Meme see, Meme do

[rthstewart]

Really bad week.   I've been dealing with babysitting and cooking for many, many children not my own through 4 days of snow-related school cancellations and power outages and I'm very much understanding that the Donner Party probably turned cannibal and ate their young first. We've lost power, again, and have been camping out either in cold dark houses or in light, overly warm houses filled with children I am babysitting while the parents are all at work.  Oh, and the $20 ice cream cake for the kid's birthday tomorrow melted. So, I've been alternating on the Blackberry between increasing frantic work emails coupled with a growing panic that maybe things are repeating and I did something wrong in the latest chapter of AW. Again.  So, I'm trying not to cry or angst, because really, I'm just being stupidly insecure. 

Also we had 30 enormous donuts that were supposed to go for the class party (canceled due to snow) and I never want to see another glazed donut again, ever.  Or Mac and Cheese and hot dogs.   On the plus side, as workers crawled home in the a nightmare of ice, snow, and gridlock this week, I was at home babysitting 6 children ages 12 and under and did not have to 1) sit in my car for 8 hours trying to go 10 miles; 2) get stuck and run out of gas in a snowstorm; 3) park the car and walk home as many did, then have to find the car the next day after it was towed; or 4) give up and sleep in a gas station or check into a motel where you pay by the hour. 

I'm still not King but I do have Power as of this morning. So, I'm now in my own house, with own firewall, with light and heat and I spent 4 hours actually doing writing work that pays and cursing junior staff who don't understand how to redline documents.

And now I have fallen to the meme-side and I lovingly blame the f-list, including snacky  metonomia  lady_songsmith  anastigmatfic and animus_wyrmis who have been circulating these memes.  And then Ana went and posted a fabulous one involving Glendon, Edmund, and a tree, and now I just HAVE to play along because I have a BAD RL WEEK and FIC ANGST. 

So, these are the memes:

• Ask me a fandom-related question in the comments. This can be fandom specific, general, or about fandom/lj stuff/fic writing/etc. in general. Questions can be as wacky as you want. Ask me about tv shows, characters, fanfic in general, fandom issues/meta, anything about any of my stories specifically.

OR

• Give me the title of a story I've never written, and feedback telling me what you liked best about it, and I will tell you any of: the first sentence, the last sentence, the thing that made me want to write it, the biggest problem I had while writing it, why it almost never got posted, the scene that hit the cutting room floor but that I wish I'd been able to salvage, a short excerpt, or something else that I want readers to know.

OR

• Name a character and I will tell you:

a) a fact about them from my personal canon
b) a reason he/she sucks
c) a reason he/she is amazing
d) a thing that I'd like to see happen to them
e) someone that I can't ship that character with

 

Comments

I'm doing them all, because that is the way I am.

[snacky]

Ask me a fandom-related question in the comments. This can be fandom specific, general, or about fandom/lj stuff/fic writing/etc. in general. Questions can be as wacky as you want. Ask me about tv shows, characters, fanfic in general, fandom issues/meta, anything about any of my stories specifically.

LOOK! NOT NARNIA! Tell me what drew you into Star Wars and what's the continuing appeal there for you.

Re: I'm doing them all, because that is the way I am.

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Star Wars my first true fannish experience. I'd been a fan of the space opera quality of the films since they first came out in 1977 and had lots of heated discussion in high school regarding whether Leia would get together with Han or Luke. It really hit my romance/romantic genre button and I'll never forget the feeling for the first time of hearing the star destroy rumble overhead in the opening sequence or seeing the Falcon jump to hyperspace. In college, I fell in with D&D geeks and we were all SW fans and so saw ESB and then caught the (it was very unusual then) midnight show of ROTJ. Whenever I was down over the years, I'd get the videos from Blockbuster and watch them and finally, when I was about 30, my husband found me my very own set.

Then, in 1991, I was in a bookstore in my office building and saw Tim Zahn's Heir to the Empire, which picked up the story 5 years after ROTJ. I would sneak into the bookstore during lunch and read it because I was too embarrassed to admit that I liked Star Wars, much less a book about SW with such a cheesy cover. I LOVED the book. Tim is a terrific writer and his character of Mara Jade was just fabulous and she sooo belonged with Luke. The second book was even better than the last and its final lines chilled me to the bone. My one SW friend who Knew The Truth sent me the final in the trilogy, The Last Command, via diplomatic bag when I was in Eastern Europe. Except.... Luke and Mara did not get together at the end, even though it was like soooo obvious, so I shipped them hard, even if I didn't know there was anything I could do about it.

I got on line in 1994 with a new Compaq computer after the release of the book and discovered this AOL community of SW fans, centered around Who Luke Should Marry, horrendous fic, and a lot of women like myself who were older and hung out in chat -- the then called Star Ladies. And we ALL shipped Luke and Mara! The women were funny, plugged in, collected toys, and very creative. We'd stay up late in chat on Friday nights, drinking wine and talking dirty. And then, I started writing Luke and Mara fic and found out just how bonding that experience is. I met a lot of my friends of today through that first fic.

The creativity of that group was just incredible --- lots of cosplay and games and t shirts, filking and buttons and lots of interaction with the authors who were expanding the 'verse. I got confused last night over Ana's filking because I thought she was doing "Pretty Fly for a Jedi" which is in my SW filk song book somewhere, along with songs like Mon Calamari ship (Yellow Submarine) and Naboo Queen (Dancing Queen) and Livin la Vida Lucas. Over the years, we've moved through different fandoms -- anything with Ewan McGregor, Harry Potter, LOTR, and others. You meet other women through the fandom, but you stay for the friendships you find there.