Sententiae Draconis

It's entirely possible that I've been reading too much about the Canucks lately. I just started reading a Stargate fic, and although I knew it was a Stargate fic when I started reading, when I read "Daniel" I immediately thought it was referring to Daniel Sedin rather than Daniel Jackson.

Of course now I'm picturing the Canucks going to other planets and hanging out at the SGC. So really this whole situation is a win. :)

HI! Thanks for offering one of my requests! I'm super stoked for this year's Yuletide, especially since all of my requests this year are very rare - 2 only have one fic on the AO3! So naturally this means that pretty much anything you write will make me super happy!

I've been doing Yuletide for many years now. And it's actually one of the only places where I end up finishing (rather than just starting) fic. So you can find the stuff that I've written over at the AO3 or at the old Yuletide Archive. You can also check out my previous Dear Yuletide Letters and various other complaints, squee etc at my Yuletide tag.

In terms of my general likes and dislikes in fic - I'm pretty eclectic. I usually prefer happy endings and generally joyful works with a lot of humour, but sad and angsty stuff can also be super awesome. Mostly I just like fic which is good (well, duh...) so if your strength is writing something a little more bittersweet, please do that!

Mostly I'm looking for something on a similar level of joyous/adorableness/happiness/snarkiness/banter to each canon, but I acknowledge that two of the three are actually set during war (and the third in the inter-war years), so life is not exactly a bucket of teddy bears. I hope that gives you an idea of what kind of tone I'd enjoy. If not please feel free to ignore all this.

( Fandom Specific Info )

I hope that was helpful and didn't confuse you further. If you need any clarification I'm sure hobbitbabe would be willing to act as a go between.

THANKS SO MUCH!

I have this crazy idea for a Star Trek fic where the Enterprise is a modern day tall ship and their at a festival with all the other ST vessels (possibly in Halifax because I know the port). And Pike is the Captain and the three watches are Red, Blue and Yellow (instead of White). The Mates are Kirk, Spock and Uhura. Scotty is the Boatswain and Keenser is the cook.

All I need is a plot. *headdesk*

The idea keeps clamouring around in my head because no one ever writes modern day tall ship stories. They always do Age of Sail stuff (and often not well). And I'm not really qualified to write an Age of Sail piece anyway because most of my sailing knowledge is practical rather than historical. Even though I've sailed on nice creaky wooden boats with antiquated sail plans they all have modern amenities and safety standards.

Anyway - plots are HARD. Part of me just wants to re-tell the movie, but I find the high-stakes of the movie are way to unbelievable for this setting. Maybe I can just do some sailing hijinks with an over-arching plot of Jim coming into his (second in) command duties?

Dude - the Enterprise could have a prank war with the Narada on the festival circuit! Okay, now I need to think about all of the best pranks I remember and then figure out how to explain them to land lubbers without making the whole story sound weird. - Rice in the furls! - Renaming the ship. - Whipping the braces. - Chekov as the new kid being told to find the shoreline!

So last night I went to bed intending to do things today, not the least of which was going to the pool and doing the exercise thing (I even checked the pool schedule online so I'd know if there were any lanes free). Of course, I didn't stop to wonder why my bed was currently shaped like a hand-basket, but one so rarely does. (I realize that I'm mixing my "going to hell" metaphors, but I'm sure that you get my point.)

Anyway, I woke up tired and so decided that I didn't want to go to the pool. I think I really need to sit myself down and set a firm schedule where I always go to the pool on Tuesdays and Thursdays (for example) except in cases of severe plague or death. Will consider doing the following at a later date.

Then I got occupied by trying to set up a new and cool LJ layout (result: I'm going to have to wait until the end of the month when I'll either have been given a paid LJ account for my birthday [hint, hint!] or I'll have bought one for myself, curses to all the cool layouts being for paid users), and was promptly distracted by an intelligent and calm discussion about fandom morality, or rather the discussion of fandom morality, to which therealjae posted a link (comment if you'dlike the link, I'm too lazy to put it in right now). My coffee actually went cold as I was reading it. It was mostly discussing the validity of having taboo sexual stuff in fanfiction (like incest and child/adult relationships, the most common examples used were Dean/Sam from SPN and Harry/Snape from HP), but also the validity of having the discussion about whether these things were appropriate, respecting both the writers who write it and the views of the people who want to speak out against it. I'm mostly on the "Ahhh! Wrong! Keep it away from me!" side of this argument discussion, but I also see how other people can enjoy those stories without thinking that those kinds of relationships are right (not quite the same, but I enjoy slash stories without necessarily thinking that the two characters are *cough* fucking like rabbits *cough*). There're also some interesting points about porn for females (and our rights to it and to having it be open and as visible as porn for males) with rebuttals about accountability and... I had something that was the right way to describe them, but it's gone from my head completely now (curse you brain!).

Anyway, my stance on it is that it deserves to be there, but the dialog against it also deserves (and should) be there too. Because even as we enjoy the squicky and the wrong (it's like a Greek Tragedy, where you get exposed to these terrible and terrifying situations so that you can experience the emotions in a controlled environment) we need, every now and again, to be reminded that this isn't simply harmless entertainment with fluffy bunnies and sunshine. (Also, to go back to the Greek Tragedy metaphor, we're on the internet, mostly sitting alone and reading by ourselves without the benefit of an audience of people around us to help us interpret the meaning of a morally ambiguous story. Not that I think it needs to have a Meaning with a capital M, but sometimes I get so caught up in stories that I forget about the real-world consequences and it's really shocking when I get reminded of them.) Someone mentioned that it was the number of these types of fics that really bothered them rather than their presence at all, and I agree with that too. When I started reading Supernatural fic I was really shocked and appalled by how much Wincest there was out there (regardless of how squicky I find the actual subject, I have to mention that I love the word 'Wincest'. I adore the vocabulary of fandom) and it kinda put me off until I explored a bunch more and was able to find all the amazing gen that's out there. I think that's a problem for the image of fanfiction in general, and it's one of the reasons why I often don't tell people that I read (and occasionally write) it. The porn exists, and that is all well and good, but there's also a lot of gen which is amazing and thought provoking and an excellent addition to canon (this is not to say that the porn, or the not-so-porny slash, romantic stuff etc, isn't a good addition to canon [it is!], but for people that don't understand fic it's harder to see past the non-canonical elements to see that).

Of course, even though I am hesitant to tell people that I enjoy fanfiction, most often when I do end up telling them they have no idea what I'm talking about and I have to explain what it is as well as why I enjoy it. So my nervousness is all for naught.

I'm sure that I had a nice thought process for the rest of this post, but then my roommates came home from their respective works and I started talking to them and promptly lost it.

Oh well. I was near the end of the post anyway.

Also I'm loving this spell-check in the message window thing! I suspect I'll have fewer typos/stupid spelling errors now. (Yeay!) Thanks LJ!

I have so many fic recs on my friends list right now that it's painful because I really have to read Aeschylus and Hesiod instead of the ficcy goodness.

(And they're AUs! I love AUs)

It's not fair.

*stomps around like the three-year-old she really is deep down inside and pouts at her computer screen and those damned Greeks*

ETA: Also my roommates are bizarre. Says S, "I'm really surprised that your fish aren't dead yet. You're a sailor, what do you know about fish."