My Podbang entry went live today. Between MLing for NaNo and six weeks of bronchitis, I had to switch to a shorter story and pod it in a rush. I had a lot of fun with it, though, and that's all down to the fic. Many thanks to kronos999 for suggesting this one and to the podmod collective for the last-minute extension.

Title: Praise the Lord (and Pass the Ammunition)
Author: nekomitsu
Reader: Diurnal Lee
Cover Artist: aesc
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: mature
Warning: character death
Summary: When Dean dies yet again Heaven decides it's been missing an angel and it's time to fill the vacancy. It takes Dean a long, long time –and several miracles performed over cheeseburgers and lice– to come to terms with his new celestial life and his old earthly temptations. Featuring Dean's new set of wings, human Castiel, beers at the Roadhouse, the Choirs of Heaven, a naked Sammy, Michael and other angels with bard inclinations, lame pick-up lines, Zachariah's lion head, gaudy motels, and Oprah-worthy revelations that are way funnier in Enochian.
Length: 3h 23m
Downloads: MP3 or audiobook

I recorded podfic for 7pennies (aka countess7 and pennyplainknits) in the inaugural Podbang challenge, and being me, I had to go for a 70k fic. *eyeroll* Having done it, I can now back up and try a short one, see about getting a better sound quality and really learning how to edit without overwhelming myself.

I think it's a tolerable first effort, even though to me I sound like a schoolteacher reading in church on canadian TV. And I'm very, very glad to have completed and posted something.

Title: Of Dice and Jen(sen)
Author: Epeeblade
Reader: Diurnal Lee
Fandom: CW RPS
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rated: mature
Warning: explicit sexual content
Length: 7:45 hours
Summary: In 1999, Jensen is a senior at college, his biggest concerns are getting into grad school and planning his next roleplaying game. Everything changes when freshman Jared Padalecki joins the gaming club.
Text: at author's fic journal
Podfic: MP3 or MB4

Many thanks to epeeblade for letting me mangle her story, to the podmods for running the challenge and allowing me a much-needed extension, and to kronos999 and paraka for enabling and general awesomeness.

I had an awesome time at CanGames this weekend, despite the unfortunately timed application of caffeine that prevented me from sleeping At All on Friday night. I got to roleplay for the first time with some terrific gamers, got to play or hang out with a whole bunch of great people whom I really only see this one weekend every year, got to overdose on the sheer yay!games!SQUEE of it all.

Except for a couple of pickup fantasy card games during my volunteer shifts, I played RPGs in every time slot.

( I ran four games and played in three. TLDR )

The most delightful surprise for me was the Little Fears, a horror game about children and the monsters they imagine, that it turns out hits a whole bunch of story kinks for me. I'm pretty sure I would have had a blast even if it weren't for the crackerjack prize in this particular scenario. The system was simple enough but didn't do much for me story-wise, though now I totally want to try Under the Bed, since I suspect it will bring the same genre of play with the added bonus of story support.

So what was this crackerjack prize? The GM told us we were a bunch of kids in an orphanage, sneaking out on a rescue operation. He handed out character sheets and had us introduce ourselves, and on the third player I got it, because his character was Dean, and the first two had been Ruby and Jimmy, called Cas by his friends, and in my hands I was holding a sheet for a boy named Sammy. When the other two came up Anna and Bobby, I thought it was convenient that the GM had cribbed all the names from the same show, because at least I'd be able to remember them easy.

But that was not the crackerjack prize, my friends. Oh no. Because it didn't end with the names. I had stuff on my character sheet like hazel eyes, and bookworm, and curious, and guided (which is the game's shorthand for having a strong set of moral principals), and WE TOTALLY PLAYED A SUPERNATURAL AU AND IT TOTALLY ROCKED! I kept wanting to jump up from the table and twirl around, hugging myself, but I didn't want to miss a second of any of it so I stayed put and played serious, innocent, six-year-old Sammy with all the creativity I could muster, and had so much fun that I was still flying high hours later despite having been awake for two days straight.

Ten-year-old Dean failed to get the car started, then got all mad when Cas managed to drive it. Later, Dean almost got himself eaten by a corn field. Bobby picked me up when we were running from that possessed tractor, and when he tripped, he threw me to Dean instead of saving himself. He got half-mauled as a result, it was totally gross. I broke cover while the big kids were thinking about shooting the scary tooth fairy, because I couldn't resist the chance to meet it, and all it did was give me a quarter. I used a map to fight a clown. Ruby shot scarecrows with flares and took out nine werewolves with novocaine grenades. Dean fought with a hockey stick because they wouldn't let him carry the gun. The awesome went on and on.

OMG, do I ever I adore it when my fandom and gaming intersect!

As I've mentioned before to some of the local fangirls, I'd really like to participate in a book club-style group aimed at fanfic. I'm trying to figure out how it might work.

I imagine participants all reading a given fic, then getting together to squee, bitch, and meta about it.

I imagine participants reccing fics that relate to a particular theme to be discussed. (crack fic, women in leadership roles, crossovers, etc.)

I'd like it to be multifandom, but how then to choose fics for everyone to read?

I imagine it'd be best if authors refrained from participating in discussion about their own fic. I'd want the group to be for talking about readers' experience of a story. I think that engaging the author about it should be done in the author's space.

Only fanfic? Would a broader fanworks approach be more or less appealing?

If something like this already exists, please to be link-sharing?

So, I bought a paid account, budgeted for well ahead of time and everything, for an assortment of reasons that mostly have to do with what DeeWee is about and the values and skills Denise, Mark, and the mass of volunteers have demonstrated since the mailing lists first opened.

The thing is, it comes with features that I never had to worry about with my free LJ account. Seventy-five icons? Why in the world would I need that many? I only used four at LJ, though it would have allowed me six.

Irony of ironies, I realized when trying to choose an icon for this post that I'm going to need to add one for overwhelmed/shock/flail. You know that thing where even though you lived comfortably in a tiny little room for years, as soon as you moved to a bigger place, you mysteriously acquired stuff that rapidly expanded to fill the larger space? Yeah, that.