everything but the girl

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Today, definitely the apple pies they were baking at the new Fresh Market near me, which I got to enjoy about fifteen minutes before leaving the store and misjudging the turn around a corner and smashing my car into said corner, tearing up the right passenger door.

But the apple pie smell was delicious and I may brave the garage again someday to get to enjoy it.

Also, fic rec of the month: Promised Land, an XMEN First Class/Harry Potter crossover of awesome, unparalleled brilliance and wonder.

In a world where Death Eater Shaw kills Erik's Muggle parents and takes him for experimentation, Erik manages to escape to the Xavier Mansion. Charles and Erik grow up together at the mansion and at Hogwarts, but Erik is still intent on hunting down his tormentor. HP AU, Erik Lehnsherr/Charles XavierPepper Potts/Tony StarkHank McCoy/Mystique

Thank you so much, anonymous writer of cleverness and wonder, who wrote the adorable Legally Blonde: The Musical fic Heart of My Own for me in Yuletide this year!

It's set after the end of Legally Blonde: The Musical and it's so much better than that moviething that they did. As the summary says, "After the events of the show, Elle starts to put together the life she never knew she wanted." It's Elle/Emmett and it's perfect, with dashes of Elle's interactions with her parents, within the world, and in setting up a legal practice for herself. I adore Elle's drive and cleverness in the show (and first film) and this fic showcases exactly that.

Love, love, love. It's perfect.

I won jlh in help_haiti, and she wrote me a fic in her Duckie/Cameron Pretty in Pink/Ferris xover: Breaking in the Future .

It's actually more than a PiP/Ferris crossover - there's also Barack/Michelle! Read it on LiveJournal or on AO3.

First, so many thanks to cedara for The Painting (White Collar) and dreamofstars for The Queen's Gambit Accepted (Chess, Svetlana-centric).

As for me, I wrote "Pink & Glitter", a story based on Lev Grossman's The Magicians, which came out last August. I knew it wouldn't find many readers because it's not just an obscure fandom, the novel itself is barely five months old. But I am generally happy with how the story turned out - it's about Julia, and the summary is thus:

To learn magic outside the Brakebills system, Julia had to do terrible things.

You can read it here - if you've read The Magicians, I'm really curious to hear what you think.

Also, last night I posted a gift-vid for gypsy_sunday in spn_j2_xmas - It's a Dean-centric vid with a heavy undercurrent of Sam/Dean subtext, set to Snow Patrol's Headlights on Dark Roads (thanks to momebie for the song suggestion!). Full postings of everything to pear_vodka coming soonish.

Am home from a wonderful three day adventure in Orlando with family and friends, where we saw the Osbourne Family lights at Hollywood Studios, rode Everest, allowed my four year old to go on the Jurassic Park ride (which she loved!) and enjoyed a Pom margarita at, obviously, Margaritaville.

Also, I got to see a bunch of spaces at CityWalk which are perfect for group/website/podcast/ship/interest group/meet-up events during Infinitus, and gaze upon Hogwarts without the scaffolding and it looks amazingly gorgeous (and the wizarding world *can* make palm trees grow in Scotland, right?).

Then, I came home, and unpacked, and woke to Yuletide treasures!

Two lovely fics for me! So gorgeously glorious to read!

And the bizarre thing was that I dreamed that I was reading a Yuletide fic and it wasn't anything I had requested, and I can't actually remember it anyway, but then I woke up and saw OMG TWO fics and wanted to read them both at the same time but I couldn't so I went in alphabetical order by fandom:

The Queen's Gambit Accepted: (Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson) Fifteen years after Bangkok, Anatoly Sergievsky seeks advice from the one person who knows him well - his ex-wive, Svetlana.
Svetlana is unmistakably brilliant and kick-arse, Anatoly is having issues, and the dialogue and setup are spot-on perfection. A fantastic coda to the musical!


The Painting: (White Collar) Peter Burke and Neal Caffrey are going to one of Elizabeth's events.
Mmmmm, Peter and Neal shopping for tuxes. Peter and Neal at a museum gala. Elizabeth being adorable and smart. And it looks like it might actually be a 'verse? With more to come on the story? While I think it's a terrific, true-to-canon tale to begin with, if there does turn out to be more chapters here, it would make my 2010! (And Yuletide Writer of Wonderfulness, I will point out that my birthday is in three weeks.)

In less cheery news, the screen on my laptop got damaged over the weekend and I have a few hundred missing pixels on the top right of my screen, which is probably the best physical place to have issues. But, still. Taking it to the SONY store on Monday to see if there is anything they can do.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it! Hope you have a wonderful day!

So instead, here's a flurry of random recs - both Yuletide and not:
Sam and Dean as Special Snowflakes - amazing art by ldhenson

Colts, Bolts & Pygmy Puffs from mimblexwimble - an HP/SPN crossover set post-DH and somewhere in SPN S4.

rivkat wrote the SPN/Chuck crossover of my dreams - it's the one I've wanted ever since episode two of Chuck, frankly. If you ever watch either of the shows, you need to read this fic.

Tear-inducing Outsiders fic from Two-Bit's PoV, set about six or seven years post-bok.

Another Chuck fic - Chuck vs Proposition 8

Gorgeous Merlin bodyswap fic (well, that's one fandom that'll probably be too large for Yuletide next year!)

The most adorable Blackadder Characters As Kids fic in the universe

And it's not exactly fic, but Forbes has a list of the most expensive fictional homes. Obviously, there's a lot of superhero lairs in there - and some super-villainous ones, too! You have to love their inclusion of quotation marks around the phrase "teenage wards" in reference to Wayne Manor!

I've long adored the Draco/Hermione dynamic. I've written meta on it time and again, and I love thinking about the ways that their relationship could have been different if things had happened just a degree or two in one direction or another in the series.

But I don't read it often; maybe it's because I have this range of ideas in my head and I don't often find a fic that meshes with those thoughts, or perhaps it's just that I'm reading less HP fic now than I did a year ago, or two years ago.

Which is why I was so thrilled to get to read the remix - the beautiful, lovely, completely D/Hr (canon compliant through Book Six) remix that Lovely Anon Author wrote from my fic from last year's Drabble-a-Thon.

It has plot and characterization and growth and insight and love - friendship and romance - and babies and it's magnificent in every word, and I love it so much, and thank you Anon Remixer, for it.

I will fangirl you madly after the reveal next week.

1. Now I'm back home and at a desktop computer, I can start fixing my alternate Journal options. When I registered or JF back in 2004 there was no "heidi" so I got that there, and ETA I just managed to get back onto the heidi journal on GJ. Wheee.

Friend me on JournalFen (I'm Heidi there).

Friend me on GreatestJournal (I'm heidi there, too! I just figured out how to get back into it, so I'll be using that instead of the 8heidi8 one! Wheee!). I know a bunch of you have friended heidi8 on GJ. She isn't me.

My plan is to back up my LJ onto GJ and crosspost onto GJ, and use both GJ and JF as reading lists. I'd rather not overload JF's servers, so I'm not going to upload all sixish years of posts there, but I will start posting fandomy things on JF, and posting both fandomy and RL stuff on GJ, going forward. However, since I regularly post onto LJ via email (from my sidekick) and since I don;'t seem to be able to post by email to GJ or JF (and I'd be happy to get a paid account at either or both if such an option was offered) the postings there won't necessarily be as timely as they are on LJ - I'll try to make sure I crosspost within 24 hours, though.

Also, did any of you set up the InsaneJournal account for me yesterday? Because someone registered heidi8 there yesterday and it isn't me - I went and grabbed 8heidi8 as a justincase there, but I would love to have the heidi8 one there, too.


2. So I can friend those of you who've relocated...

[Poll #1034377]

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3. I've been asked to help take on the Vendor Room Coordination role at Portus in Texas next summer for the time being (although they are still looking for a someone to fill the role permanently, as I am 100% sure I won't be able to attend the entire event (because of multiple family weddings & bat mitzvahs next summer) and this is a job someone needs to be on-site for). So if there's something you particularly want to see in the Vendor Room, let me know! We've already got some sensational ideas on the table for, er, the tables!

4. I also learned this morning that the reason there were too few lunches at the Saturday keynote at Prophecy was because someone either stole some 50 stickers, or possibly because someone scanned the sticker and made extra copies. We're working with hotel security to see if it was the former, but we have strong intelligence that it was the latter and either way, it was theft from the con of pushing two thousand dollars, and theft of a good time from the other attendees, and it's a horrible way to treat your fellow fans.

And fearsclave let me know about prophecy in the Toronto Star and MacLeans!

More later this week re SpellCast's Podcast Plays in the show's second season, as well as an update on FictionAlley Park's setup (I HOPE!).

And for now...
5. cutecoati has "acquired" some emails sent among the cast of the Harry Potter films sent while they were reading DH. Real Person Fic. Very funny and worth reading even if you don't normally read fanfic.