free to dissolve in streaming in summer

Dear Chocolatier, thank you so much for writing for me! Treat the list of prompts below as a springboard - feel free to mix and match, or come up with something your own, because I bet there's a ton of stories I haven't thought about that I would love. As long as my DNWs are met, I'm a happy chocolate lover. Looking forward to your gift!

Links:

• My exchange tag (letters, recs et cetera)
• AO3 (fics and bookmarks)
• Tumblr

Likes:

• Hurt/comfort! When in doubt, go with h/c: physical, emotional, captivity scenarios, caretaking, whipping, dungeons, bullet wounds, wilderness survival, whatever. I love hurt/comfort within a relationship context (ships or gen: family ties, friendship, comradeship, all is good), as an opening for one character to be hurt and for the other(s) to be outraged/terrified/comforting on their behalf. I am particular about who gets whumped, and will usually indicate so in prompts.
• Found families, tight friendships, us-against-the-world, people finding and keeping each other, providing kindness and warmth against the dark.
• Hope and kindness, Clair universes, stories where the entropy tries its hardest but doesn't win.
• Loyalty in all forms! From ritualized (oaths, kneeling, ring-kissing, knights and bodyguards and henchmen and so on) to more casual ways, like standing up for your friends.
• Self-sacrifice (metaphorical and quite literal) and martyrdom (ditto).
• Tropey AUs - space opera! high fantasy! historical! pirates!
• Outsider POVs.

DNWs:

• Hurt no comfort.
• Partner betrayal of any kind or infidelity.
• Unhappy endings and permanent character death ("presumed dead" and "died but got better" are fine).
• A/B/O, hurtcomfortverse, any other 'verses with built-in biology-based inequality.
• Hanahaki AUs and variations thereof.
• Mundane AUs.
• Non-con and dub-con front and center in the story (as a piece of backstory or an implied threat it's fine).

( Psmith, Saint of Steel, Final Fantasy XV )

i fall into a proper gaming binge every half a year or so, and then forget that computers games exist altogether. my last bout of addiction was hades, a gorgeous roguelite about trying to get out of the underworld and dealing with family, bigger on the inside than it seemed outside. now i've spent a week headfirst into the beautiful madness of disco elysium, and i'm nowhere close to done. middle of the second playthrough, at least a couple more ahead, maybe three, maybe five - this kind of not closer to be done. finally, almost a decade later, there's a spiritual successor to planescape: torment, perfect, unique and compelling like nothing else. i'm head over heels in love.

(and a note: it's very much a game that can and should be played by non-gamers. it's a true click-and-pointer; the entirety of its action happens through dialogue. give it a try.)

in disco elysium, your character wakes up in an absolutely trashed hotel room, coming off a bender of epic proportions, fucked up beyond recognition, and fully amnesiac. it turns out you're visiting a (very much not) sunny town of revachol, a slowly decaying remnant of revolution and consequent war, and, well. you're a cop, and you're here to investigate a murder. namely, a murder of somebody whose dead body is still hanged in the backyard…

this is a horrendous mess, and you are a horrendous mess - bloated, amnesiac, confused, weird, pathetic, with a host of warring impulses and demands fighting for space in your head - but thankfully there's a pillar of stability and light in your dark world, waiting just downstairs: lieutenant kim katsuragi, your assigned partner from another station, a man with godlike sense of dignity and practically endless amount of quiet patience for your bullshit. together with him, you can investigate a crime, try to stop a small civil war, solve a couple of questions of the universe, and maybe, if you play your cards just once, dance a truly epic dance together in a shot-up church. there are also cryptids, karaoke, board games, collecting bottles for money, a mystery of a crashed police car, discovering your own feelings about the homo-sexual underground, and many, many other things.

(the gameplay: you have four sets of stats (intellect, sensitivity, physicality, interacting with objects) and, depending on how you distribute them, you play a wildly different character every time. there's no way to fail: your detective can be dumb as a bag of rocks but able to get by on intuition and muscle memory, or smart and horrible with people, or empathetic and weak, or - the combinations are endless. the game is conducted via a combination of red stat checks that you can do only once, and white checks that you can try, fail, up your stats and retry again. aside from a handful of cases, a lot of time it's easier - and funnier - to accept failures rather than try for a perfect go every time. you are a hot mess, after all. there are ten game days, a variety of sidequests and tasks, and almost endless variability in how you approach them. everything is connected, except for that one door.)

(there's also a political system, where you eventually pick up your political affiliation: a communist, a libertarian, a fascist, and a wishy-washy uncommitted liberal. the game has a lot of things to tell you about all your choices, most of them funny, some of them horrendous. there's no innocence here, and no way to weasel out of the consequences of your worldview; and you could also see that it was done by eastern europe people.)

and the thing is. the thing is, it's very much the kind of a game where you perform a field autopsy on a three days old corpse while a couple of preteen kids are watching avidly and offering their color commentary, and at some point you have to rummage in the corpse's mouth and feel its brain stem. a lot of very, very bad things happen or happened - to you, to the people around you, to the town around you, to the world around you. where in fallout you rolled into town with your stats jacked high and your blaster in hand, and solved ancient disputes and established peace, here the weight of the history is very, very heavy, and you're very, very small. you can't solve the decades of violence and war and trauma and colonization and poverty with the power of your save-scumming and pithy one liners, alas; but you can solve a murder. you can help a sweet and worried old woman. you can put your cheek to a kid's fuzzy plush toy, when offered. you can tell a person, gently, that their loved one is dead, and lie about how drunk they were when they did that. you can replace a taxidermied bird you broke. you can sit on the swing with your partner, waiting for the low tide, and whistle together - two birds on the wire…

it's the gentlest, kindest, sweetest, most hopeful game i've seen in the last decade. it's a goddamn manifesto to human spirit, and to how only - well, love - holds the world, always falling apart, together. a huge part of it is your relationship with kim, because believe me, whoever you are, most of your playthrough would be dedicated to chasing kim's approval and to winning his trust. but it also sneaks into all the cases, all the dialogues, all the little throwaway details. everybody is human; everybody is awful; everybody is holy, even you. oh, even you.

(there are storylines you can or can not discover. about why harry is such a mess - and it's awful and i loved how it was done, with empathy and grace and no judgement; about the state of the world, a bit of eldritch horror so throwaway and beautiful i would read entire volumes just about that; about the city of locusts; about a small girls' memory of playing in the reeds; about the scar of the revolution. suliram, ram, ram…)

(it's also brilliantly, awfully, absurdly, hysterically funny. Art Cop run alone makes me just about die. every failure is funnier than the other. you can be as weird as you want to - in fact, the game encourages you to be as weird as you want to be - and the world around will react accordingly, outperforming you in sheer absurdity. there's a war-and-peace sized amount of dialogue and description in the game, and it's written by some damn genius of pratchettian caliber.)

and, and and. honestly, the best way to get sucked into this game is not reviews, it's random quotes and screenshots, out -of-context spoilers - it's more or less impossible to resist. but please, oh please, give it a try.

>Someone's been walking around in your dreams lately, looking for something. Tidying up, rearranging. Storing away all the unrealized dreams, putting old pains in boxes. The worst nightmares have settled down for a while. A spot of light on the bedroom door after the dark. The fluttering of eyelids in the spring sun. A thought that arises, only to disappear again. And yet there's a pattern emerging…

What if you didn’t lose your memory? What if something in Martinaise came and stored it all away. For you to slowly open one box at a time. So you can choose which parts to keep. Keep almost none of it. Only the flowers on the windowsill. Only the distant sound of a radio. Lose all the actors, the dark shadows, leave only the still lifes, the blissful distant wash of waves. If everybody knew -- you never did. She’ll be coming soon. That is all.

Dearest author, hello! Thank you so much for picking my fandoms, and enjoying the same tags I do; I'm incredibly excited for this challenge, my favorite of the year, and and those canons, and I want everything.

There are so many tags that I've definitely missed something interesting! I'll try to give some prompts for every fandom, some riffing off the tags and some not. Feel free to mix, match, disregard and ODAO at will, as long as my DNWs are kept. Bring all the tropes to my yard! I can't wait.

Links:

• my exchange tag (letters, recs et cetera)
• egelantier
• egelantier

General hurt/comfort preferences: I like my hurt hardcore and physical, and my comfort at least somehow proportional and ending on at least a hopeful note, and I like it in context of any given relationship (i.e. the character getting hurt in sight of / for the sake of / in relation to other characters, and them reacting / rescuing / comforting / rehabilitating them, et cetera, not just the character suffering in the vacuum).

I love reading about the aftermaths of disasters as much as I love reading about disasters itself - the recovery, the backsliding, the acceptance, the assistance. Permanent injuries and consequences yes! Adjusting to the new circumstances yes! New understanding yes! And I especially love all those things in the context of larger-than-life, codependent loyalty (formalized or not), self-sacrifice and self-negation.

In particular, the physical kinks especially dear to my heart: torture, dungeons or cages, and rescue thereof, starvation, exhaustion, hand injuries, whipping, crucifixion, various mobility issues, chronic pain, all variations on accepting injuries for somebody's sake. For the emotional hurt/comfort, all variations on pining (and/or mutual pining!) and characters (mistakenly) thinking that they're either unloved or undeserving of being loved or protected, and being shown they're wrong.

I prefer my woobies competent, BAMF-y and fighting every step of the way, or going into the self-sacrifice determinedly and with their eyes open.

I really love non-mundane AUs (high fantasy, pirates, space opera, et cetera), so go there without hesitation if it's your thing.

DNWS:

• Hurt no comfort
• Partner betrayal of any kind or infidelity
• Unhappy endings and permanent character death ("presumed dead" and "died but got better" are both fine)
• A/B/O, hurtcomfortverse, any other 'verses with built-in biology-based inequality
• Hanahaki AUs, soulmates AUs and variations thereof
• Mundane AUs
• Non-con and dub-con (threat of non-con or mentioned past dub/non-con is fine, but not as a central theme of the fic)

Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly

• Benjamin January & Abishag Shaw (hurt Abishag Shaw)
• Benjamin January/Rose Vitrac January/Hannibal Sefton (hurt Hannibal)

A's unrequited pining found to be requited while B helps them recover from serious injury, accepting injury to protect someone, A accused of crimes; only B believes they're innocent, attempted self-sacrifice is thwarted by people who do not agree character is expendable, Bronchitis/Pneumonia, Buried Alive, Career Ending Injuries, character being extremly tired/exhausted, Character draws negative attention onto themself to protect another, Character doesn't care about their own wellbeing, Character jumped in front of a bullet to save someone, Character needs painful first aid but there's no anesthetic, coughing up blood, Day to day living with a partner who deals with chronic pain, Hair Brushing, Kidnapped and used as leverage against the other character, A presumed dead; B refuses to believe A died, On the Run with a Sick or Injured Partner, Watching Loved One’s Physical Health Deteriorate, Whipping

( Read more... )

Psmith - P. G. Wodehouse

• Mike Jackson/Rupert Psmith (hurt Psmith)

A's unrequited pining found to be requited while B helps them recover from serious injury, accepting injury to protect someone, Accident - A can't use their hands so B takes care of A, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Bargaining - Victim Offers/Sacrifices Self to Protect Others, Carrying sick/hurt/exhausted character to bed, Character is Injured while Protecting Another, Hands too shaky to complete task, Hiding an Injury or Illness, I'll do the traumatic thing because I'm used to it, loss of voice, Slavery, Sickfic, Starvation, Wrist Injuries, Torture - Tortured While Loved Ones Were Forced To Watch, Pretending to Betray Someone to Save them, Private body worship apology for public enslavement, Collapsing from hunger, Character draws negative attention onto themself to protect another

( Read more... )

The Tarot Sequence - K.D. Edwards

• Addam Saint Nicholas & Brandon Saint John (hurt Brandon Saint John)
• Addam Saint Nicholas/Rune Saint John/Brandon Saint John (hurt Brandon Saint John)
• Rune Saint John & Brandon Saint John (hurt Brandon Saint John)

A's unrequited pining found to be requited while B helps them recover from serious injury, accepting injury to protect someone, Aftermath of Torture - Character doesn't tell anyone they were tortured; is found out anyway, Aftermath of Torture - Tortured character's superiors ensure their torturers are brought to justice, Bargaining - Victim Offers/Sacrifices Self to Protect Others, Buried Alive, Character A reminds Character B they are loved, Character draws negative attention onto themself to protect another, Electrocution, Hypothermia, I'll do the traumatic thing because I'm used to it, imprisoned together but not close enough to touch, Injury on Top of Old Injuries, remain conscious, Kidnapped and used as leverage against the other character, Locked in a Cage, stranded in hostile environment with injury, Torture - Tortured While Loved Ones Were Forced To Watch, Video of Character's Torture is Sent to Their Friends, Whipping

( Read more... )

Paladin's Grace - T. Kingfisher

• The Paladins of Saint of Steel & The White Rat Clerics (hurt paladins)

attempted self-sacrifice is thwarted by people who do not agree character is expendable, Bargaining - Victim Offers/Sacrifices Self to Protect Others, chained to a wall, Character doesn't care about their own wellbeing, Character doesn't realize how badly they're hurt until they collapse, Character expected to die but didn't and has no idea how to live anymore. Other helps & comforts., Character expects to be punished but is unexpectedly comforted instead, Character is Injured while Protecting Another, Character restrained so they won’t hurt themselves, Exhaustion, Overworking, Restraining Someone to Keep Them From Hurting Themselves, Self-Sacrifice, sleep deprivation that leads to breaking, Starvation, Trapped with someone in need of medical care

( Read more... )

The Lily and the Crown - Roslyn Sinclair

• Ariana "Ari" Gecker/Mir (hurt Ariana)

Aftermath of Torture - Character trying to hold it together is clearly low-key fraying at the edges, Aftermath of Torture - Long Recovery, Aftermath of Torture - Tortured character's superiors ensure their torturers are brought to justice, Bargaining - Victim Offers/Sacrifices Self to Protect Others, Bronchitis/Pneumonia, Caretaking, Catching injured character as they faint or lose balance, Carrying sick/hurt/exhausted character to bed, Character A claims they're Character B to save B from danger, Collapsing from exhaustion, Collapsing from hunger, Enemy targets loved one just to get revenge on character, Kidnapped and used as leverage against the other character, A presumed dead; B refuses to believe A died, Rescue, Sensory Deprivation, Sickfic, Starvation, Wheelchairs and mobility issues

( Read more... )

Tiān Guān Cì Fú - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù

• Huā Chéng/Xiè Lián (hurt Xiè Lián)

Alternate Universe - Slavery, Bargaining - Victim Offers/Sacrifices Self to Protect Others, Buried Alive, captured and tortured for a very long time, Carrying sick/hurt/exhausted character to bed, Character A gets angry at Character B's tendency to self-sacrifice, Character draws negative attention onto themself to protect another, Character is Injured while Protecting Another, Character overuses powers/magic/etc to protect a loved one, Character taken prisoner; expects torture/humiliation; gets kind & honorable treatment, Hurt character is used to having to tend to their own wounds, Hypothermia, I'll do the traumatic thing because I'm used to it, imprisoned together but not close enough to touch, Locked in a Cage, Past Torture, Slavery, Starvation, Traumatic Backstory Revelations, Whipping

( Read more... )

成化十四年 | The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty (TV)

• Sui Zhou & Tang Fan & Wang Zhi (hurt Tang Fan)
• Sui Zhou/Tang Fan (hurt Tang Fan)
• Sui Zhou/Tang Fan/Wang Zhi (hurt Tang Fan)
• Tang Fan & Wang Zhi (hurt Tang Fan)

Accident - A can't use their hands so B takes care of A, Aftermath of Torture - Long Recovery, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Bronchitis/Pneumonia, Carrying sick/hurt/exhausted character to bed, Character doesn't realize how badly they're hurt until they collapse, Character is Injured while Protecting Another, Character is Exhausted From Overwork, coughing up blood, Hair Brushing, Headaches & Migraines, Locked in a Cage, loss of voice, Punished in front of others, Sensory Deprivation, Slavery, Torture - Tortured While Loved Ones Were Forced To Watch, Trapped Together While One Is Injured, Trapped/Injured in a Cave-In, Whipping

( Read more... )

Final Fantasy XV

• Gladio Amicitia/Prompto Argentum/Noctis Lucis Caelum/Ignis Scientia (hurt Ignis)
• Gladiolus Amicitia/Ignis Scientia (hurt Ignis)
• Lunafreya Nox Fleuret/Noctis Lucis Caelum/Ignis Scientia (hurt Ignis)
• Noctis Lucis Caelum & Ignis Scientia (hurt Ignis)
• Noctis Lucis Caelum/Ignis Scientia (hurt Ignis)
• Prompto Argentum/Ignis Scientia (hurt Ignis)

Accident - A can't use their hands so B takes care of A, Aftermath of Torture - Character doesn't tell anyone they were tortured; is found out anyway, Aftermath of Torture - Long Recovery, BAMF character A is hurt and is still a BAMF; character B provides comfort anyway, Bargaining - Victim Offers/Sacrifices Self to Protect Others, Character who's usually good at hiding their chronic pain is in too much pain to hide it, Collapsing from exhaustion, Hiding an Injury or Illness, Starvation, Kidnapped and used as leverage against the other character, Locked in a Cage, Permanently injured character pines for someone they think won't reciprocate due to their injury, Restraining Someone to Keep Them From Hurting Themselves, Self-Sacrifice, Sick/hurt character is indispensable on a mission; team looks after them while they get things done, Sick/hurt character sleeping in the back seat of a car, Torture - Tortured While Loved Ones Were Forced To Watch, Traumatized character will never be the same but their loved ones stand by them, Wheelchairs and mobility issues, Whipping

( Read more... )

LOOK AT MY HCEX BOUNTY! i've gotten FOUR fics for the tiniest fandoms, each very different and utterly delicious, and i spent most of yesterday just rolling around and clutching them to my chest. ben and shaw bonding over shaw being allergic to asking for help! THE COLLARED KNIGHT FIC WITH PROPER CRUCIFIXION OMG. psmith getting suavely menaced by gangsters and comforted by mike! and kit and danielle and litsi finding their ot3 happiness after kit's rescue from terrible kidnapping and torture! it's like one gigantic and amazing id party, and i can't recommend each of those enough. ssssso happy.

firm and constant (1726 words) by anonymous
fandom: benjamin january mysteries - barbara hambly
warnings: creator chose not to use archive warnings
characters: abishag shaw, benjamin january
additional tags: rib injury, major character injury, catching hurt character as they collapse, wound tending, friendship
summary:

"jesus fucking christ!" he yelps at the top of his lungs. and then, more mildly after he's almost lost his balance and landed face down on the floor instead: "hello, ben."

nails (2926 words) by anonymous
fandom: the collared knight - tara mcgolden, undisclosed fandom
warnings: no archive warnings apply
relationships: farnesse/lio/ralston
characters: farnesse, lio, ralston (the collared knight - mcgolden)
additional tags: hurt/comfort, crucifixion, shock collars, character apologizes for being sick/hurt, both hands/arms injured, faorced to witness torturing of the hurt character, provoking torturer into torturing them instead
summary:

when lio and farnesse are captured by ralston's enemies, farnesse steps up to take the punishment.

on his left (2487 words) by anonymous
fandom: psmith - p. g. wodehouse
warnings: no archive warnings apply
relationships: mike jackson/rupert psmith
characters: rupert psmith, mike jackson
additional tags: new york city, gangsters, hurt/comfort, kidnapping, whump, beating, book: psmith journalist, stoicism under pressure
summary:

mike gets kidnapped by gangsters. but psmith definitely gets the worst of it.

tripod (3335 words) by anonymous
fandom: kit fielding - dick francis, francis dick - works
warnings: no archive warnings apply
relationships: kit/danielle/litsi
characters: kit fielding, danielle de brescou, prince litsi
additional tags: hurt/comfort, kidnapping, whipping, video recording, bathing/washing, aftermath of torture, mutual pining, ot3
summary:

kit would sacrifice anything to protect danielle and litsi. they won't let him.

(spot me in the collection! i only wrote on fic, relatively long-ish (for-me). if you'd do and if you'd like, i'll write you a drabble on request :D)

hiraga falls asleep at roberto's apartment.

turning down a job request makes the yorozuya a dangerous enemy - one who will use any means necessary to get gintoki under his control.

alice will make michael proud if it kills her.

“were you ever going to tell me?”

“of course not,” ignis says. there’s no need for explanations: of course not. it’s a horrible thing, the weight of ignis’ love, had always been. the burns are rough and cold under noctis’ fingers.

(au where the conversation in cartanica goes very differently.)

the story of my ignominious descent into ffxv is best left for another time, but here's an attempt to recreate and somehow fix all the devastation this damned game visited on me, with as much high drama as humanly possible. with bonus impalement.

can't wait for the next year to play again.