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chocolate box 2019 dear creator letter
hello dear gifter, i'm mel aka ![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
revolving aka ![[twitter.com profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
exitvelocities. thank you for making a gift for me!
likes: AUs, future fic, canon divergence, character studies, slice of life, turning points, hand holding, characters taking care of each other while simultaneously destroying their opponents/enemies/whatever, you and me against the world, spies and secret agents, con artists and heists, that king and lionheart vibe, tension and longing, cyberpunk, SPAAAAACE, magical realism, fairy tale elements/reimaginings, mutual pining, tenderness, creative use of lighting, selective framing, sequential rendering of small gestures or moments, limited palettes.
do not wants: chat fic, first person pov; crack unless it's a crack premise treated seriously; incest; minor/adult relationships of any sort, especially teacher/student or coach/student, even if you age the kid up; any type of sex work AU; abuse, abuse of authority, extreme interpersonal power imbalances/etc; infidelity, jealousy; misunderstandings/miscommunication as a plot device; tragedy for tragedy's sake; rape/noncon; a/b/o or sex pollen or anything that invalidates consent; animal death/abuse; in applicable fandoms, the transposition of american/western high school or college culture onto japanese students; i'm generally boringly vanilla so please ask before springing anything exotic on me; please don't give me background ships unless i ask for them.
rating preference: i'm not really interested in porn right now unless it's just really grossly tender porn; there are also specific fandoms for which i don't want sexual content for at all so please check that. for applicable fandoms, canon-typical levels of violence/gore/etc are fine. in general my tolerance for that sort of thing is pretty high as long as it serves a purpose and isn't just shock value.
listed in vague order of priority; more importantly some have their own individual dnws so please check!
specific dnws: this is a series that fraught in a lot of ways and discussing some of that is necessary to the sorts of things i'm interested in seeing for it. i don't know how necessary it is to say this, but it's always better safe than sorry with exchanges, so: please don't be flippant in your treatment of trauma, sexual or otherwise.
lee yut lung
yut lung is a fascinating character and the one whose gen relationships i'm most interested in seeing explored. he's only 16, a survivor of multiple and generational traumas, he so clearly wants to be nothing but vicious and cold but he also struggles with the actuality of that. i think a lot about the conversation he has with blanca, about ash still having a chance, and how both of them categorize yut-lung as someone who doesn't. that's the thing i'd really like to see dug into, via his relationships with ash and blanca and sing, though i'd like to stress that i don't want anything romantic or sexual involved.
with ash, it's clear that yut lung feels that they're similar, that they've lived through some of the same pain, that they were hurt and used because they were born looking the way they do, but also that there's some sort of fundamental difference, maybe because of eiji or maybe just represented by eiji. what i'm curious about is what exactly he wants from ash and if he even knows what that is himself.
with blanca there is the sense of being seen more clearly than he's used to, and there's a gentleness to their interactions that i don't think yut lung entirely understands either. but, when they talk about ash, blanca still says "he's not like us" and there's the tension of cross purposes.
for sing, i'm mainly interested in seeing how they could develop post-canon, in the gap between the main series and garden of light and after.
shorter wong
shorter deserved nothing that happened to him and my heart will be broken over him forever, probably. for him, i'm interested in the development of his relationship with ash pre-canon or what could have happened if he hadn't died, either with or without the addition of eiji. gen or romo is fine for either. i'll also take a gen look at this relationship with sing because it's implied that they were close but we didn't really get to see any of it.
specific dnws: if you go for the shuu/seiya (please do), please don't do the whole "can't have minato so let's settle" thing and please don't make it into a hateship, that's boring.
takehaya seiya
seiya is the most my type he could possibly be, with the sweet smile and barbed tongue, with the declaration that he has no need for compassion when his heart's a bramble thicket of love and regret. i'm actually most interested in the potential of the relationship between him and shuu, which is wrapped up in his relationship with minato and his relationship with archery. tbh i sort of want to see a situation where, later on, maybe in university or something, they sort of just find themselves together without really knowing how and having to navigate that... having to work through who they are to each other with and without minato in present time is good also. honestly i'm curious about shuu too, the whole "young prince" thing isn't just a nickname and he's always so measured and composed even when he's breaking seiya's heart... he told minato what he said to seiya without batting an eye and seemed to expect seiya to have said it himself. it's sort of the whole genius vs hard worker thing but not exactly. you can throw minato in there or you can not, because in some ways it changes everything and in others it changes nothing. either way, i would really like the focus to stay on seiya and what's going on in his complicated little head, and what shuu makes of all that.
if you'd rather go with seiya/minato by itself, i'm mostly interested in them working through that sort of unspoken tension between them, the gap between the things they know and the things they'll say out loud. a lot of it is wrapped up in seiya's guilt and i wonder if he's ever actually expressed it to anyone tbh... either gen or romo is fine here tho i tend to lean more toward unresolved romantic tension for these two. unrequited is also ok if you're gentle about it.
whatever you go with, please know that i love that put together perfectionist seiya is super, super not a morning person.
arakita yasutomo (yowamushi pedal) & zaizen naoyuki (daiya no ace)
ok ohhhh my god. two monster jr. high pitchers felled by injury?? two snarled up, snarly boys dealing with what feels like the end of the world?? if you want to sync up their timelines somehow i'll take running across each other at like rehab or something but i'd really like to pick at the idea of them meeting at university-- at a point where arakita's already well and truly settled into his Next Thing while zaizen is still slowly, painfully trying to find his. i don't know, proof of life after baseball? put zaizen at yonan if you want (tho... i'm not sure he'd be a great engineering student LOL but arakita guessed his way in so), kinjou can come too, but god i just want these two kids who loved and lost baseball with their whole entire hearts to meet. i will also take the iteration where they were rival middle school pitchers, meeting again sometime after high school.
harada hideo (chihayafuru) & harada masatoshi(/narumiya mei) (daiya no ace)
i have no idea if same name is same character and i honestly don't care, i just want harada-sensei to be masa-san's uncle and be subjected to his nephew's boyfriend and mei being wrangled into playing karuta.
mihashi ren (oofuri) & tanba koichirou (daiya no ace)
i feel like mihashi having a senpai who had to overcome intense anxiety would be good for him and i would like tanba to get the sincere admiration he deserves. that's pretty much it tbh.
kurata takeshi
i have a lot of feelings about takeshi and i just... want to know if he's ok, if he can ever be ok again. i want to see where he can go from where we last see him, his resolve to tell coach what's been happening crumbling beneath roka's scorn, this kid who ruined the thing he loved most for himself. i'd like to see him maybe go to the same university as kazuki so they can work through their respective baseball traumas together because they're very different but both very deep and they're both leaving the sport that's defined most of their lives. kazuki's already decided that he doesn't need to let this pain define his entire life, that he doesn't need to be like roka, and i'm interested both in him learning the full extent of the situation and takeshi being able to talk about it. i'll also take takeshi with basically any of the bijou seniors (naomasa, takumi, yano-jun) if you'd rather that tbh, i just. what do you do, when you fuck up that badly, when you are lead to fuck up that badly by someone you are supposed to be able to trust.
kawai kazuki/takase junta
for this i'd prefer a bit of a stretch post-canon-- reconnecting in university or even later. does kazuki ever feel like playing baseball again, what does junta feel about it if he does or doesn't, all the things neither of them said in the summer that they lost. the contrast in their relationship pre-and-post, the ease of their lost battery vs whatever they have or are finding now. basically i love kazuki a lot and i want him to heal and junta does too.
akimaru kyohei/haruna motoki
i feel like this one is so tangled up... like some things are so easy for them and others are so difficult. that they can communicate so easily without words but at the same time can't understand each other on a fundamental level. that tension is really interesting to me so i sort of just want to see them trying to navigate all of that but i'd also be down for the au in which akimaru never gave up on baseball and haruna never gave up on akimaru.
see also: crossovers
specific dnws: endeavor apologism, bakugo. i get that it's a thing that's happening in the manga wrt endeavor but like the redemption or justification of abusive fathers is both pretty common actually and not a thing i'm interested in, so. as for bakugo you have literally the entire rest of the fandom for him, please let me live.
todoiida
so, with these two i think a lot about the weight of legacy and learning to bear it in a way that doesn't involve hurting yourself with it, of having someone who can understand that struggle and the two of them becoming a shelter for one another against the worst of it... i prefer a slower development for these two generally, so i'd favor something set in the future, post-UA. obviously it all starts with stain but i'd like to see where it could go from there.
specific dnws: sorry, taichi is not allowed in any sort of requited romantic proximity to chihaya, don't @ me.
wataya arata &/ mashima taichi (& ayase chihaya)
so, i feel like a thing that gets obscured a lot by fandom hyperfocus on taichi and what they think he deserves is exactly how important he and arata are to each other. i feel like so much of taichi's character development (and in the particular the most positive parts) can be traced back to arata telling him that he's a coward in that empty classroom. taichi admits arata's importance to himself even when he doesn't want to, when arata comes back to karuta and he's just as happy as chihaya is, when he thinks about him during matches. "when i forget you i’m happy, but when i remember you i’m encouraged." basically i'd like to see something working through the weight of that, either gen or romo is ok.
alternatively: au in which chihaya is the one who moved away in middle school and comes back to tokyo for university; how arata & taichi, together, have had to deal with first her absence and now her presence.
wakamiya shinobu &/ ayase chihaya
this one i'd take in combination or in parallel with the above if you wanted but it's not necessary. basically i think a lot about how shinobu has been kept isolated for most of her life and how chihaya is in a lot of ways the first person to break through to her. maybe something where they'd met sooner, as children, or where they've moved to, twenty years on, sort of like sakurazawa & inokuma... in all honesty this ship would be my preferred endgame for the entire series and i don't think i'm going to get it so please indulge me with some version of that, hahahahah.
wataya arata/ayase chihaya/wakamiya shinobu
for this i'm just interested in more of it existing... i do very much see chihaya as the hinge of relationship since she's important to both of them and chihaya is greedy, after all, so for shinobu and arata i'd want to see what their relationship would be like vis-a-vis their relationship to chihaya vs any sort of independent romantic development between them. i'd be interested in all the complicated emotional maneuvering that might need to happen to get there but honestly i'm also just interested in seeing how a household of karuta bakas would survive mundane domesticity.
see also: crossovers
lin chen/mei changsu
i love these two with their shitty family vibe with son fei liu... i'd be interested in the little interstitial moments like that, before series proper, when mcs is still becoming mcs, when their dynamic is just forming, or the version where mcs survives but disappears as far as anyone in the capital is concerned.
xiao jingrui &/ yan yujin
jingrui goes through so much and yujin is, despite all appearances, just a solid, steady, ray of sunshine. i'd take tales of shenanigans from their childhood days or post-canon would be great because we don't get to see a lot of jingrui in the aftermath.
chang wufei/heero yuy
so this is my original rareship and where all of my problems started. i've always thought they were the most similar in terms of what they're facing after endless waltz, where wufei doesn't know how to change and heero most desperately wants to. i'd like to stick to well-post-canon for this one, adjusting to a post-gundam world and finding out how much wider it is when you aren't trapped into being a teenage terrorist... i always feel like they'd be the most terrifying preventers combo, with terrific battlefield rapport so i'll always take something along those lines.
kuan yong/xiu xian
kuan yong and xiu xian are literally my favorite part of this entire show. they're basically redblues but ones that have been together so long that they're both a little purple. i'd take anything from their like idk 500??? yearish history together, or something way post-drama, when they've regained their human forms.
kuan youg/xiu xian/xiao ju
honestly my favorite overall episode is the one where the three of them make up stories about themselves in the park and i'd love anything along those lines.
specific dnws: i'm not asking for miyuki here so please don't give him to me; in fact please actively consider other underutilized characters (shirasu, zono, miyauchi) you could use in whatever place you might have stuck him.
zaizen naoyuki
MY BITTER ANGRY DARLING. i think a lot about how he was SUCH a monster in jr high that jun is still upset about it in his last year of high school, a minimum of 2.5 years later, how hard he's trying to hold onto something so ephemeral as "talent" but his body won't let him, how he eventually has to give up because there's just no way for him to match his previous self, or at least the version of himself in his own mind.
we don't get a lot of him so honestly, anything? middle school stuff, getting injured, trying to recover, coming to the decision to quit, far future fic etc.
ship(s): chriszaizen. they were jr high rivals, they're basically set up as parallels in terms of their injuries but one gets to recover and one doesn't, so that's always interesting to me. i also like happy pro-battery aus, the au where zaizen went to seido and they conquer it together bc they were able to be be each other's brakes, and there was that time terajima literally drew a kingsman au of them for their birthdays, which are literally a day apart (zaizen is 9/30, chris is 10/1). if you want to au and you can translate their backstory to your au setting i'll probably automatically love it.
also, chriszaizentanba... i love this idea bc both their dynamics with chris are very different and zaizen used to be what tanba desperately wants to be but now no longer is or can be... just zaizen and tanba learning to fit together for chris and later themselves is such an interesting idea to me tbh. i love the idea that chris and zaizen are rougher with each other/more prone to bickering but noticeably gentler with tanba, idk. there's so much potential.
tanba koichirou
tanba has it really hard in canon, mainly bc he's a) the senpai ace, and b) therefore not the main character. i feel like he gets the short end of the stick in fandom a lot because of that too, and also because he's not one of the "pretty" characters, but i adore him. sometimes i think about first year tanba, struggling to speak clearly and look people in the eye, and i cry.
ANYWAY honestly, just give me tanba-centric things. struggles as a first year? trying to redeem himself in college? any number of what-if aus? yes, thank you, i will take it.
ship(s): christanba! i always wonder about that thing tanba says, about how it was chris who caught his elbow injury during second year, and his sort of frustrated longing to form a battery with chris. i also like the idea of them getting to finally play together properly in college, or or or. daiya is generally good for aus too, honestly, so basically any ship au you think of that fits them is fine too. (see also christanbazaizen above)
also, tanbanaka or tanba/manaka or whatever it's called! i love childhood friend ships and i always get stuck on that scene of these two at the beach, mourning the ignoble ends to their high school baseball careers, their broken promise. i always think of manaka saying "i can't give up on baseball like this" and wonder what tanba must be thinking, looking at him, this boy he wanted to become a worthy rival to.
if you want to combine all of those possibilities that's fine too, tanba can have three husbands, he deserves to be pampered.
harada masatoshi
I LOVE MASA-SAN. i keep thinking about him talking to tetsu in the stands during the fall yakushi game and talking about the pressures of being the clean-up, so i wonder about that. he's so solid and steady, how did he get there. how did he build up his relationship with mei, who doesn't quite defer to him but listens to him more easily than he does anyone else, how does this translate to his pro career, how's he doing out in hokkaido. just. masa!!! more masa!!!!!
ship(s): masamei. how did this happen, is masa nearly as put out as he pretends, mei trusts him with things he doesn't show anyone else in the series, idk!! i also really want future fic for them, playing as pros either together or against one another, just. basically their little dugout talk in S2E26 pressed all my ship feelings buttons at once with how sincere and unguarded mei was with masa there, so more of that side of their relationship would be lovely. they communicate so seamlessly on the field, they seem to finish each other's thoughts, so i always wonder how they got there.
i'm also interested in masa &/ tetsu though i don't have any specific ideas for it because they clearly have such a mutual respect... tetsu even specifically says that he recommended miyuki to succeed him as captain because they "were defeated by a man like that" aka harada masatoshi, captain, catcher, and clean-up.
if you wanted to somehow smash those two together that would be fine too.
kominato ryousuke
my most darling, my small pink hellion. i love him the absolute most, so if you decide to focus on him please be very mindful with your characterization; he's not a one-note sadist. he loves baseball, his family, and being right. he's got complex feelings and motivations, so please don't collapse him down into a caricature. i feel like a lot of fandom characterizations like to forget how much heart he has and i really dislike the whole "controlling overprotective brother" trope he gets subjected to.
things i would be interested in for him include: how is he doing in college, more about "the lean year" and how he developed, what happened when kuramochi came to seido, this boy with almost effortless athleticism and (by ryousuke's standards) a piss poor work ethic. how did they end up with the level of trust they've got by his last summer, etc.
ship: kuraryou, the great ship love of my life, the thing you can do if you don't think you can do anything else. i'm always keen on the idea of extrapolating how their field synergy applies to other situations or other areas of their lives. canonverse & future fic is great for them and they are also probably my most au-friendly ship. i really enjoy crime aus for them, honestly.
things to avoid: please don't involve haruichi in their relationship; please don't have ryousuke being insecure abt haruichi & kuramochi; please don't use their relationship as background noise for some other relationship you decided to foreground.
areas of interest: FAKE MARRIED SPIES AU, partners-in-literal-crime aus, pokemon trainer au, ryousuke wearing kuramochi's clothes, space aus, soul eater au, ryousuke giving youichi a piggyback ride, gross domestic bliss. i'm easy. summer wars au??? not necessarily the Big Plot but like the human drama part of it, or really just ryousuke taking kuramochi home as his fake boyfriend and springing his giant pink family on him. not a hamilton au bc i do not like hamilton aus but just using this line as a jumping off point: but i'm not afraid / i know who i married... an easy weakness of mine: fave characters in winter clothes, silly or fashionable both acceptable. (pls put ryousuke in a big winter hat.)
see also: crossovers
i used up all 10 reqs mainly because i feel like most of the things i want are pretty long shots so thanks for reading through them!
if you are creating for a sports fandom and would like a more specific direction or you really like quote/poetry prompts, you can try going through my saso prompts if you'd like.
general preferences
some fandoms are going to have their own specific notes, but in general:likes: AUs, future fic, canon divergence, character studies, slice of life, turning points, hand holding, characters taking care of each other while simultaneously destroying their opponents/enemies/whatever, you and me against the world, spies and secret agents, con artists and heists, that king and lionheart vibe, tension and longing, cyberpunk, SPAAAAACE, magical realism, fairy tale elements/reimaginings, mutual pining, tenderness, creative use of lighting, selective framing, sequential rendering of small gestures or moments, limited palettes.
do not wants: chat fic, first person pov; crack unless it's a crack premise treated seriously; incest; minor/adult relationships of any sort, especially teacher/student or coach/student, even if you age the kid up; any type of sex work AU; abuse, abuse of authority, extreme interpersonal power imbalances/etc; infidelity, jealousy; misunderstandings/miscommunication as a plot device; tragedy for tragedy's sake; rape/noncon; a/b/o or sex pollen or anything that invalidates consent; animal death/abuse; in applicable fandoms, the transposition of american/western high school or college culture onto japanese students; i'm generally boringly vanilla so please ask before springing anything exotic on me; please don't give me background ships unless i ask for them.
rating preference: i'm not really interested in porn right now unless it's just really grossly tender porn; there are also specific fandoms for which i don't want sexual content for at all so please check that. for applicable fandoms, canon-typical levels of violence/gore/etc are fine. in general my tolerance for that sort of thing is pretty high as long as it serves a purpose and isn't just shock value.
listed in vague order of priority; more importantly some have their own individual dnws so please check!
banana fish
notes: no sexual content for this series especially please; i'm anime-only for this canon but i know the basics of the additional material so it's fine to reference that. this is also the one series where i'm not interested in a straight AU so much-- canon divergence yes, definitely, but pure AU no.specific dnws: this is a series that fraught in a lot of ways and discussing some of that is necessary to the sorts of things i'm interested in seeing for it. i don't know how necessary it is to say this, but it's always better safe than sorry with exchanges, so: please don't be flippant in your treatment of trauma, sexual or otherwise.
lee yut lung
yut lung is a fascinating character and the one whose gen relationships i'm most interested in seeing explored. he's only 16, a survivor of multiple and generational traumas, he so clearly wants to be nothing but vicious and cold but he also struggles with the actuality of that. i think a lot about the conversation he has with blanca, about ash still having a chance, and how both of them categorize yut-lung as someone who doesn't. that's the thing i'd really like to see dug into, via his relationships with ash and blanca and sing, though i'd like to stress that i don't want anything romantic or sexual involved.
with ash, it's clear that yut lung feels that they're similar, that they've lived through some of the same pain, that they were hurt and used because they were born looking the way they do, but also that there's some sort of fundamental difference, maybe because of eiji or maybe just represented by eiji. what i'm curious about is what exactly he wants from ash and if he even knows what that is himself.
with blanca there is the sense of being seen more clearly than he's used to, and there's a gentleness to their interactions that i don't think yut lung entirely understands either. but, when they talk about ash, blanca still says "he's not like us" and there's the tension of cross purposes.
for sing, i'm mainly interested in seeing how they could develop post-canon, in the gap between the main series and garden of light and after.
shorter wong
shorter deserved nothing that happened to him and my heart will be broken over him forever, probably. for him, i'm interested in the development of his relationship with ash pre-canon or what could have happened if he hadn't died, either with or without the addition of eiji. gen or romo is fine for either. i'll also take a gen look at this relationship with sing because it's implied that they were close but we didn't really get to see any of it.
tsurune
notes: no sexual content for this series please; i'm anime-only for this canon but i don't really care about spoilers.specific dnws: if you go for the shuu/seiya (please do), please don't do the whole "can't have minato so let's settle" thing and please don't make it into a hateship, that's boring.
takehaya seiya
seiya is the most my type he could possibly be, with the sweet smile and barbed tongue, with the declaration that he has no need for compassion when his heart's a bramble thicket of love and regret. i'm actually most interested in the potential of the relationship between him and shuu, which is wrapped up in his relationship with minato and his relationship with archery. tbh i sort of want to see a situation where, later on, maybe in university or something, they sort of just find themselves together without really knowing how and having to navigate that... having to work through who they are to each other with and without minato in present time is good also. honestly i'm curious about shuu too, the whole "young prince" thing isn't just a nickname and he's always so measured and composed even when he's breaking seiya's heart... he told minato what he said to seiya without batting an eye and seemed to expect seiya to have said it himself. it's sort of the whole genius vs hard worker thing but not exactly. you can throw minato in there or you can not, because in some ways it changes everything and in others it changes nothing. either way, i would really like the focus to stay on seiya and what's going on in his complicated little head, and what shuu makes of all that.
if you'd rather go with seiya/minato by itself, i'm mostly interested in them working through that sort of unspoken tension between them, the gap between the things they know and the things they'll say out loud. a lot of it is wrapped up in seiya's guilt and i wonder if he's ever actually expressed it to anyone tbh... either gen or romo is fine here tho i tend to lean more toward unresolved romantic tension for these two. unrequited is also ok if you're gentle about it.
whatever you go with, please know that i love that put together perfectionist seiya is super, super not a morning person.
crossovers
notes: i'm not interested in sexual content for any of these tbh.arakita yasutomo (yowamushi pedal) & zaizen naoyuki (daiya no ace)
ok ohhhh my god. two monster jr. high pitchers felled by injury?? two snarled up, snarly boys dealing with what feels like the end of the world?? if you want to sync up their timelines somehow i'll take running across each other at like rehab or something but i'd really like to pick at the idea of them meeting at university-- at a point where arakita's already well and truly settled into his Next Thing while zaizen is still slowly, painfully trying to find his. i don't know, proof of life after baseball? put zaizen at yonan if you want (tho... i'm not sure he'd be a great engineering student LOL but arakita guessed his way in so), kinjou can come too, but god i just want these two kids who loved and lost baseball with their whole entire hearts to meet. i will also take the iteration where they were rival middle school pitchers, meeting again sometime after high school.
harada hideo (chihayafuru) & harada masatoshi(/narumiya mei) (daiya no ace)
i have no idea if same name is same character and i honestly don't care, i just want harada-sensei to be masa-san's uncle and be subjected to his nephew's boyfriend and mei being wrangled into playing karuta.
mihashi ren (oofuri) & tanba koichirou (daiya no ace)
i feel like mihashi having a senpai who had to overcome intense anxiety would be good for him and i would like tanba to get the sincere admiration he deserves. that's pretty much it tbh.
oofuri
notes: no sexual content for this series please.kurata takeshi
i have a lot of feelings about takeshi and i just... want to know if he's ok, if he can ever be ok again. i want to see where he can go from where we last see him, his resolve to tell coach what's been happening crumbling beneath roka's scorn, this kid who ruined the thing he loved most for himself. i'd like to see him maybe go to the same university as kazuki so they can work through their respective baseball traumas together because they're very different but both very deep and they're both leaving the sport that's defined most of their lives. kazuki's already decided that he doesn't need to let this pain define his entire life, that he doesn't need to be like roka, and i'm interested both in him learning the full extent of the situation and takeshi being able to talk about it. i'll also take takeshi with basically any of the bijou seniors (naomasa, takumi, yano-jun) if you'd rather that tbh, i just. what do you do, when you fuck up that badly, when you are lead to fuck up that badly by someone you are supposed to be able to trust.
kawai kazuki/takase junta
for this i'd prefer a bit of a stretch post-canon-- reconnecting in university or even later. does kazuki ever feel like playing baseball again, what does junta feel about it if he does or doesn't, all the things neither of them said in the summer that they lost. the contrast in their relationship pre-and-post, the ease of their lost battery vs whatever they have or are finding now. basically i love kazuki a lot and i want him to heal and junta does too.
akimaru kyohei/haruna motoki
i feel like this one is so tangled up... like some things are so easy for them and others are so difficult. that they can communicate so easily without words but at the same time can't understand each other on a fundamental level. that tension is really interesting to me so i sort of just want to see them trying to navigate all of that but i'd also be down for the au in which akimaru never gave up on baseball and haruna never gave up on akimaru.
see also: crossovers
boku no hero academia
notes: no sexual content for this series please; i'm anime-only for this canon but i don't really care about spoilers so please contextualize if you choose to reference manga-only events bc i won't get it otherwise.specific dnws: endeavor apologism, bakugo. i get that it's a thing that's happening in the manga wrt endeavor but like the redemption or justification of abusive fathers is both pretty common actually and not a thing i'm interested in, so. as for bakugo you have literally the entire rest of the fandom for him, please let me live.
todoiida
so, with these two i think a lot about the weight of legacy and learning to bear it in a way that doesn't involve hurting yourself with it, of having someone who can understand that struggle and the two of them becoming a shelter for one another against the worst of it... i prefer a slower development for these two generally, so i'd favor something set in the future, post-UA. obviously it all starts with stain but i'd like to see where it could go from there.
chihayafuru
notes: no sexual content for this series please; i'm not up-to-date on the manga anymore but most of the stuff i'm interested in for it at the moment are canon divergence anyway.specific dnws: sorry, taichi is not allowed in any sort of requited romantic proximity to chihaya, don't @ me.
wataya arata &/ mashima taichi (& ayase chihaya)
so, i feel like a thing that gets obscured a lot by fandom hyperfocus on taichi and what they think he deserves is exactly how important he and arata are to each other. i feel like so much of taichi's character development (and in the particular the most positive parts) can be traced back to arata telling him that he's a coward in that empty classroom. taichi admits arata's importance to himself even when he doesn't want to, when arata comes back to karuta and he's just as happy as chihaya is, when he thinks about him during matches. "when i forget you i’m happy, but when i remember you i’m encouraged." basically i'd like to see something working through the weight of that, either gen or romo is ok.
alternatively: au in which chihaya is the one who moved away in middle school and comes back to tokyo for university; how arata & taichi, together, have had to deal with first her absence and now her presence.
wakamiya shinobu &/ ayase chihaya
this one i'd take in combination or in parallel with the above if you wanted but it's not necessary. basically i think a lot about how shinobu has been kept isolated for most of her life and how chihaya is in a lot of ways the first person to break through to her. maybe something where they'd met sooner, as children, or where they've moved to, twenty years on, sort of like sakurazawa & inokuma... in all honesty this ship would be my preferred endgame for the entire series and i don't think i'm going to get it so please indulge me with some version of that, hahahahah.
wataya arata/ayase chihaya/wakamiya shinobu
for this i'm just interested in more of it existing... i do very much see chihaya as the hinge of relationship since she's important to both of them and chihaya is greedy, after all, so for shinobu and arata i'd want to see what their relationship would be like vis-a-vis their relationship to chihaya vs any sort of independent romantic development between them. i'd be interested in all the complicated emotional maneuvering that might need to happen to get there but honestly i'm also just interested in seeing how a household of karuta bakas would survive mundane domesticity.
see also: crossovers
nirvana in fire
notes: i'm not really interested in modern AUs for this show! other types of AUs are fine, though, i'd just like them tailored to the show's setting rather than the other way around.lin chen/mei changsu
i love these two with their shitty family vibe with son fei liu... i'd be interested in the little interstitial moments like that, before series proper, when mcs is still becoming mcs, when their dynamic is just forming, or the version where mcs survives but disappears as far as anyone in the capital is concerned.
xiao jingrui &/ yan yujin
jingrui goes through so much and yujin is, despite all appearances, just a solid, steady, ray of sunshine. i'd take tales of shenanigans from their childhood days or post-canon would be great because we don't get to see a lot of jingrui in the aftermath.
gundam wing
notes: i'd rather stick to anime canon on this one, waves away frozen teardrop.chang wufei/heero yuy
so this is my original rareship and where all of my problems started. i've always thought they were the most similar in terms of what they're facing after endless waltz, where wufei doesn't know how to change and heero most desperately wants to. i'd like to stick to well-post-canon for this one, adjusting to a post-gundam world and finding out how much wider it is when you aren't trapped into being a teenage terrorist... i always feel like they'd be the most terrifying preventers combo, with terrific battlefield rapport so i'll always take something along those lines.
moonshine and valentine
notes: i only know tv canon for this!kuan yong/xiu xian
kuan yong and xiu xian are literally my favorite part of this entire show. they're basically redblues but ones that have been together so long that they're both a little purple. i'd take anything from their like idk 500??? yearish history together, or something way post-drama, when they've regained their human forms.
kuan youg/xiu xian/xiao ju
honestly my favorite overall episode is the one where the three of them make up stories about themselves in the park and i'd love anything along those lines.
daiya no ace
notes: sexual content only if everyone is an adult; i'm like 100+ chapters behind on act ii but all i want are the retired senpai anyway tbh so i don't care about spoilers. this is technically my failsafe fandom but honestly most of the ships i'm asking for have a fanbase of approximately six people that aren't me. this has been my main fandom for the past several years so it's also the lowest priority as it's what i get most of.specific dnws: i'm not asking for miyuki here so please don't give him to me; in fact please actively consider other underutilized characters (shirasu, zono, miyauchi) you could use in whatever place you might have stuck him.
zaizen naoyuki
MY BITTER ANGRY DARLING. i think a lot about how he was SUCH a monster in jr high that jun is still upset about it in his last year of high school, a minimum of 2.5 years later, how hard he's trying to hold onto something so ephemeral as "talent" but his body won't let him, how he eventually has to give up because there's just no way for him to match his previous self, or at least the version of himself in his own mind.
we don't get a lot of him so honestly, anything? middle school stuff, getting injured, trying to recover, coming to the decision to quit, far future fic etc.
ship(s): chriszaizen. they were jr high rivals, they're basically set up as parallels in terms of their injuries but one gets to recover and one doesn't, so that's always interesting to me. i also like happy pro-battery aus, the au where zaizen went to seido and they conquer it together bc they were able to be be each other's brakes, and there was that time terajima literally drew a kingsman au of them for their birthdays, which are literally a day apart (zaizen is 9/30, chris is 10/1). if you want to au and you can translate their backstory to your au setting i'll probably automatically love it.
also, chriszaizentanba... i love this idea bc both their dynamics with chris are very different and zaizen used to be what tanba desperately wants to be but now no longer is or can be... just zaizen and tanba learning to fit together for chris and later themselves is such an interesting idea to me tbh. i love the idea that chris and zaizen are rougher with each other/more prone to bickering but noticeably gentler with tanba, idk. there's so much potential.
tanba koichirou
tanba has it really hard in canon, mainly bc he's a) the senpai ace, and b) therefore not the main character. i feel like he gets the short end of the stick in fandom a lot because of that too, and also because he's not one of the "pretty" characters, but i adore him. sometimes i think about first year tanba, struggling to speak clearly and look people in the eye, and i cry.
ANYWAY honestly, just give me tanba-centric things. struggles as a first year? trying to redeem himself in college? any number of what-if aus? yes, thank you, i will take it.
ship(s): christanba! i always wonder about that thing tanba says, about how it was chris who caught his elbow injury during second year, and his sort of frustrated longing to form a battery with chris. i also like the idea of them getting to finally play together properly in college, or or or. daiya is generally good for aus too, honestly, so basically any ship au you think of that fits them is fine too. (see also christanbazaizen above)
also, tanbanaka or tanba/manaka or whatever it's called! i love childhood friend ships and i always get stuck on that scene of these two at the beach, mourning the ignoble ends to their high school baseball careers, their broken promise. i always think of manaka saying "i can't give up on baseball like this" and wonder what tanba must be thinking, looking at him, this boy he wanted to become a worthy rival to.
if you want to combine all of those possibilities that's fine too, tanba can have three husbands, he deserves to be pampered.
harada masatoshi
I LOVE MASA-SAN. i keep thinking about him talking to tetsu in the stands during the fall yakushi game and talking about the pressures of being the clean-up, so i wonder about that. he's so solid and steady, how did he get there. how did he build up his relationship with mei, who doesn't quite defer to him but listens to him more easily than he does anyone else, how does this translate to his pro career, how's he doing out in hokkaido. just. masa!!! more masa!!!!!
ship(s): masamei. how did this happen, is masa nearly as put out as he pretends, mei trusts him with things he doesn't show anyone else in the series, idk!! i also really want future fic for them, playing as pros either together or against one another, just. basically their little dugout talk in S2E26 pressed all my ship feelings buttons at once with how sincere and unguarded mei was with masa there, so more of that side of their relationship would be lovely. they communicate so seamlessly on the field, they seem to finish each other's thoughts, so i always wonder how they got there.
i'm also interested in masa &/ tetsu though i don't have any specific ideas for it because they clearly have such a mutual respect... tetsu even specifically says that he recommended miyuki to succeed him as captain because they "were defeated by a man like that" aka harada masatoshi, captain, catcher, and clean-up.
if you wanted to somehow smash those two together that would be fine too.
kominato ryousuke
my most darling, my small pink hellion. i love him the absolute most, so if you decide to focus on him please be very mindful with your characterization; he's not a one-note sadist. he loves baseball, his family, and being right. he's got complex feelings and motivations, so please don't collapse him down into a caricature. i feel like a lot of fandom characterizations like to forget how much heart he has and i really dislike the whole "controlling overprotective brother" trope he gets subjected to.
things i would be interested in for him include: how is he doing in college, more about "the lean year" and how he developed, what happened when kuramochi came to seido, this boy with almost effortless athleticism and (by ryousuke's standards) a piss poor work ethic. how did they end up with the level of trust they've got by his last summer, etc.
ship: kuraryou, the great ship love of my life, the thing you can do if you don't think you can do anything else. i'm always keen on the idea of extrapolating how their field synergy applies to other situations or other areas of their lives. canonverse & future fic is great for them and they are also probably my most au-friendly ship. i really enjoy crime aus for them, honestly.
things to avoid: please don't involve haruichi in their relationship; please don't have ryousuke being insecure abt haruichi & kuramochi; please don't use their relationship as background noise for some other relationship you decided to foreground.
areas of interest: FAKE MARRIED SPIES AU, partners-in-literal-crime aus, pokemon trainer au, ryousuke wearing kuramochi's clothes, space aus, soul eater au, ryousuke giving youichi a piggyback ride, gross domestic bliss. i'm easy. summer wars au??? not necessarily the Big Plot but like the human drama part of it, or really just ryousuke taking kuramochi home as his fake boyfriend and springing his giant pink family on him. not a hamilton au bc i do not like hamilton aus but just using this line as a jumping off point: but i'm not afraid / i know who i married... an easy weakness of mine: fave characters in winter clothes, silly or fashionable both acceptable. (pls put ryousuke in a big winter hat.)
see also: crossovers
i used up all 10 reqs mainly because i feel like most of the things i want are pretty long shots so thanks for reading through them!
if you are creating for a sports fandom and would like a more specific direction or you really like quote/poetry prompts, you can try going through my saso prompts if you'd like.