With the East Coast smothered in the worst blizzard in decades, people are running out of snow day entertainment choices. Either you’ve really committed to your Craigslist blizzard hookup, or you’re getting sick of movie marathons and boardgames.
So, it’s time to get creative. And by “creative,” we mean blizzard fanfic.
everyone’s joking about the blizzard baby boom that’s gonna happen in 9 months, but what about the fanfic boom we’re gonna get next week
— Gavia Baker-Whitelaw (@Hello_Tailor) January 24, 2016
Seasonal fanfic is a time-honored tradition, so it’s no surprise that there’s already a tag for blizzard fanfic on Tumblr. You’re trapped indoors, it’s warm and cozy, and the Internet is right there. With that in mind, we’ve put together some ideas for your snowed-in writing project.
1) Rey and Finn’s first snowball fight
This is a no-brainer. One of sweetest themes in The Force Awakens is Rey and Finn’s low-key naivety about seemingly normal experiences. They’ve both led tough lives, but the movie is full of moments where their joy and excitement shines through, like Rey’s breathless wonder at seeing a forest for the first time. Or, you know, the fact that neither of them have ever had a friend before.
rreyskywalkerr/Tumblr
Both characters ended up in the snow on Starkiller Base, but we doubt they’ve ever made snow angels or had a snowball fight. Rey grew up in the desert, and Finn spent his formative years in a sterile spaceship full of other trainee stormtroopers. It’s time for someone to teach them that snow can be fun, and that person is obviously Poe Dameron.
2) Harry Potter nostalgia
Harry Potter is full of scenes with a tangible kind of wintry warmth. Weasley knitwear, hot cocoa by the Gryffindor common room fireplace, and snow gathering on the Hogwarts turrets. The movies have also become a staple of Christmas family viewing, which may be why they inspire so much heartwarming seasonal fic. This is already an oversaturated genre, but evidence suggests that HP fandom will never tire of nostalgic callbacks to winter at Hogwarts.
3) Narnia during the years of neverending winter
The Narnia books aren’t exactly a huge fandom, but they’re a slow-burner. The annual Yuletide fanfic exchange always turns up some interesting Narnia stories, and the canon provides a perfect blizzard setting with the eternal winter of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Also, Jadis the White Witch is a perennially mysterious character, and seems ripe for a Maleficent-style subversion.
4) The Winter Soldier comes in from the cold
For those who want to write miserable fic, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the obvious choice here. Both Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes have a difficult relationship with cold weather, after Steve spent decades inside an iceberg and Bucky was cryogenically frozen and then repeatedly thawed out during his time as HYDRA’s Winter Soldier. Also, Steve’s final memory of his best friend is Bucky plummeting to his death in the snow-covered Alps.
While most of the other fandoms on this list are ideal for cute snowball fights or wholesome cups of cocoa, Steve and Bucky both undoubtedly hate this kind of weather. So either you have to write something horrible about PTSD flashbacks, hide both characters indoors under a giant pile of blankets, or go back to the 1930s and ’40s when they were either fighting Nazis or sharing a tiny apartment in Brooklyn where Steve undoubtedly got pneumonia every winter.
Man, Captain America is a depressing fandom.
5) Canon New York blizzard fic
There’s already a whole subgenre of fanfics taking place during New York City blackouts, so we’d be stunned if fandom didn’t do something similar for the 2016 blizzard. Ideally you need a New York-based fandom like Elementary or White Collar, but you can always just conveniently transfer your favorite characters to the Eastern seaboard for the duration of the snowstorm.
Which brings us to our final and most obvious idea:
6) Blizzard hookup AU
This works for literally any fandom; a contemporary version of the wildly popular vintage fanfic trope “101 ways to end up in a Canadian shack.”
Get your OTP and snow them in. Are they already a couple? Are they strangers who accidentally got trapped together during the storm? Are they a Craigslist hookup? Is one of them the kind of douchebag who orders takeout during a blizzard, and the other one is the delivery person? The options are limitless.
Screengrab via Expelliarmus2000/YouTube
