subjunctive

Finding BSG fics can be kind of tricky, since the fandom was very LJ-heavy at the time and much of it has been deleted without being archived anywhere else (as far as I can tell). Here are a few fics I really enjoyed, organized roughly by season:

( cut for length )

Thanks so much for writing me a story! I love all of these ships to death and I'll be elated to read about them. :) Even though this is a shipping exchange, I don't necessarily expect a happily ever after. Happy-for-now, ambiguous/open/sad endings, UST, and breakups are welcome too. What I'm into the most with all these ships is the characters being important to each other's development in some way.

For this exchange in particular, I love lavish descriptions of food and food being connected to characters' memories and pasts (in good OR bad ways).

FYI, my tumblr is at subjunctivemood. I link to some of my relevant tumblr tags below, where they might help give you extra insight into what I enjoy about these canons and ships, if you're interested.

The prompts below are suggestions; if you think of something I didn't list but which seems like something I'd like, or if you are inspired to combine prompts in some way, that's fine.

General Do Not Wants: rape, explicit smut (fade to black/M-rated suggestiveness is fine), pregnancy/kidfic (exception below). The rest of my DNWs are pretty fandom-specific.

( Jon Snow/Theon Greyjoy (ASOIAF) )

( Edric 'Ned' Dayne/Arya Stark (ASOIAF) )

( Laura Roslin/Lee Adama (BSG) )

( Female Post-Apocalyptic Diner Cook/Female Gunslinger (Original Work) )

General Likes: hurt/comfort, canon AUs, time loops, relationship tropes (played straight or subverted), 5 times/things

DNWs: pure smut, pure fluff, pure darkness, noncon/rape

Ascension
Aaron Gault

Prompt: I'd love to read something set after the finale--survivalist stuff, not deathfic please, although something depressing or him slowly going insane would be fine--or other people finally joining him, wherever they are, after they've honed Christa's power. (Or are other people there already? Have there been previous accidents involving Christa's power?) Or bring him home somehow, and maybe have him confront the reality of the Ascension project and how the world has changed while he thought he was in space.

Notes: That finale messed me up, man. What??? It just ends there??? I don't want to read about Aaron dying or, like, eating himself, but otherwise I'd be happy with something depressing about being all alone in space and trying to get home (a la Agents of SHIELD's "4400 Hours," which I really enjoyed), or something hopeful and not depressing. I'd also love to read about his relationship with other members of the crew. I don't necessarily ship him with Emily, but reflections on their relationship would be great, or more about how his race complicates his position and presentation of himself on the ship (including, if you like, what it was like for him as a child and how he experienced it then). I was also really intrigued by his relationship with the librarian, Ophelia, and I'd love to hear more about their places in each other's lives. In terms of the show itself, I really like the retrofuturist aesthetic and would love to hear more about "worldbuilding" stuff like how the 1950s American culture/values evolved on the ship, if those are things you want to explore/include.



Cuckoo Song - Frances Hardinge
Trista, Violet Parish

Prompt: I'd love to see their post-canon adventures, either gen or femslash. Motorcycle road trip? Trista making new not-Triss memories? Violet being willing to fall in love again even though it's risky?

Notes: I'm sorry this section of my letter wasn't complete--I was expecting matching to take days, not minutes! I intended to reread the book because it's a little fuzzy for me at this point. Suffice it to say, I'd also love worldbuilding and setting-based fic, either of the fantastical elements or postwar Britain or both. Horror elements like the ones in canon are more than welcome, so long as there's a happyish ending.



Man Seeking Woman
Josh Greenberg, Liz Greenberg, Mike Scaggs

Prompt: Most of all, I really want something that captures the surrealist and absurdist humor aspects of the show. Pick a relationship circumstance/difficulty, take it to the strangest, most absurd place you can think of, and then pretend that weirdness is completely normal. For example, what if Josh hired an literal translator to follow him around everywhere and help him interpret his love interest's texts/comments at dinner/etc in the most stereotypical "men are from Mars/women are from Venus" way possible (or in a not stereotypical way at all--maybe it reveals uncomfortable truths)?

Notes: This is one of those where you do NOT have to use all three characters, but please pick at least two--I'd love more about Liz and Mike together, for example, with or without Josh. It turns out this is really hard to give specific prompts for. The show is really clever and funny in a way that I ... am not. I did love when we had the episode about Liz, turning the tables on her and focusing on her relationship failure despite being the show's Relationship Guru. I'd also like to see Mike struggle with wanting a long-term relationship for once. Ship-wise, I'd be down with Liz/Mike (whether it be real feelings or just friends with benefits or something one-sided), but I'd be just as happy with gen.



Minority Report (2015)
Arthur Watson, Lara Vega

Prompt: I'd love anything that explored their tenuous, complicated relationship further, especially shipfic (of any flavor, dysfunctional included, except abuse). I'm a huge fan of fake relationship tropes, and they go well with the canon, so maybe one of them has to be the other's date for a function. Or they have to team up again to save Dash, or one of them has to save the other's life.

Notes: I love their snarkiness, mutual trust issues, (what seemed to me) wary attraction, and the fact that they're on opposite "sides" but sometimes have to work together--if you capitalize on any of those things, I will be super happy. Case fic a la the show would be great; Arthur's power can be very misleading, so I'd love if you drew on that for shenanigans. The moral conflict between Lara's desire to do right and get justice can conflict deliciously with Arthur's shadiness and selfishness. Hurt/comfort very, very welcome. Also, if you're into time loops, good news: SO AM I! Put Arthur and Lara together in a time loop until they come to terms with their feelings for each other (or for any other reason--all time loops are great) and I'll love you forever. One of the aspects of the show that I really liked was the worldbuilding and all the ways our own society developed into theirs--the Fourteens, for example--so similar cultural/political stuff would be fantastic additions.

I don't want anyone in my ships to die/be dead. I'd prefer no PWP. If you write a ficlet that's more suggestive/pre-ship/UST than explicit about the relationship, that's A-OK with me.

Art treats are welcome, if you're an artist!

Supergirl (TV)
Kara Danvers/Jimmy Olsen

These two are so adorable, and I would love to see more of that. I love their dynamic on the show (so cute and fluffy!) and would like something similar-ish in tone (more serious/dramatic is good, but I don't want anything very dark). Some prompts:

• Having to go undercover as a couple for Reasons, and the UST that causes
  
• They get stuck in a time loop together, and end up falling in love ♥___♥
  
• Anything hurt/comfort, for either of them - Kara has to patch Jimmy up, Jimmy tending Kara after kryptonite exposure/injury, etc
  
• One of them gets amnesia! Angsty or fluffy, or both!

Agents of SHIELD
Will Daniels/Jemma Simmons

;_______; I really loved their dynamic in "4,722 Hours," especially the voice of hope/voice of doom thing. Will's dry commentary and sense of humor very welcome. I would love to see:

• Moments from their time together on the alien planet - I would love anything domesticky/survivalist especially (stranded on an alien planet curtainfic! Will teaching Jemma to cook with alien food! hurt/comfort!)
  
• A canon AU where Will doesn't die and was rescued - maybe his and Jemma's reunion, getting to go on an Earth date for the first time, Jemma showing him what's changed, either/both of them having trouble adjusting to life back on Earth

Marvel Cinematic Universe
Jane Foster/Loki

I really dig the way Thor is always between them and how fraught that makes their relationship. It's hard enough to stick these two together in a longfic, so I don't expect anything more than UST in a 300-word ficlet! Honestly, I love snippets/ficlets that are suggestive of a larger untold story. A couple of things I'm not into for this ship: fluff, true love/soulmates, redemption through romantic love, Loki as some kind of master seductor/sex god (he strikes me as reserved and wary of intimacy). A couple of prompts:

• Jane and Loki stuck in a time loop together! You're welcome to just do a snippet/one iteration of the loop/something similar to keep it short
  
• Anything having to do with Jane rescuing Loki from the snake for whatever reason (hurt/comfort), or any twist on the myths you are inspired by
  
• For that matter, anything that forces Loki to take care of/tend Jane (Aether aftereffects?)
  
• Somehow they get stuck together! Magical handcuffs, accidental magical soulbonding (can they sense each other's emotions/thoughts??? ♥___♥), Thor in danger, anything that forces them to (grudgingly) work together/take care of each other
  
• You can kill off Thor to bring them together
  
• Pretty much any canon AU is going to be fine with me
  
• Reincarnation/another lifetime - different ways they come together?
  
• Idunn's apples (she turns it down. ANGST)
  
• Amnesia, y'all. amnesia

The semester has ended. Grades have been turned in. Only two change-of-grade forms to fill out, and no disputations so far as I know.

Still behind on my doctoral exam reading. My chair probably thinks I hate him/I've disappeared off the face of the earth because I haven't finished revising the exam list since he asked me in March to add a bunch of stuff. (Which: :/ thanks a lot, dude.) Of course, the final version doesn't need to be turned in until, well, the day before exams, so I'm not in trouble. And I know other students have used the summer rather than take two full semesters to read and done well, so it's not unsalvageable. On the plus side, should I actually stick around for a dissertation, I f.i.n.a.l.l.y. got a workable and not super difficult idea for one.

Speaking of leaving, I only re-upped my apartment lease for another six months, through December, on the assumption that I'm going to put my body where my mouth is and actually get a job teaching English overseas. I could use a free apartment and a few million won per month. The #1 thing holding me back at this point is that in the last year I've taken up hobby orcharding, and I won't be around to see the (literal) fruits of my labor at my dad's house. Plus, somehow I doubt there are that many gardening opportunities in S. Korea.

My parents divorced last year. It sucked. But they're both seeing other people now and that is starting to feel more normal.

I'm not reading so much fic lately. A comment on FFA about how fanfic spends so much more time on facial expressions and body language than profic got me thinking about my favorite stories and how they are written. Sure enough, the best examples of writing I like don't do that. It's made me stop and reflect on my own writing a lot - I'm culling much more severely than I used to and thinking more carefully about the details I include. On the plus side, I really like what I have managed to turn out; it's a lot tighter and actually has some subtlety. On the minus side, it is hard to undo habits and it makes for a much slower writing process.

What I have been reading lately is mostly Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond books. I'm about 100 pages into the first. I don't really read historical fiction and honestly have little interest in it, but the prose is exquisite.

I cobbled together this book-meme from innermostplanet's equally cobbled-together, longer version that I just didn't have the patience for.

I didn't read a lot of fiction last year. Chalk it up to depression and busy-ness. Many of the references below are to books I read for one of my graduate classes (one on science fiction, one on teaching literature). Hopefully some of them are sufficiently obscure as to be interesting.

Unexpectedly liked: Geoff Ryman's The Child Garden. Before I began reading it (for a class) I knew it contained a semi-bestial relationship (between a human and a sentient bear), and it kind of sounded like total crack. It was actually really good, thoughtful and full of feeling and delightful narration (yes, including Human/Bear relations; I didn't have that wrong!). If you like futuristic scifi-ish fiction, you should read this.

Unexpectedly disliked: I re-read Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy this year after not picking it up for a couple of years. I had enjoyed them when I first read them, but this time around I ended up hating large swathes of it, mostly because of the narrative voices. The concept, plot, and science (or "science") in the books are very good, but the way the story was told was a huge turn-off. It's told in first person, which grates a lot more than it used to, and both the POV characters, Georgia and Shaun Mason, are so fucking obnoxious and annoying. The excerpts of "journalism" from their blogs were laughably bad, particularly after being told time and time again that they were hard-hitting and serious and objective compared to all those other journalists. Also, the personality essentialism (Irwins vs. Newsies vs. Fictionals) reached a frankly weird height. All in all, a disappointment. I'm planning to re-read all the October Daye books in the near future and now I'm worried they won't hold up either. :/

My book boyfriend: Tybalt from October Daye. You can pine over me anytime you want, King of Cats.

My book girlfriend: Becks Atherton, from Newsflesh. You deserved better, you beautiful zombie-killing badass.

Weirdest: Lesabéndio: An Asteroid Novel by Paul Scheerbart. It's almost impossible to describe the weirdness. It's science fiction aliens before the tropes of the genre really solidified and there are almost no humans at all. It's also a strongly optimistic and earnest book, as opposed to the cynicism and self-referentiality that pervades a lot of the scifi and fantasy I've been reading lately ("look at me, I'm aware of the genre tropes"). Reminds me in some ways of Lewis's Space trilogy (not sure I could describe the similarities beyond "earnestness"). If you are interested in the "form vs. function" debate in aesthetics, this is the scifi fable for you.

Favorite prose: Fiction: Nabokov, with Lolita, for obvious reasons. I read it for the first time this year. Non-fiction: Rebecca Solnit. I began her Wanderlust and every sentence is sublime. One of Solnit's greatest strengths is her ability to balance academic concepts with non-academic voice and prose. I wish I could just type up this 500-word passage that encapsulates all that I think about the postmodern examination of "the body", but alas. You'll just have to read it yourself. (May I recommend the following books: A Paradise Built in Hell, Landscapes for Politics, Wanderlust, River of Shadows).

With a few more details and thoughts.

For Mischief & Mistletoe I wrote Summit, a 10k AU where Loki fell to Earth and Sif followed him. There are a lot of things I like about this story - some particular scenes - but the idea probably needed 5-10k more for the premise to be executed really successfully. I toyed with the idea of Loki slipping away on the last night or Sif letting him go at the end (and then gearing up to follow him again), and that might have been more interesting. Not sure how much the beginning scenes really belong (I almost started at the foot of the mountain), but ultimately I left them because one of the recipient's requests was more Jane or Heimdall.

My gift, syn aisthesis, was a lovely domestic fic featuring Loki as an artist. Nice working in of little details of the relationship dynamic, which I love.

The other two stories I'd rec (with the caveat that I haven't read everything in the collection):

The lovely and sad Where You Can't Return, which is about Frigga and Sif and Loki, with some post-The Dark World parts and some pre-canon. I had guessed correctly that it was written by Barkour. I've read so much of her fic - including fandoms I'm not even in or are barely familiar with on the strength of her writing, which is not typical for me - I practically consider myself a connoisseur of her style. She seems to have mostly moved on from Loki/Sif and the MCU more generally, which is sad but fine. I hope she writes more plotty stories for The Flash; I really liked her Barry/Iris snippets.

The other is Armistice, which is ... hard to summarize, but one of the best things I've read recently. A summary of what happens in the fic could be "Futurefic in which Sif and Loki meet in a tavern while she's hunting him down," but that is really not a great description of what the story is actually about or like. Great outsider POV and scene-setting and very funny. It's short, so check it out. It was written by my recipient, damalur, who was a pretty intimidating recipient to receive since I love her writing a LOT. It's no surprise I loved this too. Armistice in particular is not very ... fanficcish, if you know what I mean? I don't mean that in a bad way (or a particularly good way, even). But there can sometimes be a certain "feel" to fanfiction because the relative insularity of the community - everyone reading and writing each other's stuff - produces a certain set of tropes and stylistic conventions like any other type of writing. A lot of the elements of "Armistice" - the third-omni POV (utterly rare in fic and getting rarer in pro writing), the setting influenced by both fantasy and scifi writing more than the canon itself, the particular brand of humor and dialogue - seem more influenced by pro genre writing than fic writing. It was a breath of fresh air. It also rewards re-read.

For Yuletide I got two great Longmire (the TV show) fics, both Cady/Henry get-togethers: Careful What You Ask For, You Don't Know Till You Try and Closing Arguments. I had a hankering for fic based on season three, given how much they were interacting, and was lucky enough to get twice the fun. Great Henry voices especially in both.

I wrote two fics myself, both of which I'm pretty proud of. For 13 Going on 30 I wrote So Ahead of Yourself, a sort-of sequel to the movie about Matt and Jenna's relationship, mostly fluffy romance with some teenaged angst and accidental five-times-ing. And I wrote a treat for Gotham, Sharpen Your Knife (terribly titled but it was posted at very nearly the literal last minute), Gordon/Mooney femdom smut that I couldn't get out of my head after seeing the prompt. Possibly thinking about another where Jim goes undercover at a BDSM club. Maybe.

Quite late to this, but I've taken some time to think and process.

First: Wow, ten movies already, and now ten more. Holy shit. It's grown to the point that even if the MCU has one, two, even three failed movies that it would not put a dent in being a gargantuan cultural and financial powerhouse. Maybe if the three failed movies were all from the original franchise lines (Cap, Thor, Avengers team) and all in a row. Maybe. But no one's going to care if Ant-Man tanks. (Personally, I'm looking forward to it, but that may just be because the twin pulls of Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly are strong. And, I admit, I'm going in with seriously low expectations. I'd rather be surprised.)

Also, LOL @ DC trying to pull off something similar. I'm enjoying the CW's DCverse and Gotham (though I'm behind), but everything else I can think of has been a total clunker. Good luck with that, guys.

( spoilers & speculation for upcoming movies )

I would love to hear other thoughts!

Dear Mischiefmaker,

Thank you for writing for me! I love lots of different kinds of stories, so you're in luck.

Original request:
I would love any of the following things: pre-canon adventures/questing/exploration; incorporation of/reference to Norse myth; post-TDW shenanigans involving Loki's plotting and/or messing with Sif's head from the throne (and/or Sif figuring it out and messing with Loki!); canon AUs for any of the three movies Loki has been in. Human AUs are fine too, as long as the dynamic between the characters is preserved (the one thing I would prefer about Loki/Sif in particular for this is that they have known each other growing up at least a little, rather than meeting as adults and strangers).

Feel free to include or ignore Sif's being in love with Thor per your preference. With Loki/Sif, I would be happy with something more antagonistic and hate-sexy, or something more focused on an actual relationship (just nothing too fluffy, although a happy ending - or a sad one - is fine). For tropes, I dig pining (including unrequited), relationship/marriage tropes (undercover as a couple, marriage of convenience, sharing a bed, etc), fantasizing about the other, "fix-it" time travel (even if it doesn't actually fix anything), and forced proximity/forced to work together or team up.

Additional prompts:

• Ragnarok or other apocalypse situation
  
• Spells or hexes where people can't lie
  
• Teaming up to save Thor from something pre-canon
  
• Exploring other realms, including Midgard, pre-canon
  
• Canon AU: Loki fell to Earth, Yggdrasil, or elsewhere at the end of Thor (Sif come to rescue him?)
  
• Huddling for warmth
  
• Other AUs: steampunk, cyberpunk, historical, cop, urban fantasy, noir, odd or unusual professions

I would also be happy with anything that includes other characters, especially from the Thor movies, as well. Jane, Thor, the Warriors Three, Darcy, any are welcome.

Darkfic, mindfucks, nightmares come to life, and horror are all fine too. Loki's magic has a lot of potential there, though of course there are other creatures and artifacts out there too.

But something more domestic or curtainficcy, especially if it focuses on the characters' dynamic, would be lovely as well. I tend to see Sif and Loki as rivals who are uneasy around each other and have trust issues, but I would also buy them as people who understand each other in a way that Thor doesn't necessarily, as outsiders (even if they don't always agree with the other's choices).

For art, I would love to see some Asgardian formalwear (maybe at a formal occasion?), either of them working at their talents (using or cleaning weapons, performing magic), or young Sif and Loki doing something together. Feel free to interpret any of the prompts above in a visual way.

Stuff I don't want: Non-con, non-sexual bodily fluids, pregnancy or kid fic. That's pretty much it, I think.