Bringing the funny
People always talk about how there's this huge pressure in fandom to include sex scenes in your stories, and how PWPs get more comments than gen and all that, but my own highly unscientific observations lead me to believe that on the whole, the thing that gets the most reaction is humor. Not that every story with a punchline gets boffo reviews, but of the stories that do receive the most comments, a high proportion of them are the funny ones. In theory, then, a funny PWP ought to be the Ultimate Fanfic, and yet I am not certain that experimental data bears the theory out.
It has been cold and wet here, at least in Arizona terms, but it's supposed to warm up over the next few days. Kathy's going to be off gallivanting with her mother this weekend, so possibly I can be virtuous and get things done. For some reason I'm more inclined to clean house when I'm by myself.
I did some work on the next chapter of "Little Sister," and I'm hoping to have it beta-ready by the weekend. Right now it's got four installments left, and I'm considering trying to finish the whole thing up for Seasonal Spuffy. All the other possibilities I've come up with so far are probably too long for me to be certain of finishing them in time. And with "In A Yellow Wood," I'm wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea to wait a bit and see if this latest development in the comics turns out to be something I can cannibalize for background.
The more I think about it, the more I conclude that the comics really suffered from Joss keeping the villain a secret, because let's face it, Twilight is a dead-boring, two-dimensional villain until we find out who he really is. If they'd cut the number of issues in half, revealed Twilight's identity and Giles's worries to the audience earlier, and had more overt B/A buildup - Buffy reacting to the events in L.A., maybe trying and failing to contact Angel, SOMETHING to establish his current importance in her emotional life - then this might actually have been a gripping story. Right now it's kind of as if they told the story of Wesley's betrayal in AtS S3 entirely from Angel's POV - it's just "Wesley did what? Why?!!? That's completely OOC! You've ruined him as a character!"
Whereas if Joss had bothered to work with IDW on Angel's half of the story, there could have been this totally awesome crossover/convergence going on, which would have benefited both the story and both companies. It's all very well to stand here at Issue #33, look back, and say, "Oh, this panel in Issue #2 foreshadowed EVERYTHING!" but if half your readership never makes to to Issue #33... IIRC the original plan was for a shorter, tighter story. Let that be a lesson to you, Mr. Whedon.
It has been cold and wet here, at least in Arizona terms, but it's supposed to warm up over the next few days. Kathy's going to be off gallivanting with her mother this weekend, so possibly I can be virtuous and get things done. For some reason I'm more inclined to clean house when I'm by myself.
I did some work on the next chapter of "Little Sister," and I'm hoping to have it beta-ready by the weekend. Right now it's got four installments left, and I'm considering trying to finish the whole thing up for Seasonal Spuffy. All the other possibilities I've come up with so far are probably too long for me to be certain of finishing them in time. And with "In A Yellow Wood," I'm wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea to wait a bit and see if this latest development in the comics turns out to be something I can cannibalize for background.
The more I think about it, the more I conclude that the comics really suffered from Joss keeping the villain a secret, because let's face it, Twilight is a dead-boring, two-dimensional villain until we find out who he really is. If they'd cut the number of issues in half, revealed Twilight's identity and Giles's worries to the audience earlier, and had more overt B/A buildup - Buffy reacting to the events in L.A., maybe trying and failing to contact Angel, SOMETHING to establish his current importance in her emotional life - then this might actually have been a gripping story. Right now it's kind of as if they told the story of Wesley's betrayal in AtS S3 entirely from Angel's POV - it's just "Wesley did what? Why?!!? That's completely OOC! You've ruined him as a character!"
Whereas if Joss had bothered to work with IDW on Angel's half of the story, there could have been this totally awesome crossover/convergence going on, which would have benefited both the story and both companies. It's all very well to stand here at Issue #33, look back, and say, "Oh, this panel in Issue #2 foreshadowed EVERYTHING!" but if half your readership never makes to to Issue #33... IIRC the original plan was for a shorter, tighter story. Let that be a lesson to you, Mr. Whedon.