Multifandom Horror Exchange 2021: Ghosts and Revenants and Goths, Oh My!

[percybysshes]

Dearest Multifandom Horror Exchange author, you marvellous creature you!

 

Hi, I'm percybysshes here and on tumblr and I'm dissembler on the old AO3. I'm thrilled that we've matched and am so excited to see what you end up writing for me! I have requested some new fandoms for me for this exchange, along with some old faithfuls and below are some general likes and specific ideas for each fandom. The length of the sections below, and the order of them, are in no way indicators of priorities or favourites; I will be over the moon to receive something in any of these fandoms! Please also don't feel you have to follow a prompt and please don't think that I'll be disappointed if you go with something completely different to what I've said: have fun and go where the spirit moves you!

 

To start with here's the general things I love and hate in fanfiction:

 

LIKES

historical details and flavour, exploration of unhealthy or un-ideal power dynamics, gothic tropes and otherwise spooky spookiness, guilt (religious or otherwise), religious themes, loyalty (at the expense of life, ideals, and/or good decisions), dark humour, gallows humour, playing with medium (i.e. epistolary fics, in-universe documents etc, hurt/comfort, doomed lovers, unrequited love with the lover being Noble and Suffering, competence and the admiring of it, unpleasant people being unpleasant, wounded (physically, previously or currently, or psychologically) people being wounded, complicated people being complicated, ghosts, manipulation, rivalmances, dubcon/noncon

 

Kinks and smutlikes

characters with hand kinks, size kinks, clothes kinks, height/size differences, age differences; characters having/doing hatesex, partially-clothed or mostly-clothed sex, oral sex, handjobs, frottage, intercrural, rough sex, body worship, semi-public risky sex, breathplay, historical sexual practices, one-night stands and one-night stands that turn into something more, sex for comfort and solace; characters who like violence (face-slapping, mutual roughing up or getting roughed up, etc.); and friends/enemies/strangers with benefits, historical sexual practices and meeting places, fancy clothes and dressing/undressing. Oh and, and I cannot stress this enough, *manhandling*.

DNWs

first person POV generally unless the canon is in FP, unrequested modern/gender/fundamental things/crossovers or fusion!AUs (canon divergent events are good though), omegaverse/BDSMverse, pregnancy, mpreg, oviposition, scat, watersports etc, curtain!fic, kid!fic, marriage!fic (including woke up married, Vegas-married, and arranged marriage) This year I would also prefer no references to current politics or politicians, modern-style transphobia or homophobia, or anything around COVID-19.

 

FANDOM SPECIFICS:

 

The Lion in Winter (1968)

Geoffrey Plantagenet/Philip II of France, Geoffrey Plantagenet/Richard I of England

(Body Horror, Paranormal Horror, Gothic Horror, Folk Horror)

 

This canon absolutely destroys me every time with the snapshot it gives of these lives, like insects in amber. I would love something that hews close to the heightened, poetic language of the film and play. 

 

Geoffrey is the great love of mine for the canon, Geoffrey who famously died very young and very unexpectedly AND fairly gruesomely (I personally am not a subscriber to the belief that he died of ye olde heart attack (thinly veiled instance of 'God's judgement' written in by the chronicler)), and I think, given the tensions and the tug of war it's easy to envision TLIW!Geoffrey finding himself in between his brother (and lover) and his friend and co-conspirator (and lover), Geoffrey is the perfect candidate for a revenant. 

 

This wiki article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenant) talks about revenants and the belief in them, particularly in the 12th century and I yearn to see Geoffrey rise as a corpse (mangled or unmangled is dealer's choice) to accost or badger Philip. Can Philip (who attempted to throw himself on Geoffrey's casket) still love and want a creature from the grave? You tell me! Will they have tender touches still even when Geoffrey's bones are showing through his wounds? Maybe! Will Philip run screaming and start a chase? Also a possibility! Run wild, I beg of you. 

 

For Richard/Geoff, though, if Richard isn't in France at the time of or soon after Geoffrey's dead, I would love to see Geoffrey as a proper, intangible, shade of a ghost. The kind that creeps at windows and turns the air freezing cold. The kind that wails out warnings, hisses threats, and generally makes itself into an unholy terror. Does Richard feel happy that Geoffrey, a thorn in the side, is dead, even if he's currently haunting him? I don't know! Is Richard, the Lionheart, immune to spooks? Is there anything tender here, an interruption of real grief by a shadow of the person grieved for? Are there reminiscences of points in time when things were peaceful; thoughts of what could have come if things had changed and Geoffrey had lived? 

 

I'm looking forward to finding out!

 

Re-Animator

Dan Cain/Herbert West

(Gothic Horror, Body Horror, Science-fiction Horror)

 

I recently rewatched this mad and wonderful film (and its sequel) and just in time to request them for this, the most appropriate of exchanges. 

 

My main yearning for these two and this canon is to hurl it back in time to either they heyday of the Victorian Gothic (Fin de Siecle; Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, Dorian Gray, Great God Pan etc) or straight back to the Romantic era Gothic (Udolpho, the Monk, Frankenstein) and have them be creepy in the age of candles or gaslighting.   

 

Particularly I think this canon lends itself to the moral and more general panic over graverobbing (Resurrectionism) in the 18th Century (up to 1832 and the Anatomy Act). Is Dan an average golden-boy surgical student who gets pulled into the shadowy world of old graveyards by Herbert? Is there sex on the slab in the centre of a surgical theatre when it literally was a theatre? 

 

My second yearning for these two is Herbert getting got and Dan tenderly stitching him back together and re-animating him. Is there some body horror sex? Are the re-animated cold? 

 

I tremble with anticipation!

 

Ravenous

 

John Boyd/Ives

(Gothic Horror, Body Horror, Folk Horror, Religious Horror)

 

Oh man this film! It's so weird and so atmospheric and anything evoking those would be fantastic.

 

In the cycle of killing and recuperating and killing and recuperating I would Love to see Ives start a cult as a messiah in the wilderness and Boyd be absolutely spitting, *murderously* furious about it. Boyd being absolutely wrathful about anything and everything Ives does and knowing that he ultimately can't end him but can end whatever fuckery he's got himself into in increasingly violent and tricksy ways while Ives is delighted to be the centre of Boyd's attention is just... chef's kiss. 

 

I know very little about the frontier era of America, except what this film and an episode of Puppet History have taught me so if this is your interest or you fancy going down a back hole of research please drown me in historical and atmospherical detail. I've out Folk Horror as a horror type for this one with vague ideas towards the landscape sort of taking sides between them and I'd love to see your take on that. 

 

Absolutely contrastingly, I'd love to see them more urban, in a Gothic city, as hunter and hunted but whichever is which isn't clear. 

 

You (I) love to see it!
 

 

King Lear

Edmund/Edgar

(Body Horror, Paranormal Horror, Gothic Horror, Folk Horror)

 

I studied King Lear at A Level English and hated it until the last few weeks at which point something in my head just switched and I realised that these two (and kingship as a concept, which I eventually wrote the exam essay on) absolutely slapped. I keep requesting these two as a ship in exchanges and will be utterly thrilled with whatever you write about them! 

 

I would absolutely adore a plot wherein Edmund rises as a revenant to wreak some kind of horrible terror on Edgar, now king. I would also love the inverse, wherein an Edgar who dies of exposure after his banishment rises and wreaks terror on Edmund, plotting to be a king. 

 

As I am writing this it's a perfect half moon outside, which reminds me that any knowledge you have about Early Modern witchcraft and folk horror would also be FANTASTIC here. 

 

I eagerly await your work!
 

 

Richard II

Richard II/Henry IV, Richard II/Henry V

(Body Horror, Gothic Horror, Paranormal Horror, Folk Horror)

 

Okay so hear me out: for Bolingbroke, Richard II is a revenant. Richard II is beautiful and Richard II is dead. Richard II has bones to grind, bones that Henry can very much see poking out of him. Does Richard demand something? Does he pronounce some dread warning? Does he simply haunt? Do they hatefuck?

 

Similarly, for Henry V, Richard II is a ghost. Henry was in Richard's while his father was exiled, by most accounts they seem to have got on. Is this haunting tender and bittersweet? Does Richard spur Henry to avenge him and murder his father? 

 

I am super stoked to find out!

 

Ready or Not (2019)

(Daniel le Domas, Grace le Domas)

(Gothic Horror, Body Horror, Paranormal Horror, Monster Horror)

 

Ghosts and revenants! In the first camp: Grace seeing Daniel everywhere, convinced he's a hallucination until he starts talking to her and then wow, she guesses she has to deal with this ghost now. How does she feel about this? How does Daniel feel, if he's unable to leave and move on? 

 

In the second camp: Daniel somehow being resurrected, perhaps out of deference to his Good Deed, and sticking with Grace would be fantastic. Is the resurrection long lasting or brief? What do they do with it?

 

Again, all these are just suggestions. Follow your joy and I couldn't be more stoked to see where this exchange takes you.