December Daily: tropes loved and unloved

[resonant]

terminally_underwhelmed - "What's a popular trope that doesn't do much for you, and an unpopular one you love?"

Popular trope I mostly don't care for: alpha/beta/omega.

I have a theory about at least one appeal that the a/b/o trope has that you don't get with something like sex pollen:: Any story with a female body in it is going to drag in all the associations that the culture puts on female bodies, from their supposedly inherent assaultability to the necessity that they be beautiful and thin and groomed at all times to the fact that they sometimes get pregnant. But on the other hand, a non-dick-centered sexual response has a lot to recommend it in erotica, such as automatic lubrication and multiple orgasms. And this way the writers get to have those advantages, and make their own decision about how many of the drawbacks to include.

So, OK, intellectually I have some grasp of the appeal. But for me -- nah. It makes me pay too much attention to the worldbuilding and not enough attention to the characters and their emotional development. I just generally don't enjoy it.

Unpopular trope I love: I don't have a snappy term to sum this up, but there's a range of tropes that basically boil down to "We're going to have to figure out how to have sex with each other." It covers everything from non-human partners to sexual dysfunction and sexual inexperience. It's part of the appeal of sex scenes with more than two partners and of making formerly straight characters fall in non-straight love. It's the reason why, even though I'm not at all knowledgeable about kink, I adore a story where somebody safewords out.

As I get older, I keep hoping to find stories that use this trope to explore how sex changes as you age -- "I used to enjoy that, but now it hurts my lower back," "I'm into it but it's going to take longer than that," "Honestly these days that's more trouble than it's worth; can we do something less labor-intensive?" -- but I'm not finding them. I'd love recs, if anyone has them.

I think I wasn't even in high school yet when I read James Tiptree Jr.'s "With Delicate Mad Hands," in which a woman rejected because of a facial injury finds her way to space and falls in love with an alien whose own culture considers her ears deformed and unacceptable, and the two of them have to figure things out. I have no idea whether it was actually a good story, but obviously it was formative. I remember in particular a line that said, They discovered two things that all lovers discover: first, mutual laughter, and second, nothing is enough.


Specify a date if you want; otherwise I'll just answer them whenever.

This year, in addition to the usual kinds of questions, I'd also love to get storyish prompts. Storyish meaning you never know what you might get: two sentences of a story, or a description of a story that will never exist, or a love song about how much I like that trope, or a rant about my pet peeve about that trope, or I know nothing about that canon except what I see on social media and here's what I think it might be about, or Ten Reasons Why I Love/Hate/Am Indifferent To that character, canon, or trope, or ...

As always, I'd love to hear about it if you're doing the meme too.

6. runpunkrun - "something you recently learned about yourself"
7. muccamukk - "Favourite power couple(s) and what makes them work so well together. Can be storyish or not."
8. armadillo1976 - "I'd appreciate a few words about navigating the issues of kids growing up and having the "mommy writes fanfic, mainly erotica, and mommy's using this word just because it sounds better than porn" conversation. My kiddo is only 5 now, and I have only written one story and am in the middle one the second one, but I see myself writing more, so I've been wondering how this conversation goes."
9. coffeeandink - "You took a break from fandom for a few years. Now that you're back, what's changed and what's stayed the same?"
10. mific - "what about crossovers? Have you written any?"
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12. marginaliana - ghost stories
13. runpunkrun - "a new thing you tried "
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15. china_shop - Guardian as described by someone who only knows it via social media
16. kiezh following up with - "What have you heard about MDZS/The Untamed, and what did you think of what you heard?"
17. ride4ever's birthday prompt - "Storyish prompt: for any due South fic you've written, write a prequel or sequel snippet for the fic or meta about the before-or-after that can be imagined about the fic's story arc."
18. mific - "the genderswap trope where a character's gender is changed. Yes? No? Maybe?"
19. runpunkrun - "fake dating: yes or no"
20. minoanmiss - "One of my favorite tropes is Then Let Me Be Evil. What do you think of it/have you explored it/so on and so forth?"
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24. runpunkrun - "John and Rodney in 2020"
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27. reginagiraffe - "Hermione/Harry/Ron from Bed and Board in 2020"
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Comments

[krait]

A/B/O doesn't work for me, either, mostly because of the biological/gender essentialism. It's frustrating sometimes, because it also contains one or two kinks that are very much my thing, but I can't read it because of the other things that go along with it.

I absolutely love 'figuring out how to have sex with this particular person,' especially in a sf/f interspecies setting! I wish there was more of it, both in canons and in fics. But I'd say that even if it was as abundant as A/B/O, so. :D

On the aging front, I do have a rec for you! patellofemoral pain syndrome by seventhstar is a Yuri on Ice fic that deals with Victor's aging (in figure skating terms; he's 27) and work-related medical issues impacting his sex life with Yuuri.


(I totally meant to do this meme, but haven't put up a post about it... oops. I guess it's going to be "Journaling January" for me again instead of "Dreamwidth December." :P )

[resonant]

Ooh, I'll bookmark that! Yuri was one of the fandoms that it seemed like it didn't exist at all when my gafiation started and by the time I started coming back it was back to being very quiet, so I don't know who any of these guys are -- but that's never stopped me before.

[krait]

Heh. :D I think all you really need to know is that both Yuuri (two Us) and Victor are top-level figure skaters from Japan and Russia respectively; Victor, who's a few years older, is Yuuri's idol and the reason Yuuri decided to pursue a skating career as a kid. Victor left skating for a year to be Yuuri's coach, but decided to come back to skating without giving up coaching.

(Yuri - one U - is a junior skater who has a bit of an envious angry rivalry with both of them, at least from his point of view.)

If you know anything about figure skating, you'll have a bit of extra info to work with, i.e. knowing that Victor's age is pushing the upper bounds of his career field, and the kinds of injuries and physical stresses figure skaters are prone to, but it's not necessary for enjoyment of the fic!