Otter's Rock

I've been quiet enough this year that I am not sure anyone will have noticed that I have been especially quiet this last month.  What have I been doing instead of reading and writing fanfic and being on DW/LJ/AO3?
( Real Life Stuff )

What I have been missing fannishly: The 2012 Bujold Ficathon.  There are so many awesome prompts, but I just do not have the time or mental energy to tackle any, right now.
Also, the heroines_fest sounds awesome, but what I know about comic books I know exclusively from the movies and fanfic, so I could only do the movieverse prompts, and see above re: time and mental energy.

Cool stuff: on the way home, listening to my CD collection, I found a couple of perfect songs for vids, and since I don't vid I am releasing them for anyone who wants them.

( Legend of a Mind--Perfect for psychedelic Dr Who vid about regeneration and companions )

And, for Once Upon A Time, two songs.
( You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You--isn't that the whole theme of Once Upon A Time? )

( More I Cannot Wish You (than to find your own true love)--again, perfect for the theme of the show )

rarewomen is open, and there are a lot of great fics from a lot of great authors!  Here are some of my faves:

BSG
Free To Choose.  Her memories define who she is, her choices define who she will be.  (Sharon Agathon)

Buffy
As a Queen, Sufficient.  Kendra, debriefing after her first trip to Sunnydale.

Discworld
A Ladies' Day Out.  The impact of unregulated collection on the draconic biodiversity of the greater Ankh-Morpork region by Vimes (née Ramkin), S. Presented to the Ankh-Morpork Dragon Fanciers Society, Grune, Year of the Reversed Ptarmigan.  Hypothesis: poachers can be firmly deterred by a gumboot to the ear and some stern words, by Jove.  (Sybil Ramkin, the Emmas, Sacharissa Cripslock)

Doctor Who
Human Behavior.  The TARDIS learned a lot from her time in a human body; that doesn't mean she knows how to put a human together again.  (Idris, Tardis)
Cold Hands, Warm Heart.  Jenny finds a Silurian warrior behind the house. Then she puts the kettle on.  One of the Jenny&Vastra stories I have been craving.

Star Trek TNG
Shadow-walking.  Ro Laren and Deanna Troi undertake a secret mission on a matriarchal world.

Vorkosigan Saga
Five Strays Elizabeth Naismith took in (and One That Got Away).  Dear Cordelia, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that Miles is a charming and intelligent young man; I've been enjoying his company immensely. He's made plenty of friends, and taken to the social opportunities at school with a great deal of verve. (For more details, please see the attached disciplinary reports from Principal Hatter.)

X-Men First Class
A Piece of Her Mind.  Agent MacTaggert really shouldn't be in this cocktail bar. And she really shouldn't be talking to two wanted criminals. But they seem to think there's a way for her to get back the memories she'd lost the previous year, and she can't help but listen.  (Moira, Angel, Mystique)

Title: A Change in the Winds
Fandom: Mary Poppins/Doctor Who
Characters: Mary Poppins, Eleven
Rating: Gen
Betaed by: Morbane 
Word Count: 2632
Timeline note: Takes place at least five years before "Mary Poppins," and during the Eleventh Doctor's time.
Written for:  afterism in yuletide 2011

On AO3.


( Domaripopexnal—currently calling herself 'Marie Babineaux,' and before that 'Mary Poppins,' and before that 'Maria Pabst'—studied the list of errands the housekeeper had given her when she and her charges had left the house that morning. )

nextian has written not one but two awesome filks about "The Lone Centurion" (i.e. Rory Williams during The Big Bang, the season finale of Doctor Who).  They are both awesome and she's got a great voice and I love the pseudo-scholarly analysis of the two songs that she includes.

If you're into Dorothy Sayers, particularly the Peter Wimsey mysteries, antisoppist has written a great Harriet/Bunter story, which you should go read--I have only a passing acquaintance with Wimsey, and it made sense to me, and I hope she writes a sequel because it's just begging for it.

AO3 explains why they've been so slow and what they're doing to correct it in the future.  Basically, it's running yuletide plus several other decent-sized holiday ficathons at the same time; the data from this is telling them how they need to scale up/streamline their operation because they can see where the bottlenecks are at peak load.  But they can't do the big stuff until after the challenges are over because slow is better than breaking things in the middle of Yuletide.  Yes, it's a hassle, but it's a fixable hassle; the old Yuletide archive was creakier back when Yuletide was much smaller, and it couldn't be scaled up.

Also, how did I now know that Mandy Patinkin played Inigo Montoya?

Okay, It's been a while since I've done a vid rec post.  I'm just finishing up driving the DW van on crack_van and trying to pick what vid to rec and it's really hard because there have been some awesome Doctor Who vids posted recently.  I've settled on Movin' Right Along, an awesome and fun multi-Doctor vid set to a Muppets song (it's awesome).  I would have recced What About Everything or Handlebars, being (IMO) the two best Doctor Who vids ever, but they've already been recced.

But what about all the other awesome vids out there?  Here are some of my faves.

Recent vids:

Brand New Day by humansrsuperior.  New Doctor, new TARDIS, new sonic screwdriver, new companion... A fresh start, the dawn of a new day, and of a new era.  The first four episodes of season 4 set to music.  It's fun, the clips are synched to the music, and it really captures the feel of the Doctor and Amy romping through the universe.

You'll Be Bright by diarmi.  Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy. With guest appearance by Nine, Ten and Eleven.
  They're reaching for adventure, for stars, for him... And they're glorious.  One of the most perfect choices of song for subject matter that you're going to find, and well made.

Starry Night by azarsuerte. Okay, granted, the choice of song was kind of a gimme.  What else would you use to vid an episode about Vincent Van Gogh but a song about Vincent Van Gogh?  Still, it's a nice song, it was a great episode, and the two are beautifully put together.

Pure Imagination by chasarumba.  Again, a perfect match between song and subject.  This takes the song from the original Willy Wonka, and sets it to clips of Amy and the Doctor (first two episodes).  If you want to view paradise, Simply look around and view it, Anything you want to, do it, Wanna change the world? There's nothing To it.  I love the editing and the way the clips were chosen.

Anything the Doctor can Do by Sammy and rhoboat.  This is really funny, playing up on the similarities and competition between the Doctor and the Master (Ten and Simm, respectively).  Bonus, the song (Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better) is sung by Jon Barrowman.

Older vids:

Measuring Cups by airie_fairy.  Four and Sarah Jane.  Lots of fun.

Swinging On A Star by crayford. Seasons 1-3 of new who, lots of fun.

So.  I just found a site that appears to have every Doctor Who episode still in existence available to watch for free.  (It's probably ad-supported, but since I use Adblock Plus, I wouldn't know.  I'd feel guilty about using their bandwidth and servers without giving them any recompense, except, oh, wait, popups are annoying and incredibly easy to use as virus vectors.)

So.  I have Doctor Who.  I have a list of all Doctor Who serials.  I've seen enough to know some are really great, and some are really awful.  Recs?  Where should I start?

I've spent the last couple of days watching the first few episode arcs of Doctor Who that come up on Netflix and are available for streaming, and this completely random sampling of six or so episode arcs (spanning the whole of the classic Who) has had a surprising number of scenes I recognize from my classic Who fanvids--several per arc, actually.  Given the number of episode arcs that Classic Who has, it's quite striking.  Either the episodes that are streaming and come up first in "Doctor Who" searches on Netflix are among the classic episodes, or vidders use the streaming eps for clips.  Or both.

(Vids are What About Everything and Movin right Along; episodes are The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Curse of Fenric, Pyramids of Mars, The Horror of Fang Rock, The City of Death, and a couple others.)

(Also, the first Daleks were awesome villains, and very well done.  The first Cybermen ... not so much.)

Meme stolen from ljc :

1. The Watchmen/BSG crossover about Doctor Manhattan, going off to explore the universe and create life. All this has happened before, all this will happen again. He doesn't like being called God.
2. The BSG AU where, when Kara jumps them using the coordinates from that song at the end of the last episode, they wind up back in time in the colonies just before the Cylon attack.
3. The Criminal Minds/SG-1 crossover where the SGC is negotiating with a planet that doesn't really want any of the standard trade goods, but they've got a high-profile serial killer but no law enforcement types with the psychological training to catch him/her. So someone suggests that hey, maybe we should lend them a BAU team for a few weeks, catch the serial killer, and give them a start on developing their own profilers.
4. The Stargate Goes Public story that focuses on the reactions of the US military peeps who weren't in on the program. Navy guys complaining about the Air Force having starships. Special forces guys pointing out that having four-person teams is really stupid; six is a much more tactically flexible number, and if they hadn't given the Stargate to the Chair Force maybe they'd have had fewer screwups like that. JAG lawyers trying to figure out how to fit the de facto decisions made by the SGC over the years because they face situations nobody's ever thought of before into the UCMJ. Marines being ooo-rah. Etc.
5. The Stargate story that focuses on the diplomatic teams: how they figure out what to trade with each world, and the person who noticed that most worlds are resource-rich and manpower-poor, and that the thing most useful to most worlds is technology just a leetle more advanced than whatever they've got--still within their manufacturing capabilities, but just a little more energy efficient. Cotton gins. Spinning jennies. Better plows. Better mettalurgy. Etc. Or some worlds want sheep with better wool, or larger horses, or other agricultural things. And then having to figure out how to convince General Hammond that what they really need is for the engineers (who want to be studying Ancient or Goa'uld or Asgard technology) to figure out how to build these things and teach the locals how to make and use them. Or convince General Hammond that the SGC needs to buy Merino sheep or what have you. And then figure out how to get them through the Stargate.
6. Babylon 5. The one about the Centauri princeling in The Lost Tales that Sheridan takes home to Minbar to keep him from turning into the monster Galen says he will.
7. Doctor Who/Atlantis. The sequel to Survivors.
8. BSG AU. The stories hinted at in Five AUs I Will Never Write.
9. Batman Beyond. The one where Terry's in college, still Batman, but moonlighting with the Justice League when they really need him. And they've got a list, really heavily encrypted somewhere, of family members of JL heroes, so that they can whisk them away to a secure location if necessary, and of course Terry's mom and brother are on that list but they still don't know he's Batman, and consequently are sure someone's made a mistake when they get kidnapped to a safehouse with superhero families. The security people guarding them are all, no, you're on the list, Mrs. McGinnis.
10. Star Trek Reboot. Away team beams down, locals don't like Spock because of his brother, and Spock's all, I don't have a brother, but what's Sybok done? And it turns out that he had forced a telepathic marriage bond on one of the women in town and raped her during his Pon Farr, and now she's pregnant, and Spock has to deal with figuring out how to help her and track down his brother to bring him to justice (which traditionally would be putting him to death, but so many Vulcans have died already, but on the other hand Vulcan doesn't have the resources to deal with a prisoner and most other Federation worlds don't have prisons designed to hold such powerful telepaths as Sybok). Also, Spock has to deal with his friends and crewmates now that part of the story about Pon Farr has come out in the worst possible way.

A listing of all my fic. My personal favorites are marked with asterisks.  My fic can also be found at An Archive Of Our Own.




( Crossovers )

( Stargate: SG-1 )

( Star Wars )

( Stargate: Atlantis )

( Babylon 5 )

( Battlestar Galactica )

( Batman )

( Superman Movieverse )

( Terminator )

( Doctor Who/Torchwood )

( Buffy: the Vampire Slayer )

( Star Trek )

( Vorkosiverse )

( Miscellaneous Fandoms--Enchanted Forrest Chronicles, Starfire Series, Rio Bravo, Big Fish, the Bible, Honor Harrington, Pride and Prejudice, and Chalionverse )

( Disclaimer and Creative Commons License )

From a fic by astrogirl2, Tremor, about Romana's school days, and her perspective (before she knew the Doctor) of an Old School episode in which the Doctor and the Master were fighting over Gallifrey, and the results included Presidential assasinations and earthquakes. Romana discusses the Master and the Doctor with her schoolmates:

Avalred shook his head. "Professor Destarla taught both of them. I've talked to her about it. She says they were very different. She says one would do anything at all to succeed, whether it was acceptable or even reasonable, and the other couldn't ever get over his own ego for long enough to accomplish much of anything."

"Really?" said Romana, with interest. "Which one was which?"

"You know... I'm really not sure!" He laughed again.

It made my day.