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
- Unusual AUs (AUs of any kind are awesome!)
- Clever, kick-ass female characters
- 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 (NB: If you’re concerned about how this one will interact with ‘Jolene’, I’d prefer no actual cheating, but it’s fine to write attraction being present between The Man and Jolene)
- 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
Smut DNWs:
- Rape/non-con (I’m also not a fan of dubcon tropes like sex pollen, fuck or die, aliens made them do it, etc.)·
- Daddy kink
- Infantilisation
- Fisting
- Scat, vore, bloodplay, breathplay
If you’d like to check out my fics, I’m enchantedsleeper on AO3. My bookmarks list 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:
.hack//Legend of the Twilight
Requested characters: Balmung (.hack//Legend of the Twilight), Fujio Satoshi | Reki (.hack//Legend of the Twilight)
Thoughts/Prompts: I’ve been a fan of .hack, and in particular Legend of the Twilight, since I was in my mid-teens (so like, half my life, wow) but weirdly, it only occurred to me last year to seek out fic for LotT, and in particular fic about Balmung and Reki! While there are only a handful of fics featuring them on AO3, it was a great blast from the past and made me determined to request them for Yuletide the next chance I got.
I love their dynamic, Balmung’s wild ideas and flights of fancy contrasted with Reki’s tired pragmatism, and their shared love of The World. I didn’t think to nominate Worldbuilding for this fandom (and my knowledge of the .hack universe is limited to Project .hack, i.e. the pre-G.U./Roots stuff, anyway) but I would love anything that leans into the virtual reality aspect of this fandom. Maybe Balmung and Reki discover a new hidden area of The World, or a mysterious Fragment remnant? Or maybe they just get the opportunity for some escapism into a quiet area? I’m happy for a fic to explore any kind of relationship between the two of them, be it gen/friendship, pre-shippy, getting together or an established relationship (or QPR). Feel free to take them on an adventure, or just enjoy some quiet domesticity!
I also requested .hack//AI Buster as you might have spotted below, and I’d be delighted with some kind of references to that canon and Balmung’s past – maybe Reki learning about Balmung’s legendary past exploits, or a meeting with an old friend, e.g. Orca or Albireo? Any direction you feel like taking it would be awesome!
.hack//AI Buster
Requested characters: Kazushi Watarai | Albireo (.hack//AI Buster), Lycoris (.hack//AI Buster), Mizuhara Haruka | Hokuto (.hack//AI Buster)
Fandom-specific DNWs: Please no romantic or sexual relationship between Watarai (Albireo) and Lycoris, or between Haruka (Hokuto) and Lycoris.
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 (or maybe you matched with me on Legend of the Twilight and then saw this), 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!
Tenet (2020)
Requested characters: The Protagonist (Tenet), Neil (Tenet)
Fandom-specific DNWs: No raceplay or size kink, please.
I would really like some shippy The Protagonist/Neil! I love their friendship, history and clear mutual trust, and the circumstances of their relationship offer lots of fun possibilities as well – although if you want to do away with the wibbly wobbly, timey wimey… stuff and play it straight/create an AU, that’s fine by me! I’m just here for the characters :D
If you’d like to just build out their friendship or go with pre-slash/pining, that’s great too. A secret workplace relationship would be fun, or established relationship with time travel; any kind of ‘first’ (first kiss, first date)… NSFW is welcome, though I’d prefer to keep it on the vanilla side. Mild kink like light bondage, blindfolding, or light D/s dynamics is welcome though!
Also, feel free to include appearances by any other members of the Tenet cast – I particularly like Ives and Mahir, and Kat is great if there’s a natural way to include her. An additional note: don’t feel like you have to name The Protagonist, as I kind of dig his name always being a mystery, although I realise that can lead to some convoluted writing tricks so feel free to ignore this if it’s not compatible with what you want to write 😂
Some specific ideas for canon-verse:
- Neil’s first meeting with The Protagonist, and/or first introduction to Tenet and to inversion
- Neil’s perspective on any of the events of the film, particularly his ‘first’ meeting with The Protagonist
- A fix-it for Neil’s death in canon, whether that’s a continuation of the events of the film or a complete timeline divergence (this doesn’t have to be complex! Feel free to just handwave the ‘how’ xD)
- Soulmates is a really fun one for these two as each is kept in the dark about the other’s identity for a large portion of their friendship, so you can do lots of interesting things with a soulmark (e.g. first words, soulmate’s name) type concept, or any type of soulmate concept where it’s not that obvious who you’ve ‘matched’ with. However, I also really like the idea of earning a soulbound with someone if you’re not keen on the predestination element of soulmate AUs, and you could have fun with that based on the way that they both get to know each other.
- Some kind of missionfic/training early on in Neil’s timeline as he’s getting to know The Protagonist
AU ideas:
- If you want to go the AU route, I’d enjoy seeing these two characters in a regular secret agent setting, maybe as fellow CIA agents or MI5/6 (or both, if there’s some inter-agency co-operation going on) or a heist scenario, maybe as fellow art thieves?
- Fusion AUs are fantastic if you wanted to put these two into the world of another canon, like Inception (as another Nolan universe :D) or perhaps something like Bond or the MCU. You could check out my bookmarks for a non-exhaustive list of fandoms I like, but I’m also happy to roll with something new to me!
Jolene - Lil Nas X (Song)
Requested characters: Narrator (Jolene – Lil Nas X), The Man (Jolene – Lil Nas X), Jolene (Jolene – Lil Nas X)
Fandom-specific DNWs: No raceplay or size kink, please.
Thoughts/Prompts: As soon as I saw this video, I immediately knew I had to nom it for Yuletide this year. If you haven’t come across it before, this is a very quick one to familiarise yourself with, particular if you’re already familiar with the original by Dolly Parton!
Lil Nas X’s cover as a queer black man singing ‘Jolene’ gives the song’s potential love triangle a whole new dimension, and makes the scenario even more explicitly bisexual. Because I am a fluffy bunny, I would love it if there could be a happy resolution to this very angsty setup, or at least a hopeful or bittersweet ending. Please feel free to OT3 this, as I love “everybody wins” threesomes! Smut is also welcome – I’d prefer to keep it on the vanilla side, but I enjoy mild kink like light bondage, blindfolding, or light D/s dynamics. If you go the threesome route, toppy Jolene would be AWESOME.
A few thoughts:- How do the Narrator (please go with whatever names you like for him and The Man) and Jolene know each other? Could they have a history? What about The Man and Jolene?
- Is Jolene actually interested in The Man at all, or aware that he’s attracted to her? (If he even is?) An ace or aro Jolene could be a really interesting route to go down, or alternatively ace-spectrum (potentially demi or grey ace?) Narrator who is feeling insecure about his relationship with The Man in comparison to what he thinks Jolene might have to offer. (Plot twist: Jolene is also ace-spec xD) I love QPRs if you want to make this non-romantic and/or non-sexual!
- The events (such as they are) of ‘Jolene’ could be a past scenario or flashback, perhaps when the characters are teenagers, with the resolution of the story taking place many years later. What do the characters discover about their situation in hindsight? Was it what they thought at the time?
Also, I saw that Montero (Call Me By Your Name) is also nominated for YT this year and I'm a big fan of that song and video, so if you'd like to get creative with some kind of crossover or references to that, please do!
More than anything, I hope you have an amazing Yuletide, and thanks so much for being my author!![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
