Arctic Light

Well, there's a tag I haven't used in a while ...

I'm decluttering/sorting my books and have decided that I don't really want to keep all the Stargate tie-ins. I'm going to keep a couple of my favorites and give the rest to basically whoever wants 'em. Many of these were originally given to me by various people in fandom, so I don't feel right asking for money. If you'll send me the shipping cost (Paypal preferably), I'll send you whichever of these you want:

( 9 SGA tie-in books, a set of tie-in comics, and one Supernatural tie-in book )

First come, first served. Just let me know which ones you want (or all of them!) and reimburse me for shipping after I take them to the post office.

ETA: All Stargate books are now claimed, sorry! SPN book is still up for grabs if anyone wants it; if not, I'll put it with the rest of the books to go to the used bookstore.

... because I write LJ posts instead!

Considering that I only filled in, what, two squares on my cliche_bingo card, I do not need to sign up for H/C bingo, right? Right. But I waaaaaaant to. XD (Here: Their list of h/c cliches for the bingo cards. See why I'm tempted?)

I did get my first choice for the SGA Reverse Bang, so now I have 5000 words of fic to write by early July. (Well, by June 25th or so in my case, since I'm off on another trip then.) My art is done and off to the writer, so all is looking good on that front!

*goes to post* WTF ... THE INTERNETS ARE GONE. (My internet access just went down. Let's see if it's back by the time I'm done typing this sentence. STILL NOT BACK. Guess I'll take a walk and see if it comes back. Sure, I could work on the short story I'm supposed to be writing today, but that would just be silly.)

Nevermind, it's back, although slow. You know, I think it says a lot about my life that I actually notice if our DSL goes out for two or three minutes.

I took my last final today - only fifteen years after I started, I have a bachelor's degree! \o/

So I'm celebrating with an SGA/Stargateverse commentfic party!

I wanted to take advantage of Dreamwidth's longer comment counts, but most of my SGA flist is mainly on LJ. What to dooooo. So I'm doing this: I'm making two posts, one on LJ and one on Dreamwidth. This is the gen party. The DW one is going to be "anything goes" - any pairing (including gen too), any rating. I think my DW reading list leans a lot more heavily in the non-gen direction than the LJ one, so it should work out fine. You are perfectly welcome to participate in both places; if you don't have a DW account, I have invite codes and will hand them out happily, and you can also use your LJ username to log in via Open ID. (I'll link to that other post as soon as I make it.) The DW "anything goes" party is here!

How to play: Post prompts! Answer other prompts!

Your prompt should be a character(s) (including "any") and any kind of prompt: a situation, song lyric, word, picture, sketch, etc. You don't have to answer prompts to leave them, but please leave one prompt per comment; responses to a prompt should be done by replying to the comment.

I want non-writers to be able to play too, so it's fine to answer a prompt with fanart (or a vid, cross-stitch, whatever) rather than a commentfic. You can also post a conversation starter instead (Top five favorite episodes? What does John's black wristband mean?) or a picspam, although to keep the comments from getting bogged down, if you're going to post more than one picture per comment, please post it at your journal and link to it! Also, if your fic gets long, it's fine to post it at your journal and link (though you don't have to).

Any Gateverse prompt is welcome, though since it's mostly SGA people around here, those are probably the ones with the greatest chance of being answered! Please don't attack characters or ships in discussions - tell us how much you love X, not why Y is teh suck. Questions are also welcome if you're totally confused, which is a definite possibility.

Commentfic! Art! Discussion! PARTY!

.... aaaand GO!

There's a lovely, detailed writeup of JF and DH's panel at VanCon, with pictures and lots of text, at crysothemis's LJ:
http://crysothemis.livejournal.com/126593.html

And winter_elf has a bunch of adorable pictures too, in several posts (probably best to just click over and see what she's got).

kristen999 has roundup posts here and here.

Anyone seen a good write-up for Rachel's talk? I've only seen a couple pictures of her floating around from the con (like all the rest of them, though, she looks relaxed and happy). (ETA2: Found one! No pictures, alas ...)

I'm kind of alternating between total squee at the pictures, and feeling grouchy and sad about not going. On the other hand, it was a gorgeous warm weekend and I got a ton of writing done (finished my Genficathon fic; worked on some original stuff that I'm really happy with). And my amaryllis is blooming. :) So not a total waste of a weekend at all.

ETA: Also, I'm still working on my website, so don't be alarmed if things mysteriously vanish because, say, some idiot deleted half the files. *kicks self*

Here's an interesting meta-point to ponder. SGA went off the air in 2008 (woe!) -- well, early 2009, I guess. As the fandom lives on, eventually the show is going to recede farther into the past, especially with regards to pop culture and technology -- two things (especially the later) that tend to play a role in a lot of SGA fic.

Presumably anyone writing fic set in the early seasons of SG-1 already has to deal with this, since 1998 was an eon ago in science, technology and geek subculture -- no iPhones or Blackberries, no Facebook or Twitter, no Buffy or Firefly or New Who, no Google or Wikipedia, no human genome sequencing ...

Even 2004 was long enough ago now that anyone writing "Rising" tags is going to have to stop and ask themselves, "Did they have flash drives? What were cell phones like then?"

But on the other hand, the Stargate world isn't exactly our world, either. Aside from the obvious presence of Stargates and aliens, there are also little things like President Hayes ... it's almost our world, but not quite. So, while most people writing fic (including me) tend to be working off the assumption that they went to the Pegasus Galaxy in 2004 and fit the timeline around that, it doesn't necessarily have to be that way; there are few enough overt references to dates or ages in the show that it could just as easily exist in some kind of nebulous "now", where technology and pop culture references are updated according to whatever's current, in 2010 or ten years in the future.

I'm starting to realize that we're going to have to figure this out! Individual fans will probably resolve it in different ways (for one person, the nebulous "now" might work great; another might strip out any references to pop culture that specifically dates her story; another might meticulously research 2006 computer technology), but it's going to start coming up, and quite soon.

I'm curious if anyone else has thought about this? Thinky thoughts? I'm also curious how fanfic writers handle it when they work in fandoms which are already significantly dated, like "Starsky & Hutch" or "Man From Uncle" *looks at xparrot* ... do you research the era of the show? Do anachronisms like cell phones bother you, or does it only matter if the show is very specifically rooted in a particular historical time (like a Western)? Does this question come up a lot in older fandoms, or do most people tend to ignore it? I think it's interesting that, as many fandoms as I've wandered through, this is something I've never really thought about before -- I guess that most of my active fandoms have been set in very far-removed times and places, or have been for currently running shows in which my interest didn't really last beyond its cancellation, so it hasn't come up for me very much ...

... she writes long posts, and posts them later. *g* (I wrote this in the airport, waiting for our flight.)

I've finished up three WIPs on this trip (still have to edit and post the second two), and then my sticksandsnark story remains to be posted in early April. And I have a sga_genficathon story to finish, as well as astridv's "Finders" AU (which I absolutely love in concept, but cannot put together into a coherent shape, so it may take awhile). Beyond that, though ...

I like the idea of trying to hit a cumulative total of a million words of SGA fic this year. My count so far for the year is about 30K, so in order to reach the goal, I have, what, 90K to go ...? i.e. one long story, or a handful of short-to-midlength stories.

( Talking about some of my WIPs and ideas in progress )

I noticed on my vacation that writing smaller stories (like the "Defiant One" tag I posted) is a nice way to unwind, or to kick-start my creativity for working on bigger projects, if I let it be -- that is, let go of the need to make my writing count by finishing up long-abandoned WIPs, or by using the opportunity to "improve" my writing in some way (not that stretching myself is bad, just that trying to make every new story an experiment seems to be a creativity-killer). I'm not sure whether to set writing goals, or just kind of let my creativity go and see what I can accomplish if I let myself play a little bit more.

This art is for the story The Sacrificial Mage on sga_santa. The story is John/Rodney -- AU, non-explicit -- and completely awesome. One scene totally branded an image into my head and I had to draw it. Since I don't know who the author is, I can't give it to them directly, but I did post a comment to the story. :)

This is only very slightly spoilery, but makes very little sense if you haven't read the story.

( AU John and Teyla - and the passage that inspired it. )

Signups are open for sga_santa (instructions are here and for non-LJ people here) -- and you know, I was not going to do ANY Christmas season ficathons other than Yuletide because I'm already swamped ... but ... what am I doing right now? Writing up a request post! OH DEAR. Well, it's only a thousand words, right?

The Stargate Fan Award results are out. Many thanks to the volunteers for compiling the results and making the awards possible, and to all the winners, especially kristen999 who won overall best this year! :) I won an award for Second Verse (Same as the First). I remember how I winced in anticipation of a backlash when I posted that story, because it was so dark and critical not just of the show but of certain aspects of fandom as well. Instead, the reception was very positive and I'm really happy and flattered about the win. I also got an award for my fanvid Handle Me With Care -- I've never won an award for vidding before! *clings to it*

Also, author reveals and the fic/art masterlist are up for mcshep_match. I only had a chance to read a couple of them during the anonymous period -- it's gotten to the point where I'm just not reading a whole lot of that particular pairing (or much fic at all right now, really). But judging by the stories I read, it looks like this is another really strong year for good stories in the 'thon. Too sleepy and lazy right now to write up recs, but I'll need to come back and do it sometime soon!

But I do have a couple of vid recs:

And Parker Was by wyomingnot - Leverage; Parker character vid. OMG, this is my new favorite vid to re-watch; it's very well edited and timed, and it's a fun, bouncy cavalcade of all Parker's adorable expressions and her body language -- really a fantastic love-letter to the character. Clips from season one, no huge spoilers that I noticed.

Stop and Stare by templeremus - Being Human; Mitchell vid. BH vids are awfully rare, and I really enjoyed this one; it's highly spoilery for season one, though. Mitchell is so pretty. :)

Edit: Oh, and I really appreciate all the responses and input on my episode tag-a-thon suggestion post. It does look like there would be interest in such a thing, so I'll get moving on putting together a community and some rules! (Because I need more things to do right now. But ... fandom is fun! School and work are not fun. XD)

astridv made gorgeous fanart inspired by ME! It's for my story Night Ops (Jennifer, Rodney, John; mostly gen with light McKeller, though not in this scene). Rather large picture under the cut -- vaguely spoilery for the story, I guess, but only if you couldn't figure out from my past stories that John and Rodney probably don't make it to the end unscathed.

( Big damn action heroes! )