it's a magical world

All right, let's do this thing. (There are still several unclaimed days, if anyone wants to add to it!)

From via_ostiense: thought processes, ideas, any commentary on writing Queen's Gambit?

Ah, yes, the three-year fic. And here I thought I could finally stop talking about it now that it's done. :P ( lots of ramble ahead )

After spending an hour and a half futzing around, I have come to the conclusion that I am completely stupid when it comes to Tumblr. Everything about what that site is and how it functions is completely counterintuitive to the way my brain processes information. UGH. I like the pretty pictures! I just can't figure out how to do anything with the site except follow people. Which is cool. I've had an empty tumblr for months now for the sole purpose of following other people. And I honestly have no idea what I would post there myself, but I feel like I'm missing some crucial element of fandom interaction, and it saddens me. Anyway, I'm kaydeefalls on tumblr. There is nothing there. Possibly I will start clicking the reblog button when I see pretty pictures I particularly like, and pretend I'm somehow contributing to fandom. :/ (I can't even make my own pretty pictures anymore. My father insisted I install Lion on my laptop, which then rendered invalid my entire Adobe Creative Suite, and I can't afford to drop $700 on Photoshop right now. I am SO ANGRY about this, guys, you don't even know. I used Photoshop way more than I give even the smallest shit about any of the features in the OS upgrade.)

I'm also just deeply frustrated with life in general right now, so this may just be an offshoot of that. And it's been one of those mornings where the phone is ringing off the hook and people keep trying to make awkward small talk with me and I just want to be left alone for five fucking minutes. Um. Sorry about that.

ANYWAY. 2011 Year in Review Meme! Which I typed up like two weeks ago and then never posted. Whatever, I'm slow with these things. And mainly I had to wait for the secret_mutant reveals, because those totally add to my 2011 word count total.

( 2011 by the numbers )

( fanworks )

( year in review meme )

( WIP snippets for 2012 )

Back on an Inception kick. Um, not the part where you get shot in the head to wake up. You know. But I've just finished an Ariadne vid and I'm trying to slam my head against the brick wall that is this fucking Eames(&Arthur) fic, in which I am discovering a great deal about Cobb but utterly failing to figure out how to put it into writing in, like, an engaging and yet succinct manner -- oh, whatever, it makes sense in context. POINT BEING, what I'm really trying is to write a believable military backstory for Eames. But my experience with the US military is pretty much limited to: 1. watching Band of Brothers obsessively, 2. other war movies, 3. my dad's cracktastic stories about being in Army Intelligence in West Germany in the early 60s, 4. Skippy's List, and 5. two of my friends bitching about Basic, one of whom is currently in Afghanistan and I really don't like thinking about it too much.

None of which has terribly much to do with the British military. My only reference point for the SAS is that one Tom Clancy book where Clark and Chavez head up an anti-terrorism team based out of Hereford. So basically NIL.

You know how people tell aspiring writers to write what they know? THIS IS WHY.

So while I'm trying to be vague enough on specifics that I don't commit any truly appalling inaccuracies, which I'm sure I am JUST THINKING ABOUT WRITING THIS, I'm trying to distract myself with other military-background fics. Of which I can find several, and they are good, but not the one that I'm bloody well looking for. The last time I turned to my f-list for fic-finding assistance, you provided SPECTACULARLY, so this is worth a shot:

Fic. Long. Arthur/Eames backstory, Arthur POV. Military. Their names kept changing throughout, in keeping with the plot -- first their real names, then they went black ops, then they went AWOL together and became criminals. I'm pretty sure it started by giving Arthur the surname Cole. It was a really well thought out look at one possible way dreamsharing was developed in the military. When the army decided to end the dream program, they basically sent their team (including Arthur&Eames) into the desert and tried to assassinate them all. The fic went on from there, and I remember thinking the romance was a little too sweet for my usual tastes, but what the hell, it was a DAMN good story. And I don't think it was written by one of the more popular writers in the Inception fandom -- I'm pretty sure I stumbled across it mostly by accident the first time, or on one of the ginormous sprawling delicious rec lists of DOOM rather than somewhere I can easily track down. (Although I'm currently trying.)

...anyone have the slightest idea?

Seriously, when I'm in the first rush of a new fandom, I read a metric fuckton of fic, and never remember how to find it again later. It is a failing.

ETA: Ask and ye shall receive, holy shit, sandwich_armada wins. For anyone curious, the fic was The Music-Makers. And now that I see the title again, I think it probably was recced all over the place when it was first posted. Deservedly.

A couple of weeks ago, I was bored and started thinking about the old chromatic casting meme that was going around a while back. And I thought, man, there is never a bad time to play around with chromatic casting!

So, Inception! One possible alternate cast, chromatic-style, and with occasional genderswapping because love that movie though I do, it is tragically lacking in the ladies. ( Chromatic Inception! )

Now I've seen Inception twice in the past week, and hope to add a third viewing soon. And don't get me starting on all the fic I've been mainlining. This is some serious crack, guys. As someone else noted somewhere, Inception is the perfect universe for fandom -- it's all about worldbuilding, a story about storytelling and the power of suggestion and creating worlds in which anything is possible (sort of) and everyone who watches it can take away something completely different and everyone's individual perception is correct every time, and no one can even say for sure what even happened. Brain!porn, basically. (And incidental suit!porn, nngk.)

Simultaneously, I'm still all a-glee over the BBC Sherlock. And this may not be obvious, but I have a bulletproof kink for good crossovers. (Seriously. I will read good crossovers regardless of whether I know both canons. I don't even sort of care, I love that shit SO HARD. Hence my abiding love for the broader Whoniverse, where everything crosses over itself in canon.) But I digress.

Basically, I badly need someone to write the crossover where the Inception team gets hired to do an extraction on some really twisty-minded clever bastard, and Eames is all, "So I went to school with this Sherlock bloke, no really hear me out--" and Sherlock and John are hauled in for a consult and of course Sherlock totally hijacks the whole dream-heist process and AWESOMENESS ENSUES. Internets, get on this.

Or the AU Torchwood crossover, where team Torchwood is a rival extraction team. Jack's the Extractor, Ianto's his Point Man (of COURSE), Tosh is the Architect (she would be so brilliant, wouldn't she?), Owen's the Chemist, and Gwen is the Forger. (No, hear me out. Eames has his own certain style, but I think Gwen's driving need to understand and empathize with others would make her an awesome Forger.) I have no idea what the plot would be, but I feel it would be excellent. Ianto and Arthur would bond over matters sartorial and bicker about who knows more about everything. Okay, yeah, basically I just want a fic with Arthur and Ianto in.

And now for some completely unrelated Top Fives.

( top five road trip songs, via tardis_stowaway )
( top five random things that make me happy, via kalliopeia )
( top five stories I've written that I'm most proud of, via zephyrprince )

Any more Top Fives?