Maius Intra Qua Extra

So that story I just posted yesterday. It was okay, right? I mean, nothing amazing, nothing groundbreaking, not even anything moving. Just a couple thousand words connecting the real-life colorful belt from the Byzantine era to the Doctor's scarf.

Well, I got this comment on it:

( Read more... )

And I have to ask, to anyone who cares to voice an opinion: Is this sarcasm? Are they saying it really was rubbish without making it look like a bash?

Because it's so excessive -- especially for such an average, vanilla story -- that I can't take it at face value. I mean, really, who gets emotional about a description of a city being loud and colorful? Not to mention, I didn't even describe the city at all. I just had Victoria say it was noisy and the Doctor point at the church.

And they want "the next update immediately"? This is so obviously a one-shot. Sorry about your hands and knees.

I feel like the person fed ChatGPT my story and asked it to write the most over-the-top emotional comment it could come up with.

I'm torn between answering nicely and deleting it entirely, but I'm starting to lean towards the delete.

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for starting a fic title? One fic per line, ‘A’ and 'The’ do not count for 'a’ and ’t’. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

I love memes like this. I love doing them because I get to think about the things I've done and talk about them. I love reading others' answers because I get to learn about my friends. I saw this meme and went, "Cool, that looks fun and interesting! I gotta do that!"

Then I thought, "Wow, that's a lot of work, sorting through fics to choose one for each letter of the alphabet, and then get the link and add all the info." But, that's in the nature of the meme, so I started working on it.

And then I realized, as I was looking through all my As, that though the meme had passed through my friends' list six times, I hadn't actually read a single title in any of them, much less clicked through to any of them. All I did was scan over the list, look to see what letters each person had missed, and then jump to their discussion about their titles.

To me, the interesting thing about the meme wasn't the titles themselves, but the distribution of letters and the self-evaluation of what that might mean. That's probably true for me for any meme, too. So, I decline to list titles -- I don't need them for my own reference and no one who reads this will care either -- and instead, I list my letter distributions.

Out of 170 works (it says 160 on AO3, but one "fic" is actually a collection of eleven works, so that totals 170):

A: 8
B: 9
C: 7
D: 7
E: 6
F: 12
G: 3
H: 5
I: 2
J: 3
K: none
L: 13
M: 9
N: 4
O: 15
P: 12
Q: none
R: 6
S: 23
T: 16
U: 2
V: none
W: 4
X: none
Y: 3
Z: none

I do not guarantee that this actually adds up to 170.

Total number of unique letters: 21

I think that's actually the smallest total of anyone's I've seen. (Edit: Nope, I'm wrong. There was a 17.) Almost everyone missed the X and the Z, and often the Q, but K and V were commonly covered.

I'm not surprised that S is the most common title starter. After all, S is the most common starting letter in English and alphabetization rules remove "the", "a", and "an" from the count. The one that surprised me is O, coming in just behind T with 15. It looks like I love starting titles with "One", eight of them in total.

I did notice two instances in which I repeated the same letter three times in the row: three Bs a couple of years ago and three Ls back in like 2014. Two of the Ys were due to "You". And only one fic title started with the name of a canon character; some fics mentioned characters in their titles but not directly by their names. One fic title started with the name of the original character.

My husband reminded me yesterday of a piece of content from the game The Kingdom of Loathing. It's a browser RPG by Asymmetric Productions that came out in 2004, which my husband still plays but I stopped playing back in around 2013. While it probably didn't invent the concept of "play through the game multiple times to gain a new, permanent skill or upgrade to use in future runs" which is common in games now, it's one of the oldest games to use it. It still has monthly and quarterly content updates, which is what's kept it alive with a rabid fanbase, enough that its revenue has been enough to fund the development of Asymmetric's other games, West of Loathing and Shadows over Loathing, which have also been hugely successful -- they're both "overwhelming positive" on Steam.

The thing that KoL is known for, though, is its absurd and irreverent humor. You can tell this from the fact that the characters and monsters are all stick figures, the main currency is meat, and in order to wear a shirt, you have to acquire a skill to do so -- people in Loathing (that's the name of the country) don't know that they have a torso, so in order to wear shirts, you have to learn Torso Awaregness. (Yes, there's a reason there's a silent "g" in that word, but I'm not going to explain it.)

The writing is also stellar. All the quests have stories and the characters are inventive and vivid. (Ed the Undying is my favorite.) Every item in the game has a description that's a joy to read. The reason I stopped playing the game was because it just took way too much time, and I'm lucky to have my husband showing me all the new stuff as it comes out.

Anyway, yesterday, he showed me an item that was in the game back when I played it. I'd completely forgotten about it, but wow, when I read the description...

----
Hippopotamus.
Anti-hippopotamus.
Annihilation.
----

I laughed to the point of tears. And I remember laughing to the point of tears fifteen years ago when this item came out.

Then, I thought more about it, and you know, it's the best piece of flash fiction I've ever read. In three words, it tells a full story that paints a vivid picture in your mind, AND it's a haiku. A three-word haiku.

Now, that's writing.

My last post (well, not the one about my murderous intentions) was the AO3 stats meme, in which I wondered why in the world "Bloody Doctors!" was such an outlier in terms of number of hits, garnering nearly 1300 hits when most of my short stories are lucky to get 300 hits over ten years. thisbluespirit agreed that popularity is often inexplicable, though there's often bias from how long the fic has been available and from the size of the fandom, but she got me thinking, and then of course, the only way to really think about things is to do a data analysis.

Not a real one, of course. I don't have the expertise to do a real data analysis. But I did take data and I did analyze it. :P

( Read more... )

I learned a new word today! "Nothingburger!"

( Read more... )

In other news...

( Read more... )

I've been meaning to post something - anything - for a while now, but I haven't had the motivation, partly because things have been stressy and partly because all I ever seem to do on my journal nowadays is whine. So, when this meme from lurking_latinist showed up on my feed, I thought it would be a great first start.

Note, I haven't actually written regularly in a long time. Maybe this will kick me in the butt.

( Read more... )

My husband told me something really interesting today. He was chatting with a colleague and the topic of Firefly came up, and she said that she didn't like it (which elicited a surprised pikachu face from my husband). He asked her why, and she said it's because she never found out anything about the characters - their histories, their motivations, etc.

That was strange, because Firefly, to both of us, is a shining example of developing the characters through showing. Mal doesn't talk about religion or his personal beliefs, but you know that he is contemptuous of religion and faith through the way he treats Shepherd Book. However, you also learn that he was once very religious from the scene where he kisses the cross around his neck during the Battle of Serenity Valley, and that the events of the battle cause his loss of faith and eventual contempt.

My husband mentioned this, and the colleague responded that she didn't learn any of that (or any of the other characters' histories) because he never talked about it. In contrast, she loves ST:TNG because the characters are always talking and providing exposition. You know Riker and Deanna had had a previous relationship and that they still love each other but have moved on because they talk about it and they tell other people about it, not because their actions now reveal that history.

It never occurred to me that some people prefer to be told, not shown. Interestingly, she added that she knew about "show, don't tell" in novels, but didn't think it applied to movies/TV. Maybe there's a difference there, but I still prefer to be shown in all media.

Back in December, I wrote an entry in which I mentioned that I had picked my writing back up and set a goal for myself of posting four stories in January. Well, it's January 30, and I just posted my fifth story to AO3.

Boo-bloody-yeah!

( Read more... )

So, I just had this happen...

( Read more... )

The thing that I probably hate the most about being a canon-compliant fanfiction writer is that the show can and, in the case of Doctor Who which changes gears and revisits itself all the time, will invalidate your stories. I don't begrudge them the prerogative of course, since after all, it is their show and not mine at all. But when you write a story, even though you know you don't own the characters or the world, you still get attached to them and the idea you concocted. I love exploring the guest characters after the credits start to roll, or establishing backstory, and I like to think some of what I've come up with is pretty cool. It's disappointing when new content comes out and your favorite headcanon is nullified.

The BBC's been producing shorts on YouTube called "Doctor Who: Lockdown", which are written and produced in the content creators' own homes and intended to entertain while asking for donations to COVID-19 relief funds. An example is "Pompadour", written by Steven Moffat and performed by Sophia Myles - I will warn you to get the Kleenex before you hit 'Play'. There aren't many, but most are concerning some of the most popular episodes of the past fifteen years.

The one that broke my writer's bubble is "The Shadow in the Mirror". You probably can figure out exactly what it's about from the title. TSinM is written by Paul Cornell, who wrote "Human Nature"/"Family of Blood" and "Father's Day" as well as the novel HN/FoB was based on, Human Nature. The video reveals the fate of Daughter of Mine, trapped in every mirror by the Tenth Doctor.

That sound you just heard was a headcanon misfiring.

I wrote her fate, a long time ago. It's been a part of my imagination for over five years now: the fall of the Doctor's footsteps (and later, bootsteps) as he approaches the mirror every year, the angry eyes watching from a shadowed corner, the string of the red balloon clutched tightly in a tiny hand forever, and what she saw that finally made her think. I can't describe how it felt to watch a different reality settle into place. Ah well. It's happened before (though not to a character or story that I've loved this much), and it'll happen again.

I will say this, though, because this is my journal and I can say what I want here. To Mr. Paul Cornell, who I have actually met and talked to about DW and writing: I've adored your work ever since I first saw "Father's Day". HN/FOB is my favorite DW episode, and the original novel is stunning. Also, that Third Doctor comic you did with Christopher Jones - I totally did not see that coming. I've always felt that Daughter of Mine deserved some closure, that the Doctor felt more responsibility for her than for the other Family members, and I think it's wonderful that you created this short piece to address that. However, there's something you need to know: Mine was better.