yuletide 2025

[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 explore, please 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, on tumblr delineative, and on my other dreamwidth rhodochrosite.

Treats of any kind and length are welcome ❤️

General

7 Seeds | 2020's Men's Tennis RPF | Chase Atlantic | Jianghu Mystery | Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy | Sakamoto Days

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, superheroes/supervillains, any magic/superpowers/witchcraft AU in general
• mentorships
• physicality and nonverbal communication
• pining and repressed feelings, repressed characters pushed to breaking and finally admitting what they want
• pop idol AU, Bleak Boyband Bingo tropes
• power dynamics, power imbalances, difficult/ambiguous/dysfunctional relationships that are intensely felt but hard to define
• roadtrips
• rarepairs, minor characters, multishipping, friendships, ensemble casts, casual/background poly, the most important person to a character being someone other than their ship partner
• 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 and choking
• competition, violence or rivalry elements
• D/s undertones, undernegotiated or non-negotiated D/s
• edging
• focus on hands/wrists/throats/collarbones
• power dynamics and authority kink
• praise as a form of degradation
• sex pollen-style dubcon
• basically, if it involves the combination of violence and intimacy, I'm in!

Art likes:

• blood
• characters interacting with their younger selves or other versions of themselves
• characters wearing hairclips
• characters pointing weapons at each other
• eye closeups
• floral motifs
• hands on throats / backs of necks / wrists
• mirrors reflecting a different scene
• outfit swap or one character wearing a distinctive clothing item belonging to the other character
• penrose stairs
• shoulder injuries
• stylisation and symbolism
• tarot card redraws
• unusual colour palettes
• weird or dramatic lighting and/or composition
• "what's in my bag"-style item layouts

DNWs:

• anything involving pregnancy or raising kids
• bitter breakups of canon relationships
• 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
• public humiliation
• reincarnation AU, A/B/O, high school AU, historical or period setting AU

7 Seeds | Mayu

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 everything to me, 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 commercial litigation firm or 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!

Fandom-specific DNW: Focus on Ango (mentions in context of his rivalry with Ryo or as a background ensemble cast member are fine).

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?

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


2020's Men's Tennis RPF | Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner

This rivalry of epic proportions where they drive each other to constantly become better and better versions of themselves! It’s so romantic that they outstrip the rest of their cohort by so much that self-improvement largely comes about as a response to the other person, so their tennis becomes more and more like a conversation. I’m primarily looking for intense ambiguous possibly-unrequited longing that can be folded into or mistaken for normal feelings of rivalry which are safe to express, as opposed to any actual established relationship. I’m a sucker for Jannik being the one so tightly repressed he can barely even acknowledge what it is he feels for Carlos, worsened by Carlos’s easy extroverted affection for everyone making it hard to tell whether Carlos feels any specific way towards Jannik, but the flipside where Carlos can’t read Jannik outside of his tennis and is at a real social loss for the first time in his life would be equally as excellent.

I love the jockbrain calculus of eagerly sacrificing long-term wellbeing for short-term brilliance; I think pro athletes are a lot like idols and would welcome the application of any relevant Bleak Boyband Bingo tropes. As a Prince of Tennis fan, if you want to throw realism to the wind and give them tennis superpowers or have Yukimura Seiichi show up I will be overjoyed too. But also please feel free to be as granular and technical as you like about tennis detail and “worldbuilding”.

Current WTA favourites are Elena Rybakina, Emma Raducanu, and Zheng Qinwen. ATP favourites are Jack Draper and Alex de Minaur, and I’m a heritage Roger Federer fan. Other ships and dynamics I like: Jack/Emma (obsessed with the idea of them being exes who aren’t over each other and Emma weaponising Carlos’s puppy crush on her to get back at Jack), Jack/Jannik (Carlos’s PR boyfriend and PR girlfriend both having ambiguous things going on with the same guy is pretty funny), Qinwen/Emma (what if we were both unfairly controversial players with a thread of common heritage in a lonely sport but you're more dedicated and outperform me even though my peak was higher... and we were both girls?), Jannik/Novak (in an unlikely heir kills the king to take the throne / dying at the merciless hands of your younger self kind of way, if you get what I mean), Jannik&/Elena, Jannik & Emma, Carlos & Emma. Also love Jannik being a fan of Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri being a fan of Jannik, and am very open to F1 crossover dynamics and ships.

Fandom-specific DNWs: descriptions of Carlos with a buzzcut, career ending injuries (non-career ending sports gore very welcome), jealousy over interactions with women, focus on Alexander Zverev, Stefanos Tsitsipas or Nick Kyrgios (mentions are okay). If relevant, my preference for handling any IRL partners is an amicable breakup or no mention at all. Feel free to deal with or not deal with dopegate. For this request, my homophobia DNW doesn’t apply, but I would prefer it if homophobia were not a main focus of the work.

Some prompts:

• Rivalry — I’d love anything that plays up the narrative of it all: Jannik’s ice to Carlos’s fire, Jannik’s machinelike focus on perfect process and pattern to Carlos’s showy virtuosic unpredictability, tennis a religion for Jannik and a passion for Carlos. What’s more romantic than having a playing style perfectly suited to exploiting your rival’s weak points! People say that Jannik tends to be better than everyone else and Carlos tends to be better than Jannik, which is such an interesting dynamic. Anything that delves into what their rivalry means to them / their sportsmanship and the genuine happiness they seem to feel for the other’s victory versus the bitterness of defeat / their respective relationships to tennis and the role that the other plays in the development of those relationships, would be amazing. When and how did they realise they were going to be each other’s best rival? How do they deal with wanting to win necessarily meaning wanting the other to lose?
• Mythmaking and legacy — they’re only just starting out on their best tennis-playing years but they’ve already been anointed by the media as the next legends. What is it like to be on the cusp of tennis godhood, emerging out of the iron fist of the Big 3 that crushed two entire generations before them? How do they handle being at the very start of their own myths and knowing it, as well as knowing that they’ll be forever woven into each other’s stories thanks to the temporal coincidence of being prodigies of the same era? How do they feel about being retrofitted into the legacy of the Big 3? Really interested in the real-time mythologisation and the effect of the media panopticon on their play, their perceptions of themselves and their perceptions of each other. They’re basically in a media-arranged rivalrymarriage. I also eat up every Jannik~Novak and Carlos~Fedal comparison, particularly given that Carlos seems to be the Big 3’s favoured child/successor.
• They've both described themselves as varying levels of close or not close friends. Let’s discuss that! I’m obsessed with contextual relationships and I think they’re most likely coworker-esque friendly acquaintances rather than best friends. So maybe they don’t talk much off-court, but they know each other in the way that matters the most to them. Dial up the contrast between politely awkward though genuine nteractions off-court (which conceal confused burgeoning feelings that can’t be named, naturally) and perfect soul-sharing near-telepathic compatibility on-court. Simultaneous extreme distance and extreme closeness! Inability to communicate in any way other than through tennis! They have an unparalleled knowledge of each other on the court when they are the most intense and concentrated versions of themselves, so how do they bridge the gap off-court? Do they text? Do they hang out? What do they talk about, when they do talk? Will they go on those golf/skiing/karting dates they promised at Six Kings?
• Any kind of forced proximity situation — trapped in an elevator together, snowed in somewhere, required to share a hotel room for some reason, accidental soulbond that forces them to stay physically close? Winner’s room-style compulsory post-match sex? Ancient Wimbledon custom requires ritual sex between the finalists as part of the awards ceremony?
• Pacific Rim AU — because obviously they would be drift compatible. Would love for this to still be set in “canon” so their tennis rivalry backstory is preserved. There’s precedent for sports rivals turned jaeger copilots and I think this would be a great way to ventilate their whole distance/intimacy thing. Just shortcut the whole getting to know each other outside of tennis thing with a mindmeld. Nothing like the impending end of the world via giant monster to expedite a relationship!
• “In-universe” media would also be fun to see — social media reactions to #Sincaraz moments, twitter fanwars between powerscaling solo stans and shippers, reddit posts, fake RPF, YouTube analysis videos, ATP challenges and quizzes and TikToks, interviews, magazine spreads?
• NSFW prompts
  • Post-match adrenaline high sex.
  • Elements of competitiveness or sadomasochism or risk-taking during sex, especially if undernegotiated and instinctive.
  • Match outcomes or ATP ranking determining who tops.
  • They’re so outwardly courteous about each other I tend to default to imagining 100 years of tortured regencyesque pining but a rivals with benefits dynamic that makes the emotional complication even messier would also be so fun. Resolved sexual tension with unresolved emotional tension!

Chase Atlantic | Christian Anthony, Mitchel Cave

I am far from immune to homoerotic boyband stage fanservice and Christian and Mitchel engage in an especially potent form: see eg <here>, <here> and <here>. Not a single song where they need to be doing all this! Like they are straight up making out. They are three seconds away from fucking raw in front of the entire stadium. And basically, I want that in fic form.

I'm extremely keen for porn, but I also adore their warm friendship and love for each other, and the depth of history they share. The way they always talk about each other in such glowingly tender terms is so touching. They've seen each other through some real growing pains (we don't talk about What About Tonight. Unless we do...). And they're totally in love, they just haven't realised it yet. Or maybe they have realised it, but they haven't confessed for the usual reasons of valuing the friendship they already have too much. Please show me the most tropey friends to lovers seemingly unrequited pining get-together story you can come up with.

Please no overt infidelity, but feel free to otherwise handle their IRL relationships however you'd like - I'd love if Cas and Jordan knew about and were fine with Christian and Mitchel messing around and I'd love even more if Cas and Jordan had their own thing going on with each other, but I'm also cool with canon divergence where they've amicably broken up or setting the story before they started dating or otherwise not mentioning their partners at all. My homophobia DNW doesn't apply to this request, but I'd prefer if it wasn't the main focus.

Some prompts:

• Something that contrasts their intense onstage physicality (and perhaps an offstage Just Bros Jacking Each Other Off, To Help Out A Bro, Because We Are Bros arrangement?) with their equally intense but unarticulated and maybe even shy feelings about each other. Turn the agony of being so physically close and exhibitionistically simulating gestures of intimacy while holding these secret feelings and fears about ruining their friendship up to max. Are they all over each other even in private because they're clingy people and the physical closeness doesn't mean what they both wish it means? Does one of them start pulling away because he's worried the other will figure out HE'S IN LOVE, only for this to be interpreted by the other as a rejection and creating a miscommunication feedback loop?
• "It's not gay to kiss your friends" - let's revisit this. Did they ever """platonically""" experiment with each other while they were on tour? Drunk hookups or excruciatingly sober hookups? Fumbling around in the tour van as quietly as possible to avoid getting caught?
• Songwriting, production, rehearsals - I know they finish the instrumentals before writing the lyrics and use the instrumentals as a source of inspiration for lyricwriting but I'd love to dive deeper into the whole process. Do they brainstorm lyrics together or run ideas past each other? How do they work on staging the songs? Do they practice the fanservice they do onstage? I’d love something exploring the incredible intimacy of writing a song with the other person in mind — not even in a romantic sonnet sense but in the sense of knowing the other person’s skillset/tone/range/performance style and creating something tailored to that.
• NSFW prompts:
  • Post-concert adrenalin high sex. I know it goes crazy! Tell me how they work off the euphoric rush of being onstage, especially after getting so physical with each other--surely that spills over behind the scenes too...
  • Christian sucking Mitchel off, breathplay/choking, and anything that plays up the ill-advisedness of fucking up your throat when your job is singing.
  • Exhibitionism, backstage/green room hookups, the thrill in risking being discovered by others.
• I'd also be really into a fucked up toxic triangulation situation where Clinton, knowing full well about Mitchel's secret feelings for Christian, swoops in and fucks Christian first as a brotherly oneupmanship thing. Obsessed with the idea of Mitchel being all over Christian onstage, knowing Christian and Clinton have just had sex backstage but unable to do anything about it because he can't confess. Happy for a threesome or a Kras/Mitty-exclusive resolution here.

Jianghu Mystery | Kuang Beiyun, Luo Xiaoqiao

Rewatched this fever dream of a nostalgia favourite recently and, random Suddenly Vampires plot twists aside, fell in love all over again with the agonisingly UST-filled mentorsituationship Beiyun and Xiaoqiao have going on for most of the show. The unflappable situation-handling unkillable cool guy x brash hotheaded tsundere secretly-glasshearted girl dynamic is like catnip to me. I love that Beiyun is a principled gentleman thief with a no-kill policy, whereas Xiaoqiao starts off more careless about murder and collateral damage but reins it back out of respect and affection for Beiyun. I love that Xiaoqiao's feelings for Beiyun seem to be stronger since they're more immediately obvious, but it turns out that Beiyun's feelings for her run far, far deeper. No matter what she throws at him, he can handle all her volatile moods and impulses. He chases after her for five years! That's the kind of total devotion I want to see from men in love.

Miscommunication plots rarely work for me, but theirs hit all the right notes because it's not really a miscommunication at all – Xiaoqiao knows, deep down, or not even that deep down honestly, that Beiyun was lying to save her life when he said he thought of her only as a sister and he was actually in love with Fang Rou (even though some part of Xiaoqiao's anger is definitely fuelled by irrational pettiness too). Xiaoqiao is really just running from the mortifying vulnerability of her own feelings for Beiyun, and from the terrifying enormity of his feelings for her, both of which she's too scared to acknowledge. In that vein I would love fic exploring their will-they-won’t-they pseudo-mentorship partnership. There is… a lot missing from Jianghu Mystery, so any kind of missing-scene or filling-in-the-plot-gaps or conjecture fic would be very welcome. Happy for you to set this at any point on the spectrum from mundane to magical.

As this canon is itself a period setting, my historical/period setting AU DNW doesn’t apply.

Fandom-specific DNW: focus on Sino-Japanese political tensions or on aggressively patriotic propaganda, except for where specifically prompted for below. To clarify, things like background geopolitical intrigue and turmoil in line with the historical era and inclusion of canonical villainous Japanese characters are fine, I'd just prefer them not to be the main plot. I would be very happy with a tighter focus on interpersonal relationships!

Some prompts:

• Timeskip roadtrip — anything set during the years they spent travelling together between seasons: sharing a room/bed, eating meals together, sparring, patching up each other’s injuries… Please feel free to lean hard into the mentorship aspects of their dynamic given Xiaoqiao's admiration of Beiyun's skills and her relative inexperience compared to him. They both have their own shifu and i know jianghu has particular rules about crossing martial arts schools, but I'd eat up anything where Beiyun corrects Xiaoqiao's form or teaches her some generic combat or meditation technique or shows her a life skill her princess-to-shapeshifting-wuxia-disciple educational background didn’t cover.
• Casefic – would love to see more of them sketchily but ultimately helpfully skulking around crime scenes! Maybe it's a smaller (more wuxia- or community-focused?) mystery they solve by themselves during their travels, or maybe their paths coincidentally cross with Yanzhao and Zhaoyuan and the others again? Maybe Beiyun's phantom thief skills come in handy on the other side of a heist case, or he or Xiaoqiao recognise the signature tell of an old jianghu associate? Feel free to handwave the timeline to facilitate this.
• Dying to see something exploring Xiaoqiao's complicated feelings about Yanzhao’s (and, by extension, Beiyun's) involvement in her brother's death. I loved her seething vengeful murderousness towards Yanzhao in the murder mansion case and wish that anguish had lasted longer. How does Xiaoqiao feel about Beiyun having this deep mutually respectful homoerotic best friendrival dynamic with the person she blames for the death of her last living family? Surely Xiaoqiao also has to feel some kind of resentment towards Beiyun, despite her love for him, since Beiyun is the one who forcibly prevented her from charging in to rescue her brother and who told her to trust that Yanzhao would be able to save him. And on the other side, how does Beiyun feel about having essentially traded the life of the person Xiaoqiao loved most in the world for Xiaoqiao’s? I don't think the show gave Xiaoqiao enough space to properly grieve and I'd love to see her blow up at Beiyun over her pain and bitterness, and I’d love to see Beiyun similarly grapple with the emotional weight of his choice to save Xiaoqiao at the cost of her brother.
• Japanese Winter Soldier endgame — I've gathered from Douban comments that the ending was originally going to involve Yanzhao getting brainwashed by his old professor into a human weapon and slaughtering his way through his former allies and loved ones. The Baidu plot summary indicates that he kills Xiaoqiao and then later Zhaoyuan, which is what finally makes him break through the brainwashing, and meanwhile Beiyun dies valiantly fighting off an entire army alone with his sword. As a tragedy enjoyer I would REALLY like to see any part of this. Xiaoqiao's relationship with Yanzhao has always been contentious even after she seemingly mostly forgives him for failing to save her brother, so an I Know You're In There Somewhere fight between them would be so interesting—does she try to get through to him, even if it's largely for Zhaoyuan's sake? Does Xiaoqiao die protecting Zhaoyuan from Yanzhao? Is Beiyun there when Xiaoqiao dies, or does he arrive too late to hear her last words, unable to do anything except cradle her broken body in the awful knowledge that he wasn't there to save her or even to comfort her in her final moments? I imagine that he takes his last stand having calmly accepted his doom but intending to take down as many enemies with him as he can before he joins Xiaoqiao in death. Please make it hurt as much as possible, I am here for the most melodramatic angst you can cook up. For this prompt, don’t worry about my political tensions DNW.
• They both know what it's like to be the last living member of a massacred clan, though Beiyun seems to be much better at handling his grief and the weight of his family's legacy. Is that something they're ever able to talk to each other about? It's really sweet that they’ve chosen to gift family/school heirlooms to each other (Beiyun’s ancestral sword, the ring from Xiaoqiao’s shifu) because they do consider each other family, and I’d love something that features those physical emblems tying one another to their respective heritages.
• Xiaoqiao's Get Out Of My School calligraphy wall message at the old palace and Beiyun's reply (and the roomful of hawthorn tanghulu) were some of the most memorable scenes for me out of the whole show. Epistolary fic in this vein would be fun(/painful in the best way)! Did they leave any other messages for each other over the five years Beiyun spent tracking Xiaoqiao? Did Xiaoqiao accidentally-on-purpose leave tokens and clues about where she's heading next for Beiyun to find?
• NSFW:
  • Anything that plays up their brat tamer x brat dynamic. I can totally see Xiaoqiao intentionally provoking Beiyun to get him to snap and show her how much he really does want her. Meanwhile, Beiyun is fully aware of and amused by what Xiaoqiao is trying to do. How far does his patience stretch? Does he tease her back by refusing to budge, or does he indulge her?
  • Solo pining masturbation during the years they spent apart. Does Xiaoqiao manage to admit that she misses him in the privacy of her own fantasies? Maybe they’re in a place that the other person has recently vacated and get off imagining the other person is still there? Maybe they can somehow sense each other through handwavey qi connections? Maybe they dream of each other, and may or may not be dreamsharing?
  • Beiyun ties Xiaoqiao up to teach her discipline and patience. In the same vein, any kind of orgasm delay/denial with Beiyun working Xiaoqiao over meditatively and meticulously while Xiaoqiao loses her mind and lets go of her pride enough to beg would be great.
• I really love Yanzhao/Beiyun and Zhaoyuan/Xiaoqiao as well, so any inclusion of those dynamics (platonic or romantic or ambiguously in-between) would be amazing. I also have a soft spot for the shifu love stories on both sides. I am fine with background Yanzhao/Zhaoyuan but would prefer it not to be a focus of the story.

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

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.

Fandom-specific DNWs: Focus on Ernest's unrequited romantic feelings for Katrielle, inclusion of Ernest in any poly with Katrielle and Emiliana, top Emiliana.

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. Some of my personal favourites who I would be over the moon to glimpse if you wanted some options: Haibara Ai, Amuro Tooru, Sera Masumi and Hakuba Saguru from Detective Conan; Franziska von Karma and Ema Skye from Ace Attorney; Valkyrie Cain, Tanith Low and China Sorrows from Skulduggery Pleasant.

• 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.

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.


Sakamoto Days (Manga) | Nagumo Yoichi, Shishiba, Nagumo

For this request, I would be happy to receive any character subset that includes Osaragi. Feel free to include whoever else works for the prompt or idea you want to write.

Institutional assassin bureaucracy and the Order being basically an ultraviolent equivalent of in-house legal is a niche that feels like it was made for me, and in that vein I would eat up any kind of Order workplace dramedy. Love my airhead murder prodigy goth princess and her deceptively lackadaisical unexpectedly principled mentor and their unsettling eldritch monster colleague who takes the form of a cheerful man. I like Osaragi quietly trailing after Shishiba in her gothic ghost maiden getup until she turns into a rabidly protective guard dog the moment something threatens Shishiba, and how the full extent of Shishiba’s pride in Osaragi doesn’t become clear until he’s facing his own mentor and calling her the cutting edge of the Order. I like the easy camaraderie and history between Shishiba and Nagumo that is nonetheless no barrier to being ready and willing to kill each other should Nagumo decide it’s a good day to kick a hornet’s nest (basically any random day), and the conflicting personal loyalties that pull them in different directions. I like Nagumo unhelpfully teasing Osaragi to provoke a reaction out of her, and I like Osaragi talking back to Nagumo and telling on Nagumo to Shishiba (Are you worried about the ranking, Osaragi? // ... Shishiba-san, why don’t you kill him on the next assignment? is never too far from my mind. Obsessed with the contrast between Osaragi being sweet with Shishiba and sharp with Nagumo).

I'm up for any flavour of weird couple or throuple or situationship or colleagues with benefits or triangulation you can imagine. Being sympathetically villainous coworkers in the same exclusive killer clique can be the most romantic thing in the world!

Fandom-specific DNWs: top Osaragi, bottom Nagumo, setting change AU (canon divergence and canon-plus AUs eg they’re still assassins but they have even more explicit superpowers/daemons/telepathic soulbonds/the apocalypse is happening/etc are fine, I just don’t want them to not be assassins), requited Kamihate/Osaragi, any mention of Uzuki/Rion.

Some prompts:

• Daily life — tell me all about a typical day in the life of an elite assassin disciplinary committee member. I’m as interested in the quasi-corporate administrivia as I am in the actual kills and would love to see both sides of the job. How often do they get sent on actual assignments versus whatever the assassin equivalent of Every Day I Get Emails is (...is it still emails)? Do they have particular types of assignments they prefer? What do they do with their downtime? Do they hang out when they’re not on the clock? Do they spar or train or work out together?
• In-universe media — this format could really highlight the fun contrast between the gruesome nature of their work and its bureaucratic couching. Some ideas:
  • Various restaurant reviews left on Tabelog under suspiciously familiar aliases that mention increasingly disturbing tangential details in between comments on food.
  • Expense claims — who’s diligent about keeping their receipts (Osaragi)? Who tries to claim outrageous expenses even by assassin standards (also Osaragi)? Who leaves everything until the last day before payday and submits a flurry of seven-figure receiptless claims to accounts? What kind of things are they expensing?
  • Draft mission reports — who writes gold star reports including all the necessary details? Who submits their reports months late with three sentences written down? Who writes up a comprehensive ranking of the local pork katsu restaurants and turns that in as a mission report?
  • Equipment request logs — missionfic written via equipment requisition form submissions would be so much fun. What kind of gear are they ordering from the JAA inventory? Do they request any specific modifications to standard-issue weapons? Something as unique as Osaragi’s briefcase circular saw must be a custom piece—did she get it via the JAA or her own supplier?
• Assassin grad program — I’d love to see the corporate analogy drawn out with Osaragi essentially being Shishiba’s grad. Does Shishiba do any active teaching other than bringing her to different jobs? Do they do post-mission debriefs? Do they have feedback sessions (guest starring Nagumo?)? Their mentorship is so beloved to me and I'd love to see more of any aspect of it. I see them as neither platonic not romantic but a secret special third thing that defies categorisation... but to be clear I absolutely ship them.
• Do Nagumo and Osaragi ever do a job together without Shishiba? Osaragi’s clearly highly influenced by Shishiba’s approach to assassination—does Nagumo try to impart some of his own freakish wisdom to her? Does he encourage Osaragi to take a more bloodthirsty approach to killing (I mean, her signature weapon is a circular saw—I like to think she’s naturally inclined to gorefest violence but tries her best to emulate Shishiba’s “clean” assassination philosophy)? Does Nagumo give Osaragi unsolicited romantic advice regarding Shishiba that intentionally completely misses the point of their mentor/mentee relationship and is designed to piss her off? Does he recognise any of Shishiba’s movement set she’s learned? How does Osaragi respond to Nagumo moving in on her beloved Shishiba-san’s mentor position? It would be funny if Nagumo actually did teach her a useful skill in his typically purposefully annoying way.
• NSFW:
  • JAA ongoing professional development requirements include a compulsory annual honeypot training module. Since Sakamoto retired, Nagumo and Shishiba have had a casual arrangement to help each other cross the requirement off. This year they’re inducting Osaragi into the arrangement.
  • Similarly, Shishiba performance reviewing Osaragi’s honeypot training module practical, Nagumo having generously volunteered to act as Osaragi's partner.
  • Osaragi gets blood splatter or an injury on her chin around the same place as Shishiba’s scar. Everyone is weirdly horny about this.
  • Nagumo decides it would be funny to fuck around with Shishiba and Osaragi and starts heavily flirting with both of them and gatecrashing their tender mentorship bonding moments and basically annoying his way into both their pants.
  • Nagumo offers/threatens to shapeshift into Shishiba during sex, Osaragi reacts poorly.
  • Nagumo and Osaragi having a coworkers-with-benefits post-assassination adrenaline management arrangement going because Osaragi feels too strongly about Shishiba to ask for that kind of casual physical thing with him.
• Optional crossover prompt — I would love to see the Order and the Varia from Katekyo Hitman Reborn crossing paths. Maybe the Varia are in Japan for a Vongola family event or Squalo is dropping by to check on his mentee and Nagumo/Shishiba/Osaragi are on a job nearby or having a meal at Yamamoto’s dad’s restaurant? Maybe the Order has business in Italy that intersects with mafia domain? Are any of them old acquaintances or rivals or lovers or some/all of the above? Do they have conflicting objectives or do they unexpectedly get to work together?
• Also optional but I would love a Rion cameo, even(/especially) if she’s unnamed, for a little sprinkle of emotional anguish. Shishiba and Osaragi are both nothing like Rion, but maybe one of them does something that causes Nagumo to make some comment that is clearly alluding to Rion even if neither of them know who he’s talking about?

Other ships I like: Nagumo/Rion (I personally consider Rion the great and abiding love of Nagumo’s life), JCC-era Nagumo/Sakamoto/Rion, pre-retirement Nagumo/Sakamoto/Shishiba, Natsuki/Shin/Akira, Akira/Osaragi.



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