Heavy Artillery Rare Pair Exchange 2022 Letter

[thrillingdetectivetales]

Well howdy, Rare Pairer!

First things first, thank you for participating! This is one of my favorite challenges to run and I'm so excited that more folks are finding it worthwhile. To make your life a little easier, I’ve compiled a couple of general lists of my favorite tropes and my DNW’s for easy perusal, with fandom-specific requests underneath. (If all of this sounds familiar, it's because I've found it's most effective to recycle the letters I've written for other challenges rather than writing new ones every time I sign up for an event, especially when I'm the person running said event.)

YES-PLEASES

• friends-to-lovers
• getting together fic
• didn’t know they were dating
• fake/pretend relationships
• werewolves/shapeshifter AUs
• soulmate AUs
• SPORTS AUS (preferably not modern, unless it's hockey)
• medieval fantasy AUs (think Witcher, Dragon Age, classic D&D, etc.)
• historical AUs in a different period than canon
• knights
• Roman Britain AUs (think gladiators vs Picts)
• urban fantasy (but still set in the 40s/50s)
• sci-fi AUs (can be futuristic, just nothing in the present day)
• person questioning/figuring out their sexuality (whether vanilla “I never thought I wasn’t straight until now” all the way to “turns out I’m really into being sexually submissive in a very kinky way, who knew?”)
• building queer communities
• experienced characters showing inexperienced characters the ropes (metaphorically, or literally if you want to go the bondage route ;) )
• character wrestling with their sexuality/religion
• praise kink
• d/s dynamics (not TPE)

DO-NOT-WANTS

• major focus on character death
• non-canon/unrequested character death in general
• graphic depictions of torture/injury
• A/B/O
• pregnancy/mpreg
• non-canon child characters/kidfic
• scat/watersports
• slave!fic
• infidelity
• treating female characters as villains/ malicious hindrances to queer male romance
• infantilazation (including daddy kink)
• pedophilia
• explicit non-con/rape*
• vore
• fat-shaming
• degrading dirty talk (i.e.: "You're a filthy little slut" etc.)
• somnophilia/paralysis
• necrophilia
• modern AUs of period media
• on-screen gay bashing (mention of past incidents/recovery from is fine)
• human furniture
• leather kink
• unsupportive families for queer character

Most other stuff is fair game. If you have a question about a particular trope/kink/topic, I’m always open to answering questions.

*Dub-con, of the flavor where a character is unsure but willing to go with it, or like, sex-pollen/drunk/etc. variety is fine, so long as there's not explicit focus on someone feeling taken advantage of.

Alright! Now let’s get on the fandom specific requests, shall we? I’m pretty open to whatever at the end of the day, so long as enough legwork/worldbuilding/character development has been done to make me believe that a certain scenario would actually happen, so feel free to use the below as guidelines more than strict rules, with the caveat being that I really don't like modern AUs for any HBO War stuff. Period AUs including magic or other tropes are fine.

Ralph Spina/Eugene Roe or Ralph Spina/Babe Heffron: Honestly, Spina just needs more love in general. Would love to see him and Roe developing a relationship over the course of their medic training and dealing with the horrors of war, or Babe and Spina running into each other back in Philly and getting together. Just more Spina! Hell, go ahead and throw all three of them together into a throuple, or if you think you can convince me that he ought to be with someone else, I'll give anything a shot, as long as it's not Speirs or Lipton.

Blanche Nixon/Ann Winters: Okay, listen. I will take anything for this pairing. Anything. (Excepting DNWs, of course.) BUT! I would kill for a canon-era baseball AU. It was the heyday of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and I just don't think we talk about that enough! Or, hey, maybe they meet through their brothers and strike up an unlikely friendship that becomes more! Maybe Ann left home for New York while Dick was away at war and she works as a waitress in the diner where Blanche has her hangover coffee every morning after spending her nights out partying with the high society jet-setters and they fall in love! Maybe they're fucking Vikings or something, I don't know! COME ON, Y'ALL, THEY'RE BASICALLY OC'S THIS IS SUCH FERTILE GROUND I'M BEGGING YOU.

Robert Leckie/Bud "Runner" Conley: Pre-canon shenanigans when they're in training! (Lord knows Leckie got up to enough.) Or maybe after the war, Runner comes to where Leckie is to say hi and hang for a bit and he just...never leaves. Double points, in the latter instance, for supportive Vera, and supportive Mr. and Mrs. Leckie's Parents. As patented hooligans, these two also feel like a pair primed for a good trope-y AU. Double bonus for getting the whole of the How Co. ensemble in there somehow.

DeEtta Almon/Lena Riggi: Like with Ann/Blanche, I will take anything! Maybe they meet during some kind of crossover event pre-canon and have a sexy fling! Maybe they both go career military after the war is over and find each other that way! Maybe they're both out of the military but meet elsewhere and wind up bonding! I'm open to anything, really.

Sid Phillips/Eugene Sledge/Mary Houston Phillips or Sid Phillips/Eugene Sledge: I don't know, I just have a lot of feelings about Mary helping Sid find himself when he gets back from the war and the two of them seeing Sledge struggle through much of the same shit and taking it upon themselves to try and help him, too, only to slowly realize over the course of time that they're dating and have been for a WHILE. Also, this one is kind of out there, but I would love if, in addition to helping him cope with his experiences during the war, Mary and Sid also help Sledge figure out he's genderqueer, even if they don't have the modern terminology for it. Any of these tropes/themes is also great with Sid/Sledge, I would just prefer Mary not be made into a villain if she appears in the fic. In fact, bonus points for supportive beard Mary Houston!

Since I'm moderating this exchange, I will know who you are and you will (obviously) know who I am so please feel free to reach out to me with questions if you need clarification. There's no mystery for the wicked, I suppose, but I'm really looking forward to it anyway. Also, if you'd like to peek at any of the previous letters I've written for this and other exchanges (which will be more of the same you've seen here), you can check out my "letters to nonny" tag.

Happy writing!
-Tec