a conspiracy of cartographers

I saw Infinity War! As I tweeted after leaving the theater, I need help reacting to something.

( This is going to just be a terrible ridiculous train of thought post, fair warning )

i. WisCon this year was wonderful! as WisCon every year is wonderful. It felt particularly short this year, though (a situation exacerbated by [a] not arriving til Friday afternoon, [b] the vid party being on Saturday instead of Friday and thus cutting into Saturday lobbycon, and [c] increasing numbers of my friends being on panels; maybe one of these years I will be brave and go on a panel myself). The vid party was delightful, it was so so great to see old WisCon buddies and to meet new ones, the GOH speeches made me cry a bit, and next year I fully intend to arrive Thursday and give myself breathing room and really bask in the con.

ii. Relatedly I am reading NK Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy! Currently in the middle of the third one, still loving it, though nothing will be as id-satisfyingly perfect to me as Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was. (SO perfectly id-satisfying; I've been summarizing it to people on twitter as "court intrigues and captive gods and family drama," and there has been much sage nodding/laughing at me because why yes that IS a portrait of my id.) I ... also think they're really well-written and -plotted and all that good stuff, but I'm not sure I can recommend them as Perfect Books, because mostly they are just perfect to me.

iii. Other things that are a bit perfect to me: Maleficent! ( Mild spoilers, mostly pleased. )

iv. I also saw Days of Future Past, but that doesn't get a spoiler cut, since it can be summarized as "Quicksilver and Mystique were my favorite parts, it was fun I guess." Sorry, X-Men, I think I'm officially broken up with you :/ Not that I won't see any future films in that universe, but I don't have lots of fannish feelings about it right now.

v. Meanwhile, in my job in the barista AU, I am now a shift supervisor! This means getting up earlier, but also getting paid more and getting to go home earlier, and is for the most part really nice. (As I type this, one of the other shift supervisors is texting me to do a complicated schedule swap because he wants to play a show with his band on a day he has a closing shift. I'm living in a weird hipster fic, send help.)

iv. Polaris and I have spent some of the day researching animal shelters in the area! Perhaps next week we will get a cat or two, stay tuned :DDD

This last weekend was really lovely. On Sunday Housemate A and Amiel and I all went down to the Common with A's slackline and did our best to wobble about between two trees; A can go four to eight steps consistently, but Amiel and I were only good enough to stand on the line for a couple of seconds before falling off. A lot of tourists came over while we were at it, and tried it too; most of them were surprised by how hard it was, probably because A makes it look relatively easy. It was lots of fun, anyway, and made my leg muscles do new bizarre things, which of course made seven hours of baristaing the next day mildly painful. Still! Want to try it again soon, preferably without a shift the following day.

We also went (as a group of five, hilariously enough) to see The World's End Sunday evening. It was ... I don't know what it was! I enjoyed it a lot, and laughed a lot, and unlike Shaun of the Dead (which I can never rewatch because dfl;dfkds zombies) I think I'll see it again, even if it never gets the same wear that Hot Fuzz does. That trilogy really likes rejecting ... organized sameness? I feel like there must be a better way to put that; though it also isn't big on punishing the people/beings/&c involved in the organized sameness. Which is cool! I hadn't picked up on that with just the first two to compare.

Real life is being mildly stressful; I have health insurance shenanigans to sort, which will probably involve the bureaucratic phone runaround, which -- well, I don't have full-on anxiety attacks when I have to talk on the phone with strangers anymore! I'll do it, though! And then set up the various appointments that insurance will give me! And those appointments will be so much less stressful than the initial phone calls. /o\

Organizing my real life also makes me think about organizing my online life, especially because I ... don't do fandom the way I used to. I think some of it has to do with the way I'm allotting my time, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that I have both long-distance from-fandom friends whose friendship isn't contingent upon us being currently in the same fandoms, and local fannish friends with whom I frequently have hours-long Avengers discussions or we find ourselves, over dinner, saying in unison "ALL HAIL THE GLOW CLOUD." So at the moment fandom isn't filling any sort of isolation-from-community need. And I'm not in desperate need of any particular fic, either; I read the Avengers fic by authors I know I like, and am writing the Thor/Loki fic I want to see in the world, and Night Vale the show is fulfilling enough that I don't find myself in great need of fanworks. (Although, go go right now listen to thingswithwings' podfic Second Date, an episode-style recording that I have already failed to remember is not canon.) The point is, I am not entirely sure if I miss my fic-devouring ways, but I suspect I should get a Pinboard, and reorganize myself, and that I'll feel much more fandom-settled when I do this.

Speaking of the Thor/Loki fic I want to see in the world, it has just passed 47,000 words. We're ... about halfway through. I'd like to get it done by the end of September, just so I'll have it all posted before Thor 2 comes out (plus, uh, we have a lot of feelings about this universe and there are side stories where Steve takes Thor and Loki to art museums or Natasha and Sif hang out talking about feminist theory, it'd be cool to be able to post those before Thor 2 also, oh pipe dreams). That effectively means writing another 50k in a month, but ... I've done 50k in two weeks while on summer vacation, I can do 50k in a month while also having life obligations. Yes.

IRON MAN 3!!! ( Spoilers are the mechanic. )

First things first: Yuletide!! I received not one but TWO Babylon 5 fics this year, about which I am very pleased, because it means that my request and my lovely writers have upped the number of Londo/G'Kar fics on the internet, which is ... one of my sillier life goals, but even so.

In Vino Veritas, a slice of life with drunk Londo and long-suffering G'Kar on Centauri Prime. It is silly and serious and sweet by turns, and very much a Yuletide fic in the sense that it made me feel all warm and fuzzy first thing on Christmas morning.

In Flagrante, three times Londo and G'Kar were caught in the act: one happy, one angry, one sad. Each time is utterly charming, but because I am me and I love how hugely and tragically in love they are, the heart-punching last section is my favorite. Oh, and also there is tentacle porn, which is what Londo/G'Kar is for, really.

Meanwhile my recipient seems thrilled with my offering, so an excellent Yuletide all round! I haven't had time to read any other fic yet, but I'm hoping I'll be able to get through at least a good chunk of the archive in the next few days.

Most of the reason I haven't gone through any Yuletide fic besides my own yet is that I went out to see Les Mis today! Shenanigans ensued and, though I set out for a noon showing, I didn't actually get to watch it until 2:15. But it was totally worth switching theaters and waiting! I cried buckets and want to see it a thousand times.

Christmas Eve service was lovely, and Christmas morning was good too -- after the delight of Yuletide there was leisurely breakfast and the opening of presents. I got practicalish things, and some ornaments, and unexpectedly the first two seasons of Downton Abbey; I was not anticipating the number of gifts and may have to slightly rethink how much book space I'll have in my suitcase for the return journey, but this is an excellent problem to have.

Hope you're all having a lovely holiday/good Tuesday generally. <3

Re: the Hobbit: I ... am really not that thrilled it's three movies now! MORE is not necessarily BETTER, and I legitimately just want a lovingly filmed version of the book that was my actual favorite thing when I was five. Two films, excellent, no need to leave anything out! Three films, I am suddenly concerned about pacing issues and what they will add and ... ahh, I don't know. I am still quite fond of Peter Jackson, but like many directors/showrunners/other wildly successful creative people, he kind of needs someone to tell him when to stop.

Re: Beasts of the Southern Wild: SO GOOD, YOU GUYS, SO GOOD. I don't have anything particularly coherent or spoilery to say, just that I loved it lots and Hushpuppy is the best six-year-old in the entire universe, and possibly also if you're going to see it you should 'ware shakycam if that sort of thing is an issue. But really just. SO GOOD. (And for afters Amiel and I snuck into the middle of The Dark Knight Rises IMAX Experience the next theater over, and spent about five minutes in silent hysterical laughter at Batman and Bane doing DEEP DRAMATIC GRAVELLY VOICES at each other before we snuck back out again to get dinner. Good times!)

Re: Teen Wolf: I ADMIT IT I SUCCUMBED. Enough people whose opinions I find interesting had started to talk about it, so I gave the first few episodes a go, and probably would have stopped except that Polaris follows a lot of the same people I do and was also curious. We watched season one together, a few episodes a night; it was all good silly fun, and then one evening we were cooking dinner or something and started wailing "STIIIILES" at each other. Now I am soldiering forward and enduring the HORRIBLE PAIN of season two alone because [a] I cannot stop or wait and [b] this way I can warn Polaris of the trauma to come. I keep legitimately screaming at the screen! I am SO INVESTED. I have no idea how this happened, but Teen Wolf is a DISEASE, the main symptoms of which seem to be CAPSLOCK IN EMPHASIS and anguished wails of "STIIIILES."

Re: Avengers: ahahdslkfsjkf okay so this fic I am writing. It is my long Avengers found family fic, of course, because I absolutely have to write that; having batted it around with various people, I've narrowed it down from being about absolutely everyone to ... still being about everyone, I guess, but entirely from Thor's POV. This will be an exciting journey! in which Thor and I figure out how the hell to deal with lots of fraught emotions when Thor doesn't have the vocabulary for most of them. Hopefully it will be fun and rewarding and full of unreliable narration and will not drive me totally up the wall! Meantime it's at about 5000 words right now, we haven't even begun to leave Asgard yet, and Amiel laughs at me whenever I venture the hope that this fic will come in under 50,000. Ahaha. Haha.

I am all packed! (Well, almost all, I still have a few accusatory items sitting outside my suitcases.) My life does not pack neatly into a duffle as it ideally should, and I have sent a hilarious cavalcade of boxes up ahead of me, but mostly the packing has been good and not too consuming. I also found some successful button-down shirts! It is all terribly exciting, and oh my god, tomorrow I am moving in with my BFF and I will actually be near friends and found family and all of this is SO GREAT.

Of course this means I probably won't have internet time again for a while, so before I go off on real life adventures, some fannish things:

i. I am bad at announcing things when I run out of exciting polls, but Zoe won my tiny Fandom March Madness! When I did a vote-for-attractive-people poll last year, Gina Torres won that too, so I think the only conclusion to draw is that you guys remain in excellent taste.

ii. Um ... this week's Community. ( Spoilers feel bizarre about this episode. )

iii. And I saw Hunger Games! ( Spoilers actually much prefer the film to the book. )

Somehow, unaccountably, I have managed to go nearly twenty-four years (or, well, only five years, it came out in early 2006) without watching Imagine Me & You. But now I have finally seen it! My thoughts are thus:

+ It is SO ADORABLE, oh my god, I have had it pitched to me as a queer film with a happy ending, but no one mentioned to me that it is radioactive levels of TOTALLY ADORABLE.

+ I liked Cersei a bit, but somehow I missed how completely smoking hot Lena Headey was. Wow.

+ I know that the film is all about ~true love~ and ~eyes meeting across the room~ and ~love at first sight~ and they sold it quite well and everything, but -- I can't help thinking that they all might have saved themselves a lot of grief if they'd had a way of framing all of this as, "Hey, you're my best friend and I adore you, but I've made the sudden discovery that I'm also into women, or at least this woman; I would love to, with transparency and lots of communication, also date her in addition to being happily married to you!" I mean. I doubt many movies would go there. But I am all for functional poly as the solution to this sort of romantic comedy problem.

+ I'm going to have "Happy Together" stuck in my head for the next ever.

I saw Captain America last night! I also saw hilarious previews for some bewildering version of Three Musketeers where Orlando Bloom is evil, everything is steampunk, and D'Artagnan has an American accent, and for the new Spiderman, which has a weirdly Twilight aesthetic. But never mind that, Cap was more interesting.

( Spoilers! This is a weird patchwork reaction post made of IM conversations, paragraphing, getting sidetracked by Thor shoutouts, my general feelings of AWW STEVE, and a drinking game. )

And then there was the AVENGERS TRAILER. I ... didn't actually realize how excited I was about this (or maybe how Loki-deprived, idk) until the trailer started playing, and I started shaking. Seriously, I was sitting there in the theatre VIBRATING WITH JOY and slowly chewing through my lip so I didn't start making obnoxious or obscene noises. I don't really have anything spoilery to say, I'm just really fucking excited. WHEN IS MAY 2012.

In conclusion, though, know what I would absolutely watch? A film in which Sif decides, screw this boys' club, I'm going to Midgard and being useful, and when she gets there she runs into Natasha, and they train together and teach each other tricks, and Sif can't quite get a read on Natasha but is pretty delighted regardless. Meanwhile, Pepper notices this and uses her CEO powers to get them a nice place to do all this, and coordinates the effort to intercept intelligence about where their skills might be useful. Jane can be there for SCIENCE, of, y'know, the handwavey Marvel variety, and Darcy does all their tech stuff. Also, Peggy was frozen or something, handwaaave, and now she's around to do the intel when Pepper's too busy with her million other responsibilities, and when Pepper's free, Peggy goes on missions with Sif and Natasha. They can still fight Loki, I guess; maybe in this universe Loki is Doom's evil girlfriend, and they're the big bads, although if we're going outside the Marvel Studios' properties with Doom, I move that Emma and Mystique are also around, either fighting or causing crime. THAT IS THE FILM I WANT TO SEE.

I'm still pretty excited about Avengers, though.

+ The response I've already got to the Loki fic is making me clutch my face with glee. It is magical to be in an active fandom. (It is also magical to know there are lots of people who share my Loki FEELINGS.) Now I just have to convince myself that not everything needs a plot, and that it is okay if I write Sif/Darcy without apology. I also have to convince myself that I am capable of writing Tony Stark, but this may, in fact, be a lie.

+ Speaking of Starks, I have the first episode of Game of Thrones sitting on my computer. Taunting me. Daring me to watch it, even though I have an inner voice wailing that I shouldn't dare watch it without reading the books first. Shut up, little voice, you coped with True Blood, you can cope with this. (Oh HBO, why you gotta keep half-seducing me into watching bits of your shows.)

+ I cannot stop listening to the gay mutant disco love song from the First Class credits. It has become the soundtrack in my mind. I am having such a strange relationship with First Class fandom! Like, on the one hand Erik/Charles is my pairing type FOREVER, and I am so, so glad that it has suddenly become fandom's thing du jour. On the other hand, the more I think about the film the more issues I have with a bunch of its basic structures and assumptions, and navigating unknown fic is a minefield of avoiding Holocaust-related hurt/comfort or the assumption that Charles is actually a good and correct person, oh god how many times have I hit the back button. On the mutant (haha) third hand, a lot of excellent writers and people I know are doing so, so right by it, and so I keep reading fic, and feeling mildly bewildered, and listening to the gay mutant disco love song yet again.

+ I went to see Midnight in Paris yesterday. It is unutterably charming, you guys. I have a low tolerance for Woody Allen films, but this one was great. I originally went to see it on the promise of Tom Hiddleston as F. Scott Fitzgerald, and he was indeed pretty delightful (although oh god he had an American accent, cognitive dissonance, WHAT IS HAPPENING) but the best part was actually Ernest Hemingway, who had me basically rolling in my seat laughing. If you like jokes about 1920s writers, watch the hell out of this.

+ I seem to be rereading American Gods; this is great fun, because I get to clutch my face and cackle when it talks about Shadow's cellmate Low Key and his scarred smile, and also I keep going, "Oh, ODIN," when no one is in the room. But I think I should warn you all: don't read Neil Gaiman late at night. Just don't do it. I used to know this, but last night I foolishly forgot, and for my transgression I dreamed that I was Shadow and had to talk with Laura while she was a half-decayed corpse; I was pretty chill about this, but there was SCREAMING INSIDE, believe me. Why you gotta do this, brain? I would have taken Aziraphale and Crowley over this. I would've taken Loki over this! Oh well. In conclusion, Neil Gaiman, late nights, no. I imagine this applies even harder if the reading in question is Sandman.

+ ...I am really tempted to watch a trio of Xena episodes in which, wiki tells me, Xena is Odin's most feared Valkyrie, Gabrielle hangs out with Brunhilda, Xena helps Beowulf defeat Grendel and ends up married to Hrothgar, and then there is girlkissing. On the other hand, if I try to watch it I might actually start laughing too hard to see.