Yuletide Letter 2025

[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/7347.html .

Likes:

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.

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, or some kind of major problem erupts that she has to deal with.

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: A Study in Emerald - The Limping Doctor, Sherry Vernet | Rache. Sebastian Moran, James Moriarty (Any combination)

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!

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

• When will Moriarty cross wits with Sherry Vernet again? Perhaps another murder, perhaps an attempt to arrest the Restorationists, or maybe even an attempt by one to convince the other to change sides, in a moment when they for some reason can talk but can't arrest or fight each other.
• 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..
• "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 recently got a great gift that was one and now I'm Hounds of the Baskervilles-ed out!

–

Thanks for reading this!

Hopefully this gives you some ideas. Do what makes something good, what inspires you, and will let you have a good time writing.

Thank you.