The Corpse Brigadier (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
corpsebrigadier) wrote2021-07-05 03:05 pm
corpsebrigadier) wrote2021-07-05 03:05 pm
Entry tags:
Dear Creator Letter: Press Start 2021
Press Start Letter for CorpseBrigadier on Ao3
Dear Creator,
Let me thank you in advance for undertaking to create for me and congratulate you on your great taste regarding whichever canon it was that provided the basis for our match! I'm stoked for this exchange, as video game fandoms are generally near and dear to my heart, and all of the canons I've requested in this sign up have--in some way and at some time--been my favorites.
I've tried below to explain what it is about each game I love, and to provide some prompts for the characters, relationships, and mediums I've requested, but I want to emphasize that I'm very interested in you feeling free to flex your creative muscles. If the prompts listed aren't quite doing it for you, I am a genuine believer in optional details being optional, and I would love to see whatever creative production you are inspired to make out of these canons.
[NOTE: This letter is functionally complete at the time it was posted, but it may be tweaked through the end of sign-ups.]
General (DNWs, Likes, Opt-Ins) | Dance Dance Revolution | Final Fantasy Tactics | killer7 | Minesweeper | Ultima
• ageplay
• incestuous relationships portrayed as healthy and uncomplicated (messed-up, dysfunctional incest is absolutely a-okay)
• omegaverse
• pregnancy-related kinks (ex: breeding kink, mpreg, worshipful focus on pregnant bellies, etc...); narrative explorations of childbearing, pregnancy, and reproduction more than welcome
• scat/emeto (unsexy mentions of vomit are okay; all poop is a no go)
Opt-Ins:
• all archive warnings
• comics, animated artwork, and illustrated fic
• epistolary fiction
• interactive fiction (I like IF a lot, you can check out myunconventionalfanworksex letter here for details.)
• non-linear narratives
• NSFW for all canons in which I don't DNW it
• whatever person/tense is your jam
General Likes:
• angst
• bittersweetness
• black humor
• character death
• complex family relationships
• hurt/comfort
• illness and injury (plague and head bashing in particular)
• incest where everything is maladaptive and bad
• fever dreams
• existential despair
• non-kinky explorations of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood
• stoicism in the face of terrible things
• surreal imagery
• torture; religious, mythological, and/or plant-based symbolism
• whump
Smut Likes:
• awkward, bad, or inept sex that's still enthusiastic
• blasphemy/sacrilege kink
• clothed or partially clothed sex
• double penetration
• drunk/drugged sex
• hate sex
• gangbangs
• non-con/dub-con in general
• non-penetrative sex
• strangulation/breathplay
• undead sex
• violent sex
Art Likes: I like things with dynamic poses; things that are cute/cartoonish; things that do something offbeat and a little bit exaggerated/surreal; and things that are a little over-stylized and dripping with symbolic imagery. Limited palettes and starkly inked black and white pieces are close to my heart as I am a rotten colorist and have an affinity for styles I could conceivably emulate. I also tend to like things that are de-saturated or a washed out looking. As with my general likes, I'm a sucker for anything that has cool symbolism with plants and religion in it.
Music Likes (for vids): I like a lot of indie/folk and the general weepy alt rock that was popular on 8tracks playlists of old. Ludo, Momus, Nick Cave, and AJJ are some of the artists/bands that I've listened to most extensively. You might get some mileage out of my prior![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
jukebox_fest a href="https://corpsebrigadier.dreamwidth.org/10182.html">sign up for more of my thoughts on songs. As the DDR section will probably hint, I'm also fond of upbeat electronic music. In terms of what I enjoy in a fanvid though, I am definitely most happy when I can feel the lyrics line up with the work, even if it's a song from a genre I'm not terribly familiar with.
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Dance Dance Revolution is probably the video game that has had the biggest impact on my life overall. I received a copy of DDR Extreme around the time that it came out, and I have steadily played that exact copy on my immortal fat PS2 for the better part of two decades. The game pretty much redefined the way I feel about physical activity, and it is absolutely the first thing I think of whenever anybody waxes eloquent about the concept of "flow." I love the joyous, exhilarating feel of thrashing around to so much synthy Euro and J-Pop, and I adore the vibrant, 00s feel of all its visuals.
I nominated the characters I'm requesting almost entirely because I love their visual style, and I confess that I am not terribly well apprised with any of the deep lore of the DDR universe and that I tend to gloss over story modes. I just like dancing. These guys like dancing too, and what I would really enjoy in an art piece is seeing any or all of them dance! I'd be interested in them jamming on actual DDR machines or dancing outside of the confines of so many blinking arrows. Something with big, dramatic movements and angles; with bright, stand out colors; and/or with a crowded visual layout would be very much in step with what I love about this game. If you want to illustrate something that evokes a specific track from the game, I have a lot of warm feelings for all the variants of PARANOiA and the feeling of being overwhelmed frenzy they all bring. I also just unironically dig Butterfly. If you want to draw something with a lot of literal butterflies, I would very much be down for it. Seriously.
As for the specific characters I nominated:
Baby-Lon: He's apparently just a normal baby who puts on magic earmuffs and becomes and incredibly cool dancing baby. I'd love to see something that shows what this transformation looks like. I'd love to see how normal parenting experiences are disrupted by this process (although with his parents being Maho and a random adventurer/treasure hunter, I can imagine he might have an atypical childhood). I'd honestly just love to see Baby-Lon dancing in imaginative or bizarre cute outfits though, so feel free to just go wild if you have a cool idea for a dancing baby.
Boldo: I nominated Boldo based entirely of my love for playing as him when he's rocking his purple afro look in DDR Extreme. It was only after checking out the wiki that I learned about him providing a foil to Disco and ostensibly having a serious/workaholic personality. Most of what I'm looking for in art of him is just him being striking and having majestic purple hair, possibly on a disco floor. However, if you want to do anything that incorporates his greater backstory and character, please go ahead.
Devil-Zukin: She's a demon. Her hoodie is apparently a part of her head. She has spooky wings. She looks like she shops at Hot Topic circa 2005. I love her. If you want to go full goth with an art piece featuring her, go for it, but I'm just as open to something featuring her that plays into the peppy, upbeat nature of the canon. If you want to reference a specific track, you might do something with .59, where she's part of the stage background.
Robo 2001: He's a robot. He's apparently not even a dancing robot, but a space exploration robot with dancing software installed. I'm down for him doing some dance moves that only a robot can do. I'm down for an image of him interacting with his programmers or creators who probably wanted him to service a satellite or something instead of performing some funky robot moves. I'm down for him robo-dancing all over the Smithsonian, where he apparently lives.
Canon DNWs: Nothing NSFW please.
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This 1998 tactical RPG by Square-Enix has been my major fandom for a few years now. I love how immensely unrepentantly bleak it is, how it's full of Church-flavored horror, and how it is just filled to the brim with unhappy families. I'm entirely here for political backstabbing and endless misery 24/7 in this sad little world of grid-based warfare. I love pretty much everything within it, and I would frankly be happy to receive almost anything for this fandom.
For this exchange, I'm specifically interested in takes on older characters and sibling sets whose lives would have been shaped by the Fifty Years War. I have an endless fascination with how the much longer and much larger conflict that we don't see as players shaped the conditions that led to Lion War and the events of the game, and I love to see people's takes on how that conflict impacted FFT's villainous and morally grey characters. A lot of the groups I nominated are ones that I'd be eager to see written into pre-canon scenarios or drawn as younger versions of themselves. I'd love looks at these characters that either show them as people who were fundamentally changed by war or as people who were remarkable for making it through the war with a consistent set of principles.
While I've made a lot of fanworks on my own positing certain histories for these characters, what I'm very keen on with a lot of my fic prompts is seeing somebody else's headcanons and worldbuilding at play. Feel free to throw in OCs, unrequested ships, and other elements if you feel it would make for a good story fleshing out some of the gaps in these characters' lives and/or giving additional dimensions to their relationships with one another. Feel free to combine multiple groups I've selected. Feel free, honestly, to fuzz any of the &s in these nominations to /s if you think it would be compelling.
In terms of art, I'm eager to see takes on what these people might have looked like and how they might have interacted in an earlier era: particularly when they might have been of the same age and disposition as all the FFT characters in Ramza's general age cohort who start play in their mid to late teens. I really just want to see the sort of ideas you have about any of these characters beyond what we see in the game.
Note on Names: I mix and match PSX and PSP names for characters and places based entirely on what I think sounds cool, and I encourage you to do likewise and adhere to whatever orthography you like best.
Barbaneth Beoulve, Cidolfus Orlandeau & Goffard Gaffgarion: Gaffgarion's biography mentions that he was once the commander of the knights of the Eastern Sky (the Touten in the OG translation), and that he was ejected for his ruthless fighting style. This is the only mention that this knightly order gets, whereas the Northern and Southern Skies are very obviously at the center of the in-game conflict. I want to know more about more about the Eastern Sky and how it interacted with other commands. I want to see how all these badasses from the last war got on, what tensions might have erupted, and how they might have changed over however many years of fighting they endured. In terms of fic, I'd enjoy reading something about the three of them interacting in relation to some sort of upset (the Romandan invasion or the death of Denamunda IV perhaps) or something that explores how they adapted as the conflict with Ordallia came to a close. If you want to bring these guys into a piece that also encompasses some of the other character groups, I feel there's a lot of potential. While the older Beoulve kids are the most obvious other characters to show up, I'd love to see these guys having to react to traumatized war orphans like the Galthenas or having to grapple with the Folles' kids and their military significance despite not being knights.
In terms of art, it would really just be neat to see a young (possibly Ramza-resembling) Barbaneth, Cid before he was particularly cool, and Gaff before he was particularly sinister. Perhaps they're in the midst of strategizing, or just chilling (possibly drinking!) somewhere post-battle. If you're interested in worldbuild through art, you might consider developing some visuals for what the Eastern Sky and its heraldry looks like.
Simon Penn-Lachish & Zalmour Lucianada: Simon quit the Inquisition because of an "incident," and that incident is never explained. I would be thrilled to learn more about that incident. I'm also generally interested in something that brings together and contrasts the only two characters in the game who were active in the Inquisition, as they don't actually get a chance to meet in canon. Zalmour is such a confirmed zealot and Simon is such a textbook case of lost faith in the midst of lingering obligations. As two of the few people who are affiliated with the Church without being affiliated with any of its multi-layered conspiracies, it would be neat to see how both men grapple with faith. Simon is also one of the only characters who would actually remember an Ivalice before the Fifty Years War, and I'd be fascinated to see how two men who would have seen most of that conflict play out relate to it.
In terms of art, I'm a sucker for ostentatious Catholic visuals, and I'd adore something that really explores and plays with what religious ornamentation looks like in the Glabados faith (playing up the details of locations like Orbonne, Bervenia, or Mullonde would be fantastic). As always, I'd love to see younger versions of the requested characters, and how these two dudes might have looked at an earlier point in time. A novice Zalmour learning from an older Simon perhaps?
Dycedarg Beoulve & Zalbaag Beoulve: These guys are my absolute favorite dysfunctional sibling duo in a game all about dysfunctional sibling duos, and I would love to read anything you can come up with about them. I'm particularly curious about what their family history is like before the younger Beoulves come into the scene and before Dycedarg started on a career of patricide and general awfulness. What was their mother like? What's up with the decade long age gaps in this family? Why did the two legitimate heirs to a family as important as the Beoulves never marry? What did they make of the sudden addition of bastards and/or foundlings in their household? How and why did they both become willing to do such terrible things? Feel free to rope in any of the other groups nominated if you think they could add something to the older Beoulves' story. I think it would be neat to put them in dialogue with the Galthenas and/or the Folleses in particular, given that the Fifty Years war provides a great narrative "in" for bringing any of these three very different sets of kids together.
As for art, I'm a sucker for siblings and connected characters in dynamic poses looking cool. I'd also be super into something where they're much younger--perhaps an older Dycedarg interacting with a child Zalbag?--or both brothers being of age to be fighting in the Fifty Years War and hanging about in the midst of some portion of that conflict? Also, I am absolutely never going to say no hokey images of them that involve goats or depressing images of them that involve mushrooms.
Rapha Galthena & Marach Galthena: Rapha and Marach have so much to love about them as characters, and I feel that their absolutely rancid combat abilities led many players (myself included at one point) to overlook them. They are so incredibly young in comparison to most of the other figures seriously by the Fifty Years War (Rapha start the game at 13), and it feels like there's very little of their lives that haven't been bound up in shared tragedy. I'm really curious about what their life was like as children before their village burned, about what their time wandering as orphans was like, and how they acclimated to becoming the adopted children of a Grand Duke before it became clear he was evil. If you want to explore Barrington's abuse of Rapha, feel free to do so. These are definitely characters I'd be happy for people to explore dark themes with. I'm also very personally taken by ways you can read Rapha as a foil to Wiegraf, with her experience with Scorpio in the wake of Marach's death serving as a parallel to Wiegraf's pact with Aries. If you are interested in doing something with multiple groups that also touches on the Folles siblings, this might be a cool starting point.
As far as art goes, I'm once more interested in siblings just posing dramatically together, especially if you have some means to have them using their clunky in game powers in a way that looks genuinely cool. I'd also love to see them in any of the various phases of their life (as villagers, as orphans, as adoptees) and how they interact with one another in light of their circumstances. As with the Beoulves, feel free to do something that incorporates imagery relating to the zodiac stone with which they're associated (Scorpio). Also feel free to do anything jokey that involves Marach's exploding frogsona or frogs in general.
Wiegraf Folles & Milleuda Folles: Wiegraf is in my opinion the best written character in the game, and Milleuda is an amazing force of personality for how little time she gets on screen. I love both of these horribly doomed revolutionaries, and like every other sibling duo nominated, I'd love to see more of them pre-canon. There's a seven year age gap between these two, and I'd love in particular something that looks to how that plays out when both characters are in the same military conflict together, as presumably Wiegraf was of fighting age far before Milleuda was unless she ended up on the field while distressingly young. I'd love to see something that deals with their reaction to the Dead Men's refused pay, the formation and day to day existence of the Corpse Brigade, or their existence as--perhaps--less cynical characters who hadn't yet seen the end of the war. I'd be very interested in stories as well that center Milleuda's POV, given how little we see of her compared to Wiegraf and his ovine Faust narrative. As with my previous prompts, feel free to mix in encounters with other nominated groups if you are inspired to do so. I feel there's a lot of cool potential as regards bringing these two together with the three generals, the Galthenas, or the older Beoulves.
And as with the Galthenas and older Beoulves, I am very much down for these two just hanging out looking cool--swords drawn as either soldiers or revolutionaries. An older Wiegraf with a kid Milleuda could be cool, and if you want to get a little abstract/dark, I'd also be game for something that gestures towards Wiegraf's eventual transformation. I really love this artist's Folles kids work in particular, and this piece by them has long been one of my favorites. As with other sibling sets associated with a Lucavi, please do not be afraid to just draw them in scenarios involving that Lucavi's associated animal. I am here for something dorky with sheep.
Canon DNWs: n/a
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killer7 is a game that hit me like a ton of bricks, and while I haven't done a replay in forever, I am absolutely haunted by how well it pulled off subverted mechanics and using gameplay as an effective narrative device. I love its weird, hyper violent, surreal aesthetics and the general sense of style that oozes out of every polygon. I also just love shooting things into an explosion of blood while watching whatever two note badass I'm playing as look cool as they spout off one liners.
While I have read that one guy's GameFAQs speculations and have given real thought to the plot and its workings (I haven't--I confess--made it through Hand in Killer7), its a game where I am also content to admit that there are parts I do not follow or get. If you feel you get killer7 very well please do not feel like you have to hold back on any galaxy brain takes or references to supplementary material out of fear I will not appreciate them. If something goes over my head, I am the sort of person whose keen to look it up, and I will adore whatever you produce whether it plays to a very shallow or a very deep reading of the game. In general, I'm very comfortable being confused with this canon.
In general, please feel free to be strange, provocative, or over-the-top as you fancy with whatever you create. I love this game very dearly, and I'd love to see fanworks for it that capture how completely out there the game can be as an experience.
Dan Smith/Coyote Smith: I really really like hate ships, and this feels like it would be such a good hate ship. These two--as per the manual--hate each other. One is a cop and one is a criminal. Dan literally (or as literally as anything seems to get in this game) killed Coyote. They are also both hot and are trying ever so hard to be cool. I don't feel there's a lot that needs to be added to this equation for there to be murderous, rivalry-fueled shenanigans--and by shenanigans I mean make outs. Please just come up with a dynamic in which they dramatically injure, violently kiss, and/or desperately fuck one another. I would love something intense that plays into their pasts being killed by other people in other ways or that veers into over the top violence. I would also love something a little more jokey that plays into the fact that Coyote's major skill is picking one very specific type of padlock and how this could figure into some sort of bondage scenario. I am also absolutely fine with some PWP.
In terms of art, I feel my narrative suggestions for dramatically injury, violently kissing, and/or desperate fucking all translate fairly well to images. In terms of vids, I confess that this might be a slightly trickier than average request given how little Dan and Coyote are shown together on the same screen. I feel that something short and satisfying could still be done with the right song and quick transitions from one character to another (and you might be able to create the illusion of them being in conversation by subbing Coyote for other characters Dan engages with where each speaker has their own shot). Honestly, something that does a good job conveying what's sexy about both characters is great even if they aren't ever in the same place.
Garcian Smith: Garcian/Emir throughout the last few chapters breaks my heart. As I mentioned above, what really blew my mind when I played this game in '05 was how well the gameplay fed into my experience of the story. The black smile battle--in which you have all the cool characters you spent forever leveling up shorn away to leave you with a nearly useless backup persona--was such an "aha" moment for younger me when I realized you could very easily map that sense of upset and annoyance onto Garcian/Emir: that he was suddenly confronted very viscerally with the fact he was the main character. Anything that plays to that moment or that addresses either Emir's initial suicide or Garcian's eventual revelation on the roof would be something that I would really adore. I'm also game for fictional treatments of Emir's past experiences with brainwashing and abuse (I know some people attribute Kun Lan's parable about the young man murdering his mother as a retelling of something in Garcian's past--although I don't think it fits exactly in the timeline of him being 13 at the Union Hotel). Since what really hits me so hard about Garcian is the question of his identity and sense of self, I'd also find it fascinating to see how he views the other members of the Syndicate whose personae he assumes. Dan might be a particularly interesting case, given how he seems so full of main character energy when he ultimately isn't the real protagonist.
In terms of art, interpretations of the Black Smile battle, of Garcian-as-Emir, or of Garcian assuming the identities of other personae would all be welcome. Honestly though if you create something that has the same vibrant, out there feel of the game, I'd appreciate Garcian doing just about anything. Bright blood everywhere, third eyes, a golden gun: there's just a lot of stand out visuals you can employ here.
In terms of vids, I'd be interested to see something that focused specifically on cut scenes where we are shown only one member of the killer7 interacting with somebody, and the implications that this figure is or is not Garcian (something that plays with the shift with the camera early on is what I'm envisioning). I'm also down for something that puts Garcian in dialogue with one character (as mentioned above, Dan might be a good pick for a member of the syndicate, although one could very obviously do a lot with Mills). If you have a fun song for it, I'm also absolutely fine with something where the bulk of the video is the Russian Roulette scene. I'm also up for something that uses "Greensleeves" as the song, although I'd appreciate it if it took a notably different tack than the killer7 "Greensleeves" vid that already exists.
Susie Sumner: SUSIE IS THE BEST. ≧∀≦ She is the trollish severed ghost head I need in my life to deliver me very specific inventory items. 〃ω〃 I fucking love Susie, and I will love anything you make that is true to the spirit of this delight of a character. In terms of fic, I am happy if you want to go dark and explore all of her very troubling and violent relationships she had pre-canon (or if you even want to invent some more). I am happy if you want to go lighter and write about her adventures in various appliances or boxes. I bet she talks shit about the other remnant psyches constantly. >‿< I bet she talks shit about everyone constantly. Having her hang out with any of the vast multitude of ghosts that dwell about Garcian's head would be wonderful, as would having her just pop out of record crates or toaster ovens or what have you to interrupt important or dramatic moments. Please do not hesitate to drown any fic you might write in emoji.
For art, I would enjoy something that looks to her past when she was more than a head (or even specifically to episodes like the murder of her mother or boyfriend) but I am also just absolutely game for lulzy images of her being a head that is hiding in something. Feel free to be creative in terms of what she might hide in.
In terms of vids, I feel that you can do a lot with the right song if it can convey the upbeat weirdness of somebody constantly vocalizing emoticons, somebody cheerfully telling you about their lulzy murder sprees, or somebody just popping out of random places in which you do not expect to find them. I feel there's also a lot of potential here if you can locate good a tune about the speaker giving somebody a ring.
Canon DNWs: n/a
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Minesweeper is meditative for me. It is restful. While there is some element of chance when you're face with certain configurations where a guess must be made, it doesn't carry with it the panic of losing at tetris or the anticlimax of losing at solitaire. There's something very satisfying about trying to logic your way through large blocks of grey squares without the threat of a timer, and the game unfolds in a fashion that feels exploratory; you are--in the end--creating a map. Of all the mindless games I've played to kill my thoughts and sooth my brain, Minesweeper is the one I seem to come back to most.
There are obviously a lot of ways you can approach a Minesweeper fanwork. Some of the ones that come to mind for me are:
What This Game Could Represent: Is there a story to be made about these mines? What sort of world requires the act of minesweeping? Is a minesweeper a profession, and if so, what does being a minesweeper entail? Are there literal mines being tagged and located or do the "mines" signify something else? Is the yellow smiley face a character? What does its death by mine detonation or its victorious receipt of sunglasses signify?
I'd love to see what worlds you can write or illustrate that might be the basis for Minesweeper. Some sort of military scenario in which a character is literally scanning for mine would work (Dystopias of enforced minesweeping! Apocalypses on a mine saturated planet! Strategic training on mine-infested grounds!), but I'd be just as happy if you wanted to do something strange where the mines are a symbol or metaphor. Perhaps minesweeping is a means to self-cultivation (some sort of virtual psychiatrist helping to map the minefields of a client's psyche)? Perhaps minesweeping is the friendly UI to something more disturbing (a training program to help people of the future identify nuclear disposal sites). Perhaps it's some abstraction of the demands made by an ever present smiling yellow idol. Perhaps it's a means of tormenting some smiling yellow prisoner. I'd love to see any ideas for a world based on this game in either prose or art.
How People Interact With This Game: If you want to write about Minesweeper as Minesweeper, I'm happy for a piece of original fiction or art that features characters playing the game and engaging with one another through it. I obviously find something very soothing about Minesweeper, but I know this isn't universal. If you can think of human dynamics you'd like to see play out in relation to a game of Minesweeper, I'd love to see them. Feel free to be as mundane or as fantastic as you like. How might future societies regard Minesweeper? How would past societies react if Minesweeper was visited upon them? How might Minesweeper affect the dynamics of a family (particularly a family in the 90s where everyone's access to it is via one computer)? How might romances or relationship grow and develop around something as weird as this classic of the Win 3.1 era?
Crossovers: Every game I have requested is either in some way grid-based or is bizarre enough to handle a Minesweeper-based plot (Ultima is definitely both). If you are an ambitious creator who wants to think through some way to insert Minesweeper into another canon I've requested (you can ignore my character/group requests), feel free to do so.
Art: In addition to illustrations of all the scenarios mentioned above, I'd love to see something that really just makes Minesweeper look cool, given that one of its few failings is that it's kind of bland looking. As it's a game very much native to the 90s, I would be very much down for something that remixes its visuals to reflect 90s visual styles: arcade floors, the Web 1.0, those patterned cups... Lisa Frank. Redesign those mines for the decade from which they hail.
Vids: This is obviously a bit of a weird request, but I'd love to see something where you take highlights of a play through of Minesweeper and find audio that captures the feeling of the game. The one that springs most readily to mind is something that plays to those games in which you're down to 2-3 squares and manage to hit the final mine in your last move: something that would pair well with music that's highly dramatic. I can also see it going well with songs about monotony, persistence, or avoidance. If you signed up to do a fanvid about Minesweeper, I anticipate that you also might have already come to the project with a vision, and if you have, I would very much like to see it.
Canon DNWs: n/a
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Ultima is a game I loved from my childhood through my teenage years and beyond, and the whole series is just a very "comfy" canon for me. I love how it is a fantasical world of self inserts inviting your self insert to be the most special self insert of them all! I love how the games acknowledge that you are just a loser on earth who goes to a bizarre high fantasy land to do quests. I love how some installments (ex: Ultima VII, pt 1) do cool little deconstructions of fantasy tropes and how some installments (ex: Martian Dreams) are just complete revels in weird imaginative worldbuilding and I love how some installments just let you go on quests and fight dragons. There's a great breadth of genres and storytelling styles this series allows for, and I'm a fan of all of them.
My favorite games in particular are all the ones that end in 2 (Ultima II, Worlds of Ultima 2, Ultima Underworld II, Ultima VII, Part 2). I love them because they all take a lot of risks and do a lot of outside the box things. Please do not feel that you have to cling to the more conventional high fantasy elements of the series. I am absolutely here for weird Ultima, and the Ultima I love is inclusive of post-apocalyptic Soviet pirate settlements, nudist tax evaders, alien cloning chambers, and giant space bullets where Sigmund Freud determines your stats based on your pastry preferences. If you happen to have played alternate versions of games for consoles, read cool things in obscure hint books, or decided that you are very attached to body-horror-filled manga series, I am cool with you weaving in any and all of that in. If you have some weird scrap of Ultima lore with which I am unfamiliar, I will be delighted to find a gap in my knowledge and look it up.
In terms of the Avatar, I tend to make them a pretty neutral character in my own fanworks, such that readers can project their Avatars onto them. I'm happy to meet your Avatar however, if you want to bring your player-designed character to the table! If you want to craft an Avatar in keeping with my playthroughs, my go to character names were historically "Reiya" (female) and "Hawk" (male), which made Serpent Isle a bit of a weird experience for all of us. The personality of my Avatars has generally trended towards the chaotic. They tend to build forts somewhere out near Yew. They spitefully keep feeding Iolo sticks of butter. They often move Saduj into the second party slot and laugh when he gets cut in two. Visually, this portrait is probably closest to how I want them to look. Use whatever pronouns for the character you enjoy.
Astaroth, Faulinei, and Nosfentor: I am interested both in looking at the Shadowlords as both A) participants in the day to day operations of a very real tyrannical regime B) abstract embodiments of terminally bad vibes who experience an apparent afterlife in the Avatar's psyche that may only be confronted on Mars. In the case of the former, I really want to look towards the specifics of the Shadowlords relationship with Blackthorn and members of the Oppression. How do the mortal villains of Ultima V react to the fact that primordial rage/fear/deceit ghosts are just a part of the picture? How do you functionally collect taxes and imprison orphans when certain cities are just given over to mass panic? Stories about Blackthorn's seduction to the dark side, about having to navigate the way U5's government handles the influence of the supernatural or how the Shadowlords do and do not take heed of the mortal agents affiliated with them would all be fascinating. In the case of option B, I'd love more stuff about the Shadowlords understanding of themselves and relationship to one another, about how they came into being from some fragmented part of Mondain, or about how the Avatar conceives of themself in Shadowlord-related terms post Martian Dreams. If you want something that combines the two, I would be very much down for a post-Ulima V pre-Serpent Isle Blackthorn who has fallen in with the Xenkans experiencing his own visions of the Shadowlords that still live within him, such that he has cause to reflect on the crimes of his past.
In terms of art, I'm very interested in images that show the mass panic/rage/deception that they bring with them when they manifest, as I feel there's something of a dark carinvale mood you can extract from their in game mechanics in cities. I'd also be into something that shows them emerging from their shards or plaguing Blackthorn or the Avatar on a psychological level. Feel free to get creative with their form or shape, or to imply that there's something that lies underneath the darkness of their hoods. I like the idea of cosmic horror-inflected Shadowlords a lot, and I'm open to images of them that are something more complex than just the cloaks and eyes we're shown.
The Avatar & Arcadion: Arcadion is a delight, and kudos to Ultima for making your over-powered super-weapon a malevolent dick who talks back to you. I love the creepy dissonance of having the supergood embodiment of the eight virtues be inextricably bound to a demon that revels in the energies of death. I'm very sad that there wasn't more going on between these two before we hit the weirdness of Ultima IX, and I've been forever curious as to what was going on with Arcadion in Pagan (which was a game I loved despite all its shortcomings). An exploration as to what is up with Arcadion's seeming shift through time would be a good start for a narrative, although I'm also just interested in the tense, adversarial relationship between a champion of goodness and their homicidal daemon-sword. How might Arcadion try to corrupt its bearer? How might the Avatar (banished from Earth) see themselves in the similarly bounded and trapped Arcadion? In what ways might there be a sense of sympathy or understanding, and what unspoken emotions might be at play between the two during their climactic parting in the Mountains of Freedom?
In terms of art, I'd love to see more of Ultima VIII Arcadion being baffled by the characters' bizarre reunion. I'd also enjoy something that shows the Avatar and the demon in some sort of composition that implies an equivalency or an equal partnership. I like the idea of something that centers the black sword, where one of them holds the hilt and the other the blade (and I feel there are cool things you could do with both configurations).
The Avatar & Shamino & Dupre & Iolo: The quintessential Ultima party! The dream team! It's me, a drunken paladin, a bard who can't clean his house or control his horse, and the extra Richard Garriott Richard Garriott put in his game when one Richard Garriott was not enough! I love these dudes so much, and I would love the four of them to be undertaking some sort of bite-sized quest or adventure. There's such a jokey, friendly feel to the core Ultima party, and I think it would be fun for them to be involved in some quest with low stakes: hunting a very small manticore or delivering large volumes of bread or having to retrieve Lord British's fork after Sherry absconded with it. If you want to get really wild, I'd very much enjoy something for them before Ultima IV. I have a deep and mostly unironic love of Ultima II, and would love to have them teaming up back when Dupre was offering people ducks and Iolo was jamming out in New San Antonio. If you want to write something darker, I'd also love a deep look into how the four characters hand the completely devastating events of Serpent Isle, as I feel there's a deeply traumatic event happening every five minutes in that game, and it's a great setting in which to explore issues of grief, guilt, and despair. I love stuff that looks back towards Shamino's past as a king and the disastrous aftermath of his leave taking in particular, and I feel that the Castle of the White Dragon is a good starting point for Ultima darkfic.
As for art, I want things that are very similar to what I want in fic: the four characters doing something a little goofy and fun, the four characters just existing in the beautiful 80s time travel nightmare that is Ultima II, or the four characters having some moment of grief or despondency in the midst of Serpent Isle.
Canon DNWs: Nothing NSFW please. (Almost everyone in this game is also just some dude who lives in Texas, and it skirts a little too close to the type of RPF I don't dig.) Also, I know the games use the word g*psy regularly, but I would like to avoid it in fanworks.
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Dear Creator,
Let me thank you in advance for undertaking to create for me and congratulate you on your great taste regarding whichever canon it was that provided the basis for our match! I'm stoked for this exchange, as video game fandoms are generally near and dear to my heart, and all of the canons I've requested in this sign up have--in some way and at some time--been my favorites.
I've tried below to explain what it is about each game I love, and to provide some prompts for the characters, relationships, and mediums I've requested, but I want to emphasize that I'm very interested in you feeling free to flex your creative muscles. If the prompts listed aren't quite doing it for you, I am a genuine believer in optional details being optional, and I would love to see whatever creative production you are inspired to make out of these canons.
[NOTE: This letter is functionally complete at the time it was posted, but it may be tweaked through the end of sign-ups.]
General (DNWs, Likes, Opt-Ins) | Dance Dance Revolution | Final Fantasy Tactics | killer7 | Minesweeper | Ultima
General (DNWs, Likes, Opt-Ins, Etc...)
Do Not Wants:• ageplay
• incestuous relationships portrayed as healthy and uncomplicated (messed-up, dysfunctional incest is absolutely a-okay)
• omegaverse
• pregnancy-related kinks (ex: breeding kink, mpreg, worshipful focus on pregnant bellies, etc...); narrative explorations of childbearing, pregnancy, and reproduction more than welcome
• scat/emeto (unsexy mentions of vomit are okay; all poop is a no go)
Opt-Ins:
• all archive warnings
• comics, animated artwork, and illustrated fic
• epistolary fiction
• interactive fiction (I like IF a lot, you can check out my
unconventionalfanworksex letter here for details.)• non-linear narratives
• NSFW for all canons in which I don't DNW it
• whatever person/tense is your jam
General Likes:
• angst
• bittersweetness
• black humor
• character death
• complex family relationships
• hurt/comfort
• illness and injury (plague and head bashing in particular)
• incest where everything is maladaptive and bad
• fever dreams
• existential despair
• non-kinky explorations of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood
• stoicism in the face of terrible things
• surreal imagery
• torture; religious, mythological, and/or plant-based symbolism
• whump
Smut Likes:
• awkward, bad, or inept sex that's still enthusiastic
• blasphemy/sacrilege kink
• clothed or partially clothed sex
• double penetration
• drunk/drugged sex
• hate sex
• gangbangs
• non-con/dub-con in general
• non-penetrative sex
• strangulation/breathplay
• undead sex
• violent sex
Art Likes: I like things with dynamic poses; things that are cute/cartoonish; things that do something offbeat and a little bit exaggerated/surreal; and things that are a little over-stylized and dripping with symbolic imagery. Limited palettes and starkly inked black and white pieces are close to my heart as I am a rotten colorist and have an affinity for styles I could conceivably emulate. I also tend to like things that are de-saturated or a washed out looking. As with my general likes, I'm a sucker for anything that has cool symbolism with plants and religion in it.
Music Likes (for vids): I like a lot of indie/folk and the general weepy alt rock that was popular on 8tracks playlists of old. Ludo, Momus, Nick Cave, and AJJ are some of the artists/bands that I've listened to most extensively. You might get some mileage out of my prior
jukebox_fest a href="https://corpsebrigadier.dreamwidth.org/10182.html">sign up for more of my thoughts on songs. As the DDR section will probably hint, I'm also fond of upbeat electronic music. In terms of what I enjoy in a fanvid though, I am definitely most happy when I can feel the lyrics line up with the work, even if it's a song from a genre I'm not terribly familiar with.[Back to Top]
Dance Dance Revolution
[Requesting ART]Dance Dance Revolution is probably the video game that has had the biggest impact on my life overall. I received a copy of DDR Extreme around the time that it came out, and I have steadily played that exact copy on my immortal fat PS2 for the better part of two decades. The game pretty much redefined the way I feel about physical activity, and it is absolutely the first thing I think of whenever anybody waxes eloquent about the concept of "flow." I love the joyous, exhilarating feel of thrashing around to so much synthy Euro and J-Pop, and I adore the vibrant, 00s feel of all its visuals.
I nominated the characters I'm requesting almost entirely because I love their visual style, and I confess that I am not terribly well apprised with any of the deep lore of the DDR universe and that I tend to gloss over story modes. I just like dancing. These guys like dancing too, and what I would really enjoy in an art piece is seeing any or all of them dance! I'd be interested in them jamming on actual DDR machines or dancing outside of the confines of so many blinking arrows. Something with big, dramatic movements and angles; with bright, stand out colors; and/or with a crowded visual layout would be very much in step with what I love about this game. If you want to illustrate something that evokes a specific track from the game, I have a lot of warm feelings for all the variants of PARANOiA and the feeling of being overwhelmed frenzy they all bring. I also just unironically dig Butterfly. If you want to draw something with a lot of literal butterflies, I would very much be down for it. Seriously.
As for the specific characters I nominated:
Baby-Lon: He's apparently just a normal baby who puts on magic earmuffs and becomes and incredibly cool dancing baby. I'd love to see something that shows what this transformation looks like. I'd love to see how normal parenting experiences are disrupted by this process (although with his parents being Maho and a random adventurer/treasure hunter, I can imagine he might have an atypical childhood). I'd honestly just love to see Baby-Lon dancing in imaginative or bizarre cute outfits though, so feel free to just go wild if you have a cool idea for a dancing baby.
Boldo: I nominated Boldo based entirely of my love for playing as him when he's rocking his purple afro look in DDR Extreme. It was only after checking out the wiki that I learned about him providing a foil to Disco and ostensibly having a serious/workaholic personality. Most of what I'm looking for in art of him is just him being striking and having majestic purple hair, possibly on a disco floor. However, if you want to do anything that incorporates his greater backstory and character, please go ahead.
Devil-Zukin: She's a demon. Her hoodie is apparently a part of her head. She has spooky wings. She looks like she shops at Hot Topic circa 2005. I love her. If you want to go full goth with an art piece featuring her, go for it, but I'm just as open to something featuring her that plays into the peppy, upbeat nature of the canon. If you want to reference a specific track, you might do something with .59, where she's part of the stage background.
Robo 2001: He's a robot. He's apparently not even a dancing robot, but a space exploration robot with dancing software installed. I'm down for him doing some dance moves that only a robot can do. I'm down for an image of him interacting with his programmers or creators who probably wanted him to service a satellite or something instead of performing some funky robot moves. I'm down for him robo-dancing all over the Smithsonian, where he apparently lives.
Canon DNWs: Nothing NSFW please.
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Final Fantasy Tactics
[Requesting ART or FIC]This 1998 tactical RPG by Square-Enix has been my major fandom for a few years now. I love how immensely unrepentantly bleak it is, how it's full of Church-flavored horror, and how it is just filled to the brim with unhappy families. I'm entirely here for political backstabbing and endless misery 24/7 in this sad little world of grid-based warfare. I love pretty much everything within it, and I would frankly be happy to receive almost anything for this fandom.
For this exchange, I'm specifically interested in takes on older characters and sibling sets whose lives would have been shaped by the Fifty Years War. I have an endless fascination with how the much longer and much larger conflict that we don't see as players shaped the conditions that led to Lion War and the events of the game, and I love to see people's takes on how that conflict impacted FFT's villainous and morally grey characters. A lot of the groups I nominated are ones that I'd be eager to see written into pre-canon scenarios or drawn as younger versions of themselves. I'd love looks at these characters that either show them as people who were fundamentally changed by war or as people who were remarkable for making it through the war with a consistent set of principles.
While I've made a lot of fanworks on my own positing certain histories for these characters, what I'm very keen on with a lot of my fic prompts is seeing somebody else's headcanons and worldbuilding at play. Feel free to throw in OCs, unrequested ships, and other elements if you feel it would make for a good story fleshing out some of the gaps in these characters' lives and/or giving additional dimensions to their relationships with one another. Feel free to combine multiple groups I've selected. Feel free, honestly, to fuzz any of the &s in these nominations to /s if you think it would be compelling.
In terms of art, I'm eager to see takes on what these people might have looked like and how they might have interacted in an earlier era: particularly when they might have been of the same age and disposition as all the FFT characters in Ramza's general age cohort who start play in their mid to late teens. I really just want to see the sort of ideas you have about any of these characters beyond what we see in the game.
Note on Names: I mix and match PSX and PSP names for characters and places based entirely on what I think sounds cool, and I encourage you to do likewise and adhere to whatever orthography you like best.
Barbaneth Beoulve, Cidolfus Orlandeau & Goffard Gaffgarion: Gaffgarion's biography mentions that he was once the commander of the knights of the Eastern Sky (the Touten in the OG translation), and that he was ejected for his ruthless fighting style. This is the only mention that this knightly order gets, whereas the Northern and Southern Skies are very obviously at the center of the in-game conflict. I want to know more about more about the Eastern Sky and how it interacted with other commands. I want to see how all these badasses from the last war got on, what tensions might have erupted, and how they might have changed over however many years of fighting they endured. In terms of fic, I'd enjoy reading something about the three of them interacting in relation to some sort of upset (the Romandan invasion or the death of Denamunda IV perhaps) or something that explores how they adapted as the conflict with Ordallia came to a close. If you want to bring these guys into a piece that also encompasses some of the other character groups, I feel there's a lot of potential. While the older Beoulve kids are the most obvious other characters to show up, I'd love to see these guys having to react to traumatized war orphans like the Galthenas or having to grapple with the Folles' kids and their military significance despite not being knights.
In terms of art, it would really just be neat to see a young (possibly Ramza-resembling) Barbaneth, Cid before he was particularly cool, and Gaff before he was particularly sinister. Perhaps they're in the midst of strategizing, or just chilling (possibly drinking!) somewhere post-battle. If you're interested in worldbuild through art, you might consider developing some visuals for what the Eastern Sky and its heraldry looks like.
Simon Penn-Lachish & Zalmour Lucianada: Simon quit the Inquisition because of an "incident," and that incident is never explained. I would be thrilled to learn more about that incident. I'm also generally interested in something that brings together and contrasts the only two characters in the game who were active in the Inquisition, as they don't actually get a chance to meet in canon. Zalmour is such a confirmed zealot and Simon is such a textbook case of lost faith in the midst of lingering obligations. As two of the few people who are affiliated with the Church without being affiliated with any of its multi-layered conspiracies, it would be neat to see how both men grapple with faith. Simon is also one of the only characters who would actually remember an Ivalice before the Fifty Years War, and I'd be fascinated to see how two men who would have seen most of that conflict play out relate to it.
In terms of art, I'm a sucker for ostentatious Catholic visuals, and I'd adore something that really explores and plays with what religious ornamentation looks like in the Glabados faith (playing up the details of locations like Orbonne, Bervenia, or Mullonde would be fantastic). As always, I'd love to see younger versions of the requested characters, and how these two dudes might have looked at an earlier point in time. A novice Zalmour learning from an older Simon perhaps?
Dycedarg Beoulve & Zalbaag Beoulve: These guys are my absolute favorite dysfunctional sibling duo in a game all about dysfunctional sibling duos, and I would love to read anything you can come up with about them. I'm particularly curious about what their family history is like before the younger Beoulves come into the scene and before Dycedarg started on a career of patricide and general awfulness. What was their mother like? What's up with the decade long age gaps in this family? Why did the two legitimate heirs to a family as important as the Beoulves never marry? What did they make of the sudden addition of bastards and/or foundlings in their household? How and why did they both become willing to do such terrible things? Feel free to rope in any of the other groups nominated if you think they could add something to the older Beoulves' story. I think it would be neat to put them in dialogue with the Galthenas and/or the Folleses in particular, given that the Fifty Years war provides a great narrative "in" for bringing any of these three very different sets of kids together.
As for art, I'm a sucker for siblings and connected characters in dynamic poses looking cool. I'd also be super into something where they're much younger--perhaps an older Dycedarg interacting with a child Zalbag?--or both brothers being of age to be fighting in the Fifty Years War and hanging about in the midst of some portion of that conflict? Also, I am absolutely never going to say no hokey images of them that involve goats or depressing images of them that involve mushrooms.
Rapha Galthena & Marach Galthena: Rapha and Marach have so much to love about them as characters, and I feel that their absolutely rancid combat abilities led many players (myself included at one point) to overlook them. They are so incredibly young in comparison to most of the other figures seriously by the Fifty Years War (Rapha start the game at 13), and it feels like there's very little of their lives that haven't been bound up in shared tragedy. I'm really curious about what their life was like as children before their village burned, about what their time wandering as orphans was like, and how they acclimated to becoming the adopted children of a Grand Duke before it became clear he was evil. If you want to explore Barrington's abuse of Rapha, feel free to do so. These are definitely characters I'd be happy for people to explore dark themes with. I'm also very personally taken by ways you can read Rapha as a foil to Wiegraf, with her experience with Scorpio in the wake of Marach's death serving as a parallel to Wiegraf's pact with Aries. If you are interested in doing something with multiple groups that also touches on the Folles siblings, this might be a cool starting point.
As far as art goes, I'm once more interested in siblings just posing dramatically together, especially if you have some means to have them using their clunky in game powers in a way that looks genuinely cool. I'd also love to see them in any of the various phases of their life (as villagers, as orphans, as adoptees) and how they interact with one another in light of their circumstances. As with the Beoulves, feel free to do something that incorporates imagery relating to the zodiac stone with which they're associated (Scorpio). Also feel free to do anything jokey that involves Marach's exploding frogsona or frogs in general.
Wiegraf Folles & Milleuda Folles: Wiegraf is in my opinion the best written character in the game, and Milleuda is an amazing force of personality for how little time she gets on screen. I love both of these horribly doomed revolutionaries, and like every other sibling duo nominated, I'd love to see more of them pre-canon. There's a seven year age gap between these two, and I'd love in particular something that looks to how that plays out when both characters are in the same military conflict together, as presumably Wiegraf was of fighting age far before Milleuda was unless she ended up on the field while distressingly young. I'd love to see something that deals with their reaction to the Dead Men's refused pay, the formation and day to day existence of the Corpse Brigade, or their existence as--perhaps--less cynical characters who hadn't yet seen the end of the war. I'd be very interested in stories as well that center Milleuda's POV, given how little we see of her compared to Wiegraf and his ovine Faust narrative. As with my previous prompts, feel free to mix in encounters with other nominated groups if you are inspired to do so. I feel there's a lot of cool potential as regards bringing these two together with the three generals, the Galthenas, or the older Beoulves.
And as with the Galthenas and older Beoulves, I am very much down for these two just hanging out looking cool--swords drawn as either soldiers or revolutionaries. An older Wiegraf with a kid Milleuda could be cool, and if you want to get a little abstract/dark, I'd also be game for something that gestures towards Wiegraf's eventual transformation. I really love this artist's Folles kids work in particular, and this piece by them has long been one of my favorites. As with other sibling sets associated with a Lucavi, please do not be afraid to just draw them in scenarios involving that Lucavi's associated animal. I am here for something dorky with sheep.
Canon DNWs: n/a
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killer7
[Requesting ART, FIC, or VIDs]killer7 is a game that hit me like a ton of bricks, and while I haven't done a replay in forever, I am absolutely haunted by how well it pulled off subverted mechanics and using gameplay as an effective narrative device. I love its weird, hyper violent, surreal aesthetics and the general sense of style that oozes out of every polygon. I also just love shooting things into an explosion of blood while watching whatever two note badass I'm playing as look cool as they spout off one liners.
While I have read that one guy's GameFAQs speculations and have given real thought to the plot and its workings (I haven't--I confess--made it through Hand in Killer7), its a game where I am also content to admit that there are parts I do not follow or get. If you feel you get killer7 very well please do not feel like you have to hold back on any galaxy brain takes or references to supplementary material out of fear I will not appreciate them. If something goes over my head, I am the sort of person whose keen to look it up, and I will adore whatever you produce whether it plays to a very shallow or a very deep reading of the game. In general, I'm very comfortable being confused with this canon.
In general, please feel free to be strange, provocative, or over-the-top as you fancy with whatever you create. I love this game very dearly, and I'd love to see fanworks for it that capture how completely out there the game can be as an experience.
Dan Smith/Coyote Smith: I really really like hate ships, and this feels like it would be such a good hate ship. These two--as per the manual--hate each other. One is a cop and one is a criminal. Dan literally (or as literally as anything seems to get in this game) killed Coyote. They are also both hot and are trying ever so hard to be cool. I don't feel there's a lot that needs to be added to this equation for there to be murderous, rivalry-fueled shenanigans--and by shenanigans I mean make outs. Please just come up with a dynamic in which they dramatically injure, violently kiss, and/or desperately fuck one another. I would love something intense that plays into their pasts being killed by other people in other ways or that veers into over the top violence. I would also love something a little more jokey that plays into the fact that Coyote's major skill is picking one very specific type of padlock and how this could figure into some sort of bondage scenario. I am also absolutely fine with some PWP.
In terms of art, I feel my narrative suggestions for dramatically injury, violently kissing, and/or desperate fucking all translate fairly well to images. In terms of vids, I confess that this might be a slightly trickier than average request given how little Dan and Coyote are shown together on the same screen. I feel that something short and satisfying could still be done with the right song and quick transitions from one character to another (and you might be able to create the illusion of them being in conversation by subbing Coyote for other characters Dan engages with where each speaker has their own shot). Honestly, something that does a good job conveying what's sexy about both characters is great even if they aren't ever in the same place.
Garcian Smith: Garcian/Emir throughout the last few chapters breaks my heart. As I mentioned above, what really blew my mind when I played this game in '05 was how well the gameplay fed into my experience of the story. The black smile battle--in which you have all the cool characters you spent forever leveling up shorn away to leave you with a nearly useless backup persona--was such an "aha" moment for younger me when I realized you could very easily map that sense of upset and annoyance onto Garcian/Emir: that he was suddenly confronted very viscerally with the fact he was the main character. Anything that plays to that moment or that addresses either Emir's initial suicide or Garcian's eventual revelation on the roof would be something that I would really adore. I'm also game for fictional treatments of Emir's past experiences with brainwashing and abuse (I know some people attribute Kun Lan's parable about the young man murdering his mother as a retelling of something in Garcian's past--although I don't think it fits exactly in the timeline of him being 13 at the Union Hotel). Since what really hits me so hard about Garcian is the question of his identity and sense of self, I'd also find it fascinating to see how he views the other members of the Syndicate whose personae he assumes. Dan might be a particularly interesting case, given how he seems so full of main character energy when he ultimately isn't the real protagonist.
In terms of art, interpretations of the Black Smile battle, of Garcian-as-Emir, or of Garcian assuming the identities of other personae would all be welcome. Honestly though if you create something that has the same vibrant, out there feel of the game, I'd appreciate Garcian doing just about anything. Bright blood everywhere, third eyes, a golden gun: there's just a lot of stand out visuals you can employ here.
In terms of vids, I'd be interested to see something that focused specifically on cut scenes where we are shown only one member of the killer7 interacting with somebody, and the implications that this figure is or is not Garcian (something that plays with the shift with the camera early on is what I'm envisioning). I'm also down for something that puts Garcian in dialogue with one character (as mentioned above, Dan might be a good pick for a member of the syndicate, although one could very obviously do a lot with Mills). If you have a fun song for it, I'm also absolutely fine with something where the bulk of the video is the Russian Roulette scene. I'm also up for something that uses "Greensleeves" as the song, although I'd appreciate it if it took a notably different tack than the killer7 "Greensleeves" vid that already exists.
Susie Sumner: SUSIE IS THE BEST. ≧∀≦ She is the trollish severed ghost head I need in my life to deliver me very specific inventory items. 〃ω〃 I fucking love Susie, and I will love anything you make that is true to the spirit of this delight of a character. In terms of fic, I am happy if you want to go dark and explore all of her very troubling and violent relationships she had pre-canon (or if you even want to invent some more). I am happy if you want to go lighter and write about her adventures in various appliances or boxes. I bet she talks shit about the other remnant psyches constantly. >‿< I bet she talks shit about everyone constantly. Having her hang out with any of the vast multitude of ghosts that dwell about Garcian's head would be wonderful, as would having her just pop out of record crates or toaster ovens or what have you to interrupt important or dramatic moments. Please do not hesitate to drown any fic you might write in emoji.
For art, I would enjoy something that looks to her past when she was more than a head (or even specifically to episodes like the murder of her mother or boyfriend) but I am also just absolutely game for lulzy images of her being a head that is hiding in something. Feel free to be creative in terms of what she might hide in.
In terms of vids, I feel that you can do a lot with the right song if it can convey the upbeat weirdness of somebody constantly vocalizing emoticons, somebody cheerfully telling you about their lulzy murder sprees, or somebody just popping out of random places in which you do not expect to find them. I feel there's also a lot of potential here if you can locate good a tune about the speaker giving somebody a ring.
Canon DNWs: n/a
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Minesweeper
[Requesting ART, FIC, or VIDs]Minesweeper is meditative for me. It is restful. While there is some element of chance when you're face with certain configurations where a guess must be made, it doesn't carry with it the panic of losing at tetris or the anticlimax of losing at solitaire. There's something very satisfying about trying to logic your way through large blocks of grey squares without the threat of a timer, and the game unfolds in a fashion that feels exploratory; you are--in the end--creating a map. Of all the mindless games I've played to kill my thoughts and sooth my brain, Minesweeper is the one I seem to come back to most.
There are obviously a lot of ways you can approach a Minesweeper fanwork. Some of the ones that come to mind for me are:
What This Game Could Represent: Is there a story to be made about these mines? What sort of world requires the act of minesweeping? Is a minesweeper a profession, and if so, what does being a minesweeper entail? Are there literal mines being tagged and located or do the "mines" signify something else? Is the yellow smiley face a character? What does its death by mine detonation or its victorious receipt of sunglasses signify?
I'd love to see what worlds you can write or illustrate that might be the basis for Minesweeper. Some sort of military scenario in which a character is literally scanning for mine would work (Dystopias of enforced minesweeping! Apocalypses on a mine saturated planet! Strategic training on mine-infested grounds!), but I'd be just as happy if you wanted to do something strange where the mines are a symbol or metaphor. Perhaps minesweeping is a means to self-cultivation (some sort of virtual psychiatrist helping to map the minefields of a client's psyche)? Perhaps minesweeping is the friendly UI to something more disturbing (a training program to help people of the future identify nuclear disposal sites). Perhaps it's some abstraction of the demands made by an ever present smiling yellow idol. Perhaps it's a means of tormenting some smiling yellow prisoner. I'd love to see any ideas for a world based on this game in either prose or art.
How People Interact With This Game: If you want to write about Minesweeper as Minesweeper, I'm happy for a piece of original fiction or art that features characters playing the game and engaging with one another through it. I obviously find something very soothing about Minesweeper, but I know this isn't universal. If you can think of human dynamics you'd like to see play out in relation to a game of Minesweeper, I'd love to see them. Feel free to be as mundane or as fantastic as you like. How might future societies regard Minesweeper? How would past societies react if Minesweeper was visited upon them? How might Minesweeper affect the dynamics of a family (particularly a family in the 90s where everyone's access to it is via one computer)? How might romances or relationship grow and develop around something as weird as this classic of the Win 3.1 era?
Crossovers: Every game I have requested is either in some way grid-based or is bizarre enough to handle a Minesweeper-based plot (Ultima is definitely both). If you are an ambitious creator who wants to think through some way to insert Minesweeper into another canon I've requested (you can ignore my character/group requests), feel free to do so.
Art: In addition to illustrations of all the scenarios mentioned above, I'd love to see something that really just makes Minesweeper look cool, given that one of its few failings is that it's kind of bland looking. As it's a game very much native to the 90s, I would be very much down for something that remixes its visuals to reflect 90s visual styles: arcade floors, the Web 1.0, those patterned cups... Lisa Frank. Redesign those mines for the decade from which they hail.
Vids: This is obviously a bit of a weird request, but I'd love to see something where you take highlights of a play through of Minesweeper and find audio that captures the feeling of the game. The one that springs most readily to mind is something that plays to those games in which you're down to 2-3 squares and manage to hit the final mine in your last move: something that would pair well with music that's highly dramatic. I can also see it going well with songs about monotony, persistence, or avoidance. If you signed up to do a fanvid about Minesweeper, I anticipate that you also might have already come to the project with a vision, and if you have, I would very much like to see it.
Canon DNWs: n/a
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Ultima
[Requesting ART or FIC]Ultima is a game I loved from my childhood through my teenage years and beyond, and the whole series is just a very "comfy" canon for me. I love how it is a fantasical world of self inserts inviting your self insert to be the most special self insert of them all! I love how the games acknowledge that you are just a loser on earth who goes to a bizarre high fantasy land to do quests. I love how some installments (ex: Ultima VII, pt 1) do cool little deconstructions of fantasy tropes and how some installments (ex: Martian Dreams) are just complete revels in weird imaginative worldbuilding and I love how some installments just let you go on quests and fight dragons. There's a great breadth of genres and storytelling styles this series allows for, and I'm a fan of all of them.
My favorite games in particular are all the ones that end in 2 (Ultima II, Worlds of Ultima 2, Ultima Underworld II, Ultima VII, Part 2). I love them because they all take a lot of risks and do a lot of outside the box things. Please do not feel that you have to cling to the more conventional high fantasy elements of the series. I am absolutely here for weird Ultima, and the Ultima I love is inclusive of post-apocalyptic Soviet pirate settlements, nudist tax evaders, alien cloning chambers, and giant space bullets where Sigmund Freud determines your stats based on your pastry preferences. If you happen to have played alternate versions of games for consoles, read cool things in obscure hint books, or decided that you are very attached to body-horror-filled manga series, I am cool with you weaving in any and all of that in. If you have some weird scrap of Ultima lore with which I am unfamiliar, I will be delighted to find a gap in my knowledge and look it up.
In terms of the Avatar, I tend to make them a pretty neutral character in my own fanworks, such that readers can project their Avatars onto them. I'm happy to meet your Avatar however, if you want to bring your player-designed character to the table! If you want to craft an Avatar in keeping with my playthroughs, my go to character names were historically "Reiya" (female) and "Hawk" (male), which made Serpent Isle a bit of a weird experience for all of us. The personality of my Avatars has generally trended towards the chaotic. They tend to build forts somewhere out near Yew. They spitefully keep feeding Iolo sticks of butter. They often move Saduj into the second party slot and laugh when he gets cut in two. Visually, this portrait is probably closest to how I want them to look. Use whatever pronouns for the character you enjoy.
Astaroth, Faulinei, and Nosfentor: I am interested both in looking at the Shadowlords as both A) participants in the day to day operations of a very real tyrannical regime B) abstract embodiments of terminally bad vibes who experience an apparent afterlife in the Avatar's psyche that may only be confronted on Mars. In the case of the former, I really want to look towards the specifics of the Shadowlords relationship with Blackthorn and members of the Oppression. How do the mortal villains of Ultima V react to the fact that primordial rage/fear/deceit ghosts are just a part of the picture? How do you functionally collect taxes and imprison orphans when certain cities are just given over to mass panic? Stories about Blackthorn's seduction to the dark side, about having to navigate the way U5's government handles the influence of the supernatural or how the Shadowlords do and do not take heed of the mortal agents affiliated with them would all be fascinating. In the case of option B, I'd love more stuff about the Shadowlords understanding of themselves and relationship to one another, about how they came into being from some fragmented part of Mondain, or about how the Avatar conceives of themself in Shadowlord-related terms post Martian Dreams. If you want something that combines the two, I would be very much down for a post-Ulima V pre-Serpent Isle Blackthorn who has fallen in with the Xenkans experiencing his own visions of the Shadowlords that still live within him, such that he has cause to reflect on the crimes of his past.
In terms of art, I'm very interested in images that show the mass panic/rage/deception that they bring with them when they manifest, as I feel there's something of a dark carinvale mood you can extract from their in game mechanics in cities. I'd also be into something that shows them emerging from their shards or plaguing Blackthorn or the Avatar on a psychological level. Feel free to get creative with their form or shape, or to imply that there's something that lies underneath the darkness of their hoods. I like the idea of cosmic horror-inflected Shadowlords a lot, and I'm open to images of them that are something more complex than just the cloaks and eyes we're shown.
The Avatar & Arcadion: Arcadion is a delight, and kudos to Ultima for making your over-powered super-weapon a malevolent dick who talks back to you. I love the creepy dissonance of having the supergood embodiment of the eight virtues be inextricably bound to a demon that revels in the energies of death. I'm very sad that there wasn't more going on between these two before we hit the weirdness of Ultima IX, and I've been forever curious as to what was going on with Arcadion in Pagan (which was a game I loved despite all its shortcomings). An exploration as to what is up with Arcadion's seeming shift through time would be a good start for a narrative, although I'm also just interested in the tense, adversarial relationship between a champion of goodness and their homicidal daemon-sword. How might Arcadion try to corrupt its bearer? How might the Avatar (banished from Earth) see themselves in the similarly bounded and trapped Arcadion? In what ways might there be a sense of sympathy or understanding, and what unspoken emotions might be at play between the two during their climactic parting in the Mountains of Freedom?
In terms of art, I'd love to see more of Ultima VIII Arcadion being baffled by the characters' bizarre reunion. I'd also enjoy something that shows the Avatar and the demon in some sort of composition that implies an equivalency or an equal partnership. I like the idea of something that centers the black sword, where one of them holds the hilt and the other the blade (and I feel there are cool things you could do with both configurations).
The Avatar & Shamino & Dupre & Iolo: The quintessential Ultima party! The dream team! It's me, a drunken paladin, a bard who can't clean his house or control his horse, and the extra Richard Garriott Richard Garriott put in his game when one Richard Garriott was not enough! I love these dudes so much, and I would love the four of them to be undertaking some sort of bite-sized quest or adventure. There's such a jokey, friendly feel to the core Ultima party, and I think it would be fun for them to be involved in some quest with low stakes: hunting a very small manticore or delivering large volumes of bread or having to retrieve Lord British's fork after Sherry absconded with it. If you want to get really wild, I'd very much enjoy something for them before Ultima IV. I have a deep and mostly unironic love of Ultima II, and would love to have them teaming up back when Dupre was offering people ducks and Iolo was jamming out in New San Antonio. If you want to write something darker, I'd also love a deep look into how the four characters hand the completely devastating events of Serpent Isle, as I feel there's a deeply traumatic event happening every five minutes in that game, and it's a great setting in which to explore issues of grief, guilt, and despair. I love stuff that looks back towards Shamino's past as a king and the disastrous aftermath of his leave taking in particular, and I feel that the Castle of the White Dragon is a good starting point for Ultima darkfic.
As for art, I want things that are very similar to what I want in fic: the four characters doing something a little goofy and fun, the four characters just existing in the beautiful 80s time travel nightmare that is Ultima II, or the four characters having some moment of grief or despondency in the midst of Serpent Isle.
Canon DNWs: Nothing NSFW please. (Almost everyone in this game is also just some dude who lives in Texas, and it skirts a little too close to the type of RPF I don't dig.) Also, I know the games use the word g*psy regularly, but I would like to avoid it in fanworks.
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