heartbeats | ghost of christmas past is inexplicably kathy griffin because of course it is (yuletide 2017)

yuletide 2017 - warfare @ ao3

Dear Yuletide Author,

Hello! Thank you so much for offering to write one of these fandoms. I requested all of these because I think they’re great series that deserve more fanfic, and I’m so excited to read whatever you come up with.

This is my third Yuletide! I had a great time writing last year and I loved my gifts, so I’m looking forward to doing it all over again. Obviously, I’m on ao3 as warfare. Feel free to check my stuff out.

I’ll start this letter by outlining general likes and dislikes, and then elaborate further on specific series and character requests - just know that I am genuinely extremely easy to please, and I’d much rather read something you were excited about writing than something you felt obligated to write because of this letter! So please take these as guidelines or soft requests (since I know how frustrating it can be to get a vague “write me anything!!") rather than hard rules. I just like coming up with prompts; sometimes I like it more than actually writing fic.

Above all else, please please please have fun, and thank you so much again for writing for me!

FANDOMS:
KING OF PRISM by Pretty Rhythm (2016) | Hayami Hiro
IDOLiSH7 (Video Game) | Izumi Iori, Yotsuba Tamaki
Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner | Kuzunoha Raidou XIV, Narumi Shouhei
Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn | Yona, Son Hak, Soo-Won

TL;DR:
YES, PLEASE!:

shipfic
gen
real casefic (someone solves a murder)
fake casefic (someone thinks there's been a crime but it's actually got a mundane explanation; something in the style of a crime procedural but with extremely low stakes, i.e., we found this cat)
pre-canon, mid-canon, canon continuation - I'd like for things to mostly follow the storyline, but I love fics that embellish on the existing story
"five things" fics
groundhog day style time reset hijinks
character studies
found families
best friendship
friends to lovers - especially with pining in the interim
fake relationships leading to real relationships (both fake dating and "through hilarious circumstance we have to get married, whoops!")
loyaltykink
humor
introspection
happy endings
here's a comment about my likes and dislikes if you're interested in or down for writing smut!

NO, THANK YOU!:

deathfic
scenes of rape or self-harm
magical creatures/high school/college/barista/reincarnation AU
crossovers with other series
genderswaps
"crack"
issuefic
kidfic (the main characters are kids, they adopt a kid, mpreg; please, just no kids!)
A/B/O
S&M/negotiated "scenes"
most hard kinks (again, here's a comment about my likes and dislikes if you're interested in or down for writing smut!)

IN GENERAL:
I like genfic, I like shipfic with no porn, I like shipfic with porn. All variations are fine with me.

I'm a huge fan of “could-be-an-episode" fic that exists squarely within the reality of canon; I like prequels, midquels, cut-for-time filler episodequels, and canon continuation! I don’t mind some bending of the “rules" of canon -- as an example, I find stuff like characters in “mundane" series developing mind-reading powers etc. hilarious -- but often I like series because of their stories/settings so I tend to prefer relatively canon-compliant fic to outright AU unless otherwise stated in specific requests. I’ve included a couple of AU prompts in some of my requests, so this is super not a hard rule, just a generalized preference. I’m very partial to casefic, but slice of life works just as well for me.

I enjoy character studies, particularly for characters we don't get pov for much in canon, and in particular I like character studies in which writers bounce the focal character off of a number of other characters. I tend to prefer this kind of cast-based character study to introspective navel gazing fic. I particularly like stories about navigating friendships! Even in shipfic, I like seeing the two central characters interacting with the rest of the cast. In general, the more of the cast you include in whatever you write, the better! I love huge messy full-cast affairs.

In terms of shipfic, I am disgustingly easy to please. I’m hugely into friends to lovers - I love the idea of two people being best friends and then figuring out that they’re actually really into each other. I ALSO LOVE PINING. Slow burn is my absolute jam, and I love get-together fic. Jealousy/possessiveness is fine with me, but I’m not into abusive relationships or non-con. Generally, though, if I ship something, my priority is to see the two characters I like interacting, whatever form it takes.

I am like ninety percent jokes and humor, and I would love a funny fic if you are feeling up to it, but I know jokes can be hard to write because humor is so individualized. I love to laugh, and if humor fic is up your alley I am all for it. I’m not that into “random" humor/crackfic, but I’m pretty easy otherwise.

On the other hand, if you want to write something sad, go ahead - my only request is that since it is (will be) the holiday season I really would like a relatively feel-good fic at the end of things. This doesn't preclude angst or sadness or anything -- I love emotional stake-raising!! -- but I would like to come out of everything feeling not (too) emotionally wrecked, if only because I will read your fanfic and then spend the day being social with my family and loved ones. I guess what I’m saying is that I’d really prefer you at least end on a hopeful note?

Similarly, please, no issuefic.

KING OF PRISM by Pretty Rhythm (2016)
hayami hiro

accessing:
MOVIE: fansub, streaming, fansub, torrent
PREQUEL (51 eps): fansub, streaming; wiki list of episodes so you can find the ones relevant to the King of Prism cast

prompts/suggestions:

backstory about hiro (and kouji?) at edel rose before everything went horribly wrong
hiro and kazuki learning to deal with each other one on one after kouji leaves
lessons hiro teaches shin
four things hiro regrets and one thing he doesn’t
fic about OTR between them getting together at the end of rainbow live and the beginning of kingpri when they’re superstars (they get handcuffed together during a variety show; they spend the night in a haunted mansion; they go on an onsen retreat)
hiro/kouji prince/knight au (or alternatively, if you want to get very wild -- hiro/kouji captive prince au)
alternate universe where hiro stayed with jin and goes to schwartz rose

I honestly still can’t believe that this movie is real. Everything about it was a magical adventure of gay and sparkles and ice skate magic and laughing for no reason whatsoever!! I’ve been to about a thousand ouen screenings and I’m so glad it came to LA this year; I just wish there were plans to localize it!

Hayami Hiro is my favorite Evil Gay Stalker Turned Redemption Arc Soft Boy. I kind of love how awful he is in Rainbow Live, and I super love how basically no one even talks about it in King of Prism. I really like characters who think they’re doing the right thing but just are… deeply incorrect? And Hiro-circa-Rainbow Live is that trope on steroids. There’s some part of Hiro from Rainbow Live that really genuinely believed that he was the only person who could perform Kouji’s songs, and that it was Kouji who betrayed him, and that’s both hilarious and tragic.

I ship Hiro/Kouji really, really hard; I like that they were childhood friends, I like that Hiro betrayed Kouji but spends most of Rainbow Live convinced it was the other way around. I’m also really into how horrible and possessive Hiro is over Kouji’s songs (and Kouji), and I also love that they did their best to redeem him so by the time King of Prism is underway he's just a Good Boyfriend who just wants to Support Kouji. I would be overjoyed to get any shipfic for them. I’d like anything - schmoopy fic about before everything went terribly, possessiveness and awfulness during the betrayal era, reconciliation, whatever.

If you aren’t interested in shipfic, gen is totally fine, too - fic about Hiro and Shin, or really anyone at the school. Hiro was a kind of awful person in Pretty Rhythm Rainbow Live, so him taking Shin under his wing and trying to act like a good senpai would be hilarious. Actually, any of the new kids - it’s clear OTR are involved with the Edel Rose students, but we never see them interact with them (something with Yu? HE WANTS TO DESTROY HIRO IT’S VERY IMPORTANT TO ME). This series is so ridiculous and so underrated and all of the boys are so good, I’ll enjoy anything.

Regarding KING OF PRISM Pride the Hero: I’m aware it’s not available in English (or anywhere besides Japanese theaters) yet, so this letter is basically just for the first movie; please feel free to ignore its existence entirely, or to write based on what's available in the trailer. Full disclosure, I’m in Japan right now and I’ve seen Pride the Hero nine times in theaters so far, so if you have also seen it somehow and you wanted to write

post-movie fic where Kouji congratulates Hiro on his win, maybe with a friendly handjob? Or an AU with that like brief two second shot toward the end of Hiro’s “Pride" where Hiro is the king and Kouji is his knight? I’m so thirsty,

that would be amazing but 100% above and beyond the call of yuletide duty. Similarly, if you, like me, watched Pretty Rhythm Rainbow Live and want to include the girls, I would love that; I’m not very into Kouji/Ito and I deeply believe that Hiro doesn’t deserve Beru, but otherwise I love the girls and would love to see them again.

I just. King of Prism is genuinely my favorite movie of all time, my life is better for having seen it, I love it so much and I want more content for it!

iori helps tamaki study for his exams
tamaki takes it upon himself to help iori make friends at school
iori and tamaki end up with a part time job at That Soba Shop during a variety show
five things about iori and tamaki at school
tamaki sees how much time iori spends with tsumugi and decides they must be dating and takes it upon himself to Solve The Mystery
iori and tamaki find a lost cat (OR A BABY) and have to return it to its owner
iori manages mezzo" for a month
iori and tamaki get handcuffed together accidentally during filming for their variety show and no one can detach them
iori and tamaki taisho roman au
full cast nineties anime hot springs episode

IDOLiSH7 is such a great game, of the idol/actor boys mobile games genre it is definitely my favorite. it is so genuinely funny and it has so much heart, and I want everyone to write a thousand fics about it.

This combination of characters is 100% self-indulgence; high school boys duo are my favorite characters, I think they get all of the best scenes together (DOUGLAS! TENTEN THE CAT!!) and I just genuinely feel like no one will ever write the high school hijinks romp I want to read about them.

Iori and Tamaki are my favorite characters in IDOLiSH7 for kind of similar reasons! They’re both stupid babies. The difference, of course, is that no one gives Tamaki enough credit, and everyone gives Iori too much credit. I love that Tamaki is so honest -- to a fault, Sougo might say -- because no one else ever looked out for him, and I love that his arc in IDOLiSH7 is about learning to trust that other people will. Similarly, I love that Iori gives off the impression that he has his shit together, but in the end he’s just a kid who can’t be honest and loves his big brother. Tamaki’s arc is about finding his family, Iori’s is about finding a dream of his own.

I also think a lot about the back matter with them, like this scene where Tamaki lashes out at Iori (Tamaki: …..don’t put on airs like that. Aren’t you always the one that’s by yourself in the classroom. | Iori: ………… | Tamaki: Ah……No, see, I don’t mean like, alone. You’re always doing what you want by yourself, right?) and then Iori admits how he feels (Tamaki: ……I don’t really get it, but are you praising me? | Iori: Not at all. | Tamaki: Then what do I care. | Iori: Yotsuba-san! | Tamaki: What!? | Iori: I was praising you. | Tamaki: Ooh.).

Or the after school cards, where Iori describes hanging out with Tamaki during supplementary classes and buying him snacks and candies (the truth is he wants the mascot toys attached; Tamaki knows but will never make him admit it and Tamaki describing how Iori’d fallen asleep and he’d tried to put a jacket over him and Iori thought he was playing a prank and he HURT HIS FOOT (endure, Tamaki-kun, endure it!!).

I’d love anything with them together; school hijinks, family dynamic fics, silly slice of life fics, CASE FIC? Face in my hands ohhhh I'd love to read casefic. Whatever. Write me shipfic!! I’m down for anything. I think that the true strength of this game is in its ability to make even silly day-to-day stuff fun and interesting, so I'm happy for you to go wild.

Include whoever else you want as well! I think the only characters I'm not crazy about are Gaku's Dad, Aya, and Kujo-san. I’d love Part Three stuff as well, so ZOOL is fair (embarrassing, chuuni, edgelord) game. I really like the Tamaki-Iori-Isumi combo! I requested Tamaki and Iori, but I'd be thrilled to read a full cast affair. There are so many good combinations -- Riku and Tenn come to mind! I thought the way Tamaki and Riku were basically best buds during the visual board tour story was incredibly cute. Mitsuki too; he’s so important to Iori and Tamaki totally knows what he goes through since He’s a Big Brother Too (Iori: what’s with that superior tone!! Yotsuba-san!!!)

Re: shipping (if you want to include it); I don't mind Tamaki/Iori if you want to write it (I'd be happy to read it). I know Iori/Riku and Tamaki/Sougo are popular pairings, but I'd prefer them not to be the focus of the fic (i.e., please no "Iori's thoughts on MEZZO"'s romantic relationship"). I low-key (high-key) ship Ryuu/Sougo and Banri/Yuki, just for background information, but seriously - pairing amnesty.

SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI: DEVIL SUMMONER
raidou kuzunoha xiv, narumi shouhei

accessing:
GAMES:
KUZUNOHA RAIDOU XIV VS. THE SOULLESS ARMY: let’s play (with commentary) | buy the game
KUZUNOHA RAIDOU XIV VS. KING ABADDON: let’s play (with commentary) | buy the game
DRAMA CDS (KUZUNOHA RAIDOU XIV VS. THE ONE-EYED GOD: largely sold out online; disc 1 | disc 2
MANGA (KUZUNOHA RAIDOU XIV VS. THE LONELY SPIRIT: fan translation
NOVEL (KUZUNOHA RAIDOU XIV VS. THE MESSENGER OF THE DEAD: fan translation of the first chapter

prompts/suggestions:

what happens in tsukigata stays in tsukigata
rebuilding after the end of the second game
narumi and raidou solve a case that seems at first to be demonic but turns out to be totally mundane
raidou has been a bit overworked and has an exam coming up and narumi offers to tutor him in spite of the fact he’s in wildly over his head
five times raidou acted his age
five mysteries narumi solved without raidou’s help
four secrets about narumi raidou keeps and one he lets slip
narumi unknowingly helps raidou recruit a demon
raidou gets caught in a demon’s time loop hijinks
raidou is placed in charge of bookkeeping for the office
shibari

EVERYONE SEEMS TO BE OVER THE DSRK GAMES BUT I AM STILL NOT.

Devil Summoner Kuzunoha Raidou XIV vs. King Abaddon is one of my favorite games of all time, and I really like vs the Soulless Army, too, though it’s much harder and I am kind of garbage at it (I like to joke that when they were making King Abaddon ATLUS just took everything hard out of the first game and replaced it with something gay).

The Taisho period is my favorite in Japanese history; I’m very into the Taisho roman aesthetic, and overall there’s just something very romantic about the period -- it was a historical moment that straddled tradition and the past and modernity and the future in a lot of very interesting ways. I think the DSRK games really feed into that, you know? In a lot of ways the setting feeds into the game; Raidou is a traditional figure, supported by a cast of demons, who has to keep order in the capital - and inevitably chaos comes from the interaction of tradition and modernity. these are strong words for games in which robot zombie Rasputin and LITERAL SATAN are the antagonists, huh?

I really like Raidou (he’s particularly great in the drama CDs, if you have access to them), but Narumi is my favorite character in the series. He fits into a very specific subset of character that I like very much, which I’d describe as "no-good old guys who come through when they’re needed." I love how frivolous he is in his day-to-day, but that comes from his troubled past, and I like that he really does try to be a good person (as an example, at one point in the drama CDs Raidou admits he’d wanted to go to school because he hasn’t been in ten days, and Narumi sends him off, and then admits to Tae that he’d kind of hoped he could ask Raidou to do the laundry for him).

Narumi/Raidou is my forever ship. Now, literally almost ten years after I first played these game, I am still just as on fire for them as I was in the beginning. If anything, time and lack of content have just made me thirstier lmao. I have a hard time even explaining what I like so much about it -- I like that Narumi is technically there to keep an eye on Raidou but that in the day-to-day Raidou has to keep Narumi in line, I like that they’re opposites, Narumi all flash against Raidou’s quiet, Narumi representing modernity while Raidou is tradition. I LIKE THE AGE DIFFERENCE AND I LIKE THAT THEY’RE BOSS AND SUBORDINATE DON’T LOOK AT ME and I also like that they’re equals at the same time. I like that Narumi tries to take care of Raidou and protect him, in his own way, because he’s the adult. I like that Raidou doesn’t need it, not really, but that Narumi does it anyway.

I’m also very happy to get genfic, to be honest - I think the 1920s time period is a great opportunity for some period gen about mundane day-to-day (with demons. And zombie robot Rasputin? I don’t know).

I love Tae (sorry, sorry - Asakura Kichou!!) and I would love her to be included, but I’m not interested in shipfic with her, because she is an INDEPENDENT MODERN WOMAN AND SHE DOESN’T NEED A MAN. I also love Gouto. Please include him, it you want! He’s the most important mentor Raidou could have, and also he is fuzzy. I love all of the demons, too, Victor, whatever - I love the world of DSRK and I’d like a wide variety of fic for it.

akatsuki no yona | yona of the dawn
yona, son hak, soo-won

accessing:
ANIME (ENG SUBTITLES): crunchyroll | youtube
MANGA (ENG): amazon (paperback) | amazon (kindle)

prompts/suggestions:

casefic in which soo-won and yona’s team are independently trying to solve a problem (and meet in the middle)
yona, hak, or soo-won acquire the power to go back in time and change one thing (and they have to decide how to use it)
au where everything is the same but soo-won is one of the dragons
five lives hak, yona, and soo-won shared (or didn't share)
five secrets yona knows about hak and soo-won (and one she doesn’t)
four things hak misses about soo-won and one thing he doesn’t
five things soo-won regrets
five things the dragons don’t understand about the relationship between yona, soo-won, and hak
modern times businesspeople au (maybe soo-won orchestrated a hostile takeover of yona’s dad’s company? Maybe they live together in a three bedroom apartment and no one suffers)
have you ever watched fushigi yuugi wrap party prohibited bus trip chapter of women’s hot springs (three parts)? you know what to do

I watched Akatsuki no Yona this year, which I realize is a hundred years too late, and I was so surprised by how genuinely good it is and how much I loved it. It really feels like a Fushigi Yuugi/12 Kingdoms hybrid; I love that it presents how complicated questions of leadership and politics and war can be, I like that all of the characters are human and flawed but are doing their best with what they are given. I love that it’s such a weird balance between melodrama and nineties-callback adventure shoujo humor. Full disclosure, as of writing this letter I have completed the anime but have not read the manga -- it’s on my list! So a lot of my comments and requests are heavily influenced by the anime, but I should be caught up by the time assignments are due, so feel free to write me either something anime or manga-based.

The selling point for this series for me is the triangle (if you can even call something that is so contentious but also completely jealously-proof a triangle) between Yona, Hak, and Soo-won. All of my favorite parts in the series center on their relationship.

I like Soo-won because he seems so silly and defenseless, but that it’s all a front meant to keep people’s guard down. I like that he steadfastly disbelieves in anything mystical and prefers to rely on his own strength and decisions. I think he’s actually a very good king, and I think it’s very telling that he doesn’t regret doing what he did -- but that, in spite of himself, he does seem to feel the absence of both Yona and Hak from his life, and that when he’s able he protects instead of hurting them. I’d love to read anything about that dichotomy.

Similarly, with Yona, I like that she’s just so good. It would have been easy for her to give up, but she does her absolute best to keep moving forward. I really started buying into the series when she realizes that her father, although he was kind and she loved him, was actually a relatively bad king, and that perhaps Soo-won is doing a better job. I also like the ways in which she hates him so much but she can’t help still loving him. I think a lot about when they reunited toward the end of the series, how she wanted so badly to kill him but also couldn’t. I like the ways in which she takes Hak for granted, not because she doesn’t love him but because she can’t live without him, because of course he has to be by her side -- the way you’d take an organ for granted. One of my favorite running jokes is that the dragons all fall in love with her immediately even though they don’t know why or understand (their responses, of course, ranging from Ki-ja’s HELLO MASTER WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG to Jae-ha’s EVERY TIME I SEE HER MY HEART HURTS AND I KNOW IT’S HER FAULT THAT BITCH).

If you’re lost about which of the three to focus on, Hak is my absolute favorite. I love the ways in which he’s accepted protecting Yona but hasn’t been able to accept how he feels about her because of how complicated the ramifications of all that would be. His strength and his steadfastness, in combination with his bad attitude, really appeal to me. I also really like his relationship with Soo-won; he was able to accept handing Yona to Soo-won, he trusted Soo-won to protect her, and as a result Soo-won’s betrayal cut him in a way no one else would have been able to.

Overall, I guess the theme of what I like about all of them is how conflicted they are; they’re fundamentally opposed to each other, they can’t forgive each other, but they also still miss each other. I know it’s impossible, but somehow I can’t help hoping that the three of them will land in a conclusion where they can be together again. I know it’s a tough request, especially that I asked for something with at least a hopeful ending and everything about Yona/Soo-won/Hak is miserable and complicated, but I’d love to read anything about the three of them, shipfic or gen. I would ask that whatever you do involves all three characters; I’d rather not read just Soo-won/Hak where Yona barely appears, or Yona/Hak with no Soo-won.

If this doesn’t work for you -- I also really like the dragons, and I’d love to read a more general story about Yona, Hak, and the gang! As mentioned above, I really like full-cast fic, and I’d love to read something about or from the point of view of the other characters (of the main boys, the only one I’d prefer not be a POV character is Zeno; I’m currently anime-only so he is a total stranger to me).

Did I mention fushigi yuugi wrap party prohibited bus trip chapter of women’s hot springs because this is the best idea I’ve ever had, maybe

Thank you once again for writing for me, sorry for the novel (I... get excited), and have a good Yuletide!!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

YES
frottage, oral sex, intercrural sex, talking/communication kink (dirty talk, banter, phone sex etc.), passionate/emotional sex, uniforms, clothed sex, urgency/quickies, confined spaces, vanilla sex, voyeurism, LIGHT bdsm (restraints, blindfolds, gags, sensation play, submissiveness, biting, clawing), hurt/comfort, awkward sex, first time, not actually first time but really awkward fumbling, preferably with laughing, begging

NO
animal themes/characteristics, do or die, anonymous sex, selfcest, a/b/o, rape/noncon, loli/shota, mpreg, regular pregnancy, ANYTHING WITH CHILDREN, PLEASE!, hard bdsm (bloodplay, whips, flogging, bondage, clamps), scat, guro, vore

GRAY AREAS
age difference (only if both characters are of age)

ghost of christmas past is inexplicably kathy griffin because of course it is (yuletide 2017)

no subject