Bagheera

I'm still surprised that I haven't written any Avengers fic (except a few short kink meme fills that weren't anything special) and I'm already losing my interest in that fandom. I dunno what's changed, but these days I don't seem to form lasting fannish attachments the way I did with Harry Potter, Smallville or Doctor Who. Instead, I keep going from one source material to the next.

My newest discovery is Teen Wolf, which has been on my radar as "that show with the gay gifs" for a while, but I only started watching it after reading some favourable things about it in the comments to a post by selenak. And my own reaction? Also very favourable!

[Attention, ex-Smallville fans: this might be a show for you. Attention Buffy fans: yep, this might also be a show for you.]

So Teen Wolf is a show about Scott (16) who, after becoming a werewolf, has to keep his secret, figure out pack dynamics and not kill anyone while falling in love with the daughter of a werewolf hunter. He does all this mainly because his future girlfriend is cool and his best friend is really, really smart.

( Teen Wolf - spoilers up until S2 )

So, in conclusion:
- not quite as funny or innovative as Buffy
- relatively little diversity in the cast
- sometimes a little cliched
- Derek is no Lex and no Spike (sorry, Derek fans)
- the Argents aren't the Luthors (not quite)

+ cool female characters, and the show does good things with them (passing of the Bechdel test and such)
+ fast-paced, connected episodes
+ interesting minor characters
+ a lot of good music, although sometimes it seems a bit like a music video
+ I like how it deals with sexuality: girls and women are shown to like their own sexuality, it has a lot more female gaze than male gaze (unless it's a gay male gaze... I don't think there is a show with more locker room scenes and naked male chests than Teen Wolf) and there's no silly "no sex until marriage" or any of that ridiculousness, plus there is an openly gay guy on the sports team and the show deals fairly well with that, too (although sometimes it's used for comic relief, like when Scott dances with him at the prom to escape the wrath of the coach)
+ teachers and parents are shown to be real people: vain, silly, sad, cruel, stupid, clever, kind - there are all shades of them
+ Colonel Tigh as grandpa-werewolf hunter is gold

So if you'd like a supernatural romance/action/teen show that doesn't induce massive rage each week, try Teen Wolf :)

It's the first week of summer term. Among other things I'm teaching two tutorial classes for Intro to English Lit, and the students have to read Nick Hornby's "Juliet, Naked" for the section on novels. At first I questioned this choice and I had to force myself to start reading it today, because the blurb only said that it was about middle aged people and relationship problems and finding love/a purpose in life/questioning your choices, and that's exactly the kind of book I DON'T read.

No one told me that it was a book about online fandom!

Every few pages I go OMG GUYS at something. I'm only 40 pages in so I can't reccommend the book yet, but simply the fact that there is a novel about US amazes me. So far what's happened is that there's this thirty-something ex-Lit student, Annie, who is in a relationship with with college Lit teacher Duncan. Duncan is your typical oldschool male fan (into details, obsessively collecting, belittling Annie as "not an expert" while at the same time expecting her to respect his fannishness as a serious academic pursuit). A few years ago, he discovered the internet and since then, he has become something of a BNF. Annie thinks she has only a casual interest in the object of his fannishness, the musician Tucker Crowe, but then, because she begins to resent Duncan more and more, she writes her own post about the newest album in HIS INTERNET FORUM (which is mostly middle-aged men like him), directly contradicting his review of the album. Duncan is appalled and tells her she doesn't have a professional opinion, while Annie is surprised to discover how much she enjoys writing and being a critical fan.

I don't know how this is going to continue, but the portrayal of fandom, and of gender issues within fandom, is blowing my mind because it was the LAST thing I expected from this novel. Here, have some excerpts:

"And then the internet came along and changed everything [...] Until then, the nearest fellow fan had lived in Manchester, sixty or seventy miles away, and Duncan met up with him once or twice a year; now the nearest fans lived in Duncan's laptop, and there were hundreds of them, from all around the world, and Duncan spoke to them all the time."

Annie talking to a co-worker:

"'Tucker Crowe has his own website?'
'Everyone has their own website.'
'Is that true?'
'I think so. Nobody gets forgotten anymore. Seven fans in Australia team up with three Canadians, nine Brits and a couple dozen Americans, and somebody who hasn't recorded in twenty years gets talked about every day. It's what the internet's for. That and pornography [...]'
'How come you know so much about it? Are you one of the nine brits?'
'No. There are no women who bother. My, you know, Duncan is.'
[...]
'Sounds like I should buy that CD.'
'Don't bother. That's what gets me. I played it, and [Duncan]'s completely wrong. And for some reason I'm bursting to say so.'
'You should write your own review and stick it up next to his.'
'Oh, I'm not an expert. I wouldn't be allowed.'"

Sometimes it feels as if English Lit and fandom are secretly married to each other :) Or, you know, they're Bruce Wayne and Batman.

ETA:
There are fake wikipedia articles in the book, OMG. And Annie keeps checking her emails for comments, and now Tucker Crowe himself has commented on her review.

I wonder what fandom Nick Hornby hangs out in...

I wanted to make a Yuletide recs post, but everything I want to rec is what everyone else had already recced (like that Horrible Histories fic), so it seems kinda pointless.

But there still needs to be a post, because I got not one, but two yuletide gifts, one for regular yuletide, and one for madness.

The Scientific Method (Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Mature, Tony/Hank, Jan/Hank)
Anon combined two things I like and asked for, fanfic clichés and Tony/Hank. In this case it's sex pollen, except that this fic shows that Tony can't actually distinguish himself under the influence from himself as he is usually. And he almost makes a mess of things, but everyone else reacts quite well, because they're awesome people and this is an awesome yuletide gift :)

Told in fallen skies (Krabat, Master/Jirko)
Another fic that is EXACTLY what I asked for, in ways I didn't dare hope for. This one is dark and sad and wonderfully in-character, plus it fills some of the gaps in the Master's story. Anon is an extremely cool person because they wrote me a fic in a fandom hardly anyone knows and so it's pretty much a one person audience.

I also wrote a story, on the 24th/25th. It was meant to be a small treat, but turned into a proper 1000+ sized thing because I'm incapable of keeping things short.

I just read an utterly enchanting fic that I HAVE to rec even if no one on my flist is going to be interested.

Five Times Pippi Longstocking Turned Down an Offer, and One Time She Said Yes (Pippi Longstocking crossed over with Pirates of the Carribean, X-Men First Class, Buffy, Deep Space Nine and Doctor Who)

Pippi Longstocking is one of my childhood heroes - arguably Astrid Lindgren's wildest, most anarchic creation (even Ronja Robbersdaughter is quite tame compared to Pippi, although to be fair I liked Ronja better). Pippi is hard to explain, but in hindsight, I'd call her a girl trickster and be done with it. She's a not quite natural creature in a very ordinary setting, who bends the rules through sheer force of will and by utterly disrespecting them. Pippi could be a mutant, or a supernatural being or an alien, but ultimately, Pippi is just Pippi, and she fits into all these crossovers perfectly, most of all the Doctor Who one, because the Doctor and Pippi? Are so very kindred spirits.

First of all, a rec:

Monkey See, Monkey Do by drakeofdross
This is the extremely deserving winner of the CLFF wave 20. I read this and I was so full of squee that I could hardly wait to rec it. It's cool and long and S6 Clex that's not fluffy but not depressing either. There's hardly a story-kink I have that this fic didn't hit. Go, go, go, read it. And beg drakeofdross to write more. ( more squeeing about the story )

:::

I now know which courses I'll be doing this semester:
Writing I (this isn't creative writing)
Translation I
Introduction to Linguistics
a course about Noam Chomsky's Generative Grammar
a course about Christopher Marlowe's plays and life
Teaching English with Texts
Introduction to Ethics and Philosophy
and
Cultural Studies: "Rewriting the Past in the Future: Star Trek"

This means that with just two semesters, I'll have my Zwischenprüfung in English, which is roughly equivalent to a Bachelor.