roses, bruises, 'bout your shoulders

Today the mysterious on-and-off nausea of the past few weeks is the most on it's been yet. I am sulky and mortal. I want to write fic and I have ideas but the word engine keeps stalling. I would like to try jolting it with prompts, so here are memes appropriated from tumblr and dreamwidth posts:

( TFLN )

( trope trope trope )

( after the watershed )

Apparently it's time for the "ten most popular fanworks by hitcount" thing again? I didn't do it last year, probably because I was in Texas at the time, so I have no data for comparison. Also limiting this to fic because I don't post other stuff to AO3 (yet) but AO3 is the easiest gauge I have, and because I'm fairly certain that none of my non-fic fanworks are even near as viewed as these ten.
( stuff wot I wrote, for the curious )

And while I'm linking to stuff on the AO3, here is an unbelievably precious and delightful, not to mention laugh-out-loud hilarious, story (by someone other than me) about living with people, domesticity, found family, disobedient brain-mouth circuits, and robots: Some Things Shouldn't Be a Chore. And while you're there, check out sabinelagrande because sabinelagrande is a synonym for awesome.

OMG NEW PARKS AND RECREATION ( SPOILERS ) Okay, now that's out of the way . . .

Today's Snowflake challenge is to "rec at least three fanworks that you think would make a good intro into XYZ fandom," which sort of fits in with my More Joy Day plan of talking about a bunch of media things, except that was going to mostly be about sources, not fanworks, so now I have to figure out which ones even work for reccing with fanworks. Small, but not too small--like, I could rec all three Trigger fics in the AO3 because they are all very good (even though I kind of feel like one-and-a-half of the ones that aren't by me are maybe more appropriately considered Hard Core Logo fic because they're so much about Bill[y], who, yes, is in Trigger, but for barely more than one scene, and--no, I take that back, I sound like Robert Sawyer trying to claim the title of Only Living Canadian Science Fiction Writer because all the others are really American, or don't exclusively write sci-fi, or are women, etc., and that's just not cool. They are good stories and it is the same universe so why am I being silly? I just hope that more people write in this fandom and write about the amazing women in it). And some of the things I thought of to mention today (now yesterday) don't have anything in the AO3 (which I know is not the only place that fic lives, but for all its problems it is the one that I like best), so how about . . .

( Miranda! )

More More Joy Day recs coming up . . .

Day 2
In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you did not create. Drop a link to your post in the comments. See if you can rec fanworks that are less likely to be praised: tiny fandoms, rare pairings, fanworks other than stories, lesser known kinks or tropes. Find fanworks that have few to no comments, or creators new to a particular fandom and maybe aren't well known or appreciated. Appreciate them.

While it's emotionally easier to rec works by other people, it is logistically more difficult (pool of things to choose from the first day: stuff made by me; pool of things to choose from for this one: EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD). I have decided to take a slightly crooked approach by tying this into the following two days and reccing three totally awesome people who you should deffo check out and maybe think about following. None of them are new to fandom or particularly obscure or unknown, though they do all at least dabble in small fandoms.

First in reverse-alphabetical order (while we're being arbitrary) is toft, whom I met online I think after nixwilliams (also awesome) recorded her poem The Lay of the Turkey and the Moose about Robarts Library (a giant concrete "peacock" full of books on campus at U of T) and the moose silhouette across the street, for the bukkake square on her card back in the very first round of Kink Bingo (when we were young and carefree [ha] and bukkake was a square), and then met in person through other new mutual friends when I moved to Toronto that same summer. Toft is amazing and brilliant and an astonishingly talented storyteller and also one of the funniest people you will ever meet. Toft didn't post many fics last year (though the ones she did were mostly very long and uniformly very good) so if that's your primary interest in subscribing you might be disappointed (though the back catalogue is not empty), but every post is worth reading. She also periodically posts curated collections of favourites from fandomsecrets.

Second is petra, who wrote the fic that I think I have recced more than any other and in more diverse circumstances (barring perhaps Toft's poem above): Were He Not Romeo Called, which is Patrick/Sarah (Slings and Arrows S2) in which Patrick is a trans man, that fits rather beautifully into canon (to me it is canon) on an emotional level . . . it's in some ways so simple, and so small, and yet it's so precise--really a beautiful little story. Petra also writes poetry (mostly limericks), a skill that I greatly admire especially because it is one I feel I do not possess, and posts such other amazing sundry things as Authorial Math (fascinating and prompted some scintillating and polite debate) and A proposed amendment to Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Tasty brainmeats!

And third is one of my faaaavourite writers of the decade, helens78, who I am again reccing not just for the fanfic (although it is always good and appears rather frequently), but also for the podfic, original novels, cat pictures and anecdotes, liveblogs of awful movies and other delicious meta, and other awesome stuff like, for example, this one-take acoustic Ani DiFranco cover. Kinky knitter solidarity high-fives!

Can't do the other two right now because I am freaking out about my asshole landlords. Maybe there will be spoons tomorrow.

Way back in the day (the day of October, before laptop died and had to be replaced), I offered my mix-compiling services in the helpsomalia auction, and got myself bought up by karraparis and hazelwho, who each asked for different C6D fandoms, characters, and prompts/premises (well, H gave me options and I chose to go with something different) that (in my head at least) dovetailed rather nicely, thematically. Hence: two separate music mixes, posted together, exploring similar angsty ideas re: confusion, deception, self-doubt and self-destruction, compromised self-integrity and questioning identity, and complicated, maybe unwise, sexual connections. They each come with a little ficlet for context and yes, they both contain songs by two separate Ontario bands/artists with "mannequin" in their names, among other artist overlaps.

Links, covers, prompt details, and track listings behind the cuts.

due South Dollhouse!AU Fraser/Kowalski mix for karraparis: ( If We're Not Horses . . . )

Battlestar Galactica (2003) Kara/Leoben mix for hazelwho: ( No Two Snowflakes )

dragovianknight, I have started working on your writing mix and hope to have something ready for you soon. My apologies for the delay. podfic_lover, I've been waiting for a quiet day at home to record your stories without much success, but I hope to get to them soon.

I SWEAR I posted this like three weeks ago . . . apparently not?

Title: Mistletoe
Fandom: Heroes
Characters: Claire/Gretchen, Adam
Rating/Wordcount: G/850
Summary: Claire goes to Adam for guidance and gets a cryptic fable about gods and greenery.
Notes/Warnings: For superkappa, who asked for both Adam/Claire and holiday schmoop starring Claire and Gretchen. Compromise?

( Beware of mistletoe )

Title: Keep the Candle Burning
Fandom: Firefly
Characters: Mal, River
Rating/Wordcount: PG, 501
Summary: Serenity's grounded by a blizzard. River calls Mal in from the cold.
Notes/Warnings: mollivanders, whose Wishlist asked for holiday fluff and Mal, and who got stuck in an airport (been there, it sucks) the weekend before Solstice/Christmas/etc. I'm not sure this qualifies as fluff, but here it is.

( Mal drops his head back and glares up through the cockpit ceiling drifted over with twinkling snow. )

Title: Soft Limit
Fandom: Leverage
Characters: Eliot, Alec
Rating/Wordcount: PG/919
Summary: Eliot and Alec have a talk about their respective kinks.
Warnings/notes: discussions of sex and BDSM practices in general rather than specific terms. Written for Queerly Gen kickoff festival, and specifically for Thingswithwings' request for gen about kinky characters.

( you play your way, I'll play mine )