Off the prompt "cuddles."

669 words.

( so this probably qualifies as the first scene of the plot-device-turns-Steve-into-a-woman story, fair warning for medium asinine Tony )

Scribbled out another 646 words of Darcy and Loki fic. I have almost gotten to the punchline of the first scene. At about 1600 words of scene. (Total wordcount for the entire file, mostly outline: 9146. AND THAT IS ONLY FOR THE CON FIC, NOT THE WEDDING FIC.) Whyyyyy.

( small teaser )

Also, I edited a cut of the song I'm vidding for (hopefully, if I get it done in time) Escapade. Yay! Cut it down from 3:17 to 2:24 and I think it works, it's tight, it doesn't leave me too much room to flail around and cry about how I'm vidding from trailers instead of a whole movie. (Oh my god, can we sync up AO3 and reality and cause the Avengers movie to already be out, SERIOUSLY.) And I think it sounds good!

I nearly went to go see Cap at the dollar theatre again for... focus. (Since you know, I have the DVD. But the theatre is something else.) I didn't because my head is a mess and I didn't feel like dealing with pure, unadulterated Steve. Augh, I wish I didn't have such a complicated relationship with characters, sometimes.

...I need a Darcy icon.

So I signed up for that. I'm less concerned about how will I manage to write something for it given that my dear santa letter hit 2K. I, I kind of want to post it. As an illustration of my own ridiculousness.

On the other hand: it is entirely probable that I'll have a plotbunny run away on me and try to hit 10K. Won't that be fun, kids!

I enjoy playing the google ads game, where I look at what ads google puts on fanfiction I write myself in email and go "I don't see how this connects unless it is a rather unlikely plot suggestion." Today's plot suggestion: I think gmail is rooting for Stephanie Rogers and Natasha Stark to get married, as there was an ad for Women-Marrying-Women weddings. I've read that story, Google! I could link you!

So I put all the bits of V60 I've written in one doc and outlined the scenes in between that still need wrote and came up with a current total of ~8300 words. I think that means I still have a long way to go, but it feels less terrifying now that I can identify all the scenes. On the other hand it feels more terrifying that I identified places where I was like "if Matt knows X AND Y, why has he not pennydropped on the whole grand scheme yet?" and also: I can't figure out the order their fates get decided in (Matt, Danny, Harriet, Harriet's baby, Harriet's husband...probably reverse order, except Matt still comes before Danny).

At some point I guessed the whole thing would be about 30,000 words, and I think I'm still right, based on the ratio of what I've written to what I still need to write.

I realized that only one scene I've written is from Danny's POV, and I'm trying to figure out if I want to correct that by swapping over some other scenes or by dropping that scene and having Danny tell Matt about it later. The second sounds easier except for how there's one more scene later that's Danny off doing stuff that Matt doesn't know about, that I don't know how I'll deal with. Maybe he knows Danny went to see Count Vorkosigan but not what came of the meeting, because he's too involved with the Appalling Secrets eating his brain?

I feel like the ending needs some kind of bow tied on top. I don't know what that could be yet.

All of the stuff with Count and Countess Vorkosigan is yet to write. In case you were wondering, Cordelia continues to inflict total awesomitude on Barrayar despite its pleas for mercy. She has a plan to sneakily slip past the Council a bill that would essentially provide a way for any woman on Barrayar to get access to a uterine replicator on the Imperium's dime. Matt is quite impressed when he figures that one out. Also it's probably going to result in marriage law reform. *cough*

Then there's foodness and cluebat to write, and I never did find a place to fit in the detail about Byerly, but it may not be relevant. Also I have to find a way for some detail of Danny's family backstory to tie into the thing Matt is solving as an inspiration, like a "right, Barrayarans are fucking backwards! got it" moment or something, so I can have an excuse to insert that backstory. Maybe what constitutes a mutant at different classes--Danny's family kept his sister, whereas Harriet's mother-in-law killed her daughter.

I want a new default/writing icon. Thoughts/requirements: female character in a current or enduring fandom of mine, preferably in the act of writing or drawing, although I am also considering the thought of text tattoo (text need not be English/Latin alphabet, though I would like to know what it says). Studio 60 is in my brain a bit, so I thought about Matty at his computer (an icon saying "I am eating it" would crack me up) but fairly rapidly determined that no, I really did want a woman, and none of the women from Studio 60 speak to me emphatically enough for default icon material. Then I considered Supernatural and I went poking for Ruby and spell diagrams or devil's traps or something but I think most of that is elided out. I have a reasonable shot of Anna and a blood sigil, but a) Anna makes my brain hurt and b) she looks really freaked out, which is non-ideal. I'm halfway contemplating an icon of Pam looking over her shoulder laughing at Dean about her "Jesse forever" tramp stamp, but a) I dunno what I think about using, for this purpose, ink that outlived its purpose, and b) I'm not that big a Pam girl. I remembered Lady Gaga has a ton of ink, but curiously the cinematography in her videos doesn't fetishize it. (For instance, I am not sure I will ever figure out what she has on her left shoulder.) I am most interested on the long German text she has on her inner arm, partly because I'm mostly likely to get it in frame with her face, and partly because of what that text is--a Rainer Maria Rilke quote, "In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?"

Okay, so far, images I'm considering (that I would probably want to add text to)--
http://jmtorres.dreamhosters.com/images/jesseforever.jpg
http://jmtorres.dreamhosters.com/images/germantat.jpg
http://jmtorres.dreamhosters.com/images/recliningtat.jpg

Any thoughts on other characters that might suit my criteria, or other places to find images of the strong contenders that might suit my criteria?

All of which is in aid of (because one must have the appropriate icon for the post):

I feel like my brain is roiling with epic WIPs lately and I want to note them all (and give anyone who wants opportunity to um, encourage anything they like).

---

Vorkosigan 60, which really ought to get a proper working title for the story as opposed to the 'verse. I went back looking for records of ever talking about this, and I don't think I managed to properly explain it to my journal any time in the three years I've had the bunny. See, back in... early 2007, I think, is when I broke and let niqaeli show me Sorkin's meta RPF crack, there were odd bits about how Danny ran the show like, um, the whole machiavellian control freak manipulation of the focus group data to make Matt start fighting back about politics in his writing, and the exchange regarding intermittent power outages caused by a palm tree:

Danny: How much do I wanna know about this?
Cal: As little as possible.
Danny: 'kay.

So I had this thought that had me literally on the floor laughing, and if I remember right niqaeli ended right there with me while the boys of the household sort of... eyebrowed at us. That thought was that Matt and Danny would be good ImpSec officers.

That is basic concept of the fusion. Details have sorted out thusly: Danny's Barrayaran, a captain, in Galactic Affairs. He trains up agents to work as responsibly as if there is no safety net by attempting to convince them he is not actually paying attention to anything they do--so they'll get shit done because if they don't, it's not getting done. Illyan threw him mediocre agents to sharpen up in this manner. There's a fair number of agents who recall Captain Tripp with... fond terror. Matt is Komarran, Danny went to college on Komarr, met him, and sort of dragged him home. Matt is Danny's pet analyst and his specialty is spotting domestic assassination attempts using galactic resources. He sort of chews on invisible problems from both ends and then says "There, that shipment of phlebotinum, so and so's using that for this plot." It's a... heavily intuitive pattern recognition thing. He couldn't tell you how he picks out what's important, but once he's at the conclusion, he can point to all the data points that got him there, and he's right. It relies hugely on having reams of accurate, seemingly trivial data. The first time he gets really fouled up is circa Civil Campaign, because one of the reports he mines regularly for currents in high Vor society is Byerly's, and Byerly started falsifying/leaving many things out of his reports. Not that Dono was a mystery that would have concerned Matt much, just that Byerly's reports got sparse while he was covering for Dono.

There's two main plot threads to the story I'm writing--one is that Matt and Danny get split up, which neither of them copes with well. Illyan had some patience for their special partnership but management has recently changed at ImpSec, and not all the personnel details came to Allegre intact. And also: without yet knowing why he's off (Dono not yet revealed, the hole in the data not yet obvious) Matt has been off, so the apparent efficacy of his and Danny's partnership is tarnished. So Matt's getting transferred and Danny's trying to pull strings to get him back, which is... you don't go around department heads in ImpSec, really, you don't. You most certainly do not go to the retired former head of ImpSec and ask for a social introduction to a potential patron who could somehow intervene on your behalf with the Emperor, because that's who you have to go to if you're going over the current head of ImpSec. You don't do any of that. Unless you're Danny Tripp and completely co-dependent to the point that it uh, interferes with your judgement.

The other main plot thread is the mystery that Matt's trying to unravel with no good sense of what pieces he's missing. It centers on Harriet Vorhayes, née Vorrutyer (which is part of the reason Byerly's inaccurate reports are so crucial here; he's stopped reporting family gossip). Matty has been inappropriately hung up on the married Vor lady for a long time; not involved, just, Danny really wishes he would... not attempt to socialize with her. So while Danny indulges Matt's requests for more data about her, because Matt's hunches pan out nine times out of ten, Danny is also quietly headdesking about stalking goddamn Harriet of all people. (Harriet's family history is... of import, so out of not spoiling the nature of the plot Matt uncovers, I will not go into it here.)

The eventual intersection of the Harriet mystery and Danny trying to climb the Vor for a patron lands squarely on Gregor being Gregor at them. Gregor being quietly, intensely Imperial is quite possibly my favorite thing in the entire Vorkosigan universe, so naturally that's where the whole story I'm writing is aimed at. So that's what Vorkosigan 60's about. Heh.

---

The Haunting: A Comedy of Spirit is, approximately, an AU of season 6 of SG-1. (This is the season when Daniel was dead.) In this story, ascended Daniel just never leaves Jack alone. Jack is bitchy about this, Sam and Teal'c are concerned for Jack's sanity, Skaara would like to not have to be the one to break it to Jack that Jack and Daniel are kind of dating, and somehow Jonas ends up obsessed with vampires. I've written a chapter and a half and about two thirds of the outline, and that much story is twelve thousand words, seriously, what, how. I posted the first chapter two years ago, and I really would like to finish it. I started rewatching season six with my brother toward this end.

---

Kryptonian Neal, who needs a better working title. This is a White Collar/DCU fusion inspired by this image of Matt Bomer in Clark Kent glasses and some of Neal's more alien behavior--seriously, every time I watch the scene at Maria's house in "Book of Hours," where she leans in and he doesn't kiss her for like, two minutes, and in fact does not kiss her at all in that scene, despite her continually leaning right into his space--yeah, this is clearly Kryptonian touch taboo at work. *nods vigorously* There are two relevant entries where I discuss this story: a snippet about Neal's Kryptonian criminal record and a solicitation of which parts of DCU I should draw on.

---

Rubyverse, my AU of season 4 of Supernatural, which is actually two fucking epic stories, paired:

The first is primarily about Sam and Ruby's summer vacation. Its working title is something along the incredibly clichéd lines of "To Hell and Back" because the primary AU feature of this part of the story is that Ruby actually assists Sam in attempts to get Dean back from hell, up to and including storming hell via the devil's gate in Wyoming. They also do other dumb shit like call up the crossroads demon and fail to deal (almost exactly as shown in canon) and call up the Trickster and ask him to turn back the clock again. But the main feature is the trip to hell--the preparation for it, because they have to get the colt from Crowley to open the gate, and because it's a long journey requiring provisioning (I think they spend nine months under hill, which works out to like, two and a half days topside) as Sam can't eat or drink anything he didn't bring in with him, or he'll end up trapped there. Ruby leaves her body topside and in hell becomes apparent as the image of how she was when she died, which leads to interesting bits of backstory coming out (which conflict with other parts of backstory she tells to other people at other times, unless you know what I know, and you won't, because the one POV that will not be present in this story is Ruby's). Ruby feeds Sam a metric fuckton of her own blood in hell, to the point that he can black-eye voluntarily, in an effort to allow him to pass as demon to casual inspection, so they can travel in hell without getting caught. (Sam remains altered by this after they get out, and Dean gets out, much to Dean's dismay; however, the manner of blood-drinking matters a lot, and this Sam only drank Ruby's freely offered blood: he didn't slaughter unwilling demons or kill a nurse or even take of Ruby's unconscious host, because Ruby left her body topside and fed Sam direct from herself in hell. He was also not trying to gain the strength to control or kill demons, and intent matters. So Sam ends up with an uncomfortable amount of power that is not tainted the same way it is in canon.) They eventually do not break Dean out because Sam snaps and busts a few hundred damned, tortured souls out and draws the attention of who Ruby terms "the scary motherfuckers": fallen angels, of whom there are not that many, but they run hell, and really the only thing to do is flee. I know this story is told out of order and I'm playing with something as simple as the framing device of telling Dean what happened while he was down, interspersed with a short run of events immediately after they get him back (Ruby fucking with Dean, the process of figuring out who Castiel is, and Castiel meeting Ruby and being extremely baffled by her, because interrogation suggests that not only is she trying to prevent the apocalypse, she has feasible plans for doing so). The ending is where Sam and Dean meet Ruby-who-is-not-Ruby: the coma girl woke up, and Ruby vacated her body.

The second part is going by the working tile of "Janie, and Other Lost Lambs," and is about, among other things, just-awoken amnesiac coma girl, who goes by Janie, as dubbed by Ruby, short for Jane Doe. Janie makes a go of life away from the Winchesters and the apocalypse while Ruby rides a proper corpse (male, just to mess with Sam and Dean's heads). But Janie... she can't remember anything about her own life at this point, but she remember parts of what Ruby did in her body (so most of part 1, except for the actual in-hell bits, during which comatose Janie was left in Bobby's care, I'm pretty sure). And she ends up calling Ruby, because Ruby is all she knows. Eventually demons hunt Janie down and try to take her apart to figure out what the fuck Ruby is doing (not unlike what happened to Jimmy Novak), and when the boys and Ruby ride to her rescue, Ruby ends up riding Janie again on a more permanent basis, with permission and certain protections. Janie gets more involved in Ruby's plan to stop the apocalypse, which at this point involves fucking with the seal count to buy time. I have a handful of seals I know they mess with that I swear are not all designed to get certain rarepairs I want (Ruby/Cas, Janie/Jo, Cas/Janie, what have you...) and there is ongoing back and forth between Ruby and Cas about how possession functions (and the fact that Jimmy is so totally Cas's sub) and how seals are constructed and deconstructed. Janie's pre-coma identity is eventually determined, and it's relevant, but mostly as a thing Janie gives up when Ruby offers her the out again and Janie chooses to stick around to be part of the fight instead. Ruby makes the guys train Janie to fight in case Ruby herself is ever out of commission, which becomes useful sooner than Ruby was expecting when they need a Trickster and Gabriel's reaction to the curiosity that is the Ruby/Janie partnership is to poke hard and damage Ruby in the process. Crowley pops up again. Among my primary clusterfuck (Ruby, Janie, Sam, Dean, Cas and Jimmy) blood and sex get exchanged in various lines. Tattoos are acquired. There is a too clever plan about Lilith, and a less clever back-up plan that Ruby is not admitting to herself she is setting in motion, although Cas and Janie back her on it. There is noncon snuggling. Many people well-meaningly ask, with varying degrees of tact, Janie if she's okay being Ruby's host. The answer sort of fluctuates, but Janie chooses Ruby over other options again, and again, and again. Ruby pushes her, but Ruby offers her the out, too, because it's important that Janie choose--particularly because Ruby is a demon, and there are things she can't choose, and needs Janie to agree to choose for her. I am sort of dancing around not blowing the ending on this one, so I will sum up thematically instead: it's about the limits of free will and the power of choice.

---

*sits back and stares at screen* I've been working on that for four hours, and by the way, those are only the epic stories in my head. I have a ton of smaller bunnies, up to and including the wtf how did I end up with this one Misha/Dean twitterfic. I also have plans this weekend to bang through my prompts post, though I have decided for the sake of getting things flowing that for those prompts I will write what I'm inspired to write and not worry about whether it fits the prompt exactly or might not be what the prompter intended. I feel kind of guilty about it, but it wasn't a secret santa prompt collection and the point was to get me writing, so get me writing we'll do.

And now it might be time to sleep.

I appear to have written 1950 words of Iron Man (movie 1) fic, and show no signs of stopping.

Is anyone awake to audience?

Did I just write 870 more words of apparently there's going to be two epic stories in rubyverse, not just one instead of my paper?

One hour until I have to leave. Dean and Ruby can stop philosophizing about demonhood in my head now.

I think I finished the White Collar fic that ate my brain! I sent it off to one of my betas who's helped me beat on it, and if certain other people who've been alphaing want to see it, they know where to find me, and then I'm going to get dragonfly to have a look, she's not read it at all and doesn't know of my struggles with it, so her perspective should help, and then I might post it! Maybe even this weekend!

Word count's somewhere around 9400 words. At this point I amazed I got out under 10K. Seriously.

Now I'm going to get three hours sleep before I take the car in for service!

I once wrote 29,000+ words of really bad fanfiction. All in one story, there were other stories... It was a serialized WIP and about a third done. And it's. Really bad. I don't think I'll even be reading any of it, I just did the word count out of sheer morbid curiosity. This was nine years ago, I would have been... *checks date* 16. I uh. Scare myself.


jmtorres: oh *god.* some of my earliest fanfiction has resurfaced. I'm afraid to look
jetpack_monkey: Egads. What are we talking about here? How embarrassing?
jmtorres: I'm reading through one hand right now. this might be the story the Mary Sue me is in. oh god WEE ME WAS HORRIFYING. oh look! the first mary sue out of the ballpark is actually *my ex*
jetpack_monkey: Ouch. Ouch ouch ouch.
jmtorres: the one that niqaeli is hilariously protective of me whenever she comes up
jetpack_monkey: Aw.
jmtorres: oh holy crap did I really write *twenty-nine thousand words of this*?
jetpack_monkey: I'm guessing that yes, yes you did.

The story I wrote for unovis_lj got longer than comment length. Whoops. 1074 words.

Is set in the Torchwood happyverse, which is (named for making me happier, not for making the characters happier) an AU in which, among other things, Tosh and Jack get stuck in the past permanently. Also on AO3.

( prompt was Tosh, lost something )

Since last posting, I have gotten sleep (thought not by any means enough), finished Cetaganda (oh, Ivan, how I love you. Fingers cramping and speech slurred. Darling!), and wrote some Jack/Tosh. Sort of. Er. It was more pornographic in my head.

609 words. Episode 12 AU. Have not yet quite decided if this is in the happyverse or not. Also on AO3.

P.S. Dear Internet, I hate you too. Love, Jul.

( Jack bought a gramophone )

This is an Atlantis crossover written from a prompt, but for the sake of not revealing what it's a crossover with until whenever the reader may guess, I shall leave the rest of this note until the end.

977 words. Also on AO3.

( Read more... )

For dbzlives, I wrote a missing scene from Yendi.

498 words. Also on AO3.

( Read more... )

faile02 requested GetBackers boysex. I, er, sort of stretched the definition of "boy." Hope that's all right.

Happy birthday, faile02.

461 words. Spoilers for episode 25. Also on AO3.

( Read more... )

astrogirl2 requested a Farscape/Doctor Who crossover. 244 words. Spoils Farscape through the mini. No specific spoilers for Who. Also on AO3.

( Read more... )

613 words. Pre-book but spoils a thing that is plot point for both book and film. Also on AO3.

( Howl and Calcifer. )

I just got to thinking about this icon, and, er, yeah.

138 words. Spoilers through... uh... Boom Town? Sort of?

Also on AO3.

( Read more... )