Progress report
The BG archive: 1467 stories totalling 10,929,175 words by 203 authors. Those numbers will go up, because I have one last class of parsing to implement. Takes forever to regenerate all the files-- will need to improve performance somehow. Perhaps by rewriting the entire system in Python and SQLObject or something. I haven't written a single line of code for the webapp segment of the project, so that's actually feasible. I could write off the Ruby phase as problem space exploration. (It's possible I'm over-Rabbiting this.) It's all in Trac if you're curious.
I have yielded to temptation exactly once, and changed the source files in only one case. I fixed this:
The rest of the sloppy, old-fashioned, invalid, incorrect, inconsistent, [EXPLETIVE DELETED] html I have been parsing intact. I used both hpricot and a big pile of regexps.
Yes, that was tedious. I should have blogged it on my real-name blog, where my geek pals would have wondered why the heck I'm bothering with that fanfic crap.
It's curious to me that all the order in my mind doesn't translate into order in the world around me. I will have fits during which I alphabetize my CDs, but the war against clutter is one I do not fight. Except now. Time to set aside the weekend hackaging and move on to the other half of the kitchen.
0 words of Giles/Xander written so far, which is frustrating because the idea is hammering at me.
I have yielded to temptation exactly once, and changed the source files in only one case. I fixed this:
E-MAIL: <a href="mscribe_angelfire.html">mscribe@anThe rest of the sloppy, old-fashioned, invalid, incorrect, inconsistent, [EXPLETIVE DELETED] html I have been parsing intact. I used both hpricot and a big pile of regexps.
Yes, that was tedious. I should have blogged it on my real-name blog, where my geek pals would have wondered why the heck I'm bothering with that fanfic crap.
It's curious to me that all the order in my mind doesn't translate into order in the world around me. I will have fits during which I alphabetize my CDs, but the war against clutter is one I do not fight. Except now. Time to set aside the weekend hackaging and move on to the other half of the kitchen.
0 words of Giles/Xander written so far, which is frustrating because the idea is hammering at me.
I don't even know how to properly fangirl you for dealing with this. Having actually tried to update that code a time or two, I know first hand that it is EXACTLY as you describe. Horrible, nasty, and although not intentionally evil, definitely approaching demonically obnoxious levels. This is part of the reason why I've saved any updates for summer, as sad as it is.
And I've always found it interesting that my brain does similar things in terms of order and disorder - my computer files are organized at least every three months, my kitchen cabinets reorganized once a year, and yet I'm the one who can't keep the kitchen table clear of my own goo ;) May your kitchen come together with amazing speed.
I have a lot of work left to go, mind you, but I've just done most of what I thought was the hard part. Yay!
There's a lot of BG fic there I haven't read, too. I see this as I watch the titles scroll by. I think a lot of it is what I've started to call "old-fashioned fanfiction", which is maybe the wrong term for it. But the stuff posted new on LJ these days feels different in some fundamental way.
And for this reason I could practically weep with joy. No exaggeration.
I think a lot of it is what I've started to call "old-fashioned fanfiction", which is maybe the wrong term for it. But the stuff posted new on LJ these days feels different in some fundamental way.
It's interesting that you say this, because I've been thinking something very similar for a long time now. And I think that the works people are producing now are more cognizant of the tropes of their predecessors, even if there isn't a specific kind of trope they're drawing on. It seems to me to be similar to modern retellings of fairy tales or myths (I'm thinking Robin McKinley's Beauty or something like that). In other places I've called it metafiction because it recalls with a single gesture what it used to take paragraphs to establish, because we're all familiar with the individual pairings' structures of desire - but maybe that's not quite the right word for it. And I'm not trying at all to say that new fanfic is being derivative or anything - more that it seems to me writers who are familiar with the corpus of fanfiction are spending their time differently than they used to.
/ramble. but you started it ;)
Not all of it. Sometimes I get the feeling like there's a resurgence of old-time ff. Maybe from people who haven't read all of the previous stuff, or possibly because they've read all of the earlier stories. Dunno. But, it's a definite style.
Not sure if it is, as Katekat says, a result of familiarity with pairings' structures. I see it as more of a natural maturity in thought and process. Earlier works seemed to have to spend more time explaining why characters were doing what they were doing. Loads of exposition that most have found unnecessary these days. There is a level of fanon that's accepted as canon, though, so there is some merit to this point. Like Giles' past with Ethan. How many essays have been written on that subject alone? Seems it's just accepted as truth now.
Also, there are many folks who are new to fandom post-series. People who had the benefit of watching the whole series at once. Must change how people see the characters and potential storylines.
Oh, and this: E-MAIL: mscribe@angelfire.com
makes me LOL with glee!
Edited at 2008-03-30 08:09 pm (UTC)