Come! Play with me!

[secretsolitaire]

It is raining outside! We are in quite a drought here -- my parents are worrying about their well running dry -- so the pattering of the rain is a beautiful sound indeed.

The HP folks on my flist have probably already seen this, but just in case: cluegirl recently asked an incredibly evil question. You have a prophetic dream that in twenty four hours,

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[secretsolitaire]

I never was into sci fi or fantasy, either - I don't read it in novel form - but it appears to be to me what attracts me to fandom. Even when I read orig slash fic, I'm only interested in fantasy-based fic.

Hunh, interesting! Wonder why that is. I guess it's like wondering why you like certain foods, or musical artists, or sexual kinks...we are what we are.

Re: BSG, I am embarrassed to say that I have no idea what it is, despite seeing various mentions of it around my flist. It's a TV show, yeah? What do the letters stand for? What's the basic premise? *is woefully ignorant*

Ah, Michael. There is a lot of Mikey hate in the B/J corner of fandom, as you might expect. Personally, I liked him okay most of the time, particularly after he stopped hanging all over Brian and hooked up with Ben. Not my favorite character by any stretch, but he had a lot of good qualities. However, I despised the whole custody battle with the lesbians over his daughter in the last season. Ugh. That arc paints him in his most strident and self-righteous light, and it ain't pretty.

Ted...yeah, I didn't really like him until he ditched the drugs (and the "woe is me" attitude) and started working for Brian. After that I thought they had some really nice snarky moments together.

I actually have a lot more appreciation for Justin since I've been in fandom. Not that I ever didn't like him, but he was sort of in the shadow of my Brian love at first. There are a number of "Justinites" on my flist who have helped me appreciate his courage and strength (because let's face it, loving someone like Brian isn't an easy task).

But yeah...Brian. *swoons*

[rinsbane]

Battlestar Galactica. It's a space opera-drama. But where SGA is mostly light and happy and has a lot of comedy (and not enough character development), BSG is a drama. It's a much better show than SGA, honestly (which is my big gay space opera, yay!). DOn't get me wrong - I LOVE SGA (duh!), but it's all about the fanon, not the canon. Okay, and the pretty John Sheppard and the adorkable Rodney. But it was the fic that made me love SGA. I watch the canon 1) to see the boys snark at each other, and 2) to get the canon to be able to play with the fanon. Which is amazing.

But BSG - it's got this tone to it, omg, that I love. And it's not a shipper's show - my gut reaction to it was that you can't fic it. There are no obvious ships, as far as I'm concerned - one of those all and any, or none (because since there are no obvious ones to me, I could go for any - but I'm cheap that way in general - look at HP). But oh my, it has GODS. The Lords of Kobol. And then the cylons (the evil robots who exterminated all the 12 colonies of humans that existed save for about 50,000 people who managed to escape) - the cylons have one god.

So the basic premise is that there are (were) 12 colonies of humans (Earth not being one - it's the mythical 13th colony), and humans built the cylons to serve them. The cylons evolved (they look like humans now), and they rebelled, and 40 yrs before the show begins, there were the first cylon wars. A truce was made. Then (now) the cylons attacked the colonies, trying to wipe out every last human. They almost succeeded. So now it's 50,000 humans against the cylons. But there's a lot of character development and shady things going on, people out for themselves and yet you can't hate them, and it's got a tone that I just love. I haven't read any BSG fic, and I'm NOT GOING TO. Dammit. I think it's a relatively small fandom - it must be extremely hard to write in. But I don't know, because I've never so much as looked at a comm.

So I'm thinking you totally wouldn't like it. *g*

Your views on QAF match up almost exactly with mine. Mikey was so whiney and yes, self-righteous. I don't know why Brian kept him around. He did get better, a bit. Same for Ted. As an "insider" who's invested in the boys, I don't like the way the series ended. But as an unattached outsider, I do.

[xie_xie_xie]

I love... love... love BSG. It's the best show on television today. But I would never in a million years write in it.

I adore Michael and I adore Ted. I'm a big huge cheeseball and I just love QAF.

[rinsbane]

I know! I haven't read any BSG fic, but I suspect it's a fandom that's extremely hard to get right, to fit in all the complexities that should be in a BSG fic to make it good. But I also think that if that one in a hundred fic got it good, it would be my dream fandom, in a way. There's so much room for moral ambiguity and themes of worship and devotion and things not quite right, a bit off-kilter - and those are all my favorite things to write. It could be painfully intense, all tone and mood and atmosphere, things said in the things not said. Oh god. It makes my heart clench just to think about it. I also think that if I were to find fics like that, I couldn't read them. I'm weird about these things. I can't read fic that's too good, sometimes. I have this folder of bookmarks in HP, and now one in SGA, that mark fic that I'm afraid to read. Because it's going to tear me apart - in a good way (and obviously not in a cliche sad!fic way, but with intensity). Sometimes I'm right about these fic, other times I've overestimated them, although they're always good. I think BSG could tear me apart that way, though, if done right.

Which is at once why I could never write in it and why I fear I must. On the one hand, to write a fic that even approaches that level (as much as anything you write yourself can. I can't scare myself with my own fic's intensity, clearly, because I'm in control of it, but I can fly with it when - hmm, I don't want to say when it's good from the reader's POV because I can't claim that about my own fic, but how about when it's good from a writing POV, when the writing process itself makes me come alive as I do it). Oops, lost my sentence there. Ok, so to even try to write a good fic in BSG would take far more than in, say, HP where I've been writing for years. Or in SGA, my new fandom in the last few months. You need to know (or bluff) far more - or maybe I'm just more intimidated. But on the other hand, oh! To sink into that, to lose yourself in the writing of such a world - it's all in the tone for me. I don't like to write outrightly happy fic (although I do and have). I like to write hopeful fic. There's no joy without sorrow, and the two should blend, and I like to let images and very subdued things speak more for me than laying it all out. Some fandoms this doesn't work for as well - I'm thinking SGA might be a hard sell there. But I increasingly think that BSG would be a perfect fit.

*ahem* Sorry. You're trying to have a QAF discussion and I keep yanking it to me me me. *sheepish* I only even entertained at the most vague level the idea of BSG as a fandom a few days ago, so I'm still reeling with the implications. Which means that I'm likely to spew at random about this. *wry* Thanks for your patience!

[xie_xie_xie]

No, I understand what you mean. I don't feel "fannish" about BSG. I just love the show itself, and don't think I'd enjoy a BSG fandom, although I'd love to discuss the show and its meaning and its stories.

[secretsolitaire]

Ah, Battlestar Galactica, yes, I've heard of that. Duh. Thank you for the summary! You're right that it probably wouldn't quite be my cup of tea, but you do manage to convey the appeal. And you know that if you do manage to write fic for it, I'll at least give it an honest try. :-)