Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 7

[kate]

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. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Oh man. This is always a tough one for me because I really love everything. I read very widely and I enjoy most tropes when either done well or turned on their head. I love it when an author or artist takes a trope and does exactly the opposite of what you were expecting. That is my favorite. I like dark stuff and angsty stuff and fluffy stuff and funny stuff, so really, I will happily read any trope if it is well written.

To name a few favorites, though:

Fake marriage/fake boyfriends/undercover as gay

I think the first one of these I read was... well, no, actually, the first one of these that really grabbed my attention and made me go O___O was season four of Buffy (I think the ep is called Something Blue, but that's just a guess) where Willow's magic goes all crazy and Buffy and Spike almost get married. I was all: UM MORE OF THAT YES PLEASE WHAT IS THIS EVEN. I am almost positive that's the moment I started shipping Buffy/Spike. And then when it showed up in fic, I was all over that shit.

I think the reason is because most of the couples I ship (John/Rodney, Wincest, Destiel) have SO MUCH CHEMISTRY. And all it would take is the slightest shove for them to get over their hangups and get together. And fake marriage/fake boyfriends/undercover as gay is exactly the thing that pushes that button for me (I also just read a Wincestiel that was a gay chicken fic, which I had never heard of but thought was pretty brilliant (though thinking about it, the second story is basically gay chicken, too)). My favorites:

SGA, John/Rodney

No Refunds or Exchanges (10659 words) by astolat
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Additional Tags: sga_flashfic, Harlequin Romance Challenge
Summary: It shouldn't have been that hard to get good help.

Supernatural, Wincest

Come on, baby, let me know (6572 words) by Lenore
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Additional Tags: Case Fic, Undercover As Gay, Gay Bar, Demons, Incest, Humor
Summary: They don't just have to pretend to be gay. They have to be the gayest!

Supernatural, Wincestiel (with bonus Charlie! This is SO GRATE!)

The Gay Chicken Champion (8374 words) by tyanite
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Castiel/Sam Winchester
Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Castiel, Charlie Bradbury
Additional Tags: Threesome - M/M/M, Men of Letters Bunker, Castiel in the Bunker, Bunker Sex, Gay Chicken, Crack, Sleepovers, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Prank Wars, Shameless Smut, Human Castiel
Summary: In the middle of a merciless Prank War, a game of Gay Chicken gets way out of hand in the Men of Letters Bunker.

Sorry, no Destiel recs because I don't actually read that much Destiel. I like them as a ship because I can see it in canon - one tiny shove and whoops! They're a couple! But the show keeps putting absolutely everything in their way, so I've gotten a bit disheartened. Well, that and the fact that I find most Destiel fics characterize both Dean and Cas differently than I prefer. That's a whole nother post, though, and we're not dwelling on it.

Actually, you know what? I'm going to dwell on it right here. So, here's the characterization thing that makes me back button out of more fics than bad spelling and bad formatting put together: Dean or Sam Winchester knowing how much in love they are with someone, and hating themselves for it (and of course not doing anything about it).

With Sam, it's mostly Dean he's in love with, and it's often just something he's known since he was very small. For whatever reason, this just pings me wrong. Hilariously, I read weecest ALL THE TIME where the boys just sort of fall into a sexual relationship because they're pretty messed up about how relationships work, and that doesn't bother me at all. I can totally see that, and it's one of the very few ways Wincest can be mostly angst-free for me and work.

The thing I cannot stand is when Sam is in love with his brother but thinks he's sick or wrong and never intends to tell Dean EVER. (I also hate this in reverse; you do sometimes see Wincest stories where Dean is the one that's like this, mostly tied to him being attracted to pubescent or pre-pubescent Sam - which is less frustrating for me because that I can totally get behind - I can see Dean being completely freaked out about that. I can't see Sam really getting that it's not normal to want to hump Dean, though. I mean, it's an oedipal thing, really, and I feel like Sam is much less (in this particular way) likely to beat himself up over something like this and just sort of accept it as part of who he is and who his family is.)

SO ANYWAY. Yeah, I hate that particular characterization, and it just comes up SO OFTEN. And a lot of times I'll be a good halfway into the fic before it pops up, and then I'm all... "WUT." Because usually if someone is pining, they're pining ALL THE TIME. It's a thing. To have them be all normal and then have one of them basically admit (it's always the POV character in their own heads, which is even more frustrating) that they've had a thing for their brother all along.... AAAAAARG.

Destiel is a totally different issue for me. Cas I get. Because I have read fics that GET Cas - and I truly believe that Cas does not put any restrictions on how he loves Dean or how Dean loves him back. If they remain friends/brothers forever, Cas will be happy with that. If they start a romantic relationship, Cas will be happy with that. He doesn't care, because him loving Dean isn't about the type of relationship they have. It just is. So I can buy stories where Cas is aware that there are romantic or sexual feelings for Dean but he doesn't do anything about them because he knows the type of relationship they share is entirely up to Dean and what he is comfortable with. That makes sense to me.

Dean, on the other hand. I just... no. The whole thing about Dean is that he's constantly lying to himself. He has a few moments of clarity here and there, but then he usually drinks until those particular brain cells are obliterated. Dean very purposely uses his obliviousness to avoid thinking about his own interpersonal crap, and he does it extremely well. I think when he was younger, he knew he was lying to himself, but he didn't dwell on it because he couldn't. Now that he's older, it's just so ingrained, I think it's automatic. And when someone uses the characterization that Dean KNOWS he's in love with his brother or with Cas but he's too afraid or too ashamed to do anything about it... that's just more self-aware than I think Dean gets in his own head.

And see, there's a difference here between bone-deep knowing and thinking. I think Dean knows about himself that he's not straight, and I could even buy that he's in love with his brother or Cas or both and he just knows it in his bones. But he would NEVER PUT WORDS TO IT. And that's the problem with having Dean think about it in fic - I just don't see him putting words to this kind of stuff. He hates words. All of the important things about Dean defy words. So it's just really frustrating to read characterization where he's hiding behind his shame or his fear and that's why he hasn't gotten together with Sam or Cas. I just really don't think that's very Dean-like. /tangent

Sorry about that. Apparently I had some feels I needed to get out there. Whoops.

SO ONWARD TO OTHER TROPES I LIKE. Or. Well, okay, I don't have recs off the top of my head for all the tropes, but tentacles has really climbed up my list over the last few years. And damn it, I DO have a tentacle fic or two, and, if I can find it, a really great John Sheppard art. [It's chkc, and no longer available, sorry. It was so amazing.]

Supernatural

To Boldly Go (2717 words) by morganoconner
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Castiel/Sam Winchester
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Aliens, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Marriage of Convenience, Psychic Bond, Tentacles
Summary: Sam is a young prince of New Earth. To finalize a treaty between his world and the neighboring planet, he finds himself being married off to one of the princes of Galaxus. Prince Castiel turns out to be nothing like he expected.

Star Trek AOS

Swell Memory (Otherness) (1368 words) by theleaveswant
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Nyota Uhura/extraterrestrial organism, Hikaru Sulu/extraterrestrial organism
Additional Tags: Community: kink_bingo, Tentacles
Summary: Uhura and Sulu visit an alien Oracle, and are unprepared for the encounter.

I am a huge fan of dubcon, and one of my favorite types of dubcon is Aliens Made Them Do It (AMTDI). Again - I love that it's the push that shoves me *nearly there* 'ships into that new territory. It has the bonus factor of doing it before the characters are ready for it (unlike with fake married, where it is actually possible to play fake married and not get all weird - i.e. Mulder n' Scully in that one episode of the X Files). AMTDI usually has a coercion factor that makes for delicious, delicious angst, and my favorites are when the characters just lose it because of that. BREAK ALL THE CHARACTERS is my motto. I do prefer for them to be relatively put back together at the end, but it's not 100% necessary for me to enjoy it.

Only one rec here, as it's getting late. Supernatural, of course, Wincest.

Factum Amoris (5378 words) by Lenore
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Additional Tags: Case Fic, Loss of Virginity, Magic, Incest, Virgin Sacrifice, Love, Blow Jobs
Summary: A mystery to solve. Some sloppy incantation-making. It all leads to brotherly love.

So in general, I guess my favorite tropes that are basically excuses for my 'ships to get together because I think they're too emotionally constipated to do it like regular human beings.

Uh, wow, this is already huge, so let me just move on to themes I love to see anywhere and everywhere: found family, team, team-as-family, redemption (I LOOOOOOVE redemption stories, particularly where the person being redeemed doesn't simply die to make up for their mistakes - this is perhaps one of the reasons I love Sam so much) teaching (particularly with regard to sexual activities), trust issues, queerness and in particular aceness, androgyny, and agenderness, general weirdness and human foibles, and patience with people you love. One of the reasons I love both Sam and Cas; they both have an exceptionally high tolerance for Dean's shit. And that is my favorite trait of Dean's, too, though he doesn't have the patience aspect of it: he loves Sammy no matter what.

My favorite kink is asexual kink. Because it's just kinda awesome. Someday I'm going to write an ace kink story, but it's probably a few years in the making because I have so many other stories on my plate right now. I also have a massive thing for bondage, particularly of the hands, and also with willpower instead of ropes (there is a great Bucky/Steve short like that, I can't remember where I read it and there is almost certainly too much fic for me to wade through to find it now, sadly (it was written pre-Captain America, which is when I read that stuff - as soon as the movie hit, I stopped)). Um. Huh. I can't really think of much else that really is my favorite? I like it all well enough, I read most things, but I can't think of anything else that really hits my buttons. (So I might have mentioned that sexy things go in cycles for me? There's an ebb and a flow and I am most definitely on a low ebb at the moment. Bad news for that porn short that's nearly finished. SIGH.)

And uh, that's like, 2000 words of my favorite things, so... yay?

In case you want to play along!