I am agog at the United States Postal Service! I ordered some Titan Books Transformers collections off Half.com Friday night--well after business hours--and two of them arrived TODAY. Monday. The equivalent of overnight delivery, since they couldn't possibly have gotten to the post office before Saturday morning.

Via Media Mail, which is supposed to come within 4-8 days, if you are lucky.

You are raising unreasonable expectations, Postal Service! The next time I completely fail to get a package, I will be even madder at you!

The collections themselves are LOVE, by the way. I first encountered them in person in New York two weeks ago, and bought two--Legacy of Unicron and City of Fear--because they are just that exciting. You see, the UK Transformers collections were originally published in magazine-style format, so regular comics-sized reprints (like the IDW ones) don't quite do them justice. Nor, frequently, do the scans.

The paper on the Titan reprints is also a bit less glossy. I don't like glossy paper, especially on trades, where the angle of the pages increases its tendency to reflect back at you.

And on Half.com, as opposed to in New York, they are pretty cheap.

Thanks to the excellent zing_och, who also got me the Dreamwidth code, I now have an Archive of Our Own account!

It is exciting. I wasn't active in fandom (lurking *a lot* but not really active) during the heyday of central archives, so I've always sort of quietly yearned for a place to put my stuff up, where all my little incidental things could get edited up properly without spamming my flist.

A stable server with resources is nice--I put a bunch of my stuff up on the Marvel Fanfiction Archive site, which doesn't exist anymore.

(I mean, obviously not stable *yet*. But eventually!)

In other news, I'm not very prolific, but after five years it does add up! *eyes stack of things to upload*

Title: After Steve
Fandom: Captain America (Marvel)
Characters/Pairings: Sam Wilson (Falcon)/Sharon Carter (Agent 13)
Wordcount: 1152
Rating: Adult.
Summary: Immediately after Captain America #25, Sharon Carter and Sam Wilson have ill-advised sex.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to harmonyangel for beta and discussions over chat.

( Fic. )

You know, I haven't done the actually-having-a-new-fandom thing since...2005. Or possibly 2004; I'm never really sure whether DC and Marvel actual count as distinct fandoms. It didn't really feel to me more like I was getting a new one any more than when I, say, got into JLI or Infinity, Inc.

( Caia babbles about shiny new fandom )

1.) Comment with any character you know I've written [or, you know, talked about extensively].
2.) Receive three bits of trivia about their sexuality: practices, preferences, experiences, fantasies, kinks, etc.
3.) Profit!

Title: Sixty-Nine
Characters/Pairings: Lex Luthor/Superdictionary 'verse. Yes, really.
Wordcount: 937
Rating: Adult, largely for potential squick.
Summary: Lex Luthor's sixty-ninth birthday party! Written in response to the fortycakes Superdictionary Challenge #15, Birthday.
A/N: Lex debuted Action Comics #23, cover-dated April 1940, which makes him sixty-nine this year. But the birthday guests and setting for this fic are Superdictionary era (circa 1970s) rather than modern.

( It is Lex Luthor's birthday! )

Anyone want a Dreamwidth invite? I've got five!

Comment with your email; comments screened.

In other news, there really is no other news. I've not been on the net much the last week or so.

From LC at LJ: I made a list of 30 people. Ask me questions about them!

(Example: "How did 1 and 13 get trapped in a cave together, and how does 7 get them out?")

So. In a fic that may be the fic I'm writing for lgbtfest or may not be, Steve Rogers tells Jan Pym (Wasp, married to Hank at the time) that he is gay.

[And that he is dating Sam Wilson, because this is ME, but this is not really necessary information for the purposes of this question.]

Jan takes him clothes shopping, because what else do you do with your newly-discovered gay friend, after all?

My question for you all, because I know nothing about fashion: what do they buy? I am hoping for something appropriately hideous and 1970s, because that's when said fic is set (I mean, roughly 1970s--it's comics so I'm not worrying too much about anachronisms), but FASHIONABLY hideous and seventies, you know. Because it's Jan, and even though she's mostly dressed by comics artists who appear to know slightly less about fashion that I do, she is, in theory, a fashion designer.

Ideas, please? Pictures would be even better!

So for TNT & Danny the Dyna-Mite related reasons, I was reading the old Super Friends comic (not to be confused with the new one, which I've also been reading and has super pets this week. And also Ch'p. It's pretty amazing, but that's not the one I have a scan from).

Nope, it's the classic version. TERRIBLE THINGS happen when Aquaman and Zan get together, guys:

( Who SAYS Zan's not as useful as his sister (in the shape of a quetzalcoatlus, not shown)? )

Yeah. I thought you all needed to see that.

(ETA: The cut got lost when it was reposted here and to LJ. Huh.)

Ask any character I've written for advice, and they will provide it, advice columnist style. Your problems or fictional characters' problems both welcome. Management is not responsible for the results of following said advice (especially if provided by Ollie).

Title: A Matter of Costume
Pairing: Captain America (Steve Rogers)/Falcon (Sam Wilson)
Rating: Adult; there be sex.
Summary: Just before Avengers Disassembled, Sam Wilson switches his costume to one that (gasp!) covers his entire chest. Steve is concerned.
Word count: 5500ish
A/N: Thanks to Deuce for betaing. Inspired by a chat with destroythemeek, to whom this is dedicated. :D

( Fic! )

( Icon meme )

Title: Five Conversations Cap Had About MySpace (That Weren't With Kat Farrell)
Characters: Steve Rogers (Captain America), Sharon Carter (Agent 13), Tony Stark (Iron Man), Nick Fury (Director of SHIELD), Rachel Leighton (Diamondback), Sam Wilson (Falcon)
Genre: Gen, humor.
Summary: Cap is intrigued by this new "MySpace" thing that kids today are using!
Word count: 2600ish
A/N: Thanks to destroythemeek for betaing and encouraging me to write this. Any errors, particularly those MySpace related, are my own.

( FIC: Five Conversations Cap Had About MySpace (That Weren't With Kat Farrell) )

So I got 15 Steps Forward for Yuletide, which is a wonderful post-"Snowbirds Don't Fly" [the Roy on heroin plotline] fic that does a better job than about anything I've ever seen of accounting for the aftermath of that. Mostly from Ollie's POV; he's *trying*, the poor clueless dear ♥. (Notable things about Caia, for those who didn't know me very well in my full-on GL/GA phase: I love Ollie even when he's being stupid. Sometimes especially.) Also Hal/Ollie, just to make it additionally dear to my heart. Written by Perpetual Motion, who I do not know but possibly should!

I myself wrote two fics for Yuletide. For my assignment, I wrote Two in Extremis for Imaginary Alice, which is Carol 'n' Tony bodymerge action-adventure fic. Those of you who IM with me can remember my flip-out when the inevitable happened and, having unwisely offered "any" for Avengers/New Avengers, I got Carol Danvers and Tony Stark. I'm...mostly pleased with how it turned out, I guess, although I feel it could be better. Comics and comic fic aren't very good training for writing fight scenes--the latter because you don't *get* many, the former because it's all in pictures rather than words. It's an art I'd like to learn more of, though.

Thanks so much to anyone I was IMing in December for putting up for me, to destroythemeek and second_batgirl for pressing imaginaryalice for details, and to mizzmarvel for last-minute beta.

And then there's the Yuletide treat I wrote for destroythemeek, Dinner With Bernie, which is just what it says on the tin: Bernie Rosenthal takes Steve Rogers [Captain America, in case anyone around here is still confused] out to dinner. I'm probably on the whole more pleased by how that one turned out, because it was less ambitious, even if I *did* write it on airplanes and in airports on Christmas eve and talk second_batgirl into betaing late that evening. Bernie was fun to write!

Hey, all,

Tomorrow morning, early, I'm going to be leaving town and going to see family. I should have a pretty good net connection, but I can't really guarantee it; and in any case I'll be distracted! So if I don't respond to my Yuletide fic promptly and/or vanish from the face of the planet...it's not you, it's my family.

...actually, the really traumatic thing about all this is that I'll be missing all the yummy comics tomorrow, and then it'll be Jan 4 before I get back to an actual shop. 50s Cap is getting his own special! Which may or may not be any good--I'm a little nervous about Chaykin, because I mostly remember him for the really dreadful Guy Gardner two-issue mini with dark!G'nort, but the preview is mostly encouraging. And FIFTIES CAP!--I am possibly more fond of him than I should be, all things considered.

Also there will be Hellcat--it feels like *ages* since the last issue--and Nova, and a bunch of other stuff. COMICS. Oh, and Rage of the Red Lanterns, which I am pretty "Whatever, Geoff," about. I'm enjoying the GL:Corps plot with Zamarons, though, because at least there is *history*, there, you know? *cranky old fangirl* That and a Guardian and a Zamaron having a "just fuck already!" argument is surprisingly cute. If you're me.

Happy Holidays for all, and here's hoping whatever you celebrate, you're getting some time off and having some fun! And good comics. :)

Since I don't tend to have a whole lot of active WIPs (my stuff either gets written pretty much immediately or not at all. I don't have a whole lot of attention span) this was mostly an excercise of poking through the old files and seeing what comes out. More nostalgic than angsty.

( This wordle is probably funnier than the fic managed to be )

( An attempt at Cap/Falc. )

( I was a different person in 2004. You might have liked me. )

( From 2005, and not the scraps of John/Hal I was hoping to find. )

I bet you thought I forgot all about this!

( Wacky situations under cut! )

From oneangrykate, glossing and cmshaw: name a character and I'll tell you three facts from my personal fanon about him or her.

Because I know a lot of you care about these things:

There is, apparently, a chance of ( Action Comics 871 spoilers under the cut; however, comics-estranged people may REALLY WANT TO CLICK. )