Dear Fandom5k Creator

[teumesia]

 

Hello dear Fandom5k Creator, and thanks for signing up this year! I hope you’ll find this letter useful; I’ve gone ahead and written some prompts/ideas, but please, if you’ve got something else in mind already or have an idea for something completely different, go right ahead and write that instead! I’ll be looking forward to reading whatever you come up with. Oh, and this letter turned out to be pretty long and slightly rambly in parts, I hope that’s okay!

General things!

DNWs:

mundane AUs, unrequested crossovers, pregnancy/mpreg/kidfic, A/B/O, overly graphic descriptions of bodily fluids other than blood.

 

General Likes:

worldbuilding, missing-scene type fic, character studies, banter, us against the world, found family/family of choice, moral conflicts, loyalty, pragmatic characters, people kicking ass together, unlikely allies, competence, darkfic, horror, cosmic horrors – the more grotesque and inhuman the better, things getting destroyed in totally over-the-top ways, action scenes and battles, trust and trust issues, power dynamics/power imbalance, dysfunctional/codependent relationships, ambiguous or downright unhappy endings.

 

If you can somehow make it work for this exchange I’m also super down for anything that plays with presentation and format – epistolary fic, IF, etc.

 

Porn:

I know I’ve requested a few pairings for several fandoms, but for those I would really appreciate it if it weren’t PWP. I’d be more than happy if you were to write me smut, don’t get me wrong, but I just don’t want the whole focus to be on it, if that makes any sense. I tend to like porn that’s heavier on the manipulative plot/sex-for-power side of things rather than straight-up fluff, so dubcon, breathplay, etc are all appreciated – though again, my only hard nopes are the ones listed above, so if you want to have a go at something else go right ahead! I’m easy to please and always happy to try new things.

And on to fandoms! \o/

 

Critical Role
Delilah Briarwood/Sylas Briarwood
AU – Canon Divergence, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Darkfic, Getting Together, Interpersonal Drama

Competent, smart villains that are also a battle couple is one of my favorite tropes and oh wow did the Briarwoods deliver on that front. They’re so devoted to each other and kick ass while looking out for each other! It’s great. Literally the only thing I dislike about their story arc is that they didn’t stick around longer, though I did appreciate them coming back for the Vecna arc -- and even then the final battles against them were both so cool I don’t really mind.     

 

--AUs! All the AUs. What if they didn’t die in in the final assault on the undead titan – what if they’d survived, somehow, and gotten away? How would they have dealt with Vecna being banished once and for all, their cause now over and done with for good? Would they have tried to get revenge on Vox Machina, or just ended up fleeing and living a quiet (or not so quiet?) life somewhere else entirely? (What if they had survived and Vecna had won?)

--Their time in Wildemount would be super cool as well. How did they meet, how exactly did Sylas become a vampire, how did the two of them flee that continent? Their time spent setting up (vampire)shop in Whitestone and consolidating their power there would be interesting too, what with having to deal not only with the townsfolk but keeping Cassandra and Ripley in line as well.

--What’s it like, building up a cult for an aspiring god? What sort of troubles did they have to go through, what structures were already in place – just how many other worshippers in high position did Vecna have, and how did the Briarwoods interact and get along with them? What were they up to after Vecna had resurrected them and before Vox Machina ran into Delilah again in Marquet?

 

 

The Half-Made World
John Creedmoor & Marmion
Action/Adventure, Horror, Worldbuilding

You know how way late in the book, Marmion tells Creedmoor that all the Agents of the Gun are unruly, and that they love them for it? That’s what I really like about these two: you’ve got a spirit of chaos demanding obedience from someone who was specifically chosen because they value freedom of choice – the Gun, pun not intended, is shooting themselves in the foot with every Agent they recruit, and they know it, and they’re glad for it. And that’s fantastic. I love how even beyond that, Creedmoor and Marmion’s relationship is way more one of equals than it probably should be – and I like how Creedmoor realizes that over time, too.  So, uh. Yes!

--Anything at all that explores the way these two bounce off each other in various situations would be fantastic, as would any kind of adventures where they work together and kick ass. Infiltrating a tiny frontier town occupied by the Line? Having to bluff their way through some steampunk hotel to get to a target? Literally sitting around a fire and snarking at each other while dancing around the fact that they’re way too similar for comfort? I’m down for absolutely anything.

--If you’ve read The Rise of Ransom City, some kind of missing scene type fic would also be super cool – what exactly happened between Marmion and Creedmoor at White Rock? Does Marmion try to get Creedmoor to come back into the fold, how does it work now that it’s technically housed in Knoll’s rifle?

--As for the Horror tag – the spirits of the Gun and the Line are really old, right? And they’re tied to technology while also enabling said technology, in the same way that they’re dependent on and in control of their respective humans. Gun and Line make for great eldritch forces, is what I’m saying, and if you feel like going a bit deeper into the nitty gritty parts of just what a pact between an Agent of the Gun and the spirit in their weapons entail, I’d be totally there for it.

Machineries of Empire
Shuos Zehun & Shuos Mikodez,
Action/Adventure, Slice of Life, Humor

“The Shuos are marked by two traits: fetishization of competence and a tendency to take the long view.” And it’s why I love them as a whole and Zehun and Mikodez in particular – because oh wow they are fantastic at planning things through but also not averse to adapting to ever-changing circumstances on the fly, and that is fantastic. What gets me with these two is that they’re super loyal to each other when by all accounts they should be anything but, since assassinating the current Hexarch is basically a rite of passage for the Shuos higher-ups. But no, Zehun’s going to do everything but murder their Hexarch, and Mikodez is happy to have them around as well and I love it.  

--The various toils and troubles and intricacies of Shuos bureaucracy! Filing away papers! Juggling way too many agents with too many demands! Killing people! Having to deal with budget cuts by putting their agents in a place where they’ll be able to change that! Clearly, both Zehun and Mikodez have the opposite of boring office jobs (as much as Mikodez might argue that point), and I’d love absolutely anything that looks a bit more into what they’re up to when they’re not both explicitly trying to bring down the Hexarchate.

--The various toils and troubles and intricacies of Shuos bureaucracy, but this time in the Assassin Limited Collector’s Edition! Maybe something like the thing with the two Shuos cadets happens again, and Mikodez and Zehun are forced to take direct action; maybe after Cheris’ rewrite of the calendar they have to juggle a whole lot of dissent from within their own ranks. Or maybe way earlier before all that, maybe they make good on the Shuos’ hatred of the Andan while on a visit to their City of Inverted Gardens and cause some chaos?  

--Probably my favorite scene with Zehun and Mikodez is near the end of Raven Stratagem, where Mikodez gives Zehun access to the codes to assassinate them, and they just tell him how utterly stupid that is – the weird and complicated trust/loyalty relationship thing these two have is absolutely fantastic, and literally anything that incorporates that would be amazing. Zehun protecting Mikodez from something, and Mikodez protecting Zehun in turn; both of them being the only one who will call the other out on when they’re being ridiculous now that Istradez is gone…anything.

 

The Malazan Book of the Fallen
Dancer/Dassem, Karnadas & Brukhalian & Itkovian
Action/Adventure, Character Development, Fix-it fic, Humor

Dancer/Dassem

Competence porn, hello. On the one hand you have Cotillion, who can and will shank you twenty different ways if you get in his way, and on the other Dassem, who’s such a great swordsman that a god and a whole undead race took notice. Together, they fight crime built an empire, abandoned it, and became mopey ascendants! (And now sometimes fight crime. On a godly scale.)

--Early empire adventures! Did they partner up sometime to go kill/intimidate/thoroughly confuse some neighboring kingdom’s ruler? Did Dancer and Kellanved take Dassem along to explore Shadow at any point? I’d love something that explores how they grew to be so close -- Apsalar says that there were only ever two people Dancer trusted, namely Kellanved and Dassem, and that now as Cotillion he no longer explicitly trusts Shadowthrone. But Dassem? Does he still, and how does that factor into their later interactions? How did that trust form in the empire years? And what’s Dassem’s take on the whole thing?

--Anything at all to do with the last Chaining of the Crippled God. We know that Dancer attended it while Kellanved apparently happened to be conspicuously absent, and Dassem was there as Knight of High House Death only to have Hood kill his daughter. So . . . what exactly went down there? Did Dassem bring Dancer along to the Chaining; if not, how did Dancer get access? How did Dassem’s daughter die, how did she end up in the Deadhouse – and how did all that affect the relationship between Dancer and Dassem (and Kellanved)?

-- Post-canon adventures! After Toll the Hounds Dassem is a wreck; after Orb Sceptre Throne he finally seems to be doing a bit better now that he has a whole island of Seguleh to worry about. The last time he and Cotillion talked was presumably during the whole Darujhistan thing, so I’d be super interested in seeing them meeting again afterward – maybe they talk it out, maybe they don’t, but either way I’d really love to see something that deals with the personal consequences that having Rake kill Hood had for the two of them, and where they go from there. Do they maybe band together for just long enough to cause some serious trouble for Mallick Rel, as revenge for taking over their old empire and killing Laseen?

 

Karnadas & Brukhalian & Itkovian

Talk about doomed characters. I fell hard for Brukhalian, Karnadas, and Itkovian when they were first introduced – something about how polite yet simultaneously super capable of kicking ass they were, as well as the sheer trust they all seemed to have in each other. They had their separate niches/jobs leading the Grey Swords, and they were so competent and worked together so well! I hoped that they would be able to join up with the Malazans and go fight the Pannion Domin together, only then of course Capustan happened and that was the end of that.

Basically: I love them a lot, but Capustan is also where I usually put down MoI because it hurts and all three of them get such a sucky fate. (Also, if you ship it and would like to turn that “&” into a “/” anywhere, go right ahead.)

--Backstory! How did they come to form their company in Elingarth, what was it like first meeting the other two? Did the Grey Swords already exist, did the three of them start out as rank and file soldiers? How did they find out that they were Mortal Sword/Destriant/Shield Anvil, initially? What were their first few assignments, who did they fight, what political intrigues were they drawn into because of the god they served? Did they maybe even make it all the way to Perish and meet Krughava and her Grey Helms? What was it like in Capustan before everything went to hell? What are they like/how do they interact with each other when they’re not faced with their company’s looming annihilation?

--Something set during Toll the Hounds would be cool as well! Do they meet at any point while that whole business with Dragnipur is going on? Is Itkovian even aware of what’s happening to Karnadas and Brukhalian, and vice versa?

--FIX-IT AU, HEAL MY HEART. Maybe Hood swoops in and this time goes “no u” to the archers that shot down Brukhalian. Maybe Fenner makes one last-ditch effort to get his power where it needs to be, and Karnadas doesn’t die of warren-poisoning and overexertion. Maybe . . . What happens? How do things change because of it? Does Itkovian still end up redeeming the T’lan Imass, somehow? How would the three of them get along with Rake and his Andii, or Dujek and Whiskeyjack and the Bridgeburners?

 

Warhammer 40k
Ahzek Ahriman/Magnus the Red,
Action/Adventure, Darkfic, Horror, Worldbuilding, Interpersonal Drama

Look, they’re just really awful (if vaguely well-intentioned, sometimes) people while also being really powerful sorcerers, and I love that. Ahriman’s goals should theoretically line up with Magnus’ – reversing the effects of the Rubric should be great for what remains of the Legion, but because they’ve both got more issues than you can throw a stick at, they’re hindering each other more than anything else. Also, lots of magic oomph and a way off-kilter moral compass to go with it for the both of them? Count me in.

--I’m not going to pretend that I 100% understand what’s going on with all the different shards of Magnus floating about inside the Eye of Terror and outside of it, but I think it’s pretty cool! What sort of fragments does Ahriman run into, and how do those pieces of Magnus react to him? What sort of stuff do they get up to together?

--Temporary team-ups for, uh, warp reasons! I don’t care what gets them to work together (Tzeentch? A big huge mutual threat? The Inquisition, again?), I just really, really want to see them investigating/fighting/magicking something side by side while also having to navigate around their own complicated history. Maybe Ahriman’s finally got a good lead on reversing the Rubric but needs Magnus’ help to follow through on it? Maybe the Planet of Sorcerors is under attack, and Magnus calls Ahriman to help? Aaaaanything.

--The 30k-era is also super cool, though here I’d prefer it if were set before the Horus Heresy. Building up Prospero! Library adventures! Exploring planets and the libraries on them! Going back to visit Terra and meeting with the Emperor and Malcador and other people! Basically there’s so much potential here to write not quite as tragic adventures and I am so there for it.

 

And that’s that. Thanks for reading and I hope you have a lot of fun writing!