I, um, forgot House was on last night, but I've seen it now, so I figure it's safe to come back online.

Had a cool idea for a vid today that I want to start nowww. It's by an artist who helped define my childhood, and it's also an iconic Canadian song, which is appropriate for SGA. This would be a full vid, as opposed to the list of about six songs I want to vid a few lines of. Those I'm thinking of stringing together like channels flipping, sort of like this HouseWivz YouTube vid but without all the other stuff. First, though, I am trying to iron out problems with ripping and exporting so the vids look better when they're done.

Speaking of vids: Does anyone know of songs that might be used to tell a story about Hou--er, someone who acts like a sadist because he's secretly masochistic?

Meanwhile, Forecast One continues to say 1-5 inches, while Forecast Two says 10-20. Guess we'll see. I haven't been in the office since Thursday. I'm guessing it'll be closed tomorrow, too, and, depending on how much falls, possibly Thursday. Would be cooler if I didn't have to work from home, but the power and Internet haven't gone out (yet?), so there's that.

Finally updated the website with stuff from January. Somehow -- and by "somehow" I mean "by wrecking my sleep schedule and screwing up my work and personal lives for a week" -- I managed to do better than the other times I participated in the Porn Battle, and wrote four ficlets. They all ended up being crossovers. I suspect it's because, as thedeadparrot said recently, there's more to seize on in a crossover prompt.

They were:

Doppelganger (X-Men movie/True Blood, Eric/Rogue, adult, consent issues) - This was a lot of fun to write, even though it's not a fun story in the end. If I ever do write more, Rogue will be ready for him.

Somewhere Over the Wormhole (SGA/Deep Space Nine, Teyla/Kira, R) - In which I thought about things these characters could connect over.

Hero Gets the Girl (SGA, Rodney/Buffy (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame) fantasy, Rodney/Jennifer, PG-13) - Which became character development.

One Night in Princeton (House/SGA, Zelenka/Thirteen, R) - Because Zelenka deserves something nice to happen to him for a change, and Thirteen recognizes a good thing when she sees it.

I'm happy with each of them. I do wish more people had given them a try, but then that's the downside of writing (a) crossovers and (b) fandoms and/or pairings that maybe aren't appealing to many people who read this journal. And actually, the Buffy-ish one birthed a vid idea in comments, though I don't know enough yet to pull off the necessary special effects.


Last, there was a Rodney vidlet for deelaundry's birthday: Call Me Al. I think most people watched who were interested, but here it is again just in case. Went over very well, which makes me happy and hopefully made Dee happy too. Now to figure out why I can't export without the program crashing. I think there's a bug related to titling.


And now, to work.

Office is closed tomorrow! The government is way more generous than my last company. And there's another winter storm watch on for Tuesday-Wednesday. I am loving this winter in the "south."

I shall consider the bonus day off (well, work-at-home day, anyway) a reward for having slogged through my taxes today. Being a half-year student and half-year employee and first-time part-time self-employee and part-year resident of a new state does not make for easy paperwork.

.

Random rec for a not-new story: Yesterday morning I decided to re-read smittywing's The Best Things in Life Are Free (SGA high school AU, John/Rodney, 100,000 words), only to discover that I'd never actually read it the first time. It's a wonderful, wonderful story - long and heartfelt, family-oriented, excellent pacing and spot-on voices, and with a fabulous supporting cast. It very much deserves its status as a classic of the fandom. Also, while I was younger than they were in the '80s, when it takes place, I was old enough that I can be nostalgic about it now.

Not-so-random rec for a new story: Speaking of SGA high school AUs, sabinelagrande's Weir/Caldwell student/teacher ficlet, I should, I wish I could. In the same way smittywing's reminded me of what it was like to be part of a family and in a subservient role, growing, sabine's reminds me of what it was like to be a senior in high school, a bigshot in the building, not quite an adult but not quite a child anymore either.

Have very much been enjoying bluflamingo's fics as well, starting with a complex McKay/Keller and a few Cadman/Katie Browns (Fade Out to Black made me tear up last night). They feel... adult, not in a sex sense but in the way the characters grapple with interpersonal matters. A little while back, scrollgirl's John Sheppard's Adynation (Sheppard/Cameron Mitchell) impressed me for similar reasons.

Any House recs of late? I was watching some season two reruns last night and am back in the mood for some ficcing.

Twenty-eight hours of snow and counting. Not that it justified everyone running screaming to the supermarket to buy all the chicken before the apocalypse*, but it's not an insignificant amount accumulating out there.

One of my few complaints about living where I do is that it's hard to see just how much snow falls, because there's really just the street and the roof of the building next door to look at. The courtyard gives a better idea; looks like the foot and a half we were promised on the low end.

*Dear Washington Post, the National Weather Service, and other professional news outlets: please stop saying "snowmageddon" and "snowpocalypse" every other paragraph and in place of useful phrases like "the blizzard of December 2009." You sound like idiots.

ETA: OMG, NY Times, what is wrong with you. Apparently a blow with shoulders obliterated Washington, leaving the Potomac an enchanted gray pewter plate studded with aerodynamic ice cream blobs from a lost civilization.


Preview:




( 8 snow photos and a tart. The fruit kind. )

People are battening down the hatches here, waiting for the storm they're saying will dump a foot and a half of snow by tomorrow evening. It'll be our third storm in a week. I am loving this winter, and not just because I get to telework so much. Wednesday morning dawned with an otherworldly landscape: branches coated with wet snow, lit yellow-white against the blue-gray clouds, a pale disc of sun visible behind them.

As the first flurries are falling, here are three things that cracked me up yesterday:

1. An email confirming that I got a spot on the White House tour (yay!) instructed me as follows: "Please be in line at 12:45 p.m. and don't forget your id." I'm surprised they encourage such wanton behavior, since things like purses, pens, "personal grooming items," stun guns and martial arts weapons are forbidden. I'd wondered if I could even bring my apartment keys, but apparently they do allow those in.

2. This indescribable political ad, found via this Slate article. Skip the middle if you want, but be sure to tune back in for ~2:20. Just. *hand flail* The pedestal and the drama and the demon sheep. It is brilliant in its self-aware cheesiness. The fact that most of it is narrated by Robert Davi just makes it all the more awesome. KOLYA DOES NOT APPROVE OF HYPOCRITICAL FISCAL CONSERVATIVES.

3. Eric calling children "teacup humans" on True Blood. (Here is the scene - gets best after 1:10. The kid's delivery of the Jesus line is equally fantastic. Warning for a Sam-related spoiler from season one, a spoiler about the villain in season two, and a season two spoiler in the title of another clip that shows up in the sidebar and in the main window when the video finishes. You can avoid the first two if you skip to 1:10.) I love him so much, and am so glad he got more screen time.

Okay, back to work.

Last but not least. I posted this in the middle of the night (and am paying for it today) as my fourth Battle entry. This version has actually been proofread.

Title: Doppelganger
Fandoms: True Blood/X-Men (movie)
Pairing: Eric/Rogue; hints of Eric/Godric
Rating: Adult
Word Count: 2,220
Contains: Some questionable consent
Spoilers: True Blood 2.9, "I Will Rise Up" (the latest episode I've seen)
Summary: What was she doing here without his knowledge? Where was Bill? And what the hell had she done to her hair?
A/N: Flashfic for Battle IX. No prompt. For those of you who haven't seen one or both sources, Anna Paquin plays both Sookie on TB and Rogue in X-Men.


( Near her ear now, he murmured, 'There is much you can do without touching someone.' )

Concrit, as always, is welcome. This one was written quickly, but I'm interested in talking about it.

x-posted to true_blood_fic and X-Men Movieverse Fan Fiction

Title: Somewhere Over the Wormhole
Crossover: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine/Stargate: Atlantis
Pairing: Kira/Teyla; hints of Worf/Ronon, if you like; mention of other characters
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,580
Summary: Teyla connects with a fellow fighter when the team gets stuck on the station.
A/N: My first femslash. Written for Battle IX, prompt "holosuite." (Shh, so what if this is the second of my own prompts that I've filled?) Read it there or below. Thank you to the_drifter & others for help with the fashion terminology. There's also a Dune reference in there.

Preview:

Kira did not appear to be well-versed in forms, so Teyla led her through the fundamentals as she would a child on Athos—although, as she grew bolder as Kira did not rebuff her, she indulged in more lingering touches than would have been appropriate for mere tutelage: trailing her fingers along Kira's triceps to shape the bend of her arm, placing her hands between the wings of Kira's shoulder blades and on her stomach to correct the arch of her spine.


( By the time their muscles were loose, Teyla had grown warm in more than one sense. )


x-posted to sga_noticeboard, sg_femslash, trek_slash, girlslash, halfamoon

Title: Call Me Al
Music: "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon (edited)
Fandom: SGA
Characters: McKay, with team; background Carter/Zelenka
Rating: PG, humor
Length: 1:45
A/N: A happy belated birthday to deelaundry, who once asked for a McKay-centric vid set to this song. I'm sorry this one didn't turn out with the greatest visual quality—Premiere kept freezing when I tried to deinterlace. One day I may come back to this for remastering, and/or to add the third verse if there's an unfaily way to handle it.

( Embed and links behind the cut )

( Lyrics )

*

Concrit is always welcome as I try to improve my vidding.

x-posted to atlantis_vids, sga_noticeboard and mckay_sheppard

Title: Hero Gets the Girl
Fandom: SGA, with mentions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: Rodney/Buffy fantasy, Rodney/Jennifer
Rating: PG-13 for sexual references
Word Count: 425
Spoilers: A pairing in BtVS season 6/7
Summary: What? It was no secret he had a type.
A/N: Flashficlet for two prompts at Battle IX: BtVS/SGA, B/R, sarcasm; SGA, J/R, hero. Read it there or here.

( He's got a leather coat and a gun and—okay, he's still working on the suave, but he's learned how to be brave, which is saying something when he's fighting the Pegasus Galaxy equivalent of Spikes and Angelus...es. )

x-posted to sga_noticeboard and mckay_keller

I have:

3 2 3 2 1 unfinished Battle ficlets,

2 nights of frustrating insomnia,

1 link to an LA Times article reviewing the medicine in "The Down Low" episode of House (warning, spoilers for the medical plot), and

1>x>0 chance to take a White House tour in a couple of weeks with the MIT alumni club.

Sup?

Title: One Night in Princeton
Fandom: House/SGA
Pairing: Remy Hadley/Radek Zelenka
Rating: Adult
Word Count: 825
Spoilers: House 6.3 ("Epic Fail"); SGA series finale
A/N: A quick Porn Battle IX fic, prompt "unexpected." Read it there or below.

( She is a good head taller, and far more pleasing to the eye than he with his scruffy hair and growing potbelly, but then he is accustomed to being with women who outshine him. )

x-posted to sga_noticeboard, gate_house, housefic and welovezelenka

Almost 700 words of a Battle entry and there's only just now a paragraph establishing the attraction.

Question: How would you describe the skin-baring portion of Kira's shirt? As in, right now the sentence says, "Kira stripped off her uniform top to reveal a sleeveless white undershirt with a band of …… beneath her collarbones." ETA: the_drifter to the rescue with "open weaving."

...Why yes, I'm filling my own prompt,* why do you ask?

*not a euphemism

I have last-minute houseguests, and yesterday I discovered that the second season of True Blood is finally on On Demand, so most of my plans for the weekend went kablooey.

However! I wanted to duck online for a minute to share this sign I saw outside a lab, because I didn't know people actually used them outside of those one or two "It's been X days since our last offworld incident" SGA fics I can't remember the titles of.

1. Cool Slate article (er, if you don't mind grisly medical details) related to current events: Step by step explanation of what happens after your limb is crushed

2. The Conflicted Existence of a Female Porn Writer - A monthly McSweeney's column by a former English major who finds herself writing about the porn industry.

3. Prompts are still open for next week's Porn Battle.

ETA: 4. The Danger of a Single Story (video with optional captions) by Chimamanda Adichie, via deelaundry from bethctg2

Here-wise, there was an upload Saturday night, vid recs Saturday day, and fic of a sort last week. Also am still open to music recommendations.

Just saw Thoughtcrimes.

1. Huh. That was not a typical "I saw it because X was in it, and it sucked" experience. I am so used to being embarrassed for whoever I'm watching for, either for the writing or the acting. This was not only not bad, it was thoroughly enjoyable. It got best when ( Not really spoilery other than a summary of the premise ) Such are the limitations of TV pilots.

2. Hoooooly hell, so that threesome fic I read whenever ago might actually have been Navi Rawat/Joe Flanigan/PETER HORTON. *scrambles to find it again* *ETA: Oh, damn, it was a crossover with someone else* I am going to enjoy revisiting the bunch of Brendan/Freya fics that I already liked before I saw the movie, too, now that there's context for them. I totally buy that pairing. Freya/Mike, too—there must be fic for that, even if not necessarily by the SGA fans who wrote Brendan. Could be sweet, could be hot, could be creepy if it plays on the power dynamics—though most of the time strong and capable, Freya had moments uncomfortably like how I imagine Eliza Dushku is in Dollhouse: like incompletely formed clay for the men to shape, or a tool for them to use. Delicious tells me there's Mike/Brendan as well. Of course. Hmmm. Mike teaching him how to block thoughts? Could be like Legilimency lessons.

3. Seeing those two guys not only appear in the same movie but also in one scene together, facing off across a desk, makes me want to write the Sheppard-as-Zeke Stone story even more.

Before I burn it to disc and take it off the hard drive, here it is for anyone who might want it. hxxp://www.megaupload.com/?d=SPDANMTB Replace the x's in the link, and change the file extension to avi when you've snagged.

I have conquered festivids! And I am here to point to what I enjoyed most and want to share with you if you haven't been by already.

I know some of you don't like or aren't familiar with vids, and/or aren't interested in seeing stuff about shows and movies you don't know. That's how I feel about yuletide each year—a bit left out because I don't know the vast majority of sources and therefore can't really enjoy the stories written for them or take part in the communal celebration of multifannishness. Plus, there are an overwhelming number of stories.

festivids—a post-holiday gift vid exchange for rare fandoms—turns out to be different. First, there are a manageable number of entries. I've seen them all (except the one for Slings and Arrows, because I'm planning on watching the show and don't want to risk being spoiled) in three sittings. Second, it only takes a couple of minutes to experience each entry, as opposed to the time investment in reading a long story in an unfamiliar fandom. Third, the quality ratio is extraordinary. And fourth, the vids are designed to be understood by non-fans on some level, to summarize the source, and/or to pitch the source. They may not resonate as much as they would if you knew what they're based on, but they're accessible. I knew maybe a third of the fandoms here. Sometimes I felt lost, but it didn't matter, because the ride was so enjoyable. Only a few left me unmoved.

fan_eunice has some convincing arguments to make for taking a look, namely: new music, new shows/movies to taste-test, social interaction while enjoying the entertainment and artistry, and, to reiterate the above: "you also do not have to know or be particularly interested in the fandom to still have one hell of a good time." I've been introduced to Joshua James and Rose Polenzani, become interested in two shows and a movie I'd either dismissed or not heard of before, and learned more about spectacular video editing.

And of course, if you do know a small fandom in the 'fest, it's probably pretty great to see a vid (or three) made for it.

Okay, that's the hard sell. Now for some recommendations. Not a problem, said I, when I first started watching; I'll just note the good ones. Okay, except they're pretty much all good. Then I decided to write down my favorites. Which, whoops, totaled about 30. I'll just pick ten, I said when I began this post. Well, I couldn't do it, so here are 15 of the vids I think shouldn't be missed, with handy emoticons to indicate the mood of each. Again, I hope you won't skip any on account of not knowing the source. Some of the best work lurks in the most obscure places. Of course, obscurity is relative.

( Favorites behind the cut: )
 

Little birdies tell me today is (was) More Joy Day.

If this music video doesn't make you smile, I'm not sure anything will: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQYVPH_JrP4

Brought to you by one of the artists featured at festivids, which opened today (yet more joy). This particular vid takes a beautiful, if all too short, look at Bonnie in The Vampire Diaries, trying to find herself.

The other two Vampire Diaries vids are worth watching too; "AEIOU" especially is fun. As are many more on the masterlist. Almost everything I've seen over there has been excellent. Reviews coming tomorrow.

Happy birthday, roga! Turns out I don't know enough about American Idol to do a proper SGAI fusion for you today, but if I did, I know it would have Rodney as Simon, terror of the music business, hated and adored by the public, oft quoted in the press for his colorful verbal eviscerations that reduce hopeful contestants to tears; and when one pissed-off auditioner, who may or may not be Kavanagh but is definitely not headed for Hollywood, asks McKay what the [censored] he knows about music anyway, McKay says without missing a beat, "Oh, you mean other than being a classically trained concert pianist, the most respected judge of vocal talent in both the Canadian and American recording industries" (to which Zelenka snorts) "and having a brain so remarkable it makes Stockholm want to invent a Nobel Prize in Music to honor it?"

( The rest [1,000 words, gen, comma abuse]: )

...If anyone wants to write that story or something like it or point me to an SGA/AI fic that's been done, please, by all means do!
 

For various dull reasons, I am for the first time watching an American Idol season premiere. It is just as embarrassing and commercial-mainstream as I expected in its judgments, but some of the nice stories are nice. Anyway -- I just wanted to say to anyone else who watched that that grumpy guy in glasses was totally Dr. Kavanagh, yes? I mean, not in looks, but in attitude and in the reactions he elicited.

So then I went to the webz to read the obvious SGA/AI fusion where Rodney is Simon and various other staff are the rest of the judges -- I dunno, Zelenka can be on the panel, and Teyla, and maybe Ronon? -- and John's the next American Idol, but the story doesn't seem to exist. Am I wrong? Should this be taken to sgastoryfinders?

Also, rec of joy for Fascinating/Indeed, a super-cute SG-1/ST Reboot crossover (gen). This deliberate bad!fic snippet (Reboot, Kirk/Spock) made me laugh too.