forestofglory

Welcome to five fandom 5+1s and a meme! This is a series of posts about stuff that’s important to my own personal fandom history. I wanted some space to talk about happy and whimsical stuff and explore the different ways I’ve experienced fandom over time. I thought it would be fun to borrow the popular fanfic structure of 5+1 things. I’m using the word fandom very broadly here, to include SFF book fandom, transformative fandom, and just liking things. The things I’ve picked to talk about might not be the best or my favorites but they are fundamental to my experience and have shaped my thinking.

This the final post of this series, and that means it's time for a meme! I’ve been seeing this meme around for a while now, but have hesitated to do it because I’m fairly new to fic and I’m still gettng the hang of which of these tropes I’m seeing when I read.-.. But it looked like so much fun, and so when I needed a meme for this project, I couldn’t resist!

Slow burn OR love at first sight -- Slow burn! One thing I really enjoy in romances is the characters coming to know each other as people. It's a great way for the reader to also learn about them, and just enjoy the ride of watching the relationship form. Besides, love at first sight just seems very unrealistic to me.

Fake dating OR secret dating -- I don’t think I’ve read any secret dating, so I guess fake dating, which is often fun but sometimes feels a bit contrived.

Enemies to lovers OR best friends to lovers -- I really enjoy the kind of enemies to lovers where neither character is in the wrong but they have reasonable reasons to dislike each other and over the course of the story they slowly learn to see past that and fall in love. I just find romances that are about learning to see the other person more fully super satisfying. I do enjoy friends to lovers as well, but it starts from a point where the characters already know each other, so even though friends to lovers seems ideal for non-fictional relationship, when I’m reading, I definitely prefer enemies to lovers.

Oh no, there's only one bed OR long distance with correspondence Definitely long distance with correspondence. There’s only one bed isn’t a trope that I have strong feelings about one way or another, but I love epistolary fiction, fanfic or otherwise. I really enjoy the characters with a distinct narrative voice, and letter writing is one way of achieving that. Plus epistolary stories can play with narrative distance in interesting ways. No all long distance correspondence stories are epistolary but they do tend to at least feature snippets of the correspondence.

Fantasy AU OR modern AU I don’t have strong feelings about this one. I generally am more interested in fantasy than in contemporary fiction but I haven’t really read very many fansty AUs and I’ve read a lot of modern AUs, which might just be because I tend to start from canons with magical elements. Also these two don’t have to be mutually exclusive! I quite enjoy modern with magic AUs!

Smut OR fluff Oh, fluff definitely. I like smut sometimes but I need to be in the right state of mind for it. On the other hand I'm a voracious reader of fluff.

Mutual pining OR domestic bliss I think both of these are fine in moderation. Mutual pining can reach a point where I just want to yell, “Communicate, dammit!” at the piners, but as long as it doesn’t get too stretched out, I enjoy a mutual pining story. Domestic bliss is also good in small to moderate doses, but eventually I tend to want something else to happen.

Alternate universe OR future fic I enjoy both of these and don’t really have preference here.

One shot OR multi-chapter -I’ve had to stop reading WIPs. I enjoyed reading them at first but after a while I just couldn’t keep track of multiple stories that didn’t update very often. So now I just wait for things to be complete. The best fic length for me is novella length, 20-40k- it’s long enough to sink my teeth into, but short enough that I don’t feel overwhelmed by how long it is. I don’t really care if those words are in chapters or one shots, because I’m going to read them all at once anyway.

Kid fic OR road trip fic -- So I have complicated feelings about kid fic. I read it sometimes and enjoy it, kidfic is often fun and cute. But I want things that this trope doesn’t deliver. I want stories that resonate with my experience of being a parent, the cute fun things yes, but also the gross things, the dull things, the frustrating things, andI rarely see those in stories. Also, while I I want stories about moms, because let's face it in our society parenting is really a very gendered experience, almost all of the kid fic that I’ve read has been about dads, which is partially because fandom can be very m/m centric and partially because I haven’t made a huge effort to get outside m/m focused spaces. While I have read some great fic about moms, most of that isn’t what I’d call kid fic. In the end, kid fic as a trope tends be be a bit frustrating to me because it is very close to some things that I want to see more of in fiction but it doesn’t end up actually being those things.

I haven’t read a lot of road trip fic, I do tend to enjoy travel stories in fiction. It’s a good reason for forced proximity, and it generally involves getting to see more parts of the world which I enjoy. So, Given my complicated feelings about kidfic, I guess I’m going with road trip fic!

Reincarnation OR character death -- I don’t really like either of these. Characters dying is just very upsetting. And I find reincarnation where the characters remember their past lives, especially as children creepy. However I really don’t want my faves to die and stay dead so I’m going with reincarnation.

Arranged marriage OR accidental marriage I had to think about this one for a bit but the evidence suggests arranged marriage, since I’ve read far more of that. I’m not sure what about arranged marriage is appealing to me. Maybe it's that these stories are more likely to engage with the wider political context?

Time travel OR isolated together I enjoy time travel generally, I like time paradoxes, and stories where time travel is twisting your brain around strange loops and you have to pluze through. But most time travel fic I’ve come across isn’t like that. The most common thing I’ve seen is time travel fix its where someone from the end of the story goes back to an earlier point in the story and fixes everything. I just don’t find “How would I change things I if knew what was going to happen?” to be very compelling question, especially since a lot of these stories aren’t interested in time travel paradoxes. On the other hand I feel pretty neutral about isolated together, so I’m going to pick time travel since I like it some of the time.

Neighbors OR roommates These seem very similar. I guess neighbors because then each character has a home that can be described and I enjoy when people use descriptions of someone’s physical space to illustrate their character.

Sci-fi AU OR magic AU Another one I don’t have strong feelings about. I enjoy both!

Bodyswap OR genderbend So I have complicated feelings about genderbending and specifically “Always a different gender” AUs. I know they’re frequently used to increase the number of female characters, and I very much support having more female characters, but reading them is super confusing for me, because I tend to feel that if those characters had always been a different gender, then they would be very different people, and I haven’t read any genderbending stories that really explore that, though I know there are some out there.

Bodyswap is something that I think would be super awkward if it happened for real, but I don’t have strong feelings about it in fic.

Angst OR crack Hmm.. so I’m not someone who enjoys angst for the sake of it, or stories where the angst is unrelenting, but a bit of angst can be a very good story ingredient. My understanding of “crack” is that it means so kind of over the top very silly premise, though I’m still a bit vague on what exactly it is. Despite my lack of experience with crack, I do tend to enjoy over the top silliness. And I also enjoy crack treated seriously, when things that should be unbelievable somehow really work. So, after consideration, crack.

Apocalyptic OR mundane I don’t love mundane things, but really dislike apocalyptic things so mundane.

And that’s the end of Five Fandom 5+1s and a Meme! Thanks for reading along, and thanks to Anna K. for helping me brainstorm for this series and editing these posts!

Welcome to five fandom 5+1s and a meme! This is a series of posts about stuff that’s important to my own personal fandom history. I wanted some space to talk about happy and whimsical stuff and explore the different ways I’ve experienced fandom over time. I thought it would be fun to borrow the popular fanfic structure of 5+1 things. I’m using the word fandom very broadly here, to include SFF book fandom, transformative fandom, and just liking things. The things I’ve picked to talk about might not be the best or my favorites but they are fundamental to my experience and have shaped my thinking.

Ever since I had my own child I’ve become aware of how few moms there are in SFF. I’ve written at length about my desire for more moms in SFF, but for this post I just want to celebrate a few of my favorites!

1. Isabella Camherst form The Memoirs of Lady Trent by Marie Brennan Isabella is first and foremost a scientist who studies dragons, and her relationship with her son Jacob is secondary to that. Her struggle to balance the expectations of motherhood with her career is something I really like reading about, and I also really enjoyed the relationship that she does eventually develop with Jacob.

2. Pearl form Steven Universe If you want to know what character types latch on and adore, you will find badass rebel women, nerds/characters who enjoy knowing stuff, and moms prominently featured on my personal list. Pearl is all three of these, so of course I love her intensely. I also love that Pearl is an anxious mess, and allowed to be a very flawed person.

3. Concubine Jing from Nirvana in Fire As the mother of one of the Emperor's sons, Concubine Jing is an uncomfortable position-she’s not allowed to leave the palace, and her visits with her son are limited. What I like about her is that despite the limitations placed on her, she remains fundamentally calm and good; her power politics are played kindly, and she uses her skills as a trained physician, or in the kitchen to achieve her ends. I also just really like watchin the loving relationship she has with her son, despite their limited visits.

4. Ekaterin from The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold I mentioned earlier in this series how much these books mean to me. One of the great things about them is that they feature several excellent characters who are mothers. Of these characters, I chose to highlight Ekaterin because she is the character for whom child rearing is the most central to her character arc. I really love seeing her interactions with her son Niki, and her concern for him drives the plot of the story.

5. Joanna from Hilda As the mom of the titular character in this kids cartoon, Joanna has a surprisingly satisfying role. She comes along on a few of Hilda’s adventures and also lives her own life in the background. I like how Joanna has her own history with the places that Hilda is coming to know. Sometimes her nostalgia leads her to pressure Hilda to excel at things Joanna excelled at in her youth, and the show handles that sensitively with both of them learning from the experience. Overall I really enjoy the nuanced but loving relationship between mother and daughter.

+1 Aunt. Georgiana without Ruth from Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho I adore all of Zen Cho’s aunts, she writes them really, really well! Georgiana without Ruth is not only an interfering aunt of the highest order but she’s also a dragon! She plays a relatively small part in these books, but she’s such a vivid character you can’t help but remember her.

Welcome to five fandom 5+1s and a meme! This is a series of posts about stuff that’s important to my own personal fandom history. I wanted some space to talk about happy and whimsical stuff and explore the different ways I’ve experienced fandom over time. I thought it would be fun to borrow the popular fanfic structure of 5+1 things. I’m using the word fandom very broadly here, to include SFF book fandom, transformative fandom, and just liking things. The things I’ve picked to talk about might not be the best or my favorites but they are fundamental to my experience and have shaped my thinking.

1. “Pornography By Women For Women, With Love” by Joanna Russ (1985) AKA the essay on slash or more spefically K/S. I first read this essay before I was a fanfic reader, but I recently reread it and I loved it both times. Russ’s pure joy at finding out about slash and sharing it with other women is just so great to read in an analytical essay about slash as a way for women to enjoy romance without the burden of gender. There are some things that don’t hold up (eg slash writers know about lube now) but there’s a lot that resonated with me as a reader of slash. This essay helped me understand and appreciate that slash is a medium with a rich tradition of people of marginalized genders writing for each other.

2. “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” Ursula K. Le Guin (1986) This essay is about the shapes of story and what we think makes a good story. Le Guin argues that domestic tasks traditionally done by women such as gathering wild oats or child care are not seen as heroic and story worthy. This eassy is critical to my critical to developing my viewpoint as a feminist critic; it made me look at not just who is important in the story but also what labor they do, and just how traditionally feminine activities are shown in a narrative. Sadly, I reread this not that long ago, and found it to be rather gender essentialist, but it was still very important in shaping how I see stories. (This one is not available online but I recommend this essay about it )

3. ”Denvention 3, Guest of Honor Speech” Lois McMaster Bujold (2008) This speech helped develop my understanding of what genre is. Bujold starts off with my very favorite definition of a genre which is "any group of works in close conversation with one another". But she also talks about how SFF works are frequently “fantasies of political agency,” and that is such an interesting way of looking at SFF. Because characters do so often have political power, that they use to push the story forward or are fighting to gain control of, and I think this definition ties back to why SFF so frequently favors stories about royalty. This speech gives me tools to see patterns in a lot of different stories.

4. ”Political agency and changing the world” by Jo Walton (2008) This Jo Walton’s response to Bujold’s speech above. Walton responds to Bujold's idea of “fantasies of political agency” but says that she sees something different, that in SFF the world is a character, and if the world is character then the world should change as part of the story. I just really love that idea-I really enjoy worldbuilding, and for me part of the pleasure of good SFF is building and understanding of how the world works, so this inclusion of the world as a character really resonates with me.

5. “Freshly Remember'd: Kirk Drift” By Erin Horáková (2017) This essay deals with Captain Kirk, masicultivity, and how our views of characters change with time. It’s totally fascinating and well worth reading even if you know nothing about Star Trek. It’s also important to me personally because reading this made me want to actually watch some of the original Star Trek, which then led to me watching a lot of other Star Trek for the first time. (That’s why I’m currently watching Voyager)

+1 SQUEE The Untamed: A Primer by Gin Jenny (2020) We don’t often talk about recommendations as part of the critical conversation but they play an important role-it’s really important to share what we like and why we like it! I’m currently obsessed with the Chinese drama The Untamed and Jenny does great job of explaining what is so awesome about it!