Rare pairs

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Over on pillowfort I made a little concoction of links to parts of my Fitter of the Species, relating to Steve Rogers and Bruce Banner as a rare pair. Fitter of the Species should you wish to rifle about at AO3 for readings.

What rare pairs do you write or read? What makes for a road less traveled?

Comments

[dendriteblues]

I don't know, as a writer in the Loki/Tony ship I wouldn't say it's rare. In fact is was pretty prominent until Winter Soldier came out and Stucky took over the fandom, which then turned into the infamous Stucky/Stony/OT3 trifecta after Civil War.

More than rare I would say it's just old. It's had it's heydey during Avengers 1 and people moved on when there were more options. But people still read and write quite a bit of it. My updates only stay on the front page for two days or so, which is pretty active by most fandom's standards. It's like RDJ standing next to Evans and Hiddleston. Of course he looks small, he's standing next to f*cking giants. But 5'9" isn't that short.

[yourlibrarian]

That's interesting to know -- I came to the MCU in 2012 and got started by reading a variety of recs which is how I ended up in Tony/Loki's area (I had been looking for longform gen fic which remains thin on the ground). So if they were a prominent ship then it explains a lot.

And you're right, I'm subscribed to the AO3 feed and there's stuff coming through every day which is not a rare pair sort of thing.

[dendriteblues]

Oof, satisfying longform gen is very hard to find. I'll be sure to rec you if I run across any.

Love that icon btw! Great colors. @__@

[yourlibrarian]

That would be great! And I felt very lucky to stumble across some Frostiron icons :)

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

So FrostIron has that same aspect as "All the team lives in the tower" whether or not a particular person is Canon Non-compliant? Aka, 'vintage'.

[dendriteblues]

That's one thing I really like about Frostiron. Because it started so early it has evolved alongside the whole MCU. With each movie the kind of fics changed, and so it's now a very diverse ship.

In the beginning there was a lot of "everyone in the tower", or more often "Loki escapes/is extradited or banished from Asgard as punishment for the invasion and winds up in the Tower.

Then Thor: The Dark World came out and ended with Loki impersonating Odin. So then there was a period of fics where Loki gets bored of sitting on the throne and starts doing shenanigans ^TM that cause him and Tony to cross paths.

Then Age of Ultron was released and we all belatedly realized that Loki had an infinity stone in A1, so then there was a rash of speculative stories about the stones.

After that came Civil War, which created tension between Team Steve vs Team Tony fans. So there was a small crop of people who wrote CW era Frostiron just to avoid the ship wars. haha These fics tend to have Loki offering Tony support and bonding over both of them being betrayed by their supposed allies.

And obviously since Thor: Ragnarok we've all been obsessed with Infinity War AUs, time travel fix-its, and post-snap future fics.

Once you've read a few, you can guess what year a fic was written just by the subject matter!

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Oooh, someone can do a battleship curve of themes.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Even without his heels RDJ is about a head taller than Jack Kirby was.

What's hilarious is a gantry shot from some comic con. Renner and Evans are looking sorta normal and Hemsworth is like another scale entirely. They're all wearing grey tees that haven't been smedium babydolled by wardrobe.

[dendriteblues]

Yeah, I will never not laugh about how small Loki looks in Thor movies. Because Hiddleston is a giant but Hemsworth makes him look like a skinny twig. xD

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Towering for all of us condensed types. And a head taller for that other end of Millennials in the MCU, Tom Holland.