Keep Hoping Machine Running

The earthling is four, and he's loved the Pigeon for half his life. This is an enduring love, is what I'm saying. And during all that time, he's believed that Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus is a basically unfair book. The Pigeon should get to drive the bus, is his feeling. It's not like there are any good reasons why not, beyond what a bus driver who didn't even stick around to drive his own bus wants.

But recently we bought the earthling the Pigeon app, and that has taken his Pigeon-bus anguish to new heights. You can change a lot of things about the story in the app, but you can't change the one thing the earthling desperately wants to. No matter what, you have to keep telling the Pigeon no.

I can only conclude that this strikes the earthling as terribly, fundamentally wrong. He's complained to us. He's protested to the app. Every time he plays the app, he gets his stuffed Pigeon out and lets him drive all the cars and trucks he owns, carefully playing through his ideal scenario, which goes like this:

"Can I drive the car transporter?" Pigeon says.

"Yes, you can. I'll help you."

"I'm so happy! This is the best day ever. I'm driving the car transporter!" Pigeon says.

This is an actual transcription, word-for-word, of one of his recent rounds of Pigeon Gets to Drive the Things. (Including the dialogue tags, because the earthling knows you have to specify who's talking.)

So it was against this background of extreme concern over rampant Pigeon-related injustice that I uttered the word "petition" to the earthling yesterday.

"What's petition?" he asked.

I tried to explain. "A petition is a letter you write to someone, asking for something you think should happen. And you sign it, and other people who agree with you sign it, and it's a way of showing that lots of people feel this way."

"Oh," he said, thinking. "Can we write a petition?"

"You have to have a thing you want to happen," I told him. "Like better lunches at school."

"Or the Pigeon to drive the bus?" he asked. I agreed that that is a thing you could write a petition about. "Let's do that," he said.

"But you need a reason," I said. "A good reason why the Pigeon should drive the bus."

"It will make him happy," he said. He thought some more. "He keeps asking and no one ever says yes. You have to say no even if you want yes."

"Any more?" I asked.

He thought some more. "It makes me sad to see him always get said no," he told me.

"You mean you'd rather see him get what he's dreamed of and worked for?" I asked, interpreting some.

"YES," the earthling said.

Those are perfectly good reasons, in my opinion. So, yeah, I made a petition for the earthling. And I'm asking you to sign it. Tell your friends, tell your family: we want the Pigeon to ride the bus. He's been asking for ten years and no one has EVER said yes. It's time to figure out how to make it happen.

Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

(Note: You can sign from anywhere in the world. You don't have to be in the US.)

I wrote one story for Yuletide 2012, for the doughty shrift, who gave me the best prompts in the world.

This Side of Paradise (17031 words) by thefourthvine
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Losers (2010)
Rating: Explicit
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez/Jake Jensen
Summary:

"I'm a good boyfriend," Cougar said.

I tell you what: in the planning stages, this story seemed like it would be fun and short, but it really only delivered on the fun front. I blame Jensen. Key lesson learned this Yuletide: If you want to write a Yuletide story that's less than 10k, don't use the motormouth's point of view. Use the PoV of the laconic guy with the sarcastic eyebrows. I mean, Cougar doesn't go into lengthy digressions about rude Canadians and the etiquette of three-ways and Star Trek.

And speaking of geeky movies, I totally salute thehoyden and frostfire for pointing out, during my Fucking Chris Evans Is in Fucking Everything breakdown, that he's never been in Star Trek. (And I salute frostfire for this conversation via IM while I was deep in the middle of writing this:

Frostfire: Hi! How are you?
Me: WEEPING BECAUSE SPOCK.
Frostfire: Did you watch Wrath of Khan again?
Me: DANTE'S PRAYER.
Frostfire: Awwwwwww.

Fandom: the place where people will always understand when you're sobbing incoherently about how he TOUCHES HIS CHAIR OH GOD.)

So, anyway. This story, thanks to Why Jake Can't Shut Up Jensen, became so long that I was in the painful position of not even being able to complain on Twitter about how long it was, because that might de-anon me. But it was a barrel of fun to write, for real.

And Nestra, Norah, Queue, and thehoyden were heroes of Yuletide for beta-reading this with such aplomb. Thanks, guys! Next year, I will try for shorter, and also way fewer run-on sentences. I swear.

My son is in preschool right now. Since Newtown, I've been staring at his school, at his building, at his classmates, and thinking of all those kids who are dead now. I don't think any parent can help that.

And, hey, I am willing to do whatever it takes to stop that from happening again. Suggestions I've heard from gun control proponents: Reduce gun access, reduce rate of fire, increase waiting periods, make smart guns (with biometric chips to prevent firing by someone other than owner) mandatory.

Suggestion I've heard again and again from gun fanatics: Arm teachers. When every teacher has a gun, every child will be safe.

( And that's what I want to talk about today. )

Dear Author Person,

We matched! So, hey, here's some good news: three of my four requests this year are five minute fandoms - you can master all three of them in the time it takes to eat a sandwich. I hope that is a joy and a comfort to you, especially if we matched on the fourth request, which is, um, slightly more complicated.

I am, as always, going to provide you with all the details, because that's what I always hope to get from my recipient. But if that's not you, please tap out of this letter now. Just know that I really, really cannot handle child or animal harm or death, and I love you for volunteering for one of my tiny fandoms. See you on the 25th!

( Me! )

( This Is Where It Starts )

( CinderFella -Todrick Hall )

( Space Girl, by the Imagined Village )

( Literary RPF (Charles Baudelaire) )

It's Yuletide time! And thus time to bring out the Yuletide advice posts.

Every year I try to persuade someone new to Yuletide to sign up for it. I don't always succeed, but I always try. And part of what I offer to support them in the Yuletide hurly-burly is advice on signing up and selecting fandoms. And then I thought: what if there are other people, people who are signing up for the first time even though they are not being harassed by me, who might also want to know this stuff? Anything is possible!

So I am sharing. Selecting fandoms for Yuletide, TFV style.

The central thesis here - my single key piece of advice - is basically DON'T DO WHAT I HAVE DONE. And while I've made mistakes every single year, my first few years I made doozies. Let's discuss my errors, so that you can either learn from them or, you know, just laugh at me. Either one is a totally valid choice.

2004 was my first year, and I signed up in a total panic. I couldn't believe I was doing it, actually signing up for Yuletide. Because - this amazing challenge that actually got me into fandom! And me, who had never actually written any fan fiction! Surely a bad combination. Also I had a high fever. And that's why, instead of actually looking at all the fandoms, I went through the fandom list from the top - this was waaaaay back when, and the fandom list was this drop-down box with a billion options, ordered alphabetically. I just picked the first three fandoms I knew, fandoms that all began with A, and went back to bed.

This was an error. I missed several key steps in the offering process, including:

• Considering what people might want in that fandom.
  
• Considering how it would be to write in that fandom.
  
• Imagining what a story in that fandom might actually look like, coming from me.
  
• Involving my brain at any point in the process.

This is why I ended up getting assigned All Creatures Great and Small. Which, okay, back then the format for Yuletide fandoms wasn't written in stone the way it is now, and I didn't even know that there was a British TV miniseries based on the books. So I was offering the books. My recipient was requesting the miniseries. Problem! Also the books are these totally heartwarming stories told in a distinctive first person voice. I - do not do heartwarming. Another problem! One I really should have considered before I got my assignment. As I did not, by all rights my first Yuletide should have been a disaster. A fandom mismatch! A fandom I couldn't actually write! Oh god whyyyyyy? CUE PANIC.

I have three people to thank for getting me through that Yuletide: Best Beloved, who read and edited and soothed and supported, laurashapiro, who beta-read the story after BB was through with it, and Cassie, our beloved and much-missed Labrador Retriever, whose lifestyle choices (chew all the things, basically) gave me something to write about. I also have to thank artyartie, who saved my life by providing a very useful prompt, and who was the best recipient a first-time Yuletider could hope for. (Dear recipients everywhere: if you really want to make your writer's day, come back a year later and say how much you still love your story. artyartie did that for me, and my confidence as a Yuletider totally soared. Which I needed.)

My take-home lessons from my first Yuletide: Read the whole list of fandoms. Also, get a loved one to review your signup for sanity.

The next year, 2005, I was determined! I would do Yuletide again! I would make fewer mistakes this time! It was a good thing my goal did not involve making no mistakes, let's just say. I downloaded a spreadsheet with all the nominated fandoms on it and eliminated everything I didn't know, followed by everything I couldn't write. Then I considered what was left. This was a much better process. Unfortunately, I missed two key steps, which were:

• Considering what people might want in the fandom.
  
• Remembering that I might be assigned either gen or pairing.

The previous year, I'd been assigned gen. (For which I am eternally grateful to the Great Yuletide Sorter, because I don't think I could have stood it otherwise. I am bad at porn anyway, and given everything else I did wrong that first year, oh god no no no.) I forgot that lots of people, me included, sometimes want fan fiction that has sex in it. I had not, at this point in my fannish career, written any explicit porn. (There are many people who do Yuletide who are only really interested in writing gen or very non-explicit romance. At least some of them game their signups considerably to avoid fandoms where straight up smut is a likely request. I did not do this. This was an error.) And that was how I ended up getting assigned Mr. and Mrs. Smith, with the prompt of "hot het porn." I had never written het. I had never written explicit porn. I had never written anything hot. CUE PANIC.

I survived this Yuletide thanks to Best Beloved, my amazing betas, and my Emergency Yuletide Whining Filter. Best Beloved in particular went above and beyond the call of duty by saying such things as "get her hands on his cock right now" and "I really think you ought to get her skin-tight pants off before they have penis-in-vagina sex" and also reminding me that while I cannot write porn, I can write teasing indefinitely. And queue wins points forever for being the person to point out, gently and kindly, that I had given John two cocks, and this was not canonical.

My take-home lessons from Yuletide 2005: Sometimes people want pairings, and even porn. Also, only write doublecock porn if your recipient specifically requests doublecock porn.

In future years, I learned advanced lessons about considering what kind of time you have, what kind of Yuletide experience you want to have, what access to the source you have. But the basics are pretty simple:

1. Get to a short list somehow. I go through the entire list of fandoms and delete everything I don't know and then everything I couldn't write, but you can do it however you want.
   
   
2. When you have that short list, look at each one of them. Imagine how you would feel if you got it assigned to you. Imagine opening up your assignment letter and discovering that this is your fandom, that you have only a few weeks to write at least a thousand words in it. Imagine what story you'd write.
   
   
3. Think about what stories a recipient might request. Common requests include:
   • A pairing of any two of the nominated characters. M/m, m/f, and f/f are all options, here. Threesomes are also a possibility, although I think less likely (based entirely on how I've never received a request for one; yes, this is SCIENCE).
     
   • Background. The history of a character, the history of some institution, how everything got to wherever it is in the canon.
     
   • Futurefic. How things turn out after the story ends.
     
   • Something just like canon - another episode, say.
     
   • Worldbuilding. This is obviously especially likely in any canon that takes place in a world obviously and significantly different than ours.
   Imagine writing each one of these types.
   
   
4. If, after all that, you feel good about it, leave that fandom in. And if you can't imagine writing a story for it, throw it out.

Take whatever is left and divide it into two lists: fandoms for which you must specify characters (always an excellent choice if you're, say, happy to write Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, but aren't really sure you could hack Bill/Ted's mom) and fandoms for which you can honestly offer any and all characters (because you are happy to write Bill/Ted's mom, or Bill/Billy the Kid, or Socrates/Joan of Arc!). Pick your top five specific-characters fandoms and offer those (or, if you have fewer than five, offer them all). Make the rest your bucket list.

And then PROFIT. Or, okay, don't profit, because this is fan fiction. My point is: click that submit button and go on your merry way. (Until you get your assignment letter a week or two later and inaugurate the great tradition of Yuletide Panic, at least if you're me.)

Anyone else have any tips to share?

For my second sixteenwins payoff, I had to (Had to! Like it's a chore!) talk about kidfic. And, okay. I have always adored kidfic, but ever since I had a kid of my own, it's been - complicated. I still want all the characters to have all the kids, except the characters who obviously should not be permitted within fifty feet of children, but I have all these - opinions and standards and issues and shit. It's awful when reality gets in the way of your legitimate enjoyment of fan fiction.

So I guess I could have given quettaser a lengthy screed on my kidfic issues, but I'm trying to produce something she'll actually read all the way through. So instead: four summaries and snippets from kidfic stories I yearn to read. YEARN.

Thanks to my Flyers beta, paxpinnae, my Habs beta, katarin, and my pre-readers, thehoyden and Best Beloved.

( Traditional kidfic! )

( Non-traditional kidfic! )

( Uncommon kidfic! )

( Id kidfic! )

( Poll! )

Okay, so after my mistaken public posting earlier today, several people led me to an epiphany, which goes like this: why not share my list of Yuletide fandom links? Maybe people will be swayed and nominate them! Or swayed and WRITE them! Or, you know, just squee with me, so I have joy to tide me over until actual Yuletide.

So here's another one. Everyone I've shown this to has had roughly the same reaction, which goes like this:

1. I - am not sure I can stand this. Do I really have to watch ALL SIX MINUTES?
   
2. Things are looking up! Maybe it won't be torture!
   
3. OH MY GOD THAT IS THE GREATEST.
   
4. No. No, I was wrong, because this is clearly the greatest.
   
5. WRONG AGAIN. That's for SURE the greatest.
   
6. Ahahahahahaha.
   
7. Awwwwwwwww.
   
8. ...It's over? And I can't even buy the music? Suuuuuuuuuck. Better watch it again, I guess.

My point is, it is really important to muscle through the initial part, which is a little hard to take if you aren't a fan of wistfulness, to get to the parts that are the greatest. And I don't want to spoil it for you, so I'm going to link here and then discuss for a bit. Ready? Watch the WHOLE THING.

CinderFella, by Todrick Hall. (Warning for rapid cutting and flashing lights.)

There. If that didn't make you happy, I don't even want to know, because it makes me really, really happy. And I knew as soon as I saw it that it would be a Yuletide fandom for me, because I would take any story in this fandom. The main pairing, obviously - I want to know their happily ever after, because I am seriously invested in it. The princesses, oh hell yes, I want to know all about that - every detail, if you will. The fairy godmother! I want to know what she does on her days off. Anything. Anything at all.

My only real complaint here is that as far as I know I can't actually buy the music. But everything else is glorious.

Okay, I am fully aware that there is a solution to this somewhere on Google, but I am also aware that the chances of me finding it anytime in the next brief forever are very slim. (Basically, I had a con, which was great and good and wonderful. And then I came back from the con and realized my life is booked for eternity. And also everyone is sick and we are all apparently going to stay that way for roughly the same length of time. I wish there was a rule that illness and busyness were mutually exclusive, but no. Unfair, I say, unfair.)

So. I have a new main computer. Yay! Because of a disastrous third-party software misfire, I used the native Windows file transfer utility to move everything from my old XP computer to my new Windows 7 computer. (Yes, I know Macs are perfect and made of unicorn snot and that using one is basically the same as achieving union with the godhead. This is why I have a Mac laptop. But my main computer cannot be a Mac for work reasons the end.)

In the process, all my music transferred over, and all my iTunes data - play counts and playlists, particularly - transferred over, but iTunes can't find my music. It's not where it used to be. (And the folder in which it lives is locked? I think?) I do not want to lose all that data, because I'm not even sure how to navigate my sprawling music collection without it. On the other hand, iTunes is unusable at this point, which means my iPod is unupdateable, which means I am sad and bereft and pathetic. And Apple of course will not provide me with any support on this front, as I am evil, and Microsoft supporting anything - okay, I'll just stop here while you get the laughter out of your system

And, like I said, I am sure there is a fix for this, and I am also sure sufficient application to Google would tell me what that is. But I'm hoping someone out there already knows what it is. And can tell me. Ideally in steps that can be easily understood by a person on a lot of cough syrup, but at this point I will take helpful links or just basically anything. Even if the answer is that I'm doomed and must do a fresh install of iTunes, that would be useful to know because it would keep me from hoping.

Help? Someone? Please?

FIXED YOU ALL ARE GENIUSES AND I LOVE YOU. Thaaaaaaaaank you!

The other night, Best Beloved and I were reading before sleeping, as is the custom of our people, and I had to take a break from the story. In the days when I did most of my fan fiction reading on a computer, that meant just switching to another tab. But now I do most of it on my Kindle, and I can't switch in and out as quickly. (On the other hand, it's way easier to read fan fiction before bed.) So for short breaks, I just kind of - look away from the screen. Which is what I did.

"What?" BB said, looking up from her own Kindle.

"It's getting gross," I told her. I may have sounded a trifle grim when I said it.

There was a pause as she tried to figure out if she wanted to know, and decided she probably didn't, and then realized she couldn't stop herself from asking anyway. (This is, by the way, self-destructive curiosity. Normally I'm the one who has it. Not this time.) "Like - blood?" she asked. "Serial killers?"

"They're having feelings all over the place," I said. And I meant it.

See, even in stories, I prefer feelings in small doses. When people start having impassioned conversations in which they share their innermost thoughts, I have to stare into space for a while, even if they are totally great and in-character conversations and the story is awesome.

I realized, after BB finished laughing openly at me and returned to her book (in which people probably had feelings left, right, and center without her flinching at all, because she is weird enough that she believes a serial killing is more disgusting than emoting) that this was totally related to a question bethbethbeth posed quite a while back, about people's favorite character types.

This might lead you to believe that my favorite character is the strong silent type. And, okay, I do enjoy reading about people who, if they have a feeling, have to go ford a stream or hack through a jungle or venture into deepest space to deal with the trauma. But that isn't my type.

My type is the spacetoaster. I love spacetoasters. I can get into all kinds of fandoms and I can like all kinds of characters, but only a spacetoaster will force me to turn my brain into a sort of heart annex to hold all my feelings of love. (Yes. Irony: I live it.)

So it's probably pretty obvious, but I'd still like to define the spacetoaster.

A toaster, see, is someone with a feelings dysfunction. Maybe the toaster has few feelings. Maybe the toaster has lots of feelings and is totally bewildered by them. Maybe the toaster has spent a lifetime getting distance from any and all feelings, only to be suddenly confronted by them and fail to deal. Whatever. My point is: toasters don't get feelings. They spend a lot of their lives watching other people emote and wishing to be elsewhere, or having feelings themselves and thinking they're maybe hungry or something. (And, yes, there is a bond of sympathy here. I once had an argument with an art therapist in which I finally said, "But I don't have feelings all the time." "You do," she told me, using the tone that therapists used to get with teenaged me after half an hour or so of attempted therapy. "Everyone has feelings all the time. You just don't acknowledge them." And then the hour was up, thank god, but I still think I was right. Sometimes I don't have any particular feelings.)

But not all toasters meet my character needs. There are lots of people who are coldly efficient, or coldly correct, or coldly distant who in no way grip me, or at least don't specially grip me, because I am specifically interested in spacetoasters: toasters who are alien, or alienated. Or maybe just easiest to describe in alien terms. Whatever. My point is, if you have an alienesque person who dreams in black and white, a person who acts like all her feelings are beamed in from a space station orbiting Jupiter, you have a character I'm going to want to meet, and read about, and write about, and possibly pin up on my super-secret Wall of Spacetoasters.

This is why my reaction to Spock was, basically, where have you been all my life, you dreamy, dreamy spacetoaster? Spock is the exemplar, the archetype, the essence of spacetoasterdom. If you're looking for a spacetoaster, you can do no better than Spock. And if you're trying to build a better spacetoaster, I'm just going to have to laugh at you, because they don't get better than Spock. (Although I encourage you to try. So, so strongly encourage you to try.)

But there are other spacetoasters out there, of course. Benton Fraser, I would submit, is a spacetoaster - a guy routinely labeled a freak even by his fellow Mounties, whose only successful emotional relationship, as the series begins, has been with a dog. (Many spacetoasters are better with animals or babies than with adult humans.) Aeryn Sun would rather shoot everyone in a building, or indeed on a planet, than have a single heartfelt sharing moment, and she is, again, an actual alien: spacetoaster! (And, man, maybe it's just that I never really watch - uh, anything, basically - but to me it looks like there is a serious shortage of lady spacetoasters out there. Someone needs to get to work on that, stat. I mean, I get the sense that Temperance Brennan may be a spacetoaster, but I also get the sense that she's on an ensemble show, and I still have scars from the last ensemble show I tried to watch. Beyond that, and of course my beloved Queen of Attolia, I've got nothing.) Jamie Hyneman has three certified expressions, last had a feeling in the fall of '39, and is weird even to other Mythbusters: spacetoaster, spacetoaster, spacetoaster. Abed Nadir is, as far as I can make out, the result of Dan Harmon's actual attempt to build a better spacetoaster. (He failed, of course. There's only one Spock. But Abed is awesome, even so.) And then there's Sidney Crosby, who only has feelings during and about hockey, and who may actually be from space. Spacetoaster. (In fact, the word itself comes from a pathetically long email exchange on the subject of one Sidney Crosby. I am not going to implicate my co-conspirator, though, on the grounds that she might then refuse to finish a story I really want to read. Guess what it's about!)

So, you believe you may have a spacetoaster on your hands, but you aren't quite sure? Here are some signs! (Please note that, like many tests, this is not intended to diagnose. A high score merely provides a basis for further testing. The real proof of the spacetoaster is in the story.)

1. Is your character highly competent at something that is not feelings or people? (If yes, +10 spacetoaster points.)
   
2. Try writing a story from your suspected spacetoaster's first-person point of view. Then write the same story from some other character's point of view. If the first character requires more words to get to the same place, and those words aren't in dialogue, you may have a spacetoaster on your hands. (+1 spacetoaster point for every additional thousand words. In extreme cases, you can just stop the test here; some spacetoaster points of view can add 50k words to a story.)
   
3. Imagine writing a story in which your suspected spacetoaster is a robot. Now imagine writing a story in which the same character spends fifteen minutes discussing his or her feelings intensely and sincerely. (+5 spacetoaster points if the robot was easier. +10 spacetoaster points if you fell over laughing when you tried to picture the second scenario. +15 if your character is actually already a robot.)
   
4. Picture your possible spacetoaster receiving a heartfelt hug from an acquaintance. (+5 spacetoaster points if the character stands there stiffly. +10 if he or she recoils, flees, or flinches. +15 if it is impossible to picture an acquaintance hugging your character because the Do Not Touch field is so strong with this one.)
   
5. Take a random sampling of five stories about the suspected spacetoaster, or five episodes, whatever you have. Count the number of times the character fails to understand some extremely basic human concept. (Example: if you want to kiss someone, that might mean you are attracted to that person!) (+1 point/incidence.)
   
6. Consider the same random sample. Give one spacetoaster point for each incidence of the following:
   • Someone calls the character an alien.
     
   • The character must engage in some level of research (reading texts, calling friends or relations, setting up an elaborate double-blind study, whatever) to understand a joke.
     
   • The character avoids an emotional scene.
     
   • The character fails to notice an emotional scene.
     
   • The character wishes to be a robot.
     
   • The character fails to respond appropriately to a fairly basic cultural concept. (Example: not really understanding the rules of visiting a friend at home.)

Total up your points. The higher the number, the more likely it is that you should email me with news of your spacetoastery discovery. What, you thought you were taking this test for you? Don't be silly. (You might not even appreciate spacetoasters. Although I hope you do.) This is my attempt to get you to tell me about your favorite spacetoasters, because I might have missed some. And I'm sick. There's nothing like a spacetoaster when you're sick. The hopeless way she stares at you in distressed confusion, pats you awkwardly on the shoulder, and then disappears and comes back with a welding torch - it just sets you right up.

I read a lot of hockey blogs, because that is the right and proper behavior of the obsessed sports fan, and I want to be right and proper. (Okay, no, that's a lie. I have no interest in being proper.) Yesterday, I found a post about summer hockey-related reading, and, wow. The post has three unsubtle messages for me:

1. "Alas, these books are not for you." (This is the only message I'm not pissed off about, because it's all on me. Basically, if I'm going to break out of my non-fiction comfort zone, I need it to in some way involve Martha Wells, Naomi Novik, or spaceships.)
   
2. "Get lost, this post is not for you."
   
3. "Fuck off, this sport is not for you."

Yeah, it's those last two messages I wanted to rant about.

The author of the post is Philip Painter, whose business cards, I have to assume, say "not interested in the ladies" right under "Director of the Puerto Rican Ice Hockey Federation." And we should thank him, for he has provided an excellent, possibly even textbook example of using assumptions about your audience to make that audience smaller. (And, in the process, exclude and hurt a group of people. I get the feeling he'd be more worried about the first part, though.)

Because we all know the only people interested in reading books about hockey are dudes, right? Right, Painter says. But, he continues, these books are so good that "your woman" might actually want to read them, too. You might have to hold her Cosmo hostage to get them back! (Or her alcohol. Or you can just withhold sex. No, I'm not kidding, that's exactly what he says.) Gosh, Mr. Painter. Thank you! That is valuable advice that will surely save my marriage. Oh, wait, no, I meant the other thing. Fuck you. I meant fuck you.

And then there's this line, which is such an amazing gem I can't look directly at it:

...sometimes a female writer can grab the subtleties that men overlook.

Thank you for those few kind words, Mr. Painter. This female writer is really appreciative, and let me tell you, I am exactly the master of subtleties that you assume me to be; I totally get the subtle implications, here. (And since you complain about the lack of graphic sex in the female-authored book that you recommended, let me just reassure you: I do indeed write graphic sex. In fact, if you're short on hockey stories involving sufficient graphic sex, I can totally help you out with that.)

And the thing is, this post comes after a season in which female hockey bloggers had to beg people not to use women's names as insults for their most hated players. (The most tragic part of this: at least one of these articles focused just on begging other female hockey fans not to use misogynist insults. Apparently the male hockey fans are just irremediable, but we can maybe save some of the ladies if we try hard enough.) And let us not forget the delightful clusterfuck that was While the Men Watch, a Canadian TV show meant to bring relief to all the women who were watching hockey but secretly yearning to discuss manicures instead. (Though no one I read on this topic mentioned the sole draw of While the Men Watch, which was that it would give you something to drown out the inane and often worrisomely creepy official announcers. At least, I assume it did, because having to listen to Pierre "My love for Sidney Crosby is unwholesome" McGuire and exceedingly unfunny stereotype-based jokes is surely cruel and unusual punishment.)

But what the general hockey fandom has learned from both of these kerfluffles is, apparently, that the ladies sure do get worked up sometimes. And then you can't have sex with them until they get over themselves. So better do your misogyny where they can't see.

Dear male hockey fans: I can still see you.

I'm just starting to wonder if you can you see me. Like, did you set your shields to exclude female presence back in fourth grade and then forget to switch that off?

If you're wondering why hockey doesn't have a bigger fanbase in your city, if you're wondering why you never seem to meet women who like hockey, if you're confused about the preponderance of dicks on your dance floor, uh, let me clear this up for you: it's your fault. Yes, you, misogynist hockey fan, and also you and you and you. Because when you pull shit like this, and especially when you pull shit like this again and again, and then don't see any problem with it (when I checked the comments on Painter's post, they included one note that the post is, you know, a tiny bit offensive, and that comment was left by a woman - and let's not forget that the Puck Daddy editors let this post fly in the first place), you're doing everything in your power to push the ladies away.

(And so those ladies are going to go somewhere else and entertain each other. And if you just said, "Hey, can I watch?" out loud - yeah, those female hockey bloggers were right. You're irremediable. Congratulations! Now please shut up.)

I appear to have written a thing! And, since I'm concerned that the Archive might fall over and go boom again soon, I'm posting it here, too. ...I'll be honest; I've kind of forgotten how you post fan fiction to LJ/DW. Let's see how this goes.

Title: Your Daddy's Aim Is True
Fandom: Hockey RPF
Pairing: Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews
Rating: Explicit
Notes: Written entirely to entertain thehoyden as she struggled with work badness. Thanks to her for beta-reading, and to Best Beloved for the usual stellar alpha-reading.
Also On: AO3

( Papa never heard the cool. )

frostfire tends to tell me about whatever media she's consuming. (So, for example, I know a lot about True Blood for someone who has never seen it and never will. This gives me joy, since it lets me pretend I have some real connection with popular culture, instead of just a really long mental list of all the fictional people who should be fucking each other.) Recently, she told me about a story she was reading. (Just to give you some idea of what it's like, this is a story that forced us to use the terms cocksobriety and gaymaker a lot. Proper usage, in case you're curious: "That's it, he's fallen off the wagon. His cocksobriety is a thing of the past." "Yeah, [character] totally hit him with a gaymaker, and now he's just COCK COCK COCK all the time.") It is glorious. I can't remember the last time just hearing about a work of fiction made me so happy.

And probably the thing that has made me happiest is this key plot element: One of the characters has an enormous penis, and this gives him angst. Yes. This man's main source of anguish is his GIANT COCK. (No, this is in no way attached to other gender issues. He just - has tremendous insecurity, caused entirely by his HUMONGOUS WANG.)

Well. Obviously this is the best thing in the world. Because, first, it has finally given me a TV-Tropes-type name for a fiction phenomenon that has long irritated me, which is when the character has a trait that 99% of people would think is totally great and maybe even pay lots of money for, but which the author pretends is a major problem leading to extreme and possibly insurmountable trauma. I needed that. For the rest of my life, when I encounter a character who is gleamingly perfect except for all the tragedy arising from being, like, too happy or whatever, I will go, "Hello, GIANT COCK ANGST!" and giggle a lot.

But GIANT COCK ANGST did not stop giving there. I'd been thinking of TV Tropes, and from there it was a short step to just plain old tropes, and I realized that GIANT COCK ANGST is a concept that needs further exploring in fiction. I mean, just consider the potential in hockey RPF alone! Sidney Crosby (who was once rumored to have a giant cock) and his GIANT COCK ANGST, caused by the many remarks made in the locker room about his, you know, horsedick. (Obviously, Sidney would be a virgin because of his GIANT COCK ANGST.) And, of course, there should really be like eight stories called The Giant Cock Angst of Patrick Kane, because come on. Patrick Kane totally has GIANT COCK ANGST, despite having a completely normal-sized penis. (And he definitely talks about his GCA all the time, too, which leads to Tazer having a cock-related breakdown. (Quote from this imaginary story: "Baby, there is nothing average about this gorgeous piece of manmeat," Kaner says, sprawling really offensively to display his goods to maximum advantage. Johnny is pretty sure Kaner's practiced this in front of a mirror, just to make him crazy, and it pisses him off how well it's working.))

But the sad news I have for you today is that there I have no actual GIANT COCK ANGST stories to recommend. There's just the one I know of, and obviously I haven't even read it. So I am going to share with you these other stories. (I just want you to be thinking about GIANT COCK ANGST. Forever, basically. I know I will be.)

The One That at Long Last Satisfies My Desire to See a Vampire Get Called an Idiot a Lot. Look, I Read Interview with the Vampire at a Formative Age, Okay? Where the wild things are, by liketheroad. Hockey RPF, Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews.

Midway through this story, I realized I was in pain. My face hurt. After several seconds of careful consideration, I realized I was experiencing muscle pain from smiling too much. And, you know, I smile a lot anyway, but apparently I don't smile for protracted periods of time without at least a small break. My cheek muscles were cramping.

So that's the center of my recommendation: This story made me smile until my face hurt so much I had to keep taking breaks to play Bubble Shooter. Maybe it will make your face hurt, too! Worth a shot.

And, okay, I have never read Twilight, and beyond the sparkling vampire thing, don't really know what goes on it. But if it's all Bella, like, yelling at Edward to get over his issues and stop being so creepy, and trying to force him to be more like an actual functional person, I am so ready to read it. I will borrow my mother's copies right now. (Yes. My mother has read the entire series. I don't want to talk about it.) This story - look, when there's an old immortal doing the Bonding Tango with a high school student, I worry. But that is seriously not a problem in this story, where Kaner is actually the one in charge of the entire pursuit-capture-turning thing, and Tazer's job is to stand around being confused and creepy and occasionally saving Kaner's life. (Kaner is also the more functional human being, which, given that we are talking about Patrick Kane, should tell you something about how vampirism affects Tazer.)

Although I really have to ask those of you who have read Twilight: Does Edward for serious spend his entire immortal life endlessly repeating high school? If so, why? Is he being punished? Because if he is, I salute the vampires for figuring out the perfect way to punish someone you can't really lock up or kill or spank or whatever, but I can only assume Edward did something really and truly awful (...attempted to destroy the planet?), in which case probably they shouldn't let him near Bella. And if he didn't do anything and is just spontaneously choosing to repeat high school endlessly, clearly there is something seriously wrong with him, and, again, he shouldn't be allowed near Bella. (Even if he was okay to start with, eternity in high school would eventually leave him barking, in which case, yes, he shouldn't be allowed near Bella.)

The One That Proves That at the End of the World, You're Going to Want to Be Able to Pickle. And Maybe Also Deal with Your Issues, but I Don't Know If It's Possible to Be Able to Do Both, and This Story Does Not Clear That Up. In Search Of, by toft. Mythbusters RPF, Jamie Hyneman/Adam Savage.

Okay. There are some stories you know you shouldn't read. This is absolutely one of those stories for me. It has animal harm! Child harm! The world ends! Bad stuff happens. And I am not a copes-well-with-bad-stuff person. I am a person who recently had an argument with her sister about who cries more easily. (We were waiting for the crowds to clear after a performance of Billy Elliot. It was topical. The conclusion, by the way: There comes a point where it doesn't matter, and that point is significantly behind both of us.)

So. This is not the story for me. I read it anyway. Partly that's because, hey, toft! She's good in anything! And partly - look. Sometimes I have Bad Story Sieges, where every single thing I attempt to read, no matter how good it looks, no matter how much I love the concept, no matter how sure I am it will be awesome, turns out to be a disaster. (I'm not sure if I hope I'm the only one this happens to, or if I want company in my misery.) In those situations, I will take risks I maybe shouldn't to break the siege. (For the record: If a beta of a story who knows your reading tastes only too well tells you that you absolutely should not read it, do not believe anyone else who tells you that you could. The beta knows it better. The end.) And this story did in fact break that particular streak of fan fiction disasters. You have to love a slumpbuster, even if it's not your usual fare.

But even if this story hadn't broken my siege, I think I would still have loved it. Yes, even though I reacted badly to certain sections. I love it enough to put up with the pain. Because, let's face it, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are near the top of your Real People I Want to Team up with if the World Ends list. (Don't even tell me if you don't have that list, because I will just fret. Proper preparation prevents poor performance, people!) Because this story is something to bring to mind the next time you're stuck in traffic and wishing everyone would just disappear. Because Adam and Jamie adopt a baby and they name her Leia. I just: Adam. Jamie. Apocalypse. Baby. That right there is a winning recipe.

...If you can handle animal harm. For real don't read this if you can't.

The Series That Proves That Dira Can't Resist Having Babies of Some Species in Her Stories. Or, in Other Words: PUPPIES! (I Approve.) Every Marine a Wolfbrother, by dira. Generation Kill, Brad Colbert/Ray Person, Brad Colbert/Nate Fick, Brad Colbert/Awesome.

Okay, I think every single person who is willing to read a series featuring US Marines psychically bonded to wolves has already read this, but my philosophy about that is that I don't care, I'm recommending it anyway. If I worry about things like timeliness and so on, I will never get anything posted. (This is why I don't instarec. If I did, it would read like, "OMG you guys totally go check out Dorothy Sayers! And this Murasaki lady is pretty darned awesome as well!")

And I would actually have recommended it earlier except I kept debating about which of the stories in the series to recommend. I finally realized that this was a sign I should just go with the whole series. (Yes, I did already recommend the first story in this series. So good I recommended it twice!) Because this is amazing. I've mentioned before that I have never and will never read A Companion to Wolves, but this series does such an incredible job of updating it, bringing it into a modern context, and making it make sense. Which is. You know. Amazing. I mean, this is Dira, so you sort of expect amazing, but still. This series is basically the equivalent, in terms of challenge level and so on, of writing a Tolkien barista AU and making it work. (Oh, man, I bet Rivendell is the name of a massively snooty coffee shop (although people in the know call it Imladris), where all the employees are seriously gorgeous but will not give you the time of day. They have Dead Language Open Mic Nights and Crystal Instrument Musicale Tuesdays. Arwen is the daughter of the owner; she gets harassed a lot for wanting to marry this dude who is totally scruffy and, like, mainstream. No, wait, I am stopping this right now.)

Given that Dira makes this central concept work, it's almost beside the point to mention that she makes so many other things work. I mean. I can't quite call to mind any other story I've read recently in which the main pairing gets bored in the middle of sex and talks about surfing (no, Dom and Brian, talking about cars doesn't count, especially since for you that is sex), but that happens in one of these, and it works. Probably the key miracle in this series is that Dira switches pairings between the stories, which. Uh. I have a very sensitive OTP Detector, and generally I can read only one pairing per fandom. Multiple pairings in a single series is tough. Multiple pairings involving the same dude - that's basically impossible. (Although not hugely surprisingly in this case, since a side theme of the series, as with every Generation Kill story I have ever read, is "Wow, Brad Colbert is really awesome. I mean. Wow. I just. SO GREAT, people. SO GREAT. I think he's made entirely of sparkledust and swear words!") But Dira made me read it, buy it, and like it. I think she wins the Impossible Feat of the Year Award, hands-down.

Unless someone really does write that Tolkien barista AU, I guess. (Suggested name for a new AO3 collection: Tolkien AUs Are Fucking Hardcore.)

The One That Leaves Me Wondering if Anyone Ever Buys a Robot Who Totally 100% Means to Buy a Robot, or if in the Future All Robot Purchases Will Occur While Drunk, Upset, Concussed, Confused, or Whatever. (And Yes, I Do Wonder How That Will Affect Marketing Strategies.) The Chinese Room, by tyrannicides. Football RPF, Iker Casillas/Cesc Fabregas.

Okay, so this is a robot AU. Stop rolling your eyes at me, youngun. I do not recommend every single robot AU that comes down the pike. Just the awesome ones. It is not my fault if the trope tends to lead to awesome stories.

And this one is sincerely awesome. Unfortunately, it's incredibly hard to write about without spoiling it. (Although I will say this: if you read it and like it, read it twice. I liked this on first reading - lovely writing, gorgeous story, solid characterization given that I have basically no clue who these people are, etc. And then I re-read it and picked up so much more of what the author was doing. First time good, second time better!)

But this does leave me in a quandary. For reasons that do not require spoiling at this juncture, I can't talk about the story, beyond, you know, the basics (There's a writer with agoraphobia! He buys an android!). And since I don't know the characters basically at all, I can't talk about them. (They play for - football teams. In Spain. Beyond that, all I can tell you is that my conclusion is that Iker maybe has some issues, and might also be a trifle uptight. And Cesc is a puppy. Probably this one.) So what do I talk about in this rec?

I mean, I could tell you about the world building in this story. (Remarkable, especially given that we're talking about one character who basically does not leave his house and another character who has no understanding of what the world actually is.) I could tell you that this story really made me think about all the things you can do with a robot AU. (I guess there's nothing that lets you get to the heart of humanity like writing about someone who is not technically human and doesn't actually have a heart?) I could tell you about the writing. (It's lovely.) I could tell you how compelling this story is. (Very.) I could tell you this story legit made me tear up in several places. (Granted, this is not all that challenging, but still.) Or I could go the rec-unrelated-to-the-story route, always a favorite of mine, and, say, tell you about how I recently discovered that my son's first preschool teacher maaaaaaybe has been able to hear my wife and I having sex for the last three years. (Whoops.)

Or I could just tell you to go read the story. Yeah, let's go with that option. (Go read it! It's good!)

There has been some salad-related discussion in our household of late. (Actually, this discussion has been going on for at least ten years. Salad is an important topic in our family.) I cannot tell you what, exactly, we've been saying, or at least I can't without biasing the poll (and god knows I would never want to bias the ironclad validity and reliability of an internet poll!), but your thoughts are VERY IMPORTANT.

Also, because this is still a fannish journal, and also because I did not want to do two polls, I'm asking about the fandom that is most exciting for you right now. So even if you have no thoughts on salad - although I'm really not sure that is even POSSIBLE - please scroll down for the last question.

In this poll, for the record, I am talking about a green salad. Potato salad and fruit salad and caprese salad and - pasta-y things, whatever, those are fine, but not what we're discussing here. Those are SALADS FOR A LATER POLL. (And there will probably be one. The salad debate is reaching critical mass around here.)

Sidney Crosby is returning to play on 3/15, and to celebrate, I thought it was time I returned to a thing I love that I used to do a looooooong time ago: Fandoms I Have Loved. For hockey RPF. I am quite serious.

But let's be clear about this. Yes, I have hockey blogs on my reader now. Yes, I now have actual opinions about rule modifications. Yes, I watch hockey clips on YouTube and argue with the referees, even though a) they cannot hear me and b) obviously if they could they wouldn't care, since they are clearly watching a whole different game, what the fuck was that call even about, were you FACING THE FUCKING ICE AT THE TIME?

And, of course, I care about the players. Basically all of them. Way more than I should. Put it this way: When Sidney Crosby was cleared for contact, my inbox erupted with joy. It was seriously a great day for me. (He looked genuinely happy. That's - weird for him.) I know two people who cried.

Still, I don't actually know very much about hockey. (Although I know way, way more than I knew on January 1, 2012. I sometimes think we - at least those of us who are allergic to real resolutions - should go back and make retroactive resolutions. Like, so you happened to buy a lot of shoes in 2011? Your 2011 retroactive resolution was clearly "mix up my shoe wardrobe more." My point is, if 2012 keeps on the way it has been, my resolution will turn out to have been "learn more about sports, ideally ones that involve a lot of hugging.") So when I say fandom I have loved, I really am talking about the fandom. My approach to RPF appears to amount to "ignore reality if that makes it more fun," so this is not the place to go for actual hockey facts.

If, on the other hand, you are looking for fandom facts, I am here for you. And let's start with reasons to read the rest of this FIHL.

(Note: I am indebted to basically everyone who already knew things about hockey. Everything I'm saying here, someone taught me in the past, like, three months. Thank you, hockey persons!)

Hockey: Five Reasons to Love It (Even If You Don't Like Sports)

1. Numbers. If you generally have a hard time telling people apart, even if one of them has, like, a giant facial scar, and also the other one has three noses, fear not! In hockey, they wear helmets (and mouthguards and sometimes visors and also so much padding you could make fourteen quilts out of one of them, and yet they still get hurt all the time, which tells you something about the basic insanity of skating up to mach 2 and then slamming into a guy wearing knives strapped to his feet and carrying a big stick), so no one can tell anyone apart. Which is why during games they have their names on their backs and numbers everywhere. You just need to memorize the numbers you are specifically interested in and you're golden. Since I can't ever tell anyone from anyone else, I love this so much I sometimes wish everyone would adopt it, and then I realize that that is a key plot element of like 87 dystopian YA novels, and I get over myself.
   
   
2. You Can Play. This is an anti-homophobia campaign run by hockey people and featuring big-name hockey players. (Including Duncan Keith, who you'll be hearing about later! And Henrik Lundqvist, known in my household for provoking the latest round of, "No, trust me, everyone but you thinks he's attractive." Best Beloved has no patience with me sometimes. I'm sorry! He has very nice hair, okay? It's - glossy?) Yes, "You can play sports even if you're gay!" is not something that should have to be said, but it definitely needs saying anyway, and these guys are saying it. It's worth watching a game or two just to support them.
   
   
3. Hockey Hugs. (I've linked to one of my favorites - the mid-game proposal! - because I can't find a way to link to all the Hockey Hugs entries. The Puck Daddies need to work on their fucking tags system, or else maybe I need to work on my brain system. Whichever.) Even the professional journalists slash the fuck out of hockey dudes, is my point, and also they are pretty amusing while doing it. Plus. I mean. Any sport that features a lot of enthusiastic hugging is better than any sport that doesn't, and that is just fact. ETA: Since Puck Daddy would apparently prefer for us to use third-party systems, here is a link to all the Hockey Hugs I could find, tagged on my Pinboard.
   
   
4. The Horror. By which I mean the terrible, terrible things players do to their hair, their faces, and their clothes in the name of either charity or - you know, I actually don't know why they look how they look most of the time. This is a sport where people wear suits to talk to the media directly after games, sometimes even nice suits, and yet for reasons that still aren't clear to me no one has ever held Patrick Kane down and forced him to get a decent haircut. And this is also a sport where the guys grow deeply horrible mustaches for Movember, and there is a tradition that the team whose players do the best Grizzly Adams cosplay in the postseason get to hug a big silver cup. (Seriously. This is a thing. Playoff beards. Look it up, but don't look at images if you're of a sensitive disposition. Or eating.) I love that it's possible to spend like half the season recoiling from the appearance of your team, even if you are lucky enough to have a relatively attractive bunch of guys on there.
   
   
5. Goalie Masks. These things are twisted, and you know how I respect that. Goalies get to customize their masks, which I suspect is one of those bones they threw them because otherwise no one would be willing to take that fuck-awful job (if you're the goalie, you can make 30 saves and still get booed for the one you miss, and also you wear so much protective equipment that if you want to hug a teammate you risk suffocating him; goalie fights are like two men attempting to dance with beach balls glued all over their bodies). But the thing is, well. If you weren't a very odd person before you became an NHL goalie, you would be after a few seasons of it, and it shows. Some of those goalie masks look like creations serial killers would make out of their victims (looking at you, Carey Price). Some look like the ultimate nerdgasm (Kari Lehtonen! Peter Budaj!). I love that every goalie's psyche is right out there on display. (And, in the case of the one that looks like brains: way to take that literally.) Gives you something to analyze during breaks in the action.

In addition, there is also an actual game involved here, which - okay, I love it. It is fast and fun and only sort of lethal, and also it features in most hockey RPF stories (except, you know, the ones about gladiators or whatever). And you can figure out at least half of it in just a week of dedicated confusion. Let's talk about that next! Sort of!

( Check inside for some guys who are really interested in stick-handling, slashing, and scoring, and who also play this game sometimes. )

Last Day of Love! I mean, I will still love you all tomorrow, but I won't be posting a recommendation. Which I am sure we can all be grateful for.

So once I thought about it, it was fairly obvious how I had to finish this series. I had to recommend a vid that can only be recommended on its own, because it is in a class by itself. (And that class would be, like, the 2011 graduating class of Arkham Asylum.)

I Swear, by dualbunny, greensilver, pipsqueaky, and sweetestdrain, all of whom should definitely win something for this, although I suspect that something is maaaaaaaaybe a free psychological evaluation. Smallville, Clark Kent/Lex Luthor, and also vidders/crack.

This vid is insane. I just want to make that clear up front. I saw it at VVC last year, and I will never forget the crowd's reaction. Because, okay, this was shown anonymously (although the vidders did come out later), and I think I was probably not the only person in the room who was a trifle worried about this song and this fandom and this setup. And then the vid builds. And builds. And just when you think it cannot get any better - look, I'm not going to tell you what happens, and also you should avoid reading the notes on the download page (basically, don't scroll down past the lyrics), just so that you can go into this as untouched and virginal as Clark when Lex tenderly presses him to the white satin sheets on their wedding night and says - no. No. See, this is exactly the problem with this vid. You watch it too many times and it restructures your brain.

But your new brain is a place where Kryptonite unicorns and gay weddings co-exist, so I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I'm just saying - after you watch this one, you'll read every crackfic ever written for the rest of time and say, "This isn't that unrealistic." And that won't be true. It's just that your standards will have been recalibrated.

Basically, this vid started out giving me flashbacks to Smallville fandom, which was an impressive feat because I pretty much missed its heyday. And it finished by causing me to laugh so hard I risked rupturing key organs. So I'm not saying it isn't dangerous. I'm saying you need to watch it anyway. This kind of fannish masterwork doesn't come along every day.

And if you've already watched it - many people have! And survived! - you should definitely take this time to watch it again. Every time you view it, you see something new. (Uh, usually something that tests your grip on reality. But that is perfectly okay, because it substitutes a better reality.)

Annnnnnd it's another pair of recs. I can't help myself. But, okay, here's the thing. For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I have a strong interest in soulbonding right now. I admit that for a few weeks of the specific soulbonding project of doom, I spent a lot of time reading soulbond stories and saying, "That's not how it works." Because, you know, this is fandom, where I will fight for my right to be incredibly dogmatic and dictatorial about a completely imaginary concept.

But then I started actively seeking out all the different depictions of soulbonding in fan fiction, trying to figure out what the key elements of a soulbond are. (Yes, I have a list. It is a short list. Soulbonds are mysterious and mutable, is what they are.) And I found some fantastic stories in the process.

#BOOM!, by 26miledrive. Hockey RPF, Ryan Kesler/Andrew Ladd. (Helpful pairing primer featuring everything you need know to read this story. Although to be honest you don't even need to know who the guys are.)

Okay, so, first, I just need to say that this hockey thing has gotten out of hand. I know this because of two interactions with Best Beloved.

Scene 1: I am watching old hockey videos on YouTube, which I suspect is just about the worst way there is to watch hockey, but, whatever, it's what I can do. I am absolutely not yelling at the screen, no matter what BB says. BB is taking a bath.

BB, from bathtub: *laughter*
Me, assuming her book is amusing: What's funny?
BB: You. What happened?
Me: THAT WAS A COMPLETELY ILLEGAL HIT. THE BRUINS ARE FUCKING THUGS.
BB: *further laughter*
Me: It was! They are!
BB: I just can't believe you have opinions about this.
Me, sulkily: That isn't an opinion. It's a fact, and everyone knows it.¹
BB: *laughs hard enough to displace a significant amount of water*

¹ Yes, I said this even though I did not know it until very recently, and had to be taught by J. (Name redacted to protect the relatively innocent.) Thanks, J!

Scene 2: Dinner. I am breathlessly relating some hockey facts I have learned.

BB: Is the hockey season on right now?
Me: Yes! Of course!
BB: When does it end?
Me: Regular season ends in April. Why?
BB: Find out if there's tickets. Or whatever.
Me: But why?
BB: I can sense it coming. You're going to want to go to one. You might as well be prepared.
Me: Don't be ridiculous. I'm not going to a hockey game.

[Some days pass.]

BB: You want to go to a hockey game, don't you?
Me: ...Yeah, I kind of do.
BB: *does not say anything, but radiates smugness from every pore*

My point is, there has to be an end to this, and quickly, before I end up at a hockey game with no idea what is going on. (Keep in mind that I do not do well in crowds, do not like loud noises, do not process visual information all that splendidly, and have no idea what attending a hockey game might be like. I am basically the last person who should ever go to a hockey game. With luck I'll be able to hold out until April. If not - has anyone out there ever been to one? Any tips?)

But it isn't my fault I'm like this! Hockey fandom is just so great, is all, and this story - yes, we're back to the story now - is proof. Because, okay, I suspect that hockey doesn't actually, in real actual fact, have evil fairy godmothers nicknamed Biz Nasty. (Seriously. The man tweets as BizNasty2point0. On the one hand - if you were nicknamed Biz Nasty, wouldn't you try to pretend you didn't know? On the other hand, man, I wish every evil fairy ever invited to a christening was named Biz Nasty. That right there would improve most fairy tales by at least 50%.) And I also suspect that Mr. Nasty can't actually forcibly soulbond people to make them work out their differences. (Through hatesex. I mean. How else are you going to work out your differences? It's hockey.)

But, oh, it's so much fun to imagine a world where hockey does, and he can. And this story is where that happens. It's the comedy of the soulbonding world, filled with bad behavior in Vegas and poorly-chosen helicopter tours and some really, really questionable decisions made by your friend and mine, Bad Fairy Biz Nasty.

Read it for the giggles, my friends. Read it for the giggles.

Apres moi le deluge, by beyond_belief. Generation Kill, Brad Colbert/Nate Fick.

And then, when you're done laughing, read this one for the quiet beauty and totally fascinating soulbond. (Sorry. I am basically the world's foremost soulbond scientist at this point. I cannot help categorizing these things; it is just my way. Look for my upcoming monograph, The Unbroken Thread: A Taxonomy of Soulbonds and Related Fantastical Connections, available wherever really boring books are sold.)

I love this one because - okay, if you're going to give two people a soulbond, hockey players who play for different teams and hate each other are actually a better choice than Nate and Brad. Usually, in fan fiction, we're writing about soulbonds between two people who spend, like, 18 hours a day together. (Oh, god, I just thought of a key and important question: Did anyone ever write a soulbond story in Sentinel fandom? I mean, they must have, right? Except it would actually be sort of pointless since it's basically canon. Still. If it's out there, I need to read it. I can't believe I never have.) Nate is off in Harvard, engaging in serious study and working to Make Our Nation Better! Brad is off in England, trying to drown Royal Marines! They have lives, is my point.

(And, yes, I did actually have a really long digression here about the worst fannish characters to have in a soulbond. I deleted it for the good of the recommendation, and I want you to know it was very hard to do. But if you have any opinions, feel free to weigh in. I mean, Methos? Buffy? Mycroft? So many possibilities!)

But in this story, in addition to lives, they also have a soulbond, and it's fabulous. I love how they fight it, how they learn to adapt to it, how they learn to deal with each other. And mostly I just love this story. I keep re-reading it, because it's one of those ones I just never feel finished with, you know? I'll be wandering around picking up toys and trying to persuade the child that there is a limit on the number of muffins we can make in one day, and suddenly I'll realize I need to go read that story. Again. And then I will spend the rest of the day thinking about the story while I pick up toys and make muffins.

Really, my only complaint here is that I want at least 50,000 more words of this. At least.

Look here, look back, look ahead, by marinarusalk. Avengers, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark.

This one is going in a Days of Love rec (rather than, you know, a normal set) for a single reason: I can't classify it. I mean, okay, it's a wonderful adventure story featuring Nazis and secret castles and lashings of hurt/comfort, but I don't know if it's an AU or not. Or I guess it would be more accurate to say that I don't know if it's a canon AU or a fan fiction AU or both. If you aren't confused, it must not be comics fandom, that's my motto.

But I don't care. This is fantastic. It's got Steve and Tony having adventures in Transylvania involving a creepy and legendary evil, and there are no pointy teeth anywhere. (Although, man, is Transylvania just unusually stocked with grim legends or what? I don't recall, like, Devon or Iowa having quite this kind of reputation. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong stories. Maybe there are a lot of stories about the unique eeeeeeevil lurking in Dubuque. "Beware of the place of three Us, traveler, or you will not see the corn ripen again." I guess Albuquerque would be in some trouble on that score, too.) Plus, it is a deeply awesome legend. I like vampires as much as the next girl, provided the next girl is not, say, Bella - never have I ever been impregnated by a vampire, and while I'm on the topic, why did I never play Literary Never Have I Ever while I was still playing drinking games? - but I am totally ready for fantasy novels to switch over to this legend for a while. (Oooo, urban fantasy featuring a graduate of this school. I'd pay money for that.)

And I really love how this story handles the Steve/Tony. I'm not going to go into it in too much detail here, because I don't want to spoil it, but I will say that midway through there is one of those scenes that leaves me wanting to applaud the author like she just did a backflip through a circle of fire, because it's an argument in which I am on both sides simultaneously. They're both right! And they completely disagree with each other! That is a sign of characters that are real people, right there. (In real life, when this happens it's just depressing. But in fiction, it's awesome.)

Anyway. This is wonderful. And I love it. And I love you. And you know how you always want to introduce the people you love to each other, providing they are not members of your family of origin? That's how I feel about this story. Go be happy together, fandom and fanwork! You're going to get along. (And in fact most of you have probably made out with this story and taken it home at least time. IGNORING THAT.)

Hi, fandom! I love you a lot, and I thought I would celebrate that with some days of love. By which I mean single recs. Let's see if I can manage seven!

The RBK Commercial for the End of the World, by, one assumes, Reebok, and also a heap of advertising personnel desperately in need of controlled substances.

My first rec is - not for a fanwork. Sorry! But this thing should inspire all the fanworks, is my feeling. This is a commercial featuring Sidney Crosby. And it is amazing. I found it in this Sidney Crosby mostly videospam, which I found via sociofemme's awesome Primer of Hockey Primers. And it is simultaneously the best and the worst thing ever.

I cannot watch most non-game video footage of Sidney Crosby, particularly anything staged, because I have an embarrassment squick and, well, let's just say Sidney Crosby attempting to be anything other than who he is (hockey-playing robot without a personality module) hits my squick hard enough to make me duck and cover. (If you want to see why, check out those other videos in the videospam, oh my god.)

But this particular commercial appears to be the product of a brainstorming session that went like this:

Advertising Person 1: Okay, people, we have to do a commercial featuring Sidney Crosby.
Advertising Person 2: The hockey-playing robot? Oh, fuck.
Advertising Person 3: He has no charisma.
AP1: I know.
AP2: And any time he tries to act like he has a personality, he lands squarely in the uncanny valley.
AP1: I know.
AP3: Focus groups routinely end up recoiling or sleeping when they watch him.
AP1: I know. But we're making the commercial anyway, so we've got to figure something out. Give me your best ideas, people.

[Long, pained pause in which no one at the table makes eye contact with anyone else.]

Advertising Person 4: ...I guess, if we've got to make a commercial featuring a boring guy who does absolutely nothing except play hockey, we could hang a lampshade on that.
AP1: Good enough. Let's do it.

And they did. The result is a commercial so depressing that it actually crosses back over into unintentionally hilarious.

( Commercial summary and transcript for people who can't watch it. If you can watch it, oh my god, DO. Right now. )

When Best Beloved and I watched this commercial, we died. And then we spent the rest of the evening randomly walking up to each other and saying things like, "All my Christmas presents!" and "Grandpa's funeral!" and "My first kiss!" and "My puppy!" The underlying message of this commercial appears to be: If you can still be happy or have fun, you aren't dedicated enough. (It is also the world's best argument for slavefic. Which - normally slavefic is not my particular narrative kink, but Sidney Crosby as a hockey slave makes so much sense that I am currently writing a Just the Good Parts version of it. Watch this commercial and tell me you don't see it. You can't. You can't.)

Seriously. Watch this. It is thirty seconds extremely well spent, even if you know absolutely fuck-all about hockey and care even less.

I am allergic to celebrities. I just - they bother me. I feel like the basic social contract, as far as celebrities are concerned, is that we pay them a lot of money and in return they spend all their time far away and we (or, okay, I) can pretend they don't really exist. (True fact: when people on my friends list post excitedly about meeting their favorite celebrities, I am happy for them, but I, uh, have to hit the back button very speedily. Because ew, celebrities.)

You might think that this would be a problem, given that I live in a place that has a mildly elevated celebrity density, but this is where my inability to recognize faces pays off; I could watch three back-to-back movies starring someone and then get trapped in an elevator with him for four hours, and when I came out I would say, "You know, he sounded familiar. I think my sister might know him." (The real problem comes about when I am walking around with people and they say - quietly and without pointing, of course, because they are Angelenos, but why even bring it up? - "Oh, hey! It's -" whoever. I do not want to know. If you're ever walking around with me and you see Jeremy Piven or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jennifer Anniston or Mary Louise Parker, just do not tell me. I will be happy, and you will be happy, and presumably whoever it is will be happy, too. Unless it's Arnold Schwarzenegger, who even I could tell looked incredibly grouchy every time I was with someone who pointed him out.)

So my celebrity allergy was absolutely fine for the longest time. I had the disease and the cure! And then I got into fan fiction, and - and it was no longer fine. Because the celebrity allergy gave me an RPF squick, and that meant there were a lot of stories I yearned to read and could not.

But it wasn't like, say, my animal harm squick, which when triggered leaves me so upset that I once cried on the phone to a telemarketer because of a story I'd been reading. (She hung up.) It just makes me geechy, in the same way that actual celebrities make me geechy. I can deal with being geechy in a good cause. So each time a new RPF fandom came out, I would read a story in it, one that was highly recommended, and each time I would have hope in my heart. Because maybe - maybe the fact that I've never seen American Idol will mean I can read this! (Nope.) Maybe the fact that I can only name about three total bandom guys will mean I can read this! (Nope.) It was always immensely disappointing; there's no feeling quite like reading a story you know is good, that you want to love, except you can't because your skin is filing for divorce from your body.

Still. I persevered. I discovered some fandoms in which I could dabble! (Mythbusters, for example. They're real people, but my brain doesn't consider them celebrities, so I can deal. Also anything featuring people from, like, WWII or before; my brain doesn't consider them real.) And then recently, magically, I followed some links that dine posted, and I found that I can read hockey RPF. I have no idea if it's because I don't consider the players celebrities or because I don't consider them real people, but I don't care. RPF! That I can read! I have hope that I can, at long long last, break this thing. Maybe this time next year I will be able to read bandom and popslash and LotRiPS and J2 and AI and all the other fan fiction I have missed over the years! There will be celebrating then, let me tell you.

In the meantime, as kind of a precursor celebration, a recs set that has been seven years in the making: an all RPF set.

The One That Proves That There's No Soap Opera Like a Hockey Soap Opera. My Siberia: A Russian Knitting Circle Story, by impertinence. Hockey RPF, Sidney Crosby/Geno Malkin.
Here is a list of the things I've learned while reading hockey RPF (note: may possibly not apply to actual hockey):

1. The Blackhawks are by far the gayest team in the NHL.
   
2. Sidney Crosby is a hockey-playing robot.
   
3. No one pines like a Russian hockey player. Entire strands of virgin forest (sorry; in my defense, uncut sounded even worse) only wish they could pine that hard.

And then I picked the story that exemplified 66% of these things. (I do have many Blackhawks recs, but the Gay Little Team That Could (Totally Blow Each Other) is going to have to wait its turn. It's fine; the players have lots to get up to in the meantime. )

So, yes, I went with the Pining for the Robot story. This is a good trope for me. No, this is a great trope for me. I have a lot of love for a certain type of character - the person who is incredibly good at something, or even a lot of somethings, who manages to be a decent person while somehow sucking at being, you know, human. (Yes, fine, my ideal character is Spock. This cannot be a surprise to anyone.) In other words: a robot. (Or, okay, to be clear, a person-type character a lot of other characters are going to call a robot. Or an alien.) And in this trope, I can see some other character appreciating the robot as much as I do. Awesome.

And this is where hockey RPF is good to me, because it turns out Sidney Crosby is an ideal robot. He's a brilliant hockey player with roughly the same skill at being human as an actual alien. (Sadly, there is no story in which Crosby actually is an alien, and the concussion is really a symptom of him going into heat. You can't have everything, I guess.)

Geno Malkin, meanwhile, is a pining hockey-playing Russian, or perhaps the pining hockey-playing Russian. Judging by the fan fiction I've read, he raises the league's pining average at least four full percentage points, and should probably get bonuses in his contract.

So, basically, this story is the perfect introduction to hockey RPF fandom. Geno pines! Sidney is bad at life! Geno pines! Sidney comes up with a terrible plan! Sex and pining! Dating and pining! And then joyful resolution and pining no more. Plus it's really funny. And you don't need to know anything about the characters, or indeed about hockey. Go read this already.

The One That Makes Raymond Carver Sexy. For Reals. A Passage That Sings, by dorkorific. Star Trek Reboot RPF, Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto.

Okay, this one is frostfire_17's fault. We were chatting about Martha Gellhorn, as you do, and we basically had this conversation:

Frost: Can I quote something at you? It will totally squick you, but you need to read it anyway.
Me, forgetting that like 90% of things that are weird in my life start exactly this way: Sure.
Frost: [pastes in a chunk of this very story, featuring MARTHA GELLHORN]
Me: Oh, god. That's - that's - look, just give me the link.

Because, I mean, yes, this one does trigger my celebrity squick like you would not even believe, and I don't care. For dialogue like this, I will read - um. I will read Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto, apparently, squick be damned. And, seriously, it is a fantastic story. Nothing is ever going to make me forgive Ernest Hemingway - even Martha Gellhorn herself couldn't do it - but this came close. (Dear middle school teachers: Don't assign the Ernest to your preteen students. No, don't. Look, I have heard every one of your excuses, and I declare them all null and void. The only valid reason to assign Hemingway to middle school students is to produce a new generation of Hemingway haters.)

So, yes, I love this story, even if it did give me horrible visions of Chris Pine in 20 years, doing beat poetry type readings a la William Shatner, but with additional lecturing on actual beat poets. I - I am not going to recover from that mental image in a hurry.

And, okay, I realize I've made this story sound kind of like its title should be Your College English Classes, Except with Hot Guys Banging. But that's not all it is! There's - pining! (You wouldn't even believe how hard I'm resisting the urge to make a Chris Pining joke here. And failing. I have no willpower.) And Zachary Quinto being kind of a hot mess! And humor! And - and, actually, you would totally read a story called Your College English Classes, Except with Hot Guys Banging, so don't even look at me that way. Just read this.

The One That Proves That Sexual Flexibility Really Is the Key to a Better Life. The Pinocchio Fallacy, by toft. Mythbusters RPF, Jamie Hyneman/Adam Savage, Kari Byron/Grant Imahara.

I cleverly separated this one from the first one because, um. I thought I could probably pack enough words in between these two stories for you to miss that I recommended a Pining for the Robot story followed by an actual robot story. I - like robots, okay? I feel a certain bond.

And this is an awesome robot story. I just - this is, like, gently steeped in the Asimov robot tradition, but then with a thousand tons of amazingness added in. I just. I love everything about this so much. And I want you to read it, which I realize is - well, look. I know that those of you who have not already read this story are thinking one of two things:

1. ADAM from MYTHBUSTERS as a SEXBOT? Okay, that's it, the internet is over. Let's all go learn croquet now.
   
2. Who from what now?

And you've probably already stopped reading this as a result. But if you're still here, no! This story is for you! (Unless you are bothered by robots, in which case you are allowed to pass on by, but for the record robots are the best.) (Also I think I should note here that - okay, for a couple of you, this story summary is going to feel like a slap in the face. I hear you, I was there, too, and it worked out fine for me. If you feel like you've been punched but you still want to read it, email me. I'll go into how it worked for me.)

Anyway. All that said, what this story is really about is what it means to be human, and what it means to be not human. It has a message, even! And also it has robot messageboards, and Kari Byron fighting for robot freedom, and Tory the Tool of the Man, which I frankly always kind of thought he was, and just general wonderfulness. Plus, you know, the best sexbot characterization I have ever read, and see, that right there is why fandom is awesome, because I never dreamed I'd have a chance to write that sentence. The fact that I did is clear proof that you should go read the story that inspired it. NO REALLY I MEAN IT.

The One That Proves That There's No Morning After Like the Morning After Elfland. Force Majeure, by astolat. American History RPF, Alexander Hamilton/George Washington.

Okay, so, this is the rare story in our household that caused a squick that wasn't mine. It turns out Best Beloved, who does not really have any textual squicks to speak of, found one as soon as she looked at this story's information a day or two after Yuletide.

"Washington," she said. "I - don't know. I'm not sure I can do that. Just. Washington."

I am here to tell you that if the idea of George Washington slash is squicking you out (BEST BELOVED), you should absolutely make every effort to get over it, because this story has magic and elfland, and also a narrative voice that will absolutely make you long for the complete history of this universe. Like, I would even read about the Civil War and the Reconstruction in this universe, and given that the worst history teacher in the world worked extra hard to make sure I would stab myself in the foot rather than hear the word "carpetbagger" one more time, even decades after the class, that is saying something. Mostly that this universe is great. (Also that apparently sufficiently good fiction can make up for an entire year's worth of educational trauma.)

And, okay, for reasons that are possibly obvious, early American history is not my strong point (same teacher, although fortunately we spent a lot less time on it, albeit still enough to guarantee that I fulfilled all my history requirements in college with classes featuring the initials BC), but I love the references in here to both our actual universe and - historical mythology? Whatever. Basically, I'm saying I love the cherry tree and everything it stands for.

And if this story has given me an appetite for founders slash, I'm sure that will pass in time. (Just - think! All nations! All founders! Ideally with magic or dragons or giant talking birds! Okay, maybe that's just me. At least I didn't suggest national founders and robots. Although that's mostly because I've already been to the Hall of Presidents.)

If you want on the earthling filter here on DW, leave a comment!

I have questions related to various things that we do with computers. (Not those things. Other things. Cleaner things. Or, okay, at least two of these are about things that are almost entirely clean.) I am hoping you all have answers.

Thank you! You are awesome! Yes, you.

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Dear Author,

We matched! This means we are destined to be friends, I tell you what, because while my requests this year are not as weird as last year's, they do sort of come off like I was trying to define "idiosyncratic" using only a Yuletide signup form. (I wasn't. I wouldn't do that to you, I swear. This is just the list that happened!)

I am, as always, going to provide you with all the details, because that's what I always hope to get from my recipient. But if that's not you, please tap out of this letter now. Just know that I really, really cannot handle child or animal harm or death, and I love you for volunteering for one of my tiny fandoms. See you on the 25th!

( Me )

( My Fandoms )

We recently watched Operation Petticoat, as you do. (Look, sometimes a person needs to see Cary Grant being suave. I am quite sure this has happened to you.) And I finished it feeling that you people had let me down, because while I am sure this has been thoroughly documented within the White Collar fandom, no one told me.

And what no one told me is that White Collar is an Operation Petticoat AU.

It's so obvious! Tony Curtis is the guy who joined the Navy for the shiny uniform and turned everything to his advantage, and then smooth-talked his way into being the supply officer for the submarine, and then robbed an entire Navy base blind to get the stuff he needed. Cary Grant is the captain, using Tony Curtis's skills because he needs them, but always aware this is a double-edged sword with no handle. Come on; that is obviously Neal and Peter, right there. And if you needed any proof beyond that, there's the name of the Tony Curtis character, which is: Nick Holden. As in, you know, one letter different from Neal Caffrey's favorite alias.

(If you're curious, by the way, Mozzie is clearly Ramon, thief and conman extraordinaire. Elizabeth, we decided after a lot of discussion, is the best parts of Lt. Crandall and Lt. Duran, combined; this is clearly why the OT3 vibe is so strong in White Collar. But there is no Satchmo equivalent. I guess you can't have everything.)

Anyway. If anyone has been yearning for a WWII White Collar AU that's heavy on the humor and features a pink submarine, there's one available for rental. I just thought you should know, in case your friends were keeping you in the dark, too.

And if you already knew, here are some other AUs for you to consider.

The One in Which We Learn That in the Right Hands, the Sketchbook Is Scarier than the Sword. Never Leave a Trace, by sam_storyteller. White Collar, Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke/Neal Caffrey.

You know what's weird about White Collar? I remember the stories, but most of the time I can't remember if a given story was gen or OT3. (If it was something else, I remember.) I assume this is because White Collar itself is so OT3 that gen is just OT3 without actual sex scenes. (Dear White Collar people: Just have the canon sex scene already. The Burkes have a big enough bed, and it would save us all a lot of confusion and double-checking. We all know the fucking is happening, you realize. It wouldn't come as a surprise. <3, TFV) So take my pairing notes with a grain of salt, is what I'm saying. I double-checked, and I double-checked again, and I am pretty sure I'm right. But with White Collar, you can never be sure.

And now let's talk about this AU. It's not, like, the Neal, Peter, and Elizabeth gladiator AU. (Um. Please tell me there is not actually a White Collar gladiator AU. I think I sprained something just imagining that.) Instead, it's the show, except with magic. And this is not shiny happy magic with clear rules, where every first-level spellcaster gets one magic missile spell per day and his party only keeps him alive because at level 15 he will get lots of magic missiles. (And also because the player will whine if you let this character get killed off like the last one.) This magic is - fuzzy. Murky. Edgy. This is magic I can - okay, not believe in. But this is magic that works for me. (Hey, there's a reason I never played a magic user, okay? And not just because magic missile doesn't do all that much for me. I just have a hard time having fun with magic that's structured like an Amway sales chart.)

I love how this story manages to be so much like the actual show in the basics - I mean, everyone still has the same jobs and no one is wearing a toga - while being completely different in tone and genre. I love how much sense the magic makes, how it totally works to have prison, a place where people suffer and are often powerless, be a nexus of supernatural power. And I love how even though the entire picture is different, Neal and Peter and Elizabeth are still absolutely themselves.

This story is gorgeous and involving and lovely and great. And that's all I can say. Go read it right now.

The One That Starts and Ends in Pretty Much Exactly the Same Place, and Covers the Entire Galaxy in Between. It Is the Infinity Symbol of Fan Fiction Stories, Basically. Only Good for Legends, by leupagus. Star Trek XI, Jim Kirk/Spock.

Star Trek is officially the canon that ate my life. It should come with a warning, actually:

WARNING: Susceptible individuals may find themselves dramatically altered from continued exposure to this material. Changes may include, but are not limited to, a tendency to write "Spock" in hearts on your shoes, laughing at stories rated NCC-1701, and partial or total loss of your leisure time. You will never recover, and there is no way to know if you are susceptible until it is too late. Please check your schedule for the next four decades before opening this DVD.

I mean, that totally happened to me. So it is extremely cheering to me to happen upon a story like this and know, for sure, that I am not the only person who lost her soul and her evenings to Star Trek. (Okay, yes, I already know I'm not alone. frostfire fell down the well with me. But more company is always nice. It's a very big well.)

And then I get to read the story. Which is, well - it is a giant sprawling epic in which Spock is a cop and Jim is, you know, Jim. (I'm pretty sure in Iowa they use "Jim Kirk" as a descriptive phrase. As in, "Did you hear about Roger? Pulled a Jim Kirk with a Klingon; hear he won't be walking for months." Or "The barn's missing and there's giant letters spelling out a graphic insult where the floorboards used to be; gosh, this looks Jim Kirk-y.") And then stuff happens. I mean, a lot of stuff, because did I mention the sprawlingness of this story? Trust me, it's worth mentioning twice. This story goes from earth to Vulcan and back again.

I love lots of things about this, but probably what I love most is the mystery plot line. Mostly that's because SF mystery is something that's hard to do and, in my opinion, totally worth doing (All the time! Everywhere!), but I admit that there's also the fact that the mystery plot line has got a lot of Vulcans in it. I love Vulcans, especially when they aren't being a frankly creepy faceless monolith, and they are the furthest thing from that here.

Plus, T'Pring is wonderful in this. In fact, my notes on this story read, in large part: "Come for the Kirk/Spock, stay for the T'Pring of awesome." (If you're wondering why I don't share my bookmarks on Pinboard too often, this would be why. I rec slowly because no one anywhere should be subjected to my immediate reactions to stories. Also, said reactions are often at least partly expressed in long strings of vowels. I try to edit that out of the final recs, too.)

The One in Which We Learn What Happens When You Hire a Wizard as an Interior Designer. The other things the road to hell is paved with, by luciazephyr. The Dresden Files, Harry Dresden/Susan Rodriguez, Harry Dresden/John Marcone.

The Dresden Files is turning out to be one of those fandoms where I find myself inexplicably sulking at the internet, wondering why there isn't more fan fiction for it out there, even though I have not taken the time to get to grips with the actual canon. But Dresden/Marcone apparently speaks directly to the part of my brain that was shaped by intensive exposure to Smallville fan fiction.

No, seriously, if you've ever wondered to yourself what the world would look like if Clark Kent had magical powers instead of, you know, super powers (primary difference: none noted) and Lex Luthor was a businesslike criminal instead of a criminal businessman, Dresden Files fan fiction is where you should be turning. And if you have no idea at all what the Dresden Files is about, not to worry, because this story will teach you everything you need to know. (And if you don't want to dive in there until you know, here you go: There's magic and crime. Dresden has magic. Marcone has crime. There are some complications. And then they have sex the end. Okay, technically that's what the fan fiction is about, but I think it's already established that in this case the fan fiction is my canon.)

This story is perfect for me, because I am - well, pragmatic might be a good way to put it. In Smallville, I rapidly grew tired of Clark's Lone Hero pose; I always wanted Lex and Clark to team up, because Lex got shit done. And Clark, honestly, needed someone to get his shit together. And then Lex could borrow (and slightly modify) Clark's moral compass, and together they could save the world. Seriously, people have no right having these prolonged declared mortal enemies/rivals things going on when by working together they could be so much more effective. Basically my message to them is always: With great power comes a great need to get your head out of your ass. (It's probably a good thing I'm not on any comic book writing team.)

Well, that is what does happen in this story with Dresden and Marcone, provided you are willing to consider Chicago to be roughly the same thing as the entire world. (It isn't. However, it definitely has the strangest pizza in the world, and that is almost the same thing.) Dresden even manages to get his head out of his ass. I cannot tell you how immensely satisfying I found this.

(I cannot help but notice that I'm a lot more concerned about Dresden's issues than Marcone, and I'm concerned that you might be envisioning me as a sort of chaotic neutral type person now. I'm not. I used to play paladins. Really, I did. I still like them! I find the concept of lawful goodness truly interesting! I give to charities and am kind to puppies and hardly ever break any important laws! Just, in fiction, I tend to prefer people who are effective but immoral to people who are the kind of moral where they screw things up all the time but for the best possible reasons.)

Anyway, this story is long and glorious and features the unstoppable team of Dresden (in charge of magic) and Marcone (in charge of everything else). Which is as it should be. The end.

The One That Left Me Twitching with a Need for the Recipes, Damn It, the RECIPES. Grande Soy Triple Dirty Chai, by friskaz. Suits, Mike Ross/Harvey Specter.

You can blame frostfire for this one. She's the person who emailed me while she was in a distant country with a summary of this fandom, which meant when I started seeing fan fiction for it I responded with "Oh, right, that's the one with Harvey and Mike! The lawyers!" instead of "So, what, we're big into Brioni/Armani now? How does that go? 'Oh, baby, slide your button into my notched lapel - harder, harder, YES.'"

(If you don't know the canon, although it's hard for me to believe I could be speaking from a place of greater knowledge than anyone when it comes to a currently airing show - it's about, well, Harvey and Mike. Harvey is a lawyer with an awesome boss. Mike doesn't actually have a law degree but is practicing law anyway. Note for people following along at home: In the real world, it is better not to do this.)

So. I think we can all agree that the barista AU is a fine and honorable tradition in fandom. (Although - when did this start, exactly? Is there a Highlander barista AU, in which Methos is the guy who knows everything about the history of coffee but will happily drink the stuff from a vending machine and Duncan is the guy who takes coffee way too seriously and works endlessly to bring good coffee to everyone? Is there a Starsky and Hutch barista AU where they hug a lot and fight corporate coffee? Is there a TOS barista AU in which Kirk is the - you know what, no. I can work a Reboot barista AU fine, but trying to imagine James Tiberius Kirk mark 1 as a barista is hurting my head, even given the worrisome similarity between Starfleet and Starbucks.)

Anyway. My point is: I can generally take or leave a barista AU, except when they are awesome. This one is awesome. I buy Mike as a barista (yes, based on my extensive experience with this canon, which involved reading not one but two intercontinental emails, I feel wholly comfortable making this assertion), I love the way Mike and Harvey interact, I love the (I assume) original characters, and this is just a totally satisfying, sweet, lovable story, from beginning to end.

Much like a really good pie. Which, note, if you read this story, you're going to want some pie. (Or other dessert of your choice, pie-haters; I know you're out there. I'm married to one.) I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Just, some stories should come with a kitchen warning up front ("Warning: Do not read if you don't have ready access to a kitchen or at least the excellent products thereof"), and that's what I'm giving you here.

I am seeking advice on two clothing problems. One is mine, one is the earthling's.

The Trousers Must Stay On!

The earthling has a very, very narrow waist. (He is not underweight. Just - narrow.) This makes buying trousers for him difficult; he generally grows into the waist around the same time the cuffs hit his mid-calf. With some brands, he doesn't grow into the waist until the cuffs are just below his knee, which would make them good shorts, except he doesn't like shorts. I have seen clothes labeled 9 - 12 months that have waists too big for his 40-month-old body.

And the thing is, the earthling has preferences. He doesn't like clothes with stiff or scratchy fabric or anything he deems poky, and he expresses his objections in no uncertain terms when things do not meet his standards. But for his age group, the only option for the narrow-waisted is adjustable-waist trousers. Which are, in the earthling's judgment, unacceptably poky, and in any case they only come in jeans and cords and stuff - all fabrics that are too stiff. He will not wear them. (And even if he did, on the tightest setting they still slip some.) He wants to wear elastic-waistband trousers made from soft fabric.

This takes us to pajama pants and sweatpants. Both of which, when they fit his length, fall off his narrow, narrow body unless we roll the waistband at least once, often twice. (We own exactly one pair of trousers that fits him in every dimension. One. This pair came to us as part of a pajama set. If I could, I would clone it.) This has worked for most of his life, but now he wants to get dressed all by himself. He does not want help, no thank you, Mama, I do it, I do it. He can get the trousers on, but he can't get them properly rolled, and the result is that he spends a lot of time walking around on his cuffs hauling up his waistband every two steps.

So does anyone have any brilliant ideas? I need either:

1. Some mechanism by which the waistbands of elastic-waist trousers can be made permanently narrower, without interfering with the earthling's ability to get them on all by himself.
   
2. A source for elastic-waist, soft fabric trousers for narrow-bodied toddlers.

Keep in mind that I do not own a sewing machine, and also the only reason I passed the needlecrafts part of Home Ec was that the district office sent over a note saying that, diagnostically, I could not ever be expected to do any better. (And even then, I was extremely wise and kept my projects very low on the ambition scale.) And Best Beloved's mother deliberately did not teach her kids home skills of any kind, on the grounds that she did not ever want them to use them.

So, basically, we are looking for a solution that does not require us to be crafty and handy and - stuff. This has ruled out everything I have come up with so far. Help? The earthling is running out of trousers. And tripping a lot. It is very sad.

The Boobs Must Be Free!

Before I got pregnant, I wore bras that took their design inspiration from the Bastille. My bras were things that you could, in an emergency, use as moderately functional body armor, filled with ribbing and nine million hooks and many wires, with a general aesthetic somewhere between "bondage device" and "cruel and unusual punishment."

Then I got pregnant, and soon I had a stomach in the way of many of those bras. Then I was nursing, and it turns out those sorts of bras block various critical ducts, not to mention that they don't fit the ever-fluctuating boobs of the breastfeeder, so they don't make them in nursing versions. I mean, yes, I have an underwire nursing bra, but it's entirely wimpy. One tiny wire under each boob! That's not a true underwire bra as I know it.

So, the earthling is now officially weaned. And, see, I've spent the last two years assuming that would happen any day now (and look! I was right!), so I've been wary of purchasing new nursing bras. As a result, I now have a total of four of them: one that is so stretched out it is more like a tank top, one that has a giant hole in it (making it ideal for any three-breasted breastfeeder, but less ideal for me), one that is way too loose, and one that actually fits and works.

Obviously, it's time to get out the old bras. They are the same size as my boobs currently are (or, okay, some of them are). But my boobs have lost the knack of wearing them. Used to be I strapped them into their wire cages and they did not protest, but after four years of freedom, they have decided they don't like captivity. They whine all the time - "A wire is poking my sensitive underparts!" (Used to be I could get an open sore on my boob from an exposed underwire with only minimal boob protests.) "This is really tight!" "Why is the cup only big enough for half of me?" (I said only some of them fit, right?) It's pathetic, seriously. Somehow having and nursing a baby turned my boobs into wimps.

Basically, they want to stay in nursing bras. I, on the other hand, would prefer to have cups that don't come randomly unhooked when I move too much, largely because there is nothing more wonderful than fishing around in your shirt for a stray cup, unless it is the charmingly lopsided look your boobs have when one is in a cup and the other one is on top of its cup.

I need recs. For bras. Bras that are not fierce contraptions of steel and strapping, bras that are somehow comfortable. (Underwires are optional, but fine. I mean, I do have underwires in my best-fitting nursing bra. Just - I guess not really aggressive underwires.) And these bras have to come in an H cup. Is there anything like that out there? Do any of you large-breasted persons out there know of a bra like that? Help my boobs! They are yearning to breathe free!

(Warning! Spoilers, although mostly of the kind where I tell you who ends up with whom, which you will figure out in the first chapter anyway.)

Here's the thing about Georgette Heyer: she hates you. Or, okay, she doesn't hate you, exactly. It's just that unless you are white, English, and upper class (and hale, and hearty, and straight, and and and), she thinks you are a lesser being.

This is actually kind of reassuring to me. See, I read all her mysteries back in my teens. (The only romance of hers I'd read before this is The Grand Sophy, which is on the required reading list that starts with Pride and Prejudice. It isn't second on that list. Maybe 50^th. But still. It's there.) I was going through a classic mysteries phase, and I found Heyer strangely refreshing, because at least her antisemitism was only one prejudice of - well, basically all of them. I mean, Sayers (who I also adored) was racist and antisemitic, but totally pro-queer, and it was confusing to proto-me - like, lady, do you hate me or love me? Are we friends or foe? Make it clearer. Whereas with Heyer, I knew where I stood: somewhere way below the bottom rung of humanity. Along with everyone else in the world except Prince William and four of his friends from Eton, which really took away the sting.

But my point is: if you are not that white British upper-class person of good stock and hearty bluffness and a large country estate, the only question for you is which book will contain a grimly bigoted caricature of you featuring every single stereotyped trait ever associated with your particular group. (You have to decide for yourself if really wonderful female characters and great writing are worth the rest of it.) For me, the big ones were The Grand Sophy, featuring a giant festering glob of antisemitism roughly in the shape of a man, and several of her mysteries, which have amazingly stereotyped gay and lesbian characters. (One of them also includes, somewhere around the eighth time the gay guy bursts into girlish tears, an explanation of how childhood asthma causes homosexuality. I am not kidding. And, hey, I'm asthmatic and queer, so maybe she's right!)

But with this as background, you can perhaps understand why I was so riveted by the concept of the Masqueraders. During the Heyer sale, Best Beloved pointed it out to me, and the conversation went like this:

BB: Listen to this one. "...brother and sister flee to London, Prudence pretending to be a dashing young buck, and Robin a lovely young lady."
Me: So, wait. They're brother and sister and they masquerade as - sister and brother?
BB: Apparently.
Me: Why? What possible reason could there be to do that?
BB: Says here it's because of the Jacobite rebellion.
Me: ...Maybe they skipped the drag aspect of that in my history books.

So obviously I made her buy it. But then, in direct violation of established conventions in our relationship, she refused to read it. I suffered the curiosity of the damned for about two days and then gave in and read it myself.

And it is exactly as advertised. Prudence and Robin spend most of the book cross-dressing, and not just, you know, casually. They are walking the walk. Prudence joins a club, attends stag parties, hears smutty jokes, and gets into fights. Robin flirts outrageously and acquires a number of admirers and a lot of petticoats.

This book shows you just how good Heyer was at this writing gig, because she faced a conundrum, here. I mean. There is no actual good, plot-related reason that Prudence and Robin cross-dress. Sure, Jacobite blah blah blah wrong side blah blah treason blah. But here's the thing: if you are, say, Robin, and good enough at disguise to make a convincing lady, you're also good enough at it to make a convincing different guy. (A fact that is driven home by another character in the book, who does just exactly that.) I was left with the inescapable conclusion that Robin and Prudence cross-dressed because they just really wanted to, and if you're not going to seize the day when you're fleeing from a treason charge, when will you?

Which, fine. I am all for cheerful madcap cross-dressing siblings having adventures in historical England! That is a winning formula, as far as I am concerned. But it did leave Heyer with a problem - when you want to write a book about something because it makes your id do handsprings of glee, but you can't come up with a decent reason for it to happen, what do you do? Millions of fan fiction writers know exactly what to do, of course: you start the story with Ray Kowalski already a zebra, or with Erik and Charles already in a brutal space prison, or with Kirk and Spock already tied together by an eternally unseverable eighteen-inch chain. Problem solved! Commence writing your ever-loving id out! But Heyer had to figure this out without the internet. And she still managed just fine. We begin the story with Prudence and Robin already Peter and Kate, and unless you look at it closely - or, okay, think at all - it holds together just fine.

But Heyer wasn't enough of a writer to solve the main problem (from her perspective, I mean; from mine, this is not a problem but a delight) of a romance in which your main characters spend all their time cross-dressing. She couldn't degay it. I mean, if Tony believes that Prudence is actually a guy named Peter, then Tony's love for Peter looks - and in fact is - very, very gay.

The traditional way of getting around this, of course, is to have Tony see through the disguise and realize immediately that Peter is, in fact, Prudence. Heyer has gone down this road in other books, Best Beloved tells me. (Apparently she was trying to win the hotly contested "Most Cross-Dressing in a Single Author's Collected Works Created After 1616" title.) The problem in the Masqueraders is that Heyer wanted Tony to treat Prudence like a dude. It's clearly a big part of the id appeal for her. Tony gets her into his club, invites her to his guys-only parties, and asks her to his house in the country for a week. (Less than a week after they meet, no less. And he pitches a massive hissy fit when she politely declines. There is no actual stated reason why he does this, but my theory is that "visit," in this case, was a euphemism for "fuck.") No guy of that time period - and do keep in mind that Heyer's historical books are "meticulously researched," or so says the bit at the end of my copy - is going to do that with someone he knows is a lady. I mean. Seriously. Not.

But it's more than that. The Big Reveal scene goes roughly like this:

Tony: Welcome to my home, Peter. I invited you to a party, but in fact it's really a romantic dinner for two!
Prudence, tensing up: Um.
Tony: Now let's chat. I know your secret!
Prudence: Yes, okay, fine. I'm a girl. I admit it. You have dragged it out of me with your vicious romantic dining and your sleepy but knowing eyes!
Tony, attempting to control his facial expressions: You're a girl? Seriously? I mean - yes, exactly! I knew it all along!
Prudence: I'm just curious. How did you know?
Tony: Um. Well, you know, various small clues I can't recall now. Mostly it was the way I felt about you. [No, I am seriously not kidding; his entire evidence is the way he felt about her.]

At no point before she confesses, in other words, does he give any indication that he actually knew. And as soon as she does confess - and absolutely not before - his way of interacting with her changes drastically. He stops treating her as an equal and starts giving her orders and making demands and being very, very Tony-knows-best-don't-bother-your-sweet-head. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that he really didn't know she was a girl. And, in fact, was rather pleased that she was not, if you get where I'm going with this.

(It is possibly also relevant that once Tony realizes that Robin is really a guy, he keeps right on flirting with him, and in fact does so more than when he thought he was Kate. I - I can only hope they work this all out after the book ends.)

So basically Heyer, who did not like persons of even the vaguest queerness, let her id talk her into writing what amounts to a gay romance. I find this deeply satisfying. (Right up until the point when women's clothes turn Prudence strangely biddable and passive, and the women's clothes on Prudence turn Tony into a raging dickosaur.)

Robin's romance, by the way, is sadly less gay, but also wildly less ethical, largely because he makes friends with his beloved as Kate but woos her in a black mask as the Unknown. (If you're asking yourself what kind of woman would fall for a guy she has seen only for a handful of minutes, who always wears a mask, and who gives himself the name the Unknown, read the book, because the answer is: exactly the kind of woman he ends up with. I correctly predicted to Best Beloved what her response would be to Robin's disclosures about all of this, and it is, basically: "Oh my god that is so awesome let's do it all again except this time can I wear the mask?")

The Masqueraders just might be for you, if you were looking for a romping romance in which a guy thinks a girl is a guy and a girl thinks a guy is a girl. (And, yes, now I am yearning for a story in which both halves of the romantic couple meet while cross-dressing - she think he's a girl! He thinks she's a guy! Surely someone somewhere has written this. Please let someone have written this.) At least until everyone changes clothes. (Provided you don't mind that the author hates you.) But if you were hoping that there really would be a good plot-related reason for all the cross-dressing: sorry, nope. Still, I think you'll agree that it's better that way.