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Okay, I said I'd link to John Hodgman on QI, so here's John Hodgman on QI. It was deeply disappointing, though, alas. He didn't get to do much - they stuck him in as the fifth wheel without even a buzzer, and he spent most of the show getting talked over. I guess it kind of makes sense that he wouldn't work on the show - the over-socialized, over-educated, Northeastern child of the ivy league that Hodgman plays is essentially the same character as Stephen Fry's, only without the inbred superiority complex, shared cultural references and almost complete lack of an offensiveness filter that lets Fry do what Fry does, so Hodgman was just sort of pallid and unnecessary. The people they've had on to be American before have gone for the loud and obnoxious sort of American, which is probably what you'd need to be heard over the overwhelming Britishness, but is so not Hodgman (and so not the only way to be American.) I totally 'ship Fry/Hodgman now though.
(It also explains why I'm having so much trouble fitting John Oliver into the BBC RPS world - the character he plays is essentially the counterpart of Rich Hall's, and at this point would probably read as British to a British person about as much as Hall's reads as American to me - that is, yes, sure, but somehow slightly off-tone.)
***
Anyway! Meantime, I have caught my AO3 account up to all the fics that are listed in my LJ memories, which takes me to the end of 2006 and exactly 30 stories. I added 18 fics in 15 different fandoms - though as almost half of those were crossovers, it's not quite as scattered as it sounds. (I still don't qualify for remix in anything other than HP, though.) Now I have to find the ones I've scattered around over the past two years as I've moved around, and any others that got lost in the mix - probably half a dozen or so - and, um, finish some of the ones I'm 90% done with from the last ten years :P.
Here are four stories from the 2005-2006 period that I still like and wish had gotten more readers:
1. Dance By The Light Of The Moon: Buffy/Angel crossed with It's A Wonderful Life. Warnings for canon suicide attempt & non-fluffy vampires.
I adore Jimmy Stewart, but spent a long time hating IAWL, because - I think - it was always presented to me as a heartwarming holiday tale of the value of cozy small-town life. I can go on about the value of small towns as much as anyway, but that is *not* what this movie is about. It's about a man who has spent his whole life being used and abused by the people around him, trapped in a job that's slowly destroying his soul and he isn't very good at, with a wife who is too busy trying to change him to listen to, who feels so trapped and hopeless he attempts suicide. The message of the story is that you should fight past despair so you don't hurt the people you love - which is not a bad message for someone suicidally depressed, if it keeps you going long enough to get help. But it means there's no happy ending, because living out of guilt and obligation is not the way to find happiness, and it also holds you back from making real changes. And it's pretty obvious in IAWL that nobody's going to get George real help and he's going to be looking longingly at that bridge again in six months, tops. This is not a fun holiday movie - it's a portrait of a suicide attempt.
And I think, watching it as an older person, the movie knows this - it's just full of random creepy horror-despair elements and is so dark all through, even when it's having "heartwarming" moments, and when I watch it with that in mind, I dislike it less. It's still godawful depressing, though.
Clearly, the correct answer to this was to have Spike and Drusilla turn him into a vampire so he could drop the guilt and go off to live his dreams!
I didn't promote this much at the time because I wanted to write more of it, but it's complete enough as-is, and I doubt I'll ever get far enough back into Buffy to write any more. And if you did read it back then, I have now posted (online for the first time ever!) the epilogue outlining what would have happened to everybody in Bedford Falls in the AU where George was a vampire.
2. Alchemy, Stargate SG1, Moebius timeline.
This is basically a post-SG1 S8 fixit. Basically, I wanted someone to deal with the fact that original!Daniel had gone right from turning down Ascension to being trapped alone and greiving in the past for ten years. ...I had him deal with it by making waffles. This may be why this fic never got much play.
It's also quite short, and very... mmm, history-heavy. If you wanted to make waffles in Ancient Egypt, this is how you would do it, but I can see how people who are uninterested in the details of that might miss the Daniel-pain I snuck in through the sides. I mean, to the extent I can understand anyone who is uninterested in how you would make waffles in ancient Egypt.
3. Built of Autumn Roses: Stargate Atlantis
Surely a fic about the deep & true soulbondy love of alternate!Old!Elizabeth Weir from "Before I Sleep" and the energy-sucking black cloud from "Hide And Seek" was destined to be a fandom classic, and it was only pure chance and bad marketing that led to its obscurity, right?
4. Open the Book, and Loose the Seals Thereof, Heinlein's World-As-Myth verse.
This is Number-of-the-Beast era Heinlein pastiche, which means consists of a bunch of characters, all of whom are smart, beautiful, and completely uninhibited, having a long and witty and authorially self-indulgent meta-conversation about how awesome crossovers are.
Only this story is about those characters writing fanfic about each other! In a way that ties up all the dangling plot threads from NotB - and includes the *only* lines of m/m sex in any story I have ever posted! (Well, sort of m/m, one of them is transgender but hasn't figured it out yet at the time of the sex, I'm not sure how that counts. ...it says something about me that I ID as a slasher but that's as close as I've ever coming to actually writing slash.)
(It also explains why I'm having so much trouble fitting John Oliver into the BBC RPS world - the character he plays is essentially the counterpart of Rich Hall's, and at this point would probably read as British to a British person about as much as Hall's reads as American to me - that is, yes, sure, but somehow slightly off-tone.)
***
Anyway! Meantime, I have caught my AO3 account up to all the fics that are listed in my LJ memories, which takes me to the end of 2006 and exactly 30 stories. I added 18 fics in 15 different fandoms - though as almost half of those were crossovers, it's not quite as scattered as it sounds. (I still don't qualify for remix in anything other than HP, though.) Now I have to find the ones I've scattered around over the past two years as I've moved around, and any others that got lost in the mix - probably half a dozen or so - and, um, finish some of the ones I'm 90% done with from the last ten years :P.
Here are four stories from the 2005-2006 period that I still like and wish had gotten more readers:
1. Dance By The Light Of The Moon: Buffy/Angel crossed with It's A Wonderful Life. Warnings for canon suicide attempt & non-fluffy vampires.
I adore Jimmy Stewart, but spent a long time hating IAWL, because - I think - it was always presented to me as a heartwarming holiday tale of the value of cozy small-town life. I can go on about the value of small towns as much as anyway, but that is *not* what this movie is about. It's about a man who has spent his whole life being used and abused by the people around him, trapped in a job that's slowly destroying his soul and he isn't very good at, with a wife who is too busy trying to change him to listen to, who feels so trapped and hopeless he attempts suicide. The message of the story is that you should fight past despair so you don't hurt the people you love - which is not a bad message for someone suicidally depressed, if it keeps you going long enough to get help. But it means there's no happy ending, because living out of guilt and obligation is not the way to find happiness, and it also holds you back from making real changes. And it's pretty obvious in IAWL that nobody's going to get George real help and he's going to be looking longingly at that bridge again in six months, tops. This is not a fun holiday movie - it's a portrait of a suicide attempt.
And I think, watching it as an older person, the movie knows this - it's just full of random creepy horror-despair elements and is so dark all through, even when it's having "heartwarming" moments, and when I watch it with that in mind, I dislike it less. It's still godawful depressing, though.
Clearly, the correct answer to this was to have Spike and Drusilla turn him into a vampire so he could drop the guilt and go off to live his dreams!
I didn't promote this much at the time because I wanted to write more of it, but it's complete enough as-is, and I doubt I'll ever get far enough back into Buffy to write any more. And if you did read it back then, I have now posted (online for the first time ever!) the epilogue outlining what would have happened to everybody in Bedford Falls in the AU where George was a vampire.
2. Alchemy, Stargate SG1, Moebius timeline.
This is basically a post-SG1 S8 fixit. Basically, I wanted someone to deal with the fact that original!Daniel had gone right from turning down Ascension to being trapped alone and greiving in the past for ten years. ...I had him deal with it by making waffles. This may be why this fic never got much play.
It's also quite short, and very... mmm, history-heavy. If you wanted to make waffles in Ancient Egypt, this is how you would do it, but I can see how people who are uninterested in the details of that might miss the Daniel-pain I snuck in through the sides. I mean, to the extent I can understand anyone who is uninterested in how you would make waffles in ancient Egypt.
3. Built of Autumn Roses: Stargate Atlantis
Surely a fic about the deep & true soulbondy love of alternate!Old!Elizabeth Weir from "Before I Sleep" and the energy-sucking black cloud from "Hide And Seek" was destined to be a fandom classic, and it was only pure chance and bad marketing that led to its obscurity, right?
4. Open the Book, and Loose the Seals Thereof, Heinlein's World-As-Myth verse.
This is Number-of-the-Beast era Heinlein pastiche, which means consists of a bunch of characters, all of whom are smart, beautiful, and completely uninhibited, having a long and witty and authorially self-indulgent meta-conversation about how awesome crossovers are.
Only this story is about those characters writing fanfic about each other! In a way that ties up all the dangling plot threads from NotB - and includes the *only* lines of m/m sex in any story I have ever posted! (Well, sort of m/m, one of them is transgender but hasn't figured it out yet at the time of the sex, I'm not sure how that counts. ...it says something about me that I ID as a slasher but that's as close as I've ever coming to actually writing slash.)
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"Been there, done that," replied Lazarus.
I have never read Heinlein fanfiction before, but I feel no need to read any more, ever again, because this is perfect. And hilarious.
:)
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Actually, there's a couple of *really good* DW crossovers, but I can't remember if you care about that fandom. There's not enough in general, really, considering what the *canon* consists of. (It was "The Number of the Beast" that first taught me that fanfic was a legitimate creative endeavor.)
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And I just found Consider a box, T, intersecting a circle, O, which is the only other fic in that fandom up at AO3, and is brilliant and funny.
(Heinlein/Dr. Who is actually more-or-less canon, because there's a point in - I think "Cat Who" - where someone whines that the Time Lords are arrogant killjoys. Or something like that.)
(If you're looking for good crossovers in general, I do have, oh, about 130 of them bookmarked on my delicious account.)