Crueltide

[for_sorrow]

Not every story is pleasant. Not every story has a happy ending. And sometimes, those are the kinds of stories that we really, really want to read.

If you're one of the many people interested in either writing or receiving darkfic for Yuletide, then Crueltide is here to devour your soul for you!

Why Crueltide?Because darkfic isn't to everyone's

Comments

[swan_tower]

(I've already edited this comment once as other people's notes give me new ideas. It will probably happen again!)

AO3: russian_blue
Letter: on LJ
Fandoms: Gabriel Knight, Elfquest, Songs for a New World, Sengoku Avengers, Jidaigeki X-Men

Wanted tropes:

Gabriel Knight -- any canon-appropriate darkness is fine here. Since canon includes murder, werewolves, vampires, human sacrifice, cannibalism, and the main character repeatedly dreaming of himself being hanged from a tree, it's a reasonably open field. :-) I'd prefer not to get unrelenting darkness, though, since part of the appeal of the games is that there's humour alongside the darker stuff.

Elfquest -- one of the brilliant things about this comic book is that it manages to deal so well with unpleasant stuff. The gift I received a few years ago is spot-on for an example of "just dark enough for me" in this fandom.

Songs for a New World -- the self-proclaimed "King of the World" is in prison. He claims he doesn't know what he did wrong. He is almost certainly either lying or deluding himself. I have no idea what happened, but it's probably pretty awful.

Sengoku Avengers/Jidaigeki X-Men -- historical time periods were often not warm fuzzy nice nice. (Not that life today is either, but we've dialed waaaaaay back on the interpersonal violence and such, compared to premodern times.) Any violence and such suitable to the era and/or to a relatively serious superhero tale is fine by me -- some of the character backgrounds already include things like "and then she committed suicide and came back as a ghost." I especially like the way superpowered people can often take a beating that would kill a normal person, because they're resilient enough or heal fast enough to survive it.

Tropes I enjoy in general: Addiction (more the narrative type than realistic "you need a twelve-step program" type), Apocalypse, Betrayal, Brainwashing, Conspiracy, Hauntings, Hypothermia, Mind Control, Monsters, Murder, Poisoning, PTSD (ditto Addiction notes), Violence. And now I feel like a terrible person for putting together that list. Also whump and hurt/comfort.

Unwanted tropes: Body Horror, Cannibalism (most of time -- I give GK a pass on the "werewolves eating people" thing), Child Abuse (physical or sexual), Degradation, Humiliation, Medical Experimentation, Mutilation (Saw-style; people being wounded and scarred in combat etc is fine), Non-Con, Torture (to the point of asking me to revel in the abject victimization of the target), Unhappy Endings. Character death is okay as a general thing, but I don't want Gabriel, Grace, any of the main Elfquest characters, or whoever's the protagonist of the story to die.