#birdrhetorics

[mithen]

birdrhetorics replied to your post “From the sudden uptick in my old gifs featuring Dean getting his shirt...”

Jen they get shirtless and talk about their feelings

*shakes head*  They just can’t leave us fic writers our turf, huh?  No, THEY GOTTA HAVE IT ALL.

[annleckie]

but seriously, is it the gerentate???

No, it’s not the Gerentate either!

[mithen]

Shipping Meme Part 3

Talk about a moment which made you question an entire ship.

Ooooh, I struggled with Sherlock drugging John in “The Hounds of Baskerville”--which is a bit funny considering one of the themes in my ships is literally attempting (or succeeding) at killing each other!  If they haven’t tried to kill each other at some point, they’re not likely to be an ship of mine.  But that kind of mental violation is apparently more of a problem to me than shooting/ strangling/ stabbing/powerbombing/threatening to throw off a parapet.  I kind of got through it, but it definitely weakened my shipping resolve.

Have you ever shipped something despite yourself?

Just as I usually ship at first sight, so also do I generally resist shipping!  I distinctly remember saying to my husband, “So, Clark and Bruce… was that… maybe a little… slashy?”  “You mean when Batman said that perhaps he’d be willing to kill Lex Luthor, because not only is he a danger to the whole world, even more importantly, he’s a danger to Superman?  That moment?  Yes, a little slashy.”  I also remember writing my friend @heraldofmanwe with something like “Well, I don’t SHIP THEM exactly, but Thorin and Bilbo certainly were intense, right?” and when she wrote back with “You know, I maybe could ship them?” I wrote back with “YOU TOO?  THEY WERE AMAZING OH MY GOSH.”  I was most resistant to Sami/Kevin because, well, it’s SO CLOSE to RPF which I generally don’t want to write, and also Kevin is married in canon.  So that took some extra mental work.  But they’re worth it. :D

Talk about a ship you feel alone in shipping. 

There are...very very few!  This is because I nearly always gravitate towards ships with lots and lots of canon so there’s usually someone out there who shares them, even if it’s not the juggernaut (honestly, Kevin/Sami is the closest thing to a non-juggernaut pairing I’ve ever had, my preferred ships are almost always the most popular ship in a fandom).  Anyone out there into Brian Kendrick/Daniel Bryan since the CWC?  I can’t be the only one who was disappointed that the cruiserweights ended up on Raw instead of Smackdown because they were hoping for more interaction between them...

[mithen]

Shipping Meme, Conclusion!

Share five must-read fics. 

This is so hard, so I’m just going through my recent bookmarks and picking the first 5 fics I’ve got about some of my favorite ships! 

Green Light (1567 words) by APgeeksout: WWE, Brian Kendrick/Daniel Bryan sex pollen.  It’s the ship I felt alone in shipping, but no longer!  Hot and just tender enough to be sweet while staying in character.

Than Dreamt of in Your Philosophy (1775 words) by misura: Master & Commander, Jack/Stephen.  This is a Lovecraftian take on M&C and is very good, understated horror--nothing too dark or disturbing, and Stephen saves the day and his dear one.

like monuments (1929 words) by Neffectual: WWE, Tyler Breeze/Fandango. This story takes a fundamentally silly pairing in canon and finds the sweet and wistful heart of it.

Q: Mourning (100 words) by jaclynhyde:  Picard/Q was the first pairing I ever searched for fic about!  This drabble is a terse, painful look at how Q deals (or does not) with Picard’s death.

Corporal Punishment (5988 words) by x_los: Blakes 7, Blake/Avon.  Aliens made them do it:  Blake must administer a spanking to Avon, and both of them try very hard not to find it erotic.  (They fail).

Share your favorite fanmix for your OTP.

Currently I’ve been listening to a lot of “Asterisk*” for Kevin/Sami, with the tracks:

The Bouncing Souls - The Something Special The Orion Experience - Nice Guys Finish Last They Might Be Giants - I've Got a Match Miike Snow - Genghis Khan Sleigh Bells - Bitter Rivals OK Go - Do What You Want Version 2 (Wallpaper Background) The Mountain Goats - Cry For Judas ( New Single from Transcendental Youth Gotye - Night Drive The Mountain Goats - Unmasked! Samson - Regina Spektor Suckers - Turn On The Sunshine Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed The Bouncing Souls - Hero Zero MASHUP DAY - (Of Sami)

Talk about a ship you initially disliked. 

I was slow to warm up to Kevin/Chris, because--I confess it with some shame--I am not very good at multishipping and I get jealous on behalf of my ships rather easily.  But the two of them had such good, easy chemistry, and were messed-up in a whole different way than Kevin is with Sami, so it was fun to write them for a couple of snippets.  

Do you have a favorite trope and/or AU for your OTP?  

With Clark/Bruce it is always and forever identity play of some sort.  The fact that the different facets of their personalities are so distinct and they often find themselves in situations where they have to pretend to be only that facet; the fact that there are so few other people in the world who know all of those facets--Clark the Kansan and Superman the hero and Kal-el the alien refugee; Brucie the rich kid and Batman the vigilante and Bruce the relentless will that unites them--so they can give each other a space to be all of their complex and contradictory selves, it’s really appealing to me.

With Sami/Kevin there’s some identity play going on there because of Generico, and part of what I love about wrestling as a fandom in general is the identity play aspect--the complex and blurry lines between the actors and the characters that inhabit their bodies and their lives.  With shipping that would take me further into RPF than I’m generally willing to go, but I do find myself sneaking ways to get that same frisson into my stories.  An AU that I’m turning over in my head with them is setting a story back in the 1920s and making them literal carnies, going from town to town fleecing marks and hopping boxcars in the night (Sami loves the art and challenge of it, but he always feels a bit guilty and leaves some money at the village orphanage before he goes).  I’ve started doing research on it, but it’s surprisingly hard to find out what life was like as a wrestler back when it was just starting to be a rigged game.

Is there a fictional relationship you’d really want for yourself?  

Gotta go with American Alpha here.  I just love that they’re basically goofballs who flat-out adore each other.  I mean, who wouldn’t want someone to look at them like Jason looks at Chad?

If you could change one thing about your OTP, what would that be? 

Comics Clark and Bruce: I’d want to go back to some form of them that has a long history together.  Right now there’s this weird and completely unimaginable situation where they each have years of history with someone who is almost but not quite the other guy, but they’ve only known each other a year or so, and… it’s awkward and unshippy for me personally.

Thorin and Bilbo: I would love some canon hint they were reunited in the afterlife, whether the dwarf version or the Secondborn version.  

Sami and Kevin: I’d want some guarantee they’re going to be tag team champs someday.  I don’t want it to be right now, that wouldn’t work psychologically. But I just want to know it’s going to happen somewhere down the line.

[mithen]

Shipping Meme Part 2

Do you have any poly ships?

I’d say Cesaro/Tyson/Nattie in the WWE is my favorite poly ship--I watched an entire season of Total Divas just because it had a lot of stuff about Tyson and Cesaro being astonishingly intimate and important to each other and about how Nattie came to accept that and value Cesaro herself.

I also ship Arthur/Lancelot/Guinevere pretty hardcore!  Which leads into...

How do you feel about love triangles?

They’re not usually my thing because they’re painful in ways that are hard to reconcile through fic.  I very much dislike writing people being unfaithful, and in a triangle (if you don’t go the poly route, which I don’t usually) some level of infidelity is kind of inevitable.

Do you have many ships that never got together at all?

Do I have any that DID?  I generally only ship non-canonical pairings, and in fact I feel no desire at all to have my ship get together.  I prefer a ship that’s never going to be canon, to be honest--it’s my job to get them together, not canon’s!  Back off, canon!  I want to give my favorite characters something they’re never going to get unless I help out.

Do you ship any characters that have never met? 

Um, oooooh.  That’s gonna be tough, because in general I don’t ship unless characters have a LOT of interaction in canon; characters with brief interactions don’t usually trip my shipping switch, so characters with none are even less likely.  Even in the rare crossovers I write, the pairings end up within the canon.  Hm.  I have to confess I can’t think of one!

Have you ever “shipped at first sight”? 

Almost always!  Clark/Bruce was within the first comic books I read of them; Kirk/Spock was the first few episodes; Thorin/Bilbo was by the end of the first movie; Kevin/Sami was six minutes into their canon existence together (a new record?)  Maybe the slowest ship build for me was G’Kar/Londo from Babylon 5, for the simple reason that their dynamic didn’t evolve into my shipping catnip until well into the second/third season.

[annleckie]

I saw Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur as a kid when it came through Detroit and it makes me happy to think our shared love of lapis and carnelian comes from the same place. I'm pretty sure I went home from it and immediately started making my own jewelry too.

OH MAN the time I spent trying to recreate some of that jewelry with the little bit of technique I had! Some of the variety of beading skills I’ve got now come from trying to figure out ways to reproduced things like that necklace/choker that’s ripply triangles of lapis and gold strung together, ,or the one with the gold rings hanging off it.  I never got anything I really liked, although I do have a crocheted necklace with gold spirals and cobalt blue seed beads that I think of as my “sumerian” necklace. 

[rosemarysbabysitter]

birdrhetorics replied to your post “This doesn’t quite feel fan ficish enough to put up on AO3 but it did...”

this feels like it belongs in the middle of a singer/songwriter AU fic with dean alone onstage with a guitar.

I love this and fully give permission for anyone to use this poem for any of their ficing needs.

[rosemarysbabysitter]

birdrhetorics replied to your post “Please vote for me so that I can make some money. Or, like, vote for...”

I voted ��

Rockstar! Thanks hun.