Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Merlin

Jan. 1st, 2019 06:44 pm
krytella: (Default)
 I never got on the Merlin train back in the day. Maybe I was too busy reading the Star Trek XI kink meme (oh what a good kink meme that was!). And then, well, Inception. A whole show seemed like a lot of investment for reading some fic.

But hey, now I'm looking for something new to watch that's on Netflix! Steam cut me off from video games because my laptop's too ancient so I need something else to do in my downtime around the holidays in between breaks of doing stuff around the house! And there Merlin is!

Reflections after season 1, the good:
  • Reasonable length seasons, not like the interminable forever of some US shows
  • That "I could take you apart with one blow" exchange was... in the first episode? Iconic
  • Is ~~magic~~ a metaphor for queer? Did you know that the designer of the original Pride flag gave meanings to each of the colors, and turquoise was "magic" and pink was "sex," but for ease of manufacturing both those colors ended up being taken out of the flags that were mass produced and do you ever think of that and get sad?
  • Men are allowed to have chest hair on this show
  • Villagers in the background of crowd scenes are always carrying around bundles of twigs. I noticed this because I'm also on an English willow basketry kick at the moment, so it's funny but we do see a lot of baskets in the merchant areas so maybe they really are just... making a fuckton of baskets...?
  • Really intense BFFs is my jam, my heart, my home country of shipping
  • Lots of fun stuff to play with around the whole servant thing
  • I'm not into Arthurian mythos enough to be annoyed about any of their choices with that

The bad:
  • Two white dudes
  • Whole structure of the show around a monarchy means that bringing in my kind of politics makes for a very resistant reading. I expect lots of fic playing on the royalty/servant power dynamic and not much on the power structures of the society as a whole

And now I will enjoy the lovely results of "Tags: Merlin (TV) Complete revised at: > 105 months sort by: kudos descending"
krytella: (Default)
This post from [personal profile] muccamukk on how Dreamwidth today is different from Livejournal fifteen years ago is worth reading and commenting on if one was on LiveJournal 10+ years ago. I've also noticed that even after the original migration waves of strikethrough and boldthrough, Dreamwidth has never had the same feel to its community despite the similarity of the site itself to LJ.

This post by[personal profile] melannen on how to foster community interaction on your journal is especially relevant in light of that. I've been so bad about keeping up with posting. Even back in LJ days I was never the host of a lot of discussion, but I discussed things in comments to other people's posts. I remember the halcyon days of cherrybina's LJ, the living room of Inception fandom!

I'm not sure yet exactly what topics I'd want to build engagement around. I feel like fan communities have never really settled in here, despite DW being the most friendly- and trustworthy-to-fans general purpose communication platform out there. And I'd like to bring back meta. If Leverage ever goes back on Netflix, maybe I'll do a rewatch comm. I'm also thinking a lot about cooking, randomly. Do you post anything on your journal that you wish more people commented on?
krytella: (Default)
 via [personal profile] littlestclouds :

Send me a character and I’ll list:

- Favorite thing about them
- Least favorite thing about them
- Favorite line
- brOTP
- OTP
- nOTP
- Random headcanon
- Unpopular opinion
- Song I associate with them
- Favorite picture of them
krytella: (Default)
 TV Shows:
  • Black Sails: haven't made it through s1 yet, which I have on good authority is the point when you fall in love with it. I was supposed to watch it with my housemate but we were never home at the same time and then she moved out so trying to remember to watch by myself. Ready for those queer anticapitalist pirates tho
  • The Expanse: also dormant, partway through season 2
  • Wynonna Earp: blew through everything on Netflix fast and have to wait for the next season to drop. Still grumpy that there isn't enough Wynonna/Doc/Dolls on the ao3.
  • Supergirl: I think I was watching s3 and kind of forgot? I'm just so. Tired. Of hearing about Mon-El.
  • The Flash: I gave up somewhere mid-s2 and it felt like I'd watched at least 3 seasons at that point. The romantic drama is annoying and the repeated secret-keeping for drama is annoying. Then someone linked to a Flash/Captain Cold fic and there were like 20k words that were So Good For Me and I tried to read all the fic and it ranged from unreadably terrible to, like, enjoyable but not super well written. I've found exactly one story I thought was genuinely good and it's comics-verse. Maybe I'm going back? Idk, I did rewatch all the s1 and s2 episodes with Leonard Snart in them with the idea I would write something, who knows.
  • Legends of Tomorrow: started because I hear it gets funner and bi protagonist, spoiled myself on the end of s1 and due to aforementioned Flash stuff I'm too resentful of what I know happens at the end of s1 to watch those episodes, oops
  • GBBO: I watch this with housemate 3. I cheated and watched series 3 without her since it's on Netflix now and I resent that there are several slash fics about it and only 2 in the world about the best GBBO RPF ship which is obvs Selasi/Andrew. The power of ~two white dicks~ I guess.
  • PoI: was watching like a year ago with housemate who moved out and we just lost steam when a certain thing happened in s3. Haven't felt very ficcish about it.
Books:
  • I've got book 2 of the Expanse series but still haven't started it
  • Been reading book 8 of Malazan Book of the Fallen for about 500 years. Well, about 5 years. Someday I'll finish the damn series.
  • The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms: just starting
  • A million different nonfiction books I'm partway through
Fic:
  • As mentioned above, I'm now on "141 - 160 of 436 Works in Leonard Snart" sorted by kudos. Thanks, I hate it.
  • Reading new HP fic as I come across it in rec lists, basically just H/D. Weirdly that was never my main ship back in the day but it's aged better, I suppose because the characters can age, unlike my OTP, who are dead. Thanks, I hate it.
  • Occasional Star Wars involving TFA characters as recced or written by a few writers I follow.
  • Read all the Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries fic I could find that I thought would be to my taste a while back. There wasn't nearly enough for me. I enjoy Phryne and Jack in canon but the only thing I'm interested in fic is her topping the fuck out of him and there is not a lot out there.
  • Me trying to find Wynonna Earp Doc/Dolls fic and only seeing a million WayHaught stories: "Is this what femslash fans feel like the rest of the time?"
Vids:
Watched some festivids based on recs.
krytella: (Default)
After all this time? Always: on being in HP fandom still/again
Representation is neoliberal bullshit
Gender-system AUs and what I love about (some of) them
Fic and the political imagination (aka Fully Automated Luxury Queer Space Communism no the communism is not a metaphor)
Writing about characters of color is harder than writing about white characters because racism, so it’s even more important that we white people do it
krytella: (Default)
 Maybe we can make this happen again! Maybe I’ll find the energy to volunteer to work on DW even though I’m not a front-end developer and the codebase scares me, because we’re never gonna have an iOS app so should have better formatting for mobile (I say typing this on my phone, having to scroll three screen widths every line to see what I’m typing).

What are you up to recently?

Pride

Jun. 28th, 2016 01:42 pm
krytella: (Default)
 So two things: watched the move Pride recently, and then had Pride weekend.

I loved the film way more than I thought I would. I mean, not that I thought I wouldn't like it, but wow. It was just... really well-constructed. There was a lot of crying in our viewing group. And then I kept seeing pictures of this group who protested in London with a Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants banner and had happy feelings all over again.

Pride weekend, I went out to a LGBT-themed partner dance event (pretty boring, so much Country Two-Step. I'm still waiting to understand why lesbians love Country Two-Step). And an aggressively queer club night, which was intense and crowded and full of great music. It ended up being just me and[twitter.com profile] ohshitcircuit and we had to dance very close because of the crowding which was... not a huge hardship *g*. I skipped the Dyke March because I got lazy and my roommate was fused with the couch and didn't want to leave, and also me and lesbian events have a weird relationship because they usually try to retroactively be inclusive of all queer women but still, I'm not a lesbian so. It's not really my space, and even if it was, I feel that calling events for all queer women "lesbian" or "dyke" is pretty erasing of bi+ identities. It's why I don't go to Lesbians Who Tech events even though they're always claiming to be for all queer women.

As an antidote to all the feeling-invisible, I marched with the Bisexual Networks group in the big Pride parade. This is my second year marching with them, and I love doing it. I've been in the parade once before, with a "geek pride" group, but it didn't feel nearly as good. A lot of the groups in the parade are really nonspecific about whether their members are LGBTQIA+ or allies or corporate employees paid or cajoled to be there. I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing, but it makes participating in the parade feel like less of an act of queer visibility. Walking with the bi group, dressed as Bi Pride Captain America, feels profoundly visible. We don't have a float, just around 20 people and a banner from the Bisexual Women's Network, and I spend the whole time running from side to side cheering with and high fiving as many spectators as possible. I saw two "It's Stars AND Stripes" shirts and one obviously homemade bi pride Cap shield shirt and so many people on the sidelines with bi, trans, or ace pride flags painted on their cheeks. I love that people do that, I love seeing everyone who steps outside of "queer, not otherwise specified" to say that they're specifically something that is neither straight nor gay. And it feels like something to be out there wearing bisexual colors when I'm not fully, officially out. I hope it means something to people watching the parade who see us. In a sea of big companies and churches preaching a nonspecific "we love you" and "love is love," to be visible as something specific and still deviant in so many places is powerful. To touch the hands of so many teenagers with bi pride flags on their faces, and so many who might be questioning and need to see that we're here, we exist, we are an identity and a community.

There are a lot of queer communities. There's the cis gay men's community which has no use for people they don't want to fuck, there are women's communities at various stages of dealing with their history of transmisogyny, there's an amorphous kind of trans/genderqueer+ community that I see forming from the trans women and the nonbinary people who don't feel included elsewhere. More and more, the community I want is polysexual community. Bisexual, pansexual, multi-gender-attracted of all stripes, biromantic asexual, everyone who's into people of similar and different genders in a non-platonic way. One of the more contentious issues around non-lesbians in queer women's spaces is what to do when they have cishet men as significant others; I'm leaning more and more towards just not dating straight men any more.
krytella: (Default)

There's quite a bit of behind-the-scenes about Leverage from The Powers That Be, but creator John Rogers' blog is a pain to navigate so I have compiled links to all relevant posts for you. There's also a behind-the-scenes podcast that was recorded during seasons 4 and 5.
 

No spoilers but episode titles... )
krytella: (Default)
Presented without commentary because I wanted to get them done in a reasonable amount of time. Most of the fic posted to the ao3 during the season 1 timeframe was short, so these are quick reads.

krytella: (Default)
 I should've been doing this all along, because whatever feelings I had specifically about seasons 2 and 3 are now lost forever to the sands of time ;____;

Spoilers... )
krytella: (Default)
I started watching Leverage about three weeks ago.

I am now approaching the end of season 3.

So, that happened.

And also the searching ao3 for Hardison/Parker/Eliot and Hardison/Eliot fic, searching by reverse date posted, and clicking on everything that doesn't look bad. The ao3 tells me I have viewed about 160 Leverage fics since Jan 21. Um.

I have some observations:
Read more... )
krytella: (Default)
I finally bought and read the first trade of Sex Criminals. I'd read the first issue when it was free online, and I saw Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky at a panel on it in March last year despite not actually having read it. So far, love it. The female protagonist's origin story is especially well-done for something written by men. Her sexuality isn't a stereotype. And it's about sex, and funny, but it doesn't laugh at people's sexuality.

Also rewatched the first truly social justice oriented episode of Criminal Minds, "Legacy" from season 2. The killer in the episode is completely underdeveloped as a character, but that's balanced by how much focus they put on the victims and on the local cop that brings them in. This is the episode where the local police captain wants them to go away, because homeless people, drug users, and street sex workers "can't disappear."

Hotchner: "What if they were cheerleaders?"
Captain Wright: "Excuse me?"
Hotchner: "Or teachers, or mothers. How did you put it, 'can bums even be missing'? Well, sir, they can. They can be hurt, they can be scared, and they can be killed."

One of the things I appreciate about Criminal Minds is the relative realism of types of victims and law enforcement response. The serial killers with the highest body counts prey upon vulnerable people who won't be reported to police. That's a prominent feature of this case and the later one that's loosely based on the Pickton murders.
krytella: (Default)
I don't have a fandom that I'm in a passionate affair with right now, so this is a collection of things that I've bookmarked that I've enjoyed. I seem to have a long backlog of things I bookmarked that I haven't read yet. Oops.



The Way You Drink Your Coffee (38830 words) by sabrina_il
Chapters: 9/9
Fandom: Hockey RPF
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews
Characters: Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Adam Burish
Additional Tags: Cock & Ball Torture, BDSM, Alternate Universe - BDSM, Painplay, Kink Negotiation, Crying, Tears, Praise Kink, Sadism, Masochism, Prostate Massage, Sex Toys, Restraints, Erotic Electrostimulation, Nipple Play, Nipple Clamps, Blindfolds
Summary:

Patrick Kane is a professional dominant, Jonathan Toews is his client.



Fenestration and the Art of Self Defense (13646 words) by Airawyn
Chapters: 4/4
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Darcy Lewis
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Darcy Lewis, Tony Stark, Jane Foster (Marvel), Sam Wilson (Marvel), Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton, Steve Rogers
Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Windows - Freeform, Tasers, Pizza, Humor, an unnecessary number of knives, Arms, aggressive self-defense, Dog Cops
Summary:

In which Darcy Lewis catsits for Captain America and Bucky Barnes doesn't use the front door.



The Love Song of the North American Douchebag (25213 words) by gyzym
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek RPF
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto
Summary:

♪ Doobie doobie do. ♪



Iron Man: Director of S.W.O.R.D. (74873 words) by Pookaseraph
Chapters: 7/7
Fandom: Marvel (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov
Characters: Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes, Natasha Romanov, Maria Hill, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Clint Barton, Bruce Banner
Additional Tags: Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Spoilers, Like Seriously Spoils The Whole Movie, Friends to Lovers, Bromance, Terrorism, Politics, Lots of plot, Don't Read It for Sex, Commander Rogers, Director Stark
Summary:

In the wake of the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the Avengers need to pick up the pieces, and figure out where to go from here. Tony had a plan, at least he thought he had a plan, but Steve Rogers seems to have blown most of those out of the water.

Spoilers for CA:TWS, lots of them.

Summary is a little vague to avoid spoiling, but it's a plotty, post CA:TWS 'what do we do now' fic.



Life of Crime (35399 words) by neveralarch
Chapters: 8/8
Fandom: Marvel 616, Hawkeye (Comics)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton, Clint Barton/Carol Danvers, Clint Barton & Kate Bishop, Kate Bishop/America Chavez, Barney Barton & Clint Barton
Characters: Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes, Carol Danvers, Kate Bishop, Barney Barton, Maya Lopez, Steve Rogers, Tracksuit Mafia, Lester | Bullseye
Additional Tags: Deaf Clint Barton, Edgeplay, Consensual Kink, Polyamory, Supervillain AU, also lots of other characters and implied pairings but these tags were starting to get out of hand
Summary:

As a supervillain supercriminal contract worker with a morality deficit, Clint Barton leads a glamorous life. You know, stolen cars, dangerous women, a really confusing relationship with a meddling do-gooder, the works. It's pretty awesome. Except for, uh, medical bills, the mob, and being on the run all the time. That part isn't all that awesome.

(A supervillain AU where Clint shoots arrows at people and gets beat up a lot. So, not really that much of an AU.)



Five People Who Flinched From Phil and the One Person Who Never Did (6867 words) by infiniteeight
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Avengers (2012)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Characters: Clint Barton, Phil Coulson, Nick Fury
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, possibly disturbing themes related to experimentation on primates, Telepathy
Summary:

Just because everyone is telepathic doesn't mean they want to hear you. Just because you can't hear them, doesn't mean you can't make a connection.



(I'm sure I read this before, but I read it again and still liked it)
Any Road Will Take You There (63045 words) by shoreleave
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek (2009)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard McCoy
Characters: James T. Kirk, Leonard McCoy, Christopher Pike, Finnegan (Star Trek), Gary Mitchell
Additional Tags: Non-Graphic Violence, Mild Language, Male Friendship, Academy Era, Starfleet Academy, Tarsus IV, Medical Procedures, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Develo
Series: Part 1 of Any Road
Summary:

Slow-developing K/M, beginning right after the shuttle ride and showing what happens the first year at the Academy. Told from McCoy's POV.



Never Have I Ever (11051 words) by thingswithwings
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov
Characters: Bruce Banner, Pepper Potts, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Maria Hill, Natasha Romanov, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Clint Barton, Thor (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Never Have I Ever, Prostitution, Drinking Games, Pepper is Poly Because Avengers, Bruce Feels, Steve Feels, Natasha Feels, idk it's a fic about how all the Avengers were kind of prostitutes, not an au
Summary:

"Well okay," Sam says, eyebrows raised. "No one told me I was signing up to join an elite team of prostitute superheroes."

(I wasn't sure how to indicate this with the tags, but none of the tagged pairings are background pairings - they all have equal screentime.)

krytella: (Default)
Communities: Sign Up Here, by renay
 An intro to fannish gift exchanges through the history of the author's participation.

Dana's meta post about their favorite fic they've written, The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized

I love that story so much. It's an Inception fic, but it's not just AU because omegaverse, it's also set in an original world Dana created for the story. So you don't need to know a thing about Inception to read it. It's my go-to story to explain how interesting and gender politicky omegaverse can be, while also enjoying its tropes for their sexy kink factor.
krytella: (Default)
Hello dear fanperson and thanks for creating a gift for me! I'm writing this to add more non-fandom-specific information about what I like. All of this is just more information for you; if it doesn't line up with what you're happy creating, feel free to go a different direction.

Things I especially like, general:
  • Groups of characters that contain at least one woman
  • Everyone in a canon team/group is a big happy family. Chosen families.
  • Explicit sex
  • BDSM
  • Anything that the author kinks on, even if it's unusual or viewed as "extreme"

Things I especially like in stories (fic and podfic):
  • Characters who identify as poly, if it's appropriate to the setting of the fandom
  • Relationship configurations where not everyone is involved romantically or sexually with everyone else: open relationships where characters can date or have sex separately, poly "vee" or network poly
  • There's jealousy but the characters work through it
  • Characters being excited about non-monogamy: voyeurism, taking joy in a partner's joy, organizing an orgy for a partner
  • Characters screwing up non-monogamy and making mistakes, but then fixing them
  • If there's sex, the sex telling an important part of the emotional story for the characters. I don't believe in PWP, porn is a plot!
  • One character's desire for a particular relationship style or kink that they've always been ashamed of or afraid they're never going to get being revealed to other characters, who are supportive and make things happen
  • Omega-verse and D/s AUs as social commentary on gender
  • Less represented sexual orientations: bisexuality, asexuality, aromanticism
  • "Genderswap" (AUs that change cisgender characters to the other gender, transgender and genderqueer characters)
  • Blurring the lines between which relationships are "romantic" and which aren't

Things I especially like in visual art:
  • Imagining alternate versions of characters by changing their gender presentation, race/ethnicity, etc
  • Art that has an in-universe reason to exist, like fake "snapshots"

Unfavorite tropes:

  • Amnesia
  • Soulbonding and soulmates, when played straight (the characters end up giving in to the social norms)
  • De-aging
  • Sex work AUs where the characters end up quitting their jobs to be monogamous
  • Incest
  • Chan (pre-pubescent characters involved in romance or sex)
     
Anon comments on, if anyone wants clarification.
krytella: (Default)
 I have been remiss in not posting much at all, especially about non-fandom life, which is kind of... important to make friends, I guess?

Serious ramble ahead )
krytella: (Default)
Having some thoughts about representation, both in original storytelling and narrative fanworks, prompted by a couple of memories.
  • On a con panel about disability in the media, someone said it was a decade between them first identifying as disabled and becoming part of a disability community, and that they still didn't see any disabled characters in media who were visibly part of a community.
  • I went on a brief kick of reading all the white collar OT3 fic. Slash fandom is pretty OTP-heavy and aside from a few fandoms (like White Collar), stories that don't have an endgame in a single monogamous dyad are a rarity. But, like I said, brief kick. I burnt out on it. Why?
After consideration, I think there are three levels of representation of minority identities (and yeah, lumping together chosen and not-chosen things, because I don't think it matters in this case).

1. Presence. There's a character played by a non-white actor, or who has a relationship with someone of the same gender, or who uses a cane, or with a nontraditional gender representation, or who is in an open relationship, or...
2. Identity. The character is shown to identify in a particular way: lesbian, hispanic, kinky, disabled, polyamorous, transgender. There are fictional contexts where this doesn't make sense, if the character's culture doesn't have a framework for identifying that way.
3. Community. The character has a meaningful relationship with communitie(s) and shared culture around their identity, whether they join it or resist it.

Lots of fanworks stop at #1. That's a thing; plenty of people do that, too. The current slash community tends to stop at #2 for the sexual orientation identity of characters. We no longer have much "I'm straight, except for you," but we do have a lot of characters who identify as gay but never mention the idea of gay subculture (or that being gay is statistically unusual, unless that's required for the romantic tension). I see the full spectrum in fanworks about characters doing BDSM, from the ones who don't see it as identity all the way through to characters who either say they don't like the "scene" or who participate in it.

Why is it so hard to get to the third level in fandom? Sometimes it's only accessible to stories set in a fictional world that culturally resembles modern Western culture. And I think sometimes it's because, with few characters belonging to the minority group, focusing on that subculture moves away from the rest of the canon characters. Usually to show interactions between people who share the identity, you have to bring in original characters. I love groups that are family-like and tight knit and us-against-the-world and that doesn't mesh well with one character having a whole other community that we never hear about in canon.

I don't want to invalidate narratives that stop before #3. As I said, plenty of real people don't choose to go that far, and maybe in the fictional world there's only one (minority to us) race or no concept of sexual orientation as identity. But when I'm thirsting for fic about polyamorous people, the only thing that's truly satisfying is... wait, actually, I have never ever read a fic about polyamorous people that acknowledges polyamory as a subculture that the characters have thoughts about. Even if it's set in a future or fantasy world where non-monogamy is accepted. Rare enough that the characters can find an identity like that at all or get any kind of rudimentary "common pitfalls to avoid" wisdom.

So that's why I get burnt out on OT3 fic. Because every one seems to be a special snowflake relationship between people who were previously romantically monogamous. It's like the difference between "lesbian relationship" and "lesbian person."

Profile

krytella: (Default)
krytella

November 2022

S M T W T F S
  12345
678910 1112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930   

Most Popular Tags

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Style Credit

Page generated Jun. 11th, 2025 07:19 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios