Candy Hearts Letter 2022
Hi! I am also ardentaislinn on AO3. Thank you so much for volunteering to write one of my chosen fandoms! I really can’t wait to see what you come up with. Most importantly, I hope you have fun writing whichever of my fandoms it is. Any suggestions I make here are optional.
Here you’ll find:
My general likes
My DNWs
And prompts for the following fandoms:
반도 | Peninsula (2020) (aka Train to Busan 2) - Jung Seok/Min Jung
Practical Arrangement - Sting (song) - Man/Woman
고요의 바다 | The Silent Sea - Han Yoon Jae/Song Ji An
Christmas Class Reunion (2022) - Elle/Devin
Original Works - Badass Woman/The Equally Badass Man Who Secretly Loves Her, Male Soldier Deployed Overseas/His Female Penpal That He's Never Met, Reality Show Producer/Reality Show Contestant Who Knows It's Mostly Fake But Plays Along, 19th Century Male Detective/The Clever and Meddlesome Woman Who Gets in His Way
A quick note on the Korean names - I’m fine with however you choose to transliterate them. Hyphen/no hyphen, slight differences in romanisation, etc. Just do what you are comfortable with and I’ll adjust no problem.
My likes:
I love getting together fics most of all. I love almost every kind of trope (fake dating, slow burn, enemies/rivals-to-lovers, trapped together, there’s only one bed, “unrequited” pining (that is really requited), found families, etc.) I also like casefic, epistolary fic, consent, beta heroes, competence, communication, U/RST, positive endings.
You may notice from the below that my ships mostly involve broken but good-hearted men being secretly head over heels for badass ladies, (and usually not feeling worthy). So that dynamic is strongly encouraged.
Happy endings (or at least hopeful endings) are preferred. Like, super, super preferred. I don’t mind angst at all, but it kinda has to be on the way out of the darkness by the end.
I also like smut, but it certainly isn’t a necessity. For smut, I’m (sadly) fairly vanilla. But I like light bondage, cunnilingus, shower sex, and accidental/consensual voyeurism, (Particularly guys taking matters into their own hands when they think they can’t be with their lady, and the woman stumbling across him mid-act. Writer’s choice whether the woman joins in or gets embarrassed)
Dislikes/DNWs:
Miserable endings. Death of a requested character. Humiliation. Drug use/drug mentions/addiction. Self harm/abuse. Non-con/rape. Heavy kink. Animal harm. Underage sexual content.
Fandom specific prompts:
반도 | Peninsula (2020) (aka Train to Busan 2)
Jung Seok/Min Jung
While maybe objectively not as good a film as the first one, I still enjoyed the hell out of it. Given that it was essentially a cross between Escape From New York and Mad Max, what isn’t to love? I loved the expansion of the world and the clever uses of zombies in the chase scenes. And I really liked the idea that anything can mean happiness when you love and are loved in return - particularly in regards to Joon Yi, but also Jung Seok (and his found family?).
Mostly I just want Jung Seok and Min Jung to kiss. I think they'd help each other heal and be stronger together as a team. While they did grow throughout the movie, they probably have a little more growing to do before they are ready to be together, and they might always be a little dysfunctional, given their traumas. It would be impossible to entirely smooth away all those sharp points they've developed. But they'd understand each other in a way no one else would.
What would interest me the most in this fandom is post-movie fics. But if you wanna do a canon divergent/au thing, I’d be cool with that, too.
Some prompts:
In order to stay together after being rescued, Jung Seok and Min Jung have to pretend to be married.
Jung Seok’s POV when he realises he loves Min Jung.
After four long years of loneliness, Min Jung just wants to be touched. Maybe they start a physical relationship that slowly morphs into an emotional one.
Neither would be particularly verbally demonstrative. How do they show they care about the other without saying "I love you?"
Jung Seok isn’t surprised to find himself in love with Min Jung - and wanting to be a father to her girls - but is he good enough for them? He’s left them behind once - can he forgive himself? Can Min Jung?
The zombie plague escapes from Korea - and Jung Seok, Min Jung, and her girls are the closest thing to experts on how to fight back and contain it that the authorities have. Will their nightmare never be over? Or is this a chance to end it once and for all?
With Min Jung in hospital while her leg heals, Jung Seok suddenly finds himself a surrogate father to two very unruly girls.
Practical Arrangement - Sting (Song)
Man/Woman
I received a great fic for this song for Yuletide, which you can find here. I’m requesting it again purely because there is so much scope here to work with, and so many different interpretations you could go with. And I want them all!
I mean…this song just screams marriage of convenience story, right? I love this trope, particularly when it’s two practical people going into the arrangement for logical reasons…only to find feelings somehow got involved. It’s a perfect set up for slow burn, pining, forced proximity, and all that good stuff.
I think in this song in particular the man might be lying to himself from the very beginning about this being a platonic arrangement. I don’t have any headcanons for their names so feel free to call the characters what you want!
Some prompts:
At what point does either character realise they have feelings for the other? How did they get there? With lots of pining and classic tropes? Do they have to play a couple outside of the house, or is this strictly a legal arrangement?
How do they meet? What happens to the woman that either character thinks this is a logical solution? How bad of a situation is she in?
Why is he lonely enough to propose this solution? Or has he secretly loved her for a long time and only wants to help her? How does the intimacy of marriage and a “warm house to return to” change things for him, even if it’s meant to be platonic? Can going through the motions of intimacy and sharing a home lead to real and lasting feelings?
How long does the “separate beds” promise last? Do they decide that for the duration of their marriage that they will satisfy each other in the bedroom as well? Or do they absolutely never touch given their promise of platonicness?
How does he bond with her son? Do they do things together as a family or mostly lead separate lives?
It sounds like she’s a disaster in the kitchen. Is he a good cook? Does she learn to after all in an act of finding herself? Or does she finally let herself be taken care of for once?
A historical AU? Maybe she’s a titled widow fallen on hard times, and he’s of the rich merchant class and still not considered good enough for her in the eyes of society.
Maybe it’s a Beauty and the Beast scenario? He’s disfigured or magically enchanted but she marries him to save herself and her son. It turns out he’s not as bad as the stories claimed.
If you want to turn this on your head, you can. Maybe the narrator of the song is a creep and/or a stalker and she actually has to get away from him and falls in love with someone else!
고요의 바다 | The Silent Sea
Han Yoon Jae/Song Ji An
So, I requested this for Yuletide, and got two excellent fics here and here. There was a third one in the collection that was also excellent, too! Right here. Normally, when I am so blessed with fics for a tiny fandom like that, I feel like the itch has been scratched, so to speak. But (un)fortunately, in this case, the fics were so good that it made me ship this pairing so much more.
It’s a crime that they didn’t kiss in this, honestly. Two of my favourite Korean actors (Bae Doo Na and Gong Yoo) in one show, buckets of chemistry, and nary a romance! Gong Yoo was at his hottest, too, with the neck tattoo and attitude. (Bae Doo Na is, of course, always at her hottest.)
They are both smart and know what’s up. I feel like they’d make a good couple. And the tension between them, particularly in the beginning, just makes it hotter. Most of these prompts presume that Yoon Jae was rescued at the end there with the others, of course.
Some prompts:
I’m envisioning a whole scenario where she marries him to share her status to save his daughter and they fall in love. They need to make it convincing or it’s basically fraud, so they move in together and pretend to be a couple… Maybe this happens after their adventure, or maybe it’s an AU where they never went to space, or they marry before they go and then they go to the moon.
There was a lot of tension between them. And sometimes there’s only one surefire way to ease that tension…in a maintenance closet.
What happens when they get back to earth? Inevitably, paperwork and bureaucracy. But maybe also they need to save the world? Again?
Additional bonding time in space, before or during everything going to hell. They have a lot of trauma they can share/bond over.
How do they work together to protect Earth after everything they've been through? Does it bring them closer together? Does the water crisis get solved or are things worse than ever?
What happens to Luna? Do they become her surrogate parents? She’s not really human, so what kind of difficulties does that present? How do they explain her presence in the rescue craft to their superiors? Once back in the real world, do they have to pretend she’s normal? This could either be very fraught or rather comedic depending how you want to play it.
Ji An and Yoon Jae have to quarantine together for a few weeks after getting off the moon.
Feel free to do some worldbuilding! The scenario is both terrifyingly realistic and completely apocalyptic. How else is it different from our world? How is it the same? What is going on outside of the limited scope we see?
Christmas Class Reunion (2022)
Elle/Devin
Originally, I saw this Hallmark movie and just thought it was okay. I didn't fall head over heels for it. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of it. Maybe it didn’t entirely stick the landing but it had all the elements to make a great romance.
Devin used to be a goofy class clown, and now he’s grown up into being a responsible, respectable, single-dad. But he’s perhaps still dealing with that old high school feeling of not quite being good enough. Particularly not for a girl as smart and driven as Elle. He still retains a little bit of his goofiness, but he’s definitely matured a lot. Throughout the movie, Elle’s modern, forward-thinking ways help Devin push himself that little more.
Elle, on the other hand, has always been responsible and ambitious, and until now has been dating guys just like her. Now that the perfect life she’d worked so hard for is starting to fall apart, she’s reassessing her priorities and maybe just…chilling out a little. She feels like she still has to put up a front, but not so much around Devin, who seems to like her just as she is and whose slight goofiness helps her mellow.
They definitely wouldn’t have worked as a couple in high school, but they had both changed a lot in the intervening 15 years, to the point where they’d kind of met in the middle of their two personality extremes, purely by chance. Maybe they still had a bit of growing left to do, but it’s clear that they were in a place where they were ready to be together and make it work.
I'm a lot more interested in where they are now with themselves and each other as opposed to flashing back to their high school years for an entire fic, but I don't mind if you mention or feature scenes from that time to illustrate their development.
Some prompts:
First Christmas together, so soon in their new relationship. Or maybe a series of big days throughout their first year, like first Valentine's, before their engagement. Or maybe many Christmases over the years, to see how they evolve.
The movie kind of cops out by not answering how Elle deals with the fallout from work, and the fact that Elle and Devin live in different cities. I don't feel like there's necessarily an easy answer to any of it, so how is all that resolved?
A missing scene where Devin pines for Elle. Maybe he'd always had a crush on her and didn't feel worthy back then, and those feelings of inadequacy are coming back because he finds 33 year old Elle even smarter and prettier and more incredible than teenaged Elle.
They work together to find Samantha a well-deserved happy ending.
Maybe they live in different cities for a while. How do they keep in contact? Texts? Emails? Phone/video sex?
Bonding time with Skylar. Is it all smooth sailing, or are there some difficulties with Elle coming into their lives?
AU/Canon Divergence. Maybe they met again under other circumstances? As long as keep the dynamic I mentioned above (Amazing woman who feels like she needs to put up a front when the life she worked so hard for is crumbling/the guy who has matured and grown so much but still isn't sure it's enough for her to fall for him.)
How did Devin's proposal happen? Or did Elle get sick of waiting and proposed to him?
Original Work
Badass Woman/The Equally Badass Man Who Secretly Loves Her, Male Soldier Deployed Overseas/His Female Penpal That He's Never Met, Reality Show Producer/Reality Show Contestant Who Knows It's Mostly Fake But Plays Along, 19th Century Male Detective/The Clever and Meddlesome Woman Who Gets in His Way
I think these tags basically speak for themselves, but just in case you want some guidance I’ll give some ideas below.
Badass Woman/The Equally Badass Man Who Secretly Loves Her
Most of the major ships I’ve had throughout my life fall into this category. Terminator’s Sarah Connor/Kyle Reese, Mad Max: Fury Road’s Max/Furiosa, Aliens’ Ripley/Dwayne Hicks, even Peninsula’s Jung Seok/Min Jung listed above. Whatever you write doesn’t need to be an action sci-fi story, though! I’m equally happy with a contemporary rom com where they are CEOs or a single-mother inn owner and a handyman or whatever. There are many ways to be a badass.
As for the story itself? Anything where the hero is quietly enamoured by how competent and capable she is, but doesn’t feel worthy of her, is what I’m after here. So, maybe she gives him a surprising confession. He's loved her for a long time, how did they meet? Maybe they have to kiss/share a bed/work on a mission together and it makes the feelings come to a head. Maybe he confesses to her in a moment of weakness and is surprised when she tells him she feels the same. Maybe they used to be spies or vigilantes together. Like, she was married to his best friend, and the three of them used to work together. Then the best friend dies and they blame themselves and fall out of touch. They have to reunite years later and he’s still carrying a secret torch for her and doesn’t realise she feels the same. There are plenty of routes you can take with this!
Male Soldier Deployed Overseas/His Female Penpal That He's Never Met
For this one, I was thinking something along the lines of the Hallmark movies The Christmas Card or Holiday for Heroes. She sends him a Christmas card or package and they start exchanging letters. He doesn't have much family, and so her letters really mean something to him. Or maybe she's looking after his dog while he's deployed and she sends him photos of his beloved pet, and they get talking. Or maybe this is set in 19th C England, and he writes to inform her of her brother's death, and his comforting words really touch her heart. I just really like epistolary romances! And I really like that moment when they see each other in person for the first time and realise that maybe those feelings that had been developing weren’t so crazy after all. It was all real.
Reality Show Producer/Reality Show Contestant Who Knows It's Mostly Fake But Plays Along
Again, this prompt was inspired by a Hallmark movie, this time Love, For Real. I really liked that he was attracted to her smarts and cynicism since he was feeling pretty jaded about reality shows himself. There's a lot of potential conflict considering falling for a contestant is unprofessional and against the rules. But I obviously don’t want fic of that movie, it’s mostly just the vibes.
Author’s pick of the type of reality show. Cooking competition? Dating show? Maybe it's a friends to lovers story where the producer convinces their friend to join up to help out and they see new sides to each other. Maybe she's the producer and he's the best friend/contestant, a la the Kdrama Love is for Suckers. Maybe it's a Survivor style show and they get “lost” in the wilderness together. Maybe one of them is a celebrity playing up a superficial image for a show, and the producer sees the real, likeable person who comes out when the cameras are off.
19th Century Male Detective/The Clever and Meddlesome Woman Who Gets in His Way
I’m just a sucker for mysteries with a female protagonist or co-lead set in the Victorian era, with a male detective or private investigator that works with her. I love the way the women have to work against and within the system but then use people’s expectations against them. The detective will often be able to work openly in the public sphere when investigating, but the woman works subtly, behind the scenes, in the private sphere. Those two skills end up complementing each other to the point that the crime couldn’t be solved or the criminal brought to justice without either of them. The fact that these stories often lend themselves to having clever, bookish heroines who everyone underestimates, plus a lot of banter with the detective, is just icing on the cake.
For specific ideas, maybe she writes him a letter with information about a crime - he initially dismisses her but is intrigued. Maybe they meet at a crime scene and he’s suspicious because she seems to know so much. Maybe he thinks she or someone close to her is a culprit and she’s trying to prove him wrong. Maybe he goes to her about a case because she has some specific expert knowledge, but she insists on getting far more involved than he intended.
Hopefully that’s all. Sorry it's such an epic letter. Thank you for writing something for me!
