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