1. Ilya's eyes being described as blue or (worse) "sparkling blue". In the books they're definitely hazel and by the kind of spooky luck that accompanied Connor and Hudson's casting, Connor's eyes are also hazel, or sometimes gray-green. They're not fucking blue. And he's not blond, either! Evidence below. (why is he so gorgeous jfc dies)



2. Why do some authors of fics name Jackie and Hayden Pike's second twin Emma, rather than Jade as she is in the books? It's not just one author, either. Fannish contamination as they haven't read canon? Is Jade named in the show - maybe she isn't?

3. Having done some minimal research of my own, this one's more a question for anyone who's learned Russian. "I love you" in Russian is in several fics (and also, I just learned, in the books!) as Ya lyublyu tebya - unlike in the show (which had a Russian language expert advisor), or in google translate, where it's always Ya tebya lyublyu (literally: I you love). I assume that the second version is correct in terms of Russian grammar, and that fanwriters are copying RR, not realising that she got it wrong?

I have just finished rewatching Captain America: The Winter Soldier, for the umpteenth time, but this time I was mapping out where things were toward the end, when enormous ships are falling out of the sky into the Potomac River at a place where it is not really wide enough for one of those ships.

They never think about the side effects in disaster movies, do they? For this, they tripled the width of the Potomac at a place where it is a few hundred feet wide, that's all. All that hot metal hitting the water would really annoy the rockfish and the Maryland terrapins. The rockfish might forget but the terrapins will remember.

Let's think of the volume of river water displaced by those enormous ships hitting the river. Where they have them hitting, the waves will wash up over the patios and parking lots into the Watergate, into the Kennedy Center (or what's left of it these days), and into Lower Georgetown's underground parking garages, where it will float a lot of cars. We went through something like this before, back in the 90s, when there was so much rain that it washed cars into the river from above-ground parking lots and floated everything in the underground garages. I'm not sure how the insurance adjusters would account for this flood on their paperwork -- "act of superheroes"?

I'm assuming that the resizing of the river also moved Roosevelt Island half a mile or more downstream, so that it would be there when Bucky pulls Steve out onto the shore (in the only place in that area that has a shore with grass at that angle compared to the water). Upstream, the south side of the river is a rock wall with mansions on top of it for several miles heading upstream -- there used to be several Kennedy places up there -- and on the other side there's a narrow area and then the Washington and Old Dominion Canal, which is a recreation area.

I'm also going to ignore the other fallout, when bits of the Shield building and more pieces of airships drop onto the buildings and streets of Rosslyn, VA, one of the most expensive areas of real estate in the country. Or maybe they'd be drifting a little further apart -- how far apart were those three ships,anyway? That would put one of them over the Mall and another over either Arlington Cemetery or Washington National Airport (I refuse to call it Reagan Airport; he didn't deserve one.)

Anyway, I don't think there's a lot of fanfic that deals with the aftereffects of the actions of superheroes. Just a thought or two for anyone who may need a bit of inspiration...

I like it when friends post "a day in the life" with pics, so here's my version. It's only a little bit "day in the life" though - it's mostly "autumn in my neighbourhood", but that's fun, too.

I was up late (reading HR fanfic ofc) so slept in to about 10 am (6-7 hours sleep), then pottered about getting ready for the Junk2Go blokes to arrive. Two days before I'd hired a guy called Birol off a tradie hook-up site we have here where you post about a job you want done and people looking for work give you a quote. I'd finally seen sense and realised I was never going to tidy and reorganise my garage myself, let alone assemble the flatpack shelving unit that'd been languishing under dusty crap for the past three years. (The garage is potting shed, storage, and laundry.) So Birol (who reminded me a bit of Bogdan from The Thursday Murder Club) had arrived, and with me supervising, had assembled the shelves and sorted out the garage. Then today the Junk2Go guys took away the heap of junk and flattened cardboard boxes. Vast improvement! I still have bench tidying to do, but it's manageable now.

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The rest of my day was given over, as ever, to reading fanfic, finishing my Heated Rivalry rewatch, and doing podfic archiving on the Audiofic Archive. A good day. Hugs to you all! ❤️

I went to look at my Circle here -- haven't done it in a very long time -- and found X's in places where check marks were. Does X mean a ban or block? Or something else?

Somewhere along the last few years my Introvert/Extrovert balance must have shifted to the left.

My doctor ordered a blood test that requires a 12-hour fast, so I did the fast, went to get the test first thing after I woke up, then went with the SU to our favorite deli, which was normally busy, and got home -- and I am completely exhausted. Too many people in too little time, also in too small a space. Yet this is the deli we've been going to since 1989, except that we weren't there for the last six years. The food is great, the wait staff is friendly and longterm -- I saw a couple of people who've worked there for more than a decade -- and it's a good place.

Yet I am feeling radically overpeopled, as if I'd had to sing an opera in the round, with no wings at the side of the stage to rest in.

Next time, one or the other; clinic or deli. Not both.

ETA: Also, I am having trouble with Etsy. It won't let me sign in with my always-used email, kitmason@gmail.com. And I can't contact Customer Service to ask them why this is happening because they are only contacted once you've signed in. Suggestions, anyone?