lostboywriting | Hurt/Comfort Exchange Letter

Dear Creator,

Hello! I'm Seldon,

lostboywriting on AO3. For this exchange I'm requesting fic in Sunless Sea, Octopath Traveler, The World Ends With You, and original works.

I'm still pretty new to multifandom exchanges. I hope this letter is clear; if there's anything you've got questions about please don't hesitate to ask via the mods. There's a lot in here but optional details are completely optional; outside of my DNW list, please pay attention to exactly as much of this letter as you find helpful and feel free to ignore the rest.

Thank you! I am psyched for this exchange and I can't wait to read whatever you write for me. 💜

Contents:

General Info - DNWs, likes, and a note about tags & prompts
Original Work - Immortal Demon Lord / His Devoted Young Servant, Temple Guardian / Male Thief
Original Works - New Tenant & Haunted House
Sunless Sea - The Fair King / Zee Captain
Octopath Traveler - Cyrus & Therion, Cyrus/Therion
The World Ends With You - Joshua/Neku, Sanae/Joshua, Sanae & Joshua

~

General Info:

DNWs:

- Pregnancy/mpreg
- Major character death
- Animal harm or death outside of hunting or fishing for survival
- Scat, watersports, emetophilia
- Mundane AUs
- AUs centered around giving people a biological role in society—A/B/O, hurtcomfortverse, etc. If you want society to be split up by social castes in whatever fashion I'm totally cool with that, but having people be actually biologically destined to be one caste or another is a hard DNW for me.

Some hurt/comfort likes:

- Hurt that's inflicted deliberately, whether from desire to harm the target, cold indifferent calculation, or a misguided desire to help (by teaching a lesson, punishing wrongdoing, attempting to 'cure' them of perceived sin or flaw, or anything else)
- Old secrets/enemies/misdeeds coming back to haunt a character
- Hurt character keeping their pain (emotional or physical, present or past) a secret
- Characters accustomed to power losing that power (whether that's power as in magic/superpowers/etc, or power as in rank or authority, or both)
- Violence! Blood! Torture! I'm pretty difficult to squick on those fronts
- Horror on the part of the comforting character when they realize how badly the hurt character is hurt
- Comforters being out of their depth / unsure how to help
- Both characters hurt and struggling to comfort/protect each other while they're trapped and at the mercy of an enemy

Some other likes:

- Complicated, messy relationships
- Power imbalances
- Mind games & manipulation
- Angst
- Darkfic
- Canon-divergence AUs

Some smut likes:

- BDSM
- Toys
- Pain play
- Knife play
- Orgasm control/denial
- Dubcon & noncon

A note on tags and prompts:

Some of the tags I picked felt fairly broad to me, and so I wrote additional prompts for them in case anyone wanted a more specific jumping-off place. Others I figured kind of spoke for themselves and so I left them to do that. Likewise, some of the tags I picked were a little more fandom- or pairing-specific, while others would pretty much work with any characters you inflicted them on and got reused a lot from request to request.

In any event, please don't take a presence nor absence of additional prompts, or the reuse of one tag over several requests versus not, to mean that I really want certain tags more than others. If I requested a pairing and a tag it's because I love them and would be thrilled to see other people's takes on them. so please write me something you want to write and don't feel restricted by anything here.

~

Requests:

Original Works:

Immortal Demon Lord / His Devoted Young Servant (hurt Servant)
Temple Guardian / Male Thief (hurt Thief)

Prompts:

Comforter Caused the Hurt:

Demon Lord / His Servant:

Perhaps this was a punishment for some careless misstep, or perhaps the Lord is performing some ritual that requires a sacrifice of pain, willingly given.

Temple Guardian / Thief:

Any who would dare violate a sacred place must be taught to respect both the wrath of the gods, and Their mercy.

Other tags:

Aftermath of Torture, Consolation/soothing after punishment, Eye Trauma, fingernail & hand trauma, Non-Consensual Comfort, Salving Wounds, Torture, Violence Disgused as Gentleness, whipping/flogging

~

Original Works:

New Tenant & Haunted House (both hurt)

I'm good with "House" being literally the spirit of the house itself, or as a catch-all to encompass the spirits of those trapped there.

Prompts:

Comforter Caused the Hurt and/or Hurt Character Comforts the One Who Caused The Hurt:

I would love a scenario where the house ensnares the tenant, and the tenant realizes they must soothe the traumatized spirit of the house for their own survival and fights to do that while the house continues to attack them. Perhaps the house ultimately realizes what they've done, and seeks to make amends? But again, I would love to read anything you come up with.

Entering a dream/nightmare to help dreamer:

Perhaps the hauntings are the nightmares of the house, as inescapable for them as for their victim.

Other tags:

Dreams and Nightmares, Experiencing Another's Pain Through Psychic Bond, Forced to relive trauma through psychic attack, Forced to watch other character's trauma, Implied/Referenced Torture, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, reliving past trauma, Wanting To Help Hurt Character But Not Knowing How To Do It

~

Sunless Sea:

The Fair King / Zee Captain (hurt Captain)

Specify as much or as little as you like about the Captain. I am good with anything as far as backstories, etc; I have no gender / anatomy / pronoun preferences here either. Use what you like. If you want to keep them an Individual of Mysterious and Indistinct Gender, go for it.

As far as the Captain's relationship with Wrack, since you can't pursue a relationship with the Fair King without working for Wrack's profit: I love the sense of dreamy enchantment that the writing gives—both the interactions with the King himself and the tether visions—and I'm very up for the Captain being sort of enthralled into something they know is terrible but find themselves nonetheless feeling strangely compelled to do. I'm also here for cold, practical, profit-driven decisions, or quiet threats murmured in their ear at an opportune moment on their first visit to Wrack, or anything else. Or, again, leave their motivations unknown.

Prompts:

Comfort Sex:

The Fair King, fearsome as his kingdom is, can be a haven of comfort and temporary escape from the terrors you encounter in-game: the terror of the zee, the terror of the dark unknown, the terror of the things you know you've done.

On the other hand…

Comforter Caused the Hurt:

What if the Captain, for whatever reason, eventually betrays Wrack and the Fair King finds out? We know the King is perfectly willing to have his subjects flogged if they displease him. Or perhaps the tether holds nightmares as well as sweet dreams, and betrayers are condemned to relive the fates of those who came before them.

Or perhaps if the Captain's so afraid of letting others drown, they should see what it's like for themself—once, or twice, or however many times it takes to see that it's not such a terrible fate, truly.

For this sort of scenario? I would be totally here for creepy, soothing, "this is all normal and for your own good" gaslighting with the comfort. If, erm, if that's your thing.

Interrogation:

Perhaps the Captain's connections with Wrack are discovered by some other power inthe Neath, or some shrewd observer in a tavern overhears them spinning tales of glory and wealth and adventure on more than one occasion in, gosh, that same patch of the Zee every time, and starts looking into the fate of those ships. There are undoubtedly some in the Neath who would not take kindly to this, and would be really interested to know more. Does the Captain break under questioning? Do they escape with the help of their crew, or perhaps with the help of some agent of Wrack? Or perhaps they eventually cooperate and are released—or they don't cooperate, but they're let loose in the hopes they'll lead their captors back to Wrack.

Once in Wrack again, do they admit to the King what happened? Does he know? Does he reward them for their strength and soothe away their nightmares, or punish them for weakness—or for being careless enough to be caught, regardless of the outcome?

Kidnapped and used as leverage against the other character:

Perhaps some rival or enemy of the Fair King thinks that the King's lover would be a useful thing to have in their possession…

Other tags:

Aftermath of Torture, Cannot distinguish dreams from reality, Consolation/soothing after punishment, Dreams and Nightmares, Drowning and getting resuscitated, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eye Trauma, fingernail & hand trauma, Gaslighting, Isolation, Non-Consensual Comfort, Phobias, Salving Wounds, Torture, Violence Disguised as Gentleness, whipping/flogging

~

Octopath Traveler:

Therion & Cyrus, Therion / Cyrus (both hurt)

Two prompts on a theme of "Therion knew this was a bad idea, but he's fonder of Cyrus than he'd like to admit."

Blood Magic:

Cyrus came seeking Therion's help in tracking down another ancient rare magical tome. It was better guarded than they were anticipating. Now they're guests of a bunch of angry cultists, evil mages, and unreasonably powerful demons, . They've had worse days, but neither of them is quite remembering when, just now.

Dungeon:

Cyrus accompanies Therion on a heist, out of academic interest. As one does. Cyrus is unfortunately less stealthy than Therion. They get caught, and aren't actually keen on murdering their way out of it.

Could this at least be one of the places where the guards are sloppy with their security, moderately kind to prisoners, or, barring either of the above, easily bribable? Of course it couldn't.

Other tags:

Aftermath of Torture, Blaming Themself for the Other Character Being Injured, Character draws negative attention onto themself to protect another, Cleaning/treating wounds, Enduring Pain to Protect Another, Eye Trauma, Faking Recovery from Injury/Trauma So People Will Stop Worrying About You, fingernail & hand trauma, Forced to watch other character's trauma, Hurt character protects another character, Imprisonment, Knife Wounds, Magical Injury, Protection - Mutual, Torture, whipping/flogging

~

The World Ends With You:

Joshua / Neku (Joshua or both hurt), Sanae / Joshua (Joshua or both hurt), Sanae & Joshua (Joshua or both hurt)

Fandom-specific DNWs:

- Dead best friend headcanons, or Joshua otherwise being actually fifteen during canon. (Pre-canon stories in which he's fifteen are fine and loved.)
- Kingdom Hearts characters
- Dream Drop Distance treated as canon.

In general:

This is basically my shamelessly self-indulgent "please make Joshua's life horrible in whatever way seems best to you, and if you'd like to beat up on Neku or Sanae while you're at it that would be completely welcome" list.

Inasmuch as Joshua can be a tricky one to actually hurt, feel free to handwave / worldbuild anything that makes it manageable. Fallen angels making trouble, enemies using Taboo powers a bit more effectively than Minamimoto did, fellow Composers with thoroughly-justified grudges, the Higher Planes stepping in for a word with both him and Sanae about their actions during canon, unexpected power loss…

I am totally happy for canon divergence as well. Perhaps Joshua lands somewhere not so pleasant when he jumps to an alternate universe at the end of week 2, and Sanae really does have to come to his rescue. Or perhaps things go wrong while he's Neku's partner in the Game, and he either goes along with it to avoid outing himself as Composer or because he's genuinely depowered enough at the time that he has no choice.

Note: Am cool with he/him or they/them pronouns for Joshua.

Prompts:

Joshua / Neku:

Kidnapped and used as leverage against the other character, Accepting Torture to Protect a Loved One, and/or Tortured to extract information from the other:

A single thought on all three of these: just because Joshua is terminally incapable of admitting to himself or anyone else that he cares, that doesn't actually mean nobody else knows. Joshua is not without his enemies, and the Underground is not a kind place.

Sanae & Joshua or Sanae / Joshua

Aftermath Of One Character Finding Out Another Character Would Sacrifice Them For The Greater Good:

Joshua's not stupid, and he's got psychic powers and a time-traveling phone camera and also loves playing detective. If he didn't know already that Sanae betrayed him in the course of his Game, he's probably going to figure it out.

Comforter caused the Hurt:

Can be as light as "Friendly spar went a bit more OTT than usual and now Sanae's got patching up to do" or as heavy as "They've both got reason to be pissed off at each other post-canon and neither one of them pulls any punches when they're pissed off, but Sanae at least might have the grace to pretend to feel guilty about it." Or anywhere else you'd like to go with it.

Harmed to Punish Another:

Sanae is potentially facing quite a lot of trouble post-canon for his actions, and I'm always curious where Joshua might fall in relation to that. Sanae was willing to kill him for Shibuya's sake, but it's also clear that Sanae does care deeply about him, in some form (fandom thoughts varying wildly on what form that is, I will note I'm cool with their relationship going as dark or as light as you want.)

Tags that were not pairing-specific:

Loss of Powers: Handy both for making characters easier to beat up and as a way to screw with their heads in its own right.

Non-Consensual Mind-Reading: I've always suspected that as happy as Joshua is to screw around in other people's heads uninvited, he would probably take turnabout very badly.

Non-Consensual Comfort: Perhaps Sanae getting into Joshua's head, or Joshua into Neku's, without permission to try to make things a little easier if the situation's really bad.

Sensory Deprivation: Can mess anybody up, but it's probably a bit worse if you're used to having your consciousness hooked straight into an entire ward of Tokyo, or a hive mind of angels.

Visions of a Worse Reality: If Joshua hadn't stayed his hand—or Neku had pulled the trigger—or Sanae's schemes had gone otherwise…

Hurt/sick character isn't quite lucid: Look, let's be honest, "not quite lucid" might be the only way to get any of these people to be honest about their feelings, ever.

Character believes no one is coming to save them: Joshua doesn't exactly have a lengthy list of friends. He's aware of this. Neku probably doesn't count after the whole shooting-him-and-stealing-his-memories business, and Sanae… well. It is what it is, on both counts.

On the other hand if Neku's taken hostage to get at Joshua—yeah. Right. Have his kidnappers ever met Joshua? Shit, he's going to die again, isn't he. He was just starting to figure life out, too.

Other tags:

Immortal character tortured to death then revived repeatedly, Gunshot Wounds, Wings clipped/cut off, Aftermath of Torture, Crucifixion, Eye Trauma, fingernail & hand trauma, Violence Disguised as Gentleness, All hurt no comfort, Protection - Mutual, Rescued character thinks they're hallucinating rescue, Salving Wounds, Taken Off Guard By Small Displays Of Affection, Character being protected isn't used to being cared about, Prickly Relationship Between Comforter and Comfortee, Character draws negative attention onto themself to protect another, Forced to watch other character's trauma, Hurt character protects another character