Loran's brain squirrels

[Podfic] Wishes Come True by Just_Bill

2023-07-27T20:13:00Z

This is a podfic of Just_Bill's Wishes Come True. It's wonderfully warm AU where Tony and Steve meet on a dating app while both having other things in mind.

This reading was done while I had a cold and only lightly edited.

You can download or stream the podfic here

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SteveTony Games Team Stats (A snapshot at the end of week two)

2023-07-22T07:19:49Z

As I already did last year, I want to point out some interesting stats about the teams and the games so far.

I am reusing the terms I used last year:

I consider two definitions for the teams. The group containing anyone who submitted a work for a team, I call "team contributors". The group containing people who submitted most of their works for one team I call "team members". Someone who submitted one fill for Team Past, one for Team Present, and two for Team Future would be considered a contributor to every team but a team member of Team Future.

What does this mean for the teams this year?

(The total in the contributor chart is of course higher than in the member chart as people can belong to multiple groups. The one person having currently the same number of works submitted for Team Past and Team Present is not represented in the member chart.)

The first thing to note is that the game participant number is lower than last year. Therefore the differences in absolute numbers are also lower.

We see that Team Future has the lowest number of contributors and members, with only around two-thirds of the numbers Team Present has. Of couse the difference in absolute numbers is small due to the smaller participant field.

Of the total of 29 participants only 3 have created works for more than one team. Team loyality is high this year!

The following table shows how many of the works for one team were created by that team's members and how many were created by members of other teams.

Team Future received the most out-of-team contributions, having almost every fifth work contributed that way.

As we go into week three, stay tuned for further updates about team strategies and participants.

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Attempting a Bullet Point Timeline

2023-07-16T16:57:32Z

I've wanted to write something based on Bullet Points ever since I read it. Sometimes I wonder why I never did and take my vague idea to the wiki, and then I remember: the Timelne Issue(TM).

The way it's written, the timeline of Bullet Points feels like it can be easily handwaved. Keep the order of events and character ages largely intact, and you'll be fine. This is a valid approach. The more sane one probably too.

However, it always felt to me as if the author (Straczynski) and the artist (Edwards) had a plan that maybe didn't have a year on every event but still an idea how the story interacts and coincides with the history of the 20th century.

So, I made an attempt at putting that into a graphic. (I may make another post about the details that let me to those conclusions, but for today I'm beat.)

Let me know if I missed anything obvious or if there is anything else of note. (I'm also always happy to talk about Bullet Points.)

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[Podfic] Sun Down Low by Captain_Panda

2022-07-31T08:54:35Z

This is a podfic of Panda's Sun Down Low, another beautiful exploration of MCU Steve's and Tony's relationship in canon and maybe a little further than that.

This recording was done while I read the story for the first time and only lightly edited.

You can download or stream the podfic here

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[Podfic] Alone at Last by Bill_Longbow

2022-07-31T08:22:28Z

This is a podfic of Bill's Alone at last, what could be a missing scene from MCU canon that just makes everything terifically worse.

This recording was done while I read the story for the first time and only lightly edited.

You can download or stream the podfic here

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[Podfic] Don't Try This At Home by betheflame

2022-07-31T07:53:13Z

This is a podfic of betheflames' Don't Try This At Home. A fluffy AU piece (despite some broken bones) with Dad Steve .

This recording was done while I read the story for the first time and only lightly edited.

You can download or stream the podfic here

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[Podfic] the wings that fade away by hollyandvice

2022-07-31T07:19:16Z

This is a podfic of hollyandvice's the wings that fade away. A quite beautiful story with many deep feelings and hope despite its premise.

This recording was done while I read the story for the first time and only lightly edited.

You can download or stream the podfic here

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[Podfic] Let it Out by wynnesome

2022-07-31T06:34:39Z

This is a podfic of stargraven's Ults ficlet Let it Out, which has mountains of goodness in a concise form.

This read was done in two takes and only lightly edited. Please see wynnesome's post for warnings.

You can download or stream the podfic here

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[podfic] Zone Trips by Captain Panda

2022-07-30T17:12:00Z

A podfic for Captain Panda's wonderful fic Zone Trips.
I read the fic for the first time while recording. The podfic is uncut, and only minor editing for noise reduction was done.

Download or stream here

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[Podfic] Dear Steve (I'm sorry for the lies)

2022-07-30T16:09:14Z

A podfic for Cathalinaheart's heartwrenching fic Dear Steve (I'm sorry for the lies).

(Please see the fic for warnings)

Download or stream it here

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Broad Strokes

2022-07-29T15:31:13Z

A Marvel 616 Artist Steve AU for the SteveTony Games. again here because it's a bit different.

Janet had probably imagined something else when she told Steve that she would introduce him to Tony Stark because “that could be huge for you”.

Janet had been a blessing since she had picked Steve as her personal project which sounded more awful as it was. As an artist having someone with connections in the right circles could be game changing. The money she had already spent on several of his pieces didn’t hurt either.

The best thing though was her attitude, as she considered them colleagues of sorts. Fashion design as she did it was an artform, so she wasn’t wrong. She considered rooting for him an act of solidarity in her own way.

The results spoke for themselves, especially at this moment when he had spent a whole evening talking to Tony Stark, West Coast galerist and Big Name in the national art scene. Steve knew who Tony was when Janet had suggested introducing them of course. What he hadn’t known was that he was even more handsome up close. And witty. And charming. And an art nerd extraordinaire.

He probably should have expected that, but he didn’t, and now he barely cared if Tony would take up one or two of his painting to see if they would generate any interest among his clients. He rather wanted to take Tony home with him.

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Markings

2022-07-28T12:17:31Z

An MCU drabble for the SteveTony Games (square "Shield"). Over here because it feels different. Takes place after Civil War.

At night, Tony keeps the shield where he can see it.

When he wakes up in a cold sweat, it sends him into an extra bit of panic every time, but not knowing where it is would be worse. He ran downstairs one night soon after Siberia and dug it out of the crate he’d packed it in, just to be sure where it was.

He can’t say what it would mean for it to be gone, but he needs it as much as he hates every little scratch on its surface, the signs of everything it’s been used for.

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SteveTony Games Team Stats (Snapshot at the beginning of week two)

2022-07-12T16:02:09Z

Using the data coming from the Masterlist, I tried to answer a simple question: who are the teams and how do they work?

This is of course limited as it is a snapshot of the current point in time and only use data provided via the submission form. I still hope it provides some interesting insights.

If we want to know who the teams are, we first need to know what a team is. With the structure of the games there is not a set list of team members; anyone is free to enter works for any team and switch as they see fit. Which contributes to the chaos we love so much.

I considered two definitions for the teams. The group containing anyone who submitted a work for a team, I call "team contributors". The group containing people who submitted a most of their works for one team I call "team members". Someone who submitted one fill for Team Fuck, one for Team Marry, and two for Team Kill would be considered a contributor to every team but a team member of Team Kill.

Below you can see two pie charts with the numbers of contributors and members for every team, respectively.

(The total in the contributor chart is of course higher than in the member chart as people can belong to multiple groups. The one person having currently the same number of works submitted for Team Fuck and Team Kill is not represented. coughs Panda coughs)

We see that Team Fuck has the largest number of contributors and members. Team Kill has the smallest number for both.

The difference in the number of Team Contributors and Team Members is largest for Team Kill, with more than a third of the contributors having not submitted the majority of their work for the team. This could be explained with Team Kill having the least points since day one of the Games and people wanting to help even if they mainly create for another team.

The difference between the number of contributors and members is the smallest for Team Marry which could also be explained with them leading since early on in the Games.

As we now know more about the number of people in a team, I would take a closer look at the amount of works they create.

In the table below you see the number of works per Team created by Team Members (again Pandas have been excluded for the sake of clarity).

Main Team	Works for Team Fuck	Works for Team Kill	Works for Team Marry
by Team Fuck	153	1	0
by Team Kill	2	135	2
by Team Marry	7	4	221

(Works by multiple people were counted for each person.)

We see overall very little deviation from the team affiliation which we also see in the following diagram.

The diagram shows how much Team Members deviate from creating for their main team. For every Team the group of people soley creating for their team is the largest (100% bracket in the darkest color). The next lighter shaded part represents the group creating more than 95% but not 100% for their team, and so on.

Let's call this factor team loyality. Overall, Team Loyality is the highest for Team Fuck. The most variation we see in Team Marry.

How does Team Marry manage to lead since time immerorial (last week)? Let's have a look at how many people contribute to how much of the whole of works for the various teams.

In the table below you see how many contributors of a team submitted more than 20% of all fills for that team and 5% of all fills, respectively.

Members contributing more than	Team Fuck	Team Kill	Team Marry
5% of fills	9	7	4
20% of fills	0	1	3

We see that Team Marry has three contributors that have contributed together more than 60% of all fills for that team. (At the time of writing that it were 171 of 200 works.) In the range of people having contributed more than 5% of all works for a team we see that it's only one additional person for Team Marry. The other two teams have a bigger contingent in that bracket.

The impression that Team Marry has a small number of very dedicated Team Members also holds true when looking at who so far submitted the most works for any team in the games. The three people with the most submitted works are all Team Marry.

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Bucky Barnes in the MCU vs. 616

2022-06-15T05:26:35Z

This is entry number three in the series of resources about Bucky in the 616 comic universe.

In this one, I want to point out some differences I see between the MCU and Bucky’s comics origins (as shown in Brubaker’s 2004 Captain America run). If you have been familiar with the movies before the comics as a lot of people have (me included), some of it settles as the default in your mind. If you switch to comics, those defaults aren’t always the same, and this should serve as a reminder or a jumping-off point for those differences to the 616 universe.

( MCU vs 616. Fight! )

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Winter Soldier - Timeline and random facts

2022-05-14T15:34:34Z

This is the second resource entry I prepared from my notes on the Winter Soldier arc. It gathers Bucky related facts from the issues, including dates, abilities and so on.
For a summary of the arc (Captain America (2004) #1-14) here.

( Timeline )
( The Winter Soldier Project )
( State of mind )
( Abilities )
( Family and life before becoming Steve’s partner )
( Bucky’s time in the army )

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Summary of the Winter Soldier arc

2022-05-01T15:53:06Z

This is a very broad summary of the first 14 issues of the Captain America (2004) run (minus #10 which isn't part of the storyline) with a focus on Bucky. The Brubaker run is also a very good read if you like Steve and has a lot of consequences for him, but I won't be going into that.

( summary under the click )

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Winter Soldier plans

2022-05-01T15:50:45Z

I've been rereading the beginning of the Brubaker Captain America run after a plotbunny bit me. Meanwhile, the plotbunny has taken a backseat, and I've decided to close some gaps in my comic reading before the next one comes along. Namely, Bucky's comics appearances (post Winter Soldier that is, Cap V1 is fun in a weird way but I can only read one or two at a time).

And if I'm doing that already and taking notes, because my brain is a sieve, I can also clean those notes up a bit and share them here. Which also gives me finally something to do with this space.

Let's see how far I get before I get caught up in another comic rabbit hole...

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