State of the Jack...
Mar. 10th, 2005 12:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
buggeryWhew.
I haven't been posting on my own LJ lately, or been available to chat on AIM the way I usually am, mostly because I've been busy getting the Four-Color Heroines challenge archive up. It was a lot of work, but also a ton of fun, and I couldn't be more delighted by the turnout as well as how good the stories the participants turned out.
Even though I had access to the stories as they were submitted, I only sat and read one of them all the way through before the archive went up -- ironically, the one I did read was Right On Target, which is about Cissie King-Jones, formerly Arrowette, a character whom I barely know from canon, but despite my unfamiliarity with her the author made her story, in which she re-evaluates her choice to hang up her costume and goes to check out the new Teen Titans her former teammates have joined, so gripping I couldn't stop reading it. I even held off on reading the story written for me, Salvage, until after the archive opened and we had a system for providing feedback during the week before authors' names are revealed in place, but the story I received provided an equally gripping Barbara Gordon POV, and great work on Cassandra, too.
I wound up having the privilege of audiencing one story for the challenge, Joker in the Box, which in addition to having a brilliant title is one of the best GOTHAM CENTRAL stories I've read in canon or fanfiction. I also audienced a story not for the challenge on Monday morning while I was in the midst of coding challenge submissions: Sharps, by Jane St. Clair, a fabulous writer whose non-fannish novel I was privileged to help edit a few months ago and who this fandom will be damned lucky to have join us (so go encourage her to stay around, everyone!); Jane IM'd me that morning wanting to write some Jason Todd fic, and I encouraged her to try some Jay/Roy Harper, as I often encourage others to do because I have an abiding hunger for any variety of Jay/Roy I can get. Jane, as far as I know, is the first to write the pairing, and she did it brilliantly, with insight into the characters and all the creep and pain and hot the story warranted.
It wasn't easy to resist the temptation to read all the stories as soon as they were submitted. In the course of coding the stories and formatting them, Te and I necessarily wound up skimming most of them to various degrees. This often made it difficult not to read the whole story. When I realised, for example, that much of Night and Day consisted of a conversation between requested character Amy Rohrbach and (star of my heart in the DCU) Dick Grayson, I wailed to Te over AIM how badly I wanted to take a break from setting up the reference-image placement for the archive copy and just read it.
Some of the stories we worked together on coding. Here's an excerpt from the conversation about one of them -- this time I'm not going to link to or name the story, because yes, I want to make you read through a bunch of stories on the archive looking for this one if the quoted bits pique your interest:
And then we got back to work. (Seriously. I know, I have a hard time believing it myself, but we were good.)
I wish there were some way I could read and feedback all the stories before the authors' names are revealed. There's no way I could, even if I didn't have assignments for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
femslash05, the Comics Genfic Feedbackathon, and comica_obscura to work on... and I do have commitments to all three.
So I'm going to still be busy, but? Also still having fun. It's a good time to be in this fandom.
I haven't been posting on my own LJ lately, or been available to chat on AIM the way I usually am, mostly because I've been busy getting the Four-Color Heroines challenge archive up. It was a lot of work, but also a ton of fun, and I couldn't be more delighted by the turnout as well as how good the stories the participants turned out.
Even though I had access to the stories as they were submitted, I only sat and read one of them all the way through before the archive went up -- ironically, the one I did read was Right On Target, which is about Cissie King-Jones, formerly Arrowette, a character whom I barely know from canon, but despite my unfamiliarity with her the author made her story, in which she re-evaluates her choice to hang up her costume and goes to check out the new Teen Titans her former teammates have joined, so gripping I couldn't stop reading it. I even held off on reading the story written for me, Salvage, until after the archive opened and we had a system for providing feedback during the week before authors' names are revealed in place, but the story I received provided an equally gripping Barbara Gordon POV, and great work on Cassandra, too.
I wound up having the privilege of audiencing one story for the challenge, Joker in the Box, which in addition to having a brilliant title is one of the best GOTHAM CENTRAL stories I've read in canon or fanfiction. I also audienced a story not for the challenge on Monday morning while I was in the midst of coding challenge submissions: Sharps, by Jane St. Clair, a fabulous writer whose non-fannish novel I was privileged to help edit a few months ago and who this fandom will be damned lucky to have join us (so go encourage her to stay around, everyone!); Jane IM'd me that morning wanting to write some Jason Todd fic, and I encouraged her to try some Jay/Roy Harper, as I often encourage others to do because I have an abiding hunger for any variety of Jay/Roy I can get. Jane, as far as I know, is the first to write the pairing, and she did it brilliantly, with insight into the characters and all the creep and pain and hot the story warranted.
It wasn't easy to resist the temptation to read all the stories as soon as they were submitted. In the course of coding the stories and formatting them, Te and I necessarily wound up skimming most of them to various degrees. This often made it difficult not to read the whole story. When I realised, for example, that much of Night and Day consisted of a conversation between requested character Amy Rohrbach and (star of my heart in the DCU) Dick Grayson, I wailed to Te over AIM how badly I wanted to take a break from setting up the reference-image placement for the archive copy and just read it.
Some of the stories we worked together on coding. Here's an excerpt from the conversation about one of them -- this time I'm not going to link to or name the story, because yes, I want to make you read through a bunch of stories on the archive looking for this one if the quoted bits pique your interest:
Jack: need a <BR> above and below the HR
Jack: and we need to move the 2nd image up and ALIGN=LEFT
Te: Which one? The one in the middle of the story, yes?
Jack: put it right before
"So I hear you're working as a software engineer now?" Cris asked.
Jack: H20 and V20
Te: I think the vspace on the 2nd image should go to 25 or 30?
Te: Also, we've got <BR><HR><BR><P>
Te: do I need to lose that <P>?
Jack: ah, that's the problem. it should be <BR><BR><HR><BR>, no P or other BRs before or after
Jack: and try V25.
Te: reload, I think I should go up to 30
Te: When I max screen, I still have 'head' to the far left.
Jack: the line break i get is
soft stomach and pulled Barbara's T-shirt off over her head.
Te: She imagined Babs sprawled out on her bed, looking up at her with swollen lips and messy hair, as she ran her fingers up Barbara's soft stomach and pulled Barbara's T-shirt off over her head.
Te: head
Te: Also. Man. THIS IS FEMSLASH
Jack: uh, huh.
Te: duuuude.
Jack: BEST CHALLENGE EVAR.
And then we got back to work. (Seriously. I know, I have a hard time believing it myself, but we were good.)
I wish there were some way I could read and feedback all the stories before the authors' names are revealed. There's no way I could, even if I didn't have assignments for
femslash05, the Comics Genfic Feedbackathon, and comica_obscura to work on... and I do have commitments to all three.So I'm going to still be busy, but? Also still having fun. It's a good time to be in this fandom.
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Date: 2005-03-10 08:41 am (UTC)This is an *amazing* fandom. The quality of the writing just blows me away, daunting and inspiring me by turns. I didn't join