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I'm also Quillori on AO3. All requests are equally open to trick or treat.
Ancient Egyptian Religion
Characters: Anubis, Ma’at, Thoth, Set
Anubis as psychopomp? Whether in Ancient Egypt or later. You could go for something eery, where he's mostly appearing around the edges of the story, or then again you could do a full-on description of a soul passing from life to death (either based literally on Egyptian accounts of the process, judgement etc, or taking the Egyptian accounts as somewhat metaphorical/symbolic). The potential for tricks is pretty obvious, but I think you could also make it work as a treat - Anubis can be a comforting, protective figure.
For Ma'at, you could create a new hymn to her praise (some of the lyrics and hymns that survive for Ancient Egypt are very beautiful, even in translation), or invocations to survive her judgement. Or maybe write about the life of the priests at her temple, or how she reveals herself to a worshipper, or to someone who had never thought to care about her ... There's a lot of potential for beauty - good order, the world working correctly, but for tricks I can see a fair potential for horror also - inexorable judgement, the fact that the 'correct' way the world works may not be fair or desirable.
Thoth the record keeper, the master of magic, the trusted and impartial judge. Tell me something about his Ptolemaic position as the master magician (e.g. the tale of Setne); or his role as both peacemaker and remorseless executioner. Or tell me about the life a scribe who worships him; how he reveals himself to a worshipper. Or his relationship with Set.
For Set, you could flesh out the fragmentary Astarte Papyrus, or give me anything at all about Set and Astarte (and Anat, if you like), or Set battling Yamm (or Apophis/Apep). Or expand on that bit in the Pyramid Texts where Thoth as well as Set is said not to mourn Osiris - why is he for once aligned with Set? (For more Set prompts, see also this yuletide letter.)
Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Characters: Any [Giulietta, Dapertutto, Muse|Nicklausse]
Stolen reflections and shadows, an irresistible woman and her probably demonic patron, a faithful friend who may be just a friend or may be an old adversary of the devil... Read a summary on Wikipedia, the libretto on Project Gutenberg or find any number of recordings on YouTube.
The whole stolen reflection/shadow thing is pretty creepy, right? But more generally anything more about Giulietta or Dapertutto, singly or together, would be great. Or alternatively, forget about Act 3, and just give me more about Nicklausse - always the Muse, or a real person the Muse impersonates or possesses? Or Hoffmann's relationship with Nicklausse and/or the Muse. Or the relation between the Muse and Dapertutto. Or indeed, it would be interesting to see how the Muse and Giulietta might interact, or have interacted had the Muse taken an interest in her.
Gene Wolfe Pastiche #12 - Adam Stemple (Song)
There are all sorts of different ways to take this. Some of the lines could be taken to suggest a traditional Victorian style ghost story
Omar Rayyan - Works
Characters: Octopus Girl from Spanish Mackerel, Fox
The fishes made wailing cries
At the wild weather
The Dream of King Don Rodrigo Anon, trans W.S Merwin
I'm always a sucker for underwater worlds - world-building is always welcome. And then, let's face it, octopuses are downright weird. What would the world look like to someone part octopus?
A fox appears in many of Rayyan's works - and what a dashing, swashbuckling (and probably untrustworthy) fox it appears to be - I'd love to read about any of his adventures.
Liáo zhâi zhì yì | Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio - Pú Sônglíng
Characters: Any [Scholar, Monk, Ghost, Fox Spirit]
Pictures that come to life; hornets and ants that are also beautiful women; ghosts and fox-spirits living in happy harmony, or waiting in the shadows to destroy the unwary and the over-trusting; the supernatural impinging always on the mundane, and never quite the same way twice - now monstrous, now benign, and no sure way to tell the two apart. This collection of short tales of the bizarre, the supernatural and the out-of-place is available from Penguin Classics in a selected translation by John Minford. A much earlier translation by Herbert Giles is available online, but keep in mind it’s from 1880 and is heavily bowdlerised. There's also the recent six volume complete translation by Sondergard. I wasn’t sure how best to nominate characters, since there are so many separate stories, but in the end I went with four character types that recur throughout. I'd be equally delighted with a new story featuring any of the four, or your take of any of the original stories.
Scholar: I used ‘scholar’ as short hand for any of the young literati gentlemen who spend so much time getting entangled with foxes and ghosts or having the illusory nature of reality demonstrated to them by Taoist priests (or losing their most prized possessions to them).
Monk: Monks and priests wander through the tales, giving away an ungenerous merchant’s pears under cover of illusion here, thwarting fox spirits there, presiding over a monastery where you might seem enter heaven through a wall painting, or creating a myriad of other illusions, beautiful or terrifying. From their point of view, what we think of as reality as just another illusion.
Ghost: Many of the ghosts in the tales are not terrifying monsters, but ghosts of young women, capable of great love (albeit sex with a ghost may turn out to be deadly), or ghosts of men driven by ties of friendship and obligation. The Tales covers everything from the happy three-way human/fox/ghost relationship of Lotus Fragrance (Minford)and the friendship of the unwitting ghost in Friendship Beyond the Grave (Minford), to the horror of Biting a Ghost (Minford) and the man who returns briefly from the dead to take his wife with him in Dying Together (Minford)|Mr Chu, the Considerate Husband (Giles).
Fox Spirit: Foxes feature in so many different ways, from villains meriting death, through a variety of ambivalent roles, to admirable heroines. Stories with admirable foxes include Grace and Pine (Minford)|Miss Chiao-No (Giles) and Lotus Fragrance (Minford); more ambiguous and dangerous foxes can be found in The Laughing Girl (Minford)|Miss Ying-ning (Giles) and Cut-Sleeve (Minford)*; outright evil creatures in Bird (Minford), Fox Enchantment (Minford) and The Merchant's Son (Minford)|The Trader's Son (Giles) (although only in the last is there no trace of sympathy at all for the foxes).
* In the past, I’ve summed up Cut Sleeve as 'Dearest cousin-in-law! What fond memories I have of our affair in my past life - the one where you consumed my Yang until I fell sick and died. Which reminds me, there's this official who's bothering me - I was thinking, maybe you could go seduce and kill him. What do you mean, you don't want to?’
In General
Fic - Things I like (provided only as indicative of my taste, not in any way as particular requirements of your story): established relationships, clever and competent characters, witty banter, slash (incl. femslash), moral ambiguity, apparently simple conversations with a great deal going on under the surface, angst if done with restraint, metaphor, clever use of literary allusions. Let's see, what else? Fierce loyalty (the tear the world apart for you variety, not the sit here passively putting up with anything variety), complicated love/hate relationships with lots of backstory, unflappable characters, arrogance if the party concerned has the requisite ability to back it up, committed partnerships between people who see the world at the same angle (even if they aren't always on the same side) ...
IF is always welcome. So is all sorts of experimentation with style or form.
Art - Things I like: A sense of detail and precision (e.g. illustrations in late Victorian children's books; botanical sketches; complicated repeating patterns; Indian and Persian miniatures; bird-and-flower paintings, particularly of the gongbi school). Conversely, also bold and simple (particularly if black and white, or black, white and one other colour, and more graceful, sinuous lines, rather than angular or blocky), or simple and subtle, with some parts trailing off into misty imprecision (e.g. Song dynasty landscape painting), or merely an impression created by a few brushstrokes. Colour schemes either fairly muted, or with rich jewel tones. Play of light and shadows.
Play of light and shadow, especially in black and white works.
Things I’d prefer you avoided: I’m not terribly keen on mpreg (or really any pregnancy or baby centred stories); watersports, scat, vomit, or excessive gore (a little bloodplay is fine); humiliation; or stories told in the 2nd person, and I do have something of an embarrassment squick. Other than that, I'm prepared to be convinced by whatever kink you want to write, at least for the length of a story. Oh, all right, I also don't tend to like issuefic, but I'm not sure that's something people generally set out to write - one person's issuefic is another's searingly honest portrayal. For art, I'm not generally as fond of neons, pastels or deliberately clashing colours.
Ancient Egyptian Religion
Characters: Anubis, Ma’at, Thoth, Set
Anubis as psychopomp? Whether in Ancient Egypt or later. You could go for something eery, where he's mostly appearing around the edges of the story, or then again you could do a full-on description of a soul passing from life to death (either based literally on Egyptian accounts of the process, judgement etc, or taking the Egyptian accounts as somewhat metaphorical/symbolic). The potential for tricks is pretty obvious, but I think you could also make it work as a treat - Anubis can be a comforting, protective figure.
For Ma'at, you could create a new hymn to her praise (some of the lyrics and hymns that survive for Ancient Egypt are very beautiful, even in translation), or invocations to survive her judgement. Or maybe write about the life of the priests at her temple, or how she reveals herself to a worshipper, or to someone who had never thought to care about her ... There's a lot of potential for beauty - good order, the world working correctly, but for tricks I can see a fair potential for horror also - inexorable judgement, the fact that the 'correct' way the world works may not be fair or desirable.
Thoth the record keeper, the master of magic, the trusted and impartial judge. Tell me something about his Ptolemaic position as the master magician (e.g. the tale of Setne); or his role as both peacemaker and remorseless executioner. Or tell me about the life a scribe who worships him; how he reveals himself to a worshipper. Or his relationship with Set.
For Set, you could flesh out the fragmentary Astarte Papyrus, or give me anything at all about Set and Astarte (and Anat, if you like), or Set battling Yamm (or Apophis/Apep). Or expand on that bit in the Pyramid Texts where Thoth as well as Set is said not to mourn Osiris - why is he for once aligned with Set? (For more Set prompts, see also this yuletide letter.)
Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Characters: Any [Giulietta, Dapertutto, Muse|Nicklausse]
Stolen reflections and shadows, an irresistible woman and her probably demonic patron, a faithful friend who may be just a friend or may be an old adversary of the devil... Read a summary on Wikipedia, the libretto on Project Gutenberg or find any number of recordings on YouTube.
The whole stolen reflection/shadow thing is pretty creepy, right? But more generally anything more about Giulietta or Dapertutto, singly or together, would be great. Or alternatively, forget about Act 3, and just give me more about Nicklausse - always the Muse, or a real person the Muse impersonates or possesses? Or Hoffmann's relationship with Nicklausse and/or the Muse. Or the relation between the Muse and Dapertutto. Or indeed, it would be interesting to see how the Muse and Giulietta might interact, or have interacted had the Muse taken an interest in her.
Gene Wolfe Pastiche #12 - Adam Stemple (Song)
There are all sorts of different ways to take this. Some of the lines could be taken to suggest a traditional Victorian style ghost story
Next time will be different: I'll shut the voices outsome of them are just plain eery
I'll keep the light up, play the perfect host
I'll say hello, I'll say goodbye, I'll talk about the sea
And listen to the tales of wrecks and ghosts
(And direct the people further up the coast)
Don't whisper me your secrets, I'd rather never hearor with a fairy tale cadence
Who haunts the lighthouse singing to the dawn
I've heard the ocean laughing nine and twenty yearsor hint at a larger story
I don't believe in omens, I don't believe in spellsRead the lyrics or listen to the song.
But I wonder if I'm not one of them as well
Omar Rayyan - Works
Characters: Octopus Girl from Spanish Mackerel, Fox
The fishes made wailing cries
At the wild weather
The Dream of King Don Rodrigo Anon, trans W.S Merwin
I'm always a sucker for underwater worlds - world-building is always welcome. And then, let's face it, octopuses are downright weird. What would the world look like to someone part octopus?
A fox appears in many of Rayyan's works - and what a dashing, swashbuckling (and probably untrustworthy) fox it appears to be - I'd love to read about any of his adventures.
Liáo zhâi zhì yì | Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio - Pú Sônglíng
Characters: Any [Scholar, Monk, Ghost, Fox Spirit]
Pictures that come to life; hornets and ants that are also beautiful women; ghosts and fox-spirits living in happy harmony, or waiting in the shadows to destroy the unwary and the over-trusting; the supernatural impinging always on the mundane, and never quite the same way twice - now monstrous, now benign, and no sure way to tell the two apart. This collection of short tales of the bizarre, the supernatural and the out-of-place is available from Penguin Classics in a selected translation by John Minford. A much earlier translation by Herbert Giles is available online, but keep in mind it’s from 1880 and is heavily bowdlerised. There's also the recent six volume complete translation by Sondergard. I wasn’t sure how best to nominate characters, since there are so many separate stories, but in the end I went with four character types that recur throughout. I'd be equally delighted with a new story featuring any of the four, or your take of any of the original stories.
Scholar: I used ‘scholar’ as short hand for any of the young literati gentlemen who spend so much time getting entangled with foxes and ghosts or having the illusory nature of reality demonstrated to them by Taoist priests (or losing their most prized possessions to them).
Monk: Monks and priests wander through the tales, giving away an ungenerous merchant’s pears under cover of illusion here, thwarting fox spirits there, presiding over a monastery where you might seem enter heaven through a wall painting, or creating a myriad of other illusions, beautiful or terrifying. From their point of view, what we think of as reality as just another illusion.
Ghost: Many of the ghosts in the tales are not terrifying monsters, but ghosts of young women, capable of great love (albeit sex with a ghost may turn out to be deadly), or ghosts of men driven by ties of friendship and obligation. The Tales covers everything from the happy three-way human/fox/ghost relationship of Lotus Fragrance (Minford)and the friendship of the unwitting ghost in Friendship Beyond the Grave (Minford), to the horror of Biting a Ghost (Minford) and the man who returns briefly from the dead to take his wife with him in Dying Together (Minford)|Mr Chu, the Considerate Husband (Giles).
Fox Spirit: Foxes feature in so many different ways, from villains meriting death, through a variety of ambivalent roles, to admirable heroines. Stories with admirable foxes include Grace and Pine (Minford)|Miss Chiao-No (Giles) and Lotus Fragrance (Minford); more ambiguous and dangerous foxes can be found in The Laughing Girl (Minford)|Miss Ying-ning (Giles) and Cut-Sleeve (Minford)*; outright evil creatures in Bird (Minford), Fox Enchantment (Minford) and The Merchant's Son (Minford)|The Trader's Son (Giles) (although only in the last is there no trace of sympathy at all for the foxes).
* In the past, I’ve summed up Cut Sleeve as 'Dearest cousin-in-law! What fond memories I have of our affair in my past life - the one where you consumed my Yang until I fell sick and died. Which reminds me, there's this official who's bothering me - I was thinking, maybe you could go seduce and kill him. What do you mean, you don't want to?’
In General
Fic - Things I like (provided only as indicative of my taste, not in any way as particular requirements of your story): established relationships, clever and competent characters, witty banter, slash (incl. femslash), moral ambiguity, apparently simple conversations with a great deal going on under the surface, angst if done with restraint, metaphor, clever use of literary allusions. Let's see, what else? Fierce loyalty (the tear the world apart for you variety, not the sit here passively putting up with anything variety), complicated love/hate relationships with lots of backstory, unflappable characters, arrogance if the party concerned has the requisite ability to back it up, committed partnerships between people who see the world at the same angle (even if they aren't always on the same side) ...
IF is always welcome. So is all sorts of experimentation with style or form.
Art - Things I like: A sense of detail and precision (e.g. illustrations in late Victorian children's books; botanical sketches; complicated repeating patterns; Indian and Persian miniatures; bird-and-flower paintings, particularly of the gongbi school). Conversely, also bold and simple (particularly if black and white, or black, white and one other colour, and more graceful, sinuous lines, rather than angular or blocky), or simple and subtle, with some parts trailing off into misty imprecision (e.g. Song dynasty landscape painting), or merely an impression created by a few brushstrokes. Colour schemes either fairly muted, or with rich jewel tones. Play of light and shadows.
Play of light and shadow, especially in black and white works.
Things I’d prefer you avoided: I’m not terribly keen on mpreg (or really any pregnancy or baby centred stories); watersports, scat, vomit, or excessive gore (a little bloodplay is fine); humiliation; or stories told in the 2nd person, and I do have something of an embarrassment squick. Other than that, I'm prepared to be convinced by whatever kink you want to write, at least for the length of a story. Oh, all right, I also don't tend to like issuefic, but I'm not sure that's something people generally set out to write - one person's issuefic is another's searingly honest portrayal. For art, I'm not generally as fond of neons, pastels or deliberately clashing colours.