Dear Heart Attack Creator,

Thank you so much for offering one of these fandoms!

I’ve put together some likes and prompts below in case you’re looking for ideas, but basically, just know that (especially for this madly rushed exchange!) I’m here for whatever you want to write. I like both darkfic and humor, happy endings, unhappy endings, ambivalent or unresolved endings. I like slash, gen, and friendships that occupy some ambiguous, platonically-intimate space in between. Adventure or domesticity, mutual affection or unrequited pining, possessive manipulation, resigned solitude... Whatever you think suits the canon, the characters, and the story you want to tell. :)

General Likes:

❤ Stylistic / Thematic Stuff:

• Imagery / textures / objects / descriptive detail
• Settings / spaces / histories / worldbuilding
• Missing scenes / episode tags / set pieces / one-shots / 5+1
• Travel / adventure / epic
• Gothic / darkness / all senses of "haunted" / psychological horror / suspense
• Mythic elements / magical realism / high fantasy
• Non-linear narrative / unreliable narrators / trope inversions

❤ Character Tropes:

• Self-discipline / controlled emotions / tough characters / competency / self-sufficiency
• Confessions / reveals / in vino veritas / stoic character’s mask slips
• Moral complexity / flawed characters / hard choices / gray areas
• Loyalty / devotion / protectiveness / sacrifice
• Isolation / alienation / otherness / outside-looking-in
• Disguises / lies / masks / secrets / complex identities
• Passage of time / change and adaptation / lost chances / looking back

❤ Shippy Stuff:

• Complicated relationships / conflicted loyalties / trust issues / unstable power dynamics
• Preslash / pining / friends to lovers / first times
• Forced proximity / trapped together / sharing a room, bed, etc.
• Platonic intimacy / indirect touches (smoking off someone else's cigarette, wearing their jacket, etc.)
• Established relationships / domestic moments / mutual understandings / shared history
• Separation / estrangement / conflict

❤ Hurt/Comfort Tropes:

• Sickfic in general (exhaustion / fainting / vomiting / fever / stomachaches / headaches / common cold...)
• Emotional breakdowns / characters being overwhelmed
• Holding / carrying / supporting / manly shoulder-clasping / etc.
• Comfort rejected / hidden injuries / "everything’s fine" / iron woobies being iron
• Hurt-no-comfort / solo characters powering through (or trying to, with whatever degree of success)

Do-Not-Wants:

❌ Explicit sexual content. (Fade-to-black or anything up to a high T-rating is fine. Preslash or totally non-shippy gen is also fine!)

❌ Unrequested romantic pairings. (For background pairings, I’m fine with any relationships that are canonical or between OCs. Other exceptions are mentioned in the relevant requests.)

❌ AU, including crossovers/fusions, setting-change AUs, and things like soulmates, wingfic, etc. (Fandom-specific exceptions are mentioned in the relevant requests. I’m fine with canon divergence as long as it doesn’t totally overwrite huge/major canon events.)

❌ Non-canon pet names like "baby," "honey," etc.

Requested Fandoms:

狄仁傑之通天帝國 | Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010) [SAFETY]

    

Requested characters: Dee Renjie & None

Canon Intro: Detective Dee is a fantasy-historical wuxia film that follows the martial-arts-and-sleuthing adventures of Dee Renjie (a fictional Chinese detective-hero who has appeared in various types of popular media since the 18th century, and was originally very loosely based on a renowned judge of the early Tang Dynasty).

To me this movie has always felt like it really wanted to be China’s answer to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and it's a pity it didn’t quite get there, because it had so much potential! It’s got lovely sets and costumes, an awesome fantasy-historical setting, and a fascinating cast of characters. I would have loved for this film’s plot to have spanned a whole miniseries, with all the character development and worldbuilding and plot-unfolding that would have entailed, rather than being limited to a couple of hours of somewhat chaotic, action-heavy film time. But I guess that’s what fanfic is for! :)

Where to find it: Depending on your location, you may be able to watch it for free on Tubi or Pluto. It’s also available to rent or buy on Amazon, Vudu, Sling, and iTunes.

Note on the prequels: There are two, but most of my prompts don’t presume familiarity with them, so please feel free to ignore them entirely! If you want to check them out, they’re also online, but not free. The first one, Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon (2013) is available on Vudu. The second, Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings (2018), is on Amazon, Vudu, and YouTube.

Thoughts/Prompts:

• I really love the idea of the Phantom Bazaar, and was sad that we see so little of it in the film. Spooky underground city, caves, underground rivers, Stygian ferryman, creepy magical black-market bazaar, all in an ancient wuxia setting with shape-shifting and monsters... I want a whole miniseries just about this. Anyway, I’d be happy to see any story or other media that further develops the Underground City, whether in terms of its physical features or its culture, inhabitants, visitors, merchandise, history, etc. It seems like Dee Renjie is already pretty familiar with the place, but we never hear anything about why. What brought him there before?
• More specifically, I’d love to see a post-canon story about Dee Renjie living in the Phantom Bazaar. Is there any hope that he can be cured? Is Wang experimenting to try to cure him? What is Dee Renjie doing in the meantime? Has he retired? Is he still solving mysteries? Is Wang teaching him the ways of transfiguration?
• Casefic! This could be post-canon (maybe Dee Renjie has been cured, or maybe he’s just working at night and/or remotely from within the Phantom Bazaar), or it could be canon-concurrent, if you want to expand on the case that he solves during the film (or have him on some other side case at the same time, or whatever). Or maybe he was even solving cases in prison pre-canon? Or you could go all the way back to before he was charged with treason at all. Magic and monsters are canon here, so mythical or horror-tending mysteries are welcome!
• If you’ve seen the prequels, one idea for pre-canon fic: In the second prequel, Dee Renjie develops some kind of mysterious illness that is never explained, and never really relevant to anything. When asked about it at the end of the film, he says it’s caused by a "demon" inside him. (The way the final battle plays out might lead one to infer that an internal "demon" must be a metaphor for hatred, but there’s never any indication that Dee Renjie hates anyone, so... ???) Anyway, whenever Dee Renjie has any kind of serious bout of this mystery illness, Shatuo has to look after him, which is an invitation to h/c if I ever saw one. How is he ultimately cured?

DNW Notes: For this fandom, I’d prefer no mutually-requited romantic pairings for Dee Renjie during the canon timeline, though I’m fine with past or pre-canon Dee Renjie/Shatuo, or with canon-typical one-sided instances of other characters trying to seduce Dee Renjie but not getting anywhere. As for background pairings, feel free to hook up other characters or OCs with each other as necessary. Regarding my general DNW for fusions, for this fandom I’d be fine with fusions between this canon and other versions of Dee Renjie, even if I’m not familiar with them. (The only other version I am familiar with is the 2010 TVB series "The Greatness of a Hero.")

鹿鼎記 | The Duke of Mount Deer (Hong Kong 1984)

    

Requested characters: Wai Siu-bou & Hong-hei • Wai Siu-bou/Hong-hei

Canon Intro: "The Duke of Mount Deer" is a 40-episode Hong Kong TV series based on a popular wuxia anti-epic by Jin Yong, starring a very young and very adorable Tony Leung and Andy Lau, in period costume and questionable wigs. <3

The premise: Two boys meet one day on the grounds of the palace court at Beijing and promptly become wrestling buddies, neither of them aware that they’re both hiding their true identities. One of them is actually the young emperor of China, while the other is a mischievous trickster kid who grew up in a brothel and is now being used as a spy, by rebels who want to overthrow the empire. The plot goes all over the place from there, but whatever else happens, things always seems to circle back to drive the conflict between the maturing emperor, who is trying to hold his kingdom together, and his problematic fave Wai Siu-bou, who would rather be getting up to hijinks somewhere.

One thing I love about this show is how well-meaning and yet deeply flawed both of the main characters are, and the continual strain of politics on their friendship. There are some intense loyalty tropes here, right alongside a lot of deception and mutual distrust and conflict. I love seeing how they struggle to sustain the fiction of an equal friendship in spite of the massive power imbalance between them — e.g. the way the Emperor seems to increasingly fall back on boyish displays of intimacy the more their friendship deteriorates, like referring to himself as "Little Yuen" or going out of his way to make physical contact — and how it becomes increasingly difficult to make out how much of this is genuine and how much is performance.

Anyway, I’d love basically any fic about these two. The prompts below are extremely optional; anything else you have in mind, especially if it includes things from my general likes list (above), is equally welcome!

Where to find it: All 40 episodes are viewable with English subtitles here (and also on TVB’s official YouTube channel, but only with traditional Chinese subtitles). As a preview, you can also take a glance at the screencap-illustrated recap of the series I posted in my journal a few years ago.

Thoughts/Prompts:

• These two come from very different worlds, and I love seeing them try to connect, successfully or not. I’d love to see a story about some instance of this — e.g. maybe Wai Siu-Bou is willing to let the Emperor give him some basic reading/writing lessons, or teach him to play chess? Or, on the other side, maybe the Emperor is willing to let Wai Siu-Bou get him drunk, or teach him to play dice?
• So there’s that one scene where Wai Siu-Bou rushes to the Emperor’s room in the middle of the night, and the Emperor tells the guards to let him in, and then invites him to sleep there. Does Wai Siu-Bou ever take him up on this offer? (I mean, it’s hardly the only time these two end up staying up late together in the Emperor’s quarters — especially since it looks like Wai Siu-Bou, as the Emperor’s personal attendant, ends up at least temporarily with duties like helping him dress and undress...)
• I love all the scenes where either character gets very protective or solicitous about the other one (e.g. Wai Siu-Bou physically using himself as a shield to protect the Emperor from assassination), and as you may have guessed from my "likes" list, angst and h/c are some of my favorite tropes, so basically I’ll be delighted with any excuse you can come up with for one or the other of these two to be in some kind of danger or distress — physical, emotional, mundane or fantastical, however plausible or implausible.
• Honestly my all-time favorite fanfic trope is just your standard run-of-the-mill h/c setup where one character is ill or injured and the other one helps them recover or just stays with them while they weather it out. Plot totally optional. The Emperor is ill and summons Wai Siu-Bou to his room because he wants company/diversion? The Emperor finds out Wai Siu-Bou is injured and pays him a visit in his quarters? The Emperor accidentally hurts Wai Siu-Bou during a wrestling match? Wai Siu-Bou finds out the Emperor hasn't been sleeping well and decides he can help?
• I’d love to see a post-canon reunion between these two, maybe many years later, when they’re older and have lived very separate lives. Maybe Wai Siu-Bou ends up in some new crisis or under arrest, and the Emperor gets wind of it and decides to intervene? How would they react to seeing each other again? How estranged would they be, or how naturally would they fall back into familiarity? How easy, or difficult, would it be for them to separate again?

Note on Names: For character names, etc., whatever transliteration style you prefer is fine, Mandarin or Cantonese (e.g. 韋小寶 can be "Wei Xiaobao," "Wei Xiao Bao," "Wai Siu Po," "Wai Siu-Bou," etc.).

DNW Notes: For this fandom, I’m fine with background pairings of any minor/secondary characters, and if you’re writing Wai Siu-bou/Hong Hei, I’m also fine with with past/background Wai Siu-bou/anybody, pretty much. I’d prefer no major focus on Wai Siu-bou’s harem of wives, but they can definitely be mentioned. Regarding my general DNW for fusions, for this fandom, fusions with the original novel, 鹿鼎記, are totally fine.

Star Trek: The Original Series

    

Requested characters: Kirk & McCoy & Spock • Kirk/Spock • Kirk & Spock • McCoy & Spock • Kirk & McCoy

Canon Intro: All right, well, obviously I don’t need to introduce this show. ;) But allow me a moment to babble about how it may be ridiculous but there are so many things I love about it.

The relationship (platonic or otherwise) between Kirk and Spock is high on that list, and so is Dr. McCoy making appearances in whatever capacity. I mean, I pretty much adore the whole main cast (if you want to throw in a background plot with Sulu or Scotty or Uhura or Chekov, I’ll be delighted—ditto Sarek and/or Amanda), but I’m especially here for any combination of Kirk & Spock & McCoy. I love all their mutual reliance and trust and banter and conflict, how attached they all are to each other, and at the same time their sense of duty and responsibility to the ship and the crew and Starfleet, and all the damage and drama they all take all the damn time, and how endlessly resilient they are.

I love the continual tug-of-war between reason and feeling, as it plays out both externally between Spock and McCoy and internally for everyone individually. I love when Kirk gets overconfident and it bites him in the ass; I love the moments when he doubts himself or questions his own motives or fears his command powers are slipping (especially if they actually are), and also the moments when he gets reckless and Spock or McCoy has to step in and do damage control.

I love all the moral ambiguity and dubious choices on the show, and Kirk’s relentless obsession with the idea that mankind “wasn’t meant for paradise” and that in order to be human one has to struggle and suffer and overcome. I love Spock being eminently Vulcan, or trying hard to be Vulcan under difficult conditions, or being maybe not actually as Vulcan as he thinks. I love McCoy’s humor and sarcasm and general forthrightness, and continual frustration over either or both of his superior officers being idiots.

Some prompts are below, but additionally, feel free to just look at my general likes list (above) and go from there!

Where to find it: The series is currently available to stream on all kinds of online platforms, though I think all of them require some form of subscription or payment. For example: Amazon Prime, Hulu, Paramount, Vudu, YouTube...

Thoughts/Prompts:

• Honestly my all-time favorite fanfic trope is just your standard run-of-the-mill h/c setup where one character is ill or injured and the other one helps them recover or just stays with them while they weather it out, so if you can do 10k of that, go for it. I particularly love sickfic, but really as far as hurt/comfort goes, I’ll take whatever you’ve got, whether it’s canon-typical crack-taken-seriously (giant brain-cell invasions! inter-dimensional transporter malfunctions! zapped by sentient electrical forcefields!) or something more subtle, realistic, or slice-of-life (Kirk angsting over perceived personal failures or past traumas, Spock emphatically Not Angsting and definitely not having illogical human emotions or identity crises, McCoy having to practically force medical attention on his superior officers who think they’re indestructible, anybody being intoxicated, anybody hiding injury/illness because there’s a crisis going on and they can’t afford to step down from their posts right now...)
• I’d love to see some kind of Lovecraftian cosmic horror take (or Borgesian dark-magical-realism take, etc.) on this fandom. Admittedly, our heroes don’t seem especially susceptible to cosmic horror as an emotion, but I feel like they could be, and surely if there’s anywhere you’re going to find truly eldritch and alien abominations, or utterly mind-destroying unfathomable otherness, that place is in space. I’d be up for the whole crew (or any subset thereof) being part of this.
• For more of a slash focus, maybe something with Kirk and Spock navigating their rather different personal needs, emotional and otherwise. I’m less interested in the sexual/biological aspects of their interspecies relationship (though that can certainly factor in as well), and more interested in the more everyday differences that might trip them up as they try to understand each other. One of the things I really enjoy on the show is how both of them seem so highly attuned to each other despite their differences, and how far each of them seems willing to accommodate the other, even if it doesn’t come naturally. But I’d also be interested to see times when these efforts failed, or times it went too far and became uncomfortable for the party doing the accommodating.
• Post-original-series, the end of the five-year mission: the Enterprise is no longer Kirk’s ship, his crew is being split up/decommissioned, Spock is going back to Vulcan (why?)... I can’t help thinking Kirk would not handle any of this very well. How does it play out? (Unhappy/ambiguous endings are totally fine, though obviously by no means required.)

(A note: I got wonderful gifts based on several of these prompts for Fic-in-a-Box, and would be delighted to get 10k more on any of the same topics again. :D )

DNW Notes: For this fandom, besides the obvious Kirk/Spock, I'm also fine with background pairings of Sulu/Chekov, Uhura/Chapel, or Uhura/Scotty. Past or background relationships between canon characters and OCs are also fine as necessary for plot. (I mean, if it's for plot reasons I’m really fine with most things -- just don’t write me a 10k romance of a non-requested pairing and you should be good!)