melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)
melannen ([personal profile] melannen) wrote in [community profile] fictional_fans2019-05-17 08:45 pm

Hidden Treasure Subgenres

I'm going back through old favorite fics and bookmarking, and I have discovered two subgenres of comfort fic that I really, really love, and will read in any fandom or pairing, even ones I actively avoid otherwise:

1. What I am calling "art kink", where the fic is mostly about the characters' relationships to their own art, and most of the major sensual moments are about art (to the point sex scenes feel less intense), and sometimes even the main 'ship is kind of subordinate to the story about the artist(s) and their art.

Random old!fic examples:
Steinway!verse by toomuchplor, Inception
The only John Wayne Left In this Town by gyzym, MCU
Any given Dirty Dancing fusion, probably

2. What I am calling Vacation!Fic, where our characters are on a break from everyday life and instead go somewhere beautiful to rest (and recover). This can be beach!fic or roadtrip!fic or snowed in at the ski lodge!fic (a very specific subset of Canadian Shack) or it can be, like, about a character dropping out of life to surf full-time, but it has a deep sense of place and a feeling of being slowed down and voluntarily separate from worries and stress.

Random old(ish) fic examples:
Ordinary Life by Astolat and Speranza, SGA (SGA was a very good fandom for these)
Lee Shore by JumpingJackFlash, Homestuck
The Lucky Ones by Screamlet, Check Please!

But I have also realized as I go through and tag that, while both of these subgenres are really well-defined in my mind, and have their own subtropes and everything - and based on my AO3 reading history, they've been that way for awhile - neither of them is something that really gets talked about or tagged for in a way that would make them easy to find or talk about or even request.

So I have two questions:

What are your bulletproof subgenres of fic that don't have a standard name or a tag or a category but are definitely a thing anyway?

What would you rec in those subgenres (my subgenres, or yours, or someone else in the comments's)?
fabrisse: (Default)

[personal profile] fabrisse 2019-05-20 05:44 pm (UTC)(link)
"Outside looking In" is my bulletproof trope. Someone is completely outside canon and ends up seeing a character's arc or a relationship (romantic or friendship) or notices something even the characters don't know (sometimes they find out at the very end). I've written a few that aren't exactly as detached as I like, but give me a reporter preparing for an interview, a barista wondering about zir favorite customer, an administrative assistant trying to figure out the weekly meetings with someone enigmatic, the nosy neighbor who thinks the family/couple/commune that moved in next door looks familiar...