lolmac | Entries tagged with egregious egotism

( How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all? )
If you aren’t familiar with LOLMac, or only vaguely: this is an image gallery. I post a new LOL every weekday.

There’s mouseover text on every LOL. (I've had people not notice until this several months along.)

I attribute every image and every idea other people give me, and I’m always on the lookout for new material. The archive is over 1200 items deep, and I recently started posting some of the older “classics” on Tumblr: icanhastofu.tumblr.com. Snurch at will, as long as you attribute! There are icon galleries for the snurching thereof.

Oh, and don’t forget to check for the mouseover text on each image.

Split Decision, Season 7 Screen Capture from:

rda_daily

( awful puns, crackfic, attributions and stuff )

I got married today. \o/
SQUEEEEEEEE

It’s LOLMac’s fifth LOLiversary!

For your enjoyment:( a walk down meme-ery lane )

One thing that's never in short supply, no matter how little else you have to work with.

Sharp-eyed regulars here will note several points of historic interest: ( of which I blather under the cut )

It’s LOLMac’s fifth LOLiversary!

For your enjoyment:( a walk down meme-ery lane )
One thing that’s never in short supply, no matter how little else you have to work with.

Sharp-eyed regulars here will note several points of historic interest:( of which I blather under the cut )

As most of you already know, prior to my cross-country move, I started a parallel journal,

bethinexile. During the move itself, I kept it invitation-only and locked down, since I was (for example) posting about the actual locations of two women traveling across the country by car, which isn't information I want to share in real time with the general populace.

The move is over and I'm now settling in on this side of the continent. Accordingly, I have unlocked the journal. I didn't post in as much detail as I had hoped, due to limited time and energy; I have more ruminations along those lines. Moreover, I will use that journal for future posts about my writing, as well as life in general. I will not be posting about writing to this journal any more (so the lineup of LOLs will no longer suffer interruptions).

So feel free to visit or Friend me over there as well! To get things nicely started, I just posted a set of ficlets over there, for multiple fandoms.

'Beth
December 2010

( that old DVD commentary memish thing )

Warning: long rambly personal writer-ly ponderations under the cut.

( Teal deer under here . . . )

So, um, yeah, I haven't been showing much progress on my word meter, and I'm not finished with chapter 14 yet. *cough cough* Remember the Wheaton/Scalzi fanfic writing contest, that I posted about at the end of May? Well, I finished my entry and submitted it yesterday. As of last night, I am officially No Longer Being Distracted By A Second Project, and I'm back to Mac.

In the meanwhile, the contest results won't be announced until some time in August, and in the interim, the contestants are being encouraged to post their stories if they so choose.

Before you attempt to read this, you might want to go back to Scalzi's blog and look at the picture again. Especially if you haven't seen it before. (True, in that case, you won't actually be 'seeing it again', but let's not get overly pedantic, okay?)

This may or may not be the crackiest thing I've done -- Doctor Who and the Hodge-Podge is certainly a contender -- but it must be close. I'm not even sure how much one can count it as RPF. It's more like Unreal Person Fic -- including the implausible set-up, with two real people saying, "Hey, write fic about us." (Followed immediately by the admonition "But no slash!") (Quickly modified to "No explicit sex! Non-sexual situations such as china shopping are okay, though.")

( Cut for length and possible toxic emanations . . . )

And yes, I'm back to finishing Reverb now. I promise!

. . . for a brief announcement:

I posted on Sunday about the writing contest I had entered, a prompt-challenge in John Scalzi's weekly column on science fiction movies.

The winner was announced this morning:

I WON.

Squeeeeee!!!!!

For icons!

All are free for the snurching. Please credit.

Well, I had a truly rip-roaring month on fanfic.net: I posted my very first Stargate fics -- two of them, totaling exactly 139 words (one sexy drabble and a silly joke item 39 words long) -- and observed with fascination that Stargate fic readers tend to behave like starved sharks when there's words in the water. I blew well past 1,000 hits for the month, which is phenomenal for me, especially considering that I haven't been doing this for very long.

And then, three days ago, a screeching halt. One hit a day. My over-inflated ego withers and sobs.

Is it just me, or did anyone else suddenly get flatlined? Given how well we know that ff.net never has technical problems, and is always timely with its acknowledgements of any glitches, and works speedily to resolve any technical issues . . . ("Wow, sarcasm. That's original . . . ")

The inestimable

katxander drew this for my birthday!

The perfect birthday card for a camel smuggler!!!

On Wednesday, Scalzi announced a writing contest in his regular AMC column, located here. Here's the gist:

"Below you will find a selection of writing assignments, based on various science fiction movies and/or science fiction filmmakers. Write up one or more, and put them into the comments below (one writing assignment per comment -- keep them short and punchy). Here's the juicy part: I'll select my favorite from the bunch and AMC will award its author a DVD set of the original The Prisoner. It's that easy! Have fun.

1. Write a brief monologue from the point of view of the creature who burst out of the chest of John Hurt in Alien.

2. Whilst visiting an alien world to collect plant samples, one of your crew ran afoul of the local sentient life, forcing you to cut short the mission and then subsequently mount a rescue attempt to retrieve said crew member. Write the discipline report for the crew member, whom the local sentients labeled as E.T.

3. Will Smith has agreed to do your next movie! Congratulations. Now pitch that movie to a studio executive. In addition to Smith, the movie must contain at least four of the following ten elements: A toothbrush; a small primate known as the Aye-Aye; a mad scientist; a robot who learns to love; shape-shifting zombie cats; a sexy podiatrist; a 1972 AMC Gremlin; Red Vines; a ticking time bomb; any one member of either Duran Duran or the Jonas Brothers, depending on your generational inclinations.

4. You are the founding member of the Jar-Jar Binks Reclamation Project who has come to the San Diego Comic-Con to spread the Gospel of Jar-Jar. You have one hundred fifty words to make your argument to the assembled masses. Go.

5. Similarly: you are at an academic film conference to give a presentation. The title of your talk? Uwe Boll: The Most Important Film Director of the Last Decade. Provide the synopsis paragraph of this talk, and/or recount how you escaped from the auditorium in which you gave the talk alive.

6. Write a short monologue from the point of view of The Terminator. NOTE: Due to circumstances beyond the filmmakers control, Arnold Schwarzenegger is not available to play the role of The Terminator. The role of The Terminator will instead be played by C-3P0. Please incorporate this fact into your monologue.

7. You are a screenwriter. Show us a short scene from your upcoming Matrix sequel, entitled Agent Smith: Telemarketer.

8. The movie Dune has been remade. The name of the newest version is Muad'Dib! The Musical, starring Hugh Jackman as Paul. You are a critic. Write the review.

9. Stung by the reviews of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen that describe the flick as being utterly without any redeeming qualities, director Michael Bay declares that the next Transformers movie will have a story and script based on one of the plays of William Shakespeare. In no more than two paragraphs, write a synopsis of that movie, using any Shakespeare play you like. NOTE: No fair using Titus Andronicus.

10. A group of science fiction sidekick characters have come together for their monthly support group/happy hour. The event takes place at TGI Friday's or some other moderately-priced restaurant chain. Provide us a glimpse of the transcript from that meeting."

---------------------------------------

( Click for my own entry )

Reverb is finished.

I completed and posted the Epilogue last week; I also did a very minor revision to the end of what used to be Chapter 15, the last chapter. Chapter 15 is now chapters 15 and 16, because the friggin' thing really was waay too long to be a single chapter.

For those who dislike WIPs and are eyeing me askance, muttering 'you said it was finished last time!!': nothing significant happened in the Epilogue; the plot really did wind up in the final chapter. The epilogue is, in fact, entirely gratuitous. But epilogues are fun, and there's nothing really wrong with 'gratuitous', is there?

( Gratuitous stuff . . . )

I haven’t done a weekend post for a while, because I’ve been off in the wilds of darkest Ohio, enjoying the lovely scenery. And on the rare occasions when I could stop looking at my partner, I even glanced out the window at the trees and stuff. Ahem. I did manage to get more reading and research done, and to get the first chapter of the new story fit to post. It’s now out in public here on fanfic.net, and in a spirit of egregious self-promotion I’m also posting the first half of the chapter under a cut here. Just to be a tease.

( Reverb )

And I’m in a quandary. I hate writing blurbs and summaries. I’m lousy at it. And this one is a particular dilemma: the whole opening sequence is basically one long reveal, leading up to what should be an unexpected situation (well, unexpected based on the usual range of Macfic, anyway). I’m chafing at the need to include a summary at all, but it’s expected and necessary for readership in the wild, heartless jungle of ff.net. (Or, as some apparently call it, The Pit.)

My first attempt at a summary came across, at least to me, as gruesomely pretentious. I’m not much keener on my second. Ack.

So anyone who’d be willing to read the first chapter and make summary suggestions would be doing me a monumental favour! I’ll even offer custom iconification to anyone who can help . . .

'Beth
September 2009

Or maybe that should be 'collaborateuse'?

As most folks know, I've been editing and betaing for

Lothi since about five minutes after I snuck into the Mac-verse (after picking a lock on a back entry). We've talked occasionally about actually collaborating, and ironically enough, we have finally done so -- not on MacGyver, but on The Man From UNCLE, Lothi's current new passion. Specifically, she started working on a mildly AU gapfiller to an episode with a rather lame ending -- okay, a totally lame ending -- and I ended up inviting myself along for the ride, so to speak.

Act I of "The Matriphobia Affair" is posted here on ff.net, or you can read it with pretty screen caps here on Lothi's LJ. Act II is under construction.

( more conspiratorialism )

Well, here's something to get the weekend started -- this is the last chapter of this story (well, novel . . . ).

There is still an epilogue to come, but no further cliffhangers. Those of you who have been waiting until it's finished can consider starting at this point; or wait till the epilogue is posted as well.

Anyone who still wants to make spoilery comments or discuss chapter 14, you can do so by clicking here.

Chapter 15 teaser:
( Rocks and trees and trees and rocks and assassins . . . )
Chapter 15 is posted here, and the story actually starts here.

'Beth
August 2010

SPOILER ALERT: I really recommend that you do not read this chapter out of sequence. Comments to this post are a Designated Spoilery Zone.

Here's the teaser, which is guaranteed to be spoiler-free:

Reverb

Chapter 14: Double Negative

Anne Moses, formerly Cooke, was in her late 70s now, and seemed frail and drawn; with her white hair and fine features, the resemblance to her daughter struck Mac immediately. She held out a blue-veined hand to him as he entered, escorted by the three Newfoundlands.

“How do you do, Mr. – MacGyver? Is that correct?” Her accent was English, rich and patrician. “Do I presume that you’re the same MacGyver who rescued my daughter when she was kidnapped?”

“Yes, ma’am – ”

“I wish you had come to see me then. I would have liked to thank you. Please, do sit down.”

She seated herself on the couch, and two of the dogs joined her, Eliphaz lying at her feet while Bildad, an evident favourite, climbed onto the cushions beside her. Mac settled into one of the chairs, and Zophar promptly lay down heavily on top of his right foot, threatening to cut off circulation. Mac reached down and ruffled the dog’s thick fur.

“Mrs. Moses, I’m real sorry about all this. It’s gotta be hard on you, having the past brought up.”

Anne simply bent her head slightly, a regal acquiescence. MacGyver drew a deep breath and hoped the dog lying on his foot wouldn’t change her mind about him when he started to say upsetting things.

“I presume this has something to do with Ashton?” Anne inquired softly.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Anne closed her eyes. “Mr. MacGyver, please tell me the truth. Was her death an accident?”

“Yes.”

Mac watched her open her eyes and breathe again, running a gnarled hand along the dog’s back. He wished he didn’t have to keep asking questions.

“Did the money stop coming after she died?”

Anne stiffened. Bildad raised his head and looked at Mac reproachfully. “I’m not following you,” she said coolly.

“The money that your son used to send.”

Anne’s voice dropped from cool to glacial. “We’ve been through this all before, and if you’re here to harass me again – I never had a son, for god’s sake – ” The chilly voice was heating up quickly.

MacGyver held up an abrupt hand, stilling her for a moment. With the other hand he drew out the photo Jacqui Murry had given him and held it so the light fell on it clearly. “He’s the one on the left, isn’t he?”

Anne was suddenly silent. Mac pressed on. “He took the picture himself, using a timer. He was into photography, wasn’t he?”

- - -

The chapter is here, and the story actually starts here.

August 2010

It’s certainly not from Chevy Chase. It’s actually from Idaho, where I’m visiting my sister, whilst the ever-magnificent

pepper_field covers RDA Daily for the weekend, freeing me from Internet Schedule Angst.

( cut for whinging )
ETA: The Chapter 14 post for Reverb is here.

So, now that the whole Stargate Fan Awards voting business is tidied away . . .

I reset my word meter this week, to officially kick off the new story. The signs of progress are a bit deceptive, though; most of the word count so far is the work I did back in May. I’ve made damned little progress this week in actual writing, with tonight – Saturday night – being the most productive by far.

I’ve mostly spent the time (when I wasn’t, you know, working, eating, sleeping, etc.) in Ponder Mode: envisioning the overall plot, considering characters, looking for interesting angles, chewing over inherent problems. Planning what kind of research I need to do. Making lots of notes. And smashing into frequent walls. I hit the Unmitigated Crap Zone for the first time in months.

( in the zone )

The bright spot is that tonight, after several days of mulling but no real writing, I got a decent chunk of work done. And I even got to add a teensy leetle bit to my word meter.

'Beth
August 2009

Some of my LOLMacs are in the running in the 2008 Stargate Fan Awards. (Actually, it's for Stargate, so they're all LOLJacks.) Voting is finally open, and the link is here: http://sg-awards.com/

( More details here )

Huzzah! Voting has been extended to August 15th! Many thanks to archersangel for the info!!

Well. First off, I learned something new and exciting this week: apparently, when I archive these posts after their moment of weekend glory, they do, in fact, make the same change on people’s Flists and retire themselves to the back of the line. Foo. I’m archiving them to 2002, and they’re all tagged ‘egregious egotism’. I may put up a link to the archive at some point, if there seems to be any point to it.

The final chapter of Revision was posted on Monday night, which means it’s now the sixth day since I had an active project, and I started twitching by the third day. Guess I’m addicted.

( more blathering )

Cheers to all, and stay tuned for more LOLs next week. For some reason, I've been getting tons of Jack ideas and only a few for Mac. Nice of the boys to take turns!

'Beth
August 2009

Huzzah! The final chapter of Revision is complete at last; I'm just waiting for one of my betas to come back with results from the sneeze test. It will probably go online tomorrow. The story came out at just under 20k words, so it’s teetering on the borderline between novellette and novella.

For those who haven’t been following the story but might be interested: it’s online here at ff.net. And I’m a hopeless feedback junkie, so consider this a hint.

( more blathering . . . )

I did warn you all that my weekend posts about writing were likely to be rambling episodes of meaningless egotism, didn't I? I didn't? Shoot. Well, tomorrow we'll have more lovely screen caps of RDA. Thanks for indulging me, mes cheries!

'Beth

So, back to writing about writing, which beats navel-gazing in that you don’t get a stiff neck. I’ve started putting together a Master Fic List, because some of my friends have them and they seem like something the Cool Kids have. I never got to be one of the Cool Kids.

Meanwhile, I’ll start at the middle, or possibly the end, and jump around randomly.

( whee! I’m jumping! )

Anyway, back to writing. I need to see how much trouble I can get my boys into by the end of the day!

Aha.

Remember the "I Write Like" meme, which looked like so much fun until we found out that no matter what crap you entered, it told you that you wrote like Somebody Awesome?

Spam, spam, spam, spam . . . it's a baited hook for vanity publishers.

I had mentioned to at least one person that I wondered what would happen if you actually entered the text of the authors themselves; the folks on Making Light went one better than that here, and then Revealed All in this later post.

On the other hand, I no longer feel ridiculous for having played with the thing -- not when such luminaries as Neil Gaiman did too.

July 2010

One of my favourite hangouts on the intrawebz is John Scalzi’s blog, Whatever. When the truly wondrful

lemonpiefirefly made it possible for me to attend the Stargate CreationCon, I took the opportunity during a Q&A with the producers, Brad Wright and Robert Cooper, to ask about Scalzi’s involvement in Stargate: Universe.

So now there’s a video clip up on the official Stargate website, showing Wright talking about Scalzi’s contributions. The voice of the invisible fan at the beginning? That’s me – the clip is of my moment in the Q&A. They edited out a couple of other comments I made, and (interestingly enough) ended the clip before Wright’s next remark about how they’d love to have Scalzi write a script for them, but he’s incredibly busy and doesn’t have time right now.

What makes this all the more interesting is that, for the last month or so, Scalzi, having had some schedule changes that caused him not to have an expected high-priority project in hand, has been working on a Mystery Project. Makes me wonder. *G*

cough, cough *taps mike* Is this thing on?

Well. Just to start out, let me say that this is not an announcement that I’m going to stop doing LOLMacs; far from it. There will continue to be new LOLs up every weekday until I get tired of it or run out of ideas, and I don’t feel in imminent danger of either. Very far from it.

When I started this site, I never had any idea of it being anything other than an image gallery – I think of LOLMac as a daily single-panel comic, only with better eye candy. (insert salacious laugh) I have occasionally made additional non-LOL posts, but I’m extremely reluctant to clutter it up with anything else, especially since there’s an unknown but fairly sizable number of people who follow the site by visiting it, and aren’t on the Friends list (including some who aren’t on LJ at all).

Speaking of which, to all and sundry: Friend at will, and comment at will; you don’t have to belong to LJ to comment. Comments are love.

However, I’ve decided to try something truly radical, namely, I’m going to occasionally write in this journal. (Don’t faint, now!) I’ll keep it uncluttered, no fear; any non-LOL posting will occur on weekends, and will subsequently be redated to a different calendar year, out of the way of the gallery. Having assembled all these screen caps, I don’t want to interrupt anyone who might be strolling through them, y'know?

( more blatherings under cut )

'Beth

I will be at both Gatecon and MTM this summer, and thanks to the solid gold wonderfulness of

gategrrl560 , we will once again have the little laminated LOLMacs to give away as buttons. And we've solved the problem of the pins falling off!

( The hard part . . . )

Yep! The new chapter is finally fit to be seen in public, just in time for the weekend!

Wabbit, you might enjoy the teaser in particular . . .

Reverb

Chapter 13: Antecedent

( Exciting teaser! )
That's it for the Exciting Teaser (no explosions! I guess it isn't the trailer). The rest of the chapter is here, and the story actually starts here.

A lot of folks see LOLMac through their Friends pages, and you may not be aware of some of the extras on the home page of the journal itself. Since I just added to them, here’s a quick review.

In my own layout, the goodies are in the right-hand column. The ‘Egregious Ego Department’ is fanfiction:

Camel Smugglers Anonymous is a fanfic.net C2, a collection of Lothi’s and my full-length fic, both completed and WIP.

MacGyver Deleted is an LJ comm of adult-rated Macfic. Not just mine! That would be a very small collection. I’m always on the lookout for more good Mac smut to add to the collection, which is Mary Sue-free at present (and I plan to keep it that way).

The next portion of the menu is direct lengths to individual stories, including the complete version of Boy Scout, which is archived in the MacGyver Deleted comm, nudge nudge wink wink.

Short But Sweet is another fanfic.net C2 – drabbles and short works. Lothi’s entire Macdrabble opus is here! There are drabbles by other authors as well.

Under ‘Lost a LOL?’ can be found, not only a link to the tags list, but links to the icon galleries. Did you know I have icon galleries? Now you do! Every icon in any gallery is snurchable; just credit (and let me know, pretty please). Some of the galleries fill several pages, so be sure to check that you’ve actually reached the end.

Below that are links to assorted comms and related fan sites, and the sites where I get many of my screen caps. Also, LOLCats, because it All Started There.

Below that is a somewhat mysterious progress meter. It shows the word count on the current WIP – in this case Reverb. The meter shows total words written against my Scientific Wild-Assed Guess of the eventual total word count. The eventual total tends to grow as I write, which makes for some funny jumps back and forth on the meter.

And below that is a pretty display of flags, showing what countries have visited the site. This is a free toy; and the version I have doesn’t give me any information on who the visitors are; it only shows country of origin (actually, I think it’s the country where the internet server is located) with no additional details. I don’t want to spy on my visitors, thankyouverymuch.

'Beth
June 2010

So I return to my computer to try to catch up on emails, and find that someone has sent me an anonymous gift through LJ! Glitterati sunglasses, no less! I can has fabulousness!!

*puts sunglasses on, looks awesome, can't see the screen* Ah, well!

If the sekrit donor is reading this, thank you very much!

And as long as I'm doing a weekend post, here's a progress report: barring one of those unforeseeable mutations that can happen in a story, Reverb has two more chapters to go, plus an epilogue -- around another 10,000 to 12,000 words, I think. Because I have a lot of story to wrap up, I'm writing both of the final chapters at once.

So Chapter 13, although it's finally progressing well, is still a long ways from finished. The good news is that, although the lag before the posting of chapter 13 is running even longer than usual, the lag between chapter 13 and chapter 14 is likely to be a lot shorter. (And when you see how chapter 13 ends, you might be glad for that. Or you might want to throw things.)

Many many hugs and thanks to everyone who's been giving me support and feedback, not to mention my inestimable Research Assistants! You folks rock.

Beth
May 2010

For anyone who might have missed the snarkfest: Diana Gabaldon, whose Outlander novels I utterly failed to read (too many awful research howlers in the first three pages of the first book), has emphatically and publicly denounced fanfic and fanfic authors. I'm not linking to her posts myself -- the links below do that -- but she ranks us with rapists, stalkers, white slavers, and pedophiles. Way to endear yourself to both your fan base and your fellow pros, gal.

The nature of the online response is fascinating, since it reflects the evolution of fanfic -- the growing acceptance of it by pros, the growing recognition that it's part of fandom and part of the world of writing. I also see it as another reflection of the shifting relationship between the creators of media and fandom -- there's been a lot of change and maturation there since I first tiptoed into fandom, heavens, 30 years ago.

All of which is a pretty highfalutin' excuse for enjoying a snarkfest. When you get right down to it, I think some of the comments on Gabaldon's hissy fit are better written than her novels seem to be. The more I've read about her books, the less inclined I am to read them.

( a whole lot more stuff, great links, and a lovely long quote )

ETA 2: Another, longer list of authors with specific policies against fanfic. This one actually includes some names of significance. Some of them are responding to What The Lawyers Say, others just plain don't like the idea. Fanfic.net REALLY needs to get the No-Fly list updated. (I've already emailed them once about it. But you know what ff.pit is like.)

These are partial lists of the names that mean something to me:

Legal issues: David Weber, Jim Baen, Orson Scott Card, Marion Zimmer Bradley (and she had good reason to be chary). Also, by secondhand report, Roger Zelazny and Fred Saberhagen.
Don't like the idea: David Drake, Alan Dean Foster, Robert Jordan, Esther Friesner, Ursula LeGuin, Patricia Morrison, Larry Niven, John Norman (don't barf!), Spider Robinson, Robert Asprin, Jack Chalker, Jasper Fforde (yes, that last one's a real pity, and has a hypocritical flavour to it).

BTW, there's one author on that last list who has not sacrificed any of my respect by her stance, and that's Ursula LeGuin. I revere her works, and somehow, the thought of trying to write fanfic in her universe is, in my mind, akin to attempting to whack chunks off of a perfectly cut diamond. You just don't.

'Beth
May 2010

For a peek into the AU of this AU, feel free to visit

macgyverdeleted -- but in this, the non-AU AU (are you following that?), Mac and Nikki did not, in fact, do anything as sensible as jump each other's bones between chapters 11 and 12.

Reverb

Chapter Twelve: Interrogative

- - -

Nikki woke up, trying to puzzle out what was missing. The bed was very short and the rough wood of the ceiling was very close, close enough to touch – right. She was still up at the cabin, and she really needed to get out of bed and radio for the helicopter pickup that she’d had to cancel the day before. Bed was the lower bunkbed in MacGyver’s granddaughters’ bedroom – AnnaRose’s bed, apparently; Petra had the upper bunk. AnnaRose, it seemed, was the only one of Mac’s descendents to have inherited his distaste for heights.

And if she’s anything like her grandfather, she’ll cope with it by becoming a tightrope walker. Or an astronaut.

( more behind cut . . . )

- - -

The full chapter is here on ff.net. It has text spacers.

'Beth
April 2010

The exaltation is that my partner is here for a visit and we’re on the road, wandering around the mountains of Washington. So far, we’ve mostly seen rain, clouds, trees, and – well, rocks and trees and trees and rocks and waterrrrrr!! But it’s all lovely.

Another bit of exaltation, easier to share, is that I got chapter 12 of Reverb finished, with some lingering holes patched (thanks

kirsty841 and

pepper_field!!), and finally posted! I’ll post a teaser and a link next.

The aggravation is that fanfic.net, aka The Pit, has once again tweaked their coding so that, once again EVERY SINGLE TEXT SPACER IN EVERY DAMNED STORY has been parsed out. I used to use ASCII characters, and ff.net tweaked its code so that they vanished from the displayed text. I switched to lines. Parsed out. Most recently, I switched to using dashes. Well, guess what’s been parsed out!?!

I have the most recent half-dozen chapters of Reverb still in the Docs Manager, so I replaced the lost spacers in those with a text spacer ( - x - ) that I hope will stay in place. But the spacers are important, damn it. I rely on pacing in my writing, and that’s a critical part of the pacing, not to mention key to basic reading comprehesion. Now I can either live with retroactively f*cked-up fiction, or go back and fix a couple of hundred thousand words of text.

And yes, I know that there are other archives. But the readers are in the Pit, and I have to be where the readers are. I've posted some pieces to other archives, and the traffic just isn't there.

Well, it’ll give me something to do while I’m mentally chewing over chapter 13, which is following the current tradition of being very reluctant to get started. As long as it also follows the pattern of coming together well when it finally does agree to get out of bed, I shall be content.

'Beth
May 2010

No, I'm not declaring bankruptcy, not even creative bankruptcy. But I did just finish and post chapter 11 of Reverb. Here's the ~~trailer~~ teaser. (The end of chapter 10, it has been noted, would have been the trailer, because it's all explosions! And explosions make great trailers!)

Reverb

Chapter Eleven: Demonstrative

MacGyver’s ears were still ringing with the shock of the crashing blasts, and bright sparks danced in front of his eyes. The world was upside down. That didn’t seem too odd – after the explosions, if anything, it seemed only right – but the world wouldn’t turn rightways up again.

( more behind the cut . . . )

And the whole chapter is here on ff.net. So are the other chapters, for that matter.

'Beth
April 2010

It appears that my writing patterns have changed. Maybe I can blame the weather – while the rest of the US has suffered horrible crushing winter abuse, we’re having one of the earliest springs on record. We’ll probably have a drought this summer due to inadequate snowpack in the mountains. But for the moment, I have daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, and forsythia all blooming at once, along with ‘leventy-jillion other pretty flowers. And a lot of pollen in the air. *sneeze*

So I haven’t been getting much writing done during the week – a few slow words in the evenings is all. Most of my writing gets accomplished on the weekends. But I’ll take it any way it comes. Chapter 10 of Reverb is moving steadily forward, with frequent pauses to absorb supplemental research (rather like supplemental vitamins, but more fun).

Speaking of fun, I had far too much of it on one particular passage, and I’m going to share it here as a teaser. It almost makes it as a double drabble, and stands alone passably well.

( Is It Poison? )

'Beth
March 2010

Most of you are also members of the

rda_daily community, and you’ll have seen this announcement already. But in case you haven’t:

In the interests of salacious enablement, I have just launched a new LJ community,

macgyverdeleted.

macgyverdeleted is a brand-new fanfiction archive of adult-rated MacGyver fic – yes, that means smut. I don’t know of any other such archive on the web, although there are plenty of places to find and post Stargate smut; so I figured that somebody ought to start one. If there’s interest, I may get a sister LJ comm going for gen Macfic, since at present we’re mostly stuck with the fanfiction.net archive. (Fanfiction.net: preserving the user-hostile interface for future generations!)

pepper_field MacGyver/Sam Carter fic will be findable at the new comm, along with

kirsty841 stories. I'm on the hunt for others to lure in; I'd rather have authors repost their own fic, so they can enjoy the feedback directly, but the comm would also be a good central point for appropriate reccing. Yes, I've got one item there already myself. Hopefully more to follow.

The comm is brand-new and still getting started, so please c’mon over and help us grow up fast and get into lots of trouble!

Not that we really care about the spelling.

Yes, I supposedly only post about writing on weekends, if then. Buuuut . . .

For those who have been waiting, patiently (or not) during the long stretch since I last updated "Reverb" -- chapter 9 has just gone online here at ff.net. The first chapter starts here, if you haven't read any of it. If you haven't read it, for heaven's sake don't start in the middle -- seriously!

My apologies for the long delay; January was a brutal month, to say the least. I want to give a special shout out to ♥ my partner and to

lothithil, whose encouragement never lagged, and to

curuchamion, who pointed me towards the

fic_rush community last weekend, which led in turn to my finally getting the damned thing finished.

If it helps make up for the lag at all -- it's a long chapter, over 5500 words. It includes whumpage and even a brief amount of shirtlessness, so we have two out of three.

For those not familiar with this kind of post here: don't blink, or you'll miss it; I'll be archiving it when I go to make the next LOLMac post. But damn it. It's taken me almost six weeks to get back to posting! And I didn't take any of that as a hiatus; the writing was very sluggish is all.

So consider yourselves encouraged to go read and comment and pat my head and cheer. Not that I'm, you know, a feedback junkie or anything . . . okay, I am.

It's been a loooong time since I posted about writing . . . I wish I could claim I've been writing all that time!

I'm still working on chapter 9 of Reverb, and making slow and steep going of it (although I think I have most of the newest added pile of research in hand now, thanks to my Amazing and Wonderful Stunt Researchers).

So, naturally, I get bit by a plot bunny: a rather small one, as plot bunnies go. Not a smut bunny, unfortunately.

It's not at all my usual: basically a vignette/character study, about 500 words. Tags for Partners and Collision Course. I think the underlying motivation behind this one was to get some chunks of Mac's Expansion Pack Past (tm) sorted out and correlated. It's online on fanfiction.net as well. I originally thought it was going to fit into Reverb somewhere as an introspective flashback, but it doesn't seem likely to do so.

Off Track

Just another morning, another cab fare; a sudden turn in the direction of his life. Except it hadn’t had any direction, not that day. Not till after that day.

( Click to read )

ETA: As a special plea, comments and reviews over on ff.net are always welcome. [ / End pathertic begging mode. ]