facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
This community is where I'm keeping my recs/reviews/records of what I read.  I have not marked it for adult content as a courtesy to users who are not logged-in.  Assume that all posts are not suitable for children.

What is Here


1.  All my existing Delicious bookmarks.  I've imported the ~250 links with notes in bulk posts by fandom.  They are all tagged:  Old Bookmarks
2.  Annotated links to what I read and find notable will be entered here from now on.  Likely once a week or so, and at present, I'll continue to use Delicious as a gathering point.  This includes fic, meta--both fandom and general, vids, and occasional miscellaneous things.  

What isn't Here

1.  My own meta or fic.
2.  A lot of the meta I read.  I don't tag everything, just the things I think are noteworthy and aren't too linked into a single hypertextual conversation.  In other words, it will make sense out of context or at a later time. 
3.  Every fic I start reading.  If I don't finish it, I don't bother to bookmark it.  Some fics I read when I'm looking for a particular emotional hit.  I don't bookmark those either because I'm not reading in a way that leads to useful analysis. 

A Little More Detail on What Fic is Bookmarked Here

1.  Mostly m/m slash.  There will also be some het, some gen, some f/f and some polyfic. 
2.  RPF and FPF
3.  Many media fandoms, but the big ones are, SGA, SPN and SPN_RPF.
4.  In SPN fandom you will see mostly Sam/Dean, so if you're upset by incest, please skip those.  You will not see sexual situations involving possessed bodies, so no Dean/Castiel or Sam/Ruby (unless it is in a canon context only). 
5.  You will not find very much that involves issues of consent.
6.  I do read some kink fic, but I have very particular taste.

A Little More Detail on What Meta is Bookmarked Here

1.  You will find meta here that discusses issues of sex, sexuality and social justice.
2.  I am not very interested in meta that is outrage only, especially expressed by people who are not members of the oppressed group in question.
3.  I have very little patience for feminism that ignores intersectionality.  I have less patience for feminism that judges other women for their choices.

A Little More Detail on My Personal Taste

1.  I like canon-compliant fic, AUs of all kinds, crossovers, G rated fluff and PWPs. 
2.  I don't think canon-compliance makes a fic de facto better.
3.  I don't like WNGWJLEO 90% of the time. 
4.  I don't like heteronormative ideas about sexuality (especially in het fic!).  I don't mind depictions of characters who think that way, but if the author seems to be telling me that just as each Hydrogen atom has one electron, one of them's the girl in the relationship, I will not enjoy the story.
5.  I like romance and angst, but I don't like wallowing in emotionalism. 
6.  I like, "I choose you,"  a whole lot more than, "We are meant to be."
7.  I read things that would be called hurt comfort, but I don't read it for that aspect.  I avoid gratuitous pain, violence or torture porn, aka whump. 
8.  I like stories to be readable.  I'm not a grammar purist.
9.  I'm an atheist.  Religion in fic is fine, evangelism isn't.  I don't take the "religion" in Supernatural very seriously.
10.  Bashing of female characters because they're women is not acceptable.
11.  I love vids as a consumer, but I have no real facility to discuss film or visual art.

This is NOT a List of Fic Recs

Or, a note for readers and authors. 

These bookmarks are not squeeful recs.  They are short reviews meant to give readers a feel for my impressions, experiences and response to the text.  This is not meant to be objective, and is absolutely my subjective feelings about what I read, at the time I read it.  I can be influenced by all kinds of things--the story I read prior, my mood, the time of the year, the time of the day, any number of things.  Every response to a piece of writing is unique to an individual, and my POV might be so different from yours that not only will you think I'm full of shit, but my opinion might be completely irrelevant to your experience.  For more insight into how I see the concept of POV and how it affects our understanding of things, please check out Micro, Macro and Beer.

This is not concrit.  This is not feedback.  This is not meant for authors.  Anyone is welcome to read what is here, but not all fic, vid or meta will be 100% endorsed by me. Most of what I finish reading, I enjoy enough, think it's good enough that I am recommending it, with enough description to give readers here an idea if they might like it themselves.  I try not to expect more than is reasonable from a given work.  (Something written to a tight deadline and to a prompt is not always going to be the best possible story.)  Trust me, there will be people who take my lukewarm response to something as an indicator that they will love it. 

However, if you believe that fandom is for the social connections only, that it is only "for fun", and that any critical discussion of fanworks isn't fun and should never be public, this is not the place for you. 

Commenting

Anonymous, Open ID or logged in are all allowed.  I will not tolerate rudeness to others in this space.  I might take some personal flack, I might not. IP logging is on.

Image Credits

The section break images were created by me using the following images, all of which were released under a Creative Commons license that reserves some rights.  See original URL for details for each image.

purdman 1 - movable type
a.pitch - gears
nightRPstar - film reels

facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
I stopped posting reviews there didn't I? Well, I hit the doldrums of the SPN J2 Big Bang, where most of what was posted was either not for me, or not of a readable standard. I'm not sure if the overall quality standard is lower this year, or if I'm just changing my tastes and less interest in ships equals less willingness to read unedited first drafts.

This is the rest of everything I finished out of this year's Big Bang, including some gen RPD, Dean/Victor and Dean/Sam. Read more... )
facetofcathy: four equal blocks of purple and orange shades with a rusty orange block centred on top (Default)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
Two Gen stories today with a similar theme--Dean arrested by the FBI. One is set during the missing year where Sam was in hell, and the other is set after Jus in Bello and Sam is right there, but no one knows it but Dean.Read more... )
facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
It's that time again. This year should prove very interesting. We have an old fandom that's not really gaining new fans, but is certainly losing fans to the latest thing.

We also have a fandom that I find myself increasingly at odds with. I actually liked season 7 of SPN a lot, and I like the current Sam and Dean dynamic. I like that they are finally more adults than dudebros. I seem to be in a very small minority.


This year I'm doing my reviews a bit the same and a bit different. Here's the highlights:Read more... )

On with the show: Three stories from the first two weeks. All RPF. )
facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
So, I got over my frothing indignation at the politics of The Eagle and got to the point where I could look at it mostly as a pretty love story. I went looking for fic. The fic largely ignores anything outside the central relationship and does not care one whit for the glory of Rome or its conquests. But, many authors are falling into a trope where the slavery depicted is much more like the later versions of American slavery and are also taking great pains to show that anyone who owns a slave is a bad, bad, evil person, and Marcus is pure as the driven snow.

Put these two together and you've got a reinforcement of the popular cultural apologia for American slavery as a thing evil individuals did rather than a system that affected every person on the continent and was one of the founding processes of creating the USA and its neighbours as nations. This is troubling, yet not unexpected. A lot of the stories simply treat the power imbalance in the relationship as one that exists only in public, which I can treat as a fantasy element as a reader and go along with. I didn't encounter any stories where Marcus actually acts like a bog standard Roman with a body slave--I expect they're on the kink meme, which I'll boggle over quietly, that more historically accurate depictions or ones that recognize the consent issues are considered kink fic.

My surprise comes at the variety of sexual and relationship dynamics to be found. This is a slash fandom where the bigger guy OWNS the smaller guy, who is blond, even, and it's less boringly predictable on the position/dynamics/roles front than J2 fic.

Most of the fic are romances, and a lot of it can be read as original fiction set in Roman Britain. I've made a note on the reviews if a story requires much canon knowledge or if it can be read as ofic. I've stuck to the longer stories, as that's what I'm into these days.

Read more... )


Check out [delicious.com profile] nintheagle on delicious (the bookamrks have been migrated, so they'll be there after Friday) for more fic from the LJ comm. The delicious list is nicely tagged with several categories.
facetofcathy: four equal blocks of purple and orange shades with a rusty orange block centred on top (Default)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
And so, the Big Bang comes to a close for another year. my overall impressions )

To end this year's reviews, I have two really good stories, one J2 that's all about UST in several ways, and one Dean/Sam. It's fitting to end with the pairing that got me into the fandom in the first place, and a story that came the closest to giving me the post season six Sam and Dean I've been wanting to read.

Read more... )
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[personal profile] facetofcathy
Warning: this first story reviewed depicts and examines issues of abuse, sexual violence and intimate partner violence. This review discusses that theme in depth.

Flying Weight by [livejournal.com profile] fleshflutter

Flying Weight (48747 words) by faviconflesh

Read more... )

Three other stories, Gen and J2 )
facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
Now that I can access LJ to get the links, here's the last four stories I read before taking a well timed week off from reading.

Please note, one of these stories depicts non-consensual acts of various kinds and I discuss that and the author's portrayal of this.

Read more... )
facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
Er, this edition of the Big Bang reviews is not a very happy one. I really enjoyed the first one on the list, despite a few issues with the story, and I found one other worth my time. Other than that...

not a lot of happy here )
facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
Tagging Your SPN J2 Big Bang Fic On A03 & Artwork News

Check it out if you're a Big Bang author, artist or reader. If you know any Big Bang authors, point this out. Many folks who've always only used LJ for posting fic might not realize how simple it is to post a work from LJ to the AO3.

Two methods that work well: the importer, which usually formats well, but will need some editing. It will not join up multiple parts for you any way but as chapters. My preferred method is cut and paste from the HTML edit box of LJ into the HTML edit window on the AO3. I like this for fitting together multipart entries into one story on AO3. You do have to do a little editing to take out cut tags or links to other parts, but it's not too onerous.

-------------------

I've got heaps of open tabs for stories, a couple of which I've read a bit of and might finish. I make no effort to read in order, and I'm already burnt out on some aspects of canon-focused FPF fic, so I'm likely going to be reviewing mostly RPF after this until I get fed up with it and want to switch back. I'm posting early this week since I likely won't be around much on the weekend.

J2 and more Gen FPF along with Sam/Dean )
facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
It's a long weekend and Civ V now has hotseat--apropos for the weather too--so I think this is all I'll finish up this week. I would love to see non AU J2 or season 6 Sam and Dean, but so far, not so much.

my cranky is definitely waxing, but I'm still finding some I like )
facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
There's everything under the sun here—all the fic, and one meta link, I forgot to post before I got into the SPN Big Bang, and some other things I've read in the last few days when the Big Bang fizzled out for a bit.

SGA Genficathon, knotting, canon gay characters, a trip to the past, F&F, DS9 and SGA Reverse Bang )
facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
I'm going to aim for posting once a week for as long as that lasts.


Only one story did it for me this week, and I can definitely say that I'm finding it harder than usual to stick to things that I might once have persevered through, and one of those things is definitely fic about teenagers. I think I've burnt out on all the high school and college and pre series stories in these fandoms.


Like Luggage of Some Departed Traveller by [livejournal.com profile] britomart_is

Dean/Sam/Jess and all pairings included in that - NC-17 - 54,000 words

In multiple parts at LJ, in site scheme with inexplicable use of blockquote tag, no other reading options available. Scene breaks are done with extra blank lines which disappear when Readability is used. It made reading an interesting and disjointed experience. I had to work at it to get this in readable form, and only the pairing made me persevere. The most unintentionally inaccessible fic so far, but if you're good with site scheme, you likely won't notice.

Author's Summary:
AU from Season One.

Rogue wildlife attacks? Check. Virulent, incurable pandemic? Double check. Relentless string of natural disasters? Check, check, check. Dean's got it hard enough dealing with the collapse of modern society, so imagine his dismay when he goes to Stanford Law to fetch the brother he's been painfully in love with for most of his life and finds that brother happily married. When Sam, Dean, and Jess set off across the country to find their dad, it's all they can do just to stay alive, much less stay true to each other.


I enjoyed this story a great deal. It was interesting as an AU, had an enjoyable Jess character and played out the long time frame of about 8 months in a way that didn't feel incomplete. I liked the Dean and Jess POV sections the best, but the Sam one was good too. He was just hard to relate to since by the time we're in his head, he's busy living in denial and lying and coming to terms with Dean and Jess in a new way and only slowly grasping that he doesn't really have grounds to be jealous.

I liked the way the relationships evolve as well with realistic time scales. I've read a couple of fics with this threesome before, but I found this one to be the most compelling.

The plot has some holes, but the plot is just the backdrop to these three figuring out where they're at.

The het sex is seriously scorching hot. The Dean/Jess scenes were my favourites, and big kudos to the author for writing such good stuff. The threesome scenes, not so much. They read like an author struggling to account for all the limbs--which is something everyone seems to have an issue with. Why is it that there is the expectation that adding a body means the sex scene has to be described like a game of twister? It makes the POV character seem very detached from what they would be paying attention to and allows them to know where everyone's hands are, when they likely really wouldn't.

Small caveats aside, it was a very enjoyable read with some really moving scenes--the Ikea one made me tear up--genuine horror, but not too much gore and some very interesting characterizations.
facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
Image used as a section break.  Shows a section of movable type.

Slow start for me this year. I'm finding my bored now reaction on a bit of a hair-trigger. Under the cut are four reviews: one Dean/Sam, and three Jared/Jensen. Read more... )
facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
(The story discussed here contains depictions of sexual assault, torture, violence, murder and psychological abuse.  Characters in the story routinely conflate mental illness with violence.  The story is focused on the oppression of a minority.  This review discusses these themes.)

I do this thing where I go to the AO3, click on works, select m/m as a category and filter to that, then sort by word count highest to low. 

The point is to find long stories in any fandom I might possibly read and I usually find a few likely suspects.  What I'm usually after is some kind of romance or something I can immerse myself in as a reader.

In this way I found Arcane Asylum by [archiveofourown.org profile] new_kate . 

I'm almost certainly more than a day late and a dollar short in finding this one, everyone who would have read it, likely has, but you never know. 

Read more... )
facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
And now for everything else. A couple of vids and some fic of various flavours. I recced some of this on my journal, so you might have seen it already.

Image used as a section break.  Shows a section of movable type.
facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
This is everything I've got tagged Vorkosigan. I included a couple that have been posted here before.

Image used as a section break.  Shows a section of movable type.

Read more... )
facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy
Image used as a section break.  Shows a section of movable type.
This post is sort of like what you'll find in the Farmer's Market this time of year--In the Northern Hemisphere, that is. Sorry if my Southern readers thought they were getting a bountiful harvest. A couple of these were recced at my journal, so appologies for the duplication, and for the very rare flame that's in this batch.

I'm not putting my [community profile] sherlock_flashfic recs here, you'll find them at my journal too.

Read more... )
facetofcathy: multicoloured faceted shapes (Prism)
[personal profile] facetofcathy

I thought I'd try something different, so I picked out the J2 stories that have over 400 bookmarks on delicious to review them. I knew I'd read them all, and I wanted to see if they had anything in common, and how my reading stacks up against their popularity.

Disclaimer: This is a totally unfair method of finding "the most popular" fics. Stories that are posted in multiple places, or where the author may have changed their journal name or posting location will have the bookmarks split up into multiple piles and won't make my arbitrary cut. Stores posted in several parts over time, like the Quarterback verse won't be he here either, even though they might be more popular. This method is going to automatically skew to older stories as well. What it does do is stop me from playing favourites in picking the stories.

Before even reviewing, I can see that one thing the six stories have in common is their length, all at least big bang length by the more modern definitions of the term, but the length varies greatly from 16,000 words to almost 200,000. They are all at lest two years old and every single one is an AU. Two were not written as part of a challenge or fest, the rest were. Five are rated adult or NC-17 and one is not rated.

My track record of liking the really, really popular stories is not great, but I enjoyed most of these, even if I wouldn't call any of them my favourites.

Read more... )

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