Fake News fandom was a HUGE part of my fandom life for quite a long time - a show with new episodes four nights a week will do that for you - hell, my default icon is still from that fandom. And yet, weirdly, I when I sat down to think of recs, there were very few fics that actually stuck in my memory? I guess, retrospectively, it was a fandom that was very much about the actual show, and about the people, for me, but there wasn't really all that much in the way of fanfic. And was there was, was nearly all short fic on tds_rps, which seems to sadly be long gone.

Anyway, for people who don't remember those halcyon days when we thought George W. Bush was the worst that American politics could possibly get, "Stephen Colbert" was the host of a comedy news show where he played a parody of a conservative pundit. (I suspect these days he would not even read as an exaggeration anymore...) His show was a spinoff of the Daily Show, a left-leaning, substantially more reality-based comedy news show, which is still going, but was then hosted by Jon Stewart. (Did Jon leaving the Daily Show put a curse on American politics? Look I'm not *not* saying that okay.) The real Stephen and Jon were good friends. The "character" Stephen was a deeply, deeply repressed gay man who had an obvious crush on Jon which he was in severe denial about (this was show canon) and Jon put up with him, for some reason. Obviously people shipped it!

Anyway, it looks like very little of the fic has made it to AO3, and all my old bookmarks are broken links to deleted LJs, and a lot of what is still up is very, very embedded in the time it was written and very specific show references, so this isn't going to be much of a recs list, but here is the fic that was linked in the one old bookmark I had that still worked:

• How Stephen Colbert Proved Jon Stewart Is a Lady (4853 words) by sarken
  Chapters: 1/1
  Fandom: Fake News RPF, Real News RPF, The Colbert Report FPF - Fandom
  Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: "Stephen" Colbert/Jon Stewart
  Characters: Keith Olbermann, Anderson Cooper, Jon Stewart, "Stephen" Colbert
  Additional Tags: Humor, lgbtfest, Report 'verse, Denial, gender issues
  Summary:

  Stephen says he "doesn't see gender." But he can't possibly be gay, so when he discovers he is attracted to Jon, Stephen concludes that Jon must be female.

...okay, that hypothetical crossover meme has reached levels of ludicrosity previously unattained on this journal.

Here is a list of fills so far:

Dresden Files/Vorkosigan Saga for isis (consisting of some extra bits of canon for the crossover I already wrote for this.)
Temeraire/Princess Bride ideas for finch
Pinkwaterverse/Cthulhu mythos for seekingferret (in which I fail miserably; surely *somebody* can come up with a better one?)
--seekingferret does Major League Baseball/The pirate Rabbi and Thor/Star Trek to my prompts
White Collar/Pirates of the Caribbean and DCU/The Lone Gunmen for elf. (Somebody needs to write a pirates/white collar crossover actually. Desperately. Also need fic now where Frohike tangos with Barbara Gordon, but that's a given.)
some flailing as regards Temeraire/Sherlock Holmes for ellen_fremedon
British Comedian RPF/Vorkogisan Saga for marginaliana (This one got kind of out of hand after lannamichaels tapped in. It probably helps to note that we were borrowing some of the characterization from a previous conversation regarding Aral Vorkosigan, Epic Troll. Also: this article on how traditional Chinese stand-up has fared under communism which I incidentally already had bookmarked, yes I did background research for this bit.) marginaliana asked for a British Comedy RPF crossover and I'm afraid in the elaboration we focused almost entirely on the Barrayar part, but I promise if I actually wrote it there would be a bunch of scenes of David and Charlie and Jimmy and Dara and so on meeting in hidden, poorly-lit back rooms at the university and playing at revolution.
Avengers/Sesame Street for lannamichaels. An excuse to write fic for the Teeny Little Super Guy! Yay!
Homestuck/Colbert Report for erinptah, featuring unbridgeable idealogical differences. And stabs. Mostly stabs.
Homestuck/Vorkosigan Saga for biichan. In which there are fantrolls.
Homestuck/Ranma 1/2 for terajk, featuring brownbetty and biichan contributing their own versions as well, which we must encourage them to write. yes.


Unfilled, still to do (list mostly for my reminder):
Avengers/Young Wizards and Vorkosigan/Avengers (I really need to watch that movie, I guess)
Something Sutcliff/Rihannsu-ish (Every time I poke at this I just come out concluding I need to re-read Rihannsu more. Tragic!)


This is actually an interesting way to find out what fandoms my commenters care about! Avengers yes (kind of obviously) but there's lots of Vorkosigan and Homestuck and Temeraire on there too, hmm.

And yes, I will still fill prompts if people leave them. Not crossovered out yet!

And as usual, all bunnies and notfic posted by me here are completely available for other people to pick up and run with, if you should chance to be so inspired.

...although to be honest I would have seriously considered going just so I could jump for Adam and Jamie. :D

Some notes from the Rally, mostly covering things that wouldn't have shown up on the TV coverage:

( Some random notes on the Rally )

Anyway: Jon and Stephen live are adorbs. I hope Mitchell and Brooker are that adorable when they get their live show. And are forced to sing just as much.

( 12 photos, mostly crowd shots )

1. Everybody who knows anything about British politics in the last 20 years should go read the THoC shared AU on the lolitics meme.

The House of Commons is an AU that postulates that BBC Parliament is in fact Britain's longest-running sitcom/drama, and the AU exists entirely in the form of press clippings with behind-the-scenes articles and interviews with actors on the show.

It encapsulates everything that draws me to RPF fandoms: the fact that things happen and characters get starring roles that would *never* happen in a fiction verse, because they would simply be too overdramatic and too unlikely and to difficult to sell; the way we use RPF both to comment on real events, and to re-write them into a better world; the layers of reality and unreality, that wrap public figures' personae, both in RPF and in the mainstream press; the alternating detachment and overinvestment that come with modern media coverage, the way press information is filtered and turned into a story; and also the sheer collective fun of it all, of course, all wrapped up in a lovely package of fluffy fourth-wall-breaking meta fic.

It currently exists as six "articles" on the anon meme and growing, and they are all, universally, brilliant. Even if you usually squick on RPF, you should still go read; the stories are all about the fictional 'actors' who play the RL characters and their experiences, so it shouldn't trip anyone's privacy buttons (and it's g-rated, of course.) I love it so much.

(The other really amazing group AU currently going over there is the Strap!Verse, which postulates that party loyalty in the British Parliament is really enforced with whips. And canes. And straps. And bare-hand spankings. But I don't suggest you try that one unless you are already comfortable with RPF kink. And have an afternoon free - it has about 30 heavily interconnected stories already.)

2. 10 O'Clock Live is really happening! 10 O'Clock Live is the new weekly British fake news show starring David Mitchell, Charlie Brooker, Jimmy Carr, and Lauren Laverne. As someone said on the Charlie Brooker community, this is either going to fail miserably or turn into the next Top Gear.

In the meantime, the new trailer on Youtube is making me very very happy. :D

Also HIGNFY is back, and I am totally writing a boarding school AU where Paul and Ian are classmates and make life hell for all of the teachers, because they can't be expelled now that Ian has photographic evidence of Headmaster Deayton's little coke-and-whores problem. (Causing trouble in Mr. Clarkson's chemistry class is difficult, though, because he usually manages to accidentally set something on fire himself before they get a chance to.)

3. Oh, if anybody wants an invite to the SEKRIT TORRENT SITE for British television, I have two to give out now!

(I believe the SEKRIT TORRENT SITE for Australian/Canadian/occasionally another Commonwealth country television is still in open membership; if you want to know how to sign up I can tell you.)

Also, if anybody wants an invite to Demonoid, I am not sure how many I have? But probably enough for anybody here who asks for one. Lots.

I also have an AO3 invite and lots of DW invites, while I'm at it.

Drop a comment here or a PM and I'll PM you with a code if you want any of those, first-come-first-served, no questions asked.

4. I am still not doing NaNo with a barely-disguised lolitics RPF sci-fi AU, but I did reactivate my NaNo account. With its less-than-10,000 user number. I may try to find any of y'all who are doing it this year and buddy you there, if I can figure out who.

Also I went and drew a cover image for it. Because I'd been staring at lots of great old SF paperbacks covers from the '70s while cleaning the things, obviously, and not because I'm actually going to write the thing.

But, I know a couple of times on gimp_gate people have asked for tutorials with scanned art and comics-style work. Would anybody be interested in a detail tutorial on my method for taking a pen-and-ink drawing and turning it into something that looks like this - computer colored and shaded and vaguely slick - using nothing but freeware, a digital camera, and a laptop touchpad?

1. If you want to know where I am in terms of fandom-ness at the moment, I did finally post a polished (and much abridged) version of The Guide To International Fake News (English-language edition) at punditfic - that pretty much covers it. October approacheth with alacrity, which means new Have I Got News For You soon! Quite Interesting is back already! I am writing a Paul/Ian schoolboys AU! And there is a march on Washington to go to!

2. Also, I need to print out a copy of Balanced Conversationalist so that I can roll it up and be thwacked on the head with it when necessary. (I have actually been where liberal!Stephen is in that strip. Except I have gone past "ritual suicide is cultural appropriation" to "you having persistent suicidal thoughts at all is ablist appropriation of actual depressed people's lives, anyway!" Yeah. That's actually kind of why I suddenly fell into BBC RPF; for awhile there it was the only thing I could watch or read that didn't trigger severe liberal guilt spirals. (That's not why I'm still in to it, mind; the cure has mostly worked - I'm still into it because it's lovely and topical and gay, and US news is currently making me depressed for entirely different reasons.)

3. And for something completely different, here are Paul McDermott and Mark Trevorrow singing a duet of "Stop in the Name of Love" like the 'old show-biz pals' they are (complete with crotch-nuzzling), from Good News Week several weeks ago. You're welcome.
( My first video embed ever! )

4. Oh, speaking of small punk-ish boys doing stagegay! Everybody is all excited about the new MCR shenanigans! And I am puzzling over why I can get into fandoms for everyone from slightly pathetic Australian comedians to Swiss figure-skaters to British wine critics but I remain largely uninterested in bandom, despite the fact that I *want* to like MCR. I think there are several factors, but the one I can't get past is that I can't listen to their music. :/ It's not that I dislike their music, it's just that there's something people can do with electric guitars that makes me filter all of their music out as mental static, and whatever it is, MCR does it a lot. I literally can't listen to it. And 90% of media interviews with celebrities of any sort trip my embarrassment squick. Bandom has its own canonical term for embarrassment squick, which is one of many reasons I want to like it. But if I can't do the interviews or the music, it makes it very difficult to get more into the fandom than just reading the more highly-recced crackfic.

...in summary, you should all read River Rats by Caroline Stevermer, and then we all can write book-based cheerfully post-apocalyptic rockstar gutterpunk epics instead, and I won't have to listen to the music. ^_^ (Although Loitering With Intent I can actually listen to! Though probably not the River Rats' cover. I should totally throw together a River Rats fanmix. With nanananananana in it, yes, I'll just have to skip that track.)

5. I watched Hot Fuzz last night! Only a few years after everybody else was over it! Okay, I sort of get the Simon Pegg & Nick Frost thing now, although I also need more Bill Bailey. (Good thing he was just on QI!) And I kind of want to watch it again :D (And, wow, it is really obvious which scenes were originally written for a female love interest.) Please tell me somebody has written crossover fic about Nicholas Angel and Sam Tyler? I mean, it must exist, right? I just haven't been looking for it the right way?

6. I need to stay firm. My yuletide requests are Miss Madelyn Mack, A Night In the Lonesome October, Their Majesties' Bucketeers, and Hodgmanverse; I decided than months ago. NOBODY LET ME CHANGE MY MIND.

I was reading rm's PSA on Queer and it occured to me that one could, in fact, make a simple nine-patch quilted totebag, with eight symbols around and the rainbow flag in the middle.

G would probably be a pink triangle, either patchwork or applique.
A would probably be the AVEN triangle, though one could use the new flag.
B would be the pink-lavender-blue flag or triangle.
T would probably be either the three-pronged symbol (applique) or the pink-white-blue flag.
L would probably be either the linked symbols or a labrys; this would have to be applique.
for I I don't know; I don't know of any pride symbols for this specifically (please tell me if there is one!) but one could use the three-pronged symbol here and the flag for T
U would probably just be a question mark
Q again I don't know; if one uses the rainbow as the center square, what goes here? There is the queer anarchy flag, but that has a specific political meaning; I'm almost tempted to go with the leather flag, as that takes in some of the queer communities that often are sidelined in GLBT and also would be fun to patchwork, but it also excludes a lot of queerness. An applique lambda might work, though (or maybe a rainbow here and lambda in the center? Or rainbow flag for Q, and the center square embroidered QUILTBAG?)

For the liner/backing, I am regretting the fact that I always throw out the incredibly ugly prints with vomit-green cabbage roses that seem to inexplicably recur. :P

And you could do one side of the bag nine-patch, and the other side as one large square for some specific identity/community that's yours and isn't specifically in the acronym: two-spirit, blue-feather, a subset of trans*, bear, poly, faerie, pansexual, bdsm, pflag, a traditional log cabin or stone wall patchwork pattern, or some combination or personal symbol that IDs the bag's owner specifically...

Anybody have any better ideas for the symbols to use for QUILTBAG, or objections to the ones I used? Anybody else interested in making or owning one of these? :D


(...we are not even going to talk about the dozen crafting/mending projects already in progress, no. Anyway two of those involve patchwork already, and if I have to pull out all the quilting stuff I might as well start a new project too, right?)


And speaking of activism and symbols, I am totally going to the Rally to Restore Sanity. (Did anybody doubt this for a second? :D) I will be bringing a sign which displays the H in Sunrays, of course. Though I am debating coming up with one with an actual political message or international fake news reference as well. Who else is going? Does anybody want to get together a whole group with h-in-sunrays signs?

4. staranise gave me that "explain five icons" meme. Here are the five icons she chose ( These may contain major spoilers for some of the small fandoms my icons are from. )

If anybody want me to pick five icons for them, I suppose I could. :D

(look at me showing off my l33t new css skills, too!)

arglflgul.

Does anybody know of a way to download The Bugle podcast without installing iTunes? I refuse to install iTunes *just* so I can get the Bugle - partly because I don't really have the system resources for it, partly because I viscerally hate the thing, partly because the iTunes store needs to *not* crash my browser every time I go there, thanks. But the Times website has finally put it under pay-only lock (and now it turns out that the Times was several episodes behind what itunes has anyway.)

I recently acquired an ipod and was forced to install itunes just long enough to flip the bit that lets you use your ipod as an external drive (though it still doesn't work right) and I really, really don't want to have to put it back on. :/ Dear Apple: if I can buy an $8 mp3 player that has all the capability and more of my iPod shuffle and can, oh, use software that doesn't try to malignantly take over my computer, surely you can design one that does the same for eight times the price.

I suppose I can just wait for the new season of the Now Show to start for my Andy Zaltzman fix, because oh look, BBC Radio Four streams internationally! -- but I can't wait until after the World Cup for my next Andy Zaltzman fix!1!! D:

Why yes, whinging about the evil of Apple does count as working on my copyright primer for con-txt, shut up.

Anyway. Since I'm asking for help about the Bugle already, I shall just make the post I've been playing with for a few weeks now, about Fake News (and "Real" News and Politics) fandom around the world and around the web.

The goal here is to get a guide to 'canon' sources and fandom sites for that somewhat-expanded RPF fandom that is, really, one of my most abiding loves. (My earliest datable memory involves Reagan giving a campaign speech. I would have been two.) I'm reasonably competent on the American ones (though my attention there is ... sporadic, and I might have missed something) and on the British ones (though, not being British, I've probably missed something.) I have a vague idea of where to start for Australia and Canada. I've no clue whatsover beyond that, and if there's anyone on my reading list who does know of other awesome fake news sources - English language or not - I would *love* the contribution!

This is meant to be video, audio, and text sources that I think everyone into current events from a fandom perspective ought to be at least minimally familiar with. (either because they're fundamental to the current fandom community, or because they're so awesome everybody should know about them.)

Here's what I've got so far. What have I missed? What should I cut?

( Too Awesome To Be Bounded By One Country )

( The United States of A )

( The UK )

( Places that are neither the US nor the UK )

What else should be on those lists? Help. Especially from people not living in the US.

I signed up for kink_bingo this year! I love how accessible they're making it: low pressure, the minimum is one 500-word story in a year, and they've emphasized that you don't have to be able to write explicit sex or sexual characters in order to play, so I'm fairly sure I can do it. My card:
( My Card )
So everybody's going on and on about their kink_bingo cards, and how lucky they are, and I looked at mine and went "huh."

I don't think *any* of the kinks I was really excited about ended up on it, and the two stories-in-progess I'd been planning to use at cheats - each of which have so many kinks they could conceivably blackout a card on their own, with no overlap - are barely represented on the card at all.

I guess that serves me right! Anyway it'll be fun, even if I only end up managing one meta post or something.

I would like to note that as I was going through the kink_wiki yesterday, exploring my options, the questions I was coming up with were things like "Would a story about someone whose erogenous zones are primarily tactile negotiating a scene with someone whose erogenous zones are primarily aural (involving sonics that person A can't produce) work for the 'silence' square?" and "does crossdressing have to involve gender, or can it involve someone whose species doesn't wear clothing dressing up as a human?" and "is 'accidental soulbond with a mechanical life-form due to shoddy safety measures during repair work' suitable for the 'electricity' square?" and "Can I do 'wrist/ankle restraints' on somebody whose limbs don't exactly fit those categories?"

... which just goes to show what pairings I have been getting bunnies for lately. Actually, having gone down the entire kink list, there are only four kinks which require somebody to have a humanoid or vaguely humanoid body (five, if you count 'shaving', which requires a mammalian one at least) and I got three of them...

I also went out to work last night without actually remembering what was on my card, and I ended up plotting out in my head an amazing story - for a kink that's not on my card. But now I really, really want to write "How Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex Invented Strip Personality Chess, And What Happened Afterward." (Does kink_bingo give out prizes for "most stories written for the wrong card"?)

...I may at least have to write a Bran/Tru 'ship manifesto, since Mymy/Vyssu/Mav has been such a hit. :D ...and I'm so tempted to try for a bingo with all non-human or cross-species pairings.


Anyway I was going to try to make this short, but this *is* me, and it's an excuse to talk about kink and about ideas for stories I'll probably never write, so here's ( some brainstorming for every square )

The reason I haven't posted on DW for awhile is that I, basically, only have the time, energy and emotional stamina to make one substantial post/comment a day, so when I'm doing a lot of posting elsewhere, my personal journal tends to go quiet.

And for the past two weeks, instead of larking around DW talking meta and coming up with creative excuses for why meta is all I do, I've actually been *writing* and *posting* fic on a fairly steady basis with reasonable output - I've written and posted something like 12,000 words, which is more than I usually manage in a year, and I'm so astonished at this fact that I've just kind of been stepping back and trying not to do anything to jinx it.

...unfortunately it's all for the British Politics RPS kink meme, and it's all anon, so you lot don't get any benefit out of it. (Unless you're also on that meme, in which case, secret handshake!)

I'm staying anon about which of those are mine not because I'm unwilling to admit to writing politics RPS - first of all, this isn't my first go-round, and second of all, I had a birthday party right at the height of the coalition negotiations, so pretty much all my RL friends have probably figure it out anyway. But I really do think anon memes work better when most of the people on them stay anon, so, anon I am staying. (I will note that a disproportionate number of the unclaimed fills with SamCam in them are my fault, but you probably could have guessed that.)

So. British Politics RPF. What the heck, self? And as a consequence, while there are as usual wonderful and insightful meta discussions going on around here, all I really want to say is "In this RPS fandom they really do send secret messages through color-coded accessories!" and "even Michael-Freaking-Feldman ships it!while being even more couple-y than usual with Jim Packard" and "I like the Speaker!" (Warning:streaming rm audio at the second link, youtube video at the third. )

The problem with this fandom is that reality keeps outdoing the fic. I mean, the fill I was hoping to finish tonight had a line in it that I was debating taking out, because I kept thinking "The Prime Minister would never actually say anything *that slashy* on television", and then -- he did. Which is the nice sort of being outdone by canon. But the reason I'm writing a journal post instead of that fic is that we've had the bad sort of canon, too. This story centers around a character publically coming out, and tonight, one of the more likable people we're writing about just got forcibly outed in a fairly awful way. :/

And it's one thing to glee over a hypocritical homophobe being forced out, it's another thing entirely when it's someone who's repeatedly turned down opportunities for real power in order to stay true to pro-glbt principles.

(And can I just pause the rambling about RPF here to say: I am completely incapable of taking the MPs' expenses scandal seriously. Do you know how much I wish my politicians were just spending public money to split the mortgage with their boyfriend or get the moat cleaned, instead of, oh, accepting free housing at a Dominionist Christian brainwashing center that requires them to go to "counseling" sessions in which they're taught that everything they do is moral because they've been chosen by God for power? SO MUCH I WISH.)
( More thoughts on RPS. )

So. Anyway. That is why I am writing meta tonight instead of fic. Perhaps tomorrow I will spend my post-writing energy actually writing one of the other DW posts I am backlogged on doing! Or put in some real work on prepping the con-txt panels I'm modding! Or go take refuge on that other anon kink meme I've been haunting and write another Charlie/David kissing on panel shows fill (because there can never be too many of those!)

...or perhaps I will spend the day just obsessively following the David Laws coverage and trying not to cry. Or write fic where he is a tiny cheerful dragon teaching Boris how to fly. :)

(I feel like I should have something to say about this story other than D: and putting it in a fannish context, but my Thoughts on the ethical complications of being in a politics fandom for a country I am not in or from is another post at least as long as this one was.)

It says ... something ... about just what kind of a dork I am that I went to see Iron Man II, and while there were many things about the movie that I liked and would enjoy discussing, the actual squee!OMG! moments?

TESSERACTS!
DOUBLE PENDULUM!!!

...I guess I am still a math geek at heart.

Also, a double pendulum (aka "Chaos Machine") is the best symbol for movie!Tony ever. I could go on and on about the scene with Tony and the double pendulum.

If I was the sort of person who could make things like that, I would figure out how to make a wind-up clock with a double-pendulum tick. I have wanted to for years. Since I can't, I am so tempted to go down to the cave tonight and build me just the pendulum, counterweighted to swing a long time like the one in the movie. With a box of scraps.

(Note: this is not cut because neither the pendulum nor the tesseracts have any actual spoilery significance whatsoever; they were set dressing. Thus my enormous levels of geekery.)

***

Click on this cut if you would like to see ( some racy vintage postcards of silent-movie era Hollywood Bathing Beauties. )

If you are not interested in racy vintage postcards of women wearing bathing costumes I would dearly like to own, then we clearly have very different tastes in postcards. But perhaps you would be more interested in one of these posts I have recently made on dreamwidth communities:

At sca_attire, photographs of me wearing nothing but a period linen shirt! I understand some of you are interested in that sort of thing. Also featuring: discussion of crossdressing while re-enacting, and me whining about how sewing is hard.
At topgearslash (locked) and crossovers (unlocked), Part One of the Top Gear/Dr. Who(/Torchwood/Sarah Jane/Big Finish) crossover of doomy doom! (Featuring: men who love their cars and/or spaceships too much, and also bonus multimedia enrichment downloads.)
At poetry, this week I am posting an elaborate four-part stealth argument-by-example for poetry as fanwork: NASA RPS from 1970, three variations on Dover Beach, and about a Flemish tapestry. And also some very silly things.
And at common_nature, an account of a trip to the beach, in which there are kites, hidden treasures and fossil-hunting.

****

Also, overcome by election coverage (OMG, I have discovered that it is possible to be fannish over election results for countries that *are not mine*! So exciting: all the fun, 75% less stress. Hooray!) I have started writing up a post - probably to be posted to punditfic - entitled "A Guide To British Fake News for Americans". Are there any British persons reading this who would like to look it over before I post it, for blatant errors?

I also now really, really want the alternate future where David Mitchell started the revolution, Charlie Brooker led it, Andy Zaltzman ended up Home Secretary, and mtf!Patchula J. Oliver spent years in prison after Bristol Palin was elected President of the USA. (They write these things *for* us, guys.)

And finally, if you would like to be on my "obsessing over diversity, privilege and appropriation re: my original characters as an excuse to not actually write anything in their universes" filter, first post to go up soon entitled "wow I have a lot of trans* characters", please click here:

This is dancesontrains's fault: she said "crossover", "Charlie Brooker" and "Keith Olbermann" in the same comment.

I am never, ever going to write story that follows, because it is epic in both length and scope and I am not good enough at voice to pull off even half the characters in it, since it has in it pretty much anyone in either Pundit or BBC RPS fandoms. But since I appear to have accidentally written an outline of it anyway, I share! :D

( ...by this point, the ongoing Keith/Charlie transatlantic pigtail-pulling contest had become a running joke... )

..and while I am on the topic of obscure RPS crossovers that maybe two people in existence actually know all the fandoms for, here is the other BBC/America RPS epic crossover that I shall never, never actually write.

( I call it the Top Gear Pledge Week Special. It has Andy Wilman/Doug 'the subway fugitive, not a slave to fashion, 'Bongo Boy'' Berman slash in it. Among other bits of horrifyingness that haunt my dreams. )

...and happy new year! Well, the new year was actually Sunday, but I am not good at updating when I plan to, hah. As has become traditional, Commander Valentine (the woman in my icon) has decided to give up smoking as a New Year's resolution, and thus will be sucking on a candy cane instead until she inevitably backslides in about a month. :P (If there's any place where the Christian liturgical calendar would be the official state calendar, it's Commander Valentine's home planet, Stephen Colbert's Alphalon.)

Anyway. While stellar_dust was in Maryland for the holiday weekend, she gave me a SIGNED PAPERBACK COPY of JOHN HODGMAN'S first BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE, THE AREAS OF MY EXPERTISE. It is inscribed personally to me, and he has drawn the dreaded H in sunrays - the sign for the hoboes to rise up and overthrow the American government - over the "Stephen Colbert Award for the Literary Excellence" badge on the cover.

The paperback edition also has - and I had forgotten, if I ever knew this - the original cover hidden on the inside, the one that contains a DRAGON, a SWORDMAID in a metal bikini, and a flattering portrait of the Author in one of the TRIPLE SUNS. So of course I had to make icons. :D

( 13 shareable Areas of My Expertise icons & descriptions )

ALSO HERE IS MY VERY OWN HOBO SIGN ON the Stephen Colbert Literary Excellence Award medal:

It is not for sharing, it is mine.

(Not that I will be in the least disappointed at anything I get for yuletide, but why did I forget to nominate Hodgmanverse?? --if I get any bookstore gift certificates for holidays I am buying myself "More Information Than You Need" at long last, and then there will probably be quite a few mole-men, furry lobsters, eagles of Hohoq and hoboes appearing in this space.)


PS: John Hodgman is on Quite Interesting this week! I will be posting a link here as soon as it is up on youtube.

I am deeply amused that my last post had some neat music and meta, and a link to a filk project, and a dozen panels of fanart, but 80% of the feedback was about the sketch of AU Rachel in déshabillé.

SO let's talk about AU RPS girlsex, yesno? :D

I have a file that's been sitting on my desktop for about six months, entitled "Thirteen Ways Rachel Maddow (never) Had Lesbian Sex With Keith". I started it way back in February, after the big meta discussion about the ethics of 'shipping a real-life lesbian with a (presumably) straight man - the f_w post that rounded it all up has been deleted, but the start of it (more or less) was my comment here about Rachel/Keith and genderswap in havocthecat's journal. So Rachel, Keith, and genderfuckery, yes.

I have been slowly adding to the file in bits and bobs ever since, but I've come to the conclusion that I'm never going to write these stories (though if I did write one out full-length, it would be either #5 or #13. Or #10 and #11. Or #8 and #9. Or...)

Anyway! Yes, I totally love the story-sketches in that file and wish they existed full length: the reason I will never write them (besides my general inability to finish fic) is that I have come to realize that I still have limits when it comes to RPS. I'll read anything (well, theoretically: large sections of RPS still bore me); I'll draw anything (that I'm willing to draw in any other live-action fandom, anyway, there are limits to where I'll go with real peoples' bodies even if they're playing other people); I'll write genfic and AUs and really mild 'ship stories and crossover AUs set in an entirely different world. But when it comes to writing sex between real live people who have their own lives and know how to use the internet -- even under the safety net of "things that never happened" - I just squick myself when I sit down to write.

SO! Anyway! I am not writing the 13 ways Keith/Rachel lesbian sex stories. But the file as sitting on my desktop is around a thousand words anyway. And it has fanart. And a fanmix. That have also been sitting on the hard drive for months. So I'm just going to post it all. Yay?

( Thirteen Ways Rachel Maddow (never) Had Lesbian Sex With Keith Olbermann )

( here be artings )

( The fanmix: 'I'll Be That Girl: Music To Bend Gender To' )

So! Stuff has happened. The most relevant, however, is that I have fallen in love.

With a radio show!

I was driving home t'other night and stumbled on a re-run of Tapestry of the Times on my very own local public radio station, WYPR, and it's like it was a radio show designed solely for me. ¹

It's a hour of music, history, context and commentary that is entirely from the archives of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the non-profit record label started in the 1960s for the purpose of documenting folk and world music and later taken over by the Smithsonian. I'm sure it has some appropriation issues - rich white people recording other peoples' culture always does - but Folkways has always at least tried to be non-exploitative, and oh my god, if I had all the time and money in the world I would have already bought out the Folkways back catalog. This show did it for me and picks out an hour's worth of good stuff a week, just enough, and omg yay.

They have their entire archives up as mp3/podcast on the website (less than a year's worth, so far), and I am slowly (savoringly) working through it. The last episode I listened to features "blues piano from Memphis Slim, marimba music from Guatemala, labor union songs, World War II anthems, Tuvan throat singing, and classic old-time tunes from Doc Boggs and Roscoe Holcomb." SERIOUSLY, could there possibly be any radio show better made for me?

As a bonus, most of these songs are basically impossible to find as pirate downloads, so I can't go and download another gig of mp3s that I don't need after every episode. :D (so I downloaded the complete Smothers Brothers discography instead, help p.s. does anyone have any peggy seeger tracks i think i have fallen in love with her too.)

¹Mind you, I am the girl who spent her high school years with the radio tuned to the Lyndon B. Johnson presidential tapes instead of rock'n'roll, so my taste may not be yours.


Also, while I am on the topic of hippy music, wintercreek made an mp3 recording of herself singing Enterprise, Starship, the John Denver filk that gets sung on the Enterprise in the novel The Wounded Sky, and posted it to starry_sea. You guys, wintercreek is amazing; she has - no lie - fulfilled a childhood dream of mine. Even if that community never does anything ever again, it was all worth it for that.

Ain't fandom amazing? Ask, and it will be given!

Anyway wintercreek mentioned wanting to get a bunch more voices to add to make it a singalong, so I did: Enterprise, Starship four voices: this is my three best takes (recorded with headphones on, and then layered over the original in Audacity.) Y'all should do it too so nobody has to hear my singing in the final version.

...and, while I'm on Star Trek multimedia anyway I guess, gblvr posted the Star Trek Reboot Art Meme (which originated with annime1231 on dA) like, umm ... over a month ago? But I just finished doing it. So here it is:

( Long fanart is long. And has no text description. Also, warnings for tentacles, hybrid babies, cocktail metaphors, space floozies, old people, Rihannsu, crossdressing, Star Wars quotes, JF injokes, Captain Maddow, Vulcan-touching, anthropomorphization, bad art, and girlsex. )

..enjoy.

For no particular reason:



This is, of course, as closely based on Edward Gorey's "The Trouble With Tribbles" as on anything else.

(It is surprisingly difficult to draw when one is covered in tribbles. And by 'tribbles' I mean cats, and by cats, I mean one cat who is completely incapable of sitting still and has possibly mastered the art of bilocation.)

This exists partly because sarken was having a bad day yesterday, partly because I am insane, and partly because I wanted to practice freehand inking in GIMP. None of those are probably good enough excuses:


Captain Maddow of the United Star Ship Bill of Rights, with her department heads, left to right: Lieut. Commander Olbermann, Chief of Science; Chief of Operations Lieutenant "Andy" ch'Cuper; Lieutenant Stewart, Communications; and CMO Lieut. Commander Dr. Stehpen (DFA Vulcan Science Academy, and *don't* mention the ears.)

( Questions and answers about <i>Bill of Rights</i> )

Also, drawing this has made me realize that part of the reason I love Keith so much is that he exactly matches my mental image of Lieut. Harb Tanzer, Enterprise's chief of Recreation. (Also it makes me want Captain Maddow/Dr. Dehner. Or at least want to draw Ana Marie Cox in Dr. Dehner's uniform.)

The tracks can all be individually downloaded at http://melannen.katycat.net/fanmix/calm/ .

(here you see the difference between "this fanmix is a work of art!" and "I need to do this so I don't go insane. Might as well share!")

...'cause, yeah, you can bet I'll need to have this on repeat *all day* tomorrow.

(How are Jon and Stephen not doing a live webcast?? *weeps*)

I am reading through the free e-book PDF of Writing Boldly, an account of the early days of Star Trek 'zine fandom. Here, have some interesting facts from it!

• Things I thought originated in LJ fandom but actually pre-date ST:
  • The term "fannish", which was used in the first ST 'zine so must have dated back to SF fandom.
  • Tickyboxes. I quote:
    A tradition that Spockanalia carried over from sf fanzines, and which carried over to subsequent Star Trek fanzines, was the check-off list on the last page. The list's introduction stated, "You are receiving Spockanalia because...." A number of possibilities followed. On my issue, the editor checked: "You are in Spock Shock," "We admire you," and "You are totally illogical."
  • Actor RPF. Okay, I knew this had been around from early days, because "Visit to a Weird Planet Revisted" was in one of the New Voyages anthologies, but I didn't realize that "Visit to a Weird Planet" was actually in the first ST 'zine ever (Spockanalia issue 3, while the show was still on the air. Lois McMaster's first published fic was also in that 'zine, btw.)
  • Stupid summary/author's notes from Mary Sue writers aren't an ff.net phenomenon; they actually *predate* the term "Mary Sue": from NCC-1701, 1973:"When I began writing my Star Trek series, I added a character to the crew of the Enterprise. This character is Janine Daniels, an eighteen-year-old with long brown hair—and green eyes. This is how she comes to the Enterprise." (Writing Boldly also contains the full text of the story that originated the term Mary-Sue, from Dec. '73)
• Ni Var was a Vulcan poetic form that showed up in the first Spockanalia issue, and was apparently used frequently in early Trek fandom, in which one is of two minds about something. The first Ni Var poem is reprinted, and man, it's excellent, as fanpoetry goes, and as poetic forms go, perfect for writing fanpoetry. Given I'm a sucker for Vulcan poetry anyway (ask me about Surak's Last Stave sometime) I wanna write me some Ni Var.
• Grup 1, the first all-adult ST 'zine, had a naked Spock centerfold.
• "Pon Farr means never having to say you're sorry", the subtitle of one of the earliest fanfic meta essays (summary: Why We Write Spock Sex) needs to become a fannish catchphrase again. /me is totally still working on a Ponn Farr story.
• The name Michelle Malkin makes me feel icky even when I'm 99% sure the early 'zine editor was not *that* Michelle Malkin. (Although it would be awesome if it was.)
• Why don't we have SMOFs anymore?
• Jacqueline Lichtenberg's Kraith AU, based around the concept that Kirk and Spock are soulbonded but not having sex, started around 1970, has had several hundred people write in it, and is still being written in, which means that it's been ongoing for almost 40 years. Eat that, M7 fans!
• Damn, I had no idea how many current big-name pros got their starts in Trek 'zines.

...and I'm up to 1975, "A Fragment Out of Time", and slash, and I promised myself when I got to slash I'd stop reading and go do something useful. :P Like OTW work. But man, I'm regretting that I didn't pick up that free copy of Bjo Trimble's memoir at BookThing when I had a chance. I wonder if it's still there...

(Mind you, my reason for not picking it up is that I still haven't even read my copy of "Star Trek Lives", which I should do, only that'd mean digging into the ST book boxes, and that'd mean nothing else getting done for a week, minimum, while I re-read all my old favorites with modern-fandom context.)

ETA: Crossover fanfic in which Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, astrophysicist, comes to Atlantis and then sets up Dr. McKay with his BFF Jon Stewart: y/y/mfy?

I present to you: the WIPs I currently have in my check-every-day bookmark folder!

State of Grace by Sailor_Ptah (Fake News Fic, character!Stephen/Charlene/Tracey/Jon.) The long-awaited companion story to Expecting, which is of course Daily Show fandom's one and only completely canon-compliant Jon/Stephen mpreg fic. :D Although State of Grace is expected to be somewhat angstier, as it brings in Stephen's (completely canon!) past as a rentboy. :D!!

This is actually basically the least crack-like story on the list, btw, since it's meticulously canonical. Watch the trailers if you don't believe me. And just *try* to not squee while you're doing it. (My glee, it goes on and on. PS: Does anyone have the Billy Joel song State of Grace? I can't find it and it gets stuck in my head every time.)

The Luck of Dennis St. Michel, Vicount Stokington by Captain Thunder, a denizen of Comics Curmudgeon (Newspaper comics, Dennis/Margaret, Dennis/Joey; AU): The sordid tale of the Viscount's return to Menacing Hall upon his expulsion from Oxford; and his discovery that Lady Margaret, still unwed and shrewish at 22, has come into a duchy and fifty thousand pounds a year. :D (There will be many :D faces before I am done with this, I'm sure. And possibly some \o/ . It takes a special brand of joy to keep something in my wips folder. Like, say, Dennis the Menace Regency Romance AUs.)

Readjustment by Seanchai and Elspethdixon (Marvel comics, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark): the sequel to their Reconstruction, Resurrection, and Redemption, the post-Civil War fixit AU in which Captain America comes back from the dead, he and Iron Man realize it was all a misunderstanding, they're in love with each other, and all is right with the world. Well, mostly: the rest of it they're fixing in this sequel. :D And, as a bonus, there's superhero fights and the aftermath of Civil War is actually being *dealt with*. Elspethdixon was the first fic author I really fangirled over back in my Remus/Sirius days, and, well, she still writes the manly angst better than anyone else. She the only person I'll read specifically for the H/C instead of despite it, because it's *just right* and totally true to the characters. And Tony just does manpain so well. Possibly even better than Sirius and Remus. (PS: Her Avengers fic also features background Danny/Luke/Jessica and Jarvis/Aunt May \o/ )

Burntcopper's NaNo project (Jack Harkness/Indiana Jones/(Methos)): She posted about this in little_details, and mentioned that it involved Jack Harkness, Indiana Jones, and Methos teaming up during WWII--

Oh, there are still people reading this review and not over there reading the story already? Why?

Actually, being a NaNo project, it's pretty rough and starts slow, although there's lots of WWII British spying in the beginning, so still worth reading. Indy shows up halfway through and almost immediately finds himself in bed with Captain Jack, though, so that's all right. Methos hasn't appeared yet, but he'd better before November ends. Oh, and there's a really cool plot with a nifty mcguffin. Did I mention the plot? No? Well, how about the Indiana/Captain Jack? ETA: AND NOW THERE IS JENNY!!!

Out Of Bounds, by icarusancalion (SGA, John/Rodney, AU): Okay, this one is basically figure skating porn with John and Rodney in it. I mean, it's excellent, the character work is great, but I have a feeling that the only people who'll get into it are the people who fall in love with men's figure skating at least every few years. (Note to self: must find my ice-skating lessons gift certificate before January.) It kept showing up on my fflist and I kept reading it, so I finally gave in. Mind you, it's long and lush and rich and porny and full of atmosphere and detail like everything Icarus writes; it's also a figure skating AU SGA slash WIP.

PS: Read everything else these authors have written. You don't get on my wips list unless I've loved a bunch of your long-form stories. Or I've never heard of you before and you're gloriously insane. one or the other.