Candy Hearts 2025 Exchange Letter

[skazka]

General likes:

- sex coming before feelings
- Complicated feelings -- characters who can't say or even think the truth about how they feel, tongue-tied lovers, pining, love/hate relationships
- loving but deeply weird relationships
- pining, whether requited or unrequited
- ghosts, monsters, the supernatural
- loyalty kink, either big selfless gestures or low-key attentiveness
- pet sociopaths — morally-dubious characters in love doing the dirty deeds their more morally upstanding lovers cannot, or needing to be restrained from doing so
- killing out of love; refusing to kill someone out of love
- Pining and characters doing deeply strange things due to pining
- erotic obsession
- hurt/comfort
- bittersweet tenderness; creepy tenderness; unexpected tenderness
- Film noir tropes and AUs — hardboiled narration, doom and double-crosses, femmes fatales, gunsels
- any other kind of genre fusion -- gothic horror? Bildungsroman? 1970s coke-fueled rock star rampage? Sweeping historical costume piece?
- 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, mutual overlapping consent issues
- internalized homophobia
- shady pasts coming to light
- parental hangups
- secret meetings and trysts
- road trips, traveling together
- partners in crime
- hurt/comfort and whump
- fuckups in love

This is a low-word-count exchange; self-contained scenes, porn without plot, tiny vignettes that could come from a larger story, and the like are totally fine. 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. All of the following prompts are totally optional and just there to get the gears turning; if none of them work for you, feel free to take off in a different direction.

I don't have remotely enough art-specific prompts to request art primarily, but if you feel inspired I’d love to receive art treats -- you can see some of my likes below.

Some of my fanart likes

For art, I'm down for anything from a B&W lineart 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 interpolate 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.

The following likes are fully for your own use as inspiration; if your artistic passion lies elesewhere, go for it.

Art likes:

- B&W and grayscale art, lineart, soft/muted colors.
- Visual pastiches of other art styles -- Edward Gorey, Aubrey Beardsley, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Goya, ukiyo-e prints, 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, choking, beating the hell out of each other or getting beaten up, etc.)
- on that note, sadomasochism (especially when it doesn’t follow strict sadist-dom-top, masochist-bottom-sub lines — masochistic doms, versatility and switching, etc.)
- impotence/erectile dysfunction
- painful sex, for drama/kink/both
- 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
- voyeur-meets-exhibitionist dynamics; watching someone who only pretends to be unaware or who’s putting on a show
- 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 via cutting; disordered eating
- unrequested incest pairings; unrequested child sexual abuse.
- on-the-page depictions of suicide
- one character overhearing another character masturbating
- characters actually getting pregnant; OC offspring.
- modern-day high school AUs; HS teacher/HS student AUs.
- racekink/raceplay
- de-aging; age regression
- omegaverse/BDSMverse/soulmate mark AUs
- ongoing RL crises and current events
- explicit sex involving characters under 15 years old
- incest being a nonissue or completely socially condoned. (Individual characters having blasé reactions like “oh well, might as well use it to get ahead” from Atia of the Julii in HBO Rome is fine.)





***

Gladiator Films - Scott

Caracalla/Geta

I love these two deeply damaged little creeps who shouldn’t be left in charge of a lemonade stand, let alone an empire. Feel free to write them in any flavor from flawed-but-sympathetic wounded beasts to chaotic, hedonistic dumbasses.

- Mutual attempts at manipulation and power struggles, especially exploration of their sibling friction and how it plays out in the bedroom. (Or, throne room, orgy chamber, etc.) Geta thinks he’s keeping Caracalla in line using sex; Caracalla thinks he’s using sex as a tool to manipulate Geta. Maybe they’re both right.
- Whump one of them! Whump them both! Some kind of canon divergence situation where they end up losing power in a different way than they do in canon, medical whump where one or both of them gets sick/injured, substance abuse, emotional suffering, bad dad trauma…
- weird sibling smarm, in the sense of “overly physically intimate and affectionate while purporting (on the characters’ part, not the writer’s here) to be just friendly/familial/guys-being-dudes behavior”. I love the moments where Geta manhandles his brother to hold him back from hurting people or getting hurt.
- So Caracalla’s socially unacceptable behavior has seemingly gotten worse, and pretty recently too. (Multiply that by the stress of ruling and his obvious enthusiasm for substance abuse.) I get hung up on the reading that his condition is specifically what we now know to be syphilis — my fandom DNW note has more details — but I’d love to read something angsty and fucked-up about Geta’s or Caracalla’s own perception of his deteriorating health.
- Porn, straight-up porn. Some random (fully optional) thoughts: kinking on Roman sexual hangups and mores; watching each other fuck other people or getting fucked; ridiculous opulent sensuality in the aftermath of their ascent to the throne; drunk or high!sex (explore any of the medical or not-so-medical hallucinogen options in the Classical world, or make something up/handwave away)

Caracalla/Geta/Acacius

- Hard to beat a classic: the imperial twins treating their general like a sex toy. Two of them ganging up on the third in any combinations, simultaneously (spitroasting, two dicks in one hole, a lucky-Pierre situation where one of them’s sandwiched between the other two simultaneously penetrating and getting penetrated) or separately… all over the spectrum from enthusiastic jubilant consent to direst noncon or anything in between.
- Conversely the two of them coming to be genuinely really dependent on Acacius and Acacius trying to use that as a way of steering them toward more peaceful civic policies without losing his head.
- Give these guys some daddy issues! (Or give Acacius some emperor issues — did he serve under their father? How did he feel about him? How does Acacius feel about his old boss’ sons being such little bastards?) Do they ever try to get their pet general more involved in matters of politics?
- Acacius developing genuine feelings for the twins despite himself, or the two of them developing feelings for him despite themselves — especially if they’re not all that experienced on the “reacting to emotions in a proportionate and reasonable manner” front and flip the fuck out about it.
- Role reversal where Acacius succeeds in taking power at some point in the years of political chaos between the first and second films, and becomes an object of desire for his two weirdest aristocratic hostages. I’d love to see Acacius struggling with his uncompromising sense of honor in the slippery political climate of Rome and the twins trying to deal with him when he’s the one in power as well as chafing under the oh-so-generous conditions of house arrest they stick Lucilla under in canon.

Fandom-specific DNW notes: “Cara” as a pet name; focus on syphilis. For this exchange I’m not interested in fics where the twins get together when they’re explicitly <16.

Feel free to give Caracalla any other combination of illnesses, explore Geta’s canon “loins” remarks as a reference to something else, or ignore it entirely. (Any other explorations of ill health and/or disability are extremely welcome and desired, I just can’t get over the anachronism factor of syphilis in that era, in a film where there’s live sharks in the Colosseum. If you want to write a historical AU set after syphilis has arrived in the Mediterranean, like Renaissance Italy/18th century anywhere/etc., you can go for it. )

Fandom-specific smut likes: Biting; scent kink, sweat kink; too-big dicks and painful anal; facefucking; arousal from violence; surreptitious or semi-public sex; dick-riding and lap sex; genderfucking and power games (especially playing with Roman societal mores that conflate femininity/subordination/sexual receptiveness/dishonor — powerful men getting off on losing control or voluntarily ceding it; getting facefucked by a femme top in all his jewels and silks and scented unguents; rape fantasies with an element of gendered/homophobic/classed humiliation; fantasizing about one’s partner being a woman or being a woman having sex with one’s partner)

Kraven The Hunter (2024)

- Sergei/Dimitri

This film is deeply silly but I love these two and the heaps of brotherly organized-crime-heir damsel in distress size kink action that attend on them. The affection between them, the humor and manhandling, the mix of bonding under adverse circumstances growing up and resentment for Sergei getting out/regret for leaving Dimitri behind, it’s great. I’m not especially wedded to the integrity of the Sony Spider-Man/Sinister Six Cinematic Universe by any means; feel free to cross over with or integrate elements from the broader live-action Marvel corpus.

- Whump or hurt/comfort centered around Dimitri’s captivity — the manhandling, the drugging, the slapping-around, the severed finger, oh my god! Feel free to turn his canonical suffering up to 11 with a prolonged captivity, mistreatment or sexual violence while a hostage, noncon drugging, allergic reactions given his captors just casually toss him some drugs and call it a day. Sergei blaming himself (and their dad) for putting him in this position, Dima feeling fucked-up about all of it and his powerlessness but trying to brazen through with humor, wound care, wilderness survival, dealing with complications… or have Sergei get hurt and Dimitri trying to tend his wounds while facing the reality of his brother’s weird powers/abilities.
- On the run together: running from their dad’s workplace enemies, running from the law, running from a whole different set of bad guys (or good guys), running away from their dad together.
- Dimitri getting fucked by big bad men and Sergei feeling weird and protective about it. If you really want to ratchet up the angst, and you should feel free, Dimitri getting nonconned or having compulsive sex with men (big and/or bad) who treat him badly (not always in ways that are agreed-upon/part of the fun) as a way of courting danger; Dimitri being taken advantage of by big bad men(/big bad women/big bad nonbinary people) at his dad’s club and not being able to say no. Sergei rescuing him, Sergei trying to comfort him, Sergei trying to protect him, Sergei being fucked-up and confused about it, or hey, he’s pretty big and pretty bad, maybe he can help out here…
- Postcanon fic where Sergei’s vigilante work and Dimitri’s newly minted (super)villainy force them to cross paths again — angsty post-breakup hookups, identity fuckery with Dimitri’s newfound powers, one of them protecting the other despite being at odds, having nemesis sexual tension. (With or without other characters going “wait… you guys are related?”.)
- Sex pollen/Fuck Or Die/Bad Guys Made Them Do It, or any variations thereupon — Sergei trying not to hurt his brother, Dimitri trying to prove he’s tough and not afraid, baddies mockingly going “what’s the problem, you guys are only stepbrothers, right?” (wrong! on… several levels), awkward aftermath and kissing/fucking again while recovering from the fallout of it.

Fandom-specific DNW notes: I’d prefer nothing for this pairing where they get sexually/romantically involved as teens before Sergei runs away from home to be a nature boy vigilante.

Fandom-specific smut likes: Size differences and size kink; biting and marking; Sergei’s beast-related superpowers as a complicating factor (super-smelling when somebody else has been railing his brother? Consensual manhandling with super-strength in the mix?); adrenaline sex; gentle sex while one or both parties are injured or sick; self-loathing masochism from either brother; hair pulling; sex for solace/sex as a terrible coping method.

*

Pilgrimage (2017)

Two dudes from two very different homosocial environments and two very different cultures, with Raymond's exquisite violence and daddy issues making a great contrast to helpless, harmless Diarmuid who's never been outside the monastery before and may be an actual orphan/child oblate. I love nasty things happening to Diarmuid (and nice ones!) but I also am intrigued by the potential for a closer understanding between them, if not necessarily an affectionate one, and an exploration of the clash of cultures going on at this historical moment.

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.

Fandom-specific smut likes: 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.

*

Roman Principate RPF
Marcus Aurelius/Marcus Cornelius Fronto

I 100% owe my introduction to this historical pair (or pairing) to Amy Richlin's translations of their letters in her book Marcus Aurelius In Love -- I'm not wedded to those translations by a long shot (and would love to see interpretations drawing from other translations/a writer taking a stance on a particular textual ambiguity) but if you're curious about these guys I would recommend checking that book out.

- Glimpses of things you can't say in a letter, or in-person physical responses to a matter discussed in one of their letters. Does the presence of conventionally erotic/lover-like language in their writing start out before they’re physically involved in person? How does the relationship on paper diverge from what they’re able to do IRL together?
- Fronto’s illnesses feature heavily in their correspondence — hurt/comfort-ify that old man! I love historical medicine and I love how dealing with infirmity (some of which sound linked to age, others not) highlights the differences in life stage between them.
- long indulgent make-out sessions -- how do their interpersonal differences and political considerations surface when they're getting physical? Marcus Aurelius often writes about how he's writing (or reading) letters in bed — let Fronto join him.
- Fantasies, either in letter form or existing solely in somebody's head. The social and geographical barriers between both men are fascinating to me, and I enjoy the way their letters reflect both a pastichey familiarity with the literary world around them and its treatment of same-sex desire and a consciousness of the ways their relationship doesn’t fit as neatly into that paradigm.
- Anything exploring the eroticism and resentment of role reversal. Chatty, slangy Marcus’ real-life position of power over Fronto is always present in their correspondence and the two of them play a lot of literary games (some affectionate, some less so) with the conventions of their era regarding active/passive, pursuing/pursued, power/powerlessness, etc. It’s compelling to me that the relationship reflected in these letters endures well past the age where Marcus is supposed to be an acceptable object of desire for men, and certainly well past when Fronto’s supposed to be desirable. What’s up with that?

Fandom-specific smut likes: heavy petting; kissing and biting; dirty talk and erotic speech/writing; frottage and grinding; mutual masturbation; skirting technicalities around acceptable kinds of sex or erotic encounters that supposedly don’t cross some arbitrary line (erotic but plausibly-deniable massage; over-the-clothes stuff; “just the tip”)

*

The Woman In The Window (2021)

I'm familiar with the book here and am happy to read fanworks incorporating it as long as the main action/character descriptions/etc. reflect the film. I definitely see Ethan as being attracted to Anna in both versions, in a weird way, and I'd love to see their respective malignancies crossing the streams. Anna's a hot mess and I would love to see her already-complicated semi-parasocial relationship with her across-the-street neighbors' teenage son get weirder. All these prompts contain spoilers for the film/novel.

Anna Fox/Ethan Russell

- There's a moment in the novel where Anna crosses a line with her tenant and ends up having sex with him in her dead daughter's bed -- that but with Ethan. I love how in her own head Anna is, and the absolute clusterfuck of consent issues that would ensue there. Anna seems to be a real noir fiend, among other cinematic subgenres; I’d love seeing Ethan get to be a junior homme fatal and working to manipulate Anna toward a specific concrete end goal rather than mostly to fuck with her.
- Outside POV on the two of them, or another character trying to put together the truth once they realize there was an angle of sexual/romantic desire in play — David? the cops? Alistair? Jane? Katie? What are they right about, what are they wrong about?
- A sexual encounter or similar transgression that Anna’s not sure really took place afterward — it could easily be something Ethan leans into as part of his advanced junior gaslighter campaign but I would also really enjoy it if it’s not something he expected her to forget and he’s a little miffed about it for reasons he can’t explain to himself.
- Alternately, Anna doing some fucked-up fantasizing or her obsessive thoughts and surveillance taking a sexual/romantic turn there. Her loneliness and her need to be involved in something even if it means denying the truth of what’s happened to her vs. Ethan being genuinely unwell and getting his own secret kicks out of their relationship… it’s true she’s on a whole bunch of extremely poorly-managed meds but Let Amy Adams Jerk Off 2k24.
- Anything rolling around in the tension between Anna being incredibly touch-starved and traumatized/poorly medicated/bad at boundaries and Anna being a credentialed child psychologist who worries about hurting this kid or letting him get hurt. Is it any better when you find out the teenager you’ve been having an affair with is a calculating psychopath instead of a shy innocent whose need for protection you’ve been exploiting, or is it just worse in a weirder way? Is it less weird when he has been sneaking into your house and watching you sleep instead of you just wishing he’d spend the night? Conversely, are there ways can she still hurt Ethan (or at least hurt his feelings) when he’s running his little creep mind-game circles around here? He’s a weird little creep and I would love to see him suffer emotionally.

Fandom-specific DNW notes: Regarding my underage-related DNWs: past sexual abuse as a theme, possibility, or discussion topic is fine, as is characters considering Anna/Ethan to be sexually abusive or the possibility of Ethan being sexually abused by Alistair, his stepmother, or his bio mom. You can deal with with Anna’s canonical suicide attempts, including Ethan interrupting her in the process of preparing an overdose, but I’d prefer her not to die from it on the page.

Fandom-specific smut likes: Kinking on sexual inexperience (real or imagined); blurring the line between arousal and repulsion; mutual masturbation; frottage; physically rough combative sex/fighting-turned-fucking; breast worship; overstimulation and edging; premature ejaculation; high/drunk sex, including nonconsensual drugging; kinking on conventionally-understood physical imperfections like scars or acne (cruelly or tenderly or both).