call for fic-kinks

[fahye]

I put this request out via email but I figure I'll throw it open to the world, too:

What plot devices are your pet loves? I'm not really interested in fandom-specific stuff, just devices that you really love seeing. As major or minor or profound or ridiculous as you like.

(This is in the interests of helping me develop structure for a WIP that I have just unearthed, so bonus points for things creating tension/deepening the dynamic between people in an established relationship, but absolutely anything will be helpful. I'd like to be able to pull this post up for inspiration at a later date!)



- Anger and/or violence on behalf of (or in revenge of) the other party.
- Convoluted and very character-specific declarations of love.
- Conspiracies! (Like in, say, Twelfth Night.)

Comments

in addition to my other suggestions

[hobviously.livejournal.com]

Chicks dressing up as dudes! Kinda gay hijinks ensue!

[not-in-denial.livejournal.com]

My favourite, favourite plotty love is rival lust. People who hate each other but not really even though they try to hide it they really just want to fuck each other senseless. Not only do I love this for a variety of pretentious reasons, it's just fucking HOT and I love it to pieces.

To expand a little, I like any relationships that are more complicated than just friends or lovers or enemies or whatever. People are complicated, and it stands to reasons that our relationships are complicated. Hell, some of my friendships are damn complicated and I love them - I give the example of one of my best friends. He and I argue constantly. We can't agree on anything. But when one of us is feeling down, the other is the first person we call. We have even had a quiet snog on another friend's verandah, blurring the lines between friends/lovers for a few moments, and then after a few days of weirdness we were back to being best friends. Now, tell me that that kind of relationship wouldn't just be awesome written into a story, srsly.

I also like power dynamics - who is more powerful than who and why, and whether the power dynamic can and will change between people.

Also, I like aliens.

Re: in addition to my other suggestions

[not-in-denial.livejournal.com]

Crossdressing and genderfucking in all flavours is worthy of cheers! Hooray, hooray!

[tammaiya.livejournal.com]

Well, in SGA aliens-made-them-do-it and ancient-devices-gone-whacky! are always fun. Um. Friction leading to arguments leading to angry sex and so forth is always good. Jealousy is a great one. Genderbending done well, sure. Near-death experience for one or both of the characters. Amnesia if done well. Undercover, eg pretending to be a couple for some reason. Uh, what else...

Who the hell am I kidding, I'm easy. XD I mean, I have whole subsets of plot devices I like based on the canon relationship of the pairing.

[liminalliz.livejournal.com]

THIS MIGHT HELP (http://liminalliz.livejournal.com/698465.html#cutid1).

[unravels.livejournal.com]

Total denial by both parties.

Also (and this can follow on from the above), one figures it out but has to keep playing along as the other is still on the DENIAL party line.

Oo, and violence on behalf of the other party is excellent. Why do these feel like guilty pleasures? *shrug* Three cheers for guilty pleasure plot devices.

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

Obviously, the key to my heart is a fleet of rhinoceroi. um. Recently, mistful posted this, (http://mistful.livejournal.com/97211.html) which I keep meaning to talk to you about. In response to her question (which is also my question to you), my favorite is a noir ending -- or people adapting to a noir circumstance -- in a clair world, because I, steeped in sourness and (recently) structural realism, think that is what life is like: you assume certain systems of cause and effect are in place, and you assume that your actions will have certain consequences, or else you cannot function: but in reality, nothing says that these systems have to hold, and you can through no fault of your own wind up sick with cancer or murdered, etc.

As for established relationships, I think they are tricky enough, and acquire enough life of their own to be sustainable/interesting without anger, violence, or conspiracies. Quite apart from any relations between humans being complex and layerful and containing potential for misunderstandings or rapprochement or ennui, there are always these possibilities: (a) one realizes that one is no longer in love (b) and/or that one no longer loves [the difference perhaps worth exploring] X (c) as in APOGS [YEAH, I WENT THERE], one, like Lucile, goes on falling and falling in love. Of course, Camille/Lucile's relationship was a freakmonster (recall his line about not knowing what else to call the sick feeling he had when he saw her, unless love) for MANY REASONS and probably didn't begin as love, but that's where it wound up, didn't it? er. I feel. Of course, in any of the above situations, whether or not one (a) wants to make love stay + (b) can do so should please your Robbins-y semiheart.

In the Maya post, they talked about Hardy, who is sort of dear to me in an awkward teenage identification that's-totally-about-me way. THERE IS A POINT TO THIS. In Jude the Obscure (SHUT UP, WORLD), the title character starts out as a smart but uncool little boy (like me) who reads books and teaches himself Latin (like me) and wants desperately to live/study in Not!Oxford (like me) and then he grows up and it JUST NEVER HAPPENS (like me). Um, but if the rest of my life resembles his in any way, I will commit suicide. OK. Anyway. The point of this was the problem not, as per us., of what you do if you're granted your life's/some almost-as-important desire, and then find that (a) it isn't what you wanted or (b) you don't want it anymore, BUT RATHER, what happens if you're not granted it at all? How do you go on from that?

It is a general enough problem to apply to love. Although I think the more usual version would be more interesting there. (What do you do when you pursue and pursue someone, succeed, and then don't want them anymore -- either immediately or later on?)

You've made me late to French, so very quickly, instead of blathering about mostly impersonal things: I like anything that has a good reason for being the way it is (as a self-contained work of art), and to a lesser extent, anything that is not the way I expect it to be even if it has no good reason. Obviously if it is unexpected with good reason that's tops of all. *dash*

[genarti]

Unspoken understanding -- silent looks exchanged, conscious manipulation (or at least awareness) of the undercurrents under the words. Especially if someone else who isn't privy to all of the undercurrents is observing, whether or not they're aware that they're missing levels of the conversation. I love taking a close, comfortable dynamic and throwing a third (or fourth, or fifth) party into the mix as a semi-outsider.

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

I love stories driven by conflicts of loyalty, and by friends with different value systems trying to reconcile their friendship with their beliefs.

[silveraspen]

I was going to type up a whole post of my own, but Gen said it first. (Who's surprised?)

But also! Complexity of dynamics. To put it in actual context, what I love most about OMGPILOTS is all the background there between Lee and Kara, not the pretty. I love the tension and the uncertainty and the fact that they've known each other forever and they snark and are comfortable with it and then suddenly it's WHOA HEY WHAT HAPPENED?

If that makes sense. I can give other examples, too. :)

[genarti]

Oh yes. That's another one. Complex dynamics, and shifting dynamics also. Some of my favorite fictional relationships are ones where the characters play more than one role towards another, and they shift suddenly and seamlessly between roles in response to the situation and what the other person is doing. Sometimes those roles are all comfortable ones, just different, and sometimes it means the conversation does wild swerves, but either way it's fun.

...Gee. Aspen and I agree. I for one am stunned by this.

[run-atreyu.livejournal.com]

Affairs of any kind get me every time: bulletproof kink, yo. I think pretty much every pairing I've ever obsessed over has one or both parties involved with someone else. Anything really good that keeps them apart but desperate for each other is fine by me. I also love buddycop vibes of all kinds. That level of friendship or close workmates that shifts into desire over a long period of time. I also really like partnerships where there's a great deal of equality as opposed to clear gender delineations, particularly if the woman is the one going out and sexxing more than the guy.

OMG, this is completely not what you were asking about, hee. Oh well, I'll post it anyway and if I think of actual specific plottish things I'll return later and re-comment :)

[vivien]

I really like having two characters who seem to have nothing in common come to find that actually, they're quite similar in ways they'd never have known had they not become closer.

Er, and redemption fic. Yum.

YAY STORY DICE!

[taraljc.livejournal.com]

Undercover as a (married or dating) couple (i.e. "The surburban episode")

Gets me every. single. time.