Yuletide 2025 letter

I am isabrella on AO3! You can also view my past exchange letters in the "letter" tag on this blog. Completely open to treats :D I have included more prompts for some canons than others as I've been requesting these for longer and accumulated more; it doesn't reflect my interest in each canon. Also please feel free to write anything you like that fits my DNWs, my prompts are just food for thought!

DNWs

Setting-changes AUs (canon divergence is fine); crossovers unless specifically requested; death of main characters; gore; gender-swapping; non-canonical/unrequested gender identities, chronic illnesses, mental illnesses, or neurodivergences; readerfic, first or second person narrative (okay in things like texts, social media, or letters; generally not applicable to book canons but noted in requests where relevant); fic about pregnancy or childbirth (unless they're getting a wanted abortion in which case yeehaw babey); fic about raising children ("kidfic"; a partial exception for North of North is noted); fic exploring mental illness in depth or discussing mental illness explicitly and at length (portraying characters with "symptoms" of mental illness is fine; going on about specific diagnoses is not); fic about body image issues including eating disorders.
Smut-related DNWs:
Non-con (dub-con like sex pollen is fine; I'm also fine with previous sexual assault being touched on); omegaverse; age regression; sex under the age of 15 (15+ is fine); mentions of pregnancy/children during sex; blood/vomit/feces/urine in sex; restraint during sex; degrading language in sex; M/F smut.

Likes

- Tropey fics such as: There Was Only One Bed, Fake Dating/Marriage, time loops, best friends to lovers and conversely enemies to lovers.

- Hurt/comfort (ranging from illness to injury, everything is fine! I have no squicks about blood/vomit/etc. outside of sexual contexts). In fact, feel free to absolutely go hard on making them miserable with broken limbs, the flu, food poisoning, migraines, cramps, concussions… As long as someone is crying or trying VERY BRAVELY not to cry and someone else is trying (especially if they're completely inept) to fix it, I'll be delighted.

- When the author knows a lot about a specific subject and uses it to great effect in the fic (literary analysis, statistical analysis, feminist theory, ornithology, genetic engineering, whatever your special interest is, go wild!).

- Found family, especially in the context of all-women settings (like pageants, girl bands, sports teams, secret mermaid clubs, women in STEM groups, Girl Scouts/Girl Guides) that kind of provide an alternative structure for the close relationships between girls and/or women.

- Humour, especially of the juxtapositional kind (think Gideon the Ninth).

- Exploring the ways that different characters show each other love.

- Characters absolutely not saying what they mean and instead communicating through completely insane metaphors and parallels to avoid talking about their real feelings.

- Themes around fame, feminine rituals, public/private personas, and hiding who you are to project a performance persona (band au my beloved).

- Doing each other's makeup, doing each other's hair, borrowing each other's clothes (being forced to borrow each other's clothes…). It's the feminine rituals of it all (can you tell I imprinted on the Girls Like Girls music video as an impressionable young teen?).

- Exploring characters' cultural/religious/familial history and connections.

- Exploring queer history and activism.

- Epistolary/other non-traditional formats for fic, especially social media-related stuff.

- When sex is funny/authentically awkward/fumbling/a complete comedy of errors but it still turns out hot.

- Any sexual first times (first time with each other, first time with a woman, first time of all time, first time trying something specific, etc.)

- Sex which is really about emotional intimacy.

North of North (TV)

Specific DNWs: Ting as a character in any meaningful way, smut.
I loooooooved this show, it was so funny and delightful and I loved the setting. So excited that someone else nommed it too! Promo post here. 
My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags.

Siaja

- Any character study of her - learning to be a leader, her inheriting knowledge from her elders, being a great mom, etc.
- Any workplace related situational comedy like in the show!

- I love Siaja growing into herself and I can definitely see her realizing that she's attracted to women. Anyone who makes her realize this is fun. I've focused on this in my prompts a lot to be honest, but I am very happy for you to explore things that do not include this too!

- In the Las Culturistas podcast, Chappell Roan says the online guinea pig community is very lovely (I'm paraphrasing). Siaja posts on the forums looking for advice on looking after Bun's guinea pigs and gets into a friendly banter with the woman on the other end (i.e., Chappell Roan).

- This is like the nichest prompt ever but I know one (1) person out there wants to write it, so I'm giving her an official out on my crossover DNW: Modern Family's Alex Dunphy comes to the polar research station to do research and Siaja and Alex discover the joys of lesbianism together.

- Helen sends Siaja to a larger town to gain some kind of short qualification or to a conference. Maybe she meets a delightful openly gay woman who makes her interested in trying it out. Maybe she has a series of work-related comedic errors just like in the show.

- Bun decides she is queer and Siaja becomes a proud ally parent, learning all about the LGBTQ+ community, and discovers that she might identify with one of those labels (queer, bi, lesbian, ace). Alternatively, she finds herself attracted to another PFLAG mom. Or leave out Siaja's self-discovery and just make it about her being a great parent while still having her own life!

- If you have personal knowledge about the Arctic or about Inuit culture I would love to learn more about it and how it might relate to Siaja!

- Similarly, if you have specific knowledge: Siaja attends a cultural exchange programme with another Indigenous nation.

- Epistolary: Siaja writes letters to Bun or her mom reflecting on various things. Similarly, her journal (an exception to my first-person/second-person DNW).

Little Mix RPF

My gift must feature one or more of my chosen character tags (giver's choice).

God I guess I got really into Little Mix again. Whatever. I'm pretty easy on this, anything will float my boat really! Feel free to include all four of them equally or similarly Jade + Leigh-Anne + Perrie. Also go ahead and focus on any femslash/poly ship if that's of interest. Also feel free to focus only on Jade or Leigh-Anne.

Jade Thirlwall and Leigh-Anne Pinnock

- I loooooooooove emotional hurt/comfort, especially about fame, media, performances, public personas, etc.

- They can be gay. Any of them, really, I don't mind, but I like Perrie/Jade as a particular fave.

- Almost kissing, almost touching, almost together on stage, etc.

- Secret Love Song pt II etc etc etc.

- Braiding each other's hair, doing each other's make up, the feminine rituals, you know the drill.

- Jade "Ally" Thirlwall I know what you are and it's bisexual. Anything about her discovering that about herself/the rest of them being like "Ally. Uh huh. Right." amuses me.

- Tropey fic in the vein of There Was Only One Bed/trapped on the tour bus/etc.

- Tropey smut: walking in on someone else getting off, leaking sex tapes, phone sex, etc.

- Angst!

- Going back home (together!) after getting famous and reflecting on how they've changed.

- Behind the scenes of the X Factor days, the rise to fame, etc. or a retrospective perspective on it with a reflective bent.

- Loving Jade’s new album, anything based on music from that! Similarly anything based on Leigh-Anne’s music.
- Post ironic/meta 1D fic tropes: sold to Little Mix, etc. 

2020s Pop Music RPF

My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags.

Towa Bird and Reneé Rapp

This is my new ongoing obsession. They're so hot. IDGAF do w h a t e v e r I don't understand why everyone isn't literally thinking about them day and night. Unbelievably if you want a brief primer J-14 got you.

Broadly speaking I'd like this fic to be set in the real world, but I'm not committed to their being singers/celebrities so role change AUs etc. are fine.

- WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR GIRL WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT TOWA. Write about that. RENEE WRITING CREDIT?

- Hurt/comfort, especially around performances <3

- Smut, especially after performances. Come onnnnn Towa at any show is literally the embodiment of lesbian sex.

- One/both of them on SNL. Drama/angst/etc.

- Trying to outcompete each other at singstar/karaoke/whatever.

- Towa fixing her in ear monitor all the time is so sexy to me.

- Generally important pieces of canon that I would love to explore: enemies to lovers, accidentally hard-launching with the Vanity Fair photobooth, them making out on stage etc.

- Okay so now we have the Renee Towa Show in the form of Renee Rapp's album BITE ME, in which I choose to believe every song is about Towa except for the ones that are about Alyssa (the ex that she cheated on with Towa) and Pauline Chalamet (SO fucking funny). Them writing that together is so hot. Songfic. I said it. Especially Shy. Also Renee how many times can you get hair pulling into one album?

- Fic based on: Mad, Your Girl, Shy, Kiss It Kiss It, Good Girl, Drain Me!, Sorry Sorry, This Isn't Me, Sometimes, in fave order.
- Aftermath of the Elle prank phone call. 

- "It's funny 'cause it didn't feel like friends on the kitchen floor, no, and I don't take friends to the back of my tour bus" 👀

- That pic of Towa on FaceTime in between Renee's tits.

- Writing songs together and fucking. Performing together and fucking. Phone sex while Renee's on tour. Phone h/c while Renee's on tour. Sex dreams etc.
- Renee is horny because she thinks she's written a really good song but it's actually mid and Towa's like have you ever even touched a guitar and Renee says I'll touch your guitar. Etc. 
- Post ironic/meta 1D fic tropes: sold to Towa Bird, who do fink gave you the teef, etc. 

Mossa & Pleiti series - Malka Older

My gift must feature one or more of my chosen character tags (giver's choice).

Specific DNWs: smut; explicit exploration of mental health issues, especially around what was raised with Mossa in book 3; an exception to a DNW: feel free to write first person like the books (either POV) if you want.

Promo: I'm insane about these I would make everyone I know read them if I could. Malka Older I want to crawl inside your brain. These books are an incredible feat of worldbuilding and romance and they're MYSTERY NOVELLAS. Things I love about it: the worldbuilding. It feels so lived in and all the little details like people living on separate day cycles and the railways built around the planet and the kind of historical-but-futuristic vibes! The fascination with Earth ecology/biology, the sci-fi elements mixed with the pseudo Victorian era vibes. I love that academia is so central to Pleiti and so… realistically stupid? I'm not in academia anymore but the absolute nonsense politics of it all and the fact that studying literature is considered life or death is incredibly funny and accurate to me. The politics of resurrecting animals and plants is fascinating to me. I love the pining of it all and the nebulous nature of their relationship and the push and pull of their growing affection etc.

Worldbuilding

- I would be into any kind of in-universe worldbuilding texts for this one, like academic articles or popular historical books or anything else you can think of that plays with format.

- The sociology of how religion and culture has been transmuted into this society is super interesting to me! Pleiti has a qibla globe (side note: would love to know more about how that works on pseudo-Jupiter) and she also says "May his memory be a blessing" to Mossa about her father so I wonder what all that implies about how aspects of various current-day religions have survived/changed on Giant.

- Anything that delves into the science of the resurrections (I have a biology degree specializing in genetics so I do find the Jurassic Park/seed bank/etc. of it all clown but fun).

- I am curious about the kind of social hierarchies that are hinted at but not interrogated at length thus far (Mossa is from Io, which seems to be considered backwards, Pleiti is from a farming area, Pleiti thinks about the class implications of porters, etc.) Pleiti reading one (1) sociological text from the Modern faculty and having her mind exploded is very funny to me. I liked the expansion of her academic world in book 3, would love to see where she takes that in the future. SORRY I also did sociology I'm a girl of many stripes.

Mossa and Pleiti

- Mossa taking Pleiti to visit her honorary family, or Pleiti taking Mossa home to her farming platform.

- Letters between Mossa and Pleiti is very on brand.

- Flashbacks to their time in college - was Mossa always solving mysteries then too? What did Mossa even study? What did they get up to together?

- Hurt/comfort of any kind. Come on you know the second Pleiti was tending to the claw marks on Mossa's back I was going out of my mind.

- Honestly I just love the books themselves so any case-ficcy type stuff would totally go wild for me.

- A character study of Mossa or Pleiti.

- Pleiti's reaction to some piece of amusing Earth culture that she's studying. What does John exploding cows in Nona the Ninth imply about New Zealand ecology? A personal fave would of course be the Girl Guiding handbooks from the early 20th century, because I am a freak! (Many of these can be found on Internet Archive I believe). Pleiti reacts to the Famous Five.

- Pleiti's interest in creating an interdisciplinary working group (I experienced a visceral war flashback to university writing that phrase) for reintroducing flora and fauna to Earth could potentially be an interesting starting point. Alternatively, she seemed like she might be leaning towards joining Mossa in some kind of regular investigative jaunt. What does that mean for her studies, her sense of herself, etc.?

- Mossa and Pleiti attending some kind of festival or celebration such as the Feast-Day of Valdegard.

The Incandescent - Emily Tesh

My gift must feature one or more of my chosen character tags (giver's choice).

Specific DNWs: smut; an exception to a DNW: feel free to write first or second person if you want.

What a delightful read! I love a good urban fantasy and also Emily Tesh's signature (well, spoilers, I suppose) approach I always enjoy. I wouldn't necessarily recommend on its sapphic merits but the woman who is a love interest is a bit Kylo Ren shan't speak so, then again, maybe I would.

Promo post (by someone else) here.

Aneeta Shah and Nikki Conway

You can of course include just Nikki or Aneeta, but I thought a lot of these prompts suited both!

- Nikki POV of parts of the events in the book: The Phoenix's takeover, the decision to open the portal, even pre-canon events that are touched on like her earlier time at the school and childhood etc. Also Aneeta POV!

- Aneeta and Nikki post-canon, what they decide to do at university.

- Nikki travelling the world (could be epistolary/letters/messages or not!).

- Aneeta and Nikki running some kind of camp/extracurricular/boarding school for the kids who don't get to go to boarding school.

- I would love to see a crossover between this and Juno Dawson's Her Majesty's Royal Coven and/or honestly the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik. I think there's some really interesting overlap in themes around magic-adjacent Britain coming out of recent urban fantasy.

Worldbuilding

- Fascinating world; I'd love to think more about why magical pursuits are not considered very important in higher academia.

- Exploring exactly how Saffy did what she did.

- Crossover ideas as noted above - in particular, a lot of the worldbuilding gave me the vibe of fanfic of the Scholomance series, so would be curious to explore that.

Rolling in the Deep Series - Mira Grant

My gift must feature one or more of my chosen character tags (giver's choice).

Specific DNWs: smut; an exception to a DNW: feel free to write first or second person if you want.

Ms. Seanan McGuire never misses it has to be said. I have not been able to get my hands on the prequel so I have only read Into The Drowning Deep! I don't have too many thoughts on what specifically I'd like to see here, but I really loved the world where mermaid studies was real and Seanan's writing style is so gripping, so if you can incorporate that (or your own twist on it!) I'm sure I'll love it. Do feel free to include all three characters, any one of these characters you're interested in, and any of the relevant side characters.

Victoria "Tori" Stewart and Olivia Sanderson

You can of course include just Tori or Olivia, but I thought it was likely that they would be paired together.

- Post-canon: what happens?

- What does Tori do with her research post-canon? Does she turn her attention to ecological destruction for real? Maybe she's an eco-terrorist?
- Olivia finding herself! What does she take away from it all?

Jillian Toth

- Love love love an insane academic who gets proven RIGHT.

- Worldbuilding type stuff that she does; research on the mermaids, her own research team, etc.

- Academic articles or interviews featuring her and/or the others.

those rumors they have big teeth

My gift must feature one or more of my chosen character tags (giver's choice).

If you're anyone except jack reading this if you're the other person who offered this for yuletide i NEED to know who you are after reveals please god!!!! otherwise, if you're here and reading this and you haven't, go read band au (what if the characters from willow were lesbian one direction and also childhood friends to lovers)😂

Tanthamore

- dark band au After AU

- pre-canon high school stuff

- hurt/comfort, whatever!

- SNL time loop!!!!!

- one of them did porn and the other finds it
- they get off together reading tanthamore fanfic/kit or jade writes ooc E rated tanthamore/etc.

- aus where they have sex at THEE worst times: after nockmaar, after finding out about micgate, after snl, in high school, at college, etc.
- in universe fics about same

Kitlora

- Chapter 7/8 kitlora AU

- Kitlora au where Elora writes Your Girl by Towa Bird about Kit.

- Elora calls while Kit and Jade are having sex.
- Elora gets off reading tanthamore smut and is like hmm.... is this ethical.... (canon or kitlora au vibes!)

Other

- Any of the in-universe fics from the fic.
- I realize the X Factor/TLT crossover band au is an insane thing to put but just a pure X Factor AU of band au would hit.
- For jack: any of the stupid ideas we've discussed already like Graylora wedding, Graydon committing international lizard smuggling crimes, etc.

- Kit/Chappell pre-canon LMAO

- 2025 Grammys

- Sorsha (the most emotionally fraught relationship in the most emotionally complex person you know) dies.

- Sorsha POV of anything - this most definitely includes things that are only tangentially related to Kit, such as Stacy.

- Elora POV of anything lmao.

- Kitlora friendship, Elora's abortion, Kit at Graylora wedding.

- Jade POV of Elora's wedding planning.

- Also if you'd like to just delve fully into social media/fandom/fanfics feel free to do a full deep dive on some part of fandom with the craziest tweets you can think of!!!

- Scorpia + Jade h/c, Sorsha + Kit h/c, etc.

- Mads dies and Jade doesn't know how to deal with it so she calls Sorsha.

- Madmartigan at SNL (and Jade doesn't know how to deal with it so she calls Sorsha).
- in universe fics of the 1D tropes

- Feel free to write any of your prompts/ideas too ik I'll like them.