viola_dreamwalk

Hey so are people still... out there?

I mean, of course they are, but... Hopefully no one that I followed 10-15 years ago thinks it’s weird if I lightly stalk them again after all this time. I'm curious what people are up to. And I will probably go on a spree of following new folks, too.

The kid whose birth derailed my long-running Star Wars AU series (and prompted me to re-evaluate my entire life) is now old enough to have opinions about Star Wars herself -- and she asked me to write her something. This kid is way cooler than I was in middle school – and likes to gently roast me and her dad for being ‘nerds’ – so I was surprised she asked but also... that’s awesome, kid.

I’ve been really enjoying the process of writing for her, which prompted me to go looking through my old content. There's more of it than I remembered, even if I wasn't all that great at finishing what I started.

Going back through old posts and such made me nostalgic for and appreciative of all those online friendships – and made me miss that sense of community, so here I am. I restarted my Tumblr, too. Why? What will I do with it? Who really knows. I've popped up here and there over the past few years, usually during times of stress, but not with any sort of consistency. We'll see how long this bout of nostalgia lasts.

(Look at my millennial fucking pink blog design here. Lol, but also I still kind of love it so I guess I will just be cringe.)

Current Mood: nostalgic

Angel

Amour (Holtz/Justine), (link pending)

Complexity (Connor, post-Not Fade Away), on LJ

Lovelorn (Holtz/Justine), on BFA

People Undone (Ensemble), on LJ

Soothe the Burn (Connor, Darla), on LJ

Surrender (Holtz/Justine), on BFA

Them Bones (Connor), on LJ

Harry Potter

A tiger by the tail. (Harry/Ginny), on LJ

Dreamwalk Blue (Albus Dumbledore, Tom Riddle, OCs), on FFN

Dreamwalk Blue: The Solitude Sessions (Albus Dumbledore, Tom Riddle, OCs), on LJ

Five Things That Never Happened in The Chamber of Secrets (Ensemble), on LJ

Hand Me Downs (Harry/Ginny), on LJ

Percy Weasley: Rogue Demon Hunter (Percy, Ginny, Kinglsey, OCs), on LJ or AO3

Leverage

Four Winds (Ensemble, some hints of Parker/Hardison, Nate/Sophie and Sophie/Tara), on LJ or AO3

The Lone Gunmen

The Geek Rock Series (Ensemble), on LJ

Grief (Jimmy/Yves), on LJ

Lost

Nalowale (Ensemble), on AO3

Pillars of a Civilization (Ensemble), on LJ

One Tree Hill

I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me (Peyton/Pete, Peyton/Jake, Peyton/Lucas), on LJ or AO3

Stargate

Mysteries (SG-1, Ensemble), on LJ or AO3

Star Wars

Mixology (Leia/Wedge, Leia/Han), on AO3

The X-Files

The Veiled Lady (Mulder, Byers, Langly, Frohike, OCs), on LJ or AO3

Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/168730.html

I really am, though admittedly lately it's been mostly just to pop up on Saturday mornings and comment in

musesfool's journal about Fringe. (I haven't watched last night's ep yet. Please don't spoil me!)

Things are better on the home front, so I figured it was time for an update.

( So, this happened... )

Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/172000.html

I have a sudden influx of new readers to Percy Weasley: Rogue Demon Hunter over at FFN (which I'll confess to rarely checking, except to use as a kind of 'test market' for fic that I'm not sure about). That means someone, somewhere must have recced the fic, which is always lovely. Thank you, whoever you are, if you happen to see this. I do intend to finish it, I'm just notoriously slow at finishing long works-in-progress, on the order of years rather than months. So, be warned.

In other news, I've acquired an iPad, which is not helping my Pinterest addiction, but has provided me with a convenient way to read books and magazines something I haven't bothered to do much these last few years.

Current Music: the xx ~ infinity
Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/170897.html

I have not been posting at all lately. I need some structure I think to keep me posting regularly, otherwise all my writing energy goes into plugging away at my WiPs (well, and Pinterest -- let's be honest).

I have, on the other hand, been writing. I'm better than halfway through Iteration, which I've decided to just knock out entirely before I go back to Percy Weasley: Rogue Demon Hunter and deal with how much I hate chapter 7. :(

In the meantime, here's a bit from right in the middle of Iteration (a.k.a. the Star Wars EU AU that I always hoped someone else would write so I wouldn't have to), just to prove to myself that I haven't wussed out again on this whole fandom thing. I do love this fic, despite that it's entirely self-indulgent and mostly written for an audience of one. It's also threatening to be novel-length, so there's that, too.

( 'Underestimating Mara was never a problem for either of us. One might even go so far as to say that’s what got her killed...' )

Current Music: little hurricane ~ haunted heart
Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/170241.html

I am so half-ass at fandom, but apparently everyone is moving themselves the hell over to Dreamwidth so I finally got off my ass and imported my whole LJ account over there. Will it make me post more? Who knows.

Also, on a mostly unrelated note, I almost never watch karaoke-talent shows, i.e. American Idol, but I'm damned if the finalists on The X-Factor aren't exceptionally talented. I'm impressed.

Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/170050.html

I'm watching Iowa State vs. K-State (all tied up at 7-7 right now*). I'm a bit of an Iowa State fan for no other reason than the fact that it's my personal head-canon for The Lone Gunmen that Jimmy Bond played his college ball at Iowa State (and was part of the 1992 Cyclones team that upset soon-to-be national champs Nebraska). I do love a good underdog story.

But, mostly, I wanted to post this:

I think Paul Wulff got a really raw deal in Pullman, but I have to admit that hiring Mike Leach is the kind of flashy, ballsy move Wazzu has needed to pull for a long damn time. Well played, Bill Moos. Love the audacity. You're my favorite, even if you did spend the better part of a decade or two in Eugene.

*UPDATE! Iowa State up 13-7. Nice!

Current Music: college football gameday!
Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/169964.html

Oh, my heart. My Cougs beat Arizona State tonight, just when I'd been ready to give up hope altogether. I actually teared up a little at the win, which hasn't happened since they won on my wedding day during a dark, dark season when they did not win very much at all. (It was like they did it just for me! ;) Connor Halliday ILU, please stay healthy.

Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/169670.html

I keep seeing that 'WiP title and first line' meme around on my friends list. My first reaction was, "Like I need to play with more works-in-progress..." But after taking a second look, I realized I have a few that are shareable.

Excluding my long-running (should that be 'half-published?' oh dear) works-in-progress, here are a few:

The Comeback Kid (The Lone Gunmen): Even after all this time, Jimmy still got the yips.

Riddles of the Sphinx (Harry Potter): Albus had eyes on her, even here. How maddening.

Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter (Star Wars EU): It only took two days for Mara to decide that she really hated Bowre.

Conception (SG-1): The Book of Origin taught that children were to respect, revere and, inevitably, replace their parents.

The Suicide Blondes Book Club (Veronica Mars): Let's face it, the blonde cheerleader is always the first one to die.

The Pharaoh's Daughter [working title] (Harry Potter): Helga was born from the river, a child of rushes and weeds.

Current Music: the wailin' jennys ~ heaven when we're home
Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/169066.html

I have not dropped off the map again, I promise, despite the fact that it's been almost a month since I've done, well, anything here. The autumn is just shaping up to be incredibly busy -- weddings, engagements, babies, baby showers, birthdays, football, pumpkin carving parties, happy hours and Sunday dinners... I'm certainly not complaining, though. :)

Given all that, this is me trying to keep writing on my radar.

Man, do I ever have issues with Part 7 of Percy Weasley: Rogue Demon Hunter. If it wouldn't blow up the plot entirely, I'd just ditch it and move on to Part 8. :(

A few short bits from upcoming chapters, though, because why not?

( 'Hey, Tall, Dark and Groovy…' )

I pressed my brother into service doing an initial edit on Iteration, despite the fact that he's in the midst of his tenure review. I figured he owes me, since I let him talk to me for an hour about Freespace the other night. (I'm not a gamer by any stretch, but consider me... intrigued... by that one.)

Anyway, while chapters 1-4 of this one are off getting the professor-treatment, here's a bit of that as well.

( Smugglers, as a group, tended to be highly superstitious. )

Current Music: rachel yamagata ~ under my skin
Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/168518.html

( 30 Days of Fanfiction -- Days 23-30: Research, Editing, Current Projects, Favorite Projects and more... )

Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/168051.html

Still playing catch-up...

Kate is a tough one. She's an uncomfortable character -- she's raw, she's angry, she gets humiliated (most frequently by her father), she's addicted to her own pain. This is all stuff that happens routinely with male characters and it tends not to bother us. We (the collective 'we') even celebrate it. It's angst! It's man-pain! Kate is, at the core, Angel's mirror -- at least through the end of Season 2. But for whatever reason it's a more difficult story prospect when the character is a woman, particularly someone a little bit grating like Kate. I love her for her gruffness, her awkwardness, but can see why it doesn't work for everyone.

In fairness, though, I do think some of the reason audiences didn't quite respond to her is because of the writing. When her original character arc was axed, I think the writers had to scramble to figure out exactly what they wanted to do with her -- and never quite got her story back to where it needed to be.

That said, there's an AU in my head where Corrupt happened as originally written and Kate gets her arc -- and it's pretty awesome.

There's also a AU in my head where she comes back to L.A. in Season 3, post-Sleep Tight, just in time to meet up with Wesley before he hits rock bottom. I've always wanted to finish it and writing about her this week made me open it up and give it a hard look for the first time in a long while. So here's a bit from the beginning of the fic. This scene is mostly set-up for the action to come, but I think it fits the female-focused theme of

womenlovefest nicely.

From Dark Waters (Alternate Season 3) -- a scene in which Kate Lockley meets her LAPD 'replacement.'

( 'Well, it’s nice to know they had a spare.' )

Current Music: anna nalick ~ car crash

Going through the content I wanted to play with for

womenlovefest, I’m realizing that the lady characters I love enough to want to write about often experience fandom hate or apathy – but it’s often because their characterization never feels quite finished. It’s like they never quite get the character arc I think they should have, and that makes me sad for them. It’s how I feel about Vala, it’s how I feel about Kate Lockley (hopefully more on her soon) – and it’s definitely how I feel about Mara Jade.

Not to get too pop psychology about it all, but it just feels like none of the characters in the Star Wars EU – Mara, in particular – ever get to do the emotional work needed to be fully-functioning human beings after all the truly awful shit that happens to them. Or, if they do, we just don't ever see it, which... why not?

How does Mara get from the angry, self-destructive (arguably a little suicidal – there are extenuating circumstances, but she straight-out asks Luke to kill her at one point) girl she is when we meet her to a complete person, confident in her own abilities and place in the universe? To a woman who feels ready to be a wife and mother? To being comfortable with wielding power and teaching others? We just don't ever really see that transformation, which is just a shame because she's a great character and there should be lots of interesting territory to explore there.

Given that, I usually tend to play with AUs when I write her, but this time around I'm going to try and fill in some of those missing moments – not an easy feat when you realize that even the canon of this particular fandom is wildly inconsistent and often flatly contradicts itself. But, what the hell? I like a challenge.

So I'm going to do a short fic for each of the tracks on the Mara fanmix I posted here, each one a 'missing' character moment or just something I would have liked to see happen. These are a little out of order, but maybe once I have them all done I’ll figure out whether they work best in chronological order, order of the track numbers – or something else altogether.

( #1. Dog Days Are Over )

( #3. Raw Sugar )

I am so far behind on

womenlovefest, I can't even tell you. I kind of knew this would happen, but I did have imaginings that I'd be able to sneak in a few posts here and there. Posting from a rock somewhere between the U.S. and Canada, though, has proved a little more challenging than I thought. Fingers crossed, though, that this works. If it does, this will be my post for Day 3 -- followed closely by Day 4.

Day 3 = more Vala. This is from a longer piece that I've never quite managed to finish, but have always wanted to. It's Vala and Adria (both the original and the namesake), and what makes them all tick:

( The child was a lost cause. )

Trying to squeeze in Day Two of

womenlovefest before heading off to an actually love fest (a wedding) this evening.

Day One was Vala (more on her later). For Day Two, I want to share some thoughts on (and fun content for) Mara Jade...

Oh, Mara. Mara is one of those characters who doesn't suffer from fandom hate so much as she suffers from maybe a little too much fandom love. The problem? It's often not good, healthy, well-rounded love. It's creepy boyfriend who puts you on a pedestal, swears that you're perfect, and is violently disappointed when it turns out you're really only human love. It's weird freshman year roommate who steals your clothes, cuts her hair just like yours, and secretly wants to sleep with your boyfriend love.

That said, I love Mara. (Hopefully more in the good way than the bad way, at least most of the time...)

( 'Here's Your Damn Love Song -- A Mara Fanmix' under the cut... )

Click here to download. (And let me know if you have any troubles -- it's been ages since I've done anything like this.)

Current Music: unlv @ wazzu on the radio
Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/166494.html

I hope it's kosher to re-use at least some older content for

womenlovefest, because I really want to start my Week of Awesome Ladies by posting the link to this fic. It's one of my all-time lasting favorites, because it is full of awesome ladies being awesome (even the ones who only got, like, two scenes of screen time in the actual show). It has mothers and daughters, goddesses and saints, maidens and crones, and an ordinary teenage girl with a really wicked sword.

Most importantly, it has Vala Mal Doran doing her thing -- which usually involves being a total badass.

Title: Mysteries
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Pairings: Mostly gen, but heavy subtext for various pairings
Rating: PG
Story Note: This was originally written between Seasons 9 and 10, before we're actually introduced to Adria as a character, so it's a little dated. At this point, consider it AU/another way it could have gone.
Summary: Demeter and Persephone fistfight in heaven.

Read it on LJ or AO3.

( 30 Days of Fanfiction -- Days 19-22, Inspiration, Sequels & Fests/Challenges ) This is a great segue, though, into...

womenlovefest (On LiveJournal at: http://womenlovefest.livejournal.com/) How much do I love this idea? A lot, like a whole lot. I am seriously pressed for time right now -- we are going to be at a wedding this weekend, have our own wedding anniversary and then will be traveling part of next week -- but I'm still going to try my hardest to talk at least a bit about some of my favorite female characters who don't get enough love. So awesome.

Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/165203.html

More from the 30 Days of Fanfiction meme, while I have a free moment...

15 – Warnings – What do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a fic?

I don't warn for much, especially in longer fics, mostly because a) I don't write much that's super explicit or objectionable and b) spoilers! It does somewhat depend on the fandom, too.

I don't know if it's the strangest, but I do get a kick out of the warnings for Iteration (even though the fic isn't actually posted yet):

Warnings: Oh, warnings for pretty much every last damned thing -- major character death(s), language, violence, het, slash, threesomes, abuse of chaos theory by a non-mathematician, and probably a few other things I've forgotten.

16 – Summaries – Do you like them or hate them? How do you come up with them, if you use them?

Summaries are kind of like the one-line pitch for your story idea. Do it well and people are more likely to buy it.

Sometimes they come in a flash of inspiration and really are boiled down to the essence of the story, sometimes I'm forced to just pick the most compelling quote from piece, and other times I will literally just explain what the story is and why I wrote it (e.g. “The obligatory MacGuffin fic”) and leave it at that.

17 – Titles – Are they the bane of your existence, or the easiest part of the fic? Also, if you do chaptered fic, do you give each chapter a title, or not?

This entirely depends. As far as multi-part fics go, I often do chapter titles. I've gotten better over the years at making sure there's some sort of structure, theme or internal order if I do decide to use them.

18 – Where do you get the most inspiration for your fics (aka "bunnies") from?

Stuff just occurs to me? And if it's interesting enough, I write it down. Once I have a general idea of what I want to do, music is a great way to keep the inspiration going. It keeps my brain in the zone for a particular mood or setting.

Current Music: imogen heap ~ not now but soon
Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/165020.html

A couple more pieces for that drabble meme. I'm plugging away at the others, slowly buy surely. :)

Gravity, Jimmy/Yves, The Lone Gunmen for

ticketsonmyself

We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance, Parker/Hardison, Leverage for

ticketsonmyself

( The rest... )

Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/164861.html

Doing a few more of these days at once, since the answers are fairly short:

30 Days of Fanfiction Meme -- Days 11-14

11 – Genre – do you prefer certain genres of fic when you're writing? What kind do you tend to write most?

I don't think so? Beyond, of course, whatever genre the original source text is. I don't purposely (usually) set out to write a romance or an adventure strictly on its own. Most of my stuff has elements from a couple different genres all married together into whatever best serves the story.

12 – Have you ever attempted an "adaptation" fic of a favorite book or movie but set in a different fandom?

I guess Percy Weasley: Rogue Demon Hunter counts, since it's essentially a Percy-as-Wesley pastiche, but it's also a true crossover with Angel so...

On the other hand, if you mean have I just cold ripped off the plot of, say, Casablanca and changed all the character names? The answer is no.

13 – Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?

I'm barely even in fandom anymore on my best days, so I don't have much exposure to 'fanon.' I get the appeal of having a shared interpretation of certain elements – it builds a sense of community, creates fun in-jokes and the like, but, as a storyteller, using it feels a little lazy. It's sloppy storytelling to just assume that your reader belongs to this like-minded community. Not to harsh on anyone else's fun, those are my standards for me and not other people. Though, as a reader, I tend to tune out/click the back button if something doesn't do the work of explaining a trope to me in a way I can grasp.

14 – Ratings – how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever written higher? If you're comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the story you're writing is G-rated instead?

I tend to fall right in the middle, roughly PG to R (or “M for Mature” or whatever we're calling it these days).

Current Music: metric ~ raw sugar
Crossposts: http://viola-dreamwalk.livejournal.com/164374.html

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I'm still here

A singing demon told me I was supposed to save the world, and it all just sort of snowballed...

Now I'm stuck, living out that night again

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Swing your sword!

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I'm cashing in your promises / gonna leave without a sound

Would you please get out from under my skin, because I can't begin this yet

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Week of Awesome Ladies -- Day 5

Week of Awesome Ladies -- Day 4 (still playing catch-up)

Week of Awesome Ladies -- Day 3 (sort of)

Week of Awesome Ladies (Cont)

Week of Awesome Ladies

She's not the kind of girl who likes to tell the world

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July 2024

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