Hedgemistress's BYOND Hope

I am not dead yet
I can dance and I can sing
I am not dead yet
I can do the Highland Fling

I am not dead yet
No need to go to bed
No need to call the doctor
Cause I'm not yet dead.


I've spent the last several months getting my writing up to the point where it can support me, hence the lack of progress on Hedgerow Hall. Obviously, working a full-time job and then writing for the equivalent of a full-time job doesn't leave a lot of time for messing around with computer games. Now I've ditched the job and got my writing routine down to where it only takes eight hours a day, so I've got time for BYOND once more

In the mean time, they went and released BYOND 4, which means I've got a lot of new stuff to learn with the new interface system... so it'll be a while before Hedgerow Hall shows up live. There'll probably be a new version of Manifesto! or something similar, though, as I learn my way around the skin builder.

...what exactly were you expecting to see?

I'm assuming the people who watched it have seen the other two movies.

Any budding Latin scholars care to help me construct a motto which would translate into English as "Progress Through Stability?"

Offering a one year BYOND membership on the key of your choice to the first person who responds with a phrase I deem useable.

Say what you will about the Brits (go ahead, it's fun), but they know how to do sophisticated satire of a sort that's hard to find in America these days... and hard to appreciate, if the American reviews of Hot Fuzz are any indication. This movie is breathtakingly good.

[EDIT]

Looks like the bad reviews I read were flukes... the general consensus is very positive on both sides of the Atlantic.

People who are close acquaintances of mine for a long time have sometimes noticed that opinions I once felt very strongly about and express in a vehement fashion can wind up changing, often with little external warning.

This comes from one of the cornerstones of my philosophy: all opinions are inherently suspect, if not outright worthless, and should be attacked savagely to expose their flaws (though, as I've said before, I'm trying to cut down on the amount of time I spend doing this.)

Usually, when I express this belief to somebody, they respond with, "Oh, so only your opinions are worth anything. What makes you so special?"... completely overlooking the fact that I claimed no exception for myself.

My idea of a good argument is one where everybody (again, not excepting myself) goes away with their opinions at least slightly modified, because this suggests that everybody learned something.

</BIG LONG PREAMBLE>

The upshot of this is that I'm coming to the conclusion that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with fan[whatevers]. I just got done reading this. It's mostly a legal defense of fan fiction, but I honestly don't give a flying fornication about legality. Something is either right or wrong, regardless of the law... the law should ideally be defined by morality, but morality is not defined by laws.

However, the article makes a very persuasive argument by way of having a big long rambling preamble that goes on for miles and miles before ever coming to any thing which resembles any kind of a point (is there anything better?). It doesn't invoke so many legal principles in this portion, but instead focuses on what human impulses cause fan fiction, and what benefits flow from it.

I read it, and found myself agreeing.

Of course, this doesn't change the fact that 99% of fan fiction is pure and utter crap... but that's more a function of zero barrier to entry. If nobody ever had the idea of writing fan fiction, but everybody who did wrote original fiction (orgfic? Hee hee. I like that term) instead, the same percentage of that would be just as crappy.

So, I'm not going to take up writing fan fiction any time soon. I'm also not going to release my own characters to the public domain or stop (gently) discouraging readers who suggest that they might take a stab at writing them.

Massive control issues aside, there's a big difference between my humble efforts and those of a major multinational corporation: there's no doubt in anybody's mind which is the "real, official" version when a major multinational corporation is involved. As long as I'm just Some Person self-publishing on the internet, it'd be hrd to distinguish my official work from any fan fic that did crop up.

And that's also not to say I agree with everything put forth within the article I linked to. I believe an author can be in the position of possessing the One True Interpretation of his or her work. The fact that everybody who encounters said work will perceive it differently doesn't negate the author's vision, any more than the fact that twenty people will hear the same sound differently negates the ultimate truth of that sound.

The "real version" of my characters exist within my head, and some of them get pretty vocal and/or violent when they find themselves being misinterpreted... but... that's a different subject entirely.