Dear Trick or Treater...

[rachelmanija]

My AO3 name is Edonohana. Thank you for creating for me!

If you have any questions, please ask the mods to check with me. If there is any issue with the mods feeling that your story for me doesn't fit my requirements, please point them to this letter and ask them to check with me first, rather than rejecting the story without checking with me.

I am a very easy recipient and will be delighted with whatever you make for me. I have no special requirements beyond what's specifically stated in my DNWs. I'm fine with all POVs (i.e., first, second, third), tenses, ratings, lengths, etc. I enjoy both shipfic and gen. I am fine with sex if it suits the story, or no sex if that suits the story.

I don't have strong feelings about tricks vs treats, so you may do either or a combination of both for any work. You may ignore my Art/Fic preferences for extra gifts.

General Likes: Hurt-comfort, action/adventure, horror, canon-divergence AUs, domestic life, survival situations, mysterious alien technology, worldbuilding, evocative descriptions, camaraderie, loyalty, trauma recovery, learning to love again or trust again or enjoy life again, difficult choices, miniature things, food, and animals.

Art-specific likes: I like watercolors, bold graphics, Tarot cards, comics, pin-ups, characters in pretty/cozy environments, battle poses, and Art Nouveau. You can never go wrong by posing a character using their powers or with an adorable kitten/tiny dragon/pegasus/etc or with their signature weapon/airplane/etc.

I have requested some of these canons before. All prompts in previous exchanges are still valid and welcomed. You can find them by clicking on the "fic exchange letter" tag. Some prompts are longer than others because I've requested them before; it has nothing to do with how much I want a certain fandom.


General DNW:

- Issuefic (preachiness; stories whose main point is some kind of political/social issue), current political figures.

- Literal Covid (other illnesses with similar symptoms are fine, as are pandemics or epidemics in general), real-life terminal illness like cancer (non-realistic stuff like super-soldiers with a limited lifespan is fine), dementia and permanent brain damage (temporary memory loss and similar things are fine), digestive upsets, graphic dental trauma, and the gross kinds of bodily waste (blood, sweat, and tears are fine).

- A/B/O, PWP/porn without plot (sex in a story that also has plot or character or relationship stuff going on is fine!), adult/child sex (references to canon child sexual abuse are fine), spanking, infantilization.

- Non-canon human pregnancy and babies or a heavy focus on canon human pregnancy or babies (baby aliens, adorable kittens, older human children, etc, are fine).

- Permanent death of requested characters or characters who don't die in canon, unless I specifically say it's OK for that canon. Presumed dead or temporary death (as in a time loop) is fine, so long as it's reversed by the end. I'm fine with original character deaths.

Art-specific DNW: Extreme gore (blood spatters, bandages, etc are fine) and graphic sex or genitalia (bare breasts and sex that's clearly happening but doesn't show genitalia or sexual liquids is fine).




Dark Tower - King
Ship: Jake Chambers & Eddie Dean & Susannah Dean & Roland Deschain & Oy
Ship: Jake Chambers & Eddie Dean & Susannah Dean & Susan Delgado & Oy

Canon-specific DNW: Susannah's pregnancy and everything associated with it. (Just the pregnancy itself - everything that happened to bring Jake through is fine.) Stephen King as a character.

Art: I'd love a pinup of any of them, or a Tarot card, or anything. Art of just one character or of Mid-World/its symbology is fine for an extra treat.

It's fine if the reason Susan is with the others is because Roland died instead of her. Similarly, temporary character death, alternate universe character death, or death where there will clearly be another turn of the wheel is fine for this fandom. And if you want to include both Roland and Susan, go for it!

I would love an adventure or a bit of h/c or horror, or anything really. How about trapped on opposite sides of a door between worlds, stalked by monsters, trapped in nightmares, squaring off with witches or cyborgs or ghosts or unsettlingly cheerful robots or evil trains, meeting their own doppelgangers, transported into another version of Earth or into their own pasts, or encountering a haunted house, a creepy carnival, an overly friendly town with secret rituals, an apocalypse log, a place of alien geometry, or a haunted painting?

On a more relaxed note, two of my absolute favorite scenes were the ka-tet meeting and eating with Talitha Unwin at River Crossing, and Roland doing the rice dance at Calla Bryn Sturgis, so I'd also love something like that. I love Mid-World culture and its weird echoes of Earth culture. I would be completely happy with 300 words where they sit around the camp fire, forage and hunt, compare stories, etc.

Crossover possibilities: The ka-tet meets their Tethered counterparts, has an encounter with Moder, squares off with vampires in Salem's Lot, wanders into the world of The Stand, meets other King characters, etc.




Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Ship: Menolly/Mirrim

Art: I would love something with dragons or fire lizards, or a portrait of the characters. Art of just one of the characters is fine.

Menolly and Mirrim are favorite characters of mine. I love them together in any way. I'd love to see them on an adventure or getting together or Menolly writing a song about Mirrim or the two of them enjoying a gather or getting caught by unexpected Threadfall or having fun with their fire lizards or watching a Hatching or overseeing a fire lizard hatching or flying with Path - I really love Path. I also enjoy AUs in which Menolly Impresses a dragon. Or a canon AU where Mirrim and Path find Menolly later than she's found in canon.




Firestarter - Stephen King
Charlie McGee

Art: I would love something with Charlie and fire.

I love Charlie so much and would love a moment with her exploring her powers or getting a chance to just be a kid again, or a future-fic set either right after the end of the book or showing what happened to her when she grew up.




Misery - Stephen King
Ship: Misery Chastain & Annie Wilkes
Ship: Misery Chastain & Paul Sheldon

Art: Something in a romance book cover style would be amazing.

I would love a story that engages with Misery the character, and Paul and/or Annie's relationship with her. (All three in the story is totally fine! Feel free to bring in Ian and Geoffrey too! I ship the Misery/Ian/Geoffrey threesome.)

Does Misery feel so real because she is? Do they get swept into Misery's Gothic world? Does Annie summon her out of sheer fan-love, and then keep her like she keeps Paul? Does Paul summon or hallucinate her, or literally escape into the pages of his own book? And how does Misery herself feel about them?




Miss Marple - Agatha Christie
Jane Marple
Lucy Eyelesbarrow
Mary Dove
Maud Dane Calthrop
Megan Hunter
Pat Fortescue
Ship: Jane Marple & Jason Rafiel
Ship: Miss Hinchcliffe/Miss Murgatroyd

I love all these characters and would be happy with anything involving them or any meetings between them. (Apart from my nominated ship, I ship Lucy/Mary, Lucy/Pat, and Megan/Jerry.) I'd be over the moon with an actual mystery but that's not necessary at all - I nominated them because I like the characters, and would be equally pleased with 300 words of them knitting or chatting or shopping or housekeeping or gardening.

Miss Marple solving the mystery of the missing gill of pickled shrimp? Lucy or Mary Dove on a new job, or running into each other on one? Mrs. Dane Calthrop spotting hidden wickedness? Megan having fun with Jerry and/or Joanna? Pat finding a better boyfriend (or girlfriend), or happy back home? For Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd, I want a happier canon AU, and will read an implied one into any domestic scene between them. ;) Miss Marple and Mr. Rafiel were a fantastic duo, and I'd love to see more of him supporting her at being Nemesis.

In A Caribbean Mystery, Raymond assured his aunt that her house will be well cared for while she's gone by a house-proud queer writer friend of his. I'm taken with the idea of Miss Marple returning home early and the two of them making friends and possibly solving a mystery.




Sandman - Neil Gaiman
Death of the Endless
Delight of the Endless
Delirium of the Endless
Despair of the Endless
Destruction of the Endless
Dream of the Endless
Wanda

Note: I also love the TV series and am fine with elements of that showing up. I'm requesting the comics rather than the show primarily so I'm not limited to the canon it's covered so far.

Art: I would LOVE art of any of these characters, from either comic or TV canon.

I would be happy with literally anything you want to write in this fandom. Feel free to be experimental or weird (or not), or as epic or intimate as you like; it goes with the territory. I love all the stories in which one of the Endless interacts with an ordinary person (or animal, or anthropomorphized concept, or fictional character, or figure from myth, or historical character), and changes their life, for better or worse. I also love the ones where they interact with their siblings, and snippets of their history.

I love all of the Endless: Death and Dream and Delirium, of course, but also ones we see less of. What does it mean that Despair defines hope, like Death defines life and (presumably) Delirium defines sanity? Delight becoming Delirium seems like a bigger change than Despair or Death's new incarnations; does that mean that delight and its opposite (disgust?) are no longer core concepts of the universe, or will there someday be a new Delight, or could Delirium change again? Where does Destruction go next?

Wanda is one of my favorite characters and I'd love an AU where she doesn't die and gets to have more adventures, or just a snippet of her and Barbie hanging out or going shopping.

All the worlds of the comics were amazing and I would love to see any of them again; a few of my favorites were Barbie's (or, really, the whole concept of a realm of toys made real), the necropolis, and all the realms of the Endless.

Bittersweet or dark endings are fine for this canon; so are happy ones.




The Stand - Stephen King
Alice Underwood
Dayna Jurgens
Maria the Oral Hygienist
Nadine Cross
Randall Flagg
Rita Blakemoor
Ship: Jenny Engstrom/Dayna Jurgens
Ship: Nadine Cross & Jenny Engstrom & Lloyd Henreid & Whitney Horgan

Canon-specific DNW: Nadine ending up comatose/brain-damaged. Dayna's rape backstory from the extended edition. (Flagg being canon-typically rapey is fine. Canon-typical deaths/bad endings are fine.)

Art: I'd love a portrait of any of them, or maybe a Tarot card. I think Nadine's hair is extremely hot.

The plot of The Stand is good but the characters are amazing. I'm really into seeing glimpses of their lives, in-canon or pre-or post-canon or in canon-divergent scenarios, or getting to meet or spend time with characters they didn't meet in canon. I always enjoy foreboding takes on their pre-superflu lives. Or what about a Groundhog Day or Peggy Sue scenario? Or one where Captain Trips left the survivors with powers? Feel free to mix-and-match these character sets, or to add other canon characters not in the tag set. For this fandom, it's fine to have characters die in the superflu who canonically survived.

Maria the Oral Hygienist
Alice Underwood
Rita Blakemoor

One of the reasons the pre-plague and during-plague sections of the book are so memorable is the wealth of vivid supporting and even cameo characters, like Maria the oral hygienist. She feels like a real person even though we only get a glimpse of her. You just know she's on the phone to her girlfriends bitching about Larry as soon as he gets out of her throwing range. Alice Underwood, with all her prejudices and harshness and love, also feels very real in just a few scenes. So does poor Rita, with her pills and her desperate eagerness to please.

Would Maria and Alice and Rita have left New York, or figured out a way to survive in it? How would Flagg have tempted them? Feel free to have them run into each other or any other characters, whether they survived in canon or not.

Dayna Jurgens

Canon bisexual heroine who goes after the Devil with a switchblade: what's not to love? IMO she's one of King's single most badass characters. I'd love to see a canon AU where she escapes or never got caught in the first place, or a bit of her pre-plague life with some ominous foreshadowing. I ship her with basically all the other female characters, so you could have some fun with that.

Randall Flagg

I'd love to see glimpses of him wreaking havoc we didn't get to see in the book, whether wandering through other King books to trash the lives of hapless characters or just making his way across America and leaving a trail of destruction behind him. I also love the idea of him checking in on canon characters pre-plague and maybe attempting to give their lives a little nudge, even if he doesn't know why he's doing it.

Nadine Cross
Nadine Cross & Jenny Engstrom & Lloyd Henreid & Whitney Horgan
Dayna Jurgens/Jenny Engstrom

Temptation, ideals, violence, loyalty, choices, redemption: these sets of characters contain so much of what I love about the themes of the book, as well as being very vivid even if only in a few words.

I ship Dayna, Jenny, and Nadine in all combinations.

The ouija board scene with Nadine was amazing - maybe more glimpses of Flagg toying with her pre-plague, or during/immediately post-plague? What if she defied him pre-plague? What if she went straight to Vegas? What if he wanted something different from her than a baby? What if he tempted her with power rather than sex? There's something a bit spooky and otherworldly about Nadine - did she have a touch of the shining, and that's why he was after her specifically? What if she did something else with it?

I'm fascinated by how the characters grapple with what's going on in Vegas and how far they're willing to go to sustain it or bring it down. I love takes on "What if Vegas characters had tried to run or rebel earlier?" and "What if the characters had ended up in different places?"

I loved the "dancing as fast as I can" atmosphere of the repopulated Vegas, with the spies and the people wondering if maybe they should leave and the people who seem to have gotten there by accident and the people who you could really see why there were there and the veneer of civilization atop terror and cruelty. A moment in that setting would be great, whether literally exploring a bit of town we didn't see in the book or trying to have a conversation Flagg doesn't hear.

Or, what if Flagg was killed or driven away from Vegas, but the other Vegas characters survived and had to pick up the pieces without him? What if Whitney Horgan had actually managed to incite an uprising? What if his group had successfully escaped, with or without Lloyd - would Flagg have pursued them?

Or maybe they meet in Boulder, or on the road before they get to either of their destinations. Only one tent. Do they go their separate ways, or stay together?




True Detective
Ship: Rustin "Rust" Cohle & Marty Hart

I do also romantically ship them, if you optionally want to go there.

What if the hints and references to cosmic horror were real, and the cultists really did summon something supernatural? Rust always seemed in touch (way too in-touch) with some kind of otherworldly darkness; what if he has some kind of X-Men more-curse-than-blessing type power (possibly via noncon experimentation) or looked into a Lovecraftian abyss and now an eldritch horror has its claws into him?

I would also be happy with 300 words of Rust pontificating in a car while Marty tries to shut him up or secretly enjoys it. I love h/c, so maybe Marty trying to get Rust to eat or dealing with the fallout of some Crash-related incident? Crash doing some sex work? High or in withdrawal? Undercover as a couple?

I'm OK with permanent character death for this fandom (like in the context of a cosmic apocalypse) so long as they're together till the end.

Potential crossovers: Rust and Marty visit Mid-World (after death is fine, like if they'd died of their wounds in the finale) or do the Long Walk (either as teenagers or in an AU where it's for adults).




Watership Down
Bigwig
Black Rabbit of Inlé
Blackavar
El-ahrairah
Fiver
General Woundwort
Hyzenthlay
Silverweed

DNW: It's OK if General Woundwort or Silverweed dies, or if we meet requested characters in the rabbit afterlife, but nothing more graphic/violent than in the book please.

Art: I would love any art of any of these characters. A Tarot card maybe? A terrifying picture of the Black Rabbit? On the punt or the raft? Calling down lightning on General Woundwort? Rabbits with wings?

I would like a canon-typical story, please, whether canon-typically terrifying or canon-typically sweet. The Black Rabbit scared the living daylights out of me as a child, and Silverweed's warren horrified me as an adult. I'd love a spooky story dealing with that or with Fiver's visions or with what really happened to Woundwort - maybe in the rabbit afterlife. A twisted legend from Silverweed's warren? Silverweed wanders into Efrafa and infects it with his death cult? Bigwig and Hyzenthlay encounter spookiness?

On the treat side, I'd love a trickster tale of El-ahrairah, in his own world or meeting up with one of the rabbits of ours. I'd also be delighted with just 300 words of any of these characters silflaying or doing other rabbit stuff.




Worrals
Betty "Frecks" Lovell/Joan "Worrals" Worralson
Betty "Frecks" Lovell & Joan "Worrals" Worralson

Art: I'd love a pinup.

Canon-specific DNW: Period/canon-typical racism. Worrals and Frecks in a romantic relationship with anyone but each other. I like Bill as a character and would be happy to have him appear, I'd just prefer to not even address him as a possible love interest.

I love them so much. I love what an adrenaline junkie Worrals is and the insane risks she takes and how plainspoken and bull in a china shop she can be. I love Frecks' fondness for sweets and movies and the good life, and also her ferocity in close quarters, like when she fights off three Nazis so Worrals can keep flying the plane. I love how Worrals isn't very demonstrative but she always wants Frecks by her side, and how openly Frecks adores Worrals. And I love how they're always stealing Nazi vehicles.

I enjoy all the characters in the books I've read (the first four, so far) and would be happy to see any of them appear.

A few possible prompts:

- Any canon-typical adventure: Worrals and Frecks fight Nazis! Worrals and Frecks uncover a plot!
- Worrals and Frecks go undercover at a lesbian bar or club (yes, these did exist in the 1940s) for spy purposes and realize they like each other like that. I like descriptions of hot women in hot clothing BTW, and I like butch/femme tropes.
- Worrals thinks Frecks is dead for a change and is absolutely devastated.
- I never tire of h/c tropes like nightmares, fevers, delirium, gunshot wounds, lost in the desert, stranded after a plane crash, caring for each other after getting injured on a mission, etc.
- Worrals has to fly a plane while concussed/shot/has one arm disabled/feverish/etc; Frecks helps.
- Post-war, sweets rationing ends and Worrals takes Frecks to a sweet shop.
- Worrals and Frecks are transporting an armed fighter plane when they're unexpectedly attacked and get in a dogfight.
- AU where women do fly in combat, a la the Soviets. (They might still face canon-typical sexism, just coming from a different angle.)
- They steal vehicles all the time and I love it. Have them steal some amazing vehicle like a dirigible or a tank.
- They volunteer for supersoldier experiments and get powers.
- They're kidnapped into an evil lab and experimented on to give them powers.
- They get involved in something like the Philadelphia experiment.
- They have an adventure involving dinosaurs, megafauna, an unreasonable number of hippopotamuses or cassowaries, etc.
- Two words: shrinking ray.
- They have a picnic, go driving in Worral's car Snooks, go to a movie, and generally have a good time together.
- It's hard to find a private place to have sex during a war.
- Frecks adopts the "wooly accomplice" sheep from Worrals on the War-Path, at least temporarily while they're traveling with it.
- Accidental kitten acquisition.