Anghraine

taiey on Tumblr responded to this post:

What do you like about super special humans in particular?

I replied:

Hmm, I’m not sure—it’s mostly a lizard brain thing.

I would imagine it’s … special powers are often very cool, by their nature, but also remote. Sometimes the whole point is that they’re remote, awe-inspiring, inaccessible—possessed by people who are just better than humans (or at least cooler!). For me, what the ‘special humans’ trope brings is a sort of immediacy alongside the shininess, an immersive sense of “like us” and of impressiveness at the same time.

Tagged: #i think that combo is the lifeblood of chosen one narratives #most of them anyway #they tend to work to make you identify w/ the chosen one or chosen people while also bringing in the appeal of shiny specialness #doesn't always work but you don't have to do a lot to /make/ it work for me personally

Caught up to double digits! This specific challenge is pretty open-ended:

Five Things! The five things are totally up to you. Maybe you want to list your favorite 5 Friends episodes, or your Top 5 fandom friends, maybe you want to list all the Broadway shows you've seen or the 5 Times K-Pop fought global hunger. Go for it. This challenge is the epitome of You Do You (in 5-ish easy steps).

I've actually been thinking about this one for awhile, and while I had a few different vague ideas, I'm going to go with...

Five Favorite Fiction Tropes

In no particular order, some just for fic and some not, and subject to change:

1. Angst -> cathartic happy ending. This can be hurt/comfort, but doesn't have to strictly fit the traditional archetype—the pain can be entirely emotional, or a mix of angst and physical suffering of some kind, or whatever, as long as it's emotionally intense for my faves and then things are made right and looking substantially up by the end. This doesn't need to involve romance (nearly all my Psych fic reading was driven by wanting something terrible happening to Shawn, and Henry feeling really bad and not being a shitty father for more than 2 minutes at a time), but it certainly can (incognitajones's "no grave to bury sorrow in" does a great job of this with Jyn/Cassian).

2. I was talking a bit more about it earlier today, under f-lock, but romantic or intense platonic relationships between people who (when the relationship forms) can expect to live for significantly different lengths of time, or have different aging patterns, or whatever. It just adds a delicious touch of bittersweetness to things. It won't necessarily carry an entire ship for me, but if I already like it ... delicious (I adore both Aegnor/Andreth and Finrod/Andreth for this). I also just like it as a world-building thing, even if I'm not invested in the specific relationship, like in Mass Effect with small details like the random overheard conversation between a young asari (lifespan: ~1000 years) and her aging salarian stepfather (lifespan: ~40 years) as she tries to comfort him.

3. Chosen ones! Yeah, I know, I know. Whatever. I love well-intentioned characters who are just super special for reasons and this has effects (they don't need to be the literal chosen one of the whole story or universe, just very special and cool by fiat, esp if it involves awesome magic powers). Adora has ruled my heart since I was tiny (pretty sure there's a corner of my brain that just has the S5 reboot She-Ra asteroid sequence on constant replay) but my love for this can encompass less centrally chosen characters who are just really special for arbitrary reasons (like book Faramir).

4. My ostensibly cis male fave whose fandom reception is profoundly filtered through gender is now a woman. Or she's a girl, for younger faves, or she's not exactly a woman, but a mixture of feminine-leaning and does not really get gender but rolls with "woman" or "girl" as a useful approximation. Obviously this is partly about personal projection, along with just being something I find interesting to think about (in terms of how the essential personality of the character would be affected by patriarchal norms, mores, heteronormativity, etc). It makes my fave hotter to me personally, it discards the gender filter usually surrounding the character and/or their fandom reception, it mixes up a usually male-dominated cast, and (since I am a creature of spite) it aggravates very annoying people. Wins all around!

5. Quasi-femme fatales: beautiful female characters who are intense, ruthless, usually haunted or damaged by something in their history, and scary to oppose? Yeah, it's a good one, especially if a) they know perfectly well how attractive they are and don't feel the need to use it (possibly they have in the past, but that's not necessary any more, and possibly ever), and b) the narrative has some sympathy for them without them losing their edge.