Chocolate Box 2022

[teumesia]

Dear Chocolatier!!

This is my first time doing Chocbox and I’m super excited – I hope you have fun :D

Anyway, thanks for checking out this letter, I hope you’ll find it useful. I’ve gone ahead and listed some general thoughts on my requested fandoms/pairings, but feel absolutely free to just ignore those if you’ve got other ideas, of course. I’m pretty easy to please :)

Find me elsewhere: AO3 | twitter

 

DNWs: mundane AUs, unrequested crossovers, pregnancy/mpreg, A/B/O, permanent physical damage, first-person POV

General Likes:

worldbuilding, missing-scene type fic, unreliable narrators, banter, us against the world, moral conflicts, loyalty and abuse of said loyalty, moral ambiguity in general, 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, trust and trust issues, protectiveness, ambiguous or downright unhappy endings

General NSFW Likes:

body horror, blood, bruises, fight sex, xeno, size differences/size kink, aggressive/rough sex, abuse of authority/loyalty, power dynamics/power imbalances, possessiveness, terrible people having a great time, breathplay/choking, manhandling, stomach and/or throat bulges, somnophilia, guro, dubcon/noncon in all its varying shades

 

And now on to fandom specifics!
…looking at it now I’m realizing that this kinda turned into Weirdly Fucked-Up Loyalty Dynamics: the Signup, so uh. Sorry about that.

 

FFXIV
Basch van Gabranth/Sartauvoir quo Soranus

Army commander 30+ years dead and the pyromancer still super into him, what’s not to love. I mean, listen, Sartauvoir had my heart the moment a giant impact marker popped up in Bozja, Thunderer started playing, and—this elezen grandpa popped up and just immediately started throwing fireballs around. Incredible. A+ moment. And then! Then I got into his Field Notes and oh wow, turns out he’s been unswervingly loyal to his commander whom he met almost three decades ago? And who’s been dead for most of these three decades??! A) what in all the world did Basch say/do to him to make him that loyal and B) SIGN ME THE FUCK UP.

Would love absolutely anything that delves into their history a bit more: what were those early days like, after Basch recruited Sartauvoir for the IVth? What happened there that made Sartauvoir so intensely loyal to Basch that he’s still explicitly calling out for his commander in his final battle on the Dalriada? And how’d Sartauvoir reconcile working for a legatus of the Garlean Empire with being a (former) Knight of Mannatheiwo, anyway? And what about Basch’s side of things – we get a little of his reasoning for wanting to recruit Sartauvoir in his Field Note, but what else went into that decision, really? What made him keep Sartauvoir as close as he apparently did?? GIVE ME ANSWERS PLS (ALSO the age difference here is A+ so feel free to lean into that if you’d like).

 

The Half-Made World Series - Felix Gilman
Creedmoor/Marmion

I just want the gun spirit monster to have some fun with the guy dumb enough to first pledge himself to it and then try and leave. The Spirits of the Gun are petty and trigger-happy (:^)) and possessive of their Agents and that’s great; clearly, though, they must also come across as genuinely enticing enough that people keep on joining them to die a glorious death against the Engines and their Linesmen. I really like how Creedmoor slowly gets more and more disillusioned over the course of the book (or expresses it more readily in any case) and how even then it’s not quite his decision alone to finally stop being an Agent—I like how he knows that he’s done some pretty terrible things, and knows that he’ll be doing even more if he continues working for/with Marmion, and how he gives some token resistance to Marmion’s orders…and at the end of the day still follows them anyway? Honestly it’s great.

I’d love absolutely anything that examines Marmion’s and Creedmoor’s relationship a bit more--maybe something set either before or during HMW, when Creedmoor is juuuust starting to have proper doubts about the whole Gun thing, and Marmion doing its best to try and bring him back into the fold; or afterwards, during the time he’s on the run, with Marmion just very badly wanting to get its deserved revenge on the man who dared to abandon it. Their confrontation at White Rock could also be super cool… You have my full blessing to go as whole-ass weird with this as you feel like – what’s Marmion look like inside the Lodge, anyhow? Tentacles, fangs, way too many eyes and appendages, some form entirely incomprehensible by humans? I’m down for absolutely anything and honestly the stranger it gets, the better.

 

Locked Tomb
John/Augustine

I don’t know why it’s taken so long for me to read these books, considering they combine two things I love, namely a) weirdly sexily described gore  and b) fucked-up loyalty. In other words: the dios apate trio and the subsequent double attempts at deicide came for me where I lived and I still haven’t recovered. I love that Augustine and Mercy decided that a threesome with God was a viable way of solving their problems (and that it worked! TWICE!!); I love that Augustine seems to have been pretty into it regardless of ulterior motives. Mostly I also really appreciate how John cares for his Lyctors, and seems to genuinely have loved them all, and…is still hugely manipulative and possessive where they’re concerned, and also so sure of his own power that even one of them outright killing him only phazes him for, like, the time it takes to come back and explode her.

ANYWAY…my one request for this pair is that, whatever you do, please make it as absolutely fucked up as you can manage J Like, seriously. Neither of them are good people and I would love something heavily leaning into the super complicated power dynamics of God/guy he resurrected. Go ham with all the implications that come with John calling Augustine “son, brother, beloved” in the same breath. Have a field day with Augustine seeming pretty confident that he’s John’s favorite Lyctor. Or how about the fact that John seems to remember (or at least pretends to, which is just as good honestly) who Augustine was from before the Resurrection, while Augustine himself has no memory of it whatsoever? …make it sinister, make it manipulative, make Augustine be aware of all that and yet still be awfully, terribly in love with John.

 

Mugen Kouro | Infinite Space
Emperor Taranis/Valantin the Pirate

My dudes...my dudes with the ridiculously huge in-game portraits... These two really grew on me over the course of the game, with Valantin having some choice moments of badassery on his own in the first part and then Taranis showing up to double down on those in the second – and then the finale!! Oh my god I loved all of it: the Phages, everyone (EVERYONE!!) teaming up to defeat them and fight the death of the universe, the journey to the Sol System and all those sacrifices… My favorite little tidbit, however, was the reveal that Taranis and Valantin were a Seeker-Tracker pair. And not only that, but they figured out what was going on with the Overlords, Voidgates, and Phages – and then became the greatest pirate in centuries and the emperor of the largest empire in order to prepare the universe for the inevitable showdown with its creators.

This being the tiny non-existent rarepair that it is, I would love literally ANYTHING with these two. Taranis first meeting the Tracker the Overlords created for him, how’d that go down – was it a pretty spontaneous creation like with Yuri and Kira, or how did Valantin first meet him? What exactly was their relationship like: lovers/siblings like we had with Yuri/Kira, something else entirely? What was their first journey into/through a Flux Sector like; did Taranis create anything in there? Or how about them encountering Bogd of Adis, and learning all those secrets that they were never supposed to learn via Valantin tapping into the Overlords’ systems… GIVE ME LITERALLY ANYTHING and I will love you forever.