FanFiction Comedy (2)
13th April 2013
I arrived half way into a story concerning Lord of the Rings, which was funny and good. I’d not heard the intro as I was running late (see the post below as to why). But I gathered it was about The Hobbit, something I’ve not seen. But am aware of it and the events surrounding it (like the NZ News being read in Elvish).
Heidi O'Loughlin's Mrs Pacman story was also wonderful. Short though understandably so there is only so much backstory you can gather from Pacman / Ms Pacman. But still it was filled with witty, funny observations and was painted with excellent flourish by O'Loughlin.
Cal Wilson's story was a stand out the best of them, there seems to be a thing with the special guests that one seems to get the idea of fan fiction and the other not quite so much.
This was the case with Cal Wilson and David O'Doherty.
Cal Wilson's was a fanfic involving The Voice and a multitude of characters including Daleks, King Kong, Jar Jar Binks, Dobby and Godzilla. Those were just the contestants, the judges were; Darth Vader, the Fourth Doctor, Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock and Hermione Granger.
Cal Wilson did some great voices, but she also got the styles and personalities of each of the characters she introduced spot on and painted them quickly and succinctly into her story.
It was funny and vividly painted. Wilson's story fired the imagination up and painted in the story and characters with imagination filling in the gaps. The frame work of The Voice plus all the characters she filled it with was wondrous.
O'Doherty's story didn't really do this.
Maybe it was because he was holding his laptop to read from, or maybe it's because I don't really care about Lance Armstrong.
But the basic premise was that Lance Armstrong ruins it for everyone.
I’m not a fan of cycling and didn’t really care about Armstrong before or after the revelation of his drug cheating. So there is a bit of that in there, I just didn’t really care about the subject of the story at all.
Finally there was Tom Furniss’ story a Bondi Rescue crossover featuring Lara Bingle as a insane power mad witch bent on destruction because she has a nice Bondi-sid house that is filled with tourists and life guards.
There was magic and evil and a her loss of an engagement ring that she flushed down the loo and was retrieved from the shit outflow pipe by one of the lifeguards from the show.
There was people getting crushed because she moved the flags to be a millimetre apart so everyone was trying to stay within them.
And then finally there was a death scene involving fingering which most of the audience went "ooo" in the 'that's a bit controversial and sort of like suggesting rape sort of thing'. But this was a very fictional construct where Lara Bingle was a mad woman with witchy powers, who craved her precious engagement ring and could float and cast down people.
It makes me think to FanFiction.net whose rules/guidelines state that entries that contain “Stories with non-historical and non-fictional characters: actors, musicians, and etc.” are not allowed.
But then are these reality shows and the people who appear in them "real" people?
I'd argue not in many cases, take Top Gear for example. If you compare how they behave in the show and especially on their big adventures to how the are in "real life", on commentaries, on other shows and in their own writing they are a similar person. But not the same, it's a part of their personality amped up for TV purposes but they're different.
With "Being Lara Bingle" and “Bondi Rescue” there's more of an argument that this is what the people are, however the situations through which we see them are constructed, so we still have a false sense of their personalities, because we only see them through these constructed situation.
How is that different from a fictional narrative through which characters are presented? (I'm glad you asked essay question-esque question) Fictional narratives present characters and it's part of a narrative structure that you learn about the characters it is how you enjoy and become immersed in the narrative. It is (usually) through the characters that the narrative is explored. You become closer to the characters than any reality show could show because a fictional narrative is a much more intimate medium through which to explore a narrative.
With prose this become an even more intimate relationship because a character's insights, internalised thoughts and specifics of that character are related to the reader. You are made to care about the characters in a far deeper way than in a televisual narrative because you are generating the characters in your imagination as you read. There are (often though not always) external influences that affect how you generate these fictional imaginary structures.
So having people read and perform their pieces of fiction that they have created is a great and wonderful experience, it is their interpretations of these (often) imaginary situations and characters that they have interpreted into existence and then presented to the world.
I want to go back and see Fanfiction Comedy again. I will again buy a ticket for Saturday as I will be up to see the I Love Green Guide Letters podcast and just hope that it doesn't over run again and force me to do (another) mad dash down the stairs.
13th April 2013
I arrived half way into a story concerning Lord of the Rings, which was funny and good. I’d not heard the intro as I was running late (see the post below as to why). But I gathered it was about The Hobbit, something I’ve not seen. But am aware of it and the events surrounding it (like the NZ News being read in Elvish).
Heidi O'Loughlin's Mrs Pacman story was also wonderful. Short though understandably so there is only so much backstory you can gather from Pacman / Ms Pacman. But still it was filled with witty, funny observations and was painted with excellent flourish by O'Loughlin.
Cal Wilson's story was a stand out the best of them, there seems to be a thing with the special guests that one seems to get the idea of fan fiction and the other not quite so much.
This was the case with Cal Wilson and David O'Doherty.
Cal Wilson's was a fanfic involving The Voice and a multitude of characters including Daleks, King Kong, Jar Jar Binks, Dobby and Godzilla. Those were just the contestants, the judges were; Darth Vader, the Fourth Doctor, Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock and Hermione Granger.
Cal Wilson did some great voices, but she also got the styles and personalities of each of the characters she introduced spot on and painted them quickly and succinctly into her story.
It was funny and vividly painted. Wilson's story fired the imagination up and painted in the story and characters with imagination filling in the gaps. The frame work of The Voice plus all the characters she filled it with was wondrous.
O'Doherty's story didn't really do this.
Maybe it was because he was holding his laptop to read from, or maybe it's because I don't really care about Lance Armstrong.
But the basic premise was that Lance Armstrong ruins it for everyone.
I’m not a fan of cycling and didn’t really care about Armstrong before or after the revelation of his drug cheating. So there is a bit of that in there, I just didn’t really care about the subject of the story at all.
Finally there was Tom Furniss’ story a Bondi Rescue crossover featuring Lara Bingle as a insane power mad witch bent on destruction because she has a nice Bondi-sid house that is filled with tourists and life guards.
There was magic and evil and a her loss of an engagement ring that she flushed down the loo and was retrieved from the shit outflow pipe by one of the lifeguards from the show.
There was people getting crushed because she moved the flags to be a millimetre apart so everyone was trying to stay within them.
And then finally there was a death scene involving fingering which most of the audience went "ooo" in the 'that's a bit controversial and sort of like suggesting rape sort of thing'. But this was a very fictional construct where Lara Bingle was a mad woman with witchy powers, who craved her precious engagement ring and could float and cast down people.
It makes me think to FanFiction.net whose rules/guidelines state that entries that contain “Stories with non-historical and non-fictional characters: actors, musicians, and etc.” are not allowed.
But then are these reality shows and the people who appear in them "real" people?
I'd argue not in many cases, take Top Gear for example. If you compare how they behave in the show and especially on their big adventures to how the are in "real life", on commentaries, on other shows and in their own writing they are a similar person. But not the same, it's a part of their personality amped up for TV purposes but they're different.
With "Being Lara Bingle" and “Bondi Rescue” there's more of an argument that this is what the people are, however the situations through which we see them are constructed, so we still have a false sense of their personalities, because we only see them through these constructed situation.
How is that different from a fictional narrative through which characters are presented? (I'm glad you asked essay question-esque question) Fictional narratives present characters and it's part of a narrative structure that you learn about the characters it is how you enjoy and become immersed in the narrative. It is (usually) through the characters that the narrative is explored. You become closer to the characters than any reality show could show because a fictional narrative is a much more intimate medium through which to explore a narrative.
With prose this become an even more intimate relationship because a character's insights, internalised thoughts and specifics of that character are related to the reader. You are made to care about the characters in a far deeper way than in a televisual narrative because you are generating the characters in your imagination as you read. There are (often though not always) external influences that affect how you generate these fictional imaginary structures.
So having people read and perform their pieces of fiction that they have created is a great and wonderful experience, it is their interpretations of these (often) imaginary situations and characters that they have interpreted into existence and then presented to the world.
I want to go back and see Fanfiction Comedy again. I will again buy a ticket for Saturday as I will be up to see the I Love Green Guide Letters podcast and just hope that it doesn't over run again and force me to do (another) mad dash down the stairs.