Entry tags:
101 fic kinks
Yeah, every so often I do a meme. :D
This is the "list 101 things you like to see in fiction" meme.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stultiloquentia has a list of people's lists following the spread of the meme.
These are not all sex-related, in fact most of 'em aren't. And they're not bulletproof: most of them make me as unhappy when badly done as happy when well done, unfortunately, and many of them are very frequently screwed up. (But I still give people credit for trying!)
1. Poetry: being written, being quoted, being discussed.
2. Poetry being recited during sex.
3. The broccoli test: no, I mean literally, grocery shopping as a test of a relationship.
4. Platonic domesticity; they're basically married but haven't realized yet that they should be having sex, or they're basically married and know very well that they shouldn't have sex, and don't.
5. Telepathy during sex; telepathy as sex; telepathy being better than sex. Also, just telepathy.
6. Altered mental states (beyond just being drunk), esp. synesthesia, euphoria, heightened or extra senses, and things of that family.
7. Body modification: cyborgs, symbiotes, uploads, biopunk, and just plain old tattoos and piercings. And everything in between. Also, certain ways of writing about (m)preg.
8. Sensuality, as distinct from sexuality; both in mood and description, and in the ways a character interacts with the world.
9. Creativity when it comes to sex toys and the making and use of them (especially when there is magic or advanced technology involved, and it is being re-purposed in unintended ways.)
10. Xeno : xenosex yes!, but also just generally characters who are very non-humanoid in body and/or mind. Includes tentacles, but not limited to them, no. :D
11. Ways of having several personalities share a body, esp. consensually or semi-consensually, and the echoes that linger after.
12. Two people having sex that is all about a third person who isn't present (and they both know this is what it's about, and do it anyway.)
13. Corsets, petticoats, and historical women's underthings in general really.
14. Women in entirely practical underwear; bonus points for gray cotton tank tops or sports bras, white briefs, or men's underwear. Extra bonus points for historical women wearing (in-period) practical underwear.
15. Plaid flannel shirts, on anyone, but particularly on people one would not usually expect to wear them.
16. Men's shirts being worn by people who are not men.
17. Shirts/tops of any kind that are way too big, so they hang off the shoulders and wrists and come down past mid-thigh.
18. Any clothing or cloth that is "soft with wear" or equivalent.
19. Motion for the sheer joy of motion: dancing/running/flying/sailing/wheeling/fighting/fencing/touching/falling, because you can and because it's wonderful.
20. Sex that goes on forever; sex where orgasm isn't the goal (or the end); sex that's about touching & being touched as much as about arousal.
21. Epistolary, told through letters and diaries
22. Documentary, told through articles/photos/transcripts/books/etc.
23. Storytelling, the Canterbury Tales setup, stories-within-stories
24. Outsider POVs on a team, relationship, or subculture.
25. Outsider POVs on the entire human race or similarly large perspectives.
26. Unreliable narrator, especially with a close narrative voice
27. Omniscient pov: "They didn't know it, but things were about to get even worse"
28. Omnipotent pov: "One might think the author had tormented them enough, but no, she had even worse up her sleeve."
29. Fourth-wall-breaking, wherein the characters know they're in a story and take advantage of that fact.
30. Genre awareness, wherein the characters know what happens in these sorts of stories, and act on those assumptions (even if they don't realize they're fictional.)
31. Metafiction in which the characters comment on (or write!) fanfiction or fiction in their genre.
32. Crossovers where people in one universe meet people that are fictional in their universe, and vice versa.
33. Crossovers where people already know each other before the crossover starts (brought in to consult, met at a conference, served together in 'Nam, etc.) The more dissimilar the canons on the surface, the more I glee when this happens.
34. Although really, just any crossovers at all, period.
35. Footnotes!!
36. Books (or songs or other media) that exist only in the fictional world but are extensively developed; bonus points for extensive quotations, using the fictional medium as a structure for the story, building a fandom for it, or using one that appears (fictionally) in more than one universe.
37. Hints at extended stories & backstories that will never get told but give the (fictional) world unexplored territory at the edge of the map.
38. Really strong and vivid character voices (and body language, too.)
39. Blatant freudian symbolism, especially if it's so blatant the characters have to comment on it.
40. Cursing as a fine art.
41. Characters deviously manipulating each other, preferably mutually.
42. Characters deviously manipulating each other for their own good.
43. Character B making a plan depending on the fact that Character A is making a plan depending on the fact that Character B is making a plan depending on Character A .... with the implication that they can predict each other's reactions so well that all the plans come out perfectly anyway.
44. Dramatic irony, in which we know something they don't. (As distinct from the false tension in which everything would be solved if they'd just talk to each other! They have to have a good *reason* why they can't just talk to each other.)
45. Dramatic revelations, in which someone decides to just tell everyone despite the very good reasons, and does it with impeccable timing and staging. (Bonus points if everyone knew anyway but didn't want to be the one to bring it up.)
46. Identity porn: in which characters who use multiple identities, work undercover, or are just really good at compartmentalizing in a less formal way, play tricks with role-switching.
47. A character who is the very best at what he does having to be rescued by the one person who is better at it (or, at least, just as good.) Bonus if the better-at-it person is visibly disprivileged in comparison and not ashamed of it.
48. "In the meantime" relationships, where both characters know it isn't epic OTP but they have fun anyway, break up amiably if something else comes along, and stay good friends after.
49. Actual, realistically complex but still happy & longterm poly relationships with poly-identified people in them. (Especially if it's more complicated than just a stable threesome, but less open than just sleeping around. Not that I object to either of those as story premises either.)
50. An intimate but not conventional relationship in which nobody outside the relationship can tell whether they're having sex or not, and they aren't particularly interested in telling.
51. The families you choose.
52. The families you don't choose, but eventually decide you're glad you have them anyway, mostly.
53. The families who choose you, whether you think you need them or not.
54. Relationships with decades (or centuries) of backstory.
55. People on opposite sides of a conflict who like and respect each other, and don't see anything strange or angst-worthy about this fact.
56. Characters who have a private language that nobody else understands.
57. A character who speaks a different language than everybody else, but communicates fine anyway (with the implication that the characters care enough to learn each other's languages, and respect & trust enough to not make anyone switch.)
58. Characters who appear to communicate fine with each other without needing any language at all.
59. Pack dynamics! Being accepted by the pack, being defended because you're pack, jostling for dominance that never (quite) gets out of hand, people who think of themselves as alphas or loners accepting a beta role and realizing they're happy in it (because they've finally found an alpha they respect, of course.) Can involve actual dog/wolf/dolphin/dinosaur packs, be an explicit metaphor, or just be visible in the interactions. <-- cannot say how much I would love to find a good femmeslash story built on this.
60. In a related matter, dogsledding. (I now read slash in three fandoms with canon dogsledding, okay? I don't *know* why!) Also, long man v. nature treks across really hostile terrain in general. (Huddling for warmth not necessary, isolation together is.)
61. Characters who are used to a relatively high level of technology and/or infrastructure dropped in to long-term subsistence living; survivalist details a yay.
62. Competent animals: not soulbonds or sarcastic sidekicks, just animals that are smart and well-trained and experienced and have a job to do and can communicate quite as well as they need to, but are still animals.
63. Competence in general, anyone who's really good at what they do, especially when said competence is well-appreciated by those who work with them.
64. Craftmanship: making something with your hands, and doing it better than necessary, just because it deserves it.
65. Love stories involving vehicles, places, or abstractions.
66. People who really, really love what they do, and appreciate how lucky they are that they get to do it.
67. Stories where everything goes right, for a change.
68. They know better, but they do it anyway.
69. Finally getting an unimpeachably good reason to do something that you'd been wanting to do for all the wrong reasons.
70. People who are perfectly happy to be underestimated, and use that fact all the time.
71. Someone who thought they could never do something learning that yes, they can, and do it well.
72. A character easily and fluidly navigating a subculture that nobody knew they were a part of.
73. Stories that screw with gender roles and gender expectations.
74. Kid characters who are realistic but likable.
75. Kids living with families they chose or made rather than their biological ones.
76. Stories about immortality and its implications.
77. Stories about godhood and its implications.
78. The power of names and naming.
79. Linguistics in general.
80. Making music as a means of expressing emotion (especially if it's the only way a character will articulate said emotions.)
81. Licking rocks: I have lost count of the number of fandoms I read in which a character has, at some point, licked a rock. It's a signpost for somebody who is not willing to let irrational taboos stand in the way of learning and knowing.
82. SCIENCE! Mad science, bad science, science indistinguishable from magic, magic with a thin veneer of logic, technobabble, research that vaguely follows a scientific method but skips all the boring parts. A story that revolves around a well-tuned bit of pseudoscience will get me every time.
83. Actual science: stories about the boring parts of science, and stories that are built around the fictional implications of a quite real bit of research or theory, hard science, soft science, math, alchemy, even well-researched ritual or traditional magic.
84. Revolution, the romantic story of the overthrow of the evil government and birth of the utopia, or the discovery and dissemination of the discovery that will change everything! Or, for some reason, usually both at once.
85. Social change: stories about the boring and grinding and hard and often difficult-to-believe-in work of creating real and enduring social change.
86. Publicity, often as part of coming-out stories, but in general about dealing with being or becoming a public figure and learning to responibly and effectively use the power that comes with it.
87. War games! Training simulations! Especially when things go wrong and the simulation becomes real partway through. Or when the trainees take it more seriously than they're meant to and end up defeating not only the scenario but the people running the scenario. But just plain stories about war games and people learning things from them are also yay.
88. Stories set during war, homefront or battlefield or command, AU or historical or made-up, I don't care.
89. Stories about games, and playing games. Particularly if it's a fictional game, or it's a way of finding a connection between two people from very disparate backgrounds. But a good round of Monopoly or Mankala or Never Have I Ever can hardly ever go wrong.
90. Deciding you don't like the rules of the game, and changing them. Or just interpreting them in a *very* creative way.
91. Baseball!
92. VR, dream sequences, time loops, etc. Not as a cheat, but when the time spent in the no-consquences world does have real consequences after all, even if they're only psychological.
93. Worldbuilding, the more convincing and less 21st-century-America-like the better.
94. Stories with a strong sense of place, whether the place is outer space or 14th century Timbuktu or the convenience store on the corner.
95. Fiction with a lot of nature writing in it, and by "nature writing" I mean full of good science but also very pretty to read.
95. Religion, mythology, folklore, forteana, or fairy tales.
96. Stories about parenting, teaching, and all the other ways of preparing the next generation and the ways it changes this one.
97. Apocalypse/disaster stories that aren't about surviving or tragedy, but are about pulling together and helping other people through it.
98. Therapy. (*Good* therapy.)
99. Stories that take all the assorted trauma, tragedy, grief, and assorted other psychological and emotional damage that accumulates for your average serial character, and lets them actually take time to work through it and heal a little, even if getting to the place where they can heal hurts a lot.
100. Inappropriate elves. :D (No, really, stories where there's a community of people who are different living secretly but peaceably among us, and a character is a member of that community, whether they know it or not. Usually they have special powers, but finding the community is the important part.)
101. Stories where a character goes off to Europe/Beta Colony/Coruscant/New York/etc. and comes back sophisticated and experienced and glamorous and street-smart and with lots of new skills and connections, and suddenly, everybody realizes that they are, and have always been, awesome.
...yes, we are still snowed in, what gave you that idea? Also, wow, my list of kinks seems to be considerably more upbeat than most of the other lists I'm reading! I like stories where people get to be happy and functional. D:
(I was actually planning to try to make the Holmes vid that's currently haunting my dreams, but after I did all the clipping, I realized that trying to make a narrative-heavy, 8-minute-long constructed reality vid about a character for whom there is less than four minutes of footage total *might* be a tad ambitious when I haven't vidded in five years. So I got an insane Mary/Irene pre-movie bunny instead and have been re-reading "Sign of the Four" by candlelight.)
This is the "list 101 things you like to see in fiction" meme.
stultiloquentia has a list of people's lists following the spread of the meme.These are not all sex-related, in fact most of 'em aren't. And they're not bulletproof: most of them make me as unhappy when badly done as happy when well done, unfortunately, and many of them are very frequently screwed up. (But I still give people credit for trying!)
1. Poetry: being written, being quoted, being discussed.
2. Poetry being recited during sex.
3. The broccoli test: no, I mean literally, grocery shopping as a test of a relationship.
4. Platonic domesticity; they're basically married but haven't realized yet that they should be having sex, or they're basically married and know very well that they shouldn't have sex, and don't.
5. Telepathy during sex; telepathy as sex; telepathy being better than sex. Also, just telepathy.
6. Altered mental states (beyond just being drunk), esp. synesthesia, euphoria, heightened or extra senses, and things of that family.
7. Body modification: cyborgs, symbiotes, uploads, biopunk, and just plain old tattoos and piercings. And everything in between. Also, certain ways of writing about (m)preg.
8. Sensuality, as distinct from sexuality; both in mood and description, and in the ways a character interacts with the world.
9. Creativity when it comes to sex toys and the making and use of them (especially when there is magic or advanced technology involved, and it is being re-purposed in unintended ways.)
10. Xeno : xenosex yes!, but also just generally characters who are very non-humanoid in body and/or mind. Includes tentacles, but not limited to them, no. :D
11. Ways of having several personalities share a body, esp. consensually or semi-consensually, and the echoes that linger after.
12. Two people having sex that is all about a third person who isn't present (and they both know this is what it's about, and do it anyway.)
13. Corsets, petticoats, and historical women's underthings in general really.
14. Women in entirely practical underwear; bonus points for gray cotton tank tops or sports bras, white briefs, or men's underwear. Extra bonus points for historical women wearing (in-period) practical underwear.
15. Plaid flannel shirts, on anyone, but particularly on people one would not usually expect to wear them.
16. Men's shirts being worn by people who are not men.
17. Shirts/tops of any kind that are way too big, so they hang off the shoulders and wrists and come down past mid-thigh.
18. Any clothing or cloth that is "soft with wear" or equivalent.
19. Motion for the sheer joy of motion: dancing/running/flying/sailing/wheeling/fighting/fencing/touching/falling, because you can and because it's wonderful.
20. Sex that goes on forever; sex where orgasm isn't the goal (or the end); sex that's about touching & being touched as much as about arousal.
21. Epistolary, told through letters and diaries
22. Documentary, told through articles/photos/transcripts/books/etc.
23. Storytelling, the Canterbury Tales setup, stories-within-stories
24. Outsider POVs on a team, relationship, or subculture.
25. Outsider POVs on the entire human race or similarly large perspectives.
26. Unreliable narrator, especially with a close narrative voice
27. Omniscient pov: "They didn't know it, but things were about to get even worse"
28. Omnipotent pov: "One might think the author had tormented them enough, but no, she had even worse up her sleeve."
29. Fourth-wall-breaking, wherein the characters know they're in a story and take advantage of that fact.
30. Genre awareness, wherein the characters know what happens in these sorts of stories, and act on those assumptions (even if they don't realize they're fictional.)
31. Metafiction in which the characters comment on (or write!) fanfiction or fiction in their genre.
32. Crossovers where people in one universe meet people that are fictional in their universe, and vice versa.
33. Crossovers where people already know each other before the crossover starts (brought in to consult, met at a conference, served together in 'Nam, etc.) The more dissimilar the canons on the surface, the more I glee when this happens.
34. Although really, just any crossovers at all, period.
35. Footnotes!!
36. Books (or songs or other media) that exist only in the fictional world but are extensively developed; bonus points for extensive quotations, using the fictional medium as a structure for the story, building a fandom for it, or using one that appears (fictionally) in more than one universe.
37. Hints at extended stories & backstories that will never get told but give the (fictional) world unexplored territory at the edge of the map.
38. Really strong and vivid character voices (and body language, too.)
39. Blatant freudian symbolism, especially if it's so blatant the characters have to comment on it.
40. Cursing as a fine art.
41. Characters deviously manipulating each other, preferably mutually.
42. Characters deviously manipulating each other for their own good.
43. Character B making a plan depending on the fact that Character A is making a plan depending on the fact that Character B is making a plan depending on Character A .... with the implication that they can predict each other's reactions so well that all the plans come out perfectly anyway.
44. Dramatic irony, in which we know something they don't. (As distinct from the false tension in which everything would be solved if they'd just talk to each other! They have to have a good *reason* why they can't just talk to each other.)
45. Dramatic revelations, in which someone decides to just tell everyone despite the very good reasons, and does it with impeccable timing and staging. (Bonus points if everyone knew anyway but didn't want to be the one to bring it up.)
46. Identity porn: in which characters who use multiple identities, work undercover, or are just really good at compartmentalizing in a less formal way, play tricks with role-switching.
47. A character who is the very best at what he does having to be rescued by the one person who is better at it (or, at least, just as good.) Bonus if the better-at-it person is visibly disprivileged in comparison and not ashamed of it.
48. "In the meantime" relationships, where both characters know it isn't epic OTP but they have fun anyway, break up amiably if something else comes along, and stay good friends after.
49. Actual, realistically complex but still happy & longterm poly relationships with poly-identified people in them. (Especially if it's more complicated than just a stable threesome, but less open than just sleeping around. Not that I object to either of those as story premises either.)
50. An intimate but not conventional relationship in which nobody outside the relationship can tell whether they're having sex or not, and they aren't particularly interested in telling.
51. The families you choose.
52. The families you don't choose, but eventually decide you're glad you have them anyway, mostly.
53. The families who choose you, whether you think you need them or not.
54. Relationships with decades (or centuries) of backstory.
55. People on opposite sides of a conflict who like and respect each other, and don't see anything strange or angst-worthy about this fact.
56. Characters who have a private language that nobody else understands.
57. A character who speaks a different language than everybody else, but communicates fine anyway (with the implication that the characters care enough to learn each other's languages, and respect & trust enough to not make anyone switch.)
58. Characters who appear to communicate fine with each other without needing any language at all.
59. Pack dynamics! Being accepted by the pack, being defended because you're pack, jostling for dominance that never (quite) gets out of hand, people who think of themselves as alphas or loners accepting a beta role and realizing they're happy in it (because they've finally found an alpha they respect, of course.) Can involve actual dog/wolf/dolphin/dinosaur packs, be an explicit metaphor, or just be visible in the interactions. <-- cannot say how much I would love to find a good femmeslash story built on this.
60. In a related matter, dogsledding. (I now read slash in three fandoms with canon dogsledding, okay? I don't *know* why!) Also, long man v. nature treks across really hostile terrain in general. (Huddling for warmth not necessary, isolation together is.)
61. Characters who are used to a relatively high level of technology and/or infrastructure dropped in to long-term subsistence living; survivalist details a yay.
62. Competent animals: not soulbonds or sarcastic sidekicks, just animals that are smart and well-trained and experienced and have a job to do and can communicate quite as well as they need to, but are still animals.
63. Competence in general, anyone who's really good at what they do, especially when said competence is well-appreciated by those who work with them.
64. Craftmanship: making something with your hands, and doing it better than necessary, just because it deserves it.
65. Love stories involving vehicles, places, or abstractions.
66. People who really, really love what they do, and appreciate how lucky they are that they get to do it.
67. Stories where everything goes right, for a change.
68. They know better, but they do it anyway.
69. Finally getting an unimpeachably good reason to do something that you'd been wanting to do for all the wrong reasons.
70. People who are perfectly happy to be underestimated, and use that fact all the time.
71. Someone who thought they could never do something learning that yes, they can, and do it well.
72. A character easily and fluidly navigating a subculture that nobody knew they were a part of.
73. Stories that screw with gender roles and gender expectations.
74. Kid characters who are realistic but likable.
75. Kids living with families they chose or made rather than their biological ones.
76. Stories about immortality and its implications.
77. Stories about godhood and its implications.
78. The power of names and naming.
79. Linguistics in general.
80. Making music as a means of expressing emotion (especially if it's the only way a character will articulate said emotions.)
81. Licking rocks: I have lost count of the number of fandoms I read in which a character has, at some point, licked a rock. It's a signpost for somebody who is not willing to let irrational taboos stand in the way of learning and knowing.
82. SCIENCE! Mad science, bad science, science indistinguishable from magic, magic with a thin veneer of logic, technobabble, research that vaguely follows a scientific method but skips all the boring parts. A story that revolves around a well-tuned bit of pseudoscience will get me every time.
83. Actual science: stories about the boring parts of science, and stories that are built around the fictional implications of a quite real bit of research or theory, hard science, soft science, math, alchemy, even well-researched ritual or traditional magic.
84. Revolution, the romantic story of the overthrow of the evil government and birth of the utopia, or the discovery and dissemination of the discovery that will change everything! Or, for some reason, usually both at once.
85. Social change: stories about the boring and grinding and hard and often difficult-to-believe-in work of creating real and enduring social change.
86. Publicity, often as part of coming-out stories, but in general about dealing with being or becoming a public figure and learning to responibly and effectively use the power that comes with it.
87. War games! Training simulations! Especially when things go wrong and the simulation becomes real partway through. Or when the trainees take it more seriously than they're meant to and end up defeating not only the scenario but the people running the scenario. But just plain stories about war games and people learning things from them are also yay.
88. Stories set during war, homefront or battlefield or command, AU or historical or made-up, I don't care.
89. Stories about games, and playing games. Particularly if it's a fictional game, or it's a way of finding a connection between two people from very disparate backgrounds. But a good round of Monopoly or Mankala or Never Have I Ever can hardly ever go wrong.
90. Deciding you don't like the rules of the game, and changing them. Or just interpreting them in a *very* creative way.
91. Baseball!
92. VR, dream sequences, time loops, etc. Not as a cheat, but when the time spent in the no-consquences world does have real consequences after all, even if they're only psychological.
93. Worldbuilding, the more convincing and less 21st-century-America-like the better.
94. Stories with a strong sense of place, whether the place is outer space or 14th century Timbuktu or the convenience store on the corner.
95. Fiction with a lot of nature writing in it, and by "nature writing" I mean full of good science but also very pretty to read.
95. Religion, mythology, folklore, forteana, or fairy tales.
96. Stories about parenting, teaching, and all the other ways of preparing the next generation and the ways it changes this one.
97. Apocalypse/disaster stories that aren't about surviving or tragedy, but are about pulling together and helping other people through it.
98. Therapy. (*Good* therapy.)
99. Stories that take all the assorted trauma, tragedy, grief, and assorted other psychological and emotional damage that accumulates for your average serial character, and lets them actually take time to work through it and heal a little, even if getting to the place where they can heal hurts a lot.
100. Inappropriate elves. :D (No, really, stories where there's a community of people who are different living secretly but peaceably among us, and a character is a member of that community, whether they know it or not. Usually they have special powers, but finding the community is the important part.)
101. Stories where a character goes off to Europe/Beta Colony/Coruscant/New York/etc. and comes back sophisticated and experienced and glamorous and street-smart and with lots of new skills and connections, and suddenly, everybody realizes that they are, and have always been, awesome.
...yes, we are still snowed in, what gave you that idea? Also, wow, my list of kinks seems to be considerably more upbeat than most of the other lists I'm reading! I like stories where people get to be happy and functional. D:
(I was actually planning to try to make the Holmes vid that's currently haunting my dreams, but after I did all the clipping, I realized that trying to make a narrative-heavy, 8-minute-long constructed reality vid about a character for whom there is less than four minutes of footage total *might* be a tad ambitious when I haven't vidded in five years. So I got an insane Mary/Irene pre-movie bunny instead and have been re-reading "Sign of the Four" by candlelight.)