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icarusAs you all must have heard by now, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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 toldauburnnothenna) 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.
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.
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Date: 2007-09-10 09:20 pm (UTC)My First Time (http://www.amazon.com/My-First-Time-Describe-Experience/dp/1555837697), edited by Jack Hart.
These are first hand accounts by various gay men of various ages about their first sexual experience. It's very hot, but mostly it steeps you in guys' attitudes towards sex and relationships. Some of these first times were romantic, some of them were traumatic, some of them were "peanut buttery," some were omes with their wives and a guy -- there's a huge variety.
I struggle to explain the differences between the way guys' approach sex and women do. I think that women slash writers need to read it to discover what they're projecting onto their male characters, because for every slash writer it'll be something different. Their own personal attitudes will vary. We need to see for ourselves what surprises us.
What surprised me was that the vast majority of these first time experiences were casual. The guys went straight from sexual interest to sex. The other thing was how fast it was, even between teenage boys. The other thing that surprised me was that the guys never expected a relationship, either before or after the sex. Not that there weren't relationships, there just was no expectation. The other thing that surprised me was that when it was with a friend, it was often a one-time thing and they were both relaxed about it afterward and the friendship continued even if one didn't want to do it again. If one or another of them freaked out it was always about rejecting being gay rather than feeling rejected that there was no committment.
I'm not sure of the reasons for this. I have vague theories about our culture and attitudes women imbibe, the risk women take both of societal censure and pregnancy, and then the psychological vulnerability of having someone inside you (very few men's first times were anal), the feminine narrative of sex being a "pinnacle" experience, while the male narrative is one of virility. I also think the fact that society tends to, um, not encourage relationships between men (to put it mildly) it's not an option on the menu. For gay men, the relationship is the risk, while for women the sex is the risk. Plus men can have the relationships they want -- with women. What's missing is the sex with men.
Icarus