Chocolate Box letter

[lirillith]

Apologies in advance: I've been out of the exchange game for a couple of years, I'm trying to start over fresh (though I have cribbed some prompts from old letters) and I'm pretty rusty at it. If you have any queries, you can ask a question here anonymously, or ask through the mods.

In most of my prompts, and most of my past exchange requests, I'm trying to steer you towards writing ships as requited, happy, and healthy. That's not to say that an angsty or bittersweet read is unwelcome, but I'd generally prefer the fic to lean on the hopeful side of the balance.

There's one major exception this time, and it's Fate/Zero. You can make it hurt for that fandom.

Likes:

• Missing scenes that fit right into canon
• Characters in a pairing making each other laugh
• Pining, especially coupled with guilty fantasizing and masturbation, though PG-rated types are also loved
• H/C, both emotional and tending to injuries (sickfic not so much)
• Huddling for warmth and similar forced-proximity tropes
• Fake dating
• Arranged marriage
• Bickering domesticity (I don't know why curtainfic has such a fluffy reputation, IME curtain shopping is a great way to get in a fight with your SO)
• Cuddling, both post-coital and non-sexual
• Focus on hands, both visual and sensory (noting scars, calluses, the shape of fingers; clasping hands during sex, holding hands at any time)
• Focus on hair (in a touch sense — washing, braiding, running hands through a partner's hair, giving a scalp rub)
• Beards and stubble
• Characters laughing together and having fun in bed
• Awkward or imperfect but still enthusiastic and happy sex
• Frottage (specifically rubbing clothed genitals against other clothed genitals; intercrural is a big nope)
• Clothed or mostly clothed sex
• Lingerie kink
• Exploration of magic or superpowers in canons where that fits

DNWs (all kinds):

• Embarrassment, humiliation — I don't like it when a character uncomfortably embarrassed or made the butt of jokes
• Non-monogamy (infidelity, poly, group sex, etc.) when not requested
• Use of not-traditional-for-sex bodily fluids (blood, urine, vomit, tears, etc.) in sex
• Graphic or lingering focus on any bodily fluids (mentions are fine, cumplay is not)
• Dirty talk
• Unrequested BDSM
• Foot fetish
• Singular they used as a pronoun outside of dialog
• Non-canon or unrequested pronouns
• Identity headcanons of any kind (gender ID, sexuality, etc.)
• Unrequested AUs or crossovers
• Issuefic
• Harm to minors outside the scope of canon

Final Fantasy VI

Fandom-specific notes: No Locke/Celes, even as a background or past relationship, please.

Sabin Rene Figaro/Cyan Garamonde
Sabin Rene Figaro/Cyan Garamonde & Gau

I definitely think of the Sabin, Cyan, and Gau trio as a family, and I love them. Thinking of Sabin and Cyan as a ship is more recent, but it hits a lot of my buttons; an older man recovering from loss, his new partner giving him fresh purpose and direction, and the two of them co-parenting a kid with his own troubles. (Note that if you can't make the slashy version work, writing them as platonic partners and foster parents to Gau is also fine.)

Emotional h/c with Cyan grieving for his family would be good, or maybe Cyan keeps a stiff upper lip (or has managed to make peace with the idea, possibly during his offscreen time writing letters to Lola?) and Sabin's the one angsting about the whole situation, since we already know that he was the more emotional one when his and Edgar's father died. Huddling for warmth while keeping watch at some point during their adventures. A moment between Sabin and Cyan when they go to the ruins of Doma, or when they recruit Cyan in the World of Ruin - or vice-versa, maybe Celes bypasses Tzen, recruits Edgar and Setzer and Cyan and they retrieve Sabin after that. Something post-canon, with Sabin and Gau coming to help Cyan rebuild some kind of community with the surviving people of Doma. Bittersweet is good here, given what Cyan has gone through.

Terra Branford/Locke Cole (FFVI)

Oh, man, my forever OTP — which makes it really hard to talk about them or prompt for them, actually? Essentially, I looked at that spark of interest in the beginning — Locke telling her she wasn't entirely without a significant other, telling her not to let Edgar near her, promising to stay by her side — and I refused to let go. I'd love something early-game, with Locke crushing on or pining for an oblivious Terra and trying to convince himself it's just that she reminds him of Rachel.

Or something during the game, even just Locke thinking about Terra as he goes about his World of Ruin quest for the Phoenix, or dealing with the implications of her potentially sacrificing herself to save the world. The two of them interacting during exploration of the buried castle in the World of Ruin (or post-ending) would be nice — if you take her to read the Queen's diary, she has a line of reaction, and they could always comb the ruins for more information about that era. Post-game, virtually anything would be good — the two of them dealing with life in post-apocalyptic Mobliz? Fluff, smut, hard-working domesticity, it's all good.

I do ask once again that you avoid/minimize Locke's attraction to Celes. It's there in canon, but so is his attraction to Terra, his fixation on Rachel, and his complete inability to handle his feelings in a healthy manner until his ex literally tells him to get over her, like, yesterday.

Tiger & Bunny

Please, no singular "they" for Nathan in narration. If you can't bring yourself to use he/him/his, which is my preference, please use ze/zem/zir or ey/em/eir.

Antonio Lopez/Nathan Seymour
Keith Goodman/Nathan Seymour

I like Nathan/Antonio where their long friendship is foregrounded and the groping and shrieking is almost a running joke between them. Though it'd also be kind of nice to see Nathan lay off the ass-grabs and Antonio be all "it's not like I miss it, but what gives?" and it's actually because Nathan's catching feelings. Maybe they have a casual FWB thing going and Antonio gets freaked out because he wants to keep it on the down-low, or maybe Antonio has always ruthlessly repressed his attraction to guys and Nathan, with his aggressively androgynous gender presentation, is confusing him on several levels. (Nathan tops the hell out of Antonio, I refuse to believe anything different. I don't interpret every relationship that way, but this is a relationship with a definite top, and it's Nathan.)

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." Nathan does tease Keith in the Rising, briefly, but we never actually see him grabbing his rear the way he does other guys, and Nathan knows about Keith patrolling the city during his downtime; I feel like there could be a really sweet relationship hiding in the background here, with a lot of mutual respect.

Barnaby Brooks Jr./Kotetsu T. Kaburagi/Karina Lyle
(obviously poly is okay for this!) Barnaby Brooks Jr./Karina Lyle
Kotetsu T. Kaburagi/Karina Lyle
Kotetsu T. Kaburagi/Barnaby Brooks Jr.

This trio is a big part of the reason for my DNW of embarrassing characters for the sake of a joke. You know that part of the anime where Kotetsu comes back from a short vacation, Karina's all "you could have stayed gone, I didn't miss you," and everyone else is all "BULLSHIT, you talked about him constantly?" until she finally flees the room entirely? I hated that. I don't mind if you treat him as continuing to be oblivious to her crush on him, but I don't want her being mocked for it.

Kotetsu being his adorkable self is fine! Karina and Barnaby both view that with affection, even if it's affectionate exasperation at times. And neither of them is necessarily going to be terribly smooth, either, if you're doing first-time/early-relationship fic.

Kotetsu/Barnaby is 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 on top, which was kind of hard to find at one time, but I like for them to switch off too.

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. Or if you just want to write an established-relationship fic so you can avoid all the maneuvering and negotiations, that's great here too.

Kotetsu and Karina, despite the age difference, have a rapport I really love — she's so often the one calling him out for being stupid about Barnaby, for instance, and I loved him performing a stupid robot dance to make her smile in ep. 14. I'm closer to Kotetsu's age than Karina's, and from the viewpoint the age difference is huge and kind of troubling; there are a number of ways you can deal with that, but Kotetsu pursuing a teenager without a moment's pause isn't one I'm going to like. Whether he doesn't even notice her until she's twenty-five, or she finally asks him out and gets it through his skull that this is a DATE-date, or whether they get over all their objections because they get trapped in a collapsed subway tunnel and they think they might die... whatever it takes, but I feel like it'd take a bit.

Or you could skip over the getting-together stuff and go with established-relationship scenarios. It might be interesting to see how things go with Kaede; Karina's closer to being her big sister, in age, than her mother. Or how they navigate being in a relationship while in the public eye; Kotetsu's secret identity is no longer secret, as of the Rising movie, and while Karina tries to keep one it's a pretty flimsy disguise.

As for Barnaby and Karina, maybe his occasional trolling of her 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. 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.

The public-eye prompts I gave for Kotetsu/Karina would apply double to Barnaby (or work for an OT3.) Does Agnes shove Karina and Barnaby into a showmance for ratings and then when they want to date on their off-hours they can't? Does Karina start wearing thigh-high boots and blue lipstick at all times just so she can get coffee with her boyfriend? (And is one, or both, of the guys really into that?) Does Blue Rose start fake-dating Barnaby to draw attention away from how close Kotetsu and Barnaby seem to be, only for it to end up as an OT3?

Ikemen Sengoku

I'd prefer that if the game protagonist is present, she not be in a relationship with Nobunaga or Kenshin. She's more than welcome (I love her narration! And I love her with Masamune, or Mitsunari, or Ieyasu or Shingen) but I don't care for those two relationships, although I enjoy all the characters involved. I actually find Nobunaga's brotherly relationship with Ieyasu, and his general trollishness in Hideyoshi's route, absolutely delightful.

Hideyoshi/Mitsuhide: I may not have cared for Nobunaga as a boyfriend, but his route did give me unexpected gifts, like Hideyoshi shoving Mitsuhide against a wall and then angsting to the protagonist about how Mitsuhide won't trust him, and Mitsuhide all but admitting he has a thing for Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi's route is, naturally, a good source for these two as well. Remember that comment he had about being in restraints, and there have been other times he liked it better? BECAUSE I SURE DO.

BDSM is typically not my thing, and honestly I can only imagine Hideyoshi being a bit uncertain about it too, but going along with it at Mitsuhide's enthusiastic suggestion. Or maybe Hideyoshi has a secret kink and Mitsuhide's the one who's taken by surprise that he's into it.

Mitsunari/Ieyasu: For quite a while I didn't really see where this ship was coming from; I took Ieyasu's professed dislike for Mitsunari at face value, and Mitsunari as just being his usual sweet self. Then in Mitsunari's route, he put on his glasses, and Ieyasu suddenly blurted out an insult, hit Mitsunari with a book, and fled the room, and it all snapped into focus. Of course! HE'S A TSUNDERE. I knew this, and yet.

So, yeah. Ieyasu insults Mitsunari incessantly because "I hate you" means "I love you" and "you're such an idiot" means "when you put on your glasses you're so hot I cannot concentrate while I'm in the same room as you," and Mitsunari longs to pet Ieyasu's fluffy-kitten hair. I think it would take outside intervention to get these two together (maybe the protagonist and Masamune, now happily paired up, do some matchmaking?) but if that's beyond the scope of the challenge, I'd be totally game for 300 words of Mitsunari stroking Ieyasu's hair while Ieyasu is all "you're doing it wrong. More like this. Also, I'm only tolerating this because it's better than you making tea."

Sasuke/Ieyasu: Sasuke has such an enormous crush on Ieyasu, and I just want him to get his man somehow. I'm not sure how, though. Maybe this is where the anime continuity comes in? Maybe, rather than saving Kenshin's life, Sasuke comes into contact with Team Nobunaga on his arrival in the past. Maybe he just straight-up arrives at Honno-ji the same way the MC did, and after being uneasily incorporated into Nobunaga's circle and screaming internally a whole bunch, he makes a play for the warlord of his dreams. I'd like to see him get to know the real Ieyasu and get over his fanboy crush a bit, having that replaced more with real feelings... (oh god I just realized, it's Yuuri and Victor all over again. Maybe Sasuke gets drunk and pole dances. Maybe I should go to bed.)

Fate/Zero

Although I know there's a larger Fate universe out there, and bits and pieces about Stay Night, Fate/Zero is basically a self-contained entity for me. I don't mind references to other parts of the canon, but I'm not going to immediately be able to appreciate them, either. (That said, my husband plays Fate/Grand Order, so I've osmosed a fair bit from it. Mostly ridiculous shit, rather than magic meta, but that's how it goes...)

I didn't actually intend to put this in my signup. The fandom wasn't even on my radar. But the Lord El-Melloi II OVA came out, and Waver was wearing the Admirable Grand Strategy tee-shirt at the end, and I checked the tagset and saw that all my ships were nominated, and now here I am, re-watching Fate/Zero in one browser and opening up all my Pixiv bookmarks from 2012 in the other, and I regret everything.

As I said at the top of my letter, this is the fandom where you can bring the pain. Character study, angst, contrasting happy moments in the past with present loss, whatever works for you. You don't have to! If you have a non-mundane AU idea where things could go differently, I'm game. But I'm ready to feel sad when it comes to these guys.

Rider/Waver Velvet: Like I said, Waver in a boyfriend shirt was what sent me down this spiral, and if I don't write "Waver immediately post-war wearing a shirt that smells like Iskandar and crying" before you get your assignment, you can feel free to do it for me. Or a missing scene from sometime during the Grail War, or something from the years that follow as he grows into the ridiculous adult that he is by the time of the OVA; clearly he hasn't entirely let go after all this time.

Saber/Lancer: These were the two I shipped first. The way that fighting was how they communicated, that honorable conflict was their bond, was absolute catnip to me; it's not an unusual dynamic for m/m pairs but it's rare in the extreme to find it for het, and I adored it. Something along those lines would be amazing, and if you went some AU route, I'd prefer if you kept that as an element of their relationship.

Saber/Irisviel: Obviously an exception to my non-monogamy DNW; you can set a Saber/Iri fic during canon without having to dispose of Iri's marriage in any way. That doesn't mean you have to ignore it; Irisviel's in love with Kiritsugu, and given that, from what I understand, the fall of Camelot in the Fateverse went as expected (i.e. Guinevere and Lancelot had an affair) Saber is probably going to have some thoughts and feelings about any involvement with Iri. Whether that means Saber pining and trying to convince herself Iri's flirtation doesn't mean anything but guiltily wishing it did, Saber and Irisviel getting together, secretly, and Saber being tormented with guilt, or Saber just sort of accepting the inevitability of it all... or you can go for an AU! I don't have ideas along those lines yet, but I'll update here if I do.

Or, you know, PWP. Saber in a suit is hot as hell, and I'm all in favor of Irisviel appreciating that, too.

I hope that wasn't too much, but I also hope it was enough! Again, I'm open to questions, and I have a big backlog of other letters if you want to browse those as well. My AO3 name is Lirillith, just like here.