Streets are filled with --

Okay, right, so I wake up this morning after popping a couple of tabs of paracetamol last night, and mostly I just feel like I've been rolled over by a violently angry trucker. Repeatedly. I have to get on a plane in roughly one and a half days, so that's not looking too shiny. *rolls*

That said, might as well make someone else's day! :D paceus asked for a DVD commentary for Ho ho ho (Discworld). Here it is:

( Things I do when low on sleep )

\o/ I am a pretty pathetic commentary writer for drabbles. *g* If anyone else wants one - for any fic, really - feel free to poke at!

Alternatively, if you feel like making a sick girl's day: the fanficcers love meme, continued

[edit] While I'm in the meta mood, might as well do the 2008-fic-roundup thing that everyone else and their mother has probably done. 8D

( The year in a couple of words )

(this goes out from under the cut, because people need the love:)

Things I love - again and again and again I have struck gold with the people I've met. It's insane - everyone seems to talk about fandom wank and such, but I've never encountered anything other than squee and constructive crit.

pere_chan: my most amazing Pere! I do not know if you are home to read this right now, but thank you so damned much. You went from being one of the first people that I felt comfortable squeeing with on AIM to being one of my closest friends outright. ♥ Your Batman art blows my mind away - your art in general blows my mind away - but not more than your generosity of spirit and optimisim.

dnatio_memoriae: I am so glad you came out of the woodwork! Thank you so much for the last couple of months; it has been one hell of a ride. *g* You're always around with something to say about Turkfic, for which I am ETERNALLY GRATEFUL IN ALLCAPS, and I love love love the concrit you gave for Restorations. I love you art so much that I have this entire folder with nothing but your pieces. I look at it and it brings a warm glow to my stomach. TOGETHER WE WILL MUSH LUCIFER AND FINAL FANTASY VII AND BLIND THE WORLD. *g* *rolls*

logistika_nyx: you are the master, and I, merely the little slavegirl thing. *g* You have constantly been around to flail at and with, and to have endless comment threads when one/both of us are bored at school/work, and god knows you've made me a better, more thinky writer than I would've been otherwise. I hope you and the Boy are home and settled into House! :D I am blessed to have got to know you. And, you know, write copious amounts of (mind)porn with you.

kabuki_chan: I hope that you are alive! And that the world has not eaten you! ♥ Thank you so much for the co-squee and the amazing art over the past year. You are the bestest!

_ice_lady_: LET YOUR THESIS NOT EAT YOU, PLEASE. ♥ Thank you for being around and always having time to comment spam and grin and glee. ♥

maho_kiwi: kiwi! I am so glad to have got to know you and Laylah - the both of you are such landmarks of fandomy goodness, and the both of you work so hard that I feel kind of star-fishy and useless in comparison. You guys have been amazing generous with your time and yourselves, so ♥ ♥ ♥!

My nose is starting to clog up and object to a lack of medicine, and I'm running out of the braincells needed to do a proper thank-you list, but nonetheless:

white_jenna, puella_nerdii, aikonamika, guingel, mithrigil, shadowwaker -- and everyone else that my brain's not remembering: thank you so much for the past year. ♥

To all the new flisters, especially the Yuletides mjules, numinicious, elishabet, liviapenn, dhaunea, kangeiko, deepad, autumn_belias, okay here I really *am* running out of braincells - I love you guys for #yulechat, and I lookforward to mm.org, and the next yuletide, and all the OTHER CRAZY. Oh, and five million NYRs. ♥

Because January is here, and since I am a slow, slow human being, I present to you yuletide fic recs.

Yuletide

Self-pimping: I wrote, for zhiverny6 two American Gods fics: In Symbols and Two Man Con. Two Man Con is a follow up to In Symbols, but can be read more or less as a standalone. Both are backstories to the novel. I wrote Reunification for Jedi Buttercup, a little Silmarillion fic with Elrond and the usual suspects.

Author pimping ♥ : My most excellent author, Aevir, wrote me a beautiful Glorfindel and Ecthelion piece entitled Not marble, nor the gilded monuments that goes through Ages and change with delicacy and amazing finesse.

Akihabara@DEEP

A hilarious Japanese drama remake of a more serious manga based on the life of otakus in Tokyo's Akihabara electronics/gaming/geek district, it focuses on the trials and tribulations of a few friends with very strange personal habits who come together to defend their way of life. A nice, relatively light and quirky watch!

Touch, written by Jain.

I was not expecting @DEEP to appear in the archives at all, but turns out that refreshing the NYR page gives some pretty amazing things. ♥ Box and Page get through some... personal issues in a way that can only be deemed as entirely @DEEP-like. Cameo appearance by Akira, who is kick-ass in every sense of the word.

American Gods

By far one of my favourite non-classic fantasy books, American Gods is a mind-shattering read all on its own - if you've never picked it up before, you should. It's 700 pages but reads like a 100, and is chock full of the most amazing mythological parallels and rewrites set in a very real, very rich 20/21st century America. The country doesn't quite matter: if you're from any place or city where migrants come and go, and it's almost every city nowadays, really, this book is worth the time. By happy chance, it also has a lot of really good fic written for it this year, by loads of writers far better than myself.

One Phone Call, written by Laylah.

Amazingness of this author aside, this small ficlet is, on its own, one of the best Low Key and Wednesday characterisation pieces I've read. It's small, to the point and every word is delicious. Set up just before the novel, but needs the rest of it to make full impact.

The Journey West, by Oyce.

Anyone familiar with the Chinese/Japanese character of Monkey/Goku will be sucked into this. Anyone not familiar with it will be pulled in anyway. The writing is a kind of amazing, evocative, word-rich writing that makes a short piece feel like a small legend all on its own.

Discworld

It's Terry Pratchett. Do I really have to... say... anything.. about... that?

Thrill-Seeking, by Cadence.

It's Vetinari/Moist, it's smut, and it's more than just believable, it's pretty damned hot, too. Moist is exactly as he should be - pushing, pushing, and pushing a little bit more. Vetinari is - - - perfect beyond words. Vidi... vici... Vetinari.


In other news, je_holiday just had its reveal, so I throw a very big THANK YOU to my author, thblackflame, and make a pimpnote for the Kinki Kids fic she wrote, So Perfect, This Moment. My own fic was written for sollasollew11, and is a V6-centric Okada-rian thing called Growing Up Okada. Banzai!