30 day writing meme: Day 1

[tielan]

I promised myself that for the next 30 days, every time I wrote 2000 words in a day, I'd allow myself to post one day of the 30-day Writing Meme:

Yesterday, my ladiesbigbang jumped from 4,000 to 6,500, thanks to WriteOrDie, and so, without further ado...

Writing Meme - Day 1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis.

I've gotten 10 years and at least a million words of fanficcing creativity out of it! From pairings and AUs that made my name in SG1 and SGA, genfic that didn't forget the female characters or woobie the males, smut and sexxing and kinky lovin' with a dash of humour and a lot of meta! Characters that swallowed my brain whole - at least one or two of them usually did and then held the door open for the others - and who then have spun off their personalities and character archetypes to spawn new worlds and universes in my head.

Stargate - in spite of the issues I have with the show, TPTB, and fandom - has been my bane and my blessing these last ten years. I've met huge swathes of my social circles through Stargate, and learned a lot about people and life and the way the world works.

I discovered how to complete a story, how to structure a plot, how to write archetypal characters, how to see side characters as people in their own right. I also learned about institutionalised racism and sexism, ableism through the show and the fandom, which then bled through into the fic and meta and attitudes and preferences that have surrounded me.

Is that a downer? A lot of people would probably say 'yes'. I think it's been a valuable learning experience: to know the prejudice of others and so not always having to wonder "is it me?" I'm glad and grateful for that experience in the training ground rather than the real world. And Stargate's shortcomings in race and gender in particular have made me aware of societal shortcoming in race and gender and in other areas.

And then there's the usual benefits of fannish universe: dozens of friends and acquaintances all around the world, five or six overseas trips to meet said friends and acquaintances, conventions and craziness, discussions, squee and at least a million words' worth of productivity, not to mention late nights spent reading stories that stuck in my brain and wouldn't be shaken loose...

Ultimately, it's been fun. Even if I put on rose-coloured glasses to look at the dodgy parts.

--

I'm not sure if there should be a second section for my own personal universes; sometime, I should tell you about Iniya and the Fifty Great Houses (my adolescent foray into epic fantasy). I had a freaking family tree of the ruling family mapped out for six generations! And then they and their fellow Iniyans started branching out into the ruling families of other countries and...

Let's just say, it got messy. :D

Tomorrow: How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?
(assuming I get my 2000 words done, which is looking a touch flaky right now)

Comments

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

Oh, your family tree makes my inner adolescent book geek heart quiver! Have I ever told you how much I adore you? (Obviously not often enough.)

[tielan]

Hee!

Honestly, it was...dreadful and hilarious and melodramatic. There were lots of twins, more than a few torrid affairs, and several sets of cousins married each other. (In fact, it was something of an epidemic for the first few generations...)

Oh man, I just dug out the family tree and...uh...it's a mess. Hilarious mess, but a mess nevertheless...

example:

Jeremy III enters into a relationship with a foreign national, Elisse, and has two children by her. Because they're the children of a foreign national (and, moreover, a country they're at war with), they're not allowed to inherit the throne, so he has to marry a good Iniyan woman.

He marries Marceila - who bears him two children...then runs off with Elisse's brother.

Jeremy then starts a relationship with his distant cousin, who gives birth to a son, and dies about eight years later.

In the meantime, Marceila has had two children by Elisse's brother.

Then he gets back together with his still-wife Marceila, and has another two children with her.

And, to top it all off...all of Marceila's children were twins.

I told you it was nuts! :D

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

I still think it's adorable and hilarious! I would have done the same!