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Writers set stories before or after the war, finding ways to explore characters in quieter moments, or strip out the high stakes, imagining Westeros as high school, run by mean girls and jocks.Ī few goofy, clever fics play fast and loose with the settings and characters - like “ For Those About to Rock, We Salute You,” in which Robert is the lead singer of Westeros' most popular band. So what does fanfic, which thrives on subverting expectations, do with this? It skips over Tyrion and Littlefinger, Varys and Tywin, and goes straight to the young'uns, telling stories about a less war-hardened Robb or having Sansa tame the Hound, à la "Beauty and the Beast." The tone is flipped: brutality and loss linger around the edges rather than filling the screen.
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Martin's books are often hailed for subverting genre conventions and reversing fantasy tropes as Ned Vizzini points out, “The characters who stay alive are the despoiled,” rather than fantasy's beloved heroes and innocents. It's unexpectedly lonely being just a reader when it's so clear how much action is going on behind the scenes. Fanfic is an immersive, collaborative world, and to be just a reader of it is to miss a lot of what makes it tick: writers taking prompts, writing stories for friends, beta-reading each others' work, inspiring and being inspired by the stories that might sprawl across fandoms.
A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE AO3 HOW TO
Tags are clickable, so you can easily find all eight of the stories tagged both “A Song of Ice and Fire” and “Women Being Awesome.” But figuring out what you want and how to find it only eases a little bit of the touristy feeling. You just have to figure out what that is.ĪO3 has a pretty fantastic search engine, and will let you pick only long fics, or tame ones, or those about Dany and her Khal. Where do you start? Do you read inside your comfort zone, or go exploring? Do you brave the more than 100 fics that pair poor Theon with his tormentor, Ramsay Bolton, or do you look for a happy(ish) ending in the stories that find various Starks rebuilding Winterfell after the war? You can have absolutely anything you imagine (which makes it very difficult to make definitive statements about fanfic as a whole). Stumbling into fanfic without a guide will make you feel like a tourist I searched Tumblr tags, skimmed LiveJournal communities, and searched and AO3 for fanfic that disproved the common assumptions about it - that it's bad, or all porn, or a waste of time for everyone involved. Not that you have to read the sexy stuff. Martin's characters in ever more compromising positions. There's something for everyone, provided you're willing to see George R.R.
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Still, sometimes Margaery and Sansa make out sometimes Theon and Robb get really, really close. Plenty of "Thrones" fic stays on the straight side, exploring the moment Catelyn and Ned fell in love, or imagining a burgeoning relationship between Myrcella Baratheon and Robb Stark. If you assume that all fanfic is of the Harry-and-Draco-get-it-on-on-the-Quidditch-field sort, you might be surprised (or disappointed). (Was Arya/Gendry ever so popular before viewers saw Joe Dempsie's abs?)Īnd, of course, they offer lots of inventive, carefully labeled smut.
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They span alternate universes from modern London to Romanov-era Russia they envision the story post-"A Dance with Dragons" they revel in character studies and beloved pairings.
A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE AO3 ARCHIVE
On Archive of Our Own (AO3), a massive, fan-created trove of tales, there are nearly 5,000 stories tagged as belonging to A Song of Ice and Fire, and more than 2,600 tagged Game of Thrones. Hours disappear into following one writer's recommendation or another, or starting a promising piece only to realize that it's hundreds of thousands of words long and will take more time than you were planning to give. It's one thing to have a passing familiarity with fanfiction - to know a little bit of the vocabulary, or have stumbled across a few fics on Tumblr - and another thing entirely to immerse yourself in it for days.