For earlier years, here. I swear I did it every year, but tags do not lie. I really need to go through my calendar and confirm this.

So statistically speaking, I killed a lot fewer characters this year. No one was raped, mutilated, or tortured, though some may have been drugged. There were new fandoms, old fandoms, things I'd never done before, and things I've wanted to do for a while.

There was Star Trek, my first fandom and the root of a lifetime of adoration of sci-fi, and there was RPS, which, yeah, I didn't see that coming like, at all. And there were people that make life so much more than it would have been without them.

( fandom in review - 2009 )

( people in review - 2009 )

In retrospect, 2009 wasn't bad at all. Thanks for that, too.

Did you ever enjoy thinking about a story so much you just don't want to write it because it will never be as good as it is in your head? (And also in your head, no one can criticize your characterization?)

I have two like this that I keep rewriting and expanding in my head all the time. And it's fun, because the inner editor who says stuff like "Oh Jesus Christ, what the fuck is that? You can't do that! Wait, didn't you do that already? Oh, that's just stupid." just cannot get in here. I can wallow.

The embarrassing part is this isn't even kinky stuff. I mean, no one is tying anyone up with piano wire and telling someone to call them daddy--this is fandom. Smut doesn't embarrass me. Unless My Little Ponies are involved in vague-non con with Rodney's hand, I'm cool. (This is not a challenge, people.) Melodrama does. Because, it's totally true, my inner writer is a sixteen year old girl who writes in sparkly pen "I want to marry John Sheppard and Benton Fraser when I grow up!" in purple ink. So sure, bring on the electrodes and implanted torture devices and what have you, but watch me squirm when I write domestic contentment.

My current mental epic is Fraser and Ray raising Fraser and Victoria's daughter, with like, hijinks and running across the border and kidnapping and lots and lots of shooting and whatnot.

*sighs*

Continuing Adventures in I Am Never Going to Finish a Story Again:

Frobisher and Ray on time and distance

"How's Fraser?" Ray asks quickly. Frobisher's nuts, but Ray has a weird feeling he's nuts in that way that's like Fraser's nuts. Just--escalated. Weirder. Interesting. Ray puts down his cup, wondering if Fraser had fucked up his sense of normal so much that Frobisher doesn't seem all that weird.

"Benton? Good boy." Frobisher smiles fondly, and Ray has this irresistible vision of Frobisher patting Fraser's head and calling him a good boy for bringing in a murderer. "Been rough, huh?"

"'S okay," Ray answers warily. Frobisher's just sitting there, all crazy and happy and not telling him a goddamn thing. "You letting him go soon?"

"Ah." Frobisher scratches at his chin. "Well. As you know, Muldoon's capture is quite an achievement. For the RCMP--"

"RCMP got nothing to do with it." In fact, Ray would say that the RCMP had shit to do with anything Fraser had done in the last few years. In *fact*, if they asked Ray, and Jesus he wishes they would, *he'd* say the RCMP hasn't done shit *for* Fraser, period.

He just can't imagine saying the word 'shit' in front of this guy. It's like sitting with his grandfather, if his grandfather had been a Mountie and seemed permanently stuck at "happy". Which Laz Kowalski had never, ever been by any stretch of the imagination.

And wait, the guy had avoided the question. "Where's Fraser?"

Frobisher hesitates. That can't be good. "We've offered him leave," Frobisher says, and it wasn't Ray's imagination at all; Frobisher *here*, no matter how much he acts like he's on another planet half the time. "He's insisting on returning to duty and his new assignment."

Ray's stomach clenches. "So he's transferring?" He can't hide the crack in his voice and doesn't bother trying to. "No exile no more?"

"He's been offered whatever post he wishes to take." Frobisher clears his throat, like maybe he realizes he's not being weird anymore. "Of course, he's been thinking it over. Despite circumstances, there are still some--hard feelings regarding his actions in pursuit of--"

"The killers of his father, whom he brought to justice," Ray drones, hands clenching on the cup. Dief growls softly against his knee. "For which the Mounties fucked him over and left him to die in Chicago. Which is what you do when someone does their job."

Frobisher's eyes narrow. "That, Detective, you do not need to argue. Not with me."

Ray blinks. Something old and raw stares back at him for a second, and he abruptly remembers what Fraser had said about him and Robert Fraser. Partners. Friends. Something even time and distance couldn't touch. Robert Fraser's been dead for nearly five years, but for this man, it's as close as yesterday, a hurt that maybe ain't never gonna heal.

*mulls* I need to check my canon for the series ending. Oh what a hardship that will be.

This is vaguely in relation to the culture shock thing I was having in dS, but also something I was pondering due to the ten million or so conversations in there in community influence.

Meta, to me, is mental fanfic of a kind--you take the ideas (characters) and work out a reason for interaction (plot), then use what you have read (canon) to hold it together. Occasionally other people's theories as well (fanon). In a very loose way. I am not good at it, because I don't read it often enough to get into the flow of ideas (ie, I am not part of the fandom of meta). I am an interpretive community of one (tm cathexys), so to speak. I have no idea how to generalize outside myself as a.) wow, bad idea, b.) no, seriously, bad idea and c.) I can't explain the ocean.

That's why I can't explain this.

For me, community plays a key role in pretty much everything, from how I view the text, read the text, discuss the text, to how I argue against the text. Depending on time, place, the state of caffeine in my bloodstream, and whether I've had this argument before, it can influence how I interpret the text via fanfic. It's not so much agreement by majority, though I won't lie, majority is freaking influential both consciously and unconsciously. Leather pants fic hit every freaking fandom for a reason, no matter how strange. Every. Fandom. Has Leather Pants fic.

That's community influence. Leather pants.

So that long lead in to this: I'm weirded out that I got hit, extremely hard, in that epic way fic does when you just live and die on it and want to rec it everywhere and talk about it with everyone, by two fic that I ran across that was linked from a rec page but did not say "Also, this is going to be that one fic you have been looking for" which I find unfair. And I'm not at all sure why. Because for me, as a rule, I require both personal input (god that was good) combined with community involvement (and everything that entails).

It's not that I've loved every fanfic that broke fandom. But I don't tend to collapse over fic when there is a total lack of any kind of community context. A fic usually hits for me in this particular way because it's fantastic, because it is being discussed (so I can indulge myself), and because it speaks to the fannish community in the text in some way, in whatever arguments the community is having over whatever. Like thete1's Past Grief (apocafic, an evil Superman, debates over good and evil and his actions and/or lack of actions in the text, blah blah blah), or samdonne's Cowboys fics (Sheppard's motivation, personality, right and wrong, limits of family and friendship, the list goes on), and etcetera.

So I was really surprised to find two dS stories that had that effect when I don't have community context to work with or against, or heck, have anything to work period since I'm not part of the community either at the time of writing or technically, right now. I have to think there's some universal theme going on that they are speaking to in a very big way, but for fanfic, for me, they shouldn't without context.

And because I'm sure someone wants to know, below cut are the fics in question.

( one, two three )

You know, this is far too much meta in two weeks. I need to return to porn now.

In relation to Something's Lost in Translation....

I'm trying to work out if using fic examples would lead to chaos and horror. I went to my log tags and there are a few authors there I'm thinking of as transitional, or ones where I was confused, confused, confused, then oh! Yes! Maybe! Okay! And the thing is? I think all of them are SGA writers as well. As in, I used them to translate for me between what I knew and what I know now (though it's only now I'm getting why I read Eight Sessions by Ces fifteen times--I was home! I knew this style! Expectations were reached!)

No, really. I think it was fifteen times or something. I had it open at work for a few days so I could go back to something I knew and that flowed the way I expected it to flow.

Speaking of--I woke up about two hours ago and wow, smart people! Explaining! My life is better and less schizophrenic just knowing I wasn't having a breakdown.

So.

Have you ever went back and read something you wrote the night before (all fifteen pages of it), and you can actually chart the decline of your sanity by paragraph?

I went from "probably doesn't need medication" to "we build special, special rooms for this" in like, ten paragraphs. That's pretty damn impressive.

Anyone up for a beta?

I suggest you keep your expectations low. The above is not a hypothetical. And is also not SGA.

In other news, Child hates Kowalski. "He's making Fraser sad," Child says, staring at me resentfully. "Vecchio was better."

The worst part is, I had to wait until he took the summer of his discontent to his room to laugh. Ribs hurt. Ow.

Circa 1999, when I started in Voyager, fandom, and the long, dark trail that later led me to unironic mreg, sex pollen, and rentboy torture, my beta sent me two tapes of Sarah McLachlan since I'd just discovered music after several years of Alanis Morisette, which okay, not a transition that's all that easy to make. I've written approximately a quarter of my total fic output in all fandoms to some form of Sarah playing in the background at some point. You could say I imprinted hard. I've killed a lot of characters set to that tape.

Kind of realized when Due South started playing it that I was fucked.

Due South in review:

( well, that was gutting )

Mock at will. I'm kind of gutted and really really high on this and season two starts tonight and season three this weekend and I might not even get out of bed. I love this show so much

So I was up last night until five AM. I got offline around 1, saying I was going to bed. Then this mysterious--I hate to call it a force but I will anyway--called me back to my laptop. Clutching a due South DVD box set in one hand with no clear idea how that happened.

So tell me this, just to brace myself--does it *stay* this amazingly fun? I am calm right now, but that is because I am eating Spicy Sweet Doritos (not as tasty as they sound). Otherwise, you might perhaps hear high pitched squeals of some kind.

Done now. I mean, with this entry. I only finished the Pilot and the first regular ep and there is so much watching left to do.