![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Darkest Night Exchange 2019
Jul. 25th, 2019 11:58 pmDear Darkest Night creator,
my AO3 handle is plumedy. A lot of my prompts from previous years may give the impression that I'm primarily a happiness- and fluff-loving fan, but there is a reason I'm participating in this year's Darkest Night; that reason is that there are some pretty dark premises I could eat with a spoon.
The general summary of my likes from previous years' letters applies, but I'm going to write it a bit differently this time to reflect the theme of this exchange.
I'm here for intense platonic relationships of all kinds - specifically, for relationships where the characters could die, kill, or sell their immortal souls for each other. And they're incredibly repressed about it and ashamed of feeling this way, but all they really want is to cling onto each other and never let go. So they totally break down in front of each other eventually. And maybe they kind of know it's unhealthy, but they're completely unwilling to contemplate the idea of not being this way because they'd rather die :>
The backgrounds to these relationships can vary a lot - one of my favourite variations, for example, is when a character has lost a parent (or another loved one) and now they see the other character as their adopted family. Even better if they love the "surrogate" more than they loved the original and feel super guilty about that! >:) Another variation I'm a big fan of is Only You Can Understand Me, where two characters go through a unique traumatic experience and are forever bonded by it <3 But really, you could probably come up with a hundred different emotional backstories and I'd love all of them.
I love it when there's a social and/or hierarchical gap between the characters that's impossible to fully overcome. One is a teacher and the other is their student, or they belong to different military ranks, or one is a renowned specialist and the other is a nobody. You get the idea. Especially if this gap makes platonic physical contact somehow socially inappropriate or awkward! Or if expressions of platonic affection are made difficult/misconstrued as expressions of professional or social admiration!! That is nice. <333 And then there's a lot of resulting angst! So much angst.
As I mention in my other letters, background romance (any gender combinations) is not off-limits - if you feel it adds to characterization or enhances the angst, do feel free to introduce it.
AUs of any kind are grand. Fantasy, mundane, historical, canon divergence, magical realism, daemons - go to town. Elements of supernatural are perfectly welcome! I mentioned horror as my general interest above; that means that I will also enjoy horror tropes and plots in fic and art even if the original canon doesn't belong to the genre.
As regards my particular requests:
By "younger" I don't really mean "a literal child", although if they meet for the first time when the younger person is just a kid, that's perfectly fine! I just want them to grow up at some point.
By "Victorian" I do mean "living in the British Empire", but not necessarily "English". They could be from England, but they could also be from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, or from one of the British colonies.
Any gender combinations are welcome for this prompt. I'll be thrilled with an older Victorian woman & a younger girl, or with an uptight Victorian gentleman adopting a female street urchin, or with two men, or an older woman and a younger man.
Fic: Pretty much what it says on the tin. Pick one of the tags, combine it with the characters, and write something. And by something I mean a highly codependent Victorian friendship!
Emotional repression induced by social distance: A friendship where the character(s) want to express their affection for each other more than anything but can only do it under the most fucked up of circumstances because otherwise Social Norms Prevent It. The affection should be mutual, but it's entirely possible one or both of them think it's not (or not entirely) - because of the aforementioned social norms, of course >:) And they don't have to find out until something super messed up happens to one or both of them!!
Character whose parents are abusive/dead wishes another character were their parent: self-explanatory. The younger character has no family/a very fucked up family, and all they really want is for the older character to be their family instead. It's possible the older character lost someone, too. And the older character may even feel the same, but there's no undoing the years of suffering and loneliness the character(s) have gone through. The grief will always be there. This can have a somewhat hopeful ending, though.
Art: anything that uses dark Victorian or Victorian Gothic imagery while portraying the characters as physically close. You can depict something bad happening to one or both of them (illness! death! horrible injury!), or you can just depict them as clinging to each other's hands or clothes/standing side by side with their arms linked and preparing to kick some monster ass/hugging out of grief or despair, possibly due to the other's injuries or illness/looking angstily away while holding onto each other. Either way, I'll be thrilled :D
Fanfic: The freeform tags for this, and the corresponding prompts, are as follows:
- Forced to hurt someone in order to protect them from something worse.
Exactly what it says, and you can interpret it quite literally if you want. I've always wanted a fic about someone evil forcing one of them (preferably Doyle >:)) to hurt the other physically in order to spare them from e.g. death. There's something about the pain of having to harm a loved one for their own good that I find particularly delightful. Of course, Doyle apologizes all the way and feels the worst he's ever felt in his life.
Other interpretations are also welcome, emotional hurt included!!
- Character feels guilty for loving a parental figure more than they love their actual parents.
Pretty much canonically Doyle's problem. I'd like that elaborated upon. I love how unwaveringly loyal he is to Bell even though it's Socially Wrong, considering he has an actual father. He probably feels horribly guilty about it but ultimately entirely unremorseful in the sense that he'd never have it otherwise. And I love that.
This trope can be combined with Character whose parents are abusive/dead wishes another character were their parent.
I don't think Doyle's father is necessarily abusive in the canon, but I don't mind this interpretation. It adds more angst!
Fanfic: Anyway. This. This is what I live for. I just want a confrontation over the fact that even though they swore to capture or kill Neill at any cost, neither of them is actually willing to sacrifice the other for that purpose. And one of them trying to give their life for the Greater Good (be it removing Neill or dealing with another similarly overwhelming threat) would make the other have a total ugly meltdown. Like, Doyle has always known one of them might die, but when he thinks Bell actually died, he loses his shit. And Bell says his life would be "unendurable" if Doyle got killed by one of Neill's surprises. They think they're SO prepared for this, but they're just. Really Not, lol. And I can just imagine them furiously shouting at each other, "so what, he gets to live?!" - "yes, if that means you live!"
It's just darkly hilarious to me that when they go, "yeah, we're totally prepared to die for this", what each of them actually means is "I will die for this so that he may live".
In the end I guess they'll just have to accept defeat and survive together, even if that means compromising their chances of preventing the deaths of other innocent people.
4. Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil. Relationship: Javert & Jean Valjean.
I'm a big fan of the Javert & Jean Valjean relationship as a frenemy dynamic. And I think they could really come to love each other in a Javert lives AU where Valjean befriends him, so that's nice, too. And I just find it beautiful that them being close friends and loving each other really wouldn't solve most of their self-hatred and feelings of inferiority problems, lol.
The freeform tags and the corresponding prompts for this are as follows:
- Alternate Universe - Star Wars Sith.
Valjean would be the Jedi-est Jedi to ever Jedi, of course. And Javert would be a Fallen Jedi. But would he even know that he fell?
- Body Switch - forced by one character onto another.
"You know nothing of Javert". Forced by Javert onto Valjean, of course. Goes not at all how Javert expected and really fucks him up. How the possibility of body switches occurs is entirely up to you. Maybe that's something Javert wishes so hard would happen that God just decides to grant him his wish.
- Character Is Dead & Doesn’t Know It.
Javert, before inevitably being kindly informed of his unfortunate state by Valjean. Either because Valjean has died himself or because their bond lets Valjean see him anyway. Set in the canonical timeline, probably, where Javert does die in the Seine.
my AO3 handle is plumedy. A lot of my prompts from previous years may give the impression that I'm primarily a happiness- and fluff-loving fan, but there is a reason I'm participating in this year's Darkest Night; that reason is that there are some pretty dark premises I could eat with a spoon.
The general summary of my likes from previous years' letters applies, but I'm going to write it a bit differently this time to reflect the theme of this exchange.
I'm here for intense platonic relationships of all kinds - specifically, for relationships where the characters could die, kill, or sell their immortal souls for each other. And they're incredibly repressed about it and ashamed of feeling this way, but all they really want is to cling onto each other and never let go. So they totally break down in front of each other eventually. And maybe they kind of know it's unhealthy, but they're completely unwilling to contemplate the idea of not being this way because they'd rather die :>
The backgrounds to these relationships can vary a lot - one of my favourite variations, for example, is when a character has lost a parent (or another loved one) and now they see the other character as their adopted family. Even better if they love the "surrogate" more than they loved the original and feel super guilty about that! >:) Another variation I'm a big fan of is Only You Can Understand Me, where two characters go through a unique traumatic experience and are forever bonded by it <3 But really, you could probably come up with a hundred different emotional backstories and I'd love all of them.
I love it when there's a social and/or hierarchical gap between the characters that's impossible to fully overcome. One is a teacher and the other is their student, or they belong to different military ranks, or one is a renowned specialist and the other is a nobody. You get the idea. Especially if this gap makes platonic physical contact somehow socially inappropriate or awkward! Or if expressions of platonic affection are made difficult/misconstrued as expressions of professional or social admiration!! That is nice. <333 And then there's a lot of resulting angst! So much angst.
- My only DNW is porn (as in, lengthy descriptions of sex written for their own sake - sex as such I don't mind; sex in art is off-limits, though). Otherwise, knock yourself out. Self-harm, abuse, extreme violence, torture, mental illness, physical illnesses - I'm happy to see any of it in my gift.
As I mention in my other letters, background romance (any gender combinations) is not off-limits - if you feel it adds to characterization or enhances the angst, do feel free to introduce it.
- I don't have a preference when it comes to endings - they can be anything from quite bleak to quite hopeful and uplifting. Surprise me :)
AUs of any kind are grand. Fantasy, mundane, historical, canon divergence, magical realism, daemons - go to town. Elements of supernatural are perfectly welcome! I mentioned horror as my general interest above; that means that I will also enjoy horror tropes and plots in fic and art even if the original canon doesn't belong to the genre.
As regards my particular requests:
- 1. Original Work. Relationship: Victorian Person & Their Younger Friend. Freeform tags: Emotional repression induced by social distance; Character whose parents are abusive/dead wishes another character were their parent.
By "younger" I don't really mean "a literal child", although if they meet for the first time when the younger person is just a kid, that's perfectly fine! I just want them to grow up at some point.
By "Victorian" I do mean "living in the British Empire", but not necessarily "English". They could be from England, but they could also be from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, or from one of the British colonies.
Any gender combinations are welcome for this prompt. I'll be thrilled with an older Victorian woman & a younger girl, or with an uptight Victorian gentleman adopting a female street urchin, or with two men, or an older woman and a younger man.
Fic: Pretty much what it says on the tin. Pick one of the tags, combine it with the characters, and write something. And by something I mean a highly codependent Victorian friendship!
Emotional repression induced by social distance: A friendship where the character(s) want to express their affection for each other more than anything but can only do it under the most fucked up of circumstances because otherwise Social Norms Prevent It. The affection should be mutual, but it's entirely possible one or both of them think it's not (or not entirely) - because of the aforementioned social norms, of course >:) And they don't have to find out until something super messed up happens to one or both of them!!
Character whose parents are abusive/dead wishes another character were their parent: self-explanatory. The younger character has no family/a very fucked up family, and all they really want is for the older character to be their family instead. It's possible the older character lost someone, too. And the older character may even feel the same, but there's no undoing the years of suffering and loneliness the character(s) have gone through. The grief will always be there. This can have a somewhat hopeful ending, though.
Art: anything that uses dark Victorian or Victorian Gothic imagery while portraying the characters as physically close. You can depict something bad happening to one or both of them (illness! death! horrible injury!), or you can just depict them as clinging to each other's hands or clothes/standing side by side with their arms linked and preparing to kick some monster ass/hugging out of grief or despair, possibly due to the other's injuries or illness/looking angstily away while holding onto each other. Either way, I'll be thrilled :D
- 2. Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes. Relationship: Joseph Bell & Arthur Conan Doyle.
Fanfic: The freeform tags for this, and the corresponding prompts, are as follows:
- Forced to hurt someone in order to protect them from something worse.
Exactly what it says, and you can interpret it quite literally if you want. I've always wanted a fic about someone evil forcing one of them (preferably Doyle >:)) to hurt the other physically in order to spare them from e.g. death. There's something about the pain of having to harm a loved one for their own good that I find particularly delightful. Of course, Doyle apologizes all the way and feels the worst he's ever felt in his life.
Other interpretations are also welcome, emotional hurt included!!
- Character feels guilty for loving a parental figure more than they love their actual parents.
Pretty much canonically Doyle's problem. I'd like that elaborated upon. I love how unwaveringly loyal he is to Bell even though it's Socially Wrong, considering he has an actual father. He probably feels horribly guilty about it but ultimately entirely unremorseful in the sense that he'd never have it otherwise. And I love that.
This trope can be combined with Character whose parents are abusive/dead wishes another character were their parent.
I don't think Doyle's father is necessarily abusive in the canon, but I don't mind this interpretation. It adds more angst!
- 3. Murder Rooms (Book Series) - David Pirie. Characters: Joseph Bell, Arthur Conan Doyle, optionally Thomas Neill Cream. Freeform tags: Aftermath Of One Character Finding Out Other Character Wouldn't Sacrifice Them For The Greater Good; Almost Died.
Fanfic: Anyway. This. This is what I live for. I just want a confrontation over the fact that even though they swore to capture or kill Neill at any cost, neither of them is actually willing to sacrifice the other for that purpose. And one of them trying to give their life for the Greater Good (be it removing Neill or dealing with another similarly overwhelming threat) would make the other have a total ugly meltdown. Like, Doyle has always known one of them might die, but when he thinks Bell actually died, he loses his shit. And Bell says his life would be "unendurable" if Doyle got killed by one of Neill's surprises. They think they're SO prepared for this, but they're just. Really Not, lol. And I can just imagine them furiously shouting at each other, "so what, he gets to live?!" - "yes, if that means you live!"
It's just darkly hilarious to me that when they go, "yeah, we're totally prepared to die for this", what each of them actually means is "I will die for this so that he may live".
In the end I guess they'll just have to accept defeat and survive together, even if that means compromising their chances of preventing the deaths of other innocent people.
4. Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil. Relationship: Javert & Jean Valjean.
I'm a big fan of the Javert & Jean Valjean relationship as a frenemy dynamic. And I think they could really come to love each other in a Javert lives AU where Valjean befriends him, so that's nice, too. And I just find it beautiful that them being close friends and loving each other really wouldn't solve most of their self-hatred and feelings of inferiority problems, lol.
The freeform tags and the corresponding prompts for this are as follows:
- Alternate Universe - Star Wars Sith.
Valjean would be the Jedi-est Jedi to ever Jedi, of course. And Javert would be a Fallen Jedi. But would he even know that he fell?
- Body Switch - forced by one character onto another.
"You know nothing of Javert". Forced by Javert onto Valjean, of course. Goes not at all how Javert expected and really fucks him up. How the possibility of body switches occurs is entirely up to you. Maybe that's something Javert wishes so hard would happen that God just decides to grant him his wish.
- Character Is Dead & Doesn’t Know It.
Javert, before inevitably being kindly informed of his unfortunate state by Valjean. Either because Valjean has died himself or because their bond lets Valjean see him anyway. Set in the canonical timeline, probably, where Javert does die in the Seine.
