Dear Summer of Horror Writer (2022)

[scioscribe]

Thank you so much for writing for me! Horror is the genre of my heart, and I can never get enough of it, so I'm already really looking forward to whatever you create. I've added some prompts, but definitely feel free to go your own way. Please think of the requested horror tags as more directions than anything else—it's more than okay if something blends subgenres or doesn't fit in neatly.

I have more prompts for some fandoms than others, but that's just because of what I could think up or because of how many different characters or relationships I was requesting; I'd be equally happy to receive gifts for any of these requests.

I'm scioscribe on AO3 and scioscribe on Tumblr. All requests this year are for fic.

Likes

hurt/comfort, emotional hurt/comfort, ensembles, enemies-to-lovers (or friends), friendships, friends-to-lovers, opposites attract, conflicting worldviews and priorities, emotional vulnerability, fix-its, casefic, canon-style adventures, crack played straight, moral complexity, nuanced bad guys/terrible people with moments of goodness or vulnerability, redemption, pining, obvious feelings that don’t quite get admitted to, unconventional gestures of affection, complicated relationships, partnerships, power dynamics, shippy gen and ambiguously intense relationships, intimacy, found family, first-time stories, established relationships, character death, amnesia, characters forced to cooperate, forced proximity, bedsharing, huddling/cuddling for warmth, 5 + 1 fics, slow-burns, fake/pretend relationships, arranged marriage/marriage of convenience, sex pollen, made them do it, noncon-related hurt/comfort, rape recovery, power couples, age gaps, worldbuilding, undercover work, loyalty, tenderness, protectiveness, acts of kindness, trying to do the right thing, identity porn, canon-divergence AUs, added supernatural/fantasy/sci-fi elements

General Sex Likes/Kinks

clothed sex, wall-sex, rough sex, teasing, anal play/sex, oral sex, rimming, frottage, fingering, gags, dirty talk, hand and finger kink, hair-touching, nipple play, characters giving orders/instructions, roleplay, casual D/s, spanking (including breasts, thighs, and pussy), talking during sex, emotional sex, sleepy/lazy sex, humorous sex scenes, enthusiastic sex, tenderness, loss of virginity, bad/awkward sex (either charmingly funny or downbeat), coming untouched, coming in pants, voyeurism, exhibitionism, collaring, people getting mussed, orgasm delay/denial, overstimulation, edging, begging, historical period- or location-specific sex, sex toys, praise kink, possessiveness, marking/bruising/biting

Bonus Horror Likes

horror-related hurt/comfort, haunted houses/hotels/etc., unsettlingly perfect small towns with dark secrets, "everything here seems superficially fine except someone's eyes are screaming," lingering trauma, bonding through trauma, courage, mutual protectiveness and self-sacrifice, comfort sex in the midst of horror, trying to survive an apocalypse together, mutating landscapes, "it's a bad idea to go into the woods," hunted for sport, finding evidence of cult-like religious practices and old beliefs with terrifying implications, ghosts, haunted spaceships, haunted regular ships, mass disappearances and abandoned locations, coming into possession of a cursed object that has unsettling or dangerous effects, supernatural or paranormal casefic, technology has turned on you, many people really are out to get you, dark carnivals, "it's a challenge to reach the end of this Halloween haunted house but—surprise!--it's actually really haunted and/or the hosts are trying to kill you," spending all night in a haunted house, quietly unsettling horror with little elements that are just slightly wrong, reality is slippery, trapped in a cave, snowbound in a haunted location, investigating supernatural phenomena, the ghosts are personally connected to you and it's tragic, the ghosts are only pretending to be personally connected to you and actually they're not ghosts at all, creepy mirrors, creepy doppelgangers, lured into a dangerous situation … and many more things

Some Favorite Horror and Horror-Related Movies

Re-Animator, Carnival of Souls, The Haunting, The Stepford Wives, The Ritual, The Descent, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Don't Look Now, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Seven, Zodiac, Memories of Murder, Get Out, Us, The Night of the Hunter, Cat People, The Shining, The Exorcist, The Perfection, Cam, The People Under the Stairs, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Haunt, Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, The Orphanage, Pan's Labyrinth, The Others, The Mist, Society, Candyman, Scream, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blair Witch Project, Ginger Snaps, It Follows, Black Christmas, 28 Days Later, The Babadook, Night of the Demon, The Witch, Lake Mungo, The Vanishing, The Sixth Sense, Eraserhead, Dead of Night, Eyes Without a Face, The Wicker Man, The Birds, Poltergeist, Freaks, The Fly, Let the Right One In, The Innocents, Jaws, Alien, The Thing, Black Box

DNW

ageplay, mommy/daddy kink, explicit sex for characters under sixteen, scat, bestiality, necrophilia, literal and real fire-and-brimstone hell

The Amulet - Michael McDowell

Sarah Howell & Becca Blair

Folk Horror, Psychological Horror, Supernatural Horror, Violent Horror

This book has such an irresistible blend of Southern Gothic, dark humor, playfulness, and horrifying bursts of violence. (Well, it's irresistible if you're me.) The compulsions and mind-warping the amulet causes are so disturbing, and on top of that, there's also just a lot of horror baked into the world of Pine Cone; it's easy to imagine all kinds of awfulness bubbling under the surface there, ready to explode. I also love the incredibly close, supportive, and almost chivalrous relationship between Sarah and Becca, with Becca consistently going out of her way to make Sarah happier any way she can and with the two of them having some serious mutual loyalty.

I like both Sarah/Becca and gen (and all potential shades of ambiguity in between). All kinds of endings are fine as long as the requested characters don't end the story on bad terms with each other, i.e., I'm fine with one of them getting possessed by the amulet and murdering the other before killing herself, I just want the other one to understand that any, say, drowning in a pot of boiling sugar is because of the amulet, not actual free will.

I'd prefer no lingering descriptions of Jo being fat like it's inherently grotesque, but neutral mentions are fine.

* Either Sarah or Becca accidentally puts on the amulet, and somehow—because they know what it does and are mentally guarded against it, maybe?--they manage to hold back its influence. Now they need to find a good way to destroy it, and in the meantime, whichever one is wearing it keeps being persistently troubled by murderous and self-destructive inclinations. Psychological horror and intrusive thoughts and maybe Sarah/Becca fucking while one of them keeps unwillingly thinking about killing the other and the other knows it? Maybe they can't get rid of or destroy the amulet, and they have to simply find a way to live with the urges or vent them by traveling cross-country and searching out targets they deem acceptable?

* Dean dies in the original accident, but he hangs around as a malicious ghost or Jo brings him back as a kind of revenant/zombie, creating a whole other set of problems for Sarah and Becca. Or Dean dies and Jo dies, but Sarah is left with a haunted house.

* Sarah and Becca aren't from Pine Cone; instead, they both move there at the same time—maybe Sarah moves in with Jo after Dean gets drafted, and Becca just happens to take a job at the factory? They start to discover that there's something wrong about this little town: peculiar rituals, secrets all the townspeople are keeping from them, menaces that need to be guarded against with folk magic, pending human sacrifices to keep the town's economy alive ….

* The two of them survive the events of the novel (along with Margaret, please) and flee Pine Cone. Unfortunately, they're now magnets for all kinds of disturbing horror and bad luck, no matter where they go or what they do. They attract everything from slimy lake monsters to serial killers posing as traveling salesmen to creepy small towns to hordes of snakes to additional cursed objects with surprising properties—whatever you like. (You can give them a way to eventually break the pattern or leave them stuck in it.)

* Anything leaning into the Southern Gothic aspects of the novel. Unearthing a horror intrinsically tied to grotesqueries in Pine Cone's history and ongoing poverty and racism? Swamps and river monsters and stifling, suffocating heat that just seems to get worse and worse? Decaying houses and graveyards? Horror connected to their ancestors or to past women in their area whose lives they somehow unintentionally parallel?



Biggles Series - W.E. Johns

James "Biggles" Bigglesworth & Erich von Stalhein

Dark Fantasy, Killer Horror, Monster Horror, Paranormal Horror, Supernatural Horror, Survival Horror

The incredible enemies-to-friends (-to-lovers?) slow burn between these two is 100% my jam. I really love enemies recognizing honor, courage, and skill in each other, and Biggles and von Stalhein not only do that, they get amazingly weird about it. (Just ask any of Biggles's friends.) There's so much catnippy mutual admiration and fascination, and I love that no matter how many times they clash, Biggles never gives up on the idea that von Stalhein is not only salvageable as an officer and a gentleman but is also a kind of friend-in-waiting.

I like both gen and Biggles/von Stalhein (and all potential shades of ambiguity in between). All kinds of endings are fine as long as the requested characters don't end the story on bad terms with each other ("canon-typical honorable enemies" is fine).

Fandom-specific DNW: Period- and canon-typical racism. Anything set during WWII or referencing Nazis (regardless of when the story is set). Just let me believe von Stalhein was covertly working as a double-agent for the Allies during that period.

* Biggles's undercover assignment in Biggles Flies East takes an unexpected turn when someone—or something?—starts bloodily killing German soldiers. Von Stalhein naturally doesn't trust "Brunow," but he does trust his competence, so he enlists him as an assistant in hunting down this terrifying serial killer. Or maybe it starts out as hunting down a killer, but they find out that what they're hunting isn't anything that human?

* Sometime after von Stalhein takes refuge in England, he drops off the radar, and Biggles is reluctantly conscripted to locate him. It turns out he didn't leave of his own free will: there's something more sinister going on, whether that's supernatural or mundane. Rescue mission from some supernatural captivity, like being held in some in-between world by unnerving fae? Kidnapped by an unexpectedly vicious and threatening killer, with extreme hurt/comfort? Buried alive and needing to be dug up in time? Conversely, Algy, Ginger, and/or Bertie wind up needing von Stalhein's help finding a mysteriously missing Biggles, for whatever reason?

* In a pinch, a resourceful soldier and/or spy can always do a little blood magic, it's just that it's hard to do it without almost dying. But if you need to communicate with your frenemy through his dreams, or pop into the underworld to rescue him, or bring him back from the brink of death, sometimes you just have to go for it. Also other creepy dark fantasy-style magic! I'm fine with them doing terrible things to themselves to help each other. Von Stalhein has to chop off a hand to get enough magical power to save Biggles? Trading away important parts of your memory so a supernatural entity will help you out?

* Taking refuge in a haunted castle, manor, or even shack, especially if the weather is so inclement that there's no way for them to simply leave. Trap them there with a blizzard or severe rain and flooding and make them confront ghosts, hallucinations, and general strangeness.

* Tragic ghost stories: Von Stalhein slowly realizes that Biggles, whom he's been interacting with normally, has actually been dead for quite a while, maybe even because von Stalhein killed him during their last run-in and blocked it out? Is Biggles haunting him and patiently waiting for him to put the pieces together? How does someone else, like one of Biggles's friends, react to realizing the depth of denial here? I'm also totally fine with the roles being reversed here—I just love "I've completely repressed killing you and so don't even realize that I'm talking to a ghost," regardless of who's dead.

* A whole onslaught of random prompts: Hunted for sport by a psychopath, flying through the Bermuda Triangle, one of them gets replaced by a sinister doppelganger and the other needing to figure it out and rescue the original, weird experiments result in weird talents (Biggles Develops Telekinesis?) with horrible side-effects, mysterious shimmering lights in the sky are actually an eldritch horror, trying to survive the zombie apocalypse, one of them comes into possession of a cursed object, werewolves, "you've been bitten by a creature that may have a horrible transformative effect, so I'm going to tie you up until we know what's going on, and no, I won't just immediately kill you before we know what's happening"?



Carrie - Stephen King

Sue Snell & Carrie White
Solo: Carrie White
Solo: Sue Snell

Dark Fantasy, Folk Horror, Gothic Horror, Institutional Horror, Paranormal Horror

I love the complicated and difficult character relationships for this book, especially how Carrie is both victim and monster and how Sue both pities and dislikes her. Carrie is sympathetic but harboring a lot of understandable but destructive rage and envy: she's a bullied, abused teenage girl who suddenly has the power to lash out and do terrific damage when she feels cornered or humiliated, and the world keeps making her feel that way. And Sue's doing the best she can to think above all the pettiness of high school and actually act on her compassion in a meaningful way—I love her attempt to find a goodness beyond shallow niceness—but she's still sometimes reflexively repulsed by Carrie's victimhood or lack of social skills. The connection between them is just so uneasy and charged and open for exploration of all kinds.

I like Carrie/Sue (both dark/horrifying and more hopeful/romantic) and gen (and all potential shades of ambiguity in between). All kinds of endings are fine.

* Carrie doesn't go home after the prom; instead, she leaves town with a terrified Sue as a hostage.

* Carrie lives on as a ghost in Sue's mind. If you take this in a shippy direction, I'm open to everything from nightmare noncon/dubcon to dark romance to something more wistful. Or maybe Carrie lives and blows town, but she's haunted by the prom ghosts and/or the ghost of her mother? Can she overcome them, banish them, or lay them to rest, or will they get the upper hand? Does she have genuine regrets?

* I also love the idea of Sue being haunted by prom ghosts, especially while she's trying to deal with being ostracized by the town and having so much survivor's guilt. Or Sue starting to investigate paranormal/psychic phenomena, going headfirst into what scares her. Or Carrie/Sue with them partnered up in looking into these cases. Carrie/Sue vs. haunted houses and other people with wild talents.

* Feeling like a monster, dealing with enormous power and the temptation to use it to do terrible things to people, PTSD and nightmares, physical deterioration and the knowledge that you're going to die young (or, if Carrie/Sue, the knowledge that the person you love is going to die young).

* Carrie somehow manages to bring her mother back, but she Comes Back Wrong.

* Carrie's intrusion into Sue's head gave her unwanted telekinetic powers that she's horrified by, and it's making people suspicious of her.

* In the aftermath of prom night, Chamberlain develops some peculiar rituals for detecting people with telekinetic powers, and everything slowly becomes oppressive and/or retrograde-creepy with beliefs about witchcraft. Or a folk horror AU where everything is superficially modern, but this is still a world where people are alert to signs of "witchcraft" and ready to turn on Carrie as soon as her powers start manifesting and they want to stone her in the public square.

* Carrie gets captured by the government/the Shop/some nefarious lab, either before or after prom, and they start experimenting on her and trying to control her, with a possible rescue attempt by Sue. Or a possible scenario where Sue is also brought into keep her company/help control her. Can they escape? How do the researchers control Carrie? If they offer her praise and support, does she even want to get out?



BlacKkKlansman

Ron Stallworth & Flip Zimmerman

Institutional Horror, Killer Horror, Paranormal Horror, Psychological Horror

These two have terrific chemistry, and I love the slow development of their rapport and mutual respect and the way they complement each other in a weird, escalating way that leads to objectively nuts situations like a shared undercover role. They're both really smart and insightful and good at improvising, which are all traits that would be useful in dealing with horror genre situations. I also really love how the movie keeps up this really intense, electric balance of nail-biting tension, anger, and comedy. The tonal balance is just perfect. As is Ron's kung fu.

I like both Ron/Flip and gen (and all potential shades of ambiguity in between). All kinds of endings are fine as long as the requested characters don't end the story on bad terms with each other.

* Ron and Flip are temporarily tasked with helping out with the investigation of a particularly dark, gruesome set of murders (serial killings? a mass murder? something involving cults?), and their partnership provides an anchor as they dive into some deep, nasty waters and possibly get endangered and/or hurt. Or maybe it's a personal investigation for one of them—maybe something that would be unlikely to get much official attention—and the other agrees to help out even though it's potentially a lot of trouble? Hurt/comfort, bonding, being horrified or disgusted by the crimes they're encountering, being isolated from getting too much help ….

* Paranormal AUs! Going undercover as a vampire and having to stomach drinking blood (maybe having to drink it from each other as weird, inadvertently sexy practice or improvisation in a tight spot?), getting turned into a werewolf on the job and needing your partner to help you cover it up and deal with it, navigating crimes and undercover assignments in a city filled with supernatural creatures with their own agendas and demands. Investigating resurrection criminal circles where people are bringing back the dead (who Come Back Wrong) to act like mindless puppets to help them with crimes.

* Difficult undercover assignments with the boundaries blurring in unsettling ways. Violent urges creeping up on you. Needing to rely on your partner to provide some kind of stability in a situation where you feel less and less like yourself by the day.

* Heightened institutional horror leaning into and throwing metaphors on top of everything sinister and terrifying about the same racism and anti-Semitism they go up against in the movie being (obviously) present elsewhere, including "respectable" institutions and their own workplace. Justified paranoia. Finding out there are plans to replace one or both of them with more "compliant" pod-person versions of themselves. Going on some kind of departmental retreat/team bonding exercise that they slowly realize is a way to get them killed/hunted for sport. Discovering the existence of some sub rosa cult or secret society with horrible creepy ambitions (including stopping them from pushing too hard on things like the KKK investigation), not knowing who to trust except each other. Essentially, just dealing with and battling back against all the same institutional prejudices as before, only this time they come with horror genre devices like explicit human sacrifices or disturbing magic, etc.

* One or both of them get drugged with something experimental, and it causes considerable mental distortions (and they're not sure how long they're going to last): hallucinations, paranoia, delusions, uncontrollable emotional fluctuations, etc. Maybe they're in a life-or-death situation where they can't get any kind of help right then, so they have to push through some arduous circumstances while also battling their own minds?



Cam

Alice Ackerman & Fake Lola
Solo: Alice Ackerman
Solo: Fake Lola

Folk Horror, Institutional Horror, Psychological Horror, Science Fiction Horror, Supernatural Horror

I love all the layers of thoughtful unease in this movie, from the trippy horror of having your own online identity stripped away from you--to the point where you're watching yourself on-screen, doing things you've never done and saying things you've never said--to the intense creepiness of being stalked to the science fictional deepfake digital clones that don't recognize their original models to the fear of having your secrets publicly revealed to sexual anxieties and the awfulness of having people dismiss your concerns and fears. Alice is such a terrific protagonist: resourceful, intuitive, weird, brave, vulnerable, and fiercely devoted to her own principles and boundaries. I'm also really intrigued by Fake Lola, especially with the possibility of her developing a kind of sentience.

I like Alice/Fake Lola, Alice/OFC or any of her colleagues, Fake Lola/anybody (including digital constructs), and gen (and all potential shades of ambiguity in between). I'm totally good with you depicting any amount of the canon-typical sex work, so Alice/guys or Lola/guys in that context is also totally fine. All kinds of endings are fine.

* Fake Lola lives on as a kind of digital ghost post-deletion. Does she develop an obsession with Alice after all that, and manage to find her new account and become an avid client? And what kind of ghost is she--malevolent, sexually intrigued, neutral, protective, all of the above simultaneously or at different stages?

* Alice rebuilds her career, refusing to be knocked down for good--but she's still working with FreeGirlsLive, and the same problem could easily happen again, so she makes it her mission to track down the people responsible for the deepfake so she can enact (possibly murderous) revenge on them. Corrupt institutions, deeply unhelpful law enforcement ….

* The deepfake digital clones become a common, pernicious part of the internet, eventually becoming a kind of online folklore that Alice or Lola has to contend with (obviously from very different perspectives). What kind of additional spring up around or about these true tales of stolen identity? Does it get hard for even Alice and Lola to tell the difference between fake accounts and real ones, and what does that mean?

* Blurring the lines between science fiction horror and psychological (and supernatural?) horror: Alice starts just feeling her identity get stripped away piece by piece until she no longer feels like herself anymore. Maybe the identity theft goes deeper than just her FreeGirlsLive account and other things in her life start going wrong? What if suddenly people are telling her about interactions they had with her that she doesn't remember having, and acting like she's done things she doesn't remember doing?

* AU where there's a different explanation for what's going on with the theft of Alice's account? The part where "Lola" is taking her audience on a tour of her house is so chilling in how it just eviscerates Alice's sense of privacy and really emphasizes how wrong all this is--it feels so sinister. What if the Fake Lola were some kind of supernatural force targeting her, instead of a digital clone? Is she a ghost of some sort? A suppressed manifestation of Alice herself? Some kind of totally inhuman force that just chooses to embody itself this way for some reason?

* I'm totally here for Fake Lola's POV on her part of the movie and everything going on behind the scenes, with either a seemingly human perspective--that sometimes feels a weird dissonance about everything--or a fascinatingly alien AI one. From her perspective, is Alice/Teapot horrifying for deleting her? How does she feel about her interactions with her viewers?

* Alice gets a smart house/Alexa/whatever. This is a bad idea, especially when Fake Lola gets involved (maybe Demon Seed-style). Or maybe the deepfake originators hack her house in revenge for her getting one over on them, and Lola actually manages to help her in some way?



Joyeux Noël | Merry Christmas

Lt. Audebert & Lt. Horstmayer

Dark Fantasy, Monster Horror, Supernatural Horror, Survival Horror

Surprising connections between characters who are supposed to be enemies, mutual recognition of honor and decency, characters taking huge risks for each other, coming together across the lines, historical context, a wintry landscape, the potential for some amazing pining … this movie is total catnip for me. The movie has a tight time-span, and I definitely don't need the story set within that! I also love canon-divergence AUs, setups where they meet earlier during the war (including under wildly different circumstances), post-canon stories, and big-picture AUs like "an alien invasion during WWI forces all the countries to work together" or "their countries have a mutual enemy in Ruritania." I'm happy to hand-wave logistics here.

I like gen and Audebert/Horstmayer (and all potential shades of ambiguity in between). For Audebert/Horstmayer, I'd prefer if their wives are fine with it, either in a general poly way, an "under the circumstances, it's fine for you to find comfort where you can" way, or some "it's okay because it's this specific person you have feelings for" way. Threesomes, foursomes, or other poly relationships among the two couples are also totally fine.

All kinds of endings are fine as long as the requested characters don't end the story on bad terms with each other.

* Quiet, elegiac ghost story where one of them dies in the war but continues to visit the other intermittently anyway, or shows up at some key moment to save the other's life? Maybe it's one of those cases where they have a seemingly normal interaction or reunion, with just a trace of wistfulness, and then one of them finds out the other is already dead and this was a bit of unresolved business he was taking care of?

* A monster is stalking the trenches, and it doesn't care what uniforms people are wearing, so the men have to band together across the lines to fight it off or hunt it down? Tense stakeouts in the snowy darkness, bonding while waiting to see if they'll be attacked; hurt/comfort after monster attacks; separated from their armies because one of them gets dragged off by the monster and the other follows; "Saving you is a dangerous mission but I'm going to do it anyway." Ice monsters, monsters made of mustard gas, monsters made of the bodies of the dead, monsters embodying the pointlessness of the war?

* Strange happenings that don't necessarily even have a clear supernatural origin. Memories getting nibbled away so that they're slowly forgetting everything? Each day a few more men seem to simply vanish from each side as if the world's slowly being depopulated, and Audebert and Horstmayer team up to make their way to their loved ones before it's too late, not knowing if or when they'll disappear too? Untrustworthy apparitions that try to lead them onto death, making it totally crucial to touch each other to verify ongoing reality and know you're not dealing with some kind of malevolent vision?

* Experimental gas makes the dead rise up to go on mindlessly fighting, only the zombies can't be controlled the way people originally thought, and now everyone has a bigger problem on their hands?

* Any kind of apocalypse—extreme weather, zombies, alien invasion, whatever: anything that can get Horstmayer and Audebert on the run together, fighting to survive, sleeping close, encountering horrors. Ditto any kind of survival horror in general: they're abducted from the battlefield and installed in some weird, dangerous alien labyrinth as some kind of bizarre test or entertainment? Slow burn survival horror where it's just getting colder day by day, and they're gradually starting to understand that they're doomed?



The People Under the Stairs

Alice Robeson & Poindexter "Fool" Williams

Folk Horror, Gothic Horror, Killer Horror, Paranormal Horror, Psychological Horror, Supernatural Horror

This movie's blend of on-point satire and effective horror with over-the-top modern suburban/urban gothic works so well for me. I love how it feels like an off-kilter modern fairy tale/urban folk horror--aided by the archetypes from Ruby's Tarot cards--where everything is painted in broad strokes and bold, cartoonish colors, and where our hero's bravery and his rescue of the girl in the tower is rewarded with a fortune. And Fool and Alice just work so well as both icons and real, vulnerable kids in a horrible situation, and they make the stakes so real. Essentially, I'd just love to see more of them in any capacity.

I prefer gen for this request. References to canon-typical sexual abuse Alice suffered with the Robesons is fine, I just don't want blow-by-blow details. I would ideally like the two of them to make it through the story alive and not completely psychologically destroyed, though being traumatized is fine if there's the implication that they can comfort each other/get help.

* Encountering the people under the stairs again: I really like the way the people under the stairs are both terrifying cannibals and fellow victims of the Robesons, ones who have just been there even longer and in even worse circumstances: depending on the moment, they could be either a threat or a help. Do Fool and Alice have trouble with them? Do they try to track them down to help them? Do the people under the stairs become attached to them and start trying to help them, with potentially mixed results? Do they become a kind of local urban legend, and do Fool and Alice get folded into that story? What is that like for them?

* Fool and Alice either seek out horrors or now somehow wind up permanently attracting them, and either way, they fight back. These two make a great team, and I feel that they should use those skills to fight vampires. Or an invasion of body snatchers. Or a Freddy Krueger-like killer who attacks in dreams. They could investigate a haunted house--maybe even a haunting taking place in a new house built on the lot where the Robesons once lived. I'd absolutely welcome any horror scenario blended with satire or symbolic weight--are the vampires also leaching off the neighborhood, gorging themselves while sucking others dry?--but straightforward scares and adventures are also amazing.

* The Robesons hang around as horrible, vengeful spirits determined to make Fool and Alice's victory very short-lived. What are they capable of? Is it a little easier to deal with them in this form or even harder? How do Fool and Alice manage to defeat or exorcize them? What do the ghosts want: possession, revenge, control? Are they bound to a location or to a person--and if to a person, to both of them or just to Alice? Do they believe what's happening right away, or do they think they're just having nightmares or hallucinations?

* Fucked-up aftermaths where they can't quite get back to their old version of normal. Becoming vigilantes against people who, like the Robesons, are protected by money and whiteness and seeming normalcy. Weirdly tender murder cover-ups when Alice sees someone who looks like the Robesons, snaps and kills them, and now Fool has to help her get rid of the body? Traumatized into codependency?



The Perfection

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Wells & Charlotte Willmore

Body Horror, Cosmic Horror, Dark Fantasy, Gothic Horror, Psychological Horror, Supernatural Horror

I love how unpredictable this movie is. It starts off feeling like a slightly on-edge romantic f/f drama and then teeters on the verge of becoming a virus movie and then becomes its own weird, Gothic, distinctive thing. Lizzie and Charlotte have incredible chemistry, and I love how their relationship has such a weird blend of genuine loyalty and care… and for-your-own-good gaslighting and forced amputation and obsession and identity blurring. Charlotte feels like an escaped Brontë character, with this vibe of simultaneous fragility and danger, and Lizzie starts off seeming more normal only to wind up becoming stranger and more brutal. I've got some specific prompts, but it basically boils down to: I'd love anything that digs into that fucked-up, promising complexity and charts where it might go from the end of the movie, and I'd love anything that builds on the horror of "the Perfection" and Anton and Paloma's legacy.

I like Lizzie/Charlotte, either as a central or a background element. Any kind of ending is okay as long as the two of them don't betray each other.

* The Perfection isn't an abstract concept: it's some kind of cosmic horror, and they were all worshiping/sacrificing to a force that rewarded or fed off artistic perfection, and now Charlotte and Lizzie have inherited it. Do they know how to deal with the force they might have just offended? What does any of this look like--how they serve it, how they move forward, how they potentially try to defeat or contain it, etc.?

* Going off the above: dark post-canon setup where Charlotte and Lizzie somehow manage to get control of the school, and they fall into their own kind of worship of the Perfection in Anton's absence? Can they fully shake what they were taught, or do they find themselves repeating bits of that behavior even when they don't want to? (Not the sexual abuse, ideally, but some kind of personal sacrifice or extreme behavior.) Is the cosmic horror force real or just a delusion on their part?

* Ghosts hang around: Anton, Paloma, Theis, Geoffrey? The academy is perfect for becoming a haunted house.

* Any psychological horror that delves into Charlotte and Lizzie having fucked-up approaches to the world because of everything they've been through. Or something where they have to deal with that from Anton's current or former students, for that matter--maybe one of his loyal adherents seeks revenge for his death?

* What if that threatened virus/zombie outbreak from the beginning was real, and Charlotte's plans go awry because she and Lizzie are stuck in the middle of an apocalypse? Are they still in China, or do they have to take an uncomfortable, destined-to-explode refuge at Bachoff?

* More body horror. Do they wind up liking their new ability to play as one enough that they start altering their bodies in other ways, too? If the Perfection is a real force, does it ever tamper with them physically? Do they keep Anton alive so they can continue to work out their feelings on him in increasingly horrible, creative ways?



Evil

Ben Shakir & Karima Shakir
David Acosta & Kristen Bouchard & Ben Shakir
Solo: Ben Shakir
Solo: David Acosta
Solo: Kristen Bouchard

Cosmic Horror, Dark Fantasy, Folk Horror, Institutional Horror, Killer Horror, Paranormal Horror, Science Fiction Horror, Supernatural Horror

This show's gift for combining absolutely batshit, over-the-top elements with unnerving horror and character development and interaction makes me so happy. I love how often their cases are a complex mishmash of logical explanations, unresolvable ambiguities, and hard-to-dismiss but unprovable personal experiences. Kristen, David, and Ben have such excellent rapport and chemistry; their relationship feels both lived-in and comfortable and sometimes crackling with tension. I love their different worldviews and how they keep on having respect and affection for each other throughout a lot of tense disagreements about what approach to take. And with Ben and Karima, I really love their mutual snark—her teasing him about "his priest"--and respect for each other, and their relationship feels ripe for some exploration via horror. (I'd love some follow-up on the hints about her past pregnancy.)

I like gen, Kristen/David/Ben, Kristen/David, and Kristen/Ben (and all potential shades of ambiguity in between). I prefer everyone to still be alive, on good terms with each other, and not completely psychologically destroyed at the end of the story, though being traumatized or experiencing ongoing unease/lingering horror is fine.

* Horror-related casefic (or a snippet of casefic) in general would be excellent, whether the resolution is supernatural, human, or a mixture of both (or people making things look supernatural). I especially like their weirder cases and incidents that aren't demon-related, like the Haunted Girl VR game, the "Pudsy's Christmas" video, Brenda at the girl's Halloween party, David and Kristen at David's father's party, the Elevator Game, the totally-not-Amazon zombies, etc.. I'd love to see them investigating a new incident, whether the focus is on the trio, just one of them, or on Ben and Karima.

* Going off the above—there's really no kind of horror I wouldn't love to see them encountering or exploring: Haunted houses and hotels. Creepy small towns with peculiar rituals where everyone is friendly but strangers tend to disappear. Viral videos and creepypasta with suspicious origins. Past cases come back in a horrible fashion, like a return of the nurse from Room 320. Nightmares and nightmare-sharing. Dark prophetic dreams. Character Has the Creeping Sensation Things Are No Longer Real. Techno-horror. Possessed technology. The fabric of reality is thinner than we thought, and there are strange things underneath. Terrifying time loops. Creepy forests and deserts. Creepy submarines. Isolated settings: snowbound, stuck in a torrential downpour, etc. Haunted dolls. Haunted ventriloquist dummies.

* Zombie apocalypse or any other horrific, world-shattering event that leaves the characters clinging to each other as all they have left in a terrifying world.

* Extreme hurt/comfort: kidnapped by a serial killer, kidnapped by someone who believes in torturing people until they achieve transcendence (a la Martyrs), sexually menaced, mind-controlled and made to do terrible things (that the others may help them cover up), mind-controlled by Leland specifically and trying to fight it off, stuck in an awful nightmare.

* One of them wakes up in what seems like a completely different life, but they still remember "their" reality and have to try to figure out a way to get back to a world everyone's telling them doesn't exist.

* Evil doppelgangers that the other characters have to gradually identify even when a lot of the impersonation is nearly perfect—just that creeping sense that there's something off about the way someone smiles and that getting worse and worse until something finally gives.

* One of them stumbles into horror in their off-hours, and they have to do a private investigation of some weird phenomena that one of them has to be vulnerable enough to open up to the others about, or one of them starts remembering some repressed past horror from their years before and needs help exploring and processing it.



The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

AJ Wilson & Cass Wilson & Helmut Zemo
James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson
Jams "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson & Helmut Zemo
Sam Wilson & Sarah Wilson
Sarah Wilson & Helmut Zemo
Sharon Carter & Sam Wilson
Sharon Carter & Sarah Wilson
Solo: Isaiah Bradley
Solo: Sam Wilson
Solo: Sharon Carter

Cosmic Horror, Dark Fantasy, Folk Horror, Gothic Horror, Institutional Horror, Monster Horror, Paranormal Horror, Science Fiction Horror, Supernatural Horror, Survival Horror

This show completely won my heart. I love all the characters and their various shades of connection and tension, with their different worldviews and experiences and the way they feel each other out; I love the idea of them having soft spots for each other and complicated loyalties to each other (sometimes against the odds). One of the things I really like about them facing horror is the way it has the potential to test and intensify their relationships with each other—to draw out protective streaks, forge closer bonds, reveal vulnerabilities, lead to hurt/comfort, etc. And with the Solo requests, I also just love the idea of seeing how these characters face down horror (with their very different strategies and approaches) and what it does to them.

I like gen and Sam/Bucky, Sam/Bucky/Zemo, Sam/Zemo, Bucky/Zemo, Sam/Sharon, and Sarah/Sharon (and all potential shades of ambiguity in between). I ultimately want the connections between any of them, gen or shippy, to have some mutual affection and respect even if there's also prickliness, wariness, or a difference in philosophies/agendas.

I DNW character death for AJ, Cass, or Isaiah, but otherwise any kind of ending is fine as long as the requested characters don't end the story on bad terms with each other or completely psychologically destroyed.

Really quick notes about what I like about the requested characters/relationships and the potential for them facing horror, since I'm requesting a lot:

AJ & Cass & Zemo: Brotherly bonding, kids dealing with overwhelming and dangerous situations and getting to be both scared and heroic. Zemo being protective of kids, partly due to his own trauma over losing his son; this also revealing depths of new loyalty to Sam.

Sam & Bucky: Bickering, heart-eyes, humor in the midst of horror. Ride-or-die loyalty even when they're pissed at each other. Pining. Sam's blend of compassion and practicality and Bucky's grumpiness and humor and persistence. Refusing to leave each other in horrifying situations; horror as a catalyst for a relationship change from friendship to romance.

Sam & Bucky & Zemo: Potential team-ups (maybe Zemo has a kind of monitored parole conditional on working with them?) with snarky attachment, slowly growing trust, and mutual loyalty. Weird Zemo redemption arc potential, his intense attachment to his family becoming intense attachment to Sam and Bucky. Hurt/comfort, horror as a catalyst for a changing relationship (either friendship to romance or just deepening a relationship) or revealing changes that are already there.

Sam & Sarah: Sibling bonding, long-standing tensions (over Sam leaving home, over Sarah's conviction that he shows up and thinks he can fix everything) coming to a head, intense family loyalty, long personal history together, knowing the full scope of someone's life but also maybe not seeing how they've changed over the years, mutual protectiveness. Living a normal-scale life alongside a brother who's living one that brings a lot of international attention (including maybe some that falls on you).

Sarah & Zemo: Unlikely connection getting surprisingly strong by going through a lot, weird understanding of each other as parents, mutual attachment to Sam, a kind of shared pragmatism, ostensibly very different worlds (regionally and also normal woman + terrorist) but with some commonalities beyond the surface.

Sharon & Sam: Power Broker secret just under the surface, Sam's principles vs. Sharon now taking a more amoral and pragmatic approach, Sharon liking and even admiring Sam while keeping a secret from him, sexual tension, working together while taking different tacks, vulnerability.

Sharon & Sarah: Potential for starting with hidden motivations on Sharon's part (but with real feelings developing) or with the Power Broker secret hanging in the air, Sarah potentially being more open than Sam to Sharon's brand of ruthlessness and getting drawn into the moral ambiguity, Sharon doing whatever it takes to protect the woman she cares about, scorching hot sex.

Isaiah: Isaiah's tragic, painful past and his different perspective on superheroing and the United States. Completely justified anger and a whole lot of trauma. His complicated past with Bucky, growing respect for Sam, and warm connection with his grandson.

Sam: Empathy, snarky humor, ongoing belief that people can change and move in better directions, willingness to get involved in messy situations even at great personal cost, heroism, leadership skills, ability to inspire everyone in a hundred-mile radius to start crushing on him. Vulnerability from laying his life and reputation on the line, being in a position where it might be hard for him to show vulnerability.

Sharon: Moral ambiguity, personal resentments but also personal loyalties, a long time on her own only being able to count on herself, firm knowledge of how to use power, a life lived in the shadow of her family, completely recalibrating her moral compass, being willing to take radical steps to deal with a potential horror.

* Going into space and dealing with eldritch space horrors. Intrusion of cosmic horror into regular life, like little tears in reality or the discovery of cults worshiping otherworldly forces. Sudden perception that the universe is hostile or indifferent, but choosing to care about each other and struggle forward despite that. Give Sam aliens and androids to deal with. Ghost spaceships with mysteriously missing crews. Investigating something way above your pay-grade and out of your usual range. Abducted by aliens, dealing with malevolent AI, some kind of techno-horror where someone can take over Sam's wings and Bucky's arm as well as other tech.

* Southern Gothic horror set in Louisiana, lush with local details. Decaying houses and graveyards, incredible heat, horror tied to the landscape. Sokovia-related horror, where the ghost of a country is hanging around despite newly rearranged boundaries or the ghosts of Novi Grad are still there and need to be dealt with in some fashion.

* Missions or cases involving supernatural, paranormal, or magical entities (potentially with dark and dangerous consequences). Dealing with these forces without really having much of a background in it, improvising a way forward by instinct, maybe even improvising magic. Having to deal with sentient supernatural forces with agendas of their own. Brokering treaties and deals between different known supernatural agents.

* Human experimentation, attempts to give people psychic powers, forcibly experimenting with Raft prisoners or changing them into supernatural beings, horrors of institutional abuse via Isaiah's experiences with HYDRA and SHIELD, the lingering impact of Bucky's experiences with HYDRA, or Sam and Zemo's experiences on the Raft. Noncon, solitary confinement, brainwashing, losing some sense of yourself.

* Stranded in harsh, unforgiving conditions where it's a fight to survive. Snowed in at a haunted hotel or cabin. Hunted for sport. Trying to survive a zombie apocalypse and protect the ones you love. Trapped in surreal and horrifying landscapes. Potential self-sacrifice, cuddling for warmth, increasing inability to be without each other because they're each other's only relief from trauma. Terror of being separated. Mutual protectiveness in the face of horror. Stalked or endangered by monsters, undergoing monstrous physical transformation.

* Going to a small town with a superficially happy surface and dark secrets and rituals underneath, including a willingness to sacrifice outsiders for ongoing harmony. Horrors combated with folk rituals, horrors springing from folk rituals, or both. Magic to save someone's life requires blood or some other form of personal sacrifice.

* Isaiah spends years stuck in a haunted house; Isaiah haunted by an alternate or past version of himself. Anyone haunted by an alternate or past version of themselves, especially with angst about the choices or events that separate them from their doubles. Haunted by things that look like the ghosts of your loved ones but are actually just trying to lure you to suicide.

* Any kind of hardcore hurt/comfort where the hurt is especially bad or cruel. (Although I would like some comfort to go with it.) Dosed with some kind of super-soldier-adjacent drug that makes you reckless or kills off all sense of pain? Captured and tortured? Captured and nonconned? Forced to trade torture or sex for food/medical care for someone else?