wanderings

I am returning to my social bookmarking-less past until Maciej sorts it so that exports are functional and I can actually move to pinboard (yes, I was still with delicious, yes, I should have moved years ago) - for now, a link dump wherein I reread nothing while releasing a bunch of fandom tabs I have on my browser:

Boom Clap (The Sound of My Heart) by femmequixotic and noe
Harry Potter | Rating: NC-17 | 39, 547 words | Harry/Draco
Summary: Post-war Hogwarts has been energized by its new teaching fellows program. Where once bitter enmity divided the wizarding community, Malfoy and Potter chummily patrol hallways together whilst Granger and Zabini seek lost parts of the castle at McGonagall’s behest and Chang supervises Quidditch when not lecturing in Charms. It’s a veritable wizarding utopia and life is predictable for the first time in years. Which is, of course, when everything blows apart as the result of a drunken dare and Malfoy’s life is ruined beyond his capacity to repair it. Ever. In a million years.
One of my joys this past year has been a slight resurgence in Harry/Draco works - they weren't one of my pairings in the sort of height or golden age of that fandom and pairing, but it was a lot of fun to be discovering the dynamic through new works something like a decade later. I have zero memory of this fic scanning through it, but that means nothing - I often have to get, like, a page into a work before I can tell whether or not I've read it before.

A better man might by lowriseflare and threeguesses
Pitch | Rating: NC-17 | 9,397 words | Ginny/Mike
Summary: The day Mike realizes he’s actively looking for Baker’s ass in the dugout is the day he decides he should probably stop slapping it.
This is like, age gap, and sports culture and gender, and sex and kink, a little. (I think a lot of shit is inherently kinky - from G to NC-17 - and am not using that word as code for BDSM; I can't remember the specifics of any sex scenes in this but I do know that I really liked this fic and I think the sex is pretty integral.)

places to be by Sixthlight
Rivers of London | Rating: PG-13 | 6,314 words | Beverley/Peter, Beverley/Peter/Thomas
Summary: Tolstoy was wrong: every happy family is happy in its own way.
Accidental co-parenting and kidfic with a poly bent. Sixthlight tends to write themes that I care about and write really well; I remember this fic as a delight.

the slow pace of geologic time by westerrnredcedar
Check Please! | Rating: PG-13 | 4,258 words | Alicia, Bitty
Jack looks at her and then puts her luggage down and leans in, grabs her into a full-body hug, right there on the sidewalk, holding her so close. She can’t remember when he last hugged her this hard. “He told his parents. About being gay. About us,” he says into her shoulder. “They were awful.”
It's about that, about Jack calling his mom for help, after, and her supporting her son and his partner, being there for Bitty, physically, and her reflecting on parenthood and time, a bit. It's pretty great.

Pants on Fire by Helenish
Inception | Rating: NC-17 | 15,169 words | Arthur/Eames
"Ah," Yusuf says, lifting a reproving hand, "are we calling less than 24 hours of memory loss amnesia now?"
Excellent use of tropes - there's almost a secret identity component with the amnesia - and character and relationship exploration.

Easy Open by Helenish
Mission Impossible | Rating: R | 6,262 words | Benji/Ethan
"So you and Hunt are a package deal these days,” Bryson says.
“Uh,” Benji says, jerking his head up from his computer, ballpoint in his mouth.
I did not expect to like this and buy this pairing but this story was compelling for me.

Desperado by fightingarrival
Star Wars | 3:06 | Poe/Finn/Rey
Summary: There ain’t nothing here for me anymore, but I don’t want to be alone. (A WisCon 41 premiere)
I'm not anywhere near finished processing this vid, so I have nothing on this.

Of Hangovers and Coffee by Madlyie
Les Miserables | Rating: G | 1,514 words | Enjorlas/Grantaire
Summary: prompt: “accidentally broke into your apartment because i was drunk AU”; You would actually expect Grantaire to wake up in an unknown apartment but things don’t always happen like expected.
I don't know that I actually finished reading this, I think I got about a paragraph in and went No! This is not the BNL song AU that I need in my heart of hearts and kind of want to write now and I need to hold onto this fic because it has inspired me.

be yourself my ally by imperfectcircle
Wonder Woman | Rating: G | 15,531 words | Etta/Diana
Summary: “That’s all very flattering,” Etta says when Diana has finally run out of steam, “but surely you have more qualified candidates than me?”
“You are of the world of men.” Diana looks a little embarrassed. “But not a man.”
-- Diana and Etta go back to Themyscira.
I think there's a thing, sort of, where we are, all of us, Darcy Lewis. I think we are also all Etta Candy, and, you know, that's a pretty fantastic vicarious experience in this fic. There's a a fake relationship in this fic. There are rituals and festivities. A+ I mean, there's also some world building if you're into that kind of thing, but I am basically entirely *chinhands* about Etta and Diana dating and the tropes here. (There are kittens in this! There are, like, alien shenanigans. It is fantastic.)

Resource Sharing by rsadelle
James Bond | Rating: NC-17 | 3,476 words | Q/Alec/James, Q/Alec, Q/James
Summary: Q experiences what it means when James says he and Alec share everything.
I remember this basically as filthy porn. Tags include d/s and double penetration.

World Ain't Ready by idiopathicsmile
Les Miserables | Rating: PG-13 | 185,796 words | Enjorlas/Grantaire
Summary: Enjolras presses his lips together. He already looks pained, and Grantaire hasn't even opened his mouth yet. That's got to be a record, even for them.
"I need a favor," he says at last.
"With what?" says Grantaire. "Ooh, are you forming a cult? Can I join? I'd be awesome at cults, I just know it." He ticks off his qualifications on his fingers. "I love chanting, I look great in robes—"
(High school AU. Grantaire the disaffected stoner is pulled into a cause bigger than himself. Or: in which there are pretend boyfriends for great justice.)
Yeah. It's exactly what it sounds like. The really long high school fake dating AU with pining and miscommunication and all of the teenaged things, basically. Solid supporting cast business with other story lines.

Penetration Testing by Toft
Person of Interest | Rating: NC-17 | 8,886 words | Harold/John
Summary: The CIA wants to know what Harold Wren is building for Nathan Ingram, so they set a honey trap. They bait it with John Reese.
God, this fic is basically what I love about John Reese as a character, and makes me want to write meta about kink, and here I definitely mean with reference to d/s. He's like the murder sub? And he just wants to be taken care of and loved and challenged?

The Real Thing by sevenfists
Hockey RPF | Rating: NC-17 | 34,892 words | Evgeni/Sid
Sitting at the table was Sid: Sid as Zhenya had first known him, almost a decade before: dorky, long-haired Sid, his cheeks round with baby fat. He couldn’t have been older than twenty, and even that was generous.
“Wow,” baby Sid said. “Are you Evgeni Malkin?”
I think the thing that got me with this fic - it's a pretty typical set-up and hockeyrpf loves themselves some age-regression - was the relationships that the present day Sid and Geno have with the time traveler. There's some tension, and a very real vulnerability that the younger Sid has because of his age that's I think really present in his relationship with Geno at this time and adds another layer to their interactions, as well as the interactions that Sid has with his younger self; I think it's a really interesting exploration of the sort of vulnerability of youth in this fic, and also power dynamics in relationships to some extent, and the dynamics of relationships in general and the tensions that exist in them, even when you are on even footing.

Under Yellow Moons by skoosiepants
Teen Wolf | Rating: PG-13 | 17,127 words | Derek/Stiles
Summary: They stare at each other, half-grinning, and Derek knows it’s definitely the absolute wrong time for this, but he wants. He wants to grin at Stiles over dinner every day for the rest of his life, baffled over yams and Moon Pie Day, and, god, crap, goddamn, when the fuck did he have time to fall in love?
Or
The life and times of Deputy Stiles and Supernatural Foster Dad Derek Hale
Some day I need to talk about how much I love skoosiepants, like, coding those italics just then made me so happy, and there's a kind of bandom style to her work, which is just fun - I've been enjoying this adult human Stilinski-Hale business she's been getting up to lately.

So that's my tabs cleared out, and, like step one in catch-up - I owe a few people some things I need to finish sorting.

The Dragon's Treasure by misura
The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
Elizabeth | G | 2,295 words
Summary: Elizabeth goes home. Various things happen. (Also contains moderate doses of floppy shoes, tennis rackets, bums and a treasure.)



At Tilde by copperbadge
Matilda by Roald Dahl | Marvel
Matilda | G | 1,247 words
Summary: Matilda turns hacker, impresses Tony Stark, and fails to be swayed by Charles Xavier.



a home for every season by dirgewithoutmusic
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis | The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Susan | G | 4,042 words
Summary: Susan Pevensie goes to Middle Earth
Let’s talk about a Susan who never moved on, who buried her family in English soil and spent the rest of her life trying to find her way home. She did not believe lions were kind, but she always remembered a bow in her schoolgirl hands.She looked in every old wardrobe she came across. It was casual, everyday– the first day in a new lecture hall, she checked the back of the coat closet. Friends had her over for Christmas dinner and she excused herself to go the bathroom, checked every cabinet and closet, and then headed back in for pudding. She went home with a cute boy she met in a smoky little pub and she checked his wardrobe before she headed home the next morning, heels in hand.



Realistic Painting of Mai by missbennet
Mai | G | one image

calvinahobbes prompted me with this after I'd put people talking to me about femslashy things on my wishlist for snowflake_challenge. February is coming, which means that, as I have for the last six years, the only fanworks that I'll be consuming or creating are female-centric ones, and since I'm a shipper there's a lot of femslash in that - Femslash February.

I tend to read more slash than anything else during the rest of the year. I like reading a lot of variations of the same story told over, and over. There's more slash so there are more variations available to me there and the size of slash fandom makes it easier to find works. I have deep roots there and I realised back in 2010 that it was really easy for me to read slash, but that I wanted to read more stories about women. Cutting male-centric fanworks out of my life completely was the easiest way, for me, to make sure that I consume fanworks about women. So, I sort of live in my own self-created fannish lesbian utopia for a month. Since I've started doing that the amount of fanworks I read about women has gone up in the other months, too; it's been a success for me, and I've made some really cool discoveries because of it. It's led me to all kinds of canons and there are all kinds of awesome femslash fanworks.

I need stories about women in my life. I need stories about queer women in my life. I am a woman, and I am queer. Those stories can be like water. Sometimes I'll run into a queer woman who will say something like, "It's a piece of shit, but it's got lesbians in it, so I'll be watching it." ...and, oh man. There's a Star Wars gif going around tumblr of Rey abruptly stopping when a ship is blown up in front of her, saying "the garbage will do" and abruptly turning and heading toward the Millenium Falcon; it's captioned with something like "when you have read all the good fic about your OTP." ...and that's it, it's that feeling, only I feel like very few of us have ever gotten used to consistently good content, we just want to see queer ladies represented and we don't have a whole lot of choices. I have watched some terrible, terrible media because of this.

Representation is so important. There's a quote by José Esteban Muñoz: "Heteronormative culture makes queers think that both past and future do not belong to them. All we are allowed to imagine is barely surviving in the present.” Stories are how we tell each other about our past and our future. Erasing queers from histories, from stories, can make it feel like we're not supposed to be here at all.

( More. )

Ways of Going Forward by redbrickrose
Tennessee wants to say "Where have you been?" or maybe just "Fuck you." She takes a deep breath and says, "Sleeping. It's..." she glances at the clock, "3 am. And my birthday was ten days ago."
Tennessee Thomas/Charlotte Froom | Rating: PG | 5,800 words
Bandom
This fic is raw edges and tentativeness and history. When Charlotte calls Tennessee in this fic it's awkward and terrible and the timing isn't perfect and both of them are still hurt, but it's a beginning. I love how broken they are in this - how much hurt there is, and how much pining. I love how they don't really let go of each other and how, having all of this history together, they start up again, and how that beginning has an echo in their past; it's really lovely. There's this thing where things aren't really resolved in this, their relationship isn't definitively settled, but they've taken some first steps together. It's hopeful.

The Journey of a Thousand Miles by igrockspock
Summary: After the end of the war, Luna makes two surprising discoveries: her father attempted to give Harry to Lord Voldemort, and Severus Snape is alive.
Luna Lovegood & Xenophilius Lovegood, Luna Lovegood & Severus Snape | Rating: PG-13 | 7,069 words
Harry Potter
It's a post-war fic about the aftermath of the war and Luna dealing with the revelation that her father is not the man she thought he was, that his principles are not what she thought they were. It's about Luna making her way back to her father after that realisation and her and Snape figuring out the business of living, after the war. It's about letting people in when you've been hurt, and Snape and Luna helping each other.

Time is but the Stream by chaosmanor
"I've been feeling like I've been swimming in two different time streams at once, ever since this started," Patrick said. "The 'now.' And the 'then.' Like being in two places at once. And I think I know why."
Andy Hurley/Patrick Stump | Rating: NC-17 | 27,846 words
Bandom
I love this story to pieces. There's this line that Patrick says in this - "I fell in love with a philosopher who would read Thoreau to me, and we'd talk about living beside a lake in the silence. I wound up choosing the band over them, which was really sad, but I think of them sometimes, and wish them all the best." and he's talking about Andy, and he says it on-air, just this matter of fact thing that is part of the narrative of his life for him; this fic destroys me in so many different ways. Patrick and Andy fell in love and then changed their relationship - broke up, so at the present that this story begins in they're friends and bandmates. (I love ex-lovers being friends and being able to move forward together.) Right at the beginning of this story there's this tiny comment that Andy makes, and him making it has nothing to do with his past with Patrick, but it takes Patrick back there and, yeah, hits him right in the face, and the story unfolds from there. There are two time-streams weaving back and forth in this and the end brings them into harmony, brings them into harmony. It's utterly lovely.

Buyer's Remorse by SilviaKundera
Summary: When Eduardo Saverin has a sudden vacancy for a best friend, no one on earth expects Sean Parker to fill it -- least of all Sean himself.
In which Sean Parker accidentally grows up, stumbles into a priorities readjustment, and helps Eduardo kick True Love's ass like a boss.
Eduardo Saverin/Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker & Eduardo Saverin | Rating: PG-13 | 18,674 words
The Social Network
The Social Network is the story of the birth of a website and the death of a relationship and the fandom is a lot of people trying to fix that relationship. There is a lot of fic about reconciliation in this fandom. As the character who sets the wheels in motion in the film, Sean Parker is not the typical focus of a reconciliation fic, but he is in this one. Sean Parker makes an overture of friendship toward Eduardo Saverin and things spin out differently from that. Sean, in his way, puts a lot of effort into his relationships in this and in trying to help his friends reconcile. Sean. So there's Eduardo's relationship with Sean, which is fascinating and hilarious, and then Eduardo and Mark's reconciliation, which is a long road, partially because they don't realise it's possible for a long time. The fic is ridiculous, funny, and interesting.

The Dark Ocean Bottom. by Pennyplainknits
Summary: Stressed and ansty after the end of the tour, Brendon escapes to London, and finds more than he bargains for.
Ryan leans his elbow on the table, puts his chin in his hand. "So, why are you here?"
"I," Brendon pauses... "I just couldn't be there. I needed to be somewhere else."
"Yeah," Ryan finally takes a sip of his tea. "Yeah, I know how that feels."
Brendon Urie/Ryan Ross | Rating: NC-17 | 24,054 words
Bandom
It's post-split fic, with that delicate between them, and they end up alone in a strange place and find each other. It's really great. There's this thing where, rebuilding their relationship after Ryan has left the band, they build something new. There's a chunk of typos in this, but the tone of the piece is great, and there's this wonderful OT3 element in it, and a really satisfying coming home bit, with pieces slotting together.

(This post is for snowflake_challenge. Details about the fourteenth day are here.)

How You Get The Girl by paperclipbitch
Young Avengers
Rating: PG-13 | 3,543 words | Kate Bishop/America Chavez
Summary: America has never pretended she can’t be hypocritical, but she’s also a hell of a lot better at subtlety than Teddy is. Which is why nobody’s plaguing her to ask out Weirdly Graceful Trust Fund Student.
I think that really all I want in a Young Avengers Diner AU is America being snarky and hooking up with Kate. This has that, the other Young Avengers tucked in well, pop culture references, and a lot of Marvel cameos in the form of those names you make up for people when you don't know what they call themselves. It's fun.

Waiting On by thehoyden
Inception
Rating: PG-13 | 2,173 words | Arthur/Eames
Summary: "French toast, pancakes, steak and eggs -- I could make you anything in the world, pet, but no. Egg-white omelette, morning after morning. It shows a distinct lack of imagination."
This is basically adorable. I love the kind of almost-domesticity that springs up with Eames taking care of Arthur each morning before Arthur's quite pulled himself together, and I love Eames' flirting and Arthur's reaction to it. It's charming.

Of Reddest Stolen Cherries by words_instead
American Idol RPF
Rating: PG-13 | ~26,000 words | Kris Allen/Adam Lambert
Summary: Kris owns an inter-dimensional cafe! Kris doesn't know he owns an inter-dimensional cafe.
Kris runs a cafe that is right on some kind of nexus between worlds so a good chunk of his staff and customers are fantastical beings and Kris dismisses any weirdness he detects as a result of it being in Los Angeles. Fairy tale fantasy crossed over with a bit of foodporn and the mundane. It is glorious, glorious fluff; it's joyous. Kris makes fantastic food and they take on the Wild Hunt. There's a pillow fort.