jadesfire: Black and white open book with old key resting against it. (Book with Key)
jadesfire ([personal profile] jadesfire) wrote2018-01-10 08:44 pm

Snowflake Day 10

Fandom Snowflake Challenge banner 2018

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.
summerstorm: (Default)

[personal profile] summerstorm 2018-01-10 10:02 pm (UTC)(link)
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.
summerstorm: (Default)

[personal profile] summerstorm 2018-01-11 09:38 pm (UTC)(link)
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.