Snowflake Challenge, Day 10

[starfishstar]

Day 10

"Share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. (More than one is okay, too.) Tell us about it, tell us why you love it, give us some examples and recs."


I don't know if this exactly counts as a "trope," but here is a type of fic that I LOVE:

The premise sounds like total crackfic...it is total crackfic...and yet somehow, also, it totally works, it's emotionally real and in character within the world of this seemingly absurd premise, and that combination of humor/absurdism and emotional realism is just perfect.

Here are some beloved favorite recs to show you what I mean:


• A Study in Squawking by castiron – Sometimes a fic comes along that so perfectly slots into that “thing I never knew I desperately needed” category – and this is one. This is series 1 reimagined where the only thing that’s changed is…that Sherlock is a hyperintelligent parrot. (A hyacinth macaw, to be exact.) And it is so good and so deft and so clever. Something that sounds like it should be total crack but reads as a gripping, real and engaging story…that’s one of my favorite things. I cannot fully express how great this story is. Mycroft’s backstory! Sherlock’s cunning use of his pigeon network!!

• The Adventure of the Seal in the Living Room by Bold_as_Brass – John comes to 221B to find…a harbour seal flopped on the living room couch. And Sherlock insisting that John and Lestrade help him drive the seal to a seal sanctuary. The best kind of story: One where the premise sounds like it should come out as total crack, but instead it’s sweet and funny and moving and a great portrait of a friendship.


And some more:

• It's Dogged As Does It by merripestin – Sherlock is Greg Lestrade's dog, John is his cat, and Moriarty is an annoying bird that taunts Sherlock....and they're utterly in character.

• The Bone Fiddle by htebazytook and vulgarweed – Sherlock/John in West Virginia! Not actually crack, but I'm including it here on the grounds that it's an entirely unexpected premise, executed wonderfully, which in a sense is kind of the same thing as what I was saying above. One of my favorite AU settings.

• An unlikely association in seven fish by Bold_as_Brass – Mycroft and John meet for fish and chips over the months of Sherlock's hiatus.

• The Adventure of the House That Was Not Empty by snarryfool/ancientreader – delightful AU where John and Sherlock meet in an entirely different way that I don't want to give away, but it involves someone breaking into John’s house. I suppose here, too, it's a stretch to call this "crack," but I wanted to include it because I love this AU premise! (And it's another great example of the characters being so totally in character, even when the circumstances are different.)

• The Inconsequential Death of Mr. Stevens by stickstockstone – again, not so much "crack" as just a quirky, different premise for how Sherlock and John meet, but it's both totally goofy, and totally sweet and satisfying, so it hits that button for me!

(These turned out to all be Sherlock recs, though that wasn't intentional.)


As long as we're talking tropes, here are some other ones I love:

• MUTUAL PINING UND UST! (I mean....that's kind of almost all fanfic, right? but still. UST!!! with all its subtropes like: everyone else thinks they should get together but they can't see it, or both the characters think the other one is amazing but are equally sure that the other could never possibly feel the same about them...)
• I seem to have a thing for "estranged lovers who parted when they were younger and less wise and couldn't make it work, but now struggle their way back together," as expressed in my love for Sherlock/Victor fics where they have a past that ended badly, but are thrown back together in the present day and work to make it work. Preferably where they already have a kid together, apparently.
• I also seem to be drawn to "one bright, energetic free spirit + plus one person with great weights of (self-perceived) moral responsibility who hesitates to inflict themselves on other people" – because I see a lot of the same dynamics between Jack and Phryne on Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries that I'm accustomed to writing for Remus and Tonks from Harry Potter!
• chosen family/friends-as-family
.

Comments

[spikedluv]

This reminds me of the golden days of SGA when I was still immersed in the fanfic, and there were the obligatory 'John and Rodney get turned into penguins' fic. (Which were so good!) *g*

[starfishstar]

Ha, yes! I haven't watched SGA, I'm not familiar with John and Rodney, and I've never read fic where they turn into penguins...but I feel I can say definitively: that sounds awesome. :-)