Trickortreatex Letter

[sprocket]

Dear trick-or-treater,

First, thank you! If you're reading this, we've matched on a fandom I love, and characters I would be ridiculously pleased to see featured in a fic. I will be thrilled to receive pretty much anything that is not explicitly invoked in my do not wants. ODAO, character requests should be considered "OR" not "AND", etc.

If you look at the "dear author" tag, you'll notice some patterns in my requests. People working together to overcome obstacles, snark and snappy dialogue, banter, darkfic, place as character, postapocalyptic, N Times Characters Did A Thing. A+ parenting and its tricky parent-child relationship consequences. I have a bulletproof love of competence, including competence at being villainous, and characters finding connections and trusting each other. Add "in bed" to any of this for great shippy times.

Do Not Wants: PWP, bloodplay, coffeeshop AU, high school/college AU, explicit descriptions of sexual assault, cross-generation ships, infidelity, violence much more intense than canon-typical levels.

Shippiness is okay, and background pairings, whether F/F, F/M, M/M are all excellent options. OT3 is one of my favorite solutions to love triangles. Outside of a handful of canon-specific "no not want" pairings*, I'm very ship-flexible. The pan-fandom ship I will go down with is Favorite Characters/Happiness. My shippy Do Not Wants: cross-generation (May-December) relationships are not my jam. Infidelity is also a huge turn-off.

*POI: Root/Finch. It's not Character/Happiness for me. Sense8: Please don't break up Nomi and Amanita or Lito and Hernando unless you are writing that darkfic trick; otherwise, adding people to their happiness adds to my happiness.

That's it, that's the letter. Everything else is fandom-specific prompting. If you have an idea, go forth, write. If you're looking for ideas, read on.

Babylon 5: Alfred Bester, Catherine Sakai, Delenn, G'Kar, Jeffrey Sinclair, Kosh, Londo Mollari, Lyta Alexander, Marcus Cole, Michael Garibaldi, Na'Toth, Sofie Ivanov, Stephen Franklin, Susan Ivanova, Talia Winters, Ta'Lon, Timov, Vir Cotto, Zathras

Trick: The memory wipe tech, the Vorlons and Shadows and First Ones, creepy stuff Psi Corps does, these all seem like good ideas for something on the scary side. Throw in Bester and you've got 300 words of trickiness right there.

Treat: Day of the Dead AU! Or not AU. Nonhumans encounter Earth holidays. Susan and Marcus snark while searching for the First Ones. The adventures of Valen and Zathras. Really, there is very little Babylon 5 fic I will not love.

Ships: Yes! If they're consenting adults, go for it. Susan/Marcus is one of the tragic doomed OTPs of my heart, but basically Susan/anyone is awesome. I love Londo and G'Kar snarking. I want Vir to have happiness! With... with high numeric satisfaction! I want Michael to have a happy ending! (Not that... oh, fine, that type of happy ending.)

Fringe: Astrid Farnsworth, Brandon Fayette, Carla Warren, Henrietta "Etta" Bishop, John Scott, Nick Lane, Nina Sharp, Olivia Dunham, Peter Bishop, Phillip Broyles, Robert Danzig, Sally Clark, Simon Foster (Fringe), Walter Bishop, William Bell (Fringe)

Trick: Fringe is one long scarefest. Exploding heads, heads in Observer labs, the cortexiphan trials and Walter and William's other human experimentation of dubious ethics and value, S3 Walternate messing with blueverse!Olivia, the literal destruction of worlds. Anything set in the "Day We Died" or S5 timelines gets a "trick" rating from me. (Write it!) Write a ghost story of an old timeline echoing in the new one? The eerie interactions of two universes? Life in the Obserververse? Episode tags and missing scenes could fill in for tricks if you're writing Fringe.

Treat: A day in the life, minus near-death experiences. Happy hour, and the things that happen after happy hour. This could even be a flashback to pre-'86, with Walter (and Elizabeth) and William and Carla and Nina. Walter and Peter both cook for the people they love, and Astrid is canonically a stress baker, which gives you, dear writer, an excuse to have canonical sweets for treats. And things you do with sweets. This is a fandom where everyone could use more hugs. Sticky hugs from their small cute toddlers, slightly more restrained hugs from team members, something less platonic from their true love(s).

Ships: Pretty much anyone/anyone. Olivia/John Scott, Olivia/Peter, Olivia/Lincoln, Astrid/Lincoln, Peter/Lincoln, redverse Charlie/Olivia/Lincoln OT3 (gen or not), S4 Peter/Olivia/Lincoln OT3, Etta/Simon, and brief happy or "a couple universes over" flings of anyone I've missed.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Manga: Maes Hughes

Trick: The vices. The Ishval war. Hughes lives, other character(s) don't.

Treat: MAES HUGHES. That's it, that's the treat I'm asking for.

Ships: Again, flexible. Maes and Elicia open up their marriage? Pre-Elicia dating? Background other pairings? It's all great.

Person of Interest: Bear (Person of Interest), Harold Finch, John Reese, Joss Carter, Lionel Fusco, Root (Person of Interest), Sameen Shaw, The Machine (Person of Interest)

Trick: This show is littered with the beloved dead. Tell me a ghost story, literal or figurative: Shaw and Cole, Reese's ghosts, Harold and Nathan, Fusco and Stills, Root's long memory of Hanna Frey's murder, Carter's big empty shoes. Dig into the creepiness of the Machine and Samaritan's all-seeing eyes. Or the Machine's relationship with various characters. Harold built the Machine in his image, private and cryptic, and throughout the series seems to harbor mixed feelings about what he's created. Root's feelings are entirely unmixed, she's fine with being the Machine's hands. How has that played out, offscreen? How does Reese feel about getting to work with the Machine in God mode?

Treat: If there was ever a fandom that needed one happy day, this is it. Fix Harold pining for Grace. Fix up Root and Shaw. Fix "The Crossing". Take Bear to the park. (Shaw And Bear's Day Off Fighting Crime would be awesome.) Write that Finch/Reese fall-ish thing that's languishing in your WIP folder. Team Machine versus jack-o-lanterns; there's enough competitive people handy with a knife hanging around to make that exciting.

Ships: John/Harold, Harold/Grace, John/Harold/Grace, John/Zoe, Carter/happiness, Root/Shaw, Root/Machine, Shaw/Root/Machine. My only hard Do Not Want pairing of the exchange is Root/Finch.

Sense8: Amanita (Sense8), Capheus (Sense8), Daniela Velasquez, Felix Bernner, Kala Dandekar, Lito Rodriguez, Nomi Marks, Riley Blue, Sun Bak, Will Gorski, Wolfgang Bogdanow

Trick: Whispers and Byron Gordon Jonas lurking in the shadows. What else do you need for a trick? Okay, there's Riley's belief she's hexed, how did that shape her? And Wolfgang's belief he's a monster. Maybe a literal, Halloween-ish monster? Up to you, writer.

If that's not doing it for you, adjusting to life as a sensate, or life with a sensate (Hernando's probably noted something is up with Lito, yes?). This could be a trick, or a treat.

Treat: Sensates' international Halloween Dia de los Muertos harvest festival equinox party. Happy Lito/Hernando+Daniela times, or Nomi/Amanita, etc. The ensemble nature of the show means there's lots of great chances to slip in more character interaction. Capheus and Wolfgang, the Cheerful One and the... not so cheerful one. Lito is struggling so much with his personal arc he is less involved with the other sensates' struggles. Perhaps Lito and Kala talk about matters of the heart? Or Kala and Capheus connect over Kala's pharmaceutical background and the drugs keeping Capheus' mother alive. This is a show very much about finding connections, any treat that focuses on that would be sweet indeed.

Ships: Everyone/everyone. Please don't break up Nomi and Amanita or Lito and Hernando unless you are writing that darkfic trick; otherwise, adding people to their happiness adds to my happiness.