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Polar Explorer RPF - Prompt Post 1
This is for prompts for all things general Polar Explorer RPF.
If you've filled (or started filling) a prompt, please make sure to link it in the comments of the Fills Post. And if you would like to cross-post your fills on AO3, here is the collection!
Under this umbrella you can prompt:
Prompts in line with adaptations of Heroic Age stories can also fit here, for example if you want to specifically prompt Hugh Grant!Cherry from The Last Place On Earth getting wrecked (which someone really should).
No blorbo too obscure for this post! EXCEPT: NO PEARY ALLOWED. God I hate that guy.
Rules:
Regular view: https://coldboys.dreamwidth.org/925.html
Regular view, last page: https://coldboys.dreamwidth.org/925.html?page=999#comments
If you've filled (or started filling) a prompt, please make sure to link it in the comments of the Fills Post. And if you would like to cross-post your fills on AO3, here is the collection!
Under this umbrella you can prompt:
- Historical versions of Franklin Expedition(-adjacent) guys (Rossier, Gore/McClure, etc)
- Madhouse at the End of the Earth/Belgica Expedition
- Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration - Shackleton, Scott, Amundsen, Mawson
- Andrée Expedition
- Karluk Expedition
- etc
Prompts in line with adaptations of Heroic Age stories can also fit here, for example if you want to specifically prompt Hugh Grant!Cherry from The Last Place On Earth getting wrecked (which someone really should).
No blorbo too obscure for this post! EXCEPT: NO PEARY ALLOWED. God I hate that guy.
Rules:
1. Be fucking nice. YKINMATO/KINKTOMATO at all times.
2. This meme is CNTW (Choose Not To Warn) but warnings are highly encouraged.
3. Prompts should use this format in the subject line: [SHIP], [DESCRIPTION]
e.g.
Mertz/Ninnis, sex crying
Solo gen can be prompted as well alongside (a) character name and description
e.g.
Gen, Emil Racovitza, discovering a crazy new fish
4. Fills should use this format in the subject line: FILL: [TITLE], [PAIRING], [RATING], [ANY WARNINGS]
e.g.
Fill: The Very Next Day, Cherry/Birdie, E, cw self-harm
5. One prompt per comment please.
6. Multiple fills for each prompt are welcome!
7. You don't have to be anon for your prompts or your fills but we do encourage it because of the vibe. You're also welcome to deanon your stuff by posting on AO3/Tumblr as you please!
8. Feedback on prompts and fills is AWESOME; please take longer conversations to the discussion post.
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Shackleton/Scott (or Wilson!), fourth man
(Anonymous) 2023-08-05 11:30 am (UTC)(link)Fill: let the river run you through, Shackleton & Scott, t, body horror, death, ghosts
(Anonymous) 2023-10-01 03:50 am (UTC)(link)--
Say a man in the snow. Rock, ice, mountain, wind. Hope as yet a terrible word, help far down away. The faces of his two companions blurred through the gloom of a tent or the absence of one. You pick; this is a story with more than one ending.
The man outside looks at the man inside and starts, the gauze of canvas sharply suddenly see-through, the gauze of time lightswirled and still. At first he thinks it a mirror, but then that is a mistake made by all men from the edge of the world. Beard, eye, blood, lip. The man inside sees him and smiles.
No, he says.
You say or I say?
You pick.
He looks out where the sky is visiting silver upon the great dark crags. The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep moans round with many voices. Something in him would shout it down, but he is too tired for madness. His skin split like seams.
What do you want?
The same thing as you.
Gristle-grin, unreality untrue.
Hasn't it always been that way?
He twists his head no, the same moment Worsley shifts on the ground next to him eyes closed. So you've picked. Life, litter, footstep, name.
He judders a breath and turns back to the flap of tent, glint of tooth that isn't there. We've never been the same, he says. Wind shears his cheeks. He watches the chapped bleeding mouth as it curls.
We're the same age now, it says.
A lurch in his chest. It is so easy to be cruel. His foot rolls a rock over.
I'm alive.
For long?
There's a falsity of movement to it; he brittles himself, lays metal to spine.
If you've come to mock me, I'll tell you one thing: I haven't come all this way to lose them.
Body, rigor, song, flame. Its mirthless cornflower gaze settles on a shape by its side.
Who's that mocking who, then?
He tastes acid, his throat feathered. In the silence that follows he cannot afford a thought. No good would come of laying himself open now, too late, like a ribcage in autopsy.
Anyway it no longer matters, it sighs. Something sickly snapping as it nods towards Crean. I should have taken him instead, don't you think?
Heat lights him through, balls his fingers into fists; lethargia moves him with embarrassing slowness.
Well you aren't having him.
A witherhand reaches out to press against the time-gauze. God help him, he can't not look. Blackened bitten skin falling away like dried flowers. Shadow clouds its rictus smile, broken-edged and lipless. It laughs like a saw.
Not even for an old friend?
Or not shadow, he realises. Fear. Trap, steel, blood, bullet. The not-quite-right coalescing into sense. He thinks of the slow sure shoulders he knew once, too proud, too sincere, an ache of responsibility and faraway love.
He wouldn't have asked, he says.
Now it drops its pretence. Regards him flatly, blurs in space. Something shivers him colder than the wind. Lord, to lie down.
Who are you?
No one you knew.
Is it still anything, he can't tell. Time-gauze ripples.
Why are you here?
Reward of priority.
He feels sleep drooping his eyes and tears vigil through his teeth.
What do you want?
You've asked that already.
I'll ask again.
The same thing as you, dear boy.
Its mouth is a drawer of knives.
I want to live, he says. Torpor slurs his speech; he knows it then, and swings his arm toward Worsley but it slugs through the air and never quite gets there. I want to live, he says again, but the words coming out of him are no longer words, only bruises. I want to live burning and its face now tilted to the sky like rapture tentless open its witherhand on his and once they had called to each other through the fog of furthest south Lord he is so tired and calling to the sky dark clouds dark clouds it laughs Lord its hands and it singing to the stillness come, Lord, shrive me
He shakes Worsley awake. Crean. You've had a good half-hour, he tells them, paternal. Ought to make for a fresh start.
Did you have a rest yourself, Boss? Worsley asks, shaking a yawn out.
Yes, he smiles, his cornflower gaze coming to rest on the riven dawn. I feel all new.
Say a man in the snow.
Bird, flint, twilight, bone.
Rock, rend, river, red.
Re: Fill: let the river run you through, Shackleton & Scott, t, body horror, death, ghosts
(Anonymous) 2023-10-01 05:20 pm (UTC)(link)Scott saying he should have taken Crean instead gave me chills, something about the sharp focus it brought to the meditations on how things might have gone (and still might go...) so differently?
Honestly what a fantastic piece I was floored to find this on opening the kinkmeme and it was such a delightfully macabre treat. Really brings home how improbably Shackleton's survival in this moment actually was, and the strange wells of strength that might need to be tapped to achieve it.
Re: Fill: let the river run you through, Shackleton & Scott, t, body horror, death, ghosts
(Anonymous) 2023-10-01 05:25 pm (UTC)(link)The best horror, for me, is only partly in what is actually happening and mostly in how it's written, and the writing here is something special. I adore the little four-word tone-poems scattered throughout like little drumbeats...seeing "reward of priority" used here made me scream a little. The avuncular "dear boy" coming out of its mouth at the end....*happy shiver*
HUZZAH ANON!
Re: Fill: let the river run you through, Shackleton & Scott, t, body horror, death, ghosts
(Anonymous) 2023-10-08 04:41 pm (UTC)(link)