Star Trek XI fic rec: So Wise We Grow, captanddeastar's startrekbigbang fic (eventual Kirk/Spockm 81,000 words, R). It's kid!fic—Spock finds himself having to parent, with Kirk's help, the son T'Pring left behind—and it's all kinds of adorable.

So! Christmas cards! (Again, not hand-made, because I fail at arts-and-crafts-ness.) Drop me a note if you want one, and I'll do my best to mail them at some point before December 25th.

[Note to newcomers: I've yet to manage to meet this deadline. Extrapolating from my last few years' Christmas-card-sending attempts, I'd say you're likely to receive your card in mid-January. I apologise in advance.]

Comments are screened.

We've had consistent 100F+ weather for the past few days, and I am melting. MELTING. Weather gods, I am so displeased. My computer's overheating so much it's uncomfortable to type. Ugh.

Yuletide sign-ups are now open! I haven't decided which fandoms I'll pick, but go volunteer! Also, UR.org's yearly Christmas Fic Exchange has just opened sign-ups, too. *nudges* How about some HP fic nostalgia, eh? Go join! ♥

Meme!

Post a list of 10 television shows you watch or have watched. Have your friends list guess your favourite character from each show. When someone guesses your favourite character, bold the title. When guessed, tell us why you like that character.

Here you go:

1. Doctor Who
2. How I Met Your Mother
3. Six Feet Under
4. Merlin
5. Firefly
6. Buffy
7. Numb3rs
8. Chuck
9. Leverage
10. True Blood

I'd offer shows like Castle, Alias, Dexter, Dollhouse, Rome, Boston Legal, Gilmore Girls, House, Scrubs, Supernatural, Pushing Daisies, Star Trek (TOS) and Heroes as options, but my favourite characters in each and every one are so obvious (and obviously awesome) that really, it's kind of pointless.

Star Trek XI fic rec: waldorph's √π233/hy7 series. Don't let the Math-y name scare you off! It starts off with an AU loosely based on the movie Good Will Hunting, in which Jim is dragged to Starfleet Academy after Spock finds out he's a bit of a Maths wiz kid, but it's so much more than that—every one-shot that followed is narrated from the point of view of a different character (Winona, Uhura, Sam, T'Pring, Sulu, Frank, Sarek, etc.), following his or her life in that 'verse. Most of them can be read as stand-alones, if Kirk/Spock isn't your thing. I'm especially fond of the T'Pring one-shot.

Also, I turn 22 today. Yay for getting old! And happy belated birthday to keshi_t, who is exactly one year and 36 hours older than me :D

All right, so I fail at updating LJ! Damn you, Twitter. I went to a U2 concert in Tampa with firstlightofeos and nancydowns a couple of weeks ago, and it was brilliant. I went to New York right after that, where I bought far more DVDs and assorted geekeries than I ought to and ate really, really good Chinese takeout. I totally fell in love with the city. ♥ And I bought a new MacBook Pro! It is gorgeous. I've just finished setting her up to my satisfaction today. Her name is River. (After River Tam, obviously, not River Song. And damn you for even considering that possibility, oxys_kai_moros.)

TV-related rambling ahead! But first, tell me something.

Poll #1476009 What have you been watching, flist?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 35

Fantasy/sci-fi:

Drama:

Procedurals:

Comedy:

Which of these soon-to-be returning shows do you plan to continue/start watching?

Rec a TV show!

( vague spoilers for Glee, Dollhouse and Merlin )

Three TV shows I'm watching and enjoying—with download links, because everyone knows I'm a pimp at heart:

Castle: Nathan Fillion playing the part of a Fillion-y mystery writer who helps solve crimes; what's not to love? I'm enjoying season 2 even more than I did season 1, and I'm happily waiting for my copy of Richard Castle's Heat Wave to arrive. Here's a YouTube promo featuring Fillion being awesome and geeky. Download the Castle pilot in .avi format here.

FlashForward: the premise is interesting—the entire world blanked out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, causing massive casualties, and during that time everyone caught a glimpse of what their lives would be like six months from now. The main character saw himself investigating the blackouts, so he begins investigating; it's all very wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey. Also: there's John Cho! And Jack Davenport! YouTube promo link. Download the FlashForward pilot in .avi format here. (Hulu link.)

White Collar: I was excited to see Chuck's Matthew Bomer (Bryce Larkin) in a new show; it just premiered two days ago, and it didn't disappoint. [Incidentally, if you aren't watching Chuck, why the hell aren't you watching Chuck?] Bomer plays a con artist who helps investigate white collar crimes to keep himself out of jail, à la Catch Me If You Can. It's entertaining! Check out the YouTube promo, and download the first episode here in .avi format (or watch on Hulu).

I'm also watching, with varying degrees of dedication, enthusiasm and caught-up-ness: Dexter, Fringe, Heroes, How I Met Your Mother, Lie to Me, Numb3rs, Criminal Minds, Stargate: Universe, Supernatural and The Mentalist. I have a terrible case of television ADD—I rarely remember/want to watch shows' new episodes every week—so everything always piles up. *pointed look at Heroes, Criminal Minds and Fringe* *headdesk*

Title: Moment of Surrender
Author: christycorr
Film prompt: Imagine Me & You
Pairings: Arthur/Gwen, Arthur/Merlin, Gwen/Lancelot
Rating: PG
Word count: ~16,000
Summary: "Getting married wasn't supposed to change anything."
Warning: implied adultery
Story notes: beta-ed by firstlightofeos, title by U2.

(Crossposted to Dreamwidth.)

( Moment of Surrender, 1/2 )

I'm going to Tampa to see a U2 gig with firstlightofeos and lu in two weeks! I'll spend the weekend there, and then I'm off to New York for a week.

But! I have a) no idea what I'll do there and b) no hotel booked. I fail at travel planning, apparently.

So, er. New Yorkers? I'd really appreciate a tip or two as to what I could do and the general area I should stick to, hotel-searching-wise. Help me, o lovely flist, you're my only hope! :D

Title: Laws of Attraction
Author: christycorr
Film prompt: Laws of Attraction
Pairings: Arthur/Merlin, Gwen/Lancelot (background Arthur/Helen, Gwen/Afanc, Sophia/Edwin, Anhora/Dragon—but it's not as bizarre as it sounds, I swear.)
Rating: R
Word count: ~23,800 (all parts)
Summary: "Merlin Emrys had strong convictions on the subjects of love and marriage—namely, that they should be avoided at all costs."
Warnings: m/m sex, slight mangling of American civil procedure, excessive geekery, overindulgent quoting of basically every movie ever.
Story notes: Here. Beta-ed by firstlightofeos, who endured far more of my have-I-your-approvals than she should have, really; thank you also to lu, who knows more of these quotes than anyone else, and to keshi_t and oxymoron, who read this first. ♥

(This was cross-posted to Dreamwidth, if you prefer reading there.)

( Laws of Attraction, 1/3 )

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love reel_merlin.

I suicidally signed up for two reel_merlin fics in July: Imagine Me & You, and Laws of Attraction. (RM, like many others of its kind, is a comm where people write Merlin AU fic based on movie plots. You sign up for a movie and, in this case, get a two-month deadline.) Due to circumstances quite beyond my control, I found myself being signed up for co-writing a fic with firstlightofeos; after much debate, we settled for Closer. Runi also had a fic of her own to write—Mean Girls. I of course didn't actually start writing much of my fics until, like, two weeks before the deadline (which was September 1st; later, it was extended to September 8th).

In the meantime, Runi and I discussed the Closer fic at length. And by that I mean TO A TRULY RIDICULOUS EXTENT. Seriously. 'Overthinking' doesn't begin to cover it. We watched the movie—I think I watched it, like, three times in the past month—and read (and annotated) the play, and discussed each character thoroughly—their motivations, their personalities, the play/movie's recurring motifs and timeline quirks, the locations, shit, everything. We drafted an outline, picked a structure and what would happen in each scene. I started spouting Closer quotes in all kinds of everyday conversation; I swear, even my brain started monologuing in Closer quotes.

Er. We ended up not writing the Closer fic, and chose to focus on our individual fics.

( My creative process, let me show you it. )

And now I'm writing Imagine Me and You. I have no idea whether I'll finish on time—I have four days, which is not much, but it's somewhat doable—but I'll do my damnedest!

So like, if I start spouting flower meanings out of the blue, please don't mind me, really. *grins* These fics have quite clearly eaten my brain.