Snowflake Day 10
Jan. 10th, 2018 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

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.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-10 09:23 pm (UTC)Canon-divergence AUs are awesome. I'm so, so picky about full-on AUs (like, different professions, different backstory) but I love a good fork in the road. I want canon to go in different ways so many times that 80% of my requests for exchanges qualify as AU, in the canon divergence sense. And when I wrote more, I used to find fusions so much fun! I think that's another one I prefer to write over read, because I like contemporary universe fiction and because fusions often get a little... out of hand (too close to the second canon in unbelievable ways). When someone does it well, it is so good, though.
edit: just find it funny that I've written like three novel-length stories and one is gen with vampires and two are fusions. LOL.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-10 09:33 pm (UTC)Heh, yes, it’s funny how what we like to write and what we like to read can be so different! I tend to avoid modern/mundane AUs for magical or sci fi fandoms, and I’ve read enough Daemon AUs that I tend not to bother. I’m intrigued as to what you mean by getting too close to the second canon. Do you mean it pulls the people from the first fandom out of character?
AUs are tricky things, which might just be why I like then so much. It’s so satisfying when the author pulls it off!
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-10 10:02 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, if the fandom is magical I will BALK at no magic. Or no creatures or whatever. Those are usually the fandoms where I'm the most "NO FULL AUS PLEASE" about. Teen Wolf without werewolves! Harry Potter without magic! I'll take Merlin modern AUs without magic but I love when secretly Merlin is magic anyway. Daemons are eh. I read like 5% of those for the fandoms/pairings I'm interested in, usually if I trust the writer. But it's not like I was THAT into the HDM universe.
And yeah, that's exactly what I mean. Sometimes people try too hard to keep certain plot elements without thinking about how these characters would not do that and it becomes a farce. I was reading a Merlin fusion like that a while back and your post put me in mind of it, ha. I've read a lot of good ones.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-11 09:02 am (UTC)Gen is one of those things that comes up in the cycle of fannish discussion from time to time. I think it's very much in the eye of the beholder! For me, it basically means "any fic where romance is not the point." And I'll get thrown out of stories that are labelled as Gen because there's nothing explicit, but are essentially romances. Like finding the right AU for you, you know it when you see it ;D
It's funny you saying that about fusion fics. One of the reasons I realised mine wasn't working back in November was that I was letting the plot guide the story instead of the characters. This has been a good reminder that the point is to put characters from one world into another, not necessarily to slavishly follow the plot of one canon using characters from another. If the canon is good, that won't work, because it will have been driven by the original characters! (I think that made more sense in my head, but hopefully you see what I mean) I have to go back to the drawing board and work out how the Daredevil characters would have been affected by living in the Guardians of the Galaxy universe, and take it from there. Maybe I'll reread We are Stardust for inspiration :D
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-11 09:38 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's what I think of as gen as well. There can be relationships in it, especially established, but they need to be a byproduct of the story rather than the focus. I was just curious as to your preferences because sure, in fanfic, you get SO much romance that gen is its own thing, but it's such a massively large category when you think about mainstream media. Like the thing I'm good at but don't like reading is character studies, and I wrote that one Pretty Little Liars canon-divergence AU where there were vampires and that explained everything, and I LOVE reading team/group dynamics gen... there's just so much.
You are doing The Good Work.
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Date: 2018-01-11 03:59 am (UTC)As to fusions, I think my all-time favourite is the The Republic of Heaven Community Radio series. It's an HDM/WtNV fusion, but unlike most HDM fusions, it's not just taking the daemons--it's a full-on world fusion, and it's amazing how well the author makes them fit together. The whole series together is 567K. Unfortunately it does include a romance (more than one, even) as part of the main storyline; there's a lot else going on but their relationship is undeniably central to the story. I don't know if it matters that Carlos/Cecil is canon to Welcome to Night Vale?
I also wanted to say that those recs look really good, and I look forward to checking them out!
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-11 09:13 am (UTC)I think I mostly just mean "the pairing getting together is not the point of the story" - everyone's definition of gen is slightly different, but that's where I come down. Having said that, found-family and strong friendship is very much my first love, so those fics sound right up my street. I've got a pretty long list of fandoms - most of the juggernaut ones like Sherlock, Supernatural, SGA, MCU, Whoniverse - and an even longer one that I'll read in without knowing the source. Probably only anime and manga would be on my 'don't read' list. Otherwise, I'll try most things once!
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-11 08:09 pm (UTC)All right, then! Let's see...
Merlin:
The Virtue, Chickens, and Destiny series, by
The Perfect Scry by
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Lancelot said, beginning to grin. “You want to teach Merlin to use magic – without letting him notice that he’s using magic?”
“He must not find out. If he finds out he has magic, he’ll – why are you laughing? This is no laughing matter, Lancelot!”
Also by
In the aftermath of the rout at Ealdor, a mercenary leader tries to hold his small band of survivors together and extricate them from the mess he got them into. He thinks he’s come up with a simple plan to save them all, but things soon stop going according to the script. And then they meet with a group of knights, led by a knight who calls himself Sir Andrew of Dollop Head.
Arthur decides, for who-knows what reason, that he wants to spend his honeymoon chasing a gryphon all over Camelot. Merlin, as ever, is tagging along behind Arthur, but his usual plan of pretending to be a simple servant isn't working. Arthur has been behaving strangely ever since their return from Ealdor, and Merlin is worried. On the road, they meet with a small band of riders who insist that they are also Knights of Camelot, and Arthur comes up with a strange new plan all of his own...
Girl Genius:
Well Met at Mechanicsburg" by
Finally, there's an MCU series, The Undone Universe by
"--I'm not even sure how to begin to describe this series. It's mostly MCU fic, but it diverges at the end of the Avengers and it's got a strong 616 influence. It's about 628K words. Each of the longer individual works forms a complete story in itself, nevertheless working to develop an overarching plot which ends beautifully. The beating heart of the story is the relationship between Tony and Steve; it's marked as gen but honestly the entire thing feels to me like a developing relationship which hadn't quite finished developing by the time the series ended. It's about pushing the boundaries of technology. It's about love. It's about doing what's necessary--and about working out what really is necessary, and what you might be tempted to think is necessary, in the moment. It's about compromise. It's about having a computer in your brain. It's one of my favourite things anyone's ever written, and it's great.
The first fic is called Saga, and I'll just give you the summary from the fic itself: Tony falls into the closing portal, but he doesn’t make it out the other side before it snaps shut. Trapped in a universe where time runs oddly when mortals blink, and accompanied by a Not-Quite-Dead Steve Rogers, Tony mouths off to a goddess of death, goes cross-dressing with Thor and Loki, and learns to hate Asgardian engineering. Oh, and he may have caused the end of the universe as they know it.
Highly recommended among all high recommendations."
I hope there's something here that you like :)
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-11 05:18 am (UTC)I have some ancient links for Sherlock AUS somewhere (and H50) if you're interested.
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Date: 2018-01-11 09:13 pm (UTC)I do love me a good AU, but I've been reading minuscule amounts of fic and don't have any good recs. I'll keep an eye on what people share with you!
(no subject)
Date: 2018-01-11 09:22 pm (UTC)I’m not reading much either, hence 10 year old recs! But I’m building a spreadsheet, so hopefully I can start catching up!