you take the blue paian

Unreal Engine 4 and Unity are now free. Game creation is now in fandom's hands, after years of tragically failed commercial games. And the potential for immersive storytelling is massive.

I'm excited about UE4* because it means that I can create an interactive Jack's house. Not just a fly-through animation that you sit and watch, but a house you can 'play' like a first-person game: go inside, move around at will, interact with objects ... even solve puzzles and become part of a story, if I take it that far. And it's only one step farther to a virtual-reality Jack's house, where you put on an Oculus rig and feel like you're actually there.

*I picked Unreal to try first because it supports HTML5 (still in beta, but what this means is you could play the Interactive Jack House in your browser, no need to download and run an executable file, or to install software). For other reasons, too, but mainly for ease of sharing.

So I've been working my way through UE4 tutorials, totally psyched for what it will add to my personal hobby, but expecting nothing for Gateverse fandom generally, unless the reboot revives interest in a few years. I figured that if this kind of CGI caught on, it would be in a megafandom like MCU, and from my DWth/AO3centric view of fandom, I'm not seeing any signs of that.

But look! Look at this!

( Stargate Network Demo demonstration screencast embedded under the cut )

THIS IS SO COOL. And made with UE4. I haven't watched the whole thing, because I want to go explore by myself and don't want to be too spoiled, but I wanted you all to know about it -- at least, whoever else missed David Hewlett's tweet. [Have since played with it, and love it.]

Here's the Presentation page at the Stargate Network site, where there's tons more info.

( eta: gate addresses )

Added gensplosion to Stargate SG-1 Comms and Feeds on Dreamwidth and removed scifi_fest.

gensplosion is a multi-fandom recommendation community focusing on gen fanfiction. Here's the Stargate SG-1 tag.

(Found via dirty_diana -- thank you!)

( This is what I was drafting a floorplan for. )

( 40-some images of Jack's house modeled in 3d )

( 4 images of a nightstand )

( and a new floorplan )

Sometime soon I'll be doing an animated fly-through, to give a better feel of moving through the house and looking around.

Beautiful stories. Happy stories. Scorching hot stories. Spooky stories. Sweet stories. Painful stories. Grin-inducing stories. Headnod-inducing stories. Dark stories. Clever, hot, happy stories. Beautiful, happy, romantic, achey stories. Beautifully thought-out and realized historical AU stories. A skilled, flexible, imaginative writer. A smart, perceptive, encouraging commenter. A dedicated admin and irreplaceable participant. A good-humored voice of reason, generous with her time and considerable talent. A light in her fandoms, and a mainstay in ours. A good friend.

Godspeed, Sid.

( art, fic, meta, some other things )

::dusts hands:: Onwards.

A few places on the web provide the location address, and Google Earth provides aerial images of the building, and I had need of a floorplan somewhat updated since the making of the wonderful one in the Solutions wiki that has been so useful all these years, so here's a draft.

( draft floorplan )

There's a whole section of Jack's house that I was never aware of! The evidence is right there in the establishing exterior shot the show always used, and also in the over-the-roof shot when Samuels visits Jack at the beginning of 'Children of the Gods,' and probably everybody else knew this perfectly well, but until now I hadn't compared it carefully enough to what's shown in the interior scenes to notice.

ETA: All the images in this post link to larger versions (I didn't add 'click to enlarge' to the mouseover text on all of them), and the mouseover text on most of them has additional notes.

( many images and much conjecturing, all gen )

Much gratitude to roeskva for the screencaps. <3

Daniel's driver's license and credit card from 'Holiday,' Jack's military ID from 'Fragile Balance,' and Jack's tags.

( images are about 600px wide )

Couple of commentfics written for the Three Sentence Fic challenge at event_horizons, where there are a lot of really nifty fills, with more than a week still to go:

Fingers Crossed, three very long sentences about superstitions and last Friday's hockey game; Jack/Daniel, 200 words, teen.

Pinch Harmonic, a 'Forever in a Day' missing scene; Jack(/)Daniel, Daniel/Sha're, a smidge of other UST, 869 words, teen. [ETA: Revised version now at AO3.]


Also, I forgot to link this from here when I archived it:

Right of Action, a Jack/Daniel aliens-make-them fic that iirc started life as a response to a Wordle challenge way way back, was abandoned in favor of 'Come What May,' and was then started over from scratch as a story for the zine a lot of very lovely people put together for Holdt. 8130 words, adult.

Thanks to Alphabet Soup, there's been lots of SG-1 fic this week. There's also been lots of SG-1 art!


Five SG-1 wallpapers by seshat0120. Gen, worksafe, four of them original team: two Daniel walls, a Jack and Sam wall, 'The Curse,' and 'The Light.'

SG-1 wallpapers and icons by seshat0120. Four wallpapers (original team and new team) and seven icons (Daniel, Jack, and Daniel and Jack), all worksafe, with an offer to customize with text.

'Forever in a Day' wallpaper by eilidh17. Daniel, gen, worksafe.

My Rock by magnavox_23. 'Evolution' wallpaper, rated G. Daniel/Rock. :-)

Kadoodie Shocking by magnavox_23. Another 'Evolution' Daniel wallpaper, this one rated PG.

Falling by magnavox_23. Winged Daniel manip, rated PG.



The Beach House by antares_dw. Jack/Daniel, rated G.

Loving You by magnavox_23. 'Forever in a Day' wallpaper, Jack/Daniel, rated G.

Dickin' Around by magnavox_23. Jack/Daniel wallpaper, rated PG.

'Fallen' and Jack/Daniel art by eilidh17, at the end of a fic post. An episode collage (gen, worksafe), a Jack/Daniel manip (not worksafe), and a Jack/Daniel wallpaper incorporating the manip (not worksafe). The fic is terrific, by the way -- a Jack/Daniel descension!fic, mature.

Mercy by magnavox_23. Jack/Daniel manip, rated R, not worksafe.

For a fic-brain reboot, magibrain took prompts, and came up with snippets of a mirror Neal Caffrey winding up at the SGC and bits of post-'Changeling' Bra'tac's perspective on Fraiser, wheelchairs, Carter, and tretonin. Mmm, brains.

Rarewomen 2014 has two Gateverse fics: FalconHorus's SGA Kissed by Fire (Kate, Elizabeth, Teyla) and Rivulet027's SGU Reasoning (Amanda Perry).

milanthruil is writing a sweet Jack/Daniel AU: Once Upon a Coffee Shop (first part links to the next, two so far).

greenbirds's V is for Vodka and Victories (sp. pyrrhic) puts Colonel Chekov and D.C.-era Jack in a room together, with sharp and moving results.

tallulah_rasa's P Is for Plan (and Also for Pie) puts S7 Daniel and Jack in a completely different kind of room (or maybe not so different, in some ways), with completely delightful results. Tallulah's fic is a treasure of SG-1 fandom, and her Jack-and-Daniel stories are pure joy.