Snowflake Day 10

[jadesfire]

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.

Comments

[summerstorm]

Gen totally counts, but I'd love specifics abut what kind of gen you like! I have this thing where sometimes having a plot makes it easier for me to write a romance story... I do go for romance most of the time, but I also have a weird habit of writing woman-centric gen? That I might not actually read if I found it in the wild, but I love exploring it and I think I'm good at it. It's one of those weird 'love writing it, but eh on reading it' things. So I share your telepathy thing but with gen, I guess.

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.

[jadesfire]

For me, it’s very much an allergy to romance in general (which applies to real life as well, to my husband’s occasional despair). I don’t see the pairing that other people do, and automatically read close bonds as familial/friendship rather than romantic. I think some of us just have our brains wired that way! It’s kind of amazing I managed to get married... honestly, I don’t mind fic with pretty much any pairing, but it has to be exceptional to make me interested in the pairing alone - I need at least a semblance of plot. The only exception I can think of is Junk Cheap, and old SGA fic, but the writing in that was enough to lift it for me.

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!

[summerstorm]

That's so interesting to me -- do you mean you don't see the pairing as romantic in the context of the fic, or outside of it? I get it either way. I'm amazed I managed to have a relationship this year but it's for different reasons, lol.

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.

[jadesfire]

Mostly, I mean that when people say "obviously Merlin and Arthur are in love" or "clearly John and Sherlock are a couple", I don't see it. A fic has to make me believe it, not just assume I'm on board from the start. Or the relationship has to be assumed and in the background, with the story about something else entirely, with the pairing being incidental. When that's the case, I'll read a story with almost any pairing (I have a few NOTPs, but not many). I don't require exciting plot, character interactions are fine.

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

[summerstorm]

Oh, that really makes sense. Especially when fandom juggernauts non-canon shit where you really have to squint. I tend to be more forgiving when there's a lot of fic because I feel like fanon did the legwork, but I definitely encounter my fair share of '...wait, they're interested in each other? Because you say so, or?' fic.

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.