Niko

So apparently a "Dear Santa" letter helps make things go a bit more smoothly, so here goes!

Dear Santa,

The Secret Santa is a general SGA one, but my absolute favorite pairing is John/Rodney. If at all possible, I would like a John/Rodney fic. I am fine with established relationship, pre-slash, or a fic where they get together through the course of the fic, but that is my ship and I would love for that to be the main pairing in the fic.

If you don't ship it or can't think of a good fic with that ship, please do not pair either of them up with someone else. I don't really ship them with anyone else (though I have read and enjoyed several fics where they were in a threesome with other characters, but that usually depends on how it is done) and while it feels selfish of me to say because this is a gift fic, it is a gift for me, and I wouldn't enjoy them being paired with someone else.

However, I do really LOVE the found family and team as family tropes, so if you don't ship John and Rodney I would adore a gen fic where their friendship and their relationship with the team is a huge part of the fic. I mean, regardless of if you ship them or not, John and Rodney spend a huge amount of their downtime together in canon, from playing what they think is an Ancient computer game to racing toy cars and playing chess. Their friendship is hugely important to both of them, and my favorite gen fics are ones that don't try to downplay that in order to make it less slashy.

If the fic is relationship focused, I would want it to be either McShep or just team!feels, but as far as background pairings go, for early fics I like Teyla/Elizabeth but for later fics I also do like Teyla/Kanaan - I like that Teyla/Elizabeth is usually handled as two strong, powerful women who are reaching out to each other because they both understand the isolation and often difficult decisions that come with leadership, and I like Teyla/Kanaan because I like that she ended up with someone from the Athosians. I feel like the duality of her responsibilities to Atlantis and to her own people was a point that was never properly explored in canon, and I love how fic tends to explore it. I like Ronon/Keller - I think she should have ended up with him in canon. I don't have strong opinions about ships for most of the rest of the characters, though I do enjoy Carson/Cadman and Lorne/Parrish. Platonically I enjoy Rodney being all gruff and pissy with his scientists but rather protective of them if they're in danger, and I like the way he and Radek bicker and fight.

I like AUs, I like canon divergence, and I like missing scenes or fics that could easily slide in between canon stuff. The AUs I'm not super fond of tend to be things like high school and college AUs or A/B/O. The AUs I do like include but are not limited to: medieval, magic, superpowers, non-Stargate, ones where one of the two of them was never in the Stargate program but the other was/is, BDSM (sub!Rodney pls), Sentinel/Guide (Sentinel!John and Guide!Rodney generally), soulmate, shifter, and all kinds of others. I also enjoy combining AUs - for example, I really like the fic Mosquito, Gnat, and Midge Season, which is a non-Stargate Sentinel AU. If you have an idea for an AU that you want to write and aren't sure if I'll like it, feel free to ask the mods to ask me and I'll let them know.

I enjoy all KINDS of tropes. Hurt/comfort, huddling for warmth, aliens made them do it, shit going down because of some weird Ancient device, arranged marriage, fake dating, and lots and lots and lots I can't even think of right now lol. When whumping I prefer hurt!Rodney over hurt!John - and especially if someone is hurting Rodney to get to John - and I figured out once it's because I like seeing Rodney get taken care of afterwards. But I also do really enjoy when they're both hurt and trying to take care of each other and are each like"let me see your injuries, no i'm fine let me see you" or when John is hurt badly enough that he can't do much and Rodney then has to step up to the plate and ends up being badass. (I'm actually super fond of fics where Rodney's badassery is acknowledged in general - there's some really good ones out there where Rodney is considered a serious threat to the Wraith because of how well he understands their tech, and a few others where despite John's super gene, Rodney is considered highly regarded by Atlantis because Rodney knows how to fix Atlantis, and tries to connect with and communicate with the city. In addition to the ones where he out-stubborns people lol)

I'm also ok with anything happening to the characters so long as there's an unambiguously happy ending. In fact, one of my favorite tropes is thought-they-were-dead-but-they-weren't and the very similar did-actually-die-but-is-ok-again. So feel free to even kill them, or look like they've been killed, so long as everything works out in the end.

I'm cool with fics being holiday-themed, but it's also not something that I am super passionate about, so that's up to you. Also up to you is the rating and if there is or isn't sex in the fic - if it's an AU where there's people who are predisposed to being doms or tops or w/e I prefer top!John/bottom!Rodney, but if it's not then I like the idea that they switch things up. 

No idea what else to say, but I've rambled on enough that I hope you have an idea for what to write. If not, hopefully you at least got a good idea of what I like and don't like.