First I bring you two recs I shared on fancake, then notes on my recent rewatch, a complaint about taxonomy, some observations about the 1980s, three more recs, and finally a call for papers more recs.

We Better Make a Start (11087 words) by thefourthvine
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson
Characters: Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson, Robin Buckley
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Himbo Steve Harrington, First Time, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Are Best Friends, Podfic Available

Summary: As soon as Eddie gets to the counter, Steve turns to him and says, "Back me up here. Kissing is no big deal, right?"

Steve Harrington is talking about kissing. Eddie's brain shorts out. "Uh," he says.

Bookmarker's Notes: Steve accompanies Robin to a gay bar where he discovers his skills with the ladies are transferable to guys. Robin and Eddie both have a crisis over it, though for different reasons. Very fun and very hot, with Steve at his himbo best.

Like a Virgin (26183 words) by mistresscurvy
Chapters: 5/5
Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Will Byers/Mike Wheeler, Eleven | Jane Hopper/Maxine "Max" Mayfield
Characters: Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair, Steve Harrington, Jonathan Byers, Nancy Wheeler, Robin Buckley, Argyle (Stranger Things), Jim "Chief" Hopper, Joyce Byers
Additional Tags: Loss of Virginity, First Kiss, First Time, 80s teen sex comedy, will and mike are both 17 in this fic, Discussions of sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Coming Out

Summary: "Did it ever occur to any of you that I might not want to have my only sexual experiences be with someone who isn't actually interested in me?" Will asked.

He was met by three identical looks of confusion. "I mean, it would still be sex," Dustin said finally.

Bookmarker's Notes: Set after a season four where, yes, a lot of people died. But the kids are seventeen now, and Mike and Will are both virgins, which Mike is very concerned about: Cue the 80s teen sex comedy. Unlike much of that genre, though, this isn't gross or embarrassing, and everybody's having a good time. I adored Will here, kind of baffled by what Mike's gotten them into, yet excited about it too, and it's wonderful to see him stand up for himself, confident enough to be honest about who he is and what he wants. Plus it includes the entire crew, even Argyle.

So, in November, I started rewatching the first four seasons of Stranger Things in preparation for the fifth season. The first season is still so good; tightly plotted, every group working in their own genre until all three storylines converge. Second season: Not my favorite, for a number of reasons, but it does give us Max and for that I will forgive it. The third season is a mall-shaped masterpiece of nostalgia, even if a bunch of goofy kids infiltrating a secret Russian facility is harder to buy than the Upside Down. Fourth, all over the damn place, literally, and full of infodumps thrown together in order to explain the new retroactive continuity, but the Hawkins crew is absolutely solid.

And the fifth season? The first half felt like a different show than the second half, and the second half wasn't exactly made up of my favorite things. I loved the quarantine aspect—huge fan of a bottle episode—and I was proud of Will (and glad that he finally got something to do), and Robin and Steve running the radio station was perfect, but I wanted MORE TEAM FEELS. There was NOT ENOUGH FRIENDSHIP for me. And would it have killed the Duffers to make Will and El BFFs? Apparently so. It got real sloppy toward the end, too, losing interest in characters in peril (Erica! Mr. Clarke!) and not checking back in with them AT ALL. And that final boss battle was boring. Like Joyce wasn't even a little bit dirty at the end. But I still love the characters and the finale didn't destroy my love for the show, and in this era of television, that's not nothing. Watching all five seasons at once was a great decision and kept me happy for a month.

But when I finished the first part of S5, I desperately wanted more, immediately, and felt all out of sorts for like, a day, until I remembered fanfic. So I went to the Stranger Things tag on AO3, filtered by gen, and sorted by kudos, and I am only going to say this once but the people tagging their Steve/Eddie and Steve/Billy fics gen need to open a fucking window. Though not either of the authors I just recced, because, as you'll see, they didn't tag their explicit relationship fics "gen," and also those came from my bookmarks.

I read, or started to read, several of the things I found on the first few pages of hits, but kept getting that sinking feeling you get when you realize the fic you're reading was written by someone who doesn't remember the 80s—probably because they hadn't been born yet.

A selection of slides from my imaginary PowerPoint presentation on the 1980s:

• If you're making a joking reference to popular benzodiazepines, it's Valium, not Xanax.

• Private homes were more likely to have answering machines than voicemail, but even those wouldn't be common until the late 80s and early 90s.

• The telephone was the phone. No one called them landlines because there was just the one kind.

• VCRs were still new and very expensive ($500 to $1,000 or more)—so if you were worried about paying the bills you probably didn't have one—but if you did have one, you'd be more likely to rent movies from an independent (and often janky) shop than buy them, as movies on VHS were very very expensive (around $100) when they first hit the market.

• The only way you're renting a video from Blockbuster in 1985 is if you lived in Dallas, Texas.

I will permit Eddie saying, "My bad," however, because it's funny.

Bonus 1990s slide:

• If you were playing Mario Kart in 1996 it would have been on the Super Nintendo; there was no Mario Kart on the original 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System.

I know it's crass to complain about free entertainment, but the cognitive dissonance is real. Many of these things could have been solved with the slightest bit of research, but, on the other hand, you don't know what you don't know, like working class people weren't routinely drinking bottled water in the 1980s, magic eye stereograms became ubiquitous in the 90s, not a decade before, and if you were at the hospital, that thermometer wasn't going in your ear.

And so I trudged on through my disappointing search results. I didn't want to exclude relationships (except for Steve/Billy which can get lost) because some of them are canon and, thus, could be considered gen, so there I was, wading through pages and pages of fic labeled gen that was decidedly not gen, when, in the midst of that relationshippy soup of search results, I found it. The fic I had been looking for. A fic that was just like the show, with a new big bad and EVERYBODY (from S2) in it, where the romantic relationships fit into the story without overwhelming it. Excellent voices. Very well written. And looooooooooong.

In A Strange Land (180411 words) by MrsEvadneCake
Chapters: 12/12
Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Jonathan Byers & Steve Harrington & Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler, Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair, Past-Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler
Characters: Steve Harrington, Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair, Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Will Byers, Mike Wheeler, Eleven | Jane Hopper, Jim "Chief" Hopper, Joyce Byers, Scott Clarke, Sam Owens (Stranger Things), Billy Hargrove, The gang's all here.
Additional Tags: Action/Adventure, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, POV Multiple, Period-Typical Homophobia, 80's Music, Eldritch Abomination, Horror, Steve Harrington-centric, Pre-Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, So many horror references, Honestly Pretty Mediocre Babysitter Steve Harrington

Summary: Doom comes to Hawkins, Indiana. Population est. 30,000.

It's cold, that's all, and the breeze is kicking up. That's why Steve feels the chill go up his spine like someone dropped an ice-cube down his back.

"Why wouldn't I be real, El?"

"The Aboleth got you."

Highly recommended. With the small caveat that it seems to think winter break happens in February?

That fic was so satisfying I stopped digging through the gen tag and moved on to the relationship soup, but lord it's a jungle out there. I did manage to find these three excellent Mike/Will fics all by myself:

( Three post-canon Mike/Will fics )

But I saw some shit out there that I can't unsee. Some of the kids just aren't all right. So it's time to get out of the tags and ask for recs: If you have favorite plotty or tropey fics that focus on a pairing—that preferably still involve Hawkins and most of the cast and don't include the redemption of Billy Hargrove, but I'll read anything if it's good—I'd love to hear about it. And of course if there's excellent plotty genfic I've missed, I need to know about that immediately.

candyheartsex author reveals have happened! And here's the fic I wrote for facethestrange:

**

Title: in the darkness with you
Word count: 4,233
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)
Pairing: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Rating: Mature
Content tags: Blind Zhao Yunlan, First time, Hand-Feeding, Finger-Sucking, Clothed Sex, Zhao Yunlan's oral fixation, Episode Related, Episode 21, Missing Scene, Blindness Arc
A/N: Many thanks to china_shop for beta-reading.

Summary:

Zhao Yunlan woke to the smell of citrus, sweet and strong in the air. Without fully turning his face out of the pillow, he slitted open a sleep-heavy eye - to complete, unchanged darkness. Reality came crashing down like a landslide. Right: still blind.

Title: Out of the Shadows
Fandom: The Hobbit (2012-2014)
Author: rodo
Length: 2,398 words
Rating: 6+
Characters: Legolas & Tauriel
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Warner Bros. et al.
Beta: starsprightly
A/N: written for Nicky_Gabriel during 2026’s candyheartsex

Summary: To Tauriel, Legolas was barely more than a stranger – until the day she stumbled into saving his life.



( “Have any of you seen Prince Legolas? The king is looking for him,” Tauriel’s captain asked. )

Like many people these days, FTH is trying to detangle ourselves from Google. This won't be quick or easy for several reasons, but this year we've taken one step you'll need to be aware of as a creator or bidder: We've got a Proton email address that we'll be using for some FTH business.

We can't use it for everything, because a lot of our automation will currently only work with gmail. But be sure to add fandomtrumpshate AT proton.me to your email client's allowlist, and look for FTH emails coming from this address as well as our usual gmail!

I just finished Basingstoke's gorgeous HR fic and it rocked my socks so much. And made me laugh. And occasionally made me teary. But mostly it just brought me joy.

Lovers, or, English is a damn funny language (77847 words) by Basingstoke
Chapters: 24/24
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Svetlana Vetrova
Additional Tags: no beta we die like Shane's attempts at heterosexuality, Post-Episode: s01e06 The Cottage (Heated Rivalry), Coming Out, Disordered Eating, Dirty Talk, Depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - CPTSD, Suicidal Ideation, Past Domestic Violence, Toxic Family Dynamics, Outing, Found Family, Pittsburgh, look I just think Ilya would really vibe with pittsburgh, Soft Dom Ilya Rozanov, do not take legal advice from this fic, Handwaving, English is this authors's first language and I'm mad about it, threesome teasing but no threesomes, Original Character(s)
Summary:

Ilya asked Shane’s father while Shane and his mother were talking outside: “Is boyfriends correct? Lovers is incorrect, but I am not sure what is correct.”

“Well,” Mr. Hollander said. “‘Lovers’ is usually used for, hm, a mistress or an affair. Something kind of sordid. Though--you would say Romeo and Juliet is a play about two lovers,” he said. He paused his knife on the chopping board. “Somehow that’s right and using it for real people isn’t right. English is a damn funny language, Ilya."

“Yes,” Ilya said from the bottom of his heart.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Time keeps slipping away from me again, and I keep thinking of things I want to post about, but when I finally sit get to down and open DW, I've forgotten all about it.

But I remembered the New Year, at least! *g*

I had a dream for the third time this week about watching the 1980s live-action Batman show with my sister so I figured it was worth a DW post :P

If you don't know the 1980s live-action Batman that I apparently watch in my dreams here's a quick overview:

• It was a weekly one-hour show that ran for about three seasons. It predates the age of season-long arcs but it had more than the usual number of 2- and 3- part episodes and some character growth even.
• It's clearly intentionally following up on the legacy of the 1960s show because it revels in the fundamental absurdity and plays for comedy, but it was also determined to not get pigeonholed as a kids' show - it has non-cartoon violence and solid emotional arcs.
• For example instead of all the silly Bat-Gadgets, they had Wayne Enterprises (TM) machines. There's a running bit where Tim always makes sure he has access to a Wayne Enterprises (TM) Automatic Soup Dispenser (TM) and nobody can tell if he's just really into soup or if he's modding it to dispense other things.
• Oh yeah, despite being called Batman, it's actually mostly about Tim and Dick. Bruce shows up in every episode for at least a few minutes but is rarely the focus. (Yes, I know the 1980s is early for comics!Tim - I assume the comics character was based on the show character? - and there's no Jay in this continuity, which lets it be a little more lighthearted about their relationships with Bruce.)
• Tim became Robin after Dick "retired" and Bruce finally noticed how neglected the neighbor boy actually was. In the show he's mostly traveling around playing poor little rich boy and Robinning with a rotating guest cast of Teen Titans (nearly every episode is in a different city - they must have had a huge travel/sets budget.)
• Dick is 100% a civilian these days he swears. He's technically in college but never appears to attend. He's always showing up to "hang out" with his little bro, or following Kory to a show, and then having to secretly superhero it up without a costume or name. The show is constantly teasing that this is the episode he'll finally become Nightwing and never follows up.
• When Bruce shows up it's usually not as Bruce, or even Batman, but as his even more useless cousin "Kenneth Wayne", who only shows up in the tabloids when he's done something so ridiculous Bruce has to send Alfred to bail him out, and therefor has an excuse to be places Bruce can't possibly be. He has absolutely 0 natural authority over the boys, who treat him as an embarrassingly untrustworthy uncle, and enjoys the hell out of this.
• Dick is dating Koriand'r, but they insist they're not girlfriend and boyfriend because "Tamaraneans don't have boys and girls, she's just my Kory and I'm her Dick". This is never explored beyond that at all. (Also Kory looks a lot less human and more like Ron Perlman's Beast* (except as a hot not-girl, of course.)
• Tim spends every episode excited and/or worried about the main plot interfering with or facilitating a possible or planned date with a girl. The girls are never named or shown onscreen. Dick teases him about this.

The episode we watched last night involved Tim and Dick renting out an old mansion/party house in Philadelphia that was haunted by a very lazy demon shaped like a yellow cartoon rabbit, a very large monitor lizard who was wanted by the Mob, a bunch of people having to shelter overnight in a Victorian-themed cafe in the zoo, and every single character having to dress up as Matches Malone in the same bad wig at the same time. Also the Three Stooges guest-starred. I hope I get to watch more later, I don't think there's an official DVD release.

---

*did I only have this dream because I did that "name all the animals" game right before bed and was thinking about Golden Lion Tamarins??

I'm searching for airplane seat cushions.

I was hoping someone on my friend's list has tried a few cushions or has a favorite they'd recommend for long haul air travel? Like 12 hours and more air travel?

Living in Alaska long flights are the norm but I think I have to accept I'm growing older and traveling is painful.

I'd appreciate any and all advice! Sadly getting out of the plane and swimming the rest of the way won't work....

Driving a car is boring. Which is not necessarily a bad thing! Every time I start a trip, I drive my car in reverse uphill on my gravel driveway like its nothing. Which is amazing! I couldn't have done that on a motorcycle, for multiple reasons, but in my car its trivial.

But with all driving being easy mode, the long straight highways that were already boring on a motorcycle are now that much worse. For some trips I take an early exit off the highway to take back roads to keep myself awake. But I'm trying to get better at highway driving, so I've got a music playlist I'm building, of songs that are both very familiar and high energy to keep me going.

Also I started working on a vid. Not any of the vids I haven't touched in over a year, not even the same editing program, but meh. Its one of those ideas that's not good by any objective metric, just two things you like shoved together.

I posted my first fanfic* TWENTY NINE YEARS AGO TODAY. My most recent fanfic† was posted less than a month ago. And today I am finishing up a fanfic‡ I started in 2011.

* The X-Files
† Star Trek
‡ Stargate Atlantis

Had a dream I was in a drugstore and Bad Bunny was sitting up in the balcony and he threw a bottle of aspirin at me and I ran across the store and scaled the wall to get up in his face about it.