yuletide 2020

[alectorine]

Hi! I'm sulfate (formerly pyrophane) and first of all, thank you so much for participating! I’ll love your fic no matter what, so please don’t feel pressured ❤️ I’ve written some prompts, but by no means do you have to include all or any of them -- so long as you steer clear of my DNWs, if you have a particular idea you’re burning to write, go for it! Feel free to spin something entirely out of my likes list and disregard the prompts as well.

You can find me elsewhere on twitter @ennezahard or @juncheolsoo, and on tumblr @delineative. If you’re really stuck, my previous Yuletide letters can be found in this tag -- if the prompts for any of those fandoms are striking a chord, I’d be happy to receive fic for them instead. The most important thing is that you have fun writing the rare fandoms we both adore!

General | 7 Seeds | Engelsforstrilogin | The Poppy War

 

General likes:

• apocalypse or post-apocalypse settings
• clashing worldviews
• dreams
• enemies to lovers where there's still some form of rivalry or resentment, friends to enemies (to lovers optional), rivals to enemies (to lovers optional)
• espionage AU, casefic, fakeout makeouts, undercover as a couple
• leader/second-in-command dynamics
• lotus-eater machines
• magical realism, urban fantasy, general magic/fantasy/witchcraft AU
• mentorships
• physicality and nonverbal communication
• pining and repressed feelings, repressed characters finally admitting what they want
• pop idol AU
• power dynamics, power imbalances, difficult/ambiguous/dysfunctional relationships
• pre-canon and futurefic
• roadtrips
• rarepairs, minor characters, multishipping, friendships, ensemble casts, casual/background poly
• sparring
• time loops
• unusual/experimental prose style and structure
• worldbuilding, histories (canonical or invented), strong sense of setting
• wound care

NSFW likes (see here for more details):

• breathplay/choking
• competition or rivalry elements
• consensual violence
• D/s undertones, undernegotiated or non-negotiated D/s
• edging
• focus on hands/wrists/throats/collarbones, pretty much just throats in general
• multiple partners
• power dynamics and authority kink
• praise as a form of degradation
• sex pollen-style dubcon
• basically, if it involves the combination of violence and tenderness, I'm in!

General dislikes:

• anything revolving around kids/pregnancy/marriage
• daddy kink
• formal BDSM
• graphic descriptions of unsanitary situations
• graphic medical experimentation
• lengthy kink negotiations
• public humiliation
• romance-related jealousy, infidelity
• reincarnation AUs, A/B/O, high school AUs (for canons not already set in high school)
• scat, watersports, etc

7 Seeds | Mayu

If you’re writing Mayu fic, you can't go wrong -- honestly, you could just write out Mayu's internal monologue as she watches paint dry or something and I'd be over the moon, I'm guaranteed to love anything in which Mayu Does Things. Mayu’s emotional maturity, levelheadedness, care for her friends, social charisma, classic Summer A self-absorption, sweetness, and cheerful passive-aggressiveness are what make her my favourite 7 Seeds character out of a cast I absolutely adore.

Summer A gen is my lifeblood, and I’d love slightly off-key slice-of-life fic exploring Mayu’s childhood/middle-school years within Summer A -- what kind of group traditions do they have? Do they try to adopt any horrifically misinterpreted civilian customs on Mayu's prompting? What does her daily routine look like? How has she decorated her dorm room, and who does she room with? Who shares her classes? Who does she view as rivals? Where does she get her supply of cute hair accessories???

I’d also love a canon-divergent AU where Mayu lives and becomes the Summer A leader -- what changes, and what doesn’t? Does she still clash with the other teams? How do the other Summer A members feel about her leadership? Who are her favourite civilians? There’s a whole range of possibilities in diverging from canon, and I’d love to see your take on it!

These are all largely canon-focused prompts, but if you wanted to write an AU transposing Summer A's weird claustrophobic childhood-friends-who-can-barely-trust-each-other-anymore intimacy into a different setting, please go wild! Summer A as a competitive sports team? Summer A as an elite idol group? Summer A as a cutthroat investment banking office? Summer A as a witch coven? Summer A as a vigilante superhero initiative? I'm very interested to see how Mayu might shine in another context!

Here are some potential Mayu dynamics I particularly love, gen and/or ship interpretations both welcome -- all optional, just here if you’d like more prompts:

• Mayu/Ryo -- even though they didn't really interact in canon I'm very interested in the way Ryo’s fake bad boy lifestyle potentially provides an excellent foil for Mayu. Canon-wise, did Mayu hang around on the peripheries of Ryo and Ango’s dramatic rivalry and make fun of them with Nijiko? Did she ever work with, compete against, tutor, or be tutored by Ryo? In a Mayu-lives AU, tell me about her exile roadtrip with Ryo -- how the two people least interested in exploring the new world, having prioritised the safety of their friends above all else, begin to turn their focus outwards and reluctantly find beauty in this utterly foreign place. A friend put it as ‘we are trying to preserve this fading world even though in doing so we’ve alienated every other person we wanted to do it for, but this singular other person thinks we’re on the right track, so we can keep going for another day’ -- anything with that kind of 'us against the world’ vibe would be amazing!

• Mayu/Ayu -- as Koruri’s best friend, Mayu must be on top of all the Summer A gossip, and so surely she must have known about the bullying Ayu was going through, especially as they share soil class. Mayu’s also well-respected by her peers, so why didn’t she put a stop to it? Did she try to rationalise her inaction the way Ayu did ('it would be condescending if I tried to help her, she’s strong enough to handle it herself’)? Was there a period, when the bullying had just begun, where Ayu thought that Mayu would step in soon? For all Mayu’s interpersonal expertise, Ayu seems to be the one situation she doesn’t know how to deal with, and I’d love to see something exploring that. In a Mayu-lives AU, how does that friction and misery escalate? Does Mayu seek Ayu out, or does she try to pretend everything is fine between them?

• Mayu/Koruri -- the sweetest friendship (plus Nobara, if you like)! Would love any sort of slice-of-life -- Mayu: Girl Detective’s investigations into the mysterious Saucer-Eyed Club activities, helping each other study for exams, roommate hijinks. In a Mayu-lives AU, tell me about Mayu and Koruri clashing over Koruri growing closer to the other teams, and how the new world strains their relationship?

• Mayu/Nijiko -- I'd love to see Mayu and Nijiko being unexpectedly good friends and classmates, particularly since they share soil class! Maybe a field trip, or studying in the library together, or Mayu waterproofing an extra track jacket for Nijiko? In a Mayu-lives AU, what causes them to fall out, and why doesn't Nijiko go into exile with Mayu and Ryo given her closeness to both?

Also, I’m not a fan of Ango, and I’d be grateful if you could keep his presence in the fic to a minimum, thank you!

My tag for Mayu is here, assorted thoughts about a Mayu-lives AU can be found here.

Engelsforstrilogin | Minoo Falk Karimi, Ida Holmström

Minoo/Ida is my rarepair otp and I like how they mirror one another, except that Minoo actively tries to be (or be seen as) a good person, while Ida tends to prioritise her own interests over her conscience. But most importantly, both girls are ultimately heroic despite their struggles with motive and action! Some specific prompts:

• Any sort of missing-scene fic -- reluctantly spending time together, shying away from what they see of themselves reflected in the other, making spur-of-the-moment overtures that may or may not be successful, having to work together, being unsettled by but ultimately drawn to one another. I think a lot about how they were only able to truly make that connection right before the end, so I'd just really like to see something that recognises that they're the ones who are most able to understand each other, especially because they don't want to.

• A sidequest sent by the Book of Patterns/a magical dream/something one of the Circle happened upon during research that requires both Minoo and Ida's skillsets to complete -- seriously, just give me the flimsiest justification for making them spend time together in isolation. Maybe a roadtrip? All of the slow burn, gradually opening up to each other, tentative companionship and loyalty despite disliking one another, accidentally settling into routines or familiarity, working surprisingly well with each other (destroying the fragile connection they've forged once they return to the others?). Feel free to mess around with the timeline to facilitate this!

• Really interested in how their family situations shape their personalities -- Minoo’s adopted her family’s moral compass and overachiever tendencies, while Ida’s internalised her family’s coldness and viciousness. Both of them struggle with familial expectation and the resulting slew of hurt or insecurities -- do they ever manage to set the need to preserve their image aside and have a proper conversation about it?

• Something that delves more into the bodyswap arc in Fire. AUs where Minoo also swapped into Ida are welcome! How do they deal with literally wearing the other's skin and having to confront the severe case of impostor syndrome the other is facing? I love all kinds of selfcest and bodysharing tropes.

• Other canon divergences -- AUs where Elias, Rebecka, Ida, Viktor etc live are welcome! I particularly like the idea of an AU where Ida is alive during The Key and comes closest to bringing Minoo back from Walter/the guardians.

• Also more than happy for you to add any of the other characters, nominated or not, into the mix to play Minoo and Ida off of -- my favourite option is Clara (the vicious streak she shares with Ida would probably simultaneously draw them towards each other and drive up distrust between them, which would be really cool to see play out), and I'm also really interested in some kind of tensely semiplatonic Minoo/Viktor/Ida thing rooted in mutual dislike and grudging trust, as well as Minoo/Linnea/Ida clashing worldviews. I just love Circle poly in general! In terms of background ships, you can't go wrong with Vanessa/Linnea and Felix/happiness; I'm also a fan of Minoo/Clara, Ida/Clara and Minoo/Rebecka.

• I'd prefer it if the main cause of conflict/tension between Minoo and Ida was not their shared romantic interest in Gustaf. I like Gustaf but am not very attached to him, so if you don't want to write him at all, that's cool. For these three, I'd rather not receive poly.

The Poppy War | Fang Runin, Chaghan Suren, Altan Trengsin

I'm so taken by the sheer messiness of these three in any combination or even smashed all together. My favourite things about them, in no particular order: Rin's habit of falling in love with people in positions of authority over her and/or people who she wants to kill and/or people who want to kill her; the power dynamics of Altan as commander, Chaghan as lieutenant and Rin as the rookie who is nonetheless selected to be Altan's successor; the intense physicality Rin and Altan exude set against Chaghan's otherworldliness; the way love, hate, and fear overlap for all three of them. I like them best when they're furiously attracted to each other and also trying to kill each other, so anything in that vein would be awesome. No matter where you position your fic along the plot-porn spectrum I will be overjoyed!

 

I don't imagine the events of TBG will affect these prompts much, but I definitely plan to have read it by reveals, so if you'd like to reference or foreshadow anything that happens in the book, go right ahead. Also, if you aren't comfortable matching canonical levels of gore, that's completely fine, but if you are, you can go wild with that too!  Finally, you don't have to include all three of them if it doesn't work with the timeline or your specific idea.

 

Some prompts:

• Fix-it fic for Altan's death - not even sure if it should be called fix-it when I'm pretty sure it would only fuck everything up even more, but I'd love to see an AU where Altan somehow survives that night at the pier. Maybe he's resurrected by another god for the kicks and Rin has to kill him for the third time, only this time for real, with the sword she reforged out of Altan's trident? Maybe Chaghan has to kill him? Both of their efforts combined?

• Chaghan finds himself in a time loop that gives him the opportunity to go to Chuluu Korikh with Altan (and Rin?). Does he ever manage to save Altan? Is it even his own time loop -- is he just an aware spectator in someone else's (Rin's?) loop? I'd just really love some more insight into Chaghan's head.

• Lotus eater dreams are my favourite trope ever and I'm so excited we got some in canon -- I'd love to see more, maybe involving Chaghan this time! What does Chaghan's ideal world look like? What are his greatest desires? And who will be capable of pulling him out of it?
  • You could also expand on any of the ones Rin experienced in canon, like the one where she's speaking to Altan on the day before her wedding to someone else. What does a world where Speer was never massacred and Rin kept all her friends look like? Is Nezha the person she's marrying?
  • And to round it off, how about Altan in a lotus eater dream? Is there even anything he wants at all or allows himself to want, other than revenge and destruction?

• I adored the Sinegard chapters of TPW because I have a huge soft spot for military academy tropes, so I'd love to spend more time in that calm-before-the-storm coming of age period. I know Altan had already graduated by the time Rin became a second-year apprentice, but how about an AU that closes their age gap by a year where Altan was allowed to pledge Lore and he and Rin ended up both being Jiang's apprentices for a year? Altan sneaking Rin into the fighting rings, the two of them sparring together with lower stakes, a lighter version of their mentorship dynamic, bonding over their abilities during more carefree times, Rin's hero worship crush coming to a head as she gets to know more of Altan before war pushed him entirely off the rails. Or maybe this is just another dream caused by the seal, and Chaghan is doing his damnedest to get through?

• Mentorship -- I love the shared legacy Rin and Altan both bear, and how Rin tries so hard to model herself after Altan, and how Rin's way of dealing with her increasing understanding that Altan is a shell of a person animated by his vengeance quest is to stubbornly idealise him even further, even as Altan spirals into desperation and cruelty. I just really want to see more of the incredibly unbalanced yet intensely powerful dynamic between Rin and Altan -- the way Rin grew to resent Altan just as much as she loved him was one of my favourite parts of TPW, so anything that plays that up would be amazing.

• Rivals to leader/second-in-command is so ridiculously tailored to my interests and I'd love to see more of Chaghan and Altan at any point in the timeline - when Chaghan hated Altan for taking his position in the Cike, during Chaghan's leadership challenge, the unconventional shape of their relationship after Altan terrified/fought/fucked/etc Chaghan into submission and Chaghan realised he enjoyed feeling powerless because nobody had ever been unafraid of him before, the development of their commander/lieutenant roles...
  • The memory Rin saw of Chaghan and Altan, which I'm pretty sure was during their three-day leadership duel -- expand on that! How many times did they physically beat each other up before they started fucking? I imagine the lines were pretty blurred, so please give me fights to the death devolving into makeouts with no less lethal intent!
  • I adore the divide between Altan-the-untouchable-living-myth-of-a-prodigy and Altan-the-deeply-flawed-human-being and how Rin's idealisation of the former begins to chip away as Altan starts cracking under the combined weight of the legacy of Speer and his military failures. We know Rin only saw glimpses of the real Altan, but Chaghan seems to have understood Altan very deeply -- how did Altan end up trusting Chaghan enough to let him in and tell him so much of his painful history?
  • Chaghan said that Altan needs victory and validation because he isn't used to not being the best. Would Altan ever allow Chaghan to be in a position to give that validation to him?

• I love the dynamic where two people who don't like each other are bound together by their mutual love of a third person who is no longer present, so in that light Rin/Chaghan is really interesting to me. I want to see even more of their uneasy enemy-of-my-enemy truce and how they deal badly with grief and the shadow of Altan hanging over everything! More along the lines of either the Altan Widows Club scene in TDR where Chaghan gives Rin the world's most awkward one-armed hug / solidarity shoulder touch or steamrolling over each other's boundaries because they know precisely where to hit (Altan-shaped sore spots) to make it hurt would be amazing.
  • They treat each other as proxies for Altan while sniping at each other the entire time for not being Altan. Like, sure, Rin might have been the one Altan chose to succeed him, but Chaghan is the one who's actually touched Altan's dick. Honestly you could go in a dark sex comedy direction with both of them being jealous of the other for the part of Altan they were exclusively privy to and trying to get it out of their system via sort-of-hatesex and stupid feats of oneupmanship. We love terrible coping mechanisms!
  • Rin experiences more of Chaghan's memories of his relationship with Altan, feelings start getting superimposed on top of each other and mixed up.
  • Rin and Chaghan hash out their commander/lieutenant dynamic via sparring -- Chaghan won't challenge Rin for leadership directly, because this is what Altan wanted and Chaghan will uphold Altan's wishes until the end, but he sure will make things as hard for her as possible.

• Wound care - any of them sustaining a serious injury on a Cike mission and needing to be patched up on the spot so they can get to safety. I love emotional vulnerability on the heels of physical vulnerability!

• The Cike -- I'm obsessed with this motley collective of superpowered assassins who operate under the understanding that they will have to permanently subdue one another someday, but until then they remain loyal to their Commander and to each other… I wish we got to see more of their pseudofamilial ensemble dynamic, so I'd adore casefic with the Cike team in the background (or foreground, if you like)! The team messing around with an Altan not yet pushed past breaking point, Baji and Unegen teasing Qara, more of Chaghan and Qara together, the integration process of any of them into the Cike. You could do something set in the past when Tyr was still Commander (and Feylen was still around?), or stretch the timeline to enable a mission before/during/after the Khurdulain siege, or expand on one of the assassinations Moag had them carry out before the start of TDR. 
  • Also interested in fleshing out the backstories of the rest of the Cike, especially considering Baji and Suni were Jiang's apprentices at Sinegard -- what exactly did they do to get them sent to Baghra? Would they ever speak about Jiang with Rin?
  • Casefic seems like a great opportunity for undercover as a couple... could there ever be an assassination scenario where two of them have to pretend to be married in order to infiltrate some event? Play around with canon divergences as you see fit!
  • AU where the war doesn't start before Rin graduates Sinegard and is assigned to the Cike, so she's sent to the Night Castle and that's how she meets everyone? I'm dying to know what the Night Castle is like, and how the Cike might operate under Altan's leadership (or Tyr's, if you want to AU it further) outside of the extenuating circumstances of a war.

• Other NSFW prompts:
  • The blurring of violence and tenderness is my favourite thing ever, particularly when it comes with such a heavy dose of resentment. Fightsex, sublimation of horny feelings into sparring, sparring in general, all those scenes where Altan choked or threatened to choke out Rin and Chaghan but in a more explicitly sexy context, you get the idea.
  • Anything that plays into the Cike chain of command. I love authority kink, and power imbalances, and Altan being terrifyingly deadly and controlling, and Rin and Chaghan both being really into that. It's very convenient that Rin gets off on both pain and praise, and Chaghan gets off on fear, and Altan is in an excellent position to provide all of these.
  • Rin and Altan get dosed with sex pollen, or magic Phoenix shenanigans side effects, or an unexpected hallucinogen reaction post-battle, or something. Chaghan is the only one still lucid and needs to get them to safety. Alternatively, Altan gets hit by sex pollen and it's simultaneously Rin's wildest fantasy and worst nightmare. Chaghan can help out too.

• I am a huge fan of Rin/Nezha and strongly suspect the series is heading in that direction as endgame, so if you'd like to include or reference them on the side, that would be fine with me! I'm also into Rin/Venka and Rin/Qara.

 
 

 

Again, these are all just suggestions – use them or leave them as you wish! Thank you so much, and see you on the other side!

- Ash / sulfate