Fic in a Box Letter 2021

[majorr]

Dear Author,

I love the tropes I've listed, but feel free to ignore them and the prompts if you have your own idea. I'll be happy to read anything you come up with. I love surprises. Thank you for writing for me!

AO3: Major

General Likes: Mutual Pining, Friends to Lovers, Slow Build, UST, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Misunderstandings, Jealousy, Possessiveness, Codependency, Loyalty, Get-Together or Established Relationship, Vulnerability, Five Times, Storms, Canon Divergence, Outsider POV, Stranded, Adventure, Wilderness Survival, Bed Sharing, Murder Mystery, Twenty-Four Hours to Live, Horror, Humor, Fluff, Apocalypse

Do Not Want: PWP, Mpreg, Incest, Weddings/Babies/Pregnancies, Genderswap, Non-Con, Dub-Con, Unrequited Love, Infidelity, De-aging, Modern or Mundane AUs, Coffee Shop AU, HS or College AUs, Animal Harm/Death, Fishing/Hunting, Second Person POV

Opt-Ins:

• Length — Drabble, Double Drabble, Triple Drabble, Drabble Series


• Creepypasta — I love horror and eeriness and things that are slightly wrong and don’t feel quite right. I’m okay with violence, gore, character death(s) (including requested characters) and am also a fan of scary stories where none of that happens but there’s a creepy mood or uncanny situation that’s unnerving/unsettling. Happy, unhappy, and ambiguous endings are all good. First person is definitely fine here. Don’t feel locked in by the prompts. If you have your own spooky idea, I’ll be excited to see it.


• Diary Entry


• Excerpts From a Character’s Journal/Notebook


• Epistolary

Agent Carter (TV)
Howard Stark/Rose

Their one scene together in the series finale had me rolling. Howard really cannot help himself. He’s like a moth to the flame of any single woman in his immediate radius, and I thought Rose’s receptive reaction to him was funny considering how she’s constantly swatting Samberly’s advances on her. I’ve always been disappointed that the show ended before we were introduced to Maria because I love Howard’s ridiculous energy for chasing women (and how crazy it drove Peggy), and it would have made it very amusing to see what kind of woman it would have taken to pin him down for good. Howard Stark versus monogamy—what on earth does that even look like? I don’t know, but I want to! If you want to write a scenario where Rose is somehow Maria, that would be cool too.

Prompts:

• Rose is in danger and has to go into hiding. Howard offers up his home as a safe house. Then love happens.


• Rose is strapped with explosives, and Howard cares. A lot. In fact, a surprising amount. In fact, too much. In fact, what’s happening and why is he in a full-blown panic?


• AU where Howard meets Rose during Captain America: The First Avenger.


• Rose’s middle name is Maria.


• Samberly gets on their nerves sometimes, sure, but Peggy notices that he annoys the absolute frak out of Howard 24/7 and puts it together that it’s because he’s constantly hitting on Rose.


• “I only knew him when he was young and single.” Me too, Steve. Is his transition from I Want Every Woman to I Want That One Woman bizarre for Howard? Or does it surprise him how good/right it feels to go from casting a wide net to zeroing in on one target?


• Public Event/Party — A man or group of men are rude to Rose about her weight. Howard reacts.


• Mission fic where Howard and Rose have to team up. Then feelings.


• Protective Daniel. He was worried about Rose on her first mission with them. Maybe he’d be worried when famed playboy Howard Stark sets his sights on her.


• Howard likes it when Rose has to protect him and beat up some bad guys. In fact, he has a lot of trouble shaking his interest in her after that.

Creepypasta Prompts:

• One of Howard’s inventions goes wrong.


• Evil Peggy. I don’t know how you do it (possession, mind control?), but Howard slowly suspecting that Peggy is killing people sounds creepy to me since the real Peggy would never.


• They find Steve, but he comes back wrong.


• Rose stops dreaming. She can no longer ever remember going to sleep to begin with. Howard does a sleep study on her. What creepy thing is going on?

Cellular (2004)
Ryan Ackerman/Jessica Martin

I love how much one phone call forced him to break through his own selfishness and make some real character growth. The lengths he went to in order to help her and how dependent she had to be on him because of the circumstances of that day are great for an emotionally fraught foundation for falling for each other and ending up together in the end. There are obvious obstacles: he’s in a relationship, she’s married, the age difference might make her hesitate—but any story where they overcome these things and find their way to each other would be great. No cheating, please. However, any situation where they pine and struggle with guilt over the intensity of their feelings, leading up to breaking up with their partners before acting on their feelings for each other gets big time green lights. But I don’t want them conspiring with each other about divorcing/breaking up. I’d rather it be an internal struggle and any confession of love to come after they’re free. I am also absolutely fine with a story that picks up after those relationships are already over.

Prompts:

• I love the idea that they stayed in each other’s lives post-movie and built a friendship with the bond they forged that day and how that friendship could launch bigger feelings.


• Denial, repressed feelings, “It’s not like that” to friends, “We’re just friends”—That’s all true, right? So why are they more committed to each other than other responsibilities in their lives?


• Jessica calls Ryan in the middle of the night after nightmares about that day instead of waking her husband. That’s normal, right? It’s only because he understands the trauma. It’s not because she specifically needs Ryan, and it doesn’t say anything that he always, always answers.


• Chloe breaks up with Ryan when she realizes he’s in love with Jessica even before he realizes it.


• Ryan makes his move after Jessica’s marriage falls apart and she files for divorce, but she turns him down because of the age gap and not being willing to risk their friendship on a relationship that would probably fall apart like her marriage. He has to convince her she’s wrong.


• Yeah, Ryan has changed, but his friends haven’t. He gets embarrassed when Jessica comes over to see him and his immature friends are there. Maybe they’re inappropriate or just juvenile, but it kind of ruins the image he’s trying to create of himself in her life as someone steady and on top of stuff that she can rely on.


• Bob Mooney gets his spa up and running, and Ryan and Jessica go together.


• Jessica’s son goes missing for a day. I’d rather it be something mundane like skipping school to hang out with friends, but that not knowing where he is drudges up all the anxiety and FEELINGS of that awful day while Ryan helps her look for him.


• Jessica is mugged, and her husband notices how much calmer she gets the instant Ryan shows up at the house to check on her, how much longer she hugs Ryan than she hugged him, how Ryan takes the seat next to her like it’s natural for him to take the place at her side, how Jessica has to comfort Ryan at his obvious concern or calm his demanding questions to the cops, how Jessica doesn’t seem to realize it yet but their marriage is very, very over.


• First times: Ryan realizes he’s in love with Jessica, Jessica realizes she’s in love with him, kiss, night together, fight + making up, etc.

Creepypasta Prompts:

• Jessica’s husband notices that she’s falling in love with Ryan and decides if he can’t have her, no one will. Maybe she and Ryan end up killing him instead, though.


• Ryan takes Jessica and her son camping. I love creepy stories set in or around forests or lakes.


• Jessica hears someone coming up the stairs every night, but there’s never anyone there. Ryan agrees to stay over to see if he hears it too.


• Caves.

Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Catherine Morland/Henry Tilney

I am forever in love with these two. Or rather, I am forever in love with these two being in love with each other. The sweetness of their relationship is my weakness. Henry sweetly teasing Catherine or telling her a wild tale or spooking her in order to amuse/entertain/gently frighten her (in turn, amusing and entertaining himself)—and I'm happy. There's a gentleness between them and a beautiful compatibility that's warm and just makes me smile. I love Catherine's wild imagination, and I adore Henry and how kind he is to her. I would love all kinds of fic for this fandom: sweet moments, emotional turmoil, external conflict or emotional conflict followed by a happy ending. I'm always happy to spend time with these characters post-canon and see what they got up to and have ideas for pre-relationship/get-together stuff too.

Pre-Relationship/Get-Together Prompts:

• To mess with Henry, his brother tells Catherine that Henry mocks her or only puts up with her company. She’s naive enough to believe him, and Henry is confused when she starts avoiding him/not meeting his eyes/looks sad around him after that.


• Henry's brother sees how hard Henry is falling and decides to go after Catherine for himself to screw with him.


• In a group, Thorpe repeatedly and blatantly insults Catherine to her face, embarrassing her in front of everybody. This pisses Henry off.


• What if they didn’t go to Northanger and were still in Bath when Isabella and James’ engagement went off? Catherine gets in a loud public fight with Isabella that gets a lot of attention, and Henry has to intervene and extract her from the situation.


• There’s a killer in Bath while they’re there. Thorpe tries to convince Catherine that it’s Henry. Henry learns this and teases her about it but ultimately comforts/reassures her.


• While on a walk, Catherine slips and gets washed away in a stream that Henry thought would be safe to cross. Bonus if she can’t swim, and there’s panic/fear before being rescued.

Post-Canon Prompts:

• Catherine gets badly injured somehow (nothing permanent, please), and Henry panics/worries/fusses. Maybe he has to pick her up and carry her to help. Maybe Catherine tries to be brave through the pain, and Henry is more upset about her being hurt than she is about it.


• 5 + 1 / Amnesia - Five times Henry pined for/was hurt by Catherine’s memory loss while she’s nervous/skittish around him, and one time she gets her memory back. Some ideas: Catherine declining to dance with him but dancing with a man she remembers from her youth, hiding in the evening because she’s afraid he’ll want her to share a bed with him, wanting to move to her family home because she’s afraid to live with a man she doesn’t remember. I like this as a second get-together scenario for them since maybe he has to do some wooing back at square one, but ultimately I’d prefer if she did remember. Emotionally torturing Henry in the meantime, however, is good fun.


• Trauma leads to Catherine being temporarily mute and unable to communicate effectively. Maybe she was a witness to something? Henry has to comfort her and slowly pull her out of it.


• Henry is surprised and bewildered when he realizes that Catherine is very angry with him, and he has no idea why. What did he do, or does she only think he did it?


• There’s a fire while they’re at the opera. Maybe they’re separated when it starts, and Henry has to find her through the smoke. I love Henry in worried/desperate mode.


• Catherine is publicly humiliated by Henry's father, and she slips off somewhere to hide at the party/wherever they are.


• Their carriage breaks down in a snowstorm, and they get stuck there for the night. Henry has to keep Catherine warm and calm. Maybe he freaks out if she slips out while he's sleeping to use the restroom and he can't immediately find her in the blizzard.

Creepypasta Prompts:

• Basement/Attic


• Catherine goes for a walk in the woods, and the forestry changes.


• Creepy doll.


• Catherine vanishes without a trace. Henry’s descent into paranoia and heartbreak as he looks and looks but never finds her.

Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Ned Leeds/Peter Parker

I love best friends to lovers stories. I love coming of age stories. I love how funny and smart Ned is and how sweet and earnest Peter is about wanting to help others. I love their best friends handshake and hugs and how Ned found out about Peter early on, so he’s been able to be his friend and support system both as Peter Parker and Spider-Man. I would just really love a story where these two navigate Peter’s Spider-Man stuff or growing up stuff, the humor and fear and hurt and comfort and angst that comes with all of that, and they find their way through it together through friendship and feelings and falling in love. I also love adventure, so danger or fighting or technical difficulties are all welcome.

Prompts:

• I love some confusion when trying to work feelings out. Moments of hesitation and uncertainty. Lingering gazes, confusing moments of jealousy. Laughing things off instead of really dealing with them. Awkward moments in youth of trying to figure themselves and their feelings out.


• Peter and Ned go to space with the Guardians on a mission.


• Misunderstandings give me life. Maybe Peter thinks Ned has a crush on someone else or Ned thinks he isn’t cool enough to hang around Peter anymore and pulls away but that just makes Peter go, wait, where’d he go, come back.


• Five times Aunt May realized her nephew was in love with his best friend before he did, and one time he finally got it too.


• Peter realizes his feelings for Ned have changed first and has a hard time getting a read on where Ned’s heart is. Woe! Pining! Worry about making things weird. Ned’s not the most subtle person he knows, so surely it would be obvious if he felt the same way, right??


• Ned gets seriously injured during Spider-Man business, and it Freaks Peter Out.


• I love their hug at the end of Endgame. I feel like even if that was the only scene you saw from the movie, you’d still be able to tell that Peter went Through It. I’d love to see other moments when he needed the comfort of his best friend. Hugs encouraged.


• Peter is in comfortable denial about his feelings for Ned. Then Darcy Lewis shows up and sees right through that. Denial isn’t really her thing, and she makes it hard for it to keep being his thing either.


• Time Travel — Peter and Ned accidentally go back in time and meet Captain America. I love Howard. Maybe Howard helps them get home, but Peggy helps them blend in while they’re trapped in the 40s? Up to you how badly they achieve that. Haha


• A huge storm and the complications that can come from them. Blackouts, flooding, taking shelter, getting trapped on a bus in a flood, having to stay over at Peter’s apartment to wait out the worst of it, flashlights/candles, thunder, freezing temperatures if it involves snow.


• Rom-Com style get-together fic featuring other members of the Avengers/Guardians. Depending on when/where you set it, I love Peter Quill, Fury, Thor, Nebula, Natasha, Tony, Steve, Maria Hill, Rhodey, Wanda, Vision, Bruce, Pepper, Drax, Mantis, Sharon Carter, Gamora, Stephen Strange, Ant-Man, Wasp.

Creepypasta Prompts:

• Ned’s recollection of his best friend before and after Peter killed his Aunt May.


• Ned encounters a ghost/demon in the machine type situation.


• Peter and Ned go camping with no previous experience. What could go wrong?


• Peter recalls the summer he and Ned fell in love. It was also the summer he started to suspect Aunt May was a serial killer.

The Vast of Night (2019)
Fay Crocker/Everett Sloan

What happened to them?? I want to know so bad! I loved the time period of this movie and the limitations it created. I loved how the two of them dove into this thing together and ended up at the wrong end of it. I would love canon divergent fic where they weren’t taken and kept pursuing the truth about aliens. I would also love post-canon fic that explored what the heck happened to them when they were abducted. I imagine that there would be some trauma for them if they were to be returned. How do they process what happened to them?

Prompts:

• After being returned, they can’t bear company with people that don’t get it for long. They also can’t bear being apart for long stretches either. I’d love to see some codependency issues stemming from what they went through.


• The town thinks they just ran off together and treats them as immoral deviants. They have to deal with being ostracized.


• They are returned, but the baby isn’t. How do they cope with that guilt?


• Everett takes to sneaking into Fay’s room at night to sleep with her to help her with her nightmares. Maybe it leads to them getting caught, catching trouble for it, but they’re too messed up to promise they won’t keep doing it.


• Being abducted leads to them becoming obsessed with the paranormal. What other situations do they get themselves into: ghosts, haunted artifacts, creepy dolls, missing person cases, urban legends, etc.


• They start a radio show about their experience, and it leads to controversy in the town. Maybe some harassment comes their way for it or teasing, anger or hostility.


• Falling in love through shared trauma.


• What did the aliens do to them in the ship?


• Fay shuts down and pulls away while trying to cope with being taken, and Everett pines and keeps coming around, worried about her and how closed off/unlike herself she is now that they’re back.


• They pursue other people who were abducted, looking for answers.

Creepypasta Prompts:

• They get stalked by someone that was also abducted but came back wrong.


• They’re chipped. What do the chips that were put in them do?


• Everett remembers what happened to them; Fay doesn’t. Why won’t he tell her? You can waive the non-con DNW if you want to take it in an aliens made them do it direction. Or go somewhere totally different.


• Fay is mute upon return, so why does it look like Everett has full conversations with her when she never opens her mouth?

What If…? (Cartoon)
Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers

I love this role reversal! I loved Peggy being so much bigger and stronger than Steve, Steve never taking the serum and having to find ways to support her and the war effort in his much smaller and more frail body. I like how it didn’t change their feelings for each other and there’s a gentleness and inevitability to their love. Peggy is so self-assured and driven and confident, and I’d love to see moments of doubt or hesitation or insecurities—parts of herself that she doesn’t usually show. Any kind of buildup, vulnerable moments, protectiveness, jealousy or uncertainty before they’re sure of the other’s feelings, before they act on them, or exploring what it’s like for them to navigate a relationship with all the complications that come up with Peggy’s abilities would be great. I love both Howard and Bucky, so feel free to include either or both.

Prompts:

• Steve in a damsel in distress role. Anything where he doesn’t have access to a suit or weapons to defend himself and Peggy has to rescue him.


• Pining and self-doubt from Steve. What if a handsome, charismatic soldier guy was into Captain Carter, and Steve was like, well, she was already out of my league and now this guy’s going for it… WOE. Emotional torture is a wonderful thing.


• Pining and self-doubt from Peggy. What if Peggy is looking at her new muscular, hero body and thinking the romance thing isn’t for her anymore. Maybe Steve is confused when she starts pulling away, is a total badass in the field but starts acting down around him when it’s just the two of them. Again, emotional torture—I like it.


• Hurt/Comfort where Peggy takes the brunt of a blast or something to protect Steve and gets seriously injured. Steve in worried/desperate mode if help isn’t immediately available. Maybe Peggy tries making peace with dying while Steve is TOTALLY NOT making peace with that. That kind of thing.


• Post-Peggy disappearing — Steve gets Peggy back. How?


• Howard creates a machine to bring Peggy back… and accidentally transports her and Steve to the 80s or 90s. Whoops.


• Howard creates a machine to bring Peggy back… and accidentally transports her to the present where skinny Steve meets Captain America and Captain Carter joins the Avengers. Maybe Steve sees Captain America’s fondness for Peggy as his dreams being crushed, insecurities about there being no way Peggy would go for him when there’s a version of himself that looks like that, and WOE because he doesn’t have a chance. Only, her heart totally belongs to him! And even if Captain America wanted it to be, it’s not the love triangle Steve thinks it is. Because love.


• Peggy stands Steve up for their first real date after something makes her doubt she’s the right one for him now, the new way she is. I love her confidence and all she’s overcome but also love the room for misunderstandings and insecurity with them, where she could be thinking she’s not conventional enough for him anymore and he’s thinking she’s out of his league—but neither actually cares about that. I like the idea of them reaching self-acceptance on the way to love.


• Steve treats Peggy like a lady pre and post-serum. Manners. Sweetness. Gestures.


• Hurt/Comfort — Steve is badly injured during a bad guy attack/alien invasion/zombie apocalypse/monsters in the city/chaotic situation, and Peggy has to keep carrying him through the chaos while fighting whatever hurt him in order to get him to help. Maybe Steve is the one trying to keep her calm despite being the one that is hurt because her growing desperation/concern for him is making her careless/reckless with her own safety.

Creepypasta Prompts:

• They get Peggy back, but she comes back wrong.


• One of Howard’s inventions turns on them.


• Steve is exposed to something that makes him drop weight. They try to save him as he becomes more and more emaciated.


• A meteor hits. Something weird gets on Peggy. What does it do to her?