bereft:need fic, need upgrade

First of all, I have to say how very frustrating LJ has become and how joyless. Not only does it take me 3 minutes on average to make a comment these days but tonight stupid Explorer wouldn't even allow me to post. The application actually kept crashing every time I hit the 'update journal' link. I've now crawled into LJ via an ancient Netscape browser with the images turned off. What sort of fun is that?

You must all be getting heartily bored with my techie lamentations. I certainly am.

Anyway, I am also bored with my fandom life. Now that the constant interactivity of LJ has been rendered painful, I want to read fic! But there isn't any good fic. Or not that I can discover. Perhaps the techie thicket is too tangled for me to hack through and I haven't been able to find the fic for the fuck. But people: rec me some good reads, please.

Today I was reduced to reading Nsync slash. And it was strangely satisfying. There's something about rps. And there's something about rps'ers. And there's especially something about popslashers. Often I really like an author's HP fic only to find that she is a former or closet popslasher, and that is always fun. I think popslash is a good inoculation against taking oneself seriously. From what I know of Nsyncers is that they adored their subjects even less than lotrippers adore theirs. They know that slashing pop idols is entirely ridiculous, and they do it with a kind of tongue-in-cheek passion that is devoid of the kind of absurd canon worship that I stumble across in HP. Lotrps was like that for me. Also there's a certain kind of plot that just goes really nicely with some dumb young men hanging about in hotel rooms.

So, the upshot: Basically I don't care what fandom you rec, as long as this is high-quality A1 stuff. The kind of writing I like (you probably know if you're on my Friends list but here goes anyway):

* no bubbling seminal fluids, please
* no lay/lie confusion
* immaculate prose
* Americanisms? I don't care; if the story's good, I'll cope with them.
* realism, or
* swoonery
* happy mooshy endings
* alternatively, really really well-thought-through bad endings where the badness arises from the characters and is tragic not externally inflicted
* I don't mind the occasional manly tear.
* Not too much action-plot at the expense of delicious dialogue and slow, slow build-up
* Hot, delirious sex
* Beautiful metaphors, or
* Terse, spare prose
* Bonus points: Unusual weird pairings done in a way that convinces me of their OTPishness

Somebody stop me before I describe the fic that never existethed... But no, it doeth! Because I have read fics that are like that (see my (woefully un-updated)recs-page!).

P.S. Don't be upset if I don't answer your tigs straight away. I tend to wait till I'm at work where I have a new, fast imac. But then again when I'm at work, I'm... at work. So you see the dilemma and appreciate the techie delays. :-)

ETA: I remember asking for fantastic fic-recs last year sometime so if you recced then, no need to rec the same fic again.

Also, if it's HP: At the moment, I feel like reading only something with Crabbe, Goyle, Dudley or Draco in it. Anything else will have to be super-mega-fantastic in which case I may already know it. God, I am demanding, aren't I?