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planned fics/synopses for Gen Prompt Bingo Round 25

([personal profile] torreyana Feb. 21st, 2024 09:02 pm)
Feedback welcome! (It doesn't have to be fancy either—if you just tell me the name/prompt of the idea(s) here that you like the looks of the most would be super helpful!)

I've been dealing with a lot of writer's block this fall/winter, and so I thought that maybe getting a new bingo card and brainstorming what I could write for it might help me to break through the block.

So now I've got a bunch of planned-but-not-written fics that I really like the idea of and wish they existed already...but in the meantime I've got to keep trying to get myself excited enough about that I can push myself to make the writing happen. So I thought I'd post some notes about them here.

If you're reading this post and want to encourage me to write more, I'd love to hear whether there's any ideas here you'd be particularly interested in reading! (Also, for prompts where I've got multiple ideas I'm considering, I'd be very prone to making decisions based on which ones have people interested in reading them, so let me know!) I know this post is really long, so I've marked fandoms & pairings in the table of contents so that you can just skip to the ones that interest you.

Basically I'm just hoping that if I know other people and not just me are excited for these stories to exist, that maybe that will be the last push of motivation that I need to break through my writer's block.

The actual bingo card can be viewed over here. I'm aiming for <5k for most of the fics (except for a few I've marked, where my ideas are running away with me despite my best efforts). Most are for Mission: Impossible, with a bit of Top Gun and Knight & Day (and two crossovers of all of the above + A Few Good Men). Synopses do include some spoilers (but with the caveat that I reserve the right to change my mind about any of this stuff as I actually write it so they may turn out not to be spoilers after all!) but I tried to keep them at the level of things I would tag for anyway, and not spoil anything that would ruin the story.

Table of Contents:



Shoes

[M:I] "Shoes Please" - Ethan/Ilsa (will exceed 5k)


I've been working on this one for a while (it's one of those fics where every time I worked on the draft I discovered more about what the fic wanted to be and what voice the story needed to have, so then I would back up and start again, and in the process discover even more about where it was headed, repeat ad lib.) but it was themed around scenes with shoes from the very beginning, so it's kind of hilarious that I ended up with such a specific prompt on this card! I didn't even consider writing anything else for this square, just immediately promised myself that it was a sign that I'd be finally finishing this fic. Anyway, the title for this one was kind of obvious, especially because the fic does include the "shoes please" scene.

First chapter is Ilsa POV. Then: (during Rogue Nation) Chaining up the unconscious American prisoner, which includes taking off his shoes, while trying to figure out whether there's anything she can do to protect/save him.

Now: (original non-canonical mission) In the back of the van (Benji's driving, Luther's doing something techy with the data they recovered) and Ethan sprained/rolled an ankle during his last bit of running to get the data. Her and Ethan's part of the mission is over now so Ilsa insists on taking off his shoes and wrapping his ankle.

Second chapter is Ethan POV. Then: (during Rogue Nation) They're hurrying out of the opera house, and he really likes this woman—he has since London—but he's trying to take her measure if they're going to be working together as he hopes they will. And then she asks him to take off her shoes, and he doesn't even quite follow what she's saying at first because nobody's ever asked him that before, but then there's a flash of excitement that she trusts him enough to ask him to do this instead of doing it herself, that maybe she's as willing to work with him as he is to work with her. Or something like that; I think I'm just going to have to see where Ethan's POV is taking me when I write this.

Now: (a few hours after Ilsa's "now" section) They're holed up at a safehouse (and Benji & Luther are busy with the data they recovered, but the mission is still past the point where Ethan's & Ilsa's skills are as needed) and end up sitting on the couch. I don't know if Ilsa says something about her feet aching or if Ethan can just tell (probably the latter, because he can always "just tell" when it comes to her) and says "let me", and takes her shoes off and gives her a foot massage. (Which, like, feet are not a thing for me at all so it's probably going to be the least lovingly described foot massage in the history of ever as it just happens in the background while they talk, but at least it lets me keep up the thematic framing in a way that makes the story "rhyme" nicely.)

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Graduation

[M:I] "I-95 (I Passed the Field Exam)" - Ethan & Benji (compared & contrasted with past Ethan & Lindsey)


Ethan POV. In the immediate aftermath of Ghost Protocol, Ethan asks Benji about how the field training/exam process went, and unsuspecting Benji (who isn't yet very good at reading Ethan when he's putting up a front) chatters away about the whole process, but in Ethan's thoughts (and thus in the narrative prose, since this is tight third) he's thinking about all of the similar events when he was training Lindsey and he remembers what her dead body looked like and can't help from picturing Benji dead the same way (maybe a mix of Benji dead from a charge in his brain like Lindsey, which was never at particular risk of happening, and Benji dead if something had gone wrong during their mission, like falling off the Burj Khalifa or getting shot, which could so easily have happened) and tells himself it's going to be all his fault when Benji gets killed.

But he fakes a smile and tells Benji how happy he is for him, and you did a great job, and Benji seems happy so Ethan thinks that he's managed to pull off his act of not being bothered. Not that Benji has actually fallen for it: he's perceptive enough that he actually does realize something's wrong, even though he might not exactly be sure what (since after all the amount of time he's spent around Ethan is still quite limited at this point in the chronology). So after Ethan has congratulated himself on successfully snowing Benji, right as he's about to leave, Benji hesitantly brings up that hey, that was a pretty tough mission and I think we're all having a hard time after—ha-ha—the world came within seconds of nuclear war, y'know? So, like, you know there's people back at headquarters that you can talk to about stuff like this, right?

But talking to people is the one thing Ethan definitely does not want to do so he bottles up his trauma and throws a few more lies in Benji's direction except this time he can tell that Benji isn't fooled and is only letting him get away with this because he's still a bit intimidated by Ethan, and he feels guilty...but not guilty enough to keep from fleeing the situation (because he hasn't even fully dealt with his loss of Julia, and the losses keep piling up and he's afraid they're going to continue to do so no matter how hard he tries).

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Quarantine

[M:I] untitled - Ethan/Nyah & Luther & Billy


In the immediate aftermath of the final showdown in M:I-2 (before the ending scenes with Swanbeck or Ethan/Nyah in the park), Nyah has to quarantine to make sure that Chimera eradicated Bellerophon, and the rest of the team quarantines with her to make sure none of them caught it since they were all exposed to her. It's a very off-the-books operation since of course Swanbeck ordered Ethan to bring back Bellerophon as well as Chimera. I'm not sure how shippy this will turn out to be, because I'm including the ship more incidentally because they're canonically together at this point than because I have any particular shippy feelings about them, but it's such a tiny rarepair that I wish there were more fic for, so I dunno...we'll see where the story takes me.

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Laughter



This was the square I ended up leaving for last on the card, and I'm still not entirely certain whether I'm going to go with any of the ideas I currently have noted, or whether I want to come back to this and brainstorm further down the line. But for the moment I have two possibilities:

[M:I] untitled - meta


My first thought when I saw this square (and it's an idea I keep coming back to and continuing to like the sound of it) would be to go through all 7 movies and make a picspam+meta of literally every time characters laugh. Because I'm kind of curious about the frequency of this (I don't have a very visual memory so even though I've watched every movie multiple times that's not something I can just recall off the top of my head) and whether laughter is much more common in certain movies or for certain characters more than others.

[M:I] "To See and Be Seen" - Ethan/Ilsa


Ilsa POV. This is an idea I had separate from the bingo card, but I realized it wouldn't take much shoehorning to make it fit the "Laughter" square so I'm going to keep it in mind here. It's magical realism, which I'd realized when I was going through my wild card options is a genre I'd really like to see more M:I fic for (but also it's not a genre I've ever written so I'm not sure how much more challenging I'd find it than regular non-AU canonverse).

Basically, some people in their world have mild magical abilities, and Ethan's (that he might not even realize he has) is to be able to capture/communicate part of a person's essence/soul when he draws them. (Which is how Brandt was able to instantly identify the subject of his "crude drawing" in M:I-4, and Luther and Brandt could tell a lot about how Ethan viewed both Ilsa & Lane in M:I-5.) Ilsa and Brandt discuss their opinions of magic (Brandt would prefer to be a rationalist about the whole thing but he's starting to suspect that he's going to have to believe that magic exists whether he likes it or not, while Ilsa had a relative who was a witch and suspects that she might have some abilities herself, because sometimes unexplained things happen on her missions and there's been too many times when she should have died but she didn't), and then Ilsa seeks out Ethan and gets him to draw her while she tries to draw him. Once again his drawing turns out to be able to see her even better than she's ever been able to see herself, and she just wishes he could turn that same viewpoint on himself.

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Hey, it's that guy: Minor characters

[M:I] "Désolé" - Ethan & the French policewoman


This is a fic I'd outlined months ago but then never picked back up, so I'm taking advantage of this square on the bingo card to motivate myself to actually write this!

POV of the French policewoman from Fallout. She's on leave (on bedrest, with her sister staying with her), and tells investigators her story of what happened, but is relieved that they seem to be at a dead end in their search for the people who got away, because after he risked his life to save her she thinks he must be doing something important and she's pretty sure she hopes he succeeds. Anyway soon after the investigators leave there's a knock on the door and her sister comes in asking if she knows anyone named Ethan—because yes, Ethan decided to drop by in the middle of a city where everybody's still hunting for him, just because he wanted to make sure he's okay. He asks her how she's doing and tells her as much as he can about why they were doing what they were doing, and then leaves from the balcony (just in case her sister called the authorities). The policewoman hopes that this visit might help her with the nightmares she's been having of that incident (and wonders whether Ethan shares nightmares of it, but fears that he doesn't but only because his nightmares are worse).

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Day-in-the-life

[crossover: M:I/TG] working title: "Sorry I Missed Your Engagement Party" - Ethan & Mav


Set in the same universe as my fic "Texts to Mav" (where Ethan & Mav are cousins—their moms were sisters—and Mav lived on the Hunt farm after his mom died) but much earlier and with probably no Top Gun characters beyond Mav. Back in the days when texting didn't involve smartphones (so I'm really not sure how I'm going to format this fic, because trying to replicate the experience of reading texts on the screen of a Nokia 1100 would be an exercise in frustration for both reader and author), Ethan tells Mav the events of M:I-3 as they happen...except of course Ethan is a biased narrator not to mention Mav doesn't have clearance to know everything that's going on, so the story he tells may have limited resemblance to the movie.

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Sensory Deprivation



I'm still brainstorming this one: I've narrowed it down to two(ish) possibilities I'm considering most strongly, but I also might throw them both out and come up with something new, because I don't feel like I've quite "clicked" with any of them yet.

[M:I] untitled - Ethan/Max


(This is, like, M:I-1 levels of shippiness, but I think the movie is shippy enough to tag them as not-gen, so this is too.) Set during his 6 months on the run in Rogue Nation. Max POV. Max is working with assorted bad guy allies (while of course also being secretly ~employed by the CIA) and kind of stumbles into capturing Ethan when it would be simpler to let him go (but she can't explain that reasoning to the others present). So then she has to appear to torture her prisoner (because convincing allies) but also doesn't particularly want to hurt him (because she's always been a bit fond of him—he may have betrayed her but he did it in such a clever way—and also because she's employed by the CIA, who don't exactly keep her updated on whether or not a particular agent of theirs is free game because he's disavowed again, so she assumes he's off limits). And Ethan just looks so tired, so (after they flirt a bit duh) she settles on putting him in a sensory deprivation tank because it will have the appearance of being torture while actually just letting him rest. And then she and her employee dude (who is back to working with her after his brief hiatus working for that other arms dealer dude during Ghost Protocol) fish him out in the middle of the night so they can be all "whoops, he escaped" and Ethan is very pliable and maybe a bit clingy (but the fic stays PG because I want to keep this fic short and sweet—and also because I'm just boring like that).

[TG] untitled - Phoenix-centric gen


(Phoenix POV). After punching out with Bob (the first time she's ever lost a plane or had to eject), Phoenix is able to push down the stress/trauma of it at first because she has the mission to focus on, but afterwards she's having a hard time. She doesn't want to officially talk to someone quite yet because she's still hoping she'll get over it really soon and if so then she doesn't want to have any marks on her record (because she's very ambitious/driven and doesn't want to take unnecessary risks of something like that affecting her career) but she also doesn't want to just bury her head in the sand and ignore it, so (uh, because this is written for the sensory deprivation square and not because this is necessarily the best way to handle it ever—but of course although she's reasoning forwards to the decision I've been reasoning backwards for a possible explanation, and I think this is plausible enough even though it feels a bit stark when I lay it out here) she decides to go to one of those commercial places where you can pay to use a sensory deprivation tank. So then the actual fic is mostly that, like maybe there's a bit of an interaction with the clerk explaining the rules to her that gives Phoenix an opportunity to explain a bit of her thinking of why she's doing this, and then most of it is just losing herself in the nothingness and remembering everybody and everything that has led up to this point. It would kind of just be a character study, I guess, but specifically focused on her trauma. I just don't know how good I'd be at writing something like this, because I've never tried to write anything quite like it and although I'm sure I could hit all the beats on my outline I'm just not sure if I could make it a strong enough story to be worth the reader's time.

[M:I] untitled - Ethan/Ilsa


So here's a sort of third possibility: I have an Ethan/Ilsa fic outlined that I really want to write one of these days, that has Ilsa in the aftermath of Rogue Nation realizing she's extremely touch-starved. There's the contrast of the nice (but sterile) hotel room that MI6 paid for in an attempt to make nice after everything that went down, vs. the rather tumble-down safehouse that the IMF team is staying in in London as they wrap up loose ends (with a ramshackle couch that she ends up cuddling with Ethan on). Touch starvation would be pushing the bounds of the "sensory deprivation" prompt, but hey this is a fic I really click with and Gen Prompt Bingo's rules are really broad in terms of 'if you think your work fits the prompt then it fits', so I dunno I might just go with this one.

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Compare and Contrast

[crossover: MI/TG] working title: "Juxtaposition" - Ethan & Top Gun ensemble (might exceed 5k)


Not a texting fic, but still set in the same universe as my fic "Texts to Mav" (where Ethan's and Mav's mothers were sisters). Post-TG:M (but in one of those scenarios where for some unexplained reason everybody was stationed in San Diego afterwards and also Ice is alive), post-Fallout but not sure about Dead Reckoning. POV is probably one of Cyclone, Warlock, or Hondo.

Mav disappears and his friends/associates aren't sure whether it was of his own volition or not, so they're trying to keep things unofficial for a few hours while they investigate on their own before they report him missing (so that they don't get him in trouble unnecessarily). Right when they're about to give up and make the report, he shows up and they all yell at him—but eventually realize that something's off. It's actually Ethan masquerading as Mav to investigate Mav's kidnapping. Basically most of the fic is a mix of half casefic and half a series of reveals as different characters figure out that he's not actually Mav.

Then at the end, once I've gotten plenty of comparing and contrasting done, then Ethan's & Mav's people come together to all help with the rescue. (I was thinking that that's one characteristic both of these characters have in common, that their willingness to sacrifice themselves for their friends causes people to be willing to trust them unquestioningly in return. It would be really nice if during the final showdown I could perhaps show that in some way, with both characters attempting to choose to risk their own lives rather than allow any of their companions to be at risk.) Also Alanna Mitsopolis is probably involved as one of Ethan's primary suspects for the kidnapping (I think she knows that Mav is connected to the Ethan Hunt who trapped her mother so many years ago, but not that either of them has anything to do with "Lark" who then hunts her down to ask about it).

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Another year older: Birthdays

[crossover: M:I/TG/AFGM/K&D] working title: "So I Guess I'll Remain the Same" (who am I kidding, the actual working title is "Adult Quadruplets Birthday Fic") / series working title: "The One Where They're Quadruplets" -
Ethan & Roy & Danny & Mav & assorted of their friends/ensemble casts


What it says on the tin: Ethan & Roy & Danny & Mav are quadruplets and get together as adults to celebrate their shared birthday. I think at least some of them bring along a few other characters from their respective movies, but I haven't really decided on a plot for this fic yet because I've been too busy figuring out backstory. Anyway the prequel to this fic turned into its own huge thing, which ended up under "Kids / Babies" below.

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Festivals and Celebrations

[M:I] untitled - Ethan & Nyah (or Ethan/Nyah? How do you tag the many-years-past-the-breakup interactions of people who used to be together romantically but are definitely not getting back together (like, ever)? I have the same problem with Ethan/Julia since that's my favorite dynamic for them as well.)


Probably Ethan POV but possibly alternating Ethan & Nyah POV. Set late-series, no earlier than Rogue Nation. In a different city during a different festival that makes them both all too aware of the echoes of their first meeting in Seville.

Nyah has gone back to theft in the intervening years, and Ethan figures out that she's going after a MacGuffin that is also of interest to the IMF. So he makes sure to get assigned the mission himself because he doesn't want Nyah to end up in a situation where some random IMF or even CIA agent is just treating her like any old criminal, and at least this way he has a bit of control over how the interaction goes. Since she's trying to steal something and he's trying to stop her (and possibly also steal it himself, depending on what sort of MacGuffin it is) I think he pretty much ends up reenacting their first meeting. I think he secures the MacGuffin and gives some excuses to his team to keep them from worrying, and then they go somewhere to talk in a scene that kind of echoes the balcony scene (and also has them end up looking out over a city that is celebrating some festival). I'm not sure if the prose is only focused on the present with the echoes of the past only being part of the POV character's memories, or if I want to have the narrative alternate in some way between their first meeting and this meeting (which they both hope will be their last).

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Grooming (Brushing / Braiding Hair, Painting Nails, etc.)



[TG] untitled - Phoenix/Hangman


Alternating POVs (so that we can see that each of them is freaking out equally as much even while they're both fooled by the other person's calm demeanor, so that they each think they're the only one freaking out). Basically, since neither of them particularly knows how to back down, they kind of accidentally dare each other into Hangman doing Phoenix's hair. Because he's just hanging around annoying her while she's getting ready because that's one of the main ways he knows of to interact with people, so she snaps at him that if he's going to be hanging around he ought to make himself useful (thinking that will get him to go away because so many guys find girl stuff scary), but Hangman is never one to back down when he's put on the spot, so he takes the dare and grabs a hairbrush and tells her to tell him what to do. So then Phoenix realizes she's in a bit over her head because she did not expect this conversation to end up with Hangman touching her so intimately and tenderly, but she's certainly never been one to back down either...

Anyway, yeah, Phoenix realizes she likes having her hair touched and Hangman realizes he likes touching it, and they do not know what to do with this new information. (But they're pretty sure they're in the middle of a competition they don't remember deciding to enter, and they're also pretty sure that the other person is currently winning because after all look at him/her, he/she isn't bothered by this like I am.)

[M:I] untitled - Ethan/Ilsa


Absolutely no idea whose POV (probably outsider, but maybe alternating outsider with one of them?). This one got a bit complicated because I was just imagining it for my own iddy indulgence and not with actually writing/posting it in mind, so it's not exactly fic-shaped, but I'm sure I could turn it into a fic with enough work. Anyway Ilsa is in hiding with Luther between M:I-7 and M:I-8 (you can just take my whole "the only way M:I-7 makes sense as a movie is if Ilsa is alive and they planned to fake her death when they went to the party" rant as read), but shortly before the final battle Ethan sneaks away to see them because they need to touch base and make sure they're all on the same page going into their last stand (after they've all been navigating by dead reckoning with no communications up to this point). Anyway they're mostly focused on serious planning for the battle before them, but also there's a bit of cuddling (along the lines of that amazing hug from the beginning of M:I-7) and also Ethan braids Ilsa's hair just because he feels like it and she says he can when he asks her, and on impulse adds a couple of sprigs of lavender that are growing in the kitchen garden or somewhere else near the house. (They're staying in a little house in the middle of nowhere that's away from all possible Entity surveillance other than satellite.)

Ethan keeps some of the flowers with him, as a reminder of this interaction that his enemies won't be able to parse. (A few days later, he has a run-in with the Mitsopolises and Zola finds the crumpled flower buds in Ethan's pocket when searching him, but neither he nor Alanna can make head nor tail of them even though they know "Lark" too well to think that there wouldn't be a reason for them.)

Anyway Ilsa left the braid in her hair because the reminder of that one little moment of peace/happiness meant as much to her as it did to Ethan, and she fixes it up with hairspray and some fresh flowers before making her triumphant arrival in which she both surprises everybody (except Ethan & Benji & Luther) and turns the tide of the battle. But meanwhile there's also an assortment of kissing between her and Ethan after they both figure out that that moment of peace meant as much to the other person as it did to them, and from there they move on quickly to some feelings realizations and making out before the battle is necessarily as over as the rest of their team would prefer they wait for.

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Last Times / Farewells

[M:I] "This Conversation Never Having Taken Place" - Ethan & the Secretary (also probably Brandt & the Secretary)


POV of the Secretary from Ghost Protocol. (He was played by Tom Wilkinson who passed away at the end of 2023, so I wanted to write something centered on his character in tribute.) Just a short piece of him learning about the Kremlin bombing and trying to figure out what's going on and what to do next, then preparing to meet Ethan, then his perspective on the canonical meeting. Just all those little moments in his life that are the last time he'll do each of those things, but he doesn't know they're the last time.

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Gardening

[M:I] "Roses Growing on Stalks of Clover" - Ethan & Uncle Donald


Ethan POV. Shortly after Ethan's breakup with Nyah, his mother passes away, and Uncle Donald wants to sell the family farm so Ethan comes home one last time to help him deal with that. They have a conversation in Ethan's mother's rose garden (which I invented for my AU!Ethan fic where he stayed on the farm, but in the fic I strongly implied that the garden existed in canonverse as well, so here's a canonverse take on it). They're just talking about the memories they share of this place and about where they've been and where they're going, except that everything Ethan tells his uncle is a lie—and the whole time he's having to hide multiple injuries from a recent mission that haven't quite healed yet and that he doesn't have a good explanation for.

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Fluff

[M:I] working title: "Dubrovnik" - Ethan/Ilsa


Ilsa POV. Ethan and Ilsa cross paths between M:I-6 and M:I-7 and find themselves at loose ends as their mission is over and they have nothing they need to do, but they're not very practiced at leisure or relaxing so they struggle with it a bit.

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Sleepovers and Pyjama Parties



This is another one where I have two completely unrelated ideas for the prompt, and I'm undecided on which one to go with.

[M:I] untitled - Ethan & Lindsey


Ethan POV? Lindsey's first time in the field—before Ethan recommends her for full active field duty, he takes her on some sort of milk run mission under his supervision. (That's basically just holing up in an abandoned building doing surveillance or whatever.) Even though Ethan's confident in Lindsey's abilities (or else he wouldn't have cleared her to accompany him), he's still a bit stressed about having his protégée in the field for the first time. So in an attempt to defuse the tension, she jokes about how they're just having a slumber party and thus conveniently connects the fic to the prompt. I'm not sure if there would be much of a plot for this one, mostly just kind of character study as I put them in a scenario where both I and the readers know how things end for them but Ethan and Lindsey still hope that this is the start of a long productive career.

[K&D] untitled - Roy & June


Undecided POV. A short and sweet coda to Roy & June's scene in the car carrier. A while later, after they've both been asleep, June wakes up and freaks out briefly (waking Roy in the process) until she remembers where she is. They chat a bit before going back to sleep. I just love that scene so much so it might be fun to expand on it a bit, and since other fics for this bingo have run away from me (even though I promised myself that this card I'd keep everything under 5k!) it would be good to have at least one fic that wasn't trying to bite off more than it could chew.

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Asphyxiation

[M:I] untitled - Ghost Protocol team


This prompt made me think of an awesome whump scene I'd seen a long time ago in a TV show, so I tracked it down and it's episode 8 of the 1st season of White Collar, "Hard Sell". I'm thinking of writing an AU that steals the climax of that episode (where the bad guy traps the main characters in his comic book vault and triggers the fire suppression system that removes the oxygen from the room) and has it involve Ethan and his team—most likely the team from Ghost Protocol. Undecided whether the bad guy would be the same character from the episode (and thus replace the White Collar characters with M:I characters) or whether it would be all original characters and just borrow the scenario. This is the scene. I just watched it for the first time in years, and huh, it's all over pretty quickly compared to what I'd built it up to in my head. And I'd forgotten that it's the good guys who trigger the vault...anyway if I write this AU I'll definitely have to rewatch the entire episode, which I should probably do anyway just for fun.

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Truth or Dare



This is another one where I'm undecided between two different fandoms.

[TG] untitled - Phoenix/Hangman


One of them has POV, not sure which. As I mentioned above (for the Grooming square), I like a dynamic for these two where they keep forging ahead due to their can't-back-down/can't-let-the-other-person-win attitude, and suddenly realize they've gotten themselves in way over their heads because romance isn't an activity they're quite as skilled at as they are at piloting. So I picture this starting as a game of truth or dare among all the Daggers (but POV character is very focused on the other person and is making up all sorts of excuses in their head for why that's not a big deal) and then later the two of them are alone and keep playing and whoops they both keep choosing "truth" and opening up to each other, how did this happen...and then eventually when POV decides that they're letting themself be too vulnerable, it would be safer to change things up and go for a dare...then of course the other person dares them to kiss them.

[M:I] untitled - Ethan & his late-series team


(No idea who has POV.) I'm not sure I can see these characters playing Truth or Dare to the same extent that it fits the Daggers, but if we could find them at a point where they all feel safe enough that they can take that risk, I was thinking that it would particularly be an interesting way for Ethan to open up a bit about his past and some of the events earlier in the series that the people he's met later don't really know about. Like maybe everybody keeps expecting him to choose "dare" since he's always been the most willing of all of them to jump out of buildings and onto moving vehicles etc., but he says he only does that for work and what they're doing right now isn't work, and so he keeps choosing "truth" instead. Anyway I like the idea of combining the feelings of several of the movies here if characters are present both from Ghost Protocol but also later movies and then Ethan is actually talking about some of the things that happened in the earlier movies when normally he seems to try to leave the past behind him since there's nothing he can do to change it. But this would have to be a very dialogue-driven piece which would be a lot of work, and on top of that there's the tiny little detail that I've never played Truth or Dare in my life so I'm just not sure how good I would be at writing a bunch of extremely competent secret agents letting loose and playing it. (Like, just getting a feel for how much Ethan would let himself open up without spilling too much would be a challenge to find that sweet spot, and then add in that all the other characters also need to be plausibly navigating that enough-but-not-too-much chasm in the background, and I'm just finding this idea a bit intimidating to get even 90% in character.)

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Kids / Babies

[crossover: MI/TG/AFGM/K&D] working title: "Watch Them Roll Away Again" / series working title: "The One Where They're Quadruplets" -
Molly Knight & Mrs. Mitchell, Mrs. Mitchell/Duke Mitchell, Ethan & Roy & Danny & Mav kidfic (will exceed 5k)


So yeah, I'd originally brainstormed a nice fun little accidental baby acquisition fic for this...and then I started brainstorming backstory for my fic for the "Birthdays" square above, and the next thing I knew I had a whole 'nother fic planned and thankfully it fit this square so at least I don't have to write 2 separate fics just for that one square. Anyway, this fic answers the question that nobody was asking: "Can you make Ethan, Roy, Danny, and Mav quadruplets and still preserve 90% of their backstory?" Because after all, for a lot of these characters their upbringing (*ahem* daddy issues) is a big part of what made them the person they are today, so even though their parents are only mentioned a few times in their respective movies, you can't really take them away without changing them a bit as a character.

So anyway I approached this as a logic puzzle and let's just say Mrs. Mitchell (I'm leaning towards the name Helen for her) is going to have even more trauma piled on her than she already had in canon (she gets pregnant out of wedlock—in the 60s when that's a much bigger deal than it is nowadays—and kicked out on her 18th birthday so she's stuck raising quadruplets on her own...plus she still has her canonical early widowhood and canonical young death, the latter of which I'm tying to longer-standing health issues) and then the kids get split up two and two (the two that go to Frank & Molly Knight keep the surname Mitchell—because after all, "that's our son Matthew" never establishes his surname—while the two that get adopted by Lionel Kaffee take his surname, but don't worry, I've got a nice complicated explanation for why all of Ethan's records say his surname is Hunt). Basically, I am having way too much fun with this when it started as just a silly little mega-crossover smushing all of these fandoms together. (I'm...not entirely sure that I know how to write a silly little fic that doesn't take the source material too seriously.)

Molly Knight POV. This thing wants to be a novel and man I wish I had the time to write a novel, but in the meantime I'm going to just write it as a lot of little glimpses of the quadruplets' life as they grow up. (But even then I'm going to have to do so much research about the 1960s and about early childhood development, and as I've started outlining it I'm sure that it's going to be super long even if I keep the pace at a sprint throughout, so I hope I'm not biting off more than I can chew here!)

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Possessions

[M:I] "Where Thieves Break In and Steal" - Ethan & Gabriel (will exceed 5k)


Briggs POV. Ethan rents a storage unit at a facility in the middle of nowhere that he uses as a supply cache and for storing what mementos he's allowed himself to keep over the years (since he doesn't really seem to have a steady home at this point), but even though he's taken precautions the Entity has been able to figure out where it is. Gabriel & the Entity set a trap, and meanwhile Briggs & Degas are still hunting down Ethan and so they end up getting trapped as well (and used as hostages that Gabriel can threaten to keep Ethan under control). Gabriel is looking for something specific that he knows Ethan has, but he's not in a hurry so he takes advantage of the situation to physically and mentally whump Ethan, going through various of Ethan's possessions and forcing him to tell him why they're important to him (under threat of electric shock to either Ethan or the hostages if he won't cooperate) and then destroying them. Meanwhile, Ethan's team is working on a way to temporarily disable the Entity's control on the area, but they know it's watching so they're going to need to throw it a red herring...

I'm really excited for this one! I enjoy whump and hurt/comfort but I'm a bit picky about it, and the scenario I've come up with here is very much tailored to my likes. And I think Briggs' POV is going to be the perfect lens to present events through—with the way he is in canon, where although he tries to tell himself that he doesn't have any empathy for Ethan Hunt, he can never quite bring himself to pull the trigger when he's got the chance, I think he's going to be a great foil for Ethan here. And his POV will be fun to write as he slowly becomes more and more sympathetic for Ethan despite himself. (The only issue is that of course we don't know if there's some sort of history between Ethan & Briggs that's still to be revealed—since there were definitely some implications in that regard in M:I-7—but hopefully however I write him I can handwave that and keep it to vague implications the same as it is in canon.)

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Warm Blooded / Cold Blooded

[K&D] "Warm Blood, Cold Snow" - Roy/June & Simon


June POV. Canon-divergence AU where Roy gets knocked unconscious in the fight on the train, and without him able to be...well, not necessarily the voice of reason, but the closest they're going to get to a voice of reason, June & Simon decide that the logical thing to do is to jump off of the train. (They might even be correct that this is the most logical action under the circumstances.) So then they're stuck in the snow in the middle of nowhere and Roy is still unconscious and June is worried that he's getting hypothermia. So she decides that the logical thing to do is to strip off his wet clothes and huddle for warmth with him with a space blanket wrapped around the two of them, while Simon builds a fire. (She might even be correct that this is the best way to handle the situation.)

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Trapped!

[M:I] "Rocks Fall, Everyone Doesn't Die" - Briggs & Degas & Grace & India Zulu 254 & Ethan (with a touch of background Ethan/Ilsa)


In the aftermath of M:I-7, Briggs' & Degas' team now has Grace & India Zulu 254 added to it. Because I said so. (I think they're still working on recruiting Paris but she's not yet a full member of the team, not to mention she might still be in the hospital.) They're still attempting to hunt down Ethan Hunt because those orders haven't been rescinded and they're good at their jobs. (And because people who don't really want to be on opposite sides being forced by their jobs to be on opposite sides is a delicious trope that shouldn't be discarded out of hand.)

Set maybe a couple of months post-M:I-7. POV is mostly someone on Briggs' team, probably Grace, with a bit of Ethan or Ilsa POV near the end. Okay so the premise is that late in the development of the AI that would eventually become the Entity, one of the main programmers (who has since died) went on a hike along some particular hiking trail (in very mountainous terrain), and so Ethan's team suspects that the programmer left some sort of clue there that might help them in their fight against the Entity. So Ethan goes there to investigate. Briggs et al. are only a few steps behind him as per usual when suddenly there's a rockslide, possibly accompanied by an avalanche. (I'm undecided whether this is coincidence or somehow triggered by the Entity, but leaning towards the latter if I can explain it.) Anyway they suddenly have to pivot to dealing with a survival situation. So then of course because Ethan is Ethan, he feels responsible for their being there and thus getting trapped in the rockslide, so he helps to rescue them, digging down from the top while they're digging their way out and meeting them halfway, or whatever.

So then they've now found their target (or rather he's found them) but it would be kind of mean to shoot him right after he rescued them and anyway none of them are going anywhere since the trail back has been obliterated, so they figure there's no hurry. So I guess they all head for the cabin that Ethan was at (or headed for), which may have been damaged by the rockslide/avalanche but it's still accessible. Everybody takes inventory of their limited supplies and patches each other up. It's discovered that Ethan was actually badly injured in the rockslide/whatever and has been concealing it for a while here, because that is one of my favorite tropes of all time and I can't pass up an opportunity to use it.

And then at the very end, they all finally get out and so Briggs figures that's the end of their temporary truce and now we have to capture Ethan, but of course he manages to escape...because as usual he was more on top of the situation the entire time than he appeared to be. And it helps that he knows Ilsa's alive but everybody else present didn't, so they didn't know to be keeping an eye out for her.

Anyway, this was one of the very first ideas I made notes for in the early days after I'd gone to M:I-7 a few times and was starting to wrap my brain around what had happened enough to start thinking about what fic I wanted in the aftermath of the movie, and I really hope I'll actually be able to write it. So I was really glad that my bingo card ended up with a square that worked for this!

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Mistaken Identity



So I had a crossover fic already planned that I'd been wanting to write for a while (basically ever since I finally got around to watching Knight and Day for the first time, which was rapidly followed by the second time, and the third time, and the fourth time...I love this movie so much!) that fits this prompt really well, so at first I thought that of course that was definitely the idea I'd be writing for this square. But my goal for this bingo card was for all the fics to be short, and I knew this one was another one that was trying to run away with me...and then I realized that I actually was really interested in writing my backup option...and now I really have no idea which of these I'll actually end up writing!

[crossover: MI/K&D] untitled - Ethan & June/Roy


Once again I'm going for an explanation of how these characters are related that is much more complicated than it needs to be. Also I'm going a bit more AU in the process than usual: Ethan's dad died earlier than he did in canon, and his mother (who is canonically named Margaret) remarried and started going by Molly (which can be a nickname for Margaret though it's not common) and had a son who is several years younger than Ethan (which means I'm shifting Knight & Day from being set when the movie came out to a few years later, because that works better for my timeline anyway). So yeah, they're half brothers, and since the CIA in Knight & Day is clearly super manipulative I wouldn't put it past them to specifically target Roy (well, Matthew at the time) because he was related to an IMF agent (whom they thought it might give them a bit of leverage over). Anyway that's all in the past when it comes to this fic, and thankfully unlike with the quadruplets fic I'm not feeling a pressing need to write a prequel that explains it all. (Though I'll try to drop the necessary backstory into the fic one way or another—most likely via dialogue from Ethan that June is too out of it to fully follow.)

June POV. She's drugged for some amount of the fic because I really like how the movie used her POV and I'd like to see if I can attempt to do something similar in prose. It's been like 4-6 years since she and Roy went on the run, and they've been continuing their itinerant adventure since then. (I'm picturing them making enough money to continue traveling via her repairing cars and him teaching self-defense, or at least that's where some of his money is coming from and they kind of have a mutual agreement that she won't ask too many questions if he disappears for a few days once in a while.) But meanwhile Dead Reckoning has been happening (the fic is set between M:I-7 and a hypothetical M:I-8) and the Entity is aware of Roy's and June's existence, and it causes a problem for them in an attempt to smoke Ethan out of hiding. Like, maybe the Entity sends the CIA full info on Roy's whereabouts, and the CIA director (which I guess is Kittridge by now; undecided whether he knew about Roy's existence prior to this) suspects it's a trap because the info comes through their old digital channels even though they've switched over to analog as much as possible, but he still wants this absconded agent apprehended so sends a team after him anyway.

Anyway Roy gets captured but manages to save June from the same fate. She of course goes to rescue him—but happens to let slip to his parents that something's up, so Ethan gets word through them or through Gabriel's further machinations. June doesn't even know Ethan exists though, so all we know is that June thinks that she's pretty good at rescuing Roy by now so this ought to go fine, and then right around when everything starts to go haywire and everything is not fine (see above re: drugged!June POV), Roy shows up so that's great, except that he keeps insisting that they still need to rescue Roy which is really confusing because he's right here. Anyway then we get a bunch of Ethan & June teamup where she keeps thinking he's Roy. (I think there would be a lot of similarities to her teamwork with Roy but also quite a few differences because although Ethan and Roy are both extremely competent and protective, they have different priorities when they approach a mission.) Eventually they actually rescue Roy (which may or may not allay June's confusion) and all three of them work together to fight their way the rest of the way out of the trap (and maybe the Entity/Gabriel have further traps set up for them just when they think they've gotten themselves clear). Anyway June and Roy might end up having to go into hiding from the Entity with the rest of Ethan's team, or I wonder if they join the IMF because it's the best way to get the CIA off their backs. We'll see how the worldbuilding works out in terms of smushing together K&D!CIA & M:I!CIA & M:I!IMF, so I'll wait to lock in a plan for the denouement until I have a better idea of what the journey is going to be to get them to that point.

[M:I] "You Really Shouldn't (Keep Calling Me Dmitri)" - Ambrose & Ethan


Also, a backup option for this square (if I decide the crossover is becoming too unwieldy and that I'm biting off way more than I can chew) would be to write a canon retelling from Sean Ambrose's POV of one of the canonical scenes where someone mistakes him for Ethan. Because he's such a great villain and I think he would have delightfully messy feelings about the whole thing, like as much as he's feeling completely triumphant about pulling it off, I think there's also a lot of anger mixed in there about how everyone wishes he were Ethan and likes Ethan better and thinks of Ambrose as no more than a bargain version of Ethan.

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That Moment (incident / chapter / episode) in detail



This is another one that has two completely unrelated possibilities that I could write for it.

[M:I] working title: "Nuclear Disarmament" - Ilsa & Luther


The first possibility is to write another installment in my Ilsa & Luther series ("In Our Way") that would be a tight-third canon retelling (exploring a canonical scene through the thoughts of a particular character). The first (and currently only) fic in the series, "Facial Recognition", would have totally fit this prompt. But the problem is that Ilsa & Luther don't really have a lot of scenes together so the next few fics in the series are more likely to be original/"missing" scenes and not based on canonical scenes. (I was thinking of having one fic for each of their POVs for each of the movies, which would mean that I'd probably have one Ilsa POV for Rogue Nation and one Luther POV for Fallout, not to mention possibly one or two set in between the movies, before I got to the next one that was actually focused on a canonical scene, which would be Ilsa POV of Luther talking her through disarming the nuclear bomb.) I'm pretty sure I want to write this series in chronological order, so that would be quite a few fics I'd have to work my way through to be able to fulfill this square if I went with this option. (I could make one of them count for the wild card square, though.)

[M:I] untitled - meta


Okay so the other option is to write up my full theory for why Ilsa is 100% definitely alive and how I think she did it, with screenshots and hopefully not too much ranting. I'm surprised I haven't seen more meta on this topic (and maybe it's out there and I just haven't come across it) but I think it would be nice to get my thoughts organized and all in one place instead of just random asides in my author's notes here and there supplemented by a bunch of disorganized rambling in my Google Doc of post-movie thoughts that I kept coming back to each time I saw M:I-7 in theaters (4 times, plus after the first couple of times I tracked down a camrip because I was desperate), as I got more and more certain that Ilsa was alive to the point that I was able to branch out into actual theories about what the plan was. (Because there was a plan going into that party in Venice, duh! That's the one thing that confuses me when people insist that those events and/or the movie as a whole should be taken at face value, like, I get that some people just don't want to think about it that deeply or have weighed the evidence and decided to come down on the side of Ilsa being dead—but do the people who go so far as to mock people who think Ilsa's alive* also think that because the movie didn't show the team forming a plan that they didn't have one? Or do they think that there was a plan and it failed? I'm disappointed that there hasn't been more discussion of what the plan was when, like, this is a time-honored tradition that when the M:I movies show the creation of a plan then the plan's probably going to go wrong...but when the M:I movies don't show what the plan was then we usually find out later that there was a plan and all the parts that seemed to be things going wrong were actually things they'd expected and planned for.)

*I've run into this on Reddit; I have no idea if it's happening anywhere else. I hope not.

So, uh, as evidenced above I might not be able to restrain myself from ranting because this is a topic I'm just a tiny bit passionate about, but anyway I do want to get my thoughts organized on this and all written down in one place, so I'm leaning towards this option (and then I'll definitely still write the Ilsa & Luther fics later on, just letting them wait till I've got on top of more of my current projects).

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Original characters



[M:I] "If You Are the Dealer (Let Me Out of the Game)" - Ethan & Alanna


Outsider POV, of someone on Ethan's team who doesn't know his history with Max and thus Alanna (i.e. not Luther): most likely Benji, backup option is Jane Carter. Most likely set after M:I-7, although it could be earlier. AU where Alanna is Ethan's daughter. (I'm not sure why this isn't more popular, considering how much agreement I've seen that Ethan/Max was a thing—I've definitely never seen anyone claim to be certain that Ethan didn't sleep with Alanna's mother. Like, the actresses' ages don't work out at all, but also considering Redgrave is 51 years older than Kirby I'm not sure they're meant to be playing characters the same age as themselves in any case. Anyway, I don't think it's at all likely to be canon—and I wouldn't really want it to be—but I would have thought it might be explored more in fic. As it is I've only come across one fic series for it and clearly the author is writing something that's iddy for them and I'm happy for them—I mean that in all sincerity; people should write stuff that they themselves enjoy reading!—but man is that not at all what I would want from this relationship. As will probably become extremely clear over the next couple of paragraphs.) I think that even though in this AU Max was younger than the 58 her actress was when filming M:I, she was still old enough (like late 40s/early 50s, where it's technically possible but very rare) that it didn't even occur to Ethan that she might get pregnant—until he walked into that room in the Grand Palais and realized that Alanna looked a lot like his mother and also was exactly the right age, or whatever. So anyway he knows but isn't telling anybody, and meanwhile he doesn't know if Alanna knows.

So anyway then we have a random non-canonical mission where the IMF team needs something from the Mitsopolises and so they break in/use masks/whatever but Ethan doesn't mention that plan B is basically "get caught and ask nicely for the MacGuffin" (because they're at that "pivot on the fly" point in their mission where they didn't have time to come up with multiple other contingency options)...but anyway they get caught (and fully held prisoner, not just politely but firmly prevented from leaving as they have in their past run-ins with the Mitsopolises, because again, they were literally breaking into her house—and also I think their level of enmity has been leveling up with each interaction they've had in canon) and Ethan tries to convince Alanna that it would be in her best interest to assist them in this particular instance, but Alanna can tell he's playing with a losing hand so she's got the advantage here.

Alanna has figured out that Lark=Ethan=her father (not that she tells them this yet; throughout most of the fic she and Ethan are jockeying for position as they try to figure out what each other knows, and meanwhile the POV character can tell something's going on but doesn't know what), but she's having a hard time figuring out who he actually is as a person based on what her mother told her about him and the various ways she's seen him act in the little time she's known him. (She's figured out that the "Lark" she initially met was definitely an act, but she can't figure out which part isn't the act.) She wants to see what makes him tick. So she presents him with a deal. She has one of her men brought in who had betrayed her and her people (in some incident outside of canon), and informs Ethan that the punishment for this man's actions is death, but don't worry, he's also killed innocent people on my orders so you don't have to feel bad about killing him. (This man, BTW, is the "original character" for the prompt.) Ethan objects that he's not going to kill him in cold blood, but Alanna tells him that there's no need to worry because that's not what she's asking for. She saw enough of what went down with Gabriel to know that even when Gabriel tried to force Ethan's hand to choose between two lives, Ethan still refused to choose. So Alanna wants to see what he'll do when she forces his hand and makes it impossible for him to invent a third option that he likes better. She presents her deal (and doesn't give him a choice of whether to accept): if he kills you, we won't kill him for his treachery and we'll let him go. If you kill him, I'll give you the MacGuffin (or whatever it is Ethan's asking her to help them with). Those are the only two options. She doesn't give Ethan much time to consider the deal either (time that she knows he would spend on casting about for a third option), immediately having her men get Ethan and the other prisoner ready. (They're given no weapons and searched to make sure nothing's in their pockets if that wasn't already established; also barefoot and probably shirtless. Then they're both given wristbands kind of like what Ethan wears in Rogue Nation, with a readout of their pulse that's also sent to a screen for everyone else to see.) They're taken to a windowed room and locked in. Anyway I probably shouldn't spoil the entire story here, but, well, this one is in my notes as "the one where Alanna forces Ethan to kill a man" and not "the one with major character death" so it's probably obvious where this is going. I'd actually like to aim for M-rated violence here, but I'm not sure if that's something I have the chops to write.

So this fic is focused on the (very prickly) relationship between Ethan & Alanna, but the original character is a major enough part of the plot (even though he doesn't get much dialogue) that I think this idea is appropriate for this square if I want to go with it. (But this fic is likely to end up a bit longer and a bit more emotionally draining to write than my other options, so those would be other factors for me to keep in mind as I'm deciding between these options.)

[M:I] untitled - OC-centric gen


So my backup option is to write from the POV of an original character who briefly crosses paths with Ethan et al. and doesn't know what's going on, so we get to see just their incomplete perspective of canonical events, with whatever false assumptions they jump to. One idea would be a tourist driving into Dubai who's like wait, is that a person? Nah, that's not likely, must have been a weird reflection and then when they actually get to the lobby of the Burj Khalifa there's gunshots and people falling off the escalator. So the OC keeps an eye on the news afterwards but there's never any headlines about it, and they're wondering if that means it was just something really minor or if it could have been some super secret operation, but none of their family believes them that it happened at all except for, like, their weirdo conspiracy theorist cousin who's convinced it's connected to that meteor in San Francisco which is ridiculous. So then eventually they just have to let it go, because whatever happened there's no way they'll ever be able to know.

Or my other idea for this concept would be someone working at a thrift store during Ethan's 6 months on the run in M:I-5, and shopping there is one of the few moments of human connection that Ethan budgets for himself during that time (because the thrift store is completely un-computerized with no cameras so it's safe-ish) so they've interacted a few times though briefly, and eventually he doesn't come in anymore so she assumes he's moved on (which he has) and hopes he's okay, and then a few months later she sees online about the assassination of the chancellor of Austria and she's all wait, is that that homeless guy? But that doesn't make any sense but as with the OC in the other concept, there's nothing that she can do so she keeps an eye on the news and hopes that things are working out for the best but never gets any closure.

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Wild Card



This bingo card was an opt-in card where I selected just 6 categories for everything to be pulled from, and for the wild card I also limited myself to the same 6 categories. Of course there's a ridiculous number of directions I could take this square in, but here are the prompts that I came up with (or already had) full ideas for:

From 3. Physical:

[M:I] 3.11 Illness - I have a fic planned (which I'm definitely going to write someday but this bingo card might not be the best occasion for it since it's not going to be short) where the team (probably in its Ghost Protocol permutation, Jane POV) has a mission at a hospital that Julia just happens to be working at. (And also because that's not enough of a complication, Ethan gets poisoned on the mission and spends half of the fic delirious. Sure is convenient that there's a nurse available who they don't have to hide anything from. Ethan would probably object to them dragging her into things, but at this point they'll just be glad if he's alive to object.)

From 7. Rituals:

[M:I] 7.13 Funerals and Wakes - I was assigned this prompt on my previous (round 24) Gen Prompt Bingo card and I have an Ethan/Ilsa fic ("To Hear Old Hundred Sung Like That Once More") half-written for it (and I really ought to pick it back up soon because it's definitively set between M:I-7 and M:I-8 so I need to make sure I write it before the next movie) but I brainstormed a variety of backup options for the square, like the Ghost Protocol team attending Agent Hanaway's funeral or Ethan & Julia leaving flowers at Lindsey's grave, but my favorite was to write a fic consisting of Twitter and/or Reddit posts about the gatecrashing of that funeral at St. Paul's in M:I-6.

From 10. Domesticity:

[TG] 10.7 Teenagers - Even though a scripted ending for Top Gun: Maverick had Phoenix interacting with Amelia, somehow out of all the Top Gun fic out there, there is literally only one fic tagged with their gen relationship. So I'd like to write some sort of brief friendship fic for them, maybe Phoenix happens to get to the Hard Deck too early and helps Amelia with her homework or something. Not sure where it would be set in terms of during the movie or post-canon or whatever; this is definitely something that would need a lot more brainstorming if I choose this prompt.

[crossover: MI/TG] 10.8 Sports - Dogfight football, Ethan and his people vs. Mav and his people. Not sure if this would be set in the same universe as "Texts to Mav" or in some alternate universe where they're also cousins. Writing sports might be good practice for writing other types of action scenes...or it might be even harder since all of your action takes place in one location without any variation. I dunno, I like the character possibilities but I'm just not sure if I could pull this off in a manner I'd be satisfied with.

[TG] 10.15 Knitting and Sewing - Bob is the only one of the Daggers who knows how to knit, and when they've got time (maybe when they're on the carrier after the mission?), Phoenix (who doesn't know how to knit since she'd never really gone in for "girly" stuff, but Bob is her new bestie and she approves of anything he does) applies peer pressure and insists that everybody had better let Bob teach them how to knit or else. Hangman (might be his POV?) claims not to want to learn but secretly is curious so he doesn't try too hard not to let them talk him into it. (Maybe his grandma used to knit or something and it brings back a lot of good memories but he worries that admitting that might make him seem too soft; also I headcanon that he's someone who struggles with knowing how to make friends with people but he wants to try to be more accepted by Phoenix and Bob since they're clearly respected in a way he'd like to be.)

[TG] 10.18 Shopping Together - I've put a lot of work in (but still have a lot more to go) on a Top Gun fic where most of the Daggers & also the Benjamins go Christmas shopping at Fashion Valley Mall. Both because that's a likely place for them to go, but also because that's where I saw Top Gun: Maverick for the first (and second) time so it felt like a fun tribute to make. Anyway that's another fic that's going to be well over 5k and feels like a bit much for this bingo card, but on the other hand maybe the impetus to pick the fic back up would be a good thing. It might be a good thing to aim at completing by the end of the year so I could post it for this Christmas.

From 12. Plot:

[M:I] 12.7 Rescue me: Damsels (and others) in distress - So this fits quite a few fics I have at various points in the planning stages. For one, the Julia hospital one I mentioned above under 3.11 Illness. Then there's one I've been playing with for a while where Max and Ethan cross paths post-canon in a situation where she's with other arms dealers and can't let on that she's at all fond of him, so although she manages to save his life she doesn't stop him from getting whumped quite a bit in the process. Also I have one planned where Ilsa rescues Ethan (but the focus isn't particularly on the rescue so I'm not quite sure whether it fits this prompt) in an AU where Paris almost manages to kill Ethan in Rome and Briggs & Degas catch up with him and think they've caught him.

[crossover - M:I crossed with LOTR and/or Star Wars] 12.14 Chosen One(s) - Ethan reminds me a lot of Frodo Baggins (who for the record isn't exactly a chosen one because he chose himself), in the sense that somebody has got to take the Ring to Mordor and if nobody else is going to volunteer for the task then he guesses it is going to have to be him. I'm not sure how I would bring the characters together (not that it needs that much explanation I suppose, just hey they're all here in the same place, how 'bout that) but I was thinking that it might be interesting to explore a conversation between Ethan and Frodo, and maybe Luke Skywalker as well, about the choices they've made and why they made them, and what they would have done if they were in each other's shoes.

[M:I] 12.15 Three Wishes - This one would probably get out of hand so I doubt I would write it for this card, but I do want to keep it in mind for the future. I was thinking about the possibility of unforeseen side effects and consequences of the wishes. Like what if one of the wishes (by, say, Benji or Julia) was for Ethan to never be able to get hurt—then if Ethan figured that out, he would probably push himself even harder. Anyway an interesting idea to play with (and I'd really like to see more magical realism fic for this fandom, so it would be a nice opportunity to expand that genre) but I don't think it's right for this particular card.

[M:I] 12.16 Oaths / Promises - I'd like to see something that takes the oath that we hear for the first time in M:I-7 ("We live and die in the shadows, for those we hold close, and for those we never meet") and shows it being present in an earlier part of canon. Since M:I-7 pays so much tribute to M:I-1, I'm particularly thinking of Ethan when he goes rogue for the very first time, trying to still keep to that oath and the spirit of the IMF even as he turns his back on the organization, and dealing with the loss of people who had also devoted themselves to that same oath—and then a few days later learning that some of them betrayed that oath, so he has to deal with that as well. Of all the ideas I'm listing here, this is one of the ones I'd be most interested in reading, but unfortunately to be able to read it I'd have to write it first, and I'm just not sure how much work it would take to make this into a workable fic: there's a lot more vibes here than there is any sort of actual plot. I guess it would just be a retelling of some of the events of M:I-1 from Ethan's perspective as he wrestles with how to make the oath fit with his current position (or lack thereof) in the IMF.

[M:I] 12.20 Supernatural Happenings - What if Ethan has always been haunted by the ghosts of all the people he's lost (it's only one step up from the nightmares we already know he has, after all) but he's used to ignoring them (and maybe doesn't even think they're real, just figments of his imagination—or of his guilt). But they're really there, and eventually they start appearing to other people in his life, who maybe have heard of these people but don't necessarily know them by sight. I'm not sure if that would be a gradual thing, or if maybe it's a situation where Ethan is incapacitated during a mission and the ghosts are able to interact with his team members to get him help. Like with the "Three Wishes" idea above, I really like this concept and like the idea of writing something a bit more supernatural for this fandom, but I think this particular idea is a bit too big for a square on this particular card.

From 13. Extending Canon and Meta:

[M:I] 13.2 When I'm 64: Future - I'm starting to wonder if the M:I series is headed towards Ethan becoming IMF secretary (which of course IIRC they originally had in mind for after Ghost Protocol, so it wouldn't be a complete surprise if they pivoted in that direction again) and maaaaybe even a happily ever after with Ilsa, so I was playing with the idea of putting my money where my mouth is and actually putting in writing a potential future for the series and what the characters' lives are like years down the line.

[M:I] 13.6 Episode Tags and Missing Scenes, 13.9 Minorities / Characters of Colour / Women in Fandom - Both of these would be suited to an installment in my Ilsa & Luther series ("In Our Way"), so if I end up writing the one with Ilsa POV of disarming the bomb in Fallout for the "That Moment (incident / chapter / episode) in detail" square above, then I would probably want to have one of the earlier installments in the series (which I'd need to write to get to that one because I intend to approach this series in chronological order) count for the Wild Card square via one of these prompts.

From 17. Things:

[M:I] 17.5 Corsets, Costumes and Dressing Up - This is the wild card option I'm leaning towards the most, because I just got more and more excited about it as I brainstormed it. Victorian Era AU of Ethan's & Ilsa's first meeting, where Ilsa is wearing a dress with a corset but can still hold her own just as much in a fight.

[M:I] 17.15 Tea / Coffee - Off the top of my head there are at least 2 scenes involving Claire & coffee in M:I-1 ("I made that coffee" & drugging Donloe—the so-called "sludge" from Kiev could count as a 3rd), and so I thought about maybe doing some sort of 5+1 themed around coffee with a combination of canonical and noncanonical scenes. And/or I also just thought about writing something Claire-centric for this, because I've been thinking lately about how the movie narrative doesn't really give her much chance to be her own person, that even though I think she's probably the character with the second-most screentime in the movie, we really only ever see her through other characters' (men's) eyes. I wonder if she's actually horrible at making coffee (or if Ethan et al. are stretching the truth for a joke), and if so whether she's pulling the classic move of women who work in male-heavy offices (of being worse at making coffee than you actually are) or whether she actually doesn't understand how to make it (and if so why). Basically I've just been thinking that I want an excuse to dig into Claire as a character and figure out what actually makes her tick, and so I thought that the theme of coffee might give me a good excuse to do so, since it encompasses a great deal of the pittance we know about her as a person.

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