EXCHANGE INTERFACE

Firstly, thank you for writing these pairings! I tend to have an "OTP" in a fandom and that OTP is almost never the hugely popular one. I'll dabble in other pairings a little, but ultimately, my favourite pairings are almost always very understaffed, so I'm delighted that you're taking on this challenge and looking forward to whatever you come up with!

Think of these as guidelines. Don't get hung up on the Wants, just avoid the Do Not Wants and it'll all be good!

Thank you so much!

general stuff

I love the female characters, but I love them in non-standard roles. None of the three women that I've listed come even close to being damsels, or helpless, or innocent. I love them active, determined, and possibly even aggressive when it comes to the guys in their lives. (Aaaand I've just realised that the guys I've paired them with are likely to be less certain of themselves when dealing with women. Huh.)

Generally, fic-wise, I'm good with just about anything that allows the female characters to shine, while keeping their characterisation. For Maria, Faith, and Kate, it generally comes down to ballsiness, their refusal to just sit back and let the guys drive, and ultimately their determination to finish the job. Plus, I love their snark - droll, understated snark in Maria's case, but Kate has no shortage of quips and comebacks, and I always see Faith as leaning towards the sarcastic side of mouthy.

My favourite relationship tropes are:

Girl Saves Boy: He's in trouble, she comes to the rescue and either outwits, outfights, or just plain takes out the enemy.
Battle Couples: They're in a tight spot and they take out the baddies together. Love-in-a-foxhole kind of stuff, before they come out all guns blazing.
D/s: Headgames, bedgames - always consensual and careful, but hot, intimate, and revealing - character study through sex - love it!
Learning Boundaries: Different people have different expectations of a relationship: behaviour, standards, time together. I like seeing the negotiation of these boundaries - she doesn't think twice about touching other guys, but he sees it as flirting. They have to learn how far they'll stretch for the other person.
Falling In Love: I love reading fics about characters falling in love. Not necessarily in a romantic sense - in fact, I'd strongly prefer you avoid any flowers, chocolates, dinner dates, or anything that might be considered conventionally "romantic" - but how they come to appreciate each other and get together. Points on a line, the high points (and low) of their interactions - especially the arguments and conflicts they have.

Some relationship tropes I don't like so much are:

silly misunderstandings: Anything that could be cleared up simply by confronting and clarifying the other character. You know - she saw him kissing another woman and goes away and sulks, or he misheard part of a conversation and got butthurt. ARGH. NO.
babyfic: It frustrates me when a baby is used as a reason to get a couple together. I can buy the idea of caring for a child bringing people together (with them falling in love as they work with each other over the child), but I dislike the idea of a child being the symbol of 'perfect love'.
conventional romance: None of the women I've picked are 'conventional'. Avoid conventional romantic tropes.

I would, at the least, like a Hopeful Ending. It doesn't have to be Happy if you can't manage that (sometimes the story goes where the story goes) but there must be hope! I'd rather not any AUs this time around, and Darker And Edgier is fine as long as there's hope in the ending.

Avengers (Maria Hill/Steve Rogers)

Maria Hill is my loved and adored character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: I love her competence, her stoicism, her pragmatism, the way she doesn't need to be at the front and centre so long as the job is being done.

Steve is kind of adorable in the MCU. He's a lot less hard-boiled than the Cap of the comics - not naive, just a lot more straight-shooting: a different man from a different era. I like that, and I like the idea that he has a thing for tough, competent brunettes who don't take shit from the men around them.

They're definitely an unexpected attraction, and at least on Maria's side, there's a touch of "oh God, no, what?" about Steve being a superhero. I can see her liking Steve-the-man but not being so crash-hot on the fact that he's Captain America. I see Steve liking Maria-the-woman at first because she reminds him a little of Peggy, and then because she's straight and careful and precise on top, but she's got the soul of a scrapper: down and dirty, just-get-it-done-by-whatever-means.

Interaction is the name of the game here. Falling in love. Reconciling their expectations of a relationship. Negotiating a battlefield - whether an actual war battlefield or a political battlefield - or possibly working things out in bed (see D/s kink). They're both soldiers - in a military (or psuedo-military) structure - how does that work in a relationship where they're generally on the same side, but might very well end up on different sides?

I don't mind if you go the Steve-is-a-virgin route, or sexually knowledgeable Steve, so long as he retains his essential Steve-ness. If you're going to take them down the D/s path, I can see it either way, although I really prefer Steve as dom, Maria as sub.

Feel free to include any side characters for the purposes of getting them together (actually, I think some kind of...collusion between the SHIELD agents and the Avengers to get Maria and Steve together would be hilarious if you can imagine it).

Angel the Series/Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Faith Lehane/Wesley Wyndham-Pryce)

Working together - the excess Slayer and the unwanted Watcher - how do their sharp and broken edges grind against each other? I love these guys sexual and sensual - and a little bit broken. They've both been treated pretty badly by life, but they're fighters at heart - they just needed to find their spaces - physical and head-space - to work out who they are.

Faith didn't grab me until S4 of Angel - very late into the picture, I know. But watching her and Wesley work together just hit all my buttons: pushing each other, learning each other's sharp edges, developing trust and a kind of affection by the end of it. I don't mind how you work the timeline and the canon - although really, I'd prefer it if Wesley wasn't dead!

I'd like to see a "falling in love" story for these two, or since "falling in love" has rather twee romantic connotations, "coming to care for each other" story. They're at truce the last time they meet. What happens afterwards? How do they get together?

Hatesex is certainly an option with these two, although it's not my preference - but they do have a lot of issues to hand. I can see them in a BDSM relationship, with Wesley as Dom (although a story of how he comes to trust Faith as Domme after the events of Sanctuary/Five by Five would be fascinating)!

If you're going to break them, I'd appreciate if you didn't leave them too broken! Hurt, yes, but I like the healing as well - or the idea that they're on the road to healing.

So...I seem to have suggested just about everything for these two. Uh. Pretty much write whatever you can!

Sanctuary (Kate Freelander/Will Zimmerman, Kate Freelander/Declan MacRae)

Any situation or scenario that involves Kate being her competent, mischievous, unrepentant, ballsy self. Perhaps playing pranks or being trickster, revealing conversations in the course of their work, or just moments together.

If you're writing Kate/Will, I'd rather it wasn't in the plague-ridden zombie universe in "Pavor Nocturnus", but in the main, standard universe. These guys are a little bit 'compare and contrast' - I think their differences would add spice, while their similarities would connect them. Co-operation and affection and practicality - maybe Helen's away and they're running the Sanctuary as a team, with Will being the front man and shouldering the responsibility Kate making things happen?

I love the cool competence of Kate/Declan. My personal take is that both of them are bisexual (possibly pan-sexual, given that there are not-strictly-human types around), and they come together through mutual attraction, commonality, and the experiences of dealing with not-strictly-human bosses (Helen and Watson), and the Abnormals under their care.

If possible I would like a glimpse of their sex life. Not necessarily them having sex, but a reference of some kind or type that indicates they're sleeping together. Kate's such an earthy character that I see this being a major part of her relational make-up - tactility and comfortable sexuality.

Last words

Whatever you write, thank you so much for writing it! If you can't manage what I've asked, don't sweat it, just write what you can. These are my preferences, yes, but I know they're challenging ones.

What I want at the base of it all is a story about the pairing and how you see them - if that matches up with how I see them, AWESOME. If not, STILL AWESOME 'cos OMG PAIRING!

Thank you so much, and I look forward to reading your fic!