Dear Shipoween Author,

Hi there! First of all, thank you very much for offering one of my fandoms! I’ve tried to put together some thoughts and prompts for each of them below, but basically, just know that these are all canons and characters I love, and if you already have a story in mind for any of them, go for it. :) This letter is just to help supply ideas.

I like slash, gen, and friendships that occupy some ambiguous platonically-intimate space in between. I like darkfic and light fic, happy endings, unhappy endings, ambivalent or unresolved endings. Spooky stuff is great, shippy stuff is great, contemplative stuff, slice-of-life, missing scenes. It's all good. Even my DNW list is somewhat flexible — just keep it in mind and use your own discretion. :)

Likes:

❤ Spooky Stuff:

• Cosmic horror / "weird" fiction / the uncanny
• Magical realism / Borgesian fabulation / mythic elements
• Gothic / darkness / macabre / ruminations on mortality
• Haunted spaces / haunted objects / all senses of the word "haunted"
• Psychological horror / suspense
• Liminal spaces (thresholds, crossroads, ruins, dreams, altered states)

❤ General / Stylistic Stuff:

• Descriptive detail / imagery / textures / objects
• Settings / spaces / histories / worldbuilding
• Canon compliance / missing scenes / episode tags
• Outsider viewpoint / character study
• Set pieces / one-shots / five things / 5+1
• High fantasy / epic / travel / adventure
• Unreliable narration / conflicting narratives
• Passage of time / change and adaptation / lost chances / looking back

❤ Character Tropes:

• Self-discipline / controlled emotions / stoic characters being stoic
• Confessions / accidental reveals / in vino veritas / stoic character’s mask slips
• Moral complexity / gray areas / hard choices / tragic flaws
• Loyalty / devotion / self-sacrificing love (reciprocated or otherwise)
• Isolation / alienation / otherness / outside-looking-in
• Disguises / lies / masks / secrets / identity porn
• Self-deceptions / blind spots / realizations / moments of truth

❤ Shippy Stuff:

• Complicated relationships / conflicted loyalties / unstable power dynamics
• Platonic intimacy / borderline gen
• Forced proximity / trapped together / sharing a room, bed, etc.
• Things left unspoken / mutual understandings / shared history
• Established relationships / domestic moments
• First times / new experiences

❤ Hurt/Comfort Tropes:

• Hurt-no-comfort / comfort rejected / “everything’s fine”
• Exhaustion / collapse / fainting / vomiting / headaches / fever
• Nightmares / breakdowns
• Regret / guilt / doubt / fear / grief / general existential angst
• Field medicine / bedside vigils / treating or bandaging injuries
• Physical comfort / emotional support / just being there / offering to stay

Do-Not-Wants:

• Explicit sex (Would prefer fade-to-black if anybody’s pants are about to come off; anything above-the-waist or otherwise non-explicit is okay.)
• Real-world deadly diseases (Most anything else is fine: fantasy illness, poison, injury, possession, etc.; anything canonical or canon-typical is fine.)
• Unrequested pairings (If it's mentioned in a prompt, go for it! Anything canonical or implied by canon is also fine as a background ship.)
• Coddling / infantilization (Give me all the iron woobies. >_> Would also prefer no pet names or terms of endearment like "baby," "honey," etc., unless canonical.)
• Present-tense narration / 2nd-person POV / 1st-person POV (Unless in epistolary sections or similar.)
• AU / crossover / fusion / crackfic (Canon divergence is fine, and for this exchange I'm also fine with ghosts/spirits/supernatural stuff in any fandom.)

Exchange Options:

Mediums: I'm requesting fanfic for all fandoms.

Themes: I'm open to spooky fic, seasonal fic, or no-theme fic. Up to you. :) I don't necessarily have specific prompts for all three theme options for each fandom, but basically, you're welcome to throw spooky or otherwise seasonal stuff into any story where you think it fits.

Requested Fandoms:

• 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)

• 鹿鼎記 | The Duke of Mount Deer (TVB 1984)

• Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien

镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)

Requested characters: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Shen Wei & Zhao Yunlan

    

Canon Intro: I probably don’t need to introduce this show or sell anybody on it, but to summarize, it takes place in a sci-fi version of modern China where there’s a special branch of law enforcement for dealing with superpowered alien beings that sometimes escape from the dismal underground city where they’re supposed to live, according to a treaty made 10,000 years ago. The plot is often wildly nonsensical, but it’s a fun premise and there are a lot of great characters, and the slash is barely even pretending not to be canon, censorship notwithstanding. If you matched me on something else but want to check this out, it’s 40 episodes long and available to watch for free, with English subtitles, on YouTube or Viki.

(It's also downloadable here, but there's a cap on how much you can download from the site per month. If you download all the episodes as .zip files you may be able to get all 40 without going over the limit.)

Note on DNWs: For this fandom, I am 100% okay with fix-it-AU/canon-divergence such that the events of episode 40 do not happen (or happen very differently). If you want to just hand-wave the whole concluding episode and write post-canon fic where our guys are carrying on with their lives much as before, with no explanation, that's fine! Given all the timeline weirdness, I feel like canon-compliance is kind of subjective for this fandom anyway.

Thoughts/Prompts:

• Some things I’m particularly into on this show: loyalty and protectiveness; shifting identities and masks; cross-cultural relationships (worldbuilding re: Dixing culture welcome!); dramatic goth costumes and spooky underworld stuff. And also the whole weird circular-timeline/mutual-debt situation between our two heroes, with seemingly no true temporal starting point.
• I’m pretty much guaranteed to love any variation on "bad things happen to Shen Wei, and Zhao Yunlan has to look after him." I particularly like seeing this done with conditions/experiences that are unique to Dixingren, and thus difficult for Zhao Yunlan to respond to or fully understand, and I like the idea that Haixing medicine either doesn’t work well on Dixingren or might somehow react badly with dark energy -- or that Shen Wei in particular has somewhat unusual (more ancient?) biology that responds differently to some substances, even if they aren't typically harmful to other Dixingren (e.g. alcohol, canonically). Basically, whatever you want to rig so that we end up with Zhao Yunlan wanting to help but not really knowing what to do, and meanwhile also having to deal with Shen Wei’s determined insistence that he’s fine.
• Alternatively, "bad things happen to Zhao Yunlan." This might work best earlier in canon, when Shen Wei is still trying to conceal his identity and can’t openly use his healing powers—or there may be things his powers simply don’t work on. Anyhow, same as above, but reversed, e.g. something with Shen Wei being firmly, earnestly solicitous, and Zhao Yunlan finding this both comical and utterly endearing. (And honestly, after episode 8, I wouldn’t put it past Zhao to purposely arrange to be in a condition where Shen would need to take him home.)
• Interactions between "Kunlun" and Shen Wei in the time-travel sequence. I can’t tell how long Zhao Yunlan actually spends in that timeline, but I like to imagine that it was a pretty long while—like, weeks at least? I love the role reversal where suddenly Zhao Yunlan is the more senior, experienced figure who knows things Shen Wei doesn’t know. How does Zhao Yunlan navigate the relationship after traveling back in history, given the knowledge that his actions as "Kunlun" will shape how Shen Wei remembers him when they meet "again"?
• I’d love to see more interaction between Zhao Yunlan and the Black-Cloaked Envoy, especially while the latter’s identity is still secret and he has to be weird and evasive about everything (and meanwhile Zhao has just... no sense of hierarchy or boundaries at all). I also love Zhao’s mingled delight and bafflement when he confirms that the Envoy is Shen Wei, but he still sort of sees them as distinct personalities, and is caught a little off-guard every time he notices one of them displaying the behaviors of the other.
• For more of a Halloween theme: spooky casefic, otherworldly stuff in Dixing or other creepy/haunted spaces (caves, basements, woods at night, etc.), weird dark-energy stuff, unexpected phenomena with the Holy Tools, another arcane-biology field-trip gone awry, Shen Wei was wrong when he said there were no monsters...
• On a related note: the "Master of Nightmares" got into several characters' heads during the last few episodes of the show, but not Shen Wei's or Zhao Yunlan's. I'd be interested to see what sort of nightmare sequence either one of them might experience if put under a similar influence, and how the other one might show up in the dream (either as a native part of the dream or entering the dream from outside to rescue/wake the dreamer). Go as dark as you want with this.

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

Requested characters: Hong-hei Emperor/Wai Siu-bou, Hong-hei Emperor & Wai Siu-bou

    

Canon Intro: Okay, yes, I know this series is more than a bit dated, with its roughly Star Trek TOS-level production values, flimsy props, absurd plot devices, and recurring misogyny. BUT. It's still such an absolute gem. It's based on a classic yet perversely genre-subversive wuxia anti-epic by Louis Cha, and centers around the improbable and complicated relationship between a trickster street-kid and the maturing boy-Emperor whom he unexpectedly befriends. It stars Tony Leung and Andy Lau back when they were both very young.

If you came here for something else but are curious about the show, all 40 episodes are viewable with English subtitles here (and also on TVB's official YouTube channel, but only with traditional Chinese subtitles). I also wrote up a ridiculously thorough, screencap-illustrated recap of the series a few years ago, here.

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

Thoughts/Prompts:

• I think the thing I love most about this show is how deeply flawed both of the main characters are. In particular, relative to the book (which you don’t need to know), I feel like the Emperor gets quite a bit more development and complexity here, and he seems to be both more internally conflicted and more potentially dangerous. His unlikely friendship with Wai Siu-bou thus becomes more complicated much earlier, in ways that seem, at least to me, very plausible. There’s also something very bittersweet about the way both characters struggle to sustain the fiction of an equal friendship, in spite of the massive power imbalance between them. I find it especially interesting how, across the series and increasingly as their friendship starts to deteriorate, the Emperor keeps falling back on boyish displays of intimacy (like referring to himself as "Little Yuen" or going out of his way to touch Wai Siu-bou). In early episodes the intimacy comes across as genuine — albeit privileged, since Wai Siu-bou has to be much more cautious about invading the Emperor’s space — but by the end of the series it seems very manipulative.
• I basically love every single canon interaction between these two, so if you just want to expand on a scene or event that happened, or a different version of an event that happened, or a different time when the same thing happened again, or whatever, those are all great. I like the fluffy scenes where they’re just fooling around or getting up to mischief together. I like the darker scenes where their trust issues, identity issues, or power-dynamic issues take the foreground. I also love all the scenes where either character gets very protective about the other one, and branching from there, I feel like h/c fic could work well for them, especially since they both have so many possible sources of distress, and so few other places to look for help or consolation.
• I’d love to see a post-canon reunion, maybe many years later, when both characters are much 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? And how easy, or difficult, would it be for them to separate again?
• These two come from very different worlds, but how much of an effort do they each make to "cross over"? For instance, maybe Wai Siu-bou needs to go through some training in courtly behavior, or maybe the Emperor tries to give him some basic reading/writing lessons or teach him to play chess. On the other side, maybe the Emperor is willing to let Wai Siu-bou get him drunk, or teach him to gamble?
• I mean, they do a lot of wrestling, so go wherever you want with that. And then, I also love how sometimes it seems like they meet up in the sparring room intending to wrestle, but then they accidentally end up just hanging out and chatting and eating pastries instead. Especially if one or the other of them has something to angst about.
• 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? Platonically or otherwise?
• For a more Halloween-themed option: This isn't really a spooky sort of canon, but there's enough wuxia weirdness that I feel like ghosts or "dark magic" woudn't be at all out of place. Maybe Wai Siu-bou and the Emperor could investigate some unnatural happenings on the palace grounds together?

The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien

Requested characters: Aragorn (Thorongil) & Denethor

Fandom-Specific DNWs: Evil!Denethor

  

Canon Intro: I ...I don’t think I need to introduce this canon. ;) As for what I love about it, it's hard to even know where to begin. I love all the settings, and am fascinated by practically every major character (and even most of the minor characters, for that matter) and would be happy to see just about any of them show up in the background of any fic, as long as it made sense with the storyline. I can't really think of anything Halloween-ish that fits with the pairing I'm requesting, but if you've got an idea then by all means, go for it.

Thoughts/Prompts:

• I love many things about LotR, but the relevant point for this request is that — as you may have guessed — I’m a Denethor fan. Apparently I have a thing for hubris and characters who think they’re unbreakable, especially if they’re mostly right. I'm also very fond of Aragorn and his general steadiness and maturity and latent, unassuming regality, especially during his earlier years as a Ranger, and (for this exchange, at least) particularly in the guise of Thorongil, aiding Gondor under Ecthelion's rule. I’d love any exploration of the rivalry between Denethor and Aragorn (or Denethor’s perception of a rivalry, whether or not Aragorn is aware of it). Probably my favorite thing about Denethor’s story arc is the ironic way his preference for Boromir over Faramir seems to parallel his own father’s preference for Aragorn over him, which makes one wonder how exactly he felt about Aragorn, and about Aragorn being the favorite. Was there ever any feeling of brotherhood between them? Did Denethor resent Aragorn but also recognize, to some extent, the reasons why Ecthelion favored him? Did he resent Aragorn precisely because there was something in Aragorn that he, too, felt compelled to admire? And how did Aragorn feel about becoming the favorite-son of another man’s father?
• One-shots, set pieces: Denethor as witness while Ecthelion confers a title on Thorongil. Thorongil attends Denethor's wedding. Thorongil attends Ecthelion's funeral, or Denethor's accession ceremony.
• As a general note, I feel like outsider viewpoints could work well here, e.g. Ecthelion's viewpoint, Mithrandir's viewpoint, Finduilas's viewpoint. How do other characters view Denethor and Thorongil's interactions, clashes, strained civilities, mutual avoidances, etc.?
• Alternatively, Aragorn's viewpoint, at a distance (in space or time). For instance, post-canon, Aragorn established as King, remembering Gondor as he knew it in his youth. Or a bit earlier, Aragorn on the black ships, believing that upon reaching Gondor he'll have Denethor's resentment to contend with, on top of everything else. Or basically any point during/pre-canon, Aragorn contemplating the problem of being heir to a throne whose Ruling Steward clearly will not relish stepping down for a king.
• Same thing but reversed: how much does Denethor continue to think or wonder about Thorongil after he disappears from Gondor? How early does he begin to guess at Gandalf's endgame plans for this mysterious Ranger? Did Ecthelion know?
• If you’re up for Denethor/Aragorn, I didn’t put it in the tags, but... I do kind of ship it. >_> I tend to headcanon Denethor/Aragorn as a sort of one-sided dubiously-platonic grudging obsession (with Aragorn mostly oblivious and busy doing Important Hero Things), but I’m also open to other readings, e.g. enemies to friends to more-than-friends. (...And then back to enemies, presumably!).

Thank You!

Truly, I will be delighted no matter what you write for any of my requests! Fluff, darkfic, plot, no plot, slash or gen, anywhere inside or outside the canon timeline. It’s all good. Thank you for offering something on my list!