My DW account was hit by an error that rendered it completely illegible shortly before Yuletide signups closed, so I hastily dumped my Yuletide letter here in case DW wasn't fixed in time. However, Dreamwidth has since corrected the error! This page and the letter on my DW are identical in content (though I may have messed up some line breaks on this end), so it doesn't matter which one you look at.

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Hail and well met! I am AO3 user Phlyarologist and I am requesting an assortment of dirtbags, villains, preternaturally hot women, and guys with boats*! I hope something in the prompts that follow will appeal to you, but if not, feel free to ignore them and do your own thing. If you also like any of my niche favorites, I trust your judgment already.

My prompts tend to skew gen, but shipping-wise m/f, m/m, and f/f are all welcome. Although I do not want explicit sex scenes, offscreen/implied/fade-to-black sex is fine!

General likes: Humor, friendship, adventure, worldbuilding, missing scenes, character study, interactions between characters who don't normally share a lot of page- or screentime, bittersweetness, hope in the face of adversity. Dirtbags, scoundrels, weasely little bastards, etc. Angst, complicated family dynamics, body horror, deathfic.

DNWs: Explicit sexual content (implied or fade-to-black is fine), non-con, unrequested incest, unrequested adult/underage ships; mundane AUs for canons with supernatural elements; modern AUs for non-modern canons; pregnancy; non-canonical child characters; gender or sexual orientation as sources of angst/conflict; non-canonical death by suicide (canonical suicides or suicides-by-proxy are fine; ideation or attempts not resulting in death are fine); vomit, feces

*Also three pretty reasonable teenagers, whose reputations I am sorry to tarnish by association.

Fandom-specific prompts: Tokimeki Memorial | Lord Ermenwyr Series - Kage Baker | The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass | Armadale - Wilkie Collins

TOKIMEKI MEMORIAL
Any (Himo'o Yuina; Ijuuin Rei)

I would like anything with either of these weird, mean, and incredibly funny girls. I should say, I'm not acquainted with much of the wider Tokimemo series lore - I can't read any Japanese myself, and my knowledge of this game is via the recent translated.games English patch. If by chance you are familiar with spinoffs/supplemental material/later games, that's rad! I likely won't pick up on any references to them unless you point them out in authors' notes, but you're more than welcome to do so. If you aren't - hey, we're in the same boat!

I'd be happy with gen for either of these characters, or to see either shipped with the protagonist. Or if you've got an idea to ship either of them with any of the other girls....?

YUINA
You know how in Yuina's ending she decides to be a nicer person for the protagonist? ...I see that lasting maybe a week. I think it'd be fun to see the two of them setting out on adult life together, Yuina keeping her supervillain vibes and upgrading the protag from "test subject" to "cutest and most valued henchman." I don't think the game says what kind of company she ends up working for, but I have to believe she's in R&D somewhere developing ever more cool and dangerous toys. Please go as science fictional as you want with this.

Heck, given the game is set in the late 90s, the cast would all be in their late 30s/early 40s in 2022. What is Yuina up to as she enters middle age? Planting her flag on exoplanets? Developing a cure for death? Fine-tuning an AI copy of herself so she can finally talk to an intellectual equal? (Please feel free to AU out or write around any RL events of the past 20 years that you don't want to address - I'm mostly in the market for mad-science silliness here!) I'm cool with her being single or in a relationship with some sidekick(s?) of your choice.

Canon-era Yuina would also be tons of fun! Science mishaps, weird interactions with classmates, junk shop finds... her CGs of hacking the bowling alley computer and the arcade are really funny to me, I love the pettiness. Wrestling with her feelings by building a giant robot. Just doing Yuina things in general. Yuina rules.
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REI
Rei is such a fantastically shitty 90s anime rival. I love her making such an effort to show up places, jeer at the protagonist, and go swanning off. Much like Yuina, her ending leans into "don't worry she's actually much girlier now and secretly nice," but, much like Yuina, I think she's more fun in her ridiculous jerk era and hope it continues to some extent.

A Rei POV on any in-game events or generally her growing feelings for the protagonist would be great fun. Stuff like her annual weird flexing on Valentine's Day / White Day (while covertly trying to give the protagonist a chocolate and get one back from him, by framing it as an insult), the Christmas party, the time she got abducted, the time they had to wipe Yoshio's memory (????)... Even Rei's reaction to the protagonist continuing to call her - she's so bad at pretending not to like him, and seems increasingly desperate to keep him on the phone even as she's trying to drive him off with weird posturing. What a dork.

Or: outsider POV on any of the above! What do Kirameki's other students make of Rei's weird-ass behavior, especially with respect to this one very average boy?

I think her early relationship with the protagonist right after the game has a lot of comedy potential too. How do you switch from "ha ha you're a pleb, doomed to failure in everything, who can't even get a girlfriend" to "j/k can I be your girlfriend?" While he's trying to know the real Rei for the first time, does she fall back on old habits? Also, WHY was he calling Rei so often if he really "hated that guy" and HOW did he pivot so easily into dating her?

DNW clarification: Re: gender/sexuality as sources of conflict - Rei is crossdressing throughout high school for Contrived 90s Anime Reasons; her ending indicates she's happy to quit doing that and live her adult life as a woman. I'm on board for her angsting about the necessity of keeping up her jerkass reputation to protect her secret, but I'd rather no real distress/dysphoria about the gender angle specifically. My dream of a post-canon Rei is someone who's mostly pleased to have the liberty to pick her own style and will still dabble in masculine fashions now and then. ALSO, if the protagonist is at all interested in/attracted to Rei while he thinks she's a guy, I'd prefer this come without a lot of internalized homo/biphobia. In general I'd rather that Rei's gender isn't a big Thing here, it's only (as in-game) one of those bizarre anime contrivances we're going to roll with.
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ERMENWYR SERIES
Any (Ermenwyr, Gard, the Saint, Eliss, Krelan, Captain Glass, Alder, Worldbuilding)

This series has a bunch of stuff in it I normally DNW, so I'll start with some canon-specific DNW exceptions/clarifications:

ERMENWYR
I really enjoy dudes who are just awful little weasels. If they have some hidden depths and some surprising competencies, it just makes the weaseliness even better by contrast. So... ... ...that Ermenwyr, huh???

I'd love to see some of his escapades around or a little before The Anvil of the World, e.g. while he's handling his dad's business in Troon and being a sugar baby on the side, or making enemies of various wizard guilds - or just generally being an oily little bastard who keeps getting himself into problems. Whether he gets out of them by guile, by applying his esoteric skills, summoning demons, or just wussing out and running for the hills, I'll be satisfied. All is good.

You could also just whump him. That's good too.

Post-Anvil of the World, I'd like to see him and Svnae working on the projects their mom has given them. Or maybe Ermenwyr palling around with Smith. Or - in the short story "The Ruby Incomparable," there's a throwaway line that Svnae is the last of her siblings to get married, which indicates that Ermenwyr at some point settles down a little??? How does that courtship go? What kind of partner can handle him? (I have no strong preference about the gender of this partner. Or, for that matter, any of his past hookups.)
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GARD
Gard is a fascinating dude in many ways. He's smart, he's got a lot of strong feelings and opinions on the way things should be, and he's just such a big sinister-looking beefcake that people write him off as a villain until he decides to embrace it. House of the Stag is such a meta story, and as a lifelong fantasy enthusiast I appreciate that a lot - but it wouldn't work half as well without Gard at its beating heart.

So, y'know... whump him, maybe? There are a lot of timeskips in the book, plenty of time to fill in more stuff where he gets beaten down, and calmly plots to come back stronger, all the while being much more emotionally affected than he lets on... Love that for him.

I also love him being very cool and competent and menacing! It's neat how his gladiatorial experience helps him develop his acting skills and then his stage experience feeds into his presentation as the oh so theatrically evil Master of the Mountain - anything playing around with appearances and personas, or anything where he gets to intimidate anybody, also welcome! Maybe some situation where he's out and about as Mr. Silverpoint and has to just barely, plausibly deniably, hint that the gloves are coming off. Everyone is terrified and no one knows why.

Also interested in his relationships with his kids (preferably when those kids are adults) - Svnae in particular, but of course also Ermenwyr, or maybe Demaledon.
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THE SAINT
Gard seems like he has all the narrative elements to be the protagonist and savior of his people, but keeps getting typecast as the bad guy until he finally embraces it. On the other hand, The Saint has a much more classic Chosen One story, until she defeats the bad guy by being horny for him. This is good storytelling. It is wonderful that the Yendri's Big Evil and Big Good are married and disgustingly devoted to each other.

I'd like to see the Saint dealing with matters of Yendri politics or faith - the evolution of Yendri material culture (and culture in general) over the course of House of the Stag is fascinating, and I'd like to see her keep trying to guide her people forward in a changing world. Is it ever changing too fast for her to keep up? Are there more attempts to silence her or write her off as corrupt, and how does she handle them? How are her outreach efforts to the Children of the Sun going, especially with the coming of the maybe-actual-real-final-savior in Kalyon Willowspear?

Her early relationship with Gard and adjustment to living in a big demon fortress are pretty glossed over in the book and it'd be fun to see more of that. Maybe she and Balnshik supervise some home improvement projects; maybe there's a bit of light fish out of water comedy that nevertheless ends in Gard's demon hordes adoring the Saint and doing anything to accommodate her? (I mean, this is all canon, but... more of it.)

I also like that thing the Saint does where she can look directly at someone and understand their true nature and incapacitate them with guilt and shame. It's kind of a subtle superpower and I like that it doesn't even necessarily come with negative judgment on her part; she's just objectively perceiving ugly realities. Any story where she gets to do that to anybody would be fascinating.
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CAPTAIN GLASS
big weird-hot monster man go go go

I mean. Ahem. This guy is intimidating and inscrutable even when he's not being overtly eldritch, and when he does do monster stuff it's really cool. I enjoy him as an enigmatic presence who's clearly got a lot more going on than we'll ever know. Nothing ever gets by him, he seems like a pretty fair boss overall, and he's protective of his crew. And if you don't keep him in booze he might turn into a horrifying slime creature? All right, all right, nobody's perfect.

I'd love anything about him, but especially stuff leaning into the space between "reasonable guy" and "some type of magical abomination you must not fuck with." How long has he been working the river, and what has he seen? How many of the tall tales about him are true? What is he, where did he come from, what can he do, what's his relationship to the river god, what actually happens if he doesn't get his fix in time?

I'd be delighted with either outsider POV or a look into the captain's own head.
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KRELAN
How did such a screwed-up family produce such a nice boy?

To me the interesting things about Krelan are 1) he likes Eliss so much, and they have such a pleasant relationship with easygoing banter and his immediate deference to her superior detective work, 2) surprising competence at a number of things, 3) his worldview is ABSOLUTELY FUCKED. Just a very reasonable and good-natured teenager with an insane self-destructive loyalty to a family that doesn't even value him, which he is fully aware of, and which he has rationalized as The Proper Order of Things. Fantastic.

I'd like to see some pre-canon Krelan taking on shady missions and running risks for the Diamondcuts at an unacceptably young age. Or perhaps struggling with unlearning old habits once his life is his own (maybe even failing to understand that his life is his own).

Krelan/Eliss would also be fantastic for shippy casefic - maybe they come across another mystery on their travels on the Bird of the River, and once again need to combine their skills to solve it, and by gosh they still just like each other so much.
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ELISS
Eliss, quite frankly, deserves every nice thing in the world. It's great seeing her find her place on the river and be respected for her skills, and I think the book strikes a fine balance with respect to her shitty childhood. She developed her observational skills out of harsh necessity; those skills are still hers to use now that life is getting a little better, and they stand her in good stead. But how she had to learn them still sucks.

Above I prompted Eliss/Krelan shippy casefic and I'm still very interested in that, but gen where Eliss solves mysteries or problems, on the barge or in any towns they pass through, would also be great! Her friendships with the divers and crew and kids are really sweet, and anything in the book's general vein of "slice of life, but it's kind of a dangerous life" would be welcome. I especially like her friendship with Pentra Smith - maybe this blossoms into more of a mentorship?

Captain Glass knew what she was all about pretty much on sight, so I'm also curious if they'd start interacting more after the book. Weird mystical and/or spooky river god connections very welcome here.
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ALDER
Alder and Eliss both understanding and not understanding each other is one of the best, messiest, most bittersweet threads in the novel. I'm glad that, per the epilogue, they don't end up estranged - they both just need to figure themselves out, and though they're pulled in different directions they're still family.

So needless to say I'm on board for any complicated Alder & Eliss sibling stuff. For Alder solo, I'm interested in postcanon, getting to know his dad, learning about the Yendri side of his heritage, and studying medicine. Something plotty would be nice, but like, a straight-up training montage of this kid learning in-universe herb lore would also have my undivided attention.

As a kid who was visibly not a Child of the Sun, in Child of the Sun territory, he couldn't help defining himself in opposition to Falena and Eliss. Now that he's more free to be himself, what else might he discover and what new perspective on his mom and sister might he gain?

Maybe he's also good at observing things and figuring out mysteries. Maybe with his studies he can provide new insight on something Eliss and/or Krelan are investigating. (If Alder is awkward or mildly salty about Krelan as his brother-in-law, EVEN BETTER.)
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WORLDBUILDING
Probably the thing I love most about this series is that the world is both weird as hell and really lived-in. There's Jack Vance-level wackadoo magic and fantasy set pieces, and there's bureaucracy, and infrastructure, and ways of doing business. There's more than one theater tradition. The Children of the Sun are having their steampunk moment and their poor sanitation practices are driving the world toward ecological collapse. There are multiple humanoid species who aren't quite like us, and aren't exactly the standard Fantasy Races(TM) either - and every so often there's a really jarring cultural or physiological mismatch. This world is so so cool and there's plenty of room to explore it more, whether through established characters or new ones.

Topics I'd be especially interested in include but are not limited to:


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*

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: PHANTOM HOURGLASS
Linebeck

After abortive attempts at other titles in childhood, Phantom Hourglass was the second Zelda game I actually managed to complete, right after Twilight Princess. And I gotta say, experiencing Midna and then Linebeck back to back gave me unrealistic expectations in the field of Sidekicks Who Are Hilarious Jerkasses. Linebeck is perhaps extra relevant to my interests because on top of being a Hilarious Jerkass, he is also a Pathetic Loser. He is indescribably seedy. He looks like he's been hung over for 25 consecutive years. Please roast this terrible old man.

Things I enjoy about him in canon: the cowardice, the bluster, the greed, the bickering with Ciela, getting terrorized by Jolene, eventually getting sort of shamed into being a better person by Link's example, ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING to do with the final Ghost Ship chase and battle with Bellum. Missing scenes, or Linebeck POV trying to spin various in-game events to make himself look better, would be delightful. I love an unreliable narrator, and this guy is a great candidate for that. It's like his whole thing.

Pre-canon, what about some narrow escape he flailed his way through and is mythologizing as a Cool Exploit of his? Maybe something from his time with Jolene, where she's pretty taken with him and he's like "oh crap oh crap she's way too badass I need an out"? Postgame, Spirit Tracks shows us he must've sorta kept his act together (although the family business model includes dropping people into a pit of Like Likes and then selling them shields, so some dirtbaggery is alive and well). So I'm curious how well all that character development stuck (given it happened in a whale's dream outside of linear time). Or, hey - granted, whale's dream outside of linear time etc etc - but does his possession by Bellum have any lingering effects?
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*

ARMADALE
Lydia Gwilt

I love Lydia. I love her scheming, her weird power moves, her angsty backstory, everything. I think she should get to murder and/or marry as many Allans Armadale as she chooses.

I'd like to see an AU happy ending for Lydia (even if it's happy for literally no one else) or something that revels in her poor unfortunate woobieness and/or her sheer moxie. What if her attempted suicide doesn't take and she has to pick herself back up and carry on? What if she succeeds at killing the principal Allan Armadale - can she build the happy relationship she wants with Midwinter, while he is mourning his boyfriend, whom, again, she murdered? Hey hey what if he just happens to die under suspicious circumstances and she's never entirely sure whether it was her doing or not? Or what if she succeeds at marrying and then killing the main Armadale?

It'd also be fun to have some dark comedy in the vein of that time she almost poisoned Armadale in Italy - maybe Lydia's trying to spend some time with her husband but feels like she's third-wheeling it because of her husband's stupid annoying best friend, whom she has sworn to destroy for largely unrelated reasons, except also her husband is in love with the guy, ugh! How is a lady supposed to get him out of the way without making Midwinter hate her?

Pre-canon (or in an AU where she survives and leaves those crazy Armadale boys alone to try her fortunes elsewhere) I'd be happy to see her do any kind of scheme or swindle or extricate herself from a bad situation with her incredible moxie, intelligence, and hotness. It's very possible that she created this bad situation herself, doing the 19th century equivalent of drunk-texting her villainous schemes far and wide or doing something equally messy, but I don't judge. It is just as possible that bad things only happen to her because she's so hot and lonely.
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