magibrain

Title: Z is for Zenith
Summary: The sun also rises, and shines into the dark places on alien worlds, and delivers life-threatening amounts of thermal and ionizing radiation and maybe a minor revelation every once in a while.
Word count: ~1500
Characters: Daniel, Jack, Sam, Teal'c, an unnamed alien sun
Era: Early season 7
Categories: Vague angst? Character study?
Author's notes: I had a whole backstory for this involving ribbon worlds and the effects on global weather of same. All that backstory is basically Sir Not Appearing In This Film.

Excerpt: Somewhere in the darkness of an imperfect and incomplete recall was an understanding of this universe – his understanding; the sum of the things that he'd seen and he'd learned, and all the memories of all the different worlds he'd set foot upon. Every day a bit more of it rose to his conscious grasp, but it didn't come complete, and it didn't come easy.

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( Read more... )

Title: J is for je ne sais quoi
Author: magistrate
Rating: T.
Genre: Mostly talking. Character study, episode-related.
Beta: Can only control the host at night.
Continuity: Canon-compliant.
Prerequisities: Nightwalkers.
Summary: In which Jonas considers ethics, and when ethics feel wrong.
Disclaimer: You know, I write in all these different canons, and as far as I can tell the legal status of fanfiction is more or less the same in all of them. The opinions expressed herein are the properties of the characters and not of America, Bedrosia, or Kelowna. The difference between theory and practice is that in practice there's a difference between theory and practice. Ethics may confuse. Questions, comments and creeping suspicions can be left in replies or directed to magistrata(at)gmail(dot)com. Thank you for reading!

==

( In which scientists play the most fun games. )

So, searching around in my drafts folder, trying to find something to jump-start my brain out of a dry spell, I came across a file titled creepsteriffic.rtf that I don't remember creating. There is no summary in this file. I have left no notes to myself. I don't know where I was going with it. What it does contain is the header template form, and the following text:

( I'd probably go with 'wrong', personally. But then, I am duly chastised. )

...

...

...other things in my drafts folder – my SG-1 drafts folder, mind, not some random drafts folder I might store formatting data in: a file called temp.rtf which consists of 2391 words of Lorem Ipsum, closed with the line "And as it turned out, THEY WERE ALL BEES!!"

Title: After Every War
Author: magistrate
Rating: T.
Genre: Character study, offworld culture fun times
Beta: The ever-excellent fignewton helped me get this fic in order, both as it was in progress and after it was done in draft.
Continuity: Veers AU around Homecoming.
Prerequisites: Seasons 6 and 7, mostly.
Summary: History can be a lot of things, but it's rarely if ever straightforward.
Disclaimer: I'm trying to make a joke here about experiencing a sense of ownership over SG-1 due to it being a part of our common culture, but it's just not coming together. The opinions expressed herein are the properties of the characters and generally not of Wisława Szymborska. Watch your step. Questions, comments and cooked grains can be left in replies or directed to magistrata(at)gmail(dot)com. Thank you for reading!

Author's Note: This started out as a fill for the 2013 SG-1 Friendship Ficathon's prompt #20: "Daniel and Jonas. AU in which Jonas stays on SG-1 after Daniel's return." I then proceeded to breeze past every deadline in the Ficathon, so I now present this work sans that context, and with a bunch more screentime for characters who are not them.

---

( After Every War )

magibrain: ...and in case you didn't know how messed up Anat is re: Ba'al, she's also keeping him in cold-sarcophagus-storage now that the war is over because she knows he can't survive in this new galactic order but can't stand to kill him.

magibrain: SHE IS KEEPING HER FATHER IN A FREEZER BECAUSE IT'S THE LEAST MESSED-UP THEIR RELATIONSHIP WILL EVER BE.

Title: A is for ashrak, Apophis, allegiance, assurance, assassins, ambition, and aim
Author: magistrate (magibrain)
Rating: T.
Genre: Character study
Beta: I'm trying to make a joke here about soullessness. It's not coming together.
Continuity: Canon-compliant.
Prerequisites: Ashraks. Also Apophis.
Summary: Bra'tac is assigned to an extremely odd mission, with an extremely odd companion.
Disclaimer: Stargate and its associated characters are the property of MGM and not Jon Layne Fisher. Thank god. The opinions expressed herein are the properties of the characters and not of Seven Macaw. Issues of loyalty will not be settled via arbitration. Questions, comments and alliteration can be left in replies or directed to magistrata(at)gmail(dot)com. Thank you for reading!

Author's Notes: s;dhf;dhg;disuhg/;eruF;USDGF;DSUFG';JKDG. Also, written for the Bra'tac & Jaffa Alphabet Soup and Gen Fic Day. Check out everything else!

=

( A is for ashrak, Apophis, allegiance, assurance, assassins, ambition, and aim )

Do you ever have one of those days where you're up way too late and you're looking through all your incomplete fics and you come across one where you have no idea when you started it, where you were going with it, or why you thought it was a good idea? But it has a helpful summary at the top, something like

(That one where Sam goes missing for a while and comes back with no memory of where she's been, but with a few new nervous tics, a preoccupied air, and a strange compulsion to build an alien clock.)

?

I mean, this happens to you guys all the time, right? Just part of the package of being a distractable sort of being and also a fic writer? Y'all should share your stories with me here. Or something.

Other things I've found in my poking around because I'm all alone in the house/on the internet and for some reason not tired at all:

Jack's mission report for P2M-477 was subtitled Everything I Know About Foreign Policy I Learned From Watching You Idiots Screw It Up, but it was subtitled in very small, white text that didn't print out.

( Several more. )

I feel like this is sorta the fanfiction equivalent of Texts From Last Night. Fanfictions From Previous Days? Yeah.

Last night I finished and posted the Damaged People installments Tranquility Base, Where The Frown On My Face and Copernius, thereby closing out the first arc of Damaged People. I'm not sure how long exactly that arc took me to write (I think I started it in mid-to-late 2007?) or how much writing is represented by it (I believe it's up above 100k words?), but that sure is a milestone. Of some sort.

( Rambling about the end of Arc 1. )

Also, I finally got around to uploading a couple of vids I've had lying around my computer for, er, months or years. Without further ado:

( Stargate SG-1: 'Window of Opportunity' to the tune of 'Every Day Is Exactly The Same'. )

( Torchwood: Suzie Costello in 'Maneater', to 'People Got A Lotta Nerve' by Neko Case. )

There you go. Enjoy.

Back in 2007, for reasons which I'm sure made sense at the time, I got the idea to write a fic with Jack Harkness of Torchwood and Sam Tyler of Life on Mars in a bar together, and then furthermore to email it to rionaleonhart without explanation to see what she would do. As it turned out, because Riona is Riona (and because the fic was probably her fault in one way or another to begin with), she calmly beta'd it and sent it back.

That, I think, may have been throwing down the gauntlet.

Because there's something you have to understand about me, and that's that 70%* of my fiction writing is spite-based. A friend believes that I can't write slash? Here is the Doctor having sex with the Master. And also the TARDIS. Riona says a Silent Hill 2/House MD crossover where Chase is James Sunderland is the most frightening idea ever and she should not write it? I write it. Stargate SG-1 decides to be completely simplistic with issues of character death, the nature of identity, and memory? Here is 140,000 words deconstructing that by implication. And then there was the Silent Hill crossover meme, which was basically a (lighthearted, mutually-respectful, and mutually-gleeful) pissing contest with jantalaimon over who could write the most, or weirdest, crossover drabblets with Silent Hill. (Among my proudest accomplishments: Winnie the Pooh, The Sims, and Tetris.)

*Completely arbitrary estimate

So I think there's a certain amount of archaeological evidence** to suggest that I started Damaged People purely to see what it would take to get Riona to go "What on earth are you doing, you crazy person?"

**Not in any way archaeological

Which is how I ended up writing what I call "A massively multifandom accidental epic following Sam Tyler (Life On Mars) and Jack Harkness (Doctor Who and Torchwood) on their misadventures, as they explore the galaxy, almost destroy some worlds, and barely save others."

How multifandom, and how epic?

Well, as of the time of this posting, I've written most of the first of a planned three arcs (1: Jack and Sam cavorting around the galaxy; 2: Series 1 of Torchwood, rewritten, expanded, and made more weird; 3: Sam Tyler saves the galaxy), and it's up to 100k words. And the thing's spawned a sequel. It's also up to 22 fandoms the last time I counted, and I keep shoving more in whenever I find a spare corner. (Lie To Me is on the waiting list, for example, and will be added as soon as a compatible plot comes up. Sherlock is in much the same position.) Among the fandoms I've managed to wedge in: Stargate: SG-1, Global Frequency, Pirates of the Caribbean, Google's April Fools jokes, Withnail and I, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Top Gear, and Cube 2: Hypercube.

The story is told mostly from Sam's perspective, with occasional dips into Jack's, so it's unintentionally organized so that if you're familiar with both series of Life on Mars and series one of Torchwood, you're generally only ever as confused as Sam is. Which, you know, can often be Rather Confused.

Anyway! I'm beginning the process of mirroring everything from its original home at damageverse to its parallel home at damaged_people. If you're interested in my one grand voluntary foray into slash and multifandom crossovers, I invite you to take a look. It's wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, occasionally extremely sketchy, ranges from pure gen to explicit with warnings and back again, and it will probably never be finished, but new stuff should keep appearing from time to time.

See the Rift exposition post for too much context. Or just keep reading for too much context again.

One of the reasons I don't really plan on doing more with this universe than braintics is because Jack Harkness is about as overpowered as you can get, and I don't think that three hundred thousand works of Jack O'Neill being shown up by the 280-something-year-old Special Ops man from the future is good fic. Jack Harkness can be put in his place by a few things – one of his alphas (and oh, isn't there a whole other post to be had about what that entails), overwhelming force, and his own utter ineptitude when it comes to dealing with his own emotions and his own damage, but none of these things are really O'Neill's forte. Which means that in the Battle of the Jacks, Harkness is almost a shoe-in to win. ...and I don't really like crossovers where the takeaway seems to be "My Canon's Character Is Better Than Your Canon's Character," even though in this case SG-1 is usually more my canon than Torchwood.

Phwah. SG-1 and Torchwood would be my Facebook "It's Complicated"s, if Facebook believed in polyamory.

(All of this pretty much boils down to to the fact that I should write a lot more with Harkness and Daniel, because Daniel can kick Harkness' ass before Harkness realizes it's been kicked, at least in the emotional insight corner. And O'Neill needs to make friends with Sam Tyler, because Tyler is a no-nonsense, authority-respecting sort of guy who can also kick Harkness' ass if it comes down to it.)

(...strangely enough, damageverse is pretty much my one grand foray into the world of slash, and is Jack Harkness/Sam Tyler. Whereas Jack O'Neill/Sam Carter is my foremost Stargate pairing, in that very special way where I ship it only so long as they both ignore the ship because saving the galaxy and being upstanding soldiers is more important. storyinmypocket and I came to the conclusion that Jacks need their Sams. Not always in a romantic way, and not always in a, er, healthy way, but it seems to hold true. ...we also came to the conclusion that the group names are "a confusion of Jacks" and "a repression of Sams". Just try to tell me it doesn't seem right.)

( But anyway, I was talking about Jack and Jack. )

...hey, who wants more braintics?

( In which discussion is had about all this. Tortury discussion. )

( In which O'Neill remains not-okay with this whole thing. )