betwixt and between

[domarzione]

* Stuff from Tumblr, because I continually fail at realizing I'm not supposed to post in-depth anything there: 

The practical magic of food safety and also condiments. I've been prattling on about food and food safety and 'best by/use by' dates a fair bit over there. I don't think I'm saying anything profound, but I also occasionally underestimate the degree of my food nerdism. I'm third-generation food service and between that and some of the oddities of my personal history, I've got a reasonable handle on what can be eaten versus what actually needs to get chucked. Which means my knowledge is occasionally esoteric because I have experience with government commercial food inspection regulations, a superb knowledge of ethnic ingredients, and also "we go to the supermarket twice a year and so this is what is in the house and there is no money to buy anything else; is this edible?" and yet giant gaps between that. Or why I have to ask people what actually is in pumpkin spice.

It started as a question about the RDJ stans and the fallout from CA:CW and ended up with me realizing a few paragraphs in that I was still very angry at the MCU. I want back into the MCU, I really do.  


* Writing progress, which is Stargate right now for better or for worse. I have, THIRTEEN YEARS after starting, figured out how things shake out in the Milky Way vis-a-vis the Ori. I know! SG-1 Ladies are representing, Daniel's his usual self, there's a USS Jack O'Neill, and none of this is actually relevant to how I have to figure out what happens in Qui Habitat. Where there is a 5k words chunk of fic that moved from the end of QH21 to the end of QH23 and just got bumped again to QH25 because Cam Mitchell's got too much else to do. I've changed the introductory transitional paragraph three times. 

I've been writing this story as-new since QH19 and it's essentially been a long string of OFCs being introduced and I don't think I'm necessarily over the ingrained Fear of the OFC that everyone my fannish generation has, for better or for worse, but it's part of a broader correction. Someone (I am sorry because you're probably reading this) mentioned in a story comment about how SGA fic used to be a bit of a sausage factory and the ladies were grossly underrepresented. I was as guilty of that as anyone with far less excuse -- I wasn't writing John/Rodney, I was writing genfic.... featuring an all-male cast of original characters. So now that I'm going back and have liberated myself from both S4-5 canon as well as the strictures I set for myself... bring on the badass dames. I sometimes wonder if I'm driving readers away with the OFC tidal wave, then I remember this story has six people reading it and they're probably ride-or-die at this point. :) 

Comments

[beradan]

I've found bread to be the food with the widest range of irrelevant sell-by dates; if I leave it on the counter it gets moldy before I can finish it, if I stick it in the fridge it's fine for a couple weeks at least. The last couple slices do get kind of stale, though.

I'm sorry that you miss the MCU :(

[domarzione]

Bread storage usually depends on ambient humidity and the bread's moisture and preservatives. Wonder Bread does a lot better in a fridge than a baguette will. But the best way to store sliced bread is in the freezer; take out the slices you need and the rest will last for months. :)

[beradan]

The backup bread is in the freezer!

[vaznetti]

I've always assumed that "use by" dates for preserved foods were a matter of testing: the producer stored it for X amount of time and then tried it, and it was still good, so that's as long as they can guarantee it for. But when you make a jam or chutney the recipe will say you should use it for a year, and I've still got a few jars from 2014 in the cupboard to get through which I have every intention of using, provided they look ok when I open them.

But FAR more importantly: Wait, more Milky Way stuff in Qui Habitat? I had kind of written off the whole galaxy as a wasteland of tragic deaths but would be super exiceted to see more of it nonetheless (I expect a certain proportion of tragic death given the whole plot.) I realise that this story isn't what you'd hoped to be working on but I am really glad to see more of it. I love the refugee worldbuilding. And having enjoyed all your old OMCs I see no reason why I wouldn't like your new OFCs. But I've been an outlier on this question for upwards of 20 years now.

[domarzione]

You can use vacuum-sealed stuff for far longer than a year. Pressure canning with glass makes them slightly less infinite-life than metal, but still. The operative word in preserves is preserves and all that sugar works wonders for storage.

I also have simple fridge pickles that are over a year old and still edible.

Vala's arc is pretty much all in the Milky Way and all off-screen and let's just say she's a bit more open to making threats she's willing and able to carry out to get help from one of the Four Great Races. (Which doesn't amount to much, certainly not enough.) But as far as she knows, the only other member of SG-1 still alive is Daniel and he's essentially a Doci who thinks he's a mediator. Someone has to get things done.

[leonie_alastair]

Thanks for the cogent food safety information!

I loved Qui Habitat - so nice to know that you are working on it again. I'd apologize for the cluster fk that is MCU canon but they brought that on themselves. I am sorry it turned the fandom into a dumpster fire for you.

[domarzione]

My responsibility is to get myself back to a place in the MCU when it's not a dumpster fire. Because we've all been in fandom long enough to know canon will only piss you off and break your heart.

[slybrarian]

I feel you on the MCU. To an extent I could ignore CACW, even if it did annoy me by turning into Iron Man 4.5 and bring in one of the silliest comic arcs. (Maybe if you want me to see the two sides as equally right, writers, don't put the guy who keeps trying to vivisect Bruce Banner in charge of registration and then give him an underwater blacksite? Also that's not how international treaties work - but I digress.) Infinity War happened and Endgame's ending just made it hard to care anymore. I feel like modern fandom platforms have made it harder to cope with bad canon, too. You can't just hang out on a community with other people who are down on Tony but don't want to be wanky about it; instead you're trying to navigate the vast howling wasteland of universal tags. Here's hoping one of these new sites eventually builds up some critical mass.

As for a QH goes, bring on the OFCs! Something I forced myself to do with my own self-indulgent nostalgia writing is bring in either minor canon or original female characters the moment there was an excuse to do so. There's no need to be tied down by bad casting decisions from 2003-2008 anymore. The series improved over time; just imagine you're writing in an AU where stargate had the chance that Trek has gotten to balance things out.

[domarzione]

Oh, I had a long rant about the logistics of the Sokovia Accords at the time, as if they could appear out of nowhere without years of negotiations that Tony would have scuttled long ago.

But you are so, so right about modern fandom spaces making it hard to adjust to bad canon; we're a generation (!!) past where everyone was forced to more or less co-exist regardless of interest or fannish interpretation and now after all this balkanization of tribes and camps, we are back to universal tags and starting flame wars.

The differences between my approaches to QH and the MCU are totally based on time passing, I've realized if not necessarily internalized. I came back to SGA and just wholesale decided that everything I disliked about the show, including almost everything from S4-S5, didn't matter anymore and I was gonna write what I wanted. I'm writing it for me in a way I didn't and couldn't back then. I would like to speed up that process with the MCU so that I can be happy in that sandbox without feeling constricted by where canon went.