Requested: One "Hell Yeah", Extra Loud
Nov. 2nd, 2006 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
itsallovernowI have FINALLY finished reformatting Blue Eyes. Again. Wanna know how to loathe a 300 page story you gave your all to? Re-read it three times in succession because you're too stupid to have remembered the whole TXT issue of going back and re-paragraphing 300 pages of text.
Actually, that's a lie. I don't hate it. I still love much of it. I hate my repetetive language, I hate the swoony melodrama that I'm prone too, I hate my inability to be concise, but I love what writing that story taught me, and I love the world that I half created and I love the characters. I really do. I've spent so much time with this story - writing, editing, formatting it TWICE - & OMG IF I EVER FIND THE PERSON WHO HACKED LEVIATHAN I AM SO KICKING HIS ASS. Please to be going to give![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shrift Praises and booze and coffee and naked cabana boys right now - that I can absolutely see it and have to whap myself upside the head and remind myself that it's not real, it's not at all canon. Although I frequently have to do that with other people's stories as well:)
So, in celebration, the meme making the rounds:
Give me two characters from two different fandoms with which I am familiar*, and I will invent a relationship for them.
*By familiar, I mean having heard of. I am so willing to make shit up you have no idea, but it's helpful if I actually know source material for one of them:) And if any gives me John Crichton/Randy n'Earl I will love them forever.
Actually, that's a lie. I don't hate it. I still love much of it. I hate my repetetive language, I hate the swoony melodrama that I'm prone too, I hate my inability to be concise, but I love what writing that story taught me, and I love the world that I half created and I love the characters. I really do. I've spent so much time with this story - writing, editing, formatting it TWICE - & OMG IF I EVER FIND THE PERSON WHO HACKED LEVIATHAN I AM SO KICKING HIS ASS. Please to be going to give
shrift Praises and booze and coffee and naked cabana boys right now - that I can absolutely see it and have to whap myself upside the head and remind myself that it's not real, it's not at all canon. Although I frequently have to do that with other people's stories as well:)So, in celebration, the meme making the rounds:
Give me two characters from two different fandoms with which I am familiar*, and I will invent a relationship for them.
*By familiar, I mean having heard of. I am so willing to make shit up you have no idea, but it's helpful if I actually know source material for one of them:) And if any gives me John Crichton/Randy n'Earl I will love them forever.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2006-11-02 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-02 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-02 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-02 10:19 pm (UTC)The comings and goings of others don't mean much to Stark these days. He's busy crossing over the dying, trying to find path and purpose here where time is fluid and flexible. He's even come to accept the screams of the nurses, knowing that they found an afterlife. It reminds him of Crichton. It is a place of penance and a place of love.
Stark doesn't expect to go to bed with Captain Jack when he meets him in the cantina, but the man is charming and open with a wide smile and when the matron explains to him what Stark does, Jack rubs Stark's arm in a way that seems more like sex than sex itself.
"I can't die," he says with a laugh, "So I wonder where you could take me."
Stark likes Jack because of the heat of his warm laughing mouth, his smile that reminds him of Crichton and Zhaan, hot tongue and teeth that make him forget his name, and because he's a little bit fluid in time himself.
He doesn't know why Jack likes him, why he puts warm hands on Stark's back, takes his ear lobe between white teeth, strokes the place around Stark's scars.
"I used to glow," he says one night as he watches Jack peel off his clothes. "I used to be light."
JAck smiles, kneels down to take off Stark's boots, touches his cheek. "It's okay." he says. "I used to be human," he says. "Nobody's perfect."
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Date: 2006-11-02 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-02 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-02 09:43 pm (UTC)I'm actually glad to have had a chance to correct some things, although this probably would not have been my idealized way of doing it:)
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Date: 2006-11-02 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-02 10:08 pm (UTC)The last time he'd seen them, his car had smelled weird for a week.
He also doesn't think evangelism would have gone over well with the aliens - God, Buddha or Carson Daly.
John's pretty sure Randy, harmless as he was, would have gotten shot. Boy had a hell of a thing for boobies. John can't imagine the lure of boobies that come in alien colors to a boy of Randy's sort Hell, John's even got some sympathy for him on that front.
So it's a surprise when he opens a box of parts and tools, odds and ends that got packed up and shoved in the pod with the rest of the crap they gathered on Earth, and he finds a leatherman tool duct taped to a big bottle of Goo-be-gone all wrapped up inside a vintage Playboy. Written on the perky curve of the models breasts in big Sharpie'd letters was #79, and an "I'm sorry." and a little drawing of a T-Bird.
Last time he'd seen those titties, and he remembers them well, had been the summer his cousins came up to stay. He remember riding around in the pickup, not quite sure what to say to either of 'em, Randy pointing out street signs and Earl scamming the pay phones for pocket change. They'd seemed like a pain in the ass at the time, headed for petty theft and a little jail time while John was headed for the stars, but they were big favorites of Suze and Livvy, jovial and good natured and amoral.
John had been pissed that all the Playboys that DK had sneaked from his father had gone back home with his cousins, but it wasn't like he could really complain. Still, he'd spent some quality time in the pickup flipping through the magazines, and he's nostalgic for the innocence of paste and paper girls, for his own young spunk and criminal cousins.
Aeryn finds him sitting there later, flipping through the Playboy. She tilts her head at the tits and ass, but shrugs. A little porn doesn't bother her much. She does point out the Sharpie'd stars on the corners.
"Family," John shrugs. "It's the little things."
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Date: 2006-11-02 10:23 pm (UTC)Pour moi:
Kaylee and Faith. ;).
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Date: 2006-11-02 10:46 pm (UTC)"You brought us to the future?" Faith had been working very hard at controlling her temper lately. It was one of those seven effective habits things. Mostly it was bullshit, but right now she thought that maybe it might serve her well to not snap the neck of the dumb ass who'd brought her to the fricking FUTURE.
"Yeah,looks like," the demon looks as repentent as something with glowing eyes and sticky skin could look.
"You are so dead when we get home," she says and looks around. The future is not all that bright, if her current surroundings are anything to go by.
"This sucks," she says, watching hover crafts pass over the dirt streets of a crappy little town that smells like horse shit and looks like the backlots at Universal Studios. Fucking interdimensional demons.
"Let's go," she moves to grab the demon by the arm, thinks better of it. He looks at the ground.
"Can't," he mumbles and she does punch him then. But not that hard. REally.
"What, your batteries low or something." When he blushes bright green, she hits him again.
***
"I don't normally work on... people?" The girl looks dubious, is about Faith's age but with a younger smile.
"You sure he's... real."
Faith kicks him in the ankle. "He's real, but his ... thingy's busted. He can't read when we are so he doesn't know how to get us home."
The girl rolls that around in her mouth and shrugs. "So you don't want me to fix him, just his... tool?"
Faith makes a little circley motion with her pointer finger and the demon pivots so that his face is towards Faith, his skull towards the mechanic. He whacks himself in the side of the head and a panel falls open near the base of his skull.
"Oh," says the girl, and starts to root around inside.
"Think you can fix it," Faith asks, curious and a little impressed. She certainly wouldn't be sticking her fingers in the gunky mess of demon brains.
"I can fix anything," the girl says and Faith believes her.
Later, after they get home she dusts the demon, she signs up for auto mechanics at the JCC in Santa Barbara.
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Date: 2006-11-02 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-02 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-02 10:27 pm (UTC)But Lee has a son and a daughter now, and he no longer wants to fight Cylons. It's comforting to fight an enemy that actually dies.
The day he shoots Fox Mulder is his first day in the compound, and it is not an accident. Mulder comes out of the tent waving a gun and Lee doesn't think twice, fires a warning shot, doesn't expect the man to walk into a bullet.
He finds out later that Mulder was on guard duty, that he'd been late, that he'd thought Lee was something else entirely. Not human. Not grey. Apparently, word of the cylons had reached this far up in the mountain.
The doctor, Scully, dug the bullet out of Mulder's calf and glared at Lee as she worked.
"If you can actually aim that thing, you're welcome to stay," she says.
He starts to tell her that he's one of the people from Galactica, but she doesn't look like she cares.
He moves his kids into the next tent, and eventually spends his evening telling Mulder about the Cylon war. The man doesn't look too upset about an enemy of humanity's creation. He just seems kind of pleased that there is life beyond what he knew, that there were still things left to imagine.
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Date: 2006-11-02 11:30 pm (UTC)Apocalyptic earth and surly Scully too.
Thanks .
Suenix
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Date: 2006-11-02 10:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-02 11:57 pm (UTC)Mitchell has Crichton's face, but he smells all wrong too.
She puts her fist against his chest, just as his hand rests on her back and when she steps away he looks a little scared and a lot turned on.
That's not a similarity that she needs to see.
"He's an idiot," Mitchell says, and then blushes, his eyes very blue against the color of the uniform. He looks at her like he knows what she is.
John's always looked at her like he doesn't. She didn't know before that she liked that sense of wonder.
There are 600 humans in the large room on the other side of this door, all dressed in ridiculous finery, all paying pretend, petty homage to the aliens and she's standing in someone's office kissing a man who looks like John. A man who claims knowledge of wormholes and other worlds.
She's wearing a dress and she could kill Mitchell with one of her shoes.
"You're not the first alien," he starts to say, then must realize that's not going to come out right.
He takes a deep breath. "I'm not asking you to go to bed with me," he says. "I just wanted a dance."
"Why not?" Aeryn doesn't back away.
"Honestly?" Mitchell narrows his eyes. There's nothing hidden there, nothing suspicious, no lingering madness. "You scare me. And I like to be on top."
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Date: 2006-11-02 11:57 pm (UTC)She parses the meaning of that, shrugs finally. "I'd take it under consideration."
He puts that shrewd, hard look back on his face. "I try not to sleep with women who aren't in love with me."
Aeryn raises an eyebrow. "You're a pilot?" she says, " You fly combat," she emphasizes. "You're lying," she says.
Cam sighs. "Fine. This is just too weird. I look like John Crichton, you look like one of my team and just be glad she's not here because I'm guessing she would want to sleep with you. Not that I don't, but... well, I think it would be sort of like mental masturbation" He licks his mouth, eyes a little glassy. "I can't believe I just said that."
"You look like him," Aeryn says softly. "You aren't him."
Cam squints. "This really doesn't weird you out?" She looks at him steadily, then leans forward to kiss him again, tongue stroking along his, appreciating the differences. If John Crichton can kiss alien women without a second thought, she can at least get felt up by his near twin. It's a comfort that he does not taste or smell or feel or grope like John. She takes a moment to regret that she won't be able to confirm that he doesn't fuck like John. Or maybe it isn't really regret. Aeryn understands what she wants, but she's not above a little misdirection, a little deserved substitution.
Mitchell cups her ass through the thin material of the dress, grinds against her almost helplessly. The two men are of a height, his sex presses against hers. She needs to not be doing this.
When she steps away, he's hard and she's resigned, edgy and aroused and angry at Earth for taunting her with this ridiculous substitute.
"This," she says quietly, humor in her voice a knife's edge, "is not the ... weirdest thing that has ever happened to me."
She goes back to the ball room, and dances with an archaeologist who keeps pushing up his glasses and trying not to look down her shirt while John Crichton pulls at his neckline and watches her with wonder and anger and that guarded reserve and she lets herself hate him a little even as she wants him.
Aeryn sees Mitchell later, waiting for his car, and he gives her a salute, holds the door open for her. The guards will stay silent, will follow her to his hotel, will know of their actions. She should care, doesn't. Everyone else has been reckless, now it is her turn.
It is very hard to start, and she thinks now that it's humans. Sex should not be this difficult. She straddles his lap, the absurd dress still on and he graps her hips, his uniform coat off, pants around his knees as she cants against him. She is a solider, and this is just sex.
Eventually, he stands, tumbles her to the bed, brings her off with his hands. She takes him in her mouth, and he is sticky and bitter and warm and his hands in her hair feel like everyone she's ever done this to.
He brings her water, and they sit on the floor in front of the bed and swap combat stories, talk aerial maneuvers until the stars start to fade and the sky nears inky blue.
He gives her his uniform coat to wear, and the guards take her back to the mansion where she falls asleep wearing the coat.
In the morning she will drink coffee with John Crichton, will sit by him and barely speak until his scent rubs off on her skin.
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Date: 2006-11-03 12:49 am (UTC)And yay for Blue Eyes! I'm definitely saving a copy this time. Sorry it was so much trouble to get it restored, but I'm glad you decided it was worth it. I do adore that story!
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Date: 2006-11-03 04:50 pm (UTC)And hee:) I was exceedingly grateful to the people who had saved copies:) It made the whole thing much, much easier.
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Date: 2006-11-03 12:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-03 12:13 am (UTC)"She's a scrap of a girl," Sam says, not oblivious to Gene's gape. "She can't have done that to you. Are you sure you aren't drunk?"
DCI Hunt glares at him. "She kicked me in the head, then scarpered up the wall. I want her arrested, I want her on the ground, I want her tied and tried and put in the gaol."
Sam rolls his eyes.
"I think you've got a bit of a crush."
Gene Hunt leans over the desk, bracing his not inconsiderable bulk on his knuckles, breath hot and meaty like coffee and onions and curry.
"That... girl...," he snarls, lip curling, befuddlement replaced by righteous indignation, "Just said she could kill me with her brain. And she sounded sorry about it." He slams a fist against the desk and all of Sam's papers slide to the side.
"Locked up. Tied up. Strung up because I've had it up to my arse with crazy women in my station house."
Sam schools his features. "Yes, sir. Very good sir. But she hasn't done anything wrong except kick you in the head, sir."
Hunt glares. "Bugger off," he says, and then wonders back into the interrogation room.
Later, Sam helps Gene Hunt put the girl into the back of his car, takes her home for dinner. His wife chides the girl for being to skinny and the girl picks up each piece of food, looking at it like it was alien technology.
Gene hides her knife and fork, and the kids have a good laugh at her combat boots, and after supper, she watches TV with the sound on loud, her face open and astonished.
"She's from the future," Gene says as he does the dishes, and Sam sits there and wishes he smoked cigarettes so he had something to do with his hands besides grind them into fists.
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Date: 2006-11-03 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-03 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-03 05:33 am (UTC)And he doesn't lock her up, but takes her home to the Missus. Awwwww... :-)
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Date: 2006-11-03 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-03 12:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-03 12:30 am (UTC)***
"Are you really the president?" He doesn't look like the man that she'd seen on TV when the Prime Minister had declared the alien invasion to be Britain's fiercest, finest hour. Not that any of them had been in the room with the gassy, horrible aliens, had been so near death.
"No," Bartlett says, grins at the girl with the blond hair and the accent. "I just play one on TV." She'll ask the doctor later, and he'll confirm that Bartlett wasn't lying.
But here and now, he's the President too. She likes that kind of dichotomy. It always makes her laugh, and it makes the doctor grin like a loon.
Besides, he's always said that Jedidiah Bartlett was his favorite president.
Bartlet puts his coat on with a fluorish that reminds her of her grandda, a little old fashioned with the straightening of the tie.
"I understand we've got a problem with aliens," the President says. "Why a 19 year old girl is hear to tell me that, and why my staff didn't find that odd is a little beyond me, but you know I just show up, punch the clock, guide the free world."
Rose giggles. "You've got daughters, too." She says.
Bartlet raises an eyebrow and nods for Charlie to come in with a bottle of Coke. Rose likes that, the green glass bottle. It's got style.
"Three daughters, all bright and lovely as the evening stars."
He looks at her shrewdly. "Aliens?" he prompts. "Are you sure this isn't like the Turkey pardoning."
He looks up at the press secretatry. Rose doesn't remember her name, but she's tall and long and has a little bit of alien about her as well, like those birds on Sermana Oralis that were waiting to get manicures.
"No, sir. Apparently there are aliens queuing up to bathe in the Lincoln Memorial."
The woman sounded a little pained and she didn't really say queue. Sometimes the TARDIS messed with Rose's hearing. She hated it when the TARDIS got bored.
"The key is to charge them more," Rose says. "They're all pretty skint, don't wanna pay more than a few hundred quid... sorry, dollars, for a day at the spa if you get my drift."
Bartlett frowns. "A nation divided by a common language."
Rose just smiles. "Sorry it's me and not the doctor, but he's looking at the world's biggest ball of twine and it's sort of hard to pry him away."
"Twine or a threat to king and country," Bartlet says again. "I can see how twine would... win out."
Rose smiles wider. "They like you," she says encouragingly. "And everyone's heard about your economy. They'll understand about the higher entrance fee."
"Shouldn't we worry about losing valuable alien tourist dollars," Bartlet asks. The press secretary starts to snigger.
"Nah," Rose adds, "They're not the sort to buy souvenirs."
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Date: 2006-11-03 12:30 am (UTC)- hg
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Date: 2006-11-03 12:48 am (UTC)The cement was hard on the knees, but the backboard was fiberglass.
Toby Ziegler shakes D'Argo's hand, gives him a pen from the White House and proceeds to get his ass kicked in basketball. The two of them drink a beer or too, don't chat much, and D'Argo invites him down for the weekend. To his surprise, Toby accepts.
John says the name sounds familiar, buys some steak and corn on the cobb and salad and better beer and sets up a barbeque by the swimming pool. He cajoles the girls into bikinis, and then burns the first steak when Aeryn complies. Instead of laying by the pool though, she strokes through the water doing endless laps and by the time Toby Ziegler arrives, D'Argo is edgy and restless and John is a little bit drunk.
"I think I knew your brother," Crichton says, and holds out his hand. Toby shakes, and says yeah, he probably did. John turns down his mouth at "did", and his eyes get cold and hard and sad.
He leaves the bbqing to Noranti after that and he and D'Argo and Toby play horse until Aeryn gets out of the pool. She puts loose sweat pants on over the bikini and still looks pale and damp and human with her tail of black hair pulled away from her face. She does free throws better than any of them and has H -O -R- S to D'Argo's HOR and Toby's HO and Johns distraction when Noranti calls them over to eat.
Toby starts to say something about alien life more than once, but interrupts himself to mention babies, his own babies and looks surprsied and embarrassed when it happens. D'Argo briefly mentions his son and it doesn't hurt as much as it did the last time he'd said Jothees name.
"You're here for the wrong season," Toby finally says. "To understand Americans, you've gotta see the Yankees."
John grins. "Southern boy. 'Fraid it was mostly fast cars and footballs in my family."
Toby starts to explain the rules of baseball and D'Argo interrupts. "I know them all," he says. "They make more sense than paper beating rock."
Toby nods.
"D'Argo pitches well," Aeryn says, picking up the corn with her fingers and eyeing it dubiously. "But he can't hit to save his frelling life."
Toby looks at them with a sort of banked awe, a half-hearted enthusiasm that he's trying hard to couch.
"You played baseball in space."
"Not technically in space," Crichton says, and it's the first time Toby sees the man give a real smile.
"We can show you," D'Argo says, and John nods his permission. "It's not Wrigley Field, but it's home."
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Date: 2006-11-03 02:00 am (UTC)You're the best, hon. Just the best. Endless invention.
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Date: 2006-11-03 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-03 02:00 am (UTC)Blue Eyes
Date: 2006-11-05 12:33 am (UTC)Read Blue Eyes.
Brilliant. I loved it. So many excellent ideas; I loved the way the story unfolded so logically, the mixture of unexpected turns followed by sequences which just had to happen the way they did. I've just quoted a few parts below:
"There had never been love on her end, for him at least. But she'd loved Talyn enough that it felt shared."
I love your analysis of Aeryn and Crais' relationship, which is such a fascinating one. The idea that their shared love and wonder for Talyn binds them in a unique way is just perfect.
"John and Aeryn had always seemed convinced that their affections were a secret, both from each other and the rest of the crew, but it was impossible to keep those kinds of secrets when moments in their company could feel like violations of privacy. "
Beautiful. A subtle and yet very powerful, and I also think very accurate, way of expressing their particular bond.
"She whispered, "Later," right before their lips met."
Now that's a perfect line, and it stayed with me for a long time.
"The anger rose - anger at fate, if it existed, at circumstances, at John for careening into Tauvo Crais' Prowler so many cycles ago and ruining her life."
I love the fact that she's still angry with John for existing after all this time.
"[Katralla] shook her head, and he gripped her hand. "John, we don't have a baby anymore," she said softly."
This whole sequence was just mind-blowing - just as psychedelically freaky as seeing the bizarro cast in "Won't be Fooled Again", and such a great way of developing the whole Scorpy thing. So cool that this time Aeryn does save him! I also liked the whole plot of Katralla vs the baby; I really had no inkling of how it would all turn out.
"He watched her walk away, and looked down at the pages of equations, the rush of wormholes broken by a kiss."
Fuck it, that's brilliant!
"She was starting to understand that her dreams for her child could be meaningless in the face of her child's dreams for herself, but that sat uneasily with her."
Great analysis of Aeryn as a mother.
"She smiled at him, touching his hand, keeping him close. "I've done some good things," she answered, angling her cheek into his palm. "I'm proud of my life."
Wow. What a twist - a punch to the gut. Incredibly moving, more so because we - the readers - are reliving two deaths in one, making it doubly powerful, doubly painful.
"When the ship landed, settling down on the surface with a whoosh and a thump, they both sat there silent and stunned, ignoring the pilot, looking at each other, looking through and past until finally Anix couldn't stand it any more, and stood, hitting the release to the pod as she strode forward. The door opened, unfurling the stairs in a hiss of steam and she walked down them, not looking back."
What a fantastic expression of the change in this character, changes which happened in spite of herself.
"I love you," Aeryn said, quiet and fierce. "That doesn't change, Anix. Nothing changes that. Love isn't that transient. No matter what happens, no matter what I do or you do, or what happens in this kingdom or in this war, I love you. Leaving you has never, ever changed that."
I really love the cycle that is their particular story. It's a mirror, a distorted reflection of the John/Aeryn relationship, the necessity of their separation and coming together and the pain of it all and having to accept and forgive it all.
"I don't know kid," he said. "I think we just keep going."
Whoah. What an ending. What a necessary and perfect and infuriating ending.
Great stuff - thanks for putting the work into re-editing it for newbies like myself! It's definitely been worth the wait.