Darkest Night 2018
Jul. 22nd, 2018 03:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skazkaLikes: Dreams and nightmares, doomed last stands, literal and metaphorical ghosts, werewolves, vampires, body horror, psychological horror, guilt, doubt, road trips, desolate landscapes, character death with or without cosmic fixes/coming back wrong. Angst and tragedy, h/c, whump, lonely people finding solace with each other, confusing boundary issues, men crying, witchy stuff, the paranormal, trauma and living with PTSD. Wound fingering, noncon tattooing, surgery, scurvy, hypothermia, cold weather survival, falling for the charms of someone who's bad news, tenderness from nasty people, prickly or aloof characters needing comfort but not knowing how to seek it out, angsty basket cases, stoic characters crumbling, loyalty kink, bed-sharing, huddling for warmth, igloo-building, infidelity, characters who in no way understand their own feelings and desires, sinister locations and atmospheres, in-universe documents (letters, manuscripts, etc.) and unusual formats like interactive fiction. I'm open to hopeful endings as well as downer endings -- if you want to write the grimdark hopeless nightmare of your dreams please go for it, but I also love fic about staying alive and making it work despite dire circumstances! I'd be equally happy with a bittersweet recovery fic as characters having everything crash down around them.
If you're interested in writing smut: I love size differences, age differences, aggressive inexperienced characters, shorter/younger characters topping, 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, flogging, caning, 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, and time-period-specific sexual practices and meeting places.
I love awful unwinnable bargains leveraged through sex, sexual violence where the emphasis is on the violence, characters self-loathingly accepting a bad experience because it's not like it could possibly make their bad fate any worse, dubcon where the character being dubconned suppresses their boiling anger and puts forward a more innocent compliant face, both characters resentfully forcing themselves into sex they wouldn't otherwise want to have in better circumstances, characters experiencing dark impulses and emotions in the bedroom, and perpetrators of sexual violence who see it as no big deal because of their own frame of experience with sexual violence. I love misery and characters resigning themselves to their fate and I also love resilience, stubbornness, and survival.
I'm fine with any format/structure of fic, from casefic to character study to PWP. A lot of my canons deal on some level with real-life social issues (homophobia, racism, sexual violence, 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.
DNWs: I'd rather not receive fic with self-harm, eating disorders, 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. For The Terror, non-explicit child abuse/shitty sex work backstory for Hickey is fine. I'd like Silna to stay her apparent age in the show -- in her late 30s like her actress -- rather than her age in the book. Canon-typical issues with food and starvation are also fine, I just don't want, say, anorexia nervosa issuefic.
Dislikes: spanking, noncanonical teacher/student, omegaverse/BDSMverse and other alternate sexual hierarchy AUs, in-universe magic/phlebotinum-induced sexswaps, zombie apocalypse tropes, noncon where the victim consciously enjoys it, marking via skin-cutting (branding, tattooing, and incidental scarring are just fine), pregnancy/oviposition, scat, watersports.
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The Terror (TV)
Group: Cornelius Hickey/Harry Goodsir; Group: Cornelius Hickey/Francis Crozier
Nonconsensual Huddling For Warmth | Forced Cannibalism | Semi-Unwitting Cannibalism | Hostage Situations | Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism | Corruption | Deliberately Induced Stockholm Syndrome | Dependent On Enemy For Survival | Dubious Consent | Everybody Is Dead | Hero/Villain Reversal | Whump | Anal Penetration As An Act Of Dominance | Blackmail | Dignified Character is Broken by Rape | Consensual Sex Leaves Character Horrified/Self-Loathing Afterward Once Truths Are Revealed | Period-Typical Homophobia | Whipping | Character Sacrifices Themselves To Save Another
- Blackmail: Either Hickey using his knowledge of Crozier's would-be mutiny to control him when they're at sea, or a scenario back in England with Hickey blackmailing either of them over anything (sexual indiscretions? financial mishaps? body-snatching?) Conversely, Crozier or Goodsir in a not-so-nice mood thinking he can control Hickey this way and finding out he cannot.
- Forced Cannibalism/Semi-Unwitting Cannibalism: Hickey decides to keep one of them around for a while, and makes sure he's well-fed, whether he knows what he's being fed on or not. In the case of semi-unwitting cannibalism, either plausible deniability or willful denial is fine. Or in a hero-villain reversal scenario, mutinous tyrant Crozier or his scalpel-happy subordinate Goodsir leaving Hickey something to tide him over that used to walk on two legs. On that note...
- Hero/Villain Reversal: Hickey's still a tough customer no matter which way you slice it, but I'd love a dark!AU where Crozier goes full tyrant after "Punished, As A Boy" with Hickey as his nemesis/whipping boy/favorite hard-headed object of torment, or where Goodsir's dark streak comes out as their circumstances get more bleak. (Maybe where it's him who cracks up less spectacularly than Dr. Clown Arson and Hickey gets the brunt of it when his flogging wounds are still healing?)
- Consensual Sex Leaves Character Horrified/Self-Loathing Afterward Once Truths Are Revealed: Hickey and Crozier bang circa "The Ladder" and shit gets very weird for both of them in short order. (The obvious candidate for horrified character is Crozier, but Hickey reacting badly to the realization Crozier isn't the kind of person he thought he was, in his own weird gutter-rat way, is totally welcome.) Alternately, Goodsir succumbing to Hickey's charms in the aftermath of "Punished, As A Boy" and taking it real hard later.
Group: Harry Goodsir & Silna; Group: Harry Goodsir/Silna
Soulbonded to Ancient Monster | Cotard Delusion | Fatally Belated Realization of Romantic Feelings | Grief/Mourning | Haunted By Dead Character | Hypothermia | Memory Loss | Survivor Guilt | Wilderness Survival | Came Back Wrong | Only Two Left Alive
- Came Back Wrong - Silna intervenes to recover what she can of Mr. Goodsir, only to find he's not quite the same Goodsir he used to be -- maybe he can only eat human flesh, or he doesn't eat or sleep at all, or it's a more subtle weirdness and Silna has to face what he's become.
- Haunted By Dead Character: Silna haunted by Goodsir, macabre bullshit/grand angst ensues, or Goodsir haunted by the rest of the crew and trying to figure out how to communicate that without cracking up.
- Soulbonded To Ancient Monster: Silna's soulbonded to the Tuunbaq and Goodsir can only study what that's like for her -- or they both end up soulbonded to the Tuunbaq, with Goodsir as the representative of the quintessential imperial intruder, and it makes their relationship to one another really weird.
- Cotard Delusion: Goodsir's alive and intact, but he doesn't feel like he is. Or Silna feels like she's missing something incredibly important, gradually but unmistakably, after the loss of the Tuunbaq and Goodsir doesn't know if she's being literal or metaphorical.
Group: Francis Crozier/James Fitzjames
- Fatally Belated Realization of Romantic Feelings | Haunted By Dead Character | Grief/Mourning | Memory Loss | Descent Into Madness | Discovering Soulmate Bond After Soulmate’s Death | Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD | Scurvy | Dreams Bleeding Into Reality | Infected Wound |Character Survived Their Adventures/Ordeal But Will Never Be The Same Again
- Memory Loss: Scurvy causes loss of short-term memory and then gradually affects intermediate memory recall --how about Crozier gradually realizing Fitzjames is losing some of his faculties and not knowing why but knowing enough to be freaked out? Fitzjames struggling to remember recent changes in his relationship to Crozier and finding himself reverting back to their earlier frostiness, or forgetting which orders he's given, or worse?
- Descent Into Madness: Anything where one/both of them survives, but isn't quite what he used to be. Or something where they're rescued and return to England, but their ordeal isn't over. Something where they return to England and everything is subtly but discernibly different in ways nobody from outside the expedition seems to realize?
- Fatally Belated Realization of Romantic Feelings/Discovering Soulmate Bond After Soulmate's Death: Crozier only realizes the full depth of his feelings for Fitzjames after Fitzjames bites it, or vice versa in an AU where Fitzjames lives and Crozier dies. For soulbond variations, I'd love a variation on that trope where same-sex soulbonds are assumed to be a separate phenomenon than homosexuality/sodomy as such for reasons of social decorum but whoever's left alive has to deal with the fact that yep, they definitely feel full-fledged romantic feelings for their soulmate and they aren't going away after death.
Mad Men (TV)
Michael Ginsberg; Group: Peggy Olsen & Michael Ginsberg
Alternate Universe - Screwfly Solution | Alternate Universe - Noir | Character's Delusions Are Reality | Hearing Voices | Psychological Trauma | Schizophrenia | Scars | Only Two Left Alive | Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD | Rape Aftermath
- Alternate Universe - Noir: Down these darkened streets walks a man who wants you to know that cran-prune sounds like a glassful of diarrhea waiting to happen. This could be Peggy & Ginsberg thrust into a noir-flavored intrigue, or their canon experiences twisted to make the dark and shadowy aspects pop, but I'd love a focus on the twisty, psychosexual, cynical side of noir rather than necessarily the surface trappings of gumshoes and dames. Though I'd kill for private detective Peggy and boy-Friday Ginsberg.
- Alternate Universe - Screwfly Solution: Shit goes sexually-motivated-femicide-shaped and Peggy and Ginsberg have to try and get through it together, and possibly fail -- my one stipulation here is that I'd rather Ginsberg not have violent impulses toward Peggy (or at least not ones caused by the events of Screwfly Solution) but I'd be fine with him having violent impulses toward anyone else (Stan?) given how he already seems to struggle with the sense that his sexual desires are disturbing and alien.
- Character's Delusions Are Reality: Something deeply sinister is going on with all those thrumming, thrumming IBM machines in the office and Ginsberg is the only one who notices at first as stuff starts to change.
- Rape Aftermath: for either Ginsberg or Peggy -- I can't imagine it would be anything but shattering for Ginsberg but it's not like it would be smooth sailing for Peggy either. Peggy trying to keep her shit together and failing in front of the character least equipped to tell anyone how to handle trauma, or Ginsberg trying to keep traumatic secrets and failing.
- Only Two Left Alive: Something wipes out the SCDP crew (solar flare? Cold War gone hot? urban plague?) and Michael and Peggy have to hack it on their own.
Deathtrap (1982)
Group: Sidney Bruhl/Clifford Anderson
Betrayal | Blackmail | Corruption | Killing Each Other | Mutually Manipulative Relationship | Period-Typical Homophobia | Mind Games | Alternate Universe - Noir | Bodies In The Basement
- Blackmail: Clifford escalates their standoff in a slightly different direction than in canon and psychological/financial fuckery ensues. Or an alternate setup altogether where instead of Bruhl enlisting Clifford in offing his wife, Clifford takes advantage of Bruhl's concern for his reputation.
- Mind Games: Surely a couple of aspiring thriller writers could come up with some deeply weird psychological paces to put each other through -- either needling each other about their canonical crimes or all the other deeply weird psychosexual stuff going on between instructor and student.
- Alternate Universe - Noir: The super twisty love-triangle angle is already tailor-made for noir -- I'd love something where the scheme to off Myra goes terribly wrong or where it's fragile Myra enlisting her husband's hunky protegé for a little spouse-murder and things go terribly, sexily wrong. Tweak the era a little or rearrange Sidney's line of work to a different subgenre of crime fiction -- go wild.
The Alienist (TV)
John Moore, Laszlo Kreizler, Sara Moore, Marcus Isaacson, Lucius Isaacson
Drug Addiction | Eldritch Locations | Faking Recovery From Injury/Trauma So People Will Stop Worrying About You | Fever | Haunted Houses | On The Run From Authorities | On The Run From A Powerful Personal Enemy | Past Abuse | Presumed Dead | Rape & Rescue | Rape Aftermath | Vampirism | Whump
(I didn't specifically request any ships as groups in this fandom but please feel free to write any ships you like with these characters and the other adults in Laszlo's little supergroup of Gilded Age crimefighters! I am an especial sucker for Laszlo/Marcus, but I ship any and all of them in a massive polyamorous tangle. For noncon-related tropes, I'd prefer the assailant to be a bad guy from outside the nominated characters or an OMC/OFC -- I'm a sucker for the complex wading through historical attitudes toward trauma and the characters' various preexisting experiences with it as much as or more than the noncon itself, so feel free to write off-the-page noncon.)
- Eldritch Locations: New York isn't that far from Lovecraft country! Send these characters (or one character) on a road trip to someplace deeply uncanny and sinister, or have them uncover one right on their doorstep.
- Faking Recovery From Injury/Trauma So People Will Stop Worrying About You: Somebody on the team takes a hit and is anxious to prove that they're over it and fit to get back to work, but they're blatantly not, even if they're not initially aware of that themselves. (With Sara, I can easily imagine this dovetailing with her dislike of being treated with kid gloves by her male teammates on account of her gender, and with Laszlo I can see him being prickly about being treated as less-capable in any way due to disabling injury, but I'd love to read it with any of them.)
- Vampirism: This can be the team trying to figure out what the fuck is up with a murderer who's an actualfax vampire, or a character trying to reckon with the newfound changes in their diet among other things using all the scientific and medical knowledge they can harness, or both. I'd love a dark, alien, genuinely eerie take on vampirism rather than the kind with established rules and an organized easily-accessible community of vampires out there -- less vampire politics and more weird body horror and baby-eating.
If you're interested in writing smut: I love size differences, age differences, aggressive inexperienced characters, shorter/younger characters topping, 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, flogging, caning, 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, and time-period-specific sexual practices and meeting places.
I love awful unwinnable bargains leveraged through sex, sexual violence where the emphasis is on the violence, characters self-loathingly accepting a bad experience because it's not like it could possibly make their bad fate any worse, dubcon where the character being dubconned suppresses their boiling anger and puts forward a more innocent compliant face, both characters resentfully forcing themselves into sex they wouldn't otherwise want to have in better circumstances, characters experiencing dark impulses and emotions in the bedroom, and perpetrators of sexual violence who see it as no big deal because of their own frame of experience with sexual violence. I love misery and characters resigning themselves to their fate and I also love resilience, stubbornness, and survival.
I'm fine with any format/structure of fic, from casefic to character study to PWP. A lot of my canons deal on some level with real-life social issues (homophobia, racism, sexual violence, 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.
DNWs: I'd rather not receive fic with self-harm, eating disorders, 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. For The Terror, non-explicit child abuse/shitty sex work backstory for Hickey is fine. I'd like Silna to stay her apparent age in the show -- in her late 30s like her actress -- rather than her age in the book. Canon-typical issues with food and starvation are also fine, I just don't want, say, anorexia nervosa issuefic.
Dislikes: spanking, noncanonical teacher/student, omegaverse/BDSMverse and other alternate sexual hierarchy AUs, in-universe magic/phlebotinum-induced sexswaps, zombie apocalypse tropes, noncon where the victim consciously enjoys it, marking via skin-cutting (branding, tattooing, and incidental scarring are just fine), pregnancy/oviposition, scat, watersports.
*
The Terror (TV)
Group: Cornelius Hickey/Harry Goodsir; Group: Cornelius Hickey/Francis Crozier
Nonconsensual Huddling For Warmth | Forced Cannibalism | Semi-Unwitting Cannibalism | Hostage Situations | Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism | Corruption | Deliberately Induced Stockholm Syndrome | Dependent On Enemy For Survival | Dubious Consent | Everybody Is Dead | Hero/Villain Reversal | Whump | Anal Penetration As An Act Of Dominance | Blackmail | Dignified Character is Broken by Rape | Consensual Sex Leaves Character Horrified/Self-Loathing Afterward Once Truths Are Revealed | Period-Typical Homophobia | Whipping | Character Sacrifices Themselves To Save Another
- Blackmail: Either Hickey using his knowledge of Crozier's would-be mutiny to control him when they're at sea, or a scenario back in England with Hickey blackmailing either of them over anything (sexual indiscretions? financial mishaps? body-snatching?) Conversely, Crozier or Goodsir in a not-so-nice mood thinking he can control Hickey this way and finding out he cannot.
- Forced Cannibalism/Semi-Unwitting Cannibalism: Hickey decides to keep one of them around for a while, and makes sure he's well-fed, whether he knows what he's being fed on or not. In the case of semi-unwitting cannibalism, either plausible deniability or willful denial is fine. Or in a hero-villain reversal scenario, mutinous tyrant Crozier or his scalpel-happy subordinate Goodsir leaving Hickey something to tide him over that used to walk on two legs. On that note...
- Hero/Villain Reversal: Hickey's still a tough customer no matter which way you slice it, but I'd love a dark!AU where Crozier goes full tyrant after "Punished, As A Boy" with Hickey as his nemesis/whipping boy/favorite hard-headed object of torment, or where Goodsir's dark streak comes out as their circumstances get more bleak. (Maybe where it's him who cracks up less spectacularly than Dr. Clown Arson and Hickey gets the brunt of it when his flogging wounds are still healing?)
- Consensual Sex Leaves Character Horrified/Self-Loathing Afterward Once Truths Are Revealed: Hickey and Crozier bang circa "The Ladder" and shit gets very weird for both of them in short order. (The obvious candidate for horrified character is Crozier, but Hickey reacting badly to the realization Crozier isn't the kind of person he thought he was, in his own weird gutter-rat way, is totally welcome.) Alternately, Goodsir succumbing to Hickey's charms in the aftermath of "Punished, As A Boy" and taking it real hard later.
Group: Harry Goodsir & Silna; Group: Harry Goodsir/Silna
Soulbonded to Ancient Monster | Cotard Delusion | Fatally Belated Realization of Romantic Feelings | Grief/Mourning | Haunted By Dead Character | Hypothermia | Memory Loss | Survivor Guilt | Wilderness Survival | Came Back Wrong | Only Two Left Alive
- Came Back Wrong - Silna intervenes to recover what she can of Mr. Goodsir, only to find he's not quite the same Goodsir he used to be -- maybe he can only eat human flesh, or he doesn't eat or sleep at all, or it's a more subtle weirdness and Silna has to face what he's become.
- Haunted By Dead Character: Silna haunted by Goodsir, macabre bullshit/grand angst ensues, or Goodsir haunted by the rest of the crew and trying to figure out how to communicate that without cracking up.
- Soulbonded To Ancient Monster: Silna's soulbonded to the Tuunbaq and Goodsir can only study what that's like for her -- or they both end up soulbonded to the Tuunbaq, with Goodsir as the representative of the quintessential imperial intruder, and it makes their relationship to one another really weird.
- Cotard Delusion: Goodsir's alive and intact, but he doesn't feel like he is. Or Silna feels like she's missing something incredibly important, gradually but unmistakably, after the loss of the Tuunbaq and Goodsir doesn't know if she's being literal or metaphorical.
Group: Francis Crozier/James Fitzjames
- Fatally Belated Realization of Romantic Feelings | Haunted By Dead Character | Grief/Mourning | Memory Loss | Descent Into Madness | Discovering Soulmate Bond After Soulmate’s Death | Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD | Scurvy | Dreams Bleeding Into Reality | Infected Wound |Character Survived Their Adventures/Ordeal But Will Never Be The Same Again
- Memory Loss: Scurvy causes loss of short-term memory and then gradually affects intermediate memory recall --how about Crozier gradually realizing Fitzjames is losing some of his faculties and not knowing why but knowing enough to be freaked out? Fitzjames struggling to remember recent changes in his relationship to Crozier and finding himself reverting back to their earlier frostiness, or forgetting which orders he's given, or worse?
- Descent Into Madness: Anything where one/both of them survives, but isn't quite what he used to be. Or something where they're rescued and return to England, but their ordeal isn't over. Something where they return to England and everything is subtly but discernibly different in ways nobody from outside the expedition seems to realize?
- Fatally Belated Realization of Romantic Feelings/Discovering Soulmate Bond After Soulmate's Death: Crozier only realizes the full depth of his feelings for Fitzjames after Fitzjames bites it, or vice versa in an AU where Fitzjames lives and Crozier dies. For soulbond variations, I'd love a variation on that trope where same-sex soulbonds are assumed to be a separate phenomenon than homosexuality/sodomy as such for reasons of social decorum but whoever's left alive has to deal with the fact that yep, they definitely feel full-fledged romantic feelings for their soulmate and they aren't going away after death.
Mad Men (TV)
Michael Ginsberg; Group: Peggy Olsen & Michael Ginsberg
Alternate Universe - Screwfly Solution | Alternate Universe - Noir | Character's Delusions Are Reality | Hearing Voices | Psychological Trauma | Schizophrenia | Scars | Only Two Left Alive | Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD | Rape Aftermath
- Alternate Universe - Noir: Down these darkened streets walks a man who wants you to know that cran-prune sounds like a glassful of diarrhea waiting to happen. This could be Peggy & Ginsberg thrust into a noir-flavored intrigue, or their canon experiences twisted to make the dark and shadowy aspects pop, but I'd love a focus on the twisty, psychosexual, cynical side of noir rather than necessarily the surface trappings of gumshoes and dames. Though I'd kill for private detective Peggy and boy-Friday Ginsberg.
- Alternate Universe - Screwfly Solution: Shit goes sexually-motivated-femicide-shaped and Peggy and Ginsberg have to try and get through it together, and possibly fail -- my one stipulation here is that I'd rather Ginsberg not have violent impulses toward Peggy (or at least not ones caused by the events of Screwfly Solution) but I'd be fine with him having violent impulses toward anyone else (Stan?) given how he already seems to struggle with the sense that his sexual desires are disturbing and alien.
- Character's Delusions Are Reality: Something deeply sinister is going on with all those thrumming, thrumming IBM machines in the office and Ginsberg is the only one who notices at first as stuff starts to change.
- Rape Aftermath: for either Ginsberg or Peggy -- I can't imagine it would be anything but shattering for Ginsberg but it's not like it would be smooth sailing for Peggy either. Peggy trying to keep her shit together and failing in front of the character least equipped to tell anyone how to handle trauma, or Ginsberg trying to keep traumatic secrets and failing.
- Only Two Left Alive: Something wipes out the SCDP crew (solar flare? Cold War gone hot? urban plague?) and Michael and Peggy have to hack it on their own.
Deathtrap (1982)
Group: Sidney Bruhl/Clifford Anderson
Betrayal | Blackmail | Corruption | Killing Each Other | Mutually Manipulative Relationship | Period-Typical Homophobia | Mind Games | Alternate Universe - Noir | Bodies In The Basement
- Blackmail: Clifford escalates their standoff in a slightly different direction than in canon and psychological/financial fuckery ensues. Or an alternate setup altogether where instead of Bruhl enlisting Clifford in offing his wife, Clifford takes advantage of Bruhl's concern for his reputation.
- Mind Games: Surely a couple of aspiring thriller writers could come up with some deeply weird psychological paces to put each other through -- either needling each other about their canonical crimes or all the other deeply weird psychosexual stuff going on between instructor and student.
- Alternate Universe - Noir: The super twisty love-triangle angle is already tailor-made for noir -- I'd love something where the scheme to off Myra goes terribly wrong or where it's fragile Myra enlisting her husband's hunky protegé for a little spouse-murder and things go terribly, sexily wrong. Tweak the era a little or rearrange Sidney's line of work to a different subgenre of crime fiction -- go wild.
The Alienist (TV)
John Moore, Laszlo Kreizler, Sara Moore, Marcus Isaacson, Lucius Isaacson
Drug Addiction | Eldritch Locations | Faking Recovery From Injury/Trauma So People Will Stop Worrying About You | Fever | Haunted Houses | On The Run From Authorities | On The Run From A Powerful Personal Enemy | Past Abuse | Presumed Dead | Rape & Rescue | Rape Aftermath | Vampirism | Whump
(I didn't specifically request any ships as groups in this fandom but please feel free to write any ships you like with these characters and the other adults in Laszlo's little supergroup of Gilded Age crimefighters! I am an especial sucker for Laszlo/Marcus, but I ship any and all of them in a massive polyamorous tangle. For noncon-related tropes, I'd prefer the assailant to be a bad guy from outside the nominated characters or an OMC/OFC -- I'm a sucker for the complex wading through historical attitudes toward trauma and the characters' various preexisting experiences with it as much as or more than the noncon itself, so feel free to write off-the-page noncon.)
- Eldritch Locations: New York isn't that far from Lovecraft country! Send these characters (or one character) on a road trip to someplace deeply uncanny and sinister, or have them uncover one right on their doorstep.
- Faking Recovery From Injury/Trauma So People Will Stop Worrying About You: Somebody on the team takes a hit and is anxious to prove that they're over it and fit to get back to work, but they're blatantly not, even if they're not initially aware of that themselves. (With Sara, I can easily imagine this dovetailing with her dislike of being treated with kid gloves by her male teammates on account of her gender, and with Laszlo I can see him being prickly about being treated as less-capable in any way due to disabling injury, but I'd love to read it with any of them.)
- Vampirism: This can be the team trying to figure out what the fuck is up with a murderer who's an actualfax vampire, or a character trying to reckon with the newfound changes in their diet among other things using all the scientific and medical knowledge they can harness, or both. I'd love a dark, alien, genuinely eerie take on vampirism rather than the kind with established rules and an organized easily-accessible community of vampires out there -- less vampire politics and more weird body horror and baby-eating.
