The Jack/Thor Epic of Epicness. Or perhaps that should be "saga-ness". (finally posting this here mostly so I can link it to finishathon. If I decide to do finishathon.) File last modified: 2006

( Part One: The Rainbow Bridge )

Chocolate is, of course, the perfect emergency food.

It has sugar for a rush of fast energy, it has fat for a slow burn of backup energy, it has things like caffiene and theobromide and cannabinoids to serve as painkiller, stimulant, and euphoric, and it has a whole bunch of vitamins and minerals and nutrients to help a person stay healthy and heal.

Hurricane season started - what, earlier this week? and we've already spent the last two days getting drowned by a tropical depression, so I was repacking my emergency bag in the closet. Just in case. And because I spent most of my childhood reading books about kids who were shipwrecked or lost or trapped or abandoned and I still kind of hope something like that happens to me someday. :D

I always stick in a couple bars of dark-dark chocolate, the kind that so dark it's bitter, (mostly because the really dark kind is less likely to melt in summer temperatures.) Because chocolate is the perfect emergency food. I learned that especially the time I spent a whole night as a tornado refugee with no food or shelter - chocolate makes everything better.

The weird thing is, a bunch of those books I read knew that. Our heroes would be wind-whipped, wet, hopeless and hungry, but somebody would have saved their chocolate bar to share, or somebody would have brough chocolate knowing that they would need it, and everyone would huddle up and break off a couple squares and be able to keep going. But those books were all published from, say, the early 20th century to the mid-sixties. The only book since then that I can think of that uses chocolate that way is Harry Potter.

Very weird. It's as if, as the awesome properties of chocolate are more and more acknowledged by science, they are less and less part of the folk knowledge.

Anyway, any heroes *I* write will always have emergency dark chocolate in their bags.

ETA: Chocolate neurochemistry.

Knights Arrant,
or, the Romance of Sir Alain du Côte and the Cup of Truth

Knights Arrant,
or, the Romance of Sir Alain du Côte and the Cup of Truth
(Boston Legal fic; WIP)

( How Queen Shirley of Cranepool sent the companions forth upon their Quest. )

( How King Dennys had an altercation with a Beggar, and Sir Brad met with a Damosel most fair. )

( How Sir Brad and Lady Dyones parted from the others, and how Sir Brad did strive with a fell beast, and how Lady Dyones gave unto him courage in battle. )

(Sorry. I tried. It won't flow. Maybe more in the morning.)

iv. How they encountered a Priest most Foul; and what passed at the pavilion of Sir Daniel the Merry.

v. How King Dennys and Sir Alain set out upon the Quest of the Cup of Truth.

vi. How they found the Chapel of the Just, and what happened when they entered into it.

vii. How King Dennys fought many battles, and Sir Alain defeated the Friar of the Cup in a battle of wits.

viii. How Sir Brad was smote upon the head by a knight most dishonorable, and how by enchantment King Dennys was held captive.

viiii. How King Dennys did make love unto a damosel, and Sir Alain came upon Lady Dyones in the field.

x. How King Dennys did defeat the stratagems of the false Lady, and how Sir Alain freed Sir Brad from the captivity of the Knight of the Hands.

xi. How Queen Shirley was sore displeased, and how Sir Alain and Sir Dennys took refreshment upon a balcony.

wtf27. Because I am insane, and it's been too long since I've done a writing challenge.

001.	Genderswap.	002.	Transformation (animals).	003.	Transformation (inanimate).
004.	Wings.	005.	Tentacles!	006.	Mpreg.
007.	High School AU.	008.	Apocalypse Now.	009.	Supernatural (creatures).
010.	Supernatural (powers).	011.	Fantasy AU (traditional).	012.	Fantasy AU (urban).
013.	Fuck or Die.	014.	Pornstars.	015.	Hookers.
016.	You see, I woke up gay.	017.	Trading Places.	018.	Forced Union.
019.	Timeshift.	020.	Aliens.	021.	Doppelganger.
022.	Twins/Non-Canon Siblings.	023.	Out Of Time.	024.	Slaves.
025.	Media Crossover.	026.	Spies and Agents.	027.	OMG we forgot ____.

This is the Highlander The Series / Batman-between-the-crises amalgamverse crossover genfic. About 3500 words and in need of some fact-checking still, but otherwise done. Until I start another section.

( Observe and Record: In Which Timothy Drake is given his first field Watcher assignment, and Adam Pierson has a conversation with Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Broody that doesn't end in drawn swords. Quite. )

I also read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe the other day, which was ehhh in all the ways I remember it being. People on the flist have been posting a lot of Narnia meta-links in the run-up to the last movie, and I greatly fear that I will have to re-read the whole series in order to write about the things that are wrong with Narnia that do not have to do with ham-handed Christian allegory that misses the point entirely, or post-feminists feeling guilty about sex. Pity me, who may have to struggle all the way through to the Last Battle just so I can write the rest of this story:

( The Perils of Susan )

Yes, it's a silly crossover. Did you expect anything else? Upstairs in the typewriter is the beginning of the story where the Professor becomes the guardian of three unfortunate orphans, who find a weird wardrobe and travel through it, because what Narnia *really* needs is a good case of the Baudelaires.

(bwahahaha.)

Author: melannen
Rating: Language, mild sexual situations
Fusion: X-Files / LGM / SGA
Pairings: Canon pairings only
Length: 5000 words
Notes: Excuse? There is no excuse good enough. 'They Encouraged Me' isn't a good enough excuse.
Summary: ( And the worst part was, Elizabeth thought, they'd probably manage to make it work. )

Okay, I am still here, but you don't want to know how badly I'm doing on wordcount.

Or maybe you do, if you need reassurance that somebody's worse off than you. But I'm not giving up; I still like the story (most of the time, anyway) and I've managed at least a few hundred words every day, although they're getting harder and less good.

But I did manage over two thousand words tonight, which are actually good enough that I'm not ashamed of them. Too bad they're random x-files fanfiction intead of novel.

Oh, what the hey! I'll post it anyway. I need to prove I can actually write, sometimes.

( There's a rumor that Mulder's really gone crazy, maybe psychic again. There's a rumor that he talks to dead people. Actually, that one's not so much a rumor after John and Monica get Scully alone down in the old office one day... )

Chapter 2: 1-5-05
( think warm thoughts )

Part 3: ( I made this )




Part 4 (snippet): ( In brightest day, in darkest night )

Hello. This is melannen, posting the warning note that this journal is now on NaNoWriMo standing. If you've friended it and no longer want my crazed ramblings cluttering your reading, please, please, defriend. I'm turning off my internal editor for this, so I'm not going to worry about quality or pace or anything like that.

On the same note, if you do want to read, friend! I'll friend back, and follow your nano if you're doing one. I will probably friend random NaNo journals with this account as I procrastinate, too. And I'm always very happy at comments of any sort.

However, I probably won't be posting everything here-- chances are a fair portion of the story will be pen-and-paper, and I'm not going to type it all up, so you won't be reading a complete novel. Anything I do type will be here, though, along with regular status updates, excerpts I particularly like, and whining. It will be mostly flocked, and I will make liberal use of lj-cuts.

Scared you away yet?

Well, here's what I'm going to attempt to write, the first four steps in my hybrid story-building system:

Label your story: The current working title has changed from "Consubstantiation" to "By Bread Alone". It's your traditional, old-fashioned faith-based alternate history vampire novel. (But Catholic, Protestant, Pagan, and Other friendly.)

Summarize it in fifty characters or less, counting spaces and punctuation: Bet learns to live with being undead.

( Outline the plot in exactly five sentences. )

( Explain why this story is worth writing. )

I also have a Random Plot Element, courtesy of the meetup on Friday: A very good book. Which is probably going to end up being the Good Book. Or possibly The Hammer of Hell, the pastor's guide to persecuting the supernatural, although that one's not so much good as amusingly ovedone.

Spoilery character-arc summaries will be going up under f-lock soon I hope. I'm not doing any more plotting, however, as that tends to kill the story.

Also, to copy a disclaimer from Anne McCaffrey: Any of the above is subject to change without notice. q:

Conflict of Interest
FANDOM: X-files/ political fic crossover
AUTHOR: Melannen@yahoo.com
ARCHIVE/FEEDBACK: Yes please.
KEYWORDS: Mytharc. Crossover. Marita/Alex.
SPOILERS: All Mytharc. The G. W. Bush administration.
RATING: Call it PG, for politics, evildoers and kissing
LENGTH: 2500 words
Notes/Summary: Remember the old, innocent days, when people were looking forward to an administration of honesty and openness and the most we had to worry about was arsenic in our drinking water? Yeah, me too. The science here is dodgy but plausible; the mytharc stuff is all true; the politics are as bipartisan as I could possibly get, and I'll hopefully end up writing something equally cynical about President Kerry.

Conflict of Interest

( A Most Disquieting Briefing, or, That Explains A Lot )

I can't believe nobody else has done this yet. Seriously. I've lost my faith in slashdom again. (Crossover. Set several years pre-movie, season sevenish or eightish)


( I was just wondering if I could borrow it. Since you kind of shot mine up. )


Bloody britishisms. *stabs*.

Pre-movie, during Book 4:


( limp black hair and an oversize T-shirt that said 'Let Me Show You My Magic Wand' )

This is, like, *completely* uncanonical. To the real history and place, and to any of the three* fictional worlds I'm pulling in. Because that would require a *lot* more research than I've done, and I refuse to take this thing that seriously. Just call it severely AU.

The backstory about Aelfwine is derived from early work on The Book of Lost Tales, btw. That much is real. The origin of the Red Book is a mystery, but it must have shown up around this time, for early work on "The Hobbit".

Yes, it's the start of the ( crossover Tolkien rpf.** )

*Or possibly four, since Reg is apparently actually a Time Lord. But he'll always be a Highlander-style Immortal to me!
**No, it's not slash. Even *I* wouldn't stoop so far as to slash Tolkien! Besides, the only feasible pairing would be Ronald/Jack, and just . . no. Sorry. Get it out of my head! Ah! Now I won't be able to stop thinking about it! it's . . too . . horribly . . plausible . .

Dear stellar_dust:

It is your fault this got written, so you get to tell me what the heck I'm supposed to do with it. Also you can tell me what I was trying to do with the random tense shifts, what is up with the bizarre artsy structure, where the plot ran off to, why it is awful and makes no sense and needs much revision, and why my personal x-files soundtrack seems to be John Denver and the Muppets.

You're welcome.

Loves,
melannen

PS: Some people would've tried to save their little sister's mind from being taken over by aliens.

Fic: The Rainbow Connection
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: G
Length: 2400
Spoilers: Through season six
Notes: Lyrics by the Muppets. Quotations at end from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, by Tom Stoppard. Many thanks to stellar_dust, who did an absolutely amazing job of telling me what was wrong with this. Even if she is one of Them.
( Proposition: The colors red, blue, and green are real. The color yellow is a mystical experience shared by everybody-- Demolish. )