rsadelle: (Default)
My mom and I went down to Sacramento last month to see Wicked. She saw the San Francisco production a few years ago; I knew almost nothing about it except that it's different from the book (which I haven't read anyway) and that it's femslashy.

Spoilers, ranting, and a recs request. )
rsadelle: (Default)
I keep thinking I should post about hockey more so we can have more conversations about it and do all that fannish stuff, but (a) I'm not very industrious when it comes to things like pictures and video and (b) I think [livejournal.com profile] lakeeffectgirl is the person most interested in it, and she and I email about hockey all day long anyway. And speaking of, go read her snippet about the Briere kids wanting Claude to move back in. It's so great! Also, I really want all the stories about the Briouxs and their kids. ALL THE STORIES. (Well, actually, only the good ones. Badly written ones can stay unread.)

Mostly my everyday tiny hockey things go on Twitter or Tumblr. I have a confession about Tumblr: sometimes I open things with the intention of reblogging them, and then don't because tagging them seems like too much work. (And I refuse to reblog without tags. My biggest Tumblr pet peeve is untagged and uncaptioned pictures. You can't interest me in people if you don't tell me who they are.) I think I use Tumblr all wrong anyway because I almost never just reblog things. Everyone who follows me and is interested in whatever it is probably also follows the person I'm reblogging from, so there's no real point in reblogging unless I'm going to say something about it, which I don't think is how you're supposed to use Tumblr. You all know I'm wordy anyway, so of course I can't just use Tumblr for pretty things. I also often open things and then decide that, no, I'm not going to pick a fight about it. (But I think there's at least one thing that's getting some angry commentary if I see it a third time.) See? This is why I can't just be fannish, because I overthink things and refuse to just capslock. Semi-relatedly, I'm horribly jealous of how much time people seem to have for fandom. Why can't I have a job where no one cares if I watch videos of hockey players taking us on tours of their houses at my desk?

I must have more time than I think, though, because I ran out of hockey fic to read. (If you know of things I'm not likely to have read, meaning things not at AO3, you should tell me about them!) I tried reading some Generation Kill fic instead (because I generally love GK fic even though I've never seen the show), but it turns out I've read an awful lot of it already, particularly the AUs, which are what I like most. I don't know what to read now. Is there new good Star Trek reboot fic?
rsadelle: (Default)
There are two stories behind this entry. The first is that I was going to make it yesterday, because I think there should be something different for the Ides of March. Then we were ridiculously busy at work, and I didn't want to do anything but wallow in reading fic when I got home. The other story is that when I can't get my shit together (and this is the first week of 2012 where I have gotten my shit together), I pick a fandom I don't care about and read a lot of fic. So here are some recs from three previously-unread fandoms.

Avengers

I have now read a lot of Avengers fic, and I feel like a terrible fangirl for saying this, but I don't really get it. Maybe if I'd seen more of the movies than just Thor. There are two stories I've liked:

Safeword by melannen. The author's summary for this is, "Tony Stark doesn't need to be safe, sane, and consensual. He has JARVIS instead. (Then he gets Steve.)" JARVIS is the pov character, which makes it a particularly interesting story.
The next time Tony specifically requested that JARVIS observe one of his encounters, the other participant was a man who did not yet appear in any of JARVIS's databases. He was tall, burly, had a few days' beard stubble and a leather jacket, and smelled of distilled alcohol and engine exhaust. He must have been someone Tony met in a bar or other location where casual encounters were commonly negotiated.

He was, at several points, rather rough with Tony, and notably demanding. However, he never seemed to have any air of malice about him, and in fact appeared to be quite carefully monitoring and reacting to Tony's level of enjoyment. And Tony never offered any signs of distress; entirely the contrary, in fact. There were several points at which JARVIS considered the possibility that he was expected to interfere, but in the end, he simply let the encounter play out.

The next morning he asked Tony if his lack of action had been appropriate.

"Oh, yeah, don't worry about it," Tony said through his smoothie. "He was considerate all the way. Guess that shows me not to judge people by appearance, huh? Thanks for caring, though, you're great."
Thor is the one movie I saw, and Darcy was my favorite character in it. I discovered, as I read Avengers fic, that I will read any and all Clint/Darcy. Gift of Asylum by carleton97 and Sister_Wolf is my absolute favorite. Clint and Darcy have really hot sex in a bar bathroom, and years later meet again as part of the Avengers Initiative.
Sleep is just about winning when bar stool girl drops two tequila shots in front of him and says, "Drink up. I'm at least two drinks ahead and you look like you can hold your liquor."

Clint jerks back, surprised again that a civilian girl managed to get so far into his personal space. "Excuse me?"

She gestures impatiently at the drinks. "You seem like you would hesitate to take advantage of a drunken me. I'm trying to fix that."

"Are you kidding?"

She gives him a flat, unimpressed look. "Do I look like I'm kidding? Listen, the math is simple: a few drinks plus you plus me equals sex. If you're not into it, let me know now and I'll stop wasting my time."

Clint isn't used to girls being so blunt about it. Normally a bar hook-up is flirting, a little kissing and "do you want to go back to my place for some coffee?" But hey, she's cute, she's a little weird but not in a bad way, and she wants to have sex with him. Clint is not an idiot.

Clint gives her one of his best charming grins and tips both of the shots back, one after the other.
X-Men: First Class

As you may remember, I loathed the movie with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, but a couple of weeks ago, [livejournal.com profile] brown_betty made a post of recs for AUs where Erik is in a position to mentor people. I did read all four stories (although not the sequel to one of them) before I had to stop because it was just making my rant about the movie loop in my head. The best of the stories she recced is If You Liked The Book, You'll Hate The Movie by paperclipbitch. Erik is a high school guidance counselor, Alex and Hank are both in mandated therapy with him, Hank and Emma are best friends, Raven tries out everything, Sean is the lead singer of a band, and Erik refuses to sleep with Charles.
Mr Lehnsherr had a smile with too many teeth in and a bare office with no inspirational posters about mental health or life in general or anything in it, and the thin, mean look of a guy with bodies under concrete in his basement. He watched Alex’s glare and calculated silence for five minutes without saying anything, and then said: “I’m Erik.”

Alex had had his fair share of call-me-by-my-first-name-and-now-we’re-friends psychiatrists, and while he didn’t say it aloud, he let his scorn curl across his face.

Erik grinned. “Oh,” he said, “I’m not trying to be your friend here. I have no interest in being your friend because I’ve read your file and you’re an asshole. But I think we can let formality slide since we’re basically here to keep you from killing anyone else.
Hockey RPF

I originally started reading Hockey RPF because I wanted something to read and I was promised soulbonding, but I have to admit it's totally my fandom now. I have no interest in hockey as a sport, but hockey fic? Yes, please. Three reasons hockey fandom is awesome:
  1. It takes place in our real world - no pesky canon to learn!

  2. Most of the fic is about people living together/hooking up/otherwise making a life together while being oblivious to/dumb about the fact that they're in love, but in an adorable way.

  3. No one in hockey fandom can quite believe they're in hockey fandom, so everyone who talks about it is hilarious about it.
The first rec is the Kane and Toews primer by [livejournal.com profile] totheviktor. Even if you have no interest in these people or this fandom, you should read the primer (you don't have to watch the videos; I've only watched a few, and that was well after I read the primer the first time). I laughed all the way through it.
Patrick Kane is a hideous hockey-playing weirdo who is bad at every aspect of life. "An unattractive, terrible dude?" you say. "He sounds like the worst! Tell me more! Does he happen to have a somewhat attractive, bossy captain/teammate/roommate/BFF/bromeo in his life? Do they perhaps have popsicle eating contests, weep over movies, fail miserably at fighting, buy matching furniture, read Twilight, and get called married by their mothers? As men do?"

Yes.
Hockey RPF has an entire subgenre of fic where people teach Sidney Crosby about sex/feelings/having fun. Heart in Hand (Sidney Crosby/Alexander Ovechkin) by salifiable is my favorite of them. It's very long (130,000 words), so either plan to stop in the middle or don't start reading until you can read all the way through. It is worth the time. It's fantastic. You may want to skip/skim the first sex scene; it's dub con in a way that is uncomfortable to read.
"Oh my god, stop that," he says, pulling Ovechkin away from the glass where the other player is crossing his eyes and trying to touch his tongue to his nose, apparently engaging in a silly-face contest with a kid in the front row. Sid feels like telling the kid that there's no way he can win, Ovechkin has too much of a head start in that race. "C'mon, we need to start practicing."

"Okay, great! What we practice today, Sid?" Ovechkin says, bouncing up and down.

"Well, I've been working on getting better defensively," Sid says. "But you wanted to improve your game, right? What do you think you need to work on? What criticisms of your game did you hear last year?" he asks.

"Russian, dirty player, no defense, choker, predictable, dirty hitter, no defense, show-off, not team player, choker, Russian, dirty, selfish, bad fashion, bad dancer," Ovechkin rattles off.

"Whoa, whoa," Sid says. "Wait, what?"

"I know, right? I dress great, and I'm good dancer!" Ovechkin says indignantly.

"No, I mean..." What Sid really means is that he had no idea Ovechkin had taken all the criticism aimed at him so much to heart.

"But hey, we can work on defense together!" Ovechkin says, brightening. "By end of summer, we gonna be Selke nominees, tell Datsyuk he can't have any more."
You know how Twilight is terrible? Well, if you make it gay and humorous, then it becomes delightful. Where the Wild Things Are (Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews) by liketheroad is such a story.
He approaches Johnny slowly, hands up in the air. “No touching, okay, I get it,” he says, using a soft, coaxing voice, but Johnny just presses his shoulders back tighter against the wall. It looks like his nails are trying to dig into the plaster.

“Don’t break the wall, man,” Patrick says. “There’s probably asbestos in there. You could die, and that would hurt.”

It’s a serious fucking concern, because Patrick is a good guy and only looking out for Johnny’s best interests, so he’s almost offended when Johnny starts to laugh.

Okay, that’s a lie. Johnny’s face cracks open with his laughter, his body unfolds, turning loose and bent double, and Patrick stands in front of him, his hands raised triumphantly in the air.
One of the things I really enjoy about hockey fandom is the commitment to stories where one dude plays hockey and the other dude used to but is now homeless/poor/a hooker. The first one of those I read was Knocking Me Dead (Ryan Kesler/Andrew Ladd) by beatperfume. It's fluffy and delightful, and my absolute favorite variety of hooker AU.
Over the next few weeks, Andrew takes a pair of Kesler’s gloves, a Coach bag containing a present for his mom, a travel coffee mug, and his expensive sunglasses. Some of it Kesler gets back (his mom’s present, his mug) and some he doesn't (he doesn’t even bring up the gloves). But he always has to go back and ask, and every time he ends up having sex with Andrew. The fact that each time, he comes prepared with a couple hundred in cash is something he doesn't think about. He also doesn't think about the fact that he doesn't get mad anymore when he realizes something is missing.

Whatever. He's getting laid and he's playing great, so there's really no need to complain.
The other thing this fandom has a serious commitment to is babyfic. This comment/chatfic by [livejournal.com profile] shoemaster and [livejournal.com profile] go_gentle is such a story. Erik Staal and Jeff Skinner have a one-night stand when Jeff is seventeen, and it results in a baby. If you are not into mpreg, this story is safe for you since it skips to Jeff showing up with the baby.
He brings their stuff inside and drops it in the hall the second he sees Jeff holding Maggie. She smiles when she sees him, and he's so glad she didn't forget him, even if it was a stupid thing to worry about.

"Hey little one," he says, leaning down to kiss her forehead. "Papa missed you."

Jeff is just beaming at both of them and it just feels like home, and it feels like family, and Eric just wants to pull Jeff into his arms and hold them both.

"I missed the way she smells," Jeff admits.

"Way better than the locker rooms at Nassau," Eric agrees, stroking Maggie's cheek.

They stand there grinning at each other for few moments.

Eric finally breaks the moment. "Who's hungry? C'mon, I'll make dinner," he says, putting his hand on Jeff's back to herd him towards the kitchen.
I am semi-systematically reading my way through the hockey RPF at AO3 (there are only 632 of them, and I've already read a fair number of the really long ones), but I will take recs for fic if you are also enjoying this fandom! I am perfectly happy to read these without knowing anything about any of the characters, so team/pairing is unimportant.
rsadelle: (Default)
I'm feeling very between fandoms and non-fannish* at the moment, which means I will probably go back to my between fandoms mode of occasional random fic posting and no discussion. (Watch: in two weeks I'll be in love with something new and won't be able to stop talking about it.)

In other fannish news, I have imported all my fic into AO3. Total number of stories: 409. Even taking into account the fact that that includes some permanently unfinished things, that's a lot of fic. I tried to count how many fandoms it was yesterday, but I got tired of counting at thirty. It's probably somewhere over fifty, even doing things like collapsing individual bands into bandom. I knew I had written a lot of fic in a lot of fandoms over the last thirteen and a half years, but that was possibly even more than I expected.

One more piece of unrelated fannishness: I have Netflix again for a while. (Thanks [livejournal.com profile] allegram and [livejournal.com profile] dedalvs!) My plan was to watch some TOS so I could get all the references in Star Trek reboot fic. Instead, I'm watching/rewatching (I haven't yet hit the point where I stopped watching the first time around) Grey's Anatomy. It's so soapy and sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in it, but I can't stop watching. I loved this show when it started - A soapy medical drama with lots of female characters? Totally my kind of thing! - and then at Escapade one year someone ruined it for me by saying hateful things about Meredith. (I gather she's generally not well-liked. I always liked her.) Alex/Izzie is my Grey's Anatomy OTP forever. I would take fic recs!

Other things I've been watching: Nikita (my favorite show on TV right now), Once Upon a Time (I wasn't into this week's ep; we'll see if that's the show or my mood), Hawaii Five-0 (I'm an ep behind, and I keep holding out hope that it'll get better, but we'll see how it goes), Revenge (love this show, and they hit the reveal I've been waiting for this week), Leverage (sometimes I love this show, sometimes it's just okay), Ringer (I still love this show for its interesting plot).


* My heart and mind are completely occupied by Sherlock but (a) I don't feel qualified to write fic for it (pay no attention to the Google doc behind the curtain), (b) I don't want to talk about it as much as just hold it in my heart, and (c) I don't really want to read discussion about it because I know that if I do, someone will ruin it for me. [back]
rsadelle: (Default)
Attitude Adjustment

I've been feeling very Bah, humbug!/No one cares so why bother? about fandom recently, and then yesterday I got an email with my extras for my [livejournal.com profile] bandgirlsbang story. They're amazing. I have made pleased gasping noises about them more than once. People took my story and made these incredible things for it, and I'm all full of joy again. I can't wait to share them with you next week.

Fic Reading/Recs Request/Recs Request Request

I have been doing a lot of escapist fic reading. Anyone have any recs? I really want to read romances in the 20,000-30,000 word range, but I will take other suggestions. I've been reading mostly Harry Potter (Harry/Draco), Star Trek reboot and reboot RPF (Kirk/McCoy, Spock/Uhura, Chris/Zach), Sherlock (John/Sherlock, Sherlock/Lestrade), Hawaii Five-0 (Steve/Danny, but I would read Kono and Chin things too, and would love Kono&Chin gen), and some Suits (I will read anything, even gen; the quantity has to do with snobbery on my part, not hard to find pairings). Again, I will take other suggestions too.

I read a lot of fic. Is there anything any of you want recs for? Do you like recs, or am I just talking to myself if I post/email them?

TV Watching

I had a random urge to watch the first episode of Grey's Anatomy, and since all of season one is on Hulu, that's pretty much what I did with my Thanksgiving break. (Note: Season one is only nine episodes.) I know it's cool to hate Grey's Anatomy for being soapy and melodramatic or whatever, but I'd forgotten how much I love it. I'm considering rewarding myself for finishing Yuletide (when I do) with a month of Netflix to watch more Grey's Anatomy and all the Star Trek I can handle.

This weekend, I wanted to keep doing nothing but watching TV, and since I didn't have anything else to catch up on, I wandered into the ABC Family shows available on Hulu. I have to admit a real love for ABC Family shows. They're kind of like YA novels, but as TV. Also, they have some very interestingly frank and progressive conversations about sex and birth control. Anyway, this weekend, I got myself hooked on Switched at Birth. As you might be able to tell from a combination of the title, the network, and my interests, it's a show about two teenage girls who find out they were switched at birth. One of the families is rich; the other is poor. Because this isn't enough drama and conflict, one of the girls is deaf and the other is hearing. Two warnings: 1. You might find yourself annoyed with the rich family's overwhelming sense of entitlement. 2. You might find yourself annoyed with the hearing family for not thinking they should learn ASL until someone else takes them to task for it several episodes in. Other than those two things, I love it, and it comes back for season two in January.

The other ABC Family show I'm working my way through is The Nine Lives of Chloe King. [livejournal.com profile] norwich36 and I saw a trailer for it at the movies quite a while ago, but I'd forgotten to go look for it again once it started. Chloe turns sixteen and suddenly finds out that she's one of the Mai, which are essentially cat people, meaning they have cat-like superpowers and whatnot, and there's something about Baset. Which doesn't make much sense because she was born in the Ukraine. Chloe is not just Mai, she's the Uniter. I'm only a few episodes in, and all I know about what that means is that she has nine lives to lead. Most of this is nonsense, and the real pleasure of the series is all the teenage girl with superpowers things: one of her best friends is very excited because he's into comic books, Chloe has a great relationship with her mom, and there's a boy who is, of course, connected to the people trying to kill the Mai. The internet tells me this has been canceled, and I can see why: it's kind of fun, but it's not the kind of thing I would be involved in for years.
rsadelle: (Default)
This entry moves from gushing to contemplative and critical to critical. This is an entry comprised mostly of pop culture critique along political lines, specifically around issues of sex and race. If that is not fun for you, or you don't think that's a worthwhile use of fannish energy, you should skip this entry.

This entry includes spoilers for all aired episodes of all three of these shows.

Rizzoli and Isles

Have you ever watched a buddy cop show and thought, "If only this were about women"? If so, Rizzoli & Isles is the show for you. Angie Harmon plays detective Jane Rizzoli while Sasha Alexander is medical examiner Maura Isles. Together, they solve cases. They're also the kind of buddy cops who are practically married. They go undercover in a lesbian bar in season one and pretend to be together (unfortunately badly) in season two. They bicker and talk about fashion and facts and people. The show also does a fantastic job of including Jane's family. And I like the male cops. My two favorite things from this season: Spoilers )

Haven

Earlier this year, [livejournal.com profile] norwich36 linked me to an anonymous thread about shows with strong women characters to catch up on over the summer. Haven was one of them, so I started watching it. I was fascinated by how many people commented back about it when I tweeted about it, particularly for a show I'd never even heard of before. It's really good. Those of you reading this might also like it: the lead character is a woman, and there's a fantastic slash pairing. (Nate/Duke forever! Where is my story where they're exes?) But in the context of this post, what I want to talk about is how Audrey is interestingly nonsexual and nonsexualized, which is not something you see in women on TV. Spoilers )

Suits

In case you haven't noticed, I love Suits. The plot is stupid and gets in the way of a really fun show, but the fun stuff is enough to make up for it. My strategy has been to watch it once, and then only watch the fun parts again. But that's not what this post is about. This post is about women, so let's talk about the women on Suits. Parts of fandom (including me) are very excited about the women: Gina Torres as Jessica Pearson, lawyer whose name is in the firm name and who got Harvey out of the mail room and into law school in some fashion we haven't been made privy to yet; Sarah Rafferty as Donna, Harvey's fantastic assistant who gets all the best lines; Meghan Markle as Rachel Zane, paralegal who's smarter than most of the firm but with test-taking anxiety that's keeping her from taking the LSATs; and Vanessa Ray as Jenny, Mike's best friend Trevor's girlfriend who later becomes Mike's girlfriend. (Okay, fandom isn't as fond of Jenny. I think there are strong possibilities for some interesting stories there, but fandom's "OH MY GOD A WOMAN" thing means no one's likely to write them.)

But what I haven't seen yet (largely because I haven't gone looking for Suits conversation outside of the two email threads I'm on) is any discussion of the ways in which the show's portrayal of women is problematic. I think there's a layer of sexism on the show that's particularly insidious precisely because it's under the surface. Details/Spoilers )
rsadelle: (Default)
Today I'm thankful to have finished watching all of Torchwood because now I can go read fic without being spoiled. And, yes, that is also a thinly veiled request for recs. At this point, I will read anything, but I'm particularly interested in Jack/Gwen, Tosh/Owen, or anything where they're all poly.
rsadelle: (Default)
I have no idea how to find what I want to read using delicious tags, so I've been reading things tagged Harry/Draco+EWE for the past few days. I've now read two separate stories where there's no one in Slytherin but Draco and some first years. I really want a story where since there isn't anyone else there, Harry and Hermione move themselves into Slytherin and drag Ron along. Anyone know of anything like that?

*

I also want some Harry/Draco + Luna, or possibly Harry/Draco/Luna. Warning: the plot bunny includes mention of miscarriages. Bunny! Or possibly two. )

HP 7.2

Jul. 24th, 2011 04:08 pm
rsadelle: (Default)
I almost didn't make a post about this, and here's why: I read the book once, and quickly, and once I was done, I was, in many ways, done with Harry Potter. I no longer remember any details about the book, so seeing the movies was like meeting the story anew all over again. There's something they kept in the movie that made me wince (see below the cut for details), and I remembered it bothering me in the book too, so I went back to see if/how I talked about it at the time. Half the comments on that entry are people telling me I'm wrong, and I was surprised by how much that hurt. After thinking about it, I realized I was still upset about the first time people told me I was wrong about Harry Potter (even though it was ten years ago, and even though I turned out to be right after all). But then I thought about it some more and I decided (a) to hell with this; I'm an adult, and I can handle people disagreeing with me, and (b) I've decided that if last year's summer meltdown involved flashbacks to high school and this year's involves flashbacks to college, that must be progress. So here's a post with my four HP bullet points and my two recs requests.

Spoilers )
rsadelle: (Default)
I'd really like to read more lesbian fiction. I will take any and all recs, from any genre of professionally published work or fan fic. If you're reading this, there's a good chance you already know my tastes, but just in case you don't, a quick rundown of my recent-ish experience with lesbian profic: loved Malinda Lo's Ash and Huntress (review forthcoming) and all of Naomi Kritzer's work; hated Gerri Hill's The Killing Room and Karin Kallmaker's Substitute for Love; and am struggling my way through SteamPowered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories (although to be fair to the collection, I don't really like steampunk prose). Any suggestions?
rsadelle: (Default)
Request 1
A fannish friend of mine in the Washington, DC area is looking for a new roommate, and would prefer a fannish type to a Craigslist-found stranger. She has a cat. If you are or know someone who's interested, let me know and I'll get you contact information.

Request 2
A different fannish friend is looking for recs for fic where there is home remodeling and/or decorating. She will also take landscaping and/or gardening. She already has links to Home Improvement (J2), curving like the ocean toward you (H50, Steve/Danny), and Family Portrait and Blueprint (dueSouth, Fraser/Ray K). (I can't personally vouch for most of those - the only one I've read is "curving like the ocean toward you," which I very much enjoyed.) Any other ideas? Fandom is unimportant, and knowing her, she might read het as well as slash. (And threesomes, but it seems like with my friends, that probably doesn't need to be said.)

The Offer
I have a bunch of Dreamwidth invite codes. If you want one, let me know!
rsadelle: (Default)
While I was visiting her, [livejournal.com profile] lakeeffectgirl showed me Sherlock, which I loved. It has the same two elements that I love about H50: they're married (or at least well on their way to together, complete with everyone thinking they're together) from the beginning, and it's funny. (My favorite line: "I'm in shock. Look, I've got a blanket.") I've read my way through the first few pages of highest hit count and longest things (minus anything that sounded ghastly or was part of a series) on AO3, and I'm finding the same thing with this fandom's fic that I found with H50: a lot of it is boring. My sample size of two is actually too small to make any definitive judgments, but I'm wondering if there's something about fictional person fandoms - either in terms of who they attract or in terms of the canon itself - that makes this more likely. Anyway, my point here is that I would love some recs! And I will give you some too.

First up are two stories I read on recs from [livejournal.com profile] lakeeffectgirl that are basically the same story, except one is kink and the other has texting. [livejournal.com profile] etothepii's "everything you won't tell me (is mapped in your scars)" is the kink one. It's set in a world where everyone is either a dom or a sub. It's actually the third in a series, but I originally read it without reading the prequels, and it made perfect sense. (I did then accidentally read them last night, and they are also very good.) [livejournal.com profile] misslucyjane's "My Phone's on Vibrate For You" is the texting one. They both hit my love of stories where the characters are involved before they ever put a name to it. From "everything you won't tell me (is mapped in your scars)":
"He told me to choose between you and him," John admits, and looks away. His mouth feels suddenly dry. "He didn't like that I help you with your cases."

"So you chose me," Sherlock says, softly. There is something in his voice that John can't identify, and on someone else he'd almost call it awe.

"I don't need a sub," he says. But I need you, I need what we have.

Sherlock beams at him.
From "My Phone's on Vibrate For You":
Then came the day when Sherlock texted him a blunt, "Come home and fuck me. SH," and a few weeks after that John woke up to a text of, "I'm downstairs and naked. Where are you and why aren’t you here? SH," and then only a few days passed when Sherlock texted him from across the room, "Take off your clothes. I want to do stuff to you. SH," which made John laugh out loud, but he also took off his clothes.
Because it's me, after reading through a lot of unsatisfactory things (remember the part where I said it was funny? Why is the fic all serious?), I finally got down to business and started working my way through things tagged john/sherlock+d/s at delicious. I have two recs from that reading.

First up is [livejournal.com profile] thisprettywren's "Transport," in which Sherlock's kink of choice when he needs to decompress is sensory deprivation. John happens to be filling in as the medical person on duty at the club where he does this and finds out. This was so good, and I absolutely believed that Sherlock would need a break from taking in all that information.
The abrupt removal of the touch on his skin was one of the most disorienting moments of Sherlock's life, the sudden lack of connection making his head spin. So intently had he been focusing on that single point of contact that, when it disappeared, his first dizzying fear was that it was he who had been obliterated.

They'd played games before, confronting him with teasing bursts of stimulation that came and went, leaving him to swim in a void, keeping him guessing. It was enjoyable and distracting, and when it happened again he'd accept it as he accepted everything else.

It was also not what this was. Or, he didn't think it had been. That intense, sustained connection hadn't been teasing at all, it was... exploratory. Communicative. Then it was severed and he called out for it, biting down hard on the gag between his teeth, once again grateful for the anchoring presence of the leather restraints. Just this, he thought, here, and the pressure of the straps against his skin was the proof he needed.
The other thing I read that I really liked is [livejournal.com profile] thedeadparrot's "If I Fell." In a lot of ways, it's the same kind of d/s fic you might find in any fandom, but then, I like that sort of thing.
"Do you trust me?" John asks when Sherlock turns to look at him.

He's not touching Sherlock. There is a careful two feet of space between them, yet Sherlock wants to lean towards him, wants to bury his face in the wool of John's jumper and just breathe in the scents of it, London and dim sum and John's particular brand of detergent. "Yes," Sherlock says, and the word tastes strange on his tongue.

"Good," John says, as he brushes his lips across Sherlock's, light enough to be a tease. "I want you kneeling."

Sherlock drops to his knees almost as soon as John's finished the sentence. "You knew," Sherlock says, still feeling a bit petulant. He's not in that place in his head yet, where all he can do is want and obey and need. "You knew and you didn't say anything."

"I suspected," John says. "I didn't know until just now." He runs a hand through Sherlock's hair, his fingers digging lightly into Sherlock's scalp. "You'd be obedient at the strangest times and I could never suss out why that was."
rsadelle: (Default)
In case you missed it, I spent a long weekend visiting friends in New York. This involved a movie premiere, a concert (the reason I went this particular weekend instead of some other), other fannish delights, and food. Plus a lot of just hanging about with some of my favorite people in the world.

Talihina Sky

Thursday night was adventure number one: Talihina Sky. In case you have never heard of it, it is a documentary about the Kings of Leon. We did not just see this movie; we attended the premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Premiere adventures. )

My Chemical Romance

On Friday night, we went to see MCR. You can read an actual review of the show here. My thoughts on the experience. )

Other Fannish Viewing

We watched a bunch of fannish things, as you do when spending a long weekend with fangirls.

Panic!, AAR, MCR, Community )

Food

One of the promises about this trip was that we would go to BabyCakes, which is a vegan, gluten-free bakery, so on Saturday night we did just that. I bought a cupcake and an apple crumble thing (kind of like a coffee cake). The cake part of the cupcake was fine. The frosting was amazing. It tastes like a cream cheese frosting, but it's vegan. I had the apple crumble as part of my breakfast on Sunday morning, and then promptly started googling vegan, gluten-free apple cake recipes. I may have to buy one of their cookbooks. We also went to Risotteria, a gluten-free Italian place, where we each had a different kind of risotto. I may also have to learn how to make risotto now.

Concluding Note

Fangirl weekends are the best. You should have them if you don't already. ♥
rsadelle: (Default)
I am having a tough week this week, so tell me something good. Tell me about something awesome in your life or an amazing new recipe you've discovered. Tell me about something you're writing or your new favorite song. Rec me a story or show me a picture.

I'm not sure I can promise to return the favor, but you'll have my undying gratitude.
rsadelle: (Default)
I keep meaning to make a kink recs exchange post, but I've been meaning to do that for six months, so the chances it'll happen anytime soon are iffy.

Enabling friends have recently gotten me into bandslash, which mostly makes me laugh about how I'm always a couple of years behind the rest of fandom. Anyway, I read a couple of stories with BDSMy elements without being explicitly BDSM (part of what prompted my previous question about BDSM and BDSMy fic), which made me want to read more of that kind of thing.

The Recs Request

BDSMy fic. I don't want something like a BDSM club/whips and chains thing, something less formalized. I read something where someone (Frank or Gerard, I think) found himself really liking having his hair tugged a little while giving head and something else Panic pre-gsf where Ryan had a thing about his wrists. So what I really want is something like that - where someone just likes being held down, but where the story is more about the relationship/schmoopy than just the hot sex.

Anyone have any recs for fic along those lines? I'm not picky about the fandom - as we've seen, I'm perfectly happy to read things where I know nothing about the fandom.

The Rec

I wasn't sure if my request made a lot of sense, and then I stumbled upon a story on my own that was exactly the kind of thing I wanted, so you can consider this both a rec and an example of what my recs request is about, even if the story in question is somewhat more formal than I was thinking of.

The story is "Tell me to stop" by [livejournal.com profile] airgiodslv. It's Brendon/Spencer, with Brendon both subbing for Spencer and teaching him the mechanics of being a dom. The mood is what I wanted. I also really liked the level of negotiation. There's no real reason for this cut. I just feel like there should be one here. )
rsadelle: (Default)
As I mentioned, I've been reading a lot about race, racism, and anti-racism, and one of the communities I came across was [livejournal.com profile] 50books_poc. Reading some books by people of color seems like a good idea, but 50 in a year seems like setting myself up to fail. To get a good sense of what would be a reasonable challenge, I decided to look at both the books I own and the books I've read so far this year to see how many of them are written by PoC or feature PoC protagonists. Since I always say I don't really read books by or about men, I also thought it would be interesting to look at female authors and protagonists. A note about counting: books with multiple authors/protagonists got counted if one of the authors/protagonists was PoC/female. Anthologies did not get counted in the protagonist category and only got counted in the author category if it was an anthology of stories by one author. (I thought about trying to fraction it out, but that would be too much work for what is meant to be a general overview and doesn't quite need that level of precision.)

Books I Own

I own 29 books of fiction. This includes picture books, excludes ebooks (because my standards for keeping them are pretty low since they don't take up shelf space), includes collections of Grimm and Andersen fairy tales and Connie Willis' Impossible Dreams but excludes multiple-author anthologies (because thinking about how to count them made my head hurt), and counts all volumes of From Eroica With Love as one book (because to do otherwise seems like cheating in my favor). If you're interested in what those books are, you can check out my LibraryThing. I've excluded nonfiction because the nonfiction I own is more in the reference category (a cookbook, three prayer books) than the sort of thing you would sit down and read.

Of the 29 books I own, 2 books are by PoC authors. (Note: I think. I had it in my head that Vera B. Williams is Hispanic, and my mother thinks so too, but a quick google didn't give me anything. If she is, it's 3, not 2.) Interestingly, both of them are graphic novels by Japanese authors (one in translation, one originally in English) featuring white characters: Yasuko Aoike's From Eroica With Love (I have volumes 1-13 in official translations and a bunch of fan translations, which is why it would feel like cheating to include each volume separately) and Kazu Kibuishi's Daisy Kutter: The Last Train.

Of the 26 books for which I counted protagonists, 3 books have PoC protagonists. Interestingly, two of the three are picture books (Vera B. Williams' A Chair for My Mother and Robert D. San Souci's The Enchanted Tapestry) and two of them have Chinese protagonists (Robert D. San Souci's The Enchanted Tapestry and Maureen F. McHugh's China Mountain Zhang).

Of those 29 books I own, 25 books are by female authors. Of the four that are by men, one's a picture book, one's a graphic novel, and the other two are the Grimm and Andersen fairy tale collections.

Of the 26 books for which I counted protagonists, 18 books have female protagonists, which is much lower than I would have guessed before I counted. Of the books with male protagonists, only one is by a male author.

Books I've Read This Year (So Far)

I've read 23 books so far this year. This includes fiction, nonfiction, ebooks, and anthologies.

I was able to identify if the author was a PoC or not for 16 of those books. (Note: the single anthology was left out of this count.) Of those 16, only 1 book was written by a PoC author (Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi). Trying to figure out if the author was a PoC or not was an interesting exercise. There was one particular author who I expected from her writing to be the whitest white girl who ever lived. I found pictures of her, and, well, I've seen white women who look like that and I've seen PoC women who look like that, and she does not self-identify a race on her MySpace page. It was one of those things that make you think about how odd it is to try to determine these kinds of things from the outside.

Of the 18 books for which I counted protagonists, only 1 book featured a PoC protagonist (Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs).

Of those 23 books, excluding the one anthology, 17 books were written by female authors. This was another one of those that was lower than I would have expected before counting. Of the six books written by men, three of them were children's/YA, one was nonfiction (one of the books counted as written by female authors was also co-authored by a man), and one was m/m erotica (and if I'd known that Sean Michael was actually a man and not some female slasher's male pseudonym, I never would have bought Bent; it does go a long way to explaining at least two of the three major problems I had with the book). This division isn't quite as surprising to me: when I say I don't read books by men, I usually say that the exceptions are nonfiction and the occasional YA novel.

Of the 18 books for which I counted protagonists, 12 books featured a female protagonist. Of the books featuring a male protagonist, two were YA, three were m/m erotica, and one was a fantasy novel with gay protagonists by a female author, which, again, fits pretty well with how I would classify books I do read with male protagonists.

What Seems Reasonable to Me

I think I could actually do more, but I think I'll baby step my way into this and start with a commitment to reading one book by a PoC author per month. So this is where I'm asking for recs. Keep in mind that I basically read YA; fluffy sci fi/fantasy (by which I mean no hard sci fi, nothing with too intensely belabored a message, nothing with eighty bajillion pages of boring description), preferably with a romance as part of the plot; nonfiction in limited quantities; and m/m erotica.
rsadelle: (Default)
So remember what I said about how Friday Night Lights was hard to watch and I wasn't sure if I could watch more of it? Well, you should ignore me when I say things like that. In the twelve days since that post, I've watched the other 48 episodes of the show. (Note: NBC has only aired and posted to Hulu the first six episodes of season 3, but all thirteen episodes apparently aired on DirecTV, so I was able to find them online. This post may contain spoilers all the way through that thirteenth episode of S3.) I think marathon watching was actually the way to go - the impact isn't quite so startling when you watch them at a stretch. Also, I was going to move on to something else when I was done, but I can't. Instead, I'm rewatching the bits I really like from previous episodes.

Spoilery )

I'm now ready for some fic recs, especially Jason/Tim/Lyla or Tim/Lyla or really, anything with Tim. Some recs from me:

40 Miles North of Presidio by Jae Gecko - Lovely Tim/m story.

Five Things Jason Street Was the First to Say by [livejournal.com profile] hth_the_first - Nice Jason/Lyla/Tim story.

Hotassery is Not Special Dispensation to be an Ass by [livejournal.com profile] hackthis - Amusing and nicely done Tim and Landry gen fic.

The Pursuit of Happiness by [livejournal.com profile] brandil - Awesome Tim/Lyla/Jason set during "Let's Get It On."

Riggins & Winchester by [livejournal.com profile] thisisbone - The most amazing FNL/SPN Tim/Dean crossover. Oh, I loved this story.

Texas Forever by Ishafel - I don't know if this is supposed to actually be a happy story; I found it sad.

Texas Forever by [livejournal.com profile] t_fic - Excellent gen Tim future fic.
rsadelle: (Default)
[livejournal.com profile] dedalvs responded to my post about Proust Was a Neuroscientist with a list of ways to find new music. They're good ideas, but, as I told him, I don't care enough about music to put in the effort. (I think if I were interested enough, I could write a music version of my post about how visual art doesn't do it for me.) But his idea about asking friends is something I do have the effort for. (I've also downloaded a few fic soundtracks over the last few days. So far, I've only listened to the one that's the soundtrack to a Chris/Steve cowboy AU. It's pretty good, although there's one song that doesn't fit with the atmosphere of the others.)

Recs Request
What music would you suggest? Is there anything that you're loving right now that I would like? I have a $3 mp3/movie/TV show credit from Amazon that I'd love to use before it expires at the end of the month, so anything that you think I should buy from them (from a non-RIAA label) would be an extra bonus.

Project: 22 Days of Music
In return for any recs you may or may not make, I'll make some recs myself. Every day between now and Valentine's Day, I'll post about one song I like. Rules to keep me on track:
  • I will make sure you can listen to the song somehow (this may take the form of YouTube videos fairly frequently because almost everything is on YouTube and I'm probably too lazy to upload every song for you).
  • For those of you who fear 22 songs by Christian Kane and Steve Carlson (yes, [livejournal.com profile] fuseji, I am looking at you), I promise not to repeat artists.
  • Valentine's Day will be a love song. (I didn't have to tell you this, but two seemed like not enough rules.)
rsadelle: (Default)
Missing from my exclamation points from last night (because I didn't notice it) is the fact that The Wedding Job was directed by Jonathan Frakes. Jonathan Frakes! I only noticed this because this morning I followed the link from Chris's MySpace blog and bulletin (I find it hilarious that whoever's in charge of his MySpace always posts things as both a blog post and a bulletin) to iFMagazine's interview with Anthony De Longis, who played the Butcher of Kiev in The Wedding Job. He talks a lot about the fight scene and says tons of nice things about Chris.
There are places where I'm sure they'll intercut, because they had two cameras and two angles, but what was fun was, we would shoot it start to finish, all five phrases. And that's a big rarity. Not that many people can do it. Christian can. I can. When you see how good [the Butcher is] and how good [Elliott] is and the two of us struggling to get an advantage with each other, it just adds to Christian's credibility as that character.
(Apparently iFMagazine doesn't know how to use IMDb to check the spelling of character names. Come on! This is basic writing 101. I keep forgetting how Eliot is spelled too, and I never have been able to figure out if it was Sara or Sarah on CSI, but I look it up every time I need to use it!)

After reading that, I remembered that John Rogers talks about Leverage eps on his blog, so I went to see what he had to say.

First, he says, "EDIT: Almost forgot. That's Chris Kane doing not just the fight knifework but the kitchen knifework. He's actually a pretty great cook." All those stories about Chris cooking now have a reality basis! And you know he learned from Steve. There really needs to be fic where Steve teaches Chris how to cook and they fall in love along the way. *sigh* If only Chris/Steve were a bigger fandom or if more of what there is were worth reading. (There's a surprisingly large number of Chris/Steve stories that are genuinely unreadable.) (I actually read five parts of a who knows how long and hideously overdramatic WiP yesterday because I was so desperate for Chris/Steve. I can only reread [livejournal.com profile] tigers_prowl's fic and [livejournal.com profile] smokeringhalos' "Build Me Up, Buttercup (the Kane Remix)" so many times before I know them by heart.) Any recs for Chris/Steve will be greeted with effusive thanks, especially if you come up with something that isn't (a) something I've read before or (b) one of the aforementioned unreadable fics.

Then, one of the questions about The Stork Job was about how real Chris's injury looked. John says:
SOMEBODY went out at 1am after his weekly poker game with Tim Hutton and SOMEBODY started tossing around a football, until SOMEBODY slipped on the asphalt in his goddam cowboy boots.

Miraculously -- and I mean MIRACULOUSLY -- that Somebody heals at weirdly supernatural speed. We only had to cover the problem in two shots (the lesbian bar joke was an on-set throwaway, I think). Seriously, the entire asphalt burn was healed in under three days. The doctors were freaked. It definitely supports the idea that "shitkicker" actually has a genetic component.
Oh, Chris. This is exactly the kind of thing fangirls expect you to do! Maybe we're not so wrong in our Chris fanon. Also, as long as I'm making fic recs to go along with my gushing over Chris, let me rec [livejournal.com profile] wenchpixie's "How Come a Threesome Isn't Ever as Good as in Porn?" which is a gen SPN/Leverage crossover in which Eliot is not the only one who didn't know it was a lesbian bar.

Last week's post had pictures from the set, including this one, in which Chris looks horribly uncomfortable, the way he does in most pictures where he's trying to smile. Only the second time I looked at it did I realize Beth's sitting in his chair. [livejournal.com profile] schuyler said "It looks like she's sitting in his chair and telling a super embarrassing story about Chris' childhood." This would make an awesome story by someone who's funnier than I am. (What are the chances I could somehow foist it off on [livejournal.com profile] with_a_kay? If only I knew her better.)

Profile

rsadelle: (Default)
Ruth Sadelle Alderson

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Tags

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags