Goreswap 2023 Letter

[corvusumbranox]

Goreswap 2023 Letter

AO3 Username: StopTalkingAtMe

Welcome to my letter, Mystery Creator. Let me start by saying I’m open to a LOT of different things, to horror of all kinds, and to endings that range from tooth-rottingly happy to bleak despair. Some of the sections here may be longer than others but please don’t read anything into that – I’d be delighted with a gift for any one of them. I’m excited to see what you come up with! :D

The canons that I've requested all lend themselves to gore automatically, and if in doubt anything canon-typical will always be welcome. Do whatever you want with my prompts: they're just there to give you an idea of the sort of thing I like and the tropes I'm fond of. Use them as starting points, subvert them, or ignore them completely and go off my general likes. Whatever works for you.

Table of Contents

• Gore Likes
• General Likes
• Smut Likes
• DNWs
• From Beyond
• House on Haunted Hill (1999)
• Lurking Fear (1994)
• Re-Animator

General Likes and DNWs

Gore Likes

• Canon-typical gore and violence
• Blood (whether from injuries, supernatural bleeding from the walls of a house, or vast pools of blood)
• Injuries: stabbings and gunshot wounds, getting bitten, broken bones (including when the ends piece the skin), exposed viscera
• Bruising and scarring
• Severe beatings
• Zombies and ghosts, and the accompanying horrifying descriptions
• Cannibalistic monsters
• Hurt/Comfort: patching up wounds, standing vigil by the bedside of a wounded loved one
• Torture (from an antagonistic character), Characters being forced by an antagonist to torture their loved ones, or to maintain their cover
• Charnel Houses: piles of mangled body parts, corpses, and bones
• Dreams, hallucinations and other altered states: gory and horrifying images
• Characters getting beaten to hell and back and still forcing themselves on even if they have to crawl over broken glass (maybe metaphorical, maybe not)
• Resorting to desperate acts of violence when fighting an enemy, especially biting and using nails to claw at them, gouging or even biting eyeballs, etc, accompanied by all the sensory experiences and internalised trauma
• All the horror, agony and bone-crunching trauma of TEMPORARY extreme maimings, amputation of entire limbs etc, for example in a dream/hallucination or in cases where the injury is healed somehow (e.g. in From Beyond). (‘temporary’ only applies to the requested characters -- with third parties, anything goes)
• Less extreme maimings, such as the loss of a single eye or hand (gory descriptions are fine), and the character's accompanying trauma, recovery process and/or adaptation to the injury.

General Likes

• Character studies and introspection
• Loneliness and isolation
• Angst
• Atmospheric description, scenery porn, sensory description
• World-building, backstory, and character development.
• Horror.
• Closed Circle - Stranded with a murderer in your midst, whether in horror or murder mystery. Think And Then There Were None.
• Case-fic, whether fully realised or just touching on elements from a case.
• Whump, hurt/comfort and hurt/no comfort.
• Endings of all kinds, happy, bleak or bittersweet.
• Canon-divergent AUs, especially post-canon ones where the bad guys win.
• Pining, whether mutual or one-sided
• Repression and stoicism
• Descriptions of scars
• Main Character Death and grief; characters getting together while still grieving for previous partners, taking solace in each other, the dead character still seeming like a presence in the relationship, etc.
• Crossovers, especially oddball crossovers that come completely out of left field, although I do tend to prefer crack played straight rather than outright crack. If you have reason to believe I know and like the other fandom, then I encourage you to go for it.
• Post-Apocalypse scenarios, including zombies (probably my favourite AU scenario of all time), with focus on angst and the struggle for survival.
• Stranded Together With No Way Home, us against the world, deep mutual dependence on the other party because there’s no one else around (which may not be entirely healthy)
• Time Loops
• Older characters finding love.
• Age gap relationships
• I really love historical detail and extensive research notes, so if that’s what you’re into then feel free to go wild. (If that’s not your thing, then please don’t worry: I am in no way an expert, and I love tropey indulgent stuff and cheerfully anachronistic fics just as much).
• Hair kink. Hands pushed into hair, coiling it around fingers, routinely cutting another character's hair if appropriate in context (e.g. in post-apocalyptic scenarios), hairwashing as part of hurt/comfort, yanking head back by the hair, etc
• Textiles, especially knitwear and embroidery; men in jumpers; historical and cultural details and craft in general
• Unusual structures and ways of telling a story, such as Rashomon plots, non-linear narratives, outsider POVs, epistolary works, etc.
• Cigarette kink: descriptions of smoking, sharing cigarettes, lighting cigarettes for each other, etc.
• Physically unprepossessing men uncomfortably aware of how powerless he is to protect the woman he’s with from other men, whether or not the woman can take care of herself, such as Jenna and Vila in Blake’s 7’s The Keeper! The Fifth Doctor and Peri in Caves of Androzani! (Or Dr Haggis and Cathryn in Lurking Fear.) It gets me every time.
• Finally, and I cannot emphasise this enough, men in sleepwear, particularly pyjamas and dressing gowns.

Smut Likes

• Sex Pollen and aftermath, and any other kind of something made them do it scenario
• Angry Sex, rough sex, hate sex, rough sex that turns tender
• Clothed Sex, or clothed/naked
• Comfort Sex
• Dubcon when requested (mutual dubcon of the something-made-us-do-it kind is ALWAYS okay even when not explicitly requested)
• Mild bondage and other forms of gentle restraint
• Oral Sex, especially cunnilingus in all its forms, and ESPECIALLY cunnilingus with fingering
• Rough Sex - Lots of Scratching and Biting and Hair-Grabbing/Pulling and Holding Partner(s) Down
• Sex in grimy, grim, uncomfortable places
• Threesomes
• Situations where one character is too tired, injured etc to orgasm themselves, but takes great pleasure in making the other person come, so long as it's part of a wider give-take relationship when it comes to sex.

DNWs

• A/B/O
• Unreqested Noncon (Bad Guys Made Them Do It scenarios are fine though)
• Dubcon involving unaroused characters
• Unrequested Incest
• Bestiality (monsters don't count here)
• Scat and waterplay
• Formalised D/s dynamics (bondage and other forms of restraint are OK)
• Underage
• Het anal sex
• Breathplay (antagonistic choking is fine)
• Fisting
• Sexualised lactation
• Any variation of the word 'come' in a sexual context spelled as 'cum' (please use 'come', 'came', 'precome' etc)
• Permanent and extreme maiming of a requested character, e.g. removal of an entire limb, or both hands, or eyes. (Less extreme maimings, such as loss of a single hand or eye, or a couple of fingers, is fine).

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From Beyond

Requested Ships:
Katherine McMichaels/Crawford Tillinghast
Requested Freeforms: Action With Gore, Angst With Gore, Eroticized Gore, Horror With Gore, Hurt/Comfort With Gore

Note on my DNWs: My BDSM DNW is waived when it comes to Dr Pretorius.

CANON-SPECIFIC GORE SUGGESTIONS:

• Body horror
• Monstrous transformations with all the accompanying violence and gore, bones breaking as bodies twist into different forms, skin peeling off, exposed viscera, gloop, and blood
• Dr Pretorius repeatedly torturing Crawford, and/or Katherine, and able to go extreme due to them being able to heal themselves
• Crawford's unfortunate phase of sucking out bits of brain through eye-sockets
• The experience of being eaten alive then rebirthed. I'm more into this for the body horror rather than for vore, but feel free to go to town on the agonising pain and birthing analogies and poor Crawford suffering.
• An exploration of the monsters living in the world of the Resonator, gloop and tentacles and the monsters hunting each other or Katherine and Crawford (those creatures that kill Bubba, for instance)
• Descriptions of injuries and wounds and the injured party's suffering, as the non-injured party tries to patch them up, or else offers comfort. And given canon, let's assume they can heal from just about anything, so any kind of injury goes.
• Dr Pretorius dubconning Crawford and/or Katherine, along the lines of the scene in canon where he gropes Katherine

~~

Well, I wasn’t expecting this to turn out to be one of the single-most hottest things I've ever seen in my life, but the whole thing is laser-targeted to my id from start to finish. It's so sexually charged, from Crawford and Katherine eye-fucking each other when they turn the machine back on for the first time, to him watching her sleep while bleakly confessing to Bubba about how he used to lie awake listening to the sounds coming from (*checks notes*) Dr Pretorius's kinky sex dungeon, to the deeply creepy and uncomfortable implications about what was going on between Crawford and Dr Pretorius pre-canon and what will be going on post-canon. Canon never quite clarifies, but it’s implied that their relationship was abusive, domineering, and dubiously consensual in *all the fucking ways.*

Crawford is exactly the kind of woobie I like, meek, damaged, and deeply traumatised, and I can’t decide if I want him to continue to suffer horribly or to actually get the chance to be happy for once. Both, ideally. I love Katherine too: she’s so single-minded and determined, and after all the shit Meg goes through in Re-Animator I very much appreciate seeing Katherine get the chance to be the scientist with dubious ethics who inadvertently fucks everyone over for once.

My OTP of OTPs for this film is Crawford/Katherine, but I also ship Crawford/Katherine/Bubba, and all the permutations of fucked-up Crawford/Pretorius/Katherine. There are so many character notes that I really, really love: like Crawford taking the bed in Dr Pretorius's room, having presumably given Katherine his own bedroom because it's the gentlemanly thing to do even though it's possible to infer that some very, very unpleasant things have happened to him in Pretorius’s room. Or that moment early on where she strokes his hair tenderly and then sends him off to get an MRI while he desperately begs her not to. Their relationship is such a mix of genuinely sweet and deeply uncomfortable, and it leaves me wondering if perhaps she reminds Crawford subconsciously of Pretorius, and that's part of why he's attracted to her (and oh god that's the creepiest fucking thing). Also, hot fucking damn, that *kiss*.

My headcanon is that Pretorius was blindfolding the women he brought back, and forcing Crawford to become complicit in rape-by-deception (whether the women were secretly in it or not). It explains how Crawford would know about Pretorius being impotent, leads to some uncomfortable conclusions about what Pretorius was doing with those recordings (blackmail being yet another hold over Crawford), and is horribly uncomfortable and messy in a way that very much appeals to me, especially if Pretorius isn't above dubconning the fuck out of Crawford and punishing him for knowing about his impotence. And I’m assuming he isn’t.

I love that whole early stretch of the film when it's just Crawford, Katherine and Bubba in the house, investigating the murder of Dr Pretorius while also poking about the machine. It's so claustrophobic and intimate and sexually charged, and I'd love to see that section of canon stretched out a little bit. This isn’t a haunted house story in the traditional sense, but it gives me the same vibes as something like the Haunting of Hill House (book or film) or Hell House, another can't-fail trope with me. Perhaps Crawford takes longer repairing the machine and in the meantime they're all settling in and getting to know one another while Crawford is trying to repress his trauma about the house, and all the while the atmosphere is getting more intense. I love watching the three of them get to know each other, the dynamic between the three of them, and the way it shifts after they’ve turned the machine on for the first time and ratcheted up that febrile atmosphere of horniness. Maybe Dr Pretorius doesn’t make his presence known so obviously at first, so they turn the machine on more times before the shit really hits the fan, while Crawford gradually starts to suspect something is wrong.

And oh man, *Bubba.* I grew up watching Dawn of the Dead a lot, and it remains one of my favourite films of all time, so yep, I am extremely fond of Bubba. I’m delighted by the way he towers over the pair of them, the way he watches over and the caretaking role he takes on, and the way, when the sexual tension starts to ramp up, he admits to getting an erection. Which is to say I am very much here for Crawford/Katherine/Bubba, and I’m fascinated by how the dynamic would shake out given how intense the Crawford/Katherine relationship is. Maybe because he's older and not as damaged as Crawford (or as horny as Katherine) he sort of acts like an anchor for the two of them? I’d also love to see just about every permutation of Crawford/Pretorius/Katherine explored too, including monster-fucking.

Optional General Prompts

• Exploration of Aftermath of Canon Events – The more I think about that ending the more it sticks with me, how it’s a circular narrative, with Crawford beginning the film under Pretorius’s control and ending it that way too. And I’m guessing Pretorius isn’t impotent any more. It’s so bleak, the idea of him being tormented, tortured and eaten (ideally with the focus on body horror rather than vore), only to be reborn over and over again, and I would be very much here for some extremely dubiously consensual, abusive, domineering tentacle sex, and body horror.
• Bondage – It sure would be a shame if those manacles went to waste.
• Exploring Ancient Ruins in a Lovecraftian Alternate Dimension (Monsters Optional) – Post-canon fic where Crawford and Katherine explore the world beyond, like the mysterious temple mentioned in the original story, and all the creatures who inhabit it. Maybe they’re more or less normal, maybe they’re changing into something monstrous (but that doesn’t necessarily need to be a bad thing). Anything is welcome for this prompt, from horror, worldbuilding, smut, or something much gentler and fluffier.
• Femdom – I just want Katherine to gently dom Crawford. Maybe they stumble across an overly friendly tentacle monster and after escaping from its clutches it occurs to her it could have its uses.
• A fix-it where Katherine sets out to rescue Crawford.
• Or a canon divergent fic where Crawford appears to have escaped the effects of the Resonator at the end, but it gradually becomes clear that although he looked normal at first, he came back wrong.
• I cannot emphasise enough how here I am for Crawford having his boundaries trampled on and getting bad-touched, either by Katherine while she’s being affected by the resonator or by Dr Pretorius. I would very much like to see the relationship between Crawford and Pretorius explored, and I think there's a lot to dig into. Like the bit where he yells that Pretorius doesn't know how to give pleasure, only pain, and the question of how he'd know Pretorius was impotent because there's really no good answer to that question. Give me something where Pretorius feels up Crawford instead of (or as well as) Katherine, or where Pretorius encourages her to join in. Bad Guys Made Them Do It scenarios are especially welcome here.
• So how did Dr Pretorius manage to turn the Resonator back on? Does he (and Crawford after the end of the film) retain an awareness of the normal plane of existence, and some ability to manipulate it?
• Obvious third wheel in spontaneous threesome still highly enjoys themselves – During the early part of the film, a spontaneous threesome develops between Katherine, Crawford and Bubba, possibly induced by sex pollen or just the lingering effects of the Resonator. (With Bubba, naturally, being the third wheel, but he’s fine with that tbh.

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House on Haunted Hill

Requested Ships:
Dr Richard B Vannacutt & The House
Watson Pritchett & Dr Richard B Vannacutt
Watson Pritchett & The House
Watson Pritchett/Dr Richard B Vannacutt
Requested Freeforms:
Action With Gore, Angst With Gore, Eroticized Gore, Horror With Gore, Hurt/Comfort With Gore

Note on my DNWs: For Pritchett, please have him be 16 or older for direct sexual contact, but sexually arousing dreams/visions/hallucinations are fine from 13+).

Canon-specific DNW: This request is specifically for the first film, and it’s fine for Return to House on Haunted Hill to be ignored. If you do include it, please avoid having the evil in the house being purely due to the Baphomet Idol.

CANON-SPECIFIC GORE SUGGESTIONS:

• Vannacutt's charnel house.
• Mutilated ghosts
• Hallucinations along the lines of the ones Price sees when he's in the zoetrope. Or the operation Melissa sees through her camera.
• Medical kink and descriptions of Vannacutt's fucked-up medical experiments, asylum-based horror in general, turture devices masquerading as medical devices, the zoetrope and its accompanying hallucinations
• Gory descriptions of zombies and the risen dead. (There's a deleted scene where Sara falls into the cellar onto a vast pile of rubble and body parts, and is attacked by zombies.)
• That vast pool of blood in the basement, where it came from, the experience of drowning in it, etc.
• Eldritch architecture: including, but not limited to the agonising experience of becoming part of the house, with its fabric replacing bones and sinews, or of being dragged into the walls, or non-euclidean architecture
• Pritchett being tortured by Vannacutt, knives, the experience of being autopsied while still alive
• Those sculptures in the basement, coming alive or appearing to be made of freshly dead flesh

~~

I have a very particular fondness for 90s cheese, architectural horror, and the disparate bunch of people trapped somewhere for *reasons* trope, which is one of my favourite tropes of all time. Add in ghosts, and ohhhh baby, I am there. (As an aside, I'm also a big fan of the original trilogy of Thief games, and the ghost visuals in this were the direct inspiration for the Shalebridge Cradle mission in Thief 3 (possibly one of the best, creepiest missions in anything EVER), so I'm inclined to be kindly predisposed towards this film purely because of that.)

It’s a curious one, because the things that mean it doesn’t work that well as a horror film for me (the CGI smoke-monster climax! The criminal underuse of Dr Vannacutt!) are the exact same things that make the question of what the hell is going on significantly more interesting. The more you dig into the first film, the more it becomes clear that there’s something more going on that just a haunting as a result of what happened at the asylum.

I also find it fascinating that despite Dr Vannacutt being the most prominent ghost (and male), Pritchett refers to the house as female, and specifically as ‘a stupid vengeful whore’ iirc. The Shadow primarily speaks with female voices (and according to one of the extras they used imagery of naked women to create the Rorschach effect). Then there’s the women Price sees while he’s in the Saturation Chamber.

I'd love to see the mythology of the house dug into, because I have a lot of unanswered questions. Like the walled off room we finally see towards the end where Vannacutt used to dump his corpses, and in the middle of the room there’s a chair, just sitting right in front of the rubble, which is the creepiest fucking thing. Why is that chair there? Did Vannacutt sit on it, staring into the rubble, listening to the Shadow talk to him? (And while I’m not hugely keen on the canon introduced by the second film, and I especially dislike the suggestion that the evil in the house is all down to the Baphomet idol, I do quite like the way it expands on the way the house seduces people, the idea of good if flawed people being corrupted, and the suggestion that Vannacutt wasn’t always evil).

And then there’s one of my favourite things about this film: Pritchett, a fucked-up traumatised asshole woobie packed with neuroses, who clearly has a boat-load of issues with the house. It’s not immediately clear whether he actually used to live in the house or not, but he’s clearly spent a lot of time there and he’s familiar with it enough to know the history of the house, his way around the basement, and quite a lot about how it’s haunted, including the existence of the Darkness/Shadow and Dr Vannacutt. I’d love to see something about his previous experiences with it, what happened with his grandfather and father, and what it was like growing up in the vicinity of that house, whether he lived there or not. And I am completely here for the house’s attempts to seduce him.

Other random things I love about this canon: the Saturation Chamber! I’m really drawn to the concept of machines that can drive you insane through sensory experiences, and it’s just the icing on the cake that it takes the form of this extraordinary period-appropriate zoetrope. The relationship between Price and Evelyn! This complicated tangle of love and hatred and contempt, spitting daggers at each other, and him clearly being so desperately in love with her still, while she's so completely batshit. I love her. And the whole thing of there being multiple conflicting agendas, with the three competing guest lists, and even then the house doesn’t get what it wants because of Sara being an imposter.

Watson Pritchett/Dr Richard B Vannacutt

Not a pairing that I’d originally considered, but then a seed took root and now I can’t stop thinking about these two and what sort of dynamic they’d have.

We see so little of Vannacutt, but Pritchett absolutely freaks the fuck out when he realises he’s around, so they clearly have a history, but exactly what that history is, and what Vannacutt’s role is as a ghost in the house, is left decidedly unclear. It’s gradually become one of my favourite things about this film: the way the focus shifts from the villain being Vannacutt to the house itself, and the way that upends the way his character could potentially be seen – is he a villain, or potentially another victim of the house, or both?

There are just so many unanswered questions about what it means to be a ghost in that house, how much of it is reenacting the terrible things that happened there, and how much free will they have, and to what extent they’re being controlled by the house, and just… damn, I don’t know, but dig into it as much as you want.

The sequel flattens out most of the unexpected wrinkles in the worldbuilding, and is mostly forgettable, so I don’t really recommend watching it (although I will admit to being delighted by Steven Pacey and Andrew Lee Potts’ inclusion in the cast), but what it does do is develop the idea of people being corrupted and seduced by the house, with one line being: ‘Vannacutt was known for being a brilliant physician and great humanitarian. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in the '20s. But somehow, this great man went from saving people to butchering them’ and oof.

The whole trope of otherwise good-but-flawed people getting corrupted to evil and doing terrible things (and there’s no doubt that he’s done terrible things) gets me right in the id. Corruption and redemption arcs are welcome in all their forms for either character, as is the all-encompassing guilt that comes from realising what you’ve done. I’m also just generally interested in the idea of them finding common ground as fellow victims of the house, even if Vannacutt remains wholly evil, and that would affect how they might relate to each other, before and after Pritchett’s death. And pre-canon too – why does Pritchett react like that to finding out Vannacutt’s around?

Explore the ship in whatever way you choose. The gen dynamics fascinate me just as much, but shipwise, anything is welcome, from fucked up extremely dubious consent, where the sex is part of the house’s way of torturing Pritchett (potentially with some medical kink mixed in, but anything where Pritchett gets strapped down?), to anything on the enemy-fucking scale, to something a little more sympathetic where we do actually get a glimpse of a glimmer of goodness in Vannacutt. Or maybe the house is fucking with them both by making them fuck each other?

Optional General Prompts

• This House has a Personality and that Personality is Fucked Up – And adolescence is tough enough as it is, without having to go through it while you're living in a haunted house that can't seem to decide whether it wants to fuck you or kill you.
• Explore the deaths of Pritchett's father and grandfather, because it feels like there are a lot of unanswered questions there. Did the house exert any influence over them? Could Pritchett’s father have murdered his grandfather? How did his father really die?
• A both hates and loves how good the sex with B is – Vannacutt/Pritchett (because the more I think about shipping them, the harder I ship them.)
• Character is forced to work with someone who scares them – I’m intrigued by what it means to be a ghost and how much free will they have. Pritchett has to work with Vannacutt for reasons (especially delighted by the idea of this considering how Pritchett crapped himself when he recognised Vannacutt’s description).
• So how does Pritchett manage to resist the Shadow at the end in order to free Sara and Eddie, when seemingly no one else was able to resist?
• Something revolving around the stained glass ceiling, because creepy though it is is just suggest a marginally less evil side to Vannacutt and the idea of good people being corrupted by evil will always fascinate me.
• Character with trauma is freaked out and turned on by getting tied up – Specifically thinking of Pritchett here, the poor little bastard. XD
• Conversations In Liminal Spaces On The Border Of One World And Another – Ghost!Pritchett and ghost!Vannacutt have a conversation.
• Evil!Pritchett – A canon-divergent fic where Pritchett isn’t so resistant to the house. How would that affect canon?
• Entering someone's dreams/nightmares – Vannacutt and/or the Shadow enter Pritchett’s dreams, where pre-, during, or post-canon.
• Time Travel Fix-It – Pritchett travels back in time to the 20s-30s, and finds himself caught up in events at the asylum. Could he potentially change the way events pan out? (The actual fix-it is optional here)
• Time Travel - Character meets their child self – Ghost!Pritchett realises it’s possible to travel through time and interact with his younger self.
• Vannacutt manages to escape the house. There’s a deleted scene (after the credits roll in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdo8voI87LI) in which Vannacutt brings the real Jennifer Jenzen to the house, and another scene where his spot being tortured is taken by Price. Which leads me to wonder if it’s possible for him to buy his freedom, or if he’s figured out a way to outwit the house.
• Explore what the hell was going on with that chair. Was Vannacutt listening to the Darkness, or was it potentially a seduction/sex thing?
• Corruption Arc – Either for Vannacutt or for Pritchett. Or, conversely, a redemption arc for Vannacutt, or Vannacutt getting a redemption arc while Pritchett goes the other way. I really love the idea of the house seducing people into evil (the second film goes harder on that, and iirc explicitly states that Vannacutt wasn’t always a monster), and the question of whether someone who’s done terrible things can really be redeemed.
• Eldritch Architecture – I’d love to see something that goes hard on the Lovecraftian elements in the plot, the idea of this ancient nameless evil existing even before the house was built, and of what the Darkness at the heart of the house really is.
• Tentacles made them do it – Probably no surprises that I have Pritchett/Vannacutt in mind here.

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The Lurking Fear (1994)

Requested Ships:
Dr. Haggis/Cathryn Farrell
Requested Freeforms:
Action With Gore, Angst With Gore, Horror With Gore, Hurt/Comfort With Gore

Note: The full film is up on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7GZu2GofGM. It starts about 37 minutes in.

As far as I can remember, I don’t think his first name is mentioned at any point, but by the looks of that sign outside his surgery, it starts with an I. :D

CANON-SPECIFIC GORE SUGGESTIONS:

• The creatures: cannibalism, rooms littered with bones, a charnel house of body parts
• Violent attacks on the people of Leffert's Corner, bite wounds, evisceration, dragging corpses or living people through small spaces with all the resulting breaking of bones
• Descriptions of wounds, whether in action, horror, or hurt/comfort, exposed viscera and bone, deep bites, plentiful blood.
• Patching up wounds, standing vigil by the bedside of a severely injured loved one
• Childbirth and all the resulting gore from that, particularly if something goes wrong and it becomes necessary to perform a c-section or if they're under siege from the creatures.
• Thank God We're Alive Sex while covered in blood, or Fuck We're Going to Die sex in captivity or otherwise desperate circumstances
• Scars, how they got them, what they look like, etc
• Watching loved ones die

~~

God, I had so much fun watching this. It’s very short and kiiinda trashy, inexplicably mashing up Lovecraft with a London gangster subplot, but 1.) I appreciate how firmly it commits to in media res (even the prologue flashback opens with the people of Leffert’s Corners fully aware that the creatures exist), and, 2.) oh GOD do I adore Cathryn and Dr Haggis, both the individual characters and their ‘us against the world’ dynamic, whatever the hell their relationship is, or was, or might have been. <3<3<3 Oh, and the basic horror concept of monsters living in a cave trope (along the lines of The Descent, if you've seen it) is a bulletproof trope for me, and I love this particular film's take on it with the creatures burrowing up into people's houses and nowhere in town being safe.

For Cathryn, I love that whole thing of her having to take over the commando role from her sister, even though it’s not really a role that fits her naturally. She’s so tough, but vulnerable at the same time. And Dr Haggis, ohhhh baby: he’s a damaged, chain-smoking (even around sweating dynamite. DUDE. XD), bitter as fuck, alcoholic broken man, but at the same time he absolutely steps the fuck up when it comes to people needing medical attention and he’s so protective towards Beth and Cathryn... Uhm, not to mention the adoring stoic hearteyes he makes at Cathryn throughout. I love him so much and I just want him to have nice things. Or at least to survive so he can suffer some more.

They’re both so bruised by whatever’s gone on before the film starts. We never really see anything of what they were before or what their lives were really like: we’re just plunged into this semi post-apocalyptic warzone with no real explanation. He’s pretty clearly pining for her, but their conversation at the church door suggests the feeling is mutual, and I am just so here to see their relationship explored, whether it be a look at what might have happened between them pre-canon, or possibly a post-canon fix-it (or a fix-it to make it worse) where he survives. I love the way they work together, and the dynamic they’ve fallen into, and their shared grim resignation and determination to fight. They’re just together, this mismatched quietly pining little battle-couple, while their town falling to hell around them, and I ship them so hard.

I’d love to see something that explores pre-canon, because the film really does does drop us right smack in the middle of things, with virtually no explanation of what happened before. How did the townspeople finally figure out the creatures existed, and how long has it been common knowledge? Why haven’t they left? Or a canon-divergent fic where things shake out differently: maybe his injuries weren’t quite that serious which means he survives and she has to patch him up? Or the Martenses haven’t quite all been killed and come after them looking for revenge? Or give me a moment between them: have they ever hooked up while drunk or had inadvisable ‘thank god we’re alive’ sex? Oh, and pining is extremely welcome, especially mutual pining.

The film and pairing also hits a very specific trope which is like CATNIP to me: a physically unprepossessing man uncomfortably aware of how powerless he is to protect the woman he’s with from men who are stronger than he is, whether or not the woman can take care of herself (and in this case Cathryn very much can take care of herself). It gets me every damn time. *eyes*

Optional General Prompts

• Battle-couple – They just work so well together. I’d love to see some moments of them working together, because I’m so drawn to their dynamic, especially since fighting doesn’t necessarily come easily to her. Are they fighting by each other’s side, or it it a case of her fighting and him patching her up afterwards? Or him talking her through patching him up because he’s the one who got injured?
• Love in the time of horror and misery – Something else I love is the whole bleak atmosphere of the virtually deserted town. Everything’s crumbling and worn down, there are holes everywhere where the creatures have burrowed through, and everything is falling apart. It’s almost post-apocalyptic, except the world is still going on around them. Show me them them falling in love, or quiet moments of tenderness, affection and loyalty in the middle of the world going to hell around them.
• Alternate Universe - the big bad wins – They’ve lost and been captured by the creatures, and have nothing to do but try to escape, or trying to support and comfort each other through it, or have ‘fuck it we’re going to die’ despair sex.
• Bathing/Washing - After a fight, the two of them hole up together to wash off the gore.
• A 5 Times fic showing the gradual change in Leffert's Corner over time as the townsfolk gradually begin to realise something is wrong.
• Character A falls asleep on B's shoulder – Their relationship has so many opportunities for moments of quiet intimacy and emotional hurt/comfort. And pining. Lots and lots of pining.
• Character A has been crying and tries to hide it but B still notices it – I’m good with either one of them being the crying character here. Maybe he’s exhausted patching people up, or someone’s died despite all his best efforts, or she’s been coasting on adrenaline for too long and is finally starting to crumble. I adore their dynamic so much, and the idea of him being the only person she lets see her in a moment of weakness is the most delicious thing.
• Scars – Maybe a Five Times fic cataloguing their scars (or just hers), whether they’re caused by the creatures or not.
• Gently touching a character's scar(s) – As an excuse for hurt/comfort or tender emotional sex? I’m good with either. Or both.
• A canon-divergent fix-it where Dr Haggis survives his injuries, which means Cathryn has to patch him up post-canon.
• Cigarettes – You can probably count the number of minutes he’s without a cigarette on one hand. XD Give me all the descriptions of smoking, maybe a traumatised moment when his hand is shaking so hard he can’t light his cigarette so she has to do it for him.
• Functional Alcoholic Not So Functional At The Moment – Here for the hurt/comfort of this, whether the emotional hurt/comfort of them being there for each other when they’re scared or grieving, or the physical hurt/comfort of her helping him to bed, and then maybe sticking around afterwards, and the two of them bedsharing, whether entirely platonic or otherwise. Also here for drunken confessions, or maybe him just being less able to hide the way he feels about her while he’s drunk. I love how important they clearly are to each other, but also how frustrated she is with his drinking, even while she obviously gets why he does it.
• Childbirth - Because you can't have the Chekhov's Gun of a heavily pregnant woman and not have her give birth in a highly stressful set-piece, come on. So how about a canon-divergent scene where Beth, Cathryn and Haggis are beseiged down by the monsters, and at the worst possible moment, Beth goes into labour.
• That line of Cathryn's: "This is what I thought the end of the world was going to look like."? What if it really was the end of the world? Give me a post-apocalyptic AU. Maybe they're dealing with a zombie apocalypse, or creatures much like the canon ones but more widespread, or they're carriers for a disease.
• In that first scene with them, while they're outside his surgery, he makes a reference to them making some kind of bargain, presumably an agreement to stick around in town to kill the creatures. How did that bargain come about?

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Re-Animator

Requested Ship:
Herbert West/Dan Cain
Requested Freeforms:
Action With Gore, Angst With Gore, Horror With Gore, Humor With Gore, Hurt/Comfort With Gore

Canon-specific DNW: Please pretend that the scenes of sexual violence against women in Beyond Re-Animator never happened. References to the Meg/Hill scene in the first film are fine though, and I’m also fine with noncon by a third party where Herbert is the victim.

CANON-SPECIFIC GORE SUGGESTIONS:

• Canon-typical experiments (including experiments on animals), descriptions of corpses (reanimated or otherwise) and body parts, further examples of morbid doodling with human body parts
• From bullets to bone saws: different methods of putting down the dead and their respective pros and cons
• Visual descriptions of them being splattered with blood and gore and viscera, e.g. that moment when Herbert is soaked up to his elboes in blood? More like that, please.
• Patching each other up after an experiment goes wrong, performing battlefield surgery and stitching up wounds, injuries, gunshot wounds, stabbings, evisceration
• Thank God We're Alive Sex while covered in blood
• Canon-typical over the top violence and gore, biting, hacking reaniated apart with axes, etc
• Quiet moments of respite when surrounded by the gory remains of whatever you've just been doing, whether experiment or fighting the dead
• Body horror, descriptions of the Bride, mutilated or monstrously adapted experiemts, exposed viscera, sinews and tendons
• Fighting the dead, doing everything in your power to protect the other person, acts of violent desperation

~~

I fell absolutely head over heels in love with the first Re-Animator film from the first moment I saw it – it’s so much damn fun to watch, funny, gory, obscene, and I think Herbert West might actually be one of my favourite characters in anything ever (and while I have some reservations about the sequels I do really like them both). As for Dan/Herbert, I shipped it right from the scene where they bring the cat back, and specifically from the moment where they’re side by side with weapons in hand, although with Herbert hanging back a little bit and clinging onto Dan’s shirt, because obviously.

The way from that moment they’re just… together, and there’s no way Dan is going to do anything other than help Herbert. I love that, and I love the way Dan sticks with Herbert through thick or thin (right up until the moment that he doesn’t, but more of that in a minute). So many things about this ship are tailor-made to my id: the combination of earnest/obsessive and likeable/abrasive, the constant touching with Herbert grabbing Dan at every single opportunity (this in particular just freaking delights me XD), the potential for hurt/comfort and protectiveness, and a complicated mixture of loyalty, manipulation, and betrayal that will get me every damn time.

I’d love anything that goes hard on the hurt/comfort and mutual protectiveness between Herbert and Dan, or anything that captures the tone and bonkers exuberance, gore, humour and horror of the films. Maybe something that explores what happens in between the films, especially between the first and second films, because damn, are there some unanswered questions there – like how did Meg’s heart come to be outside of her body, and how the hell did Herbert manage to persuade Dan to go to Peru with him? And any of the reunions where an apparently dead Herbert pops up again. I also cannot emphasise enough how here I am for Herbert getting menaced and/or whumped.

I know it’s a deleted scene, but I find it really interesting that it doesn’t seem to be the prospect of having to give Dr Hill the credit for his work that gets Herbert to break the hypnosis, but Hill threatening Dan’s life. And the way he immediately abandons their current work to switch focus onto making the Bride to stop Dan from moving out. On the one hand, it’s a terrible manipulative thing to do, but on the other hand… *eyes* And also, what the hell was Herbert’s ultimate plan with the Bride anyway? How did he see that whole thing panning out long-term, beyond a short-term fix to keep Dan from leaving?

And then there’s the third film. While I have reservations about it, Dan turning state’s evidence on Herbert actually isn’t one of them. I am a complete sucker for complicated relationships, and I actually really love the way it shifts the balance of their relationship, especially considering the unfortunate consequences and the hellhole of a prison Herbert ends up getting thrown into. The way it hints at the way he’s suffered without ever quite going into details (the years in solitary), along with that moment when the warden hits him… and Herbert’s very deliberate act of revenge on the warden, which I firmly believe is something the Herbert of thirteen years previously would not have contemplated in a million fucking years, just shows how much the experience has changed him. That, and the way he reacts when Howard calls him doctor when they first meet. Mmph. It’s all very painful in a way that hits me right in the id.

I’m also delighted by how differently Herbert acts towards Howard, particularly at the end of the third film, where he comes across Howard cradling Laura’s head, looks at him for a moment, and then just effectively shrugs and yoinks his ID card. It’s a detail that brings home just how important Dan is to him. As far as I’m concerned, at the end of the 3rd film he is 100% going off to find Dan, and I would love something that explores them meeting again post-canon, and how the dynamics between them might shift with a Herbert who’s hurt at the betrayal and bruised by everything he’s been through and a Dan who’s not quite so naive and trusting.

Optional General Prompts

• 5 Times Dan Assumed Herbert was Dead – Because in various places, namely the screenplay and the novelisation, he is explicitly stated to have died at the end of the first film and I like the idea of him repeatedly appearing to die and popping up again mostly unscathed (and I’m amused that the one film where he doesn’t appear to die at the end is the one in which Dan does not appear. XD).
• Accidental Baby Acquisition – I mean, they’re doctors. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that they might find themselves in a situation where they have to deliver a baby in a crisis (possibly involving zombies), and end up separated from the mother and stuck having to look after the baby.
• Addiction - Character tries to distract Addict from addiction with sex – Dan tries to break Herbert’s reliance on the serum.
• Alternate Universe - Russian Doll Fusion – I love time loops in all their forms anyway, but this one in particular, with its focus on constant, unrelenting death, and the way the discovery that the loop is being shared with another person would play out with these two is perfect. (and for time loops in general, I’m amused by the way Herbert would probably adapt his work to take full advantage of the loop (er, an endless supply of fresh corpses with no consequences – hey, how is it murder if they don’t stay dead? – having to memorise the results because he can’t write them down, etc.)
• Hurt/Comfort – Hurt/Comfort is always welcome, but one thing I’d love to see is Dan helping Herbert through withdrawal from the serum. Mainly because I really wish that deleted scene had been included in the film. I have some quiet headcanons about Herbert’s addiction to reagent, and amongst them is the fact that avoiding sleep is really, really not a good idea, and that maybe the times when he’s at his most batshit are the times when he’s suffering from chronic sleep-deprivation. All of which convinces Dan to help him to break the habit.
• Bad Guys Made Them Do It – and every other iteration of Something Made Them Do It.
• Betray them to save them – Dan’s presence looms so large in Beyond Reanimator even though he doesn’t appear. I can definitely see a situation where Dan got to a point where he couldn’t see any other choice, and he genuinely believed if things carried on the way they were that Herbert was going to get himself killed. I’d love to see that decision explored and the fallout when/if they’re reunited and he realises what Herbert’s been through.
• Hurt/Comfort - Character with injured hands requires assistance (which turns sexual) – Here for the hurt/comfort and smut potential of this (and also very fond of one character shaving another.)
• Inspired by the novelisation, Dan is completely taken by surprise when Herbert unexpectedly turns out to be massively into ice hockey. Maybe it’s a hobby he only occasionally spares the time for, but either way Dan is extremely weirded out by the prospect of Herbert going to bars and talking to fans.
• You Hurt Me More Than Anything; But Being Without You Hurts More – Herbert goes in search of Dan after the end of Beyond Reanimator. Is he planning on revenge (even if he ultimately can’t face going through with it?) Does something else happen as a catalyst that forces them to work together again? I’d love to see all the messy hurt/comfort and emotional fallout of everything that happened.
• Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence – How might things have played out if Meg hadn’t been so hostile to Herbert from the get-go? Maybe if she hadn’t been there when he came about the room, allowing Dan to prime her for his oddball roommate beforehand? And if she hadn’t walked in on them bringing Rufus back, which meant that Dan wouldn’t have fallen out with Dean Halsey, who then wouldn’t have died, etc etc. It’s interesting how differently Herbert treats Francesca. While he’s not exactly polite to her (XD) he tolerates her presence in a way he doesn’t really tolerate Meg’s, and I can’t help but read that as at least partially being the result of Meg’s attitude towards him.
• Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence – A canon-divergent AU where Francesca isn’t on the scene and the creation of the Bride is much more successful, and she isn’t quite so much of a monster. Mainly because I’m really curious what the hell Herbert actually had in mind beyond keeping Dan with him at all costs. (And for the record, I’m completely open to Herbert/Dan/The Bride in whatever form that takes.)
• Hurt/Comfort - Technically awful attempts at comfort are actually very comforting – Okay, so Herbert is pretty terrible at doing the whole comfort thing, but the fact that he even tries is pretty damn significant.
• Road trip after the end of the world – Any post-apocalypse scenario will do, but I am particularly fond of a zombie apocalypse, which seems particularly apt for this canon. Was it Herbert’s fault, or was he entirely innocent for once? Where are they going? What’s the plan? And how does reagent factor into things?
• Estranged Characters - Injured A shows Up on B's doorstep Saying "I didn't know where else to go" – My first thought with this was Herbert turning up out of the blue, but what if it’s the other way around? What if, potentially after Herbert’s prison break, he considered hunting Dan down, but reluctantly decided not to follow through, only for Dan to suddenly turn up unexpectedly, and turns out he’s been keeping track of Herbert all these years and somehow or other the shit’s about to hit the fan?

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Thanks for reading!