Rare Male Slash Exchange 2021 letter
May. 19th, 2021 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skazkaiIt's that time of year! Where I talk too much and try to get people invested in small-fandom slash pairings.
Likes:
- historical details, material culture, pop culture for the era the fic is set in, historical politics (feel free to pick and choose, embroider, and ignore historical reality as desired, especially for fandoms like Trust and Rome where deliberate historical divergence is the name of the game in canon)
- allegiances and loyalty (especially loyalty kink!)
- dreams and nightmares (dream sex and dream symbolism are both a+)
- trauma and PTSD, memory and personal baggage, literal and metaphorical haunting
- friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers-while-remaining-enemies
- pining both reciprocated and unreciprocated
- hurt/comfort: post-whump h/c, battle aftermath, h/c where a powerful/prickly/difficult person is the recipient of the comfort whether they like it or not, h/c where a villain is doing the comforting (for mindfucky sinister reasons or otherwise), h/c where the 'hurt' is embarrassing or a chronic condition with no easy fix
- sex happening before feelings and then feelings show up to the party and make everything weird: characters in denial about their developing feelings, or reluctantly finding themselves feeling something real
- bulletproof loyalty, whether or not it's deserved, and all kinds of loyalty kink
- pet sociopaths -- morally fucky characters doing heinous ruthless things for the one they love, with or without their permission
- infidelity -- guilt, rationalizations, the thrill of the forbidden
- open relationships/background relationships
- all different kinds of historical/genre AUs. Film noir AUs, theater company AUs, 70s horror movie AUs, AUs setting canon in the 1980s corporate world or the English Regency -- any high-concept AU you want to write I want to read.
Side pairings, background pairings, and unrequested characters are all welcome. The prompts I list below are definitely not comprehensive or hard-and-fast -- if nothing here inspires you or if you're inspired to mix and match or write a role-reversal of something I've laid out feel free.
Smut Likes:
- size differences
- age differences
- aggressive inexperienced characters
- body worship -- scars, hands, body hair, muscles
- blowjobs, handjobs, frottage, intercrural and non-penetrative sex
- clothed/semi-clothed sex, or where only one party is naked
- fancy clothes, uniforms, layers, dressing and undressing
- hatesex and fighting-turned-fucking, arguments, verbal abuse, insults, physical roughhousing and wrestling
- erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation
- breathplay, choking
- cuddlefucking, lazy sex, affectionate post-sex hangouts, pillow talk
- inhibitions and interpersonal baggage in the bedroom
- anonymous or pseudo-anonymous hookups
- sex that's both clumsy/painful and tender
- wound fingering, wound fucking, kinking on the pain and power involved in historical medicine
- rope bondage
- caning and flogging
- characters with physical imperfections (scars, bad joints, body parts that won't necessarily cooperate)
- characters seeking sex for comfort (whether or not they find it)
- sadomasochism, pain, rough body play -- grabbing/shoving/yanking/hitting/punching/etc.
- smoking, sharing cigarettes, cigarette burns
- drug and alcohol use (relaxation and altered states of consciousness during sex as well as substance abuse and dependency)
- time-period-specific sexual practices and meeting places
- head-shaving or hair-cutting, especially nonconsensual/dubiously consensual or degrading/clinical hair-cutting -- I don't know how to work this into any of my fandoms but if you'd like to write it I'd love to read it.
- noncon and dubcon -- especially fucked-up sexual bargaining, villains menacing protagonists, dark!protagonists menacing villains, antagonistic characters mutually attempting to dubcon one another, and anything where the focus is on emotional conflict and distress.
I'm not specifically requesting art this year, but if you feel a visual treat coming on I would love to receive it.
DNWs: Self-injury or eating disorders due to psychological distress; unrequested incest or child sexual abuse; teacher/student AUs; pregnancy; omegaverse/BDSMverse AUs; focus on coming-out or gender transition; noncon with trans victims; urban fantasy werewolf tropes like packs and alphas; scat; OTK spanking. I'd rather not read explicit sex with characters younger than 16.
Feel free to deal with Baron Harkonnen’s canonical sexual abuse of boys and his attraction to Paul and Feyd-Rautha for Dune; likewise feel free to deal with canonical levels of incest and underage sexual experience in Trust and Rome.
Dune Series - Frank Herbert
Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen/Paul Atreides
- Something working in the framework of arranged marriage, Bene Gesserit-engineered mating, or kanly — is there some obscure clause in the dictates of the Great Convention that could put these two into contact with each other in a non-stabby context? If you feel the inclination to explore a transmasculine take on Paul Atreides (or Feyd, for that matter) I would be happy to read it.
- Any kind of culture clash between the norms of their respective houses, with fucky space politics and maneuvering. Or a role reversal where Paul is the murder teen engineered for destruction by the dastardly Duke Leto and his bloodthirsty concubine, and Feyd-Rautha is… maybe just as terrible but at least not alone in that? Raised in a wholesome honorable environment by an uncle who doesn’t openly want to fuck him? Who knows!
- Paul getting haunted by Feyd’s ghost, or just hassled by his unwanted ghola. Or anything else exploring the blurred edge between the supernatural and the scientific in this series. Dream-sharing, astral projection, prophecies, premonitions, it’s all delicious to me.
- Either one of them as the other one’s unwanted concubine, prisoner, or hostage. Feyd-Rautha as hostage among the Fremen? Paul as a nonconsenting VIP on Giedi Prime? Fucked-up Baron machinations optional but delightful.
- This is deeply self-indulgent but I don’t care: Paul is a slightly uptight virgin during much of the timeframe of the first book and remains a strict one-Chani guy until he fucks off into the desert, while Feyd-Rautha is absolutely not a virgin and has been immersed in hugely fucked-up Harkonnen sexual norms for his entire life. Something with those two extremes meeting for great angst, casual noncon, or anything else, please.
Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen/Baron Vladimir Harkonnen
If only I could say this was my only problematic dysfunctional royal family incest pairing… but it 100% is not because that dynamic is my forever catnip and these two with their fantastically wack dynamic are grade-A. I love the interconnected interests that bind them together, saturated in a generous cocktail of inappropriate desire, disgust, contempt, and extremely justified suspicion — the Baron is doing something purposeful by purposefully grooming Feyd-Rautha for power and lining him up to take an important place, but Feyd is less than patient with that plan, and why should he be?
- It’s not an uncommon reading of their relationship to read the Baron’s obvious desire for his nephew as unconsummated — if so, why? Besides the more obviously lethal quality of at least some of the Baron’s sexual encounters, what does he think he’s doing to Feyd-Rautha by not bothering to conceal his attraction but also conspicuously not forcing him any further than he does? How conscious is Feyd-Rautha of that, and does he ever try to strike a different kind of bargain?
- The Baron’s punishment for Feyd-Rautha’s poison-needle assassination attempt develops a sexual angle, either on top of forcing Feyd to kill his concubines or parallel to it. I really love how despite his protests Feyd-Rautha is well aware he has no real choice in the matter of how his uncle reacts to the murder attempt and that he’s lucky to be getting out alive, but it certainly
- Feyd-Rautha survives as a prisoner but the Baron figuratively or literally haunts the fuck out of him. Vladimir Harkonnen hassling Alia from beyond the grave relies on another type of mechanism than conventional haunting, but I love it so much, and if you want to echo or parallel that go wild.
- More bouts of mutual backstabbing and treachery — what’s more erotic than treachery? Resentment, scheming, arrogance, gloating, bad blood, public displays of favor and allegiance motivated by weird petty angling… I want it all.
- Sex pollen: both of them getting hit by it and being pissed-off and schemey about it during and afterward, even as they’re driven by forces beyond their control. I just want a weird roiling sea of mutual distrust, asymmetrical desire, and loathing here, and also I think Dune sex pollen would be funny.
Fandom-specific smut likes: body contrasts (I am really partial to brown-skinned, short, wiry Paul in contrast to buff pretty-boy Feyd, and anything recalling that the Baron was a big man even before he grew fat); OTT space luxury in the bedroom; physical violence; fighting turns to fucking; any incorporation of Paul’s terrible purpose(tm) or kwisatz haderach aspects during intimacy; Feyd-Rautha being weird and cynical and suspicious about sex; Paul being a sheltered virgin despite his BG training; coitus reservatus; mutual sexual exploration; deflowering; edging; mindfucks in the boudoir; Dune-fandom-typical philosophical and tactical interior monologues during sex.
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Trust (TV 2018)
Paul/Angelo Calati
- Pre-escape-attempt weird homoerotic age-inappropriate mountain bonding around the timeframe of 1x04— I love the contrast between the beauty of the landscape with its pastoral teenage pleasures (swimming in rivers, cooking around campfires, shooting the shit about girlfriends back home) and the unmistakable tension and dread of what Paul is really there for.
- Scenes from the time when Angelo and Paul are on the run together. These two have the advantage of a shared language but there’s still a huge gulf of experience and social context between the two of them — how do they see one another? Who makes the first move? Paul has some wild experiences under his belt but he’s still another neglected teenager — how does Angelo feel about that duality?
- What can Paul learn about Angelo while they’re escaping together? What does Angelo know about Paul’s past life? Does he ever learn about Paul’s less-than-golden family history or his track record with schools? Paul can be gentle and vulnerable but he’s ultimately just a lost and stubborn kid with a shitload of problems, many of his own devising; likewise, Angelo is the youngest and most compassionate of Paul’s captors, but he’s still wrapped up in organized crime out of necessity, and he’s capable of blunt cruelty. I’d love anything with the two of them catching glimpses of one another’s pasts. What do they only learn about one another once they’re somewhere else — Rome, Naples, New York?
- I won’t lie, even knowing the obvious historical trajectory of the actual case I was still caught off-guard by Angelo’s death, and I would love any kind of canon divergence there. If they do manage to escape Primo’s sphere of influence, do things get complicated in a different way after that? How far can Paul vouch for Angelo before they start to get tangled in their well-intentioned lies?
- Huddling for warmth, co-sleeping, tending each other’s wounds, trying to cook for each other, and any other flavor of attempted domesticity. If you want to defy all odds and have these two get a little happiness together I would appreciate it. Alternately, the two of them taking risks for each other, especially if Paul’s headstrong fearlessness actually pays off in Angelo’s favor.
Paul/Primo Nizzuto
- This is a pretty candidly fucked-up pairing for [gestures at canon] reasons but I’m interested in whatever take on it you want to deliver — I’m certainly interested in the more dysfunctional and trauma-bonding-oriented side of how this pairing might possibly work, but I enjoy this fandom’s take on potential post-freedom meetings between these two — as Primo’s new influx of cash brings him to Rome, or Paul’s obvious trauma brings him back to Calabria.
- Anything exploring the complicated balance of desire, fear, and coercion between these two — how do they see one another? What shifts in the dynamic of the crew result from whatever exists between Primo and Paul? There’s always an element of consent issues going on here but I’d be interested in how that kind of escalation into a new avenue of violence might raise the stakes; if you want to deal with dubcon/noncon here please do.
- Shared drug use — there’s a pretty robust (by tiny-pairing standards) body of work dealing with this but I’m always interested in more. Alternately, anything dealing with the full range of altered states of consciousness between them — Paul’s illness, delirium, and forced drug use/intoxication, and Primo’s more self-orchestrated coke use and boozing.
- Anything dealing with the complicated gender-and-masculinity shit between them — young Paul is a real product of late-1960s early-1970s media culture and music culture from the long hair to the bare feet and his wild, bony androgyny is part of his charm while for Primo and co. (as it is for the rest of the Getty men) masculinity is closely entwined with power and money. That kind of raunchy 70s masculinity that Primo embodies (the mustache! the tight pants! the coke nail!) is wildly sexy but also transparently dangerous, so if you want to go all-in on those physical contrasts I would be really into it.
- Paul certainly seems aware that he’s an object of older people’s desire during his life in Rome, from his grandfather’s mistresses ogling him in the pool to his nude spread in Playmen — is he aware of this with Primo? Does he ever consider exploiting Primo’s attraction to him as a potential way out, or at least a road to temporary relief from pain and deprivation?
Fandom-specific smut prompts: For Primo and Paul, there’s all of the face-slapping and coke-sharing; drunk sex; high sex; intercrural sex; frottage; unreciprocated orgasms; either of them crying during sex; internalized homophobia coming out in the bedroom; Primo’s experiences or lack of experience with sex between men expressing themselves in sex; stubble burn; hair-pulling; noncon/dubcon with ignored boundaries, homophobia, or mutual attempts at making the best of an awful situation. For Paul and Angelo, I would love any kind of age-appropriate fucking around, whether it’s swapping tense handies in the hills or heavy making out while huddling for warmth; hair-pulling/general kinking on hair; clothes-sharing; swapping dirty stories.
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Henry IV Parts One & Two - Shakespeare
Henry IV of England/Prince Hal
- A bunch of the stuff Henry attributes to Hal's delinquency and God's divine punishment for their respective sins sounds... dirty. If you want to do anything fucked-up and/or filthy with penance, sin, divine judgment, and the rod of heaven!!!! I would love to read it. I'd love to read Henry being in denial about his incestuous feelings, Henry feeling deep guilt and shame but not enough to not do what he's already planning on doing, or Henry finding dubious workarounds for how he's not actually being as evil as he could be. Ins and outs of medieval Catholic ritual: optional but extremely welcome.
- Henry compares Hal to Richard II in this play, which is… fraught, given the whole play that just came before this one. Does Hal assume his father had Richard killed on purpose? If there was ever anything between Henry and Richard, or the specter of a potential something, does that color his feelings for Hal? If so, is Hal aware of it at all? What would it take to make him broach the topic? (Consider my incest DNW waived here for Richard II/Henry IV, as it is for Henry IV/Hal, but please no Richard/Hal.)
- I’d love something about these two and how their political positions make their relationship more complicated -- does the way they're already in a precarious position make it easier to rationalize violating multiple massive taboos? What does their clandestine relationship look like from the outside? Hal makes some concessions with his time and person under the assumption that his father will die soon, only for "soon" to come less quickly than expected and for their remaining time together to be increasingly fraught. I'm interested in the shape that this pairing might take as Hal passes out of the whole "youthful shithead" phase into a level of adulthood where being under his dad's thumb is increasingly inconvenient.
- Henry and Hal being cruel to each other! I know this is a fairly fucked-up desire, but Hal's ability to be nasty at his supposed friends' expense is one of my favorite things and I'd love something where his ostensible growing reconciliation to his father (or a scenario where they end up spending more time together across the board) ends up breeding some contempt between the two of them on top of their respective desperate needs for [approval, praise, etc.]/[vindication, control, etc.]
- Historical AUs set in different eras are totally fair game to mix and match with any of my prompts, but I'm especially craving an interwar British AU for these two. An AU where the family drama has played out in just another rich terrible family rather than the royal family of England is probably in order, but if you can swing the latter I would also love it. I just want fucked-up intergenerational cultural shifts and impending threats and societal shifts and also Hal doing a little bit of cocaine and fucking his dad.
Fandom-specific smut likes for both plays: late medieval clothing porn, especially untied points/yanked-down hose; dressing/undressing; fully or partly-dressed sex; intercrural sex; wound fingering; face-slapping; choking; sexual jealousy.
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Pilgrimage (2017)
Raymond de Merville/Diarmuid
- Diarmuid is so inquisitive and earnest that it’s easy to buy him as - genuinely pure of heart enough to handle the relic — does de Merville consciously or unconsciously want to spoil that purity? To forcibly secularize him? (Forcing him out of the monastic clothing he’s accustomed to as an extra twist of the knife would be great for me.)
- Raymond taking out his religious and/or daddy issues on luckless Diarmuid, taking him as a servant/””””servant”””” on campaign, or just making him a straight-up hostage or designated relic-toucher for his own sweaty, dirty, grimy, thoroughly secular pleasure.
- Any kind of complex love-hate-fear thing between these two, or the two of them being forced to rely on one another because of Reasons. I love all the ways Raymond de Merville is cast as Diarmuid’s total opposite, from his aristocratic background and Anglo-Norman vibes to his secular habits. Medieval material culture, cultural tensions, language barriers, injured or battered Diarmuid, Diarmuid’s religious earnestness, and Raymond’s deep religious bitterness are all big pluses here.
- Raymond de Merville tries to get out of his worldly obligations (or a price on his head?) by becoming a simple, humble, ordinary monk, no ulterior motives here, no sir… at the same time as Diarmuid is settling into full monk status or finishing up his novitiate. I love monastic drama from this time period, and grumpy medieval chronicle griping about whether formerly-worldly novices really meant it or not forever delights me.
- Class differences, medieval-style! I personally headcanon Diarmuid as a child oblate given the abbot and Brother Ciaran’s remarks about him not knowing life outside the monastery, but no matter how he grew up he certainly seems to come from a different class background and sociopolitical context than Raymond as a nobleman’s son and a career soldier — I’d love to see what that looks like between them, from their attitudes on sodomy to their attitudes on violence.
Fandom-specific smut likes: All kinds of medieval sodomy hangups and workarounds! (My preference isn’t for fic where Diarmuid truly knows nothing at all, even conceptually, about sex between men — Irish penitentials from this era can get pretty fine-grained about young monks’ sex lives.) Intercrural sex; stigma around oral sex; Raymond communicating what he wants Diarmuid to do to him (or vice-versa) despite their language gaps; clothed or mostly-clothed sex; painful sex; age and size differences.
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Rome (TV)
Julius Caesar/Octavian
- Atia's readiness to believe that her teenage son shrewdly seduced his great-uncle for political gain is sure something and her pushiness about it cracks me the fuck up every time -- so what if Octavian decides to mess with her head and her expectations of what that relationship would look like? Does he take advantage of new latitude as a supposed lover, to political ends or personal ones, or just get a kick out of people thinking he has Caesar's special attention? If you choose to take things a counterhistorical/counter-canonical direction with Caesar's assassination, I'd love something where Octavian tries to take the lead in Caesar's defense and Caesar is appreciative but confounded.
- I love the scene in 1x10 where Octavian anoints Caesar with blood before his triumph, and I'd love more scenes of them interacting in that kind of ambiguous state where Octavian is acting from his position of religious authority and Caesar is nominally submitting to him. What's that like for a man with Caesar's track record of achievements? I'd love any fic that deals with Roman state religion, Octavian's skeptical deism, Caesar's history with symbols and omens, astronomy, haruspexy, dream interpretation, really any of it. (All the weird blood stuff in the triumph preparation scene is also wildly sexy, so take that wherever you want.)
- How does Caesar see Octavian's more cold-blooded/borderline antisocial traits? His approach to politics is pretty different from his eventual heir's, but I'd love anything where the two of them size one another up, or where Caesar reflects on Octavian's appetite for ruthlessness, whether it elicits admiration or unease. (Or both!) The series really showcases the mindfucks Caesar's capable of through judicious employment of mercy and forgiveness -- does that work as well with Octavian when he's feeling nervy?
- Octavian wants to top Caesar, Caesar is keenly aware of why this is Not The Thing… but they figure it out. Roman sexual hangups are my kryptonite, especially as they dovetail with the complicated balances of real-life power between these two and their associates; feel free to make the full spectrum of Roman sex hangups take center stage here. (Or omit them as an area of focus, if that's not your speed, though I'd prefer no ahistorically well-adjusted sexual norms.)
- Octavian isn't great in canon at keeping the secret of Caesar's epilepsy -- though with a family like that, secrets seem hard to maintain -- but I'd love something where he's a bit better at keeping that specific element under wraps, and Caesar is a little grateful, or where his slightly more skeptical take on the interference of gods in the lives of mortals prompts him to take a different tack with an illness that's the supposed product of divine judgment.
Mark Antony/Octavian
- Some scenario where Antony and Octavian are both separately persuaded it's in their best interest to make up… at least for the time being… and have to pretend they're on cordial terms at a dinner party/in public/in front of the Senate/in front of their troops/in front of Cleopatra. Basically fake dating without the dating. Cue ancient Roman gay chicken, hatesex behind the scenes at a social/public/religious event and then having to go back and pretend to be amiable, etc.
- Both of them processing some fucked-up feelings after the death of Caesar, for a rare moment where the immediate fallout of Caesar's literal and metaphorical inheritance isn't getting in the way. Alternately, a fic where Antony is among Caesar's assassins, and the politics get messy.
- If you just want to write more of Antony kicking the shit out of Octavian, I would be very happy. (Octavian managing to kick the shit out of Antony is also very welcome, especially in ways that hurt his pride.) """"Playful"""" sparring gets serious, impromptu rough body play during sex, fighting turning into fucking or "don't look at my boner while we fight!" denial as they both get off on mistreating one another -- listen, I'm sorry, but all the choking in light of Octavian's canon kinks… yeah.
- Fucked up consent issues going every which way! Antony thinks he's dubconning Octavian, Octavian thinks he's dubconning Antony, both of them are right. I love many flavors of dubcon (as evidenced by that way-too-long list up there) and would be happy to read any situation you can contrive to put these guys into.
- Something set during Lupercalia -- the historical Antony seems to have been involved in the festival in some capacity (cf. the whole "offering Caesar a crown" thing) and the tone of those festivities seems like a great backdrop for all hell to break loose. In-group politics, major event-planning logistics, teeth-gritting social niceties while Octavian and Antony are at each other's throats, or just boning down while undergoing ritual purification.
Fandom-specific smut likes: facefucking/anything with outrageous Roman hangups about oral sex and the mouth; Octavian getting sex-choked/slapped; Octavian doing the sex-choking/face-slapping; Octavian as an awfully pretty sadomasochist top; rough body play; intercrural sex; fucking in the spoons position.
This fandom gets some wiggle room on my normal guidelines regarding explicit underage sex since the timeline of canon compresses historical events and ages of consent in the ancient world look pretty different; as long as he’s not explicitly a prepubescent, bulla-wearing child, I’m fine with it. Fic dealing with Octavian’s mommy issues, Octavian’s canon sibling incest, Atia's assumption that Caesar and Octavian have sex in 1x04, or the general messiness of Roman sexual norms around age and class are also totally fine.
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Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
Thomas Cromwell/Henry VIII of England
- Anything to do with weird gestures of ownership and any kind of loyalty kink would make me happy here, going either way. Cromwell's idea of the service offered to his masters has pretty concrete consequences for other people, and Henry's idea of an affectionate gesture can get real possessive, so I'd love anything that dwells a little on that -- the bit in The Mirror & The Light when Cromwell talks about Henry sending him bedhangings got me REAL good. (From Mirror: he finds himself thinking of his spectacular bed: the king has given him a set of covers and bed hangings, purple woven with silver tissue, emblazoned with the royal arms. You are mine asleep or awake, Henry is saying: like a lover.) The most recent installment of canon doesn't end on such a warm note between the two of them, but I'd be very happy too with fic set when Cromwell's stocks are riding higher.
- This is my most farfetched of ship desires: fic where Henry and Cromwell meet pre-canon. I have no fucking idea how this would work or when or where but I just love both men's respective bygone youths -- Henry as a gorgeous springy golden beauty, Cromwell as a hard-bitten mercenary -- and how they cast a shadow over their respective adult lives.
- Canon has lots of good bits with traveling, visits, and Tudor court entertainments, but I want more, more, more. If you want to put a developing Henry/Cromwell relationship against the backdrop of mundane life developments, or with awkward courtly spectators alongside the dark undercurrents, I would be super into that.
- Henry's response circa M&TL to Cromwell being compared to Piers Gaveston and Robert de Vere… let's talk about that. For that matter, what does Cromwell think about Edward II/Richard II as precursors and patterns for the whole "kings with uppity minions" thing that bites him and Henry in the ass from time to time? If you want to go deep on Tudor historiography, go for it; if you just want to write these two considering their historical precedents while they bone down, also go for it.- What kind of lawyerly workarounds can Cromwell manage to justify sodomy, or to define what they're doing as Technically Not That?
- Anything to do with Henry's various injuries and health issues -- or on the flipside Cromwell's recurring Italian fever. Cromwell has very good reasons to be highly attuned to the prospect of Henry's impending death (or at least foul temper) and there's a lot of complicated stuff going on there about how Henry understands his power to be reflected in his person.
Thomas Cromwell/Thomas Wolsey
- Pre-great-matter Cromwell/Wolsey where Cromwell expresses, or maybe more represses, his feelings through the medium of doing Wolsey's dirty work.
- Sexy Tudor murder mystery -- somebody gets bumped off (one of the Cardinal's other henchmen? someone involved with monastic dissolutions?) and Cromwell acts as Wolsey's agent to solve it. Or cover it up. Whichever.
- On the other end of the plottiness spectrum I would absolutely kill for any moment of unresolved tension between these two from any moment in their relationship, whether either of them is conscious that what they're feeling is romantic or not. Loyalty kink, general affection and concern, their weird little shared jokes, gift-giving, and anything with Cromwell’s habit of expressing his more tender emotions through ruthless competence and quiet menace.
- Dreams and ghosts -- especially if they fuck with Cromwell's developing Protestant theology, or toe the line between horny and surreal. I love how Wolsey’s shadow persists in Cromwell’s life, especially in the timeframe of Mirror where Cromwell is forced to reconsider what he thought he knew about Wolsey as well as what he thought he knew about Christian doctrines concerning the dead, so if you want to explore that time frame in particular I would love it. Or Cromwell’s ghost very crossly meeting Wolsey’s in an afterlife neither of them fully anticipated, idk.
- I'm open to film noir AUs for any fandom this year but I'd especially love a film noir riff on these two, either the two of them entangled in a noir-inflected take on Wolsey's canon downfall or a 20th century (midcentury? post-Golden Age, neo-noir?) remix
Fandom-specific smut prompts: fully-clothed/partially-clothed sex; nocturnal visitations; Tudor clothing porn (esp. with Cromwell commentary about the textile industry) abutting actual porn; intimacy while nominally discussing something else; sex while one party is pining for somebody else and the other party is pining for the person they're having sex with; former Italian hustler Cromwell.
Likes:
- historical details, material culture, pop culture for the era the fic is set in, historical politics (feel free to pick and choose, embroider, and ignore historical reality as desired, especially for fandoms like Trust and Rome where deliberate historical divergence is the name of the game in canon)
- allegiances and loyalty (especially loyalty kink!)
- dreams and nightmares (dream sex and dream symbolism are both a+)
- trauma and PTSD, memory and personal baggage, literal and metaphorical haunting
- friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers-while-remaining-enemies
- pining both reciprocated and unreciprocated
- hurt/comfort: post-whump h/c, battle aftermath, h/c where a powerful/prickly/difficult person is the recipient of the comfort whether they like it or not, h/c where a villain is doing the comforting (for mindfucky sinister reasons or otherwise), h/c where the 'hurt' is embarrassing or a chronic condition with no easy fix
- sex happening before feelings and then feelings show up to the party and make everything weird: characters in denial about their developing feelings, or reluctantly finding themselves feeling something real
- bulletproof loyalty, whether or not it's deserved, and all kinds of loyalty kink
- pet sociopaths -- morally fucky characters doing heinous ruthless things for the one they love, with or without their permission
- infidelity -- guilt, rationalizations, the thrill of the forbidden
- open relationships/background relationships
- all different kinds of historical/genre AUs. Film noir AUs, theater company AUs, 70s horror movie AUs, AUs setting canon in the 1980s corporate world or the English Regency -- any high-concept AU you want to write I want to read.
Side pairings, background pairings, and unrequested characters are all welcome. The prompts I list below are definitely not comprehensive or hard-and-fast -- if nothing here inspires you or if you're inspired to mix and match or write a role-reversal of something I've laid out feel free.
Smut Likes:
- size differences
- age differences
- aggressive inexperienced characters
- body worship -- scars, hands, body hair, muscles
- blowjobs, handjobs, frottage, intercrural and non-penetrative sex
- clothed/semi-clothed sex, or where only one party is naked
- fancy clothes, uniforms, layers, dressing and undressing
- hatesex and fighting-turned-fucking, arguments, verbal abuse, insults, physical roughhousing and wrestling
- erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation
- breathplay, choking
- cuddlefucking, lazy sex, affectionate post-sex hangouts, pillow talk
- inhibitions and interpersonal baggage in the bedroom
- anonymous or pseudo-anonymous hookups
- sex that's both clumsy/painful and tender
- wound fingering, wound fucking, kinking on the pain and power involved in historical medicine
- rope bondage
- caning and flogging
- characters with physical imperfections (scars, bad joints, body parts that won't necessarily cooperate)
- characters seeking sex for comfort (whether or not they find it)
- sadomasochism, pain, rough body play -- grabbing/shoving/yanking/hitting/punching/etc.
- smoking, sharing cigarettes, cigarette burns
- drug and alcohol use (relaxation and altered states of consciousness during sex as well as substance abuse and dependency)
- time-period-specific sexual practices and meeting places
- head-shaving or hair-cutting, especially nonconsensual/dubiously consensual or degrading/clinical hair-cutting -- I don't know how to work this into any of my fandoms but if you'd like to write it I'd love to read it.
- noncon and dubcon -- especially fucked-up sexual bargaining, villains menacing protagonists, dark!protagonists menacing villains, antagonistic characters mutually attempting to dubcon one another, and anything where the focus is on emotional conflict and distress.
I'm not specifically requesting art this year, but if you feel a visual treat coming on I would love to receive it.
DNWs: Self-injury or eating disorders due to psychological distress; unrequested incest or child sexual abuse; teacher/student AUs; pregnancy; omegaverse/BDSMverse AUs; focus on coming-out or gender transition; noncon with trans victims; urban fantasy werewolf tropes like packs and alphas; scat; OTK spanking. I'd rather not read explicit sex with characters younger than 16.
Feel free to deal with Baron Harkonnen’s canonical sexual abuse of boys and his attraction to Paul and Feyd-Rautha for Dune; likewise feel free to deal with canonical levels of incest and underage sexual experience in Trust and Rome.
Dune Series - Frank Herbert
Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen/Paul Atreides
- Something working in the framework of arranged marriage, Bene Gesserit-engineered mating, or kanly — is there some obscure clause in the dictates of the Great Convention that could put these two into contact with each other in a non-stabby context? If you feel the inclination to explore a transmasculine take on Paul Atreides (or Feyd, for that matter) I would be happy to read it.
- Any kind of culture clash between the norms of their respective houses, with fucky space politics and maneuvering. Or a role reversal where Paul is the murder teen engineered for destruction by the dastardly Duke Leto and his bloodthirsty concubine, and Feyd-Rautha is… maybe just as terrible but at least not alone in that? Raised in a wholesome honorable environment by an uncle who doesn’t openly want to fuck him? Who knows!
- Paul getting haunted by Feyd’s ghost, or just hassled by his unwanted ghola. Or anything else exploring the blurred edge between the supernatural and the scientific in this series. Dream-sharing, astral projection, prophecies, premonitions, it’s all delicious to me.
- Either one of them as the other one’s unwanted concubine, prisoner, or hostage. Feyd-Rautha as hostage among the Fremen? Paul as a nonconsenting VIP on Giedi Prime? Fucked-up Baron machinations optional but delightful.
- This is deeply self-indulgent but I don’t care: Paul is a slightly uptight virgin during much of the timeframe of the first book and remains a strict one-Chani guy until he fucks off into the desert, while Feyd-Rautha is absolutely not a virgin and has been immersed in hugely fucked-up Harkonnen sexual norms for his entire life. Something with those two extremes meeting for great angst, casual noncon, or anything else, please.
Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen/Baron Vladimir Harkonnen
If only I could say this was my only problematic dysfunctional royal family incest pairing… but it 100% is not because that dynamic is my forever catnip and these two with their fantastically wack dynamic are grade-A. I love the interconnected interests that bind them together, saturated in a generous cocktail of inappropriate desire, disgust, contempt, and extremely justified suspicion — the Baron is doing something purposeful by purposefully grooming Feyd-Rautha for power and lining him up to take an important place, but Feyd is less than patient with that plan, and why should he be?
- It’s not an uncommon reading of their relationship to read the Baron’s obvious desire for his nephew as unconsummated — if so, why? Besides the more obviously lethal quality of at least some of the Baron’s sexual encounters, what does he think he’s doing to Feyd-Rautha by not bothering to conceal his attraction but also conspicuously not forcing him any further than he does? How conscious is Feyd-Rautha of that, and does he ever try to strike a different kind of bargain?
- The Baron’s punishment for Feyd-Rautha’s poison-needle assassination attempt develops a sexual angle, either on top of forcing Feyd to kill his concubines or parallel to it. I really love how despite his protests Feyd-Rautha is well aware he has no real choice in the matter of how his uncle reacts to the murder attempt and that he’s lucky to be getting out alive, but it certainly
- Feyd-Rautha survives as a prisoner but the Baron figuratively or literally haunts the fuck out of him. Vladimir Harkonnen hassling Alia from beyond the grave relies on another type of mechanism than conventional haunting, but I love it so much, and if you want to echo or parallel that go wild.
- More bouts of mutual backstabbing and treachery — what’s more erotic than treachery? Resentment, scheming, arrogance, gloating, bad blood, public displays of favor and allegiance motivated by weird petty angling… I want it all.
- Sex pollen: both of them getting hit by it and being pissed-off and schemey about it during and afterward, even as they’re driven by forces beyond their control. I just want a weird roiling sea of mutual distrust, asymmetrical desire, and loathing here, and also I think Dune sex pollen would be funny.
Fandom-specific smut likes: body contrasts (I am really partial to brown-skinned, short, wiry Paul in contrast to buff pretty-boy Feyd, and anything recalling that the Baron was a big man even before he grew fat); OTT space luxury in the bedroom; physical violence; fighting turns to fucking; any incorporation of Paul’s terrible purpose(tm) or kwisatz haderach aspects during intimacy; Feyd-Rautha being weird and cynical and suspicious about sex; Paul being a sheltered virgin despite his BG training; coitus reservatus; mutual sexual exploration; deflowering; edging; mindfucks in the boudoir; Dune-fandom-typical philosophical and tactical interior monologues during sex.
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Trust (TV 2018)
Paul/Angelo Calati
- Pre-escape-attempt weird homoerotic age-inappropriate mountain bonding around the timeframe of 1x04— I love the contrast between the beauty of the landscape with its pastoral teenage pleasures (swimming in rivers, cooking around campfires, shooting the shit about girlfriends back home) and the unmistakable tension and dread of what Paul is really there for.
- Scenes from the time when Angelo and Paul are on the run together. These two have the advantage of a shared language but there’s still a huge gulf of experience and social context between the two of them — how do they see one another? Who makes the first move? Paul has some wild experiences under his belt but he’s still another neglected teenager — how does Angelo feel about that duality?
- What can Paul learn about Angelo while they’re escaping together? What does Angelo know about Paul’s past life? Does he ever learn about Paul’s less-than-golden family history or his track record with schools? Paul can be gentle and vulnerable but he’s ultimately just a lost and stubborn kid with a shitload of problems, many of his own devising; likewise, Angelo is the youngest and most compassionate of Paul’s captors, but he’s still wrapped up in organized crime out of necessity, and he’s capable of blunt cruelty. I’d love anything with the two of them catching glimpses of one another’s pasts. What do they only learn about one another once they’re somewhere else — Rome, Naples, New York?
- I won’t lie, even knowing the obvious historical trajectory of the actual case I was still caught off-guard by Angelo’s death, and I would love any kind of canon divergence there. If they do manage to escape Primo’s sphere of influence, do things get complicated in a different way after that? How far can Paul vouch for Angelo before they start to get tangled in their well-intentioned lies?
- Huddling for warmth, co-sleeping, tending each other’s wounds, trying to cook for each other, and any other flavor of attempted domesticity. If you want to defy all odds and have these two get a little happiness together I would appreciate it. Alternately, the two of them taking risks for each other, especially if Paul’s headstrong fearlessness actually pays off in Angelo’s favor.
Paul/Primo Nizzuto
- This is a pretty candidly fucked-up pairing for [gestures at canon] reasons but I’m interested in whatever take on it you want to deliver — I’m certainly interested in the more dysfunctional and trauma-bonding-oriented side of how this pairing might possibly work, but I enjoy this fandom’s take on potential post-freedom meetings between these two — as Primo’s new influx of cash brings him to Rome, or Paul’s obvious trauma brings him back to Calabria.
- Anything exploring the complicated balance of desire, fear, and coercion between these two — how do they see one another? What shifts in the dynamic of the crew result from whatever exists between Primo and Paul? There’s always an element of consent issues going on here but I’d be interested in how that kind of escalation into a new avenue of violence might raise the stakes; if you want to deal with dubcon/noncon here please do.
- Shared drug use — there’s a pretty robust (by tiny-pairing standards) body of work dealing with this but I’m always interested in more. Alternately, anything dealing with the full range of altered states of consciousness between them — Paul’s illness, delirium, and forced drug use/intoxication, and Primo’s more self-orchestrated coke use and boozing.
- Anything dealing with the complicated gender-and-masculinity shit between them — young Paul is a real product of late-1960s early-1970s media culture and music culture from the long hair to the bare feet and his wild, bony androgyny is part of his charm while for Primo and co. (as it is for the rest of the Getty men) masculinity is closely entwined with power and money. That kind of raunchy 70s masculinity that Primo embodies (the mustache! the tight pants! the coke nail!) is wildly sexy but also transparently dangerous, so if you want to go all-in on those physical contrasts I would be really into it.
- Paul certainly seems aware that he’s an object of older people’s desire during his life in Rome, from his grandfather’s mistresses ogling him in the pool to his nude spread in Playmen — is he aware of this with Primo? Does he ever consider exploiting Primo’s attraction to him as a potential way out, or at least a road to temporary relief from pain and deprivation?
Fandom-specific smut prompts: For Primo and Paul, there’s all of the face-slapping and coke-sharing; drunk sex; high sex; intercrural sex; frottage; unreciprocated orgasms; either of them crying during sex; internalized homophobia coming out in the bedroom; Primo’s experiences or lack of experience with sex between men expressing themselves in sex; stubble burn; hair-pulling; noncon/dubcon with ignored boundaries, homophobia, or mutual attempts at making the best of an awful situation. For Paul and Angelo, I would love any kind of age-appropriate fucking around, whether it’s swapping tense handies in the hills or heavy making out while huddling for warmth; hair-pulling/general kinking on hair; clothes-sharing; swapping dirty stories.
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Henry IV Parts One & Two - Shakespeare
Henry IV of England/Prince Hal
- A bunch of the stuff Henry attributes to Hal's delinquency and God's divine punishment for their respective sins sounds... dirty. If you want to do anything fucked-up and/or filthy with penance, sin, divine judgment, and the rod of heaven!!!! I would love to read it. I'd love to read Henry being in denial about his incestuous feelings, Henry feeling deep guilt and shame but not enough to not do what he's already planning on doing, or Henry finding dubious workarounds for how he's not actually being as evil as he could be. Ins and outs of medieval Catholic ritual: optional but extremely welcome.
- Henry compares Hal to Richard II in this play, which is… fraught, given the whole play that just came before this one. Does Hal assume his father had Richard killed on purpose? If there was ever anything between Henry and Richard, or the specter of a potential something, does that color his feelings for Hal? If so, is Hal aware of it at all? What would it take to make him broach the topic? (Consider my incest DNW waived here for Richard II/Henry IV, as it is for Henry IV/Hal, but please no Richard/Hal.)
- I’d love something about these two and how their political positions make their relationship more complicated -- does the way they're already in a precarious position make it easier to rationalize violating multiple massive taboos? What does their clandestine relationship look like from the outside? Hal makes some concessions with his time and person under the assumption that his father will die soon, only for "soon" to come less quickly than expected and for their remaining time together to be increasingly fraught. I'm interested in the shape that this pairing might take as Hal passes out of the whole "youthful shithead" phase into a level of adulthood where being under his dad's thumb is increasingly inconvenient.
- Henry and Hal being cruel to each other! I know this is a fairly fucked-up desire, but Hal's ability to be nasty at his supposed friends' expense is one of my favorite things and I'd love something where his ostensible growing reconciliation to his father (or a scenario where they end up spending more time together across the board) ends up breeding some contempt between the two of them on top of their respective desperate needs for [approval, praise, etc.]/[vindication, control, etc.]
- Historical AUs set in different eras are totally fair game to mix and match with any of my prompts, but I'm especially craving an interwar British AU for these two. An AU where the family drama has played out in just another rich terrible family rather than the royal family of England is probably in order, but if you can swing the latter I would also love it. I just want fucked-up intergenerational cultural shifts and impending threats and societal shifts and also Hal doing a little bit of cocaine and fucking his dad.
Fandom-specific smut likes for both plays: late medieval clothing porn, especially untied points/yanked-down hose; dressing/undressing; fully or partly-dressed sex; intercrural sex; wound fingering; face-slapping; choking; sexual jealousy.
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Pilgrimage (2017)
Raymond de Merville/Diarmuid
- Diarmuid is so inquisitive and earnest that it’s easy to buy him as - genuinely pure of heart enough to handle the relic — does de Merville consciously or unconsciously want to spoil that purity? To forcibly secularize him? (Forcing him out of the monastic clothing he’s accustomed to as an extra twist of the knife would be great for me.)
- Raymond taking out his religious and/or daddy issues on luckless Diarmuid, taking him as a servant/””””servant”””” on campaign, or just making him a straight-up hostage or designated relic-toucher for his own sweaty, dirty, grimy, thoroughly secular pleasure.
- Any kind of complex love-hate-fear thing between these two, or the two of them being forced to rely on one another because of Reasons. I love all the ways Raymond de Merville is cast as Diarmuid’s total opposite, from his aristocratic background and Anglo-Norman vibes to his secular habits. Medieval material culture, cultural tensions, language barriers, injured or battered Diarmuid, Diarmuid’s religious earnestness, and Raymond’s deep religious bitterness are all big pluses here.
- Raymond de Merville tries to get out of his worldly obligations (or a price on his head?) by becoming a simple, humble, ordinary monk, no ulterior motives here, no sir… at the same time as Diarmuid is settling into full monk status or finishing up his novitiate. I love monastic drama from this time period, and grumpy medieval chronicle griping about whether formerly-worldly novices really meant it or not forever delights me.
- Class differences, medieval-style! I personally headcanon Diarmuid as a child oblate given the abbot and Brother Ciaran’s remarks about him not knowing life outside the monastery, but no matter how he grew up he certainly seems to come from a different class background and sociopolitical context than Raymond as a nobleman’s son and a career soldier — I’d love to see what that looks like between them, from their attitudes on sodomy to their attitudes on violence.
Fandom-specific smut likes: All kinds of medieval sodomy hangups and workarounds! (My preference isn’t for fic where Diarmuid truly knows nothing at all, even conceptually, about sex between men — Irish penitentials from this era can get pretty fine-grained about young monks’ sex lives.) Intercrural sex; stigma around oral sex; Raymond communicating what he wants Diarmuid to do to him (or vice-versa) despite their language gaps; clothed or mostly-clothed sex; painful sex; age and size differences.
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Rome (TV)
Julius Caesar/Octavian
- Atia's readiness to believe that her teenage son shrewdly seduced his great-uncle for political gain is sure something and her pushiness about it cracks me the fuck up every time -- so what if Octavian decides to mess with her head and her expectations of what that relationship would look like? Does he take advantage of new latitude as a supposed lover, to political ends or personal ones, or just get a kick out of people thinking he has Caesar's special attention? If you choose to take things a counterhistorical/counter-canonical direction with Caesar's assassination, I'd love something where Octavian tries to take the lead in Caesar's defense and Caesar is appreciative but confounded.
- I love the scene in 1x10 where Octavian anoints Caesar with blood before his triumph, and I'd love more scenes of them interacting in that kind of ambiguous state where Octavian is acting from his position of religious authority and Caesar is nominally submitting to him. What's that like for a man with Caesar's track record of achievements? I'd love any fic that deals with Roman state religion, Octavian's skeptical deism, Caesar's history with symbols and omens, astronomy, haruspexy, dream interpretation, really any of it. (All the weird blood stuff in the triumph preparation scene is also wildly sexy, so take that wherever you want.)
- How does Caesar see Octavian's more cold-blooded/borderline antisocial traits? His approach to politics is pretty different from his eventual heir's, but I'd love anything where the two of them size one another up, or where Caesar reflects on Octavian's appetite for ruthlessness, whether it elicits admiration or unease. (Or both!) The series really showcases the mindfucks Caesar's capable of through judicious employment of mercy and forgiveness -- does that work as well with Octavian when he's feeling nervy?
- Octavian wants to top Caesar, Caesar is keenly aware of why this is Not The Thing… but they figure it out. Roman sexual hangups are my kryptonite, especially as they dovetail with the complicated balances of real-life power between these two and their associates; feel free to make the full spectrum of Roman sex hangups take center stage here. (Or omit them as an area of focus, if that's not your speed, though I'd prefer no ahistorically well-adjusted sexual norms.)
- Octavian isn't great in canon at keeping the secret of Caesar's epilepsy -- though with a family like that, secrets seem hard to maintain -- but I'd love something where he's a bit better at keeping that specific element under wraps, and Caesar is a little grateful, or where his slightly more skeptical take on the interference of gods in the lives of mortals prompts him to take a different tack with an illness that's the supposed product of divine judgment.
Mark Antony/Octavian
- Some scenario where Antony and Octavian are both separately persuaded it's in their best interest to make up… at least for the time being… and have to pretend they're on cordial terms at a dinner party/in public/in front of the Senate/in front of their troops/in front of Cleopatra. Basically fake dating without the dating. Cue ancient Roman gay chicken, hatesex behind the scenes at a social/public/religious event and then having to go back and pretend to be amiable, etc.
- Both of them processing some fucked-up feelings after the death of Caesar, for a rare moment where the immediate fallout of Caesar's literal and metaphorical inheritance isn't getting in the way. Alternately, a fic where Antony is among Caesar's assassins, and the politics get messy.
- If you just want to write more of Antony kicking the shit out of Octavian, I would be very happy. (Octavian managing to kick the shit out of Antony is also very welcome, especially in ways that hurt his pride.) """"Playful"""" sparring gets serious, impromptu rough body play during sex, fighting turning into fucking or "don't look at my boner while we fight!" denial as they both get off on mistreating one another -- listen, I'm sorry, but all the choking in light of Octavian's canon kinks… yeah.
- Fucked up consent issues going every which way! Antony thinks he's dubconning Octavian, Octavian thinks he's dubconning Antony, both of them are right. I love many flavors of dubcon (as evidenced by that way-too-long list up there) and would be happy to read any situation you can contrive to put these guys into.
- Something set during Lupercalia -- the historical Antony seems to have been involved in the festival in some capacity (cf. the whole "offering Caesar a crown" thing) and the tone of those festivities seems like a great backdrop for all hell to break loose. In-group politics, major event-planning logistics, teeth-gritting social niceties while Octavian and Antony are at each other's throats, or just boning down while undergoing ritual purification.
Fandom-specific smut likes: facefucking/anything with outrageous Roman hangups about oral sex and the mouth; Octavian getting sex-choked/slapped; Octavian doing the sex-choking/face-slapping; Octavian as an awfully pretty sadomasochist top; rough body play; intercrural sex; fucking in the spoons position.
This fandom gets some wiggle room on my normal guidelines regarding explicit underage sex since the timeline of canon compresses historical events and ages of consent in the ancient world look pretty different; as long as he’s not explicitly a prepubescent, bulla-wearing child, I’m fine with it. Fic dealing with Octavian’s mommy issues, Octavian’s canon sibling incest, Atia's assumption that Caesar and Octavian have sex in 1x04, or the general messiness of Roman sexual norms around age and class are also totally fine.
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Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
Thomas Cromwell/Henry VIII of England
- Anything to do with weird gestures of ownership and any kind of loyalty kink would make me happy here, going either way. Cromwell's idea of the service offered to his masters has pretty concrete consequences for other people, and Henry's idea of an affectionate gesture can get real possessive, so I'd love anything that dwells a little on that -- the bit in The Mirror & The Light when Cromwell talks about Henry sending him bedhangings got me REAL good. (From Mirror: he finds himself thinking of his spectacular bed: the king has given him a set of covers and bed hangings, purple woven with silver tissue, emblazoned with the royal arms. You are mine asleep or awake, Henry is saying: like a lover.) The most recent installment of canon doesn't end on such a warm note between the two of them, but I'd be very happy too with fic set when Cromwell's stocks are riding higher.
- This is my most farfetched of ship desires: fic where Henry and Cromwell meet pre-canon. I have no fucking idea how this would work or when or where but I just love both men's respective bygone youths -- Henry as a gorgeous springy golden beauty, Cromwell as a hard-bitten mercenary -- and how they cast a shadow over their respective adult lives.
- Canon has lots of good bits with traveling, visits, and Tudor court entertainments, but I want more, more, more. If you want to put a developing Henry/Cromwell relationship against the backdrop of mundane life developments, or with awkward courtly spectators alongside the dark undercurrents, I would be super into that.
- Henry's response circa M&TL to Cromwell being compared to Piers Gaveston and Robert de Vere… let's talk about that. For that matter, what does Cromwell think about Edward II/Richard II as precursors and patterns for the whole "kings with uppity minions" thing that bites him and Henry in the ass from time to time? If you want to go deep on Tudor historiography, go for it; if you just want to write these two considering their historical precedents while they bone down, also go for it.- What kind of lawyerly workarounds can Cromwell manage to justify sodomy, or to define what they're doing as Technically Not That?
- Anything to do with Henry's various injuries and health issues -- or on the flipside Cromwell's recurring Italian fever. Cromwell has very good reasons to be highly attuned to the prospect of Henry's impending death (or at least foul temper) and there's a lot of complicated stuff going on there about how Henry understands his power to be reflected in his person.
Thomas Cromwell/Thomas Wolsey
- Pre-great-matter Cromwell/Wolsey where Cromwell expresses, or maybe more represses, his feelings through the medium of doing Wolsey's dirty work.
- Sexy Tudor murder mystery -- somebody gets bumped off (one of the Cardinal's other henchmen? someone involved with monastic dissolutions?) and Cromwell acts as Wolsey's agent to solve it. Or cover it up. Whichever.
- On the other end of the plottiness spectrum I would absolutely kill for any moment of unresolved tension between these two from any moment in their relationship, whether either of them is conscious that what they're feeling is romantic or not. Loyalty kink, general affection and concern, their weird little shared jokes, gift-giving, and anything with Cromwell’s habit of expressing his more tender emotions through ruthless competence and quiet menace.
- Dreams and ghosts -- especially if they fuck with Cromwell's developing Protestant theology, or toe the line between horny and surreal. I love how Wolsey’s shadow persists in Cromwell’s life, especially in the timeframe of Mirror where Cromwell is forced to reconsider what he thought he knew about Wolsey as well as what he thought he knew about Christian doctrines concerning the dead, so if you want to explore that time frame in particular I would love it. Or Cromwell’s ghost very crossly meeting Wolsey’s in an afterlife neither of them fully anticipated, idk.
- I'm open to film noir AUs for any fandom this year but I'd especially love a film noir riff on these two, either the two of them entangled in a noir-inflected take on Wolsey's canon downfall or a 20th century (midcentury? post-Golden Age, neo-noir?) remix
Fandom-specific smut prompts: fully-clothed/partially-clothed sex; nocturnal visitations; Tudor clothing porn (esp. with Cromwell commentary about the textile industry) abutting actual porn; intimacy while nominally discussing something else; sex while one party is pining for somebody else and the other party is pining for the person they're having sex with; former Italian hustler Cromwell.
