Bite-Sized Fandoms Exchange Letter 2025

[firebatvillain]

Dear Bite-Sized Fandoms Exchange Writer,

Thanks for writing for me - I’m really excited for this exchange for the second year! I love bite sized fandoms, and 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/7347.html

I am open to treats in unrequested format (fic/art/podfic etc).

Things I like in writing:

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 like in art:

Characters hugging, cute animal companions, manifestations of magic or the supernatural, characters looking fierce holding a weapon, item, or tool. Characters floating against abstract backgrounds with aquatic or space-ey feels. I'm happy with all art media, from digital to watercolor to mixed media to others.

In terms of mood: I like moods that are cozy, happy, fierce, or exciting, but I don't like moods in art that are dismaying, horrifying, or depressing.

In terms of how to depict the characters, feel free to diverge from straightforward direct physical depiction / canonical elements if you'd like! I'm comfortable with and enjoy all levels of explicitness/maturity in fics and art.

Anyway - on to the important DNWs and prompts!

Things I don’t like / DNWs:

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

In art, my DNWs are authorial monarchist apologia, depictions of needles breaking skin, 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: A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman - The Limping Doctor/Sherry Vernet, The Limping Doctor & Sherry Vernet

I consider A Study in Emerald to have tremendous potential for fanworks (and it is, itself, a fanwork, as a crossover between the Cthulhu Mythos and Sherlock Holmes). I've enjoyed a lot of ASiE fics in the category of "a take on a classic story in this world" but I've also enjoyed when writers have gone their own route or tried to explore the aftermath or run-up to A Study in Emerald itself. The idea of a world haunted and ruled by the Great Old Ones, and the story of the Restorationists, fighting their power with only the tools of humanity in this dark alternate 1880s, is a lot of fun. So much is hinted at or referred to, but so little is revealed, in the original work. I'd love to see more!

What does a war in Europe mean for the Old Ones? Do they battle each other or have some kind of detente? How close are the Restorationists to getting anything serious done, in Albion or elsewhere? And when another mystery pops up, for either our Restoration hero or his loyalist foe to solve, what horrors await them?

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

• I'd love to see a story that revisits a classic ACD Sherlock Holmes story, but set in this universe and with an eldritch twist. Our Restorationist heroes investigating some kind of happening relevant to the Restorationist cause, or perhaps an inversion of a classic story where they're committing some kind of crime against the state or similar, and I'm a happy camper.
• I'd like to see a treasure hunt, a heist, or a race against time, with our heroes hunting for an eldritch treasure that could be crucial to the Restorationist cause. Maybe it's a race against royalist forces, maybe some kind of horror is going to be unleashed on some innocents and they have limited time to retrieve the item.
• "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time." The Star of Albion, Vol 43 No 156 was published 1 year before The Great War broke out in our world, decades after Moran wrote his piece. When war breaks out, do our heroes try to bring down the Old Ones once again, this time across a war-torn continent as horrors both eldritch and manmade are unleashed? Was the Archduke Franz Ferdinand killed by our heroic Restorationists, ready to wet their blades once more with the green blood of creatures from beyond this world?
• I'd love to learn more about the Restorationists from the inside. The Holmes character is prone to obsession and wasting away, but he and the Watson  are close confidants in this story, men who set themselves against the (false) order of the world and sometimes may have only each other to trust. What do they do when they're not killing royals and hoodwinking Moriarty? Perhaps they have time for their romance to develop, between their cases and their travels, in the new world or in Europe.

Request-specific DNW: No fics that are remixes of The Hound of the Baskervilles - I just got a great gift that was one and now I'm Hounds of the Baskervilles-ed out!

 

Request 2: God I miss the days when you could show up to a stranger's farm - s4mm4n : Farmer's Boy/Narrator

Original post here: https://web.archive.org/web/20191112200115/https://s4mm4n.tumblr.com/post/186763378087/god-i-miss-the-days-when-you-could-show-up-to-a

 

If you offered this, I think you know what you want to write for it already, hehehe. If you want some ideas, I like things that are funny, sexy, smutty, and longing! That night, or another night, or who knows what comes next. Pining ok. Feel free to make up names for unnamed characters if you feel it would help the story.

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

• What happens that night, after everyone beds down?
• Is there a future for the narrator and the farmboy? Or is he just talking longingly of an experience he once had, and how he misses those days. Or can they be reunited?
• Why does the narrator miss those days? What changed, is there a sad story there?

 

Request 3: My favorite part of the Bible - CheeseParade (YouTube Short) - Jesus Christ & Sinless Steve

I think the joke is really well executed as well, much better than. The typical John 8:1-11 joke. It has good costuming and acting at the start, it's shot well, good lighting and enunciation and voice over, good music. It takes the typical joke a step further in a few ways: it's not just the "here's a sinless guy who will in fact throw the rock" or "Jesus was referring to himself", it is a really specific guy. That guy? Sinless Steve. It then switches into WWE mode, with the townspeople cheering or panicking, commentators saying "Jesus can't believe it" etc. The cut to the terrified woman's face. Oh man. And of course: The son of God with the steel chair (using the epithet here btw is also WWE style).

So, what do I want out of this? Well, basically anything exploring this world, Sinless Steve, and Jesus Christ!

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

• The fight continues! Will Sinless Steve or will Jesus Christ prevail? Can they tag people in? Are there other moves they'll bust out? The Sinless Suplex? The Prophet Piledriver?
• Sinless Steve wants revenge! It's time to see him rile up the crowd and learn how his journey has shaped him and prepared him for another bout!
• Face Heel Turn for Sinless Steve! Has he gone too far, become too proud (Pride is a sin, after all) and fallen to evil? Is it up to the Son of God to give him a SMACKDOWN and show him the wages of sin?

–

Thanks for reading this!

Hopefully this gives you some ideas. I am sure I will like whatever you create.

Thank you.