forget your Unified Theory of Everything

Title: Or Even Rearrange You
Rating: NC-17
Length: 11,000
Characters: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Warning: lots of het sex?
Summary: Tony and Pepper negotiate the beginnings of a romantic relationship. With sex.
A/N: Thanks to my_daroga, for being interested.

If you want, this could be Tony/Pepper backstory for the series I’m writing, Responsible Science. Other than the fact that I wrote them with the same characterizations in mind, though, they have very little to do with each other.

This takes place right near the end of Iron Man 2.

( Or Even Rearrange You )

I learned today some reasons why Curiosity is cool.

I had to do a planetarium show about Spirit and Opportunity, the last Mars rovers, so I know a lot about them and they have a special place in my heart. One of the coolest things about Spirit and Oppy was their mission was meant to last about 90 days. After a year or two, Spirit got stuck, and she just sat there and took pictures. I think Oppy's finally kind of worn down too? Dunno, haven't checked recently, but the point is six years after they landed Oppy was still trucking it, and they're probably still sending data.

Curiosity, however. Oh, Curiosity. Unlike Spirit and Oppy, she doesn't have solar panels! The problem with solar panels on Mars is Mars has sticky dust, so eventually you get less and less power. But Curiosity is powered by plutonium. Oh, oh oh, plutonium is forever. When will it go away? For our purposes, never! Okay, not that the song is positive, but in this context it is really, really cool.

The other thing I learned about Curiosity is she has a laser. Spirit and Oppy had these rock abrasion tools. Pretty nifty, especially because they're called RATs, so I always just imagined them scratching away at rocks saying, "Cheese! Cheese!" But when it comes right down to it RATs aren't as cool as LASERS. Lasers, guys. This means she can get inside rocks and see what they're made of!

There are some other cool things. The landing site is neat. Gale crater is neat. The mission (to see whether Mars has the elemental make-up to have once supported life) is neat. But the last thing I learned about Curiosity? Is the neatest.

She landed!

Oh, and Shatner did a video for NASA or something. THIS WORLD IS THE BEST ONE. EXCEPT FOR ALL THE OTHERS BECAUSE I BET THEY'RE COOL, TOO.

So I once read this fic on ff.n where someone had taken Vonnegut's short story Long Walk To Forever, taken out the names, put in Buffy and Angel, and changed some phrases.

And there's song fic, most of which is randomly inserted lyrics, but anyway, you try to write around a framework, I guess? Maybe.

And then there's that thing you do where you take a romcom plot and adjust it to fit canon and your characters.

I feel like I'm doing something in between these three things, except I seem to be taking geometric proofs and dissertations about wormholes and randomly inserting Bruce and Tony's names in various portions. Sometimes I kind of jigger the order of equations and add exclamation points and Steve saying, "What's going on, guys?!?" It feels like writing porn. It feels, in fact, hotter than most porn I read.

Also, this expresses pretty much all the things I ever wanted to about Bruce and Tony. Hopefully it's ALL OVER THE INTERNET by now, but it needs more:

It started with fanart. Then a song.

Then someone actually wrote the music for the song and sang it, because whoever they are they're effing gorgeous: here they are being gorgeous.

I just switched the tags for my Avengers fic on Ao3 to the "character&character" format rather than the "character/character" format. No characters have sex, make out, or profess love for any of the other characters in these stories. Characters do feel lust and look at each other with longing.

I admit to some confusion, because people who have read Responsible Science, my Avengers series, have seemed to agree, when they brought it up, that the series is indeed gen. However, the consensus also seemed to be that my fic The Pure and Simple Truth was not gen. In that fic, no characters had sex, made out, or professed love, but Harry felt lust and looking at Draco with longing.

There are plenty of reasons even the same readers (and these aren't the same readers) may feel the one is slash and the other is gen. The Pure and Simple Truth was written for an H/D fest and was a remix of an H/D fic. There was mostly talking not a lot of action. The focus of the fic was Harry's relationship with Draco (well, actually it was supposed to be about forgiveness). The end suggested H/D would get together. Meanwhile there's no context for Responsible Science other than as Avengers fanfiction, and there's more action/plot than Pure and Simple. The focus of the fics is Bruce's relationships with Natasha, Steve, and Tony (well, actually it's supposed to be about ethics); maybe people are less likely to read sex/romance into the equation when you've got one person having rather intimate feelings about three people at once. There's not been a suggestion at the end of any fic in Responsible Science that anyone will end up together (except perhaps Pepper/Tony).

At times I feel rather disingenuous, claiming that Pure and Simple is gen, because I definitely had all the sexy Harry/Draco thoughts writing it. But I'm having just as intense sexy Bruce/Natasha, Bruce/Steve, and Bruce/Tony thoughts while writing Responsible Science. None of the attraction between any of the characters (in either Pure and Simple or Responsible Science) is mentioned explicitly. It's more just Character A noticing that Character B parts his hair to the side, or whatever. And none of the thoughts characters have about each other is explicitly sexual, except for Bruce and Natasha in A Fine Spur. (I wonder if people consider that one less gen than the others?)

Because so much fanfiction is written with the intent of hooking A up with B, I totally understand the necessity of slash/het/gen labels. And yet, as I find myself writing less and less fics with that intention in mind, the rationality of the labels seems to be disappearing. Should my intent in writing the fic play a part in the label? Should what readers could read into a story play a part in the label? A story in which no one could be shipped by the reader is a bad story, imo. In any good book/show/movie/game/whatever you consume, there's usually room for shipping, and thus a large contingent of fandom.

Speaking of which. Poll. Tag Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Avengers movie with pairings so you can put them on an archive.

Title: The Kids Weren’t Alright
Rating: PG
Length: this chapter: 13,000; total: 53,000
Characters: Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Pepper Potts, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, and Jane Foster. This is gen, but focuses on the relationships between Bruce/Tony, Bruce/Steve, Bruce/Natasha, with some Tony/Pepper, Tony/Steve, Natasha/Clint
Warning: deals with past child abuse (parts 2-4); offensive (including homophobic) language; really nonsensical use of science concepts, equipment, and terminology
Summary: Tony accidentally turns himself into a twelve-year-old using alien tech. Steve is stuck as bodyguard, Bruce is stuck trying to fix him, and Pepper is stuck trying to ward off a twelve-year old’s attempts at flirtation. And then things go from bad to worse.
A/N: Thanks as always to my_daroga, for listening.

This is the fourth story of the series Responsible Science. You don’t have to have read any of the previous stories to get this one.

This story is 4 parts long. It’s finished; I’m just editing. All should be posted within a week.

Go to: part 1 | part 2

( The Kids Weren’t Alright part 3 )

Title: The Kids Weren’t Alright
Rating: PG-13
Length: this chapter: 16,000; total: 53,000
Characters: Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Pepper Potts, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, and Jane Foster. This is gen, but focuses on the relationships between Bruce/Tony, Bruce/Steve, Bruce/Natasha, with some Tony/Pepper, Tony/Steve, Natasha/Clint
Warning: deals with past child abuse (parts 2-4); offensive (including homophobic) language; really nonsensical use of science concepts, equipment, and terminology
Summary: Tony accidentally turns himself into a twelve-year-old using alien tech. Steve is stuck as bodyguard, Bruce is stuck trying to fix him, and Pepper is stuck trying to ward off a twelve-year old’s attempts at flirtation. And then things go from bad to worse.
A/N: Thanks as always to my_daroga, for listening.

This is the fourth story of the series Responsible Science. You don’t have to have read any of the previous stories to get this one.

This story is 4 parts long. It’s finished; I’m just editing. All should be posted within a week.

( The Kids Weren’t Alright part 1 )

Go to: part 2

Title: So, The Helicarrier Needs Curtains
Characters/pairings: Bruce, Natasha, Tony, Steve, Clint; mainly Bruce/Natasha, with some Bruce/Tony, maybe Natasha/Clint if you want, brief mention of Clint/Coulson, family dynamics
Rating: G? PG?
Length:3,500
Disclaimer: Not mine
Summary: This isn’t actually about curtains. It’s about friends, taking care of each other, pizza, and zombies.
A/N: jbadgr made this picture for my fic, A Fine Spur. So then I wrote this fic for her picture, Get Some Sleep, Big Guy. Go make her draw more drawings.

This is not attached to the universe of A Fine Spur (LJ | AO3 | DW) or The Hollow Men (LJ | DW | AO3); it’s just some quick fluff.

( The Helicarrier Needs Curtains )

This past weekend I went to Con.txt in Maryland. Some highlights:

-I met stultiloquentia! She was on a short list of "people I must meet before I die". I don't mean now I'm ok to die or anything, but it was cool.
-Friday you could comicbook cosplay? I didn't see many people doing it, but my_daroga was Tintin and sarah was Captain America and they were amazing. Plus, the next day I was Bruce Banner and my_daroga was pre-serum Steve Rogers, which you can see here. That's my, "I'm always angry" face.
-My favorite panel was probably viklikesfic's "dealing with social justice" panel. That's not what it was called. Anyway, in it, the group came up with a list of how to deal with fanfic that is offensive to one group or another due to treatment of a minority or handling of a subject. It was a very open, honest, and helpful discussion about a topic that can often be difficult to talk about. I was doing final edits on this fic about Steve Rogers at the time, and I'd been having so many thoughts about what is appropriate to address in fanfic, the place of fanfic, why we write it and what we do with it, in conjunction with writing this fic that this panel was really, really enlightening and helpful.
-ravenna_c_tan had an HP party and fed us butterbeer! And I met incapricious, who is awesome. Hello!
-holli's love of Steve Rogers was also a highlight. Also, her dresses.
-jjhunter recited Pablo Neruda to us. No one wrote a Sherlock Holmes/Pablo Neruda crossover, though.
-viklikesfic is awesome and knowledgeable on many issues, and also a great lunch date ;o)
-synecdochic is as open and amazingly precocious in person as she is online.
-cesy gave us lots of info about AO3, and about legality of fanfic. She's so articulate and willing to answer questions; she put a human face on the OTW for me that is both beautiful and eminently worthy of respect.
-One of my favorite parts was Disco Duck, which was a dance. I'm not keen on dances, but eventually a contingent wandered over to The Quiet Room where I sat on a smooshy couch and we talked about fanfic and literature and sci fi and Avengers and sundry.
-Ahhhh I met so many other people, some just in passing, all of whom were amazing.
-On Sunday, lots of people were headed out, and a lot of the panels I went to were small. I found this delightful, as topics tended to wander, and a lot of the panels just turned into big fannish discussions about Whatever. I love fannish discussions about Whatever; they are some of the best kind.
-We found Star Trek fans, even though there was no dedicated ST panel. There was even a Kirk/Spock vid at the vid show.
-Speaking of the vid show we saw a White Collar vid and then we had to watch the show. Our lives are so hard.
-my_daroga got bit by a squirrel. This wasn't part of the con, but it's worth mentioning.
-For a long time leading up to this con, I didn't know it was a slash con. I thought it was a . . . context con. You know, where you talk about fannishness and the treatment of issues and groups, and how to interpret and why we interpret and also cock. I really liked this con because it was all of those things, and it was full of really interesting people saying really interesting things. This was the first fannish con I've been to--the others have all been a bit more commercial. I have to say I prefer this kind, although the biggest disappointment is that there just isn't more time to talk about all the things that delight and interest me, and meet all the people who have so many intelligent and relevant things to say. It does make me hope to go to the next one.

I'm at con.txt! People talking about slash! . . . And about space ballroom AUs. Also, DC is nearby, so my_daroga are going sight-seeing! Eventually. After more slash and talking about Star Trek and all of the things. All of them!

Title: A Fine Spur
Rating: PG-13, for violence? I guess.
Characters: Natasha Romanoff, Bruce Banner – I think this is gen, but I dunno, he has sexy thoughts about her.
Disclaimer: Doesn’t belong to me.
Summary: Uninterested in being an Avenger, Bruce goes back into hiding. Once more Natasha is sent to recruit him, but she has an agenda of her own. There's this total McGuffin action plot, and then this totally meta discussion on whether Black Widow is allowed to show emotion, cf multiple fannish discussions on the subject.
A/N: This uses two prompts I saw on the kinkmeme. One is that Natasha is afraid of the Hulk and hangs out with Bruce in order to overcome it. Another one was Bruce tending Natasha’s wounds. So there you go.

Fear is a fine spur; so is rage. ~Irish proverb

( A Fine Spur )