Somewhere Different Now

Well, there's an hour and change left of 2018 in my timezone. It hasn't been the shittiest year ever for me personally, but it hasn't been an especially good one either. On the larger scale of national and world news, it's been a deluge of horror with a hint of hope to come. However, rather than delivering any thoughtful reflections on larger issues, here's a list of some movies, books, and fanworks I loved this year. This is a list of my favorites, not necessarily what I think was the best quality.

Favorite Movies
-Black Panther - This list is in alphabetical order, not ranking order, but Black Panther is undeniably my top film of 2018. Perfect blend of dealing thoughtfully with big issues, fascinating characters, great action, and a gorgeous look.
-Colette - Keira Knightly plays a bisexual author, stands up for her desires and recognition against patriarchal expectations, and wears gorgeous period outfits...it's like they made it just for me. I found the depiction of her marriage to be fascinating. It wasn't a healthy relationship at all, but it was an interestingly complicated one.
-Ocean’s Eight - A super fun romp featuring competence porn and a great cast of ladies.
-Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse - Would have been the best Marvel movie of the year if Black Panther hadn't existed. The animation was outstanding, and somehow made even a Spider-man origin story feel fresh. Fun for both very casual and more serious fans.
-The Spy Who Dumped Me - The most underrated movie of the year. Look, I'm not saying it's great cinema for the ages, but TSWDM was probably the most fun I had in a movie theater all year. I laughed so much. Kate McKinnon and Mila Kunis seem to be having a great time onscreen together. Part of building a movie industry less centered on men is that women should also get to be at the center of silly action buddy comedies of middling quality. We deserve a Mary Sue-ish fantasy of being swept up from a boring life into a more exciting world and eventually, after a lot of mishaps, ending up being really good at it. If that hasn't sold you on this movie, Kate McKinnon flirts with Gillian Anderson (only minimally in character) and performs on a trapeze.
- A Star Is Born - The second-closest I came to crying in a movie theater this year. Lady Gaga proves that her acting chops are as strong as her singing voice.
-Won’t You Be My Neighbor - Definitely the closest I came to crying in a movie theater this year was in this documentary about Mr. Rogers. It's well worth watching if the world at large is dragging you down as a reminder that there are truly decent and kind people in the world, and at least one of them was even a white man.

Favorite Books (Alphabetical by author. Not necessarily books published this year, just ones I read this year)

-All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders - Moving, inventive, quirky, relevant.
-The Mortal Word by Genevieve Cogman (Invisible Library series #5)- One of my favorite ongoing series.  So much fun, and characters who really need more fandom.
-The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal - alternate history of space travel after a devastating meteor strike in 1952.  Great premise, diverse lady-centric cast, tautly written.
-Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty - tense space thriller full of clones and nonlinear narratives.
-Night and Silence by Seanan McGuire (October Daye #12) - Latest installment in my other favorite ongoing series.  I love these characters so much and want to protect them from all the terrible things and big revelations that keep happening.
-On Trails: An Exploration by Robert Moor - Fascinating nonfiction about trails from the first organisms to move along the sea floor to modern long-distance hiking. 
-The Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab (A Darker Shade of Magic, A Gathering of Shadows, & A Conjuring of Light, all read this year) - Fantastic worldbuilding, suspenseful, memorable characters including a piratical female antihero.  
-The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne Valente- deliciously angry tales from all the women killed in male-centric superhero stories.
-Space Opera by Catherynne Valente - Eurovision in space with the fate of humankind at stake.  Glam rock meets Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  Hopepunk comedy.

Favorite Fanworks 

-The Night War: 60th Anniversary Edition by praximeter - Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers (with hints of unrequited Bucky/Steve). Do you like strong backstories for characters left underdeveloped by canon, frame stories, historical research, unreliable narrators, or being utterly emotionally compromised? Then go break your heart into a million pieces with WWII-era Bucky's diaries right now. This immersive fic blew me away.
-Avengers Get Ready by niyalune- fanvid distilling so many MCU feelings.
-Winter's Herald by leveragehunters.  My inner 14 year-old died of squee at seeing that there was an epic length MCU/Heralds of Valdemar fusion focusing on Steve/Bucky, and it was incredibly well done.  Soul bonds and telepathy and magical horse-like beings, oh my!
-i need a forest fire by tomorrowsrain - Bucky and Tony go on an epic roadtrip as fugitives, enemies to friends. Also Steve/Bucky relationship. Plotty with excellent dialog.
- light a match and burn them down by defcontwo - it has Steve/Bucky/Peggy and serum!Peggy with great banter...all the things my heart desires in a fic for these characters, pretty much.

What have y'all enjoyed this year?  What great things did I miss that I'll have to catch? 

Happy 2019, y'all.  May it hold manifold good things in store for you, and may you all find the strength to meet its inevitable challenges.

Hello LJ! Let's do a lyrics guessing meme I've done in the past.

1. Open up your music player. Hit shuffle.
2. Record the first few lines of the first 25 songs that come up. Skip instrumentals, but don't skip the embarrassing ones.
3. Make hapless LJ/DW denizens guess the song names and artists. Google is cheating. For musical songs, the name of the musical is acceptable in place of the artist.
4. Cross out the songs that have been guessed.
5. Pass it along.

Note that if the first few lines of the song include the song's title, I may choose to censor those particular words if I think it's too obvious with the title left in, or I may leave it if the title isn't too distinctive a phrase. I also skipped a few songs that were especially obscure.

So shuffle came up with some that are pretty well-known and recognizable, but also a few that are tricky enough that I couldn't guess them from my own music library, so the difficulty varies vastly. Comment with your guesses!

( Lyrics under cut due to length )

Friday night I did a rewatch of the first two Captain America movies.  When Bucky fell off the train into the chasm, I made a distressed noise that caused my cat Noodles to get up from where she was dozing on a different chair and come snuggle beside me on the couch.  Thank you, Noodles. <3  I needed that comfort in a time of emotions.

Saturday night I went to see Captain America:  Civil War.  Tragically, Noodles could not accompany me to help me deal with all my feels.

-Overall, I loved it!  There are a number of caveats I’ll get to, but overall I think it was a strong movie,  about as strong as it could be given the fundamentally annoying “make the heroes punch each other” premise.


-I would watch an entire movie of Steve, Sam, and Bucky roadtripping in a VW bug. I would watch a TRILOGY about that.

-It was fun to watch the movie with an excited opening weekend crowd, including my friend L. who is kinda hilariously reactive to things she’s watching.  The most amusing moment of reaction happened when Steve and Sharon kissed.
CROWD:  general reactive murmurs, many sounding surprised or negative, but a few “awwws”.
SOME GUY:  *wolf whistle*
FRIEND L:  What the whaaat??!?  (After the movie, she said she found it really weird that Steve seemed to be having a thing with the niece of the woman he used to be involved with.  Very valid point.)
ME:  Well that was random. (By “random” I meant “obvious attempt to shoehorn in a heteronormative romantic moment to obscure the fact that this movie reads much more naturally as a love story between Steve and Bucky.”)
BUCKY AND SAM:  Quick, we have to make faces like amused, pleased, straight wingmen to cover up our jealousy.

-I HAVE SO MANY BUCKY BARNES FEELS RIGHT NOW.  (This is typical for days ending in -y, but especially true at the moment.)  Pardon me while I wordvomit, or feel free to skip to the next bullet point.  Poor sad trashpanda was just trying to lay low and deal with his shit in peace, having recovered his sense of self all on his own, then some asshole decides to frame him and Steve found him but they had no time to have a proper conversation (and certainly not reunion sex, dammit) before a lot of cops showed up and they had to have a foot chase in the car traffic and then he got arrested and strapped to a fucking chair, which must have been brutal given how many awful things he’s experienced strapped to a chair, and then said asshole REACTIVATES HIS PROGRAMMING AND FUCKS UP HIS HEAD AGAIN and made him kill more people, but Steve still believed in him and showed this by getting into a tug of war with a helicopter, and Bucky totally could have shot Steve but even through the programming he didn’t do that and instead just crashed the helicopter.  And then Steve pulled him out of a river after an aircraft crash because they are always saving each other and apparently going unconscious plus seeing Steve got him back in his head.  And then he had to fight some superheroes because he always helps Steve out in his fights and also they thought they needed to keep the asshole from taking over the world, but it turned out asshole just wanted the superheroes to fight more and decided to provoke that by using stuff that HYDRA brainwashed Bucky into doing and there was a lot of fighting that could have been avoided if Tony would have calmed down for ten minutes and considered the meaning of BRAINWASHING and then Bucky’s arm got ripped off and it’s clear that that thing was linked to his pain receptors, ack! And then everyone was finally so punched into a pulp that they calmed the fuck down at last but Bucky was so worried about his inability to control his own head that he had himself put back into cryofreeze, goddamn it.  But it’s a long way between Siberia and Wakanda, so hopefully Steve and Bucky managed to get some sexytimes in at some point.

-Steve is still very much a tiny stubborn lonely kid inside, and it hurts my heart.  I just want him to be happy, dammit.  It’s clear that he would give up pretty much anything and everything for Bucky.

-I really loved the opening Avengers mission where it’s clear that they’ve been working together and training Wanda in espionage and superhero team skills.  The followup conversation between Wanda and Steve where they discuss how to deal with having made mistakes that led to people dying was also great.

-Sam!  I enjoyed watching the badass new moves he had like using the wings as a shield. I love the further deepening of his friendship with Steve (he went with Steve to Peggy’s funeral, awww) and how he is thoroughly part of the team.  Wish he’d had a bit more of a plotline of his own, oh well. I am highly amused at the way they gave Sam a drone as a nod to comics!Falcon’s actual falcon Redwing.

-Natasha is trying so hard to do the right thing for the world while also doing right by her friends.  She gets a lot of shit from people for being morally grey but I think she’s actually a deeply moral person, she just is willing to do more dubious things in support of the larger picture.  I adored the scene where she came to the end of Peggy’s funeral and gave Steve a hug.  (This movie needed so many more hugs for Steve, and everyone else too.)  I wish the movie had more of her, but then again, that’s my complaint with every Marvel movie.  If they ever make a Black Widow film my complaint will be the ten minutes she’s not onscreen.

-Super excited to see Black Panther!  His look and fighting style were a joy to behold.  Even in this crowded movie he got a plotline of his own. It was a pretty simplistic “Grief=>Vengeance Quest=>Really Stubborn About That Vengeance=>Finally Laying Down the Need for Vengeance” storyline, but he handled it with grace and charisma.  I look forward to the Black Panther movie and getting to know him more.

-I don’t care if Vision was “worthy” to lift Mjolnir in AoU, because in this movie he was definitely the Creepy Boyfriend towards Wanda.  He walks through walls to intrude on Wanda’s conversation in her room.  He prevents her from leaving the house.  Dude, just because you’re a mystical android or whatever doesn’t make this stuff okay. Wanda, meanwhile, is maturing into a thoughtful young BAMF; she's great.

-The scene at the end with Rhodey and Tony (and the most excellent Stan Lee cameo) was lovely.  I suspect Rhodey will be calling literally everyone he knows to tell them about Tony Stank.  I do wish the movie had made a bit more focus on his friendship with Tony before the accident.  He got grievously injured to further the (white) main characters’ plotlines, and didn’t even get much character development to make up for it. :(  I hope this isn’t the end of his appearances in the MCU.

-The things I disliked most were mostly the things I already disliked going into the movie, namely the general premise that all the heroes are fighting each other and that the movie shoehorns in Ant-Man and Spider-Man instead of focusing on the already large cast of existing Avengers.  Black Panther is a cast addition that made sense, but those two were only there to pad out the fight scenes and have some one-liners.  The scenes with the Arthropod Dudes were lots of fun, but they were tangents that I felt weakened the movie as a whole.

-It felt really contrived to me how the movie had all the characters willfully refuse to calm down, listen, or compromise so it could get all of the superheroes fighting.  I dislike this whole Civil War premise and hope that future movies go back to building a team instead to fight actual evil.

-Hot Young Aunt May?  Whyyyyyyyyyyy?  I am weirded out.

-I am a super bummed that Tony and Pepper have broken up and that she wasn’t in this movie.  It explains some of Tony’s less than stellar decisions and poorer than usual emotional stability in this film, but I wish it hadn’t happened and I hope it is undone AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.  Like, I want a random scene in Doctor Strange where someone is looking at the celebrity news and sees that Tony Stark and Pepper Potts have gotten back together.  That is the urgency of this situation.

-Seriously, why did Tony decide that a battle with other superheroes where various governments were just itching to arrest the lot of them was the right time to bring in the teenage kid crimefighter he’s been eying?  Pepper would never have let this happen.

-“Spider-Man WIll Return” said the end of the credits.  Of course Spider-Man will fucking return.  More Spider-Man movies are only slightly less certain than death and taxes.  I really like the character, but the number of movies he has (especially compared to all the heroes who aren't white dudes) is ridiculous.

-Personal headcanon that Clint and Natasha started fighting each other in the big brawl because they were each trying to keep the other away from the more enhanced fighters who might hurt them worse.

-When Nick Fury gets back from wherever he is, he is going to be SO PISSED OFF.

-Can the Captain America scenes in the next Avengers movies just be Steve receiving hugs and having barbecues with his friends and petting animals and generally being happy?  And the same for Bucky?  Plus lots of them tenderly making out?  No?  Well, thank heavens for fanfiction.

First, for anyone seeking more active LJ folks to know, there's another friending meme making the rounds:

*  *  *

There are former LJers who would like to return, but their friends lists have been deserted.
Let's all welcome them back with open arms and show them that LJ is very much alive!

*  *  *
Second, here's a fannish meme via ladymercury_10. Comment with a letter or a couple of letters and I'll answer:

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.
B - A pairing—platonic, romantic or sexual—that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.
C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.
D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.
E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom? If so, what?
F - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom?
G - Have you ever had an OTP? If so, do you remember your first one? Who was in it?
H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., TV shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)?
I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?
J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr.
K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?
L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves.
M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.
N - Name three things you wish you saw more of in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).
O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?
P - Invent a random AU for any fandom.
Q - A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.
R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?
S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon.
T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?
U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.
V - Which character do you relate to most?
W - A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.
X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.
Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?
Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! (Prompts optional but encouraged.)

OMG, I forgot how intense it feels to get New Sherlock after a hiatus.  It's hard to even sort out what my reaction to the content of the show is because the whole time I'm watching it there's a part of my brain excitedly repeating "IT'S BACK!  NEW EPISODE!  IT'S BACK!  NEW EPISODE!", which gets distracting.  Here are my thoughts as best I can get them down, in no particular order:

-When Dr. Hooper came onscreen, I squeed out loud at such a volume and high pitch that it scared the cat.  Molly in drag!!!  She's running the morgue, being addressed as doctor, and bossing around Anderson!  I am so glad I wasn't spoiled about how Molly figured in to the Victorian setting.  That was a moment of joy (and sexy) I was not expecting.  I'm not entirely sure I buy Holmes never picking up that Dr. Hooper is a woman in disguise.  I wonder if he noticed it upon first meeting her, decided that she was very competent in her job and thus there was no reason to expose her or let their professional relationship get weird, and so he just deleted the information.


-Mary was such an excellent BAMF in this episode!  It's like they wrote most of her scenes JUST FOR ME.  Victorian!Mary worked as a secret agent for Mycroft on behalf on England.  Mycroft calls her Watson, because Holmes brothers work best with a Watson around.  Modern!Mary snarking about MI-5's lack of security was marvelous.  I loved how obvious it was that Sherlock really likes Mary.  He recognized her under the mourning disguise before John did, and when he and Watson showed up as her backup in tracking down the cult he said something like "For you, Mary? Any time."  I don't remember the exact line, just the degree of happiness it caused in me.  And if the Victorian setting is a mind palace exercise/drug-induced dream of modern!Sherlock, then we can surmise that he sees her as working unequivocally on behalf of good, albeit in a secretive way. Take that, anti-Mary folks who have doubted whether Sherlock's willingness to forgive Mary in HLV was genuine.  Also, how cute is it that Holmes refers to her impish sense of humor?  Very cute.

-Mrs. Hudson's literary criticism by pointed silence was delightful meta.  Mrs. Hudson in general was excellent. Also, her conversation with Mary gave this ep a Bechdel test pass.  (The secret society scene had a ton of women, but I think they mostly just talked to Holmes and Watson.)

-I lied about there being no particular order to my thoughts.  I am talking about the female characters first, because they are clearly my priorities.

-Speaking of ladies, I was less fond of the resolution of the case (in one level of the Inception-esque trip that was the latter part of this episode) with the secret society of women.  It felt like Moffat way too pointedly trying to address the criticism of his writing of women but being super obnoxious about it.  All these women may be on the right side of history, but they're also a murderous, melodramatic cult of Furies that takes some of its trappings from the KKK.  Geez, Moff, tell us how you really feel.  *eyeroll*  As I said in my earlier bullet points, the treatment of the individual recurring female characters was great, but the conspiracy of women was not my favorite.

-Perhaps my least favorite thing was the fat-phobia in how the show treated Victorian!Mycroft.  I get that Mycroft is fat in ACD's stories.  They could have stayed close to canon by simply putting Gatiss in a fat suit without making such a big deal about him being gross and close to death and constantly eating.  Or they could have had the slender Mycroft we're used to but throw in some line about how Mycroft insisted that John disguise his appearance in the write-ups of the cases so nobody would give him the obnoxious attention they gave Sherlock.  The way they chose was just obnoxious.

-I had been hoping for a frame story in the present to give meaning to the sudden shift to Victorian times.  Apparently I should be careful what I wish for.  I will have to watch the episode again before I fully make up my mind about it, but my initial reaction is that it was too much drug-addled dream-within-a-dream stuff.  I am okay with ambiguity about whether the Victorian or 21st century Holmes is the "real" one, but I ended the episode confused about what happened in both time frames, especially the present. Did Sherlock end up deciding that Moriarty was definitely dead or is there still ambiguity? Are we supposed to accept the secret society of avenging women as the real explanation for the historical case Sherlock was pondering, or is that just a product of his penchant for meladrama?

-And where did Sherlock get drugs to take before the plane to exile anyway?  I thought he'd been in prison since shooting Magnussen.   I did enjoy the Holmes brother feels about Mycroft taking care of junkie Sherlock.

-I did like all the meta commentary and focus on Watson as storyteller.  Also, apparently when Sherlock is upset on the plane he read John's blog about them meeting.  Right in the feels!

-Andrew Scott is soooo fantastically creepy as Moriarty.  On the one hand I shudder every time he appears on screen, but on the other hand I really enjoyed seeing the Victorian versions of him and Sherlock having their confrontations.

-I really loved the scene where Victorian!Holmes was manipulating the floating newspapers articles as a mind palace exercise.  It was visually beautiful and a nice analogue to the more computer-esque mind palace visuals in Hound.

-That conversation where Watson talked to Holmes about how he ought to marry was so sad.  Watson, you fool, he doesn't want to marry a woman, or even The Woman.  He wants to marry you and Mary.  Failing that just you, or just his work.


Overall I will have to watch again to reach a final verdict on whether the plot towards the end was merely unecessarily hard to follow (but pretty good if you get it) or a Total Mess That Thinks It's Clever But Isn't.  Other than that, however, I enjoyed this episode a great deal.

I was going to try to get more done this afternoon, but I've spent more time than expected on the computer, looking at the news from Paris.  My heart aches for the victims of this atrocity.  The scale of the attacks is truly awful.  My heart aches also for those affected by the bombings in Lebanon earlier in the day, where over 40 people were killed by the so-called Islamic State.

Events like this bring out the best in people as well as the worst.  Parisians on twitter created a hashtag to offer to open up their homes to strangers who needed a place to get inside.  The hospitals issued a call for blood donations, and as morning arrives in Paris people are queing up to donate and crashing the blood donation service's website with the sheer numbers who are trying to find out how to best give of themselves.  I'm sure as more survivors' stories are told we will hear many tales of people risking or giving their lives to protect others.

But on the flip side, incidents like this have the potential to bring out cruelty in the responses, as if the evil of the attacks wasn't already enough.  If policy-makers restrict rights excessively in pursuit of unachievable security and if people take out their anger at the extremists on peaceful Muslims, then the terrorists win.  Terrorists want fear.  They want to ignite a holy war.  We can vanquish them only by keeping our society open and free and by living our lives in a spirit of love, peace, and multiculturalism.

I've been to Paris once, back in 2006.  I was visiting a college friend who was attending theatre school there.  In many ways Paris was exactly what I'd hoped and expected to see.  Art, museums, and historical monuments were everywhere.  People carried bags of baguettes through the street.  A mime juggled on the subway.  My friend took me to parties with her friends, an international mix of Bohemian artist-types.  (One of them looked uncannily like Johnny Depp; when he greeted me with a double cheek kiss I was rather glad that my inability to speak French gave an excuse for making a garbled response, because I was dazzled enough that I don't think I could have managed full sentences in English right then.)  One day we had to reroute ourselves around a protest march of some sort.  It was beautiful and sophisticated and lively and all that a city should be.  There were only two things that really surprised me about Paris:  (1) here in the US, Parisians have a reputation for being super rude, but this was not my experience at all.  People in Paris (including strangers on the street, not just friends of my friend) were no ruder to me than people in any other large city.  Given how little I spoke of the language most were remarkably patient and welcoming.  (2) I knew that Paris was a multicultural city these days, but I was still a bit surprised by just how much of a rainbow of humanity lives there.  It looked at least as diverse as New York.  I liked it.

I hope that despite the death and horror the people of Paris can hold on to their kindness and multiculturalism.  I hold in light the people of Paris and all those whose lives were touched by this tragedy. I pray that the carnage stops here.

After seeing it on andrea_deer's journal, I've just signed up for a fannish festival/challenge/event/thing that I think is a great idea.














Rectober aims to have people posting recs for all sorts of fanworks during the month of October.  I love sharing the delight of my favorite fanworks with friends and hopefully sending some loving feedback to the creators. I hope some of y'all will join in, because I'd love to see what you recommend.

If you participate, you get to choose how much you want to post.  Some people are setting daily posting goals, while others are only committing to two posts the whole month.  For myself, I'm setting a goal of seven rec posts over the month of October.  That's about twice a week with one built-in skip.  I may try for more if the posts go quickly, but seven seems like about the maximum that I can reasonably promise.

I'm probably going to do themed rec posts with a mix of fic and vids.  I'm still trying to work out what those themes will be, but some candidates include:
-Excellent Ensembles
-This Broke Me Into Tiny Pieces, Please Share My Pain
-Golden Oldies (fics/vids more than 4-5 years old...obviously fandom goes back much farther than that, but since I started bookmarking fic in 2007 this is a good cut-off)
-Three (or More) Cheers for Poly Ships
-Avoid Beverages Or Risk Keyboard Destruction (crack/humor/general silliness)
-Long Reads Worth the Time Investment
-Fanworks Other Than Fic and Vids (meta, fan art, crafts, fanmixes, etc.)
-Awesome Ladies Being Awesome (focus on one or more female characters saving the day...this may have too much overlap with what I'd rec for everything else)
-Fairy Tales & Fantasy
-Crossovers of Great Win
-This Doesn't Fit My Other Categories But It's Too Awesome To Ignore

Obviously this is more than seven categories, so I'm either going to whittle it down, make some rec posts include one or more categories, or just make more posts.  Feel free to comment if there are some of these categories you're especially interested in seeing or if you want to suggest others.

I hope some of you will join me in making LJ lively with the celebration of fannish creativity this month!  Click the banner if you want to officially sign up.

Meanwhile, the good news is that Doctor Who is getting a spin-off.  The bad news is that this spin-off is NOT about Madame Vastra and Jenny as Victorian interspecies lesbians who fight crime accompanied by sidekick Strax and a pack of plucky street urchins.  It's also not flashback/prequel Doctor Who starring Paul McGann.  It's not a revitalization of Torchwood, or any other form of spin-off that fans have been asking for.  Instead, the spin-off is about teens at Coal Hill School dealing with aliens/monsters, with no mention of characters from previous shows appearing.  I will certainly give it a try, but this just feels like a missed opportunity.

For this entry, I am going to resurrect a meme that I did quite some time ago.

Choose fifteen characters. Then put your playlist on shuffle. Your first song with lyrics is your first character, and so on. For each song, choose lyrics that resonate with the corresponding character.

Last time some of the matches were pretty hilariously bad, while one or two were spot on.  Let's see how many novelty songs or environmentalist protest songs we get this time!

Character list:
1.  Steve Rogers (MCU)
2.  Mary Morstan (BBC Sherlock)
3.  The Doctor (Doctor Who)
4.  Alec Hardison (Leverage)
5.  Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel comics)
6.  Peggy Carter (Agent Carter/MCU)
7.  Martha Jones (Doctor Who/Torchwood)
8.  October "Toby" Daye (Seanan McGuire's October Daye novels)
9.  Eliot Spencer (Leverage)
10.  Doreen Green (Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comics)
11.  Melinda May (Agents of SHIELD)
12.  Rose Tyler (Doctor Who)
13.  Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
14.  Molly Hooper (Sherlock)
15.  Mr. Spock (Star Trek, I may do either TOS or AOS movies depending on the song)

Now for the songs.

( Songs and attempted justifications under cut )

Here's a meme grabbed from theladymore.

Give me a character and I'll tell you:

1: sexuality headcanon
2: otp
3: brotp
4: notp
5: first headcanon that pops into my head
6: favorite line from this character
7: one way in which I relate to this character
8: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character
9: cinnamon roll or problematic fave?


Fandoms you might want to ask about include Marvel Cinematic Universe (including tv), Doctor Who/Torchwood, Sherlock, Leverage, Whedonverse tv, Star Trek (TOS/AOS), Sleepy Hollow, or whatever other fandoms you've seen me talk about around here.
(Note that I am posting this and then going to bed, so don't expect a prompt answer.)

in honor of the United States of America's Independence Day, I suggest that everyone celebrate by repeated viewings of "Freedom Ride," an extremely serious and important Captain America fanvid about Steve Rogers, fandom bicycle.


(Here it is on AO3 if you want to comment to the vidder.)

This is the most patriotic thing I've ever seen.  America, fuck yeah!  ;)

Alternatively, I suppose you could stick to celebrating the actual history of how America's founding fathers talked about liberty a lot while still perpetuating the oppression of everyone who wasn't a white dude considered the difficult question of whether to declare independence from Britain and/or open up a window to cope with the heat...all while breaking into song.



Ah, 1776. How fortunate that some clerk made note of the actual melodies sung during debate in the Continental Congress so this historically accurate reenactment could be made.