Andraste

So, this season of Doctor Who has come to an end! I thought the last episode was the weakest part of an overall good season. Complete waste of Belinda (something that was a problem with the whole season unfortunately), far too talky, climax happened much too early we spent the last twenty minutes on something that should have probably been an entire season and left a bunch of threads dangling that should probably have been resolved already. Oh well, RTD has always sucked at finales. I'm one of those people who doesn't even like The Parting of the Ways much, although I have a weird soft spot for Army of Ghosts/Doomsday largely because it pleases my fangirl heart to see the Daleks and Cybermen fight.

For this season we've got Lux, The Well, The Story & The Engine and The Interstellar Song Contest so I'd still say I loved it as a whole even though the end wasn't great. But on to the spoilery part!

( I don't even know why I'm cutting when this was all over the newspaper headlines in Britain and here in Australia, but at least I can say I didn't spoil anyone ... )

Anyway, whatever happens next I await it with interest!

Stolen from Selena, a meme about my 2024 fandom year! Which was pretty good even though finishing an entire novella in February seems to have exhausted my creative powers for the rest of the year. (My resolution for this year is to write literally anything.)


1. Your main fandom of the year?

Not sure I had one, unless we're counting Our Flag Means Death because it's the only one I actually produced any content for. If we're looking for the one I spent the most emotional energy on, though, I spent ten months impatiently waiting for more Dragon Age and then two months playing The Veilguard, so that.

2. Your favorite film watched this year?

Conclave! A tense thriller about the internal politics of the Catholic church that has the plot of a dumb high school film. If it sounds like those to things should work against each other, let me reassure you that they are in fact a perfect combination. Definitely recommended if you're interested in church politics and/or dumb high school films only everybody in the story is a grown adult cardinal (or a nun.)

3. Your favorite book read this year?

I finally got around to reading The Name of the Rose (yes, yes, I know, at least I've caught up now!) and unsurprisingly I adored it.

In terms of books published this century: I think I loved Translation State even more than the rest of Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books. Honourable mentions to Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh and The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo.

4. Your favorite album or song to listen to this year?

My self-created Will Wood playlist on Tidal probably got the most playtime, especially Laplace's Angel because I'm trying to vid it. (I just need IWtV Season Three to exist first …)

5. Your favorite TV show of the year?

This was such a good year for TV, I cannot choose! What the hell, let's do a top ten, in alphabetical order.

Agatha All Along: a terrific sequel to WandaVision with a great bunch of new characters and a glorious return for the titular (anti)heroine. Disney should let Jac Schaeffer do whatever she wants.

Fallout: Proving that The Last of Us wasn't just a fluke and Hollywood has actually learned something about making good video game adaptations. All three leads are terrific and Kyle McLachlan is perfectly cast. Can't wait for more.

Dandadan: A contender for my most surprising fandom of the year. 'Raunchy high school anime with a romance between two teens and a generous helping of fanservice' doesn't sound like my thing at all but I checked it out because I was so impressed with the animation and ended up staying for the plot and characters and delightfully weird world-building. It helps a lot that the female characters are properly developed and the male lead ends up in just as many absurd situations in his underwear. Also has one of the single best episode of any anime I have ever watched.

Helluva Boss: Speaking of dark horses: in the space of two weeks in the middle of this year, I went from, 'ugh, I guess I have to watch Hazbin Hotel if I want to hear Keith David sing, even though I'm pretty sure I'm too old for edgy cartoons' to marathoning every episode of that an its sister show and becoming profoundly invested in the relationship between an imp and an owl. Sometimes fandom is like that! Anyway, if you like musicals and/or unnecessarily tall owls and are not too old for edgy cartoons you might as well give it a shot, since it's free on YouTube!

Interview With the Vampire: I continue to be amazed at how this show turns the fascinating but flawed source material into television that is actually good. I think I liked Season Two even more than Season One, and I look forward to more.

A Man on the Inside: Michael Schur and Ted Danson team up again for a comedy about a widower who's hired by a private detective to infiltrate a retirement community. Not as good as The Good Place, but one could say that about most TV shows, and Danson is in excellent form. Netflix should be doing more of this kind of thing and by 'this kind of thing' I mean shows that tell a satisfying story in the space of eight episodes. (And then they renewed it any way! Fingers crossed Schur sticks with a self-contained story for the second season as well.)

Orb: On the Movements of the Earth: An anime about the discovery of heliocentrism that might have been made for me. Almost all of it is people sitting in rooms having philosophical discussions about science and Renaissance Catholic church doctrine, presumably because they have to save all the animation budget for glorious vistas of the night sky and the occasional fight scene. It makes me tear up every single week.

Skeleton Crew: Four kids from the most boring planet in the entire Star Wars universe end up very far away from home and have to find their way back. Is it basically The Goonies in space? Sure. Does it work perfectly on its own terms? Yes. The kids are all great and Jude Law is wonderful. Here's hoping it sticks the landing.

X-Men '97: I made a whole post about this one earlier in the year but the short version is that I loved it and was extremely relieved that it lived up to the legacy of the show that got me into my most enduring fandom and introduced me to my favourite fictional character.

Yatagarasu: The Raven Does Not Choose Its Master: Stunningly gorgeous anime set in a fantasy kingdom that's far too complex to explain in a couple of sentences. If you love interesting world building, court intrigue and complicated master/servant relationships I would give this one a look.


Honourable mention to Brilliant Minds which is bad House M.D. fanfic but if House was nice to his patients, canonically gay and played by Zachary Quinto. (The first episode is outright terrible, but the clunky expository dialogue reduces by about 80% after that and I sincerely recommend it if you like American network procedurals and/or staring at Zachary Quinto.)


6. Your favorite online community of the year?

The FFA Discord, again <3. Amazing how the chat belonging to a hive of scum and villainy consistently manages to be one of the most chill fandom spaces I've ever been in.

7. Your best new fandom discovery of the year?

Probably either Dandadan or the Hellaverse, since most other things on my list I at least knew about before 2024 or they were laser-targeted at me so I was bound to find them eventually.

8. Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?

The fourth season of Umbrella Academy, in the sense that it had some very good bits but I want to take a red pen to the whole thing. (I know the episode order got cut down but I don't think they cut the correct things to squeeze it into six episodes.)

Additionally, Doctor Who had some brilliant individual episodes but the season arc as a whole didn't end up working for me. Oh well, I've never thought that RTD was any good at finales. At least I love Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor to bits and look forward to seeing more of him.

9. Your fandom boyfriend of the year?

I mean, predictably it is my fandom boyfriend for life: X-Men TAS Charles Xavier! And also his boyfriend Magneto.

If I have to pick new characters: Emmrich and Davrin, my joint favourite new Dragon Age boyfriends. Stolas. Also Jude Law's many-named character from Skeleton Crew arrived at the last minute to sweep me off my feet <3. That man is very good at his job.

Also, honourable mention to Daniel Molloy - he was already my favourite but even more so after the second season. (Sometimes I just randomly think about him playing telenovela music or asking Louis if he's the Zodiac killer and laugh.)

10. Your fandom girlfriend of the year?

Agatha Harkness and it's not even close. (I will have to admire her from afar, though, as I am not dumb enough to fight her girlfriend for her hand.)

Honourable mention to Lace Harding. BioWare finally gave me a dwarf romance after twenty-four years and I was not disappointed <3.

11. Your biggest squee moment of the year?

The end of Dragon Age: The Veilgard contained the most satisfying scene in the entire series for me. (Specifically ( endgame spoilers. ))

12. The most missed of your old fandoms?

I'm glad X-Men '97 came along because oh boy do I not enjoy X-Men comics in the post-Krakoa era. I know that they had to put the toys back in the box eventually and that some other iteration I like will be along eventually but god it all feels so boring by comparison :(.

13. The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to?

Still need to catch up on Batman: Caped Crusader, Shogun. Not to mention the latest seasons of From, Silo, and Slow Horses.

14. Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year?

The second season of Severance starts in just a couple of weeks!

Also Alecto the Ninth is meant to come out this year. The next season of The Wheel of Time. More Helluva Boss episodes when they eventuate.

It is not an exaggeration to say that X-Men: The Animated Series set the course of my fandom life - of my life in general, really.

It's not just that it introduced me to my favourite fictional character and had me independently inventing the idea of slashfic at the age of fourteen. While I'm sure I'd have found fandom and fanfic eventually, it's because I came in via this particular route that I found CFAN and from there my first BFF who introduced me to the rest of my real life social circle (including, eventually, my second BFF). Not to mention that if I'd come into fandom by another path I might not have encountered any of the people who are reading this, or joined my current fandom Discord!

When I heard that they were reviving the series I was interested but I also had reservations. I wasn't sure the show needed a revival, and with David Hemblen sadly no longer available and Cedric Smith not returning I had misgivings about the recasts. I was also concerned about Charles being completely absent on account of being dead, or that they would tone down the Charles/Erik subtext. (I don't need them to be canon, but I also don't need Disney going No Homo about my forever OTP.) So I was interested but cautious.

Good news: the first season was terrific! I did not need to worry about any of these things! Especially not that last one, oh boy. (In hindsight I don't know why I thought anyone would even want to make more X-Men TAS without Charles/Erik subtext. It would be like cutting out Storm talking dramatically about the wind or Gambit speaking about himself in the third person.)

The recasts did bother me a little, because I am a person who hates recasts basically all the time. I really thought I'd miss Hemblen more than Smith, because while Smith did a perfectly good job he is of course not my definitive Xavier voice when Patrick Stewart is right there. But I don't know if it's that Matthew Waterson's impression of the original is better or what but it's Ross Marquand's performance that occasionally threw me. I got used to it as we went, though, so hopefully this will have stopped bothering me altogether next season.

The show isn't perfect - it had some clunky dialogue here and there (much like the original series) and they rushed through some things to get to the three-parter at the end. However, the good bits were very good, especially the finale that combined a couple of mediocre '90s comics stories into something wonderful.

( Who knew that Operation Zero Tolerance and Fatal Attractions were like the gin and tonic of nineties X-Men comics stories? )

One other caveat is that despite the this is very much the sixth season of an existing show only with better animation. I don't know how much sense it would even make to someone who didn't see the original version. But if you watched this version of the X-Men back in the day and have a Disney+ account, I strongly recommend checking it out.

So, I wrote some things for Candy Hearts this year! In order of word count:

Safe Home (100 words) by Andraste
Fandom: Moon Knight (Comics)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Marc Spector/The House of Shadows
Characters: Marc Spector, The House of Shadows
Additional Tags: Candy Hearts Treat, Drabble

Summary: It takes Marc a while to notice what's happening.

Punishment Detail (300 words) by Andraste
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Blackbeard | Edward Teach/Israel Hands
Characters: Blackbeard | Edward Teach, Israel Hands
Additional Tags: Dubcon, Bootlicking, Blackbeard's Kraken Era, Candy Hearts Treat, Triple Drabble

Summary: Blackbeard has a new order for Izzy.

Restraint (1848 words) by Andraste
Fandom: Hitman (Video Games)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Agent 47/Diana Burnwood
Characters: Agent 47 (Hitman), Diana Burnwood
Additional Tags: Bondage, Edging, Cunnilingus, PIV Sex, Candy Hearts Treat, Plot What Plot

Summary: Diana has a challenge for 47.

So: how about those Doctor Who specials, then? On the whole I enjoyed them, with a few reservations. Which is what I'd say about the first RTD era, come to think of it.

First of all: much as I was looking forward to Tennant and Tate returning, I was unconvinced that the Fourteenth Doctor would feel separate enough from the Tenth Doctor to justify giving him a whole number to himself. However, I am glad to have been entirely wrong about this. While of course he's got a lot in common with Ten, the performance feels distinctive enough that you can really tell that he's been three other people in between. Even if I'm still convinced that RTD really did this to make the number of Doctors line up with the number of actors after Moffat put the War Doctor into the timeline, it ended up feeling right to me.

( Spoilers accidentally renamed one of the fundamental forces of the universe, oops. )

Yesterday I finally took myself to see the D&D movie, and am pleased to report that it was a delight! If a fantasy heist film starring Chris Pine and Michelle Rodríguez sounds like a good time to you, I definitely recommend it, whether you're into Dungeons & Dragons in its various incarnations or not. I think it's much to the film's benefit that it never slows down to explain the wider lore - it doesn't actually matter if the audience knows the difference between a sorcerer and a wizard or what a Tiefling is. We're always given just enough context to understand what impact it has on the lives of the characters, and that's all that's necessary.

However, there is also a lot going on here to delight D&D fans specifically. My hopes for this film went up a lot when the trailer came out and there was not only an owlbear but a black dragon breathing acid - that suggested a promising level of attention to detail. But more than the joy of pointing to locations in Neverwinter while saying 'hey, a gelatinous cube!' or 'oh, Evard's Black Tentacles! My sorcerer can cast that!' the film really gets the vibe of a D&D game. Everything from the characters finding one cool magic item that is thereafter the lynch-pin of all their plans to the wildly over-levelled guest star introduced just to help them survive a single quest feels familiar. And the 'five questions' bit may be a lift from The Simpsons but it's also absolutely a thing that a DM has done to their players. My only strong criticism is that it's much more heterosexual than any tabletop game I have ever been in. (Which is partly the people I play with, I know, but also it's 2023! Holga could absolutely have had an ex-wife instead of an ex-husband.) Edgin's dead wife backstory was certainly a tired cliché, but there are plenty of well-rounded female characters in the film so it didn't bother me over-much.

The cast are all very charming and seem to be having a good time, but in particular I'm just continuously delighted that Hugh Grant has found his true calling as an actor. I mean, he was fine in Four Weddings and a Funeral and its ilk, but that man was destined to play charming villains and he's absolutely terrific in this.

Sequel requests (if there even is one; sadly it has not done great at the box office and I bet the Mario movie is not helping its staying power): really I just want more of this type of thing. But also, more Xenk! Characters that cover the classes they didn't get to include this time around - cleric and ranger and ESPECIALLY a warlock. A broader variety of Forgotten Realms races among the cast. In particular, moar dwarf!!! One briefly-glimpsed dwarf adventurer did not fulfil my need for dwarf characters!

Last night my subconscious gifted me with:

A) A Les Miserables/Murderbot fusion AU where Javert was a SecUnit who didn't have a working governor module but nobody noticed because of course he still followed all the rules. (No word on whether he passed the time watching Sanctuary Moon. Probably not.)

B) The excellent but also extremely random crossover pairing of Sten from Dragon Age/Asterius from Hades. Also they were on a boat for some reason??? Theseus was of course sulking in the background; hopefully whatever situation that put Sten and Asterius on the same ship had also deposited Iron Bull there to console him?

Signa Ex Diris (1742 words) by Andraste
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Babylon 5 (TV 1993)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Londo Mollari, Cartagia (Babylon 5)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes
Series: Part 3 of Transpositions


Summary: Cartagia has many tedious things to attend to before he can ascend to power. Perhaps this visit to the prophetess of Tuwain will prove more interesting than he expected.

(More things from Andraste's hard drive! I wrote the first two parts of this all the way back in 2004, and then stalled out because I could not work out an interesting place for Londo to be in a genderswap AU. And then I felt very stupid for not realising much sooner where she would logically be located ...)

Afternoon Tea (1781 words) by Andraste
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Good Omens (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens), God (Good Omens)
Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Post-Canon, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens)

Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley have an unexpected visitor.

So I was talking to people about the Broccoli Test, i.e. the fandom meme where you try and work out if your OTP can successfully signal 'buy broccoli' to one another from opposite ends of the produce section. Most of my pairings either fail spectacularly or cheat wildly, but thinking it over I realised that I have one that could actually do this!

( Read on to find out which two actually manage to communicate ... )