December Meme: Fandom trends you miss/Fandom trends you want to make happen

[melannen]

This one was surprisingly tough! I can think of things I wish fandom would STOP and very specific stories I would like someone to write repeatedly, but trend-wise? Hmmm.

Okay, here are some things I used to really love that don't seem to come up as much anymore:

--Kinkmemes. I know there are still some of these hanging on, but I miss when every fandom, even tiny ones, had a really active kinkmeme, especially when they were really discussion-heavy and had as much meta as fic. I wouldn't have the time to spend on them that I used to but I wish I could.

--Canadian shacks! Okay it doesn't have to be Canadian, or a shack, but I would like more of "Stick your favorite characters somewhere isolated with inadequate shelter on the flimsiest pretext you can devise and make them cuddle for warmth in front of a wood fire."

--In general it seems like gleeful tropefics haven't been around as much lately? We've got all the soulmate-adjacent stuff like Hanahaki and a/b/o and geese, but what happened to random animal transformation and wingfic and truth serum and all that? (I wonder if part of this is that AO3 had to stop canonizing tags for that kind of thing a few years back, and so it's been harder to find and build momentum for, especially as AO3 becomes more dominant.)

Things that never really became a trend that I would love to see more of:

--Following on from tropes: I would like more area-affect tropes. Sure, your favorite character getting sex-pollened is fun! But what if the WHOLE TOWN got sex-pollened? One character getting de-aged is great! All but one character getting de-aged is EVEN BETTER. And so on. There are fics here and there that do this really well but I would love to see it become more of a trend.

--From the same era as Canadian Shacks but never as popular: Inappropriate Elves. Or, more broadly, the sort of not-actually-an-AU-because-it's-canon-compliant-AU that Inappropriate Elves exemplified so well: the kind of story where $Character is an elf but has been an elf all through canon and nothing changed. Or the Harry Potter AU where it isn't that they're all going to Hogwarts, it's that $Character went to Hogwarts back in the day but they were keeping it a secret! Until now! (Buzzfeed Unsolved has been very good for this because there's a trope/joke(?) in the fandom that one of the characters is actually a demon.) This doesn't necessarily have to be about secret identities - I am fine if most of the other characters also knew, as long as the audience doesn't - but about seamlessly fitting the new concept into canon as if it had always been true. (And it doesn't have to be magical/SF - I found one where a character had quietly been a CPA all along, and it was great.)

--More non-contemporary-setting setting-swap AUs. So, like, the historical/SF canons that take the "mundane" AU premises but keep the canon setting: Les Mis coffeeshop AU that's still in 19th century France. Or the Star Trek college AU where it's Starfleet Academy. For canons that do have mundane settings, do a hospital AU but the hospital is IN SPACE. And so on. (I realize that half the point of mundane AUs is that you don't have to bother with worldbuilding the setting as hard, but I don't care, I want all the non-mundane mundane AUs.)

Comments

[snickfic]

Kinkmemes. I know there are still some of these hanging on, but I miss when every fandom, even tiny ones, had a really active kinkmeme, especially when they were really discussion-heavy and had as much meta as fic. I wouldn't have the time to spend on them that I used to but I wish I could.

SAME. I don't think I was ever on one that had meta, but I feel like kinkmemes were my fannish coming-of-age, and I miss them a lot.

[melannen]

It wasn't, like, essay-level meta, but we had some good shipping and canon interpretation threads back in the day. And lots of talking-about-prompts-without-actually-writing-them.

The deadpool kinkmeme revived for about a month after the new movie came out, and I know there's some hanging on very slow in other fandoms, but I don't think there's anymore fandoms where they're home for anyone.

[china_shop]

the kind of story where $Character is an elf but has been an elf all through canon and nothing changed.

I keep wanting to make characters vampires, because it would be SO EASY to just slip that in there without changing much at all... except if nothing changes then I don't know what the story would be. ;-P

TROPE FIC! I love trope fic! :-)


I may have to steal this question and do my own version.

[melannen]

Well, based on my literature review, the plot is usually either a) Oh, I have kept this secret so long, but how can I keep it from my One True Love. But can he still love me if he knows it? or b) I have kept this secret for so long, but a Thing has happened and if I want to save everyone I must Reveal Myself!

...that's basically the plot of Guardian already, isn't it.

There's also "Character A is X! Character B says, hey, I've always wanted to do Y with an X! A and B do Y together." Those are fun. :P (That's how my one "Secretly a vampire all along" story goes.)

I would love to see other answers!

[hlagol]

I do love a Canadian shack.

[melannen]

Hard not to love!

[finch]

I expect you don't actually keep that icon around just for such an opportunity but I'm going to imagine you do anyway.

[elaiel]

I love the "cuddling for warmth" trope!

I miss "land comms" like Stargateland.

[melannen]

I never quite figured out landcomms. Were they basically the same as the drabble challenge comms in HP fandom waaaay back where everybody played for House points?

[sholio]

Kinkmemes per se aren't really my thing aside from the ones that have a lot of prompts for gen and PG shipfic (which ... kind of defeats the purpose of a kinkmeme), but I have been really loving the resurgence of commentfic prompt memes happening lately! I love that kind of thing.

AREA-AFFECT TROPES, though! I've almost never read that (about the closest I can think of is a sex pollen one I read awhile back in which the entire Avengers tower got pollen'd with what was basically cuddle pollen) and now I really want to write it, because OMG. *___*

I am also all over Canadian shacks, wherever they may be located. XD

[melannen]

Kinkmemes full of gen and PG and plot ideas are the best kinkmemes. :P

I incepted someone into doing an area-affect sex pollen one for me once (not the avengers one, a very obscure fandom) and it's still one of my favorite fics. The phrase "Every spring, the sex pollen winds sweep down from the North," was involved. I would enjoy that becoming trope-former!

[sarken]

We've got all the soulmate-adjacent stuff like Hanahaki and a/b/o and geese

G...geese? Do I want to know?

I would like more area-affect tropes. Sure, your favorite character getting sex-pollened is fun! But what if the WHOLE TOWN got sex-pollened?

YES THIS. I didn't actually get anywhere with it, but I once started a BSG fic where it turned out New Caprica was overrun with a sex pollen-producing weed. I will also maintain until my dying breath that Southfork ranch is similarly overrun with such a weed, explaining about 3/4 of the drama on Dallas.

[melannen]

The Soulmate Goose of Enforcement. Basically, instead of seeing in color or getting a tattoo or whatever, you get followed around by a murder goose that refuses to leave until you and your soulmate get together.

(I have not actually read any of these. I think it's still mostly a joke? For now?)

[slashmarks]

Setting swap AUs that keep the world like that would actually make me interested in setting swap AUs!

I hadn't heard AO3 stopped canonizing that kind of tag. How broad was the change? Any particular reason for it, or just too much work?

[melannen]

Boring internal reasons! The short version is server load; the long version is equally boring. It had nothing to do with how people use the tags, just technical/admin stuff around figuring out how to keep the wrangulator from crashing the servers, and it was decided to prioritize pairing/fandom/character tags over no-fandom freeforms. There's a process in place to get moving on it again, but there's a ton of backlog, as you might expect.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

There are gleeful tropefics in current Buffy fandom, though I can't say if there used to be more. I have a random animal transformation open in another tab right now ^^

[snickfic]

Oh really?? I would love to hear more about current Buffy fandom trends. I've been out of the fandom for so long now. Has a/b/o ever gotten a toe-hold there, for example?

[flamebyrd]

Non-mundane mundane AUs are the best thing! Even the smallest things, like setting your LotR coffee shop AU in a slightly AU modern day where we have elves/dwarves/hobbits/etc makes me so happy.

[isabellerecs]

Oh my gosh, yes. I love modern-day Middle-earth AUs. :D

[lannamichaels]

We've got all the soulmate-adjacent stuff like Hanahaki and a/b/o and geese

I have heard of... one of those. OK, google tells me that's the flowers in mouth thing. I've seen that.

Animal transformation still lives on in hockey, with that poor guy from juniors.

(And it doesn't have to be magical/SF - I found one where a character had quietly been a CPA all along, and it was great.)

Is this Rich Man's World or is there another fic where a character is secretly a CPA? Because I'd love to read it if so!

Les Mis coffeeshop AU that's still in 19th century France.

I firmly believe that the Musain crew are a present day coffeeshop AU of the French Revolution. Probably being written by Cosette.

[melannen]

The goose one is explained above. Assuming that's the other that confused you, and not A/B/O, I don't have time to explain a/b/o today. :P

Hockey does seem to be a rich source of tropes atm! Too bad it's about hockey players. :/

Yep, the Flash one! There are some other CPA AUs out there in other fandoms but all the others I know of are outright AU, not canon-compliant ones.

[pensnest]

I'm too far old school to have got the hang of kink memes, although if I'd known about the meta I might have tried harder! (I miss metafandom, too.) Once upon a time, my fandom had a lovely little comm in which people could request a prompt and a pairing and get a ficlet written for them. It was so easy to follow! There was a weekly round-up of all the prompts! (Plus I must have written forty or fifty stories as a result.)

Random animal transformation and wingfic are things I recognise from popslash fandom, and I'm sure they were in the contemporaneous ones, so I guess fandom has just moved on to whatever. The coffee shop AU swept through there as well and then blew away. Is it harder for the new Things to spread because there are *so* *many* *fandoms* now, or because fans are spread wider across the fannish media, or… are they actually spreading just as well and I'm not reading them? (Actually, this seems most likely.)

I do like your broadening of the Inappropriate Elves. Though really, Inappropriate Elves may actually have been the Best Thing Ever. Possibly. There's a lot of competition.

[melannen]

I think the move to AO3 + the fact that server issues mean the tags aren't getting canonized is part of it! But I also feel like fandom kind of stumbled onto A/B/O AU and just ...got stuck there? Like a sticky tarpit right on the edge of the Id Vortex, where all the people who would be writing wingfic or sex pollen just stumble back to A/B/O or soulmates instead because it's just a little too sticky and hot to quite ever escape from.

Inappropriate Elves are the best. I entered fandom just barely to late to take part in the original challenge.

[author_by_night]

Do you have a link to this meme? I'd love to do it myself! I looked on your tags, but I couldn't find a link.

This isn't really what you mean by more elf-fic, but I had a friend who, years ago, wrote an OC who was basically an elf, although she had a different name for them. So that made me think of her fic.

[melannen]

I don't really know if it has anywhere I can link to? It's just a thing people do on DW some Decembers where you put up a post saying "I'm doing December Meme! Give me days and topics!" or sometimes you call it January meme or take topics but not dates or seed your own topics and let people pick the dates or whatever. It started going around DW again this year right before the Tumblrpocalypse started, which was a good semi-coincidence!

It must have had an origin at some point but it had lost it years ago before it got to me.

[isabellerecs]

Oh yes, please to more non-contemporary-setting setting-swap AUs. I think I am in desperate need of a Les Mis coffeeshop AU that's still in 19th century France now.

[melannen]

I have been desperately needing one since at least 2013. :D Enlightenment-age coffeeshops are so fun; I went to the one in Colonial Williamsburg just after it opened and I should really go back someday.

[umadoshi]

I would like more of "Stick your favorite characters somewhere isolated with inadequate shelter on the flimsiest pretext you can devise and make them cuddle for warmth in front of a wood fire."

...someday I am going to write a post about the tropes that Newsflesh offers the world (either explicitly or by leaving the doors WIDE OPEN).

(My fire icon is not cozy, but I so rarely think to use it.)

[melannen]

Canons that have their own Canadian Shacks are the best canons!

[yantantether]

Oh wow, you've really made me want to write wingfic in my current fandom! Also, I'm a big fan of the idea of bringing back the Canadian Shack.

[melannen]

I always had really mixed results with wingfic: I think basically I feel like if you give someone wings, you'd better let them fly, so half the time when they didn't I just felt let-down. But oh, when they fly!

Why did we ever let Canadian Shacks fade away...

[ratcreature]

I'd love more non-contemporary-setting setting-swap AUs too, but then I'm a sucker for world building.

[melannen]

I too am a sucker for worldbuilding! As long as I'm not the one doing all the work...

[verity]

I LIKE THIS NON-CONTEMPORARY-SETTING SETTING-SWAP AU THING

[melannen]

ME TOO

IT'S GREAT

[fucktheg0ds]

I think you're onto something when you say tropefics aren't as much of a thing anymore. Which is a real shame! I haven't even been in fandom that long (about 6 years?) but I miss being able to read Canadian shack or truth serum fics about my favourite characters/ships. I used to read a lot of that stuff in the Torchwood fandom but then I left that fandom and didn't find that kind of fic anywhere else. Can we bring tropefic back into fashion??

And I want more non-contemporary setting AUs too! I'm not in the fandoms you gave examples for but those imaginary AUs sound So Good. Ugh.

Excellent post. I've been a bit disillusioned by fanfiction recently, and this helps explain why.