Dear Yuletide Author (2022)

[enchantedsleeper]

Dear Yuletide author,

Thank you so much for checking out my letter! I’ve provided some general likes/dislikes below followed by some fandom-specific prompts and headcanons to hopefully make your life as easy as possible this Yuletide. :3

However, I love to be surprised, so please feel free to get creative and don’t feel duty-bound to use any of the prompts if you’re inspired in a different direction! I’m very easy-going and will always be happy just to receive fic of any of these requests. Optional Details Are Optional, and the main thing is that you have fun and enjoy Yuletide!

Things I love:

• Humour
• Fluff and general cuteness
• Snark and banter
• Happy/feel-good endings
• Found family dynamics and strong friendships
• Queerplatonic relationship dynamics
• Outsider POV
• Unusual AUs (AUs of any kind are awesome!)
• What-ifs and gap-fillers
• Tropes involving sleep and dreaming (e.g. sharing a bed, or nightmares if you want to go down the hurt/comfort route)
• Characters being in denial of their feelings (either friendship or romantic :D)
• Non-cis, non-het and/or a-spec interpretations of characters, even when not implied by the canon

I am happy for the fic to be as long or as short as you please. I love shippy fic, but gen, close friendship and implied/open to interpretation relationships are super awesome as well.

Plotty fic is great, worldbuilding is great, plot-light character or relationship-driven fics are REALLY great.

General DNWs:

• Non-canonical character death and tragedy; I tend to prefer a happy or at least hopeful tone
• Plots or tropes revolving around deception – including infidelity
• Amnesia
• Gore – I’m okay with violence, but preferably not graphic descriptions thereof
• Body horror
• A/B/O dynamics
• Pregnancy
• Stripper AU
• Master/slave AU or dynamics
• BDSM AU

If you’d like to check out my fics, I’m enchantedsleeper on AO3. My isn’t exhaustive but will likely give you an idea of what I like to read. I also have a user page on Fanlore where I list most of my fandoms, in case you want inspiration for crossovers/fusion AUs, though they don’t have to be in a fandom I’m in!


Fandom-specific thoughts/prompts:

Bel-Air (TV 2022)

Requested characters: Will Smith, Carlton Banks

Will and Carlton's developing friendship in the show was lovely, but at times I felt it skipped a few steps - one episode they were at each other's throats, and a couple of episodes later they'd be supportive of each other without much in-between. I would love any fic that explores all the facets of their friendship and growing bond as cousins - their initial rivalry, mutual dislike, Carlton's frustration with his parents favouring Will (that REALLY didn't get a proper resolution in the show), Will learning about Carlton's problems and anxiety and becoming more sympathetic towards him, maybe the two of them being put in a situation where they're forced to work together and help each other.

I would prefer for Lisa not to be featured because I find that whole love triangle to be kind of annoying and uncomfortable, unless it's in a scenario where she and Will haven't got together yet and are just good friends. (Or perhaps after an amicable breakup). I'd love to see Hillary or Ashley featured as well since I felt like the Banks siblings didn't get much "on screen" time together - maybe with Will and Carlton realising they need to set aside their differences to help one or both of the girls.

I nominated Geoffrey because I love him and he is amazing, but stopped short of requesting him because it might be hard to give him a proper role in any of the above ideas, but I would also love if you could incorporate him in any way, being his mysterious, badass self.

I would also love to see some friendship with Will and Jazz or Will and Trey - maybe Carlton supporting Will through his guilt over how his friendship with Trey ended? Give me men with close friendships being supportive of each other and sharing their feelings! (They're teenage boys, so it's fine for this to come with a side of denial, but I'd love to see them being vulnerable with each other and not judging each other for it).

The end of season 1 also left me so desperate for a continuation/closure, especially with the way that Carlton shoves the money into Will's hand before he runs away -  he didn't want to stop him, he just wanted to make sure Will would be okay on his own 🥺 I would LOVE some Carlton or Will POV of that moment. What if Carlton doesn't go to Lisa for help but instead sets out on his own to find Will? Maybe he teams up with Jazz on the way? I'd love to see some season 1 finale canon divergence, post-canon or fix-its.

Fandom-specific DNWs:

• I would really prefer no romance/incest for these two
• Homophobia - including internalised homophobia. Please no homophobic attitudes/jokes either coming from or about the two of them, let them be close and supportive of each other without any kind of stigma in this escapist fictional fanwork ^^

Questionable Content

Requested characters: Brun, Millefeuille, Renee

We haven't seen much of Brun and Millefeuille in the comics lately, nor Renee and not-shitty Dan, so I really wanted to request them for Yuletide! Specifically, I would love to see Brun and Millefeuille exploring their growing relationship/friendship, and also see how Renee and Dan are getting on with their long-distance relationship. (I've nominated Dan but left him out of the request as I would be fine with just a mention of him or a brief cameo, with the focus more on Brun and Renee and Millefeuille). I would also love Brun & Renee friendship, especially Renee giving Brun advice about Millefeuille or generally being supportive, and getting to know Millefeuille as a new person in her best friend's life!

Some additional ideas/prompts:

• I am happy for Brun & Millefeuille to be friends and equally happy for them to be shippy. I have a preference for more of a non-sexual or queerplatonic relationship, especially as Brun has professed disinterest in sex, but I could also roll with Brun being demisexual or gray ace and discovering a new side to herself/her sexuality, with Millefeuille also being in new territory as an AI in a relationship with a human!
• I would love any cameos from Millefeuille's AI posse - Beeps, Roko (<3), Melon. Strong friendship circles FTW! Hell, an appearance from Yay would be hilarious - whichever AIs you feel minded to throw in would be awesome. Bonus points for creativity :D
• Brun and Renee being awesome best friends and roommates - and things don't have to be perfect, I'd be happy to show some depth to their relationship as roommates as well, but with them ultimately working things out and growing their friendship from it. Heck, I'd love a fic that focuses on them as friends with Millefeuille more of an additional element, maybe with Brun and Millefeuille having a developing or established relationship in the background.
• Outsider POV - maybe Renee on Brun and Millefeuille or Millefeuille on Brun and Renee?
• Background Dan/Renee - I would prefer this to be positive and not a huge conflict, but equally, Renee and Dan hitting a speedbump in their relationship and Renee coming to Brun about it would be lovely, and maybe Brun sees parallels in her relationship with Millefeuille or talks to Millefeuille about things.
• Dan and Millefeuille getting to know each other as the respective significant others of Renee and Brun would be awesome!
• Double dates! Or double dates-slash-queerplatonic-together-time!

Fandom-specific DNWs:

• As mentioned while I'm down for Brun discovering new sides to her sexuality, I would really like this to not erase her perspective on sex that's expressed in the comics (i.e. please don't make her suddenly down to bone all the time)
• Ace or arophobia (a bit of internalised ace/arophobia is okay, but I'd prefer it to be approached from a perspective of working through it and not validating it)

Fence (Comics)

Requested characters: Harvard Lee (Fence comics), Aiden Kane (Fence comics)

Thoughts/prompts:

I would love some comics-canon Aiden/Harvard. I'm not really a fan of the novelisations, so would prefer not to incorporate the events or canon from those. (The one exception to this is Harvard Paw the bear because he is unquestionably canon xD) Instead, I'd really like some "in between" moments from Aiden and Harvard that we don't get from the comics (where the focus tends to be more on Nicholas and Seiji).

Some specific thoughts:

• Mutual pining - because they're idiots and each is sure that the other only wants friendship, or A Relationship Would Put Too Much Strain On the Team
• Alternatively, a secret relationship, sneaking around and being Very Obvious while thinking they're being subtle about it (Aiden has a great selection of high-collared shirts to hide love bites, but Harvard? Noooot so much)
• Best friend backstory - maybe flashing back to their time in primary school together (I would love a cameo from Arune from vol 4!)
• Background Nicholas/Seiji - particularly if Nicholas and Seiji are being idiots and Harvard and Aiden comment on this while being Extremely Oblivious to the parallels with their own relationship
• I loved the pushing beds together detail from volume 5 - maybe something around that and why they always push their beds together? Sharing a bed - or being unable to share on a school trip and PINING HORRIBLY? (I'm really warming to this :D)
• Accidental or not-so-accidental clothes sharing - I'm fine with fudging some canon details to make this possible since most of the time the boys are in fencing gear or school uniform xD Harvard and Aiden keep showing up in each other's clothes (or wearing accessories that clearly belong to the other - everyone assumes that it Means Things, but Harvard and Aiden have no idea. They're just doing what normal roommates do, right? (Bonus: one time it does Mean Something)
  
• Jealousy - on either or both sides! Obviously Aiden is a professional heartbreaker, but what about if Harvard finally catches someone's eye? How does Aiden deal with not being able to monopolise his best friend's attention when he wants - and what does that force him to confront about himself?

Fandom-specific DNWs:

• Homophobia, either internalised or external
• Biphobia
  
• Infidelity - even if it's Aiden with one of his hook-ups, I'd prefer him to let the person down before embarking on anything with Harvard. And please no cheating on a significant other to get together.
  

.hack//AI Buster

Requested characters: Kazushi Watarai | Albireo (.hack//AI Buster), Lycoris (.hack//AI Buster), Mizuhara Haruka | Hokuto (.hack//AI Buster)

Thoughts/prompts: I love the .hack//AI Buster novels and have always wanted fic of them (sadly I’ve never quite got around to writing my own), but there is tragically none to be found! If you matched with me on this fandom, we should be friends. :D

Lycoris is optional for this fandom, but I’d love a fix-it where she survives somehow, maybe deciding to go on evading the Cobalt Knights indefinitely – possibly aided by a rogue Watarai/Albireo and Haruka/W.B. Yeats? I love the idea of the two of them (I specified W.B. Yates rather than Hokuto for this scenario mainly because it’s her ‘real’ character and probably more useful at a higher level) going rogue to protect this AI, rejected by the game but with a mind and will of her own. Or perhaps there could be another scenario where she came into being, and met Watarai and Haruka, under different circumstances that don’t require her death. I’m not saying you have to write domestic kidfic with Albireo and W.B. Yeats/Hokuto “adopting” Lycoris, but well, I wouldn’t be opposed? :D

Or maybe you want to go down the route of a non-The World AU where these characters are all ordinary humans thrown together by some other circumstances, which could be cool! Maybe by some tech-fantasy means Lycoris is able to become human and live in the offline world? The sky’s the limit ^^ 

If you decide not to include Lycoris, I’d love anything focusing on Watarai and Haruka’s relationship post-AI Buster volume 2 – it’s implied that they get together romantically, although I know that supposedly in canon their relationship doesn’t last, but I’d like to ignore that! (Or at least not explore that far ahead). I’d be keen for anything shippy between the two of them, but if you’d prefer, gen/friendship or pre-relationship is great too! Another scenario I’d love to see is the two of them meeting under different circumstances, with Haruka playing W.B. Yeats instead of Hokuto (Lycoris may or may not put in an appearance, up to you). How might Albireo’s meeting with this legendary net poet and beta player go?
 

Also, I didn’t have enough nomination slots to nom Balmung and Orca (sadface) but I love them as characters so if you’d like to feature them somehow, perhaps adventuring with Albireo and Hokuto (or her W.B. Yeats character) or just as a cameo, I would be thrilled!

Fandom-specific DNWs:

Please no romantic or sexual relationship between Watarai (Albireo) and Lycoris, or between Haruka (Hokuto) and Lycoris.


More than anything, I hope you have an amazing Yuletide, and thanks so much for being my author!