bluflamingo

Go, now, without pause, and read What Happens Next: Interlude, by dossier.

It's 13,500 words of John, Cam and Alex visiting Cam's parents (and his very extended family) in the universe of my What Happens Next. She sent me what she had of it about a week ago, and I swear, I have it half-memorised, I've read it so many times. It's set in between the two parts of the original, the six months between John coming home and him quitting the Air Force, and it's just perfect. Did I say that already?!

She writes John exactly as I imagined him being then, kind of uncertain and unsure and very much unmoored, trying to build a connection to this family he suddenly has, and trying not to believe they want him. And it has Cam being sweet and wonderful and exactly the kind of guy you want to suddenly fnd yourself raising a child with, and Cam's family, who are lovely. And it has Alex, who I'm just unreasonably attached to, considering he's entirely a figment of my (and now dossier's) imaginaton.

Plus, it also draws on all kinds of bits and pieces from 50 things about John Sheppard and Cam Mitchell, including just what John thinks of being occassionally told explicitly that he's loved.

No, seriously, why are you still reading this post? Get over there and read dossier's story instead!

Oh how I miss the days when I wrote something from start to finish and that was pretty much that beyond some editing.

In other words - I *just* finished my gateverse_remix fic, at just over 4,000 words and had a brilliant idea for what I *should* have done. Which, given that I wasn't wild about the first version anyway, means scrapping the whole thing and starting over.

Grr!

In happier news, skieswideopen just posted a short Cam and John fic, In Desparation, Madness, which I won't describle for risk of spoiling it, since it's so short, other than to say that it's really cool, definitely (in my head at least) pre-slash, amazingly in character for both of them, and for Sam, and really kind of sweet.

I don't know how, but I got two remix fics this year, which is very cool.

One is Protective Urges (the Girl You'll Be A Woman Soon remix) (Firefly, Mal/Kaylee), a remix of Protective Urges; and the other is Penguins, Sparrows and Stars (be free to fly remix) (SGA, John/Rodney), a remix of Penguins and Sparrows and Stars.

What's interesting, for me, about both of them is that they're not just expanding on the stories I wrote, they're actually telling different stories as well, and not what I would have come up with, either.

The Protective Urges remix takes Mal's pov while he's chasing off Kaylee's potential suitors, and turns it into Mal wanting her and knowing he can't be with her; it's melancholy and longing and all there in what I wrote, even though I never intended it to be. PU was a gen fic, all about Mal being a big brother to Kaylee.

The P&S&S remix is told from John's pov after he gets stuck in the ship, and goes back into the history of his relationships with Rodney, Teyla and Ford. I'm actually not 100% convinced that it could have worked that way, though I think that's more because of my own thoughts on this universe than because of anything in the actual story, so I can't blame the author for that - zie's not psychic! That said, it's a workable theory of how things could have been, and it does work in the context - it explains how they knew each other and where they went, and it's totally different from what I imagined. Plus, hir John pov from being the ship is really cool.

In lieu of linking to my own fic, which I nearly did, a clue? It has some femslash in it and some het (first time for everything!), and it's written for a sci-fi fandom. And I think that's all I can say without giving it away.

In this journal, we're pretending Christmas never happened. Suffice it to say it didn't go well.

On a brighter note...

1. I got a fantastic story from my SGA Santa, Silent Night, which is absolutely sweet, and has Teyla the firebug and John playing the guitar and the team sleeping out under the stars, and is a great antidote to post (pr during-) Christmas blues.

2. I also got a great story from Yuletide, from Garth Nix's Abhorssen series, which is exactly what I was hoping for when I wrote the prompt: Alone. You need to have read the series for it to mean much, but if you have, you should read this fic, it's a great tag to the books.

So, last day in my temp job today, thank GOD because it was boring as hell. Though the people I worked with were really nice.

Because it was a school, they had blocking software on their computers, so some pages on the net were blocked, or cut off part way down. Weird thing was, it refused to let me open Sign Language so I could answer the comments, in which nothing much happens and no-one even says damn, but it was happy for me to read East of the Sun, West of the Moon, in which many and varied things unsuitable for young eyes happen. I don't get it.

Also of note - ITV3 are repeating Liverpool 1, which I first saw when I was... 16, maybe? and is completely responsible for my addiction to broken characters. Sadly, there's no sign of it coming out on DVD.

Started work on my story for spookathon, for values of started work that translate to "wrote 1 page in a week and have no idea where it's going"; also started on a thing about how Lorne picked up their crew in Penguins & Sparrows, before realising it wasn't working and needed to be an actual story; also started (which may explain why I haven't finished anything yet!) a story about John's dad dying, though it's being thwarted by the failure of the internet to divulge the information I want. On which note, do we know which branch of the military John's dad was in?

Recs:
1. synecdochic's Broken Wings is up to part 9 and if you're not reading it, you should be. It's Cam and Jack's clone, in an AU where Cam doesn't join SG1, and I'm really hoping for a happy ending, at least partly because I'd love to see how she's going to create one. I feel like I'm reading it and waiting for Cam to crack, which is probably why I'm so giddy when there's a new part.

2. Various Cam/John fics for sg_flyboys (for which I got gorgeous icons, including this one!); my favourites are torakowalski's Falling From The Sky Now and Then, set during The Return, because it's beautifully written and Cam is so lovely in it (also, they make out on Mars!); and wojelah's Parley, set in a future where both of them are broken. It's full of hints that they could make things better for themselves, with this pervasive sense of their own inability to let go and try and it just *works*

3. I wanted to rec something cheerful for no 3, because the first 2, while all wonderfully written, aren't exactly sunshine and happniness. Sadly, even the vaguely happy stuff makes me sad, so there is no number 3. Sorry.

I don't know how or why, but since this is completely a don't-look-a-gift-horse-in-the-mouth moment, I'm not complaining: I got two stories in the femslash07 ficathon, the second being Happily Ever After. It's Stargate Atlantis, Teyla/Sora and five ways they might have got a happy ending. Every one of the possibilities is beautifully drawn and totally plausible, and the whole thing is just a lovely thing to read.