broadcast me a joyful noise

I have realised I will have to be the Yuletide 2015 rec list I want to see in the world, in the hope that it will encourage MORE REC LISTS, because >2500 fics is a lot to browse through. I need guidance! I need gushing capslock!

( Here, I'll start. )

Consider these all recced to high heaven!

Spin! by weatherfront (Inception)
Ifrit is her usual magical self, but this time there are POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS involved. Ariadne is a blogger. It's all pretty fantastic.

and miles to go before I sleep by cupiscent (X-Men)
Charles, via Erik. This has some excellent observations of the both of them, and also it contains CRICKET TALK <3 Suck it up, America, you can't have all the superheroes.

glimpse of a great heart by liminalliz (Sherlock BBC)
A light-handed and lovely version of the Pool Scene, with a wonderful John POV.

Handle Me by helens78 (X-Men)
ODE TO FASSBENDER'S HANDS. I think helens78 is some kind of porn fairy; she's done a lot of short, usually kinky Charles/Erik ficlets that hit my buttons pretty squarely.

& I know littledust is in the middle of an Angel/Raven fic which promises to be SUPER.

Today in Inception Fandom Is Batshit Awesome news:

- My Softer World comics remade with Inception screencaps <3

- MY LITTLE PONIES. KJAHKJADHADGHJASGAJ. Cobb and Mal are my favourites.

~

ristrettoette (one of the people who taught me to write, no lie) is kicking around LJ again, as she does, and dashing off brilliant Sherlock fic, as she does. My favourite so far is the latest one, Rate of Change. For a moment you had envisioned that one cheap wheel forever embedded, cheerful, spinning. READ IT.

~

This is not a link, but: my parents are in Turkey and my mother keeps sending me amazing travel emails and I WANT TO TRAVEL AGAIN :(

Ughghgh midweek overnight shift, you have ruined my day. Stupid long bus ride. Stupid overlong nap fucking up my sleeping patterns. Stupid fatigue-induced LOCKING MYSELF OUT OF MY ROOM. Stupid scarily empty bank account. Stupid brainfuzz interfering with both assignments and writing.

*grumps*

All I want to do is hide in the depths of my Harvard hoodie and drink tea and watch QI. And stalk bookshop's delicious account, because who needs to trawl the terrifying depths of Inception fandom when you have Aja to find all the awesome stuff and present it to you with capslock?

I'm also putting aside half an hour to send feelings of mild hatred in the direction of apiphile, who nodded sympathetically at my writing-woes and then turned around and casually churned out a marvellous 10K fic about Eames in like 0.235 seconds. BECAUSE SHE IS AWFUL. HOW DARE SHE. Read it, there are dinosaurs.

* Master & Commander AU Sherlock Holmes art. SO. AMAZING. (ATTACKED BY ROGUE PIRATES. WATSON IS SUCH A CRACKSHOT.)

* Perpetuum Jazzile doing Toto's Africa -- this is an old old link that we watched in choir last year to get inspiration for our own rendition of a very similar vocal arrangement. We did not have an AWESOME BEATBOXER, however, so they win.

* White Collar fandom is being pretty damn amazing on the Neal/Peter/Elizabeth front, so have a few recs: Contractual Obligations: A Love Story in Three Traffic Lights by shaenie is an amazing, intricate, kind of brutal fic that is mostly a negotiation between three very smart and very complicated people. I'm not sure I buy some aspects of the characterisation entirely, but it's good enough and intelligent enough that I am fully prepared to accept these versions of the characters for the duration of the story. Figure It Out by lightgetsin has a very satisfying and well-paced balance of plot, sex, and Peter's Dominance Issues (hello, my favourite thing about this fandom). Plus of course there's Taking Liberties by astolat, in which NOBODY IS SURPRISED that astolat writes these characters perfectly.

* Eyaiverse, as ever. I reread bits and pieces of these stories whenever I want to be cheered up. I am so fond of every single one of those characters <3 (Fry! We need to add the eYuletide fics to that list.)

* My best friend is pretty awesome sometimes, and by sometimes I mean ALWAYS.

skin is, my -- by nextian, who is AMAZING <33 This is the junction of human and eyai tissue tech; this is the Vatican and secret police and secret agendas and the problem with crossing borders.

Róisín goes to flick him the V and discovers, with some confusion, that the hand's fallen asleep. She sighs and fumbles for the key, hating to do this in public, in front of the eyai waitress, on someone else's limb. There's the little pressure against the bone, the pins and needles, then the muscles reengaging one by one, and her fingers jerk and spill the salt across her plate.

~

The next story is still Agatha Verey and the downfall of the Kingdom, I promise, but I'm slowly gestating one about Australia as the sanctioned battleground for Asian companies & creating desire in a saturated market & becoming a republic & medical ethics and a few other cool things.

~

New to eyai? You want this post here.

1) One of my awesome friends from high school has turned her design talents to the Trekkish arena and has produced a very slick T-shirt that I think a lot of you would love:

ROCK OUT WITH YOUR SPOCK OUT

2) THE THREE STAR TREK VIDS YOU MUST SEE, NO QUESTIONS, JUST WATCH THEM:

- Circus (Kirk + Britney Spears)
- Poker Face (Spock + Lady Gaga)
- We Go Together (The Crew + GREASE omg)

3) SOME EXCELLENT FIC:

- A Formal Dance in the Bowling Alley by loneraven
McCoy grins. "You're passable, Jim Kirk. Would smuggle into space again.

- How to Avoid Kicking Puppies and Other Valuable Lessons in Leadership by sparky77
"I’m laughing at you, too. You had a fight with Spock about which one of you has to be the bad parent and you lost. That’s hilarious."

- cut and fucking paste by crimsonclad
'Dear Ambassador Spock,' Jim writes, 'The new Spock thinks I am a total asshole and that sucks.'

4) Karl Urban BONES MCCOY will be at Sydney Supanova! \o/

Periapsis by rawles. Lee and Kara and the nature of sociopathy, before and after the end of the world. IT'S EXCELLENT, disturbing and plausible in the best Rawlesian style (see also: Reign Within); what's frightening is how little this AU alters things, in the end.

~

Pursuant to that, I think I have a fic in me somewhere about childhood and adolescence as a game of Mao. About taking an active role in your own operant conditioning, and about becoming fluent in the laws which determine your possibility of success.

(It took me a while to work out how to reconcile a strong desire to be universally liked with the inability to truly register negative emotion, when defining a coherent personality, but I figured it out eventually: someone disliking you is the equivalent of having to pick up a card. You've done something wrong. Work out what it is. You can't please everyone all the time is something of an alien concept; working within structures, basing your social interactions on the idea that there are certain agreed-upon rules, logic dictates that if your actions are appropriate then you will be rewarded. 'Not caring what people think' is a character trait; as such, it must be constructed and developed just like any other, and it takes some time to overcome the years-long association that is: someone's negative opinion = a mistake on your behalf.

And no matter how complex and thorough your understanding of human systems becomes, how automatic and effortless your behaviour, you never quite drop the idea that perfection is achievable. Tailor your game and tailor it again. You'll get there.)

Anyway, I was throwing around the idea of turning all of this into an Azula fic, but then I realised it wouldn't work because Azula never had to learn to act the same as everyone else: she was expected to be different. Her sociopathy was tolerated in some areas and encouraged in others. Her learning of the rules was strictly for the purpose of being the dealer, so to speak; she never had to compete with anyone or learn them in order to survive. She never had to build up her own portrayal of normalcy.

And I've already said what I want to about Dexter.

~

I enjoy Mao enormously, even when I start out blind; it's like life, only easier. And for much lower stakes.

Yeah, because the last thing I needed to erupt fully-formed into my consciousness was a FUCKING AWESOME FICBUNNY. I wasn't even doing anything to encourage it, I swear*, I was washing my hair in between studying respiratory medicine and haematology, and the idea just hijacked me out of nowhere and now I really, really, REALLY want to just sit here and write furiously. It has a Plot and everything, and you know me and my normal lack of ability to write Plot.

Ugh.

I might start it tomorrow, if my first exam goes well enough that I don't panic and spend the rest of the day buried in my notes.

In the meantime, oh Merlin-watching denizens of my flist who have a better memory for detail than I: have we seen anybody use anything breakable on the show? I know they have the anachronistic windows, but I don't recall them drinking out of anything that wasn't metal, and their buckets are made of wood...is there any pottery around the place, either ornamental or useful? I need something that will go smash.

WOW CRYPTIC.

*Okay, MAYBE I was thinking about Merlin in a dress, but that's not my fault at all.

1) Earth's News Feed. HEEEEE.

2) However, I can't believe I had to find out from the above link that Bernie Mac has died :( WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SOMETHING, INTERNET? Frank! Ocean's Whateverthenumber wouldn't have been the same without you!

3) Aria has made an insta-cheer picspam of Ten hugging people (and companions hugging each other!).

4) FIC REC: Merc has been writing hilarious, crazy, creepy-as-fuck, awesomely characterised (and, um, incredibly hot) Scarecrow/Joker fic. Yeah. YEAH. This is the third chapter but it contains links to the first two, so make sure you read it in the proper order and then tell Merc how great she is.

5) Okay, enough procrastinating. TO THE LIBRARY! (Where's Sokka when you need him to say that in an impressive tone?)