Chocolate Box 2018 Letter

[kay_obsessive]

Dear Chocolate Box Creator,

First of all, thank you so much for making something for me! I really love all of these fandoms and relationships I’m requesting, so I’m sure I’ll like anything you make for any of them!

If you’re the journal stalking type, my previous exchange letters can be found here and here, my AO3 account is here, and my tumblr is here. Other than that, I don’t have much of an online presence, but I will try to give you everything you need to know right here.

General Likes/Dislikes

Likes: A strong sense of character and character relationships. Characters who know each other better than anyone else, whether they are friends, lovers, colleagues, enemies, or any combination of the above. Trust and loyalty. Competence. Intimate body language. People who have no sense of personal space with each other. Outsider perspectives – either a stranger’s view of the main characters or a friend or relative’s view of a character’s relationships. Interweaving plots. Slice of life. Roadtrips. Mission fic. Future fic. Canon divergence AUs. Supernatural/fantasy/______punk/in space! AUs. Backstory. Interesting worldbuilding details. Undercover as a couple. Friends to lovers. Developing relationships. Culture clashes. People who are bad at communicating finally managing it.

Dislikes: Porn with no other story around it (I am A-okay with it as long as there's some kind of set-up). Permanent major character death. Non-con. Extreme underage. Parent-child incest. Unrequested crossovers. ‘Modern mundane’/high school/coffee shop AUs. Love triangles where everyone acts immature and no one communicates. First person POV, unless the original canon is in first person. Creepily invested matchmaker friends. Anything A/B/O, dom/sub world, soulmates, or magical bonding.



Requests

Any prompts listed are just ideas and suggestions, and if you have your own super great idea for any of these fandoms and relationships you should totally go for it! I haven’t tried to separate out fic/art prompts, so feel free interpret anything in either direction.

Dishonored

Daud/Billie Lurk

This is one of those relationships that was basically tailor-made for me. Mentor/student, leader and their close subordinate who can get away things others can’t, age gap, complicated issues of trust and loyalty and betrayal and forgiveness – these are a few of my favorite things. I love everything about these two and their messy, complex history with each other. I was doomed basically from Billie’s first line, and it only got better from there.

• Something from the Whalers’ heyday: Daud and Billie fighting together, training together, running their gang of assassins together. Maybe blowing off steam after a particularly tough job.


• AU where they meet up again earlier than in canon, before or during the events of Dishonored 2. Maybe one was looking for the other; maybe they stumbled across each other by accident, and now they have to deal with all their issues on top of the plot going on.


• Daud and Billie together on the Dreadful Wale.


• Anything to do with the Fugue Feast. This is one of the most interesting little details of Dishonored’s worldbuilding to me, and it doesn’t get expanded on much in canon. How do people already living outside the law spend their time on a day without laws? Or just use it as an excuse to put them in neat masks and face paint – that’s cool, too. Or go the porny route, also cool.


• Everyone survives Death of the Outsider and Billie and Daud go retire somewhere with their weird adopted former god child that neither of them really wants, but what else are they gonna do with him?


• Or they kill the Outsider but Daud survives, and now they have to deal with the aftermath of that decision.


• I am always down for werewolf/vampire/monster AUs for this canon.

Fruits Basket

Manabe Kakeru/Sohma Yuki

One of my favorite ships, cursed to eternal rare pair-dom because Kakeru didn’t make it into the anime adaptation. Alas. I really love this relationship so much, especially how their friendship helps them both become better, more confident people. Kakeru pushes Yuki into showing his real personality and having more natural reactions, which is really important as he’s trying to break out of the manufactured, inoffensive, ‘princely’ personality he’s developed. And Yuki lets Kakeru know when he’s gone too far and helps him become more empathetic and understanding of other people’s feelings. And they’re hilarious together, especially as Yuki becomes more comfortable and their interactions become more mutually teasing.

• What happens post-series? They’re both planning to go to college, though in different places. Do they stay in touch? Visit each other? How does Yuki cope with this freedom and independence after having so little of it for so long? Kakeru’s much less enthusiastic about college in general; does he stick with it or go in a different direction?


• Kakeru finding out about Yuki’s curse. Do they manage to keep it a secret? Does Akito find out? Does it go relatively well, like with Tohru or does his memory get erased?


• Kakeru with rat!Yuki.


• Kakeru has no sense of personal space, and Yuki comes to kind of enjoy that contact without having to worry about the curse with him.


• Student Council fun times! Maybe going on school trips, maybe having meetings go awry, maybe even actually working like the totally responsible people they are.


• Kakeru getting to know other members of the Sohma family and/or Yuki meeting some more of Kakeru’s family. They both have fairly messy families, though in very different way.


• I’ve always thought a Fruits Basket/Pet Shop of Horrors crossover would be really interesting.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga

Olivier Mira Armstrong/Miles

I’m a sucker for leaders and their close subordinates; I love that kind of loyalty and trust, especially if it goes both ways as is clearly the case for Olivier and Miles. We don’t get a ton on their relationship in the series, but I love the glimpses we do get: Olivier explaining to Miles why she needs someone like him at her side, Miles saying that Olivier was the one to convince him he could make a difference from within the military, Olivier releasing Miles to help with the Ishval restoration at the end. I’d love to see that relationship expanded on in fic or art.

• How did Miles wind up working under Olivier at Briggs? What kinds of conflicts and tensions did they have before figuring each other out?


• Do they keep in touch while he’s working to rebuild Ishval, and does the relationship change at all now that he no longer reports directly to her? Maybe Olivier visits to check on the progress being made.


• Miles comes back to Briggs after his work in Ishval.


• Quiet moments on the Wall.


• What happens after one or both of them retires?

Lackadaisy

Ivy Pepper/Viktor Vasko

Here comes my love of age gaps again, oops. Ivy and Viktor have my absolute favorite relationship in the comic. Big, strong, curmudgeonly characters who have a not-so-secret soft spot for small, sweet, perky characters are a weakness of mine. I love that he can be murderously protective of her, but she also has a clear power over him, to the point where others will bring Ivy along as a shield if they think Viktor might be unhappy with them. I love how Ivy reacts to Viktor being in danger by being aggressively cheerful and unwilling to let him mope alone, while Viktor reacts to Ivy being in danger by being an asshole and trying to drive her away – and neither of them quite understands what the other is doing and they just wind up arguing.

• Working through their last argument, reconciling, and moving forward.


• Ivy dealing with everything she’s learned about Viktor recently, figuring out why she feels so weird about the whole ‘estranged wife and daughter’ thing.


• Viktor, however reluctantly, teaching Ivy the skills of their trade.


• Ivy using Viktor for his warmth in winter.


• Ivy and Viktor down the road, after prohibition ends.


• Or maybe something terrible happens to everyone else around them and they wind up doing their own cat people version of the movie Léon

Psychonauts

Sasha Nein/Milla Vodello

Superstar Psychonauts Sasha Nein and Milla Vodello! They don’t actually have a ton of direct interaction in the game itself, but I love the implied relationship between the two. They are psychic secret agents! They go on ridiculous missions together and fight crime - psychic crime! One of these missions involved being undercover in elaborate costumes at a fancy party! They have had at least one clichéd instance of falling down and landing on top of each other in a ~romantic~ pose! I eat this stuff up with a spoon.

• Early days in the Psychonauts: recruitment, training, first missions, first missions as a team, first summer working the camp.


• More on the dark backstories of either character and how they learn about each other’s past.


• Sasha and Milla in each other’s mental worlds.


• Having that “I need to tell you something” conversation after the end of Rhombus of Ruin. Or just comforting each other after everything.


• Sasha and Milla in their winter gear from that Psychonauts 2 poster.


• A normal day at the office at Psychonauts HQ, dealing with bosses, coworkers, interns, paperwork, and office gossip.


• Psychonauts HQ does various holiday parties. Attendance is mandatory.


• Milla teasing Sasha about his obsession with aliens.


• Sasha and/or Milla and their opinions on the fictionalized comic book versions of themselves.

Tortall

Rikash Moonsword & Veralidaine Sarrasri

I’ve always loved the way this friendship develops over the series. Stormwings are initially introduced as purely antagonistic, and Rikash is definitely an enemy at the start, but he and Daine develop a grudging respect for each other over the book where he’s introduced and end up with a tentative truce. Then they are thrust back together as uneasy allies against a common enemy and start to talk to each other on more even ground. Then they are fully on the same side, any enmity becoming affectionate teasing, and Daine realizes suddenly as Rikash dies that he had become a friend and someone she really cared about. And then she names one of her kids after him, aw.

• I’d really just love to see more conversations between these two. Maybe put in some extra interactions during the last two books or in the time between them, show more of that tentative friendship evolving.


• What do other Stormwings think about Rikash’s friendship with Daine? Obviously, Barzha and Hebakh have respect for her because of her role in freeing them, and that’s good enough for most of their followers. But Daine has a pretty bad reputation among most other Stormwings, and even the ones on their side seem sneering at best toward her. What kind of teasing or even outright challenges did Rikash put up with for that friendship? Did Daine have any interactions with the other Stormwings after Rikash’s death?


• Maybe let Rikash survive the final fight? It would be fun to see Daine slowly realize that she has a Stormwing for a friend under happier circumstances. Or maybe there’s some magic immortals loophole that would let him come back from the dead. I mean, it would hardly be the first time in this series.


• Flying together, either with Daine transformed or being carried.

Well, that about sums it up, I think. Again, thank you so much for creating something for me! If you like prompts, I hope what I gave you is helpful. If you prefer to work without them, I look forward to seeing whatever you come up with. I’m sure whatever you make will be awesome!