Additional Likes and Dislikes I love strong characterization, and will go just about anywhere with you for insightful or fresh characterization. I like my women strong and dangerous (and often my men, too), and I like when women have a slight edge in the relationship, status-wise. I'm interested in age differences being acknowledged, and fluidity in gender roles and sexual orientation. I like things that explore the workings of the Order, because it's a fascinating and unlikely organization, and I dig the Aurors/MLE as an organization. I like eras and places we see only hints of in canon, things that flesh out the edges of the world we see but are grounded in it. I like non-traditional relationships, things people make work in their own ways when it's not obvious how or why it does - especially for Beholder, I dig people who don't fit the usual molds making a place for themselves that suits them and makes them happy. (Maybe two people feel a genuine, and sexual, affection despite seemingly exclusive sexual orientations; or they have a long-term relationship with some unusual circumstances; or two people who love the same person come to an arrangement so no one loses; or two people who love each other but can't make it work together find the addition of a third makes it work; or an unusual extended family-of-choice within which there are various pairings and other relationships. Maybe it's a simple story about an unlikely pair of people who fall in love.)
I like Emmeline Vance, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Galatea Merrythought, and I have kind of a thing for Sirius Black, who is mad, bad, and dangerous to know (the unromanticized hot-headed, wildly partisan, and slightly unhinged version). Also, I dig Snape a bunch. (I have trouble investing in Next Gen as characters, but I don't think they're big presences in this fest anyway.)
I love me some McGonagall/Snape, and I constantly crave more (together, separately, platonic-or-sexual-life-partners, dueling as metaphor for sexual tension, complex stories about complex wartime realities, simply falling in love despite having no intention to do so - I love it all). But I also love being surprised by super-obscure pairings I've never thought of before. Lately, Aberforth is my little black dress; I think he can be paired with anyone. I've kind of had the urge for some McG/Aberforth, in particular, because I think their shared past/Albus as mutual family of blood/choice/Order ties/similar personalities are underexplored. I'm up for OT3s; I prefer when everyone in the OT3 is fairly equal in the relationship, rather than a couple and a third wheel - people working together who really can't work separately. (I think McG/Snape/Albus is virtually canon, they're so emotionally tied up together in bizarre ways. I want McG/Snape/Aberforth in an OT3 of great snark and hardness. And I love the totally unexpected OT3s.)
Tonewise, I'm up for anything from a complicated and realistic ambivalence and pragmatic arrangements, to wartime drama, to sly and funny, to a sweet little love story. For something like Beholder, I think I favor some genuine emotion at the heart of the relationship, something that satisfies them, simply because it's a celebration of the unlikelier characters being loved, too. So preferably something with a little tenderness at the core, whatever sort of bleakness or violence or realism there is.