Yuletide 2020 DYW Letter
Oct. 14th, 2020 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skazkaHappy Yuletide! In accordance with the seasons, here is my annual tl;dr Yuletide letter -- feel free to incorporate as little of it as you like. I'm skazka @ AO3 and my past letters can be found here. This year I am requesting Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger, Henry James' The Turn Of The Screw, Valerie Martin's Mary Reilly, HBO's Rome (2005-2007), and Lolah Burford's Edward Edward
- Likes (General)
- Likes (Smut)
- DNWs
- The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters (Caroline, Roderick)
- The Turn Of The Screw - Henry James (Miles, Flora)
- Mary Reilly - Valerie Martin (Mary Reilly)
- HBO's Rome (Gaius Octavian)
- Edward, Edward - Lolah Burford (Edward Clare Armstrong)
Likes:
Some general things I dig:
- historical details, material culture, pop culture
- allegiances and loyalty (especially loyalty kink!)
- dreams and nightmares, feverish visions, neurasthenia
- psychological horror
- captivity, whether literal or metaphorical (house arrest, claustrophobia, bonding with one's captors/captives, bogus politeness from host to 'guest', being technically free to physically leave but psychologically restricted)
- ghosts (poltergeists, spirit visitations, seances, 19th century Spiritualism, vengeful spirits)
- body horror (surprise new orifices, involuntarily changing bodies, parasites, viral transformations, losing control over your own body and mind, etc.)
- gothic horror tropes (mystery, wonder, and the macabre, decaying old houses, ancestral curses, family secrets, etc.)
- noir tropes (doubles! identity trouble! perversity, pessimism, fatalism, and menace!)
- claustrophobia, doubt, guilt, decay
- conversely, characters with unusual or offbeat viewpoints being businesslike, confident, and competent
- trauma and PTSD, memory and personal baggage
- disability and the body
- road trips and travel
- character death
- angst (angsty tormented ladies! angsty tormented dudes! stoic suffering!)
- sturdy/muscular women with tender hearts
- spooky atmosphere -- decaying hotel rooms, sinister places, oppressive atmospheres
- cozy atmosphere -- small-scale domesticity, hospitality, characters looking after each other, running a household, making a home
- goofy or dark humor, humor in general
- religious themes and elements (whether positive or more ambivalent)
- family relationships and parental baggage
- in-universe documents (letters, manuscripts, academic journals, etc.)
- unusual formats (interactive fiction, illustrated fic, etc.)
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 especially enjoy:
- loyalty kink
- friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers-while-remaining-enemies
- agonized pining both reciprocated and unreciprocated
- one-night stands with complicated emotions attached, or purely sexual relationships leading to unexpected feelings
- hurt/comfort -- one or more parties getting tragically roughed up or whumped to hell and back and needing stoic ministrations; h/c where a rough or unpleasant person is the recipient of the comfort whether they like it or not; h/c where a villainous character is doing the comforting; cautious or grudging h/c
- quarrelsome but ride-or-die friendships
- characters who just can't stay away from each other
- domesticity and tenderness coming before characters become lovers
If you're interested in writing smut, I love:
- size differences
- age differences
- body worship
- oral sex (cunnilingus, fellatio, rimming)
- handjobs, fingering
- frottage and non-penetrative sex
- clothed/semi-clothed sex
- fancy clothes, uniforms, layers, dressing and undressing
- hatesex and fighting-turned-fucking
- breathplay
- inhibitions and interpersonal baggage in the bedroom
- anonymous or pseudo-anonymous hookups (especially in semi-public places -- public parks, train compartments, dormitories and barracks)
- noncon and dubcon
- painful/clumsy but fun and tender sex, OR, 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
- time-period-specific sexual practices and meeting places.
I love noncon and dubcon, especially mutually antagonistic or psychologically muddy angles and characters making difficult bargains using sex. I appreciate a focus on difficult/complicated emotions and experiences and the conflicted side of dubcon -- a character having sex they don't uncomplicatedly desire but that they believe will help them achieve some goal, for instance. For noncon I especially like to read about horror, discomfort, resistance, self-disgust, and anger on the victim's side; for perpetrator attitudes I like reading about hatred, mixed feelings, obsessive love, contempt, and the like, but I don't care much for ravishment tropes where the victim secretly wanted it all along/hated it at first but came to love it, scenarios where afterward the rape is a non-issue as though it hadn't happened at all, or where the rape results in unambiguous true love and a happily ever after. I'm fine with non-explicit noncon and dubcon and would be just as happy with only the portrayal of aftermath or implication if that's more in your comfort zone.
Pairing-wise, I've tried to make mention of specific ships I'm especially fond of, including those that extend beyond requested characters, but I'm not monoshippy in any fandom and I'm pretty open to whatever pairings you want to bring to the table. I dig slash, femslash, het, gen, and anything else; feel free to write any kind of pairing you like or none at all, as well as multiple pairings, OT3s and poly relationships, infidelity, etc. Any level of intensity or non-intensity with regard to sex, violence, character death and other dark stuff is fine by me, including major character death and downer endings on a character-specific scale. A lot of my canons deal on some level with real-life social issues (homophobia, sexual violence, domestic 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 fine with all different formats and structures for fic, from casefic to character study to domestic fluff to plotless porn. As far as nominated characters, you are under zero obligation to include all (or only) my requested characters in the same fic, and I'm happy for other characters to appear. I'm totally on board with AUs, especially those that riff on or echo the original canon events/setting, but canon-divergent and for-want-of-a-nail AUs are very welcome, as well as alternate settings, alternate time periods and genre/pastiche AUs. Let the world be your oyster there.
I enjoy AUs that racebend characters, always-a-girl genderswaps, and fic where characters are written as trans, especially fic where the character's canonical gender and gender presentation doesn't change, just the character's presumed cis status. (Mary Reilly or Flora as trans women and girls, for instance.) However, I prefer transfic that isn't focused on coming out, self-discovery, outing, or the experience of transphobia to the exclusion of other elements like plot. I'm happy to receive crossovers and fusions -- if you're not sure if I'm familiar with a fandom judging from my AO3 fandom list or past request letters, feel free to ask via a mod. I'd be happy to receive poetry, but would rather not receive free verse -- any other metrical forms are fair game.
If you want to check out my past exchange letters, you can find them here.
This year I am participating in Cooktide (prompts and fic around characters cooking and dining), the Interactive Fiction challenge, and (ideally) Crueltide and Yuleporn (TBA). If anything in those prompts sparks your interest, fabulous.
EDIT 10/17/20: Yuleporn prompts are go!
EDIT 10/22/20: And now Crueltide.
DNWs:
I'd rather not receive free verse poetry, transfic focused on coming-out or transphobic hardship, depictions of self-harm or eating disorders, or unrequested depictions of suicide/child sexual abuse/incest. I don't want to read explicit sex involving characters under 16. This year I would also prefer no references to 21st century politics or politicians, modern-style transphobia or homophobia, or any focus on the consequences of COVID-19.
Fic dealing with the canonical abuse themes in some readings of The Turn Of The Screw and Mary Reilly, as well as the weird sexual politics of Late Republican Rome as they apply to Octavian, is fine. The fallout of sexual abuse in these canons (or the fallout of the complicated semi-sexual relationship between Edward and his father in EE before he reaches adolescence) is fine to feature as well, but I'd prefer no on-the-page sex acts or descriptions of sex acts between adults and children.
*
The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters
(This canon is a novel published in 2009; it's still widely available in print, including in ebook form.)
- Roderick Ayres, Caroline Ayres
I loved this novel to pieces, and it does a tremendous job pulling apart the societal underpinnings of gothic fiction through its incisive use of historical place and time.The Ayres siblings are mostly seen through Faraday's eyes, and that casts them in an interesting and complicated light; I love the narrator's compelling presence as one lens through which the story unfolds, but I'd love to get more of the two of them outside that structure, either scenes we never glimpse from Faraday's POV in canon or without that narrative filter.
Roderick's struggles at Hundreds don't start with his accident, but that certainly didn't make his life much easier -- what was his boyhood there like, and what was his sense of his inheritance as the only son? I love Roderick's passion for machines and engineering -- cars, planes, just about anything else by the sound of things -- and would love fic that deals with the past few decades' worth of technological advancements as they've arrived (or haven't arrived) at the house. I would love anything to do with his experience of disability after the war -- encounters with other disabled servicemen, his experiences in the period of immediate recovery, or something set in the period of Roddie's homecoming after his smash. Or anything else to do with wartime experiences, whether shaded with the gothic in their own right, perhaps in ways that Faraday couldn't perceive if he were privy to them, but that Caroline and Roddie can. Did Caroline and Roderick see much of each other during the course of the war, or correspond at all? How did their paths diverge?
The novel is shy around the matter of homosexuality considered relative to Waters' regular oeuvre, but I would be very interested in a reading of both of the Ayres siblings as queer -- whether they're fully conscious of it or not. (Though I can't imagine Waters isn't conscious of that aspect of the novel, especially with Caroline -- the Wrens were the only branch of the British armed forces where homosexuality wasn't formally outlawed, though that didn't mean that women who loved other women had an especially easy time either.) I'd love anything about Caroline's friendships and relationships during the war, or Roddie's experiences and connections in the RAF.
I'd be interested in further encounters with the titular stranger, the malevolent and sometimes petty force that exerts itself over Hundreds and the Ayres family -- feel free to fill in the blanks of unseen encounters during Faraday's tenure at Hundreds, or is there any chance of the phenomena Roddie so hates and fears following him to the institution even after he's been expelled from Hundreds itself? Given the animating obsessions and resentments that drive the forces haunting Hundreds, is there any chance of escape? How much of her sister does Caroline suspect, and what does she finally glimpse?
Or suppose Caroline manages to make her escape from the house itself -- I confess I always find her death just agonizing so if you want to fix that any way you can think of, especially if Betty helps, I'd love that. If a gothic novel is the romance between a girl and a house -- Faraday having coopted the form in his own way -- is there any possibility of a divorce between Caroline and Hundreds? What does life after haunting look like? Likewise, a canon-divergent piece where Roderick's fate plays out differently (whatever that looks like in your imagination, even if it's still tragic) would be right up my alley.
I love the novel's scenes of struggle against entropy -- from the waves of cultural changes that seem profoundly threatening to people like the Ayres to the physical deterioration that time and use exert on Hundreds Hall. You could write a thousand words just about looking after a shabby old house and I would love it. Caroline is really the haunted gothic heroine I've been waiting for all my life -- sturdy, sensitive yet sensible, kinda butch, loves dogs -- and I love the ways she's grounded in the physical world. Her slightly careless existence isolated from much of the world may not look like Faraday's standard for womanhood, but she's more interested in all her own baggage to wrangle. Caroline must be equally if not more aware than Faraday of the ways she's being shuttled around socially in an attempt to set her up with a suitable mate and save the house in the process, so what does she make of that? Does she steel herself to the prospect, or recoil from it, or both? What's her life like when Faraday's gaze isn't on her, and what is her relationship with her brother like?
I'd love to read more about the decadent fall-of-the-house-of-Ayres themes, both the literal decay of Hundreds Hall and the termination of the Ayres family line without issue. Really, if you want to pull out all the Gothic stops here -- Rebecca, The Turn of the Screw, M.R. James, have at it -- or embrace the class issues, I would be really into it, so feel free to weave in any other gothic/horror elements or inject some (further) intertextuality. I'd also love any crossovers or intertextual engagement with Mary Renault's The Charioteer or Sarah Waters' own The Night Watch.
Ship-wise, I'd be interested in fic that deals with Caroline's canonical relationship with Faraday in all its complexity; I'd also be interested in Roderick/Faraday, and all the differentials of age/experience/class between them -- how weird could that professional and personal relationship get? I'd also be interested in Caroline/Brenda or any of her other wartime women friends, or Roderick/any of his RAF buddies, including the younger navigator whose passing he grieves so pointedly:
Smut likes: Body worship. Mutual masturbation. Body hair. Significant dressing and undressing. Uniform kink. Oral sex. Anything employing Faraday's questionably therapeutic electrical devices for less than pure purposes. Medical kink. Anything that leans into the boyish interwar aspect of Roderick's attractiveness -- situational homosexuality, wartime masculinities, wild repression, societal baggage in the bedroom -- or the more sturdy, sensible aspects of Caroline's -- her strong hairy legs, her attractive disheveledness, schoolgirl pashes extended into wartime adulthood, female masculinity, furious sexual repression.
*
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
(This canon is a novella published in 1898; it's currently in the public domain as well as widely available in print. You can read it at Project Gutenberg, as well as elsewhere.)
- Miles, Flora
I love this story to pieces, its eerie depiction of the ambiguity of supposed childhood innocence and the way it establishes its dread creeping fear on a direct line into the darkest parts of the Victorian psyche. With regard to apparitionist/non-apparitionist schools of thought I like to have my cake and eat it too, so feel free to come down on either or both sides of that line or weave back and forth across it as you desire. Feel to write any kind of crossover with then-contemporary or modern weird fiction, ghost stories, or horror fiction. Or simply 19th century children's fiction -- if you've ever wanted to cross this novella over with A Little Princess or The Secret Garden, now is your time.
With regard to the novella's adults, I'm not especially interested in Quint as a character on his own but I'm very interested in Jessel, the second governess, Mrs. Grose, the kids' deadbeat guardian, and the characters in the framing story for that matter. I do take the reading that there's a solidly sexual element to Quint's supposed malign influence on the children as well as Jessel and that Mile's offenses leading him to be sent down from school likewise related to sex, either directly or indirectly -- I'm fine with characters having typically Victorian views of sexual abuse and sexual knowledge and I prefer an interpretation where Quint remains an unpleasant figure even at his most magnetic. (If the CSA reading isn't one you prefer, feel free to elide, avoid, or omit it entirely in favor of another.) I'm familiar with most adaptations of this story, including The Innocents and Netflix's recent Haunting of Bly Manor, but would prefer no cross-pollination in fic with Britten's opera, The Turning, or The Nightcomers.
I love the double-edged ambiguity of Miles, the role-transgressing jauntiness of Flora, the kids' shadowy yet thoroughly Victorian backstory, and the pure banality of how they both end up wealthy yet unwanted; anything about the two of them either separately or together, or any missing scenes from their lives and experiences with their creepy and/or flakey guardians would be welcome. We learn that Miles did (or rather said) something bad away at school; I'd love an outside POV on that from a fellow student, perhaps one of those that he himself says he liked, or an adult's account of something barely-glimpsed and even less understood. (Or Miles' own unreliable account, unmediated by the governess-narrator?) In an AU where Miles survives and is still a piece of work, how might he himself frame the narrative of the haunting if given the chance? Does he ever end up going back to school? In such an alternate continuation, do the hysterical associations between Miles and precocious wickedness linger?
Flora is rather younger than Miles and is exempted from some aspects of the expected Victorian path to adulthood by dint of being a girl, but as a result the governess seems even less equipped to deal with her when she's not being sweet and charming. Her confidence and courage give the governess narrator the willies, and her supernatural cockeyed qualities take a rather different form than her brother's. Does she take the ghosts of Bly with her when she goes on to her next residence after the story's finish? How might the shadow of the Quint-Jessel affair and the second governess' hysteria linger with her? The governess narrator mentally characterizes Flora's relationship toward Miles as being one of girlish adulation for an intellectually and physically superior male relative, but it doesn't have to be -- feel free to turn those gendered expectations inside out, or to explore what else bonds siblings together.
I'd love any postcanon fic -- what's it like to survive a ghost story, or not to survive one? If you want to give either Miles or Flora a literary afterlife (in a canon-divergent AU or otherwise) I would love it -- either as writers and artists themselves, or preserved in another contemporary document like a case study or a series of gossipy letters. I'd love something where they echo other sets of famous literary siblings or blaze new literary trail. Might postcanon Flora outliving her brother mean living to tell her own version of the spectral experiences, perhaps contesting other accounts? Whether that's a riff into ultra-bleak feminist autobiography, Jamesian ambiguity, or dark comedy, I'm down. I'm a sucker for all the long shadows associated with Haunted Child characters all grown up, and Miles and Flora could conceivably have lived through all kinds of fin de siecle fun if Miles' untimely death hadn't intervened -- if you want to subvert or rearrange that cut-shortness, go to town writing an adult version of the siblings that's equally opaque, canny, and ambiguous, or that turns with time into something altogether different.
There's lots of room for missing scenes from the novel's events, or predating the second governess' arrival -- if you want to write anything from the children's POV, or any scene or exchange that might have transpired between them, I'd love that. Sinister secrets of Bly, uncanny geographies, or just the homey niceness of a fine old house grown suffocating and strange -- what else lies under the surface of that lake? Are there less-frequented rooms with their own dark histories? I'd love anything that contrasts the childhood landscape of the place (as a big old house with lots of odd corners and cozy rooms) with the adult scenes that have played out in its various locations. I'd love to read fic set during the first reign of Miss Jessel, especially if it's delivered through the children's slightly skewed and childish perspective -- the kids as spectators on an adult's psychological deterioration, or another sinister system of decay and collapse. Or set the fucked-up psychosexual snarl between the servants and their charges playing out at Bly against the backdrop of another grander-scale sort of downfall -- in a riff on late-19th-century invasion literature, or a crisis due to epidemic disease, or the undead takeover depicted in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula.
Or write epistolary fic from the perspective of a modern (or less-than-entirely-modern) historian trying to untangle the threads of life at Bly -- the written manuscript of the governess' tale is a key piece of the novel's framing, but what other documents of life in an Essex country house might serve to inform or illuminate what transpired there for an inquisitive scholar? If you're writing fake documents/epistolary fic, feel free to include Miles and Flora only in their textual afterlives rather than in person, or have one/both show up for an unexpected bit of oral history if you dare. I love fake academic writing, letters, framing stories, and all that good stuff, so if the spirit moves you I would adore a meta take on the lives (and deaths) of the children and adults who dwell at Bly. I'd also love to read anything that tweaks the narrative conventions of Victorian children's literature and/or literature about children, especially for horror or black comedy -- saintly dead kids, boys' own adventures, unspecified but surely filthy vices, Alice in Wonderland-style slightly sinister romps.
I don't have any particular ships I'm dying to see during the canon era but period-typical romantic school relationships with same-aged friends or postcanon relationships for any survivors are also totally fine. If you write fic about the fucked-up relationship snarl between Jessel, Quint, and the children, or about Miles' nonspecific indiscretions at school -- and please do! -- I'd prefer no explicit sexual content involving the kids.
*
Mary Reilly - Valerie Martin
(This canon is a 1990 novel still widely available in print, including in ebook form.)
- Mary Reilly
I love this book to bits, both on its own merits and as a canny transformative take on classic lit. Without 19th century genre fiction I wouldn't be in fandom (thank fuck for Dracula) but Strange Case was a late addition to my repertoire and I'm thrilled to have an outside-POV take on it that brings such fascinating dimensions to the fairly dude-heavy original text.
I love this novel's sense of heightened erotic atmosphere, even as Mary herself cleaves with firm purpose to repression and proper decorum -- if you want to engage with that on any level, either solo or in the context of her relationship with Henry Jekyll, I'd be only too happy to read it. Certain passages of the novel are pretty clearly inspired by the writings and experiences of Hannah Cullwick, a nineteenth-century diarist and working woman whose complex relationship with the middle-class barrister Arthur Munby revolved around the erotics of service. I would love anything where Mary enters into a similarly complicated and ambivalent relationship with her master, and her way of navigating that under her own terms and while reckoning with her own desires. What would it be like to take a position of negotiated power over her master, and to engage with his own complex relationship with desire?
I really enjoy and appreciate this novel's treatment of trauma, and the tangible presence of Mary's girlhood hardships in her strictly-managed adult life. The process of disclosure and concealment between Mary and her master draws them together just as it keeps them separated -- Mary's past experiences and present thoughts can scarcely be expressed to anyone, but they clearly demonstrate that she's had much of her short lifetime to reckon with (and perhaps repress) those things that can't be spoken of in polite company. Her account of her father's drinking clearly strikes a chord with Jekyll, and Hyde's presence clearly strikes a chord with her that's similar to her past suffering under her father's attention -- just about anything dealing with that would make me happy.
The interlude at Mrs. Farraday's rooms after Hyde's crime there, with the murdered girl's friends and perhaps colleagues coming to find her condition, always makes me want more of that milieu -- Farraday herself rubs Mary deeply wrong for some very legitimate reasons, but she seems more sympathetic to the murdered girl's mourners, and if you were to write a canon-divergent AU where Mary's more involved with those girls' lives after that chance meeting or interacts with them further I'd eat it up.
The domestic sphere is defined in this novel through a whole lot of hard work -- scrubbing, washing, brushing, hauling, polishing, and plenty of dirt that has to be forcibly cleared away to permit the respectable home to function. If you'd like to write anything about Mary's work, her relationships with Cook and Annie, or in general the intricacies of Victorian material culture from the POV of the person who has to do the serving rather than being served, I'd love that. I'd also love anything that deals with Mary's physical strength and capability and the contrast the novel draws (and Mary herself is certainly aware of) between her lower-class, hard-working vigor and her master's elevated and cerebral fragility. The Stevenson novel reiterates a few times that Hyde is small and stunted compared to his own master -- is there any chance that Mary could subdue him? Would the doctor's clothes hang better on Mary than they do on Hyde? If things go Cullwick-and-Munby-shaped, do the two of them ever consciously try on or shed roles? (Assuming that Jekyll stays alive long enough to do so -- if you want to fudge his canonical fate in both novels, feel free to do so.)
I'm especially interested in the novel's depiction of the Jekyll/Hyde duality considered from Mary's own viewpoint, especially when the original story's rather short on female characters across the board -- Jekyll is the closest thing to Mary's ideal gentleman, while Hyde unsettles and repulses her. If you'd like to show alternate scenes or encounters between Mary and Hyde, I'd love that, especially anything that plays on the reading of Hyde as a newly-minted gentleman struggling to enjoy the finer things in life (his own suite of rooms, for instance) with the effortless pleasure of a natural-born cad. He occupies a very different place in the Victorian rubrics of class and social status than Mary, and his relationship to her master is even more complicated than her own if such a thing is even possible -- if you want to explore more of their fucked-up triangulation, or to explore Mary's feelings for this young man who has inexplicably wormed his way into her master's confidences, I would love that. Mary's initial flicker of jealousy when she thinks that Hyde is her master's newest project and is supplanting her is like a jolt of identity kink for me and I'm a sucker for Strange Case riffs where people suspect the doctor and his rough young protege are more than platonically intertwined so inject extra jealousy there if you feel. On the flipside, so to speak, I'd also love fic about Mary's canonical relationship with Henry Jekyll and any alternate paths it might have taken. All the scenes with the doctor examining Mary's scars really rove across that line between patronizing professional queasiness and personal tenderness, and their relationship suggests a host of missed opportunities and potential for moments of mutual recognition.
The novel's framing device of a recovered manuscript seems like it would lend itself well to epistolary fic between later correspondents or meta fic in other unusual formats -- BBS posts, academic writings and book reviews, Twitter scandals! -- dealing with the afterlife of Reilly's writing. Bonus points if you incorporate the various schools of historical thought and feminist theory that produced works like this one when combined with the Neo-Victorian novel form. My one caveat per my DNWs would be no focus on trans-exclusionary feminism. The whole rest of feminist theory and thought is your oyster.
Ship-wise, I love Mary's complex canonical relationships with both Jekyll and Hyde; I'd also be happy to read fic that pairs her with Mrs. Farraday, the murdered girl's friends, an OFC, or other female characters from 19th century literature. (Mina Murray? Rosa Budd? Grushenka Svetlova? Sybil Vane?)
Smut-specific prompts: you know that whole wildly fraught sequence with Jekyll's injured ankle and Mary having to assist him? Make it weird. Well, weirder. Or that scene where Mary must carefully and cautiously feed him his breakfast -- feel free to whump either or both of them freely for the sake of weird touchy-feely intimacy This seems like a great fandom for kink that doesn't involve intercourse in obvious ways, and I wouldn't be disappointed to receive that in this or any fandom -- size differences, age differences, class differences, sturdy women with sturdy muscles, the thrill of restrictive garments, the many pleasures of dirt! -- but if you'd like to write sexy stuff with sex in it, I'd especially love cunnilingus, body worship, fucked-up knifeplay, undernegotiated roughness, and dubcon/noncon involving Hyde. If you'd want to write more insidious dubcon or noncon involving Mary's sainted master, I'd be here for that too.
*
HBO's Rome
(This canon is a two-season HBO drama series from 2005-2007, available on DVD and in digital download format as well as streaming on HBO's various streaming platforms.)
The odd fandom out this year, setting-wise! I went down the HBO Rome rabbit hole this year during self-isolation and it has been a balm to my soul. In another life I was a wannabe Latinist so any Classical content you want to cram in there is very welcome, but I'm also extremely loosey-goosey with the historical research so if you're not comfortable there or just want to play first and foremost in the landscape we're given in canon, I'd love that too.
- Gaius Octavian Caesar
Really I am happy with anything that has spooky cold-blooded poetry-lover Octavian getting up to no good. This show's setting is a lot of fun for me, and I welcome fic that deals with all kinds of politicking, public events, cultural differences, societal mythmaking, romantic and sexual intrigues, the complicated family dynamics between Atia and her offspring, and any random bits of actual non-HBO history that you feel inclined to incorporate for your own amusement. Octavian has an impressive future ahead of him but I'm not especially interested in fic about him in later life as full-blown Caesar Augustus -- if you want to diverge from the historical record, however, feel free to deal with his later life as much as you like. This guy is my not-so-secret fave (both as frosty sensitive youth in s1 and as a glacial hunk with murder eyes in s2) but the whole cast here is near and dear to my heart, from Vercingetorix to Vorena, so feel free to run wild with an ensemble piece so long as Octavian is in the middle of it all.
Octavian's relationship with Caesar is a big area of interest for me -- I would love more scenes of the two of them together as Octavian closes the gap between young adulthood and the mature desire for power he's settled on by the ripe old age of nineteen. Octavian's a quiet one for much of canon, so I'd love a look at what he sees in his famous relative, or his awareness of Caesar's flaws more substantial than just physical vulnerability. I'd also love to see more of what Caesar sees in Octavian -- nepotism and an appreciation for his ability to keep a secret are certainly parts of it, but they both have a tendency toward the cold-blooded and I find that fascinating as a source of potential commonality. Canon doesn't really touch the then-contemporary allegations that Octavian earned his status as Caesar's heir through a sexual relationship, but I'd love to see how just the allegation of that would play out in the HBO Rome universe, as well as what the reality of that might look like, if you're so inclined. I ship Caesar and Octavian every which way, and if you're interested in more ship-specific prompts feel free to check out my 2020 RMSE letter
From Anthony Everitt's biography of the historical Augustus:
Show!Octavian doesn't appear to share his RL counterpart's health issues during this period of his life (apart from using poor health to beg off sparring with Titus Pullo) but I'd love fic dealing with those issues anyway -- anything dealing with the tension between his oversized and precocious ambition and the uncertainty of living with frail health in the ancient world (or especially the overlap with Caesar's own illness and its significance for his political career) would be fabulous.
I'd love more scenes of Octavian and Octavia at any point as brother and sister with one-time jaunts into incest -- what on earth is going on with Octavian that that incest gambit works? What if it turned back on Servilia in a way she hadn't expected? I genuinely love everything about Octavia in her own right, so the two of them interacting in any capacity would thrill me -- solving a mystery, covering up a murder, becoming Rome's #1 incestuous power couple together, or just figuring out what their relationship is like when they're out from under the pressure of a shared family name. What does Octavia make of her brother's budding capacity for calm cruelty? What are some other times in their relationship where the two of them have sought out one another for comfort, or just for a co-conspirator?
What goes on during Octavian's timeskips away from his mother and sister? What does he get up to with Maecenas and Agrippa? I find the note he leaves Rome on for the final time before the actor-switch a really interesting one, and I feel like we might have gotten more of his relationships with his friends (especially poor smitten Agrippa, who seems like an all right fellow?) if season two hadn't been quite so truncated. So feel free to fill in any of those gaps and gray spaces, or unspool a whole other ulterior narrative about Octavian's earliest days as Caesar's heir. And how does Octavian feel about Caesar's death, on a personal level? On a pragmatic one?
Octavian's relationship with Antony in all its incredible thorniness is a fascinating part of both seasons for me -- we see much of them as foes in canon but not as much of their periods of collaboration, and that's fascinating to me. Octavian's ambitions and willfulness make him a not insignificant obstacle to Antony after the death of Caesar (and maybe before?) but the deep history between Antony and Atia makes the whole thing fraught. I yearn for something where the two of them need to play nicely together in the political/social sphere to achieve some goal that will benefit both of them, whether it's avoiding eventual war or avoiding the wrath of Atia. I do also ship Antony/Octavian, with all the competition and aggression and complicated emotions that entails, and any kind of interactions on the spectrum from battlefield dubcon hatesex to complicated wooing would be fabulous. These two are also featured in my 2020 RMSE letter if you're interested in ship-specific prompts. (Fake ancient Roman dating! Lupercalia fuckfests!)
I also enjoy what we see of Octavian's relationship with Livia in s2, especially but certainly not limited to the kinky sex -- Octavian must go on quite the journey of self-discovery between frankly telling his future bride that he's into impact play and the first time we see her sex-choke the living daylights out of him. If you want to write scenes from their marriage, especially Livia leveling up into a powerhouse of a Roman matron with a finger on the pulse of what makes her oddball husband tick, I would be all about it. The show plays a little fast and loose with the societal judgments placed on well-to-do Roman women, which is all well and good from a HBO production, but I'm also fascinated with the thought of a woman who by all appearances likes a good time figuring out how to make the best of Octavian's emerging stances (in public life if not private) around chastity and matronly morals.
My silliest side wants more of Octavian's adventures with Titus Pullo, with Pullo chatting frankly with this spooky aristocratic boy and getting his unique brand of advice. I'd also love Titus Pullo and Octavian alternating who gets to be the pet sociopath in their relationship. Titus Pullo was born to be a great minion, and Octavian desperately needs a friend and authority figure who's not warped by power, but you can have them get up to any kind of mischief you desire and I'd be all about it.
Ship-wise, Octavian is my versatile fandom little black dress (little white toga virilis?) for this show so consider just about any of his relationships as fair game. I'm interested in his canonical relationships with Octavia and Livia, and I ship him with Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Titus Pullo, Agrippa, Maecenas, and Brutus.
Re. my DNWs, I'd prefer no actual sex involving Octavian prior to the point in the first season where he canonically loses his virginity or where he's understood in Roman terms as a bulla-wearing child; sex where he's at least 16 years old but still under 18 is absolutely fine and dandy, and characters kinking on his youth in that context is totally okay.
Smut-specific prompts: hangups and scandals about Roman citizens submitting to be penetrated! I love Octavian's canonical sadomasochism and would adore anything incorporating impact play and choking. Intercrural sex, facefucking, femdom, mutually manipulative dubcon, age differences, class differences, Classical sex positions. (If you can work in someone lowering themselves down onto a dick using a handily-placed strap a la the Warren Cup, you win Yuletide.)
*
Edward, Edward - Lolah Burford
(This canon is an 1973 novel; to my knowledge it's no longer in print, though a digital copy is pretty easy to find on questionable download sites like Libgen. You can still get your hands on a physical copy wherever used books are for sale; prices on Bookfinder vary from ~$20-150.)
- Edward Clare Armstrong
This book is stone-cold bonkers, and I am not exaggerating or just being polite when I say any fic for it would thrill me in a major way, but this is Yuletide so you might want a little more to go on than that. Edward is the closest thing I've ever encountered to a male gothic heroine -- anything more dealing with the high-drama aristocratic tension of his family history and personal life would be very welcome. More 18th century research porn, more continuing Sadeian adventures in innocence and experience, more Edward whump! Get him sick, injure him, beat him, have him get kidnapped and brutalized again. (With bonus points for the Earl finding out and being brutally torn between jealousy that someone or something else has mistreated his ward and, well, whatever other emotions that kind of thing might stir up in a complicated and possessive lover.) I'd be dying for all kinds of fic about trauma here, especially the various literally and metaphorically claustrophobic situations in which Edward finds himself -- his dependency for material support on a man who is both his father and his sexual partner, his limited world, the way he's barred from the rest of his family, his tendency to get locked up in priest holes.
Another joy: religious themes out the waz! The canon is certainly interested in the appeal of Methodism to Edward's own disposition and the deep influences of religion for better or worse on both Edward and his father's viewpoints -- the religious controversies of the Georgian era are very much alive for these characters and that's an interesting angle on the period for me.
Edward's all-encompassing curiosity and love is a really interesting counterpoint to the dark gothic extremity of the series of events that sends him to live with the Earl, and I'd love to see more about it -- his lonely boyhood spent learning to make butter and hate tyranny, his attraction to Wesley and Shakespeare, his love of the material side of rural life, and ultimately his romantic relationships. I would also love anything exploring Edward's darker side or taking him to a darker place -- Edward grappling with his faith and his calling, more clashes with Tyne or between his sincerely-felt beliefs regarding hurt and forgiveness with the reality of his relationships. I love the absolute smorgasbord of personal suffering Edward goes through in this novel, but part of me desperately wants him to snap, whether that looks like a cold turning-away for good from a damaged and compelling lover (my mental touchstone for this is always The Heiress (1949) for some reason), a conscious campaign of seduction, frank self-destruction, or a straight-up guns-blazing, bloody-murder revenge plotline. I love, love, love parricide as the capstone to a complicated relationship -- or hell, filicide, sorry Edward -- so I am definitely opting into major character death here. Duels! Poisons! Hauntings! Wars! Flights to the continent! Just give Edward some satisfaction, for heaven's sake.
Feel free to explore the aspects of Edward and the Earl's relationship that a 1970s novel can only handle allusively -- I'd love porn with emotions here and anything dealing with the complicated interplay of pain and pleasure/attraction and remorse that characterizes their coming together. I really love the interplay in relationships with stark inequalities around (but certainly not limited to) age and rank -- the Earl's awareness that his son is young and fresh while he himself is old and jaded, and the exchange of power and experience vs. youth and beauty. I love the Earl as a character but I'm also desperate to see these two clash -- tell me about times when Edward has had (or lost) the upper hand, about more times when Edward crosses his uncle (purposefully? unwittingly?) and the fallout from that, or different turns their relationship could have taken.
While we're going into the complicated sexual relationships of the Tyne family, I would love fic with Edward having sex with his father's mistress -- the one who physically resembles him. She gets a seriously, seriously dark fate in canon, and if you choose to give her an alternate ending or enlist her in a broader plot to give the Earl some just deserts. Any and all of the canon courtesans are welcome in fic.
His relationship with Marion Alleyn at Oxford is wildly romantic for me and I'd love anything where it goes differently, for the better or otherwise, or takes a deeper set of twists and turns. It's hard to come back from your dad fucking your first college boyfriend, true, but there's a lot of possibilities there worth ficcing. If you'd rather explore earlier territory I'd also love fic where the threat of sexual bargaining during Alleyn's kidnapping becomes a reality, or where Marion is the one who introduces Edward to sex as well as radical politics and has the privilege and misfortune of unraveling his friend's complicated relationship with his guardian. Alleyn may say nothing shocks him, and he's pretty blasé about what he thinks their relationship is like at the time of his Divinity exams, but there's quite a bit about the Earl he doesn't know. I'd also love fic where Edward and Marion end up on picaresque Regency adventures together, mixed up in politics or on the high seas. (If you're hankering to write an Austen crossover, now is your time!)
I also love Edward's canonical relationship with Anne, as little as we get of it -- I appreciate that she first turns up as a pistol-packing avenger in men's clothes (my favorite period-piece trope on the planet might be pragmatic crossdressing) and I'd love more of what draws the two of them together and what the future might hold, or missing scenes. If you do go a revenge-plot route, I'd love for her to be involved, and her position so already entrenched in the great Armstrong family drama is a lot of fun for me.
Historical cameos would be great here, and canon has a lot of fun with them, so feel free to include real historical figures. If you want to go a bonkers but very welcome route -- in-universe historical documents from decades or centuries later. Maybe some later person writes a biography of James Noel Holland, scandalous Earl of Tyne (or of Edward himself -- what does he go on to do? what might his later impact on history be?) and there's a great deal of scholarly controversy over it, or a historian uncovers something in the archives that suggests the dark sexual snarl at the heart of Edward's family life.
Maybe needless to say here given my other likes, but feel free to go balls-to-the-wall on the weird porn here! Self-indulgent historical research spiraling is also very welcome -- Burford's digression into how exactly her characters take snuff is a little much for even me, but feel free to hew as close or stray as far from the material realities of the 18th and early 19th century as you feel like.
Ship-wise, I ship Edward with the Earl, Marion, Anne, and with various courtesans. I'd also be down for Marion/Anne/Edward as an OT3, but I'd prefer no mutual polyamorous trios or threesomes with the Earl involved. (Dysfunctional love triangles are fine, however.)
Smut-specific prompts: whew! I want Edward to get fucked every which way. Tie him up, brutalize him, pull his hair, cut his hair, have him get nonconned, it's all good. Nipple kink, Regency tit torture, biting, semi-public sex, pseudo-anonymous sex, clothed or partially-clothed sex (especially, in the case of m/f sex, where layers of the woman's clothing are lifted/unpinned/loosened but not removed) and literary allusions in the boudoir. I'd also love anything with Edward causing deliberate pain, especially with the Earl -- wound-fingering, rough sex, breathplay, or just topping him with as little concern for his well-being as his father shows him the first time they have sex.
One fandom-specific caveat here relating to my DNWs: the canon has plenty of sections where Edward and the Earl interact with erotically/romantically-charged beats while Edward is a child by the standards of his own era. No need to ignore or retcon what's in the book or to exile it from discussion in dialogue, but I would prefer no on-the-page intimacy between them in fic, even intimacy short of sex, while Edward is younger than sixteen.
- Likes (General)
- Likes (Smut)
- DNWs
- The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters (Caroline, Roderick)
- The Turn Of The Screw - Henry James (Miles, Flora)
- Mary Reilly - Valerie Martin (Mary Reilly)
- HBO's Rome (Gaius Octavian)
- Edward, Edward - Lolah Burford (Edward Clare Armstrong)
Likes:
Some general things I dig:
- historical details, material culture, pop culture
- allegiances and loyalty (especially loyalty kink!)
- dreams and nightmares, feverish visions, neurasthenia
- psychological horror
- captivity, whether literal or metaphorical (house arrest, claustrophobia, bonding with one's captors/captives, bogus politeness from host to 'guest', being technically free to physically leave but psychologically restricted)
- ghosts (poltergeists, spirit visitations, seances, 19th century Spiritualism, vengeful spirits)
- body horror (surprise new orifices, involuntarily changing bodies, parasites, viral transformations, losing control over your own body and mind, etc.)
- gothic horror tropes (mystery, wonder, and the macabre, decaying old houses, ancestral curses, family secrets, etc.)
- noir tropes (doubles! identity trouble! perversity, pessimism, fatalism, and menace!)
- claustrophobia, doubt, guilt, decay
- conversely, characters with unusual or offbeat viewpoints being businesslike, confident, and competent
- trauma and PTSD, memory and personal baggage
- disability and the body
- road trips and travel
- character death
- angst (angsty tormented ladies! angsty tormented dudes! stoic suffering!)
- sturdy/muscular women with tender hearts
- spooky atmosphere -- decaying hotel rooms, sinister places, oppressive atmospheres
- cozy atmosphere -- small-scale domesticity, hospitality, characters looking after each other, running a household, making a home
- goofy or dark humor, humor in general
- religious themes and elements (whether positive or more ambivalent)
- family relationships and parental baggage
- in-universe documents (letters, manuscripts, academic journals, etc.)
- unusual formats (interactive fiction, illustrated fic, etc.)
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 especially enjoy:
- loyalty kink
- friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers-while-remaining-enemies
- agonized pining both reciprocated and unreciprocated
- one-night stands with complicated emotions attached, or purely sexual relationships leading to unexpected feelings
- hurt/comfort -- one or more parties getting tragically roughed up or whumped to hell and back and needing stoic ministrations; h/c where a rough or unpleasant person is the recipient of the comfort whether they like it or not; h/c where a villainous character is doing the comforting; cautious or grudging h/c
- quarrelsome but ride-or-die friendships
- characters who just can't stay away from each other
- domesticity and tenderness coming before characters become lovers
If you're interested in writing smut, I love:
- size differences
- age differences
- body worship
- oral sex (cunnilingus, fellatio, rimming)
- handjobs, fingering
- frottage and non-penetrative sex
- clothed/semi-clothed sex
- fancy clothes, uniforms, layers, dressing and undressing
- hatesex and fighting-turned-fucking
- breathplay
- inhibitions and interpersonal baggage in the bedroom
- anonymous or pseudo-anonymous hookups (especially in semi-public places -- public parks, train compartments, dormitories and barracks)
- noncon and dubcon
- painful/clumsy but fun and tender sex, OR, 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
- time-period-specific sexual practices and meeting places.
I love noncon and dubcon, especially mutually antagonistic or psychologically muddy angles and characters making difficult bargains using sex. I appreciate a focus on difficult/complicated emotions and experiences and the conflicted side of dubcon -- a character having sex they don't uncomplicatedly desire but that they believe will help them achieve some goal, for instance. For noncon I especially like to read about horror, discomfort, resistance, self-disgust, and anger on the victim's side; for perpetrator attitudes I like reading about hatred, mixed feelings, obsessive love, contempt, and the like, but I don't care much for ravishment tropes where the victim secretly wanted it all along/hated it at first but came to love it, scenarios where afterward the rape is a non-issue as though it hadn't happened at all, or where the rape results in unambiguous true love and a happily ever after. I'm fine with non-explicit noncon and dubcon and would be just as happy with only the portrayal of aftermath or implication if that's more in your comfort zone.
Pairing-wise, I've tried to make mention of specific ships I'm especially fond of, including those that extend beyond requested characters, but I'm not monoshippy in any fandom and I'm pretty open to whatever pairings you want to bring to the table. I dig slash, femslash, het, gen, and anything else; feel free to write any kind of pairing you like or none at all, as well as multiple pairings, OT3s and poly relationships, infidelity, etc. Any level of intensity or non-intensity with regard to sex, violence, character death and other dark stuff is fine by me, including major character death and downer endings on a character-specific scale. A lot of my canons deal on some level with real-life social issues (homophobia, sexual violence, domestic 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 fine with all different formats and structures for fic, from casefic to character study to domestic fluff to plotless porn. As far as nominated characters, you are under zero obligation to include all (or only) my requested characters in the same fic, and I'm happy for other characters to appear. I'm totally on board with AUs, especially those that riff on or echo the original canon events/setting, but canon-divergent and for-want-of-a-nail AUs are very welcome, as well as alternate settings, alternate time periods and genre/pastiche AUs. Let the world be your oyster there.
I enjoy AUs that racebend characters, always-a-girl genderswaps, and fic where characters are written as trans, especially fic where the character's canonical gender and gender presentation doesn't change, just the character's presumed cis status. (Mary Reilly or Flora as trans women and girls, for instance.) However, I prefer transfic that isn't focused on coming out, self-discovery, outing, or the experience of transphobia to the exclusion of other elements like plot. I'm happy to receive crossovers and fusions -- if you're not sure if I'm familiar with a fandom judging from my AO3 fandom list or past request letters, feel free to ask via a mod. I'd be happy to receive poetry, but would rather not receive free verse -- any other metrical forms are fair game.
If you want to check out my past exchange letters, you can find them here.
This year I am participating in Cooktide (prompts and fic around characters cooking and dining), the Interactive Fiction challenge, and (ideally) Crueltide and Yuleporn (TBA). If anything in those prompts sparks your interest, fabulous.
EDIT 10/17/20: Yuleporn prompts are go!
EDIT 10/22/20: And now Crueltide.
DNWs:
I'd rather not receive free verse poetry, transfic focused on coming-out or transphobic hardship, depictions of self-harm or eating disorders, or unrequested depictions of suicide/child sexual abuse/incest. I don't want to read explicit sex involving characters under 16. This year I would also prefer no references to 21st century politics or politicians, modern-style transphobia or homophobia, or any focus on the consequences of COVID-19.
Fic dealing with the canonical abuse themes in some readings of The Turn Of The Screw and Mary Reilly, as well as the weird sexual politics of Late Republican Rome as they apply to Octavian, is fine. The fallout of sexual abuse in these canons (or the fallout of the complicated semi-sexual relationship between Edward and his father in EE before he reaches adolescence) is fine to feature as well, but I'd prefer no on-the-page sex acts or descriptions of sex acts between adults and children.
*
The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters
(This canon is a novel published in 2009; it's still widely available in print, including in ebook form.)
- Roderick Ayres, Caroline Ayres
I loved this novel to pieces, and it does a tremendous job pulling apart the societal underpinnings of gothic fiction through its incisive use of historical place and time.The Ayres siblings are mostly seen through Faraday's eyes, and that casts them in an interesting and complicated light; I love the narrator's compelling presence as one lens through which the story unfolds, but I'd love to get more of the two of them outside that structure, either scenes we never glimpse from Faraday's POV in canon or without that narrative filter.
Roderick's struggles at Hundreds don't start with his accident, but that certainly didn't make his life much easier -- what was his boyhood there like, and what was his sense of his inheritance as the only son? I love Roderick's passion for machines and engineering -- cars, planes, just about anything else by the sound of things -- and would love fic that deals with the past few decades' worth of technological advancements as they've arrived (or haven't arrived) at the house. I would love anything to do with his experience of disability after the war -- encounters with other disabled servicemen, his experiences in the period of immediate recovery, or something set in the period of Roddie's homecoming after his smash. Or anything else to do with wartime experiences, whether shaded with the gothic in their own right, perhaps in ways that Faraday couldn't perceive if he were privy to them, but that Caroline and Roddie can. Did Caroline and Roderick see much of each other during the course of the war, or correspond at all? How did their paths diverge?
The novel is shy around the matter of homosexuality considered relative to Waters' regular oeuvre, but I would be very interested in a reading of both of the Ayres siblings as queer -- whether they're fully conscious of it or not. (Though I can't imagine Waters isn't conscious of that aspect of the novel, especially with Caroline -- the Wrens were the only branch of the British armed forces where homosexuality wasn't formally outlawed, though that didn't mean that women who loved other women had an especially easy time either.) I'd love anything about Caroline's friendships and relationships during the war, or Roddie's experiences and connections in the RAF.
I'd be interested in further encounters with the titular stranger, the malevolent and sometimes petty force that exerts itself over Hundreds and the Ayres family -- feel free to fill in the blanks of unseen encounters during Faraday's tenure at Hundreds, or is there any chance of the phenomena Roddie so hates and fears following him to the institution even after he's been expelled from Hundreds itself? Given the animating obsessions and resentments that drive the forces haunting Hundreds, is there any chance of escape? How much of her sister does Caroline suspect, and what does she finally glimpse?
Or suppose Caroline manages to make her escape from the house itself -- I confess I always find her death just agonizing so if you want to fix that any way you can think of, especially if Betty helps, I'd love that. If a gothic novel is the romance between a girl and a house -- Faraday having coopted the form in his own way -- is there any possibility of a divorce between Caroline and Hundreds? What does life after haunting look like? Likewise, a canon-divergent piece where Roderick's fate plays out differently (whatever that looks like in your imagination, even if it's still tragic) would be right up my alley.
I love the novel's scenes of struggle against entropy -- from the waves of cultural changes that seem profoundly threatening to people like the Ayres to the physical deterioration that time and use exert on Hundreds Hall. You could write a thousand words just about looking after a shabby old house and I would love it. Caroline is really the haunted gothic heroine I've been waiting for all my life -- sturdy, sensitive yet sensible, kinda butch, loves dogs -- and I love the ways she's grounded in the physical world. Her slightly careless existence isolated from much of the world may not look like Faraday's standard for womanhood, but she's more interested in all her own baggage to wrangle. Caroline must be equally if not more aware than Faraday of the ways she's being shuttled around socially in an attempt to set her up with a suitable mate and save the house in the process, so what does she make of that? Does she steel herself to the prospect, or recoil from it, or both? What's her life like when Faraday's gaze isn't on her, and what is her relationship with her brother like?
I'd love to read more about the decadent fall-of-the-house-of-Ayres themes, both the literal decay of Hundreds Hall and the termination of the Ayres family line without issue. Really, if you want to pull out all the Gothic stops here -- Rebecca, The Turn of the Screw, M.R. James, have at it -- or embrace the class issues, I would be really into it, so feel free to weave in any other gothic/horror elements or inject some (further) intertextuality. I'd also love any crossovers or intertextual engagement with Mary Renault's The Charioteer or Sarah Waters' own The Night Watch.
Ship-wise, I'd be interested in fic that deals with Caroline's canonical relationship with Faraday in all its complexity; I'd also be interested in Roderick/Faraday, and all the differentials of age/experience/class between them -- how weird could that professional and personal relationship get? I'd also be interested in Caroline/Brenda or any of her other wartime women friends, or Roderick/any of his RAF buddies, including the younger navigator whose passing he grieves so pointedly:
'You know his navigator died, when their plane came down? I think he blamed himself for that. It was nobody’s fault, of course. —No one’s but the Germans’, I mean. But they say it’s always hard on the pilots when their crews are lost. The boy was younger than Roddie; only just nineteen. Rod used to say that it ought to have been the other way around: that the boy had had more to live for than he did.'
Smut likes: Body worship. Mutual masturbation. Body hair. Significant dressing and undressing. Uniform kink. Oral sex. Anything employing Faraday's questionably therapeutic electrical devices for less than pure purposes. Medical kink. Anything that leans into the boyish interwar aspect of Roderick's attractiveness -- situational homosexuality, wartime masculinities, wild repression, societal baggage in the bedroom -- or the more sturdy, sensible aspects of Caroline's -- her strong hairy legs, her attractive disheveledness, schoolgirl pashes extended into wartime adulthood, female masculinity, furious sexual repression.
*
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
(This canon is a novella published in 1898; it's currently in the public domain as well as widely available in print. You can read it at Project Gutenberg, as well as elsewhere.)
- Miles, Flora
I love this story to pieces, its eerie depiction of the ambiguity of supposed childhood innocence and the way it establishes its dread creeping fear on a direct line into the darkest parts of the Victorian psyche. With regard to apparitionist/non-apparitionist schools of thought I like to have my cake and eat it too, so feel free to come down on either or both sides of that line or weave back and forth across it as you desire. Feel to write any kind of crossover with then-contemporary or modern weird fiction, ghost stories, or horror fiction. Or simply 19th century children's fiction -- if you've ever wanted to cross this novella over with A Little Princess or The Secret Garden, now is your time.
With regard to the novella's adults, I'm not especially interested in Quint as a character on his own but I'm very interested in Jessel, the second governess, Mrs. Grose, the kids' deadbeat guardian, and the characters in the framing story for that matter. I do take the reading that there's a solidly sexual element to Quint's supposed malign influence on the children as well as Jessel and that Mile's offenses leading him to be sent down from school likewise related to sex, either directly or indirectly -- I'm fine with characters having typically Victorian views of sexual abuse and sexual knowledge and I prefer an interpretation where Quint remains an unpleasant figure even at his most magnetic. (If the CSA reading isn't one you prefer, feel free to elide, avoid, or omit it entirely in favor of another.) I'm familiar with most adaptations of this story, including The Innocents and Netflix's recent Haunting of Bly Manor, but would prefer no cross-pollination in fic with Britten's opera, The Turning, or The Nightcomers.
I love the double-edged ambiguity of Miles, the role-transgressing jauntiness of Flora, the kids' shadowy yet thoroughly Victorian backstory, and the pure banality of how they both end up wealthy yet unwanted; anything about the two of them either separately or together, or any missing scenes from their lives and experiences with their creepy and/or flakey guardians would be welcome. We learn that Miles did (or rather said) something bad away at school; I'd love an outside POV on that from a fellow student, perhaps one of those that he himself says he liked, or an adult's account of something barely-glimpsed and even less understood. (Or Miles' own unreliable account, unmediated by the governess-narrator?) In an AU where Miles survives and is still a piece of work, how might he himself frame the narrative of the haunting if given the chance? Does he ever end up going back to school? In such an alternate continuation, do the hysterical associations between Miles and precocious wickedness linger?
Flora is rather younger than Miles and is exempted from some aspects of the expected Victorian path to adulthood by dint of being a girl, but as a result the governess seems even less equipped to deal with her when she's not being sweet and charming. Her confidence and courage give the governess narrator the willies, and her supernatural cockeyed qualities take a rather different form than her brother's. Does she take the ghosts of Bly with her when she goes on to her next residence after the story's finish? How might the shadow of the Quint-Jessel affair and the second governess' hysteria linger with her? The governess narrator mentally characterizes Flora's relationship toward Miles as being one of girlish adulation for an intellectually and physically superior male relative, but it doesn't have to be -- feel free to turn those gendered expectations inside out, or to explore what else bonds siblings together.
I'd love any postcanon fic -- what's it like to survive a ghost story, or not to survive one? If you want to give either Miles or Flora a literary afterlife (in a canon-divergent AU or otherwise) I would love it -- either as writers and artists themselves, or preserved in another contemporary document like a case study or a series of gossipy letters. I'd love something where they echo other sets of famous literary siblings or blaze new literary trail. Might postcanon Flora outliving her brother mean living to tell her own version of the spectral experiences, perhaps contesting other accounts? Whether that's a riff into ultra-bleak feminist autobiography, Jamesian ambiguity, or dark comedy, I'm down. I'm a sucker for all the long shadows associated with Haunted Child characters all grown up, and Miles and Flora could conceivably have lived through all kinds of fin de siecle fun if Miles' untimely death hadn't intervened -- if you want to subvert or rearrange that cut-shortness, go to town writing an adult version of the siblings that's equally opaque, canny, and ambiguous, or that turns with time into something altogether different.
There's lots of room for missing scenes from the novel's events, or predating the second governess' arrival -- if you want to write anything from the children's POV, or any scene or exchange that might have transpired between them, I'd love that. Sinister secrets of Bly, uncanny geographies, or just the homey niceness of a fine old house grown suffocating and strange -- what else lies under the surface of that lake? Are there less-frequented rooms with their own dark histories? I'd love anything that contrasts the childhood landscape of the place (as a big old house with lots of odd corners and cozy rooms) with the adult scenes that have played out in its various locations. I'd love to read fic set during the first reign of Miss Jessel, especially if it's delivered through the children's slightly skewed and childish perspective -- the kids as spectators on an adult's psychological deterioration, or another sinister system of decay and collapse. Or set the fucked-up psychosexual snarl between the servants and their charges playing out at Bly against the backdrop of another grander-scale sort of downfall -- in a riff on late-19th-century invasion literature, or a crisis due to epidemic disease, or the undead takeover depicted in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula.
Or write epistolary fic from the perspective of a modern (or less-than-entirely-modern) historian trying to untangle the threads of life at Bly -- the written manuscript of the governess' tale is a key piece of the novel's framing, but what other documents of life in an Essex country house might serve to inform or illuminate what transpired there for an inquisitive scholar? If you're writing fake documents/epistolary fic, feel free to include Miles and Flora only in their textual afterlives rather than in person, or have one/both show up for an unexpected bit of oral history if you dare. I love fake academic writing, letters, framing stories, and all that good stuff, so if the spirit moves you I would adore a meta take on the lives (and deaths) of the children and adults who dwell at Bly. I'd also love to read anything that tweaks the narrative conventions of Victorian children's literature and/or literature about children, especially for horror or black comedy -- saintly dead kids, boys' own adventures, unspecified but surely filthy vices, Alice in Wonderland-style slightly sinister romps.
I don't have any particular ships I'm dying to see during the canon era but period-typical romantic school relationships with same-aged friends or postcanon relationships for any survivors are also totally fine. If you write fic about the fucked-up relationship snarl between Jessel, Quint, and the children, or about Miles' nonspecific indiscretions at school -- and please do! -- I'd prefer no explicit sexual content involving the kids.
*
Mary Reilly - Valerie Martin
(This canon is a 1990 novel still widely available in print, including in ebook form.)
- Mary Reilly
I love this book to bits, both on its own merits and as a canny transformative take on classic lit. Without 19th century genre fiction I wouldn't be in fandom (thank fuck for Dracula) but Strange Case was a late addition to my repertoire and I'm thrilled to have an outside-POV take on it that brings such fascinating dimensions to the fairly dude-heavy original text.
I love this novel's sense of heightened erotic atmosphere, even as Mary herself cleaves with firm purpose to repression and proper decorum -- if you want to engage with that on any level, either solo or in the context of her relationship with Henry Jekyll, I'd be only too happy to read it. Certain passages of the novel are pretty clearly inspired by the writings and experiences of Hannah Cullwick, a nineteenth-century diarist and working woman whose complex relationship with the middle-class barrister Arthur Munby revolved around the erotics of service. I would love anything where Mary enters into a similarly complicated and ambivalent relationship with her master, and her way of navigating that under her own terms and while reckoning with her own desires. What would it be like to take a position of negotiated power over her master, and to engage with his own complex relationship with desire?
I really enjoy and appreciate this novel's treatment of trauma, and the tangible presence of Mary's girlhood hardships in her strictly-managed adult life. The process of disclosure and concealment between Mary and her master draws them together just as it keeps them separated -- Mary's past experiences and present thoughts can scarcely be expressed to anyone, but they clearly demonstrate that she's had much of her short lifetime to reckon with (and perhaps repress) those things that can't be spoken of in polite company. Her account of her father's drinking clearly strikes a chord with Jekyll, and Hyde's presence clearly strikes a chord with her that's similar to her past suffering under her father's attention -- just about anything dealing with that would make me happy.
The interlude at Mrs. Farraday's rooms after Hyde's crime there, with the murdered girl's friends and perhaps colleagues coming to find her condition, always makes me want more of that milieu -- Farraday herself rubs Mary deeply wrong for some very legitimate reasons, but she seems more sympathetic to the murdered girl's mourners, and if you were to write a canon-divergent AU where Mary's more involved with those girls' lives after that chance meeting or interacts with them further I'd eat it up.
The domestic sphere is defined in this novel through a whole lot of hard work -- scrubbing, washing, brushing, hauling, polishing, and plenty of dirt that has to be forcibly cleared away to permit the respectable home to function. If you'd like to write anything about Mary's work, her relationships with Cook and Annie, or in general the intricacies of Victorian material culture from the POV of the person who has to do the serving rather than being served, I'd love that. I'd also love anything that deals with Mary's physical strength and capability and the contrast the novel draws (and Mary herself is certainly aware of) between her lower-class, hard-working vigor and her master's elevated and cerebral fragility. The Stevenson novel reiterates a few times that Hyde is small and stunted compared to his own master -- is there any chance that Mary could subdue him? Would the doctor's clothes hang better on Mary than they do on Hyde? If things go Cullwick-and-Munby-shaped, do the two of them ever consciously try on or shed roles? (Assuming that Jekyll stays alive long enough to do so -- if you want to fudge his canonical fate in both novels, feel free to do so.)
I'm especially interested in the novel's depiction of the Jekyll/Hyde duality considered from Mary's own viewpoint, especially when the original story's rather short on female characters across the board -- Jekyll is the closest thing to Mary's ideal gentleman, while Hyde unsettles and repulses her. If you'd like to show alternate scenes or encounters between Mary and Hyde, I'd love that, especially anything that plays on the reading of Hyde as a newly-minted gentleman struggling to enjoy the finer things in life (his own suite of rooms, for instance) with the effortless pleasure of a natural-born cad. He occupies a very different place in the Victorian rubrics of class and social status than Mary, and his relationship to her master is even more complicated than her own if such a thing is even possible -- if you want to explore more of their fucked-up triangulation, or to explore Mary's feelings for this young man who has inexplicably wormed his way into her master's confidences, I would love that. Mary's initial flicker of jealousy when she thinks that Hyde is her master's newest project and is supplanting her is like a jolt of identity kink for me and I'm a sucker for Strange Case riffs where people suspect the doctor and his rough young protege are more than platonically intertwined so inject extra jealousy there if you feel. On the flipside, so to speak, I'd also love fic about Mary's canonical relationship with Henry Jekyll and any alternate paths it might have taken. All the scenes with the doctor examining Mary's scars really rove across that line between patronizing professional queasiness and personal tenderness, and their relationship suggests a host of missed opportunities and potential for moments of mutual recognition.
The novel's framing device of a recovered manuscript seems like it would lend itself well to epistolary fic between later correspondents or meta fic in other unusual formats -- BBS posts, academic writings and book reviews, Twitter scandals! -- dealing with the afterlife of Reilly's writing. Bonus points if you incorporate the various schools of historical thought and feminist theory that produced works like this one when combined with the Neo-Victorian novel form. My one caveat per my DNWs would be no focus on trans-exclusionary feminism. The whole rest of feminist theory and thought is your oyster.
Ship-wise, I love Mary's complex canonical relationships with both Jekyll and Hyde; I'd also be happy to read fic that pairs her with Mrs. Farraday, the murdered girl's friends, an OFC, or other female characters from 19th century literature. (Mina Murray? Rosa Budd? Grushenka Svetlova? Sybil Vane?)
Smut-specific prompts: you know that whole wildly fraught sequence with Jekyll's injured ankle and Mary having to assist him? Make it weird. Well, weirder. Or that scene where Mary must carefully and cautiously feed him his breakfast -- feel free to whump either or both of them freely for the sake of weird touchy-feely intimacy This seems like a great fandom for kink that doesn't involve intercourse in obvious ways, and I wouldn't be disappointed to receive that in this or any fandom -- size differences, age differences, class differences, sturdy women with sturdy muscles, the thrill of restrictive garments, the many pleasures of dirt! -- but if you'd like to write sexy stuff with sex in it, I'd especially love cunnilingus, body worship, fucked-up knifeplay, undernegotiated roughness, and dubcon/noncon involving Hyde. If you'd want to write more insidious dubcon or noncon involving Mary's sainted master, I'd be here for that too.
*
HBO's Rome
(This canon is a two-season HBO drama series from 2005-2007, available on DVD and in digital download format as well as streaming on HBO's various streaming platforms.)
The odd fandom out this year, setting-wise! I went down the HBO Rome rabbit hole this year during self-isolation and it has been a balm to my soul. In another life I was a wannabe Latinist so any Classical content you want to cram in there is very welcome, but I'm also extremely loosey-goosey with the historical research so if you're not comfortable there or just want to play first and foremost in the landscape we're given in canon, I'd love that too.
- Gaius Octavian Caesar
Really I am happy with anything that has spooky cold-blooded poetry-lover Octavian getting up to no good. This show's setting is a lot of fun for me, and I welcome fic that deals with all kinds of politicking, public events, cultural differences, societal mythmaking, romantic and sexual intrigues, the complicated family dynamics between Atia and her offspring, and any random bits of actual non-HBO history that you feel inclined to incorporate for your own amusement. Octavian has an impressive future ahead of him but I'm not especially interested in fic about him in later life as full-blown Caesar Augustus -- if you want to diverge from the historical record, however, feel free to deal with his later life as much as you like. This guy is my not-so-secret fave (both as frosty sensitive youth in s1 and as a glacial hunk with murder eyes in s2) but the whole cast here is near and dear to my heart, from Vercingetorix to Vorena, so feel free to run wild with an ensemble piece so long as Octavian is in the middle of it all.
Octavian's relationship with Caesar is a big area of interest for me -- I would love more scenes of the two of them together as Octavian closes the gap between young adulthood and the mature desire for power he's settled on by the ripe old age of nineteen. Octavian's a quiet one for much of canon, so I'd love a look at what he sees in his famous relative, or his awareness of Caesar's flaws more substantial than just physical vulnerability. I'd also love to see more of what Caesar sees in Octavian -- nepotism and an appreciation for his ability to keep a secret are certainly parts of it, but they both have a tendency toward the cold-blooded and I find that fascinating as a source of potential commonality. Canon doesn't really touch the then-contemporary allegations that Octavian earned his status as Caesar's heir through a sexual relationship, but I'd love to see how just the allegation of that would play out in the HBO Rome universe, as well as what the reality of that might look like, if you're so inclined. I ship Caesar and Octavian every which way, and if you're interested in more ship-specific prompts feel free to check out my 2020 RMSE letter
From Anthony Everitt's biography of the historical Augustus:
Caesar decided it was time to give the young man some administrative experience. He turned over to him the responsibility for managing the theatrical program of the triumphal celebrations. Keen to show his commitment, Octavius stayed to the end of all the performances, even on the hottest and longest days. This strained his already delicate health and he fell seriously ill. Caesar was beside himself with anxiety and, to cheer him up, visited the sufferer every day or sent friends in his place. Doctors were in permanent attendance. On one occasion a message came while he was dining that Octavius had suffered a serious relapse and was in danger of dying. The dictator leaped up at once and ran barefooted to the house where Octavius lay. Frantic and deeply upset, he cross-examined the doctors about their patient’s prognosis and then sat down by the boy’s bedside. Gradually Octavius recovered, but he remained weak for some time.
Show!Octavian doesn't appear to share his RL counterpart's health issues during this period of his life (apart from using poor health to beg off sparring with Titus Pullo) but I'd love fic dealing with those issues anyway -- anything dealing with the tension between his oversized and precocious ambition and the uncertainty of living with frail health in the ancient world (or especially the overlap with Caesar's own illness and its significance for his political career) would be fabulous.
I'd love more scenes of Octavian and Octavia at any point as brother and sister with one-time jaunts into incest -- what on earth is going on with Octavian that that incest gambit works? What if it turned back on Servilia in a way she hadn't expected? I genuinely love everything about Octavia in her own right, so the two of them interacting in any capacity would thrill me -- solving a mystery, covering up a murder, becoming Rome's #1 incestuous power couple together, or just figuring out what their relationship is like when they're out from under the pressure of a shared family name. What does Octavia make of her brother's budding capacity for calm cruelty? What are some other times in their relationship where the two of them have sought out one another for comfort, or just for a co-conspirator?
What goes on during Octavian's timeskips away from his mother and sister? What does he get up to with Maecenas and Agrippa? I find the note he leaves Rome on for the final time before the actor-switch a really interesting one, and I feel like we might have gotten more of his relationships with his friends (especially poor smitten Agrippa, who seems like an all right fellow?) if season two hadn't been quite so truncated. So feel free to fill in any of those gaps and gray spaces, or unspool a whole other ulterior narrative about Octavian's earliest days as Caesar's heir. And how does Octavian feel about Caesar's death, on a personal level? On a pragmatic one?
Octavian's relationship with Antony in all its incredible thorniness is a fascinating part of both seasons for me -- we see much of them as foes in canon but not as much of their periods of collaboration, and that's fascinating to me. Octavian's ambitions and willfulness make him a not insignificant obstacle to Antony after the death of Caesar (and maybe before?) but the deep history between Antony and Atia makes the whole thing fraught. I yearn for something where the two of them need to play nicely together in the political/social sphere to achieve some goal that will benefit both of them, whether it's avoiding eventual war or avoiding the wrath of Atia. I do also ship Antony/Octavian, with all the competition and aggression and complicated emotions that entails, and any kind of interactions on the spectrum from battlefield dubcon hatesex to complicated wooing would be fabulous. These two are also featured in my 2020 RMSE letter if you're interested in ship-specific prompts. (Fake ancient Roman dating! Lupercalia fuckfests!)
I also enjoy what we see of Octavian's relationship with Livia in s2, especially but certainly not limited to the kinky sex -- Octavian must go on quite the journey of self-discovery between frankly telling his future bride that he's into impact play and the first time we see her sex-choke the living daylights out of him. If you want to write scenes from their marriage, especially Livia leveling up into a powerhouse of a Roman matron with a finger on the pulse of what makes her oddball husband tick, I would be all about it. The show plays a little fast and loose with the societal judgments placed on well-to-do Roman women, which is all well and good from a HBO production, but I'm also fascinated with the thought of a woman who by all appearances likes a good time figuring out how to make the best of Octavian's emerging stances (in public life if not private) around chastity and matronly morals.
My silliest side wants more of Octavian's adventures with Titus Pullo, with Pullo chatting frankly with this spooky aristocratic boy and getting his unique brand of advice. I'd also love Titus Pullo and Octavian alternating who gets to be the pet sociopath in their relationship. Titus Pullo was born to be a great minion, and Octavian desperately needs a friend and authority figure who's not warped by power, but you can have them get up to any kind of mischief you desire and I'd be all about it.
Ship-wise, Octavian is my versatile fandom little black dress (little white toga virilis?) for this show so consider just about any of his relationships as fair game. I'm interested in his canonical relationships with Octavia and Livia, and I ship him with Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Titus Pullo, Agrippa, Maecenas, and Brutus.
Re. my DNWs, I'd prefer no actual sex involving Octavian prior to the point in the first season where he canonically loses his virginity or where he's understood in Roman terms as a bulla-wearing child; sex where he's at least 16 years old but still under 18 is absolutely fine and dandy, and characters kinking on his youth in that context is totally okay.
Smut-specific prompts: hangups and scandals about Roman citizens submitting to be penetrated! I love Octavian's canonical sadomasochism and would adore anything incorporating impact play and choking. Intercrural sex, facefucking, femdom, mutually manipulative dubcon, age differences, class differences, Classical sex positions. (If you can work in someone lowering themselves down onto a dick using a handily-placed strap a la the Warren Cup, you win Yuletide.)
*
Edward, Edward - Lolah Burford
(This canon is an 1973 novel; to my knowledge it's no longer in print, though a digital copy is pretty easy to find on questionable download sites like Libgen. You can still get your hands on a physical copy wherever used books are for sale; prices on Bookfinder vary from ~$20-150.)
- Edward Clare Armstrong
This book is stone-cold bonkers, and I am not exaggerating or just being polite when I say any fic for it would thrill me in a major way, but this is Yuletide so you might want a little more to go on than that. Edward is the closest thing I've ever encountered to a male gothic heroine -- anything more dealing with the high-drama aristocratic tension of his family history and personal life would be very welcome. More 18th century research porn, more continuing Sadeian adventures in innocence and experience, more Edward whump! Get him sick, injure him, beat him, have him get kidnapped and brutalized again. (With bonus points for the Earl finding out and being brutally torn between jealousy that someone or something else has mistreated his ward and, well, whatever other emotions that kind of thing might stir up in a complicated and possessive lover.) I'd be dying for all kinds of fic about trauma here, especially the various literally and metaphorically claustrophobic situations in which Edward finds himself -- his dependency for material support on a man who is both his father and his sexual partner, his limited world, the way he's barred from the rest of his family, his tendency to get locked up in priest holes.
Another joy: religious themes out the waz! The canon is certainly interested in the appeal of Methodism to Edward's own disposition and the deep influences of religion for better or worse on both Edward and his father's viewpoints -- the religious controversies of the Georgian era are very much alive for these characters and that's an interesting angle on the period for me.
Edward's all-encompassing curiosity and love is a really interesting counterpoint to the dark gothic extremity of the series of events that sends him to live with the Earl, and I'd love to see more about it -- his lonely boyhood spent learning to make butter and hate tyranny, his attraction to Wesley and Shakespeare, his love of the material side of rural life, and ultimately his romantic relationships. I would also love anything exploring Edward's darker side or taking him to a darker place -- Edward grappling with his faith and his calling, more clashes with Tyne or between his sincerely-felt beliefs regarding hurt and forgiveness with the reality of his relationships. I love the absolute smorgasbord of personal suffering Edward goes through in this novel, but part of me desperately wants him to snap, whether that looks like a cold turning-away for good from a damaged and compelling lover (my mental touchstone for this is always The Heiress (1949) for some reason), a conscious campaign of seduction, frank self-destruction, or a straight-up guns-blazing, bloody-murder revenge plotline. I love, love, love parricide as the capstone to a complicated relationship -- or hell, filicide, sorry Edward -- so I am definitely opting into major character death here. Duels! Poisons! Hauntings! Wars! Flights to the continent! Just give Edward some satisfaction, for heaven's sake.
Feel free to explore the aspects of Edward and the Earl's relationship that a 1970s novel can only handle allusively -- I'd love porn with emotions here and anything dealing with the complicated interplay of pain and pleasure/attraction and remorse that characterizes their coming together. I really love the interplay in relationships with stark inequalities around (but certainly not limited to) age and rank -- the Earl's awareness that his son is young and fresh while he himself is old and jaded, and the exchange of power and experience vs. youth and beauty. I love the Earl as a character but I'm also desperate to see these two clash -- tell me about times when Edward has had (or lost) the upper hand, about more times when Edward crosses his uncle (purposefully? unwittingly?) and the fallout from that, or different turns their relationship could have taken.
While we're going into the complicated sexual relationships of the Tyne family, I would love fic with Edward having sex with his father's mistress -- the one who physically resembles him. She gets a seriously, seriously dark fate in canon, and if you choose to give her an alternate ending or enlist her in a broader plot to give the Earl some just deserts. Any and all of the canon courtesans are welcome in fic.
His relationship with Marion Alleyn at Oxford is wildly romantic for me and I'd love anything where it goes differently, for the better or otherwise, or takes a deeper set of twists and turns. It's hard to come back from your dad fucking your first college boyfriend, true, but there's a lot of possibilities there worth ficcing. If you'd rather explore earlier territory I'd also love fic where the threat of sexual bargaining during Alleyn's kidnapping becomes a reality, or where Marion is the one who introduces Edward to sex as well as radical politics and has the privilege and misfortune of unraveling his friend's complicated relationship with his guardian. Alleyn may say nothing shocks him, and he's pretty blasé about what he thinks their relationship is like at the time of his Divinity exams, but there's quite a bit about the Earl he doesn't know. I'd also love fic where Edward and Marion end up on picaresque Regency adventures together, mixed up in politics or on the high seas. (If you're hankering to write an Austen crossover, now is your time!)
I also love Edward's canonical relationship with Anne, as little as we get of it -- I appreciate that she first turns up as a pistol-packing avenger in men's clothes (my favorite period-piece trope on the planet might be pragmatic crossdressing) and I'd love more of what draws the two of them together and what the future might hold, or missing scenes. If you do go a revenge-plot route, I'd love for her to be involved, and her position so already entrenched in the great Armstrong family drama is a lot of fun for me.
Historical cameos would be great here, and canon has a lot of fun with them, so feel free to include real historical figures. If you want to go a bonkers but very welcome route -- in-universe historical documents from decades or centuries later. Maybe some later person writes a biography of James Noel Holland, scandalous Earl of Tyne (or of Edward himself -- what does he go on to do? what might his later impact on history be?) and there's a great deal of scholarly controversy over it, or a historian uncovers something in the archives that suggests the dark sexual snarl at the heart of Edward's family life.
Maybe needless to say here given my other likes, but feel free to go balls-to-the-wall on the weird porn here! Self-indulgent historical research spiraling is also very welcome -- Burford's digression into how exactly her characters take snuff is a little much for even me, but feel free to hew as close or stray as far from the material realities of the 18th and early 19th century as you feel like.
Ship-wise, I ship Edward with the Earl, Marion, Anne, and with various courtesans. I'd also be down for Marion/Anne/Edward as an OT3, but I'd prefer no mutual polyamorous trios or threesomes with the Earl involved. (Dysfunctional love triangles are fine, however.)
Smut-specific prompts: whew! I want Edward to get fucked every which way. Tie him up, brutalize him, pull his hair, cut his hair, have him get nonconned, it's all good. Nipple kink, Regency tit torture, biting, semi-public sex, pseudo-anonymous sex, clothed or partially-clothed sex (especially, in the case of m/f sex, where layers of the woman's clothing are lifted/unpinned/loosened but not removed) and literary allusions in the boudoir. I'd also love anything with Edward causing deliberate pain, especially with the Earl -- wound-fingering, rough sex, breathplay, or just topping him with as little concern for his well-being as his father shows him the first time they have sex.
One fandom-specific caveat here relating to my DNWs: the canon has plenty of sections where Edward and the Earl interact with erotically/romantically-charged beats while Edward is a child by the standards of his own era. No need to ignore or retcon what's in the book or to exile it from discussion in dialogue, but I would prefer no on-the-page intimacy between them in fic, even intimacy short of sex, while Edward is younger than sixteen.
