Maybe World

Hello, writer!

First of all, I just want to say: Please don't worry if you end up discarding all my prompts, or if you can't see any way to fit a bunch of likes into one fic. (I'm going with a broad enough list of likes, including tone, that you're probably going to hit one, at least.) My letter, and my likes list, isn't meant as a checklist, it's just meant to give you ideas. Some of the best fics I've ever received have had nothing to do with my prompts. Some of my likes may contradict each other, I don't know. And honestly, I don't read tons of fic, so I'm sure there are things I love that I'm just forgetting to mention.

Basically, I love fic that digs into canon in some fashion, whether that's character study, worldbuilding, missing scenes or alternate explanations for canon events. I love teams and collaborations and adventuring parties and partnerships, which seems to be the theme of my requests this year. While I don't want something that ends on a dark and hopeless note, I'm more than open to fics digging into the angst before helping the character into a better place, and bittersweet endings are just as welcome as happy ones. I hesitate to say I want fluff, because I don't want all the rough edges sanded off the characters, but fic doesn't need to be high-stakes or super-angsty to make me happy, either.

In other words, there are a lot of things that could make me happy. I hope this letter helps you pick out something you'll enjoy writing, gives you ideas if you need any, or stays out of your way if you already have ideas!

Gen Likes:

• Missing scenes that slot seamlessly into canon
• Dialog, strong character voices, banter, flirting
• Character and relationship studies
• Worldbuilding, from small details that make the world feel more lived in to big elaborations on things canon just doesn't touch
• Magic meta, discussion of the minutia of learning and casting magic, how it feels to cast a spell or have one cast on you, studying magic from a scholarly or hands-on perspective
• Food porn and drink porn
• Ensemble/team relationships
• Seasonal themes — the weather, the mood, seasonal or holiday food and drinks (not just for winter, either, though I do really love winter)
• Humor
• Angst that ends up in a happy or hopeful place
• Bittersweet endings
• Happy endings
• Hurt/comfort
• Exploration of the subject a really dedicated character is into — whether that's a mage talking magic, an artist dealing with art block, an athlete discussing their sport or a baker getting really in-depth about bread
• The creative process, especially when it goes wrong, or when a character's struggling with it
• 5 Times fics, 5 + 1, other variants on that structure
• Epistolary fiction
• Outsider POV

Shippy/Smutty Likes:

• Pining! Oblivious mutual pining is the very best, unless the very best is pining leading into guilty fantasizing and masturbation, or pining + h/c, or... you get the idea. Pining tropes are good!
• Laughing during sex
• Holding hands during sex
• Hand kink in general: noticing the size of someone's hands, the shape of their fingers, their scars or calluses; wearing or removing gloves
• Facial hair, stubble, and shaving — feel free to imagine stubble or shaving routines for clean-shaven dudes, let men get scruffy at times, or run with Sabin's mountain man beard from some of the Amano art
• Hair in general, in a touch sense — washing hair, braiding it, scalp rubs, running hands through a partner's hair
• Clothing kink (one partner wearing some of the other one's clothing; a character wearing clothes that are unusual for them, more formal or more casual or more revealing or whatever; in a modern setting, men in suits)
• Partially-clothed sex
• Wall sex
• Awkward sex (the kind where it's ultimately good for both of them, after the one who got kneed in the throat by accident when they tried to 69 is able to breathe again)
• Non-dirty talk during sex — bickering, bantering, just trying to continue the pre-sex conversation though they're getting increasingly distracted from it

Do Not Want:

• Severe and graphic harm to children or real-world animals
• Embarrassment squick
• Focus on OCs
• Incest
• Sexual content featuring anyone under the age of 15
• Graphic or highly detailed descriptions of bodily fluids or focus on them
• Unrequested polyamory, open relationships, or infidelity
• Vividly described gore
• AUs other than canon divergence (no changes of setting, profession, etc.)
• Non-canon character death, particularly death of requested characters, or any children
• Non-canon or unrequested pronouns
• Identity headcanons (gender ID, sexuality, etc.)
• Unrequested crossovers
• Use of "mommy" or "daddy" in sex scenes
• Cockroaches

( Explanations of some of the more subjective or confusing DNWs )

Requests!

I've tried to be even-handed here! But I can't guarantee that all the sections will be equally long and detailed. I promise all my fandoms are equally beloved; I have agonized long and hard to be sure of that.

Final Fantasy VI

The classic RPG of my heart. I've been in this fandom since I knew what fandom was; the very first fic I ever read, and the first fic I ever wrote, were for FF6. Sometimes I move away from it for a while but so far I've always come back.

Request: Sabin, Cyan, and Gau

( The Veldt Family )

Ikemen Sengoku

I started mobile otome games on a whim. I'd never really played an otome, other than Hatoful Boyfriend, and I was curious. I didn't expect the delightful protagonist and witty writing on this game to grab me so thoroughly, and I sure didn't expect to start shipping a couple of the love interests, but when I was playing Nobunaga's route (otherwise not at all my speed) the MC stumbled onto Hideyoshi slamming Mitsuhide up against a wall, and she's all "oh no, they're fighting!" and I'm like, "no, honey, that's not fighting." Later on, she thinks, "come on, you two, kiss later," so I guess she caught on.

Request: Hideyoshi and Mitsuhide

Delicious in Dungeon

You notice how my likes list includes things like food porn and worldbuilding and team or ensemble dynamics? This manga was basically made for me. I read the page where Laios points out that the dungeon has to have an ecosystem and I was SOLD. Sometimes when I'm feeling down, I think of Senshi fishing zombies out of the dungeon latrines to perk myself up.

I have a couple of fandom-specific general requests: no spoilers beyond the US releases (which should be the end of volume 7, as of Yuletide) and using the Yen Press translations of the names (Laios, Chilchuck, etc.)

Request: All (Marcille, Laios, Chilchuck, Falin and Senshi)

Shirobako

This is one of my favorite anime. I love the characters — all of them, even Tarou — and the insight into anime production, and the genuinely heartwarming view of creative work, and all the little details of setting and character and daily life, and it has an ending more satisfying than I would ever have expected or imagined for a workplace comedy.

Request: Kinoshita Seiichi

So that about wraps it up for fics. I hope some of this is helpful to you, and if it's not, feel free to do your own thing! While keeping my DNWs in mind, I mean.

My AO3 name is Lirillith, spelled the same as in this URL. I'm posting this letter to both the Yuleporn and Wrapping Paper challenges, and while I think my prompts and likes, above, should be sufficient for Yuleporn, I wrote this not knowing that Wrapping Paper was even a thing! That's what I miss by not doing Yuletide for a couple of years. So, for any artists wandering by, the next section is for you.

( Wrapping Paper Challenge )

Hello, writer!  

I am so sorry about this letter.  It's so long, but still lopsided.  LLtQ has so many branching paths and hidden scenes buried under skill checks that I feel like I ought to account for them all, and Tiger & Bunny has so many characters nominated, all of whom I love.  Shirobako is a much simpler request, so it's much shorter.  I promise that doesn't mean I love it less!  I just have a very definite favorite character for it, and it makes for a more focused request.

One thing I want to make clear upfront:  All prompts and likes are meant as guidance, not as hard-and-fast rules.  Some of the best fics I've ever received have been beautifully unexpected, in the spirit of my requests but not the letter. You don't need to pile on the items from the likes list or use any of my prompts — they're meant to give you an idea of the kind of thing I like or to be starting points, not to be requests for the only things I want to read.  (DNWs, on the other hand, really are serious day-ruiners.)  A fic you enjoyed writing is going to be a lot more fun to read than a fic you were slogging through miserably.

I'm fine with any rating, from G to E.  I'm perhaps disappointingly vanilla, at least in the sense of "not into BDSM," for which I apologize, but relationship-driven smut for any of the pairings I ship is totally welcome, and I do have an attempt at a kink list in my likes.  

Likes:

• Fic that gets into greater depth with canon events than canon itself did — missing scenes tied into one precise moment in canon, timeskip fic covering how characters got from point A to point B, characters still reckoning with the events of canon after the ending.

• Dialog, strong character voices, flirting, banter

• Worldbuilding through the eyes of the main characters; magic meta, superpower meta, mundane details in fantastic settings, mundane applications of superpowers or magic

• Food porn.  Worldbuilding via food or drink, characters cooking or baking, characters enjoying and seeking out different cuisines, or enjoying the taste and complexity of their alcohol and not just how drunk it gets them.

• On the shippy front: UST and pre-relationship maneuverings; mutual pining prior to getting together; get-together/first-time fics, the ways characters sort of awkwardly stumble into a relationship; friends-to-lovers or FWB shading into more

• Sex-related things that aren't necessarily porny: I love awkward, realistically imperfect first times (and additional times) where the characterization is more important than any given kink.  I really like couples who can laugh and have fun in bed, and just in general, and couples trading off who takes the lead depending on circumstances rather than one partner always dominating.

• But as for the kinks: If there's going to be dirty talk I prefer it be praise-based, awkward as hell, or both (or one character's really into it and the other is flailing.)  Clothed or mostly clothed sex and frottage.  Wall sex.  Pregnant sex.  Sex toys.  Masturbation or sex dreams, coupled with pining.  Temperature play, and possibly relatedly, use of superpowers/magic powers during sex.  Talking during sex in a non-dirty-talk way — like, trying to carry on the pre-sex conversation until distracted into incoherence.  Joking or light-hearted bickering during sex.

• Ensemble/team fic, especially for those canons where the team/workplace/adventuring party forms a kind of canon found family.

• Holiday fic, ideally linked to the time of year — i.e. I'm not interested in getting Halloween fic or summer fireworks in December.  I live in Southern California; I want escapist snow this time of year.  But pick a holiday, or make up a seasonally appropriate one — they're all welcome.  Also welcome — people grousing about the holiday in question, sentimentality-puncturing events like crimes, disasters, etc., loneliness or angst, anime production crises like in Shirobako, ghosts whether literal or figurative... bittersweet holiday fic would be awesome, is what I'm saying.

DNWs:

• Mention of infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, or other traumatic/negative outcomes to pregnancy.  Infertility, in particular; I don't want to see it handled poorly and I'd rather not see it at all. 
  

• Public humiliation (kinky or not) or characters embarrassing themselves, knowingly or otherwise.  I distinguish this from the "awkward romance" that I actually like, in that I think of that as a more mutual thing, each of them viewing the other's awkwardness with affection.  But I don't want anything lingering on, or playing-for-comedy, a character's embarrassment or humiliation.

• Unprompted setting-change AUs, fusions or crossovers, or inclusion of unrequested pairings.

• Sibling or parent/child incest.  First cousins and beyond are fine.

• OCs.  If you need to give a name and a line of dialog to the character who brings them tea, that's fine, but I want the focus to be on canon characters.

• Gore and graphic violence; eye injuries in particular are a major squick.

• Animal harm or death, especially to cats.

• Issuefic of any kind

• Explicitly identified asexuality in any romances; I want my ships to have at least the possibility of having sex at some point.

• Singular they as a personal pronoun outside of dialog; if you feel the need to use a gender-neutral pronoun for a character in narration for more than a line or two, I'd strongly prefer some other choice, like ey/em or xe/xem.

• Any mention of cockroaches (unlikely in fanfic, but you never know)

• Excessive focus on bodily fluids and smells during sex.  Obviously in explicit sex fluids happen!  And I'm all in favor of explicit sex!  I just don't want comeplay, bukkake, loving and detailed descriptions of saliva or wetness, excessive amounts of ejaculate or lubrication, etc. Watersports, scat, and bloodplay are also off the table.

Long Live the Queen: Elodie, Banion, Brin

Fandom-specific: Would prefer not to get anything with a ruthless/Machiavellian/sadistic Elodie, here; I also very much DNW the ending Lucille renders Elodie sterile and Elodie takes the opportunity to marry Brin.  Though now that I think about it, those two (ruthless Elodie and Lucille's revenge) go hand-in-hand.

As I said in my sign-up, Elodie is the only character I require; if things aren't working out with Banion and Brin, I do have prompts involving just Elodie, or a few other possibilities with other characters.

Tiger & Bunny: Any

I know requesting any is a roll of the dice, but I tried this last year, which I really believed would be T&B's last year in Yuletide.  I can't believe the fandom slowed down so much that it squeaked in again this year, but I'm not going to pass up one last chance to ask for anything and everything. 

A lot of my prompts do involve Tiger & Bunny: The Rising, the sequel movie that came out in 2014.  It should be widely available by now, I hope, but things set during or before TV canon, or during one of the time skips, would be really welcome too!  In the last-episode time skip, we passed over a year in which the heroes had to deal with the revelation that Hero TV was rigged, and that NEXTs could lose their powers (which had been a well-kept secret up till then.) And on top of that, Kotetsu, the heart of the team, and Barnaby, the catalyst who essentially made them a team, both retired at the same time.  Were any of the heroes in touch with Barnaby during that year?  Were they in touch with Kotetsu?  Did any of them go to visit him?

There's also always the year before the series started — Pao-lin, Karina, and Ivan are younger than the other heroes, but did they all start at the same time?  How did they settle in?

And origin stories, for one or more characters, or all of them — we know Keith was eighteen when his powers manifested, but how did they first appear, and how did he learn to control them?  How did any of the heroes learn to control their powers?

Ensemble gen, whether it's superheroic adventure or Hero TV galas or the characters spending downtime together, would be fantastic!

This letter is not just a copy-paste of last year's letter (I kept adding things, because there are more characters in the tagset this year) but if you've read that one, odds are that any prompts you remember are still there.  

The DNW ships (in a romantic/sexual context) are Kotetsu/Yuri, Barnaby/Maverick, and Pao-lin or Kaede with any adult characters.  The other DNWs for this fandom are: they/them as a personal pronoun (mostly relevant to Nathan), writing Pao-lin as non-binary/genderqueer, and including Japanese honorifics unless they're coming from Ivan.

Fandom-specific: I'd appreciate fewer fat jokes than canon has.  This doesn't mean no mention of Kinoshita's weight at all — "SHORYUU-BELLY!" was one of the greatest moments in anime history, IMO, and he makes weight references himself — but less of the casual office joking about food, eating and weight would be nice.  They're all chowing down on delicious-looking stuff constantly; I'd rather just enjoy the food porn.

Also — if you matched on this fandom, please don't feel like the fact this section isn't as ridiculously long as the other two means some kind of favoritism.  LLtQ is a game with a lot of branching paths and easy-to-miss scenes; Tiger & Bunny had twelve characters nominated and I requested Any.  This is just a much simpler request in comparison!

I hope this covered everything, because this letter is way too long as it is!  I just know I prefer to have something to go on, and hopefully you do too.  If not, well, the most important stuff is up at the top and/or in my signup, and I really do consider my prompts optional guidance.  I just want to cover all the bases, in case you want that guidance.

If you feel you'd get a better idea of what I like via my fics and so on than through this batch of tl;dr, you'll have better luck with my AO3 or Tumblr.  I'm the same name everywhere: lirillith or lirillith .  I haven't used this space for anything except exchange letters in quite some time.

• Missing scenes, episode tags, fic that gets into greater depth with canon events than canon itself did
• Dialog, strong character voices, flirting, banter
• Awkward, faily attempts at romance or sex that nonetheless work out in the end (awkward sex with both parties laughing isn't bad sex, it's the BEST sex)
• Related: Couples who can laugh and have fun in bed, or just in general
• Couples trading off who takes the lead depending on circumstances rather than one partner always dominating
• Smut in general, though I fall more at the vanilla end of the spectrum
• Happy, welcome, healthy pregnancy
• Pining, but only as a prelude to a couple getting together or at least progress in that direction
• Clothed or mostly clothed sex and frottage
• Temperature play, and possibly relatedly, use of superpowers/magic powers during sex
• Talking during sex in a non-dirty-talk way -- like, trying to carry on the pre-sex conversation until they get distracted into incoherence

• Mention of infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, or other traumatic/negative outcomes to pregnancy.  Infertility, in particular; I don't want to see it handled poorly and I'd rather not see it at all.
• Characters embarrassing themselves, knowingly or otherwise.  I distinguish this from the "awkward romance" that I actually like, in that I think of that as a more mutual thing (or at least, if one partner's flailing, the other's at least viewing the whole thing with affection.)  But I don't want some poor soul screwing up while everyone around them looks on with pity and disdain.
• Unprompted setting-change AUs, fusions or crossovers.  Canon-divergence is fine, though!
• Gore and graphic violence; eye/hand injuries in particular are squicks
• Animal harm or death
• Any mention of cockroaches (unlikely in fanfic! But canons keep mentioning them. Please use some other method to indicate squalor.)
• Excessive focus on bodily fluids and smells during sex (obviously fluids happen, you don't have to go non-explicit to avoid them, but I don't want loving, detailed descriptions of ejaculate, saliva, or wetness, excessive amounts of them, comeplay, etc.)  Definitely no sex featuring fluids like blood, vomit, or urine that aren't standard parts of sex.