In somewhat related news, one of my colleagues brought some chocolate panettone in today, that their stepmother brought back from holiday. It is so good. I can't figure out how they got the gooey chocolate into it without it becoming simply part of the dough - gooey seems to be its natural state at room temperature. Maybe it was injected afterwards?
Speaking of things culinary, I ordered some ginger recently, when I did some online shopping. I thought I ordered one piece - I didn't really mind what size, I only needed a little bit - but I ended up with a big bag of the stuff. Perhaps I ordered it by weight, and ordered 1lb, not 1 piece. I dunno. Anyway, this resulted in me looking up how to preserve ginger. I tried this recipe, because... well, because I have a NaNo to write and I needed something to
I'm thinking up lots of things I could now do with the ginger syrup. Mixed into ice cream! Added to mulled wine! Taken when I have a cough! Spread on pancakes!
I also, this weekend and yesterday - I was off yesterday - made pepper and poppyseed bread*, potato cakes**, céleri rémoulade** (similar to coleslaw, except with celeriac), naan bread, dahl, and raita. We had a little homemade Indian meal yesterday. It's amazing how motivated I get when I'm supposed to be writing something. But I did hit my word target, so that's okay.
They're repeating Colditz, the 1970s TV series, at the moment (on Yesterday, for UK peeps). Gosh, David McCallum was adorable. Well, okay, he's still adorable - but, er, not quite as devastatingly attractive, IMO.
I have more intelligent - well, more lengthy - things to say about the series, but not right now.
p.s. Scrivener is awesome.
* While very drunk! And it was delicious! I get to a certain state where I want to prove I'm still capable, so I do things like vacuuming, making bread, cleaning the bathroom...
** While hungover. Not so much fun. I kept having to stop and sit down for a bit. Also, the bloody Madagascar Penguins had an entire cartoon about trying to make one of them throw up, which really didn't help.
.
But I digress.
What I mean to say is, I have a new favourite scientific phrase (just ousting Quantum foam), which I intend to wedge into a fic if I possibly can: the Airy wave theory, so called because it was first published by George Biddell Airy, and it's about waves.
Awesome.
I still haven't found what I'm looking for, though. What do you call the something-or-other just before a moving object? The... air displacement, water displacement, the warning shivers before a full earthquake, the tiny sliver of air pushed out in front of a car or a plane, the crinkles on the surface of a blob of jam when you push it with a finger to test if it's set and you can stop boiling it...
You know. The thing.
Focus. That seems to be what I'm lacking at the moment. Okay, new plan:
1) Write the
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2) Finish the companion fic to All To Myself, Alone which managed to sneak in past my lack of focus, and which is effectively finished but needs fleshing out (ahem).
3) Finish the Jack/Sara fic that is so nearly done, dammit, it just needs an ending and some polish.
4) Lather, rinse, repeat.
Okay... GO.
So. I'm trying to put together an approximate (hah!) timeline for Stargate prehistory. Of course, this is complicated by Stargate's own inconsistencies, and the fact that the film contradicts the episodes, which in turn contradict themselves...
Aaaanyhow. This is my rough approximation, giving preference to props (ID badges) rather than words, and the series rather than the film, and based on the idea that the series is set at about the same time that it came out:
1945: Stargate opened for the "first" time; Ernest lost.
1952: Jack born.
1965: Daniel born.
1968: Sam born.
1969: SG-1 back in time, meet Hammond, Catherine.
1973: Daniel's parents die1.
1981/82...?: Sam's mother dies2.
1985/86...?: Charlie born3.
1990/91 (during the Gulf War): Jack prisoner in Iraq for 4 months.
1995/96...?: Charlie dies.
1996: Stargate reopened, mission to Abydos (Daniel left behind).
1997: Apophis comes through Stargate, SG-1 formed, start of series.
Any thoughts gladly welcomed.
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1 NICK: I am sorry.
DANIEL: For what?
NICK: For not adopting you when your parents died.
DANIEL: You were travelling all over the world.
NICK: It wasn't your fault.
DANIEL: I was eight years old, how could it have been my fault?
2: I'm bad at assessing children's ages - she's, what, thirteen?
3: Honestly, so bad at assessing ages.
There aren't really any rules for this stuff, not in English grammar, because it's not designed for time travel, alternate versions of oneself, etc. But having been a scifi fan since forever, a fanfic writer for just as long, and always, well, not a Grammar Nazi, but at least a... Grammar Collaborator? Um, let's drop those terms, they make me uncomfortable. I'm a grammaphile, and I've wrestled with some of these concepts before, trying to put them into legible English.
There are some awesome grammar comms out there, in particular
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Note: I ain't no expert, and I'm not trying to be prescriptive. These are suggestions as to what feels right, YMMV, go strut your funky creative licence stuff. I have a few book to which I might refer (principally Strunk & White's Elements of Style), but they are also subject to changes in location (British =/= American =/= Canadian =/= Australian =/= other places' proper grammar) and time (language evolves, goddammit). I myself am prone to older grammar constructions, having read a lot of old books in my formative years. I welcome correction, suggestion and debate, but not flames or outright revolution.
And I'm blaming
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So, what shall we tackle first? Well, seeing as I've been polling opinion on this one recently, how about ( bodyswap and gendered pronouns... )
When I first started writing down the fanfic that had been uncurling in my head since I first liked a story, it was rubbish. I shamelessly ripped off LoTR with my epic saga of Arwen Evenstar rewritten as a Mary Sue, riding around Middle Earth on a pony. I was twelve or thirteen. Heck, thinking about it, that wasn't my first fanfic, but it was certainly my first finished one, and I was very proud. I wrote it out neatly and gave it to my English teacher, and she was mightily impressed. I did pretty well in English. Later on, for my A'levels, I was asked to write a diary from the point of view of Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. That was where I started to learn about writing in English-that-was-not-my-accent.
When I first started reading online fanfic, it was mostly pretty terrible (ASIDE: ah, alt.tv.x-files.creative, those were the days! My tall, Canadian internet boyfriend... yes, I lived the cliché). It was trial and error, and the good stories were precious, I saved them all on floppy discs. I got used to the idea of fanfic as a natural progression of my own interests in reading, watching, and writing.
When I got into X-Men, I knew enough to go searching for fanfic for my pairing of choice. Being more critical by then, I almost gave up in despair before I found the good stuff - but eventually I did find it, and boy was it good.
By the time I got into Stargate, I had some methods for finding good fanfic, the most reliable of which was to look for anyone writing fic of vaguely the kind I want, follow their recs, find someone who wasn't completely unreadable, follow their recs, find someone decent, follow their recs, find someone even better...
So, this is what I think I've learned: the problem with some of these writers is that they've never found the good stuff. Leaving aside the issues inherent in reading fanfic of one's own work, they're not interested in reading fanfic of other people's work*, in fanfic for its own sake. And that's fine - their choice. But because of that, the only fanfic they'll encounter is the most immediately accessible to someone not familiar with finding good fanfic.
Really, I feel quite sorry for them. I honestly do. I've read things that would make their hair curl. I've found stories that blow the professional works on the shelves of my local bookstore clear out of the water - out there, free, gratis, for anyone to read. But to find them, to read those jewels, the reader has to fight Sturgeon's Law, and unless and until they've done that, all they're likely to see is the crap.
The books we buy are often better than a random selection of fanfic, but that's comparing apples and oranges: people rarely buy books by poking a pin into the list of all books published that month. If that's how they're examining fanfic, no wonder they think it's the Pits.
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There you go, my tl;dr.
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* Unless it's published, like The Wide Sargasso Sea, but famously brilliant works do not a representative sample make.
Barrie was a good friend of Conan Doyle, and they tried to write an operetta together - sadly for them, the thing was a flop. A little later, Barrie wrote 'The Adventure...' in the flyleaf of a book, which he presented to Conan Doyle. I have no doubt that Conan Doyle found it hilarious. It's very brief, and I highly recommend it as both a good Holmes parody and a brief insight into the Victorian literary world.
In bringing to a close the adventures of my friend Sherlock Holmes I am perforce reminded that he never, save on the occasion which, as you will now hear, brought his singular career to an end, consented to act in any mystery which was concerned with persons who made a livelihood by their pen.
"I am not particular about the people I mix among for business purposes," he would say, "but at literary characters I draw the line."
There is also a valuable lesson to be learned about gunning for the golden goose in the last, wise words of Mr Sherlock Holmes.
I wonder if the others know how to dance. Are there Jaffa formal dances?
( Cut for disconnected wittering. )
Anyway, I'm pretty sure I've read the bleachers thing, so you're not even original.
ETA: ARGH! Sneak attack by one of the tropes!
1. I don't believe slash has access to a deep, underlying truth that het and gen are somehow missing, and that someday, if I'm a very good girl and eat all my greens, I'll understand.
2. I don't believe that het is always indisputably right and canonical. Heteronormative happens.
3. I don't believe that gen is the only proper and unbiased way to read a show (not that I've run across gen people who say that, but you know – for the sake of equality. *g*).
4. I think it's impossible to really know whether an actor was staring soulfully into his co-star's eyes and willing the audience to believe this was True Love, or if he was staring at a wig on a stick for the tenth take that morning, willing the director to yell "Cut!" so he could go grab some lunch.
5. I know that a (TV/movie) character is not created by just one person – so while I will be interested in one person (actor, director, writer, editor...)'s take on that character, and it may make me look at them differently, I won't necessarily take it as an Ultimate Truth.
(5b. That said, I think it's a bit different for characters in books, because there's usually just one driving force behind their creation. But I still feel free to apply my own interpretation in the privacy of my own head, and on my own blog. Put your hand down, Ms. McCaffrey. Yes, you will be marked down for handing it in late, Ms. Rowling.)
6. The show as it is broadcast is the finished product, in my opinion, and anything else – going to all the conventions, talking to the actors, watching the cut scenes, owning the action figures, an in-depth knowledge of a subject that the show touches on – is gravy: nice, but ultimately not essential.
7. I believe that being an expert in a TV show is about as serious as a study of The Da Vinci Code. Which is to say, not at all. It's fiction, and acknowledged as such by the creators. That means they have a license to make shit up if the facts don't fit the storyline. In turn, fans have the freedom to interpret that how they like. (Yes, even the new Doctor Who fans, no matter how much I want to tell them to get off my lawn.)
8. I don't have to like someone's interpretation, but I don't believe that gives me the right to tell them they're wrong. They're not wrong; they just have a different opinion.
9. I do, however, want to be challenged if someone finds my interpretation in some way hurtful or damaging or sexist or racist or homophobic or ageist or sizist or... I choose my words because of their connotations, so ideally I'd like to know if those connotations differ significantly for other people. I don't want to perpetuate oppressive beliefs.
10. I would like for the above, particularly the last two, to apply in reverse.
Also, I think this should be rebranded as tropes, rather than clichés, because it has a less negative connotation. IMO. I mean, yes, often they are clichés, but I've also seen them done well and interestingly. Or amusingly crackish. *g*
( Tropes, dammit. Tropes! )
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Do you think that there can be non-shippy stories where Sam and Jack have sex? Or is that, by your definition, shippy?
As you know, Bob, there's not really a great deal of Sam and Jack friendship fic out there, and the definitions can be a little hazy anyway, with the difference in intent and perception (one person's UST is another person's friendly banter).
What I mean is... gen people, could you imagine reading/writing a Sam and Jack friendship fic where they are forced into that sort of relationship? Or, Sam/Jack people, could you imagine reading/writing that kind of fic, but without the UST angle - one where it's their friendship that they have to salvage? And without a happy ending where they're given permission by the Prez to break the frat regs. *g*
(And no, this is NOT what I'm planning to do for my
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Total number of stories written in 2008: 27
Total wordcount of posted stories: 27,649
Breakdown of those fics:
Sam/Jack: 5
Sam/MacGyver: 3
Sam/Daniel: 2 ½*
Other (Daniel/Sha'uri, Daniel/team, Jack/Sara, Sam/Pete, Jack/Martha): 5
Gen: 11 ½* (when the heck did I turn into a gen writer?!? Fig, I blame this on you and your Alphabet Soups!)
*The half-gen, half-Sam/Daniel fic is It's Been An Honor.
( The stories. )
( The questions. )
2006
2007
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Oh, I held out, but I can resist no longer...
The state of my apocalypse
Current wordcount: 365 (!!!)
Total wordcount of versions written and then discarded: Circa 15,000+ (*headdesk*)
Number of times I've had an epiphany of 'This is it! I've got it at last!': About once every two weeks
Number of complete restarts from the beginning: 8
Bits I really like that aren't going to make the final cut: Vast swathes
Number of plans drawn up: 5
Number of plans I usually draw up for a fic: 0
Number of changes to how the world ended: 4 (Replicators, Ori, Goa'uld attack, never discovered)
Originality of ideas: 3%
Number of ficathons I've tried to write this for: 2
Length of playlist for writing this fic to: 3.6 hrs, before my iPod died and took with it the playlist.
Certainty I have of finishing this time: 58% (amber alert)
Likelihood of me turning into Inspector Clouseau's boss or Robert Lindsey in GBH before this fic is done: High (already got the eye-twitch)
Pirates:
Reason this fic is making me so nuts: I have no idea
Lunchtime today, 549 words on my apocafic! IT LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES!
Is it any coincidence that I cut my nails last night? I think not.
Also, today I have dressed like an egg. I hoped no one would notice - that they would think I was just dressed in a nice, summery yellow skirt and white top. Naturally, the first person to see me said, "Egg!". Dammit.
Stay with me on this.
See, I find the smallest things make it easier or harder for me to write. Cutting my nails, that's another one - whenever I cut my nails, I find myself suddenly typing a lot more. If I have long nails, I type less. I'm like some kind of reverse Sampson, only with nails, and writing fanfic rather than pulling down temples. Um. And it's odd, because I don't notice my nails getting in the way or anything, when they're long - but when they're short, typing is suddenly that much more tappytappytappythisiseasyandIcanhitallthekeyswithoutahiccup...
So, my inability to write. It's not the weather - because it's not that hot, neither is it that cold. It's just... meh. It's like un-weather (now the rains have stopped trying to drown half the country). It's not lack of time, now I've posted the CotG thing (wow, that went well!), and done the AIM thing, and had the holiday, and come back to work (which is keeping me busy and productive, but not in a stressful way - rather, it's pretty joyful to feel useful at work, for once). It's not other stresses - finances okay, check; (mostly) good relationship, check; keeping active, check; eating sensibly, check; getting enough sleep, check... It's not the lack of inspiration, either - I keep thinking of bits and twists and lines and changes and stuff that needs to get the hell out of my head and onto a page.
So, why can't I write this damn fic, for the rapidly-looming deadline (Aug 12-18 OMG)? Clearly it's the keyboards. On the work one, I have to press just that slight bit harder than I find natural, otherwise some of the keys stick. It's fine for work - meaning there's no excuse to requisition a new one. The one at home is... it's too.. it's... grah.
Dammit,
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edit: Just remembered! I've put links in the above-mentioned post to the Christmas party reel comment fic by
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I haven't squeed about my course lately. Mainly because, for the last two lessons (which are once a week), our usual tutor was away. We had someone who claimed to be "just as knowledgeable". That may well have been the case, but his ability to communicate that knowledge was non-existent, so we spent the lessons pootling around with the programme. Which, y'know, is all well and good as a learning method (that's pretty much how I learnt Photoshop), but I have the programme downloaded onto my laptop at home. I can pootle in my spare time. Bah.
But anyhow, yesterday, Juan - the regular tutor - was back, and there was much rejoicing (in my brain, anyhow - the class is pretty quiet and subdued). We learnt about how to create a curve that can be rotated so you get something that's symmetrical, all the way around. I made a table lamp that lit up. *g*
I'm definitely getting to grips with the basics. And the good thing is, now I'm not moving house, I'm able to go in to the college during the summer, after the course has finished. Juan said we could just call him and ask if it was okay to use the computers. Whee! I'll definitely have to take him up on that, if I can get some free time.
In fannish news, I can't concentrate. I have lots of new shinies, and that's not a very good idea. There's the
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Oh, and I must must must email / phone my rl friend Vick. Because she emailed me ages ago and I didn't reply. Very bad me. Sorry, Vick, if you're reading this - I did get it, and I will reply! I swear! :)