AND THEN SETH GREEN IN FLANNEL GUEST STARRED ON X-FILES

[whynot]

The end of the paid account was like Y2K or something. I was all OH NO OH NO, but in the end all I lost was icon space and poll-making abilities. I didn't even lose my mood theme! So, okay. Also: GIP! If I were still doing the adjacent icons meme, I would be writing a drabble about Susan Pevensie and Bender hanging out.

Speaking of memes, lovestories gave me 5 things to talk about:

erasure poetry
This is all zempasuchil, actually. She took a whole course about it, and was posting links to Humument.com and other examples, posted her own erasures, and I became intrigued. Erasures appeal to my love of stories within stories. I suggested we erase each other's fics, and to my delight she said yea. Speaking of which, have ya'll already signed up for erasureathon?

Merlin/Will
Ah, Will: fandom's buttmonkey. Here's the thing. He is obviously a big part of Merlin's origins story, and he and Merlin obviously adored each other and perhaps canoodled in the pastures. I like his realistic reaction to certain doom (run awaaaaay) -- but he does come back to fight in the end, guys -- and I like his utter normalcy. Also, he's the only other person except Hunith who knew about the magic! Merlin may not end with Will by his side, but he begins with Will by his side, and this is just as valid as Merlin and Arthur's superspecial destiny. I said most of what I had to say about Will in Halcyon Days, though I suspect there may at some point be an AU where Will survives and follows the gang back to Camelot, then this happens. Have a Merlin/Will vid. I've recced it before but god, it gets me every time.

insanely glorious Narnia AUs
<3! AUs are insanely glorious fun! Oh, the 'what if?' game. These days I tend to blither on about Merlin AUs more, excepting this one I'm on with marycontraire wherein Merlin and Arthur are FBI agents and the Pevensies are the mafia, and Arthur and Edmund have secret meetings where Arthur tries to wrest information out of Edmund about Morgana's kidnapping. Thing is, I never used to like AUs, but then you start asking questions like WHAT IF ARTHUR WAS A DINOSAUR and how can you turn away?

Peter/Susan
What have I said about them that I haven't before. They are the inappropriate OTP of my heeeaaarrrrt. I think I've Peter/Susaned myself out, in that although I still ship them, I tend to write around them more now instead of directly addressing the issue. In the rambling meme, I talked about Peter/Susan.

Indonesian shadow puppets
I never got around to writing the drabble about Edmund and the shadow puppets, but it would involve comparisons to Plato's cave, and how the shadows cast on the cave wall are like the puppets' shadows on the screen. The 'real' thing may be the leather puppets and the human voices and hands that animate them, but what the audience is meant to see are their shadows. And the brighter the light, the sharper the shadows, and that's where the story lies. So, uh. I guess that's what it means to Edmund.



Here are a couple of things that have improved my Monday. First, a most gracious lady remixed me and zempasuchil's Narnia geek-off, Sea Change, for remixredux09. It is so lovely, please read it: into something rich and strange (the tempus aeternum backbeat). Awesome #1: there is more Lucy. Awesome #2: "Edmund has spent hours puzzling over black holes and maths and the curious turn of gravity trying to find a way to say, in the language of these scientific men, what he himself knows with an utter intimacy." <3 "Einstein's Dream" is now on my to-read list.

Second, my Merlin/Monty Python fusion, Only a Model, has been nominated for excalibur_award under Best Crack Fic, Best Humor Fic, and Best Crossover Fic. \o/! Thanks, nominator! If any of ya'll are inclined to agree with this nomination, uh, vote for me? I promise to reform the health care system!

Comments

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

for real, you should always be in my life multiple times, Z. <33

haha, thanks. That fusion had been building in me a looong, I feel. I couldn't stop making Monty Python references when I started watching 'Merlin'. The two have so much in common! It's like, they're both Arthurian legend(ish), but RIDICULOUS.

It does rather look like a case of not enough nominees for too many categories. It may be 'cos it goes out and explicitly makes itself the non-Merlin/Arthur awards to shed light on a fandom minority? That eliminates like, most of fandom right there.

It means more people should write OT4 AUs and whatever qualifies as "OT4 pre-ship fic." (Wait, aren't all fics featuring our OT4 pre-ship? right?)
Ahaha, facts that are true. I think some of my favorite shippy fics are not shippy fics, y'know?

[zempasuchil.livejournal.com]

d'awww <3333

The Merlin/Arthur contingent is huge, and I wish there were a way to quantify fandom because I'm curious as to the proportion between Merlin/Arthur and gen fic, how much het there is, who ships what. it would be great to somehow keep track of all the stories, all the fanart, all the authors, though we could never get all the lurkers who talk and read though they may never post a fic.

Heh, we're such fans! We would rather read into things than read explicitly what we're thinking of :)) that said, there's a lot to be said for plot, which appears in gen, rather than picking up your bodice-ripper Merlin/Arthur romance.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

I wish there were a way to quantify fandom
Unnecessary application of my degree #579857954: using ship, genre, fic length, and number of comments, regression analysis can be used to see the probability that a non-Merlin/Arthur fic would achieve fandom popularity.

There is a graphjam to be had in all this.

than read explicitly what we're thinking of
That's what commentfic is for. ;) 'COS Y'KNOW, whatever happens in commentfic stays in commentfic. Um, except when it doesn't? But implication can be so much more powerful than explicitness!

[zempasuchil.livejournal.com]

Your icon is wonderful :D

Stats blow my mind! how do you do that?? (you can take that question as rhetorical if the answer involves teaching me regression analysis...)

Merlin graphjam? WOULD BE WIN

it is subtlety and some wonderful writers know how to and do use it :)) I love the idea that whatever happens in commentfic stays in commentfic. It is like the place to go wild and write things you at first think should probably never be written. And then they turn into epic threads that someone links to and, lol. I am remembering the O11/Narnia AU you and bedlam had going for so long. (is it still up? last time I checked I didn't see anything new)

TAKE 2

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

HAHA. Okay. FIRST, what outcome variable will we choose to represent fandom popularity? We'll go with 'number of comments'. What input variables will we put into the model? The model itself would be structured a little something like this:

number of comments = (fic length * x1) + (main ship * x2) + (fic rating * x3) + standard error [which is sort of like standard deviation]

Then you rekerfooble the beta values (viz. FOR AN IMPROBABLE EXAMPLE, the beta value of 'fic length' is 20, because an increase of 1 word is correlated to an increase of 20 comments). Say we have a sample of 200 Merlin fics (n = 200). If we were to choose one Merlin fic from this sample with the following specifications:

x1 = 1000 words
x2 = Merlin/Arthur
x3 = R

--what would be the projected number of comments that this fic would have, based on analysis of the aforementioned 200 fics? You'd want to recode the input variables into numbers, so after some rekerfoobling, your projection for how many comments one particular fic (out of the 200) might get would SOMEHOW look something like this (improbability of the numbers aside):

number of comments = 20*1000 + 25*0 + 30*3 + standard error


AND MAY THE LORD GOD HAVE MERCY ON MY SOUL. D: (i'm sorry, professorrrrr)


ahahaha EXACTLY. It's the brothel where you can do filthy things that your fic/wife at home won't let you do to her. The O11/Narnia AU is still up, though discontinued indefinitely. We just... faded. themusingstream has it up in pretty much chronological order, courtesy of the awesomeness of lazaefair.

Re: TAKE 2

[zempasuchil.livejournal.com]

my mind = bamboozled. but I think I sort of understand it! But not very well. Still, I love how academia will ALWAYS pertain to fandom! ALWAYS. destinyyyy

haha, we all pray to our Lord God professors for mercy on our souls, don't we?

That AU was a super awesome thing while it lasted! and it lasted for so long; I was super impressed at your commentficcing stamina. always am.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

destinyyyyyyy <3

aww thanks! You accidentally stumble over weirdly awesome bits of insight in commentfic sometimes. like, the story may not be 'real', but the moments are.