In honor of Gaia... fic departing the fandom.

[icarus]

As you all must have heard by now, gaiaanarchy is posting her last unfinished SGA fics and leaving the fandom. Usually when I read dramatic departures, well, I remember my friend Red who left an old forum of mine. Annually. But Gaia I believe because her motivating forces are pretty strong (a 29,000 word story and only one review? Ouch). And she's also putting her WIPs out on the front lawn as a sort of SGA yard sale -- without the tags that read "50 cents or best offer."

I'm not departing the fandom but I do have a WIP to put out on the front lawn. Or rather, part of a WIP. But it is complete. In a way. At least... you have the ending. It's been in front of you the whole time, like that Easter Egg that's in the most obvious place that no one ever finds.

A year ago I wrote a story called Last Port Of Call. It was only the first part of a (roughly) 24-part long fic. There was a storm of controversy at the time with a lot of interesting feedback that would probably make my year if I were doing a thesis in Psychology and Gender Relations. I had enough material for a guaranteed A, I'm sure of it.

I never told anyone (well, okay, I told auburnnothenna) but at the same time I posted it (and by same time, I mean the same day), I also posted my story outline for the rest of the story.

Yep. That's right. I gave away the rest of the story. Without telling anyone that's what I did.

You see, when I told people that I knew that they'd like Last Port Of Call as a whole once it was complete -- I really knew. Because the same people who hated the first part loved the story outline. Yes, I do know, because you reviewed it and you told me you loved it. (ETA: It took a tremendous amount of discipline on my part to not point this out to you guys at the time, to put the story first before winning an argument. But I'm writer first and foremost and I'm not going to spoil my own reveal, no matter how tempting.)

The story outline was About 10 Days Before The Wraith Attack.

I even used a little of the same dialogue. I thought for sure that would give it away.

Part of why I posted the outline was that I was afraid the story was so big, and so difficult, that I would never finish it, and I wanted everyone to know the end. At the same time, I didn't admit it because I still wanted to give Last Port Of Call the good ol' college try. After I posted them I thought, "Okay. I'm going to have a little fun with this." I planned to post Last Port Of Call as a WIP and see who figured it out. (There was one person who did just from what I posted, noting with tongue-in-cheek that it was the same premise with even the same dialog. Ding-ding-ding, you win a prize, you smart cookie.)

It was going to be cool because About 10 Days Before The Wraith Attack was John's perspective with 20/20 hindsight, his gloss of events, while Last Port Of Call was the LP of what really happened. Both were going to be written from a very tight John viewpoint. It started to turn into an interesting exploration of memory and how we re-write it in hindsight.

But after the storm, I found that the story had changed in my mind. There was a fierce demand to write Rodney's point of view and I felt a need to defend the story rather than writing it as I intended. I wrote a second chapter... and it came out from Rodney's point of view, which really wasn't the story but rather an answer to the unhappy women who criticized it. It had changed and... wasn't that exploration of memory any more. It shrank and became just what people wanted. It made people happy. Gave those who needed to see Rodney's perspective what they wanted. But I'd lost the structural integrity of the story.

So here you go. Here's the ending of Last Port Of Call.

Comments

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

(This thread is like a really looong IM chat... *g*)

Really. Real time! (Till now.)

In short...everybody is going to get Jossed, big time.

That's a big part of it. Another friend pointed out that we went into a fic slow down while two major challenges were being prepared: sga_bigbang and mcshep_match.

I don't think the show will go away; it will just change. And I have no problem with that either. TPTB can do what they want; and they seem fine letting us do what we want, which is a relief.

It's true. The Stargate people have never had an issue with the fans and fanworks.

Apparently the Sci-Fi channel is under pressure from their owners to buy fewer outside shows (like MGM's Stargate) and run more of their own. Stargate's future will depend as much on the ratings of Sci-Fi's own shows as it does on Stargate's ratings. I hope the show will make it seven seasons, even if the last seasons are a little weak.

About Bailing Out Authors Who're Getting Attacked - Positive Steps

Further up thread... thinking about the systems in place for helping authors who are being clobbered over PC-ness... it doesn't really work to dive into the mess on their behalf. Fanfiction is supposed to be -- at least for me -- fun.

Plus, the reason for the attacks is to give the attacker a platform for their opinion. The longer it goes on the longer they can pump out their message.

I hope that you'r right, that it's just individuals who do this and they're losing interest.

I think what I'm going to do is whenever a story is getting trashed (again) because of someone's personal politics, I'm going to recommend the story. Sign up for stargateficrec and recommend it there. Link the author to the rec so they can see it. And encourage other people to do so.

It would be a gentle protest to counteract what's going on without giving the political protester any more of a platform.

Icarus