#remember this cold

u know the trope where like. little evil guy goes thru horrific traumatising event and/or everyone discovers they previously went thru horrific traumatising event and then everyone feels sorry for them and, yknow, feels and redemption and whatnot (kinda like falling falling stars except im not expecting anything else to be as good as that <3<3<3<3)... is there an ao3 tag for that? and/or like... a collection (honestly not sure how collections work)?

sadly ao3 has not yet learned to read my mind and scrolling thru every fic tagged with 'angst' has been Not Fruitful. sincerest thanks if u do decide to answer!! and have a good day/night regardless!

Hi anon!

So, the term is probably closest to something like 'woobification' or turning a villain into a woobie (terrible things happen to them, everyone feels sorry for them, and they get accepted etc.)

However, this tag is often viewed negatively in fandom so almost no one tags with it. It's very hard to find these kinds of fics and you'll be much better off actually targeting specific villains in fandoms and then looking via tags like angst and hurt/comfort.

For example, these sorts of fics have happened a lot with Loki. You'd be looking for long wordcount Loki angst fics with hurt/comfort as a tag. And then having to weed out specific ones. You might want to start with Lise's series re: Loki and Steve Rogers here, called Remember This Cold. This is nearly a million words long, so it's a good place to start. Loki goes through many traumatising events, and it's nice watching everyone slowly come around to him (some faster than others).

Unfortunately there's no universal tag though, along the way people got shamed for doing this to villains, and so at best you might be able to search for 'redemption arc' but that's not really going to give you the kind of woobification you're probably looking for. I know it happened to Loki a lot, if you go into my bookmarks and search via Thor + Marvel fandoms specifically for longer fics re: Loki, most of them will be like this though.

There are other villains people love to do this to, but none are immediately coming to mind for me. Other folks can add them in the tags! Some villains are more appealing for this than others, so often targeting a character is more fruitful than searching like...all fics for this phenomenon. It's important that the fics be generally longer than about 20,000 words, because that's long enough to establish a decent turnaround redemption narrative. And you'll probably want the hurt/comfort tag as well (though not everyone will have used it.)

Also, Lise does this with other villains too! So that's an author I think you can find a ton of great fics out of if you like her style! (if living can be this, is also very good).

It might not always be villains you know well, but the stories are often very worth it regardless of how familiar you are with the fandom!

How the hell does she find that sharp, jagged, frightened, desperate part of Loki that makes me ache and transform it into words I can read and cry over. Every. Damn. Time! 

...excuse me. 

chase the endless summer (2788 words)

Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)

Rating: Gen

Pairing: Steve/Loki

Summary: Time for a honeymoon.

(Stephen Strange is not amused.)

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@veliseraptor‘s Remember This Cold AU is most excellent, and everyone should read it!

Context, what little there is