All aboard the exposition train!

Homestuck. Rose/John, John/Rose/Dave/Jade. NC-17. Warnings for tentacles (after a fashion) and pegging (after a fashion), further warnings on the fic itself.

At the top of the hill, John stops his bike and turns his face up to the sky. The spreading reach of a thunderhead’s anvil dome towers so high up and so white, like an egg cracked and spilling on an upside-down blue tabletop, its black yolk spitting thunder. He can’t stop himself from grinning, closing his eyes and feeling it. It’s a whisper in his ear, a growl in his stomach. It’s in his fingertips and digging underneath hair follicles, like needles, like ice burn or the prickle of summer heat trapped in an old car. It’s behind his eyes and tickling his nose. When he opens his mouth, he can taste its potential.

It tastes young, something new born out of old water. Faintly odorous, petrichor sharpened into knives by wind, just like how he used to do it. Back in the game when he was a weapon, grabbing the very currents from the air and turning them into spears, whirlpools, and waves of force. But here and now, he’s just a pivot.

The milk and frozen pizzas are sweating in the rear basket, but they’ll be fine. Just a sec.

This fic has it all: totally gorgeous writing, fascinating character analysis, and really awesome smut.  Come for the porn, stay for the worldbuilding.

secretstantler:

Hello everyone and welcome to the 2012 Secret Stantler Pokemon Fandom Holiday Gift Exchange!

This is the chance for everyone to give a little and get a little - fanart or fanfiction, that is! 

If you would like to enter, please put the following in the Secret Stantler askbox by Global Midnight, Saturday Dec 15th! And please don’t use Anon to do it, or else your entry will be ignored!

• Three pairings you would like material for, ranked in order of preference, for your Stantler to pick between.
• If you’re not interested in pairings, that’s fine! List off a few characters instead,  using & instead of / between them (Giovanni & Silver vs Ash/Misty)
• Whether you would prefer to get art, fic, or will accept either
• Whether you’re going to submit art, fic, or can do either
• What kind of pairings (het, yuri, yaoi, pmd, non-pairing/gen) you’re willing to do for your receiver!
• If applicable, any big nonos (“I’m clueless about special” for example) or yesyeses (“I’d really like to do mystery dungeon!”)

Once all entries are in, I and a less-than-secret set of helpers will match every entry up to another to be their willing-and-able Secret Stantler. Please keep your inboxes open so that we can send you the appropriate gift info!

Once you’ve made your gift, there are three ways to deliver it:

• Use the Submit button to submit it directly to Secret Stantler. If you’d like to remain anonymous to your recipient, you can Log Out before submitting.
• Post the gift to your own Tumblr, then send Secret Stantler a link (with spaces in place of slashes as necessary) so we can reblog it. Make sure to tag both your recipient and #secret stantler
• If you do not want your work on display, you can send an ask with a link to your work (on pastebin or tinypic if necessary) as proof it’s done and a note saying such, and letting us know if you’re going to give your gift yourself or if you’d like SS to deliver it for you.

All gifts are due by Global Midnight on Saturday Dec 29th. We would love it if you get them done and in before that, of course, but that way we can make sure everyone’s got their gift before the year is over, and we can post it all at least a little spread out. Including lag time for us to sort the entries, this should give you at least 12 days to work on your gift.

A few final notes:

• Gifts do NOT have to be Christmas themed. Honestly they don’t even have to be holiday themed if you don’t want them to be, but try to keep at least a little winter magic in them ;)
• Please keep pairings to two or three people. I know a lot of us have OT5s and such, but even OT3s are a lot for some people, and there’s a big difference between asking someone to draw two characters and draw five characters.
• Please no NSFW. That’s what the Kink Meme is for!
• Feel free to Submit other Holiday/Winter themed fanfiction and fanart all season long! I’ll be trying to post between two and five submissions a day to keep this place looking festive.
• All credit for this wonderful idea goes to my dear friend Makomaragi.
• And most importantly, PLEASE only enter if you’re serious about contributing!  I don’t want to leave anyone sad because they worked hard and didn’t get a gift in return.

If you have any questions, you can submit them to the askbox! Questions are the only things that will be accepted anonymously, but you can ask them in-person as well.

Happy Holidays, and let’s make it merry and bright for the whole fandom!

Homestuck. Roxy Lalonde/Jake English/Jane Crocker/Dirk Strider. PG-13.

Frigglish stretches on the bed and jumps down to pad quietly after you, leaping up onto your lap as you sit down in front of your husktop, and open up the only photos of her that you have. A couple vague images caught over her shoulder. The curve of her jaw. One of her from a magazine or something sitting in a large chair with a book on her lap, pen in hand and eyes down. Her eyelashes are long and dark compared to her white-pale everything else. You like to put dark mascara on, like she does, and dark lipstick too. A few shades into pink rather than purple though. You think you’d make a good match. Mother and daughter walking up red carpets to book signings in famous places from the old world.

But she’s not with you, anymore. She never was.

A beautiful and totally heartbreaking fic about loneliness and internet friendship and how the two intertwine.

creeperlovefics:

Title: age/sex/location

Author:  CamouflageCamel

Pairing: John Egbert/Dave Strider

Rated: General Audiences

Summary: John starts to love it when Dave talks with his hands.

((This is about the most adorkable thing. I about died.))

Dong Bang Shin Ki (DBSK/TVXQ). Yunho/Changmin. NC-17. Office/Hentai manga!AU (I really don’t know how to explain it). Warning for tentacles.

It’s taken him months to track it down. A doujinshi of this calibre hardly ever surfaces for sale on the open market. It’s something whispered of in internet chat rooms, and occasionally a low-quality photograph of the cover is posted, only to be deleted a few hours later. Changmin had never expected that he might be able to get his hands on a copy, but thanks to a friend of a friend of a colleague of the owner of the comic shop that Changmin frequents, finally he had the opportunity to buy this doujinshi for himself.

He straightens up as he approaches the bank where he works, twisting the handle of the plastic bag around his fingers. His heart is racing as if he’s trying to sneak porn into the workplace. Technically that’s exactly what he’s doing, but he focuses on the fact that the manga isn’t just some mass-produced yaoi smut—it’s Art.

I really love indulgent, silly, tongue-in-cheek pieces like this, especially ones that gently poke fun at hardcore otaku because, yes, we can indeed get a little crazy and pretentious about stupid things (I am one of these people, sometimes.)  Glitterburn always manages to dovetail hilarious and endearingly trashy plots with really amazing smut, so this is a delightful read on all fronts!

Super Junior. Gen. G. Canon!AU.

Super Junior ‘05 comes to an end quietly and with a small concert for the most dedicated fans. ELFs they call themselves, and even Jungsu has to smile at that through his tears. Ever Lasting Friends, not fans, and that makes all the difference.

Maybe things would be different if Super Junior had never meant to be generational, maybe more of them would be famous, maybe they’d get more airing time, more CFs, more popularity and fans, but this is the way life works.

This fic is a fascinating thought experiment on what it would have been like if SuJu had remained a rotation group, as it was originally debuted as.  It makes you sort of appreciate what we do have, which is refreshing, considering how much pain this fandom can sometimes bring its followers.

Avatar: The Last Airbender. Sokka/Zuko. PG-13.

Zuko scowled at him for several seconds, as if considering how best to phrase his next words. “I wouldn’t want you to get hurt,” he said finally.

“You wouldn’t want me to get hurt,” Sokka repeated, incredulous.

“The Avatar would be upset.”

“Uh huh.”

“And your sister would kill me.”

“I think you’re missing the point I’m trying to make.” Sokka pulled back his shoulders, striking a more confident pose. “Look. I know you’re new to the group, but there’s some stuff you should know about it. Like that I’m the weapons guy.”

“I thought you were the plan guy,” said Zuko, without a hint of irony.

I don’t ship this, but Sokka and Zuko are written so in-character, and the relationship’s development is so slow and natural, that it completely sucked me in!

X-Men: First Class.  Charles/Erik + cast. PG-13.

Hank gives Erik a wide berth, taking in his helmet with the best poker face he can muster. He notices that Erik hangs back as Raven winds her way through the house, eventually reaching Charles and hugging him gingerly. “Charles, it’s me, it’s … Raven,” she says after a bit of hesitancy. “I’m your sister, Charles. We grew up together. Maybe this will help,” she says, and transforms into the golden-haired teenager that Charles knew her best as.

He smiles at her. “I apologize, Raven,” he says in his usual gentle cadence; because that much hasn’t disappeared, at least. “I’m afraid nothing clicks.” Raven bites her lip and Charles’ gaze shifts to Erik, who has been surreptitiously glancing at him since his and Raven’s arrival. “And who might you be, my friend?” Charles asks.

I like the way that Erik weaves through uncertainty in this fic. I love the way she writes amnesia’d!Charles, too; so mild and sort of politely blank.