Bagheera

Hello from France. The weather has turned less beach-y, and there's only so many medieval cities like Carcasonne you can go sight-seeing in, plus I feel like I could write something. So here's a little prompt game I cooked up.

List A is a list of Pairings, Fandoms or Characters I'm feeling in the mood to write. List B is a list of prompts. Pick one item from A and one from B and I'm gonna write you something :)

List A:

1) Pairing: Doctor/Master (any version)
2) Fandom: Bernice Summerfield
3) Pairing: Xavier / Magneto (X-Men Movieverse)
4) Fandom: Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire
5) Pairing: Picard / Q (ST: Next Generation)
6) Character: Data (ST: Next Generation)
7) Fandom: Journey into Mystery*
8) Pairing: Clark Kent/Lex Luthor (any version)
9) Fandom: Avengers - Earth's Mightiest Heroes
10) Character: Loki (any version)
11) Fandom: Star Trek – Voyager
12) Fandom: Star Trek – Deep Space Nine

*I’m only up to Manchester Gods, so no spoilers for Everything Burns in comments, please!

List B

1) souvenirs / mementos
2) learning sth / teaching sb.
3) blind faith / doubt
4) stealing / giving gifts
5) old age / long distance
6) harm sb. / help sb.
7) revenge / redemption
8) giving orders / serving
9) playing games / deadly serious
10) freedom / captivity
11) alternatives / experiments
12) art / artificial
13) shadows / mirrors
14) strangers / meetings
15) magic / childhood
16) power / force
17) wild / tame
18) saint / dragon
19) betrayal / proof
20) disguise / revelation

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 :)

So here's one of the things I wrote for the Thor kinkmeme. Crossover between Marvel and Smallville, but you needn't really know much about Marvel except that Doctor Doom is an evil genius (surprising, I know, given his name), has his own country that he rules with an iron fist (literally), likes to hang out with Loki because dark magic is relevant to their interests, and has a frenmity with Reed Richards/Mr Fantastic that is nearly as strong as that of Lex and Superman. And Loki is a Norse god/space alien/trickster with daddy issues and BFF-turned-nemesis-relationship to his adoptive brother Thor. You can probably see why they should all three get along smashingly.

Title: Myth and Legend
Pairing: Lex/Loki, (Doom/Richardses, Doom/Loki and Lex/Superman alluded to)
Rating: adultish
Length: 1323 words

( Lex Luthor is a man who knows his myths. )

So in my ongoing flirtation with fandoms not-Who, I have now watched some more SV - Arctic, Odyssey and Hex - and those were all quite good! Lex told Clark he loved him, Green Arrow bought Clark from the Russian mafia, Chloe is BADASS, so is Tess, and the whole Zatanna episode was too adorable and funny (adorable and funny necromancy: YAY). Am definitely continuing to watch more SV seasons 8-10.

Am also continuing to haunt the Thor kinkmeme, although it is not that great. Sometimes it is involuntarily hilarious. See, Thor, in the comics, speaks with a faux-Shakespearean grammar. I SAY THEE NAY and stuff like that. Kinkmeme writers trying to emulate it for some reason keep ending up sounding like Jane Austen characters. Consider this gem:

“I have always considered Doctor Doom to be a man of the very worst kind and I shudder to think of what he might be doing with my brother—”

Yes, that's Thor, talking about Loki/Doctor Doom. I LOLed hard.

Possibly it's made even funnier by the fact that I'm reading "Emma" right now (for the first time) which is... I dread its inevitable hetero ending, because the lesbian subtext is THERE, and I'd like Emma to be this glorious, slightly amoral scheming lesbian billionaire lady who's secretly heartbroken that her girlfriend got married to some boring old dude. And not just some girl who gets her comeuppance and marries Knightley, who I think is also some boring old dude.

Yesterday's Smallville reaction post may have given you the impression that I've turned into a bile-filled Smallville hater, but actually, no. I'm now contemplating watching some of the seasons I missed, because the Finale has made me curious about Tess and the whole clone storyline and I've heard that apparently Kon was also pretty good on SV. And they had Booster Gold and other heroes, which is hard to resist (only episode between Traveler and the Finale I watched was the one with the JSA.)

So, which episodes do I watch for Tess? Or any other really good ones you'd recommend?

I'm also tempted to write fix-it fic because certain developments in the finale just begged for it.

So. I watched that.

( Warnings for snark )

WOW.

First Smallville episode I watched in more than a year, and wow. Wow. It was, especially in the last half hour, a constant fangasm for someone who loves the wider DCU verse. I cannot believe how much random canon they managed to cram into these two hours.

( Smallville squee (mostly). Who thought that would ever happen again? )

Okay, maybe I have a small grudge against Smallville.

But if this were the JSA Show, or the Green Arrow Show or the Watchtower Show, I would totally adore it to bits and watch every episode.

Wow. The House finale was... wow. I love it, even though it's gut-punchy and dark.

( Now House has something in common with LOM, BSG and a lot of other stuff I love - with spoilers for the finale )

Man, that was FUN. I've found my peace with Smallville by ignoring it as best as I could for a year. I haven't watched any SV in that time, and managed to forget S6-7 quite well. Never watched S8. This is very much written from a fannish place of canon-does-not-exist, and both the Lex and Clark in here are half fanon and half their DC selves. I don't think anyone will mind ;)

For ladydey who asked for
Five times during the Rift years that Clark thought Lex was seriously Hot (and wished he could allow himself to get with him. Turns out that my definition of srsly hot includes: black leather, law skills, bald woobieness, morally ambiguous supervillainy and a good deal of violence.

( 2906 words, nc-17, futurefic )

Wooo-hooo! I won plnunn's Smallville Doujinshi contest with "Inseparable"! Much love to Pam for having the contest and to danceswithgary for betaing this story :)

And much love to SV fandom in general and those of you on my flist in particular. This is really nice, since I'm pretty sure I won't write anything major in SV fandom for the time forseeable and this feels sort of like letting go of this fandom with a bang instead of a whimper. It was a hell of a ride, but lately both the show and the mood in fandom made it very hard to love this fandom. I mostly just wanted to ignore it in favour of shinier pastures. Of course SV fandom isn't to blame for it - when I look at what other, much better shows offer their fans, and how much those fans still complain, those who stuck with SV all the way through look pretty damn patient and forgiving. And what's more - if you just take the products of fannishness SV fen have produced, fanfic, fanvids, manips, drawings, meta, and never watch an episode of it, then this show is a thing of beauty.