Five Things Make A Post

1. I went to my first Pilates class last night. Given how much I don't ache this morning, I'm fairly sure I did it wrong! Still, I enjoyed it. There's only 5 of us in the class, and everyone seemed to be there to concentrate and do things, rather than chat and catch up on gossip (I've had bad experiences with exercise classes before!). And we were encouraged to take things *very* gently at first, so I'm sure the aches will come.

2. On the other hand, I'm quite pleased I don't ache too much, because my throat is giving me quite enough pain for one day. It kept waking me up during the night, as it's painful to swallow. The accompanying snuffle isn't too bad, but I'm assuming it will get worse. J has already more or less lost his voice :/ I'm armed with a decongestant, throat sweets and one of those numbing sprays, so hopefully I'll actually get some sleep tonight.

3. Thanks to snowflake_challenge, I now have about eleventy-million fics bookmarked to read, to go with the list of twelvety-million podfics. I'm determined to make time for both this year, and to leave feedback but dammit, that's a lot of fanworks. A spreadsheet might be required.

4. I managed to get through quite a few things yesterday, which felt good. Given how zonked I am today, I'm not hopeful of making the same progress, but I have my lists and we shall see what happens. It's always easier to do things once you've done things!

5. Doctor Who folks, if you don't already listen to Verity, let me heartily recommend it to you. It's a rotating panel of smart women talking about Doctor Who. There's a mixture of episode discussions, series discussions and silly games, which is just about my ideal podcast. Plus, two of my favourite podcasters, Erika Ensign and Liz Myles, are regulars, so that makes me happy.

5a. Note to self, upload all the icons into the slots you just paid for. That's why you saved them all, after all...

Snowflake Day 10

Day 10

In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. (Or a few!) Tell us what makes it work for you, and why it appeals to you so much. Talk about what you like to see in fanworks featuring that theme most. Feel free to include recs and examples!

Does Gen count? Gen feels like it should count, because it’s always a small minority of fic, but I suppose it’s more of a genre than a trope. Note to self: dig out that ‘Hardcore Genficcer’ icon.

My first instinct was "telepathy!" as that’s my favourite thing to write, but because I have such strong feelings about it, it’s not always my favourite thing to read. I think that would have to be AUs, especially fusions of one fandom with another. As someone with very little ability to write outside canon, I’m always fascinated by how writers take one detail and go off in a totally plausible but utterly different direction. And I love the cleverness of fusing one fandom with another, picking elements of each and crafting something new. It’s something I’m trying write at the moment, and man it’s difficult. It’s that cleverness that draws me in, the moment where there’s a detail in this AU world that is a damned clever take on the original one, and it just makes me grin from ear to ear.

One of my favourites is an old one, a Merlin/Firefly fusion, We are Stardust which I like because it does more than just take characters from one fandom and dump them in another. It takes elements of both and blends them into a seamless whole, and it’s the perfect length to give you enough and leave you wanting more.

There’s also Kianspo’s Let us Dare, which turns the world of Merlin on its head, with humour and warmth. I would have watched the hell out of this show, I really would.

SGA, like Merlin, spawned about three million AUs a week, but the one that sticks in my head is Greyias’ See No Evil. I loved how it kept Rodney and John perfectly in character, while changing their roles utterly. It’s a long, satisfying read. And I was just talking to Naye and Sholio about A Clear and Different Light, which is a stunningly complete AU with talking whales. Tell me, who doesn’t want talking whales in their fic?

More recently, I loved Lady Ragnell’s Hold me close and fear me not, which is a Daredevil/Fairy Tale* fusion. I like how it feels like it’s set in a world just a side-step from our own, and how the magical elements have their own logic.

Please do rec me your own favourite AUs!

*I’d heard of, but wasn’t familiar with the story of Tam Lin before reading the fic, and it really, really didn’t matter.