Inside Voices

These are courtesy of scout_lover!

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Title: I'm From the Government...
'Verse: SPN/Warehouse 13
Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Bobby Singer, Ruby v1.0, Myka Bering, Claudia Donavan
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1788
Warnings: None
Summary: Myka and Claudia are sent to retrieve a certain notorious firearm...set during the events of SPN 3.04.
Author's Note: I recently put up an offer for a fic a day for the first twenty days of December. This is prompt #7, provided by happygoth, who proposed having Warehouse agents come up against hunters who actually have a use for the artifacts they collect.


( Someday soon she was going to make her peace with the idea that easy didn't mean the same in her world that it meant to the rest of humanity. )

While I didn't get 100% caught up on my outstanding fic obligations, I'm down to four so I've decided to go ahead with an idea I parkered from alinaandalion. As I have in the past, I want to do something for you guys, for all the times you've kept me sane.

So...

The first twenty people to respond to this entry with a fic prompt (characters, rating, general idea what you're looking for) will get that fic from me in December. I'm going to do one fic a day between December 1 and 20 (in the past I've done 12 Fics for Xmas, but that interferes with hickumu time hence the schedule adjustment).

Within the following fandoms I'm pretty much willing to write anything (even if it's not my preference), so don't worry about letting me know exactly what you're looking for! As everybody who is a regular reader of this LJ should also know, I'll cross anybody into anything.

Fandoms:

Whedonverse
Leverage
Supernatural
Rizzoli & Isles
Castle
Bones
Law & Order (Original Recipe & SVU)
Perception
Warehouse 13
Revolution
Arrow
Nashville
Covert Affairs
White Collar
Avengers (Movieverse)
Hunger Games
BSG v1.0 and v2.0
Star Wars
A-Team (TV Verse)

*deep breath* Okay guys - let's see what you've got!

[Poll #1818824]

I don't often recommend entertainment on my LJ. Not television, not movies, and *certainly* not books.

Because, well, by and large I like crap. And I both know this and am at peace with it.

However, this? Is seriously good shit. YA, vampires (including a vampire hippie), ghosts, goths, psychics, and a Buffy-type appreciation for the whole high school = horror movie metaphor.

And I do mean that in the best of ways.

Glass Houses by rachelcaine. Read it, then tell your friends to read it.

Good lord -- do a little tiny bit of research for an LJ post and starting losing large chunks of your day!

So. Cassie Clare (or Claire, or however you want to spell it). For those not familiar with the kerfuffle that's been rocking the fandom world this past week or so, go here. I warn you though, you will lose the better part of a day with this -- like the Ms. Scribe debacle, this is an (admittedly biased, but fairly detailed) summation of things that have happened in the world of Big Name Fandom over the past five years.

Harry Potter Fandom. Truly it brings the batshit insane to the yard.

It's got me to thinking, though -- hell, I think it's gotten most of us who are fannishly inclined and have dabbled in that bastard stepchild of "real" writing known as "fanfiction", "fanfic" or simply "fic" pondering our place in the literary universe.

Now, with regards to the woman at Ground Zero: do I think Cassie is a plagiarist?

Hell yes. Whispered or shouted, the evidence against her at this point is overwhelming. Which saddens me, because I think the existence of the Very Secret Diaries proves that the woman is talented.

Talented enough to deserve the book contract she got? Well...that's really another kettle of fish entirely. Especially if what I've been reading proves out as true, and there's stuff in her soon-to-be-released "original" work lifted from other sources.

That? Pisses me off. Not just because of my own situation, but because of all the other talented writers out there who are *more* talented than Cassie (and me, frankly) who have to work even harder to get themselves noticed because they didn't get famous on the strength of work they plagiarized from other authors and tried to pass off as their own.

Anyone who believes Cassie's presence in fandom and the popularity of her fic didn't play a role in her getting her contract...well, I'd like to hear your reasoning, because I don't buy it. Publishing is a business, and if you believe that an author will bring legions of pre-existing fans to her original fiction sales, why wouldn't you take that risk?

Of course at the heart of it is the belief that the ideas and words are original, even if the setting isn't.

Tangental to this are my feelings about the people who've carried this to professional writers, soliciting their opinion on the matter.

So. Not. Cool.

Fandoms are like Vegas -- what happens in Fandom stays in Fandom. We largely police our own ranks and handle our own shit. This *allows* the more tolerant professionals out there to turn a blind eye when we play in their playground. We don't abuse the equipment, we don't litter, and we're always careful to put everything back when we're finished.

If that changes, it forces the professional author to acknowledge that while we may not be stealing or despoiling the equipment we are, at the very least, guilty of trespassing in their world.

One lazy inconsiderate person spoiling it for the rest of us.

I think most authors/creators understand that fanfiction is a labor of love. We don't expect to be financially rewarded for our work -- those of us who write fic just want to be a part of something really, really cool.

Those of you who've been on my f-list for a while, remember this? Even people who wouldn't normally consider themselves fic-writers dove in for the chance to be part of something really wonderful.

And it was.

What if somewhere half-way through that oddessey, someone had dragged it to Disney's attention, forcing them to stop us from finishing? Yeah, life would have gone on -- and Will, Jack, et al would have been remained the safeguarded intellectual property of Disney -- but a bunch of us would have been robbed of the chance to link back to that entry occasionally and smile at what we were part of creating.

And quite frankly? I think that would have sucked.

Got some heavy thoughts bouncing in my head, but basically that's what the weekend boils down to. I got out of here, hung out with my friends, and had *wonderful* (and on program!) food.

Okay, so I had more of crevette's barbeque sauce than was probably wise, but being as the stuff could qualify as a beverage it's so good, I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

I'm officially down four pounds in the first week of my reunion with Atkins. At least I think it's my first week. Might be first ten days. Definitely not two weeks, because it's only been one ABC Night.

Huh. Anyway, I've lost four pounds since starting. Go me!

Lunch Saturday was with tinne, and it was fabulous to just sit and hang out and talk life over a couple of Panera's Bistro Steak salads.

Got home in time to catch my breath, collect Robin, and head out to crevette's for OMGWTFBBQ!

And it was *good*. More hanging out and gossiping commenced. I also managed to figure out a way to break our friend G's son out of his self-imposed block against writing. G was worried because T had a three page paper to write on Neptune, and it had been a *major* battle just to get him to list out the facts for the paper.

Well, when I looked at the paper, it was three pages of just facts.

And I had an idea.

Way back in college, when grindar and I were dating, I realized that while he was a *brilliant* speaker -- could talk persuasively on any topic for as long as necessary -- he couldn't translate that skill to his papers.

Solution? He would pace my dorm room and talk, and I would type what he said.

Thinking that this technique might help T, I asked him to start telling me about Neptune. He was able to talk for a couple of minutes without any difficulty -- *proving* to me that he knew the subject.

So, I suggested to G that he arrange to record T *talking* about Neptune, and then all T would have to do is go back and transcribe what he said.

We'll see if it works.

The problem with T is that in certain areas he's been fighting against his teachers and his parents for so long that having more of the same battles isn't getting any of them anywhere but thoroughly frustrated.

Telaryn's truism -- when it doubt, don't bang your head against the wall one more time, find a way around it. Here's hoping I did.

Today's been work, work and more work -- laundry, trash collection, changing bed sheets and working in the garage. Interspersed with that has been half an hour writing on "Conscience" (now that the latest bout of stress has been neutralized) sitting on my balcony, and reading the latest Merry Gentry offering "A Stroke of Midnight"...which surprisingly doesn't suck. She's got some plot and pacing issues, but so far it's a really good read and an interesting story.

It's also *not* the size of a small paving stone. I'll probably be done with it by morning.

My biggest argument is that she let the cast of beautiful men grow *way* too large -- I can't even follow most of these Sidhe men, much less give two flying fucks (literally) about them as characters. Even so, she manages some decent character growth for the core gang.

Here's hoping that the library has the book on CD by the time I leave for San Jose. Be kind of funny to drive the west while listening to nothing but Laurell K. Hamilton. :)

Okay, funny in the sense of making my own fun...but still.

History Channel's running an FDR/WWII documentary at 9pm. Robin is actually excited to watch it.

Back to the grind tomorrow. Here's hoping that with Mercury *finally* going direct, the week has a chance of not sucking.

Las Vegas (the show not the city) last night was very, very pretty. Unfortunately for harmonyfb, I didn't manage to rouse myself in time to tell her to turn it on until *after* the hottest scenes between Christen Kane and Marsha Thompson.

*fans self* I know he probably had serious choreography and tons of rehearsal for that scene in the dance club, but there are few things more attractive to me than a man who can dance and look like he's really enjoying himself while he does it.

I went through yesterday feeling like my brain was shut off. School went well up until math -- I'm currently trying to puzzle out exactly *why* Robin isn't getting the basic geometry we're doing right now as easily as the rest of the math we've been doing up until this date.

I'm not going to panic until I check her homework this morning and see how she's doing. This could all be a post-trip fog. Probably is, in fact, but geometry is one of those things I will do whatever it takes to make sure she can get through without incident.

She's also in the group doing the best in rehearsals for the Maypole dance at Northward. And I finally asked the music teacher if anyone objected to the dance on religious grounds. She's the same music teacher who included Jack Skellington's song in the Holiday concert, so I figured I was on safe ground.

She said no, and kind of laughed it off. I followed it up by saying that I was frankly surprised that everyone was so enthusiastic about having the students closest to adolescence performing a major Pagan fertility rite. I thought it spoke very highly of the administration's open-mindedness ;)

She actually paled right in front of me. "I never thought about it that way."

In other news, Dad was in such good health and humor yesterday that I was able to get stuff done yesterday afternoon that *didn't* involve keeping him company.

And I got three more pages written on my precis. I'm definitely going over ten pages on the first pass, but there are plenty of places in the first seven pages I can cut way down.

Today in Social Studies, thanks to crevette, we're putting a final punctuation on our study of Communist China by reading those Doonesbury strips from the 1970's that took place in the People's Republic. Robin should love Honey's account of how she carried out Mao's instructions to tear down the Great Wall (and then later in the week put it back together again).

Robin and I just got back from seeing "Freaky Friday". *sigh* Good movie.

What is it with Disney and their remakes lately? They don't suck! They should!

Ah well -- going to count my blessings and be done with it.
===============================================================
In all my post Dragoncon meanderings, I don't think I mentioned that Robin has contacts! It's so weird.

It's not like we haven't seen her without her glasses before, but I think grindar nailed it when he noted that it makes a huge difference to see her eyes focusing without the glasses. She really does have pretty eyes. *parental gleam*

And just in time for the big National Choi Kwang Do seminar. That was seriously going to suck to get the chance to train with the grand master of the order and not be able to see what he was doing!

The demo team got to perform at the seminar, and hoo boy did they rock! They also made a huge impression because the team from the Michigan school that performed is mostly adults and all first degree black belts or higher.

Our team is *all* 14 and under, and Robin is the *only* black belt.

In other demo team news, I think I may have gotten their coach interested in the idea of a routine set to the Cruxshadows' "Resist/r". I think it would be *fabulous* -- will record developments as they happen.
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Probably the most outstanding part of Dragoncon was the people I got to meet. I had already met anniesj, wisteria_, and elfgirl previously, but it's always great to see them. Next time, though, I want to do something more substantial to help elfgirl have a good time. You about broke my heart with how tired you looked, girlfriend!

New meets including the ever-exciting and fabulously snarky ginmar. I swear Gin is a reincarnation of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, or one of the classic 1940's "ballsy dames". She is a lady who takes no shit from *anyone*, and gives wonderful, wonderful snark -- even *without* alcohol.

hazel75 won my love the second she mentioned Weeza Boudrow from "Steel Magnolias". Everything after that was just gravy. Waylon Jennings, *real* Country music, karaoke -- I swear I'm going to be hiding out at her house next time I'm in Atlanta for a family get-together. *g*

And then there was chloegoth. If there was a cooler, classier lady at Dragoncon, *I* certainly never met her. Gracious, friendly, and with a talent for subtle snark that I thoroughly envy. My snark tends to be more sledgehammer level.

And she's a Laurel Hamilton fan! Who swings towards the lycanthropes! I think by the look on the guys' faces Sunday night, we were probably quite the silly looking fangirls, but that's okay. It's so rare to find an Anita Blake fan that isn't totally Jean Claude's bitch! It *must* be acknowledged and celebrated!

Of course I also have to get her hooked on the Princess Meredith books now. *g*

It occurred to me driving home today that it's been a week since Dragoncon, and I really haven't managed to put together any coherent record of my exploits.

Don't know if I'm going to manage to do it today either, because the movie I just watched appears to have sucked my brain dry.

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.

Shut up. At least the nachos were good. *g*

This just has to be the year for sucky sequels to movies I enjoyed the first time around. This Charlie's Angels *totally* didn't get the point of the movies.

It isn't about the chicks -- it's about the cheese. The first Charlie's Angels was a nice, respectable Swiss.

I think this one barely qualified as Velveeta. Yes, I know there's nothing actually resembling genuine cheese in Velveeta -- that's precisely my point. ;)