Eight Days of Happiness: Storyfinders Communities. And Poetry.

[thefourthvine]

The Ones That Suggests Some Plots I Never, Ever Want to Read. And Some I'm Delighted I Already Have. Found and Searching, by linabean.

Know this: I love storyfinders communities. I love them unashamedly, unabashedly, unironically. One of the first things I do in a new fandom is hunt down the local storyfinders. Yes, there are some risks inherent in this - every tenth post on one of these communities is absolutely horrifying, and every fortieth makes me recoil from the screen, cover my ears, rock in my desk chair, and weep silently for my people.

And yet. And yet. The other entries are educational! Every time someone posts, I learn what people consider the money shot of any story. (Hint, anyone out there who is searching for either the story that starts with a spanking that John gets because of Rodney or the one where they find all the extra control chairs called cathedrae: it's Indelible, it's by Shaenie, and there's about a million words of awesomeness and plot between those two apparently very memorable points. Enjoy!) I also learn that there are many kinds of people in my fandoms, and some of them are very different from me. Some of them even seem to speak an entirely different language than any of those ever spoken on the planet earth. (This means I am sharing my fandom with aliens! I am always delighted by that news. Hi, aliens! Hi hi hi hi hi!) But most of all, I just love seeing what people look for. Sometimes I get links to stories I've read and loved and need to put on my Kindle. Sometimes I get links to great stories I somehow missed. And sometimes I get links to stories that are so mind-bogglingly horrible that I have to tell myself the person was just searching for it because she was trying to deal with a very serious story-induced trauma head-on.

But, as much as I love storyfinders communities, I love these poems even more. They capture everything that's fabulous about the communities. (The desperate tone! The pleas for help! The one where McKay is turned into a puppy with many exclamation points, like this: !!!) And they also capture an awful lot of the essence of SGA fandom. And then they create something entirely new, all in themselves - I mean, these are really awesome poems.

I smile helplessly every time I read these. And then I giggle a lot. And then I want to cuddle fandom to me. And then I want to slap it in the face. These poems bring me many feelings, is my point. But the dominant one is happiness. Pure, unadulterated joy that there could be something so awesome that storyfinders communities are only one small part of it, and that someone could take a segment of that awesomeness and distill it and purify it and make it even better.

Fandom, I big pink line you. Totally.

Comments

[annakovsky.livejournal.com]

HEE. Pride and Prejudice???? NICE.

Oh my God, okay, now I kind of WANT to secretly run that challenge and have the entries posted to an actual comm, that would be pretty hilarious. I also vaguely want someone to keep track of storyfinders entries for well-known fics, catalog what ARE the money-shots of each fic, and see what it says about the fic and/or what people are getting out of fandom. Hey, as long as people are doing condescending anthropology articles on fandom, they might as well study something interesting about it, amirite??

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, DO. I would participate! Um. Except obviously not, because that would be an abuse of fannish resources. (But. Funny. Yes.)

And I actually have started a half-assed list of the most requested stories in SGA, complete with the keywords (I wasn't kidding; if you see "spanking," it will be Indelible 99 times out of 100, even though spanking is not exactly an unheard-of concept in fan fiction). But shoving the work onto academics: this is brilliance of a high caliber. I vote an enthusiastic YES.

...Now I want a storyfinders analysis community. With statistics. And lists. And stuff.

[annakovsky.livejournal.com]

Oh man, is the spanking a big plotpoint of that story, or an aside? Haha, now I want to read it and see why it's so memorable about that fic. (That's funny, too, 'cause serious, some light kink is all over fanfiction... though actually maybe less so than my perception is, now that I'm thinking about it more?)

...Now I want a storyfinders analysis community. With statistics. And lists. And stuff.

AUGH NOW SO DO I. The problem is that all my "fandoms" are so tiny that they aren't even big enough to have their own storyfinder communities... though maybe this lends me the outside air of objectivity? Heee.

People's perceptions in memory are SO INTERESTING, though. Like, I remember some friends telling me about some fic where Hermione calls Snape "babe" all the time (or vice versa? Hilarious either way, anyway) -- then they linked me to it, and in a fic that is basically novel length, the word "babe" actually only appeared three times, which is not many for that many words! Definitely not "all the time." Although of course you can (and should) argue that that is three times too many, hahaha. But you get my point.

[ariadne83]

The way I remember it the spanking in that fic is intense, the way it's described, but it also has quite an impact on the plot. It kickstarts this whole Thing.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Oh man, is the spanking a big plotpoint of that story, or an aside?

Big plot point! But the story is, like, 100k words; it has several other plot points that never show up in storyfinders. (I really do love the ones where what sticks in people's minds are the asides, though.) And the funny part is that the spanking is part of a larger plot point - John and Rodney have to take a tea that causes perfect memory and flashbacks, and that's *the* plot point for the story - and no one ever mentions that, even though they themselves have perfect memories of the spanking part.

The problem is that all my "fandoms" are so tiny that they aren't even big enough to have their own storyfinder communities

I don't see that as a problem. I see that as a lack of observer bias. It takes you from the realm of immersion anthropology to the halls of naturalistic observation psychology!

Although of course you can (and should) argue that that is three times too many, hahaha. But you get my point.

I do! The thing that stands out in your mind may not be the dominant theme or even a major thing. That is what makes storyfinders awesome. (I have to admit, though, that if Hermione called Snape "babe" EVEN ONCE, that would destroy my ability to form any associative memory at all. I'd just go around saying, "Babe. Babe. BABE." A lot. Maybe sometimes I would add, "Dude. DUDE." That is obviously what Snape calls Hermione in this story, right? THERE WOULD BE NO JUSTICE IN THE WORLD IF SNAPE DID NOT CALL HERMIONE DUDE.)

...Oh, man. I am TWITCHING for a storyfinders analysis community. Just think! A place where people could post the best of all the storyfinders communities (case studies)! A place where people could post most-searched stories (frequencies and descriptive statistics)! A place where people could post PIE CHARTS.

*fantasizes wildly*

[badesquisse.livejournal.com]

(case studies)! A place where people could post most-searched stories (frequencies and descriptive statistics)! A place where people could post PIE CHARTS.

And maybe a regression or two... What makes a story that will be remembered? Y = a1 * (number of spanking episodes in the fic) + a2 * (number of people permanently disabled) + a3 * (number of males pregnant) + (- a4) * (number of females pregnant) + ...

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

And I totally forgot the one-note element. It should have gone like this:

So, I only remember this one small part, but - there was a girl? And her sisters had, like, bought some hats. And I think cold cuts were involved.

[dzurlady.livejournal.com]

And yet, there is every possibility someone would know what story it was from that. It is a fannish miracle.

[dzurlady.livejournal.com]

I would feel a little bad about spamming a real comm, but would love someone to run the challenge!