![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Now I have closet space!
Other accomplishment of note. I finally managed to write a story for
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
whatif_au bi-monthly prompt. It's always a goal, just one I have a hard time making. It just happened to fit the prompt for sga_saturday too which was a bonus. Heaven and Hell (2294 words) by melagan
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Characters: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Heaven & Hell, Angel/Demon Relationship, Pre-Slash, Friendship, Fluff
Summary:
Rodney is a demon stuck in Hell. The last thing he expects is to see an angel slouching in the doorway.
Now if I could just figure out what to write for
trope_of_the_month's coffee shop prompt. The only coffee shop AU I've ever written is:
Moon Base Four
*sigh* Hardly your typical Coffee Shop AU. I don't know if I can or want to do 'typical'. It doesn't seem to be my style. :)
Not just match reports, not just journalism, but long-form meta. You know the kind: 3,000 words on how one player adjusts their stance under pressure, or how their rivalry with another player has this Shakespearean weight to it. The kind of thing that slides between gifsets and headcanons and actual technical breakdowns because all of it feels necessary to capture what you love.
And the thing is - this isn’t new.
In ancient Rome, fans used to carve their favourite charioteer’s name on their gravestone. They literally wanted to be remembered through their fandom. They bought vials of gladiator sweat (no, really) to keep like holy relics. They painted graffiti in stadiums, catalogued stats in painstaking detail, and shouted themselves hoarse for their team colours. The only difference between then and now is the medium: from stone walls to Tumblr dashboards, from sweat vials to match-worn shirts.
What Wallace is doing in String Theory isn’t so different either. His essays are part analysis, part poetry, part love letter to the sport - the same impulses that drive people to write sprawling livejournal posts about Aragorn’s arc in Lord of the Rings or to make 50-slide PowerPoints about why their ship dynamic works. He’s putting language around awe. Around obsession. Around the feeling of watching someone do something unbelievably human and larger-than-human at the same time.
So when I read him going deep on Federer or Michael Joyce, I don’t just see a writer explaining tennis. I see fandom-as-practice. I see continuity: from Roman sweat vials to Wallace’s reverent adjectives to that one gifset you keep reblogging because it perfectly captures the way your fave moves like liquid light across the court.
Sports fandom has always been fandom. And String Theory is just another text in the endless library of people trying to make sense of love and skill and spectacle with whatever tools we have to hand. Sometimes it’s chisels. Sometimes it’s gifs. Sometimes it’s a writer with a dictionary in one hand and an obsession burning in the other.
I keep saying I don’t really have a physical type, and that’s mostly true, but then I remember that I am extremely predictable when presented with:
- boobs (yes, thank you. approved)
- arms/shoulders/hands (the holy trinity, sculpted by the gods, perfect for hugs, holding, etc.)
- and a cute smile with dimples (instant death, funerals on Tuesday.)
but honestly? my real type, the one that has haunted me across fandom after fandom like some eldritch repetition compulsion, is not about looks. it’s about vibe. it’s about the socially awkward nerd/geek archetype.
like:
- the stammering genius who can calculate orbital trajectories but cannot flirt to save their life.
- the bookish disaster whose entire love language is handing you lore.
- the character who absolutely panics when someone sits too close to them but will recite a 40-minute lecture on obscure historical trivia if you so much as make eye contact.
- the ones who have arms, yes (thank you again), but also the emotional range of “confused owl who has never been in public before.”
and then it just… kept happening.
- Sam Carter (Stargate SG-1): astrophysicist, genius, blows up suns in her free time, still somehow flustered when someone gets personal.
- Daniel Jackson (also Stargate): the man who will translate a dead language on the fly but forgets how to hold a conversation with a living person. glasses, floppy hair, emotionally constipated: chef’s kiss.
- Penelope Garcia (Criminal Minds): maximalist hacker chaos gremlin, dresses like she’s powered by rainbows, says the most unhinged things with absolute sincerity.
- Abby Sciuto (NCIS): goth lab queen, talks a mile a minute about forensics, deeply earnest under the eyeliner. if she doesn’t count she should.
and it spirals out from there. every fandom has one. the genius who trips over their own words, the hacker who overshares, the scholar who forgets to eat, the witch whose spellbook is better organized than their life.
yes, I like boobs. yes, shoulders/hands/arms are my eternal weakness. yes, dimples will ruin me every time.
but the real through-line? the thing that never changes?
give me the socially awkward nerd archetype and I will imprint like a baby duck.
#yes i have a type your honour #and it’s willow rosenberg with different hats #sam carter blew up a sun and my heart #daniel jackson tripped over his own shoelaces and i imprinted #penelope garcia maximalist chaos gremlin supreme #abby sciuto forensic goth princess #nerds my beloved #boobs are great but have you considered lore #dimples are fatal shoulders are eternal #socially awkward archetype continuum #from hacker witches to stargates to crime labs to the atp tour #tennis fandom dont look at me #actually do look at me #yes this is about jannik #gangly apologetic owl boy who calculates everything #sports but make it nerdy #my narrative gravitational pull remains undefeated)