AU Exchange Letter 2019

[telm_393]

Hello! Thank you for writing for me. I’m really pumped about this exchange. :)

There are some prompts for the suggested AUs. You can mix and match prompts and AUs themselves, and also ignore anything I say and do what your heart tells you is best for the AU.

In the end, the freeform is the prompt and anything else is just for your consideration. There’s also some sections that are significantly longer than others, but that says nothing about how much I want them, just about how many freeforms I chose and how much rambling I did.

I’m also really partial to h/c and whump and angst, but anything is good, I promise.

On to the letter!

Likes:

- Hurt/comfort--I'm a big fan of the comfort, but the hurt can be as dark as you want (non-con, abuse, torture, etc.)

- Darkfic

- Hopeful/bittersweet endings, though I'm not closed to unhappy endings

 - Literally sleeping together


- Established relationships


- Bittersweetness

- Mental health issues 

- Sanity slippage/full mental breakdown


- Memory loss/memory issues

- Loyalty, protectiveness, loved ones supporting each other through anything and even if they don't know how or screw up a bunch

- Grief/mourning

- Recovery from trauma (it doesn’t have to be a full recovery, I love reading about characters finding a new normal)

- Characters finding out secrets about each other and characters hiding things from others because they’re ashamed and afraid that they’ll be judged, and then acceptance

- Dealing with past trauma (this can include canon or non-canon abuse and/or non-con, anything you want)

- Angst with a happy or hopeful ending

- Characters having complicated feelings about each other

- Caretaking and caretaker fatigue

- Twisted and fluffy feelings

DNWs:

- Smut/PWP/sexual or non-sexual kink/fic that's E-rated due to sexual content

- Underage

- Broken bones (ribs are fine)

- Amputated limbs

- Unrequested shipfic

- Character bashing (nothing that could be classed "X character unfriendly")

- Character death of any of the characters in the combinations that you're writing about (though other characters are fair game)

- Ship bashing or kink bashing

- Genderswap/always-another-gender/suddenly-another-gender

- Gender headcanons, including pronoun changes

- Asexual headcanons

- Autistic headcanons

- Characters schooling anyone, especially each other, on social justice issues

- Soulbonding/soulmates

- First person POV

- OC kids

- Pregnancy of all kinds

- Chatroom fic

- Crossovers

- Furries

MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE 

Group: Scott Lang/Sam Wilson

This will always be my OTP. Always and forever.

...And considering that Sam and Scott admittedly haven’t interacted thaaaaat much in canon, AUs are PERFECT for them.

I adore all the other characters that surround Scott and Sam. Including the rest of Team Cap or various other Avengers or the other Ant-Man characters would be great in any AU.

I feel like Sam’s capacity for brooding is often left untapped, and Steve and Bucky as Sam’s friends who are always trying to get him to get out there and ~*~*~live~*~*~ in a mundane AU where he’s a veteran, or in a canon AU, would be sincerely hilarious. I like Sam as a not-necessarily-as-put-together-as-he-seems kind of guy with his own issues, and would never say no to Sam whump. (That said, I would never say no to Scott whump either. Or whump for both of them.)

I see both of them with problems and hang-ups but still having a happy, supportive relationship in the end with a lot of the issues coming from the outside.

A past Hope/Scott relationship in any AU is a-okay, and her having a role in the story is equally a-okay, either as exes who are friends or as friends who aren’t exes. I’d prefer Sam with no previous romantic connection to other MCU characters. Background pairings for any of the other characters are fine.

I’m actually kind of prompting a lot of these AUs under the mundane umbrella, but you don’t have to make them mundane. (By mundane here I mean “no one was ever a superhero, that’s not a thing”.)

Freeforms + prompts:

ALL: Alternate First Meetings — Honestly, this one’s pretty open-ended for me in that I can’t quite think of a specific prompt, but this could pretty much go with any of the AUs below barring the MCU-specific ones, or it could also be them meeting differently in some different point in the MCU proper.

ALL: Dark — I love the idea of dark versions of these characters. Mad scientist Scott? Dishonorably discharged Sam with a lot of knowledge of anatomy from his time as a PJ? (And a certain flair for torture?) Either of them as having been experimented on?

ALL: Apocalypse AU — Any kind of apocalypse would be amazing here. Sam and Scott teaming up for any reason (maybe they’ve lost touch with the people they’re closest too? Don’t feel afraid to kill other characters off either) would be awesome. A mundane AU or Sam and Scott hooking up in more ways than one after some kind of apocalyptic event (including [insert bad guy] winning at any point) in the MCU proper would both be interesting. One of my favorite things in apocalyptic scenarios is characters going a little nuts, so don’t be afraid to lean into that.

ALL: Romantic Comedy AU— I just desperately want to know what you’d come up with this omg. Fuse the pairing with your fave rom-com. Just include as many rom-com tropes as possible. Go wild.

ALL: Secret Relationship Is Publicly Revealed— This is one where I like the idea of a canon AU. Sam and Scott are together since X point in the MCU canon, but their relationship is only revealed once Sam becomes Cap? Or something of the sort. (Coming out and homophobia as a plot point would be totally cool here.)

MCU: Character suffers permanent injury in final Endgame battle — I’d be down for this with Scott or Sam. Maybe the two of them are in an established relationship, or they were in a relationship/had a fling at some point, and the injury brings them back together? I prefer brain damage or some kind of internal injury to something like amputation. Also, both of them suffering a life-changing injury in the final battle and bonding over that would be neat too.


IRON MAN MOVIES

Group: Ho Yinsen & James "Rhodey" Rhodes (IM Movies)

Group: Ho Yinsen & Pepper Potts (IM Movies)

Ho Yinsen (IM Movies)

Freeforms:

MCU: Yinsen (Iron Man) lives

MCU: Yinsen (Iron Man) lives and Tony dies

I’m still not over Yinsen, and I think he’s really interesting, and I’d love anything where he lives. Yinsen & Tony wasn’t nominated as far as I can recall, but friendship between them would be great as well as with the others. Yinsen interacting with anybody would be great.

Friendship between Yinsen and Pepper and Rhodey in an AU where Tony dies (and maybe Yinsen becomes Iron Man instead) would be amazing too.

If you want to make it an exact canon AU (that is, following the movies but with Yinsen added/replacing Tony) or totally diverge, that’s fine by me.


THE GOOD PLACE (TV)

Group: Jason Mendoza & Eleanor Shellstrop

Group: Tahani Al-Jamil & Chidi Anagonye & Jason Mendoza & Eleanor Shellstrop

Group: Tahani Al-Jamil & Jason Mendoza

Note: I like all the canon romantic relationships here! Janet/Jason, Eleanor/Chidi, etc. are totally fine to include. For

Freeforms + prompts:

ALL: Roommates AU — Mundane AU where any of these combinations become roommates? Somehow? (And if you want to include the non-human characters, where the non-human characters are human too?)

ALL: Apocalypse AU & Post-Apocalypse — This can definitely fit with the Dark AU below. I’d love to see any of these characters in some kind of apocalypse. Sanity Slippage for somebody/everybody would be a total plus too. All the characters somehow coming together in an apocalypse would be awesome.

ALL: Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies — I’d love to see a version of canon where the core four or variations of them survive (with or without having their near death experiences, though without would be neat) and somehow meet up and change each other for the better! That would be amazing.

Then again, you could also put this in with the Dark AU and do something with that, which would be cool too. Maybe if they’d survived, everything would’ve just gotten worse and worse, I don’t know. Or just go dark in some other way. This goes with the roommates and different first meeting AUs too.

ALL: Dark — I have various thoughts on this one above, but you could do absolutely anything and I’d eat it up. Maybe everyone ended up in the Real Bad Place from the beginning, I don’t know! (Like, Michael made a Real Bad Place neighborhood and put them in there and then gets to know them and feels kind of bad about it.) This can be mundane dark or supernatural dark or canon AU dark, go for anything.


THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY (TV)

Group: Allison & Luther & Klaus & Ben & Five & Diego & Vanya

Group: Allison Hargreeves & Ben Hargreeves (UA TV)

Group: Ben Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves (UA TV)

Group: Diego Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves (UA TV)

Group: Luther Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves (UA TV)

Note: I am cool with fic that features any canon relationships, including Allison/Luther.

Freeforms:

UA TV: Ben lives

UA TV: Luther leaves the Academy as a teenager

UA TV: Luther leaves the Academy with Vanya

I’m super interested in Luther’s relationship with his siblings and also what might’ve happened if he’d left his dad behind earlier. Maybe he had an injury (brain damage, internal injury, some kind of serious psychological injury, etc.) at some point that made him fall from grace in Reginald’s eyes and so he becomes closer to one of his siblings like Vanya or Diego? Or he knows Ben is with Klaus and leaves with them/Ben helps convince him to go? Basically, how and why would Luther leave Reginald when he’s younger?

I’m also always really fascinated by how much Ben seems to care about Luther, so I think that either an AU where Ben’s still a ghost but Luther knows about him or an AU where Ben’s alive could be awesome. A more Ben-centric version of the Ben lives AU would be A+ too. I love Ben.

And if you matched with me on Allison and Ben, fic where Ben and Allison leave together could be really interesting in a Ben Lives AU! I'd love to see more of their relationship, since it's clear that Allison really misses him. Maybe a codependent kind of thing, maybe healthier, whatever you see. Hell, maybe Ben goes along with Allison and gets into Hollywood in front of or behind the camera too.


Russian Doll

Group: Nadia Vulvokov & Alan Zaveri

Freeforms:

ALL: Roommates AU

ALL: Character gets another character’s help that they didn’t get in canon

ALL: Different First Meetings

ALL: Apocalypse AU & Post-Apocalypse

I love this show, I love the characters, I want good things for them, and also h/c, and also pain. I contain multitudes. Nadia’s self-conscious, defensive selfishness mixed with protectiveness is really interesting, as is Alan’s inability to get help and desperate fear of pretty much everything. Their relationship is intense and caring and the way they’re connected is both heartbreaking and sweet.

I think that the parallels between Nadia’s mother and Alan himself are really fascinating and something that can definitely be explored. I’d be really happy to see them meeting in some other way that doesn’t involve a time loop at all, like being roommates, or the time loop stopping before it starts because they actually bumble into helping each other the first time and then somehow connect.

Then the apocalypse is just fun tbh. Imagine how messed up these characters would be in a post-apocalypse (of any kind) situation! That could also go with alternate first meetings. Or maybe it's an apocalyptic time loop and the apocalypse either happens or doesn't at the end. 

(I really love all the side characters here too, especially Farran and Ruth, so if you want to include them, be my guest.)