(no subject)
Dear Yuletide Author,
Because I am a terrible person with poor taste and poorer judgement, I confess I have taken to abusing the limits of Yuletide by requesting stranger and stranger things purely to see if the mad machine that is Yuletide can possibly fulfil them. This year, my requests have a theme: their canon names are all ridiculously long. Pretty much nothing else connects them.
1) The Complete Lost Works of Samuel Beckett as Found in an Envelope (partially burned) in a Dustbin in Paris Labeled: "Never to be Performed. Never. Ever. EVER! Or I'll Sue! I'LL SUE FROM THE GRAVE!!"
It is a play by the Neofuturists, full of juvenile attempts to take the piss out of Beckett, and I would appreciate any effort to build on this effort, but what I would most like to see is some sort of cruel extension of "If"- the sketch in which the audience is subjected to multiple assaults from the insipid 1970s ballad "If" by Bread, while an old woman gesture lasciviously at the audience from her rocking chair. The audience sits, trapped by the realization that the sketch has no defined end, that it could go on for six repetitions, or ten, or fifty. Honestly, if you cannot figure out anything else to write for me, in this or any other fandom, do not default. Simply Copy and Paste the lyrics of "If" into the submission box enough times to total 1000 words and call yourself done. I assure you I would consider it a successful Yuletide if I received this. The corpse of Samuel Beckett probably wouldn't.
2) "The Influence of Immanuel Kant on Evidentiary Approaches in 18th Century Bulgaria" (Fictional Journal Article)
Of course, Orin Kerr has actually written a journal article with that title in the past year, but I consider it a fanwork rather than an extension to canon. I never would have expected the fandom to have this much staying power, but here we are four years after the Justice Roberts interview and people are still creating fanworks. Clearly this is more than a joke. Clearly this fandom is real and meaningful and important.
3) "Biographical Notes to "A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes" by Benjamin Rosenbaum" by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Delightfully, magnificently self-referential and thought-provoking, not to mention action-packed, this is one of the great SF stories of our time. I would appreciate any expansion of the Karaite themes in the story, or more pirates, or more on the differences between plausible-fables and science-fiction.
I'd like to see what life is like on the war-cities. I'd like to see how Plaus-Fab Wisconsin differs from Wiscon. I'd like a meeting between Benjamin Rosenbaum the science fiction writer and "Benjamin Rosenbaum" the plausible-fabulist. There's so much world in this little story and it's all so enticing that anything would be appreciated.
4) Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
Oh wow, there's a lot here. This was a report written by a group of 'experts' about how to safely mark a nuclear waste site so that for the thousands of years it would take for the site to become safe, as language and culture shifted among humanity, the warning would stay clear.
The answer the group comes to generally is that because of the unpredictability of the future of humanity, this is a really hard problem and should be addressed by spamming warnings in as many different languages and communication styles as possible over the site. In a darkly funny appendix, though, one of the experts acknowledges that more eloquent than the language will be the gamma rays: As soon as someone gets sick with radiation sickness, any group will pull back, no matter how many linguistic warnings they ignored to reach that point.
The report also includes a piece of fiction imagining a potential encounter between future excavators and the signage proposed, which is strangely gripping. I'd be fascinated by whatever story you can expand from this fiction, or also by any other potential encounters between other excavators you can imagine: Aliens encounter the signs! Nonlinguistic children encounter the signs! Near-future Americans encounter the signs, comprehend them all, think that they're just macabre jokes, and continue!
This entry was originally posted at http://seekingferret.dreamwidth.org/175697.html. Please comment there using OpenID. There are
comments.
Because I am a terrible person with poor taste and poorer judgement, I confess I have taken to abusing the limits of Yuletide by requesting stranger and stranger things purely to see if the mad machine that is Yuletide can possibly fulfil them. This year, my requests have a theme: their canon names are all ridiculously long. Pretty much nothing else connects them.
1) The Complete Lost Works of Samuel Beckett as Found in an Envelope (partially burned) in a Dustbin in Paris Labeled: "Never to be Performed. Never. Ever. EVER! Or I'll Sue! I'LL SUE FROM THE GRAVE!!"
It is a play by the Neofuturists, full of juvenile attempts to take the piss out of Beckett, and I would appreciate any effort to build on this effort, but what I would most like to see is some sort of cruel extension of "If"- the sketch in which the audience is subjected to multiple assaults from the insipid 1970s ballad "If" by Bread, while an old woman gesture lasciviously at the audience from her rocking chair. The audience sits, trapped by the realization that the sketch has no defined end, that it could go on for six repetitions, or ten, or fifty. Honestly, if you cannot figure out anything else to write for me, in this or any other fandom, do not default. Simply Copy and Paste the lyrics of "If" into the submission box enough times to total 1000 words and call yourself done. I assure you I would consider it a successful Yuletide if I received this. The corpse of Samuel Beckett probably wouldn't.
2) "The Influence of Immanuel Kant on Evidentiary Approaches in 18th Century Bulgaria" (Fictional Journal Article)
Of course, Orin Kerr has actually written a journal article with that title in the past year, but I consider it a fanwork rather than an extension to canon. I never would have expected the fandom to have this much staying power, but here we are four years after the Justice Roberts interview and people are still creating fanworks. Clearly this is more than a joke. Clearly this fandom is real and meaningful and important.
3) "Biographical Notes to "A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes" by Benjamin Rosenbaum" by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Delightfully, magnificently self-referential and thought-provoking, not to mention action-packed, this is one of the great SF stories of our time. I would appreciate any expansion of the Karaite themes in the story, or more pirates, or more on the differences between plausible-fables and science-fiction.
I'd like to see what life is like on the war-cities. I'd like to see how Plaus-Fab Wisconsin differs from Wiscon. I'd like a meeting between Benjamin Rosenbaum the science fiction writer and "Benjamin Rosenbaum" the plausible-fabulist. There's so much world in this little story and it's all so enticing that anything would be appreciated.
4) Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
Oh wow, there's a lot here. This was a report written by a group of 'experts' about how to safely mark a nuclear waste site so that for the thousands of years it would take for the site to become safe, as language and culture shifted among humanity, the warning would stay clear.
The answer the group comes to generally is that because of the unpredictability of the future of humanity, this is a really hard problem and should be addressed by spamming warnings in as many different languages and communication styles as possible over the site. In a darkly funny appendix, though, one of the experts acknowledges that more eloquent than the language will be the gamma rays: As soon as someone gets sick with radiation sickness, any group will pull back, no matter how many linguistic warnings they ignored to reach that point.
The report also includes a piece of fiction imagining a potential encounter between future excavators and the signage proposed, which is strangely gripping. I'd be fascinated by whatever story you can expand from this fiction, or also by any other potential encounters between other excavators you can imagine: Aliens encounter the signs! Nonlinguistic children encounter the signs! Near-future Americans encounter the signs, comprehend them all, think that they're just macabre jokes, and continue!
This entry was originally posted at http://seekingferret.dreamwidth.org/175697.html. Please comment there using OpenID. There are
comments.