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

[erinptah]

Here from metafandom.

Come to think about it, I have played around in my head with kind of an imaginary Wizard of Oz fandom. (I say "imaginary" because, while there is Oz bookverse fandom, it's very old-fashioned: mostly mailing lists and zines and the like. I've toyed with the idea of what Oz fandom would look like if the books had been written ninety years later. Probably a lot like Harry Potter Fandom, is what I envision.)

Haven't gone into nearly as much detail as you have, but I've come up with things like fics that should be written. (And these can be fics that I wouldn't write myself, mind you - darkfic and smut, for instance.)

I also, come to think of it, have more than one Sailor Moon ETMNBR. I've been meaning for a long time to rewrite one of them into an interesting and readable epic, but it may never happen. Which is a shame, because I think it could be made interesting to other people.

...this is a very interesting poll, and has given me things to ponder. Thanks for laying your fannish psyche bare for us - it's intriguing!

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I say "imaginary" because, while there is Oz bookverse fandom, it's very old-fashioned: mostly mailing lists and zines and the like. I've toyed with the idea of what Oz fandom would look like if the books had been written ninety years later. Probably a lot like Harry Potter Fandom, is what I envision.

Ooo, cool! Have you seen liviapenn's and hradzka's posts on this? (On imagining what LJ fandoms for older books might look like, I mean.) If you're interested, you can find David's one on Holmes here (http://hradzka.livejournal.com/121802.html), and he links to Livia's post about the Wimsey series at the top of that one.

Have you ever written up your vision of Oz-written-today fandom? I find those posts fascinating. (Well. Obviously, since I have collection of them in my head.)

I also, come to think of it, have more than one Sailor Moon ETMNBR. I've been meaning for a long time to rewrite one of them into an interesting and readable epic, but it may never happen. Which is a shame, because I think it could be made interesting to other people.

Interesting. What do you think needs to be done to your epic to make it readable and interesting to others? (I'm, um, fishing for ideas, here - I mean, if there's a way to do that, I would seriously consider it, just because - well, I wrote these ETMNBR, and it'd be really nice to take the MNBR part of them.)

Thanks for laying your fannish psyche bare for us - it's intriguing!

It's what LJ is for! (You can lay your psyche bare in many places, but only in LJ do half the people who see it say, "Me, too!" and another 5% say, "Link?")

[erinptah]

Those are very very cool posts. Thanks for the links!

I've done a bit of musing in thelostoz (it's a terribly inactive comm, so it's only a few posts from the top). I've pondered doing something more extensive with it, like a comic; but I feel like I'd end up doing fandom parody, and I couldn't top mina_de_malfois at that.

This particular epic needs to be rewritten so that all the details that are only in my head - what places look like, for instance (I've been negligent at describing them) - are written out, the fanservicey bits are made less fanservicey, and the Sue is de-Sued. Right now it's mostly me playing around with my characters, in whom I'm already emotionally invested. I need to write the story in such a way that other people can get emotionally invested too.

Or I could turn it into a comic. Which I have also pondered. (People are much more willing to read a story with pretty pictures.) In this case the main blocking factor is that I don't have the time.

You can lay your psyche bare in many places, but only in LJ do half the people who see it say, "Me, too!" and another 5% say, "Link?"

LJ is great like that =D