I'm so easy...

crack_van totally works. Not only do I now apparently read X-Men Comicverse fiction when previously I stuck with fanfic for the movies, no that would be harmless. I also spent quite some time during the last days watching CSI episodes, because the CSI overview gave me the last nudge to give the series a try. Sure it's not like I wasn't aware of the potential consequences of reading a community where people pimp their fandoms (it's not like you need a huge surgeon general's warning to figure those out), it's just -- I have a number of peripheral fandoms in which I have no real idea where to find good fanfic/recs, and crack_van is good for that too.

On the upside it turns out I can actually read an introduction to a fandom and find that informative, but still feel no interest whatsoever to check out the fiction. Like I didn't develop any interest in Blakes7 or Homicide or The Professionals or Pop Slash (okay, I read one of the recced stories for pop slash, I don't think that counts). Who knows, maybe exposure to temptation will even make me more resilient in the face of new fandoms in the long term.

Anyway, about CSI. Before reading any of the fanfic (I still prefer not to read fiction until I've seen at least some of the source) I watched a couple of CSI episodes, and several of those from third season showed Grissom's hearing problems. So, since this is a crime show and doesn't particularly dwell on the emotional impact of his illness I thought it would be really easy to find fanfic exploring this. But either I'm not good at finding stuff (which is possible, after all I'm not familiar with the fandom yet), or it isn't a popular topic as I had assumed. I mean, the fandoms where I got most of my "tv fan socialization" so to speak, were really large (like TS or XF) and somehow I've come to expect these obvious fanfic topics as a given, like the blatantly missing scenes, the fic dealing with the glaring emotional issue some character has, the emotional fallout of something that is never seen on screen, because it's "off-topic" for a cop show etc. I think of that as the "meat and potatoes" kind of fanfic, the topics/themes/scenes for which (in large fandoms) you'll usually find dozens variations of fanfic dealing with them, and most of these stories aren't terribly original, or brilliant pieces of writing (though some are), but I like to read that kind of fanfic, because it fills in the obvious blanks even I see in a source.

And before I inadvertently start an "entitlement" kerfuffle or something similar, I don't think of fanfic (fandom) as a supermarket, where I can always expect to find exactly the kind of fanfic I'm looking for. But I have to admit, it is kinda neat when it does work like that, you know? So if by chance any of you know of CSI fanfic dealing with Grissom's hearing loss, I'd like to read that.

Also, I was browsing for some Everwood fanfic (and I meant to rec an Everwood story too, come to think of it, but now I can't find the frelling bookmark, and of course I can't remember the author or title either >.<), and I noticed a couple of stories with German phrases/words as titles. And I was wondering about that, because I don't tend to come across, for example, Spanish or French phrases as titles in fanfic (or I don't notice, which is definitely a possibility as well), but see German ones semi-regularly, though from my impressions not as often as Latin ones. Anyway, I've been wondering why that is. I mean, I get that in X-Files fandom it probably is because of some of the episode titles, but Everwood? Does German look/sound exotic or something?

kinky(?) superhero sex -- in canon

Any Avengers fans (which I'm not) probably already heard of this, but I still found it amusing. Avengers #71 apparently has been delayed because it now comes with a MR rating instead of an PSR one. The reasons, according to this post at newsarama, are a scene with Ant-Man and Wasp in bed, where we see a damp, shrunken Ant-Man crawl up her body, presumably from between her legs, and an admission by a villain that he pays a prostitute to dress like Wasp and beat her up. You can see the the first in one of the preview pages also linked from the forum.

the truth is out there, er, here...

The answers to the "four truths, one lie meme" I did yesterday...

1. I used to do a semi-regular radio show about books.

True. It was in a community radio based wholly on volunteer work not on a commercial station, but for a while I did a monthly show (usually together with a friend, but sometimes alone), where we reviewed books, usually live on air for one and a half hours. It was semi-regular because though the intention was to do it monthly that didn't always work out.

2. One of my favorite dishes as a kid, i.e. until I became vegetarian as a teenager, was fried Grützwurst (a sausage made from groats, pig's blood, raisins, and probably a lot of other disgusting pig-based ingredients) served with sweet applesauce and mashed potatoes.

True. Actually it's one of the few dishes I miss even after a decade of being a vegetarian (without any lapses, so I don't miss it too much *grin*). I guess it's because that dish always felt like comfort food, it's quite fast to prepare, and I know it sounds kind of gross, but it is actually very tasty. It isn't much like the separate ingredients at all. The sausage is cut in half so that not just the skin is fried but one side of the interior as well, and it gets a lovely crust (coming from the groats/blood mixture I presume) that goes well with the sweetness of the raisins and the apple sauce.

3. I was once threatened with a pocketknife by a classmate in elementary school.

True. It was a neighbor's kid and we had the same way home. He had some kind of crush on me, but I wasn't very happy about his attentions, and then one day he pulled out his pocket knife on the way home and threatened me. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but I talked to him to keep him calm and eventually he put the knife away. Once I was home I told my big brother (not my parents) who sufficiently intimidated the jerk in turn. He never tried anything like that again on me.

4. I still have a notebook with some embarrassingly bad poems I wrote years ago.

False. I knew with all you writerly types out there it would sound plausible, but I have only written two "poems" (and I use the term loosely) in my whole life, both of them while I was still in elementary school. And I disposed the notebook with those two as a teenager. So, no atrocious poems.

5. I was offered to skip a year in high school twice, but refused because I liked the other people in my year and high school in general.

True. I didn't want to skip because I liked my classmates, even the somewhat psycho guy who used to hit my back with his fists and sometimes strangled me with my scarf wasn't all that bad in his saner moments. You could talk with him about comics and RPGs for example. Besides, I had absolutely no intention to put real effort into getting excellent grades. By not skipping I could continue to draw comics and cartoons in class without any impact on my school performance. It's not that I was lazy or uninterested as such, I actually did the assignments, participated in class etc., but I rather liked that it didn't take much effort. It wasn't like I already knew all the stuff that was taught either, unlike my brother for example who enjoyed showing the teachers up (by reading a scary amount of books, thus having read more philosophy books than the philosophy teachers and the like) so I wasn't bored by the subjects -- I was just okay with going at a slower pace than I could have and with not learning more than what was offered in class, and to be a slacker drawing doodles instead, even though I didn't find the stuff I learned uninteresting as such.

I think the teachers who suggested I skip years didn't quite get my attitude and had this idea that I ought to be eager to learn more, or faster, or more challenging things, just because I probably would have been able to do so.

Anyway, overall I liked high school, especially the last three years or so. While I wasn't widely popular I didn't have any problems, despite being a feminist, vegetarian, overweight science geek. Even when my two best friends moved away, I still found people to chat and hang out with during recess, for example.