This accidentally turned into five things, oops

[melannen]

I washed my hair this morning, and instead of immediately braiding it/tying it back, or going to bed, like I usually do, I decided to just let it dry free.

It turns out I have curly hair now. Since when? And it's a nice-looking kind of curly too, not *foom* or the limp waves that used to be my two options.

***

Today stultiloquentia linked to a new fic by lettered called The Chuck Writes Story, which is pretty much an account of the last years of SPN from the perspective of a wank report.

It's kind of brilliant. I mean, yes, I am a sucker for any fic that includes wank reports and lj names, but this one ties up so much stuff with reality and story and fan ethics and writing ethics and fan/creator interaction and IDEK, and it is way more than the typical BNF-AU fic. If you're at all interested in fandom-as-a-fandom, you should totally read this fic.

(also it teaches us that not leaving feedback or recc'ing things can lead to the end of the world, trufax, because we could be commenting on angels, unawares.)

...and this on the same day that uk_lolitics fandom had a matching-tie-colors-shipping incident that leapfrogged from the community to twitter to the real people and back, with a sidenote on purple socks. :P (Still the only rpf fandom where they actually send sekrit messages by color-coding their ties.)

***

I've actually gotten way behind on following the lolitics meme and haven't worked on any fic in ages, but I still read the communities. And I thought it might be interesting to list the currently running shows I'm following fannishly (as in, every week as soon as new episodes come out):

Quite Interesting (either youtube or torrents)
Have I Got News For You? (either youtube or torrents)
Would I Lie To You? (youtube)
Mock the Week (youtube)
8 Out of 10 Cats (youtube)
Never Mind the Buzzcocks (youtube)
The Bugle (by using a backdoor into the iTunes account + converting from m4a. PS: Chris is awesome, fuck John and Andy)
The News Quiz (on BBC Radio 4 webcast)
Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me (the WWDTM website or on actual radio, if I remember)

...yes, I have a problem. But so does British media apparently, so there. Anyway I thought about posting this because there seems to be a new current-events satire show from the BBC: Tonight, hosted by Rory Bremner. I listened to the first episode of it on the BBC iPlayer the other day, and perhaps the most relevant thing about it is that Andy Zaltzman is their political correspondent. Hooray for Andy getting a real job! And why didn't I hear about this on the Bugle?

It's a lot like The Now Show, though. They better not be canceling the Now Show.

***

Otherwise fannishly: I guess I'm all caught up on Dresden Files now. The anon meme seems to have slowed down a lot while I was away. D: Also wow the Marcone bias is apparent when you read a bunch of it all in one go like that. I have declared a moratorium on posting anything Marcone-related there for awhile. Even if I do have theories.

(Am I the only one who came out of Ghost Stories suspecting Childs is an agent of the Fomor and Marcone isn't really in Rome? No? Just me then?)

It's a good thing I already knew from careful experiment that anything non-Marcone-related gets about 1/10th the feedback of anything else on the meme, or I'd be feeling kind of discouraged right now. :P

In completely unrelated news, can I just sing out my love for a certain kind of fic featuring a certain kind of pairing? That is to say:

Teacher/Student fics;
Where the teacher is male and the student is female;
And they were teaching in a time of war, such that the student never really had a time when she was safe or innocent or didn't know how to kill;
And the war, and the teaching, are over now;
And the student has gone off, and learned things from other people, and earned her own way, and become awesome;
And she comes back and is completely a match for her teacher in any way;
And his only possible reaction to this is 'guh';
And they develop a fully equal relationship that's aware of the lingering power issues and consciously works with them and they communicate, possibly because whenever he screws up she is capable and willing to smack him down;
And if either of them ends up staying at home with the kids, it's totally him (after all he's the one in a caring profession.)

There are many reasons why I like this storyline, obviously. Some of them involve my personal history with teachers and teaching. Some of them involve ways that the storyline hits things I like anyway: like canon female characters who go off and become awesome, and the male characters acknowledge that they are now awesome; and relationships where the equality, and the inherent issues with it, are openly acknowledged.

I think one thing I like about it is that a romance traditionally needs some kind of impediment to the relationship happening: in slash it's often, at least partly, external: I can't date another guy/girl!, which I think is one of the reasons slash romances go down easy. I often get bored/frustrated with the ones where it's all internal, where it's all about the characters not talking to each other or angsting endlessly or passing around the idiot ball or whatever, especially with characters where I don't see that as IC. But a lot of the other external obstacles either get awfully contrived, or are too much of an obstacle and take over the story. That teacher/student formula, for me at least, is just enough of an obstacle that it's believable to me that it would make the story interesting, but not enough of one that it needs too much set-up or makes me lose sympathy for the characters.

Anyway which is just to say: Where is all the Harry/Molly fic? I know why nobody wants it to be canon - nobody can trust Butcher to write Harry/Molly in a way that doesn't set off everybody's squick meters and make us want to destroy innocent bookbindings - but as a fanfic ship it is perfectly set up to fit that formula. And I know I'm not the only one who likes that formula! Because I've already read ALL the Snape/Hermione fic and ALL the Kakashi/Sakura fic (And SOME of the Spock/Uhura fic, but a lot of it just ignores the teacher/student aspects. Sadly.)

Somebody even requested pretty much exactly this on the DF meme a few weeks back (and it wasn't me!)

Of course it didn't have any Marcone in it so nobody on the meme took notice of it. But still. (Maybe I should go request Harry/Molly/Marcone.)

***

PS: I am going AFK for a five-day weekend starting tomorrow. Enjoy the internets without me!

Comments

[cyprinella]

Someone is filling a Harry/Molly BDSM story right now which I think is pretty awesome.

[melannen]

I know, isn't it awesome? But I can't be the first anon to leave feedback on it, that would be gross sockpuppetry. :P

Like I said, I know from experience to expect non-Marcone-related fills to get no love on the meme, I am just commenting on that fact. :P)

[cyprinella]

Did I not leave ♥? I thought I did. Damnit!

[melannen]

There was one 'yay!' comment and one ambiguous comment on part 1, could've been you, and none at all on part 2. Which is great, because it greatly reduces internal pressure on the author to finish part 3 in a timely manner! :D

[cyprinella]

Well then here I will be all definitive about it and say MOAAAAAAR!

[melannen]

I will do the best I can considering the 'close proximity to elderly relatives' issue over the next few days. :P

[sara]

(Still the only rpf fandom where they actually send sekrit messages by color-coding their ties.)

Wait, REALLY?

That's...really?

[melannen]

They don't send secret messages about who is dating who (well, not as far as we know :P) but all the political parties, and a lot of the hot-button issues, have their own signature colors, and a lot of the politicians admit to picking tie colors to show support for whatever they're supporting. (Especially around campaign times!) Which basically gives fandom carte blanche to read any meaning they want into any and all sartorial choices.

(One of the things that make me still enjoy this fandom are reading the reaction posts to live House of Commons broadcasts, and seeing all the comments about these Very Serious And Important Men that completely ignore what they're saying in favor of talking about their sartorial choices on that particular day. It's strangely empowering.)

[sara]

...or cracked. Empowering or cracked, one or the other.

[melannen]

Can't it be both?

(The comm has a strict 'no serious business' rule on those posts. It's not that nobody cares about what they're saying, it's just that they also care about who is wearing a natty blue-satin-lined suit jacket today, and whether the Speaker's tie really does portray Lovecraftian horrors from the deep, or it's just a bad paisley, and they know that mixing squee with business ends badly.)

[sara]

...I've been giving real thought to buying C. a tire that portrays Lovecraftian horrors from the deep for his birthday this year, actually.

He doesn't like paisley. Which is hard for me to understand, because there's nothing better than a good paisley and it's almost in fashion this year.

[melannen]

When I was young and comparatively innocent, someone passed on to me the rumor that paisley became popular because it's shaped like human sperm cells. I admit I've been vaguely suspicious of it ever since.

That tentacle tie is awesome though!

[sara]

*blinks* And here I always thought it was another sartorial gift brought to us by the appropriationistic imperialists of the late great British Empire. I mean, it was popular hundreds of years before anyone had any idea what sperm looked like.

It is pretty neat. I like a lot of her ties. Of course, C. has a work-at-home job (I don't, but the scarf selection is much smaller).

[melannen]

I didn't say the rumor was true. (I think the story actually went that it became popular in Europe around the same time as the first published drawings of magnified sperm, because of the similarity in shape. Still probably not true.)

[zlabya]

I've traditionally veered away from RPF but this one sounds so delightful! Especially the bit about the ties. Over here in the US everyone seems committed to red and white to go with their blue suits so they are oh so patriotic.

[melannen]

I don't know if it's that different, it's just that US politicians are too chicken to publicly voice their support for anything more specific than "GO USA!" :P

[sara]

I don't even know how you'd say, "I would like a robust infrastructure-repair and jobs-creation package" with your neckwear. Perhaps a necktie with a backhoe on it.

That place I linked to has got one with wind turbines. Maybe I should have one delivered to Pete DeFazio's office.

[derryderrydown]

My first thought was Harry Potter/Molly Weasley.

My second was, "Huh, that doesn't fit-"

My third was, "But, damn, I'd read the hell out of it if was well-written."

[melannen]

Damn, so would I.

Has anybody written it? This is HP fandom. Surely somebody's written it. (waly and lack-a-day for the days of de.icio.us.)

ETA: Also I have several times attempted to get people to write Harry/Charity in Dresden Files - which is essentially the same ship as Harry Potter/Molly Weasley - but no dice, sigh. To much het and not enough Marcone, one suspects.

[sophia_sol]

Hah, I'm pretty sure that the entire reason I commented on the Chuck Writes story is because of all the overthinking about comments and friends that Chuck did in the first part.... (I'm usually awful at commenting on things I like)

Could you tell me what all it is that happened in lolitics today, that you refer to offhand? Because it sounds very interesting and I have no connection whatsoever to lolitics and wouldn't even know where to start looking. (and hey, if you have fic recs, I am not opposed to learning more about this fandom!)

[melannen]

Clearly we have found the new strategy for getting lots of comments. :P

It partly-locked, and partly involving-real-people, and I'm not sure I want to publically link the two halves, but basically, there is a Member of Parliament who often interacts in an.. um, sparky-yet-friendly way with the Speaker, and thus fandom has been not-at-all seriously shipping them. They are also both known for wearing interesting ties. Some on the comm noticed that today, Speaker was wearing the exact same eye-searing tie that said MP had worn a few weeks ago. So they mocked up a graphic pointing this out.

And then the graphic's maker tweeted it at said MP, and he tweeted back accusing the Speaker of 'stealing his tie' and calling it #tiegate, and then tweeting the Speaker's wife demanding an explanation, and as she does she was awesome in fandom's general direction.

And then the RP sockpuppet journals of the characters in question made another locked post in the fan community discussing this and making thinly veiled accusations at each other. While the real people were having an almost-as-cracky Twitter conversation about it, and @-replying some of the RP journals' muns, at the same time.

In a lot of RPS fandoms this level of interaction would be a signal for panic and wank, but lolitics fandom is just sort of used to it these days, because yes, British politicians do that sort of thing. (This afternoon someone from the comm also tweeted asking who the MP with the spiffy purple socks was, and got a twitter reply from somebody who was sitting next to him. In the House of Commons. As we speak. (Because they just passed a bill allowing MPs to tweet from the floor. As you do. When the word economy is in crisis.)

...and god, I am so far behind on the fic and the del.icio.us account that indexed most of it is still completely b0rked, so I don't even know where to tell you to start. Charity Begins At Home is up on AO3 and a good starter classic from the early days, though it doesn't bring in a lot of the 'minor' characters that have been getting more attention lately.

[sophia_sol]

...lolitics sounds AWESOME. In a slightly worrying kind of way. :P What are the names of the MP and the Speaker involved? *goes to read Charity Begins At Home*

[melannen]

Bercow and Bryant. Or Brycow, as the fandom has it.

[cyprinella]

When the word economy is in crisis.

Are we going to austerity tweeting? Only 70 characters now?

[verity]

I want to read Harry/Molly post-Ghost Story. Before that, I couldn't see it. But now? FUCK YES.

[melannen]

I think I could maybe see things heading in a Ghost-story-ish direction with Molly already, but definitely. Yes. They have so many parallel traumas now, and Molly's had her first "kick ass and stand on her own convictions without her mentors" moment.

[trouble]

I have such a kink for Student/Teacher fic /o\ And yeah, you've hit the major bits of it.

I am excited to read that SPN fic you recced! Which... is not something I say.

[melannen]

It is definitely not a fic that you need to be an SPN fan to enjoy! At all!

And yay for teacher/student kink.

[stultiloquentia]

...because we could be commenting on angels, unawares.

Bwahahaha. Well put.

[melannen]

It's true!

[zana16]

Yay, I am not the only person addicted to The News Quiz and The Now Show!

:)

[melannen]

Nope! As a News Quiz and Now Show fan, have you listened to the first ep of "Tonight"? Do you have any thoughts? :D

[zana16]

I am not familiar with Tonight -- what is it? *perks up*

[melannen]

The one I mentioned in my post! :D It's a new BBC Radio 4 show, kind of like The Now Show. It's listenable on the website. They did a Tom Lehrer song this week!

[zana16]

...You are right. Oops! :) Wish they had a podcast... otherwise I'll forget to listen!

[lettered]

Thanks!