are all fandoms overrun with High School/College AUs these days

all fandoms are overrun since forever. I'm sure somewhere in some fanzine there's a very intense story about how Kirk was the jock and Spock was the math geek and they had a Taylor Swiftian romance that ended with them being prom kings.

The HS/College au is kind of a sign that fandom has worked through most of its thoughts/feels in canon and now needs something fluffy and adorable to feed the feels.

(I may have a strong NOTP. Like, Angel/Cordy strong.)

Ha! Last night I ran across an exchange about the Angel episode "Awakening" where Kat asked why Angel called out Buffy's name in that soul-losing hallucination and ita replied she didn't know but was all for it if it meant Angel/Cordy didn't happen even in his dreams. My sisters in NOTP!

I will admit to liking some of the Lestrade/Mycroft fics, even though they don't have screen time together. But they do make sense if the writer can come up with a good back story as to how they met. Although I think I've read a few that are set before the show and at least one where Mycroft is secretly going on to online chat rooms and finally decides to meet the guy who turns out to be - Lestrade! The premise sounds horrible but it was actually enjoyable.

I think the Parrish/Lorne stuff came from the whole miltary guy and scientist thing with SGA. There's Jack/Daniel, Shepard/Mckay and so you have to have Lorne/Parrish! It's the only thing that makes sense.

Although honestly, looking at the moview The Losers if you just go by that (and not the comic books) there's not much interaction between Jensen and Cougar that says could be read as subtextual. At least from my one and a half viewings (I stopped watching the first time because I hate MAx, the second time I just fast forward through anything that was Max and Wade without the Losers).

I haven't gotten into the alpha/beta/omega thing and it's everywhere. I read one SGA fic (I didn't read the tags all the way) and there was the merest hint of alpha/beta/omega thing but I was most of the way through the story before I realized what was going on.

Clint/Coulson I like even though there's not much there, but I have issues with stories that make Clint much younger than Coulson. I'm not sure how old he's supposed to be in the movie vers or comicverse, but it seems people make Clint closer to Natasha's age (or rather ScarJo's age) when I always think of Clint as being closer to Jeremy Renner's age and thus closer in age to Coulson

I think of Natasha as ageless and Clint as Renner's age. I'm wondering if younger writers are looking for an insertion point, so they make Clint younger.

I think of Clint as a bit younger, perhaps late 30s, because the Fraction/Aja comic is my core impression of the character rather than the movies.

Isn't Natasha canonically unaging, thanks to Red Room fuckery? (Even apart from being a comic character in a continuing franchise, I mean.)

In entirely unrelated news, OPI brought out a "Fifty Shades of Grey" polish collection and did NOT name a shade "Red Room of Pain". Wasted opportunity, man.

I may have a strong NOTP. Like, Angel/Cordy strong.

I always thought of myself as a fairly laid-back, live and let live type of person when it comes to character and pairing preference. Even Angel/Cordy was like, ehhh, it does not work for me whatsoever but if it's your thang, go fly your freak flag.

But then, someone on my Flist turned into a rapid Skye/Ward shipper (AoS) and OH MY GOD. I realized that I had not known the true meaning of NOTP before. I mean, I enjoy the show, but I am not even that fannish about AoS! But every time she happily burbles about her ship (which is often), I found myself getting a *visceral* reaction, like, a knot in the chest and nausea. It got so bad that I had to create a special filter. Who knew that could be a thing. It's just a dumb ship about a TV show for crying out loud.

(Oh man, the impulse to vent about what a terrible ship that is to everyone -- so difficult to curb. I can be internally judgy but I try not to be an obvious asshole when I can help it. But sometimes that's hard.)

Wonder if it the same one onmmy flist

t goes check your Flist

Nope. She's not on yours. It's a pretty popular ship apparently and I guess I understand how woobie!villain/ingenue can be a popular trope. But I just can't with this particular ship.

Well, Ward is a psychopath who murdered his brother and the rest of his family, and Skye unhesitatingly shot him when she got the chance. And even before that she came very close to saying "Let the bastard die in agony." It's kind of hard to find the "My love will SAAAAVE him!"

But a lot of fannish people are pretty young, and they connect with Skye, and Ward is objectively handsome and young enough to be a standard romantic figure.

Really, though, Ward is one of the things I love most about Agents. He was presented as Generic Hero to be Molded by Coulson, and by the end of the season he was My God, How Batshit Crazy is He?