how sometimes my kinks catch me unaware (also contains a rec)

[ratcreature]

I was reading a LOTR AU (No Man's Child by Anoriath, it's unfortunately an unfinished WIP, and sadly seems abandoned since 2007), and I had a hard time figuring out why I liked it so much, when at first glance it has a lot I don't care for: First, it is Aragorn/OFC and I'm pretty much set on Aragorn/Arwen as my OTP by inclination. And I like AUs

Comments

[sholio]

It's really interesting how some kinks are so specific and/or situational (or just hard to define) that it's really hard to find stories that cater to them, or to recognize them when you stumble across them. I was actually thinking about that today with regards to h/c, because it's my #1 kink -- it's always been the thing that gets me in the gut, ever since I was a very young friendshipper. And yet, I've become increasingly cold on fanfic that carries the h/c label, because so much of it is so very Not My Thing. There's something very specific to canon h/c that doesn't do it for me in fanfic h/c; I'm not sure if it's the actual canonicity of it -- the fact that there will almost certainly be canon consequences, or at least one can imagine that there will -- or if it's that it's usually unexpected when it happens in canon, or if I'm just burned out on it, or something else ... I'm still trying to figure that one out

[ratcreature]

For more complicated kinks labels seem mostly useless. I think because they are either too specific or too general. For example the things that get labelled "service kink" are stories were it is is sex play, which I like okay, but it doesn't do that much for me, because it is like a fantasy twice removed. Meanwhile a ton of stories that have relationships that can easily provide for that kink in their setup, but not all provide the mental twist or internal dialog focus or whatever you want to call it that is necessary for a story to cater to the kink. Much like you can have stories with a graphic rape that won't do anything for a rapefic kink (but may work as h/c or as casefic or any number of things).

And labels like h/c are just very broad, only slightly more specific than "drama" or "humor", or maybe like a label such as "mystery".