#I do just really enjoy cataloguing my histories with fandoms if I can remember them lmao

[saveugoodmadam]

this is so funny to me okay so the timeline goes

Several years ago in my desperately wanting to be a werewolf phase I looked at like one or two pages of the first chapter of the glass scientists but it had literally just started and hadn't gotten past chapter two and I was. A child. So I ended up like of dropping it

Fast forward several years later...

I'm looking at random tv tropes articles and there's one with a picture of a girl with a skeleton hand

I reverse image search it and one of the suggested images is a panel from chapter one of tgs

flashback.jpg

I binge the entire comic in a single day and buy volume one immediately

edward hyde and associates sink their grubby little paws into my brain

and today I just spend twenty one pounds on a copy of the two main source materials (j&h and frankenstein) and a copy of the jekyll and hyde OBCR and a copy of the original studio cast recording which had to come over the sea from TEXAS

[forbiddenfantasies1]

J/B Smut Swap Fic Recs, Take 2

Well my plan to have all my @jb-smut-swap fic recs on one post was an epic fail so like Whitesnake once said, here I go again. Maybe this one will be shorter and I can wrap it up in one post. I make no promises. The last time I promised to keep something short, it didn't go well. I'll demonstrate my self-awareness and put them under the cut. Shocker...there will be a Part 3.

Binary Explosive for jencat, rated E. This was one of the first fics I read in the exchange, and this thing has stuck with me. It has all the tropes I love...established relationship, battle couple, Brienne being competent AF, and Jaime wanting to fuck her even more because of it. The tension in this, both between them and between them and the literal bomb strapped to them, is so damn good. The knife scene made me want to buy my husband one so I could make him strap it to his inner thigh. The whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking "I need yall to stop being so horny so you don't die but also maybe shift on his thigh a bit more, Brienne." The banter, the history, and the smoking hot sex scene make this one a must-read.

Lines that will live in my head forever: This was a hard choice because honestly the whole thing is so damn tense and horny I could quote the entire thing to you, but I'm going with: “Nearly there,” he rasps and she tries not to think of any other time he's moaned that against her skin. Not that it's any less intoxicating to feel his cock jutting heavy between her legs--the thin cotton khakis Samwell had had them both wear to make them look slightly less threatening leave little to the imagination when they're so close together. And her imagination doesn't need much help when she knows so well how Jaime feels buried deep inside her cunt.

“Is this enough?” It's more a plea than a question, but instead of answering Jaime moves between the arch of her legs in response. Brienne has to press her lips tightly together to hold back an inappropriate noise. His hand slides between them, his wrist pressing against her cunt, and she's certain he can feel how wet and ready she is for him through the fabric.

The beeping picks up.

And author, if you see this, what do you want for the boat fic? Tell me.

Good Long Line of Praises for KayJayTeal, rated E. One of the very best things this fandom has done is to fully adopt the idea that Jaime is always putting his mouth to work, whether it's by talking shit, being charming, or going down on Brienne (as she deserves!). In this fic, Brienne tries to flip it on him by talking to him throughout sex, and they realize that Jaime has a praise kink. It just gets hotter and hotter, and eventually they reach what turns out to be the words that really push his buttons (I'm not gonna tell you, go read it). If you like dirty talk, then this is the fic for you, but be prepared to also be slapped in the face with some deeply authentic intimacy and heart. Another one in the Smut Swap that manages to be stupidly hot and still so tender all at once.

Words that will live in my head forever: Look this entire story is full of words, spoken and unspoken, that made me want to smush my face into a pillow. But I'm gonna go with: Sometimes they are so caught up in the moment, desperate and needy for each other, they only catch glimpses of each other, an encouraging smile here, hooded eyes there. Often Brienne is so consumed by the way he kisses her, touches her, that she curls her body towards him and buries her face in his shoulder as her thighs clutch him, but tonight, she makes a conscious effort to watch him as they move together. It surprises her how intently he looks at her, how much it moves her to catalogue all of his grunts, his hums of pleasure.

“I like seeing you like this,” her voice fades a little on the last part, momentarily overwhelmed at how responsive he is to her, how he looks at her with such awe. “You’re doing so well for me.”

This wasn't my gift but it felt like one for me.

Diplomatic Relations for wildlingoftarth, rated E. You know how you can go to Epcot and Eat Around the World? This is that but the world is the Seven Kingdoms, and Jaime is snacking on Brienne. Okay not each kingdom is noted by the presence of Jaime Lannister, Oral Enthusiast, but you won't ever convince me that's not happening amidst all the fucking. They're ripping pillows, alarming Sweetrobin, and generally trying not to scandalize the entire population of Westeros as they fuck all over it during their diplomacy trip. This story is just fun from start to finish and even with all the non-stop fucking, what really shone through for me is just how much they like each other.

Lines that will live in my head forever: Again, the options are endless, but let's go with: Jaime threw his head back and his moan was once again muffled. Now she understood what Jaime so enjoyed in teasing her. But she would go about driving him crazy a different way. Her way.

She shifted her legs, knees and hips until she was comfortable, reveling in the way his throat moved with every swallow he took as they moved against one another. Then, Brienne leaned down and whispered low into his ear, “Remember to practice your discretion, my lord.”

She grabbed a pillow to muffle her own cries of pleasure, then began riding him at a punishing pace and nearly preened in satisfaction when she felt the vibration of his choked moans against her palm.

If you're looking for lots of sex mixed in with laughter, this is the fic for you.

Trust Me With You for LadyRhiyana, rated E. This is another one that I read super early but it has stuck with me. Was it the mention of the Elliot Ness suit? Was it canon adapted to a more modern setting? Was it Jaime misunderstanding why Brienne wanted to meet him in the library? It was probably all of the above, plus the lines I'll share below. I don't know if a memo went out about fingers being used to fuck my entire world up, but if so let's keep it going. I've thought about that scene more than once since reading it and will undoubtedly keep thinking about it for quite some time.

Lines that will live in my head forever: I mean it's clearly the finger part. CLEARLY. Here read it with me and then go read the entire fic because it's all that good: “In just a little bit, my cock is going to be in here.” He pressed one of her fingers inside, and while she wasn’t a complete innocent—she’d heard plenty of talk among men and occasionally between women to know what the act itself involved—she was still shocked at the intrusion.

Shocked that it was her hand there, doing this, with Jaime beside her, and then one of his fingers slid inside, joining hers, and she gasped again.

“I’m going to make this good for you,” he promised as his finger slid out only to press back in. She caught onto this and her finger moved in time with his as she spread her legs wider. “Touch yourself, Brienne.”

Jesus, I got pissed off all over again. Fuck this scene so much.

Apart, Together, Together Apart for potato_writes, rated E. This story. Holy shit. Excuse me author I signed up to read dirty smut, not be left with a flood of emotions. This story punched me right in the heart, but in the good way if that makes sense. Jaime is King Tommen's Lord Commander and Brienne is the Evenstar, and when he comes to Tarth or she ventures into Kings Landing, they are lovers. In this fic, they have a week together and it is both so, so hot and so, so poignant.

Lines that will live in my heart forever: God I almost picked one of the soft lines because some of them really fucked me up, but since it's a Smut Swap, I'm sticking to the smut: He’s sprawled on her bed, naked as his nameday, waiting. She stops dead in the entrance and then hastily slams the door. His legs are spread. He smiles lazily, his hand moving slowly up and down on his cock, not chasing release but keeping himself hard for her. She is instantly flushed red. Jaime is here, in my bed waiting for me. Wanting me.

“Come here,” he says, his voice soft and deep. “Do you like what you see?”

She nods, her eyes wide. She tries to regain some of her composure. “The last time I unexpectedly found a man in my chamber he was cleaning the chimney. That was very useful.”

“But not nearly as decorative, I’d imagine.”

Read this one but be prepared to have feelings when you do.

[redspiderling]

MCU Breakdown: That b-roll called Endgame, part 2

This mess has been swirling around my mind all day and I can safely say that once I managed to block individual offences and look at the greater picture, I was able to reach a conclusion that might bring some peace to my mind and, hopefully, yours too.

We’re not here to once again simply exhibit how this movie failed to express itself in a visual way, we’ll go a step further because I’m an asshole like that.

We’re here to explain why the failure of visual expression cheapens the story-telling process and leads to an unfulfilling cinematic experience.

I’m adding a “read more” this time because I actually remembered to do it.

Let’s ease ourselves into this.

Exhibit 1: Not using any visual storytelling elements.

This is the moment Pepper realises Tony has figured out time travel. That they can -potentially- travel back in time and save trillions of lives. And it’s shot, like this

Like a picture from a furniture catalogue. I’m saying furniture catalogue not only because the shot is 80% furniture and 20% character. Not just because it is quite dark, and the pieces that are drawing the attention of our eyes are the various lamps and candles, bright and shiny in an otherwise brownish, muddy frame. 

This moment hasn’t earned its existence in our minds as an emotionally charged one. 

It’s not just that Tony was never the character who envisioned himself as someone capable of “settling down”. It’s that our brains have been trained for centuries to look for visual clues. The wringing of hands, the beads of sweat on a forehead, nervous gestures, restlessness. The symbolism of a storm in the horizon that trouble is coming. They’re all simple things but they’re layers upon layers of meaning.

The trouble isn’t just that the Tony we know is not the Tony we’re looking at. It’s that the way the story unfolds, visually, doesn’t fill us with dread. Instead we are left looking at an image of a somewhat peaceful existence void of any emotional charge. 

How this scene represents the “enormous scientific revelation will restore balance to the universe but will potentially ruin our family” sentiment, is an enquiry for me to make and for the Endgame show runners to never explain.

Exhibit 2: Using visual storytelling elements wrongly

To move forward from that significant for all its insignificance moment, it’s old news in the fandom that Endgame took the concept of found family and kicked it to an alternate dimension. 

What we are looking at here, is the New “But Actually Really Damn Old” Dream of the MCU: Typical affluent white heteronormative Heaven. 

And yet that’s not the problem. It is a problem, in the general “this is the 21st century and it takes a bit more to impress us” sense, but it’s not a problem from the perspective of a story. You can tell good stories for us all to enjoy that begin and end with this narrative, as long as you do it well. 

It is quite obvious that the basic concepts of visual storytelling are known to these people. And they do attempt to use them on occasion. We’re talking about visual clues that will help nudge the viewer in the right direction, so that when the moment comes, the viewer will have seen it coming and won’t get annoyed. 

Thus one could easily assume any form of foreshadowing is better than no foreshadowing, right?

Perhaps. But from my experience, certainly not in this instance. This is one of the big problems with this film, it is not certain where to draw the line on just how much does the viewer know? Is this their first MCU film? Second? Did they see Cap 1 and skip the rest?

Our story tellers don’t use all the information they have provided us with, and that creates traps for them. Even when they do attempt to warn us for what is coming they create more trouble for themselves. Because foreshadowing needs to be consistent. And dead ex girlfriends who got married more than 50 years ago, are not a likely candidate for a love story in the mind of the viewers.

Visual story telling is crucial and it needs to be consistent. You can show me hints that I will pick up on. 

Here's Steve in the Avengers. He's certainly a man out of time, with his old man clothes.   

Thankfully, by the time the Winter Soldier appeared, he was fitting in quite well in the world. A modern man now, with a modern attire.

So I'm left to watch in bewilderment and wonder, why is Steve back in his old man clothes in Endgame? 

When did this regression occur? Viewers are not idiots. Like I said, we are trained to pick up on visual clues, it's crucial to our survival in the world. If I see a monkey eat seeds from a tree and then die, I'll remember not to eat from that tree.

I see the attempt here. The lack of colour and hope in the frame where Steve gazes longingly at the old compass, the soft, dream-like orange of his perfect life with his little wife. I can take a hint. Do I want it though? Have you prepared me for it? Does it make sense in terms of the other visual clues you've provided me with over the years?

Exhibit 3: Shifting the responsibility

Did I mention how much Marvel lucked out with the casting?

There’s 0 visual language employed. There’s no symbolism, no light, colour or perspective of happiness, or hope, or hopelessness. The only thing between those two pictures that says Tony and Natasha are not having some really strange conversation with each other right now, is the expression on their faces.

The fulfilment Tony found in parenthood and Natasha’s heartbreak over Clint’s crimes is visible only through the talent of the performers, not through any visual clues the show runners left behind for us. 

Natasha stressing

Professor Hulk and Dr Strange paying their respects

Clint’s guilt

Wanda remembering her dead loved ones

Complex emotional moments laid entirely on the shoulders of the actors. Which isn’t entirely a condemnable thing, talented actors can pull strong emotions from their audiences, but they can only do so much. 

Lets reference a pop culture legend most of you will understand

We don’t remember Luke finding out the truth about his father just because  Mark Hamill is a really good actor. We remember it because in that moment, Luke had been brought to his lowest point. He was worn from battle, his life was hanging from a thread. Darth Vader was looming over him, the personification of everything he hated and in that moment he found out that a part of him came from that evil. 

That build up was the result of a well written script, of a masterful piece of music, a visual tone that brought us to the brink of a revelation. The performance was part of the tale that will be retold for generations. 

In conclusion 

While there have been literally dozens upon dozens of articles about fans and viewers and critics having “issues” with this or that in Endgame, the truth is that our real problem, is this mixed bag of hardly ever used, or wrongly used storytelling elements. One that has been building up to a disastrous result for years.

And while all that is the least of Endgame’s crimes in the eyes of a Natasha fan (I have a personal vendetta against the film at this point) I still can’t help but bemoan the loss of a singular opportunity for creating a milestone in cinematic history. 

Because if we can’t revisit Endgame for its story due to a complete lack in originality, and we can’t revisit it for its visuals, we won’t revisit it at all. And with it most of the MCU will go down as a piece of popular media that took the world by storm, but won’t have much to recommend it 10, 20 years from now. And isn’t that a shame. Edit: If you’re wondering why they messed up this badly, there’s a long list of reasons:

This wasn’t actually planned ahead. They didn’t write all the films from the beginning, they were making things up as they went along, so they created pitfalls for themselves.

They ignored the visual language.

They went along with weak scripts.

For Endgame specifically, they did ridiculously extensive re-shoots, which resulted in messy set ups (misplaced items on set, badly lit scenes, bad special effects) and bad editing.

They bit off more than they could chew with the amount of characters presented on screen, and never managed to create complete and fulfilling storylines for them.

Finally, they allowed bigotry and sexism to affect their judgement, thus placing the viewer against their narrative.

[jemariel]

Sherlock, Supernatural, and How I Am Trying to Take Shipping Less Seriously

I want to tell my story. 

(tl;dr: I have a lot more fun with shipping when I don’t worry about whether or not it will ever be canon. OR: Never put that much faith in the hands of showrunners. It always ends BAD.gif)

I wrote most of this post months ago and it’s been rotting away in my drafts since maybe March? It seemed like a good time to actually post it. This is my own personal perspective, where I’m coming from on this. Obviously everyone’s feelings and opinions are 100% their own and I respect that. We’re all coming from somewhere.

Soooo. I’ve been lurking in various fandoms for a long time. I started in 2001, when I was 14. I’ve seen a lot of changes in fandom and the internet and how we interact with our favorite media. Now seemed like a good time for me to sort through this.

My first OTP was in Highlander. It was, for all intents and purposes, a dead fandom when I arrived. The show had been cancelled 5 years before I even discovered that other people wrote and posted their fanfiction, and one half of my pairing was dead for the final series. The pair I read about maybe shared half an hour of screen time through the whole three seasons they were both in the show? They had very little plot interaction at least.

I didn’t care. It didn’t stop me from reading about them. Didn’t stop me from wanting to put them in the same room and see what happened – usually them getting on like a house on fire.

The point is that we were under absolutely no impression that they would ever become canon. There was literally no possibility for it. But that didn’t matter. We could do what we wanted. We were just having fun.

After Highlander came Harry Potter. Sirius Black and Remus Lupin. I don’t remember if I started shipping them before or after the 4th book but it was definitely long before the 5th book. This was the first time I had the inkling that maybe, possibly, JK Rowling might have actually intended them to be read that way. This is where I read my first meta, before it was called that – someone who went through the books and pulled out excerpts that made a person think. Wow that eye contact really did linger, I thought. Maybe that embrace wasn’t strictly brotherly, I said to myself.

At the time, queerbaiting was not even a word in the vernacular. So when the 6th book came out and Tonks and Remus became the most eyebrow-raising pairing I’ve ever encountered, I just shrugged and went on with my life. Sirius was dead anyway so this really changed nothing. I liked Remus the gay uncle werewolf, but bisexual was fine too. I mostly wrote and read about them during their school days anyway. So this was fine.

Eventually I moved on, and where I landed after that was in the grand daddy of all slash pairings, the first fandom in our current fanfiction zeitgeist: Star Trek, the Original Series. Kirk and Spock. This was still a couple of years before the 2009 reboot movies, so all I had was a cheesy 60s TV show with a venerable back catalogue of fanfic. What’s better, this ship could never be sunk! Of course they couldn’t ever be canon, it was the 60s. Times were different. I could ship them with fervor and never be disappointed because of course it was just our interpretation. … Wasn’t it?

Oh, Gene Roddenberry. You idealistic sonuvabitch. You created the Vulcan word “t’hy’la” specifically for Spock to use for Kirk, and you made it mean friend, brother, and lover? Was that really necessary or were you trying to tell us something?

Here I found more fledgling meta, and I went through the novelizations of the movies with a highlighter devouring every piece of evidence I could find. But while this ship was unsinkable, it would also never fly. Even if Roddenberry had intended this, or supported it after the fact, prejudice surely had kept his intentions in the background. Subtext was our friend. We could work with subtext. The subtext wove a gay love story the likes of which we haven’t seen since the ancient Greeks. I was happy with that.

But then.

2010. Sherlock.

I knew going into it that Holmes and Watson were the greatest love story never told. I figured it would be a fun pairing for a while. But oh. I was not prepared. And oh, be still my beating heart, the Angelo’s scene! If I recall correctly I actually sat up straighter in my chair at “so you’ve got a boyfriend then”/”No.” Could they… could he? Did they actually…? Was this written for… me? For us? Could we, the weird little corner of the fandom be right for once?? The slash shippers, the queer kids, the ones who had been peering between the lines for decades to try and catch glimpses of ourselves in our favorite stories?

I buried the thought for a few years, devouring Johnlock fanfic like it was my job, my civic duty, my vocation. I waited patiently for each new series. But I never actually expected anything to come of my hopes until after season 3.

Bet you guessed it. TJLC had caught me like a spark in dry grass. The few analyses I’d read before were NOTHING compared to this. Suddenly it all seemed so possible. So real. After The Abominable Bride it seemed like there was nowhere else to go, nowhere to go but up. We were right. WE WERE RIGHT! For a whole year, we got to relish the thought that it might actually happen.

…………….. Season 4 was… tough. It felt like a slap in the face, all of our hopes thrown back at us with ignorance at best, cruelty and direct malice at worst. If it had been a good season on its own without canon Johnlock I might have been okay, but as it is….. It was not the first time I’ve had my heart broken by a TV show, and probably only seems like the worst by virtue of being recent. But I would very much like it to be the last.

A few months before diving head-first into the pre season-4 gear-up, I watched a few seasons of Supernatural. Just enough to meet Castiel and lay the groundwork for a Destiel obsession as a contingency plan for if season 4 of Sherlock went all pear shaped. I’m glad I did or I don’t know where I would have found my refuge.

But I started to notice something. From my earliest wading in the Destiel end of the tumblr pond, I shied away quickly from any discussion of evidence, subtextual clues used to make predictions, or whether or not Destiel could or should or will be canon. I still take all meta and spec I read with a healthy pinch of salt. I am trying very hard not to care about whether or not it becomes canon, because honestly? I miss the days when whether or not a ship was canon or had a snowball’s chance of ever becoming so had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not I shipped it.

Fandom is just one of many echo chambers that the internet has molded around every one of us. It is so easy to become convinced that our way is right and everyone else’s way is wrong, because we only hear our own voices and those of people we agree with reflected back at us.

We are not the arbiters of what happens in canon. The showrunners are NOT obligated to listen to us. Not everyone can be right, and the showrunners cannot listen to everyone. Nor should they. They are, for better or for worse, creating their own story. Not ours.

We can always write the story the way we want to, over and over in countless different ways. These days I see a show almost more as a set of toys to play with than as its own impermeable whole. I can believe that Dean and Castiel have been slowly falling in love over the course of the last decade. I can decide when and where I want them to have first admitted it, to themselves or each other. What’s more – I can change my mind. Some days I like believing that they’ve been together since Cas’s hand print was still fresh on Dean’s shoulder. Some days I’d rather believe that they’re still pining and in various states of denial. Or anything in between – it’s all equally valid. Once it’s said and stated in canon, that’s it. That’s the show. That’s how it happened. I like the freedom I have when my ship is not explicitly canon. The best is when they are clearly aware of it and give us moments like the mixtape or the Fanfiction Gap of 9x06 – new toys to play with – but let us shape what’s actually going on. As I say in my tags sometimes: They clearly love us and want us to have nice things.

All of this is NOT to say that up-and-coming queer kids do not richly need and deserve representation. God, not at all. I beat myself up about this a lot, for what feels like a terribly selfish desire to just enjoy it and not worry about whether or not the up and coming queer youth could have it better than I did. They can and they should and I still believe that season 4 of Sherlock was the biggest missed opportunity in queer cinema history.

I just can’t take it so personally anymore. For the sake of my favorite hobby, I cannot stake my enjoyment of a pairing and a show on whether or not the showrunners want to take the risk. I cannot let them dangle me on that particular string. I cannot give them that power over me. 

So this is my manifesto, for me personally. If Destiel becomes canon? I will be over the moon. But I will not go hunting for it. I won’t expect it. I will cherish every gift that the showrunners give to us because they’re not obligated to give us a damn thing, so I can’t take what they do give us for granted. I will live my headcanons, write my fics, and I will love the show for what it is, warts and all. I will ship my ship, enthusiastically and with my whole heart, because it brings me joy to do so. Canon or no canon. @starsinursa @daughter-of-the-rain-and-snow