Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days of auld lang syne?
And days of auld lang syne, my dear,
And days of auld lang syne.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days of auld lang syne?

I’ve been voting a bit in the ASC Awards for auld lang syne. I don’t watch ENT or DS9, so I’ve mostly skipped those categories. There’s some TNG by Lori and Alara I missed this year, and the whole category is quite small so I’m going through it now. Things won’t really heat up until the weeks of TOS and VOY, which somehow got scheduled together.

Many of the old Trek people are nowhere to be found in this year’s awards, and so far nothing has gotten the dried-up Trek fic juices running again. Retirement suits me just fine, thanks.

Occupied territory of the day: al-Andalus

I’m back from the deep, dark swamps of Southeastern Massachusetts. I got a ride home, so now I have a leftover “get out of Fall River free” card (otherwise known as a return ticket) from Bonanza Bus Lines. They should be paying me to go there. But I digress…

I don’t usually think about the feedback I’m not getting, but when my site stats came back up recently after months of being AWOL for an upgrade I was surprised all over again at just how little feedback people send when they think I’m not looking. My standard estimate is 1% feedback - that is, one piece of email per 100 readers - but that estimate is a bit high. In some cases the rate is more like 1 in 500, or 1 in 1000. My latest story has received not a single feedback out of over 200 hits, and it was a good story, if I do say so myself.

So I started wondering, how can it be that some people get so much feedback they don’t have time to answer it, and other people get nothing? To what, exactly, does an order of magnitude more feedback correspond - a name that’s an order of magnitude bigger? An army with ten minions for every one of mine? Ten fan friends for each of mine? A story that’s ten times better?

To answer that question, I’d have to know where all that feedback was coming from. There are two kinds of feedback in the fan world: potlatch fb and unsolicited fb. If you know that certain actions (such as posting to a mailing list) will inevitably bring you feedback no matter the quality of the fic, you can assume the fb is potlatch. On the other hand, if you post a story anonymously (say, in a blind contest) and get feedback for it, that’s unsolicited feedback. Everything in between is suspect. And if you hardly know with your own fic whether the feedback you get is spontaneous or a result of a complex network of fannish obligations and feedback guilt, how can you know what the BNF’s are getting?

It’s almost impossible to get an honest piece of fb in fandom. Even newbies get fb that’s intended to rope them into the potlatch rather than express how the reader really felt about their fic. People who aren’t involved in the potlatch generally don’t send any feedback at all. They’re going to archives and reading your fic and you never even know.

Sure there are rec sites, contests, and the occasional slightly picky archive, but there are no real rewards for quality the way there are for quantity. (Anyone who thinks fb numbers are a reflection of quality should take a look around fanfiction.net.) Fb is just one of the many rewards for quantity.

I forgot to mention the first time I phoned it in that my phoning in inspiration was Richard Dean Anderson. In TV, as in parenting, there’s just no substitute for being there. What I’ve seen of seaon 7 so far has disturbed me with its lack of RDA. When he is on screen, he seems out of it, like an Ascended Daniel who can’t quite figure out whether he’s still in the cast or not. I strenuously object to the de-Mulderization of the show. I hate being strung along with crumbs of Jack. I want Jack back full-time.

And then there’s “Grace.” I have to agree with KC on this one - the episode dragged like a paralyzed spice worm in Great-great-great-great-granchildren of Dune. I meant to check the credits to see who the writer was because the writing was so bad, especially when Sam was dictating her logs. Dangling modifiers, poor word choice, and a stunningly obvious mistaken use of “nebulae” for “nebula” might be excused by the concussion, but it didn’t feel that way while I was watching.

Speaking of which, nebulae are the kiss of death in science fiction. They make insultingly stupid movie physics look good. Real nebulae are, surprising as it may seem, nebulous. Even if you call them “gas clouds,” there are still certain physical properties they cannot have in the vacuum of space. They won’t hide you from Khan. They won’t form an entire new planet when you set off a genesis device in one. They most certainly will not glow like a neon sign, leak through your shields, stall your engines, or corrode your hull.

And by the way, what’s up with that hull and those shields and the impulse/warp drive (sorry, sublight/hyperdrive) and that ship full of people in blue pajamas? Did I miss the Frankenstein episode in which the fresh brain of Stargate was implanted into the stitched-together corpse of Enterprise? And the only things on this show that should be glowing are those beady Goa’uld eyes. It hurt me to have to listen to Sam, my Mulderless Scully who’d always been so rational and believable back in season 4, stand there and spout technobabble that was tired and old when Spock first said it.

So, as an episode, “Grace” was a wash for me because of the technical flaws. Yes, Sam works through a puzzle and a lot could be read into the clues, but I was too distracted by the problems. Why is Sam counting her rations? How the heck does she find the alien ship? Why does this feel like a bad episode of Voyager? And what about the alleged deep insight into Sam that I was promised? Where’s the Real Sam?

Well, I despaired of her for quite a while there. Sam’s interaction with Teal’c, Daniel, and Grace didn’t reveal anything about hidden Sams. All the shadow characters were completely in character, rather than showing us the Teal’c side to Sam, etc. For me there was only one redeeming element to “Grace,” and that was the shippy element, starting with Jacob’s appearance.

I wasn’t particularly pleased by Jacob’s without love you may as well toss yourself out an airlock attitude. I don’t think Sam really believes that - it’s the near occasion of death speaking. Sam’s beliefs correspond to what Jack says; it’s not Grace who’s Sam, it’s Jack. He openly admits to being a figment of her imagination. They have an obscure conversation that I at first put down to more bad writing, but the truth this episode is a lot like “Divide and Conquer” - a lot of silly tech nonsense surrounding a kernel of intentionally ambiguous ship. Jerie is definitely right about the Sam/Jack scene. They’re not saying what it sounds like they’re saying.

For one thing, Jack asks her what’s stopping you if you really wanna know? Even though for the rest of us this scene is about Sam finally admitting how she feels about Jack, after having her side of the story cut in both “Divide and Conquer” and “Beneath the Surface,” that’s not what it is for Sam. Sam knows how she feels and she only incidentally shows it by admitting that leaving the Air Force is an option and with her fantasy kiss. What Sam is forced to confront here is how Jack feels. She says I’d let you go right now if I knew. But honestly, even stumbling around hallucinating with a concussion, how can she not know? Everyone who’s ever watched the show knows how Jack feels about Sam. He admits he’s not that complex. So Sam’s subconscious is more than enough to get her to face the fact that Jack loves her, to inform her that he’s not going to provide the easy out of letting her give up her career, and to assure her of his undying devotion. Even though she’s just psychobabbled herself into going after someone else, because she wants something more and she doesn’t know what else to do.

And so Our Hussy is born, though she’s not happy about it. That leaves me one last question: who is Grace? Some have associated Grace with the Christian notion of unmerited favor, but this is Stargate, not The Passion of the Christ. For me, Grace represents the Graces of Greek mythology, who personified splendor, mirth, feasting, joy, peace, and most importantly, happiness. They are also the attendants of Aphrodite. Grace brings food, sings songs, blows bubbles, and says we need to talk - but when it comes down to talking, Grace turns into Jacob and talks about love.

So Grace isn’t the cloud - the cloud is just another badly-written sci-fi nebula. Like the other hallucinations, she’s Sam, but while Teal’c, Daniel, and Jacob are Sam giving herself grief, and Jack is Sam trapped in her impossible emotional circumstances, Grace is a happy Sam. Grace is Sam’s inner hussy.

Writing link of the day: Turkey City

Fanfic is, generally speaking, easier to write than original fiction. The main problem of writing fanfic is keeping in character. You don’t have to create the characters or the setting, and in many cases you don’t even need to describe the characters or the setting. Blah, blah, blah, Ginger - we call it meta because we’ve heard it all before. The fanfic shortcut to character and setting are so familiar that they obscure another fanfic shortcut - the low road to plot.

I was meditating in the bathtub over my folders full of unfinished original stories, most especially the one I need to finish by Friday, and how sad they seem by comparison to my slim selection of abandoned fanfic. In almost all cases, I abandoned the original stories because I couldn’t figure out what happened next, and I abandoned the fanfics because I didn’t want to take the time to write what happened next. Why did I never have plotter’s block with fanfic?

The majority of my fanfics involve getting X and Y together, so I always know what the story is working towards. Everything in the story functions toward that end. Shippiness isn’t the only easy fanfic plot out there, though - my drabble motivation, write 100 words about the episode, is also sufficiently restrictive to squeeze a plot out almost every time. Episodes can always use fixing, and challenges are a dime a dozen if you can’t think of a shippy plot on your own. The show provides its own plot-inspiring restrictions - we’re low on replicator rations, we need to get back to Earth, have you fought the Goa’uld today? It would be hard not to find plot material in seven seasons of details major and minor. Fanfic is an orgy of cheap and easy plotting.

The majority of my original stories start with an idea in a setting. I get as far as tossing one major character in there, and there he sits, holding the idea and looking original. He may stroll around the setting for a few scenes before I realize that I don’t know where he’s going. With absolutely no restrictions, I don’t know where to start. The simple solution is to make some restrictions, but that’s just as hard as the plotting itself.

By comparison, setting is easy and even character is doable - you can always plagiarize real people’s personalities or keep the story short and undemanding on the characters. Ideas are a dime a dozen, and if you don’t think so you can recycle those from other people’s stories. The trouble is plot.

The muse finally came up with a plot for my poor wandering character - I just had to trap her in the bath where she couldn’t surf or otherwise amuse herself - and of course couldn’t write it all down. I’ve found that relaxation is the only way to get work out of her. She has the bed/bath/bus problem of creativity, and I wonder if it means something deep about the human mind.

But that’s just an idea, and what I need are plots.

Lego link of the day: The Portland Lego Brickfest at Wired
Filk musical of the day: Once More With Hobbits

I’ve finished off season 4 of Stargate with drabbles for “Double Jeopardy” and “Exodus”: Double Take and A Fateful Trip. On the long side, my new AU fic, A White Dove, clocks in at 7,500 words. It’s set in season 7 (though there are no real spoilers since I haven’t seen any of season 7) and it’s unrelated to the previous two AU fics. This is also my first not entirely sappy or parodic or bitter Stargate fic of over 100 words.

Note that I said not entirely. The cool thing about AU’s is that you can kill the characters over and over and over again, and there will still be spares in some other universe. (You can take that as a summary of the story.)

I’ve been following a kerfluffle about a writer who mentioned an unfavorable review to her fans, who in turn went forth and challenged the review. The kerfluffle itself is fairly simple - I’d never tell my mailing list about an unfavorable review. I think it’s iffy enough telling them about contests I’m entered in (because the implication is go and vote for me), but I figure that if they like my fic they’d like similar fic. It’s a public service announcement.

The kerfluffle led to a couple of discussions of what a Mary Sue is. Everyone can spot your basic Flaming Mary Sue: purple eyes, flowing locks, super powers, beloved by all, saves the ship, dies tragically at the end, etc., etc. But other definitions of Mary Sue are more controversial. To some people, any OC is a Mary Sue (or if male, a Marty Stu) by analogy, because all OC’s detract from the canon characters to some extent, just as Flaming Mary Sue supersedes the canon characters in all respects.

To me, canon characters can themselves be Mary Sues: when Seven saves the ship without needing anyone else’s help, she’s a Mary Sue for Brannon Braga. He didn’t want to deal with an ensemble show, so he tossed Seven in there and everything after that happened in relation to her. Likewise Wesley Crusher, to whom Gene Roddenberry gave Marty Stu superpowers so that eventually he had to ascend to a higher plane of geeking. And that’s just in canon - fanfic writers can also take the canon characters and turn them into authorial insertions.

Speaking of which, I don’t consider “authorial insertion” to be the primary definition of Mary Sue, and for that reason I don’ t think Yenta Sue (the name is from Rana Bob’s Field Guide to Mary Sues), the matchmaking Mary Sue of slash fandom, is a Mary Sue at all, unless she befriends all and saves the ship while she’s matchmaking. I’ve written too many matchmakers into my fic (both alien and canon characters) to disown them now as Mary Sues.

Yenta Sue is clearly an authorial insertion. My purpose in writing schmoop fic is to match up two characters (of opposite sex, but I don’t think the slash case differs in any important respect). Anyone who participates in the matchmaking activity, be it Tom Paris or Seven of Nine or Q or a convenient planetful of matchmaking aliens is acting transparently on my behalf as author. Calling Yenta Sue Crewman Pereira or Jemiminika the Alien doesn’t make much difference.

You might say that Jemiminika the Purple-eyed Alien is an authorial insertion while Tom Paris is not, but I don’t have purple eyes or superpowers and I don’t save the planet on a regular (or even semi-regular) basis. Real authorial insertion isn’t that common in fandom, though you do find the authorial narrative voice in those annoying inline notes (i.e., Isn’t Legolas SO cute!!!) and author-turned-character in I’m Janeway’s Teenage Daughter fics.

So there are three different sorts of Sue here:

1. Flaming Mary Sue: the impossibly perfect character
2. Yenta Sue: the character who acts on the author’s behalf
3. Me Sue: the direct authorial insertion

I don’t think they overlap nearly as much as they’re made out to. Of all of them, only Flaming Mary Sue is prima facie bad writing, because the character is by definition all out of proportion to the milieu and genre. Yenta Sue is merely a stock character there to push the plot along. Me Sue could be anywhere - how would you know? Do you know the author so well that you can tell when she appears in her own fic? I don’t.

I’m not quite sure what WIP amnesty day is all about, but here’s a UFO (that’s unfinished object - I make no claim that it’s in progress) I’ll probably never finish. I issued a Leatherclad Challenge at some point, to get Chakotay back into his Maquis duds. Somehow this AU set in first season was supposed to accomplish that.

The Nines by Jemima (VOY, UFO, Season 1/”Survival Instinct”) 7/03

No one would have guessed they were drones by looking at them. Yes,
there was an eerie coordination to their movements as they strolled
down the wide thoroughfare of Llan Station, but theirs was not the
flesh-defying mechanical precision of the Borg. The unity of the four
humanoids was more like the discipline of an elite military squadron.
A passer-by might notice an almost decorative flash of metal on a neck
or hand, but the Collective’s callous disregard for the humanoid form
was nowhere in evidence.

As the figures turned aside at the entryway of a shop, the Human’s
motions were not quite human, nor the Bajoran’s exactly Bajoran. A
member of Species 571 would not have claimed this quartet, nor would
the former comrades of the fourth humanoid have recognized their own.
They disconnected the credit register with swift, accurate motions
that could as easily have belonged to a ring of thieves as a crew of
repairmen.

Their oddness did not disturb the inhabitants of the space station,
who were mainly members of species 482, 390 and 207, with a smattering
of 133, 797, the ever-popular 218, and unidentified visitors. To the
locals, they were merely four more aliens employed to service the
station’s decaying infrastructure. It would take a human to spot
Seven’s inhumanity, and a purported Bajoran to call Three spiritless.

(more…)

As you may have noticed from the screenshots in my previous quantum mirror entry, the controller for the quantum mirror changed between the two QM episodes. Since they’re two different controllers (one from our reality, one from Samantha~’s), that’s not much of a problem.

However, in the process of trying to use the little gold doohickey on the quantum mirror, I noticed that the mirror itself changed between episodes. Since it’s supposed to be the same mirror in both eps, that is a problem. Mirror #1 (in “There But…”) is more rocky and irregular in shape. Mirror #2 (in “Point of View”) is smoother and has much more regular border around the reflective surface. Compare the first mirror shot and the beach planet mirror shot in my previous QM entry to see what I mean.

The big problem for me was that the doohickey went away in Mirror #2, but I really wanted a doohickey for technobabble purposes. But then I figured out that the doohickey was just a label, like the other artifacts had. Now I have no doohickey at all.

I can’t believe I read the whole thing - not that I did, but I tried. Voting in the Sam/Jack Fanfiction Awards closes tomorrow. You can find links for the fics on the nominations page - quite a few of them are broken, but you can track those down with Google. I’ll link some of my favorites, though.

Categories never work for me. I came up with ties in a couple of them, where the two best stories have very little in common besides the categorization. So I’ll just forget the categories and talk about the fics according to size or other notable similarities.

When given a choice between long fic, episodic fic (to be explained later), and vignettes, I prefer it long. At least, it impresses me more if it’s long, since it’s much more difficult (for me) to keep a big plot going. So first off, the notable long stories: “Sleepers” by Alli Snow, which I’d read before, “Counterbalance” by Sally Reeve for mini-me action, and “Skipped Stones” by TereC, a three-part story under series which had some interesting AU action before the h/c got out of control. “4+1=5-2″ by Jo R. had a good plot, “Retribution” by Suz Voy was long for her, “Until the End of the World” by Ruth M. King was only partially marred by the pervasive evil bad guy h/c subplot, and “Future Imperfect” by Sally Reeve isn’t bad for angst.

By episodic fic I mean little freestanding vignettes strung together into a story. Like the reams of h/c, the proportion of episodic fic was a surprise for me as an ickle newbie SG fic reader. I prefer something with a bit more cohesion and subplot, but I still enjoyed a few of these. My favorite was “Veils of Reality” by SelDear, an AU series of twelve or so vignettes from different AU’s - though I never really picked up on the thread that was supposed to hold them together. The “Dark and Stormies” series by Michelle V. and Jojo was a hilarious parody. For the more standard romantic episodic series, I liked “Remedied” by Suz and “A Matter of Tact” by Jojo. “Spoken” by Suz Voy also had that strung-together feel for me, despite being all on one page and having a good plot twist.

Of course actual episode additions and revisions abounded. Most notable were “Once in a Lifetime” by Michelle V. (2010), “Surface Tension” by Sally Reeve (Beneath the Surface), and “Opportunity Lost” by Jojo (Window of Opportunity). If that’s not enough, there’s also “Passing the Test” by Alli Snow (Entity), “Shattered” by Claira (100 Days), “Vigil” by Nanda (Metamorphosis), and “Trust Me” by Wendy Parkinson (Message in a Bottle).

And then there were the real short stories, like “Light to Dark, Dark to Light” by CGB, “Together” by splash_the_cat, “Things We Can’t Say” by Suz Voy and “Swinegate” by Sadler and O’Neal. See also “Chronology” by AJ, “Rules of Engagement” by splash_the_cat, “Squee!” by Suz Voy again, and “Noticing” by Claira.

There were a couple of metafics that I loved, as well. They weren’t metafic proper but short stories that played with language: “Euphemism” by splash_the_cat and “Miscommunication” by Michelle V. All that reading was worthwhile to find those two. The list above is not everything I finished, or even everything I liked, just the top of the heap by an unscientific measure. Now I can go forth and vote.

Last entry, I was curious what had become of the quantum mirror. Jerie reminded me that There But For the Grace of God was the first QM episode; Point of View was the second and last to date. So here’s what I discovered by rewatching them:

[Warning: Spoilers for quantum mirror episodes]
In “There But…,” SG-1 find the quantum mirror in an alien lab on P3R-233.
Daniel touches the mirror, transferring himself to an alternate reality. The mirror flashes white for a moment. He describes the sensation: “When I touched the mirror, there was this…this surge, it was like getting an electrical shock, just for a second.” Daniel brings the controller through with him.


[gratuitous controller shot]

The controller gets blown up, either with the conference room or with the SGC on the alternate Earth. The mirror is still on and pointed at the correct universe when Daniel returns to P3R-233, and he makes it home.

In “Point of View,” we see that the quantum mirror from P3R-233 has made its way to Area 51. It appears to be off when we first see it, but it flashes on when Samantha~ points her controller at it from her reality. She brings the controller through. She and Kawalski are caught and brought to the SGC, where it becomes apparent that Samantha~ is suffering from entropic cascade failure at the cellular level because there’s already a Sam in this universe. Entropic cascade failure sets in after 48 hours.


[death by technobabble]

Samantha~ must be returned to her own reality, so we get to see the controller in action. Since the mirror was turned off, it lost its place and Daniel needs to find the correct universe again. This involves a lot of grimacing at the controller and noticing small differences like where your last hand grenade blew up or Carter being a captain instead of a major.


[another gratuitous controller shot]

There are supposed to be a nearly infinite number of realities, for each decision made in each reality. Daniel ought to have an infinite amount of work to do, but the controller senses nearby realities. (Hey, I don’t write ‘em.)
Another important technical point we see during Daniel’s exploration is that the mirrors don’t have to be in the same place. In the correct universe, the mirror has been brought to a small room with nothing in it and a wall outside the door. In Samantha~’s universe, the mirror is in a crowded storage closet with a direct view down the hallway. Daniel even comes across a beach planet in his grimacing:


[uninhabited beach planet]

All’s well that ends well, but what happens to the mirror afterwards? General Hammond gave an order: “…upon your return I want that quantum mirror destroyed.” In “There But For…,” Daniel speculated that the mirror might be made of naqahdah, so it’s not entirely clear how it could be safely disposed of, if it was.

What happens to the controller? There’s no sign of it when Daniel is captured by Jaffa, but the mirror appears to be off. It fails to show up at any point later in the episode. Who dialed the mirror to get SG-1 home? If you ask me, Daniel looks guilty as he leaves the alternate reality. There are all sorts of big pockets in his BDU’s and backpack…


[What has it got in its pocketses?]