I've never thrown my mashed potatoes up against the wall

[melannen]

Hmm. Well, I'm still stuck on Stargate: Atlantis at the moment. There's some really good fic and vids out there, although I think I'm glad I waited as long as I did to start reading: the fandom's had time to shake itself down a few times. And so much of the stuff on lj is so very good, once you've figured out how to find it. pegasus_b is currently slowly eating my brain. I've been waiting and waiting for an informally-done shared world like that to actually *work* long-term, because I feel like that is the most pure and vital evolution of fic-writing culture, and I'm fascinated. (Most of the others I've seen attempted either fizzle, are devoured by drama, or get bogged down in administration and nitpickery. This one's just plain *good*. It must just be the right time and right place and right *people*. Sort of the same way that xf_journals has been amazing me-- it has its problems in terms of keeping a plot moving, but I'd seen enough rp's crash'n'burn that I didn't expect a *completely* uncoordinated one to even *last* like it has, much less still rock.)

I'm now 3,000 words into the SGA/HL crossover of doom, which doesn't sound that impressive until you realize that it's the farthest I've gotten in writing *anything* for about two years. Actually, since I got this lj, which is probably telling ... although the first half of what I have already needs massive rewrites (after I read Critias and Timaeus, darnit, I was trying to get out of having to...) And I can't write the next part until I either find or create a list of everyone we know of on the Atlantis expedition and what they do, because as usual I want it to be all about the minor characters. Plus even if I do finish it, I've developed a terrible case of jitters about promoting it anywhere because a) the general level of writing in SGA is so high, and b) so many of them used to be big names in HL fandom back in the days when I was still reading The New Voyages...

Also, Methos is insisting that he spent most of the early twentieth century using the name 'Dr. Benjamin Pierce', which, while it works remarkably well with his canonical pseudonyms, is ... just ... wrong.

There is one thing that can make me stop reading an otherwise well-written SGA fic, and shake my confidence in the writer, though. It's rare that a characterization issue gets me riled up, but one that does is the assertion that Dr. Rodney McKay, under his facade of arrogance, is hiding deep-seated insecurity. Dr. Rodney McKay is not hiding any deep-seated insecurity; you can tell this because he has been broadcasting his deep-seated insecurities loudly and shamelessly across two galaxies. And only a supremely, honestly self-confident man can afford to do that. Dr. Rodney McKay doesn't hide *anything*-- okay, he's occasionally capable of lying to himself, at least over the short term, and his sense of perspective can be a little out of whack. Actually, one could probably sum up his complete personality issues by stating that if he was hooked up to the Total Perspective Vortex, he would come out either smirking and saying "told you so," or muttering to himself about how he could have designed a better simulator, and who'd decided to use a cupcake anyway, the entropy drift as it got stale would obviously throw off your calculations over time, plus using hot coffee instead would add the necessary level of improbability to explain things like Sam Carter and John Sheppard.

(... did I really just spend five minutes trying to get Google to tell me whether Canadians call them fairy cakes or cupcakes? Yes I did.)

The rest of my free time this weekend was spent trying to get the Jack/Thor bunny *out* of my head, without any notable success. I may post about that tomorrow, if I'm feeling particularly sadistic. Oh, and re-reading the insanely good Jack/Baal fic I found on stargateslash.

dreamsquirrel stopped by and we had an amazingly geeky conversation, even for us. At one point we were discussing IRC, and said conversation can be summarized thus:

Him: My impression is that IRC these days consists mostly of guys pretending to be girls cybering with other guys pretending to be girls, even though they both know that the other girl is probably a guy pretending to be a girl.

Me: Really? My exposure to IRC is that it's mostly female slashers writing chatporn with other female slashers.

... So then only actual difference is that the men try to keep up a pretense that they're having sex with real women, but the women blithely admit that they're all women pretending to be fictional men.

There, we solved the slash and gender question! You can all go meta about more interesting stuff now.

ETA: As to the big news this week, I internalized St. Malachy at too early an age to be anything other than slightly freaked out by papal succession. See you in 2012...

Comments

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

*drools* Jack/Ba'al???!?!?!?!? ACTUAL GOA'ULDFIC?

Holy shit!

Is the end of the world here too?

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I don't know, but I'm starting to worry.

Also, Ba'al is insanely hot in that. (There's a sort-of-sequel here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/maraceles/61750.html#cutid1) which is also not to be missed.)

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

Dayyum. As soon as I finish doing work tonight, my eyes are going to be glued to the screen reading those. :)

(and if you see any other pro-Goa'uld fic, regardless of pairing, PLEASE tell me!)

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Well, have you read Willing (http://www.area52hkh.net/ass/salieri/willing.php) or Acquisition (http://www.otherplaces.net/acquisition.htm)? They both feature OC, non-System-Lord goa'uld, but they're relatively sympathetic to the whole lifestyle. There was at least one other okay one, with a Mary-Sue Goa'uld(!), which I can't seem to find again.

Beyond that I got nothin', but I'm definitely keeping my eyes out. Surely there must be more people who think that Ba'al and Apophis (and Yu and Osiris and Hathor) are some of the best characters in the show? *sigh*

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

*perks* No, I haven't! I remember one someone recced to me a long time ago that featured an OC Goa'uld, but she was pointedly anti-System Lords-- it was a weird kind of self-hating Goa'uld/anti-Goa'uld fic that had good worldbuilding and still annoyed the shit out of me. These look infinitely more promising. :)

And yes, you'd think there would be. Coming from fandoms where there are tons of villain fans (SW, HP), it was downright *weird* to see the way Goa'uld-backers are treated by the Stargate fandom. I've been meeting a lot more people who are interested in the Goa'uld lately, though, so I've got some hope.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that sounds like the one I was trying to remember.

I don't even know if it really is a villain thing-- there seem to be almost no non-SGC fics at all. You'd think there'd be plenty of Asgard fic, and Tok'Ra fic, and Tollan fic, and Abydos fic, and Jaffa fic to start with-- SG1 has so many meaty recurring characters, and the shifting alliances and allegiances are the coolest part -- but it seems like if a character's not SGC-affilated, nobody *cares*.

It's strange-- I came in by way of SW and HP too (with side trips to HL and XF) and I'm used to at least *some* fic about everyone else.

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

I think you're partially right-- there is damn little fic about anyone but "The Team." And I also find that bizarre considering how *many* minor characters there are and how big the world is. It also occurs to me that there's very little worldfic in general in Stargate, the character-fic writers not only predominate, but they're pretty much all there is.

But it's also partially the villain thing, because I made the mistake of posting Goa'uld-worldview-supportive comments to several Stargate lists when I first got interested in the fandom (as I do in support of the Sith and the Slytherin), and the responses were downright *hostile.* I've been called "sick" for doing this and several other things-- I commented on one of the emails on my original LJ in 2003, I'll have to see if I can find it. Of course, now that people (particularly on Gateworld, which seems to cater to a very low common denominator of fan-- I frequently see threads on there where people don't know that any of the System Lords are named after figures in living religions!) find Ba'al to be HOTT, this should be changing rapidly. I can hardly wait for the redeemed!Ba'al fics to start pouring in. *growl*

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I tend to judge fandoms entirely by the well-rec'd fic and what I pick up in the comment threads to that fic, which is usually the *highest* common denominator, so I'm sure you're right. How could anybody watch the episode where Apophis dies at the SGC and not fall at least a *little* bit in love with him, though? I just don't understand people sometimes.

[enemy-anime.livejournal.com]

I've never bathed in yogurt and I don't look good in leggings...and we've never been to Boston in the fall.

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

Woohoo! We rock!

.. I'd like to see an analysis of *why* we rock, sometime. Because it's definitely surprised *me*, too, that we've held together for over a year now. Possibly because it's *real-time*, and moves slowly ... whereas with traditional-style RPs that are slow you tend to get single days that last for months on end, and people get bored or annoyed. We can just say "ok, that was *last* month - what's going on *now*?" and move forward.

Ya think?

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

And also, none of the journals is completely dependent on the existence of any of the others. Sure, we whine when there aren't any posts for awhile, but the answer to that is always "so go make up your own story with your character" .. you never have to wait to post until someone else has done so, and you don't *have* to follow anyone else's story for it to still work.

And probably the biggest reason? We have a group of core players who completely, utterly rule. *g*

[melannen.livejournal.com]

And I've never painted daisies on a big red rubber ball!

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Yep! We rock!

I think it's sort of a combination of those things. I was thinking along those lines-- it's like, *because* you do absolutely minimal planning and organization, nobody has any *expectations*, so nobody gets disappointed and disillusioned when things don't happen, they just keep having fun playing pretend. Yay!

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

Vhat iz zhis "we" you schpeak uff? Are you joining, then? So can I put you down for Phoebe? d-;

Lack of planning and organization is the *best*.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Er, no? q:

D'you have any idea how much *research* I'd end up doing to attempt to RP Phoebe? It wouldn't even be funny.

... and that was not an invitation to suggest other people.

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

*reads St. Malachy thing instead of doing work*

... wow. But. How accurate were all the prophesies that came before #109? It doesn't say.

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

It would be fun research! d-: You'd be a great Phoebe. You could be off in England doing your own thing, and occasionally bugging your dear friend Mulder. It would be awesome.

*sigh* Ok. You could be Jeffrey Spender! Yeah! That'd be great! .. at least he's American. Morris Fletcher? Jeremiah Smith? Ooh, no, Chuck Burks. Yes. That's it. Perfect for you.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I don't even know who Chuck Burks *is*.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

The whole list is here (http://www.catholic-pages.com/grabbag/malachy.asp"). Go wild. A lot of them seem very read-into-it-what-you-will.

My impression though is that nobody really paid much attention to it until John Paul I was assassinated died a perfectly natural, not-mysterious-at-all death after only a month in office, people started looking for prophecies, and oops, they suddenly realized there were only a few left to go.

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

She could be Gibson's blind deaf girlfriend!!!1

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

Yes!!! :D That's *definitely* it!

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

*GASP!* Chuck Burks! (http://xfphotos.fredfarm.com/season4/l-betts/betts330.jpg) Is the really awesome guy who works in the paranormal-things laboratory at UMD! He rules! .. and I think the last time he was seen was listening to the Lazarus Bowl singing "I am the Walrus" in the XF office in Hollywood AD. Lots of room to make stuff up!

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

Current Music: veggietales - the pirates who don't do anything

Gah! That evil song again! (We had a sales associate at Gamestop who would sing that constantly. Oddly enough, he got written up once for being a S.A who don't do anything...)

At one point we were discussing IRC...
What kinda channels are y'all going into?! The raunchiest I've seen is:

march t2 anyone? i can host.
(30 minutes pass)
heh. Person sucks.
Krmt is a gey lucksack
**KrmtDfrog has kicked Person. (heh.)**

Also, skree on the EPS icon (which I think was on a comment)!

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I don't actually go into channels very often. Since I am completely lacking in social skills, the few times I tried I just lurked, not saying anything, so I didn't see the point.

The ones I know about are mostly fandom channels-- a lot of them are through squidge.org, which is all slash, all the time, so, yeah. I know there's a #dcu that's fairly active, and a couple stargate ones, and of course harry potter ones of various sorts, some of them for particular RPGs. Occasionally people repost porn written in the channels to lj, which is called chatporn.

Of course that was all mad generalizations.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

No, no, no!

Aargh. If I didn't have more than I could handle already I might even be tempted to do that one.

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

Y'know, if social skills were a requirement to use IRC, there'd be, like, 10 people, total, spread out across all the different servers... XP

That's kind of the point. No one *really* knows you, so you're a little more free to say things. In the very worst case, you can always say someone stole your nickname and said all those nasty things about Draco and a jar of Mango preserves.

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

Wait a minute... that icon...

I know I'll not remember the title, but was that from a short in a PBS show? I seem to remember math-based detectives, solving a case in which a rock musician sang a plea for help, which turned out to be dialtones...

And another had a nefarious teacher who was spreading false information to his class... (gasp!)