tea berry-blue

We finished the fic.

It feels weird.

I wrote a very long thing on tumblr which you may read.

So, I, uh. I'm still not sure what to think of this, but I'm writing Avengers fanfic.

Dear Captain America.

I started writing it this week. rainy_day has been writing a story that I've been discussing with her since before she started it, in April, and I really liked the premise of it, because she's actually trying to write Captain America in the present day as someone with 1940s sensibilities rather than just a lot of anachronistic jokes or points where he doesn't understand pop culture, which seems like a tall order but also a rather good commentary.

She hit a wall in her story and we were discussing where to go with it, and as a sort of morale booster thing, I decided to write a letter from Tony Stark to Steve Rogers for her.

And I kind of got hooked. I started writing letters from Tony Stark to a fictional writer-of-Captain-America (since the Captain America comic exists in Marvel canon, in one of those wonderful metaliterary twists that I love), and it's chock full or nerdery about comic history and comic fan mail, but I'm also trying to write in character development and plot and I just don't know what I got myself into.

Plus, the comments people are leaving on it are just amazing.

Part of me is torn because I feel like if I'm going to write something, I should write something commercially viable, but I also love the idea of playing with characters who are cultural icons because there's something intensely meaningful about it. I wrote a couple blog comments this week about why it's important to demand change from big publishers like DC and Marvel, because they have ownership of beloved icons and have the power to use those icons in important stories. This is in the wake of DC canceling a story where Batwoman would marry her longtime girlfriend. Ironically, DC didn't cancel the story because they were concerned about the lesbian angle, but because they thought the characters getting married would make them seem "old." This is in line with them retconning a ton of hetero marriages, as well, so I'm willing to believe that, but it doesn't take away my disappointment.

So I've been doing that. I also need to say that I'm completely floored by the response I've gotten. I've been posting fics on fanfic archives for years, and the most I've ever gotten is about fifteen comments on a single Harry Potter fic. This one already has over 2000 hits, forty-odd comments, and all of them are pretty much unequivocal praise. Some of them are really long and well-considered and talking about what I'm doing with a lot more thought than I was putting into the fic at first. I'm extremely touched that people are taking the time and are feeling this strongly about something I had just started noodling around with for kicks, and it sort of makes me feel like I need to do better.

I've also been playing more music, of course.

I also played this song for rainy_day, since she said she'd been listening to it on repeat while working on her fix:



And here's a song I wrote in 2000, about falling out of love: