shadowscast

So I never post anymore (you may have noticed). But this, this was worth breaking radio silence for: fan_eunice has posted a Once A Thief vid! It's fun and it's bouncy and it's fun!

Girls Just Want To Have Fun

Once A Thief, if you don't know, is a Canadian TV show that aired for one season back in 1997. It was based on a John Woo movie of the same name, and in fact the show pilot was a remake of the movie (with somewhat different characters and plot). The main characters are secret agents working for a Shadowy Government Agency. They fight evil with martial arts. The show is campy, uneven, delightfully slashy, and does not take itself very seriously at all except for when it does.

The full series aired in Canada and Australia but never, I think, in the United States. One of the agents was played by Nicholas Lea, who also played Krycek in the X-Files, and most of the fannish interest arrived via X-Files fandom. In fact I think I may be the only person in the entire world who got into fandom via Once A Thief as opposed to vice versa.

I saw bits and pieces of the series during its original run on broadcast. I liked the show very much, but had no way to catch the episodes I'd missed. These were ye olden days; I didn't even own a VCR. Watching the show, I was convinced that before every single scene, the director told all of the actors "and by the way, you secretly want to have sex with each other." It was THAT SLASHY. Except I didn't know what slash was yet. But when searching the still-relatively-young internet for episode summaries (I mean, I was probably searching with Alta Vista, folks), I stumbled across a fic about the two male leads having sex while hiding in a closet.

I was like ... OH. WOW. So I'm not the only one who thought they were totally hot for each other!

And thus I discovered fanfic. And slash. Which I didn't even realize weren't synonymous until years later when I jumped into That '70s Show fandom (a weird and brief blip between my Once A Thief and my Buffyverse stages).

Sadly, it was a very hard fandom to pimp, since barely anyone had seen the show and it wasn't out on DVD. I had a set of episodes on VHS tapes via the old-fashioned fannish copy-and-snailmail network; I also in fannish desperation paid $40 at one point for a set of DVDs that had been *ahem* pirated off of TV by some guy.

But now things have changed! The DVDs have finally been released! (They came out in June of this year; I only heard about it a couple of weeks ago and I now have my box set sitting on my desk, yippeee!)

And ... a vid! Have you watched it yet? You should go and watch it and comment, too! :-D

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reena_jenkins has posted a collection of podfics, put together in an album she has called The Intangible Residuum. I am honoured to have had a fic included—my Buffyverse Alphabet!

Also, someone has nominated my little fic Five Superpowers Xander Is Not Sorry, Upon Reflection, That He Doesn't Have for the Sunnydale Memorial Awards. Thanks, mysterious someone!


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Hello, world. How's it going? Me, I've been okay, but busy and tired and somehow drained of all creativity. I just went about three months without writing a word of fiction, which may actually be the longest fallow period I've had since I was six years old. I mean, three months without posting—sure, no big deal. Three months without writing, though? I turned around and realized I'd lost a part of myself. Eeep. But even this realization happened in a context of things opening up and my energy starting to come back—spring is here, the academic year has finished, and my husband has just quit his job (which is a good thing!).

So yesterday I realized I could write again, and it felt really good. I set the bar low: a "five things" story with drabble chapters. A gently attainable goal. And I finished it today!

500 words. Gen.

Five Superpowers Xander Is Not Sorry, Upon Reflection, That He Doesn't Have

( Read more...Collapse )

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Hello, world! Although I'm not really active in fandom these days, I have recently been quietly working on a short Spike/Xander story. My stories tend to sprawl, and at this point in my life I just don't have time for sprawling, so I challenged myself to write something self-contained and complete. And now it's finished and I get to post it. Hooray! I hope you like it.

Story Info
Fandom: BtVS & AtS
Rating: Teen & Up (for a bit of swearing, a bit of violence, a bit of sex)
Length: 8,184 words (complete!)

This is a post-Chosen AU in which Xander finds Spike's amulet in the wreckage of Sunnydale. When he picks it up, something interesting happens...

Many thanks to yourlibrarian for beta-reading, and for coming up with a few good lines that I was happy to snag!


Seeing Is His Superpower

When they went back to the Sunnydale site to make sure the Hellmouth was closed for good, Buffy and Willow nearly left Xander behind.

"You've done enough already," Buffy said to him, in that eggshell-gentle tone they'd all been taking with him lately. "Anyway, it's probably going to be really boring. Just Willow walking around doing a bunch of incantations and me standing guard."

"I want to go," Xander insisted. "Hey, you never know. Maybe I'll see something you guys miss." ( Read more...Collapse )

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Number of drabbles I have written, ever: 11

Number of these that have been about weddings: 7 (= 63.6%)

Number of words in my complete collection of posted fanfic to date, excluding drabbles: 581,000

Number of these words having to do with weddings: 450 (= 0.08%)

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Remember back when I said that I was working on finishing a seven-year-old WIP in an obscure fandom? I'm done!

I'm still dubious whether anybody's going to read it (the fandom is tiny!) but I sure had fun writing it, anyway. yourlibrarian is so awesome that she actually watched the entire series so that she could beta read for me! She's always a joy to work with, and I'm really grateful for her insightful input, her encouragement, and her close reading!

So hey, how about I give you some details?

Title: Family
Author: Shadowscast
Fandom: Once A Thief
Pairing: Mac/Michael, Mac/Li Ann, Mac/Vic
Rating: Mature
Summary: Family is a complicated thing for Mac Ramsey.
Warnings: Please note that chapters 1 and 2 contain some potentially disturbing sexual scenes due to abuse and control issues. There are sexual situations involving dubious consent.
Length: Long! 172,986 words.
Status: Complete, woohoo!

Notes: It took me seven years to complete this story. I started posting it as a WIP to a Once A Thief mailing list back in 2003. Then I left it hanging for a really, really long time ... but I started working on it again in March of 2010, and I finished it last night. Yay!

I hope there are still some interested readers out there, after all this time. If you do read it, I'd love to hear from you.

Link: Family

If you don't know the fandom but might want to give the story a try anyway, here's what you really need to know: The characters are secret agents. And they're hot. :-)

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I've been watching WALL-E a lot lately (because my toddler likes it). I got to thinking about the many parallels between WALL-E and Battlestar Galactica. It amused me, so I drew up a list.

( Cut for spoilers for both WALL-E and BSG.Collapse )

For a slightly different take on it all: I checked out AO3 and was delighted to find a gorgeous little WALL-E/BSG crossover fic! Merry-Go-Round by Nope.

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Hey, so, quite recently, I finished an epic rewatch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series. I use the word "epic" because I was doing this rewatch with a friend, and it took us five years to complete. (It didn't help that during that time, he moved to Seattle for a year and I had a baby and, well, life sure does get in the way of TV-watching sometimes, doesn't it?)

Anyway, it was a lot of fun! But after rewatching AtS in particular, I've found that there are a few plot points that are bugging me. And tonight, I feel like sharing, so I will describe them at length! (Um, this is my first meta in oh my goodness a long time. Please be gentle?)


1) ( The Shanshu ProphecyCollapse )

2) ( The ApocalypseCollapse )

3) ( The Perfect HappinessCollapse )

4) ( Those damn Cyborg NinjasCollapse )

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Hello out there!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of hanging out with a new RL friend who is also fannish, and she reminded me that I haven't updated this journal for quite a while. It is true! (Also she washed my dishes while I was occupied with my 2-year-old kid. the_shoshanna, you rock.)

So here's what's up with me, fandom-wise:

I'm still working on the seven-year-old stalled WIP from my first fandom, Once A Thief. It's giving me an inordinate amount of pleasure to be working on that story again, even though I'm unconvinced that anybody will read it once it's done. Better yet, yourlibrarian has offered to beta-read it for me, starting by actually watching the whole darn television series!

Speaking of friends who are wonderful (I seem to be blessed with a lot of them!), a couple of my RL friends are looking after my kid several days a week this summer, allowing me to have some relaxing solitary time during my summer hiatus from teaching. Some of this time will most certainly be spent writing, oh my yes.

I'm starting to kick a few new Buffyverse ideas around in my head, too. Of course the problem is that I find it difficult to write anything short, but I'd really like to write something that I can finish before the summer's over. So, hm, we'll see what comes of that.

Meanwhile, I'm really excited, proud and grateful to have received several fandom awards for the one story I wrote last year! Thanks to whoever out there nominated me, and also to everyone who put in the work to make these fandom awards happen.

Pretty banners behind the cut, as well as links to the awards sites so you can go find lots of good stories to read.

( Click to see.Collapse )

Oh hey, if you missed the story when I posted it last fall and want to check it out now, here it is. (Spike/Xander, circa season 7, with a time loop!)

On AO3: Longest. Day. Ever.
At Fall for S/X: Longest. Day. Ever.

*hugs* to you all. See you around!

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So, remember how I said back in November that I needed to give up fandom for a while?

I realized about three weeks ago that I need to come back.

Okay, specifically: I needed to start writing again. Writing is my creative outlet, it's my play. All work and no play make Homer go crazy. So I did (go a little crazy) and then I did (start writing again), and so here I am.

Except what I'm writing right now isn't my current S/X WIP. It isn't even Buffyverse. I've picked up a stalled WIP from my very first fandom, Once A Thief. This is a story that I hadn't updated in seven years. It's been stuck, unfinished, since May 2003. It was about 120,000 words long when I stopped. I'd tried many times over the years to get back to it, but I never could manage a single word. And this is the story that's writing itself now whenever I get my fingers to a keyboard.

I realize there may be nobody left in the entire world who's interested in reading it, but apparently I need to write this story.

Meanwhile, I've also opened up a shiny new Archive of Our Own account, and am experimenting with uploading my old stories. I just started with a couple of really short ones, but the interface is really nice and they look very pretty there, plus it gives me a nice sense of accomplishment. So I'll probably keep going with that, as I find time.

ETA: On AO3, I'm Shadowscast, as always!

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