Self-indulgent muttering and self-criticism

[brainofck]

I have never remixed before. But I signed up for the gateverse_remix with cautious enthusiasm.

Here is a true story.

Ever since I read it, in my mind, throwing pebbles up the mountain has been the benchmark for the perfect J/D first time story. Angst. Love. Uncertainty. Uncertain ending. Both of them a little off balance. For me, it really is perfect in almost every possible way.

I hesitated to sign up for the remix after I heard about it for several days, because I had an unrealistic, crazy fear that if I signed up, I would have to remix THAT story.

But the idea of doing the remix was too interesting, and finally I said, Get a grip, BRAIN! You will not have to remix throwing pebbles up the mountain, jeez!!!!

So.

On the morning I got my remix assignment, I had a small, horrified, flattered, panicked moment when I realized that synecdochic, who was organizing the remix event, had assigned me HERSELF to remix. Wow! I've never done this! And I wondered if she had actually PICKED me to remix her, or if that is just how it worked out. Becuase I organized that OT3 event last year, and I know how hard it can be to hook up the right writer with the right request. Still. It felt like a big responsibility. An extra expectation to live up to.

Also, I had this nagging feeing that her name was really, really familiar...

THEN.

I clicked over to her SG-1 page and almost had a heart attack.

But weirdly, after a few hours of spazzing, I started looking over the options, and I clicked on like water, lying and started re-reading it, and THANK YOU GOD, Jack started talking to me almost right away.

So I was feeling pretty good. Lots of ideas. It would work. But...

There was a lot of the Eurydiceverse that I had not seen. And I already had the idea that I wanted Cam to be wrong about a lot of what was going on in Jack's head during like water, lying, but I wanted to see if synecdochic had given us any insights into Jack, Daniel, or their relationship that I had missed. So I started reading.

And then I hit on Grace Notes.

And that Jack was SO not the Jack I was writing. I swear, I read it and almost cried. Not the right Jack. Not, NOT, NOT. Her Jack is sort of at peace with his realtionship with Daniel. He's let Daniel go, lets Daniel come to him, doesn't obsess with Daniel anymore. Their relationship has broken him, or nearly, and he has stepped back from it, using the distance between them as a shield.

My Jack is SO still in the Daniel game.

I was having a freak out til I realized. Duh. Remix. *rolls eyes at self*

Anyway, so there's my remix experience, in a nutshell. I am actually pretty happy with how it came out, especially considering the RL time constraints I have been under. I should extend a special thank you to Little Sister, who kindly slept in the past several days, letting me get up at godawful early hours on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and today to write and edit. Another special thanks to green_grrl, who's excellent edit and suggestions were the only reason I was able to post this morning, so quickly after realizing I had the deadline wrong.

Will I remix again? That remains to be seen. Remixing is hard work. But it was fun.

Comments

[princessofg.livejournal.com]

well, your story fucking rocked. *applause*

remix is like fanfic double distilled, i deem. not only the backdrop of canon but the backdrop of someone's interp of canon, interp'd again.

simply amazing. i am in awe. i still don't think i could do it, or maybe i could in a year when my brain was not already overcommitted to the nth power, but the stories i'm reading are SO SATISFYING and PERFECT.

i heart sg-1 fandom.

again -- congratulations. you totally succeeded.

[brainofck.livejournal.com]

I definitely didn't know how it was going to work. I was hoping that I would get some mediocre but productive writer who would have a lot of good story ideas and I could take some idea they had and basically write my own thing. Sort of like any ficathon, just a better developed premise to start me off. But synecdochic's stories don't lend themselves well to that, since they are such deep character studies. I basically started with her text and started writing over it, swapping the point of view. In some ways, it was easier than writing something completely original, because she had already plotted it out. I was just writing Jack's response. But in other ways, it was hard, because it was long, and I wanted to make sure I got an authentic Jack perspective, not just a rewrite of the same action.

Definitely hard work. But I can definitely see that you might just want to back away from the whole thing as a writer. :D