Ruth Sadelle Alderson

Today I'm thankful for lakeeffectgirl. We've now been friends for long enough that I can refer to it as a very long time. We've drifted in and out of various fandoms over the years, sometimes together and sometimes separately, and it's a joy to be in a fandom together again. There are a lot of other great things about her, but right now one of them is that we spend a lot of time emailing back and forth about hockey. In the midst of one of our threads, she emailed me a snippet about Mike Richards in high heels, which I starred so I got to reread it every time I went to email something else to her in that same thread. When she took NaNo prompts, I told her that even though it felt like cheating since she's already writing so many things I love, I would throw in additional votes for a few things, including more high heels. She turned that original Mike in heels snippet into middle of that riot. Until she wrote it, I'm not sure I realized how much Carts buying Richie heels would absolutely be my kind of thing.

Those of you who've been around for a while know that I'm a fan of Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project blog, and you may further know that I wasn't as excited about her first book on the subject, also titled The Happiness Project. She now has a second book on the topic, Happier at Home, which I was able to request from my local library much faster than I thought was going to be possible.

I liked Happier at Home much more than The Happiness Project. (Keep in mind that I read the first book two years ago, so it is possible this is a change in me more than a change in her.) I thought it was a more useful, concrete book. One of my problems with the first book was that I felt I didn't learn anything I didn't already know from the blog, where I didn't feel that way about this book. I've been reading her blog all the way through the time she implemented the happiness project for Happier at Home, and somehow that worked better for me with this book. I recognized things in the book that I'd read posts about on the blog, but instead of finding that repetitive, I got a thrill out of it, a little like I was an insider. I do still wonder how it would read to people who haven't read the blog - there were places where I could practically see the hyperlinks to previous posts that would explain her basic philosophy (and she did just post about her abstainers vs. moderators distinction in response to a lot of book tour questions about it), and there are patterns to how she talks about things that are familiar if you read the blog - but I think it would still be a useful book even if you aren't a regular reader.

As the title implies, the focus of the book is on being happier at home. As she usually does, Gretchen (side note: proper book review etiquette would involve using her last name, but I feel like I know her too well from her blog for that) breaks her project into several thematic areas that she then focuses on one at a time on a month by month basis. She then has four or five specific resolutions within each thematic area. I found the resolutions for this book much more concrete - and, in many cases, more widely applicable - than the ones in the previous book. I finished the first chapter on "Possessions" and put the book down to reorganize a nearly-unusable cabinet. I also finally threw away my broken umbrella (although I haven't yet replaced it).

There are three of her specific resolutions that I've been thinking about. The first is "give warm greetings and farewells." This is one of those resolutions that doesn't seem particularly applicable to me: I live alone, and I have people over about once every other month. However, we already have mandatory warm greetings at work: when someone comes into the main office area, everyone has to say hello to them before they can fully enter the room, and they have to go around and greet everyone individually (originally, the options were handshake, fist bump, or high five, but it's devolved to everyone just exchanging fist bumps). It really has made a difference in the attitude of our office, and it's exactly what Gretchen talks about: taking a moment out of whatever you're doing to greet someone. I've been trying to do the same thing when people leave for the day, although I have to admit I'm terrible about looking up from what I'm typing to say hello or goodbye.

The second resolution I've been thinking about is "make the positive argument." The idea behind it is what she calls "argumentative reasoning": "When a person takes a position, he or she looks for evidence to support it and then stops, satisfied." Gretchen specifically talks about this in the frame of her marriage: whenever she's upset and tempted to think something like, "Jamie isn't very thoughtful," she then thinks to herself, "Jamie is very thoughtful," and can come up with a lot of evidence to support that argument as well. "Make the positive argument" fits right in with a lot of similar advice about seeing the positive side of things, but it's one of those things that you hear over and over again, and then you're in the right place and it's said in just the right way that it sticks with you.

The third of her resolutions that I find interesting is "enter into the interests of others (within reason)." The basic idea is to take an interest in other people's interests by listening or asking questions: "entering into other people's interests is an important way to show respect and affection." I've been thinking about this in two ways. One is that I've been trying to be a better listener over the past few years, and paying attention to and asking questions about other people's interests (which is not something I'm good at, particularly the asking questions part) is one way to do that. The other is that one of my coworkers, who I don't know very well at all, brought in a craft project for us when it was her turn to lead our weekly teambuilding activity. One of the things I really liked about it as an activity was that she told us that the craft supplies she'd brought for us to use were just a small portion of the supplies she has, and that she has an entire room at home devoted to crafting. Crafting is very much not my kind of thing, but knowing that about her and seeing what kinds of things she brought in for us to use has made me feel much warmer toward her.

I would definitely recommend Happier at Home, and if you read it without having read the blog, I would especially love to know what you think about it. I liked it so much that I might actually buy myself a copy to have on hand for reference when it comes out in paperback.

Sidney Crosby and the Russians Who Love Him

Fandom, take note: this man is not a robot:

( Picture )

I have to admit that I can barely handle this picture. Look how absolutely delighted he is to have that child in his arms. You know who else loves kids?

This guy:

( Geno! )

Also, this guy:

( Ovi! )

Where is the nanny AU where Sid has a baby and hires Geno or Alex to be the kid's nanny?


Danny Briere (with bonus Taylor Hall, Tyler Seguin, Scott Hartnell, and Claude Giroux)

Whatever, like I was going to make a hockey post without including him. First, let's watch this:

( Video )

This is the video I tell people about when I'm trying to describe how unintentionally dirty hockey is. Barely legal draft prospects Taylor Hall and Tyler Seguin visit the Flyers locker room where Danny tells them how hard or soft he likes his sticks and how many he goes through in a season. And then Tyler Seguin can't keep himself from commenting about how tiny Danny is.

The only bad thing about that video is that it's during playoff season, which means Danny has terrible facial hair. So let's look at him in the adorable hats the Flyers had for the Winter Classic:

( Adorable hat! )

And while we're on the subject of the Winter Classic, I may have watched this video a very large number of times today:

( Video )

It's titled "Flyers See Winter Classic Ice," but is actually just Scott Hartnell and the Briouxs checking it out. Hartsy greets all five of them with, "Hey, Brieres."


Carts+Richie 4-EVER (with bonus Staals!)

This gif floated around tumblr recently:

( Carts and Richie making hearteyes at each other. )

Mostly, it makes me want a college AU, but I can't say why it reads that way to me. Also, it comes from this video:

( Video )

The best thing about this video is that nearly all of the dialogue is just the Staals chirping people. Best Scandinavian trolls.


Tyler Seguin's House of Bros

I really mean it when I say that Segs and his husband and boyfriends are making my whole summer better.

First, his husband was upset that Segs and the dog were napping without him:

( Picture )

Then Segs took his other other boyfriend to see Magic Mike:

( Picture )

And then slept on him in public:

( Picture )

Also, it appears that someone in that house is sleeping in a bed with pink blankets:

( Picture )

Really, how does this kind of thing happen in real life?


Danny Briere's (ex?-)Husband's New Boyfriend

Let's just start with pictures of that time Claude Giroux took Paul Bissonnette as his date to the NHL Awards:

( Claude and Biz on the red carpet )

And lest you think that's fangirl exaggeration, allow me to assure you that every interviewer they met on the red carpet called Biz Claude's date, in those words. And then there's the video that the screencaps above come from. You may need a minute to prepare yourself for this. Keep in mind that it includes this exchange:

Alyonka Larionov: I'm just wondering, how did this relationship start?
Claude: I don't even know. When's the first time we met?
Biz: It's complicated.
Claude: My status on Facebook, "It's complicated."

Yeah, that happens:

( Let's go to the video tape. )

And don't forget the first red carpet interview where they talk about how they were hanging out together in Montreal when they decided Biz should be Claude's date:

( Video )

You have no idea how much I want Claude/Biz fic. And the fact that no one wants to break up Claude and Danny isn't going to stop me from talking about it. Possible plot bunnies:

The one where Danny's straight and Claude is not: Claude's young, but he's not completely stupid. He knows falling in love with an older straight man who already has a family isn't going to end well for him, so he moves out of Danny's house, gets his own place, gets over Danny, and hooks up with Biz.

The other one where Danny's straight and Claude is not: Danny really is just a friend. Claude tends to just hook up with people, and then he starts hooking up with Biz.

The one where they're poly: Claude and Danny have an open relationship. Possibly they're monogamous during the season and free to do whatever (or whomever) they want during the summer. This summer, Claude spends a lot of time hooking up with Biz.

The one where they fall in love: Biz is not into relationships. He just likes sex. And then there's Claude, and he thinks it's just hooking up. (This would be like that Taylor Hall/Ryan Whitney story with the part of Taylor Hall played by Claude and the part of Ryan Whitney played by Biz.)

The one I'm most likely to write: Claude and Biz casually hooking up in varying cities. (If I end up writing it, it's probably just going to be a sex scene that hinges on Claude asking, "Can I fuck you this time?" and Biz finding that he really likes being fucked.)

It seems like all my hockey posts are just repeating lakeeffectgirl, but as much as I feel like I've abandoned the rest of my fannish friends (there's a clear divide: the two of us are into hockey; everyone else is all Avengers all the time), this really is what it's like when we're in the same fandom. Anyway, have some links.

First, lakeeffectgirl's hockey nicknames spreadsheet that anyone can edit. If you know nicknames that aren't on it, add them! I used the spreadsheet this week, so it is useful for writers. (You will get bonus points in my book for including a source citation.)

Secondly, she also transcribed Sticking Together, the definitive January 2011 news article that lays out the Briouxs' domestic arrangements. Highlights include Danny asking Claude to move in repeatedly, neither one of them thinking there was anything weird about their living arrangements, and the kids preferring Claude to pick them up from school.

And then there's her series of Brioux snippets. I am the lucky first recipient of these snippets in my email, and they make my day every time. I don't even know if I can put into words why I love them so much. They are just exactly the kind of story I want to wrap myself up in. They're domestic and soft and full of cuddling and oblivious marriedness. If you don't know anything about hockey, all you need to know for these to make sense is that Claude Giroux lived with divorced Danny Briere and his three sons for a season, then moved out. (Alternately, you can read the news article from the previous paragraph, since it works perfectly well as a Brioux primer.)

Unrelated to the Briouxs, you could also go read this Mike Richards and Jeff Carter article from the Philadelphia media. It's not fan fic, but it might as well be. Richards can only speak in the couple's we and the writer informs us, "While Mike Richards grew to enjoy life in L.A. this season, Jeff Carter seemed to be dying a slow death in Columbus and didn’t hide his unhappiness." I honestly think the hockey media might be even more invested in this relationship than the fangirls.

Project Appreciation, v. AO3
I'm sometimes amazed by the things AO3 does, particularly in terms of what already exists in the tag sets, and then I have to remember that, right, this is a thing built for us, not some other system we're trying to bend to our will.

Tiny Thoughts on Feedback
I read a few comments on someone's post on how people use AO3's feedback features, which has me thinking more about them. (I don't recommend reading those sorts of discussions. I would rather have not know how some people use the Kudos feature.) I am terrible at leaving feedback. Terrible. I sometimes feel guilty about it, but not guilty enough to leave more feedback. I'm more likely to leave feedback (a) on stories written by friends and (b) on stories posted on LJ. In a twist of contradictory thinking, I never leave Kudos because I don't want people to see what I'm reading, but I dislike AO3's comment system because comments aren't immediately obvious to other people. I will sometimes skim down the comments on fic on LJ to see what other people are saying/what kinds of conversations people are having with the author/if anyone I know has already commented on it, but I only ever click to read the comments on someone else's story on AO3 if I'm looking for something specific (such as checking to see if anyone notified them they mistagged the pairing on their story). What I'm much better at is reccing things. My impulse if I loved something isn't, "I should tell the author I liked this." It's "other people should read this." You might wonder what I'm talking about because I don't post that many recs here. That's because I feel like if I'm reccing something for a wider audience, I should put some effort into it to explain what it is and why you might like it, and then quote from it. That makes recs here less frequent. But what I do when I like a story on an average day is switch over to my Gmail tab, find the appropriate thread, and send a rec that reads something like this: [adjective] [pairing] story where [some enticing detail]: [link]. At least it pushes people's hit counts up?

Friend Appreciation, v. Fannish
I absolutely love the fact that I belong to a group of friends where if you're having a bad day and you're in the same fandom as someone else, there is a good chance someone will write you babyfic/kidfic/deaged!fic. I'm usually on the writing snippets side of that, but yesterday I was having a terrible day, and lakeeffectgirl sent me the most adorable babyfic snippet that did, indeed, make my day better.

Friend Appreciation, v. Increasingly Famous
Puck Daddy asked The Production Line to write their Blackhawks season eulogy. I only sort of care about this. What I really care about is that stevie_roch is The Production Line's artist, so her drawings (Patrick Kane with a pacifier! Hair gel jokes! Patrick Kane with a lifejacket!) are an integral part of the article.

Three Stories I Would Read That No One Will Ever Write For Fear of Being Called Creepy

• Trina Crosby gen fic.


• Taylor Crosby/Stephanie Lemieux. (Reference. Note also that Taylor is a goalie.)


• A story where some Penguins rookie moves in with the Lemieuxs and he and Austin Lemieux fall in love.

My commitment to writing and plot bunnying things fandom as a whole has no interest in remains strong.

The one thing I've been lamenting about hockey fandom is its lack of kink fic. There's a lot of casual kink - people enjoying being manhandled/held down/bitten - but not much of the more serious variety. Then along came liketheroad with a complicated kindness. I'm sure you've heard me say before that my cardinal rule of sex scenes is that how they feel is more important than what they do, and this is increasingly true the more people in the scene or the kinkier it is. "a complicated kindness" hews true to that rule. She fades to black for half the sex scene, which works incredibly well because (a) the story is all about the feeling of the kink and (b) it's the kind of sex scene where you could easily get stuck on what they're doing and forget to show us how they feel. The whole story has exactly the fantastic kind of feeling I want from d/s fic. It does take place in high school, so if that's not your thing, you shouldn't read it. It also does exactly what I've been pondering when thinking about kink and hockey players being young and has them look things up on the internet.

Shaking still, he types in another link, but it doesn’t take him to more porn, which sucks a lot, but is probably helpful in terms of Patrick’s goal of not coming in his pants.

He tries to focus on the text in front of him, and after blinking at it stupidly for awhile Patrick realizes he’s reading some kind of a FAQ on bondage and sadomasochism. Patrick kind of wants to skip it and see if there’s more porn, but it was on Johnny’s list so that means he has to read it.

It seems pretty straightforward to Patrick. He never thought to lay things out like the website does, but he finds himself nodding a lot, feeling like he wants to fist-bump whoever wrote the responses. Like, who wouldn’t want to get tied up? Seems like a pretty fucking great idea. He imagines rope digging into his wrists and thinks he would still prefer Johnny’s hands, but if Johnny was the one watching him struggle against them, Patrick figures he could probably make do.

Same goes for getting hit, getting choked. It all sounds fucking awesome, if you ask Patrick, and really the only thing he doesn’t get is why anyone would want something different. Pain is - in hockey pain is how you know you’re doing good, how you know you’re working hard enough. It should burn a little. It should leave you gasping, emptied out, wanting more.

If hockey’s like that, and hockey is the best thing in the world, Patrick figures sex can’t be that much different. It might even be better, maybe, but he doesn’t really know. Mostly, all Patrick knows is that whatever he’s doing, he wants to be doing it with Johnny.

There are two stories behind this entry. The first is that I was going to make it yesterday, because I think there should be something different for the Ides of March. Then we were ridiculously busy at work, and I didn't want to do anything but wallow in reading fic when I got home. The other story is that when I can't get my shit together (and this is the first week of 2012 where I have gotten my shit together), I pick a fandom I don't care about and read a lot of fic. So here are some recs from three previously-unread fandoms.

Avengers

I have now read a lot of Avengers fic, and I feel like a terrible fangirl for saying this, but I don't really get it. Maybe if I'd seen more of the movies than just Thor. There are two stories I've liked:

Safeword by melannen. The author's summary for this is, "Tony Stark doesn't need to be safe, sane, and consensual. He has JARVIS instead. (Then he gets Steve.)" JARVIS is the pov character, which makes it a particularly interesting story.

The next time Tony specifically requested that JARVIS observe one of his encounters, the other participant was a man who did not yet appear in any of JARVIS's databases. He was tall, burly, had a few days' beard stubble and a leather jacket, and smelled of distilled alcohol and engine exhaust. He must have been someone Tony met in a bar or other location where casual encounters were commonly negotiated.

He was, at several points, rather rough with Tony, and notably demanding. However, he never seemed to have any air of malice about him, and in fact appeared to be quite carefully monitoring and reacting to Tony's level of enjoyment. And Tony never offered any signs of distress; entirely the contrary, in fact. There were several points at which JARVIS considered the possibility that he was expected to interfere, but in the end, he simply let the encounter play out.

The next morning he asked Tony if his lack of action had been appropriate.

"Oh, yeah, don't worry about it," Tony said through his smoothie. "He was considerate all the way. Guess that shows me not to judge people by appearance, huh? Thanks for caring, though, you're great."

Thor is the one movie I saw, and Darcy was my favorite character in it. I discovered, as I read Avengers fic, that I will read any and all Clint/Darcy. Gift of Asylum by carleton97 and Sister_Wolf is my absolute favorite. Clint and Darcy have really hot sex in a bar bathroom, and years later meet again as part of the Avengers Initiative.

Sleep is just about winning when bar stool girl drops two tequila shots in front of him and says, "Drink up. I'm at least two drinks ahead and you look like you can hold your liquor."

Clint jerks back, surprised again that a civilian girl managed to get so far into his personal space. "Excuse me?"

She gestures impatiently at the drinks. "You seem like you would hesitate to take advantage of a drunken me. I'm trying to fix that."

"Are you kidding?"

She gives him a flat, unimpressed look. "Do I look like I'm kidding? Listen, the math is simple: a few drinks plus you plus me equals sex. If you're not into it, let me know now and I'll stop wasting my time."

Clint isn't used to girls being so blunt about it. Normally a bar hook-up is flirting, a little kissing and "do you want to go back to my place for some coffee?" But hey, she's cute, she's a little weird but not in a bad way, and she wants to have sex with him. Clint is not an idiot.

Clint gives her one of his best charming grins and tips both of the shots back, one after the other.

X-Men: First Class

As you may remember, I loathed the movie with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, but a couple of weeks ago, brown_betty made a post of recs for AUs where Erik is in a position to mentor people. I did read all four stories (although not the sequel to one of them) before I had to stop because it was just making my rant about the movie loop in my head. The best of the stories she recced is If You Liked The Book, You'll Hate The Movie by paperclipbitch. Erik is a high school guidance counselor, Alex and Hank are both in mandated therapy with him, Hank and Emma are best friends, Raven tries out everything, Sean is the lead singer of a band, and Erik refuses to sleep with Charles.

Mr Lehnsherr had a smile with too many teeth in and a bare office with no inspirational posters about mental health or life in general or anything in it, and the thin, mean look of a guy with bodies under concrete in his basement. He watched Alex’s glare and calculated silence for five minutes without saying anything, and then said: “I’m Erik.”

Alex had had his fair share of call-me-by-my-first-name-and-now-we’re-friends psychiatrists, and while he didn’t say it aloud, he let his scorn curl across his face.

Erik grinned. “Oh,” he said, “I’m not trying to be your friend here. I have no interest in being your friend because I’ve read your file and you’re an asshole. But I think we can let formality slide since we’re basically here to keep you from killing anyone else.

Hockey RPF

I originally started reading Hockey RPF because I wanted something to read and I was promised soulbonding, but I have to admit it's totally my fandom now. I have no interest in hockey as a sport, but hockey fic? Yes, please. Three reasons hockey fandom is awesome:

1. It takes place in our real world - no pesky canon to learn!


2. Most of the fic is about people living together/hooking up/otherwise making a life together while being oblivious to/dumb about the fact that they're in love, but in an adorable way.


3. No one in hockey fandom can quite believe they're in hockey fandom, so everyone who talks about it is hilarious about it.

The first rec is the Kane and Toews primer by totheviktor. Even if you have no interest in these people or this fandom, you should read the primer (you don't have to watch the videos; I've only watched a few, and that was well after I read the primer the first time). I laughed all the way through it.

Patrick Kane is a hideous hockey-playing weirdo who is bad at every aspect of life. "An unattractive, terrible dude?" you say. "He sounds like the worst! Tell me more! Does he happen to have a somewhat attractive, bossy captain/teammate/roommate/BFF/bromeo in his life? Do they perhaps have popsicle eating contests, weep over movies, fail miserably at fighting, buy matching furniture, read Twilight, and get called married by their mothers? As men do?"

Yes.

Hockey RPF has an entire subgenre of fic where people teach Sidney Crosby about sex/feelings/having fun. Heart in Hand (Sidney Crosby/Alexander Ovechkin) by salifiable is my favorite of them. It's very long (130,000 words), so either plan to stop in the middle or don't start reading until you can read all the way through. It is worth the time. It's fantastic. You may want to skip/skim the first sex scene; it's dub con in a way that is uncomfortable to read.

"Oh my god, stop that," he says, pulling Ovechkin away from the glass where the other player is crossing his eyes and trying to touch his tongue to his nose, apparently engaging in a silly-face contest with a kid in the front row. Sid feels like telling the kid that there's no way he can win, Ovechkin has too much of a head start in that race. "C'mon, we need to start practicing."

"Okay, great! What we practice today, Sid?" Ovechkin says, bouncing up and down.

"Well, I've been working on getting better defensively," Sid says. "But you wanted to improve your game, right? What do you think you need to work on? What criticisms of your game did you hear last year?" he asks.

"Russian, dirty player, no defense, choker, predictable, dirty hitter, no defense, show-off, not team player, choker, Russian, dirty, selfish, bad fashion, bad dancer," Ovechkin rattles off.

"Whoa, whoa," Sid says. "Wait, what?"

"I know, right? I dress great, and I'm good dancer!" Ovechkin says indignantly.

"No, I mean..." What Sid really means is that he had no idea Ovechkin had taken all the criticism aimed at him so much to heart.

"But hey, we can work on defense together!" Ovechkin says, brightening. "By end of summer, we gonna be Selke nominees, tell Datsyuk he can't have any more."

You know how Twilight is terrible? Well, if you make it gay and humorous, then it becomes delightful. Where the Wild Things Are (Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews) by liketheroad is such a story.

He approaches Johnny slowly, hands up in the air. “No touching, okay, I get it,” he says, using a soft, coaxing voice, but Johnny just presses his shoulders back tighter against the wall. It looks like his nails are trying to dig into the plaster.

“Don’t break the wall, man,” Patrick says. “There’s probably asbestos in there. You could die, and that would hurt.”

It’s a serious fucking concern, because Patrick is a good guy and only looking out for Johnny’s best interests, so he’s almost offended when Johnny starts to laugh.

Okay, that’s a lie. Johnny’s face cracks open with his laughter, his body unfolds, turning loose and bent double, and Patrick stands in front of him, his hands raised triumphantly in the air.

One of the things I really enjoy about hockey fandom is the commitment to stories where one dude plays hockey and the other dude used to but is now homeless/poor/a hooker. The first one of those I read was Knocking Me Dead (Ryan Kesler/Andrew Ladd) by beatperfume. It's fluffy and delightful, and my absolute favorite variety of hooker AU.

Over the next few weeks, Andrew takes a pair of Kesler’s gloves, a Coach bag containing a present for his mom, a travel coffee mug, and his expensive sunglasses. Some of it Kesler gets back (his mom’s present, his mug) and some he doesn't (he doesn’t even bring up the gloves). But he always has to go back and ask, and every time he ends up having sex with Andrew. The fact that each time, he comes prepared with a couple hundred in cash is something he doesn't think about. He also doesn't think about the fact that he doesn't get mad anymore when he realizes something is missing.

Whatever. He's getting laid and he's playing great, so there's really no need to complain.

The other thing this fandom has a serious commitment to is babyfic. This comment/chatfic by shoemaster and go_gentle is such a story. Erik Staal and Jeff Skinner have a one-night stand when Jeff is seventeen, and it results in a baby. If you are not into mpreg, this story is safe for you since it skips to Jeff showing up with the baby.

He brings their stuff inside and drops it in the hall the second he sees Jeff holding Maggie. She smiles when she sees him, and he's so glad she didn't forget him, even if it was a stupid thing to worry about.

"Hey little one," he says, leaning down to kiss her forehead. "Papa missed you."

Jeff is just beaming at both of them and it just feels like home, and it feels like family, and Eric just wants to pull Jeff into his arms and hold them both.

"I missed the way she smells," Jeff admits.

"Way better than the locker rooms at Nassau," Eric agrees, stroking Maggie's cheek.

They stand there grinning at each other for few moments.

Eric finally breaks the moment. "Who's hungry? C'mon, I'll make dinner," he says, putting his hand on Jeff's back to herd him towards the kitchen.

I am semi-systematically reading my way through the hockey RPF at AO3 (there are only 632 of them, and I've already read a fair number of the really long ones), but I will take recs for fic if you are also enjoying this fandom! I am perfectly happy to read these without knowing anything about any of the characters, so team/pairing is unimportant.

Best of the Year

Here are the five best books I read last year, alphabetical by author's last name, with first lines. I have completely cheated on this this year and included two series to count as one book each. I've only put the first line of the first book for the series. (This is actually a double cheat since the first book in one of those series was one of my best books of 2009, and a triple cheat since both series include books I've read before.)

• The Splendor Falls by Rosemary Clement-Moore.

  For months, I relived the pas de deux in my dreams, in that multisensory Technicolor of a memory I'd much rather forget.

• The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins.

  When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.

• Will Grayson Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan.

  When I was little, my dad used to tell me, "Will, you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."

• Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta.

  A long time ago, in the spring before the five days of the unspeakable, Finnikin of the Rock dreamed that he was to sacrifice a pound of flesh to save the royal house of Lumatere.

• The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, and A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner.

  I didn't know how long I had been in the king's prison.

All of the Year

A decade ago, I decided that I would keep a list of all the books I read. It would be, I thought, interesting to see how much, and what, I actually read. So when I read a book, I wrote it down in my notebook. I liked the whole project so much that I've been doing it again each year.

What's here:

• Books I read in 2011.


• Authors of the books.


• Dates I read the books.


• Short notes about each book, including links to my reviews if I did one. Note: reviews all contain spoilers.


• Approximately how many times I've read the book.

What's not here:

• Magazine and newspaper articles.


• Web-published fiction I read.


• Short stories and individual chapters I read to remind myself of what the book was about.

This year, I read 46 books. For those of you playing along at home, that's 15 more than last year. 38 of those, or 83%, are books I read for the first time. 27, or 80%, were Young Adult or children's books. 3 were written by a PoC author; 44 were written by a female author or coauthor. Of the 44 books for which I counted protagonists, 5 or 8 (depending on how you count Katniss Everdeen) had a PoC protagonist; 37 had a female protagonist.

( The List )

I loved both of Marisa de los Santos' previous books - Love Walked In and Belong To Me - so I was excited to see a new book from her, and Falling Together didn't disappoint.

( Spoilers/Review )

All said, I loved this book, although I wish I had read it more slowly (I was up against a library due date and it was unrenewable). If you liked her previous books, you will definitely like this one, although if you didn't like those, you probably won't like this one either.

A while ago, for no reason I can remember, I decided to read some Star Trek reboot fic. I missed this fandom the first time around for two reasons: One is that I don't want to read Kirk/Spock. I get that they're the original Trek pairing, but (a) Spock and Uhura! and (b) as much as I expected Kirk and Spock to fall in love, they didn't. The other is that I saw the movie in theaters three times in a month, and my reactions were something like this:

First time: Awesome!
Second time: Wow, that's a lot of lens flare.
Third time: JJ, YOUR STUPID PLOT IS GETTING IN THE WAY OF A REALLY GOOD MOVIE.

Two years later, that trauma has worn off, and it was probably time for me to get into this fandom anyway since I generally pick up fandoms two years late. Since I'm not reading Kirk/Spock, there are two other pairings I've gone for: Kirk/McCoy and Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto. I didn't think I was that involved in this fandom, and then Zachary Quinto officially came out and I had a lot of feelings about it, so maybe I just imprint quickly.

This entry originally had a recs request section, but since my last entry makes that redundant, this is now just five recs.

Fic Rec: Kirk/McCoy
I read Ceres_Libera's Switch on accident. Not that I didn't mean to click on it, but I misread the word count, and only when I'd been reading for a while and hadn't gotten anywhere near the end did I realize it was 230,000 words, not 23,000. The story is fantastic. It's long and slow and they don't get together until near the end. There's bed sharing and stealth bed sharing. Kirk becomes a teacher to a bunch of other Cadets, which is one of the things I love in outsiders in an academy stories. It's a fantastic love story with a really good McCoy pov and interesting politics. It is also the first story I've ever read that uses "clavicle" in a sex scene where it's both character appropriate - McCoy uses anatomical terms to talk about bodies all the way through the story - and sexy. Really the only problem with this story is that every time I go look at it to rec it, I get sucked in again and spend hours rereading it.

Jim was silent while Leo stepped toward him, but shifted to the edge of the bed and spread his legs so that Leo could stand between them. Leo'd never had a patient that so aggressively wanted the doctor to invade his personal space. "I'm going to make a lesson plan for you, too, Bones," he said quietly. His color was still high from fighting, and Leo could practically hear the adrenaline zinging through his system.

"That a fact?" Leo drawled, lining up hypos on the tray with some satisfaction.

"Yep," Jim said, and Leo started at the feeling of Kirk's hand wrapping itself around his hip the way it had the other night, and he looked up, straight into Jim's bloodshot blue eyes. "Going to make sure that you're capable of disarming an enemy, teach you to use whatever weapons you have at hand to defend yourself and sickbay."

Leo picked up one of the hypo sprays menacingly, and he heard Jim chuckle, then felt his long fingers flex on his hip, his thumb rubbing against the ridge of his external obliques. Jim was watching him, his eyes twinkling with amusement and something that looked a lot like affection, before he closed his eyes and lifted his chin, exposing the long line of his neck. "Go ahead, Bones," he said quietly. "I'm all yours."

Kink Fic Rec: Kirk/McCoy
You remember how overstimulation/people taking it beyond what they think they can is one of my top five kinks? silverlining_99's Just Can't Get Enough is one of those stories, and an incredibly hot one at that.

Jim sets it aside for awhile, though it nags at him, the very suggestion that maybe he doesn't need to bother holding back and hiding even the most extreme parts of himself. On the one hand it's a completely foreign notion to him, has been since he first became acquainted with his own near-insatiable drive and realized it isn't normal, the way his body resists being done if he allows himself to get going at all.

On the other hand, since the day he met Bones the man has bitched and moaned but indulged him in every way that matters, every single time.

On some level he's not exactly surprised that Bones would do it for this, too. If anything it's that that makes him reluctant to let go entirely, to let Bones see just how far -- and long -- he could actually go.

He doesn't want to take advantage, or anything.

Kink Fic Rec: Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto
The cheesy title made me put off reading medea_fic's Captain Spanky and Supernova series. Then I stumbled into a different excellent piece of kink medea_fic wrote, and decided to trust that these might be good. I loved them. They are incredibly engrossing. There is also some really hardcore kink, as in if I'd been told what was in them I might not have read them because it's not my thing. It works, though, in the story.

The basic plot is that Chris starts to think he might be a little kinky, gets Zach to play that out with him, and then it keeps escalating, both kinkwise and relationshipwise. The other thing you should know before you start reading is that this is not one of those stories where the author warns for angst, and then you read it and think, "That wasn't angsty!" medea_fic means those angst warnings. Don't start reading part 12 of Supernova unless you have time to read from there all the way through to the end. Those last few chapters are rough, but the story arc is incredibly satisfying.

Zach gives a small smile. A strange smile that Chris had never seen before. It hits him: this is the smile reserved for Zach’s lovers. Chris feels a stab of – something – at the thought that so many others before him have seen that gorgeous smile.

“You want me to spank you? Doesn’t sound like it to me.”

“I want you to hit me. I’ve been thinking about it for – for months. Please, Zach.” Chris is thinking, Hell yes this is my thing. And no need for fantasies of a hot female redhead, either. He wonders what his face looks like, because he is trying to project desperation and appreciation and anticipation and all the things he thinks Zach would like to see. It seems to work.

Fic Rec: Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto/George Clooney
Now this is a threesome you never knew you wanted, but now that you're thinking about it, you can't stop. The story is sparky77's The George Clooney Experience, and it is absolutely hilarious.

There are certain things that George does not do. Not because they’re wrong -- his grasp of right and wrong has never been that strong -- but because they never turn out as well as he planned.

He’s learned his lesson. No more fucking pretty boy actors. It never works out well. And they’re never as pretty as he thought when he was drunk and it was dark. And they generally turn out to be idiots. And assholes. And lousy in bed.

He’s not entirely sure what the kids are getting up to these days, but clearly it’s not good sex. Maybe he should talk to the President about the state of sex education in this country. Clearly something is missing. He has his phone out of his pocket before it occurs to him that drunk-dialing the President is probably not a good plan.

He is really, really fucking drunk. And that’s the only excuse for the fact that right now he is checking out the ass of a pretty boy actor. It’s a very nice ass, and, you know, fuck it. He can learn the lesson about not fucking pretty boy actors again tomorrow.

Fic Rec: girl!Kirk
In addition to the pairings above, I wandered my way into always-a-girl territory, and found In Her Aspect and Her Eyes by ninhursag. The story is "Four people Jamie Kirk likes the look of, and the one she loves." Each section is told from the other person's pov, and yet Jamie doesn't get lost in it. The first three sections are good, but it's the end of the fourth and the fifth that have lodged themselves in my head. Heed the consent warnings.

"You have scars," Gaila whispers when she finds them with her fingertips. They're broad and flat, just raised skin, really. They're all over Jamie's back and scattered over her ass.

"Good observation. I do," Jamie says and she sounds a little lazy-- still calm and sleepy, still, but she's gone stiff. No more purring cat, more like spine curved, claws ready.

Gaila frowns and finds herself going stiff too. "I don't-- do human manners say it's rude to ask? You've been so nice, don't let me be rude, please."

For some reason that turns out to be exactly the thing to say. Jamie laughs, relaxing again, and kisses Gaila on the mouth, warm and pleasant. She tastes like Gaila's orgasm and that works just fine for her. "You," Jamie says, "Are the least rude person I have ever met. Forget about it, okay?"