(no subject)

Less than a day until class begins. Still working on the syllabus, but the school has a nice web interface (apparently it's bad with .jpgs, but it's been fine with documents). I'm going to bring my prop bottle of Mylanta Night Time Strength with me, to show a genuine falsely advertised product.

My office is in full pop culture swing now. I have my Buffy, Independence Day, Spiderman and Supreme Court posters (one of these things is not like the others), pictures of Justice Souter, my circuit judge & his court, Kirk & Spock, and Jed Bartlett (signed, okay?); a print of Norman Rockwell painting showing a female juror holding out against a bunch of guys; a mini-poster that says "When you pirate MP3s, you're downloading Communism"; a wedding picture; a picture of me and Miss Kitty; and pictures of me & my husband at Acadia. Also action figures: Spike, Mulder & Scully, and a corpse on a gurney that came with M&S. Oh, and a stapler shaped like an alligator.

Which reminds me of a Justice Breyer story (he looks exactly like Mr. Burns of the Simpsons, and he has a habit of holding his head in his hand in a way that looks like he's trying to prevent his brain from exploding). During oral argument on Wal-Mart v. Samara Bros., the case from 2000 about the protectability of trade dress, he asked the parties a question about whether a hairbrush shaped like a grape would be protectable trade dress. Let's all take a moment to contemplate a hairbrush shaped like a grape. (All I can think of is that it would generate a lot of static cling, like a balloon. At least in the actual opinion Justice Scalia used the example of a cocktail shaker shaped like a penguin.) Justice Breyer is a deeply, deeply strange man, and I say that with full respect.

Eternal Shame, and Recommendations

Okay, I make soundtracks for fics/pairings. It's mental songfic, and it's black shame. We even have CDs for the Bowie Buffy stories, and tapes for a few of the Iolokus ones. Still, this Shriekback song is my Clex anthem:

Across the same back yard again
Over the same low wall
Into the same long car and then
Black wheels on a silver car
Big wheels go round
Panoramic as the open sea
Big waves crash down

Out of the same back door
Across the same back yard again
Over the same low wall
Into the same long car and then
Touched down in a different place
Wide eyes look round
On the devil and the deep blue sea
One sun beats down

Health and knowledge and wealth and power
Passion and poems and sex
I wear a smile like a leather glove
I won't shut my mouth for less
Belts and buckles and whips and chains
My sign my style my dress
My heart was made to steal
It's heaven, more or less

And I have an iTunes mix themed for them. Black, eternal shame.

So I have these recommendations in many fandoms, having succumbed, Shriftlike, to speedballing crack-whorishness. I thought I'd share, in the hopes that someone somewhere might find a little joy in my mix of het and slash lovin'.

I'm just going to do a few at a time, so tonight it's Buffy and Angel goodness. Be warned: I read lightly in this fandom and miss many good things; several others I really like are in progress, and I won’t recommend works in progress. Call it superstition or simply protecting others from my mistakes.

Rachel Anton, Geek Series: A nice series of Willow/Spike interactions (no sex).

Ins, Winners and Fault: Two short stories, razor sharp – you don’t know you’ve been cut until you see the blood. Winners is a perfect story about the triumph of the light; five paragraphs from the end, everything falls into place. Fault, dealing with Buffy and Angel in the years to come, is a bit too cryptic to be perfect, but both stories should be at the top of anyone’s list. The other stories are also quite good, but too short to pack as much punch.

Flywoman, Puppy Love, Willpower, Meat and Salvaged: Another entrant in the “didn’t know my guts had been ripped out until I looked down” category. She makes excellent use of the short-short form to pack maximum emotional impact.

Yahtzee: Duh. Favorites include Acid Trip – love that Xander; Them Mean Ol’, Low-Down, Lando Calrissian Blues – frivolity about a serious issue (my caveat: there really are Lando Calrissian books, and they’re better than the average SW profic, but characters in stories are totally allowed to be wrong); Captive of the Soul; and The Other Half Lives.

A.C. Chapin, Alternative Lifestyle: There is no Buffy. There is only Anne.

Elizabeth, Along Came a Spider: Spike takes care of Dawn.
Also: Frozen, in which Lindsey loses something more to Angel.

Two Ladies of Quality, Career Change I: New Boy: As I said, I don’t recommend works in progress, but this story about Giles’ introduction to vampirism from the inside stands by itself.

Livia, By the Rule: Willow breaks Jesse’s rule.

Jessica Harris, Impossibilities: Giles and Xander work out a modus operandi.

Melymbrosia, Truly and Forever: Willow loves Tara.

Jennifer-Oksana (or whatever she’s calling herself these days), Merciful: What really happened when Cordelia’s headaches got bad. The rest of Jenny O’s Angel stories are good, but this is my favorite.