#redorchids

So, the first thing that has to be said about TTD is that is found a REALLY GOOD way around the whole SUDDENLY EVERYONE IS GAY thing that so many fics with real people (especially Bandom fics) have, which I found particularly great, because I really hate that trope. Even if I know that it’s all fiction, it’s still using real people templates and you can’t just suddenly turn them all gay - it just doesn’t even make sense half the time. This fic though, fixed that completelly because it’s set in a world where almost all the males are in fact, gay. Not all of them (and not all of the males WERE gay, something else refreshing), but a large proportion. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like a cute gay couple as much as the next tumblrer, but so often, no matter how good the fic is, the premise just doesn’t acually make sense, and the author gets carried away with making up gay couples, so it ends up really unrealistic. This particular fic was really great about that. Sure the two main Characters - Brendon and Spencer - were gay as a picnic, but for once Pete wasn’t. He and Ashley were a couple and Patrick didn’t even feature. It just… worked.

The other thing that was really great to see in a Bandom fic, was females! And females who weren’t just sextoys. Well, ok they kind of were, but they were also dancers on the show. They were talked about in the same way as a lot of the other male characters and sure, none of them were exactly MAIN chracters except Maja in the first (and kind of second) part, but it was nice to have a lot of them there.

So aside from the things that I liked because they soothed my pet peeves for an evening, there was some genuine good writing and characterisation going on. She manages to write a real arsehole character in Ryan, but have you not hate him completely and make it believable. Ryan is often used for him arseholeness in Brendon/Spencer fics, but here he’s also a real character. In short all the characterisation was wonderful, or at least, very good. Plus, the author clearly knows her shit about dancing. Theres a lot of jargon in there, but it’s not the sort of jargon you throw into a fic because oh god you have no idea how to write this thing that you’ve started writing so maybe if you keep throwing in buzzwords no-one will notice - no, this girl really knew her stuff. If you read the primer (which can be found above the story), she’s watched a crapload of So You Think You Can Dance, and it shows. The atmosphere feels real and you get invested not just in the characters, but in the actual compeition. It becomes obvious by the end what’s going to happen (not that I’m going to spoil), but you still want to read it and find out.

Basically, if you like reading about dancing, Bandom, sexy-dancey-boy things, and lets face it there’s some crack in there, this is a great fic for you. It’s not an Epic, so you can read it in a night. The world is believable and it’s got some nice touches about criticisms of homophobia in the dance world. Which is a bit ironic isn’t it?

And if that didn’t convince you, try to imagine Pete Wentz doing hip-hop.