Crueltide 2025

[for_sorrow]

(Thank you everyone who has made these posts in my absence. May you always find something bright and shiny!)

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 or horror, then Crueltide is here to devour your soul 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 your recip requested dark or horror fic but didn't comment on this post, you can still tag it with Crueltide if it fits the theme! The Crueltide tag helps all of us darkfic and horror readers find more things to read. 

-- 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.

Comments

[keerawa]

AO3: keerawa
Letter: Letter
Fandoms:
Scholomance by Naomi Novik - Oliver Lake, Guo Yi Liu, World-Building
The Lazarus Project (TV) - Shiv
Warrior (TV) - Ah Toy, Wang Chao

Happy Endings Preferred?: yes, at least a glimmer of hope

Wanted tropes: Let's see. This year I have murder, magical torture, dark destinies, body horror, realizing you are a monster, sex workers, racial and sexual violence, and a group of people trying desperately, over and over, to keep humanity from wiping itself out. Do I want any dark tropes? *laughs maniacally*

I especially enjoy unreliable narrators, horrors of war, forced to choose between ideals or people, main character death and grief (esp. dealing with canonical death), confronting your worst fears about yourself, unconventional morality, psychological horror, excessive loyalty, alienation, paranoia, corruption, dystopian societies, PTSD, dub-con of the sex pollen/drugged/going into heat variety, fuck-or-die scenarios, blood kink, pain kink, knife play, involving unknowing people in your kink, sex work, 'shoot the dog' to save someone else from having to do it, mind control, hypnosis, brainwashing, gaslighting, possession, xeno, tentacles, controlling (or failing to control) dangerous desires, and the subtle, building realization that something is deeply wrong.

Unwanted tropes: non-con between main characters (unless forced on them from the outside), suicide, evil for the sake of evil, child abuse (Exception for Scholomance - the way Oliver Lake was raised is abusive, and you can explore that), pregnancy and breeding, partner betrayal, forced feminization, graphic on-screen overdose, non-con or murder, focus on mental illness or institutionalization.