Having been down the hate-fandom road before, I think the reason hate-fans stick with it is very similar to the reasons anyone sticks with squee-fanning: because it's an enjoyable, creative, social activity. Hate-fans fan together, share their outrage, write the stories they want to read, in general bond over their irritation.
( more ramblings...Collapse )
This rant brought to you by Linkara and his hilarious, insightful screeds against bad comics - I love me some delicious comicbook fanboy rage (especially when it comes with a good dose of feminism and highly amusing narration)!
joonscribble called it last month and we were hoping, but I still can't believe that they actually did it!!! When the guy said "she", OH but we shrieked!This totally makes up for BBC Sherlock's handling of Irene. So perfect~! Not only does it mean that Irene can remain The Woman and fundamental to Sherlock without at all interfering with Watson's absolute significance - but Irene did it, she defeated Holmes, completely. It was Joan who defeated her.
(For now. Her lawyer may have a difficult case, but given their client, they are going to be very, very motivated. Or else Irene might just decide to do her time and run her operation from a nice safe prison cell, like any good mastermind...)
(OH though, how much more do I want Watson to do Reichenbach instead of Holmes? It's so perfectly set up for it, since Moriarty is going to have a different target now...though as
cesperanza pointed out, as it turns out she's already put Sherlock through the grief that Holmes traditionally subjects Watson to...)Also, HE NAMED A BEE AFTER HER, AWWWWWW. Holmes & Watson forever & ever & ever <333
In the last couple weeks we watched all that's out of Elementary - highly recommended! It does a lot of remarkable things effortlessly and unselfconsciously. Lucy Liu's Joan Watson is amazing and awesome, not the least of which for being a relatable, recognizable human being who also happens to be an Asian-American woman. While when the show was first announced I was disappointed by the changes they'd made to Watson's character (ex-doctor and not ex-military), in the context of the show and the version of Sherlock Holmes they're telling, it makes sense. And she is still absolutely Watson, long-suffering and loyal, if a bit snarkier about it than some.
But then that's par for the course - one of the things that makes Elementary's Sherlock so great is because everyone actually calls him on his shit. And he actually listens (sometimes, to some people), and he tries (even if he doesn't always succeed). ( More squee, no spoilers to speak ofCollapse )
We've also started watching SyFy's Warehouse 13, and while that isn't what I'd call good TV - oh my god it is so frigging cute it's almost painful. It's not for everyone - it's corny and shallow and obvious, but if you like cute made-family teams being cute together while dealing with unabashedly implausible scifi artifacts, you owe it to yourself to watch this show.
It does have a couple other points to recommend it. Not only does it have more major female characters than male for a good part of the show, but the central partnership is a male and a female agent, both young and white and attractive, who bicker but love working together and love each other and have ABSOLUTELY ZERO UST. Their relationship is sibling-esque all the way without any hint of romance; they're genuinely happy and supportive for their partner whenever they find romance elsewhere. Meanwhile to make up for the lack of sexual chemistry there, it is positively bubbling between the female agent and H.G. Wells. Who is a (canonically bi) woman. Played by the preternaturally gorgeous Jaime Murray of Hustle. (She's also kind of an arch-villain, sometimes, depending, which tension only ups the femslashiness (very deliberate femslash; at her introduction she was briefly paired with Pete, but since then it's Myka who she has all the intense interactions with.))(And while I don't think that 'ship has actually gone canon, H.G./Myka is the most popular pairing in the fandom by an order of magnitude...)
But mostly it's just adorable action-comedy with lots of hugs and goofy scifi peril to the characters in every episode (I swear, every single ep has at least a moment of h/c or worry with someone). It reminds me more of SFC's old Invisible Man than perhaps any other show I can think of; it's a show that knows exactly what it is, and is very happy to be that, with no ambitions to take itself more seriously. And since I adored I-man, and am a sucker for cute teamy h/c, yeah, am enjoying the heck out of W13!
reena_jenkins podficced my Avengers/Project Runway crackfic, Loki Runway, with awesome voices!Loki Runway, read by reena_jenkins
Go, listen and delight! \o/
Also, OTW is holding its first membership drive of the year!
If you're curious where your money would be going, here's an explanation of AO3's annual costs - owning the servers is awesome but doesn't come cheap!
I've been a volunteer at OTW/AO3 for 4 years now, and I have never met a more diverse and more committed group of fans; we come from all kinds of fandoms, and the one thing we all have in common is that we're all dedicated to putting all resources into making the Org the best it can be, to serve as much as fandom as well as possible.
And if you're like to donate time - volunteering will re-open later this month. Become a tag wrangler! See the world (of tags)! Engage in serious discussions over whether the canonical should be Cock Blocking, Cock-blocking or (as it turned out due to majority rule) Cockblocking! :D
For any old-school fans out there, this isn't pre-slash; it's smarm, fit for the heyday of the Senfic list. For all of you who don't know what smarm is...sure, it's pre-slash :P
Random Access Memory (4503 words) by Xparrot
Fandom: Person of Interest (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences | Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Harold Finch & Nathan Ingram, Harold Finch & John Reese
Characters: Harold Finch, Nathan Ingram, John Reese
Additional Tags: Sickfic, Fevers, Angst, Smarm, Friendship, (possibly to be jossed) backstory, adventures at MIT, Reese can read too, as well as cook breakfast
"You're running a fever of 104," Nathan says.
One Stone (7322 words) by Xparrot
Fandom: Person of Interest (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences | Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Harold Finch & John Reese
Characters: Joss Carter, Harold Finch, John Reese, Lionel Fusco
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Drama, Angst, Presumed Dead, Hospitals, Carter POV
Carter knows she cares too much, she's been told so by every commanding officer she's ever had; and that caring keeps her sharp but also puts her in danger of burning out. So once in a while she takes a moment to breathe, to remember who she is when she doesn't have on a badge.
So she doesn't feel guilty about it, when Fusco calls and says, "Carter, sorry, know it's your day off, but I think we're going to need you down here--"
gnine and I are caught up on Person of Interest and now desperately need the next episode. Not because it's on any kind of cliffhanger but because we somehow slipped into fanning 3rd gear.I can hardly rec POI; it's...it's fangirl catnip, is what it is, for a particular sort of fangirl, and everybody else is wondering why you're rolling around giggling in a pile of weeds. I almost find it easier to list its flaws, starting with GOD I am tired of two-white-men-saving-the-world and going on from there. And yet, and yet. This isn't like Smallville, hating the show while loving the Lex; I don't hate POI in the least, though it bores me at times and at its best it's still...pretty dang cliche and shallow; for all it has vague pretenses of deeper meaning, it is eagerly quick to put action over theme.
...And I'm in love all the same. ( squeeful rambling; a couple mild spoilers for s1, none for s2Collapse )
So I guess what I'm saying is, watch Person of Interest! And write me gen fic! Y'know, if you're into action shows with co-dependent clams.
(Also,
talitha78 has now vidded for it! Which, seriously now, do you need a better reason to get into something?)(Also, in the wider social context, I do want to mention the one ep with a doctor being threatened by putting her wife in danger, and it wasn't played as a joke or a surprise reveal or fanservice, and there was nary a blink from any character that she had a wife instead of a husband - it's things like this that give me hope, that a straight-out action show with a fairly conservative ideology is now including gay marriage as an assumed, normal thing. Which is how it becomes normal, to show it so, and it cheers me every time to see it!)
(On the other hand, if you're in the mood for strongly written drama with great female characters (and male characters - great everybody!), I highly recommend The Good Wife. If you, like me, have seen the previews for years and gone 'No, thank you' - give it a shot anyway; the show's victim to the most misleading advertising of anything I've ever seen. It's presented like some tawdry political scandal soap-opera; it's actually a sharp legal drama starring a (totally awesome) woman in her 40s with two kids, which is something more TV shows should star. It's not a fan show for me but it's an excellent watch. Even if, as an American, it does make me kind of terrified of our legal system, and how very capricious and political and personal it can be (especially because from what I've heard, it's more realistic than most shows...))
( Have watched through 2x03 - potential spoilers, though nothing majorCollapse )
I also am wondering where the POI/White Collar/Burn Notice crossover is - you know, the one where Peter Burke's number comes up, and then Reese discovers that Burke's partner Neal Caffrey is also aware of the trouble and is calling in a favor from an old Agency acquaintance of his down in Miami...(Michael Weston and Reese both served in Eastern Europe, and by my calculation had at least an overlapping year before Michael got burned...)
That, and the Sentinel AU (The show reminds me quite a bit of The Sentinel, between the comic-book cops-and-robbers and the bugfuck ex-Ranger hero + weird nerdy sidekick, and having diamonds of pure fanbait squee buried amidst lots of urgent and somewhat nonsensical action...)
(Also, if there's any good Finch h/c out there, I, uh, wouldn't mind being hooked up...)
Since posting that fic, I have repeatedly gotten anonymous reviews on ff.net helpfully informing me that Doctor Who has broken the 4th wall before. Usually that's all the reviews say; sometimes they specify a date for the first Whovian 4th-wall-breaking, or protest that "Of course this messes Doctor Who up." To date I have gotten 14 reviews of this nature (on a fic that's only got 16 reviews otherwise!) - a glut when it was first posted, and then coming in regularly every few months. The latest one was this morning. I've gone and deleted all of them since I didn't like how they were artificially inflating my review count - but I still have the email alerts and I'm tempted to post them all here for posterity.
As far as I can tell, though the reviews have been signed by different people, judging by word choice and sentence structure they're all by the same guy (I say "guy" because most of the names given have been male). I am so very curious who this person is! As far as I can tell, they aren't familiar with Gintama or at least don't care about it, so I can't figure out how they came across my fic at all, or why they bothered reading it. Though that's nothing compared to the real mystery, which is what drives someone to return again and again and again to a little-known fic to spam the reviews with Doctor Who trivia? What is it about this story that was so offensive and "unfair" to Doctor Who - a series approximately a hundred thousand times more popular in the English-speaking world than Gintama - that it garners such dedication? I actually went to the Doctor Who crossover section to see if it was some sort of trolling tradition, but found no other fics with such reviews.
Last year they did post one signed review, from mark3232, a completely unused account. I PM'ed back but never received a reply, but a month later my mystery "fan" was back (again anon) to correct someone else's review. I've now put up an amended author's note on the fic stating that I am aware of their thesis and I will be deleting any more such reviews I get, but I doubt this will have any effect; a mission of this importance cannot so easily be silenced!
(What makes it especially silly is that in the fic itself the characters discuss how they're in a non-canonical fanwork and not in their respective "real" universes at all...)
I looked it up and lo! It came out last year! So, since I couldn't wait for shipping, that became my first actual purchase for my Kindle (my collection is pretty much entirely fanfic and public domain books) and gave me a delightful afternoon's reading. Overall, loved it as much as I've loved the rest of the series, even if the ending got me a bit. Erm. Tense. (...meaning I probably will have to reread it, as I started speed-reading to find out how it worked out and I tend to miss details when I put the pedal to the floor) The Artemis Fowl series has to be one of the most consistent series I've ever read - while the story and characters change and evolve enough to keep it interesting, it keeps to its core elements from first book to last (and my impression is that the author's voice remains constant, too, though I'd have to go back and reread to be sure. Which I might well do.) Meaning if you don't care for the first book, I wouldn't bother reading the rest. On the other hand if you enjoyed it, yes, buy all the books and buckle up because it's a romping ride all the way through!
Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian continues and concludes the tradition of the series in grand style. And by tradition I mean Eoin Colfer's uncanny ability to write to my personal fiction kinks like he's got a direct line to my id. These books maybe more than any others I regret not existing when I was a kid, because as much as I enjoy them now, they would've been closing on a religious experience to my young un-kink-jaded self. I mean, The Last Guardian has
mutual attempted self-sacrifice in a fantastic take on the old sucker-punch scenario, Holly attempting to knock Artemis out to make the world-saving sacrifice herself, only to have Artemis pull a fast one on her anyway and knock her out (you can't blame Holly, it's Artemis!) Do you know how many times I'd have reread that as a small thing? (at least three or four times more than I'm going to reread it now... :D)
Also Artemis and Holly's best-friendery is oh so delicious, and stays firmly as friendship (while not ruling out the possibility for more developing). Plus Artemis's baby brothers are begging for their own sequel series. Which I don't think there are any plans for, though...
Also Artemis and Holly's best-friendery is oh so delicious, and stays firmly as friendship (while not ruling out the possibility for more developing). Plus Artemis's baby brothers are begging for their own sequel series. Which I don't think there are any plans for, though...
Colfer has said he intended for the series to be a trilogy that then he had more ideas for, but he's decided it's time to move on, and I entirely respect his choice to end on a high note. At the same time, if he does happen to get a new idea to pick up on any of the loose threads dangling about that world, I will be be there with bells on!
(I admit, I feel somewhat awkward making grand proclamations as to the worth of fanfic. Fic has been one of my major hobbies for years, it's given me great pleasure and I've made a lot of friends through it. But the vast majority of fanfic (mine most definitely included!) is extremely lightweight entertainment. It's not culturally insignificant; but it's neither humanity's greatest achievement. So while I can and will defend its artistic merit, for the most part that's not what I look to it for. That being said...)
As a writer, I personally feel that censorship, that the attempt to prohibit or control the sharing of ideas, is dangerous to the production of art, to the creators of art, and to society as a whole. Regardless of whether it's government censorship banning books, or an original creator's censorship of an interpretation of their work that makes them "uncomfortable".
If you respect a creator and want to honor their wishes by not writing fic of their work, that's awesome, good for you. But there is absolutely no rule that says that because you have read something by an author means you have to respect that author. There are quite a lot of authors I've read the works of who I do not respect, either because of the work itself, or because of what I know about the author otherwise (yes, Orson Scott Card, you homophobic asshole, I'm talking about you.) So to say that I should be required to respect a creator's wishes, that a creator has the right to stop me from expressing my opinions of their work - whether they're expressed by writing a critical essay or smutty fanfic - makes me wonder what's the point of art, of experiencing other's ideas, if I'm only allowed to engage with them in "approved" ways and aren't permitted to have thoughts of my own?
I will admit this is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy; any author who opposes fanfic etc. based on their work I automatically lose respect for (and therefore don't feel obliged to listen to their wishes about making fanworks). To me, any attempt by an artist to try to limit others' creative expression feels like they're trying to keep the "art" to themselves, that they feel that they should be allowed to create what work they like, but "other people" aren't worthy of that right. Because there is no artist who has never been influenced by, inspired by, other art, others' creations - whether or not the original creators of those works meant to inspire anybody.
If you don't want to inspire anybody else, if you want to keep your characters and your worlds all to yourself and not let anyone play with them, there is a very simple solution - don't publish. If you make art of them, don't share it with anyone else; or else only share with trusted friends who respect you personally enough to not do anything with your creations that you don't want them to do. As soon as you give a stranger access to your art, then you are giving them the right to have any and all thoughts about that work, and to express those thoughts publicly, and they should be legally protected to do so, in any fair, just, and healthy society.
No Such Liberty (147330 words) by Xparrot
Chapters: 32/32
Fandom: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Loki & Thor
Characters: Thor (Marvel), Loki (Marvel), Odin (Marvel), Frigga (Marvel), Sif (Marvel), Warriors Three, Original Characters, Tony Stark, Clint Barton, Other Avengers
Additional Tags: Post-Movie, Drama, Angst, Brothers, Asgard, Loki Feels, Thor Feels, so many feels
Summary:
Thor takes Loki back to Asgard in chains, but this does not mean that Loki's schemes are ended, or that Thor has or ever will give up on his brother. Though when danger threatens the realm, on which side will Loki fall?
Made it at slightly under 150K words (I ended up cutting about 4K in the editing, here and there). Feels strange to have nothing more to post, after putting up chapters approximately-weekly for the last six and a bit months. ...Yeah, it took longer to edit & post than it did to write the thing, geesh! And people have actually read it - and liked it, even! and left me amazing comments! - which kind of amazes me, considering it's gen, and so tightly focused on Loki & Thor, and my Loki isn't in step with a lot of the fandom anyway, being far too woobie for some and not woobie enough for others. But it's the story I wanted, the one I'm not going to get from Thor 2, so in the end I'm glad I did it.
Now I have to get back to writing - something! I've been slacking off, editing instead of writing new stuff, for the last couple months, stuck in my regular winter hibernation; but February tends to be the month I get going again. There's things there that want to be written, bubbling right under the surface; I just need to bait a hook and toss it in...
(...and stop playing Fallen London, or at least stop stalking my candle waiting for it to refresh, AGH
sholio! :P :P :P)I was away on vacation for a couple weeks (holidays in Australia is an amazing experience - New Year's Eve in Sydney was like the Fourth of July, hot and sunny and fireworks! ...And enormous flitting fruitbats freaked out by said fireworks, which is not like any New Year's I've had before. There were sulfur-crested cockatoos nesting outside our hotel window, and rainbow lorikeets flocking everywhere, and ibises in the park and prehistoric geese on the golf courses, and snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef was beyond amazing. I've wanted to go to Australia for the animals since I was about six, and it did not disappoint on the creature features! I also got to meet
alasen who is a lovely (non-marsupial!) creature herself, along with a batch of other marvelous fangirls whose names and screennames both I have...entirely managed to forget. But it was great fun!)Then I celebrated my recovery from the jetlag by getting an awful cold which I'm only now recovering from (rather screwed up my fic-posting schedule - for anyone who is waiting for it, the end of the Loki fic is coming, soon!) and plunging into AO3 wrangling business for the year.
Also watched the end of Fringe! Which I...I don't know how I feel about it. But then I don't actually know how I feel about Fringe in general, so that's par for the course...( some spoilery natteringCollapse ) In the end I would have to recommend Fringe as a show worth seeing, original in a lot of ways (and a lot of different ways, being one of the few shows I know that managed to pretty much change its entire concept with every season, while still remaining recognizable and true to its characters all along...)
gnine very (very) late at night about Loki's costume choices led to this:Loki Runway (6336 words) by
Fandom: The Avengers (2012), Project Runway (US) RPF
General Audiences | No Archive Warnings Apply
Loki hadn't been observed with a new scepter, and there had yet to be another alien invasion, but he was still a supervillain. SHIELD was on high alert for three months.
Which was when the new season of Project Runway started airing, and one of the designers strutting his stuff in the opening, boldly declaring, "I'll show you mortals how to make it work," set off every facial recognition program SHIELD had.
And "No Such Liberty" continues on, now with bonus Avengers:
No Such Liberty (112,992 words) by
Chapters 20-26
"You invited Thanos to your nightmares, to your mind—why? What devil's bargain were you seeking this time?"
marvel_bang is live!And being as I'm ridiculous, I just had to go and write a gen fusion/x-over for it - an anime fusion, effectively reducing my audience to sliiiightly above zero. But 12K has been one of my favorite series forever - it's always been a very much a Type A fandom for me, though, nothing I ever felt up to writing fic for. Fusions, however, are fair game, and so much fun! (I should mention that the fic is actually not crack in spite of the premise. Which was basically me realizing that Loki's name was too perfect to resist.)
Great thanks to
beckerbell and gnine for the beta/pre-read/cheerleading/telling me that yes it was a ridiculous idea and I should totally do it anyway, and thanks to neptune47 for the lovely fanart!
Sea of Storms, Bridge of Colors (30,785 words) by
Fandom: Thor (Movies)/Juuni Kokki | Twelve Kingdoms fusion
Teen And Up Audiences | Loki & Thor gen
Asgard was once a province in the kingdom of Lo, until its people were driven out, forced to become a wandering mercenary tribe. As the sons of the All-Father, Thor and Lopt are raised as brothers and Asgardian warriors, never guessing how their destiny is entwined with the kirin of Lo, the mystical creature born to choose the emperor who will save the realm from ruin.
(Or, the one where Loki is a magic black unicorn.)
Good luck to everyone on the American East Coast, stay safe!
SPOILERS (do not read unless you've read it. I mean it, really, it's better not knowing...)
But I would just like to say, to everyone I got into this series...
( I say again, spoooooilersCollapse )
(In non-spoilery news, this issue also included a letter from Tom Hiddleston to Kieron Gillen, waah!:
Dear Kieron,
You and I see Loki the same way. He's one dark, anarchic, bottomless black hole of rage, hatred, pity and pain. An exiled outcast, a lost & lonely agent of chaos, who wouldn't know what to do with familial forgiveness if it walked up to him in the street and slapped him in the face. I've had as much fun playing him as you've clearly had writing him. I know your run of JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY has been so hugely popular. What an enormous honour to share Loki's legacy with you. Here's to bringing Norse back!
--Tom Hiddleston
ETA: A follow-up thought from
gnine...In other writing news I finally finished the rough draft of "No Such Liberty". Which is substantially longer than said novel manuscript. I decline to admit how much. So grateful someone is reading this thing; it's so ridiculously self-indulgent and not most fans' cup of Loki-tea, but eh, no regrets. I DO WHAT I WANT (or what my muse wants, anyway...)
No Such Liberty (77,688 words) by
Chapters 13-19
"What was concealed from us, Loki? What happened, when you were so hidden?"
And the final chapter of Everything Burns comes out tomorrow...*scoots deeper under the desk*
( spoilers! through JiM 644Collapse )
marvel_bang is taking claims for stories now! (that I have a story in the big bang as so far yet unclaimed has nothing to do with this rec. Really. ._.)Meanwhile the ongoing struggle with my Loki feels continues apace, have posted a few more chapters, with the latest one having one of my favorite moments in the story (if anyone ever wondered if I outgrew my love of smarm - no. No I have not.)
No Such Liberty (47,734 words) by
Chapter 9-12
Loki slept peacefully for the day and the night and late into the next day; past noon he at last awoke, screaming.