So one of the things on my sister's Christmas list was "good longfic recs, I don't care about the fandom" (although I'm not sure where she'll have the time, since she's supposed to be WRITING A THESIS. About VIKINGS.)

But anyway. Like a berk I am only writing it now. But here it is! If you want me to make a .zip I suppose I can, but most of these are already available as e-book downloads.

(Note that these are all well-known, mostly oldish stories, so if you are in the fandoms you probably know them already? But this is for people who just want longfic regardless of fandom.)

WARNING: IF YOU HAVE A KNOWN WEAKNESS FOR LONGFIC, AND YOU NEED TO DO SOMETHING OTHER THAN READ FIC SOMETIME IN THE NEXT WEEK, DO NOT CLICK THE CUTS.

( Vorkosigan Saga )


( Next, BBC Merlin AUs )

Okay. There's the entire Vorkosigan series + 25 more long fics/series. When you have finished those? Go read all the fic in the Sherlock Holmes recs post I will be writing for lindentreeisle as soon as this one goes up. Then, go read everything Astolat has ever written. When you've done that, get back to me, and I'll do two more fandoms for you. ^_^

I have finally posted more of How the Master Stole Christmas! The next two pages (both double-page spreads) are up at doctor_and_master: How the Master Stole Christmas Episode 2. It's also up at my dA account, in the SeussWho gallery, if you'd rather read there, though without the extra text-only pages.

But I am reposting the latest page on this journal anyway, because I am proud of myself and want to look at it some more :P
( Why for nine hundred years I've put up with it now! )

...I finally finished that update because I told myself I wasn't allowed to draw any lolitics girlband!AU fanart until I finished the Who-Christmas-Sing. I know, I know, normal people are motivating themselves around their yuletide at this point, but whatever, I have my plot, I have a very clever way to cheat and quadruple my wordcount, and I know I can churn out a few thousand words as soon as I make myself sit down and concentrate.

And in the meantime there is girlband!AU. :D This is the latest shared-world AU of awesome to take over the lolitics meme. I don't know - do other anon fic memes do these amazing shared AUs? The other ones I've followed haven't but then I haven't followed them as immersively. Anyway, girlband!AU involves taking the democratic leaders, past and present, of Great Britain (and occasionally other countries) and re-casting them as members of Spice-girls-esque girlpop bands. And they make so much more sense that way, OMG, just.

Plus it is helping with my ongoing feelings of guilt about being all into British politics and ignoring the US! By turning them into genderswapped shallow pop-culture celebs with zero actual relevance, instead of people who are supposed to be FIXING THE WORLD DAMMIT, I can finally get detached from policy enough to think about US politicians without wanting to stab myself in the gullet! \o/

(Yes, I know, sarken did it first with Disney Band PRT. But still I am in love! And also I have discovered Sleevage, the blog for people who are more interest in the art of album cover design than in the actual music. I just wish its search engine worked better. ... I really need to attempt to organize my blogroll again.)

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?

So I should probably mention here that I'm going to Pennsic War again this year, which means two weeks completely offline starting this upcoming weekend.

....not that you guys will notice, given how little I've been updating lately, but the people waiting for WIP updates on my anon meme fics will.

(If you don't know about Pennsic War, it's the largest SCA meet in the world: 10,000 medieval re-enactors and assorted other history geeks camping together in a field in Pennsylvania for two weeks. It's kind of like an east-coast Burning Man for people who are too fundamentally uncool to go to Burning Man. I figure as long as I'm unemployed, I might as well take advantage of all the free time.)

Anyway, while I've been busy anon-writing what some people have started to poetically call "HMG RPF", fandom seems to have finally decided to spend the summer recess on Inception and the new modern-day Sherlock Holmes miniseries. I have no particular interest in Inception, and no real anticipation of seeing the movie any time soon. I haven't seen the new BBC Holmes yet either, but I do plan to, and I've been following the discussions on my circle about it, and modern-day Holmes AUs in general, with avidity. (Particular mention goes to naraht's post Modernizing Holmes.)

So instead of doing pre-trip stuff or finishing anon fills, have 1500 words of my take on pop-culture-savvy modern-day AU Holmes, while I'm still uncontaminated by the filmed version. (If there's one thing anon meme is good for, it's gotten me much more used to dashing off mini-fic on short notice without obsessing about it.)

( 'I feel like at this point I need to point out that I am not the sort of person who catches references to minor characters from 19th century detective novels and discusses fuermosi over drinks.' )

I've reached that point in my annual NaNo odyssey where I'm so far behind that I grin, throw my hands in the air, and write random crackfic instead. (I am still working on it, mind you, which is an improvement over this time previous years, it's just going very slowly and all I seem to manage are 500-word cookies that wouldn't make any sense to anyone but me. Also I'm still sick - does that count as an excuse?)

Anyway, this particular crackfic has been brewing ... well, possibly since the first time I ever heard "Snoopy's Christmas Carol" and fell in love with those (doomed)daring young men in their flying machines, but what what brought it on particularly was a combination of my amazement that nobody else appeared to have done this yet, and siegeofangels posting her giant and marvelous SGA songrecficsetthing on Armistice Day of all days, so she can take credit if she wants.

All historical and otherwise inaccuracy is to be officially blamed on the documented unreliability of Canadian aces' reports. :P (Also, this is not really so much historical-fic as it is Aerial Combat Adventure Stories for Boys fic.)

Fandom: SGA
Title: The Game of Naughts and Crosses
Gen, AU, violence, McKay&Sheppard, ~1500 words
Summary Major Meredith McKay (VC), the famous WWI flying ace, writes a letter home to his sister, on the occasion of having their first American pilot attached to the squadron. (He's an idiot.)

( September 1917, somewhere in France )