(no subject)

[sideways]

Took a stab at the Fanfic Trope Showdown meme floating around and the results look about right.

Top 10:
1 Hurt/Comfort
2 Found Families
3 Loyalty Kink
4 Friends to Lovers
5 Snowed-In Cabin/Isolated Together For Extended Period of Time
6 Polyamory
7 Fake Dating/Fake Marriage Accidentally Turns Into Feelings
8 'Falling For A Coworker/Teammate Is A Bad Idea' Except This Is Fiction So It Works Out
9 Accidentally Fell In Love With The Mission Target
10 Seemingly Unrequited Pining

Bottom 10:
28 Daemons
29 Body Swapping
30 Pride and Prejudice AU
31 Hogwarts AU
32 Soulmate Identifying Marks (Tattoo, Red Thread of Fate, etc)
33 They Break Up (but then They Get Back Together)
34 'They All Work In An Office' AU
35 Actually Unrequited Pining
36 Selfcest (possibly due to time travel)
37 A/B/O

Any discussion of this sort of thing has to come with the caveat that I'll read and enjoy almost anything if it's written well enough (and of course that this is entirely about my preferences and not an objective valuation). A/B/O is probably the one major exception; I don't think I've ever found one of those that have won me over, since the fundamental conceit runs opposite to what I like out of my fiction, and it often hits my squick button pretty badly.

I think the stand-out feature here is that I prefer stories set within the canon to wild AUs, so I gravitated towards the tropes that you're more likely to find in The Adventure Goes On stories - prequel fics, sequel fics, fill-in-the-blanks fics, I'm here for it all. Usually the urge that drives me to look up fanfic is wanting more of what I've just experienced, and better insofar as fic will reliably be interested in expanding on the character relationships and small moments that maybe were sidelined by time, plot, and/or authorial prejudice constraints. I've never related overmuch to the "watching two idiots fall in love 500 times" joy; I would actually really like it if more stories seemed to give a damn about what happens after two people fall in love.

Hurt/comfort is definitely my sweetest siren song - I grew up on whump and I can be counted on to at least click in if you promise me some good hurty action. It needs to be in-character, though, and if it's too gratuitous I tend to bail. Not here for through-the-roof contrived angst and the comfort is a critical part of the equation. For me, it's not about a character crawling around crying and bloodied, it's about... vulnerability, I suppose? The best h/c is about the relationship between the hurtee and the comforter, things coming to the fore under the pressure and the stress that ultimately strengthens the bond, and the hurt can be as simple as someone not sleeping well.

I think it's also telling that my top three tropes aren't romance-exclusive. I'm not big on porn, personally, and I love a good fic that emphasises friendships and familial bonds just as much as - and occasionally more than - one centred on a romantic love story. And I like me a bit of co-dependence in my fiction, even if I very much don't in reality.

In examining the stories that appeal to me less... yeah, I'm usually here for a happy ending, I'm rarely here just for the sex, and I work in an office. Offices are boring. The end.

Comments

[dreamerinsilico]

I really relate to what you say here about seeking fanfic because you want *more of the thing*. I don't avoid wild AUs, personally, but I also don't read them unless I either know the author already, or have been given a truly glowing recommendation regarding one. (Even then, in the latter case, there's a certain activation barrier, that isn't there in canon extension fics. Absorbing entirely new worldbuilding takes extra cognitive effort, and sometimes I don't want to spend the energy on it!)

You also put into words really nicely how I feel about hurt/comfort - the point, the beauty of it is in the vulnerability and therefore the potential for intimacy between the characters (whether romantic or otherwise).

I'm loving seeing everyone's trope takes like this!

[sideways]

I've enjoyed many a wild AU for sure, but yeah, when swan-diving into the depths of a new fandom's worth of works they're not what I'm most hoping to find. Especially since when you DO find one you really love you get, like, 20 chapters of bliss and then you're right back to where you started: wanting more of a thing, only this time it DEFINITELY DOESN'T EXIST.

:'(

And really, if one party doesn't mutter something telling in their feverish, filter-less delirium, what is the POINT.

[dreamerinsilico]

but yeah, when swan-diving into the depths of a new fandom's worth of works they're not what I'm most hoping to find.

LMAO, aptly put. And when it's a fandom that's been around for a while, sometimes there's so much of the wacky AU stuff, too. Which - this is not a bad problem to have! Huge quantities of fairly high-quality wacky AUs mean probably-even-larger quantities of high-quality canon extension (when the canon's actually good). But let me tell you, when I got into the show Hannibal a couple of months ago and got showered with fic recs, my dismay bordered on the comical at how many of them were completely off-the-wall AUs. Hunger Games! Swan Lake! 1920s merfolk! (Me: omg look I'm new here and still *shaking* with feelings from the series finale can I PLEASE just have a lot of what comes immediately after that)

[sideways]

Godddd, that's a mood. Especially since every major AU inevitably smacks the reset button on the relationship and either cuts out or heavily rewrites all the major events that were shared, and even though the best ones of course still capture the spirit of the story... I wanted the first story. I don't just want the basic heart of it, cut out and transplanted into a new setting where things can be gratuitously tweaked to the author's liking, I wanted THAT history and THOSE consequences. Coffee shop doesn't cut it when I desperately want the epilogue outcomes of five seasons worth of trauma or whatever.

(A moment to smack a kiss in the direction of the Rogue One fandom though, which did me surprisingly generous with dozens upon dozens of excellent prequel takes on Baze and Chirrut. Thank you extremely obvious but largely undetailed allusions to their shared history.)

(And then another moment to concede that there are one or two fandoms where AUs can be more enjoyable that canon continuation for me, but of course it's all down to personal tastes anyway.)