The Mezzanine

I'm halfway through writing a (longish) Lois Lane fic, and I wrote a line that delighted me. I simply had to share:

Lois asks a couple of insightful questions, and starts sketching notes on her article as the Mayor answers everyone else’s less interesting questions.

That is all. :)

If I say "the Five Find-Outers and Dog", does that mean anything to any of you?


They're from a series of mystery novels by Enid Blyton - aimed at kids who are about 9–12 years old. The "Five Find-Outers" are Fatty (the brains of the group), Larry and Daisy (brother and sister), and Pip and Bets (also brother and sister). The "dog" is Buster, who belongs to Fatty.

Together, they solve mysteries (arson, burglary, anonymous letters, forgery, and so forth) in their little village, to the great annoyance of the bumbling village policeman.



Anyway, the whole thing takes place in the 1940s. And I would love to write a fanfic set in the 1960s. (But I probably never will. Instead, I'm putting it here.)

( the basic idea, for anyone who's interested )

Okay, snowflake_challenge. Let's do this!

So I have one non-fandom goal: learning Spanish. I already know a fair bit of German, and some Latin and French; Spanish is the next language in line.

Why Spanish? Mainly because American TV has started using Spanish the way Agatha Christie uses French – with random sentences thrown in here and there assuming you'll get the gist – so it's relevant to my life.



And my vaguely-related-to-fandom goal: turn one of these two plotbunnies into an actual narrative.

Suppose there's a Dark Mage. He takes a five year old girl as his apprentice, because she has innate ability. But he's not interested in teaching her to use her abilities wisely - more in getting as much raw power out of her as he can. He mistreats her, exploits her, and eventually discards her.

Then, the sixteen year old ex-apprentice (somewhat used to tripping out on magic, with a history of doing some quite nasty stuff that hurt people) is left to starve on the streets, with a heck of a lot of mental scarring. And she is found by another man, a weaver by trade, who takes her in, cares for her, and teaches her to weave. She grows up, moves on, and has a happy life.

...and that's the prologue.

Our story begins when a 30 year old woman - professional weaver, and mother of three - realises that the Dark Mage has been growing in power. And that she is exactly who the world needs to stop him.



Questions? Comments?

One of the many (many) narratives I've had at the back of my head is one where magic used to be possible, slowly stopped being possible, but is now gradually becoming possible again (sort of like Shadowrun, but much less dramatically).

It occurred to me the other day that, if you had people passing magical techniques down in the hopes that they'd one day become possible, you'd have a whole bunch of people who were extremely well trained in how to do high-level spells without having any of the safety precautions or common sense that comes from having screwed up the low-level spells.

Much in the same way that you learn your vegetable chopping techniques as a by-product of having accidentally chopped your fingers, and your egg-cracking techniques as a by-product of having accidentally dumped most of an egg shell into your cake batter.

So, there would be apprentices, in their early days of screwing up low-level spells, saying "Master... do you think we should maybe draw a salt circle before..." and their masters cheerfully dismissing this as unnecessary, before accidentally setting fire to the curtains and dying everyone's skin bright blue and saying "...right. So, next time we might... draw a salt circle. Yep."

This is the story of how a young fanficcer, taking her first steps into a new world of fandom, eagerly decided to do lots of research to make her fic extra-awesome, and did just enough research to totally screw up the whole thing.


Here's the thing. I'm not really a Star Trek fan, but I know the vague outline. These days, having looked at much of TV Tropes, I'm a bit more conversant than I was 6 years ago. Which... brings us to our story.

You see, I was writing a teeny ficlet starring Andrew. Nothing major - just 300 words or so. But I was trying hard to write him well, and keep it in character, and I threw in a Trek reference, because, why not?

The joke was that Andrew had gone to a convention, very eager to get a signature from an actor. An actor who'd only been in a single episode, but of course, Andrew being Andrew, he knew exactly what the guy's name was and which episode he'd been in, and was very eager to line up for a signature.

...so, I went on IMDB and Wikipedia, and looked at Voyager episodes, trying to find a one-episode character I could use. None of that making up names for me, oh no. I was going to do it properly. Sure enough, I found a character who'd only appeared once, put him in my fic, and thought no more about it.


Until a few weeks ago. When I was re-reading some of my old fic.

And I got to the one with Andrew, and was reading it happily when I got to the Star Trek bit and thought "...hang on. That sounds familiar."

Because, yes, I've been hanging round fandom for several years now. No matter how much Trek you don't watch, there's a few facts you're bound to pick up.

It took me less than a minute to check. And then several minutes more to stop headdesking, because, you see, what I'd done...

Well, what I'd done was have Andrew line up at a convention to get a signature from Commander Riker, that's what. Mister Growing-The-Beard Himself.

Which totally changes the line, and also makes Andrew look slightly moronic for talking about Riker coming from Voyager when he's actually from Next Gen.


Yes, I'm an idiot. Feel free to mock me. *grins*

For those who would like to remix things...

buffy_remix is now taking sign-ups for Buffyverse remix fics.

The Remix is live! And someone has written a rather fun remix of Fair Dinkum: She'll Be Right (the No Worries remix). Go read!

(My story is buried somewhere in there too. As are plenty of other fascinating new remixes. Have fun.)

So, after spending last week immersed in a debate about whether fanfic is ethical or at all legitimate, I'm spending this week... in another debate about whether fanfic is ethical or at all legitimate.

*sighs*

This time, it's a discussion on reworked fanfic being published as original fiction. An interesting topic - but the anti-fanficcers are mainly arguing that "you're taking someone else's plot/characters/setting rather than putting in the effort of coming up with your own!"

...using someone else's PLOT. By reworking my own fanfic.

*sighs again*



My dear arguers,

It may have escaped your notice, but fanfic does not consist purely of finding a transcript of a tv episode, and putting "she said" in between all the dialogue.

Supposing I go crazy and decide, for some reason, to rework a fanfic as original fiction. Say... hmm... this one here.

I change some names, alter a few words, and I have... an epistolary short story about two roommates getting on each other's nerves and an escalating prank war.

Or what about this one? I'd end up with a short story about a ghost and his friendship with two women.

It may have escaped your notice, ranting people, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer never featured stories about a woman falling in love with a coat-rack, or someone deliberately sabotaging dinner with his girlfriend's sister, or a vengeful army of trained drop-bears. And, tragically, Angel and Illyria never got it on.

Heck, half the time my fanfic doesn't even include anyone else's characters, let alone plot.


And yes, I can see you opening your mouths, about to say "Ah, but I didn't mean that kind of fanfic..." Yeah, but - you kinda did. You said "fanfic", and then promptly showed the whole world that you had no idea what "fanfic" tends to involve. Hence I will go forth and ignore your opinion.

(Actually - first I'll post a short rant on the subject. But then I'm going to ignore your opinion. Just you watch me.)

Because I have gone crazy, I told Snick I'd write a Dawn/Andrew mpreg.

Hence I found myself, last night, trying to explain to the boyfriend exactly what "het mpreg" is. He now thinks I'm very weird.


Truthfully? I have no idea why taking a male/female pairing and getting the man pregnant should be such a source of delight to me. (Nor can I explain the brilliance of wingfic, body-swaps, sex pollen, penguin AUs, genderswaps, self-inserts, or curtain-fic - no matter how cool they are.) But the first fic I ever read was het mpreg, and I'll always have a soft spot for it.


*goes back to planning ways to use the Key in dimension-bendingy mpreg weirdness*