selenak

Because I'm all about the balance, here's the post about what sure-fire good buttons I've found in my three quarters of a year Heroes fanfiction reading. I'll try to avoid the glaringly obvious (i.e. most of us are rather keen on good spelling and characterisation that fits with their idea of what the source provides, etc.).

1) A sense of place and atmosphere. Speaking as someone who is aware she is better at dialogue than description, I always admire people who manage to get a real sense of the physical world surrounding our characters across and make the setting of their stories unique to that particular location, and/or, even better, use this setting to tell us something about the characters. Years ago, back in Highlander fandom, I read one of several amazing stories by

katallison, and the one I'm thinking of took place at the Grand Canyon, which she used superbly to get something about Methos and Duncan and their different ways of seeing the world across. In Heroes,

linaerys is particularly good at this kind of thing. Given New York is such an important location for the show, it gets used a lot in fanfic as well, but more often than not as Random Big American City. (This is true for my own stories, too.) A story like Your Young Men Shall See Visions, on the other hand, really uses New York to portray the Petrellis. Fear of Flying similarly uses Venice and Verona, and from details like the food consumed to how sitting on those ancient Roman steps in Verona feels while listening to an opera (and I've done that, so I recognized it), the way place and atmosphere is used continues to wow me.

3) Using a detail from canon to explore a character and/or make it a basis for backstory speculation. One example of what I mean by this: in Sentimental Value,

andrastewhite does this with Bob's power. Now quite a lot of viewers quickly forgot he even has one and assume by default that he, like Thompson, is a "normal", since he displays the power in question only in the season 2 opener to make a point to Mohinder. (It's alchemy, or, if you don't want to use that term: the ability to transform another substance into gold.) If you're familiar with the Greek myths, this is the gift Midas asked from Apollo, which quickly turned into a curse, which is why Bob's password which Elle uses in Powerless is "Midas". By itself, this is just one detail about Bob, and seemingly not a very important. But Andraste thought through the full implications and possibilities, combined it with a few other things about Bob we either know or can guess (such as the fact there seems to be no Mrs. Bishop around), and came up with the single best story about Bob Bishop I've read to date. It also confirmed to me that in Heroes fanfic, if the detail from canon being used to explore a character is his or her superpower, which doesn't happen as often as you'd think, I am well on my way to being sold by the very premise. Let the story be well-written, and I'm agog.

3) There is an ensemble, really. Like most viewers, I have my preferences among the characters. And I do love intense character studies, both to read and write. But nonetheless, if a writer manages to use not just one or two but a lot of the huge Heroes cast and does so in a way that makes each of them significant, I'm hooked. One of my favourite examples is

trollprincess' Twenty Things Learned On Road Trips, which includes the entire s1 ensemble and makes me glad for every single sentence.

4) The amazing case of the actually present significant other. Or: fanfic that focuses on a relationship between X and Y but doesn't ignore that X also has a very important relationship with Z. Especially but not exclusively in slash, the romantic relationships one partner has on the show/book/film with someone other than the person he or she is paired up in the story is often ignored. Or worse, bashed. (Back in the Jossverse, you could call this the Riley phenomenon - I told you it wasn't limited to slash pairings, it's there in het as well.) So, when I read a slash story like Tell Me Anything , which is Claude/Bennet but also not only respects but actually explores Noah/Sandra, I'm extra thrilled. I'm not saying this is mandatory for every X/Y you can think of, neither in Heroes nor in any other fandom. Sometimes, especially in short vignettes, there really is no room for Z. I'm just saying that when it does happen, my already present love for the story is just that extra bit stronger.

5) Characters bringing up or discussing books/films/movies they like. This is basically a kink of mine, well-fed through years of being a Jossverse fan. Such details make me happy. Guess who was squeeing when the Doctor and Martha in Dr. Who last season talked Harry Potter? In Heroes, you have of course Hiro as a certified sci fi fan, giving you licence to let him talk about or use any number of sci fi shows/books/movies. And comics. It makes complete character sense. Mind you, this has to be done in a way that tells us something about Hiro and whoever he's talking with - i.e. Hiro arguing with Ando about their favourite Star Ship captains would be great. (Haven't read it yet, but I do hope someone has written it, and I just missed it. And no, I'm not going to write it, because I already wrote that argument for Jonathan, Warren and Andrew from Buffy. In sung form, no less. To a tune from Stephen Sondheim. Hence no more starship captain arguments in fanfic from me.) Someone who includes this kind of thing regularly in their fanfic is

futuresoon. Which makes her versions of Peter and Nathan, for example, very refreshing to read after you've been through lots of fanfic where they always talk about their relationship, which, for the record, I really can't see them do that often, if at all. They're spectacularly co-dependent and crazily dysfunctional, but they're still guys. Now, in

futuresoon's Big Damn Petrelli Story , they talk about brands of coffee, Helen Keller and Stephen King, and that makes their lives real for me in a way that's rare in fanfiction while getting the emotion across perfectly.

Also, it's just a hobby of mine to imagine which songs, films, tv shows, books fictional characters would like or dislike, and why.