Vidder: Luminosity & Tzikeh
Musical artist: Bob Dylan
Pairing: none
Vidder on LJ: sockkpuppett and tzikeh
Vidder's website: Luminosity's Vidworks
Why this vid kicks ass: Johnny's in the basement/ Mixing up the medicine/ I'm on the pavement/ Thinking about the government...I'm told this is a classic xf vid. I'm not surprised. The lyrics of this song work incredibly well with xf, and the vidders did a brilliant job linking images to the words. You really have to watch it a couple of times to get the full impact. Wonderful wonderful vid.

(Scroll down about 1/4 of the page til you find it, then right click and choose 'save as')
Subterreanean Homesick Blues

Fandom: THE X-FILES
Pairing: Mulder/Scully
Author on LJ: unknown
Author Website: Under the Rug
Why this must be read: Good S8 fic! I like this fic because Scully is grieving after Mulder's death and not coping too well, but she is not a completely emotional crybaby like some authors make her out to be. Great Skinner characterization. There's drunk!Mulder, Mulder and Doggett fighting, Mulder's fears and anxieties about the baby, and emotional blackmail. All the good stuff.

I guess I could call in sick. After all, it would be the truth. I do
feel sick.

Again.

Like every damn morning for the past five months.

Or I could leave a message on my answering machine: "Hello, this is
Dana Scully, consider me abducted."

Nah. It would probably kill Skinner on the spot.

That's not funny.

Do I look like I'm having fun?


Doctor, Copper, Sailor, Corpse

fandom: popslash
pairing: Justin/JC
author on lj: phaballa 
author website: not found
why this must be read: This was just posted today, written for the 2007 JuC Story Swap. It's funny, because Andrea's stories almost always are, but like all her stories, it also has so much under the humor. This is all about NSYNC's long slide into hiatus, and it's gorgeous. Justin is just right here, wanting so much, but not wanting to lose anything, either. JC is willing, without being a doormat. The other guys are here, too, and Chris is especially priceless. NSYNC means a fucking fabulous story.




I'm Invincible, So Are You

Vidder: Pezgirl
Musical artist: REM
Pairing: None
Vidder on LJ: pezgirl7
Vidder's website: None
Why this vid kicks ass:

I can't think of a better vid to show someone what the show is about. I love the song anyway, but Pezgirl has done an amazing job of timing appropriate clips to the lyrics - or as appropriate as you can be with an Old West show and a modern song :) And considering how fast paced it is, I think it's pretty cool.

The end of the World

Vidder: Gotangler
Musical Artist: The Darkness, I Believe in a Thing Called Love
Pairing: everyone/everyone
Vidder on LJ: ?? I would love to know
Vidder’s website: on YouTube

Why this vid kicks ass:

Did you see The Heroes Slash Manual (bandwidth intensive, scads of pictures) that goes into every single possible potential slash pairing on the show? This vid puts that beauty and hilariousness to music, and it's too fabulous for words.


The Heroes slash!video

Vidder: Perri Smith
Musical artist: Bruce Springsteen
Pairing: None
Vidder on LJ: neonhummingbird
Vidder's website: Neon Hummingbird Graphic Design
Why this vid kicks ass:
I got excited when I heard there was a DC vid out there, and when I saw it, I was even more pleased. This vid focuses on the human side of the Justice League, those moments when it's dark and a struggle for them to go on. But overall the vid is hopeful (because of the images of hugging and the repeated chorus, "It's all right"), and it was wonderful to see how these friends are there for one another.

The song, Springsteen's "Lonesome Day" from The Rising, is an apt choice. The lyrics say it all: "Let kingdom come I'm gonna find my way/Through this lonesome day".

Side note: I am filled with a burning desire to get out and watch my DVDs immediately. I forget how awesome the Justice League is collectively when together.

Many thanks to lizbetann for uploading and hosting the vid! Download and watch it and give feedback to the vidder.

Scroll Down to Lonesome Day and right-click and Save As (39 MB)

Fandom: THE SENTINEL
Pairing: Jim/Blair
Author on LJ: saffronhouse
Author Website: Good Morning, Sunshine (gen) Sweet (slash)

Why this must be read: My last fic rec of this month is one of my very favourite Jim/Blair love stories. However, you’ll need to set aside a good couple of hours to do it justice.

Kitchen Song can’t be pigeonholed in any one category although it is technically a ‘first time’ fic. But there’s so much going on here that the story reads more like a written tapestry of everything there is to love about The Sentinel.

Martha describes it as ‘an afterward to Snake Oil’ (already recced here), itself one of the best fics I’ve come across and generally one of my favourite ghost stories ever. The events in Kitchen Song will make more sense if you've already read Snake Oil.

Kitchen Song is long and languorous: Jim and Blair seem to make love in real time.

(  A little taste... )

Martha’s writing is just sublime.

Kitchen Song

Vidder: Mary S. Van Deusen
Musical artist: Julia Ecklar
Pairing: gen or slash is in the eye of the beholder
Vidder on LJ: unknown
Vidder's website: Starsky & Hutch Videos

Why this vid kicks ass:

My initial reaction to this vid was “you’ve got to be kidding me.” Temper of Revenge is an over-the-top song about a vengeful knight seeking the murderers of his beloved brother-in-arms. While Sweet Revenge is an episode where emotions run high as a vengeful cop tracks down those responsible for the machine-gunning of his beloved partner.

All right, now the connection is obvious, especially as Hutch is known as the White Knight in the fandom. However, it’s the skill of this vidder which transforms the melodramatic tale of betrayed knights into the perfect theme for the last episode of Starsky & Hutch. On the artistic level, this vid merges and transforms its source materials into emotionally powerful Jungian archetypes. On the even more important 'kicks ass' level, this vid is a sinfully decadent indulgence in Dark!Hutch deliciousness, that’s even more fun when you abandon all shame and sing-along.

And hell, in a fandom where both gen and slashers celebrate the love between two cops, who can resist a vid which contains the lines: “my companion was made to be half of me. . . how can one un-partnered be whole?”

Go ahead and watch Hutch get medieval on Gunther’s ass. If nothing else, it will be a completely different experience.

Temper of Revenge

Fandom: THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.
Pairing: NS/IK, the barest hint of slash
Author on LJ: wiccagirl24
Author website: Author's fiction is here on Fanfiction.net
Why this must be read:

Classic Man from U.N.C.L.E. stories have a three corner structure: there’s the agents, the villains and the Innocent. When producer Norman Felton came up with the original concept, he imagined the Innocent would be an identity character for the audience. For home viewers, this promoted a fantasy that at any moment, Solo and Kuryakin might suddenly show up on their doorstep and wisk them away into an exciting adventure in which they might bravely help save the world.

In other words, in MFU, “Mary Sue” is canon.

In the 1960s, quite a number of viewers were children and so some of the Innocents were children as well. For example, fans fondly remember a sprightly, 10 year old Kurt Russell helping Solo track down the source of a deadly chemical that wiped out an entire Scottish village.

This story, which proceeds very much like an enjoyable first season episode, also features a child: sweet six year old Molly Parsons. The agents discover poor Molly hiding in a bedroom closet minutes after they encounter the corpses of her parents who have been shot, execution-style. It seems Thrush made Molly’s father, a scientist, an offer he couldn’t refuse ---only he did.

Now Solo and Kuryakin must find Dr. Parsons’ research before Thrush does and deliver Molly to the safety of U.N.C.L.E. HQ in New York.

Of course, they have to persuade her to leave the closet first --- not an easy task even for two resourceful agents.

The More Innocent Than Usual Affair

Fandom: BAND OF BROTHERS
Pairing: Dick Winters/Lewis Nixon
Author on LJ: sardonicsmiley
Author Website: None
Why this must be read:

This is what the fic gods intended when they spawned the Five Things format. A series of AU's exploring a broad and wonderful spectrum of what ifs. What I love most about it is that they're the same men and yet they are not, that the varying butterfly effects depicted here are allowed to make subtle, delicate changes to such well established personalities. I am in endless awe of writers that can pull something like this off so well.

And also, it's hot.

Winters looks up at him, pale hard eyes softened, a face he has never seen smile smiling, and Lewis Nixon runs.

Four Ways They Don’t...One Way They Do

Fandom: BAND OF BROTHERS
Pairing: Ensemble (slash, het and gen)
Author on LJ: shanghai_jim
Author Website: Author's Website
Why this must be read:

Last rec of the month, anything but least. It's been a privilege guys, I hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did.

Homecoming is probably the most ambitious project in this fandom, certainly it is one of the best executed concepts in any fandom.

Picking up after the war ends, Homecoming traces the journeys of the men who left as boys and came back to interrupted lives only to learn that not all broken things can be mended. Read it because it's beautiful, intricate, funny and heartbreaking. Read it because it understands that epics are truly constructed out of the smallest of moments.

Fandom: THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.
Pairing: NS/IK
Author on LJ: laughingacademy
Why this must be read:

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’s three corner structure --- agents, villains and Innocent --- allows for a great deal of flexibility, particularly when deciding who will fill the villain and innocent roles. In the original classic series, one of the pleasures was seeing which famous star might show up each week. In the Ace novels, well-known literary characters (like Sherlock Holmes) and real life people (like the legendary writer/editor Forrest J. Ackerman) often made appearances.

The tradition continues in MFU fan fiction. One of the first widely distributed MFU fan novels had the agents crossing paths with Captain James Kirk and Mr. Spock. There have been a number of similar encounters with other fan favorites since.

This story, which was written as a Secret Santa gift for the muncle community’s annual Down the Chimney exchange for 2005, finds Solo and Kuryakin on the trail of a mummy, competing with a crazy Thrush chief named Reginald Ramsey who believes himself to be the reincarnation of the pharaoh Rameses II.

Traveling on the Twentieth-Century Limited, they meet a certain tweedy professor, an archaeologist named Jones who just happens to be carrying a bullwhip (and he’s pretty good at using it, too.) Jones is occupied by a more personal mission of his own, but naturally, he’s glad to help out.

This is a really fun jaunt with some clever lines of dialogue (Indy definitely sounds like Indy, too) and it has a little twist at the end that sharp-eyed MFU fans will most surely appreciate.

The Mummy Direst Affair

Vidder: Zen
Musical artist: The Bee Gees
Pairing: Jim/Blair
Vidder on LJ: vagabondage
Vidder's website: zeneyepirate vids

Why this vid kicks ass: This is simply one of the most fun vids I’ve ever seen.

Given the title song, Blair is of course the star, all hands, eyes, hair and mouth, bemusing a slightly dazed, affectionate Jim. It also features disco!Jim and disco!Blair, complete with a wacky 70s lights-and-effects segment. The juxtapositioning of words, music and images is wonderful. Even the couple of little bits with Simon are perfectly chosen.

Quite simply, the whole thing is a delight and just watching it will make you smile.

Jive Talkin’

(I’ve linked here to Zen’s journal entry linking the vid as it’s quite new and doesn’t yet seem to be up at her site.)

Fandom: MISCELLANEOUS JOHNNY DEPP MOVIES (Sleepy Hollow)
Pairing: Ichabod Crane/Jack Sparrow
Author on LJ: ciceqi
Author Website: Sleeps With Coyotes's Slash Fiction
Why this must be read: First of all, it's Sleeps With Coyotes. If you've ever read her work you know this is good. Eerie, magical, and above all, HOT, this story slashes two characters played by Johnny Depp. It just doesn't get any better than that!

Sleeps With Coyotes's own summary is "Headless horsemen in the back forty? Ghost ships on the Sound? Who ya gonna call?" Yep, you've got it. Constable Ichabod Crane is the only one with any qualifications to deal with the supernatural, so one Christmas he is tapped to deal with a ghost ship, The Black Pearl. Its cursed captain bears an uncanny resemblance to him and has an unnatural interest in him. Yum!

SLEEPY HOLLOW at IMDB

( Read more... )

Ye Merry Gentlemen

This is Mojave Dragonfly signing off of the Crack Van for August!

Vidder: Nastally
Musical artist: Nine Inch Nails
Pairing: 10!Doctor/Simm!Master
Vidder on LJ: nastally
Vidder's website: N/A
Why this vid kicks ass:

This vid rocks like a rocking thing. Hot and dark, like good coffee. The vidder was inspired by the rather well known Kirk/Spock vid done to the same song and aren't we so glad she was? Really, every fandom with any kind of love/hate or love/ambivelance thing going on needs a vid to this song. And nastally has done it right.

Warning: not at all safe for work. There are clips of actual porn in this.

Enjoy

Link to the page with the link to the vid -> closer

Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Doctor/Tegan
Author on LJ: anellis
Author Website: N/A
Why this fic must be read:

This fic must be read for the hotness, obviously. I really like fic about both 5 and 8 for the way authors often explore their naïvité about sex. Not that they don't know what's what, but there's a deeper level on which they just don't get it. Tegan, of course, has no patience for this not getting of it. She is determined to teach the Doctor a damn lesson. There have been too many people screwing around inside her head and she wants something real. Not some illusion meant to comfort, but real blood coursing through real veins.

This is the last story by Anne Ellis that I'll be reccing this month. Not because it's the last of her fics that I'd rec, by any means, but because I can't find any more of them. If you stumble across any, count yourself lucky.


Anima

Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Doctor/Master
Author on LJ: nostalgia_lj
Author's website: Nostalgia for an age yet to come
Why this fic must be read:

Hokay. I'm gonna toss you one last one for this month. This is a little different. I'd call it crackfic. Crackfic in a graphic novel sort of a way. Featuring THAT phonecall. Plus public nudity, evil bootycalls, and assbabies wearing knitted shoes. Apparently this is the source of the term tiemcock, too. Which is a term everyone should clearly familiarize themselves with. Have a happy September. It's been real, catch you all on the flip side.

Lolwho