Dear Yuletide Writer!!
This letter is for Napkins, which happens to be my AO3 name as well!
First off, thank you so, so much for signing up and for offering one of the fandoms we matched on! This is my first year doing Yuletide, and hopefully this letter will be useful to you! I’m generally really easy to please; I like the whole gamut of fiction and a whole mess of tropes in there.
My dislikes are pretty few, so let’s start off with them: character death/permanent injury, pregnancy/kidfic, beastiality, and serious issues not already brought up in canon (think homophobia, political stands, self-harm, abuse, trans headcanons, etc). I am all for sexual content, but with the fandoms I’m requesting, I would like to request that if you do include it, it be kept on the more vanilla, loving side.
I’ll talk about the fandoms I requested and some specific prompts below, and please feel free to ignore or add anything as you want, but here are some general tropes and prompts I enjoy:
AUs of all shapes and sizes, fake dating, Christmas/other holidays, domesticity, hurt/comfort, character introspection/exploration, banter that can easily accidentally slip into hints about actual feelings, and found family. I really will love anything that you write, this is more to give you an idea of my likes and reasons for them, so thank you so much again!
Love Live
(If you want more than the anime, game story scripts are all available and translated at http://decaf.kouhi.me/lovelive/index.php?title=Main_Page)
Requested Character: Hanayo Koizumi
Okay, what’s more fun than cute girls having fun singing and dancing and trying really hard to improve and better themselves and each other? I’m a sucker for idols in general, but the supportiveness of the girls to each other in Love Live and the friendships that they bring to and form within the group hit a lot of my buttons. The series really fits in with my love of found family and has a lot of room for cute fluff, crazy hijinks, character drama and exploration, as well as a lot of ship potential! Hanayo is my favorite character, and as such she’s the only one I’ve outright requested, but as long as she has the main role, I don’t mind if the fic is shippy/not or who else it involves!
My favorite pairs are Hanayo/Rin and Nico/Maki, with Rinpana in the lead; I really like how both Hanayo and Rin support and push each other to go past their roadblocks and have a long history of understanding and supporting each other. I love Hanayo’s more outgoing side, especially in direct juxtaposition to her shier, quieter side, and especially in how it’s almost a direct contrast to Rin’s more outgoing personality and quiet moments with her. Childhood friends are a trope I really enjoy for its sweetness and how it can develop into characters understanding each other without words, and I think Hanayo and Rin are a great example of how the trope can skirt the line between friends and romance really easily. For Nico and Maki, I really like how they both seem to throw each other off balance a lot; there’s a lot of banter and blushing and blurting things out then trying to take them back, which is so fun to play with and to see! I also really like the first years as an ot3, especially how Maki seems to relax around them a lot/is more open and honest towards them than the other girls and they’re all just incredibly sweet and supportive with each other.
For any ship, or even for a general prompt that can involve all of the girls, since Christmas is more of a holiday for lovers (and then for single friends to all band together), something in line with that would be cute and season appropriate! It’s generally secular as a holiday, so think more just snow and lights and cake and holding hands and exchanging gifts and expressing love. You could even draw inspiration from some of the LLSIF card sets - are they full AUs or just costumes for a concert? How do they all feel about the set if it is? Rin and Hanayo have a lot of matching outfits in event sets (they’re the only ones who match on a non-holiday-related event set), and there are things like Hanayo holding a chocolate of Rin in a bridal dress for the Valentine’s set that Rin is holding in the White Day set (they’re both URs in the set that they aren’t holding the chocolate, and their conversations for each card are about each other and giving each other chocolate/gifts).
Natsume Yuujinchou
Requested Character: Takashi Natsume
The main thing I love about this series is the overall feeling of it: a very soft melancholy that morphs, over the course of the series, to a warm peace about connections and relying on others and how strength can come in many different forms. I’d love to see some worldbuilding or just adventures around in the setting; there’s so much room for exploration both in the sense of characters and emotions as well as action!
The series clearly also fits in with my love of found family, with Natsume becoming more and more comfortable with the people around him and opening up more and more. Ideas could include what happens when it simply becomes too difficult to hide the fact that he can see youkai? Did someone accidentally hear Nyanko-sensei speak, or did something a youkai do to get at him/the Book of Friends become too much to cover up? I’d even be super open to seeing something set in Reiko’s time! Did Natsume get overwhelmed by memories of Reiko after releasing a particular name and gets trapped in watching it? Did Matoba kidnap Natsume (again)?
This series has always been a source of comfort and cathartic crying, so as long as the story ends on a happy/hopeful note, go as sad as you need/want if you want to! (this is a fandom I'd be okay with some darker sexual content, so long as the overall ending tone isn't so dark or hopeless. also please remember, no beastiality)
Nodame Cantabile
Requested Characters: Noda Megumi, Chiaki Shinichi
I’ve had a deep attachment to this series for a long time due to feelings about playing and creating music and how the connection and relationship with music can evolve and change and affect interpersonal relationships. Nodame’s character arc in particular - how she grows from someone very carefree and not particularly serious to learning what her abilities are and harnessing them to reach a goal (and in the process create new goals), without really losing a lot of herself - is one I really enjoyed. Everyone’s growth in their relationship to music and their instruments is really important to me.
While I clearly ship Nodame and Chiaki, the rest of the cast of characters are too great to ignore, and I wouldn’t mind seeing either a worldbuilding or just character exploration piece that includes other characters and doesn’t focus on a relationship. The message of many paths to one goal and finding your own path and your own relationship with the world is what really stands out to me about the series. That, and the heavy influence of music and classical music in their lives! I’m a sucker for pieces or interpretations of pieces acting as a parallel to the storyline.
Emelan (Tamora Pierce)
Requested Characters: Dedicate Lark, Dedicate Rosethorn
This series has been one that I’ve returned to time and time again, even though I get a different enjoyment out of it as an adult than as a preteen/teenager, obviously. Since the kids are the focus of the series, there’s a lot left to the imagination when it comes to their mentors! I’m especially drawn to the relationship between Lark and Rosethorn, whether you want to interpret their relationship as a deep platonic friendship or something more! How’d this all start? How’d they decide that they wanted to stay at Discipline? How much changed after Rosethorn’s stroke? Did Lark have to find out the hard way how particular Rosethorn is about her garden? How do they find a moment’s peace/spend that moment together when the kids are around? This could be set any time in their friendship/relationship, really I just think it would be something neat to explore! If you do want to go shippy, I am all for sexual content here!