Oh dear sweet Jesus on a pogo stick...you have to see this.

I was recently introduced to the joys of Topless Robot, which is the kind of snarky geek/comic/videogame/anime blog I wish I could write, and which I highly recommend.  (It includes TWoP in its blogroll, and the humor does remind me of TWoP back in the days when it was funny.)  On Fridays they post something called, appropriately enough, Fan Fiction Friday.

Think of the worst, most disturbing fanfic you've ever been tricked into reading.  Then double the pain.  Then quadruple it.  That starts to give you an idea of the things that this blog has dredged up from the depths of the intarwebz.  Look, people...things that cause you to use the phrases "Care Bears" and "S&M" in the same sentence?  Just shouldn't exist.  Nor should erotic scenes between a Red Koopa and a Green Koopa.  Nor should femslash involving Lilo of Lilo & Stitch and the Powerpuff Girls.  After all that, the Night Court mpreg looked almost normal.

Lest you think I am making this shit up, you can find it all here.  I wish LiveJournal allowed longer tags, because I would tag this as both OMG That Is Horrible and Disgusting - Let's Show It To Someone Else, and I May Be Messed Up But At Least I Don't Write Dragon Ball Z / Anne Frank Crossover Fic.  (That last one is safe to click on, by the way.  The author keeps it PG, and gives it a happy ending, in which Goku defeats Super Saiyan Hitler and takes Anne to Australia and marries her.  And the mere fact that I can state that kind of thing is safe to read, shows you just how warping some of the other stories were...)

After reading through my flist, I have decided that there are only three ways for fandom to cope with last night's  "character development" for Sylar:

1. Killing Tim Kring.
2. Crack (literal).
3. Crack (metaphorical).

After some analysis, I've determined that the least harmful of these three choices is probably the final one.  (I am, however, open to hearing arguments to the contrary.)  And so, I present to you my outline for a vitally important fic that I would like to write!  It is titled...

( Cut so as not to spoil anyone who hasn't yet seen last night's episode. And to preserve you from my insanity. )
All I'm saying is, if you're going to let 14-year-old fanfic writers write Sylar's storyline, then you should just fucking go full-out balls-to-the-wall with it, Kring.

Any additional plot suggestions for The Incredible Sparkly Adventures are welcomed! 

I just got out of a two-hour conference call that made me want to tear my hair out.  I need something to lighten my mood.  So...

Last week, as a result of playing Kingdom of Loathing, Boyfriend and I discovered this website:  Roy Orbison in Clingfilm .  That's right. It's a guy who writes stories about Roy Orbison wrapped in clingfilm. We only read one ("Roy in Clingfilm in Space") because Boyfriend was rather traumatized, but...wow. It's, like, the most bizarre fetishizing I've read, as there's nothing even vaguely sexual, the author just...enjoys the thought of wrapping Roy Orbison in clingfilm. Observe:

I retrieve some cling-film from the Clingfilm Stowage Compartment where several hundred of the translucent rolls of joy glint softly in the cabin lights.

Roy Orbison unbuckles from his seat and floats out into the middle of the cabin, his black clothing billowing about him in the zero gravity like the folds of some black cloth manta ray. 'Commence,' he says.

I won't give away the surprise twist ending, but let's just say, if you're intrigued by the thought of wrapping Roy Orbison in clingfilm, it will definitely delight and satiate you.  When you read the stories, and you will read the stories, picture Dieter from Sprockets as the author, reading it aloud to you.  That makes it all the more delectable.

Earlier today, I started a post about something that turned into musings about fan fiction and its validity and purpose. (I have a degree in popular culture. It's hard for me not to come up with essays of this type.) The post ended up being eaten as I was finishing it.   Here's my attempt to re-create and expand on it.  My question: is fan fiction really of lesser worth than "original" fiction?  (This is not a defense of porn, it's actual questions.)

Well, in one of my weirder TV viewing moments, I was sitting down to eat dinner while feeling impatient for Jericho and the awesome Lennie James to come on. So I randomly turned on Discovery Health, and they're showing a British TV movie called Born With Two Mothers starring...Lennie James. That was more than a little freaking odd.

Slash Moment #1: If you've been around the online Heroes fandom this week, you've probably seen the discussions about someone who may or may not have claimed to be dating a Heroes star via the astral plane. If you haven't heard about it...believe me, you don't want to know, I kind of wish I didn't. But somehow I stumbled across this comment thread of utter crack in which Dr. Mohinder Suresh kicks in his two cents on the matter, and other male characters from Heroes begin replying, and it degenerates into something rivaling the TWoP Hoyay thread for sheer hilarity.

Slash Moment #2: I used to be a constant reader of Neil Gaiman's blog. Not really sure why I slacked off. At any rate, a while back I was describing to someone a post of his about the origins of slashfic from several years ago, and this afternoon I was motivated to look it up. This is actually the first "slash" I actually read. If you go there, keep reading through the discussion of copyright - there's another Kirk/Spock reference near the end that will crack you up. I can never decide if his description of slashfic authors is genuine or if he just wanted to avoid unnecessarily hurting anyone's feelings. 

You know, I had been enjoying this season of Heroes until this week's episode, which...actually, I didn't even hate it, because that would imply it had aroused some sort of emotion in me.  So I thought, well, if you didn't like anything about it, what would you have done differently?  But for the most part, my brain cared so little that I couldn't come up with anything.  So then I thought, well, if you could have rewritten any scenes from this season, what would they be?  And thus, this piece of crack was born...



Okay...so it's only mild Hoyay...but at least there's Mr. Muggles!

You know, I think I've finally figured out why I've been writing fics for Heroes.  I'd managed to make it out of my teens and 20s without ever taking part in a fandom that way, and congratulated myself on that.  You know--"I may be a huge dork, but there are people out there who are even dorkier than me! Go make fun of THEM instead!"  However, I started reading fics that were recommended by people at TWoP whose opinions I trust, and then that started giving me ideas that would not stop circulating in my brain until I wrote them down, and then I gave in to the call from the dark side to put them online where everyone can see what a freak I've become.  And I thought...when did I become this person?  I was at least this obsessed with the first season of Veronica Mars, but I didn't write fan fiction about it.

The thing is, though, this year I've been going to a writing group on Saturday mornings.  We write for short, set periods and we all start with the same prompt: a sentence, usually randomly chosen from a book.  (My recent contributions included sentences from "Alexei Sayle's Great Bus Journeys of The World" and "The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases".)  Some people think that sounds boring, or that it's "forcing" you into writing something that "isn't really you".  But I've quite enjoyed it.  After the timer goes off, we usually read back what we've written, and it's fascinating to see how 6 people can take the same sentence and use it to create 6 completely different pieces--a poem, a rant about the government, a wistful memory from childhood, a satire with really inappropriate humor.  Because I would never have started with that particular sentence on my own, I end up going to places I never would have found on my own, and I've actually written several things that I'm developing into full stories.

My point: since February 3rd, I've been conditioning myself to take a prompt, which provides me with some structure and background information, and add on to it with an original idea.  

The canon events in Heroes, along with the relationship conventions that have been established in the Mylar fic community, provide me with some structure and background information that are ready to be added on to with an original idea.

Of course, it's always possible that this is just a justification that I've come up with so that I can sleep at night.

ETA: Of course, this still doesn't explain why I'm enjoying writing them so much.  Oh well.  Especially since this is something I always said I would never, ever, ever do.  Because I couldn't possibly enjoy it.  (I'm starting to kind of sound like Mohinder, aren't I?)