Fierce Rawthorne

Venom: Let There Be Carnage - sometimes you just need a dumb movie about a failboat man and the alien who loves him, and there, LTBC delivers. There is a mid-credits scene but not an after-credits scene. I read spoilers last week since after the debacle of the last Bourne movie, I read spoilers for any movie where I know I'll be pissed if a) main characters die b/c no one wants to figure out some other way to end their character arc, or b) bad things happen to women in order to motivate men. (This is why it took me three years to watch the last two Avengers movies.) Thankfully, LTBC was Lake-safe! And personally, I found the mid-credits scene to be delightful but I think it may be divide certain groups of fans.

Certain other movies arriving in the near future do not seem to be Lake-safe and I might hold off on seeing them in the cinema. (My incredibly petty reasons for not liking movies where main characters die in the end are mostly: WHAT ABOUT MY FANFICTIONS? Yes, even though fix-it is a thing. Plus if I am mad enough, I won't want to watch the movie again enough to write a fix-it, still looking at you here Jason Bourne. I do have a partial plot dreamed up to fix all the things I was mad about in the last two Avengers movies but I'm not sure I'll have the dedication to write the 200k it would have to be.)

Anyway, LTBC's weak point was basically wasting Naomie Harris in their attempt to really keep things moving at a fast pace - I hope she has more to do in No Time To Die. LTBC is only like 90 minutes long so any character development is really quick wham-bam, but I liked the device used to give Cletus a little backstory.

Second Pfizer shot update: Much busier than when I went for my first dose, since we are now in the 65+ phase as well, but still moved quite smoothly and everyone working the vaccination site was again in a good mood. My arm hurt a bit immediately post-shot for about an hour, then about twelve hours after that it really ached, same as the first time. I felt really run down/heavy for most of the day after, but didn't get the whole fever/chills side effect, and then the day after that I felt back to normal. Very grateful that I was able to get in an early group - my dad is going for his second dose on Thursday (he just turned 69) and we're planning on mid-March for being able to eat dinner together again a few times a month (probably without my sister, as she's much further down in the vaccination scheme & I refuse to be around her unless we're both masked because of her uncontrollable bad choices).

Attended a couple Escapade panels via Zoom last weekend despite my desire to Never Be Perceived Via Video, and it was nice to listen to people chat about Shetland (and hilarious to listen to the monsterf****** panel) and to see some of the same faces I remembered from previous cons. It's been more than ten years since I last went to Escapade in person - I went in 2004, 2006, and 2007, I think? At least those are the years that have my name in them on the fanlore pages, haha.

I'm sad I didn't get to see dine at all this year but we were probably attending different panels! (Dine, if Ruth and I ever get to take our pandemic-postponed Portland/Seattle trip, we'll visit you then!)

Other than that, I have nothing to report besides fic links:

Finished/posted the rest of the Venom in a jar story! out of a million, wrapping up at a little over forty-four thousand words - honestly did not expect to write my second-longest fic ever when I started it last year. And people seem to be enjoying it, which is so lovely. Venom fandom has been very nice to me even though it's not as active as it was when the first movie dropped, and the second movie keeps getting pandemic-delayed.

Speaking of Let There Be Carnage, I feel very "oh no please don't fuck up all the things we liked about the first movie" about it. The same screenwriter (a woman!) is back, so that's good, but I have held a pointless grudge against Andy Serkis for years that I just can't let go of, lol. Also are they going to address that the Carnage symbiote is the Venom symbiote's offspring? Probably not, since the first movie didn't use Riot being Venom's offspring either.

January I felt very blah about writing, which tends to happen after I've banged out a bunch of words for Yuletide, so I gave myself a few weeks off from writing and it helped. And now I'm back on my Venom bullshit! (Was I ever really off? Probably not.) Aside from the jar story, I also finished a Valentine's Day story in the holiday series, and two things for Symbruary prompts - a little addition to the jar!V fic for the warm/cold prompt, and a non-sexual age play story for the play prompt.

In other fandom news: For Chocolate Box, I wrote some Marcus/Esca domestic fluff for The Eagle. I would have liked to do some treats, but see above re: January blahs. CB was sort of struggle last year as well, so I just need to remember that I'm usually suffering from exchange burnout when it rolls around and stop signing up.