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Anybody here read the comic Die by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans?

Anybody here have strong feelings about Ash and Sol? No? Just me? Oh well. (The one time in my life that I turn into a veritable shipper, haha... Of course it had to be in a fandom that doesn't exist.)

Started writing a longfic, my first real sustained one, about these two, plus Ash's wife Sophie, two and a half years ago. It's set in the first few days after the end of the comic and just... tries to make Ash (and Sol; and Sophie) have a bunch of deeply necessary conversations. It's not finished yet, but four chapters plus a prologue are up, total words ca. 19,400, and I am still actively working on more.

There's an official sequel to the comic coming out in mid November, so all of this is going to be extremely AU and out of character in about... three weeks, haha. (I had to make "my" Sophie up almost from whole cloth because there is so little of her in the original comic; she seems to be a main character in the new series, though, so she's going to get Official Characterisation now, which is likely to be different from mine. My Sol is also very much an extrapolation from rather limited data.)

This may be your one chance to see me get seriously shippy! — "How to Reappear Completely", by Hmpf MacSlow

I'm actually really proud of this one, not just because of the unprecedented length but also because there is so much dialogue and so much... relationship stuff, for lack of a better word, in it. I know this is the most traditional fic terrain of all, but it's not what I usually write, so it's exciting to try writing in this mode. I'm not sure I'll be able to stick the landing - writing a fic in which emotions and relationships are the plot is a new kind of tricky for me. But I love trying to learn it, right now.

You can currently buy all four volumes of Die, plus the entirety of The Wicked & The Divine, and the entirety of Phonogram plus some other stuff, for the very low price of approximately a single TPB, on Humble.

I also wrote a little primer about the most relevant Die plot points if you want to read the fic without having read Die. But really, read Die instead, and don't let my silly primer spoil the ending for you.


Fic sample:

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https://archiveofourown.org/works/31479920

Ramse, after Tokyo. Short, intense angst-o-rama, beta'd patiently and perceptively by <lj-user=killabeez>. First time in quite a while that I've allowed myself to go into perfectionist mode; it felt appropriate here because Ramse is so deliberate. The sloppiness I'm currently allowing myself elsewhere to increase my productivity would have felt out of character, for writing about him.

I'm proud of this one.

Spoilers for a major season 1 event, so beware if you haven't watched all of season 1 and still plan to.

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I've officially started writing fic for, ahem, "Splinter" (let me continue to have my stupid joke, lol). This is probably a boon to everyone: once I start writing fic in a fandom, I usually stop being quite so obnoxiously vociferous about that fandom, which will be a relief to everyone over on tumblr (and possibly also to some other people, heh). And the fandom itself might get a fic or two out of it, eventually. Though nobody knows when that will be, least of all me.

Got two story beginnings, one that's barely a beginning yet and one that's around 500 words, 200 of which are really rather good, the rest needing improvement (or excision, possibly).

I like those 200 words so much that I have to exert a lot of self-control to not just post them here, but who wants 200 words, only to then be left hanging for what with me may well be years?

So, yeah. Not gonna do that.

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... about violence on Farscape and on 12 Monkeys  (yeah, I'm getting over my issues with the show's title — since the  meta is about a week old, though, I'm still calling it "Splinter"  there).

(Thought I'd already posted this here, but apparently not.)

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Oh man, I can' t believe I'm getting back into LJ/DW, in 2021, lol. I mean, I've been saying I wanted to do it for years now, but it looks like I'm actually doing it, now. Thank you, lockdown.

We'll see how long it lasts; I've never been good at consistency, with any social network.

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I really dislike the word "broTP" actually.

Just feels like it fits here, though.

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Looking for a new broTP? Do I have one on offer for you!

(I have no idea how long my current phase of frantic fannish activity on tumblr will last, but I've decided to share some of the more worthwhile posts resulting from it with my LJ/DW... Mind you, I'm not sure if  this is anybody else's idea of "worthwhile"...)

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SF&F lately has been strangely obsessed with themes of mass murder for the "Greater Good", as well as other forms of extreme moral compromise for various lofty(ish) goals. My latest fannish love, the show I kind of refuse to call 12 Monkeys (it's called Splinter, I tell you, Splinter!) is part of that strange glut of texts dealing with extreme - and sometimes really rather artificial - ethical dilemmas of that sort. It's not the first such text that I've been obsessed with in recent years, though. Two of the previous ones caused me to produce long, unfinished essays, which I recently decided to post to tumblr (though there is no discernible fan presence for either of the two book series in question there).

I'm somewhat troubled by my own fascination. Unfortunately I ran into messy clumps of thought tangle before I could really get to the bottom of that, or get to any sort of definitive point, with either of these two unfinished beasts. (My brain is really only half-smart, and in situations like this, it shows.)

Still, I poured a lot of work into these, and maybe someone will find them a little bit interesting even in this fragmentary shape. Or maybe not, that's also fine. I'm just putting them here because, well, they already exist, so why not.

Links to the relevant tumblr posts:

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I've been absolutely metaing and rambling my head off about 12 Monkeys (tv show version, which incidentally I absolutely hate to call by that name for probably rather idiosyncratic reasons too boring to explain here, so please be aware that I'm referring to it as "Splinter", which was its pitch title, lol) over at tumblr. I keep thinking I should post the longest/best posts here, too, but really it's all one long stream of consciousness.

If that might be your thing, head on over here: 

https://compartmentalisinghmpf.tumblr.com/

(I'm so damn desperate to talk to someone about that show, seriously. The fandom is mostly dead. Mind you, my refusal to tag with the show's actual title probably doesn't help the few remaining fans to find me, haha.)

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Trying my hand at a seriously long-form thing for the first time (though there's only a prologue and one finished chapter, so far, and the rest will take... *a while*, knowing me). The outline for this thing is longer than some of my finished fics! And it's full of BIG THEMES. And it has something approaching plot, maybe? Also, a very weird - possibly unacceptably weird - dramatic structure dictated by the ups and downs (and less clearly spatially describable changes) of a very complicated relationship. This is fanfic, so why not?

What's there for now kinda works on its own, I think.

Fandom is the Laundry books again, which has actually grown a bit since I last talked about it here, but is still tiny. There's maybe four active writers now, counting me. All of whom are doing very much Their Own Thing - including me, because this fic is nothing if not idiosyncratic.

I've been very excited about this project for a couple of years now, and am still very excited to continue it (although I'll have to read the next book first, which just came out. And also, finish the next chapter of the vampire vicar fic that's about three quarters done.)

This story is basically about having someone who knew the canon main character *before* he was a magical secret agent go, "what the fuck are you doing" at him a lot. :D The character I've chosen for that role is the barely canonical (mentioned in passing, once) brother of the main character.