fandoms, AO3, and vampire hobbits

[sophinisba]

I've been having a really nice week. I've been blowing off exercise (eh, the gym is closed and it's too cold to run outside) and rl work (eh, no excuse there), staying at home and throwing myself into some fun fannish projects. I started a new Merlin fic on Monday and another one yesterday and have been writing a ton on both. \o/ I haven't posted anything new but I've had new comments on a few older fics that made me feel really good. I've been archiving my old fics at the Archive of Our Own and exchanging e-mails to brainstorm for a small fic and art fest to be held at camelot_fleet next month.

I finally finished watching Noah's Arc on Netflix instant viewing a few days ago. I liked the movie a little less than most of the episodes because (skip) of all the relationship/infidelity angst and because I was disappointed that Junito wasn't in it and that Noah ended up with Wade, who I still think is an asshole. I did like the part with Wade's mom though, and Chance's student Brandon was a cutie. It was still fun and I think I might request Alex fic for Yuletide next year.

On Tuesday I went out to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie and I liked it pretty well, though not as much as I'd hoped. I liked the fight scenes more than I usually like fight scenes in movies/on TV because they were well choreographed and had a neat look to them, but I still felt like it got kind of long. In general I loved the look of the movie, but I'm a squeamish viewer and I had to look away for some of the stuff with dead bodies, especially the thing with all the pig carcasses ;alskjfa; sldjkfs

It was certainly very slashy and I liked that it did that while still giving Eileen Irene cool things to do. I've only read a few of the stories and have never gotten into the fandom so I can't say much about canon faithfulness, though it seemed like the filmmakers' goal was more to have fun with it, so that was fine. What surprised me was that the Holmes/Watson dynamic actually reminded me more of House/Wilson than it did of what I remember from Conan Doyle. In particular the bits where Watson would complain in this calm, long-suffering way about all crap he puts up with from Holmes, and Holmes would just make funny distracted faces. I know that House is partly inspired by Sherlock Holmes but I still thought it was funny. It made me want to watch more House and I was disappointed to get home and check and see that there are still no new episodes. Next week though, right?

I thought uploading my fic at the AO3 would be really tedious but it's mostly been easy and occasionally fun - I like skimming my old fics and deciding on tags for them. I've been working backwards and only bothering with fics of 500 words or more because, goodness, I have a whole lot of drabbles and I haven't decided how I want to post them yet. I'm thinking if I have ficlets I can group together (such as all my LotR interspecies slash) I might post them as chapters in a single fic because that would give me a place to put notes and dates on each one and would leave it up to the reader whether to view them separately or all on one page. I'm not sure what to do with things that aren't easily grouped though, like the times I've written a single drabble remix or a haiku for a fandom and then never touched it again. I do want to have it all there eventually for the sake of completeness, and especially for remixing purposes.

I've also skipped my old Yuletide fics for now because I don't know how that move is going to happen, and I'm putting off posting some stories from a series and chapters of unfinished fics. Looking back at my old fics I was thinking about how very glad I am that I no longer post WIPs. Ugh, I used to stress and feel so much guilt over those things!

I was excited about there being a special field on the upload form for remixes, but it turns out that only works if the remixed fic is also in the archive. I did happen to come across an archive copy of a fic of woldy that I'd remixed, so I filled out the form there, but I was disappointed that it just showed up as an endnote with a link to the title but not the author's name. I'll probably send in some feedback about that (and a few other things) because I think it should be more prominent.

Anyway, 61 works posted so far, and I've made it back to the beginning of 2007. I wrote a lot in 2006 so that might take a while, but I'm sure it'll be fun in its own way. I've been using the backdating option so I can keep track of dates myself and so they don't show up as new fics when other people go looking for things.

One of my favorite things about the archive is the freeform tags (that let people go searching for things like "tentacles" and "fluff" across authors and fandoms), but I haven't been at all consistent about using them. I remember to use a word length tag about half the time. And then I keep finding more tags that would be appropriate for things I've already posted. I'm hoping they'll eventually make it possible to edit just the header and tags without editing the whole story, and at that point I'll go back and make a bunch of changes.

I've been using the "character of color" tag for most of the fics where it applies but not my Gwen fics. That's probably something I should change, it's just that it feels a bit different somehow, and I wonder if people looking for fics where the character's race is relevant would be frustrated to run into so many Gwen fics. Then again, I get a little frustrated myself when I search for Gwen fics and most of what comes up is Arthur/Merlin with Gwen as a supporting character. (I love Arthur/Merlin, don't get me wrong, but it's not what I'm looking for when I click on the Gwen tag.) I kind of wish it were possible to tag a character or pairing as secondary to a fic. Like I think someone would be disappointed if they clicked on the Arthur/Gwen/Merlin tag and got my Arthur/Gwen PWP where they use Merlin's sex magic, but on the other hand leaving off that tag might be annoying to people who are purist about their Arthur/Gwen, you know?

I've got a similar issue deciding whether something is gen or het or slash or what. Sometimes I'll write about (say) Frodo and Aragorn and it's ambiguously slashy, and other times I'll write about characters who are in a relationship but that's not really what the story is about. When I post things like that in my journal I usually use multiple genre tags because it's more down to other people's definitions of "gen" than anything else, but on the archive I have to choose one, and I haven't really figured that out. I do like being able to put the "queer themes" tag on a gen story.

Getting into my older stuff there's a lot of LotR fic, and I've been unsure about whether to use "Lord of the Rings (2001 2002 2003)" or "Lord of the Rings - Tolkien" as the fandom. Most of the time I use both, but it's kind of a pain waiting for them with the autofill and I haven't been consistent about that either. I know some people feel strongly about differences between the books and the movies but I've always written in sort of a blended universe. I had a Pippin/Marigold fic that I just listed as book fandom since Marigold isn't in the movies, but then I got to thinking that she isn't in the books either except as a name on the family tree, and my impressions of her character come mostly from reading other people's fics. What do you think, other LotR fans? How have you been labeling yours?

Speaking of LotR, franzeska commented on the Dreamwidth side of the Fanlore post I did a couple weeks ago to ask whether I remembered the vampire hobbits fad from a few years back, and I had to say no, I think it was before my time. Does anyone else remember who the authors were, when that happened and where they got archived?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

in reply to your question about vampire hobbits....it was a fad that was around in 2003 - 04, in my recollection. They used to have their own archive, called Anklebiters, but that seems to be gone. However, here is one story that i thought was really good:

http://www.houseofhobbits.com/Rfics/MourningSky.html