Nine years, really?

It occured to me that yesterday was my nine years on livejournal anniversary. Those were the days, my friends. You needed invite codes for lj then (mine came from raincitygirl). And reading through the first awkward entries, I, err, don't seem to have changed much. Back then, lj was what tumblr is now, but I don't think I'll do more than check out the occasional tumblr related to very selected interests of mine. Why? I really don't like getting spoiled. After a decade or more in onlne fandom, I can't say I ever not regretted being spoiled, and there was a time (ca. Buffy season 6, original broadcast) when I did read spoilers. So until tv show, movies and book related tumblrs come up with the equivalent of a spoiler cut, I'll stick to those indulging my penchant for 60s musicians, more or less.

The first genuinenly movie based Avengers fanfics start to show up, and they're Tony & Bruce and Natasha/Bruce, both of which pleases yours truly. But really, any combination of Avenger & Avenger, Avenger & SHIELD Agent, SHIELD Agent & SHIELD & Agent, or for that matter Loki & Anyone just works with the Whedonian hat trick of making/keeping everyone intriguing and compelling to watch/read about. The downside of this is that now I don't want Iron Man 3, Thor 2 or Captain America 2, I want more Avengers. Go team! The exception is that I also desperately want the Black Widow origin movie which we didn't get so far but might now given how well she does in The Avengers. Having caught something of a bug in the form of a slight fever, I wasn't able to go to the cinema again (but will try to night), but I did rewatch Iron Man. For some reason, what struck me in particular this time around was the sheer creepiness of Obediah Stane. I can see where the child abuse fanfic speculation comes from. Leaving fanfic aside, it also reminds me of one of my annoyances of Iron Man 2, to wit, the entire Howard Stark issues graft-on in combination with the arc reactor retcon, because seriously, if you want Tony dealing with daddy issues in addition to blood poisoning as the movie equvalent of the Demon in a Bottle comicverse storyline, the fallout of finding out about Obediah would have done the trick.

Remix Reveal: Historical Fiction and Star Trek

My main story this year owes its existence to a coincidence, to wit, that when we got the remix assignments, I had just gone through a period of reading up (and watching, in the case of the John Adams miniseries) on the history of the American Revolution and its founding fathers. (And mothers.) Culminating in a book on the Hemingses, a family of mixed race slaves whom we know more about than usual because three generations of them were owned by Thomas Jefferson, main author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States. Now, my assigned remixee, lferion, shared several fandoms with me, including one of my oldest, Highlander, and one of my newest, Sanctuary, and at first I thought I would remix one of those stories, but try as I might, I found myself going back to two of her poems, one of which, Monticello, was about Jefferson and visiting his home and won out over the other (which was Richard III connected and would also have resulted in historical fiction). The poem and all the thoughts and emotions that had accumulated in me while reading said books providedn an irresistable spark of inspiration. Which resulted in a story about James Hemings, his life, and his relationship with Jefferson. Why James? I hope the story will tell you. Writing it meant a lot to me, and that's putting it mildly. If you only read a single story of mine this entire year, let it be this one.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (The Hemings Remix)


I also participated in Remix Madness, which was fun, and resulted in a far more conventional remix of a story that penknife had written, Last Words. Last Words, set during the Star Trek: The Next Generation two parter Unification, deals with Spock's father Sarek, his relationship with Spock and his attempt to say goodbye to his son via Jean-Luc Picard. If you know penknife, you know she writes Vulcans, especially Sarek, like no one's business. Now Unification is a mixed effort of a two-parter, but the Sarek scene (depicted in my icon) and later the Picard and Spock scenes are excellent and moving, and the earlier TNG episode Sarek where Picard mind-melds with Sarek is among my favourite TNG eps, full stop. It occured to me that there were certain parallels in Picard's own relationship with his father to the Spock and Sarek situation, and also that Unification took place after Picard's Borg experience, which left its indelible mark on Jean-Luc. All of which and my affection for the character, whom I had never written safe in cameos and memes, resulted in a Jean-Luc Picard pov on the events of Last Words, which hopefully works in its own right:


Messenger (The Earl Grey Remix)