dear podficcer...
Saturday, 10 October 2015 01:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ailis_fictiveMy first #ITPE - I’m very excited!
(ETA 10/16/16 - now my second ITPE, but none of the below has changed...)
So the most important thing - I have very, very broad tastes in fic, and am very fond of all the fandoms I’ve asked for. I go more for a good story than for anything else; I’m going to dump a lot of information down here about my tastes and preferences to hopefully give you some ideas about where to start, but if you have a story in one of these fandoms that you love and have been dying to record, go for it. Odds are good that I’ll love it.
I don’t have any triggers or dealbreakers that aren’t really far past current mainstream fandom - extremely explicit gore/violence and bleak and awful endings are as close as I get, but it’s got to be pretty far out of the fannish mainstream to hit my boundaries. (I quite like most old-school h/c, to give you some idea.)
Some overall preferences - any rating, any pairing/moresome. Really. I am the *exact opposite* of an OTPer - I will read *any* pairing/+, and be sold (or not) by the story. I love stories that deal with non-monogamous relationships (in any form, sexual / romantic / intimate-platonic), especially if they actually deal with the complexities of having and maintaining multiple intimate relationships - they’re worthwhile, but not easy!
Speaking of sex, explicit is great! (Gen is also great. Really, I’m easy!) My biggest kink, narratively and sexually, is power exchange - sexual or not (see some of the Vorkosigan notes below…) - so most kink fic works for me. (And dub-con, as long as the narrative is aware of / acknowledges the consent problems, usually does too.) I generally prefer seriously explicit/kinky scenes to be M/M - I love (LOVE!) female-character centric stories and femslash, but explicit scenes with a cis-female character can be kind of hit-or-miss for me. (It has to do with dissonance against my own experience, so trans and GQ characters don’t tend to hit this particular block for me. Dominant male / submissive female often does, hard, in addition to coming weighted with a lot of sticky cultural baggage, so that’s usually a dynamic I avoid in fic.) This is absolutely not meant as a blanket “no explicit het/femslash” request, just that if you’re going for straight PWP, especially kinky, (which is great! Sometimes I just want to listen to ten minutes of hot sex scene) dudeslash is my preference.
Other general narrative and trope notes - I’m really, really into found-family, family of choice, and team-feels - and shipping-centric stories that acknowledge (or focus) on the people outside the main relationship. My sense of humor is a bit wonky, so straight-up comedy is a little hit-and-miss; things that are supposed to be funny don’t always strike me that way. AU’s are also a bit hit-and-miss; a lot of what I like about the dynamics and narrative focuses of a particular fandom tend to be tied up in the canon setting, so close-canon AU’s usually work better than “bandom in SPAAAAACE!” types. Again - always! - story comes first, so if you think it’s a great story, go for it! Most tropes work for me in direct proportion to how well / thoughtfully they’re written - with the exception of BDSM-verse, which is a pretty bullet-proof win. My power-exchange kink...it’s a thing. I’m a queer woman and love stories that foreground queer experience - I’m just as fond of stories that address internalized and external homophobia/biphobia as stories where everyone is happily gay/bi/etc and no-one cares.
Fandom specific (in order of preference, if you’re looking for a general guide, but I LOVE THEM ALL!)
Check! Please - All the fun of hockey fandom, main characters who don’t suffer from the issues of RPF, what’s not to love! (I do like regular hockey RPF - it’s not on my request list, mostly because there’s a lot of podfic out there already, and there’s a little bit of “it’s complicated…” in that relationship that I don’t expect you figure out - since I can’t always myself - but for purposes of this request, the important bit is that CP/Hockey RPF crossovers are fab. Recently, one featuring “Tyler Segin: Kitten Dealer” nearly made me shoot coffee out my nose.) I’m hard pressed to think of anything in this fandom that I wouldn’t be thrilled to receive (OK, I do find Johnson the metaphysical goalie to be something of a funny-once joke) but I particularly adore outsider POV (the team watching Jack and Bitty’s star-crossed romance, minor/original characters looking at this whole crazy crew...) and the ambiguous enigma that is Kent Parsons, maybe-antagonist. (Oh and Lardo rocks, of course.)
Vorkosigan Saga - so I mentioned my power exchange kink, sexual and non-? This fandom is ALL OVER the non-sexual half of that. Formal oaths, personal loyalties, oath breaking and betrayal... “Aral Vorkosigan’s Dog” tells a falling-in-loyalty story using the structure of a romance, and it’s brilliant and deeply resonant for me. I tend to gravitate to Barrayar-centric (and non-Miles-centric) stories - which is pretty common across this fandom - and especially love the previous generation - Piotr and Ezar and the fascinating dance of their power dynamics. This is also a fandom in which I especially love exploration of the women and their issues and stories - canonical, mentioned-but-not-appearing, or original characters used to explore the history and dynamics of the world.
Bandom (MCR, FOB, Panic) - oh, bandom. I came to this fandom sideways through the fic, because I’ll wander through Ao3 looking at authors and tags I enjoy, and I eventually noticed that a lot of the stories I was enjoying seemed to be about these band boys. They tend to hit my buttons for team-feels and multiple inter-related relationships, and also are a little more willing to go towards complicated and ambiguous relationships and resolutions - real life doesn’t always follow a neat narrative arc, and RPF seems more willing than FPF to reflect that. (not that I mind classical narrative structure, or even fix-it-fic that tidies up some of the messier ends of real events.) I also really *love* the self-conscious construction of identity and narrative that goes along with celebrity - stories that address that, directly or obliquely, are great! I particularly enjoy stories dealing open/multiple relationships, cross-band relationships (two constructed families learning what it means to be, effectively, in-laws.) Bandom/Hockey RPF crossovers are my secret catnip - divergent norms of identity, masculinity, and homosocial relationships, oh my! I like both current work and older stories, as far back as I can dig - I don’t care at all if they’ve been completely over-ridden by real-life events; again, it’s all about the story. Or, you know, the smut. That’s good too.
(ETA 10/16/16 - now my second ITPE, but none of the below has changed...)
So the most important thing - I have very, very broad tastes in fic, and am very fond of all the fandoms I’ve asked for. I go more for a good story than for anything else; I’m going to dump a lot of information down here about my tastes and preferences to hopefully give you some ideas about where to start, but if you have a story in one of these fandoms that you love and have been dying to record, go for it. Odds are good that I’ll love it.
I don’t have any triggers or dealbreakers that aren’t really far past current mainstream fandom - extremely explicit gore/violence and bleak and awful endings are as close as I get, but it’s got to be pretty far out of the fannish mainstream to hit my boundaries. (I quite like most old-school h/c, to give you some idea.)
Some overall preferences - any rating, any pairing/moresome. Really. I am the *exact opposite* of an OTPer - I will read *any* pairing/+, and be sold (or not) by the story. I love stories that deal with non-monogamous relationships (in any form, sexual / romantic / intimate-platonic), especially if they actually deal with the complexities of having and maintaining multiple intimate relationships - they’re worthwhile, but not easy!
Speaking of sex, explicit is great! (Gen is also great. Really, I’m easy!) My biggest kink, narratively and sexually, is power exchange - sexual or not (see some of the Vorkosigan notes below…) - so most kink fic works for me. (And dub-con, as long as the narrative is aware of / acknowledges the consent problems, usually does too.) I generally prefer seriously explicit/kinky scenes to be M/M - I love (LOVE!) female-character centric stories and femslash, but explicit scenes with a cis-female character can be kind of hit-or-miss for me. (It has to do with dissonance against my own experience, so trans and GQ characters don’t tend to hit this particular block for me. Dominant male / submissive female often does, hard, in addition to coming weighted with a lot of sticky cultural baggage, so that’s usually a dynamic I avoid in fic.) This is absolutely not meant as a blanket “no explicit het/femslash” request, just that if you’re going for straight PWP, especially kinky, (which is great! Sometimes I just want to listen to ten minutes of hot sex scene) dudeslash is my preference.
Other general narrative and trope notes - I’m really, really into found-family, family of choice, and team-feels - and shipping-centric stories that acknowledge (or focus) on the people outside the main relationship. My sense of humor is a bit wonky, so straight-up comedy is a little hit-and-miss; things that are supposed to be funny don’t always strike me that way. AU’s are also a bit hit-and-miss; a lot of what I like about the dynamics and narrative focuses of a particular fandom tend to be tied up in the canon setting, so close-canon AU’s usually work better than “bandom in SPAAAAACE!” types. Again - always! - story comes first, so if you think it’s a great story, go for it! Most tropes work for me in direct proportion to how well / thoughtfully they’re written - with the exception of BDSM-verse, which is a pretty bullet-proof win. My power-exchange kink...it’s a thing. I’m a queer woman and love stories that foreground queer experience - I’m just as fond of stories that address internalized and external homophobia/biphobia as stories where everyone is happily gay/bi/etc and no-one cares.
Fandom specific (in order of preference, if you’re looking for a general guide, but I LOVE THEM ALL!)
Check! Please - All the fun of hockey fandom, main characters who don’t suffer from the issues of RPF, what’s not to love! (I do like regular hockey RPF - it’s not on my request list, mostly because there’s a lot of podfic out there already, and there’s a little bit of “it’s complicated…” in that relationship that I don’t expect you figure out - since I can’t always myself - but for purposes of this request, the important bit is that CP/Hockey RPF crossovers are fab. Recently, one featuring “Tyler Segin: Kitten Dealer” nearly made me shoot coffee out my nose.) I’m hard pressed to think of anything in this fandom that I wouldn’t be thrilled to receive (OK, I do find Johnson the metaphysical goalie to be something of a funny-once joke) but I particularly adore outsider POV (the team watching Jack and Bitty’s star-crossed romance, minor/original characters looking at this whole crazy crew...) and the ambiguous enigma that is Kent Parsons, maybe-antagonist. (Oh and Lardo rocks, of course.)
Vorkosigan Saga - so I mentioned my power exchange kink, sexual and non-? This fandom is ALL OVER the non-sexual half of that. Formal oaths, personal loyalties, oath breaking and betrayal... “Aral Vorkosigan’s Dog” tells a falling-in-loyalty story using the structure of a romance, and it’s brilliant and deeply resonant for me. I tend to gravitate to Barrayar-centric (and non-Miles-centric) stories - which is pretty common across this fandom - and especially love the previous generation - Piotr and Ezar and the fascinating dance of their power dynamics. This is also a fandom in which I especially love exploration of the women and their issues and stories - canonical, mentioned-but-not-appearing, or original characters used to explore the history and dynamics of the world.
Bandom (MCR, FOB, Panic) - oh, bandom. I came to this fandom sideways through the fic, because I’ll wander through Ao3 looking at authors and tags I enjoy, and I eventually noticed that a lot of the stories I was enjoying seemed to be about these band boys. They tend to hit my buttons for team-feels and multiple inter-related relationships, and also are a little more willing to go towards complicated and ambiguous relationships and resolutions - real life doesn’t always follow a neat narrative arc, and RPF seems more willing than FPF to reflect that. (not that I mind classical narrative structure, or even fix-it-fic that tidies up some of the messier ends of real events.) I also really *love* the self-conscious construction of identity and narrative that goes along with celebrity - stories that address that, directly or obliquely, are great! I particularly enjoy stories dealing open/multiple relationships, cross-band relationships (two constructed families learning what it means to be, effectively, in-laws.) Bandom/Hockey RPF crossovers are my secret catnip - divergent norms of identity, masculinity, and homosocial relationships, oh my! I like both current work and older stories, as far back as I can dig - I don’t care at all if they’ve been completely over-ridden by real-life events; again, it’s all about the story. Or, you know, the smut. That’s good too.
