Day 10

[mf_luder_xf]

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!

I don't know if this actually qualifies as any of these, but some of my favorite things in fics include a) maintaining friendships (because I feel this way in RL about significant others and friends), b) when there is no bashing of the other half of a canon pair for the sake of the ship (like, Tony and Pepper can have a good break up, Pepper doesn't have to be written as a shrew just for Tony and Steve to be together) and c) when there is no friendship/character bashing either (I consider this separate from b mostly because of Teen Wolf fandom - too many anti-Scott fics mixed with Sterek).



Other loves:

Found family.

Blood is thicker than water? Nah. Though there are many variations of this phrase, and some do actually refer to born-family (i.e. blood relations) being the only people you can trust, the proverb actually goes back to a longer one stating "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb," which actually has the opposite meaning - that those we make a covenant with are stronger bonds than those we are born with. I don't mean to suggest born family can't be strong ties or that they are lesser, but I tend to enjoy fandoms where one or more of the people are on the outs with their blood relatives (say 616!Tony Stark and even MCU!Tony though Howard isn't as awful in MCU as 616; Neal Caffrey and his dad; many, many Star Trek characters; John Sheppard's obvious disconnect from almost everyone on Earth; those who lost families like Derek Hale) but who come to form teams, or have children (or the fic can give them that), or make friends whose bonds are as strong or stronger than those blood familial relations. I love when these outsiders become part of a family (like HP marrying into Ron's big, amazing family; fics whereby Sheriff Stilinski and Melissa getting married Stiles and Scott become actual brothers; or Sheriff Stilinski calling Derek "son") through friendships and such or where they create their own family (like referring to Tony and Steve as Mom and Dad by the other Avengers, teams like Hawaii Five-0/SGA/Hale, McCall and/or Hale-McCall pack/Enterprise, Bobby's big speech about how much he cared for and raised Dean and Sam as his own sons *FEELS*). While I'm definitely a shipper, if that shipping is put into context of a larger team or found family, I am a goner. I love when the pairing (or threesome, etc) is found family, but I also enjoy the larger context of a team.

In a fight, they're lethal. But around each other, they melt.

By this I don't mean they have to be sappy, gushing romantics around each other, but I do tend to love characters from sci-fi/superhero and procedural shows where one or more of the ship I enjoy is a fighting bad ass through personal chosen training (Bruce Wayne, Alex Danvers, Dinah Laurel Lance), military (John Sheppard, Steve McGarrett, John Reese), sometimes by life circumstances (Sara Lance, Oliver Queen, Alex Krycek), powers (Derek Hale, Clark Kent, Castiel), or how they were raised (Dean Winchester, Black Widow). And often the other in the pairing is either also a fighting bad ass (see: SuperBat, WonderSuperBat, Alex/Maggie, McDanno, etc) OR, is super competent in mind (Rodney McKay, Felicity Smoak, Stiles Stilinski, Harold Finch) but more importantly also has a dark side or some kind of moral ambiguity (often as a result of their "rationality" or willingness to save their significant other/loved ones). But as bad ass as they are, and even can lash out in the ship, at the end of the day, they are cuddly people who gaze and pine and love harder than imaginable with their partners.

The gruff one and the happy one.

Somewhat related to above (as in it tends to cross over, like Sterek), I ~LOVE~ pairings where one is always outwardly gruff or moody or bitter or whatever (usually earned, often a mask, often they have dark humor, take things Very Serious, sometimes just because they're an introvert and that's okay. Then the other is by comparison bubbly or enthusiastic. It's like grumpy cat and the dog from Up! being besties. And the best is when the cheery one makes the grumpy one smile despite themselves. UGH, YES. The things is, I don't think that works in "real life" so it's this great opposites attract thing that's probably a lot of wish fulfillment on my part.lol And of course, being the cheery one doesn't mean they don't get sad, and honestly, I love if they're secretly morally ambiguous underneath all that exuberance. (Honestly, Stiles Stilinski, a true Slytherin fight me, is the perfect example of this.)

Sometimes this also relates to the dark and the light one (SuperCorp, Stony, Aziraphale/Crowley, McDanno), but it's less actually about hair color than morals and personality traits for me.

Competency kink.

Like apparently everyone else! I just really love stories/TV shows about people being awesome at things. Whether mind-related (Stiles, Bruce Wayne, Rodney McKay, Nathan Stark, Tony Stark) or the physical element - and also often combined with mind in the sense of strategizing (Bruce Wayne again, John Sheppard (see Judas Doesn't Answer for my favorite example of this regarding John EVER), John Constantine). People doing things they're good at, sometimes finding new things they're good at, yes, please.

Oblivious and/or mutual pining

Seriously. When the reader knows two (or three) people in a ship are in love with each other, find them sexually attractive, whatever, but the people themselves have to stumble into it awkwardly or after long periods of time, lawd have mercy, my kink. Such situations often also result in some of my other favs like first times, accidental (or pretend) dating/marriage, and tired, put-upon friends who don't understand how the people in the ship are so unable to see it/how they haven't been having sex all this time.

Polyamory

I do love my OT3s. I will say this, I tend to prefer committed threesome relationships to dating multiple people polyamory. I thought my first actively shipped OT3 was Neal/Peter/El from White Collar (aside from reading Mulder/Scully/Krycek because I read anything with any form of them back in the day), but as I've been watching Riverdale, I flashed back to my childhood reading the original comics and recalled even as a child thinking why did Archie have to chose? It wasn't some kind of sexual interest at that age, but there was something about Archie/Betty/Veronica even young me saw as unnecessary that Archie had to choose, and that the girls shouldn't fight over a boy. Since then I've developed some other hardcore OT3s like WonderSuperBat (which I prefer over WonderBat or WonderSuper), OnexTwoxThree (Derrick/Portia/Marcus) from Dark Matter, Dutch/D'Avin/Johnny from Killjoys, Trip/Archer/T'Pol from ST: Enterprise and the more numerous and fleeting threesome likes including being okay with Stucky in the context of an OT3 with Tony or Felicity/Oliver/Barry or Felicity/Oliver/Sara, Sterek+someone, or Kara/James/Winn. I just enjoy the dynamic of three, I guess? It probably doesn't hurt that I am bi and ship m/m, femmeslash and m/f, so threesomes tend to include more than one variation thereof as well as at least one bi character. It also tends to resolve those pesky love triangles in canon and indulge my interest when I like multiple ships involving one of the same characters. And sometimes, like Neal/Peter/El, it just makes 100% sense and they should have ended the show like that.

The End of the World

Not always am I in the mood for this. Of late, I've been actively avoiding it in Sterek fics because I just want some resemblence of happiness for them, ok? But honestly, apocalyptic TV shows and stories are some of the first things I gravitate towards. Especially in my own writing. SPN's End 'verse was an AMAZING boon. Heroes and the many different ways the world could end? Yup. Good Omens, American Gods, SG1/SGA, MCU, DC Comics. Honestly, with those interplanetary (multiple earths) fandoms it takes a lot of effort to make it seem real because one world ending doesn't have as much effect when they can just move to another. But losing Earth or focusing on character losses in particular, those gut me to the core. I just love a good cry, I guess. I also enjoy the world-building that goes into them. Most of the time, world-building isn't a thing for me in fics because the TV show has done the world-building (this isn't to say I don't enjoy it or that plot doesn't matter, I just don't need specifics or case fic typically), but I still appreciate the effort that goes into that and so making an AU or an apocalyptic version (AU or not) allows me to enjoy world-building as well as established characters and the relationship(s) focused on. My one exception is zombies. I just don't care about zombie AUs.
(Check out Blinded by White Light for an apocalyptic (i.e. post-colonization) heartbreaker MSR fic.)

Kinks

Well, go hard or go home, right? If we're talking strictly sexual kinks (versus the above which are romantic and story kinks, though in the right context...)

Knotting. Ok, seriously, thank you Sterek fandom for ruining my life.
-->As a subset of this, I've discovered a hardcore pregnancy kink for this fandom. Not necessarily mpreg, but dirty talk regarding getting someone pregnant, or people thinking how they wished that could happen, etc. This is so funny to me because I remember loathing mpreg when I first fell into fandom (and honestly, I don't think I'd read it in most fandoms aside from TW). But again, Sterek! Ruins all my nope kinks.
(Check out Knotting Expectations for a particular PWP favorite of mine with a bit of both of these kinks.)

Sex against walls or furniture (except dining tables because seriously, people eat there). Self-explanatory. But there's just really something about someone (man)handling someone up a wall or rutting against walls because they can't wait...also, I really enjoy desk/some kind of waist level surface sex for m/f pairings.

Mind!sex. This can be anything running from Charles and Erik doing it at long distances in the mind space (I know there's a word for this but I can't think of it atm), to someone shooting sex-based thoughts to or receiving them from a partner, to using one's mind to add further sensations, physical or mentally, mental bonds, touch telepathy. People that have that mind connection (think Kirk and Spock bonds) that contributes to feelings or uncovers them in addition to allowing people to experience someone else's pleasure or adding to, is just really hot.

I have a whole lot more, but it seems this questions pops up in every snowflake year, so I'll save more for next year. ;D