soc_puppet | A plunny for someday (possibly someday past) (Reply)

But first: Happy 40th anniversary to my parents, uh, yesterday! (I celebrated in person with them and a few dozen other people, no worries about me missing it in brickspace.)

H'okay, back to business. Some of the changes in fandom over the past 20+ years came up on Tumblr, and I shared both a trope I haven't seen in a while, and the idle thought I had towards sporking it but never got around to:

I still want to do a subversion of this particular trope I remember from slash/yaoi fandom back in the day: Your preferred same gender ship had to go undercover as a couple at a gay bar. I feel like it became a less common trope as homophobia decreased? It was also usually part of a fandom that involved criminal investigation of some sort.

Anyway, one day I really want to write that trope, except:

Character A is particularly squirrely about going
Doesn't have a good explanation but insists that they're not homophobic (and may have actual receipts to back it up)
Ends up unable to get out of it
When the two of them arrive at the bar, you learn that Character A is a regular there and has been vocally pining after someone who matches the description of Character B

But some part of me has been reluctant because people won't recognize the trope anymore and realize that I'm lovingly sporking it, and apparently that's enough to ruin some of my interest in writing it? Like a part of me insists that the trope in question was a "time and place" kind of thing, and we're no longer in that time or place, so I shouldn't do it. And I know I shouldn't care, but like. It's not like brains make sense at the best of times, so here I am, I guess.

I still pine for that idea, but yeah. Brains.

Anyhow, any of you have ideas that you didn't get around to and now just no longer seem like they have a place?