Dira Sudis

(Dreamwidth only: Random icon is random and also a reminder from the universe that I need to get started on my Lupercalia story. Speaking of WIPs.)

WIP Meme! Because, let's face it, I am constitutionally incapable of letting this one go by without participating.

From misspamela: Post a random sentence (or three whole paragraphs) from every WIP you're currently working on, even if it's very short. Then invite people to ask questions about your WIP. With any luck, you'll get talking about writing, and the motivation to take that WIP one step closer to completion will appear as if by magic!

Naturally I am going for the "three whole paragraphs" option. Feel free to ask questions! Even if they are more of a comment than a question.

( Lewis kidfic! )

( The unfunny Aral/Jole story. )

( The GK story that did not appear in yesterday's poll, for reasons. )

For philomytha, who asked for Aral/Simon. This is a somewhat sideways approach.

Memory. Aral/Simon. Not explicit. 550 words.
It was just the same as always.

( Asked and Answered )

Do you know, I think this is the first time I've ever written OMC/OMC?

ellen_fremedon requested Hector and Alyosha, so here they are. Falls into the continuity of The World That You Need, but I suppose if you want to read OMC/OMC fic set about halfway through Shards of Honor you don't need any further explanation for this.

During Shards of Honor, Hector/Alyosha. Not explicit. 500 words.
Whatever this is, it's so dire that Aleksi is approaching him openly.

( Timely )

Sooooo on the 20th lamardeuse recced a lovely Lewis story called "The Hermit Crab" and, having read one or two of her squee posts about Lewis I read it. And then downloaded the first two episodes. And then drove to my parents' house, which meant A LOT OF HOURS IN THE CAR TO THINK, and then spent some time carving out alone-time at my parents' house by watching more Lewis and then MORE HOURS IN THE CAR and the upshot is: yeah, I'm probably going to write Lewis/Hathaway kidfic. It's all plotted out! It's very nearly totally finite in scope! I've mostly already done all the research I need to on UK paternity law thanks to watching Single Father last year!

Also Hathaway may actually have been invented just to make me happy, idk. He's a seminarian-turned-cop who responds to his manpain by despondently playing guitar alone in his flat. His crush on Lewis is visible from space as impeccably color-coordinated sparkles in the vicinity of Oxford. (OHAI OXFORD I MISS YOU.) This is the only adorable clip of them I can find on YouTube, but it is extremely adorable.

So, now that that's out of the way: here is a fandom-year-in-review meme that I swiped from... somebody.

Your main fandom of the year?
Stargate SG-1 dominated the first half of the year, overlapping slightly with Generation Kill which took over from then on. And the Vorkosigan Saga has been thrumming away patiently throughout.

Your favorite film you watched this year?
Captain America, I think, although I guess fannishly speaking X-Men: First Class wins out on actually having compelled me to write fic.

Also I feel I should make special mention of having finally for the first time, after about eleven years of active resistance, watched The Big Lebowski, which was pretty great and not at all the embarrassment-squick-farce-thing I was flinchingly anticipating. iulia was, as usual, right.

Your favorite book read this year?
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, and One Bullet Away, by Nathaniel Fick--weirdly pretty much equal amounts of physically hugging the book because I adored it so much for each of those. And Mira Grant's Deadline!!! And The Last Werewolf, Glen Duncan's unfortunate personality notwithstanding. And all of Fables. And The Princess Curse and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and The Persian Boy and Born to Run and and and.

Your favorite tv show of the year?
Castle is the only full-network-season show I've kept up with all year, and I continue to enjoy its goofy, good-natured approach to cop drama. Critically speaking, Game of Thrones and Southland were both brilliant (and heart-wrenching), and I eagerly anticipate the next seasons of each.

Your best new fandom discovery of the year?
Generation Kill, which in my experience encompasses the chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter breakthrough of adding A Companion to Wolves to anything, but especially GK. Also, as of this week, Lewis. ♥

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?
White Collar, where the show actually objectively seems to have changed, and Doctor Who, in which my view of the show changed.

Your fiction boyfriend of the year?
Brad Colbert.

Your fiction girlfriend of the year?
Sam Carter. (Now I really want Sam and Brad to hang out and blow shit up together. ♥)

Your biggest squee moment of the year?
I am pretty terrible at remembering these, but the one that leaps to mind is this moment in maybe the third episode of Lewis, when it has become moderately plot-relevant for Hathaway to reveal to Lewis that he plays in a group that does "world music plus jazz and medieval madrigals", and Hathaway says off-handedly that he will get Lewis some of the music to listen to. Lewis seems about as enthusiastic about this prospect as any sane person confronted with that description.

At the end of the episode, Hathaway pulls out an iPod and offers one earbud to Lewis, telling him it's that music he does, and Lewis gamely pops in the earbud while Hathaway pops in the other and they walk down the street in perfect sync, listening together. ♥__________♥

Your biggest fan anticipations for the coming year?
CAPTAIN VORPATRIL'S ALLIANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And I guess the actual Avengers movie is going to come out this summer so we can write movie-verse fic based on Steve and Tony actually interacting in movie canon? That's going to be neat.
But mostly, IVAN! HIS BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let's never, ever discuss how long this story has been in progress. Let's just say 2011 is my year of finishing things and leave it at that.

Many, many enormous thanks to ellen_fremedon, petra, fairestcat, and iuliamentis for beta, as well as everyone else who read or otherwise encouraged this in the last ... unspecified span of time.



Set during Shards of Honor. Aral/Cordelia. Explicit. Pegging. 8000 words.
Despite the title/rating/etc., this is a story about all the sex Aral and Cordelia didn't have with each other before they got married.



( Frequently Suggested Sexual Practices: An Aid to Communication )

This story was fox's idea, even though she still can't read it due to spoilers, and technically had no idea what she was suggesting to me when she demanded this story.

Many thanks to iulia and ellen_fremedon for their help!


Nikki and Gregor. Gen. 2700 words.
The third time Nikki met the Emperor was also the first time he met his soon-to-be-stepfather's foster brother.


( Family in a Box (Some Assembly Required) )

29 – What is your current project or projects?

There are, hm, let's say five. I feel like sharing today, so some of the teasers are in the 300-500 word range.

Awaiting final beta and fixing and a smidge more writing, there's the Vorkosigan/Doctor Who crossover sequel to Signals That Sound in the Dark.

( In which Aral Vorkosigan meets Amy Pond )

Then there are the two I am midway through the actual writing of.

One is a not-wolf-verse Generation Kill story of which this snippet is almost but not quite entirely unrepresentative.

( After this there's a lot more misery, but I like this bit. )

The other one I'm writing is mostly about all the sex Aral and Cordelia don't have before they get married, because I have thought about this and they really never had time for any. So really it's about a lot of things including Aral during the week of the green silk room, wishing he were somewhere else.

( Not anywhere else. He has a destination in mind. )

And, since I've done a bit of writing on each of them, I suppose I can also consider the two Next Things to be also current projects.

The stuff I've got for the next Generation Kill wolf-verse story is pretty rough and will probably change a lot, but this bit should stay pretty much the same.

( How Nate Met Brad. )

And last and least-written but by no means least in any other sense, the next story in The World That You Need, which I have been in the process of circling back around to write since ... last November.

( In which Arkady is having a difficult day. )

File created: 8/19/10
File last modified: 8/19/11, 10:52 PM

At 20,406 words, my ridiculous gen Vorkosigan/Doctor Who crossover is DONE. ISH. UNTIL THE BETAS GET AT IT.

BUT MOSTLY JUST DONE. \o/

7 – Have you ever had a fic change your opinion of a character?

I assume, given that the other 29 questions are about fic I've written, that this question is asking if the experience of writing a given fic has ever changed my opinion of a character.

My kneejerk reaction is to cite Burn Up in Love Love Love, Panic! at the Disco GSF that originated in me saying, you know, I liked all of the dozens of slutty bottom Ryan Ross stories I had read, but why couldn't there be slutty bottom Jon Walker? At the time I said it it was sheerly contrarian, but by the time I finished the story it seemed self-evident to me that Jon belonged on the bottom of the puppy pile (and Ryan on the top).

For a bit more, uh, depth, though, there's also the experience I had while writing When the Reckoning Arrives, which is how I learned who Arkady Jole is (and all about how his life works). This feels a bit like cheating since I was also making up most of what I know about Arkady Jole, but I can't talk about him in the OC question tomorrow, so you get him now. I wound up writing "When the Reckoning Arrives" only after making repeated failed attempts to write "Everything That You Can Keep" without the detour. But I couldn't figure out how Jole worked, what he was thinking, how to write his voice, and finally I went and gave him his own story in which to find out who he was. That didn't exactly change my opinion of him (my opinion: Jole is the prettiest! And best! And loves Aral a lot!) but it gave my opinion something to work with.

Other than that, hmm. I tend to be kind of ... a stickler for canon? (I feel like if I try to say I'm not iulia will turn up in the comments to LAUGH AT ME FOREVER, so I should just cop to it.) I try to keep even things that have no reason to be in line with canon in line with canon (and my interpretation thereof), and when writing something that deviates wildly I tend to have a pretty good separation in my mind between, you know, "This is what this character would be like as a professional hockey player" or "This is what this character is like after he's been held captive for months by the bad guys" and "This is what this character is actually like."

On the other hand, lately I have to reach in and forcibly remove the soul-bonded wolves from all my other bunnies that are not supposed to involve soul-bonded wolves. DAMMIT, WOLVES. YOU GET ONE AU. ONE. IT IS YOURS. IT IS A WHOLE UNIVERSE. BUT YOU HAVE TO STAY IN IT.

( All 30 questions under the cut. )

Remember that time it took me 7 years to finish a Stargate fic? Yeah, odds are against me finishing a 30 day meme in anything like 30 days, but I will persevere. Probably.

3 – For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to write?

Okay, well, I listed 49 fandoms on day two, so answering this exactly as asked would get seriously out of control. Instead, under the cut, my favorite characters to write from what I semi-scientifically conclude are my top ten current and past fandoms.

( Playing favorites! )

( All 30 questions for your meme-repeating convenience. )