Night on Fic Mountain '18

[teumesia]

Hey there, dear writer, 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 :D

 

 

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.

 

Smut likes:

I tend to like smut that’s heavier on the manipulative plot/sex-for-power side of things rather than straight-up fluff; 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.

Felix Castor – Mike Carey
Thomas Gwillam

A well-intentioned extremist if we take well-intentioned to mean “will totally sic some loup-garous on you and anyone unfortunate enough to be in the immediate vicinity so long as it suits his goals”, Gwillam always makes for fun interactions – because he’s well-aware that he’s doing some pretty shady things, but he’s also in the firm belief that what he’s doing is absolutely and without a doubt the right thing. And that’s cool!

--What sort of stuff does Gwillam get up to when he’s not working the same case as Fix? Do the Anathemata have an organization-wide mailing list that goes hey, please work on these cases, or how does Gwillam come across ghosts and all that kind of stuff? What’s the worst case he’s ever had to work on? How different was the daily life of a church-sanctioned exorcist when he was, well, still sanctioned by the church? How well does he get along with his fellow exorcists – and what about the various loup-garous in his employ?

--One thing I will be forever sad about is that Gwillam never got the opportunity (or, er, misfortune) to run into Asmodeus! A pity, really, because he’d probably have been in absolutely over his head and it would’ve been really fun. How would Asmodeus handle a man of faith, and what would Gwillam have done when actually directly confronted with one of the big demons from down below?

The Half-Made World – Felix Gilman
John Creedmoor & Marmion, Lysvet Alverhuysen & John Creedmoor

Creedmoor & Marmion

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?

--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.

 

Liv & Creedmoor

Their relationship was a huge highlight of the book for me – I love how they play off of each other, how they start off as being these starkly contrasting characters and over the course of being forced to flee to the west together end up rubbing off on each other- I like how Liv starts out as being super by-the-book and eventually becomes incredibly pragmatic and even ruthless, in her own way; how she serves as a sort of moral compass for Creedmoor and inadvertently ends up being the last push he needs to leave the Gun.

--I really would love absolutely anything that explores that weird sort-of-friends dynamic they’ve got going, whether that be through them having adventures or just sitting somewhere and talking their issues out.

--Missing-scene type post canon stuff would also be cool: What happens after they return from the unmade lands of the west? Harry Ransom gives a few hints, but what sort of adventures do Liv and Creedmoor get up to? What was it like finally finding the weapon, what happened during their further encounters with the Hill Folk, what were they doing during the final few confrontations with the Line? And what happens to them after the war is over?

--What if Creedmoor had chosen differently, at the end? After the battle of New Design, there’s only a handful of Linesmen left – what if he had killed them, what if Liv had never had the chance to stab Creedmoor, what if he had taken the General and tried to make it back to civilization? How would Liv deal with a Creedmoor who chose the Gun instead of humanity?

 

Lessa (Webcomic)
Ares/Ryan Anderson

Ooh boy, these two. Ares is a fantastic villain, in that once you learn about him and his motivations he becomes pretty understandable – except when he goes and crosses the moral event horizon he does it hard, and it’s great to watch. The same goes for Ryan, save that at the last moment he tries to back out of the whole thing; but it’s too little, too late, and Ares doesn’t hesitate to tell him so. They’re both awful in their own way, and later on they’re awful for each other, and I love that.

--How did Ares and Ryan first meet, and how did Ares reveal that he could totally help Ryan live longer but, oops, fine print: you’re gonna have to kill a whole lot of people?  It must’ve been pretty compelling, to get someone like Ryan to kill a whole hospital worth of people; similarly, Ares must’ve been pretty interested in Ryan himself, since Ryan is second generation rather than third or fourth. So, basically: how did that deal with the devil go?

--What were they up to while Rano was busy making a name for himself as the Crimson Knight? What’s it like, running the Deman island empire – how do they deal with whatever problems arise? Is it all peace and unity, or does the infighting we see later rear its head within the higher ranks of the organization as well?

--I’m always super down for any type of missing-scene stuff. What happened after Ryan got himself run through by Lucy at the hospital; he aftermath of that scene near the end of Season 2, where Ares turns all of Ryan’s books into a great big mountain of ash; how was Ares doing after he kicked Lessa off of that cliff; how much chaos was there after the big finale of Season 1, with the artificial sun?

 

The Malazan Book of the Fallen – Steven Erikson
Surly|Laseen, Apsalar & Cotillion

Surly

Surly is one of those characters who took a while to grow on me, but between a reread and ICE’s Path to Ascendancy books she’s now one of my favorite characters. I love her pragmatism (“eey Kalam, I know you don’t like me but murder Mallick Rel for me?”), her general competence as an assassin, and mainly of course the fact that when Dancer and Kellanved were off doing their thing in the Azath, she decided that the throne would look a whole lot better with her on it – and then actually went through with it! You go, Laseen \o/

--I would really love something that goes into the early years of her life, before she and Nok and the other Napans showed up on Malaz Island. Surly’s royalty, and we get a few hints of what drove her out of her homeland – but what exactly happened, how did it all go down? I’m always game for court intrigue and political drama! Plus, the Napan Isles haven’t really been explored all that much in canon, so if you wanted to do some worldbuilding here you’ve got soooo much room ;D

--Or something set during the years Dancer and Kellanved were off exploring the Azath! Did Surly always have ambitions for the throne; how did she go about consolidating her power to the point where she felt confident enough to take the throne for herself? Her interacting with Topper and her Claw and the Talon would be really cool as well.

--A somewhat crackpot prompt, but since timeline-wise her death looks like it’d come before Hood being killed by Rake, what if Laseen had shown up as part of the undead force fighting inside Dragnipur? How would the Bridgeburners have reacted to her presence, and vice versa?

 

Apsalar & Cotillion

“I possessed you but in hindsight that kind of sucked for both of us, so now I’m going to try to be a vague surrogate father figure” is not really what you’d expect of the Patron God of Assassin and the young woman who got all his skills, but here we are! Their relationship as it develops over the course of the books is one of my favorites: while they both start out with a lot of (understandable) issues about the whole possession thing, they eventually end up helping and humanizing and supporting the other, and I just think that’s really sweet, especially since they’re both in the business of killing people.

--Anything at all to do with how Apsalar having Dancer’s memories works out for the two of them. She knows a whole lot about Cotillion, and he comes to care about her enough to not mind, so there’s this weird dynamic where they both understand each other really well but are also super hesitant to talk about emotions or anything except shanking people. And that’s cool! But what’s also cool is the two of the figuring out how to properly deal with the whole situation, rather than just running off to deal with whatever matters are currently plaguing the world.

--Maybe something post-TCG, where Cotillion visits Apsalar (and Crokus, if you want to throw him in) in Itko Kan. How’s Apsalar doing now that she’s presumably settled a bit into domestic life, and what does Cotillion think about? Is he just there to check up on her; is he being a mopey ascendant again; does he have a job for her despite promising not to involve her in the affairs of High House Shadow again?