Story: "Hairpins" Part 8

This story belongs to the series Love Is For Children which includes "Love Is for Children," "Eggshells," "Dolls and Guys,""Saudades," "Turnabout Is Fair Play," "Touching Moments," "Splash," "Coming Around," "Birthday Girl," "No Winter Lasts Forever," "Hide and Seek," "Kernel Error," "Happy Hour," and "Green Eggs and Hulk."

Fandom: The Avengers
Characters: Phil Coulson, JARVIS, Clint Barton, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanova, Bruce Banner.
Medium: Fiction
Warnings: This story is mostly fluff, but it has some intense scenes in the middle. Highlight for details. These include dubious consent as Phil and JARVIS discuss what really happened when Agent Coulson hacked his way into Stark Tower, over which Phil has something between a flashback and a panic attack. They also discuss some of the bad things that have happened to Avengers in the past, including various flavors of abuse. If these are sensitive topics for you, please think carefully before deciding whether to read onward.
Summary: Uncle Phil needs to pick out pajamas for game night. He gets help from an unexpected direction.
Notes: Service. Shopping. Gifts. Artificial intelligence. Computers. Teamwork. Team as family. Friendship. Communication. Hope. Apologies. Forgiveness. Nonsexual ageplay. Nonsexual intimacy. Love. Tony Stark needs a hug. Bruce Banner needs a hug. #coulsonlives.

Begin with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7. Skip to Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13.

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Poem: "Dragon Whiskers"

This poem came out of the March 4, 2014 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired by ellenmillion and rhodielady_47.  It has been sponsored by laffingkat.

Dragon Whiskers

Dragons hatch with their whiskers
already fully grown, long tendrils
wrapped around their tiny bodies.

They scamper around the cave,
tripping over too-big feet
and flapping their stubby wings.

It seems impossible that they
will ever grow to the size
of a house or a mountain,

but the whiskers point the way.

Poem: "Saving the Maidens"

This poem is from the March 4, 2014 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired by prompts from rix_scaedu, aldersprig, and Dreamwidth user Rosieknight.  It also fills the "role reversal" square on my 1-2-14 card for the Trope Bingo fest.  This poem has been sponsored by laffingkat.

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Origfic Bingo Card 3-6-14

Here is my new card for the origfic_bingo fest. This bingo challenge encourages original material across all formats and lengths. It's a terrific fest if you want gen and/or gentle fiction. There are Gen, Romance, and Kink cards available or you can mix those categories. Read the rules first. A signup post appears the first week of each month, when anyone can request a card whether you've completed a bingo or not. (See all my bingo cards.)

If you'd like to sponsor a particular square, especially if you have an idea for what character, series, or situation it would fit -- talk to me and we'll work something out. This is a good opportunity for those of you with favorites that don't always mesh well with the themes of my monthly projects. I may still post some of the fills for free, because I'm using this to attract new readers; but if it brings in money, that means I can do more of it. That's part of why I'm crossing some of the bingo prompts with other projects, such as the Poetry Fishbowl.

Underlined prompts have been filled.

B column: five poems

BLACKOUT as of 9-17-14.



This fest allows bingo claims for fills that have been written but not posted yet. The card below is Gen. 

B	I	N	G	O
keeping warm	courage	parent(s)	pursuit of happiness	artistic endeavor
fury	victory	a crowd	prosperity	disability (temporary)
peace offering	traditions	FREE SPACE	bribery	silence
taking a chance	vulnerability	enlightenment	bad news	fast and loose
party / festival	toys and games	taking a break	diplomacy	habits and routines

 

Photography

 People on a beach.

Banned Content

More and more online booksellers are practicing censorship.   This directly harms writers by preventing them from selling their work; it directly harms readers by preventing people from spending their money as they see fit.  

Some people say that this doesn't count as "real" censorship because it's done by corporations rather than government.  But it has exactly the same effect on your ability to write, read, sell, and buy what you choose.  Look around.  Corporations are doing a lot of destructive things that the government was forbidden to do because those cause problems, only nobody forbade corporations because nobody thought that businesses would ever have  the power to do government-type things.  Now they do, and it's a disaster.  

When a small business makes personalized decisions, it has a small impact; but when a megacorp does, it has a government-sized impact.  That makes it not okay anymore.  If you're going to function in an area where you control most or all of the market, then you have an obligation to serve ALL of that market, not cherry-pick just the customers you personally like and freeze out everyone else.

If you think this is only happening to erotica, it's not.  That's just a genre where it's relatively easy to catch people censoring content.  People who think that censorship is okay will manipulate everything according to their -- usually awful -- worldviews.  So there's probably censorship in other areas such as politics, religion, sexual health information, current events, etc.  It's a new bottleneck between creators and customers.

This is becoming a huge issue in books, videos, music, all kinds of cultural entertainment.  It's a problem with online money handlers who think that they have a right to tell you how you can spend your money.  Shopping in niche markets can be fun, but it's less efficient and effective than shopping in a few large places.  It wastes your time and causes you to miss some stuff that is available but out of easy reach.  

Poem: "The Island Dragons"

This poem came out of the March 4, 2014 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired and sponsored by Anthony & Shirley Barrette.  You can read more about Komodo dragons online.

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New verses in "Its Very Existence"

Thanks to a donation, "Its Very Existence" is now complete.  See how Nahum responds to his rescuer.

Writing Comics

Here's an essay on what happens when a novelist approaches comics.

When I started to get interested in scriptwriting and comics, I just went out and researched the topic to learn the general infrastructure of the field.  I learned a lot, some of which is useful in storytelling generally.

I can't imagine anyone approaching this without figuring out how it works first, but apparently, that's the usual -- along with people's equally insane habit of copying art/literature from the outside in.  Just another example of me and my alien brain.  I typically start from one of the core concepts: idea or medium.  Either I have a specific kind of story I want to tell, or I want to explore a certain format.  I go from whichever of those I star with to the other one, and then work my way out from there.

Another thing I've discovered is how this affects my perspective in storytelling.  Only a few settings/characters seem to hit me as script-friendly.  I'm not entirely sure why yet; it's new territory.  But there's a definite cinematic feel to certain ideas, and it can really influence how I write about them.  I like the visual aspects of Schrodinger's Heroes and The Blueshift Troupers.  

Sometimes I find myself thinking about comic frames or camera angles.  I think about dialog differently too.  In a bifocal medium, I strongly prefer stories where the words and images are equally important, although there may be some sections where one predominates.  If you're not using them together fluently, you're wasting half your opportunity for storytelling, not to mention the potential for dynamic interest as you shift the weight from one to the other.

Read "Longing" by Sharpeningthebones

 sharpeningthebones has written the ficlet "Longing" based on my prompt.  It's about the love between books and bookworm.  <3