled the events of Fever Season? Perhaps, after Rose is forced to leave New Orleans, they flee to Paris together and meet Ben there? That would be so cool! Another suggestion: what if Rose hadn’t been pregnant at the time of The Shirt on His Back? Would she have traveled with the others to Oregon? Or would Hannibal have stayed in New Orleans with her, leaving Ben and Shaw on their own? I would LOVE to see crossdressed Rose exploring the Wild West, but Rose and Hannibal forced to deal with his withdrawal on their own and despite societal disapproval would be excellent too.
- EPISTOLARY FIC PLZ. I always love it when Hambly includes notes written by the characters in the books; I’m so fascinated even by little details like how they address one another (‘amicus meus’ is so cute it kills me) or how they manage to include secret messages that outside observers wouldn’t understand (whether that’s slipping into Latin or Greek, or codewords, or Shakespeare quotations). They do send a lot of letters and short notes in the books, and I’d love to see more of them: Hannibal’s letters from Mexico, Ben’s letters from Oregon or Washington DC, short notes during a normal day around the city, whatever.
- Loyalty kink: there’s a lot of moments in the books where one character has to simply trust that another won’t betray them, because they’re unable to talk directly due to outsiders listening in or them being separated. There are so many societal factors holding these characters apart, and I love how they work around them (usually subtly and sneakily, but sometimes very blatantly!) to maintain their trust and friendship. This is my JAM. Especially if one character goes through a period of angst, believing they might have been betrayed or abandoned, before the other(s) proves their loyalty by coming through with a happy ending. Examples from canon: when Ben is afraid Hannibal has abandoned him in Sold Down the River, before finding out that Hannibal was really kidnapped; in Dead Water, when Ben and Hannibal are unable to speak directly to one another to maintain their cover story, and are confronted by Molloy and Davis unexpectedly. The way they manage to back up each other despite having no plan is delicious. I just want to wallow in a ton of angst and loyalty and trust.
- I realize she’s not nominated, but I would also LOVE to get fic from Livia’s POV. Either backstory (a story about her as a child, as a young woman, from when her children were young, etc) or her view on a scene from canon. Or what does she think about Rose, about Hannibal, about the OT3?
Hadestown - Mitchell - Hades, Persephone
My ships: Hades/Persephone, Persephone/Eurydice, Persephone/Orpheus. Orpheus/Eurydice is great, but I’d prefer that as a background ship and not the main focus of the story
My request: I am familiar with both the album and the theater production (specifically, the NYC production from earlier this year). I prefer the show, but I realize that a lot less people had access to that, so if your writing is based on the album, that is totally okay.
I love the setting, the 1920-30s sound of the music and look of the costumes, Hades as a factory town, Orpheus as a penniless poet, Persephone as a drunk flapper. Worldbuilding that elaborates or expands on any of this would be awesome.
I love Greek myth, and if you want to bring in some other god or myth, that would be great. What does Athena look like in this world? Dionysus, Aphrodite, the Trojan Horse - go crazy!
Optional Prompts:
- I am absolutely fascinated by Persephone and her role as Queen of the Underground. I’d love a fic that explores that. The way she pushes alcohol on the souls makes me think of the river Lethe and its ability to grant forgetfulness. After all, what stops you from escaping more than a little temporary relief? Is she as sympathetic to Orpheus as she seems, or does she know all along that he’s going to look back? How complicit is she in the mortals’ fates?
- Persephone/Hades origin story would be AMAZING. Either stick to just their first time, or show me how it all fell apart and they got to the hate-fucking place they are currently.
- Some of the way Persephone and Hades work out their own issues through Orpheus and Hades strikes me as the gods fighting a cold war, using the poor mortals as proxy combatants. Is that the case? If so, have they done this same thing more than once? There’s a theme in the show about cycles happening over and over again, and while the mortals only experience it once, the gods must witness it over and over again. What do they think about that?
- Persephone/Eurydice or Persephone/Orpheus! I don’t even know how this would work or when it would fit into the storyline, but I’d love to see Persephone bang one of the mortals.
- I’d love a Hades POV story about what he sees in Persephone. How does he feel about her treating him as a jailer? Does he relish or dread dragging her back down the the Underworld every year? How have they both changed since they first met?
Underground (TV) - Cato, Noah, Rosalee
My ships: Cato/Noah/Rosalee (either as a true triangle or as a V), Cato/Noah, Cato/Rosalee, Noah/Rosalee, Rosalee/Elizabeth
My request: This is my favorite television discovery of the year! I love the heist take on the material, I love the big action sequences, the huge twists in practically every episode, the gray morality and that there are no clear lines between "good" characters and "bad" characters.
In terms of the characters, I love Rosalee’s slow growth of confidence in herself, as she goes from shy and sheltered to independant and completely kickass. I love how loyal she is, the way she’s willing to sacrifice herself to protect others.
Cato is probably my favorite character (though I love the others as well!). He’s completely self-serving, manipulative, cunning, and I love that about him. I love his dry sarcasm and the way he’s constantly pushing at Noah and testing him. I love how he refuses to trust anyone else, and the way we learn he’s been hiding a deep loss all along. I love how he looks down on Rosalee until she shocks him with her skills. More of that, please!
Noah is brave and smart and loving and just a true hero in every sense. I love how determined he is to be free, and how he manages to learn or plan for or work past every single obstacle that the world throws at him. I love his friendship/brotherhood with Henry.
Optional Prompts:
- I would love a fic about the three of them finding their way back to one another after the season finale. I realize that this would probably require longfic, and while that would be AWESOME I do not require it. Feel free to use a timeskip or a series of short scenes or anything that works!
- Backstory about any of them would be great, but I’m especially interested in Cato, since we know so little of his past. What was his relationship like with Noah before Episode One? Had he ever interacted with Rosalee before (it seems likely, since they both have relatively elevated positions)? What about his family or childhood?
- The episode where Cato and Rosalee dressed up and pretended to be rich was THE BEST THING EVER. I would love a missing scene set during that time, or an AU where they had to stretch the deception out longer. What if they’d had to spend the night together? Just tell me more about their awkward intimacy! :D
- An AU with them in some more happy life would be excellent. I’d love to see them running a heist in the modern day! Or they could still be traveling from Georgia to Canada, but this time they’re driving a car and complaining about bad fast food.
- On a different note, Rosalee/Elizabeth fic would also make my day. Either set during the finale, or in the future, or in some AU, I don’t care; I just ship it and would love to see them together. Feel free to completely ignore Elizabeth’s husband.
The Ballad of Black Tom - Victor LaValle - Charles Thomas Tester
My ships: nothing really, though if you have an idea for a ship, I’d love to see it!
My request: I love how this novella stays true to so many elements of Lovecraft, while flipping other aspects completely on their head. I love how “Black Tom” is given a voice, agency, and a central role in the narrative. I love 1920s New York City as a setting in general, especially with the addition of Great Old Ones and witches and demons. The tragedy of the middle part of the story was so well-done, and such a shock to me - despite being far too common.
I love Tom himself, and would happily read an entire series of books about him. He's such an engaging character: funny, cunning, and brave, dealing adeptly with monsters and magic despite being an utterly normal human himself. His relationship with his father is sweet, relatable, and heartbreaking.
Optional prompts:
- I loved the Tom we got to see in the early parts of the book: confident, charming, utterly in his element. I would ADORE a story focused on him pre-book dealing with a normal element of his job: confronting a ghost, finding mysterious artifacts, exorcising a demon, anything like that! A crossover with another Lovecraft story would be cool, as would bringing in something from another canon (urban legends - does Tom meet Bigfoot? Creepypastas - Tom faces off against Slenderman? Tom meets some famous historical figure of 1920s NYC who turns out to have a horrifying backstory?), or you can make up something entirely original. I’m also happy for this story to have any sort of tone: light-hearted and funny, scary, tragic, etc. Whatever works for you is good by me.
- What does Tom do after the end of the book? He seems to be all revenged-out, at least for the moment, but now he has these new powers - where does he go? What does he do?
- Backstory about Tom’s childhood and his father would be great. His father seems to have some sort of power of his own (the song he teaches Tom) - where did that come from? Why did he never teach it to Tom before this? What else does he know that he never had time to teach Tom?
- Cthulhu POV! What does the Great Old One think of this human he’s made a deal with? Tom doesn’t seem the type to actually worship Cthulhu, so what sort of relationship do they have? And does this change over time, as decades pass?
- Horror-fic with post-book Tom as a dark, menacing figure - perhaps hunting down wrongdoers? Perhaps obligated by whatever deal he made to kill innocents? - could be lots of creepy fun. Maybe urban legends grow up around him, and he survives as a story told by New Yorkers. How does his legend develop and change over the years? Something meta (like “the 70s grindhouse horror film based on the story of Black Tom!” or “internet websites researching Black Tom sightings!”) could be awesome.
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