Patron Saint of Falling Over Things

Ours so far has been cool and occasionally rainy, which is lovely after Thursday's swelter.

I had three fics for Yuletide, which I've posted to my journal. I'm trying to do that more. The Archive might not be there forever, and it's a good idea to have a back-up. And besides, I'm trying to post more to comms on Dreamwidth, because that's somewhere where DW could do with more activity. I miss the days of busy comms on Livejournal.

This was my fic round-up:
A Beautiful Lie, (Killjoys, Johnny and Lucy)
Four things that didn't happen to Laurent, and one that could have changed everything, (Captive Prince, 5 AUs. SO MUCH FUN TO WRITE!)
Very Special Guest Star (The Muppets/Indiana Jones crossover. I never knew how much I would love writing Piggy. Wow.)

I finally get to rec the fics I betaed, too:

For lilacsigil
Five Ridiculous Things That Never Happened to Nancy Whitehead (and one awesome thing that did) (Unbeatable Squirrel Girl)
I love AUs, and I love Squirrel Girl, so this was awesome.

The Uncanny X-Gwen (Gwen Variants comics covers)
Fic for this Spider-Gwen cover - the one where she's all the X-Men, or at least, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler and Colossus. So. Many Gwens.

Jus Tertii (Daredevil comics)
Kirsten McDuffie (before she's dating Matt Murdock), who just wants to be a regular ADA, but can't because superheroes. I love that Stephen Strange consults for the District Attorney's Office. He so would!

No More Dominion (Spider-Gwen comics, Matt/Elektra, Foggy Nelson)
In this universe, Matt Murdock is evil, and he spends a lot of time considering his own evil. And his roommate at college is so unrelentingly nice, it's unbearable.

And one for monanotlisa:
Nobody Move (And Nobody Gets Hurt) (Killjoys, Dutch/Johnny, Dutch/D'Avin)
Set immediately after the last episode, a lovely friends-to-lovers rescue fic. Such awesome Killjoys fic this year!!

It was a really great Yuletide this year. (I say that every year, but it's true.)

We're home from seeing X-Men: Days of Future Past, and all you can hear in the house is the tappity tap of keys. We stepped in the door, and I said "To the internet!" Actually, I took a nap. But lilacsigil was sitting in the dark tapping away when I got up.

I am having all kinds of nostalgia for the years I've been in this fandom, the movies that have come and gone, the friends I've made as the canon expanded and expanded, and it's really lovely. Sloppy and emotional hugs for everyone, okay?

( (Extremely) Scattered Thoughts )


For future reference, and because the release of the movie is all over the place, I've collected a bunch of review posts here:

lilacsigil: here.

andraste: here.

selenak: here.

sineala: here.


OMG, I can use my X-Men icons again. And my X-Men tag. And there's an uptick in kudos, because people are reading more X-Men fic. comicstore_news is full and plump like a happy chicken. And, and, and!

Ack, life is oddly frantic!

- Planted our tomato seeds today, along with some Lebanese cucumbers and some coriander. I planted another thyme plant out in the back garden, where most of our herbs seem to be accumulating. And lilacsigil bought a bay tree, which she transplanted into a pot to sit down with the veggie beds. Peas and lettuces are growing!

- Finished my baby afghan. I still need to wash it and reblock it, but it's done, and I really like the way the trim came out. I had a lot of yarn left over, so I made a little pixie bonnet, and I've started a pair of booties:

( Booty and bonnet sounds surprisingly rude, actually. )

Title: The Persistence of Memory
Fandom: X-Men: First Class, X-Men comicsverse
Rating: PG
Words: 19.5K
Characters/Pairings: Emma Frost/Moira MacTaggert, Natasha Romanov, Sage
Warnings: Sixties-era misogyny, James Bond levels of violence
Notes: Thank you to lilacsigil for beta-reading, to artmetica for the beautiful art, and to chosenfire28 for running xmenbigbang.

Summary:
After Cuba, Moira is left with no memories and a career in tatters. She should know better than to engage with another telepath, but the opportunity to reclaim her life is too great a temptation. When Magneto and his new Brotherhood attack, Moira offers their target, Emma Frost, another option. She is surprised to find that Emma has an agenda of her own: to find and stop the scientists responsible for Shaw's anti-telepathic helmet.

This tentative alliance becomes a frantic dash across Europe with the USSR's best agent on their heels. Car chases, lipstick cameras, midnight journeys to Moscow, brainwashing and fighting on top of trains: can a disgraced spy and a vigilante telepath stop world powers from exploiting mutants again?



( Full sized art, links to fic, art and fanmix  )

xmmficathon has been and gone! I wrote three stories, omg. Also got to write "fine freckled erection". Personally, I feel this to be my finest moment in fanfiction. Also my finest moment was not titling that fic "Spotted Dick". (Actually, my excellent and discerning beta said "Fuck, no!")


The fic written for me:

As Is by eva_roisin (Charles, a kind of one-sided Charles/Alex)
This is the year that passes after the events on the beach in Cuba: Charles adapting to life post-spinal injury, building up the school, dealing with the world at large. It's amazing - beautifully written, and so damn real that it hurts. Go read it, it's one of my favourite fics in the fandom.

And the two fics I betaed:
Wednesday by a_q (Henry, Raven)
This is set post-X3 but builds on the relationship between Hank and Raven. It's very bittersweet, but hopeful in the right amounts, too. You really get a feeling for the long, long road this particular friendship has been down.

Chase Your Shadow by lilacsigil (Ororo, Jean, Charles/Erik)
Ah ha ha, this is so deliciously timey-wimey that I can hardly bear it. A post-X3 fixit that fixes EVERYTHING, but in a satisfying, time-bending way. Storm POV, some lovely Charles/Erik moments, many cameos, and a wonderful Jean Grey.

And some recs I enjoyed, apparently in alphabetical order:

Laced Up Both My Boots by aphrodite_mine (Emma/Moira)
Smoking hot Emma/Moira femslash, very tense and edgy - this should have been in the movie. Or just in a movie by itself.

Stay by ion_bond (Mystique/Destiny, Erik/Charles)
I love Destiny fic at any time, but this is really good Destiny fic - beautiful and achy, in the way that things are with Destiny: you can take different paths, but things inevitably come around to the same point, and she knows it. A great feeling of the era, and how it shapes the X-Men and the Brotherhood.

The Heel by lonelywalker
Kurt! And Toad! The Munich Circus ventures forth to London, and with it, Kurt starts to look at the world, and also at his family and the role he has within the circus. This stitches the First Class universe to the previous movieverse in a really clever way. (And how much do I love that the first thing most of us older fans do is try to make the canons match?)

Imaginary Life Journey by renata_kedavra (Raven, Erik, Kurt, Charles)
This one caught my eye because renata had three language betas; I reasoned that had to make for an interesting story. And it did - two different might have beens for Kurt in the First Class universe, and how a variation in ideology can have a vast effect on the outcome of a meeting. Some excellent philosophical conversations in here, as well as a fantastic Erik/Mystique rapport.

Carry That Weight by selenak (Jessica Jones, Mystique)
JESSICA JONES omg. This is freaking awesome - if you've read the Alias comics, or come across Jessica Jones in the larger Marvelverse, you'll love it. If you don't know Jessica Jones, this is what you need to know: she's rude and she's brutally honest and she specialises in putting her finger directly on that ouchy place you don't want anyone to touch. She's a PI, she's involved in the superhero world in ways that are sometimes embarrassing and sometimes heartbreaking. Now go and read an awesome fic about her.

Soon to Become by sullensiren (Charles/Erik, Raven/Azazel)
Post-movie fic - Charles and Erik build their school - Erik bakes! - but domestic bliss aside, this is a really satisfying look at why the Erik/Charles dynamic eventually breaks down.

So many fics! Such a diversity of characters, too! The master list is here.

ETA: Wow, that's a lot of code. I'm sure to have borked something.

Title: Instant Pleasure
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Rating: NC-17
Words: 1300
Characters/Pairings: Sean Cassidy/Alex Summers, Hank McCoy/Alex Summers
Warnings: None
Summary: Sean embraces the atmosphere of openness at Charles' house, but not everyone there feels the same.
Notes: Written for zephyrprince for the 2011 xmmficathon. Thank you to lilacsigil for the beta.

( Apart from Charles and Erik, Hank was the oldest of them and the best educated, but Sean would put good money on him being the most innocent. )

Title: Iterations
Summary: "I knew Charles Xavier at Oxford. I used to meet him in a pub now and then. We'd have a drink, we'd flirt. You know, I should have married him. He'd have been a real father to Jason."
Recipient: ion_bond
Request Used: In 2000, Charles Xavier travels through time back to 1953. What would he tell his younger self? Magneto/Xavier, please. (Any method of time travel, mechanical or mutant-powered, real or illusory is fine with me, although I like Forge and Bishop and movieverse Jason Stryker WAY better than Cable.)
Rating: R
Warnings: Domestic violence
Notes: Written for xmmficathon. Thank you to lilacsigil and d_generate_girl for beta reading. Ion_bond, I, uh, loved your prompt so much I also made a tiny fanmix, which is here.

(  It's late when the argument turns nasty enough that neither of his parents care if the neighbours can hear. )

We went to see the movie again today - that's twice in two weeks, you have no idea how amazing that is. That's how much I love this fandom, people. I will sit in a car for eight hours, for a total of four hours of entertainment.

(And then lilacsigil had lots of fun at the prosthodontist. She went in for a crown, she came out needing dental surgery.I guess they thought we needed a little excitement in our lives again. *sighs*)

But at least we saw the movie!

( My thoughts, good and bad but mostly squeeful )

Other X-Men things:

Go sign up for xmmficathon! This was my first ficathon ever. Back in the day. By which I mean, 2006. But go sign up - you can write for any movieverse, you have an option to nominate crossovers with other Marvel fandoms, and to bring in comicsverse characters if you want. This is a super fun exchange, and I'm very fond of it. Sign-ups are here.

Did you know there's a newsletter that is relevant to your interests? comicstore_news and its dreamwidth feed, comicstore_news_feed. I've been editing this newsletter since back in the day. It's for DC and Marvel fandom, and we link fic, meta, graphics, and pretty much anything else.

marina has posted this: Erik Lehnsherr and the Holocaust - I think it's a great post, I think it's also a great resource if you're considering writing this part of Erik's life, and you want to do it respectfully.

And now? I'm going to prowl the kink memes, see if there's something there that sparks off some ideas.

See my lol-drama Chase icon? I'm having lol-drama, of a sort. My posting day for au_bigbang ddderis June 3rd, and the beta-reader who usually helps Ameri-pick when I write American fandoms has had to drop out.

Would anyone be willing or able to do a quick read-through of my big bang and help with my Australian/American disconnect? It's a House/X-Men crossover, it's Chase-centric gen with some slashy Chase/Jason Stryker overtones. It's 25K. You'd be the third of three beta-readers, so hopefully it's in pretty good shape with regard to grammar and plot.

I'm pretty much ready to bribe, at this point. With Tim-Tams.

Please?

Title: Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Rating: PG
Fandom: X-Men/Iron Man
Summary: A protest at Stark Industries proves unexpectedly enlightening for Tony.
Notes: Set before X-Men 2 and the Iron Man movie. Written for librarybat, who requested The X-Men need Tony Stark's support for something. Jean and Pepper bond over Tony being an idiot.
Thanks to lilacsigil and wizefics for the beta.

( Where Have All the Flowers Gone? )