Stargate:SG1 is not really a big fandom for enemy ship? Jack O'Neill/Harry Maybourne really should have been, by all rights, but it always turned up more in background than actually being shipped. (Maybe Maybourne's actor wasn't sufficiently hot? It's always tragic when that happens.) And Daniel/Vala counts, I guess, but that era of canon always had a weird overlay of echoes of Farscape, and I didn't know Farscape enough to decode them. There were plenty of other possibilities really, but none of them went anywhere.

Maybe it was something about the timing, SG1 falling square into the LJ era, when mailing lists and hand-rolled archives were on their way out in favor of social media, AO3 wasn't around yet, and there wasn't really a space for small pairings to build a community? Or maybe Jack/Daniel and Jack/Sam just used up all the air in the the room.

So really this is on the list for one specific fic but it is one of my favorite fics of all time, it has all the best things in it, and I have read it lots times. Lots.

• Conflict of Interest (5631 words) by Maraceles
  Fandom: Stargate SG-1
  Rating: Explicit
  Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
  Relationships: Ba'al/Jack O'Neill
  Series: 2 parts
  Summary:

  Jack and Ba'al get thrown in a Goa'uld prison together. Despite whatever else is between them, they're still enemies. They can work with that.

I signed up for kink_bingo this year! I love how accessible they're making it: low pressure, the minimum is one 500-word story in a year, and they've emphasized that you don't have to be able to write explicit sex or sexual characters in order to play, so I'm fairly sure I can do it. My card:
( My Card )
So everybody's going on and on about their kink_bingo cards, and how lucky they are, and I looked at mine and went "huh."

I don't think *any* of the kinks I was really excited about ended up on it, and the two stories-in-progess I'd been planning to use at cheats - each of which have so many kinks they could conceivably blackout a card on their own, with no overlap - are barely represented on the card at all.

I guess that serves me right! Anyway it'll be fun, even if I only end up managing one meta post or something.

I would like to note that as I was going through the kink_wiki yesterday, exploring my options, the questions I was coming up with were things like "Would a story about someone whose erogenous zones are primarily tactile negotiating a scene with someone whose erogenous zones are primarily aural (involving sonics that person A can't produce) work for the 'silence' square?" and "does crossdressing have to involve gender, or can it involve someone whose species doesn't wear clothing dressing up as a human?" and "is 'accidental soulbond with a mechanical life-form due to shoddy safety measures during repair work' suitable for the 'electricity' square?" and "Can I do 'wrist/ankle restraints' on somebody whose limbs don't exactly fit those categories?"

... which just goes to show what pairings I have been getting bunnies for lately. Actually, having gone down the entire kink list, there are only four kinks which require somebody to have a humanoid or vaguely humanoid body (five, if you count 'shaving', which requires a mammalian one at least) and I got three of them...

I also went out to work last night without actually remembering what was on my card, and I ended up plotting out in my head an amazing story - for a kink that's not on my card. But now I really, really want to write "How Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex Invented Strip Personality Chess, And What Happened Afterward." (Does kink_bingo give out prizes for "most stories written for the wrong card"?)

...I may at least have to write a Bran/Tru 'ship manifesto, since Mymy/Vyssu/Mav has been such a hit. :D ...and I'm so tempted to try for a bingo with all non-human or cross-species pairings.


Anyway I was going to try to make this short, but this *is* me, and it's an excuse to talk about kink and about ideas for stories I'll probably never write, so here's ( some brainstorming for every square )

con_txt has posted their annual pre-con "what fandoms are you in?" poll, and I wish to share with you what I put in the "If you clicked 'other', elaborate here" box, because it amuses me as summary of my fannishness at this exact moment. (It's true! But it still amuses me.)

Usually, "other" means "a variety of small book fandoms, indy comics, and/or obsolete video games. But mostly small book fandoms".

In the RPS category, it specifically means "British comedians that are on panel shows a lot". (But also Discovery Channel, NPR, and various other media personalities and presenters that aren't exactly either actors, pundits, or reality-show people, and have shows and fandoms that blur the border between real and fictional; I don't even know how to describe the genre, but I know it when I see it. Mythbusters. A Prairie Home Companion. OMG SOMEBODY HAS ACTUALLY WRITTEN 3-2-1 CONTACT FIC. Anything John Hodgman-related. Top Gear. You know. That.)

Also, Muppets/Sesame Street is an RPS fandom, because muppets are real people. :P

And by "other actors" - Doctor Who/Torchwood RPS. even if nobody has written me any Pertwee/Delgado yet, sadface.

And the "Sports figures" tickymark means "90% of the time I could care less about pro sports but figure skating hits my kinks every time, why god why."

In other random fandom news, brownbetty made a post about crossovers involving professional figure-outers and professional secret-keepers, and how she likes them best when the figure-outers never quite figure it out, and it never works when they find out the secret too easily.

I agree halfway: if the secret is discovered too easily, or the people trying to figure out the secret don't have to do the work, it ruins the crossover. But my problem with many of the example crossovers people listed is that the figure-outers ought to *know the secret already*, because the figure-outers in our fandoms are usually pretty well connected and very good at what they do. And if they don't know, it's probably because the secret-keepers have been actively interfering with them well before your crossover started. These are people whose avocations mesh: they shouldn't always be walking into the crossover with a clean slate.

( Rambling about crossovers. Okay, maybe it's a little bit epic. )

Here are some posts I have made to DW communities in the past week:

asexuality: Queering the Census: We ALL Count, in which I gripe about the Queer the Census campaign, which is about greater visibility for LGBT people but erases everyone who isn't heterosexual but doesn't fit it one of the L-G-B-T boxes.

common_nature: Welcome!, In which elke_tanzer and I have started a community that is all about nature, and you all should join it! And post stuff there! And leave comments!

create_my_comm: Little Details, in which we are all agreed that DW needs a community that is like l_d only awesomer, and none of us want to be the one to start it! (So you should!)

starry_sea: Anybody still here?, in which I apologize abjectly for abandoning my own community, and talk about how to get it active again.

tarot: An Amazing Tarot Blog, in which I rave at length about Pre-Gebelin Tarot History, which discusses tarot from a strictly historical and rational perspective, a perspective which is deeply awesome and far, far too hard to find.

treknovelfest: Illustration for "Three T'kay Stories", in which I have done a lot of research in the Starfleet Archives and found photographs & descriptions of the original ancient Vulcan artifacts that were used to illustrate ljc's treknovelfest entry based on my prompt, From The Terran Coyote to The Klingon K'Ortar: Tricksters of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.

...there, that can be my followfriday. :D (What posts have you made to DW communities in the past week?)

Most of those were posts I have been procrastinating on making for months! Having them done is like breathing clear air again. (Also, omg, I might actually have to change my to-do list now - I'm afraid the dry-erase marker might have set in on some of them.) There's several more I've had on hold, though - maybe now that I'm on a roll I can scratch even more of them off.

In the spirit of getting things done, how about that WIPs meme that was going around awhile ago? One paragraph from everything in my "In progress" folder, was it?

( This includes fics, meta posts, vids, fanmixes, and various stranger things, in all states of completion, fyi. )
...it says something about me that my reaction to all of that laid out is "That's less than thirty things! Not at bad as I thought!" If you ask for more information about any of them in comments, I will probably give it to you. (At length! ^_^ )

Also while I am doing random meme-y things, poall:

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 )

So I have been trying not to get to emotionally involved with the politics (though I still want to do that "Sarah Palin or TGP: Who Is More Qualified?" point-by-point comparison), but I have been following fivethirtyeight.com pretty closely. And OMG, if Obama takes the South? That will be not only win, it'll be the most important thing to happen in American politics in my *lifetime*.

***
Anyway.
1. Comment on this post.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your blog.

stellar_dust gave me "D".
...I had a list of twenty-five characters to pick from, and that was before I checked my notes. So, um, have the short list as meme x 3.

And hey, while I'm at it, why not give me two numbers between 1 and 15 and I'll write you a comment-fic where those two characters meet. :D (Random or calculated, I don't even care.)

( Five Large Fandoms )

( Five Small Fandoms )

( Five Nonexistent Fandoms )

...Yeah, I should probably stop there. Even if it means I have to leave out David Starr, and Mike Doonesbury, and Dick and Dorothea (the D's), and Diana Fowley, and Dick Grayson**, and Dickon Sowerby**, and Daystar, and Death**, and Doli the Dwarf, and ....

(** marks characters I have either written in fic or tried to write.)

So my newest Early Review book for LibraryThing is The Art Of Darkness, about undercover work; and there's been all this talk about the far north lately; and I had a whole bag of mending to do, and needed something to watch. So (as could be clearly deduced from that list of circumstances) I pulled out the tape I got at con.txt of the dueSouth pilot.

Several things:

No amount of fanfic, icons, picspam, or squee posts can possibly prepare you for just how indescribably, irrepressible-grin-inducingly cute Constable Fraser is.

No amount of fanfic can prepare you for how *bad* Ray's fashion sense is. I am more convinced than ever that he's actually a Time Lord. (Though another thing that fanfic hadn't conveyed is that Ray is apparently already doing primarily undercover work, which does make that whole two-Rays thing make a lot more sense without having to bring in regeneration.)

(Ray is also indescribably cute. And Dief is a much better actor than I was expecting him to be. Remember when I was talking about watching Old!Who, and it's like being a historian who's heard all the myths and read all the theories, who gets a chance to actually *be there* and *see it happen* and it's so much more amazingly amazing than any reconstruction? Yeah, like that.)

Also, this song will *get stuck in your head*.


Undercover book is also making me really want fic exploring the Master's tendency to go into deep cover at the slightest pretext. And making me want to re-read A Howling In The Factory Yard, again, but, y'know, that's kind of a given.)

I started collecting these songs and then suddenly discovered I had enough for a mini-mix. So, here I share!


( Eight songs, ranging from avant-garde classical to surf rap )

World Spinning Round.zip
Rightclick-save. 40 mb zip file, contains songs+album art+text+.m3u playlist
xposted to fan_mix (jf) and mixed_music (ij)

This has been an utterly gorgeous summer so far. Sometimes I really love Maryland, herself. The weather's had just enough hot days to make me feel welcome without making me pass out from heat exhaustion, and - the best part - I have zero mosquito bites so far!

Tonight, on the drive home, it had rained, and mist was rising up from the roads and the creek. I put my brights on as I went through the twisty lane that follows the creek bottom just so the ghosty swirls would have more substance. Now, outside, it's raining again in the dark; and bright orange lightning against the sky. Plus, there were bagpipers playing on my walk to the car.

...no, actually I don't know what the bagpipes had to do with anything, either. Except that I seem to really like bagpipe music now. It makes my subconscious say "you're at the Renfest! Yay!" (Much the same way rainy summer evenings signal camping trips to me, actually.)

Speaking of Renfest, my conversation with melsmarsh about garb inspired me to pull out a sewing project last night. I need some sort of low-key handwork to keep my mind occupied during my long summer classes, and I remembered that I had bought some Folkwear peasant blouse patterns on the cheap last summer. The one that I really want to make is the Ukranian shirt, and that one suggests a large, heavily embroidered placket down the front. Embroidery is a *good* handwork project for me: takes just enough attention that my mind doesn't wander, without taking *too* much attention. But the suggested embroidery pattern is big huge roses, and I *hate* designs of big huge roses. Irrationally. Possibly partly because my mother loves them, but also, they're ugly. SO! A chance to design an ethnic-looking embroidery pattern!

I want to do Earth's Stargate address. (Actually, I want to do two of these shirts; the first one, with the Stargate address, in plain muslin, to see if I like it, because I can never have to many cream muslin peasant shirts. If I do, I have this wonderful, soft, slate gray wool that I could sew another, more formal one in; that one, I would just do minimal embroidery: just plain black, the runes Sifl, Simn, Pirr, and Ges at the collar and cuffs; but that would be for later; I really don't want to mess up that fabric.)

So. ( Earth's stargate address )

Sometimes I sore regret that I grew up with a language which makes no distinction between formal and informal pronouns.

This comes up because I seem to be writing Boston Legal fic as a Sir Thomas Malory pastiche, and while Late Middle English *grammar* I can manage pretty instinctively, I keep having to stop and think about whether to use 'you' or 'thou'. Okay, so it's not as hard as it *could* be - clearly King Dennys uses 'thou' to *everyone*, because *everyone* is inferior to Dennys of Cranepool. Sir Alain du Côte, by contrast, always uses 'you', because Sir Alain is familiar with nobody - except with Dennys, and occasionally with whatever damosel he's sleeping with. I have a feeling that Sir Jeraint, the Knight of the Hands, uses 'you' with absolutely everyone, except when he's very nervous and forgets, because it seems like that's one of the social things Asperger's would make difficult. It's when I start with the characters who are more or less normal that I run into trouble.

I suppose that this isn't that big of a difficulty - after all, many modern languages still make the distinction, English being one of the first to drop it, so translators must handle the issue. But when I speak Spanish I usually just go with 'usted' for everyone, because none of my teachers bothered to explain how to choose (and since they all spoke different dialects anyway, they'd probably have contradicted each other), and anyway it's one less set of conjugations to remember. I have a feeling I sound comically old-fashioned, but then my grammar sucks so bad they'd be laughing at me anyway, and better too formal than too informal - anyway usted is the direct translation of English 'you'. And in English I only fall naturally into 'thou' when cursing people.

This is actually the *second* Arthurian pastiche I've attempted in the past few months. The first was an SGA retelling of the romance of "John, the Knight of the Lion", (because who other than John Sheppard would go on adventure, get manipulated into marrying a lady, and then go back to his city and get distracted and completely *forget* that he'd married her?) John uses 'you' graciously toward his men and ungraciously toward his superiors but 'thou' promiscuously towards people he considers his equals. Rodney, by contrast, thous everybody indiscriminately until they earn his respect, at which point he switches to 'you' and sticks with it, even while he's calling them idiots. Elizabeth is scrupulously correct, using 'thou' to inferiors and 'you' to superiors and equals, although she tends to fall back to 'thou' in private, even with Caldwell. Ronon uses 'thou' on everyone except those above him in his direct chain of command, because that's how they did it on Sateda. Teyla and the Athosians only use the formal (except in prayer), although she's been picking up the informal a little with people who use it to her, mostly John. Ford uses 'thou' with his inferiors and equals and 'you' with his superiors and has always felt slightly odd about the Major calling him 'you'.

And, hey, since I went there *anyway* - Mulder thous everybody as a direct affront to his aristocratic background, except when he's being manipulative. He was being manipulative when he met Scully, and then never got around to switching back. Scully is very correct in the same middle-class way as Elizabeth, but the longer she spends around Mulder the looser she gets. House uses thou exclusively except with his parents. And with Wilson's wives and Chase's father, and other attempts to be deliberately obnoxious with it. It took him almost six months to get Chase to stop using 'you' on him, and he still hasn't broken him of being polite to Cuddy and the patients. Cameron switched from 'thou' back to 'you' with him after their date, and Foremen always uses you, except when House suceeds in provoking him. Wilson also uses 'thou' with everyone, but somehow with him they assume it's affectionate rather than contemptuous.

Harry Potter uses 'thou' with everyone he calls by their first name and 'you' with evereybody else, except for Dumbledore and Snape whenever he thinks he can get away with it, and Mr. & Mrs. Weasley because they insist, and Slytherins when he wants to make trouble. Bones uses 'you' with everyone, even small children, except the people she considers hers, which is basically just the stooges and Booth. Hodgins considers 'you' to be a tool of the patriarchy; Zack calls everybody 'you' because whenever he tries to 'thou' somebody he gets shot down, except Hodgins and Bones and (when she's feeling generous) Angela. Booth takes 'thou' from Bones and his army buddies but nobody else.

SG1 always sticks with 'you' except in moments of extreme emotion, except for Daniel, who will at the slightest provocation give you a ten-minute dissertation on why English preserved the informal form, and who likes to randomly switch to 'thou' just to see Jack twitch, and has gotten everybody but Jack to use thou with him off-duty. Jack has never yet called a Goa'uld anything other than 'thou', except that sometimes with General Carter he forgets; and he's been on thou terms with Thor since about ten minutes after they met. The Asgard and the Ancients thou *everybody*, but the Nox don't, even when they're calling us children; the Tollan use 'you' but they make it clear it's only to be polite.

Darnit, now I want to write stories where they really do use middle English pronouns. Oh, wait - there's one open on my desktop right now! What a coincidence! I'll get right to that, then.

SG-1 was awesome, and Teal'c needs to treat Vala to a Star Wars marathon.

Speaking of Star Wars, sister and I both *simultaneousy* said 'Offworld!Elizabeth looks like a Star Wars character!' followed several seconds later by 'She looks like Leia pretending to be a smuggler/she looks like Boushh!'

So it follows logically then that Elizabeth is Vala's granddaughter, and John is her secret twin brother. yep. And she's going to marry Rodney and they'll have lots of little Ancient children.

(Oooh, the One Ring just sank into Mount Doom!)

Oh, and that ship? We bet you 10 credits that the hyperdrive breaks at a climactic moment. (ETA: Rodney was totally going to name it the Falcon, omg! squee!)

Also, in light of this week's SGA, the Proklarush Taonas thing begins to make (a tiny, tiny little bit of) sense.

RE: the current SG-1 episode: why, by Ba'al's balls, aren't they using freaking *Morse code*?

bah bah bah.

On the other hand, m-theory is hot, even if Sam has it completely wrong. I'm sure Rodney would agree with me.

ETA: The SGA episode actually includes less logic than SG1. Bah. If he can design a virus that'll do that, he can design one that'll kill 'em outright and avoid all the sticky moral issues (since we obviously haven't got any qualms about biowarfare and genocide to worry about.)

And why, by the ring-devouring fires of Mount Doom, did they let a Wraith onto Atlantis in the first place? SGA seems to be alternating brilliant episodes with episodes that require every single person to be bloody stupid, and I no longer feel guilty about the fic I'm writing. So there.

ETA 2 ... and now I'm trying to figure out if it's reasonable that the Ancient alphabet is related to the SG Alphabet. (Answer: Heck yes. Clearly descended from the same ancestral forms.)

ETA 3: Ooooh! It's a Six/Baltar 'shipper episode! Now I wish I'd actually been paying enough attention to the show to follow the episode! Oh well. (Because all I care about in nu-BSG is Six/Baltar, and Kara when she gets to play fighter pilot.)