possibly I'm overthinking this

[pellucid]

Recently I decided that as something of a fic writing experiment, I should break out of my habitual mold and try to write a sort of fic I usually do not write: fluffy ship fic. The idea was spurred primarily by running into a couple of pairings that I wanted to read fic about but whose fandoms had a dearth of the sort of thing I wanted to read. If

Comments

[pellucid]

There certainly is lots of good shippy fic that does fluffiness and good characterization (and I thought of naming names of people who write it and then figured I was destined to leave people out if I did that). I think part of my problem here is that I haven't been specific enough about what I mean by "fluffy ship fic," or at least the kind that pushes my buttons. It's a fairly specific thing I'm looking for here, perhaps best typified by angsty cop partners (and I think the repetitiveness of the procedural tropes also plays in to my desire for repetitive romantic tropes in accompanying fic). There are only certain kinds of pairings I'm inclined to ship like this, and then there are certain kinds of fic I want to read about them. All very repetitive within one sub-genre but then perhaps completely lacking in another. Even if I had ever been inclined to ship, say, Adama and Roslin in a traditional sort of way, they don't quite fit my tropes, so it would have been a different kind of shipping--a kind of shipping, frankly, that I don't tend to do.

Of course, the fic does have some level of characterization as it is. And it's also possible it would ping more specifically as these characters to someone more familiar with the show--gabolange doesn't watch it. But the interesting realization for me here was that to a certain extent I don't want this to be some great character study of Mac and Stella but rather the kind of "I didn't realize how much I cared about you until this dire situation which forced me to follow you halfway around the world to save your life" shippy post-ep that has its analogue in any other pairing where one or both partners is regularly in mortal peril and having to save the other's life, and they're forced to negotiate that balance between keeping safe distance and recognizing that life is short. That's my button. Rinse, repeat. ;)