Fandom Snowflake Challenge - Days 9 & 10

 

Smooshing two together again!

Day 9:

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator. 

Went with three that define me as a creator. Kind of.  I think these stories all give a pretty good idea of what I tend to go for when I'm writing fic. So, in a word, tons of gen-y found family feels, and a smidge of shippy angst. 

Mommy's All Right, Daddy's All Right (GOTG): If I'm remembering it right (and I'm probably not) I started this fic the night I got home from seeing GOTG Vol. 2 for the first time. I have a HUGE soft spot for genderbent AUs, and the idea of a tiny girl Peter growing up scrappy and a little broken on a ship full of Ravagers just grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go. The main focus of the fic, obviously, is her relationship with Yondu. I loved thinking about how that dynamic might change with a Petra Jean versus a Peter Jason, but the funny thing is that, at the end of the day, the key parts of it (Pete's hatred of the way Yondu raised her, and Yondu's inability to communicate his love in any way anyone would consider healthy) didn't change all that much. Reading back over this story is a weird experience; there're things I would have definitely changed if I'd written it even a month or two later, but I do love it all the same.  

Every Night You Stay (Stranger Things): A quick and messy fic set in the aftermath of the last episode of S2. Like the girl!Peter fic, this one has a huge focus on found family and I loved getting the chance to write dialogue for so many different characters at once. It's also a bit of an Outsider POV fic (since the entire thing is told from Nancy's perspective and she's observing how everyone else handles the trauma as well as her own feelings about it), and I love me a good Outsider POV story. 

you know i can't just let you be (The Punisher): In general, I write more purely gen stuff than purely shippy stuff, but this story was my first completed attempt at a pairing I happen to love with all my heart and soul. I'm including it here for the angsty argument that ends with bed-sharing (otherwise known as my absolute favorite romance trope. Ever.)

Day 10:

In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. (Or a few!) Tell us what makes it work for you, and why it appeals to you so much. Talk about what you like to see in fanworks featuring that theme most. Feel free to include recs and examples! 

Found family. Found family all the way. 

I don't know exactly why this trope gets me as much as it does, but I've loved it since I was old enough to start reading stories on my own (and probably even before then). There's just something about the idea of a band of scrappy and imperfect people drawn together (bonus points if they're reluctantly drawn together!) into their own scrappy and imperfect version of what a family means that gets me. Every time. Maybe it's because I like angst and family drama, and found families tend to have both in abundance. Going deeper, though, I guess I could say it's because the found family trope is a wonderful way to explore how complicated, loving relationships can grow between the most unlikely pairs of people. The ones you'd never, in a million years, assume would get along. And that's my very, very favorite thing. 

I'd include recs, but about 95% of the stories (both original and fic) that I read feature some kind of found family, so it would be a long list. Off the top of my head, though, books by Ursula K. Le Guin, S.E. Hinton, Diana Wynne Jones, and Melina Marchetta are pretty often gold mines for this trope, sholio  writes wonderful found family fics (especially in the GOTG and Stranger Things fandoms), and two 2017 movies that (in my opinion, anyway) fit the trope to a T were GOTG Vol. 2 and Logan.