spherical cows

This Yuletide, I received two utterly delightful stories!

Catch the Wind, How to Train Your Dragon post-movie. "Hiccup explores uncharted territories."

This is so good, you guys. The Stoick-Hiccup relationship, the Hiccup-Astrid relationship, Toothless, everything is awesome. It's perfect post-movie catharsis.

The Quintuple Convergence Alternatives, The Middleman. "Or, Five ways Wendy didn't meet the Middleman."

I love these slices-of-life that show the characters so well - so much of the Middleman is the crazy plots and the random happenstances, and these slices are just different enough while the characters are still recognizable. The last one punched me in the gut, but I love it so much.

Happy Yuletide and merry Christmas to those who celebrate either (or both)!

Title: Spelled Out in Ice
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Summary: "And yet we’ve been stealing people for thousands of years. Changelings, human lovers, tithes, what does it matter?"

10,000 words at the AO3

I realized the other day that it has been almost eight years since I started watching Stargate. To celebrate, I thought I would do some rewatching, which got me thinking about the storylines the writers chose and the storylines the writers could've chosen.

( Holy crap, this got long. )

Title: The Light Beyond the Trees
Fandom: How to Train Your Dragon
Rating: PG
Notes: Written for trekkie_mage.
Summary: Hiccup, growing up in Berk.

( 4,700 words )

Title: Make A Little Birdhouse In Your Soul
Fandom: Once Upon A Time
Rating: PG
Summary: Emma is still adjusting to life in Storybrooke, but Storybrooke is not making it easy.
Warnings/Notes: Written for Yuletide 2011; also available on AO3. Thanks to Ari for the beta!

( ~4,000 words )

I'm trying to put my finger on what exactly it is about this article that's made me so infuriated.

On one hand, there is an incredibly imbalance between portrayals of Cuban-American exiles and Cubans who are still in Cuba,¹ in that pretty much no article I have ever seen in the Washington Post has both addressed the fact that 1. Cuba is poor, and 2. it is pretty much the fault of the US embargo. There are many articles that talk about how third-world it is in an oh, isn't it sad, this is what Communism does to a country, but very few that acknowledge that a good part of why Cuba can't get products is because of the embargo. So seeing yet another article that is all about the Cuban-American exile experience is not putting me in a good mood in the first place.

On the other hand, the article implies that somehow, Rubio isn't Cuban-American enough. He's the wrong kind of Cuban-American because his parents emigrated at the wrong time. He's Cuban-American, but he doesn't really count because his family wasn't really exiled. Look at him pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, getting the support of the Cuban-American exile community when he isn't even one of them! What a fraud.

To which I say: bullshit. The Washington Post does not get to determine who is or isn't Cuban-American. As another Cuban-American whose entire Cuban-American experience pretty much consists of feeling not-Cuban-enough because I didn't grow up speaking Spanish in Miami, I find this utterly revolting.

I disagree with his politics, and I would vote for him right after Hell froze over, but he is still Cuban-American and the Washington Post has no right to wink-wink-nudge-nudge imply that he isn't.

Also, something about this seems slightly racist to me, in that if he were a white man from a European country of similar background, I can't imagine that public sympathy would have turned against him so fast.

And finally, while I believe that all public figures (and all people, for that matter) are subject to having their statements fact-checked, right now it looks like Rubio is guilty of getting some dates wrong. Some important dates, yes, but I'm inclined to believe that he was basing what he said off his family's oral histories, and I can sympathize with that - oral histories are all that I have of my mom's family history.²

Hopefully now that this is out of my system I'll be able to go to bed.

¹ I should also add that there are very few stories about Cubans in Cuba in general. You'd think that after 1960, the island was empty except for Fidel chewing on a cigar in his military uniform and plotting eeeeevil Communist things to himself. Sidenote: This exact stereotype (plus, you know, all the sketchy gender and racial politics) is why X-Men: First Class irritates me so damn much.

² And my mom has the same kind of year slippage. She always said that she left Cuba when she was about eight, but when we dug out the documents, it was closer to when she was six or seven. It happens.

Title: Take the Third Option
Rating: R for frank discussion of sex and violence
Summary: Take the Third Option, or, Vulcans Have Prehensile Dicks And Other Misinformation.
Notes/Warnings: Written for trekkiemage as part of her (very belated) Help Japan winnings; this one's for "Hurt/Comfort." This fic deals with pon farr and all the consent issues that come with it, so take that as you will.

( Around 6,000 Words )

(Crossposted to halfamoon, DW, and LJ.)

Princess Tutu is a fandom that I see get attention about twice a year: during halfamoon and Yuletide. Granted, most of my fandoms are Western live-action shows, but I still don't see Princess Tutu getting nearly the amount of love it deserves. I don't know if it's that it's an anime, or that it involves ballet, or that it does not at all shy away from its fairytale aspects, but I'm here to tell you a little bit about why you should give Princess Tutu a chance, even if its name makes you wince.

(Its name makes everybody wince, right up to the very end of the very last episode when you find yourself thinking, "Yeah, there's nothing else it could've been named.")


( A Female-Centric, Dial-Up-Unfriendly Look At Princess Tutu )

Oh, that rare creature, the public political post on this journal.

If you have a Twitter - or even if you don't - please try to check out Tiger Beatdown's recent posts about Julian Assange and Michael Moore, with a healthy dose of Keith Olbermann.

If you visit just one link, make it this one - the rest are updates, but still important. Please keep in mind that the posts may trigger for sexual assault, since they're about Julian Assange.

I tried to post more details, but it just made me really angry. Rape apologism is never, ever, ever okay, and neither is victim-blaming, victim-outing, minimizing rape, or anything of that kind.

A bandwagon? LET ME JUMP ON IT.

the ❝that's my favorite!❞ meme
A FANFICTION PRAISE MEME