Got the link from therienne, read it, and laughed my head off.

The Exceedingly Sad And Very Touching Story of How Dr. Elizabeth Weir Died Saving Atlantis, by lavvyan. Slash, NC-17 (though I'd rate it R at most, myself). McKay/Sheppard.

Short, mean and very very funny.

flambeau has posted her answers to the story summary meme, where people ask you for summaries of stories you haven't actually written.

Her summaries are a joy, and also very cruel because I want to read the full stories now. And they don't exist! Woe! She makes an Eroica/Highlander crossover sound like an utterly logical match, and she has a Jeeves/Wooster story with Aunt Agatha's son Thos. in it (I die of love) and then, for SGA, she begins thus:

It took them quite a while to find the games on the Ancient database, and even longer to realize that they were games. Multi-user games, even. Rodney had written the whole subdirectory off as a manual for several different models of sailing ships that were obviously millennia out of date; it was Simpson who figured out how to set herself up as a pirate captain.

And there's more, and in various fandoms. Go read. :-)

If you haven't wandered over to the Great Vidding Truth Meme over at sdwolfpup's yet, it's definitely worth seeing and participating.

This is one long thread where you can leave anonymous feedback on the vids of any vidder who signed up. Criticism, squeeing, "I liked your vid but I don't understand X" ing, it's all good. If you want to tell me something about my vids, but you'd rather do it anonymously, go for it! And please don't be afraid to criticize. I really want to know.

I love seeing this meme grow and grow, and I've found several vids that I had lost track of, by vidders that aren't so well known. Here's a quick rec for gayalondiel's SG-1 vid to "Men In Black", which is a lot of fun and has some really excellent clip choices.

marthawells is giving away ten signed copies of Wizard Hunters, the first book in her Ile-Rien trilogy. She says:

"Right now there are 51 entries, so the chances aren't bad.

To enter, send an email between now and February 15 to WebAdmin @ marthawells.com saying you want to be in the contest. (Only one entry per person, please, even if like me you have about ten different email addresses.) On the 16th of February, I'll put all the entries in a hat and pull out ten winners. The winners will need to email me their mailing address so I can ship them the books. And overseas entries are fine."

I love this trilogy, and the only reason I'm not entering the giveaway is that I have a hardback copy. Go enter!

That's all I was going to say, but now I find I have to talk about the book a bit, even though I usually worry too much about whether I'm doing a book justice to even attempt a review.

I find Wizard Hunters riveting, and yes, it's the first part of a fantasy trilogy but it's a strong book all on its own - this is not one of those trilogies where the main character slowly acquires a telepathic horse, a quest and an adorable sidekick and sets off for adventure on the last page of book one, leaving you to grind your teeth and hurl the book against the wall.

Tremaine Valiarde doesn't have a horse, a quest or an adorable anything; she gets by on a gun, her wits and a bar of chocolate. I fell for her immediately. She's sarcastic, pessimistic, clever and unconventional, her character shaped by her unusual upbringing, and she lives in a wartorn world whose technology level is close to our own - early '20s, say - and where scholars of magic perform their experiments to try and stop the war. One of those experiments sucks Tremaine and several of those sorcerer-scholars into another world, a seemingly primitive one where sorcerers are inherently evil and must be hunted and exterminated. The first people she meets, Ilias and Giliead, are the wizard hunters in the title, and the clash and mesh of cultures as they fight their common enemy is a strong thread in all three books.

Ilias and Giliead are great characters in their own right, foster-brothers who have spent their lives dealing with rogue sorcerers and their curses, with a painful, strong history together that is slowly revealed during the trilogy. I can't say how pleased I am that Giliead and Ilias are returning in several prequel stories in the magazine Black Gate; I was really disappointed that there isn't going to be a whole prequel novel.

I always want quotes in reviews, to see what the author's writing is like, and I'm going to quote the very opening of the book here, because it sucked me in immediately and I think it gives a good feel for the book as a whole.

It was nine o'clock at night and Tremaine was trying to find a way to kill herself that would bring in a verdict of natural causes in court, when someone banged on the door.

"Oh, damn." A couple of books on poisons slid out of her lap as she struggled out of the overstuffed armchair. She managed to hold on to the second volume of Medical Jurisprudence, closing it over her fingers to mark her place. The search for the elusive untraceable poison was not going well; there were too many ways sorcerer-physicians could uncover such things and she didn't want it to look as if she had been murdered. Intracranial hemorrhage seemed a good possibility, if a little difficult to arrange on one's own. But I'm a Valiarde, I should be able to figure this out, she thought sourly. Dragging the blanket around her, she picked her way through the piles of books to the door. The library at Coldcourt was ideal for this, being large, eclectic and packed with every book, treatise, and monograph on murder and mayhem available to the civilized world.

The entry hall was dark except for one single electric bulb burning in the converted gas fixture above the sweep of the stairs. The light fell on yellowed plaster walls and rich old wood and a blue and gold patterned carpet on polished stone tile. Coldcourt was aptly named and Tremaine's bare feet were half- frozen by the time she made it to the front door. She had let the housekeeper have the night off and now she regretted it, but she had had no idea it would take this long to arrange things. At this rate she wouldn't be dead until next week.

You can read the first five chapters of Wizard Hunters online, here.

In decision, by flambeau. SGA, Sheppard/McKay, NC-17. This melted my brain.

No one was hurt. The city was quiet around him, at peace. John went on, not very far, and came to a halt. He stared at McKay's door until it trembled before him and slid open.

So, yes, I am going to default and not finish my second Hercules story before December 31st. You may now all mock me! In truth, I think I can probably finish it after all - but not post it, as I am going to be offline until January 1st.

Still, I have a story for you, because a very kind fan sent me one for a solstice present and gave me permission to post it. Here's Deb Arlens story Solstice Solace, and a lovely little story it is, just the thing to read when it's dark and cold outside and cosy indoors. If you like it, please comment and encourage her to write more! (I am going to forward all comments, accompanied by a little nagging of my own. *g*)

Title: Solstice Solace
Author: Deb Arlen
Rating: PG-13, slash
Pairing: Hercules/Iolaus
Size: 9 Kb

Hercules’ breath puffed out in frosty little clouds behind him as he loped towards the tiny village huddled beneath the crag of the mountain. The village was too small to have a name, though the mountain had several - none of them complimentary.

( Solstice Solace )

sockkpuppett has a new vid. It's an Angel vid called 'There There', and it's about Illyria.

If you're interested in vidding, or just want to watch a gorgeous new vid from one of the very best vidders, I urge you to download it. Trust me, having watched Angel is optional. (I've never seen any Angel except for the muppet episode, but I love Luminosity's vids in the fandom.)

New Lum vid! Yay!

Also, if you are interested in Lum's Scooby Road project, please see this post.

A package was delivered yesterday, but I wasn't home, so they dropped it at my neighbours' house.

Now I am home and they are not. Woe.

Want to bet these are the Vividcon DVDs?

In happier news, sockkpuppett is still adding names to the list of people who want her Scooby Road vid project on DVD. You could be one of those people. You should be one of those people, if you like vids or Buffy at all. Probably even if you don't. Lum is simply a fantastic vidder, one of the three whose vids I rewatch the most, no matter what fandom they're in. (The other two are killabeez and flummery, so that's really four people, but never mind.)

If you haven't heard about this before, Scooby Road is sockkpuppett's magnum opus - she took the whole of the Beatles' Abbey Road and vidded the whole of Buffy to it. I've only seen one small piece, one vid, and that was breathtaking. I can't wait to see the whole.

I've been reading bits of Stargate: Atlantis fanfic here and there, mostly following other people's recs, but I thought I'd rec this one, from a writer I'm not familiar with. It gave me the shivers.

Iterations, by maisierita, SGA, rated R for language.

The first time they rescued him, they came with explosives and stunners and guns. They shot the two guards, blew up the door to his cell, and killed three more people on the way back to the Jumper. Stumbling with fatigue, John tripped over a bloody, contorted corpse, and everything went black as he hit the ground.

When he woke up, he was back in the dark, damp cell, chained to the wall again.

Hurray, the Escapade 2005 vid DVDs are on sale at last. And, to make things even better, they still have copies of the 2004 and 2003 sets for sale too. There's a complete list of vids, songs, vidder and fandom for each DVD set.

I highly recommend these sets. I wrote up a personal review for every vid on the 2005 set (except my own *eg*).

The 2004 set has Whatever by Luminosity and Sisabet, an Angel vid that kills me. It's hilarious and sexy and you don't need to have seen Angel at all to adore it. There is also All Soul's Night, a gorgeous Gladiator vid by Destina which takes the best parts of a movie that left me unsatisfied and turns them into a haunting character portrait, Come Together by Laura Shapiro, a creepy and dark Farscape vid, and We'll Meet Again, an utterly evil Stargate vid by Carol S. Among others.

All these vids are online, but I personally find watching small, compressed vids on my computer really unsatisfying. Seeing them at their best on the TV screen, in full size and picture quality, makes an immense difference to me - when I got my first DVD vids, the Vividcon set, I was blown away.