Hetswap 2017
Dear Hetswap Author,
Welcome! I'm really looking forward to seeing what you write for one of my favourite pairings and I hope you enjoy your assignment.
I shall try to keep this to a sensible length, but I have a history of waffling too much in these things, so bear with me! I hope it will be useful, but you should ignore most things that aren't my likes/dislikes/specific requests if not. You can see my other fic exchange letters at my dear author tag.
Likes: Humour, missing adventures, friendship, hurt/comfort, fantasy, history, mysteries, ghosts, casefic, crossovers, banter, feelings & emotion, touch/sensation, first times, trope subversion, trapped together tropes, fake marriages/marriage of conveniences, forced to work together, moving towards intimacy, five times, dancing, historical costumes & undressing, balancing out each other, helping each other be better, emotions conveyed by things other than words, winning through to happy endings, kissing, holding onto each other, comedy of manners.
Dislikes: graphic horror/violence/gore etc, explicit pr0n, sugary sentimentality, incest, rape, unending angst without hope, non-canonical tragic endings, kidfic, everyone being oh so hot, pregnancy, real life medical conditions (unless canon), character bashing, assumptions that canon is awful and needs fixing, anything to do with over-eating/greed, & non-canonical major character death (unless it fits with a darker canon/ship).
However, I don't have any actual triggers and want, most of all, for the story to fit the pairing - not all of the above things will apply to all fandoms/pairings requested! I'll write more about AUs in prompts below, but in general sticking to canon is safest unless I've asked for one, and if you still feel led, I'm usually happy to have fantastical elements in my mundane canons, but unhappy to find my fantastical canons made mundane.
I try to choose all my requests carefully, so I do want all of these pairings. Please don't be alarmed if I write more or less about one than the others. (I've been writing this letter while ill and have wound up even more random than usual, but honestly - I love the idea of getting fic for any of these pairings.)
1. Doctor Who (1963)
Five/Tegan, Brigadier/Liz Shaw
Five/Tegan
I don't know where to begin and I love them so much and I can't write them to my own satisfaction, please help me, author. Anything featuring one emotionally repressed 800-year-ish old Time Lord and his stubborn, loyal, tell-it-like-it-is-and-then-some Australian air-stewardess will make me very happy, I promise. We all know what it means when two people argue like that in the 1980s. (I once made a manifesto for Five/Tegan. It was a bit more coherent than this is, so you might as well have the link.)
* the Doctor and Tegan get stuck in the past/a planet with a formal society together without the TARDIS somehow & maybe even have to pretend to be a couple
* any sort of hurt/comfort between them is lovely (cf. the Doctor at the end of Snakedance, or the way that Tegan seems to feel that the Doctor is her responsibility when he's in trouble or hurt).
* they get forced to live out some sort of altered reality where they are a couple/get together (until they get out)
* missing scenes from late S20, early S21. (Suddenly, after The King's Demons, they're both a lot happier and the Doctor keeps taking Tegan everywhere she wants to go. It could just be to annoy Turlough, but still...)
* anything you can think of where they can still be their awkward selves with bonus points if they can also be shippy and maybe kiss or more. Somehow. *glares at them* (Don't worry if you can't, author, they are the most awkward perfect pairing that won't sometimes and honestly anything you can do with them will be lovely. I am pining for fic - suddenly everybody seemed to stop writing them all at once.)
If you want to include anyone else in your fic, that's fine, I love Nyssa and Turlough too and don't even hate Adric. The Master is welcome to plot, if that's where your Muse takes you.
Brig/Liz
I love them, I love all their interactions in S7 & how they start off almost as if someone invented the X-Files twenty years early (until the Doctor turns up), how she winds him up and he tries to remain imperturbable, the respect they have for each other (or that Liz learns to have for him), their combined sheer effectiveness and competence and, as a pairing, their mutual repression/devotion to career or duty is a big thing.
* any missing S7 scenes/adventures or later reunions
* any S7 trouble they investigate without the Doctor. (I once wrote a set of these myself, but I still have a huge hankering for them doing their stuff without even needing the Doctor every time, because canon suggests this is the case anyway.)
* I don't usually like AUs for DW so much (I mean, you can just go to wherever it is, or do whatever it is in canon anyway!) but as the Brig and Liz don't travel in the TARDIS and are so grounded in a particular place and time, I'd enjoy some for them - UNIT as an outfit investigating supernatural things, with a sceptical Liz called in as adviser, historical settings, golden age crime-solving (with Liz as the brilliant amateur and the Brig the put-upon police inspector).
* or, of course, they do wind up somewhere back in time or elsewhere in the galaxy when the TARDIS is playing up again (or the Doctor is) and have to rely on each other.
* either of them getting injured or hurt in the course of an adventure and the other having to provide help etc.
* in this one, UST, sudden breaking of repression etc etc. is lovely, thank you. Including use of fanfic tropes like alien sex pollen, fake marriage, trapped together. (Brig/Liz + Cliché is usually a winning formula. I think it's partly just imagining the world-weary Brigly eyebrow raising that will ensue.)
Any other members of UNIT, and the Master, or other such characters are fine if you want to use them.
2. Doctor Who (Big Finish Audios)
Eight/Charley
Eight/Charley... I do adore their dynamic. I don't mind if you keep it as canon with Charley loving the Doctor in an additional way, or make it properly shippy at any point. I love Eight/Charley fluff, and I love the enduring love and friendship with a side-order of pain that they are in canon. I remember once reading an interview with India Fisher where she said that, for Charley, in her position, the Doctor is all the family she can have now, her best friend, and only possible lover and her feelings for him encompass all those things. And I love how perfect a match she is for Eight at that point and that, however different his feelings may be, he still finds it hard not to sacrifice the universe for her. In short, I love the fun and banter and the fluff and I love the sheer mixed up wrongness and rightness of them.
* missing adventures
* reunion fic. I hate that they've never found each other again! I would love that to happen and if you want to go there in your fic, please do.
* going to a party somewhere, on a picnic, or out somewhere nice with nothing bad for a change.
* they face something surreal and cracky
(I haven't heard all of the Eight and Charley audios yet, but I have heard from the start to Scherzo, and The Girl Who Never Was-the ending of her run with Six. My other runs of Eight audios are also patchy - I've heard up to Never More of the run with Lucie, the Mary Shelley set, and am nearly through Dark Eyes 4. I do hope to listen to the rest and while I don't mind of course if you want to ref. anything I haven't yet listened to, I would be grateful not to be spoilered!)
Six/Evelyn
I like these two in a more understated way to my other pairings on this list - I love them as dear friends, as maybe romantic together, but I'm not sure I'm up for much in the way of them being a sexual pairing. (Although I won't rule it out - I've learned in fanfic that a good fic can sell me anything, and I love these two and their obvious love and concern for each other). They are a great combination in balancing each other out and the mix you can go for of affection, banter & humour and occasional heartbreak in that is all lovely, as are they.
* Six/Evelyn chocolate cake!fic (because it hasn't happened yet, and it must surely be inevitable at some point, all considered.)
* missing adventures/scenes and anything where Evelyn gets to be everything Six needs, as she is, and/or Six betrays his concern/affection for her.
I will just love anything you give me with them, really!
(Don't be scared by the cake!fic prompt - it just happened to be the first random prompt I thought of. I understand that it is not for everyone!)
(I have got up to Project Twilight with the audios, so I am massively behind. I am kind of aware that Things Happen to Evelyn, but not fully spoiled, so please try not to do so, as I will catch up eventually, I hope! I don't mind generic refs, though, if you want them - I know to expect Sadness at least.)
3. Blake's 7
Dayna/Tarrant, Avon/Servalan
Avon/Servalan
Just give me more of them as they are in canon, and I'll be very happy, dear writer. I love their interactions, the darkness and deviousness of them as a combination and how well-matched they are and aren't in awful ways.
I am trying to think of specific prompts for them, but really just MORE, anything! I mean, what can you prompt that canon hasn't got to yet? Servalan even bought Avon as a slave that one time. They've plotted, they've kissed, they've killed people, they've gone mad together. Again, I am quite sure that if you can write them as they are, I am bound to love whatever you do.
Dayna/Tarrant
The bit in Ultraworld where aliens actually try to make them do it and they kiss and then Dayna explodes everything is just beautiful. I love them together a lot - Dayna's fierceness (and deeply buried vulnerability) and how dangerous she is, and how well they understand each other - they hardly need to talk when out on missions together. And I mean, just... *waves hands at them* They're a great combination. They'll bring the house down. Literally.
* missions going wrong, having to pose as a couple while on a mission, or missing scenes, snatching time to get together.
* Post-Gauda-Prime: They both survive and pick up the pieces... and?
I like all of the other B7 characters and am perfectly happy with anyone else appearing as seems good to you.
4. Spooks | MI5
Zaf/Jo, Harry/Juliet, Ruth/Tom
Zaf/Jo. My refrain for this whole section is probably going to be "do you see how cool/beautiful this ship is and how LITTLE FIC there is and how TRAGIC that is?" but it's never so true as for Zaf and Jo. I love Zaf's humour (and his prettiness, let's be honest and shallow here, Raza Jaffrey, I mean...) and Jo's journey across the seasons, and I love all their interactions in canon. Please make good this lack of fic and make my battered heart happy.
* flat-sharing fluff, hurt/comfort between/after a bad mission, going on a mission together (and maybe being a tight spot), or flirting in the early days on the grid, the scene that got cut where Jo agrees to move in with him, Jo moving in. Do they play spy games like Zoe and Danny? Do they deal with each other's families? Do they date other people under fake names? Go undercover in a tea shop or bookshop or something, with secret messages and lies. (Love, Spooks-style, you know how it goes.)
* AUs - canon divergence, other lives they might have lived (and, you know, actually lived). With Spooks (& this'll go for the others), I'm quite intrigued by the idea of whole other settings (supernatural investigators, historical, anything you feel you can translate the grid and everyone into that would be cool). I don't seem to have read anything much like this, so go for it if it appeals.
* However, if you want to go the angsty as hell version: fine, fine, author, break my heart, it's Spooks, do it, I wouldn't be watching this show if I didn't like it really. Write LOVE into my flesh with a knife and feed off my pain, why don't you?
Harry/Juliet. Last time I looked there was actually no fic for this that wasn't backgrounded in a Ruth/Harry fic. Have people not noticed that Juliet is Anna Chancellor? Come on, doesn't everyone want to see young Juliet and Harry up to devious doings in Berlin (or wherever) back in the day? She's brilliant, amoral and ruthless, and he's Harry Pearce. I also like the fact that she's also one of the few people who can make him flip out a bit. I'm not looking for an OTP here, but a one night stand at the very least is canon.
* encounters over the years. (In any way you choose to interpret that - after all, I think with some Spooks characters outwitting each other is practically sex for them anyway!)
* flesh out the hinted at Berlin backstory, or maybe some aspect of Juliet's appointment
* I'm not really all that keen on the series's later use of Juliet (I like the Juliet who may be an amoral Tory but damn well isn't a traitor, thanks), but on the other hand, if you want to go there, it could also make quite a fabulously dark subject for a Harry/Juliet fic, with Ruth absent. If you want to go there and wring out every bit of pain and angst and irony from it, please do.
I probably want to stick with canon for these two. (Although I'll never say no to a X Times set of AUs; and these two could be fun for it.) But seriously, you would be a trailblazer who deserves a medal.
Also, you might think from the pairings that I've chosen that I don't like Ruth/Harry, but I do! It's just that they already have all the fic, so I decided to try for some different pairings this time. If you find yourself needing to include Ruth/Harry or any refs to it, that is absolutely fine by me. I am also fine with most other Spooks characters turning up - there's no one who'd spoil everything for me by making an appearance! (Oh, except maybe too much Ben in a Zaf/Jo fic. Poor Ben, but he's just Not Zaf, is he?)
5. Jonathan Creek
Jonathan Creek/Maddy Magellan
I've enjoyed most of JC through the years, one way or another, but I miss Maddy! So I'd love to see more of them, anywhere from friendship to shippy, investigating stuff, bickering or in an AU reunion.
* casefic (well, no harm asking!)
* Maddy and Jonathan stand there and bicker/Maddy gets one up on Jonathan again
* Maddy and Jonathan and more domestic disasters/Adam bringing the theatre down
* Maddy comes back and they get together bickerishly ever after AU
* Maddy comes back in any other way, AU or not.
* I was going to say no Other Setting AUs here and then couldn't imagine what one would look like in Jonathan Creek... and now I want to see! Enlighten me, dear author! If it has Maddy and Jonathan in it, being incurably themselves, it will no doubt delight me.
(I pine for Maddy every time a non-Maddy episode comes on, even if I enjoy it, but I've no objection to any mentions of any of the other characters, including Carla, Joey and Polly, although if you bring Maddy back for a reunion, please make it a canon AU and not splitting up Jonathan/Polly.)
6. OUaT
Emma Swan/Killian Jones | Captain Hook, Cora Mills/Rumplestiltskin
Emma/Killian is probably my favourite canon pairing - I love the way they've had to believably work towards a relationship, with Emma's fears and walls, and Hook's past. I also love the improbability and fairy tale meta crack that is the show, and in particular some of the humour that comes of that as regards Hook being who he is and Emma being (still just about) more grounded in the 'real world'.
* Hook & Emma and any situation/thing Hook has to deal with where he doesn't have a clue about this world and its technology - this is one of my favourite things! (If you know anything about me, you'll learn that I do like a character out of time, and Hook fits that bill in many ways).
* any number of dates interrupted by fairy tale disasters/members of the complicated Charming family tree (and love love that Hook just now happily accepts that this is a dating-Emma hazard and expects it).
You can see the kind of thing I'm leaning towards here - life in Storybrooke and all its adventures and ridiculousness and how a Pirate and a Saviour still manage to fit in a love-life.
Cora/Rumple
Again, as with the other darker pairs (Avon/Servalan, Harry/Juliet), I'm not looking for a fairy-tale OTP (and enjoy Rumple/Belle very much) but I love their dynamic - always plotting, Cora being ambitious, Rumple being manipulative (and then as now unable to believe he can be loved). How many encounters have they had down through the years, together or by proxy? I'm open to their battles and game-playing or the darker, angst of the fact that their genuinely was or could have been love there if they were both that bit less flawed. Rumple is always fascinating, and Cora is (probably) my favourite secondary character, and I'll be delighted to get more of her.
I think the above probably covers all my thinking - I can't think of separate prompts. Just play with them, as I've said. Canon backstory, missing scenes in S2, other encounters, lives they might have lived - anything you can think of. My only no-no would be improbable fluff (as with all the other darker pairings). They are who they are, and that's their problem (and multiple other people's, too).
Again, I love OUaT, and have no objection to anybody else appearing, nor any refs or appearances by other canon couples.
Feel free to mix and match some prompts between couples, as long as they work for them - you can see where there are some repeated things I like and Muses will do that kind of thing, I know! (Probably a fluff prompt won't work for the darker pairings, but it's all over to you now, Dear Author.) Mostly, I hope you have fun with whatever you write and I look forward to reading it come reveals!
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there:
Welcome! I'm really looking forward to seeing what you write for one of my favourite pairings and I hope you enjoy your assignment.
I shall try to keep this to a sensible length, but I have a history of waffling too much in these things, so bear with me! I hope it will be useful, but you should ignore most things that aren't my likes/dislikes/specific requests if not. You can see my other fic exchange letters at my dear author tag.
Likes: Humour, missing adventures, friendship, hurt/comfort, fantasy, history, mysteries, ghosts, casefic, crossovers, banter, feelings & emotion, touch/sensation, first times, trope subversion, trapped together tropes, fake marriages/marriage of conveniences, forced to work together, moving towards intimacy, five times, dancing, historical costumes & undressing, balancing out each other, helping each other be better, emotions conveyed by things other than words, winning through to happy endings, kissing, holding onto each other, comedy of manners.
Dislikes: graphic horror/violence/gore etc, explicit pr0n, sugary sentimentality, incest, rape, unending angst without hope, non-canonical tragic endings, kidfic, everyone being oh so hot, pregnancy, real life medical conditions (unless canon), character bashing, assumptions that canon is awful and needs fixing, anything to do with over-eating/greed, & non-canonical major character death (unless it fits with a darker canon/ship).
However, I don't have any actual triggers and want, most of all, for the story to fit the pairing - not all of the above things will apply to all fandoms/pairings requested! I'll write more about AUs in prompts below, but in general sticking to canon is safest unless I've asked for one, and if you still feel led, I'm usually happy to have fantastical elements in my mundane canons, but unhappy to find my fantastical canons made mundane.
I try to choose all my requests carefully, so I do want all of these pairings. Please don't be alarmed if I write more or less about one than the others. (I've been writing this letter while ill and have wound up even more random than usual, but honestly - I love the idea of getting fic for any of these pairings.)
1. Doctor Who (1963)
Five/Tegan, Brigadier/Liz Shaw
Five/Tegan
I don't know where to begin and I love them so much and I can't write them to my own satisfaction, please help me, author. Anything featuring one emotionally repressed 800-year-ish old Time Lord and his stubborn, loyal, tell-it-like-it-is-and-then-some Australian air-stewardess will make me very happy, I promise. We all know what it means when two people argue like that in the 1980s. (I once made a manifesto for Five/Tegan. It was a bit more coherent than this is, so you might as well have the link.)
* the Doctor and Tegan get stuck in the past/a planet with a formal society together without the TARDIS somehow & maybe even have to pretend to be a couple
* any sort of hurt/comfort between them is lovely (cf. the Doctor at the end of Snakedance, or the way that Tegan seems to feel that the Doctor is her responsibility when he's in trouble or hurt).
* they get forced to live out some sort of altered reality where they are a couple/get together (until they get out)
* missing scenes from late S20, early S21. (Suddenly, after The King's Demons, they're both a lot happier and the Doctor keeps taking Tegan everywhere she wants to go. It could just be to annoy Turlough, but still...)
* anything you can think of where they can still be their awkward selves with bonus points if they can also be shippy and maybe kiss or more. Somehow. *glares at them* (Don't worry if you can't, author, they are the most awkward perfect pairing that won't sometimes and honestly anything you can do with them will be lovely. I am pining for fic - suddenly everybody seemed to stop writing them all at once.)
If you want to include anyone else in your fic, that's fine, I love Nyssa and Turlough too and don't even hate Adric. The Master is welcome to plot, if that's where your Muse takes you.
Brig/Liz
I love them, I love all their interactions in S7 & how they start off almost as if someone invented the X-Files twenty years early (until the Doctor turns up), how she winds him up and he tries to remain imperturbable, the respect they have for each other (or that Liz learns to have for him), their combined sheer effectiveness and competence and, as a pairing, their mutual repression/devotion to career or duty is a big thing.
* any missing S7 scenes/adventures or later reunions
* any S7 trouble they investigate without the Doctor. (I once wrote a set of these myself, but I still have a huge hankering for them doing their stuff without even needing the Doctor every time, because canon suggests this is the case anyway.)
* I don't usually like AUs for DW so much (I mean, you can just go to wherever it is, or do whatever it is in canon anyway!) but as the Brig and Liz don't travel in the TARDIS and are so grounded in a particular place and time, I'd enjoy some for them - UNIT as an outfit investigating supernatural things, with a sceptical Liz called in as adviser, historical settings, golden age crime-solving (with Liz as the brilliant amateur and the Brig the put-upon police inspector).
* or, of course, they do wind up somewhere back in time or elsewhere in the galaxy when the TARDIS is playing up again (or the Doctor is) and have to rely on each other.
* either of them getting injured or hurt in the course of an adventure and the other having to provide help etc.
* in this one, UST, sudden breaking of repression etc etc. is lovely, thank you. Including use of fanfic tropes like alien sex pollen, fake marriage, trapped together. (Brig/Liz + Cliché is usually a winning formula. I think it's partly just imagining the world-weary Brigly eyebrow raising that will ensue.)
Any other members of UNIT, and the Master, or other such characters are fine if you want to use them.
2. Doctor Who (Big Finish Audios)
Eight/Charley
Eight/Charley... I do adore their dynamic. I don't mind if you keep it as canon with Charley loving the Doctor in an additional way, or make it properly shippy at any point. I love Eight/Charley fluff, and I love the enduring love and friendship with a side-order of pain that they are in canon. I remember once reading an interview with India Fisher where she said that, for Charley, in her position, the Doctor is all the family she can have now, her best friend, and only possible lover and her feelings for him encompass all those things. And I love how perfect a match she is for Eight at that point and that, however different his feelings may be, he still finds it hard not to sacrifice the universe for her. In short, I love the fun and banter and the fluff and I love the sheer mixed up wrongness and rightness of them.
* missing adventures
* reunion fic. I hate that they've never found each other again! I would love that to happen and if you want to go there in your fic, please do.
* going to a party somewhere, on a picnic, or out somewhere nice with nothing bad for a change.
* they face something surreal and cracky
(I haven't heard all of the Eight and Charley audios yet, but I have heard from the start to Scherzo, and The Girl Who Never Was-the ending of her run with Six. My other runs of Eight audios are also patchy - I've heard up to Never More of the run with Lucie, the Mary Shelley set, and am nearly through Dark Eyes 4. I do hope to listen to the rest and while I don't mind of course if you want to ref. anything I haven't yet listened to, I would be grateful not to be spoilered!)
Six/Evelyn
I like these two in a more understated way to my other pairings on this list - I love them as dear friends, as maybe romantic together, but I'm not sure I'm up for much in the way of them being a sexual pairing. (Although I won't rule it out - I've learned in fanfic that a good fic can sell me anything, and I love these two and their obvious love and concern for each other). They are a great combination in balancing each other out and the mix you can go for of affection, banter & humour and occasional heartbreak in that is all lovely, as are they.
* Six/Evelyn chocolate cake!fic (because it hasn't happened yet, and it must surely be inevitable at some point, all considered.)
* missing adventures/scenes and anything where Evelyn gets to be everything Six needs, as she is, and/or Six betrays his concern/affection for her.
I will just love anything you give me with them, really!
(Don't be scared by the cake!fic prompt - it just happened to be the first random prompt I thought of. I understand that it is not for everyone!)
(I have got up to Project Twilight with the audios, so I am massively behind. I am kind of aware that Things Happen to Evelyn, but not fully spoiled, so please try not to do so, as I will catch up eventually, I hope! I don't mind generic refs, though, if you want them - I know to expect Sadness at least.)
3. Blake's 7
Dayna/Tarrant, Avon/Servalan
Avon/Servalan
Just give me more of them as they are in canon, and I'll be very happy, dear writer. I love their interactions, the darkness and deviousness of them as a combination and how well-matched they are and aren't in awful ways.
I am trying to think of specific prompts for them, but really just MORE, anything! I mean, what can you prompt that canon hasn't got to yet? Servalan even bought Avon as a slave that one time. They've plotted, they've kissed, they've killed people, they've gone mad together. Again, I am quite sure that if you can write them as they are, I am bound to love whatever you do.
Dayna/Tarrant
The bit in Ultraworld where aliens actually try to make them do it and they kiss and then Dayna explodes everything is just beautiful. I love them together a lot - Dayna's fierceness (and deeply buried vulnerability) and how dangerous she is, and how well they understand each other - they hardly need to talk when out on missions together. And I mean, just... *waves hands at them* They're a great combination. They'll bring the house down. Literally.
* missions going wrong, having to pose as a couple while on a mission, or missing scenes, snatching time to get together.
* Post-Gauda-Prime: They both survive and pick up the pieces... and?
I like all of the other B7 characters and am perfectly happy with anyone else appearing as seems good to you.
4. Spooks | MI5
Zaf/Jo, Harry/Juliet, Ruth/Tom
Zaf/Jo. My refrain for this whole section is probably going to be "do you see how cool/beautiful this ship is and how LITTLE FIC there is and how TRAGIC that is?" but it's never so true as for Zaf and Jo. I love Zaf's humour (and his prettiness, let's be honest and shallow here, Raza Jaffrey, I mean...) and Jo's journey across the seasons, and I love all their interactions in canon. Please make good this lack of fic and make my battered heart happy.
* flat-sharing fluff, hurt/comfort between/after a bad mission, going on a mission together (and maybe being a tight spot), or flirting in the early days on the grid, the scene that got cut where Jo agrees to move in with him, Jo moving in. Do they play spy games like Zoe and Danny? Do they deal with each other's families? Do they date other people under fake names? Go undercover in a tea shop or bookshop or something, with secret messages and lies. (Love, Spooks-style, you know how it goes.)
* AUs - canon divergence, other lives they might have lived (and, you know, actually lived). With Spooks (& this'll go for the others), I'm quite intrigued by the idea of whole other settings (supernatural investigators, historical, anything you feel you can translate the grid and everyone into that would be cool). I don't seem to have read anything much like this, so go for it if it appeals.
* However, if you want to go the angsty as hell version: fine, fine, author, break my heart, it's Spooks, do it, I wouldn't be watching this show if I didn't like it really. Write LOVE into my flesh with a knife and feed off my pain, why don't you?
Harry/Juliet. Last time I looked there was actually no fic for this that wasn't backgrounded in a Ruth/Harry fic. Have people not noticed that Juliet is Anna Chancellor? Come on, doesn't everyone want to see young Juliet and Harry up to devious doings in Berlin (or wherever) back in the day? She's brilliant, amoral and ruthless, and he's Harry Pearce. I also like the fact that she's also one of the few people who can make him flip out a bit. I'm not looking for an OTP here, but a one night stand at the very least is canon.
* encounters over the years. (In any way you choose to interpret that - after all, I think with some Spooks characters outwitting each other is practically sex for them anyway!)
* flesh out the hinted at Berlin backstory, or maybe some aspect of Juliet's appointment
* I'm not really all that keen on the series's later use of Juliet (I like the Juliet who may be an amoral Tory but damn well isn't a traitor, thanks), but on the other hand, if you want to go there, it could also make quite a fabulously dark subject for a Harry/Juliet fic, with Ruth absent. If you want to go there and wring out every bit of pain and angst and irony from it, please do.
I probably want to stick with canon for these two. (Although I'll never say no to a X Times set of AUs; and these two could be fun for it.) But seriously, you would be a trailblazer who deserves a medal.
Also, you might think from the pairings that I've chosen that I don't like Ruth/Harry, but I do! It's just that they already have all the fic, so I decided to try for some different pairings this time. If you find yourself needing to include Ruth/Harry or any refs to it, that is absolutely fine by me. I am also fine with most other Spooks characters turning up - there's no one who'd spoil everything for me by making an appearance! (Oh, except maybe too much Ben in a Zaf/Jo fic. Poor Ben, but he's just Not Zaf, is he?)
5. Jonathan Creek
Jonathan Creek/Maddy Magellan
I've enjoyed most of JC through the years, one way or another, but I miss Maddy! So I'd love to see more of them, anywhere from friendship to shippy, investigating stuff, bickering or in an AU reunion.
* casefic (well, no harm asking!)
* Maddy and Jonathan stand there and bicker/Maddy gets one up on Jonathan again
* Maddy and Jonathan and more domestic disasters/Adam bringing the theatre down
* Maddy comes back and they get together bickerishly ever after AU
* Maddy comes back in any other way, AU or not.
* I was going to say no Other Setting AUs here and then couldn't imagine what one would look like in Jonathan Creek... and now I want to see! Enlighten me, dear author! If it has Maddy and Jonathan in it, being incurably themselves, it will no doubt delight me.
(I pine for Maddy every time a non-Maddy episode comes on, even if I enjoy it, but I've no objection to any mentions of any of the other characters, including Carla, Joey and Polly, although if you bring Maddy back for a reunion, please make it a canon AU and not splitting up Jonathan/Polly.)
6. OUaT
Emma Swan/Killian Jones | Captain Hook, Cora Mills/Rumplestiltskin
Emma/Killian is probably my favourite canon pairing - I love the way they've had to believably work towards a relationship, with Emma's fears and walls, and Hook's past. I also love the improbability and fairy tale meta crack that is the show, and in particular some of the humour that comes of that as regards Hook being who he is and Emma being (still just about) more grounded in the 'real world'.
* Hook & Emma and any situation/thing Hook has to deal with where he doesn't have a clue about this world and its technology - this is one of my favourite things! (If you know anything about me, you'll learn that I do like a character out of time, and Hook fits that bill in many ways).
* any number of dates interrupted by fairy tale disasters/members of the complicated Charming family tree (and love love that Hook just now happily accepts that this is a dating-Emma hazard and expects it).
You can see the kind of thing I'm leaning towards here - life in Storybrooke and all its adventures and ridiculousness and how a Pirate and a Saviour still manage to fit in a love-life.
Cora/Rumple
Again, as with the other darker pairs (Avon/Servalan, Harry/Juliet), I'm not looking for a fairy-tale OTP (and enjoy Rumple/Belle very much) but I love their dynamic - always plotting, Cora being ambitious, Rumple being manipulative (and then as now unable to believe he can be loved). How many encounters have they had down through the years, together or by proxy? I'm open to their battles and game-playing or the darker, angst of the fact that their genuinely was or could have been love there if they were both that bit less flawed. Rumple is always fascinating, and Cora is (probably) my favourite secondary character, and I'll be delighted to get more of her.
I think the above probably covers all my thinking - I can't think of separate prompts. Just play with them, as I've said. Canon backstory, missing scenes in S2, other encounters, lives they might have lived - anything you can think of. My only no-no would be improbable fluff (as with all the other darker pairings). They are who they are, and that's their problem (and multiple other people's, too).
Again, I love OUaT, and have no objection to anybody else appearing, nor any refs or appearances by other canon couples.
Feel free to mix and match some prompts between couples, as long as they work for them - you can see where there are some repeated things I like and Muses will do that kind of thing, I know! (Probably a fluff prompt won't work for the darker pairings, but it's all over to you now, Dear Author.) Mostly, I hope you have fun with whatever you write and I look forward to reading it come reveals!
Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there: