swim through the fires to stay in this world

I need to talk for a minute about how much I love het_reccers.

Because I fucking love het_reccers.

I was just thinking this morning about how much I'd like some good Man of Steel fanfic and how unlikely it is for there to be any but when I get home LO! Two new and fucking fabulous Man of Steel fanfics are being recommended.



Big smoochies!

This week is fucking fired. Seriously, I am so glad that I just have a shift tomorrow left and then I swear to god, I am going to spent Saturday curled up under the covers. And then go watch Man of Steel with awesome people.

Work had been endless and dull and my headspace has been totally grey.

In an attempt to cheer myself up, I've been thinking a lot about the friends-to-lovers trope and specifically, the tipping point moment, when the couple can no longer be (or pretend to be) "just friends."

So I'd love to hear people's friends-to-lovers recs! Or we could just chat about our

(For my part, I'd suggest everyone read Making It, based off Jenny Crusie's Faking It.)

To Be Unmade (best blending of MCU and comics-verse).
Those Who Are Afraid of Wolves
Moving Targets (Clint/Natasha in the rubble.)
The Body In The Machine.

[+] Today sucked. Let us not speak any more of it.

[+] Changes from the first draft of Thor to the final film . My thoughts:

1. I'm glad they cut the stuff with Jane's dad (enough significant father-figures already!), Darcy/Fandral, and the explicit Hank Pym reference (it works much better was a Bruce Banner reference, imho).


2. ...but they should have kept in the stuff about Darcy being a hacker! Hot damn, that bit of info makes me want to write fic!


3. Sad they cut Thor thinking Erik was into Jane because that is twisted comedic gold... but glad they cut the bar fight that Thor didn't participate in, because that would be totally out of character and I think assault should be allowed if the other person is a jerk.


4. I would have liked to have seen more romantic Jane/Thor moments... but at the same time, I feel like they didn't necessarily need them....?

[+] I love Pepper Potts and want to read fic about her being a badass CEO... but not enough to put up with having to deal with Tony/Bucky/Steve in the background. Thank god that The B Team exists which is two chapters (and more coming) of Clint and Natasha and Darcy and Jane and Pepper (as RESCUE) being heroes. Literally, there is ONE PENIS in that fic.

[+] I feel like the Winter Soldier is vastly over used in fandom (and never used for maximum angst in Clint/Natasha fics) and Barney Barton is vastly, vastly, criminally under used. Seriously, I was reading a fic that was beautifully foreshadowing Barney Barton as the villain and then, nope, it's the Winter Solider. DESPITE IT BEING TOTALLY THEMATICALLY INAPPROPRIATE FOR IT TO BE THAT CHARACTER. And part of me wants to make a comment to that effect but the other part of me is like, nope, there is no way that "by the way, you picked the wrong villain, did you realize?" could possibly be taken well.

[+] AUGH, THIS WHOLE POST IS ME BITCHING. If I had realized this was going to be such an acerbic post I wouldn't have bothered.

[+] I wish I had time to write the things that I want to read.

In honor of femmeslash February, I come bearing recs:

You Do Not Have To Walk On Your Knees (Once Upon A Time, Regina/Emma) Part One, Two, and Three.

This fic manages to be gloriously humorous, filled with accurate character beats and character insights, and gets Regina and Emma together in a believable way.

When It's Time To Turn The Page (Natasha Romanov/Kate Bishop)

Post Winter Soldier 14 fix-it fic in which Natasha responds to getting screwed over by her amnesic, paternalistic, one-armed, solviet, assassin DICK of an ex-boyfriend by sexing the fuck out of Kate Bishop. Because Kate Bishop makes everything better by a factor of one hundred. True story.

Get Loved, Make More (Gigi Darcy/Lydia Bennet)

A deliciously taut, slow-burn Gigi/Lydia fic. Also, this has some phenomenal background Lizzie/Darcy.

This vid fills me with delight:



(even though it needs one more Lizzie/Darcy scene at the end.)

callmeonetrack recommended Cecelia Grant's romantic novels here, and I completely second that recommendation. I've read A Lady Awakened and A Gentleman Undone (each took me about a day and a half) and I greatly enjoyed both.

Read them if you like:

-determined ladies who drive the narrative
-heroines who are allowed to be broken and flawed and fucked up (especially the lead in A Gentleman Undone)
-actually hot, actually explicit, in-character sex scenes
-LADIES WHO KNOW ABOUT SEX, KNOW HOW TO GET THEMSELVES OFF/USE SEX TO KILL EMOTIONAL PAIN
-romantic leads who are actually romantic leads

I only have a couple quibbles,
( Read more... )

Robot Trip

Go read this right now and then come back and talk to me about how amazing Tony and Pepper are. Okay, okay, this fic is actually about Tony driving Dummy cross-country and Steve tagging along but the best moments are the briefs sections of Tony/Pepper (imho). They're quippy and delightful.

Straight On Til Morning (gen)

Thor and Jane are having a baby. Tony's conflicted about the whole thing.

arsenicjade writes the best hurt/comfort and the best Tony voice. It's a wonderful combination. Also, brief section with some of the most deliciously dark and perfect Tony/Pepper ever written. (Plus, if it were on AO3, this would absolutely be tagged with Howard and Maria's A+ Parenting.)

The Goat's Back (gen, AU)

An AU where Steve's essentially a failed experiment, corporal punishment is the predominant form of discipline and team leaders take the punishments for those under them.

Excerpt:

When the military redrew the Disciplinary Guidelines Manual in the late 90s, there had been doubt as to whether the research showing that Special Ops groups would react better to the punishment of their leader than of the individual committing the action in question was accurate. After the first few public whippings, however, the other team members forced to watch, it had proven itself so efficacious that nearly every government agency had adopted the practice for tight-knit, specially skilled teams.

Years later, when the Serum-Enhanced Soldier (SES) program finally admitted defeat due to pervasive inability to control the subjects, almost all of those who had survived the experimentation were either terminated, or given the choice of becoming unit commanders to elite units. Steve has never been able to explain why they even bothered presenting a choice, but he suspects they were simply loathe to completely waste the invested time and money if there was some, any use for the remaining products.

In any event, Steve took the second choice. To this day, he thinks it was probably the wrong one.

Further note: there is also an excellent podfic of this fanfic. It came up on shuffle three times in two days, showing that my iPod shares my love of watching Steve suffer beautifully.

Running On Empty

Steve is always hungry. (Or the care and feeding of one Steve Rogers.)

These Are Better Days

Steve's tried to watch the news, some—he has a lot to catch up on, after all—but sometimes even that's not real. “The Daily Show is funny because it's fake,” Bruce had tried to explain to him. “Fox News is funny because it doesn't know that it's fake.”

They try to be patient with him. He figures, with Thor back in Asgard, he's the closest thing to an alien they've got. But he's stopped watching the news, anyway. It gets old, after a while, when you just keep seeing your own face.

More awesome Steve fic, with bonus touches of Tony/Pepper.

So, after Tony and Steve have ripped your heart out of your chest, stomped on it, shoved it back in your chest and then repeated the whole process, read Contingencies and Clint Barton will take a turn.