Post and Modern's Excellent Adventure.
Jan. 29th, 2020 08:28 pmChallenge #15
In your own space, create your own challenge. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
Hello, everyone. Look at your fandoms, now back to me, now back at your fandoms, now back at me. Sadly, your AUs are stale and unengaging, but if they switched to the reinvent and reconstruct strategy, they could smell as new and fresh as they did once upon a time. Look down, back up, where are you? You're in a trope that you're writing without any of the common motifs you assumed to be obligatory but are merely optional. What's in your hand, back at me. I have it, it's the motivation to write that fluff casefic just the way you always wish fandom would finally be brave enough to tackle. Anything is possible when you know you're not bound by common convention. I'm in a challenge.
A bit more seriously, my challenge is simple.
Try to find a new way to tell an old story.
Take a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme that you like - maybe one from Challenge #14, even - and examine the common aspects of it within one fandom or across multiple ones. What's always assumed to be there? What do you notice as a universal feature or attribute? Beyond the presence of the trope itself, what can you be pretty sure will also make an appearance, based on the inclusion of the trope?
Now that you've gotten that list in place, write something which goes against that list. Toss out the hangers-on - or focus on the hangers-on in ways that haven't yet been done. Try to figure out just how much would be different if you took one of the tropes, played it to the hilt, and then kept on playing. Yank the dial to 11 and rip the knob off. If seemingly everyone has these two characters reunite in one city, have them get back together somewhere else - just because it hasn't been done yet doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. All it means is that you haven't done it yet.
If your schedule's full up, if you don't have the energy, if you're already busy writing something...don't feel obligated to create something for this.
Instead, just try to figure out how to look at old stories in new ways.
In your own space, create your own challenge. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
Hello, everyone. Look at your fandoms, now back to me, now back at your fandoms, now back at me. Sadly, your AUs are stale and unengaging, but if they switched to the reinvent and reconstruct strategy, they could smell as new and fresh as they did once upon a time. Look down, back up, where are you? You're in a trope that you're writing without any of the common motifs you assumed to be obligatory but are merely optional. What's in your hand, back at me. I have it, it's the motivation to write that fluff casefic just the way you always wish fandom would finally be brave enough to tackle. Anything is possible when you know you're not bound by common convention. I'm in a challenge.
A bit more seriously, my challenge is simple.
Try to find a new way to tell an old story.
Take a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme that you like - maybe one from Challenge #14, even - and examine the common aspects of it within one fandom or across multiple ones. What's always assumed to be there? What do you notice as a universal feature or attribute? Beyond the presence of the trope itself, what can you be pretty sure will also make an appearance, based on the inclusion of the trope?
Now that you've gotten that list in place, write something which goes against that list. Toss out the hangers-on - or focus on the hangers-on in ways that haven't yet been done. Try to figure out just how much would be different if you took one of the tropes, played it to the hilt, and then kept on playing. Yank the dial to 11 and rip the knob off. If seemingly everyone has these two characters reunite in one city, have them get back together somewhere else - just because it hasn't been done yet doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. All it means is that you haven't done it yet.
If your schedule's full up, if you don't have the energy, if you're already busy writing something...don't feel obligated to create something for this.
Instead, just try to figure out how to look at old stories in new ways.
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