Completely unrelated to the previous post, my AO3 playing card deck came a couple of weeks ago!

I think it is just using the 52 most-used freeform tags on AO3 (not counting the ones too pornographic for Legal to allow) which is why there is both a Fix-it card and a Canon Divergence-Fixit card, but they are very fun and I can see them being good for both story-plotting and divination. The graphic design for every tag is also very clean and fun, although none of us could figure out what the heck was going on with the Gen card.

Anyway, there are fifty-two tags (and two wild cards) in the deck, and COINCIDENTALLY, I have more-or-less 52 files in my "wips I really wish I was finishing" Scrivener file. So what I should do is match the cards to the files and every day I draw a card and have to add at least one word to that file. But instead I'm probably just going to write them up here. For fun.

( You'd think being this good at coming up with reasons not to work on these would translate into writing skill, but no )

(There are nearly 200000 words of fic in that Scrivener file.)

This meme seems to be going around again - I got it via avanti_90. I need something to bribe myself to get to-do list done with, anybody want to give me a pairing and some numbers?

It can be any pairing from any of the fandoms you know I know canon for, except I'm going to exclude RPF this time, because I'm so incredibly behind on canon for all my old RPF fandoms. (There are some fiction canons I'm also incredibly behind on, I'll let you know if you hit one of them.)

Comment with the name of a ship from a fandom I know and I will tell you a bit about how each of the following scenarios would go down for them:
1. Fake dating
2. Bodyswap
3. Sexpollen/fuck or die/aliens made them do it
4. Dark!fic
5. Their first kiss
6. Meeting the parents
7. Moving in together
8. A crossover of my choice
9. An AU of my choice
10. If you like, another trope/scenario of your choice

So it's almost February! How time flies when you haven't done any fiction writing since Yuletide.

Also I think my first-half-of-February book display at work is going to be wolves and werewolves. I was going to do books about how it's okay to be single and you shouldn't feel pressure to find The One, but - and I don't know why I was surprised by this - we don't have enough books in the library system to do a display on that.

So wolves it is. I even put A Companion to Wolves on hold to use in the display. Maybe I'll actually read it first, even.

So hey, if I were to write something about wolves this February, completely for no reason at all except to jumpstart my writing again, OR even for this year's Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia fest, what should I write?

aoifes_isle asked for: Most oddball piece of research done this year - whether it be for work, wrangling, fic or because the brain-weasels attacked ...

So, uh, is there anyone reading this who has some Russian and would be willing to look over a first-pass translation of some Vysotsky lyrics I'm trying to put into English? I think I've got a rough literal version via Google and two other not-great English translations, but given that I know, like, three words of Russian, it would be nice to have someone to confirm it's all basically right, and stuff like "Does 'в настроеньи питейном' mean 'feeling drunk' or 'wanting a drink'?"

schneefink asked: what would be your ideal next canon YA series?

SO I actually wrote up a version of this right after I got the topic, because, well, Young Avengers! I had a whole twelve-issue storyline that was both something I really wanted to see, and that centered around the Young Avengers' ongoing themes of time travel/AUs, meta and reality shifts, and questions of identity. Unfortunately the main plot hook was "trying to bring Cassie Lang back from dead". Oops.

Anyway the short version: if I was proposing a YA series to Marvel right now, I would want it to center around Loki experimenting with reality-alteration using the power of storytelling (specifically: fanfic! :P) with the help of Billy Kaplan and America Chavez and, if I'm shooting for the moon anyway, maybe Kamala Khan? And whatever assortment of other current, former, and future young superheroes I can get my hands on.

( Actually... )

If I could have ANY YA series I wanted, though, and not just one there's a slim possibility Marvel would actually make, what I want is basically the Young Avengers version of Fraction's Hawkeye - 'what they do when they aren't saving the world.'

( It starts with Billy and Teddy's housewarming for their first apartment together. )

The chances that Marvel would actually make that are, like, 0%, though, if only because it's clearly aimed at a slightly older audience than Young Avengers is meant for. ...Maybe somebody will fanfic it someday.

Actually though if I could pick any one Young Avengers series to get it would be a movie trilogy. :P You didn't specify comics series, so that counts!

Because if they keep doing comics eventually they will fuck it up completely, because comics always do, but if they do a reasonably good movie, there will be enough movie fanfic for me to dine out on for years. Also, I would love to see some of these characters get a substantial incarnation with simplified/re-imagined backstories.

Set the first movie after whatever MCU does with Civil War, with a similar origin, i.e, the grown-up superheroes have fucked up big, so it's up to us kids come together to try to fix at least the small things.

( The first movie is called 'Young Avengers: Red, White, and Black.' )

Call me, Marvel Studios, I'll throw together some spec scripts.

1. For those of you who were at the party last night, I looked it up, and "Natural Harvest" says that semen has approximately the same textural qualities in cooking and baking as egg white, so you probably wouldn't need extra stiffeners. ^_^

2. Also, Riddles of the Exeter Book, our grand and noble heritage as English speakers, and 100% definitely what really happened in "Riddles in the Dark", someone ellenfremedon should write that version.

3. So I didn't quite manage the October challange to finish at least five wips so I could earn the right to do NaNo; I'm actually REALLY CLOSE but when it came down to the wire I said "screw it" and went to bed early instead. oops. So as punishment, instead of NaNo, I have decided I have to add at least 1500 words to one of my wips every day in November.

To aid this effort, last week (...when I could have been writing) I went through and made a new Scrivener file that includes every story I have worked on but not finished in the past three-and-some years. It has 154 files, containing 294,856 words, divided into four main folders: "WIPs", "WIPs that I claimed were finished and posted to AO3 anyway", "stories that exist only as outlines", and "notfic and ficlets I could expand". Along with some original fiction and nonfiction stuff, there are approximately 63 different fandoms represented.

(compare this to my complete fic posted to AO3, where there are 104 stories with 97 different fandom tags, and 284875 total words. --there's overlap there, though, due to the 'WIPs I claimed were finished and posted anyway" category, though only about 50,000 words' worth. Of course AO3 represents over ten years' output as opposed to three-and-a-bit.)

Anyway I will be posting the stories I worked on and how many words here periodically, to motivate myself, under the tag 'nanowrimo' if you care. Also I have realized I have a bunch of money I budgeted to give away this year that I've spent hardly any of, so to sweeten the pot, every time I finish a WIP this month I will donate 1% of its wordcount (in dollars) to a semi-related good cause of some sort. whooo.

So far I have:

• Added 850 words to the one where Bucky Barnes is a Yankees fan, because when even the Hydra Trash Party thinks that's going too far, I can think of no better endorsement.


• Wrote 850 words of the next bit of the aNitLO megacrossover, since it matches my Halloween costume.

So I'm not technically behind until I go to bed tonight without writing anything more!

4. Harry Potter LJ fandom is apparently having a reunion party this week. I'm not sure if I'll do anything for it (...finish a ten-year-old HP wip, maybe?) but I think there's still some old HP friends hanging around here who might be interested.

I am backreading old fic in my tags (partly to procrastinate actually finishing any more, partly because I'm thinking about finally putting together an AO3 anthology of scraps too small to go anywhere else, partly because I am masochistically collecting old bunnies I could write the first 1700 words of if I make my October goal^**).

And I just want to say that if anybody felt like posting their translation of Oolon Colluphid was Right somewhere I could see it, it would make my weekend. ^_^

(my intoabar assignment is Jasper Sitwall & Nita Callahan, which is simultaneously too hard and way too easy)

^**Here is my current list of bunnies-I-could-totally-write-the-first-1700-words-of-as-long-as-I-wasn't-obligated-to-finish, if any of you want to egg me on in my challenge <_<

*the AU where Javert becomes a criminal mastermind instead of a cop and recruits Valjean before he meets the bishop
* the Community/Captain America crossover
* the next bit of the Community werewolf AU
* the YA fic where Billy Kaplan is terrified that he's been accidentally turning everyone queer
* the one where Carlos takes Cecil as his date to the Ig-Nobel awards
* the Kirk/Spock/Uhura conduit fic (where Kirk is the conduit)
* the les amis in Omelas au
* the SGA as Gethenians au
* the Avengers Go To A Drag Ball (because if Steve comes out he wants to come out the proper old-fashioned way, by dancing with Sam at a drag ball)
* Valjean in the Ankh-Morpork AU
* pallet/shipping container slash
* Steve Rogers/Betty White
* Stacker Pentecost/Hannibal Chau hate-is-too-strong-a-word!sex
* les amis go to the moon and meet the Lunar Man-Bats
* les amis in Starfleet
* four-year-old baby spy Natasha being trained by the Winter Soldier
* Harry Dresden Sings the Blues
* The Erlking vs. Benton Fraser
* The next bit of the one where Langoustini meets Marcone
* the dS/DW AU where there's only one Ray, but he's a Time Lord
* the Pacific Rim Star Wars AU
* the one where Methos is forced to admit he's Scottish by upbringing, oops
* the one where Methos is forced to admit he's a virgin, oops
* the sequel to the hl/yw fic where Methos and Ed'rashtekaresket are bros
* the one where Marius and Cosette meet Azelma in New Orleans
* the one where les amis are judges in an American election
* the Eroica baseball au
* the one with Klaus and the "machine"
* the one where Adora Belle Dearheart becomes Patrician because the men are all too chickenhearted to do it
* the Lucky Starr AU with magical soulmate wrist tattoos - wait not an AU sorry
* the one where the serum doesn't work and Steve Rogers becomes a Pulitzer-prize winning war cartoonist instead
* the one where Aurora Pontmercy has twelve dead godfathers
* Peter Quill/Dean Winchester, driver picks the music
* the one where hot grown-up Gavroche goes back in time and saves everyone at the barricades
* the one where Bucky writes a book
* the Good Omens Easter story
* the next bit of the epic Night in the Lonesome October sequel
* Valjean and Javert at La Madeleine
* Les Amis start a porn studio (for great justice)
*JARVIS finds a copy of the Wizard's Manual on one of his drives, and has to make a Choice
*Lady Ekaterin Vorkosigan/Admiral Miles Naismith
*The AU where pere Madeleine is Bishop of Digne and Javert is a young priest serving under him
*Grantaire takes a love potion to make himself fall for Enjolras

I spent basically all of my day off yesterday either sleeping or waking up from sleeping because of headache and sore throat, so that was great, my immune system continues to time things so I'm only sick on days I already don't work. :P (I was considering calling in today, if only so I don't wind up in a paroxysm of anxiety over calling in on the day when I'm really really sick, but I'm somewhat better today and also work has air conditioning unlike home, so I guess I'm going in.)

Anyway, happy Second Half of Year, everyone! July 2nd isn't too early to be planning for Yuletide, right? Here are my current plans for yuletide requests (somebody come talk about these in comments with me....)

Fandom: Young Avengers (2013) (If it makes yuletide quals....)
Characters: America Chavez, Kid!Loki
Requests: I would like a story where America punches Loki in the face a lot and they both enjoy it, please. Sex optional (if sex, f/f America/Loki greatly appreciated), punchings required (kicking also okay.)

Fandom: Number Munchers (the original continuity, I never got into the remakes.)
Characters: Muncher, Troggles
Requests: Something about the Munchers being UTTER SMUG gits to the Troggles, please. Take your inspiration from the great moments in history, only make it personal. And with more maths. (Human AU where they are all genius mathematicians competing to solve an important problem and they all hate muncher dude is also a-ok.)

Fandom: The Asher Novels - Barbara Hambly
Characters: Any
Requests: I would like the story where James and Lydia finally realize that their thing with Simon isn't Simon and Lydia being in love and James being weirdly okay with it, it's Simon being in love with James and Lydia and vice versa, and Simon being "about time you two noticed". (There was even a bit in the Book of the Kindred of Darkness about how when vampires get involved with couples they usually go for both sides of the triangle, idk how Lydia didn't make the connection!)

Alternatively I would like something set during the Great War where James has been called back into intelligence work and is thrown among not just the human war but all the vampires of Europe fighting to survive a war unlike any they have seen before.

Also I would like a story about Simon and Grippen, at any point in their long history together, hunting together in the way vampires hunt together. Alternatively really anything that explores Grippen's feelings about Simon!

Also I would like a story about Lydia's aunts and stepmother finally getting what is coming to them. Say, a story about Grippen deciding to target Lydia's stepmom would be kind of wonderful, wouldn't it?

Basically these stories only have 13 fics on AO3 and that is a crime and a travesty they should have ALL the fanworks.

( Let me tell you about Barbara Hambly's vampire novels. (very minor spoilers.) )

The last few nights before bed, I've been watching The Thick Of It (starting with S1 - I'm now caught up through the specials). This was a show I've been aware of in a vague sense since it started, but especially (obviously) when I was active in British Politics RPF fandom. I drifted out of that fandom about the time that the new government stopped being an exciting story and started clearly being about screwing over the young, old, poor and disabled.

But then thatyourefuse started watching it and posting about it, and that means it almost certainly has interesting female characters and powerplay, and apparently what I really needed now was a political fandom I could enjoy that had no real-world stakes, and being a BBC show this one has a much less intimidating amount of canon than West Wing, so I started watching.

For the record: watching this before bed every night is possibly not a great idea. :P

( Some Things about The Thick of It s1 + specials )

For the past month or more my fandom activity has been: watching QI and HIGNFY and listening to the Bugle and The News Quiz; attempting to work on my Avengers polybigbang fic and other fics in that universe; attempting to finish one of my Community fics; poking at last year's yuletide (which I am going to post more of this year! I swear!) and related canon; keeping up with a couple of webcomics; watching The Thick Of It; and, when I just want braincandy, reading Teen Wolf slash.

I have no desire to watch Teen Wolf canon, though. It's partly because it's clear this is one of those fandoms that exists to spite canon, but let's be honest, it's at least partly because Derek and Stiles both have epically terrible hair.

I think NaNo is going to be werewolves this year, though. Just because (and because I have nine different things in my wips file that involve wolves, coyotes or werewolves in some way, for some reason.)

...no, I am not going to write a Thick Of It werewolf AU, stoppit.

Note to self: when you find yourself thinking "Oh hey, there's a Yuletide fandom called 'Hard Core Lego'? How didn't I know about that before?" it is probably time to go to bed. :P

There is not actually a yuletide fandom called Hard Core Lego, and there aren't even any relevant google results on the phrase! Internet, why not?

Presumably it's a faux-documentary about a group of women who were really big on the battlebots circuit in high school and college, famous for always using Lego pieces in their robots (and for making extremely vicious robots. And for being girls.) Since college they've grown apart, but Josie Box, their former leader, gets the group back together for tour to promote science education after hearing about how their old advisor is going to be fired because the Harper government is cutting school science programs across the country.

While they travel, stopping by an arena or hackerspace in every city, the group slowly falls apart. They visit their old school and discover that their old advisor isn't being fired because the robotics program was dismantled years ago and she's been working as a reading tutor for the past five years. Jane loses her anti-anxiety meds and won't come out of the van for three days. They stay up late having retro LAN parties and drinking caffeine until they experience hallucinations. Their old advisor admonishes Josie for cynically using the cuts to get the group back together instead of taking advantage of her resources to work for real change. Billie Talent is told that she has a high-paying job offer from Facebook and plans to quit the tour early. Josie finds out and later sets her newest robotic creation against Billie's sentimental favorite from the old days, destroying it beyond repair, and the group splits up for good. In the final scene Josie drinks with the documentary crew members and then steps on a Lego. Barefoot.

...I would watch that. (Casting suggestions?)

(Note that I haven't watched the one with Callum Keith Rennie. I just lack sufficient interest in depressing movies where nobody is very likeable and queer-ish people end tragically. I haven't seen many Canadian films at all, actually, for some reason.)


I'm working on my yuletide signup. I posted to thefourthvine's post with my signup strategy, and using basically that method I have it down to a mostly-final list of just under a hundred things that I would be delighted to write. (less than a hundred this year! I must be getting out of step with fandom.)

Have only vague ideas what I'm going to request. I may wait and see which fandoms don't have any, late in the process, to fill out my four. (Someone who wasn't me nominated Time Team RPF! \o/)

1. So I've heard about this Thing that is apparently going on in Avengers fandom, where Peter Parker is somehow Tony and Steve's kid? I haven't read any of them, because the setup trips my Canon Logic circuits too hard. But if you do want bb!Peter to end up being parented by Avengers, this is how to do it without tripping my Canon Logic circuits (and also hits my shipper circuits, yes):

Twice-orphaned superhero Peter Parker alters his smartphone with a better voice-activated search application he calls MAI (Modified Artificial Intelligence), to help him while he's out webslinging (and keep him company). Eventually he falls into the middle of an Avengers fight, and JARVIS discovers MAI, and then starts secretly sending her system upgrades; they fall in love. Peter shows up at Avengers Tower asking why his AI has been acting strange ever since that fight, he and Tony realize what JARVIS and MAI have been up to, and Tony declares it adorable and insist they move in. JARVIS and MAI work together to mother-hen everybody even better than either can on their own.

2. I picked up a copy of Men Who Stare At Goats (the supposedly-nonfiction book, not the movie), and now I want General Ross to have spent most of the late '70s and early '80s up to his eyebrows in First Earth Battalion woo, meditating and levitating and 'attuning brain waves' and primal arm-wrestling and sending soldiers against the enemy with flowers and baby lambs and hug power. In fact, this is pretty much my canon now - the book even namechecks General Ross because some of the stuff from the Hulk movie was right out of the New Age Army playbook. IT JUST MAKES SENSE that a guy who ended up on the supersoldier project would have started out there.

I have no idea how to turn this into a story, but I really want someone to figure it out.

3. People in Loki fandom like to bring in Loki's kids and Loki's motherhood experience. I want a story in which it is pointed out that Loki isn't the only one who occasionally gets bored and creates new life just because he can, because Tony does that stuff all the time, and then somehow or other Tony and Loki end up being each other's single motherhood support group. Bonus points if Loki baby-sits the robots sometimes and it's adorable and terrifying, extra bonus points if Loki rescues them from a kidnapper and goes all maternal protective rage, and Tony doesn't understand why the other Avengers are disturbed by this.

Character realism... optional.

4. An AU: In which Dr. Bruce Banner was overcome with white liberal guilt *before* that fateful gamma ray experiment, went out to help the poor of Asia, got captured by the Ten Rings, met Tony Stark in a cave full of scraps, saved Tony's life, talked him into changing his ways, and successfully got himself killed in the escape.

Meanwhile, Dr. Yinsen of Gulmira was recruited into a secret US Army program working with gamma ray immunity, there was a lab accident/poor experimental protocol, and he ended up with his very own green rage monster; he escaped military custody, fled back home to Asia, and managed to stay under the radar until the Black Widow recruited him into the Avengers Initiative to fight the Chitauri. He meets Tony Stark on the helicarrier and they bond immediately, and they live happily ever after as science buddies.

I mean I love Bruce too, but would not that version be really really awesome?

5. The rest of my Poly Big Bang draft, which needs to be done, um, tonight.


If any of these already exist and you know here they are, please tell me! Especially number 5.

While my sister was here, we went through and cleaned out a lot more of the Star Wars junk, so all that's left now fits on and around one bookshelf. (The junk we cleaned out is now sitting on the back porch, while we figure out what to do with it. I was in favor of just emailing the Star Toys museum about another mass donation, but sister wanted to see if anything was worth trying to sell, and meanwhile I'm trying to decide if I can bear to open all the mint-in-box action figures so I can play with them (and store them better), or just donate/sell them as mint in box, and also trying to convince our cousins to take it all.

...so uh anybody want any Star Wars junk?)

My sister gave me a list of the books we have that I haven't read that I should, starting with Jedi Apprentice, so I started with those.

You guys. Jedi Apprentice. I know that I've previously been told, when asked why Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan blew up into a giant fandom, that the reason was Jedi Apprentice, but somehow I was still assuming that most of it came from the fandom. NOT SO MUCH.

( Destiny! Soulbound! )

What I am saying is that these books are very silly, and I can't find any Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan on the AO3 that is quite as gay as them.

***

I also had some crochet I needed to get done, so I decided to start watching Community. It is you guys's fault. Yes, you. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, Community people.

I am watching in silly mixed-up order, starting with the five legal free online streaming episodes (all from later in S3) and then at the beginning of S2. (since I have already read ALL THE FIC - and wow, Community people, that didn't take long, get on the ball there - and been to the con-txt panels, and been subjected to many people discussing it - I had already been spoiled, so that seemed like a good order to go in.) I'm about a third of the way through S2 now. Here are my comments:

1. JSYK, if somebody had told me that John Oliver had a brilliant recurring guest role on this show, I probably would have started watching two years ago. :P

( some more things that surprised me )

(There is nothing in the above about Troy and Abed and the general geek-friendliness and Annie and Britta and Pierce and Shirley and the Dean and postomdern magical realism and the episodes themselves and etc. because the fandom did prepare me adequately for how awesome all of that is. Yay!)

***

Oh, so the last part of the Avengers-are-geeks fic went up on AO3 a few days ago, and so did that not!fic I posted on here a few months back, The One Where Tony Stark And Princess Leia Hook Up, since I was writing about Avengers and Star Wars anyway.

My writing has been going interesting places this year! I signed up for inkingitout with a wordcount total for the year, and it's the last half of July and I'm actually ahead by a comfortable margin!

The main thing I am learning about my writing is that writing hard things is hard, and writing silly crossovers is easy. So while I have a bunch of Hard Things that I am still pounding away at (including the Avengers fics I was talking about at con-txt, and some Homestuck things, and the next bit of the October megacrossover, and a couple of DF WIPs, yes, before you ask), it makes it easier if I am working on something silly at the same time, to turn to when all writing seems a pit of despair and failure.

Unfortunately once I let myself decide that I immediately got overrun with silly crossovers, so I need you guys to help me out.



...okay, I'll be honest, regardless of the poll, it's probably going to be the Avengers/Star Wars one, if only because it only needs about five hundred more words of snappy dialogue for a complete first draft. Unfortunately, despite being a silly crossover, I am filled with angst about what to do with it then.

( Completion and pairings )

(While I was working on this lettered wrote a much more coherent post on the topic of pairing tags, which covers the same ground, you should go read that instead.)

...okay, that hypothetical crossover meme has reached levels of ludicrosity previously unattained on this journal.

Here is a list of fills so far:

Dresden Files/Vorkosigan Saga for isis (consisting of some extra bits of canon for the crossover I already wrote for this.)
Temeraire/Princess Bride ideas for finch
Pinkwaterverse/Cthulhu mythos for seekingferret (in which I fail miserably; surely *somebody* can come up with a better one?)
--seekingferret does Major League Baseball/The pirate Rabbi and Thor/Star Trek to my prompts
White Collar/Pirates of the Caribbean and DCU/The Lone Gunmen for elf. (Somebody needs to write a pirates/white collar crossover actually. Desperately. Also need fic now where Frohike tangos with Barbara Gordon, but that's a given.)
some flailing as regards Temeraire/Sherlock Holmes for ellen_fremedon
British Comedian RPF/Vorkogisan Saga for marginaliana (This one got kind of out of hand after lannamichaels tapped in. It probably helps to note that we were borrowing some of the characterization from a previous conversation regarding Aral Vorkosigan, Epic Troll. Also: this article on how traditional Chinese stand-up has fared under communism which I incidentally already had bookmarked, yes I did background research for this bit.) marginaliana asked for a British Comedy RPF crossover and I'm afraid in the elaboration we focused almost entirely on the Barrayar part, but I promise if I actually wrote it there would be a bunch of scenes of David and Charlie and Jimmy and Dara and so on meeting in hidden, poorly-lit back rooms at the university and playing at revolution.
Avengers/Sesame Street for lannamichaels. An excuse to write fic for the Teeny Little Super Guy! Yay!
Homestuck/Colbert Report for erinptah, featuring unbridgeable idealogical differences. And stabs. Mostly stabs.
Homestuck/Vorkosigan Saga for biichan. In which there are fantrolls.
Homestuck/Ranma 1/2 for terajk, featuring brownbetty and biichan contributing their own versions as well, which we must encourage them to write. yes.


Unfilled, still to do (list mostly for my reminder):
Avengers/Young Wizards and Vorkosigan/Avengers (I really need to watch that movie, I guess)
Something Sutcliff/Rihannsu-ish (Every time I poke at this I just come out concluding I need to re-read Rihannsu more. Tragic!)


This is actually an interesting way to find out what fandoms my commenters care about! Avengers yes (kind of obviously) but there's lots of Vorkosigan and Homestuck and Temeraire on there too, hmm.

And yes, I will still fill prompts if people leave them. Not crossovered out yet!

And as usual, all bunnies and notfic posted by me here are completely available for other people to pick up and run with, if you should chance to be so inspired.

ellen_fremedon has started a meme, which is terribly dangerous but too tempting for me to ignore, so here:

Let's play the Hypothetical Crossover game! Name any two (or more) fandoms you know I'm familiar with*, and I will tell you how I would, hypothetically**, cross them over!

Take the meme, spread the meme, do the meme, love the meme.


*Fandoms I'm familiar with: written on AO3 (expand full list), tagged on DW (under fandoms: , though note my DW tags are a mess atm); marked 'read' on LT: SF and YA, comics (and art), everything. (If you want to be particularly evil, you can give me two fiction fandoms + a nonfiction book and I will mash all three.)

**I thought about saying that you can't name a pair of fandoms about which you know I have already a) written, b) hypothetically discussed, or c) declared I am not writing, but nah. Just, if you give me one of those, you deserve what you get in return!

Hmm. That last post wasn't really in the spirit of today being More Joy Day, was it?

So here is some joy: lannamichaels is talking about Ezar Vorbarra/Aral Vorkosigan arranged marriage AUs. And I started talking about it with her in comments. And now she has written a bit of it in comments! There should be more of it. There should be epics. It is full of joy! And glitter! And conquest!

Also there is a digression about how Simon Illyan should just have sex with everybody, which is also full of joy. Come join us!

You guys, you guys, you remember the Cordelia Vorkosigan Flimsy Dolls, right? And if you followed the comments, you may have seen me and sara and carmarthen discussing the politics of the Vorhartung Castle Gift Shop, and how somebody should write that story?

Well, miss_lanyon wrote it! As a sequel to Ship Duty, already one of the best recent Vorkosigan fics out there, no less! And you should all go read it because it's brilliant and it's everything it should be. There are old Vor ladies! And stuffed Stegosauri! And Byerly being competent! And Ivan being traumatized by pictures of his mother in her underwear! And discussions of white collar crime and accounting! And many other wonderful things!

A Charity Case: In which Byerly gets a job, Ivan fills in for his mother, the Emperor polishes his retail skills, and the Vorhartung Castle Gift Shop ladies embezzle every mark.


Also, everybody, seriously, you should totally get in the habit of throwing all the random plot bunnies you have out in the open, because I have been doing that, and people keep writing the darn things. It is making my given/recieved ratio on AO3 look completely out of whack, but I don't care, because they are all awesome stories. This is fandom doing what fandom is for! (That is, providing me with a custom drip-feed of the stories I need in my life with minimal effort on my part. ...I mean, um, building new heights of creativity through collaboration and conversation and an ethic of openness of ideas. Yes. that.)

(Now somebody needs to write me the Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane AU set in the Study in Emerald universe. In which Peter is of course a distant descendant of royalty down several lines. Go on. You know you want it now too.)

ETA: btw, terajk is still writing heartwarming Ranma + Ryoga + Akane fic, if you were wondering.

I have been reading a ton of Avengers-y fic lately, and I have learned that in certain places in Thor movie fandom, it has been decided Nick Fury, Director of Shield, is Jormungandr the World Serpent, condemned to enwrap all Midgard in his mighty coils until the end of days.

This fact is so self-evidently true that I keep forgetting it's only fanon; I was re-reading some old post-Civil War fic and I was like, "Of course Tony couldn't manage SHIELD effectively; he's not a Son of Loki [he only thinks he is]."

I kind of desperately want movieverse fic where Fury and Thor go fishing now, but I'm not in that fandom, so.

Also, due to an interesting concatenation of friendslist posts, I now find myself wanting Tony Stark/Leia Organa fic,¹ and if there is any, I can't find it in the post-AVOS era.

And there are so many possible way to do this and they are all awesome. But.

So a a week or so back I posted about the Star Trek TOS barista thing, and I used the term "notfic" a few times? Notfic is a concept that seems to have come out of bandom, or, at least, most of the people on my reading list that I've picked it up from are bandom-y people. (Any of you want to speak up usage of the term?)

It seems to refer to - well, you know when you've got a fic idea, and you kind of love the idea, and you know exactly how the story would go, but you also know you don't care about it enough to put the necessary work in to turn it into a real fic, or maybe you don't care about the fandom enough to want to do the research? And yet it is an awesome idea that you want to share with the world. (Or sometimes you have a story you started without realizing that you were never, ever going to finish it, and yet you still want to let everybody know how it ends, or what the sequel is.) So you write out a kind of stream-of-consciousness synoptic thing that occasionally lapses into dialogue or even proper scenes (for the really good bits) but most of it's just a pretty bare-bones summary? And then you've got the thing out and you can stop having it nag at the back of your brain, and other people can enjoy it too. And a good notfic can be up to a couple of thousand words (but it's telling a story that in decompressed form would be a couple of hundred thousand.)

That's notfic.

I approve of this becoming an accepted form of fanworks, obviously. I think the first full-on one of these I posted was the Jess Has Agency SPN AU, four (urgh) years ago, but that's partly because there was a certain amount of shame I had to get over, there's this idea I internalized somewhere that an unfinished story is a private thing, and talking about it before it's polished and prepped is, well, at best deeply impolite, at worst just gross

I don't think I'm the only one. Hence all the NaNo filters.

Well, screw that. Not!fic a go.

Which is only to say, ( So Tony Stark has to be from Alderaan, )

Um. And now to do the NaNo writing I was supposed to be working on today. :P


¹Actually what I'm shipping is Tony Stark/Carrie Fisher as OTP of trainwreck, but somehow Carrie Fisher RPS still trips my shame circuits.

Somebody needs to write a crossover between Suits and Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law.

I don't care how, I honestly don't know enough about either show to even suggest how, but apparently I know just enough that I keep visualizing Harvey from Suits as having wings and a yellow cowl. And I get the impression that the general... metaphysics of the two shows would mesh quite well.


[This post brought to you by the X-Files episode "Space" being on TV, and as a result, me thinking, "Oh right, I was thinking about watching some Space Ghost Coast to Coast once I run out of Top Gear... why was I thinking about watching Space Ghost Coast to Coast? Oh right! Suits fic!"

...look, the alternative was me attempting to vid Top Gear to Jem and the Holograms.]

Reading list, I have a question: does ~3,000 words of Methos and Joe Dawson talking about the Lone Power, Ahriman, Immortality, and the Song of the Twelve count as "a Highlander/Young Wizards crossover fic" or "boring self-indulgence"?

Because that seems to be appearing on my desktop, and I'm not sure which one to file it under.



So yesterday was the church picnic. And Saturday I went to the Books for International Goodwill book sale in Annapolis, and pulled A Calendar of Dinners with 615 Recipes (printed 1923, last revised 1913) off the free-cookbooks shelves.

I was thumbing through it and found a recipe for The Wholesome Parkin, which turns out to be a traditional molasses-oatmeal-ginger bread from Northern England, famous for only getting better as it gets staler ('excellent when a week old'). And partly because I have a thing (inculcated by LotR at a young age) for durable breads, and partly because I realized that it only uses ingredients that I have in my basic camping kitchen, I decided I needed to make it for the church picnic.

( Here is a picture, and a recipe, and also Crisco and some other things. )

( Other books acquired at that sale )

PS: I am testing the new AO3 update in IE6. Always offer to test in IE6: it is so much fun, there are so many things that don't work.

List of fic I am not currently writing, no, absolutely not:

"Four times it wasn't Harry, and one time it was":
1. Wherein Herewiss s'Hearn and Sunspark go through a Door looking for other men who have the Fire, and meet Harry Dresden and Bob the Air Elemental instead, and there is a lot of playing around with Soulfire/Flame and annoying of Wardens and Wardresses (and possibly setting buildings on fire. Or sex.)
2. Wherein Howell Jenkins is trying to visit Wales but winds up somewhere under Edinburgh instead, and gets help from a certain Warden in staying under the Council's radar.
3. Wherein Har of Osterland, searching for a rumor of a shadow of Suth, instead meets a strange wizard of winter's ice in the Northern Wastes and plays a riddle-game with him.
4. Wherein the enchanter Sir Harold Shea is visiting Queen Mab and Queen Titania as an emissary of Queen Gloriana, and provides a much-needed dose of scientific rationality and clinical psychiatry to everyone involved.
5. Wherein Harry Callahan is never letting Dairine do a transit spell for him ever again, Ways are walked, and parenting advice is exchanged.


"Five More Days In Paradise"
1. In which Kincaid and Murphy visit Hawaii on a working holiday, and bring Ivy along this time. Lots of things blow up, Detective Kelly remembers their last visit all too well, and Ivy makes a new friend and gets to swim with the dolphins.
2. In which Joe Dawson and Adam Pierson came to Hawaii for a quiet retirement, which seems slightly at odds with the mysterious headless bodies and localized lightning storms that 5-0 keeps hearing reported on their private beach.
3. In which Danny Williams refuses to believe there is a full-rigged pirate ship just offshore, even after Captain Jack Sparrow shanghais him onboard. (Well, for definitions of "shanghai" that involve Steve, flirting and a lot of rum.)
4. In which Danny is uncertain why it is 5-0 who are explaining why they're in Hawaii to a couple of Canadian cops, but the phrase "killers of his father" gets bandied around a lot.
5. In which Superboy meets Steve McGarrett. And territorial displays happen.

...on the plus side, I seem to be mostly out of my all-RPF phase for now.

1. Ebook piracy: the latest hot topic. I have been staying out of this discussion, mostly because: I have been listening to pirated audiobooks since before I could *read*, since pirated audiobooks meant "check the LP out of the library and copy it on to reel-to-reel tape." I worked through all my moral and ethical questions about the issue by the time I had hit kindergarten, with the assistance of the fact that *all* of my peers and authority figures did the same things; I had picture books that were photostat copies bound with brads; I had Boxcar Children books that were bookstore remainders with the covers stripped.

My father was a math and programming teacher in the early 80s; the county-wide department inservice days were the best thing ever, because Dad would come home with 5.25-inch discs holding pirated copies of all the latest Apple II games that all the teachers were trading around under the desks. (True story: I once asked Dad what the "kracker" did in programming, since all the programs we had at home had a "kracked by" credit before the opening screen.) In fact, I have never met a single teacher, at any level, and growing up a TK I've met a lot, who has taught for more than five years and doesn't routinely make illegal copies of things for her classes. When a law is that widely flouted (by pretty much everyone who doesn't directly benefit from its existence, and also often, quietly, by them as well), what you need to do is change the law, not human nature.

Which is to say, I got over this topic two decades ago. Can we move on and stop acting like fainting flowers about it? ^_~

2. Still listening to (pirated) Dresden Files! 3.5 books in have reached Step 10 in the getting-into-a-fandom timeline. Current fic bunnies: A Day In the Life of Father Forthill; 5 Times Harry Dresden Narrowly Avoided Learning About Slash; and Ray Kowalski Dances With The Winter Lady. Also did another meme fill, which was probably obvious to anyone who knows me and is reading over there. However, I've reached the point where I know just enough canon that I no longer feel comfortable writing fic without knowing it all, sigh, so that's stalled, mostly.

Luckily, the anon meme is keeping me in fic for now! Actually I was just thinking that maybe Dresden Files has finally cured me of politics RPF, given the relative numbers of times I've been reloading the two memes, but then Dresden Files fandom decided on its own to adopt Rahm Emanuel as a character, so I suspect I'm just cursed to read politics RPF forever. (Oh, Rahm, oh.)

3. I am almost finished with my mending basket! Which means time to start a brand-new sewing project, maybe! (Or go back to a years-old retired one.) The last thing in the basket was the Madelyn Mack dress I wore at con-txt and ripped the hem out of. It's 100-year-old black silk, so thin it's translucent in sunlight. I have a picture of my grandmother wearing it, c. 1930, in an "Old Hometown" history pageant; I have a picture of her grandmother wearing what might be the same dress, 30 years earlier. I was really, really nervous about attempting to repair a dress that's practically an artifact and such fragile fabric, too - until I actually started the repair.

I am at *least* the fifth person who has attempted to repair the hem of this dress! (And a better seamstress than at least two of them.) That makes me feel a lot better, and, somehow, love the dress a lot more, too. In fact, its value as a historical artifact may not so much be its value as a dress, as it is a record of Edwardian and early-20th-century home clothing repair techniques; this dress wears its scars proudly, and I'm learning things about effective and efficient repair just from studying it that even my mother's generation seems to have forgotten. (I never did get a picture of me wearing it last summer. Maybe once the repair is done I'll attempt a photographic record. Repair being done make take awhile - there is literally six yards of hem around this skirt.)

4. Last Thursday was the first 10 O'clock Live! It was not terrible! It could use some settling-in time, but it was legitimately good. It actually feels like it's kind of halfway between wanting to be the Daily Show and wanting to be something more like W$W - a serious but irreverent real current events magazine. Am looking forward to more.

...and then the next day Keith Olbermann signed off for the last time. D: D: He wasn't always right and he wasn't always good, but he almost always said the things that the American left needed said but was afraid to, and shouted them when they needed shouted, and now who's to do that?

5. I joined inkitout - the DW community to challenge yourself to keep writing all year - and so far, thanks to Dresden Files, am doing okay. But! This week's support post was to introduce one of your characters, and I was like hooray! I always want to talk about my original characters! Until I tried, and realized I couldn't do it. ( original character wibbling )