Limited Theatrical Release Letter 2020

Limited Theatrical Release Letter 2020

AO3 Username: StopTalkingAtMe

Hi, Mystery Author, and welcome to my letter for the 2020 Limited Theatrical Release Exchange letter. I hadn’t exactly planned on all my requested canons being horror films, but it just sort of worked out that way. Some of my requests may be longer than others, but please don't take this as an indication that I want any request more than the others.

Table of Contents

General Likes, Smut Likes and DNWs
Anaconda
Les Affamés | Ravenous
The Fog
Thir13en Ghosts

General Likes and DNWs

General Likes

• Character studies and introspection
• Loneliness and isolation
• Atmospheric description, scenery porn, sensory description
• World-building and character development. Backstory
• Horror of all kinds, particularly body horror, folk horror, Lovecraftian horror, and atmospheric ghost stories.
• The Closed Circle trope (the most famous example is And Then There Were None) in both horror and mysteries.
• Case-fic.
• Death fic, mourning, and introspective fics dealing with one character's reaction to another's death.
• Endings of all kinds, happy, bleak or bittersweet.
• Canon-divergent AUs, especially post-canon ones where the bad guys win.
• Older characters finding love
• Horror scenarios which involve being trapped in dark, claustrophobic places (especially caves) with monsters (As in The Descent)

Smut Likes

• Consensual sex both gentle and rough
• Fellatio and cunnilingus (especially cunnilingus with fingering)
• Mild bondage and other forms of gentle restraint, holding a person down or restraining their wrists.
• Dubcon when requested, including sex pollen and ‘no no yes’ situations.
• Realistically imperfect but still pleasurable sex (e.g. taking factors into account such as age, one party feeling shy or vulnerable etc,)
• Ghost sex
• For vampires, bloodplay and biting
• Threesomes (and orgies)
• Sex in grimy, grim, uncomfortable places
• Tentacle sex, entirely consensual or dubiously so
• Monster fucking

DNWs

• A/B/O
• Noncon (Unless requested. Extremely dubious dubcon is also fine if prompted)
• Dubcon involving unaroused characters
• Incest (unless requested)
• 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
• Fisting
• Sexualised lactation
• Any variation of the word 'come' in a sexual context spelled as 'cum' (please use 'come', 'came', 'precome' etc)

Anaconda

Requested ships: Terri Flores/Paul Serone
Requested medium: Fic

*Clarification for my noncon DNW for this fandom: By 'no violent non-con', I mean no actual physical harm (other than slight bruises) and keep it mostly painless (i.e. mild pain that comes indirectly from struggling against bonds rather than being directly inflicted is fine). I'd prefer the prevailing emotion to be one of anger and/or pragmatism rather than trauma, but a bit of trauma is okay (maybe an awareness of it being something she'll have to deal with in the future, but right now she has to focus on survival). And aroused victim only, please.

~~

I have a huge soft spot for monster movies, and Anaconda is one of my favourites. I unashamedly love it. It’s a fun film to watch, I like all the characters, and something about the setting of a bunch of people isolated on a boat hits my id hard. Then on top of that there’s the Terri/Paul Serone thing, which… well… There are very, very few things that hit my id harder than the trope of a woman trying to distract the bad guy by pretending to seduce him (blame it on watching Disney’s Aladdin at an impressionable age). This ship is skeevy and messed up, so dubcon, sex pollen, and forced seduction are all possibilities here… Or alternatively maybe something goes wrong, the rest of the crew goes missing, leaving the two of them stranded, and Terri realises she has to go through with her pretended seduction.

Silly popcorn movie or not, I actually find the character dynamics in it kind of interesting and there’s potentially quite a lot to explore. I like that the characters don’t always act as expected, such as when Gary throws his lot in with Serone, and the pompous English dickhead (there’s always one) much more likeable in a moment of crisis. And then there’s Serone himself: simultaneously revolting, sinister and OTT. I can’t help being delighted at Jon Voight’s scenery chewing, and kind of want to know more about the character. I also like the idea of exploring the conflict in having to rely on someone who is simultaneously a threat to your life, and I would be particularly interested in explorations of his character where he isn’t just the cartoon villain he almost becomes in canon, but treated as a rounded character, ruthless and brutal as he is. Is all the priest stuff real or is it an act? How differently would things have gone if they’d just cooperated with him? I’m fascinated by the way he seems to tolerate insults from the women in a way that he doesn’t from the men. Look at the way he immediately slaps Westridge down when he tries to stand up to him, for example. It feels like a very different dynamic to the way he behaves with the women (less leering, for a start).

Setting the ship aside, I really do love the film purely for itself. Ignore the ship completely and just give me more canon-style survival horror and I will be happy, I swear.

Please note that this request is specifically for the first film. References to the sequels are fine, but I'm perfectly happy for them to be completely ignored. The only thing I will say is that I really like the imagery of the blood orchids in the second film (even if you use absolutely nothing else about it except its appearance and name), so if at any point you’re looking for a sex pollen delivery system, then… *shrug*.

Optional Prompts

• An AU where Steven and Serone come to an agreement about which way to travel so there’s no need for the wasp. (Maybe Serone manages to persuade him or they’ve met previously?) How would that change the course of the film, with perhaps the others suspecting him slightly less? After all, he was right about the tribe...
• Something goes wrong, and Terri and Serone are separated from the rest of the crew (or everyone else is killed). Set-up for sex pollen or something more serious. Whether they’re shipped or not (and please feel free to make this gen if you’d prefer), I’d really like to see some exploration of their dynamic. How you approach this probably depends on how suspicious Terri is of him: whether he’s already revealed himself as a villain, or if her suspicions haven’t yet been confirmed (but maybe she’s warming towards him because he saved her life, even if he is a massive fucking weirdo). I’d be happy with either. Also open to her seducing him to prevent him from killing her/leaving her stranded.
• An exploration of where the snakes come from. Use the sequels if you want or ignore them completely and make shit up. I do like the aesthetic of the orchids in the second film (and the, uh, giant snake orgy), but there shouldn’t be any need to have watched the film to use them. Does it occur to Terri at any point that there may in fact be more of a market for a documentary about a massive 40 ft anaconda than the original topic?
• The attempt to distract Serone goes horribly wrong and she has to go through with it (perhaps an AU there aren’t enough of them left to overpower him), or an extremely dubiously consensual no no yes situation. Or with Gary dead, Denise is particularly vulnerable, and so Terri seduces Serone thinking she’s protecting her. Look, I just want some follow-through on that scene where she pretends to seduce him, okay?
• Why is Serone so obsessed with that damn snake? Is it really purely about money, or is there something more at work? Is it any snake, or is it purely that specific snake that he’s after? And I am, as always, up for backstory and character development.
• I’d love to see something Lovecraftian here, exploring obsession and the possibility that the anacondas are harbingers of an Elder God. Maybe Terri gets sucked into it in his wake, and the near-madness of facing it creates a kind of bond between them, which she can’t escape afterwards as much as she hates him (and the idea of him worshipping a Lovecraftian creature shines a whole new light on why he’s so snippy about being described as a ‘failed priest’).

Les Affamés | Ravenous

Requested characters/ships: Bonin/Tania
Zoé
Requested medium: Fic

~~

I’ve always loved zombie films. This one (a French-Canadian horror film currently on UK Netflix) has its flaws, but I really, really enjoyed it anyway. I loved the off-kilter in media res opening and how you’re not quite sure what’s going on at first, particularly when we first meet Bonin (<3), the creepiness of some of those early shots in the forest, and how saturated with colour it is (so rare in zombie & post-apocalyptic media), and the found family relationship between Bonin, Tania and Zoé. It’s also gorgeously shot, and I particularly loved the behaviour of the zombies: the Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe that I got from them at a couple of points, and the towers of human belongings that they built, which was such a creepy image and all the more so for how inexplicable it was.

I was a little disappointed with the ending, so would particularly like to see a canon divergent AU where events go differently, but I should stress that this doesn’t necessarily have to mean a fix-it. I am fine with bleak endings, believe me. I’m also fine with the requested ship taking a back seat to the zombie-related horror.

Optional Prompts

• Zombie-related horror. One thing I particularly like in the film is the way it handles the moments of tension: the need to be silent to avoid attracting the zombies, and the way the zombies themselves behave, the way they stand so motionless until something triggers them. It’s creepy as hell. I just love post-apocalyptic stuff anyway, so anything along those lines, whether the primary antagonist is human or zombie, will always be welcome.
• Post-canon and futurefic, whether it’s canon-compliant or an AU where the ending has played out differently (fix-it not necessarily required). The film is set fairly early in the outbreak – what will the world look like a month or a year or a decade down the line?
• Or alternatively, something pre-canon. How did the outbreak first begin, and what were their first encounters with zombies?
• More of Tania and Bonin. I loved Bonin so much: his terrible, terrible jokes (and the way the other characters react to them), and the quietly understated trauma behind the scene when we first meet him. I will always love messy apocalypse relationships (the ones that you just know would probably never happen if it wasn’t for the end of the world, and all the awkwardness that comes as a result), and I really love the one that forms between him and Tania, as well as with Zoé. I’d love some more found family stuff, whether the focus is on Tania and Bonin, on Zoé, or all three. Also here for messy apocalypse sex, whether its ‘thank god we’re alive’ sex, or ‘shit, we’re going to die’ sex.

The Fog

Requested characters/ships: Andy Wayne
Requested medium: Fic

~~

Another favourite horror film, and one I will never get bored of watching. I love how slowly it builds, the setting and the quietly sinister storyline: how it is at heart a pretty traditional ghost story, with added gore. I was a little bit at a loss as to who to nominate for this as I don’t have any particular ships for it, and basically just want *everything.* In the end I picked Andy because of the particular vulnerability of being a kid and because the idea of him returning to Antonio Bay as an adult really appeals, but I’m not kidding when I say I’d love anything for this film, and would be happy to see something about any of the characters, living or dead, if you’d prefer to focus on someone else and leave Andy out entirely.

While I do love gore, the moments I particularly like in this film are the quieter, creepier moments – Captain Blake’s voice ranting over the radio while the piece of wood drips water, or the shots of the roiling fog, and the ghost story it opens with. Supposedly, it was originally meant to be a very different kind of film with the gore being a later addition to make it more marketable, and while I love the film as is, part of me would love to see that alternative version and how it could have worked. But if you’d rather go with something closer to the original, I’m absolutely fine with gore too.

Optional Prompts

• Future fic – Andy returns to Antonio Bay as an adult. Is he still haunted by what happened, or has he come to believe he imagined it all? Does his presence there set it all going again, or did it never really end in the first place? Or maybe he’s grown up to be driven to investigate the supernatural and there’s another ghost to deal with – Father Malone perhaps, still haunting the church?
• An AU version of the plot (or just part of it) reimagined without the gore and the overt horror. What would that look like? How would it work?
• Follow-on from the end of the film. Has Blake’s thirst for vengeance been satisfied, or is there more to come?
• A character development piece focusing on Father Malone. Perhaps his sacrifice at the end of the film seen through Andy’s eyes?
• Something playing off the ghost story at the start of the film which is such a wonderfully atmospheric moment. I love the idea of the events of the film going on to form their own legend told over a campfire. (Possibly this could be combined with the futurefic prompt?)
• Something that focuses on Elizabeth? Does she stick around after the end of the film? And what exactly is going on? Supposedly the ghosts are targetting the descendants of the conspirators, so why target her? (I’m particularly thinking about the mortuary scene here). Wrong place wrong time, or is there more to it than that? Incorporate the twist of the remake if you want, or have Blake develop an obsession with her or her with him (always here for dubcon ghost sex, btw)
• Explore the conflict between Blake as a betrayed innocent party with a potentially valid reason to seek revenge and what he has become by the time of canon events. The way he burns up when he grasps the cross suggests there’s something unholy going on, but he was a good man once. I’d love to see something that delves into the horror of what he’s become, and how they’re trapped, punishing innocents for what was done to them by men long-dead.

Thir13en Ghosts

Requested characters/ships: Dennis Rafkin/Kathy Kriticos Kathy Kriticos/Cyrus Kriticos Dennis Rafkin/Cyrus Kriticos Dennis Rafkin
Requested medium: Fic

~~

I completely unashamedly love this film and everything about it: the bereaved family who think a sudden bequest from their estranged uncle is going to solve all their financial problems (I mean, good lord, did they actually pay attention to that video will?), the early noughties ghost aesthetic, the ghost-vision goggles, the clockwork workings of the mansion, the closed-circle tropey goodness of the plot, and most of all the characters, particularly Dennis.

Dennis is virtually everything I adore in a character: touch-starved, self-hating, deeply conflicted, and painfully, agonisingly lonely. Anything that explores his struggles with his psychic abilities, loneliness and inability to touch people is right up my alley and I'm pretty much guaranteed to love it. I ship him with both Cyrus and Kathy, or potentially both at once.

For Kathy, I'd really love to see something that builds on what we see of her character. In canon she has to keep things together for the sake of her grieving father and death-obsessed little brother, but perhaps after she learns about the existence of the occult things change. Maybe she's drawn to occultism despite (or because of) what happened, and finds herself following in Cyrus's footsteps. Or a darker Kathy who's working with Cyrus himself, either in a canon-divergent AU where Cyrus survived or where he's been brought back somehow. Maybe she brought him back thinking she could control him.

Consider my incest DNW waived for Kathy/Cyrus, although I'd prefer if the focus was more on being seduced to the dark side by an older man, than on him technically being a family member. It also isn't clear how old Kathy is in canon, but personally I see her as college-aged in canon, maybe 19-21).

Ghosts are ALWAYS welcome, as is anything exploring the house or Cyrus's particular brand of ridiculously flamboyant occultism. Again, I have no issue with character death and mourning, or blood and gore.

Optional Prompts

• A time-loop set during the events of the film where Dennis keeps dying in a variety of unpleasant ways.
• After the death of her brother and/or father, Kathy returns to the house in order to use its powers for herself. Maybe she finds Dennis there and he tries to stop her.
• Something quieter and sweeter exploring a relationship between Kathy and Dennis where he manages to overcome his difficulties with touching other people and they gradually heal from the experience. This could have a happyish ending, or it could be utterly devastatingly bleak, so perhaps at the end it's revealed that they're both dead and trapped in a containment cube and he's been hiding this from her to protect her.
• Architectural horror — something focused around that gloriously OTT clockwork house. Maybe something like that isn’t quite so easy to destroy.
• Dennis and Cyrus and their fucked-up relationship, however you choose to present it: platonic or otherwise. Bonus points for making it vaguely dub-conny and deeply manipulative. Perhaps Cyrus is somehow able to overcome the psychic touching issue with some sort of drug; if you've been desperate for human contact all your life that'd be hard to resist.
• Came-back-wrong: Dennis or Cyrus. Or both.

Thanks for reading!