Fic/Vid Masterlist

Hello! Look, there is a journal here. It contains much random blather, most of which is not friendslocked. I have no particular friending policy. Lurk, comment, whatever. It's all good. :D

It's possible you're just stopping by for the fanfic and vids. In which case, might I direct you to a masterlist? ( what you see is what you get )

( X-Men Movieverse )

( Doctor Who/Torchwood )

( Multifandom )

( Avatar: the Last Airbender )

( History Boys )

( Inception )

( Merlin )

( Band of Brothers )

( Harry Potter )

( House )

( West Wing )

( Miscellaneous )

So basically everyone else can go home, I totally won Festivids this year, OH MY GOSH. I received the two most gorgeous and perfect vids ever, and I do not say these things unless I mean them.

First, continuing the Sports Night theme of my holiday exchanges (seriously, I'm kind of baffled myself, I requested tons of other things too), this lovely ensemble vid, To Make You Feel My Love. THEY ALL JUST LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH OKAY. I'm really impressed by how the vidder made such a slow-paced song work with a TV show that's so quick and talky, but it really, really does. And while obviously the lead characters get the most screentime, all the other characters get their moments, too, and I LOVE THEM ALL.

Then, this weird and gorgeous Donnie Darko vid, I'm Not Done, which captures the essence of the movie and Donnie's unbalanced mental state absolutely perfectly. It's eerie and unsettling and very, very beautiful.

SO MUCH AWESOME. Now to dive in and check out the rest!

(If anyone guesses mine, I'll...write you a thing? IDK. There are a lot of vids. Mine is...obviously mine if you know what you're looking for, but I don't think I've ever really discussed the fandom on this journal before. It's not anything I've ever vidded or written for.)

Roommate moving out tonight. Like, she started packing her stuff up with a couple of friends at 9:15pm. On a weeknight. And since I have to collect her keys from her when she's out, I have to wait up until she's done. Of the long list of petty inconveniences she's caused me over the past couple of weeks, this isn't really a big deal, but damn it, I'm tired and I've got to be up at 6:30am for work as usual and I just want to go to sleep. Aaand she just left on her first run, and will be back for the remainder in another 40 mins or so. DAMNIT.

At least this should be the end of THIS roommate drama. Which, really, you don't want to know and I don't want to type it all up.

New roommate moving in probably Friday morning. I like her a lot, all of the twice I've met her. But good personality & responsibility vibes, strong enough that as soon as she left after I'd shown her the place I already knew I wanted her. (And unlike leaving!roommate, who was very nice but I didn't feel entirely comfortable with, and felt rushed/pressured to choose her because I was running out of time.) So here's hoping.

And I had a long phone interview this evening for a potential 5-month summer theater job. It went pretty well, though of course I don't know how many other people are being interviewed or how well any of THEM did. Fingers crossed, anyway. (And a local theater I've never worked with just e-mailed me offering me a gig in May. Which I turned down, because I've heard mixed things about working with them and, well, because I'm hoping for one of the summer theaters to come, but still. It's always a good ego boost to know someone out there recommended me highly enough that a theater would be willing to hire me sight unseen.)

Life. It happens.

I'm about 2/3 through the last Sherlock, and I just had to pause to say -- ( spoiler spoiler spoiler )

Speaking of moving...new!roomie is moving out. Family emergency-type reasons, totally understandable, I don't blame her for this at all. But now I have to go through the whole damn roommate search process AGAIN. When I don't even intend to live here for more than another four or five months. Seriously, universe? Seriously?

After spending an hour and a half futzing around, I have come to the conclusion that I am completely stupid when it comes to Tumblr. Everything about what that site is and how it functions is completely counterintuitive to the way my brain processes information. UGH. I like the pretty pictures! I just can't figure out how to do anything with the site except follow people. Which is cool. I've had an empty tumblr for months now for the sole purpose of following other people. And I honestly have no idea what I would post there myself, but I feel like I'm missing some crucial element of fandom interaction, and it saddens me. Anyway, I'm kaydeefalls on tumblr. There is nothing there. Possibly I will start clicking the reblog button when I see pretty pictures I particularly like, and pretend I'm somehow contributing to fandom. :/ (I can't even make my own pretty pictures anymore. My father insisted I install Lion on my laptop, which then rendered invalid my entire Adobe Creative Suite, and I can't afford to drop $700 on Photoshop right now. I am SO ANGRY about this, guys, you don't even know. I used Photoshop way more than I give even the smallest shit about any of the features in the OS upgrade.)

I'm also just deeply frustrated with life in general right now, so this may just be an offshoot of that. And it's been one of those mornings where the phone is ringing off the hook and people keep trying to make awkward small talk with me and I just want to be left alone for five fucking minutes. Um. Sorry about that.

ANYWAY. 2011 Year in Review Meme! Which I typed up like two weeks ago and then never posted. Whatever, I'm slow with these things. And mainly I had to wait for the secret_mutant reveals, because those totally add to my 2011 word count total.

( 2011 by the numbers )

( fanworks )

( year in review meme )

( WIP snippets for 2012 )

secret_mutant authors have been revealed! Oh, man. A couple of those I totally guessed; others, I'm kind of smacking myself in the forehead for not figuring out immediately. And then, y'know, a bunch of authors I wasn't familiar with before, who now I obviously need to check out. If you like Charles/Erik and you haven't taken a look at this exchange yet, you really should. Ninety-five new fics, many excellent. Huge kudos to pocky_slash for organizing and running the damn thing.

And now I can properly thank argyleheir for her excellent gift, Practical Applications of Radioactive Material. READ IT! Erik and Charles keep running into other superheroes on their recruitment trip; I particularly adore Sue Storm in this one, but really, it's all just great fun and awesomeness. ♥

Also, I wrote some stuff?

Celestial Navigation (9470 words) by kaydeefalls - or on LJ
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, N'Dare Munroe, Ororo Munroe
Summary: Not everything has to be life or death. Sometimes it snows in September, just because a little girl wills it so.

From the sign-ups, it was pretty clear that ginbitch and I have pretty damn similar tastes in terms of canon fics set in the 1960s; I definitely got my period research kink on writing it. The prompt was for snow, which to me, obviously meant bb!Ororo had to be in there somewhere, which wound up mostly involving her mother, N'Dare Munroe. I kept their family backstory as close to comics!canon as possible -- N'Dare was Kenyan, one of long line of priestess-sorceresses; she married an American photojournalist, and Ororo was born in Harlem. They move to Egypt when Ororo is very young. I couldn't find anything suggesting N'Dare was herself a mutant, so that bit's all mine. Also, it's kind of a love letter to New York City (my hometown), and it let me get inside Charles's enormous head way more than I've ever really thought about before. Telepathy is weird, guys. So that's that one.

&

I Ain't Scared of Lightning (13107 words) by kaydeefalls - or on LJ
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Characters: Erik Lehnsherr, Charles Xavier, Alex Summers, Moira MacTaggert, Armando Muñoz, Angel Salvadore, Hank McCoy, Raven Darkholme
Summary: Canon!AU. "Shaw has someone very dear to me," Charles said in a low tone. "You're not the only one playing for keeps, Erik."

Pinch hit of doom! I have no fucking clue where this came from, except that I had this image in my head of Charles on the Coast Guard ship flanked by Darwin and Angel, and Erik being like, daaaaamn. But it was kind of an intense ride for me -- most of it was written frantically over the course of last weekend, as, um, you might have noticed. I'd originally intended to include flashbacks of Charles & Raven's altered backstory, but when I realized how massive the main plotline was becoming, I cut them all out. Possibly there's another fic in there; possibly there's also another fic continuing the AU version of events through the end of the movie. Possibly I should just leave it be. My main regret with this is that I didn't have the time to fully explore the changes in Charles's outlook on the world due to losing Raven so early on -- I think he'd be much more pragmatic and less optimistic about the Shaw situation, and far less scrupulous about his own use of his powers to achieve his goals. And, on the flip side, he would actually be able to understand Erik's point of view much better -- there wouldn't be such a wide chasm of miscommunication between them, which would serve both them and the team much better in the long run. I'm not sure how well any of that came across. But it was interesting to explore. (Original prompts from confusedkayt: badassery leading to kissing, holding one another, Erik connecting with Alex. I did manage to incorporate all three!)

So...yeah. That happened. :)

Meme, gacked from several people:

1) Discover the #1 single in your country of origin in the week you were born.
2) Find it on YouTube.
3) Post it on your LJ/DW page without shame. Or for some of you, with shame.

Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World

SNERK. Of all the 80s musical artists -- I hate most pop music post, like, 1969 -- I'm kind of impressed it's a group I actually have on my iPod (thank you, Donnie Darko soundtrack), though I've never heard the song. OH GOD THE MUSIC VIDEO, WHAT IS THE HAIR, WHY THE RANDOM STOCK FOOTAGE OF A PLANE LANDING.

Heeeey, Yuletide! My fic will surprise absolutely no one who knows me.

The World's Fastest Snowball (4010 words) by kaydeefalls
Fandom: Sports Night
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Dan Rydell, Casey McCall, Dana Whitaker, Natalie Hurley, Jeremy Goodwin, Kim (Sports Night), Elliot (Sports Night), Isaac Jaffe, Chris (Sports Night), Dave (Sports Night), Will (Sports Night)
Summary:

In which a network plot may or may not be afoot, interns are procuring desks for unwilling sportscasters, and inclement weather threatens the course of baseball history. So business as usual, pretty much.

I'm kind of amused that of all the fandoms I offered and requested, I managed to both write and receive the same fandom. BUT THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH SPORTS NIGHT FIC OKAY. This was fun to write, although it took me a very long time to get it started because I really, really don't know much about actual sports. The only sport I both understand and enjoy watching is baseball, hence this fic, but even so, I have never done so much research for such a relatively short fic. (The MLS trivia alone, dear god.) Anyway. It's nothing special, but I made myself giggle an awful lot while writing it and my recipient enjoyed it, so that's all that matters. :D


You know what else matters? NEW SHERLOCK TONIGHT OMG. Can. Not. Wait. And I wrote many, many words for the Charles/Erik pinch hit last night, which I now need to double-check for, y'know, coherency. And then actually fucking finish it today, oh god, I really need to do that, how is the pinch-hit I'm writing in a week longer than my original assigned fic which I worked on for a month. *facepalm*

My secret_mutant pinch hit plot keeps growing like the fucking Blob, guys, I don't even know. I thought I'd cleverly slashed it in half by cutting out all the backstory I'd originally planned on writing, but that apparently just opened the door to everything else spiraling out of fucking control. I am seriously concerned that Jan 2 will roll around and I will have to stop, close the document, and write 500 words of fluff from scratch to fill one of the prompts and then finish this as a completely separate fic later. :/ UGH. WHY CAN I NOT WRITE SHORT THINGS.

But anyway, people should go check out secret_mutant, because there's a whole lot of Charles/Erik goodness being posted there every day this and next weeks. And if anyone guesses either of the fics I wrote, I will totally write you a ficlet* of your choice. (This also goes for Yuletide, incidentally, but that challenge is so damn huge that I don't actually expect anyone to somehow pick out my one little fic out of the two thousand and change posted.)

I mean, no guarantee that my original secret_mutant fic has been posted yet, obviously. And my pinch hit will probably be super fucking obvious, if only because it will probably go up on the very last day of the challenge and, well, there are several other reasons it is painfully obviously a kaydeefalls creation, what with the stupid amount of plot slammed in around the very short and simple prompts the recipient requested. ASSUMING I EVER FINISH IT.

And then I'll have four days after that's due to finish my festivids vid. EEP. Me and the seasonal challenges, guys, what the hell was I thinking?

*And by "ficlet", I mean "absurd plotty epic", who am I kidding.

Yuletide victory is mine! And AO3 is still running very smoothly. Which was a pleasant surprise.

And my date last night went quite satisfactorily, thank you. \o/

Nothing in particular to add about the latest round of LJ fuckwittery. I continue to be kaydeefalls at DW, which has become my primary home. The downside of Dreamwidth at the moment is that most fannish activity is still centered around LJ; but once enough of us get active over here, that will slowly shift. And please, I've been on LJ for close to a decade, I LOVE the community it fostered, and I will be very, very sad if fandom shifts over to someplace like tumblr instead. (Tumblr is great for image-based fannishness, but oh god, do I ever despise their interface for actual, like, communication. And I'm a very text-based fan myself, so, really not ideal.)

Happy Chanukah, my friends. ♥

secret_mutant fic done! Now it just needs, y'know, a beta. And for me to reread it when I'm not a wee bit tipsy. (Finishing fics drunk after a pub crawl: not highly recommended. On the other hand, alcohol breaks through writer's block like nobody's business.)

I'm not usually a music-oriented person when I'm working on fic, though I do have a generic writing playlist of soothing background noise. (And I write a lot of Boden's Mate / Queen's Gambit with the Inception soundtrack on loop.) But seriously, Tom McRae is my Charles/Erik fanmix. Every single damn song of his relates to them in some way or another, I swear to god. And I'm not usually the sort of person who assigns every love song on the radio to my current OTP. This is NOT normal for me. And yet. Guys, the dude has a song titled "Ghost of a Shark", and that is not even the most fitting element of the song. ("I'm gonna leave any minute...") For this fic, in particular, I've been listening to "Best Winter", "Houdini and the Girl" ("He says I’ve been under the water / I’ve been under the ground / And honey one thing’s certain / There’s no escaping now"), and "Sound of the City" ("And I watch you fall from a great height / and you watch me fail night after night"), but...ugh. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH, and Tom McRae is totally their soundtrack for ever and ever amen.

And now I need to write Yuletide. FUCK.