callirhoe | Yuletide 2016: Dear Writer

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Hi! I'm so glad we matched on one of these awesome fandoms, and I can't wait to read the lovely story you write for me. I put a literal ton of prompts for each fandom because I have so many feels about these canons, but if you have a totally different story you want to write about my requested characters, feel absolutely free to do so! I'm very open to any rating, any style, any genre, and I love being surprised -- please just steer clear of my few DNWs and I'll be happy.

Particular turn-ons (this year): missions and rescues and casefic, established relationships, comic-book-style OTT ridiculousness, hurt/comfort, fandom standbys like Five Times + One Time fic, metatextual formats like in-universe media or stories inside stories, complete AUs (particularly alternate professions like athlete/criminal/hooker!AUs or historical-ish settings like Wild West/noir/medievalesque!AUs), marriage/cohabitation, domesticity and curtainfic, accidentally-acquiring-a-kid-together fic, happy endings, heartbreaking endings, time travel/space travel/dimension hopping, friends to lovers, magic and weird science and other handwavy explanations for comic-book plots.

Turn-offs and DNWs: Horror atmosphere, zombies, gore (people get hurt in my fandoms and I’m okay with that, but I’d rather not see it graphically written out), animal harm, non-canon pregnancy.

ALPHA FLIGHT
Characters: Any (Jean-Paul Beaubier, Kyle Jinadu, Walter Langkowski, Claire Hudson)
I nominated these four characters not as a set, but because I’d love any of them on their own or any combination of them. I’m familiar with all four volumes of the comic; my favorites are volumes 1 and 4, as is maybe obvious from my choice of characters from the classic lineup. I ship both JP/Kyle and JP/Walt like whoa.

Jean-Paul Beaubier: Jean-Paul has been my favorite Canadian for like… a long time. I love his arrogance, his caustic attitude, his impatience with a world that’s always too slow for him, and most of all, his loyalty and heroism despite his general cynicism. I’d love a story about any aspect of his varied and interesting life: pickpocket, political activist/terrorist, circus acrobat (!), Olympic athlete, disgraced former athlete, adoptive father, first openly gay superhero, businessman, author, married man.

I’ve received a pair of lovely getting-together stories about him and Kyle in a previous Yuletide which are always in my heart, but I’m always up for more re-imaginings of how they met and started dating, or I’d love to read about them as an established couple and their continued navigation of the complicated superhero/regular guy relationship.
I would especially love it if they decided to adopt or surrogate a child, which would certainly be very emotionally loaded for JP as a callback to his deceased adoptive daughter, Joanne, from the first Alpha Flight series.
A bittersweet or fluffy quiet moment at home (Holiday! Anniversary! Whatever!) would be great.

Walter Langkowski: Walter is another one of my faves; I find him really interesting as a character with a rich but not-very-fleshed out history.

Like JP, he’s a former pro athlete, though his football career is hardly ever brought up and I’d love to learn more about that -- how do you go from playing in the NFL to getting your doctorate in biophysics and then accidentally-on-purpose giving yourself superpowers? Anything about the twists and turns his life has taken would be fascinating.
If you want to explore his time as “Wanda” after being resurrected in Snowbird’s body and how the female-bodied experience affected him after he changed back to his original form, that would also be great!
His relationship with Aurora, and with Jean-Paul… I love the three of them in an unhealthy, jealousy-fueled triangle. I’ve always wanted to know how Walter would respond to finding out that Jean-Paul once as much as admitted to loving him (granted, Walt was dead at the time, but after he came back, did Aurora never use that as ammunition against him and/or JP during one of their spats? I have to believe it was brought up somehow, somewhere).

Kyle Jinadu: As for Kyle, I’d love to read about his relationship with JP from either of their perspectives, but it would also be pretty awesome to get some backstory on him!

What we actually know about him from AF proper is limited -- he has a sister in the US, likes snow sports and possibly photography, and is a PR or business manager type person? Aurora introduced him to Jean-Paul, but how did he and Aurora become friends anyway?
JP affectionately calls him a superhero groupie; did he look up to Alpha Flight when he was younger, did/does he have a crush on Walt or Mac, did he have a poster of Jean-Paul the skiing champion on his wall?
Or you could write something set during or after the events of Fear Itself, in which Kyle was mind-controlled by the Purple Woman, nearly killed, kidnapped and brainwashed to try to kill Jean-Paul, re-kidnapped and un-brainwashed, and then apparently adopted a dog?? I mean, that’s a lot for a supporting character to go through in eight issues! I’m so interested in how a normal, non-super person deals with all that; hurt/comfort is always my jam.

Claire Hudson: This little girl's situation fascinates me, and I’d love to know anything about her life as she grows up.

If you want to follow up on the ending of the most recent volume and imagine what happened to Heather and little Claire under the influence of Unity, I would love to read about her childhood with a brainwashed/obsessed mother, on the run from her own father.
Or I would adore future fic with a grown-up Claire making her own path in any of Marvel’s myriad futures. Is she a mutant; is she a scientific genius like her father or a determined leader like her mother; will she ever join a new generation of Alpha Flight? Will she be a villain or a hero, or something in-between, or a regular person struggling through a superhero-adjacent life?
And if you want to write me the fic where JP and Kyle somehow end up adopting her or taking care of her for a while (IDK what happened to Heather and Mac in this scenario; maybe they’re dead again, or off in space, or just taking some time to work things out after Heather gets un-brainwashed?), I like the way your mind works and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

INVINCIBLE
Characters: Any (Kate Cha, Paul Cha, The Immortal, Rex Splode)
The recent news that this long-running series is coming to an end next year made me finally decide this is the time to request it for Yuletide. I’m extremely fond of the huge, sprawling universe, the enormous cast of characters, and the galactic-level plots, but I’ve picked some characters whose feet are planted firmly on Earth (for the most part -- though if you WANT to send them into space, feel free!). I’m up for any combination of these four, and anyone else you want to add in is completely fine! With these characters I especially ship Dupli-Kate/The Immortal, Dupli-Kate/Multi-Paul, Rex/Mark, Rex/Mark/Eve, Rex/Robot, but I’m open to literally any ship.

Kate and Paul Cha: I love these twins on opposite sides of the hero-villain spectrum! I love their mutual protectiveness and I’d love to see it explored either in a platonic sibling relationship or in a codependent, fucked-up twincest/clonecest kind of way.

I really want to read anything about their teenaged years as a crime-fighting duo, or their split as Kate went into big-league heroing and Paul became a villainous henchman, or family feels with Kate’s babies (has Paul even met his niece and nephew?).
A canon-divergent AU where Kate followed Paul into henchmanry (or they teamed up to become a supervillain duo!) or Paul joined Kate in the Teen Team or the Guardians would be very cool!
Or maybe a heist/mission/breaking Paul out of prison again because she needs him?
Kate as an underground superhero-rebellion fighter is one of my favorite things and I’d love to see Paul join her in that.
Or feel free to explore either one of them on their own: we know very little about Paul outside his work for Mister Liu and the Order, and I’d love to see a day in his life, or in Kate’s as she juggles being a mom and (retired) superhero.

The Immortal: He is a really interesting guy, and I’d love to see anything about him at any point in his really, really long life.

Did he like being a knight, or an adventurer, or President? Show me any relationships he formed, any important historical figures he met (and maybe fought), any important historical figures he was, or who were his children?
I really enjoy his relationship with Kate, that despite his reluctance to form bonds with a woman who’s going to die someday and leave him alone again, he actually ends up marrying her. It would be so interesting to see their relationship play out in the future, as Kate and the twins age and he stays the same.
I’d also love to find out if he and Paul would get along -- I suspect not, but I also suspect Kate will make them make peace, somehow. (And if you read my Alpha Flight request above you might recognize that I have a thing for unhealthy twincest threesomes founded on possessiveness and jealousy, so that… would also be very, very welcome here. :) )

Rex Splode: I love and really, really miss Rex since his death during the Invincible War. After a less-than-glorious start, just when he was proving himself to be actually a pretty awesome guy and a great hero, he has to go and have a heroic death! So fic set before his death, or him coming back to life somehow because comics, would be fabulous, and I’d especially love for him to have something good and happy in his life.

I ship him and Mark like whoa based on their brief connection, and the threesome with Eve because Eve is just great and I love that both of the guys appreciate that, and I’d love something happy for either of those combinations.
Also, Rudy/Rex because imagine how weird it would be to come back from the dead and find out that your former teammate has cloned your body and is walking around in it as supreme ruler of the world. So. Weird. (But also kind of oddly hot if your ego is big enough, and I feel like Rex’s definitely is.) I’d love to see the two of them confront each other after everything that’s gone down since Rex died. Would Rex join the resistance? Would he and Rudy somehow switch places, since they do have the same face? Or what if he comes back to the cloned body, displaces Robot, and they have to share a body like in some kind of crazed superhero sitcom Odd Couple type situation???? I am up for so much crack and/or seriousness here.

THE UNBELIEVABLE GWENPOOL
Characters: Any (Gwen Poole, Georges Batroc, Mega Tony, Cecil)
This book is so ridiculously great and charming and hilarious and fun! I can’t even attempt to choose my favorite character or situation, but I am just in love with the morally-bereft Gwen and her merry band of semi-well-intentioned mercenary misfits and would love to read a story about any or all of the nominated characters (as well as the Terrible Eye, whom I couldn’t fit into my nominations). A mission, heist, assassination, etc. with all of them would be amazing. I don’t particularly ship anything in this comic but am open to any ship, so feel free to do that if you like! I’m super open to crossovers with literally any other Marvel canon or team, too, especially the other ones I’ve requested.

Gwen Poole: Gwen is not a very good person, but I just love her, and I love how it’s finally clicking for her that she might be in a fictional universe, but the people around her are as real as she is and her actions actually do affect them. I’m not so interested in backstory on Gwen: I am waiting anxiously for the comics to reveal more bits and pieces of who she is and how she came to the 616 universe.

I’d love anything with her and any member of MODOK or literally anybody else: training montages with Batroc, team bonding exercises with Tony or the Terrible Eye, trying to help Cecil with his ghost problems!
I really love the glimpses we get of her objects of fannishness through the posters and collectibles in her room -- I’d adore seeing her have a hero team-up or nemesis fight with literally anybody in the Marvel universe, from the obscure to the Avengers.

Mega Tony: I'm planting my flag: Tony is one of the cutest Marvel characters of all time just based on the little we’ve seen of him.

I am so curious how an adorable cuddly teddy bear like him got into mad-sciencing and just why MODOK coerced him into joining up, so backstory would be fabulous!
Same with the Terrible Eye: her magic is hilarious to me and I love her whole look and attitude, so if you want to tell me who she is and how she got mixed up in all this, please go wild.
I’d also love to know who the former ‘tank’ of the team was that Gwen straight-up murdered in the first issue. The team was so blasé about his death, which makes me giggle, and I’d love to read anything about the dynamic before Gwen came along.

Georges Batroc: I hardly know anything about Batroc in the wider Marvel universe, but I loved Gwen’s breakdown of his whole character concept as a terrible French stereotype.

I’d love to see more about him in this team, especially as he’s the “adult” of the group and falls into the mentor/teacher role for Gwen. Training montages, please!
Or, ooh, give me his Very Secret Diary-type perspective on the whole MODOK mess, or a missing scene with MODOK Superior, or what he does on his day off!

Cecil: Poor, poor adorable Cecil is my whompy love, so I’d really enjoy reading about his trials and tribulations in his new… afterlife. I’d prefer a lighter tone even though his situation is so dark and terrible, in keeping with the tone of the comic.

Maybe Dr. Strange sets him up with the ghost of any other tragically-deceased character (Uncle Ben???) for a counseling/advice session?
I’d love to have Gwen reading him the “Make the Most of Your Ghost” book and the two of them figuring out some way Cecil can actually interact with the physical world.
Can he do a kind of Ghostwriter thing and enter computers to hack and/or spookily troll this world’s heroes? PLEASE YES.

X-FACTOR
Characters: Julio Richter, Shatterstar

I have so many Marvel OTPs, but RicStar is surely at the top of the list. I would love to know what the pair of them are doing now, since they're in comics limbo after their unplanned Mojoworld detour -- are they stuck on Mojoworld (do Star's portals work interdimensionally?) or does Arize send them home, or try to send them home but miss and send them to an alternate dimension instead, and what about the time-travel weirdness anyway?
One thing that struck me while thinking about this was that the *first* time Star was sent from Mojoworld to Earth he wound up in the wrong time, too late to get the X-Men who were his original mission, which is how he ended up with X-Force and met Rictor in the first place; maybe he and Rictor manage to get back home but are displaced in time yet again? Maybe they meet their younger selves somehow, or end up in whatever historical period you choose (Ancient Rome with more gladiatorial arenas, or the Wild West, or the Golden Age of comics) or the future, or literally anything you want here, seriously.
I'd also be interested to know how the other members of X-Factor or any other former teammates would react to seeing RicStar show up alive, possibly years after their apparent deaths, after or during the reshuffling of the universe after Secret Wars.
If you'd rather set it during X-Factor, that would also be very cool and I'd love to see them taking center stage in solving a case together and beating up the bad guys, or just hanging out on the couch watching movies, or dealing with their personal issues such as the remnants of Ric’s criminal family.
Another idea I truly love is an alternate universe where the Hell on Earth War ended differently and they get to spend some actual time with Ric’s godson Tier for fluffy family feels and shenanigans! Keeping the whole team alive + together would be amazing here.