There's A Woman Inside Of All Of Us Who Never Seems To Get Enough

[redbrunja]

 Okay, so I haven't done the last two week's fannish5, because two weeks ago, my answers to the question (Five reasons you only get into one fandom at a time - or - five reasons you are multi-fannish") just didn't parse nicely into five answers, and this week's (Name five imaginary places you would like to go on vacation) frustrated me, because honestly, the places I'd like to go would require me to be printed with special skills to not die.

So, I'm making my own questions and posing it to you.

So, flist, tell me five of your bulletproof kinks in storytelling.

I talk about a lot of them here, but I'm going to give you five more, to start the ball rolling:

1.) Nakama.

2.) Gender-reversals. Everything I'm really digging right now has some nice gender reversals deep in the text.

3.) Complicated father-daughter relationships. (See, Jack and Sydney Bristow, Keith and Veronica Mars, Noah and Shiloh from Repo!) This ties into the idea of gender reversals. So many author just focus on the whole father/son dynamic.

4.) Glasses. Especially hot, dark hair guys with glasses.

5.) Romance with an equal. I like contrast between two people in a pairing, but I also want them to also be equals in some kind of root way. Zuko and Katara are actually a really good example of this. Despite their sociocultural and (initial) nationalistic differences, they're very similar in a lot of deep ways (importance of family, the ways they decide to protect their family, a total disrespect of other people's property....)

Comments

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Partnership/Loyalty/Nakama. Loyalty is one of those storytelling tropes where it can be so bad when done wrong (see: Twilight), but when it's done right, I will love it like nothing else

Agreed. There is something about those people who will always stand by those other people that just makes something so deliciously epic.

Sometimes tying into the above, and sometimes not, really good villains. Villains who are intelligent, human, and win sometimes. That's one thing that bugs me more, even, than cardboard cutout villains- when the Forces of Evil never, never win and by the Final Battle there is absolutely no suspense because I don't honestly believe they can do anything. I love storytellers who give their baddies some victories.


So much word for this. It's why I adore Avatar and Soul Eater and while I always rooted for Team Rocket back when I was watching pokemon.

Crossdressing! For all of the very good reasons that have been stated above, when I'm thinking about it- and otherwise just because it's hot.

For me, this usually works best female-to-male, but male-to-female can be fun too.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

5) Master/servant dynamics. Another thing that can be really bad when done wrong, but amazing when done right. I like it when there's a strong enough bond between the master and the servant that the power dynamics start to blur- particularly if the servant is the more capable/powerful of the two (see: FFVII again, and Vassalord).

Are you reading Fumi Yoshinaga already? She has a definite fondness for doing twisty and uncomfortable-but-compelling things with relationships with big power differentials, including master/servant pairings -- and she'll then throw in so many additional twists of age differences and quasi-familial relationships that trying to figure out just who really has the most power gets incredibly blurry.

(Mmmm, Vassalord. *licks yummy Rayflo icon*)