selenak

Dear Creator,

thank you so much for writing this story for me. We clearly share some Trekian interests, and I'm thrilled to find out what you'll come up with.

Generally speaking: most of the prompts below aren't romantic in nature. If you ship one of these character combinations - say Pelia/Guinan - , be my guest, I don't object, but I don't want a story where them having sex takes up two thirds of the text. Re: fluff or dark, I'm fine with wherever the muse takes you, anything from angsty h/c to cheerful silliness is fine as long as the characters I love are at the heart of it. Also, if in cases where I requested a character combination of three named characters your story idea would only fit for two of them, and otherwise it would not work, that's fine with me as well.

DNW:

- bashing of canon pairings or characters in general. By which I don't mean the characters have to like each and everyone else, which would be oc, and honestly, I'm not exactly an admirer of, say, Chakotay's. But that doesn't mean I would want to read everyone dissing him (same with other characters)

- Alpha/Beta/Omega scenarios, watersports, infantilisation. Really not my thing, sorry.

- Rape: Now, this canonically happened to one of the characters I've asked for, and in her case, of course I would expect the story to deal with it. However, with the other characters, where it didn't happen in canon, I'd rather not read about it this year's ST fictional gift.

Likes:

- character exploration

- stoics who get the job done

- wordplay and banter if ic for the characters involved

- some humor amidst the angst if you go for a darker story

- fictional politics, history and literature (i.e. if you want to let the characters discuss the politics in their universe (e.g. the Federation's decision(s) re: Romulan refugees being an obvious case in point), or debate Cardassian literature a la Garak and Bashir, I'm all for it)

The question of AUs: In general, I'm not against exploring characters in, say, a "five things that never happened" scenarios, but I also love it if the story manages to stay within canon continuity.

On to the prompts:

SNW/Discovery: S2 of SNW and the way it dealt with M'Benga's and Chapel's Klingon War past and PTSD left me with a plot bunny and a wish that refused to go away: to see either or both of them interact with either or both of Discovery's two main Klingons: L'Rell and Ash/Voq. Maybe Ash is tasked with investigating the Ambassador's death. (Pike of course knows he's also Voq, but M'Benga and Chapel don't. Does he tell them at some point? What do they make of him? Or: there's (another) conspiracy against L'Rell the Enterprise comes across which they have to stop because otherwise it will look like it was human-organized, and somehow Chapel and M'Benga end up in a situation where they and L'Rell have to work together in order to survive? (Extra points for the irony of Christine having to disguise L'Rell as human for a while.)

DS9/'TNG: I've always been curious about another encounter between Sisko and Picard a few years after the pilot. Could be during the Dominion War, could be a First Contact AU where not Worf but Sisko commands the Defiant and thus ends up on the Enterprise for the Borg disaster, could be in another scenario altogether - as long as they get to interact meaningfully.

TNG/SNW: given Pelia's life span, I bet she and Guinan came across each other a couple of times. As opposed to the other two crossovers, which are angsty in nature, this lends itself to cheerfulness, given their personalities, though if you want to explore the drawbacks of a life that lasts centuries (for Guinan) or even millennia (for Pelia), go ahead.

Natima Lang as a Cardassian journalist and later professor turned dissident, who was on Terek Nor and Bajor during the Occupation at least long enough to have a relationship with Quark (which as a Cardassian has to have been at the very least scandalous) could be a gift for further fannish exloration, especially since canon gave us so few Cardassian "Civilians". Anything with her would be welcome, no matter whether it's a Terok Nor era story of her time there, or something set after her one episode appearance. Maybe Natima returned to Cardassia during the war with the Klingons and after the fall of the Obsidian Order, and then the Domion War happened - did she go back to the Resistance at once? Or maybe she's one of Garak's contacts when he, Kira and Damar come to Cardassia in the seventh season. Natima probably has mixed feelings re: Garak at first - as a former star of the Obsidian Order, he was very much part of the system she thought was terrible for Cardassia....

Quark is my favourite character on DS9. (Used to be Garak back in the day, but in the last decade or more, it's become Quark.) Any story that explores him would be very, very welcome. Quark & Rom: we see their relationship develop throughout the show, but I think the era I'd love to read about most right now are those months of the Second Occupation at the start of season 6, when Quark knows that Rom has stayed partly for him and partly to help the Federation, and is very much aware this can get them killed at any moment. The same era also offers a lot for scenes or a story focused on Quark's interactions with both or either Jake and Ziyal. I don't think Jake fully realised just what he was risking by staying on DS9 until the Second Occupation actually started, and Quark must have been one of the few touchstones of relative familiar normalcy left. (I mean, Jake can see that Kira in a world where she has to serve as Dukat's second in command really really REALLY has other things on her mind, and Odo is off exploring his inner Changeling, not that Jake had much interactions with Odo before.) As for Ziyal, again Quark is a part of the pre War station, but more to the point he's probably the only non-Cardassian on the station she can be relatively sure doesn't hate her father's guts, while also not having any "For Cardassia!" type of delusions. And if she wants to contact people she doesn't want her father to know about but doesn't want to ask Kira for, either, he's ideal.

The whole Sarah Sisko backstory is one of my few remaining pet peeves about the show, given that the Prophets essentially raped her and used her as a breeder, and that is never acknowledged as such on screen. So a Sarah story, either one set in the past where we see how she recovered from that experience and rebuild her life, or a post show scenario where she shows up on DS9 with revenge on the Prophets in mind because presumably news about Ben Sisko and DS9 was all over the Federation at the end of the Domnion War, and that's how Sarah finally figures out where the being taking over her body had come from and where the child of that experience ended up - anything focusing on Sarah would be welcome.

DNW: Sarah at the end deciding the Prophets really knew best. She can stop hating them or deciding she has put that trauma behind her, but I don't want her forgiving them.

Michael and her various mother figures: I love what canon gives us, but am greedy enough to want more. S2 briefly has two of them (Gabrielle and Emperor Georgiou) on the ship at the same time, and you'd only have to tweak it a bit so Amanda is there as well, but I'd be just as happy without a scenario where they really all meet, and instead we explore the various relationships consecutively. Except for Amanda and Mirror Philippa. We've seen the Emperor with Sarek, and I am wildly curious what she and Amanda would make of each other. This could be either in s2 or after Georgiou's return mid s3 (i.e. post Terra Firma), provided Georgiou ended up in the Primeverse rather than the Mirrorverse. She would be one of the new people Amanda could speak to about Michael, and vice versa. At the same time, she used to be a genocidal dictator and never hides the fact - how does Amanda (who presumably met her share of shady people, but pretty likely no one with that much blood on their hands) feel about this?

I adore Michael's friendship with Saru, and how we see it develop in canon from rivalry to comraderie to incredible closeness. Anything from the sci fi equivalent of curtain fic (maybe Saru wants Michael's advice for a good Vulcan gift for T'Rina?) to an in depth exploration of an extremely angsty era (after the Battle at the Binary Stars and Georgiou's death, the journey back to Earth?) would be loved and appreciated.

Laira Rillak intrigues me so, not least because successful politicians who aren't villains are a rarity in the media in these days, but also for her Bajoran-Cardassian background. She isn't old enough to have experienced the Burn herself but old enough to have had a childhood when the aftereffects were even worse than when Michael shows up. Choosing to work for what remained of the Federation in this era is anything but an obvious career choice for an ambitious woman. Why did she do it? She gets along well enough with T'Rina that T'Rina tips her off at a key point - do they have history (in an era where the former Vulcan isn't a Federation member anymore)? What does Laira Rillak think of her Cardassian and Bajoran heritage, does she identify as either or both or none? Or another angle altogether, just as long as you explore her character.