My Favorite Things: Comedic Sidekicks, Fanfiction, and More Love for Alien Languages

They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, a weekly column where we gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we’re all about an incredibly funny (and gif-able) actor on the CW’s Supergirl, the top fanfiction you need in your life, and showing more love for the stunningly designed alien language of the movie Arrival. Read on for more!

Carey’s Favorite Thing is… Jeremy Jordan!

Jeremy Jordan is my favorite thing this month. Okay, he’s one of my favorite things anytime I see him on Supergirl. Jordan plays Winn Schott (yep, son of the infamous Toymaker) on Supergirl, and also happens to be Kara Danvers’ best buddy. In the first season, Winn and Kara worked at CatCo, where Winn worked IT and Kara put up with the (sadly missing from the second season) Cat Grant. In the second season, Schott’s IT work landed him a job with the DEO working with the Danvers sisters — and then he started to jeopardize that role by working with a certain someone (no spoilers) as Metropolis’s newest crimefighting duo. In a recent second-season episode, Alex Danvers drags Winn offworld to help save Supergirl — all while Winn has to convince himself he’s “not the redshirt.” Jordan’s comedic timing is too perfect (apparently he’s also fresh off the Broadway show Newsies and I would go see it just for him). He imbues Winn Schott with a gamut of emotions and an exuberant personality that delightfully elevates Schott’s character above standard best-bud/comic relief. And really, his performance just begs for more Internet memes. How are there not more Internet gifs of Jeremy Jordan? From that smile to saving the planet, everything he does is GIF ready.

Sherry’s Favorite Thing is… the alien language of Arrival!

I am in love with the language system of the aliens in the movie Arrival. Whenever the aliens were asked a question, they responded with an inky circle containing sections that are thicker than others, and lines coming off it. It sounds terrible to describe it with words. The images are stunning. According to imdb.com, Montreal artist Martine Bertrand created each of the circles. Over a hundred of these logograms were created for the movie, creating a complete alien language. The logograms absolutely stunning. I would love to have prints of them to put on my walls. Each logogram denotes an entire response of both words and emotions. I don’t know what each of the logograms specifically mean. I’d have to watch the movie dozens of times or find some way to study the logogram bible to be able to do that, but just looking at them stirs a strong emotion of wonder and hope in me.

Lane’s Favorite Thing is… Archive Of Our Own!

My favorite thing this month (and truthfully, many other months) is fanfiction at Archive of Our Own, which makes fanfiction so damn accessible. I suppose as a novelist, I’m not supposed to love fanfiction, but I really really do.  I love the scope and the possibilities of it. When I’m writing books, a lot of times it feels like I’m collapsing possibilities.  If I write A, then B follows, and all those other possibilities wither away. But fanfiction is about exploring all the possibilities it can wring out of the source material.  If A, then X, Y, Z, and frog plus watermelon! Even if I didn’t enjoy fanfiction for the story, I think I’d enjoy it as a tool for analyzing story elements — plot and character and style.

I could meander on and one about the generalities of fanfiction, but I’d rather give you some specifics. Want a story where the events might as well be canon, but the effect is really different?  Check out Owlet’s This You Protect about what happens if the Winter Soldier remembers Captain America and escapes his programming.  It’s long and wry and eminently quotable.

Or for an alternate take on story canon, you could check out KouriArashi’s Coming Undone, which involves the Teen Wolf characters ending up with a very different and delightfully conceived Alpha.  Or, one of my all time favorites, LTLJ’s Retrograde, which is a novel in its own right, about an Atlantis that lost communication with Stargate Command right after their arrival. Adventurous and plotty and wonderful.

Any thoughts on the selections above? Let us know in the comments.