Rare Male Slash Exchange 2018

[skazka]

Likes:

- historical details, material culture, pop culture
- allegiances and loyalty (especially loyalty kink!)
- monsters! ghosts, vampires, werewolves, revenants...
- psychological horror
- body horror (surprise new orifices, involuntarily altered bodies, parasites, viral transformations, losing control over your own body and mind…)
- gothic horror tropes -- mysteries and the macabre
- noir tropes -- doubles! identity trouble! perversity, pessimism, fatalism, and menace!
- claustrophobia, doubt, guilt, and decay
- trauma and PTSD, memory and personal baggage
- adventures, mayhem, and voyages of self-discovery
- road trips
- character death
- spooky atmosphere -- decaying hotel rooms, sinister places, oppressive atmospheres
- cozy atmosphere -- small-scale domesticity, hospitality
- goofy humor
- family relationships and parental baggage
- friends-to-lovers, allies-to-friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers-while-remaining-enemies
- partners in crime
- in-universe documents (letters, manuscripts, etc.)
- unusual formats (interactive fiction, illustrated fic, etc.)
- continuing adventures and rebuilding friendships

Ship-wise, I dig intimacy between friends and allies, and screwed-up bleak bad-guy hatesex, and just about anything between those poles, really. I love noncon and dubcon, especially antagonistic or psychologically muddled angles and characters making difficult bargains using sex. I especially enjoy loyalty kink, agonized pining both reciprocated and unreciprocated, hurt/comfort -- especially hurt/comfort where the resentful recipient is weird about needing it!, sex happening before feelings and then feelings show up to the party and make everything weird, quarrelsome ride-or-die friendships turned romantic, and characters who just can't stay away from each other. I know my likes sound pretty grim, but I'm equally happy and thrilled to receive gentle domestic comfort!fic -- I love established relationships, makeshift domesticity, and characters building a life together against the odds.

If you're interested in writing smut: I love size differences, age differences, aggressive inexperienced characters, internalized homophobia, body worship, scars, blowjobs, cunnilingus, handjobs, frottage and non-penetrative sex, clothed/semi-clothed sex, hatesex and fighting-turned-fucking, breathplay, inhibitions and interpersonal baggage in the bedroom, anonymous or pseudo-anonymous hookups, friends with benefits, rough and/or violent sex, kicking/punching/slamming either in the course of consensual fun sex or antagonistic noncon-dubcon sex, sexual crying, painful or clumsy but fun and tender sex, tragically clumsy fail sex, wound fingering, characters seeking sex for comfort, characters having sad sex while thinking of other people (especially if it's two people thinking about the same person!), sadomasochism, rough body play, smoking/sharing cigarettes/cigarette burns, dark and emotionally complicated but consensual and loving sex, and time-period-specific sexual practices and meeting places.

(For creepy dirtybadwrong content, I love awful unwinnable bargains leveraged through sex, characters self-loathingly accepting a bad experience because it's not like it could possibly make their bad fate any worse, both characters resentfully forcing themselves into sex they wouldn't otherwise want to have in better circumstances, characters experiencing dark impulses and emotions as a result of being the disadvantaged party in dubcon/noncon, nonconsensual outfit changes/haircuts and misuse of magical powers.)

I'm fine with any format/structure of fic, from casefic to character study to PWP. I'm cool with canon relationships of all stripes, background ships, OT3s and poly relationships, infidelity, etc. A lot of my canons deal on some level with real-life social issues (homophobia, sexual violence, abuse, etc.) and I often appreciate that as an element of these canons' texture; you're welcome to incorporate those social factors in fic or pass by them as you're comfortable.

I'm totally on board with AUs, especially those that riff on or echo the original canon events/ setting. Canon-divergent AUs are very welcome, as well as alternate settings, alternate time periods (14th century, 16th century, 1950s, 1990s...) and genre/pastiche AUs. Summer camp romp, film noir, 80s YA thriller, torrid romance novel? Let the world be your oyster there. I love AUs that racebend characters, always-a-girl genderswaps that turn m/m into f/f, and fic where characters are written as trans, though I prefer all of these not to be agonizing tales of unremitting prejudice and hardship or showcasing other characters' intolerance -- more of a "what if?" scenario that deals with different identity as well as the other elements of the canon. (For always-a-girl genderswap, I especially love fics with butch characters rather than fics where a character's suddenly very feminine.) I'd be fine with any of these premises as its own starting place, if that stokes your imagination, or combined with any other prompt.


DNWs:

I'd rather not receive fic with self-harm, eating disorders, noncanonical suicide, noncanonical child sexual abuse, or unrequested incest. I don't want to read explicit sex involving characters under 16. Mentions of general teen romance and sexually active teenagers are just fine, as well as fic touching on canonical child sexual abuse and suicide.

Dislikes:

I don't care for unrequested teacher/student ships, generic modern-day mundane AUs, characters overhearing each other masturbating or having sex, spanking, "kissing practice"-type tropes, omegaverse elements, urban fantasy sexy werewolf tropes like packs and alphas, apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic settings, noncon where the victim starts liking it and consenting to it partway through, fic incorporating contemporary RL tragedies, or noncanonical elements of Nazism.

I'd also prefer no convenient female canon love interest disposal -- I'm always down for infidelity, polyamory/multiple concurrent relationships, AUs where canonical love interests never dated, and canon ships being framed as having broken up amicably at some point in the past, but not a festival of dead girlfriends or a primary emphasis on how past relationships don't matter in comparison to this One True Love.

*




Kennedys RPF

- John F. Kennedy/Robert F. Kennedy

Listen, I like loyalty kink, okay. I'm comfortable with this written as actualized and consummated or as sublimated and pining as you want -- my one caveat is that I'd rather not read fic where the whole Kennedy clan knows or discovery of the relationship becomes public, though a general mood of "oh shit, if anyone finds out about this we are so fucked" is 100% welcome. I'd love fic set against the backdrop of their 1951 trip through Asia and its aftermath, or against the backdrop of Bobby's tangling with McCarthy and co., or hell, a torrid love affair in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis -- I love Bobby's brutal stubbornness and Jack's various dysfunctions as much as I love their positive qualities and I like their clashing almost as much as I love the affection between them; I'm fine with some less than noble emotions bubbling to the surface even if they're both aware they ought to be doing better. For this as a pairing I'd prefer them to only get together as adult men, but within that timeframe I'm fine with any kind of arrangement, from a long-term slow burn emotional affair to a messed-up one-time thing that both of them are left staggered by. Perfectly matched dysfunctions nurtured in the same Kennedy family climate of overachievement, Bobby acting as an extension of his brother, Jack's seriously disordered attitude toward sex and intimacy tripping them up or narrowly plunging them into an ill-advised three-way, Catholic guilt and paranoia out the wazoo, skinny dipping, etc.

If you're interested in AUs/alternate-history type stuff, I'd love the historical divergence or alternate universe of your choice -- something where JFK survives the assassination attempt and Bobby's struggling to handle the crisis while also handling his emotions, something where the Cold War goes off the rails and they're hiding out somewhere, something where they team up to bump off Old Joe, something where they do in fact accidentally kinda sorta drown Joe McCarthy while out boating that one time and a massive coverup only brings them closer…

Bonus porn prompts: poolside shenanigans, intimacy that accommodates Jack's disabilities, talking before/during/after sex

- John F. Kennedy/Lem Billings

Absolutely anything about these two would make me happy -- pranks, fuckups, and teenage fights at Choate, something set during Jack and Lem's trip through Europe in '36, Lem making his way into the Kennedy family and navigating that web of ambitions and affiliations, a torrid emotional affair played out in weekend visits and stolen moments, a weird emotionally polyamorous tangle set against the backdrop of various Kennedy family get-togethers, whatev. I love how much correspondence between these two still exists and anything set against the backdrop of their prep school hellraising would especially delight me -- all that crassness and bravado, near-misses with expulsion, something with the note from Lem to Jack in 1934 that Pitts speculates contained a botched proposition (maybe not-so-botched?), contending with the fact that your super duper hot best friend is an uncontrollable pussy magnet, JFK trying to keep a lid on the scope of his disabilities and contending with a lot of discomfort while Billings tries to keep a lid on his attraction to guys in not the world's most hospitable climate for man-manly love… alternately, a brick lands on Jack's head or something and knocks some sense into him wrt chauvinistic womanizing assholery and he and Lem retire to a life as twin grey eminences with deep suntans and lots of respiratory issues. I'm fine with unrequited love/semi-unrequited love/pining, or something that's reciprocated after a fashion, even an asymmetrical fashion but the one thing I'd rather not read is a genuinely uncaring and purely exploitative one-way relationship where Lem's desperately mooning after Jack and Jack knows and doesn't give a shit about Lem.

If you're interested in alternate history, I'd love an alternate scenario where Joe Jr. survives and Jack's path to the White House doesn't happen, or at least doesn't look the same -- is their relationship different when it's not having to contend with all that Camelot baggage, or is Lem still stuck as a runner-up? Or something where JFK survives the assassination attempt and everybody's left scrambling to figure out what the fuck just almost happened, including Lem.

(...or a super tragic/batshit soul mate AU, just saying)

Bonus porn prompts: "Oops, there's only one bed left" -> boning down ensues, glad-to-be-alive sex after another dismal hospital stay or close shave, roughhousing gets weird, sad handies, finding sneaky places to bone down while in their last years at Choate, sneaky vacation quickies

There Will Be Blood

- Daniel Plainview/Eli Sunday

I love the way these two lock horns, culminating in probably the best mind games ever depicted on film, and I'd love to read more deeply twisted entanglement with bonus social commentary, this time with boners. Eli is a spitty zealot with a majorly dysfunctional family and a spooky twin(?), Plainview is a major-league manipulator who rolls into town like Dracula, and together they make sweet, sweet music. I'd love to read anything about these two, a follow-up to their canonical altercations or an interpolated scene of what we don't see in their interactions. What about an alternate trajectory where Eli prospers and it's Plainview ruefully groveling? Daniel taking out his guilt and resentment about fatherhood on Eli, Eli trying to work his weird charismatic face-slapping mojo on Daniel with sexxy results, or something where their roles are inverted -- Plainview's the established pillar of the community as a venerable oilman and Sunday's the snotty upstart rolling into town looking to make a profitable bargain. Or something where Plainview is a literal vampire or some kind of supernatural revenant, or where something seriously twisted emerges from underground to take possession of one (or both) of these dudes.

Bonus porn prompts: face-slapping, situational humiliation, forced or spontaneous-yet-terrible dirty talk, stomping on dicks, getting busy on that bowling alley floor

Mad Men

- Michael Ginsberg/Sal Romano

"They don't even meet!", you say. "They appear in completely non-overlapping seasons!", you say. "Ginsberg has massive hangups around the very concept of homosexuality that feed into his debilitating mental illness!", you say. Well… you're right, but fuck it. (FWIW, I'd prefer fic set after Ginsberg's psychotic break to give him a little bit of recovery and security, even if it's recovery by the standards of early-70s psychiatry.) Something with Michael getting accidentally/accidentally-on-purpose cruised by Sal, or where they meet in a pickup situation and only later find out a) they actually like each other and/or have feelings for each other b) holy shit, they could have been coworkers in another life. (Something where Sal comes back to SC&P in Don's absence and it sends Ginsberg's gay paranoia into overdrive?) Or on a happier note, Sal meeting Michael's father, or Michael self-actualizing his sexuality a little with Sal's help and vice versa -- Sal sort of gets the shaft in a narrative sense and he's in the closet out of necessity but he definitely seems to know himself and to like himself, in a way that might blow Ginsberg's mind. Or something in an AU where Michael, Sal, and Kitty become an inadvertent poly V. Ginsberg tries to make himself useful around the house, Kitty is relieved to have someone closer to her own age around the place who's a little less buttoned-up, and Sal is hunky patriarch over all.

Bonus porn prompts: anonymous sex, Sal giving blowjobs, anything that kinks on Sal being a beefy handsome brick shithouse and Ginsberg looking like a haunted late-60s waif, Ginsberg being a big honking virgin.

- Michael Ginsberg/Stan Rizzo

Stan is the canon object of Ginsberg's unfortunate sexual awakening but it doesn't have to be that way! I love Ginsberg's bitter sense of humor (which admittedly sometimes tips over into being slightly unhinged) and him and Stan reverberate off each other nicely there. I'd love to read a fic where the person who takes care of Stan after his William Tell fiasco is Michael instead of Peggy, and what's comfort-seeking behavior for Stan blossoms into something ~more -- or something where Stan intervenes for his friend before things go all nipple-shaped -- the two of them sharing a moment or reuniting later in the crazy 70s, an established-relationship fic where they try to hash out a living situation without anybody catching on, or just the culmination of some fabulous angsty pining where it all goes better than Ginsberg anticipated. Or something where Stan and Ginsberg reconnect after Ginsberg's breakdown and have to try and figure out where the hell to go from there with each other -- Stan accompanying Ginsberg to an event in the gay community out of solidarity only to realize hey, he could totally get used to this, or introducing his family to his incredibly prickly "friend"? Something where they have to fake date because of reasons, accidental baby acquisition, undercover in a gay bar, office quickies on one of those couches that's tragically full of farts…

If you're down for a weird AU, I would love a Jewish summer camp AU (hey, Stan could be half-Jewish!) -- '50s, '60s, '80s, whenever ya feel, they can be campers or counselors but I'd love to see Stan having a blast out of his depth and trying to grow some facial hair while Ginsberg wears canvas sneakers and performs increasingly unsettling skits -- or a fucked-up totalitarian dystopian AU (still set in the '60s or a setting analogous to the '60s, please!) or a neo-noir AU where things get extra fucked up at the agency and only one belligerent stoner and one already-paranoid guy can crack the case.

Bonus porn prompts: beard burn, office quickies, devirginating Ginsberg, stoned sex, touch starvation

Rope 1948

- Phillip Morgan/Brandon Shaw

These guys are the most established of established relationships circa canon and that leaves a lot of scenes from their relationship only alluded to, so I'd love fic set at any point in their acquaintance. I confess that I love the way Rupert is an unspoken third presence in their relationship, even though I didn't request the three of them together, so I'd love anything dealing with his influence on both of them pre-canon and any jealousy resulting from that. (Brandon clearly wants Rupert's approval the most, but there's some vibes there too with Rupert and Phillip, which Phillip might or might not reciprocate and which might or might not make Brandon happy.) Or anything with their fabulous bachelor lifestyle, more scenes of their weird toxic push-and-pull relationship, an alternate take where they get away with the crime and wind up traveling to scenic locales while still at each other's throats, or post-canon fic dealing with the aftermath of both their actual crime and literally or figuratively being outed. Something set during their school days (though I'd love to see stuff where Phillip is as creepy and weird as Brandon is, not just a totally swamped innocent) or something where Phillip's comparative ability to keep his ghoulish enthusiasm under wraps gives him the upper hand to domineer Brandon a bit?

Bonus prompts: HAND STUFF; canon's obvious and excellent potential for breathplay; anything set in their school years with a veneer of plausible deniability while sneaking off; risky/semi-public sex.


Crossover Pairings

- Rust Cohle (True Detective)/Jesse Pinkman (Breaking Bad)

The world of grim man drama is your oyster here -- the obvious candidate is the two of them recovering in Alaska together and I'd love that, but some kind of time-slip scenario (or straight-up just timeline rearrangement, I'm not a hardass about continuity) that leads to Jesse meeting Crash, or crossing paths with 1995!Rust, would make me extremely happy also. Does Rust try his whole faux-sympathetic-understanding mind whammy on this nervous young addict in the interrogation room and accidentally uncover more than he meant to? Do Jesse and junkie Rust spend some time holed up in the same hotel room together? The Iron Crusaders pick a fight with Todd's creepy Nazi gang and havoc ensues, or Rust and Jesse bond over their respective kid issues, or just two weird drifters crossing paths on their way up north, whatever you feel like.

Bonus porn prompts: high!sex, Jesse feeling guilty about Rust's hospitality and assuming he wants something in return or vice versa, grimy motel room fucking, anonymous or faux-anonymous sex, trying to get it on at Rust's place with practically no furnishings and murder photos everywhere, Alaskan comfort sex in a cabin by a lake or something, the crack AU where Jesse's a woodworking hermit up north and makes artisanal wooden dildos all day long to calm his troubled psyche...

- L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries (Rear Window)/Brandon Shaw (Rope)/Phillip Morgan (Rope)

I love Hitchcock's commitment to kinky subtext and to restricted-setting thrillers but this one doesn't have to be set during Jeff's period of recuperation by any means! Jeff witnessing a murder and his nice young neighbors coming over to visit him, flattered but also jittery to have a witness? Any kind of backstory fic (with or without "say, you look familiar!" as a point of entry) or fun with voyeurism. (Postcanon fic where Brandon and Phillip get away with their crimes and their social circles bring them into contact with Jeff via Lisa would also be up my alley.) Cat-and-mouse games, messed-up murder pacts, or totally benign non-murdery neighbor romance interaction with a suspenseful totally-gay subtext is all a-okay.

Bonus porn prompts: fucked-up dubcon that's pretending not to take advantage of Jeff's physical limitations circa canon, trawling for a third person for a thinly veiled mindfucky threesome, sex choking, voyeurism and exhibitionism (canon!)...


- Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver)/Sonny Wortzik (Dog Day Afternoon)

- Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver)/Steve Burns (Dog Day Afternoon)

These are my go-to sleazy 70s sad dark crossover ships so I'll consider them as a group here and I'd love anything that leverages that grainy atmosphere these canons share. Nocturnal meetings, random encounters, attempted acts of kindness, failed (or successful?) efforts to be morally upright… I'd love a ships-that-pass-in-the-night take on these relationships, or something where a human connection does genuinely make a change in any of their lives.

Sonny and Travis are both Vietnam vets, both more than a little unstable, and both forces to be reckoned with, but they have pretty damn different personalities and outlooks on life and intimacy -- any encounter between these two in all their squirreliness, Travis getting enlisted as unlucky wheelman, etc. Sonny's a family man capable of being charming and loving, but also a pretty flawed person who cracks badly under stress -- how does that chafe against Travis' romantic streak and weird rigidity?

Meanwhile, Burns and Bickle are both creatures of the night -- does Bickle know he's got an undercover cop in the back of his cab, or do their paths cross in a more sinister context? Travis and his aggressively-hetero coworkers are definitely in contact with queer New Yorkers, but it's not clear how much understanding they might have, and I'd love to see those streams cross given Travis' creepy ambivalence around intimacy and the way Burns eventually comes to associate sex and violence, consensual and otherwise.

Bonus porn prompts: weird quasi-anonymous intimacy, blowjobs, goings-on in alleys and backseats of cars, laying on of hands, anything taking advantage of Travis being immersed in the seediest side of sex but also weirdly virginal and untouchable, witnessing or participating in physical violence as a prelude to getting it on.

- Col. Walter Kurtz (Apocalypse Now)/Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver)

Okay, this one's the odd one out even out of my sleazy 70s thriller/horror/drama selections but that's never stopped me before. All these two really have in common is significant psychological disturbances and the Vietnam War but the potential for chronological overlap is there if you seriously turn your head and squint. I'd like to see anything with the two of them going off the rails and losing their shit -- warrior poet (in the classic sense!) meets white-knight vigilante wannabe with disastrous (and sexy) results. Something where Bickle's Special Forces background lands him in Kurtz's compound smack-dab in the middle of the war? (It already doesn't take much to set Bickle off on a creepy internal monologue, so in that respect at least he seems like a man after Kurtz's own heart.) Or something set before (or during) Kurtz's full-on break with the military and with Western society -- I can see that eliciting fascination or repulsion out of Bickle, or a little of both.

Travis as weird acolyte or wannabe assassin, usurping Willard's role in Now (or the photojournalist's?) or beating the boat crew to the compound, by accident or on purpose -- Kurtz can teach him a thing or two about cockeyed philosophy and existential horror and also about the art of love because nobody can get under your skin like scary-eyes Marlon Brando can. Scary monologues about the nature of warfare between the sheets, hero worship leveling up into pagan idolatry, or murderous obsession getting deflected into crazy-sublimated sexual desire, remaking your much younger and much more squirrelly captive/recruit/disciple/etc. in your own image… yeah. (Both these canons are pretty harsh, so if you want to leverage the ways Travis' psychological differences make him vulnerable in that context and not just open to persuasion, go for it. Or regular ol' Kurtz-level mindfucks/torture/cult of personality stuff.)

If you don't subscribe to the take that Travis is a vet, or you can't stand fudging the films' timelines this hard/would rather take this ship in a different direction logistics-wise, knock yourself out! I'd love to see anything you come up with here and you're a more inventive writer than I am.

Bonus porn prompts: SIZE DIFFERENCES SIZE DIFFERENCES SIZE DIFFERENCES. (Brando and De Niro are just about the same height, but Brando's Kurtz is famously hefty and it's hard to imagine Travis being less wiry as a younger man.) Semi-lucid sex. Travis being an extraordinarily tightly-wound virgin.

- Llewyn Davis (Inside Llewyn Davis)/Larry Gopnik (A Serious Man)

...there might be a Coen Bros theme to some of my ships this year, oops. Really I just want these two to cross paths with any level of romantic/sexual consummation, seeing as they're both sad sacks with very different reasons for their sad-sackness -- Llewyn's more assertive than Larry is, but he's also way more of a dick, and way less anchored by the idea of domestic obligations. Something where Llewyn is the sexy pot-smoking drifter crashing on Vivienne Samsky's couch who shakes up Larry's life, not necessarily for the better? Prequel fic set while Larry's still an earnest slightly-less-doomed bachelor, or something where Llewyn's drifting takes him all the way to the Minneapolis suburbs? Arguments about mathematics, seductions via folk song, and scriptural exegesis optional but appreciated. (I would love Jewish!Llewyn for this, especially anything with Llewyn Davis, Latino Jew -- ordinarily I'd be like "I have no idea how that'd be canon relevant in any way" but given A Serious Man's sweetass Job undertones, I mean, it could?)

Bonus porn prompts: anything really twisting the knife re. suburban domestic infidelity, high!sex, emotionally confusing flirtations and passes, unwelcome sex dreams for anybody involved, intimacy that's casual and commonplace for Llewyn not being so for Larry and vice versa

- Burt Gurney (Hail Caesar!)/Barton Fink (Barton Fink)

Hear me out! They're both idealistic leftists in the film industry, Barton Fink ends his canon effectively barred from pursuing his calling, all because he royally biffed his shot at Hollywood greatness by penning a fruity movie about suffering and social conscience; Burt Gurney throws it all away as a matter of principle and ends up in a position that might not be so great. (Cf. the Coens' comments about a stinger scene showing Burt standing in a really long line for toilet paper somewhere in the USSR.) But both of them are tied to Capitol Pictures by contract (albeit about a decade apart) and that's enough for me to build a dream on. Barton going Full Commie and showing his hunky tapdancing subletter the way of the future (with SWEET KISSES) or fresh faced idealist Burt Gurney recruiting Barton Fink, Alienated Has-Been to the cause by actually giving a shit about him and his mildly misguided vision -- maybe he saw Bare Ruined Choirs playing in New York. Jaded former idealist meets beefy true believer! Doomed dance hall hookups with the champion of the common man! Burt takes a walk on the wild side and ends up in a much more film noirish corner of the California dream, or Barton gets welcomed into the comparatively supportive and forward-looking arms of The Future -- anything with these guys would make me happy.

Bonus porn prompts: Channing Tatum's MAGNIFICENT LEGS, banging in thoroughly non-scenic locales with peeling wallpaper and worse, size differences, meeting your heroes and then banging them, uniform kink (costume and real -- not that Barton Fink has a TERRIFIC track record with sailors in uniform but stuff can get weird, ok.)