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trinityofone) wrote2006-02-02 06:03 pm
trinityofone) wrote2006-02-02 06:03 pm
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wip_amnesty: Three Snippets
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svmadelyn has announced the start of a new round of wip_amnesty, and baby, I need amnesty like you would not believe. I have so many half-started stories on my hard drive, it's not even funny; but rather than totally swamp you guys, I'm going to limit myself to two of the larger ones, after kicking things off with the three shorter snippets in this post.
I'm always sad to see stories die, mostly because even in stories that I hate there's usually at least one good line that I'm sorry to see wasted. So this is the Random Humorous Lines Live! post. It's also most strongly the "What was this story about again?" post. (And hey, if you think you know the answer to that question, please let me know--then maybe I could actually finish one of these nasty buggers.)
So. Ficdump.
Snippet No. 1
It took two months of careful planning, two months of making nice with Lorne and of slipping bribes to Zelenka, two months of flirting with Elizabeth, and even throwing the occasional sultry glance Caldwell’s way. Two years since their last trip, two months of behind-the-scenes puppetry to ensure that their vacation time would synch, and finally, finally, John won them their well-deserved two weeks’ Earthside leave. So of course, Rodney was sick by the second day.
“God hates me,” Rodney moaned, beached across the bed, sweaty, his fingers alternately casting aside and clutching for the covers.
John had found it was better to keep him distracted. “Which god would that be?” he asked. “The one on M3K-763, whose temple you desecrated by sneezing? Or the one on the poodle planet, where you tried to pet--”
“All of them, any of them, the universe hates me, okay?” Rodney reached for the covers again and came away with John’s hand instead. “It’s just plain ungrateful, the number of times I’ve saved it...”
John stroked his thumb over Rodney’s. “The universe doesn’t hate you,” he said, gently. “It’s probably just all that chilli you ate for lunch.”
Rodney groaned. “Don’t say chilli. Gonna kill you if...gonna die.”
John swallowed. He wondered if it was possible for Rodney temperature to have risen appreciably in less than five minutes. He tried touching a hand to Rodney’s forehead, but Rodney turned and batted him away. John sighed; he had a new appreciation for Carson, that was for sure.
“While the irony would be impressive, you’re not going to die,” he said. “And if you kill me, who will make you soup?”
“‘S a good point,” Rodney conceded. After a minute his breathing leveled out and he slipped, mercifully, into a doze.
John pulled himself up from his awkward crouched position and guiltily extracted his fingers from Rodney’s grasp. He tucked the blankets back up, even though he knew that within minutes, Rodney would kick them off again. Glass of water from the bedside table: he could take it into the kitchen, refill it. He could do something.
He crept through the apartment, awkward there without Rodney to show him that it was okay to relax. They’d had a day--one frickin’ day--of lounging around, watching television and ordering an obscene amount of takeout, including the lamentable chilli. One day to decompress, and then they were going to go out and do stuff: eat in real restaurants, go skiing, maybe fool around in a hot tub. Instead, it looked like John was stuck playing nursemaid, and with Rodney incapable of appreciating his kinky outfit (if he’d had one).
So, um, then John was going to nurse Rodney back to health just in time to get sick HIMSELF, and then Rodney would be the crankiest (yet oddly, most effective) caretaker ever, yet their leave would be ruined, and they would never get to even leave Rodney's apartment, but after seeing each other at their worst, they would realize that they really do love each other, and on the last day of their break when they were finally both feeling better, they would opt out of going out and DOING STUFF, and instead stay in bed all day, having lots and lots of sex, THE END. But illness isn't actually that cute, really, at least not as cute as brain injury, so I went with that and wrote Consilience instead.
Snippet No. 2
“M’oh.”
“What?”
“Um, he pointed at you and said ‘Moe.’”
“Thank you, Colonel, I got that. Why did he say ‘Moe’?”
“M’oh is the name of our most powerful ancestor. He has selected you to participate in the ordeal.”
“What?”
“He said--”
“I heard him! You--you can’t just choose someone for a dangerous ordeal based on ‘eenie meanie minie moe’! And how do you even know what that is? What is the matter with you people?”
“M’oh has spoken.”
“But--”
“You do not wish to anger M’oh.”
“Why, is he gonna hit Curly in the face with a pan?”
“Rodney...”
“Oh, fine. But if it turns out I’ve been sent to my doom by a children’s game...”
“Rodney?”
“Yes?”
“Just remember: you’re the rubber, and he’s the glue.”
“I hate you so much right now.”
But of course he doesn't REALLY, and then something happens, and something else, and then they done sex the end? Maybe? Hell if I know.
Snippet No. 3
John was never going to be able to play Frisbee again.
That sucked. He’d really enjoyed Frisbee. Especially Ultimate Frisbee. Especially at the beach, when the majority of the other players were bouncy girls in tiny tiny swimsuits. But that was ruined for him now. Ruined. He dove to the ground as another alien Frisbee-of-DOOM whistled by his head. It missed him by less than an inch, went rocketing into a tree, and sent a shower of splinters shooting into his face.
Yup. Ruined.
“What are you thinking?”
McKay was lying beside him, pressed so tightly against the expanse of dirt and wet leaves that he might’ve been trying to bury himself in it. John spared him half a glance. “That I might as well just go gay since bikinis have been spoiled forever.”
“Um. I meant about how to escape.”
“Oh.” He glanced back toward their attackers; with any luck, their supply of killer Frisbees would be running low. He grabbed McKay’s arm and jerked him to his feet. “Run, I should think.”
They had not gone two steps before McKay started chanting, “Bad idea! BAD IDEA!” John wasn’t exactly large with the histrionics, but he had to agree. The natives apparently had a rather extensive backstock of sharp-edged, whistling death!Frisbees, and they weren’t afraid to use them. There was a whirring sound; John stumbled and ducked; and when he rose to his feet again, his hair felt...shorter. McKay was staring at him, wide-eyed and loose-jawed. “Jesus Christ,” he said.
“Seriously?” John patted anxiously at the top of his head. “Is it that bad? How much did I lose?”
“Are we talking brain cells here, because--Look out!”
They darted behind a boulder. McKay was panting. “All I did was ask them where the bathroom was. Really.”
“Actually, what you said was, ‘From the smell, I’m guessing this is the latrine.’ While you were standing in the middle of the chieftain’s bedroom.”
“There was a definite ammonia-like odor--Ronon even agreed with me! You know, before he ran in the correct direction, instead of making the mistake of following you.”
“Rodney...” John growled, and the only thing that saved McKay from his excoriating wit was the collision of another evil Frisbee with the rock they were hiding behind. McKay coughed; John shook flinty bits of stone out of his hair. “Right,” he said. “We need to make a break for the forest.”
McKay rolled his eyes. “In case you haven’t noticed, Colonel, between us and the forest is a vast, empty field. Let me repeat that,” he said, punctuating each word with an emphatic flourish. “A Vast.” Jab. “Empty.” Circle. “Field.” And stab.
John sighed. “Got any better ideas?”
McKay thought about it. Then he worked his way slowly out of his awkward crouch, peeking over the edge of the rock. “Hey!” he called. “Sorry about the--” A disk shrieked as whizzed past his ear. McKay did a bellyflop. “Okay. No.”
“Right.” John raised his gun and stole another glance at the encroaching horde of Frisbee-wielding, bikini-corrupting natives. “On three. One.” He grabbed at McKay’s arm. “Two.” He sent a spray of covering gunfire over the rock. “Three!”
And they were off!
Offed was more like it; there was no way they were going to make it. The disks were arcing down on them with that awful hiss-whine; it was a miracle they hadn’t been hit already. A miracle: John had seen what this weapon could do to bark and stone; it took tremendous effort, now, not to picture it doing the same to human flesh, to human muscle and bone. McKay stumbled beside him, and John’s heart stopped, waiting for the vivid splash of red, the horrible wet thump. Instead there was a muffled curse and “Oh, great: gopher holes--just what we need.” John allowed himself a second’s half-smile; then it was back to groping for McKay’s wrist and tugging him along like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and her intrepid reporter friend.
They were almost there--almost there, and John was beginning to rethink his original, pessimistic assessment. It was that flare of hope that did it, of course, because suddenly there were three of those things bearing down on them all at once: nasty, grinding death at every turn. There was nowhere to run; nothing to hide behind. John raised his gun, thinking he could shoot at least one of them out of the sky, maybe give Rodney half a chance...but then McKay shouted “John!” and snatched at his vest. They toppled over, McKay falling flat on his back and John landing on the other man’s stomach. John thought he felt a weird sort of buzz--hey, he hadn’t been serious about the turning gay thing!--but it was too late to worry about that now. They may have dodged two of the flagitious Frisbees, but the third’s trajectory was straight and murderous and true. He braced himself, praying that it’d be quick, and that his taking the blow would give McKay half a chance, after all.
Something bounced lightly off his shoulder. It felt...kind of like a Frisbee, actually.
John opened his eyes. The Disk of Death was lying beside him in the dirt, spinning weakly. Beneath him, McKay was staring at it, then at him, then back at it, with a look of giddy astonishment on his face. “It worked!” he shouted, and boy, was his mouth way too close to John’s ear. “I did it!”
“What?” John was still too shocked to move.
McKay gestured at his chest, at the glowing green object nestled there. “We’re invulnerable!”
Several pertinent questions popped into John’s mind. However, what he actually said was, “Wha?”
“The personal shield!” said McKay, the enthusiastic palpitations of his body tampered somewhat by the fact that he was still smushed under John. “I modified it to work for larger groups of people! Okay, for two. For two people. But still: in-vulner-able!”
“I thought it was broken.” John was sorta stupid after nearly escaping death.
McKay rolled his eyes. “Right, like I was really going to write this thing off after one teeny-tiny technical failure involving a massive cloud of life-sucking energy. I’ve been tinkering with it for months! Working out some of the...kinks.”
“Let me guess,” John said, pushing himself into a sitting position. “It lets you eat now.”
“Yep! It also--Um. Colonel?”
John’s body--against John’s strictest orders--was once again up close and personal with McKay’s; they looked like they were posing for a From Here to Eternity photo-op. John tried to jerk himself away, and once again snapped back against McKay’s person like two opposing magnetic poles. John arched an eyebrow. “Kinks, you say?”
“Not mine personally!” McKay yelped. “I swear, it didn’t do this in any of the simulations!”
“Simulations?” John growled. “You didn’t test it first?”
“Hey! I just saved your life here!”
...Rodney said, and both he and John were very irritable about the fact that they were pretty much stuck together by that tricksy personal shield, and they remained irritable, possibly for several whole minutes. But then John gave up the pretence of being at all straight, and mad, invulnerable sex was had, and the author admitted that she really just wanted an excuse to use Sneetches in an SGA story. Which hey, are pretty cool, actually, and maybe she should just shut up about this now so she can reuse them in something else. Um, walk away. This is not the hijacked weaponry you are looking for.
More to come...if you can stand it.
svmadelyn has announced the start of a new round of wip_amnesty, and baby, I need amnesty like you would not believe. I have so many half-started stories on my hard drive, it's not even funny; but rather than totally swamp you guys, I'm going to limit myself to two of the larger ones, after kicking things off with the three shorter snippets in this post.I'm always sad to see stories die, mostly because even in stories that I hate there's usually at least one good line that I'm sorry to see wasted. So this is the Random Humorous Lines Live! post. It's also most strongly the "What was this story about again?" post. (And hey, if you think you know the answer to that question, please let me know--then maybe I could actually finish one of these nasty buggers.)
So. Ficdump.
Snippet No. 1
It took two months of careful planning, two months of making nice with Lorne and of slipping bribes to Zelenka, two months of flirting with Elizabeth, and even throwing the occasional sultry glance Caldwell’s way. Two years since their last trip, two months of behind-the-scenes puppetry to ensure that their vacation time would synch, and finally, finally, John won them their well-deserved two weeks’ Earthside leave. So of course, Rodney was sick by the second day.
“God hates me,” Rodney moaned, beached across the bed, sweaty, his fingers alternately casting aside and clutching for the covers.
John had found it was better to keep him distracted. “Which god would that be?” he asked. “The one on M3K-763, whose temple you desecrated by sneezing? Or the one on the poodle planet, where you tried to pet--”
“All of them, any of them, the universe hates me, okay?” Rodney reached for the covers again and came away with John’s hand instead. “It’s just plain ungrateful, the number of times I’ve saved it...”
John stroked his thumb over Rodney’s. “The universe doesn’t hate you,” he said, gently. “It’s probably just all that chilli you ate for lunch.”
Rodney groaned. “Don’t say chilli. Gonna kill you if...gonna die.”
John swallowed. He wondered if it was possible for Rodney temperature to have risen appreciably in less than five minutes. He tried touching a hand to Rodney’s forehead, but Rodney turned and batted him away. John sighed; he had a new appreciation for Carson, that was for sure.
“While the irony would be impressive, you’re not going to die,” he said. “And if you kill me, who will make you soup?”
“‘S a good point,” Rodney conceded. After a minute his breathing leveled out and he slipped, mercifully, into a doze.
John pulled himself up from his awkward crouched position and guiltily extracted his fingers from Rodney’s grasp. He tucked the blankets back up, even though he knew that within minutes, Rodney would kick them off again. Glass of water from the bedside table: he could take it into the kitchen, refill it. He could do something.
He crept through the apartment, awkward there without Rodney to show him that it was okay to relax. They’d had a day--one frickin’ day--of lounging around, watching television and ordering an obscene amount of takeout, including the lamentable chilli. One day to decompress, and then they were going to go out and do stuff: eat in real restaurants, go skiing, maybe fool around in a hot tub. Instead, it looked like John was stuck playing nursemaid, and with Rodney incapable of appreciating his kinky outfit (if he’d had one).
So, um, then John was going to nurse Rodney back to health just in time to get sick HIMSELF, and then Rodney would be the crankiest (yet oddly, most effective) caretaker ever, yet their leave would be ruined, and they would never get to even leave Rodney's apartment, but after seeing each other at their worst, they would realize that they really do love each other, and on the last day of their break when they were finally both feeling better, they would opt out of going out and DOING STUFF, and instead stay in bed all day, having lots and lots of sex, THE END. But illness isn't actually that cute, really, at least not as cute as brain injury, so I went with that and wrote Consilience instead.
Snippet No. 2
“M’oh.”
“What?”
“Um, he pointed at you and said ‘Moe.’”
“Thank you, Colonel, I got that. Why did he say ‘Moe’?”
“M’oh is the name of our most powerful ancestor. He has selected you to participate in the ordeal.”
“What?”
“He said--”
“I heard him! You--you can’t just choose someone for a dangerous ordeal based on ‘eenie meanie minie moe’! And how do you even know what that is? What is the matter with you people?”
“M’oh has spoken.”
“But--”
“You do not wish to anger M’oh.”
“Why, is he gonna hit Curly in the face with a pan?”
“Rodney...”
“Oh, fine. But if it turns out I’ve been sent to my doom by a children’s game...”
“Rodney?”
“Yes?”
“Just remember: you’re the rubber, and he’s the glue.”
“I hate you so much right now.”
But of course he doesn't REALLY, and then something happens, and something else, and then they done sex the end? Maybe? Hell if I know.
Snippet No. 3
John was never going to be able to play Frisbee again.
That sucked. He’d really enjoyed Frisbee. Especially Ultimate Frisbee. Especially at the beach, when the majority of the other players were bouncy girls in tiny tiny swimsuits. But that was ruined for him now. Ruined. He dove to the ground as another alien Frisbee-of-DOOM whistled by his head. It missed him by less than an inch, went rocketing into a tree, and sent a shower of splinters shooting into his face.
Yup. Ruined.
“What are you thinking?”
McKay was lying beside him, pressed so tightly against the expanse of dirt and wet leaves that he might’ve been trying to bury himself in it. John spared him half a glance. “That I might as well just go gay since bikinis have been spoiled forever.”
“Um. I meant about how to escape.”
“Oh.” He glanced back toward their attackers; with any luck, their supply of killer Frisbees would be running low. He grabbed McKay’s arm and jerked him to his feet. “Run, I should think.”
They had not gone two steps before McKay started chanting, “Bad idea! BAD IDEA!” John wasn’t exactly large with the histrionics, but he had to agree. The natives apparently had a rather extensive backstock of sharp-edged, whistling death!Frisbees, and they weren’t afraid to use them. There was a whirring sound; John stumbled and ducked; and when he rose to his feet again, his hair felt...shorter. McKay was staring at him, wide-eyed and loose-jawed. “Jesus Christ,” he said.
“Seriously?” John patted anxiously at the top of his head. “Is it that bad? How much did I lose?”
“Are we talking brain cells here, because--Look out!”
They darted behind a boulder. McKay was panting. “All I did was ask them where the bathroom was. Really.”
“Actually, what you said was, ‘From the smell, I’m guessing this is the latrine.’ While you were standing in the middle of the chieftain’s bedroom.”
“There was a definite ammonia-like odor--Ronon even agreed with me! You know, before he ran in the correct direction, instead of making the mistake of following you.”
“Rodney...” John growled, and the only thing that saved McKay from his excoriating wit was the collision of another evil Frisbee with the rock they were hiding behind. McKay coughed; John shook flinty bits of stone out of his hair. “Right,” he said. “We need to make a break for the forest.”
McKay rolled his eyes. “In case you haven’t noticed, Colonel, between us and the forest is a vast, empty field. Let me repeat that,” he said, punctuating each word with an emphatic flourish. “A Vast.” Jab. “Empty.” Circle. “Field.” And stab.
John sighed. “Got any better ideas?”
McKay thought about it. Then he worked his way slowly out of his awkward crouch, peeking over the edge of the rock. “Hey!” he called. “Sorry about the--” A disk shrieked as whizzed past his ear. McKay did a bellyflop. “Okay. No.”
“Right.” John raised his gun and stole another glance at the encroaching horde of Frisbee-wielding, bikini-corrupting natives. “On three. One.” He grabbed at McKay’s arm. “Two.” He sent a spray of covering gunfire over the rock. “Three!”
And they were off!
Offed was more like it; there was no way they were going to make it. The disks were arcing down on them with that awful hiss-whine; it was a miracle they hadn’t been hit already. A miracle: John had seen what this weapon could do to bark and stone; it took tremendous effort, now, not to picture it doing the same to human flesh, to human muscle and bone. McKay stumbled beside him, and John’s heart stopped, waiting for the vivid splash of red, the horrible wet thump. Instead there was a muffled curse and “Oh, great: gopher holes--just what we need.” John allowed himself a second’s half-smile; then it was back to groping for McKay’s wrist and tugging him along like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and her intrepid reporter friend.
They were almost there--almost there, and John was beginning to rethink his original, pessimistic assessment. It was that flare of hope that did it, of course, because suddenly there were three of those things bearing down on them all at once: nasty, grinding death at every turn. There was nowhere to run; nothing to hide behind. John raised his gun, thinking he could shoot at least one of them out of the sky, maybe give Rodney half a chance...but then McKay shouted “John!” and snatched at his vest. They toppled over, McKay falling flat on his back and John landing on the other man’s stomach. John thought he felt a weird sort of buzz--hey, he hadn’t been serious about the turning gay thing!--but it was too late to worry about that now. They may have dodged two of the flagitious Frisbees, but the third’s trajectory was straight and murderous and true. He braced himself, praying that it’d be quick, and that his taking the blow would give McKay half a chance, after all.
Something bounced lightly off his shoulder. It felt...kind of like a Frisbee, actually.
John opened his eyes. The Disk of Death was lying beside him in the dirt, spinning weakly. Beneath him, McKay was staring at it, then at him, then back at it, with a look of giddy astonishment on his face. “It worked!” he shouted, and boy, was his mouth way too close to John’s ear. “I did it!”
“What?” John was still too shocked to move.
McKay gestured at his chest, at the glowing green object nestled there. “We’re invulnerable!”
Several pertinent questions popped into John’s mind. However, what he actually said was, “Wha?”
“The personal shield!” said McKay, the enthusiastic palpitations of his body tampered somewhat by the fact that he was still smushed under John. “I modified it to work for larger groups of people! Okay, for two. For two people. But still: in-vulner-able!”
“I thought it was broken.” John was sorta stupid after nearly escaping death.
McKay rolled his eyes. “Right, like I was really going to write this thing off after one teeny-tiny technical failure involving a massive cloud of life-sucking energy. I’ve been tinkering with it for months! Working out some of the...kinks.”
“Let me guess,” John said, pushing himself into a sitting position. “It lets you eat now.”
“Yep! It also--Um. Colonel?”
John’s body--against John’s strictest orders--was once again up close and personal with McKay’s; they looked like they were posing for a From Here to Eternity photo-op. John tried to jerk himself away, and once again snapped back against McKay’s person like two opposing magnetic poles. John arched an eyebrow. “Kinks, you say?”
“Not mine personally!” McKay yelped. “I swear, it didn’t do this in any of the simulations!”
“Simulations?” John growled. “You didn’t test it first?”
“Hey! I just saved your life here!”
...Rodney said, and both he and John were very irritable about the fact that they were pretty much stuck together by that tricksy personal shield, and they remained irritable, possibly for several whole minutes. But then John gave up the pretence of being at all straight, and mad, invulnerable sex was had, and the author admitted that she really just wanted an excuse to use Sneetches in an SGA story. Which hey, are pretty cool, actually, and maybe she should just shut up about this now so she can reuse them in something else. Um, walk away. This is not the hijacked weaponry you are looking for.
More to come...if you can stand it.
feedback
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Two years since their last trip, two months of behind-the-scenes puppetry to ensure that their vacation time would synch, and finally, finally, John won them their well-deserved two weeks’ Earthside leave. So of course, Rodney was sick by the second day.
Hee, you just know that'll end in a disaster. Still, it's so sweet.
More to come...if you can stand it.
Bring it. :)
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wags,springwoof
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M'ohmore. ;)no subject
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Swamp us, swamp us! I love the third one especially, the silliness is great *g*
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WiP Snips
Really enjoyed "M'oh" and the frisbees of death. *G* Thanks for sharing.
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So sickness is no fun, and Stooges jokes never go off but:
John was never going to be able to play Frisbee again.
That sucked. He'd really enjoyed Frisbee. Especially Ultimate Frisbee. Especially at the beach, when the majority of the other players were bouncy girls in tiny tiny swimsuits. But that was ruined for him now. Ruined.
Oh my dear god. How come you're not writing this? that line alone would make the fic worthy, but writing the equivalent of soulbond on a badfic while using canon gadgets? Truly priceless.
OMG Frisbees.