Grabbed from canis_m here :) In no particular order...

( 100 amazing ladies! )

Heh, you can kind of tell where partway through I realized I was about to fill it up exclusively with anime/manga :) And now I realize I didn't even get to Harry Potter! Oh, and I forgot Xion! I just finished playing the new KH game and she may very well be my favorite character in the entire franchise ♥ And then there's all the Final Fantasy characters, and I don't think I even got to any books or any of the other Star Trek series, and... well, I think I could probably fill this list several times over :D Ladies!

ETA: Now with added fandoms! And wtf, how did I forget the character in my own icon? D: Yoruichi is one of my favorite characters in Bleach.

I think I actually finally have a complete first draft of that fic where Team Gai cross-dresses and goes to Vegas! (Most of which I originally wrote two years ago D: ) Though even after all that time, I still haven't come up with an actual rationale for what the antagonists are doing /o\ Like, I know what they need to be doing for the story, but I can't even decide whether they're from Rock or Mist or possibly both. Still, once I figure that out, put in more description, and remove the ten million repetitions of the word "surreptitious", I should be able to actually show this thing to people. IDK if anyone even reads Naruto fic anymore, but what the hey.

Got kind of sidetracked by Twelve Kingdoms novel translations, but I still have a bunch more Yuletide fics to rec. I've only incidentally read the Yuletide Madness stuff, and still haven't gotten to a lot of the fairy tales, but I figured this would be a good place to drop off another batch of recs.

( Fandoms are Anastasia, Catch-22, Chrono Trigger, Community, Earthsea, The Handmaid's Tale, Howl's Moving Castle, Hurog Series, I Am Maru, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Let the Right One In, Leverage, Like Water for Chocolate, Lilo and Stitch, The Lion King, Little Women, and Submachine )

And with that, I am going to go play the new KH game for a while, and then maybe read some fic about magical black unicorns and the rulers who love them and/or go to sleep. I have more recs in Delicious, but I'll post them tomorrow.

I feel like I'll be reading fic for the rest of my life... dunno if that's good or bad. You can read everything I've been bookmarking under my yuletide tag in Delicious, albeit with minimal information. I'm kind of hitting that fic fatigue point where I can't enjoy stuff I would usually like, so I figured this would be a good time to stop and do some recs. At some point, when the server load has gone down some, I'll have to go back and comment on all of these; but for now I'll settle for drawing attention to them.

First off, I want to rec the really awesome Kill Bill fic that was written for me: A Battle Without Honor and Humanity! It's an awesome fic about Nikki Green (Bell in the fic, she takes her mother's name) gets her revenge against Beatrix... with BB being her path in. The prose is fantastic, Nikki is just amazing, and I just really love everything the author did with this fic.

Now for the other recs!

( Fandoms are Aladdin, Aliens, Beauty and the Beast, Black Lagoon, Bridge of Birds, Calvin and Hobbes, Community, Dinocomics, Fairy Tales, Futurama, Homestar Runner, Monster, Mulan, Oregon Trail, Princess Tutu, Public Service Announcements, The Simpsons, Skip Beat, Twelve Kingdoms, Yankee-kun to Megane-chan, and Yotsubato )

And now off to do something else and then read and rec some more. I haven't even touched Leverage yet.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, there's a general rundown here, or check out some of the recent posts on metafandom. This is a bunch of stuff, and I don't even know how to organize this in a reasonable way, so I'll just throw everything under random numbers.

( Cut for tl;dr and general incoherence )

- To be honest, I can't really say I'm surprised that Bujold is racefailing it up. (With the usual "OMG WHY ARE YOU SO SENSITIVE" choral accompaniment.) And I say that as someone loves the Vorkosigan books, and even got a Yuletide story in that 'verse. I never loved Wrede nearly as much, but yeah, again, not surprised. Still doesn't make it any less hurtful to see, though :(

- Okay, I'm trying to figure out who to write my femgenficathon fic about. Here's what I'm looking for:

1. A woman canonically in a position of authority
2. Who has a canonical friendship with another woman
3. And isn't evil

So far my list of women who qualify is:
- Yoruichi and Soi Fong.
- Possibly Janeway and Seven of Nine? It's been so long since I've seen Voyager, I can't remember much about their relationship.

:/

But I'm probably forgetting lots of women. (I certainly hope I'm forgetting lots of women.) So I'm requesting recommendations for female characters who fit these three criteria. Can be books, TV, movies, manga, anime, video games, basically anything that isn't RL. Ladies of color are especially appreciated :D

The bad news: Geocities is finally closing down.

The good news: DreamHost is offering a free two-year plan + domain registration for the first 1000 Geocities users who sign up. From their page:

All you have to do is verify you are an existing GeoCities customer by creating a page on your GeoCities account (or editing an existing page) to have the phrase “I’m off to DreamHost!” on it!

Then when you signup for us, simply put the full url to that page as your “promotional code” and you’ll get a 2 year plan (normally $214.80) free!

Which I just did, so pretty soon the HP gen recs page should be available at http://www.jetamors.com . (Though I shudder to think at how many links must be inactive...) Now I just have to figure out whether there's anything else I want to be doing now that I have a domain and a "real" hosting company. Maybe I could set up an FTP or something? What do people do with websites these days?

I keep starting to type out a litany of my woes this year, and then deleting it because lol no one cares, but seriously... this year has sucked MASSIVELY for me so far. (And for reasons almost entirely unrelated to the economy, amazingly.) Anyway, the latest suckitude is that I'm having problems with my laptop screen, so I probably won't be around much for a week or two.

Prompts are up, and the Gen Battle has started!

I've written one short fic for it, and I'd like to do more; in particular, Crossover (Princess Tutu/Yankee-kun to Megane-chan) just begs to be written, though I don't know that I'll be able to pull it off. (Gen Battle not an anime-only challenge, btw; in fact, most of the prompts are for Western fandoms.)

Anyway, here the fic that I wrote, which still doesn't have a title. It's rated G.

( AtLA, Mai, Ty Lee, and Azula - the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, exam time )

1) Check out the Gen Battle! It's like the Porn Battle, but without all the sexytimes, and (probably) more zombies. You can leave prompts until the 11th, and after that there'll be an entry to post fics.

2) I've been kind of following the big Racefail thing that's been going on for the last few weeks and vaguely wondering if I should write a post about it. Fortunately, kaiz has said everything I wanted to say, only better.

3) I've had so many awesome fanfic ideas over the last few weeks, but it seems like I always end up doing other things instead of writing them. Self >:(

Happy Boxing Day, everyone!

I spent most of yesterday either doing family stuff, or devouring Yuletide fics. First of all, the one that was written for me :DDDD

My Yuletide gift is Happy Birthday, Miles, which is a Vorkosigan fic. I wanted something featuring Mark and/or the Koudelkas; they're some of my favorite characters, but not much fic is written about them. (Well, not that there's much Vorkosigan fanfic at all.) Anyway, this one is really cute and awesome; Mark arranges a surprise party for Miles. This being Mark and Miles and Barrayar, there are a few minor disasters, but thanks to the magic of Pizza, everything ends well :D

There were a lot of other good fics in this batch as well! Some of the ones I enjoyed...

( Haruhi, Ptutu, Monster, Claymore, Skip Beat, Mulan, Saved by the Bell, Calvin and Hobbes, Winnie the Pooh/Discworld )

So, that pretty much comes to the end of what I've read and enjoyed so far. There's still lots of other stuff I want to read: the other Vorkosigan fics, the Wall.E fics, the fics for Sunshine, and whatever else people are reccing that sounds good.

Urk, has it really been a year since I've posted in this journal? :/ Anyway, a few things:

1) If you're an American, GO VOTE TOMORROW, if you haven't already.

2) Forgot to crosspost it to LJ, but I finished my fic Yo Ho a little while back; you can read the last chapter, "A New Picture Book", at FFN. Dunno if I'm all that happy with it, but at least it's over.

3) I'm doing Yuletide this year! \o/

( Cut for stuff only my Secret Santa writer will care about )

4) I keep thinking I should start writing manga reviews for stuff that I like, especially the more obscure stuff. But I don't think I'm very good at articulating that kind of thing; there are a few exceptions, but generally my reactions to manga can be fully summed up in emoticons. I guess I could just do a lot of picspam...

Title: Only Might
Author: jetamors
Fandom: Avatar
Rating: PG-13ish
Warning: Big 3x08 spoilers!
Summary: Highlight to read: Hamma may be imprisoned, but she's learning a lot.
Notes: I originally wrote this in a_white_rain's journal. Haven't written anything in a while, so concrit is (as always) welcome.
___________________
( She watched the rats. )

Grabbed from prelud :)

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. * - Read more than once. (No underlinings because I'm not particularly looking for any of the unread books.)

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and punishment
Catch-22*
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights*
The Silmarillion*
Life of Pi : a novel
The name of the rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey - Does it count if it was one of those prose retellings? Dunno; I'll bold it anyway.
Pride and prejudice - Can't remember if I've read this more than once or not.
Jane Eyre*
A tale of two cities
The brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies* - Really excellent book.
War and peace
Vanity fair
The time traveler's wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The kite runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great expectations
American gods*
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius - I don't care what this book is about, I refuse to read it with a title like that.
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West*
The Canterbury tales - Again the thing about not reading it in the original; though I memorized the first 14 lines or so like a good English student.
The historian : a novel
A portrait of the artist as a young man - Only got through this because I had to read it for class.
Love in the time of cholera - It's not that I disliked it, it's just that I checked it out when I was really in the mood for something else.
Brave new world
The Fountainhead - I still don't see what she was getting at.
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange*
Anansi Boys
The once and future king
The grapes of wrath - Was this the one with Lenny and whatshisface who liked furry things? ETA: Nope.
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984*
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility*
The picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
To the lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's travels - This through no fault of my own; I don't think I've ever had a copy of it with the later parts with horse-people and stuff.
Les misérables
The corrections
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune*
The prince
The sound and the fury
Angela's ashes : a memoir
The god of small things
A people's history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon*
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A short history of nearly everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The scarlet letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves:
The mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud atlas
The confusion
Lolita - I really need to finish this; I read about 3/4ths of it in a bookstore and keep forgetting to pick it up again.
Persuasion*
Northanger abbey
The catcher in the rye
On the road
The hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down*
Gravity's rainbow
The Hobbit*
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield*
The three Musketeers

Guess I'm doing better than I thought I was literature-wise; I've read almost half of these, and I've heard of all but three or four.

Writer's block continues apace, so have a meme :)

Seven Random Things about me (meme grabbed from a_t_rain)

1) I read the equivalent of about 2 1/2 paperbacks a day, and have since I was a teenager. (Less so, obviously, on days when I'm watching old episodes of a show or studying for one of my math-heavy classes, but those days don't come around that often.)

2) I'm a rather picky eater, though I've loosened up a bit as I've gotten older. Foods I have always disliked: macaroni and cheese, all breakfast foods with meat in them (unless it's seafood), eggs that are not hard-boiled or scrambled, most barbecue, cabbage, sandwiches (I like them more now, but would still rather pick them apart and not eat the bread), meatballs... the list goes on. I don't care much for fruit juice or soda either.

3) When I was about fifteen, I stuck my hand through the glass pane of a door trying to open it. I didn't cut anything important, thank God, but I do have a distinctive set of scars on my right arm.

4) I haven't combed my hair in over eight years.

5) Exactly 1/3rd of the wanks I've reported to the *_w communities somehow involved pedophilia. This perturbs me.

6) I've been to every continent bordering the Atlantic. (Well, except Antarctica.) I'd really like to go to Australia and some part of Asia to round out the set, but it hasn't happened yet.

7) The first person I ever had a crush on was Levar Burton.

Blaargh, haven't hardly written anything in a month or two. I completely lost my funny around June-ish, and while I think it's back, I'm a little tentative about finishing up any of my humor stuff. I'm in a perfect mood for writing angst, but I'm so sick of writing it. Maybe I should try for something fluffy instead--only I really don't have any good story ideas. Prompt me?

In a somewhat more depressing turn, there's been a rather ugly race wank going around in HP fandom; the initial post laying out the issue is here, with more links here and even more links here. What I really hate about this kind of thing (I mean, apart from the stuff like people refusing to admit they accidentally made a mistake, and people attacking the messenger so they won't have to take responsibility, and people equating having sex with me with having sex with goats, wtf?, etc.), what I really hate is how hard it makes it to trust the people on my friends list.

I mean, I was lucky this time. None of the d_d mods and none of the people showing their backsides in the apology post are on my flist. But I was in HP fandom for two years, and I've always had an open friending policy. They weren't on my flist--but they easily could have been.

And I want to trust you guys. You all seem like cool people, and I'd like to think that if something like this came up you'd be able to deal with it like respectful and rational human beings. But I can almost guarantee that the people being dismissive and disrespectful and outright offensive in this wank had nothing in their LJs or the way they presented themselves that would tip anyone off. There is literally no way for me to tell whether any of you are that kind of person.

It just poisons the entire well. For me, fandom is about having fun, first and foremost. But I actively dread the day when something similar happens in a fandom I'm active in. Because then it'll be on my front stoop, and I may have to make some very painful decisions about people I thought I knew. Pretty much the exact opposite of fun :/ It's hard for me to think of leaving fandom forever-- but if I do, it'll probably be because of something like this.

I wish I could say I knew what kind of response I'll get to this post. But I really don't.

My thoughts on Deathly Hallows As last time, I'm writing this without looking at anyone else's reactions first.

( SPOILERS, duh )

And now to go off and catch up on all the discussions and wank I've missed.

ETA: Fifty new messages, and none of them with spoilers in the subject line. Did I really go through all that bother for nothing? DDD:

And a PSA, I suppose: the first 495 pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows leaked onto the internet yesterday. The remainder is expected to leak sometime tonight or tomorrow. There is word of organised efforts to spoil launch party lines, to broadcast spoilers over the Tannoy at shops (and airports? I doubt that one is true), and if you're a spoilerphobe, now would be a good time to limit your access to all mass media, not just the internet. In fact, I think fannish LJs are safer at this point than the streets in broad daylight, because most fen understand about spoilers.

Oh, crikey. I guess my total media fast starts now, and not Wednesday as I had been planning. See y'all Saturday afternoon, I guess; I've got one LJ-related commitment and a few games where I can easily avoid personal messages, but apart from that the Internet no longer exists for me. (And no release party either *shudders*)

I was fandom-monogamous for a while, but over the last year or two I've learned to dip my toes in other waters. These are some of the things I've found.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Home is... by sporkyadrasteia. I like the movies okay, but not enough to dig into the fandom. But then I saw a rec for Tia Dalma/Davy Jones, and my curiosity got the better of me :) It's a really lovely story, and while it was written before AWE, it actually works with that movie pretty well.

Fullmetal Alchemist (anime): Good Intentions by ladylisse. I remembered her from HP fandom, and I found the summary intriguing, so I figured I'd give it a try. And OMG. I had my issues with the anime series, but if it had been resolved like this, I might've liked it even more than the manga. It's the sort of story that leaves me laughing and crying at the same time, and it's the sort of story that I'm always trying to write.

Samurai Champloo: Treatise on the Price of Sugar in the Edo Period by sintari. (Mugen/Fuu, btw.) What I really love about this fic is the description, of the surroundings, and of the characters' actions, and of Mugen's inner thoughts. It all comes together really well.

Silent Hill 2: Save Point: Hell is Repetition by Patrick Phelan. You don't actually have to know anything about Silent Hill to get this fic (I certainly don't); knowing about basic game mechanics is enough. Because game mechanics are what this story is really about, and it works *so* well.

Lord of the Rings: Thirteen Gifts for Thirteen Gardeners by Tulip Proudfoot. Towards the end of RotK, as Frodo is preparing to go to the West, he mentions the children that Sam and Rosie will someday have. This fic is set after Sam leaves; the children (now grown up) find a box with a letter and gift for each child. The characterization, fleshing out what we know of each character, is absolutely lovely, and the whole thing just has a very warm feeling. (There's some minor canon het, but the main focus is gen.)

Final Fantasy VII: Need by melanthe_v. Occasionally, people writing 1sentence-type fics will try to make each sentence part of a story; this is the only one I've ever seen where it actually *works*. I'm usually not that into slash either, but I like the Reno/Rude here.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Welcome to the Slaughterhouse by beer_good_foamy. Rated NC-17 for violence; sometimes a gal's just in the mood for some over-the-top gore :) There's a bit of canon Willow/Tara too. Tara's family drags her back home; the Scoobies go after them, and, well... you can guess the rest. It's executed very well, though I think Buffy went down a little too fast for my tastes.

Beauty and the Beast (Disney): Picture This by TrudiRose. I think I kind of ship Gaston/Belle thanks to this fic; the romance is very believable, there are some awesome OCs once you get further in, and it was lots of fun spotting the places where events from the movie were mirrored. Belle's a bit offputting at the beginning, but this is addressed; the only quibble I had was that the triplets weren't rounded like the rest of the characters.

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle: Wait For Me by Victoria Hughes. I tried looking for Sakura/Syaoran after reading TRC, but this was pretty much the only readable thing I could find. While it was written before the author got very far into the series, it doesn't really contradict anything. It meanders a bit more than I'd like, but the ending is spot-on perfect.

Avatar: Editing History by v_voltaire. An incomplete selection of Avatars removed from the history books. This is why I love 100-word drabbles. Because when people get it right, they get it *really* right.