How better to begin the new year than with a look back at the last? :)

1. Your main fandom of the year?

I'm a fandom polygamist, always was, always will be. However, I think the fandoms that occupied me a bit more than the others this year were Breaking Bad and Once upon a Time.


2. Your favourite film watched this year?

Wadjda, my review of same linked, which was absolutely amazing and would have been even if it wasn't a) the first Saudi Arabian big screen movie, b) the first Saudi Arabian film directed by a woman, and c) all about a girl.

Runner-up: Iron Man III, which broke the curse of the third movie in a popular franchise being weaker than the previous ones, was highly entertaining and provided a good wrap up to the Iron Man films while leaving Tony and friends available for Avengers shenanigans.
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3. Your favourite book read this year?

It's a tie between Steel Blues, which is just the kind of ensemble adventure with great character stuff I love, and the first volume of Mark Lewisohn's monumental Beatles biography.


4. Your favourite TV show of the year?

It was a very good year for tv, both new (how so awesome, Orphan Black?), and recurring/finishing, but this, too, is a tie of the two named in 1). Though if you push me: Breaking Bad. Because it is complete now and thus one can say it really remained and ended as one of the most amazing accomplishments on tv.


5. Your favourite online fandom community of the year?

I loved the disussion of The Charioteer which naraht was hosting on her journal, but as far as communities go: 2ceuponatime, which will resume its s1 rewatch now that the show proper is on hiatus. It makes think of b5_revisited a few years ago.


6. Your best new fandom discovery of the year?

Considering I didn't discover BB this year but did start to marathon Once upon a Time after Christmas last year, it's the fairy tale show, together with Orphan Black which I marathoned in the summer, and Bates Motel (ditto). Of these three, Orphan Black wins in sheer quality, but Once upon a Time in terms of my emotional investment.


7. Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?

Homeland. Alas.


8. Your TV boyfriend of the year?

Tricky. I don't really have one in the sense the meme means, I suppose, and in terms of my male tv loves of years past (and forever - Londo Mollari, I will never quit you *g*). Not that I didn't like various male characters, sometimes a lot, but never in the sense of crushing on them. Although, you know, if I had to pick one to have an affair with, well, err, I'd probably go for Rodrigo Borgia, him being Pope not withstanding, in the hope I'd get a graceful exit like Giulia and not a bloody demise courtesy of general scheming in Rome.

9. Your TV girlfriend of the year?

Norma Bates. As she's ever so doomed by narrative, I'm trying to steel myself for the inevitable. But Norma is such a vivid, rich character, impulsive, loving, controlling, repressive, resourceful, mamma bearish, hopelessly damaged, helplessly damaging.

10. Your biggest squee moment of the year?

The Day of the Doctor was everything I'd hoped the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special would be. Also, in April I saw Helen Mirren and Judi Dench both on stage in London. Don't make me choose.

(The amazing last bunch of Breaking Bad episodes, particularly Ozymandias, certainly left me breathless, emotionally wrung through and pulse racing, but squee is the wrong term for what I felt.)


11. The most missed of your old fandoms?

You know, I always go periodically back to my old fandoms like Star Trek or Babylon 5 or Highlander, so I can't say I miss them. Writing a Torchwoodstory for this year's DW remix made me rewatch a lot more TW than was needed for the story and made me miss the show, but most certainly not the fandom, the majority which I always remained at a cautious distance from due to my utter lack of Jack/Ianto shipping.

12. The fandom you haven’t tried yet, but want to?

Other than Slings and Arrows, which the "this year I really will do it!" show to marathon, I'm now tentatively eyeing Sleepy Hollow and The Americans.

13. Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year?

Orphan Black, season 2: will it keep up the quality or have a second year downfall? Also, seeing MCU Natasha Romanov again in Captain America II, and watching the third part of The Hobbit.

There is one cinema in Munich which occasionally shows those National Theatre productions from Britain which otherwise we continental Europeans are (legally) deprived of. Considering the RSC is getting into the transmission business with David Tennannt in Richard II, I was already hoping said Munich cinema gets a contract with the Stratford crowd as well, when, lo and behold, I stumbled across this great bit of news: The National Theatre will broadcast a Macbeth starrting Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston! This makes me exceedingly happy, not only because the NT as mentioned is an option here in Munich, but because this is dream casting. With one exception - Judi Dench and Ian McKellen in the 1970s - all the Macbeths, both on screen and on stage, which I've seen had the problem that either Lady M or Macbeth was great, but not both. However, Alex "River Song" Kingston as Lady M and Kenneth Branagh as Macbeth should ensure this problem is solved, and I'm a very happy theatre addict over here.

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Elementary meta by abigail_n: Watson, I Need You: Thoughts on Elementary's First Season

And a couple of fanfic links:

Iron Man: Show me your true colors Amusing missing scenes Rhodey-centric friendship tale set around IM2 and IM3. The banter between Rhodey and Tony is dead on.


Once More Into The Fray: another good entry of Pepper dealing with the spoilery thing from IM3 subgenre which uses Natasha and the rest of the gang well.


Breaking Bad:


A matter of time: Future fic, terse and heartbreakingly to the point, featuring Skyler and Jesse.

Brought to you courtesy of my renewed Avengers fanfiction reading: there is one bit of fanon (err, one of several, but bear with me) that I hoped would be gone but is still around, and that's Tony bringing up the fact she stabbed him and spied on him to Natasha at every opportunity. Which just strikes me as wrong. Yes, he isn't thrilled by that and brings it up - in Iron Man II, just after it has happened. In Avengers, the only bit of direct interaction between them is when Tony shows up at Stuttgart, overrides the loudspeakers of Natasha's quinjet to play Shoot To Thrill and asks "Agent Romanoff, miss me?" before engaging Loki. (Which makes her smile.) This to me does not sound like a man who still isn't over the fact Natasha did her job (and, um, saved his life) months after it happened. As teasings go, this is a fond one (and all three Iron Man films plus Avengers gave us enough examples of how Tony Stark sounds when he's delivering a hostile taunt for comparison).

Do I think he trusts her? No (and nor does Natasha, hence her "Stark trusts me as far as he can throw - " line to Coulson.) But not out of personal animosity; more in a realistic estimation of what her job means (and that she's really good at it). When Steve asks, re: Fury, why Tony would assume Fury is lying to them, the reply is "He's a spy - Captain, he's the spy, his secrets have secrets", not "Fury tricked me by letting Natasha work undercover for me". In conclusion: I wish that writers, if they have Tony interacting with Natasha, would take in the fact he's not still in Iron Man II mode. As both Avengers and Iron Man 3 demonstrate.

The conference is over, I'm on my way back to Munich, and am looking forward to catching up with Elementary and Doctor Who (despite the fact it's another Gatiss episode). Meanwhile, because sometimes the fandom gods love me, lettered, she of the fantastic Responsible Science series, aka the smartest, most layered fanfiction The Avengers has inspired so far, has written 8000 words meta on Iron Man 3: Here.

(Still not using the icon I really want to use for fear of spoilery implications.)

In this interview with Marvel honcho Kevin Feige, the passage about Black Widow made me dance the dance of joy. Then he goes on to discuss the question of female superheroines and whether or not they'll fair well on screen:


Q: There’s been talk of Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow getting her own spin-off films. How far along are we from seeing the next female superheroine in her own story?

A: Well, I think you saw it in Avengers. I think that’s one of the many amazing things Joss Whedon can do. I think people are going to be surprised by how powerful Scarlett is in this movie, and how evolved her role is. We have already planned her next appearances and where to take that character because we believe in it and we believe in her in a big, big way. When will there be a standalone? Both is what we’re heading toward. A lot of it is that we’re only going to make two movies a year, maybe sometimes it’ll be one movie a year like this year, maybe someday it’ll be three movies a year just depending on what comes together. But really, it’s two movies. So there’s kind of a backup on the runway right now in terms of when can something go. We do like when some of the characters appear in other people’s movies.

Q: Everybody likes that!

A: Yeah. And that’s probably where you’ll see Black Widow next. But my favorite scene in Avengers is when Loki and Widow ( do spoilery things )

I love that. I’d love to explore that deeper.

Q: My experience in watching Avengers was that I left wanting to see a lot more of Hawkeye and Black Widow. There’s always traditionally a romance element to these movies, but that was the pairing I wanted to see much more of. Maybe I’ll make my own fan fiction… (You and hundreds of fans, journalist, I hope, says this ljler.)

A: [Laughs] That’s great.

(...)

Q: Going back to the subject of women and the female presence in this community, obviously you’re trying to make four-quadrant movies here.

A: I hope so.

Q: What do you think is the primary reason behind the lack of female superhero stories in this genre? Are they trickier to tell, address different kinds of themes?

A: No – I think there were some bad ones, and they got a bad rap because they weren’t particularly good and they didn’t make a lot of money. There’s a movie called The Hunger Games that came out a few weeks ago, and just because it’s not based on a comic doesn’t mean that’s not a female superhero movie. That’s what she is. And it did tremendously well. So I think when they’re done well, the audience will come to it.

Q: When in your estimation have they been done well before?

A: Well, I would say Kill Bill, or I could go as far back as Alien and Aliens. When they’re done good, they are just awesome hero movies. It’s only when they don’t do well that they say, "Oh, it’s because it was about a woman." No, it’s because the movie was bad.

Q: How do you feel about a movie like Elektra, then?

A: [Pauses] Did you enjoy that movie?

Q: I enjoyed… parts of that movie.

A: Right. [Smiling] I think if that had been a better movie, more people would have come to see it.

Very true, and of course common sense, but it's still (sadly) not something I'm used to hear someone on the producer side stating (they previously were more inclined to mutter something about men and women both going to films about men but men not going to films about women), so I'm glad to read it now. And of course now I'm hoping for that backstory/origin tale more fervently than ever.

Mind you, I hope they'll have someone write/direct it who keeps that balance The Avengers struck with Natasha and her relationships. What made movieverse Black Widow & Hawkeye or Black Widow/Hawkeye, depending on how you interpret the relationship, instantly appealing was the sense they'd seen each other at their worst and had each other's back, but also the fierce competence. ( Spoilery stuff is discussed ) They also make a captivating combination because of the equality in shades of grey in them. Neither of them is a figure of light morally elevating the other. So, here's what I wouldn't want in a BW origin film: Peter Bishop William Adama either Hawkeye or another male character as Natasha's core of existence and thief of story. As long as that's avoided, bring on Black Widow: The Movie!

Incidentally, also mentioned in the flurry of interviews making the rounds now was Iron Man 3, which as I said I'm not nearly as curious about as the next Avengers installment, but when Feigner said Tony would be isolated in that one and would not be able to call anyone for help (makes sense; they need a Watsonian reason for the other Avengers not to show up in an emergency after this film) and compared the situation he would be in to the cave in Afghanistan, I suddenly had an inkling about which comicverse storyline they might be adapting (loosely). One of the crackiest yet irresistable ones, which is the sole reason why despite his partly infuriating decisions (*cough* Brand New Day *cough*) as chief editor of Marvel I can't hate Joe Quesada, because back in his writing days he penned the tale of how Tony Stark's armor gets sentient and turns into an abusive boyfriend who after getting rid of his girlfriend (not Pepper in the comics, that was the era of Rumiko, but I suppose it will be Pepper in the film if they really adapt this) and ruining his reputation kidnaps him to a lonely island to have it out with Tony and his constantly armor-changing ways, complete with "you never truly loved me" etc. and stripping him naked. After a few days of survivor games on the desert island where Tony has to use all his wits (since tech isn't an option) we get the grand climax in which inevitably the arc reactor that keeps him alive has the obligatory malfunction and the armor realises without Tony there is no point to existence. Presumably a film adaption would come up with something different. :)

7 – Have you ever had a fic change your opinion of a character?

There are several answers for this, as a reader and one as a writer. I had not paid much attention to the Minbari characters during my original watching of Babylon 5; not because I disliked them or found them dull, but because they just didn't capture me the way the Centauri and the Narn did. While I rewatched the occasional favourite episodes, I didn't do a rewatch of the entire show until the dvds came out, and by that time I had read the stories of deborah_judge and eye_of_a_cat, featuring Lennier, Delenn, Neroon in various combinations, and lo and behold, this time around I found myself very intrigued by the Minbari scenes (and occasionally frustrated); Delenn especially came across as a far more complicated character than I had seen her as back in the 90s.

Then there are the negative examples. Back in the day during the Spike Wars, before I went zen and stopped reading both Buffy discussions and much of Buffy fanfiction, I was verging towards Spike dislike not on account of anything the poor guy had done on screen but because of the relentless woobiefication and the sheer amount of grovel fic. Thankfully, by the time AtS season 5 came along the lack of fanfiction reading had worked and I was back to liking Harmony's Blondie Bear. (Especially him and Angel being petty to each other, because it was so anti-woobiefication.) I even, dare one say it, sought out fanfiction. (Some.) A female example of this would be Lilah, whom I had liked all the way back in s1 and 2 when most people's Wolfram & Hart lawyer of choice had been the other L.M., Lindsey MacDonald. However, by the way we were in season 5 of AtS and Lilah was overwhelmingly popular, I came across first a story in which Buffy comes on to Lilah and is turned down and then a story in which Giles (!) lectures Wesley on how unworthy he was of Lilah, and I had to quit Lilah fanfiction because that pesky fanfic-induced dislike raised its head again.

And then there is the example of opinion created by fanfiction. Sort of. I usually avoid reading fandoms I haven't watched because I am a firm believer of the thesis that you can diverge from canon as much as you like, as long as you know the canon first. And nothing annoys me more than finding people writing fanfiction about a fandom the original source of which they've never seen/read and only know via other fanfiction, because that usually leads to horrid mischaracterisation. However, in my roleplaying days at theatrical_muse I interacted with a lot of characters from fandoms I wasn't familiar with, in addition to those I knew, which meant I "met" these characters in their role-played, i.e. written by a fan, guise first. One of those was Tony Stark. Bear in mind this was before the movies and at a point where Tony, due to Civil War, was at his most unpopular. I entirely blame likeadeuce for not only making me be intrigued by and liking Tony Stark but hunting down various Marvel volumes to get his backstory. Including the entire Civil War storyline. Yep. The Tony fondness is all her fault.

As a writer, there were various stories where I felt exploring a character fictionally made me know her/him better, but only in one instance was there really an emotional change. This was Nowhere Man, a Torchwood/Doctor Who/Deep Space Nine crossover I wrote for Multiverse a couple of years ago, during the hiatus of TW's first and second season. Before writing the story, I didn't actually like any of the TW gang. I found Owen interesting (which is why he's the point of view character of the story), but that wasn't the same as like, and was somewhat indifferent with the occasional spark of dislike towards everyone else. Writing the story, however, made me fond of the lot of them and their show, which I hadn't expected, and this was a good foundation for starting season 2, which as it turned out cemented my fondness for the TW team by letting it act actually like a team and having in general more good character moments and better writing. (And then Children of Earth went to the stratosphere with the writing quality, but that's another story.) But Nowhere Man was where it all started, and once I had finished writing the story, I realized I was looking forward to season 2 - when did that happen? At some point while writing about team TW and Garak during the Year That Wasn't.


( The rest of the questions )

From penknife:

Go to your icons page in Livejournal and look at the first two icons (the one on the right and the one on the left). Pair up the characters in the two icons. Go to the next two and do the same until you have a list of ships. Then...well, write 'em.

It's been a while since I've done this one, and I have new icons and new fandoms, so I gave it another go. Filtering out combinations which remained the same since the last time, as well as real people not dead since centuries and the same characters twice, here are the remaining 'ships of crackiness and sometimes amazing fitness:

( Say who now? )

First of all, there is a great Brian Bendis interview here, mainly about Avengers Prime, aka the upcoming "how Tony, Steve and Thor make up at long last" tale. Now, if you remember Civil War: The Confession from two years back, the fact Bendis basically ships Cap/Iron Man is no news. Quoth the man: "Some of my favorite moments of my Avengers stuff has been the aftermath or prologues to the events, whether I wrote them or not, like with ' Civil War: The Confession.' I wanted to do the opposite of 'The Confession' with this," Bendis continued. "'The Confession' has Tony and Steve letting each other have it in as brutal a fashion as possible. And I thought that they should let each other have it, but with the idea that they get over it. That they learn to live with each other, or don't. So initially, it was going to be a one act play like that, where they just let each other have it. Then I called up Editor Tom Brevoort and said, 'I actually think they need to go out and have an adventure together to remind them why they love each other so much.'" Other choice quotes include "It's almost like a superhero couples retreat [Laughs]. They're either going to work things out or not", and, re: another favourite Bendis character, "let's just say that Luke Cage might be the Sean Penn to the paparazzi of the Marvel Universe". Good times, good times.

(The only difference to the gazillion post-Civil War fanfic scenarios where Steve Rogers gets resurrected and he and Tony Stark reconcile I can see is that these usually don't occur as a threesome with Thor...)

Now, on to the also partly by comic book writers written Lost, where at long last we get another Sun and Jin episode.

( You're just not meant to be together )

Blood Ties

Liberation: plotty, UST and other -tensions soaked story around Mike, Henry and Vicki, solving a case in the aftermath of the Father Mendoza incident. Mmmmm.

Dollhouse

For Those Rebellious: futurefic, in which Priya-Sierra and Tony-Victor are trying to figure out who they are after the Dollhouse.

It starts somewhere: Topher backstory, mixing bright, cheerful and absolutely chilling, very appropriate to the character.

Iron Man

Chaos Magic: post-Secret Invasion, just pre-World's Most Wanted, this is a great Tony Stark portrait at this point.


Momo

Several Architects: lovely, lovely Michael Ende fanfic which as much of what Ende wrote is also great meta on the art of storytelling.


Oresteia

Last Days: Clytemnestra, ruling in Argos, encounters Odysseus. Sharp and memorable.

Der Ring des Nibelungen

Das Lied von der Erde: the story of Wotan and Erda, great to read even if you're not familiar with Wagner's interpretation of Norse mythology. (BTW, the story is in English, not German, non-German speakers.)


Twin Peaks

And Devil Makes Three: absolutely awesome story about the first meeting and subsequent first case Albert Rosenfield shares with Dale Cooper. The snark, the suspense and the mixture of funny and creepy rules, and the character voices are brilliant.

And a treat for friends of Doctor Who and the Latin language:

In Pompeium: given that the family from Fires of Pompeii was from the Cambridge Latin Course, this is only fair!

Simon Callow, who to date has written my two favourite biographies about Orson Welles, has seen Me and Orson Welles (aka the new movie using the producton of Julius Caesar as a background and likes it, writing:

Miraculously, they’ve got Welles right, slap down the middle. The English actor Christian McKay, who bears a striking facial resemblance, and reproduces Welles’s cadences with accuracy (though pardonably he lacks some of the range and richness of what was, after all, one of the greatest voices of the 20th, or probably any other, century), succeeds where none of the many actors who have attempted to play Welles have, in that he suggests the astonishing alternation of masculine and feminine on which everyone commented. Now seductive, now abrasive, now skittish and now savage, McKay sweeps all before him, not counting the cost to himself or others, which is exactly what Welles did.

Now I'm really looking forward to the film, though it probably will take its time before being released in Germany.

On another note, and speaking of charismatic egotistic geniuses with a streak of self-loathing, here's an excellent article about Matt Fraction's run on Iron Man so far, which explains why I'm really fond of reading it, though I don't often review individual issues.

And lastly, more discoveries from the AO3, this time a Sarah Connor Chronicles story:

Blessed are your eyes because they see: James Ellison and John Henry, in the future. Firstly, I was delighted to discover a story about Ellison. Even better, a story about Ellison which doesn't pair him up with Sarah. Not that I don't like Ellison/Sarah combinations as well, but you know, the second season has involved Ellison in these fascinating relationships with Catherine Weaver and John Henry, and I can't understand why this hasn't been explored more in fanfiction. I was thrilled to find this gem.