I don't even know how this started! dugindeep and I were talking about her (now newly posted) Law and Order-esque story when she was writing it, and the subject of art came up. It probably began as "will you make me a banner?" and turned into 65+ graphics in one general theme for a 65K+ story. I had a blast, not just because it was one of my best friends, but because I rarely get to do art and I was so excited about the story!

So, no way I can include all the graphics in my first ~official~ art post (eeeep!), but here are a few, and I'm just proud. And, even though I had all of the locations, dates, and times for the scenes, I haven't gotten to READ the story yet even though I know it's amazing because I had snippets (I wanted to be surprised), and now I'm planning to get my butt right over there and jump in -- YOU SHOULD DO BECAUSE dugindeep IS AWESOME. SHE KNOWS COPS, YO.


IN THIS WINDY CITY
MASTER POST
Authored by dugindeep | 65,000 words | Rated NC-17 | Jared/Jensen

Chicago Homicide Detectives run themselves all over the city to tie together
a handful of bodies, a potential scandal with a local Alderman,
an unnamed dirty cop, and a possibly even dirtier partner.

In Chicago, it's not just the wind that'll get you ...


( More ~serious art! )

So, matalinolukaret and I were talking about Tom Brady's hair on Twitter last night [and its similarities to Jared Padalecki's 'do], and she had the revelation that Jared and Tom could be related.

Naturally, I demanded that she write fic and she obliged with The Jared Padalecki Playbook [J2, PG13], featuring Thanksgiving with the Padaleckis, friendly banter between cousins, and Gisele Bündchen & Jensen Ackles as the spouses who put up with way too much ♥

You'll have to forgive me, I'm trying to get out of a funk right now. Suffice it to say it's been a bad day/week/month so far and I hate complaining but this is my trying to fix that. I love my job, I really do, but sometimes the people there drag me down that it starts affecting other areas of my life, especially personal and online. This week, my boss and the head of the lab are at a conference leaving me with only the people that I have friction with, and it's not conducive to having a good week. Fortunately, that ends tomorrow and though I have to work all weekend, hopefully I can leave some of the stress behind and move on.

With a month left before I post my Big Bang, I'm trying to get back into the swing of it. It feels like it's been forever since I finished writing it, almost longer than I spent writing it, and going back now it's just such a departure from what I normally write that it's freaking ME out. Heck, do all of you even know what I'm writing? I know I made a teaser post of sorts a while back, but if not, here's my summary!

Golden Filaments In Fair DesignSamuel, a young orphaned boy, lucks into a life he could never have imagined, one full of wonder, magic, and love. Fate sends him to a couple with a traveling Vaudevillian show, and growing up amid the strange and beautiful performers is everything he’d dreamed. Happy as his childhood was, as an adult Sam becomes ever lonelier and develops two distinct personalities. There is the shy, helpful Sam who avoids social company. But there is also a charismatic and seductive artiste, first inspired to perform by a green eyed stranger he meets one night by chance. When the stranger, Dean, becomes a very real force in his life, he learns the other man's deep secret; Dean too is living a double life - one Sam would have never expected and one that leads him down a road of magic and discovery. The two men grow close, their connection obvious and passionate from the start. But when souls hang in the balance and destiny is never far away, the two men end up having to fight for the life they deserve.

Crazy, no? I have to say, there's character death in the story, but I look at it this way...how many times have Sam and Dean died on Supernatural, huh? There you go. I don't want to give away more because if you do end up reading it, I don't want to spoil the story! I'm not sure what combination of drugs [or what I'd inhaled that day in the lab] gave me the idea, but it's sheer ridiculousness. Some of you already know this!

BUT. The point of this post was to cheer me up from my recent drama and total run of back luck [I think I killed a leprechaun or something], so here's a list of things that make me happy at the moment...

• jumpuphigh offered to make a Big Bang soundtrack for me since I'm musically-inept and had no plans to offer one. Her track list is currently 9 hours long, but she'll cut it down ;)
• I'm working out again which has done wonders to combat stress even though it feels like my quads want to secede from the rest of my body.
• Snow Patrol's Make This Go On Forever which was nearly the title song of my Big Bang.
• Candy orange slices. Sort of an antithesis to the working out thing, but so darn good!
• Recent jewelry creations which I'll hopefully post soon.
• I'm going to Atlanta the week before my Big Bang's posted, and I *really* need the time away. Yeah, it's sort of a business trip, but it's a FUN business trip - staying downtown, getting wined and dined by the showrooms, hunting down awesome jewelry deals and finding new products for the store.
• pornfriday!

And some fic recs, none of them new, but all of them worth reading!

• Le Bel Endormi dans la Tour [or The Sleeping Beauty in the Tower] by tabaqui: Jared/Jensen - PG. A take on Sleeping Beauty that's creatively written [seriously, I had to read some sentences more than once so I could get all the nuances and descriptive effort] and heartwarming. Quiet, but loving, and such a fairy tale minus the fairies. It makes you want to know so much more about the world she created.
• Binding The Edges by mgbutterfly: One of my favorite Sam/Dean stories of all time, and it's only about 4,000 words. It's just such a great, progressive story about how the brothers get together as told through every time they have to bind each others' wounds.
• The Three Faces of Jared by nocturniquette1: 17 chapters. 70,000 words of a great, intriguing story! It's the tale of Jay Welling, trapped in an unhappy and abusive marriage, until different sides of his personality, formed and buried after a tragic event in his past, start making themselves known. Each identity is so different, and there's a match for each one, but who is Jay really, and who will he end up with? There are tough moments, but there are happy ones too.
• I know everyone has been reccing Big Bangs, and I figure you all have your must-reads and your list of to-reads, but three amazing ones I've read belong to arlad, finn21, and cormallen. All three are SO different even though they're all Jared/Jensen, and all are worth multiple reads! I can't wait 'til real life allows me to read more than one or two fics a week.

Just for something a little different, I thought I'd rec some of my favorite non-J2/SPN stories. These are ones I can go back to, over and over, and read.

( Danny/Martin and Tim/Tony if you're interested - four stories, all good, long reads! )