Dear Fic in a Box Creator 2024
Aug. 27th, 2024 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scioscribeThank you so much for creating something for me! I'd be delighted to receive anything for any of these requests and am already so excited to open my gift box. <3
I have gifts enabled, and treats are very welcome!
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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, acts of kindness, trying to do the right thing, identity porn, canon-divergence AUs, added supernatural/fantasy/sci-fi elements
Historical- and canon-typical language, violence, attitudes, and darkness-levels all okay to include unless otherwise noted.
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
DNW
ageplay, mommy/daddy kink, explicit sex for characters under sixteen, scat, bestiality, necrophilia
Poirot - Agatha Christie
General loves for this fandom: 1930s period detail. Glamour. Having queer relationships (f/f, m/m/f) in a time where you couldn't be too open about them. Characters having more going on beneath the surface than it seems like at first glance. Being changed by going through a murder investigation together.
Dr. Carl Bessner/Ferguson | Lord Dawlish/Cornelia Robson
* Post-Death on the Nile, Cornelia and Dr. Bessner are married and ready to live happily and practically ever after, but they didn't expect that Ferguson would stay in touch. Maybe he's as opinionated and judgmental as ever, but it's easier to deal with him now that they're a set pair and he's the lonely hypocritical socialist aristocrat who is hanging around them like a lovesick puppy. They see him a couple times out of bemused (maybe even slightly annoyed) nostalgia, but then they find themselves actually … getting to like him? I'm here for all the weird, accidentally cozy domesticity of Ferguson hanging around all the time because he doesn't feel at home anywhere else, with OT3 shippiness starting to creep in.
* One night, Ferguson's visiting Bessner and Cornelia, and he has a few too many drinks. While they're pouring him into bed, he impulsively kisses Cornelia—well, they knew he had feelings for her, even if they might have thought he'd moved on. But then he kisses Bessner too. Now everyone has to figure out what they want to do about this ….
* Ferguson starts becoming a kinder person and putting his ideals into practice instead of just acerbic comments, and his gradual improvement is making Cornelia and Bessner warm towards him.
* Pining where Ferguson is deeply, besottedly into them but thinks that they couldn't possibly reciprocate because Cornelia is very upright and would never take another lover, and Dr. Bessner is traditional and probably remembers all the bad things Ferguson said about him …. Maybe they even start having sex, but he keeps thinking he's just their bit on the side, but eventually he finds out that the feelings are mutual.
* Outsider POV fic where either Lord Dawlish's neighbors are bewildered by the relatively plain German doctor and his wife that Dawlish keeps bringing around—who seem perfectly at home on his property!--or the Bessners' neighbors slowly working out exactly who Ferguson is even if they can't figure out what on earth he's doing there.
* Porn! I can see both Dr. Bessner and Cornelia liking to give orders for other people's own good, and Ferguson is someone who, if you scratch the surface, could be very eager to please the few people he actually cares about. Casual D/s with some commands and maybe a bit of bondage? Cornelia getting cunnilingus from both her husband and her lover? Bessner testing both Cornelia and Ferguson's reaction times and erogenous zones FOR SCIENCE?
Jacqueline de Bellefort/Linnet Doyle
* Anything darkly bittersweet and canon-compliant, where the shadow of Simon and accompanying doom hangs over everything. What were the earlier, happier days of their friendship like? Did their friendship sometimes include casual sex that they either minimized or didn't talk about? How would Jackie's passionate intensity and Linnet's selfishness and destructive "I know what's best" confidence manifest if they had a relationship with each other?
* AU where Linnet doesn't suddenly fall for Simon but for Jackie, and Simon wants Jackie to pursue her until Linnet remakes her will to leave Jackie everything? Maybe Jackie winds up genuinely loving Linnet more than Simon and scuppering the plan completely, and she and Linnet build a life together that may or may not ever involve mentioning the original murder idea. Maybe Jackie is prepared to go through with it, no matter how awful it is, but she has a hard time living with the aftermath. (I'll also take a No Homophobia AU where Linnet and Jackie can actually get married, and Simon has to pretend to be their stalker.) I don't even need a resolution—I would be just as happy with a dark snippet of Jackie/Linnet with Linnet not knowing the whole story and with Jackie herself uncertain of what's going to happen.
* AU where Jackie decides she can't go through with the plan after all, and she takes Poirot's warning and doesn't follow Simon and Linnet onto the boat. Maybe she sends an anonymous letter warning Linnet about her husband. Linnet might not believe it at the time, but then Simon dies trying to smuggle a cobra into a bed, paving the way for Jackie and Linnet to reunite as a troubled couple with genuine feelings but the world's weirdest history.
* Jealous, bitter, guilty, fraught hatesex during the stage where Linnet is slowly—she thinks—stealing Simon away from Jackie?
* I like where Poirot points out to Linnet that there must have been a moment when she felt herself falling for Simon and first trying to attract him and she chose to give into it. What if there had been an earlier moment in her life when she'd felt that with Jackie, and—because it was the 1930s—she did stifle the urge? AU where she didn't, and they had a full-blown affair/relationship that actually worked out? Alternate version of the Nile cruise where they're just there on their own holiday, enjoying the scenery with no idea that things could have unfolded some other way?
* Peggy Sue fic! Jackie shoots herself at the end of the novel … and wakes up back when she first came to ask Linnet to do her a favor and hire Simon, and she decides to make things turn out differently this time ….
Bull Durham
Crash Davis/Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh/Annie Savoy
Medium Opt-In: Writing - In-Universe Interview
Medium Opt-In: Writing - In-Universe Magazine Article
General loves for this fandom: Getting settled in life/working out what you want. Dealing with major life transitions. Baseball and what it's like as a player and fan. Being on the road. Earthiness and frank sexuality. Playfulness. Tenderness. Mentorship. Sexual mentorship. Post-movie settings. Different careers and different career trajectories. Protectiveness. Light jealousy over one of them being involved with someone else.
* I'd love any post-movie get-togethers with some slice-of-life looks at how they're all settling into the next stretch of their lives. If Crash goes to Visalia, does Annie get a job at a college there? What's their day-to-day life like, and what's it like when Nuke occasionally comes by? What's it like when they realize he's coming by often enough that he's clearly going out of his way to do it? Do they follow his games, and what do they think of his Major League playing? Does Annie discover any new poets? What's it like for Crash to be managing a team for the first time?
* Post-movie, Crash and Annie get married. Nuke comes for the wedding—and makes sure to arrive in time for the bachelor party Crash wasn't even sure he was going to have. How about a co-bachelor/bachelorette party involving a threesome, maybe starting with some playful stripping that gets less playful and more intense/heartfelt as it goes along? What happens after the wedding? Does Nuke think he has to leave? Do Crash and Annie stop him?
* I feel like a large portion of this movie is Annie and Crash co-domming Nuke into being a better pitcher—the bondage, the garters, Crash revealing Nuke's pitches to the batters if Nuke doesn't throw what Crash tells him to—and I'd love to see more of that. I'm good with both AUs where it's openly sexual for all of them from the beginning and set-ups where Annie knows what she's doing but Crash has a thin veneer of plausible deniability about how this is all totally platonic and professional … only to find that he's getting a real thrill out of Nuke doing as he's told, that he's super into those garters, etc.
* Hurt/comfort, including emotional h/c—old injuries flaring up for Crash? Nuke getting injured and having to leave the show, or at least having to face the possibility of his career being over? Annie's not in a profession as prone to injuries, but I'm all for them taking care of her after a minor car accident or helping her face some more emotional hurt, like loss of a family member or sadness about potentially leaving Durham for Visalia.
* Nuke spends part of this movie clearly hoping Crash and Annie will tell him he did a good job, and Annie unabashedly asks for some very deserved compliments, so I'm all for leaning into praise kink among the three of them. (Crash hides it better, but I'm sure he'd like some too.) Let them all discover how much fun it is to give and receive some sexy praise.
* A magazine piece (an interview, a career retrospective, etc.) subtly reveals that the OT3 is happening in ways we can pick up on, even if the interviewer or writer doesn't realize it. Or maybe it's a much-later piece after Nuke's retirement—released now-ish rather than when the movie came out—and the three of them are actually explicitly together? If they decide to be open about their relationship—or at least not-so-subtly hint about it—what do they do, and why do they go for it?
* AU where the three of them hook up the night Annie initially brings both Crash and Nuke home, but that doesn't necessarily make things less complicated. How does Annie feel about impulsively breaking her long-standing rule of only having one player in her bed per season? Does the relationship start off as a V centered on Annie before gradually becoming more equally attached on all sides? How does this affect Nuke's training/Crash's last season?
* Post-movie, Nuke gets a girlfriend or a (mostly secret) boyfriend—or both—and Annie and Crash find out about it and have very complicated feelings. It means they're secretly a little relieved when the break-up happens, because they have some excellent consolation in mind.
Our Flag Means Death
Length Opt-In: 500 minimum words per fic
General loves for this fandom: The ensemble (I love everyone here, requested it or not). Canon ships, non-canon ships of your choice, background relationships, and poly ships (so don't feel like you have to break up Jim/Olu/Archie for Jim/Izzy, for example). Characters being both flawed and sympathetic. The breakup boat-era of trauma and misery and bonding. Post-amputation Izzy embracing his unicorn leg and new relationship with the crew. Healing; figuring out how to move forward. Both historical detail and anachronisms. Horniness. Queerness. Weird gestures of affection. Violence. Supernatural elements. Hurt/comfort.
Fandom-specific DNWs: Izzy's death (except for prompts where I've requested it). Jim, Olu, and Archie leaving the crew.
Frenchie/Israel Hands
* Even more gleeful anachronisms than usual: a raid leaves the crew with a huge supply of shoddy chocolate. When they make port, Frenchie takes it upon himself to invent Valentine's Day, convincing everyone ashore that there's a very real holiday for celebrating romance and that their significant others will expect gifts. It's also the perfect time to tell someone how you feel! With chocolate, that you can buy from him! But his scheme is so effective that the Revenge crew winds up getting into the Valentine's Day spirit too, and with all the romance in the air, Frenchie may as well use this chance to make a move on Izzy ….
* Frenchie needs a fake boyfriend for a bit of grift. Maybe Izzy (grumpily, snarkily) agrees to get drawn into the proceedings? Or maybe someone else does, and Izzy winds up having a hard time watching Frenchie trade casually loving touches with someone and call them pet names, and that serves as a catalyst for him making his feelings clear?
* Breakup boat-era feelings and/or hookups—frantic and stressed and surprisingly tender? Moments where things teeter on the edge of tipping over from platonic to otherwise? Frenchie trying to hold on to his cheerful fatalism but slipping sometimes and needing comfort? Hurt/comfort with either of them tending to the other or trying to protect each other? Bit of hand-holding or a stolen kiss when they're in the brig on the Red Flag?
* Breakup boat-era Frenchie accidentally gets dosed with truth serum of the "compulsively babble whatever comes to mind" variety, which means the box is coming open whether he likes it or not. Izzy tries to distract him from having too bad a time with it (both when it comes to Frenchie confronting his own trauma and when risking riling up a currently-unpredictable Ed).
* Frenchie gets very into Izzy's drag look, so Izzy gives him a private show. Maybe they also try some makeup on Frenchie and get into that as well? Or Frenchie gets bedecked with some more flowers?
* Exception to my DNW about Izzy's death: Post-S2, Frenchie decides to venture to a non-traditional underworld in order to retrieve Izzy, but he does it in his own idiosyncratic way where he's effectively making up the afterlife rules as he goes along—and this improvisational magic actually works to effect a resurrection. Orpheus/Eurydice with a happy ending! Frenchie's lute can stand in for a lyre! I'm also good with other variations on "Frenchie cobbles together bits of improv and superstition in order to effectively con the universe into giving him back an Izzy," so I'm here for any kind of weird resurrection/retrieval along those lines.
* Izzy lives and stays on as first mate to Captain Frenchie. If they're not together, does this make Izzy's attraction to him shift into another, more obvious gear, because he does love a good authority figure? If so, what's it like for Frenchie to suddenly be such a focal point for Izzy's loyalty and intensity and service kink? How does it eventually become clear that their relationship isn't just about that? Alternately, does Izzy decide—whether they're already in a relationship or not—that Frenchie being the captain puts him off-limits because They Have to Be Professional? I'd love to see Frenchie convincing him otherwise.
* Captain Frenchie decides Izzy deserves a break and that he should just be a semi-retired figure who's part of the life of the ship but doesn't have all the work of being a first mate. Izzy, of course, construes this as a total rejection of his potential usefulness. Can Frenchie get him to accept a more relaxed life, or is the right solution for Izzy to still have a more official role after all? Is there a weird period where Izzy tries to make his official role "captain's bedwarmer," and things get mildly angsty before they get better?
Israel Hands & Jim Jimenez
Israel Hands/Jim Jimenez
* Jim didn't go through all the trouble of pulling off an amateur leg amputation just for Izzy to get both his leg and himself in unreasonable danger, so they develop a major protective streak towards him. Izzy goes on an emotional journey from "this is fucking insulting" to "this is fucking hot"/"this is giving me Feelings."
* Izzy getting off on the competence porn of Jim's knife-throwing and knife-fighting, and Jim gradually noticing it and starting to show off more. Izzy would like to disapprove and yell at them for grandstanding, but he's too busy being hard.
* Exception to my DNW about Izzy's death: I adore Jim inheriting his glove, and I'd love anything exploring them claiming that (or Izzy having left it to them—I could see him potentially having some very terse will) and having feelings about it. I love anything in the spectrum of their relationship, from sex and romance to crew bonding to a kind of surrogate parent-child relationship, so anything from "mourning lover Jim jerks off with the glove on" to "Jim treasures Izzy's glove like it's their family knife, and for the same reasons," is excellent—whatever direction you want to go in.
* The two of them hooking up after Calypso's Birthday, still in their drag outfits, and just being super into both it and each other.
* Also just porn in general, because it would be ferociously hot. I would be thrilled with anything, but if it's helpful, I could definitely see them being into things like knifeplay, honor bondage, D/s with top Jim, hair-touching, overstimulation, body appreciation, and deliberately leaving bruises/marks/bites. But seriously, anything.
* Jim gets temporarily magically de-aged to an intense, extremely untrusting child or teenager focused solely on revenge and getting back to their Nana. Izzy is actually very good at looking after them and helping draw them out of their shell a bit without pushing them too hard.
* Comfort during the breakup boat era! Post-severed-toes comfort, comfort for exhaustion and being pushed to their limits, post-mutiny comfort when they're starving and think they're probably going to die, comfort sex, emotionally complicated comfort where Jim's still resentful and/or furious but is going to reluctantly accept or offer comfort anyway ….
* Jim's emotional journey from "you're a fucking asshole who marooned my boyfriend, tried to kill my captain, and antagonized the guy who's now got us trapped in a floating hell" to "he's a dick, but he's our dick." Just glimpses of their evolving relationship with Izzy as they go from hate to attachment and from seeing him as an antagonist to an ally/crewmate/friend/lover/whatever.
* Vaguely True Grit-inspired pre-S1 AU where Izzy is on his own for some reason (he and Ed are in the middle of a dubiously professional spat? He's on extended shore leave to recuperate from some injury and chafing for something to do? He's rethinking his whole life?) and Jim winds up hiring him to help out with their revenge plans.
Psych
General loves for this fandom: The whole ensemble (I adore everyone here, requested or not) and the way they may bicker but still have each other's backs when the chips are down. Banter. All the running jokes. Hurt/comfort. Characters having a ton of history with each other. Horror movie spoofs. Casefic. Deductions; people contributing to the cases in different ways. Little moments and details that reveal characters being fond of each other. Dramedy. Undercover work.
Burton "Gus" Guster/Shawn Spencer
* Shawn and Gus have to go undercover as drag artists. Even if they start off reluctant, they wind up both very picky about their styles and wanting to look incredible—and succeeding so well that they wind up really, really turning each other on. (I'm 100% happy to have a whole casefic from this angle, too: I would happily watch them settling into their assumed roles, making friends, ferreting out a killer, and then hooking up and getting lipstick all over each other and figuring out how much of this—besides the sex, obviously—they want to keep up.)
* I feel like Shawn's history of random odd jobs that he only has for a week means he's basically a font of different profession AUs in canon, so I'd love to see a pre-series fic where he and Shawn bicker, pal around, flirt, hook up, and fall in love while the setting just nonchalantly rotates around: coffee shop, florist, tattoo parlor, wedding planner, etc. Or maybe it's set during the series, but it's about how for some reason they find it easier to flirt (or have "this is just a one-off, we're still just friends!" flings) when Shawn's briefly working a cover job (like at the planetarium in S1) because it feels a degree removed from their regular lives?
* I love the wide range of things Gus geeks out about, and I like to think Shawn loves it too—and maybe starts finding it really inconveniently hot when Gus goes off on an enthusiastic, ultra-knowledgeable tear about something. Maybe it triggers a get-together? Maybe it's in an established relationship context where Gus can only talk about safecracking or an obscure comic book run, etc., for so long before Shawn drags him to the bedroom—if they even make it that far. Maybe Gus knows exactly what sets him off and enjoys doing it deliberately.
* Hurt/comfort where a blow to the head or a curse unexpectedly makes Gus temporarily but genuinely psychic, and it's not nearly as much fun as Shawn being a pretend psychic: maybe the visions are painful, disturbing, or debilitating, or maybe it's just overwhelming. But he can sense Shawn's feelings for him—especially since Shawn's incredibly worried—and that means that at least one good thing has come out of all this. Now to get rid of his unwanted newfound powers and start dating his best friend.
* Established relationship fic where Gus proposes to Shawn via subtle clues that he knows Shawn will piece together with his observational skills (at least once he works out that something's up with Gus), because these two feel like they should have a weird-ass scavenger hunt story for how they got engaged.
* After "Gus's Dead May Have Killed an Old Guy," Gus's parents make Shawn/Gus their OTP and assume that the two of them are not-so-secretly together? (Let's just say that Shawn/Joy never happened.) They keep hinting that it's past time for wedding bells, encouraging the two of them to go on romantic getaways, etc. Shawn spent so long with Gus's parents not liking him that he's not going to give up their approval now, so clearly he and Gus should just more obviously fake-date to seal the deal on this. (And to be fair, Gus isn't wild about how his parents now act like he's a scoundrel if he goes on a date with anyone else.) They're already basically doing it anyway! It doesn't have to change things! … It totally changes things.
* Reverse of the "only one bed" trope. Shawn and Gus keep running into situations where there's only one bed and they're simply forced to spend the night doing some plausibly deniable cuddling. At this point, they take their only-one-bed "bad" luck for granted … until they wind up in a hotel room that actually has two beds and everything gets weird and pining-filled as they have to confront that they don't want that extra bed.
* Gus's SuperSmeller (™) means that he really, really likes the way Shawn smells, and he's not above sniffing the back of his neck, burying his nose in Shawn's armpit, etc. So there's the horny side of things, but there's also him liking the scent of Shawn's hair on his pillow when Shawn has to be out of town, or how weird and unfamiliar it is when Shawn's gotten hurt and smells like the hospital, etc.
* Mpreg where Gus gets pregnant from either a one-night stand or a relationship that's definitely not going to go the distance (nor will the other parent be sticking around voluntarily). Gus—maybe to his own surprise—decides he wants to keep the baby. Shawn is torn between going into turbo-drive on making Gus's pregnancy as comfortable and funny as possible and going into an unexpected tailspin about how he now feels like he's also automatically becoming a dad, and what does that mean? Cue flirtation and panic and slipping into easy cohabitation/domesticity and maybe a little difficult pregnancy h/c. (Gus definitely needs some pampering, at the very least.)
* A relative of a previous suspect wants to expose Shawn as a fraud in order to tank his credibility, so they abduct him and give him truth serum, hoping to record him confessing to making everything up. But since the truth serum just lowers his inhibitions and makes him babble, he has a shot of avoiding ruining his career as long as he steers himself towards talking about something else. And what can he talk about for hours? Gus. Definitely Gus.
Burton "Gus" Guster/Juliet O'Hara/Carlton Lassiter/Shawn Spencer
I also really like blurring the &/ lines for this, so I'm equally happy with both out-and-out shipfic and stories that feel more like intensely shippy episodes where things get right up to the line on flirting and is-it-platonic-or-romantic camaraderie and then everybody backs off and tells themselves that it's nothing (even though we know it's not). So UST and pre-relationship stuff are totally fine! I'm also good with everything from "all four of these people have equal romantic/sexual relationships with each other" and looser polycules where maybe not everyone is fully dating or sleeping with everyone else, as long as they're all important to each other and it's recognized that they're all part of the relationship, no matter what it looks like.
* Tweaking one of my Shawn/Gus prompts: Shawn and Gus go undercover as drag artists, and not only do they wind up being very into each other that way, Juliet and Lassiter wind up being incredibly into it too. Does Lassie get surprisingly chivalrous with them when they're in drag? Does Jules help with the makeup and maybe get a drag king look going on? Does everyone try to convince themselves that this is just a flirty/kinky thing and the newly awakened feelings will go right back into the box once the case is over?
* Shawn's only had one real (on-and-off) boyfriend—a total tool whom Gus absolutely hates, but who always sucks Shawn back into his orbit when he's around. I'm totally fine with this landing anywhere from lighthearted to angsty/whumpy. The terrible boyfriend can be a run-of-the-mill dick—borrows a ton of money, never follows through on plans, splits when Shawn's hoping things are serious—or he can do something more serious like cheat or, for maximum angst and protectiveness, get abusive. Either way, Gus hates him but can't talk Shawn out of seeing him—and now the guy's back in town. Gus reluctantly enlists Lassie and Juliet to help him run interference and maybe try to send the asshole boyfriend packing. Huh, seems like they're all really protective of Shawn and feel like he could do better. Maybe once they get this guy out of here, they can prove it—and realize that the four of them work together well outside of cases too.
* There's a killer striking at the local Santa Barbara poly community, so the four of them have to go undercover as a polycule—and, of course, make sure they're convincing enough to not immediately warn the killer that they're there. I just want to bury them under an avalanche of fake relationship tropes where they all have to casually touch each other and pretend to be romantic and discover that they're mostly pretending to be pretending. I feel like these four are an especially great fit for this because they'd all have such different lines in the sand of what they're used to (physically, emotionally, etc.), who they're used to it with, and where it would start to feel real.
* The four of them are out in the field alone when they get exposed to sex pollen and require immediate "treatment." Do they start off trying to stick with masturbation or with couplings that somehow feel easier to justify, like partners with partners, only to find that they can't resist the temptation to make it a free-for-all? I love the idea of them all being overwhelmed with lust but also still very much themselves—bantery and prickly and fun and weird—and that making it obvious that there's genuine attachment and attraction in all directions in addition to the pollen. (Maybe someone else even shows up partway through, but the foursome has no interest in them?)
* One of them is stuck in a time loop. It takes some time getting the others to believe them (and maybe at first they assume they're stuck until they solve a case/do something else), but that's actually not the biggest hurdle. The problem is that obviously this is Groundhog Day, which means one of them is Bill Murray and maybe the others are all Andie McDowell! Confessing feelings to just one person doesn't break the loop, so apparently this isn't going to stop until they all seal the deal ….
* I can never get enough of hurt/comfort and jeopardy triggering feelings realizations, so feel free to have one of them abducted or badly hurt and the others scramble to save or comfort them and inadvertently give away the intensity of their investment in the process. I especially love the idea of them all working out that clearly everyone is in love with the missing-or-hurt character but taking longer to figure out that it's not just that and they're all concerned with each other as well. Does anyone try to nobly step aside because they reflexively assume that there's a "right" match here that doesn't include them? (Only to be proven wrong, of course.) Plus bedside vigils, rescue operations, first aid, comfort, etc.
* Any kind of slice-of-life as an established relationship (or an establishing one, where they're together but they're still trying to figure out what that togetherness looks like). What do their holidays look like? What do their families know (or suspect) about their relationship? How do they support each other when something goes wrong for one of them?
The Twilight Zone
Length Opt-In: 300 minimum words per fic
General loves for this fandom: Worldbuilding. Quiet tragedy but with a sense of finding something to value in the midst of the worst of things, even if you're doomed. Thinking that you're going into a tragic situation but finding out that it's just another kind of life with its own ups and downs.
Mrs. Bronson & Norma
Mrs. Bronson/Norma
Episode: "The Midnight Sun"
* I would love stories from either the hotter world or the colder world, if you want to treat the hotter world as real. Or I'm good with stories set in the hotter world with the creeping awareness that it's all a dream creeping in. Or both worlds being real in parallel universes. Or anything. Basically, both the hotter world and the colder world are excellent, atmospheric apocalypses that I would love to see more of.
* I love their weary tenderness and a sense of being alone together at the end of the world. Taking care of each other, looking for each other, making gestures both big and small. I'm interested in all the little domestic details of life in the slow-but-steady apocalypse and this depopulated New York: whether they ever risk going outside for any real period of time, whether they eventually try to leave the building after all, how they try to stay warm (or cool) for as long as they can.
* Norma painting for Mrs. Bronson, making different hot or cold landscapes. Trying to keep the paint from freezing or melting. Norma convincing Mrs. Bronson to pose for her, clothed or nude. Mrs. Bronson learning to paint or draw too.
* Extremely bittersweet get-together fic where they both know that there's only a limited window of survival time.
* The two of them are somehow able to alternate between the hot and cold worlds, but while that gives them a little bit of comfort, it can't save them: they're always just going from one apocalypse to another. But they somehow managed to make that be enough.
* They're saved by another kind of Twilight Zone happening, like stepping into one of Norma's landscapes and having it become real around them or somehow finding that no matter how cold or hot it gets, they don't die, and they've become something otherworldly. Or there's some last-chance spaceship leaving in search of another world, and the two of them manage to get on it.
* Totally optional intra-Twilight Zone crossover: Death comes for them, and it's either Murray Hamilton's Death from "One for the Angels" or Robert Redford's Mr. Death from "Nothing in the Dark."
Solo: Janet Tyler
Walter Smith/Janet Tyler
Episode: "Eye of the Beholder"
* I've always wanted to see more of the exiled community. I'd love to see Janet starting to settle in there and, as Walter promises her, beginning to feel at home and genuinely loved for the first time in her life. I would be absolutely delighted with 10k of just Janet adjusting to her new life, dealing with everything from living on a kind of remote ugliness leper colony--one that might be in a completely different kind of climate or at a completely different level of tech/wealth than she's used to, in addition to everything else--to slowly finding her own beauty standards adjusting to developing connections and relationships.
* Maybe the new community is basically ignored by the larger dystopian society, so they aren't just relieved of the burden of being constantly scorned as hideous, they also get--even if they don't notice it right away--more opportunities to be themselves without the constant pressure to conform in every way. I'd love to see Janet trying out different options that she couldn't have explored in the outside world, from "different kinds of fashion" to "oh, lesbian sex is an option here."
* Janet eventually becoming one of the people who go to the hospitals to collect the patients who have had the maximum number of failed corrective surgeries, and how she deals with that and feels about it. Is she ever able to reconnect a little with the people from her last hospital? I'm always intrigued by the doctor who veers close to treason because he sympathizes with her so much.
* I'd also love to see Walter's POV on Janet, gen or ship, as she starts to settle in--it could be really cool to see some of her journey through his eyes.
* Janet/Walter specifically! Is a sweet slow burn? What draws them to each other? Does he actually find her attractive right away, since he's been with his own people for so long, or do they both have to get used to each other for a while before a spark really kindles? I'm also into seeing how Janet thinks of him physically at first--presumably in very unflattering terms based on very different norms--and how that might change as time goes by, but how her new beauty standards still might not match ours and her perspective still might feel alien there.
Solo: Marsha White
WB: "The After Hours" Mannequins' Department Store Life
WB: "The After Hours" Mannequins' Time as Humans
WB: Sex Among "The After Hours" Mannequins
Episode: "The After Hours"
* Please give me any and all mannequin rumspringas. Is Marsha the first mannequin who has forgotten herself in the outside world, or does that happen often enough that it's a recognized hazard? Where do they go while they're living outside the department store? Do they all use the same rotating apartment? What are some pleasures they especially enjoy as humans that they don't get to have as mannequins?
* Someone forms a relationship with a mannequin while the mannequin is taking their turn outside. Do they find out the truth? Does it become a kind of weird long-distance relationship where the other person just waits, year after year, for their mannequin's visit? Is it a bittersweet, star-crossed love where the human eventually gets married to someone else, or is a kind of touching "well, they're making it work" relationship?
* What is their life like in the department store(s)? Can any of the employees or customers ever see them move? Do they have more freedom and mobility on the ninth floor, or is it just that they have more privacy? Is that floor technically real but just for storage, or is everyone being 100% literal when they say it doesn't exist, and only the mannequins can actually access it? Do the mannequins have opinions about the clothes they model or where they stand in the store?
* Mannequin POV, just to capture the uncanniness of it. One of my favorite details is how they reflexively fall back into stationary poses when they're not actively interacting with each other, and I'd love to see more distinctly alien details like that from their perspective.
* Mannequin sex. I really ship Marsha/Scorching Hot Saleswoman Mannequin, whom you can name whatever you like, but I'm also good with original mannequin characters of any gender combination. I just want to know if the mannequins fuck, and if so, how.
I have gifts enabled, and treats are very welcome!
I'm
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, acts of kindness, trying to do the right thing, identity porn, canon-divergence AUs, added supernatural/fantasy/sci-fi elements
Historical- and canon-typical language, violence, attitudes, and darkness-levels all okay to include unless otherwise noted.
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
DNW
ageplay, mommy/daddy kink, explicit sex for characters under sixteen, scat, bestiality, necrophilia
Poirot - Agatha Christie
General loves for this fandom: 1930s period detail. Glamour. Having queer relationships (f/f, m/m/f) in a time where you couldn't be too open about them. Characters having more going on beneath the surface than it seems like at first glance. Being changed by going through a murder investigation together.
Dr. Carl Bessner/Ferguson | Lord Dawlish/Cornelia Robson
* Post-Death on the Nile, Cornelia and Dr. Bessner are married and ready to live happily and practically ever after, but they didn't expect that Ferguson would stay in touch. Maybe he's as opinionated and judgmental as ever, but it's easier to deal with him now that they're a set pair and he's the lonely hypocritical socialist aristocrat who is hanging around them like a lovesick puppy. They see him a couple times out of bemused (maybe even slightly annoyed) nostalgia, but then they find themselves actually … getting to like him? I'm here for all the weird, accidentally cozy domesticity of Ferguson hanging around all the time because he doesn't feel at home anywhere else, with OT3 shippiness starting to creep in.
* One night, Ferguson's visiting Bessner and Cornelia, and he has a few too many drinks. While they're pouring him into bed, he impulsively kisses Cornelia—well, they knew he had feelings for her, even if they might have thought he'd moved on. But then he kisses Bessner too. Now everyone has to figure out what they want to do about this ….
* Ferguson starts becoming a kinder person and putting his ideals into practice instead of just acerbic comments, and his gradual improvement is making Cornelia and Bessner warm towards him.
* Pining where Ferguson is deeply, besottedly into them but thinks that they couldn't possibly reciprocate because Cornelia is very upright and would never take another lover, and Dr. Bessner is traditional and probably remembers all the bad things Ferguson said about him …. Maybe they even start having sex, but he keeps thinking he's just their bit on the side, but eventually he finds out that the feelings are mutual.
* Outsider POV fic where either Lord Dawlish's neighbors are bewildered by the relatively plain German doctor and his wife that Dawlish keeps bringing around—who seem perfectly at home on his property!--or the Bessners' neighbors slowly working out exactly who Ferguson is even if they can't figure out what on earth he's doing there.
* Porn! I can see both Dr. Bessner and Cornelia liking to give orders for other people's own good, and Ferguson is someone who, if you scratch the surface, could be very eager to please the few people he actually cares about. Casual D/s with some commands and maybe a bit of bondage? Cornelia getting cunnilingus from both her husband and her lover? Bessner testing both Cornelia and Ferguson's reaction times and erogenous zones FOR SCIENCE?
Jacqueline de Bellefort/Linnet Doyle
* Anything darkly bittersweet and canon-compliant, where the shadow of Simon and accompanying doom hangs over everything. What were the earlier, happier days of their friendship like? Did their friendship sometimes include casual sex that they either minimized or didn't talk about? How would Jackie's passionate intensity and Linnet's selfishness and destructive "I know what's best" confidence manifest if they had a relationship with each other?
* AU where Linnet doesn't suddenly fall for Simon but for Jackie, and Simon wants Jackie to pursue her until Linnet remakes her will to leave Jackie everything? Maybe Jackie winds up genuinely loving Linnet more than Simon and scuppering the plan completely, and she and Linnet build a life together that may or may not ever involve mentioning the original murder idea. Maybe Jackie is prepared to go through with it, no matter how awful it is, but she has a hard time living with the aftermath. (I'll also take a No Homophobia AU where Linnet and Jackie can actually get married, and Simon has to pretend to be their stalker.) I don't even need a resolution—I would be just as happy with a dark snippet of Jackie/Linnet with Linnet not knowing the whole story and with Jackie herself uncertain of what's going to happen.
* AU where Jackie decides she can't go through with the plan after all, and she takes Poirot's warning and doesn't follow Simon and Linnet onto the boat. Maybe she sends an anonymous letter warning Linnet about her husband. Linnet might not believe it at the time, but then Simon dies trying to smuggle a cobra into a bed, paving the way for Jackie and Linnet to reunite as a troubled couple with genuine feelings but the world's weirdest history.
* Jealous, bitter, guilty, fraught hatesex during the stage where Linnet is slowly—she thinks—stealing Simon away from Jackie?
* I like where Poirot points out to Linnet that there must have been a moment when she felt herself falling for Simon and first trying to attract him and she chose to give into it. What if there had been an earlier moment in her life when she'd felt that with Jackie, and—because it was the 1930s—she did stifle the urge? AU where she didn't, and they had a full-blown affair/relationship that actually worked out? Alternate version of the Nile cruise where they're just there on their own holiday, enjoying the scenery with no idea that things could have unfolded some other way?
* Peggy Sue fic! Jackie shoots herself at the end of the novel … and wakes up back when she first came to ask Linnet to do her a favor and hire Simon, and she decides to make things turn out differently this time ….
Bull Durham
Crash Davis/Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh/Annie Savoy
Medium Opt-In: Writing - In-Universe Interview
Medium Opt-In: Writing - In-Universe Magazine Article
General loves for this fandom: Getting settled in life/working out what you want. Dealing with major life transitions. Baseball and what it's like as a player and fan. Being on the road. Earthiness and frank sexuality. Playfulness. Tenderness. Mentorship. Sexual mentorship. Post-movie settings. Different careers and different career trajectories. Protectiveness. Light jealousy over one of them being involved with someone else.
* I'd love any post-movie get-togethers with some slice-of-life looks at how they're all settling into the next stretch of their lives. If Crash goes to Visalia, does Annie get a job at a college there? What's their day-to-day life like, and what's it like when Nuke occasionally comes by? What's it like when they realize he's coming by often enough that he's clearly going out of his way to do it? Do they follow his games, and what do they think of his Major League playing? Does Annie discover any new poets? What's it like for Crash to be managing a team for the first time?
* Post-movie, Crash and Annie get married. Nuke comes for the wedding—and makes sure to arrive in time for the bachelor party Crash wasn't even sure he was going to have. How about a co-bachelor/bachelorette party involving a threesome, maybe starting with some playful stripping that gets less playful and more intense/heartfelt as it goes along? What happens after the wedding? Does Nuke think he has to leave? Do Crash and Annie stop him?
* I feel like a large portion of this movie is Annie and Crash co-domming Nuke into being a better pitcher—the bondage, the garters, Crash revealing Nuke's pitches to the batters if Nuke doesn't throw what Crash tells him to—and I'd love to see more of that. I'm good with both AUs where it's openly sexual for all of them from the beginning and set-ups where Annie knows what she's doing but Crash has a thin veneer of plausible deniability about how this is all totally platonic and professional … only to find that he's getting a real thrill out of Nuke doing as he's told, that he's super into those garters, etc.
* Hurt/comfort, including emotional h/c—old injuries flaring up for Crash? Nuke getting injured and having to leave the show, or at least having to face the possibility of his career being over? Annie's not in a profession as prone to injuries, but I'm all for them taking care of her after a minor car accident or helping her face some more emotional hurt, like loss of a family member or sadness about potentially leaving Durham for Visalia.
* Nuke spends part of this movie clearly hoping Crash and Annie will tell him he did a good job, and Annie unabashedly asks for some very deserved compliments, so I'm all for leaning into praise kink among the three of them. (Crash hides it better, but I'm sure he'd like some too.) Let them all discover how much fun it is to give and receive some sexy praise.
* A magazine piece (an interview, a career retrospective, etc.) subtly reveals that the OT3 is happening in ways we can pick up on, even if the interviewer or writer doesn't realize it. Or maybe it's a much-later piece after Nuke's retirement—released now-ish rather than when the movie came out—and the three of them are actually explicitly together? If they decide to be open about their relationship—or at least not-so-subtly hint about it—what do they do, and why do they go for it?
* AU where the three of them hook up the night Annie initially brings both Crash and Nuke home, but that doesn't necessarily make things less complicated. How does Annie feel about impulsively breaking her long-standing rule of only having one player in her bed per season? Does the relationship start off as a V centered on Annie before gradually becoming more equally attached on all sides? How does this affect Nuke's training/Crash's last season?
* Post-movie, Nuke gets a girlfriend or a (mostly secret) boyfriend—or both—and Annie and Crash find out about it and have very complicated feelings. It means they're secretly a little relieved when the break-up happens, because they have some excellent consolation in mind.
Our Flag Means Death
Length Opt-In: 500 minimum words per fic
General loves for this fandom: The ensemble (I love everyone here, requested it or not). Canon ships, non-canon ships of your choice, background relationships, and poly ships (so don't feel like you have to break up Jim/Olu/Archie for Jim/Izzy, for example). Characters being both flawed and sympathetic. The breakup boat-era of trauma and misery and bonding. Post-amputation Izzy embracing his unicorn leg and new relationship with the crew. Healing; figuring out how to move forward. Both historical detail and anachronisms. Horniness. Queerness. Weird gestures of affection. Violence. Supernatural elements. Hurt/comfort.
Fandom-specific DNWs: Izzy's death (except for prompts where I've requested it). Jim, Olu, and Archie leaving the crew.
Frenchie/Israel Hands
* Even more gleeful anachronisms than usual: a raid leaves the crew with a huge supply of shoddy chocolate. When they make port, Frenchie takes it upon himself to invent Valentine's Day, convincing everyone ashore that there's a very real holiday for celebrating romance and that their significant others will expect gifts. It's also the perfect time to tell someone how you feel! With chocolate, that you can buy from him! But his scheme is so effective that the Revenge crew winds up getting into the Valentine's Day spirit too, and with all the romance in the air, Frenchie may as well use this chance to make a move on Izzy ….
* Frenchie needs a fake boyfriend for a bit of grift. Maybe Izzy (grumpily, snarkily) agrees to get drawn into the proceedings? Or maybe someone else does, and Izzy winds up having a hard time watching Frenchie trade casually loving touches with someone and call them pet names, and that serves as a catalyst for him making his feelings clear?
* Breakup boat-era feelings and/or hookups—frantic and stressed and surprisingly tender? Moments where things teeter on the edge of tipping over from platonic to otherwise? Frenchie trying to hold on to his cheerful fatalism but slipping sometimes and needing comfort? Hurt/comfort with either of them tending to the other or trying to protect each other? Bit of hand-holding or a stolen kiss when they're in the brig on the Red Flag?
* Breakup boat-era Frenchie accidentally gets dosed with truth serum of the "compulsively babble whatever comes to mind" variety, which means the box is coming open whether he likes it or not. Izzy tries to distract him from having too bad a time with it (both when it comes to Frenchie confronting his own trauma and when risking riling up a currently-unpredictable Ed).
* Frenchie gets very into Izzy's drag look, so Izzy gives him a private show. Maybe they also try some makeup on Frenchie and get into that as well? Or Frenchie gets bedecked with some more flowers?
* Exception to my DNW about Izzy's death: Post-S2, Frenchie decides to venture to a non-traditional underworld in order to retrieve Izzy, but he does it in his own idiosyncratic way where he's effectively making up the afterlife rules as he goes along—and this improvisational magic actually works to effect a resurrection. Orpheus/Eurydice with a happy ending! Frenchie's lute can stand in for a lyre! I'm also good with other variations on "Frenchie cobbles together bits of improv and superstition in order to effectively con the universe into giving him back an Izzy," so I'm here for any kind of weird resurrection/retrieval along those lines.
* Izzy lives and stays on as first mate to Captain Frenchie. If they're not together, does this make Izzy's attraction to him shift into another, more obvious gear, because he does love a good authority figure? If so, what's it like for Frenchie to suddenly be such a focal point for Izzy's loyalty and intensity and service kink? How does it eventually become clear that their relationship isn't just about that? Alternately, does Izzy decide—whether they're already in a relationship or not—that Frenchie being the captain puts him off-limits because They Have to Be Professional? I'd love to see Frenchie convincing him otherwise.
* Captain Frenchie decides Izzy deserves a break and that he should just be a semi-retired figure who's part of the life of the ship but doesn't have all the work of being a first mate. Izzy, of course, construes this as a total rejection of his potential usefulness. Can Frenchie get him to accept a more relaxed life, or is the right solution for Izzy to still have a more official role after all? Is there a weird period where Izzy tries to make his official role "captain's bedwarmer," and things get mildly angsty before they get better?
Israel Hands & Jim Jimenez
Israel Hands/Jim Jimenez
* Jim didn't go through all the trouble of pulling off an amateur leg amputation just for Izzy to get both his leg and himself in unreasonable danger, so they develop a major protective streak towards him. Izzy goes on an emotional journey from "this is fucking insulting" to "this is fucking hot"/"this is giving me Feelings."
* Izzy getting off on the competence porn of Jim's knife-throwing and knife-fighting, and Jim gradually noticing it and starting to show off more. Izzy would like to disapprove and yell at them for grandstanding, but he's too busy being hard.
* Exception to my DNW about Izzy's death: I adore Jim inheriting his glove, and I'd love anything exploring them claiming that (or Izzy having left it to them—I could see him potentially having some very terse will) and having feelings about it. I love anything in the spectrum of their relationship, from sex and romance to crew bonding to a kind of surrogate parent-child relationship, so anything from "mourning lover Jim jerks off with the glove on" to "Jim treasures Izzy's glove like it's their family knife, and for the same reasons," is excellent—whatever direction you want to go in.
* The two of them hooking up after Calypso's Birthday, still in their drag outfits, and just being super into both it and each other.
* Also just porn in general, because it would be ferociously hot. I would be thrilled with anything, but if it's helpful, I could definitely see them being into things like knifeplay, honor bondage, D/s with top Jim, hair-touching, overstimulation, body appreciation, and deliberately leaving bruises/marks/bites. But seriously, anything.
* Jim gets temporarily magically de-aged to an intense, extremely untrusting child or teenager focused solely on revenge and getting back to their Nana. Izzy is actually very good at looking after them and helping draw them out of their shell a bit without pushing them too hard.
* Comfort during the breakup boat era! Post-severed-toes comfort, comfort for exhaustion and being pushed to their limits, post-mutiny comfort when they're starving and think they're probably going to die, comfort sex, emotionally complicated comfort where Jim's still resentful and/or furious but is going to reluctantly accept or offer comfort anyway ….
* Jim's emotional journey from "you're a fucking asshole who marooned my boyfriend, tried to kill my captain, and antagonized the guy who's now got us trapped in a floating hell" to "he's a dick, but he's our dick." Just glimpses of their evolving relationship with Izzy as they go from hate to attachment and from seeing him as an antagonist to an ally/crewmate/friend/lover/whatever.
* Vaguely True Grit-inspired pre-S1 AU where Izzy is on his own for some reason (he and Ed are in the middle of a dubiously professional spat? He's on extended shore leave to recuperate from some injury and chafing for something to do? He's rethinking his whole life?) and Jim winds up hiring him to help out with their revenge plans.
Psych
General loves for this fandom: The whole ensemble (I adore everyone here, requested or not) and the way they may bicker but still have each other's backs when the chips are down. Banter. All the running jokes. Hurt/comfort. Characters having a ton of history with each other. Horror movie spoofs. Casefic. Deductions; people contributing to the cases in different ways. Little moments and details that reveal characters being fond of each other. Dramedy. Undercover work.
Burton "Gus" Guster/Shawn Spencer
* Shawn and Gus have to go undercover as drag artists. Even if they start off reluctant, they wind up both very picky about their styles and wanting to look incredible—and succeeding so well that they wind up really, really turning each other on. (I'm 100% happy to have a whole casefic from this angle, too: I would happily watch them settling into their assumed roles, making friends, ferreting out a killer, and then hooking up and getting lipstick all over each other and figuring out how much of this—besides the sex, obviously—they want to keep up.)
* I feel like Shawn's history of random odd jobs that he only has for a week means he's basically a font of different profession AUs in canon, so I'd love to see a pre-series fic where he and Shawn bicker, pal around, flirt, hook up, and fall in love while the setting just nonchalantly rotates around: coffee shop, florist, tattoo parlor, wedding planner, etc. Or maybe it's set during the series, but it's about how for some reason they find it easier to flirt (or have "this is just a one-off, we're still just friends!" flings) when Shawn's briefly working a cover job (like at the planetarium in S1) because it feels a degree removed from their regular lives?
* I love the wide range of things Gus geeks out about, and I like to think Shawn loves it too—and maybe starts finding it really inconveniently hot when Gus goes off on an enthusiastic, ultra-knowledgeable tear about something. Maybe it triggers a get-together? Maybe it's in an established relationship context where Gus can only talk about safecracking or an obscure comic book run, etc., for so long before Shawn drags him to the bedroom—if they even make it that far. Maybe Gus knows exactly what sets him off and enjoys doing it deliberately.
* Hurt/comfort where a blow to the head or a curse unexpectedly makes Gus temporarily but genuinely psychic, and it's not nearly as much fun as Shawn being a pretend psychic: maybe the visions are painful, disturbing, or debilitating, or maybe it's just overwhelming. But he can sense Shawn's feelings for him—especially since Shawn's incredibly worried—and that means that at least one good thing has come out of all this. Now to get rid of his unwanted newfound powers and start dating his best friend.
* Established relationship fic where Gus proposes to Shawn via subtle clues that he knows Shawn will piece together with his observational skills (at least once he works out that something's up with Gus), because these two feel like they should have a weird-ass scavenger hunt story for how they got engaged.
* After "Gus's Dead May Have Killed an Old Guy," Gus's parents make Shawn/Gus their OTP and assume that the two of them are not-so-secretly together? (Let's just say that Shawn/Joy never happened.) They keep hinting that it's past time for wedding bells, encouraging the two of them to go on romantic getaways, etc. Shawn spent so long with Gus's parents not liking him that he's not going to give up their approval now, so clearly he and Gus should just more obviously fake-date to seal the deal on this. (And to be fair, Gus isn't wild about how his parents now act like he's a scoundrel if he goes on a date with anyone else.) They're already basically doing it anyway! It doesn't have to change things! … It totally changes things.
* Reverse of the "only one bed" trope. Shawn and Gus keep running into situations where there's only one bed and they're simply forced to spend the night doing some plausibly deniable cuddling. At this point, they take their only-one-bed "bad" luck for granted … until they wind up in a hotel room that actually has two beds and everything gets weird and pining-filled as they have to confront that they don't want that extra bed.
* Gus's SuperSmeller (™) means that he really, really likes the way Shawn smells, and he's not above sniffing the back of his neck, burying his nose in Shawn's armpit, etc. So there's the horny side of things, but there's also him liking the scent of Shawn's hair on his pillow when Shawn has to be out of town, or how weird and unfamiliar it is when Shawn's gotten hurt and smells like the hospital, etc.
* Mpreg where Gus gets pregnant from either a one-night stand or a relationship that's definitely not going to go the distance (nor will the other parent be sticking around voluntarily). Gus—maybe to his own surprise—decides he wants to keep the baby. Shawn is torn between going into turbo-drive on making Gus's pregnancy as comfortable and funny as possible and going into an unexpected tailspin about how he now feels like he's also automatically becoming a dad, and what does that mean? Cue flirtation and panic and slipping into easy cohabitation/domesticity and maybe a little difficult pregnancy h/c. (Gus definitely needs some pampering, at the very least.)
* A relative of a previous suspect wants to expose Shawn as a fraud in order to tank his credibility, so they abduct him and give him truth serum, hoping to record him confessing to making everything up. But since the truth serum just lowers his inhibitions and makes him babble, he has a shot of avoiding ruining his career as long as he steers himself towards talking about something else. And what can he talk about for hours? Gus. Definitely Gus.
Burton "Gus" Guster/Juliet O'Hara/Carlton Lassiter/Shawn Spencer
I also really like blurring the &/ lines for this, so I'm equally happy with both out-and-out shipfic and stories that feel more like intensely shippy episodes where things get right up to the line on flirting and is-it-platonic-or-romantic camaraderie and then everybody backs off and tells themselves that it's nothing (even though we know it's not). So UST and pre-relationship stuff are totally fine! I'm also good with everything from "all four of these people have equal romantic/sexual relationships with each other" and looser polycules where maybe not everyone is fully dating or sleeping with everyone else, as long as they're all important to each other and it's recognized that they're all part of the relationship, no matter what it looks like.
* Tweaking one of my Shawn/Gus prompts: Shawn and Gus go undercover as drag artists, and not only do they wind up being very into each other that way, Juliet and Lassiter wind up being incredibly into it too. Does Lassie get surprisingly chivalrous with them when they're in drag? Does Jules help with the makeup and maybe get a drag king look going on? Does everyone try to convince themselves that this is just a flirty/kinky thing and the newly awakened feelings will go right back into the box once the case is over?
* Shawn's only had one real (on-and-off) boyfriend—a total tool whom Gus absolutely hates, but who always sucks Shawn back into his orbit when he's around. I'm totally fine with this landing anywhere from lighthearted to angsty/whumpy. The terrible boyfriend can be a run-of-the-mill dick—borrows a ton of money, never follows through on plans, splits when Shawn's hoping things are serious—or he can do something more serious like cheat or, for maximum angst and protectiveness, get abusive. Either way, Gus hates him but can't talk Shawn out of seeing him—and now the guy's back in town. Gus reluctantly enlists Lassie and Juliet to help him run interference and maybe try to send the asshole boyfriend packing. Huh, seems like they're all really protective of Shawn and feel like he could do better. Maybe once they get this guy out of here, they can prove it—and realize that the four of them work together well outside of cases too.
* There's a killer striking at the local Santa Barbara poly community, so the four of them have to go undercover as a polycule—and, of course, make sure they're convincing enough to not immediately warn the killer that they're there. I just want to bury them under an avalanche of fake relationship tropes where they all have to casually touch each other and pretend to be romantic and discover that they're mostly pretending to be pretending. I feel like these four are an especially great fit for this because they'd all have such different lines in the sand of what they're used to (physically, emotionally, etc.), who they're used to it with, and where it would start to feel real.
* The four of them are out in the field alone when they get exposed to sex pollen and require immediate "treatment." Do they start off trying to stick with masturbation or with couplings that somehow feel easier to justify, like partners with partners, only to find that they can't resist the temptation to make it a free-for-all? I love the idea of them all being overwhelmed with lust but also still very much themselves—bantery and prickly and fun and weird—and that making it obvious that there's genuine attachment and attraction in all directions in addition to the pollen. (Maybe someone else even shows up partway through, but the foursome has no interest in them?)
* One of them is stuck in a time loop. It takes some time getting the others to believe them (and maybe at first they assume they're stuck until they solve a case/do something else), but that's actually not the biggest hurdle. The problem is that obviously this is Groundhog Day, which means one of them is Bill Murray and maybe the others are all Andie McDowell! Confessing feelings to just one person doesn't break the loop, so apparently this isn't going to stop until they all seal the deal ….
* I can never get enough of hurt/comfort and jeopardy triggering feelings realizations, so feel free to have one of them abducted or badly hurt and the others scramble to save or comfort them and inadvertently give away the intensity of their investment in the process. I especially love the idea of them all working out that clearly everyone is in love with the missing-or-hurt character but taking longer to figure out that it's not just that and they're all concerned with each other as well. Does anyone try to nobly step aside because they reflexively assume that there's a "right" match here that doesn't include them? (Only to be proven wrong, of course.) Plus bedside vigils, rescue operations, first aid, comfort, etc.
* Any kind of slice-of-life as an established relationship (or an establishing one, where they're together but they're still trying to figure out what that togetherness looks like). What do their holidays look like? What do their families know (or suspect) about their relationship? How do they support each other when something goes wrong for one of them?
The Twilight Zone
Length Opt-In: 300 minimum words per fic
General loves for this fandom: Worldbuilding. Quiet tragedy but with a sense of finding something to value in the midst of the worst of things, even if you're doomed. Thinking that you're going into a tragic situation but finding out that it's just another kind of life with its own ups and downs.
Mrs. Bronson & Norma
Mrs. Bronson/Norma
Episode: "The Midnight Sun"
* I would love stories from either the hotter world or the colder world, if you want to treat the hotter world as real. Or I'm good with stories set in the hotter world with the creeping awareness that it's all a dream creeping in. Or both worlds being real in parallel universes. Or anything. Basically, both the hotter world and the colder world are excellent, atmospheric apocalypses that I would love to see more of.
* I love their weary tenderness and a sense of being alone together at the end of the world. Taking care of each other, looking for each other, making gestures both big and small. I'm interested in all the little domestic details of life in the slow-but-steady apocalypse and this depopulated New York: whether they ever risk going outside for any real period of time, whether they eventually try to leave the building after all, how they try to stay warm (or cool) for as long as they can.
* Norma painting for Mrs. Bronson, making different hot or cold landscapes. Trying to keep the paint from freezing or melting. Norma convincing Mrs. Bronson to pose for her, clothed or nude. Mrs. Bronson learning to paint or draw too.
* Extremely bittersweet get-together fic where they both know that there's only a limited window of survival time.
* The two of them are somehow able to alternate between the hot and cold worlds, but while that gives them a little bit of comfort, it can't save them: they're always just going from one apocalypse to another. But they somehow managed to make that be enough.
* They're saved by another kind of Twilight Zone happening, like stepping into one of Norma's landscapes and having it become real around them or somehow finding that no matter how cold or hot it gets, they don't die, and they've become something otherworldly. Or there's some last-chance spaceship leaving in search of another world, and the two of them manage to get on it.
* Totally optional intra-Twilight Zone crossover: Death comes for them, and it's either Murray Hamilton's Death from "One for the Angels" or Robert Redford's Mr. Death from "Nothing in the Dark."
Solo: Janet Tyler
Walter Smith/Janet Tyler
Episode: "Eye of the Beholder"
* I've always wanted to see more of the exiled community. I'd love to see Janet starting to settle in there and, as Walter promises her, beginning to feel at home and genuinely loved for the first time in her life. I would be absolutely delighted with 10k of just Janet adjusting to her new life, dealing with everything from living on a kind of remote ugliness leper colony--one that might be in a completely different kind of climate or at a completely different level of tech/wealth than she's used to, in addition to everything else--to slowly finding her own beauty standards adjusting to developing connections and relationships.
* Maybe the new community is basically ignored by the larger dystopian society, so they aren't just relieved of the burden of being constantly scorned as hideous, they also get--even if they don't notice it right away--more opportunities to be themselves without the constant pressure to conform in every way. I'd love to see Janet trying out different options that she couldn't have explored in the outside world, from "different kinds of fashion" to "oh, lesbian sex is an option here."
* Janet eventually becoming one of the people who go to the hospitals to collect the patients who have had the maximum number of failed corrective surgeries, and how she deals with that and feels about it. Is she ever able to reconnect a little with the people from her last hospital? I'm always intrigued by the doctor who veers close to treason because he sympathizes with her so much.
* I'd also love to see Walter's POV on Janet, gen or ship, as she starts to settle in--it could be really cool to see some of her journey through his eyes.
* Janet/Walter specifically! Is a sweet slow burn? What draws them to each other? Does he actually find her attractive right away, since he's been with his own people for so long, or do they both have to get used to each other for a while before a spark really kindles? I'm also into seeing how Janet thinks of him physically at first--presumably in very unflattering terms based on very different norms--and how that might change as time goes by, but how her new beauty standards still might not match ours and her perspective still might feel alien there.
Solo: Marsha White
WB: "The After Hours" Mannequins' Department Store Life
WB: "The After Hours" Mannequins' Time as Humans
WB: Sex Among "The After Hours" Mannequins
Episode: "The After Hours"
* Please give me any and all mannequin rumspringas. Is Marsha the first mannequin who has forgotten herself in the outside world, or does that happen often enough that it's a recognized hazard? Where do they go while they're living outside the department store? Do they all use the same rotating apartment? What are some pleasures they especially enjoy as humans that they don't get to have as mannequins?
* Someone forms a relationship with a mannequin while the mannequin is taking their turn outside. Do they find out the truth? Does it become a kind of weird long-distance relationship where the other person just waits, year after year, for their mannequin's visit? Is it a bittersweet, star-crossed love where the human eventually gets married to someone else, or is a kind of touching "well, they're making it work" relationship?
* What is their life like in the department store(s)? Can any of the employees or customers ever see them move? Do they have more freedom and mobility on the ninth floor, or is it just that they have more privacy? Is that floor technically real but just for storage, or is everyone being 100% literal when they say it doesn't exist, and only the mannequins can actually access it? Do the mannequins have opinions about the clothes they model or where they stand in the store?
* Mannequin POV, just to capture the uncanniness of it. One of my favorite details is how they reflexively fall back into stationary poses when they're not actively interacting with each other, and I'd love to see more distinctly alien details like that from their perspective.
* Mannequin sex. I really ship Marsha/Scorching Hot Saleswoman Mannequin, whom you can name whatever you like, but I'm also good with original mannequin characters of any gender combination. I just want to know if the mannequins fuck, and if so, how.