Snowflake Challenge Day 10

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!

My favorite trope is found family/team. But, because I tend to gravitate toward canons where that is a theme, it tends to be a theme in almost all the fanworks I like to consume (or at least a vast majority). So that said, I think my next favorite trope is fake dating/marriage. I could literally read hundreds of thousands of these. I probably have. Below are some of my very favorites.

Stargate: Atlantis
Ordinary Life by astolat and Speranza. McShep, 20,043 words, explicit.
THIS FIC, Y'ALL. This is one of my top 3 SGA fics of all time. Pieces of it come up all the time in my daily live. Port Salut cheese will always remind me of this. Seeing Raytheon anything will mean I say "I know who Raytheon are," in zoetrope's accent. Like, I just love everything about this fucking fic. And the podfic by zoetrope

No Refunds or Exchanges by astolat. McShep, 10,659 words, explicit.
Shit, I just realized I totally used this title for an SPN fic I wrote, heh. Whoops. Anyway, this is amaaaaaazing and I like it a lot because in it, Rodney is just a decent human being with principles and it's kinda nice. I mean, I like a lot of other things about it, but the Rodney with a moral compass is nice. Also you can tell how old it is by Rodney's full name on the marriage certificate, heh.

The Losers
This Side of Paradise by thefourthvine. Jensen/Cougar, 17,031 words, explicit.
This is a Yuletide fic, and it's so fun. I think mostly because Jensen is so certain Cougar is straight.

Imaginary Boyfriend by me! Cougar/Jensen, 4,713 words, teen.
Stealth crossover with Criminal Minds, White Collar, Psych, and Leverage. Based on an ad I saw for Imaginary Boyfriends. This was such a blast to write.

Supernatural
Come on baby, let me know by Lenore. Wincest, 6,572 words, explicit.
I'll just leave you with this summary: They don't just have to pretend to be gay. They have to be the gayest!

Fake It Til You Make It by me! (Yep, TWO self-recs!) Wincestiel, 33,467 words, explicit (but for violence and warnings - PLEASE NOTE THE WARNINGS - not sex).
This one started as a fun romp and turned into a "I want to fix everything about Sam and Dean ever." It was fun and then cathartic to write, so there's that. Plus there's a gay cruise.

Snowflake Challenge Day 11

Day 11

Share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life.

Well. I'd have to say Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I started watching it immediately when it came out, but I broke up with my bf (he was the one that wanted to watch it) and then moved cross country (twice) and picked it up again in season 5, right after my brother moved in with me at my mom's house. The episode? The Body. OUCH. And when the season ended I was DEVASTATED. My dad had bought a computer so I was on the internet ALL THE TIME looking for... I didn't even know what.

I didn't know at the time, but it was fandom. I was looking for fandom. And I found it. I had dabbled in fandom a little after The Mummy. I had basically inhaled everything Brendan Fraser ever did and found a mailing list with people who loved him and... tried... to form friendships. I emailed with a couple of people who shared my squee, but it was awkward and not fun and I wasn't super good at it. Plus my bf (yeah, the Buffy one) looked down on it (internet friends aren't REAL friends) and just... I never quite got it. I did write my first official piece of fanfic, and won a prize - a piece of actual film from The Mummy. I don't have the fic or the piece of film anymore.

But anyway - I wasn't wholeheartedly in the Brendan Fraser fandom (is it really a fandom? I have my doubts about this) and I fell out of it and didn't keep in touch with anyone and just generally was like... not broken up about it.

Buffy, I started looking for fic, and found a mailing list, and made some online friends, and... holy shit, they were real friends. We talked about meeting up IRL, and... WE. DID. IT. I met up with... I dunno, like, eight? "Strangers" from the internet. At one of their apartments in California. I couldn't even believe it. And I visited them several more times over the years - including once in London (yes, one of the girls was from London!). So that was, I think, my introduction to fandom dynamics and the shift from online to IRL and the ways fandom could bridge that, and I will forever be grateful for that, because several fandoms down the line, it brought me my wife, and several friends that I am absolutely certain will be life-long, and I have met many, MANY fans IRL now and nearly every experience has been brilliant. So thanks, Buffy. It's been real.