I've never heard anything bad on a personal level, though I imagine her widespread fame in fandom would make people take the occasional venting about same more personally than they would a voiced pet peeve from some random person.

As for the story itself, I liked it in general but I think it involved unrealistically aggressive shows of force from the SGC when they've been proven willing to cut their losses with Atlantis in the hands of an actively hostile enemy. And the John Sheppard in my head wouldn't be willingly fathering a child no matter who thinks it's politically advantageous.

I'm with Shrift. I've met Ces briefly, know a ton of people who know her, and I've never heard anything that would lead me to respect her any less than I do, which is actually a great deal. I do think that anyone who gets that much good fannish press ends up with a number of people willing to cut them down. You can't, after all, actually be friends with everyone who has friended you, and some people are insulted by that.

Okay, despite not loving "Written by the Victors" quite as much as some other folks do, I still think this: [link] is remarkable. How cool is that?

I honestly have no idea what this is about and I know Ces (although I won't claim to know her well), but now I'm even more paranoid about what people are saying about me

Ah, I shouldn't have said anything, because I'm totally not going to go into details. This is the first and last time I've made any reference to said behaviour; it isn't general knowledge and it was inappropriate of me to refer to it - I only mentioned it to underline the fact that I genuinely liked the story, and that this response may have shown a lack of literary discrimination on my part, but it definitely wasn't tinged by fangirling.

Sorry - I was tired, and I was feeling defensive about the suggestion (which I realise wasn't actually being directed at me, but as I said - tired) that people were praising the story just because of who wrote it, when I knew fine well that I was erring in the other direction.

But, really, I should have shut the fuck up. Really sorry about that. I feel like I just made a sodding bear, and I'd like to undo it.

Shrift, I'm sure that the only thing anyone is saying about you is that you look hot in leather pants. And I admire the way that all the people who know Ces are coming down on me for hinting at anything disparaging about her. Good on you. You are good people and good friends to have.

I sure hope I didn't come off as coming down on you! It's just that I'm so very familiar with the phenomenon of fans (profic, especially) praising to the skies so-so work based on love of previous work, or else being down on very good work based on personal opinions about the writer, et cetera. I actually wasn't putting you in that class at all, seriously.

No, you really didn't - it's entirely my bad.

You know, on a slightly different note, I've been listening to the soundtrack to Hairspray for the past two weeks and I so want someone to make an X Men vid set to James Marsden's rendition of "The Nicest Kids In Town", with Scott as Corny Collins (although it probably OUGHT to be Prof X, but, but) and Wolverine as Link and Storm glaring at the "Negro Day" bit, and...I think it would be awesome.

Fay -- I note that Sweet Charity has started up again, and there are lots of vidders who do X-Men in it, so I'd pledge $25 towards making your dream a reality....

YAAAAAY!!!!

Oh, man, that would be FABulous!

Cesca is a force of nature. I can imagine her personality rubs people the wrong way, but she's always been really nice to me.

It freaked me out to see someone list her story as the new "best story ever" in SGA fandom, displacing the previous victor, "Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose." First of all, I didn't read "Freedom", so it obviously can't be the best story ever, right? Since everything is all about my preferences.

Second, the idea of dubbing anything "best story ever" sort of disturbs me, because it's *so* subjective. I know it happens all the time with novels and movies, but I think it's something about fanfic being such a personal activity that makes it weird.

Second, the idea of dubbing anything "best story ever" sort of disturbs me

Sounds like somebody watches too much VH-1, to me. Also, way to play fast and loose with language, people! Language is kind of important to written stories, so, that's generally to be taken as a bad thing! Ironic, even! Eventually, you are going to run out of superlatives, and won't you feel like the shmuck then!!