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This post is open for discussion on anything to do with the challenge - remixing meta and strategies, suggestions for the mods, AO3 issues, observations, questions, etc. I'll start a few discussion threads, but other people should feel free to start others if there are other topics they want to bring up. We welcome comments from readers, watchers, and defaulters as well as the people who ended up turning in fic. Dreamwidth users, if you wouldn't mind clicking on the crosspost link to the LJ side of this post, it would be nice to keep all the discussion in one place.
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October 22 2010, 00:51:24 UTC 1 year ago Edited: October 22 2010, 01:02:53 UTC
Remixing!
How was the writing, people who wrote? What was fun about it? What was difficult? I saw thatWere there any stories you read that especially impressed you as remixes?
Do you think you'll sign up for another remix in the future, like maybe next year's RemixRedux (multifandom) or another Merlin-specific challenge like this one? What advice would you give someone deciding whether to sign up for a remix challenge now?
October 22 2010, 04:37:05 UTC 1 year ago
Re: Remixing!
I wonder if it would have helped to have a discussion post on remixing, how and why and some ideas for what to do, right at the start of the challenge for people who have never remixed anything before.Yes, I would love to sign up again. Standard caveat for any exchange challenge - be very aware what you are willing *and* interested in writing, and make sure to delineate it in your sign-ups, or you will almost without fail get something that makes your eyes pop. ;) And even then, be prepared for anything. Keep an open mind; something that is not your thing might give you surprising ideas, you never know.
I would be very interested in discussing the remixes and processes more, but I have to get to work now. =)
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October 22 2010, 07:45:33 UTC 1 year ago
Re: Remixing!
My favorite stories on the what an awesome remix front were1 year ago
October 22 2010, 19:01:43 UTC 1 year ago Edited: October 22 2010, 19:02:04 UTC
Re: Remixing!
Ok, I witter on like a crazy person about how I went about my remixes here1 year ago
October 23 2010, 03:07:59 UTC 1 year ago
Re: Remixing!
I can't post this in my journal because it would have to be locked, so here's a rough sketch of what I did:First I flailed, because I've been in love with Lass's work in general and The Ink Is Still Drying in particular for a long time, so in many ways I think I had an unfair advantage. But whatever, not going to argue with fate. ^_^
When I went to do the remix itself, I started by printing it out and writing all over it. I wrote whatever came to mind at different points - expanding images, underlining particular lines that caught my eye, adding what the characters who weren't narrating might be thinking, etc.
Looking at those scribbles, I realized I wanted to tell Morgana's (and Gwen's) point of view on the story, as we only have Merlin's and Arthur's. But I had a dilemma. The reason Lass chose not to tell it from Morgana's pov was obvious from the start: this Morgana is quite mad (or possibly the most sane person ever, it's hard to tell - but she's definitely mysterious and somewhat inaccessible).
In trying to explain how that happened, I found myself quoting a line of Morgana's I thought was from "Ink" but was in fact from "the only things that echo". Later, I found myself describing Merlin's nightmares in terms of his memories of Will from "Halcyon Days". This gave me the idea of non-linearity, because Lass used a reverse timeline in that story to take us backwards from Will's loss to Merlin's earliest memories.
Then I took this jumbled mess and dumped it in
What came out of that conversation was the sense that Lass doesn't believe in the fourth wall. Or rather, that she thinks it's highly optional. And when I thought about it, the wise, self-confident Morgana Lass wrote didn't believe in it either. That Morgana had seen through her own reality, or at least I could use that as an explanation for why her own non-linear experience of life made sense to her.
What other realities to include, though? I mean, if she sees through the story, surely she also sees into other stories?
In that moment I turned my thoughts to the body of Lass's work, which I love so much, and grinned fit to burst. It's probably a terribly unorthodox way to go about a remix, and if I didn't know Lass I wouldn't have tried it, but the idea of making "Lass Stew" or "Distilled Essense of Lass" just wouldn't go away. So that's what I did. I re-read almost all of her stories, pulled out lines and images and structures that meshed well with "Ink" or made sense in the context of the legends the show seems to be following. (I relied on "Wait in the Fire" a lot for the later bits, since "Ink" ends long before the final battle.) Then I put it all together, mixing and matching and listening for Gwen's voice (since I still wanted to let her speak, as Arthur does in the original). I think the result is very patchwork and could use smoothing, but to some degree the roughness makes sense for Morgana in this context, so I'm okay with it.
The last piece was motivation. If Morgana did know that she was merely playing a part in a story, why would she allow Arthur to die and everyone to suffer, especially when she had a part in causing that? And why was she in that boat at the end, waiting to take Arthur to Avalon?
The only answer I could come up with was that Morgana not only knew she was part of a story but also understood why stories keep being told. She knew what she had to do to give her loved ones literary immortality. She had to make the story memorable, and at the same time make people want to fix it so that, in some other storyline somewhere, they could all be happy.
For titles, this is the first time I haven't agonized over one in pretty much forever. Yay Lass for having awesome titles to play off of!
So that's how I ended up writing a remix that was really a remix of 13 stories, not 1. Whoops?
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October 26 2010, 01:01:14 UTC 1 year ago
Re: Remixing!
I'm probably biased, butOctober 22 2010, 00:56:27 UTC 1 year ago
The AO3
For a lot of participants, this was their first time posting at the Archive of Our Own. For me it was my 138th time posting a fic there but my first time modding a challenge, after having heard a lot about how awesome it was for mods. What did you think? Is it a good place to host an exchange like this?The AO3 is still in beta and being developed by volunteers. I'd like to send them some substantive feedback about what went well for us at this challenge and what could be improved, so constructive criticism in this thread would be especially great.
October 22 2010, 03:44:16 UTC 1 year ago
Re: The AO3
The posting was really easy (though I've done quite a bit of it before), and I loved being able to tweak later, because oh boy do I still feel the urge. The experience of being able to fix typos later has reduced my deadline-related anxieties, so I'm all in favor of AO3 on that front.I was saddened but not surprised by the lower comment counts, though I applaud those who went out of their way to comment on several stories. Yuletide got lower comments, too. I think this is something that will need to be addressed as an AO3/fandom issue overall, though, and is not at all specific to any one challenge.
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October 22 2010, 05:20:46 UTC 1 year ago
Re: The AO3
Like everyone else, I love the ability to tweak FOREVER.And it's awesome how the author reveal is like magic =D
I like getting e-mails of the comments. I got about the same amount of comments (2 and 5) as I did on my previous two long remixes (3 and 7). And those two RemixRedux were hold on LJ. So I think it's more a remix thing instead of an AO3 thing.
I also recognize that people haven't finished reading (and hopefully commenting) yet. I'm not even halfway through the stories, since I read the remix, read the original, then comment ^^;;
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October 22 2010, 07:38:07 UTC 1 year ago
Re: The AO3
Haha, I LOVED the ability to tweak. Although it was less "tweak" in my case, and more "use the opportunity to write up until the very deadline". I posted a ~4k draft on first deadline day, and then wrote the next 6k in a panic. But I didn't have to beg the mods for an extension so I didn't feel like a total bother, even if I probably was!1 year ago
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October 22 2010, 08:15:56 UTC 1 year ago
Re: The AO3
You mentioned I should bring this up in this post, so. I was running author searches to try to pull up people who were on AO3 by a different name (in this case Harlequin/slashweaver) and the search returned with the remix of my story. Which I already suspected from certain characteristic elements, so, haha. Ergo, author profile pages will keep the magic secret, but the search engine Still listed as being by Anonymous, but it's the only result on an author search.1 year ago
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October 22 2010, 14:55:25 UTC 1 year ago
Re: The AO3
Oh man, for exchanges I pretty much love EVERYTHING about the AO3. My account's still very new and I haven't played with the overall site yet (haven't even uploaded all my fics to it yet), but there was nothing about it that wasn't delightful when it came to posting to this exchange. Must be a dream for mods, too.1 year ago
October 22 2010, 18:08:38 UTC 1 year ago
Re: The AO3
The only issue I had with AO3 was trying to use it from my conference hotel when it was refusing to load the preview page, so I got really worried that I wouldn't be able to finish uploading my fic. It worked in the end, but misbehaved A LOT from that connection & I don't know what combination of the internet connection, time, and AO3 were at fault. I've never had issues like that with AO3 before or since, but it made the Archive nigh on impossible to use for a while.1 year ago
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October 25 2010, 00:04:56 UTC 1 year ago
Re: The AO3
In general, I'm not a fan of AO3 but that said...I've run fests the old fashioned way on mailing lists and then LJ and I can only imagine how much easier AO3 makes things for mods! That alone makes it worth it, IMO. This was a smooth and well-organized fest. My hat is off to you all!October 26 2010, 01:04:06 UTC 1 year ago
Re: The AO3
I loved the AO3 before this challenge, but after this I love it even more! The posting was so easy and I'm so into the idea that things like accounting for remixes (and hopefully in the future, other types of fic challenges) are built in to the system.As far as commenting goes, I agree with everyone who's said that this is a fandom-wide problem, not just one for any particular fic or challenge, and I'd rather continue with the AO3 and work towards discussing that over the long term. It definitely makes LJ/DW seem very comfortable right now, but I don't think that'll always be the case, especially not if challenges like this continue to be hosted on AO3! So I'd definitely vote for the next
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October 22 2010, 01:10:20 UTC 1 year ago
Notes to the mods
I initiated this challenge, andAre there things you wish we'd done differently? Suggestions for the next time any or all of us try to run an exchange?
(Or, if you have positive things to say, we'll take those too! :D)
October 22 2010, 01:14:09 UTC 1 year ago
communicate by e-mail?
I was surprised that a third of the participants didn't post in time (even though we'd said they should go ahead and post drafts as long as they could post 1000 words). I wondered if that might have been helped if we'd communicated more by e-mail rather than assuming people would read this journal or, like, remember the deadline themselves. What do you think - would that have helped?October 22 2010, 03:40:05 UTC 1 year ago
Re: communicate by e-mail?
This might have helped some people, though in my case I simply wrote down the wrong date on my whiteboard. /o\October 22 2010, 04:29:59 UTC 1 year ago
Re: communicate by e-mail?
Unfortunately, the final submission rate - about 20% dropouts? I think is fairly standard for most challenges. Some mods I've seen email/post reminders maybe a week ahead of time, because there will always be people who put it off and forget about it, but even so, defaulters ye will always have with ye.I think the time period given was fine too. Not to short and not too long.
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October 22 2010, 03:40:45 UTC 1 year ago
Re: Notes to the mods
I think the amount of time you guys gave was just right, at least for me. Other structural thoughts will have to wait until I'm awake. ^_^October 22 2010, 04:25:35 UTC 1 year ago
Re: Notes to the mods
Comments for targeted exchanges are inevitably low unless there is serious reccing going on, so I'm not particularly surprised or bothered. People gravitate to the stories written for them and by/for their friends first; more will come in when the stories get reposted publicly and announced on the merlin newsletter - the announcements on it so far have been in the form of a single link in news or chatter, easily overlooked.I was actually expecting that the newsletter would post direct links to individual stories, as they had done with some other anon exchanges - I think RemixRedux and holiday exchanges, if I remember right. And then they posted the story links again after the author reveal.
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October 23 2010, 22:05:16 UTC 1 year ago
Re: Notes to the mods
I don't have much to say about things being different. I just wanted to say a huge thank you to you mods for doing a fabulous job! <31 year ago
October 23 2010, 04:34:19 UTC 1 year ago
Remixing v. Fic writing
This was a comment toI've always found writing remixes easier (and faster) than writing fics. The plot's usually there in your lap. Coming in, you already know what angle/plan of attack you're going to take. Non-remix fics, on the other hand, are more fluid and have vaguer plan/outline. (I used to outline my fics a lot. Very quickly stopped doing that because I guess that's just not me...)
Do you find remixes easier or harder to write? Do you write from start to finish or in bursts of inspiration? How does it differ with your non-remix fic writing?
October 23 2010, 13:30:09 UTC 1 year ago
Re: Remixing v. Fic writing
Ah, I'm the opposite. I have to think about a remix more, whereas most fics come pretty clear to me (at least structurally). With a remix, I have to investigate the original to see what the central core that draws me to it is, and then figure out how to spin that, and then I have to figure out what pieces of the original to include in the remix. It's about twice as much work for me, on average.1 year ago
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October 24 2010, 09:47:20 UTC 1 year ago
Re: Remixing v. Fic writing
They are both fun and difficult, but in different ways. Like you said, you walk into a remix with thestructure in place already, just waiting for you to fill in the blanks, but sometimes you may run into someone whose way of thinking is so different from yours, it's like whoa I can,t even imagine how to go about reframing this story in my own terms. Esp where you and assigned person come into conflict over personal (equally valid) interpretations of character thoughts and motivations and it affects their actions and story development. Whereas writing your own is free and easy and anything goes!Personally, I'm very interested in how people pick what stories to remix: for the short ones, how to expand it; for the long, which parts to pick. And while flipping pov is always the easiest way to go about it, it can be very boring homework for a writer, so I'm interested in alternative styles and twists. Like for my own, I chose to turn the causes of events on their head in the love potion one, and for the pinch-hit, it seemed obvious that a 5year-old Merlin would be an unreliable narrator telling Arthur what his mother told him, so that kept the writing of it fun for me.
(Fun enough I was secretly hoping for more pinch-hits so I could play some more and write stupid secret They Fight Crime jokes and the like. XD Sorry mods!)
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