I'm a slave to the Power of Death

I've been here on Dreamwidth for about 6 weeks right now and I have to say I am thoroughly enjoying it.

I'm starting to connect with people which is a little harder than I expected but I think I'm getting the hang of it. I still sometimes overthink what I want to say in reply to someone's post and end up saying nothing. Practice makes perfect though so I'm going to keep working on it, and ask you all to continue to be patient with me.

I didn't have a clear idea of what I was going to write about. I knew this wasn't going to be a diary or daily journal, I have those. I had thought I'd write about my hobbies and interests, but instead this has turned quite fannish and I've been making fairly long rambling posts about things. Meta might be the way this is going and I don't mind that at all. I might look into more about that.

I still want to try turning my hand at writing some fanfiction, but I'm still quite apprehensive there. I don't know if writing about my attempts at writing would be interesting, but I've seen others write about it. A problem shared is a problem halved and all that

I may write a little more about the books I'm reading. I enjoyed seeing the stats for my August writing. I've seen some book-themed link-ups but I'm not sure how interested in those I am, or if anyone else would be either.

So yes, so far so good, I'm enjoying my first attempt at blogging and I think I'll be continuing it!

smallrobot commented on my post about SG-1 kink-fic saying

I sometimes go into a tag thinking something like, "This pairing and this concept make too much sense. I'm sure there will be lost of fics listed under the tag!", and end up with a few at best. I'm always so puzzled when it happens, but then I realise my view of the characters is just not shared by many other people in this respect.

And it got me thinking how we all see the characters so differently. Everyone in fandom watches the same show, the same episodes, the same stories, with the same characters but we all see them so differently. We all see their attributes and intentions a little differently, we react to different scenes in different ways.

Take Sam Carter in the SG-1 premiere for instance - the 'sex organs on the inside' speech: I know a lot of people (Amanda Tapping included) think it's very cringey but I think it's very typical attitude of a woman in a man's world in the mid-late 90s. I'm sure I've said similar things to old white men on dig sites in my time. I also think it's the moment she won Jack's respect - standing up for herself, matching their jibes, keeping up with them but still remaining (mostly)respectful of the chain of command. I also think Hammond was very amused in that scene.

Then we move into fandom. Even something as simple as which pairing/s we ship. A quick look at the stats on AO3 and there are 6336 Jack/Sam & 6211 Jack/Daniel. There's also 908 Daniel/Vala, 632 Sheppard/McKay, 607 Sam/Janet, 398 Mitchell/Sheppard, 371 Sam/Daniel, 354 Daniel/Sha're.

(There's a whole other train of thought in there brewing about how not just I refer to some characters by first name, and others by surname - why Jack and not O'Neill, or Mitchell and not Cameron when they're both military).

Even in those 6211 Jack/Daniel fics, the variations are multiple. 1090 established relationship vs 813 first time, for instance. Or 420 AU compared to 407 episode related. There's 1224 angst, 826 drama, 615 hurt/comfort, and 595 romance.

The most basic question of who's on top - ask 10 people, get 10 different answers.
Are they written as gay, 'only gay for you', bi, experimenting - ask 10 people, get 15 different answers
Throw kink into the equation, and then you ask 10 people, get 20 different answers.

I'm not well-versed at using AO3 enough to know how to drill down into what other tags are included in fics tagged with BDSM but I imagine there are even more variations than I've had hot dinners in the last 34 years.

Anyone who's been in fandom long enough has undoubtedly experienced the ~drama of 'ship wars' because god forbid anyone else see the characters in a different way! But I absolutely love how we all see the same thing completely differently - whether it's because we have different life experiences, different experiences of queer... or just plain different sexual fantasies.

Personally, I go for: Jack is bi; Daniel doesn't care about gender; and I don't really care who's on top in either vanilla or kink, both work for me and they're both super hot. There's something about the big powerful general on his knees for Daniel (also nicely cliché), but there's also something fun about Jack making Daniel, the linguist, lose his coherence.

And now I'm going to continue discovering more kinks I didn't know I had LOL