bironic

Once upon a time, I was struck by the desire to write a Riddick story in the style of those early-2000s X-Men movie fanfics where Wolverine and Rogue were imprisoned in Stryker's complex and forced to have sex for his research program. (Ex: The Cell by jjblazer.) I ended up making up a character because it didn't feel right to cast Jack as the person thrown into Riddick's cell. The words poured out, and I was well pleased with the result, but I was too embarrassed to share it, so it has been sitting on my hard drive for almost three years.

Tonight we are watching the third (& worst) Riddick movie at fangirl movie night. For whatever reason, this feels like the right time: I am finally taking the plunge and posting the fic, in all its flawed, iddy glory.

*hits "post" and hides face*


Title: Captive Breeding Program (Furyan Bloodstock Remix)
Fandom: Chronicles of Riddick series
Pairing: Riddick/OFC
Rating: Explicit
Word Count: 4,250
Summary: "Get as far away from me as you can before I do exactly what they warned you about," he growls.
Content notes: Nonconsensual sex. Murder, attempted murder, strangulation. Aliens make them do it. Abhorrent medical ethics, including forced impregnation and gestation. Aphrodisiacs. Dubious plot points.
A/N: Written in January 2014, two days after posting I Like the Way You Move. Riddick's voice was influenced by stories such as The Things We Leave Behind by Ratatosk. Enjoy?

( The next one they toss in is young. )

Vids

Thanks to heresluck and corbae, it looks like jetpack_monkey and I have found a song for our Auction vid, hurrah. At least, we both think it's a good fit and now we will see if it works when the editing begins. Am psyched. I had a lot of fun watching the movie we're using, and will be subjecting* my mom to a rewatch when she visits this weekend.

*Not really; she said it sounds great.

Books

Finished The Dispossessed and got really into it in the second half or last third as Shevek became more humanized and humorous (especially with kids and animals! cute!), more aware of the ways Annaresti culture was deviating from its founder's ideals, and better able to articulate the problems on Urras and their (un)solvability, and as he struggled to break through with his grand unified physics theory and get it into the right hands when no one's hands seemed right.

Flipped through Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll, an overstuffed, unself-aware mess that nevertheless had a few things to recommend about it. Content warnings galore.

Now wrapping up Deathless by Catherynne Valente and not sure yet what to make of it. Certainly makes me wish I knew more about Russian fairy tales and folklore. And that readers weren't so distanced from the main character after the first section. Some truly striking images, though. A bit like Uprooted with hints of Gaiman's Endless, among other things, but very much its own entity.

Recs

Grenade by fiercynn and scribe, which I beta-ed and have been remiss in not recommending. Full-hearted multifandom vid about self-sacrificing sidekicks who don't get the love they deserve. Rory Williams! Sam Gamgee! Sam Wilson! Many more!

Phase Changes (BtVS, 18,000 words, explicit) - a Giles/Xander/Willow fic that is locked to AO3 readers and so I assume I shouldn't name the author here. A diamond in the rough unearthed during an id tag search in the archives. Giles gets hit with a freeze ray; Xander and Willow, who are a couple, stay with him to keep him warm; things progress as you'd expect; and then the author truly won my heart when Willow has an issue with reaching orgasm and Giles gives them a sex ed lesson. Things don't end easily, either, as the next morning they debate whom, if anyone, to tell, and Buffy struggles with what's developed. Nicely written. Choosing to ignore the Wesley/angel and Spike/demon consciences the author gives Giles in the second half, like the hula-dancing "subconscious" from 50 Shades, which I remember reading somewhere was a holdover thing from anime fandom?

To the Victor, the Spoil by Annakovsky (Hunger Games, 13,000 words, explicit) - Katniss/Haymitch, Katniss/some other people, Capital corruption, Finnick and state-coerced sex, bleak and beautiful.

Tasks

Forthcoming Mom visit + Passover = tidying up, planning activities & choosing Haggadah materials. Looking forward to hosting a couple of friends for the seder and using these beautiful glass seder and matzah plates I acquired in Tel Aviv while visiting roga years ago. Looking forward to pulling out of this slump, too.

Ah, well. The themed viewings appear to continue.

( A Knight's Tale )

( Margin Call + fic rec )

( The Secret Life of Bees )

( Mortdecai )

Not wanting to pay more dollars to see Avengers again, I decided to have a little Other Movies Featuring Paul Bettany fest.

So far:

( The Reckoning )

( Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World + fic recs )

( Inkheart + fic recs )

( Priest )

Still to go: Wimbledon (rewatch), A Beautiful Mind, Legion, A Knight's Tale, Mortdecai… Thank you, county library system.

.

Something about all this has caught the obsessive part of my brain, and I've been preoccupied for days with thoughts and images of his various roles, including returning repeatedly to certain animated gifs. This couldn't have come at a worse time; I'm in the midst of two packed weeks at work and don't have brain space to waste on this. But that's probably exactly why it's happening now. Maybe it's even coming at the time I most need it.

I've got a sudden hankering for summer-at-the-beach romance stories. Do you know of any good ones?

If fanfic, doesn't matter what fandoms or genders. Long, slow burn would be great. One-shot PWP also good.

So far, I found The Summer Holds A Song (We Might Sing Forever) by annundriel and Obstinatrix (Supernatural AU, Castiel/Dean). And Past the Breakers by thepsychicclam (Teen Wolf, Derek/Stiles), which is shaky on the emotional arc but a good enough genre fit to keep going.

zulu asked: "What got you into fandom? Does the same thing spark your passion now, or is it something(s) else that keep you inspired?"

The thing is, I've replied to several other questions first because I don't know the answer to this one. I don't know if the same thing sparks my passion now as in my early days of joining the Harry Potter and House fandoms because I haven't felt passionate or inspired about fannish stuff in a while. Meh on TV shows, meh on reading fic, meh on my own writing and vidding; hence taking in so many books and movies lately on my own. Lying fallow, knowing something else will come along eventually. And that's okay, even though it can be sad not participating in what others of you are happy about.

But something might be waking up.

Yuletide used to make me a Scrooge McGrumpypants, which I think was mostly about my own pang of sadness that I didn't -- don't -- feel anywhere near as excited about it as other people because I hardly know any of the sources being written about and I don't find the stories for unfamiliar sources accessible in the way, say, the vids are at Festivids. I skim and try probably somewhere between 1 and 5% of the stuff posted. This year, I liked:

• I'll Be Right Here (E.T.), in which it is an anniversary of the night E.T. left
• Bad Day (What Maisie Knew), in which Margo and Lincoln are shaken up but handle it well when Maisie has an accident on the playground
• Fewer Than Ten Scenes From the Second Coming of Richard III (The Ten Stupidest Things I've Heard Since Richard III's Remains Were Identified blog post) [link], in which ghosts converge on the area as conspiracies swirl; I loved the "Tudor spy" osteologist's way of speaking
• A Different Kind of Boy (Pitch Black), in which Jack comes on to Riddick and Riddick doesn't say no; contains some unfortunate "the killer kissed him hard" sort of stuff, but the trans* depiction was interesting

I could have sworn I'd trolled the AO3 archives for Riddick/Jack fic after seeing Chronicles of Riddick a month or two ago, but either I did it wrong or the Riddick/Jack tag hasn't been wrangled to match Riddick/[other name Jack goes by that is sort of a spoiler]. In any case, I found some others and fell into reading them for hours in a way I haven't done in possibly years:

• No Rest by Laylah, 1K, which I'd give the same summary as above and just hits a cluster of my kinks
• Twin Flames by serafina20, 23K, in which Jack tries to grow up; it's permanently unfinished, and I wish it had warned for past incest/abuse, but it was an engrossing read
• The Things We Leave Behind by Ratatosk, 100K+, which I've by now mixed up entirely with Twin Flames perhaps because they both remix the second movie, but involves Jack being taken by and escaping from mercenaries trying to bait Riddick and then they meet again trying to save the universe from Necromongers and there's excellent dubious consent stuff; also unfinished but being updated slowly at ff.net

Then I rented The Iron Giant and The Fast & the Furious. So I guess I'm having a low-burn Vin Diesel thing. Ten years after everyone else. Funny because he's not my usual type. Feels good! I am contemplating doing a quick Kink Bingo vid about how Riddick gets chained down and cuffed and gagged all the time. Dilemma: do it now while the interest is still fresh, or wait two weeks-ish until the last movie in the trilogy comes out on DVD (I didn't catch it in theaters)? Advice welcome.

Second, or I suppose first chronologically, the other week I tried NBC's Dracula with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Thomas Kretschmann. I don't know what the hell that show/miniseries is doing (steampunk + villain/hero switch + slow-mo fight scenes + plotline about energy conglomerates + lady medical student + terrible accents + queer subtext that turns into text = ??), but I couldn't stop watching. More on that in its own post.

Third, after reading the Riddick/Jack stuff I went and added 1,000 words to an unrelated story on my computer, which is about 1,000 words more than I'd written since January.

...That didn't answer the question at all -- sorry, zulu -- but it's the best response I've got right now.

It seems china_shop is coordinating a fandom appreciation challenge whose first assignment is to "rec three fanworks by people you don't know and whose works you haven't read/watched/listened to/looked at before." Tougher than it sounded! I scanned through a bunch of fandoms on the AO3 today but didn't find a lot to rec by authors I wasn't familiar with. It's hard to take chances when you have limited time and want a quality story - which I guess is part of the challenge, to take that chance, because you may uncover someone new (to you) and good.

I did find this little slice of delight: Quantitative/Qualitative by norah, a short and humorous anthropomorfic:

"I love thee to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach," Qualitative continued, when Quantitative interrupted.

"Wait, how deep is that? How high? How broad? In metric or Imperial measures?" it demanded.

And, if you'll allow a bit of cheating, I recently (but not today) discovered these two new-to-me writers in Vampire Diaries fandom:

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Is A Curve by Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine) - Elena/Klaus, rated Mature - in which things progress from canon to a relationship of sorts, and the voices are right.

"I'm sorry. For throwing the stone at you. That was out of line."

Another man, a better man, would tell her, No, it wasn't, you were grieving and I was intruding and I'm sorry about Jenna, but she harbors no illusions about Klaus, and it doesn't surprise her when he only shrugs and says, "Don't worry about it, sweetheart. It's not like you could actually harm me."

I'm Crawling on Your Shore by smithereen - Alaric/Elena, rated Mature, warning for underage and father figure - in which they sleep together, and then they sleep together.

He's still wearing Stefan's t-shirt. She rubs her cheek against the familiar material, worn soft. His body feels so hot underneath the fabric, fever hot. Not like Stefan. She can hear his heart beating.

Ric's arm tightens around her waist, his fingers pressing. His eyes slit open, his whole body going tense against her for a second. He relaxes slowly, like it doesn't come easily. He unwinds his arm. "Sorry," he says. He moves like his neck is stiff.

Not sure what the other challenges will bring and if you'll see me there, but any excuse is a good one to find and rec new stories.

Catch-up time! With a few pictures.

( Home Decorating for the Holidays – First trip to synn's new place )

( TV & Movies – Red Cliff, Sherlock TV show, Tron: Legacy, Stargate (1994), Thoughtcrimes rewatch, Brimstone ep rewatch, Vampire Diaries. With bonus link to an article about invented languages for fictional cultures. )

( Cooking – Mm, holiday food. )

( Hanukkah – Gifts, given and received, and a little help from technology. )

Should say something about fic now that I've got a bit of time to read some again. But I am not a big fan of Yuletide—I'm up to the "T" fandoms that I know and so far I've only got Texts from Cephalopods to recommend, along with about 10,000 other people, based on a possibly bogus YouTube video we watched when we saw the name of the "fandom"—and a couple of enjoyable Inception stories of late, Late Night Phone Call by sparkledark and The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret by eleveninches. Need to check out sga_santa and see if there's anything good over there. It's nice that the rare pairings (by which we mean everything that isn't McKay/Sheppard and Rodney/Jennifer, and maybe Sheppard/Weir and Sheppard/Teyla) are growing ever more numerous as the years pass since the show ended.

…Whoops, my friend just called to remind me that she and her husband and their puppy are coming over tomorrow evening for dinner. Guess I'd better figure out what they'll be fed.

Attention once again, local people: Santa Claus Leonard Nimoy is coming to town. Specifically, to a temple in Rockville, MD, in May. You, too, can try for a ticket (general admission is double chai, $36).

\o/

In other news, I got my first and hopefully only sunburn of the season on Sunday while performing in the D.C. St. Patrick's Day parade. WTF, Washington. Sunburn in mid-March? Remind me why I moved here?

But it was cool to be in a parade. And cool to be one of the people being watched, doing those nifty-looking Riverdance-type steps, rather than one of the admirers.

In other other news, Vividcon snuck up on me. Deadlines for vid submissions start in about six weeks, I think. At least, Club Vivid submissions are due May 1; those are new vids set to dance songs, and they play them at a party at the con while people drink and dance and sort of half-watch the vids. I may try to do one.... There's a song I heard on the hip-hop station that I like, and that could work for a multifandom fight-as-dance thing. What I should do are any of the four or five serious vids I meant to do last year but haven't finished. Yet the idea of throwing something together to a beat is tempting. Will it break the dam so I can finish the others? Or will it get me all tied up in knots as usual because it's too ambitious an idea in too little time?

Here, have some fic recs. Fic fixes everything.

• The Wind on the Mountain by starlingthefool (Inception) - This one, you need to know the canon for. Really excellent story. Well-depicted platonic relationships all around, fascinating journey of discovery for Ariadne, hot Ariadne/Arthur/Eames in the first section.
• Jailbait!Arthur and the Joys of Anal Sex by five_ht (Inception) - And this one you don't need to know canon for. Slightly underage boy convinces young man to take him to bed. Hot hot. Lovely positions and sexual awakening.
• Slide by anonymous (SGA) - In which John offers himself to a dominant AU!Woolsey to protect his team, only it doesn't end up like that at all. BDSM. Issues of consent.
• Love of his Fucking Life by anonymous (SGA) - Tentacles and eroticized noncon. In which the city's metal probe slides in to conduct repairs, and John writhes in a confined pod - first for one reason, and then for another.
• ETA: Sugar Spell It Out by notfar (Glee) - A powerful story and a satisfying read. I've only seen a couple of episodes, but the character voices and tones -- especially Sue Sylvester's -- seemed pitch-perfect. Warning for underage noncon, not of the erotic variety.