FIC: Chasing the Light (1/4) | Clint/Natasha | PG-13 | The Avengers

Now that all has been revealed, I'm going to be posting my be_compromised Secret Santa Exchange story here for archival/anal completist purposes. If you read the fic at the comm, this one is nearly entirely the same. But because I can never leave anything well enough alone, I'm going through it again and finding little nitpicks that I'm fixing. >.> There shouldn't be anything significantly different.

Title: Chasing the Light (AO3)
Author: sarea_okelani
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Clint/Natasha
Characters: Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff, Phil Coulson, Original Characters
Author's Notes: Apologies for the long notes, but I have a lot of people to thank! This story was written for ittykat as part of the be_compromised Secret Santa Exchange. My prompt can be found at the end of the story; I don’t want to give away too much at the beginning! :-)

Thanks go out to a number of lovely ladies: anuna_81 and cybermathwitch for running a great exchange, ittykat for the fun and challenging prompt(s), daxcat79 for the awesome banner below, and my two tireless betas, jade_okelani and adelagia. Without Jade, I don’t know if this story would have gotten written. Parts of this story gave me fits while writing, and whenever I encounter a roadblock, I tend to avoid writing altogether. But she gave me daily writing assignments and encouragement, and little by little, it got done. Adelagia helped me remove one of those early roadblocks. I could not, for the life of me, figure out a way to do what I wanted to do, and on one of our foodie trips up to Vancouver we talked it through and she helped me find a solution. Hurrah! And of course, that’s on top of the beta duties they both took on after the story was done (when they both independently said that I needed to add a scene or two at the end, I agreed with their wisdom immediately. OK no, I kicked and whined and resisted, but ended up listening to them anyway, and of course now the story is better). I am blessed to have two such good friends who allow me to abuse them in this manner.



Summary: A mission that goes awry tests two assassins and their partnership.

( Read the story. )

Winter. Bah.

My Best Picture nominees viewing continues!

Beasts of the Southern Wild: Loved it. I can't believe Quvenzhane Wallis was 5 years old when she was cast! Love the story, the directing, everything. It reminded me a lot of Whale Rider, which is a movie that I love to pieces. However, like Whale Rider, I suspect that the various nominations this movie got are its "awards" -- as in, congrats that you made a wonderful movie, we'll acknowledge it with these nominations, but we're going to give the actual awards elsewhere. Not having yet seen Life of Pi or Amour, right now I'd give directing to Benh Zeitlin for this movie.

Lincoln: I wanted to think it was amazing, but I just didn't. I found it really boring, actually. I have the greatest appreciation for Abraham Lincoln himself, but I'm just not that interested in the Civil War (I'm more of a WWII buff). It's one of those time periods that I don't particularly enjoy reflecting on for entertainment purposes, watching people try to defend slavery, countrymen killing countrymen, etc. Daniel Day-Lewis probably has Best Actor in the bag, but I'd love to see Bradley Cooper pull off an upset, he was so impressive in Silver Linings Playbook. It's not going to happen, though.

Other than Life of Pi and Amour, I still need to see Django Unchained and I'll be done!

Met K for dinner last night. We went to Brave Horse Tavern to try their Sunday night fried chicken dinner. It was OK. The chicken wasn't as good as at Ma'ono, the collard greens were too sour, and the biscuits and gravy were way too heavy. What was really good was their homemade soft pretzel with three different kinds of mustard, and their plain cheeseburger. Yes, we ate all of it. Stop judging us.

Talis still has an ulcer in his right eye. :/ Poor little thing has been wearing one of those Elizabethan collars for more than a month now. I was hoping it'd heal up on its own while we were in LA, but it didn't happen, so now he has to have a "procedure." That's been scheduled for Jan. 25. Meanwhile, I've been buying his antibiotic eye drops from the vet's office for $30/bottle. While in LA I needed it replenished. Rite-Aid wanted $40 for it and they couldn't get it until the following day. I ended up going to Costco, which not only had it in stock that very day, but it only cost $12.80! Crazy.

I completely forgot that I have a cooking class tonight -- Singaporean chili crab -- and took the bus in to work today. D'oh!! Now it's going to be a mad rush trying to get home and take care of the pets before heading out again. >

FIC: Wet Hot Avengers Summer (7/9) | Clint/Natasha | PG-13 | The Avengers

Title: Wet Hot Avengers Summer (AO3)
Author: sarea_okelani
Rating: PG-13, for teenagers getting up to what teenagers get up to
Pairings: Clint/Natasha, Tony/Pepper, Thor/Jane, minor Clint/Bobbi and Phil/Cellist, Clint & Coulson, Clint & Tony

Summary: At summer camp, Clint’s met the girl of his dreams. Then he meets her four brothers.

If you missed them: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

( Read part seven. )

Note: OK, so remember when I said that this story was likely going to have 8 parts? I lied, it's going to be 9. jade_okelani insisted that I had to extend the ending to make it better. It's so annoying when she's right. Soooo there will be 2 more parts after this. Hope you enjoyed this one!