teumesia | Yuletide 2021

Yoooo!

It’s that time of the year again, happy Yuletide \o/ Thanks for checking out my letter, I hope it’ll be useful.

I’ve gone ahead and written some general things about each requested fandom/character (because when else am I going to get to ramble about my fave tiny canons if not now…) and also some prompts/general ideas for each – feel free to just ignore those if you’ve got other ideas, of course. I love shipfic just as much as I love gen, and would be absolutely delighted with either for any of the fandoms I’ve requested.

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DNWs:

mundane AUs, unrequested crossovers, pregnancy/mpreg, A/B/O, permanent physical damage, scat/vomit/piss, vore, rimming, first-person POV

Likes:

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

I'm also a huge fan of anything that plays with format -- epistolary, IF, weird typesetting, etc. House of Leaves was a formative influence, haha! (If you want to do any of these, please ignore the First-Person-POV DNW, it doesn't apply to weird formats :D)

NSFW Likes:

body horror, bruises, fight sex, xeno, character study through porn, size differences, aggressive/rough sex, moral ambiguity, size differences, abuse of authority, terrible people having a great time, breathplay/choking, manhandling, stomach and/or throat bulges, somnophilia, blood, gore, consent issues/dubcon/noncon

(I haven’t prompted for it specifically because I can’t prompt for smut to save my life, but wherever a ship is concerned I would also be very happy with something porny rather than plotty.)

Curse of Strahd
Strahd, Rahadin

*holds up the darklord of Barovia and his too-loyal murderous elf* I just think they’re neat

On the one hand we have an ancient vampire who’s so focused on getting his long-lost obsession back that it’s literally trapping him in his own realm, and on the other we have his dusk elf chamberlain who’s so loyal that he’s literally the only person still sticking around at Castle Ravenloft who isn’t a vampire spawn themselves. And that’s really cool! I love how ridiculously, awfully loyal Rahadin is to Strahd, how closely the two of them work together to keep things in Barovia on track for all of these centuries – they’re both terrible people who’ve at least somewhat deluded themselves into believing they aren’t, and I think that makes for great interactions. Anyway, long story short: Strahd’s moral compass has been taking a steady cliff-dive for, like, at least the last 500 years while Rahadin just remains so damn loyal to him throughout and that is fantastic.

My prompts here are more or less gen because honestly I just have an easier time coming up with those, but if you want to take any of them and make them shippy/porny, please do! I ship them hard, mutual terribleness and all.

Day-to-day life in ever-gloomy Ravenloft: so…yes I would be totally interested in just the day-to-day life and all the weird little things that factor into living in Barovia. Maybe a team of adventurers have arrived and need to be entertained with dinner! Maybe the adventurers have arrived to try and kill Strahd, and him and Rahadin have to fight them off! Maybe it’s time to go collect taxes down in the villages; maybe there’s something going on in Vallaki and they have to intervene! \o/

History time/early-mistlocked days!: what were those early days like, with Strahd just coming into his powers and Rahadin having to navigate all of his lord’s new changes? Or how about the whole thing with Patrina Velikovna and the other dusk elves! Or even those years before Tatyana died and the mists descended on Barovia: what were Strahd and Rahadin like back then, how did their relationship change in the years following Strahd becoming a vampire? Feel free to incorporate things from I, Strahd here if you’ve read that or do something completely different, both are equally great!

A Place Where Terrible Things Happen™: bad things happen in Barovia and that is awful and of course Strahd and Rahadin are responsible for the lion’s share of terrible things happening, but! I think it’d also be super cool if they had to deal with something totally terrible together – like, maybe another darklord decides to invade, or the Dark Powers decide to fuck things up on a much more active scale, or—actually, on second thought, I would also be super interested in Strahd and Rahadin doing terrible things. Equal opportunity terrible thing!

The Endless
Hal, Tim

Honestly the main reason I nominated and requested these two is that I’m super intrigued by that one scene late in the movie where Aaron and the camp group are all sitting around the campfire, Aaron has no idea what’s actually going on with the loops yet, and before Hal can say anything Tim just sort of gestures for him to get up and come with and Hal, up until then the de facto leader of the camp, veeeery reluctantly follows? eyemoji.png But no, really, what’s up with that? What’s the dynamic there? (And how often exactly does Tim pat Hal on the shoulder like he did in the end of the movie??)

Tim’s always sort of doing his own thing – he unlocks the shed with all the records in it when Justin and Aaron return at the end; he’s the only one not into the brothers returning from the start – while Hal is just trying so hard to make the best of the situation they’re all in, and I would just really like to know what the both of them get up to across the various loops. Like, was Tim already there when the camp group showed up? There’s records in the shed going back all the way to the 1800s, and Tim’s dress style is definitely a lot more old school than the rest, so…? (I mean, while I personally am a fan of suspenders they’re not exactly the sort of thing you wear in the 2010s.)

The Many Ascensions of Camp Arcadia: so . . . those loops, huh? What are they like for the people inside? What changed between the first and, well, whatever iteration they’re on now? Things they discovered separately, things they discovered together; any attempts to escape the loops and the entity from either of them? Any kind of worldbuilding here with Hal and Tim (and just one of them, too, if you’d like) would be super cool – there’s so much going on with the various time loops and I’d love to know more about them!! The whole concept of people stuck in various loops specific to them, only to die to the entity to feed it? power it?? it is a mystery – that’s really interesting and basically I’d really like to know how it affects the people who are trapped inside it forever.

Actually, how about that first loop: what went down in the Camp that first time? A lot of individual loops seem to overlap with the larger Camp Arcadia loop, so did any ‘outside’ loops factor into the creation of the Camp loop? What made Hal and Tim and all the rest decide to die to the entity in the sky, in the long run? Or did they get stuck on accident that first time, and developed their worshippy thing only later on?

Anyway I’m easy when it comes to this movie. Do whatever! I’m happy with anything that explores the relationship between these two, whatever that relationship ends up being.

Malazan
Dancer

I just love Cotillion a lot, okay. Best-worse god at being godly. I’m game for literally anything here as long as it involves Cotillion having a heart that’s way too soft for someone who’s the patron god of assassins.

Pre-ascension! I’m always super down for Dancer’s adventures before the Night of Knives – whether that’s solo assassinating, teaming up with Dassem, bickering with Surly, or dicking around with Kellanved in some warren or other. It’s all good!! I’m partial to adventure fic here because Dancer kicking ass as an assassin is always great, but honestly like I said, do whatever and I assure you I’ll be super happy to read it.(We’ve gotten a bit more info on the pre-ascension crew in ICE’s Path to Ascension books, and while I have read those please feel free to just ignore them/the stuff in them if you’d like.)

Whump…whump. Listen, he gets injured a lot in the Path to Ascendancy books and then he’s like two sentences away from crying whenever he’s onpage together with Apsalar in BotF, so. More of that would be cool!!

Throw him at any of the other characters and see what happens: That nebulous span of time where Cotillion really hated Laseen because she did exactly what he and Ammanas wanted and tried to kill them! Going to check in on Dassem after everything in Toll the Hounds happens! On that note: the Hounds, I love the Hounds and how they incorporate Cotillion into their pack. Bickering with Ammanas. Getting annoyed by Edgewalker’s continually cryptic non-answers. Helping Apsalar take care of a pesky neighbor! Literally anything with one of the various assassins worshipping him praying to him and Cotillion actually showing up! (Whether that ends up being a practical solution to whatever problem the assassins were seeking aid for remains to be seen, lmao.)

Post-Crippled God (spoilers for The God is Not Willing): WHAT ARE YOU UP TO, MY DUDE. What (mis?)adventures has Cotillion gotten up to since he sent the Crippled God home? Why’s he keeping an eye on Stillwater? What sneaky things are he and Ammanas up to these days; what’s High House Shadow planning? Like, there’s obviously something going on because it wouldn’t be Shadow if they were just twiddling their thumbs, but, well. What game are they playing, these days, and what’s Cotillion’s part in it?

If you want to go shippy with any of these, I like Dassem/Dancer and Laseen/Cotillion a lot, but the only ship I can think of rn that I wouldn’t be into is him and Apsalar, so…go wild, honestly. This is your blank cheque.

Shadow of the Colossus
Worldbuilding

I was super excited to see this in the tagset, ngl. I love the game and I love its world and the plot and it’s just so beautiful— there’s so many places to explore, and it’s just so cool. I’d love to know more about the world and Dormin and the colossi – what’s going on with the world past the Forbidden Lands, what were the Forbidden lands like before Dormin was imprisoned there and, well: what’s up with Dormin, really? It’s all super interesting to me and if you’re game I’d love to hear your takes on literally anything to do with the world of Shadow of the Colossus!!

· The Forbidden Lands: they’re so pretty and so hauntingly empty. What were they like before Dormin was sealed there? There’s so many ruins of an ancient civilization scattered throughout – the Desert Fortress, the underground-ish place you fight Cenobia in … what happened to the people who built all those places? What made them leave? Did they leave, or were they still around when Dormin was sealed in the Shrine of Worship? Why were they sealed in a Shrine of Worship, anyway? What was worshipped there?

· Dormin! What’s up with Dormin!!! Why were they sealed in the first place? And how did that happen, on that note – Dormin is huge and powerful, so how did people manage to lock them away that first time? Why is the Ancient Sword so lethal to them and the colossi? Who came up with the idea of splitting their soul into the colossi? Also the idea of them being able to bring people back from the dead seems to have endured through the ages, so: where did that idea come from? Did they bring someone back, before they got sealed away? And, well, beyond all that: what is Dormin?

· (And if you’re up for including stuff from the PS4 version: what’s up with the Sword of Dormin??!)

· The colossi themselves! So they all of them seal away a part of Dormin, but how does that influence them, exactly? Where they built solely for the purpose of containing them, and if they weren’t, what were they meant to be doing before they had Dormin trapped in them? Like, Celosia and Cenobia are described as “guardians set loose” by Dormin, so…?

· The world beyond – so obviously Wander and Mono and Lord Emon come from somewhere. What’s that place like? What’s the rest of the world like? Are there more Dormin-like things sealed elsewhere, or is the Forbidden Land the only place like it? And what’s going to happen to the Forbidden Lands and the world beyond, now that Dormin has been released?

And that's that! Hope you have fun and see you in December :D