Arctic Light

I signed up for WC BB as both an author and an artist - the fic you know about (it's what I've been posting for the last week and a half!) and now, here is the art, for florastuart's Penelope Weaving.



Art deco! :D

Penelope Weaving is Season One through Kate's eyes. I haven't read the entire fic (yet) since it wasn't done when I made the art, but I really loved the part that I did read. Obviously it's almost entirely between-the-lines and/or a very different take on canon events (since, for the most part, we have no idea what Kate was doing during most of season one), and there are a few places where it conflicts with my established headcanon, but it does a brilliant job of bringing Kate to life and giving depth and complexity to her side of the story.

Well, this has been a rather spectacular writing jag -- in the last 9 days, I've written just about 50,000 words (counting both fanfic and original; I've been writing tons of both lately).

I HAVE POURED A LOT OF WORDS OUT OF MY BRAIN. I don't know if this is a record for me, but it's certainly a record since I've been writing down my daily word counts (which I've been doing since 2009).

On the fanfic side of things, I think I've FINALLY stopped adding side stories to my White Collar Big Bang. There is now the original BB plus 5 sequel stories. Each of them was written for a square on my h/c bingo card. I still have to edit the last two (I finished rough drafts of both of them today) but I now have 62,000 words of White Collar fic to post in September. \o/

For a sneak preview, under the cut is my h/c bingo card with the finished squares filled in. So you can see what you have to look forward to. :D

( H/C bingo card )

Note the complete and utter lack of anything resembling a bingo, however. :D

Options when you are about 90% done with an AU Big Bang story:

#1: Finish the Big Bang!
#2: Write a bunch of side stories in the same universe that you can't post for three months!

Guess which one I seem to be doing. *facepalm*

Hey, New York people: if one needed a stretch of lonely docks somewhere (anywhere) in or around NYC for sneaky smuggling-based shenanigans to happen, where might be a good place to locate it? (ETA: Actually, now that I'm writing that part, I think perhaps more populated docks would actually serve my purposes better, in the interests of having some bystanders around ... so I think I'm good on this question for now. :D)

... is it just me, or are fanvids suffering from a case of megabyte-bloat lately? I get that you want your vid to be high-quality, but past a certain point, I'm not going to bother downloading it. I clicked on one link the other day, only to discover that the vid was 420 Mb. For three and a half minutes of video? I don't think so!

(I also do not support this growing trend to offer vid links without telling me what format I'm downloading or how big it is. Mystery vid surprise! Do not want!)

When I make vids, I've had a lot of trouble finding a compressor that'll give me a reasonably sized video that isn't choppy or poor quality. So I do understand that it can be a struggle with the technology, especially for a newbie vidder. But ... do people not even check? Or am I just behind the times, still thinking in terms of "bandwidth" and "hard drive space"?

ETA: So that this post isn't just whine, I have discovered yes, Virginia, there will be an SGA Big Bang this year!

And purimgifts is open for signups. Should I? Should I not? *dithers*

ETA 2: sg1_beyond_otp is taking prompts for their Gateverse OT3+ ficathon. You don't have to participate to leave prompts!

The Road to Hell by wildcat88 (gen, PG13, 50K words)
Nice solid action/adventure story, fast-moving and enjoyable, focused primarily on John and Ronon but (as usual in Wildcat's stories) featuring sympathetic roles for all of the teammates. With extra bonus Todd, and some interesting tidbits about the Wraith life cycle.

Calling Down the Lightning by dreamwaffles (John/Rodney, PG13, 55K words)
This was just brilliant! An AU in which wizards are rare and powerful -- and, in most nations on Earth, killed on sight. The world-building was fantastic and one of the things I loved most is that unlike most AUs with characters that are magic, mutant or otherwise special, there weren't a lot of them running around; rather than an "us against the world!" thing with half of Atlantis being gifted, the rare magic-users on Atlantis had to hide their true nature even from their closest friends, teammates and lovers.

Thousandmother by springwoof (John/Rodney, NC17, 49K words)
Sometimes it's nice to get a story that puts the sci-fi back in the space opera. The team are stranded and separated, hunted by Wraith and confronted with truly alien aliens. The secondary characters also get quite a bit to do, including Lorne, Zelenka and a guest appearance by SG1.

The Magical Number Seven (Plus or Minus Two) by general_jinjur - (gen, 61K words)

This story was just ... wow. I think it's assumed its place with my very favorite novel-length fanfic in this fandom. It involves two twists of canon: "Tabula Rasa" (they don't get their memories back and have to reinvent themselves and their place in the galaxy) and "This Mortal Coil" (the RepliTeam aren't killed). And what emerges when these two plot threads are twined together is a really incredible exploration of identity -- of who we are, and what makes us us, and what aspects of our connections to other people can transcend memory and self (and what can't). I guess I ought to warn you that the stories I love most are those with a little bittersweetness to them -- there were parts of this that just broke me because of what they'd lost, and didn't even know they'd lost; the distrust is sometimes hard to handle -- but then they'll turn right around and love each other so much it hurts.

There is a character death warning: more information on that if you want it --> minor/supporting characters only - Radek, Caldwell; none of the team.

If comparisons to other stories are useful to you, this story reminded me a little of auburnnothenna's stories -- it's kind of got the same feeling to it that a lot of hers do -- and also reminded me a bit of Ltlj's space pirate AU.

SGA Secret Santa fic is killliiiing meeeeeeeeee. And I can't whine about it in more detail because of, well, the secret part. But I'm starting to feel like this is the fic that never ends, it just goes on and on, my friends ...

Big Bang stories read so far:

A Wing and a Prayer by kriadydragon - (gen, 97K words)
AU in which Milky Way people ride dragons, and Pegasus Galaxy people ride griffins. I went into it kind of wary about the premise, and then ended up really, really enjoying it -- there's solid worldbuilding (though I admit that I still had a few questions about how the dragon-enabled version of Earth would work, but not really moreso than, say, Temeraire) and some breathtaking action sequences. John's at the center of the story, but all the teammates get a good role.

Whipping Boy by skinscript - (gen, 45K words)
This is so totally not what I was expecting -- and I mean that in a good way! The title and the fact that it's a slavefic scenario led me to expect massive woobification; in reality, though, it's an interesting and twisty sci-fi fic, focused on Sheppard, McKay, Lorne, Parrish and a group of OC soldiers that I ended up liking very much. Having enjoyed it a lot, I'm kind of worried that people will avoid it because of misconceptions of what it's about (which is what I almost did -- I clicked on it because I wanted a Rodney story, and was very pleasantly surprised that it wasn't what I'd guessed from the title).

Children of the Abyss by writerjc - (gen, 40K words)
This one is a nice solid team adventure fic, pretty much in the style of an actual episode. Everyone gets something to do, and it has the "sense of wonder, exploring the galaxy" feeling that originally drew me to the series.

Obviously I'm working my way through the gen section. :) I'll start hitting the pairings a little later.

SGA Big Bang is LIVE!

I just want to stay home and read all the stories! Sadly, I have to get my ass in gear and go to class. Woe! But it looks wonderful; there are 43 stories, including a handful of gen and a wide variety of pairings. Many thanks to gblvr and svmadelyn for making it happen one last time.

I was fortunate enough to do artwork for These Proverbs We Made in the Winter Must End, by siriaeve. I picked the story based on the description because I thought it sounded visually interesting, but you shoulda seen the grin on my face when I saw who I was writing for (we picked them without knowing). I adore siriaeve's lyrical prose and her luscious world-building, and I knew I was in for a treat. And how!

Summary: The planet of Posturr is on the brink of civil war and Ronon's team is missing. Amid chaos and betrayal, Ronon must work closely with Jennifer to find them, facing the ghosts of his past as he rethinks his present.

It's PG13, Ronon/Jennifer with a very minor side pairing of John/Rodney/Teyla. I highly recommend giving this story a chance even if these aren't your pairings; there's no graphic content at all and the world-building is awesome -- I can't remember the last time I read a "team captured by offworld hostiles" story that did such a wonderful job of making the society convincing and sympathetic, with a believable political situation and descriptions so vivid that you can practically feel the mud on your boots. Even the OCs are marvelous. And the story is told in a really wonderful Ronon POV that fleshes out his backstory marvelously.

Am I correct that the form isn't working on the website yet? Or is it just that it isn't working *for me*?

I know the mods are busy and working hard, but it's getting so close to the deadline that it's starting to worry me ...

I cannot decide whether to sign up for sgabigbang! Signups close on the 29th, so I only have a few more days to decide. This is their last year, and I'm very sad at the idea of not being part of the final one. On the other hand, last year was awesome; I had so much fun co-creating the Whaleverse with naye, and I suspect there's at least a 50/50 chance I'll end up failing to complete my story this year if I do sign up. So maybe it's better for me to go out on a high note than to sign up and fail to meet the goal and never have another chance to redeem myself?

And right now I'm doing a pretty good job at sticking to my original fiction goals, and I don't really want to derail myself. I know from past experience that when I commit myself to doing a ficathon fic, I tend to have trouble working on anything else 'til I finish it; I might think I can work on both a Big Bang fic and an original novel at the same time, but past experience tends to imply that I can't.

Maybe I should sign up as a beta or an artist instead? Or just cheerlead? I would really like to be involved, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to commit myself to a big fic right now.

*wibbles some more*