Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020) Letter

!Please, just because I have more prompts or more to say about a fandom (or prompt) doesn’t mean I want it more, it just means that I have more to say. I want all of these equally!

Starting with my requests based on songs, because five minute fandoms are always a good place to start.

 

From The Stars – Rabbit Junk

Song

The narrator’s part of some agency, there are other such agencies. But what do those agencies actually do? What’s the point of investigating such structures? Clearly there’s some reason to it as the narrator doesn’t seem surprised by the body of an unknown agent.

Expand on the story in the song or tell another such story, maybe something from the narrator’s past or from the perspective of a different agent.

Or in art, I’d love to see the final moments of the song, the narrator being attacked by the creature, whatever it is, or an image of one the structure itself, dark and imposing and unnatural.

 

Burrow Your Way to My Heart – Darkest of the Hillside Thickets

Song

A romance song about a young woman full of vermin. What is she? What does the narrator see in her? Or tell me her story, her life before she met the narrator. Clearly she’s been this way for a long time, ever since she was a child and she the insects and parasites that live in her were her friends even then. How did that happen? Her father seemingly human and disturbed enough by her nature to try and remove the parasites, but what of her mother? Was she unnatural, but in a different way?

Here is where I’d love to see art, her all full of bugs and squirming things, yet lovely and vibrant and alive. The contrast is so fascinating to me, something vile romanticized and made sympathetic, the object of desire and longing. I would love to see her depicted as she is, horrific, and yet as lovely as the narrators seems to feel she is.

 

Jolene (H.P. Lovecraft Version) – Michael Kelly

Song

There’s this meme about the song Jolene, where the narrator keeps describing her and describing her in increasingly vivid and unnerving terms until the only thing you know about Jolene is that she’s not human and that she’s horrifying. This song is that meme.

If you’re in the mood to create art for me I’d love to see your depiction of Jolene in all of her might and horror. Is she beautiful? Horrifying? Incomprehensible to mortal eyes? Draw heavily from Lovecraftian elder gods and monsters if you want to, things like Nyarlathotep, Eihort, Shub-Niggurath and all of the others.

For written works, outright Lovecraftian horror about a cult that worships this entity and seeks to bring her to the world would be awesome, but I was thinking something else. There’s the trend in history, for horrific things to be referred to by pleasant names to avoid offending them or drawing their attention and now we do the same thing with hurricanes, winter storms and typhoons. So I’d love to hear the story of Anomalous Event Jolene, or something similar. What are these events? How often do they happen and is there any way to prepare for them or prevent them?

 

H.P. Joelcraft – Julian Velard

Song

Okay, this one takes some explaining, it’s Lovecraft’s Nemesis sung to the tune of Billy Joel’s Piano Man. What I’m looking for isn’t something directly based on the lyrics, I do not want a fic about Nyarlathotep, which is what the original poem’s about. What I want is something that captures the feeling created by this song – Imagine walking into the kind of piano bar where the man (is he a man? They seem man-shaped, but their eyes are the only thing that you can clearly see, except sometimes there are no eyes, just amorphous blots of deeper shadow where you expect a face to be) sitting at the piano would play a song like this. What are the patrons like? What is the place where the bar is like?

What on earth is the stranger who’s stumbled into this place even doing there?

Give me some creepy small town vibes, or one of those places that seem to exist outside of time and reality as we know it.

Or if you want to do art, silly as it is, I’d love fan art of Billy Joel how he looked back in the 70’s, with focus on his eyes in such a way as to make him subtly unnerving.

 

Golden Age of Leather - Blue Öyster Cult

Song

At the surface, this song is a highly romanticized depiction of an outlaw biker gang that’s decided to have one last huzzah, going out in a blaze of glory and violence as, after a night of drinking, drugs and sex (I love the line about ‘a wanton child too dead to care’ being ‘passed from man to man’ – it’s so awful and bleak) they take sides, fighting and killing each other in an orgy of violence, that ends with the dawn, not a trace of the men or their bikes left, save for ‘the glint of a solitary shaft of chromium steel’.

You can write me a fic about that night, as it is in the song, give details about specific men, the terrible things they’ve seen and participated in, or the events that led up to them making the pact that they consummate in the song.

On the other hand, if you want to get surreal, the Blue Öyster Cult is fond of the theme of supernatural, or preternaturally evil biker gangs. So perhaps this particular band of bikers isn’t just a mundane outlaw biker gang. Perhaps they, as a group did something that bound them together to the degree where the completion of the task brought them to the point where there was nothing left to live for (martial themes are used in the song, referring to them as drunken soldiers and describing what they do as a last crusade). Did they vanquish some supernatural evil, possibly a rival gang of inhuman nature, and now this ritual suicide is seen as the safest way to keep said rivals sealed away for all time? Alternately, will death in this ritualized battle allow them to exist past death, carrying said rivalry beyond the grave and into the home turf of their ghostly rivals?

For artwork based on this prompt, I’d love an image of an aged, weathered and generally beat-to-hell biker in full regalia, holding a bloodied metal or braided leather getback whip loosely in his hand. I’d love bold, heavy outlines and shading if you go black and white, and if you do color maybe warm, sunset colors to reflect the sense of ending and finality in the song. Oh and one thing I’d really love to see a Blue Öyster Cult symbol hidden somewhere in the piece.

 

Pinocchiho – Tech N9ne

Song

The narrator’s a monster, but he hates it, he longs to be normal. I want the story of that, expand on the details of his date as mentioned in the song, or tell me why he’s that way? Has he always craved the flesh of women, or was he cursed with cannibalistic desires through some circumstance? Is he even human? Expand on his backstory please! Is he a vampire? A werewolf? Descended from a demon of some sort?

Oh, and while the song’s set in modern times, I wouldn’t mind it being used as inspiration for a historical or fantasy setting.

For art, I’d love a picture of a handsome, well dressed, yet horrifying, wild and desperate looking man, covered in blood in the immediate aftermath of the events of the song. Fangs, claws, and inhuman eyes are always a plus in my book.

 

Some Things Man Was Not Meant To Know – The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets

Song

A whole list of things not to do to protect you sanity or life. Any of the lines honestly works as a prompt, but I cannot help but imagine someone either desperately telling someone all of this in an attempt to protect them from something. Or someone slowly losing their sanity as they encounter circumstances where some of the situations listed keep presenting themselves as reasonable options.

This is kind of an anything goes request, magical realism or situations where fantasy and reality blend are what I’m looking for here.

 

And now for the things that aren’t five minute fandoms…

 

Prototype

Alex Mercer & Dana Mercer: Sibling interactions when they were young is what I’m thinking with this. I mean he had to have been a sociopath as a child, so what was it like for Dana to grow up admiring an older brother who just isn’t right in some ways. Did she suspect anything or force herself to ignore it?

Alternately, give me something set towards the later part of the game where Dana’s realizing that there’s something wrong with Alex, something deeply, horribly wrong and a new sort of wrong, one she can’t ignore. Or go post game and give me Alex being unnerving and Dana trying to cope with the fact that she wants to know more, or does she? Because once she knows there’s no going back.

Solo: Alex Mercer: Since he’s a not human, I’d love something focused on that, him fighting the infected, him tracking down someone to consume them, him dealing with all of the conflicting memories he’s acquired. Or him trying to pretend to be human for Dana’s sake. Or him losing control of his powers, becoming something more obviously inhuman, fighting with instincts that he doesn’t want to act on. Body horror is my jam here and Alex is body horror the character.

For Alex, I would love fan art of him using his powers, partially mutated or anything like that. If you really want to go wild, having him rip apart some sort of infected would be so awesome!

Solo: Dana Mercer: There’s a lot to do with Dana. Her being alone and scared while the city goes to hell, her trying to reconcile everything Alex has said with what’s going on. The missing scene of her in the hive with Greene. A bad ending AU where Green infects her, or Alex, or anything that results in her being infected. If you do go with her being infected, graphic descriptions and messy transformations are something I love.

Solo: Robert Cross: With Cross I have two wildly divergent lines of thought. One is that I’d love a fic about him doing his job, tracking down runners and killing them and all the infected they might have created. Or to put it another way, Cross being a horrifying, masked pursuer, mercilessly tracking down a frightened young girl, killing everyone she’s met in her attempt to escape him and then killing her. Because his job description is basically ‘be the villain of an old slasher movie to protect humanity from a horrible, mutagenic virus’.

If you do fan art for this prompt, just Cross being masked and menacing, looking like a horror movie villain would be amazing.

Other line of thought is a sort of bad end AU where he ends up infected, somehow, not like in the game where the supreme hybrid consumes him and steals his form and memories, but Cross himself genuinely infected. I want to see either how it happens, or his thoughts on becoming what he’s spent the better part of his life eradicating. Is he conflicted, wondering how long he should let things carry on before reporting what’s happened and turning himself in to be destroyed (or worse, kept for research?) or does he keep at it, determined to track down Alex and have one last victory, trying to die a hero rather than a monster?

With this idea, I’d love fan art showing him battered and bloodied, his uniform torn (possibly with obvious claw marks, hinting at how it happened) or him starting to show signs of infection – maybe a hint of claws or fangs or some other bit of wrongness.

 

Resident Evil

Steve Burnside/Claire Redfield: For this one I was thinking a Code Veronica bad ending style AU where a mutated Steve pursues Claire with something other than murder on his mind. Or the events of Code Veronica happen as normal, but years later Steve is discovered to be alive, not human, but lucid and alive and the two end up reunited. So basically either violent sex or adorable, heartwarming fluff with Steve as a monster please.

With art I’d like anything emphasizing how large and mutated Steve is, for porn focus on unnatural, inhuman anatomy, him looming over Claire, would be great. For fluff, him being awkward and shying away, nervous and embarrassed by what he is would make my heart melt, because I’m strange that way.

Sherry Birkin/Jake Muller: I just love these two as a couple, him the tough guy, cynical and jaded, Sherry incurably optimistic and endearing despite having been through hell. An extended or missing scene from the game, a chance encounter between them on some future mission, anything where the two of them are getting through some tough situation together.

If you want to go with something full on horror, I’m always up for depictions of Sherry where her G-virus infection does more than make her stronger, more durable and makes her age at a slower rate. Eyes in unnatural places, extra limbs, fangs, things being just not right are very fun for me if you want to play around with body horror ideas. Sherry having to explain or show Jake why she doesn’t want to consummate their relationship would be awesome, and Jake’s reaction is up to you, ranging anywhere from totally fine to nope! and being glad that Sherry wasn’t want their relationship to get physical.

Or, since the G-virus does funny things to the infected, making it so that reproduction comes first and foremost, maybe Jake doesn’t get a choice in the matter and is lucky to survive an encounter with an amorous (visibly infected?) Sherry. Despite my love of monsters, Sherry doesn’t need to be one for this situation, Jake being ravaged by an amorous, adorable little blond who won’t take no for an answer while the two of them are captives of NeoUmbrella would be so much fun.

For art, anything where Sherry’s visibly infected and resembling her father in any way would be amazing! I love the extra eyes, exposed muscle and bone, and extra limbs. Of course, monsters aren’t necessary – as I said, Jake and Sherry part of some NeoUmbrella experiment where Jake’s strapped down to a table, helpless as a perfectly human Sherry has her way with him is great.

Chris Redfield & Jill Valentine: So much potential for this I love any AU situation where a character ends up infected, but remains essentially who they are mentally, possibly with new instincts and drives to deal with, but still recognizable in terms of personality. That’s why I always ask for body horror when I’m asking for RE fics, because I love what the viruses do to people.

Jill’s been exposed to so many things so many times over the course of the series (RE3 with Nemesis infecting her, Revelations when she basically swims through a pool of the T-Abyss virus, RE5 as Wesker’s captive and test subject), what if one of those times the vaccine failed or her abnormally high resistance to the viruses worked against her in some way? How would Chris react to that, would they still be able to work together?

Or with Chris, what if he ended up infected during RE6? There were plenty of opportunities for it after all. What if Piers survives, brings Chris back, but Chris isn’t human anymore? How would his reunion with Jill go?

Or, if turning one of the characters into a monster isn’t your cup of tea, just give me these two fighting their way out of some situation typical of the series, trapped in a lab, sent to some isolated location, trying to get to the bottom of who’s making a new sort of B.O.W. using a previously unknown virus.

Moira Burton & Claire Redfield: I’m requesting these two because I’d love a different take on the bad ending of Revelations 2. I was so disappointed that Moira didn’t show back up as a monster after that and I’d love a fic that uses Moira surviving, trapped on the island and no longer human, waiting to see if anyone comes for her. It wouldn’t be a happy ending exactly if someone does come, but I’d love to see her survive and get brought back home.

If you feel like creating art for this, I’d love an encounter between a horrified Claire and a mutated Moira, something lanky and tormented looking based on what the t-Phobos virus does to its victims.

Solo: Ada Wong: She’s always so calm, cool and collected, working with the worst of people and always coming out the better despite the situations she goes into. I’d love to see her on a mission where something goes wrong and she has to fight her way out. Or she misjudges a perspective employer and ends up part of an experiment, infected and struggling to find a cure in time.

Solo: Albert Wesker: Some time before RE5 Wesker went totally insane. My thought is that it’s because of what he’s been through, no longer being fully human and then finding out the truth of his upbringing, that every part of his life, right up until he betrayed Umbrella was one big, carefully orchestrated science experiment, Spencer’s pet project. Arrogant as Wesker is, I can see that destroying him, the discovery that for the majority of his life he had no agency whatsoever, that the first action that he took that was truly his own was to betray his creators. With Wesker I’m looking for a kind of existential horror, the knowing that he’s, by the setting’s standards, a monster, even if he doesn’t look it. On a fundamental level, he’s just another B.O.W., the same as a Tyrant, just somewhat more refined.

Or for something completely different write be a fic about him overseeing some experiment or doing mercenary work the way he was during Code Veronica.

Solo: Annette Birkin: Annette is a horrible person, but also a wife and mother. At some point she fell in love with William, she pulled him out of a deep depression, the absolute lowest point in his life until the very end of it, and had a child with him. That says something because the Birkins strike me as a couple who would have not issue not having an unwanted child. This means that Sherry was loved, which means that Annette tried to take care of her as best as she was able. I would love to see something focused on that, her concern over William slipping back into obsession with his work, ending up infected and because she knows what the G-virus does, knowing what she has to do to protect Sherry.

Or write me something about her trying to raise Sherry right or being afraid for her after Sherry’s infected, the helplessness she must have felt.

Solo: Jake Muller: With Jake there’s so much potential. Missing scenes from his time a NeoUmbrella’s captive, post RE6 him continuing work as a mercenary, fighting B.O.W.s, escaping from them, the people who created them and possibly the BSAA while he’s there. He could end up in a bad situation because some organization manages to discover that he’s Albert Wesker’s son (imagine how valuable that must make him for research purposes!).

And because I’m always up for infected characters, maybe being Wesker’s son doesn’t mean he’s immune to the viruses of the setting, maybe it just means that he stays sane and himself after being infected. An AU where he’s not as resistant to the C-virus would make me so happy, or maybe something set post-RE6 where Jake starts realizing there’s something wrong with him. Maybe it starts as receiving an injury that should have killed him, but doesn’t, or he realizes he’s stronger, faster, his senses and reflexes seem better, which is awesome, but it doesn’t stop there…Mutations could be subtle or drastic, how does he cope with them? Is he bothered, or is there something about what’s happening to him, some mental change that means he’s not as horrified as he knows he should be? Maybe it takes actual effort for him to keep track of what’s going wrong. Does he seek help or does he continue working as a mercenary afterwards?

For art ideas, feel free to draw him as a J’avo (all those extra eyes!” or come up with a mutated version of him (something halfway to being a Tyrant in full combat gear?)

Solo: Jill Valentine: Missing scenes between the mansion incident and being pursued by Nemesis would be fun, her dealing with STARS being disbanded and discredited, regarded as mentally unstable because of what she’s seen and how no one could possibly believe her.

The worry she felt during any of the times that Chris went missing, vanished without a trace.

Her thoughts falling out the window, hands at Wesker’s throat, only to wake up in a lab.

Her time as Wesker’s captive, the experiments she must have been forced to help him with, or been a test subject for.

After that, being rescued by Chris and then seeming to vanish from the series. Were there lingering effects from the P-30 and everything else she was exposed to?

Or infected character AU scenarios. When Nemesis infected her with the T-virus, if the T-Abyss virus vaccine didn’t work, her time as Wesker’s captive and test subject (Jill infected with Uroboros is an idea that’s long fascinated me). Or even go post canon, the reason she’s vanished is complications from all of everything she’s been exposed to and she’s not exactly (or if you want to go all out, even remotely, human anymore).

For art seeing Jill transformed (or in the process of transforming) into any of the various types of monsters from the series would make me so happy. Torn clothing, visible injuries, nonhuman anatomy (claws, fangs, tentacles, extra limbs) are always enjoyable.

Solo: Sherry Birkin: Ah, adorable little Sherry. Give me missing scenes of her out in Raccoon city, searching for her father, her encountering him where he’s mutated beyond recognition, delirious fever dreams when she’s infected, her growing up basically belonging to Simmons as a pet project, bargaining for her freedom, getting sent out on a mission that she only half understands, finding out the truth about Simmons, ending up a captive of NeoUmbrella. There’s so much potential for horror with Sherry.

Again, because I’m predictable, infected AU situations are always something I’ll enjoy. Claire being too little too late to save her and us finding out what successful integrating of the G-virus with a host means, her mutating under Simmons’ care (possibly as the result of something he does to her, not that she might know), hitting puberty and having the added horror of becoming something not at all human (and all too reminiscent of her late father?), or something happening while she’s a captive of NeoUmbrella.

With fan art, just making Sherry into something that resembles her father, either from the original game or the remake would be so neat and have so much potential for horror. Trying to capture the terror she would feel at such a thing happening would be amazing.

Solo: William Birkin: Ideas include a missing scene from when he and Wesker decide that James Marcus must die (I cannot imagine William being the most enthused about having to help get rid of a body, even if he didn’t mind killing the man), the frantic end of things and his increasing paranoia when he realizes that everything’s falling apart making his work irrelevant and putting him in a situation where he might not make it out alive, his final moments, where he decided to infect himself as a final act of spite and then coming back (and being lucid for long enough at the start to have a final argument with his wife). After he came back and was aware of what happened was there a time where he tried to convince himself that somehow, it was a success and that he wouldn’t degenerate into a monster?

Art wise, Birkin at stage 3 or 4 of his infection, Remake version or original flavor is awesome. Just him being huge and asymmetrical, looming and terrifying is so much fun.

 

Crossover Fandom

Any Group of Characters You Can Assume I May Know

!Note: the following list is by no means exhaustive or restrictive, it's me just tossing out random ideas and fandoms. Feel free to use any of them, or extrapolate from them, after all it's characters you can assume I may know, so there's a lot of room for you to go wild. Feel free to ignore any of what I say below if you get an idea and want to run with it.

Ooh, boy, I have no idea how to prompt for this. I guess the easy way to go is to say see all those settings and characters up there? You can put them together in each other’s settings.

Like put any character from Resident Evil or Prototype into the kind of peculiar town or situation from one of those songs.

Robert Cross descending into madness as he discovers the runner he was chasing is actually an avatar of Jolene or pursuing her to the kind of town where that ‘H.P Joelcraft’ song might be played in a bar…

Any of the Resident Evil characters in the above situation works too.

Umm, Jill Valentine going on a blind date with the narrator from Tech N9ne’s Pinocchiho? That works.

Oh, and things that I saw nominated in this exchange, but didn't have space to ask for are Has Anyone Heard of the Left/Right Game? and Candle Cove. They're two really fun creepypastas that could easily be crossed with any fandom. Anyone could learn about the left/right game and decide, on a whim, to play it, and anyone can reminisce about a creepy show they used to watch when they were a kid...

To save you from needing to look over what I’ve written and received, unless you want to, here are some other possibilities:

I’m a fan of the Prince of Persia series, both the Sands of Time trilogy and Prince of Persia ’08, so putting maybe putting the narrator from From the Stars into an archeological site from one of those games (does some trace of the Sands or Ahriman linger on to this day?)

Silent Hill is always a possibility, you can send anyone there.

I’ve written Sesame Street fanfiction, so maybe a very special episode, centered on an important life lesson from some other setting?

Untitled Goose Game is good for humor. The viral samples have gone missing! Who could have done it? HUNK from Resident Evil meeting his match as he pursues the goose, trying to get back what it’s taken?

Calvin and Hobbes – Calvin’s overly active imagination takes him into a dire situation.

Fallen London gives all sorts of potential for weirdness and horror.

If you want to go really wild, take the Black Rabbit of Inlé from Watership Down and have a human character be haunted by them as a premonition of death. Or if you're writing about a more unpleasant character, maybe they see the Rabbit as their spirit animal? A sign of good luck letting them know that someone else is going to die?

Corruption of Champions for all of your terrifying porn needs. Send anyone you like to the demon realm from there and watch the funtimes happen… Body horror in the most sexy way as a character's fucked into something inhuman, loving and loathing the whole ordeal.

Animorphs is really just cosmic pessimism for middle schoolers.

I love pretty much all of Ursula Vernon’s short stories, Jackalope Wives, or Digger the Wombat are favorites of mine with their magical realism, as is The Dark Birds.

I’m crazy fond of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle though I’ve only seen the first movie. Feel free to put the characters from that into a different setting or game if you want or put characters from another setting into Jumanji…

Dead By Daylight is a great setting to put random characters together. Feel free to have a character from one of the fandoms I like end up as one of the killers (Alex Mercer or Robert Cross or a Resident Evil protagonist as a killer? Yes please!)

Umm, other games and settings I like…

Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance. Mixing one of them with Resident Evil or Silent Hill, or Prototype could be fun.

I’m quite fond of H.P Lovecraft’s work so that could work.

Army of Two is one of my guilty pleasure games.

Final Fantasy X has horror potential and you could always justify a character from another setting ending up there.

Anarchy Reigns is so good for over the top anything, but again, the cyberpunk style dystopia can be fun and gives lots of opportunities for horror.

I also enjoyed the first two InFamous games.

The Suffering and The Suffering Ties that Bind games are pure horror and the events of that series could easily work their way into another setting.

Wow, I can’t believe I forgot to mention this, since I’m using songs as canons feel free to use anything by the Blue Öyster Cult or Billy Joel. Like Captain Jack could be selling drugs to the Transmaniacon MC. Or Billy Joel’s Downeaster Alexia, there’s actually all sorts of potential for a horror crossover there, with anything by the Blue Öyster Cult, or with something Lovecraftian.

Right, and I just thought of this, I’m a huge fan of Lucha Underground. Professional wrestling in general is fun for me, but Lucha Underground is a sure win for me, the over-the-top ring personas there, so perfect. Just a thought, if you do decide to write me something featuring professional wrestlers is that I don't want RPF, I want the logic and characters that exist in the ring brought into another setting, or wrestling logic applied to another setting! Oh, that would be cool, making characters from another setting professional wrestlers and writing them into a horror story!

Just realized, I've written Doom fanfiction too so you can run with that, perhaps a Watership Down crossover featuring Doomguy and Daisy his pet rabbit?

Ooh, thinking of small fuzzy creatures, I was a huge fan of the Redwall books back in when I was in middle school. I'd prefer Redwall characters to remain woodland creatures, but you can always change a character from another setting into a woodlander.

There's also Bloodborne - A character from pretty much any setting could wake up in Yharnam or the Hunter's Dream.

And if you think you’ve seen me talking about something somewhere and want to extrapolate from that or run it by a mod to contact me, feel free to do so.