"You look Time Lord."

Title: "A Night at the Lanes"
Fandom(s): Doctor Who
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Donna Noble, Clara Oswald, original character
Rating: G
Genre: General
Word Count: 6632

Summary: (Blue Rain AU) In repayment of a favor from his colleague Dave, Jon takes Donna, Dave, and Dave's girlfriend Clara out for a night of bowling.

Read it on AO3.

Author's Notes: Nothing special here. This is mostly intended to introduce new characters for the future: Dave, Jon's colleague who's a mechanic in his group and who'd been mentioned in Blue Rain but never actually appeared, and Dave's girlfriend Clara.

I did notice that while selecting character tags on AO3, "Clara Oswald" is subsumed by "Clara Oswin Oswald", which is weird to me, that the splinter's tag is considered dominant, not the companion's tag. Personally, I'd have three separate tags for Clara Oswald, Oswin Oswald, and Clara Oswin Oswald, since they're all different characters, but if I couldn't, I'd definitely make "Clara Oswald" the dominant tag.

I don't expect much from Goodreads, but I was still surprised to learn that Goodreads members have named The Hunger Games as the "best book ever"!

Title: Overrated
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, Ryo.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 490: Amnesty 49 at drabble_zone, using Challenge 487: Stars.
Setting: After the manga.
Summary: Ryo is happy being an ordinary detective.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
A/N: Double drabble.

Title: Party Doubts
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Jack, Ianto.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 906: Sour, at torchwood100.
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Jack and Ianto are getting ready for the twins’ birthday party.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
A/N: Double drabble.

Title: Lumos.
Author: lannamichaels
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Series: Part 1 of Leontes Granger
Pairing: Hermione Granger/Neville Longbottom
Rating: G
Archives: Archive Of Our Own, SquidgeWorld

Summary: Leontes Granger is sorted into Gryffindor.


( The boy!Hermione fic )

Youtube being sucky - but you need to watch this vid if you are at all into K-pop demon hunters.


youtube.com/shorts/wj42TF_i_-s

Job One: Remember that Computers Are Stupid

Job Two: bake Bob's favorite cookies to thank him for setting up my new laptop, and putting up with the occasional stupidity that's part of dealing with ones and zeroes.

We both knew it would take a couple of days, or even more than that, and I'm trying to be patient as he preps the new one (an Asus Vivo) so that we can download all my files from my slowly dying Lenovo, files that have been downloaded onto a delightful little red portable 2T hard drive.

That drive may will come in handy after the transfer, since I might need to keep it connected to my new laptop for a few weeks, or maybe months. My Lenovo has 1.82 T of storage, whilst my Asus only has 1T. We'll eventually see about getting a new, larger, drive in the Asus, but I don't foresee me using up the 1T of storage the Asus has. 

I've named the little hard drive Ada, and my new laptop is officially Alice-Alyx. It's the first time I've named a laptop, but it seemed the right thing to do with this one. I'm laughing a bit at myself, but hell, why not name some things that will help keep me happy for a good long time?

Now one of the remaining questions is whether Alice-Alyx will recognize my Samsung Galaxy ear buds. We tried to get them paired up yesterday, and the Asus laughed at us. Once again, I'm reminded that computers are stupid; they only do what we tell their ones and zeroes to do. 

In the non-computer part of the weekend, I was able to get in touch with a skiffy fannish acquaintance whose holiday card came back to me a bit ago. It turns out that he and his partner had indeed moved from the address I had for him, so I can send him something soon, and most definitely this coming holiday season. 

I also cleaned the bathroom, and sorted a small mountain of paperwork that had grown so high it was in danger of toppling over. I'm terrible at organizing and sorting, but I managed to do it today. I'm inordinately proud of myself. (I probably shouldn't be quite so loudly proud, because the universe will undoubtedly send something my way to punish me for such hubris. Heh.)

So that's my excitement for the weekend, and I am very happy that that's the most excitement I've had to deal with. Compared to this time last week, it's easy-peasy. 

I was reading this morning's edition of Dan Rather's Substack newsletter, where he was writing about the song "Stand By Me". (Apparently he writes about a song or musician every Sunday.)

Anyway, he mentioned that "Stand By Me" was "numbered among the Recording Industry Association of America’s 25 Songs of the Century." This naturally got me curious: A ranked list of things? That's like catnip to me!

So I went to look for it. Turns out that there's no such things as the RIAA "25 Songs of the Century." What there is is the "Song of the Century" list, produced by the RIAA in conjunction with the NEA and Scholastic Inc. It's a list of 365 songs. So where did Rather get this idea of "25 Songs of the Century"? Because "Stand by Me" is #25 on the list, and the Wikipedia entry for "Songs of the Century" only includes the top 25 songs on the list. Apparently Rather (or, more likely, one of his research assistants) looked at the Wikipedia entry, didn't read the text carefully, and based on the table of songs assumed that it was a list of 25 songs.

If you read the text carefully, not only do you get the correct number of songs. You also start to question the RIAA's methodology for creating the list. According to the entry, "[h]undreds of voters, who included elected officials, people from the music industry and from the media, teachers, and students" were asked to select the songs. These voters were selected by the RIAA (and one is forced to ask "how many students does the RIAA know?"), and of the 1300 voters selected, only 200 responded. Seems kind of sloppy and haphazard.

Then, if you read the list, you see that the voters were rather sloppy and haphazard in their definition of a song: #7 on the list is the entire album of West Side Story, which is not "a song." Altogether there are 18 albums on the list: 11 Broadway shows, 6 jazz albums, and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Obviously I don't have a copy of the instructions that the RIAA sent to the voters, but I think we can all agree that (with the exception of Thick as a Brick and possibly a few others) an album is not a song.

Also, just as an aside, I think 2001 (when this survey was conducted) was a bit premature to be choosing the most impactful songs of the 20th century.

All that being said, I think any other such list would be just as subject to being haphazard and subjective, and on skimming over the list I do think it would be an enjoyable and/or interesting list to listen to. Plus, unless you were born on February 29, you can figure out what day of the year you were born on and then look at the complete list and see what song your birthday corresponds to. (Mine is "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy.)

candyheartsex author reveals have happened! And here's the fic I wrote for facethestrange:

**

Title: in the darkness with you
Word count: 4,233
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)
Pairing: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Rating: Mature
Content tags: Blind Zhao Yunlan, First time, Hand-Feeding, Finger-Sucking, Clothed Sex, Zhao Yunlan's oral fixation, Episode Related, Episode 21, Missing Scene, Blindness Arc
A/N: Many thanks to china_shop for beta-reading.

Summary:

Zhao Yunlan woke to the smell of citrus, sweet and strong in the air. Without fully turning his face out of the pillow, he slitted open a sleep-heavy eye - to complete, unchanged darkness. Reality came crashing down like a landslide. Right: still blind.

Having a panic attack while your friend is also having a very shitty time and having to help (while trying to not seem like you yourself are having a bad time) is sure an experience. Been trying to get over it with movies.

Zootopia's message is still a little muddy, but "Didney" would never do something like this now (Zootopia 2 not withstanding, no idea how good that one is). Goldeneye made me feel like a kid again. I always forget I enjoy James Bond movies. The difference is I'm an adult now, and can think of them critically.

As for new watches... 8½ is... overrated? I guess? It feels like a dream, it plays with its medium so darn well, but alas, I cared not for our director character. Maybe on a rewatch it's better, but I have no desire to do so. Sleeping Car though? Very very silly. Always nice seeing Madeleine Carroll in a not-drama. I have seen four talkies with Ivor Novello and in half of them he's the most obnoxious rascal (good, he plays them well). Lots of moving camera, not enough trains. I still enjoyed I Lived With You more, but somehow believed Carroll and Novello's romance more than Jeans and Novello.

(And I would believe his romance with me even more *cough*)

I have to thirst somewhere. My friends can't handle it, and it's not even as scandalous as Cairns's for Veidt's tight clothing :P

EDIT: Ah! Almost forgot! bethefirst is having its (optional) signups! tardis_remix is also having (obligatory) signups and prompt claiming!