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yuletide2019-11-02 09:19 am
primeideal) wrote in yuletide2019-11-02 09:19 am
Entry tags:
Crueltide (2019)
Credit to for_sorrow for the original post and macrocosmica for the dreamwidth port!
Not every story is pleasant. Not every story has a happy ending, and not all happy endings come without a dark and painful journey. And sometimes, those are the kinds of stories that we really, really want to read.
Why Crueltide?
Because darkfic isn't to everyone's taste. By making it easier to identify darkfic prompts and people open to receiving darkfic in yuletide, we can all indulge our preferences without placing undue pressure on our assigned writers or risking gifting unwelcome fics to our recipients. (And also: the name was the least cutesy of those being thrown around in 2014.)
What is darkfic?
Depends on your definition. But here's a (non-exhaustive) list of darker tropes to get you started:
(White text used as some content may be triggering to some - highlight to read.)
Addiction - Amputation - Animal Abuse - Apocalypse - Betrayal - Body Horror - Brainwashing - Cannibalism - Character Death - Child Abuse - Claustrophobia - Conspiracy - Degradation - Disease - Dystopia - Gaslighting - Hauntings - Humiliation - Hypothermia - Insanity - Invasion of Privacy - Lovecraftian Cosmic Horrors - Medical Experimentation - Mind Control - Monsters - Murder - Mutilation - Non-Con - Paranoia - Poisoning - Prison - PTSD - Sadism - Slavery - Suicide - Torture - Unhappy Endings - Violence
Does a darkfic story have to have an unhappy ending/some other specific trope?
No! Not at all. Just because a story is packed with darkfic tropes doesn't mean there's no light at the end of the tunnel.
Also, just because you like one trope, it doesn't mean you like all of them. Feel free to specify your do-not-wants alongside your wants.
Great, how does it work?
-- If you end up writing a darkfic story, just tag it with Crueltide when you upload it to the collection, and that'll help readers find more of what they like. It would also be good to tag any particular tropes you've used, to help readers find/avoid them. That's all you need to do!
-- If you would like to receive a darkfic story in one of the fandoms you've requested in your yuletide sign-up, you can advertise that here by replying to this post. (The template below is merely a suggestion of what to include - the level of detail in prompts/tropes is entirely up to you. But please do limit yourself to fandoms on your Yuletide sign-up - the Yuletide mods need to be sure you get a fic in one of those, and a treat in an unexpected fandom could make that awkward. )
AO3: ao3 username
Letter: dear yuletide writer (URL)
Fandoms: fandom details here
Happy Endings Preferred?: yes/no/don't mind
Wanted tropes: list any of your favorite dark tropes, themes, or prompts here.
Unwanted tropes: list your darkfic do-not-wants here.
If you want to advertise your requested fandoms as being particularly dark and of potential interest to others, feel free to comment along those lines too.
Alternatively, if you only want your assigned writer to know what you're into, just make a mention of darkfic/crueltide in your optional details as part of your signup.
for_sorrow for the original post and macrocosmica for the dreamwidth port!Not every story is pleasant. Not every story has a happy ending, and not all happy endings come without a dark and painful journey. And sometimes, those are the kinds of stories that we really, really want to read.
If you're one of the many people interested in either writing or receiving darkfic, then Crueltide is here to devour your soul the Yuletide-extra for you!
The short version
- Read the comments to find people to treat with darkfic.
- Tag your yuletide darkfic with 'crueltide'
The long version is beneath the cut.
Why Crueltide?
Because darkfic isn't to everyone's taste. By making it easier to identify darkfic prompts and people open to receiving darkfic in yuletide, we can all indulge our preferences without placing undue pressure on our assigned writers or risking gifting unwelcome fics to our recipients. (And also: the name was the least cutesy of those being thrown around in 2014.)
What is darkfic?
Depends on your definition. But here's a (non-exhaustive) list of darker tropes to get you started:
(White text used as some content may be triggering to some - highlight to read.)
Addiction - Amputation - Animal Abuse - Apocalypse - Betrayal - Body Horror - Brainwashing - Cannibalism - Character Death - Child Abuse - Claustrophobia - Conspiracy - Degradation - Disease - Dystopia - Gaslighting - Hauntings - Humiliation - Hypothermia - Insanity - Invasion of Privacy - Lovecraftian Cosmic Horrors - Medical Experimentation - Mind Control - Monsters - Murder - Mutilation - Non-Con - Paranoia - Poisoning - Prison - PTSD - Sadism - Slavery - Suicide - Torture - Unhappy Endings - Violence
Does a darkfic story have to have an unhappy ending/some other specific trope?
No! Not at all. Just because a story is packed with darkfic tropes doesn't mean there's no light at the end of the tunnel.
Also, just because you like one trope, it doesn't mean you like all of them. Feel free to specify your do-not-wants alongside your wants.
Great, how does it work?
-- If you end up writing a darkfic story, just tag it with Crueltide when you upload it to the collection, and that'll help readers find more of what they like. It would also be good to tag any particular tropes you've used, to help readers find/avoid them. That's all you need to do!
-- If you would like to receive a darkfic story in one of the fandoms you've requested in your yuletide sign-up, you can advertise that here by replying to this post. (The template below is merely a suggestion of what to include - the level of detail in prompts/tropes is entirely up to you. But please do limit yourself to fandoms on your Yuletide sign-up - the Yuletide mods need to be sure you get a fic in one of those, and a treat in an unexpected fandom could make that awkward. )
AO3: ao3 username
Letter: dear yuletide writer (URL)
Fandoms: fandom details here
Happy Endings Preferred?: yes/no/don't mind
Wanted tropes: list any of your favorite dark tropes, themes, or prompts here.
Unwanted tropes: list your darkfic do-not-wants here.
If you want to advertise your requested fandoms as being particularly dark and of potential interest to others, feel free to comment along those lines too.
Alternatively, if you only want your assigned writer to know what you're into, just make a mention of darkfic/crueltide in your optional details as part of your signup.
no subject
Letter: https://skazka.dreamwidth.org/172695.html
Fandoms: The Turn Of The Screw - Henry James (Miles, Flora); Mary Reilly - Valerie Martin (Mary Reilly); The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters (Caroline, Roderick); The Terror AMC (Cornelius Hickey)
Happy Endings Preferred?: no preference
Wanted tropes: psychological horror, gothic horror, ghosts, trauma/PTSD, corruption, power plays, claustrophobia, guilt, violation of personal boundaries, self-doubt, paranoia, malignant environments/objects/locations, survivor's guilt, exhaustion, whump, murder, consent issues and dubcon/noncon.
The Terror: S1 of this show was written with an eye to when the story tips over for each character from an adventure story to a horror story, and it really shows -- but with Hickey, his story seems to have been a horror story from the beginning. Hickey vs. monsters (vampires, malicious European-style spirits, John Carpenter-style body horror beasties) or Hickey + human monstrosity -- cruel bargains, pet sociopathy, cannibalism, body horror, dubcon/noncon with Hickey as both victim or assailant, before/during/after the timeframe of canon.
Turn of the Screw: So we mostly get horror from the POVs of the second governess and of Mrs. Grose, but the haunting at Bly must be an altogether experience for its two youngest residents. I'd love double-barrel horror dealing with on the one hand ambiguous spiritual manifestations/spooky but familiar locations/absolute isolation and abandonment by the children's guardian, and on the other, the potentially very real banal horror of witnessing and being subject to whatever Quint might have done in life. I'd love anything where the children are differently attuned to the house than the governess is, or where they do in fact have a private knowledge of weird shit going on that they're withholding for their own reasons.
Mary Reilly: Mary is my favorite traumatized woobie of yore and I would love anything with her dealing with the truth of her master's experiments and the threatening figure of her master's protege/alter ego. I'd love a pitch-black exploration of her crushing dedication to service, or a look at what Mary's own darker half might desire, or a story about slow but sure corruption whether at the hands of Mary's master or his man.
The Little Stranger: The gothic horrors of Hundreds Hall have melded to a degree with the horrors of war and the palpable forces of Faraday's class resentment -- I'd love any dark/bleak look at the siblings' past, present, and future with these dark forces or a horror/supernatural tale set during wartime, understood through a similar lens of then-contemporary parapsychology and social tension. More unlikely-gothic-heroine horrors for Caroline and Roderick, bumping off Faraday, creeping dread.
Unwanted tropes: apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fic, graphic animal harm, self-harm, pregnancy horror, omegaverse, slavefic. I'm interested in darkfic dealing with the child abuse/CSA themes perceptible in both Mary Reilly and The Turn of the Screw as well as general Victorian/Edwardian childhood misery for all fandoms, but I don't want to read scenes of onscreen child abuse and I would prefer no fic centered on Mary Reilly's father or Quint. Backstory fic where either man is simply present and a player in the fic's events are fine, as is anything with the consequences of abuse, lasting trauma, or 19th century attitudes about abuse. I'm also not interested in the trope of the seductive child character except as a clear consequence of trauma.