Well I've been tagged, so let's do this thing! I'm gonna talk so much y'all are gonna regret asking. ✌️ (Thank you @shreedle!)
Slow burn or love at first sight?
Look, man, I'll take either if you write it well. Give me a reason to believe in it and I'm there. I love both. Absolutely choice. What if you loved someone no matter what for so long that you felt like you were drowning every time you were near them, but you couldn't stand to be away, either, because that was just a different drowning? But what if you saw someone and something tiny but very important inside of you shifted and refused to go back, ever, even though you don't know them and you don't know why you're feeling this?
Fake dating or secret dating?
Secret dating, because having a really controversial reason to hide it can be awfully engaging as a plot thing. But fake dating can be extremely funny and cute too.
Only one bed or long distance correspondence?
I will put as many characters in the just one bed as I feel like. We are baking a whole polycule in that one bed. Nobody's gonna make it out single. They might come out as QPPs of some weird flavor if it's a more aroace kind of thing, but either way they're gonna go, "Wait, this is comfortable, why do I have feelings about this," and it's gonna get emotionally involved. Everyone in. There's only one but you'll all fit somehow.
If you think about it, I write reploids as being platonically physically affectionate to the point that they almost all self-enforce Only One Bed even if there are several. They'd really rather just do a sleepypile with their loved ones where possible.
I do fuck nasty with amnesia, but that takes pretty specific circumstances. Beating the shit out of The Blorbo never goes out of style. Like, I don't point out it as such but you really can play Spot The Whump with some of my fic (I have some WIP stuff brewing that's way less subtle). And then having someone take care of the character? Delicious. Wish fulfillment. The disabled with chronic pain impulse to think "what if I hurted SO so bad that everyone cared a whole lot and worried about me and took my pain seriously and saved me and made me feel better" is real and it WILL get you.
I feel like a lot of fantasy is just...really rote and bland. D&D-flavored wallpaper isn't my jam. If it's done well, I'm all in, but I have developed a taste for sci-fi. Although I am extremely one of those picky bastards that gets turned off by the science not making sense. So there's that. Life is hard, man.
Mutual pining or domestic bliss?
I need these idiots stealing glances and sighing forlornly and dreaming about each other's hands and lingering just a little too long and shit like that, man. Make like a tree and pine already! Hell, make it more than two, I love polycules. I'm starting to think writing just two people in one relationship isn't that interesting to me right now. EVERYBODY PINE IMMEDIATELY.
Next you're gonna ask me "oxygen or water?". No! I can't pick. Besides, like, both at once? Sex is fucking silly (haha pun). Big fan of fluffy smut, and smutty fluff. I've never once had Totally Serious Sex Where It Wasn't Kinda Funny. I don't believe it exists, mostly. Maybe occasionally but the contrast between hot and funny just makes it pop more to me. It's like spicy honey, that shit's good.
Canon compliant or fix-it?
Canon is broken, is too small. I take a hammer and fix the canon! Super glue canon back to its big size!
Reincarnation or character death?
Both have uses. Not really interchangeable. I've done both too. Different merits and flaws, you know? It's apples and oranges to me. Do you want the loud-quiet, heavy resignation of grief or the shocking wonder of finding that they're back? Those are not the same but both are very good!
One-shot or multichapter?
I want nothing more than to get on a really cool ride and discover that I'm in no danger of running out of track any time soon. This will not surprise anybody who knows my total words to total works ratio.
Arranged marriage or accidental marriage?
There is something really interesting to me about the idea that everyone around you has chosen your fate for you, hopefully with your interests in mind, but not only do you not really get a choice, but that fate is another person in the same situation as you. Maybe you know them. Maybe you've known them forever and it's been a static feature of your life that You Will Always Have Them. Maybe you met on your wedding day. But they're here, too, with the same fears and hopes as you. Can you build a good relationship on that? Can you become a team even if neither of you asked for this? There's so much there.
I need an excuse to write this because I'd love to examine arranged marriage from a realistic viewpoint. It's normal in many cultures! It's a fact of life for millions and yes, it can be very bad, but many of them do find themselves happy at the end of it. An American worldview just goes, "No, fuck that, that's horrible, that infringes on your Individual Freedom," but we're not the whole world (thank fuck) and I don't need to subscribe to that assumption. I think it can make a really charming love story, actually, if two strangers find that actually they're quite compatible, and conveniently already married, so now you've got to befriend your own spouse. And again, that is actually not such an unusual situation in reality! Why not run with it?
High school romance or middle aged romance?
Bruh, if I could just be middle aged for my entire life...look, I would need a really good motivation to vote for high school. I wanna see people who are settled and know themselves-ish and are maybe a little world-weary get surprised by finding out that the middle is not the end.
(I can't say shit, though, the age gap I write between X and Glitch is something like 90 years. Glitch is an antiques chaser. The only one in that group with a 'normal' age gap is Mack. I don't know what the fuck age is.)
Time travel or isolated together?
Lock them in the cabin or cave or whatever where it's really cold and there's only one bed. I'm telling you, man. Any greater-than-two,-inclusive number of people. Nobody's coming out of this single.
I tried but I honestly don't have a strong opinion here. Both are okay, but I don't feel much about either. It's more what you do with it for all of these. I'll read damn near anything if it's done well and interestingly.
Science my fiction, baby. Making things tech is just fun. I like magic, but I somehow have a harder time inserting it where it wasn't.
Body swap AU or genderbent AU?
Sell the gender changes to me. I wanna see how this is different. I feel like a lot of trans fans can kinda hate genderbent things sometimes but I don't get it. I think it's a fascinating character study.
(If I'd genderbent X in the Every Endverse, I strongly suspect she would have struggled badly with selective mutism. Male-presenting X already struggles to speak his mind. How much worse would it be if she presented female and then human macho military culture imprinted her with a powerful sense that she shouldn't talk over anybody ever? Ouch.)
I want to see blood and I want to see tears and I want to see someone absolutely break the fuck down and it's gonna be so cathartic, guys. It's time to fucking CRY, prepare your eyes.
I will blow up anything to serve the plot. The thing is, we've had apocalypses on Earth before, in reality. We'll have more. The end is never the end. No matter how bad it gets, we are like weeds and we will still take root in the cracks and find ways to go on. The storyscape is a mental construct and a symbol itself. You know?
I don't go for all the zombie stuff either. That's rooted in a fear of the Political Other who can't be reasoned with, who will infect everyone around you to be like them and destroy your culture and devour your self and convert you to them through violence. I don't like it. The vibes are rancid. The most I fuck with Zombies As Plot is like, Project Zomboid and Zombies, Run!. (Wow, I sure did analyze that.)
The apocalypse, the way I use it, is there because it can be overcome. It creates a conflict that demands that everyone work together or perish completely. The Eurasia Colony destroyed the Earth but the Earth refused to die. Humans remained. Reploids remained. Everyone and everything was permanently scarred and everyone lost so much but they're still alive, so there's still hope. Things can and must get better, and it must be because people overcame their divisions, even while the apocalypse deepened those divisions.
I'm writing political shit, man. Like I'll fully acknowledge that. I've thought about it way more deeply than you'd think (or maybe exactly as much as you'd think if we've talked about writing before). I could do this for hours without repeating myself. "Fanfic isn't activism" unless it kind of is. The message is very intentional and the apocalypse is an analogue for the real life situation. We gotta get our shit straight. Unfortunately I don't walk super good and I've got about enough energy to do anything for four hours maximum any given day, so I'm not in much of a position to get up in front of crowds, but I found my weird tiny megaphone anyway. It's very niche but I'm being very serious!
Also mundane is boring and I viscerally hate stories where the main character enters another realm, however literally or metaphorically, but goes home to normality at the end. Fuck that. That's not how it works. X is staying in the quarantine zone and he's becoming a Maverick and he's in the resistance and he's happier and he's not alone anymore. Being so changed by your experiences that you no longer fit into your old life is a real thing that happens. I've been off-script for what everyone thought I should be since I was 26 and I've only kept going since. I own my narrative. Sometimes you just have to leave and stay on the other side of the rainbow forever because that's what you need to live. Mundanity is poison to that.
