Links to all fanfiction I've written in various fandoms. That I'm admitting to.

( Alias )


( Angel the Series )


( Babylon 5 )

( Battlestar Galactica )


( Breaking Bad )

( Buffy the Vampire Slayer )

( Citizen Kane )

( David Copperfield )



( Doctor Who )

( Farscape )

( Earth: Final Conflict )

( Heroes )

( Highlander: The Series )

( Historical Fiction )

( Lost )

( MCU )
( Merlin )

( Mythology )


( Once upon a time )

( Order of the Air )

( Penny Dreadful )

( Rome )

( Star Trek: The Original Series )


( Star Trek: Deep Space Nine )


( Star Trek: Discovery )


( Star Trek: The Next Generation )

( Star Wars )

( Sunset Boulevard )

( The Americans )

( The Beatles )

( The Borgias )

( The Godfather )

( The Medici )


( Torchwood )

( X-Men )

( The West Wing )


( Crossovers )

Turns out that reccommending an old favourite makes one check up on the writer’s more recent productions, and was that ever rewarding! Behold what I found:

Brisingr (155649 words) by ironychan
Chapters: 31/31
Fandom: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Jane Foster/Thor, Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Characters: Jane Foster (Marvel), Tony Stark, Vision (Marvel), Wanda Maximoff
Summary:

When Jane Foster discovers an object on a course for the inner solar system, it looks like a job for the Avengers. But when what looked like a comet turns out to be a refugee ship from another galaxy, it's not clear whose job this is anymore. Tony Stark and the Vision find they have an uncomfortable amount in common with the creatures called the Brisings, while Jane learns that the aliens are being followed by something they thought they'd left behind five million years ago. Set post-AOU, pre-CW.

This is a wonderfully well plotted story, with complicated aliens (who have their own history and want something other than invade) to please my inner Star Trek loving heart. It’s one of those rare Marvel fics to give Jane Foster a central role, and one that’s about Jane as a scientist. Also, it’s a fantastic example of how to write two characters with opposite povs on how to deal with a key issue (in this case Jane and Tony), with both of them having good reasons for their respective attitudes, without making either of them less than sympathetic or three dimensional. And it offers hands down the best use of MCU Vision I’ve yet seen in either fanfic or movies. In conclusion, I love it to bits!

Or rather, really long stream of consciousness ramblings, with spoilers for everything. Before you embark on said ramblings, have a fun and fluffy fanfic rec, set post Winter Soldier and pre Age of Ultron, in which the team hangs out and enjoys some leftover weed. As you do.

Weird Science

( Now, hear me ramble on. )

So, the trailer for Spiderman: Homecoming debuted, and I find myself looking forward to a new Spiderman movie for the first time in eons. (I did end up liking the first Garfield movie, but I also felt it deeply unnecessary, and then the second Garfield took away what I had liked about the first one, so.) Which means Tom Holland's debut in Civil War has done its intended job for me, I suppose. And I freely admit one aspect I'm looking forward to is Tony Stark getting the morally ambiguous mentor role this time around. (Plus it won't be an origin story, THANK GOD. We really don't need to see Uncle Ben dying for the third time in a row.)

Incidentally, Tony saying "don't do anything I would do" suddenly made me wonder whether someone has done the glaringly obvious and made a vid about him and Howard to the tune of Harry Chapin's Cat's in the Cradle, preferably using the Johnny Cash version. So I checked YouTube, and sure enough, someone did, but the vid is four years old, which means they can't have used any of the Howard footage from Agent Carter (and probably none of the Tony footage from Age of Ultron), and of course not the virtual memory from Civil War, or the Tony and Peter interaction there. And the vid of my dreams would really be focused on the Tony-Howard parallels rather than just being about Howard's lack of time (though that of course would also be there, it's in the lyrics, after all). Using Ultron (Tony's creation) and his devastation possibly intercut with Doctor Faustus and the movie massacre (Howard's creation), the Howard-Peggy argument scene from "The Blitzkrieg Button" intercut with Tony and Steve early on in "Civil War", Howard and Tony both making presentations and speeches in their flamoboyant ways, Howard in the plane over Manhattan with Tony as Iron Man near the end of "Avengers", and so forth.

Goofiest fannish thing of the month I did: going to the Star Wars: Identies exhibition which is currently here in Munich and taking pictures of the Ahsoka Tano part of it.

( Under the cut )

Re: the exhibition itself, costumes, models and props from all eras. (I.e. from early storyboards for A New Hope to BB8.) The infamous slave girl costume for Leia from Return of the Jedi brought it home that poor Carrie Fisher must have hungered and/or drugged herself to a painfully thin state for that movie - those sizes are tiny!

It's very much aimed at a young audience, with educational mini lectures (I don't mean this in a deragotorily) all over the place, like in a science museum. One of them, however, awoke protective feelings about Shmi Skywalker I didn't know I had. The subject was different methods of parenting, and the speaker, using clips from A New Hope (Toshi Power Station!) and The Phantom Menace (Shmi tells Anakin only he can decide whether or not to go with Qui-Gon to become a Jedi), tells us that while both Owen & Beru and Shmi were loving parents, Owen and Beru gave Luke discipline and boundaries whereas Shmi basically let Anakin do what he wanted and hardly gave him any rules at all. (Implication: and thus a future dark sider was made.)

Now look here, Star Wars: Identies. I'm all for defending and giving the two Lars' credit, not least because Uncle Owen was vilified in some older SW fanfiction. However, you really can't compare these situations. "Hardly any rules" doesn't apply when both Shmi and her son are slaves, and their entire existence is ruled by someone else. And how was Shmi supposed to react once Qui-Gon's offer was on the table? "No, Anakin, remain on Tatoine and stay a slave with me. Maybe you won't die on the next pod race Watto puts you in, either." Sure.

And that's leaving aside that you can speculate about reasons for the way Anakin's personality developed endlessly, but "lack of rules to obey" certainly wasn't one of them. He went from spending the first nine years of his life as a slave to spending the next fourteen as a Jedi, in an order where you address your mentor as "Master", are expected to feel benevolently for all species in general but must not get overly attached to any particular individual, something practically everyone else takes for granted, and where you go where they tell you to go. And then he spent the remaining 20 plus years of his life as a Sith, in a situation where while a great many people feared him (with reason) he still was expected to unquestioningly and absolutely obey the Emperor, who between Watto and the Jedi Council certainly wins the price for "most obvious tyrant ever in charge of Anakin Skywalker".


Switching fandoms, since I'm in a complaining mood: yesterday, my suspension of disbelief snapped again in an otherwise not half bad post Civil War story where the author declared that Tony Stark was incredibly awkward around children. Look, author, I don't care how much you're attached to the fanon of Tony incapable of most social interactions, but we actually have screen canon on this. (I.e. how Tony Stark acts with children.) He's not awkward at all. Now you can argue he treats children like adults and whether or not that's a good idea, but he hits it off with Harley in Iron Man 3 almost instantly. There's no moment of "oh God, a child? What do I say?"; instead, Tony draws the correct conclusion that Harley is a mini nerd who gets bullied at school and bribes him with something to use against a bully, and has a wry, amused rapport with the kid throughout the rest of the movie. And in addition to Harley, there's the scene early on when Tony is having lunch with Rhodey and a couple of kids come to them because they want Tony to sign their pictures for them. Which he does without hesitation and with a friendly joke (that he then gets into a panic attack isn't because they're kids but because one of them mentions New York). Hell, in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, as far as I call, one official tells Nick Fury he wants Iron Man to come to his niece's birthday party, and it's not phrased like this is something unprecedented. In conclusion: MCU Tony Stark not only isn't awkward around kids, he seems to be well practiced in dealing with them. In fact, you could say he's got a talent for it.

For that matter, he's good with teenagers, too, if Peter Parker is anything to go by. Before anyone of the "recruiting Peter was unforgivable" persuasion strikes, I'd like to point out that by "good" I don't mean "morally upstanding". I mean "knowing how to interact with a teenager he's never met before and whom he wants something from". Which isn't something most adults can pull off.

Spent the weekend at home to be with the APs for Mother's Day, was otherwise very RL busy as well, so, just a few Iron Man fanfiction links. Both featuring Pepper because she's still on my mind, so I was looking for her in fanfic. (Neither of them has to do with the subject of my recent post, though, I hasten to add.):

( Still under a spoiler for Civil War cut to be safe )

Variation old fandom:

*self* Has a conversation with friend involving Iron Man 3. Rewatches IM3, is filled with great fondness, checks out fanfiction especially knowing what the impending arrival of Civil War will inevitably result in. Reads summaries on pages 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the AO3 Iron Man archive. Stares in disbelief.

Prevailing feeling: Who are these people supposed to be? Definitely not any characters I've seen in the movies...

( Some spoilery to IM3 observations of how this movie would have been written if scripted by the authors represented by the first few pages of the current archives )


Variation new fandom:

*self* is excited the Black Sails fandom finally is getting larger, new stories are being written, and hey, several of them about a pairing I'm very interested in with a fascinating on screen dynamic!

*self* Reads the summaries. In rarer cases, reads the stories despite that.

Prevailing feeling: Who are these people supposed to be? Definitely not the characters I've seen on my tv screen...

Aaaaanyway.I realise that everything is subjective, my interpretation is just that, mine, not obligatory for anyone else, etc., etc., different strokes for different people, and different tropes, etc. And every now and then, I actually find a gem where what appeals to me on screen is included in the fanfiction rendition. As, for instance, this excellent Silver and Flint emotional power play:

If your feelings aren't a story

I'm currently in Prague again (as enchanting as in April, though as then, I'm not here for sightseeing), so have little time, but did manage to browse throught this year's remixes. Here are some I especially enjoyed:

Buffy:

Letters never sent (The Crumbled Sheets Remix

Xander, trying to tell Jesse's parents what happened in the BTVS pilot. It's a story entirely composed of letter attempts, terse, gutwrenching and all too likely.

Fairy Tales:

Feathers and Nettles (The Sibling Remix)

Based on Anderson's tale of the six swans, a story about the youngest brother and his sister. Bittersweet.

Galaxy Quest:

Like no business I know (The Climbing Uphill Remix)

How Gwen experienced the show. Loved it.

MCU:

Magic Boxes (The What Remains Remix):

Howard builds magic boxes and out of them come weapons. Tony is his greatest creation and his worst nightmare.

Takes the various versions of Howard movies and Agent Carter have presented and creates a coherent whole. It also includes the encounter between Peggy and Vision I never knew I wanted until I read it!

I reread Sansom's Shardlake series - there will be a new novel this autumn - and concluded again that this might be my favourite current series of mysteries set in a historical era. (Here is an earlier detailed review.) The novels definitely are my favourites set during the reign of Henry VIII. Yes, even above Hilary Mantel's Cromwell novels, possibly because the later give me the sense of Mantel being just a bit too much in love with Cromwell (who shows up in the early Shardlake novels, too, since our hero starts out as a lawyer working for him, and is much thought about in the later novels after his death), or it might be the freedom of not knowing how the main regular characters (Matthew Shardlake, Jack Barak, Tamasin) are going to end up since they're all fictional. Also, Sansom knows his Tudor lawcourts like no novelist I've ever seen and makes being a Tudor lawyer as fascinating to layperson me as The Good Wife does it currently for Chicago lawyering. Speaking of Hilary Mantel's Cromwell novels, though, or rather, the movie versions currently being shot, here's a hilarious picture of Henry VIII, as played by Damian Lewis, taking a selfie. Okay, I should have phrased this "Damian Lewis taking a selfie while in costume as Henry on the set", but who doubts Henry would have LOVED taking selfies?

(Also: is Damian Lewis the first genuine redhead to play Henry VIII?)

From Tudors to Avengers:

The planned (and unused) Hawkeye scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Would have been a cool scene, but I can see why they cut it, if that was supposed to be Clint's only appearance in the film. It depends on the audience knowing him for the emotional impact, and strange as it may seem, not everyone watching one or two of the Marvel films has watched all of them.

Incidentally, while pondering why, when I loved Captain America: The Winter Soldier as a movie, Bucky and Steve/Bucky aren't relevant to my interests, so to speak, at one point I thought it was because we don't see much of non-brainwashed Bucky in the movie and what we saw of him in the previous CA film just felt like standard best pal stuff, so there wasn't much for me to get attached to beyond an abstract "poor guy, what a life" level. But then I realised that in terms of screentime, there is even less of Clint Barton, who also walks around brainwashed through most of the only film where he's in so far with any sizable amount of screentime (that one minute in Thor really doesn't count), and yet The Avengers immediately managed to make me emotionally invested in the Natasha and Clint relationship, and in Clint, with all the attachment I can't muster for Bucky and Steve/Bucky. I would say it's because I care about Natasha and that her concern for her brainwashed partner and determination to rescue him moves me on her account, but I care about Steve, too. And yet. *ponders*

Meanwhile, a missing scene set during the first Iron Man movie which celebrates the Rhodey and Tony friendship, lovely to read:


They Don't Know Where We Come From (4699 words) by ladyflowdi
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Avengers (2012), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man (Movies)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Emotions, Arc Reactor, Missing Scene, Medical Procedures, Medicine, Psychological Trauma, Trauma, Recovery, PTSD
Summary:

“Shrapnel,” Tony says, and alarms go off around his ears and he can’t breathe and the pain is going to eat him up from the head down. “In my heart. I made it. Not the shrapnel. ...Well. The shrapnel too.”

When thalia_seawood visited last week, we chatted on the (cinematic) Marvelverse (and watched some), which sent me on a reading binge. Or rather, a looking-for-stories binge, since I'm not into several of the most popular pairings and was in the mood for gen more than romance anyway, but luckily, the fandom is so large that you can find what you're looking with some patience. Or with lucky, when there happens to be a ficathon at the same time.



The Sky and I (6706 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton & Thor
Characters: Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov, Thor (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Thor The Dark World Compliant, Iron Man 3 Compliant, Captain America the Winter Soldier Compliant, (as much as it can be with the film not being out yet), Recovery, Developing Friendships, Introspection, New York, Not Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Thor Is Not Stupid
Summary:

If this is going to work, Clint needs to remember that Thor is not his brother.

This is not only one of those rare stories where Clint gets to deal with what Loki did to him in Avengers without the story leading up to hurt/comfort sex, but also a rare story that uses Thor in ways other than make fish-out-of-water jokes and/or pair him up with Loki. It makes sense that Clint would be wary at first around another Asgardian, but team-building stories post Avengers rarely tackle that, either. In short, it's a gem all around, and while Clint and Thor are the main focus, all the other Avengers are well written, too, and I loved reading it.


Queen of the Mountain (1397 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov
Summary:

Remix fic, Avengers Remix Round 2

Tony needs some help, some advice on heroing. He gets a little more than anticipated.

Also a rarity: Tony and Natasha bonding (again, without leading uip to a pairing). This one is set post Iron Man 3, and executes its "Tony learns from Natasha" premise very well indeed in a short space.


Once Around the Park (1896 words) by AnonEhouse
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man (Comic), Iron Man - All Media Types
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Happy Hogan & Tony Stark
Characters: Happy Hogan, Tony Stark
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff and Crack, First Meetings
Summary:

A totally non-canonical version of how Tony and Happy met.

(Although it's entirely possible that Marvel simply refused to tell the truth. I've read at least 2 different versions in the comics.)

Iron Man 3 left me craving more stories about Happy Hogan, and while there still aren't many, there are now at least some, including this delightful "first meeting" tale.