Aelfgyfu

I didn't write much fanfic in 2011. In fact, I wasn't going to do a round-up until I lost count of my friends who were doing year-end round-ups and wrote how sad they were that they hadn't done more. Ha! I can be more pathetic than any of y'all!

I went to my website, Aelfgyfu's Mead Hall, and confirmed my memory that I didn't even manage to post a single story there this past year, even though I wrote three short stories in 2011. I just have to redo a bit of the coding and hand them over to Brilliant Husband, but I can't even manage that. I wanted to redo a bit of "Doppelganger" to make sure that it will make sense to Chuck fans who don't know Stargate SG-1, but I can't seem to muster the will or the mind to do it. . . .

My year in fic consists of Tales of an Accidental Fic Writer.

My plan for 2011: write the third story in my Primeval AU; write more SG-1; dabble elsewhere.

What I actually did in 2011: I wrote two Chuck stories and one for Cabin Pressure (details below).

Seriously, Muse?
1. I don't even read Chuck fic! I have read virtually no Chuck fic whatsoever; I'm just not that interested in the show, though I think Adam Baldwin is great.
2. Cabin Pressure is a radio show. I have so far heard: two or three random episodes of series 2; one random episode of series 3; all but the last episode of series 1. That's a total of about eight half-hour episodes of a radio show. I have read some Cabin Pressure fic, and I remain perplexed by it, because for me little of it strikes the right notes. How can I write fic for something of which I know so little?

Enough introduction. Here's what I wrote this year:
( Chuck and White Collar )

( Chuck and Stargate SG-1 )

( Cabin Pressure )

( Goals for this year )

RATING: G (general audiences)
LENGTH: about 8600 words
CATEGORIES: crossover, humor
SUMMARY: Casey is thrilled to head a mission once again, even if it involves impersonating some lowlife Ring agent who looks a lot like him. This Dave Dixon guy will never know what hit him.
SPOILERS: through early s8 of Stargate: SG-1 (set before "Heroes"); start of s3 of Chuck
WARNINGS: None
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks to my betas, Brilliant Husband (dudethemath) and especially redbyrd_sgfic, who read the story very quickly and made some great suggestions. All errors, infelicities, and poor judgement are my own.
Written for sg_fignewton's Crossover Alphabet Soup, without which I would probably never have put this anywhere outside my own mind! Thanks for the opportunity and encouragement, Fig, and I'm sorry I forgot to link back for an embarrassingly long time.
I didn't get to revise this as much as usual. Please, let me know about typos, errors, and other things that could be improved! (If I make minor changes, I'll just make them here. If it really needs it, the story will get a revision and a later reposting.)


( Doppelgänger )
( Start reading where the comments to Fig's Alphabet Soup post left off )

( Pick up where Alphabet Soup Anthology left off )

The genesis of this story is a story unto itself. I said something one day to Brilliant Husband about reading a White Collar story with a title something like "Wait in the Car," and he immediately responded, "Sounds like a crossover with Chuck!" And thus an idea was born. I have resisted looking up the WC story I actually read in the first place, let it exercise undue influence on a clearly cracky idea. I drafted a story, in consultation with BH, and then let him make changes. Then I roped in aurora_novarum to act as beta, and she returned it to me November 22 (with apologies for taking so long! Which I already knew was hilarious!).

Life and work have been crazy, but at long last the story is done! Aurora should not be blamed for any problems with it (although she deserves thanks for getting me to straighten out at least some of my convoluted sentences). dudethemath will accept both praise and brickbats (right, BH?).

Without further ado:
TITLE: "Wait in the Van"
AUTHORS: aelfgyfu_mead with dudethemath
RATING: G (general audiences)
LENGTH: about 6000 words
CATEGORIES: humor (mild crack?)
SUMMARY: Peter kept telling Neal to wait in the van. Was it Neal's fault he didn't specify which one? Crossover with Chuck.
SPOILERS: possibly mild for White Collar s1, Chuck through the end of s2
WARNINGS: PLEASE ignore the fact that those seasons occurred in different years. You can't make the timeline work, and I don't want you all to hurt yourselves trying to do so.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks to my beta, aurora_novarum. All remaining errors, infelicities, and poor judgement belong primarily to me and secondarily to Brilliant Husband.
DISCLAIMER: White Collar belongs to Fox Television Studios and Jeff Eastin. Chuck belongs to:College Hill Pictures Inc., Warner Bros. Television, Wonderland Sound and Vision. They probably both belong to other persons or identities as well, but not to me. No copyright infringement is intended, and indeed the story probably won't make sense unless you've watched both shows. So watch the shows, buy the DVDs, etc. I do not profit from fic except insofar as comments make me happy.

( Wait in the Van )

Most of my posts since mid-January have been brief birthday wishes. Obviously, I am pressed for time and brain cells.

Today, dear friends, I have put aside some time for your amusement (I hope). I have continued through SG-1 and must post some s6 reactions just as soon as I remember what those episodes were and how I reacted, but that will be a whole post in itself.

I have tried a few new shows, and I have scattershot comments. I'll put spoilers for each behind cuts. Please don't spoil me either! Thanks!

Leverage
We've only seen three episodes of Leverage. Mostly, I like it--which surprises me, because I am generally turned off by revenge, and Leverage is the ultimate revenge fantasy. Some of my friends seem really to enjoy it, and I couldn't resist aurora_novarum's Leverage/SG-1 crossover "Wargames Didn't Play Out Like This" even though I'd never seen Leverage. We gave it a try when it came up on Netflix in "View Instantly!"
So tell me, friends who enjoy it: is it really crackfic every week? Because all three episodes so far have been pretty crack-ridden! I don't just have to suspend disbelief; I have to lock it in a box and shoot it into orbit!
I do enjoy the characters, even as I think, "This could never possibly work." I like Hardison: he just struck me from the start as the one of these people I could actually enjoy spending time with. Parker is great fun to watch. Eliot gives me trouble--he's a killer, and I like my heroes not to kill the bad guys, even if they deserve it. I like that Sophie and Parker get scenes together and they never seem to be talking about guys! My gosh! Male creators and writers can write women like this?
The show is clever, even if it's completely farbot. I don't feel compelled to watch it, though; I don't say at the end, "Let's watch another!" as I do with the next show.
No spoilers here; I haven't seen enough!

The John Casey Show (aka Chuck)
Chuck was another show I watched because friends enjoyed it so much. Brilliant Husband watched some and gave up. I thought he'd watched several episodes. Only when I finally decided I had to try it did I find that he got no further than the crotch scene with Chuck and Morgan in the premiere; he saw that and thought, "I don't need to see any more of this!" He got past it on his second try (and I on my first).
I really like Chuck. He's smart, he's cute, he's sweet. He deserves a much better life than he gets. I kind of like Sarah, although I have some misgivings (under the cut). But why do I keep watching?
Adam Baldwin plays John Casey. Adam Baldwin: Col. Dave Dixon on SG-1, Jayne on Firefly, the guy you've seen lots of places but who never plays the lead. He may not be the lead, but he owns this show.
We're well into the second season now, and I'm still loving it! I do get to the end of an episode and say, "I want another!" (but we never do, because it's always bedtime; we do, however, sometimes cheat and watch the opening scenes of the next episode, because there aren't any previews on the disks). I love Ellie and Awesome. I even kind of like Morgan. (Jeff I could do without, seriously.)
( Spoilers under the cut up to 2.11, 'Chuck Versus Santa Claus' )
Oh, and I think I've won over redbyrd_sgfic to The John Casey Show, too. Just passing on what other friends did to for me!

I Spy
I was stunned by Robert Culp's death. I loved Greatest American Hero back when it ran, but I I hadn't looked for it again until he died. I couldn't believe he'd grown older! He was still Bill Maxwell to me, though that was a quarter century ago. Now I do want to see it again, but our TiVo couldn't find it, so we recorded an episode of I Spy instead.
I had never seen I Spy. I don't know why. I kind of always knew it existed, but when we turned on the one episode we got from Rerun Retro TV, I discovered I didn't even have the premise quite right! I knew it was about a tennis pro and his trainer posing as spies, but I thought Bill Cosby was the lead and played the tennis player, and Robert Culp was the sidekick. Okay, that was backwards.
When we watched the opening credits for the episode "It's All Done with Mirrors," Bill Cosby's name is there, but all the scenes showed Robert Culp! I did figure out Cosby wasn't the lead. The episode was surely quite atypical (details after the cut), but I do have remarks that shouldn't be spoilers.
First: those men go around with no shirts on an awful lot! I think at least half the episode must have had one of them shirtless! (I could also not help but notice they were never both shirtless at the same time, but then again, the episode was atypical.)
Related to that: I found myself repeatedly thinking, "Wow, I never knew Bill Cosby looked--" before my brain started screaming, "NOOOO; that's Cliff Huxtable you're talking about!" My first exposure to Cosby was Fat Albert. As I recall, Cosby showed up himself in non-cartoon scenes to dispense fatherly advice every episode. Cosby has always been a father figure to me: Fat Albert dates to 1972, folks, so it was around before I can even remember. He looks good in a three-piece suit, too--NOOOO! Brain says NOOOO!
It's slightly less disturbing to see Robert Culp looking really good, because a) I always knew he'd been a leading man (even if I hadn't seen it) and b) he never came off as a father figure to me. Slightly loony uncle, absolutely, but he was my favorite on GAH (more below). My reaction to him outside shirtless was a little more, "Put on some sunscreen, man! You'll burn!"
I found parts very funny, although some unintentionally so.
( This episode )
Conclusion: must watch more episodes to see if other episodes are even funnier (these guys are both hilarious!) and to see if they usually go around shirtless. (I think my LJ friends are corrupting me; I never used to say things like that before I got on LJ myself. Thanks, gang!)

Musings: Chuck as Greatest American Hero for the aughts?
Think about it: in the eighties, we had a show with a fairly normal but really, really sweet guy in a frustrating job who suddenly gained unexpected powers. He had a devoted girlfriend and a crusty FBI handler (who really cares for him). No-longer normal guy keeps his day job, tries to keep his new job secret. I love crusty handler best.
For the aughts, we have a more powerful woman and a far more aggressive agent, but we still have a really, really sweet guy in a frustrating job who suddenly gained unexpected powers. He has a devoted CIA handler pretending to be his girlfriend who really has feelings for him, and a really hard-core NSA handler (who denies really caring for him but I don't entirely believe him). No-longer normal guy keeps his day job, tries to keep his new job secret. I love slightly psycho handler best.

What do you think?