But It's Such a *Shiny* Bandwagon
Fandom Appreciation Challenge 2010
Today's challenge: DAY 1: "Rec 3 challenge stories or fanworks in your journal." Okay, so I totally did five. But! Two of the first three to spring to mind have been recced absolutely everywhere, so I added two more obscure ones.
i'm actual (gen) [iCarly] - Written for 5_4_3_2's Hidden Things Challenge. FYI, I now want "hidden things" to ALWAYS mean "ladies' underwear". Amazing character voices and really, this may now be my personal canon.
Just because he's a guy doesn't mean he's not allowed to like pretty things. All of that's just society trying to keep him down. He's really just making a statement, sticking up for the rights of his fellow man.
Really, it's like a protest. In his pants.
Waking Sleeping Giants (Sookie/Eric) [True Blood] - Written for the Eric and Sookie Summer of '69 challenge on ff.net. TOTALLY my favorite from that challenge, because the idea is fascinating.
Shifters, weather-witches, psychics and sooth-sayers, we were pulled from kitchens and classrooms, backyards and bayous, wall street offices and insane asylum cells. The vampires had stepped out of their hiding places in history, we'd been shaken out, a last mad proof that the human race wasn't irrelevant.
Unlike the bloodsuckers, we don't have a common denominator. We have no historically recognized name like 'vampire.' Perhaps that's why we get left out of protests and motions of congress. It's tough to speak about us. Conservatives find our insistence on being regarded as human vexing. They whisper 'Deviant' behind their clenched fingers. Liberal student movements love the term, they put it on their signs and flags, they sew it in ink to their skins, forgetting that it was meant for those of us who will never blend seamlessly into psychedelic rave-riots for world peace. It was meant for those who wouldn't be drafted by lottery (a spell-binder there, a soul-walker here) but gleaned en masse, sorted through McCarthy's information gin, to be turned out on the front lines.
It was meant for here and now. Vietnam, in the summer of 1969. It was meant for us. 143-D of Corps 1, under the command of Captain Andre Boulain. It was meant for her, Sookie Stackhouse, pretty, blond, telepathic.
Better Hemispheres (Rathe/Eslingen) [Points Novels] - Written for Yuletide 2008. Philip and Nico in a quiet moment.
The thing about Astreianters is that they believe Astreiant's the center of the world. Philip has heard this many times, and said it too, but it's only now he lives here that he's realized it's literally true. There's a world map frescoed on the south wall of the temple of Bonfortune, and bang in the middle, big out of all proportion, is the city. Major Astreiant landmarks, like the Queen's palace and the Bonfortune temple itself, are marked with colored dots. The dots are as big as the one for the city of Esling.
It's a merchant-venturer's way of thinking. Travel and trade, yes, but always coming home in the end. Travelling in order to come home, in order to lighten your profit-heavy pockets building yourself a grand house. Everything's measured by its distance from your marble-inlaid front door.
Soldiers' maps are different. No soldier needs a world map in any case; it's the next hill that matters, the next river, the woods that might conceal an ambush, the ridge that can be held forever with two good cannons. A soldier makes tactical maps, impermanent, useless after the next day's march. Drawn on old paper scraps, or even on sand; nobody would ever paint one on a wall. There's no center to such maps, bar the place you happen to be at that moment.
Bonus recs:
Graduate Vulcan for Fun and Profit (gen) [Star Trek: Reboot] - Written for the Star Trek Big Bang. I totally want this to be canon! It has so many things I enjoy seeing in my reboot!Kirk - Tarsus IV aftermath, secret academic skillz - meshed perfectly with things I never knew I always wanted, like the crew of the Kelvin as Kirk's honorary aunts/uncles/well-meaning busybodies.
The next day in class Sakel says, "The information in your PADDs requires updating. Please ready for data transfer." He repeats himself in Vulcan.
Jim watches in numb horror as the menu of his PADD suddenly sprouts a second syllabus in Vulcan, and, at guess, thirty texts named things like ORIGINAL SOURCES OF VULCAN CULTURE and THE INTERPLANETARY SOCIETY OF LITERATURE: THE YEAR IN REVIEW and PATHS OF KNOWLEDGE: TERRAN AND VULCAN LOGIC and, naturally, THE DIALECTS OF SURAK, IN THE ORIGINAL FORM. There's also a note, verging on smug, from Sakel, saying that if he's lost any of the material that he's sent him over the years, Sakel can resend to Jim's data account.
He taps open both syllabi and discovers that he is supposed to write "My name is __________. My hobbies are ________, _______, and ________. I joined Starfleet because ___________.When I graduate I hope to be posted at _______________. (EXTRA) My reason for learning Vulcan is _____________." in Simplified Vulcan, and (from the other syllabus) ten pages about the difference between Simplified and Standard Vulcan, and what it means in terms of Vulcan culture, interplanetary politics and relations, and why (Jim mentally translates) Simplified Vulcan is a bunch of horse shit that most Communications people desperately want to light on fire and dance widdershins around, not that Jim blames them. In formal, academic Vulcan.
"He's really dumping it on us," says a tiny girl with antenna next to him. Her voice is slightly hysterical, like she's just jumped in the water and it was about fifty feet deeper than she expected. "The textbook doesn't even start Vulcan letters until three chapters in!"
"Standard transliteration is acceptable," says Sakel, looming up behind them. "If you are unsure of your ability to write in Vulcan characters." A meaningful pause. "For this assignment."
Jim wonders if it's possible to kill a Vulcan with the sheer power of hate in your heart.
Future Legend (Kris Allen/Adam Lambert) [RPF] - Written for queenbitchfest. POST-APOCALYPTIC DYSTOPIAS, THEY ARE MY FAVORITE. Perhaps because they are so perfectly suited to fulfilling my fic kinks for h/c and for logistics. And this one is especially amazing, with the slow reveal of circumstances (which is why you're not getting a quote).
Today's challenge: DAY 1: "Rec 3 challenge stories or fanworks in your journal." Okay, so I totally did five. But! Two of the first three to spring to mind have been recced absolutely everywhere, so I added two more obscure ones.
i'm actual (gen) [iCarly] - Written for 5_4_3_2's Hidden Things Challenge. FYI, I now want "hidden things" to ALWAYS mean "ladies' underwear". Amazing character voices and really, this may now be my personal canon.
Just because he's a guy doesn't mean he's not allowed to like pretty things. All of that's just society trying to keep him down. He's really just making a statement, sticking up for the rights of his fellow man.
Really, it's like a protest. In his pants.
Waking Sleeping Giants (Sookie/Eric) [True Blood] - Written for the Eric and Sookie Summer of '69 challenge on ff.net. TOTALLY my favorite from that challenge, because the idea is fascinating.
Shifters, weather-witches, psychics and sooth-sayers, we were pulled from kitchens and classrooms, backyards and bayous, wall street offices and insane asylum cells. The vampires had stepped out of their hiding places in history, we'd been shaken out, a last mad proof that the human race wasn't irrelevant.
Unlike the bloodsuckers, we don't have a common denominator. We have no historically recognized name like 'vampire.' Perhaps that's why we get left out of protests and motions of congress. It's tough to speak about us. Conservatives find our insistence on being regarded as human vexing. They whisper 'Deviant' behind their clenched fingers. Liberal student movements love the term, they put it on their signs and flags, they sew it in ink to their skins, forgetting that it was meant for those of us who will never blend seamlessly into psychedelic rave-riots for world peace. It was meant for those who wouldn't be drafted by lottery (a spell-binder there, a soul-walker here) but gleaned en masse, sorted through McCarthy's information gin, to be turned out on the front lines.
It was meant for here and now. Vietnam, in the summer of 1969. It was meant for us. 143-D of Corps 1, under the command of Captain Andre Boulain. It was meant for her, Sookie Stackhouse, pretty, blond, telepathic.
Better Hemispheres (Rathe/Eslingen) [Points Novels] - Written for Yuletide 2008. Philip and Nico in a quiet moment.
The thing about Astreianters is that they believe Astreiant's the center of the world. Philip has heard this many times, and said it too, but it's only now he lives here that he's realized it's literally true. There's a world map frescoed on the south wall of the temple of Bonfortune, and bang in the middle, big out of all proportion, is the city. Major Astreiant landmarks, like the Queen's palace and the Bonfortune temple itself, are marked with colored dots. The dots are as big as the one for the city of Esling.
It's a merchant-venturer's way of thinking. Travel and trade, yes, but always coming home in the end. Travelling in order to come home, in order to lighten your profit-heavy pockets building yourself a grand house. Everything's measured by its distance from your marble-inlaid front door.
Soldiers' maps are different. No soldier needs a world map in any case; it's the next hill that matters, the next river, the woods that might conceal an ambush, the ridge that can be held forever with two good cannons. A soldier makes tactical maps, impermanent, useless after the next day's march. Drawn on old paper scraps, or even on sand; nobody would ever paint one on a wall. There's no center to such maps, bar the place you happen to be at that moment.
Bonus recs:
Graduate Vulcan for Fun and Profit (gen) [Star Trek: Reboot] - Written for the Star Trek Big Bang. I totally want this to be canon! It has so many things I enjoy seeing in my reboot!Kirk - Tarsus IV aftermath, secret academic skillz - meshed perfectly with things I never knew I always wanted, like the crew of the Kelvin as Kirk's honorary aunts/uncles/well-meaning busybodies.
The next day in class Sakel says, "The information in your PADDs requires updating. Please ready for data transfer." He repeats himself in Vulcan.
Jim watches in numb horror as the menu of his PADD suddenly sprouts a second syllabus in Vulcan, and, at guess, thirty texts named things like ORIGINAL SOURCES OF VULCAN CULTURE and THE INTERPLANETARY SOCIETY OF LITERATURE: THE YEAR IN REVIEW and PATHS OF KNOWLEDGE: TERRAN AND VULCAN LOGIC and, naturally, THE DIALECTS OF SURAK, IN THE ORIGINAL FORM. There's also a note, verging on smug, from Sakel, saying that if he's lost any of the material that he's sent him over the years, Sakel can resend to Jim's data account.
He taps open both syllabi and discovers that he is supposed to write "My name is __________. My hobbies are ________, _______, and ________. I joined Starfleet because ___________.When I graduate I hope to be posted at _______________. (EXTRA) My reason for learning Vulcan is _____________." in Simplified Vulcan, and (from the other syllabus) ten pages about the difference between Simplified and Standard Vulcan, and what it means in terms of Vulcan culture, interplanetary politics and relations, and why (Jim mentally translates) Simplified Vulcan is a bunch of horse shit that most Communications people desperately want to light on fire and dance widdershins around, not that Jim blames them. In formal, academic Vulcan.
"He's really dumping it on us," says a tiny girl with antenna next to him. Her voice is slightly hysterical, like she's just jumped in the water and it was about fifty feet deeper than she expected. "The textbook doesn't even start Vulcan letters until three chapters in!"
"Standard transliteration is acceptable," says Sakel, looming up behind them. "If you are unsure of your ability to write in Vulcan characters." A meaningful pause. "For this assignment."
Jim wonders if it's possible to kill a Vulcan with the sheer power of hate in your heart.
Future Legend (Kris Allen/Adam Lambert) [RPF] - Written for queenbitchfest. POST-APOCALYPTIC DYSTOPIAS, THEY ARE MY FAVORITE. Perhaps because they are so perfectly suited to fulfilling my fic kinks for h/c and for logistics. And this one is especially amazing, with the slow reveal of circumstances (which is why you're not getting a quote).