I seriously should not be on the internets right now, but there are pictures from the Superstars on Ice rehearsals and I have thoughts.

( Picspam behind the cut. )

1. Project Runway S5! My initial reaction is always, "Wow, there's so many of them! How is Bravo going to get me to love them so much like they always do?" That one over-tanned guy is consciously trying to depict himself as a wacky hybrid of Christian Siriano and Santino Rice, but he doesn't seem smart enough. I like Suede and his blue mohawk: don't know why he reminds me so much of Uncle Nick. Daniel and Kelli seem exceptionally talented, and those sweet mousy girls are so cute I hope one of them pulls an upset and makes it to fashion week.

2. I am, like, three weeks behind on Shear Genius, but so far, omg, it's like a big floral caftan of over-the-top fabulosity.

3. ( So You Think You Can Spoilers )

4.( July is the season for skating gossip )

5. (or possibly 4e, it's a tough call) Sarah Brannen, who writes the awesome, funny blog on IceNetwork, wrote a fabulous children's book about gay guinea pigs getting married. fox1013, were you aware of this? Apparently, there has been kerfuffle for the predictable reasons, and it has involved the phrase "homosexual rodents." Equally fabulous librarian blog response here.

I am sleep-deprived and burned out on femslash08 and there is no way I'm going to get any more real work done today. espresso_addict reminded me of my fail-ish project to post to LJ all the fic that went away when Freeservers ate my website. So here's the one I've most wanted to bring back to life.

It's from 2003. That didn't seem so long ago until I read the headers.

Title: No Easy Way Down
Fandom: Farscape
Pairing: Crichton/Aeryn
Rating: NC-17 for bizarre alien sex
Spoilers/Continuity: Takes place in the third season.
Summary: Crichton and Aeryn have interface compatibility issues.
Word count: 2,276
Disclaimers: Farscape is the intellectual property of the Jim Henson
Company, Nine Network Australia, and Hallmark Entertainment. This original work of fan fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License; attribution should include a link to this Livejournal post. It is protected in the USA by the fair use provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976 because I do not intend to sell it at any price. Snakes in wheelchairs, going clockwise.
Notes: Thanks to vassilissa for the beta, and to distraction77. And to
the fuh-qers, especially thsfuhqinsux, whose fault this whole thing is. The title comes from a Dusty Springfield song.

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( Well, that was weird alien ass sex. )

Just finished the inevitable backup fic for femslash08, which I mostly wrote in a burst of coffee-fueled creativity at 8:30 this morning.

Title: The Burning Keeps Me Alive
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Claire/Elle
Spoilers/Continuity: Through the end of the second season.
Rating: NC-17 for sex, violence, and language.
Warning: The kind of pain/power stuff you'd expect from this pairing.
Summary: Compassion lessons in what's left of America's heartland.
Word Count: about 1,300.
Disclaimer: Heroes is the intellectual property of NBC. This original work of fan fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License; attribution should include a link to this Livejournal post. This story is a labor of love, not money, so it's protected in the USA by the fair use provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976. I changed my hairstyle so many times now, I don't know what I look like.
Notes: Thanks to callmesandy for the super fast beta. Written for aphrodite_mine for femslash08. Title is from "Life During Wartime" by the Talking Heads.

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( In this future, you get to be a superhero. )

OMG, everyone, we totally crashed LJ with all the lesbian porn last night.

I mean, I'm sure femslash08 had very little to do with the outage? But I think we all prefer the version of events where LJ's servers simply could not take the sheer quantity of girl-on-girl action.

I have been too busy moderating to read most of the stories yet, but jengrrrl wrote me the world's most amazing funny sexy South of Nowhere fic and I could not recommend it more highly.

femslash08 stories are going up, yay! This is the one I wrote.

Title: We Belong Together Like Sex and Violence
Fandom: Women's Murder Club
Pairing: Lindsay/Cindy
Rating: PG-13 for sexual situations
Spoilers/Continuity: Takes place a couple of months after the show ends.
Summary: What kind of sick freak kills a nun? And what kind of sick freak puts the case ahead of her girlfriend?
Word count: about 1,200.
Disclaimers: Women's Murder Club is the intellectual property of 20th Century Fox. This original work of fan fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License; attribution should include a link to this Livejournal post. This story is a labor of love, not money, so it's protected in the USA by the fair use provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976. If I could be a back-street lurker, I'd make more money and have more fun.
Notes: Written for femslash08 for celeria. Title is from "Heather Heather" by The Magnetic Fields. Huge thanks to jule1122 for the speedy beta.

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( Lindsay is enjoying her lazy, rainy morning until she gets the call about the dead nun. )

The Evan/Tanith interview is finally up on IceNetwork, and yes, I watched it. ( This goes on a bit. )

I should cheer myself up by writing Tanith/Tila Tequila, y/y?

So I went to the beach and scrawled things in my notebook, and some of them were ficlets that people requested while I was bored at work.

For jengrrrl, South of Nowhere, Spencer/Ashley. No spoilers; it feels kind of S2-ish.

( I'm young, and I love to be young. I'm free, and I love being free. )

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For estriel, skating, Johnny/Tanith, this summer at Champs Camp, references to the stuff on IceNetwork. This one got kind of involved, and also I swear this happened.

( Climbed a mountain and I turned around. )

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And last but not least, special bonus ficlet for callmesandy, who had to go to the dentist so I wrote her Johnny/Ben porn in the IM window. Takes place this summer, a little AU-ishly. Warning: fluffy porny friendservice.

( My choice is to stay, and keep you close to me. )

Back from Undisclosed Seaside Location! And back to work. But now I have new shoes and an electric mixer! And there were crab cakes and frozen custard. And my mom.

Also, a notebook full of semi-random scrawlings, some of which look enough like ficlets to be posted tonight if I have enough time after work and grocery shopping and replacing my lost cell phone charger and blaaaargh.

Tanith, Ben, and Evan were in a Japanese charity gala together (charity whores! I love my charity whores.) and in the finale, Tanith skated with Evan and then Ben stole her back. Make of this what you will.

Still not on IceNetwork: anything about that, aside from one more picture in which the two of them are sitting together, not looking at each other, and not touching. There's more evidence that Ben Agosto and John Baldwin are dating. Also, more evidence that Jeremy Abbott is adorable and trying very hard not to talk out of only one side of his mouth.

Relatedly: oh, sweetie, the crotch on that costume. Did his dance belt slip? I was going to icon one of those, but even if I crop above the waist, the mental image is hard to erase.

I'm sure everyone has noticed that Johnny Weir has a new journal article and that he enjoys baiting the Johnny/Stephane 'shippers.

Someone on FSU referred to pairs as "dwarf tossing" and now that is what I am calling it.

One week until femslash08 stories are due. So this is the week when I hate all of fandom ever and then the stories come up and it's all worth it. (I am obviously too mean to run a ficathon, but why let that stop me?)

Hokay, kids, let's see how many of these I can type directly into the LJ window by 4 PM EDT.

LJ cuts are lines from whatever turns up on my Zune.

For jule1122, skatin', Johnny/Ben, 2008 Central Park show.

( I built a levee of the stars )

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For ariestess, Women's Murder Club, Lindsay/Jill, post-series.

( Shine, shine, shine it bright onto what you really want. )

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For kindkit, who walks the line between mean and brilliant, SF author RPF, China Miéville/Samuel R. Delany.

( Like a Jabberwocky, I am hungry for your love. )

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For fox1013, Survivor/Muppets, Rizzo the Rat/Eliza Orlins.

( Nonsense has a welcome ring )

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Yay, it's almost time to go home. I wasted a whole hour! You guys are so HELPFUL.

ETA: Okay, guys, that's all I'm gonna have time for. Offer closed.

Bored at work. Give me a couple of characters, and I'll make 'em kiss. Just for you! Additional word/phrase of prompt would be helpful but not required. I am so punchy I'm even willing to try old fandoms/brave new fandoms/crossovers/Muppets. For fucking serious.

talk_back was having trouble understanding gymnastics' Code of Points, and apparently so is everyone else. I don't grok it the way I do skating's CoP, mostly because I quit gymnastics classes at age six so I could start ice skating. But I left an explanation in talk_back's comments and thought it might help others.

Each routine/element/thingy has an inherent level of difficulty that is calculated ahead of time. I am not sure how this is calculated, as I do not understand gymnastics nearly as well as skating, but the level of difficulty is rated on a scale of 1-7. If you're doing the balance beam equivalent of a quad toe-triple toe, your routine has a difficulty level near the maximum, or you can be more Jeff Buttle about it, etc. So you're going in with a base difficulty level, same as skating.

After you do your routine/vault/whatever, the judges then confer to decide how awesome your routine/vault/whatever was. There are some mandatory deductions: taking a step after a dismount, stepping out of bounds on floor exercises, falling on butt, etc. This degree of awesomeness is rated on a scale of 1-10.

They add your difficulty level to how well you executed whatever you were doing, and that's your score. Does that make sense?

If you know the specifics of the sport better than I do, please do comment and clarify. Or bitch about how the loss of the 10.0 system is killing the sport OMG, although if you do that Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir might skate over your hand. Just to warn you.

1. I reached skip=280 on my friendslist today, and this constitutes a massive amount of catching up. Just so we're clear on the crazy levels of backlog. And I'll be on hiatus completely next week, so there go those plans of active fannish engagement.

2. I have been watching the US Olympic trials in, you know, the foofy sports. Gymnastics and diving. I like flexible people with good abs! As in skating, not enough coverage of the men, not enough eye candy among the women, although springboard diver Christina Loukas is not entirely hard on the eyes. The real story, though, is in men's platform, where this guy is the cutest tiny homosexual athlete since Jeremy Abbott. He is the second best men's platform diver in the United States. The best men's platform diver in the United States is David Boudia, who is Thomas's "good friend," and they do synchronized diving together. I will take my porn now plz.

3. You know what the sport of figure skating needs? Mr. John Baldwin, Jr., hanging up his skates and doing some commentary for NBC and ESPN.

4. I am ruining, like, six people's hopes and dreams by the extent to which Gossip Girl has made me a Dan/Serena shipper. I'm sure I'm not the first to note how much she looks like Claudia Black, which only intensifies my feeling that GG is Farscape with fewer aliens and more cocktail parties.

5. Fandom is accusing my friends of racism again, and it is getting OLD, people. Ha, I haven't been queer-bashed in a while; maybe I should go comment on some meta. This is inappropriate for an unlocked post, but seriously, it's e-fucking-nough.

Fic! I have no idea who is going to read this, but fic!

Title: Maybe Sprout Wings
Fandom: Women's Murder Club
Pairing: Lindsay/Jill
Rating: PG-13 for language and mature content
Spoilers/Continuity: takes place a couple of months after the show ends.
Warning: Non-explicit and non-erotic references to underage and intergenerational intimacy, in the context of a murder case.
Summary: Jill is a little too invested in the case of a murdered teenage figure skater -- and a little too invested in Lindsay.
Word count: about 5,200.
Disclaimers: Women's Murder Club is the intellectual property of 20th Century Fox. The original characters in this story are my own creations; no similarity to real people, living or dead, is intended. This original work of fan fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License; attribution should include a link to this Livejournal post. This story is a labor of love, not money, so it's protected in the USA by the fair use provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976. All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed. It's like Dan Rydell's New York renaissance, only with more naked chicks.
Notes: Written for The 2008 Dog Days of Summer Femslash Advent Calendar. Title is from a Mountain Goats song. Thanks to annavtree for help with Bay Area geography, and immeasurably huge gratitude to my beta, jule1122.

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( She died with her boots on. )

1. My flist reading started at skip=440 today, so if you posted anything ever, be prepared for belated random commenting.

2. My Zune really likes "Just Missed the Train" by Kelly Clarkson, and I can never remember what song it is. So I do that, "Ooh, I really like this, what is it?" and the Toy is all, "Dude, it's that Kelly Clarkson song. The same one. You idiot."

Please to not be commenting on how lame I am for loving Kelly Clarkson.

3. Survivor Africa is a really different season when you root for Brandon. I've seen it three times, each time rooting for Lex. I like Lex. But fox1013 does not, so she told me we had to agree on someone else to root for. Suddenly, Africa is the story of heartbreak, betrayal, and bitchy queeny flaming arrows.

4. Still no sign of the Tanith/Evan interview on IceNetwork. I welcome your theories.

5. The problem with thistle90 is, we get drunkish and then she's all, so, when did you say you were writing me that Johnny Weir/Randy Harrison fic where Johnny makes him throw out that plaid shirt and then they have sex?

6. This game has taken over my life. I do not know why it's so fun, but I am spending hours and hours building buildings.

1. So yes, fifteen quality minutes of Johnny Weir being off-ice fabulous on IceNetwork, and trust me, it is fabulous. There's this thing with whoopie pies and he does the whole thing without cracking up and people on the message boards thought he was serious. It has been speculated elsewhere that these videos are evidence that Johnny has failed the media relations seminar yet again, but I think it's more like USFSA has given up and admitted that Johnny's media persona works to their advantage. They've basically given his fans fifteen minutes of snark to enjoy. And by giving him permission to goof around, they've given him incentive to play along when it's actually important.

Also, it's not like the interviews with Ben Agosto or Brent Bommentre were... hinged.

Or the girls in the skating fashion "talk show." Johnny seemed downright sedate compared to Tanith. I'd forgotten how wacky she gets when she goes off-message. She was bitchy and ranty and totally responsible for the running butt crack joke. Her hair is still fierce, with accompanying circular finger snap.

The promised Tanith/Evan interview is not up yet -- when I get home I will have Merylandcharlie waiting for me -- and I'm kind of dreading it, not only for the usual but because I fear they might be announcing their engagement. (Tanith and Evan, not Meryl and Charlie.) And you can guess how I feel about that.

1a. I would very much like to transcribe the IceNetwork videos, but I have a lot of Real Life to do this week, not to mention a fic deadline on Friday. I'll probably get 'em done just around when nobody cares anymore and/or they've been leaked to YouTube.

2. I have watched the first three episodes of Gossip Girl, and it's good to see Josh Schwartz still has it. What a clever, well-written show. Unfortunately for those who got their hopes up, it is, as callmesandy predicted, not the kind of show I usually write fic about. Not really my character types (except Dan, kind of), really really not my physical types. But it's an awesome show and I enjoy watching it.

3. On the other hand, I have officially been pimped into the cult of Lindsay Lohan/Sam Ronson.

4. SYTYCDOMG tonight.

5. Also tonight, I am cutting most of my hair off. My dissertation adviser has not compared me to a Teletubby yet, but I think we're on the verge.

6. I kind of wish I'd gone to con_txt. Maybe next year.

7. So far, this summer's kink-related ficathons have resulted in one fic that doesn't get past second base, one fic about a pairing I only even thought of because it came up in a random meme, one unfinished fic that made me realize that the pairing it was about are a One True Friendship for me, and the beginning of a masturbation fic. Why can't I just write OTP PWP like a normal person? Sigh.

Important ice skater interview UPDATE. Because ahestele and callmesandy didn't have to ask me twice.

The way it worked was, they asked a bunch of skaters more or less the same twenty questions. It's hard to get across all of this, because Ben is very much a man who speaks with his body -- he gestures and shows a lot of emotion. As you might have guessed, I find this very appealing. And, you know, yay good answers!

Not sure who the interviewer was. Possibly Drew Meekins.

( OMG bug-laden video program and streaming problems and the fucking thing wouldn't let me pause you have no idea )

So. Um. For some reason I am hungry for Thai food.

1. Thanks to a seven-minute interview on IceNetwork, I am now even more in love with Ben Agosto than I was seven minutes ago. That IceNetwork subscription was an embarrassingly smart use of my money.

He... has really pretty hands. With which he gestures.

ETA:I have transcribed the Ben interview. Seriously. Oh, BEN.

In addition to the Ben one, there's also a Navarro/Bommentre (fun -- they're both witty), a Samuelson/Bates (he's kind of awesome, she's kind of a dope), and a McLaughlin/Brubaker (boring). If you want me to transcribe any of those, leave a comment.

2. In the continued pursuit of my femslash renaissance, I have acquired the first three episodes of Gossip Girl. I'll let you know how that goes.

3. I am making The Historian watch SYTYCD, and in exchange, she is making me watch The Real World: Hollywood, and damn her, I am enjoying it. I have never seen a season where they had more trouble keeping people in the house. But I think my favorite moment is the one where anger management therapy changes Dave's life.

USFSA just noticed which side its bread is buttered on. The picture is even flattering.

I am a sad, sad fangirl who cannot stop reloading Icenetwork to see if there are more pictures from camp. Thing I forgot to mention yesterday: we now have canon visual evidence of how much Rachael Flatt is Jeremy Abbott's adorable tiny sidekick, or possibly vice versa.

I asked fox1013 if it was okay to have Original Figure Skater Characters in my Women's Murder Club fic, and she said, "I don't see why not," and now I have 2,700 words of dead skater mystery with bonus Lindsay/Jill. So apparently that is the way to get me to do that, then.

I am reading matociquala's novel Carnival as a palate cleanser between great 17th-century prose works, and it is so fabulous on all levels. RIYL Le Guin, gay stuff, biting critiques of sci-fi tropes, and/or Samuel R. Delany.

1. Grand Prix assignments WTF? Weir's not at Cup of Russia, and they're all set up for a Johnny vs. Evan showdown at Skate America. Weir must be fucking livid. Although he's actually set up well, with only one really tough competitor at both Skate America and NHK. Things look rougher for Lambiel, who's up against Buttle, Chan, and Lysacek in Canada and Chan and Joubert in France. There'll be a great Verner vs. Joubert showdown in Russia. In dance, Cup of China is going to be wild: Domnina/Shabalin vs. Tanithandben vs. Khokhlova/Novitski.

And the rest remains to be seen.

2. Incredibly enthusiastic rec for fic I beta read: There Was This One Time, Friday Night Lights, Tim/Jean, by turnonmyheels. It's, you know, you try to beta for corrections and improvements and sometimes you just go HELL YES over and over. That is this fic.

3. (1a?) Icenetwork is full of pictures from Champs Camp. Stats so far:
Pictures implying Ben Agosto/Brent Bommentre: 1
Pictures implying Ben Agosto/John Baldwin: 1
Pictures implying Bebe Liang/Ashley Wagner: 3
Pictures illustrating that Charlie White gets more disturbingly hot with each passing day: 6
Pictures of Ben Agosto in incredibly ugly shorts: 1
Pictures of Johnny Weir looking happy: 4
Pictures of Evan Lysacek looking happy: 0
Pictures of Evan Lysacek looking like if he has to keep touching Tanith for one more second, he will throw up: 3