Arctic Light

Hurt/Comfort Exchange has tag nominations open already; the post with links is here. As you will see if you click through to the tagset, the Biggles fandom has already invaded. And the freeforms, picked up from last year, are a wonderland of creative inspiration.

(I imagine mods see us coming and are just like "Oh no, them again" ... though honestly it's not too bad, we're generally quite well-behaved!)

There is also a poll about a Biggles smut event over at the bigglesevents comm, patterned loosely on smut4smut.

Speaking of which, also very inspiring: the smut4smut freeform tagset.

("Agreeing to rough sex as self-punishment" is a tag I will definitely write for EvS one of these days; it calls to my id in a major way ...)

WHEEEE.

https://archiveofourown.org/tag_sets/14131

Please note what we have already done to the Biggles category.

Which also means it's time for the freeform tag game of watching them shuffle and pair up in different combinations as new tags are added, thus suggesting stories.

For example:

A & B have to cancel planned date because A's ill/injured; B comforts and makes evening romantic → Caring for character's injured wings ↓

This CLEARLY involves winged Biggles unable to make his planned dinner date with EvS because his wings are injured AGAIN.

(Winged Biggles probably hurts his wings all the time because he strained, broke, or otherwise injured a wing doing some incredibly risky flight maneuver. Then he mopes around being landbound while his wings heal.)

The tagset has been good to me with wingfic so far; for a while the bottom-most tag was "Wingfic - Wing injuries", which gave me these delightful combos as the tags reshuffled:

Sharing a bed to keep a close eye on hurt character's well-being & needs → Wingfic - Wing injuries ↓
Waking up from nightmares while sharing a bed → Wingfic - Wing injuries ↓
Temporary Blindness → Wingfic - Wing injuries ↓

The bottom one is honestly kind of hilarious and tragic at once - the WORST combination! clearly the wings are injured because of accidentally flying into obstacles! - but the others ... I would read 50K of this.

Anyway, go forth, add tags, have fun and give me new inspiring combinations to post about.

1. Signups for Hurt/Comfort Exchange close today.

2. I may be starting a new publishing venture because I totally need another of those right now, but details redacted for now. >.>

3. I made a Bill Maxwell gifset from Greatest American Hero a few days ago.


I owe a proper post or three about Greatest American Hero, which I was enjoying but doing FINE at not having too many strong feelings about, until one particular episode made the steel jaws of fandom feelings close around me like a bear trap. As they do. This is a show that was basically wrecked by network meddling, but there are times when you can see that it might have been really amazing and ahead of its time in multiple ways if the creators had been able to do what they wanted to do with it. A few years later the same creative team went on to do Wiseguy (... as well as like 50% of everything else that was popular on TV in the action genre in the '80s) and it's interesting to see this as an early run at things like having season-long continuity and interweaving the characters' personal and work lives, in a more farcical setting.

Also, I've been semi-joking with sheron that the show's writers had a functional portal to 2020. We've had episodes about a violent, right-wing religious cult co-opting the presidency and sparking LA riots, an outbreak of a disease that forces people to be quarantined for its 2-week incubation period, and an unscrupulous TV personality deciding to run for president on the basis of figuring out how to use celebrity to make people do whatever he wants. (That last one is probably a not-so-veiled swipe at Reagan, given the time period, but still.)

Thank you so much for writing for me! All request details are just to help you know what I like about canon, not binding information. This fest is 100% relevant to my interests and I know that I will love whatever you write.

Feel free to mix and match tags! If one of my tags for one request inspires you for another, go for it. I don't think there's anything I'd hate to have written for a different request, as long as my pairings are kept as requested. Also, including other cast members is fine too. I don't think any of these canons have anybody I wouldn't like to have in my gift.

( Likes and dislikes )

Fandoms in alphabetic order. I would love to receive a gift for any of these. ♥

( Alliance-Union )

( Agent Carter )

( Iron Fist )

( The Punisher )

Earlier today sheron plotbunnied me with the idea of an Iron Fist season 1 AU in which Ward creates a masked vigilante persona as a way of getting some time away from his dad without being watched all the time, and he meets Danny and Colleen and possibly saves their lives and/or becomes friends with them as this other persona. As Sheron pointed out, Ward is really fixated on Following The Rules, so it actually makes a lot of sense for him to create this alternate persona who isn't weighed down with all the same baggage as Ward normally is - Harold has one set of rules, but his alternate identity has other rules and it's sort of like, as Sheron said, Ward's version of "This is who I could have been if i had been a good person." Cue identity porn and mutual lifesaving and Danny and Colleen having no idea that their helpful new friend is actually ALSO Harold's #1 henchman who has tried to kill Danny multiple times! And Ward is being torn in two, because ... RULES! (Plus, jealousy and conflicted feelings about Danny. Etc.) But also, Danny and Colleen are his friends! AAAAAA!

.... I may have already written 2K of this. >__>

Meanwhile, with hurtcomfortex happening again, it's time for my favorite freeform tag game, as described last year, in which the juxtaposition of tags/arrows on the HurtComfortEx tagset suggests that one tag leads to a second tag as a logical consequence. Sometimes these suggest a plausible story that I might like to write!

Both Captured - Forced to Work Together to Escape → Character insists on completing mission despite injuries

Some aren't so much my thing, but at least could be a plausible story.

Comforter Has Dubious Motivations → Delirious character asking for the one they're pining for

And sometimes ... UM.

Rollerskating injury → Subdrop

The tag juxtapositions keep changing as new ones are added, so there are new delightful combinations every time the tagset is updated.

The tagset game is also what led to telophase's hurt/comfort generator last year.

Hurt/Comfort Exchange reveals were today, and I am so delighted with my gifts; they are the BEST. ♥ I've spent most of the day happily wallowing in them, and I will be rereading every one of these a bunch.

The Mind is a Monkey (Iron Fist, 3400 wds, Danny & Ward gen)
“Okay,” Ward said. “Great. You have a telepathic fever.”

Danny develops sudden onset telepathy, because of course he does; Ward panics. A delicious many-layered hurt/comfort angstcake, beautifully characterized. ♥

Something we can rely on (Defenders, 5K, team gen)
How did you stop an enemy who knew everything about you: both your weaknesses and how to cancel out your strengths? With great difficulty, it turned out.

TEAMMMM! Danny and Matt are captured by an enemy who knows how to block their powers (in a particularly awful way for Danny); their friends go searching. All my team feels, right here. *love*

Hijacked (Alliance-Union/Hellburner, 13K, Ben & Dekker + ensemble)
They all knew something was up at this lonely nullpoint, but no one on Norway expected to find a Mazianni base.

Plotty post-canon LONG!!! novelette with loads of competence porn and h/c and prickly friendship! SO GOOD.

And there's still the rest of the archive to go through!

I thought I was done with my H/C Exchange signup, but then I noticed that someone (not me, this time) nominated some Alliance-Union characters, including a highly relevant-to-my-interests combo, so OOPS, now that's in there, as well as having added a couple more tags (e.g. Altitude Sickness) to the Iron Fist request. I expect this is probably going to keep happening 'til signups close.

Signups for hurtcomfortex are open now! (Closes March 7.)

Sign up | Collection | Tagset

I need to finish writing my signup. SO MANY TAGS TO CHOOSE FROM. *___*

I just need to mention that rachelmanija and I have been having IMMENSE fun with the freeform tags in the hurtcomfortex tag set.

Part of our delight is coming from the way the tagset window lists freeforms. You get them in sets of 30 or so, and the top-level listing is the tag range indicating what tags are in the group. For example:

"Anaphylaxis → Blindness"

This is leading to some absolutely delightful tag pairings, suggesting stories which are variously wonderful, appropriate, and/or plausible:

Character voluntarily takes job that will shorten lifespan → coughing up blood
Comforter Rains Down Retribution On Hurt Character's Behalf → Defenestration
Blaming Themself for the Other Being Injured → Character crying in their sleep
Bar Room Brawl → Canon-Typical Violence
Keeping the hurt secret → Miscommunication
Terminal Illnesses → Withdrawal
Injury Due to Other Character's Incompetence → Loss of Trust
Magic Curses → Non-Consensual Bondage
Stuck in a Trap → Treating wounds with unconventional materials

... suggest a story I would dearly love to write ...
Mistakenly Believes the Other is Dead → Physically Injured Character Comforting Emotionally Distressed Character
unexpected tenderness → Withdrawal
Collapsing from exhaustion → De-Powered
Hurt in enemy territory → Loss of Identity
Healer Directing Operation On Self → Impaled by Debris
Self-Loathing → Substance Abuse (hi Ward)
Character being protected isn't used to being cared about → Cold bath to bring down fever
Suicide Attempt → unexpected tenderness
Drowning → Fever

... not sure I would write but would absolutely read ...
Monstrous/Powered Character Frightens Partner But They Love Them Anyway → Orphans
Other Character Tries To Help But Can't → Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Electrocution → Feeding someone hot soup
Publicly repudiated by family → Self-Hatred

... plausible as something you might see in hurt/comfort and yet hilarious ...
Common Cold → Drinking to Cope
Spanking → Torture Victim Comforts Distressed Friend/Loved One Who Was Forced to Watch
Childbirth → coughing up blood
Corporal Punishment → Drinking to Cope

... or just suggest one of those stories where the author is clearly marching to the beat of their own id.
Drowning → Forced Prostitution
Sex to Distract Character Who's Afraid of the Dark → Swordfighting
Child Loss → Corporal Punishment
Hate Crimes → Hyper-sensitive skin
Soulmate Separation → Tattoo Gun Accident

Check out the full tag set here!

I am currently at Rachel's (we both have brightly dyed hair at present, and have now had two different people ask us if we were sisters - see visual evidence here), and last night we came up with the idea of putting all the H/C Exchange prompts in a text file, printing it out, cutting them up, and pulling random prompts out of a hat to generate our own combinations, then writing them. We put the entire prompt list on a text file and took it to a 24-hour Kinko's ... only to run into problems trying to get it to print on the copy machine, so we had to take it to the attendant and have her print it. This was followed by a conversation which went something like this:

Attendant: Which file is it?
Us: ummmmmm. The Word file?
Attendant: Could you be more specific?
Us: .... *contemplating how to describe it in the most non-specific way possible*

On the one hand, I think Kinko's attendants probably have seen FAR weirder things than two women with technicolor hair trying to print out a document containing things like "Alternate Universe - Prostitution" and "Being a hyperspace pilot shortens your lifespan and addicts you to a drug". On the other hand, I feel that there is a distinct likelihood of us featuring in some anecdote about Those Weirdos at the Late-Night Kinko's.