Yuletide Letter 2024

[firebatvillain]

Dear Yuletide Author,

Thanks for writing - I’m really excited for this Yuletide. I hope you’re excited as well! I’m FireBatVillain on Ao3 and Tumblr.

Aside from my DNWs, I hope you consider the prompts and likes in this letter as you work, and that they inspire you to make something you enjoy creating and that tickles my fancy! These prompts are meant to inspire, not restrain/restrict, so feel free to go beyond these prompts and create what you like!

In addition to this letter, I also maintain a longer, general letter about likes and dislikes if that's useful for you: https://firebatvillain.dreamwidth.org/5012.html .

Things I like:

Happy stories, bittersweet stories, and stories that end with a spark of hope even if they are angry or sad. I like good communication, wordplay, honor, pointless heroism or love even if it won’t succeed. Probably one of my favorite ideas in fiction is the idea of heroism in the face of hopelessness, and love even if things seem sad.

 

A little mini scene or interaction, an ending or a beginning, that could be a canon-compliant off-screen scene or interaction - sounds fun! I also like AUs and alternate imaginings.

 

I like explicit content and smut. I am okay with darkfic. I do not mind any of the archive warnings aside from what's listed in my DNWs.

Things I don’t like / DNWs:

In fic, my DNWs are authorial monarchist apologia, vivid descriptions of needles, pregnancy, and extreme underage.

 

Regarding the monarchism thing: I’m okay with characters in a feudal or monarchist setting, and even protags who are monarchs, and even these characters triumphing as monarchs as long as the story itself isn’t apologia for monarchism. Characters who like monarchism, who think of themselves as good kings, who want to restore the throne, etc - all good by me. Rider in Fate/Zero, or Moriarty in A Study in Emerald, etc are excellent characters and enjoy works about them. I just would prefer not to read a work where the final moral of the story is that democracy is bad and we should all be ruled by a single person with absolute unchecked power, as presented by the author.

Requested Fandoms:

Request 1: The Masquerade Series- Baru Cormorant

I love the Masquerade. The novels are dense with ideas and ideology and ways society might be structured. Power, control, betrayal, and thoughts - the idea of incrastic thinking, the qualms. I like the bits about power and how institutions work and I like the world that has been built and revealed to us over the course of the story. I spent these books wanting to see Tain Hu's name written across history and blood, and a thousand pages mourning her.

I also think there's something very funny and intense about Baru, I love her blind spots and her weaknesses and her brilliance and her ruthlessness and the way she's not aware of how scary she is, except for when she is. I think it matters that on top of everything else, Baru is also a disaster and very extra. I love her.
My general letter contains my likes and dislikes, and here are some prompts to get you started:

• In some kind of Modern AU, Baru Cormorant is an actual accountant sent to rescue and actual plant/factory that is having accounting and production issues.
• Baru gets into a very toxic romance with someone, and incredibly manages to rationalize and compartmentalize it in some terrible and great way.
• In school, Baru and the others are given a qualm to study, and Baru becomes convinced that something is afoot, regarding either the qualm or the study.
• Baru Cormant during Traitor is dealing with another busy day in Treatymont, with her stresses piling up as the supposedly loyal Imperial Accountant, when Tain Hu comes by to tease her.

Request 2: かぐや様は告らせたい | Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai | Kaguya Wants to be Confessed To (Manga)  - Odajima Saburo, J Suzuki of Koenji, The Glutton Girl of Jinbocho, Tanuma Takahiko (Any combination)

These four characters are the Four Ramen Emperors of Tokyo and they represent one of my favorite side plots in Kaguya-Sama. I love their devotion, their silliness, their seriousness, and the times that they help and respect the main cast. I like that there is a whole world of ramen lovers, and these four are at the top of it, even if they're not the young people they used to be. It's so fun!

I encourage you to write whatever you want as long as it features at least one of the Four Ramen Emperors. You can use a subset of the characters rather than using all four if you prefer. 

My general letter contains my likes and dislikes, and here are some prompts to get you started:

• The Four Ramen Emperors gather in one place for the first time in a long time, and have a ramen related competition.
• San of Shibuya, aka Odajima Saburo, runs into Fujiwara again, and comes to the aid (or perhaps, causing problems for) our heroes on account of feeling he owes Fujiwara a debt of gratitude.
• The Immortal of Sugamo, aka Tanuma Takahiko, actually turns out to be related to Dr Tanuma Tsubasa, and Tanuma Shozo, and his family places him directly in the line of fire with the main plot.
• The Glutton Girl of Jinbocho, reminded of her history with San of Shibuya, and feeling that perhaps their beliefs aren't in such conflict any more, meets with him again - will they rekindle their romance?

Request 3: Burberry "Hero" Commercial - Shirtless man | Centaur, Horse (Any Combination)

Find this fandom here: https://us.burberry.com/c/burberry-hero/ and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js3Q0QllYYQ

My notes on the Burberry "Hero" scent: Clear, crisp, refreshing, like a sea breeze and running on the beach at sunset, but not briny. No barny or musky scent, nothing that evokes horse scents or anything equine. I didn't notice smoke or campfire scents either.

Watching this video again, it's incredible. Driver's physicality, the beauty of his form, the intensity of his focus and his running, it's all remarkable. He's extremely embodies in this commercial, and it really shows. The horse is practically a background element. I also find the final result, when they merge into a centaur, to be over the top and humorous. I'd love something about what led to this transformation and story, more about the Shirtless man or even about the Horse. Bonus points if there's some kind of reason for them to... be a Centaur? I guess the impression I have is that somehow they merge and become one creature, but why? The horse seems happy to do it as well. 

If you're looking for some prompts to inspire you, here are some optional prompts:

• The shirtless man and the horse live in a society where only a few men are chosen to become centaurs. From the moment he crossed his first rite of passage, the shirtless man knew he wanted to become a centaur, and had to achieve this goal against steep odds.
• The shirtless man is actually a practitioner of ancient, lost magics, in a world where magic is gradually fading out of the realm. With his trusty equine friend, he seeks to bring back magic via a fusion of both body and soul.
• The shirtless man had a forbidden love, a centaur (creator's choice of gender). However, it could never be between the two of them, as any attempt at copulation would result in a horrible death and trampling. Thankfully, his trusty steed was willing to undergo a melding ritual...
• Actually, all centaurs split into humans and horses when nobody is looking, which is how they get by in our modern society (think about like, vampires living among us, but instead centaurs). However, every few weeks they need to combine their two halves back into their natural form.

Request 4: A Tale of Future Crime (cohost post) - jackapedia - Darpa Killblade, Baltimore Airport, Crusty Silverware, Fishy Ramirez (Any Combination)

This is a fandom of an image of the back cover of a book that doesn't exist. Think of it as kinda like Goncharov, except nobody joined in on the joke, and the only artifact of the fandom is this one back cover (as well as a nice voiceover of it). It was posted by jackapedia to Twitter and to co-host: https://x.com/Jackapedia_/status/1631106301286547456 and https://cohost.org/chrisfulkerson/post/1117269-a-tale-of-future-cri

You might also appreciate this spoken performance: https://soundcloud.com/zenuel/hacker-voice

I love this parody of cyberpunk! Tums 2! The President of Cops! The owner of Circuit City's coolest jacket! I think this is unabashedly over the top, funny, and turned up to 11, and I'd love a story of any level of seriousness set in this fandom, related to this book back cover story. It could take the form of a fic or any other sort of written artifact, format wise, that ties in and gives us a bit more of the world of A Tale of Future Crime. I am here for silly, I'm here for action, I'm here for over the top, and I think I will love practically anything written in this fandom. 

My general letter contains my likes and dislikes, and here are some prompts to get you started:

• Do they manage to kill the President of Cops? What actually happens in the story, or perhaps a missing scene from this book that we never got to read because it's just a back cover.
• How about a cool backstory? Baltimore Airport was lab-grown to be a swimsuit model, but something changed and later they were programmed to kill. Perhaps Baltimore is struggling against that killing nature, or maybe that's what set them free...
• Crusty Silverware and Fishy Ramirez are doing a job together. It's a serious job, the kind of job that could earn then dozens of Bytes (that's the currency of the future, remember), but they're too distracted by their love for each other. Maybe Crusty and Fishy get real crusty and fishy with each other!
• NitroNerv and Tums 2 aren't the only crazy future drugs. There's an entire world of them out there, including ones with crazy names like Flatline and The Crash and so on. What kind of crazy drug deals does Darpa Killblade get into with his incredibly cool jacket?

–

Thanks for reading this!

Hopefully this gives you some ideas. Avoiding the DNWs is significantly more important than any of this. Do what makes something good, what inspires you, and will let you have a good time writing.

Thank you.