Otter's Rock

I love rec lists! Got this meme format from sixbeforelunch

1. Angst

what this darkness cannot swallow, it must spit out (24750 words) by Dialux
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Caranthir | Morifinwë/Haleth of the Haladin, Caranthir | Morifinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Caranthir | Morifinwë & Maglor | Makalaurë, Caranthir | Morifinwë & Celegorm | Turcafinwë, Caranthir | Morifinwë & Curufin | Curufinwë, Amras & Amrod & Caranthir | Morifinwë, Caranthir | Morifinwë & Fëanor | Curufinwë, Caranthir | Morifinwë & Nerdanel, Caranthir | Morifinwë & Original Female Character(s)
Characters: Caranthir | Morifinwë, Maedhros | Maitimo, Maglor | Makalaurë, Celegorm | Turcafinwë, Curufin | Curufinwë, Amras (Tolkien), Amrod (Tolkien), Fëanor | Curufinwë, Nerdanel (Tolkien), Finrod Felagund | Findaráto, Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Brother-Brother Relationships, Father-Son Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, Father-Daughter Relationship, Grief/Mourning, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Feanorian Family Feels, Dysfunctional Families Slowly Becoming Functional, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Therapeutic Vibe Of Planting Trees, Post-Canon Fix-It, Maedhros' Awful Sense Of Humor Post-Rebirth, No. None of the Feanorians Can Keep Secrets., Alternate Universe - Caranthir Fucks, How To Get A Guy Who Hates You To Kill You, ...how to FAIL at getting a guy who hates you to kill you, Fëanorian Week 2021
Summary:

Caranthir sighs, disgusted, and sits on the bed, as far as he can get from Celegorm without appearing like he’s halfway to crawling out of his skin. “I didn’t come back to life so I could hear how much my dying traumatized you.”

“You fucking bastard,” says Celegorm, and lunges.

[When Caranthir is reborn into Valinor, he must deal with everything he left behind in Beleriand- the annoying brothers, the overbearing parents, the family he lost and will never regain.

But there are things that Caranthir does not know. There are lies that have not yet been unwound. There are mercies he has never expected. It takes orange trees, infuriating brothers, silver ribbons and unseasonal thunderstorms, but slowly Caranthir learns precisely how wrong he is.]

2. Alternate Universe

New Wave (103324 words) by yellow_caballero
Chapters: 12/12
Fandom: Batman - All Media Types, Batman - Fandom
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Stephanie Brown & Bruce Wayne, Stephanie Brown & Tim Drake
Characters: Stephanie Brown, Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake, Alfred Pennyworth, Arthur Brown, Original Male Character(s), Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Stephanie Brown is Robin, 1930s mobster movie + 90s kid PBS show + 00s tween girl cartoon, Steph's a skate punk Tim's a leet hacker and Bruce has NO idea what's happening, Can YOU jam with the console cowboys in cyberspace?, The Batman (Movie 2022) + The Batman (Cartoon 2004) + Turning Red basically, Stephanie Brown-centric
Summary:

Some lunatic in a bat costume is running around Gotham clowning on fools, but local delinquent Stephanie Brown has way bigger problems. When her father and friends start joining mob wars Steph knows she has to do something about it before Gotham collapses. If that means joining up with rich dudes playing dress up, pasty nerds with hacking and photography habits, and throwing on a costume herself, then that’s just what she’ll have to do. Even if Batman works alone. She’s convincing.

In which Stephanie Brown rocks the radical nineties and becomes the first Robin, ruining Batman’s life and giving Tim Drake a hobby.

3. Canon Divergence

Listen To Your Heart (No!) (67914 words) by yellow_caballero
Chapters: 7/7
Fandom: Moon Knight (TV 2022), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Layla El-Faouly/Jake Lockley, Layla El-Faouly & Jake Lockley, Layla El-Faouly/Steven Grant
Characters: Jake Lockley, Layla El-Faouly, Khonshu (Moon Knight), Steven Grant (Marvel), Jean-Paul DuChamp, Marc Spector
Additional Tags: Action & Romance, Drama & Romance, absolutely unprecedented levels of wifeguy & husbandgirl, layla's a bit of a reylo but we don't hold that against her, jake's over-reliance on WikiHow to navigate social situations, unstoppable 'I can fix him' vs immovable 'I can make her worse', Unreliable Narrator, internalized ableism, Suicide Attempt, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied Sexual Content, Autistic Jake Lockley, Ableism
Summary:

One month after Marc Spector crawled inside an Egyptian temple and Jake Lockley walked out, Jake tracks down Layla El-Faouly and offers to help her take revenge and avenge her father. Jake is sure this is how flirting works. Pretty sure.

It's easy to fall in love with a badass protector of the night. It's a little harder to fall in love with Jake Lockley, your everyday assassin. And there's no way Layla El-Faouly could ever fall in love with Marc and Steven. There's no way they will ever meet.

Three acts on the subject of heartbreak.

4. Crossover

Big Hero Martian (42621 words) by althor42
Chapters: 3/3
Fandom: Big Hero 6 (2014), The Martian - All Media Types
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Hiro Hamada, Baymax (Marvel), Cass Hamada, Mark Watney, Annie Montrose, Gogo Tomago, Wasabi-No Ginger, Fred | Fredzilla, Melissa Lewis (The Martian), Alex Vogel, Chris Beck, Beth Johanssen, Rick Martinez (The Martian), Teddy Sanders
Additional Tags: hiro goes on a rescue mission, so it's on mars, small details, just build a ship, nbd
Summary:

There would have been no rescue for Mark, if NASA had not noticed he was still alive. Unless of course, a certain Big Hero noticed instead.

5. Fix It

god loves everybody, don't remind me (70381 words) by napricot
Chapters: 4/4
Fandom: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Erik Killmonger & T'Challa
Characters: Erik Killmonger, T'Challa (Marvel), T'Chaka (Marvel), Ramonda (Marvel), Shuri (Marvel), Okoye (Marvel), Nakia (Black Panther), N'Jobu (Marvel), Erik Killmonger's Mother, Bast, Linda (Black Panther movies), W'Kabi (Marvel), Ulysses Klaue, Everett Ross, Zuri (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Time Loop, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Wakanda (Marvel), Djalia | Ancestral Plane (Marvel), Erik Killmonger Lives, Family
Summary:

N’Jadaka didn’t believe in the gods of his people. But belief was not a prerequisite of the gods’ attention, and the blood of the Panther tribe ran in N’Jadaka’s veins. Bast took hold of his soul in her mighty jaws and lifted it free of his body. She gave him a warning shake, just as she would a misbehaving kitten, and set him back. With one careful claw, she tweaked his path through time into a twisting loop. Wayward and abandoned though he was, N’Jadaka was still of her tribe. He could set things right, if given the chance.

Erik gets a do-over. Erik gets a lot of do-overs. Or: Erik Killmonger's own personal version of Groundhog Day, only with a lot more murder, dying, trips to the ancestral plane, awkward family conversations, and divine intervention.

6. Fluff

Cat Nap (8883 words) by galwednesday
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Sam Wilson (Marvel), Clint Barton
Additional Tags: Post-HYDRA Reveal, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, modern WS!Bucky Barnes, Captain America Steve Rogers, not sure if that counts as Shrunkyclunks or not, OC stands for Original Cat, accidental pet acquisition, Steve Rogers's Sadness Interior Decorating, Fluff and Humor
Summary:

Objectively, losing the Bucharest safehouse and its contents was the least of Bucky’s problems. The balding agent he’d seen directing the raid was apparently affiliated with SHIELD, which was a shadowy government agency that made representatives from other shadowy government agencies suddenly remember urgent appointments when Bucky tried to bribe, threaten, and otherwise shake them down for information on what the hell SHIELD might want with a former brainwashed assassin. Dodging SHIELD should be his number one priority.

Subjectively, he wanted his fucking cat back.

7. Humor

Mountains, Molehills (1175 words) by lalaietha
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Lilo & Stitch (2002)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: David Kawena/Nani Pelekai
Characters: Nani Pelekai, Lilo Pelekai, David Kawena, Jumba Jookiba, Pleakley
Summary:

Technically, David doesn't live here, but that "technically" is starting to get real thin, and he knows it. Which is why he chokes a bit when Lilo puts her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands, and says, "Are you going to ask my sister to marry you, or what?"

8. Hurt/Comfort

5 Times Tim Spends the Night at Wayne Manor + 1 Time He Comes Home (48695 words) by motleyfam
Chapters: 6/6
Fandom: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Batman (Comics)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Tim Drake & Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Batfamily Members & Tim Drake
Characters: Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Dick Grayson, Janet Drake, Jack Drake
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Mother Hen Jason Todd, Hurt Tim Drake, Sick Tim Drake, Wayne Gala (DCU), Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, though tim will argue that one, Jason doesn't die, Tim Drake-centric, Concussions, Birthday Fluff, Bad Parents Jack and Janet Drake, not bad people per se, but definitely people who should not have had a child ya feel?, Hospitals, Blood and Injury, Vomiting, 5+1 Things, Family Feels, Found Family, Infection, Stitches, Medical Inaccuracies, i mean i tried my best but i’m no doctor, Kid Tim Drake, Batfamily (DCU), Tim Drake Joins the Batfamily Early
Series: Part 1 of Settle Our Bones, Part 1 of 5+1 (expansion pack)
Summary:

Tim is good at galas.

No, scratch that—Tim is great at galas. He’s been attending them ever since the age of three, when his parents first stuffed him into his little Gymboree tuxedo and gave him a stern lecture about ‘sitting quietly’ and ‘speaking when spoken to.’ He knows all the rules: what to wear, how to stand, when to smile, what to say, what not to say. He knows how to come across as polite and intelligent and charming, and on absolutely any other day, he would be rocking this.

---

Or, my take on a ‘Tim Joins the Family Early’ AU, told through a series of sleepovers—most of which are unplanned.

Featuring pre-teen Tim, Alive!Jason, and a whole lot of hurt/comfort.

9. Missing Scene

Mercy (420 words) by Selena
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Babylon 5
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Londo Mollari & Delenn
Characters: Delenn (Babylon 5), Londo Mollari
Additional Tags: Episode Related, Backstory, Flash Forward, Guilt
Summary:

Londo and Delenn and the mercy of the universe.

10. Post-Canon or Pre-Canon

Heartrate (7199 words) by avocadomoon
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek: Enterprise
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: T'Pol/Charles "Trip" Tucker III
Characters: Charles "Trip" Tucker III, T'Pol (Star Trek)
Additional Tags: Grieving, Alternate Universe - Canon Fix-It, Slice of Life
Summary:

"I shall endeavor to impress you," T'Pol says. "Even after all these years, I believe I am still capable."

11. Songfic

Do people still write songfics? I mostly find them annoying, because my musical taste is eclectic and so I rarely know the songs they're referencing. Which is why I don't have any of them in my bookmarks. However! I have a fic which is a crossover with a song--Slip Slidin' Away by Paul Simon--so that will have to do.

Assistance to British Nationals Abroad (20372 words) by melannen
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: British Government Cats RPF, Slip Slidin' Away - Paul Simon (Song), Monstress (Comics), Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch, Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Palmerston (Chief Mouser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office), Larry (Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office), Tam Tam (First Record-Keeper of the Is'hami Temple), Cronus (Assistant to the Chief Whip), Toby (Rivers of London), Molly (Rivers of London), The Woman Who Became A Wife, The Man Who Wore His Passion For His Woman Like A Thorny Crown, The Father Who Had A Son, Siffha'h (Tower Bridge Gating Team)
Additional Tags: Crossover, Cats, London, worldgates, Tentacle Monsters, Spiders, Dogs, Wizards, Yuletide
Series: Part 2 of Author's favorites, Part 2 of Rivers of London crossovers
Summary:

Three cats, three humans, a dog and a tarantula walk through a Gate -

12. Whump

Clearly Calm and Keeping Terrorized (258290 words) by Batbirdies
Chapters: 34/34
Fandom: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd & Everyone, Jason Todd & Titus (DCU)
Characters: Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Damian Wayne, Barbara Gordon, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, Dick Grayson, Leslie Thompkins, Alfred Pennyworth, Titus the Dog
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Dysfunctional Family, Major self esteem issues, Father-Son Relationship, Adopted Sibling Relationship, injury and illness, Unintended Animal Therapy, Dogsitting, Flashbacks, Nightmares, References to Dogfighting, Some Medium level violence, Deep Seated Issues, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, bad language, Vaguely Suicidal Behavior, It’s not really how I intended it to go but here we are, Bruce Wayne hasn’t always been a good parent, So much angst, Fluff and Angst, Exposition Heavy, Slow burn family relationships, Lazarus Pit Madness, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Platonic Cuddling, Fix It Fic, canon divergent after Damian’s resurrection, Pre-Rebirth, An attempt to combine all the other timelines
Series: Part 4 of Emotional Motion Sickness
Summary:

Jason made a deal with Bruce, no killing, and there would be no more conflict between them. At least on patrol. Jason reasoned it would be easier to accomplish his goals without constantly fighting Batman along the way.

It didn’t change anything, not really. Not until he found an old gift he never knew about and Bruce asked him to dogsit Titus while he and Damian were out of town.

Not until the Lazarus Pit started bothering him again.

AKA: My take on a Jason rejoins the family fic.

This was so hard to do, to pick just one fic for these categories! To console myself from having to choose between beloved favorites, I shall simply link to my Pinboard bookmarks and my AO3 bookmarks. Have fun!

Yoinked from petra: Rules: give us the links to your fics with the most hits, most kudos, most comments, most bookmarks, most words, and least words.

Hits: Lieutenant Bennet's Visit Temeraire/Pride and Prejudice, (3,172 words). Elizabeth is an aviator.

Kudos: Past Lives (Star Wars: Clone Wars/The Force Awakens (16,696 words). Unfinished Finn Time Travel fic. I have ambitions to finish it someday! but that day will not be soon.

Comments: Also Past Lives, which is unsurprising as it is in chapters and posted a chapter at a time, and thus people are more likely to leave multiple comments. Most of my fic are either one-shots or posted all at once even if there are multiple chapters, so there are fewer/no repeat commenters and they have ONE day at the top of the Works list for that fandom. Also, time travel fixits are very popular in Star Wars fandom. And #2 sorted by comments is Lieutenant Bennet's Visit. Once those two are eliminated, #3 is To The Stars, Singin' in the Rain (1952) (4,027 words), Lina Lamont as a Rocket Scientist.

Bookmarks: #1 is Past Lives (again), but #2 is Far Above Rubies, a Pride and Prejudice AU where Mary marries Mr. Collins and is quite content with hr life. (5,237 words)

Max Words: Consequences (Stargate SG-1) (46,377 words). My first published fic, I'm pretty sure! And still my longest. Brought to you by my gut-deep loathing of the then-common trope in SG-1 fic where Jack and Sam (a CO and his executive officer) get together and have babies and everyone is happy for them and there are no career consequences for either one of them.

Min Words: I've written a number of drabbles (and a drabble is 100 WORDS EXACTLY I will die on this hill!) but most of them are not posted independently on AO3, they're in various themed collections (crossovers, or particular storylines of multiple drabbles) gathered into works with each drabble as a chapter. The only two drabbles posted completely by themselves are Blood Will Tell (Stargate SG-1) (100 words) In Another Life (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) (100 words)

*

My take-away from all this: I write in a lot of different fandoms, and at least for me, the fics that tend to have the most in one category of user engagement also tend to have the most in other categories of engagement. It's not until you get down into the 3-5th place in any category that you have significant variation.

Also, looking at the bottom of the list, I have 21 fics with no comments on AO3 at all. But those are earlier fics that were written pre-AO3 (or very early in AO3's days) and they've gotten comments elsewhere, just none on AO3. For instance, fic exchanges used to be primarily hosted on LJ. So that's where all the comments are, either in the post on the community there or on my journal. I have twelve fics with 0 bookmarks ... which means that on several fics people liked it enough to bookmark it but did not comment. And the only fic with no kudos is the one for an exchange that hasn't been revealed yet :D.

Taken from anghraine and tielan 

Look at the most recent 20 fanwork titles on your AO3 account. (I'm assuming this isn't the most recent begun/completed fics, but the most recently updated for any reason.)

1. How many are you happy with? Eight.  Which is high, for me; I routinely hate my titles, but two of those come from canons with really strong naming conventions that I could just go with and and one was an episode tag where I could play off the name of the episode and one was based on a musical and so I could just take a line from one of the songs in the musical and whaddaya know, it both fit and commented on the story and canon!

2. How many are ... not great? Three or so?  I don't often hate my titles, so it's not like they're terrible, just, you know, mostly mediocre.

3. How many did you scramble for at the last minute? Eight.  It's usually more, but as I said in question 1, some fandoms and types of story are more helpful in naming fic than others.

4. How many did you know before you started writing/creating, or near the beginning? None!  Titles are pretty much always the last thing I think of, even if it doesn't quite qualify as "scrambling at the last minute."  Although I just uploaded a ficathon fic (not yet revealed, and hence not in this list) where the title was the first thing I thought of and the entire reason I chose that fandom to write for in the first place (it wasn't what we matched on).

5. How many are quotes from songs or poems? Five, I think? There are two that I have no idea, which probably means I was going through, like, poetry.com searching on keywords and stuff.

6. How many are other quotes? Does, like, a saying count?  If so, one. "Home Is Not A Place " (Star Wars Legends, Zahn Trilogy)

7. Which best reflects the plot of the story/content of the fanwork? Undoutedly "In Which Mrs. Jane Dupree Has An Adventure (The Finding Herself Remix)" (the poetry of A.A. Milne) and "In Which Cimorene Settles In as King's Chief Cook and Librarian, and Deals with Politics" (Enchanted Forest Chronicles), those being the ones where I used the canonical naming convention of telling you exactly what's going to happen in that chapter/fic.  Probably also "Kitty and Georgy (The Healing Old Hurts Remix)" (Pride & Prejudice) because again, the remix title format is designed to explicitly tell you the content of the story.  "Assisting Mr. Wayne" (Batman Beyond) is also pretty, hm, self-explanatory.  I'm not sure that any of them are more or less reflective of the plot than any of the others, it's kind of a tie.

8. Which best reflects the theme of the story? Definitely "Will the cycle be unbroken" (BSG 2003) because it's all about time travel to stop the awful march of "all this has happened before, all this will happen again."

9. Which best reflects the character voice of the story/POV of the fanwork? "Here We Are Together" (My Fair Lady) for the simple reason that it's quoting the canonical words of the viewpoint character.

10. Which is your favourite title? "Will the cycle be unbroken" (BSG 2003) because it flows so organically from the story. Also, I came up with it in the middle of the writing process, which is one of the reasons it fits the story so well.  It matches both in theme and content, because to come up with the hybrid dialogue I spent a lot of time searching for quotes and lines of poetry I could adapt; the hybrid says very little that isn't a quote or allusion in canon, and I wanted to follow that convention.  So a modified quote felt very apt.

Post the first line from your 25 most recent fanfics and try to find a pattern. Taken from jedibuttercup 

( 25 First Lines )

( Patterns )

Stolen from anghraine 

Account Created: December 4 2009
Link to AO3: Beatrice_Otter 
Total Works: 154--but one of those is just all the crossover drabbles I wrote for tth100 strung together.

Total Wordcount: 575,102
Average Wordcount: 3,734
Longest Story: Consequences, a 46k word SG-1 AU I wrote in 2005 because I was annoyed at all the Broca-AUs and thought I could do it better.  Turns out, this is not the greatest reason to write a story, and by the end of it I hated it.  And the sequel shows it, because it ends WAY too abruptly and I still occasionally get people wanting to know if I'm going to actually FINISH it and my response is, I know this is a crappy ending, but it's the best you're getting.  (For those of you too young to know SG-1 or who were never in the fandom, The Broca Divide was like the third ep of the first season, and the SGC gets a virus that turns people into cave-men and Sam tries to seduce Jack before she gets carted off to the infirmary.  There were a lot of really bad fics that used this as a jumping point for really OOC floof.)
Shortest Story: Well, I have a lot of drabbles as mentioned earlier, but AO3 thinks they're all part of one story because that's how I posted them.  The two monofannish drabbles are posted each as their own story, so those are what AO3 thinks are the shortest.  "In Another Life" and "Blood Will Tell."  And when I say "drabble," I mean a REAL drabble, 100 words exactly.  None of this newfangled "any really short story" nonsense, goldern kids get off my lawn ...

Total Kudos: 4,397
Average Kudos: 28
Story With the Most Kudos: Lieutenant Bennet's Visit, with 405.

Total Comment Threads: 634
Average Comment Threads: 4
Story With the Most Comment Threads: Lieutenant Bennet's Visit, with 73.

Total Author Subscriptions: 54
Total Story Subscriptions: 35
Story With the Most Subscriptions: Darcy's Surprise (the sequel to Lieutenant Bennet's Visit) with 5.

Total Bookmarks: 776.
Story With the Most Bookmarks: Lieutenant Bennet's Visit, with 87.

Stories With No Comments or Kudos:  All of them at least have kudos, but holy crap I had no idea I had so many with no comments at all (or at least, none here).  Most of them are from the pre-AO3 days, so they at least had comments other places, but still.  'Tis a little disheartening to see it all laid out like that.

Well, my current WIP isn't yet to page seven, so instead of seven lines from page seven you get five lines from page 5.

Everything was fairly ordinary for an office. Desks, chairs, piles of paper everywhere, though there were rather more women than the offices she was used to. Pictures of loved ones—none notable that Peggy could spot. If Dottie was after a connection to someone influential through someone working here, Harrier would be the obvious target.

One thing Dottie had never been was obvious.

"Can I help you?"

Peggy took care to startle slightly—but not too much—at the other woman's interruption. The other woman was a few years older than Peggy but more fashionably dressed, with immaculate hair and makeup that would not have been out of place on Rita Hayworth. "Oh! Yes! I'm afraid I'm new—Helen Bolt—Mister Harrier told me to find Tillie's desk—are you Mabel?"

"Uhuh." She managed to look down her nose at Peggy while staying seated at her desk. "I'm Mildred Atwater. Mabel's the one in the green dress whose seams aren't straight. And Tillie's desk is in the next row, so beat it, you're in my light."

I have figured out that the MacGuffin--whatever it is that Dottie wants--isn't actually in the office, that's just a red herring, but I still don't know what to do instead.

I've never really been successful at figuring out cases for casefic, dunno why I thought this time would be any different.

firecat asks, "Why is Babylon 5 your favorite show?"

(schneefink, you may want to look away, because this will be FILLED with spoilers.)

Because it's awesome?  Seriously.  I mean, okay, it does have some flaws.  There are parts where the dialogue is pretty clunky and definitely NOT helped by the fact that the supporting actors couldn't always, well, act.  (Look, the main characters were pretty much all awesome actors, with the exception of Bruce Boxleitner who still did a decent job, but the guest stars were often pretty low-budget and given clunky scripts to work with and were simply not up to it.)

But the overall arc of plot, character development, worldbuilding, was breathtakingly groundbreaking in its day and is still a darn sight better than most of the long arc-driven shows we have today.  It paved the way for every show since that had a long story to tell.  Lost could not have happened without Babylon 5 showing the way.  Except that Babylon 5's arc was better than just about any other TV show arc since.  Most of them fizzle out or go weird or jump the shark; Babylon 5 didn't.  It all fits together, particularly if you chop off season 5 which was an add-on.  It makes sense in a way that a lot of the latter part of, say, Battlestar Galactica doesn't.  Most arc-driven shows, they peter out or lose steam or the writers lose track of what they're aiming for or they never had an endpoint planned out in the first place and as time goes on it really shows and the whole thing falls apart.

The thing was, Babylon 5 was J. Michael Straczynski's baby, start to finish.  He had a whole five season arc figured out from the beginning.  Not only that, he had redundancy built in.  For example, he knew he was going to need a Very Powerful Telepath for Reasons.  Like, a telepath who is WAAAAAY more powerful than any other telepath ever.  That was going to be Talia Winters (whose lover Jason Ironheart had been experimented on and turned into some sort of metahuman, and had given her a "gift" before he died that was supposed to be developed into the Very Powerful Telepathy needed for plot purposes).  But Talia's actress left the show.  So Joe Stracynski wrote her an awesome final episode ... which also happened to bring back Lyta Alexander, a telepath who'd been in the show's pilot, in which she telepathically "scanned" a Vorlon (a really mysterious and powerful alien) and then went off to try to contact the Vorlons, who then took her in and altered her and used her as a proxy, thus giving her the Very Powerful Telepathy needed to fill the plot arc originally filled by Talia.  The two women were very different, character-wise and history-wise, yet either of them could fill the same plot arc, and when one replaced the other it felt like it had been planned that way all along.  I still look back at that (and several other instances like that) and shake my head in wonder.

And the reason he could do that, that he had such tight control and move things around, is that he wrote most of the show.  There's at least one season where he wrote every single episode himself.  In a lot of ways, the series is like a novel written by one man.  So, yeah, it didn't always get as polished as it could be, but dang.  And even with all the places where the dialogue was clunky, there are other places where it's so incredibly awesome that it gives me chills.

When it first came on, of course, that wasn't why I loved it.  No, I loved it because it had wonderful characters.  The show was billed as "not Star Trek!" and it wasn't, but part of that was that the characters were allowed to be a lot more real and human and funny.  And they were allowed to grow and change over the course of the series.  Londo and G'Kar, for example, both start off very petty, and yet they also had heart and the possibility for something more.  They both change dramatically over the course of the series, together and separately, and they both have reasons to do so.  It feels natural.  It feels like real life.  They make mistakes, they learn, they grow, sometimes they backslide--they felt real.  All of the main characters felt real and three-dimensional in a way you seldom get on TV or movies.

And the worldbuilding!  Wow!  Each alien race had a culture all their own, that felt three-dimenional, too.  (Except maybe the Drazi.)  Most SF shows, each alien species has A Characteristic.  They're Stoic Warrior Aliens or they're Logical or they're whatever, and they all come from a planet that is All One Thing (a desert, or oceans, or whatever that one geographic feature is).  But there were a lot of species on Babylon 5, and any that showed up more than once got developed into something deeper.  Something complex.  Something like a real culture might actually be like, with a history and everything.  I love the Minbari the most, but the Centauri and the Narn both had some fascinating complexities.

And it had a message.  Sometimes subtle, sometimes clunky, but it was about something.  In a deeper way than Star Trek was, by that point.  You can watch the show on a number of levels--just the SF action adventure, or the political commentary, or the religious level--there was always something to explore and go deeper in.  You didn't have to delve into its message or buy into it to enjoy it, but it was there if you wanted it.

I loved it, and still do.  I love the characters.  I love the world.  I love the thoughtfulness.

laurajv asks: What's your favorite character, from any media, and why?

And the problem with this is the same problem I have with any "what's your favorite?" question, and that is that I've never had any one book or character or movie or anything that I could point to and go "this one is my favorite."  Even if you narrow it down, so it's "what's your favorite character on a particular show?" I almost always go, "well, that depends on my mood."  My fannish affections are extremely poly; I've never had anything resembling an OTP or OTC.  I mean, I have pairings that I like (I'd never choose to pair Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade with anyone else, nor Han and Leia with anyone but each other), but it's not a strong enough thing to go THEY CAN'T EVER BE WITH ANYONE ELSE.  Like, if someone wrote an interesting, well-written story with no character bashing where one of those two pairs broke up or never got together in the first place, I'd read it and enjoy it.  (Well.  Let me clarify that.  If you were going to pair Luke with Callista, you would have to re-write the end of Children of the Jedi so that she didn't end up in Cray's body, because that really, really weirds me out.  Like, ew, and then after that she went off the rails in the other two books she appeared in, but if she weren't in Cray's body to begin with those other books would be different, so.)  But my favorite Star Wars characters are probably Corran Horn and Mara Jade, if you take all things together.  (But then there's Thrawn!  Pelleon!  Padme!  Winter!)

Star Trek characters, well, Saavik and Spock for classic trek, everyone on DS9, B'Elanna Torres and Tuvok on Voyager, Trip and T'Pol on Enterprise, TNG I can't pick favorites, and TOS everyone but Kirk.  (He's too much of a fratboy.  They took out all the character's good points and exaggerated his bad ones.)

Babylon 5, um.  HOW CAN ONE PICK FAVORITES?  They're all awesome!  I start off with Delenn and Lennier, but then would I put them as more beloved than Londo and G'Kar?  And Vir and Na'Toth and Susan and Marcus?  Er.  Well, no.  I mean, my favorite culture to do worldbuilding with is definitely the Minbari which would normally dictate what characters I want to write about.  (Boy, howdy, does that happen with Star Trek.)  But I love Londo and G'Kar and Vir and Na'toth and all the rest so much I love to write them too even if their culture is less interesting to poke around in ...

Battlestar Galactica, I love me some Cylons.  Love 'em, love to hate 'em.  Particularly the Final Five.  And then there's Bill and Laura, love them!  Billy!  Felix!  Lee and Kara annoy me separately and together, but mostly because the show focused on them.  Like, Kara was not the only screwed up person in that fleet.  Neither was Lee.  And the last season and a half there were so many stretches that were all about their issues when I wanted to know what was happening to all the other characters that I love, but we didn't get it because we had to get Yet Another Go-Around on the Lee and Kara show.  (Or the Lee's Daddy Issues show.  Or the Kara is Messed Up Because Life Done Her Wrong show.  And I appreciated in the abstract how rare it is for a heroine to be allowed the kind of damage that Kara was while still being a hero, and it's rare for a heroine to have a Traumatic Backstory not involving rape (I mean, the messed up stalker guy who may/may not have raped her in that creepy New Caprica apartment came long after Kara was screwed up by her mother's abuse, it was a complicating factor not THE REASON FOR EVERYTHING), but still, it was too much for my taste.)

Once Upon a Time.  I ship Belle/Rumple but I'm glad she kicked him out--that's what I like about that pairing, that she's the kind of person who would do that if she had to, they love one another but Twu Wuv doesn't conquer all, and I have been so worried since the beginning that they would try to paper over the ethical issues inherent in that relationship and go "it doesn't matter that he's evil because she loves him!"  So I can't read much fic in that pairing because most of the fic tends to be in that vein.  I hate, loathe, and despise Hook with the passion of a thousand burning suns.  I love Emma, Regina, Neal (I miss Neal!) ...those three are actually probably my favorites on the show, and my favorite character that doesn't get enough love is definitely Neal.  (I mean, I prefer Emma with Neal than anybody else, but like I said I'm not really an OTP type person, and there's a lot of gen Emma and Swan Queen both, and lots of Outlaw Queen as well, to give my my Emma and Regina fixes.  Not much Neal at all.)  Other than that, Mulan and Aurora had so much potential, sigh.

MCU, my favorites are (in no particular order) Peggy, Sam, and Steve.  My favorite character there that fandom that fandom doesn't much care about is Maria Hill.  I believe in Jasper Sitwell.

Doctor Who!  Eleven is my favorite doctor, but Martha and Donna are my favorite companions.  I loved early!River, before she was ruined by making EVERY SINGLE THING IN HER ENTIRE LIFE EVER ABOUT THE DOCTOR AND SHE'LL DO INCREDIBLY SELF-DESTRUCTIVE THINGS BECAUSE OF HIM AND HIDE IT FROM HIM SO HE DOESN'T FEEL BAD.  Gah.  I don't have enough time watching Classic Who to have informed opinions there.  I like Rose as seen on the show, but get really annoyed by Rose as seen by fandom, where SHE IS THE ONE TRUE COMPANION AND EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS ABOUT HER AND THE DOCTOR GETTING TOGETHER AND/OR STAYING TOGETHER AND HE COULD NEVER CARE ABOUT ANY OTHER COMPANION THE WAY HE CARES FOR HER.  Because of this I rarely read any fanfic in which Rose occurs.

Stargate: Sam and Teal'c and Sha're and Hammond are probably my favorites, but I love them all.  And I was never into SGA enough to really have favorites, as such.  It was okay, and I think I saw every ep at least once, but eh.  I read a lot of McShep because there was a lot of it, but the two of them, separately and together, are my least favorite characters on the show.  It's not that I dislike them, but, look, they were the most formulaic and least interesting.

Terminator, I love Sarah Connor and Catherine Weaver and James Ellison and John Henry and Cameron and Jesse and ... look, the Sarah Connor Chronicles are definitely my favorite part of that franchise, and I love almost everything about that show except that it wasn't longer.

Vorkosiverse, again, there's nobody that I don't absolutely love.  Ivan, Simon, Alys, and Elli are the only major characters that I don't think I would ever say is my favorite.  All the rest, yeah, at different times and in different moods I would choose different ones from among them as my favorite.

sixbeforelunch asks: What Star Trek headcanon of yours has not yet made it into a story?

Most of it is (unsurprisingly!) about Vulcans.  For example, I have some Thoughts about how to reconcile Vulcan culture from Enterprise with the rest of the TV show.  As mentioned in my previous post, the taboo against telepathy there DOES NOT FIT with anything else we know about Vulcan telepathy ANYWHERE ELSE IN ANY OF THE SHOWS, let alone the books.  I would bet you that lots and lots of families (plus of course the monks of Gol and the priestesses of Mount Seleya) just kept quietly keeping on with what they were doing and finding ways to mislead the Science Directorate about it.

I also think that Mestral from that one episode about the Vulcans marooned in West Virginia in the 1960s got married and had kids  who formed a whole backwoods West-Virginia clan of Vulcan-Human hybrids who kept some elements of Vulcan culture and not others, and quietly imported some Vulcan things (possibly musical instruments, crops, etc.) after official First Contact was made.  And possibly also made contact with the V'tosh ka'tur at some point--maybe a few marriages?  Adopting kids the V'tosh ka'tur didn't want to raise on ships but didn't want to send back to Vulcan to be forced into line?  And possibly after Vulcan was destroyed in the Reboot universe sending aid there to help out.  (I am completely ignoring the canonical difficulties in producing a Vulcan-Human hybrid, here, and the fact that if anything the show underestimated it.)

I think that Saavik and Spock (who eventually got married, in the books) have a daughter who is on track to being the next T'Pau, and will in time become the Eldest Mother of their clan.  I think her name is Amanda.

I think that part of the reason that Perrin (Sarek's second wife) and Spock didn't get along is that Perrin didn't know how to relate to a step-son older than she was, and also (unlike Amanda) was very definitely On Sarek's Side in any disagreements, instead of staying out of them or trying to be a go-between.  And I think on Spock's part he was (however illogically) interested in finding fault with the woman who replaced his mother, and he'd have been a lot less tweaked off if his father had married a Vulcan instead, something logically arranged by the clan.  Because falling in love with a human once is one thing, and shows how wonderfully special Amanda was.  Falling twice just smacks of fetishism, and makes Amanda one in a series.  Meanwhile, Sarek loved Amanda, and he loves Perrin, but in very different ways.  He had to make accommodations for Amanda, and he changed his lifestyle for her (however much they looked like a Perfect Vulcan Couple on the outside), and marrying a Vulcan woman would mean adapting back to Vulcan ways of doing things, and he's old and doesn't want to.  Perrin, however, will maintain the human tone of the household, and she's kind of in awe of her predecessor so things can stay pretty much the same.  (She is not, however, in awe of Sarek, however much she respects him.  Spock thinks she is, and respects his father less because of it, but then he doesn't see the way Sarek and Perrin are when they are alone together.  Perrin, for her part, plays up the Dutiful Vulcan Wife around Spock because she knows it annoys him, which doesn't help his impression of her.)  She knows where she stands in Sarek's affections; she wants respect more than anything else, and he gives it to her, and she's one of those people who falls in love with a culture other than her own and wants a place in it, and he gives her that.  And Sarek doesn't like the friction between Spock and Perrin, but look, he and Spock have always had their differences, and both are stubborn, and neither have ever had to deal with one another without Amanda there to smooth off the rough edges and tell them they're being idiots and cajole them into talking, and he doesn't know how to do it with Perrin fuming about Spock's disrespect.  It's the one thing he regrets about marrying her.

Worf spent a few years as a teen trying to fit in and be more human, but eventually realized that it wouldn't get him any more acceptance from the other kids at school, and so went the opposite direction and tried to be More Klingon Than Klingons.  He doesn't really remember that phase, until Alexander comes along, and even then, he's forgotten a lot more about what he was going through than he thinks he has.

Will Riker gets a lot of crap for staying a Commander for so long.  He should have gotten a promotion to Captain years before he did.  He stayed because he loves Enterprise, and as First Officer he still gets to do the stuff he loves (front lines of exploration, getting to actually GO ON HAZARDOUS AWAY TEAMS and not stay on the bridge all the time).  And it's comfortable there, with all his friends.

I don't have any headcanon for DS9 that I haven't written because the show was so fascinating and well-written I never felt I had to fill in the gaps myself.  And I didn't pay enough attention to Voyager.  Didn't pay much attention to Enterprise, either, truth to tell, but the gaps were SO FRICKING HUGE.

There are still five days open on the January Meme.

For laurajv: What are the most interesting ideas about Vulcans you've seen in other people's fanfic?

Hrm.  Now, this is a tough one.  If you count the 80s Star Trek novels as published fanfic (they really are, particularly when you consider how many of those authors were fanfic authors who sold their fic to Pocket Books), well, I don't know if it gets easier, but it does get easier to pinpoint specific things and attribute them to specific authors.

See, the thing is, I have VERY SPECIFIC IDEAS about Vulcan culture, mostly derived from those 80s Trek novels.  I did some meta about it a few years, back, after the first AOS movie, and you can find it here.  My first criteria for Vulcan fics is "how well does it match up with my headcanon" and if it doesn't, then it doesn't really matter how interesting it is, it's not going to grab me.  (This is one of many reasons why Enterprise was problematic for me.)  And when I do read a fic and go "wow, awesome Vulcans!" it's usually because the author shares many of the same fanons gleaned from the Trek novels of the 80s (especially Spock's World, The Romulan Way, The Vulcan Academy Murders, Dwellers in the Crucible, etc.)  So right now, it's hard for me to list any specific interesting fanon from fic, because it gets mixed up with what was in those books to form a whole Vulcan worldview.

I mean, your fics always have awesome Vulcan worldbuilding, and I like macedon's Vulcan fics so much (Wisdom and Beauty, the Anselm series)  ... Oh! xparrot had a really great take on Vulcan grieving practices in Markings.  Also, ljc has a great meta about the Vulcan trickster T'Kay here.