ramblings on the BSG fandom...

[fahye]

...which nobody cares about but me, so I'll stick it under a cut.

But first! PSA: I'm moving into the new apartment today, staying over the weekend and then relocating (AGAIN) to my parents' house (AGAIN) to look after the cat (AGAIN). So: no Internet access until Monday.




I spent some of yesterday hopping from place to place in the BSG fandom, and am alarmed by how much of it seems to centre around the Yahoo group for BSG ficwriters. I wouldn't know a Yahoo group if it hit me inna face with a tyre. Uh. LJ is my comfort zone.

There are a couple of really good fic archives out there, which I expect I'll submit to once I've written a few more things, and one major LJ community for fic. Gratifyingly compact, as fandoms go.

I've done a lot of skimreading and a little more full-reading, and I'm a bit disappointed at the lack of good fic. I've found a couple of authors whose stuff is great, but on the whole the fandom seems dominated by mediocrity masquerading as OOC-ish schmoop and angst of the self-gratifying type. The entire damn WORLD seems to ship Kara/Lee (hurrah!), but a hefty portion of writers for the pairing seem prepared to abandon all sense of complexity and character voice in favour of getting them to have sex a lot/admit their undying love. Which then triggers massive squee and OMG SO GOOD WRITE MORE. I don't know. It's very possible I'm a spoiled brat and it's also possible that I just don't know where to look to find the fandom's cache of good authors (they MUST exist. somewhere.) but...ugh. Yeah. I need a fandom-mentor, because this show makes me want to write and tease out the intriguing ideas and possible backstories and what-ifs.

(And yes, fic out Kara/Lee in a satisfying manner, but now that I've made a quick token effort in that direction I'm leaving them well alone until I've seen S2 and/or sorted out my thoughts on their relationship properly, because there are so many layeeeeers. And Apollo's voice is difficult because he hides so much, and Starbuck's voice is damn difficult because she's got more layers again and you can't just portray her as a tough ass-kicking pilot, or an insecure person who has crises of identity and family and faith, or as a genuinely fun, caring, normal girl, because her balance changes a lot depending on context. Uh. This wasn't meant to be a Starbuck analysis. There'll be one of those later.)

I have given up remaining unspoilered in ANY sense of the word. Ugh. I could feel a rant about this coming on even before carrielh mentioned it on her LJ. I know it's unreasonable to expect people to consider the fact that Australia hasn't seen the second season at all, but it still irks to see icons with couples kissing or spoilery images or whatever, liberally sprinkled over every community I visit.

And hey! We're not getting the second season at all, from what I hear. So I'll be shelling out about $120 to order it off Amazon, thanks to exorbitant postage and the producers' stunning plan of releasing it in two parts. Grrrr. Sure, I'd rather have S2.0 now rather than waiting for S2.5 to be aired and then getting them all together, but I JUST MOVED HOUSE. I just bought a fuckton of furniture and household goods and my scholarship money doesn't come in until the beginning of March.

And my Internet speed is so fucked up that there is no chance I could buy it off the iTunes store, because I'd be waiting all year for the episodes to actually download. And if I get all of my RL friends addicted to S1 (marathon planned for Monday!) and then fail to deliver S2 it will be rather pointless.

*grumbles. grumpily.*

I need to knooooow things. I feel weird writing for a fandom when there are huge portions of the canon I am unaware of. For now I shall sulk mightily and write backstory for Gaius.

Here endeth the rambling.

ETA: Dear god, my fandom has a pregnancy fetish.

*stares*

I mean, sure, why not, if it's done well. But it seems to be everyone's favourite plot point.

Comments

[pathstotread.livejournal.com]

There are several good BSG fic writers out there, Kara/Lee and otherwise. (moodfic, stars_like_dust, brynnmck, just to name a few.) Unfortunately, they're fairly outnumbered by the incompetent hacks, most of whom hang out at that Yahoo group, actually. All of my favorite authors are pretty much strictly LJ. I've written a few BSG pieces myself, but I find it very hard to get the characters down because they're all so multi-faceted. It's a tough fandom to write in, so I shouldn't be so hard on the squeeing fangirls, but sometimes I'm just like..."my GOD, please stop writing. Please."

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I've since discovered stars_like_dust, but I will check out the others. And I liked all of your stuff enormously :)

[vaudevilles.livejournal.com]

God I *am* stalking you.

If you want plotty interesting stuff there's rheanna27's brilliant Twelve (http://www.livejournal.com/users/rheanna27/40930.html) which is long and fascinating.

For Kara/Lee stuff there's beyond_insane and lots more at bsg2003fics and bsg_creative.

I've got a bunch of recs - some smutty (but avoiding the worst of the yahoo group teeny-dross) and some not. I read mostly K/L but some gen and some other... though there is a sad lack of good long plot-driven fic in the fandom so far.

I'm happy to email you through a bunch of recs if you want (dribbling fangirl with five A4 pages of tabulated recs in 9 point OMG how sad) and then you can see if I have any kind of taste.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

*grins; stalks you back?*

Eee, thank you. I'm starting to get a feel for which writers do the kinds of things I like, but do feel free to email me some recs for when I have time to settle in and read!

[vaudevilles.livejournal.com]

Best rec for today svilleficrecs's Intra (http://www.livejournal.com/users/svilleficrecs/102660.html). A story about what happens to Kara and Lee in the moments between in 33. With some hot hot hot smut and a lovely slice of the stress, silliness, and exhaustion from this ep.

If you want I'm happy to share the BSG love and send you Season Two so far - it'll take me a while to copy the discs but being an enabler to a ficcer sounds like a job for... Bad Influence Girl!

If you want (and I haven't scared you off with the horse heads) email me your address at ceridwyn at stonesoup dot co dot nz. Us downunderites must stick together ;o)

[fahye.livejournal.com]

:O

You're a wonder. That would be great - is it .avi files?

[glamaphonic]

Oh, sweetheart, back away from the Yahoo!Groups. I am an Elitist Whore (tm) but it remains true that the central hub of BSG fandom is here on LiveJournal. This is a tiny, tiny fandom with like very few fic archives and big websites and that sort of thing. It's almost entirely contained in a bunch of bitches talking at each other on LJ.

If you haven't discovered it yet, galacticanews is the fandom newsletter and the eye of the storm so to speak. It links to everything, except fic, because lo there was wank, but it's amazingly useful if you just want to get a feel for the fandom. Also, the_wireless is the fic announcement newsletter which is very, very useful as it posts a few times a week with a list of links to BSG fic that's been posted on LJ. One of the practices of The Wireless is to keep an eye on people who write fic, but don't crosspost it into comms (which a lot of people do) so a lot of times you'll find fic you won't have known existed if you didn't have the person who wrote it friended.

I have a very, very short and incomplete rec list on my website here, because I have been thus far too lazy to even get through adding all the recs from when I first came into the fandom and read everything ever, much less all the awesome fic that has been written SINCE then. Of course, since I came into the fandom about two weeks before season two started this means that conveniently none of my recs have to do with anything beyond what you've seen! See, my laziness works for you.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

*latches onto your arm*

THANK you. A tinyfandom sounds like something I can handle.

I've had a look at galacticanews and it does look useful, but I don't want to go reading most of the reviews/meta stuff until I've actually SEEN the second season. Didn't know about the_wireless, so thanks!

Elitist Whore sounds so much nicer than 'spoiled brat' :D