skygiants

I've been waiting to make this post until I was sure there was not going to be a sharp downturn in the final stretch (CAUTION TAPE ALL OVER MAKO'S LIPS! STAY AWAY!), but I really liked season 3 of Korra! It was extremely good and I really appreciated ( many of the things it did! )

...so of course then innerbrat and I started thinking about ways that we would have rewritten the first two seasons to get our ideal versions of the show while still getting maintaining the third season intact.

( Under the cut! )

SO THERE YOU GO. Mostly though I'm just glad I like and look forward to the show again.

Well, it seems increasingly likely that tomorrow's episode of Korra is going to completely ruin my headcanon that everyone from Avatar: the Last Airbender lived to a happy old age of being cranky curmudgeons, so I am hastily posting this UNDER THE WIRE while it could still conceivably have happened!

Title: How It's Done
Characters: Toph, Katara, Zuko, Sokka, Lin
Word Count: 2008
Summary: Toph really wants to try out this pro-bending thing.
Notes: Set about ten years before Korra. Spoilers for . . . the existence of pro-bending? The existence of Lin?

( Do I look like I'm here to play pai sho? )

moonyazu9 asked me for my top five animated animals. This is actually easier than most of these top fives, as there are a few that come to mind pretty instantly.

( Adorable animated animals under the cut! )

And now, oh flist, it is your turn to bring to me your favorite animated animals! Preferably with screencaps, because I'm sure it will be useful to someone on some bad day to have a handy link to a comments page entirely filled with adorable and/or hilarious animated critters, and that someone may well be me.

lacewood asked me for my Top Five OTPs! As with everything else, this is a difficult question to narrow down and will leave out many many things I love, but I WILL DO MY BEST, etc. etc.


( Top Five OTPs )

Oh my god, that was the longest I have ever talked about shipping ever. EVER. Distract me from how embarrassed I feel by telling me why you love the relationships you love the most!

I have only read an infinitesimal number of Yuletide fics so far, all in the As - aside from my own brilliant gifts which I can never ever glee about enough (Which World and Brush Contact, guys! I will fangirl until the COWS COME HOME). I regret this especially because there were a few of your fics I wonder if I would have been able to guess if I had gotten to them pre-reveal! But I am super looking forward to reading them all as I get to them. :D :D :D

I wrote three stories this year - one assigned, one pinch-hit, and a Madness drabble. My goal was to write more stories than last year so I am moderately pleased with this. Next year perhaps I will write FOUR! Though let's not get crazy in our ambitions.

My assigned story was for Joie de Combat (joiedecombat) in Baccano! fandom: While Recognizing the Importance of Luck in Certain Situations, Eve Genoard Continues to Disapprove of Gambling. It's about Eve Genoard and the Gandor brothers and Mafia politics, and features Luck Gandor getting kidnapped because it amuses me. I almost never write anything involving action, so this was epic amounts of fun for me to write - kidnapping! arson! assassins! severed fingers! dramatic games of billiards! - which is possibly also why it grew RIDICULOUSLY long. Also, genarti and areyoumymemmy are to blame for any and all horrible puns in the title and the chapter headings.

My pinch-hit was for Katrick (kindness_says) for Tamora Pierce's Tortall books: Armiger, a series of vignettes about the changes that take place in the friendships between Alanna and Jon and Gary and Raoul and Alex over the course of In the Hand of the Goddess. It was a bit bizarre writing fic in this fandom because the last and only thing I ever wrote for the Alannaverse was, um, my thesis, which meant I constantly had to remind myself that I was not allowed to get on any hobbyhorses about crossdressing and gender roles and Judith Butler. But fun!

And the one Madness ficlet (and the only DWJ fic I wrote this year, shockingly!) I wrote was for MiraMira (miramira.dreamwidth.org) for Homeward Bounders: Jamie Hamilton's Rotten Luck. I wrote this in half an hour in my towel on December 24th when I was struck by an idea that made me giggle in the shower, so I don't take much responsibility for it, but I never turn down an excuse to write dorky Homeward Bounders crossovers.

Also, while I am linking things, it strikes me that I never linked back here the fic I wrote ages ago for the Avatar: The Last Airbender Ladyfest ficathon. It was Jailhouse Rock for escalove and was about Mai and Suki not doing the insta-bonding thing postcanon (OR DO THEY???) I was quite pleased with it until I read it right after posting my Baccano! fic and realized I used at least two of the exact same turns of phrase. Uh. YOU NOTICED NOTHING.

genarti, areyoumymemmy, varadia and dictator_duck were all marvelous about beta-ing; thank you all so much! Special thanks goes to Emmy and Gen, however, for not only beta-ing an epically long fic in a fandom they knew not much about, but then patiently listening while I explained every little reference to them, usually while cackling maniacally ("NO SEE IT'S FUNNY IF YOU KNOW ALL ABOUT CLAIRE STANFIELD HERE LET ME TELL YOU!")

So last week I went with my roommate to see Vicky Christina Barcelona. The narration introduces Vicky and Christina by explaining that they are best friends, see the world the same way, and have identical tastes in everything except romance. This is the one and only time the idea that these two best friends, who have identical tastes and interests and have chosen to spend a summer together, might have a conversation about anything other than romance is even obliquely referenced in the film. And it is not a conversation, it is narration.

I wish that I came out of the movie more surprised by this.

More cheerfully: shoroko tagged me for the top seven character 'ships meme! I am not a hugely 'shippy person and my 'top' anything tends to vary wildly depending on the day, the hour, and what color top I happen to be wearing, but I will give a shot at providing At Least Some 'Ships I Like. The rules of the meme are:


1. List your top seven character ships
2. Put all of them in order of your love for them; 7 to 1, 1 being your main fixation.
3. Name the movie/show/book that they're in.
4. Supply photos for said people.
5. Tag seven people.

( I reserve the right to ignore these, most especially 2. and 5. I also occasionally reserve the right to make stuff up. )

Um, all I have to say is BEST RECAP SHOW EVER.

Books books books okay. These three are each part of a different series that I am slowly working my way through. Variety is good?

Ellis Peters' Monk's Hood: I do not love the whole 'Brother Cadfael's Old Girlfriend NEEDS HIM NOW' subplot, although his squirming is kind of hilariously awkward. I do love Brother Mark and the not!twins - interesting characterization is really where the Cadfael books excel.

Philip Reeves' Predator's Gold: This is the sequel to Mortal Engines, and Badass Hester continues to be the best thing about the books - although I did get very frustrated during the first half of the book, which involves a Love Triangle and Hester being angsty and possessive. Understandably so, but still. Also, Professor Pennyroyal is like a carbon copy of Professor Lockhart. However, I LOVE the end, in which both Hester and and to a certain extent new girl Freya get down with their ruthless and morally ambiguous badass selves without a backward look. Tom, meanwhile, continues to fill me with profound ennui, which was not helped by ( spoiler! )

L.A. Meyer's Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber: Someday I will do a full proper pimp post about the Bloody Jack books, because I love them, and my love continues untarnished even after devoting a significant part of my thesis to one - which is something, I think. I adore Jacky and her moxie and the fun she has with everything. She's just enjoying herself SO MUCH with the taking over ships and flirting with boys and becoming fabulously rich that even when the most implausible plot twists pop up, you just kind of grin and go along for a ride. And the constant play with gender and class boundaries never fails to make me happy. Further joy: it looks like the series is going to have seven, and I have only read three, which means many more books to go!

In other news, GUYS HOW EXCITED AM I ABOUT NEW AVATAR SOON. I am going to NY this week for apartment-hunting, so the trouble will be convincing my mom to let me turn her TV to Nickelodeon on Thursday night.

So, noticing that I only had one Avatar icon, and that there were plenty of screencaps available on the web, I decided to try my luck at some icon-making.  ( . . . all right, a lot of icon-making. Icons through S3; spoilers for, um, new hairstyles? (BUT NO FACE-EATING BEARD.) )

Screencaps from Water-bender.com