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Sunday, March 26th, 2006 03:30 pm
on too much thinking
It feels really tacky to meta on your own fic when you're still in-progress and oh my God the *remixes rock*, but let me just state for the record, I have never, ever, in my entire fanfic career, enjoyed writing anything as much as I'm enjoying Crimes Against Humanity.
Also, for the record, quick rec on another remix, of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
auburnnothenna's You Must Remember This, titled You Must Remember This (The Same Old Story Remix). The sheer desperation and the feeling of time running out--wow. Serious wow. It is definitely a worthy remix to an amazing story.
I don't actually have a kink for prison fic, but I figured that creating new kinks is part of my duty as a well-rounded fangirl with multiple intersts and tastes. A Renaissance fangirl, if you will.
What's really getting me off is sitting down and being able to say, I think everyone should be wearing torture collars, because then I can randomly strike people down in the halls and don't have to wait for an outside enemy. Or, huh, you know, it would have been a lot more fun if the interrogation from Critical Mass was carried out with real enjoyment of all the fun inherent. And ooh, *explosions*, pretty! Which goes to show fandom has completely and utterly corrupted me in all ways. It's different from writing a combined AU using MirrorDimension fic, or even go and change one thing back in the past--I usually feel some need to *explain* why Universe B is such a mess, or such a better place. Here? No reasons.
Hmm. I keep thinkng about the three darkest stories of any length I've written--A Handful of Dust, which is dark but honestly, from Clark's pov, that place is sunshine and puppies in roses, you know?--Jus Ad Bellum, where I spent amazing amounts of time trying to make a statement--and it will never stop freaking me out a little that I started posting that just before 9/11--and Absolute Zero, which was the first time I seriously, seriously tried to write explicit torture. I used flashbacks and medical reports to gloss it to myself, but it says a lot about it that I flinch when re-reading it.
But thinking about it, I always had an *excuse* somewhere in my head, even if it was flimsy one, and that excuse dictated the level I was willing to suspend disbelief in what I was writing. So Jus Ad Bellum never got the sections of flashbacks to the labs where experimentation actually occurred, just the injuries catalogued and the emotional scars shown. It feels like Crimes doesn't have those kinds of limits, and a part of me, the part of me that kind of worries about going over the top, gets beat down a lot by the voice that says, you stripped them of their morals, their inner sense of humanity, and some of their sanity. They don't *have* limits. They have goals and want to achieve them in the most direct way, and the most direct way is going to appeal to their sincere lack of ability to empathize.
The one thing I did that I'm kinda still wondering about is bonding John immediately to Rodney, but I had this hugely practical reason for it, in that John's *nuts* and if I don't connect him up with someone fast, he'll have no brakes at all, and setting John Sheppard loose in Atlantis without a leash feels like possibly the very worst idea in history. On one hand--God, the death count. On the other--this story will be very short if everyone bonds together to kill him off the bat in a fit of self-preservation when he just gets way too enthusiastic with the armory. And frankly, John, cut off from his people in Earth with nothing to do and a lot of time to do it in, would instantly appreciate the man who created his bombs, who talks in death tolls and damage reports, who loves destruction just as much as John does, though he has better control of himself. He can connect with Elizabeth as his leader, but that personal connection that makes him more than just the living embodiment of chaos, with someone who can channel his tendencies and curb him when necessary--yeah. I liked that
I'm taking a short nap, my head is killing me. Final note: read the remixes! I'm about halfway through SGA and seriously, they rock. Smallville next. *bounces*
Also, for the record, quick rec on another remix, of
auburnnothenna's You Must Remember This, titled You Must Remember This (The Same Old Story Remix). The sheer desperation and the feeling of time running out--wow. Serious wow. It is definitely a worthy remix to an amazing story.I don't actually have a kink for prison fic, but I figured that creating new kinks is part of my duty as a well-rounded fangirl with multiple intersts and tastes. A Renaissance fangirl, if you will.
What's really getting me off is sitting down and being able to say, I think everyone should be wearing torture collars, because then I can randomly strike people down in the halls and don't have to wait for an outside enemy. Or, huh, you know, it would have been a lot more fun if the interrogation from Critical Mass was carried out with real enjoyment of all the fun inherent. And ooh, *explosions*, pretty! Which goes to show fandom has completely and utterly corrupted me in all ways. It's different from writing a combined AU using MirrorDimension fic, or even go and change one thing back in the past--I usually feel some need to *explain* why Universe B is such a mess, or such a better place. Here? No reasons.
Hmm. I keep thinkng about the three darkest stories of any length I've written--A Handful of Dust, which is dark but honestly, from Clark's pov, that place is sunshine and puppies in roses, you know?--Jus Ad Bellum, where I spent amazing amounts of time trying to make a statement--and it will never stop freaking me out a little that I started posting that just before 9/11--and Absolute Zero, which was the first time I seriously, seriously tried to write explicit torture. I used flashbacks and medical reports to gloss it to myself, but it says a lot about it that I flinch when re-reading it.
But thinking about it, I always had an *excuse* somewhere in my head, even if it was flimsy one, and that excuse dictated the level I was willing to suspend disbelief in what I was writing. So Jus Ad Bellum never got the sections of flashbacks to the labs where experimentation actually occurred, just the injuries catalogued and the emotional scars shown. It feels like Crimes doesn't have those kinds of limits, and a part of me, the part of me that kind of worries about going over the top, gets beat down a lot by the voice that says, you stripped them of their morals, their inner sense of humanity, and some of their sanity. They don't *have* limits. They have goals and want to achieve them in the most direct way, and the most direct way is going to appeal to their sincere lack of ability to empathize.
The one thing I did that I'm kinda still wondering about is bonding John immediately to Rodney, but I had this hugely practical reason for it, in that John's *nuts* and if I don't connect him up with someone fast, he'll have no brakes at all, and setting John Sheppard loose in Atlantis without a leash feels like possibly the very worst idea in history. On one hand--God, the death count. On the other--this story will be very short if everyone bonds together to kill him off the bat in a fit of self-preservation when he just gets way too enthusiastic with the armory. And frankly, John, cut off from his people in Earth with nothing to do and a lot of time to do it in, would instantly appreciate the man who created his bombs, who talks in death tolls and damage reports, who loves destruction just as much as John does, though he has better control of himself. He can connect with Elizabeth as his leader, but that personal connection that makes him more than just the living embodiment of chaos, with someone who can channel his tendencies and curb him when necessary--yeah. I liked that
I'm taking a short nap, my head is killing me. Final note: read the remixes! I'm about halfway through SGA and seriously, they rock. Smallville next. *bounces*
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From:It is definitely so much better than the original story. In some cases this might make me feel pained, but I'm actually gleeful, because I wanted someone to remix that, I wanted someone to do something with the idea (which was good) that I thought I'd just glossed over. The remix is just a thing of beauty.
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From:This is the main reason I love remixes so much. The good ones, of good stories like this? Totally change your perspective on the original as well.
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From:He does need someone to focus him--aim him, if you will. I have this entire backstory thought that Mitch and his friends that were dead were kind of his total support system and he got caught without a group to ground him and keep him from just being totally insane constantly. Rodney, and this is jsut me writing it, how people read it is completely open to interpretation, is brilliant and utterly sociopathic, but extremely *stable*. He'd totally be drawn to that.
Seriously, *fun*. Hugely so.
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From:Honestly, sometimes it's a really great vehicle to be dropped right into the middle of chaos and have a story unfurl like wings from the centre of it.
These people are cut off, without hope and in some cases sanity and are trying to control the only thing they can, their immediate environment. It works really well.
Glad to hear you are enjoying writing it immensley... means we get faster fic to feed our obsession... yes?
*big eyes*
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From:I have to wait till tomorrow... durn it...!! :)
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From:And *hugs* Thanks.
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From:I KNEW you'd be into this! Assassin fic, check, prison island fic, check.
Also,
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From:I KNEW you'd be into this! Assassin fic, check, prison island fic, check.
You know me so well :D
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From:*falls down snorting and dies*
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From:It should come as no surprise, given this, that I have tumbled ass over tea kettle into SG:A during this, my first exam season in three years. I have spent the day
studying very hardreading Crimes Against Humanity...twice.I will blame you if I fail my exams tomorrow, curse your insufferable brilliance.
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From:I mean, oh! No! Not that!
I am right now thinking how when I get home, I will write more in your honor. *nods with huge, sincere eyes*
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From:Er.
I mean.
Yes, please.
I'm pretty sure I can wing tomorrow's exam, anyway.
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From:Starting to feel the Sheppard/McKay love. Oy!
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Smallville next!!!
From:...."Pretty when you're mine." .......What do you want? chocolate? Money? Cute, hot body-slaves focused on fulfilling your every wish & desire? (be it passionate sex or taking out the trash...)
I'm getting desperate enough to get you ANYTHING for more of that story. I've read all there is 3 times now. It just ENDS. It's a crime!!!
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Oh
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yay the meta
From:I was totally glad to read that, as I had pondered the speed of their connecting to each other on my second read through and I had half convinced myself that omg, maybe john was stringing rodney along! using him! oh noes! and my heart would have been broken into little tiny pieces! but that is not the case! huzzah! (that's not the case right. Right? ::looks worried::)
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Re: yay the meta
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From:I'm kinda still wondering about bonding John immediately to Rodney
See, this is one of those things that I've thought quite a lot about whilst reading this story. I admit I was a little unsure about it in earlier chapters, but by chapter four, it was working for me, mainly for the reasons you've said, John does need something to cling onto, and for me he was initially attracted to Rodney's crime prior to meeting him. However, their relationship also works for me as a reader - not knowing where you're intending to go with this - because the speed with which they've bonded implies either a) it's not sincere and the reader's just waiting for Rodney to be screwed over in some monumentally epic and bloodthirsty way (made all the more scary by John and Rodney's conversation about Elizabeth in Ch 4) or b) it is sincere, and the reader's waiting for something to happen to Rodney and for John to lose it completely.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that for me, this worked really well - particularly as the story's developing - because it just added to the feeling in this fic that anything could happen,there are no boundaries or limits to what these people will do, they literally will stop at nothing. With the J/R relationship, we are, in a way, back on solid ground, but with none of the normal principles that shape this relationship we're still left guessing, and that's making this enormously fun to read, but also seriously scary! Thank you!
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From:Actually, off-world would be more interesting. Hmmm.
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From:Uh, sorry, that was more thinking out loud than actual comment. This series has me seriously strung out, and I'll follow it anywhere.
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