Poll: Consensus, Part One

[thefourthvine]

So. I miss talking to and hearing from y'all. But I'm suffering from a tiny problem, namely absence of any ability to finish anything. Someday I hope to be able to write actual useful sentences that connect to other sentences again, but today is not that day, so I'm going to do a themed poll series instead of meta or a themed recs post. (There are only three parts to this themed poll set, but I realize that, from me, three posts is totally massive spamming. My apologies in advance.)

The poll's theme is: consensus.

In part one, below, I'm going to try to establish my relative fannish sanity by consensus. To do so, I need to take you on a brief tour of my brain, focusing on two particular fannish things it does that I'm starting to suspect are - well, weird. (And keep in mine I'm judging myself compared to other fans; we'd already be considered insane by many of Them Folks Out There.)

We will now depart on our trip through TFV's brain. Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Imaginary Fandoms. I have, um, imaginary fandoms. I don't mean original fiction that I tell myself - I mean original fandoms, where I come up with, for example, a long and detailed original story, and then entertain myself with considering - and sometimes, um, even writing - various types of fan fiction or kerfluffles or meta that might result from given installments of the story. Sometimes I do, like, a TV series, and cast it with imaginary actors and plan out both FPF and RPF. In my most recent imaginary fandom, I've even begun mentally vidding it.

These imaginary fandoms hit basically all my buttons, of course. I'm not actually going to describe this in any kind of detail, because, um, oh my god so embarrassing that I kind of want to die just from typing it out, but the current one involves time traveling teams (one "temporal scientist" and one assassin-ish type) from the future. The main team, at this point (in my head, we have arrived roughly at book or season three), has uncovered evidence that they are working for - and trapped by, and no, I'm not even going to elaborate on the whole legal enslavement aspect, because I do not want to die of embarrassment - an organization of extremely questionable ethics and purpose, which opposes an organization that also has extremely questionable ethics and purpose. Oh, and the timestream, which they're supposed to protect, is slowly dissolving.

I have assorted mental fan fiction for this story, all carefully tagged to various chapters or episodes. I have, as I said, mental vids. I entertained myself on one long, hideous drive to Pasadena imagining the meta resulting from the end of book or season one.

I'm pretty sure that all this is the very definition of sad and pathetic. But, hey, this is fandom - maybe we all do this. Do you?

Epics That Must Not Be Read. (Term borrowed from the only other person I know for sure has written one of these. She will not be named here - unless she just wants to be - out of mercy for her.) Another thing I do is write these long, involved pieces of FF that are only for an audience of one, and that one person is me. They're always AUs of some kind, and they always start in canon and move sharply away from it, and they always entertain the hell out of me. But only me.

I've written two. The first is a BtVS story that currently stands at 80 pages of actual story, 30 more of notes and dialog, and 5 of outline, plus 10 pages of deleted scenes. It assumes that canon remains the same up to "Once More with Feeling." (Please note that "Once More with Feeling" is the only episode of BtVS season six that I've seen - and I haven't seen any of five or four, either. No, wait - I think I've seen one episode in season four. My point is, the first clue I had to the ETMNBR status of this beast was that I was writing in canon I hadn't seen.) At that point, a single line changes, and this massively alters everything from then on. In terms of timeline, I've written up to where season nine would have been if there had been one, and I know how things will resolve in season ten.

There are only two people in the world who would be interested in this story; one is me, and the other is Best Beloved. We've both read it. I know it's an ETMNBR, so I'm not worried about finishing it. But I re-read it fairly regularly, and I still write on it from time to time, because it entertains me so damned much.

The other one is much more embarrassing because I didn't realize it was an ETMNBR until after I sent it to be beta-read. It's also rather long (and needs to be much, much longer), an AU that assumes canon up to a certain point and then sharply diverges, and entertaining only to me. (My poor, poor betas - some of them actually read the fucker, and provided really helpful, thoughtful, useful comments - in short, they helped me make a story that was interesting only to me even more interesting. To me. At the cost of a lot of their time and effort. I would send them flowers and chocolate except that I'm embarrassed to speak to them.)

Now for consensus. Feel free to judge harshly.

[Poll #851020]

Comments

[minim_calibre]

When I was 13/14, I had an imaginary musical fandom. I drew sketches for their album art, invented all the interviews I had clipped out from magazines, wrote what was essentially FRPF (fake Real Person Fic) about them.

Err.

I got really involved. I haven't done it that much since. Ages ago, icebluenothing was going to have me write some fanfic for his imaginary show, but nothing came of it, and I'm currently without an imaginary fandom.

My ETMNBR is open in another window. 17,386 words so far. When not falling into Winchester Mania, I'm writing about a thousand words a week in it. I love it to pieces. I want to hug and cuddle it. I occasionally forget it's an ETMNBR, and think about areas I need to improve before I ship it off to beta. And there are parts in it (curiously, not the sex parts) that tickle the hell out of me, and I just want to share them. But I can't. Because it's pure id on my part.

I mean, I hate that sathinks is halfway around the world right now, because she's never on IM when I've just whipped out another stunning chapter of cracktastic joy, and she's the only person I'd trust not to stage an intervention on me for writing it.

I did have an opt-in filter crackfic going for a while, and I may someday finish it, but that's not an ETMNBR so much as a You've Been Warned About Reading This Epic. (YBWARTE)

I've actually created a filter for my ETMNBR, but I'm scared to use it.

Because the ETMNBR is totally my baby at this point.

Even if it has a face only a mother wouldn't puke on seeing.

[flyingtapes.livejournal.com]

ha! I knew you would be in here somewhere. I was reading the post, and just thinking, I know min is around here. this is right up her alley.

I think, in many cases, an important component of the ETMNBR is having one other person who will read your crack-epic no matter what. They will talk about it with you if you want, read it, crit it, let you play in that space of your brain for however long you want. It's a Good Thing.

I probably have a couple stories mouldering away in my brain and my hard drive. (Sometimes I think they're the same thing.) But I am not an Epic Writer. So they're more Small Things That Probably Oughtn't Be Shared. (STTPQBS.)

[minim_calibre]

You could be epic! Short epics! SGA High School AU, where John's the star quarterback, and Rodney's like, the star member of the Science Club, and their love is all starcrossed! You know you want to!

And Teyla's a cheerleader!

[minim_calibre]

(Please note that the important part is the Teyla-with-pom-poms part.)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

When I was 13/14, I had an imaginary musical fandom.

That is incredibly cool. (And, my god, at that age you were already deep in the creation of elaborate fanworks. I'm impressed; at that age, I was Mary Sue sagaing the hell out of everything I read or thought of, but that was it.)

Although I kind of had an imaginary band fandom at that age; I read an article about a band in one of my sister's music magazines, and became a fan without hearing any of their music, or in fact knowing anything about them other than that article. (Sure, I heard their music later, and read more about them later, but I had six months of seriously obsessed fannishness where that article was all I had. Needless to say, I made a lot of shit up.)

I'm currently without an imaginary fandom.

I find myself thinking, oh, how sad, and, like, wanting to refer you to potential imaginary fandoms. (Like, I want to suggest trinityofone's Puddlejumpers (http://trinityofone.livejournal.com/60262.html) AU (http://trinityofone.livejournal.com/tag/puddlejumpers), because that's an imaginary band. Or I could offer to share my imaginary fandom with you, except of course then I would have to tell you about it and I WOULD DIE (and so would you, but for me it'd be shame and you it'd be boredom).)

This is a sign of how much this poll has changed me; when I posted it, I would've been envied you for not having an imaginary fandom, because, hey, sanity = very enviable trait.

Which suggests that posting this poll made me revel in my own insanity a bit more than is healthy.

Hmmmm. Still not sorry.

I've actually created a filter for my ETMNBR, but I'm scared to use it.

*hopeful*

Am I on it?

[minim_calibre]

I have determined that I HAVE to be in Pearl O's imaginary fandom.

So, now I have one! Yay!

::adds you to filter::