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Pet Delights and Guilty Pleasures in Fanfiction

MiskWisk said:
I blame Brian Jacques for why I like this. You'd always get one scene in a Redwall book at a minimum that was dedicated to describing delicious food.
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Irony: Jacques apparently did it because he grew up quite poor and remembered being often hungry, so when it came to putting things in the Redwall books for kids...
 
I adore carefully crafted AUs. These seem to be rather rare because I ardently believe there is a difference between original fiction with fanon names and an AU that takes that fanon and goes "Okay, what if X?" that isn't an idiotic high school thing.
 
Love Powered M32 rotary grenade launchers.

or in laymans terms i am hypercharging my technology with magic. or I am hyper accurizing my magic with technology.
 
I just kinda like all the Coming Out as gay/Trans/etc fanfics out there. Y'know the ones, where most of the cast or whatnot is relatively supportive and nothing too terrible happens?

It's all a little wish-fulfilly, and eventually you can predict some of the plot beats, but I just enjoy them that much? It's cute, and I like it and it makes me feel warm and fuzzy, so there.
 
The Laurent said:
I just kinda like all the Coming Out as gay/Trans/etc fanfics out there. Y'know the ones, where most of the cast or whatnot is relatively supportive and nothing too terrible happens?

It's all a little wish-fulfilly, and eventually you can predict some of the plot beats, but I just enjoy them that much? It's cute, and I like it and it makes me feel warm and fuzzy, so there.
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Those things that get written because we ardently wish our families and friends were half as supportive. Yeah, I love those too, big hugs.

Tax: I like the stations of canon.
 
If there are no stations of canon, then well, you might as well write original content.
 
I like seeing characters do things that turn out to be reflections of what happened in canon. The same, but outright opposite in some way. It's even better when the characters responsible have no clue about the original event.
 
The main character getting slapped down for their nonsense.

Maybe he's touting ridiculous standards of morality, maybe he's being hypocritical but refusing to see it, maybe he's drunk on power and bites off more than he can chew. But someone or something comes along and just beats him down (or crushes his argument, etc). He is so thoroughly defeated that even recovering is a faint hope, let alone retaliating. His inappropriate view of the world is crushed in the most direct, irrefutable way possible and he can't deny it.

This comes to me after so many works where the main character's flaws are excused by plot contrivance, or through author favoritism, or by simple narrative incompetence. Anime, manga, fictions of all type suffer from "heroes" who believe absurd things and try to force their way, somehow winning despite not deserving it. I like to see these characters wrecked, and forced to acknowledge that they were wrong and need to change.
 
A character type I like a lot (and like to write) is the selfish noblewoman with a soft spot for her loved ones, colloquially known as the "ojou-sama" archetype. I have no idea when my stance changed from dislike to adoration, but honestly they just work for me.

I think the combination of realizing they're kind of awful and possessive people while being genuinely tender at times sells it. Though it needs the self awareness and honesty to really work, otherwise the character just ends up being trash.

Drill hair is welcomed, but very much optional. :V
 
I guess the closest in this regard would be the hidden badass. Not the crouching moron kind, but like the little old lady or small quiet person beating the heck out of a room full of mooks.
 
Power Experimentation and Power Exploration, yeah a power a story does not make, but I so enjoy when they are given a good amount of time in the story.
 
Crossovers. They're frequently done poorly, as with most things, but I find they're inherently more interesting at least on a conceptual level (depending on series involved and genre, granted) than single-series fanfics reasonably frequently. For example, when it comes to action-based Nanoha stories, I've only ever really encountered crossovers among those stories that were interesting. Not to say that there aren't some, Graceful Degradation is a story I quite enjoy, but with crossovers, even if it winds up being kinda trite, there's a much higher likelihood of a story that I personally find at least a little compelling. It's an example of an odd effect I've noticed where you're more likely to get original flavor from some series' fanfiction if you look at their crossovers.
 
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Dredging this one to say that I love it when an author goes absolutely huge on the idiom of a culture in-universe and expands it with such care that I keep forgetting the additions aren't actually canon.
 
Well researched & understood trade/commerce/support/profession stuff.

It's that story where the protagonist quietly runs a coffee shop, or a library, or an antique shop, or has a very specific or niche trade working as a furniture maker, or paper marbler, or cork harvester, or glassblower, but the author clearly has enough passion or interest to fill out those niche details that identify unmistakable familiarity with the subject.

It's damn rare in conventionally published fictions, but finding them in fanfic is like finding the holy grail.

I have no examples that I can give off the top of my head, but I've definitely encountered one or two over the years.
 
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Ultimate said:
I think it goes without saying Original Flavour fics are objectively the best fics.
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Indeed ; there's lots of different names for these, but whether it's Missing Episode or Elsewhere or things like that, they tend to be my favorite. I go towards fanfic because I want "more of the same" !
 
Another thing I like is crossover fics. Or even fics exploring character interactions that haven't happened in canon.
 
I like when alternate POV have the character do stuff that's (mostly) unrelated to the main plot or the main character of the fic.
In a rather extreme example, Sengachi's The Friendly Necromancer had a whole chapter dedicated to the full biography of a new character that, I think, is only going to feature in the next arc as a mcguffin. And it was great!
 
Characters getting told in-person what I've been yelling at them for SO long. Even if it's just "TALK TO EACH OTHER FFS." Bonus points if they actually acknowledge the problem.
 
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