With the last of the refugees, I come from Livejournal, dragging my old fandoms behind me.

Wow. Tumblr is going to be the death of me. Thank the FSM that I got all my grades submitted before the OUAT season ender! LOL!

(Not that I don't have some of the most irritating students ever complaining about their grades... sigh. You *missed the final exam* dude. And didn't contact me about it until TWO DAYS LATER. No. I am not sympathetic to your cause. Idiot.)

The angst. The hair rending. The tearing of garments. The overdone aca-fan analysis. The weird comparisons. (Xena/Gabrielle = Regina/Emma? I have no memory of Xena trying to kill Gabrielle...? Or saying mean things to her episode after episode? Perhaps I need to re-watch?)

And of course the cheers and the happy dances and the triumphant hand signs being thrown from the happy het canon shippers.

Anyway. Awwe-some!

I've even learned how we go after a dude breaking up a non-canon f/f. He's a rapist. Or an embodiment of rape culture. (A distinction without much difference?) Which, hmmm. I think I would have preferred evil bitch. Or stupid bitch. Or even castrating bitch. Though that last is my least favorite of those three.

I like Nestra's rule. (Rule? Preference? Guideline) Just ignore the inconvenient canon het interest. That's certainly the most common solution in Eureka (still the home of my current OTP!) Jack/Nathan shippers. Allison? Allison who? Who is this Allison of whom you speak? No. no. *headshake* I'm quite sure I've never heard of anyone named Allison....You must be mistaken. Or, oh yes, lovely, but ultimately - there was nothing there. Mutual decision to just be friends. Often after Allison helps the boys get it on.

I might even read that fic. The one where Hook realizes that Emma will never respond to him the way she does to Regina, and manfully steps back after midwifing their true love. I mean. OOC up the wazoo, but, I'd read it anyway!

Yes. Another one!

As always - I am incredibly grateful to sk and to Ms. Artisan. In this particular case - I also owe a big shout out to Meredith - who not only offered some brainstorming, but even went and found the links to help me sort out the science - or the Eureka 'science' for the kids science fair project.

Posted at my AO3 page - http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nell65

As some of you know, my latest fandom obsession is Eureka - a syfy production about a secret government scientific think tank and all the wacky scientists that live and work there, and the every man sheriff who saves them from themselves time and time again. In this show, there is a couple. Zane Donovan and Jo Lupo. Jo is my new Nikita. Everything about her hits one of my fan girl buttons. Hard. Zane thinks Jo is awesome. In both time lines. So, she and Zane are my latest OTP 4 eva.

I read a new fic last weekend, new fic production is slowing but hasn't stopped for the fandom, and it really got to me. Got to me so hard, I actually wrote a short fic set in that story universe - which is an AU twist on the canon time travel/reboot. My OTP was left a bit, well, hanging. In my view. I *needed* to fix it. (see OTP 4 eva) I wrote a fic to do it. I contacted the author, recieved her perssion to post, and viola. With Jaybee's beta, it is up on AO3 now. The original author left an encouraging comment (yay!) which has made me feel quite good about the whole excercise.

Here is the link to the fic:

Love Writ on Her Arms

Does anyone else weep on seeing the M*A*S*H episode in which Col. Henry Blake listens by phone as his youngest son is born stateside? It isn't a sad episode at all, it's a very funny, slapsticky one - the way the first several seasons episodes often were.

But, if you watched enough of the series, you have probably also seen the later episode when Henry's chopper was shot down over the Pacific as he was headed out on the first leg of his journey home. There were no survivors.

So - now, when I see the episode when Henry is so happy and excited about the baby, I weep. Because I know that he will never meet that child. Every time, by the way. I weep again.

As we come up on the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg (and the almost more important, strategically speaking, fall of Vicksburg in the west to U.S. Grant), the military history parts of the internet are alive with posts and blogs.

I teach military history and nineteenth century U.S. History is my field. I know the history of the Civil War quite well for some one who is not, as they say, a 'buff.' So I knew the rough outlines of the history of the Iron Brigade.

I wept today as I read this, a short story about them on the eve of Gettysburg that I did not know.

"On this day, 28 June, the men of the Iron Brigade were marching towards Gettysburg. Then the lead regiment of the brigade passed a young woman waving an American flag in her front yard. She was described as being, "about 20," and we can infer a little about her looks by what happened next.

The commander of the lead regiment, a man named Rufus Dawes, is riding with his staff at the head of the column. He inclines his men and they all tipped their hats and bowed to her as they passed her prosperous farmhouse. Then the first company of the infantry and the second company, trooped by and just stared in amazement as the young beauty waved her American flag, an audience of one for these men marching towards the enemy.

But by the time the third company approached, a lieutenant took things into his own hands. Lieutenants sometimes do that, and sometimes they do it right.
Calling behind himself he brought his company to a more rigid form of marching, the sort usually used on parades not real road-marches. Then he ordered, "Company C, Right Shoulder, Shift, Arms!"

Essentially this was the same mass salute that a military unit would give to a general or the President of the United States when marching past on a formal review up Pennsylvania Avenue. And then, following the inspired lead of Company C of the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment, every, single, damned, company, in the whole rest of the First Brigade of the First Division of the First Corps of the Army of the Potomac, did exactly the same thing, for the same reason.

....

"Less than 96 hours of life remained for a sad percentage of those men. Out of the 1,885 men marching down the road that day -- saluting a pretty girl by the side of the road as though she were a dignitary -- some 1,153 of them would be killed, wounded, or captured before 100 hours were out. And believe me, you do not get called the "Iron Brigade," by both sides, because "captured" makes up a big part of your numbers. That one unknown girl to whom they collectively, in their hundreds, flirted while marching towards hell was probably the last pretty face many of them would ever see. So maybe we can forgive them their little breach of military custom and courtesy. They would pay, in truth, on the barrel-head when the time came."

Acting Like School Boys as the Armies Close In, by Lt. Col. Robert Bateman.

The essay is florid, and leans a little hard on the men, men, manly men, theme, and I suspect the soldiers would have found any young woman waving the flag pretty, because it was her actions not her face that charmed them - and yet. I wept. I'm still weepy - hours later.

That this should be the week the Supreme Court gutted the enforcment provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which was written and passed to give the 15th Amendment to the Constition force, only makes me weep the harder.

And suddenly understanding - just a tiny bit - what the TRs must have felt during all of LFN. In the, what it feels like to root for not the main couple sense. Not that I'm opposed to the main H50 couple (fannishly speaking - I'm honestly not sure who the show runners think the 'main couple' is? Doris and Mick? They appear to be the only two to actually acknowledge that they are in a relationship, and one that is, relatively speaking, honest and straightforward) -- I just really like Adam and Kono (and such lovely tears. They both got to cry. Grace Park is so pretty when she cries. I just want to hug her. Awesome..!)

Because seriously? I totally wish next season of H50 would feature several episodes of Adam and Kono on the run with Doris McGarrett. SERIOUSLY! I'm so jealous! Can you be jealous of fictional characters? And, yes, I know, sad, death, destruction, fratricide in defense of your one true love (sheds small tear for Michael Noshimuri's beautiful shoulders and even more beautiful artwork that we will never see again) all had to come first.... but honestly. On the run with Doris McGarrett? How wild and crazy fun will that be?

(Is Steve ragingly jealous? Yes? No? Of course? Will Adam and Kono come home full of wild adventures with Doris stories? Do I, maybe, perhaps, possibly, need to write such a story? Does the sun rise in the east? Will there be more angst? All of the above? Tune in next fall to find out? Will we ever get to the bottom of the Wo Fat mystery? LOLOL)

~~~~~~

Hmm. It occurs to me I may finally need some icons beyond LFN..... :-)

ETA: Oh man. Already, the bunnies are forming. I think there should be pirates. And adorable urchins. And possibly smuggling.

Okay - it turns out that I wasn't ready to walk away from my Eureka/H50 universe. I think, maybe, I didn't like that Danny was unhappy? Whatever the cause - this story burst into my head and would not leave me alone until I wrote it and shared it. It was a fun ride, and I hope others will enjoy it too.

I have also posted it to my AO3 account, here:http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nell65

Title: Bright Morning Comes
Fandom: Eureka, Hawaii 5-0
Characters: Zane Donovan, Jo Lupo, Steve McGarrett, Danny Williams, Catherine Rollins, Chin Ho Kelly, Kono Kalalula, William Shaw, General Mansfield, Dorris McGarrett
Relationships: M/F, M/M, Multi
Category: Gen, Action/Adventure, Scifi
Words: ~20,000


Prologue:


The video opened with a wide pan of a lengthy but orderly airport security line, before zooming in on a very slender, impeccably dressed white woman. Her fashionable purse dangled from its short strap over her forearm as she held her tickets and passport ready for the first inspection station. With her free hand she reached up to brush her hair back from her face, showing off her thin, aquiline nose, high cheekbones and elegantly understated makeup. She took a step forward, and another, swayed, started to raise her free hand, and then, like a marionette whose strings had been cut, collapsed onto the ground in an untidy sprawl. The lines swirled and broke as people rushed to her side, struggling in vain to revive her. The video ended with another close up shot framing her face, her dead eyes staring emptily up into the camera.

Jo had recognized her instantly. It was Beverly Barlow, spy, terrorist, felon, fugitive, very occasional ally and now, it seemed, corpse. Though Jo would have preferred to be able to stick pins in her, a lot of pins, just to make sure.

( Read more... )

One of the upsides of closed canon universes is the limitless possibilities for what our beloved characters might do next, good and ill. Happy and sad. Beautiful and tragic.

Many, many years ago, in the first heady explosion of HEA post-series LFN fanfic, some of us with a snarkier bent complained that there was an overabundence of Michael and Nikita have twins and ponies and sparkly rainbows sorts of fic, in worlds that weren't obviously supposed to be even a little AU.

Now, it's true that I'm not in a position to cast too many stones, having produced my own HEA fic, but still. Some of those first HEA, kitchen-curtian stories were a teensy bit, well, twee. Especialy given the source material. So I foolishly declared to my fellow snarkers that I could write a 'true to the source' future fic where Michael and Nikita had children and struggled to deal with parenthood in the same universe that produced Section One, and made them who they were.

Eventually - I finished the promised story. It has had lots of inputs, and still has kitchen-curtain bits, but that was probably inevitable given the challenge I originally set myself.

After nurturing it and setting it aside and picking it up again after years of languishing and then letting it mature and reading it again, I am at last letting it go into a world that has almost no readers left for this sort of story! But - in general, witness the Eureka/Hawaii 5-O story I just completed, the idea of clearing my brain of old stories has been successful. And this one is more than ready to fly on its own.

If anyone should be interested after all these years, here it is.

As always, special thanks to my excellent and wonderful beta readers sk and Jaybee. I would never have finished without you. And whatever errors and infelicities remain, they are my own.

Title: Footprints in the Dust
Fandom: LFN
Characters: Michael Samuelle, Nikita Wirth, Kate Quinn, Mick Schotpel, Adam Samuelle, OCs
Relationships: Het, Multi
Words: ~54,000

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

*****

Less than two hours after Mick Schtopel walked out of the past and into Orly Airport, Nikita stood in the lobby of a small, left bank hotel. She was overseeing the delivery of more computer equipment. They had chosen the hotel at random, based on the combination of layout, size, location and the willingness of the owner to throw out his two sets of guests and (for a generous fee) turn the entire facility over to them.

( Read more... )

*****

Nikita felt some of her tension bleed away as she turned into the long drive at the cabin. She knew, in her head, that simply changing locations wouldn’t change what had happened. But her spirits lifted anyway.

( Read more... )