Bright End of Nowhere

(ganked from aurora_novarum)

I'm trying to distract myself from reading extremely dense research papers on vibrations of plates and flat-panel transducers. Mostly because I'm waiting for the library to contact me with the book I requested that's practically the bible on the former topic (my knowledge is limited and reading the papers I have right now is just too hard without the background info). So when Aurora posted about "DVD Commentaries", well, I'm jumping on the wagon.

I've always kind of wanted to do one (or a few) as well. Especially after the fact, where I go back and try to figure out what I was thinking and what I still like and what I wish I did better. Plus, it's possible this will jumpstart me into writing again. (The stargate_summer fic is looking at me. I've started doing sketches for it, which, while working on the story, isn't exactly what I wanted.)

Fics are located in the "fic" tag. Things on the bottom include my original stuff that I did before I gave up and started writing fanfic. If you actually read any of those, they're also fair game.

Also, if there's just some questions you have on a particular story, feel free to ask that too. Or just my own writing process, when it actually works.

Egged on by abyssinia4077 to at least attempt the Porn Battle VII, I have been trying to write this sort of thing, despite having no idea what I'm doing. (This is causing Abyssis to laugh at me. Lots.) Originally, this experiment was simply to give poor Cam a break from the huge angst I'm making him go through.

And, you know, I probably should have seen this coming:

( And this is apparently why I don't write porn )

I know that the end of term is here because, not including the OMGFINALS!, my brain has apparently broken in interesting ways and is munching on the crazy cookies.

Exhibit A: abyssinia4077 and I have signed away our souls to stargate_summer, and will be attempting to write the AU-of-Doom with Ba'al and RepliCarter joining forces and taking over the galaxy. (God damn you, d20! Why did you fail on the saving throw?!) Abyssis has already told me I get to play the snake-wrangling game while she chases after the metal spiders. And both of us will be worried about Jack O'Neill or Teal'c strangling us in our sleep.

( Exhibit B, I'm blaming Trout for )

I'm just hoping I can my brain enough to deal with thermal-fluid systems by Wednesday. Oy.

1. OMG, I think I have a draft for apocalypse_kree.

2. ...I think I just wrote a happy ending.

\o/

I found the plot and ending to my apocalypse_kree fic! \o/

Now I just need to finish writing it. But I know where it's going. This just increased the likelihood of me finishing it by a factor of 10x, because I sure as hell had no idea how to do it when I didn't know where it was going and have 3 problem sets plus a paper draft hanging over my head.

Also, abyssinia4077 continues to be a terrible influence. :P Or maybe I'm a terrible influence on her. Hrm. In any case, we are continuing to send ourselves further into hell. Our handbasket is large, I have snacks, and she's bringing the margaritas, so it's all good.

The RepliCarter fic is getting even more bizarre, because the only way for me to get my brain thinking the way it needs to is by being utterly sleep-deprived and hopped up on caffeine. (Her thinking is ridiculously fractured and fluid at the same time.) I have had to pull out at least 2 separate engineering books at this point. And I'm only at 800 words. I have no idea where it's going, but RepliCarter pretty much has me in a headlock until I finish it.

(I do not look forward to the beta process.)

Also, in other fun news, I nearly killed the plot I had for my apocalypse_kree fic with Science. *headdesk* Luckily, I was able to find my "I Am Not A Theoretical Physicist" hat and pull off an arcane handwave to save it. (My life, it is so hard.)

Current Status

Level of Hatred for 2nd Person PoV: High
Status of RepliCarter: Scaring the hell out of me
Number of Times I've Had to Pull Out an Engineering Text: 0
Number of Times I've Had to Pull Out a Security Text: 2 (Current favorite: Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick)
Number of Times I've Questioned My Sanity: lost count
Categorization: WTF?

Actually, the only reason I actually made some degree of progress is because I suddenly had a "headdesk" moment when I realized that I write borderline-psychotic, traumatized second person PoV all the damn time. Yeah, I went back and read some of the Centauri charsheets. Disturbing perspectives, thy name is Assassins' Guild.

Except the idea of a charsheet for RepliCarter is somehow even more disturbing and freaky than some of the worst, most messed-up characters that sprung fully formed from my brain.

I don't understand it either.

Since next week is finals and all my last assignments were due last week (AKA The Week From Hell), instead of having Friday as a Reading Day, I've pretty much got this week free of obligations outside of "go to lectures, which are secretly review sessions, for two classes".

So, in my infinite wisdom, I have decided to go back to the WiP that's been stuck in "Beta Edit" for the past 3 months. Oh yes. It's machete time. Although, I have a sneaking suspicion it's going to grow another few thousand words by the time this edit is done. *eyes fic suspiciously*

Housemates and I are watching the new Dr. Who. I have no idea what is is with us and time travel. We liked Journeyman, they liked SCC (which I...haven't watched yet, due to extreme hosage), and now we're crunching and grinding our way through space and time. (I will reiterate for those who played the IAP tenday that I am, in fact, Not A Time Lord. Can we please stop with that joke yet?)

They also got introduced to Firefly last night, and thus the concept of Canadian Actor Bingo. That was hilarious. Now all that's left is for me to finally get off my ass and watch more BSG beyond the miniseries. I will. Really. I've got copies and everything.

As referenced in my last post, I've got two ideas for tabletops percolating in my head. One is space pirates, the other is a steampunk Lovecraftian horror game. Unfortunately, the two systems I know best are DnD and Shadowrun, neither of which lend themselves well to either setting. So I've been reading the d20 Modern and d20 Future books in hopes that I can get something out of them. The space pirates seems most likely to work; the steampunk Lovecraft one will take a bit of tweaking, no matter what system I use, since I'll probably draw a lot of the Cthulhu mythos out of Chaosium's version, and I have yet to find another system that is d100 based that doesn't suck.

The apocafic is currently in the hardcore editing phase. The phase where I ruthlessly take a machete to it and ask myself "dear god, what was I thinking?". Which is good, because I'm vaguely terrified of the characterizations of some characters, since I'm deviating from standard quite a bit and absolutely need to make sure I can back it up while keeping some other characters completely bewildered about this drastic personality shift.

( And now, some SG AU rambling )

...

I think I finished the alpha draft for BDtH. \o/

Now to edit the damn thing.

How about after I collapse and sleep?

(Also, anyone interested in beta'ing a slightly-dark apocafic? shanghairain, who's playing my editor beta (grammatically and "does this sound right"?), and I are way to close, since he's been my sounding-board for the last few months. I feel like I'm making some wild assertions, and I need someone fresh to smack me if I'm not sufficiently substantiating them. This would be after I (and shanghairain) get done with the initial edits.)