Jain

This week I have...
--called my congressman and asked him to cosponsor the Presidential Accountability Act.
--called one of my senators and asked him to vote against Jeff Sessions's appointment to the position of Attorney General, on the grounds that Sessions can't be trusted to protect people's civil and political rights. (I tried to call my other senator, but he's not taking calls this week. So disappointed that we didn't manage to vote him out this year.)
--called the Department of Justice and asked them to investigate the human rights abuses by the Morton County Sheriff's Department against the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters.
--subscribed to Mother Jones and The Guardian.

Well, that was unspeakably devastating. Thank you to everyone who's posted their reactions and helpful links and general expressions of support in the aftermath of the election; I'm one of the many who really needed to see those. I've also seen an outpouring of donations from my DW/LJ friends to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and various local charities, which has been heartening. (I've donated to the National Resources Defense Council myself, because climate change was terrifying even before Trump was elected.)

In addition to those very worthy organizations, though, if you can spare the cash--and if you're a U.S. citizen or green card holder--please consider donating to Foster Campbell, the Democratic candidate for Louisiana senator who'll be advancing to that state's runoff election on December 10th.

The Republicans will maintain their Senate majority regardless of whether Campbell wins or loses; the only question is whether that majority will be 52-48 or 51-49. The latter is preferable to the former, even in the short term. But to truly understand the significance of this race, look at the map of Senate seats up for election in 2018. That's 33 contested Senate seats, only eight of them currently held by Republicans, and most of those Republican seats are in deep red states.

The chances of Democrats winning back the Senate during the midterm elections are painfully low. But conversely, the importance of preventing Republicans from becoming a supermajority in the Senate two years from now is very high. A Campbell victory would be step one towards preventing that outcome.

So donate to Campbell if you can, VOTE in the runoff election if you're a Louisianan, and just keep being the awesome people you are in general.

Thanks so much for writing for me! This is my first time participating in Trick or Treat, and I'm really looking forward to it. I hope you have a lot of fun, too!

My signup requests are all for fic, but I'm happy to receive art as a bonus gift.

With one exception, I have a strong preference for Tricks that either 1) use supernatural horror tropes in a non-horrific fashion, e.g. werewolves who retain their humanity while shifted, or 2) involve scary supernatural threats that are soundly defeated by the protagonists for a happy ending. The one exception is Dark Matter, where I'd prefer canon-level horror.

Particularly relevant to this exchange: I love werewolves, like ghosts, am generally disinterested in vampires but can be persuaded if the fic is awesome, and do not want zombies. Regarding Treats, I like anything from G-rated fluff to hardcore porn, but don't care for PWPs; I like some sort of character and/or relationship development along with my smut. If you want further details on my fic preferences, you can check out my general fic kinks and squicks post or browse my fic exchanges tag.

( A Charm of Magpies, Dark Matter, The Eagle, Frontier Wolf, Lynes and Mathey, The Sleeper and the Spindle, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street )

The Eagle: Sunset (Marcus/Esca); 1905 words
The Eagle: Walls (Marcus/Esca); 1557 words
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street: The Watchmaker's Apprentice (Keita/Thaniel); 3007 words

Thanks for offering to write in one or more of my requested fandoms! If you want a better idea of what I like, you can check out my general fic kinks and squicks post. Particular to Purim Gifts, I've listed my favorite pairings in the fandom details below, but all five of these fandoms are ones in which I'm very happy to receive gen fic about any of my favorite characters. And do have fun with whatever you decide to write; I'm sure I'll love it!

Big Hero 6
I adore GoGo Tomago! I'm pretty OTP-ish in this fandom: GoGo/Wasabi is my only real ship. But I'm also very happy to read gen about GoGo and/or Honey Lemon and/or Aunt Cass, especially fic that delves into their unique interests. The absolute best thing about this movie for me is how it validates intellectual passion. And I also love fic about characters cooking and/or eating, so Aunt Cass is totally covered, too.

Captain America (Movies)
My favorite eligible characters are Natasha and Peggy, though Maria Hill is also amazing and I liked what little we saw of Sharon Carter. Preferred ships include Natasha/Sam, Sharon/Natasha, Bucky/Steve/Natasha, Bucky/Steve/Natasha/Sam, and Bucky/Peggy/Steve. Oh, and Bucky & Peggy friendship fic would be great, too; I don't understand why there's so little of that out there.

Loki: Agent of Asgard
I assume anyone offering this fandom for Purim Gifts is cool with the idea of writing Verity Willis, so I'll just say: yes, Verity fic for me, please! I don't ship Loki/Verity, but their friendship is awesome and I'd love to see more of it. Background Loki/Sigurd is cool but extremely optional; I really do want the focus to be on Verity (& Loki).

Nobuta wo Produce
Mariko's my absolute favorite, though I also love Nobuta a lot, and I'm charmed by the unlikely understanding Bando shares with Nobuta. Preferred ships are Nobuta/Mariko, Akira/Mariko, and Shuuji/Nobuta/Akira.

Pacific Rim
I love both Mako Mori and Sasha Kaidanovsky; highly competent, professional women ftw! I haven't read the comic, so please don't rely heavily on characters, plot points, etc. from it. Preferred ships are Sasha/Mako and Raleigh/Herc/Mako.

The Avengers: The Good Fight (Peggy & Sharon); 1641 words

My father passed away last night. It wasn't at all unexpected: he'd been suffering from dementia for a long time and had declined very badly in the past year or so, and we placed him on hospice this August.

I don't know if his death still hasn't sunk in for me yet, or if it's that his illness was so long and protracted that I've already gotten a lot of my grieving over with, but I'm feeling mostly okay right now. As far as I can tell, the rest of the family is about the same--even my mother, who was very devoted to him and whose reaction we'd all been worrying about. I think it really helps that my brother, his gf, and my baby niece moved home recently; the baby has been a welcome distraction for all of us.

And because we knew this was coming, my three siblings who live far away were able to come see Dad before he died (two of them could take over a month off of work and are still here now, while my youngest sister had to go back for school but will return for the memorial). That's helped a bit, too, knowing that everyone had the chance to say goodbye to him.

My expectations going into this movie for the first time were high, to say the least. (Seriously, my brother and I went to a matinee showing, and I woke up several times the night before because I was too excited to sleep. I was like a little kid on Christmas Eve; it was ridiculous.) And then The Winter Soldier surpassed pretty much all of my expectations.

( Very spoilery spoilers beneath the cut )

Thank you so much for participating in this exchange and for offering one or more of my requested fandoms! A couple of important things I wanted to tell you:

* Optional details are optional. I've offered some possible hooks for a story in each of my requests because that's how I like to write for exchanges, but if your creativity is sparked in other ways, or if you just don't like any of my suggestions, then feel free to ignore them and write a different story for those characters.

* I'm chattier about some of my requests than others this year. Please don't think that this indicates a preference on my part for one fandom over another. I promise, I'd be equally thrilled to receive a story in any of these fandoms.

( General likes and dislikes )

( Archer's Goon, Elementary, Frontier Wolf, Iskryne series, The Left Hand of Darkness, Nova )

I saw Pacific Rim today: excellent film, will see in the theaters again.

If you don't like mecha and/or alien dinosaurs, you probably won't love this movie. It's a lot (a lot) more homage than it is subversion. It's skillfully done homage, though, that draws not only on the obvious anime, Godzilla, Power Rangers, etc. antecedents but on Independence Day and H. P. Lovecraft and Hokusai. At the same time, it's not derivative (though the Independence Day parallels in particular are strong enough that I wouldn't recommend watching the two films back-to-back). This isn't a Godzilla/Power Rangers mash-up; it's a film that both is a love song to these genres and that also has its own story to tell.

And though I don't think you can love this movie without appreciating one or both of the aforementioned tropes, I think you could still enjoy it a lot if you love any of the following: 1) action movies with heart, 2) stories about families, both born and chosen, 3) stories about damaged people learning how to heal, 4) visually beautiful films, 5) Idris Elba.

P.S. Needs more fic!