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Meme questions, answered! Film at 11.
A few days ago I posted a meme loosely paraphrased as the "name something you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it," meme, but bracketed it with discussions of short stories and most people started chatting to me about stories (not complaining! great recs!)
Except Pixie, who had so many questions it'll take multiple posts, I should imagine. (Actually, I'm still open to questions, though my week just got a lot busier, oy.)
So, first up, the fandom post:
The fandom question(s) was (were):
How you write and conceive of stories like The God of Poets and your Teal'c fic in particular, but just.. all of it?
Well, the God of Poets came about because of a prompt, and (awesomely) one that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
paian chose for me. The prompt was, specifically, Teal'c and Thilana, S10's Line in the Sand, and the MLK, Jr. quote "[I talk] about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate." Actually, I have a huge author's commentary on that story here (which is more or less all about authorial intent and wallowing in glorious wikipedia finds), but I can try to talk about the origins of the ideas, maybe?
So there's this thing about writing Teal'c where you aren't haunted by the ghosts of stories written already, written *better* or done to death in the same way as in, oh, a big pairing area of fandom like Jack/Daniel stories or something. I can revisit the Jaffa having an oral tradition or the Teal'c and Bra'tac mentorship, over and over again and have it still feel relatively underexplored. And Teal'c is a *wonderful* subject, just brilliant to write about. Lush backstory, glorious vocabulary, deep emotions and passion that's let loose under really remarkable conditions... To say nothing of Bra'tac (guaranteed to add 30% more awesome to any scene you're writing, so saysrydra_wong.?
Anyway, with Poets, I think you have the longstanding fascination with Jaffa bardic tradition (born of some fabulous stories from Salieri, I believe), paired with the wonderful mentor relationship Teal'c has with Bra'tac. Wouldn't it be interesting if Bra'tac were the one more likely to say something about seeing too much hate? He has more of the age and experience for it, and while Teal'c is *close*, and certainly older than SG-1, Bra'tac has something else. Bra'tac has the weariness of training the next generation, but not expecting to see the glorious outcome, not really.
Wouldn't teaching love over hate be interesting in the context of the Jaffa warrior caste? Who but Bra'tac could pull that off? And we've never really heard much of what Bra'tac learns of Teal'c while he's off doing his own thing; is Teal'c's name fairing well among Jaffa since he is such a figure but not among them? Is he lauded among the free humans or feared? And what of the fact that Teal'c has done so much that he can't go back (apparently) and be a simple Jaffa again?
I suspect a lot of this prompted Footsoldiers as well; the relationship with Bra'tac is confoundingly counter-tradition, and amazing. Teal'c is possibly the most emotionally intelligent member of the original SG-1, and yet he is just as much of an orphan as Daniel, has the same experience being raised by a single parent that Sam has... except for Bra'tac. And this mysterious mother figure we never heard a word about until season 10.
I'm not sure I could tell you where Into the Breach came from, except maybe a fascination with the possibility of Teal'c/Sam (it was, possibly my third fanfic ever and at the time I was reading Jack/Daniel stories where Teal'c and Sam...kind of got shoved together as consolation prizes. It was interesting) and how Teal'c would never, never push it and Sam would never realize. It's a small tragedy in it's way; how I love that the actors went there in Unending. Fantastic! That, with the immediately following point just below, prompted the Five Things Teal'c in Unending story.
The Cameron/Teal'c stuff is shameless appreciation of a sweet, sweet relationship and pretty, pretty people.
That's a lot of Teal'c, really. Anyone curious about specific less-Teal'c stories is please to speak up in the comments.
Do you have lots of WIPs?
Well, I do start stuff and then not finish it, but it's rare that I go back and ever even remember that it exists, honestly. It's not that I'm writing a bunch of stories at the same time, or even that they are long enough to do in installments. Usually when I write, I write all of it at once with a fairly stringent focus.
Actually that's true of how I approach most things. (OMG I suck at multitasking)
Looking through my files, these are stories that I at least started writing:
the curious blindness of familiar things
"Cameron waffled between hating how he jumped to go say goodbye to a woman he'd met once (twice if you counted her native counterpart,) and inertia about going to the trouble. On the day, despite still being on the fence about it, he showered and dressed in clean clothes before he realized what he was doing. Drank two cups of coffee before deciding he was jittery enough and dumped the pot. Sat by the window and watched the minutes tick by, just like always."
[I remember this one, this is a complicated concept of AUs from The Road Not Taken, and Sam as a unifying figure for the members of SG-1 separated in that reality. Except it got really Cam/Teal'c weighted. I have 2,000 words of this, huh.]
Cassie Fic
Sam walked into the apartment in Nevada, juggling keys, dropping her purse and shoes and still maintaining a hold on the plastic bag she was carrying. Cassie was on the sofa in the main room, folded into pretzel shape, but head resting sideways on a wide elbow off the back of the couch, the phone rested easily on the side of her head.
“A friend was talking about graduation today,” Cassie said, loud enough for Sam to hear.
“That’s ambitious,” Sam said quietly, as she rounded the half wall that sectioned off the kitchen. Cassie leaned her head back to get an upside-down view of Sam’s smile.
On the other end of the phone line, a man’s voice was saying, “Is it time for graduation already? Seems like only last month we were moving you into your first dorm room.”
“It was last month, Jack,” Cassie said, giving up her easy nest in the couch cushions to kneel up and watch what Sam was unpacking.
“Must be the gate lag,” Jack said dryly, sorting out the crinkling plastic sounds he heard through the receiver. Cassie drew her eyebrows together and unwittingly mimicked Janet’s disapproving face as she craned to get a look at the labels on the paper-wrapped sandwiches.
“D.C. being good to you, Sir?” Sam said in Cassie’s direction.
“Tell her it’s still hot and she’s fired,” Jack said, turning away from his crossword and looking thoughtfully at the refrigerator.
[Pretty sure this was prompted by wankery of some kind, it goes on to have Cassie ask why she's got carte blanche on Earth and Teal'c doesn't. It's really transparent, though Sam and Jack entertained me when I was writing it.]
Otherwise, I have a handful of words under the heading of "Sha'uri Fic", and an interesting title for a Jack story that has absolutely nothing else associated.
Although, I had at least a crappy first draft of a Sam and Teal'c story that needed at least double the word count. I have no idea where that is. Or what I might have called it.
Do you think you'll ever get tired of writing gateverse? Do you think you'll ever move on from writing gateverse and write in a new show? Are there any new (or new-to-you) shows/fandoms that you would like to step into if you had the time?
The closest I've gotten to writing anything else was the beginning of a creepy assed Simon story from Firefly where he starts getting obsessed with understanding death. And then I think I wrote a single SGA ficlet that wasn't Sam-centric. And that's it.
I've certainly stopped writing Gateverse as obsessively as I did before, but my writing has improved a zillion-fold, so I imagine it evens out. Realistically, I think the show ending will see me moving on to another favorite eventually, but I do one thing at a time, as previously stated. So, though I'll read other fandoms, I'm not tempted to write Supernatural or NCIS or Atlantis or Firefly or Farscape or Slings and Arrows. Yet. Hard to say what will grab me when I'm ready to be grabbed.
[I would like to give a shout out to people who have tried to pimp me into other shows, it's a hilarious experience every time. And y'all are usually right about whether I'll like something. Rome was awesome, Farscape is incomparable, it's good stuff.]
I'd lay money that I enter any new fandom as a pimp first and writer second, though. That's just how I roll: research always comes first (in one fandom at a time.)
Except Pixie, who had so many questions it'll take multiple posts, I should imagine. (Actually, I'm still open to questions, though my week just got a lot busier, oy.)
So, first up, the fandom post:
The fandom question(s) was (were):
How you write and conceive of stories like The God of Poets and your Teal'c fic in particular, but just.. all of it?
Well, the God of Poets came about because of a prompt, and (awesomely) one that
paian chose for me. The prompt was, specifically, Teal'c and Thilana, S10's Line in the Sand, and the MLK, Jr. quote "[I talk] about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate." Actually, I have a huge author's commentary on that story here (which is more or less all about authorial intent and wallowing in glorious wikipedia finds), but I can try to talk about the origins of the ideas, maybe?So there's this thing about writing Teal'c where you aren't haunted by the ghosts of stories written already, written *better* or done to death in the same way as in, oh, a big pairing area of fandom like Jack/Daniel stories or something. I can revisit the Jaffa having an oral tradition or the Teal'c and Bra'tac mentorship, over and over again and have it still feel relatively underexplored. And Teal'c is a *wonderful* subject, just brilliant to write about. Lush backstory, glorious vocabulary, deep emotions and passion that's let loose under really remarkable conditions... To say nothing of Bra'tac (guaranteed to add 30% more awesome to any scene you're writing, so says
rydra_wong.?Anyway, with Poets, I think you have the longstanding fascination with Jaffa bardic tradition (born of some fabulous stories from Salieri, I believe), paired with the wonderful mentor relationship Teal'c has with Bra'tac. Wouldn't it be interesting if Bra'tac were the one more likely to say something about seeing too much hate? He has more of the age and experience for it, and while Teal'c is *close*, and certainly older than SG-1, Bra'tac has something else. Bra'tac has the weariness of training the next generation, but not expecting to see the glorious outcome, not really.
Wouldn't teaching love over hate be interesting in the context of the Jaffa warrior caste? Who but Bra'tac could pull that off? And we've never really heard much of what Bra'tac learns of Teal'c while he's off doing his own thing; is Teal'c's name fairing well among Jaffa since he is such a figure but not among them? Is he lauded among the free humans or feared? And what of the fact that Teal'c has done so much that he can't go back (apparently) and be a simple Jaffa again?
I suspect a lot of this prompted Footsoldiers as well; the relationship with Bra'tac is confoundingly counter-tradition, and amazing. Teal'c is possibly the most emotionally intelligent member of the original SG-1, and yet he is just as much of an orphan as Daniel, has the same experience being raised by a single parent that Sam has... except for Bra'tac. And this mysterious mother figure we never heard a word about until season 10.
I'm not sure I could tell you where Into the Breach came from, except maybe a fascination with the possibility of Teal'c/Sam (it was, possibly my third fanfic ever and at the time I was reading Jack/Daniel stories where Teal'c and Sam...kind of got shoved together as consolation prizes. It was interesting) and how Teal'c would never, never push it and Sam would never realize. It's a small tragedy in it's way; how I love that the actors went there in Unending. Fantastic! That, with the immediately following point just below, prompted the Five Things Teal'c in Unending story.
The Cameron/Teal'c stuff is shameless appreciation of a sweet, sweet relationship and pretty, pretty people.
That's a lot of Teal'c, really. Anyone curious about specific less-Teal'c stories is please to speak up in the comments.
Do you have lots of WIPs?
Well, I do start stuff and then not finish it, but it's rare that I go back and ever even remember that it exists, honestly. It's not that I'm writing a bunch of stories at the same time, or even that they are long enough to do in installments. Usually when I write, I write all of it at once with a fairly stringent focus.
Actually that's true of how I approach most things. (OMG I suck at multitasking)
Looking through my files, these are stories that I at least started writing:
the curious blindness of familiar things
"Cameron waffled between hating how he jumped to go say goodbye to a woman he'd met once (twice if you counted her native counterpart,) and inertia about going to the trouble. On the day, despite still being on the fence about it, he showered and dressed in clean clothes before he realized what he was doing. Drank two cups of coffee before deciding he was jittery enough and dumped the pot. Sat by the window and watched the minutes tick by, just like always."
[I remember this one, this is a complicated concept of AUs from The Road Not Taken, and Sam as a unifying figure for the members of SG-1 separated in that reality. Except it got really Cam/Teal'c weighted. I have 2,000 words of this, huh.]
Cassie Fic
Sam walked into the apartment in Nevada, juggling keys, dropping her purse and shoes and still maintaining a hold on the plastic bag she was carrying. Cassie was on the sofa in the main room, folded into pretzel shape, but head resting sideways on a wide elbow off the back of the couch, the phone rested easily on the side of her head.
“A friend was talking about graduation today,” Cassie said, loud enough for Sam to hear.
“That’s ambitious,” Sam said quietly, as she rounded the half wall that sectioned off the kitchen. Cassie leaned her head back to get an upside-down view of Sam’s smile.
On the other end of the phone line, a man’s voice was saying, “Is it time for graduation already? Seems like only last month we were moving you into your first dorm room.”
“It was last month, Jack,” Cassie said, giving up her easy nest in the couch cushions to kneel up and watch what Sam was unpacking.
“Must be the gate lag,” Jack said dryly, sorting out the crinkling plastic sounds he heard through the receiver. Cassie drew her eyebrows together and unwittingly mimicked Janet’s disapproving face as she craned to get a look at the labels on the paper-wrapped sandwiches.
“D.C. being good to you, Sir?” Sam said in Cassie’s direction.
“Tell her it’s still hot and she’s fired,” Jack said, turning away from his crossword and looking thoughtfully at the refrigerator.
[Pretty sure this was prompted by wankery of some kind, it goes on to have Cassie ask why she's got carte blanche on Earth and Teal'c doesn't. It's really transparent, though Sam and Jack entertained me when I was writing it.]
Otherwise, I have a handful of words under the heading of "Sha'uri Fic", and an interesting title for a Jack story that has absolutely nothing else associated.
Although, I had at least a crappy first draft of a Sam and Teal'c story that needed at least double the word count. I have no idea where that is. Or what I might have called it.
Do you think you'll ever get tired of writing gateverse? Do you think you'll ever move on from writing gateverse and write in a new show? Are there any new (or new-to-you) shows/fandoms that you would like to step into if you had the time?
The closest I've gotten to writing anything else was the beginning of a creepy assed Simon story from Firefly where he starts getting obsessed with understanding death. And then I think I wrote a single SGA ficlet that wasn't Sam-centric. And that's it.
I've certainly stopped writing Gateverse as obsessively as I did before, but my writing has improved a zillion-fold, so I imagine it evens out. Realistically, I think the show ending will see me moving on to another favorite eventually, but I do one thing at a time, as previously stated. So, though I'll read other fandoms, I'm not tempted to write Supernatural or NCIS or Atlantis or Firefly or Farscape or Slings and Arrows. Yet. Hard to say what will grab me when I'm ready to be grabbed.
[I would like to give a shout out to people who have tried to pimp me into other shows, it's a hilarious experience every time. And y'all are usually right about whether I'll like something. Rome was awesome, Farscape is incomparable, it's good stuff.]
I'd lay money that I enter any new fandom as a pimp first and writer second, though. That's just how I roll: research always comes first (in one fandom at a time.)