Dear Yuletide writer:

Thank you! I'm glad you wanted to write for one of my fandoms, and I hope you have fun working on it. I love all these canons and I'm really excited to receive a gift in one of them.

If you participate in any of the optional yuletide community-organized bonus challenges, I am absolutely up for Yuleporn, Wrapping Paper, and IF in any of my fandoms. I'd be into Crueltide things for Black Company or Nocturne.

Thank you again! I can't wait to see what you write. - laylah



General DNWs, applicable to all fandoms: deathfic, pregnancy/kidfic, misunderstanding angst, oppression or bigotry as a major plot point, mundane AUs (high school, coffee shop, etc.), scat/vomit, infantilization, forced feminization, unrequested dub/noncon.

General preferences!

Things I enjoy a lot:

- Adventures! Characters getting into trouble and back out again, always good. Most of my fandoms have some kind of important conflict going on and you should feel free to explore that as much as you want to.
- Shippy things! All my requests except one have pretty obvious shippy options, and you should feel free to run with that -- I like a lot of variety of emotional dynamics in sexual content, whether romantic or not, and if you want details on that front there's a lot more in my smutswap letter.
- Exploration of the limits of humanity, in any fandom where it applies: if we matched on a fandom with homunculi or Demifiends, or if you want to ponder whether an undead sorcerer or a Heroic Spirit still truly experiences humanity, I'm into it! What are the limits of being human? Who counts? Always good questions.
- Affection that's demonstrated but not spoken: I am all about "show don't tell" for love/devotion in fiction.
- Related, hurt/comfort, especially for combat injuries and especially as a chance to demonstrate the above.


Things I'm generally less excited by:

- Introspection & plotless character study pieces
- Heavy angst and hopeless endings
- Stories that just retell a canon scene

Individual fandom requests:

Sengoku Jidai | Sengoku Period RPF
Ikoma Kitsuno
Mori Ranmaru
Nohime | Saitou Kichou
Oda Nobunaga

You do not need to use all four characters for this request!

What I'm looking for here is something about Oda Nobunaga and one of his lovers. He was just. Like. This goddamn whirlwind of drive and ambition and energy, and that would have been so overwhelming and compelling when it was turned on you, but so frustrating to try to hold his attention for long when there was always so much to do. I would (obviously) love to get sexual content for this one, but I would also love letters and poetry, or material culture nerding, and anything that fleshes out one of these people who stand, historically, in the shadow of their warlord. I'm ultimately a romantic at heart and I'd like to see one of these relationships portrayed in a basically positive light (e.g., I'm aware that it's likely his marriage to No was strained by her inability to have children, but I'd rather read about them getting along with and enjoying each other). The first things that come to mind:
- with Kichou: So they were teenagers wed in an arranged marriage designed to broker peace between their fathers, who were minor warlords with neighboring territory. This is some romance-novel bullshit in real life. Neither of them had reason to trust each other, both of them probably expected the other to be more loyal to family than spouse, but they're young and fierce and hot (and he's still more impulsive and less ambitious than he will be as an adult) and sparks fly.
- with Kitsuno: She was a widow when she met him, and he was still a minor warlord squabbling with relatives over control of Owari province. Frankly it was probably at least partly political for them to get together, too, despite tales of him being struck by her beauty; her father was probably glad to find a way to make an alliance out of an aggressive neighbor by using his widowed daughter as a bargaining chip. What was she expecting from Nobunaga? How did he compare to her husband? How much did they ever get to know each other? I'm in romance novel territory again.
- with Ranmaru: Hello, completely normalized deep power imbalance, how are you? I'm great. By the time Ranmaru became Nobunaga's page, Nobunaga was one of the most powerful men in the nation. Between that and the fact that Ranmaru and his brothers had been taken in by the Oda household years before, after their father's death in combat, it seems really likely that Ranmaru would have looked at this attention as a great honor and a great opportunity. Was he still fighting a case of nerves the first time things got intimate between them, or was he totally on board? Nobunaga, we're told, admired Ranmaru's intelligence as well as his beauty, and I'd love to see some of that admiration.

In any case: if you love historical research, please go for it and I will eat it up. If you're daunted by the idea of trying to make sure your dates line up and your references to art and tea and textiles are correct, though, don't stress over it. I will enjoy the fic either way.

These prompts are all very canon-verse, but I'd like to reiterate that canon divergence is completely fine, and actually adding-supernatural-elements-to-history AUs would be pretty great. Kitsune Kitsuno bewitching a warlord whose power she can see before ordinary mortals can? Actual Demon King Nobunaga laughing in the flames of Honnoji as he carries Ranmaru off to the Sixth Heaven? If that kind of thing moves you, I'm cheering for it.

And on a completely different note, I'd also be super fascinated by a story about just the women, about Kitsuno and Kichou forming an alliance (and becoming lovers?). Women who are socially positioned to be rivals instead caring for and supporting each other: my jam.

The Black Company Series - Glen Cook
Soulcatcher

Soulcatcher is the immortal trickster androgyne warmage of my heart. There's a lot of cool stuff that happens in the later books but first-book Soulcatcher will always be my favorite. The combination of terrifying the Company but protecting/championing them, being socially male while not trying hard to hide being biologically female, and playing an epic game of "let's you and him fight" with all the forces in play in the entire northern empire: hot damn. I would love to see basically any kind of exploration of what's going on behind that mask. Some options:
- The planning stages of the move to hire the Black Company in the first place: are there allies involved, or is Soulcatcher claiming this pawn alone? Is this part of a long-term plan, or more a case of pulling a thread to see what unravels?
- A battle Soulcatcher helped the Company win, or a trap they set together, or some other adventure that could slot into the book somewhere.
- Soulcatcher breaking the will/soul of another mage to create a thrall.
- A tale from the age of the Dominator, whether that's political infighting or magical warfare or I don't even know.
- A folk tale told in the north that's based on something terrible Soulcatcher did in the distant past, distorted by time and distance into something people don't entirely believe could be true.
- What is going on with the voices? Are they indeed captured souls? Manifestations of madness? Manifestations of the madness that comes of one body being full of a large number of souls who are furious at being imprisoned in the wrong flesh? there are sort of canonical answers to this but canon seems to change its mind about Catcher a lot.

Interactions with any of the Company and/or any of the Taken would be great, with very few caveats: I'm not really interested in the sibling rivalry stuff that got played up in the later books (rivalry based solely on being powerful mages with competing aims: cooler), and I don't want stuff with Catcher trying to seduce Croaker at all.

Ok, I can't lie, the gender stuff going on in the first book really appeals to me. I would hesitate to call Catcher nb or anything and I am not interested in any kind of contemporary-style exploration of gender identity (it would be really tonally jarring for this canon!) but Catcher treating gender as a toy and using it to fuck with people would be great, especially in conjunction with shifting voices: sounding especially femme when giving orders to soldiers who understand their general as male? gruff deep male voices paired with flirty bar-wench body language? Basically Soulcatcher's primary identity axis is chaotic, and if that expresses along gender lines as well as elsewhere, good.

Also it occurs to me that Catcher's POV would probably be hella tricky to write, so this is me explicitly saying it's fine to write from the POV of another character about their interactions with Soulcatcher, whether that's another canon character or an original soldier/mage.

Fate/Apocrypha
Any
(tagset characters: Karna | Lancer of Red, Astolfo | Rider of Black, Sieg, Siegfried | Saber of Black)

Holy crap I love so many characters in this canon. I tried very hard to choose a single pair to prompt for and couldn't do it. I love all four of the nominated characters and honestly most of the cast (basically everyone except for the Masters who are assholes to their Servants). I am watching the anime and have not read the novels, so please don't give me major ending spoilers; if I get minor spoilers I figure that's my own fault for requesting a canon I haven't consumed all of.

A not-at-all-exhaustive list of things I'd like:
- give Karna and Siegfried that rematch, via whatever mechanic you'd like. Having them both really get into it and into each other and/or having the fight end in somebody getting railed against a wall: also good.
- Astolfo and Siegfried both drew short straws on the "who's getting a shitty master?" lottery and I'd love to see them recognizing that in each other and forming some kind of tentative alliance around it; their personalities are so diametrically opposed, it'd be an interesting struggle for either of them to connect with the other.
- Astolfo and Sieg have such a sweet thing going on, with their mutual desire to protect each other from terrible shit, and I'd love to see that turn more explicitly romantic.
- Really seriously tho the "likes" section of Astolfo's profile reads "all this world," and I just want to see some of that passion for and joy in life shared with people who need help seeing it, gosh.
- Siegfried/Sieg dreamspace sex would be interesting and sweet and sad, with lots of layers of both of them trying to figure out how to articulate and act on their own needs instead of other people's plans for them.
- If you want to go dark, consider an Alter for one of the Servants here. Maybe Yggmillennia isn't satisfied with losing their Saber and try to re-summon him and he doesn't show up the way they expect? What would Siegfried Alter even be like?

I do love every Servant in this bar, and you should feel free to add other members of the cast if they suit your purposes. Watching the way alliances shift and plans get disrupted as we move into the second half is amazing, but something that took a hard left turn into canon divergence would also be delicious.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Lucifer
Hayasaka Chiaki
Hitoshura | The Demifiend
Nitta Isamu

You don't need to use all four characters for this request!

I would be happy with Naoki interacting with (or shipped with) any of the others, or any of the humans exploring the Vortex World solo, or an exploration of what Lucifer is up to when the core of his strength appears to be sealed at the bottom of Amala and how he's manipulating situations to get himself free enough to resume his war. Fuck, actually I'm now considering Lucifer/Chiaki and that could be a really interesting ship. Human/demon interactions of any sort are also great, especially if they incorporate the demon's mythology/folklore origins. This is one of my perennial fandom loves, and I have very few hard preferences:
- I want a story where the Conception does take place, because the Vortex World fascinates me and is one of my favorite things about the game, but I'm happy with exploring any canon direction after that OR any kind of post-Conception canon divergence.
- I'm not generally interested in introspection-only fic; if you want to do a solo character study, those work better for me as "Isamu explores the ruins of Shibuya" or "Chiaki wins her first fight with a demon" and their thoughts/actions in that process reveal their character.

I've requested these characters in various combinations in other exchanges earlier this year; if this is too vague and you want to mine any of those older requests for more concrete prompts, they're all available in the exchange letters tag in my journal and they're all things I would still love to receive.

This is one of my Crueltide canons, and there's a lot of character death and violence to go around in the canon; let me say I don't want permanent death of the character(s) that you focus on in your work, and I don't want to see Chiaki defeated. Temporary death with resurrection (and maybe coming back wrong?) via abuse of game mechanics or whatnot, perfectly fine.

If you want to do post-ending fic, I would be into any of the endings! I'd like to see how the experience changed them if you go with the Neutral Ending, tho, rather than having it just be as if they reset and everything's fine.

Fate/Grand Order
Alexander | Rider
Zhuge Kongming | Caster

I'm including prompt options here for "familiar with additional Fate canon" and for "just met them in FGO, not familiar with the whole franchise."

So if you're familiar with Fate/Zero (and/or the later places where Waver appears) you can probably already predict what I want out of these characters: what happens when the person who shaped the direction of Waver's life, whose colors he still wears in all his ascensions, who was the grand inspirational king who captured his imagination—incarnates with him as a fair youth the age of one of his students? I do ship it and if you do too, I'd love to see an exploration of how that changes, especially since on the surface it looks like they've swapped erastes/eromenos roles but personality-wise it's a lot muddier. If you don't want to go the shippy route though, I think you could probably still hit the key emotional notes—being reunited-except-not with someone immensely important—while assuming a platonic Master/Servant & older-brother-type-mentor/student relationship. Ultimately I'd like to see a connection that is emotionally satisfying/comforting for Waver (he deserves a nice thing every now and then) but having it be awkward or complicated getting there would be great.

If you're not familiar with other Fate canons, how about something about what they were getting up to together during Septem before crossing paths with the player's party? They both appear to have gone rogue, acting without Masters, and Alexander just has this incredible force of personality compared to El-Melloi II being more self-effacing and hesitant about everything except his strategic abilities. What have they steamrolled together between Alexander's boldness and El-Melloi II's support? When and how did they bail on the Master/Servant contract, and did they do that together or separately? How did they get their bearings in this place and time that's foreign to both of them? Shipping is still great if you're on that train, especially with Alexander as the one to initiate things after noticing that his strategist appears to admire him a lot but somehow hasn't made a move.

With either prompt, Zhuge Liang's input on Waver Velvet's predicament would also be pretty great.