So now that we've talked about kidfic, I want to talk about their spiritual brother. (And no, I am not talking about MPreg, because they are my absolute least favorite thing.) I am talking about alternate timelines.
The appeal of the alternate universe is obvious-- it lets you give your characters a fresh start, play with their dynamics in new ways, and fix some of the holes in the narrative presented to the audience. Some holes are easier to fix than others, and often times the community at large will find a particular answer so appealing that they essentially become a kind of secondary canon. This is especially true for pairings, thus the term OTP (One True Pairing). Because the medium of film especially is limited, fans have to extrapolate a lot from a very small amount of source material, and this leads to generally agreed upon ideas about characterization that come from one very small incident.
For example: At one point in Thor, Darcy Lewis mentions that along with losing all of their equipment and research, Agent Coulson also confiscated her ipod. This is now a feature of almost any story involving Darcy.
My point here is that when you hold a microscope over something that was really not intended to be scrutinized so hard, you end up finding a lot of cracks. There are two ways of dealing with this: You can try to come up with some kind of explanation, or you can just chuck some parts of the official story and go you own way.
We're all a bunch of tabloid reporters, is essentially what I'm getting at. Hawkeye was briefly in the Thor movie! So briefly he is in like one scene! And he never talks to anyone but Coulson as far as we know! But this one scene is, in my opinion, the entire reason why Darcy/Clint is such a popular pairing.
Darcy is an interesting case, because she's kind of the fangirl self insert. It's pretty easy to imagine that you're Darcy. Darcy is the fandom bicycle. She gets paired with pretty much everyone... except, weirdly, Tony, the internet seems pretty sure that she's his daughter. (I am 100% behind that one, by the way. If it's not Tony/Steve or Tony/Pepper, I want no part of it. ) Most of the Darcy fanfiction that's out there is basically about her becoming a strong, capable adult-- and since she's the audience avatar, I see this as an extension of the worry that most young adults have about being directionless. So, what do we as a collective mass do to Darcy, who we see as ourselves? We make her powerful, and sexy, and valuable. I don't think I've seen her portrayed in a negative light, ever, in any of the transformative fiction I've read. It's kind of beautiful. Darcy is the self love that we never knew we had. She always loves the Avengers, because, well, WE love them. And they love her too, because isn't that the ultimate fantasy-- to imagine the things that you love, love you back.
Darcy is also a great way to fix a lot of plot holes, because when you squint at her, she doesn't really make sense. How can anyone afford to be an intern for 3 years? How, exactly, did they get her picture of Thor into the DMV database? These aren't big enough questions to distract you from the movie, but under the microscope, they become kind of... nagging.
So below, ranked in no particular order, are my Darcy recommendations.
Out of the stories that try to explain these things, my favorite has to be We'll Run Like We're Awesome. It's one of the few Darcy fics to, so far, have no romantic pairings-- it's just very focused on her and her relationship with her father, Tony Stark. It's well written, emotionally nuanced, and ongoing, so if you like being able to binge read an entire story in one go, you may not be satisfied to wait, but it's worth it. Click the link to check it out: We'll Run Like We're Awesome
I will not lie to you, the end of this one made me kind of depressed. It was this line, specifically:
"Years later, Darcy will remember the days spent at the Malibu house as some of her best. She will speak of it (carefully edited for content) to her grand-nieces and -nephews, and they will humor her, just a funny old woman holding up her stories of superheroes and gods like trinkets."
Because, right there, you just killed my happy ending. I know that if your family thinks that your superhero stories are you making shit up, it means that eventually, you stopped being with them, and I know that's the way of the world and totally realistic, and you just stomped all over my heart, you really did. Bruce/Darcy, because some people like that kind of thing: She blinded me with political science. Which is also available As a podfic
Finally, I would recommend Simple, Not Easy, if you feel like you really need to get your Clint/Darcy on, if only for the image of Loki as a drunk baby sloth.
We'll get into the idea of Darcy/Steve next time, because I really want to talk about how fantastic podfics are, and this post is already too long to get into it.
The appeal of the alternate universe is obvious-- it lets you give your characters a fresh start, play with their dynamics in new ways, and fix some of the holes in the narrative presented to the audience. Some holes are easier to fix than others, and often times the community at large will find a particular answer so appealing that they essentially become a kind of secondary canon. This is especially true for pairings, thus the term OTP (One True Pairing). Because the medium of film especially is limited, fans have to extrapolate a lot from a very small amount of source material, and this leads to generally agreed upon ideas about characterization that come from one very small incident.
For example: At one point in Thor, Darcy Lewis mentions that along with losing all of their equipment and research, Agent Coulson also confiscated her ipod. This is now a feature of almost any story involving Darcy.
My point here is that when you hold a microscope over something that was really not intended to be scrutinized so hard, you end up finding a lot of cracks. There are two ways of dealing with this: You can try to come up with some kind of explanation, or you can just chuck some parts of the official story and go you own way.
We're all a bunch of tabloid reporters, is essentially what I'm getting at. Hawkeye was briefly in the Thor movie! So briefly he is in like one scene! And he never talks to anyone but Coulson as far as we know! But this one scene is, in my opinion, the entire reason why Darcy/Clint is such a popular pairing.
Darcy is an interesting case, because she's kind of the fangirl self insert. It's pretty easy to imagine that you're Darcy. Darcy is the fandom bicycle. She gets paired with pretty much everyone... except, weirdly, Tony, the internet seems pretty sure that she's his daughter. (I am 100% behind that one, by the way. If it's not Tony/Steve or Tony/Pepper, I want no part of it. ) Most of the Darcy fanfiction that's out there is basically about her becoming a strong, capable adult-- and since she's the audience avatar, I see this as an extension of the worry that most young adults have about being directionless. So, what do we as a collective mass do to Darcy, who we see as ourselves? We make her powerful, and sexy, and valuable. I don't think I've seen her portrayed in a negative light, ever, in any of the transformative fiction I've read. It's kind of beautiful. Darcy is the self love that we never knew we had. She always loves the Avengers, because, well, WE love them. And they love her too, because isn't that the ultimate fantasy-- to imagine the things that you love, love you back.
Darcy is also a great way to fix a lot of plot holes, because when you squint at her, she doesn't really make sense. How can anyone afford to be an intern for 3 years? How, exactly, did they get her picture of Thor into the DMV database? These aren't big enough questions to distract you from the movie, but under the microscope, they become kind of... nagging.
So below, ranked in no particular order, are my Darcy recommendations.
Out of the stories that try to explain these things, my favorite has to be We'll Run Like We're Awesome. It's one of the few Darcy fics to, so far, have no romantic pairings-- it's just very focused on her and her relationship with her father, Tony Stark. It's well written, emotionally nuanced, and ongoing, so if you like being able to binge read an entire story in one go, you may not be satisfied to wait, but it's worth it. Click the link to check it out: We'll Run Like We're Awesome
I will not lie to you, the end of this one made me kind of depressed. It was this line, specifically:
"Years later, Darcy will remember the days spent at the Malibu house as some of her best. She will speak of it (carefully edited for content) to her grand-nieces and -nephews, and they will humor her, just a funny old woman holding up her stories of superheroes and gods like trinkets."
Because, right there, you just killed my happy ending. I know that if your family thinks that your superhero stories are you making shit up, it means that eventually, you stopped being with them, and I know that's the way of the world and totally realistic, and you just stomped all over my heart, you really did. Bruce/Darcy, because some people like that kind of thing: She blinded me with political science. Which is also available As a podfic
Finally, I would recommend Simple, Not Easy, if you feel like you really need to get your Clint/Darcy on, if only for the image of Loki as a drunk baby sloth.
We'll get into the idea of Darcy/Steve next time, because I really want to talk about how fantastic podfics are, and this post is already too long to get into it.
