Res ipsa loquitur

*OK, not quite fifty, more like twenty. Don't ask me why I did this. One night it just seemed like more fun than going to bed like a normal person to see how many prompts I could come up with to play with a trope.

I did a thought experiment testing each of these prompts on three tropes: sex pollen, telepathy, and fake marriage -- I figured if it more or less works with all three, it will more or less work with anything you come up with.

Anybody else have ideas? If we all work together, maybe we can come up with a multi-use list to share.

1. Flip it. (It's not sex pollen, it's friendship pollen, and it's messing up the nice no-strings thing we had going. I can't hear your thoughts; I can't even hear you talking, though I can hear everybody else just fine. It's not fake marriage, it's fake divorce.)



2. We handled it OK the first time it happened. I don't understand why we're having such trouble with it the second time.



3. We didn't handle it well at all the first time it happened, but it keeps happening and it's actually getting kind of funny. (Great example: cesperanza 's Stargate Atlantis story Weddings, Plural, and a Yak.)



4. Lean heavily into the implied consent issues, because have you noticed there are almost always implied consent issues?


( More trope twisting behind the cut )

Canonical Trek characters use the holodecks for sports you can't do on a starship (Klingon martial arts, skiing), going to bars, and that kind of amateur-theater-type entertainments that this introvert cannot fathom enjoying. Fanfictional Trek characters also use them to have sex with unavailable co-workers. All perfectly plausible.

But holy crap, you could have a holomassage twice a week.

Other things I would use a holodeck for if I had one:

• "Computer, create some models with my same body measurements, but not my same face, because that's creepy. Now let's try a range of clothing suitable for this interior climate, six outfits at a time. Prioritize freedom of movement. I don't look good in yellow."



• In a similar vein, trying out hairstyles. Glasses. No, wait, in the Trek future there are no glasses.



• Physical therapy.



• Dancing lessons.



• A personal trainer. (In my case, dancing lessons and a personal trainer would probably look pretty similar. "No, your left foot. Left. Left.")



• Music rehearsal. Multiple overlapping metronomes and scrolling sheet music. The best accompanist in the sector. A rhythm guide for tricky syncopations. One soprano, one tenor, and one bass. A few carefully selected instruments that you need to time yours to. A whole entire choir and/or orchestra. An ensemble with such sophisticated AI that it could improvise with you.



• Language lessons with someone whose lips you could read. Assuming the speakers of that language had lips. And someone who would converse with you.



• If you have a long, physically tedious computer task to perform, you could holocreate yourself an input device that required you to move your whole body so you wouldn't get repetitive motion injuries. Trackpad? No, I'm using this rowboat.

And think of the things you and your friends could do together other than solve mysteries! Contradancing. Karaoke. D&D. Hell, you could be circus acrobats.

I can't promise that I would never use the holodeck to summon up a fictional character to hug me.

(This line of thought inspired by AxeMeAboutAxinomancy, who is charming me by writing Paris/Kim in 20-for real-21.)

Here's another thing that's all very well for porn but has missed opportunities for romance: the a/b/o worldbuilding trope where the alpha penis sometimes has a knot on it, sometimes resulting in two lovers being tied together for a long period of time. The stories I've read have sometimes mentioned this beforehand, in anticipation or dread -- "and then we'll be attached together for the thirty-minute alpha orgasm" -- but when they actually get there, we usually get a few minutes of conversation or dozing followed by a fade to black.

OK, my first thought about this is actually more porn, namely: I want better descriptions of what it's supposed to feel like to have an orgasm that lasts half an hour. (Who was the comedian in the eighties who said, "My mother was in labor with me for 36 hours. I don't even want to do something that feels good for 36 hours"?)

But on the romance side:

- We can just about keep the awkwardness at bay for long enough to have sex, if we do it so fast and intense that nobody has a chance to say something they can't take back. We definitely can't keep the awkwardness at bay while being unbreakably attached to each other for half an hour.

- Now you're attached to me for thirty minutes, and also somewhat debilitated by pleasure, so I think this would be a great time to ask you that question that you always avoid answering.

- Now I'm attached to you for thirty minutes, and also somewhat debilitated by pleasure, and my ability to pretend that this is just meaningless sex is being severely tried.

- I've had bad luck with prior relationships, and my experience of this thirty minutes has been really godawful. I don't know what it's like to experience this with someone I can actually trust.

- I have to make sure this doesn't happen with us; I owe it to you to make sure you can always make a fast getaway and not be stuck with me for half an hour, because nobody would want that.

- Actually I can do it with you. I just have to make sure we're in a position where you can't see my face while it's happening.

- Holy shit, I've never had anybody talk dirty to me for the entire thirty minutes. Uh, that makes it forty-five minutes. My mind is blown.

AU:: I'm running for office. When I'm preparing for a debate, you're the one who plays my opponent.

For some reason I'm enjoying imagining this with Arthur and Eames.

via trobadora

Years ago on LJ I identified my ideal tropes as mapping into a double cluster around a center that's basically a period of yearning in the gap between sex and intimacy -- either you have sex first and spend the story yearning for intimacy (e.g. aliens made them do it) or you have intimacy first and spend the story yearning for sex (e.g. everything from hypothermia to truth serum). All my answers here definitely follow that pattern.

Slow burn OR love at first sight::. It amuses me that I find love at first sight less plausible than sex pollen. I do enjoy variations on a theme of "the first time I saw you, I was already obligated to do some long-term, difficult, and intimate thing with you" -- for instance, "I have amnesia and I woke up in bed with you and we were both wearing matching wedding rings," or "so you're the royalty from the neighboring kingdom that I've just entered a political marriage with." Soulbond stories ring that bell for me, as long as the bonding in the situation takes a little while to produce a bonding in feelings.

Fake dating OR secret dating:. Fake dating is definitely a gap-type trope -- here we are holding hands and pretending to be happy together while I yearn for that but believe that you're not interested. Yep, yep, that does it for me. Secret dating isn't a trope I can remember seeing a lot of. I suppose you could have a Romeo-and-Juliet type scenario, or one of those delightfully farfetched romance scenarios where you'll lose the inheritance unless you can stay single. It locates the obstacle to the relationship outside the relationship, which isn't as interesting to me.

Enemies to lovers OR best friends to lovers:. I like them both, but enemies to lovers takes longer and is more difficult. With best friends, you have to look for some additional reason why they haven't just kissed already.

Oh no there's only one bed OR long distance with correspondence:. I'm not nuts about either of these, because mostly neither of them is very plausible to me. If you had to share a bed with someone you were longing for, you'd probably either not really sleep, or wake up back to back, and while a good writer could make either of those enjoyable to read, there's not as much inherent drama in it as I would like. And I have never read a romance conducted in correspondence that didn't make me go, "Oh, come on." Either they require characters to understand what they feel and communicate it in a way that I don't find at all plausible, or they require me-the-reader to be able to understand what's being communicated in the subtext and both the characters to understand what's being communicated in the subtext, and I just don't buy it. (I've seen it done well for comedy -- "My dearest M., I assure you it wasn't my fault; the boat was already on fire when I got there, and I got nearly all the penguins out of the ballroom unharmed.")

Fantasy AU OR modern AU. Both are done badly a lot more often than they're done well. It's a worldbuildling issue. Modern AU is certainly easier for the writer, but a lot of the time if you take the characters out of a historical or fictional setting, all your conflicts go away too. Sometimes it works, though -- I think one reason the high school AU is so popular is because high school is probably the closest most contemporary people ever come to living in a world with very narrow social roles and high penalties for violating them. Fantasy AU is an awfully big category -- could include anything from "Fraser's a werewolf and Ray's a vampire" to "exactly the same as the canon except that Spock has telekinesis." Delightful if done well, but few writers want to put enough effort into worldbuilding.

Smut or fluff. I don't know, what even is the definition of fluff? I think of it as meaning explicit emotional communication, and most of the time that's out of character for the kinds of characters I like to read. On the other hand, if you give me the choice between a basically solid story with sex and no emotions or a basically solid story with emotions (expressed in an in-character way) and no sex, I'll choose the emotions.

Mutual pining OR domestic bliss. OMG, pining pining pining. What can you do with domestic bliss? What can happen? I'll read and enjoy domestic comedy, but I pine for pining.

Alternate universe OR futurefic. I mean, I like them both, but it's easier to do futurefic well, because it requires less worldbuilding, and so a higher percentage of it is good. Also, like many fanfic fans, I always view canon as basically what sets the scene for the real storytellers, i.e. us.

Oneshot OR multi-chapter. Even a long story is more likely to make me happy if it's posted as a oneshot. Stories posted in chapters have a high likelihood of being posted before they're finished, which means they have a high likelihood of disappointing me with either a weak finish or none at all.


Kidfic OR road trip fic. I haven't seen a lot of either of these, and I don't feel particularly strongly about road trip stories. But I read kidfic all wrong. If a story has a child in it, I have a laser focus on the wellbeing of that child, to the point that the relationship starts seeming like a distraction from the real story, which is when is the last time that kid ate anything other than string cheese, and isn't it about time for her to go to bed?!

Reincarnation OR character death. I really dislike character death. There's enough grief in real life, thank you. Reincarnation isn't something I always avoid, but it does tend to keep company with some specific ideas about soulmates that I don't really like all that much, though -- that whole "We will always find each other through all eternity" stuff. It might be fun to read a reincarnation story in which the two characters aren't particularly soulmates but either (1) they have real potential that just can't be developed until both of them have done several lifetimes worth of maturing or (2) they're just two people who get more and more compatible because they have more and more practice at being together.

Arranged marriage OR accidental marriage. I like both of these, but arranged marriage hits right in my trope cluster. Arranged marriage is also a nice way to add zing to a best-friend story.

Time travel OR isolated together. Another pair that are both good. Time travel is risky because it often takes over the story -- I understand the temptation to explain things, but honestly I'd prefer "Suddenly, in the night, Sam Vimes found himself meeting up with a teenage Vetinari," just as an example, rather than two pages of explanation. But isolated together is excellent too!

Neighbors OR roommates. If you're going to make them neighbors, why not go all the way and make them roommates? As far as I can see, both scenarios have the same advantages, but roommates has them more.

Sci-fi au OR magic au. Magic has some pre-existing worldbuilding that a writer can just pick up and use. This would very much not satisfy me if I were reading a nonfannish novel -- the worldbuilding there is the whole thing I'm reading for -- but I read fanfic for relationships, and so if the writer wants to go "And he's a wizard -- you know what a wizard is like" or "And it's a curse -- you know how a curse works," I'm fine with that. SF is inferior in fanfic precisely because of the lack of those worldbuilding templates. (I mean, unless by SF AU you mean "Steve Rogers goes to Starfleet Academy," in which case I am so there.)

Bodyswap OR genderbend. Bodyswap is, of course, intimacy without sex, so I love it. Genderbend is often a lot of fun as social commentary. Social commentary is something I have more strength for some days than others; in the current political situation, often it's going to hit on some things I'm trying not to think about.

Angst OR crack. Now these are both things that are so dependent on skilled handling for me! Angst has to have a light hand with emotional explicitness -- it's a lot more effective if you give me the sorrow-and-yearning kit and make me put it together myself. And crack depends on (1) whether I agree with you about how funny the premise is and (2) whether you're able to execute it with a complete straight face.

Apocalyptic OR mundane. God, I hate apocalypse. I hate it so much. It's so lazy. And it seems like it shows up in all the canons [hisses at Marvel] and ruins everything. I like stakes high but human. Throw too much risk in there and you lose me.

Editing to add the "story idea" tag and point my future self at the Dome Habitat AU.

that Darcy Lewis of Thor and Dan Lewis of Venom both have the same last name.

Imagine a pair of siblings who just happen to stumble into superheroish goings-on that they can't share with anyone.

Imagine Thanksgiving at Mama Lewis's house.