I volunteered to give a couple of my co workers a basic "intro to knitting" lesson today over lunch and help establish a group hang out with crafters who nibble at lunch once a week. So I have some plans and some hopes and also some concerns!  

Have you ever taught someone something? were you super prepared about it beforehand or just relying on your own expertise to carry you thru?

So, a couple of fic recs today for fic I have loved that share a common element - they are alternate universes that are not crossovers in the sense of Character A meets Character B, but crossovers of worlds that were built up in other fiction, so Character A living in Character B's world. 

Check, Please!  and Practical Magic 
Author Summary: “My true love will have hair the color of yellow apples,” and Jack Zimmermann will take a bite from the forbidden fruit, juice running down his chin. “My true love will be exactly five feet and six-and-a-half inches tall,” and he will chew a leaf from a tree of that same height. “My true love will be as sweet as sugar and sharp as lemon,” and he will drink half a glass of Great-Aunt Cathy’s lemonade, waiting until the last dregs of sugar hit his tongue. “And if a single one of these things is not to be, then let it be known—my true love shall not be he."  (He knows in his bones that this spell won’t ever come true. After all, his true love isn't real, and if he’s not real, then the curse can’t take him. That’s the whole point.)
Original Source: http://checkpleasecomic.com is a truly wonderfully written comic about Eric Bittle, a sweet shy Georgia peach who goes to a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts to play hockey, bake pies, come out of the closet, and fall in love with his hockey team captain. 
Why I Love This: This fic is a crossover AU that gives Jack Zimmerman, major love interest of Check, Please! and deeply vulnerable young NHL rising star, the family background of a Practical Magic,  a Sandra Bullock movie where she and her family are all witches cursed to be unlucky in love. So, this fic has magic, relationships that are literally cursed, lots of canon lesbian relationships, and a love triangle that is resolved in the acceptable way - by turning into an OT3! I adore the magical community politicking - the world feels fleshed out and real, people have misconceptions that are corrected by new experiences with compassion and not stupid drama. It's great. It's just honestly a ray of sunshine. And, of course, the goalie can break the fourth wall, because goalies are magic. 

There is some ongoing 'new fandom weirdness' going on in Venom fic, in which writers who come from the comics tend to fall into using language common to the comics, and people got into fandom from the movie using that language.

This can lead to some confusion, particularly around how to talk respectfully about a character who is literally a goo alien from a species that does not have gender and reproduces by budding.

Since this can have some overlap with the ongoing cultural discussion about how be respectful and kind when you want to talk to and about trans and nonbinary people, it's worth laying out why there's some differences going on, and where they come from.

• The comics address this by calling the symbiote, 'the symbiote' or 'the Venom symbiote,' and using it/its/itself language for the symbiote. In the comics, only the combo of symbiote+host = Venom, and the name Venom is applied to any host the symbiote takes. Specifically, people who know and love the symbiote use 'symbiote' and 'it/itself' language in a positive, non harmful setting, and this is largely taking place in the context of the symbiote being an alien creature with different cultural norms

• The movie took a different approach: the symbiote's name is Venom from the first discussion, and the movie uses he/him/himself. (Specifically, the symbiote makes an introduction using the name Venom to another character personally, and other characters call the symbiote alone Venom and use he/him language when they consider the symbiote sentient, but other characters who are not nice use “it”; and don't know the symbiote's name.) The line “We are Venom” is said towards the end of the movie, but it's not quite clear if what that shift means.

So, fic writers are using both of these modalities, both supported by canon, AND some people are also using different ways to talk about the symbiote that are drawn from some existing etiquette about how to talk about trans and nb people who don't have a traditional gender (like, sometimes using 'they/them/themselves’) language.

So there is a lot going on in Venom fandom about this, I so far have not seen any grossness or antitrans sentiment going around (tho, hi, it's the internet, I'm sure there's some out there), and I hope this helps explain where folks are coming from.

For myself, I got used to the conventions of the comics, but I've been reading a lot of fic about the movie, so I'm playing fast and loose.I do tend to use 'it' or 'they' with the symbiote by itself, because that's what the comics do and that's what I'm used to doing with nb characters. I basically never use the name Venom for just the symbiote unless I am comment on a fic where the author has used that convention; - it can cause too much confusion to try and insist on different language, and I'm not convinced it really adds much to push for it. “He” for the symbiote alone seems just weird and wrong to me, but it's also common in the comics for people to address Venom (when the symbiote and host are 'suited up) by the host's gender, so it's coming from nowhere. There is a basis for a lot of these choices.

It's a developing fandom and I'm not sure where the consensus is going to land, if indeed it ever does.

So, I have just discovered there is an adorable tiny web documentary about former Bruin, Andrew Ference, in which he spends a lot of time riding around on a bike in Boston and hoisting his tiny adorable daughters in his absurdly buff arms.

SO I REALLY NEED SOMEONE TO INTERVENE if this dude is actually a dick in some other way.  Like, stop me if this is gonna be a P*tr*ck K*ne situation or otherwise a Chicago hockey kind of a problem, and I'm just missing the warning signs. 

Because this 2012 video is causing me to experience a fannish emotion - his daughers are SO SMALL and they are on SMALL BIKES, people. 

This day was long already when I woke up and DW ate my draft about why, so I'm calling it an omen and a night.

Since DW doesn't have the option to just like a post or leave a kudos, please feel totally free to take this tiny poll and leave kudos if you don't feel like commenting on any particular post.

So I bought a paid account because, honestly, I feel like Dreamwidth deserves some extra money for storing my fannish hindbrain for the better part of a decade at this point. 

Which means I can now actually have like a hundred icons, and I currently have five, so I need to get me some beautiful damn art right quick.  

In order of how much attention I pay to these things.

AO3 - https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitewithfish

Dreamwidth - https://kitewithfish.dreamwidth.org/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/kitewithfish

Pillowfort - https://www.pillowfort.io/kitewithfish - NEW


I also technically still have an LJ under the same username, but the owners of LJ skeeve me out so much that I prefer to not put stuff there. 

I'm reading this! It's great!

A Conspiracy of Truths
by Alexandra Rowland

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34328664-a-conspiracy-of-truths

I believe the author is fannish but I can't remember her username. :/

Edit- she is, and she did AO3 style tags for this book at her Twitter

https://twitter.com/_alexrowland/status/1032314242320326656?s=19