Yuletide letter

[lirillith]

Hello, writer!  

I am so sorry about this letter.  It's so long, but still lopsided.  LLtQ has so many branching paths and hidden scenes buried under skill checks that I feel like I ought to account for them all, and Tiger & Bunny has so many characters nominated, all of whom I love.  Shirobako is a much simpler request, so it's much shorter.  I promise that doesn't mean I love it less!  I just have a very definite favorite character for it, and it makes for a more focused request.

One thing I want to make clear upfront:  All prompts and likes are meant as guidance, not as hard-and-fast rules.  Some of the best fics I've ever received have been beautifully unexpected, in the spirit of my requests but not the letter. You don't need to pile on the items from the likes list or use any of my prompts — they're meant to give you an idea of the kind of thing I like or to be starting points, not to be requests for the only things I want to read.  (DNWs, on the other hand, really are serious day-ruiners.)  A fic you enjoyed writing is going to be a lot more fun to read than a fic you were slogging through miserably.

I'm fine with any rating, from G to E.  I'm perhaps disappointingly vanilla, at least in the sense of "not into BDSM," for which I apologize, but relationship-driven smut for any of the pairings I ship is totally welcome, and I do have an attempt at a kink list in my likes.  

Likes:

• Fic that gets into greater depth with canon events than canon itself did — missing scenes tied into one precise moment in canon, timeskip fic covering how characters got from point A to point B, characters still reckoning with the events of canon after the ending.

• Dialog, strong character voices, flirting, banter

• Worldbuilding through the eyes of the main characters; magic meta, superpower meta, mundane details in fantastic settings, mundane applications of superpowers or magic

• Food porn.  Worldbuilding via food or drink, characters cooking or baking, characters enjoying and seeking out different cuisines, or enjoying the taste and complexity of their alcohol and not just how drunk it gets them.

• On the shippy front: UST and pre-relationship maneuverings; mutual pining prior to getting together; get-together/first-time fics, the ways characters sort of awkwardly stumble into a relationship; friends-to-lovers or FWB shading into more

• Sex-related things that aren't necessarily porny: I love awkward, realistically imperfect first times (and additional times) where the characterization is more important than any given kink.  I really like couples who can laugh and have fun in bed, and just in general, and couples trading off who takes the lead depending on circumstances rather than one partner always dominating.

• But as for the kinks: If there's going to be dirty talk I prefer it be praise-based, awkward as hell, or both (or one character's really into it and the other is flailing.)  Clothed or mostly clothed sex and frottage.  Wall sex.  Pregnant sex.  Sex toys.  Masturbation or sex dreams, coupled with pining.  Temperature play, and possibly relatedly, use of superpowers/magic powers during sex.  Talking during sex in a non-dirty-talk way — like, trying to carry on the pre-sex conversation until distracted into incoherence.  Joking or light-hearted bickering during sex.

• Ensemble/team fic, especially for those canons where the team/workplace/adventuring party forms a kind of canon found family.

• Holiday fic, ideally linked to the time of year — i.e. I'm not interested in getting Halloween fic or summer fireworks in December.  I live in Southern California; I want escapist snow this time of year.  But pick a holiday, or make up a seasonally appropriate one — they're all welcome.  Also welcome — people grousing about the holiday in question, sentimentality-puncturing events like crimes, disasters, etc., loneliness or angst, anime production crises like in Shirobako, ghosts whether literal or figurative... bittersweet holiday fic would be awesome, is what I'm saying.

DNWs:

• Mention of infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, or other traumatic/negative outcomes to pregnancy.  Infertility, in particular; I don't want to see it handled poorly and I'd rather not see it at all. 
  

• Public humiliation (kinky or not) or characters embarrassing themselves, knowingly or otherwise.  I distinguish this from the "awkward romance" that I actually like, in that I think of that as a more mutual thing, each of them viewing the other's awkwardness with affection.  But I don't want anything lingering on, or playing-for-comedy, a character's embarrassment or humiliation.

• Unprompted setting-change AUs, fusions or crossovers, or inclusion of unrequested pairings.

• Sibling or parent/child incest.  First cousins and beyond are fine.

• OCs.  If you need to give a name and a line of dialog to the character who brings them tea, that's fine, but I want the focus to be on canon characters.

• Gore and graphic violence; eye injuries in particular are a major squick.

• Animal harm or death, especially to cats.

• Issuefic of any kind

• Explicitly identified asexuality in any romances; I want my ships to have at least the possibility of having sex at some point.

• Singular they as a personal pronoun outside of dialog; if you feel the need to use a gender-neutral pronoun for a character in narration for more than a line or two, I'd strongly prefer some other choice, like ey/em or xe/xem.

• Any mention of cockroaches (unlikely in fanfic, but you never know)

• Excessive focus on bodily fluids and smells during sex.  Obviously in explicit sex fluids happen!  And I'm all in favor of explicit sex!  I just don't want comeplay, bukkake, loving and detailed descriptions of saliva or wetness, excessive amounts of ejaculate or lubrication, etc. Watersports, scat, and bloodplay are also off the table.

Long Live the Queen: Elodie, Banion, Brin

Fandom-specific: Would prefer not to get anything with a ruthless/Machiavellian/sadistic Elodie, here; I also very much DNW the ending Lucille renders Elodie sterile and Elodie takes the opportunity to marry Brin.  Though now that I think about it, those two (ruthless Elodie and Lucille's revenge) go hand-in-hand.

As I said in my sign-up, Elodie is the only character I require; if things aren't working out with Banion and Brin, I do have prompts involving just Elodie, or a few other possibilities with other characters.

 

One of the things I would dearly love to see is a lengthy look inside either Banion's head or Brin's, during the events of canon or at any point during a relationship/marriage.  There are so many possibilities here!  Banion is certainly seeking a bride of the appropriate status, and also trying to assert himself in their relationship (if you go just for him) despite her higher rank, but I'd like to see him being impressed by Elodie and growing to respect and care for her.   And Brin!  Is it love at first sight for her?  Or is it a little more calculated?  Tl;dr incoming...

For a long time, my playstyle featured Elodie cramming on academic subjects to make up for lost time; I prefer to have her sponsor both the hospital and printing press, and I often get the Lumen crystal via economic knowledge.  As a result, the first few times I romanced Brin, I apparently charmed her by getting stage fright on the entrance to the ball and then tripping over both our feet when we danced.  More recently I've been exploiting royal demeanor and handling the ball much better, though I rarely manage real skill at dance, but I still have a soft spot for Brin falling head-over-heels for an awkward teenager who knows the tax code inside and out.  

I realized, after I wrote this, that this comes across as seriously confusing given my DNWs about public humiliation.  The thing is that on my first playthrough, the entire experience at the ball actually hit me hard right in the social anxiety.  Naturally, I died on my first attempt (birthday parties are so dangerous!) so when I started over, I was determined to improve Elodie's social skills and dancing so the ball wouldn't be so agonizing.  Social skills and dancing are of little use when fighting a naval battle, it turns out, so eventually I had to grit my teeth, focus on other areas, and suffer through the ball, until I finally got the hang of manipulating Elodie's moods so Composure and Presence weren't such a non-starter.  It's part of why "economics wonk with two left feet" is such an ingrained Elodie headcanon for me — I saw it so many times.

So, you know, maybe Brin sympathizes with the (possibly) awkward, pretty girl and falls hard and fast... or falls hard and fast for the poised, mature-beyond-her-years young lady who's acing Royal Demeanor lessons... or maybe it's a lot more calculated.  There's a scene, if you leave Julianna imprisoned, that raises some really interesting questions:

For one, it implies that Brin has a certain amount of resentment of her brother, more than you'd suspect based on everything else about them.  It also suggests (when Brin mentions her noble ex-lovers, including Lucille as well as Julianna) that Brin is looking for a partner of her own social class, just the way Banion is.  Her sudden and intense pursuit of the inexperienced young queen might have a lot in common with Banion's flirtation attempts, whether the motivation is "I bet I can sweep her off her feet" or "I can be closer to the throne than my brother is, hah!"  

Or hell, maybe Brin let the resentment show for a reason, and she's really thinking of marrying Elodie to Banion, or of the poly possibilities.  Maybe she's coordinating with Banion or maybe she's playing her own game.  

In other words, I think I love the manipulative take on it; but I also want the manipulation to end up with at least one of the siblings, ideally both if they're both involved, developing real feelings for Elodie.

I pretty much only put Banion and Elodie together when Brin's involved.  I actually really enjoy the Banion/Elodie sparring at the ball

but didn't like how their Brin-not-included wedding let him get some petty revenge; I want Elodie to come out on top, and Brin is the one who knows how to make that happen.

Though on the other hand, one of the endings suggests a fairly open, mutually-satisfactory arrangement for all three:

If that's your preferred version, I'd like the OT3 to be more of a V centered on Elodie; actual siblings-touching-each-other incest is a DNW, though there's no need to shy away from the "we're sharing a wife" level of unusual closeness.

And what if Brin marries Joslyn?  Does she tell him about the arrangement, since he might need a little extra convincing to remarry so soon?  (Though "I want to marry you so I can bang your daughter" is not necessarily going to persuade him in the direction Brin wants.) Does Banion know of the plan, or suspect?  What are all three of those pairings — Joslyn/Brin, Brin/Elodie, Banion/Elodie — like, both in the beginning and over time?

I don't have many fandoms where I feel like arranged marriage tropes work, but I like them in theory, so I'm probably getting a little out of hand here.  I don't suppose most of these even suggest a plot, but I'd love smut or character study — honestly, this would be a great fandom for character-study-via-sex — or anything character- or relationship-driven.

Other prompts - Like I said, Elodie is the only one I require.  I like the possibilities in her relationships with Banion and Brin — but I also like the possibilities in several of her other relationships, like her clearly-awkward arranged marriage with Thaddeus, Arisse's son (the one traumatized by catching his dad in the act with his half-brother Kevan.)  Or with Evrard, especially the parts hinted in the ending where a disguised Elodie is sneaking out of the castle for pastries and the chance to spend time with people who won't treat her like a queen; I'm responsible for that Evrard nomination, because I seriously considered requesting him instead.  

And as a worldbuilding fan, the details in some of her lessons were like catnip to me; you could do Elodie-centric worldbuilding gen focusing on some of her lessons and make me very happy, if that's how the spirit moves you.

 

Tiger & Bunny: Any

I know requesting any is a roll of the dice, but I tried this last year, which I really believed would be T&B's last year in Yuletide.  I can't believe the fandom slowed down so much that it squeaked in again this year, but I'm not going to pass up one last chance to ask for anything and everything. 

A lot of my prompts do involve Tiger & Bunny: The Rising, the sequel movie that came out in 2014.  It should be widely available by now, I hope, but things set during or before TV canon, or during one of the time skips, would be really welcome too!  In the last-episode time skip, we passed over a year in which the heroes had to deal with the revelation that Hero TV was rigged, and that NEXTs could lose their powers (which had been a well-kept secret up till then.) And on top of that, Kotetsu, the heart of the team, and Barnaby, the catalyst who essentially made them a team, both retired at the same time.  Were any of the heroes in touch with Barnaby during that year?  Were they in touch with Kotetsu?  Did any of them go to visit him?

There's also always the year before the series started — Pao-lin, Karina, and Ivan are younger than the other heroes, but did they all start at the same time?  How did they settle in?

And origin stories, for one or more characters, or all of them — we know Keith was eighteen when his powers manifested, but how did they first appear, and how did he learn to control them?  How did any of the heroes learn to control their powers?

Ensemble gen, whether it's superheroic adventure or Hero TV galas or the characters spending downtime together, would be fantastic!

This letter is not just a copy-paste of last year's letter (I kept adding things, because there are more characters in the tagset this year) but if you've read that one, odds are that any prompts you remember are still there.  

The DNW ships (in a romantic/sexual context) are Kotetsu/Yuri, Barnaby/Maverick, and Pao-lin or Kaede with any adult characters.  The other DNWs for this fandom are: they/them as a personal pronoun (mostly relevant to Nathan), writing Pao-lin as non-binary/genderqueer, and including Japanese honorifics unless they're coming from Ivan.

 

Character-specific prompts:

Kotetsu: You can go pre-series, into his relationship with Tomoe, Kaede's babyhood, all that.  Pregnancy and babies are very much on my mind, for personal reasons, and while I find stereotypical pregnancy humor tiresome I'd love fluff along those lines.  Or family gen from even earlier, into his childhood and teen years, or later on; I have a huge soft spot for his brother Muramasa.  

While there is certainly a lot of it out there and I can understand wanting to write something different, I'd love Kotetsu/Barnaby, my first and biggest ship for this show.  Maybe some kind of movie tag where they deal with the fallout of Rising, and Barnaby finally gives Kotetsu a piece of his mind for that "I will break up with you for your own good" stunt, and one of them finally admits he's in love with the other?  There's so much out there for this pairing, but I've basically given up on looking for fic for them; I do have a preference for Kotetsu as the primary top, which was not all that popular at the time II quit hunting for fic.  (I want them to switch off, sure, but Kotetsu on top is more my thing.)

I love these two being IDIOTS together.  I love Kotetsu being silly during sex, or any other time, and Barnaby facepalming with fondness and exasperation in a mixture varying based on the context, and I love when the two of them fail at communication and then get it sorted out, and I love their working partnership.  I'd love just about anything with these guys, from the beginning of their relationship to established-relationship sex or domesticity.  You can touch on as much or as little of the heavy stuff from canon as you see fit, but I'd prefer nothing significantly darker than canon.

I have the opposite problem with my OT3, Barnaby/Kotetsu/Karina; there's almost nothing, so... anything at all?  It always seemed to me like Kotetsu thought Karina might be into Barnaby, and it'd be just like him to pull off a failtacular attempt at matchmaking that somehow works out for the best in the end anyway.  I love all the sub-pairing there, as well.  Kotetsu and Karina, despite the age difference, have a rapport I really love — she's so often the one calling him to task for being stupid about Barnaby, for instance, and I loved him performing a stupid robot dance to make her smile in ep. 14.  Barnaby and Karina... well, I talk about them in the next section.  And I already went on at length about Kotetsu/Barnaby.

Two of my strong DNWs are Kotetsu/Yuri and Kotetsu/Keith, but I have a soft spot for Kotetsu/Antonio.  And Kotetsu/Tomoe!  I'll talk about that ship more in the Tomoe section, but fluff set at any point during their relationship, family fic with the two of them and wee Kaede, or pre-canon Kotetsu/Tomoe/Antonio would all be great, or Tomoe-lives AUs.

Barnaby: Honestly, if I had to pick a single favorite character from this show, it might be Barnaby. I love this ridiculous man, his well-hidden social awkwardness, his pretend-classical-conducting, and his obvious adoration of his idiot partner.  (I describe Kotetsu this way with love.  Love and frustration.  I'm sure Barnaby feels the same only more so.)  That adoration doesn't have to be shippy, to me, though I do ship it really hard.  

I also ship him with Karina, though, or Ivan — maybe he's had an interest in Ivan since their Hero Academy days?  Maybe his occasional trolling of Karina is meant as teasing, not antagonism (I don't really like seeing them totally hostile to each other; it doesn't feel like it fits the second half of the series and Rising) and he's just a bit tone-deaf socially.  "He's just a bit tone-deaf socially" goes a long way to explain many things about Barnaby, to me, despite that profile I linked citing his "flawless social skills."  One thing I want to request is that you not write him as aggressively cold, uncaring, or mean; I feel like some writers go too far in that direction when trying to write him as tsundere.

For Barnaby solo, I liked the "traveling Bunny" Pixiv meme, where Barnaby spent the year-long episode 25 timeskip traveling the world and sending postcards home to Kotetsu; something along those lines would be wonderful, regardless of ship level.  Or Barnaby bonding with any number of the other characters; Nathan, in particular, is outgoing enough, and enjoys Barnaby enough on the level of looks, that I could see him putting up with Barnaby's prickliness long enough to get past it.  Whereas Keith is just so sweet and oblivious that he'd probably completely miss the prickliness and fail to be put off by it.

I always liked Barnaby's soft spot for kids, whether that's Pao-lin, Kaede, random civilian children in need of rescue, or the kids from the orphanage in Rising; if you're comfortable writing children, I'd be totally game for fic about Barnaby slowly getting more involved there, probably starting out with "I'd like to donate some money" and gradually progressing until he's buying presents, funding outings and holiday parties, and reading stories to the kids.  (Mind you, "if you're comfortable writing children" is a big if; I'm about to have one and I'm not sure I'd take this prompt on.)

Karina: I love this girl so much.  And I ship her with so many people.  Karina/Keith, Karina/Kotetsu, Karina/Barnaby, Karina/Pao-lin... I don't have many shippy prompts, but if you have an idea of your own, there you go.  

One thing I can say with certainty that I love is fic that takes her seriously as a superhero; it's not an accident that she's usually second or third in the hero rankings, coming in right behind the guy who can fly and the guy who can jump so well it's nearly flying.  She's one of the cast's heaviest hitters, and she might be able to do even better if not hampered by an armor-less costume and the scripted image that leaves her catchphrasing in front of armed criminals.

One of the things I most want involving her is Girl Power Trio fic.  She, Nathan, and Pao-lin were already shown to be friends, but Rising made it clear how protective they are of each other and how much they all mean to each other; I'd love some post-Rising hugs or platonic h/c.  Karina and Nathan both took quite a beating trying to protect each other, after all.  Or something set during one of the series timeskips, like I mentioned above — friendships don't get that deep overnight, so the trio spending time together at any point would be good to see.  And it seems like Kotetsu's retirement would hit Karina pretty hard, since she's still pining for him a year later.  Or maybe she thinks she's over him and then he comes back?

Nathan: First off — pronouns.  I very much prefer he/him/his for Nathan, but if you aren't comfortable with that, I'd prefer ze/zem/zir or ey/em/eir.  I always trip over singular "they" outside of dialog, in the actual narrative parts of the story.  

Like I said above, Girl Power Trio fic!  I love that friendship.  I love all Nathan's potential friendships: it's been mentioned in word-of-god stuff that Nathan and Agnes are friends, we see that his relationship with Kotetsu is comfortable and friendly, he knows about Keith patrolling the city during his time off, he and Antonio hang out despite all the groping... and I suspect Nathan and Barnaby could bond during one of the show's timeskips.  

Or something shippy — Nathan/Antonio or Nathan/Keith would both delight me.  I like Nathan/Antonio where their long friendship is foregrounded and the groping and shrieking is almost a running joke between them; or, for that matter, where Nathan's gender presentation makes things very confusing for bisexual Antonio.  And on that gender note, I like Keith/Nathan where Keith has mentally classed Nathan as "beautiful lady to be treated with great respect and courted with flowers" and Nathan's just like "Oh honey. That's adorable. Now let's take off your shirt."  Or Nathan/Ivan?  I think there was some artbook tidbit suggesting that Nathan delivered on that promise to give Ivan a big kiss when he left to spy on Jake, and even if there's not, I can totally see it happening, and leading to some personal discoveries for Ivan.

Rising-related, I'd like to see something fleshing out Nathan's backstory based on the glimpses we saw.  Something about the onset of his powers? He's notably missing the tattoo in the white-dress flashback in the movie, and all his angst seems to be about sexuality/gender/gender expression, not about NEXT status. I really like the idea that for him, paradoxically, finding out he was a NEXT was a happy and empowering discovery, which would fit with the way it didn't show up in flashbacks of his worst and most painful memories, but I'd really just love ANY exploration of the subject.  Or his relationship with his family — he probably took over Helios from his (obviously wealthy) parents, but was that the result of a full reconciliation or more grudging?

Pao-lin: In addition to the trio friendship fic, I do ship Pao-lin with Karina, in a friends-to-lovers way — Pao-lin giddily crushing on an oblivious Karina, or UST-fuelled hero sparring and training.  And with Kaede, who's close to her age, but where the interaction is all potential — maybe Kaede moves to Stern Bild in a few years to live with her dad, and the two of them start hanging out, maybe they go to a school dance or something as "just friends, totally just friends" since Pao-lin, being tutored, isn't getting the high school experience.  And with Ivan, whose age I estimate down so the age difference isn't so bad — or there's always future fic.  One of my favorite moments for the two of them isn't even onscreen anywhere; it's in their Circuit of Hero duet song, where he moons over how manly she is.  They clearly get along, he admires her... I don't have too many plot ideas for them, but that's what I like about their dynamic — she's tougher than he is.  

I find she doesn't get underestimated as a hero by the fandom quite as often as Karina does, but like most fans of hers, I worry that her bosses will try to sex up and feminize her image as she gets older — watching her dealing with that is always interesting.  It's not exactly uncharted fic ground, but there's always room for multiple takes on it.  But I also just love her in the present and I'd love to see her interacting with any of the other characters — Kotetsu clearly feels kind of fatherly towards her, Barnaby seems more like an older brother figure, and while we don't see her interacting in-depth with many of the others, all the personalities in this show are so clearly sketched that I'd like to.  She seems like she'd be a big fan of Keith's dog John, you know?  Or like she might want some tips from Antonio on bulking up.

I very strongly  DNW fic where Pao-lin is nonbinary.  She/hers and female gender ID paired with her canon non-femme presentation, please.  

Ivan: I've prompted him a bit in tandem with other characters, but he also has a lot more known backstory than some.  It was hard not to ship him with his imprisoned ex-boyfriend good friend Edward.  We know he went to the Hero Academy, where he didn't feel like he was very impressive even though he's a shapeshifter and there are people in the student body whose superpower is sweat.  You could always write about him then — were he and Edward an item, or was he secretly in love with Edward, or maybe it was the other way around?  Or did he look up to Barnaby or have a crush on him?  Or there's his first year as a hero, when never makes eye contact with anybody or even really talks to them except when Keith or Pao-lin seek him out.  (Did he ever tell either of them about Edward?  And if so, when or how?)  Or the timeskip, when he apparently upgrades his powers from "can look and sound like someone" to "can make self indistinguishable from brick wall."  How'd he practice and develop his abilities?

A lot of us assume he's an anime fan, and I'm sure that's a part of it, but you know, I'm pretty sure he's adapted at least some of his in-character mannerisms from Japanese theater — I think his interest in Japanese culture is a lot more in-depth than just "lol he likes Naruto."  He's also one of the only heroes who (a) has a clearly-defined public persona totally distinct from his own, and (b) has a social media presence — something getting into how he built that up and carved out a niche when veteran heroes like Kotetsu and Antonio struggle with it would be interesting.

Keith: Like I mentioned above — all we know about his past is when he gained his powers.  We know he's kind and honest and expresses himself clearly but very oddly, and he loves his dog SO MUCH.  He seems kind of lonely sometimes, but not deeply unhappy.  I wish I had more ideas for him!  I love him, I just find him difficult to write — does he need a girlfriend?  A boyfriend?  Keith/Ivan used to be a very popular pairing when the fandom was more active, and I like Keith with Nathan, and Antonio, and even at some point in the future Karina, but I don't know exactly what it'd take to spark a romance with any of them.  

Come to think of it, it's also interesting that while Keith is impossibly earnest, he never raises a word of objection to Barnaby's "just in it for the points" attitude in the early part of the show; it's almost like he saw through it where Kotetsu didn't.  Or, you know, he was just too airheaded for it to register, but sometimes I like the idea that he's a lot smarter and more perceptive than anyone realizes.  It's a possibility, anyway.

Antonio: I love that this guy's hobby is sewing, and he's really proud of his skills.  But what I find most interesting about him is his dynamic with other characters: how far back he and Kotetsu go, the mostly-offscreen friendship with Nathan, the crush on Agnes.  Agnes and Nathan are friends (it's one of those Word of God things, it was posted on This Is Sternbild) and Antonio's got a thing for Agnes; maybe sometime they all drink just enough at one of the end-of-season parties and have a threesome.  Maybe they decide to make it a tradition.

How well did Antonio know Tomoe?  (I've written OT3-ish fic of the trio in high school, so I'm totally game for "very well.")  There's a lot to explore around the time of her terminal illness, where we know what was going on in Kotetsu's life at that point in time (trying to care for Kaede solo and for his dying wife while working as a hero and already known as Crusher for Justice) but not Antonio's.  I'm not at all averse to Kotetsu/Antonio, whether it's some angsty seeking-comfort-after-losing-Tomoe thing or a lighthearted FWB arrangement (or maybe it starts light and then one of them falls in love.)

I ship Nathan/Antonio pretty hard.  I really love the hints at a friendship between them, and the suggestion that Antonio doesn't so much mind being groped at all as being groped without warning and/or in public.  I'd love some missing scenes set during/around/after the Rising movie, whether they're a secret couple and Antonio's worrying secretly about Nathan, or comes to realize how he feels when Nathan's endangered, or whatever else you can think of.

Yuri:  To be upfront, I'm not terribly interested in seeing Yuri interact with most of the hero characters.  I like his distance from them, and I have a hard time imagining him in any non-awkward, non-official interaction with almost any of them, even outside of NOTPs (Kotetsu/Yuri is a major, major DNW.)  On the other hand, I'm sure Kotetsu isn't the only hero ever to come in for damage fines, even though he's the main one; maybe Yuri ends up having to deliver a stern lecture to Pao-lin or Antonio. I don't see him as having much patience for most of the heroes, outside of his interest in Kotetsu and Barnaby for their varying but strongly-felt approaches to justice, even though I think he could be brought to take an interest in someone who surprised him with a similar stand.

So really, what I'd be most interested in for Yuri is solo gen; backstory about the process of becoming Lunatic or learning to manage his powers, a day in the life, a moment when his mother is lucid or at least non-violent, the parts of his judicial docket that don't involve Wild Tiger-related property damage. Jigsaw puzzles.

Muramasa: Kotetsu's older brother is one of my favorite characters.  It was just so refreshing, during the anime run, to see Kotetsu finally run aground against somebody who sees through his obfuscating, distancing crap and calls him on his refusal to confide in people. And I'm always a sucker for well-done sibling relationships.  

We don't get much info about Muramasa's past, but there are bits and pieces; we don't exactly know his perspective on Kotetsu gaining powers, but we can guess.  A character profile of Kotetsu mentioned both that Muramasa's divorced and that Kotetsu wants to somehow get him remarried.  He may have known Antonio back when Antonio and Kotetsu were in high school.  He definitely knew Tomoe, though we don't know how well.  Fleshing out any of those would be excellent — heck, thanks to a posting on Pixiv, I'm interested in Antonio/Muramasa or Antonio→Muramasa, too.  

Tomoe:  Kotetsu's late wife is another of those characters, like Muramasa, who feels really vivid to me despite her lack of screentime.  Some of that's because of her appearance in the audio drama about Kotetsu and Antonio's first meeting (her "yeah, your code name ideas suck" in particular) and some of it because of adorable Pixiv fanart.  

There's plenty to explore from their life together, since the series mostly just gives us some sentimental glimpses: high school dating, all the growing pains of getting married and moving in together, domestic fluff, pregnancy fic (pregnancy smut? :D) cuteness with baby Kaede... terminal illness angst...

OR you could go with Tomoe-lives AUs.  Given that canon (in a tiny freeze-frame) shows that Kotetsu used to be a high-scoring hero, yet he's near the bottom when we meet him, I've always suspected her death triggered a long-lasting slump for him; he'd be in a very different place at the start if she were still alive, I think, and that could make for a very different partnership with Barnaby.  Kotetsu/Tomoe/Barnaby OT3 welcome but unnecessary — I think the different progression of the plot would be interesting all on its own.  But it's kind of an ambitious AU.  Snippets alone would be more than enough, if you like the idea.

Kaede: I've already prompted her as a baby and toddler in tandem with her parents, and it's true, in canon we mostly see her in relation to her dad (or her crush on Barnaby.)  But she's close in age to Pao-lin, she has Karina's contact info in Rising, and she saved the lives of the entire team of superheroes in the anime finale; I always like the idea of Nathan taking her under his wing and Kaede getting adopted into the Girl Power team, even if she has no intention of becoming a hero.  I do have a fondness for Kaede/Pao-lin as a ship, though it's hard to come up with non-fluffy suggestions, given their ages.

And, you know, this is a superhero canon — having the hero's kid take up the mantle is a time-honored tradition!  Kotetsu may not be in favor, but that could make for some interesting conflict, with Kaede determined to go to the Hero Academy despite him.  But I also like the fact that she has her own thing, with ice skating, and doesn't have to just be Tiger Jr., so either direction is fine by me in futurefic.  I do like the idea of her coming to live in Stern Bild, eventually, whether she's living with just her dad, or coming to terms with her dad being in a new relationship (with Barnaby? With Karina?  Both?)  

Okay.  Prompts for every character in the tag set.  I hope I've done my duty.  I know I don't have prompts for every possible character combo, here, but I'm open to most potential character combos, at least in gen.  

I apologize profusely for the length, because apparently "profusely" is how I do everything.  But I didn't want to leave anyone out, or restrict my signup to a single subset of the characters.  I love this fandom so much, and I've spent so much time thinking about it over the past five years — I don't think every idea I've ever had made it in here, but that's mostly because some of my ideas are crack.

 

Shirobako: Kinoshita Seiichi

Fandom-specific: I'd appreciate fewer fat jokes than canon has.  This doesn't mean no mention of Kinoshita's weight at all — "SHORYUU-BELLY!" was one of the greatest moments in anime history, IMO, and he makes weight references himself — but less of the casual office joking about food, eating and weight would be nice.  They're all chowing down on delicious-looking stuff constantly; I'd rather just enjoy the food porn.

Also — if you matched on this fandom, please don't feel like the fact this section isn't as ridiculously long as the other two means some kind of favoritism.  LLtQ is a game with a lot of branching paths and easy-to-miss scenes; Tiger & Bunny had twelve characters nominated and I requested Any.  This is just a much simpler request in comparison!

 

So Director Kinoshita.  When I started watching, I absolutely did not expect the moe-anime-directing goofus would be not only my favorite character from this show, but one of my favorite characters of all time.  But this anime surprised me in so many ways, and given that the entire show rocketed to the top of my best-of-all-time list, it's not surprising that the characters would too.  I love him even when he's being frustrating and bratty (derailing an entire production over his previously-unmentioned character headcanons, throwing a literal table-flipping tantrum over being locked up to work on storyboards) — maybe especially then, in fact.  I love his imagine spots when he gets especially inspired, and I love his eventual triumph when things go wrong with 3rd Girls' Wing.

You can feel free to bring any of the characters from canon, nominated or not, as long as the fic is Kinoshita-centric.  I love his relationships with all his colleagues, and the way they operate as kind of a found family when things get rough.  I especially like his friendship with Honda, and ship it a little, not that I'm expecting anything along those lines (and if you went there, I'm not sure anything more than pre-slash would feel like it fit the canon.  But I'm happy to be proven wrong!)  Kinoshita goes back a ways with a number of the folks at Musani, and while the traumatic failure of Boing Boing Paradise looms large, he was successful before that — vignettes from earlier productions would be awesome!  What kind of anime was Fullnaked Hypnotist, anyway?  

I also, as I've mentioned, love all the food in this show — I'm lucky enough to have easy access to a lot of good Japanese food, so I get the mixed blessing of craving favorite foods every time the characters help themselves to ramen, curry, or kara-age.  And I love how food is used to smooth things over socially and get people working together, or help cheer up and distract cranky folks at loggerheads ("I want to work there," my husband commented, wistfully and repeatedly, when I was watching this over again with him.)  I'd love to see that play into a fic — Honda deliberately brings the Big Montblanc to try to shake Kinoshita out of his paralysis, so presumably he has past reason to believe that'd work.  A history of creative breakthroughs brought about by food?  

Basically, you can go as slice-of-life or as deep into lightly-disguised anime references as you'd like — I just loved this canon and want more.

 

I hope this covered everything, because this letter is way too long as it is!  I just know I prefer to have something to go on, and hopefully you do too.  If not, well, the most important stuff is up at the top and/or in my signup, and I really do consider my prompts optional guidance.  I just want to cover all the bases, in case you want that guidance.

If you feel you'd get a better idea of what I like via my fics and so on than through this batch of tl;dr, you'll have better luck with my AO3 or Tumblr.  I'm the same name everywhere: lirillith or lirillith .  I haven't used this space for anything except exchange letters in quite some time.