recs and links

Vidders : ash48 & maichan808 Betas : _sharvie_, deirdre_c, and lsketch42 Music : Audio clips from Slinky, G.I. Joe, Old Spice, Slap Chop, Timex, Yoshi Blade, Bud Light, Shake-a-Puddding, Energizer, Bounty, Sprite, Pantene, Barbie, Yak Freedom, Chevrolet, Oscar Mayer, Snuggle, Flying Circus Rating :…

"I'm going to die," Eames tells him, sprawled on his living room sofa like a Victorian maiden with the vapors, complete with one arm flung over his eyes. His laptop is sitting on the coffee table, and the cursor does not appear to have moved in Arthur's absence. "You can die after you finish this draft," Arthur says, and places a cup of coffee on the table that he picked up from the shop down the street. "Have mercy, darling," Eames moans, and then cracks open an eye. "You brought me coffee?" "Drink it, stop whining, and finish that draft, or I swear to god, Mr. Eames, I will strangle you and enjoy it thoroughly." AU where Eames is a novelist and Arthur is his editor. Wonderful banter and pining.

Really lovely post-series Josh/Donna. It made me tear up, anyway.

Ahahahahaha! The Inception team as CareBears *dies* With adorable artwork.

"Sorry," Eames says. "That was –- that was Arthur." "Of course it was," his mother says. Eames doesn't like that tone in her voice. It's somewhere between tolerance and amusement. Parents shouldn't laugh at their children. Unless they share the joke. "I have to go, Mum," he says apologetically. "Work calls." "No, darling," his mother says. "Work didn't call, Arthur called." "It's the same thing," Eames says. His mother makes what he can only describe as a mocking noise. "Hardly." Really lovely, meditative look at Eames and Arthur and their relationship. Also, Eames's mum FTW!

Other than Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi, few musicians are as associated with New Jersey as The Gaslight Anthem. That’s why it was such a shock to fans when singer/guitarist Brian Fallon packed up and moved to Brooklyn as the band began work on its third album, American Slang. While you could take The Gaslight […] More

Jo also isn’t the kind of girl Sam’s used to meeting at Stanford. She wears thrift-store tank tops under old flannel shirts and workman’s boots worn thin with real use, not bright patterned shirts or sparkling jewelry. There’s dirt under her fingernails more often than not and she’s got a vaguely Midwestern accent like his, which is strangely rare here. Stanford may have students from all over the country (and the world, for that matter), but the heartland of America isn’t always particularly well-represented. She knows how to hustle and steal and use her innocent good looks to wheedle and while what she wants out of the generally unsuspecting public for fun and profit. This, she explains to him, is what she was doing when they met at the bar. She’s pretty and smart and an anthropology major and keeps a box full of knives tucked under a false bottom in one of her desk drawers. AU where Jo and Sam meet and fall in love at Stanford. Very cool

"It's not like we have a choice anyway," Eames said. "Unless anyone here is volunteering to walk up to Saito and say, thank you for this gift but no thank you? Oh, and can we have back the PASIV that you took from us, because that would be lovely." They all shuddered. "...Cobb could take off his clothes for Saito," Yusuf offered. "What?" Cobb said, sounding like he was choking. "I have children!" "I can't be the only one thinking it!" Yusuf said. "All those smoldering looks!" "Good lord, man, don't bring your children into your striptease," Eames said. "That's just filthy." "There will be no striptease," Cobb said between gritted teeth. "No stripping of any sort. No teasing of any sort. And I do not smolder at Saito. I don't want to know what drugs you're tripping on right now, Yusuf." *dies laughing* Utter cracktastic hilarity.

There are two seasons: the one where it rains water and the one where it rains blood. Rimshot. Bah-dum-dun. The bodies don’t stop coming, and you sleep in seconds instead of hours. Perfect, achy, brutal story about McMurphy.

Brutally realistic and heartbreaking look at Zuko trying to win the peace.

At first glance, the shape of the classic paring knife seems to make sense. A great big curved chef's knife is for cutting, hacking, and chopping large things, so to cut, hack, and chop small things, I'd want to use a small version of a chef's knife, right? The thing is, I don't use a paring knife for cutting, hacking, and chopping. I use it for peeling, brunoise-ing, thin slicing, and generally performing the type of precision knife work that a large chef's knife is simply too thick and bulky for. There's a fundamental difference between the type of tasks performed by a chef's knife and a paring knife. With this in mind, I went shopping for a paring knife with a new set of criteria.

“your name isn’t Arthur.” “Yours isn’t Eames,” Arthur shot back. “Oh excellent,” Mal said, delighted. “You know one another.” “When this job is over, I am going to punch you in the face,” Eames said. Enjoyable backstory for Arthur/Eames.

"Oh, Christ, no. Arthur, it was many, many things, but it was certainly never that. I can list all the things it was, if you'd like. I know you enjoy your lists. Frustrating, infuriating, maddening—" "Those all mean the same thing." "I won't lie to you, darling, I'm beginning to think they're all synonyms for 'Arthur.'" Warm, schmoopy Arthur/Eames full of pining and banter and Arthur wearing Eames's ugly but comfortable clothes. *happy sigh*

Dick loves his family and it’s incredibly important to him. Dick has attempted to help others who weren’t family[...] So wouldn’t it be more in-character for him to not just offer Jason counseling, but also let him know that he considers Jason his brother and that he feels guilt for not being there when Jason died? Making Dick loathe Jason seems like a very odd move for a character who loves family above all else. It would mean that the bonding they did have when Jason was Robin and Dick was Nightwing is negated, the trust he extended to Jason in Outsiders forgotten and now a push moving the characters both into places where they don’t exactly fit in a very simplistic manner. (I continue to ignore comics canon so I can ship them hard)

Dean has to be invulnerable and inhuman and strong enough for the both of them; he has to be everything that Sam is not, he has to be brave so that Sam can be scared, and sane so that Sam can go crazy sometimes. It's a perfectly logical idea, when you're four or six or ten years old and your brother is all you know of heroism, all you know of what makes sense in the world. At twenty-three, when you know what maintaining that illusion has cost him, and continues to cost him, continuing to believe it is at once cruel and the only thing you can do, because he's built his entire world upon it. He believes in it, too, and it'll kill him, that he isn't. That he can't be. That no one, ever, could be. Utterly gorgeous and bleak casefile set between Nightshifter and BUaBS.

Utterly adorable Wendy/Lacey first time.

Manjula's tone is final, brooks no disagreement, and it makes Marge smile and want to rise into the air. There is such certainty in the woman, more than enough for two, with plenty to spare. She is touching Marge's hair now, working her fingers into the stiff-sprayed curls. Everything loosens around Manjula: dishes don't finish rinsing, sentences trail off, Marge's hair droops and spills. Lovely Marge/Manjula story that burns slow and hot.

In which Dean accidentally joins the Glee Club, gets a girlfriend, and finds a hunt. Adorkable. (timelines are jiggered so Dean's a teenager at McKinley High.)

A catalogue of some of the more...embarrassing incidents Sam and Dean have faced while hunting. Hilarious.

lots of crowning moments of awesome here, plus tough guy jazz hands with the guns and the flashlights and you know how much i like that.

“Dude, seriously, without me, you’d be stuck on some half-assed road without a damn clue which way is north. Even if you had a compass rose tattooed on your ass.” “Uh, already stuck on some half-assed road and you’re here,” Dean points out, slapping Sam’s leg. “And if I had a compass rose on my ass, I wouldn’t be able to see it anyway, Sam. Unless I had a mirror and—“ Sam smacks his brother upside the head with something heavy. “Oops, thought that was the map.” This story starts out with some fine brotherly hilarity and then BAM! it slams you in the gut with gorgeous heartbreak. Have a tissue handy.

"She should probably go to hospital, just in case she has a bad reaction to it. It would be safer." "Oh, wonderful," says Arthur. "And what do we tell the doctor? She just happened to be self-infusing a substance synthesised by a friend?" "Ariadne," says Saito. "Do you have a favourite hospital?" She blinks. "I -- had my appendix out at the American Hospital of Paris. They were fine." "Excellent. I own that hospital." "You do not," says Eames. Saito is pulling out his phone. "I will own it by the time we arrive there," he amends. Ahahahahaha! Yusuf is long-suffering and Saito is a BAMF and there is hilarity about cannulae. *dies*

During "Changing Channels," the Trickster zaps Sam and Dean into a lesbian porno. As the stars. They must, of course, play their roles. Ridiculously, amazingly hot. (Wincest)

"Jason Todd," she says. "Well." She runs long fingers through her hair, and looks up at nothing. "What do you want? Good parts? Bad parts? Embarrassing stories?" "I want to know if I'm like him." That gets her attention. She looks at me in surprise. It takes her a couple seconds to figure out what to say. "Jason Todd was a jerk and a punk," she says. "He was brave. Determined. Too stubborn for his own good. He liked power more than responsibility, and never avoided a fight when he could start one." She shakes her head, with a bitter little smile. "And he looked at me as if he were undressing me with his eyes. So, no. He was nothing like you." I don't know Steph at all, but this still made me cry. (Oh, Jason...)

Really lovely story showing how Zuko evolves over the course of the series through Katara's eyes.

Sweet, nicely characterized AU where Sam and Dean aren't growing up in the hunt, but it finds them, nonetheless. I really liked how very much themselves they were in this.

Mai and Iroh FIGHT CRIME! Or, they catch the guy who tries to assassinate Zuko, anyway. Adorable. “Been a long time since I saw anyone use a fukiya,” he says. Carefully, he removes the dart from within and sniffs the tip. “Red belladonna. Very nice. Slow acting, so he’d have hours to regret his sins. Most young people want nothing to do with the old ways.” “Zuko will be happy to know he was almost murdered by a historical recreationist,” says Mai.

“Though I cannot deny,” she continues, tilting her head and smiling up at him, “that Mr. Eames is proving himself essential to my future happiness.” “And how is that?” he asks, finally. “Has he promised you the finest equipage in the the town, or ten country houses, or a retinue of pretty abigails to serve you?” “On the contrary,” she says, and swallows. With Eames boldness is easy, but with Arthur there is always so much more at stake. “He has promised me you.” Nicely done. I like all the simmering tension between them, and enjoy picturing them in the clothes of the era.

Sam deals with a hunt at Stanford that only cements his desire to leave the hunting life behind. Oh, Sam... Works in the revelations from s5 naturally and heartbreakingly, as well.