#jaelijn talks

[jaelijn]

Thought I had a good buffer on the queue with the slower posting but I Did Not. So it's practically empty again. Will fill it up again when I feel like it.

[rebelsandfools]

Rebels and Fools: Issue 7

It's time for the grand finale - the final, sparkling new issue of our digital Blake’s 7 fanzine, Rebels and Fools, has arrived!

Seven issues - what a fantastic achievement, at last complete. If you're new, you now have the full set of R&F issues at your fingertips - if you've been here forever, here's the final piece for your collection.

One last time a massive THANK YOU again to all contributors, without whom this zine wouldn’t exist. As our readers, please be vocal in your appreciation, in public or in private. You will find ways to contact the individual contributors in the zine, but I’m also always happy to take messages on this blog (ask box!), and appreciation posted into #rebelsandfools is most welcome and will be reblogged here (unless Tumblr eats the tagged posts because, well, Tumblr). And if you happen to be in the mood for a review - there is still space on R&F’s fanlore page!

Click here to get to the pdf download of the zine, or find the link for copy-pasting under this issue’s cover image by yours truly the editor, @jaelijn.

Here is the link to the zine again, and for copy-pasting: 

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l889fts4u35tqfm0l4pcd/Rebels-and-Fools-Issue-7.pdf?rlkey=85bggvwjr1ikf5x90k38tnl5p&dl=0

Enjoy the zine!

Sharing and Promotion: You are absolutely encouraged to talk about and promote the zine to Blake’s 7 fans anywhere and everywhere! If you wish to publicly share the zine off Tumblr, please link to the original of this Tumblr post, not the direct Dropbox link. I will be maintaining the link on here, but cannot guarantee that the download link won’t change over time.

One caveat on promotion: you cannot use the cover image or any content that is not your own in full or in part for the promotion of the zine (or any other purpose, really) without the explicit permission of the editor (me) and the creator of the content in question - if you plan a bigger piece on/promotion of R&F, contact the editor. You are not permitted to profit financially from this zine in any way, including but not limited to promotion and/or sharing of the zine.

Contributors: You are absolutely allowed to post your own work elsewhere, as long as you don’t submit it to another zine. I would, however, ask you to wait just one little week until August 30th 2023 before doing so, just so people have time to appreciate the zine in full first, and that you mention the zine and link back to this post when you do. There is also an AO3 collection, if you want to add your works there. For now, you can absolutely point people to the full zine and highlight where to find your content, if you want. Please do not use any submissions to the zine to make financial profit. And finally: thank you again for your wonderful submissions!

[rebelsandfools]

Rebels and Fools: Issue 4

It’s here! It’s live! It’s alive!

Wait, what?

It’s time for a neatly packaged bundle of sparkling, brand new Blake’s 7 fanworks! Rebels and Fools: Issue 4 is ready for your viewing/reading pleasure!

Once more a massive THANK YOU again to all contributors, without whom this zine wouldn’t exist. As our readers, please be vocal in your appreciation, in public or in private. You will find ways to contact the individual contributors in the zine, but I’m also always happy to take messages on this blog (ask box!), and appreciation posted into #rebelsandfools is most welcome and will be reblogged here (unless Tumblr eats the tagged posts because, well, Tumblr). And if you happen to be in the mood for a review - there is still space on R&F’s fanlore page!

Click here to get to the pdf download of the zine, or find the link for copy-pasting under this issue’s cover image of the ever lovely dangerous Servalan drawn by @jaelijn.

Here is the link to the zine again, and for copy-pasting: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4lblz9i5ui3pz47/Rebels%20and%20Fools%20-%20Issue%204.pdf?dl=0

Enjoy the zine!

Sharing and Promotion: You are absolutely encouraged to talk about and promote the zine to Blake’s 7 fans anywhere and everywhere! If you wish to publicly share the zine off tumblr, please link to the original of this tumblr post, not the direct dropbox link. I will be maintaining the link on here, but cannot guarantee that the download link won’t change over time.

One caveat on promotion: you cannot use the cover image or any content that is not your own in full or in part for the promotion of the zine (or any other purpose, really) without the explicit permission of the editor (me) and the creator of the content in question - if you plan a bigger piece on / promotion of R&F, contact the editor. You are not permitted to profit financially from this zine in any way, including but not limited to promotion and/or sharing of the zine.

Contributors: You are absolutely allowed to post your own work elsewhere, as long as you don’t submit it to another zine. I would, however, ask you to wait just one little week until August 21st 2020 before doing so, just so people have time to appreciate the zine in full first, and that you mention the zine and link back to this post when you do. There is also an AO3 collection, if you want to add your works there. For now, you can absolutely point people to the full zine and highlight where to find your content, if you want. Please do not use any submissions to the zine to make financial profit. And finally: thank you again for your wonderful submissions!

[rebelsandfools]

This is a general reference post for the ongoing work on a digital Blake’s 7 fanzine (issue #1?)!

This is completely fanmade, for fun and not for profit. Once the zine issue is done, it will be a full-colour pdf free to download (and home-print for personal use, if so inclined).

Project tag (tracked): #rebelsandfools

I’m @castielslight / Jaelijn.

GETTING IN TOUCH:

For now, use tumblr ask or submit to get in touch. If needed (and it probably will be for submission), I will set up an email address specifically for zine business.

And please do get in touch! I want this project to be as collaborative as we can possibly make it.

(I try to answer queries as quickly as I’m able. Bear in mind that my “battery” sometimes runs low.)

A note on promotion: If you want to promote the zine on tumblr, just reblog any posts - this is a good one for it! If you want to promote the zine on other sides, please contact me, the editor, first. I will let you know how to go about it.

WORKING SCHEDULE:

Ambitious / ideal deadline for content submissions: end of July 2017.

Absolute deadline for content submission: end of August 2017.

This gives you 5 months. You can submit at any time before then.

This schedule is to allow me to finalise editing in the course of August and get the zine out before my RL gets chaotic in September and I have no idea when the editing might be done after that.

If this turns out to be completely undoable, we can talk about pushing the deadline back to October, and hope that I might have time to get the editing done by the New Year.

WHAT CAN I SUBMIT?

Short answer: any self-created B7 content that fits into a static format. I want this to be a zine for which everyone can find *something* to contribute.

Long answer:

art, fic, meta, filk, poetry, crafts, recipes, fic recs, zine recs, character-themed song rec lists, etc etc etc (whatever else you can think of!)

no gifs (they move and therefore can’t be printed), videos (they also move), or stand-alone screencaps (we don’t want to invite copyright issues beyond the usual for fanworks; elaborate edits, photomanips and caps as meta evidence are all fine)

all work should be new for the zine (i.e. not previously published).

theme-wise, I would exclude nothing, but ask that visual submissions be SFW (some light nudity etc is fine, but let’s avoid the very explicit things)

there will be a separate post with more specific rules for wordcounts, file size etc and for what I need from artists and writers in terms of “meta data” - e.g. summaries, titles, ratings, warnings…

as this is a digital zine, I see no reason why we should limit ourselves in numbers of submissions, but if we get a lot of material, there might be an issue #2 (or #3…)

OTHER THINGS

You’ll see that I have titled this project “Rebels and Fools”, which is the title I picked for my B7 livestreaming. This does not have to be the title of the zine unless people like it; I think of it primarily as the name of the “publishing house”. Feel free to suggest a title for the zine!

If people would like a specific theme or themes for the zine or for elements of it (such as optional themes for art and fic), I’m happy to take suggestions!

If you want to collaborate on fic and art, or write a joined meta, it is up to you to organise it in a way that it’ll be ready by the deadline. I’m happy to fascilitate via this blog - i.e. if you’re an artist looking for someone to fic your art, I can give a shoutout etc.

I’m absolutely serious about the ficrecs. This should be something everyone can contribute a favourite to, and we’d end up with a whole list of great B7 fic to explore after we’ve read through our own zine! I imagine this to be quite simple in format, so it doesn‘t require reviewing skills (though if you want to submit a page length fic review too, knock yourself out!). Details HERE.

Remember to refer to the detail post (HERE) re: specifics for different types of submission.

If you have your own beta, please please use them. Or if someone is willing to offer proofreading services for this zine specifically, please let me know. I will casually proofread for spelling and grammar as I edit, but I won’t have the time to give a detailed proofread to every submission.

Want to help with editing / handling submissions / answering questions? Let me know. This is a sideblog, so I can add multiple users to it.

[jaelijn]

I had a thing I was hoping to finish for Orbit Day, but it didn't happen. Oh well. At least there are still Whumptobers being uploaded, though not currently post-Orbit ones.

[jaelijn]

-

[jaelijn]

While I'm here for the spoop boops I might as well say this, too: The Whumptober fics are all done, but as I said, I don't want to rush the posting this year. I'll be slowly digitising them, giving them the final polish, work out what the heck to do for titles and I guess eventually they will start trickling out on AO3.

[jaelijn]

It's my 10 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

[jaelijn]

Some mutuals may have received a suprise chat message from me including a link. I'm not sure whether the accompanying explanatory notes sent correctly, so just in case: this is not a phishing mail, I have not been hacked, this is real. :D

[jaelijn]

Was curious how long it was since I made this post - a little under three years - and I wish I could say that things had changed for the better. But somehow I'm still here, at least.

On the plus side, Untitled PGP Longfic has broken 110k (incl. some 3k of very rough notes), so it is well on the way on being longer than BDaS+NTtS, already longer than either individually. Apparently the average range of scifi book word counts is something like 100k-120k, though there are of course longer books. It'll be interesting to see which one I will end up closest to whenever I'm done.

[jaelijn]

I'm keeping all three paws up for the time being, but I did the grind for all three badges so I could have a ginger paw for Vila and a black paw for Avon. 🤎🖤🥺

[jaelijn]

If you've heard me talk about the Frogwares Holmes games and were intrigued but don't want to play them yourselves, a friend of mine has started streaming them on Twitch - I'm a terrible lurker on streams so I don't often chat, but they don't mind that - as in, if you don't want to chat, there's no pressure - but they are still a beginning streamer, so every follower counts. Accordingly, I thought I'd do a little advertising for them: They're ElementarJay on Twitch and are currently playing "Sherlock Holmes vs Arsene Lupin", for which they just finished the second - and very fun - stream. Check them out and if you have a twitch account, consider following (They play Holmes every Sunday and Stardew Valley on other days of the week, if that's your thing)

[jaelijn]

TIL that apparently in Star Trek Beyond, Spock's date of birth was shown on a screen at one point, and it's January 6th. Now who exactly was the Holmesian who did that? XD

[jaelijn]

Happy Birthday, Holmes.

Today's a good day to try out the Frogwares Holmes games if you got them during the Steam sale, haha.

[jaelijn]

Fic Writer 2023 Review

Based on this. I always want to do annual reviews but then don't get around to them and then it feels weird doing them in February, so here we go for once. Under a cut because long (There's 30 things and I ramble. Not sorry.).

1. What’s something new that you tried in a fic this year? How did it turn out and would you do it again?

I suppose that I wrote a fic from Blake's POV counts. I didn't have a big plan for trying something new for Whumptober this year, but I always find myself doing it because everything starts to feel stale if you write 30 fics in so short a timeframe. So the POV was supposed to be what I tried with that fic, but the fic got away from me a bit, so in retrospect the unusual (for me) POV feels comparatively insignificant. There was also more Jenna this year - I think I'm getting there, so yes.

2. How many fics did you work on this year? (They don’t have to be finished or published!)

I have no idea. I have a very long list of WiPs that I am sure I have added a sentence or two across the year, or maybe I just opened them, fixed a few typos and closed them again, and then I have a few handwritten things that I haven't typed up yet. But *at least* it's 35 published things (31 of which are Whumptobers) and the longfic, so 36. Put like that, it sounds terribly prolific.

3. What’s something you learned about yourself as a writer?

I enjoy creating without expectation - immersing myself in the longfic with no idea when it will be done or how long it will get was terribly freeing. The downside is that I also realised that I'm not really intrinsicly motivated to post and share anymore, or at least that thought generates no positive pressure at all because scales. It would be really easy for me to never post another fic right now, but I'm not stopping writing.

4. What piece of media inspired you the most?

Always and ever, Blake's 7. There's nothing else that makes me want to write right now.

5. What fandom(s) did you write for this year?

Accordingly: Blake's 7

6. What ship(s) captured your heart?

Avon/Vila. Though they had me already.

7. What character(s) captured your heart?

See above.

8. Did you write for a new fandom or ship this year?

No. Since a lot of my writing, Whumptober aside, went into the longfic, I didn't do much experimenting - not even during Whumptober, really.

9. What fic meant the most to you to write?

Longfic aside, because as ongoing project that obviously matters, possibly Wet Towels, because it feels like I nailed a tonal direction I want to go in with my Avon/Vila.

10. What fic made you feel the happiest to work on?

By far, the longfic. Some of the Whumptobers were just the right kind of painful, but the most joy creating - yes, the longfic.

11. What fic was the most satisfying to finish writing?

Impending Destiny. I know I keep harping on about this fic, and maybe I'm the only one who thinks it's the best oneshot I've written this year and everyone else hates it, but it was so intense to write and so satisfying.

12. What fic was the most difficult to write? Did you finish it?

I did a few "second takes" on Whumptober this year, so I guess those and no, but then again the second take wasn't difficult, I just wasn't happy with the first and haven't touched those since. Fic I stuck with, possibly either Ghastly Aftermath, because ouch (it's difficult to write while you're crying at your own writing, all right?) , or Mistaken Trust because the final scenes were difficult to get right.

13. What fic was the easiest to write?

Nothing strikes me as particularly easier than the rest, really, but then what published writing I've done has been mostly in my comfort zone either way. So I guess all of the ones that weren't difficult?

14. What were your shortest and longest fics this year?

With Every Single Kiss has literal drabbles, so that, though all of the drabbles together are longer than my shortest oneshot. Longest is the ongoing longfic (duh) currently sitting at approx. 91k.

15. Rec a fic you wrote or posted in 2023

I am once again begging you to read Impending Destiny, lol. But if that isn't you're cup of tea, try Mistaken Trust or Spun Gold.

16. What were you go-to writing songs?

I didn't have many, this year. There's usually at least one or two, but I had a weird year with music, I feel, with few new songs that I really fell in love with, so there's been lots of playlists on shuffle and there's no song I could point to.

17. What were your go-to writing snacks?

I don't really snack when I write for fun, and I've had to cut down on my chocolate intake, so unless it's a chocolate praline, none.

18. What was the hardest fic to title?

Is "all of them" an answer that's allowed? I guess I could say Free Fall, not because of the fic, but because it was the first Whumptober and I was trying to figure out the "title format" for the rest of the Whumptobers. (I don't know if anyone has noticed that the Whumptobers have had title formats for three years now, but either way...) Other than that, the no-longer-so-untitled longfic was the one I put most thought into titling, but I'm not telling yet.

19. Share your favorite opening line

So... the thing about Whumptober is that it makes you *incredibly aware* of opening lines, or the format of opening lines. I try not to start all of them the same way, but I also tend to... slip into self-referential facetiousness doing that, in that all of them become funny when considered side by side.

I suppose "Avon was high." and "When the rebel forces of Carin IX finally managed to fish Avon out of the river, he was drenched to the bone." still amuse me (Spun Gold and Wet Towels, respectively).

20. Share your favorite ending line

Now I have to open all of them again, haha! Uh, let's do a not-Whumptober for once:

But lying curled up in the embrace of his most trusted companion, his link with and buffer against the world, Avon sometimes wondered whether it had been a curse at all. (The Price, from R&F #7)

21. Share your favorite piece of dialogue

Uh... spoiler for Impending Destiny, but I keep it vague and not post the whole thing?

“Whoever said that love is the most powerful force in the universe was a bloody liar,” Avon spat, “or a colossal fool. [....]"

22. Share an excerpt from your favorite scene

Oh for... just... just read Impending Destiny, okay?

23. Share the final version of a sentence or paragraph you struggled with. What about it was challenging? Are you happy with how it turned out?

Oof, I guess the final lines of Mistaken Trust. It would have been so easy to just let them hug and kiss but Avon resisted and once that line was there I had to do something with it that didn't feel unkind to Vila in a plot that... wasn't kind to Vila. I think I managed the balance and once Avon had said no I didn't want to go back to the easy ending, but it wasn't easy to get right.

24. What’s something that surprised you while you were working on a fic? Did it change the story?

... Impending Destiny. It was supposed to be a fix-it fic!!! It's... not a fix-it anymore. The shift was so striking that I made a tumblr post about it.

25. What did you use to write? (e.g. writing programs, paper & pen, etc.)

Word and paper & pen, very occasionally a note app on my phone. All of the Whumptobers had a paper version before I typed them, but I've only written snippets of the longfic on paper. I enjoy not writing at a screen every now and then, but it *is* slower.

26. If you had to choose one, what was THE most satisfying writing moment of your year?

I don't know, because my writing has been so unevenly balanced (very slow but steady progress for most of the year and A LOT of writing in September/October). I suppose finishing the Whumptobers again? Or perhaps when I realised that the longfic was going to be longer than BDaS without it feeling forced.

27. Did you do anything special to celebrate finishing a fic?

No. Once the longfic is done, maybe I will.

28. How did you recharge between fics?

Recharge? What's that? Or rather: between fics? What's that? Hahah.

I know what I would have *liked* to do, which is read a fanfic once in a while, but there's not much new out there to my taste these days. I guess watching other shows counts. I have resorted to rewatching B7 as final measure.

29. If this were an awards show, who would you thank?

The numerous people who kudosed, the few people who commented, @oxideblack for the incredible art and for the appreciation of my fics from their circle of fans, @quordleona03 for the inspiration, and @comarum and @foreignobjecticus who know why.

What’s something that you want to write in 2024?

Ah, it would be nice to finish the longfic this coming year. But I'm not making any plans. With how I feel about the sharing & posting, I'm counting it as a win if I don't lose my motivation entirely.

[jaelijn]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Was tagged by @quordleona03, thank you! It still blows my mind we're talking, haha.

I'd like to see this spread to the B7 folk, so if you've written for B7, even if you haven't in a while, consider yourself tagged!

How many works do you have on AO3?

227 - though as ever I need to remind people that this is not the total of my fics and certainly not the total of my fanworks (I have none of my art on AO3).

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

985.865 (I always have to do math here because I'm "co-author" on a fic I did the art for. So this is my *actual* words on AO3, not what AO3 says.)

CUT because oops it got long.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

At the moment, Blake's 7 only, unless you count Drake's Venture, but then again I have no active projects on that.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

This is in no way representative because my most kudos-ed fic will probably always be said "I did the art" fic that doesn't count, and my fandoms are vastly disparate in size, so my older SPN stuff is automatically up there. But anyway - Destinies Entwined (SPN), The Kindness of Strangers (SPN), There is no sin except stupidity (Canon Holmes - this one actually crept up there! I archived it, backdating, but people seem to have found and loved it!), Fields of Gold (SPN), and finally, With Every Single Word (B7) - and with the exact same amount of kudos, Bitter Days, and Sweet (B7).

5. Do you respond to comments?

Absolutely! Sometimes it takes me a while, but yes.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

*filters works by MCD warning*... I mean I've written a lot of bleak things, but not every MCD thing is necessarily bleak - on the other hand, I am probably forgetting some angsty ones that have no MCD. Most recently, or most in my memory, are a few of the Whumptobers, which always seem to bring out the darkness: Impending Destiny is up there, as is Bitter Almonds, Death's Kiss, perhaps, though that has some measure of catharsis, A Grave Man, Poisoned Apples. Then there's Earth, Earth Sector, Greyscale... Whatever you consider angstiest, it's probably a B7 fic. If you'd asked me to pick one, it'd probably be Impending Destiny because it hurt me to write and I feel it's underappreciated.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I'm in a similar boat as Quordle - these universes are angsty. Most of SPN ones are just... kind of even, all things considered, nothing to happy and nothing too sad, same with the Holmes stories, as they are all set somewhere in the middle and I can't give an Ending if there is more canon to go (and I rarely write AUs). But when it comes to B7, I've written some incredibly sappy stuff that doesn't really have "happy endings" because it's a fluff one-shot in the first place. Longfic with the happiest ending is probably Bitter Days, and Sweet, if only because it's a happy ending PGP. I do tend to prefer bittersweet endings to "fix everything" endings though.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I've got some... strange comments, but no outright hate, no, not on fic. But I also enable comment moderation on anything that might attract things, as a precaution. It hasn't been necessary, but perhaps people don't bother if they feel they might get moderated anyway. This is not an invitation to start sending me hate!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Not really. Being ace probably has something to do with that... I've found myself writing some intimacy, non-sexual or bordering on sexual kink or "draw the curtain" sex scenes lately, but I don't really get anything out of sex in fic for smutty reasons (and for a long time disliked pairing fic because it seemed so focussed on sex). I could see myself writing something more explicit if it served a plot point, but mostly I don't feel explicit detail is necessary for character development/plot progression. Intimacy, yes. But who cares who sticks what where and where the body fluids go?

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Yes, though I wouldn't say I do it *often* - I am generally more keen on conceptual mashups (what if B7 characters were in Victorian London) than pure crossover (what if B7 characters met Holmes characters), because I tend to be interested in single fandoms at a time rather than more at once. That said, I have done them. The most out there is probably my Doctor Who / Pirates of the Caribbean crossover, Dancing Star. I vaguely recall it being for a longfic challenge, but don't remember which. I'm still fond of that one and it's not even on AO3 (yet).

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of. (Don't do this.)

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I have been asked, and I think I had a Holmes fic translated once back in the LJ days? I'm not generally against translation if it's with my explicit consent, but there are some fics where I don't feel comfortable with it, often long or very personal work or stuff that I'm still working with. It helps if I already know the translator before they come to me with translation requests.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have made attempts, yes - some never worked out, some are yet to be published, others were collabs more in the sense of "let me add a sequel to your thing" rather than true co-writing. I have done a few fic/art collabs, on either side of the line, but I don't think there's anything currently on AO3 that has been co-written, unless you count my meta with @comarum.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

I am not going to make a claim on an "all time" favourite, particularly as I still feel I only found my niche with shipping fairly recently, and there are a few... fan-favourite pairings that I never really shipped but where I'm now wondering whether I would have jumped in more readily if I had been aware that this niche existed. Also is it still a ship if the pairing is canon, or is that just enjoying the original work?

My most long-standing active ship at this point is Avon/Vila, however.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

When someone says "doubt you ever will", I always immediately think of a project or two where I get defensive about the idea that I will never ever, even though I haven't touched them in decades. They are in long-term hibernation, but I balk at the idea of them being abandoned. That said, I have a good number of Red Dwarf fics that I'll probably never polish up. Dimensions was important to me, but this is where it'll probably end. Something about that fandom doesn't work for me.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I like to think: characters, dialogue, angst and long-form fics, though of course the short things will always outnumber the long ones because they take so long to write!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Finding endings for fics that are supposed to be short. Writing characters that aren't neurodivergent. Writing characters/relationships that aren't ace, though I feel I've been getting better with that. Anything that demands I actually pay attention to the characters' gender. Homonyms.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Depends on the extensiveness. If characters are always speaking a different language, sprinkling single lines in that actual language is weird and having the entire dialogue in a language that isn't the fic's is tedious, but if a few lines of dialogue are in a different language, sure. I feel the same way about strong accents.

Besides, I'd argue that characters in my current fandom aren't speaking English (the language I write in) in the first place, but a future common tongue I call Standard, so unless I want to invent a conlang, I'm not using their actual language anyway. On the other hand, rendering other languages in English can ignore some special characteristics of that language - something I specifically think about when I write about SIGN (my concept of sign language in the B7 universe). In general, I tend to emphasise readability over accuracy.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Depends on what counts. The first things I called fic were for SGA. Never published. The first published stuff was Canon Holmes.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

This changes constantly, and I also feel like I keep developing as a writer, so there are things I was very happy with at the time that I would not write that way now. They still were a favourite once - and in the same vein, if I didn't feel any of my recent stuff were favourites, I'd be doing something wrong with the craft. Consequently, right now I am very fond of Impending Destiny and my current longfic project.