*waves languidly*

[stillane]

Haven't been posting much because honestly, nothings been going on. This is because I am on vacation. I am one with the sloth. (The deadly sin kind, that is. Cute as the critter form is, I've heard they can be nasty little bastards and they have their own plant growth. I will adore them from slightly more of a distance, thank you.)

I've been hauling my rear end out of bed at hours late enough to horrify nightshift workers, largely due to the fact that I'm indulging my worst conditioned insomniac impulses. This will no doubt come back to bite me when I really can't get to sleep when classes start up again, but *handwave*

Also, I am currently baking cookies. Yes, it is closing in on 2 am. I blame mmmchelle and thegrrrl2002 and their latest. If you haven't read it yet, go do that, and then tell me you don't want cookies, too.

I have accomplished approximately nothing that I set out to do over break, but I still have hope and a few days. What I have done is written stuff. How did I forget how much fun John and Rodney are? It's a little like finding your favorite pair of fuzzy grey cotton socks in the bottom of the drawer and slipping them on to go dancing around your apartment ala Risky Business. I feel all toasty again, if slightly silly.

Meanwhile, my dastardly holiday plan is going... well, according to plan. The family has apparently had their big cohabitation readjustment battle already, and so should be settled in nicely by the time I roll into town. Mwahaha.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go eat oven-warm cookies and write a quietly freaking out John. I love my life. *g*

Comments

[feartheotter.livejournal.com]

Baking at 2AM is a way of life, m'dear. Be careful, lest it suck you in.

Honestly, I have no idea what I mean by that. It's closing in on 2AM here, but my brain/body is still on Mountain Time, so it's more like 3. And I start to get loopy around 3.

In any case, knowing that you're feeling the break-time sloth, you'll be getting a guilt-free weekday phone poke. *nods soberly*

But first, sleep.

[stillane.livejournal.com]

Baking at 2AM is a way of life, m'dear. Be careful, lest it suck you in.

Hee. I don't mind the idea so much - I'm pretty much guaranteed to be more productive after midnight - but I think my neighbors might object. I have the ancient, creeky-style oven model; it's an exercise in stealth just to open the door. *g*

And feel free to poke away. Lord knows I probably won't be sleeping. :P

[stillane.livejournal.com]

*pokes* Also, I need your home address. I have your semi-home, but that won't do me much good in the grand holiday scheme - okay, so it's not that grand a scheme - which I am plotting.

[krisomniac.livejournal.com]

*steals cookie and runs away*

I have like six disks of gingerbread dough in my freezer just *waiting* to be rolled out, cookie cuttered up, and baked. Maybe today's the day.

[stillane.livejournal.com]

Gingerbread! We were actually all sitting around the other day discussing the building of gingerbread houses, and how it's just no fun when you live solo or in pairs. The house never disappears fast enough, and you just wind up with a dilapidated remnant of its former gumdrop glory. Okay, so we weren't that maudlin, but the thought was there.

How involved is the making of gingerbread, anyway? I was contemplating doing something food-oriented for my neighbors, since I have no idea who celebrates what and food is the universal holiday language. If it did not require extreme culinary intelligence, I could maybe manage gingerbread people. Hm. What do you think?

*tosses more cookies your way*

[krisomniac.livejournal.com]

How involved is the making of gingerbread, anyway?

It's not too bad. I accidentally doubled the dough recipe and it only took 1 1/2 hours to roll it all out / cut it / bake it. (I made the dough a few days ago and froze it.)

This recipe works well:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/103110

[stillane.livejournal.com]

Eeeeexcellent. This looks manageable, even for me. Provided, of course, that I have a rolling pin. This is what happens when you move; you suddenly have to wonder these things. *shrug*

[aurora]

What I have done is written stuff. How did I forget how much fun John and Rodney are? It's a little like finding your favorite pair of fuzzy grey cotton socks in the bottom of the drawer and slipping them on to go dancing around your apartment ala Risky Business.
Yaaaay!! \o/ (Speaking of socks: did you read that AU where John and Rodney ARE socks??)

As for the 2am thing: I stayed up till 4am last night to finish lily&halo's latest rps fic. It was totally worth it. :D I have chelle&thegrrrl's fic open in a tab, and I hope I can get to it tonight.

[stillane.livejournal.com]

Speaking of socks: did you read that AU where John and Rodney ARE socks??

They... wait, what? Seriously? That's kind of awesome. I really thought we'd topped out with the crack for the season with the unicorn/rainbow 'verse (which I kind of tragically adore), but no! Every time I think I've heard it all, I am proven delightfully wrong. I love my fandom. *g*

As for the late night fic reading... I'm so sad. The greatest mitigating factor in when I get to sleep is whether or not I'm conscious enough to still enjoy the next story. I ought to have willpower, I know, but not so much. *g*

I have chelle&thegrrrl's fic open in a tab, and I hope I can get to it tonight.

Good plan. It's one of those fantastically warm, happy glow fics. I started grinning at one particular early scene and never really stopped.

[aurora]

I really thought we'd topped out with the crack for the season with the unicorn/rainbow 'verse (which I kind of tragically adore), but no!
I KNOW! (Unicorn/rainbow = OTP, yo!) It made me so happy that we hadn't run out of crack just yet. (The fic is here, btw.)

The greatest mitigating factor in when I get to sleep is whether or not I'm conscious enough to still enjoy the next story.
Yes! If I can't enjoy a great story, I rather save it for the next day rather than to rush through it. That being said: omg, my 'to read' list is huge. And this is just my 'omg read now!!' list. I'm not even thinking of my real 'to read' list. Oh, SGA, how are you so awesome??

I just read the Mr. Toe fic! It was so happy making. *hearts her dorks*

[terribilita.livejournal.com]

Yes, how could you forget John and Rodney? How? *shakes head* But I agree, the only thing to do to remedy that is to write fic. *nods firmly*

:D

[stillane.livejournal.com]

Hee. In my defense, I haven't written much of anything for a while, not by the standards I used to manage. I keep seeing Fic Year In Review posts everywhere and thinking, Nope. Don't need to do that; I can name all three things I've done in the last year off the top of my head. *g*

Part of it, though, is that I have to be reading enough to be caught up. Otherwise, I'll be off reading instead of writing, because I'm lazy. I need to get to a point where there's a story that I want to read that doesn't exist yet, and I can't convince myself it doesn't exist until I've read what does, and then I get distracted by all the pretty I've been missing out on. Yep. Vicious cycle. *g*

[terribilita.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I got into the SGA fandom fairly late (end of season two-ish) so I think you'd already written most of the stories you're known for. I missed all the initial fun! Thankfully, you wrote one of my favorite stories from this year and it's not even SGA--"Settle" makes me so happy, seriously.

I need to get to a point where there's a story that I want to read that doesn't exist yet, and I can't convince myself it doesn't exist until I've read what does

Oh see, but what if you get a plotbunny and you really want to write it and you do find that someone's written it already? I've seen authors say that they try not to do this because then they realize that it's been done and so they kind of get discouraged.

I got the new fic btw, so I'll send that back as soon as I'm done!

[stillane.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I got into the SGA fandom fairly late (end of season two-ish)

Weirdly enough, I didn't get into either of my two major fandoms until they were already in full swing. I was a little more timely with Supernatural, but the first SG:A ep I ever saw was Intruder. I was stuck by myself in a hotel in Wyoming and turned on SciFi to keep me company, and the rest is history. *g*

"Settle" makes me so happy, seriously.

*hugs you* It's kind of fantastic to know that other people like that one, because it is so much my own happy place.

Oh see, but what if you get a plotbunny and you really want to write it and you do find that someone's written it already?

To a certain extent, it's a little unavoidable. We're all aiming for new and different, but with the sheer volume of writing going on, we're bound to stumble onto one another sometimes. The worst is when you have the germ of an idea, and then you run across it somewhere else done terribly. At least when it's done incredibly you get to enjoy it from the outside.

When you do get caught mid-fic, I think your only hope is to find something new about whatever it is you're writing that makes it important to you to finish it. Sometimes, I think you can accomplish that by striping it back to the bare bones of what you liked about the idea in the first place. From there, you can try to build in a different direction, and the challenge is maybe good. Like bootcamp.

This might be an easier approach for me because of the way I usually start a fic. In my case, it's rarely a full plot that shows up; I tend to get little bits and pieces, a scene or a line or sometimes just an overall theme. From there it kind of spiderwebs out, and by the time I'm at the end I usually don't quite know how I got there.

My bigger problem is when I go back to read over something and realize it reminds me of someone else's work. That happened on Destiny Manifest, way back when I was first starting to write. In that case, I think the best thing you can do is evaluate how much of the idea you owe to the other writer, and talk to them if necessary. (Read: throw yourself on their mercy.) I got lucky and had astolat as the original author, and she looked mine over and didn't have an issue with it. If she had, the only option would have been to ditch it, although it would have gnawed a little bit of my soul away to do it.

Did any of that make any sense whatsoever? It's after 2. Chances are pretty good the answer to that is, "No." *g*

I got the new fic btw, so I'll send that back as soon as I'm done!

Yay. No rush. I've been told it's still got some comprehension issues - what, you aren't all reading my mind? - and I wound up writing a bit of a cheat-sheet summary of what's going on in everyone's heads throughout. If you'd like, I can send it along, too; might make sorting out what I need to work on easier. *g*

[terribilita.livejournal.com]

I don't think I remember my first episode of SGA. I think it was a rerun of The Eye on FOX but all that happened was me thinking whoa, that cranky guy is yummy when wet and this Sheppard guy is hot. But I didn't actively start watching new episodes on SciFi until one of my favorite authors from BtVS started posting SGA fic, and that was in season two.

I think "Settle" quieted that crazy voice in my head that's always asking for slash from anything and everything. Like, I'm watching some random movie and I'm sitting there thinking, boy, I wish someone would write so and so getting together. And you know it's never gonna happen because fanfic, much less slash fanfic, is so rare for most movies. And The Rundown? I never could've imagined someone doing so. It took me a while to even discover slash (even though I always had a thing for you know, guys getting it on, and if you know anything about yaoi, I was big on that) so when I watched the movie back in 2003 (yes, I saw it in when it was playing in theaters and before I knew what slash was) I saw something between Beck and Travis but I couldn't name it. So ahem, yes, "Settle" is representative of all those movies I wish had a fandom but don't. And it doesn't hurt one bit that it's amazingly written and works perfectly as a post-movie story.

Did any of that make any sense whatsoever?
Yes, yes, that did make sense. You know, it's funny because with a fandom this huge, I mean, the sheer amount of fic is amazing, there's bound to be similarities in stories (post-Trinity fic! yay!).

The worst is when you have the germ of an idea, and then you run across it somewhere else done terribly.
Someone on my friends list brought this up recently in relation to podfic. There was a back and forth between her and someone else in the comments that I found really interesting. They both agreed that there's some terrible podfic out there, specifically for some very well known SGA fics. They both said it sucks because no one will redo those podfics. But...why not? Just like I wouldn't blame you for writing out your plotbunny anyway, even after you've found it done terribly, I wouldn't blame them for recording their own version of the podfic. I don't see anything offensive in that at all.

I'll be honest, I don't see why astolat would have a problem with it. As far as your comment implies, it wasn't outright plagiarisms, it just had some similar themes. But isn't that all over fandom? It just seems like it's inevitable. It's how it's written that matters, imo.

(Kind of off topic, but I love it when people who are writing fic post to sgastoryfinders with a summary of a story they think they might be stealing from subconsciously. Oh, sgastoryfinders, how I love you!)

I'm about ready to send you back my edited version, but a question for you before I send it back: are you caught up with season 4? Up to This Mortal Coil even? I always have random comments in my edits and I'd hate to spoil you!

[stillane.livejournal.com]

First off: yep, totally caught up. I remain unspoiled for unaired eps, but anything that's seen the light of day is fair game. (And now I'm very curious.*g*)

Second: podfic. Hm. You know, a little while ago someone asked whether I'd ever thought about doing it, and I've been pondering ever since. I think I tend to think of podfics more like music than fic, actually. Multiple versions seem natural, the same way that covers of songs do. I'd kind of get a kick out of hearing someone else reading one of my fics aloud. I'm always surprised by the things that hit the reader differently than they hit me, and podfic seems like one big experiment in that.

On the other hand, I'd also love to try my hand at it. The repressed theater geek in me misses doing play read-throughs. I just have no idea how it's done. *g*

I think the problem a lot of authors have with it, though, is that they feel obligated to promote podfics of their stuff, even if they turn out really bad. (There's a certain amount of inevitable attachment to something that someone created because they liked your work so much, I think; I get kind of spastically excited if someone illustrates, for instance.) And then they get trapped, because to then turn around and do their own podfic maybe screams that they didn't like the first version. I don't think that's necessarily the case at all - covers and originals can live in harmony! Ouch. I hurt myself with that accidental pun - but it's hard to get that across, maybe. I'm just guessing, though, since I have no practical experience.

And third: oh, sgastoryfinders. That place is wonderful. It's entertainment all by itself. You get your daily dose of stories you've somehow missed; you get to play Fic Taboo ("It has three donkeys and a waterslide!" "Oh, I know that one!"); and you sometimes even get to find out what it is about one of your own fics that sticks in peoples' heads. There's one line from Cohesion that pops up from time to time, and I'm always surprised. I didn't think it was an important line at all, just a throw-away bit of dialogue, but it's what caught someone else's attention. *shrug* I'm not going to complain, but I am curious. *g*

[stillane.livejournal.com]

Also, if the copy I sent you has a weird explanatory paragraph at the beginning that seems to bear very little relation to the fic, that's cause it does. It pertained to the old, really wonky version, and should have been axed before I sent it off. How it managed to come back after I hit delete, I haven't the foggiest. *sigh* Sorry about that.