Multifandom Horror Letter 2021

[corvusumbranox]

Multifandom Horror 2021 Letter

AO3 Username: StopTalkingAtMe

Welcome to my Multifandom Horror letter, Dear Creator. I am a huge horror fan, so I’m pretty damn excited about this one. Please don’t feel constrained by the horror free-forms I’ve requested – consider this a go ahead to write any kind of horror that takes your fancy. I love it all, from quietly understated to full on blood-and-guts. I also love every kind of ending, from happy, to bittersweet, to utterly bleak. Some of the sections here may be longer than others but please don’t read anything into that – I’d be thrilled to receive a fic any one of the fandoms or ships I’ve requested. All requests are for both art and fic.

Table of Contents

• General Likes
• Art Likes
• Smut Likes
• DNWs
• Anaconda
• Britannia
• Crossover Fandoms
• Doctor Who (1963)
• Sapphire & Steel

General Likes and DNWs

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
• Case-fic.
• Whump
• Endings of all kinds, happy, bleak or bittersweet.
• Canon-divergent AUs, especially post-canon ones where the bad guys win.
• Pining
• Descriptions of scars
• Main Character Death and grief.
• Crossovers (If you have reason to believe I know and like the other fandom, go for it).
• Dimension Travel
• Mirror Universe
• Post-Apocalypse
• Stranded Together With No Way Home
• Time Loops
• that fic genre w/ long lowercase title (&parenthetical) that’s sexy moody multilayered & complicated

Smut Likes

• Sex Pollen and aftermath
• Aliens Made Them Do It
• Angry Sex
• Careful Sex with an Injured Partner
• Clothed Sex
• Comfort Sex
• Dubcon when requested (mutual dubcon of the something-made-us-do-it kind is ALWAYS okay even when not explicitly requested)
• Foreplay - Kissing down partner's spine as you slide down/unzip their top
• Hate Sex - Characters having hate sex gradually catch feelings
• Kisses pressed against the back of the neck and/or along bare/mostly-bare shoulders
• Mild bondage and other forms of gentle restraint
• Morning after (amazing sex the night before)
• Oral Sex
• Rough Sex - Lots of Scratching and Biting and Hair-Grabbing/Pulling and Holding Partner(s) Down
• Sex in grimy, grim, uncomfortable places
• Sex - Loving Soft Gentle Submission to Inexperienced Character
• Sex - Touch-Starved Character So Overwhelmed They Don't Know What to Do With Themselves
• Sex Pollen - Both/All Affected
• Threesomes

General Art Likes

In terms of artwork I'm open to a lot of different things, but I'll particularly love something which captures the atmosphere of canon, whether that be beautiful scenery, or something grim and gritty. When it comes to horror art, I’d love anything from full on blood-and-guts to something more subtle, whether creepy and atmospheric, or images which on the surface look perfectly lovely until you start looking a bit more closely and realise that something is very, very wrong. I love contrast and lots of rich intricate detail, but I'm also open to simpler art with softer, more muted colours if that's your style. I also quite like diptychs and triptychs, as well as the use of stylised borders, but seriously, anything.

DNWs

• A/B/O
• Noncon (*No violent non-con for Anaconda)
• 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 (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)

Anaconda

Requested Ship: Terri Flores/Paul Serone
Requested Freeforms: Type: Cosmic/Lovecraftian Horror, Type: Monster Horror, Type: Paranormal Horror, Type: Psychological Horror, Type: Survival Horror
Requested Medium: Art and Fic

*Clarification for my Noncon DNW: 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 (see my related request for The River). 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. Is all the priest stuff real or is it an act? 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.

Setting the ship aside, I really do love the film purely for itself. Ignore the ship completely and 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 equally happy for them to be completely ignored. The only thing I will say is that I really like the imagery of the Blood Orchid in the second film, even if you use absolutely nothing about it except its appearance (my sex pollen prompt is probably relevant here).

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.
• 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.

Optional Art Prompts

I mean… snakes? Lots and lots and lots of snakes. Terri as some kind of snake-goddess? I’d love to see some scenery porn for this, or possibly a cut-through scene where we can see on the deck of the boat and underneath and the anaconda can be seen readying to strike while everyone remains completely oblivious. The imagery of the blood orchid? Waterfalls? (It’s fine to ignore the ship here). Terri and Paul having to work together to survive, or fighting each other while surrounded by thousands of snakes.

Britannia

Requested Ship: Lucius/Aulus Plautius
Aulus Plautius/Kerra
Requested Freeforms: Type: Body Horror, Type: Dark Fantasy, Type: Folk Horror, Type: Paranormal Horror, Type: Psychological Horror, Type: Religious Horror
Requested Medium: Art and Fic

Oh god oh god oh god. Right. Sometimes you just come across one of those shows that you absolutely love to bits, which are basically so perfect that they had to be made for you. For me, this is one of those shows. I love it. I love it so much that I'm actually flailing the tiniest little bit at how much I love it. It's so fucking good, omg, and yet I'd barely even heard of it until very recently. I started it knowing virtually nothing about it aside from having watched the trailer: I saw Zoe Wannamaker, Mackenzie Crook, and Julian Rhind-Tutt in the cast list and went in assuming it was going to be a comedy. Ahahaha, no. Although it has made me laugh pretty damn hard a couple of times. But yeah, no, not a comedy. Not in the slightest.

It's gorgeous. I love the visuals, the scenery porn, the ambiguous supernatural themes and how they veeeery gradually get less ambiguous over the course of the series, the weirdly janky but sort of perfect way the music in the opening credits fits with the tone, the creepy fucking visuals of the druids. And the way the Romans react to this vision of Britain too, as this eerie shifting landscape of ghosts and curses and magic. The characters: I love them all. I love everything about it. There isn't a single character or aspect of the show which I wouldn't love to see explored in more detail.

As always, I'd love to see character studies, scenery porn, elements of horror, creepy ambiguity, smut, complicated questions of loyalty and betrayal, canon-divergences, Bad Guys Win!AUs… Seriously, I want everything.

Lucius/Aulus Plautius

I mean, I knew right from the first moment that Aulus was going to be a favourite of mine because I am horribly predicable, but Lucius is fast becoming one of my favourites too. His relationship with Aulus, how long they've known and fought alongside each other, his gradual growing unease as he begins to realise something's not right with Aulus, how freaked out he is by the part he played in the prophecy, his unease with the druids, and the way things are going, and god, the moment when he decides to stop Aulus, which is the most brutal fucking thing. And when we see him again in season 2, in hiding as a deserter, struggling with his grief and guilt over everything he's done, and his gradual search for redemption. I'd love to see their past explored -- we get some hints of the campaigns they've fought together in the past (that story about their time in Egypt *shiver*). And while I'm not quite sure about the Christian themes that are starting to thread through the show, that absolutely does NOT apply to Lucius's arc, because holy crap, am I desperate to know what happens next and for him to meet Cait (god, it killed me when he ran into her father).

And Aulus, Christ, Aulus. I'd love to see him explored. Is he inherently a demon, or is he like Divis in that he's just possessed and the real man is in there somewhere? How long has he been possessed, and at what point did the demon begin to take over? At what point does Lucius begin to realise something is wrong with him, or notice the change in him?

And just the way their relationship is presented in the first season show in general: the shared history, the loyalty kink, the fact that they're both ruthless, brutal men, who end up being changed by the place around them, and the question of how much of Lucius's behaviour happens of his own volition.

Optional Prompts

• Alternate Universe - Bad Guys Win - One thing I love about this series is how completely it's left me guessing. What exactly is Aulus's plan? What would a world where he's won look like and how does Lucius fit into that world? Is there any humanity left in Aulus? Show me Lucius failing Cait, or confronting Aulus in a hopeless last stand.
• Character's enemy is the only one who understands them - Anything exploring the relationship between Aulus and Lucius, whether you treat it as gen or something more. Explore that weird place between betrayal and loyalty, and I'm especially fascinated by the way the show treats free will. It often isn't clear whether characters are acting under their own volition, and this is especially true of Lucius towards the end of the first season. Does he consider going back? Does he come into contact with the druids?
• Dreams bleeding into reality - Perhaps he comes down with a fever. Is Aulus fucking with him (or just fucking him) through his dreams or is he just dreaming? Is there part of him that desperately wants to go back?
• Explore their backstory and shared history. When did they first meet? What was the outcome of what happened at Golgotha, or on any number of the campaigns they’ve fought together, whether it’s set in the past or Lucius being tormented by memories/hallucinations of everything he’s done.
• And speaking of everything Lucius has done, was it in service for Rome or in service for Aulus? Explore his motivations for the betrayal, because that fascinates me. To what extent was he influenced by the druids and/or Aulus? Was there a moment when he realised that every terrible thing he’d done in Rome’s name had really been for Aulus, and to what extent was he aware of that while he was doing it?

Aulus Plautius/Kerra

Daaaamn. :D I shipped them right from their very first meeting when he flirts with her (and possibly a little bit before that too), which made the bit when he parleys with Antedia and realises why they hate each other so much just the most glorious thing to watch XD. Every one of the scenes they share are scorching hot (yeah, even/especially the last one), and I love the antagonistic nature of their relationship. I've already touched on why I love Aulus so much, but god, Kerra is amazing too, and there's a lot to explore about her character in relation to Aulus, such as her bitterness over what happened to her mother, and whether any part of her is drawn to him because she's curious about her Roman heritage. Dubcon is fine for these two, which is probably just as well.

I mean, there's no way this is going to end well given the ship. :D Give me dubiously consensual enemy-fucking, emotional manipulation, 'came back wrong' fic where Aulus brings her back, canon-divergence where Aulus and Kerra maintain their alliance and he manipulates her, or she falls under the Dead Man's influence rather than Phelan, and that leads her back into a relationship with Aulus.

Optional Prompts

• Attempt to revive dead loved one(s) goes horribly right - Okay, 'loved one' is stretching it a bit here, (unless the loved one is neither Aulus or Kerra, which is another option, and potentially a way for him to attempt to manipulate her). Aulus brings Kerra back from the dead.
• Character Finds Out Reality/Their Memories Have Been Rewritten By Love Interest/SO - Kerra has taken Amena's role as Aulus's lover, but is gradually beginning to realise something is very badly wrong.
• Character's enemy is the only one who understands them - Kerra finds herself drawn to him because of what he can tell her about her Roman heritage.
• Evil takes a character's loved one's face to manipulate that character - A canon-divergent AU where Phelan dies rather than Kerra, and Aulus takes on his face or somehow uses an image of him to manipulate her. (I ship Kerra/Phelan too, and see them as having a very claustrophobic upbringing where the two of them only had each other).
• A canon-divergent fic where the siege/betrayal never happens.
• Their final scene together goes… slightly differently.

Optional Art Prompts

For Aulus/Lucius, I mean… look at them. XD I really like the look of the Roman armour, and the visuals of the show as a whole. The druids, the stylised dream sequences, and the creepy elements of horror. A scene from their shared history, Lucius struggling with his burgeoning conscience after Golgotha, with Aulus ‘helping’ him through it. The spear? The hints of Lokka lurking in the shadows. Maybe something going heavy with light and shadow with Lokka lurking in the shadows and some hint of Cait in the light?

Similarly, for Aulus/Kerra, incorporate the look of the series, the druids, etc. All their scenes together are so freaking hot. Maybe try to capture that attraction/animosity dynamic between them, or that final scene between them going differently. A sex scene or post-coital scene with some hint of Lokka lurking in the shadows? Aulus marking her skin, rewriting the life given to her by the druids?

Crossover Fandoms

Requested Ships: Ducky Mallard (NCIS)/Fleur Perkins (Midsomer Murders)
Third Doctor & Jo Grant (Doctor Who 1963) & The Crew of the Lewis and Clark (Event Horizon)
Third Doctor & Jo Grant (Doctor Who 1963) & The Squaddies (Dog Soldiers 2002)
Requested Freeforms: Type: Body Horror, Type: Cosmic/Lovecraftian Horror, Type: Folk Horror, Type: Paranormal Horror, Type: Psychological Horror, Type: Gothic Horror, Type: Science-Fiction Horror
Requested Medium: Art and Fic

Ducky Mallard (NCIS)/Fleur Perkins (Midsomer Murders)

Oh god. Okay, look, yes this ship is potentially cracky as hell, but oh my god do I want it. It hit me out of nowhere while I was coming up with ships for the recent Silver Streak flash exchange, sadly too late for me to nominate it for that exchange, and… now I ship it like burning. I love them both – Fleur is one of my favourite things about the more recent episodes of Midsomer Murders, and I adore Ducky and his stories, and I would love to see them meet and work together, possibly flirting over a corpse or admiring each other’s competence.

It’s entirely up to you how you handle the horror aspects of this and where you choose to set it, although Midsomer Murders seems to lean more horror than NCIS does. That setting seems like it’d be an easier set-up for a crossover (an annual conference of coroners being held in one of the villages of Midsomer because no one bothered to check whether that was a good idea? Yep, checks out.), but if you have any ideas for a fic set in the NCIS world then please go with that instead.

Ghosts, serial killers, ludicrous means of death, the cosmic horror potential of all those murder-villages, competitive or cooperative post-mortems? I love the idea of Midsomer being this notorious murder black spot, possibly as a result of some monstrous cosmic horror entity, and all the weirdness of the ridiculous death rate being acknowledged by the characters. Also here for an And Then There Were None style mystery.

Optional Art Prompts

I’d just love a scene of them together, maybe cooperating (and sharing a moment) over a post-mortem, while hints of something bleak and terrible lurk in the shadows at the corners of the room. Or the hotel he’s staying in is haunted and they’re searching for ghosts.

Third Doctor & Jo Grant (Doctor Who 1963) & The Crew of the Lewis and Clark (Event Horizon)
Third Doctor & Jo Grant (Doctor Who 1963) & The Squaddies (Dog Soldiers 2002)

Aside from the element of the element of me looking at these two Sean Pertwee films and going, ‘Needs more Pertwee’, these are absolutely two of my favourite horror films of all time. I could watch them over and over again and not get bored. They’re also both reminiscent of the Third Doctor era, and I could see him and Jo – who are, by the way, one of my favourite Doctor-Companion team-ups of all time – fitting in to both of them. Event Horizon is every story where they’ve turned up somewhere and masqueraded as ambassadors or members of the crew or whatever, and Dog Soldiers could definitely be a UNIT story if you squint and ignore the gore and swearing. Which there’s no need to do, by the way – I am absolutely fine with both. :D

I’m not even sure what I want from this, other that I love these films and I love it when Doctor Who intersects with horror, and I’d love to see how the Doctor would affect the story lines of either of the two films, and/or interact with the characters.

Optional Art Prompts

I mean… blood and gore for both seems a given. I love the visuals of Event Horizon, both the gory nightmarish visuals of hell and the oily black look of the ship’s engine, so feel free to incorporate either of those, or have Jo or the Doctor being haunted by the terrible images the ship shows them.

For Dog Soldiers, maybe an action scene, or Jo and/or the Doctor looking after Wells upstairs. Or a quiet moment before the werewolves attack.

For both these films, there’s no need to picture both Jo and the Doctor.

Doctor Who (1963)

Requested Ship: Solo: Taren Capel
Requested Freeforms: Type: Body Horror, Type: Gothic Horror, Type: Institutional Horror, Type: Killer Horror, Type: Psychological Horror, Type: Science-Fiction Horror
Requested Medium: Art and Fic

The Robots of Death is one of my all-time favourite Doctor Who serials, possibly no surprise since it’s essentially And Then There Were None with added killer robots. I’m fascinated by the world building around the world of Kaldor and how robots fit into it, and robophobia, this utterly crippling mental illness, devastating in a world so dominated by a robot workforce, and especially given that those robots with are supposedly incapable of harming humans seem to go on killing sprees on the reg. And Taren Capel and his background, this robotics genius raised almost entirely by robots. It’s such a bleak, terrifying idea, especially as in one of the extended universe stories it is suggested that Taren Capel was affected by robophobia rather than a love of robots, which is an idea I’d love to see explored.

(There’s quite a bit of extended universe stuff, and if you’re familiar with any of it, then please feel free to incorporate it, but I’m absolutely fine with it being disregarded entirely. Everything contradicts everything else, anyway. XD)

Optional Prompts

• Something set during the events of the serial, whether it’s canon-compliant or canon-divergent. How differently might events have gone if the Doctor and Leela never arrived on the sand miner?
• Backstory – give me something showing Taren Capel’s bleak upbringing raised by robots.
• A post-canon fic where the Company attempts to replicate Taren Capel’s robotics genius by having him cloned and the clone raised by robots, which goes about as well as can be expected.

Optional Art Prompts

I love the style, costumes and design of this serial so much, and especially the look of the robots. Give me more of that, basically, or maybe an image of a young Taren Capel growing up around robots.

Sapphire & Steel

Requested Ship: Sapphire/Steel (Sapphire and Steel)
Sapphire & Steel
Requested Freeforms: Type: Cosmic/Lovecraftian Horror, Type: Folk Horror, Type: Gothic Horror, Type: Paranormal Horror, Type: Psychological Horror, Type: Science-Fiction Horror
Requested Medium: Art and Fic

I watched this recently, and have fallen utterly, completely head-over-heels in love with it. It’s the weirdest fucking show, and I love that it makes absolutely no attempt to explain what the hell’s going on or who or what Sapphire and Steel are (or Silver and Lead for that matter). It’s basically made for me, the tone of it, the first two episodes with their quiet almost M.R Jamesian eerie ghost stories reconceptualised as kiiiiind of sci-fi with creepy cosmic horror elements, but they never move away from them as ghost stories. And then there’s the Fifth Assignment, The Dinner Party, which I am still delighted about, because if there’s one thing I love more than n eerie ghost story, it’s an And Then There Were None pastiche, and not only did I get that, it also happened to be combined with Undercover as a Couple. I’m still a little dazed that that happened. :D And then there’s that incredibly bleak ending, and the idea of Sapphire and Steel trapped together in a greasy spoon floating in the middle of nowhere forever.

I ship them so damn hard. I love the contrast between them, Sapphire so serene and composed while Steel is so tightly wound and intense (and this is the goofiest damn thing to fixate on, but I have a bit of a thing about the way he goes up and down stairs. It’s ridiculous, I know, and yet...). What the hell are they? What the hell went on between Sapphire and Silver? What the hell is going on between Sapphire and Steel, for that matter? Are they beings who actually date, fall in love, fuck, or when they do – and I’m thinking about Sapphire and Silver, here – are they just adopting human habits which aren’t inherent to their real natures at all?

I’m especially fascinated by Steel, since while I could believe Sapphire used to be human, I don’t for a second buy that about him. He’s a fascinating character, and one thing I’ve loved is seeing the way he seems to shift over the course of the series, how different he is in The Dinner Party when he’s actually making the effort to pass for a human being. I need (and want) to go back to the beginning and watch it all over again, but I got the impression in the early episodes that he cared about very little other than the assignments and Sapphire – his disregard for most of the human characters (like the moment when he’s talking with Tully and Sapphire contacts him and Tully is instantly forgotten and dismissed, and… well, poor Tully in general), his mannerisms, the odd little gestures of affection he makes towards Sapphire in the second assignment and how… veeery slightly off and experimental they feel, combined with his lack of comprehension of what love is and being unable to distinguish being in love with someone from using them… Damn.

I’d love to see anything that explores that inhumanity. One thing I loved about the Dinner party assignment is the suggestion that their Miles and Veronica personas somehow took on lives of their own. It struck me that he seemed more human/humane in the last assignment – he actually seemed to give a shit about what happened to the woman – so I kind of headcanoned that as a lingering after-effect of the Miles persona. What happens if that effect starts to wear off and he starts getting less human again? What happens if Miles and Veronica are actually called into existence as real separate people - there's an opportunity for some existential horror there.

Alternatively, I am so, so here for fucked up bad endings. Follow up on the bleak way the series ends. What do they do together for the rest of eternity stuck in that miserable little greasy spoon? Or give me a horror, whether more outright horror the more understated canon-style ghost stories, or something closer to canon. One thing I loved about the various assignments was the way they impacted on the various guest stars, so if you want to explore how they’re affected afterwards, please do. Or explore the cosmic horror elements of canon, the creatures moving against them, the transient life forms…

Optional Prompts

• A forced to choose between B and the greater good - chooses B even though it's not what B wants - I could see either character taking either role and sacrificing everything to save the other character. I am totally here for their loyalties to each other being pushed to extremes, whether it’s Steel who gets to the point where Sapphire’s well-being is more important to him than the assignment, or Steel expecting Sapphire to sacrifice him and his fury when she doesn’t.
• A goes evil & can't be cured/contained;B stays with them as they wreak havoc instead of killing them - More loyalty kink. I was specifically thinking about Steel here (although again, reversing the roles could work too). I’d love to see their loyalty to each other and their dedication to the job explored. Which is more important? How much are they each willing to sacrifice for the good of the other? And how much do they really care about human beings anyway?
• Look how much better off I am without you; I do not miss you or even think about you (I am lying) - For one reason or another, Sapphire and Steel’s partnership is broken up. Or they have an affair and it does not work out. Steel’s fine with that. Except he really fucking isn’t.
• Time Loop - It Gets Worse Every Time - I LOVE time loops, and they seem like the perfect trope for this canon. Maybe with every loop the beings outside time encroach more on the present and reality starts to decay more and more. Are they both stuck in the loop, or just one of them? Or are they both stuck in their own personal loop and are left unable to communicate with one another? Or maybe they figure out a way, but every time they use it reality decays a little more.
• Stranded alone together for a very long time - I have no words for how much I love the bleakness of the canon ending and the idea of them both being trapped together potentially for eternity. Do they age at all? Are the transient beings still fucking with them or have they been completely abandoned? What happened to Silver?
• Having to destroy the happily married doppelgangers you accidentally created - The Dinner Party was a favourite of mine, and I love the idea that their Undercover as a Couple routine actually called Miles and Veronica Cavendish into being as a Tommy-and-Tuppence style married couple who trip around the 1930s (or the 80s) solving murders whilst being desperately, ecstatically in love. Which would be lovely except that their very existence is damaging the fabric of time. Possibly an outsider POV from either Miles or Veronica, and going hard on the horror of the sudden appearance of a pair of doppelgangers who insist that you have to die (and Steel’s realisation that that is what love is meant to be like and which he will almost certainly never experience). (struck through because I couldn't resist doing a version of this prompt, but that doesn't mean I don't still want it. I'd love to see your version.
• Non-human character seems less human with every passing day - Oh god, I am so here for this with Steel. Whether because it’s because the Miles Cavendish effect is wearing off, or because he attempt at a human love affair has broken his heart so he retreats from human emotions because they hurt too much, or because an eternity stranded has resulted in him gradually losing his mind.
• Something where for one reason or another they’re forced to work against each other. Or an alternative universe where one of them did take the job offered to them mentioned in the final assignment.

Optional Art Prompts

I love the look of them together, how close they stand to each other, in a way that could be shippy but also pings as very slightly off. And the contrast between them, with Sapphire serene and calm and Steel so tightly wound he might snap at any moment. And, uh, while this is a bit goofy, I have a bit of a thing about Steel and stairs. For horror elements, go with canon-style understatement or something much more over the top and gory. I really like the way canon uses horror, both ghosts and the supernatural and the cosmic horror elements.

Thanks for reading!