Multifandom Horror!

[shinyfakehard]

Hi, creator!

Thank you so much for taking the time to create something for me! I’m super excited to see where this exchange takes me, and I hope you are too.

I really enjoy horror that deals with the psychological sides of things - fear and guilt and exhaustion. And I also like monsters and humor and Horror as Metaphor and charming villains! I don't care as much for gorefests or religious horror (specifically the stuff that deals with modern religion; *handwave* demons are different).

Some of my request write-ups ended up at very different lengths, but I swear that I want everything equally!

General

Fic Likes

— Jealousy, obsessive/possessive behavior, codependency
— Relationship messiness
I adore that delve into difficult patches in relationships, hurt feelings, worn-thin patience, break-ups, make-ups, back off again, the end for real. Infidelity welcome.
— Physical or social isolation of a group: boarding schools, secluded campuses, camps, cults, teams, snowed in hotels, locked in the attic by your grandmother, and so on. I like spaceships a little bit less, but mostly because I'm not super into sci-fi. If writing a Moon Hotel or whatever makes you happy, though, go for it!
— Smut! While I’m not asking for it to be the focus in most of this exchange, I definitely still enjoy it.
Likes include but are not limited to: altered states • assplay • begging • bruising or biting • casual sex • come marking • dirty talk • drugged sex • dubious consent • edging • embarrassment • filming • finger sucking • first times • hands • informal D/s • manhandling • manipulation • mouth kink • multiple orgasms • nipple play • oral sex • over the clothes • overstimulation • power imbalances • rough sex • size differences • somnophilia
— Classic horror set-ups
Find That Monster/Murderer, Get Away From That Monster/Murderer, slowly turning into a monster/murderer, haunted houses, trapped in the cabin/tree house/cave…

Art aesthetic likes: oversaturation, contrast, color blocking; tender moments (fingers brushing, kissing, holding hands, intense eye contact), atmosphere and settings; details and clutter. ex: x | x | X

DNWS

A big plus of horror, IMO, is having this space to test limits and push on uncomfortable places. That said, there are a few things that I really, really do not want and will make be back out of piece of work:

World-ending events, cosmic entropy, death as the horror: I’m struggling to pinpoint the exact boundary, but if you’re familiar with The Magus Archives, the only episode that really freaked me out to the point I couldn’t finish it was Ep. 70. The ending of Cabin in the Woods is fine with me, Melancholia is not. Basically, the more total or seriously the actual death is treated, the less interested I am.

Mourning or grief, character death, and fear of death as motivation are all fine.

Exclusive focus on abuse of authority in the forms of bigotry against minorities or child abuse: To me, that means things like the meat of the story being directly about hate crimes, or gendered or racialized violence, or young children (<14) being stuck in extremely abusive situations.

I do not mind if characters have experienced these traumas or as instigating events, if it’s why characters don’t trust authority, or if (good, bad, or in between) characters’ views aren’t completely in compliance with modern understandings. I’m not really as sensitive to any individual event so much as… idk, the framing of the event as an entirety?

Example exceptions include: Candyman (1992) (because there’s a lot more going on than his origins) and It Follows (metaphor!!!).

General DNW: culturally accepted incest, gender or sex swap, erotic spanking or caning, slavery, explicit sexual content for Animal Crossing

I hope these help more than hinder; if something isn’t clear, please feel free to (ask the mod to) send me follow-up questions. Now back to the fun stuff!

REQUESTS

Animal Crossing

Request: Player Character

(Please feel free to focus on any villager, including the player character (any gender); I didn’t nominate to the tagset in an attempt to dissuade myself from adding another deadline to my calendar, but clearly that didn’t work 😅)

Tag: Institutional, Killer, Survival, Folk, Paranormal

— Common-folk at mercy of, misinformed, manipulated by institutions”
— Weak survivor character, at a disadvantage from the start • Oppressive atmosphere, lack of control • Surreal setting or situation • Horror elements such as mazes, unexpected ambushes or injuries”
— Landscape psychogeography - interaction of atmospheres, histories, actions, characters to affect environment • Isolation of community - caused by landscape, horrifying to outsider, can’t be broken due to community’s bonds • Skewed moral beliefs of community different from ones outside, outsider may/may not adapt, may cause outsider’s death • Happening/summoning - manifestation of skewed moral beliefs, maybe human sacrifice, maybe paranormal, etc. • Community itself as agent of horror, may include political exposure of pastoral lies, not necessarily traditional rural setting”

There are massive power disparities between Tom and the player character and then the villagers, and the town/island itself is such an insanely insular, isolated environment—Hell, I pretty much exclusively refer to my collection as my cult. I’d love to explore those dynamics with the economy, information, and freedom of movement being held exclusively within such a small group of characters.

That isolation also plays into gothic (without the lower-case romantic angle) and cosmic (without The Void) horror in my mind. It’s such a bizarre environment; how do they cope with being around the same tiny group of people day-in and day-out, largely without anything to do, completely separated from their previous life? Where the hell are they in New Horizons where there are just millions of unique islands that can never be revisited and if you’re lucky(?), some human will force you to come home with them? What the hell is there to do if something goes wrong; you’d been hearing for weeks that [player character] wanted [villager] off the island, or [snooty] and [lazy] have been fighting for weeks, and now [villager] is gone, would they really…?

I also wouldn’t mind poking at the logic or backstories of some of the less standard animal characters: Is Hopkins/Stitches really just a blowup doll/a stuffed bear? Coco seems like a nice girl, but what's going on inside her head? What is going on with Lucky and Ankha? What is your whole deal, Pietro?

Also, the dark obsession that overtakes you over rare fish, bugs, or hybrids? Something dark is definitely at work there.

Baby Baphomet! Not literally, but maybe similar idea of cryptids and monsters being designed as villagers? Or villagers being redesigned as more horrific (while still being cartoonish)?

His Face All Red

Request: Narrator/His Brother

Tags: Gothic, Psychological, Paranormal

— Tends to place emphasis on both emotion and a pleasurable kind of terror • Atmospheric and often symbolic”
— Emotional vulnerabilities, fears, insanity • Darker parts of psyche that may be repressed and/or denied • Suspicion, paranoia, and distrust of the world and/or oneself"

I love the restraint Carroll has in her work, but at the same time I’ve never read a story of hers without wanting to grab it by its metaphorical ankles, turn it upside down, and start shaking until every possible penny falls out.

Why do they look so different (is the older maybe slightly not completely human)? What was their childhood like? Why do they live so close, but the younger’s prospects are so nonexistent? Was That Night the first time the younger brother’s resentment had come to the surface? Did the older brother ever have any clue, was he preparing for something (the holes??)? What the fuck is going on?????

Obviously, you don’t need to answer all or most or even any of these questions; just give me some brother incest and something to do with mysteries established in this comic and I’ll be so, so thrilled.

Original Works: Humans

Requests and tags:

Psychological was the only requested tag, but I’ve included some others that I think could add context or inspiration. While “It was all a dream! They were just crazy the whole time!” is a bit overdone at this point, what I really like about psychological horror is how it can destabilize what’s really going on and who the characters can trust (driving them to the wrong comforts!). A strong emotional response to, idk, a dead rabbit, is more effective for me than thirty spectacularly gory murders.

(A/A, but prefer queer relationships) Gaslighting Spouse/Gaslit Spouse
— Gothic, Killer: Dark, intense, intrapersonal conflict is one of my favorite types of stories, and I like it best when they’re both kind of fucked up, whether that turns into Spouse vs. Spouse or some sort of Heavenly Creatures type situation.
(F) Group of Teenage Girls with an Ouija Board
— Cosmic, Survival, Paranormal, Monster: I’m interested both in the girls tampering with something completely beyond their understanding or control and having to deal with consequences; maybe it’s real, maybe it’s mass hysteria, maybe it’s one manipulative ring leader, maybe some combination
(M) Traumatized Ex-Soldier Who Thinks He's Hallucinating His Dead Comrades
— Institutional, Violent, Survival, Paranormal: This has so much potential to get dark quickly, especially with the trauma and lack of support that surrounds veteran affairs. Also: Is a soldier ever really an ex-soldier? Was he in love with one of the comrades? I don’t particularly care for high fantasy or hard science fiction, but feel free to take this to some sort of fantasy/supernatural realm.
(M/M) Backwoods Cult Leader/Runaway Teenage Boy
— Gothic, Folk, Religious: I! Love! Cults! Manipulation! The purposeful destruction of boundaries and separation from reality or traditional morals! Restructuring your entire life around this bullshit that the leader is pedaling (... but is it really bullshit?)
(M/M) Fake Medium/His Twin Brother Who Actually Channels the Dead
— Gothic, Monster, Paranormal: As I see it, there are two paths: they’re partners in this psychic business, but the actual medium is a bit… much for most people. OR. They had a big, dramatic split over the fake monetizing this thing that fucked young real medium up. What puts a strain on their dynamic, or drives them together?
(M/M) Stalker Fan/Famous Athlete He Catches In A Compromising Position
— I don’t have much to add about this one, but the potential tension is delicious. The stalker forcing a “relationship” because the athlete doesn’t want to get outed… How long can that go one? Does the stalker get desperate? Does the athlete?

Original Works: Non-Humans

Requests and tags:

Monster (... which is kind of inherent with the category, lol) was the only requested tag, but I’ve included some extras that hopefully add more context or inspiration.

(A/A but I prefer queer relationships) Human(s but I prefer just one) Who Didn't Know Their Spouse Was a Werewolf/Werewolf Spouse
— Killer, Body: I’m imagining some sort of scenario where there are these deaths stacking up, and the coincidences and late nights start adding up… does the human stay loyal to the monstrous spouse? If so, does it work? For how long? How sympathetic is the werewolf? How much control does the werewolf have? Does the guilt start creeping in?
(A/F) Mind-Controlling Alien/Entire Dorm of Girls' Boarding School
— Survival: The Screwfly Solution, only with the opposite starting point, right? Right??? Sure, there has always been a little bit of initiation for the new girls, or queen bees maintaining their rule, but this shit is… next level. Or maybe the aliens just want to stage their own prison experiment, or recreate Ladies of the Flies, or…

Red Dead Redemption

Requests: Arthur Morgan/Charles Smith, John Marston/Arthur Morgan, Sadie Adler & Arthur Morgan, Solo: Arthur Morgan

Tags: Gothic, Psychological, Killer, Survival, Paranormal

— Combines horror, death, and at times romance, mystery, or adventure • Atmospheric and often symbolic"
— Emotional vulnerabilities, fears, insanity • Darker parts of psyche that may be repressed and/or denied • Suspicion, paranoia, and distrust of the world and/or oneself"
— Slasher, serial killing, backwoods killing”
— Trying to survive in a horror-filled world • Oppressive atmosphere, lack of control • Surreal setting or situation
— Supernatural forces, paranormal beings or events • Ghosts, spirits, possession, spells • Haunted places or objects • Supernatural agency that violates physical laws • Maybe psychic, mystic, telepathy

Monster Hunting as Bounty Hunting: It’s an honest way to earn some money… or is it?
— Someone gets changed, and it challenges some preconceived notions. Or maybe it doesn’t matter that they’re still them, and now they have to run.
— No one gets changed, but the hunter’s conscious gets more and more unsure about what he’s doing.

The Vampire of St. Denis and other such canon spooks! Feel free to expand upon what’s already there or build your own for them to stumble upon and get menaced by.

I didn’t request folk horror because the gang doesn’t really seem isolated enough for how this exchange defines it, but everyone’s devotion to Dutch sure is… a lot, and there are definitely more ways for it to backfire on everyone than it did in canon.

I also just really love the atmosphere of this game; slowly worsening circumstances, the shit closing in on Arthur, the shit he takes on just because that’s the sort of man he is. While it wasn’t really a horror canon, I think the genre switch would still fit really well.