The Culture Channel

Elspethdixon's Big Damn Fanfic List

Being an index to every piece of extant-on-the-web fic by Elspethdixon since her freshman year of college, including the clichéd badfic, the abandoned WiPs, the one that turned up on McTabby’s Summary Executions, and the one with the word “orbs” in it. From Harry Potter to Pirates of the Caribbean, and beyond. Hopefully, the quality improves as ones moves down the page.

( Big Damn List )

Forward-dated to go at the top of my journal. Warnings are present in the headers on all multichapter fics. Warnings for ficlets will be provided upon request. All multichapter fics contain some degree of hurt/comfort.

If I was god of the universe, instead of some lame third age miniseries we’d just straight up be getting an Amazon or Netflix series based on the Silmarillion.

My personal favorite parts are the Feanorian-centric bits, of course (show me a trashfire woobie antagonist I won’t invariably adore) but since TVs audiences are composed of 98% basic hets, If I were in charge of producing a Silm tv show I’d do the story of Beren and Luthien, AKA “Luthien-Sue and her Gary Stu boyfriend go on a quest to bring her racist father the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown.”

No need for writers to make up a female character in order to shoehorn in a bullshit het love triangle like they did in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit movies: Luthien is the One Mary Sue To Rule Them All, and she and her amazing hair (the Luthien actress’s wig will consume every $ of the costuming and make-up budget that doesn’t go toward Morgoth and his crown) will be the Disney-princess-style star of the narrative.

She and her boyfriend-accessory, Beren, faithful animal companion, Huon, and sexy elven badboy and potential-love-triangle fodder, Celegorm, go on an epic quest together to pick a fight with Sauron and Morgoth in the name of true love/fulfilling a sacred vow to one’s dead father.

Celegorm would be sexy and broody and wear a lot of leather and be half the potential viewership’s preferred boyfriend for Luthien right up until his sudden-but-inevitable betrayal.

Beren would be noble and square-jawed and handsome and very much the sidekick to Luthien’s heroine role.

Huon is a very good boy and the audience’s favorite.

The overall narrative would be structured so as to imply that the true villain of the story is King Thingol as much or more than it is Morgoth or Sauron, because the whole involvement of Luthien, Beren, and Finrod, the subsequent destruction of Finrod’s kingdom, and the (heavily-forshadowed throughout the show) future conflict the possession of a Silmaril will inevitably bring to Doriath all only come to pass because of his petty refusal to let his daughter marry a mortal/spiteful assigning of what’s supposed to be a suicide mission to said mortal to try and prevent said marriage.

I don't know how to embed on dreamwidth, so here, have links to youtube videos:

"You wish us a happy holidays (but you really mean a merry Christmas)" by Erin McKeown (Buy the mp3/mp4 here: https://erinmckeown.bandcamp.com/track/you-wish-us-a-happy-holidays)

And

Straight No Chaser's "Christmas Can-Can"
Best line: "We've heard this song twenty time/ and it's only Halloween"

As I said last time, posting what I'm actually reading would involve mostly audiobooks about extremely Mary Sue-ish FBI agents catching serial killers and fanfic about Eddie Brock making sweet love to his beloved spouse a puddle of alien goo, so instead I'm posting themed rec lists. I'm linking to the Brooklyn Public Library's page for each book rather than Amazon because a) that's where I read them all, and b) fuck Jeff Bezos.

Today's Theme: Evolution & Paleontology, Dinosaur Edition
Last time I recced paleontology books I did it in hard mode (no dinosaurs). Now, I offer a rec list composed entirely of dinosaurs.

My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs
by Brian Switek
Just great intro to dinosaurs in general, especially for those who fondly remember the dinosaur-themed picture books of their 80s/90s childhoods (or Jurassic Park, or the glorious 1999 BBC series Walking With Dinosaurs) but haven't really looked at the field since then.

House of Lost Worlds: Dinosaurs, Dynasties, and the Story of Life on Earth
by Richard Conniff
About the early days of paleontology at Yale, and the founding of Yale's Peabody museum, the history of which is tightly entangled with the story of one of the greatest (or at least most infamous) scientific rivalries of all time: the bitter, decades-long, incredibly petty feud between Edward Drinker Cope and Yale's O.C. Marsh. This is less about the fossils themselves and more a history of the people - professors, paleontologists, university administrators, federal officials, government survey teams, former prospectors/miners turned fossil hunters, etc. - who found, excavated, brought back, and put on display the first major public exhibition of dinosaur skeletons.

Dinosaurs Without Bones: Dinosaur Lives Revealed by their Trace Fossils
by Anthony J. Martin
On dinosaur trace fossils (trackways/footprints, burrows, etc.) and what paleontologists have learned from them, but it also functions as an interesting introduction to the world of trace fossils in general - footprints, burrows, claw and tooth marks, and all the other evidence animals leave behind other than their bodies.

The Sauropod Dinosaurs: Life in the Age of Giants
by Mark Hallett & Mathew J. Wedel
A detailed overview (with illustrations) of history's biggest herbivores, the sauropod dinosaurs (of brontosaurus fame - you know, the really giant ones with the long necks and tails). This was a fascinating look into a family of dinosaurs I had never read about in depth before (my personal favorites are the therapods), covering not just beloved North American species like Diplodocus but also South American titanosaurs and several Asian sauropod lineages. There's also a section covering theories about sauropod diets and their possible roles in the prehistoric ecosystem based on studies of things like fossilized plants and pollen.

And finally, if the book about paleontologists backstabbing one another at Yale didn't provide sufficient dinosaur-themed academic wank for you, there's always this book by one of the BNFs of 20th century dinosaur wank:

The Great Dinosaur Debate: New Theories Unlocking the Mystery of the Dinosaurs and Their Extinction
by Robert Bakker. (Originally published in 1986 as "The Dinosaur Heresies." I suspect it may be out of print - I found my copy in a thrift shop - but it's worth checking your local library for)
Travel back to the 1980s for a look at some of the biggest controversies in an earlier era of paleontology, written by one of the kings of dinosaur controversy, Bob Bakker. Beginning in the 1960s and 70s there was a major revolution in how paleontologists conceptualized dinosaurs (from cold-blooded plodding reptiles to warm-blooded ancestors of birds), and Bakker did more than almost anyone else to popular these new theories - the depictions of dinosaurs in the first Jurassic Park movie were heavily influenced by his work and the character of Dr. Alan Grant was partially based on him (well, a hotter, taller version of him who's distinctly lacking in Bakker's trademark mountain-man beard and possessed of better fashion sense - based on documentary footage, Bakker appears to have worn the same flannel shirt for the past 30 years). Reading Bakker's 1986 "Dinosaur Heresies" today, not all of his theories have stood the test of time (such is the way of science, especially in a field where so many major new discoveries have been made over the past three decades), but several of his key arguments, such as the close link between dinosaurs and modern birds, have stood the test of time and are now widely accepted.

I'd post a Wednesday reading list, but then I'd have to admit to how many truly dreadful romance novels I read and how often I listen to the same handful of audiobooks over and over. Instead, I'll spare you the Lora Leigh (ever wanted to read badly written het A/B/O fic? She has a whole 20+ book series), murder mysteries, and Harlequin Historicals and give themed recs instead. I'm linking to the Brooklyn Public Library's page for each book rather than Amazon because a) that's where I read them all, and b) fuck Jeff Bezos.

Today's Theme: Evolution & Paleontology
HARD MODE: NO DINOSAURS OR FOSSIL HOMINIDS

Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species by Sean B. Carroll
Great overview of some of the biggest discoveries in evolutionary science & paleontology, with short biographical sketches of the people who made them. This is written for general audiences, so you don't need any previous knowledge about biology or evolutionary science to follow along.

Life Ascending - The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution by Nick Lane
Most of which took place long before dinosaurs, or even vertebrates, existed. Lane discusses a number of evolutionary leaps that were paradigm-changing (photosynthesis in plants, the origins of sensory organs, sexual reproduction, the transition from bacterial RNA to nuclear DNA), but which don't get nearly as much media attention as the origin of humans or the emergence of tetrapods onto land.

The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life by Nick Lane
If you enjoyed the previous book and want a more in-depth look at the biochemical theories surrounding the origin of complex life and the evolution of eukaryotes. This is all single-celled organisms and DNA-from-RNA and "let's speculate about what life was like back when we were all bacteria clustered around hydrothermal vents" kind of stuff.

Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters by Donald R. Prothero
This book might as well be subtitled Evolution: Why Creationists are Really Freakin' Stupid, and I love it for that. The only part better than the author's constant dragging on creationists is the part on invertebrate paleontology where I learned that arthopods are descended from unsegmented worms while molluscs are descended from segmented one, which is pretty much the opposite of what you'd expect and therefore cool.

When Life Nearly Died by Michael J. Benton
Who doesn't love the End Permian Extinction Event? Usually over-looked in favor of it's more famous End-Cretaceous/K-T Boundary Event/Flaming Asteroid Death From Above younger sibling, this grand-daddy of all extinction events is fascinating in its own right. It's certainly my favorite time that life on earth nearly died (accompanying controversial opinion: the BBC's Walking With Monsters is better than Walking With Dinosaurs).

Resurrecting the Shark by Susan Ewing
Fossils sharks can get weird as fuck, and Helicoprion, or as I like to call it, the Whorl-Toothed Fossil Shark (or WTF Shark) was about as weird as they came. Generations of paleontologists have wondered why the hell its teeth grew in a giant spiral like that and WTF it used them for. Now, you can read the results of their headscratching and boggle/wonder as well.

Happy Wednesday!

Instead of writing about the actual Nazi-themed comics Marvel is currently putting out, I’m going to summarize/review the imaginary Captain America and/or Avengers-centric titles I wish existed.

So, this week is the second issue of The Falcon and Captain America, which debuted back in July and which so far seems to be about Sam and Redwing going on a cross-country roadtrip with their sidekick Bucky!Cap, supposedly so Sam can re-introduce Bucky to modern/twenty-first century America. The first issue ended with them driving off into the sunrise/sunset together to start their roadtrip. This one opens with them in costume together in a diner somewhere along the NJ Turnpike debating their route (Sam has a bunch of old-school road atlases, Bucky accuses him of having spent too much time with Steve) while a douchey-looking guy with a pro-Trump hat makes some comment to his buddies about how nice it is to see “the real” Captain America back. Bucky makes a comment to him on the way out about how “the real” Captain America would probably have stopped to teach him a lesson and he’s lucky Bucky’s only the understudy and he and Sam get into their little red hybrid and drive away. Then they fight Overdrive, who’s created a giant traffic jam by altering everyone’s cars into goofy-looking nonfunctional models to protest overconsumption of fossil fuel (power-creep alert – he apparently has “turbo-nanites” now that allow him to affect multiple vehicles at once now). Sam and Bucky eventually talk him down* and convince him that there are better ways to fight global warming than through traffic accidents and maaaybe this was a poor way to go about trying to turn himself into a good guy. It ends with them getting back in the Falcon-mobile and continue on their way. There was a brief flashback during the diner scene to Steve angsting at Bucky before they left (about having been brainwashed into thinking he was HYDRA, so now he knows how terrible Bucky must feel about having been The Winter Soldier), but hopefully that’s not going to be a major theme and we’ll mostly stick with Epic Roadtrip Adventures from here on out.

*This is when you find out that Sam’s car is a hybrid.

Next Week:
X-Women #3 (I still think this is a stupidly gimmicky title given that there have been multiple all-female X-men line-ups before and all of those runs had normal X-book titles, and that they should just make it X-Men: Red or something to go with the new Gold and Blue X-books, but it has Jubilee and X-23 in it, so I'm continuing to give it a chance)

As part of my attempt to resume using DW regularly, I'm going to be crossposting all the posts I've made to tumblr over the past year or so to this journal (only the handful with original content, not the reblogs). I'll be back-dating them, so they shouldn't be spamming anyone's friends/reading page.

From this point on, I will not be cross-posting anything to livejournal. For various reasons involving immediate family members and their choices of career, it's probably not the best idea for me to continue using LJ now that the servers are located in Russia. I already have all the posts I've made on LJ since 2003 backed up on Dreamwidth, and I will probably delete all the posts on my personal LJ soon and leave a placeholder post with a link to DW. I'm reluctant to actually delete my entire LJ account lest it take my cap_ironman and ship_manifesto posts and other posts and comments I've made in discussion comms with it, but from now on I won't be using actively using it anymore.

Not that anyone who still has me friended on LJ is likely to notice, considering how much of a lurker I've been for the past few years ^_~.

Question for the (616-fan) masses:

When a bullet/knife/rock/other weapon hits Steve’s shield (or any other vibranium object), what does it sound like? Does vibranium vibrate with a pure musical note like a tuning fork? Does it make a weirdly muffled, dead/flat “clunk” sound because all the energy of the impact is retained by the deflected bullet and none is transferred to the shield which therefore barely vibrates? Does Wakandan vibranium do one and Antartic vibranium the other? The traditional “shield hits something” impact sound in Gold/Silver Age comics is “CLANG” except for that one memorable panel when it was “WANK”, but what kind of/how musical a clang?

Obviously Tony can recognize the distinctive sound of a bullet hitting vibranium, but what *is* that sound?

I can’t believe that after a full decade’s worth of writing Steve/Tony fic, this vital question is only occurring to me now…

Hang the Fool is finished now! On the one hand, joy! I have like three-four new chapters to read! On the other hand, woe! What fanfic am I going to stalk for updates and obsess about now?

I mean, other than all those other WiPs I’m following?


#so they barely interact in canon #see if I care #you will pry my Kurosawa/Sergio Leone-character-archetype-based shipper feels from my cold dead hands