Snowflake Challenge, Day Ten

[sunlit_stone]

I keep wanting to go through and rec things to people, but I think that's going to have to wait--I want to go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight.

Okay, so.

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!



So, first, I love it when the reader has more information than the characters. I realized as I was contemplating this post that it was a common thread behind several of my favourite tropes. For instance:

Mutual Pining. God, I love mutual pining. Unfortunately I can't think of any recs that are for this specifically, as opposed to just including mutual pining, but if you want to rec me some I would be delighted :D

Identity Porn. Fuck, this is one of my very favourite tropes. (This is one reason I love Nirvana in Fire so much.) My recs for this one are mostly Stony:

Bizarre Love Triangle by panickyintheuk, an about 2K fic the plot of which you can probably guess from the title, and which never fails to crack me up. Once the idea was in his head, he’d started picking up on all kinds of things, like the way Stark talked about Iron Man with such affection, and seemed to share so many of his mannerisms, and was constantly working on ways of improving the suit. It was obvious.

I (created from fantasies) exist solely for you by Mizzy;62 K, a classic for a good reason. Six years ago, without the Avengers Initiative there to save the day, scientist Dr. Eric Selvig sacrificed himself to save the world, the almighty demi-god Thor was lost to a terrible storm, and vigilante Iron Man – spotted with a nuclear weapon trying to take advantage of the situation – was forever labelled an enemy of SHIELD.

This is a comic book office AU, where Steve is defrosted a year too late, Thor has forgotten who he is, and no one knows Tony is Iron Man.

Also includes: office pranks, inappropriate post-it notes, and superheroes who like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain.

Then we've got Think of This as Solving Problems (That Should Never Have Occurred by Sineala, one of my very favourite authors. 35K, and combines identity porn with that other classic trope, amnesia. No one knows Tony is Iron Man. Then Tony gets amnesia, and literally no one knows Tony is Iron Man.

But there's also a Clark/Bruce fic: Fake Empires, by copperbadge. 11K. Starts with Clark interviewing Bruce Wayne, builds from there;
very good. Bruce Wayne can't possibly be as dumb as he acts, and Clark Kent isn't as ordinary as he appears.

Okay, enough with the identity porn. (Is such a thing even possible?)

Next up: conversely, I love it when the reader has a lot less information than they think they do. That is, I love

Twist Endings (or Twist Middles), at least when they're well done. I don't want to rec for these publically because it's kind of a spoiler, y'know, but if you don't mind that drop me a line and I'll pass some along.

Next up we have Power Differential. *coughs* yeah, I've got no explanation for this.

Um. No, wait, I do know what to rec for this: the Legends and Legatees series, by Fahye. 51K, though the first ~5K is both its own story and porn. Summary of the second fic, which is the bulk of the series: Eggsy slumps against the wall, feeling every bruise like it's new, and tells the truth.

"You want to make sure I jump when I'm told?" he demands. "It'd better be you doing the telling, Harry."

Very good! Also contains dom/sub elements! Very hot!

--come to think of it, that really looks an awful lot like my next favourite trope,

Loyalty Fic. Honestly this is my favourite trope to end all tropes: I /love/ loyalty-centred fics, I'd say "even when they're not romantic" but that feels like missing the point. Half the time what I get out of romance-flavoured loyalty fic is that you're almost guaranteed it's going to be the most important relationship. I said earlier today that I wish "falling in loyalty" was a genre the same way "falling in love" is, and I really meant it.

Some recs. Many of these aren't just loyalty kink, I think, but loyalty is a very important element throughout:

A goodly amount of Person of Interest fic, including most of the stuff astolat has written. My favourite astolat PoI fic is Dangerous If Unbound, which is Rinch BDSM+telepathy AU. It always makes me feel sort of like crying, but in a really happy way, or in relief almost, as though someone had just lifted a burden from my shoulders. It's possible I'm not really able to be objective about it. I recommend it highly. 23K. The Texas sun beating down was merciless, almost a physical weight on his shoulders. John couldn't move even to change the angle: the collar was tight, the cuffs were tight, and the chains had been pulled to their limits.

Single-Use Weapon by Fahye. This is one of my very favourite fics, despite the fact that the only prior acquaintance I had with Kings was binging the TVTropes article so I could read this. It's really, really good, and also--how, in a way that's hard to describe. 67K, Jack/David and Michelle/David. "The king is dead," says Samuels. "Long live the king."

A story about fealty and destiny, spies and secrets, and the things we do to hold onto power.

A Field Guide to Common Birds in New York, by Toft. PoI fic, Finch again. A fundamentally devoted Reese. Also includes surveillance, which is a trope I love in PoI fic. Went on the list of my favourite PlI fics the moment I read it. 15K. In which John acquires a Tumblr, a therapist, and an interest in birdwatching.

And last but definitely not least we have Aral Vorkosigan's Dog, by philomytha (DW). Illyan's point of view on Aral from just before to shortly after the Escobaran war. Unlike the others this is gen, but please don't let that stop you; in my heart this is the loyalty fic, a sort of Platonic ideal if not for all loyalty fics then at least for a certain subtype. The process of Illyan becoming loyal to Aral and coming to understand his own loyalty is beautiful and occasionally heartbreaking to watch. I've reread it many times, especially when I'm also reading Shards of Honour; it fits perfectly into the canon, so rereading it feels necessary when rereading canon from that era. Obviously, I strongly recommend it. 76K. Illyan is assigned to watch Aral Vorkosigan during the Escobaran war. Soon he has to choose between his duty and his conscience, and the consequences rapidly get beyond him.

Comments

[jainas]

Ho, thank you for the recs (I know they must be good because you also mentionned a few of my favorite fics^^)! I'll never catch up with my reading list at this rate! XD

And some recs back: I don't know if you know the community fancake, but they have themed reccing:
- https://fancake.dreamwidth.org/tag/theme:+mutual+pining (you will find much more fics in the "pining" tag)
- https://fancake.dreamwidth.org/tag/theme:+loyalty+kink (this one was mostly a miss, but I keep hoping people rec more fics for it at the next amnesty round)
- https://fancake.dreamwidth.org/tag/theme:+identity+porn

[sunlit_stone]

Oh, thank you! :) I'd checked out the loyalty kink and identity porn tags, but for some reason it totally failed to occur to me to give the mutual pining tag a try. It's definitely something to check out.

[maplemood]

"Falling in loyalty"...ooh, I love the sound of that. Absolutely should be its own genre. And reading your recs made me realize that, even though I've read a couple wonderful original books with a strong focus on it (like the Queen's Thief series and a few of the Earthsea books), I haven't gotten around to reading much fic with a similar focus. Now that's something I'll have to fix!

[sunlit_stone]

I love original stories with this trope (there's also Carol Berg's Transformation, I don't know if you know it?), but even aside from anything else since it's not a recognized genre they can be very hard to find. I think fandom seems to be more interested in the trope in general? and of course it's much easier to filter on, or sometimes you stumble into a whole fandom where the trope is prevalent and flop there happily like a cat in the sun. (I really do recommend Person of Interest for this! And philomytha below also recommends White Collar, which I can second, and The West Wing, which I can't for the simple reason I haven't watched it yet (though I do intend to).)

Anyway. Rambling aside, I hope you find something that you like :)

[maplemood]

Never heard of Transformation before, but it sounds amazing and I'll need to get my hands on a copy--which could take a little while, since it doesn't look like my library has one, but it looks like something that would be right up my alley! Also I just remembered that a bunch of Rosemary Sutcliff books (The Mark of the Horse Lord being my favorite) have a strong falling-in-loyalty theme as well.

I've watched White Collar, but not looked into White Collar fic all that much for some reason--now I'll have to check more out. :)

[sunlit_stone]

Oooh, thank you, good to know!

It's been a while since I spent much time in the White Collar fandom, but I'm sure I could locate some of my old favourites if you wanted :)

[maplemood]

Oh, thank you! No pressure, but that would be great! (And super sweet of you!)

[sunlit_stone]

I'll do my best to put something together tomorrow :)

[philomytha]

As I said elsewhere, you're playing my song on the falling-in-loyalty topic, and thank you for the rec :-)

I can probably babble for hours about loyalty and what I love about it, and yes, it definitely trumps the romantic side of relationships for me every single time. Not that you can't make some interesting sparks fly with both, but if I had to pick one, it wouldn't be a hard contest.

Person of Interest definitely presses those buttons very hard. On a much lighter and more frivolous type of show, White Collar ran an excellent loyalty-kink plot with Peter and Neal, developing into a wonderful dynamic where Peter wouldn't trust Neal with a dollar, but would happily trust him with his life. And The West Wing, of course, with such a glorious set of loyalty relationships, Josh and Leo, Leo and Jed, ultimately in a different way Josh and Santos... it's great.

I spent a lot of my childhood reading as many of those old-school historical novels for kids as I could find, because they had a distinct tendency to have falling-in-loyalty as a theme. So many of them were about wayward young boys being sent off to be a squire to some apparently dubious knight who turns out to be the Best Knight Ever and the squire falls completely in loyalty, or some other period's variant on that theme... of course, these being good old-fashioned children's books, the knight usually picks the more romantically wrong side of some civil war and dies horribly, his dying act being to preserve the squire's life, who then has to grow up to be Worthy of it all etc. It made me realise that it's hard to make the resolution of a loyalty-kink story work. I used a romance structure for the loyalty plot in AVD, but it's the ending that's hard to parallel properly. In the books I grew up on, it was always some variant on 'and then they come to be complete equals' or 'then the leader-role character dies and the loyal subordinate has to be in charge on his own' and neither of those really fulfil what you want from a story about loyalty, where the satisfaction comes from seeing the loyalty relationship functioning happily in its proper place. It's the earning of trust, the transition from indifference or hostility to growing respect and admiration, tests of character on both sides, culminating in the recognition that they have found someone worthy, on both sides of the relationship - that's what makes the story interesting to me.

What I really want, and so rarely see, is these stories played out with both the characters women. Writing that story is somewhere on my vague to-do list for the future, though whether as fanfic or original I don't know.

[sunlit_stone]

I felt a little awkward being quite so effusive in light of our recent acquaintance, but it didn't stop being true just because we've actually talked, and I have something similar in my bookmark of the fic so it's also not like you didn't know; and it definitely belonged on the list. So. *coughs* Which is to say, I'm experiencing a spasm of social awkwardness, please forgive me, and it was my pleasure.

As to the potential genre, it's not even that there aren't novels on the theme, it's just that they're not /categorized/ as such. So I'll love one and goodreads will think I'm into, I don't know, space operas in general or what have you. Which is fair enough, it's not like I don't like space operas, but it's so frustrating when the books are out there and we have this whole book-recommendation system and yet.

Yes, White Collar is really great in that respect. (I remember that scene where Neal says Peter's the only one he can trust, and that scene where Neal tells Peter he didn't say goodbye because Peter's the one person who could change his mind, and the scene towards the last season of the show I actually watched, when Neal is coming towards Peter with a smile on his face and Peter catches his eye and shakes his head slightly, and Neal just immediately looks serious and moves on, no need for more information than that. I love those two.) As to West Wing, everything I hear tells me I'd love it, and I keep meaning to watch it, it's just that I'm really bad at watching TV and haven't gotten around to it yet.

I loved falling-in-loyalty stories but was never really able to find a genre with them, instead more or less coming across them sporadically as I read. (Do you know Transformation, by Carol Berg? It was one of the first ones I read.) It hadn't occurred to me that the resolution would be difficult to make work, though it's interesting to think about. I'm realizing now that even as what you might call "getting-together" loyalty-kink stories are not precisely thick on the ground, I'm not sure I've ever seen an established relationship loyalty-kink story. I'm not even entirely sure what it would look like. In terms of AVD, I did really like the ending, though it's possible that it mattered that it was fic and that we have some idea what's coming next. (Certainly I cackle at the beginning whenever Simon's thinking something like 'well, it won't be forever' or 'not that I'm actually going to be spending time in Vorkosigan House in the future' and so forth.) A few of the moments that really stick with me--when Simon places his hands in Aral's, and their silence means it's not technically treason, but they both know what it means; after he's uncovered Aral's "treason" but ends up falling asleep curled up at the floor by Aral's bed; when he discovers that it's not Vorkosigan's treason and everything he thinks he knows about the last few months reorients itself inside his head and he feels like ash and dust but at least it's not Vorkosigan's treason after all, and he holds on to that; when he gets the prisoners out, in the raid on the ministry, because this relationship really has--developed him, made him stronger, more (if you would) of a Worthy Knight; and when he tells Aral that if Serg had become Emperor he would have broken his oaths and raised up in rebellion, and thanks Aral for sparing him that. Also: "It's the earning of trust, the transition from indifference or hostility to growing respect and admiration, tests of character on both sides, culminating in the recognition that they have found someone worthy, on both sides of the relationship - that's what makes the story interesting to me." Yes, exactly. I mean, I can enjoy other kinds of loyalty stories, but this is what makes a loyalty story beautiful, for me.

As to both characters being women, yes, god, that would be amazing. Honestly I'm not sure I've ever read a loyalty kink story that involves a single woman, which is really a tragedy. Normally I don't really care for reading stories with, mmm, relationships with power dynamics where the woman is on the serving side (I have no problem with people who do enjoy it! This is fiction, people should read and write what they like; it's just personally I don't), but I can imagine giving it a shot here if it were well done. Or with a woman superior, as long as it didn't go too much in the, mmm, grizzled bodyguard romance direction, if you know what I mean. But with both of them women, god, I'd love to see that.

[philomytha]

It's really not likely to generate awkwardness, telling someone you like something they wrote, honestly ;-)

I tried to write a long long post about loyalty stories and how I divide them up and understand them and why it's hard to find them, but I'm moving house on Wednesday and my brain is dissolving in the general chaos. But in short, I think a key reason it's hard to find loyalty stories is that by their nature stories about loyalty have to be about something else too. A is loyal to B, but part of the reason B is worthy of that loyalty is because B has some greater loyalty which may or may not be shared with A. And it's that greater loyalty that the plot's about, whether it's left-wing American politics in The West Wing or fighting crime in White Collar or serving Barrayar in the Vorkosigan series.

For loyalty stories involving women, well, the reason I adore Scott & Bailey, with all its many flaws, is that it has a whole set of loyalty dynamics between women. The buddy-cop kind of loyalty between Rachel and Janet, and also the more hierarchical kind that I especially adore between Rachel and her boss/mentor Gill. The show really gets to grips with this in some of the later seasons, 3 and 4 (but 5 is rubbish, it's by a different writer who had no idea what made the characters tick). It's only one part of the story, and another huge part of the story is the ridiculously soapy lovelifes of the main characters, but the crime plots are very good too. I keep watching everything Sally Wainwright puts out, because I have a feeling that she's going to nail this loyalty-between-women story one day. Happy Valley has some of it with Catherine and Ann (plus a wonderful wonderful sequence if you like to see women rescuing each other) and there's tons else to love about Happy Valley, but ultimately Catherine is more of a solo character. Maybe in the next season, who knows.

Oh, and on falling-in-loyalty, Das Leben Der Anderen (The Lives of Others) is a German-language film that is basically what I wanted to do in AVD only about a million times better. Stasi officer monitors disaffected artist and finds his loyalties shifting as a result. Beautiful film, fantastic acting, the man playing Wiesler can communicate whole novels by how he sits in a chair, and an exquisite ending, it's one of the very few films I've watched more than once.

[sunlit_stone]

Well, that's all right, then.

part of the reason B is worthy of that loyalty is because B has some greater loyalty which may or may not be shared with A Hmmm! That does make some sense--of course a lot of stories are about characters achieving a goal, but it can't be just about the two characters getting together in the way that (say) a lot of romances are, or even just a coming-of-age thing, etc. (It occurs to me that appreciation for this kind of thing may be one reason I enjoy Hannibal fic so much, since it's almost impossible to have a Will-and-Hannibal fic that doesn't resolve the central moral conflict, one way or another. It's definitely true that part of the reason I love the show is the central and irreconcilable conflict, for Will, between choosing Hannibal and choosing the right thing.)

This definitely makes me want to check out Scott & Bailey, terrible as I am at watching television. And thank you for the film recommendation--you've definitely made me interested in watching it (and I expect my family will perish in delight if I express interest in a German film, and I wouldn't be surprised if we had a copy around here somewhere, so there's hope :P)

[umadoshi]

I'm definitely adding a couple of those recced fics to my to-read list.

(And I'm also just saying hello, having just subscribed to you. ^_^)

[sunlit_stone]

Delighted to be of service ^_^

And hi, nice to have you along :)

[halfeatenmoon]

NICE TROPES

Identity porn is one that took me a looong time to understand when I first started seeing people talking about it in fandom, but it's SO MUCH FUN. And superhero canons are great for it.

I love surprise twist/surprise middle stuff too! I don't know how to rec them either since just reccing something for that trope is a spoiler, but I LOVE IT.

[sunlit_stone]

Haha, thanks ^_^

Yeah, identity porn is one of my favourite tropes (er, obviously). I mean, it's just so good. Do you know a show called Nirvana in Fire? It's got so much identity porn, and also loyalty, cunning plots, and devotion to justice. It's really good <3

And I know, right? Like, I keep wanting to say 'hmm, there are some books you might like if'--no, self, that kind of defeats the purpose. :/ Alas. I suppose you could go around recommending things for their other fine qualities, or--hmm, no, you know what you could do, you could rec a bunch of fic/stories and say "at least one of these contains a twist ending (or middle) but I really do rec all of them, you can message me if you really want to know which but otherwise have fun." Eh?

[spikedluv]

Thank you for the recs! I've bookmarked a couple for later reading.

[sunlit_stone]

My pleasure! I hope you find something you enjoy :)