Dark House/Concordia Discors

Updated December 31, 2018 with AO3 links to stories from the last two years in the following fandoms: Star Wars Sequels (Finn/Poe); James Bond (00Q); Merlin; MCU (Peter/Tony, and Tony and Rhodey); X-Men First Class; Ocean's 11; Halt and Catch Fire; The Eagle; Tombstone; Babylon 5; Penny Dreadful.

( Merlin (BBC) )

( James Bond movies )

( The Eagle )

( Vikings (History Channel) )

( Hannibal (NBC) )

( Die Hard (Live Free or Die Hard) )

( Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) - all pairings )

( Hawaii Five-0 )

( Wiseguy )

( Southland )

( Band of Brothers )

( Kings )

( Stargate: Atlantis )

( Brokeback Mountain )

( Stargate: SG-1 )

( Supernatural gen )

( Supernatural Sam/Dean )

( Supernatural Dean/Castiel )

( Supernatural J2 and J3 RPF )

( Supernatural het (one sad lonely story) )

( The Sentinel )

( Star Wars sequel trilogy )

( Star Wars and The Phantom Menace )

( Smallville )

( Miscellaneous other fiction on AO3: Angel the Series, Anna and the King, Batman Begins, Babylon 5, Ben-Hur, Captain America RPS, Carnivale, Deadwood, due South, ER, Farscape, Fast and Furious movies, Fire From Heaven, Game of Thrones, Gladiator, Halt and Catch Fire, Hard Core Logo, Highlander, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Horatio Hornblower, Iron Giant, King Arthur, L.A. Confidential, The Lion in Winter, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Mad Men, Ocean's 11, The Outsiders, OZ, Penny Dreadful, Queer As Folk US, Rome, Snowpiercer, Tigerland, Tombstone, Tron and Tron: Legacy, White Collar, The X-Files, X-Men First Class )

Bringing home the December posting meme with a prompt from j_crew_guy - Five things you're thankful for this year.

1. I'm thankful to be alive, and for my health, since last year was quite challenging in that regard. I'm also grateful for the relative good health of my family and friends.

2. Very thankful for my job, and for the roof over my head, and food on my table, in times when so many people have been struggling, and thankful I have the means to help others.

3. I'm thankful for my resilience, which has really taken some body blows and deep cuts these past 3 years, but is still intact.

4. Thankful as always for my family and my friends, and that includes all my fannish friends and all of you here. ♥

5. I'm thankful to be at a point in my career where I have consequential decisions to make about my future, and grateful for where the path has led, even if I'm not always cracked about the scenery. 33 years ago when I graduated college and embarked into adulthood, I couldn't possibly have predicted the path my life would take, but I am grateful every day for what I have. No regrets, no point in looking back. Very interested to see what 2023 will bring.

Wishing you all a very happy and peaceful new year, and one that is filled with joy for you and those you love. ♥

I got just a touch behind because of life, so three posts today! So sorry.

avidrosette asked: What are your top 5 favorite ships that you write, and what draws you to those specific pairings? Follow-up: is there a pairing that you love but choose not to write?

Since I'm a fannish butterfly, or serial semi-monogamist, I don't have a top 5 I write in the present tense, since I am rarely writing more than one or two ships concurrently. Once in a while. But I can talk about five I have loved writing, and why! And I can answer the follow up question as well.

1. Arthur and Merlin, from Merlin - what drew me to this pairing was, predictably, self-sacrifice and devotion. I love all versions of King Arthur, but I was less cracked about this version of Merlin, in the beginning. It was just so silly. But the show later took a serious turn, and toward season 4, when I gave it another go, I fell hook line and sinker for the depth and devotion in this version of the relationship, especially after Uther dies. They are friends and brothers in ways that they don't acknowledge with words, until the very last few episodes - but they demonstrate their feelings through their actions, in mutual fashion, in nearly every episode ever aired, going back to the first few in the entire series. And then there's their snark. It's a combo I can't really resist: fealty, loyalty, devotion, competence, and love.

2. Danny Williams and Steve McGarrett, Hawaii Five-0 - this pairing is both complicated and fun. Steve is fascinating to me, not just because of his backstory and his career, but because he's impulsive and unpredictable and has a very strong moral core that to others might appear to shift around in shades of grey. And then there's Danny, who bulldozed into Steve's life and knocked over all the china and Steve's clammed up emotions and just...remade his entire life, really, with Steve's consent. Steve returned the favor by taking control of Danny's car, being favorite uncle to Danny's children, and eventually quitting his job because the near loss of Danny almost destroyed him. And then there were the carguments and the banter and the snark and the jokes. They are so fun to write! So layered. So interesting. Unparalleled dynamics.

3. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, Star Wars - this pairing is super-fun for me for two reasons. One, because I like to send them adventuring and see what impacts their adventures have on their relationship. (Interestingly, this world-building and character-creation angle also attracted me to SG-1; I like to build a dollhouse and see how moving through it changes the relationship dynamics. I am the dungeon master.) But I also like to write stories for these two that really drastically alter their traditional circumstances and their relationship to each other. Honestly, my stories were not always well-received by the fandom for this reason, but I have always found it immensely satisfying to explore the shades of grey and the power dynamics in masters and apprentices, and Jedi in general.

4. Winters and Nixon, Band of Brothers - if I could find more angles from which to write this pairing without really banging on over well-trod ground, I would be writing them constantly. I've read just about every book, biography and autobiography about Easy Company soldiers, and they all live in my head, and the part that really kills me is, they all are explicit that Winters really did love Nixon in spite of all his flaws, and no one could really explain it whatsoever. In fact some were annoyed and baffled by it, because Nixon was not well liked among the men, in general. Some saw him as a difficult drunk. So that informs my feelings about this pairing, and the complexity of how their bond was formed, and the differences in their personalities, all combined with their unwavering devotion to each other. IDK. I love them.

5. Dean and Castiel, Supernatural - I've been writing this pairing on and off since, I don't know. 2008? What attracts me to it, once again, is the devotion and the found family aspects, and the unexpected nature of the relationship. The angel does not ever act as he's supposed to, even as far back as season 4; he is the one thing in the story Chuck wrote - by Chuck's own angry admission - that does not go as planned, and the fact that he changed the narrative right from the beginning and all because he loved Dean (hello, it's canon now! Hurray!) is what helped Dean realize his worth, and helped to enable the Winchesters to win the ultimate battle. The shifting dynamics of this relationship over time have made it fascinating to write at multiple points in time, and to read, as well.

And for the follow-up question! -

One pairing I love, but haven't really attempted to write, is the Richieverse version of Holmes/Watson. I finding writing Holmes a little intimidating, in any incarnation. I have never been able to quite zero in on the voice. I've made a few stabs at it over the years, but they aren't quite right. Maybe someday.

lilly_the_kid asked: A memory, fanish or otherwise, that always makes you smile.

This one is easy. :) Back when I was in college a million years ago, I went to Belk Lindsey (also known as Belk's) to find a Christmas present for my mom, and settled on a comfy-looking sweater with wide emerald green and black stripes. (This was the 80's; there were always a lot of sweaters to be had.) I loved it! I wanted one. It was sort of like the Freddy Krueger sweater, but cozy and attractive.

Cut to Christmas Day, and my mom opened her present and burst out laughing at the sight of the sweater. I was a little bewildered, because what in the world is funny about a sweater??? So she told me and my sister to each open one of our gifts, and...it turns out she had bought each of us the same exact sweater - me in pink, and my sister's in blue! Each of us got our favorite color. We laughed ourselves silly over it. Great minds think alike!

There's a fantastic picture of us all holding our sweaters up and giggling about it, which I have framed and sitting on my bookshelf, because there was so much joy on all our faces. ♥ ♥ ♥

wickedwords asked about - Things (fandoms/characters/decorating ideas/etc.) that originally fell flat for you that now you adore.

Hmmm. Originally, I was not interested in a single character in the MCU other than Iron Man. It seems wacky now in hindsight, but it's true. I saw Captain America: The First Avenger, and I was deeply unimpressed overall (tho I fell in love with both Peggy and Howard), and also really mad about Bucky's death. It felt like a waste of a great character. (Obviously, I had no comics knowledge.) Then I saw Thor and could not get past his bleached eyebrows, and I was not at all into Tom Hiddleston, and I thought it was all campy and silly, and by the way, neither Hemsworth nor Evans did anything for me at all. (Like I said, there's no accounting for it! IDK what was wrong with me!)

What finally did it for me was the one-two punch of the Avengers (which I LOVED, and still love to this day; it was pretty much perfect) followed by CA: The Winter Soldier. The formation of the team, followed by the return of Bucky and my favorite dynamic (self-sacrificial devoted assholes) playing out in a spy thriller that gave me a SECOND team (the barbershop quartet!), sucked me in and kept me there, and I fell for all the characters, and that was that. Also most of the actors in the MCU are good eggs, and I actively adore several of them (Chris Evans especially), and that's just a nice bonus.

resonant asked - Do you hold any opinions now that are vastly different from when you were younger? Fannish, nonfannish, frivolous, serious - anything you like.

I like to think of myself as a work in progress, and I don't think I've had many opinions in my life that were set in stone, to be honest. As I've matured, and my thinking has broadened and deepened, I've shifted around on various things, because I don't know how I can remain open and curious to learning without eventually evolving in my thinking as a result of that. Also, and importantly, I've received a world-class education in topics like privilege, access, ageism, ableism, racism, bias, gendered roles and heteronormativity, and much more, over the 25 years I've been in fandom, and those lessons have greatly impacted how I operate in the world, and how I approached aspects of my professional work. Fannishly, I've shifted on various issues as a result of coming to understand the needs of others much better.

There are some constants in my life, however, and these will never change. Here are the top 10 such opinions.

1. Diet Coke is the world's best beverage.
2. Morning Has Broken is the worst song ever written.
3. Hootie and the Blowfish is the world's worst band name.
4. People should be put in jail for watching video without headphones in airports, on buses, or on planes.
5. Ghostbusters is the world's #1 most quotable movie, followed closely by Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
6. Author's notes should not be longer than the story.
7. Friendship means never having to say you're sorry for being cranky on a bad day. (Though friendship also means saying you're sorry when you behave crankily on a bad day.)
8. Pink is the best color, and it's even better when it sparkles.
9. Never step out of the way of a man coming down the sidewalk; hold the course, and enjoy either the last-second swerve, or the bruise he's going to get from the collision, because both taste like sweet victory.
10. People who hate Titanic are just wrong. (People who hate Avatar, however, are correct.)

minnaway asked: if you had to show one episode of a show, or one movie out of a series, for which you're a fan to someone who hadn't seen it and didn't know anything about it, what would it be? Tell me about a "this would be fun even if you don't know canon" episode of something you like, basically!

In attempting to answer this question, I realized I am very, very bad at describing things to people who lack context or where there's backstory, especially when people don't share my super-niche interests, like characters who switch sides. I made three abandoned attempts at it, though! My actual post notes for the three are below.

Fast and Furious - I forget which number (5? ish?), but it's the one where this former federal agent, having fallen in love with a street racer and family in two previous non-consecutive movies while undercover and working cases (I really need to look up these numbers) goes all the way over to the criminal side to rescue his friend and then goes on the run with them and throws in with their criminal activities which really aren't that criminal tbh. Lots of found family and also there's the Rock, which makes things more fun and interesting. Also Wonder Woman is part of the crew. (Should I explain that the street racer he falls in love with is the sister and not Dom? That sounded confusing. Or maybe it isn't.) Then there's a cool heist plot with shenanigans and great fighting.

Die Hard 4 - It's every Die Hard movie but better, because it involves McClane protecting this hacker kid that he gets really fond of and they have a weird but fun buddy dynamic, and also Timothy Olyphant and Maggie Q are the villains and class up the joint, and also there's a terrorist plot to take down the grid and interfere with stuff that involves hacking, and Bruce Willis is unaccountably hot throughout the whole thing. There's a lot of fanfic about that. McClane kicks a lot of ass and gets his ass kicked a lot. Would it make this more or less appealing if I explain the chemistry between McClane and the hacker? IDK.

The French Mistake (an episode of Supernatural) - well. It would take too long to explain why, but the characters of Sam and Dean Winchester, played by Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, cross over into a bizarro universe where they land on the film set of Supernatural, where they encounter Misha Collins (doing a hilarious schtick where he's not at all like his real self) and also they are mistaken for Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, and what follows is an hour of these two poking fun at their real selves and the Supernatural creators while playing Sam and Dean, and it is delightful and hilarious.

...so difficult!

rheanna asked: your top five best individual scenes or moments from TV shows or movies

Here are the first five that came to mind immediately when I read the question. (It would be impossible to list five all-time faves, because I've watched way too much media to ever do that with accuracy.)

1. That scene in Angel where Angel tries to kill Wesley after finding out about Connor. I have rarely been that shocked or upset by a scene.
2. THIRTEEEEEEEENNNNNN. (Otherwise known as, that scene where Vorenus watches Pullo losing battle by combat and can't help himself; he has to jump in to save his friend.)
3. That scene where Tim finally tells Frank the truth, on the rooftop, from Homicide: The Movie. Gosh, I just teared up, just thinking about it. Ugh, Frank.
4. The sequence of scenes where Ben heals Jonesy, and then Jonesy wakes up and realizes what Ben can do, and never leaves his side again, in Carnivale.
5. Sam Winchester's first death, in All Hell Breaks Loose, part 1, and the scene which follows where Dean is speaking to his brother's body. (Supernatural.)
6. Bonus: Captain America wields Mjolnir in battle, in Avengers: Endgame.

ranalore asked: talk to me about music. Have you got a favorite genre? A favorite artist or song? And how do you choose music for vidding?

I think rock is and will always be my favorite genre of music, but I like a wide variety of things, including some hip hop, rap, and country. (A lot depends on the era and the artist, in those categories). But I listen to most sub-genres of rock, folk, R&B, jazz, blues, house, electronica/techno and dance, funk, disco, new wave, hair bands, 80's, classical of all types and eras, lounge, bachelor pad music, orchestral, scores, big band, soundtracks, etc. I don't listen to death metal (or really, most kinds of metal), most punk rock, some country, and hard-core rap. My favorite category, which isn't really one genre, is 80's music.

All-time fave artists, off the top of my head, include: Duran Duran, Journey, Frank Sinatra, Linkin Park, U2, the Police, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme, Johnny Cash ...and as I started listing this, I realized writing out every band I love was quickly going to take over my entire day, and I'd start to fret that I was missing all kinds of artists I love, and faves, so I'm stopping with the ones that immediately came to mind. :)

As for how do I choose music for vids - I don't, exactly. The music sort of chooses the source. It's hard to explain. When I was still vidding, I used to hear "perfect song choice!" a lot in vid review. Sometimes I'd hear "wow, that song shouldn't work, but it does." I hear a song, and I see a story, and I know exactly how it should look, and what the story is about. I don't try to match up songs or music to the source; rather, I hear a song and I know instantly what the song is about, like it was written just for that source. I heard Did You and knew it was an OT4 SG-1 vid. I heard Nasivern Pi and knew it was about space flight. I heard This Town's Religion and knew it was for Top Gun, and I heard Resolution Road and (eventually) knew it was for Spy Game. Likewise, Farewell Ride by Beck was for Tombstone and Doc Holliday. And so on. I would see the story that song is telling me unfolding in my head, but with visuals from a specific source, and then I would go find the right clips and put them down. Probably sounds weird, but for a long time, it worked for me. I would sometimes stop to consider whether a particular song was too modern for a period source, but if I felt like it worked, I trusted my instincts. (One example of this was my Sherlock Holmes vid Deep Blue Sea.)

I have also pitched very specific songs and ideas to other vidders, after winning their vid-making skills in an auction or something, and been met with, "...interesting..." because they couldn't really see it right away. But then after considering the song choice, they did see it, and amazing vids emerged because they are superb vidders. A couple of examples: Jetpack Monkey's crushcrushcrush (he talks about the song choice here), and rhoboat 's Deep.

Thanks for the question!

I started out with long answers, and now they are all short! Not to worry, I have looked ahead to the rest of the month, and they'll get long again at some point.

dine asked: your favourite casual vacation spot - and what you most like to do when there

My favorite casual vacation spot is at home. :) I am as far at the end of the introversion scale as it is possible to be, and yet my day job requires me to be incessantly "on stage" and deliver extensive emotional labor to keep other people going. I am always running on a half charge because I never have time to recover my energy. It kind of sucks. And also, I work some long hours. So a week at home for me, where I'm off work, is like heaven. I can sleep in, I can read books (if I am able to recover enough energy and attention span to do so), I can watch movies and putter around and do nothing, I can catch up on errands. I can order food and never speak to another living human being.

I think staycations are wonderful in part because when I travel, I don't really do short local trips anymore, unless it's a there-and-back kind of thing in one day. Most travel for me involves a destination and a plane ride, and Doing Things for days. They're planned in advance, and they aren't casual, because I'm not a person who travels by the seat of her pants. I have to have a plan, and know where I'm staying, and have a rough idea of what I'm going to be doing. But that being said, when I lived closer to it pre-pandemic, Disneyland was my fave quick getaway, and some of those experiences are captured under the Disneyland tag, though the majority are friends-locked. (Except for the last trip in 2019, where I took possession of Disneyland's Sparkliest Object. I guess I felt the world needed to see that one.)