Otter's Rock

I suppose I should probably actually post my worldbuilding_exchange fic here. Wouldn't want to be too quick off the mark, it's only been a month since it was revealed 🤣.

I wrote a BSG fic, which gave me a lovely excuse to write a fic about a headcanon I've had since I first watched the show. (What the headcanon is, you'll have to read the fic to find out ...)

Title: Fertile Ground
Author: Beatrice_Otter
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters: Original Four
Length: 5383 words
Written for: redrikki in Worldbuilding Exchange 2024

Summary: Simon only bothered to continue the fertility experiments because the others demanded it. Things are different on New Caprica.

AO3. Squidgeworld. Rebloggable on tumblr. Pillowfort.

Simon sat at his lab bench, waiting for his samples to finish processing—as well as they could, given the abysmal shortages of everything on New Caprica—and contemplated whether it would be worth it to take his turn as the Four representative at consensus meetings. The Ones were dead set against shipping in medical supplies from the Colonies. The Sixes and Eights should be pushing for it—if they truly wanted to build a relationship with the humans, helping them stay alive should be high on their priority list—but Fours were the only Cylons who really understood the fragility of the human body.

There was a knock at the door. Nurse Sashon popped her head in. "There's a human who's actually willing to have you treat her."

"Really?" Simon stripped off his gloves and tossed them in the laundry basket. Medical staff had been dramatically under-represented in the refugee fleet, and several years of trauma and poor healthcare and worse food hadn't been helped by the living conditions on New Caprica. But people would rather wait for Doc Cottle or one of the others, than be treated by a Cylon. "What's wrong with her?"

( Read more... )

Lovely author, here is my theory about letters: how much detail people want in a letter is HIGHLY variable. Some people (such as myself) prefer if their recip gives LOTS of guidance on their wishes. Some prefer as little as possible so they can be free as a bird. Most are somewhere in between. So! Here's everything including the kitchen sink if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am just not inspired that way."

I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am very rarely disappointed with my gifts. I write long and detailed Dear Author letters because I find such things helpful when I'm writing for other people; if you are like me, here you go! If your style is different and a detailed letter makes you feel hemmed-in, feel free to do what works for you.

The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks just don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.

One thing: I do have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.

Please no incest or darkfic.

( General likes and dislikes )

( Star Wars: Original Trilogy )

( Star Trek: TOS )

( Battlestar Galactica )

( Star Trek: Deep Space 9 )

Lovely author, here is my theory about letters: how much detail people want in a letter is HIGHLY variable. Some people (such as myself) prefer if their recip gives LOTS of guidance on their wishes. Some prefer as little as possible so they can be free as a bird. Most are somewhere in between. So! Here's everything including the kitchen sink if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am just not inspired that way."

I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am very rarely disappointed with my gifts. I write long and detailed Dear Author letters because I find such things helpful when I'm writing for other people; if you are like me, here you go! If your style is different and a detailed letter makes you feel hemmed-in, feel free to do what works for you.

The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks just don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.

One thing: I do have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.

Please no incest.

( General likes/dislikes )

( Babylon 5 )

( BSG )

( Star Trek TNG )

( DS9 )

( Stargate: SG-1 )
( Sarah Connor Chronicles )

( Enterprise )

( Guess Who's Coming To Dinner )

( BSG/Voyager )

( Voyager )

laurajv asks: What's your favorite character, from any media, and why?

And the problem with this is the same problem I have with any "what's your favorite?" question, and that is that I've never had any one book or character or movie or anything that I could point to and go "this one is my favorite."  Even if you narrow it down, so it's "what's your favorite character on a particular show?" I almost always go, "well, that depends on my mood."  My fannish affections are extremely poly; I've never had anything resembling an OTP or OTC.  I mean, I have pairings that I like (I'd never choose to pair Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade with anyone else, nor Han and Leia with anyone but each other), but it's not a strong enough thing to go THEY CAN'T EVER BE WITH ANYONE ELSE.  Like, if someone wrote an interesting, well-written story with no character bashing where one of those two pairs broke up or never got together in the first place, I'd read it and enjoy it.  (Well.  Let me clarify that.  If you were going to pair Luke with Callista, you would have to re-write the end of Children of the Jedi so that she didn't end up in Cray's body, because that really, really weirds me out.  Like, ew, and then after that she went off the rails in the other two books she appeared in, but if she weren't in Cray's body to begin with those other books would be different, so.)  But my favorite Star Wars characters are probably Corran Horn and Mara Jade, if you take all things together.  (But then there's Thrawn!  Pelleon!  Padme!  Winter!)

Star Trek characters, well, Saavik and Spock for classic trek, everyone on DS9, B'Elanna Torres and Tuvok on Voyager, Trip and T'Pol on Enterprise, TNG I can't pick favorites, and TOS everyone but Kirk.  (He's too much of a fratboy.  They took out all the character's good points and exaggerated his bad ones.)

Babylon 5, um.  HOW CAN ONE PICK FAVORITES?  They're all awesome!  I start off with Delenn and Lennier, but then would I put them as more beloved than Londo and G'Kar?  And Vir and Na'Toth and Susan and Marcus?  Er.  Well, no.  I mean, my favorite culture to do worldbuilding with is definitely the Minbari which would normally dictate what characters I want to write about.  (Boy, howdy, does that happen with Star Trek.)  But I love Londo and G'Kar and Vir and Na'toth and all the rest so much I love to write them too even if their culture is less interesting to poke around in ...

Battlestar Galactica, I love me some Cylons.  Love 'em, love to hate 'em.  Particularly the Final Five.  And then there's Bill and Laura, love them!  Billy!  Felix!  Lee and Kara annoy me separately and together, but mostly because the show focused on them.  Like, Kara was not the only screwed up person in that fleet.  Neither was Lee.  And the last season and a half there were so many stretches that were all about their issues when I wanted to know what was happening to all the other characters that I love, but we didn't get it because we had to get Yet Another Go-Around on the Lee and Kara show.  (Or the Lee's Daddy Issues show.  Or the Kara is Messed Up Because Life Done Her Wrong show.  And I appreciated in the abstract how rare it is for a heroine to be allowed the kind of damage that Kara was while still being a hero, and it's rare for a heroine to have a Traumatic Backstory not involving rape (I mean, the messed up stalker guy who may/may not have raped her in that creepy New Caprica apartment came long after Kara was screwed up by her mother's abuse, it was a complicating factor not THE REASON FOR EVERYTHING), but still, it was too much for my taste.)

Once Upon a Time.  I ship Belle/Rumple but I'm glad she kicked him out--that's what I like about that pairing, that she's the kind of person who would do that if she had to, they love one another but Twu Wuv doesn't conquer all, and I have been so worried since the beginning that they would try to paper over the ethical issues inherent in that relationship and go "it doesn't matter that he's evil because she loves him!"  So I can't read much fic in that pairing because most of the fic tends to be in that vein.  I hate, loathe, and despise Hook with the passion of a thousand burning suns.  I love Emma, Regina, Neal (I miss Neal!) ...those three are actually probably my favorites on the show, and my favorite character that doesn't get enough love is definitely Neal.  (I mean, I prefer Emma with Neal than anybody else, but like I said I'm not really an OTP type person, and there's a lot of gen Emma and Swan Queen both, and lots of Outlaw Queen as well, to give my my Emma and Regina fixes.  Not much Neal at all.)  Other than that, Mulan and Aurora had so much potential, sigh.

MCU, my favorites are (in no particular order) Peggy, Sam, and Steve.  My favorite character there that fandom that fandom doesn't much care about is Maria Hill.  I believe in Jasper Sitwell.

Doctor Who!  Eleven is my favorite doctor, but Martha and Donna are my favorite companions.  I loved early!River, before she was ruined by making EVERY SINGLE THING IN HER ENTIRE LIFE EVER ABOUT THE DOCTOR AND SHE'LL DO INCREDIBLY SELF-DESTRUCTIVE THINGS BECAUSE OF HIM AND HIDE IT FROM HIM SO HE DOESN'T FEEL BAD.  Gah.  I don't have enough time watching Classic Who to have informed opinions there.  I like Rose as seen on the show, but get really annoyed by Rose as seen by fandom, where SHE IS THE ONE TRUE COMPANION AND EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS ABOUT HER AND THE DOCTOR GETTING TOGETHER AND/OR STAYING TOGETHER AND HE COULD NEVER CARE ABOUT ANY OTHER COMPANION THE WAY HE CARES FOR HER.  Because of this I rarely read any fanfic in which Rose occurs.

Stargate: Sam and Teal'c and Sha're and Hammond are probably my favorites, but I love them all.  And I was never into SGA enough to really have favorites, as such.  It was okay, and I think I saw every ep at least once, but eh.  I read a lot of McShep because there was a lot of it, but the two of them, separately and together, are my least favorite characters on the show.  It's not that I dislike them, but, look, they were the most formulaic and least interesting.

Terminator, I love Sarah Connor and Catherine Weaver and James Ellison and John Henry and Cameron and Jesse and ... look, the Sarah Connor Chronicles are definitely my favorite part of that franchise, and I love almost everything about that show except that it wasn't longer.

Vorkosiverse, again, there's nobody that I don't absolutely love.  Ivan, Simon, Alys, and Elli are the only major characters that I don't think I would ever say is my favorite.  All the rest, yeah, at different times and in different moods I would choose different ones from among them as my favorite.

Title: All the Difference (The Brave New World Remix)
Characters: Kara Thrace, Sharon Agathon, Hera Agathon, Kacey, Nicholas Tyrol, Cally Tyrol
Pairing: Kara/Sam, Sharon/Helo, Cally/Tyrol
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: suicidal thoughts
Original Story: Liminal Fate by lunar47 .  Written for bsg_remix 
Betaed By: lizardbeth and leakypaintpen 
Word Count: 10,650 words

Summary: All this has happened before. What if it doesn't have to happen again?

At AO3

( What if it doesn't have to happen again? )

So!  Blood and Chrome, the new BSG series about a young Bill Adama, is out on Youtube as webisodes, at least the first two eps.  It's okay so far, not as good as BSG but I'll keep watching in case anything interesting happens.

rarewomen is open, and there are a lot of great fics from a lot of great authors!  Here are some of my faves:

BSG
Free To Choose.  Her memories define who she is, her choices define who she will be.  (Sharon Agathon)

Buffy
As a Queen, Sufficient.  Kendra, debriefing after her first trip to Sunnydale.

Discworld
A Ladies' Day Out.  The impact of unregulated collection on the draconic biodiversity of the greater Ankh-Morpork region by Vimes (née Ramkin), S. Presented to the Ankh-Morpork Dragon Fanciers Society, Grune, Year of the Reversed Ptarmigan.  Hypothesis: poachers can be firmly deterred by a gumboot to the ear and some stern words, by Jove.  (Sybil Ramkin, the Emmas, Sacharissa Cripslock)

Doctor Who
Human Behavior.  The TARDIS learned a lot from her time in a human body; that doesn't mean she knows how to put a human together again.  (Idris, Tardis)
Cold Hands, Warm Heart.  Jenny finds a Silurian warrior behind the house. Then she puts the kettle on.  One of the Jenny&Vastra stories I have been craving.

Star Trek TNG
Shadow-walking.  Ro Laren and Deanna Troi undertake a secret mission on a matriarchal world.

Vorkosigan Saga
Five Strays Elizabeth Naismith took in (and One That Got Away).  Dear Cordelia, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that Miles is a charming and intelligent young man; I've been enjoying his company immensely. He's made plenty of friends, and taken to the social opportunities at school with a great deal of verve. (For more details, please see the attached disciplinary reports from Principal Hatter.)

X-Men First Class
A Piece of Her Mind.  Agent MacTaggert really shouldn't be in this cocktail bar. And she really shouldn't be talking to two wanted criminals. But they seem to think there's a way for her to get back the memories she'd lost the previous year, and she can't help but listen.  (Moira, Angel, Mystique)

Anybody got any chess-for-beginners primers they could recommend that would help me understand the subtleties of the game at least well enough to write a fic with it?  Because I just signed up for and got the most stylishly awesome piece of art at trekreversebang this year, and it's Pike, Spock, Kirk, and Uhura against a background of a chess board and pieces.  So I'm thinking I should know something about chess to write this.

Other ficathons: bsg_remix  is done, and Remix Redux is coming along nicely.  Anyone want to beta 30k words of BSG AU on short notice, or about 10k words of SG-1 on slightly less short notice?

trekreversebang is open for signups!  This is the big bang where the art comes first, and then the authors write stories about it.  I had lots of fun last year and love the story I wrote, despite the fact that my artist flaked out and I never got a finished piece of art.  They've changed the rules this year so that can't happen--the art has to be finished, not just in rough draft form, before authors can claim it.  I'm signing up and looking forward to it!trekreversebang



I don't think I'll be doing bsg_remix this year--I've had fun in the past, but I've only written one new BSG fic since doing last year's remix, which tells me that it's not where my inspiration is currently going.

What I really need to be working on is my sequel to Lieutenant Bennet's Visit, which is from Darcy's POV.  Maybe, since I have a snow and ice day, I will get working on it.

(Maybe I will work on saving all the fics I've bookmarked over the years to my computer, instead--finished Doctor Who last night, next up Battlestar Galacactica.)

Title: Walk the Earth Unseen
Author: beatrice_otter 
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters: Head!Six
Spoilers: none
Word Count: 821
Summary: Head!Six keeps watch over Gaius. And debates.
AN: This is my attempt to make sense of the character of Head!Six, which was radically different at different times.

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.
—John Milton, Paradise Lost

( Gaius Baltar sleeps, slumped in his chair in the pitiful lab that is all Galactica can manage for him. If he were awake, he would say he is alone. He isn’t. )