Entry tags:
Dear Summer of Horror Creator
For interested parties: see ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summerofhorror | Summer of Horror on AO3 for details. Signups until June 1! You only need to request/offer one fandom in this exchange.
Hi! Thank you so much for writing for me! I'm very excited to see what you come up with, and I'm sure I'll like whatever you make.
Don't worry about whether you're sticking close enough to the requested horror type, or whether your story is horror enough. If the story wanders, that's fine. The prompts are also for suggestions only and not meant to confine you to only writing those ideas. I'm fine with something short and atmospheric rather than plotty.
I welcome treats, and I am open to gen or ship on all of these requests.
General likes: Hurt/comfort, friendship and enemies-to-friends (+ occasionally to lovers), case fic, sharing small spaces (beds, hotel rooms, tents, spaceship escape pods), banter, characters caring about each other, nightmares, aftermath of traumatic events, domesticity, cuddling/snuggling (of either a gen or shippy variety), AUs.
Horror likes: Spooks, chills, ghosts, big old houses or creepy woods or abandoned spaceships with Bad Things half-seen out of the corner of your eye. Seemingly normal or too-perfect settings (suburbia, small towns, offices, etc) with something Very Bad underneath. Surprises and twists. Mild body horror, such as heads turning around backward or jaws unhinging, or characters being modified in mad science experiments against their will. Creepypasta and urban legends. Characters banding together to fight evil. Bravery in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds. Having to go to the afterlife to bring back a dead person, especially at great cost. Characters saving each other generally. Evil doppelgangers (and subsequent attempts to rescue the replaced person/figure out who the replaced people are). Unreliable narrators, e.g. the narrator IS the doppelganger and doesn't know it. Rituals and magic, especially being performed by characters who don't really know what they're doing but are Just That Desperate. Characters meeting their AU counterparts from a worse dimension. Werewolves and shifters, especially (for horror purposes) with some body-horror elements to the transformation.
Horror DNWs: Insect-related horror - I'm fine with casual mention of insects, swarms of flies, etc.; I just don't want detailed descriptions of insects crawling in people's eyes and laying eggs in people and so forth. Graphic descriptions of decomposition or cannibalism. (As with insects, these could be background elements in a larger scenario, e.g. the characters finding a decayed dead body in the woods, but I'd prefer not to have these elements focused on.) Very graphic and splattery body horror, e.g. detailed descriptions of a character being flayed alive or having parasites hatch inside them. Pregnancy-related horror. Actual coronavirus or apocalypses based on worldwide pandemics (but characters e.g. having a fever or similar symptoms is fine, as is discussion of historical pandemics). "The good guy main character was evil all along" reveals (but fine if it's a mirrorverse-type AU or very recent replacement, and "our" characters are still around - I love the evil doppelganger trope, I just don't love it if it's in the context of the character being retconned as evil throughout the events of actual canon).
Because this is a horror exchange, I'm fine with an ambiguous or dark ending, deaths of requested characters, etc. However, you don't need to give me a dark ending just because it's a horror exchange - everyone can make it out fine and be okay! A story that is centered around recovering from trauma and nightmares from a horrific experience that happened pre-story would also be fine with me.
Horror things that are triggery for some people that I'm okay with: Needles, characters trapped in institutions, suffocating/drowning/being buried alive, self harm/suicide attempts, rape, permanent disability for requested characters as long as it's not as extreme as e.g. "all their limbs were cut off" or "they were trapped inside their mind in a husk of flesh forever" (but like, someone having to have a hand cut off to stop a creeping horror infestation is fine).
Fandoms:
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Horror types: Dark Fantasy, Folk, Gothic, Institutional, Medical, Monster, Paranormal, Science Fiction, Supernatural, Survival
Relationships:
James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson & Helmut Zemo
AJ Wilson & Cass Wilson & Helmut Zemo
Sarah Wilson & Helmut Zemo
I love both gen and ship for the Sam & Bucky & Zemo triad. I'm also fine with any subsets of the pairing as long as the third party isn't hated or sidelined in favor of the pairing, e.g. Sam/Bucky is fine as long as there's still some mutual appreciation for each other. Any of these pairings are also welcome as background pairings for the other Zemo requests. Gen only for Zemo and the non-Sam members of the Wilson family, please!
Welp, it's been a year since I fell for this show and it doesn't show any signs of getting better anytime soon. I prefer the Sam-Bucky-Zemo triad as prickly allies or somewhere along an enemies-to-friends (/lovers) arc than as outright enemies; at the very least I'd like mutual respect, even if it's tempered by wariness and an inability to fully trust each other, as opposed to dislike. If you want to have Zemo out of prison and working with Team SamBucky with no explanation, I'm totally fine with that; of course, the prison part of it can be part of the plot, or it can be an AU, etc. Anyway, I'm just completely here for semi-domesticated villains working with the heroes and all of them being drawn into reluctant sympathy shading into genuine affection/trust/love for each other.
There are more requests specific to the S-B-Z triad than the other characters, but this is because I'm cribbing from past letters and have more ideas for them. As always, these are only suggestions, and if you have a different idea, go for it!
- I am very much here for all kinds of monsters, survival situations, and other action plots. Stranded and hunted in the woods? Rescuing a town from something terrible? Sent on a suicide mission to fight something awful that they couldn't possibly survive (except of course they do)? I like the idea of Sam and Bucky, in addition to Zemo, being considered "expendable" in their own way and all of them having to deal with the fallout from that.
- Zemo ending up in a situation where he has to protect or rescue Sarah's kids! (Or Sarah and the kids.) Maybe he gets involved with some kind of swamp horror around the Wilson place, or he's left behind while Sam and Bucky are monster-hunting (because he's hurt? on house arrest and can't leave?) and the monster comes there instead. I also really like the non-combatants getting to be resourceful and actively participate in the fighting.
- Terrible things happening in the Raft! Experiments being performed on prisoners, that Sam and Bucky find out about, and decide to show up to shut it all down (and also rescue their villain while they're at it!)? Something eerie and terrible stalking the halls of the Raft in the dark? Maybe Zemo intentionally decides to sacrifice himself in a whole new way by acting as an undercover agent to uncover bad Raft things? Give me all the trauma and h/c and reluctant team-ups against something worse! If you combine this with the Cass & AJ or Sarah requests, maybe he ends up at the Wilson place afterwards, or some terrible thing from the Raft turns out to be following him after he's out.
- Spaceships are, of course, canon in the MCU, so they could easily end up having to contend with something alien - a crashed ship, a haunted spaceship, aliens on Earth, alien doppelgangers replacing team members, etc.
- Continuing on from the doppelganger idea: any of the team is replaced by an evil duplicate (alternate universe copy, supernatural copycat, etc), with the real version imprisoned and hurt somewhere - maybe the duplicate is abusing them, or siphoning off their life force to maintain the deception? And only the smallest of tells gives the replacement away, revealing how much they really notice about each other.
- I love eerie small towns where Nothing Is Right (with weird supernatural things, creepy corrupt sheriffs, etc). Especially since, in a situation like that, they'd be somewhat constrained from fighting or even openly revealing themselves for who they really are. Also, Zemo having to contend with small-town Americana is bound to be entertaining.
- Maybe Sam and Bucky go missing in an eerie small town (or similar) and Sarah is the one to take Zemo along on a rescue road trip, figuring that he's the lesser of two evils when it comes to rescuing her brother.
- I would be here for horror dealing with any of their backgrounds, so: awful Sokovian folk traditions in a small village where Zemo's sense of familiarity quickly turns to the realization that he can't trust his own people, or something terrible is stalking the Louisiana woods where Sam and Sarah grew up, or something followed Bucky home from the war.
- Speaking of "things that followed them home from the war" as a general theme, I think all variations on that would make an excellent horror story! Perhaps the personification of the Winter Soldier is haunting Bucky, or Zemo keeps seeing his dead family out of the corner of his eye in crowds, or Sam is getting weird phone calls from someone who claims to be Riley. Just ... someone in the trio (one or more) haunted by the dead of their past, getting sleepless and disheveled, afraid the others won't believe them if they admit it.
Biggles series - W.E. Johns
Horror types: Dark Fantasy, Folk, Gothic, Monster, Paranormal, Supernatural, Survival
Relationship: James "Biggles" Bigglesworth & Erich von Stalhein
Canon-specific DNW: A WW2 setting or any mention of von Stalhein's activities in WW2, unless you decide to make him a British double agent, but even then I'd prefer not to have it dwelled on.
These Boys' Own Adventure books are very much of their era and genre, but I have found them unexpectedly delightful, particularly the relationship between the eponymous hero and his honorable enemy (and eventual friend), German spy Erich von Stalhein. They praise each other to anyone who will listen! Neither of them seems even slightly worried about being killed even when the other has them at gunpoint! It's great.
Gen or ship is fine! If you do ship, I'd prefer not to have explicit sex for this pairing.
These books are gloriously batshit yet are also oddly grounded-feeling and full of setting details, and therefore would lend themselves to all kinds of horror, from spooky castles full of ambiance, to completely bonkers stuff like ghost planes or having to fight giant squid.
- Ghosts! Perhaps a haunted castle in which they all get snowbound - maybe two opposing groups, Biggles' group and one of von Stalhein's various gangs (canon or non; he seems to have a talent for joining up with groups of various criminals in the between-war eras), who have to cooperate to get out? Or you could do something serious and atmospheric with literal ghosts of WWI. The books frequently reference fairy tales and some of them take place in assorted cool old castles and abandoned locations throughout Europe, any of which could make an excellent setting for ghosts or other supernatural horror.
- Encountering a seemingly normal village of people who sacrifice visitors, an ancient mystic well with something terrible living in it, etc. This all 100% seems like something that would happen to them.
- Monsters! I am a simple girl with simple tastes. Give me characters fighting a monster, rescuing each other from monsters, saving a town from monsters, etc, and I will be very happy.
- Tales of survival! You could do many things along those lines in this canon: an airplane crash in the desert, in a forest, on an island; characters being hunted Most Dangerous Game style; stranded in the woods with something after them, etc. All the era-specific survival details, making water catchers out of airplane wings and drinking out of coconuts, etc, is very welcome here! But of course you can just send them off to be hunted by monsters in a frozen wilderness or whatnot; I am very, very here for it.
- Bermuda Triangle, or frankly any pulpy tropes from 1920s-40s pulp supernatural/horror fiction that you want to throw in there would be delightful.
- I should also mention that, although the only option in the tagset is Biggles & von Stalhein, I also have a particular craving for von Stalhein stuck in a dangerous situation (stranded in the woods, etc) with someone on Biggles' team who isn't Biggles, with reluctant life-saving and bonding, and if you wanted to focus on that with Biggles only coming into the story later, I'd also be completely down for it. (Maybe the person he's stranded with realizes that Erich has a Thing for Biggles while they're trying to get out of whatever situation they're trapped in, with later sympathy when he expects a lack of it, and von Stalhein realizing he has a supportive person to talk to about it?)
- A journey to the afterlife to save a supposedly dead person is always my jam: Biggles saving EvS, or a deeply reluctant vice versa, or both of them going down to get one of Biggles' friends because von Stalhein won't let him do it alone? All the points for Biggles somehow managing to get an airplane there.
summerofhorror | Summer of Horror on AO3 for details. Signups until June 1! You only need to request/offer one fandom in this exchange.Hi! Thank you so much for writing for me! I'm very excited to see what you come up with, and I'm sure I'll like whatever you make.
Don't worry about whether you're sticking close enough to the requested horror type, or whether your story is horror enough. If the story wanders, that's fine. The prompts are also for suggestions only and not meant to confine you to only writing those ideas. I'm fine with something short and atmospheric rather than plotty.
I welcome treats, and I am open to gen or ship on all of these requests.
General likes: Hurt/comfort, friendship and enemies-to-friends (+ occasionally to lovers), case fic, sharing small spaces (beds, hotel rooms, tents, spaceship escape pods), banter, characters caring about each other, nightmares, aftermath of traumatic events, domesticity, cuddling/snuggling (of either a gen or shippy variety), AUs.
Horror likes: Spooks, chills, ghosts, big old houses or creepy woods or abandoned spaceships with Bad Things half-seen out of the corner of your eye. Seemingly normal or too-perfect settings (suburbia, small towns, offices, etc) with something Very Bad underneath. Surprises and twists. Mild body horror, such as heads turning around backward or jaws unhinging, or characters being modified in mad science experiments against their will. Creepypasta and urban legends. Characters banding together to fight evil. Bravery in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds. Having to go to the afterlife to bring back a dead person, especially at great cost. Characters saving each other generally. Evil doppelgangers (and subsequent attempts to rescue the replaced person/figure out who the replaced people are). Unreliable narrators, e.g. the narrator IS the doppelganger and doesn't know it. Rituals and magic, especially being performed by characters who don't really know what they're doing but are Just That Desperate. Characters meeting their AU counterparts from a worse dimension. Werewolves and shifters, especially (for horror purposes) with some body-horror elements to the transformation.
Horror DNWs: Insect-related horror - I'm fine with casual mention of insects, swarms of flies, etc.; I just don't want detailed descriptions of insects crawling in people's eyes and laying eggs in people and so forth. Graphic descriptions of decomposition or cannibalism. (As with insects, these could be background elements in a larger scenario, e.g. the characters finding a decayed dead body in the woods, but I'd prefer not to have these elements focused on.) Very graphic and splattery body horror, e.g. detailed descriptions of a character being flayed alive or having parasites hatch inside them. Pregnancy-related horror. Actual coronavirus or apocalypses based on worldwide pandemics (but characters e.g. having a fever or similar symptoms is fine, as is discussion of historical pandemics). "The good guy main character was evil all along" reveals (but fine if it's a mirrorverse-type AU or very recent replacement, and "our" characters are still around - I love the evil doppelganger trope, I just don't love it if it's in the context of the character being retconned as evil throughout the events of actual canon).
Because this is a horror exchange, I'm fine with an ambiguous or dark ending, deaths of requested characters, etc. However, you don't need to give me a dark ending just because it's a horror exchange - everyone can make it out fine and be okay! A story that is centered around recovering from trauma and nightmares from a horrific experience that happened pre-story would also be fine with me.
Horror things that are triggery for some people that I'm okay with: Needles, characters trapped in institutions, suffocating/drowning/being buried alive, self harm/suicide attempts, rape, permanent disability for requested characters as long as it's not as extreme as e.g. "all their limbs were cut off" or "they were trapped inside their mind in a husk of flesh forever" (but like, someone having to have a hand cut off to stop a creeping horror infestation is fine).
Fandoms:
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Horror types: Dark Fantasy, Folk, Gothic, Institutional, Medical, Monster, Paranormal, Science Fiction, Supernatural, Survival
Relationships:
James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson & Helmut Zemo
AJ Wilson & Cass Wilson & Helmut Zemo
Sarah Wilson & Helmut Zemo
I love both gen and ship for the Sam & Bucky & Zemo triad. I'm also fine with any subsets of the pairing as long as the third party isn't hated or sidelined in favor of the pairing, e.g. Sam/Bucky is fine as long as there's still some mutual appreciation for each other. Any of these pairings are also welcome as background pairings for the other Zemo requests. Gen only for Zemo and the non-Sam members of the Wilson family, please!
Welp, it's been a year since I fell for this show and it doesn't show any signs of getting better anytime soon. I prefer the Sam-Bucky-Zemo triad as prickly allies or somewhere along an enemies-to-friends (/lovers) arc than as outright enemies; at the very least I'd like mutual respect, even if it's tempered by wariness and an inability to fully trust each other, as opposed to dislike. If you want to have Zemo out of prison and working with Team SamBucky with no explanation, I'm totally fine with that; of course, the prison part of it can be part of the plot, or it can be an AU, etc. Anyway, I'm just completely here for semi-domesticated villains working with the heroes and all of them being drawn into reluctant sympathy shading into genuine affection/trust/love for each other.
There are more requests specific to the S-B-Z triad than the other characters, but this is because I'm cribbing from past letters and have more ideas for them. As always, these are only suggestions, and if you have a different idea, go for it!
- I am very much here for all kinds of monsters, survival situations, and other action plots. Stranded and hunted in the woods? Rescuing a town from something terrible? Sent on a suicide mission to fight something awful that they couldn't possibly survive (except of course they do)? I like the idea of Sam and Bucky, in addition to Zemo, being considered "expendable" in their own way and all of them having to deal with the fallout from that.
- Zemo ending up in a situation where he has to protect or rescue Sarah's kids! (Or Sarah and the kids.) Maybe he gets involved with some kind of swamp horror around the Wilson place, or he's left behind while Sam and Bucky are monster-hunting (because he's hurt? on house arrest and can't leave?) and the monster comes there instead. I also really like the non-combatants getting to be resourceful and actively participate in the fighting.
- Terrible things happening in the Raft! Experiments being performed on prisoners, that Sam and Bucky find out about, and decide to show up to shut it all down (and also rescue their villain while they're at it!)? Something eerie and terrible stalking the halls of the Raft in the dark? Maybe Zemo intentionally decides to sacrifice himself in a whole new way by acting as an undercover agent to uncover bad Raft things? Give me all the trauma and h/c and reluctant team-ups against something worse! If you combine this with the Cass & AJ or Sarah requests, maybe he ends up at the Wilson place afterwards, or some terrible thing from the Raft turns out to be following him after he's out.
- Spaceships are, of course, canon in the MCU, so they could easily end up having to contend with something alien - a crashed ship, a haunted spaceship, aliens on Earth, alien doppelgangers replacing team members, etc.
- Continuing on from the doppelganger idea: any of the team is replaced by an evil duplicate (alternate universe copy, supernatural copycat, etc), with the real version imprisoned and hurt somewhere - maybe the duplicate is abusing them, or siphoning off their life force to maintain the deception? And only the smallest of tells gives the replacement away, revealing how much they really notice about each other.
- I love eerie small towns where Nothing Is Right (with weird supernatural things, creepy corrupt sheriffs, etc). Especially since, in a situation like that, they'd be somewhat constrained from fighting or even openly revealing themselves for who they really are. Also, Zemo having to contend with small-town Americana is bound to be entertaining.
- Maybe Sam and Bucky go missing in an eerie small town (or similar) and Sarah is the one to take Zemo along on a rescue road trip, figuring that he's the lesser of two evils when it comes to rescuing her brother.
- I would be here for horror dealing with any of their backgrounds, so: awful Sokovian folk traditions in a small village where Zemo's sense of familiarity quickly turns to the realization that he can't trust his own people, or something terrible is stalking the Louisiana woods where Sam and Sarah grew up, or something followed Bucky home from the war.
- Speaking of "things that followed them home from the war" as a general theme, I think all variations on that would make an excellent horror story! Perhaps the personification of the Winter Soldier is haunting Bucky, or Zemo keeps seeing his dead family out of the corner of his eye in crowds, or Sam is getting weird phone calls from someone who claims to be Riley. Just ... someone in the trio (one or more) haunted by the dead of their past, getting sleepless and disheveled, afraid the others won't believe them if they admit it.
Biggles series - W.E. Johns
Horror types: Dark Fantasy, Folk, Gothic, Monster, Paranormal, Supernatural, Survival
Relationship: James "Biggles" Bigglesworth & Erich von Stalhein
Canon-specific DNW: A WW2 setting or any mention of von Stalhein's activities in WW2, unless you decide to make him a British double agent, but even then I'd prefer not to have it dwelled on.
These Boys' Own Adventure books are very much of their era and genre, but I have found them unexpectedly delightful, particularly the relationship between the eponymous hero and his honorable enemy (and eventual friend), German spy Erich von Stalhein. They praise each other to anyone who will listen! Neither of them seems even slightly worried about being killed even when the other has them at gunpoint! It's great.
Gen or ship is fine! If you do ship, I'd prefer not to have explicit sex for this pairing.
These books are gloriously batshit yet are also oddly grounded-feeling and full of setting details, and therefore would lend themselves to all kinds of horror, from spooky castles full of ambiance, to completely bonkers stuff like ghost planes or having to fight giant squid.
- Ghosts! Perhaps a haunted castle in which they all get snowbound - maybe two opposing groups, Biggles' group and one of von Stalhein's various gangs (canon or non; he seems to have a talent for joining up with groups of various criminals in the between-war eras), who have to cooperate to get out? Or you could do something serious and atmospheric with literal ghosts of WWI. The books frequently reference fairy tales and some of them take place in assorted cool old castles and abandoned locations throughout Europe, any of which could make an excellent setting for ghosts or other supernatural horror.
- Encountering a seemingly normal village of people who sacrifice visitors, an ancient mystic well with something terrible living in it, etc. This all 100% seems like something that would happen to them.
- Monsters! I am a simple girl with simple tastes. Give me characters fighting a monster, rescuing each other from monsters, saving a town from monsters, etc, and I will be very happy.
- Tales of survival! You could do many things along those lines in this canon: an airplane crash in the desert, in a forest, on an island; characters being hunted Most Dangerous Game style; stranded in the woods with something after them, etc. All the era-specific survival details, making water catchers out of airplane wings and drinking out of coconuts, etc, is very welcome here! But of course you can just send them off to be hunted by monsters in a frozen wilderness or whatnot; I am very, very here for it.
- Bermuda Triangle, or frankly any pulpy tropes from 1920s-40s pulp supernatural/horror fiction that you want to throw in there would be delightful.
- I should also mention that, although the only option in the tagset is Biggles & von Stalhein, I also have a particular craving for von Stalhein stuck in a dangerous situation (stranded in the woods, etc) with someone on Biggles' team who isn't Biggles, with reluctant life-saving and bonding, and if you wanted to focus on that with Biggles only coming into the story later, I'd also be completely down for it. (Maybe the person he's stranded with realizes that Erich has a Thing for Biggles while they're trying to get out of whatever situation they're trapped in, with later sympathy when he expects a lack of it, and von Stalhein realizing he has a supportive person to talk to about it?)
- A journey to the afterlife to save a supposedly dead person is always my jam: Biggles saving EvS, or a deeply reluctant vice versa, or both of them going down to get one of Biggles' friends because von Stalhein won't let him do it alone? All the points for Biggles somehow managing to get an airplane there.
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I had SO MUCH FUN coming up with these. :DDDD
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My brain, instantaneously: Zemo vs. rusalky, charm-off at eleven.
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