The Slain God

Hi there - the c_im_bigbang claims are up here.

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tsukinofaerii wrote me a present! Did you like Rampage in Secrets of a Successful marriage? Do you want Pepper to blow more shit up? Then you will enjoy Early Retirement almost as much as I did. And while I'm clapping my hands, let me also point out her latest fic, a fic about the importance of communication. Kiiiinda. I betaed it, and it made me laugh greatly. :D

Also, I rebuilt my computer and now it is white with blue glowy. Looks very Sixties space-age. And it is very quiet and cool. My internet is being totally lumpy recently, though. Reinstalled my OS, too, and it was surprisingly simple to get everything set up like I like it.

I'm not quite finding the Clint/Natasha I want; lalaietha writes some great short pieces on them, with bonus Liv Tyler Betty/Bruce. But I would enjoy more wild adventure, action and shenanigans! Anyone writing this?

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I have been on a writing dry patch, which is most frustrating; I have quite a backlog of thoughts that I need to get down on paper (screen). Sadly, most of my thoughts are movieverse right now; 616 is turning me off, MA is beloved but defunct, and Ultimates... *stares at Ultimates* well, Steve should be back soon and I have high hopes he's going to be a woobie in relation to Spider-Man. Equal odds as to whether this will be 'due to guilt over Peter I will fiercely defend and support you' or 'due to guilt over Peter I will be rabidly against any other kid being Spider-Man, and may behave outrageously towards this end'. So most of my thoughts are in relation to movieverse, as the movie was delightful, setting out interesting character dynamics between almost everyone.

Clint/Natasha: I ship it hard, bros, romance, friends with benefits, hunting in pairs, co-dependent mutually obsessed violent weirdos. Has anyone written a romance-adventure historical AU where Natasha is a deadly spy a la Milady de Winter but treated much better than in The Three Musketeers? In fact, something like the recent movie, with steampunk airships and maybe they can just push Athos off the airship. (putz) And Clint - not entirely sure about Clint, but perhaps his love can persuade Natasha to give up her rakish roguish ways. Or she could fight a duel for his honour. Somehow. (Perhaps this is more of a historical-ish AU. I enjoy both historical and historical-ish.) The image of Fury as Cardinal Richelieu is a special one which I will treasure.

I'm playing the hell out of Diablo III. I have plenty of thoughts about the sexism of the character design, and the Witch Doctor class is... well, pretty racist, I guess. (Also, if you search 'witch doctor racist' on Google, you get a lot of results on the Blizzard forum. Click through... thread deleted. Search for 'racist' on the Blizzard forums... nowt. Charming, Blizzard, charming.

Having to be constantly online to play=also not cool.

It's an excellent game, classes seem well-balanced, lots of fun, intriguing skills. But I suspect I won't buy Diablo IV - and I pre-ordered this game two years ago. Still, if anyone else is playing and wants to co-op - bear in mind I am very much a casual player - hit me up. I've got all five classes playing through together, I'm working on the second half of Act II right now.

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I am writing this from a seafront restaurant in Dahab, Egypt, which sounds wonderful, but is sadly undermined by the exciting upper respiratory tract infection that has lain me low for the past nine days, IE my entire holiday so far. :| I went to Cairo and didn't even see the pyramids, can't dive because of congestion, and I'm too weak to bus out to Jerusalem or Petra. Sigh. I've spent most of the time sleeping and not eating - they put me on a drug cocktail drip for a while to fix that damage, but I'm still a little weak and wobbly. So, if you're waiting for a response for me on anything, give me a couple days more, okay? I'm not ignoring you, just running slow. :) (Unless it's urgent, in which case feel free to prod me along. But you know, please only prod if it is urgent, I am still quite sick.) On the bright side, rescheduling to go home early means I'll make the UK Avengers opening, and catch Hunger Games in theatres.

In other news, the divine Ironfries drew the most wonderful fanart for Secrets of a Successful Marriage; it's just perfect. Go here, and marvel. I mean - their faces. All of them. So precious and expressive. I tried to leave feedback in her ask, but I'm a Tumblr n00b and don't know if I did it right, so I'll just roll and squee here about my all-encompassing ecstasy. I literally cannot pick a favourite picture; Steve's amazing disappointed face, his fish-related ecstasy and Tony's helpless fondness for Steve's fishlove, Tony despairing in the Pontiac, and them dancing, oh, the dipping ♥. Maybe Steve's disappointed face is my favourite. It is so very, very, disappoint. Like, you practically don't need to read the story now. You can just look at these pictures and it's like taking a highly distilled version of the story and rubbing it on your face.

The diligent kalakirya has podficced Tomorrow Belongs To Me! Ten hours! Due to being abroad, I haven't had a chance to download and listen, but I'm pretty psyched. And impressed. That is some serious patience! cybel has made it into an audiobook.

And thanks to pkai7, who gave me a blue dragon that made me smile when I was down. ♥

Going back a little further, I got two delicious gifts in the C-Im Secret Santa, which as usual went very smoothly due to the general good behaviour of the participants. I got a sweet fic by snowynight, Join Your Hands which is a nice external voice on Ult Steve and Tony and the little personal ways they interact. Ult Jan is always one of my favourites, and Steve has some lovely quirks here. :) And plingo_kat wrote me buy the brooklyn bridge about Steve happily spending money, which is just delightful - lovely spun fluff with just enough weight to be comforting, like a favourite blanket. All told, an excellent haul. I wrote three fics I was generally pleased with; my favourite was Elizabethan privateers, although I made poor muccamukk tear out her hair.

muccamukk: you're certainly ticking the costume porn box
valtyr: With a thick pen. Twice.
muccamukk: in the first two paragraphs
valtyr: Ah
you wait
muccamukk: ahaha
valtyr: That's more costume light flirtation
muccamukk: what kind of ship is it!
valtyr: I own multiple books on Tudor costume
valtyr: IDK
muccamukk: ?
valtyr: I don't have any books on that

Then we argued about which deck they were on and which masts people were leaning against and would a proper lady be on the main deck and was Natasha really the kind of lady to worry about being on the appropriate deck. I still don't know what holy stoning is, but I did win the debate on who had superior cannon by saying Tony Stark's presence in weapons design trumped historical accuracy. And I called the fic Pillars of Hercules, which is probably the classiest dick joke I've ever told.

Anyway. A little shaky, so I will post this now. Hope all you good people are well, and excited for Avengers time. I am excited for Avengers time. ♥

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I was talking to jazzypom tonight, and we were talking about our various writing styles; she and I write very differently, both in how we write, and what we produce. That's pretty interesting because we tend to have similar interpretations of the characters.

Anyway, I said we should both write about it, and try to get other people to do so, because I really love hearing/reading/talking about the writing process.

jazzypom's is here.
snowynight's is here
tsukinofaerii's is here
derryderrydown's is here.
Mine's under the cut. I'd love it if other people wrote about theirs in their journals and dropped me a link. :)

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Anyway, that's a lot of talk. Talk to me about your writing style? :)

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Some disconnected stuff...

I don't like the idea of Steve and Tony raising Peter Parker primarily because it knocks Ben and May out of the picture and I really don't like that; they were such huge influences on him. Especially May, there are so few mother figures with personality and influence over superheroes. It also loses my interest because a big part of Peter's heroism (to me) is that he kept on being a hero while people hated him for it, with virtually no support, trying to balance shitty jobs and friends who thought he was a flake and poverty with saving lives. I mean... once you take those things away, there doesn't seem to be much of Peter Parker left. Canon Pete's up there with Cap on the selfless heroism scale. (I just choked up thinking about Ult Peter, who in many ways was an adaption distillation of 616 Spider-Man.)

Changing the subject entirely, my British Museum magazine arrived with a special on the Hajj, and it made me think of sci-fi - how will Islam fare in space? Generation ships will presumably be off-limits to Muslims, unless they take the Hajj before they go and plan not to have children, which is not really how generation ships work. And at what point will there be too many Muslims for Mecca? By which I mean, all Muslims who are able to should make the pilgrimage once in their lives, so at what point will there be so many Muslims Mecca will be too full for everyone each year?

And totally different subject again, does anyone know any fantasy fiction set around a perambulatory court? All I can think of is that Diana Wynne Jones one, but in that they're moving around the realm for magical reasons. Moving courts are such a huge part of life pre-modern times, and yet almost all court fantasy seems to be stationary courts. Also, I would be all over a space Imperium with a travelling court in the shape of a General Systems Vehicle (Culture ship; essentially a huge city spaceship. Well. They're up to 200km in each dimension, but you get my drift). Is there anything like this?

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OH God. Well. I handed in my essays and finished my term. Now exhausted and have to catch up on things I neglected. One of my essays was atrocious, I should be ashamed. Despite attending almost every lecture and seminar, taking notes, doing the reading diligently, and participating vigorously in seminars, when I got to the list of essay questions they were all puzzling blanks, and I was unsure where to start. The other course, though, all the questions were interesting and linked to a specific lecture and came with lists of recommended extra reading.

Result, I did all the reading for that essay and ignored the other one in the vague hope it would go away. It didn't. I finally read half a dozen articles and skimmed two books and wrote a piece of garbage. The other essay suffered the opposite problem, with far too many thoughts and ideas being crammed in as I read and read more and more. Anyway, the essays are compulsory but don't count towards our final grade, so whatever.

It's funny, before this year started I was very interested in Tudor Britain, had read several books on it, and didn't really care about Late Antiquity. After ten weeks with our teachers, I realise Tudor Britain was really boring and Late Antiquity COMPLETELY FASCINATING.

Anyway, I have a month before classes start again and am going to try and fill in the gaps of my knowledge - I've gone through the reading lists and picked out some books to read. Currently reading a biography of Henry VII and God's Secret Agents, which is about Jesuit missionaries in England during Elizabeth's reign. Starting to find the Tudors interesting again. Then I think Decline in History, which was vigorously recommended to me last year and may or may not be relevant to my current subjects, but I guess economic decline and the Mediterranean is always useful knowledge. A book about the economy of Early Modern Britain, a biography of Wolsey, The Roman Empire at Bay as I read chapters 9-12 already and they were pretty ace. Then two books on religion and society under the Tudors.

Annoyingly, the library closes early on the 22nd and then doesn't reopen until JANUARY. So I'll read what I can of the books I have out, and then go to the library 21st evening and trade them in. I want to read The Rise of Western Christendom and The Fall of Rome: The End of Civilization in tandem, as they're sort of duelling viewpoints, and I want to read some stuff on James, Charles and the English Civil War before next term. Oh, and I want to read the book next term's lecturer wrote. :) So, uh, too much planned. Also I have to finish my exchange fic, and there will probably be pinch-hitting, and I'm not taking any holiday; but work should be quiet.

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Today I had a half-day's falconry. :D

It was cold. :|

I wore my thermals, and warm jumper, and gloves - the major problem, ridiculously enough, was that my boobs were cold. And it's socially unacceptable to breathe on or rub them, so. But it was well worth the cold. I crossed London via public transport, and was collected at Rickmansworth by a friend who drives, and has a car. Friend had been recruited at the last minute - I purchased two vouchers earlier in the year, and then left it til they'd almost run out - only to find most of my friends either busy, or already possessed of tickets to a different falconry centre. Sigh. This friend, who I hadn't seen in several years, posted on my Facebook to quibble with me about the estimated economic growth used in pension cost forecasts. (I won, and my prize was cookies.) And it occurred to me to ask if they'd fancy falconry, and YES THEY DID. They also brought their wife to tour the centre and watch us admiringly as we threw birds around.

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Anyway, it was ace and I strongly recommend it if you get the chance. :D

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After reading marinarusalka's ace fusion between Avengers and Echo Bazaar, I am now playing Echo Bazaar.

I have no actions left for the day, and am sternly telling myself not to indulge in subscribing. (But extra actions! D:)

Also, I picked a terrible time of day to sign up - my actions rollover at about 3pm, which means I'll use them all up in the evening, instead of having something to do in spare moments at work, as was my intention. D'oh!

Am working on exchange fic; it's all behaving oddly and such. *glares* I hope everyone's getting on well with theirs. :)

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These are the most precious, wonderful things imaginable: Steve, Tony, Natasha and Coulson charms

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