Thanks for everyone with the vidding advice! As of yesterday I have added one clip to my vid and I'm feeling very accomplished.

Anyway, the weather here has suddenly turned decisively autumnal, which I am enjoying. Have a mini-recs-list of autumnal-feeling fics I felt inspired to reread over the weekend.

Only one of them is actually set in autumn. Apparently what makes a story file as 'autumnal' for me is:

• cool weather
  
• a cozy house set back in the trees
  
• a strong small-town sense of place
  
• soft clothes and warm food
  
• assholes with well-earned trust issues affirmatively deciding to let someone else in for once
  
• ~50000 words

(as always I'm happy for additions in the comments!)

China (53941 words) by torch
Fandom: Highlander: The Series, The X-Files
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Methos/Fox Mulder
Characters: Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Methos
Additional Tags: Crossover, casefile
Summary: Mulder is looking for witches. Methos is looking for some peace and quiet. Whether they'll find what they're looking for in rural Indiana is anyone's guess.

One of the first fics I read, still one of my favorites, definitely holds up. (I think it helps to know the basics of who Methos is to enjoy this, but if you're reading this you probably already do, right?)


Lee Shore (34795 words) by JumpingJackFlash
Chapters: 19/19
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Eridan Ampora/Dave Strider
Characters: Eridan Ampora, Dave Strider, Dirk Strider, Equius Zahhak
Additional Tags: Post SBURB, Character Study, Road Trips, Painting, awkward bro moments, awkward eridan moments, awkward dave moments, Xeno, doodlefic
Summary:
In the years after the game, the twelve trolls and eight humans have tried to stick together, because no one else would understand. When Eridan misses one of their yearly reunions, Dave makes an impulsive decision to go find him.

Yes it's Homestuck! But this is probably the top Homestuck fic I'd rec to people who don't know canon. It's set in a softer gentler post-canon and probably the only thing it would help to know going in is that Trolls, while close enough to Humans that it's not obvious, think of interpersonal relationship through very different paradigms, and the MCs here spent their early teen years (among other, more traumatic things) learning how to navigate that cross-culturally.

Give A Dog A Job (63728 words) by bomberqueen17
Chapters: 10/10
Fandom: Wiedźmin 2: Zabójcy królów | The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (Video Game)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Iorveth/Vernon Roche
Characters: Vernon Roche, Iorveth (The Witcher)
Additional Tags: semi-modern au, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, what if roche was a retired crazy dog guy, and iorveth was a paranoid former political prisoner, and they were neighbors, and there were a whole bunch of dogs there, Past Torture, Past Violence, Flashbacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, unhealthy boundaries, realistic dogs, Alternate Universe - Small Town, rural living, romance novel logic, to be clear these are some really unhealthy boundaries, Miscommunication, Chronic Pain, Epilepsy, safe sex, Enthusiastic Consent
Summary: Vernon Roche, forced into retirement by the injuries he got failing to save King Foltest from being assassinated, settles down in the woods with a pile of dogs, maybe to drink himself to death.
One of these dogs retrieves his neighbor, a mysterious one-eyed hermit.

You definitely don't need to know any Witcher canon to read this! It's set in a vaguely modern AU and you can get all you need from the story. Which you should do.

I will do my last two December meme posts... soon. Right now I am just trying to catch up on comments on the old ones. Meanwhile, I have barely dipped into the Yuletide archive (and probably won't before reveals), but I have read all of the Madness works that are over 100 words and up to 1000 words in fandoms I care about, so here are 20 recs for short Madness stories (and two sonnets, a sestina and a vid.)

( In more-or-less reverse wordcount order )

Also, my Madness gift has got me thinking about vids again. And when I was clearing stuff out, I found an old mix CD from c. 2008 that was labelled "to vid". So let's play a fun game! Can you match the song to the fandom/pairing I wanted to vid it to in 2008?

1. A Weekend In the Country from A Little Night Music 2. All This Useless Beauty - June Tabor 3. Black Velvet - Alannah Myles 4. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen 5. Cabaret from Cabaret 6. Don't Need the Sunshine - Catatonia 7. Finale from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamboat 8. Hotel California - The Eagles 9. Is That All There Is? - Peggy Lee 10. It's A Small World After All - The Sherman Brothers 11. Light Up My Room - Barenaked Ladies 12. Little Miss Can't Be Wrong - Spin Doctors 13. My Heart Will Go On from Titanic 14. Nine Inch Will Please A Lady - Robert Burns/Traditional 15 Paradise by the Dashboard Light - Meatloaf 16. Postcards from Mexico - Girlyman 17. Que Sera Sera - Doris Day 18. Sixteen Tons - Merle Travis/Traditional 19. Son of a Preacher Man - Pansy Division 20. The Band Played On - Guy Lombardo 21. The Way - Fastball

A. Doctor Who, All the Masters B. Doctor Who, Doctor/Master C. Doctor Who, Jack/Rose D. Doctor Who, Peri and Five's regeneration E. Doctor Who, Shalka!Doctor F. Doctor Who, the DoctorDonna G. Free Space (I don't remember) H. Harry Potter, McGonagall the ladies of Hogwarts I. Highlander, Joe/Methos J. Pirates of the Caribbean:At World's End, Ensemble K. Sherlock Holmes (RDJ version, but BBC would work), Everybody/Everybody L. Superman Returns, Lois Lane M. Supernatural, Dean N. Supernatural/Bones, Dean/Temperance O. The X-Files, Alex Krycek P. The X-Files, Byers/Suzanne Q. The X-Files, Mulder/Krycek R. The X-Files, Mulder/Scully S9 S. The X-Files, Teena Mulder T. Torchwood, Jack Harkness U. Stargate : Atlantis, Ensemble

...We're not even going to talk about the other old CD I found, which is labeled just "TARDIS: The Musical". It starts with House Prydon singing "All That's Known" and features such gems as Delgado Master singing "If I Loved You" from Carousel and Nine singing "Everything's Comin' Up Roses." The real mystery, though, is: I made this mix CD no later than 2009, so WHY, after the big LotTL climax, did I decide to end it with the Master singing "Now that I'm A Woman, Everything Has Changed" from The Last Unicorn? Time travel?

I got two fabulous stories for yuletide:

Lucky Starr and the Ambassadors of Eris (4259 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 8/8
Fandom: Lucky Starr - Isaac Asimov
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: John Bigman Jones/Lucky Starr, John Bigman Jones/OFC
Characters: Lucky Starr, John Bigman Jones, Ben Wessilewsky, Hector Conway, Gus Henree, OFC
Additional Tags: Space Flight, Emotional Baggage, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Human Biology, Science, Sexual Tension, Canon Compliant, Mild Sexual Content
Summary:

A mysterious ship has been discovered entering our solar system. Lucky doesn't know that Bigman keeps a ring in his boot. Will Conway survive the stress of it all?

For my main gift I finally got Lucky Starr fic after all these years! \o/ It's like a new slice of canon only with more women and more three-dimensional relationships. And up-to-date-science. It's wonderful. (This now makes two Yuletides in which I have gotten fanfic that is about how Pluto is not a planet. I think that means I win.)

Five Numbers That Got Munched (And One That Can't Be Proven) (2777 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Munchers
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Munchers - Character
Additional Tags: 5+1 Things, Mathematics, Food Issues, Dialogue-Only, Yuletide Treat, Yuletide 2014
Summary:

Throughout history, humans have turned to mathematics to express deep insights.

Throughout history, Munchers have been trying to eat things.

For my treat I got a NUMBER MUNCHER. MUNCHING THINGS. While a poor mathematician tries to teach the muncher math. It is adorable and full of math geekery. It is great.


And then! Unexpectedly! I got a Madness gift, that was marked as a Les Mis/Top Gear crossover, and I had no idea what to think, since I hadn't requested either of those fandoms? And like, Jeremy Clarkson is really not much like Jean Valjean. But then it turned out it was a vid.

A vid of the Top Gear Botswana special to "One Day More".

TBH I thought I was over Top Gear fandom, but the minute Oliver came in, singing Cosette's part in the song, I realized I would never, ever be over Richard/Oliver. Plus this is basically EXACTLY the kind of vid I like: shamelessly literal interpretation of a song that really shouldn't work with the fandom and yet does. It's beautiful.

My own story is full of obvious giveaways that it's me, but it's a super-obscure fandom so hardly anyone has read it. (I will just have to get you all into the fandom after reveals....)

***

Meanwhile, I did really amazingly great on the giant to-do list (well, for me, anyway) until about dinnertime yesterday, and then, uh, not so much, including a break for staying up till 5 AM reading fanfic *sigh*. I did manage to watch this week's Librarians after missing the previous one, though!
( I guess if I'm trying to actually watch I will keep doing weekly reaction posts like I did back in the day when I had shows? )

1. I have been doing a terrible job with the writing lately. Since last update, I have written a few hundred more words of the ANitLO crossover, some more Montparnasse fic, some more Booby!Marius story, and a tiny tiny bit of the one where Cap and Tony are both fail at coming out.

2. Part of the reason for this is that I keep coming home at night and not wanting to do anything but SLEEP. So yesterday I read rydra_wong's post on winter light and realized that the fact that f.lux is set to make me sleepy at sunset probably isn't helping. I didn't want to turn it off because I still don't need to be staring bright-eyed at Tumblr until 2 AM, so I decided to try reversing the latitude on my f.lux location - it may be getting dark under the daystar, but my laptop's brightness now thinks I live off the coast of South America and it's late spring with the days still getting longer. We'll see if it helps.

3. Also possibly more relevantly to the lack of writing I read the Loki: Agent of Asgard trade and then read all of the Boyband!Loki fic on AO3. I knew better than to start reading Loki:AoA, because getting mixed up with trickster gods is ALWAYS a bad idea, and besides I've read enough Marvel Now trades to know that it'll inevitably get mixed up in a massive crossover event and start to suck. But you know. As of the first trade it is basically flawless and also 100% made of fandom catnip and I can't. Come talk to me about AoA.

Comics!Loki, for those who don't know, has in the past few years gone through a complicated series of disincorporations/autocides/reiterations, more-or-less intentionally, and is currently in a body that frequently gets him mistaken for Harry Styles and/or Justin Beiber, trying to figure out how to stop being the villain of the story and develop a working conscience, despite everything - from his destiny to his Queens - working against him. If boyband!Loki gleefully out-scheming everybody in the Marvel Universe, swashbuckling with hot dudes, going on crime capers as a hot chick, having vaguely-platonic coffee with a cute hipster girl he met while speed-dating, being blatantly objectified by the narrative, being canonically pansexual and genderfluid, and being tragic yet determined about stuff like the nature of free will and stories and truth and good and evil and guilt and redemption sound like your kind of thing - well, run very fast in the other direction from Agent of Asgard, okay, because Loki is always bad news.

(If you've seen the panels where Loki confesses to having created a most terrible slash on the internet, okay, so, on the one hand yay, on the other hand given all the meta stuff about how Loki is defined by the stories written about him, and his newly canonically fluid gender/sexuality, I really want to talk about why Loki is creating slash on the internet, and what stories he's telling.)

(he's writing about Sigurd fucking him in their trash dumpster.)

4. ( Here are some boyband!Loki fic recs )

You will notice there is no Sigurd in those recs. That is because there is no Sigurd fic on AO3. At all. ...fandom, write me some Loki/Sigurd fic like, yesterday. HOW CAN YOU RESIST THAT FACE

5. I shall put in for the DW friending meme that ladyscribe is running, but it totally expects you to be doing the December posting meme. I have too much stuff going on to commit to posting on certain days, but I will borrow isis's weekly variation. So here is your chance to make me talk about a thing, any thing at all. as long as it's AoA Loki

Give me a topic and pick a week and I will try to talk about that topic on my journal at some point during that week. (disclaimers: topics for a given week are cut off after 5; several topics may be combined into one post.)

Week 1: Dec 1-7 : a book you loved that you didn't expect to and why (the_rck); what are your feelings on Agent of Asgard? (dhampyresa)
Week 2: Dec 8-14 : what would be your ideal next canon YA series? (schneefink); Young Wizards crossovers! Why are they awesome? Can everything be a YW crossover? Discuss. (sineala); Most oddball piece of research done this year - whether it be for work, wrangling, fic or because the brain-weasels attacked ... (aoifes_isle)
Week 3: Dec 15-21 : how the MCU compares to comic universe (chordatesrock); Tell me something (or somethings, if you like) you would like to see more of in the fantasy genre. (alasse_irena); Is there a book/show/movie you've been fully intending to get to this year but find yourself putting off for some reason? (Fear of disappointment, not wanting it to be over--whatever!) (umadoshi)
Week 4: Dec 22-28 : could you talk a bit about Their Majesties' Bucketeers? I reread it not too long ago and I'd love to hear about what kind of fic you wish there was, or some meta if you've got it in you. (fenellaevangela); talk about your writing process (espresso_addict).; perhaps you could talk about The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (redsnake05)

6. If you're curious about why I sometimes go a long time between DW posts, my process here was literally: a) I can't post the friend meme comment until I've made the DW post to link to; b) I can't make the DW post until I've made the Tumblr post to link to; c) I can't make the Tumblr post until I have scanned the comics; d) I can't scan the comics until I have dug the scanner out of the pile behind the couch; e) I will deal with the pile behind the couch sometime after hell freezes over.

Okay, I re-read my exchange story and took out another dozen or so typos and bad phrasings, and I guess it's not entirely terrible. :P

For some reason, notifications to subscribers don't seem to have gone out for stories when the collection was revealed, so if you're subscribed to me, you probably didn't see this.

Some Things Which Occurred in the Garden on the Rue Plumet (7142 words) by melannen
Chapters: 4/4
Fandom: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Père Fauchelevent & Jean Valjean, Père Fauchelevent & Javert, Père Fauchelevent & Javert & Jean Valjean, Original Squirrel Character(s)/Original Squirrel Character(s), Javert & Jean Valjean
Characters: Père Fauchelevent, Jean Valjean, Original Squirrel Characters, Javert (Les Misérables), Cosette Fauchelevent, Marius Pontmercy
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Alternate Universe - Fauchelevent Survives, Alternate Universe - Valjean Survives, Post-Barricade, Face Squirrels, Canon Era, Grumpy Old Men, Victor Hugo Pastiche, Depression, Fluff, Non-human POV, Outdoor Sex, Domesticity, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Baby Animals, Hats, Families of Choice
Summary:

This fic contains Old Men and squirrels.

...nope, that's basically it. That's the fic. Old men and squirrels.

The story I got was by cinaed and as you would expect, given that, it was wonderful and amazing in all ways! She based it on one of the scenarios I outlined in that JVJ OTP meme I did here awhile back, by which I mean HUDDLING FOR WARMTH in a cottage in the country. You should all read it and tell Cinaed how wonderful it is.

The Summer Has His Joys, And Winter His Delights (5471 words) by Cinaed
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Javert/Jean Valjean, Cosette Fauchelevent & Jean Valjean
Characters: Jean Valjean, Cosette Fauchelevent, Javert (Les Misérables)
Additional Tags: POV Male Character, Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Moving In Together, Snowed In, Blow Jobs, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000, First Kiss, Canon Era, Friends to Lovers
Summary:

The autumn after Cosette gets married, Valjean decides to close up the house in Paris and move into a little cottage he's rented in the countryside up north. At Cosette's insistence, Valjean invites Javert along, and to their mutual surprise, Javert agrees. Of course, three months, much less a week, is a long time with only each other for company...

You guys, you guys, you remember the Cordelia Vorkosigan Flimsy Dolls, right? And if you followed the comments, you may have seen me and sara and carmarthen discussing the politics of the Vorhartung Castle Gift Shop, and how somebody should write that story?

Well, miss_lanyon wrote it! As a sequel to Ship Duty, already one of the best recent Vorkosigan fics out there, no less! And you should all go read it because it's brilliant and it's everything it should be. There are old Vor ladies! And stuffed Stegosauri! And Byerly being competent! And Ivan being traumatized by pictures of his mother in her underwear! And discussions of white collar crime and accounting! And many other wonderful things!

A Charity Case: In which Byerly gets a job, Ivan fills in for his mother, the Emperor polishes his retail skills, and the Vorhartung Castle Gift Shop ladies embezzle every mark.


Also, everybody, seriously, you should totally get in the habit of throwing all the random plot bunnies you have out in the open, because I have been doing that, and people keep writing the darn things. It is making my given/recieved ratio on AO3 look completely out of whack, but I don't care, because they are all awesome stories. This is fandom doing what fandom is for! (That is, providing me with a custom drip-feed of the stories I need in my life with minimal effort on my part. ...I mean, um, building new heights of creativity through collaboration and conversation and an ethic of openness of ideas. Yes. that.)

(Now somebody needs to write me the Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane AU set in the Study in Emerald universe. In which Peter is of course a distant descendant of royalty down several lines. Go on. You know you want it now too.)

ETA: btw, terajk is still writing heartwarming Ranma + Ryoga + Akane fic, if you were wondering.

OMG, this was clearly the right time to get into Dresden Files fandom, it seems like everywhere I go there is somebody who is just getting into it or starting something new.

Look, there's even a Dresden Files anon meme as of, um, yesterday! And just when I finally got caught up on the politics one. And I offer free whuffie to anyone who can guess which fill I wrote! Not for which prompts are mine, though, because they're probably painfully obvious.

There are way more I want to fill, but I am hampered by being less than 1/4 of the way through the canon, on a lot of them. I am so tempted to skip to the end. But. I think I have just realized something about myself: Audiobooks are the *ideal* way for me to consume any fandom that I'm writing fic in. They take a lot longer for me to get through, but it's worth it. Because when I'm writing fic for a non-text-based fandom, the stories don't unspool in my head as text - I'm thinking in terms of camera angles or panel layouts instead of phrases and paragraphs, and it gets difficult to translate onto the page, especially if the story needs a close POV. But one thing I need in order to really feel good about my characterization is a strong sense of voice, being able to hear the intonations and accents of the characters when I put their words on the page, and I don't get that when the canon I'm working from is just text.

Good audiobooks combine the diction and structure of text with the strong voices of TV, and it's actually working for me. And I'm remembering that the first fandom I did a really steady amount of fic in, HP, was a fandom where I knew the audiobooks better than the paper books by the end, too. So right now I'm rationing out the Dresden audiobooks by forcing myself to put in 1000 words on fic on write-or-die immediately after every hour I listen. So far, it's kind of working. (The fic is blatant id-spill so far - I am currently whacking it hard with a stick in hopes of stopping the mpreg - but at least it's *progressing*.)

Also I am finally getting my quilt repairs done. ^_^

Anyway. While I was off being all proud of that, my sister went and wrote over 7,000 words of AMAZING and AWESOME Q/Captain Jack Harkness crossover slash, which is brilliant and which you all should read:

Qniversal Constants by stellar_dust.


Also, poall in last entry is still open. Please vote! I meant it about not caring if you knew the fandom or had any intention of reading it.

Very belated, I know. Sorry. :/

Also, I realized while working on this that I need to add another 'ship to my list of man/vehicle pairings: Holmes/Violin. (And yes, with Holmes the violin is very much a vehicle.) That explains why my absolute Holmesverse OT-whatever involves Madelyn making a recording of Irene and Sherlock performing Erbarme Dich ...dude, I just realized: Irene, Holmes and Madelyn together make an MC, DJ, and producer! Chap-Hop battle with the Napoleon of Crime necessary, y/y/mfy?

...anyway, on with the recs:

( Holmes bookverse recs )

( Holmes movieverse )

( Other Holmeses and other Watsons )

...if there were any others I mentioned that I have forgotten, remind me and I'll try to find them?

So one of the things on my sister's Christmas list was "good longfic recs, I don't care about the fandom" (although I'm not sure where she'll have the time, since she's supposed to be WRITING A THESIS. About VIKINGS.)

But anyway. Like a berk I am only writing it now. But here it is! If you want me to make a .zip I suppose I can, but most of these are already available as e-book downloads.

(Note that these are all well-known, mostly oldish stories, so if you are in the fandoms you probably know them already? But this is for people who just want longfic regardless of fandom.)

WARNING: IF YOU HAVE A KNOWN WEAKNESS FOR LONGFIC, AND YOU NEED TO DO SOMETHING OTHER THAN READ FIC SOMETIME IN THE NEXT WEEK, DO NOT CLICK THE CUTS.

( Vorkosigan Saga )


( Next, BBC Merlin AUs )

Okay. There's the entire Vorkosigan series + 25 more long fics/series. When you have finished those? Go read all the fic in the Sherlock Holmes recs post I will be writing for lindentreeisle as soon as this one goes up. Then, go read everything Astolat has ever written. When you've done that, get back to me, and I'll do two more fandoms for you. ^_^

I am back from my annual Winter Holiday away-from-internets-ness! I have not even started catching up on the DW posts I have missed, or the hundreds and hundreds of Yuletide recs, but I *did* get to my stories.

And as seems to be a trend, I have an embarrassment of riches again this year: three stories!

My assigned story is The End of the Enlightenment, based on A Night in the Lonesome October, and Awesome Author took up the challenge of writing about a Game other than the one in the book, and it is amazing! Alas, I am not knowledgeable enough about the place & time that author chose to recognize the characters immediately, but that is okay, because not really knowing just makes it creepier, plus! That means there is research to be done! Which is always a good thing!

I also got The Story of Elihu Yale, which fleshes out John Hodgman's account of the founding of Yale University, featuring Elihu Yale and his wise prostitute, and it is adorable!

And finally, there is Two Out of Three Ain't Bad, which is Myssmo/Law and Srafen/Hedgyt and comes in chapters, OMG. Author took up the challenge of writing queer lamnviin! And in a way that fills me with joy!

...also, while all the above stories are amazing on their own, two of the authors left notes to the effect that they plan to write more, which a) means more story for me someday YAY! and b) makes me feel slightly better about the fact that I did the same thing to my yuletide recipient. :/ Dear recipient: You seemed to like the story, and I hope you could not tell that I only wrote 1/4 of what I intended (and instead just assumed I'm not a very good writer) but I *do* still intend to write you the other 3/4. Hopefully by the time the archive opens again. Maybe?

Meanwhile, apropos of you-really-don't-want-to-know, here is a song I have written:
( I want a Necronomicon for Solstice (only a Necronomicon will do.) )

(Finally) posted my Ace Manifesto last week: Fox Mulder, Ace.

(Note to self: you have run into this before, you should remember it by now, if you post an intro post to a very old, very quiet fandom, and mention that it is old and quiet, you *will* get one of the two-dozen still active people showing up in your comments being deeply offended that you didn't mention them specifically.)

And vaguely connected to that, here are two fic recs: zortified has written asexual!Ivan Vorkosigan: Uneasy Lies The Head. I'm not sure how he's done it - that seems even *less* likely than ace!Jack Harkness - but it makes me happy that it has been done, and well. :D

And to prove that vanity googling sometimes works, I just stumbled on a fic that was written based on some old meta of mine, by aria: All That Remains. It is Highlander, Methos genfic, and it is everything I want in Highlander fic. Sometimes I feel like, even if I never write anything again, the amount of awesome fic that's been written based on ideas I just threw out justifies my existence on its own. :D

***

I have been writing a bit, though. And I've just been reminded that earlier this year, I made a commitment on 12in2010 to finish at least 12 stories over 2000 words this year. I think I might actually manage 12 over 1000 words this year, which is shocking enough on its own! But a lot of it's been anon, so it is difficult to keep track of. Here (mostly for myself) is my fic accounting for the year:

( 2010 fic round-up )

The other thing I pledged to do this year was read and review at least 100 books. I think I've managed the 'read' part, given a broad enough definition of the word 'book.' Review... well, I still have almost a month to finish the reviews! (I post my book reviews on LT, where they get just enough upvotes to assure me I'm not posting into a vacuum. Would anybody be interested in them being crossposted here? I've though about it, but never gotten motivated.)

Also I am apparently posting a thing, in parts, to doctor_and_master for their December fanfest, which is apparently How the Master Stole Christmas, complete with anapests and illustrations. <_< The next bit should go up late tonight, hopefully, now that I've found my stylus (again.)

1. I am going through today and subscribing back to a bunch of people who've been subscribed to me for a while; I've been letting my reading list sit, partly because I'm lazy, partly because my reading list is already very close to Dunbar's number*, and partly because quite a few of the people who subscribed to me recently are folks who I've gotten used to thinking of as way out of my league, too smart and too popular for me. But I have got to the point again where I am spending time reloading my list saying "why are there no new posts?" (I realize the answer is 'holiday weekend already' but I am ignoring that.) So. Um. Hi?

*I have issues with Dunbar's number as a hard limit, but for a single network, it does seem to make sense. And to be about where I settle naturally when it comes to active posters on a reading list.

2. Three fics which I recently found which I must share! And one of them isn't even my fault in any way!

• Sherlock Holmes, Petticoat Detective by verity, which I linked in my yuletide letter, but deserves to be seen above a cut. Remember how back when BBC Sherlock was first gaining steam, I posted about how my issue with a modern!Holmes AU is that without Victorian!Holmes, modern culture would be very, very different?
  
  Apparently while I was off ignoring the fandom for my own sanity, some of them decided that the answer to that problem was that, instead of Holmes being the trope maker and archetype of the genius detective, in that universe, Madelyn Mack was. THIS IS BRILLIANT AND MAKES MY HEART SING.
  
  And verity has actually writ fic about it! Linked above is just a short ficlet, but what she manages to cram into the ficlet about what this means for Holmes - that the archetype he's built his self-image onto is one that pop culture thinks is a girl's - is amazing and I am in love with it. And verity tells me that more is coming, yay!


• The Lambda Quadrant by peapods24. I repeat my comment to the author: OMG Bill of Rights fic! With Rachel/Ana! Luring Keith into a gay bar of shiny! !!!! This is sheer beauty! ...and I love particularly (well, after Keith getting pinched by the bouncer. And Anderson's drooping anntenae.) the commentary you've worked in here on what being gay means on this Earth. I think it's a bit fluffier than I would have written it, but it's definitely the way things *should* be on TOS!Eearth. Proving that Earth understands IDIC better than Surak does, one glittery gay bar at a time. :D


• The World That You Need by dira. This is a Vorkosigan-verse series, up to about 50,000 words total, set during the first half of Vor Game, about how Cordelia Vorkosigan talked her husband into seducing his (male) secretary, because his happiness delights her. It is the best exploration of what it means to be homosexual on Barrayar that has ever been written; it is one of the best stories about poly relationships that I have seen in fandom, period; it is just a really good story about Cordelia and Aral and their marriage, and about Jole, the minor canon character that Dira has given amazing depths to; and it is just full of joy and love, even as it delves into some really dark and painful things on the way to happy-ever-after. This fic is now canon to me, but I really recommend it even to people who aren't Bujold fans, if you like reading fic that addresses LGBT themes deeply - it's just that good, and I want it to go on forever. I have read it about six times since it was posted.

3. The other day I went to The Star Toys Museum and donated five boxes of Star Wars crap to them, ( in exchange for a tour )

4. I finally finished listening to the audiobook of A Wizard Of Mars, after being unable to acquire a copy of the written book without using money. I was... kind of disappointed in it? Maybe it's partly because it was on audiobook, which meant that when I came to the bits I disliked, I had to just slog through, instead of skimming or skipping, so they seemed even longer. But the reason it took so long was that there was a long section in the middle where Nita and Kit aren't telling each other, or their supervisors, things that they really should, by their established character from previous books, be telling them. It is one of those annoying "if they talked to each other there would be no narrative tension, so they are just going to keep secrets for no reason other than angst" things. DD seemed to expect people to buy it just because Nita and Kit and proper teenagers now, and hormones do strange things? Maybe it's just that I was never a proper teenager, maybe it was hitting my embarrassment squick a bit, but I didn't buy it at all, even though ( spoiler cut )

5. Last night, seeking to prove that there really *wasn't* anything good on any of her hundreds of FIOS channels (she was wrong from the outset, 'cause there was a Top Gear rerun on BBCA, but still), Mom put on an episode of the old live-action Hulk TV series. It was - bizarrely - not terrible. It was actually really fun, in that seventies-TV way. And I am thinking of submitting Dr. David Banner to the crushes of shame on hot_daily, because wow, if there was ever a character designed to appeal to little fangirl hearts! And I love love love the oldschool special effects, too. Where is the fic for this?

1. Everybody who knows anything about British politics in the last 20 years should go read the THoC shared AU on the lolitics meme.

The House of Commons is an AU that postulates that BBC Parliament is in fact Britain's longest-running sitcom/drama, and the AU exists entirely in the form of press clippings with behind-the-scenes articles and interviews with actors on the show.

It encapsulates everything that draws me to RPF fandoms: the fact that things happen and characters get starring roles that would *never* happen in a fiction verse, because they would simply be too overdramatic and too unlikely and to difficult to sell; the way we use RPF both to comment on real events, and to re-write them into a better world; the layers of reality and unreality, that wrap public figures' personae, both in RPF and in the mainstream press; the alternating detachment and overinvestment that come with modern media coverage, the way press information is filtered and turned into a story; and also the sheer collective fun of it all, of course, all wrapped up in a lovely package of fluffy fourth-wall-breaking meta fic.

It currently exists as six "articles" on the anon meme and growing, and they are all, universally, brilliant. Even if you usually squick on RPF, you should still go read; the stories are all about the fictional 'actors' who play the RL characters and their experiences, so it shouldn't trip anyone's privacy buttons (and it's g-rated, of course.) I love it so much.

(The other really amazing group AU currently going over there is the Strap!Verse, which postulates that party loyalty in the British Parliament is really enforced with whips. And canes. And straps. And bare-hand spankings. But I don't suggest you try that one unless you are already comfortable with RPF kink. And have an afternoon free - it has about 30 heavily interconnected stories already.)

2. 10 O'Clock Live is really happening! 10 O'Clock Live is the new weekly British fake news show starring David Mitchell, Charlie Brooker, Jimmy Carr, and Lauren Laverne. As someone said on the Charlie Brooker community, this is either going to fail miserably or turn into the next Top Gear.

In the meantime, the new trailer on Youtube is making me very very happy. :D

Also HIGNFY is back, and I am totally writing a boarding school AU where Paul and Ian are classmates and make life hell for all of the teachers, because they can't be expelled now that Ian has photographic evidence of Headmaster Deayton's little coke-and-whores problem. (Causing trouble in Mr. Clarkson's chemistry class is difficult, though, because he usually manages to accidentally set something on fire himself before they get a chance to.)

3. Oh, if anybody wants an invite to the SEKRIT TORRENT SITE for British television, I have two to give out now!

(I believe the SEKRIT TORRENT SITE for Australian/Canadian/occasionally another Commonwealth country television is still in open membership; if you want to know how to sign up I can tell you.)

Also, if anybody wants an invite to Demonoid, I am not sure how many I have? But probably enough for anybody here who asks for one. Lots.

I also have an AO3 invite and lots of DW invites, while I'm at it.

Drop a comment here or a PM and I'll PM you with a code if you want any of those, first-come-first-served, no questions asked.

4. I am still not doing NaNo with a barely-disguised lolitics RPF sci-fi AU, but I did reactivate my NaNo account. With its less-than-10,000 user number. I may try to find any of y'all who are doing it this year and buddy you there, if I can figure out who.

Also I went and drew a cover image for it. Because I'd been staring at lots of great old SF paperbacks covers from the '70s while cleaning the things, obviously, and not because I'm actually going to write the thing.

But, I know a couple of times on gimp_gate people have asked for tutorials with scanned art and comics-style work. Would anybody be interested in a detail tutorial on my method for taking a pen-and-ink drawing and turning it into something that looks like this - computer colored and shaded and vaguely slick - using nothing but freeware, a digital camera, and a laptop touchpad?

How about another post about the female characters of Sherlock Holmes fandom? (It's weird how *much* I have fixated on Mary Morstan in this fandom - I'll read the Holmes/Watson if it comes strongly recommended, but I only really get enthusiastic about any given fanwork if it has Mary (or Irene, or Mrs. Hudson but that never happens, so mostly Mary) in it, with the result that I've not been submerged nearly as much as I thought I would be. It's strange to be in a fandom where I'm actually exhibiting *taste* to the extent it limits my reading.)

There is not nearly enough of this sort of story coming through del.icio.us. So I have descended to going to the library and checking out these things made of sheets of paper glued together on one edge - apparently, you can get Holmes fanfic in that format, too. And apparently, if you want novels about the women, you're more likely to find them there...

First, though, a few more fic recs:

Scenes from an Unusual Domestic Arrangement, by lalaietha/recessional, OT4: If you're reading Holmes fic, you already know to read everything recessional writes, but if you only read one, read this one: it is the OT4 that must exist.

Imagine Me and You (and You and You), by flash_indie, OT4: More Mary-heavy OT4 that is awesome! And it's novella-length! This has Mary joining the boys as a full partner in the detectiving, and a really interesting working-out of the poly dynamic over time. Mary is occasionally a bit too modern for my taste, but the story carries you along anyway.

Not A Rational Organ, by bluepercy, bookverse, gen-ish with Holmes/Mary and implied OT3: This was written well before the movie and seems to have got very little attention post-movie, which is a shame, because I love it lots, and I believe it happened. Watson is taken captive as a result of one of Watson's cases, and Mary insists on coming with Holmes on the rescue, and they both love Watson enough to let him go, and during the adventure Holmes gets confused, stops seeing Mary as an enemy, and starts having unfamiliarly heterosexual thoughts about her. The only complaint I have about this story is it isn't the beginning of a twelve-book series.

Checkmate, by random_nexus, gen-ish OT3: another story from the pre-movie fandom. This is a short bit that is simply a conversation between Holmes and Mary Watson, in which she out-maneuvers, out-manipulates, and out-deduces him, and he likes it, and she knows he does. If that isn't enough to get you to read, well, we clearly have fundamental differences in our ways of thinking.


And now for the published fic: since this was written and printed for money, I am more comfortable being openly critical of it even when I liked it overall. So these reviews are at, um, somewhat greater length. (but, then, the stories are also of somewhat greater length.)

Good Morning, Irene, aka The Adventuress by Carole Nelson Douglas
( Note: this is very much not movieverse Irene. I like this one better. )

Verdict: Will not be reading out of order, but will be keeping my eye out for the first book in the series.


Mrs. Hudson and the Spirits' Curse, by Martin Davies
( Okay, when I heard that this series *existed* - the series in which Holmes is fairly incompetent and Mrs. Hudson is secretly feeding him all the clues - I knew I wanted try it out, even if it was crack-addled and/or just plain bad. )(Mrs. Hudson! More people need to write about Mrs. Hudson, yo! If Martin Davies can do it, so can you!)

Verdict: Fun but not life-changing; would read more if I stumbled upon it. Also, very glad it exists.


Their Majesties' Bucketeers, by L. Neil Smith
( This is an AU where Holmes and Watson are Lamviin - small, trilaterally symmetrical crustaceans who live on a desert planet that is in their species' equivalent of our Victorian period. Also, they do *everything* in threes, not just symmetry - including sex and gender. )
Verdict: Will SO be requesting for Yuletide. :D (Also, *so* glad it exists. And Mymy/Mav/Vyssu is still my canon OT3 for all Holmes fandom everywhere. I had forgotten how deeply I loved this book in high school - my copy is falling apart, and I still have stretches memorized, ten years since my last re-read.)


...and while I was returning some of these to the library, I checked out the first Mary Russell book. And one of the Moriarty books (the series where it's Moriarty who secretly solves the crimes and gives Holmes the credit - no, I'm not sure how that works either) so there may be another set of these, after I read those. Also, I checked out Lord John and the Private Matter, Monstrous Regiment, and Pride/Prejudice, for all your Queer Age of Sail needs. I have reviews of those half-written that I'll probably post to age_of_sail when they're done.

Hi! I am still lacking energy to do anything serious online, but here are some things anyway:

Signal boost via zvi: If, like me, you recently got weird malware on your system that tried to get you to install anti-virus software, and couldn't figure out where from because you'd only been on trustworthy sites, you probably got it from an ad running on Livejournal. Just so you know. ETA: a thread about it on lj news - if you think you got hit, drop in and leave a comment, it might help.

(I think I got my system clean - I have Spybot running to stop unauthorized registry changes, and cleared out a bunch of suspicious files - but will probably be doing a format + reinstall as soon as I have time to think anyway.) When is DW going to be able to syndicate flocked lj posts so I never have to go back there again? Plz?

*****

I am one of those boring old fans who's been around long enough that the slash-misogyny argument just seems tired; yes it's important, but it's the same thing I read about in 2003. And 2005. And 2007... So instead, here are some awesome Sherlock Holmes stories about women:

Commonplaces, by Astolat. Irene Adler goes to visit Holmes after "The Final Problem."

Thoughts Without Words by Katie Forsythe. Holmes goes to visit Irene, and a conversation is had. (If you've been reading Holmes fic, surely you've found Katie Forsythe's work already, but this one is just *amazing*. It's full-on unreliable narrator - SCAN is given an entirely new interpretation, as is Holmes' history - yet the Holmes and Adler here are so amazing that I get it confused with canon. And I almost suspect the naked!Adler scene in the movie was based on this story.)

Five Times John Watson Quite Unintentionally Saw Irene Adler Naked, by flowers4ophelia. Irene and Holmes carry on together and annoy Watson a lot. Movieverse, though not necessarily contradictory to bookverse.

An Ideal Husband by Irene Adler. Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes both receive the same visitor. (this is also heavy on the Violet Hunter, who was in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" and seems to be the third-most-loved-by-fandom female from a case.)

Enclosed by Recessional. Mary Morstan receives a visit from Sherlock Holmes. Recessional has been writing a lot of really excellent Mary Morstan fic of late: you should read.

Blood Shift by Toft. Mary Morstan and Watson find something necessary in each other.

five times Mary suspected Holmes and Watson were more than friends and one time she knew it to be so., by Lady Paperclip. Mary Morstan is visited by certain inescapable deductions. And also Irene Adler, which is sometimes the same thing.

Leaving, by Telanu. Holmes visits Watson and Mary.

Congenital Defects, by Branwyn. Mary Russell is visited by a series of increasingly wodehousian mishaps as the result of an inconvenient aunt.

Honeycomb Series, by LizBee. Lizbee has written most of the Mary Russell fic that I actually liked; this series deals with Russell's Jewish identity and her marriage to Holmes.

Suppressed, by Jane Turenne. Mrs. Hudson visits Watson.

Miss Madelyn Mack, Murderess, by Flourish. Miss Madelyn Mack is visited by sudden and unexpected violence.

...in other words, Holmes fandom and its subsidiaries are full of amazing female characters, and people should be writing more stories about them. Especially Mrs. Hudson, who I suspect has a lot of unplumbed depths. (I know there's a published series where she solves the cases and secretly feeds the clues to Holmes - it even sounds sort of good; I'm keeping my eyes out for it - but I am suddenly convinced that Mrs. H has been in the employ of Mycroft - aka M of what will eventually be MI-6 - for a very, very long time. Pre-dating the time at which she was assigned to keep an eye on his brother.)

****

And on that note, I just picked up the first Irene Adler novel (well, okay, the second, because why read a series in publishing order when you can read it in the order you find it at the public library). I'm only about ten pages in, and I'm provisionally liking it. But I can't get past the fact that this Adler is apparently a soprano. Adler's a contralto, isn't she? This is actually very important to her backstory, considering the different expectations of a contralto and soprano in classical opera!

Did I in vain spend all that time looking for pieces for contralto and violin solo? (Well, no, it wasn't in vain, because I found Yehudi Menuhin playing Erbarme Dich, which I fell in love with instantly and only wish he had a better contralto to play for. I want Madelyn's secret recording of Holmes and Alder performing that to exist in RL. Please.)

****

While I'm asking about minor canon points, here's some more, in various fandoms:

1. So a veteran of the second Anglo-Afghan war naming his dog "Gladstone" is roughly the equivalent of a veteran of the *current* Afghan war naming his dog "Gordon", right? People who know more about Victorian politics than me: What statement exactly is that making?
   
   I only know as much about Gladstone and Disraeli as anyone who's read "The Annotated Alice" far too many times, but the longer I watch Holmes-movie-fandom without *anyone* mentioning that the dog's named after the PM, the more I notice its absence.



2. Sarah Jane Smith currently drives a lime green Nissan Figaro, and used to own a bright red Volkswagen Beetle named Ethel. Does anybody know what model Volkswagen she was driving in "School Reunion"? And did she have a car during her Old Who appearances, and if so, what was it?



3. Can anybody get access to a copy of the article "A Pocket Telephone," Literary Digest, Vol. 44 (March 30, 1912) p. 639 ? I can't, not even after stealing my sister's JSTOR login, but I would really really really like to read it!



4. Is there anything anywhere in primary or secondary Star Trek canon about the cultural significance of male Vulcan hairstyles and/or beards? (Other than the obvious.)



5. I swear that within the last several years there was a find somewhere in England of items related to witchcraft that included what was probably a prosthetic phallus: does anybody else remember this? For obvious reasons it is difficult to google. Or any citable links to archeological finds of life-sized false phalli in England in the last century?

***

And on the off-chance you haven't found it yet: asexual_fandom now exists! And I didn't even have to be the one to start it!

Last night I dreamed about Lord Peter Wimsey buying pot. I think it was a direct result of being trapped in a small room with both Harriet *and* Diana Villiers. Luckily, he had Elmo to back him up.

...right, no more reading crossovers before bed.

And before you ask, no, I have not yet found any crossovers with Diana and Harriet. Or Lord Peter and Elmo. Though if you know of any, let me know.

I have been reading a lot of crossovers, though. Because damned_colonial mentioned on age_of_sail that they needed someone to take over recc'ing AoS crossovers, and saying that around me is like saying to my roommate's cat, "Hey, Yzma, someone needs to eat that piece of paper on the carpet!"

So, yes, I have been looking at AoS crossovers. Because I am a sucker for crossovers. Way back in 2004, when I was just starting to be polyfannish, I was getting into PotC and XF at the same time, and reading Austen and Aubrey/Maturin, and I was like "Oooh, why isn't there an MSR Regency AU?"

(I did start to write one. But then I started wondering if the only way to explain Mulder's first name was to give his family Quaker connections, so I started looking into whether he could have a Quaker parent and still be a peer, or at least a wealthy landowner in high standing with the Crown, and what I learned is that the people who do British history on little_details don't even know who George Fox was, much less William Penn. Then I realized that what was going to be a silly crackfic would require figuring out how to write a romance between the disgraced bluestocking crypto-Catholic daughter of a Navy captain and an American Quaker aristocrat who was secretly a spy, and decided this might be a bit much. I did ponder changing the names and trying to sell it as an original romance and seeing if anyone would notice. Especially if I left in the crashed saucer. And the giant squid.)

Anyway, I never did find the Regency AU, but stellar_dust did find me a crossover with the Aubreyad, in which Mulder somehow ended up injured, disoriented, and in Dr. Maturin's cabin on the HMS Surprise. (This isn't as unlikely as it seems, given Mulder's tendency to take stupid risks in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle.) I tried to find it for the crossover recs post. Google was unhelpful. Searching my LJ and e-mail were unhelpful. It pre-dates when I started keeping bookmarks. I vaguely remember it being on a specialty archive, which means it was probably in the un-indexed 'deep web', assuming it's even still up.

So. This is when I ( sailed off the edge of the map, mate )

ANYWAY.

/me goes back to looking for that story where Mary Bennett helps build a Zeppelin.

(this is why we need an Archive of Everything. Where we own the damn servers. And there is full-text search. Or at least really good tagging & folksonomy.)

You know what? I think the absolute most appropriate thing I can possibly put in my first-ever-Dreamwidth post is a rec for my sister stellar_dust's just-posted DW ficlet (DW as in Doctor Who, not DreamWidth, although the reason it's so appropriate is that the DW could, totally, also stand for Dreamwidth, because it is a story about the unspeakable eldritch horrors that lurk in the hearts of web-page-coding and the awesomosity of women and computers, all in just 325 words):

A Perl of Great Price.

Go read it.

So my newest Early Review book for LibraryThing is The Art Of Darkness, about undercover work; and there's been all this talk about the far north lately; and I had a whole bag of mending to do, and needed something to watch. So (as could be clearly deduced from that list of circumstances) I pulled out the tape I got at con.txt of the dueSouth pilot.

Several things:

No amount of fanfic, icons, picspam, or squee posts can possibly prepare you for just how indescribably, irrepressible-grin-inducingly cute Constable Fraser is.

No amount of fanfic can prepare you for how *bad* Ray's fashion sense is. I am more convinced than ever that he's actually a Time Lord. (Though another thing that fanfic hadn't conveyed is that Ray is apparently already doing primarily undercover work, which does make that whole two-Rays thing make a lot more sense without having to bring in regeneration.)

(Ray is also indescribably cute. And Dief is a much better actor than I was expecting him to be. Remember when I was talking about watching Old!Who, and it's like being a historian who's heard all the myths and read all the theories, who gets a chance to actually *be there* and *see it happen* and it's so much more amazingly amazing than any reconstruction? Yeah, like that.)

Also, this song will *get stuck in your head*.


Undercover book is also making me really want fic exploring the Master's tendency to go into deep cover at the slightest pretext. And making me want to re-read A Howling In The Factory Yard, again, but, y'know, that's kind of a given.)

So, you may have noticed I've been talking about the Master and the Doctor quite a lot lately. That's because they are awesome, and they are evil ex-BFs across all centuries and galaxies and universes. Honestly, I swear. So I give you a recs post, which had the working title "Recs List of Doomy Doom". There are five recs under each of the five categories, and also I will be sneaking a sixth category at the end, because this is Dr. Who fandom and you can always sneak in an extra S6. This is by no means *complete* - you should read all fics by all writers rec'd (I stuck to one fic per writer) - and then you should go read everything else under the Doctor/Master tag on my del.icio.us. Many of these are standards in the fandom, but not all of them, and some are actually far more obscure than they should be.

Also, this recs list is so awesome that it has its own *soundtrack*. Of songs that were too shippy to go on my Master playlist. Click on the category titles: download the songs!

1. (Emmylou Harris) Bang the Drum Slowly : Post "Last of the Time Lords" fixit fic.
I meant to ask you how to fix that car / I always meant to ask you about the war / And what you saw across a bridge too far / Did it leave a scar
Because the only slash cliche this pairing hadn't covered yet was dying in each others' tearful embrace. Thank you, Rusty, for that.
And because this is the fandom that denies canon so blithely they often don't even bother to mark "post-LotTL AU" in the headers. Which is perfectly reasonable, considering that *canon* denies canon so blithely. Past this section, assume that any given fic may be blithely assuming a "The Master Didn't Die" AU. Everybody knows the Master isn't dead for good anyway.
( To the fic! )

2. (Spike Jones) My Old Flame : Other Doctors and other Masters, schoolboy!fic and looping timelines.
My old flame / My new lovers all seem so tame / They won't even let me strangle them!
Because the Doctor and the Master have forty years, five media, and about twenty bodies' worth of subtext, and if you thought tSoD/LotTL was it, you ain't seen nothin' yet. (If you want some more canon background for these, try the best_enemies lj community, which is all about the Master and the Doctor's forty-year love affair and has help for getting caught up. Warning: From here on in, these recs could include any possible permutation of Doctors and Masters. However, you really don't need any more than the basics for these: I read the fic first, caught up on the show later, and it worked fine.
( To the fic! )

3. (Georgia Gibbs) Kiss of Fire: Kink!
Just like a torch you set my soul within me burning / I must go on along the road, no returning
Because - well, seriously, one of the people in the pairing is called "The Master"; did you really think we wouldn't go there? Also they are both deliciously screwed up, and also not human, and also in the most cracky fandom since DC Comics; the potential for good, hard, in-character kink is endless. Assume all fics below this section have general kink warnings. And when these warnings say BDSM, they *mean* it. (this set is all Ten/Simm, but there is kink for other combinations - I was hobbled by trying to get in as many different good authors as I could. Also, no one else takes it quite as *far* as fast as Ten and Simm.)
( To the fic! )

4. (They Might Be Giants) Doctor Worm : Humor fic!
I like to play the drums. / I think I'm getting good / But I can handle criticism.
Because they're wacky and silly and cracky and manic and insane, and there's some really, really good humor fic being written in this fandom. Which you need, after a while of watching Ten and Three and Five drip the angst. Assume all fics below here might very well be crack.
( To the fic! )

5 (Alanis Morissette) Not the Doctor : Master/Someone Other Than the Doctor
I don't want to be adored for what I merely represent to you / I don't want to be to be your babysitter / You're a very big boy now
Because frankly, I wouldn't inflict either of them on anyone else. But sometimes it's fun to watch them try.
( To the fic! )

6. (Spike Jones) None But the Lonely Heart : Post-Journey's End Fixit Fic
Because the Master will make it all better. (Everything below this cut can be presumed to have S4 spoilers; nothing above it does.)
( To the fic! )

and, um - pardon the two times I accidentally posted this while working on it. You saw nothing.

So according to the election judge at our polling place, our vote for a presidential candidate and our votes for delegates are two separate votes that have no effect on each other - the winner of the popularity contest gets a certain number of delegates at the convention *along with* whatever delegates are elected by popular vote. This is actually a pretty interesting and rigorous system, according to the theory of votes; you can vote for as many candidates as you want, and vote for them *different amounts* depending on how much you like them; you can use your popularity contest vote for the person you like, and then vote strategically with the delegates.

... if the election judge was right. That is not exactly the impression I got from the official state party rules (given that the official rules confused the heck out of me) and all the laymans' explanations I've read or heard about two-part primaries claimed that one or the other of the two parts of the vote were non-binding.

Anyway, I made the judge laugh by explaining what I was hoping I could do (and by being so gleefully ultra-liberal at her!) and I ended up voting for Gravel in the popular vote, and voting my delegates 1/3 Clinton and 2/3 uncommitted, which is actually a pretty fair reflection on my feelings right now: I've been leaning toward Clinton because a) the people who are rabidly against her, 90% of the time, make me angry with their stupid; and b) I understand her, and feel like I can predict what she'll do, in a way I just don't think I can with Obama. But, hey, still mostly Gravel and 2/3 uncommitted. :P

( So here's a democracy-themed multifandom fic rec set, in honor of the occasion. )