SN Fics: Deads, Not Words/Simple Rules/Porn Virus/Nervous Breakdown Hat

Title: Deeds, Not Words
Fandom: Sports Night
Rating: G
Summary: Casey sounded lost and confused, and it made Dan's chest ache. "I'm going absolutely insane. I've forgotten where I work."

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Title: Simple Rules
Fandom: Sports Night
Pairing: Dan/Casey
Rating: R
Summary: Casey's always been good with rules.

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Title: Porn Virus
Fandom: Sports Night
Rating: PG-13 for mentions of porn.
Summary: Dan's sick and has an urge to watch porn. Banter-fic.

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Title: Nervous Breakdown Hat
Fandom: Sports Night
Pairing: Casey/Dan
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine. Never were.
Summary: "You're worried that I'm not wearing my nervous breakdown hat in front of Charlie?"

SN Fic: The Surest Recipe

Title: The Surest Recipe
Fandom: Sports Night
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Neither of the boys are mine.
Summary: "A mixture of admiration and pity is one of the surest recipes for affection." Andre Maurois

Notes: I started with the idea of a slashy mini-epic. It turned out to be a not-actually-epic and not-actually-slashy fic, but I love it regardless. Go figure. Big thanks to meadowlion for careful betaing.

SV Rec: Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of Interest by rageprufrock may well be the most adorable SV future-fic ever written. Ever. It's told from the perspective of Connor, Lex's almost-nine-years-old son. He's just as precocious and adorable as you'd expect from Lex Luthor's son.

Conner was halfway convinced that when he'd been young, his father had inserted a tracking chip somewhere. When he'd turned seven, he'd spent a solid two hours looking for it, but then his father had walked in on him inspecting the space between his legs with a mirror. All Conner had taken away from that experience was that if the So You've Become Sexually Active speech his father apparently had planned for when he was sixteen was anywhere near as awful as the So You've Discovered That You Have Special Feelings There speech, he was either going to have to run away from home or just avoid turning sixteen altogether.

Really, I can't praise this fic enough. The pacing is great and it's filled with little details and images that feel so real. The characterisation is wonderful, the characters are fully fleshed, and I promise you that you'll find yourself sniffling at some scenes, and giggling at others.

I'm not a huge SV fan these days (ie. don't keep up to date with current canon) but you don't really need it for this fic. As long as you know the basics, this story will explain all the rest. So, really, you guys have no excuse not to read this. *g*

Identifying with female characters

musesfool was talking about that old argument of "I never identified with the female characters because they sucked when I was growing up". It's an interesting post with a lot of interesting comments, but something that caught my attention was viola_dreamwalk saying:

Where it gets weird for me is when a) the standards are different for male versus female characters; for example, a "weak" or passive male character is viewed as positive/sensitive/"a woobie"/etc., but his female equivalent "sucks" or b) we reject traits that are traditionally read as feminine because they're considered lame or useless.

Huh. I'm totally wondering about that. SN is a fandom that has strong female characters and woobie guys, and I'm wondering. Am I really that biased when it comes to woobies? All of fandom adores woobie-Dan, and woobie-Casey when he shows up, but do we hold it against the women? I don't know.

Mind you, when it comes to identifying with characters, I tend to ideantify most with Casey. Arrogant, self-involved, somewhat oblivious to others, emotionally blinkered (he has a truly stunning lack of ability to recognise his own emotions and motivations for what they are), demanding, nowhere near cool. Sincere, caring, loyal, sweet, clever (but only in regards to certain topics), basically conservative but doesn't follow social expectations blindly. Most of those things occur in my personality, to an extent.

There are times when I identify with Dan -- but that's generally restricted to when I'm writing a Danny POV. I don't identify with Natalie or Jeremy; or Isaac, Kim or any of the rest of the tertiary characters.

When it comes to Dana, I love her dearly. She is a strong female character, intelligent, sassy, well rounded with understandable flaws. I come to her defense and when she gets hurt I have a strong urge to bitchslap Casey/Gordon/Sam. If I had the opportunity to date/sleep with one SN character, it would be Dana. I think she's fascinating and endearing and adorable but I don't identify with her.

I just... don't.

And this is something that links to other thoughts. Like that I love this t-shirt but I *know* that I'd never buy it, let alone wear it in public. Like the fact that I keep thinking of myself as bi, but I barely ever leer at guys; I check out girls. Like the fact that terming myself a lesbian feels weird and untrue, but every time I imagine dating someone, that someone's always female.

Oddly enough, I don't feel that weird about calling myself a baby dyke which is just strange, but all about mental association, I guess. And, heh, isn't this icon so damn *appropriate* for this post? *snerk*

SN Icons...

...for phoebesmum, since she pointed out the need for them.

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