pellucidthings

[pellucidthings]

“Queerness, to me, is about far more than homosexual attraction. It’s about a willingness to see all other taboos broken down. Sure, many of us start on this path when we first feel “same sex” or “same gender” attraction (though what is sex? And what is gender? And does anyone really have the same sex or gender as anyone else?). But queerness doesn’t stop there. This is a somewhat controversial stance, but to me queer means something completely different than “gay” or “lesbian” or “bisexual.” A queer person is usually someone who has come to a non-binary view of gender, who recognizes the validity of all trans identities, and who, given this understanding of infinite gender possibilities, finds it hard to define their sexuality any longer in a gender-based way. Queer people understand and support non-monogamy even if they do not engage in it themselves. They can grok being asexual or aromantic. (What does sex have to do with love, or love with sex, necessarily?) A queer can view promiscuous (protected) public bathhouse sex with strangers and complete abstinence as equally healthy. Queers understand that people have different relationships to their bodies. We get what it means to be stone. We know what body dysphoria is about. We understand that not everyone likes to get touched the same way or to get touched at all. We realize that people with disabilities may have different sexual needs, and that people with survivor histories often have sexual triggers. We can negotiate safe and creative ways to be intimate with people with HIV/AIDs and other STIs. Queers understand the range of power and sensation and the diversity of sexual dynamics. We are tops and bottoms, doms and subs, sadists and masochists and sadomasochists, versatiles and switches. We know what we like and don’t like in bed. We embrace a wide range of relationship types. We can be partners, lovers, friends with benefits, platonic sweethearts, chosen family. We can have very different dynamics with different people, often all at once. We don’t expect one person to be able to fulfill all our diverse needs, fantasies and ideals indefinitely. Because our views on relationships, sex, gender, love, bodies, and family are so unconventional, we are of necessity anti-assimilationist. Because under the kyriarchy we suffer, and watch the people we love suffering, we are political. Because we want to survive, we fight. We only want the freedom to be ourselves, love ourselves, love each other, and live together. Because we are routinely denied that, we are pissed. Queer doesn’t mean “don’t label me,” it means “I am naming myself.” It means “ask me more questions if you’re curious…“”

—

What Queerness Means To Me « Tranarchism (via docasaur)

I’ve chosen this as one of my first posts as it’s important to me that people understand what I’m talking about when I use the term queer.  

(via hollyloveholly)

[pellucidthings]

New fic? New fic! Because I can’t get this show out of my head, and because I’m not ready to tell the bigger stories yet…have two characters nobody really loves musing on the ones we do, among other things.

There were words, of course, but none of them registered until it was far too late. (Or: five conversations Elizabeth Lochley has with Michael Garibaldi.)

Babylon 5. Season 5, spoilers for the series. 4600 words, gen & all audiences, outside POV & truth-telling. References to canon alcoholism.

With gratitude to @pellucidthings for the beta, and for taking a chance on this little story.

[pellucidthings]

90% of Claudia Leigh’s function on City Homicide is to show up and do psychobabble exposition but for whatever reason I love her anyway, and now @gabolange has written me a story and turned her into a real character and it is wonderful and I love it a lot! 😍 You should go read it!!!

New fic? New fic! Probably not the fic you are expecting from me, but hey.

For my City Homicide folks and specifically for @pellucidthings, this is Claudia’s story. Set during and after season four.

Five times Claudia doubts herself, and one time she doesn’t.

4700 words. Mostly gen. References to canon attempted sexual assault.

Hope you like it!

[pellucidthings]

3, 9, 31, 45 for the fic meme

(Yet more from this.)

3. What is the best fandom you’ve ever been involved in?

Farscape!!!!! Which is interesting because I discovered it after it finished airing (maybe a year or so after Peacekeeper Wars), and I was never heavily involved, and didn’t write much for it. But it just had the absolute best fandom ethos I’ve ever experienced. Farscape was for so many people a really, really special show. There were a number of people who had loved other things and been in other fandoms and thought they knew what this whole fannish love thing was all about and then we found Farscape and it was like, NO BUT THIS THING OMG. I’ve never loved another show like that, and I think that feeling was unusually prevalent in the fandom. Back in the day on LJ, when a new person would discover Farscape and post about it, there would be this whole “puppy pile” full of people who would show up in your comments delighted to find a new fan. And not just, hey, welcome to our fandom--though it was that, and that’s lovely and rare enough--but also this sense of kinship that felt somehow unique to Farscape. Like if someone really knew how to love this show, they must be our kind of people, and not just superficially. 

It was also the fandom where I really learned what fic can do. I’d read great fic in X-Files and in SG-1 before that, but my focus had always been really heavily on the ship and I wasn’t thinking as much about fic in a more meta way as a transformative medium. That was all Farscape. Part of the reason I didn’t write much in that fandom was that I didn’t need to. Between the show itself and the amazing work of the other fans, I didn’t need anything else.

9. What are the best things about your current fandom?

Oh, this is kind of a sad question because I feel like the best things about my current fandom...aren’t so much the way things are anymore. But when I discovered The Worst Witch, maybe two years or so ago now(?!?), it reminded me, more than anything I’ve seen lately (i.e., in the past 8-10 years) of old-school transformative fandom. It’s a kids’ show. It’s kind of terrible, even at its best, and really terrible at its worst. One half of one of the biggest ships in the fandom had maybe 30 minutes of combined screen time in two episodes. And it was like fandom looked at this, cracked its knuckles, and said, let’s see what we can do with this!!! And what it did with it was so wonderful. Lots of fic, lots of fanon that filled out alllllllllll the gaps, a really quite sophisticated and adult perspective on these characters who were not really created that way in canon. I haven’t had that much fun in fandom since before BSG went off the rails, so like...2008. 

And then last year the show retconned something horrible for Hecate’s backstory, and I think a lot of us were just...done. And some of it was because of that, and some of it, I think, was a few of the major players in the fandom moving in other directions for various reasons, so the hicsqueak side of the house, in particular, has been much quieter. There are still some great stories popping up from time to time (and my faaaaaaaaaaaaavorite wip by @nike-sga), but it’s lost the energy it once had, and that makes me sad. At the same time, well, that’s how fandom goes. Everything runs its course, and I suppose that, too, feels kind of nostalgically old-school.

31. What’s the nicest thing someone has ever said about your writing?

I don’t know???? But let’s take ever off the table, and the one that’s delighted me most lately was probably @nike-sga‘s comment on Times the Walk From You (this is the let’s tag Nike post, isn’t it!). The money quote: Anyway, you are the worst and this is beautiful, and I can’t even look at you right now. Fantastic work, as always. I mean, that’s basically what a girl always wants from a comment, right?

45. What is your all time favourite fanfic?

Oh god. Like...one? That’s an impossible question. I’m going to go with the first thing on my shortlist that popped into my head. Another day the answer would almost surely be different. But it is true that I have loved this fic passionately for many years: No for Yes by Yahtzee. Alias, Jack/Irina, rated M. Simultaneously the story of how they met and married and the story of how they reconciled during Sydney’s lost years. It hits basically all of my fic buttons, does excellent things with point of view and with gaps, and is just really, really well done. 

[pellucidthings]

For the fic meme: 10, 17, 29, 40.

(More from this.)

10. Is there a fandom you read fic from but don’t write in?

Already answered! 

17. Who was your first OTP and are they still your favourite?

Mulder and Scully! The original ship! But no, I wouldn’t say they’re still my favorite. My feelings are complicated. I can’t watch season 1 without yelling at baby Scully to run far, far away from the crazy man. Live your life!!! But then at a certain point--and that point is actually pretty damned early--they’re just in it and I can’t not ship their traumatized, codependent little selves. I also have biiiiiiiiig issues with the William plotline, and I think the less said about the more recent seasons the better. So I will ship them forever, but it’s complicated, and mostly it’s also history at this point.

29. Do you have a beta reader? Why/Why not?

Hahahahaha! Fishing for compliments, are we, dearest? <3<3<3 

@gabolange became my beta reader like...days after we met. Though that was less weird in the fannish culture of 2007, I think, than it seems to be now? And we’ve been betaing for each other ever since, and over the years I think we’ve gotten pretty good at it. I have a beta reader because she makes me a better writer, always. Because first drafts are first drafts and they can always be better. Because I believe in feedback and in revision and in putting in the work to try to say, as effectively as I can, the thing I was hoping to say in a story.

(Literally today I was writing a letter of recommendation for a student and one of the primary themes was around how successfully they approached revision and the willingness to work with feedback and grow as a writer. So this is a big thing with me in all contexts.)

40. What do you struggle the most with in your writing?

Hmm. Maybe balance? Like, sometimes I’ll write something in waaaaayyy more detail than it needs (I...like words). Other times I won’t write enough and the point won’t be clear. I think in RL/work writing I err toward the former and in fic I err toward the latter, but generally speaking I can struggle to hit the sweet spot in all contexts, especially the first time through (see also: using a beta reader!). I’m sure there are other things, as well, but that’s the first thing that comes to mind.

[pellucidthings]

For fanfic asks: 1, 10, 15, 18, 23, 30

(From this.)

1. What was the first fandom you got involved in?

The X-Files!!! I remember the day I discovered that people Wrote Stories About Mulder and Scully OMFG!!! Mind blown.

10.  Is there a fandom you read fic from but don’t write in?

Quite a few! I mean, pretty much any time I like a thing I go see what’s on AO3 for it. And there have been plenty of things where I read through some of that for a little while and it burns itself out quickly. The two big fandoms where I have read a lot and have come back to off and on for years and years are Pride and Prejudice (there is no end to my capacity for P&P canon divergence AU) and Once Upon a Time (Swan Queen 4-evvvvvaaahhhh!!!!). 

15. Is there an obscure ship which you love?

“Love” might be strong, but this probably wins for obscurity. City Homicide is already obscure, and the main ship (Nick and Jen, which I also love) only has a couple dozen stories by even fewer people. But to get really obscure: I rewatched season 3 a while back and became weirdly fascinated (like a train wreck?) with Simon’s arc. And weirdly fascinated with his relationship with Claudia through all of that. And then I developed this whole head canon where Simon goes off to find himself but like, actually does, and gets his shit together and turns into a decent guy, and some years later he comes back to Melbourne and he and Claudia reconnect somehow, and it still takes a really long time because of the whole part where she was his shrink, but eventually...yeah, I really ship it. 

18. What ship have you written the most about?

Daniel/Janet, Stargate: SG-1. Though it was all a really long time ago and a lot of that stuff isn’t really on the internet anymore... @nike-sga will remember, though!

23. Name a fic you’ve written that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it.

Hmm. Let’s go with something outside the usual suspects: a bailar (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Sarah Connor/James Ellison). Mostly I just love them a whole whole whole lot, and they don’t have a lot of stories by anyone, so I get to include my own in the stories about them that I like. :) But also I think there’s something about this story that captures what I love most about them. It’s not quite a literal story--I mean, sure, maybe they did go and dance in a dive bar in the desert that one time, but it’s more of a metaphor for their whole relationship. I also really love the imagery. 

30. What inspires you to write?

Oh, who knows. I mean, there’s a pattern in the kind of story I like to tell--give me an awesome woman wronged by her show and I will defend her in fic!--though I have certainly written other sorts of stories, too. But what makes me actually sit down and write? Hard to say. Usually there’s something that gets stuck in my head--a line or an image--and then it all unfolds from there.

[pellucidthings]

Fanfiction Questions

Fandom Questions

1. What was the first fandom you got involved in?

2. What is your latest fandom?

3. What is the best fandom you’ve ever been involved in?

4. Do you regret getting involved in any fandoms?

5. Which fandoms have your written fanfiction for?

6. List your OTP from each fandom you’ve been involved in.

7. List your NoTPs from each fandom you’ve been in.

8. How did you get involved in your latest fandom?

9. What are the best things about your current fandom?

10.  Is there a fandom you read fic from but don’t write in?

Ship Questions for your Current Fandom

11. Who is your current OTP?

12. Who is your current OT3?

13. Any NoTPs?

14. Go on, who are your BroTPs?

15. Is there an obscure ship which you love?

16. Are their any popular ships in your fandom which you dislike?

17. Who was your first OTP and are they still your favourite?

18. What ship have you written the most about?

19. Is there a ship which you wished you could get behind, but you just don’t feel them?

20. Any ships which you surprised yourself by liking?

Author Questions

21. What was the first fanfic you ever wrote?

22. Is there anything you regret writing?

23. Name a fic you’ve written that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it.

24. What fic do you desperately need to rewrite or edit?

25. What’s your most popular fanfic?

26. How do you come up with your fanfic titles?

27. What do you hate more: Coming up with titles or writing summaries?

28. If someone were to draw a piece of fanart for your story, which story would it be and what would the picture be of?

29. Do you have a beta reader? Why/Why not?

30. What inspires you to write?

31. What’s the nicest thing someone has ever said about your writing?

32. Do you listen to music when you write or does music inspire you? If so, which band or genre of music does it for you?

33. Do you write oneshots, multi-chapter fics or huuuuuge epics?

34. What’s the word count on your longest fic?

35. Do you write drabbles? If so, what do you normally write them about?

36. What’s your favourite genre to write?

37. First person or third person - what do you write in and why?

38. Do you use established canon characters or do you create OCs?

39. What is you greatest strength as a writer?

40. What do you struggle the most with in your writing?

Fanfiction Questions

41. List and link to 5 fanfics you are currently reading:

42. List and link to 5 fanfiction authors who are amazing:

43. Is there anyone in your fandom who really inspires you?

44. What ship do you feel needs more attention?

45. What is your all time favourite fanfic?

46. If someone was to read one of your fanfics, which fic would you recommend to them and why?

47. Archive Of Our Own, Fanfiction.net or Tumblr - where do you prefer to post and why?

48. Do you leave reviews when you read fanfiction? Why/Why not?

49. Do you care if people comment/reblog your writing? Why/why not?

50. How did you get into reading and/or writing fanfiction?

51. Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!

[pellucidthings]

[pellucidthings]

what x files episode should i watch?

i just spent 2 hours of my life making this flowchart wtf

click to enlarge

notes: not every episode is on here and i didn’t rec much past season 7

[pellucidthings]

Both @gabolange and @rahleeyah tagged me for this, so I suppose I ought to do it! My top five favorite pieces of my own content:

1. The Signs that the Signmakers Made (BSG, Laura Roslin character study, some background ambivalent Roslin/Adama, rated T). I posted this to AO3 long after I wrote it, and in the notes, I said, “This is the Laura Roslin of my heart, no matter what happened afterwards.” That’s still as true today as it was when I posted it in 2014, as it was when I wrote it in 2007. Never have I loved another character this much. Never have I been more angry and heartbroken over a show. Never will I write a story I love more than this one.

2. Times that Walk from You (The Worst Witch, Hecate Hardbroom character study, Hecate/Pippa, rated G). “Signmakers” only retroactively became a defense of the character I loved against a show that mistreated her. This one was that story from the beginning. The season 3 revelation/retcon/hot mess that Hecate had been confined to Cackle’s since childhood was horrific. This story is my attempt to work through the psychological implications of that. Five things that never happened to Hecate Hardbroom, and one that did.

3. The Sea with its Deepness (Stargate: SG-1, Janet Fraiser character study, gen with some Daniel/Janet if you squint, rated G). Janet was always my favorite character on SG-1. This story is less about why and more about what happens when you center her perspective. (Yet another character study of yet another character hard done by in her show. Possibly there is a theme here.)

4. Five Things Gillian Foster has Never Told Anyone (Lie to Me, Gillian Foster character study, a little background Gillian/Cal, rated T). I wrote this in a hurry, I don’t think I had it betaed, and I never gave it a proper title. But it’s had a lot of staying power as a character study and a story, for me, and apparently for others--it’s the one story among those I originally posted on LJ and only later archived on AO3 for which I continue to get fairly regular kudos. Gillian never got shafted by the show, at least, but she still had so much more potential than we ever got to see, and she always deserved better than Cal and his ego. 

5. To Make the Wounded Whole (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries/Doctor Blake Mysteries crossover, Elizabeth “Mac” Macmillan/Alice Harvey, rated T). And now that I’ve established a pattern, let’s break it. This one is just fun, and while I hope it works as a character study for both of them, it didn’t come from a place of dissatisfaction with what was happening to them on their respective shows. Rather, it occurred to me that, as women in the same state and the same profession in time periods that would at least overlap, Mac and Alice would totally have known each other. And then I started shipping it really hard. Like, this is canon now. Fight me.

I tag... @nike-sga, @moocowmoocow, @twtd11, and @amillionmillionvoices. If you want. And anyone else who wants to play, feel free!

[pellucidthings]

3, 4, 10, 26, 27

3. What’s your current OTP?

I think we still go with Hecate and Pippa here.

4. What’s your current NOTP?

Hecate and Ada. Especially after season 3. Just...no. 

10.  Do you ship any characters that have never met?

I do! @gabolange mentioned the two such pairings I’ve at least somewhat converted her to: Alice Harvey and Elizabeth “Mac” Macmillan, and Cam Mitchell and Janet Fraiser. I ship the hell out of both of those pairings, to the extent that I’m pretty sure they actually got together and were very happy and also Janet Fraiser absolutely didn’t die ever, obviously. And Cam Mitchell is sort of the LBD of fandom, so I can ship him with all sorts of folks he’s never met--Gillian Foster from Lie to Me is another one of my beloved women who deserved better so therefore she should go hook up with Cam Mitchell. 

Though another take on this question is Sarah Connor and James Ellison because I shipped them long before they ever met AND THEN THEY DID, except only sort of, and this made me ship them harder, and then they met again, but again only sort of, and by this point they were obviously really in love. Or he was really in love with her. Sarah doesn’t really do that.

26. Have you noticed a pattern in your shipping? Is there a romantic dynamic you’re more drawn to?

Heh. So I’ve shipped many pairings where I adored the woman, and the dude also adored the woman, so hey, let’s ship them. He was sort of irrelevant in his own right, usually. And then I started spending more time in femslash land and was all, oh wait! Let’s just get rid of the men altogether! This solves all problems!

Which doesn’t mean I don’t still have affection for various of my old het pairings, because of course I do. Though the ones that endure most strongly are the ones where I actually did like the dude in his own right: John and Aeryn, James and Sarah, Jack and Irina, Cam and everyone. 

I also have some hardcore buttons for some good mutual pining, some combination of enemies to friends to lovers, and some “we love each other in our own way, but we’re not the sort of people who have a conventional relationship�� (which also sometimes manifests as can’t live with you, can’t live without you). 

27.  Is there a ship you’ve shipped for most of your life?

I mean, we’re going on 25 years for Mulder and Scully at this point--and despite all my deeply complicated feelings about all of that, they’re still Mulder and Scully, so. And they were the original ship, of course. But although 25 years does count as a majority of my life, I was already in high school when XF started, so I’m trying to think if there’s anything that goes back further and still endures. Darcy and Elizabeth, maybe?

(Ask me more from this.)

[pellucidthings]

From the shipping meme, @my-little-yellowbird asked for 12, 22, and 25:

12.  Have you ever been disappointed when your ship finally got together?

Have I ever... 

There are several ships where I think the show handled the getting together extremely badly--X-Files and Castle come to mind. But there’s one that stands out from the rest in the sense that the ship went canonical and destroyed absolutely everything I ever liked about it on every level, and it’s been more than ten years and I’m still so bitter. Yup, Bill Adama and Laura Roslin, I’m looking at you. #RoslinDeservedBetter

22.  Which of your ships have the best chemistry?

John Crichton and Aeryn Sun, Farscape. That one was actually really easy. They are ridiculously hot.

25.  Have you ever shipped a pairing before you even started watching the show/movie simply because of gifs and graphics or similar?

Already answered!

[pellucidthings]

11, 19, 25, 40.

11.  Talk about your favorite first kiss.

Hmm. I’m going to cheat slightly and go with my favorite second kiss, which is also one of the all-time great kisses of television: John and Aeryn, Farscape, A Human Reaction. It’s not that it’s especially hot--there are lots of John/Aeryn kisses that I’d rate higher on that count--but the way the scene is done, all the emotions, just a perfect scene in a perfect episode, and the point when everything in this show, very much including their relationship, gets pretty real. 

19.  Have you ever shipped something despite yourself?

I have something of a habit of shipping ambivalently, so I have various pairings that I ship the hell out of while kind of not wanting them actually to get together because they’re not those people (Sarah Connor and James Ellison come to mind). I also have some pairings that I shipped sooooooo hard and then eventually the show went to these places that just have me yelling at Scully to go back in time and never ever walk into that basement office. But I’m not sure I can think of one that quite fits the “despite myself” label the way most people would understand it?

25.  Have you ever shipped a pairing before you even started watching the show/movie simply because of gifs and graphics or similar?

I’ve definitely shipped lots of pairings with very little canon under my belt: memorably, the first episode of Stargate: SG-1 I ever saw was “Threshold,” and it caused me to fall hard for Janet Fraiser, and I was also intrigued by her conversation with Daniel about ethics, and before I knew it I was sort of hardcore shipping them before I ever saw basically any more of the show. Oh, 2003... :) Among other pairings I’ve shipped a lot within one episode: Hecate and Pippa, Swan Queen, Jack Bristow and Irina Derevko.

I think the only pairing that I had sort of fully bought into before I saw any of the show, though, was--weirdly enough--Kira and Odo from DS9. I couldn’t begin to tell you why. 

40.  If you could change one thing about your OTP, what would that be?

HOW MUCH TIME DO WE HAVE? Ahem. 

For Hecate and Pippa: basically can we put these characters into an entirely different show with different writers and also make Pippa a main character? That counts as one thing, right?!?

(Ask me more from this!)

[pellucidthings]

40 Questions - Meme for Shippers

[pellucidthings]

Raquel Cassidy at the World Premiere of Downton Abbey at Cineworld Leicester Square in London (September 09, 2019)

[pellucidthings]

To all of you fic authors out there. Happy Fic Authors Appreciation Day. Thank you for everything!

[pellucidthings]

AO3 won the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Related Work!

Here’s the speech given by Naomi Novik when the award was accepted:

All fanwork, from fanfic to vids to fanart to podfic, centers the idea that art happens not in isolation but in community. And that is true of the AO3 itself. We’re up here accepting, but only on behalf of literally thousands of volunteers and millions of users, all of whom have come together and built this thriving home for fandom, a nonprofit and non-commercial community space built entirely by volunteer labor and user donations, on the principle that we needed a place of our own that was not out to exploit its users but to serve them.

Even if I listed every founder, every builder, every tireless support staff member and translator and tag wrangler, if I named every last donor, all our hard work and contributions would mean nothing without the work of the fan creators who share their work freely with other fans, and the fans who read their stories and view their art and comment and share bookmarks and give kudos to encourage them and nourish the community in their turn.

This Hugo will be joining the traveling exhibition that goes to each Worldcon, because it belongs to all of us. I would like to ask that we raise the lights and for all of you who feel a part of our community stand up for a moment and share in this with us.