citrusjava

On the Deceber Days meme, balder12asked: Favorite and least favorite tropes in fan fic. Plus, what's a trope you've never written, but want to try?


Tropes I love:
Ooooh. So many. Spells gone wrong, or gone wrong for a character, or just happening - are great. It's interesting to read a character facing new situations, new problems and a new existence, identify or identity they resist. Being dropped into a different place in society, rediscovering their relationships through it, or just going through some in-character crack. Creative curses are interesting as well. I find it very interesting, the different ways people write witches or those who curse, their motives, agency and interests, and who they are.

One thing about this trope - for some reason it's almost always Dean. Where is all the great fic about Sam being cursed in interesting ways?

some recs (mostly it's both fic and podfic:
I don't wan Somebody to Love Me by lazy_daze- I don't wanna give too much away, it's just great
And You Would be a Fool by badbastion- another really good and fun one I don' t wanna spoil
Speechless by candle_beck- just fantastically well written
Keep Our Minds on the Sum of Each Other also by LazyDaze - the boundaries between Dean and Sam were never that stable to begin with
And one of the best fics in the fandom, balder12's Mystery Dance

Tropes I dislike:
I don't like AU - there's some great AU out there, but I almost always want non-AU more. Probably since so many AU's make things more normative, perhaps... but also just cause I'm interested in "canon" variations... I might read something unrelated, but that's - not related very closely? Not a fan of hooker fic, mostly . And A/B/O I'm frustrate that I don't get. It squicks me some, but more than that - I don't get the appeal, and want to!


Tropes I might want to Write:

Well, all else aside, choosing by trope - being able to write wonderful fluffy happies, or a really good long road trip story, with the music and the food and sights and music again and *relationships* and so forth, or a good - like, a classic Wincest early season fic...

holiday love meme 2014
my thread here

*blushes like a dork*

Title: Return

Characters: outside POV, Sam (for me it's always Sam and Dean, in whatever form, but it's not about them)
Rating: gen
words: ~800
Warnings: Spoilers for season 3, between fic and original work, unbetaed
Fandom: Supernatural, also see notes .

Summary: She has many names, there's a lot of road ahead.

She drives her 1978 Pinto through the desert, as the sky goes the same unreal color as the lone gas station neon sign.
There's a lot of road ahead.
Past midnight, she stops at a 24 hour McDonalds and gift shop roadside mini-mall. She and the place don't fit together in the same w orld, but there they are. Hard to tell which one of them is out of place.
She slurps her chocolate milkshake with greedy enjoyment, distracted with thoughts of the work before her, and eats her fries as she gets back into the car.
She doesn't toss the wrappers in the back. There are important things there.


Her neatly folded clothes still smelling fresh, some smelling of live body. She has room to move in them, none of that stretchy, restrictive stuff, and she sure needs the room. Outsiders would tell you, sometimes tell her at toll booths or rest stops, that she is fat, and hairy, and old. Some people call her things for that. She has many names.

The next morning, around ten, as the sun begins to take the day serious, she finds the last bone, a wolf's scapula .

The next day she cleans the bones, setting them together on the bleached sand at it goes warmer, humming as she works, sleeaves a wave of color against the sky. She hums to herself, at times it's easy, throaty sounds, sometimes the tune shapes into something she may have heard playing at some diner, or riffs from home. She likes Nicki Minaj . She smoothes the bones fondly as she works and rubs, almost encouragement . and they meet her halfway , , coming together with tendons and cartilages and blood vessels beginning to beat pleasantly under her patting fingers .

At night, the wolf looks up at her, fur tired but new, the color of the darkening sky. She gets some water out of the back seat and pours it into a flat container for her. It's been baking in the car all day, warm and industrial smelling, but the wolf laps at it, and places her hairy, heavy muzzle, fondly dripping on the fabric of her thigh. She pats the wolf's shoulders, and they rest for a moment. It's been a hard day.

the wolf observes her with new eyes, old, not who she was before, how could she be, after the desert. How would she even know who to be, if she tried, pieces from Whitehorse, Yukon, Alberta, northeast Oregon, Minnesota, hind leg from a meadow at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, nail polished as a talisman, from the Caspian Sea, vertebra from behind a California zoo. She know it can be confusing to try to be some many things, that mean so much for other, not even knowing what . The wolf presses her cheek to her belly, warm and wild, then runs off, surrounded by fresh air and night, and stars, too. In the last of the light from her headlights - trusty Pinto idling, lighting their piece of sand - she sees a flash of change, maybe, the wolf's joy in running now a woman-wolf's joy. She hopes not, wolves are better than people, but it's her body now, again, and it's her prerogative to morph into a woman if that's her thing. No judgment.


she slowly collects the bits and ends of her long day, back aching and hair wisping out of its fastening. Gathers the more dangerous things into bags, sitting on her cooler with a beer, crumbles some leftover treats for the opossums or whathaveyou, coyotes, whoever likes leftover KFC can have it - her small thank you for the desert. hauls the stuff back into her backseat - looking emptier than before.

Time passes, and she is outside a small town in Florida, resting on the hood of her car and humming at the stars, when a man approaches, tall the sort of hungry who doesn't remember he is anymore. His shirt is bloody. Old blood. His blood. Mostly. He exists a black old car that she likes, and in the back seat he keeps something important as well. She can tell he knows better than to approach a woman alone on a deserted road, but he does anyway . She has a rifle, but she is pretty sure she doesn't need it. Yet.


She doesn't often talk with people like him. But there is desperation in his expression that reminds her of some wolves, obsessive persistence, the more it hurts the more sense it makes, brown hair in his eyes like the weight of a head on her thigh. Soft.

she tell him - they don't come back the same.

He says he doesn't care. He says please, just please. He doesn't understand she mans it literally. This isn't a thing she can do for the loved ones. They can come back for themselves, but they're never the same. But she can tell he'd have said please anyway. Hell, who knows, maybe his would be the exception.


She doesn't shoot him.


They drive for the Everglades.


Notes:
Yesterday I was present at a reading of a story from Women Who Run With Wolves, which IU haven't read, but this can sort of be fic for - I couldn't find the story or its origins online - but it made me cry , and I needed it, the story. And wanted it as part of SPN, it felt like the missing part, the female characters I want ri read/watch in SPN. I want to be her some day. I loved that her world was just simply not so much about men (though then I went and wrote her relating with men still). I adored having a character like that even imaginable. I so often feel like - I'm supposed to already be able to do things, handle the world, be OK - and I'm only going to have less and less agency as time goes by . There are not a lot of opportunities waiting for me - and in the future, not even the opportunity to be exploited for being young . I so very much want to take a road trip, long and elaborate and wonderful, I hopee I ever get to . It's comforting to have a story about someone who gets to do that, have all that amazing agency, boundaries, and do something beautiful and meaningful, while also being old, fat, hairy and a woman.

I don't have the time to get into the complexity of fandom and of Night Vale this can bring up, but this one was too tempting to not even comment on. Also, procrastination is a great drive.

Title: Subject
Fanadom: Welcome to Night Vale, (Hockey RPF, fandom)
Characters: Malik, original fan character
Words: 150
Rating: gen
Spoilers: WtNV Homecoming

Summary: Night Vale is a good place for fandom


( Ze'd gif the sweet little ways they looked at each other, touched each other across boundaries of masculinity. )

Title: To the Pain
Pairing: Undertones of Dean/Sam, Dean/Cas, Sam/Cas
Rating: Gen
Spoilers: vague, for 10x02
Summary: 'Skip to the end'.


( So treasure your love... )


ETA: Have I read the perspective thing somewhere? Let me know if I did, please. I'm so paranoid about these things, but it doesn't mean I haven't :)

Ahh, Show!


Watched most of the special (managed to avoid all spoilers - yay!!!) - and yelled and flailed so much!
Oh, Shooooow... mrrrrrrrrr....
Show <3
I love you show much.
:-)

Season 5

Swan Song
I probably can't express how much Swan Song touches me.
There is nothing like it.
It made me cry time and again, just looking at the transcript for a second to check for what exactly they said, that sort of thing.

I can't express it.

Bobby and Dean
First time around, I didn't get how far gone Dean had gotten.
Didn't really follow how desperate and hopeless...
A few days ago I rewatched a few of the later episodes. Rewatching still keeps giving me new things, perspectives, concepts.

In one of the earlier episodes of season 5, Bobby is willing to bet his life away to bet to regain some worth . This sort of devaluation of himself - I hadn't realized it - I thought of it as a plot device, and not as something Bobby was going through. And giving up his soul for a while to Crowley... When Dean was going to say yes, Bobby told him that Bobby wanted to shoot himself every single day, and every day didn't, because he'd promised Dean. They influence each other and echpo each other in such a deep way ...

Dean
But Dean. Honestly, I so get how come he was going to say yes. It kinda amazes me that he didn't, earlier - just out of stubbornness, insisting on resisting coercion, being contrary cause he's Dean - I don't know how he made it that far, I don't.

Dean and Sam
And Sam... Hearing from Dean that Dean didn't believe in him, and believing in Dean anyway, and saving the world cause he did, and saving Dean and OMG I'm crying just writing this, I'm so gone for this show. One of Sam's many shining moments that don't get enough attention. And Dean actually acknowledging it... OMG. Boys. After all the bad stuff that's happened between them in seasons 4-5, all the trust issues, being able to trust each other and lean on each other ...

OK

Oh - The Amulet

I still hope they do put it into some episode, ever.
Maybe in a shark -jumping sort of way.
My boy Robbie wants it back....
I'll probably be wary about it, and not consider it exactly canon, if they do - unless it's unexpectedly amazing - but I'd still like them to do it.

I started watching the show from season 4, After School Special, though I've tried watching random episodes before, and seriously tried to watch it from the start in reruns (Wendigo) - and seriously did not connect to it. I chose After School Special cause it sounded like it might remind me of Buffy, the whole "who we were in highs school vs. who we are now", and I was really trying to find something about the show that'd make me care at all, would make me want to watch more.


Pretty early on I found myself wanting to describe Dean as 'chibi', and found it amusing that I'd want to describe the show's rough, tough male lead like that. Honestly, in my early days of watching, I believed Dean was intentionally and officially characterized as "a delicate flower" with a flimsy macho shell no one ever was supposed to take seriously. This probably has something to do with me starting from season 4 rather than 1. I was certain Jensen played him that way knowingly and just - that that was his characterization. I was pretty surprised when I came across a con vid in which Jensen was talking about how much of a tough guy Dean is.


I'd decided not to get into fandom or read fic at all till I finish watching the whole show and have my own opinions (that took a few weeks, perhaps? Season 8 was just starting to air). I was going a bit crazy, wondering about the subtext between Dean and Sam. I knew there was fic out there, so *someone* saw *something* - but, could I be imagining it all? Me, and perhaps that random fic writer out there - or maybe not, maybe it was one of those 'made in fandom ships'? Was I seeing what I thought I was seeing, was I just imagining this? I tried to catch it in screencaps, but it seemed to be more about the movement. I kept taking notes about where scenes were slashy. I remember telling myself that 'even' something like that scene in Playthings was pretty slashy, though probably no one really paid much attention to that. I noticed the Destiel subtextiness, but it didn't shake my world much- I just, you know, smiled for the people out there who must be adoring it. I was not expecting ship wars.

I also watched a few con vids (J2 in sports shirts, linking arms and skipping around on stage?) and the guys seemed so sweet, happy, nice towards fans, and way too clean cut, and I was telling myself - no. I am not getting into another RPS fandom. Leave that for One Direction fans, I am not. And then Misha was cute too, and I grumbled and stood my ground.

Oh, and I also considered Jensen way way too much of a WB/ CW pretty boy, and I didn't get why anyone would find Misha attractive at all, and it took me time to realize people do, and Jared I was just vaguely loyal towards cause he was Dean on Gilmore Girls and was cute there.

The first J2 fic I read was an AU, but I wasn't used to this convention. It wasn't very well written, and there wasn't much of an exposition, so I spent the first half of the fic going - why the fuck would Jensen try to pick up guys online, give them his real name, just meet them randomly with no thought about his celebrity status?


Do you also feel like season 4 is in a somewhat different genre?
I loved season 4. I still feel season 4-5 are very different from seasons 1-3 in vibe and style, not just in storylines. It feels like a different genre somehow. More like Buffy, yes. Less... manly desolate isolated "the world burned down, and ground is salted" "there is nothing in the world but you" more... fluffy, relatable, er, saturated filters? For all they have so many problems, it's just - it feels. Softer? I wanna say more feminine, somehow? Season 4 more than season 5.

A thing about Cas and Wincest
A while back I was hurt by some cruel stuff some people on Tumblr wrote about Wincest, went looking for anti-Destiel stuff, cause I wanted to see what could have fueled that sort of attitude (besides being anti incest), and couldn't find any (found a little since). I asked people what might fuel that, what I'm not seeing that Wincest fans do, and balder12 made the very good point that in most Wincest, Cas and the boys' relationship with him are just ignored, while Destiel and Sassy fans constantly have to deal with and acknowledge the other brother. I agree. even of the very little Destiel I've read, I've read some Sam-bashing fic and meta (*sadface*), but I've also read some fic that developed and explored Dean and Sam's reelationship alongside Cas and Dean's, in a way that I found satisfying (as a shipper, for me, the sex and romance aspects of Dean and Sam's relationship are not as important as the rest). I'd like to read more Wincest in which the boys' relationships with Cas are explored. I've hardly ever read any at all. Perhaps it's because we're used to the boys being alone, and it's part of the ship and its epicness. But do we really need them to literally be alone, no other relationship, for themto be together? I've hardly even found Wincestiel in which the different relationships were explored, really.

( Fic and podfic recs )
___
*I seriously need someone to talk to about how incredibly close On the Road is to SPN, and Dean is Dean and are you kidding me about Sam and OMG slashy and OMG Kripke must have reread the first chapter before he sat down to write the pilot of something!