Fandom: HIGHLANDER
Pairing: Duncan/Methos
Author on LJ: None
Author Website: http://www.wordsmiths.net/MacGeorge/

Why this must be read: I love the old romantic comedies, and this story is firmly in that tradition. Think of The Philadelphia Story with Duncan as Cary Grant pairing off with Methos as Jimmy Stewart, yep that's the ticket. It's a goofy and charming comedy of errors -- with Methos literally leading everyone down the garden path.

As usual, MacGeorge serves up an solid and intricate plot, this time in the service of humor: there's an ex-wife and a new husband-to-be, young love thwarted by parental disapproval, and a couple of immortal friends on their way to becoming lovers, all thrown together in a big bash of a wedding where they bounce off each other in hilarious maddening confusion, as Methos sets everybody up with a hapless Duncan. But eventually they all pair off as they should -- or form a threesome as the case may be -- and everyone's happy, including the reader, splitting sides notwithstanding.

( Excerpt: Methos Lays His Plans )

Social Graces

Song Title/Artist: Just Like You / Voice of the Beehive
Pairing: Duncan/Methos
Vidder: Luminosity
Vidder on LJ: sockkpuppett
Vidder's website: http://kamil.slashcity.com/eyecandy/
Warnings: None

(Okay, technically I missed the cutoff for the Friday Drive-In, but I'm still up, and Next Friday, my gig here will be over, so I'm posting it anyway.)

Why this vid kicks ass: When I was a sprout of thirteen, I wallpapered my bedroom with fotos of cute guys from the pages of Tiger Beat, 16 Magazine and Hit Parader. I pasted gazillions of tiny pictures of cute guys into collages that covered the doors; I hung mobiles of fave fotos of cute guys from the ceiling. On every horizontal surface, including the floor, sat boxes and bottles decoupaged with pictures of cute guys. It was total teenybopper sense-around cute guy overload.

This vid reminds me of that.

Voice of the Beehive's "Just Like You" is retro-60's, which happens to wayback to the time when I was wallpapering my bedroom. It's a brilliant selection, pop and perky and perfect for the kaleidoscopic imagery Luminosity uses for this 3-minute love story.

And the cute guys! Guh! This is totally slash, okay? Luminosity hits every slash moment in the Duncan and Methos canon and fanon. The clips zoom by, some of them almost too quickly for the eye to follow. There are a lot of them. But this is good; to me, the vid has the same insatiable greediness for images of Duncan and Methos that made me fill a room with fotos of cute guys.

A serious undercurrent runs through the bright, giddy eye-candy sweetness. Not all of the images are cheerful -- the song's bridge, in fact, is accompanied by a breathless montage of the double-quickening, a moment in the Duncan/Methos story that's not exactly light (though slashy, yeah!) There are images of Duncan under the influence of the Dark Quickening, Duncan in the throes of quickenings, Duncan fighting, in pain, in trouble. The vid drills down deep, which makes the overall sweetness just that much more so.

My favorite Luminosity vid is always the one I'm watching, but I'll always watch this one first.

"Just Like You", at Luminosity's Vidworks

Fandom: X-Men Movieverse
Pairing: Xavier/Magneto
Author on LJ: Penknife
Author Website: http://penknife.freeservers.com/
Why this must be read:

Because anything by Penknife is worth reading, but I've decided to rec. this one because it is one my personal favorites. Charles Xavier post X-2, coping with loss and the art of losing. This is one of the most elegant and poetic stories I've read in any. It will take your breath away and any excerpts would spoil it.

Go. Read. Now.

Name of Fic