The Slashy Awards

[Poll] Eeeeeeekonomy.

2009-07-05T04:36:08Z

So, the other day I took the earthling to the mall for walking-around purposes, and every single store except the Cinnabon was having a sale. It was a little scary. And we're looking for a desk right now, and half the local furniture stores are having a sale. The other half are out of business. Friends of mine have been laid off. California's budget looks like it's been hit by asteroids.

I am alarmed. And so I'm wondering about y'all: how are you doing? Poll time!

And, by the way, if you're thinking now might be a good time to get your finances in order, I highly recommend the services of jarrow, who does custom budget spreadsheets for fellow fans (and, I assume, others). The spreadsheets are a) really, really pretty (they look like Monopoly!) b) easy to use and c) cheap. It does not get better than that, people. (Except it does: he also provides instruction and tech support. And emotional support, too, if you need it, like if you find budgeting just way too scary ever to face, or if you hyperventilate every time you think about your bills.) We had been trying to use Quicken for two years, and basically only achieving an ever-growing hatred of Quicken. John's spreadsheet, on the other hand, is totally working for us.

And now, let's talk about you.

View Poll: Economy

195: What Is This Thing You Humans Call 'Star Trek'?

2009-07-03T04:37:20Z

Having a fandom that is public knowledge is weird. I mean, no one ever discussed due South in my presence who wasn't also discussing Fraser's cock. I don't think anyone but fans has even heard of The Sentinel. I know lots of people read comic books, but no one is willing to admit to it at the places where I go. I'm not sure anyone over the age of 15 has ever watched Merlin who didn't want to write fan fiction where someone got it on with someone else. A few people had, presumably, heard of Stargate: Atlantis, but it's not like anyone said anything about it. But Star Trek is - well. Let me tell you a story.

Twice a week, I take the earthling to OT. The pediatric therapy section is part of a unit that also provides therapy to adults. Because I spend a lot of time in the waiting area, I know most of the adult therapists at least vaguely, and I know the names of all the women, because they wear their badges. (So do the men, technically, but they usually clip their badges to a pocket and then put the badge inside the pocket. It's on, but it's not like you can see who they are.) So I have to make up nicknames for the guys.

Once, I was waiting for an elevator with one of the adult PTs and he spontaneously shared with me that it was his first day back at work after some surfing championship thing. "Oh?" I said politely. "How was it?"

"Totally awesome," he said very sincerely, and that was the last thing he said that I understood, although he kept talking all the way up in the elevator and then down the hall. Just before we parted ways, I figured out that he was relating the details of his own performance, with helpful side notes about the condition of the ocean.

"Awesome!" I said, confidant that at least I knew that much of his dialect, and he nodded enthusiastically. I went to the waiting area and he went off to teach a stroke patient to walk, and I started to think of him as Surfer Boy.

But then one day I sat in the waiting area next to a woman in her sixties and her forty-ish companion as they watched Surfer Boy demonstrate one of the weight machines and discussed in great detail what they'd like to do to him. (It started with the younger one saying, "I'd like to sink my teeth into those thighs." "Honey," said the older one as she crocheted something pink, "If I got my mouth on him, I wouldn't waste time on his thighs.") They called him Mr. Hotass throughout their very extensive discussion of his features and probable abilities, and the nickname Surfer Boy just couldn't compete. He is Mr. Hotass forever to me now.

And there's another adult PT who I think of as the Professor, because he reminds me of a professor I had in college - he's very tall, and he wears wire rim glasses, and he's fond of slightly frayed Oxford shirts that in no way match his corduroys or chinos. He, like my college professor, speaks very very quietly. I have never understood a word he's said. (With my college professor, if you didn't get to class in time to get a front row seat, you just studied from the book, copied down the board occasionally, and hoped someone up there was taking good notes.)

And, finally, there is Itsuko. (See? She wears her name tag!) If I had to give her a nickname, it would be PT Fangirl. She is very, very interested in American Idol (she was near tears over Adam Lambert's loss - no, really, there was a small group of sad, hugging women in the hall the next day, and I just thank my friends list, because without y'all I would have thought Adam Lambert was a patient who died) and also those dance shows.

So, the other day the Professor was using the work table, and Mr. Hotass was next to him getting a hot towel out of the big scary steamy hot towel machine that you have to use the Tongs of Giantness on. Itsuko was waiting behind Mr. Hotass. And they had the following conversation:

The Professor: *something inaudible, ending in a questioning tone*
Mr. Hotass: Damn it, Jim, I'm a physical therapist, not a doctor!
[Laughter.]
The Professor: *something inaudible and semi-emphatic sounding*
[Further laughter.]
Itsuko: Fascinating, Captain. Dr. McCoy, if you do not require any additional hot packs, I believe it would be most logical for you to yield your place to me.

And I knew exactly what they were talking about it. I could even make some decent guesses about what the Professor had said, and that has never happened before.

My primary sensation was one of injustice. That was my fandom! They weren't supposed to know about it! I wanted to yank them aside and say, "YOU! Obviously your fandom is surfing. Go back to being incomprehensible about that! Itsuko - okay, you can stay, because really I think you're more than halfway there already. But as for you, Professor, I don't know what your interests are, but I'm betting you're a founding member of the Speak Softly (Stick Optional) Club for Boring Men. STAY AWAY FROM MY FANDOM."

And then I remembered that everyone knows about Star Trek, and in fact basically everyone in the Western hemisphere knows more about Star Trek than I do (because they've seen more than one episode of the series, and probably the movie as well).

Because the thing is, there's so much stuff in Star Trek. It's not just the movie. It's not even the movie and the original series. It's some number of spinoffs, and I don't even know how many. (People, what the hell is Enterprise? Is that the same as TNG? TOS? Is it a whole OTHER series? I would check Wikipedia on this one, but it tends to really enhance my feelings of Star Trek inadequacy.) It's a very large number of novels, many of them, bizarrely, written by people whose names I recognize, some I even know. (And one, apparently, was slash, and no one noticed until after it came out. Oops!) And it's half a fucking century of fans, and fanwank, and people writing long impassioned essays about things like insignia design and the meaning of spaceship numbers. (For the record, I entirely salute this. It's just too much for me to assimilate.)

It's overwhelming, is my point. In a good way! A good way! But I keep turning to Best Beloved and saying things like, "Okay, what is with this t'hy'la thing? It's in every story ever!"

And she says, "I don't know." (Because she hasn't watched all the original Trek. This is a problem, as she is my source of information for all visual media. And she probably won't be seeing the whole series, either. Normally I could buy her a season or two as, like, a subtle hint in the shape of a gift, but have you seen how much those things cost? Too much for a hint, I'll tell you that.)

Or I say to Best Beloved, "Okay. Pon farr. So there was - um, a girl? That Spock didn't marry?"

And Best Beloved, who has in fact seen that episode, says, "Well, yes. She wanted to marry someone else, so she challenged Spock and picked Kirk as her champion - no, I don't know why, so don't ask - and they fought and Spock thought he'd killed Kirk. He was very sad, as I recall. And then she went off and married the other guy."

So I - nimbly avoiding the question she told me not to ask, because I am no fool, say, "What happened with the pon farr, though? Doesn't he have to have sex with someone?"

And she says, "I don't know, but looking back, I'd have to say he and Kirk went somewhere private."

It's also intimidating. I normally eventually get to a place where at least I feel like I can write in a fandom, even if I never actually do, but I don't think that's going to happen here. There's just too much stuff to know. This means, of course, that I will have to sit here and just hope that someone else writes the stories I want to see. Like the story where the reboot universe gets a few more Spocks - like, raised-on-earth Spock, and Captain-of-the-Enterprise Spock, and never-met-Kirk Spock. How many Vulcans can one starship hold? (Oh, like you've never wanted to see a vid to "Part of Your World" for Spock.) LOTS, would be my feeling, and, really. The more Spock, the better.

Which brings me to another embarrassing element of all this. I appear to have developed an OTC. (Yes, I, too, look at those initials and see over the counter. But I refuse to spell it out.) And my OTC is - well, Spock. This is highly distressing! First, I feel like, well, what else have I missed about classic fandom? Will it turn out that my favorite show in the whole entire world is Starsky and Hutch or something? (Just having a favorite TV show would be quite a shock to my system.) But most of all, I feel strangely adrift. I'm usually an OTP kind of girl, and so I know what to read: things with my characters' names on them, and a slash in between. With an OTC, it's different. Because I will happily read Spock paired with basically anyone - Kirk, Uhura, Sulu, his tricorder, the warp cores (although Scotty would kill him if he tried anything), John Sheppard, Jack Sparrow, the Enterprise, a culturally significant and aesthetically pleasing rock, whatever. As well, of course, as any gen in all kinds of quantities

This makes it much harder to read fan fiction. I need to know, in advance, if a story that's gen will contain sufficient Spock, or if it will leave me muttering, "Okay, that was kind of awesome. But, seriously: not enough Vulcans, too many mans." (It's not that I don't like the others. I do. I just - SPOCK. He is everything I ever wanted a character to be! And also telepathic, which I find deeply creepy, but that just adds an edge, you know?) Plus there's ever the danger that I will read a story that ends with a SAD Spock. And I think we all know that a sad Vulcan (grimly repressing all signs of sadness and pretending that it is totally logical to lie on his bed and listen to Fall Out Boy all day) is the very saddest thing of all.

I remain hopeful that I will settle into some kind of stable OTP orbit, though I don't know exactly how that would work. (NO, it is not going to be Spock/Spock. I have limits. Probably.)

And so I am here, overwhelmed (Why isn't there an easy, bullet-point summary? For people who are maybe not up to reading fifty years of, like, Trekian scholarship?) and out of my element (an OTC, seriously; I cannot even cope).

But definitely in the fandom. Eeee! Trek!

The One That Is Everything (Okay, Not Quite, but Still) Wrong with Movies Today. And It's Brilliant. ...On the Dance Floor, by sloanesomething.

This is for that one lone fan out there who didn't know what I was referencing with "not enough Vulcans, too many mans." It's also for anyone who doesn't know Star Trek at all. Or anyone who knows Star Trek but isn't our kind of fan. Because, oh my god, this is so awesome, and I don't care who you are: you will get this. (And if you don't love it, there's just no hope for you.)

Of course, the sad part is that you could use this song for a vid in basically any fandom, except, you know, Xena. But I refuse to think about that! Instead I will think about the joy that this vid brings me. Which is a lot. And it brings it about every ten minutes, because once you start watching this vid, there is no stopping.

(There's also no chance that you'll get through the day without singing this song. It's like heroin for your ears. I just feel I should tell you that now, so you don't blame me later when you sing it in front of your direct supervisor, or your entire family, or, you know, a gathering of Sunday school kids.)

The One That Answers the Question of Who Is Doing All the Unglamorous Work in Starfleet. The First Time, by Afrai, aka bravecows. It's - OFC/OFC? Kind of? That's not really the point, though.

So, having spent quite some time wibbling about my negative reaction to any story not featuring Spock (which, seriously, in my head I want to make that sparkly text, except I know it would be wrong), I'm going to start off by recommending something that is totally Spock-free. And here's the thing: I don't care. This is that good.

What's it about? Well. Let's just say this is meta as well as fan fiction, and you'll get it as you go along, and I can't tell you in advance.

I can say, though, that I love these characters. And I want them to be canon. I want the concepts to be canon. There's something in here that is SO AWESOME and makes so much intuitive sense and yet I cannot think of any visual SF that does it, although of course my reference set is limited - I mean, I haven't even seen all the Star Trek spinoffs.

So I can't tell you what this is about, really. I can just tell you to read. Oh, and I can say that if this story were canon, well, that'd be a step toward correcting the problem the last rec identified.

The One That Features Courtship Via Phonemes. I Mean, I Guess Almost All Courtship Is, but These Are Explicit Phonemes, and, No, I Don't Mean That the Way You Think I Do. Break, by yahtzee63. S'chn T'gai Spock/Nyota Uhura.

This story, on the other hand, has an entirely acceptable amount of Spock. It also has lots and lots of profoundly awesome Uhura. My only complaint about this story is that, once again, I think everyone in the universe has already read it, but I want to rec it, so I will. I've never worried about that problem before, after all.

This is backstory - although that seems like an insulting term for it, really - for the Spock/Uhura relationship in canon, and I looooooove it. (I think most dedicated slashers will love this one. There's enough emotional distance and longing and requited passion, plus just a touch of angst, to satisfy. Or so it was for me.) This has all the elements I need in a story featuring Spock (great seething cauldron of emotion, sternly repressed, occasionally bubbling to the surface while he pretends that, no, there are no disturbances in the core of Planet Spock, which is of course not at all volcanic, no, really, ignore that eruption you hear). And it has a Nyota who is truly an equal character, truly intelligent, and truly human. I could not ask for more.

In fact, this story has made me kind of afraid to see the movie, because if there's one thing I know about big-budget summer action movies, it's that they don't usually provide rich character development and thoughtful, realistic relationships and depth. I am guessing, if this story were canon, most of the words in it would be replaced by something exploding.

The Vid That Teaches Us That Vulcans Are the Real Rough Trade. Or, Okay, Not, but They Sure Do Give New Meaning to Rough Sex. Poker Face, by talitha78. S'chn T'gai Spock/Jim Kirk.

So, um, this vid is pretty much the closest we'll get to an actual canon Kirk/Spock sex scene, or am I the only one seeing that on that screen? No, I can't be.

And, if that is not enough to compel you - this is Spock. Spock! Who has a POKER FACE! Except not, as it turns out, for Kirk. Kirk: the illogical exception to every aspect of Vulcan control! I could not love this more.

PLUS, we get to see the evolution of Spock, from fierce but wee baby Spock to more-Vulcan-than-Vulcan pre-Starfleet Spock to Kill him? Fuck him? Maybe both! Spock-with-Kirk. They are all my favorite Spocks, let me tell you.

And I love that this fandom has been so prolific, with so many excellent vids set to so many songs I would not normally listen to at all. And yet, you know, there's a decent chance I'll end up loving this song. I mean, I watch the vid enough.

(Spoooooooooock. <3 <3 <3 <3!)

(P.S. Anyone know of a good place to get ST icons? I neeeeeed them. Apparently.)

194: It Turns out That I Do, in Fact, Have Time for the Pain.

2009-07-01T04:13:20Z

For the very last Sweet Charity, I put my recommending up on the block, and got won by the deeply awesome dorothy1901. Her first request, sadly, I could not fulfill, for I just don't know enough about Iron Man/Captain America. (I do know, though, that every single person ever anywhere at all should go read this, by jwaneeta, which is AWESOME and INCREDIBLE and looks exactly like a comic book - I actually had to check several times to make sure this wasn’t a scan from Slash World. Incidentally, if this set depresses you, that will be an excellent antidote.)

But she very kindly offered me a choice. And I chose Unhappy Endings, which is the kind of thing I keep meaning to recommend - there are so many brilliant sad-ending stories that I truly want to tell you all about, but when it comes down to it, I don’t. Mostly because I’d have to re-read them, and then there would be pain and suffering. Which is totally the point, and yet - I read fan fiction pretty much only on my Kindle these days, while I’m nursing the earthling, and he does not like it when I cry while he’s eating. (Seriously. He pulls off and gives me this look. “Mama,” the look says. “Do you MIND? I am kind of busy, here, and you’re getting me WET.”)

So thank you, dorothy1901, both for giving to charity and for giving me a good reason to do this.

(People, I am assuming I don’t need to tell you this, but just in case: these stories are NOT HAPPY. There is death involved in some of them, and lots of the kind of thing that leaves your heart all sore. If you read any of these stories, I advise you to have some safety-tab stories at the ready.)

The One That Guaranteed I Could Never Read Anything About Arctic Survival Without Sniffling a Lot. The End of the Road, by katallison. Due South, Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski.

Once upon a time, a young and innocent fangirl was getting into dS. She loved the fandom so much that she was not as wary as she could have been. Should have been. Would one day be. So she saw the warnings on this story and thought, hey, I can totally deal with less than cheery! Particularly in exchange for something so well-written, so good!

And so she read The End of the Road. And it destroyed her.

Now, here's the thing: I could say, "And that fangirl was me." She totally was me. But I'm not the only one who loved Kat's work, thought she'd take any of it that she could get, and then realized, way too late to save herself, that there was only so much reality she could take. This story taught a lot of dS fans of my generation two things:

For god's sake, know your limits. And live them.
Kat Allison can turn a phrase that will carve your soul from your body. Admire her! But fear her.

And I have both admired and feared Kat ever since. (I've also learned that, while The End of the Road is perhaps the ultimate example of her essential Kat-ness, she's written this theme and concept in a number of fandoms. I handle every one of those stories better than I handled this one, because Fraser. And Ray. IN MY HEART THEY ARE HAPPY TOGETHER FOREVER. No, really. Even after they die, they are still together. Probably haunting some poor young relative who cringes every time he opens a closet because he knows there's a fifty-fifty chance he'll walk in on his crazy dead great-uncles fucking on a desk.)

This story is brilliant. And it's heart-breaking, and that's largely because it's so believable, so real. Kat never writes angst. She only writes pain. And this story has brought glorious, glorious pain to many a dS fan. If you love unhappy endings, you'll love it. It doesn’t matter if you read in this fandom. This one's for you.

The One That Would Have Enhanced My Phobia of Telepathy, Except Such a Thing Is Not Actually Possible. Down with Telepathy! Flinch, by maisierita. Stargate: Atlantis. John Sheppard/Rodney McKay. Sort of.

One of my favorite kinds of stories is the kind where the person takes a fan fiction cliché and subverts it, makes it new and awesome. Or, in this case, new and real. This story packs a surprising wallop for something so short, and I think it's because of how well it builds on what I might call, in a different setting, the existing body of literature. And then undercuts it.

Because that's the thing: we know how this story goes! There is embarrassment and worry followed by confessions of true love (unless you just cut straight to the hot hot sex). Yay! Except - well, it doesn't go that way this time. You might say this story perfectly highlights the difference between fan fiction and real life, because this is how that would really go. This is how it would be if telepathy was real. (This is why I fear telepathy, people. No good can come of it, no matter how much joyous happy fucking and forever love comes from it in fan fiction. In the real world, knowing what people think can only destroy you.)

I remember reading this story two years ago, when it first came out, and being surprised and impressed and thinking maisierita would be one to watch, because she manages to pack a lot of pain into this, subtly and without force or angst or melodrama, and anyone who can do that can write. And I was right! She's fabulous. I just think it's kind of funny that, despite all the great stuff she's written that I've read, this story will always be what I associate with her name.

The One That Shows Us That There Are Some Things You Just Can't Share, No Matter How Much You Might Want To. (And Totally Improves by Approximately a Million Times on an Episode of SGA.) The Standard of Comparison, by agentotter. Stargate: SG-1, Jack O'Neill/Daniel Jackson.

The thing is, SG1 has a lot of stories I could have picked for this set. I was totally spoiled for choice. (Partly this is because I can handle sadder stories in SG1 than I can in other fandoms. Partly this is just because the world ends an awful lot in this fandom, and any story in which the human race is extinct at the end is probably going to fit in an unhappy endings set. At least if you’re human, and I tend to assume, perhaps unfairly, that most people reading this LJ are.) I mean, I thought of this story right off the bat, as soon as I'd read dorothy1901's request, but I decided to do Important Research. So I re-read approximately 5 million SG1 stories, sniffling many times over each, and finally decided to go with my first instinct.

What can I say? It's another one that has stayed with me. And I love the way the unhappiness just unspools from the ending. It's not just that it ends unhappily, it's that things are definitely going to get worse. Jack and Daniel are stuck in a bad place, and the only solution to the problem is worse than the bad place. But they can't just choose to stay there, either.

Because I am that kind of person, I usually spend a few minutes writing a sort of mental fan fiction for any story I read that I really liked. (I've doing this since I was a kid. I wanted to know what happened to every single person in a book from the ending until forever. And then I wanted to know about their kids. It drove me nuts that the authors just left the characters there, when clearly there were unresolved questions! Like what they had for dinner the next day, and what happened when they grew up, and if they got a dog and what they named that dog. I think I was a fan fiction reader born, not made.)

But I can't do that with this one. It hurts too much. I'd rather leave Jack and Daniel in limbo forever than imagine what has to come next for Daniel. And for someone who was deeply, sincerely resentful of Charles Dickens for not going into sufficient detail, that's saying something.

The One That Teaches Us the True Meaning of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. Inextricable, by lunabee34. Star Trek Reboot, Jim Kirk/S'chn T'gai Spock (Apparently that is his real full name - thanks, bluemeridian. And thus we see that even Spock could not escape the Alien Apostrophe Law. Apparently being half-human doesn't help. Also, does anyone but me wonder how he can have a name unpronounceable by humans if his mother was human?)

So. This whole story is basically one huge movie spoiler. I'm cutting here for anyone who hasn't seen the movie yet and wants to, even though I think I am the last such person in existence. (People on MARS have seen this movie by now.) I am also cutting, while I'm at it, for spoilers for the story.

This is a short story that packs a painful wallop. And, see, that makes sense. The canon situation that Jim Kirk is in - well, it's a good thing he's basically a happy-go-lucky guy (or, okay, not exactly, but he's not going to be a secret cutter, either; if has some frustrations or angst he needs to get out, by god he'll blow things up). Because, uh, having a memory of an awesome future that won't be yours: this is not a recipe for joy. This is a recipe for lying in a darkened room and listening to whiny music and telling your friends there's no point in doing anything, because you can't live up to yourself. I would not blame Kirk for that.

Not that he's doing that in this story. Instead, he's trying to take what he can. I totally approve. It's just sad, is all. There's a happy ending here for lots of people - for Reboot Spock, and Uhura, and probably Sulu and Chekov and Scotty, too. Even Spock Prime, I would argue.

But not for Jim Kirk, who gets to know he should have had something very wonderful, that he desperately wants. Except that it's never going to happen. (And he can't even wish for it to happen, since it would require, you know, hurting his friends.)

I don't believe that this is how things work for Jim Kirk. But even so, I can totally believe in this story. And I love it for that. Even thought it makes me sad. And that’s pretty much the whole point of this set, isn’t it?

193: Something Random

2009-06-24T05:49:46Z

Here are some things I felt like recommending! Seriously, that's the whole theme, here.

(Side note: If you wonder, as I sometimes do, why our entertainment products appear to be made by straight white men for straight white men, you might want to read this or, if you can, donate a little something to a woman filmmaker.)

The One That Makes Me Wonder Why No One Ever Covered Safe Mind-Melding in My Middle School and High School Sex Ed Classes. Did They Not Care About My Health and Safety? You'll Get There in the End (It Just Takes a While), by seperis. Star Trek Reboot, Jim Kirk/Spock. (Does Spock have a first name? A last name? And why is it Spock, when all other Vulcans seem to be named things like T'Pippi and T'Eppic and T'Pain and T'Eyla?)

So. These days, I do most of my fan fiction reading on my Kindle, which means a delay of anything up to five years (not really) between finding the story and getting it read. (People who write long stories and put them all on one page with no tables: I love you forever. Many times my will has just broken faced with twelve or fourteen separate posts to consolidate.) While this story was waiting to be converted to Kindle format, I went to an OTW committee meeting in which it was described as, "Everything you'd ever want from a pon farr story." (This is why OTW is more fun than any other non-profit in the world. You get recs along with your work. Also, we tend to end most meetings talking about tentacle porn; if we ever get committee mascots, ours will be a tentacle waving proudly, possibly clutched around a big shiny coin.)

Obviously, that booted the priority waaaaaay up. I mean, I don't even have any wants from a pon farr story, or I didn't - I only actually know what pon farr is because of a) Killa and T. Jonesy's vid and b) because people talk about, like, vid farr and fic farr and so I had to get a précis from Best Beloved a while back. But it doesn't matter, because that is so totally right: this is everything I never even knew I wanted from a pon farr story. And, having read it, I want several million more. I totally understand how this whole slash thing got started, now.

(Also, I don't know if this is canon or Reboot or just fanon, but I love how Spock is, in this story, all, I am totally the least emotional person on the planet la la la logic is my only guiding force, and he's actually totally faking it. Because you cannot tell me he's not making emotional decisions here. He's just, you know, putting a logical face on it. As far as I can tell, Vulcans aren't emotionless, they're just bringing new depth to the concept of repression. No wonder fandom loves them so much.)

The One That Makes Me Think We Should Institute a Program of Mandatory Homosexuality for Los Angeles Police Officers. Apparently It Makes Them Eaiser to Deal with, and God Knows That Would Be a Very Welcome Change. Son Is on a Midnight Run Like DeNiro, by hackthis. Southland, John Cooper/Ben Sherman.

(First, an important note. When I rule the universe, there will be a 25 year moratorium on naming fictional characters John or Jack, and anyone who tries to use either name will have his character named by me, instead, and I can tell you right now that the first one is going to be Gervase. I have had it with this. There are baby name books for a reason, television writers! How hard is it to find a name that doesn't already belong to a major character in every other time slot? Not hard at all. Just pick something that isn't John or Jack. Seriously: Evil Overlord TFV forbids fictional Johns and Jacks. Unless your main character is a girl, and then you can name her John J. Jackson III if you want to.)

Okay. I really needed to say that. But, aside from the John Issue (NO MORE JOHNS EVER I MEAN IT OR IT'S THE SALAD MINES FOR YOU), I kind of love this canon. I mean, I have no idea what it is - the lovely qe2 told me that it's about a canonically gay cop in LA, but that's where my knowledge ends. He could be a canonically gay robot cop in a post-apocalyptic LA populated mostly by centaurs and monkeys, for all I know.

Although in that case, this would be an AU. Because one of the many things I love about this story is - okay. I live in Los Angeles. And this is Los Angeles. I can picture these places! I have driven down that street! I would kill Ben Sherman and eat his corpse to own his house! (No, not really, but I can find you a thousand people who would.) I have no idea if hackthis lives here or if she does really awesome research (I suspect the latter, mostly because I have long suspected that she lives in a secret space habitat orbiting the earth, where she creates superplants and bends them to her will), but either way: oh my god, this is SO Los Angeles. And I love it.

And I love these characters even more. (Yes, even though one of them is named John. I am prepared to forgive even that. This time. Next time, though, it is Gervase for sure.) This is a classic slash epic, involving a main character who is broken (but getting better) and grouchy (but well-meaning) and hot totally despite himself, and I love that.

And I also love, let me add, that the younger, inexperienced partner here is totally the sexual aggressor, and does none of that virginal squeaking that we sometimes see. He's all: yes, I want to do this, now let's get some cocks in play, sir. I deeply, deeply love that. I can't tell you how much.

The One That Will, for the Next Ten Years or So, Make You Snicker Helplessly Anytime Anyone Suggests Purchasing a Shag Rug. And Then Argue That Sex Toys Should Not Come out of the House Maintenance Budget. Hi, I'm Captain Jack Harkness, by frostfire_17. Star Wars x Torchwood, Chewbacca/Jack Harkness.

I am going to sit back for a bit and let that pairing sink in. Now, after it has sunk in but before you run away screaming, I'm going to share with you my own thought process when I saw this:

Me: I, um. Wookiee [and why does my spellchecker know Chewbacca but not Wookiee?]/human sex? Um. I really don't think...
Me: But it's Frostfire, though. She can make me like any pairing. I mean, okay, she's never challenged my limits this much, but...
Me: And if anyone was going to do it, it'd be Captain Jack Harkness.
Me: Oh, who am I kidding? I'm going to read this.

And I did. And I was very, very glad I did. I mean, it would be worth reading just for the introduction, with its slightly frantic explanation of how she came to write this (and, even though she posted it for Kink Bingo, Kink Bingo is not to blame; she just sat down one day and decided to write this of her own free will, and I really had not believed I could love her more, but that did it), but it gets even better than that. It's Jack! And Chewbacca! And Jack so totally would do Chewbacca, and I can't even blame him (although the thought of all that hair touching me makes me want to claw my own skin off, but Jack does not have my issues, or, at this point in his canon, any actual issues that I can tell). And I totally have to congratulate Jack for having the good sense to pick out the best sentient being in the room.

But most of all, I love this story because it made me realize that Jack Harkness isn't kinky. Kinky, to me, requires that you have an unusual focus on one - or several - areas of sexual interest. (Fur! Bondage! Opera glasses and bouffant hairdos! Whatever.) Jack has no special focus whatsoever - he's equally interested in all fields of sexual endeavor. His preference is, basically, any way you want it. Which means that to me Jack Harkness is the definition of vanilla. Obviously I need to work on my terms a bit.

The One That Teaches Us That If You're Going to Do a Spurious Magical Ritual, You Should Do It Outside. Preferably While Armed with Electric Cattleprods, Just in Case. Accidents Will Happen, by holli. Supernatural, gen.

Oh, adolescence. A time of rebellion! A time of unfortunate fashion choices! A time when you accidentally bring the dead back to life in your parents' basement!

Okay, maybe that didn't happen to you. It didn't happen to me, either. But I did once spend four extremely boring hours listening to the angst of a guy who was absolutely convinced he was possessed by a ghost. I had mono, and I was in no mood, and I ended up faking an exorcism just to get him to shut up and let me sleep. (Seriously: I took my middle school Latin - yes, I did say "amo, amas, amat" at one point, so thank you for that, Mrs. Scher - and some candles and some assorted cooking herbs and spices and unpossessed him. And the lesson here is: don't get between a sick person and her bed.) If I'd been living in the world of Supernatural, probably I would have ended up desouling him or something.

I just love this story, and I love these characters - I think I used to know them, in fact - and most of all I love the perspective this provides on the Supernatural universe. Because, sure, there are badass demon hunters with magical guns and magical cocks (I may be wrong about the magical guns, but I can cite several million stories on the magical cocks thing), but there must also be lots of suburban girls with random superpowers. (Also, I bet fire insurance is a bitch to get in the SPN world. And every year good actuaries probably go mad, tearing at their hair and shrieking, "But my predictions should have been correct!")

And let me finish this with a helpful hint for any teenagers reading this: if you accidentally summon a big unconscious naked guy, for the love of god lock him up and call someone. Do not talk to him. Do not get him a blanket. Do not look directly at him unless you're absolutely sure he's out cold. That kind of situation is the definition of something you want to be someone else's problem.

[Poll] Some of your favorite things?

2009-06-22T00:55:35Z

A few weeks ago, Best Beloved was at her library talking to a patron. The patron explained that she was in a big hurry to go out and buy a new TV, because her main TV had broken, and she had another TV that was just as good, but she felt weird not having a backup. (Keep in mind that this patron lives alone.)

Best Beloved was surprised by this. When she relayed it to me, I was also surprised. But then, we are not exactly normal in our relationship to television. (For Best Beloved, it's like an old friend who she's always happy to see, but rarely actually does see. For me, it's like an acquaintance who leads a fascinating life in a distant land and occasionally takes a break from it to come to my house and punch me in the mouth.)

Fortunately, I know a large group of people who have, if not a normal relationship with television, at least a more normal one. So I thought I'd ask you about this backup TV thing. Plus some other nosy questions about technology, because I care enough to be inappropriately curious about your life!

View Poll: Televisions

I guess I should have known hell would be full of paperwork.

2009-06-12T05:58:49Z

We're buying a house. Or we're trying to. This is a process that appears to be designed to teach you the folly of wanting to buy a house.

And the thing is, we already HAVE a house. We bought this one ten years ago, and the process was, okay, a little terrifying for first-time buyers, but it was nothing like this. The wrinkles that have been added in that decade:

They used to make you sign a stack of papers roughly the same size as War and Peace. (And you had to sign every single page.)

Now, they make you sign (and sometimes also initial) every piece of paper in the world. We have twice - TWICE - had to sign a document indicating our understanding of the fact that people can farm. Not us, mind you. Just - people. Other people. Somewhere. They have the right to farm, and now we know it. After all, we signed a document saying we know it. Twice. (The Realtor who represented us when we bought our current house, who I miss more and more with every passing day, told us, "Every piece of paper you sign, that's a lawsuit." From this, I can conclude that every person in the state of California except us spent the last ten years filing property-related lawsuits.)
They used to give you all the papers in one big batch. This was scary, and also funny, because, see, I read everything I sign. It's like a sickness; I can't help myself. (I also read the agreements when I install software. There are some great lines in there, people, and I think I may be the only one reading them, because obviously the middle parts are written mostly to entertain the authors. I'm talking primarily about the parts with explosions.) Most people apparently don't, because last time, when we went to our Big Festival of Signing Documents, it took us hours and hours in the little conference room. Our escrow officer kept returning and asking if we had any questions. Or if anything was wrong. Or if we...needed anything. Every time she came back, the furrow between her brows was deeper and her voice was a little higher-pitched.

Now, there are a few huge sets, but mostly they send you the documents in little batches. Every day. For months. So you get a full day to reflect on someone else's right to farm, and also the fact that you are not located in a flood plain, and also that you are indeed living in Los Angeles, where, it turns out, there are sometimes earthquakes. Then, the next day, you get to meditate mindfully on sixteen separate pages that basically say, "Hey, you're going to have to pay for this, you know." (You have to sign all sixteen, and also initial pages two and eleven, and the need to initial will not be obvious, and will require a further round of faxing.) This turns the Big Festival of Signing Documents into the Endless March through Document Hell.
They used to use technology - well, if not for good, at least not for evil. The last time we looked for a house, our Realtor would email us the current listings that matched our criteria, and we'd email her back with a list of the ones we wanted to see. Beyond that, there really wasn't any technology involved except the telephone. And the laser printer.

Now, though, it's not so much with the email. (We can, after all, do all our own searching of the MLS, right there on a million websites.) It's the faxing. Apparently, there's a law that says that every one of the documents we have to sign (remember: all the paper in the WORLD) has to be faxed at least three times or we're not allowed to buy the house. And we do not own a fax, because I won't buy a machine unless it has at least one function I actually look forward to using, so this means a lot of me chauffeuring documents around town like I gave birth to them.

My basic response to this whole joyous process has been twofold:

Somewhere very early on, I lost sight of the house altogether. We've visited it a few times, sure, but we've spent easily three thousand times the hours with the documents than we have with the actual house. As a result, I keep forgetting that eventually we will supposedly, you know, have a new house. Instead, I dream of the day when we won't have any more documents to sign. I imagine that this will be nice for me in the future, in that if we ever actually do get the house, I will be delighted - a house! When I was only expecting a significant reduction in the amount of paper in my life! - but right now it sucks.
I spend a lot of time playing Realty Roulette. This is where I think of a place we could conceivably live - Iowa City, Iowa! Pittsfield, Massachusetts! Manchester, New Hampshire! (and rock on, marriage rights states, for giving me more places to play with) - and then I go to realtor.com to see what kind of house we could get there for what we're paying here. (By the way, if any of you knows of a real estate listings site for, like, Canada or New Zealand, that would really help me expand my Realty Roulette.) Since I never check San Francisco or New York City, the answer is always: a lot more than we can get here. A lot. Acres of land! Lakefront property! Historic homes gorgeously remodeled! Enough bedrooms for us to have five more kids! (Not that we would, mind you.) Enough square footage to host every fangirl in the state of Iowa simultaneously!

And then sometimes I get really crazy - this is especially on the days when the house-buying process is so horrible that I am ready to go live in a tent in the wilderness, like, how hard could it be to baby-proof the great outdoors? NOT AS HARD AS BUYING A HOUSE, let me tell you. On those days, I go check out real estate in areas where I know we will be able to afford a palace. Turns out, for example, we could pretty much buy all of Flint, Michigan. Not that we'd want to - no one wants to, which is the problem, as I understand it - but we could. We could get together with some other like-minded folks, take over the town, and turn it into the Fannish Oasis! And then my mind spirals off into the awesome library we will have (it will have a zine section and a dedicated archives computer and a children's wing with only non-poisonous toys, and reading groups dedicated to classic badfic and cliches), and the awesome hotel we will build for cons, and the community garden, and eventually I've managed to forget about the fact that I am once again going to get into my car, with my car-hating child, and drive to Best Beloved's work to get her signature on documents that must be signed today or the world will fall into the hellmouth. Or so the email from the Realtor suggests.

Anyway. Today was an awful day, a new low in house-buying. (Anyone want to move to Flint with us?) So I developed a new mental escape, which consists mostly of imagining how various characters from various fandoms would handle this. Like, all those stories in which, say, John and Rodney buy a beachfront house in California? Not going to happen. When they get the document from the title company (and this assumes they won't need a mortgage, by the way) that requires them to list everywhere they've lived for the last ten years, what will they put? A basement in Colorado? Abducted by aliens? I bet they don't sell houses to people who are missing five years of their lives. I mean, we've lived in the same place for ten years, and there's some question about whether or not they'll sell to us.

Benton Fraser would probably carefully, correctly fill out every single form, returning it precisely as indicated, having read and thoughtfully considered each one. And then have a wild bout of hysterical blindness which could only be cured by the repeated application of snow. Canadian snow. (It cannot possibly be this hard to buy a house in Canada. Canadians are sane, right?)

And I don't know the Supernatural boys that well, but I'm guessing they'd either shoot someone or exorcise the whole damn realty profession no later than ten days into any attempted home purchase.

Anyone else have suggestions for how fannish people might handle this? I would be interested to know, because maybe there's a coping method I could borrow that's better than my current one, which consists of:

Fantasize, with the help of realtor.com.
Eat mint chocolate UFOs.
Cry.

(And, yes, I've already considered switching to exorcism. Does anyone know how to draw a pentagram around the state of California? I can't be the first person to have wanted to do this.)

192: Be Cheerful, Sweet Maid, and Let Those Who Will Be Gloomy

2009-06-07T16:39:36Z

I have been patiently plugging away on my Sweet Charity recommendations set, which happens to feature unhappy endings, so I've also been spending a lot of time - really a lot of time - watching vids that make me happy. And I figured, hey, why not put together a set of those, too? You guys may need the antidote after the unhappy endings set comes out.

And while we're talking about unhappy endings: Best Beloved and I planned to buy life insurance a year ago. And we, um, didn't, largely because it's hideously intimidating. But we've finally accepted that we have to, whether we would rather just have oral surgery or not, and we've also finally realized that possibly there is a person out there who actually knows about life insurance, who can provide us with advice that doesn't come coated in a layer of ooze. (Why YES, we are in fact afraid of life insurance salesmen. Does it show?) So: life insurance advice, anyone?

The One with the Deeply Symbolic Model Spaceship. No, Really. DEEPLY SYMBOLIC. Don't Stop Believing, by arefadedaway. Star Trek.

I love it when a new fandom hits big, because then you get vids like this. I'm sure there's an official term for them that I don't know, but I think of them as zeitgeist vids, and they are fun. They're like all the enthusiasm and sudden-onset glee - that same first flush of fannish love that keeps people up all night reading stories they know will be terrible because they just Need More Spock, or whoever - rendered in vid form.

Zeitgeist vids pretty much always get me into a fandom. I am helpless in their grasp. I, of course, have not seen this source - the last movie I saw in theaters was Iron Man, and probably the next one will be Star Trek 11 - but it doesn't matter. I am prepared to buy what this vid is selling. Kirk! Just a city boy! Spock! A small town girl! They take a midnight train going anywhere! See, I am already giddy with love and joy and fannish enthusiasm.

It used to be that my OTPs were set in stone by the first five stories I read in a fandom; these days, it's the vids I see before I read even one story, more often than not. And by the end of this vid, and the other - um, what are the official initials for this fandom? It's so new I haven't seen a consensus yet! - anyway, after this and the other zeitgeist vids in whatever fandom this happens to be, I am prepared to ship Kirk/Spock. Unless someone can point me to a seriously bouncy Spock/Uhura or Kirk/McCoy or whatever vid. (And let me tell you how proud I am of knowing those names: SO PROUD, because one of the downsides of zeitgeist vids is that they often leave me saying, "I love you! Whoever you are! You are shiny and awesome, and, wow, I guess I'd better hit the IMDb.")

The One with the Cleanest Medieval Peasant Village I Ever Did See. Beverly Hills, by giandujakiss. Merlin.

It's the old, old story: a small town girl, living in a lonely world - no, wait. Wrong vid. This old, old story is about a small town boy who goes to the Big Shiny and uses magic, often totally inappropriately, and saves the world from time to time, and spends most of the rest of his time falling in love. This is a deeply classic narrative - I dare you say otherwise, given the enormous body of Harry Potter fan fiction I can bring to support my case - and I love it.

And so I love this vid. It was one of the very first Merlin vids I saw, and it made me love the fandom. (Why, yes, I am a sucker for vids. It is not my fault; I blame - I don't know. laurashapiro, actually. She encouraged me.) I deeply approve of young-man-big-city narratives, particularly when the big city has turrets. And, yes, I am in fact talking about Arthur, there, because you can't tell me he doesn't spend a lot of time admiring his turrets, and you also can't tell me Merlin isn't secretly doing the same.

This vid takes fabulous advantage of Merlin's ability to look gormless while simultaneously profoundly judging those around him. I admire it greatly. And the opening makes me smile every single time.

The One That Conveys the Fundamental Joy of Being Able to Stop Time and Teleport, Which Is a Thing You Would Think People Would Just Know, but It's Amazing How Often They Act Like It's a Big Burden. Sawatte Kawatte, by laurashapiro. Heroes.

I think of this as the Happy Heroes Vid. No, really. Every Heroes vid I download seems to consist of a) people getting their brains eaten and then lying around dead with no skull on or b) a girl killing herself (or sometimes just mutilating herself) horribly and bloodily. Sometimes it's both. In the vids, if you don't know the fandom, it looks like Heroes is largely about people using their superpowers to cause tons of bloodshed and draw comic books, and the thing is, you don't need superpowers to do those things. Humans manage that just fine without any special abilities at all! A knife and a pen and you're all set!

Which is why I love the characters in this vid, and am sad that in so many vids they are Sirs Not Appearing in This Vid. The one guy has superpowers and actually does things with them, and I mean things that don't in any way involve anyone bleeding and/or dying horribly. (Okay, he does seem to have a sword, but I bet he doesn't go around lopping people's heads off and having their brains out like some mutant zombie Highlander.) He saves people! He does neat tricks! He has fun! It's like he actually understands what superpowers are for. I cannot help but feel, watching this vid, that the main character of it watched the SF movies and read the comic books, and all the other people in the show grew up on an unadulterated diet of horror.

So I like that. It's a Heroes vid that makes me happy. And even more happy-making is the sheer joy of these two guys together. They are two sides of the same coin, to quote almost every other fandom in this set. They neeeeeeed each other. And when they hug, my heart turns handsprings. It is that simple.

The One Featuring the Most Fabulous Group of People You'd Shoot in Preference to Spending Any Time with Them. I'll Be There for You, by dualbunny. Black Books.

I will be perfectly honest: I have no idea if this vid will work for you if you haven't seen an episode of Black Books. (I myself have seen the first one, which puts me in an unusual and, frankly, uncomfortable place of Actual Canon Knowledge.) But give it a try anyway, and if it doesn't make you giggle, watch the first episode of Black Books and then come back. It's worth it.

See, okay. First, this song. It's - now, it's not like I don't like it, but it's a bit goopy, you know? Whenever I hear it, I visualize a lot of hugging. It is obviously talking about the kind relationship wherein party A automatically has tissues before party B has even started to cry. (And they watch the same sad movie almost every Friday night, so that's not such a huge surprise.) I admire that kind of relationship! I do! Just, you can only take so much of hugging and thoughtfulness.

Which is why I find that song used for these people to be awesome, because they're the kind of friends who, if they settled down to watch a tearjerker movie after one of them had had a big breakup, would end up accidentally setting the crying person on fire. And then Bernard would light a cigarette from the flames.

And, actually, I think that comes through very clearly in this vid whether you know the source or not, so I've changed my mind: I do recommend it for the source-unfamiliar. Just keep in mind that there are three main characters in the show: Bastard, Hapless, and In Any Other Group, She'd Be the Crazy Girl, but in This One, She's the Voice of Reason. And enjoy.

Driving Shame

2009-05-19T19:05:19Z

Our neighbor across the street is a very fine man who should just not drive. Ever. Once, as Best Beloved watched in bemused astonishment, he backed his SUV-type-car smack into the little red sports car he loves but almost never drives (because he has kids). He just - he put that car in reverse and hit the accelerator and did not stop until there was a CRUNCH sound. And then the sports car had to go away for a few weeks.

Twice, he's managed to back out of his driveway and somehow hit his lawn instead of the street. Twice. And I don't mean just brushing his lawn with a single wheel; he backed right straight across its lovingly-maintained greenness and dropped into the street off the curb with a resounding, car-shaking thump. And that's just what we've seen, and it's not like we watch him every minute, or even most minutes. (I will admit that I've thought occasionally that a webcam pointed at the front of his house would be bound to yield interesting results.)

It has reached the point where, if we're anywhere on the street and we see him getting into his car, we retreat at least fifty meters and try to put a solid barrier between him and us. And then we watch, because we know it will be good. (On Sunday, we had a 5.0 Richter scale earthquake. When it started, we were bathing the earthling, and as the house shook we looked at each other and said, "Either it's an earthquake or the neighbor just backed into our house.")

Best Beloved finds this pathetic. He's a nice man, he's successful, he has nice kids and a nice partner and a nice life, but when he goes into reverse, he takes his life and his insurance premiums in his hands. I, on the other hand, am entirely sympathetic, and here's why.

When I took driver's ed, I had never been behind the wheel of a car. I couldn't be covered by my parents' insurance until I had a learner's permit, and I couldn't get that until I had driver's ed, and to my parents, that meant that I could not so much as sit in the driver's seat. Which, fine. I doodled through several boring lectures and averted my eyes through many gruesome movies. And then came my big day. I showed up at the "range," which was an old motocross course the driver's ed people had bought and used to break in their students before they inflicted them on the actual public streets. And I expected I would learn how to drive.

Except. What happened was, we were all put in cars and told to just - go. No instructor in the car; he sat in a little tower and shouted at us through a radio. No instruction in, you know, how to drive. And everyone else was fine with that; they climbed into their cars like old pros and went. So I tried to, and I did fine. Until we were ordered to put our cars in reverse. Everyone else backed neatly and efficiently from one orange cone to another. I backed the car straight into a ditch. And I mean into that ditch. I couldn't get it out. The instructor couldn't get it out. Later, they had to bring a giant crane in to get it out. I am totally not kidding.

As I got out of my butt-down, teetering car and walked in shame back to the waiting area, the instructor yelled at me, "Why didn't you TELL me you didn't know how to drive?" And I didn't know what to say. It was my first range session. Of course I didn't know how to drive. I couldn't figure out how all those other people did. Didn't their parents worry about their insurance?

Anyway. Several years later, I was in college, and I was relating this story to a group of friends, as I have done many many times because it's one of those humiliations I cannot stop replaying in my head (especially, oh god, the jump down from the elevated driver's seat, and the long hot walk while everyone stared at me from their non-ditched cars, and the half-hour miserable wait while everyone else drove), and one of the people in the group sat bolt upright. "That was YOU?" he said. "They told us about you! You're FAMOUS!"

He took driver's ed two years after I did. They were still telling the tale of the girl who didn't know how to drive and backed into a ditch and they had to get a crane to get the car out. For all I know, they're telling it even now. It was yet another time in my life when I got to be the Horrible Example.

So I can relate to our neighbor. I haven't backed into a ditch in many years - really, it was just the once - but I still flinch every time I shift into reverse.

And the thing is, as we were talking about it, Best Beloved disclosed her own reverse shame story - one she had not previously told anyone, not even me, even though we've been married more than fifteen YEARS. I will not relate it here on the extremely off chance that the owner of other car reads this. (Also, she would hurt me.) And I shared with her a story I had never told anyone before, about how I hit the mailbox and knocked the whole thing into the street and didn't notice and a neighbor picked it up and put it on our lawn and my parents thought it was the victim of mailbox baseball (a popular pastime where I grew up) and cursed a little bit and then my father put it back up. And I never told them otherwise.

So we shared these stories, and then I started wondering how many other people have driving shame stories to share. (By "driving shame," I don't mean "I never use my turn signals." I mean, like, "I forgot to put the parking brake on and it rolled into the street and sat there for hours, forcing all our neighbors, as they returned from work, to drive into someone else's driveway to get around it.") I'm hoping it's not just Best Beloved and me and the guy across the street who have these stories. I mean, I can think of five of them right off the bat, including one that scares me more now remembering it than it did when I did it.

And the thing is, these are all more terrifying now, because we have the earthling. It's one thing to look back in shame; it's entirely another thing to be looking ahead in horror.

So: do you have any driving shame stories? I want to hear them! Not only will I feel less like an idiot (I backed into the ditch oh my god); I will also have a great resource to show the earthling in about 16 years, when he asks why he can't get a license.

Eight Days of Happiness: Metafic

2009-05-11T05:32:30Z

It's the last day of happiness! Not that I don't plan to be happy tomorrow, but I probably won't be posting about it. The meme is done.

Here's what I learned: man, I don't have time to post every day. If you posted this week, I almost certainly missed it, because it was all I could do to get these up and reply to a few comments. (I will honestly try to get to the rest very soon. But posting had to come first! Well, after the earthling, I mean.) I miss you folks! I miss your lives and wit and wisdom and random posts about cats! You're pretty much my entire social life that doesn't involve a charming but pre-verbal baby. In the future, I will cling to you much harder. There will be squeezing involved. Some of you may pop. Sorry.

But, on the other hand, this was tons of fun. I got to post things not in sets, things I couldn't fit in sets, sets that were too small or too weird or whatever. I posted things that were not polished and things that maybe made no sense, and I did not feel bad. And, most of all, I got to express my love for fandom, which makes me so very very happy.

I love you all! You bring me joy! And the eight days are up. Maybe next year I'll try for fourteen, but until then, I'm going back to once in a blue moon posting. But first: metafic.

The One That Hurts and Heals. And Notice I Did Not Type That "Heels." General Wrongness in the Hub, by travels_in_time. Torchwood.

The sad part is that every single time I read this, I have this moment where I flinch away from the screen and try to remember why I bookmarked something that's so horribly, horribly - oh, right. It's metafic, and it's supposed to be that way! And then I return to reading a much happier person.

No. The really sad part is that I've seen every mistake in this story made so many times that I have some kind of post-grammatic stress syndrome going on in my head that makes me twitch convulsively each time I read this. Because, see, the author is not exaggerating at all here, and that's the true tragedy.

But also the source of the humor, of course. And it's awesome to be reminded that all these errors can be corrected! The universe can be saved!

Relatedly: hug your betas, people. And then hug other people's betas. They save us from so very much humiliation and agony.

The One Where We Learn That Fandom Has a Big Black Cock. I Can't Say I'm Totally Shocked. Making up Is Hard to Do, by china_shop. Fandom/LJ.

Haven't we all, at one point or another, snapped, "Oh, suck my cock, LJ" at the computer screen? Or, if we haven't, maybe we should. I mean, I never knew I wanted to see Fandom topping LJ, but clearly -

Oh, god. There's no way to write this rec, because it goes well past the familiar if occasionally awkward fields of double entendre and all the way to the somewhat less familiar climes of meta-within-a-recommendation-of-a-meta-piece. There's too much meta on my screen right now! My fingers cannae take much more o' this, captain! (Trek fans: did I, uh, do that right? I'm not fluent in your in jokes, but I'm trying.)

Anyway. This is surprisingly hot, considering it's, you know, Fandom/LJ, and it's also surprisingly compelling - I care about the characters an awful lot, given that they are not exactly my usual sort. And it's totally appropriate to the time when it was written (two years ago). But I do wonder, when I read it now, how a story like this would look now. I am guessing Fandom would be negotiating a polyamorous relationship with LJ and IJ and her new sweetheart, DW. (But part of her would want to stay monogamous and cleave only unto LJ! And part of her would want to leave his skanky ass for good! She'd be torn, is my point. Poor, poor Fandom. Thank god for feeds.)

The One in Which Burton Guster Gets Outed. No, Not Like That. Worse. Gus Goes for the Gold Star, by liviapenn. Psych.

It's a Yuletide story about Yuletide. It had to happen, and it's just totally brilliant that it happened with Burton Guster. (Side note: am I the only person who desperately wants to see a crossover between Leverage and Psych? I just think Hardison and Gus would like each other. Unless they got into a vicious argument over Horde v. Alliance, I mean. And although I don't know either fandom well, I sort of suspect that Parker is Shawn's kryptonite.)

Gus, in this story, out-nerds me with ease - I have no idea who Ben Sisko is. Also, of course, I've never won a gold star in Yuletide. (I try! I do! But there are extenuating circumstances. Yes, every single year. Yuletide is hard.) And he does it with such style. The man has special lucky writing socks. Maybe if I had special lucky writing socks, I too could get a gold star.

Or not. But Gus can. And I generally cringe at fandom-within-fan-fiction - it often just does not work all that well, and usually I prefer that the characters stay in their world and out of mine. But Gus just seems to fit right in with the Yuletide madness.

And he deserves a gold star, damn it.

Eight Days of Happiness: Alternate Universes

2009-05-10T00:25:08Z

I love alternate universes. Good ones, that is. I just got finished trying to read an original fiction author's hideous, horrible attempt to write an AU of her own (published) work, and it made me appreciate fandom even more than I usually do.

You people have a deft hand with the AU, and I love you for it. It's not just that I could count on virtually every author I love to get a supernormal powers AU (the kind the published author failed failed failed at) exactly right; it's that most of you have already gotten it right, and then graduated to things like random inanimate objects or apocalypses or everyone is one inch high and lives in the walls of a castle AUs.

So here I celebrate two of my very favorite kinds of AUs: the kind where someone is a robot, and the kind where they all have different jobs. Yay AUs! That are written by people who know how to write them!

The One with Baby Robots. Baaaaaaaby Robots. Why Is There Not a Community Dedicated to Pictures of Baaaaaaaby Robots? Muscle and Blood and Skin and Bones, by Leah, one half of leahwoof. Stargate: Atlantis, mostly gen with background John Sheppard/Rodney McKay.

I have a well-documented, possibly unholy fondness for robots. Particularly for turning characters into robots. Not like the Buffybot, though. No. More just like - what if John Sheppard was really a robot? What if Rodney McKay was? (And, huh. I don't think I've seen any Rodney is a robot stories. Am I just forgetting some? He has a brain like a computer! What if it WAS a computer?) So, of course, I've already recommended Male Enhancement (The Soul and the Company Store Remix). And this story is a sequel to that one.

But, oh, it's so much more. Because this is the story of how John and Cameron grew from little bitty boxes with treads to be, you know, Real Boys. I love Lorne in this, I love the background of it, and I just insanely love the Johnbot and the Cambot. I actually re-read this story far more often than I re-read The Soul and the Company Store, because it makes my heart swell with happiness.

And, see, I never really wanted to see John Sheppard or Cameron Mitchell as human babies. But as robot babies, they are so insanely cute that I just cannot even deal with it. (Possibly this says something bad about me, that I find robot babies cuter than human babies. But I would submit, in my defense, that a) that's not true in all cases - I find the earthling indescribably cute - and b) I'm pretty sure John WAS a robot baby, so I'm just going with what nature intended.)

The One Featuring an Uther Pendragon Who Is Clearly Closely Related to Lionel Luthor, and, Wow, Isn't That a Terrifying Crossover Waiting to Happen? We're a Storm in Somebody Else's Teacup, by paperclipbitch. Merlin, Merlin/Arthur Pendragon.

So, I know that all of Merlin fandom was asquee about this story, but I found it totally randomly. I saw the link from the Merlin newsletter while I was looking for stories to Kindle, clicked through, and saw this line:

Merlin meets Morgana Le Fay at a support group for People With Freaky Unnatural Powers.

And I thought, yeah, I'd like to read that.

This turned out to be one of my more fortunate snap decisions, because this is - I don't know how to describe it, even. It's utterly addicting - I read it on my Kindle while the earthling was nursing, and I found myself desperately hoping he would eat for just a few more minutes, because I had to know what happened next. (I think, if I'd been reading this as it was posted, the wait would have killed me.) I was entirely caught up! I cared immensely about these characters and their lives and their decisions and their hair and their coffee table books!

It was a total immersion story experience. I loved it.

This was one of the earliest stories I read in the fandom, and I'm just lucky that it didn't set my expectations so high that I spent the next month reading Merlin stories with an expression of spoiled disappointment on my face.

Anyway. This is a modern Merlin AU. (Side note: why do modern Merlin AUs so frequently feature a Merlin hitting the coffee so hard you expect his eyebrows to zing off his face? Is this canon or something? I mean, they have tomatoes. I guess they could have coffee. Although that's veering perilously close to, like, Post-It notes and Gaius as a first generation hacker with punch cards and - wait. Is there a Merlin hacker AU? If not, why not?) There are powers! There is drama! There are action sequences and love scenes! But that's all beside the point. The fact is, each sentence is laced with undetectable but extremely savory and instantly addictive glee. Read it.

Eight Days of Happiness: Original Fiction on the Internets

2009-05-09T04:36:43Z

The One with Magic Horseradish. Beat That, Harry Potter. Why Is This Night Different?, by Janni Lee Simner.

This one might only make people who have celebrated Passover happy, but as it so happens, I am one of those people! And we are talking about things that make me happy, so.

Okay. I sat through Seders as a small child waiting intently for the moment when we opened the door for Elijah. Beyond that, it was just a lot of Hebrew before we got to eat anything. (For reasons that turned out to be very good ones, no one went into much detail with me about, you know, the plagues of Egypt and so on. Why was this a good idea? Well, to give you some idea: I cried through The Prince of Egypt, and when I say "through," I mean that I started during the opening credits and kept on pretty much until the closing ones, traumatizing Best Beloved and astonishing the kids around us. At one point Best Beloved turned to me and whispered, "Why are you crying for Ramses? You do realize he's killing your people, right? You can't root for both sides!" But in fact I am perfectly capable of, if not rooting for, at least crying for both sides, even if one of the sides is, you know, pretty much intent on enslaving and killing me. This is why I don't like team sports or elections much.)

Anyway, my point is: to me a Seder is lots of talking before you get food, and the world's most terrible wine. (Is there some kind of religious requirement that Passover wine has to be bad? Someone must make good Passover wine, right?) So when I say this story brought new meaning to Seders for me, it doesn't exactly mean it rocked my religious world. It's just that most rituals would be a lot more meaningful if you added vampires, I think.

And I also love this because - look. I, too, read The Vampire Lestat as a wee proto-slasher, and I too loved it despite all its flaws because OMG LOUIS/LESTAT 4EVA SQUEEEEE, except I was much too snotty as a young teenager ever to type anything like that. (If I had been in internet fandom as a fourteen-year-old, I would have been the person starting wank about improper use of semicolons. As opposed to now, when I just kind of rant about it in my head. I have grown as a person and mellowed with age for sure.) But sometimes I want the other side of vampires, where they are not sexy, not deliciously homoerotic, not pretty pretty princesses with body glitter, but rather, you know, crazed undead killing machines who probably smell like old blood, which those of you who have smelled it will know is not a supersexy aroma likely to be heavily featured in the next BPAL set. And this story does indeed feature that kind of vampire.

So, overall, this story makes me happy twice. (And I think there's a Doors song about that. Anyone who sings it gets a fork to the ear.)

The One That Demonstrates That Power to the People Sometimes Just Results in Electrocution. Figuratively Speaking. Wikihistory, by Desmond Warzel.

For many months after reading this story, Best Beloved and I would be discussing some internet storm, and we would end up by saying one thing at pretty much the same time:

We're adults; can we keep sight of what's important around here?

And that line is why this story makes me happy. I mean, yes, it will certainly appeal to anyone who has spent any time reading Wikipedia talk pages, where you can meet people who have true and intense rage over pickled vegetable classification, who would, if they could just get their attendants to let them out, go and hurt people over their hideous bad wrongness with respect to pickled vegetables. (The sad part, actually, is that most of them are not locked up, and are probably perfectly kind and decent people who just, for some reason, lose their shit when pickled vegetables come on the scene.) And it will certainly make you deeply appreciate the various time agencies who have, in fiction, kept control of time travel out of the hands of the common person. (Okay, many of those agencies are various kinds of evil and oppressive and so on, but at least they aren't streaking at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which is absolutely the first thing that would happen if college students got hold of a time machine.)

But most of all, this story reminds me, every time I read it, that people are often Wrong on the Internet. And even when they aren't, they are very much inclined to obsess over minor side issues. (Of which I am guilty! Totally and completely guilty! I've definitely been Wrong on the Internet, too, but at least I'm sorry about that. I am proud of being obsessed with minor side issues, which makes me one of the internet crazies.) The last line of this story reminds me to bring it back to what really matters.

And to open a damn window, from time to time.

Eight Days of Happiness: Context Is for the Pure of Mind

2009-05-08T02:39:02Z

I love vids. Even more, I love the twisty minds that vidders have. Okay, first, they must watch, like, a lot of source. A lot. Whenever I consider what it takes to be a vidder, the very first thing that stuns me is - holy shit, these people have to watch stuff all the time. I myself do not have the necessary brain power to watch that much, so it's kind of stunning.

But it's the way they watch stuff that is so especially wonderful. Your average ordinary viewer might watch 45 minutes of a TV show and be like, "Well, the plot was pretty good, but I could have lived forever without that upskirt shot, and I really wish we could have seen more Peregrine and Tucker." (Note: names not from an actual fandom as far as I know.) Whereas I imagine a vidder watching those same 45 minutes and, at about 21:13, sitting bolt upright, groping feverishly for the remote control, and shrieking: "ORGASM FACE ORGASM FACE ORGASM FACE YESSSSSSSS!" Or, "Oh my god, the backgrounds look exactly the same, and the motel beds look exactly the same - I can cut that so they look like they're lying in the SAME BED even though they're in different rooms." Or, "Did she seriously just lean in, smile, and then TURN HER HEAD? The gods smile upon me."

Vidders, in short, must be experts at taking things out of context. It's their gift! (One of many, actually.) And because they also sometimes have, well, ever-so-slightly dirty minds, very often what they do with their out of context shots is - well. As follows. (Note that you don't need to know the fandoms for any of these vids. You just need to know what two hot guys do when they're alone.)

The One That Will Likely Someday Win a Prize for Best Ever Use of Unicorn Horns out of Context. Reach out and Touch Me, by solanyxe. Merlin, Merlin/Arthur Pendragon. (And how.)

Sooooooo. I don't really know how to summarize this one. I mean, I could say, "Here we have Arthur setting his sights on Merlin, hunting him down like an exceptionally hot and tasty unicorn, and then fucking him into the ground." But that would be - hmmm. Accurate, actually.

And yet it all uses footage from a show that airs on regular television. Now, admittedly, it's British regular television, and probably they have mutant British-style rules. (Like, I don't know - maybe "It's totally acceptable to show two guys getting to third base in prime time if they're celebrating their country's victory in the World Cup." Could be anything, is my point. They're wild and crazy over there.) Still. I'm pretty sure that if they had actually shown footage of Merlin and Arthur having sex, someone would have told me. (And if that did happen and no one told me: really, people. I'm hurt.)

This vid, in short, is a masterpiece of taking shots that a number of people - actors, directors, editors, the guy who gets the coffee for any of the above - saw and thought were perfectly clean and PG-rated and suitable for showing to nuns and grandparents, and turning them into something you have to watch twice to be sure there's no actual penetration shown.

The One That Takes the Phrase "In My Pants" to a Whole New Level. One Where You Will Probably Hurt Yourself Laughing. Supernatural (In My Pants), by deirdre_c. Supernatural, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester (plus assorted inanimate objects and light breezes).

I have to wonder what the creative process was for this vid. I'm guessing it was, "You know, Sam and Dean make a lot of funny faces. I bet I could do something really evil with that." Where "really evil" means "likely to cause neighbors to call the police because of the prolonged hysterical laughter."

Because. Okay. We had to declare a moratorium on all Supernatural vids for about two weeks after Best Beloved and I watched this, because we'd be watching this very deep, moving exploration of Dean's anguish, and the camera would zoom in on his face and he would look tormented and then, inevitably, one of us would mutter, "in my pants." Or just hum a little. And then we'd both collapse into giggles. What I'm saying is, this vid destroyed my ability to take manpain seriously. I'm not sure if this means we should bottle deirdre_c and sell her, or if it means we should lock her up for the good of fandom. Maybe both.

This vid also has one of the best builds I've experienced in recent memory. At first, I was like, "Oh, yeah, Sam/Dean, I get you, but what is with this song choice? I seriously do not get why...okay, I see why, but that doesn't explain - okay, it kind of does, but...[COLLAPSES LAUGHING]." I suspect that will be your experience, too.

The One Where the Cars Are a Metaphor, but Not a Very Subtle One. Mmm Papi, by talitha78/talitha78. Whatever it is that we're calling The Fast and the Furious fandom these days, Brian O'Conner/Dom Toretto/a whole bunch of cars.

I admit it: I haven't seen Fast and Furious. I want to! I do! But I have an eleven-month-old earthling. The idea of getting two hours to watch a movie is far-fetched. The idea of going to a theater without the earthling and spending upwards of three hours there is - well. It's also entirely possible that sometime this month I might win a lottery, despite never buying a ticket. The odds are roughly the same.

But, nonetheless, I heard the squee - and suspiciously ecstatic moaning gasping noises - that shot around fandom when the movie came out. There were a lot of incoherent posts along the lines of, "I - I did not - did they seriously - OH MY GOD BEST MOVIE EVER!" I assume some day I will get to see why.

Except I already kind of have. Because, for one thing, I've seen the first movie, which should have been titled, The Fast and the Furious: It Makes Perfect Sense Provided You Assume They're Fucking. (I'm guessing the fourth one is secretly called Fast and Furious: Now Even We, the Filmmakers, Have to Assume They're Fucking.) For another - well. I've seen this vid.

I admit that Talitha78 didn't have to take things very far out of the context for this one, since 40% of the first movie consists of longing stares between Dom and Brian, and a further 20% consists of very loosely disguised metaphors for sex between Dom and Brian. (I can only hope the fourth one measures up.) But. Still. This vid takes the essence of the movies (Dom and Brian: so in love and so totally doing it) and makes them reality.

Plus, there is a sequence that makes it very clear that the whole thing with the cars is not so much repressed homoeroticism as it is a chance to do some explicit man-on-man action without the MPAA getting all het up.

Eight Days of Happiness: Fairies

2009-05-07T04:51:05Z

The One with Elf-on-Elf Combat. Oh, Don't Look at Me Like That. Like You've Never Wanted to See Elves Whale on Each Other.* The Crown of the Summer Court, by astolat/astolat. Merlin, Merlin/Arthur Pendragon.

There was a period of about a week after I read this story that I spent seriously considering that maybe I was just done with Merlin. It seemed like this story had fulfilled my every wish and desire, and I didn't need any more stories in the fandom; I was replete.

I got over that. Of course. I mean, for one thing, I haven't even found an Inappropriate Centaur story in Merlin - I can't possibly be done. (And, also, I'm not done with the characters; there's that, too. It's just - until you've found a few Inappropriate Centaurs, you really don't feel you've come to grips with the fandom. And by "you," I mean me.)

But this story is just that awesome. I have been secretly wanting fairy and elf AUs for quite some time (and this despite the fact that at least 98% of urban fantasy novels make me want to stab the author with a knife inscribed with celtic symbols; as with MPreg and woke-up-animal stories, elves and fairies seem to be one of those things that should really remain in the hands of fans). I'm sorry! It's just this urge I get sometimes. I want someone to put on something sparkly and wave a wand around.

And Merlin - well, come on. It's halfway there already - I mean, sharpen a few ears, add some magic competence, you've got it. But - the magic! The tests! ARTHUR QUEEN OF THE FAIRIES OMG! I just cannot even express my love for this story enough in words. (Where is the Squee Font? That, like, contains only hearts and flowers and sparkles and exclamation points? It would make my recs sets so much easier to write. Harder to read, possibly, and likely to give people Twilight flashbacks, but easier. When will font-makers meet my needs?)

-Footnote-

* I should perhaps explain that I spent a lot of time playing AD&D in my youth. The Cult of Elf got incredibly annoying. Ninety percent of new players wanted to play an elf. If they wanted to play a high elf, you knew they'd maybe eventually grow into real actual roleplayers if you could resist hitting them with a Player's Handbook. If they wanted to be a dark elf, you knew you were going to be trying to get the chaotic neutral character to kill their characters by the third game.

Eight Days of Happiness: Storyfinders Communities. And Poetry.

2009-05-06T03:25:05Z

The Ones That Suggests Some Plots I Never, Ever Want to Read. And Some I'm Delighted I Already Have. Found and Searching, by linabean.

Know this: I love storyfinders communities. I love them unashamedly, unabashedly, unironically. One of the first things I do in a new fandom is hunt down the local storyfinders. Yes, there are some risks inherent in this - every tenth post on one of these communities is absolutely horrifying, and every fortieth makes me recoil from the screen, cover my ears, rock in my desk chair, and weep silently for my people.

And yet. And yet. The other entries are educational! Every time someone posts, I learn what people consider the money shot of any story. (Hint, anyone out there who is searching for either the story that starts with a spanking that John gets because of Rodney or the one where they find all the extra control chairs called cathedrae: it's Indelible, it's by Shaenie, and there's about a million words of awesomeness and plot between those two apparently very memorable points. Enjoy!) I also learn that there are many kinds of people in my fandoms, and some of them are very different from me. Some of them even seem to speak an entirely different language than any of those ever spoken on the planet earth. (This means I am sharing my fandom with aliens! I am always delighted by that news. Hi, aliens! Hi hi hi hi hi!) But most of all, I just love seeing what people look for. Sometimes I get links to stories I've read and loved and need to put on my Kindle. Sometimes I get links to great stories I somehow missed. And sometimes I get links to stories that are so mind-bogglingly horrible that I have to tell myself the person was just searching for it because she was trying to deal with a very serious story-induced trauma head-on.

But, as much as I love storyfinders communities, I love these poems even more. They capture everything that's fabulous about the communities. (The desperate tone! The pleas for help! The one where McKay is turned into a puppy with many exclamation points, like this: !!!) And they also capture an awful lot of the essence of SGA fandom. And then they create something entirely new, all in themselves - I mean, these are really awesome poems.

I smile helplessly every time I read these. And then I giggle a lot. And then I want to cuddle fandom to me. And then I want to slap it in the face. These poems bring me many feelings, is my point. But the dominant one is happiness. Pure, unadulterated joy that there could be something so awesome that storyfinders communities are only one small part of it, and that someone could take a segment of that awesomeness and distill it and purify it and make it even better.

Fandom, I big pink line you. Totally.

Eight Days of Happiness: Old Self, Meet New Self

2009-05-05T04:05:00Z

A long time ago, I was in a creative writing class with a person named Kelly. (And, seriously, why isn't there some service for finding fangirls if you only have their RL names? If she's not in fandom, she should be. And if you're reading this and you're named Kelly and you're a librarian and you once took a poetry class from a professor named Pat, I want to talk to you.) She wrote a poem about wishing she could send a videotape (See? A loooooong time ago.) back to a younger version of herself. I thought about that a lot. I still do.

And in these two stories, it actually HAPPENS. Sort of. In both cases, a reset (or Retcon) button gets pushed, and younger versions of Ianto and Rodney get inserted into the lives of current Ianto and Rodney. I cannot tell you how much I love this. I want this to happen to everyone. (Okay, not everyone. In Teal'c's case, lots of people would die, because younger-Teal'c would likely not be behind this whole killing-the-gods thing. And some people are so young already that it would be more like a de-ageing story - Clark, Merlin, I'm looking at you. But Depot-era Benton Fraser, oh my god. Ronon Dex before he was a runner. Jim Ellison before he joined the military!)

So, on to the specific stories.

The One That Demonstrates Why People Should Not Plan Like Action Heroes Unless They Happen to Be in an Action Movie. (If You're Not Sure, Assume You Are Not in an Action Movie.) Rewind, Reboot, Restore, by Rheanna, aka rheanna27 and rheanna. Stargate: Atlantis, Rodney McKay/John Sheppard.

This story - well. If I had to pick just one character who got to see his new life as his old self, it would have to be Rodney. Because - okay. I used to complain that the Gateverse canon writers did not exactly get this novel concept we call "character development," but in Rodney, they totally prove that they do get it (they just mostly don't like it, and try to avoid it when they can, sort of the way some people are with cilantro). Rodney of pre-Atlantis really is a very different person than the Rodney we know and love, and that makes for quality drama when the two Rodneys meet. And in Rheanna's hands, it is quality indeed. If I had imagined how this might work, well, I don't think I could have imagined anything as wonderful as this.

Also, this story has one of Those Lines. The ones that stay with you and define the story for you, and that you think of often. (I cannot be the only one who has these. I refuse to believe it.) I am not sure if I should include it or not, so here it is, behind the cut:

Rodney let out a long, low groan. "I hate myself," he said. "I literally hate myself."

For one thing: hurray, a use of "literally" that actually means literally, and if you don't think that's something to celebrate, I would like to live where you do, please.

But more - that line is the story. Except the story is so very much more. And if I listed all the things I love about this, I would spoil every last plot development, so instead, how about you just read it?

The One That Proves That If You Spend a Lot of Time near Jack Harkness, You Should Plan Like an Action Hero. It Might Be Fun, and It's Not Like You Could Make Your Odds Worse Than They Already Are. The Theory of Two Centres, by sam_storyteller. Torchwood, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones.

This one fascinated me. See, I have never seen Torchwood, and I don't read huge amounts in the fandom (although that is changing, especially since people keep writing nice long stories for me to put on my Kindle, and TW folks, I will totally take any recs you might have for those), so I really don't know much about Ianto. I know he wears suits. I know the entire fandom seems riveted by him. I know he's the guy who did right by Jack after the Master knocked him up. (Okay, maybe that isn't canon, but it should be.) Beyond that - well, I have a seriously hard time telling the Torchwood people apart, and they seem, from the posts I see on my friends list, to spend most of their time having massive team orgies, so it's not like there's been a pressing need in my life to know who's who.

In this story, though, Ianto is awesome. He seems kind of like Giles, except a) he went through his transformation from Ripper to the Librarian with the Core of Steel in four years instead of twenty, and b) it's not magic and demons, it's the Rift (and excuse me if I have some difficulty telling the difference sometimes). I - I have a weakness for characters who had wild youths and grew up to be staid individuals, for reasons that might be apparent to those who know me pretty well, and this makes me like Ianto so much. I just really admire those who, sure, they could have the sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll and dangerous leather outfits, but they'd rather have this spreadsheet. After all, it's an awesome spreadsheet.

So I love that, and I love the point of view factor here. (Rewind, Reboot, Restore is from the loved one's point of view, and Theory of Two Centres is from the actual rewound person's point of view, and it is fascinating to me the difference that makes in the tone of the story.)

And, most of all, I love that this story gave me the chance to get to know both younger-Ianto and, by the reactions of people around him, canon-Ianto. For people who don't actually know the canon, this story really cannot be beat. And that is very happiness inducing for me.

Eight Days of Happiness: Fanart

2009-05-03T22:56:12Z

As I remind myself endlessly when really cool memes are going around: I don't do memes. Except it occurred to me, when the eight days of happiness meme was going around, that I could in fact do that one. Because fandom brings me happiness! I can talk about one aspect of fandom that makes me happy, and provide a rec or two as an example, and I would be doing a meme. I formulated this plan as soon as I saw the meme and waited patiently for someone to tag me.

And then I remembered that a) most of my friends know I don't do memes, so they weren't going to tag me and b) even if they did, there was a good chance I wouldn't see it, because what with replying to comments and parenting the increasingly mobile and active earthling, I've been sort of sporadic on the friends list reading lately. So I decided to tag myself. Novel concept, yes, but I was not about to let a meme I could do pass me by.

So here I go. Eight days of fannish things that bring me happiness, part one: fanart.

The One with the Doughnut. This Is Where We'll End It, by zoetrope. Due South, Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski.

This is the work that got me looking at fanart. Because, okay. I had been traumatized by some fanart in the past. (Before I was in fandom, I was on a message board that spent some time making fun of fandom, and while I didn't get into that, it did mean horrific fanart was passed around very gleefully on that board. I had seen the kind of photomanips that make your eyeballs peel. Plus, three words: pregnant elf Blair.) I thought fanart was all the sort of thing that would keep you up at nights thinking of Legolas's horrible twisted neck pasted onto what was, quite clearly, the body of a weightlifter who had a lifetime membership in a tanning salon. (Once, I swear I saw Aragorn's head on Arnold Schwarzenegger's body. The very thought still wakes me up in a cold sweat some nights.)

And, also, I am not a graphics person. I am a word person. And so I just assumed that even if there was good fanart out there - well, there is also good beer out there. Doesn't mean I want to drink it. (I am sorry,
norah. I am hoping you will love me anyway.)

But then - this. Which is a comic book, which I totally get, except it's about Fraser and Ray instead of homoerotic guys in tights manifesting their daddy issues. (Which is not to say that this is not homoerotic. No. Nor is it intended to suggest I have issues with guys in tights. Far from. But who knew comic books could also feature Mounties and cops with experimental hair? Not me! ...And now, of course, I am wondering where all the superhero AUs are in dS. People, please point me to the large number of dS superhero AUs I have tragically missed.)

So here we have a story. And some wonderful art. And the reason I started clicking on links to fanart. All this time later, This Is Where We'll End It can still make me happy - not just because of the story, but because this is where some love began, you know?

Plus, it's pretty. I think that's a definite bonus when it comes to fanart.

(And also, of course, there is Diefenbaker's OTP. That is one of my favorite comic book panels of all TIME. There could be an actual, canon comic book panel with Batman blowing Superman in midair, and I'd be all, "...Well, that's pretty good. But the Dief panel is better!")

The One with the Best Fictional Dog in the Universe. Lirael and the Disreputable Dog, by pentapus. Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series.

And just as we started with the piece of art I fell in love with first, here's the piece of art I fell in love with most recently.

Unsurprisingly, both these works involve dogs. (I'm so much more likely to understand art if dogs are present. I really would have gotten more from Art Appreciation, also known as Art for Philistines and Science Majors, both of which I happened to be, if Van Gogh and Rubens and Picasso had included more dogs in their paintings. (And also if we hadn't had the really weird art professor teach two weeks, including one full class of a guy being crucified on a Volkswagen - seriously, folks, if you ever have to bring the art love to people who think real and brilliant art is the periodic table, don't bring up people nailing themselves to cars. Especially not at 9:30 in the morning, oh my god. I was eating breakfast and suddenly a crazy dude was bleeding on his sunroof.)

See, I have such love for the Disreputable Dog - she is quite honestly one of my favorite characters in all of literature. And this is HER. (Plus Lirael, who I also quite like. It's not her fault that she's overshadowed by the Most Awesome Creature of All Time.) I would kill - maybe only a plant, but still, death would be involved - for an icon of the Dog. Because she is the definition of love.

And all of you people who have no idea who I'm talking about - SHAME ON YOU for not having already read Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series. Strong female characters! Strong female dog characters! The Library of the Clayr, which is up there in the top five of my favorite fictional libraries! And zombies, for you sickos who like that kind of thing. Really. Read these books.

And then come back and look at this picture for a while. Your heart will swell with happiness.

Why Aren't People Commenting on My Post/Story/Whatever?

2009-04-22T05:03:22Z

Sometimes you may say to yourself: all these people have me friended. And yet I posted a story (or a link, or four extremely compelling pictures of my cat, including one where she almost had a ribbon on her head) and many of them have not commented! You may wonder why. You may even be downcast in your wonderment and confusion.

Well, wonder no longer! I have been doing some careful research on this very topic, and I have all the answers.

15% of the people who have you friended have since left for greener fannish pastures, or perhaps for somewhere outside of fandom altogether (it's sad, but it happens; fannish scientists are working round the clock to discover a cure, except for the four hours they spent reading that Jack Harkness/Brian O'Conner epic last night). They no longer read your fandom-related posts. (Or, alternately, it's cats they don't like. My point is: whatever you posted doesn't interest them.)
15% were planning to get back to that post later. It's open! It's in a tab! Or it's in Read Later! Just...wow, busy, you know how it is. (Of course, if you're counting every comment and comparing it to a master list, maybe you don't know how it is. In that case you'll just have to trust me.)
10% of the people who have you friended think you're boring. (Sorry! Sometimes science means having to say the hard truths.) They scroll past you, or they filter you. Or maybe they think everyone they have friended is boring, and they don't read their friends list at all; their friending is just a social nicety. It would probably be better if you believed that last one. Yeah, this segment is the one we'll call "social niceties."
10% of the people who have you friended weren't reading the day you posted. Someone had horrible news and came home and went straight to bed with a dog and a hot water bottle. Someone has food poisoning and is puking too much to go near her computer. Someone is addicted to a flash game and can't click away until she beats level 77. Someone is in the South Pacific having a lot more fantastic sex than you ever have or ever will; she isn't thinking about you or fandom right now. (Okay, she's thinking, "I have to use that the next time I write Merlin/Arthur, or John/Rodney, or Bertie/Jeeves - ooo, yeah, Jeeves is probably mega-kinky." But she's not missing her friends list, is my point.)
10% only read you on a phone, or a netbook or internet tablet that's impossible to type on, or a Kindle, or in five minute snatches at work or between dragging kids to soccer or whatever. They love you, but they never do manage to get back to comment.
10% of the people who read you only lurk. They lurk everywhere. Maybe they can't type. Maybe they have tentacles and can't find a tentacle-ready keyboard. You don't know. And do you really want to risk displaying your prejudice against the betentacled?
5% of the people who read you are still pissed off about the comment you didn't reply to. You know the one. (You reply to every single comment you get, you say? Even the ones obviously from bots? Even the ones LJ forgets to notify you about? In that case, these people are sulking about an inadequate response you left them, where you missed the point or missed the question or failed to thank them or sounded snarky. You can't please everyone. Not even with an incredible facility at hitting "Reply.")
5% of the people who read you are still pissed off about that post you made. You know the one.
5% of the people who read you are pissed off that you didn't comment on one of their important posts. They're withholding sex - sorry, I meant comments - until you understand how important they are, and maybe send some flowers or something.
5% of the people who read you have broken internet connections right now. Fucking Comcast.
1% of the people who read you hurt their hands this morning.
1% of the people who read you currently have a broken spacebar.
1% of the people who read you are heavily medicated. Their loved ones have taken away their keyboards for everyone's safety.
1% of the people who read you are seriously undermedicated. Their loved ones have taken away their keyboards so they still have friends when the meds kick back in.
1% of the people who read you read you in bed, and a loved one has threatened to take away the keyboard if they type at night anymore.
1% of the people who read you are sockpuppets. They're only going to comment if they want sparkle pens.
1% of the people who read you are, in fact, commenting, but they're doing so by telepathy. If you're not getting the comments, well, obviously something is wrong with you. They can't be held responsible for that.
1% of the people who read you are aliens. They can't ever pass the prove-you're-human test, and for some reason they get the CAPTCHA every time. They are thinking of filing a lawsuit against LJ.
1% of the people who read you cannot comment for religious reasons.
1% of the people who read you haven't figured out that you have to hit the "Post comment" button in order to get the comment posted. They keep typing like it's an IM box, and nothing ever shows up, and they just do not know why. They've submitted several complaints to Support about this. (It's possible you didn't want to read their comments anyway.)

But wait, you say! That's everyone!

You're right. It is. So, hey, if you get any comments at all, you have beaten the odds. You must be really awesome and special. Can I friend you?

(P.S. I don't comment a lot, but I'm probably reading. And I'll repeat what I said in my info: I love all the comments I get, except the ones from the spambots who are cordially invited to DIE DIE DIE, but no one ever should feel obligated to comment here. I get the lurking, I really do.)

Dreamwidth

2009-04-08T22:20:33Z

For everyone already at DW, I'm thefourthvine there, too. (Yes, I still think the name was a bad choice, one I should have thought about for more than a nanosecond, one that puts me in the sad company of People with Pathetic [edited to change an unfortunate language choice] Social Networking Pseudonyms. But by god I stand by my mistakes. Bonus for anyone who hasn't made an account yet: I haven't used up any of the good names!) I have imported my LJ (remarkably easy!) and will be crossposting.

And if you're on DW or you get on DW, I'd love to know your username.

191: Rare Beauties

2009-04-05T06:07:33Z

I think my Yuletide glut has finally run its course. To celebrate: small fandoms!

The One That Shows Us That "Economy Sized Jackhole" Can Totally Be the Language of Love. (In Fiction. Probably You Should Not Test Drive That in Real Life.) What's the Story, Morning Glory?, by liviapenn. Psych, um. I consider this gen? I don't know. Categories are haaaard, people. But if there's a pairing, it's Burton Guster/Shawn Spencer.

So, Best Beloved has seen a season or two of Psych. I myself have not watched even an episode, and not just for my usual "television, so hard, woe is me" excuse. See, I understand that it can be lethal to people with severe embarrassment squicks. (No, really. I hear there are people who have embarrassment squicks gibbering in St. Mungo's because they were locked in a small room with Psych playing 24/7. It was apparently one of Voldemort's crueler tortures.) Often, even the fan fiction is fairly embarrassment-intensive.

But. The thing is. The Gus/Shawn pairing is so appealing and so obvious that I ship them intensively just from the tiny snippets (certified embarrassment-free) that Best Beloved had me watch. It's one of my favorite kinds of pairings: They are super good friends! Who clearly love each other! And are always there for each other! Above all others! C'mon, guys, just make out already!

So I am extremely delighted by this, which gives some gorgeous Gus and Shawn backstory that you can read either as gen or as the prelude to, you know, sex. (They already have true, true love. Canonically. Like, the kind of love where you know neither one will ever have an outside relationship that lasts longer than six months, and any relationship that does last that long will end with the other party saying, "I'm leaving because I'm sick of being a distant second to your best friend." And then, if it's Shawn, the person will add, "You asshole," and if it's Gus, the person will say, "But I really want to stay friends, okay? God, I care about you so much. I can't believe I'm breaking up with you.") I myself read it as gen but remain convinced that there is sex in this story's future, because I like to take every path there is. (This is entirely true, and let me tell you: it did not make me popular back when I played AD&D. But it did mean I was always the one with a good map.)

Either way, this is an awesome story, and has the bonus of being about these fabulous characters and not containing anything that will make my fellow blush squickers want to die.

The One with a Title So Good That I Can't Think of a Better Title for the Rec. The Underwire Job, by brown_betty (whose user name is giving me a great deal of trouble for some reason; in my Kindle, she's Brown Bewtty and Brown Better and Burn Betty) and emeraldwoman (who has no unfortunate Kindle aliases as yet). Leverage, Alec Hardison/Parker (who apparently does not have a first name, unless that is her first name, in which case she does not have a last one).

And, see, this would be one of those fandoms where I had to use the power of the internet to find out things like, oh, the characters' full names, and also, you know, what it is, exactly. (A television show! Apparently about people who, in a strange twist of events, do not fight crime! They make it instead. I guess maybe the crime-fighting field was getting overcrowded.)

I just. Okay. I love these characters. I have no idea if they're like that in the canon, but in this fan fiction, they are made of love. It's like someone asked me what I would find appealing in characters, and then made two of them. (Parker and Hardison, for the record. I am sure Elliot also brings the awesome on a regular basis, though.) I have re-read this thing maybe 15 times since it was posted, and that's solely because I want to spend lots and lots and lots of time with Parker and Hardison. I want them to get married and have geeky, antisocial babies. And then I want fan fiction about the babies. It's that bad, people.

And then. Well. There's plot, and kittens, and World of Warcraft jokes, and pushup bras, and frankly this story makes me giggle with glee just thinking about it. I cannot even tell you how much I love it.

But mostly it's the characters. I could spend my whole life with these people, I think. (Except Nate and Sophie, who frankly do not seem that interesting. Should I find them interesting? Do they have a secret sorrow? Or, better, a total lack of secret sorrows? And, oh oh oh, can either of them travel through time? The only thing this story lacks to make my joy complete is time travel.)

The One That Proves That Real Heroes Are Just as Irrationally Careless of Their Hearing When They Aren't Saving the World. (Someone Please Tell Me There Really Isn't a Ballpark That Close to an Airport.) National Pasttime, by Dira Sudis, aka dsudis. Live Free or Die Hard, John McClane/Matt Farrell.

First, let me offer my caveats. I did not see Live Free or Die Hard. I have, however, seen the original Die Hard, and based on my knowledge of that, I am guessing that in this canon there is a terrible threat against a member of John McClane's family and, you know, loads of other people. (A city? The country? The universe? Oh, oh, now I want to see Die Infinitely Harder, which would be set in SPACE, and it would feature John McClane - and Matt, why not? - versus bad guys in a SPACE STATION that they're going to take over and use to hold the whole world hostage. I like my cheese with zero gravity, moviemakers!) I am guessing there are manly grimaces and various wounds and weapons and last second saves. I am guessing someone says "Yippee ki yay, motherfucker."

I am hoping, based on the title, that this all takes place in New Hampshire, but I'm not betting on it. (Side note: if they decide to do a complete run of state motto titles, I don't want to be here for Die Hard Is Okay, although probably that would be the one where John McClane gets the therapy he so clearly needs.)

In other words, I know very little about this canon. Apparently, though, Brandon from Galaxy Quest is in it. And apparently - I find this so unspeakably odd I can hardly type the words - he has sexual chemistry with Bruce Willis. (I didn't know anyone had ever had sexual chemistry with Bruce Willis. Imagine my surprise!) Now, I have avoided learning anything else about this pairing, for the simple reason that big age differences make me vaguely geechy.

And then Dira wrote a story, and I put it on my Kindle in a moment of weakness, and I was lost. I don't even know why this pairing is so appealing, or why this story works so well for me. I just know I am now grimly trundling off to look for other stories in this fandom, even as I mutter under my breath about how I don't like large age difference pairings, and I haven't even seen the movie, and and and.

But it's hopeless. I loved this pairing and this fandom from about the thousandth word of this story. And if you read it, well, I would appreciate that. It's nice to have company in love.

The One about the Gay Superpowered Flying Alien from an Exploded Planet. No, the Other Gay Superpowered Flying Alien from an Exploded Planet. You Thought There Was Only One? Moab, by Parhelion, aka cirurussundog. Zenna Henderson's People series, OMC/OMC. (Do not run screaming into the night! That's not always a bad thing. And it's very in keeping with the universe.)

So, first, a summary of the People series, which, for a change, is a canon I do know. (Pause while I regroup from the shock.) The homeworld of an intelligent civilization of alien humanoids blows up. To the great surprise of many, they do not send earth just one scion who will grow up to have a lot of abilities and an unnatural fondness of skintight primary colors. Instead, they have a sort of diaspora. A bunch of them end up on earth, scattered in the Southwest. They, of course, have special abilities (that comes standard with the planet explosion in the civilization building kit). Sometimes they fit in; sometimes things work out. Sometimes they don't. Eventually most of them clump together and head out for somewhere better than earth (but less likely to explode than their homeworld, one hopes).

As it happens, I like this series a lot. But I love what Parhelion has done with it so very much more. Because there are gaps in Henderson's series, and what she's done - well. She's created a Person (do they get the capital letter in the singular? I have no clue) who I find more interesting and memorable than any of the characters in the original stories, and she's addressed a topic that I, frankly, find way more interesting: were there any People who were, you know, different? Unwilling to be folded into the big happy People sandwich? And, hey, maybe gay?

(Look, I'm a slasher. This can't be a surprise to anyone reading this. Or, hey, if it is? Possibly you are thinking of some other thefourthvine.)

This is one of the standout Yuletide stories of all time for me. (Not, you know, standing out in the same sense as the Carebears BDSM; that also stands out, but in a totally different way. Yuletide is large. It contains multitudes.) The style is perfect. The tone is perfect. The character is perfect. This is the People series, but better. As in, whenever I want to re-experience that universe, I will most likely turn to this story, not the originals. I can't think of anything more I can say to convince you, but oh: if you like the People series at all, read this.

Follow up on Z's Science Project

2009-04-03T04:17:24Z

Remember my nephew's science project, which so many of you very kindly took part in? (Seriously, almost a thousand responses. Professional surveys with monetary rewards often can't get that kind of response, people. You are awesome, and I thank you.)

Tonight was the night the science project results were revealed, at my nephew's school's open house, and my sister was supposed to take a picture so I could show all of you.

Except she couldn't. Because my nephew's project, alone among all of them, was not displayed. After much back and forth with various people, my sister learned that apparently some people were uncomfortable with his conclusions. Specifically the part where he said that what he really learned from this project was that some people don't want to be called boys or girls, and that those people need an "other" option. (And also that they tend to prefer blue to green.)

(This really has been a learning experience, and not just for Z, either. At my younger nephew's birthday party, Z was wandering around showing off his survey, and many of the older kids asked why he had included an "other" option for gender. Now, okay, you have to understand - Z is the kind of kid who, if you tell him you don't want to be called a boy or a girl, he will just kind of accept it. So you are other? Fine. People are mysterious anyway, and obviously this is just another layer of mysteriousness to them. He doesn't need to understand it to be okay with it.

Most of the other kids, though, found this concept fascinating and absolutely bewildering - obviously everyone is either a boy or a girl! Obviously! - and wanted to ask many many questions. Which was the point when my sister turned to me and said, "They're your friends. You explain it." You have not lived until you've tried to explain being genderqueer to a group of suburban elementary school students hyped up on cake and candy and penguins.)

So tomorrow my sister has to write an irritated letter to the principal, emphasizing that she wants Z's project - which also apparently was the only one to get graded twice, or possibly not graded at all; the story isn't clear - back, and she wants it considered for the district competition like all the other projects. And also that it's sad that the school missed the opportunity to show some genderqueer student or sibling or parent that, hey, you can have a different gender identification and still be considered and counted and included.

Anyway. Whether they give back the project or not, you'll still be able to see the results, because my nephew is nobody's fool and has a copy saved. But I still hope to be able to offer a picture of the poster, which is reportedly very nice.

In the meantime, I will be thinking about this: a concept that could be absorbed without distress by my nephew and a birthday party's worth of kids was just too scary and weird for some school official somewhere. It's a hard row you hoe, genderqueer people. I salute you! (And, parents, I think the take-home lesson here is: teach 'em early, while they're malleable. Or they might grow up to be narrow-minded educators.)

[Poll] Dreamwidth

2009-04-02T05:58:41Z

On April 30, open beta of Dreamwidth starts. Where will you be?

(What's Dreamwidth? Why are some people switching to Dreamwidth? What is Dreamwidth like for users right now?)

View Poll: Dreamwidth?

Sweet Charity

2009-03-28T05:52:27Z

I'm for sale at Sweet Charity, for the second (and very last, since, sadly, this is the very last Sweet Charity ever) time! It's for an excellent cause - RAINN, the charity that was the original reason for all this awesomeness. It was a blast the last time I did this, and I'm hoping someone else wants me to have even more fun.

I'm offering a recs set of your choice, and I will quote from my blurb at the site:

I'll do one recs set of at least four stories or vids or pieces of art in my usual style. (You can see what that's like at my LiveJournal, and you can see what Adbaculum got in the last Sweet Charity round here. That one got away from me, though; I'm not promising - or threatening! - anything that long.) You get to pick the fandom or the theme. (Probably not both.) I'm willing to do any of the fandoms or themes listed below, and if you have an idea for something else, feel free to suggest it - just please have a choice from the list, too, or check with me before you bid.

I won't rec specific stories, and I probably can't meet requests for specific pairings (unless you happen to want one of my OTPs, in which case I totally can). But I will try hard to meet whatever requests you have that I can meet!

Possible fandoms: Angel the Series, Anime, Art, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Crossovers, DCU, Dead Zone, Doctor Who, due South, Entourage, Farscape, Harry Potter, Hercules, Hikaru no Go, Hitchhiker's Guide, Highlander, Marvel Universe, Master and Commander, Merlin, Ocean's 11, Pirates of the Caribbean, Sentinel, Small Fandoms, Smallville, Sports Night, Stargate: Atlantis, Stargate: SG1, Supernatural, Torchwood, Vids, Yuletide.

Possible themes: Alternate Universes, Amnesia, Attire, Bad Days/Bad Things, Body and Gender Shenanigans, Breaking Up, Cliches and Crack, Coming Out, Crossovers, Death, Documents, Dreams and Sleep, Evil, Family, Fast Fic, First Times, Five Things, Food, Gen, History and the Future, Humor, Intoxication, Kidfic, Kink, Kissing, Language, Longer Stories, Meta, Numbers, Rare Pairings, Ratings Below NC-17, Religion, Secrets and Lies, Series, Small Fandoms, Surprise, Things That Never Happened, Threes, Travel and Transportation, Watching.

Bid, if you can! Maybe on me, even!

(Remember: good cause!)

Admin

2009-03-06T06:48:08Z

I'm temporarily disabling anonymous comments to deal with an annoying bot incursion. (I'm growing tired of deleting random chunks of Japanese text about bedding, job-hunting, and Denmark.) If anyone knows another way of curing the bots, I would love to hear about it!

190: I'm Going to Vidding Land

2009-03-06T05:36:20Z

I'm going to Vividcon! And, in celebration, I have vid recs. But first, a VVC-related comment and poll:

Last time, I realized that being completely and utterly unable to initiate conversations with strangers is a bit of a handicap at a con. (Yes, I should have known that going in, and in fact I did, but I wasn't sure what to do about it.) So this time, I'd like to make slightly firmer plans with people - for lunch, and to chat, and so on. This is a preliminary poll to find out who is going, and if anyone would like to hang out with me and keep me from being looooonely.

The other thing is, BB and the earthling will also be coming. They won't be doing the con; they will be touring Chicago during the day. But I'm also looking to see if anyone is brave enough to have dinner or whatnot with all of us.

View Poll: VVC!

The One That Will Have You Looking Suspiciously at Cherry Stems Forever. Handlebars, by flummery. Doctor Who.

This is - well. This is the Doctor. End of story. This is the Doctor in every respect and every detail. The first time I watched this, I was basically clapping in glee from the very first line, and then it got better. And better. And better. And eventually it achieved such amazing levels of betterness that I still haven't entirely recovered. This vid rendered me incoherent. Permanently.

I don't want to tell you how it gets better - if you've somehow missed this vid and this song, just go watch it. You will not be the sorrier. In fact, even if you have no idea who this Doctor person is (He travels through time. With friends. It's complicated.), still go watch it, because after you see this, you will most definitely know.

I once thought I preferred vids about companions (Or enemies, or Daleks. Why are there no Dalek vids? There are lots of good vids songs for them! One is the loneliest number! Make a Circuit with Me! The Macarena!) to vids about the Doctor. And that's still true. But what I think is - my brain knew that this vid was coming, and decided it might just as well wait for perfection.

The One That Demonstrates Why You Might Not Want to Make Pegasus Galaxy Your Vacation Destination. Well, Yes, Life-Sucking Monsters. But It Gets Much Worse Than That, Actually. Open Secrets of the Pegasus Galaxy, by yevgenie. Stargate: Atlantis.

Okay, first: this is her first vid, you guys. How is this her FIRST VID?

Second: this is the vid that says everything we all know about SGA and don't talk about. Basically, I'd sum that up as: no one gets out of Pegasus clean. (In fact, you mostly don't get out at all. This vid makes that point, too.) The Wraith are the enemy, but how are they different than Atlantis, given some of the decisions the home team makes? The Ancients are (supposed to be, and oh my god, so not, so skeevy) the good guys, but look how badly they fucked Pegasus over. The open secret of Pegasus seems to me to be that everyone fails, falls, dies, fucks up, and fucks over. No heroes.

And now I'd like to talk about the song. Because, see, I love Leonard Cohen. I occasionally fantasize about marrying one of his songs. But I have always considered him basically unviddable. Turns out, nope! I just didn't have the right vision, because oh my god how this song works - works for the vid, works for the theme, works works works. Even if this vid didn't say something I've always wanted someone to say about SGA, I would still love it to pieces, because it's a vid to Leonard Fucking Cohen. That sound you just heard was my heart growing three sizes.

(FIRST. VID. HOW? HOW?)

The One That Is Evidence for the Prosecution. Climbing up the Walls, by obsessive24. Supernatural, Firefly, and Heroes.

Sooooo. I'm trying to think how to put this. Okay, let's start with this: INCEST. This vid is about incest. And it pulls no punches. Actually, it - you know those video games where, if you hit like nine million buttons in exactly the right order while standing on one foot and whistling Dixie, your character will rear back, grow a robo-claw, and rip another character's head off and eat it? This is the kind of punch this vid has.

And it's just. Fucking. Brilliant. You will be glad your head has been ripped off and eaten by this vid.

What we have here is an incest narrative with all the fanon taken out. Yeah, sure, there are three sibling pairings, here, but it almost doesn't matter; the central story is the same for all of them: fucked-up families, needy and vulnerable younger sibling, obsessively protective older sibling, and then the robo-claw comes out. But the point is: this vid is awesome, and so incredibly rich (there's so much here I could write several lengthy essays about this, for reals), and brutally real. And the brutality should in no way scare you off. (You weren't using that head anyway. And, hey, who doesn't want to see a robo-claw?)

The One That Would Give Charles Darwin Nightmares. (No, Really. He Was a Very Sensitive Man.) Unnatural Selection, by charmax. Battlestar Galactica and Terminator.

My love for robots is well-documented. At this point, I don't think I need to tell you that sometimes I'm rooting for the robots. But, um. The robots in this vid don't need any humans in their cheering squad; they're doing just fine by themselves. (And, yes, my love for robots can totally survive this vid. I imprinted on robots early and well.)

I don't know either of the sources for this vid. It totally does not matter. (I didn't know any of the sources for obsessive24's vid, either. Cluelessness is my comfort zone!) The basic message is very clear to anyone who grew up on hard science fiction: we're going to build the next stage. And then it's going to destroy us. (Mine was, yes, a cheerful childhood, always anticipating the moment the machines/metahumans/genetically engineered blobs would rise up and take over. In my day, we didn't need violent video games to prepare us for the apocalypse.)

I love this vid so much, which is a strange thing to say about something that's equal parts dead humans, robotic overlords, and various apocalypses. (Like a Jonathan Coulton album! Except not funny. Really not.) But it's gorgeous and so brilliantly edited and it does in three minutes what it took science fiction a childhood to do for me. Watch. Learn. And fear the future.

It's Poll Week, Apparently

2009-02-24T05:17:31Z

My nine-year-old nephew has to do a ridiculous poll for his math class, and he needs lots of responses. It's one question. Anyone feel like taking it? Please? I would thank you! My sister would thank you! My nephew would also thank you!

(Added bonus humor for anyone who has ever taken a math class: his teacher assigned this question, and also assigned him to determine the mean, mode, and median of answers. If you take it, you'll see why we are all deeply amused by this. Statistics: UR TEACHIN IT RONG.)

ETA: SurveyMonkey broke! The question was as follows:

View Poll: Z's poll

Feel free to take it if you haven't already, and thanks again!