• B – A pairing you initially didn’t consider but someone changed your mind

Trying to think of examples (that aren’t just, hey this canon couple you didn’t notice, it’s great and give it a look)…

Stannis/Davos wasn’t something I picked up from the books, but fans emphasized it, so now it’s a brOTP I love (romantically I can take or leave).

anghraine makes a good case for F!Faramir/Aragorn, which I’d never ship otherwise.

• A – Your current OTP(s)/OT3(s)/OTX(s)

Answered with a bunch of examples in previous post. See L.

• D – A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t (again: be nice)

Anything from Legend of Korra. And AtLA would be better if I force myself to like Kataang (just, ugh. Honestly Aang took a long time for me to stop actively disliking him, and he and definitely his crush felt too immature)

• W – 5 favorite ships and 5 kinks you like best for said ships

(Damn, I don’t have a handy lists of kinks, but I’ll try my best. Also, too much a prude to list out the sexual ones.)

Bodyguard Crush, especially gender-flipped. Roy/Riza and Ling/Ran Fan are good examples. Devoted serious girl protecting (physically and as a moral boost/restraint) her genuinely good-hearted but forced into political and moralistic dangers and quagmires boy. The regular bodyguard crush trope as well, but I like twist to my knight and maiden scenarios. A big one for me is what I’d call the Dark Empress and Her Knight, where the guy is the devoted warlord but his queen is sealed calamity in a can or more powerful/the one ruling, and he is amused that people fear him when they should her. The noble demon type villains inverse of the knight and maiden. I can name a lot of my original characters that have this dynamic, or AUs for fandom pairings, but actual examples…. Dark!Anakin/Padmé perhaps. Regular canon version for them of course is the bodyguard and m’lady. Also the defrosting ice queen guy making pragmatic decisions to protect cheerful girl’s happiness. Height differences.

Aoshi/Misao.

There’s a running theme of dynamics here. As far as fanfic tropes I also love more than I should, the fake marriage turns to real affection and its even better older sibling, the Perfectly Arranged Marriage! Fusion/Crossovers! Combine or parallel a couple of these things and you get Beauty and the Beast (Belle always was my fav). In a strange way happy ending Theon/Jeyne ends up here too. Reunited in the afterlife – Zack/Aerith. 

• O – Choose a song at random, which ship or character does it remind you of

*turns on radio* first song is Mountain Sound, which as  I listen does make a great Tolkien roadtrip song. Maybe Gimli and Legolas?

• L – Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves (chars you’re neutral on are fair game, as are chars you dislike)

I’m neutral on Túrin, but damn if he doesn’t try to do the right thing. And he was making an honest attempt at a peaceful under-the-radar life with Nienor, and he did kill Glaurung. Without Gandalf Middle-earth would have fallen to Sauron.

Rand was under insane pressure and tried his best, take away the taint and ruling and prophecy pressures and he was a very good friend. And good musician. Min’s superpowers was one of the best and most inventive things in that series and fueled a lot of the fan-guessing that ran that series.

Dany can show a great deal of compassion and is trying to do the right thing by freeing the slaves and improving the lives of those without power she comes across. Without her dragons she would have had little power to save her own life, let alone anyone else.

• F – What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom

I’ve lurked in fandoms online since middle school, so of those, RuroKen was the first one I actively searched for manga translations and webrings and fansites for character shrines and fanfiction (Ah, the Akabeko site). Also some other anime of that time – Inuyasha I know, but I missed the big three of Evangelion, Fushigi Yuugi, and Escaflowne. But 1999 was also the year Phantom Menace came out, so I remember the drive that summer to my grandpa where the car discussion was explaining Star Wars, my parents deciding to remedy the glaring omission in our education by renting the OT, and my mom going out and buying some SW books – two of the childrens’ novelizations of TPM from the viewpoint of Padmé and Anakin, and some of the X-Wing novels. Never saw TPM in theaters, but bought it on video, my sisters and I were majorly hooked on everything, I read all the Bantam Era novels I could find at my library, saw AotC twice in theaters (which is one of the only films I’ve paid to see twice). I obsessively followed theforce.net sometime after the second film, greedily wanting spoilers for RotS, read the legacy discussion boards and fanfic. Never read NJO or played any of the video games, fannish obsession has weaned off over the years a tad, but yeah, 16 years for that one as well. Oh, and Tolkien. Funny story that one. Technically younger than a bunch of other fandoms by like a year or so.