So I might theoretically know someone? With the same first name as me? Who now has a small business website and a small business to go with it?

http://evenbetteryou.wordpress.com

I highly recommend this person and her work. And goodness knows she needs the money. But you can't say she's me, there's nothing to prove that, she will deny any knowledge of this dangerous Sanj person.

I will leave this post unlocked for a few days while y'all check out the site and spread the word among the people. A very, very dear friend -- who is also not into all this stream-crossing nonsense -- threw it together for me.

Superhero identities are HARD, y'all.

I finally saw X-Men: First Class today -- I missed it when it was in the theatres. I may have to watch it again, because of reasons.

There is a lot of fic, it seems. Perhaps some of you could tell me which bits are any good?

So, there was a Glee finale. And I have A LOT OF FEELINGS.

( So that happened. )

In celebration of the whole grad school back-in-action thing, the very dear sociofemme took me out to dinner tonight.

I would have been very happy, for the record, with a burger from the local french fry joint. The company is top-notch, no matter what.

Sociofemme wanted to doll up (and she did, very prettily!) So we went to a place she'd researched which I hadn't heard of, a local-foods gourmet fine dining experience in the middle of absolutely nowhere -- i.e., five minutes from my house, but in a new direction.

OH MY GOD, PEOPLE. SO GOOD.

( I didn't get pictures, alas, but the food was also very pretty. )

I have been in fandom a startlingly long time now, and recommending stories was pretty much my first fannish act.

And yet, in all of that time, I have not ever recced a WIP. Serial stand-alone stories, yes, but not an unfinished piece in chapters.

I say this because there's a first time for everything.

Sweet! A Love Story Told in Sugar by ohquixotica with glitterwocky, is a Glee future AU in which Kurt and Blaine never met in high school. You need not know one fucking thing about Glee to enjoy this story. It's just a story about two gay men in New York City, with very different approaches to life and an immediate long-distance/virtual simpatico.

That's just what it looks like on the tin. It actually is is a story about risking intimacy after loss; a story about learning to feel again after going numb, and a story about bringing actions into line with words.

Plus there is food porn. Also pastry recipes.

I don't actually know if this story is good? There's an omniscient narrator, and a matchmaking OFC, and recipes with commentary tracks, so. But it hit me right in the gut in a way that a story has not done in a very long time. Maybe's it's just been a big day, but I haven't cried like that in a long time. I cannot wait for the next installment.

My petition to resume graduate studies has been accepted.

WILD RUMPUS IS IN EFFECT.
YOU ALL MAY NOW PARTY LIKE ROCKSTARS.

Tomorrow: figuring out how I pay for it. But that's tomorrow. Because I fucking climbed my own private Mount Everest for this, and I deserve a pat on the back and a beer.

Glee, the show, has been mostly a hot mess lately.

Glee, the fandom, has been making me pretty happy. The fans do such a good job with filling in and extrapolating... much like a few other fandoms I could name, they do a better job with the show's possibilities than the show does. Or at least they write things more to my taste.

Here's an insta-rec for a really lovely Kurt/Blaine story that takes the couple forward in time from canon. In If You Leave, Blaine and Kurt make the good, healthy, rational decision to break up when Kurt leaves Lima. This story is nothing fancy - no zombies or playlists or high drama or anything -- it's just one of the best Blaine voices I've seen, and I found it sweetly enthralling.

Happy Friday!

Poking around the Web today, a couple of friends on FB had links to an article on the scarcity of women and of characters of color in D&D books and modules. (This implicates, by extension, Wizards of the Coast, whose artistic palette has a pretty significant impact on fantasy art in general.)

Which, grrr. I haven't gamed in years, but tabletop gaming was my introit into geekdom and is how I made half of the college friends I'm still in touch with.

So I still feel a kinship. And a desire to do better.

The Prismatic Art Collection at Kickstart looks like a great way to, erm, kickstart more representative fantasy art.

I have no further knowledge of this program beyond this article and its comments. I just think it looks neat.

Happy Thursday!

Happiest of all happy birthdays to my beloved friend kass, who is surely one of the bright lights in the universe.

*flyingtacklehug*

A big part of my brain has been in Hothead Paisan levels of WTF over the current political situation in the US.

This post by yuki_onna says it just about right.

I'mma keep pounding my head into the wall now.