Concordia Discors

Hey y'all - crossposting from DW is semi-permanently disabled due to LJ disabling third-party access, so I will no longer be posting here at all. To be honest, there are a number of posts I didn't crosspost here over the last year; pretty much if you want to read my locked journal entries (or really, any entries) you will now need to subscribe to DW. I know some of you just aren't willing to make that effort, and I sympathize. I felt that way once! But that was years ago now, and I haven't read my flist here in a verrrrry long time (a couple of years), if I'm being super-honest.

So that's your heads up. If I remember, I'll repost this in a couple of days to catch the day shift. Love to everyone who is stubbornly lingering here! Hope I see you on the flip side. ♥

I have Spider-Manned and I have also Hawkeyed. There are lots of spoilers here, but I'm 100% only talking about things I loved, because there were so many.

( things I lovedCollapse )

All right, now I'm going to go on to Hawkeye for a second. More spoilers below for ep 5, Ronin.

( spoilerrrrsCollapse )

Some things of interest!

- Lil Nas X covered Jolene and I can't stop listening to it.



- Rumor had it (as of last week) that Daredevil is getting a soft reboot with the same cast on Dis+ and if it were to happen, it would prove Kevin Feige is worthy because 1) it was the only Netflix Marvel series worth saving IMO (unless you count Punisher, which I do, but it's really a spinoff of Daredevil) and 2) CHARLIE COX. I'm skeptical, but hopeful.

- Babylon 5 is also getting a reboot and I'm 10000% going to be on the couch with popcorn when it does. And I'll give it the same number of episodes I gave the original to hook me in, which was 12, because that first season was a slog and a half. But once I was in, I was all in; to me, it's still the show with the best-defined plot arcs ever. I'm sure they can do it even better in the reboot, knowing what went wrong/right the first time.

- I went to see No Time to Die and I posted my thoughts about that over here, and now I'm just waiting for someone to talk to about it. *crickets chirp* So in the absence of that, I wrote some more 00Q, for reasons.

- While I've been off work this last month recovering from surgery, the only thing I really accomplished was to take down my old fannish website. It was quite a project, checking each page and every file, to be sure everything I was deleting was already on AO3 or was saved off to my hard drive for posterity, given that there was 25 years worth of stuff in there. In the process I unearthed all kinds of stories I had hidden and forgotten about, and therefore had never posted. Some have been hidden there for 15 years; some were never posted publicly. Here's a list of what I've coded and posted to AO3 so far, for the sake of completeness:

The Waters of Lethe - Stargate SG-1, Jack/Daniel
Ridiculous Odds - due South, Fraser/Vecchio
The Language of Love - the Sentinel, Jim/Blair
Signs and Wonders - Smallville, Clark/Lex

I'm relieved the website is retired. I created it for free in 1996 on Geocities, and it has lived on Yahoo! Small Business for many years now for a fee, but the last time I actually updated it was 2008. Eventually I will cancel the webhosting, but I'll keep the domain name one more year, just so nothing weird happens to people who might follow old links to my site.

- From the old website, I did keep all my long, long recommendations lists for SPN, SG-1, Star Wars and misc fandoms, tho many of the links were broken, but - I have them in documents with the HTML intact, in case I want to follow those URLs. They are like little time capsules of mid-2000's fanfic excellence. Some of those SPN stories were amazing.

- I did also post all of the vids Barkley and I made together to AO3, and I'm going to post some of my own vids. The ones I like the best (things like Hurt, Did You, Farewell Ride, Comin' Home Baby, etc), probably. Mostly that's because I obliterated the download links for the older ones by deleting my website, so now they only live streaming at Vimeo, but there's no way for people to access them without the links or passwords.

- I have binge-watched ALL the things while I've been off work, since I really couldn't do much else: Dr. Death (really good); Dexter (surprisingly good, I'm not sure why I missed it first time around); Midnight Mass (interesting, but not very scary; only watch if you're into preachy philosophizing, good acting, and deep character dives); Ted Lasso season 1 (fun, but not a rewatch); The Great (fun); Goliath season 4 (I'm mostly in it for Nina Arianda, and I miss season 1 every time a new season comes out that's worse than the previous season); Only Murders in the Building (it's so meta! And pretty fun); The Looming Tower (frustrating but good); and Maid (I'm at episode 5 and I think I'm about to bail). It would be hard to underestimate how much time I have spent sitting in the recliner, exhausted and feeling icky, while staring at the TV. (It also helps to binge watch things when one is not sleeping at all.)

- I will say tho, y'all Prime folks should queue up the first few minutes of Goliath 04x02 to watch JK Simmons doing an amazeballs extended musical number (complete with song and dance) called "Mr. Pain Killer." Uh, he's the head of a bad pharma company that makes opioids, and this is a fantasy sequence? IDK how to explain this hilarity. Honestly, you have to see it to believe it. Preview clip.

Think that's it. It's been a rough month chez Destina, but this next month will be better, as we head into spooky-sparkly-pumpkin-cranberry-peppermint season. Hope you all are doing well. ♥

The Long Way 'Round (2923 words) by Destina
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Sarah Wilson (Marvel)
Additional Tags: First Kiss, Bucky Barnes's Trigger Words, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Found Family, Bucky Barnes & Steve Rogers Friendship, Awesome Sarah Wilson (Marvel), Steve Rogers's Notebook
Summary:

A story about taking the long way 'round, only to end up right where one belongs.

--

Bucky smiles, like it's nothing. Even though it's everything. The boy from Brooklyn, whose feet were once rooted to the familiar ground of hot city sidewalks, has learned to appreciate some things from a new century: the smothering heat of Louisiana afternoons, and kids shouting in the distance about which one'll be a better sidekick for Cap; cicadas singing him to sleep, and the way Sam's quick, knowing grin is sometimes only for Bucky.

Really enjoyed this movie.

( in mother Russia, you do not cut for spoilers, spoilers cut YOUCollapse )

My entry for intoabar and (with the exception of a really short Highlander/Gladiator crossover 20 years ago) my first actual crossover story. Dean Winchester walks into a bar and meets...Captain Flint! Featuring bickering, troublemaking, Castiel being Over It, and vague allusions to other fandoms, because why not.

Ship to Shore (2976 words) by Destina
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Supernatural, Black Sails
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton, Castiel & Dean Winchester, Captain Flint | James McGraw & John Silver, Benny Lafitte & Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Characters: Dean Winchester, Captain Flint | James McGraw, Benny Lafitte, John Silver, Castiel (Supernatural), Sam Winchester, Claire Novak
Additional Tags: Crossover, Roadhouse in Heaven (Supernatural), Humor, Pirates, Dean Winchester Saves The Day, Troublemaker Dean Winchester, Troublemaker James Flint, Castiel is So Done (Supernatural), Everyone is Dead, Off-screen Relationship(s), What is time, allusions to other fandoms, with ships, so very many ships
Summary:

Rocky's was busy all hours of the day and night, because - well, because there weren't any rules, really. Time was variable, if it even existed at all; it moved differently around there, blah blah, it made Dean's head hurt to think about it for too long. So he didn't, really. He set his own schedule for his corner of the afterlife, and it included regular days and nights, a 24-hour bar, and a clientele that varied from day to day. Mostly hunters, and people he vaguely recognized as related to him because the shapes of their faces were the same as Mom's, or Sam's, or John's.

Once in a while, though, they got a wanderer.

I stayed up way too late last night to watch episode 5 of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. (To be fair, I fell asleep sitting up while waiting for it to drop, but still.) And I was richly rewarded.

( feels and ep 5 spoilersCollapse )

Holy cow the 2nd episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier left me with a lot of feelings. I sure hope someone else out there is watching this so we can talk about it!

( spoilers for episode 2Collapse )

Yep, another one. (The worst part is, I have a third one all finished up...and it too is a fix-it for a pairing that already has nearly 96,000 stories on AO3. I guess this is my life now.)

These Old Bones (3227 words) by Destina
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Characters: Dean Winchester, Castiel (Supernatural), Jack Kline
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Castiel (Supernatural), Idiots in Love, Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, We Got Work To Do, Jack wants his family to be happy, Dean Winchester Deserves to be Happy, Castiel Deserves to be Happy (Supernatural)
Summary:

After a lifetime of making bad and desperate deals, this is the last (and most satisfying) of all his bargains: at the end of every hunt, Dean comes home to Cas.

I did the thing. Over 12,000 words of the thing, actually. (Would you believe I had to write this in order to be able to write a 2,000 word PWP? Of course you would, because we are all in fandom together.) HUGE thanks to RurouniHime and killabeez for beta! (And comma clean-up far beyond the call of duty. I'm sooooo rusty.)

The Art of Being Broken (12572 words) by Destina
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Characters: Dean Winchester, Castiel, Sam Winchester, Miracle the Dog (Supernatural)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dean Winchester Lives, Castiel Lives (Supernatural), OTP Feels, Team Free Will (Supernatural), Dean Winchester Prays to Castiel, Jack Meddles For A Good Cause, Happy Ending, Soul Bond
Summary:

After Dean cheats death (again) on a hunt gone wrong, he finds himself talking to Castiel once in a while, because Cas's sacrifice is an unhealed wound. He never expects an answer to his prayers...but there are new rules to this old game, and the Winchesters are overdue for a miracle.

I managed to write a little gen Yuletide treat this year, because I saw a prompt I couldn't resist at the last minute. And that brings my grand total of posted stories in 2020 to...two! Go me! Gosh, what a year.

Unrequited (1305 words) by Destina
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Ben-Hur (1959)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Messala (Ben-Hur)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Aftermath, Suffering, Suicidal Thoughts, Regret, mentions of Judah Ben-Hur, Yuletide Treat, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Summary:

The rabble come with platitudes for the Tribune Messala, or what’s left of him.

I must process some Mandalorian feelings.

( Spoilers would give their lives to protect the child.Collapse )

And since I'm here, a very tiny bit about Star Trek Discovery, with spoiler.



( Spoilers have...a question.Collapse )

I did the thing. You all also should do the thing. ♥

holiday love meme 2020
my thread here

I have an excessive number of thoughts and feelings, which I'll now proceed to share with you, now that I've sort of processed them. Can someone please come talk with me about these? Because...so many feelings.

( SPOILERS. Discussion of some stuff I loved, plus callbacks and parallels, but not all positive.Collapse )

I'm resurrecting this icon from the olden days of LJ, as is fitting and in keeping with SPN tradition of what's dead never staying dead for even a hot minute. *g*

I stopped being fannish about SPN about 9 years ago, but in the time I was all up in it, I wrote...pretty much everything there was to write. My final tally in the fandom was: 1 het, 11 Sam/Dean (Wincest), 2 Dean/Castiel (Destiel), 8 gen, and 16 J2 RPS (including one J3 story). It pained me in the early years of the show to have some folks tell me I was helping to shift the acceptable lines/norms of society by writing Wincest (not antis, just regular, thoughtful fans), and then later to have a different set of fannish friends hate Castiel so much for disrupting their Wincest vibe that we could not hang out in the sandbox together. Let me live, man...I wanted to ship everything!

Nowadays, it pains me to see how awful the Wincest fans (or "bibros" or "brosonly/bronlies", what hilariously awful terms omg) are to the Destiel fans (aka the Hellers, a term of disdain from Wincest fans - DestiHellers - that they promptly appropriated for their own), especially after episode 15x18, and how much of the actual fannish discourse has become about 'winning' (aka your ship sucks, only mine is valid, the canon does not support your interpretation of the text, etc) and 'losing' (aka die mad, Castiel fans). And how awful the fans across the board are with bringing up ships to the actors, and yelling at them for...IDK, it's unclear for what. Not writing the show themselves? Not conceding to fan demands? It's a trip. I know, I know. Fandom has always careened in and out of toxicity. It feels especially toxic at this point in 2020, tho; I confined myself to the corner of Tumblr that is lit up about 15x18, and that's been pleasant. Even though I think EVERYONE needs to adjust their expectations. (It's so helpful to be interested in the show, and a little invested in how it ends, but without feeling crushed if it doesn't go as hoped.)

( some thoughts on the road so far, including 15x18+19Collapse )

( Wants and DNW for the finale, and discussion of a couple predictions...includes a couple potential spoilers for 15x20Collapse )

...wow, look at all that. Apparently I do still care! I think I'm at a point where I will need to be spoiled about the episode before I can watch it. Which is easy, lucky for me, because I'm best coast; I can just look at twitter trends and have a pretty good indication of how far off the rails (or up into the stratosphere) things have gone.

There won't be any way to please everyone, that's for sure. But the big classic mistakes are so very easy to avoid...even for clueless Hollywood writers. I very much hope they manage it. (Not holding my breath.) Here's hoping for a happy ending, or at least one that pleases most fans. Especially me. It's been a hard year. :)

Hi out there! I went back and looked at my journal entries, and aside from some vid reposts and a link to that Garak/Bashir teleplay Siddig and Robinson did, and a couple polls to cut people who weren't actually reading this journal, I've made no entries since August 2. Time flies? It's not that I haven't had things to say, it's that I don't have the energy to say them, I guess.

( the state of me is...2020Collapse )

Haven't felt very fannish this year, either. I've read 3 or 4 fanfics in the last few months, which is extremely weird for me as a more or less steady fanfic customer/consumer. Mostly it's because I can't pay attention to anything; I have to save all my concentration for work. Other than that H50 story I wrote, no writing has happened. I beta'd a couple of vids for a friend, and that's been about it. My brain space is occupied. Rented out, to anxiety and election stress and work stress, like everyone else. I'm hoping when the election is over, some of this will lift off me. (Not holding my breath.) I have been reading some books in very tiny bite-sized chunks; I had a large TBR stockpile from which I've picked a few things, and I've been very selective about it. Mostly non-fiction, but a few novels, too. I'll post about all that at the end of the year. Probably.

I decided to take this first week of November off, because...I deserve a week off! I need a nap and some cake and to watch a horror movie or two. I'm reading DW every day (and Twitter), and sometimes I comment to let you know I'm thinking of you, but a lot of posts have passed by without me commenting. I'm paying attention, tho. Thank you sheron for checking in on me, and james for the little cards and notes. :)

Unrelated to any of the above, this morning I went to Trader Joe's in my fortnightly Saturday 8AM "keep the maskless morons away from me" run and they were playing the theme song of From Russia With Love very loudly (followed by Goldfinger) and I was sad. RIP Sean Connery. :(

Last but not least, let's talk about ( the Mandalorian S2E1!!!!Collapse )

...okay but what if a fan wrote a Garak/Bashir Zoomable teleplay where they are husbands and Alexander Siddig and Andrew Robinson performed it with affection and heart and in full character and it was absolutely fucking lovely

shhh no just listen

what

if





(This is the first time I've mustered up the energy to type words to DW in a long time, so you really should take that as a sign of how much I liked this. Also I was a Bashir/O'Brien shipper, I didn't see Bashir/Garak at all back in the day. Also I hate it when fans talk to actors about fanfic. These are all indications of the obstacles I had to overcome to watch this thing in the first place. And yet.)

Human
Music: The Killers
Vidders: Barkley and Destina
Run time: 02:49
Fandom: Iron Man movies (MCU)
Summary: We love him 3000.
password: ilu3000

Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Music: Mashup: Dean Grey (Oasis, Green Day)
Vidders: Barkley and Destina
Run time: 03:17
Fandoms: Stargate SG-1, Firefly, Farscape, Supernatural
Summary: All our competent, problematic faves and their man pain.
password: broken