Dear Author Letter for FemslashEx (Tamoline)
Dear author,
Thank you for agreeing to write me a fic. I hope you find it a fun and interesting experience.
Things that turn me off -
Explicit smut is very hit and miss with me. I might find it interesting, I might not. Caveat emptor. Futanari and other male parts on women is a definite squick, though, so please none of that. No torture or non-con, and preferably no character bashing. I'm also not interested in any relationships with male characters - I'd prefer the relationships just written out, unless you want to do something interesting with the breakup.
Things that do work for me -
Pieces that are character driven, character exploration or that concern the evolution of a relationship definitely work for me. Things that make me feel - humour and tragedy - are also good bets.
General notes
AUs are in general fine.
Fandom notes:
These are just some vague thoughts I have. Feel free to ignore them if you come up with a better idea.
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Natasha/Nakia, Natasha/Carol, Natasha/Sharon Carter, Valkyrie/Nastasha - For all of the these, it strikes me that the post-Snappening five years has a lot of potential. All of these people were badly injured by what happened, and Natasha was an organising force throughout it. Did she run herself into the ground? I can see Carol and Valkyrie especially sharing that tendency. How did they make time? What ghosts haunted them? What scraps of joy did they manage to eke out regardless?
Natasha/Maria Hill - this would probably have to be pre-Snappening, barring Soul Gem weirdness, but there's a lot of the same issues. Both are busy, driven women - atonement for Natasha, ambition for Maria (you don't get to be Fury's 2ic without that). How did they make time for each other? Did they make time together before SHIELD fell apart and they were out of it.
Natasha in general - feel free to work with Soul Gem weirdness. Is she going over her life, reliving bright and dark spots, until something happens? Given time travel and alternate universe weirdness, does she (or a part of her) get transported into an alternate universe where she can make different decisions? Feel free to make this melancholy if you want.
Carol/Maria Rambeau - what might their life have been like before Carol was snatched? What pieces does Carol start to remember about their life? DId Carol make regular visits after the movie? Did they manage a life in between cosmic missions? What happens when Monica develops powers of her own? How does they feel about Maria getting older whilst Carol remains the same? Feel free to include some period typical homophobia and difficulties arising from that, but I'd prefer not a misery fest for this at least. If you want to include Natasha finding her way in an existing Carol/Maria relationship, feel free.
Ava Starr/Hope van Dyne - does Ava get Snapped as well? If not, how has she survived in the Snappened world? Is she softer, having had to look after others after the world went mad, or harder? How have her feelings about Hope changed or stayed the same? If she was Snapped, how does they both react to being in this changed world, five years later? What has changed, what has stayed the same? How does Ava react to not being in constant pain any more? Feel free to include the rest of the Ant-man crew as supporting characters - the family feel of the movies is something I love about them, and I can't see Scott being jealous. (Maybe he hooks up with his ex and her husband instead.)
Annihilation
In general, please keep the weird feel of the movie. Feel free to include striking visuals and expand that to the other senses as well, mixing them together in a synesthesiatic mess. What if there's time as well as space weirdness? This is definitely a fandom where ambiguously happy fics work very well.
Lena/Dr Ventress - Both driven and unable to give up, what if something of Dr Ventress lives within Lena? What if they've both been diffracted, and versions of both of them survive within the Shimmer, or a version of the Shimmer five steps into an alternate dimension?
Josie/Anya - Anya outwardly strong and yet broken, fighting against her addictions and the Shimmer with varied success. Josie, outwardly softer but in many ways stronger, willing to flow with the Shimmer, to survive in a way that Anya couldn't even imagine. How did they come together? Had they slept with each other in the Southern Reach? Before maybe? Or does it happen in the psychedelic nightmare of the Shimmer, folding into and around each other?
The Southern Reach Trilogy
See the general ideas for Annihilation, though with the flavour of the books. Again, ambiguous or even dark endings work well for this fandom.
The Surveyor/The Anthropologist, The Psychologist/The Linguist, The Biologist/The Surveyor, The Biologist/The Psychologist - For the characters of the first book, feel free to flavour their viewpoints with their own specific idiosyncracies. The biologist saw everything in terms of her speciality. What might the Surveyor or the Anthropologist have noticed. For the Psychologist or the Director, what might have they experienced in their return trip? What might have changed? What might have stayed the same? Why might the Psychologist have sent the Linguist back at the last moment? Did she, or was she some kind of sacrifice or control for this trip
Ghost Bird/The Biologist - For all that they have the same memories, and that Ghost Bird is actually the alien clone, Ghost Bird seems closer to human in many ways. Could she drag the Biologist back to something closer or at least more comprehensible to humanity? Or would this be a meeting of the human and alien in more ways than one.
Grace/The Director - they were obviously close. Maybe it was more at some point, in the long sticky nights at the Reach. In the stultifying intellectual air of the Reach, where things get stuck, did they achieve a static orbit of sorts, coming together and tearing them apart with irregular orbits? Was Grace's shooting of the Director's clone just the last cataclysmic act of a much longer play? Or, in the years spent in Area X, does Grace manage to find some piece of the Director layered in the terroir of the Area? Do they at least come to some kind of peace? Or even, after Grace finally gets home, does a clone of the Director arrive, more complete by virtue of the Area's new understanding of humanity? And is this a good or bad thing?
Grace/Ghost Bird - The two survivors of the book, last seen heading off together. Did they achieve an understandig or maybe something more during the journey across landscape changed by the Area. How do the new rules affect them? How are things changing again?
In both the pairings that include Grace, feel free to include her unnamed girlfriend/partner/wife, and how the events may have changed her.
The Checquy Files - Daniel O'Malley
Felicity/Odette - Enemies to friends. Next step? Do they become closer through missions? What happens if Odette has to share various organs in an emergency, or even connect up their systems? How does Odette react to the increasingly occult world she's now part of? Feel free to be as tropey as you want with this pairing - the weird world of the Checquy would seem to fit them well. What about meetings with their families on both sides, found in the case of Felicity, more biological in the case of Odette. I can imagine that there'd be a certain amount of intimidation and wariness on both sides.
This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Red/Blue - please feel free to keep the lyrical descriptions of the original. What happens past the end of the book? Do they find some kind of domestic bliss, or do they just take the opportunity to wage a war on both the Agency and the Garden, working in concert as befits them best, even if it's not in the same time ot even the same timeline? Do you want to write a series of letters to each other in the style of the original, or do they actually manage to (gasp) talk? Do they keep the same overblown endearments, or do they only use them for emphasis, or do they move onto something else entirely? What is life like for the two deadliest secret agents in all of time and space?
The Boys
Elena/Maeve - we only saw hints of this in the show. Feel free to show me what it was like, back in the day. How they met, how they fell in love, how they fell apart, maybe with the hints of new birth at the end. Or maybe show how they get back together, how Maeve manages to free herself from Homelander's poisonous presence.
Maeve/Starlight - I'm really not interested in Maeve using a power imbalance with Starlight here. But otherwise, feel free to go wild. Have Starlight pursue Maeve, reawakening the altruism Maeve had long thought dead. Or maybe Maeve falls for Starlight first, but doesn't pursue her, instead does her best to protect her from Homelander as Starlight tries to make a difference, thinking that Starlight is far too good, far too innocent to be involved with someone like her, until Starlight surprises her, makes her own thoughts known. Or maybe it's snatched moments, as and when they can be sure that they're unobserved, hidden moments to keep them going as things go to hell around them.
Crossovers - Lara Croft/Diana (Wonder Woman)
Like a lot of people, I was inspired by the fanart (https://nebezial-asheri.tumblr.com/post/180339438902/decided-to-put-these-in-a-bit-of-a-chronological) but feel free to go wherever with it. For point of reference, I'm mostly familiar with the reboot Tomb Raider games, so feel free to reference them.
Dead To Me
Judy/Jen - Wow. I really loved this toxic mess of a friendship, and with the events of the end of the season, where could it go from there? Judy is already so dependent on Jen, I think the first move would have to come from the latter. Unless it was something like a drunken mistake from the former, which Jen has to then deal with. Any way, feel free to make whatever comes next as unhealthy as the relationship on the show, complete with the moments that make you think this could actually work. Feel free include additional crimes including murder as they frantically flail around trying to keep each other as friends, or maybe something more.
DC's Arrowverse
Kara/Nia - feel free to make this fluffy girlfriends slowly falling in love, or Nia taking the initiative that Kara didn't quite expect and certainly didn't see coming. Again, I don't want unhealthy power dynamics with Kara using her position of authority, though feel free to have her worry about such.
Kara/Lena - feel free to set this at any point over the last three seasons. There's certainly a lot of material to mine as their relationship shifts from trust to suspicion and make again. They have enough soft moments and regular meet ups that you can certainly build off those, but if you want to work more edge into their positions at the start of the fic, there's definitely room for that, especially as of the end of season 4. How does Lena react to finding out Kara's identity? How does Kara try and rebuild what they had? Again, feel free to be very tropey with this. The world of Supergirl certainly has room for it.
Kara/Imra - Imra certainly seemed to find Kara fascinating. What if that wasn't just platonic? What if Kara found herself reciprocating, willingly or no? Does she feel guilty that she's no longer interested in Mon-El, but rather his wife? Or what if Imra gets left behind at the end of season 3, and can't get back for reasons? How does she make her life back here in the past, away from her people? Is there any part of her that feels a certain guilty amount of relief, especially as Kara helps her?
Underworld (Movies)
Erika/Selene - In the movie, they're very much positioned as enemies - the girly girl Erika being obsessed with Kraven, whereas the not-like-other-girls Selene interested in kicking arse and tracking down the truth. But what if Erika can't help her eyes from following Selene? What if Selene finds something to value in Erika's more social awareness? What if they work together, and manage to change the events of the first movie? Or, for that matter, what if Erika seeks out Selene after the first movie, for her own purposes at first, but maybe for something else after a while? I'd prefer if you didn't blunt down either woman, but maybe make their edges complement each other more than the movie did.