yuletide 2023

[alectorine]

Hi! I'm sulfate (also at pyrophane) and first of all, thank you so much for participating! I'm so excited to see what you create. 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 highrankership, 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!

Treats of any kind and length are welcome ❤️

General | 7 Seeds | Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy | Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway's Flash

General likes:

• apocalypse or post-apocalypse settings
• characters being stabbed or otherwise injured on the shoulder
• 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
• fate and/or doom—in the sense of some unavoidable tragedy looming on the horizon even if the characters don't know it yet, or starcrossed lovers, or characters railing against their fate but ultimately unable to avert it, or characters being soulmates except one (or both) is horrified by the idea of predestined love (particularly where they're enemies before they find out they're soulmates). On a happier note, I also like fate in the sense of serendipitous meetings and reunions, and ships that are Meant To Be, in whatever capacity
• leader x second-in-command dynamics
• lotus-eater machines
• magical realism, urban fantasy, any magic/superpowers/witchcraft AU in general
• mentorships
• physicality and nonverbal communication
• pining and repressed feelings, repressed characters finally admitting what they want
• pop idol AU, Bleak Boyband Bingo tropes
• power dynamics, power imbalances, difficult/ambiguous/dysfunctional relationships
• roadtrips
• rarepairs, minor characters, multishipping, friendships, ensemble casts, casual/background poly
• sparring
• time loops
• unusual/experimental prose style and structure
• worldbuilding, histories, strong sense of setting
• wound care

NSFW likes (see here for more details):

• breathplay/choking
• competition, violence or rivalry elements
• D/s undertones, undernegotiated or non-negotiated D/s
• edging
• focus on hands/wrists/throats/collarbones, pretty much just throats in general
• 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 involving pregnancy or raising kids
• daddy kink
• formal BDSM
• graphic descriptions of broken bones—unless there's a supernatural healing mechanic at play, in which case go wild. But either way, other injuries in the nature of bruises, cuts, dislocations, stabbings, etc are all fine!
• graphic descriptions of unsanitary situations, including infections
• graphic medical experimentation
• homophobia (internalised or societal)
• infidelity
• lengthy kink negotiations
• noncon
• public humiliation
• reincarnation AU, A/B/O, high school AU

7 Seeds | Mayu

How to read: 178-chapter manga, available via scanlation sites (I don't think there is an official licensed translation). There is an anime adaptation on Netflix, but I wouldn't recommend it as it's very rushed and the quality isn't great.

A perennial repeat request! 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 instead of Ango 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? Personally I imagine her attentiveness to others' emotional needs would warp into micromanagey "I know best"-type control issues and ultimately result in much the same outcome as Ango's leadership i.e. attempted removal of threats to the status quo and subsequent exile. But 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 an institutional superhero initiative? I'm 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's student leadership committee energy, and these two have somehow become my series OTP (though I will absolutely eat up any gen iteration too!). 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'd be grateful if you could keep Ango's presence in the fic to a minimum. Mentions of Ango in context of his rivalry with Ryo or as a background ensemble cast member are fine.

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



Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy | Katrielle Layton, Emiliana Perfetti

How to play: Video game, available on mobile, 3DS, and Switch. I've logged 18 hours for 100% completion, but Emiliana only appears in Cases 2, 3, 5, 8, 11 and 12, so it could definitely be done more quickly. You can also find a walkthrough here.

I adored the main Professor Layton games when I was younger but only recently discovered Layton's Mystery Journey—and instantly became obsessed with GIRL DETECTIVE RIVALS!

What I love about Katrielle: her cheerful materialistic self-centredness and love for fashion and food and fine things in life, as well as her compassion and her willingness to go the extra mile to achieve an outcome she believes is just even if it's more than what the law requires, like her resolution of the Goddess of the Thames case.

What I love about Emiliana: her cool haughty primness and perfectionism, and her pride in her intellect and logical prowess, contrasted with the unexpected gap charm of her secret love for romance stories and Maverick D. Rector's movies, her fear of the supernatural, and her kind heart as pointed out by PC Beate—all of which she represses and vehemently denies and pretends not to have despite her transparency.

What I love about Katrielle/Emiliana: the way their rivalry drives them to improve themselves, the deep respect and trust they grow to have for each other to the point where Emiliana of all people has such staunch faith in Katrielle in the Katrielle Layton: Wanted! case, their friendly antagonistic banter, Katrielle's confident openness contrasted with Emiliana's uptight repression, the way their opposing investigative styles of instinctual synthesis vs logical deduction reflect their complementary personalities but at their core they both have the same good heart.

I'm less interested in established relationship fic for them and am more into the rivals-to-lovers aspect. In short, I'd love anything where Emiliana's cool composed shell cracks in front of Katrielle's sunny unfazeability, or where Emiliana gets flustered by Katrielle's directness, or in general Emiliana being super tsundere, whether or not she's aware of her crush on Katrielle. If you're writing porn, I'd prefer it if Katrielle is the top (if relevant) and/or the more dominant party.

Some specific prompts if you'd like more direction:

• Casefic! If you're interested in going for something more plotty (or even just a single-scene glimpse into a case they're working), I would absolutely eat it up, especially if there's some kind of supernatural element that can bring out Emiliana's very cute fear of ghosts (and Katrielle's penchant for teasing her about it). I'd love to see more of Katrielle and Emiliana not-so-reluctantly working together, divvying up investigative tasks, brainstorming and bouncing theories off each other, bantering and ribbing each other mid-investigation, spurring each other on to be the best detectives they can be, sharing living and/or working spaces, unintentionally growing accustomed to each other's habits... I enjoy both the quaint cozy atmosphere of the earlier cases and the darker, more serious tone of the climactic cases in LMJ so either—or both!—would be welcome. If you'd like some plot inspiration, Detective Conan has a ton of oneshot mysteries that have similar vibes to LMJ.

• In a similar vein to the above prompt, futurefic where Katrielle and Emiliana run into each other at a detective competition (like the puzzle party in the final case) they've both been invited to, after a year or so of not seeing each other. Maybe one of them went abroad for study or work? I can see Emiliana taking up a more prestigious role overseas or getting poached by a high-profile agency. Regardless, they have to work through both the mystery at hand and the big question mark of their unresolved feelings about each other. Perhaps the competition gets derailed by a very real and unstaged murder that forces them to go from competitors to collaborators in order to solve it? Who invited them to the competition, and why? For the other contestants, feel free to use OCs (I love the silly Ace Attorney-esque pun names among the LMJ cast) or give your favourite detectives/secret agents/geniuses cameo roles.

• Bodyswap—Katrielle and Emiliana are so different in temperament that bodyswap fic could be really fun for them. There's already a talking dog in canon, so surely bodyswapping is not out of the realm of possibility. How good are they at acting like each other? If the POV character already knows she has feelings for the other, how does she cope with literally inhabiting her crush's body? Which of their friends and acquaintances and coworkers do they manage to fool? Who figures it out? How do they return to their original bodies? I know the usual way the trope is resolved is via sex and I would love to see it if you're interested in writing explicit fic!

• Emiliana wakes up one day with the ability to see ghosts. Terrified and not entirely convinced she hasn't gone mad, she turns to the only person who might believe her: Katrielle. Cue harnessing Emiliana's newfound medium powers to solve murders and cold cases together. You could extend the magical themes further—what if Katrielle's "luck" and "gut instinct" were supernatural or even divine in nature?

• Spy/secret agent AU—or maybe futurefic? They're rival agents working for different national organisations, but they're brought together to collaborate on a cross-jurisdictional project. All the above prompts could equally apply in a spy AU setting. I love all tropes related to going undercover as a couple and fakeout makeouts.

• Optional crossover prompt if you're familiar with Mystery Room—I'd love to see Katrielle and Emiliana working with Lucy and Alfendi (and Hilda?) on a murder case! Maybe a canon divergence AU where serial killer Diane becomes Lucy's Moriarty-style nemesis figure and the case is getting complex enough that Scotland Yard has to call in extra resources in the form of its star profiler? Maybe Katrielle just happens to be in the area for a family reunion and gets caught up in events? Or perhaps Diane winds up fixating on Katrielle, somehow (there's some fun potential for Emiliana to get irrationally jealous that someone else is staking a claim on her rival, and then annoyed at herself for the irrational response. Of course, Diane wouldn't limit her flirty threats to just Lucy and Katrielle...)? I'm 100% open to polyshipping Lucy and/or Diane with Katrielle and Emiliana, but I'd also welcome gen. In terms of Mystery Room-specific ships, I like all combinations of Alfendi/Hilda/Lucy/Diane.

As a note, I find Ernest fun and funny as Katrielle's henchman and I don't mind him continuing to have unrequited romantic feelings for Katrielle, but I'd prefer if his crush on Katrielle was not a point of conflict with Emiliana. I'd also rather not see him as an antagonist or obstacle in Katrielle and Emiliana's grand rivalmance. I'm happy for you to include or not include Ernest as you wish. Please no poly with these three.

Out of the rest of the Layton series, I'm familiar with Curious Village, Pandora's Box, Lost Future, and Mystery Room—feel free to draw on any Layton source for lore, worldbuilding, or fun cameo purposes, but I just might not pick up on it if it's outside of those four games.



Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway's Flash | Gigi Andalucia, Hathaway Noa, Kenneth Sleg

How to watch: 1.5 hour movie, available on Netflix. I would recommend also watching the prequel, Char's Counterattack (2 hour movie, available on Crunchyroll and Netflix), but Hathaway's Flash is decently standalone—though Netflix also has a six-minute summary of the events leading up to Hathaway's Flash on Youtube! For even more background context, there is a compilation movie trilogy of the original Gundam series (available on Netflix), which is the prequel to Char's Counterattack, but that's more distant from Hathaway's Flash and I'd consider it optional viewing.

It honestly took me multiple watches to register anything that was happening in this movie because I was so distracted by the high-octane sexual tension simmering between everyone. What I like best about these three, ship-wise: Hathaway's attraction to Gigi overlaid with his grief over Quess and the way he tries to push Gigi away despite their undeniable chemistry and growing intimacy, and the way Gigi cuts through him so easily; the flirty sensuality Kenneth and Gigi exude together contrasted against the difficulty of their respective connections to Hathaway, and Kenneth's jaded divorcee experience vs Gigi's youthful naivete; the despair of Hathaway and Kenneth being enemy leaders despite their initial regard for each other and similar ideological outlooks on doing necessary evil to achieve good; the intense sense of doom permeating everything.

Naturally, I'd love porn, if you're interested in writing explicit fic! Other than that, I'm primarily looking for something bittersweet or even tragic, though I'm all for moments of levity and humour along the way.

Some prompts:

• Post-canon fic where Hathaway dies, leaving Kenneth and Gigi surviving him (any situation where Hathaway martyrs himself would be great, especially if either Kenneth or Gigi were involved in his death. Does Kenneth really end up taking his head, except in significantly sadder circumstances than he expected?). I love dynamics between two people who both loved the same, now absent, third person. How does the loss of someone they both felt so intensely about impact their relationship with each other? I see Kenneth and Gigi in canon as on decent terms, maybe with a lowkey friends(?)-with-benefits type of arrangement—does Hathaway's death drive them closer together or further apart? Do they grow unhealthily close and codependent since they're all they have left of Hathaway, or do they flee from the constant reminder of their grief and only reunite by chance years later, reigniting all the old tumult of complicated emotions that never really used to be there before Hathaway died? Does Hathaway's newtype ghost ever appear to either of them? If you decide to write this prompt, you can focus on Kenneth and Gigi as a subset.

• Lotus-eater machine—Hathaway's personal desires are so deeply repressed because of his belief that he should function as a symbol of his grand cause rather than as a person, making him a prime target for the involuntary unrepression of a lotus eater machine dream where he, Kenneth and Gigi are already in an established relationship. I'd love to see all the idyllic ot3 scenes that don't seem possible in canon—they have a lovely day at the beach despite Hathaway's ambivalence about the ocean, they have domestic cohabitation shenanigans, they go on a mini roadtrip holiday, they go grocery shopping together, they have great sex untarnished by war-related horrors... maybe Kenneth and Gigi even manage to convince Hathaway that everything that happened before was just a bad dream. Except Hathaway is too burdened by guilt and duty to let himself have this kind of simple joy—I think he would take a long time to accept this new, softer "reality", and that he would ultimately try to go back to the real world to carry out his responsibilities, no matter how happy he is or could be in the dream, and I'd love to see all his warring emotions about getting a seemingly happy ending play out!
  • You could do some interesting worldbuilding here, if you were so inclined! What does a peaceful world where Hathaway gets all his heart's desires even look like, considering how deeply rooted war and trauma are in him and everything around him? How far back does the historical revisionism extend—did the events of Char's Counterattack occur? Are Amuro and Char still alive? Is Quess still alive (If she is, I hope she and Hathaway are somehow on good terms in his dream ;__;)? How is Hathaway's relationship with his family? Are the White Base crew in his life as family friends? Do Gundams exist in this world? Is the world totally untouched by war? Maybe the history of this world is all flimsily vague and ambiguous no matter how much Hathaway tries to figure it out, adding to the eerie sense that something's not quite right here.
  • What does it take for Hathaway to finally make the choice to leave the dream behind? How do dream Kenneth and dream Gigi react? Are they aware they aren't real, or do they just seem really worried that Hathaway appears to have gone crazy, or is it unclear? If Quess exists in this dream, I could see her as a sort of "final boss" Hathaway has to face before leaving, in that he has to finally let her go before he can return to the real world.
  • Alternatively, something that starts off seeming like a regular modern AU where everyone has mundane non-military jobs and backstories but Hathaway starts having these weird dreams about giant robots and ecological catastrophe and death that gradually spill over into his waking life—but which world is the dream and which is reality?

• I really enjoyed the scene where Kenneth beat the fuck out of Gawman and I'd love to see him rough Hathaway up too—any physical violence short of breaking bones would be great. Maybe in a scenario where Hathaway gets captured or offers himself up to save another Mafty member? Maybe Kenneth believes Hathaway's actions are genuinely irredeemable and feels personally betrayed that Hathaway ended up being Mafty Navue Erin himself, or maybe Federation officials are supervising and force Kenneth to make an example out of Hathaway. Does Gigi intervene like she did during the plane hijacking, or tend to Hathaway's wounds afterwards? Go all out on the misery and emotional agony!

• Spy AU—I feel like everyone has this suave fashionable secret agent Bond-movie-esque energy and it'd be fun to see that in a literal sense! Hathaway as the "civilian" son of high-profile Federation agent Bright Noa who gets "unwittingly" caught up in an operation led by Kenneth, only he's actually the undercover leader of an enemy organisation here to sabotage it? Expert consultant Gigi hired by Kenneth for the operation who instantly uncovers Hathaway's secret but doesn't rat him out? A glitzy event stakeout/infiltration/assassination scene where they have to attend in fancy outfits would be so good—maybe two of them go as a fake couple? Loved Kenneth helping Gigi do up her dress in front of Hathaway in the movie and would enjoy something similar in a spy AU context, maybe plus helping her with strapping on weapons under her dress. Maybe plus helping her take everything off afterwards...

• NSFW prompts:
  • I loved how forward Kenneth and Gigi both were about their interest in Hathaway, so the logical extension seems to be Kenneth and Gigi ganging up on Hathaway to seduce him. Maybe they even make a competition out of it? Who gets Hathaway to crack first? Hopefully it all ends in threesome porn where everyone gets what they want. Happy with a lighthearted sex comedy tone for this one, but if you wanted to drop a few angst gutpunches somewhere, I'm a huge fan of getting lulled into a false sense of security before being blindsided by anguish.
  • In a similar vein, accidental voyeurism fic where Hathaway keeps stumbling across Kenneth and Gigi hooking up and has to contend with his repressed attraction to both of them. Naturally, Kenneth and Gigi have been orchestrating this on purpose with the intent of trying to get Hathaway to join them (and eventually he does... but only after a lot of guilty jacking off).
  • Kenneth coaching Hathaway on how to fuck Gigi the way she likes it.
  • In general, I'd love any threesome porn setup where Kenneth is a dom top and a bit of a sadist who likes seeing his partner/s desperate and pushed to their limits but in a service top kind of way where he's extremely focused on giving them what they want even if they won't admit it, all while staying charming and casually in control. Think overstimulation, edging, rough sex, choking, sexual bullying, humiliation via praise, etc. Hathaway comes off as a bit of a masochistic mess under the shield of cool competence and I would like to see him unrepressed despite himself. I don't mind if Gigi is bossy/bratty in bed and knows what she wants, but please no pegging or femdom.

• Not really a prompt, but I'm obsessed with the visual of Gigi wearing that oversized Federation military jacket, so any mention of Gigi stealing from Hathaway and/or Kenneth's wardrobes would make me very happy.

Also, I love Quess, so I'd be really grateful if you didn't include unambiguously negative narration about her in the fic, if relevant. Hathaway having complicated longing-resentment-guilt feelings about Quess is very welcome, though!

I'm familiar with all mainline UC Gundam series, so feel free to draw from any source for lore and worldbuilding as you see fit.

[Click for spoilery prompt addenda]

For the prompt about Kenneth and Gigi in the aftermath of Hathaway's death, feel free to use the novel canon where Hathaway is executed by the Federation and Kenneth takes up Hathaway's mantle to continue Mafty's resistance. Feel free to also use the alternate history in Beltorchika's Children (eg Hathaway being the one to kill Quess) rather than Char's Counterattack, if you'd like.

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