Consonants and vowels all together, equally

Erica/Lydia recs! The rules: no WIPs, had to have the pairing as more than just a one-off in a series of drabbles or as background (though where noted they share the stage). That left me with 21 fics out of the 40 listed at AO3.

( recs below the cut )

Okay, I'm done with Yuletide reading. You RED fans can find a pile of interesting fics, both Victoria/Ivan and our pal Agent Cooper. My yuletide recs include Carol Burnett-Julie Andrews Actor RPF, Anne of Green Gables, The Apartment, Stoppard's Arcadia, Arrested Development, Austen (S&S and Persuasion), Brick, Calvin & Hobbes, Golden Girls, Great Gatsby, James Bond, The Runaways (2010), Ramona Series (Beverly Cleary), A Single Man, Victor/Victoria, Whip It, and Good Wife/White Collar.

Then at brunch yesterday I realized that I'd meant to make this post ofstartrekbigbang and rpf_big_bang recs, particularly as there are some of you out there looking for long fics to crawl into. The RPF fics are either Kradam or Chris/Karl Trek. I'm a Kirk/McCoy girl, so that's a lot of what you'll see in the ST recs, plus some Chekov/Sulu and Pike/Number One and a lot of Spock/Uhura in the background. Oh, and tons of AUs: regency romance, Inception-inspired, WWII, Indiana Jones-esque, even post-apocalyptic (and you know how I feel about that).

( 17 fics, so a lot to read in here )

First, thanks to everyone who replied to my previous post about being a bad fangirl. It's crazy how often any of us feel that way! (it's crazy.) The most frequent reply I received was that if I'm having fun and not harming anyone I can't be doing it wrong. I rarely think of fandom as something that I'm doing for my own self-satisfaction, so I'll have to think about that statement for a while.

A friend asked for my definition of a "good" fangirl, and while I gave it to her in the comments I decided that rather than laying it out here, I'd flip it and talk about the things that I do that I feel aren't really in that definition. (Turning negatives into positives makes me feel a lot better.) This isn't about disparaging the majority, hopefully, but about celebrating the minority!! So today's aspect: ( schmoop, fluff, comfort, domesticity. )

Anyway, I got two really splendid comfort fics a few weeks ago and wanted to share them with you all! (I wrote some recently as well, but like all my comment fic it needs a bit of a clean up before I post it)

Dear amyamy wrote me some Kirk/McCoy, Seeking Slumber, the night before I left for Infinitus. I had to get up at ridiculous o'clock to get on a plane and a conversation with a friend had both gone too late and upset me a good deal; she came on chat and calmed me down and I was able to get to sleep. When I woke up, this adorable little fic was in my email.

Last month someone posted a fandom secret about how they often wrote comfort fic for their friends but no one wrote it for them. In the comments I sympathized and noted that when I'd been mugged not long ago I'd asked just for links to comfort fic and didn't get many. And then in the comments of fandomsecrets, shadowbyrd wrote me some delightful Percy/Oliver fluff!

Link me if you can--what's some fluffy/schmoopy fic that you've been enjoying?

Now that Castle has been renewed I can happily look forward to another season for all my scripted shows: HIMYM, Castle, Community, White Collar and Glee. I'm also enjoying Justified so far; anyone else watching that?

Speaking of Glee, I had the privilege of beta'ing kitsune13's Every Rule I Had. It's Will/Quinn, a really lovely ride if you like those characters. And sure, somewhat of a forbidden love, but come on, it's Catja. She was incest when incest wasn't cool, so a little teacher/student really isn't going to faze her.

Generally I wait until things are done to rec them, but I do know that honestys_easy has finished writing her story, a western AU about David Cook and his own merry band of bank robbers with a dollop of AI8 characters as the nice townfolk (and as deputy, one Kris Allen). Even if you're not in Cook fandom or Idol fandom I think you'll find a lot to like in Outlaw's Prayer.

Another story I've been working on as a beta, and is also nearly finished (all but the epilogue), is ali_wildgoose's Something to Hold Onto. It's Avatar: the Last Airbender, Jet/Zuko, and I'll let Ali explain: "This is an AU that takes place during Season Three, and is built on the conceit that Jet never saw Iroh Firebending his tea." Tons of adventure, piles of romance, seriously what more do you people need?

I requested Kim and Lindsay from Freaks and Geeks, and got TWO gift fics!

Growing Upside Down. Lindsay finally discovers the part of her she's been trying to find since high school. Femslash.

write her name in the sky. Kim broke up with Daniel for the last time three days after she and Lindsay got back from their summer adventure.

There were also two Rymon fics written for Yuletide this year, the first for ignaz and the second for delilah_joy:

And When It Was Good. There are shows when it's good, when they're on.

Where We're Going, and How to Get Back. There are things less like relationships.

Go, read, comment! Yayness!

I just sent 10,000 words of Rymon to poor dana_kujan and how do I repay her? By writing a "Cake" Rec Post. All recs are always for samgrrrl because she likes recs. There isn't a lot here, just four authors that I'm willing to say you should read, one of which you absolutely must (that means you, sistermagpie).

Ah, Cake: Chris Richardson and Blake Lewis. ( Background, or why this is all lillijulianne's fault. )

So you know how we're always talking about how we want our porn to be really smart, and tell a story through the sex, and not be all "ew girly bits"? Ladies and Gentlemen, meet lillijulianne. My links at del.icio.us include the dates she posted the stories and I suggest that you read them in that order. 42 stories, though each one is fairly short, and a lot of it also includes Kat McPhee (hence the "McCake"). She's given us not only really layered takes on these "characters" but also an intense emotional arc. These are the kinds of stories that we're always trying to find, the kind you can really sink your teeth into, and I can't recommend them highly enough. No, really, run don't walk.

For really well-written, mostly smutty, ship fic, I also recommend two other writers, birdisland and ruby_fruit. Rubyfruit's 12 stories are incredibly hot, inventive, with that little bit of humor at the core that makes them really fun to read. Birdisland's 8 stories are in a more impressionistic style, but no less sexy.

Then there are writers who are writing stories that feel like you could have written them yourself, and you're just so glad they're writing, too. For me, the latter is lessthangreat—except she's a lot more prolific than I am; I've linked to 19 stories here, and all are funny and loving with a sweetness underneath. She does great dialogue and her stories really, in the end, are just fun to read. Some are lighter than others, but I recommend them all.

Or, some thoughts on RPS.

But first, a rec: Belongs to Us is worth joining punditslash to read. (All the TDS/TCR and CNN/MSNBC type RPS is locked in the comms because the Comedy Central blog has a tendency to link to them.) Fantastic Keith Olbermann/Dan Patrick slash with all the backstory, regret and make-up sex of your average golden age Sirius/Remus fic. ( A short version of their backstory, and perhaps why you should care. )

The title of this entry is from their radio show where they did an extended and completely hilarious riff on Larry King.

The start of American Idol, and more directly my posts about them, always makes me vaguely nervous about ( the risks of tinhattery that one always runs when thinking about RPS. )

So I thought, more for my own feeling of comfort than any of yours as many of you assure me that you don't think of me as a tinhat, that I would lay out what I actually think is going on, rather than my fun shippiness, so you see that you know, I'm not crazy. Also I was thinking about this after reading the TWoP recaps for last week. ( From what I've seen, we have four possibilities for what is a actually going on with Ryan and Simon. )

All that said, I think I write Ryan/Simon the way that I do not only to make a comment about what is going on with the show—a sort of fictional meta, if you will—but also to make Simon a tiny bit nicer than he actually is, and give Ryan the reward he does deserve, and in general make them both just a little bit braver than they are. Ryan and Simon make a great pair because Ryan is one of the few people who really isn't afraid of Simon one little bit, but also likes and respects him, while Simon responds very well to Ryan and sometimes is just a little bit nicer because of him. And you know how I love couples who can get under each other's skin.

Oh, you know, everything is fine here, so I'm sorry if people thought I sounded down in my last post! I was just a little bored and not wanting to do work and annoyed that no one was on YM.

Anyway, so one miss fiatincantatum pointed me to a fabu Seamus/Dean story by Delphi (atdelphi) on pornish_pixies that you all should go read. Some nice reviewer of the story had mentioned me which got me all ego-y. And then I reviewed with my S/D Clio icon, which was probably obnoxious but whatever.

Which leads to my confession: I am driven insane by jealousy for everyone who is a posting member of pornish_pixies! Okay, so I write more het than slash. Okay, so my slash pairing is a good deal rarer than Harry/Draco or Snarry. Still. Still!

However, since I should be all positive and shit, I'm going to wander off and write something for erotic_elves because I ♥ them.