Darkest Night 2016 letter
Aug. 1st, 2016 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skazkaMy letter for Darkest Night 2016! (Heads-up: this is a darkfic exchange, so a lot of these prompts include or outline potentially grim shit, particularly violence and sexual assault, so CW for those things in particular.)
This is a first-year exchange, and the format's a little new to me, so if you're not sure/have any questions please feel free to get in touch via a mod! If there's a tag + fandom combo I don't give a prompt associated with here, or any combo of tags and characters that may not be strictly in my signup form but that catches your eye, let your imagination run wild. Ship-wise, my requested characters and groups lean toward dudeslash this year, but I'm comfortably multishippy and happy with slash/femslash/het/gen/anything else. I'm also a big fan of always-a-girl genderswaps and would read them for any of these fandoms. I'm totally comfortable with any level of explicit-ness, but if you're ever split between wanting to write something that mostly just suggests dark themes (or implies them without graphic detail) and feeling like you should write something graphic because darkfic, the former isn't disappointing or falling short! Write whatever's in your comfort zone.
DNWs: noncanonical child sexual abuse*, sex involving under-16s, self-harm, accidental pregnancy, mpreg, BDSM-verse or Omegaverse, teacher/student, formal D/s.
*: (Some of my canons touch on or centrally feature child sexual abuse -- okay, why be coy, it's just True Detective. You don't need to reach to omit it, but I'd prefer no onscreen abuse/flashbacks to abuse.)
Likes: Dreams and nightmares, fucked-up vampires, serial killers (especially the banal, unglamorous, mission-oriented/just plain fucked up kind and not the "I only kill people who are mean to my true love" kind) and general murderers -- assassins, robbers, people who are willing to kill to make their living, and the people who spend their lives catching them. Partners in crime, doomed last stands, Bonnie & Clyde scenarios. Ghosts, body horror, psychological horror, guilt, doubt, road trips, desolate landscapes, character death, characters coming back from the dead. Or major characters not dying when they expect or want to die, whatever. Characters being confident and cocksure about things that go really badly off the rails for them or end in disaster. Tragedy. Lonely people finding solace with each other, witchy stuff, the paranormal, and living with PTSD. I don't describe a lot of canon-setting AUs in these prompts but I'm open to them, especially historical AUs, hitchhiking AUs, and high-concept AUs that are more involved than just "canon characters are now American high school students".
Sex-wise -- love me some non-penetrative sex, consensual painful sex, fucking for comfort, sex in bathrooms or in cars, oral sex, hand kink, size differences, breathplay, unsafe kink, unromantic pragmatic sex, sneaking around to get laid, and body worship. Any level of consent is fine: I love both fucked-up and non-fucked-up consensual sex. Noncon (especially with pain and discomfort; with superficial gentleness and tenderness; with an elaborate setup to mindfuck a captive; as a way to manipulate a third party; rape-and-revenge) and dubcon (especially messed-up hatesex; with ulterior motives for compliance on the part of the person being dubconned; with serious mixed feelings; where the person being coerced genuinely believes that they should enjoy it and doesn't understand why they don't; when the person doing the coercing acts like it's normal regular sex) and general mindfucks are all great. I'd prefer no "secretly comes to like being raped" stuff unless it's unambiguously self-destructive and not a delightful surprise bonus of being assaulted.
Divergent series - Veronica Roth
Tags: Not The Chosen One; Aftermath of Violence; Alternate Universe - Villain Wins; Character Death; Mindwiping; Dark Character; Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting; Guilt; War
Peter Hayes
Peter Hayes, nature's biggest asshole! As far as these prompts are concerned, I'm drawing from the books more than the movies, but if you want to draw from the film's characterization choices that's fine by me.
I find his ultimate fate in the books (basically being mindwiped at his request, with the implication that his worst traits still come through because they're hardwired into him somehow) really grim, and the series gets pretty mindwipe-happy at time.
I'd love to read something where there is something pathologically wrong with Peter on a biological level, that he can't shake even if he wants to. Or where the shadow of what Peter once did is actively undermining any effort he might make to be good? Do past memories intrude into his new life at all?
Or something where Peter straight-up opts to die rather than be remade as a blank slate -- whether through something seemingly self-sacrificial or deliberately on his own terms, suicide via third party, or something else. Peter knows there's something wrong with him, and I find that really horrifying, so lean on that all you like.
If Tris and co. never manage to undermine Jeanine, or if Evelyn's coup goes off as originally intended, what's Peter's place in the new Chicago order? Is there a place for someone like him anywhere? Peter doing his vicious thing and rising in the ranks, or finally hitting an obstacle he can't weasel his way around through violence and skulduggery.
Anything that puts Peter into Tris' debt -- his whole debt-oriented understanding of what it means to owe someone your life seems like a cynical way of compensating for his failure to grasp that kind of thing intuitively, but what happens if he owes her in a way he can't pay off?
Tris Prior
Anything where Tris' big heroic sacrifice in Allegiant doesn't take -- either she survives it and has to deal with the traumatic fallout, or where somebody else takes that hit for her and her sense of herself is shaken as a result. In general, fic where any of Tris and company's heroic gambits fail, or where Jeanine isn't ultimately overthrown -- does she ally herself with other rebels? Attempt to flee the city? Try to stick it out?
An AU where Eric, not Four, singles Tris out for attention/protection and she ends up inadvertently supporting the other side of the schism that's building within Dauntless. The no-holds-barred, no-mercy philosophy is brutal, but there are also reasons why it might be appealing, and I'd love to explore that.
Anything with Tris dealing with the fallout of the series' considerable death count or her experiences of torture/violence, leaving her more hard-boiled and fucked-up -- maybe alleviating some of her canonical guilt, but at a cost.
Anything with dark!Tris, generally, especially set during her time in Dauntless. One of the decent things Dauntless initiation actually seems to do for Tris is allowing her to unlock a sense of her own skills -- I'd love to see her use some of that strength and ability to do some stuff that's... less than empathetic and self-denying. Doing her own fair share of backstabbing rivals, offing Peter or his teenage goons as retaliation, teaming up with one of her rivals for less than selfless reasons, and in general enjoying the kind of fucked-up adrenaline-high liberty that makes Dauntless so intoxicating. Dauntless seems like a lot more fun than Abnegation, for sure, but their idea of a good time is inherently dangerous even if you're not trying to keep your Divergent status under wraps.
For either of them:
Any kind of military AU, whether a real-world AU (no WWII, please) or a full-on civil war between factions.
I'd love to read a Hunger Games fusion with either/both of these two! Maybe Tris' initial self-denying tendencies hamstring her ability to grab the spotlight, but she manages to off her fellow contestants from afar and feels awful about it; maybe Peter's jarring good looks become both an asset and a liability in the appearance-focused Capitol; maybe Tris volunteers herself as an act of self-sacrifice and is frightened to discover how good she is at the actual combat training (and combat to the death) part of the whole deal? I'm a big sucker for uneasy alliances, but also for backstabbing and freaky survivalism, so take that wherever you want.
(I'm open to any pairings for these two, including Tris/Peter, but I'd prefer anything between Peter and Tris in a universe where the first book's attempted sexual assault has occurred to be strongly toward the mutually fucked-up end of the spectrum, rather than fluffy. I'm partial to Tris/Christina and Peter/Eric, if you're on the prowl for femslash/dudeslash ships, but you have zero obligation to include characters other than whichever ones you matched on.)
Ex Machina
Tags: Stalking; Abuse of Authority; Vivisection; Coerced Sadism; Grooming; Claustrophobia; Gaslighting; Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism; Rape; Trapped; Dubious Consent; Dark Character; Mindfuck; Character Death
Nathan Bateman & Caleb Smith:
Nathan stalking Caleb through his digital profile (phone use, Internet searches, work history…)
An inside-out AU where Caleb is the tech CEO with a dark secret and Nathan is his unwilling guest.
Fucked-up variants on an AU where Caleb's a robot.
An AU where Nathan's being held prisoner in the house himself (by his own rogue AI? by some outside party?) and Caleb's as stuck as he is.
Anything where Nathan uses the control he has over the house and its technology/environmental controls to fuck with Caleb's mind -- or vice versa, with Caleb gaslighting Nathan, especially using his drinking problem as leverage.
Vivisection (whether robot or human).
Anything that amps up the fact that Caleb is trapped -- Bluebeard AU, something where he tries to get out long before the end of the "tests" on Ava, something where Nathan succeeds in his own goals and Caleb can't be allowed to leave, etc.
Caleb and Nathan are both pretty distinct Types of dude -- Nathan styles himself as a sophisticated he-man tech bro; Caleb's smart, weedy, and much less macho. But they're both men, and they both have a pretty proprietary way of relating to women. Are there any scenarios in which they're not so different? (I only requested these two dudes because I'm a little reluctant to request darkfic outright about the women of the film, but if you want to include any of them in any way please go ahead, because I love them!)
Or any fic where Caleb finds out that Nathan's basically keeping women captive in his home and goes "...intriguing, tell me more" instead of reacting with horror. (Though in this case Ava and Kyoko still being victorious and mopping the floor with both of them would be a highly welcome conclusion.)
For slash-specific prompts -- Nathan low-key grooming Caleb from afar to be a receptive sexual partner, no pun intended; Nathan using the whole "programmed to be straight" conversation as a pretense to push Caleb's boundaries; the two of them fucking while Nathan probes Caleb's feelings about Ava or uses Ava as a proxy; Nathan being a reeeeally pushy bottom.
The Nice Guys
Tags: Vampirism; Harm to Children; Depression; Immortality; Came Back Wrong; Gunshot Wounds; Arousal From Killing; Murder; Descent into Madness; Dubious Consent; Period-Typical Homophobia; Loss of Innocence; Sexual Dysfunction; Grief/Mourning; Drugged Sex
Jackson Healy:
Jack's clearly got some anger issues and a more than passing familiarity with brutal violence -- maybe one time he kills somebody and it doesn't go away? (Whether that means it happening in front of Holly with zero deniability on sweet old Mr. Healy's part, or it making a mess/public scene, or needing March's help to get rid of a body… whatever.) Or Healy getting off on killing, whether he's guilty about it or brazen.
Healy doesn't have March's obvious grief/despondency going on but he plainly has some issues around his own sense of worth and the idea that times are changing too quickly these days -- anything with bummed-out Healy, struggling with his own big time baggage, would suit me fine.
What kind of fucked up stuff has Healy seen? What kind of shady stuff is lurking in his history that might come back to make his fledgling PI career a lot harder?
Any kind of AU where March and Healy just keep crossing paths violently -- one where they're stuck on opposite sides of a case or getting underfoot during tense moments, or really just anything with the thinnest pretense to have Healy beat on March, because I'm a sucker for it.
Either (or both) of them enduring pain on the other one's behalf, or to protect Holly, with whatever fallout there is from that.
Holland March:
Holland's a huge fucking mess and I love it. His canon growth toward being more at peace with his losses and a slightly more stable parental figure is awesome and all, but I love to put him through the wringer.
So Holland jokingly says he might be immortal -- maybe a fic where he really is immortal, with grisly consequences when he takes a bullet or something and still won't die, or when he survives something and everybody else around him dies? I'd also relish some Came Back Wrong fic for this one, where Holland has another brush with Nixon but comes back to the land of the living altered in some way. (Whether psychologically, physically, or some other way -- I'd love something where his personality is still the same, allowing for the shock of technically dying, but his body is permanently altered… like it no longer heals, or no longer requires food and sleep, or he no longer looks totally human? Let your imagination run wild.)
Vampires. Always vampires.
There were a lot of serial killers active in California in the 70s -- please don't feature any real-life ones, but I'd love fic with Holland discovering a mundane case he's working on is linked to something much worse, or crossing paths with/tracking down a seriously fucked-up killer, with all the stress that entails.
Any kind of whump for Holland March! (With or without comfort.) He suffers so goofily/beautifully in canon and I'd love to see him try and cope with the kinds of injuries he seems to attract like a magnet.
Or anything where March starts to lose his grip on reality, due to alcohol/drugs or his preexisting eccentricity or another factor. Not knowing the difference between dreams and actuality: funny when it's the ankle gun scenario, scary under other circumstances.
If you're interested in writing March/Healy slash -- I'd love fucked up sex while undercover that leaves both of them feeling kind of fucked up and violated, anything with period-typical homophobia (while I love this fandom's willingness to write a pretty level-headed approach to late-70s bisexuality and would be happy to read that too… both of them might reasonably have a lot of hangups around gay sex, not to speak of other people's views on it), sex under the influence with sloppy uneasy boundaries, and anything with sexual dysfunction in any possible sense.
Holly March: My #1 girl detective!
Something where Holly gets way, way over her head while doing her own work on a case -- maybe she's in danger or another kid her own age is in danger, and she has to come through without grown-ups' help, either because they aren't physically present or they aren't even aware she's involved.
Holly March versus vampires! (With or without her dads' help.)
Holly coming across anything that screws with her sense of wonder/hope/all the stuff that generally goes with childhood.
Any fic dealing with grief and guilt for Holly (and for Holland too) -- in relation to her mom's death, or the Detroit conspiracy case, or anything else.
(If you choose to pursue the prospect of Holly/anyone, I'd love fic where Holly grows up to be gay/bi, but she's also thirteen years old so I totally get why you might not want to jam hard on a romantic focus.)
True Detective
Tags: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers; Descent into Madness; Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism; Architectural Horror; Came Back Wrong; Ghosts; HIV/AIDS; Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues; Dubious Consent; Forced to Watch Rape; Gunshot Wounds; Revenge; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD; Witchcraft; Cults; Cosmic Horror; Recovery Process after Gang Rape; Character Death
Rust Cohle & Marty Hart:
Right off the bat, I'll be real - fic where Marty and Rust really are serial killers, or where Rust's a killer and Marty's an unwitting accomplice/willfully ignoring it. (Or vice versa. Whether this is "Rust and/or Marty = the real Yellow King", or Rust and Marty being serial killers coincidental to the activity of the cult is up to you. I'd love to read the latter and how it derails P&G's idea of their involvement in the case.)
Rust and Marty meeting on opposite sides of the law somehow rather than as partners. (Marty nabbing younger Rust as a reluctant accomplice to some other killer? Rust catching Marty during one of his not-such-a-family-man-now Hulk-outs?)
Either of them cracking up for good. Fic where Rust drops off the grid after the Ledoux shoot-out and goes back to being Crash full time, with Marty needing to fish him out, or where Marty drops his family-man persona earlier than 2012 and gets seriously nasty.
Fic where Rust is HIV-positive, with all that would entail for him in 1995, or in 2012.
Rust's ghost haunting the fuck out of Marty, or vice versa -- imagine how fucking pissed off Rust would be to be a ghost. Would he even notice, really? Or ghosts of other people like Dora Lange bugging the two of them, I'm all about that.
Anything with the show's enthusiastic melding of supernatural and psychological horror -- characters doubting their own reality or getting used to living with a brain that's trying to fuck them over. This is obviously pretty canon for Rust, but I'd love to see Marty cope with it postcanon, or fail to cope with it. Maybe Rust's crazy is more contagious than they realized.
I loved the fucked-up interiors once they actually arrive at Carcosa -- from the very outer limits with the Childresses' ill-kempt house to the grounds of the old fort itself, that place is really fucking creepy. What if they never got out of it and ended up trapped in there on a more cosmic level? Or something after the showdown at Carcosa where one of them survives their serious injuries, but is kinda… different afterward.
Rust Cohle & Ginger:
ALL THE UNDERCOVER FIC. Fucked up stuff they did together, fucked up stuff that Rust did with (or to) Ginger that's made even more screwy by the fact that he's undercover, Ginger brushing up against cult stuff and taking Rust with him, Rust taking a bullet for Ginger…
Dubcon/noncon everything (including but not exclusively sex -- drug use, tattoos, involvement in other crimes, torture, other heists they've been on) that Rust can't or won't say no to due to his cover as Crash. (Or because of how fucked up he is after losing everything -- the way Rust talks about being used by law enforcement after his breakdown is really harsh and it's clear his rock-bottom junkie burnout persona wasn't much of a persona. What did Ginger see in him that made him trust him?)
Or h/c, with the worst source of comfort ever. (More shootouts, a brush with the cartels, horrible biker gangbang aftermath with either of them, etc.) Or a full AU where there's no undercover-cop Rust and Crash is just an unusually brainy loner (who's being reluctantly recruited as a narc?) or where they're teenage dirtbag criminals together.
Rust Cohle & Johnny Joanie Boelert:
I love their brief meeting so fucking anything with these two would make me happy. Does JJ seek Rust out after the story behind their trauma is suddenly being splashed across every news outlet in the country? What if the two of them cross paths earlier and share a fucked-up recognition of each other as people who've been marked by evil?
Something with the two of them sharing fucked-up revenge plans, or low-key getting involved in occultism together despite Rust's deeply ingrained skepticism, or with them going cultbusting together and accidentally digging deeper into exactly the kind of stuff Joanie is running from… Johnny Joanie is one of the few characters in this exchange who I do want a happy(ish) ending for, because their one scene in canon is such a show-stealer, but feel free to kill Rust all you like.
(It's not especially clear how Johnny Joanie identifies in canon gender-wise, so feel free how to write that however.)
This is a first-year exchange, and the format's a little new to me, so if you're not sure/have any questions please feel free to get in touch via a mod! If there's a tag + fandom combo I don't give a prompt associated with here, or any combo of tags and characters that may not be strictly in my signup form but that catches your eye, let your imagination run wild. Ship-wise, my requested characters and groups lean toward dudeslash this year, but I'm comfortably multishippy and happy with slash/femslash/het/gen/anything else. I'm also a big fan of always-a-girl genderswaps and would read them for any of these fandoms. I'm totally comfortable with any level of explicit-ness, but if you're ever split between wanting to write something that mostly just suggests dark themes (or implies them without graphic detail) and feeling like you should write something graphic because darkfic, the former isn't disappointing or falling short! Write whatever's in your comfort zone.
DNWs: noncanonical child sexual abuse*, sex involving under-16s, self-harm, accidental pregnancy, mpreg, BDSM-verse or Omegaverse, teacher/student, formal D/s.
*: (Some of my canons touch on or centrally feature child sexual abuse -- okay, why be coy, it's just True Detective. You don't need to reach to omit it, but I'd prefer no onscreen abuse/flashbacks to abuse.)
Likes: Dreams and nightmares, fucked-up vampires, serial killers (especially the banal, unglamorous, mission-oriented/just plain fucked up kind and not the "I only kill people who are mean to my true love" kind) and general murderers -- assassins, robbers, people who are willing to kill to make their living, and the people who spend their lives catching them. Partners in crime, doomed last stands, Bonnie & Clyde scenarios. Ghosts, body horror, psychological horror, guilt, doubt, road trips, desolate landscapes, character death, characters coming back from the dead. Or major characters not dying when they expect or want to die, whatever. Characters being confident and cocksure about things that go really badly off the rails for them or end in disaster. Tragedy. Lonely people finding solace with each other, witchy stuff, the paranormal, and living with PTSD. I don't describe a lot of canon-setting AUs in these prompts but I'm open to them, especially historical AUs, hitchhiking AUs, and high-concept AUs that are more involved than just "canon characters are now American high school students".
Sex-wise -- love me some non-penetrative sex, consensual painful sex, fucking for comfort, sex in bathrooms or in cars, oral sex, hand kink, size differences, breathplay, unsafe kink, unromantic pragmatic sex, sneaking around to get laid, and body worship. Any level of consent is fine: I love both fucked-up and non-fucked-up consensual sex. Noncon (especially with pain and discomfort; with superficial gentleness and tenderness; with an elaborate setup to mindfuck a captive; as a way to manipulate a third party; rape-and-revenge) and dubcon (especially messed-up hatesex; with ulterior motives for compliance on the part of the person being dubconned; with serious mixed feelings; where the person being coerced genuinely believes that they should enjoy it and doesn't understand why they don't; when the person doing the coercing acts like it's normal regular sex) and general mindfucks are all great. I'd prefer no "secretly comes to like being raped" stuff unless it's unambiguously self-destructive and not a delightful surprise bonus of being assaulted.
Divergent series - Veronica Roth
Tags: Not The Chosen One; Aftermath of Violence; Alternate Universe - Villain Wins; Character Death; Mindwiping; Dark Character; Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting; Guilt; War
Peter Hayes
Peter Hayes, nature's biggest asshole! As far as these prompts are concerned, I'm drawing from the books more than the movies, but if you want to draw from the film's characterization choices that's fine by me.
I find his ultimate fate in the books (basically being mindwiped at his request, with the implication that his worst traits still come through because they're hardwired into him somehow) really grim, and the series gets pretty mindwipe-happy at time.
I'd love to read something where there is something pathologically wrong with Peter on a biological level, that he can't shake even if he wants to. Or where the shadow of what Peter once did is actively undermining any effort he might make to be good? Do past memories intrude into his new life at all?
Or something where Peter straight-up opts to die rather than be remade as a blank slate -- whether through something seemingly self-sacrificial or deliberately on his own terms, suicide via third party, or something else. Peter knows there's something wrong with him, and I find that really horrifying, so lean on that all you like.
If Tris and co. never manage to undermine Jeanine, or if Evelyn's coup goes off as originally intended, what's Peter's place in the new Chicago order? Is there a place for someone like him anywhere? Peter doing his vicious thing and rising in the ranks, or finally hitting an obstacle he can't weasel his way around through violence and skulduggery.
Anything that puts Peter into Tris' debt -- his whole debt-oriented understanding of what it means to owe someone your life seems like a cynical way of compensating for his failure to grasp that kind of thing intuitively, but what happens if he owes her in a way he can't pay off?
Tris Prior
Anything where Tris' big heroic sacrifice in Allegiant doesn't take -- either she survives it and has to deal with the traumatic fallout, or where somebody else takes that hit for her and her sense of herself is shaken as a result. In general, fic where any of Tris and company's heroic gambits fail, or where Jeanine isn't ultimately overthrown -- does she ally herself with other rebels? Attempt to flee the city? Try to stick it out?
An AU where Eric, not Four, singles Tris out for attention/protection and she ends up inadvertently supporting the other side of the schism that's building within Dauntless. The no-holds-barred, no-mercy philosophy is brutal, but there are also reasons why it might be appealing, and I'd love to explore that.
Anything with Tris dealing with the fallout of the series' considerable death count or her experiences of torture/violence, leaving her more hard-boiled and fucked-up -- maybe alleviating some of her canonical guilt, but at a cost.
Anything with dark!Tris, generally, especially set during her time in Dauntless. One of the decent things Dauntless initiation actually seems to do for Tris is allowing her to unlock a sense of her own skills -- I'd love to see her use some of that strength and ability to do some stuff that's... less than empathetic and self-denying. Doing her own fair share of backstabbing rivals, offing Peter or his teenage goons as retaliation, teaming up with one of her rivals for less than selfless reasons, and in general enjoying the kind of fucked-up adrenaline-high liberty that makes Dauntless so intoxicating. Dauntless seems like a lot more fun than Abnegation, for sure, but their idea of a good time is inherently dangerous even if you're not trying to keep your Divergent status under wraps.
For either of them:
Any kind of military AU, whether a real-world AU (no WWII, please) or a full-on civil war between factions.
I'd love to read a Hunger Games fusion with either/both of these two! Maybe Tris' initial self-denying tendencies hamstring her ability to grab the spotlight, but she manages to off her fellow contestants from afar and feels awful about it; maybe Peter's jarring good looks become both an asset and a liability in the appearance-focused Capitol; maybe Tris volunteers herself as an act of self-sacrifice and is frightened to discover how good she is at the actual combat training (and combat to the death) part of the whole deal? I'm a big sucker for uneasy alliances, but also for backstabbing and freaky survivalism, so take that wherever you want.
(I'm open to any pairings for these two, including Tris/Peter, but I'd prefer anything between Peter and Tris in a universe where the first book's attempted sexual assault has occurred to be strongly toward the mutually fucked-up end of the spectrum, rather than fluffy. I'm partial to Tris/Christina and Peter/Eric, if you're on the prowl for femslash/dudeslash ships, but you have zero obligation to include characters other than whichever ones you matched on.)
Ex Machina
Tags: Stalking; Abuse of Authority; Vivisection; Coerced Sadism; Grooming; Claustrophobia; Gaslighting; Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism; Rape; Trapped; Dubious Consent; Dark Character; Mindfuck; Character Death
Nathan Bateman & Caleb Smith:
Nathan stalking Caleb through his digital profile (phone use, Internet searches, work history…)
An inside-out AU where Caleb is the tech CEO with a dark secret and Nathan is his unwilling guest.
Fucked-up variants on an AU where Caleb's a robot.
An AU where Nathan's being held prisoner in the house himself (by his own rogue AI? by some outside party?) and Caleb's as stuck as he is.
Anything where Nathan uses the control he has over the house and its technology/environmental controls to fuck with Caleb's mind -- or vice versa, with Caleb gaslighting Nathan, especially using his drinking problem as leverage.
Vivisection (whether robot or human).
Anything that amps up the fact that Caleb is trapped -- Bluebeard AU, something where he tries to get out long before the end of the "tests" on Ava, something where Nathan succeeds in his own goals and Caleb can't be allowed to leave, etc.
Caleb and Nathan are both pretty distinct Types of dude -- Nathan styles himself as a sophisticated he-man tech bro; Caleb's smart, weedy, and much less macho. But they're both men, and they both have a pretty proprietary way of relating to women. Are there any scenarios in which they're not so different? (I only requested these two dudes because I'm a little reluctant to request darkfic outright about the women of the film, but if you want to include any of them in any way please go ahead, because I love them!)
Or any fic where Caleb finds out that Nathan's basically keeping women captive in his home and goes "...intriguing, tell me more" instead of reacting with horror. (Though in this case Ava and Kyoko still being victorious and mopping the floor with both of them would be a highly welcome conclusion.)
For slash-specific prompts -- Nathan low-key grooming Caleb from afar to be a receptive sexual partner, no pun intended; Nathan using the whole "programmed to be straight" conversation as a pretense to push Caleb's boundaries; the two of them fucking while Nathan probes Caleb's feelings about Ava or uses Ava as a proxy; Nathan being a reeeeally pushy bottom.
The Nice Guys
Tags: Vampirism; Harm to Children; Depression; Immortality; Came Back Wrong; Gunshot Wounds; Arousal From Killing; Murder; Descent into Madness; Dubious Consent; Period-Typical Homophobia; Loss of Innocence; Sexual Dysfunction; Grief/Mourning; Drugged Sex
Jackson Healy:
Jack's clearly got some anger issues and a more than passing familiarity with brutal violence -- maybe one time he kills somebody and it doesn't go away? (Whether that means it happening in front of Holly with zero deniability on sweet old Mr. Healy's part, or it making a mess/public scene, or needing March's help to get rid of a body… whatever.) Or Healy getting off on killing, whether he's guilty about it or brazen.
Healy doesn't have March's obvious grief/despondency going on but he plainly has some issues around his own sense of worth and the idea that times are changing too quickly these days -- anything with bummed-out Healy, struggling with his own big time baggage, would suit me fine.
What kind of fucked up stuff has Healy seen? What kind of shady stuff is lurking in his history that might come back to make his fledgling PI career a lot harder?
Any kind of AU where March and Healy just keep crossing paths violently -- one where they're stuck on opposite sides of a case or getting underfoot during tense moments, or really just anything with the thinnest pretense to have Healy beat on March, because I'm a sucker for it.
Either (or both) of them enduring pain on the other one's behalf, or to protect Holly, with whatever fallout there is from that.
Holland March:
Holland's a huge fucking mess and I love it. His canon growth toward being more at peace with his losses and a slightly more stable parental figure is awesome and all, but I love to put him through the wringer.
So Holland jokingly says he might be immortal -- maybe a fic where he really is immortal, with grisly consequences when he takes a bullet or something and still won't die, or when he survives something and everybody else around him dies? I'd also relish some Came Back Wrong fic for this one, where Holland has another brush with Nixon but comes back to the land of the living altered in some way. (Whether psychologically, physically, or some other way -- I'd love something where his personality is still the same, allowing for the shock of technically dying, but his body is permanently altered… like it no longer heals, or no longer requires food and sleep, or he no longer looks totally human? Let your imagination run wild.)
Vampires. Always vampires.
There were a lot of serial killers active in California in the 70s -- please don't feature any real-life ones, but I'd love fic with Holland discovering a mundane case he's working on is linked to something much worse, or crossing paths with/tracking down a seriously fucked-up killer, with all the stress that entails.
Any kind of whump for Holland March! (With or without comfort.) He suffers so goofily/beautifully in canon and I'd love to see him try and cope with the kinds of injuries he seems to attract like a magnet.
Or anything where March starts to lose his grip on reality, due to alcohol/drugs or his preexisting eccentricity or another factor. Not knowing the difference between dreams and actuality: funny when it's the ankle gun scenario, scary under other circumstances.
If you're interested in writing March/Healy slash -- I'd love fucked up sex while undercover that leaves both of them feeling kind of fucked up and violated, anything with period-typical homophobia (while I love this fandom's willingness to write a pretty level-headed approach to late-70s bisexuality and would be happy to read that too… both of them might reasonably have a lot of hangups around gay sex, not to speak of other people's views on it), sex under the influence with sloppy uneasy boundaries, and anything with sexual dysfunction in any possible sense.
Holly March: My #1 girl detective!
Something where Holly gets way, way over her head while doing her own work on a case -- maybe she's in danger or another kid her own age is in danger, and she has to come through without grown-ups' help, either because they aren't physically present or they aren't even aware she's involved.
Holly March versus vampires! (With or without her dads' help.)
Holly coming across anything that screws with her sense of wonder/hope/all the stuff that generally goes with childhood.
Any fic dealing with grief and guilt for Holly (and for Holland too) -- in relation to her mom's death, or the Detroit conspiracy case, or anything else.
(If you choose to pursue the prospect of Holly/anyone, I'd love fic where Holly grows up to be gay/bi, but she's also thirteen years old so I totally get why you might not want to jam hard on a romantic focus.)
True Detective
Tags: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers; Descent into Madness; Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism; Architectural Horror; Came Back Wrong; Ghosts; HIV/AIDS; Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues; Dubious Consent; Forced to Watch Rape; Gunshot Wounds; Revenge; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD; Witchcraft; Cults; Cosmic Horror; Recovery Process after Gang Rape; Character Death
Rust Cohle & Marty Hart:
Right off the bat, I'll be real - fic where Marty and Rust really are serial killers, or where Rust's a killer and Marty's an unwitting accomplice/willfully ignoring it. (Or vice versa. Whether this is "Rust and/or Marty = the real Yellow King", or Rust and Marty being serial killers coincidental to the activity of the cult is up to you. I'd love to read the latter and how it derails P&G's idea of their involvement in the case.)
Rust and Marty meeting on opposite sides of the law somehow rather than as partners. (Marty nabbing younger Rust as a reluctant accomplice to some other killer? Rust catching Marty during one of his not-such-a-family-man-now Hulk-outs?)
Either of them cracking up for good. Fic where Rust drops off the grid after the Ledoux shoot-out and goes back to being Crash full time, with Marty needing to fish him out, or where Marty drops his family-man persona earlier than 2012 and gets seriously nasty.
Fic where Rust is HIV-positive, with all that would entail for him in 1995, or in 2012.
Rust's ghost haunting the fuck out of Marty, or vice versa -- imagine how fucking pissed off Rust would be to be a ghost. Would he even notice, really? Or ghosts of other people like Dora Lange bugging the two of them, I'm all about that.
Anything with the show's enthusiastic melding of supernatural and psychological horror -- characters doubting their own reality or getting used to living with a brain that's trying to fuck them over. This is obviously pretty canon for Rust, but I'd love to see Marty cope with it postcanon, or fail to cope with it. Maybe Rust's crazy is more contagious than they realized.
I loved the fucked-up interiors once they actually arrive at Carcosa -- from the very outer limits with the Childresses' ill-kempt house to the grounds of the old fort itself, that place is really fucking creepy. What if they never got out of it and ended up trapped in there on a more cosmic level? Or something after the showdown at Carcosa where one of them survives their serious injuries, but is kinda… different afterward.
Rust Cohle & Ginger:
ALL THE UNDERCOVER FIC. Fucked up stuff they did together, fucked up stuff that Rust did with (or to) Ginger that's made even more screwy by the fact that he's undercover, Ginger brushing up against cult stuff and taking Rust with him, Rust taking a bullet for Ginger…
Dubcon/noncon everything (including but not exclusively sex -- drug use, tattoos, involvement in other crimes, torture, other heists they've been on) that Rust can't or won't say no to due to his cover as Crash. (Or because of how fucked up he is after losing everything -- the way Rust talks about being used by law enforcement after his breakdown is really harsh and it's clear his rock-bottom junkie burnout persona wasn't much of a persona. What did Ginger see in him that made him trust him?)
Or h/c, with the worst source of comfort ever. (More shootouts, a brush with the cartels, horrible biker gangbang aftermath with either of them, etc.) Or a full AU where there's no undercover-cop Rust and Crash is just an unusually brainy loner (who's being reluctantly recruited as a narc?) or where they're teenage dirtbag criminals together.
Rust Cohle & Johnny Joanie Boelert:
I love their brief meeting so fucking anything with these two would make me happy. Does JJ seek Rust out after the story behind their trauma is suddenly being splashed across every news outlet in the country? What if the two of them cross paths earlier and share a fucked-up recognition of each other as people who've been marked by evil?
Something with the two of them sharing fucked-up revenge plans, or low-key getting involved in occultism together despite Rust's deeply ingrained skepticism, or with them going cultbusting together and accidentally digging deeper into exactly the kind of stuff Joanie is running from… Johnny Joanie is one of the few characters in this exchange who I do want a happy(ish) ending for, because their one scene in canon is such a show-stealer, but feel free to kill Rust all you like.
(It's not especially clear how Johnny Joanie identifies in canon gender-wise, so feel free how to write that however.)
