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(Yes, I did Day 11 before I did Day 10. This is a longish one.)
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snowflake_challenge Day 10: In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. (More than one is okay, too.) Tell us about it, tell us why you love it, give us some examples and recs.
Fusion Crossovers
This is easily explained: I love the characters of fandom A. I love the worldbuilding of fandom B. LET'S SMUSH THEM TOGETHER INTO A SINGLE STORY!
Like variations on a theme, fusion crossovers have the potential to be really really interesting when done well. Take characters, take worldbuilding, mix and match as required. The creative possibilities are amazing!
For instance, Character S in Fandom A is in the military. It's a huge part of who he is and what he's done over the years. Fandom B has a military, but in canon, it's an Evil (tm) dictatorial military and the good guys are the resistance.
The easy way is to make Character S a member of the resistance. Instant good guy - just add situation!
The interesting way is to make Character S part of the military - a cog in the machine, a piece of the puzzle, doing what they can while questioning the orders they're given. And then either to work them around to how they do good in an evil machine, or else how they break out of the machine when the consequences are dire.
An excellent example of this is the series Heroes In The Sky by![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
quigonejinn and hauntedjaeger, which is a Pacific Rim fusion into Firefly. One of the reasons I particularly love this one is because "we're no longer the army...we're the resistance" Stacker Pentecost is an Alliance officer who retires, marries Herc, and adopts Mako who came out of Alliance experimentation rather more sane than River. Raleigh is a Companion. Chuck is so very 'Jayne' that it's unutterably brilliant. Oh, and Tendo and Allison are the mechanics and pilots of the ship, of course.
Fake Marriage and Mutual Pining
An excellent starter for the reasons I love the Fake Marriage trope combined with Mutual Pining is right here.
I love the angst, and mutual pining (when they don't know) is wonderful. The difficulty is mostly in making it reasonably believable that they don't think it's possible for the other person to love them. So this lends itself to certain characters better than others - characters with a strong sense of responsibility, characters who have emotional constipation, characters who are in situations that mean they can't be publically together, and they think (for Reasons) that they can't do it privately either.
I haven't read too many Fake Marriage fics in the last five years - it was a common enough trope for Stargate SG1 in my OTP there. Sam/Jack had innumerable 'fake marriage' fics. INNUMERABLE. However it was a far rarer trope for my Stargate Atlantis OTP which was John/Teyla The problem was largely having it done suitably (according to me, anyway), because Teyla is a Pegasus native, a diplomat and a trader. I'd rather she talk them out of the situation than be an excuse.
Mutual Pining is easier to find, although the trick is to find stories that have believable reasons for why the characters aren't dropping hints, confessing how they feel, or moving forward.
(Steve/Maria actually lends themselves to mutual pining really well. Professionally, Maria can't afford to be more than friends with Steve, and personally she knows that she's not up to his standards - at least in the eyes of other people. Meanwhile, Steve sees Maria being brisk and businesslike with him and figures she's not interested in anything more than friends, not realising that the little courtesies she accepts from him are her indicators.)
Fuck or Die
It's the necessity of it. Making the best of a situation that they're maybe not entirely happy with. Or a character getting fixated on another character and using the 'fuck or die' situation to have their chance, all the while acknowledging that it's under duress and if it wasn't life-or-death then they'd never be anything more...
First Times
Which side to kiss on? Where do hands go? What things turn them on, and is it vanilla on the first date, or do you jump straight to choc-chip raspberry ripple with pecans? Exploring these things - negotiating them verbally or non-verbally - is kind of fun.
Also, virginity/sexual debut. 'Virgin' is not the same as 'innocent'. And then there's the question of exactly what counts as 'virginity'... Penetration? Orgasm? Frotting? Oral?
Try There is nothing like a dame - MCU Steve/Maria.
BDSM
Collars and cuffs, tying up, pleasure and pain, orgasm denial, obedience, safewords... BDSM is all about trust and vulnerability, and getting it working between characters while remaining in-character? Is totally the bomb.
And sometimes I'll go with stuff that isn't necesarily in-character but is still hot.
a taste of heavenly rush - Pacific Rim, Chuck/Yancy
Co-Sleeping
This trope got me in Pacific Rim, particularly in the Mako/Raleigh pairing which is always my endgame, but which I wanted to go slower than most fanfic writers who were right up into sex pretty much as soon as the characters were out of their gear post-movie.
It's bodies, intimacy, vulnerability, trust - without getting into sex and all the issues that might come with it. Or sitting on the border of sex.
And there's always the morning hard-on or the wet dream for the opportunity to turn things sexual!
Intimacy
In my stories, sex comes after emotional/personal intimacy, and where it doesn't, then the sex itself forms an intimate bond. But I also like stories that show the intimacy of characters without necessarily having them in bed. Sometimes it's who can enter a room without waking them up, or who they hand their weapons to, or who they trust with their identity/location/personal crisis. It all depends on the personality of the characters as to how it all fits together.
for the sane mad and the bravest monsters bylanguage_escapes - Elementary, Sherlock, with Watson, Irene, and various OCs, and is about levels of trust and intimacy for him. And for a character like Sherlock, that's no small thing.
I could probably go on: soul-mates (inverted or subverted), negotiation, kickass chicks... So many tropes that I enjoy reading and writing!
snowflake_challenge Day 10: In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. (More than one is okay, too.) Tell us about it, tell us why you love it, give us some examples and recs.Fusion Crossovers
This is easily explained: I love the characters of fandom A. I love the worldbuilding of fandom B. LET'S SMUSH THEM TOGETHER INTO A SINGLE STORY!
Like variations on a theme, fusion crossovers have the potential to be really really interesting when done well. Take characters, take worldbuilding, mix and match as required. The creative possibilities are amazing!
For instance, Character S in Fandom A is in the military. It's a huge part of who he is and what he's done over the years. Fandom B has a military, but in canon, it's an Evil (tm) dictatorial military and the good guys are the resistance.
The easy way is to make Character S a member of the resistance. Instant good guy - just add situation!
The interesting way is to make Character S part of the military - a cog in the machine, a piece of the puzzle, doing what they can while questioning the orders they're given. And then either to work them around to how they do good in an evil machine, or else how they break out of the machine when the consequences are dire.
An excellent example of this is the series Heroes In The Sky by
Fake Marriage and Mutual Pining
An excellent starter for the reasons I love the Fake Marriage trope combined with Mutual Pining is right here.
I love the angst, and mutual pining (when they don't know) is wonderful. The difficulty is mostly in making it reasonably believable that they don't think it's possible for the other person to love them. So this lends itself to certain characters better than others - characters with a strong sense of responsibility, characters who have emotional constipation, characters who are in situations that mean they can't be publically together, and they think (for Reasons) that they can't do it privately either.
I haven't read too many Fake Marriage fics in the last five years - it was a common enough trope for Stargate SG1 in my OTP there. Sam/Jack had innumerable 'fake marriage' fics. INNUMERABLE. However it was a far rarer trope for my Stargate Atlantis OTP which was John/Teyla The problem was largely having it done suitably (according to me, anyway), because Teyla is a Pegasus native, a diplomat and a trader. I'd rather she talk them out of the situation than be an excuse.
Mutual Pining is easier to find, although the trick is to find stories that have believable reasons for why the characters aren't dropping hints, confessing how they feel, or moving forward.
(Steve/Maria actually lends themselves to mutual pining really well. Professionally, Maria can't afford to be more than friends with Steve, and personally she knows that she's not up to his standards - at least in the eyes of other people. Meanwhile, Steve sees Maria being brisk and businesslike with him and figures she's not interested in anything more than friends, not realising that the little courtesies she accepts from him are her indicators.)
Fuck or Die
It's the necessity of it. Making the best of a situation that they're maybe not entirely happy with. Or a character getting fixated on another character and using the 'fuck or die' situation to have their chance, all the while acknowledging that it's under duress and if it wasn't life-or-death then they'd never be anything more...
First Times
Which side to kiss on? Where do hands go? What things turn them on, and is it vanilla on the first date, or do you jump straight to choc-chip raspberry ripple with pecans? Exploring these things - negotiating them verbally or non-verbally - is kind of fun.
Also, virginity/sexual debut. 'Virgin' is not the same as 'innocent'. And then there's the question of exactly what counts as 'virginity'... Penetration? Orgasm? Frotting? Oral?
Try There is nothing like a dame - MCU Steve/Maria.
BDSM
Collars and cuffs, tying up, pleasure and pain, orgasm denial, obedience, safewords... BDSM is all about trust and vulnerability, and getting it working between characters while remaining in-character? Is totally the bomb.
And sometimes I'll go with stuff that isn't necesarily in-character but is still hot.
a taste of heavenly rush - Pacific Rim, Chuck/Yancy
Co-Sleeping
This trope got me in Pacific Rim, particularly in the Mako/Raleigh pairing which is always my endgame, but which I wanted to go slower than most fanfic writers who were right up into sex pretty much as soon as the characters were out of their gear post-movie.
It's bodies, intimacy, vulnerability, trust - without getting into sex and all the issues that might come with it. Or sitting on the border of sex.
And there's always the morning hard-on or the wet dream for the opportunity to turn things sexual!
Intimacy
In my stories, sex comes after emotional/personal intimacy, and where it doesn't, then the sex itself forms an intimate bond. But I also like stories that show the intimacy of characters without necessarily having them in bed. Sometimes it's who can enter a room without waking them up, or who they hand their weapons to, or who they trust with their identity/location/personal crisis. It all depends on the personality of the characters as to how it all fits together.
for the sane mad and the bravest monsters by
I could probably go on: soul-mates (inverted or subverted), negotiation, kickass chicks... So many tropes that I enjoy reading and writing!
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(and thanks for the fic links - they'll keep me occupied for a while!)
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I do deplore the habit of making one's OTP autaomtically 'drift compatible' in PR fusions, though. To me, that's a 'cheat' because too frequently the author doesn't need to cite anything more than 'drift compatibility' as a reason for them to be together.
It's a bit like the soulmates trope on that front. Which I also have issues with, unless it's inverted or subverted.
Frankly, half the fun for me as a writer and a reader is in looking at the complexities of the relationships between pilots and the people they have outside that dynamic. Also, not all intimacy is sexual, which they partly circumvented by having two pilot pairings be family - only, fandom being what it is, not really. But they still have to have friendships outside - the Beckets were friends with Tendo, and doubtless knew many others. Herc was clearly friends with Stacker, but Chuck didn't share or wasn't in that same level of friendship...
Sorry, small rant there. :)
I hope you enjoy the recs!
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