Okay, so it has recently come to my attention that this guy:



And this gal:



have the same surname. And Derek is a werewolf by birth. And the Hales could possibly have a long bloodline, and Margaret is part of it. Which means Margaret might be a werewolf.

This certainly works with some of the themes of family shame and secrecy in North and South. For instance, Richard Hale isn't a dissenter to the Church; he's a werewolf, and his parish is close to finding out or something, so that's why the family has to go north. And Frederick didn't mutiny; hunters found out about him, so the Hale family can't talk about him.

And the night Thornton sees Margaret and Frederick, it's a full moon, and Frederick (or Margaret) kill Leonard because Leonard's a hunter. Which fits perfectly with what actually happens in N&S; Frederick accidentally kills Leonard, because he's trying to get away from Leonard, because Leonard knows his true identity.

( And all of the sudden this became a discussion about the treatment of class in relation to werewolf, vampire, and hunter archetypes in supernatural dramas. WHAT IS MY LIFE. )

I kinda wanted to talk about Old Fan Vs New Fan Wars, or how much more of an echo chamber fandom seems now than it used to (and whether that's 1- me having been in fandom a long time, 2- me changing where I experience fandom over time, 3- changes in fandom spaces, 4- other possible changes in fandom). Or about how now that we've finished Earth's Mightiest Heroes my_daroga and I are currently pairing this excellent documentary about the Civil War with Teen Wolf--not as inspired a pairing as West Wing and EMH, but inspired, nevertheless.

BUT I GOT DISTRACTED FROM ALL OF THAT BECAUSE MARS.



Apparently Curiosity is currently in safe mode, but she'll be up again soon.

meme snagged from snickfic

List all the tabs you have open now, for Science.
*this "Post an Entry" tab
*another "Post an Entry" tab for a post I was gonna do on dramatic irony. I really wanted to squee about how much I love dramatic irony, bitch about its misuse, and inspire a big thick discussion on dramatic irony and fanfic. Half-way through writing the post I realized it probably sounded pedantic or too academic, and then I realized that people probably wouldn't read it. Or if they did they'd never tell me.
*Go Your Own Way was a Batman fic that was gonna be an example of the unique opportunity fanfic presents for dramatic irony
*the Wikipedia entry for "dramatic irony" so I could quickly define it for anyone who might've forgotten what it was. This was so the post would be friendly and welcoming and then I realized it made it sound even more pedantic and stilted
*Google image search for "Bruce Banner Tony Stark". Sometimes I just like seeing them together?
*Google image search for "Steve Rogers". This is because I find Steve!voice very hard to write. To get the cadence and tone right, sometimes I look at actors' faces.
*tumblr "Mark Ruffalo" tag. See above.
*an article in the LA Times about who won the 2013 Grammy's. This is for an Avengers fic I'm writing, though I'm not sure I'll use the info.
*Google map of Africa. Specifically, Lesotho.
*google search for "deleted mail gmail", because both the trash and the spam folders are really difficult for me to find in gmail. This search wasn't helpful though; it was all about recovering mail you had permanently deleted
*this Three Sentence Ficathon, in which I encourage you all to leave and fill prompts
*google search for "if you bring a horse to water" because I forgot the actual idiom. It was for a three-sentence River/Mal fic, but I ended up not being able to use it. Three sentences is hard!
*the Battlestar Galactica entry for Gaius Baltar, for the three sentence Gaius/Six fic I wrote. I remember he came from a poor, backwater place, but I couldn't remember the exact details.
*panlexicon.com, which is my number one thesaurus
*my Dreamwidth reading list
*a Teen Wolf Stiles/Derek fic on Ao3

my_daroga and I have been making our way through West Wing and Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. At first, you think, "What a strange pairing!" Then you realize its brilliance.

WW: Toby attempts to SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY. This is the teaser, seriously. Cue ep with some awesome location shots, a Republican senator who just might see the light, Toby behaving a little bit too underhandedly, and oh, our broken Congress--which just might be fixed, if we are capable of compromise.
EMH: Oh, right, and the Secretary of Defense is actually Red Skull, which Steve finds out during a visit. Seriously, Steve passed Toby in the halls. End with a riveting battle in front of the Washington monument and Red Skull almost destroys America, I mean the Capitol Building. But since the Avengers stopped Red Skull social security is totes okay.

WW: Who's testing their nukes? Bartlett doesn't know, but suspects Iran. The US is ready to fight, and meanwhile Josh hates NASA. But actually everyone's just burned out on NASA because after going on the moon, what happened? Nothing. But why don't we stop wasting money on nuclear weapons when we could be going to Mars? Because it turns out it was Isreal running nuke tests all along.
EMH: The Kree attempt to build an intergalactic highway through our sun or something, which will destroy life on Earth as we know it. Marvel marvels at the fact that humanity hasn't managed to travel beyond Earth's moon. Tony points out he's been busy making nuclear weapons.

(Actually Tony says, "We're working on it," which really embodied so poignantly all the hope and despair the West Wing episode was attempting to convey.)

In other news, Earth's Mightiest Heroes is a fantastic show. Not as fantastic as Avatar: The Last Airbender, but then again, what is? Sometimes I imagine the writers/creators of EMH sort of sitting around and bitching at each other (sort of like I imagine the writers of SPN).

writer: No, her hair gotta be flying all around.
artist: why?
writer: Zero g!
artist: . . . you realize how hard that is to draw?
writer: But the science.
artist: . . . you are so hot to me right now.
writer: can she be in a ponytail?
artist: Captain Marvel wears her hair down. I can draw her putting it up.
writer: . . . you are so hot to me right now.

Also, WW meets EMH. What would CJ Cregg do with Tony Stark? I don't even know.

Do you ever have shows that unwittingly pair up?

I'm currently writing an Avengers series set in the Marvel movie-verse called Responsible Science, and I'm posting the fifth story, which is called Let's Stop The Time Warp (Again). In this story, I've included several Marvel characters whom we haven't seen in the Marvel movies. Since actors haven't been cast for these roles, I feel like some liberties can be taken with canon--yes, they're in the comics, but it's not like Mark Ruffalo looks exactly like comics!Bruce Banner; Gwenyth Paltrow doesn't look exactly like comics!Pepper, and so on. These characters don't even necessarily have the same backgrounds they do in canon. I thought since the Marvel movie-verse is an AU anyway, it'd be acceptable to race-bend some of the parts.

I'm kind of upset with some aspects of the current reboot trend, since it allows creators/producers/Powers That Be a built-in "excuse" to cast lots of white males, since that's what a lot of older western canons feature. I'm not going to go into a long diatribe about it; I wrote an essay here. I will say that I think it's a damn shame that so many aspects of a canon can be updated or changed--time periods, plots, characterizations--but as soon as you suggest changing something like gender or race or sexual orientation, you get a lot of people saying, "But the original isn't like that!" A lot of these originals were produced by white males in conservative eras. I'd like to think that we've come along way since the forties, even since the eighties; I'd like to see those changes reflected in my media.

( Regarding Marvel specifically )

Does anyone who is reading my Avengers series, Responsible Science, wanna beta? Not the story I am currently posting, but like, a future one. Or two.

I feel like I've been sadly remiss in making Avengers friends, but I honestly don't even know where all the Avengers meta and discussion goes on, unless it's solely at Ao3 within comments on stories. Where there are some incredibly thoughtful people, lemme just say.

In cases such as these, I believe the common expression is, "Fandom, why did you not tell me?"

However, in this instance, I believe to express such a sentiment would be unfair, because fandom did tell me. Due South wasn't the hugest show to ever hit America, but I've been hearing about it since I've been a part of fandom--or at least since I got a livejournal.

It's not even the case that fandom did not adequately express the unadulterated joy that this show is. It's just that fandom expresses joy quite often and with such exuberance, it really is difficult to tell whether it is a joy in which I will share, or to which I will react with general bemusement. Regarding Due South--fandom, I share the joy.

I often feel like books, movies, tv, and other assorted media have the discussions I want to have better than most people; they discuss morality and existence and the difficulty of relationships between people. Finding a new one that you like is like meeting a life-long friend who will never, not once, recognize that you exist.

Fandom, of course, is the answer. Fandom is the life-long friend who recognizes you. Canon is the absent third between you, who instead of being conspicuous in absence, is merely more deeply loved. And yet, I feel like I am bad at fandom. I'm bad at being friends with the wonderful, lovely people I know when we don't share a canon between us in the bed, and I'm bad at meeting people in a fandom that's new to me.

...This was supposed to be a post where I said, "OMG DUE SOUTH! Anyone? Can someone look at my fic and talk about it with me? Anyone?" But then I got obsessed with feeling sorry for myself.

Pick a character I've written and I'll list the top ideas/concepts/etc I keep in mind while writing them that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them.*

*I don't think it follows that if other people don't have those concepts in mind they're inaccurately depicting them. For what it's worth.

I've been gone away for ever, but now that I finally have time, I've been . . . watching movies.

( Spoilers for Skyfall )

Overall: Best Bond movie ever, best action movie I have seen in a long time (except for Avengers), still has typical Hollywood problems, I don't care give me fic.

Sooo . . . may I just say I'm a loser? I have so many things to read and people about whom I care very much who are all waiting on replies from me. I'm sorry. I'm afraid that instead of taking care of anything that matters in what spare time real life has afforded I've just been poking sticks at this porn. In my defense, I've had very very little spare time, and for those of you who haven't heard from me, it's not because I don't love you or care about what you do or don't think you're amazing and brilliant. Because I do. I'll get back to you soon, hopefully. ♥

In the meantime, porn.


Title: Relationship Risk Assessment and Research
Pairing: Tony/Pepper
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: dirty talk, a spreadsheet, a vibrator, anal play, an enema, a blow-job, snowballing, light bondage, light humiliation, felching, consent issues, sex scenes of epic length and unnecessary proportion, seriously, they’re too long, a kitten
Summary: Pepper’s trying to run a company, maintain a relationship, and still have her own life. Tony’s just trying to be a good person. AKA the one in which Tony won’t shut up about Pepper’s vagina and Pepper has a backstory.
A/N: Thanks to my_daroga for listening, and jad and aki_hoshi for spreadsheet help.

This takes place directly after Action Items for the Morning After, but since it’s primarily PWP, you probably don’t really have to read that one to get this one. This occurs in the same universe as Responsible Science, but there aren’t many points of connection.

A/N2: This fic is sprawling and shapeless and bulky beyond all belief. And 50,000 words of basically PWP? It really should be cut and trimmed and fine-tuned, but I didn’t really write it to be a good story. I did it to let off a bunch of steam, and because serious stories I’m trying to write were stressing me out. I'm sure many people think that there should a hard line difference between "Stories" with a capital S and rambles that are a lot more like "here are my thoughts lemme show you them and god, isn't that hot?" But the problem is I have an easier time expressing my thoughts in the form of fiction. So I'm sort of sorry I called it a story. But sort of not because it's still a story, just not a very good one. So idk have fun.

Relationship Risk Assessment and Research