Let's play strip global thermonuclear war

scribblinlenore and I, in our infinite wisdom, have decided to issue a challenge. Please spread the word: We want cliches. Dozens of 'em. Actually, this dozen:

- Trapped in an elevator or other small space
- Amnesia
- Drunken first-time sex (as Te puts it, "too drunk to be straight" or "two beer queer")
- Waking up hungover in compromising circumstances with no memory of the night before (may be combined with previous)
- Hooker fic - how about some Lex? Y'all have written stories where he reminisces about selling his body just for the hell of it, but we rarely see him do it except with or in front of Lionel. Hooker!Lex without incest, I say. Or Hooker!Clark. Actually, I'm not terribly picky.
- The X-Files Memorial Cliche: Two people. One hotel room. One bed.
- Forced to have sex [by aliens, bad guys, the Kryptonian version of pon farr...]
- Body switching
- Sex change – waking up with different equipment
- Truth or Dare
- Lookalike sex substitute – we've seen Lex do it a dozen times. Give us someone else. Preferably Clark.
- Sudden disability requires one person to care intimately for the other.

We would like at least one entry in each category, and we already have a few stalwart volunteers. If you (you know who you are) don't volunteer, we'll be forced to come after you. With poky sticks. Deadline: the end of August.

I'll also try to link to any preexisting stories to which I'm alerted that fit the guidelines, if the author wants.

Who's going to play?

Unrelatedly, over halfway through the first season of Stargate: SG-1, I have two questions for long-time fans. First, is it a deliberate joke that Scully's dad/the General/Don Davis never says no to any request? He's like the big old sugar daddy of the group. Second, is the SG-1 team ever going to stop destroying irreplaceable alien technology and start capturing it for further analysis? They're worse than the humans in Pohl's Gateway series, who were pretty damn wasteful.

And that episode "Heat," I mean "Hathor," when Daniel points out that most of the cellular residue from Hathor's alien babies is likely to be his and Jack says, reflectively, "Eww"? I loved that moment.

Finally, Evanescence's new video for "Going Under" is up at Launch, and it is quite creepy. The basic conceit is a concert video, only the concertgoers flash in and out of being demonic rather than human in aspect; the glimpses are short enough that one doesn't want to trust one's eyes. Nicely done.

Con report: Nimbus and Vulkon were entertaining, though the chunk of Florida separating them, not so much. Florida drivers are the spawn of Satan. I did enjoy the long stretches of highway where the official, posted speed limit was 70 – it was like a dream come true.

I also enjoyed my Nimbus panel on legal aspects of fandom, even though it started at the ridiculous predawn hour of 8:30. The Nimbus con was half academic, with panels on book-banning, Harry/Hermione versus Ron/Hermione, slash (huge), and justice in the wizarding world, the last by the incomparable AJ Hall. Many of the people there seemed to have HP as their first fandom, which made them an interesting bunch. Vulkon was straight-up fangirls and boys – the James Marsters lookalike was creepy, especially since we also had mustangsally78's Spikebot in the very same outfit.

I finally got Clark and Lex action figures at Vulkon. Clark has detachable Kryptonite hands! You can also pull Lex's hand off, but there's no black-gloved replacement, sadly. And then Sally gave me Rosie the Riveter, which makes six or, depending on how you count, seven figures for my office windowsill, the other three/four being Mulder, Scully, Spike, and Scully's autopsy corpse.

Had a lovely visit with Sally, during which we shopped, played in her pool, ate, and saw "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," more's the pity. I also got a preview of her new series with Chase, and it made me remember why I loved Xander so much in the early seasons. Good stuff, people. Next visit: Disney! (The Swan & Dolphin, where Nimbus was held, was Disney enough to call the staff "cast," but I didn't see any characters. The food was terrible, in the main, though the onion rings were okay.)

The challenge responses have been great so far. Many people, however, have yet to speak up. I'm looking at you. Metaphorically, anyhow. Although it's not a formal part of the challenge, I will give extra love to stories that have Clark leap tall buildings in a single bound, or fly faster than a speeding bullet, because we should have some cliches that are just for Superman. Z. has agreed to make some graphics -- he's thinking action figure Clark & Lex against a cartoon desert island backdrop. Most of the others would be harder to illustrate, especially since the action figures' clothes don't come off.

Unscheduled book review and rant here. ( Collapse )