Yuletide Letter 2024

[kitsunerei88]

Dear Yuletider,

Thank you for writing for me! I hope that, if you were poking through the letters app previously, you were excited by the prospect of matching with me and if you weren’t, you are excited by my prompts here. A few notes: I have a very strong tendency to ask for the moon (hey, if you don’t ask for it, you won’t ever get it), but I’m easy to please. I hope my prompts inspire you, or at least that my general likes and so on give you a sense of my vibe!

GENERAL
General Likes:

• Fics that are character-focused, character-driven, and deal with character exploration or character development. Show me aspects of a character I never considered before, or explorations of how a character's upbringing influences their worldview! I also especially love minor characters, particularly BIPOC characters.


• Fics as challenge, whether it be a challenge on canon, on fanon, on fandom, or a comment on our own reality. Basically, I like literary shit, don’t be afraid to go literary and write reflective shit that talks about politics.


• A focus on relationships, particularly how a character interacts with the world around them, and other characters based on their upbringing and worldview.


• Thematically, I’m all about trauma? Like, PTSD, unhealthy coping mechanisms, guilt, men crying on the floor for things that are their fault… etc. I also really, really love redemption and atonement narratives, and by that I really mean “I fucked up and have something I need to redeem myself for”.


• All flavours of AU. Canon-divergence, Modern AUs, Mundane AUs, crossovers, etc, especially if it interacts with one of the above. I especially like Rule 63 AUs because of the potential for exploring gender and how it impacts and socializes characters.


• Worldbuilding, especially through in-universe documents (please consider this an opt-in to pretty much whatever in-universe document or weird in-universe storytelling device you can dream up).


• Alongside the worldbuilding, I really like accuracy and real-life details. My favourite fics have included discussions of 9/11, I’ve written fic where R2P is a big deal, I suspect I’m known for my legal shit, and so—if you have specialized knowledge of something, I love seeing it! Don’t worry about hitting political issues with me, I love political issues.


• Romance of all varieties: fluff, happy endings, drunken confessions, friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, fake dating, fake marriage, arranged marriages, established relationships, slow-burn, shovel talk, and pining (mutual or otherwise). In general, I prefer M/F pairings, but I don’t mind M/M or F/F pairings and prefer them if canon.


• Smut-wise, I love first times, gentle sex, rough sex, possessive themes, mild BDSM (e.g. bondage, spanking with a hand), strong D/s with femsub, impregnation and pregnancy.

I am always open to treats, including both art treats and podfic treats!

General Dislikes:

In general, unless specifically requested, I don't tend to enjoy crack fic, soapbox fic/issuefic, amnesia fic, body swaps, cringe comedy, and plots based on miscommunication or jealousy. If there is hurt, I usually like comfort, or I often just can't get through it--same goes for angst (unless explicitly requested, of course). That said, these are general dislikes-—they're not DNWs, I have liked fics with all these, and I have sometimes requested these things. If you have an idea that you’re worried might come close to one of these, don’t worry and go for it.

Hard DNWs:

Please note that these are my general hard DNWs. In some cases, there may be sections where some (or all!) of them won't apply, and in that case follow what was in the sign up.

• Character bashing. In general, I like to imagine that all characters are like people—they're complex, and they have an array of good points and bad points.


• Harm or death to pregnant women, children or small animals (background mentions or past references is fine, as are things like statistics—I just don’t want to be dragged through it in detail, like please don’t make this a central point of the fic).


• Except otherwise indicated, non-canonical major character death, graphic violence and torture (graphic being “more than what is in canon”), non-con or dub-con, PWP or large age differences (>15 years)


• Adultery or infidelity (specifically, this is mostly about the betrayal--if you have a plot where two people are married for convenience and happen to have other relationships, that wouldn't trigger as long as everyone knows and doesn't care)


• Smut-wise, I DNW A/B/O, age play, humiliation, bloodplay, cannibalism or vore, watersports, scat, mpreg, snuff, or underage (<15). I’d note here that I’m still figuring out what smut works with me and not, so you may want to look at my definitive likes for more guidance!

ROMANCES OF ARQUITAINE

I am absolutely mad about this series because there is so much potential in it. I have basically been attempting to build this fandom out of nothing, therefore all the fic on AO3 is either by me or written for me.

How do I even begin describing my love of this series? It tickles so my id so hard, from concept to characterization to worldbuilding. To begin, there is Vianne di Rocancheil: hedgewitch, bookworm, and lady-in-waiting to Princesse Lisele d’Arquitaine. She’s also a royal byblow, but that doesn’t matter until it does, because there’s a coup that murders both the King and the Princesse.

Then, there's Tristan D'Arcenne: the Captain of the King’s Guard, Left Hand of the King, desperately in love with Vianne. Like, obsessive, crazy, stalker levels of in love with Vianne. And he has secrets, many deep dark secrets that of course Vianne can never, ever find out. And then, with the coup, Vianne is now the Queen, if throneless, and yeah, that’s about all I can tell you.

Vianne di Rocancheil/Tristan d'Arcenne

I love the characterization of Vianne, especially in The Hedgewitch Queen. As she said herself, she was specifically raised to be without ambition, and those lessons took. What I love the most about her is that she is exactly what one would expect of a lady-in-waiting to the Princesse—she’s intensely loyal to her Princesse, she has no idea what she’s doing, the whole point of her life thus far was the glittering Court social scene. She has no practical skills, and she’s thrown into the deep end with no skills to survive it. And on the other hand, there’s Tristan. Yeah. There’s Tristan and that says everything, insane obsessive fuck that he is.

So, onto my prompts!

• Canon divergence AU! I would love to see what would have happened if King Henri had realized that the price of Tristan’s loyalty was Vianne and given her to him. A straight-up arranged marriage fic would be great (in fact I got one as a raffle prize and it was wonderful!), but I’m especially interested in seeing what would happen with the coup if Tristan had gotten Vianne. What would Vianne’s life have looked like then?


• Another Canon Divergence idea—what if the coup went off exactly as planned? What if Vianne found herself on a one-way boat trip to Tiberia? I can’t imagine Vianne would have been very happy about this turn of events, but does she try to go back?


• I’d also love a dark fairy tale AU or fusion—I think this canon works really well for that, and tonally it’s very much got the right feeling. Note that the series itself is somewhat dark (there’s a canonical dubcon scene in book 2), so darker takes are welcomed!

Lisele d’Arquitaine

I admit I didn’t think much of Lisele until I got the arranged marriage fic but really: who was Lisele? On one hand, you have Vianne’s perspective, which is that Lisele was airheaded and needed her to look out for her; on the other, you have Lisele’s single action in all of The Hedgewitch Queen, which is to protect the Seal of Arquitaine and then entrust it to Vianne, which seems to act at odds with her described character. So: more about Lisele, please! I’d love an AU where she lived and took Vianne’s role, possibly because Vianne died for her or something (oh man, her problems with Tristan would be immense, but I somehow think she’d be better equipped to do it). Alternatively, if the coup never went off or failed, what is Lisele like as Queen?

Worldbuilding

In terms of general worldbuilding, go wild. I'd love more of the history and the stories that Vianne tells at the beginning of the book, or I'd love to see what life was like in Arquitaine at pretty much any point. I'd love to see something about how Adrien rebuilds the country and rules, or about Tiberia, or Arquitaine religion or pretty much anything else. This would also be great in the form of folktales or legends (expand on any that Vianne talks about in the beginning!) or religious texts. Enjoy!

YOU DO NOT NEED TO INCLUDE ALL FOUR CHARACTERS IN YOUR FANWORK, I’M HAPPY WITH ANY COMBINATION OF THESE CHARACTERS. Also, I explicitly opt in to non-con/dubcon, graphic violence and torture, major character death and PWP for this request.

 

TALES OF BEAUTY AND MADNESS

The Tales of Beauty and Madness is Lilith Saintcrow’s YA adaptation of three fairy tales, being Snow White, Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood. That said, the “seven dwarfs” are now the seven Mafia families that rule the city and the fairy godmother of Cinderella is a massive spider-woman who wants to eat Cinderella, and I think that says everything you need to know about what kind of fairy tale adaptation this is.

I’m primarily fascinated by the worldbuilding in this series. There feels like so much hidden in the corners of the story that I want to know more about! Essentially, it seems like the world was the same as our world until the Reeve, or the magical revolution, when something happened to make the world dangerously unsafe.

Some prompts:

• The Reeve itself! What happened to make magic enter our world?


• Covered trains travel between cities because between the cities is dangerous. I’d love to hear more about these dangers and why they are, or more about the people that live rurally. Also, food? Where do the cities get food if not the wastes between the cities?


• Jacks and twisted charms! The implication is that jacks were normal people until their charm twisted and turned them into monsters—explain more, please! What causes charm to twist? What is life like for jacks, who seem to be on the bottom of society?

I'd be happy to have the above explored with any of the characters in the tagset, but if you want a different direction, I'd be equally happy with a Camille and Nico romance--the first book doesn’t go into detail about their romance, and I’d love some fluff or smut around these two. How do they get together, do they sneak out for dates, first kisses and first times, There Was Only One Bed… I’m also fine with PWP for these two! 

For Ellen and Avery, I tend to think they're a cuter sort of romance, and I'd be happy to see that too. I'll be real here, this is such a small/non-existent fandom I'd love whatever you wrote.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO INCLUDE ALL THREE CHARACTERS IN YOUR FANWORK, I AM HAPPY WITH ANY COMBINATION OF THESE CHARACTERS.

 

STRANGE ANGELS

This is a YA series by Lilith Saintcrow that came out a little after the YA vampire craze in the early 2010s. What I love about this series is that depending on the book, you’re reading a very different story; the first book is a bit of a survivalism and mystery, the second and third are boarding school stories (but very different ones), while the fourth and fifth conclude the story in more of a classic urban fantasy romp.
Some of the things I really love about this series is that it is in many ways a reaction to the YA vampire craze. There are sexy vampires, and the story directly calls out how it’s really weird that this hundred-year-old super-soldier half-vampire is into the main character. The second main character, Graves, is half-Japanese and he’s not a stereotype (though the author’s descriptions of him sometimes are very, uh, please can you get a sensitivity beta OH MY GOD), which honestly is pretty good for this era of YA fic. Also, the fact that Dru doesn’t end up with anyone at the end is pretty great.

For this request, I’m mainly looking for worldbuilding, particularly with August and Benjamin, their relationship with Dru, and the svetocha mythos. Some prompts:

• Okay, so August has a longstanding relationship with Dru. Her dad left her with Augie for at least a month or so when she was a teenager, and August obviously knows what she is. Please explain: Why did Augie keep her existence a secret? What was the process by which he was like, yes, I’m going to keep this svetocha’s existence from the Order despite the fact that svetocha are precious and culturally we prize them so much?


• Honestly, more of August and Dru’s relationship either during canon events or afterwards. I get the sense that August wasn’t a particularly high-ranked djamphir until Dru gave him a Council seat because she trusts him. In a lot of ways, August is the one person that Dru sees as an authority figure and trusts and treats as an authority figure (teenage rebellions notwithstanding)—I’d love to see more of them interacting!


• Benjamin! The leader of Dru’s little gang of bodyguards! I love him, and I want SO MUCH on his relationship with Dru either during canon or post-canon. One of the scenes I love with Benjamin is when they’ve gone shopping for clothes and he’s like “Nordstrom’s! Macy’s! For god’s sake Neiman Marcus at least, when I took this job, I was expecting Paris Fashion Week and transatlantic flights” and Dru is like “…why would I ever do that” while tossing jeans from Target into a cart. I’d love to know what Benjamin and his cohort have been taught about svetocha, what they thought Dru would be like, and how Dru completely breaks his brain.


• A bit like the last prompt, Benjamin never really gets it easier--there’s that ADORABLE scene where they’re eating lunch together and he’s like “I suppose we were going to tell you about the assassination attempts when you told us about sneaking out during the day instead of us having to follow you all invisible-like”, and she’s like “…sorry”, and then post-canon when he’s like “If I let you out of my sight you will Do Something” in the most intensely paranoid way… please. I want more of this poor blorbo of a man and his relationship with Dru and his failed attempts to live up to what he’s been taught he should do as part of a svetocha’s Honor Guard.


• How did Benjamin become her Honor Guard anyway? Like Dru just tells us that after she arrived at the Schola Prima, there was chaos and then a few minutes later, Benjamin and his friends showed up, said they were her guard, and took her to her rooms? Were Ben and his friends just walking out of class when Hiro or someone showed up, pointed at them, and said “YOU, you’re her guard now”? Did he just decide “oh wow I get to meet a svetocha” and grab his friends and go? What happened here?

YOU DO NOT NEED TO INCLUDE ALL FOUR CHARACTERS IN YOUR FANWORK, I’M HAPPY WITH ANY COMBINATION OF THESE CHARACTERS.


I hope this letter has been inspiring and I look forward to reading your fanwork!
-kit