Days of Love 3

[thefourthvine]

Look here, look back, look ahead, by marinarusalk. Avengers, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark.

This one is going in a Days of Love rec (rather than, you know, a normal set) for a single reason: I can't classify it. I mean, okay, it's a wonderful adventure story featuring Nazis and secret castles and lashings of hurt/comfort, but I don't know if it's an AU or not. Or I guess it would be more accurate to say that I don't know if it's a canon AU or a fan fiction AU or both. If you aren't confused, it must not be comics fandom, that's my motto.

But I don't care. This is fantastic. It's got Steve and Tony having adventures in Transylvania involving a creepy and legendary evil, and there are no pointy teeth anywhere. (Although, man, is Transylvania just unusually stocked with grim legends or what? I don't recall, like, Devon or Iowa having quite this kind of reputation. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong stories. Maybe there are a lot of stories about the unique eeeeeeevil lurking in Dubuque. "Beware of the place of three Us, traveler, or you will not see the corn ripen again." I guess Albuquerque would be in some trouble on that score, too.) Plus, it is a deeply awesome legend. I like vampires as much as the next girl, provided the next girl is not, say, Bella - never have I ever been impregnated by a vampire, and while I'm on the topic, why did I never play Literary Never Have I Ever while I was still playing drinking games? - but I am totally ready for fantasy novels to switch over to this legend for a while. (Oooo, urban fantasy featuring a graduate of this school. I'd pay money for that.)

And I really love how this story handles the Steve/Tony. I'm not going to go into it in too much detail here, because I don't want to spoil it, but I will say that midway through there is one of those scenes that leaves me wanting to applaud the author like she just did a backflip through a circle of fire, because it's an argument in which I am on both sides simultaneously. They're both right! And they completely disagree with each other! That is a sign of characters that are real people, right there. (In real life, when this happens it's just depressing. But in fiction, it's awesome.)

Anyway. This is wonderful. And I love it. And I love you. And you know how you always want to introduce the people you love to each other, providing they are not members of your family of origin? That's how I feel about this story. Go be happy together, fandom and fanwork! You're going to get along. (And in fact most of you have probably made out with this story and taken it home at least time. IGNORING THAT.)

Comments

[soc_puppet]

You haven't heard? Every fourth year, Iowa is descended upon by hoards of vicious soul-rending beasts in human guise. We locals are tasked with discerning the true humans from these abominations, whereupon the candidates who are most likely human are encouraged to roam the country in the hopes that the remaining monsters will not be able to maintain the number of followers sufficient to feed without revealing their true nature. We're just coming out of a cycle now, even; I hear some places call it a "presidential race"?

*coughs* Seriously, though, give me five minutes with my dad's Iowa-related book collection and I'll find you something. If nothing else, we can stretch Field of Dreams until there's portals into both heaven and hell wherever you can't see the road through the corn, and you must be careful walking through 'cuz it can be really hard to tell which is which. (Watch me latch onto the least relevant part of your rec yet again, sigh.)

[everbright]

But local folklore is cool!

[soc_puppet]

I'm definitely on board the Folklore Is Cool train, I just never caught much of Iowa's. I guess I was just too distracted by the Devonian Fossil Gorge, the mid-continent gravity anomaly, and the dunklyo-whatsit and giant sloth and mammoths and such. Oh, and the VLBA, though that's not been here quite as long.

Edit: Okay, I take it back somewhat. There is the Haunted Bookshop, but it was named that before it actually got a ghost, and I don't know if it followed the store to its new location or not. It was actually sorta-haunted at its old location, though.

[everbright]

Oh, neat, Devonian Brachiopods! My college has a bunch of Brachiopod encrusted limestone blocks as retention walls, I love those things.

[soc_puppet]

The fossils were some of the coolest things to come out of the flood of '93, IMO. And the rocks are just so full of things, it amazes me still. I need to go visit again when it's more consistently warm around here.

[thefourthvine]

I - I'm sorry. I hadn't meant to make light of your statewide suffering. The Presidential Locusts are clearly more than any population should have to bear.

*gentle pats*

Maaaaan, though, I totally want you to do this research in your dad's Iowa book collection. I WANT TO KNOW IOWA'S DARKER SECRETS. I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE CORN THAT IS A PORTAL TO HELL.

[soc_puppet]

Okay, I'm honestly embarrassed that I forgot about this one, but we have the Black Angel. Which, after checking with Dad, is pretty much as close as we come. Well, Presidential Locusts (I am so stealing that name) and local Zombie March chapter aside (fun timing in 2007 for the march, tho). There might be some more stuff closer to the Mississippi, but the river's somewhat less of an Iowa-specific phenomenon. Edit: Oh right, we've also got Zadar. But he's an acquired taste. [/edit]

For a more sci-fi angle, I'm going to mention the local VLBA station, if only because this is the best chance I have of someone somewhere coming across this and getting the extra joke. See, a friend of the family works there, and he told us he got the job because he knows Jack; anyone else would have trouble, 'cuz they don't know jack. In my brief affair with Stargate fandom, my brain happily tittered away with that scrap of info. Sadly, I doubt anyone will ever do anything with it.