Hello, dearest Yuletide author,

Thank you so much for checking out my letter! This is my first year playing in the Yuletide sandbox and I’m so unbelievably excited to dig into these rare fandoms. Before we get into this behemoth of a letter, I just want to state upfront: the best fics are ones where the author clearly loved what they were writing. I want you to have fun! I want you to be passionate about what you’re writing! Sure, I’ve included a veritable shitload of prompts, ideas, and tropes I love, but if a completely different plotbunny grabs you in its teeth and won’t let go, then ride that inspiration as far as you can (as long as it doesn’t go against my DNWs of course!). I just hope my letter gives you some inspiration in a fandom (or fandoms) we both love <3

To anyone reading this letter—I am 100% open to treats, should you find yourself inspired.

So, onto the letter itself. Some people write short and snappy yuletide letters. You have not stumbled upon one of those. I’m happy for you or sorry that happened, whichever applies.

Now, some of this has already been included in my signup, but I reiterate and expand on quite a lot of it here, so I would recommend going through and reading this letter in its entirety (or, y'know, just focusing on the canon(s) you know you're going to write for). I'm not gonna force you though. I'm not a cop. I'm just stupidly passionate about all of these fandoms and the possibility of getting fic for them, so I'm going to give you a ton of detail and leave it to you to pick out what's important to you and what you'd like to write!

Contents:

Likes / Smut Likes

DNWs

Eldritch Horror (Board Game)

Frostpunk (Video Game)

Left 4 Dead (Video Game)

Outlast (Video Game)

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (Video Game)



THINGS I LOVE

I’m a huge fan of romance and smut, but I’m a sucker for anything that focuses on character relationships. Like it says in my signup, I DNW any endgame romantic/sexual ships beyond those I list for each fandom (I'm an unrepentant monoshipper)—but that doesn’t mean I’ll say no to gen. Relationship dynamics and the way characters interact with others is my bread and butter no matter if it’s platonic, romantic, or anything else.

• That trope where someone or multiple people mistake a character’s bruises/injuries as being the result of domestic abuse, when really it’s the result of heavy kink play, their badass secret life (e.g., they’re secretly a super spy!) or some combination of both. Bonus points for outsider POV!
• POV outsider fics (either looking in on a romantic relationship OR looking in on a buckwild situation that’s difficult to understand and easy to misinterpret from the outside)
• Sex worker fic!! Camgirl/camboy, full service, phone sex…I love it all, and with vibes from comedic and fluffy to trashy and tragic. My kingdom for a fusion with any of my requested characters in the setting and story of Cam (2018).
• Mutual pining
• Enemies to lovers, enemies with benefits to lovers, friends to enemies to lovers
• Competent characters who are the best of the best in a particular skill
• Underestimated competence is even better—I love when someone doubts a character’s skill, maybe mocks them, and then gets shown up and made to look foolish. I love when assholes are proven wrong.
• Wacky AUs where AU elements are cleverly related to canon characteristics
• Non-traditional found family (AKA no set mom/dad/child/sibling roles, these people are just Family)
• Temporary character death
• That trope where someone appears to have died and everyone is traumatized, but it turns out they’re alive (maybe they had to fake their death, maybe they just barely survived, maybe they were captured by Bad Guys, etc)
• Monstrous characters (metaphorically and literally). Also, monsterfucking
• Getting together fic
• Bitter exes getting back together
• Anything Lovecraftian, or within the cosmic horror genre
• Size differences
• Age difference in relationships, especially when the age difference is emphasized
• Threats of or attempted rape/non-con by an antagonist, or the ever-present threat of rape that comes with rape culture
• Possessive behaviour. Bonus points if it includes objectifying behaviour, i.e., “you are something that belongs to me”. Double bonus points if the one being objectified doesn’t want to be into it, but is.
• Funky gender stuff with cis people or binary trans people, e.g., a man who is a wife, a woman being called “sir”
  
• Wacky but mundane settings where the characters are all, like, coworkers or something. Think something like a ghosthunting team, a matchmaker service, researchers at an Antarctic research base or a space station, Disney park cast members. Basically I’m thinking petty workplace squabbles but in absurd workplaces.
• Identity porn. Any kind is great but if you can give me an even more chaotic, messy version of the Miraculous Ladybug two-person-love-square, I love you
• Complicated, angsty, traumatic sibling (or sibling-adjacent) relationships
• Epistolary or semi-epistolary, especially if it’s in a unique format (the scp format comes to mind but of course not limited to something like that)
• Fake relationship. I’m alright with this whether it’s between a ship, or between two characters who are definitively NOT into one another (in the latter case, fake pairings not specified in my signup are okay as long as they do not develop any feelings for one another and remain strictly platonic)
• Any kind of undercover fic (undercover at a BDSM club/party is a personal favourite but I love all undercover tropes)
  
• Casefic/missionfic/monster of the week fic
  
• The trope where somehow, somewhere, for some reason, the characters are being hunted for sport
  
• Lifestyle BDSM, especially if it’s not set out in any strict terms, the characters have just naturally fallen into a D/s dynamic (or maybe they would naturally fall into a D/s dynamic, but one of them is resisting…). Bonus if they also have a power imbalance outside of the relationship.
  
• Hurt/comfort and whump
  
• Codependent relationships where it’s obviously extremely unhealthy but also, nothing else could possibly work for these two characters (romantic, platonic, familial). basically this dynamic:

• That trope where characters are caught in a bank robbery and/or hostage situation…especially if they have badass skills that give them an advantage in the situation.
  
• Forced proximity
• Unreliable narrators
• Happily-ever-after or happy-for-now endings
• Societal homophobia as a backdrop for exploring a queer pairing or character.
• Whump, both emotional and physical.

I am totally fine with graphic violence, gore (though not guro), and body horror; basically all of my requests are horror or horror-adjacent canons, so if you want to stick with canon-typical (or worse) levels of gore and violence, please do!

And of course, some things I love in smut specifically:

• Desperate sex
• Overwhelmed bottoms
• Sex tears, whether it be from emotion, pain, overstimulation, etc
• Size kink
• Consensual non-consent or dubiously consensual non-consent (i.e., mutual rape kink but make it messy and poorly communicated)
• Virginity kink (of the virgin bottom/experienced top variety)
• BDSM (especially sadomasochism and dominance/submission)
• Leaving marks (bruises, bites, ropeburn), especially out of possessiveness
• Rough and/or violent sex
• Choking kink
• Feminization kink or forced feminization kink
• Objectification and/or depersonalization kink
• Degradation kink (mild or intense, anything is good)
• Orgasm control (orgasm delay, orgasm denial, forced orgasms)
• Aftercare without calling it aftercare
• Characters feeling shameful about their desires for whatever reason (especially if they try to repress their desires and end up failing horribly)
• Pretty much all flavours of dubious consent

THINGS I DO NOT WANT

• Switching: I generally have really strict top/bottom AND dom/sub preferences and I dislike switching with very few exceptions; please don’t even allude to switching within a couple. I’ll give my character-specific preferences in their respective fandom sections so if there’s to be smut, please either write to those preferences or avoid sex acts that would indicate one of these roles!
• On-page sexual content with anyone under 18, whether explicit or vague. Narration or dialogue stating two underage characters get sexual or an older character reminiscing on teenage sexual experiences is fine, as long as it's vague.
• Bathroom bodily fluid kinks (watersports, scat, vomit, menstrual blood)
• Endgame romantic/sexual relationships not specified in my signup/letter. Past or temporary relationships outside those specified in my signup are fine.
• High school AU
• Polyam relationships, threesomes, moresomes
• Infidelity between any of the couples I’ve specified here. If they’re cheating on other partners with each other, that’s fine.
• Permanent death of any requested characters
• Kink negotiations or overemphasis on safewords. I prefer RACK over SSC, but I prefer messy poorly-communicated kink discovery over both.
• Bestiality
• I’d really appreciate if you would not use the spelling “cum”, “cumming”, etc and instead use “come”, “coming”, “precome”, but I'm not going to enforce that.
• Enemas
• Readerfic
• Genderbend/rule 63
• Unhappy endings; bittersweet endings are fine.

And now, with all my general preferences out of the way, we can get into the fandoms I've requested for this year's Yuletide (in alphabetical order).

• The hopelessness, the way the extreme difficulty built into the game makes everything feel desperate, like these characters are just clinging to normalcy and survival in a world that’s falling apart around them.
• The collaborative nature of a group of very different people all being called to action all across the globe, and coordinating with each other to stop something unstoppable. And questions of why they, specifically, were called; is it a higher power? a sense of solemn duty? practicality?
• The way in-game mechanics can lend to storytelling, such as one character racing to another's location to protect them from certain death, the way extremely difficult choices can often lead to a character making sacrifices (even potentially sacrificing themself) to further the plot and help save the world, and the way lucky dice rolls can sometimes make incredible things happen.
• The sense of mystery hidden all across the world, from ancient sunken cities to giant worms hidden deep beneath the earth to esoteric cults and secret societies that are both good and evil. The world is just so rich and fascinating.

Now, we've got four nominated characters here that are from the set of playable investigators. These characters don’t necessarily have a canon characterization, but they do have little blurbs associated with them, as well as their general skills and archetypes within the game that might help give ideas for potential characterization. I also have some general characterizations I like for them, personally.



URSULA DOWNS - The Explorer
(Game stats and description)
"As a young girl, Ursula constantly climbed trees, scaled rock walls, and explored caves. When it came to her studies, she excelled in history and the sciences. After getting a degree in Archaeology in Boston, she began traveling the world searching for forgotten civilizations. She's an expert in both ancient and contemporary languages, and is capable of enduring the harsh environments she encounters during her expeditions. Recently, Ursula has traveled to Africa to oversee the excavation of a lost city's ruins."

Ursula is an all-rounder who can be specced for many different tasks, but does her best work exploring ancient ruins and getting around the board through difficult terrain. She has a free re-roll pretty much every round. Literally just think of her as a combination of Evelyn Carnahan, Rick O’Connell, and Indiana Jones. A versatile adventurer, explorer and historian whose main in-game mechanic is just competence: the character.




RITA YOUNG - The Athlete
(Game stats and description)
"Clocks do not lie. In the past, people said hurtful things to Rita. They threatened her. But since she started running competitively, Rita has only cared about the clock. Most of the time, it says that Rita is faster than the rest. It says she is stronger and has trained harder. Now she competes around the world and has attracted some unwanted attention. The prejudices of certain esoteric cults cannot tolerate her successes. They plan to make an example of her. But they will have to catch her, and the clock says they cannot."

Rita is a character who's built for fighting monsters, closing gates (a mechanic that involves stepping into one of the mystical otherworlds to close a tear in reality), patching herself up afterward, and constantly gaining new talents. She's a competitive runner and a Black woman dealing with the prejudice of the setting by simply being stronger, faster, and smarter than everyone around her. She gives me such Autism Vibes. Running isn’t just her career it’s her special interest.




FINN EDWARDS - The Bootlegger
(Game stats and description)
"Finn was making a good living, running liquor from Canada to cities all along the East Coast. He never got caught and never lost a delivery. Now he has taken a job in Chicago and gave his word that he could get it done. This time it won't be alcohol he's delivering, and it won't be the local sheriff trying to catch him. Finn's caught up in some supernatural conspiracy, but in the end, he adheres to the same principles. Deliver the goods. Don't get caught."

Finn's another all-rounder who can be a pretty good support role, with his ability to move himself and other characters around the board. He also cannot have his items taken from him unless he chooses to give them up. I've always seen him as a quick and clever smuggler/bootlegger who knows how to steal shit, get out of trouble quick, and keep himself alive. This is a man who’s been around the block a few times. This is a man with experience. This is a man with daddy potential.




TOMMY MULDOON - The Rookie Cop
(Game stats and description)
"Most members of the Muldoon family are part of the Boston police force in some way or another. Not long ago, the youngest brother Tommy got his badge. Armed with an eye for detail, fierce courage, and his trusty rifle Becky, young Muldoon is dedicated to law enforcement. Now he finds himself in Anchorage at the request of his cousin, the local sheriff. Something has been killing people, and off the record, his cousin says it's a wendigo. Tommy's not sure he believes any of that, but catching killers is in his blood."

Tommy is another character built for fighting monsters, who can prevent other, weaker characters from having to deal with monsters. He starts with a carbine rifle that he's lovingly named "Becky". He's a rookie cop whose in-game function is to protect his teammates and who seems to have semi-canonical daddy issues and a fully canonical hero complex! This sweet little twunk has a praise kink; change my mind.

*If you'd like to include any other Eldritch Horror investigators or characters, then please feel free!


I’d love any fics for this game to take place only in the canon setting. What that means is up to you! It could be set pre-canon, before the eldritch cults have started to really make themselves known in the world. It could be set during the game itself, anywhere from the early stages when the world is just starting to get weird to the late stages where the world is typically falling apart. It could be set post-canon—the Old One has been defeated, but what does that mean for the world? What does that mean for these characters? Are they recognized as saviours of the world, or does nobody know what they’ve done? I'd be happy with literally any fics for this nonexistent fandom, so please, if you find yourself inspired then go where your heart takes you.

Another fun thing to explore are what the game calls “Other World Encounters”: these are basically the encounters you have to do to close the gates, tears in reality through which monsters and horrors can spawn. The journeys these encounters take you on are varied and wild; sometimes you find yourself in a dreamlike version of the far-flung past or the distant future, sometimes you find yourself on the shores of a ghostly lake in a distant star cluster, sometimes you find yourself in the crumbling kingdoms of unfathomable gods, hiding from monsters or making bargains with Old Ones. The sky’s really the limit here, and there are so many fun and fucked up possibilities to explore. Go nuts show nuts!


Fandom-specific DNWs: Endgame het for any characters in the tagset; Alternate settings other than the canon setting


Ships & dynamics: Finn/Tommy (top!dom!Finn, bottom!sub!Tommy), Ursula/Rita (top!Ursula, switch!Rita)

Finn/Tommy: Honestly, who doesn't love a good cops-and-robbers romance. The rookie cop, desperate to prove himself and protect the people around him, and the bootlegger and smuggler with a few years under his belt and all sorts of friends in low places? It writes itself. I'm obsessed with the tension of feeling caught between duty and feeling. Also, the sexual tension of putting the cop that tried to arrest you in his own handcuffs.

Ursula/Rita: These are two extremely powerful characters, extremely fun to play and extremely good on a team because of how their skills and specialties balance each other out. They're also two experts in their fields, and both give me neurodivergent vibes. Somehow, I just feel like they'd be drawn together. I could see them getting together being an ordeal—the world is falling apart, and they're both too dedicated to saving it to let romance get in their way—but once they're established, they're unshakeable.






I can play Frostpunk for hours, and I have. This is such a fascinating universe with really satisfying gameplay elements, even when it gets reeeaaally frustrating and I have to give up my classic strategies for something new. It’s such an interesting canon to explore; the world as we know it has ended, and the last vestiges of humanity are huddling together desperately trying to survive in a world that actively seems to want them dead. The coal-and-steam aesthetic is gorgeous, and the vast winter wasteland is rife with narrative possibility. For those who've never played, if you’re into punishing resource management games, I definitely recommend it!

The stories of the individuals within this setting are really what intrigues me. I’d love to see the hardships, the triumphs, and the catastrophes through any kind of character within any of the in-game scenarios (or, if you’re feeling creative, a completely different scenario!). I’m especially fascinated by the idea of queerness in this setting; how does the late 19th century attitude towards queerness carry over into this new world? Especially if you follow the Faith or Order pathways. I'd love to see an exploration of queerness in one of the authoritarian city-states that either of those pathways offers if you progress far enough—bonus points if that queerness includes the Captain, who ostensibly has decided to implement this authoritarian government that might not approve of their orientation or relationships.

There are no canon or fanon romances in Frostpunk, since there are no canon “characters” in the way we’d normally conceive of them, but if romance is your style then i would love something that explores what kind of relationship the Captain has going on. You can go full OC with this, and feel free to make the Captain however fleshed out of a character you’d like. This is such a stressful situation and I’d love to see how a relationship might form under these desperate circumstances, or how it might struggle against the harsh reality of the Captain’s position. Oh, and like I've written above, bonus points if there’s a secretive element because of the queer nature of the relationship.

Honestly, I’ll take any queer romance, as long as it’s bound up in the setting. Doesn’t have to include the Captain at all, there are so many different people in these miniature societies—maybe a couple of scouts fall in love! Maybe there’s some interesting class-divide-romance between an important engineer and a nobody mineworker! Maybe a doctor falls for one of their longterm patients!

If romance isn’t your jam, I would seriously love any exploration of the bonds people form in impossible situations, and the tensions when situations get even more dire. I’d prefer to see anything on worldbuilding filtered through the eyes and narration of someone living in the world, but I absolutely will not say no to some straight up meta about the worldbuilding. I love this game!! I love the world!!

Also, I’m open to something exploring any of the in-game scenarios. My personal favourite was the seed arks (I'm a big fan of scientists and I love having a city run entirely by automatons, it’s fantastic) but I love them all. And if you want to dream up your own impossible scenario outside those available in game, please do!


Fandom-specific DNWs: Endgame het for any prominent characters


Ships & dynamics: N/A. Give me anything queer!






I feel like most people know about Left 4 Dead by now, but if you don’t, here’s the basic pitch: a zombie apocalypse has just started, and a group of four survivors come together to fight their way to hopeful evacuation as they’re swarmed by zombies (the fast kind).

As of writing this signup, I just started playing this game. I'm hoping to get through the campaign in the next few weeks, but this is one of those fandoms that I somehow stumbled into without consuming much of the canon content (I've seen a few videos of people playing, but not a full playthrough). Honestly, I think Nick as a character just grabbed me. I LOVE a cynical asshole with a deeply, deeply buried heart of gold; the kind of guy who'll adopt a small group as His People and do anything for them, but tell the rest of the world to fuck off and mean it. Combine that with a criminal past and I'm locked in, I can't escape. I guess that's a hint: if you're looking to write some L4D fic, anything Nick-centric is the way to my heart.

I love post-canon stories in this universe where the world has, somehow, mostly recovered from the zombie apocalypse and the survivors get to return to normal lives. Especially if they find they can’t quite fit in, thanks to all the violence they’ve seen and their new badass skills. I also love the survivors running into people from their pasts, from Before the infection—can they still connect with people who haven't been through the trauma they have? Do the people they used to know even believe what they went through? Nick was pretty clearly against forming relationships at the beginning of the game—are his old associates surprised by the relationship (platonic or romantic) he's developed with Ellis (or the other survivors in general, because I'll never say no to some Coach and Rochelle)? Tl;dr, I would love something that explores the tensions, explicit or implicit, between the survivors and people who didn't go through what they went through (people who evacuated immediately, people who lived somewhere the apocalypse didn't really hit, whatever it may be).

If you'd like some Nick/Ellis-specific ideas and prompts, one thing I'd love to see with them is daddy kink taken a few steps further (aka more on the roleplay side of things than just calling someone “daddy”). I'd love anything with this dynamic, from pure PWP to a deep character study of this particular kink with these particular people. Of course, I won't say no to classic daddy kink either. If that's not your style, I'd be really intrigued by a canon-divergence where Nick and Ellis somehow met (and maybe had a one-night-stand?) before the apocalypse broke out; maybe it was the night before things kicked off, maybe it was a couple years ago. Exploring the way this changes the trajectory of their relationship during the game interests me. Oh, and this is such a perfect setting for hurt/comfort that I've gotta mention it here. Take the in-game mechanic of patching someone up and turn that into some delicious whump & caretaking.


Fandom-specific DNWs: On-screen or off-screen death of Rochelle or Coach; Endgame het for requested characters


Ships & dynamics: Nick/Ellis (top!dom!Nick, sub!bottom!Ellis)

Nick/Ellis: This hits on a few relationship tropes I love: an age difference substantial enough to be meaningful (with life experience difference to go along with it), "fuck everyone but you", that very specific brand of kinda onesided hate-to-love where they start off bickering and not trusting each other but end up bonded for life, and the age-old battle couple. Also, Nick is an asshole cynic with a criminal past and Ellis is a good-natured daredevil with a cute accent. A classic sunshine/grump couple.




*I’ve included Miles in my sign-up, but I do not require him in my gift! However, please include him if you can, even if it’s a minor role

For those unaware, Outlast is a 2013 horror game wherein you play as journalist Miles Upshur, looking into apparent criminal behaviour at Mount Massive Asylum (and you undercover much more than you were bargaining for). In the Outlast: Whistleblower DLC, you play as Waylon Park, whistleblower to these crimes and tech guy at Mount Massive, who gets thrown into the asylum after he’s caught spreading secrets.

Outlast was once one of my favourite games; I knew every jumpscare, almost every battery location. The cast of characters is fascinating, entertaining, and downright terrifying sometimes. The feeling of utter helplessness–you have no weapons, nothing but the ability to run, hide, and film with your night vision camera–makes the atmosphere extremely tense even if you know the game as well as I used to. Also, it's certainly not perfect in terms of representation, seeing as it makes use of the age-old trope of asylums as a horror setting–but I do appreciate what the fandom does with this (and what canon hints at, to some extent), making it clear that the true horror is Murkoff and the awful, inhumane experiments they're conducting on the patients in their care.

Honestly, the funniest thing about this canon for me is that despite looooving the fucked up and deranged material in the game, I prefer fics for this fandom to be fluffier, less fucked up, and have relatively happy endings (even if there’s a hefty dose of awful angst along the way). Like, yes, Miles was killed at the end of the main game—but maybe now that he’s the host of the Walrider, he managed to stay alive as more than just incorporeal bullshit. Yes, Eddie was a misogynistic serial killer even before being put in the morphogenic engine—but maybe Murkoff manipulated his files to make him seem more dangerous than he was, so they could keep him around for experimentation. He also died…but maybe he didn’t! Maybe he survived being hoisted up amongst his failed brides, or maybe he didn’t get hoisted up in the first place! My approach to Outlast fic that's set in canonverse is truly just, "i think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love".

I've got a few different ideas and prompts knocking around for this fandom. If you go canonverse, I'd love anything with Eddie and Waylon (and maybe Miles!) cooperating after escaping Mount Massive. Is it a deadly hide-and-seek for their lives from Murkoff? Is it a comedic unlikely partnership filled with bickering? Is it a character study on the nature of shared trauma? Or how about a roleswap AU, in any configuration? Maybe Eddie's the IT guy and Waylon’s the Bride looking for his groom; maybe Waylon’s the reporter and Miles is the IT guy. There are so many possibilities!

I love AUs of all kinds in this fandom, the more humorous and wacky the better. I love Waylon and Miles having an established friendship, wherein Miles is an agent of chaos and Waylon is the long-suffering play-it-safe guy (who really could do with being a bit more exciting and spontaneous).

Oh, and no matter what you end up writing, if you include Eddie/Waylon—I'll love you forever if you play around with gender roles here. I love Waylon taking on the Bride role, or a more feminized role, especially if it's something that he really wants (maybe he's trying to convince himself that he doesn't, or maybe he's totally accepting of it). Let Eddie be a gay man with a wife!!


Fandom-specific DNWs: Canon character death of any requested characters; Strictly evil readings of Eddie as a character; Endgame het for requested characters


Ships & dynamics: Eddie/Waylon (top!dom!Eddie, bottom!sub!Waylon)

Eddie/Waylon: If I'm being honest. Eddie...big. Okay, that's not the only reason I like them, but it's a big one, and I'll love you forever if you emphasize the substantial size difference between them. But really, beyond Eddie calling Waylon darling and being obsessed with him, that moment they share at the very beginning of the game is one of the biggest draws of this ship. Sometimes, you horrifically torture a man because you'll be killed if you don't, and later he horrifically tortures you because his brain has been scrambled. Trauma bonding is a fucked up and powerful thing. Also, old-fashioned gentleman Eddie and nerdy tech-forward Waylon is a perfect opposites attract in any universe.



Ah, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, a combination of two of my favourite things: Twinklock Holmes and Lovecraftian horror. I haven't played this game myself yet, but I did watch someone play it (just as I also watched someone play the original Twinklock game when it came out, even though I have it untouched in my library...). My absolute favourite part was watching this young and reckless Sherlock Holmes, who prides himself on his rationality and being able to find the logical explanation for even the most absurd events, struggle to comprehend all the Cthulhu bullshit. Those moments where he was just desperately trying to make sense of things...the absolute anguish and confusion he was experiencing...

There's this one moment where he's sitting on the floor in a stupour, and he literally whimpers "Watson?" in this extremely terrified and desperate voice, and that rewrote some of my DNA a little bit. And then in the end, when you have the option to accept the madness and Sherlock is just so distraught about it all...

In case you couldn't tell, I would love to see this traumatized pretty-boy genius get whumped.

Speaking of whump, we're dealing with Cthulhu here, and Sherlock canonically is terrified of water. I feel like there's so much to do with that. Let's traumatize this baby boy some more!

Also, the gentle development of his relationship with Watson from Chapter One to this game is very interesting to me; it seems they still don’t entirely know each other, they’re still figuring that out, and that narrative is very juicy. Especially with Sherlock’s Jon-shaped baggage from the previous game, and his freshly-resolved childhood trauma (that’s clearly still clinging to him). Feel free to explore that relationship throughout the course of the game, and how it might develop afterward (especially in a universe where Sherlock has accepted the madness).

I would like any fics written for this fandom to take place in the canon setting, under the assumption that the Old Ones are real (even if nobody but Sherlock believes it). I love the Cthulhu mythos (and the entire Lovecraftian and associated mythos), so I'd love even deeper explorations into the cosmic horror of this setting. I haven't included Worldbuilding as one of my requested characters so don't feel pressured to focus on it, but just know I'd love to receive fic that focuses on worldbuilding if you're enthusiastic about writing it.


Fandom-specific DNWs: Endgame het for requested characters; Alternate settings other than the canon setting; Anything that definitively states that the Old Ones aren’t real


Ships & dynamics: John/Sherlock (top!dom!John, bottom!sub!Sherlock)

Sherlock/John: I mean...it's Sherlock Holmes and John Watson! They're shippable in every iteration! What I specifically love about this canon, though, is that they're younger, and fairly fresh into their partnership. There's something that feels more raw and clumsy about this iteration of them, and I mean that in the best way possible. But beyond that, the age-old dynamic of Sherlock trusting John and only John, when his trust and affection are very hard to come by...I eat that up. Also, I just want this Sherlock to have someone to take care of him. I think he needs it.



Alright...I think that's everything! I might add to this letter over the next little while, but for now it's finished. Thank you so much for making it to the end of my ramblings; I hope you have a fantastic Yuletide and I can't wait to read what you've written! <3