This is a universe - in need of a name - which is composed of the slight intersection of mostly separate fandoms. It began with Van Helsing, which I then stretched to include characters from Brian Jacques' book Castaways of the Flying Dutchman, and also the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, followed by the TV shows Stargate: SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, and Supernatural. So, they are all kind of related in that my portrayal of certain characters remains true to my "canon" despite the new fandoms they are plunked down in. The Supernatural / Stargate: SG-1 crossover fics are less connected to the rest of the fandom, as indicated below by the fact that they are somewhat disjoined from the rest of the timeline.

 

While going through the files backed up on my external harddrive, I realized that this baby was 500 words from first chapter completion. (Also, I was dreaming about my S1 love and this fic last night. Yes, I'm weird. Yes, I like it. Yes, the above line is my official story, and I'm sticking to it.)  The idea was birthed a long time ago, I know exactly where it's going, the only surprise is who the characters really turn out to be.

What is this, you ask? This is Season 1 casefic, just after "Something Wicked" - everyone remembers the Striga, right? Right! So, just after Fitchburg the boys head south to Arizona and, well, this is what they find. Also, Monster of the Week, brotherly interaction, and yes. Sam's college buddies - including the black guy from the pilot that has never shown up in fic anywhere that I can find. I gave him a name and a major and a propensity for hanging like grim death onto his money, unless there's booze involved. :) You want to know more, I'm going to make you read the fic.

In other news, this is just a little bit of me having fun and trying to remind myself (after stopping watching S4 halfway through, just from the threat of maybe possibly having to see more of Geneiveve Whatsername ever again) that I do love Supernatural, and it doesn't get much better than Season 1. Though I've been horrified enough by the Bubblegum Princess (also known as brunette!Ruby) to even view S2 and bits of S3 with fond nostalgia. Anyway, enough ranting, on to the fic!

Like the Rifle


 

Hello all!

So, Chapter 2 of Echoes of a Song Half-Sung is complete, and posted! I was going nuts with the case that I finally picked, and it took a flowchart with bullet points to get me to keep it all straight. Seriously, the only way the show's writers get through it week after week without going insane is because there's more than one of them. I'm convinced of it.

In other news, I had really too much fun altogether writing the first segment. I did. And the last segment ended up being far longer than I thought it was going to be (but it was the differential, it's supposed to be the meat of the story, blahblah, it was more complex than I anticipated). Hopefully, however, I've got all the dominoes stacked and waiting to tip in the next chapter. Don't know precisely how I'm going to start that one off yet, but I'm optimistic. Also, every time I end up writing from House or Wilson's POV it ends up being longer than really anyone else's - excluding the differential POV, of course. Though I'm not actually too happy with that; I don't feel like I gave the character's personality really at all, so there may be some later tweaks to it. But for midnight-thirty, it's good enough for me. I really wanted to get this out ASAP, so it's up in the raw. :)

Enjoy!

And yea, I'm revelling in clean sheets tonight!

 

I've been meaning to do this for awhile. :)

I've been trolling fanfiction for (ohmygod, has it been this long?) more than six years now - it took me awhile to get up the courage to get an account at ffnet, where I started out, and I was reading through the LOTR fandom for months before I contemplated writing and posting myself. So, more than six years. At first, I was reading anything that looked even slightly interesting. Then, I got fed up and started writing my own. Then, my fickle muses abandoned me, and I went back to mostly reading. Then? I developed standards.

So, when perusing ffnet, LJ, or some other site, this is how I decide whether or not I'm going to read a fic.

1. If the author's screenname/handle/sig/whatever has a swear word, especially if it's the F-bomb, I run away. They clearly have the maturity of a kid who's just discovered the pleasure of irritating his/her parents by saying something outrageous in front of people they want to be impressing, and as such in all probability won't be writing anything intellectually stimulating enough to keep my interest for more than a few hundred words. Also, come on, people. Grow up already. Yes, I swear more than I should, but I recognize that it's crass behavior. It's not appealing. Calling yourself f$^*erwriter (this is an entirely made up example, but based in a reality I've seen more than once) is laughable and not going to win much respect. Yes, I am "racial" (is that even possible in the anonymity of online comms? Whatever) profiling. Or some rough approximation thereof.

2. Title look interesting? Okay. BUT IF ITS IN ALL CAPS, the author probably wants to attract attention because for some reason the story's presentation isn't. Because they wrote, "sry suck at summeries haha the story's better i promese" or something along those lines, quite possibly. (Note: Exceptions to this rule are rare, but have presented on occasion.) Also worthy of attention, the complete opposite, where there are no caps at all in the title, is some sort of new artistic license or something - and not what we would naturally assume to be a lack of concern or the proper grasp of English. So total lack of capitals in the title doesn't actually mean anything - it could be either someone who's good enough to feel this artistic license is merited (and they're usually either trying it out and it's merited, or possessed of enough talent to get away with it), or just someone who's really, really clueless (although the clueless people tend to give themselves away by treating the title like a sentence, and capitalizing the first letter only). Could go either way: Use Caution.

3. Summary. Misspellings? Run. The other way, as fast as your cursor takes you. Grammar goofs? Ditto. If it's ffnet, and someone wastes their few characters saying, "sorry I suck at summaries", or begging for feedback, I also sanction running. Asking for feedback or noting that your work is rough in an Author's Note is more than fine - but I feel if you can't write a semi-decent summary, enough of something to hook people in or at least give a clue as to what's going on, it's a reflection of your ability to write a story. I've had trouble writing summaries too on occasion (mostly because I don't know what's going to happen in the story, or I can't quite find a way to sum it up without giving it away), but the "sorry I suck at this" always irritates me just because it's a waste. Put down something! Anything! But not that! 

4. Math (yeah, you thought this was going to be fun? Ha!). These are the mental gymnastics I do before I click the link of something that has so far passed the first tests, and they apply to ffnet only, really. For LJ, I generally like to find something longer because it usually indicates someone's got more story to tell, but short and sweet and well-written are also more common on LJ than in the general mass of ffnet. And LJ fic posting is a bit of a quality filter itself, though that apparently tends to vary by fandom. So, ffnet:
    (a) I look at the length, and the number of chapters. If I can't divide the number of words by the number of chapters and get at least 1,000 words/chapter, then it's likely I won't click it (clearly marked drabbles being the exception). My mental ideal is approx 2,000 words/chapter, which makes it long enough that I feel it's worth investing emotion in their plot. Because the numbers say there's something there. 
    (b) The second piece of math is again, the number of chapters. I compare it to the number of reviews, and if it works out to at least 10 reviews/chapter, I've got a winner. Not only is it lengthy, but enough other people were compelled to say something about it that it's likely there's something there worth my enthusiasm. Anything more than that is golden, anything less can be a diamond in the rough (if the above three rules are held and there's length) or . . . not (if any of the above are violated, I click only if the summary is at least intriguing, and then only with extreme wariness).

O.o
My job is burning out my brain. I sit, and I copy-past from adobe to word, for HOURS. I want the next project to start, desperately. But the girl who's going to train us is out sick. Disease is running rampant. WILL NOT YIELD!

Also, quite possibly going back to school because no way in hell I'm doing this for the rest of my life, especially with the temp agency siphoning my salary.  

But enough of that, on to the good stuff!
 

*squeals* OMG, OMG, OMG Sol made me a present! And it is pretty and awesome and the music and the hinting and the vagueness is all so perfect! :)

To Question Why. It has a trailer.
Here. Go. Watch. Then go tell Sol what a paragon of humanity she is, because SQUEEEEE!!!!!! 

*bounces insanely* Wow, now I think I'mmona write some more! :)