many faded things

Wow, LJ tells me that today is basically everyone's birthday. Happy birthday to jamesinboots and deirdre_c and most especially to my favorite person on LJ, walkawayslowly, who is currently off leading teenagers through Romania and therefore isn't around to read anything I write about my ridiculous amount of schmoopy love for her.

BUT I'LL WRITE A LITTLE ANYWAY.

I'd sort of stalked Merrin a little last summer after she wrote Demons Made Me Spill My Guts Like a Girl, which I possibly never should have admitted to, since I've gotten all kinds of crap about it since. (The number of times I've heard, "Ahaha, LOSER. You used to stalk me!" . . .) And I had NO idea how hard I was going to luck out when I friended her after chatting a little in the comments of Costarfucking. The answer: SO HARD. We crack ourselves up more than anyone else on the PLANET, and we're exponentially funnier and more awesome together than when we are apart, and also she's a phenomenal writer (*cough* What Remains *cough) and ALSO I love her to itty bitty pieces, and shortly there will be fic involving Merrin and someone whose name starts with David and ends with Cook.

Oh yes.

On a totally unrelated note, ahaha, I just discovered Entourage fic. Much like that time a couple years ago when I spent about a week reading nothing but The O.C. fic (Seth/Ryan! Seth/Summer and Ryan/Marissa on the way to Seth/Ryan! Seth/Anna and Ryan/Anna on the way to Seth/Ryan! Various other permutations thereof!), I have been gorging on every little bit of Eric/Vince I can get my hands on. Unlike with The O.C., where I'd at least watched the show sporadically, I have seen exactly none of the Entourage canon. But but but. Vince/Eric OTP! I feel like that needs about eight more exclamation points, and I am restraining myself.

I sort of want to type out this whole big meta thing of, like, how Entourage is hitting a bunch of the same buttons for me that non-AU J2 used to, except that it isn't marred by any of the wank or by the breakup and also it's 100% fictional (in spite of being loosely based on Mark Wahlberg's own entourage, blah blah whatever). Also it's got a GREAT cast of supporting characters (Drama! Turtle!) AND it has Ari Gold. ♥ ARI ♥!

It's like taking everything I love about J2 and putting them in the best (very minor) AU ever. Childhood best friends falling in love and being really, really gay for each other! In Hollywood! With big movies!

Tragically, unless there is a secret huge Entourage fandom hiding from me somewhere, there are like three good writers in the whole place, and I've already read pretty much everything they've written. The amount that I've loved everything fourteencandles has written is rather ridiculous, but this is by far my favorite:

Boys Will Always Break Your Heart by fourteencandles
Eric/Vince | PG | 14,500 words | outsider POV (!)
The boys are back in town, with their mothers watching out.

walkawayslowly is the person who really sold me on outsider POV as an awesome, awesome thing (read What Remains for why!), and this fic totally nails that. It's narrated by Eric's mom, which I would not have thought I'd like at all, and yet, omg. Eric, Vince, and the guys come back from California, aaaaaaaand Eric and Vince come out to their mothers. IT'S AMAZING, OKAY. I've basically been reading Entourage fic as original fic, since, again, I've never seen the canon, but really, this fic is phenomenal. Outsider POV and coming out fic in the same place.

Uh, I can hear you all hitting that defriend button already, so let me just add: there is no way in this world I have the time or the energy to actively get into a new fandom at this point, so I'm sure that, like my short-lived The O.C. phase, this too shall fizzle out. Unless there really is a secret huge fandom of which I am not aware, in which case, no promises, yo.