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musycFinal update on Mr Holmes! He has been officially adopted! His foster mom fell in love with him basically on sight and she and her partner have given Mr Holmes a forever home. I am so grateful that he found a loving family and a comfortable life for the rest of his years.
Picture book readings:
Home is a Wish - Julia Kuo, author and illustrator
Dealing with a big move to a new home, and the worries that come with that. Cute but not memorable. 5/10
A Cat Like That - Lester L. Laminack, author; Nicole Wong, illustrator
A chubby cat and his wanderings around his town. Illustrations were a bit off for me, but I did like the little map that showed the cat's movements. 5/10
Pavlo Gets the Grumps - Natalia Shaloshvili, author and illustrator
Pavlo is a grumpy kid/kitten that doesn't want to play. Mom and friends help with his big feelings. Okay, but nothing special. 5/10
Midnight Motorbike - Maureen Shay Tajsar, author; Ishita Jain, illustrator
I liked the story and setting of this - Amma and daughter take a motorcycle ride through India at night when it's too hot to sleep - but the illustrations were very muddled. Lovely story, not a joy to look at. 4/10
We Are Lion Dancers - Benson Shum, author and illustrator
Lovely book about children watching lion dancers and learning how to do the dance themselves. 7/10
Scamp - Anden Wilder, author and illustrator
Cute story about a little girl who is almost more cat-like than her cat. 7/10
Another Word for Neighbor - Angela Pham Krans, author; Thai My Phuong, illustrator
Gorgeously written, excellent vocabulary, lovely illustrations. This was a winner of a book, where a new family with two kids moves next to an older man who just wants quiet. They make friends and they make pho! 9/10, would definitely buy.
Safe Crossing - Kari Percival, author and illustrator
This was adorable. Environmental education and citizen outreach, plus a diverse set of characters. There is a touch of a sad moment when the unfortunate realities of salamanders and frogs crossing a road gets explained but it's not huge, and treated with compassion. 9/10, would absolutely buy.
Reading goal #9!
Ben Aaronovitch - Masquerades of Spring
If you had set me down and said this is Aaronovitch's Yuletide fic, I would not have been in the slightest bit surprised. This read like a Folly-based Jeeves and Wooster AU, which is not a criticism! It was a frothy book, very enjoyable and fun. 8/10
DNF: Manda Collins - Lady's Guide to Mischief and Mayhem. Five chapters in and I kept picking something else to read, so back it went!
Currently checked out:
Boyd and Beth Morrison, Lawless Land
Evie Woods, Lost Bookshop
Picture book readings:
Home is a Wish - Julia Kuo, author and illustrator
Dealing with a big move to a new home, and the worries that come with that. Cute but not memorable. 5/10
A Cat Like That - Lester L. Laminack, author; Nicole Wong, illustrator
A chubby cat and his wanderings around his town. Illustrations were a bit off for me, but I did like the little map that showed the cat's movements. 5/10
Pavlo Gets the Grumps - Natalia Shaloshvili, author and illustrator
Pavlo is a grumpy kid/kitten that doesn't want to play. Mom and friends help with his big feelings. Okay, but nothing special. 5/10
Midnight Motorbike - Maureen Shay Tajsar, author; Ishita Jain, illustrator
I liked the story and setting of this - Amma and daughter take a motorcycle ride through India at night when it's too hot to sleep - but the illustrations were very muddled. Lovely story, not a joy to look at. 4/10
We Are Lion Dancers - Benson Shum, author and illustrator
Lovely book about children watching lion dancers and learning how to do the dance themselves. 7/10
Scamp - Anden Wilder, author and illustrator
Cute story about a little girl who is almost more cat-like than her cat. 7/10
Another Word for Neighbor - Angela Pham Krans, author; Thai My Phuong, illustrator
Gorgeously written, excellent vocabulary, lovely illustrations. This was a winner of a book, where a new family with two kids moves next to an older man who just wants quiet. They make friends and they make pho! 9/10, would definitely buy.
Safe Crossing - Kari Percival, author and illustrator
This was adorable. Environmental education and citizen outreach, plus a diverse set of characters. There is a touch of a sad moment when the unfortunate realities of salamanders and frogs crossing a road gets explained but it's not huge, and treated with compassion. 9/10, would absolutely buy.
Reading goal #9!
Ben Aaronovitch - Masquerades of Spring
If you had set me down and said this is Aaronovitch's Yuletide fic, I would not have been in the slightest bit surprised. This read like a Folly-based Jeeves and Wooster AU, which is not a criticism! It was a frothy book, very enjoyable and fun. 8/10
DNF: Manda Collins - Lady's Guide to Mischief and Mayhem. Five chapters in and I kept picking something else to read, so back it went!
Currently checked out:
Boyd and Beth Morrison, Lawless Land
Evie Woods, Lost Bookshop
badly_knittedTitle: Best Medicine
Fandom: FAKE
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Dee, Ryo.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 450: Amnesty 45 at
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drabble_zone, using Challenge 40: Laughter.Setting: After the manga.
Summary: Sometimes, you just have to laugh.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
A/N: Double drabble.
( Best Medicine... )
Tags:
badly_knittedTitle: On The Right Side
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Jack Harkness.
Rating: G
Written For: Challenge 925: ‘Mercenary’ at
dw100.Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Some people don’t deserve the Doctor’s assistance.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Doctor Who, or the characters.
Tags:
badly_knittedTitle: Something Weird
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Kathy Swanson.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 866: Who at
torchwood100.Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Something weird has happened in Cardiff. Again.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
A/N: Double drabble.
sunshowerdandelionFinally finished my chapter! On the eve of my very busy days no less. I'm feeling this full-body tingle of satisfaction, even though I've only completed the draft.
Tags:
umadoshiFor those who have go-to versions of common things like, say, meatloaf or brownies or curried chickpeas, how many recipes do you try before settling on one? Is there a point when you say "THIS. THIS is my [x]", or do you sometimes try new versions even when you have one you love? (Possibly this is a "once you've actually cooked a lot, you can look at a recipe and have a fairly good idea of what the different seasonings might add up to"?)
(I didn't help enough with any of the meals under the cuts to tag this post with YKYC, alas.)
( meatloaf! (well, meatloaves) )
( belated notes on a batch of black beans a month ago )
(I didn't help enough with any of the meals under the cuts to tag this post with YKYC, alas.)
( meatloaf! (well, meatloaves) )
( belated notes on a batch of black beans a month ago )
Tags:
kat_lair***
Title: Vernal
Author:
kat_lair Fandom: Wheel of Time (both book and tv-show applicable I think)
Characters: Aviendha, Moiraine Damodred, Egwene al'Vere, Bair, Melaine
Tags: Canon Compliant, Rain, Ficlet, Rhuidean
Rating: G
Word count: 737
Summary: The rain lasts until sunset.
Author notes: Picked some spring themed prompts to get me out of a writing slump. This was for the prompt 'vernal'. Unbetaed so if you spot a typo or mistake you should tell me.
Vernal on AO3
( Vernal )
***
Tags:
queenslayerbeeOn tumblr, I was recently asked about nsfw headcanons about my darling Mia Dearden (among other characters I have yet to get around to). I'm just going to c&p them over here, because this is a fandom topic I've been thinking about a lot, and I'd welcome more discussion.
Initially, I was going to insert here some jokes about Heteroooo Mia; comment on why I see her this way, and on certain fanon trends that go against this and why.
This got long, and I have a few more nsfw headcanons I wanted to share. Luckily, I got another ask about Mia, so I’ll be dividing this and posting the second part in a moment (ETA: here it is!). Also, given the character and the topic, warning for mentions of csa and child trafficking.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about fandom’s approach to sexuality, about “queer headcanons”; about how I’ve personally moved further away from said approaches, if I ever followed it anything more than half-heartedly in the first place. And Mia happens to be a good case study to illustrate my points.
Fandoms are built largely on shipping. That’s just a fact, and it’s not something I particularly object to. I understand why it’s bothersome when that’s all there is, especially if you run countercourse, and especially in fandoms where everything is reduced to one pair of characters (or a trio involved in a ship war) to the detriment of everything else. But I can’t say I haven’t had my fun in the eternal game of smashing dolls together in various combinations. Dynamics and interactions between various characters happens to be one of the main things I’ll pay attention to in any given story; I enjoy a well-written romance, and I love to ask myself “what if…”, in any shape of form. My main fandom, all my previous main fandoms, are built on large, expansive casts, where there are several characters and countless relationships that hold my attention, and in those I’d be called a multishipper, even if usually, when I walk away, all but the few dynamics that retained most of my enthusiasm fade away in my memory.
So this is not an indictment against shipping, by any means. But there are approaches to shipping that I find less and less fitting to my own way of reading texts.
One is the “queer (most often bi) until proven otherwise” approach. Not because I think us queers are these freaks of nature, these aliens that don’t fit with the rest of the human experience. But because the vast majority of characters in the fandoms we move in, like it or not, have been written, with varying levels of awareness, with the intent of portraying heterosexual characters, and that has shaped them.
Some of them, taking a Watsonian approach in mind, wouldn’t change much, if they suddenly were queer, be it thanks to their particular personality or circumstances, or thanks to the context of the universe they live in. Such is life. But in many cases, likely more than I think fandom likes to acknowledge, this would be a more than significant alteration. And, instead, because it’s often filtered through shipping and which dolls we want to smush together to the detriment, and not alongside character exploration, a lot of m/m and f/f fandom content comes across as two straight people who just happen to fuck people of their same gender. And “fuck” might be a strong word, because sometimes any inkling of raw desire feels utterly absent.
Going back to Mia: I read her as heterosexual because that’s what’s in the text. This is a woman (a girl, when she starts) that likes men.
That is attracted to them, that gets passing crushes on them, that develops stronger feelings for them. Her interest in men over women isn’t limited to the romantic territory: her stronger bonds are with men. Ollie and Connor, of course. Dinah is her closest female bond, and that one is built largely off-panel and clearly not on the same level as the other two. She admires Roy and wants to take his mantle, follow in his steps (not just as Speedy II, but also on Roy’s activism and advocacy, by sharing her own personal stories, as he did). On the Teen Titans, the characters she has the most significant interactions with are Victor Stone and Tim Drake. It’s been a while since I read this, but I remember little to no bonding with the female Titans, barring a couple jokes to Rose on her very last appearance. We see one female friend of hers at school, very briefly.
I think it’s fair to say that Mia has an easier time interacting with men. And I can think of why easily. Yes, men are the people who hurt her most. They’re also who she was most used to. And I can see how her past as a trafficking victim, engaging in survival sex works while living on the streets, wouldn’t have been conducting to building solid friendships with other girls and women. Those bonds can be beautiful, but I can picture the kind of competitiveness she was facing in that environment, especially at 15 and younger. She tells Oliver that she took drugs to stay awake, a practice they all did to prevent assaults or robberies -the latter, at least in part, likely from each other. Because you can’t trust anyone 100%, because no one is trustworthy. Not even Mia, in such a dog eats dog world.
At one point, Mia brazenly references a sexual act she did involving other girls… and it was in the context of male clients paying for titillation. There’s absolutely no hint of Mia thinking of it beyond that. And a key detail here, is that this moment, not to mention the bulk of Mia’s character, especially pertaining her relationship with sex, was written by Judd Winick. An author who has never once been subtle about queer subtext (and, when allowed to, text). He even has a character of his own creation, Grace Choi, with a similar background to Mia as a trafficked child, a queer woman who only dates women. And yet, with Mia… nothing. Not even an inkling that she is remotely interested in anything but men.
Queer!Mia, and especially lesbian!Mia, aren’t readings that are accomodated by the text. They are, if not going actively against the text, at least way beyond its boundaries.
And that’s perfectly fine. But it means that you have to build them up, apart from the text.
I find that more and more, I prefer some kind of stronger foundation to built upon for these things, be it subtext (intentional or not, death of the author and all that) or, yes, shipping. Because seeing how a given characters interacts by members of their own gender vis a vis the other is something to build upon. There’s preciously little (nearly nothing, really) of that with Mia, and not seeing anything there to go from means I am not interested in that process, but that’s a matter of personal preference, if anyone else is, go ahead.
Go ahead with the awareness that a queer Mia, and especially a lesbian Mia (and, especially, as I’ve seen before, an amab Mia), is a different character. That these are non-canon readings. Ask yourself, how could this change her reactions to her trauma? Her relationships with Ollie? With Dinah, if she had latched on a safe, older woman to explore her feelings? With her diagnosis? With the Titans, maybe with her heroism? With the world?
Sadly, this isn’t what I see when I spy a lesbian!Mia headcanon in the wild. It’s either lip service, betrays a deep discomfort with the way this csa victim expresses interest in men, or *checks notes* becomes a rhetorical weapon against us ten Jason/Mia shippers.
And fuck, if that isn't boring. Not to mention quite offensive, as a lesbian, ngl.
I dug deep on my Heteroooo Mia headcanon in my last post, so I’ll take advantage of this one to talk a bit about Mia and sex, especifically. Warning for allusions to csa and child trafficking.
I’ve talked about this with other shippers but I think she’d love very involved roleplaying. She likely has past experiences with those kinds of games, and not good ones (yet, at the same time, pretending someone else can afford you some distance), so she might’ve been unsure at first, but to her surprise and delight, it’s immensely fun. Especially with costumes involved, which is something she ponders and jokes about out loud with other capes, Because.
I think she and Jason would feed into each other with this (because you know this would be a shared kink). Through anyone else’s eyes, the result is way too convoluted and complicated. These two are building up an entire film, a saga. They’re enjoying themselves immensely.
I also have this headcanon that her limits, her comfort zone, are in constant movement. Not static, shifting, hard to predict. What sometimes feels right, other times becomes a hard limit. If sometimes giving head feels active, feels like being in charge, feels like indulging in how much she can affect the guy, other times the posture itself feels degrading. If sometimes certain possessiveness makes her feel wanted and desired, as herself and not just a body and a means to an end, there are other times when it feels like ownership and she gets the urge to escape. Or simply, physical touches that usually cause pleasure will suddenly, without her being able to find an explanation, feel awkward and immensely unsexy. It’s a headache and a half, and something that can add to her insecurities about being too “high maintenance” (unlovable) in a romantic relationship.
Heteroooo Mia
Initially, I was going to insert here some jokes about Heteroooo Mia; comment on why I see her this way, and on certain fanon trends that go against this and why.
This got long, and I have a few more nsfw headcanons I wanted to share. Luckily, I got another ask about Mia, so I’ll be dividing this and posting the second part in a moment (ETA: here it is!). Also, given the character and the topic, warning for mentions of csa and child trafficking.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about fandom’s approach to sexuality, about “queer headcanons”; about how I’ve personally moved further away from said approaches, if I ever followed it anything more than half-heartedly in the first place. And Mia happens to be a good case study to illustrate my points.
Fandoms are built largely on shipping. That’s just a fact, and it’s not something I particularly object to. I understand why it’s bothersome when that’s all there is, especially if you run countercourse, and especially in fandoms where everything is reduced to one pair of characters (or a trio involved in a ship war) to the detriment of everything else. But I can’t say I haven’t had my fun in the eternal game of smashing dolls together in various combinations. Dynamics and interactions between various characters happens to be one of the main things I’ll pay attention to in any given story; I enjoy a well-written romance, and I love to ask myself “what if…”, in any shape of form. My main fandom, all my previous main fandoms, are built on large, expansive casts, where there are several characters and countless relationships that hold my attention, and in those I’d be called a multishipper, even if usually, when I walk away, all but the few dynamics that retained most of my enthusiasm fade away in my memory.
So this is not an indictment against shipping, by any means. But there are approaches to shipping that I find less and less fitting to my own way of reading texts.
One is the “queer (most often bi) until proven otherwise” approach. Not because I think us queers are these freaks of nature, these aliens that don’t fit with the rest of the human experience. But because the vast majority of characters in the fandoms we move in, like it or not, have been written, with varying levels of awareness, with the intent of portraying heterosexual characters, and that has shaped them.
Some of them, taking a Watsonian approach in mind, wouldn’t change much, if they suddenly were queer, be it thanks to their particular personality or circumstances, or thanks to the context of the universe they live in. Such is life. But in many cases, likely more than I think fandom likes to acknowledge, this would be a more than significant alteration. And, instead, because it’s often filtered through shipping and which dolls we want to smush together to the detriment, and not alongside character exploration, a lot of m/m and f/f fandom content comes across as two straight people who just happen to fuck people of their same gender. And “fuck” might be a strong word, because sometimes any inkling of raw desire feels utterly absent.
Going back to Mia: I read her as heterosexual because that’s what’s in the text. This is a woman (a girl, when she starts) that likes men.
That is attracted to them, that gets passing crushes on them, that develops stronger feelings for them. Her interest in men over women isn’t limited to the romantic territory: her stronger bonds are with men. Ollie and Connor, of course. Dinah is her closest female bond, and that one is built largely off-panel and clearly not on the same level as the other two. She admires Roy and wants to take his mantle, follow in his steps (not just as Speedy II, but also on Roy’s activism and advocacy, by sharing her own personal stories, as he did). On the Teen Titans, the characters she has the most significant interactions with are Victor Stone and Tim Drake. It’s been a while since I read this, but I remember little to no bonding with the female Titans, barring a couple jokes to Rose on her very last appearance. We see one female friend of hers at school, very briefly.
I think it’s fair to say that Mia has an easier time interacting with men. And I can think of why easily. Yes, men are the people who hurt her most. They’re also who she was most used to. And I can see how her past as a trafficking victim, engaging in survival sex works while living on the streets, wouldn’t have been conducting to building solid friendships with other girls and women. Those bonds can be beautiful, but I can picture the kind of competitiveness she was facing in that environment, especially at 15 and younger. She tells Oliver that she took drugs to stay awake, a practice they all did to prevent assaults or robberies -the latter, at least in part, likely from each other. Because you can’t trust anyone 100%, because no one is trustworthy. Not even Mia, in such a dog eats dog world.
At one point, Mia brazenly references a sexual act she did involving other girls… and it was in the context of male clients paying for titillation. There’s absolutely no hint of Mia thinking of it beyond that. And a key detail here, is that this moment, not to mention the bulk of Mia’s character, especially pertaining her relationship with sex, was written by Judd Winick. An author who has never once been subtle about queer subtext (and, when allowed to, text). He even has a character of his own creation, Grace Choi, with a similar background to Mia as a trafficked child, a queer woman who only dates women. And yet, with Mia… nothing. Not even an inkling that she is remotely interested in anything but men.
Queer!Mia, and especially lesbian!Mia, aren’t readings that are accomodated by the text. They are, if not going actively against the text, at least way beyond its boundaries.
And that’s perfectly fine. But it means that you have to build them up, apart from the text.
I find that more and more, I prefer some kind of stronger foundation to built upon for these things, be it subtext (intentional or not, death of the author and all that) or, yes, shipping. Because seeing how a given characters interacts by members of their own gender vis a vis the other is something to build upon. There’s preciously little (nearly nothing, really) of that with Mia, and not seeing anything there to go from means I am not interested in that process, but that’s a matter of personal preference, if anyone else is, go ahead.
Go ahead with the awareness that a queer Mia, and especially a lesbian Mia (and, especially, as I’ve seen before, an amab Mia), is a different character. That these are non-canon readings. Ask yourself, how could this change her reactions to her trauma? Her relationships with Ollie? With Dinah, if she had latched on a safe, older woman to explore her feelings? With her diagnosis? With the Titans, maybe with her heroism? With the world?
Sadly, this isn’t what I see when I spy a lesbian!Mia headcanon in the wild. It’s either lip service, betrays a deep discomfort with the way this csa victim expresses interest in men, or *checks notes* becomes a rhetorical weapon against us ten Jason/Mia shippers.
And fuck, if that isn't boring. Not to mention quite offensive, as a lesbian, ngl.
Other headcanons
I dug deep on my Heteroooo Mia headcanon in my last post, so I’ll take advantage of this one to talk a bit about Mia and sex, especifically. Warning for allusions to csa and child trafficking.
I’ve talked about this with other shippers but I think she’d love very involved roleplaying. She likely has past experiences with those kinds of games, and not good ones (yet, at the same time, pretending someone else can afford you some distance), so she might’ve been unsure at first, but to her surprise and delight, it’s immensely fun. Especially with costumes involved, which is something she ponders and jokes about out loud with other capes, Because.
I think she and Jason would feed into each other with this (because you know this would be a shared kink). Through anyone else’s eyes, the result is way too convoluted and complicated. These two are building up an entire film, a saga. They’re enjoying themselves immensely.
I also have this headcanon that her limits, her comfort zone, are in constant movement. Not static, shifting, hard to predict. What sometimes feels right, other times becomes a hard limit. If sometimes giving head feels active, feels like being in charge, feels like indulging in how much she can affect the guy, other times the posture itself feels degrading. If sometimes certain possessiveness makes her feel wanted and desired, as herself and not just a body and a means to an end, there are other times when it feels like ownership and she gets the urge to escape. Or simply, physical touches that usually cause pleasure will suddenly, without her being able to find an explanation, feel awkward and immensely unsexy. It’s a headache and a half, and something that can add to her insecurities about being too “high maintenance” (unlovable) in a romantic relationship.
Tags:
rynling( Read more... )
I spent the past two weeks living my American car commercial dream of driving through mountain forests in a high-end Mercedes. Unfortunately I was not romanced by any draculas; but otherwise, everything was perfect.
I spent the past two weeks living my American car commercial dream of driving through mountain forests in a high-end Mercedes. Unfortunately I was not romanced by any draculas; but otherwise, everything was perfect.
Tags:
m_findlowTitle: Tough stains
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 100 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 450 - Amnesty, using Challenge 293 - Soap and water at drabble_zone
drabble_zonem_findlowTitle: Assaulted
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 200 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 450 - Amnesty, using Challenge 149 - Poke at drabble_zone
drabble_zonem_findlowTitle: Mammoth job
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Characters: Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 100 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 450 - Amnesty, using Challenge 233 - Just getting started at drabble_zone
drabble_zone