Chocolate Box 2022 Letter

[skazka]

General likes:

- hookups coming before feelings
- one-night stands and anonymous sex turned not-so-anonymous
- loving but deeply weird relationships
- pining, whether requited or unrequited
- ghosts, monsters, the supernatural
- loyalty kink, either big gestures or low-key loyal doting
- Pining and characters doing deeply strange things due to pining
- Complicated feelings -- characters who can't say or even think the truth about how they feel, tongue-tied lovers, pining, love/hate, enemies-to-lovers, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers-again, etc.
- Film noir tropes and AUs (hardboiled narration, doom and double-crosses, femmes fatales, gunsels)
- any other kind of genre fusion -- campy 80s slasher horror? Summer camp romp? 90s YA novel? Gothic horror?
- Fucked-up courtships -- mind games, fighting as foreplay, surveillance and obsessions from afar, villains in love with heroes and vice versa. This can be silly (think Kate Beaton's Nemesis comics) or more serious.
- Noncon and dubcon -- power plays, trying to bargain for advantages or escape worse consequences using sex, trying to defuse a dangerous situation using sex, fights and captivity scenarios that take a bad turn, villain-on-hero noncon.
- shady pasts
- parental hangups
- secret meetings and trysts
- road trips
- partners in crime
- hurt/comfort and whump
- murder: murdering your lover, murdering people on behalf of your lover, major character death
- fuckups in love
- always-a-girl genderswap (especially when leading to butch characters and f/f pairings!)

I love fic with trans characters, especially if characters retain their canon genders as trans people, i.e. trans dude Sidney Falco, trans girl Irulan Corrino. This and genderswap can be a total freebie on top of any other AU too. I'm down for crossovers/fusions, AUs of all kinds (especially high-concept/fanciful/historical AUs), and unusual formats, whatever that may mean to you.

For art, I'm down for anything from a vignette of the two characters interacting to a comic/illustration/fresco -- if it's a pairing who've met in canon, feel free to illustrate a passage you find particularly shippy or a missing scene! My prompts definitely lean more toward the narrative than the visual, but I really would be thrilled for anything visual with these pairings. Historical AUs/historical outfits will always delight me -- Regency! ancient Rome! 1940s! -- and any kind of genre pastiche mentioned above. I'm totally down with porny art and would love to see it.

Art likes:

- B&W and grayscale art, soft/muted colors.
- Visual pastiches of other art styles -- Edward Gorey, Aubrey Beardsley, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Goya, midcentury magazine illustrations, etc.
- Historical/setting AUs where the characters get to show off new clothes/settings/gear.
- Hairy chests, legs, and pits (on all genders). Men's legs and butts.
- Historical clothing and uniforms.
- Tarot motifs.
- Skulls! Skulls, skulls, skulls.
- For ship art, size differences and smaller characters taking a more dominant role (whether that's topping or in any other sense).
- Art of characters beaten up or scarred.
- Portraits/bust-style art.

Smut likes:

- size differences (both size/weight/physique and in the dick department)
- partially-clothed or mostly-clothed sex
- oral sex, handjobs, frottage, intercrural
- characters who kink on violence (gunplay, face-slapping, beating the hell out of each other or getting beaten up, etc.)
- impotence/erectile dysfunction
- casual fuckbuddies, sex for comfort, friends with benefits
- funny goofy fail!sex, dramatic dysfunctional fail!sex
- historical sexual practices and meeting places, cruising, queer subcultures
- fancy clothes and dressing/undressing
- angsty whumpy noncon/dubcon, conflicted manipulative dubcon
- class issues in the bedroom
- younger characters as sexual initiators/sexual aggressors

DNWs: self-harm; eating disorders; unrequested child sexual abuse; unrequested incest; PIV sex with transmasculine characters bottoming; sexual assault of trans characters; trans pregnancy; omegaverse; RL crises and current events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. I don't want to receive explicit fic involving characters under 16.

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Dune Series - Frank Herbert
Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen/Irulan Corrino
- Arranged marriage AU! In many ways Feyd and Irulan are both carefully manicured specimens of their respective aristocratic types -- the courtly Bene Gesserit-educated princess and the charismatic poisonous prettyboy -- and I feel like they would have so much to fight about when they weren't joining forces to fight other people.
- Feyd-is-Paul's-prisoner AU (for handwave reasons or because his Kwisatz Haderach-fathering abilities have been neutralized... R.I.P. testicles) where Feyd and Irulan have an absolutely deranged affair across prison bars.
- The 2000 miniseries has a great plotline where Irulan seduces Feyd to get information on her father's schemes out of him, and frankly I still want: more of that.
- Fem!Feyd/Irulan f/f where Feyd is still every inch the murderous, treacherous jock (combined with any of the above or anything else you like)
- Fucked-up long distance relationships!

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
- 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 and Irulan existing in tension between "sheltered royal virgin" and "over-educated Bene Gesserit"; 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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Pilgrimage (2017)
Brother Diarmuid/Raymond De Merville

- Raymond makes Diarmuid his concubine and takes him back to England (or France) by force.
- Conversely, Raymond makes Diarmuid his """"""personal chaplain"""" and takes him back to England (or France) by force. In either case I'd love to see Diarmuid thrust into civilian clothes for the first time in his life and dealing with the very different social mores of Anglo-Norman society.
- Something with the scene between the two of them in the woods going further in a rapey direction.
- Any kind of weird hostage situation where Raymond begins to feel grudging affection/protectiveness for Diarmuid and hates it. (Whether or not Diarmuid starts to feel a reciprocal obligation toward his captor, and especially if not.)
- Hurt-comfort with Raymond giving Diarmuid medical attention, or vice versa. (I love Diarmaid and Ciaran's interest in herbalism in canon, so feel free to draw that out.) With villain ships, I really enjoy the villain having a legit pang of conscience now and again, if not necessarily enough to turn Diarmuid loose.


Bonus smut prompts: Size kink; clothed/mostly-clothed sex; intercrural sex; handjobs; casual homosocial bed-sharing (or forbidden, taboo bed-sharing) as a prelude to sex; all kinds of medieval sodomy hangups; surprisingly rough sex; surprisingly gentle sex; kissing and embracing as plausible-deniability foreplay; language kink and verbal humiliation.

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The Power Of The Dog (2021)
Phil Burbank/Peter Gordon

- The anthrax gambit doesn't work and Peter has to come up with alternate murder methods while in a rapidly escalating intimate relationship with Phil. Does Phil ever suspect it? Is that something he can get past?
- Kink exploration -- Phil's delightfully fetishistic relationship with objects and materials is present in canon and I'd love to see any kind of scene in which that element is present either under the surface or breaking through to a more visible position. Similarly, I'd love something like this with Peter and whatever kind of scenarios/imagery/objects carry that kind of horny power for him.
- Something filling out Peter's unvoiced thoughts about Phil as an object of desire -- my own reading of the film as a text is that Peter does feel a certain degree of attraction toward Phil, but it's tempered by all kinds of resentment, but I'd love to read anything exploring any of the options there.
- Phil and Peter spending time alone together in the wilderness -- camping in the mountains? Day trip to the Lewis & Clark place getting out of hand? Involuntary (or semi-involuntary) isolation due to weather, injury, or other external factors also seems like a recipe for horny disaster some fun tension.
- Real talk, I want all kinds of consent issues scenarios for these two, especially situations that are mutual -- such as a scenario where Phil might not be up for it if he knew Peter's ulterior motives, but where Peter's own attraction is mingled with fear and plenty else -- but definitely extending to all other potential darkness and fuckery.

Peter Gordon/Peter's college friend (the one he calls Professor)
- Peter's friend does come out to the ranch despite Peter's wishes (surprise visit? Malicious Phil gambit? Family happened to be in the area and don't quite get why dropping in on your secret boyfriend's stepfamily might be tense?) and shit hits the fan. What do they do together? How do others see them?
- The novel includes the tantalizing detail that Peter and his friend stay up late talking about their plans for their future together -- what do they hope for? How do they see their relationship fitting into that?
- Sexual exploration and experimentation at college -- I love the thought of these two exploring a model of intimacy between men that doesn't look much like the Bronco Henry experience.
- Post-canon relationship fic -- how have the events of canon changed Peter, and how does his friend pick up on that?
- Really post-canon fic about the two of them as grown men further into the 20th century. What kind of doctor (if any at all) does Peter turn out to be? How does their relationship hold up, even if they're no longer partners or exclusive partners?

Bonus smut prompts: hand kink (!!!!); bondage; bed-sharing and co-sleeping; m/m intimacy under the veneer of plausible deniability; physical roughness and rough body play;

Fandom-specific DNWs: I'd rather not read anything worse than what happens in canon happening to Rose (so her being psychologically terrorized and frail is fine, but her being dead or institutionalized against her will is a DNW) or anything suggesting Phil's low estimation of her character and motives is objectively accurate.

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HBO's Rome
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?
- 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 or art 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? 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?
- Older 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.)
- 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 is a benefit.

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.

Fandom-specific DNWs: 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 Octavian'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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Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)
J.J. Hunsecker/Sidney Falco

- What favor did Sidney do for J.J. that was too far, even for him? (I'd rather it weren't just Falco having sex with Hunsecker in exchange for tips; that can be part of it, but I'd rather the line being crossed be something more than that.)
- J.J. takes Sidney under his wing, maybe in an AU where the gambit to separate Susie and Dallas succeeds uncommonly well or at some earlier point of divergence in their relationship; Sidney feels like a kept boy and hates it, even as he benefits from it
- Does Hunsecker have a background in show business, if he's nominally writing about the arts? Does Falco ever needle him about it?
- Falco survives the film's ending and the two of them end up in a deeply bitter relationship full of dependence and jealousy. I would love any kind of post-canon waning-days-of-Hollywood-gossip retrospective (if you want to go truly wild, some kind of epistolary treatment of their relationship in the style of You Must Remember This or Scandals Of Classic Hollywood or hell, Hollywood Babylon) or just a scene from the aftermath.
- What does Falco make of Hunsecker's attachment to his sister? Is he ever bold enough to float the word "incest"? (Consider J.J./Susie's weird vibes firmly requested in this case.)

Bonus smut prompts: J.J. making Falco crawl to him, metaphorically or literally; anonymous and faux-anonymous meetings; closetedness; tearooms and cottaging; face-slapping; rough body play; verbal humiliation; sexual humiliation.

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These Violent Delights - Nemerever
Paul Fleischer/Julian Fromme
- Anything with Paul learning more about Julian's traumatic school experiences and being super fucking weird about them. I find Nemerever's extracanonical thoughts on what happened with Julian in school really interesting and fic-suggestive (he has a twitter for them here: https://twitter.com/TVD_extras) but there's nothing there that you couldn't get the gist of from canon -- bullying, fucked-up coercive sex, and other horrors of supposedly exclusive institutions all seem in order here.
- Alternate-setting AUs of all stripes where these two meet as student revolutionaries, chess prodigies, art forgers, or anything else.
- Canon divergence where they do kill Julian's parents (siblings optional) and what that does to their actual relationship afterward. That whole plan might have seemed one way as a more-or-less pleasant fantasy of freedom and self-affirmation but it'd be quite another in reality, and even if the two of them 'get away with it' I can't imagine it's much fun.
- Canon divergence AU where Julian's parents attempt to pull the plug on his relationship with Paul by enforcing a family vacation to France/California/wherever... and then Paul shows up anyway like "hi, it's 1973 and airfare costs like $50, I'm rescuing you".
- Literally anything about their relationship would make me happy -- missing scenes, alternate endings, epistolary fic, darkfic, porn.

Smut prompts: Unsafe kink; furtive sex outdoors, in semi-public locations, in cars, etc.; sadism; masochism; mutual masturbation; super weird emotionally intense heavy petting; sex or making out in traditionally all-male environments like locker rooms.

Fandom-specific DNW: If Julian's school trauma includes sexual abuse by adult authority figures (teachers, staff, etc.) I need those abusers to get murdered.

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Wolf Hall Series - Hilary Mantel
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.
- 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,
- Dreams and ghosts -- especially if they fuck with Cromwell's developing Protestant theology, or toe the line between horny and surreal.
- 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.

Henry VIII/Thomas Cromwell

- Queasy loyalty kink set during one of those times where Cromwell is riding high in Henry's favor -- this could take any form but I'd be especially interested in the kind of public gesture other people are bound to witness and scrutinize, or its aftermath.
- Cromwell having to navigate Henry's prudishness about sex yoked to Henry's debilitatingly intense experiences of sexual desire -- either third-wheeling Henry's desire for Anne or lawyering his way around sodomy. This is a pairing with a lot of baggage for both parties around sexuality and sodomy so I'd be happy with any level of explicitness here, down to just fraught sexual tension that never goes anywhere physically.
- Nocturnal visits getting weird -- another dream Cromwell does his best to interpret? Henry amusing himself by showing up unannounced?
- Anything incorporating the bonkers traditions around gift-giving, hospitality, and the semi-formalized exchanging of Valentines -- Cromwell doing Henry's bidding by acting as Mary's valentine, or Henry's gifts toward Cromwell taking on a possessive tinge?
- Anything with Henry's various ailments/disabilities and horror of disease, or conversely, anything with Cromwell's Italian fever making an inconvenient recurrence.

Bonus smut prompts: rules-lawyering your way through sodomy; fully-clothed or partially-clothed sex; erotically charged dressing and undressing; failing to undress from your massive Tudor outfit fast enough so you ruin your codpiece; men wearing just their shirts for sexual activity; sexually-repressed but sexually charged physical interactions with ostensibly innocent motivations; affection and horniness for scarred/hairy/burly/heavy/old bodies.