vamp

[SPOILERS] SPN 12x01 - Reaction Post

Thu, 20 Oct 2016 08:00:13 GMT

Okay, so I was days late for the party, I knew SPN was restarting in October, but I hadn't gotten around to actually noting the date, and last night I figured I should check, and, lo, it started last week. So I had surprise-new-SPN to watch \o/ It's a bloody good thing I don't spend any time at all in my tumblr timeline, because I can imagine I would have been epically spoiled and we all know how much I hate that.

Mary Winchester is cool

Okay, so I've always thought so. I honestly don't know why I expected S12 Mary to be different from the Mary in the time travel episodes, especially considering the last time we saw young Mary was only about 5 years previous to the character we have now.

Okay, so she looks like more time has passed than that. I've had two children, I can buy that. I don't know if it would have worked as well if they'd used the 'young Mary' actress, because she was brought back to life from the night she died.

All that doesn't matter. She's Mary.

I don't know why I didn't expect to like her. I've always liked her before. Maybe I thought she'd get in the way, change the feel of the show, clutter things up. Okay, it's only been one episode, and Sam's not around, but it doesn't feel cluttered. Especially coming from the end of S11, it definitely doesn't feel cluttered.

I did totally expect her to be all fucked up and traumatized. Which is dumb. She was raised a hunter, she's not some fainting flower. She's kickass, and a little back from the dead situation isn't going to completely freak her out.

She's a little freaked out, sure. She's, again, got to deal with the fact that the children she refused to raise as hunters, were raised as hunters. But I expected to want her story wrapped up nicely and pushed to the side, but I'm not feeling that at all. I want her to endure.

Not all the peripheral characters have to die. Most of them have, sure, it's kind of the peripheral character thing that they have an expiry date. I think I'll be pissed beyond telling if Mary finds the same fate Kevin and Charlie found.

Please, god, don't kill her horribly. Been there, done that, the boys have suffered enough. I can't even imagine what that would do to them.

I do have to say that Mary's return was a whole lot lighter than I expected it to be. She was relatively cool about it, and we even got a joke out of it.

[tumblr]

There's always been that parallel between Sam and John and Dean and Mary, but never has the Dean and Mary parallel been more evident than here, as she calls the Impala 'sweetheart' and stares fondly at the interior with that 'I had sex in this car' look on her face.

London Chapter

The Men of Letters have got England sorted. That's impressive. I've actually always wondered what the monster sitch was in the UK, and even wrote in one (unpublished) fic that Britain was monster-free (except for ghosts, which they left alone, because England does like it's history).

I mean, it would be a relatively simple operation, as Toni-whatshername said, to close the borders to monsters. It's an island!

Which is why it pisses me off beyond all recognition that Toni seems to be blaming Sam and Dean for the fact America is still full of monsters? WTF, seriously? I mean, the MoL in America went dark in the 50's and the London chapter didn't think to check that out? Oh, no, we just cleaned out all the monsters in Britain by the 60's and then sat back and let the US get munched, not our problem, oh, until a couple hunters get too high profile and too long-lived, and then we'll just pop over and blame them for all the shit that's gone down since before they were born, that'll make it nice and tidy.

What a bunch of wankers.

(Random observation. They can't keep demons out, as proven by Crowley popping over to Scotland to pick up his bones that time.)

Lucifer and Crowley

Lucifer is burning through whole families of vessels. You know, you might wonder why, when a person sees several members of their family burn through their eyeballs one after another, they'd say 'yes'. But, continuity error notwithstanding, Lucy isn't coping well. Is he running from Crowley? I get why Crowley wants him dead, he was his dog, after all, and he wants his throne back, but is Lucy actively running or is he just fucked up and broken and not able to stick in any one vessel?

I can't help but wonder if he's going to find Sam...

Sammy

Thinks Dean's dead. He's still got it reasonably together, considering he's been tortured and they're fucking with his mind, but he thinks Dean's dead and I'm convinced that Lucy is going to find him, his true vessel or whatever, and because Sam thinks Dean is dead, he's just going to say yes now that his attempt to escape has been foiled and he might feel as though he's got no other option.

I'm kinda like partly 'oh, that would be fun', because one of my problematic faves is totally Sam and Lucifer, but also, when Sam finds out that Mary is back, I want that reunion to be pure, not messed up with the fact that it's not really Sam.

I'm all torn.

Yeah, I think that's all my rambly post-12x01 feels out.

comments

[SPOILERS] Gifs: SPN S11 Finale

Thu, 26 May 2016 14:12:31 GMT

Just some gifs from the episode.

Made entirely in the terminal cos I'm getting a better result and it's quicker and I'm learning new things and shit \o/

Want, take, have, don't be a dick.

As for the rest of the ep, I can't even talk right now.

comments

The Objectivity of Value

Wed, 25 May 2016 10:04:20 GMT

A thing just hit me. See, a couple days ago, I wrote a fic of ~1k. Start to finish, done in a day.

Now that might not seem like such a big achievement, and maybe it's not, I mean, on a normal day I'll easily hit 1k of a longer fic, and on a really good day I can do 4. Lots of people I know do more.

But when you've gone as many months as I have without posting anything, while also keeping up a regular writing schedule, finishing something, even 1k, is a big achievement.

Okay, so, it's not actually the first thing I've finished in however many months it's been. I've finished a couple things. Just a few. Longer things, though, and I've either rewritten them until I lost the plot and ran screaming, or filed them away for 'future edits'.

Yeah. I may have finished a couple things, but I haven't finished them, if you know what I mean.

That's almost relevant to what just occurred to me. Almost.

So, I finished this very short thing. And I looked at it, and I thought, well, that's editable. A few tweaks here and there, some line edits and spell checking, and that's postable.

And that, for me, lately, is fucking phenomenal. No rewrites from scratch. No tearing it apart only to completely fail at putting it back together again. Just a quick tidy up and throw it out into the world.

There's a few reasons for that.

It's short. It's always going to be quick, whatever you're doing to it.
It's pure porn without the remotest hint of plot. There's really nothing to fix.

But then comes the problem I have. I don't think it's good enough to post.

I overthink stuff, I'm told, and yes, I totally do. I admit that. But this...it isn't particularly good. It's passable, I think the grammar is reasonably sound, the spelling doesn't suck, it makes a certain amount of sense. It's porn, and I don't think it's bad porn, I mean, there's no turgid lengths and no one's getting reamed by a horse or anything, so yay?

It just seems flat to me. And, in my opinion, it could be lifted out of that flatness by the addition of some plot.

And therein lies my problem. I don't value this short bit of pwp, simply because of what it is. There's no plot. Nothing happens except for a bit of fucking.

But I know that as soon as I start putting plot into it, it'll balloon into a 30k epic, I'll hit a wall, break it, cry, and shove it into a folder so deep on my hard drive I'll never see it again.

That's just what happens to me lately, but I'm kind of over bitching about it, so I'm just going to leave that there.

My problem here is, I don't seem to value fic as much if it doesn't have that plot.

I used to read and write a lot of short pwp. Loved it, for years and years, that was my bag, baby. I was a short porn activist, even, proselytizing on the form to anyone who would listen.

Oh, how we change.

I still love a good bit of porn, but nowadays I need it framed in stuff happening. I need a fucking reason for the fucking, you know?

So. I don't value the thing that I just wrote because it's short and has no plot, and I do put value on longer fic where shit actually happens.

So I read longer, plotty fics, and I tend to scroll past the short fic marked pwp. Likewise, I only feel confident posting longer fic with plot, because that's what I personally value, but I can't do that right now. And I don't know what to do with this short thing simply because it's pwp and I don't feel like it's worth posting.

Sigh.

Later: I ended up posting it to a sock account I use for stuff I don't want on my regular AO3 account. It holds the really taboo stuff I can't be arsed dealing with wank over, and some really fucking odd shit I've written in the past.

But, hey. I wrote something. And I edited it. And I posted it (even in a really cowardly manner). That's something. It's progress.

What's really fucked up about the whole thing, though, is that just because I don't value it, doesn't mean there's not readers out there that do value short smut, just like I used to, back in the day. Case in point: it's getting a decent amount of kudos, and some really positive comments.

The moral of the story? I really really do overthink shit, far too much, and I need to just suck it up and embrace whatever I'm capable of at the time.

It's time to stop being a derp, and write some more goddamn pwp!

comments

Some gifs

Sun, 22 May 2016 13:20:14 GMT

From episode 05x08 - Changing Channels

Want. Take. Have. Just don't be a dick.

comments

I will go down with this ship [SPN 11x17-20 SPOILERS]

Fri, 06 May 2016 13:26:33 GMT

Caveat: contains epic spoilers and wild speculation

So. Here's this thing I noticed several weeks ago. In 11x17 - Red Meat, the one with the werewolves where Sam got shot and then choked by the dude they were trying to save (there's some gratitude for you), Dean believed Sam was dead (hell, I believed it), and essentially committed suicide.

Okay, so, his intention was to make a deal or sweet talk the reaper that turned up and bring Sam back. But. Seemed like, if it didn't work and he didn't get saved, that he wouldn't be too cut up about it. Last ditch effort was to offer his own life for Sam's. The general impression I got was that if Sam was dead, Dean didn't see much of a point to being alive.

I'm a big Romeo and Juliet fan, so I spotted the parallels right away, though I honestly don't think the writers were terribly subtle about it. It kinda ticked all the boxes.

(just as an aside, hubby thinks I've got my wincest-tinted glasses on, but he didn't see the ep, just heard about it when I flailed and squeed at him the next day)

The ep kind of made my year, and set my brain working overtime, because the way the ep ended, and the fact that it kind of slapped us in the face with the R&J-ness of it all, set me to speculating on future events. For a long time I've believed that the only way either of them is ever going to stay dead, is if they're both dead. The end of S10 kind of brought that into perspective. The only way to lock MoC!Dean away and have him stay locked up was to kill Sam. For example. I think it's a distinct possibility that hhe series will finally end with the boys both checking out, if not at the same time, at least within a very short time of each other (but not this season, because SEASON TWELVE HOLY SHIT).

So I've been obsessing about that ep for the last several weeks, and then last night, 11x20 - Don't Call Me Shurley (and wasn't that title just a dead giveaway?), aired, and we got this scene:

So, here, Sam's sucked down some of the Darkness Fog, and he's done for. Telling Dean to get out and save himself, and Dean's all like "I'm never leaving you, ever!!" and shit, which is what we expect from him. But then, he very obviously (and yet this particular suicide attempt is a fuckload more subtle than the one in Red Meat), inhales deeply as the fog swirls around his face.

It would probably have been very easy to miss. I even tried to talk myself out of it, until I went back and watched that scene again. I'm convinced. That was a conscious suicide attempt. It was Dean, completely going down with the ship.

Of course, it didn't work, because Amara needs him for something (and that's a whole 'nother blog post right there), but he tried. So. Romeo and Juliet theory cemented. If Sam dies, and without the ability to bring him back, Dean's going to try his darndest to follow him.

Which, in my opinion, is just the most perfect thing I could ever imagine, being a massive R&J fan and all. It all feels like some major foreshadowing, but I don't know whether to expect something over the next few eps for this season, or if it's particularly farsighted on the part of the showrunners. It wouldn't surprise me, I mean, I've been waiting for Chuck to turn up again since 10x05. They're certainly capable of it.

comments

The Magicians 1x11 [SPOILERS]

Tue, 29 Mar 2016 10:26:13 GMT

My ship is canon!!! They gave us a tiny tiny glimpse, but I'm gonna run with it \o/

Bunch of teases, they are, and it's all messy and complicated (threesome! infidelity!), but I don't fucking care. *clings to tiny glimpse*

ETA: Ep 12 gave us this lovely extended flashback. Bless.

comments

Misfits

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 11:05:25 GMT

So, this show is my current happy place.

Original cast.

Misfits is superheroes and time travel and alternate universes and zombies and sex pollen and superpowers and buttfucking and complete and utter crack. There's doppelgängers and genderfuck and magical healing cock and fuck or die and age gap and back from the dead and pseudo-incest and non-con and male lactation and....

Name a fic trope, and it's probably there in some form or another.

I came a bit late to Misfits (story of my life, really). They were playing it late at night on my made-for-me channel about a year ago, and I started watching about halfway through Season 3. So I completely missed Nathan, and that was a fucking tragedy, and I never really got to know Simon as he was earlier in the show.

But I finally acquired the full series, and I've been watching from the beginning. Fuck me, Nathan is just a complete cunt, but I love him. And Simon, all awkward and weird and more than a touch creepy? OMG. Beautiful.

Nathan, romancing Simon, while under the influence of some sex pollen love tattoo thing. (apologies for the menu bar across the top of the image, I was too lazy to edit my screenshot fuckup)

Superhero guy-in-the-mask Simon makes so much more sense to me now.

pretty

Fast forward (I didn't) to Season 5, and we've got a whole new lineup. It happened gradually, cast members leaving and new ones coming in one or two at a time, so it was never too jarring and the show didn't change too abrubtly.

Season 5 cast. I want to know why they put Alex in a girl's jumpsuit...

I miss Nathan and Simon and Kelly, but I love Rudy to death, Jess is the queen of the deadpan delivery, and Alex is fucking priceless in his girl's jumpsuit. The angry probation worker is my favourite of all time. Even wee monkeyish Finn grew on me towards the end.

Finn getting romanced by the angry probation worker.

It's a beautiful, wonderful, fucking hilarious show about a bunch of young offenders with superpowers who tend to kill their probation workers a lot, dispose of bodies without blinking an eye, and, on occasion, save the world. They curse like sailors, fuck like rabbits, and we even get the odd onscreen cock. You've got to love UK television*.

*Kiwi TV can be a bit like that, too, on occasion. Though I'm not sure I've seen cock on kiwi shows. I'd probably remember if I had.

comments

Woops, I did it again.

Tue, 12 Jan 2016 08:23:45 GMT

So I just got done saying I wasn't going to sign up for anything until Camp NaNo in July, and then I went and signed up for spn_j2_bigbang. I'm officially insane.

But I did actually write something already. I got an idea over Christmas, and just wrote a little every day through New Year, until I got to the end. Because it's so damn rough, and so...well, unfinished (if I got bored with the scene I was writing, I just stopped and went onto the next one, so it's beyond gappy), I figured the only way I was ever going to get it posted (rather than tucked away in a dark corner of my hard drive to languish in obscurity) was to sign up for Big Bang. Deadlines work for me. I panic like fuck getting there, but I hit those deadlines. And I hate 'letting people down' so once I sign up for a thing, I'll get it done.

It pretty much means Camp NaNo is out though. Big Bang runs through August, but even if I get an early post date (posting starts in June), I know I'll be in an epic flurry of panic right up until the day, and when I've spent months with my head in just one thing, the last thing I want to do next is take on another long fic. I dunno. I won't say no until July, but I'm not holding my breath.

Really makes me think that perhaps, for me, Big Bang is the new NaNo. I mean, I NaNo'd religiously for 6 years, then last year I Banged, and come November I was just like, nope. One big thing a year is about enough for me these days. I must be getting old.

comments

SPN 11x09 [SPOILERS]

Thu, 10 Dec 2015 11:33:24 GMT

Holy fucking evil cliffhangers, batman!

I am very very very excited about this episode. There is just so fucking much and it's only just this minute finished and I want to watch the damn thing all over again (but I'm not allowed because god forbid I wear off the shiny before the end of the season when I will finally allow myself to sit down and marathon the whole thing).

From Rowena fangirling (and drooling) over Lucifer, to Sam's face (omg, was that just, complete and utter terror, or what?) when Lucifer appeared, to Lucifer asking Sam if he wanted to share a bunk (I'll admit, I fucking died of squee), to the surety that Sam was going to say yes (and yep, my timeline is all over the fucking place but my brain is basically mush r/n), to the reveal that it was Lucifer sending him visions this whole time, to the seeming validation of my Darkness theory from earlier in the season, to the fact that the boys teamed up with Crowley again (I <3 Crowley completely, so I was so very pleased), all the way to the absolute glee that I'm going to get to properly ship Sam/Lucifer (I didn't start watching SPN till S8 was airing, so previous seasons were speedily marathoned and Lucifer went by so fast I didn't really have a chance before I was all about Dean & Benny...). *gasps for air*

The entire ep was just so beautiful... And then it cliffhangered. I could scream.

comments

A Shift in my Fandom/RL Balance

Mon, 07 Dec 2015 10:34:12 GMT

Shit's been changing a lot around here. Getting a bit more outdoorsy, over the last year or so. Yep, I started growing things, out in the previously barren back yard last summer, and it went pretty well. What began with one easy care garden bed last September became many, and now I've got plants thriving all over the bloody place.

(It's summer right now in the Southern Hemisphere, of course)

That's pretty much why I chose to not do NaNo this year, because the garden is taking so much of my time, but it's really affecting my writing and fandoming (totally a word) across the board. By the time I do get a chance to sit down at the computer, I'm too fucking exhausted to even think, let alone create. Half the time I just choose to not bother turning on the computer at all. And that's not a major revelation these days, because smartphones and devices and shit, and I do occasionally write on my phone, but it's a bit of a palaver, really only done when I have a midnight plotbunny or something. But I like the old physical keyboard, so.

(a hybrid tablet would be a handy dandy piece of equipment, I'm sure)

Anyway! So I've just posted the last fic I'll sign up to write in a while. It was the SPN Holidays Exhange that I signed up for months ago, and it was, to be honest, one of the hardest things I've ever written, mostly because as the weather got warmer and there was more stuff to be done in the garden, I just didn't have the time or brain-things to devote to it. That was pretty much a sign to not sign up for anything else until the summer is most definitely over!

So, the plan is, the next thing I sign up for will be Camp NaNo in July. That's midwinter here, nothing much will be going on in the garden (except for planting some garlic), and I'll have a good month of frost beforehand to plan the thing!

(then it'll be August, where I'll start gearing up for next summer again, holy crap)

So, yeah. Something had to give, and it's turned out to be the writing. Which I'm kind of okay with, at least with the whole signing up/obligation stuff. That way lies stress and the fear of letting people down if I can't complete things.

I've also retired from modding the FMF comm on LJ, after two years. I'm barely in the Teen Wolf fandom these days anyway, I've still got friends and connections there, and I'm still watching the show and reading the odd fic, but I'm not writing in that fandom at all anymore, so it's a good time to move on.

So, there's some definite shifting going on around here. I'm not leaving fandom or anythign like that, it would be impossible, for one! It's more like going with the flow, really. I'll be around as long as there's shows and books and shit to love :D Right now that's hanging on every fucking episode of Supernatural Season 11...

comments

Baby (spoilers for SPN 11x04)

Thu, 29 Oct 2015 08:18:09 GMT

Impala!POV episode for the fucking win. That was kind of awesome. I was scared it was going to end badly, to be honest. You know, watch Dean's baby die a final death kind of thing. Much relieved that it didn't, I would have cried, no shit.

Short post is short.

comments

Why I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year.

Sun, 25 Oct 2015 18:49:40 GMT

I first did NaNoWriMo in 2009. My mother had just passed away (like, less than two months before), and it completely fucked me up. I'd never written a novel before and I hadn't finished anything longer than a thousand words in many many years... It was definitely a case of throw myself headlong into something that would consume me completely so I didn't have to deal with the fact that I'd lost the only person I'd ever been able to rely on completely.

I still can't believe I won that year, and went on to complete the novel through December (because fuck Christmas when I'd just lost my Mum), finally coming out with a tally of 110,000 words and a complete novel. I still maintain that it's my best NaNo ever, though it's a typical first novel, meandering and tangented, cheesy and cliché. It was a learning experience, and one of the things I'm most proud of (even though there's very few people in the world that I'd ever let read it).

It was also my first slash fic. It wasn't meant to be. I wasn't even a slash writer back then, and the story began with a het pairing, but by the first quarter it was plainly obvious that it wasn't going to end that way. It was an epiphany, you might say, and once it was done I found it very difficult to write het afterward.

So NaNo kind of means a lot to me, and after doing it (and winning) every year since, it's become a habit, an institution. I almost didn't do it in 2012 because I hadn't written anything in about six months, but an acquaintance pushed me to do it again and I said fuck it, and just did it, and it got me writing again.

Every year I'd come out with something plainly unpublishable. Some years were more shit than others, but every time it was kind of a reset button for my writing habit, and I'd come out the other end of November with an inability to not write.

So, this year, like every other year, I expected I would NaNo again. The fact that NaNo was designed to fall in the deep dark of winter but actually fell in the summer for me never really bothered me before. We'd just bought a house when Mum died, and before we bought it I had lots of ideas for the garden, and because Mum was a gardener and I had two black thumbs, she was supposed to help me with it. Well, that, of course, never happened. Summer was no different to winter, in fact, I was even more inclined to hide inside because everything about summer reminded me of her.

It took me 5 years and the death of my grandfather (the other gardener in the family) to even get to the point where I could bear to think about having a proper garden. Then instead of bringing up painful memories, growing stuff was suddenly a way of connecting to them both. So last year I both gardened and NaNo'd.

It wasn't hard or anything, it's not like either suffered greatly. But because my mind was consumed with tomatoes as well as words, I just didn't care as much about the words.

About a month ago, when I was thinking I should start planning for NaNo, while I was already planning the garden, the truth really kind of hit me. Another epiphany, perhaps. I realised that I'd rather put all my energy into growing shit than I would into a book that I know from experience I'll never publish.

And all the 'thou shalt write every day and not let real life intrude if you want to be a real writer' stuff that people spout can kiss my arse, frankly. I'll still write every day, there's nothing going to stop me from doing that, but I'll put my intense effort into it at a time of year when there's very little to be done in the garden. Thank god for Camp NaNo, July is a much better time of year to be doing that shit around here.

And next month, I'll grow some stuff :D I'm as proud of my erratic, overgrown garden as I am of my first laughable novel.

[crosspost]

comments

Shiny Happy People (spoilers for SPN S11 thru E03)

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 21:23:05 GMT

Spoiler warning for SPN 11x03 (and the previous eps in the season by default).

So it just hit me this morning that Amara/The Darkness (okay, I'll never not be able to say that without singing ~I believe in a thing called love in my head, just saying) has a lot in common with Jasmine, from Season 4 of Angel.

Old thing, older than God, perhaps (I'm not entirely clear on that with Jasmine, not that God is even a thing in the buffyverse, but we'll go with that anyway). Now, it's some of the shit Amara said in 11x03 that made me start thinking. She questions Crowley on the evil in the world, wouldn't it be better if it was gone, kind of deal (and I'm letting my own interpretation/first impressions guide me here, because I'm not doing rewatches till the end of the season, so the shiny doesn't rub off too quick). My first thought was, oh, is she not this big evil horribad thing that they've all built her up to be? Maybe she could be kinda good for this world full of monsters and evil and HAVEN'T SAM AND DEAN SUFFERED ENOUGH!?

You know?

But shiny happy la la candy land has some serious free will issues, proven by Jasmine (will it be the same here, if it happens? Probably).

And there's the fact that Amara eats souls (though, yay her for eating demons, no bad there, and isn't it nice that she can get all big and strong on what one would think would be a dried out old husk, but no, apparently demon souls are good eating). <-- that's a big old Jasmine similarity, there - though Jasmine didn't leave a trail of soulless madpersons in her wake because she et the whole person, no waste or inconvenient byproducts.

A kid that grows uber-scary-fast. What a surprise (and Crowley, because he's awesome).

So, of course The Darkness (~I believe in a thing called love) isn't a 'good' thing, but I don't know that she's flat out evil, either. Death, did, of course, call her destructive, but he also called her amoral, which, by definition, isn't good or bad. So there's that.

So it'll be interesting to see how it all turns out. I was so ready for a more interesting big bad (it's been a few years since we've had one, Metatron is a boring dick (though Metafiction was fun), Abaddon was too evil to be interesting, and all that other angel/heaven shit was totally yawn—the Mark of Cain was certainly gripping, but a bit hard to think of the Mark/Dean as the traditional big bad. There was epic value in manpain there, but I'm ready for something the boys can punch, so to speak), and I'm curious to watch it unfold. Will we end up with candyland and kittens and rainbows? I want to see what moral quandaries that puts before the Winchester boys.

[please don't tell me anything that might have been indicated regarding the rest of the season—I am spoiler-free, and prefer to remain that way, thank you]

comments

SPN 11x01

Thu, 08 Oct 2015 12:47:54 GMT

totally not a recap

So, the new season of Supernatural completely crept up on me. Feels like S10 only just finished O.o, but I guess it's been a while. I would have completely missed it had it not been for the fact that I decided to clear out my overflowing RSS feeds tonight and happened to see a mention of it.

Well. I dived on my fave torrent site at the speed of light and had it in mere minutes. I've been doing a slow rewatch of S10, and I only had four eps to go, so I was kind of up in the air as to whether I should do that before starting S11. I don't have the time I used to have for marathoning shows, so I would have either had to do an all nighter to watch 11x01 tonight, or get through an ep a night for 4 nights and then watch 11x01.

It took me about 30 seconds to decide that I couldn't abide either of those options, and I dived right in :D

Without spoilering, and without doing a big old recap and cross-examination of the ep, I'm just gonna say some things had me like \o/ and some things had me like :/ and some things had me like O.o and some things had me like O.O

And if the next ep could please hurry the fuck up I'd be very happy. Yup yup.

comments

SPN Secret Santa

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 16:48:09 GMT

So I'm doing another Xmas exchange thingy

You know how when you sign up for a thing, exchange or whatnot, and there's that horror-period of uncertainty and fear and almost regret when you're awaiting your assignment (because who hasn't gotten an assignment that technically fits your offer but isn't quite your comfort zone and the entire process is a stress thing like OMG THIS IS SO HARD)?

In the past I've written comedic Christmas Dinner genfic (what the hell do I know about Northern Hemisphere Christmas? Nothing. And I'm NOT funny, nope), and fluffy kidfic (soo far out of my ballpark), and 'trimming the tree' (again with the unfamiliar traditions), so Xmas exchanges always instill a kind of cold sweat terror (and yet I continue to sign up).

I got my assignment for spn_j2_xmas yesterday, and I frickin danced around the kitchen with joy. It just FITS. I was like, here are all the things I like, and these are all things I can do!

Prompts even fit things I have been wanting to write but just needed an excuse, and my recipient's likes are all my happy places, and I'm just so pleased!

Epic kudos to the matching mods, they certainly know their stuff.

So I sat down last night and picked one of many bunnies that hit me almost immediately, and roughly planned a thing out, and I'm totally psyched :D I'm not saying there won't be stress (there always is when crafting a thing especially for a person), but I'm feeling very hopeful, because I know I'm capable, I just have to make it work :D

/happyvamp

Totally not to diminish the value of challenging oneself to leave ones safe wee box, but sometimes, it's just nice when things come easy, you know?

comments

So this happened...

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 10:26:20 GMT

It's considered the height of rudeness to demand updates of a fic author like this, and that's just basic logic. We don't get paid, this isn't a job. I do this shit for love, and in most cases, I write for myself.

I'll never understand the entitled attitude of some readers. This kind of thing has me more inclined to give the whole thing the big middle finger than to actually bother writing ANYTHING that might placate this selfish twit. Jeez.

comments

ABO fic and the kinda-rapey-ness to it all

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 03:27:25 GMT

I'd never come across the Alpha/Beta/Omega phenomenon before I hit the Teen Wolf fandom. It just wasn't a thing in my previous fandoms. While there's elements of the trope that I enjoy (mpreg, male lactation, knotting, made them do it), I steadfastly resisted it in Teen Wolf.

Mostly because I'm a canon whore, and IMO, Teen Wolf already had a perfectly good Alpha/Beta/Omega mythology, and Omegaverse wasn't it.

But also, because it was, more often than not, kinda rapey. Sometimes very rapey.

I like a good non-con fic as much as the next deviant, and I love dub-con. The rape/non-con warning has never scared me away. But within ABO, where the balance of power is significantly uneven because biology, it's a squick.

I'm the same with BDSM fic. If consent isn't explicit, or if the bottom has any 'they don't love me' hangups even if it's revealed to be a misunderstanding later, or if the top is using subjugation and pejorative language in regards to the bottom, I'm running a mile fighting the urge to vom.

So ABO, if I read it, like BDSM (on the extremely rare occasion I might read that), has to be fairly fluffy and with all the consent and explicit feelings and communication and stuff. Or eww.

I've been reading a fair amount of ABO in Supernatural lately. Mostly it's good. Rape/non-con warnings are there to cover the dubious consent of biological imperative, there's respect for the omega, at least in the main pairing, lots of lovely mpreg and I don't have to completely disregard a canon mythology in order to read it.

Then I was reading a fic that had no rape/non-con warning, not even a dub-con tag, and was trucking along nicely with what seems to be a fairly common 'Dean hides his omega status from Sam for years and then spontaneously goes into heat when they're adults and they fuck' trope.

Then when Dean's heat is revealed, Sam suddenly turns into this rapey asshole, all 'I own you' and barely saying two words before throwing Dean down and fucking him.

Urgh. I squicked hard, and now I'm all shaken and kind of put off. And it all could have been avoided with a little dub-con or 'controlling language' tag or at least some hint in the summary that it was going to go that way.

I'm going to be wary of ABO going forward now, when I'd almost lost that fear because most of it is well tagged and doesn't ping my squicks. And that kind of sucks.

There's all these questions in my head now, too. Do I have the right to be pissed at getting squicked by this fic? Or is rapeyness to be assumed simply because of the biological imperative of ABO?

In my experience, a rapey vibe shouldn't be automatically assumed just because ABO, because it's not all like that. I feel like the author should have used the archive warning, or at least a dub-con tag (the work was 'no archive warnings apply' so the rapey vibe really was a surprise).

I guess I'm a little hesitant to leave a comment to that effect, though, because I ignore requests for top/bottom 'warnings'. There's a difference between an official archive warning vs a tag for something that shouldn't ever be a 'warning' at all, though, right?

I guess I'm afraid I'd get called out as a hypocrite :/

comments

Just some stuff that happened recently...

Thu, 16 Jul 2015 13:42:45 GMT

no, I'm not going to warn for that thing

I received an anonymous comment on a plot-driven casefic that simply said: "please can you warn for top!Sam/bottom!Dean?"

There was a time that I would have replied to a comment like that, and politely told them to get stuffed, but I can't be arsed engaging these days. I'm passionate about dynamics not mattering (certainly not something I'd ever warn for, and I often don't tag dynamics unless I'm writing PWP). The commenter is possibly passionate about slash conforming to age- or behaviour-based dynamics, and any discourse is unlikely to end well, so I don't bother.

So I ignored it. I figure, if certain dynamics squick you, you can just scroll past any fic lacking dynamic tags like you might a 'choose not to warn' archive warning if you're sensitive to MCD or whatever. You could ask the author, I'd certainly be quite happy to answer truthfully. Or you could engage a canary like you might for any one of hundreds of potential squicks.

As far as I'm concerned, if it's a fic with actual story instead of something written purely for titillation, the sexual dynamics don't matter. I may or may not tag for them, but I'm certainly not going to warn for them.

SPN is a pretty well established fandom, I'll admit, and I haven't been writing in it long. I've only just recently started reading a large volume of SPN fic, so I'm still learning all the fandom-specific traditions and eccentricities. But I haven't noticed any more dynamic tagging in wincest than I do in any other fandom. Some authors do, some don't. Not that I've ever had any inclination to bow to pressure or convention, but I don't feel any need to change what I've been doing so far.

I get that people have squicks, even some that many people wouldn't think would need a warning, or sometimes, even a tag. I've got some pretty unusual squicks myself. If it's that much of a deal for me, and the tags/pairing/summary hints that maybe it's in a fic, I keep scrolling or suck it up and take the risk on myself.

yep, I'm totally taking exception at the wording of the request

I remember when warning for slash was the thing to do. No one (who hasn't been living in a cave for the last 5-10 years) warns for slash anymore. I tend to pull a face on the rare occasion I'm confronted with a 'slash warning' these days, but some people find it downright offensive, and I can understand that.

I feel a bit silly warning for incest, to be quite honest, when I'm clearly writing Sam/Dean, but I get that there's a lot of unrelated AU's out there, so I still do it because I don't expect anyone to have prior knowledge that I don't write AU's. I do this because incest can be highly squicky for some (I think the quantity of RPF in this fandom can attest to that fact), and it's an understandable squick, IMO.

speaking of RPF...

I find RPF squicky as fuck, but I recently came across a couple summaries in the Big Bang that sounded so interesting that I downloaded them, did a search and replace on the names, and happily read them as unrelated Sam/Dean AU's. I did wish that the authors had tagged every 'character' in the fic so I'd have known to replace them, though, because half-way through and suddenly being confronted with an actor name is a bit jarring.

Even weirder (to me and likely me alone) is the use of real people who aren't SPN cast members. Because I never go beyond the fourth wall, I don't have the foggiest idea who these people are. But it's not often that I don't just scroll really fucking fast past the RPF, so I guess that's not something that really matters much.

I'm a newbie in this fandom, but not to fandom

I'm getting the feeling that some SPN people don't get out much. Every time I've been in a place where I've said 'I'm new to SPN fandom', there's always someone who seems to read that as 'I'm new to wider fandom, and writing, and the internet' and talks to me accordingly. It frustrates the hell out of me because I'm left wondering whether to smile and nod and let them think that, or put them straight.

Mostly I just smile and nod, because people get weirdly defensive when you politely tell them 'no, it's fine, I know how to fangirl/write/work the internet, thanks, been doing it a few years now'. Or maybe I'm just always accidentally offensive, no matter how polite I try to be. Could be a kiwi thing, could be an awkwardness thing, who knows?

holy crap I posted some fic

Right. This post has gotten ridiculous, and is really just a collection of brainworms and annoyances, which, considering I haven't posted in a really long fucking time, shouldn't be too surprising ;) I actually opened this doc to record the posting of my SPN Big Bang fic, and apparently got distracted, so I'll just stuff it in at the end here :D

If All Else Perished - Sam/Dean, casefic, explicit, 26k

Sam and Dean investigate a series of murder-suicides in an historic, but crumbling house in a small town in the rural midwest. There's a vengeful spirit in the house, all that's left of a boy who killed his brother before hanging himself in the attic. Sam and Dean get caught up in the same cycle of events that killed eight people over the last decade, and they discover an incestuous affair that led to the boys' deaths. It affects them more than they'd like to admit, raising the question of just why neither of them can ever let the other go.

Contains some frickin amazing (and NSFW) art (including the banner above) by blythechild. Check it out just for that ;)

comments

Teen Wolf Remix (signups are closing, like, imminently)

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 12:55:14 GMT

I've just realised I should have posted about teenwolfremix here a little earlier, but I've been away with the goddamn fairies. Half of that is school holidays and the fact that I never get on the computer until late when the kids are home and my brain is utterly fried by then :D

But Remix! Participation looks like it'll be a little lower than last year, which is likely related to my own personal fail at promo, but it'll make for a nice cosy wee fest :)

So if you're up for a little transformative working, you ever wondered what someone else might do with your version of the Teen Wolf universe, or you know someone who might be into it, you can check out the full deets on AO3.

Signups close Wednesday 14th January.

comments

Public rating systems on AO3

Sat, 03 Jan 2015 23:48:28 GMT

You know what it's like on Amazon and Goodreads. The rating system that makes me thankful that I don't write OF. It has a point there, despite the potential for abuse (I've heard of authors using socks to rate their own stuff up, of enlisting friends to do it, and of people who don't like the author one-starring out of malice). You check out the ratings and reviews before you shell out hard earned cash. All of the logic.

Thank god this built in rating system will never be a thing on AO3, those who decide these things having rejected that particular new feature proposal in part due to the potential for abuse.

No one has to pay to read fic, therefore there's no danger in flouncing after the first paragraph if a fic is not to your taste.

I occasionally look at bookmarks of my own stuff on AO3. I like to read the comments, I get all fluttery and excited when someone ticks the rec box, and I look for tags they've applied that I might like to add to the fic.

And I wander through other peoples bookmarks, looking for their recs and comments and often add things to my TBR from there.

From time to time I see readers using a rating system in their bookmarks. I'm not particularly precious about my work, I think I've been doing it long enough that I know my limitations and I know that most of what I post (especially lately) is seriously lacking in one way or another. So when I see a low rating on one of my own personal faves, and one of my highest kudos'd works, I can shrug it off without too much of a hit to my ego.

I realise that most of the time these rating systems have little to do with the quality of the work and more to do with the readers own tastes, and for many are likely only meant for the readers own reference. I keep a rating system of my own, but I keep it in Calibre, safely private on my own personal computer. There's no way in hell I'd let the authors of the works I read see those ratings, because they are for my own future re-reading reference, and have everything to do with my own personal tastes and almost nothing to do with quality.

I never see these ratings by a reader with any works of their own on AO3. It's only readers who make these ratings public. I won't say that before they criticise they should try writing themselves because IMO that's not what they're doing. I imagine that the majority of them simply have no concept of how hard it is to create something and share it.

To all those non-writers who use a rating system: Fic authors (and artists, and podficcers, and all the creators in all the media) put hours upon hours of their own time, and blood, and sweat, and tears, into creating fanworks and then share them for free, for love. It's a very vulnerable position, and particularly for those new to sharing, one knock is all it takes to make them not want to share again. Imagine if this happened to your favourite author way back when they began. If they simply gave up before they'd really started, before they had a chance to hone thier writing. Imagine how little fic we'd have to read now!

AO3 is not Amazon, and it's not Goodreads. Public ratings don't belong here.

If we got paid for this shit it might make public rating systems easier to take, but we don't. All we get in return is a few kudos or comments. Personally, I'm happy with that. I don't want to get paid for writing fic, because this way I get to write whatever the hell I want to write, I don't have to please anyone but myself, and I write to my tastes.

And for those readers who choose to rate to their tastes, that's fine, too, but you should keep it to yourselves. Don't put it where the author is highly likely to see it, in places like public AO3 bookmarks.

The ridiculous thing is that it's very easy to make ratings and comments in an AO3 bookmark private. All you need to do is tick the private bookmark box! Unless you're intentionally trying to make the writers feel bad, but that's kind of an asshole thing to do.

comments

NaNo '14 - Day 1

Fri, 31 Oct 2014 23:28:57 GMT

*cough*

I thought this was year 5, but it's actually my sixth NaNo. Not counting the one Camp NaNo I did. That seems like a lot. I did my first NaNo around the same time or a little before I really started writing fic and being involved in fandom, so it is a good way of keeping track of that.

But 5 years. Holy crap.

So it's day #1 of NaNo '14 and it's awesome! So far. Give me a week and I'll be tearing my hair out and crying. In terms of where I thought I'd be in my story by todays target I'm way ahead. So I'm slightly concerned that I might not have enough story to fill the 50k. Hopefully things flesh themselves out as I move along, if not I have some backup fic I can write to fill the gap.

Oh! And my story. I've tended to write OF for NaNo, but this year I'm writing a (perhaps) novel length SPN fic. Wincest is best, as is the celebration of unhealthy brotherly co-dependence *grin*

I've already killed Dean. Just this morning. Went well XD

Also, I'm doing this without knowing anything about Season 10, so, spoilerphobe warning. Yep.

I'm just going to chuck this here so I can look at it and freak out when I see red boxes.

comments

I feel a bit like a headless chook

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 22:43:22 GMT

I'm supposed to be editing my Hols fic right now, in order to get it done and posted before NaNo, but I've actually been working on getting shit sorted for Remix. Signups won't open until December, but December is like, the day after NaNo, and I really don't want to be trying to do it while I'm trying to cram 1667 words into each day as well.

So, yeah. I'm doing that. Plan is to have everything ready to hit the 'open' button before the 1st November. I started months ago, to be honest, but decided we needed new graphics, so I was planning on making pretty banners and shit. Pity the promo pic for season 4 was so blah. I must have worked on making it pretty so many times, and then just didn't do anything because I ended up hating it all. At this point the new graphics I've made are perhaps too simple, and not a huge change from last years, but oh well. We can always change them next year ;)

Next on my list, rewrite all the rules and stuff, because we're making it so fanworks other than just art and fic are eligible to be remixed :D

comments

NaNo is not far away...

Fri, 10 Oct 2014 02:53:08 GMT

It's coming up the busiest time of year for me, for a lot of people, I guess. Christmas is on the horizon, but that's something I barely give a passing thought in October. November is the big month for me, it'll be my 5th NaNoWriMo this year, so it's definitely become something of a habit, and all non-essential things just go completely out the window until after it's over and I've taken a few days to recover.

And in time honoured vamp tradition, NaNo is approaching while I'm in the midst of one of my horrible extended not-writer's-block periods. Which is actually a good thing, because I generally come out of NaNo with a hiss and a roar, the not-block having been forced away by the necessity to consistently write a stupid amount of words each day.

So that's good. I'm looking forward to November, because NaNo for me is a kind of reset button for my writing habits.

comments

Fic Recs

Tue, 16 Sep 2014 10:23:49 GMT

Sickness (656 words) by orphan_account
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Characters: Derek Hale, Stiles Stilinski
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Dark, Murderers, Disturbing Themes, No Sex, Obsession
Summary:

This kid. This kid is a sickness.

Written for a prompt on an anon meme: For a darker fic, I am perpetually infatuated with psych institution AUs.

Bookmarker's Notes:

Lovely little darkfic featuring crazy!Derek and crazy!Stiles.

New Direction (8434 words) by blacktofade
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Additional Tags: Shibari, Rope Bondage, trust building, Aftercare, Body Worship, Praise Kink, intimacy issues, Established Relationship
Summary:

Stiles realizes Derek has intimacy issues and tries to find a way to help them both better understand.

Bookmarker's Notes:

Beautiful.

Body Acceptance by DevilDoll (tumblr fic) | podfic by jinxy

teen wolf | sterek | male lactation | lactation kink

I tripped and flailed and ate this up when I stumbled across it. It is entirely relevant to my interests.

Science, Bitches! (2688 words) by eeyore9990
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Characters: Derek Hale, Stiles Stilinski
Additional Tags: Manipulative Stiles, Emotional Manipulation, Sexual Manipulation, Stiles is a bit of a psychopath, Scent Kink, Dubious Consent, Extremely Dubious Consent, Morally Ambiguous Character, morally ambiguous stiles
Summary:

Stiles is aware that it's wrong. He's a rational, intellectual person who really does understand that some things are right and some are… not. He just can't really be bothered to care.

How to get a werewolf boyfriend in three easy steps.

Bookmarker's Notes:

Oh, holy fuck. This is everything I ever needed.

Don't Slow the Beat of Our Hearts (3558 words) by tryslora
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Jordan Parrish, Derek Hale, Scott McCall, Sheriff Stilinski
Additional Tags: Community: fullmoon_ficlet, Alternate Universe - Speed, Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, Background Lydia/Parrish
Summary:

“See, some idiot out there must have watched Speed a few too many times, and as you might know, we’ve got a certain politician’s teenage son living with his mother in Beacon Hills and riding on my bus every damned morning and now someone has decided to make an example out of him and all his classmates if I happen to go under fifty-five miles per hour.” Stiles wishes he were kidding, but no, this really is his life right now.

Bookmarker's Notes:

Very canon Parrish and perfect Stiles. My ideal fic right now.

These are just my very faves, all my recs can be found on AO3 here.

comments

I should never be allowed to post WiP's

Fri, 12 Sep 2014 10:07:14 GMT

If it's not psychic fuckery causing me to get kind of kripked, or just being jossed because I'm writing last season while this season is airing, both of which make me freeze up bad enough, it's my not-writer's-block.

I've abandoned WiP fic in a previous fandom. I don't feel too bad about it now (except for this fic, but that's more about my own attachment than any letting people down feelings), because I'm done with writing in that fandom, it's of the past.

A current fandom, though? Ouch. Okay, I pretty much abandoned Ruined because of the aforementioned psychic fuckery and my absolute horror at having written an ending with so many parallels to canon, but the ending is sitting on my hard drive. With a season's worth of distance, I'm thinking I might just post it, with a disclaimer swearing that I hadn't seen or heard anything about 3b while I was writing it, just to call it done.

Somewhere Quiet is my current WiP. I've let things distract me (both fandom and RL), unfortunately, which disrupts the momentum, and leaves space for second guessing. Is the boss fight dire enough? Do I retcon the already posted chapters for a canon detail that didn't exist when I wrote them? Do I trash the final few scenes again because even this third version just doesn't feel right?

I do get distracted ridiculously easy. I have this rule, one fic at a time, but I've been lax about sticking to it lately. Inflection Point is another WiP, and despite it's status as my stress-free happy place, so is Wake Up Dead. And I've just signed up for Teen Wolf Holidays, NaNoWriMo is looming, and Remix is on the horizon.

I'd like to get Somewhere Quiet at least out of the way before NaNo, which, considering there's just this one chapter left to post, shouldn't really be too hard. But I've been kind of panicking, because I knew that what I had written (it was technically done just a few days ago, now, not so much), wasn't right.

But the lovely thraceadams gave me a bit of a pep talk, and I shoved it away in a folder, determined to take a step back and concentrate on other things for a while.

Less than 24 hours later, I was fishing it out again. That disconnect, the letting go, gave me just enough distance to realise that I probably did have to trash most of what I had of the final chapter. Right now I'm concentrating on the first scene of the final chapter (it's with venis_envy right now), making sure the resolution to the casefic part of the fic is right, and then I'll worry about the shippy parts, which, honestly, is what I find hardest right now.

I have gone through and retconned that canon detail (Parrish has a first name now, and even though the fic is firmly within post-3b/pre-S4 canon, it felt weird to call him anything other than Jordan).

So, yeah. I have direction. At least a little bit. WiP's can be a problem for me, though. If I'm writing them when I'm particularly prone to distraction (like now), they tend to stack up. And while I've got WiP's in my past that haven't ended in laggy failure, it's a big risk to start posting before the whole fic is done.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes the simple fact that it is a WiP is what drives me to complete the thing, but that has to happen when I'm not prone to this constant second guessing.

comments