trude

Merlin-related.
The Future Queen held a Fluff fest last week, and I made a prompt. And dfriendy wrote the cutest little Gwen-Merlin-Arthur-baby griffin ficlet based on it. And to make things even better, felix-aeternus made an adorable picture to accompany it.

Then Merlin multis came into being. Which made starry-laa post a list of A Hundred Reasons to Ship Gwen/Lancelot and plingo-kat to post a list of 10 reasons to ship Merlin/Lancelot.
And there was much rejoicing.

Changing fandoms (OK, I'm not actually in Doctor Who-fandom - haven't seen the classic series or Moffat-Who, just largish chunks of RTD-Who), lizbee wrote Irregulars (Mickey/Martha, PG-13). I know there was a dozen faults with the way that this pairing was executed on the show itself, but I love the idea of M/M, and this story fills in the blanks and makes it make sense.
And that's why I love fanfiction, period.

Two HP recs, apropos the recent discussion about fandom and female characters:
Being liquid by rotary phones. Teddy/Victoire, R-rated.
A rare story that manages to question and transform the canon's (and possibly the reader's) assumptions about gender and sexual orientation, while keeping the canon pairing and not dismissing the female character as uninteresting and unimportant. (Bonus points for the way the issue of Teddy's parents is handled.)

Better sisters is a ficlet from Fernwithy's recent round of prompt-taking, and an example of that YES it is possible to write Ginny and Fleur symphatetically in the same story, and YES one can assume that neither of them stayed exactly the same person they were back in their teens.


Assorted other recs:
Selenak continues to write Merlin-character studies. Five lessons is about Arthur and Sui Generis is about Merlin and I can only hope that she continues to go through the rest of the cast.

Five Pre-Raphaelite Muses Who Did Not Quite Pan Out by prochytes is Desperate Romantics/AtS/Torchwood/Primeval/Doctor Who/Merlin. I'm unfamiliar with half of these fandoms (though vaguely familiar with Dante Gabriel Rossetti) but of the three I am familiar with, two parts are hilarious and one is eerily beautiful.

( And now some G/L stuff that got cut out of my last post )

Made a quiche with some broccoli and Västerbottenost. Remembered half-way through why I havn't made anything similar in ages - I always fail with the crust. (This time, I accidentally heated the empty casserole, and the crust melted when I put it in.) Nevertheless, the result was pretty good and the leftovers will probably be even better.

Did some quite, quite necessary book-shopping. Isn't this the prettiest Austen-cover imaginable? [Back-cover blurb by J.K. Rowling]. Apart from maybe this. [Front cover blurb by Helen Fielding].

Also bought Strong Poison. Not with the cover I wanted (it's probably out of print), so it won't match the rest of my Whimsey(&Vane)-novels, but at least now I can read about Miss Climpson faking a séance whenever I need to. [Back-cover blurbs by P.D. James, Minette Walters and Ruth Rendell and an introduction by Elizabeth George. Bit of over-kill, there.)

For anyone who'd like to read short snippets of Harry Potter-fic, fernwithy has had a challenge-call again. I especially recommend number 3 and 11.

Belated Happy new year!

Saw a novel about Miss Moneypenny from the James Bond series in the bookstore today. Almost bought it, but then I remembered that I have no shelf space left.

Hey! The BBC will adapt Andrea Levy's Small Island into a miniseries(?) this year. With Naomie Harris and that-actress-from-that-Jane Eyre-adaptation-I-havn't-seen-yet as Hortense and Queenie. Good news.

Rec time!
More ficlets-on-demand from fernwithy:
Hermione's and Ron's wedding [Lovely fluff, lovely Hermione.]

Hermione and McGonagall during H:s seventh year [And it's a pretty good take on post-war Hogwarts, too. A bit sad, but hopeful.]

Harry and qudditch, post-war [More excellent fluff]

Young Albus D. and headmaster Black (Nigeullus) [Absolutely brilliant and heartbreaking take on a 13-year old Dumbledore, who has his very own way of getting into trouble.]

Lily, James and Harry in Godrics Hollow, 1981 [Just as cute and doomed as it should be.]


And something entirely different, a slightly older fic I re-discovered when I was looking for something else:
Just Impediment by doyle_sb4
Blackadder/Doctor Who crossover. Starts with Edmund dissing Shakespeare:

“Of course it’s got good reviews. It’s a Shakespeare comedy,” Blackadder said, with all the venom such a prospect demanded. “It’ll be cross-dressing, willy jokes and hilarious misunderstandings between identical twins. All of which the general public eats up like one of Mrs Miggins’s Wednesday Surprises. Will ‘Predictable’ Shakespeare must have one of the cushiest jobs in England: write the same thing over and over and wait for the girls and cash to come rolling in.”

and it only gets better from there.

selenak has written West Wing-fic, which makes me happy, since she's an excellent writer and it's a fandom I like to revisit from time to time.
Words and the men: Jed and Toby, four glimpses over the years. Sad and a bit funny, as it should be.

fernwithy offered to write ficlets based on other people's prompts last week-end, and got so many request that she'll probably be busy until January. These are my favorites so far. (Some of these makes more sense if you're familiar with her HP-ficverse. It's quite big by now, but well worth checking out.)

McGonagall and Sirius, during GoF [basks in the awesomeness of McG, and wants to hug Sirius]

Regulus/Lily II (and Harry) [So, sometime after the epilogue, Regulus returned from the actually-not-quite-dead. Just deal. I love how much Lily is her mother's daughter here.]

The trio discussing Teddy and dead parents and stuff ["Missing scene", sort of, from Fern's multi-chapter fic Teddy Lupin and the Daedalus Maze. Excellent Ron.]

More un-dead Regulus. Christmas at Grimmauld Place, again. [Fern's Reg is my favorite Reg ever.]

A Star Wars one! Little Princess Leia celebrates her birthday. [A must-read for all Leia-fen.]

Percy and his nephew Fred [Good take on an older, wiser Percy. Also good take on George, even if he doesn't appear in the story.]

Tonks giving Remus a birthday gift (during GoF) [I love those little moments when they could have been happy]

Two Sirius-centric ficlets today [Both are lovely, though I think I like the first one best.]

Restitution Hasn't Come Quite Yet by theiceisthin is a couple of brief, introspective glimpses of Tonks from OoTP to DH, it doesn't get to any profound insights about her and I think that's the point. R/T without being either particularly shippy or dismissive about the relationship, which is a bit of a feat in itself.

Harlequin by andromeda3116 is also a brief character piece, this time of Teddy. Without being super-angsty, it portrays a kid who definitively is troubled by his parents death, and deals with it in a very different way from Harry. I don't think I've read any other fic that comes closer to "Teddy in my head" than this. (Also like the very brief glimpse of his relationship to Victoire that we get here).

Sistermagpie posted a review of Galaxy Quest. Recced because it's good and because there isn't enough GQ-meta around.