wyndewalker

melagan and goddess47 asked me to participate in romancingmcshep this year but I haven't been doing much writing lately. Instead here are recs for 5 of my favorite HEA McShep fics.

Title: Bell Curve series
Author: Rageprufrock
Fandom: SGA
Pair: McKay/Sheppard
Words: 63,164
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: None
Summary: In his rational mind, Rodney knew that following a girl who'd just dumped you into a strip club was really, really pathetic.
Notes: I can't say with 100% certainty that this was the first McShep story/series I read but it's always the first one that comes to mind when I try to remember. And, okay, I will never get over my amusement over the title of the first story in the series - Bell Curve, Or, Ladies Night at the Boom Boom Room. Either way it's Rodney at his acerbic finest with Stripper!John.

Title: Time in a Bottle
Author: Astolat
Fandom: SGA
Pair: McKay/Sheppard
Words: 14,216
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: None
Summary: To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour.
Notes: This is always the second story that come to mind when I think of my first forays into McShep. Astolat has always had way of story telling that pulls you in and refuses to let you go until the story is done and just makes you fall in love with the characters.

Title: Entangled Particles series
Author: Zinnith
Fandom: SGA
Pair: McKay/Sheppard
Words: 139,712
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: None
Summary: The Entangled Particles 'verse is an AU in which John is a former Air Force pilot and Rodney is a writer. It's set in Sacramento, California and tells the various tales of two men and a relationship.
Notes: Another of the early McShep stories/series I read in fandom and still periodically reread.

Title: Wraith Killers
Author: LadyRa
Fandom: SGA
Pair: McKay/Sheppard
Words: 69,959
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Canon Typical Violence
Summary: Atlantis ends up with some unexpected new residents.
Notes: Well, it's LadyRa and kittens! Hard to go wrong with either.

Title: Lord John Sheppard versus Earth
Author: LitGal
Fandom: SGA
Pair: McKay/Sheppard
Words: 61,696
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence
Summary: Canon diverged before Jackson found Atlantis. The IOC stepped in and decided to make things more efficient. A gene testing program brought Major John Sheppard into the program earlier, but budget constraints and international treaties have kept Dr. Jackson out of the antarctic. So now John has to find his own team--and his own geek--or he's in danger of being stuck in the mountain forever as a light switch. However, as the universe changes, fate forces some things to return to proper form, and other things... they get wildly out of control. John isn't sure how he came to be Earth's enemy, but he's going to have to deal with the cards he's dealt.
Notes: LitGal is one of those writers who is able to combine such incredible world-building with great word economics that you'll think you've just finished a story twice as long as it actually is and loved every minute of it. This story in particular is canon divergent yet still gets to Atlantis in an unexpected way. In the end it's a big love letter from John to Rodney.

Another year has come and gone. I can't personally say that 2021 was better than 2020 but it at least wasn't worse. So that's something. I did meet or exceed most of my reading goals for the year which is definitely a win. I gained a new fandom which is good, though it did distract me a little from my goal of more diversified fandom reading. I can't say I'm overly upset by it. LOL

December Reading Bingo

This month went pretty well. I finished four pro books and made it halfway through a fifth. I'd hoped to finish it before the end of the month but I've been sick since the 23rd with a nasty head cold and it just didn't happen. Ah well.

Books read:
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

I'm halfway through a reread of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone because why not.

Reading stats for the month:
Pro Books read: 4
--words read: 369,015

Fanfiction stories read: 124
--words read: 2,020,102
--fandoms read: 4 - 911, Harry Potter, SGA, and Teen Wolf



Reading Stats for 2021

Goals for the year:
Read 9 Pro books
Read 12.5 million words

Achieved for the year:
Read 5 Pro books
Read 24,321,988 words
Read 1,525 fanfiction stories in 41 fandoms

Fandom Stats for the year:
( Read more... )

And for those interested in seeing all of the stories I read this year along with the charts and graphs and, honestly, the ridiculous amount of effort I put into keeping track of all of this, here's the url to the Google Sheets version of my Excel spreadsheets: https://tinyurl.com/yp76t6pk

Another bingo finished. I accomplished my goal of completing a Non-911 and a 911-only bingo but I did have to use a WIP and under 5k fics to complete the 911-only bingo. Apparently there's not much Apocalypse or Genderswap fics in the Buddie fandom, and what there is are either WIPs or super short. But I got it done. I've also come to realize that while Fork in the Road fics are *always* Canon Divergent, Canon Divergent fics are *not* always Fork in the Road fics even if they sometimes appear to be on the surface.

Established Relationship	Crossdressing/Costumes	Gender Swap
AU: Apocalypse	Epistolary	Fork in the Road
Time Travel	Future Fic	AU: Alternate Professions

As always keep an eye on the tags and warnings, particularly the Apocalypse fics, mostly for some mild violence and character deaths.

Established Relationship - 911 - In May's Living Room - Anonymous
Established Relationship - 911 - Research Isn't Always A Good Thing - artbyweb86
Established Relationship - 911 - The Devil Hides Behind the Sun - moonstonediaz
Established Relationship - 911 - Christopher Says A Bad Word - Un1te_Cosm0s
Established Relationship - SG-1 - Anunnaki II - MichelleB

Crossdressing - 911 - princesa chronicles series - buckgirl (deanc0ded)
Crossdressing - 911 - Love the Way (You Wear That Dress) - chucks_prophet
Crossdressing - 911 - 27 and a Half Dresses - chucks_prophet
Crossdressing - 911 - For His Eyes Only - mansikka
Crossdressing - 911 - trust you with my body, my eyes closed - rebeccaofsbfarm
Crossdressing - Teen Wolf - Dress Rhymes With Mess - LadyDrace

Genderswap - 911 - Buck's New Normal series - CinnamonVanillaCulture
Genderswap - Hobbit - An Eye For Quality - Linelen (Linelenagain)

AU: Apocalypse - 911 - To build a home WIP Hiatus - Afstory & FallenExeed
AU: Apocalypse - 911 - Balance - bunnyangel
AU: Apocalypse - 911 - Abandon - bunnyangel
AU: Apocalypse - 911 - Rally Point - bunnyangel
AU: Apocalypse - 911 - The one at the end of the world - Monstrous_Moonshine
AU: Apocalypse - 911 - The Day They Changed - TaylorGuy
AU: Apocalypse - Blade 3 - Be My Mate - glitterfics
AU: Apocalypse - Losers - Why Couldn't It Be Zombies? - taibhrigh

Epistolary - 911 - Those Two Firefighters - DarkFairytale
Epistolary - Arrow - message in a bottle - spyglass
Epistolary - Pacific Rim - The Little Shatterdome Around the Corner - GutterBall

Fork in the Road - 911 - we were born with nothing - squidded (torncorpse)
Fork in the Road - 911 - this is what it's supposed to be - thatnerdemryn
Fork in the Road - SGA - What Might Have Been series - Keira Marcos -
Fork in the Road - Teen Wolf - The Overlooked - HarleyJQuin

Time Travel - 911 - Believe in Fate - Bythia
Time Travel - 911 - Adjacent - mansikka
Time Travel - Harry Potter - Sixth Year (Rough Trade fic) - Goddess47
Time Travel - SGA - Janus Two-Step - LadyHolder
Time Travel - Teen Wolf - Misfire 'verse series mothlights & unpossible

Future Fic - 911 - the love definition - tkreyesevandiaz
Future Fic - H5O - Rear View Mirror - dante_s_hell

AU: Alternate Professions - 911 - all was golden in the sky series - spinningincircles
AU: Alternate Professions - Arrow - Icing on the Cake - CheerUpLovely

Shocking, I know. I actually managed to complete this before the month was halfway over.

For Fandom month I managed to read 3 stories or series per fandom for a total of 1.4 million words. A number of old favorites mixed in with some new fics.

Stargate	Losers	Pacific Rim
Star Trek: AOS	NCIS	9-1-1
Teen Wolf	Crossover	Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Row 1:

( Read more... )



Row 2:

( Read more... )



Row 3:

( Read more... )

Since I never got to them in June I decided September would be a good time to clear out some of my Marked For Later list. I didn't get through as many as I wanted to but I did find myself clearing out a few unread simply because I couldn't figure out why I'd marked them for later in the first place. ::shrugs::

September Word Count: 1,831,699

As always heed the tags.

Marked For Later Stories Read:

BTVS - Series: Hyena Packverse 1 - No Laughing Matter - quicksylver28
MCU - At the Heart of the Matter - Pookaseraph
MCU - Assembling an Audience -Suzelle
NCIS - A Long And Winding Road - SpencnerTibbsLuvr (KliqzAngel)
PotC - Will Turner Sequence 1 - Paterfamilias - Zwarte Parel
PotC - Will Turner Sequence 2 - Finding William Turner - Zwarte Parel
SGA - Coping Mechanisms - amireal
SGA - Moka - Martha - Warning: This has flashbacks of torture and, while a well-written story, I found it disturbing.
SGA - Pegasus Purgatorio - MrsHamill
SGA - Antarctic Drift - smilebackwards
SGA - Prime, Not Prime 1 - Forged in Fire - Tarlan
SGA - Prime, Not Prime 2 - Prime, Not Prime - Tarlan
Supernatural - Across the Universe - iamthemagicks
Teen Wolf - Celebrity Wolf - Alexdoesthings
Teen Wolf - Heartbreakers and Howls 1 - 4 Rules of Being a Heartbreaker - hellbells
Teen Wolf - The Alpha and the Pack 1 - Who's the Alpha? - penumbria
Teen Wolf - The Alpha and the Pack 2 - The Alpha and the Pack - penumbria
Teen Wolf - Red Riding Hood 1 - Little Red Riding Hood (you sure are looking good) - textbookchoices
Teen Wolf - Red Riding Hood 2 - Claiming Red - textbookchoices
Teen Wolf - Chocolate and Notebooks - thisnewjoe

August is Trope Bingo month. This month will be interesting because some of the fics fit multiple tropes, some just tend not be labelled as such, and some I'm finding people don't seem to understand the meaning of, that or they're just slapping the tag on their fic even though it doesn't really fit. Le sigh.

AU: Fusion	Everyone Thinks We're a Couple	Secret Identities
Getting Together	Opposites Attract	Mistaken Identity
AU: Roommates	AU: Romance Novel	Different First Meeting

July is Fandom Bingo month and I've actually gotten off to a pretty strong start. It helps that some of the fandoms this month are older ones so I'm reading a bunch of the stories I meant to read last month. And several of my Marked For Later stories also fit. So yay for multi-tasking! :>

Chronicles of Riddick	Hawaii 5-O	Random Small Fandom
Eureka	Random New Fandom	Merlin
Hobbit	Arrow	Magnificent 7

This post took quite a bit longer to get done than I'd planned. Mostly because I really haven't had time to work on it. On the first I was driving home from Kim's in Cleveland. That took most of the day. On the second I got roped into doing yardwork for my Mom before I went in for my afternoon shift at work. Yay. (Note the sarcasm) Then I worked 3 doubles in a row, which meant 11-13 hour days depending on the break between shifts. Thankfully I have today and tomorrow off. Yay!

On to the good stuff.
I had two goals for May:
1) Complete my trope bingo in 9-1-1, Teen Wolf, and SGA for a total of 27 fills.
2) Read a minimum of 2.5 million words, breaking April's record of 2,092,567 words.

Well, I can honestly say I successfully completed both goals. In the case of the word goal I really really really successfully completed my goal. For May I read a grand total of:

3,234,037 words.

I kid you not. It occured to me towards the end of the month that I'd all but quit playing games on my phone. Which makes me wonder just how much time I normally spend doing that. Hmm.

The plan for June is a little bit up in the air at them moment. I'd originally planned to use this month to work on catching up with my Marked For Later list on AO3 but then I lost my notebook with what I'd intended and thought I'd go with a deep-dive on some of my older favorite authors. Then I found the notebook and now I can't decide. Plus there's still my obsession with 9-1-1, and the stories for Quantum Bang are being released this month. Although there's less stories that I'm interested in reading than I expected. Sigh. I might spend today and/or tomorrow going through the authors and my Marked For Later list and picking out a selection of stories to start with and take it from there. As interesting as it was I'm definitely not going to try and break May's record. As I went through the stories for my bingo fills I realized I couldn't remember a lot of the stories I'd read earlier in the month and I know I'd enjoyed them. Something tells me there's going to be a number of rereads in my future.

So, plan for June is a mix of old favorite authors and Marked For Later stories, mixed with Quantum Bang stories and 911. Should be fun.

For anyone interested in the stats: https://tinyurl.com/yp76t6pk

Amnesia	Vision-Deprived	Holiday Fic
Hurt/Comfort or Angst	Single Parent Fic	Fluff
Marriage	Alternate Universe	Presumed Dead

As always check the tags.

Column 1:
( Read more... )

Column 2:
( Read more... )

Column 3:
( Read more... )

So for the first time I haven't completed the goals I set for my bingo. I did read at least two stories in every fandom on my card and most of them I did manage to read three like I planned. I fell short on Harry Potter, due South, and The Sentinel.


I blame 9-1-1 entirely. And Jilly James because it was her story that got me started.


I was not looking for a new fandom or even a new show to watch. But April is a Rough Trade/NaNo month and Jilly wrote a 9-1-1 Buck/Eddie series and against my better judgement I decided to read it. 169 stories, 860,888 words, and having binge watched the entirety of 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Lonestar later I clearly have a new fandom.

It might also account for how I managed to read 2,022,608 words this month. It'll be interesting to see how May goes.

For anyone interested in the stats: https://tinyurl.com/yp76t6pk

Fast and the Furious	Harry Potter	Pacific Rim
due South	Teen Wolf	CSI: Miami
Sentinel	Marvel Cinematic Universe	Stargate: Atlantis

As always check the tags.
Row 1:

( Read more... )

Row 2:

( Read more... )

Row 3:

( Read more... )

No bingo for March. Instead I focused on reading a single long fic I hadn't read before but had been recced. In this case: A Marauder's Plan by CatsAreCool FFN or AO3 Due to the wildly different word counts on the sites I used the count plugin for Calibre which came back with 866,828/866,692 for the different versions.
Summary: Sirius decides to stay in England after escaping Hogwarts and makes protecting Harry his priority. AU GOF.

I started on March 2nd and finished on the 25th. Overall I really enjoyed this story. It was great seeing a responsible Sirius specifically, and responsible adults in general. A number of secondary characters are greatly fleshed out adding to the depth of the story and CatsAreCool did some interesting things with the concept of Family Magic. There are a lot of threads, plots and sub-plots, woven throughout this story and, barring one mentioned below, CatsAreCool did an excellent job of keeping track of everything and keeping the reader moving in the right direction.

Pretty much my only two complaints were a, early on there was a lot of repetitive information being passed along in conversations between characters but that thankfully stopped after about the first quarter of the story; and, b, there was a "twist" that really felt like it came completely out of nowhere. That being said, neither really affected my overall enjoyment of the story. It definitely goes on my would, and probably will, read again list. Also considering the fact that the author wrote and posted this over the course of several years they did an amazing job of keeping it coherent and well written. I highly recommend reading it if you have a couple weeks to spare. :>


And because some people were interested in seeing the list of stories I've read, and because I keep track of things like that, like a great big nerd, below is a link to a Google Sheet with the year-to-date info. No links and currently no source listing, ie AO3, FFN, etc. But I'm neurotic enough that I may include that info at a later date.

https://tinyurl.com/yp76t6pk

My April Fandom Bingo card will be posted shortly.