Etch out a Future of Your Own Design, by anonymous: Real Genius, Mitch/Jordan and then Chris/Mitch, but also about academia and disillusionment—a fantastic sequel to the movie with real pathos in with the humor, and a sweet little crossover tucked away (given the rest of the story, kind of like a hidden bomb, but okay!). I also suspect the author’s field because of the capitalization of the title, but that’s neither here nor there.

weimar27 recorded a podfic of Full Service Firm (J2 AU)!

Discworld future-fic.  You'll almost think Pratchett went and got himself an AO3 account.

Another Chuck story for me, in Yuletide Madness: In the Middle
Casey's the only smart one in the bed. I love Casey’s distinction between his partners’ types of stupidity.

The Opposite of Swarb, Connie Willis--Bellwether
Delightful fandom meta in great Connie Willis voice. The puns alone are enough to make the story fun! Now I kind of want to write a Five Cage Fights … fic.

( Chris Hedges on why America sucks, with bonus fat phobia )

( more on the financial crisis, Henry Jenkins on emotion in pop culture, David Rakoff essays, film music, cheapness )

( Pretty Little Liars, the book )

I bid on tryfanstone in help_pakistan, and asked for a fairly iddy Sam/Dean scenario.  tryfanstone was incredibly accommodating, leading to a few rounds that went like this:

T: Would you like anything else?
R: ... [even more specific request]
T: Sure!  Also, would it be okay if there was [other sex scene]?
R: Is that a trick question?

The full results are up, and I am greatly pleased.  Blood Moon or on author's website.  tryfanstone says:

Concession, by obsession_inc, an AU that seems to me to be a 2010 version of a classic story; to say which one would be spoilery, and you might not agree with me.  Creeping horror: Christine Everhart tries to figure out what happened to Pepper Potts.  I don't think you have to be in IM fandom to appreciate this one.

Also, I have a new mattress, yay!  Back to sleeping on cotton-covered slab instead of expensive failed experiment in supersoftness.  Apparently I am denser than I should be, or something, because I just felt like I was sinking into marshmallow.  News to me: mattress variety has increased a lot since the last time we bought one.

Fic rec: Mistaken for Strangers, by bellatemple . As an acafan I couldn't not love it. And if you think about the SPN-fan relationship as indicated by the show, the title gets even better.

( Werewolves, assassins, dragons, young offenders, and whatever it is that CJ Cherryh writes )

I’ve been watching two adorable I’m on a Boat ST:Reboot vids. Some thoughts: ( very vague movie spoilers )

(2) I really love seeing two or more artists take the same strictures and play with them! The vidders here sometimes use the same shots, but in different places, and they use ( more vague movie spoilers )

; and they use “If you're on the shore,/then you're sure not me-oh” quite distinctly, with one humorous and one kind of painful. It’s a little more repetitive than the three Body vids in three different fandoms, or the three Handlebars vids, but still neat to watch.

Resonant has a new Hancock story, Flight—it’s Ray/Hancock but in my head it’s pre-threesome, and it’s got that “orders of magnitude stronger than your partner” thing, which is so sexy, and a killer ending. Read, enjoy, consider adding to the fandom!

Paul Alan Levy has a post up on Public Citizen's defense of CafePress against claims by the GOP that people can't put "GOP" or an elephant on politically-themed items for sale on the site. It's a great post, but Paul describes this image as "a portrayal of a figure labeled 'GOP' peering into a toilet stall labeled 'men' and occupied by a figure." Peering? Is that what they're calling it these days? Paul, I think, has led a sheltered life, despite his relentless defense of free speech.

Three different fandoms, one song.  It's probably not a great idea to watch them all at once, but the contrasts are quite intriguing because of the different meanings and different relationships illustrated by "sometimes it feels like/you don't have a body."  I also particularly like the three different interpretations of "try to speak American."

Heroes (Peter):
http://community.livejournal.com/heroes_vids/19369.html?style=mine

Firefly (River/Mal/Serenity -- well, that last one is my interpretation, but isn't she necessarily part of them?):
http://obsessive24.net/videos.html

I had a lovely evening out last night with astolat, geekturnedvamp, Z., Astolat's partner, and a geeky friend we have yet to convert to full fannishness. The evening was marred only by the fact that we went to see The Matrix Reloaded. And the bottom third of the screen was out of focus for the entire film. Which circumstance reminds me of the old joke about the nursing home: "The food is so terrible," says one resident. "Yes," the other replies, "and the portions are so small." Our friend did demand passes for all of us, and received them. She is very cool.

astolat and geekturnedvamp are introducing me to the wonderful world of offline vidding, and it is a lot of fun. I have a list of downloaded SV vids I like that I'm going to foist on geekturnedvamp as possibly worth waiting through a bad connection for. ( Read more... )

In other news, Amazon has a bunch of music one can download in mp3 format. A few appear to be people taking advantage of the new bands format to post unauthorized songs, but most aren't. Kristen Hersh, Dar Williams and the Tom Tom Club, among others, have tracks up; the Dar Williams is a non-album track, Starman, that may horrify purists like M'Sally. Watch out, though, for the big names using Liquid Audio instead. As a result of sampling, I bought a Rockapella disc off Half.com, because I am cheap and also don't like to give money to Amazon for customer service reasons. One might ask whether a person with 14 uninterrupted days of music on her hard drive needs more. But they're neat, and I've got a few gigs left.

Speaking of music, the New Order collection Retro is worth it for serious fans, even though there's at least one full disc, probably two and a half, of stuff you already have. The live disc is good, and some of the remixes are quite enjoyable. The "fan" disc is in my opinion over-focused on the early, Joy Division-type stuff, but wins my vote for its inclusion of "Leave Me Alone." If you're not a fan but like the music, you can get a better basic New Order collection for probably somewhat less in total in the four (five really) discs Low-Life, Brotherhood, Substance, and Technique. Main complaint: the damn thing comes in a package like those extended half-LP sized things stores used to use for CDs so they could retrofit vinyl bins for CDs, except, unlike those old packages, this one isn't half air. It opens up so you see all 4 discs at once, which would be mildly cool if you could then fold it up and actually put it in your CD rack/storage unit, except you can't. It fits on top of mine, though. Grrr.