Ooh, a meme!
It's been so long since I've seen a really good meme that I wanted to participate in, and this one seems right up my street:
Via dreamflower02 --
Name five ‘non-sexual kinks’ you have as a reader/writer: that is, five writing techniques, themes, settings, or character types that really draw you into a story. (If they are different for you as a reader than as a writer, please name both!)
1. I know the conventional wisdom is "don't describe the canon characters; anyone interested in reading your fic already knows how they look/act". But I *love* observations and descriptions of my favorite character(s). Particularly if (a) it contains some unusual or vividly phrased insight about them, (b) it's generally positive, and/or (c) it comes from the POV of either an original character who's just meeting them for the first time, or one who they don't usually associate with in canon. Even just a fresh-sounding physical description can do it for me.
2. In every fandom I've been majorly into -- i.e., enough to read/write fanfic for -- there has been one particular character that I fixate on. I will occasionally read fics about other characters in that work, but my favorite needs to be in there at least a little bit. My POV on shipping of said favorite has varied with the fandom, however. With ST: DS9, I used to ship my favorite, Odo, to hell and back with Kira (before and after they became a canon couple); with LOTR, I didn't much care who my favorite (Frodo) was put with as long as he was prominent; with Who, I think I've gotten pretty sick of romantic shipping altogether and much prefer focusing on the friendships that my favorite (Ten) is involved in, especially with Donna and Sarah Jane.
3. I'll read shipping fics, mainly because most of the time that's all I can ever find, but I much prefer friendship-focused ones, when I can get them. Too often, friendship is seen only as a stepping stone to romance; the prevailing attitude seems to be that the *only* way to truly plumb the deepest depths and highest heights of a relationship between two characters is if you take it in a romantic/sexual direction. That's fine, but it's *not all there is*. Deep and platonically loving friendships (that stay exclusively platonic) exist too and are just as interesting and worthy of being explored for their own sakes, IMO.
4. Fics that challenge some prevalent opinion in the fandom stand a good chance of ending up on my hard drive, if they make sense to me. For instance, ones that *don't* paint Ten as a complete bastard over his actions in certain episodes, and instead explore why he might have seen those things as the right or the only thing to do in the circumstances.
5. I favor canon-compliant fics, i.e. ones that deal with canon events as they happened in canon, as opposed to AUs. I especially prefer gapfillers and missing scenes, though I also loves me some long, plotty fics that could easily be canon adventures, particularly if they meet one or all of the above specifications. :-)
Via dreamflower02 --
Name five ‘non-sexual kinks’ you have as a reader/writer: that is, five writing techniques, themes, settings, or character types that really draw you into a story. (If they are different for you as a reader than as a writer, please name both!)
1. I know the conventional wisdom is "don't describe the canon characters; anyone interested in reading your fic already knows how they look/act". But I *love* observations and descriptions of my favorite character(s). Particularly if (a) it contains some unusual or vividly phrased insight about them, (b) it's generally positive, and/or (c) it comes from the POV of either an original character who's just meeting them for the first time, or one who they don't usually associate with in canon. Even just a fresh-sounding physical description can do it for me.
2. In every fandom I've been majorly into -- i.e., enough to read/write fanfic for -- there has been one particular character that I fixate on. I will occasionally read fics about other characters in that work, but my favorite needs to be in there at least a little bit. My POV on shipping of said favorite has varied with the fandom, however. With ST: DS9, I used to ship my favorite, Odo, to hell and back with Kira (before and after they became a canon couple); with LOTR, I didn't much care who my favorite (Frodo) was put with as long as he was prominent; with Who, I think I've gotten pretty sick of romantic shipping altogether and much prefer focusing on the friendships that my favorite (Ten) is involved in, especially with Donna and Sarah Jane.
3. I'll read shipping fics, mainly because most of the time that's all I can ever find, but I much prefer friendship-focused ones, when I can get them. Too often, friendship is seen only as a stepping stone to romance; the prevailing attitude seems to be that the *only* way to truly plumb the deepest depths and highest heights of a relationship between two characters is if you take it in a romantic/sexual direction. That's fine, but it's *not all there is*. Deep and platonically loving friendships (that stay exclusively platonic) exist too and are just as interesting and worthy of being explored for their own sakes, IMO.
4. Fics that challenge some prevalent opinion in the fandom stand a good chance of ending up on my hard drive, if they make sense to me. For instance, ones that *don't* paint Ten as a complete bastard over his actions in certain episodes, and instead explore why he might have seen those things as the right or the only thing to do in the circumstances.
5. I favor canon-compliant fics, i.e. ones that deal with canon events as they happened in canon, as opposed to AUs. I especially prefer gapfillers and missing scenes, though I also loves me some long, plotty fics that could easily be canon adventures, particularly if they meet one or all of the above specifications. :-)