Rare Male Slash Ex 2023 Exchange Letter

[skazka]

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)
- 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
- religion and religious identity (most obviously this plays out in Wolf Hall, where I'm absolutely obsessed with the way the English Reformation plays out in a very personal sphere, but I also have a lot of emotions about Dieter Frey and Jewishness in Call For The Dead, and would love to see non-WASP religious identities explored in Sweet Smell of Success)
- 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. I’ve got plenty of smut prompts but I will hugely enjoy anything you write me on any level of explicitness, and I also love pairings that go completely unconsummated.

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-harm or disordered eating due to psychological distress; unrequested incest or child sexual abuse (past CSA is fine); high school or 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.



3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Ben Wade/Charlie Prince

- How did Charlie end up in Ben’s gang to begin with? How long’s he been trailing after Wade with the most unsubtle stars in his eyes? What were their respective first impressions of one another? Ben seems like the consummate cool customer as far as leaders go, but Charlie always seems to be just this side of flying off the handle even when his boss isn’t in peril — how did he earn his place as Wade’s de facto lieutenant, and why does Ben tolerate him?

- Any kind of dealing with injury/illness/inclement conditions together, either as part of the bigger gang or caught out alone/separated and trying to reunite. Does Charlie go and get himself injured in the course of trying to do something valiant on Wade’s behalf? What about when it’s the boss who’s injured?

- I’m really interested in the various ways age and experience are played with in this movie — adolescent William both starstruck with outlawry and queasily fascinated by the taking of human life, Ben Wade’s account of starting his gang off in Leadville as a motherless boy not much older — and I’d love any kind of AU where these two’s relative ages are adjusted, whether it’s teenage budding outlaw Wade falling in with an equally teenaged and tempestuous Prince or either one of them as grown men dealing with a teenaged version of the other. (Though a teenaged Charlie Prince with all the admiration for outlaw life and none of the experience sounds like a real powder keg.)

- Charlie seems to be almost as protective of Ben Wade’s glamorous criminal reputation as he is of the man himself, especially in the screenplay where he clearly expects others to respect what Wade’s name signifies (and the near-fetishization of his famous gun) — what does Wade himself make of that when they’re alone together? How aware is he of Charlie’s feelings?

- On the flipside, Charlie Prince is at rock bottom an arrogant, vicious, trigger-happy dickhead and I love it so much — feel free to whump him, rough him up, make him suffer, or have Wade firmly but painfully rein him in from his more reckless tendencies. Even the boss must get tired of him sometimes and as much as I love the loyalty kink/villain-henchman dynamic they’ve got going on I would love anything where a noncon/dubcon element muddies the waters even more.

Fandom-specific smut: Huddling for warmth/bedroll-sharing; loyalty kink; eye contact during sex; intercrural sex; service kink; gun kink, both in the usual sense of gunplay (sex at gunpoint, penetration with a gun, etc.) and in the sense of guns-as-objects-of-desire. (The Hand of God does look awfully pretty, and it’s not like Westerns don’t have a rich track record of homoerotic “btw the gun is my penis” imagery.)

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Call For The Dead - John Le Carre
George Smiley/Dieter Frey

These two have serious layers of history and I’d love anything set during any of them, basically. (Or after Dieter’s canon death if you want to write discussion of/reflection upon the relationship, that’s how thirsty I am about these two — there are thoroughly practical reasons for why he doesn’t otherwise appear in the later narratives around Smiley’s life but that’s what fanfiction is for.)

- Something during their time at the same university — Dieter as the idol of his classmates, beautifully Byronic and playing with fire, and Smiley positioned there as the unobtrusive watcher, still getting spotted as a potential ideological ally. It’s fascinating to me how keenly aware of Dieter’s attractiveness Smiley is, and how well-attuned he is to all the ways that attractiveness and conspicuousness puts him in danger — Smiley’s own self-restraint and utterly unromantic outward persona are my kryptonite and I’d love to read some deranged pining against a backdrop of literature and rising dread.

- We’re meant to believe that in his espionage career during the war Dieter manages to thread the needle between his obvious skills and all the highly visible qualities that make him memorable and put him at risk in a virulently antisemitic and ableist social climate, but it could only have been incredibly nerve-racking. I’d love to see any scenes of Dieter and Smiley as spy and handler during this time period, celebrating their wins or coping with crisis, or any of the clandestine meetings and exchanges between the two of them that evoke cruising and wartime trysts.

- Anything post-war is also super welcome, exploring their positions on opposite sides of an ideological gulf — is there any other way they might have crossed paths, tangled up with the Fennans or otherwise?

- Listen… okay… as a frumpy British man of a certain age Smiley must 100% be familiar with a certain degree of situational homosexuality (and tbf Dieter has likely encountered its Continental equivalent) — I’d love anything about how he compartmentalizes (or doesn’t) sexual encounters with men, and likewise for Dieter in an era where both left- and right-wing orthodoxy were incredibly hostile to homosexuality. (If you want to write something about Dieter’s time in East Germany, the thorny history of homosexuality there is fascinating.)

- This is highly self-indulgent and also chronologically shaky given the ways Le Carre has to adjust Smiley’s age and personal timeline as the books featuring him go on, but if you want to include any of the other Circus associates we meet in Le Carre’s novels, either as onscreen presences with whom these two cross paths or just part of the texture of espionage, please do. I love Connie Sachs, Prideaux and Haydon, and anybody else you want to feature. Also Ann, always Ann.

Fandom-specific smut likes: It’s almost been made deliberately hard to objectify Smiley, but I still do; I’d love anything dealing with the contrast between his unprepossessing and unromantic exterior and the times where he does in fact play the lover. Sexual intimacy short of penetration or deliberately skirting penetration; sexual fantasy; hurried trysts; edging.

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Primal Fear (1996)
Aaron Stampler/Martin Vail

- I joke about this movie being only slightly removed from being a neo-noir or a 1990s-style erotic thriller, but I’m really not joking, so: please feel free to explore the way a canonical attraction between these two, mutual or one-sided, acknowledged or subtextual, would impact how the film plays out. Canon divergence or missing-scene-type stuff, it’s all good.

- The film treats a NGRI ruling as pretty much a parking ticket — Janet snapping that he’ll be out in a month — but in reality forensic psychiatric treatment is a pretty grueling long-term experience at the absolute best of times; I’d love anything where Martin can’t keep himself away from Aaron even after knowing the truth, or where Aaron has to throw himself on Vail’s mercy for support during his institutionalization. Or the two of them getting entangled even closer as the only ones who know each other’s respective secrets and unflattering truths. (Feel free to also handwave the possible timeline of that whole thing and go with the movie’s framing of it.)

- The whole split personality gambit might be a ruse but Aaron is clearly pretty messed-up over his experiences at Savior House, with homelessness, and with an unhappy home life before that — I would love to see some absolutely terrible coping, and Vail struggling with his sense of what reactions are authentic on Aaron’s part and what’s a continued mindfuck or a gambit to get some kind of upper hand. And Aaron’s certainly aware that Vail prefers the meek, passive version of him to the hostile and manipulative reality — does he ever try to play that part to get a little leverage on him, or to punish him for that?

- On that note, there’s some real layers to the consent issues here and I am so here for all of them. How do the formal imbalances of power between these two impact their fucked-up little joint effort, or any relationship they might have after Aaron’s out of an institutional setting and showing back up in Vail’s life? Show me what an affair might be like — super-toxic, self-aware, destructive, horny, violent, yearning, disastrous, or any combination of the above.

- One aspect of their dynamic that I’m obsessed with is the degree to which they’re reacting off of one another and collaborating together on their narrative of the murder, constructing the split personality defense and putting together some version of what happened with the Archbishop that Martin can finesse in front of a courtroom. How conscious is Vail that he’s even doing this? Can they take this absolutely cursed collaboration into a relationship after the case is over? Mutual blackmail? Mutual destruction? Mutually beneficial bullshitting? I love Martin's absolute arrogance and confidence -- he's really fucking good at his job and he knows it -- and would love to see more fucked up cat-and-mouse stuff between these two or on-the-fly collaboration.

Fandom-specific smut prompts: Consent issues in every direction; sexual inexperience/difference in expectations around sex; furtive semi-public sex or sexual contact in an institutional setting where discovery is a possibility; clothed or mostly-clothed sex; shower sex or any other manifestation of Aaron despoiling Martin’s gorgeous empty house after he walks free; “we shouldn’t be doing this” sex (or “you shouldn’t be doing this, so I don’t need to feel bad about what I do to you” sex); all kinds of guilt, hostility, and hangups in the bedroom.

Fandom-specific DNWs: actual DID/Roy being an actual distinct personality; heavy focus on Martin being compassionate and well-informed about sexual abuse or on this pairing making healing and healthy sexual choices together; ageplay/age regression/aging Aaron down to be under 18.


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Red Shoe Diaries (1992 TV Film)
Jake Winters/Thomas K. Butler

I was introduced to this film by a recent episode of the film history podcast You Must Remember This and if you want a brief tasting menu of what makes it so nuts, it’s well worth a listen — the short version is that it’s the TV movie proof-of-concept for the Showtime series of the same name, about Alex, a beautiful but troubled interior designer caught between her love for Jake, her high-powered architect fiance who is also early-1990s David Duchovny at his most beautiful, and an intense erotic desire for Tom, a gorgeous rough-trade construction worker who moonlights as a shoe salesman. When guilt-wracked Alex kills herself, Jake is left piecing together wtf happened from her diary and tracking down Tom in search of catharsis. You can stream the film for free on Tubi, and it is premium arty 1990s trash. I would love something exploring the triangulation between these three — Jake first engages with the version of Tom he only knows through Alex’s diary, before seeking him out and taking out his complicated grief on this beautiful, arrogant piece of primo man beef, and the two of them desperately need to bone.

- Basketball is clearly standing in for something more between these guys and I’d love something where the erotic spark kicked off by their rough-and-tumble sweaty macho grappling goes somewhere different.

- Tom’s truly weird daddy issues also seem like a fun thing to unpack; what’s his relationship to his dad like, and how does Jake see it connecting to Alex’s own mom trauma, or his own parental baggage?

- Does Jake leverage the things he knows about Alex that Tom never got to learn, or does he deliberately withhold that information? How does physical roughness and violence play out between the two men relative to how it informed both the horny highs and disturbing lows of Alex’s affair with Tom?

-The class dynamics between Alex and Tom are right at the forefront, with him literally on his knees for this girl and her $200 French shoes and clearly feeling something complex about that; what’s that look like between Jake the architect and Tom the construction worker with a side hustle?

- Do they ever meet again after the events of the film? Feel free to include the extended framing device of the Red Shoes newspaper ads/Jake continuing to collect these personal accounts of erotically wayward women, including his own day-in-the-limelight episode of the Showtime series getting busy with Sheryl Lee, or ignore all of that and sketch out some other trajectory for these two.

Fandom-specific DNWs: AUs where Alex/Tom doesn’t happen or that remove Alex from the picture entirely.

Bonus smut prompts: Mutual dubcon/noncon; destructive fightsex that trashes Jake’s bougie apartment or ruins Tom's only suit; competition in the bedroom; verbal humiliation exploiting the things Alex’s written in her diary or that Tom’s learned about Alex from their affair.

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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? (Side note: Hunsecker’s RL inspiration, Walter Winchell, came up as a teenager through vaudeville and lived long enough to encounter fellow ex-vaudevillian and fuckup Bob Fosse. Fosse, who was closer to J.J.’s chronological cohort, apparently hated the guy and at the time of his own death was working on a biopic of him. Make of that what you will.)

- 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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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. Acts of service that are also acts of personal advancement are still acts of service. I’m really smitten with all the ins and outs of Tudor bureaucracy and politicking if you want to incorporate any of that.

- 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 try and solve it, anyway.

- 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, whatever. One of those moments that stays preserved in amber or develops new facets considered in hindsight.

- Dreams and ghosts -- especially if they fuck with Cromwell's developing Protestant theology, come with a big helping of guilt and rationalization, or toe the line between horny and surreal.

- I'm open to film noir AUs for any fandom this year (and SSOS/Wolf Hall would be a great bit of schemey synergy) 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.

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. (M&TL: 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, which I love, 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.

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.