Playing with words

Challenge #3

In your own space, put some favorite characters into an AU, fuse some favorite canons together, talk about your favorite AU/fusion tropes, or tell us why AU/fusions aren’t your cup of tea.

I've written a few canon AUs and a couple of fusion/crossovers, and I like reading them as well. Sometimes it's just therapeutic giving the finger to canon and running with a wild idea like hey, WHAT IF NOBODY NEEDLESSLY DIES THIS TIME. 🙌😉Or transplanting your favorite characters into modern circumstances just to see the same fun dynamic and clever little canon references surface, because they're still them and they'd spark off each other the same way in any universe! (I am big on Soulmates AUs, as you can probably tell.)

My absolute favorite AU author is scrubclub who has done Gendrya (Game of Thrones) AUs a bunch of inventively different ways and all of them are a delight! Her best (IMO) is the enemies to lovers HP AU which I have recced a billion times because the wonderful details drawn from both canons are what make it really special. The story breathes with such authenticity and unapologetic fun like beater bat puns. Her other stories are great for the same reason - the Superheroes AU oneshot gets their superpowers (and the banter) just right, and her Modern/Political Westeros AU also works in that Game of Thrones style House maneuvering and background while they deal with tabloids and evidence obtained via cell phone instead of "little birds." 

My current OTP is Beth/Benny from TQG and I'm actually writing a canon AU where Benny gambles his way to Moscow now! But for this challenge, here are some other B^2 brainstorm ideas:

1. Harry Potter AU where Beth Harmon, the new year 5 Ravenclaw prefect would just love to wipe that superior smirk off of Benny Watts’ face, the insufferable year 7 Slytherin prefect. She'll do anything to finally lead Ravenclaw to victory for the House Cup as well as crush him at wizard's chess, because they also have a long standing rivalry there ever since he decimated her only set when she was only a first year. Also, his perfect blond hair is just unfair. 

2. A Hunger Games AU where Benny is the cynical, alcoholic District 3 mentor and Beth the brand new tribute who is brilliant, stubborn and impulsive and absolutely determined to win to get back home to her mother Alma, a single parent. Benny struggles to groom her into a tribute sponsors will love instead of loathe, although he can't help but wish that she had a chance of winning instead of dying like all the others because she reminds him uncannily of himself. 

3. Nobody has written a shared scars Soulmates AU for them yet, so let me just PUT THAT ENERGY OUT INTO THE UNIVERSE TOO! 😁😁😁

Wishing you all a wonderful New Year! 🥳🙌 This will be another many updates at once post because so much has happened but I've been too busy to sit and compose a post!

First! Thank you to spikedluv for more DW points via holiday_wishes ! So much appreciated!!! 🥰

Second cool thing: I've won a few Discord Nitro giveaways ever since I started entering lots of them? Law of averages, so I've been cruising along with Nitro Classic (which is basically just Extra Emoji Powah - it's the discount version of Nitro) and I have a few months of classic credit stored up now. Then a couple days ago I basically won the jackpot: one year of Nitro Boost! 🙌🥳This is the fully souped up version of Nitro that costs $100! So I can boost the little B2 server again, which is awesome! (It means all members on the server can use more of our custom emoji and stickers and our icon can be a GIF one, plus a few more perks.)

Third: I spotted a new gift on AO3 and went rummaging through the tags at fandomtrees and ooooh! Can't wait!

And finally, the person translating my fics into Vietnamese has finished An Exchange of Kings now and the link is here!


In not so cool things: tumblr is basically totally non-functional for creators right now. 😭 It's probably them trying to fix their banned tags issue, but now any tagged post doesn't show. 🤨 So I'm not making any more GIFsets until they figure out WTF they're doing. Really sad that I might have to redo the tags on all the sets I've posted - that is at least a hundred sets.😭 I have two more weeks of work, so maybe after that?


November/December media

TV shows: So much quality content! I have been very happy with the TV offerings lately. I think I'll be trying Wheel of Time next, since the people in the Gendrya server are talking about it. (I read the books ages ago, so I don't think I'll be offended by the "narrative diversions" that husbands everywhere are complaining about!😂) 

Squid Game- I totally get all the hype over this series - it was sooo good! I started it one night, just to see why everybody was talking about it and flooding my dash with people in tracksuits. Watched two episodes, and then binged the rest the next day! It is very intense though - I can see why people just can't take the strain of it, and the seemingly cynically violent narrative. This show breaks your heart on purpose? I do like what it says about capitalism and human nature in the end though. I have caps for icons, so I will be working on those sometime!

explained S3- There was a chess ep and one on dogs! Awesome season!

The Mind explained- The last ep on brainwashing was uncomfortably relevant. 😖 Radicalization in small groups: it can happen to you! I want to watch the one on personality again - the different traits are really interesting! 

Lost in Space S3- I can't believe it's over! And I liked where the characters ended up, mostly, although I am sad it wasn't a little bit shippier for the pairings I was rooting for. 🥺 

Arcane- OMG this show blew me away! I think I actually like the love triangle on this show because it's such a fresh take on the trope and sooo heartbreaking?! Plus what a corruption arc! And the character designs and artwork and music were all just stunning together! Definitely going to re-watch just to be wowed all over again. 

Hawkeye- I did not expect this show to make me ugly sob because I'm going to be honest: I went into this not giving a damn about Clint. My fave was Natasha and I have been bitter for literally YEARS. This show had everything though - humourous banter, great character arcs/plot, awesome action sequences and emotional catharsis like whoa. 😭😭😭 So well done, and it totally blew away my expectations. Plus the holiday setting was perfect - my kiddo and I watched it all over Christmas and it felt so sublime! 

The Witcher S2- I liked it for the most part although Jaskier should have had more songs! Having Ciri a lot more central at last was great, and I also like the time spent with more of the minor characters like Fringilla, whose choices and struggles I find a lot more relatable than say, Geralt's? Although I don't like what they did with Yennefer since it was so contradictory and also not in the books?! 🤨(Yes, I am the annoyed husband here: what was that?!)


Movies: Only watched a couple. I'm hoping to see No Way Home in theatre soon though! It comes out here on the 7th!

Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings- This was such a fun romp and I kind of ship Katy/Shang-chi now. I loved how they were so solidly each other's person. 

Don't Look Up- I found this so depressingly realistic that I had to stop watching in the middle for a day. Like maybe it's satire but it felt terribly plausible.  


Books:

   Scythe, Thunderhead and The Toll by Neal Shusterman

In an overpopulated world where an ubiquitous, omnipresent AI has solved all mundane human problems like death and disease, there have to be those who must reduce the population instead. This was such a neat dystopian concept and I think the first book in this series was definitely the strongest, although all of them have several gut punch twists. The weakest part of the series was the romance - I just didn't feel it between the two main (young) protagonists. (Maybe I am over YA romance? IDK.) The third book is strangely structured too, because one of the minor characters from the second book gets a leading role for most of the first third of it - it's a jarring change when you're so used to his chapters being the occasional interlude instead of the main focus! I have a bunch of fic bookmarked for this, but for the mentor scythes, who had the most tragically separated for eternity soulmates story ever. It still makes my heart break a bit to reflect on it. 🥺

 A Psalm of Storms and Silence by Roseanne A. Brown

Ooooh this was such a good finish to this duology! I feel like anything I say will be spoilers for the first book, but the great worldbuilding continues out into the world around the city in the first, with a wonderfully diverse range of characters, and some realistically motivated characters? Like at first it seems like the author is playing to a romantic trope, but noooope, character was motivated by something deeper! 😅
A great YA fantasy read - I'm reccing this series to my kiddo for sure.


Finally, here's my last fic of the year for newyearcntdown 

Title: Cold Hands (Cold Feet) (Joy and Harmonny for the Season Chp 3)
Fandom: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Characters/Pairing: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts, Jolene DeWitt & Benny Watts, Benny Watts & D.L. Townes
Word Count/Rating: 2424 words, T
Summary: Counterpart to the previous chapter: Whatever did Benny get Beth for Christmas?
Link to AO3 here

This was expanding on the backstory of the last chapter of Exchange too - I wasn't planning to write that in when I first saw the prompt, but the more I thought about that other meaning of Cold Feet, the more I wanted to add it. I was originally going to write eight stories for this community and only finished three, but I am keeping the option open to post a couple more on AO3 even though the community on DW won't be open for cross-posting!

It never rains but it pours and I'm really loving this, universe; keep it coming! 😁🙌

The holiday_wishes comm is just amazing - I've gotten some points towards my account here from two people now, and I didn't even get to thank them because DW doesn't send you a link when they do that! So thank you very much, kind elves! 🙇‍♀️

And I won another nitro giveaway a couple of days ago! So I will have Sweet Emoji Powah for another month after this one expires! *dancing* I can't believe I won - I'm only in that server because they have cute emoji, so it was a totally unexpected windfall! 😅

The lovely person fantranslating my B^2 fics into Vietnamese contacted me yesterday and said they had put up chap 1 of An Exchange of Kings (Openings and Tactics). Link is here! I really wish I could understand the nuance of the language - I am dying to understand how they translated the title, since it's actually an impossible concept in chess (but I wanted that metaphor of them both resigning at once and then playing out a new, unfamiliar kind of game instead).

Finally, this morning I got a notification that somebody had gifted me a Tedbecca fic as a prize for participating in a comment-a-thon last month! I started late and only got out 7 comments, so I didn't expect anything, actually, I just wanted to contribute to the fun! 😅 But one author whose fics I love still wrote me (and two others) a story with that kind of perfectly pitched angst of getting what you desperately want and knowing it might get snatched away at any second. 🥺🥺🥺 It hurt so good and feels so hopeful in the end and Ted is such a beautiful person in it and I love it to bits. 🥰🥰🥰


Anyway, I hope you guys are all doing well! Work is craaaaazy for the next two weeks for me and I've committed to 8 things (probably mostly B^2 holiday fics, although one prompt is dying for a Tedbecca set) for newyearcntdown. First fic is here for the prompt Snuggle (Huddle for Warmth):

Warning for TQG rant. I am just writing this up here so I can just link the essay the next time somebody claims that "Benny begged Beth to come back to New York multiple times." This is usually cited as evidence that Beth was cruelly tossing out his heart, and therefore mostly to blame for their split. 

I disagree with this idea on so many levels, but let's start with the oft-cited evidence.

( Cut for pedantic detail )

Thank you for whatever you make for me! I lean more towards wanting sweet, heartwarming or sexy treats, but if you have something that gives wonderfully angsty pangs based on the pairings below, go for it! Angst with a happy ending is my #1 favorite thing and I love it when it hurts so good. 🥰

Art: Anything shippy is going to be awesome and make me squee! Hugs, leaning on shoulders, brushing hair - anything where they are showing affection and/or attraction, please! Reinterpretations of scenes from canon are a fave too!

Some general DNWs:
Graphic gore, Scat/Watersports, A/B/O, Mpreg, Cheating on a partner, High School AUs, misogyny, major character death, non-con sex, character bashing or humiliation, incest (unless it's already established in canon), non-requested pairings, hurt without comfort, unrequested pairings, owner/slave, teacher/student or employer/employee dynamics. No oral sex where one partner is choking/gagging either, please. 

Things I love:
canon-AU, 5+1 and missing scene type fics, worldbuilding details, female characters acting with agency and awareness, badass couples being badass together. I love action, angst with a happy ending, fluff and soulmate AUs, fairy tale/literary/mythology references/AUs, epistolary formats. More loves: humour, witty banter, pining, family bonding, everybody lives!, respecting boundaries, sexytimes, feminist themes, competency, respectful relationships.

Canon specific prompts:

( Ted Lasso, TQG, GoT, MCU ) too!

Dear creator,

Thank you for whatever you make for me! Just love all the characters below and I cannot wait to see what you come up with, whether it's fic or art! 😄

Some general DNWs:
Graphic gore, Watersports/scat, A/B/O, mpreg, cheating on a partner, high school AUs, misogyny, major character death, non-con sex, character bashing, incest (unless it's already canon like Jon/Dany and Jaime/Cersei), hurt without comfort, unrequested pairings, owner/slave, teacher/student or employer/employee dynamics.

Things I love:
canon-AU, 5+1 and missing scene type fics, worldbuilding details, female characters acting with agency and awareness, badass couples being badass together, action, angst with a happy ending, soulmate AUs, fairy tale/literary/mythology references/AUs. More loves: fluff, humour, witty banter, pining, family bonding, everybody lives!, respecting boundaries, sexytimes, feminist themes, competency, respectful relationships.



( Fandom specific prompts )

So I spent the weekend backing up fics and reviews that are on ffnet to AO3, since signs are pointing to ffnet circling the drain. Another one bites the dust, but I'm not terribly sad about it since AO3 is superior in most ways anyway, and I've only been putting up fic on ffnet as an afterthought. Still, it made me rather nostalgic. I had completely forgotten how I'd had a phase where I wrote a new, spite driven Forwood fic after every new ep of TVD, and re-reading all those old reviews made me think of the Genesis awards forum. <3

Also I noticed the stats on one of my series while I was clicking in and out, and if one more person bookmarks it is going to be SUBLIME. :DDDD 



I really want to write a new Skittles chapter that is exactly 3030 words to make it all 3s, but I don't know if I have it in me! LOL Besides, this author has already won at AO3 word/chapter count number manipulation, LBR. I find it extra delightful that it is Lucifer fic! Link here I've only read the first chap of the first fic, but so far it's good!



Also: made a couple new TQG sets recently. This Chess Players/moving pieces set was another fun challenge. I had to learn to make pale GIFs because I wanted it to look chessboard-y, and I think the final effect is pretty nice, although Tumblr isn't playing nice with the timing and refuses to sync the GIFs which are actually all the same frame order and length! Grrrr. Anyway, it was neat to look at the different way the actors learned to move the pieces, and I love the elegant way Beth captures pieces the best, although I found capping Benny violently taking pieces the most amusing. Like he would hit the piece with his, and then use the dead piece to punch the clock after, and apparently TBS modeled it off how Bobby Fischer played.

I also tried that trendy vibrant painted background GIF effect on the first GIF of this B2 set. Will have to attempt it again in a scene with less movement, but I think it's a decent first effort!

Okay, TQG fans on the f-list, I have a question for you!

I've been talking to humiliatedrook and it seems like fandom has vastly different interpretations of something that I thought was pretty clear?

So what do you think were the primary causes of Beth's breakdown in 1x06 (Adjournment)?

I'm shoving my meta under the cut, so please take the poll before reading! :D


( Warning for discussion of drug/alcohol addiction )

Cut most of these out of my sets on tumblr! If you have requests from there, just HMU via comment - I have most of the caps still. GIF icons are sized for DW and AO3 and only the first frame will show on tumblr. Stills should work everywhere! :D

Please comment/credit if used! 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when your beta has a birthday, you write them some smut.

Skittles (1360 words) by NRGburst
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Characters: Beth Harmon, Benny Watts
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Mile High Club, Fingering, PWP
Series: Part 3 of Check and Mate/An Exchange of Kings
Summary:

Sweet (and sour) treats from Check and Mate/Exchange-verse

We're moving so I don't have time to make a header or anything fancy, but here's a video of bullet chess, which is a version of Skittles, for those of you who don't know what the title ref is.