Yuletide letter 2022

[rallamajoop]

Hey there, and welcome to yet another hopeful Yuletide letter! I am prone to rambling when talking about my favourite shiny things and known to get a bit carried away coming up with prompts, so just for the record up front: feel free to take as much or as little from any of these as as you please, and run with them wherever they may take you.

I'm rallamajoop on AO3 too, and absolutely opting-in for any treats people might like to write.

General likes/dislikes

Stuff I like in fic: Mostly, this'll come down to whatever makes sense for the fandom and the specific idea, but FWIW: I like tropey id-fic, I love snark and banter, I like action/adventure fic with involved plot, I am totally down with stories that throw you into the middle of the action from the get-go, I like dialogue-heavy stories with a focus on character or relationships whether there's any action or not, I'm always down for crack, and I love ridiculous AUs to bits and pieces (especially if they find clever ways to translate stuff from canon over to a new setting).

Stuff I mostly prefer not to see in fic:

• Most domestic tropes: Generic fluff is fine and dandy, extended discussions of home renovations or [character x]'s sublime cooking put me to sleep. Coffee shop AUs work for me on occasion but have a very low hit rate.
  
• Over-invested third-parties: While I do enjoy POVs from a third-party, that trope where their friends can see how perfect they'd be together before they know it themselves is really not my jam
  
• Drama built primarily around 'I'm not good enough for [him/her]' angst or ridiculous misunderstandings.
  
• Destined mates/soul-bond fic: can be enjoyable, but have seen enough of to last me a while
  
• Genderswaps: again, works for me sometimes, but generally less hit than miss

No great preference on:

• Tense, first/second/third person
  
• Hurt/comfort: It's fine, but it doesn't grab me particularly
  
• Ratings: Anything from G-NC17 is totally okay in my book

If you are up for cracking into the NC17 rating, I am:

• Very keen on: smut which has something to say about the characters and their relationships, focus on emotions over mechanics, most varieties of dubcon, dangerous or ill-advised spur-off-the-moment sex, ridiculous seductions, and probably a lot of other stuff that is not occurring to me right now. Perfectly happy with dubcon/noncon and darker scenarios, but would prefer things stop short of realistic rape-fic.
  
• Not terribly keen on: humiliation, rimming, most D/s related kinks (beyond basic power-play and bondage). DNW scat and (all jokes about the DX series' weird bathroom-fixation) watersports is generally not my thing either.

Deus Ex

For the DX series, I'm up for fic either based on the original 2000 game or the 2011 Deus Ex: Human Revolution ‒ or even some mashup of both, if you're feeling particularly ambitious. But for simplicity, I'll tackle prompts for them both separately.

Deus Ex (original)

Helios and his precursor Icarus are basically my favourite parts of this game. I love the fact that such a big part of the final chapter involves the PC being basically seduced by (well, you know – being very rationally talked into merging with) a creepy AI whose defining characteristic is saying yessss in a really suggestive manner, and that one of the endings basically makes the ship canon. JC himself isn’t the most compelling character – I mean, if you wanted to lean into the fic as a character piece, there are some great potential parallels with in how both he and Helios are functionally Illuminati creations, programmed for obedience, but who went rogue within days of being activated, and how that could play into how they relate to each other. But Helios just oozes personality from the moment he first appears, and it seems like such a shame there’s basically no fic out there celebrating that.

I’m up for horror, leaning into the twisted-AI-stalker angle. I’m up for possibly-even-more-twisted AI/human smut. I’m up for something character-centric and introspective. And I’m entirely up for ridiculous crackfic about any part of this whole batshit scenario.

I’m also up for fic involving the previous Icarus incarnation JC’s AI stalker (Daedalus is welcome to join the party, of course, but he just doesn’t have as much personality.) And on a side-note, I know JC and Helios do feature prominently in the plot of the sequel, Invisible War, but I haven’t played it and most references to it are going to be lost on me, so absolutely no need to worry about canonical compliance there.

But if all that fannish rambling isn’t working for inspiration, have some bonus prompts

• “You feel something. I must know what you are feeling.” – what does JC feel in that moment? This is pretty much the only moment Helios expresses interest in JC’s emotional inner life, but it could suggest so much about his fixation on JC.
  
  
• “I now have access to your systems” / “Upload complete. Your systems were very cooperative.” Uh-huh. Well that’s not suggestive at all.
  
  
• Icarus and Helios seem to be able to pop into JC’s Infolink whenever they like. We only see JC during missions, but the guy has to sleep sometime (even if it’s mostly in transit). Some unwanted AI commentary – or even a real conversation – during a quieter moment could be very interesting to explore.  
  
  
• If he’s alive to see it happen, Paul is surprisingly supportive of the idea of his only brother running off into the sunset with a rogue AI. The crackfic potential of Paul being totally supportive of all his brother’s weird life choices even as everyone else around them is all WTF could definitely go some fun places.
  
  
• Alternately, what if that conveniently-timed Paul holo-appearance wasn’t really him at all? JC goes from first hearing about Helios’ crazy idea to ditching all his other allies’ plans and agreeing to merge with the AI damn fast. It’s no stretch at all to picture Helios faking that message – and twisting JC’s perceptions in who knows how many other ways – all for his own ends.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

So, I could go on and on about everything that fascinates me about this bizarre mess of a game, but fic-wise, I’m pretty much here for the Jensen & Pritchard show. I love their always-snarky, occasionally-flirty dynamic – especially for Pritchard’s eloquent variety of sass – and I ship them something ridiculous,  but if you’d rather stick with writing gen, there’s plenty I’d love to see explored from that angle too. I’m very much interested in how their relationship changes in the background over the course of the game: they're all sniping and open hostilities at the start (at least until someone's being shot at, at which point they can suddenly work together fine). But by the middle Pritchard’s pretty explicitly one of the few people Jensen really trusts – and though it doesn’t feel unearned, the shift is never commented on, and it’s hard to pinpoint when and how it happens. Basically, lots there I’d enjoy seeing dug into, whether from a romantic angle or not.

If you are up for writing smut, I’m very keen on some of the kinkier possibilities inherent in this canon – especially the a/b/o potential, if only thanks to the ridiculousness that is the CASIE implant. I wouldn’t usually go straight to requesting omegaverse fic, but you can’t tell me one of Jensen’s implants let him identify people as alpha/beta/omega and then gas them with tailored pheromones if the conversation isn’t going his way – and not expect my brain to go there. So yes, I am very keen on seeing someone take the cyberpunk omegaverse possibilities to whatever logical conclusion they might come up with.

And for some extra prompts:

• Between prodding Jensen to confront Sarif about the security backdoor (oh-so-significantly created right before Jensen was hired) and then tracking down the PI who was involved, Pritchard does a hell of a lot to help Jensen track down the truth about his past. And while I'm sure that's mostly just a convenient gameplay conceit, suppose Pritchard had some inkling there was something to find, even if he had no idea what. After all, he's canonically deeply suspicions about the real reason Jensen was hired (ie. because Megan and thus Sarif already knew about his DNA). Could be an interesting angle to explore, or even to have Jensen confront him about (“Did you know what I was going to find?”)
  
  
• On a similar thread, after leaving Michelle Walthers’ apartment, Jensen promises to explain everything to Pritchard when they see each other next – but that never happens, and we never see that conversation. I’d really like to see that conversation, even if it means twisting the timeline a bit, letting it happen over the Infolink, leaving it to much later – whatever works.
  
  
• AI!Prichard AU. Could be a full Helios-style rogue agent who first contacts Jensen out of nowhere; could be an Eliza-style reveal; could just be a mundane thing where Sarif Industries has an in-house security AI system – as long as he still retains some of his original personality, I’m here for it.
  
  
• Witcher!AU. Obviously, only one for someone already familiar with the Witcher books/games, but the parallels between Jensen and Geralt/other witchers are almost too obvious, and I could easily picture Pritchard as a sorcerer or the like (he’s certainly got the arrogance for it already).

Hammer Dracula

Cards on the table here: I ship Dracula/Van Helsing (and that goes for any Cushing-Van-Helsing) something awful in these films. So I’d love to see slashfic about them – really, anything from complicated subtext to outright smut – even if that means taking the fic to some fairly dark places.

If you’d rather stick with gen though, no worries – anything that delves into their relationship, that suggests some level of twisted mutual respect or insight, or even just lets me see them having a tense-but-civil conversation would be terrific too. Lee’s Dracula can be an odd one to characterise, when he gets so few opportunities to speak, but I’m fine with seeing some liberties taken here if it works for the story (as I’ve seen plenty of good fic in this fandom do).

As for specific prompts, it’s no secret that one of my favourite things about these films is the implication (intended or otherwise) that the Dracula vs. Van Helsing rivalry has come to span whole generations, with Van Helsing being reincarnated, and Dracula reborn. (Sure, the resemblance between the various Cushing-Van-Helsings could just be down to genetics, but conveniently-identical-reincarnations are such a vampire trope that the implications are pretty unavoidable.) Now, you the writer are on no obligation to validate my headcanon on this one (plenty more prompts below) – but if you’re up for it, I can see a bunch of places it could go (shippy or otherwise). Were there previous generations/incarnations of the Dracula/Van Helsing rivalry before the first we see, in the 1958 film? What could future generations look like? Is Van Helsing himself even aware he’s being reincarnated? Take it anywhere you like!

Some other prompts:

• Give me backstory! Van Helsing is already hunting Dracula at the start of The Horror of Dracula, but we never find outhow it all began. He’d have us believe that destroying Dracula is simply something he’s doing for the good of humanity, but is that the full story? Do they have personal history? Have they actually met face to face? (Could this even be why he sends Jonathan to the castle, posing as a librarian, rather than being able to show up there in person without being recognised?) Or would Dracula have been genuinely surprised to discover this complete stranger is so dedicated to his death?
  
  
• “Rest in final peace” is pretty significantly carved into Lawrence Van Helsing’s gravestone – but why would you need to say that about a vampire hunter? Is this hinting he could have been bitten or even turned before his death?
  
  
• Something from Jessica’s POV, discovering that there’s more to her family history with Dracula than she’d realised, could be very interesting.
  
  
• Dracula himself telling Lorrimer things he didn’t know himself about his own family members and history could be very interesting too.

Varney the Vampire

I’m not sure what the odds are that anyone reading this has actually readVarney the Vampire (let alone enjoyed any of it enough to write me fic). But what the hell – that’s what Yuletide’s for, isn’t it?

What I’m really craving from Varney fic is something at least as ridiculous as the novel itself. Outright crack-fic, absurdist parodies, florid send-ups of the original prose, The Importance of Being Ernest-comedy-of-manners-style shenanigans – anything along those lines!

Varney himself is my favourite part of Varney-the-novel. I love him being his scornfully-witty-self and running rings around all those idiot humans; I had great fun with his sporadic OTT moments of self-indulgent angst and self-pity, and I was never disappointed by yet another scene in which he’s forced to flee the scene with a face full of lead, only to comically and repeatedly fail to get over a wall. Varney at his best is such a gloriously entertaining mess, and I’ll always be up for more of that.

If you’re up for writing crack ships in addition to crack fic, well, I came out of the Bannerworth saga shipping Varney/Flora/Charles something awful. You’ve got Varney proudly insinuating there’s someone who loves Flora far more than Charles ever could (oh who could that be), scaring the life out of her, and yet still coming closer to a real understanding with her than with her than any of the men in the household. You’ve got Flora ultimately taking pity on him, to the point of hiding him from the mob in her own bedchamber. And then you’ve got Varney utterly unable to bring himself to actually kill Charles, even after holding him prisoner so long – and then spilling his entire life story (or, you know, one version thereof) with surprisingly little prompting once Charles tracks him down and shows a little sympathy. Don’t get me wrong: I’m still very much looking for absurdist crack fic out of this trio – but it pretty much ships itself.

Or for some more gen-friendly prompts – I’d love to see something really play up the idea of the Bannerworth’s being less horrified by the vampire himself than the notion the neighbours might find out there’s a vampire in their family. Or how about an AU where Varney climbs in through Henry’s window instead of Flora’s, so that everyone goes about treating Henry as the fragile, delicate maiden instead? Or to give the beleaguered Bannerworths a break for once, I do love how casual they are about Varney by the end of their arc – a far future where they’ve had years to get used to the idea of having possibly-a-vampire as their maybe-relative, who just keeps getting into trouble and appearing on their doorstep/windowsill in need of help in the middle of the night and it’s all just become routine – there could be a lot of fun to play with in that scenario too.

Seriously though, anything Varney that captures any of the glorious nonsense I love so much about the character-slash-novel would make my Christmas. Go wild.