2014 yuletide letter
hello dearest yuletide author!
first of all, thank you so much in advance for writing for me :3! (and sorry this letter ended up being late...) i'm a yuletide first-timer! heard about it this year and was pumped to join. but yeah, i'm definitely looking forward to whatever you end up writing for me! below i'm going to list out some prompts and faves but don't feel like you have to follow these; you don't have to write based off of this stuff, and anything vaguely inspired but not related is great too.
some general things:
likes:
i absolutely LOVE au fics, which i feel like is a strong note to start out on, but I LOVE THEM. this applies especially with elements of fantasy and magic. i also love heist stories. a good twisty mindfuck would be super cool (see: inception, other media with twists/reveals that were surprising or unfolded throughout the story), as long as it obeys its internal rules of reality and has an ending that is not too ambiguous/obscure/not understandable. here's a list of random things i'm interested in that may or may not interest you as well: dreams, fox spirits, circus/carnival settings, homesickness, future fics, reincarnation, superpowers. here is a list of some of my fave tropes.
i'd be happy with femslash, slash, poly, het, or gen! romantically, i'm okay with most pairings in my fandoms (unless listed below), though i'd prefer that if you write a pairing and i haven't specifically requested that pairing, that it not be the absolute focus of the fic. i'm a sucker for slow burn romance and slightly bittersweet realism, though these two are not necessarily related. i will eat up a lot of things if they end with an even somewhat happy ending--if it's an ambiguous/open ending, that it has at least a hint towards the happy/positive.
all ratings are fine for me. i like porn but would prefer the focus of the fic not to be on sex at the expense of a plot.
dislikes:
anything with noncon or dubcon, character hate. i'd prefer not to see crackfics, typecasting (in general and people of a pairing into the "feminine" or "masculine" role of the relationship), self-injury or suicide, excessive gore or horror, infidelity, drugs (alcohol is fine), mental or terminal illness, and hard kinks. character death for the sake of plot/character development is fine with me, as long as it's not gratuitous.
and my prompts for the fandoms and characters i requested! (note: it is not required that all of the characters i requested be included unless specified otherwise.)
raven cycle:
overview: the raven cycle is an ongoing series by maggie stefvater, and the third book blue lily, lily blue just came out like...a week ago. don't worry about spoiling me for the third book--i haven't read it yet, but hopefully will by the end of december. it belongs to the mystery and fantasy genres, though perhaps more to the latter than the former. blue sargent is a girl raised in a family of psychic women that amplifies their psychic powers but has none of her own. through some paranormal events, she gets to know gansey, ronan, adam, and noah, who attend at the nearby private school aglionby, whose students are known as the raven boys. together, they work on gansey's search for an old sleeping welsh king.
personal notes: i actually really liked the dream thieves much more than the raven boys, partly because of the character development and interactions that fed into the blue/gansey/adam/ronan/noah relationship. i'm into the relationship as a whole and it would be really interesting to see it written out--how would it play out, especially in this fantastical context? the blue/gansey/adam love triangle that i felt like was developing (though i hear it's been picked apart by now?) seemed contrived and off to me, along with the grey man/maura relationship. mostly i was entranced with how the plot and fantasy plots were coming together, for example: the dream where ronan meets his father and his father repeated the stipulation in the will...i couldn't believe how well the line was placed in the narrative previously, exposed so that i could notice it but the meaning obscured just enough that the significance would shift into place right as niall repeated it. assuming stiefvater had meant for the readers to "get it" right at this point, and knowing that i did was an incredible feeling.
for the series overall, there's this dark lovely tone that underlies all the magic, and the fantasy was what drew me in but what kept me was how it correlated to the growth of the characters themselves. i'm most interested in reading about the main 5 characters and their bonds to each other.
prompts:
1. like i mentioned above, i'd love to see a blue/gansey/adam/ronan/noah relationship explored, either as poly or just their friendships and how any romantic relationships might play out within that framework. i'd prefer not to read a blue/gansey or blue/adam fic.
2. in particular, based on the characters that i requested, a blue/ronan/adam ot3 would be really interesting--to me they're all very much unsure (or at least not explicit) in their relationships to each other. they all have a lack in their lives (as do gansey and noah), and some of it overlaps, some of it doesn't. any fic exploring this ot3 (romantically or platonically) in the character relationships and how they function as a unit, really! quiet settling into their relationship, until one day one of them realizes--we've had this relationship after all this time. how ronan's desires not only manifest in reality, but the dream world as well. ronan's straightforward but also good-all-along-type affection for adam in the dream thieves really struck me, ronan's and blue's paths not really intersecting except in the context of the other boys BUT still the interpersonal pull, adam and blue using each other as proxy relationships (thinking along the lines of the fake dating --> love trope)?? all these are really cool things. just everyone in love with each other, basically.
3. blue, gansey, adam, ronan, noah as poc, perhaps asian or asian-american. i think there are powerful parallels to be drawn between the asian-american (or other n-gen immigrant) identity and the search for a king whose energy runs deep within the land (like it's a quest for something that you don't even know exists, foreign languages/cultures/history), as well as each character's individual struggles. this could mean something like a roadtrip-style fic (visiting the ~motherland), feelings of not belonging or lack tied in with cultural diaspora, something based on this, but even something that has this as a quiet part of the background would be great.
4. future fic! where all this adventure leads them, you decide.
noragami:
overview: noragami's a great funny manga & anime that introduces us to yato, a war god that is attempting to increase his visibility to eventually build a shrine. hiyori is a human that notices yato pass by and in an attempt to save him from an impending car crash, gets hit herself, and her soul is knocked out of her body (she can return, but it occurs repeatedly). yato adopts a shinki (spirit weapon) named yukine, who is selected for his pure spirit; yukine died when he was pretty young. i have only watched the anime, but i don't mind reading about events or characters that appear in the manga.
personal notes: if you got me for this fandom then you probably selected "all" on your offer, haha. i am super into kofuku/bishamon (mostly on the basis of this panel) and how that has and will play out. kofuku is the type that seems to express everything but has her hidden turns and possible past (as the god of poverty, her optimistic personality is one that has either been constructed in opposition to or forged based on the suffering she has caused/seen), while bishamon is a badass that wears her heart on her sleeve, but her kindness does not mean well for everyone. they and yato have a selfishness to them that makes them more real in the mortal world, and obviously they have fine-tuned the majority of their personalities through their existence--but this doesn't mean they can't change.
i'd prefer not to receive yato/hiyori (romantic), except possibly in yato/yukine/hiyori.
prompts:
1. i'm actually really interested in the gods (yato + the ones i listed: kofuku, bishamon) and their past relationships with each other. i talked about it above, but i'm really interested in kofuku/bishamon in particular, if your scope is limited. but for the 3 of them together: how did they meet each other, all at once or separately? how was the bishamon/yato relationship before he killed her shinki? was there a time when kofuku was frosty and did whatever she could to survive? she would never really have been in danger of disappearing but also never widely worshipped--how would she have felt? what are their pasts like, how did they change between each meeting with each other? immortality fic *__* did any of them transition from mortal to god? did they have relationships with mortals?
2. or possibly yato/yukine, romantically or found family. the shinki and god bond is very close, and yato was willing to endure the blight for yukine--why? does he hold that much regard for all of his shinkis? what if he had thought about his own existence and particularly resonated with yukine's crisis? why does he feel so strongly about suicide? yukine is a character with potential too--what does he think of all this business, having had no choice in the matter? we've seen a lot of his stealing/meanness, but in the anime he pretty much mellows out after that; i'd like to know more about how he feels after the purging (feel-good fuzzy fic preferably ;__;). one of the scenes in the closing sequence that really struck me was hiyori smiling upon finding yato and yukine sleeping on each other's shoulders, and it's that kind of feeling that i really love about this anime.
3. yato/yukine/hiyori ot3: how does this work with hiyori's mortality? doesn't have to be romantic, though if it is, please age up yukine at least a couple years. what if they had all met under different circumstances (alternate reality or au)? or just straight up au: apartment roommates au, au where they're all strangers on a train/plane going to the same place, musicians who get put into a trio for a concert, the 3 of them catching each other at their most vulnerable moments and coming out all the stronger for it ;___; one issue i have with the anime (and possibly why i'm not that interested in hiyori by herself) (i don't know if this is more fully explored in the manga) is that hiyori seems like an emotionally perfect character--that is, she has her moments of pettiness and anger, but otherwise she's just generally nice and doesn't have any development of her own to pursue. maybe you could write in some development, and how it relates to yato and yukine.
kyoukai no kanata:
overview: an anime based off a light novel (partial translations of the light novel are online, anime episodes can be found on animefreak) that deals with a world where a group of people called spirit world warriors are in charge of killing youmu/demons with their special powers. it's kind of slice of life but also kind of epic, and is centered around two characters named akihito and mirai. mirai is the only surviving member of a clan of spirit world warriors that can manipulate their blood to form weapons. akihito is a youmu/human hybrid whose body holds a youmu, beyond the boundary, within it. they meet at school under unlikely circumstances, and their relationships with each other and with other characters develop from there.
personal notes: i have not read the light novel except for the preface, only watched the anime, but feel free to draw from either or both. note that i have not requested mirai, and would not prefer to see a focus on mirai or akihito/mirai--i'm fond of mirai and her relationships with all of the characters, but i think her character is not drawn out well/believably in the anime, which could translate over to fic written about her. as for akihito/mirai, i didn't really swallow the absolute true love overcomes all line the anime was trying to sell, and that tainted the rest of the relationship; to me it could have worked just as powerfully without the romantic aspect.
prompts:
1. a story on ayaka! she's one of my requested characters, and her character was super interesting to me but was not fleshed out as much as i would've liked to see. i'd be into seeing anything you have to offer! what's her past like? how did she come to like and work with humans? is there a whole community of youmu that peacefully coexist with humans? how did she get to be as powerful as she is?
2. mitsuki/akihito...they're not exactly friends because mitsuki has been assigned to keep an eye on akihito, but i'm just...really interested in seeing how this rlshp would play out, in some alternate reality perhaps. or just some au :3
3. something about the nase family and their relationships to each other (childhood, major events?), or the siblings individually--what is the youmu inside izumi and how did it get there? how have they all become the people they are now? do they wish they were closer to each other? this series left so many questions unanswered, goddammit.
4. some fic love for the minor characters!! side stories, or placing them in alternate universes, or in a different place within the same universe (e.g. someone stationed at the coastline during the calm? i have no idea). i just really love the setting and premise of this series and feel like there's so much to explore. GO WILD.
5. i would really love to see a fic where the core set of characters (you can decide who this is--akihito, mirai, mitsuki, hiroomi?) grow up and grow close. this might make use of the found family or badass crew tropes? obviously this would involve alternate reality working before the ending. do they start working together, or go their separate ways while maintaining contact? is there an event that causes them to grow close or is it just gradual? this prompt is partly based on akihito's moment of sad bonding with mirai about being alone in the world; the moment really struck me (the nase siblings hiroomi and mitsuki are alone in their own ways, too, i think). but what if they still think this 10 years into the future and then realize they're not alone?
magi: labyrinth of magic
overview: set in an old world fantasy and travelling across multiple kingdoms/countries, magi is a manga & anime that features the young boy aladdin and the stories of the people he meets: the determined alibaba, downtrodden but powerful morgiana, and many more. this is a world that has dungeons (lair of a djinn that contains traps and treasure (i'm paraphrasing from the wikipedia page here)), rukh (essence of living beings), and magi (people that can manipulate and talk to the rukh, of which aladdin is one). there is SO MUCH to say about magi and i'm sure i've only barely scratched the surface. i highly recommend it! all the episodes of the anime can be found on animefreak.
personal notes: one thing i love about magi is the underlying theme of hope and change and connection. aladdin touches everyone's lives in some specific way, and the character connections really mean things, if that makes sense. also the premise and follow-through of the magic and fantasy is so cool! the story and the setting are so rich and i love it. it really feels as viewers that we are in this world, not only through the details of the story but that we are making the journey with our characters. honestly i love magi so much. if i took one issue with magi, it would be that it sometimes draws its good and bad sides too absolutely--though this may be a subconscious reason i like it so much, and it does subvert this division occasionally.
anime vs. manga: please take my prompts in reference to the anime if possible, as i have not read the manga! it's fine if you draw specific details from the manga, but for entire character or arc references it's probably best if you stick with the anime--for me it's not an issue of spoilers, but understanding the source material. WHAT I MEAN TO SAY is that i'm afraid that if you reference the manga, i won't understand the fic. if you don't think that will be an issue, then by all means go ahead!
prompts:
1. any character study. i'm more biased towards the "good" characters/characters we are supposed to side with, but an analysis of the villains (those that we've seen enough of to judge) would be interesting. the character i've requested is kougyoku, and i'm really interested in how she feels like she needs to prove herself but is also described as super powerful--her relationships with her siblings/step-siblings and others within the palace--her growth within and outside of the events of the series' plot.
2. the stories of the djinn--what were their lives like when they were in alma torran? what about now? can they communicate with each other when they're not next to each other? this would be so cool, feel free to draw on the manga for reference! (paimon/leraje...paimon/ugo...)
3. aladdin--speculation about his future, au, what he did in the time before he came to earth, relationships to the other magi in more detail, his moral conflicts (or good vs. bad internal debates)--almost anything aladdin-centric that explores his identity, feelings, or role in this universe.
4. cassim/alibaba (not necessarily romantic)--after the rukh absorption, if the alibaba hadn't left the slums, you and me against the world, au with them both ;__; PIRATES COLLEGE DEMONS /rolls off a cliff
5. things focusing on the minor characters of magi--of which there are many, i know. give me their backstory, formative influences, one of their most treasured memories, thoughts during the part of the plot in which they appear, dreams and desires, everything. i want it all!! i'm sort of kidding but also more minor character focused perspectives pls and ty. yamraiha/sharrkan, sphintus/titus/aladdin (i'm cheating by adding aladdin, i know), kougyoku/judal, non-canon pairings! non-canon character interpretations! queer interpretations (femslash?)! friendships that could cross the world and back! character-centric fics! everything.
6. more requests for found family trope realizations and/or future fic. everyone loves each other, maybe romantically, maybe not? where will they be in x years?
and then a collection of random aus i prompt:
- mafia/gang au [x]
- fox spirit (or other chinese/japanese/korean/etc mythology) au or reincarnation/immortality au
- heist/inception au, dreamspace is collapsing / adventures in dreamspace
- circus au
- bandfic, [a] doesn't realize that they already know [b] from childhood until they're there in the flesh, already in the band.
- any fantastical/magical/sci-fi introduction into an otherwise formerly relatively normal world OR MAGICAL QUEST
- stuff with demons. dreams. superpowers *___*
i'd like to emphasize that these prompts are not absolute rules, but rather suggestions for avenues you might choose! i've included some headcanon that you may or may not draw on. feel free to go with another path if inspiration strikes you, and i will definitely be happy with whatever you choose to gift me with. i hope you have fun writing (most important!!!) and this is super exciting to await. have an absolutely wonderful holiday season!! ♥
first of all, thank you so much in advance for writing for me :3! (and sorry this letter ended up being late...) i'm a yuletide first-timer! heard about it this year and was pumped to join. but yeah, i'm definitely looking forward to whatever you end up writing for me! below i'm going to list out some prompts and faves but don't feel like you have to follow these; you don't have to write based off of this stuff, and anything vaguely inspired but not related is great too.
some general things:
likes:
i absolutely LOVE au fics, which i feel like is a strong note to start out on, but I LOVE THEM. this applies especially with elements of fantasy and magic. i also love heist stories. a good twisty mindfuck would be super cool (see: inception, other media with twists/reveals that were surprising or unfolded throughout the story), as long as it obeys its internal rules of reality and has an ending that is not too ambiguous/obscure/not understandable. here's a list of random things i'm interested in that may or may not interest you as well: dreams, fox spirits, circus/carnival settings, homesickness, future fics, reincarnation, superpowers. here is a list of some of my fave tropes.
i'd be happy with femslash, slash, poly, het, or gen! romantically, i'm okay with most pairings in my fandoms (unless listed below), though i'd prefer that if you write a pairing and i haven't specifically requested that pairing, that it not be the absolute focus of the fic. i'm a sucker for slow burn romance and slightly bittersweet realism, though these two are not necessarily related. i will eat up a lot of things if they end with an even somewhat happy ending--if it's an ambiguous/open ending, that it has at least a hint towards the happy/positive.
all ratings are fine for me. i like porn but would prefer the focus of the fic not to be on sex at the expense of a plot.
dislikes:
anything with noncon or dubcon, character hate. i'd prefer not to see crackfics, typecasting (in general and people of a pairing into the "feminine" or "masculine" role of the relationship), self-injury or suicide, excessive gore or horror, infidelity, drugs (alcohol is fine), mental or terminal illness, and hard kinks. character death for the sake of plot/character development is fine with me, as long as it's not gratuitous.
and my prompts for the fandoms and characters i requested! (note: it is not required that all of the characters i requested be included unless specified otherwise.)
raven cycle:
overview: the raven cycle is an ongoing series by maggie stefvater, and the third book blue lily, lily blue just came out like...a week ago. don't worry about spoiling me for the third book--i haven't read it yet, but hopefully will by the end of december. it belongs to the mystery and fantasy genres, though perhaps more to the latter than the former. blue sargent is a girl raised in a family of psychic women that amplifies their psychic powers but has none of her own. through some paranormal events, she gets to know gansey, ronan, adam, and noah, who attend at the nearby private school aglionby, whose students are known as the raven boys. together, they work on gansey's search for an old sleeping welsh king.
personal notes: i actually really liked the dream thieves much more than the raven boys, partly because of the character development and interactions that fed into the blue/gansey/adam/ronan/noah relationship. i'm into the relationship as a whole and it would be really interesting to see it written out--how would it play out, especially in this fantastical context? the blue/gansey/adam love triangle that i felt like was developing (though i hear it's been picked apart by now?) seemed contrived and off to me, along with the grey man/maura relationship. mostly i was entranced with how the plot and fantasy plots were coming together, for example: the dream where ronan meets his father and his father repeated the stipulation in the will...i couldn't believe how well the line was placed in the narrative previously, exposed so that i could notice it but the meaning obscured just enough that the significance would shift into place right as niall repeated it. assuming stiefvater had meant for the readers to "get it" right at this point, and knowing that i did was an incredible feeling.
for the series overall, there's this dark lovely tone that underlies all the magic, and the fantasy was what drew me in but what kept me was how it correlated to the growth of the characters themselves. i'm most interested in reading about the main 5 characters and their bonds to each other.
prompts:
1. like i mentioned above, i'd love to see a blue/gansey/adam/ronan/noah relationship explored, either as poly or just their friendships and how any romantic relationships might play out within that framework. i'd prefer not to read a blue/gansey or blue/adam fic.
2. in particular, based on the characters that i requested, a blue/ronan/adam ot3 would be really interesting--to me they're all very much unsure (or at least not explicit) in their relationships to each other. they all have a lack in their lives (as do gansey and noah), and some of it overlaps, some of it doesn't. any fic exploring this ot3 (romantically or platonically) in the character relationships and how they function as a unit, really! quiet settling into their relationship, until one day one of them realizes--we've had this relationship after all this time. how ronan's desires not only manifest in reality, but the dream world as well. ronan's straightforward but also good-all-along-type affection for adam in the dream thieves really struck me, ronan's and blue's paths not really intersecting except in the context of the other boys BUT still the interpersonal pull, adam and blue using each other as proxy relationships (thinking along the lines of the fake dating --> love trope)?? all these are really cool things. just everyone in love with each other, basically.
3. blue, gansey, adam, ronan, noah as poc, perhaps asian or asian-american. i think there are powerful parallels to be drawn between the asian-american (or other n-gen immigrant) identity and the search for a king whose energy runs deep within the land (like it's a quest for something that you don't even know exists, foreign languages/cultures/history), as well as each character's individual struggles. this could mean something like a roadtrip-style fic (visiting the ~motherland), feelings of not belonging or lack tied in with cultural diaspora, something based on this, but even something that has this as a quiet part of the background would be great.
4. future fic! where all this adventure leads them, you decide.
noragami:
overview: noragami's a great funny manga & anime that introduces us to yato, a war god that is attempting to increase his visibility to eventually build a shrine. hiyori is a human that notices yato pass by and in an attempt to save him from an impending car crash, gets hit herself, and her soul is knocked out of her body (she can return, but it occurs repeatedly). yato adopts a shinki (spirit weapon) named yukine, who is selected for his pure spirit; yukine died when he was pretty young. i have only watched the anime, but i don't mind reading about events or characters that appear in the manga.
personal notes: if you got me for this fandom then you probably selected "all" on your offer, haha. i am super into kofuku/bishamon (mostly on the basis of this panel) and how that has and will play out. kofuku is the type that seems to express everything but has her hidden turns and possible past (as the god of poverty, her optimistic personality is one that has either been constructed in opposition to or forged based on the suffering she has caused/seen), while bishamon is a badass that wears her heart on her sleeve, but her kindness does not mean well for everyone. they and yato have a selfishness to them that makes them more real in the mortal world, and obviously they have fine-tuned the majority of their personalities through their existence--but this doesn't mean they can't change.
i'd prefer not to receive yato/hiyori (romantic), except possibly in yato/yukine/hiyori.
prompts:
1. i'm actually really interested in the gods (yato + the ones i listed: kofuku, bishamon) and their past relationships with each other. i talked about it above, but i'm really interested in kofuku/bishamon in particular, if your scope is limited. but for the 3 of them together: how did they meet each other, all at once or separately? how was the bishamon/yato relationship before he killed her shinki? was there a time when kofuku was frosty and did whatever she could to survive? she would never really have been in danger of disappearing but also never widely worshipped--how would she have felt? what are their pasts like, how did they change between each meeting with each other? immortality fic *__* did any of them transition from mortal to god? did they have relationships with mortals?
2. or possibly yato/yukine, romantically or found family. the shinki and god bond is very close, and yato was willing to endure the blight for yukine--why? does he hold that much regard for all of his shinkis? what if he had thought about his own existence and particularly resonated with yukine's crisis? why does he feel so strongly about suicide? yukine is a character with potential too--what does he think of all this business, having had no choice in the matter? we've seen a lot of his stealing/meanness, but in the anime he pretty much mellows out after that; i'd like to know more about how he feels after the purging (feel-good fuzzy fic preferably ;__;). one of the scenes in the closing sequence that really struck me was hiyori smiling upon finding yato and yukine sleeping on each other's shoulders, and it's that kind of feeling that i really love about this anime.
3. yato/yukine/hiyori ot3: how does this work with hiyori's mortality? doesn't have to be romantic, though if it is, please age up yukine at least a couple years. what if they had all met under different circumstances (alternate reality or au)? or just straight up au: apartment roommates au, au where they're all strangers on a train/plane going to the same place, musicians who get put into a trio for a concert, the 3 of them catching each other at their most vulnerable moments and coming out all the stronger for it ;___; one issue i have with the anime (and possibly why i'm not that interested in hiyori by herself) (i don't know if this is more fully explored in the manga) is that hiyori seems like an emotionally perfect character--that is, she has her moments of pettiness and anger, but otherwise she's just generally nice and doesn't have any development of her own to pursue. maybe you could write in some development, and how it relates to yato and yukine.
kyoukai no kanata:
overview: an anime based off a light novel (partial translations of the light novel are online, anime episodes can be found on animefreak) that deals with a world where a group of people called spirit world warriors are in charge of killing youmu/demons with their special powers. it's kind of slice of life but also kind of epic, and is centered around two characters named akihito and mirai. mirai is the only surviving member of a clan of spirit world warriors that can manipulate their blood to form weapons. akihito is a youmu/human hybrid whose body holds a youmu, beyond the boundary, within it. they meet at school under unlikely circumstances, and their relationships with each other and with other characters develop from there.
personal notes: i have not read the light novel except for the preface, only watched the anime, but feel free to draw from either or both. note that i have not requested mirai, and would not prefer to see a focus on mirai or akihito/mirai--i'm fond of mirai and her relationships with all of the characters, but i think her character is not drawn out well/believably in the anime, which could translate over to fic written about her. as for akihito/mirai, i didn't really swallow the absolute true love overcomes all line the anime was trying to sell, and that tainted the rest of the relationship; to me it could have worked just as powerfully without the romantic aspect.
prompts:
1. a story on ayaka! she's one of my requested characters, and her character was super interesting to me but was not fleshed out as much as i would've liked to see. i'd be into seeing anything you have to offer! what's her past like? how did she come to like and work with humans? is there a whole community of youmu that peacefully coexist with humans? how did she get to be as powerful as she is?
2. mitsuki/akihito...they're not exactly friends because mitsuki has been assigned to keep an eye on akihito, but i'm just...really interested in seeing how this rlshp would play out, in some alternate reality perhaps. or just some au :3
3. something about the nase family and their relationships to each other (childhood, major events?), or the siblings individually--what is the youmu inside izumi and how did it get there? how have they all become the people they are now? do they wish they were closer to each other? this series left so many questions unanswered, goddammit.
4. some fic love for the minor characters!! side stories, or placing them in alternate universes, or in a different place within the same universe (e.g. someone stationed at the coastline during the calm? i have no idea). i just really love the setting and premise of this series and feel like there's so much to explore. GO WILD.
5. i would really love to see a fic where the core set of characters (you can decide who this is--akihito, mirai, mitsuki, hiroomi?) grow up and grow close. this might make use of the found family or badass crew tropes? obviously this would involve alternate reality working before the ending. do they start working together, or go their separate ways while maintaining contact? is there an event that causes them to grow close or is it just gradual? this prompt is partly based on akihito's moment of sad bonding with mirai about being alone in the world; the moment really struck me (the nase siblings hiroomi and mitsuki are alone in their own ways, too, i think). but what if they still think this 10 years into the future and then realize they're not alone?
magi: labyrinth of magic
overview: set in an old world fantasy and travelling across multiple kingdoms/countries, magi is a manga & anime that features the young boy aladdin and the stories of the people he meets: the determined alibaba, downtrodden but powerful morgiana, and many more. this is a world that has dungeons (lair of a djinn that contains traps and treasure (i'm paraphrasing from the wikipedia page here)), rukh (essence of living beings), and magi (people that can manipulate and talk to the rukh, of which aladdin is one). there is SO MUCH to say about magi and i'm sure i've only barely scratched the surface. i highly recommend it! all the episodes of the anime can be found on animefreak.
personal notes: one thing i love about magi is the underlying theme of hope and change and connection. aladdin touches everyone's lives in some specific way, and the character connections really mean things, if that makes sense. also the premise and follow-through of the magic and fantasy is so cool! the story and the setting are so rich and i love it. it really feels as viewers that we are in this world, not only through the details of the story but that we are making the journey with our characters. honestly i love magi so much. if i took one issue with magi, it would be that it sometimes draws its good and bad sides too absolutely--though this may be a subconscious reason i like it so much, and it does subvert this division occasionally.
anime vs. manga: please take my prompts in reference to the anime if possible, as i have not read the manga! it's fine if you draw specific details from the manga, but for entire character or arc references it's probably best if you stick with the anime--for me it's not an issue of spoilers, but understanding the source material. WHAT I MEAN TO SAY is that i'm afraid that if you reference the manga, i won't understand the fic. if you don't think that will be an issue, then by all means go ahead!
prompts:
1. any character study. i'm more biased towards the "good" characters/characters we are supposed to side with, but an analysis of the villains (those that we've seen enough of to judge) would be interesting. the character i've requested is kougyoku, and i'm really interested in how she feels like she needs to prove herself but is also described as super powerful--her relationships with her siblings/step-siblings and others within the palace--her growth within and outside of the events of the series' plot.
2. the stories of the djinn--what were their lives like when they were in alma torran? what about now? can they communicate with each other when they're not next to each other? this would be so cool, feel free to draw on the manga for reference! (paimon/leraje...paimon/ugo...)
3. aladdin--speculation about his future, au, what he did in the time before he came to earth, relationships to the other magi in more detail, his moral conflicts (or good vs. bad internal debates)--almost anything aladdin-centric that explores his identity, feelings, or role in this universe.
4. cassim/alibaba (not necessarily romantic)--after the rukh absorption, if the alibaba hadn't left the slums, you and me against the world, au with them both ;__; PIRATES COLLEGE DEMONS /rolls off a cliff
5. things focusing on the minor characters of magi--of which there are many, i know. give me their backstory, formative influences, one of their most treasured memories, thoughts during the part of the plot in which they appear, dreams and desires, everything. i want it all!! i'm sort of kidding but also more minor character focused perspectives pls and ty. yamraiha/sharrkan, sphintus/titus/aladdin (i'm cheating by adding aladdin, i know), kougyoku/judal, non-canon pairings! non-canon character interpretations! queer interpretations (femslash?)! friendships that could cross the world and back! character-centric fics! everything.
6. more requests for found family trope realizations and/or future fic. everyone loves each other, maybe romantically, maybe not? where will they be in x years?
and then a collection of random aus i prompt:
- mafia/gang au [x]
- fox spirit (or other chinese/japanese/korean/etc mythology) au or reincarnation/immortality au
- heist/inception au, dreamspace is collapsing / adventures in dreamspace
- circus au
- bandfic, [a] doesn't realize that they already know [b] from childhood until they're there in the flesh, already in the band.
- any fantastical/magical/sci-fi introduction into an otherwise formerly relatively normal world OR MAGICAL QUEST
- stuff with demons. dreams. superpowers *___*
i'd like to emphasize that these prompts are not absolute rules, but rather suggestions for avenues you might choose! i've included some headcanon that you may or may not draw on. feel free to go with another path if inspiration strikes you, and i will definitely be happy with whatever you choose to gift me with. i hope you have fun writing (most important!!!) and this is super exciting to await. have an absolutely wonderful holiday season!! ♥