The trope meme

[auroracloud]

Everyone's suddenly doing that ultimate trope showdown so here's mine. Not very surprising!

(Oh, and I haven't forgotten that 15 characters meme that you lovelies gave me so many wonderful situations for! I'll be posting the first batch soonish.)

1 Hurt/Comfort
2 Found Families
3 Friends to Lovers
4 Snowed-In Cabin/Isolated Together For Extended Period of Time
5 Loyalty Kink
6 Seemingly Unrequited Pining
7 Polyamory
8 Accidentally Fell In Love With The Mission Target
9 Enemies to Friends to Lovers
10 Amnesia Fic
11 'Falling For A Coworker/Teammate Is A Bad Idea' Except This Is Fiction So It Works Out
12 Magical Connection (Telepathy, etc)
13 Fake Dating/Fake Marriage Accidentally Turns Into Feelings
14 Fairy Tale/Mythology AU
15 'Groundhog Day'/Karmic Time Loop

16 They Break Up (but then They Get Back Together)
17 'Everyone is Evil'/Mirrorverse AU
18 Royals/Political Marriage Turns Into Feelings
19 And They Were Roommates!
20 Adopting/Raising a Baby
21 Reincarnation/'25 Lives' AU
22 Body Swapping
23 Actually Unrequited Pining
24 Unusually Specific Occupation AU, Like, The Author Clearly Has The Same Job
25 Characters Swap Roles AU (I don't mean in the bedroom)
26 Selfcest (possibly due to time travel)
27 Pride and Prejudice AU
28 Daemons
29 Hogwarts AU
30 Supernatural Creature/Human Romance
31 'They All Work In An Office' AU
31 High School/University AU
31 Vampires/Werewolves AU
31 Hot Single Parent(s)
35 Soulmate Identifying Marks (Tattoo, Red Thread of Fate, etc)
36 Coffee House AU/Food Service AU
37 A/B/O


Hee. It probably surprises no-one, and especially not me, that Hurt/Comfort, Found Families, and Friends to Lovers come at the top. Those are probably about 80 % of the fic that I read. Hurt/Comfort, besides pushing my buttons anyway, is also a way for me to deal with my own emotional and mental issues and tough times (one of the reasons I'm more into emotional than physical hurt in those fics, and prefer an emphasis on the comfort). Found Families is a trope I seek everywhere, and most of the shippy stuff I read is based on some variety of Friends to Lovers, because frankly, it's almost the only kind that makes sense to me. I mean that I don't see myself in a relationship with someone who isn't a friend first, or at least definitely friend material, so it's easier for me to read stories based on that. But the occasional spot of Enemies to Friends to Lovers can certainly be delicious with the right characters.

I had no idea I was so into snowed-in cabins, must seek out more of them! I like polyamory in fic because a) then I and the characters don't have to choose if there are several good options, and b) I like reading things that shake up the relationship norms of our society.

And frankly, the fairly high rank of "Accidentally Fell In Love With The Mission Target" can be almost solely blamed on the fact that I've recently managed to see all of the Black Guardian trilogy from the Fifth Doctor era of Classic Who. I found it inspiring. Ahem.

As you can tell, I'm not a big fan of AUs - to be more specific, I'm a big fan of canon divergence AUs ("what if...", fix-its etc.) but not a fan of AUs that change the world the story is set in. Usually when I'm into a fandom, I'm really into the world, and I'm into the characters and find that the world and the characters' relationship to it is a big part of the characters. Say, I'm not hugely into stories where characters from Doctor Who are taken out of the Doctor Who universe, because travels in time and space and encountering weird stuff and how the characters deal with it is why I'm into the fandom. If I wanted to read about a bunch of people running a coffee shop or studying in university, then I would, you know, read/watch stories that are about coffee shops or universities. I'm so obsessive about my fandoms because I want to get away from the world of nothing but offices and jobs.

Though it does depend on the fandom, and how well it combines with a particular AU trope, and how well the said AU is done. Fairy tale/mythology and mirrorverse AUs are considerably higher on the list, because I love fairytales and they're such a versatile form of story-telling, it feels more right to stick whichever characters into a fairy tale situation and see how they deal with it. And mirrorverse things are closer to the canon divergence AU stuff that I love, because usually the basic universe is the same, something's just happened to make a normally good character evil, or something like it, and then it can be really interesting to see how it affects everything.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

can be almost solely blamed on the fact that I've recently managed to see all of the Black Guardian trilogy from the Fifth Doctor era of Classic Who. I found it inspiring. Ahem.

LOL, but Turlough was barely even trying. :-D

I like AU settings if it's an interesting translation (it's like using modern settings for Shakespeare plays, to pull out analogies, or, of course, just have fun) but they really don't work well in Doctor Who as a general thing. DW is the fandom for natural crossovers with nearly anything, but who needs an other setting AU, when your team TARDIS can just go to the setting? There are even EU stories where they start running a bar and the Twelfth Doctor spent decades teaching at a university. Arthurian fusion? The Doctor is Merlin! They have had canonical adventures in dreams, books, and mirror universes, too.

Whereas, Blake 7, which I also love, seems to be a thing that never met an other setting AU that it didn't like. (Robin Hood, Elizabethan, coffee shop - best coffee shop AU ever! - Regency, everything.)

[auroracloud]

LOL, but Turlough was barely even trying. :-D

True! And not very committed to the goal to begin with, I'd say. But still! Can fit the trope!

Yeah, in Doctor Who you can just create a crossover with anything! Why make a Pride and Prejudice crossover when you can just transport the characters into a Jane Austen world and see how they deal with it? And it's also one of the charms of the universe that it has all these unlikely crossovers between our world and the one with aliens and time travel. A secretary is possessed by an evil computer, rescued by her seaman friend, and together they run into a time machine! A shopgirl meets Autons in a basement! A medical student is training in a hospital while its transported to the Moon to search for an alien hiding among the patients! An English-teacher travels in time and saves the world many times over while keeping her job!

And in-universe things are just more fun. I'd love to read about the Second Doctor and Jamie actually trying to run a coffee shop in a modern-day city as a cover when they're secretly trying to prevent alien takeover, and it'd be hilarious. Reading about characters like them in a coffee shop AU? Not as much fun, because there's so much you lose about the characters when they're not an 18th century Highlander and an ingenious, but not always practical, adventuring time-traveller.

[thisbluespirit]

True! And not very committed to the goal to begin with, I'd say. But still! Can fit the trope!

Oh, definitely! I'm not sure how many times the trope involves people with birds on their heads, though. :-D

And in-universe things are just more fun. I'd love to read about the Second Doctor and Jamie actually trying to run a coffee shop in a modern-day city as a cover when they're secretly trying to prevent alien takeover, and it'd be hilarious.

It would be! I occasionally do an AU snippet meme, which is fun (other settings AUs! but very short ones, don't shoot me!) and people will keep giving me DW characters for it (as if it's my main fandom or something!) and it's so hard to make the snippets not be things that could just be another TARDIS adventure. (I did Jamie & Zoe once - I think about two of the snippets actually come across as AU.) I mean, where it does work for me, is where you have a very specific setting that is then cleverly (or humorously) translated into another setting, pulling out parallels and jokes and things, but DW just doesn't have a specific setting. (That said, one of the few I've come across that really works is an Austen-esque AU of An Unearthly Child - but then, of course, that is translating a specific situation in the 1960s to a different era.)

[auroracloud]

Well, most of the Five/Turlough fics I've read so far don't really go into very much detail about the Black Guardian, which may very well be because the bird-on-the-head factor might somewhat diminish the drama of the situation if you stop to think about it. :-D (Bless old Doctor Who. If monsters aren't made of bubble wrap or look like they're assembled out of kitchen appliances, then the deity-like figures have birds on their heads.)

I don't shoot AU writers even if I don't often read those stories, don't worry! I've actually enjoyed your AU snippets a lot! I think it's different when it's just a brief sketch of a few sentences, and you can enjoy the ridiculousness of the situation without going too deep in the nitty-gritty of how it works. Or when it illustrates some point about the canon nicely - like the one of yours where the "born another gender" for Jamie basically meant that none of the canon ever happened to him, and that's that.

And even if I'm generally not a big fan of different-universe AUs, there are always exceptions. I just remembered that one of my favourite Torchwood fics a year or two ago was an American high school AU. Really! But see, it was this brilliant Clueless/Torchwood mash-up, where Jack took the place of Cher, Ianto was the grumpy-yet-sexy ex-stepbrother, Gwen was the BFF and Rhys her boyfriend, and Tosh was the New Girl. It was brilliant. I should probably rec it for the monthly theme at tardis_library.

Though maybe with Torchwood it also helps that it does have a specific setting and you can try to translate it into another setting.

And of course there are other exceptions. I'm generally not fond of modern AUs for historical fandoms, but sometimes they can be delightful. I've read an Anne of Green Gables modern AU fic that I totally enjoyed, and my friend recommended a modern Indian retelling of Pride and Prejudice that I really should check out.

[thisbluespirit]

Bless old Doctor Who. If monsters aren't made of bubble wrap or look like they're assembled out of kitchen appliances, then the deity-like figures have birds on their heads.

What more can we ask for? :-D

Exceptions are always the trouble with fic, especially when writing DNWs: I don't like this trope, except for that amazing fic over there. Or when I just do because I feel like it...

For some reason I am particularly fond of subverted trope coffee shop AUs where people are kind of terrible at running coffee shops, as most of them would be!

[auroracloud]

Exceptions are always the trouble with fic, especially when writing DNWs: I don't like this trope, except for that amazing fic over there. Or when I just do because I feel like it...

Very true! I end up listing a lot of things as DNW's that I actually do sometimes read; but if I recognize that a thing is a problem for me except when I'm just in the right mood or it's handled just the right way, I figure it's safer to list it as a DNW. After all, it's not exactly fair to expect my assigned writer to be able to write that one fic out of 100 that actually works for me.

For some reason I am particularly fond of subverted trope coffee shop AUs where people are kind of terrible at running coffee shops, as most of them would be!

Hehe, yes, I can see that!