Shut Up, and Let Me See Your Jazz Hands

I am kind of cranky about profic lately. Apparently I think people doing this for pay should be as good as people doing it for free on the internet? And then they aren't, and I get...cranky. Basically, I am reading a lot of beginnings and ends, and not a lot of middles, because that's where it all kind of falls apart.

I'm also thinking about the books that I desperately loved in the days before I found fanfiction, and wishing people would write more about those. Like, Cate Tiernan's Sweep series: I have never seen anyone so much as mention it and I was OBSESSED with those books. Morgan/Hunter, man, so amazing. And then that SEQUEL, with that ISLAND, oh my GOD, I cannot bear to think about it. Also, there should be Morgan/Willow crossover fic, because the grief and the crazy power and the terrible vengeance they will wreak if you hurt someone they love. They could be kindred spirits, okay? And hey, everybody's getting into the Vampire Diaries now, what about Night World? SOMEBODY WRITE ME ASH/MARY-LYNNETTE. OR KELLER/ILIANA/GALEN. OR BOTH. I NEED IT IN MY LIFE.

Or, oh, the Dark Visions trilogy, Kaitlyn/Gabriel, he would crawl on his belly through broken glass for her, EASY. Ugh, LJ Smith, how so amazing with the ridiculous love stories? Jez/Morgead! Maggie/Delos! Jenny/Julian! Bonnie/Damon! (Confession: I read Dark Reunion first, so I never shipped anything else. Okay, a little Elena/Bonnie, but mostly, Bonnie/Damon all the way!)

(Also, I 100% prefer the old Night World covers to the new generically "dark" ones.)

So I am reading some favorite-cliche stories (X goes back in time to save the ones they love!) and, confession: I ship Wesley/Illyria desperately. It was honestly the only storyline I gave a damn about in those final episodes, and the biggest reason I regretted the cancellation, because rumor had it they were actually going to go there. I cannot watch the "would you like me to lie to you now" scene without weeping, I ship it so hard. Her gaspy "my love, oh! my love" is so clearly an epiphany and it KILLS ME DEAD. Unf.

Joss Whedon is kind of an amazing bastard at getting me to fall in love with his characters' relationships.

( So, the various ships (of many fandoms) that I LOVE, in no particular order )

Apparently, if you read enough of a Certain Kind* of Xander-fic, you will get a great craving for men's adventure fiction?

I am now reading The Hunt For Red October**, and am planning to read Patriot Games next. Although I may go for PG now, as I am most interested in reading Jack vs. assassins and the wiki article was stupidly vague about what happened in which book...but PG is currently my best guess. If you've read Tom Clancy, confirmation/denial would be awesome.

*Almost anything on XanderZone, many Stargate crossovers, anything written by any of the authors on the th_presents yahoo group, especially Ten himself...

**Jack Ryan is the President of choice in many of the aforementiond fics; it is almost like research?

Mediocre-to-okay media things that have surprised me recently:

5ive Girls - Weird religious horror movie with lesbian schoolgirls = cheesy fun, right? But even though the main villain is very explicitly a Christian demon (Legion, aka the one Jesus banished), one of the girls isn't Christian and makes a protection circle by calling on her Goddess and it totally works. Surprising!

The Listener - Comparisons of telepathy to rape even though the telepath is the hero! And there's even a whole argument about how even though he, Toby, is a good person, that doesn't mean her argument is invalid. Also there is a thing about Toby's third foster home dad who never touched him, just thought about it every night, and how it was before Toby learned to block people out and "it was just a matter of time" and also Toby getting taken over by someone else's nightmare when he gets flashes of a girl's rape.

Death Angel - Romance novel where the hero is a sociopath (assassin, very little emotion, no personal connections other than business, no attachments to possessions) who's kind of interested in the heroine, but still honestly debating whether or not to just kill her (girl he kind of admires/sticking it to a guy who irritates him vs. 2 million dollars). There's some change when he watches her die in an accident he caused, but the big change in his thinking really only comes after he sees her alive again and perfectly okay and it seems to be equally composed of "she's a miracle" and "holy shit there's life after death what does this mean for me?". And he ends the book still absolutely willing to not just kill to protect her, but willing to commit cold-blooded, pre-emptive murder to protect her.

I am totally in an emo have-I-read-everything-good-already? mood. So I'm going to blather at y'all for a while before I sulk off to re-read...something. I want to read Secrets, and HP & the Nightmare of Futures Past, and I Am What I Am, and Defender of the Night, and the Resurrection-verse, but I can already reel off whole sections of those from memory, so. I want something epic and ass-kicking and romantic and if there was non-permanent death, that would be ace, really.

So I am - obviously - not a hardcore shipper or anything (with two exceptions), but sometimes I think that just makes it harder when I dislike a pairing. Because I can look at it and be like, "I'd like to read it, I love that author and that is exactly the kind of ridiculous h/c premise I so love, but I cannot. My brain is willing, but the inner fangirl is in active revolt at the idea."

Sometimes I find a pairing genuinely creepy on its own merits (*cough*Harry/Ginny*cough*), but mostly I seem to hit a problem with the way I approach fandom, which is more difficult, because that is unlikely to change. I have to have someone to root for, apparently, because if it is a fandom for me? I have a favorite. I am there for the favorite, and the favorite only. I am usually ambivalent at best about pairings not involving the favorite, because I want the favorite to have all the boys and girls, basically. It's not a hard and fast rule - I am interested in basically all of the (main) BtVS characters, and I have a hierarchy of favorites in bandom (one for each band, but Brendon Urie trumps everybody) - but it's how I roll 90% of the time.

Like, Gerard is my favorite; my most-read Gerard pairing is with Frank. Therefore, in my head, Frank is with Gerard or Jamia or nobody; I have negative interest in anything else. Gerard can be with anybody, but my inner fangirl has put a little sign on Frank that says "reserved for Gerard and/or Jamia, since I am not quite crazy enough to ignore the awesome RL lady of his choice". The same thing with Pete: Patrick or Ashlee or nobody. Which means I don't get to read much Mikey fic, which is sad and actually what started this; I only got to read half of Discipline and Punish and that is an awesome series and looks really interesting and the Bob/Gerard was great and I totally ship it and I still cannot manage the Mikey/Frank half. Is very sad.

I am a little bitter about the Panic split because I'll read Brendon/Spencer, but what I really shipped (fictionally! I am not a tinhat!) was GSF and somehow, I don't think there'll be much more of that.

Early Hannah Howell novels feel a lot like fanfiction in places. Or internet original fiction, I suppose. There's just a vibe there, like she might secretly have written massive h/c epics under another name. Plus, her awesome hand-waving of things like women wearing underwear and men who think rape is wrong and people not trying to set psychics on fire; it's very "I know and acknowledge this isn't factually correct, but it's how I want to play it, just go with me". Although you know who should be a fangirl but almost certainly isn't? Bertrice Small. She totally loves worldbuilding and using actual historical figures (Jasmine totes has a love affair - with baby! - with actual-doomed Prince Hal) and h/c and slavefic (every other story ends up in a harem in Algiers) and she could really benefit from a good beta.

I totally want slash for RocknRolla; there is an actualfax gay hoodlum in actualfax love with his best friend/gangleader. There is...no, I don't want to spoil it, it was too hilarious. Suffice to say, if it doesn't show up at Yuletide, I will be very sad.

Seriously. Nothing to read. Send recs.

Normally this would be an SIC post, but that would involve googling French and I don't want to.

( Bandom, Harry Potter, bandom, television, fandom, bandom, books, Queer As Folk, Harry Potter, bandom, Harry Potter... )

I keep listening to this song and thinking of Gerard. Because really, "Jesus christ that's a pretty face/the kind you'd find on someone that could save"? TOTALLY Gerard "Saves Lives" Way.

It's nice that my assistant manager thinks I can do anything - favorite example, you have to be given computer authorization to do returns; Jessie was in CSR training two weeks before she got it, but the AM gave it to me after I'd done two returns, both of them with her right there - but then I get days like today. It wasn't a bad day! I was busy and I wasn't doing anything I particularly hated. But I started out in Tools, got some freight to put up, got moved out of Tools, told to design one fourway (the little freestanding shelving units by the registers) and stock two more, told to hang sale signs in three departments, then I had to man the service desk for an hour during lunches, then I had to help bag the 8+ boxes of peanuts that are nearly out-of-date (25 lb boxes, btw), then I had to change prices on a bunch of clearance items (the only thing I actually got done), and then, 30 minutes before I leave, I get more freight, walky-talkies that need antitheft sensors attached. Too much for one person to do! Too much for two people to do, even.

I've decided to add an Atwoods tag, because I apparently am going to keep talking about it. And I've decided that the tag is going to be "Okie Walmart" because that's what we are, we are the hick superstore.

I'm not actually crazy about the Spencer/Brendon, but at least three of my all-time favorite Brendon stories are S/B, so it kind of looks that way.

Been thinking about updating my if you read my recs post, because surely my tastes have changed in two and a half years? But apparently, no, the only thing no longer true is my aversion to Harry/Sirius. I read that now, sometimes. And I'm more. I don't know how to say this. I latch on more? I will get a fictional craving and leap on it like it's a fleeing gazelle. So a fandom will go from a once-in-a-while thing to my fifth or sixth most recced in short order, but then I may put it down and not pick it back up for months/years (see: Smallville).

I remain confused about marking genderswap/sexswap/genderfuck/whatever you want to call it. Because. Generally, I go by the gender the character identifies as, like the trans!Pete fic has a slash tage because he identifies as male. But do people have a fundamental aversion to girlparts that I should warn for het in stories with spontaneous sexswap? And the always-a-girl thing. Not something I dig so I didn't really have a policy but there was epic-length girl!Spencer getting knocked up by Panic GSF and really, who says no to that? And I know where that one goes, but then there's the Trish/Peyton thing and the Ryan/Bren and the Frankie/Gee and they're het or femslash or whatever, but if you have an OTP, wouldn't you want to read it? So I want to stick them on the slash page, but they are NOT SLASH. I am TORN.

I want a Pete Wentz list named Long Live the Carcrash Heart and an MCR list called Let's Save Some Lives.

I find Gerard's sincerity about life-saving pretty much as charming as I find Harry's cupboard-raised social awkwardness.

Vampire list called Bite of Your Kiss! I post these things, because if I write them down I lose them.

I was reading an essay - sadly, I cannot remember where - that talked about the author not having OTP but OTCs - one true character. And that's totally how I do, so thanks for the phrase, whoever you were.

I keep seeing meta on True Blood and how the show's so much better than the books and I have to say: You guys are stopping after the first book. The show is drawing on all 10+ of them. Of course it's more layered! They're foreshadowing things Sookie won't find out for years! And for the people who talk about the shallow beginnings of book!Bill/Sookie - he's her first love. Remember that? Probably happened when you were a teenager, probably started just because your beloved was attractive and cool (to you, at least)? That's what she's going through. And the MFEO vibe will later become hilarious/bitter-making.

I feel kind of weird about the continuing rpf kick. Because I have a project deadline and I either need to man up and figure out a way to do all-rpf lists without it feeling like a cop-out (if I just wanted to "50 random awesome things I just read" I could be throwing up a list every three or four days) or I need to read something else for a while. Seriously, I have (nominally) multifandom lists that 50 - 75% rpf at this point and that's...not really cool with me. SGA, especially, has a million fics about kids and two million more about death, yet I can't convince myself to go look; I just have "NEED MOAR BRENDON" on a loop in my head.

There are certain jobs/situations where you're expected to form an exclusionary "us-against-the-world" kind of bond with those (mostly) of the same gender and most of those are also very macho, very straight, the military, the police, most professional sports. And then you get bands. And I really really love that.

I am seriously in love with this: If Music Be The Food Of Love (I'll Have The Veggie Burger). Brendon being a brave little toaster and totally oblivious to Spencer being stupid in love with him! Angst! Happy ending! <3333333

Whoever put up the link to the massive, massive pile of sf/f book torrents? YOU ARE MY NEW FAVORITE.

Awesome books I own but can't find! Awesome books I didn't buy because the library had them! Awesome books I've never been able to find in print, anwyhere, ever (damn you, Lisanne Norman, you are probably the source of my thing for cat people! you hooked me and then I could never, ever find book 2! book 10, everywhere, but book 2 invisible!)

If someone pokes me I will totally upload the best ones with descriptions. Just, be prepared for flailing. The Tielmaran Chronicles! The King's Riders! The Raven's Ring! I can't even!

Polyamory! Accidental vampire queen who doesn't take shit! Prince who's bullied into becoming the champion of a war god who mocks him! Brain damaged hero who kind of becomes queen of an alien race and whose sister is in love with him! Badass thief-mage on roughly three epics Quests for Vengeance, one of which dictates that she masquerade as a bimbo piece of ass while subtly mocking the whole court!

Basically, I am enthralled.

Y'all, that was AWESOME. Everyone was incredibly friendly and kind. The panels were more about the writing than the reading, and the first panel I went to was briefly hijacked by a bitchfight about NASA vs. commercial space, but then I got to hear about how PC Cast's biologist father critiques her nonhuman sex scenes and there was the awesome, awesome fairies, demons, and zombies panel. Go, Team Zombie!

I clapped so hard at The Merlene Show (hillybilly Martha Stewart, presented by Yard Dog Press) that I bruised my thumb.

There was awesome MST3King at the play (Don't Mess with Iron Man) and someone brought a model Servo.

But the highlight? Author speed dating. You signed up and then you got a table with 2-3 other fans and 30 authors came by to chat with you for 3-5 minutes. This led directly into the new book reception, so you could follow up on particularly awesome conversations. I got to spend, like, two hours talking to Marie Brennan, Shanna Swendson, and Sarah Rees Brennan, aka mistful, aka the person I went there to see. Pretty much made my year. Also super awesome? Dean Lorey, PC Cast, Jen Barnes, Rachel Caine, Larry Dixon, and Julia Mandala.

Still working at Atwoods, with the bonus of a raise, possibility of promotion (even though it's partially because someone I liked got fired), and the return of the best discount ever. We had it for the holidays and it made them so much money that they brought it back until somebody abuses it; they take what they paid, add 10% profit, and we get everything else off. I'm getting shirts for $2.50, it's awesome.

And hey, remember when I was all, I want some Simon/Ronon and then got it? Twice? Just found more. The internet rocks.

Back in RL, I'm getting to redecorate my room for basically the first time ever. On the negative side, that's because a water pipe in the wall between my and Richard's rooms burst and ruined the carpets and some of the furniture and stuff. Totally could have been worse: my computer was set up in Richard's room and his was worst hit; basically all of his furniture is a loss. But I was in there and we got it stopped quick with no damage to my baby.

It seems like nearly all I'm reading lately is M7 and original fic. And those are two things that have, for me, a startlingly high rate of failure, of fics that I just can't sit back and enjoy. I found some good stuff, but it's been two-and-a-half, three weeks now and it's getting ridiculous. A couple of notes:

"Ohhh, new fandom and it burns. I keep finding Mag7 fic that's just good enough to make me hope there's something awesome on the horizon. I've found three that are pretty good, but that's after five days of searching and that third one? Mostly made the cut because it got bonus points for hooker!Ezra. Hooker fic always gets bonus points if it's even readable and negative points if it's not. There was another hooker!Ezra fic that got so many negative points I just skimmed the middle third. It was bad hooker fic with drug addiction, weird relationship dynamics (and not my ship), and there was gangrape of a girl. That's, like, -70. Not cool."

"OMG, stop it, GIVE YOUR CHARACTERS REAL NAMES. Taniel? Dravin? And then, god, there was the story that featured Shasta and his neighbors, Dawn and his sister Karen. I mean, if you're going to give a boy a hippie girl's name, don't then name his sister something completely normal. I would fully accept soap opera names like Blake and Kendall! But dude, random guy named freaking Dravin? Bitch, please."

I bought a bunch of ebooks from Torquere Press and remain rather bemused at the quality. Out of...23 books this last time, there are 2 I'm still waiting to read because I have hopes and don't want to be disappointed/don't want to fall in love before I have money to buy the sequel(s), 4 anthologies where I enjoyed the story/stories I bought them for but haven't read completely, 6 novellas that are good-to-awesome, 5 that are bad-to-mediocre, 4 novels that are almost good, and 2 that are medicore.

Still haven't found anyone as good as Parhelion, although Julia Talbot is growing on me. She's pretty solid, but this last book, The Peacock and the Firebird, really floundered for me when it came to the vision/ghost crap. Some of it contradicted itself a little, one hero's reluctance to accept, y'know, crazy and sometimes overwhelming visions of a past life that included his violent death is treated as silliness/cowardice at times, and oh yeah, the thing with the bodies? If there was one murderer, why were there two swords and oh, yeah, why did he/they leave them in the corpses? That's not how you treat a good weapon!

Guide to Survival, by Kurtzwilde, I think, felt like a freshman effort, but had some good bones. Manners and Means similarly had something that could have been good, but the plot takes place in such a small window of time that the change in relationship dynamics felt very...forced? I dunno, off. Our hero went, in five days, from in love with two guys and caring about a third, to in love with the third and caring about/distancing himself from the other two.

Broomsticks and Stones was pretty awesome and made me long for more Kara Larson. Dead of Winter, Hanged Man, and The High Priestess were all by Parhelion and therefore awesome; that is a man with a fantastic grasp of period dialogue. And wow, now I want to go reread some of this.

Still in progress, because this is fun.

Heroes:

• I want Peter and Isaac to paint together, Peter helping Isaac with using his powers sober, the both of them getting progressively more stressed and strung out as November 8 looms ever closer without them finding the damn cheerleader, and then I want them to have a desperate, sweaty, paint-streaked fuck right there on the mushroom cloud on Isaac's floor.
  
  
• I want Mohinder/Claire, after Claire finds out what her father's been doing on those "business trips", where they drink together and bond over their daddy issues and how very much this mutant explosion has fucked up their reasonable lives. Then there's friendship that slowly shifts to dating without either of them really noticing. Also, it'd be awesome if, at some point Claire could save him from amugger and then be charmed by how nonchalantly he accepts being saved by a girl.
  
  
• I also want a gen story. Shocker, I know. But I really want to see Hiro and Matt = BFF. Don't even try to say it wouldn't be awesome.
  

( Read more... )

I am burning myself out on HP. Want good origislash but cannot find any that is for free. Woes. Eyes hurt, hate light, noise, and life. Want a cheeseburger like salmon want to swim upstream. Am filled with Auto Angst, as it has been raining on and off for two days and I have only only one working windshield wiper. And it's on the passenger side. And there's that one window that doesn't always stay up. Also, still sleeping in my car. Which needs gas. Thank god I am accustomed to sleeping in a ball. But I miss showers like the desert misses rain. Or, you know, like smokers miss the days cigarettes did not label you an anti-social bringer of second-hand death, as regular rainfall would, in fact, destroy the desert's balance as an ecosystem. Have been making do with sink baths. Aaaaaagh. Need something to read.

Re-read Covenants today and want to read The King's Own, because I've only read it once or twice, as it wasn't as good as Covenants and Suiden spent practically the whole thing forcibly separated from Rabbit and thus off-screen and Suiden is my beloved. Okay, Suiden and Rabbit and Jeff and Laurel and Jusson and a little bit Wiln, but only a little bit because he is a specieist bastard, although yeah, he has some cause. Plus the plot was not as interesting as the vast and shiftingly intertwined conspiracies in the first book.

Oh, Rabbit. There should be Rabbit-slash. He is young and foppish and badass and spends all of his time in close quarters with unmarried men, several of which can read his mind, and he ends up publicly nude at least twice in the first book alone and also there is whumping. I would pay a million dolars for Rabbit/Suiden because Suiden = protective and incredibly possessive army commander/foreign prince who is also sometimes a dragon and Rabbit = young and incredibly powerful soldier-cum-mage who wants to just be ordinary but is massive trouble-magnet. There's also the loyalty and the trust and the thing where Suiden keeps getting into pissing matches over Rabbit and hey, is one of the guys who can read his mind. I would take Rabbit/almost anyone. But I especially want Rabbit/Suiden. Or Rabbit/Jusson.

Anyway. Dissatisfied with the world, off to try to change that, but hold little hope for the rest of the night. Balls.

Okay, see, one of the things that drives me a little crazy about books now is the way they leave me wanting more and yet there is no more because for the most part, people don't do litfic. Which sucks because I need more of these 'verses.

Read Ethan of Athos, finally, and of course I loved; come on, it's a Bujold book, how could I not love it? Really, really want some Ethan/Cee and I actually think I might get some; I think I remember seeing it and passing it up 'cuase I hadn't the book yet?

Also read Dragon Bones and Dragon Blood, both by Patricia Briggs, and OMG, people, go buy them now; they are beauteous. I had to call eight bookstores before I found one that had the second book and you know what? More than worth it. There's magic and intrigue and crazy-awesome plot twists, the kind where you think you know where it's going and then wham, tricked you, but in the best possible way. God, Ward's awesome and I love him, but I almost love Oreg more. I really, really want something from Oreg's POV; you get to read stuff from the POV of several characters, but never Oreg.

Nightlife, by Rob Thurman, is a really, really good book for you if you like unreliable narrators. Mostly because ( spoiler ). It's the author's first novel, and you can tell, but it's still good. The story itself is reminiscent of Supernatural: two brothers hunting/on the run from demons, the elder brother all badass, the younger with creepy supernatural powers.

And there's more, of course, but I haven't got a lot of time, so it'll have to wait.