A surprisingly un-cracky SPN/LotR (movie-verse) crossover, trading on the "Changing Channels" premise: [link]

Does anyone know of a vid made to Perfect Circle's Gravity?

Every time I hear the song I swear I've seen a vid to it but I draw a blank on any details.

Yeah, I think it's Smallville maybe? I'm 90% sure it's from a Vividcon.

Halfamoon has started up over on LJ. For the next two weeks, there will be fics, fanart, vids, recs, meta, etc. all focused on female characters. Very much worth checking out, IMO.

Another great Inception fanartist. Great angles and lighting and colouring.

Inception gets all the great artists.

A thought niggling at the back of my head has been why AU's are so appealing to me where they are an automatic turn-off to others.

All I can think of is for me, they allow play and fresh story potential with characters I love without confusing canon. And all I can think about the dislike is that there is no canon. I love the characters, but sometimes I like to shake free of all the shit they're tied to, some of it poorly thought out. And I like to not get my fanon too confused with the canon, and AU's are a big help in that department. Also, AU's are an interesting place for the themes of canon to take place in a completely foreign setting, and sometimes, when done right, that's an interesting exercise and sometimes illuminating for the oringal source.

AU's are an interesting place for the themes of canon to take place in a completely foreign setting, and sometimes, when done right, that's an interesting exercise and sometimes illuminating for the oringal source.

I rarely, rarely like AUs (reasons to follow), but there are a few I adore, and what you describe there is exactly why I like the ones I like.

For most of the series I follow, the world-building is as important to me as the characters, so removing that aspect of a source can easily kill the appeal. With something like Avatar: the Last Airbender, the world and the different cultures are such an integral part of why I enjoy the series that something like a high school or band AU does not appeal. On the other hand, I could see Supernatural translating into, say, a Revolutionary War AU in a way I would find appealing.

And all I can think about the dislike is that there is no canon.

Well, some characters really need their 'verse to work, for me. Frasier and Niles in the Supernatural world was hysterical and cracktastic and I loved it but it wasn't the Cranes on their show. Making characters work outside of their world without it going as pure crack (nothing wrong but I think not what you are discussing) doesn't always work.

Then there is the my hed iz pastede on yay effect which happens so much more often then not when I try and read AUs. It's like an OC, but the author didn't want to say so.

And then there are AUs that are my favorite things to read and reread and reread forever. But there are so many AUs that I see and I will never click. They just don't appeal.

I tend to dislike AUs where they diverge from canon over specific peeves of the authors, like a character they dislike having died (or the reverse), but are otherwise in the same basic setting. But wildly different settings/plots with the familiar characters transplanted into them seem to suit me better. "Guns and Neuroses" was a sterling example of how well that can work.

I've read some lovely AU's and yet there was one character the author obviously disliked and turned them, wildly OOC, into the most heinous villian, when they'd been a canon good guy, and I just don't get it.