Hell's Half Acre

I finished watching Teen Wolf Season 1 tonight.

It was good! I liked it. I was talking to someone the other day and they were asking me to compare Teen Wolf to another show - "Is it like Vampire Diaries?' "Uhh...no?" I don't watch Vampire Diaries, because when I have I've hated it - but I enjoy Teen Wolf. Mind you, maybe that's just because of my hatred of vampires and my love of werewolves. Seriously folks, werewolves are awesome and vampires need to die. I've chosen my side on the war, thanks. Anyway, I don't really know what other show to compare it to.

Now, of course this viewing wasn't a clean watch. I had already been reading fic in the fandom and so was spoiled for everything that was going to happen. I was pleasantly surprised by what was canon though.

( Blatherings about the show and fandom ships... )

I'm looking forward to S2, which I hear is better/worse (I've had conflicting reports)... and then S3a, which I hear is a clusterfuck.

Thankfully, one of my fears about getting into this show was that I'd have an overwhelming urge to write for it... but so far that hasn't happened. Yay!

Okay, I saw ratherastory and claudiapriscus do this yesterday, and even though I'm kind of busy, I want to do it too!

Tell me about a story I haven't written, and I will give you 1-3 sentences (or more) from or about it.

Any of my fandoms are fair game...even ones that you know I like, but I've never actually written for before. Only, I won't write about Teen Wolf, because I haven't actually watched that show yet. You can also prompt for any of my 'verses if you like. ETA: You can also prompt for my original fic fantasy novel (for those of you who liked the drabbles I did of it back in April.)

In other news: I finished watching the first season of White Collar. It was good, and the actors are great, and I love the Peter/Neal/Elizabeth dynamic... but the show didn't really grab me when it comes right down to it. It was, however, GREAT to watch while sewing my new curtains, because it's the type of show that you don't actually have to pay that much attention to.

I may have given in and downloaded the first few episodes of Teen Wolf.... I haven't watched them yet. But just to give you an idea of how little I know about the actual show: I did not realize it was an hour-long drama. For some reason, I had it in my head that it was a half-hour program... like a dramatic sitcom or something? I have no idea why I thought that. Perhaps because the last teenage werewolf program I watched was Big Wolf on Campus. And for those of you who know what that is: Don't judge me! It was back in the age of dial-up internet and I wanted to understand the Tommy/Merton slash that I had found while looking for Dead Man on Campus slash (again, no judging allowed... I loved that movie.)

Now off to do errands... if anyone prompts, I'll most likely leave the responses until tonight or tomorrow. Tomorrow I have to clean my apartment, and writing tiny little fics instead would be a welcome distraction to that.

So, I've been reading Teen Wolf fic for about the last month now, this is what I have learned:

1. People really don't like Stiles' buzzcut in the first two seasons.

99.9% of the fics I read have a line in them explaining that Stiles had decided to grow out his hair a few months before the fic takes place, and now someone's hand is comfortably buried in it while they do various romantic activities.  To me, this shows a lack of imagination on the part of the writers. I once read a very wonderful piece of writing by Joey Comeau that involved a girl with a buzzcut and the narrator VERY MUCH enjoying that buzzcut - and the description was so good that it was almost a tactile experience in and of itself. Seriously... buzzcuts can be sexy too, people.

2. Don't shorten already short names!!

Derek and Laura are both very short names. You do not have to shorten them to "Der" and "Laur"... and don't even get me started on "D". First off, they sound ridiculous. If any of you actually know a Derek or a Laura that goes by "Der" and "Laur" then I apologize, but I highly doubt these characters would respond to those names in the show. I think it's actually harder to say "Laur" than "Laura"... and also, I think Derek would probably end up being shortened/pet-named similar to Eric and end up being a Rick or a Ricky. (And if the character REALLY doesn't look like he would respond well to being called Rick, then odds are he wouldn't respond well to being called "Der" either.)

I get that these authors are trying to show familiarity and affection through names... but take it from someone who HAS a short name - the people who are closest to me and the most affectionate and loving DON'T SHORTEN MY NAME. I even told one of them once that he could, and he acted like I had just force fed him lemon. In not so many words, he basically told me that any shortened version of my name was less beautiful than my name and he only wanted to call me by a beautiful name - because, you know, AFFECTION. (And I'd like to point out that this was just a FRIEND, we weren't even romantically involved.)

3. Supernatural fandom has spoiled me for emotional follow-through

I don't know how to explain this one - but for some reason I've never been as emotionally satisfied after reading fic in another fandom (and I'm thinking of primarily Teen Wolf and Merlin here) as I have after I finish reading an SPN fic. Hmm... exception for Sherlock fic, that tends to be pretty emotionally satisfying too. I always think that's backwards to how it should be though, because Teen Wolf (I'm told) and Merlin both have very little emotional follow-through in the show, so I always assumed that the fic-writers must want to make-up for that... but that doesn't seem to be the case. It's almost like the apple doesn't fall far form the tree - if you think of the show as a parent and the fandom as its offspring.

It's kind of funny, because in Supernatural, you'll have pretty great emotional follow-through on the show, and then when they drop the ball and leave some emotion-based point hanging (like the amulet, or the voice-message), the SPN fandom will have 200 fics to resolve it within a week.

Now, that being said, I know Teen Wolf fiction actually does have more emotional follow-through than the show... but it's still not COMPLETE. So, maybe it's just a matter of the bar being set too low... or my personal bar being set too high. Or, it might actually be a case of people liking the fact that they don't have to worry about emotional follow-through that much and that all people are really interested in is Der sinking his hands into Stiles' suddenly long hair.

As some of you know, I've been reading Teen Wolf fanfic recently. I don't actually have any immediate plans to watch the show (I'm going to give White Collar a try first, and maybe see how Tumblr reacts to TW S3).

Anyway, since most of the fic over on AO3 is Sterek fic, I've been reading that.

My problem is that there are these really lovely first-time fics, but inevitably, they all end either before Sheriff Stilinski finds out, or, even more infuriating, they end right after that, but before Derek has to come over for the obligatory awkward "meet the parent who once arrested you for murder" lunch/dinner/brunch.

It's kind of driving me crazy, because goddamn it, I like stories where people's opinions of each other change and I really really want to SEE that meeting. In my opinion, it's a really bad writing choice to end the story on the "I love you, and by the way my dad wants you to come to dinner" line, because that's not a resolved ending to the fic, that's a "why isn't there another chapter?" ending to the fic.

So, my questions to anyone on here that is in the Teen Wolf fandom:

1. Do you have any recs about Sheriff and Derek actually having the awkward "I'm dating your son and I'm not actually a murderer...or well, not for the murder you thought I did" discussion?

2. Is there a Teen Wolf equivalent of spn_storyfinders (or a similarly functioned tumblr fic-blog) so that I can put a request in for Sheriff and Derek stories?

Now, to be fair, I have read a couple of fics that DO address the Sheriff and Derek meeting really well, so it's not ALL fics... but that just makes the majority of fics that skip this scene really f*cking annoying. Unfortunately, because I've gone on such a Teen Wolf fic binge the last few weeks, I can't actually remember what those stories were... I know one of them had Derek hanging out at Stiles' house and eating meals with them until the Sheriff actually put it together about what Kate did. Another one didn't really have a Sheriff+Derek moment, but it was told from the Sheriff's point of view and it had him briefly conclude that Derek had PTSD and that him hanging out with teenagers was actually him hanging out with people his own age. Anyway, I want more stories like those.

Hey, does anyone want some more Merlin sadness? You're in luck!

Today's prompt: Returning to an activity that you haven't done in days/months/years.

Dress the King
(Merlin, post-reunion, 445 words)

( Merlin’s fingers were shaking. It was the cold. )

Title: Men of Legend
Author: hells_half_acre
Beta: borgmama1of5 - my first time ever using a beta. It was interesting! Readers who are usually annoyed by my overuse of the word "said" will rejoice!
Fandoms: Supernatural and Merlin
Rating: PG (Gen/optional pre-slash)
Word Count: 33,935
Setting/Spoilers: This is set between S4 and S5 of Merlin and around S8 of Supernatural (in an undefined fantasy time period where Dean, Sam, and Cas are all available and doing alright.)
A/N: There's about as much merthur slash in this fic as there is in Merlin - which means that technically, it's pre-slash.

Summary: When a sorcerer summons monsters from another world, Merlin must summon heroes from another world to help save Camelot. Meanwhile, Dean and Sam Winchester didn't even know they were summon-able.

Chapters:
One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten

Read on AO3.