to-do list blogging #3

[melannen]

Okay, all the sewing room stuff that's going to get done for now is done - the rest has to wait until I've excavated the top bunk (tomorrow's job. Tomorrow's *only* job. It's going to be... quite a job. I may liveblog it.) because I know there's more crafting stuff in there.

In the meantime, here is: sublist: fanfic WIPS to work on this week.

...all titles provisional only

A Thousand Rainy Days (Since We First Met) : The modern AU consensual pining a-spec Enjolras/Grantaire thing based on this. (With detailed-ly daydreamed sequels “It’s always me who ends up getting wet” and “it’s a big enough umbrella”, so I know how it ends, I just have to figure out the middle.)

This Demon-Haunted World: The Buzzfeed Unsolved fic where it turns out Ryan was actually a skeptic all along (I am not actually writing buzzfeed unsolved fic, move along) (I’m just tired of all the fanfic where it turns out Ghosts Are Really Real For Sure and none that are the opposite, and I know Ghosts makes a better story but I wanted to see if I could do it)(but I’m not really I gave up rps years ago, it’s bad for your health)(augh)

Shadows on Snow: The Imperial Radch AU/crossover where Seivarden and Breq both take wrong turns and end up meeting on the wrong snow planet: Gethen instead of Nilt. It’s really fun to write Radchaai and Gethenian ideas about gender interacting, although the Foretelling scene is going to be...trippy. Also I’m being totally self-indulgent and writing Seivarden as having become a Handdara adept instead of a kef addict, which is making her interestingly different-not-different (in a very Handdara way).

World’s Oldest Virgin: So like many many years ago in Highlander fandom there was a challenge to write Virgin!MacLeod and have it be IC, and then somebody dared people do to Virgin!Methos instead, and I don’t think anybody ever did but it lodged in the back of my brain and apparently now I am finally writing it out? It requires an explicit sex scene + sensitive treatment of sexual-assault-related stuff though so it might still be too hard for me.

The next chapters of both of the Deadpool kidfic wips, both stalled on the basis of a) Deadpool voice is really hard and I need to rewatch the movie at least once, and b) chapter 2 ends on a plotty cliffhanger so if I post it I'm committing to a longer WIP for sure.

The First Sedoretu of Ankh-Morpork for the sedoretu fest prompt I claimed (I have not forgotten!) Stalled by the fact that it refuses to diverge from canon - like, "Sam and Sybil can't get married until they finish their foursome so Sybil keeps throwing Sam at Havelock until they realize they're in love" does not in fact materially change the plots or character arcs of any of the first three Watch books. I mean, in Men at Arms he spends the book in a minor panic about the fact Sybil wants him to propose to the Patrician instead of in a minor panic over his upcoming wedding, but that's basically the only difference so far. I keep going "I need a scene here where Sam moons over the Patrician" and then realize at that point in canon he is staring moonily at the man's bedroom window from his bedroom across the city. I think it will diverge farther by the time Sybil meets Margolotta, but in the meanwhile I need my book with me for scene-by-scene reference, and thus I can't work on it at work.

Dead Newt: The one where Hermann and Newt both forget that if they let the PPDC declare them both dead, that means their private papers get released to the historians, and that means they have to sit in hiding watching the media dissect their early letters and discover their tragic love affair (which never existed! They would have noticed!) This came from a tumblr prompt, which I have since lost, of course. Stalled because I need to re-watch Uprising because I seem to have read it very differently than most people writing it now.)

Dark Water and the Vivisector: the no-Kaiju AU where Newt and Hermann are both serial killers. Stalled because I can't decide if the cops are the original-era jaeger pilots or the uprising-era jaeger pilots. Or both.

That's Not How The Force Works!: the post-TLJ fic that starts with Force Ghost Han punching Force Ghost Luke in the nose because he deserves it. Stalled because there's a bunch of *scenes* I want to write in this world, but no connected story, and I can't decided how to structure it or what actually belongs in it. The POV character having transcended spacetime does not help with this, mind you. Also I keep getting distracted trying to learn to read Chinese.

Not Made For Any Man: The Moon's First Quarter: I add at least a chapter to this every October! It's almost done! But the last two chapters need to be full of Heterosexuals being Heterosexual at each other and I can't figure out how it works.

Also, to-watch list for this week:
1. rest of Buzzfeed Unsolved
2. Rest of Guardian
3. Round Planet
4. New Doctor Who
5. Stranger Things (maybe)

Comments

[lannamichaels]

*subtley encourages all of these, especially the sedoretu, ignoring her own never-got-off-the-ground sedoretu fic*

Guardian has become a fandom where I read fic for it, but haven't seen the show, and have been left deeply confused about Shen Wei. But I live happily in the ambiguity ;)

[melannen]

Now I feel a lot better that mine stalled out at only 5000 words. :D

I also really want to do a Star Wars sequel trilogy sedoretu fic, because it's inexplicable to be that nobody has yet, but I promised myself I had to finish the Discworld one first.

[lannamichaels]

I am Intruiged at the star wars sedoretu. What's the pairings line up?

[melannen]

In my version, Finn and Rey are Star moiety and Rose and Poe are Shadow moiety (because Morning and Evening don't work in space) so it's Finn/Rose, Finn/Poe, Poe/Rey, Rey/Rose + Finn & Rey BFF and Rose & Poe BFF.

I like the idea that the person Finn is most super-devoted to in canon is the one he *doesn't* have a sexual/romantic thing with, because this is me writing. (But I also like him and Rose as a romantic pair better than as friends.) And the idea of Poe & Rey meeting at the end of TLJ, looking each other over and each separately going "yep, yep, I am 100% there for marrying that". And I think Poe & Rose working out a platonic relationship with their history together-but-separate in the Resistance would be really cool.

But I could see it going the other way with the het ships, too, if someone else wrote it.

[lannamichaels]

I like how that works out! I still have not yet seen TLJ so I don't know much about Rose, but from what I do know, that is great. :D And I like Star vs. Shadow, that's an excellent way to put it.

[melannen]

I spent an excessive amount of time trying to find out if there were any recorded moiety names from Mayan cultures (because Yavin and Oscar Isaac, and a lot of Southwestern/Mesoamerican groups did) but I think the most likely I found was Red people vs. White people, and just. No. We've ruined that one forever.

[highlander_ii]

i am trying to imagine the 'raping and pillaging' Horseman of Death maintaining purity for 5k years... not saying it can't be done, but brah was rivaling Connor in the ability to say 'i can't die, get on me' in his younger-ish days. =)

[melannen]

To make it work re: horsemen I am using a very limited definiton which includes "all parties involved must be freely consenting or it doesn't count." Even then it's quite a stretch, I grant you that!

But part of it is playing with how things like sex, virginity, courtship, etc., change definitions over time. Methos has lost a lot of different versions of virginity over the centuries and continents! And probably undergone ritual repurification at least a few times, too.

(Actually you could probably write a really fun one set after the Dark Quickening where they were *both* mystically revirginized in the holy spring, like in that one old sga crackfic. It's not what I'm writing but I would be so there for it if someone did.)

[highlander_ii]

Ah ha - I see... I was trying to imagine Methos being sneaky and lying to Kronos (not that he couldn't) about all the prisoners he wasn't actually banging. The rest of his history, I could see him pulling it off, but that Horseman bit is the rough patch.

But playing fast and loose with the definitions can also work.

And somewhere in Highlander fandom, I missed this scenario. Or maybe I came in a little late.

[melannen]

I think there was a phase where a lot of people were writing about Methos initiating a blushing Duncan into the joys of manlove (which is ridiculous, he has clearly been okay with the man love since about ten minutes after he met Fitz in his first century, but that's fandom for you) and people who were not fond of the trope were trying to take it að absurdum.

But I was lurking at the time and literally the only thing that stuck is the scene in my hypothetical fic where Methos explains to Joe that he just never got around to it somehow, the millennia just fly by when you're busy don't they, so I don't remember the details. (I think there was a fic written where Methos nearly convinces Mac he's a virgin just to see if he'll buy it, but I wanted to see if it was possible to play it straight.)

[highlander_ii]

I do remember the 'Methos shows Duncan about making it with the doods' - b/c what else is the ROG there for, but to teach the boy scout? I wasn't ever really Duncan's biggest fan, so I didn't focus much on him.

I can definitely see a scene with Methos telling Joe that he was just cruising through life and never got around to making the sex. And it would be in character. XD

[melannen]

"Unlike some people," meaningful glare at Joe, "I never had an arbitrary deadline to motivate me," and Joe thinks about all that Watcher paperwork turned in sometimes years late, and suddenly it almost makes sense. Almost.

[highlander_ii]

Yeah - that sounds about right. =)