jadesfire | Bored now.

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*flap*,
meme

Bored now.

Yes, I've moved onto Buffy quotes. My brain for them is better than for Round the Horne.

I'm honestly and seriously fed up with this now. I fell over again this morning, straightening up from a drawer. Every time I get up off the sofa and go anywhere, I see stars for a moment and my knees wibble. DO NOT WANT.

Hurrumph.

I am comforting myself with my flist and old NCIS episodes, but I am bored and stressing about work (I have stuff to do! Doesn't my body know that?) and failing to get anything written which makes me grouchy. Grouchier.

Hurrrrrrrrrrrumph.

I know I haven't written anything in ages, but just in case anyone remembers that I used to....

Meme picked up most recently from

topaz_eyes:
Ask me a question about one of my fanfictions. It can be absolutely anything in any fic and I will tell you the honest-to-god answer. Don’t hold back. Ask about major upcoming plot points if you want to. Whatever you ask, I have to answer truthfully.

And yes, 'will you ever finish anything ever again' is a reasonable question. Most of my fic is linked from the sidebar, but I'm working on a list that actually includes everything. Right now, my total stands at around 426,000, not including unfinished pieces. That's not too bad for 3 years' work, is it?

Right. Back to the pirates. \o?

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Been to the doctor with that falling over? Could be something simple like blood pressure...

*nods* My blood pressure is at the low end of normal, and I think when I get very tired, it just can't quite cope :S Hopefully after my hospital appointment in June I'll start getting closer to an answer.

More sleep, less coffee is probably also a good plan, but that one requires hard work and is therefore less attractive...

Getting tired could just be another symptom of the blood pressure thing, but then sleeping sounds like a good idea ;). Hope you'll be all right!

The caffeine might actually be good for you if your blood pressure is low, just not at night before bed. I knew someone who would crash out if they didn't have a strong coffee first thing in the morning because they needed it to boost their bp. The body is a funny thing, things that are bad for it can also be good for it lol... contrary body is contrary.

The seeing stars when you get up from a seat or straighten up from bending forward certainly sounds like low blood pressure to me...though I'm not a medical person (I do live with a paramedic though and have a very strong interest in biology). I hope they can get you sorted out soon, it must be so frustrating and worrying for you.

Nate

That's interesting. I think it's a balancing act - I do need to cut down, because a lack of sleep means I'm more tired, which means worse head-rushes, but I definitely need it to function as well! Maybe I'll drink less, but better stuff ;)

Thanks. The hard one at the moment is explaining to my boss that yup, I'm fine, I just keep falling over...

Yeah, that would be hard to explain.

You can get half-caf now or you could alternate caffeinated with decaf?

Hope you get it sorted.

*hugs*
Nate

Have you been to see a doctor yet?

*nods* I have slightly low blood pressure, which I think gets worse when I get tired. Obviously I just need more sleep ;)

Will the team play Nardils ever again?

*bats eyes innocently*

Okay, serious question. Does Sheppard know about the donut tradition between Lorne and Teyla? Does he approve?

*giggle* You don't want to know about the Nardil wars. It gets messy.

The donuts? Sheppard knows about them, and he doesn't not approve. It's more that he doesn't entirely get it. He can't work out if it's a present thing - not that he's dated many women, but they mostly prefer things like jewellery and flowers, and he doesn't think Lorne thinks of Teyla that way anyway - or if it's a buddy thing, but most of his buddies prefer beer. As with most personal relationship details, this one leaves Sheppard a little confused.

I can totally see that. And perfect icon choice there kiddo!

::frown:: Please be not getting hurt.

::hugs::

I am lying down with a blanket over me. The only way to get hurt is if I fall off the sofa ;)

*leans* So sick of this.

Well. I don't know about you, but I know I've managed to fall off a sofa before. Granted, one of the animals is usually involved, but STILL. ;)

::shakes head @ icon:: Years of training, and that's how they fight? Really, boys?

Yeah, I bet. I saw above that you mentioned you're going in next month, for tests, I'm guessing. I really hope that helps, hon. ::squeeze::

426,000 words of finished stories is amazing for 3 years' work.

::gentle, non-balance-affecting hugs::

*hugs back carefully* Thanks :)

It's a lot of words and stories laid out like that! Weird.

I know you basically define yourself as a "gen" writer. Can you elaborate on your reasons for that, whether you've ever been tempted into something more hard-core. And am I correct that it also defines your reading preferences as well?

Heh, it's funny you should ask me that, because I've been doing a lot of thinking about that lately.

Going with the second question first, you're half right. I will read het/slash if someone recs it to me as being something I'd like, and I'll dip into stuff on crack_van if the summary/rec sounds intriguing, but mostly, yes, I stick to gen. I'm also a weird Gen person, as I'm not that into h/c, which tends to limit my reading options. For reading, I'm much broader than I am for writing, which takes me to the first question.

The answer's yes and no, in terms of being tempted out of my gen zone. Z and I wrote Jack/Ianto, and I wrote a threesome piece for my Torchwood ficverse. But both are tame in terms of explicitness. One of the reasons I tend to write in that ficverse, or outside screen canon for Torchwood is that I'm not so much a Gen addict as a canon addict, and I don't find Jack/Ianto *or* Jack/Gwen to be plausible pairings. It's come up in the Stargates as well, where I'm being *told* that these two people are attracted, but I can't make it work in my head. I don't see the chemistry. Chemistry I see is (say) House/Wilson, and in those cases I tend to fall back on canon. I like to say that my writing is as slashy as the show, although I make the exception for SGA (where I see the central relationship as fraternal, just like in SPN)

What it really comes down to, I think, is my deeply unromantic nature, and... Okay, I'm struggling for the words here, but. Probably naivete would be a good word. I had a Strict Baptist upbringing (think quakers rather than gospel music), and even in college, I was deeply oblivious to who was sleeping with who. And before you ask, yes, the internet has been an education ;) What I'm saying is that my default position is to interpret *all* relationships as platonic. Yes, even Starsky and Hutch. I used to get annoyed with shows that paired people off, because to me, it wasn't necessary. I like friendship or the frisson of flirting. More than that? I just didn't/don't need. Then there's my literal-mindedness (my thinking is so concrete you could building tower blocks on it), which means that straying from canon is extremely difficult for me - although that's getting easier. So if we don't see on screen that they're sleeping together, my writing has to reflect that. I'm happy to suggest, and to play with ideas, but ultimately, I'm not going to come down on one side or the other (see 'slashy as the show' above)

That's probably way more than you needed to know! But I've recently become aware that Gen used to/does have something of a reputation for being not just disinterested in, but actually anti-slash, so I try to tread carefully. I write what pushes *my* buttons, and ultimately, I guess Gen just does.

I don't find Jack/Ianto *or* Jack/Gwen to be plausible pairings.

For the first half of that alone, I will love you forever.

Thanks for the well-thought out and illuminating answer.

Heh, we won't talk about the other half then. I like making people happy :)

I've been trying to formulate this for ages, so it's nice to have the chance to put it down. Maybe I'll turn into a whole meta after all.

I'm far more willing to accept the second from people who admit to the first.

I'd love to see a full-blown meta on the topic as well, because basically I'm completely on the other side of the spectrum. For all the fic I've written in the last four years or so, hardly any of it is totally Gen. Even that tends to allude to some kind of sexual or emotional relationship.

I think there's a divide in what makes people interested in fanfic - for some it's primarily looking at the way the characters interact with the world, for others it's primarily looking at the way characters interact with one another. And there can be a very fundamental lack of understanding lurking within that divide - I've had the situation before now where I've said to someone that I mostly write gen and had a ten minute lecture on how H/C was actually smut in all but name (which I'd agree with - a friend describes it as "emotional porn" and I think that's pretty much accurate) before I've managed to interrupt and point out that I don't write H/C, I write gen. But the thought of writing anything that wasn't relationship-based was so utterly alien to the other person that they just couldn't work out the appeal.

I'm very strongly at the "interacting with the world" end of the scale, needless to say. :) I do write het and I do write slash - and I do it at the extremely porny end at that! - but I can't do it at any great length and I can usually slip a hint of plot into even a porn battle ficlet. I'll read both het and slash, but I've never had an OTP in my life and I'm much more likely to have avoidances than favourites where pairings are concerned. I'm with you on the unromantic nature - I couldn't write romance to save my life and really have very little interest in reading it.

But the thing is... it's easy to not concentrate on relationships. Canon manages it all the time, and TW is just chock-full of potential for gen storylines spread over a century and more! All of my longer bunnies are gen (though some with the proviso that, you know, Jack is in there) and mostly outside of the on-screen timeline, but I figure that someone'll read them even if others won't understand the appeal.... ;)

I hadn't thought of it in those terms before (and also hadn't thought of H/C before, although my Gen leanings might explain my complete lack of interest in the genre...)

I think I'd want to turn it around to 'how the world acts on the characters', mostly because the other way round implies that Gen *has* to have a plot, which I don't think it does. Most character studies, I would divide as Gen, but a lot of them don't have any more plot than 'character thinks'. Considering I'm a Gen writer, my plots suck, and I'm grateful that most readers over look the holes, or that my betas fill them for me as we go along. Mostly, I *am* interested in how the characters interact, and in general, a story will only work for me if I know what it's going to say about the characters. Plot is entirely secondary.

*g* It is hard to say you write Gen when you write Jack. He's pretty much his own fandom and his own genre!

H/C - one character is hurt, the other(s) comfort them, invariably leading to all of the physical and emotional closeness that one would expect with romance/smut, only not quite taking that final step. I know some folks who regard it as a distinct genre in its own right, while others think it's just slash (and I have mostly seen m/m) for the prudish or homophobic. I can't say that it's a type of fic I have much interest in but I will say that the emotional "hit" with H/C can be a lot stronger than in slash, where the focus is often more on getting the smut. The anticipation can be better than the pay-off sometimes.

I think I'd say that a story has to have a plot (something happens/changes) of some form, otherwise it's a snippet or a vignette. Gen/het/slash are just flavours (or colours, if you like) of all of those things. Character studies are character studies - I think they're often a beast unto themselves and don't fit into the neat gen/het/slash categories (much like Jack. ;)), and nor should they have to. There are no hard and fast rules, though, and that's good. People should feel free to write what they want to, just as readers should be free to cherry-pick their reading matter.

Still, "fic" seems to cover all bases and all writing formats. :) Cuts through a lot of the nit-picky taxonomy.

Interacting with the world cuts both ways - characters interact with and within their environment and that environment influences how they behave and interact with one another. I can't write something if I don't have a feel for that world and an understanding, if only in my head, of how it works - it's very much an extra canonical character for me. I'm absolutely no good with AUs that place the characters into entirely different lives!

I see friendship too. Buddy cop shows, to me, are platonic. Best friends. Mentor/Mentee. Brothers in all but blood. That kind of thing. Slashing them never even occurred to me before discovering fanfic and 90% of the time I still can't see it on screen.

*nods* Same here. And usually I *still* don't see it, even when canon gives it to me - Jack/Ianto, Rodney/Keller. It just...doesn't click in my head the way it seems to in other people's.

Perhaps the only one I can see is Sapphire and Steel *points to icon* but even then, I like leaving their relationship completely ambiguous. I think maybe I just dislike answers and conclusions. Suggestion is much more *fun*

Rodney/Keller and Ronon/whatshername was so forced and terrible. Jack/Ianto semi-works, but not terribly well for me.

Suggestion is ideal. *nods* Playful banter. I love that.

That is *fantastic* for 3 years work. It's like you wrote a novel a year!

*giggle* It certainly felt like that. Considering I was going to take it easy this year, I'm signed up for 3 Big Bangs and 1 SPN-fest (I'd kill for an SPN-Gen Big Bang but there you go). Apparently this is my idea of 'taking it easy'...

Three bigbangs? Tardis, Criminal Minds and....

*hugs*

I believe I still owe you a day out or a weekend away or something.

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