Otter's Rock

Happy Yuletide, everyone!

First, I got a delightful little fic written for me:
promenade.  My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle and Mrs. Higgins.  Wonderful story.  Mrs. Higgins was superb, and Eliza's reactions to the English upper class abroad are perfect.

Here are some other fics I have enjoyed:

4'33"--John Cage
The Sound Of A Yuletide Fic Not Being Written. There sure are a lot of cars going by.  Great meta look at writing, and 4'33"

The Addams Family (movies)
An Addams Family Contract (Written in Secret, Signed in Blood).  “I’m an Addams,” Debbie protests indignantly. Immediately after making this statement, Debbie realized that it was true.  (Or, Wednesday wants to exorcise Debbie. Debbie wants to kill Wednesday. A negotiation begins.)  This is AMAZING and hysterically funny, and the thought of Debbie and Wednesday working together is TERRIFYING.

Don't I Deserve Love (and Jewelry).  The plan to win Wednesday’s friendship did not start well. She shared her admiration for the girl’s blowtorch, then hinted about her own childhood affinity for matchsticks and fire accelerants, but Wednesday was unimpressed.  Do better,” she said before lowering her hockey mask and stalking after Pubert.

Honeymoon in Transylvania.  Ahahahaha, this is wonderful.  Gomez and Morticia vs. the TSA!

Alien Series
A Room with a Crappy View. 17k of Ripley and Hicks awesomeness post-Aliens. This is an absolutely AMAZEBALLS fic, and I LOVE it. I love that they deal with their trauma. I love how they wrote the Colonel, doing the best she could on the evidence she had and how frustrating that was and yet, when you look at it from her POV, what better way could she have handled it? The action is great, the relationships between Ripley and Hicks and Bishop were awesome, this is an absolute treat.

All About Eve
Getting Back to Being a Woman.  Karen knew enough not to go to New Haven.  Never let it be said that Margo Channing doesn't know how to take care of her friends.  I love this. I could just hear Bette Davis and the others saying their lines, and the ending is perfect--I think Karen and Lloyd will be able to have a much better relationship after this, if he's willing to accept and live into the changed relationship.

Till I have the possession of everything she touches.  Addison DeWitt/Eve Harrington and their daughter.  VERY well done Addison perspective.

Aubrey-Maturin series.
Vent de Boulet.  Jack & Aubrey, Teen.  The aftermath of Stephen's escape from the French interrogators at Port Mahon.  Wonderful portrayal of the relationship between them and natural consequences of their trauma-filled lives.

Babette's Feast
Body and Soul.  After the French dinner, a new normal established itself among the faithful.

Ballet Shoes
A Long Way from the Cromwell Road.  Petrova visits Pauline in Hollywood after the war ends.

Bletchley Circle
Logical Recovery.  After the showdown with Marta Magro at the warehouses, Jean, Millie, and Lucy embark for Glasgow to find Eliška. Archival research, an extended stay with Jean's cousin, undercover rescue missions, and much emotional processing of past events ensue.

Cabaret
Infinite Variety.  London, 1950. Clifford has coming looking for Sally. Instead he finds a girl who may or may not be her – or their – daughter, the reclusive former Master of Ceremonies, and an annoying parrot. He becomes part of their strange household, full of love and bickering; sorrow, pain and music. No-one will tell him where Sally is, or even whether she’s alive. No-one will tell him anything. Except the parrot, who tells him that life is a Cabaret.  Oh, wow, this is painful but SO GOOD and the ending is perfect.

DC
Teen Titans
From Cold to Fire.  "Do you want to go out with me?" "What?"

Young Justice
Getting Stupid in your area.  Hang-time includes considerations of evil clones and taking down a newly raised lich lord.  Love the banter.

Die Hard
Your Answers Please.  “Come on, kid,” McClane said gruffly. “This place is fucking depressing. You’re coming to stay with me.”

Enchanted Forrest Chronicles
Best Served Cold.  In which Antorell causes trouble in the Enchanted Forest, and Cimorene and Alianora make an amphibious new friend.  Hilarious, I love Ribbita!

Ghostbusters
Better Than Roses. Janine dates. It's...something.

The Goblin Emperor
Imperial (non) Immunity.  Csevet doesn't get sick. Maia's not so confident.

Light a Mourner's Candle.  The Archprelate finds a chaplain for Maia.

Against a Sure Winter.  When the opportunity arose to become one of the four ceremonial bodyguards for the new Emperor, Cala Athmaza volunteered. He didn't fully realize what he was letting himself in for, but he knew in his heart he had made the right choice.

Sugar Lumps.  Maia spends some time with his horse.

Greek Mythology
beauty, her artificers.  Shortly after their wedding, Aphrodite sustains a small wound.  Really great Aphrodite/Hephaestus dynamic.

a thing of beauty, golden.  Olympus’ one-century wonder appears in Hephaestus’ workshop between one strike on his anvil and the next..  Another really great Aphrodite/Hephaestus fic.

Hancock
yeah I know the shortcut, rather take the long way. Ray daydreams a New York that looks a lot like something out of an old Daredevil comic - towers looming over the city like cragged, jaded sentries, impartial to the neon kaleidoscope of chaos churning along below them. Hancock roosts on the tallest, craggiest one of course, brooding as he watches the slow pulsing heartbeat of the city below him. Ready to dive off his perch and into action with the first cry of distress, and there’s probably lots of those in a city like New York. Lots of zooming around, saving people, saving the world. Hopefully with slightly less metaphorical middle fingers to the world. And less alcohol. Ray’s not an idiot though, and one sparkly life-changing month doesn’t just fix people.

History RPF
15th Century.
these late eclipses.  Anne Neville, like others of her line, is born with a gift.  I LOVE the way magic is brought into this, it melds so well with the history.

19th Century/German folklore
The Bargain.  Bettina finds a secret door at her grandmother's house, one that leads to something very unexpected. The things she learns as a result change her life in small but important ways.

Imperial Radch
Still Left in Want of Mercy.  The Republic of Two Systems is about a month old. Seivarden is having yet another crisis - can Mercy of Kalr get her through it? Maybe, with the crew's and Fleet Captain's help.  Interesting Ship perspective.

high above the trees.  An unexpected embassy. Really excellent, probably the best way I've ever seen "Awn Lives" done.

The Incredibles
Life of a Superhero, Junior Grade.  Fortunately, this was Tuesday night training, not a real villain-chasing experience.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
The Magicians of Starecross Hall.  Being a series of interludes in the life of John Segundus, newly practical magician, in the year following the disappearances of Messrs. Strange and Norrell. Including: a new school for young magicians, explorations of the King’s Roads, Lady Pole’s alarming needle-work, unanticipated trips to Faerie, and John Childermass.  I love this story!  How the school got started, and 'Miss Wintertowne' (although I do think she would style herself 'Mrs' Wintertowne, because she is married and up through the 18th Century 'Mistress/Mrs' vs. 'Miss' had as much to do with age and experience and such as it did with marital status) and how she uses embroidery as a kind of art therapy.  I love the slow burn, and I love the stuff about exploring the King's Roads and Faerie.  It is excellent and awesome.

Lilo & Stitch
The Dance.  Lilo peeked out from behind the curtains and looked over the stage.

A Little Princess
Discipulae.  "I just realized," Sara said. "Becky, I could have a tutor now. I could hire someone to teach me anything I wanted. All the things that are hard to learn alone from books — Greek and Latin, Sanskrit, algebra, anything I wanted. What would you learn, Becky, if you could?"  Really great look at what their lives could be like post-canon.

Marvel
Captain Marvel
Take my hand (and we'll march to the front lines). There's a dream Vers has sometimes.

this youthful heart can love you. Carol waited a week before she left with the Skrulls.

Space Cases.  Monica tried many other times to win her mother over to a pet. A rabbit, a pony, a parakeet. This is not any of those stories. This is the story of Monica Rambeau and a Flerken named Goose.  Or: Why Nick Fury is never allowed to babysit ever again.

The Tesseract's Wife.  A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points: non-linear snapshots of a love story.

Fly Me To The Moon.  "It's a vacation. Like spring break," Carol says. Monica's eyes widen. "Really? So we can hang out? What are we going to do?" "Well," Carol says, leaning back in her chair and flashing that old, familiar smirk. "I thought we could go to the moon."

Into the Spiderverse
i got you.  Miles thinks he's hiding the truth about Spider-Man, but one unfortunate night, it comes to light.

one last leap.  Telling his parents he's Spider-Man is a leap of faith Miles can't bring himself to take.

My Life to Liv.  Liv survived her encounters with her interdimensional Spider-nemeses, of course. So what's next for her?

Interdimensional Phone Pals.  Gwen Stacy is many things, but open to friendships isn’t really one of them.  Or,  Five rules Gwen makes for herself, and how Peter B. makes her question them.

Into the Spiderverse/Murder, She Wrote
Spider, She Wrote.  Miles and May visit her old friend Jessica in Cabot Cove.

Mulan (1998)
the proper order of things. Great outsider perspective.

The Mummy
After the Mummy.  London was becoming Rick's least favourite place, and not just because of all the rain. Loving Evy was one thing: figuring out whether she loved him back after the Egyptian heat faded away was something else. Where's a good rising of the undead when you need one? Don't worry, Jonathan found one.  Lovely fun adventure.

Course Correction.  Jonathan really is serious about staying away from tombs and mummies this time (except trouble always seems to find him). Good thing Ardeth is there to help him stay on-track.

Travelers by Night.  Very quickly, Jonathan weighed the odds. On one hand, potential death, whether by armed bandits, a mummy’s curse, or people who looked like bandits and who were very angry about someone unleashing a mummy’s curse. On the other hand, potential riches, home ground, and topics of conversation other than what happened at school fifteen years ago and who got it in the neck where.

Murderbot
How I Spent My Vacation Between Survey Missions. What happens when ART reunites with Murderbot during another break between research survey missions? Media gets viewed, of course, but there might also be some bad news for more shady corporations.

Situation Normal.  Hi, I said, along with amusement sigil 159 = wave. It seemed a little inadequate, but what do you say to the ship that radically altered your appearance, helped you figure out your past, and also threatened you with terrifying weapons? Amusement sigils seemed like my best bet.

My Fair Lady
Here We Are Together.  Eliza and Freddy are working together. Henry isn't happy, and makes sure everyone knows it.

One Day at a Time
what they say about the young. Without the kids around, it feels like everything has changed, except for all the other things about Penelope's life that could change, too.

a return to normal.  Penelope and Schneider's Friday night plans fall through, so they have a movie night instead.  Very sweet.

Persuasion.
The Pen in Their Hands. Five letters that were written, but were never sent, aboard H.M.S. Laconia. (And one that was.)

Smooth Water. “If I wanted easy comfort, I should not have become a captain’s wife.” Wonderful Austen voice.

A Step Not Taken.  What if that day at Lyme had gone just a little differently?

Peter Wimsey
The Duke's Parlormaid.  A story in correspondence, with detective interruptions.  Really captured the feel of the books and all the character voices.

Poirot
The Mice Will Play.  When Poirot returns unexpectedly from a case, he finds out something new about Miss Lemon.

RED
The One Bathtub.  “I did have dinner plans,” Han said, grudgingly, and so Victoria kicked the door in and graciously allowed Han to be the first into the bathroom. She understood the pain of missed reservations.

Rivers of London
Through All the Years, This Is My Home.  At night, when the rest of the staff and most, if not all, of the masters were asleep, Molly would wander the moonlit halls and remember what fresh air felt like on her skin. Of Molly, of Thomas, and of the years they've spent together - and of the Folly, strong and everlasting.  Lovely Molly perspective.

Peelian Principles.  "You're very calm about this," Seawoll said on the fifth day.  Nightingale's perspective on Peter's time as a hostage, and REALLY AWESOME.

UXB.  When one the deadliest weapons of the Blitz threatens London once again, Peter finds himself on the front line.  Wonderful casefic, just perfect.

Saved!
Conversation Starters. Cassandra and Roland have five important conversations.

Sense and Sensibility
Realization and Renewal.  As Marianne recovers, Elinor and Colonel Brandon find themselves drawn to one another.

Sense8
Blue and Gold.  Wolfgang comes home with Kala and Rajan after Paris. Finding a place with them.

Star Trek: Rihannsu
Day Comes Up New.  "I have done something spectacularly stupid," Arrhae said.  This is a wonderful extension and meditation on what might happen past canon.  Ever since I first read The Romulan Way as a teen, I've wondered what happened to Arrhae in the end, and the subsequent books were great but didn't answer the ultimate question.  This doesn't either, but it suggests something further, which I appreciate.

Terminator Movies
A Fistful of Sarahs.  The sky cracks open, and Sarah watches herself tumble out of a rift in the space time continuum. She’s older than she is now, and she’s got a lot more scars, and she’s carrying the biggest and weirdest looking gun Sarah’s ever seen.

with all the hope in my heart (and doubt in my mind). Sarah Connor has done this before. Dani has not. Post-Terminator: Dark Fate.

Fate, the Future, and Other Sons of Bitches.  Sarah and Dani hit the road.

Winnie the Pooh
In Which Pooh Hunts for the Meaning of Christmas.  Pooh finds a mysterious envelope pinned to the door of his house.

In Which Eeyore Loses His Tail Again, Or At Least Plans To.  It's a bright, sunny day, and Eeyore has a plan to make it tolerable. Now if only his friends will cooperate.

I had such fun with this ficathon, both writing and reading all the fics (and if you haven't gone and read through the fics, you should do so immediately).  I bingewatched all the Sarah Connor Chronicles before writing, and I'd forgotten how much I loved that show, and how awesome it was.  It's held up well, I think.  Anyway, once I got to working on this fic, it started out one thing, and then it changed and I wasn't sure it would fit any of the tropes requested, and then it ended up that it fit all three.

Title: The Ones We've Been Waiting For
Fandom: Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles
Written by: Beatrice_otter
Written for: weakinteraction  for past_imperfect 2019
Betaed by: phnelt
Rating: Gen
Word Count: 5298
Summary: Cameron and John Henry are preparing for John Henry to take her chip and go meet Future John. Then someone expected shows up. AU of Born to Run


At AO3. On tubmlr. On Pillowfort.


They always say time changes things, but actually, you have to change them yourself—Andy Warhol

---

( Cameron closed the door, knife in hand. She walked over to John Henry's side, calculating the quickest way to download him onto her chip. )

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.

I'm feeling the need to write something different. You know what that means; fic prompt time. So. Anyone who wants me to write them a fic, comment here. Fics will be at least 500 words long. Each person should make at least two requests, of which I will write one. Each request should contain one or more characters from the list below and a short prompt (theme, quote, etc). ONE request may be for a sequel/timestamp/missing scene/etc. from a fic I have already written. (For instance, I would not be averse at all to writing something more in the universe where Maria von Trapp from the Sound of Music was a Potential.) Crossovers are acceptable, provided I am familiar with both fandoms. I do not write slash or explicit sex.

BSG:
The Cylons (including the Final Five)
Bill Adama
Laura Roslin

Once Upon A Time:
Emma
Snow
Charming
Henry

Stargate: SG-1
Teal'c
Sam
Daniel
General Hammond
Sha're
Jacob Carter

Superman:
Clark/Kal-El/Superman
Lois
Richard
Jimmy
Perry
Kon-El
Martha Kent
Jonathan Kent

Batman:
Bruce/Batman
Lucius Fox
Jim Gordon
Tim Drake
Babs Gordon
Terry McGinnis

Wonder Woman (as long as you don't mind a mish-mash of all DC canon regarding her)

Babylon 5:
Lennier
Marcus Cole
Delenn
Vir
G'Kar
Stephen Franklin
Susan Ivanova
Londo

Star Wars:
Obi-Wan Kenobi
Princess Leia
Mara Jade
Luke Skywalker
Han Solo
Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader
Padme Amidala

Star Trek:
Spock
Amanda
Sarek
Scotty
Uhura
Sulu
Troi
Geordi
Dax
Sisko
Kira
Odo
Garak

Vorkosigan:
Any

Terminator: SCC
John
Sarah
Derek
Cameron
Ellison
Weaver
John Henry

Marvel Movieverse:
Steve Rogers
Peggy Carter
Dr. Erskine
Pepper Potts
Maria Hill
Natasha Romanov
Bucky Barnes
 

It starts this Friday!  I can't wait; it's perfect timing, as I just bought Season 2.  Man, I absolutely love this show.  I love Sarah, and Cameron, and John, and Derek, and Weaver, and Ellison, and Savannah, and John Henry, and all of them.  Yay!

Remix Redux is open!  A lovely story was written for me.  Autumn (the Ashes and Roses Remix) is a remix of Summer Experience.  It's a good story, that incorporates some of the head canon for that 'verse that I mentioned in a comment on my DW, and the anony mouse got Sarah Connor's voice perfectly.  Go read and review!

Comment on "Summer Experience" via the Pit of Voles:

Nice try but there are some questions you should answer.

First of all:
Who is Dr. Baums Wife ?


You leave more Questions than "Born to run"

Gee, thanks, reviewer.  Never mind that that's not the story I was telling.  Or that, in any story/vignette that small, there will be far more questions raised than answered.  That's the point.  That's why I love reading and writing them: they raise questions and make you think and leave you a lot of space to fill in your own ideas.

I wrote two fics:

Rio Bravo: My Three Good Companions.  This is a post-movie story to showcase the wonderful camaraderie of the three main characters.  Rio Bravo is a 1959 Western starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and Walter Brennan.  It's a little formulaic, but it's about the height of that genre.  For classic Westerns, it doesn't get much better.  I am always amazed at how much gets packed into each frame, how much good acting and directing there is.  For example, the first five minutes of the film set up the action for the whole rest of the movie, and does so clearly and brilliantly without using any words at all.  The audience simply doesn't need them.  (Also, it is one of Wayne's many later films that works to counter racist stereotypes either subtly or blatantly.  Wayne's only friend in town outside his deputies is the owner of the hotel, a short cheerful Hispanic man.  Carlos shares the duty of comic relief with Walter Brennan, but in the shootout at the end he shows up to provide ammunition and covering fire while the white citizens of town hang back and watch from a distance as if this battle to protect them is merely an afternoon's entertainment.)

Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles:  Eudaimonia.  I always loved the underlying philosophical questions of SCC, particularly between Ellison and John Henry, and this was a wonderful excuse to explore it, so I jumped on this pinch-hit as soon as I spotted it.

I just received the most awesome story for scc_reloaded. The story is Independence Day by missnya. It's about Derek and Kyle, learning to survive after Judgment Day. It's gorgeous, lyrical writing, from child-Kyle's perspective, and if you have any interest whatsoever in any form of the Terminator franchise, you absolutely must, must, must read this fic. I cannot rec it highly enough.

Really, I do. But the thing is, I have very specific tastes when it comes to icons. (Hey, my parents are professional photographers--I grew up with photographic art all around me, I got picky about it.) First, they have to be relatively simple. Nothing too busy. It's only 100x100 pixels, people, you get too much stuff in there and it just looks cluttered and muddy. I don't like it when people use weird filters and coloring and stuff--it almost always detracts from the impact of the image. I want that sucker to pop. I like dramatic images and vibrant colors. Contrasts with light and shadow. If there's text, it's got to be awesome text with a reason for being on that icon, and also text that resonates with something I'm likely to want to be talking about in a post that icon could be used with. The image itself needs to be, well, iconic. Striking. Memorable. Not just another headshot of a character or screencap from a random scene in a random episode. If it's a specific moment, that moment needs to be obvious and a critical moment. If it's a character shot, it needs to capture the essence of that character or say something about him or her. Above all, not generic. This is all the stuff an icon has to be before I even give it a second glance, regardless of fandom or anything else about it. (I do occasionally go for a humorous icon, but not for this fandom.)

What am I looking for specifically in a Terminator icon? I want it to be of Cameron, Sarah, or John, or some combination of the three of them. I want it to be kickass, not angsty. I absolutely do not want any romantic/shippy stuff. Some shows I ship, some I'm pure gen, some I waffle on; my Terminator love if pure gen.

I've spent the last several weeks looking at every icon post listed on judgment_daily and haven't found anything.