Born Incomprehensible Yesterday

Just a guy (he/they) with a blog.

[enchantedbook]

From "The Rubáiyát" by the Persian poet Omar Khayyám. Illustration by René Bull, 1912.

[fiercestpurpose]

There’s a quality that certain books/movies/TV shows have that leads me to say, “Yeah, I can see people making fanfiction of that.” It’s something to do, I think, with how tight the story is, how much feels open-ended or like it could be elaborated on.

Something like Breaking Bad, for example, has low squiggability (that’s what I’m calling this quality). It’s tightly written, the characters are consistent, there’s little left to interpolate or extrapolate. Obviously, people DO write fanfic of Breaking Bad, but it still has a low squiggability score. Whereas something like Supernatural has a high squiggability score. Fantasy and science fiction often have high squiggability scores. This suggests squiggability could also be related to worldbuilding and potential for people to borrow a premise or setting.

And sometimes you’ll read or watch something and you’ll say, “Ah, low squiggability,” and then you’ll open tumblr and find out that everyone else seem to think its squiggability was very high indeed.

[rock-paper-blankets]

for Various Reasons I once spent a day trying to figure out if squiggability (excellent term, thanks op!) was tied to whether a show was more serial in structure or procedural - that is, whether shows that have a full-season story arc or shows that have episode-by-episode stories were more likely to have more fanfics.

I thought for sure the episodic shows (like Supernatural, Sherlock, Dr. Who) would dominate the fanfic world. As in, there'd be more fics for episodic/procedural shows than season-focused/serial shows (shows like Heated Rivalry, Good Omens, Stranger Things). The hypothesis being that there was more room for invention around a show that itself kept inventing more characters and situations for its world.

Now, I'm a humanities kid, NOT a math kid, but I think I did a reasonable breakdown, and--again, I spend an honest-to-god eight-hour day on this--it turns out the two structures are equally squiggable:

Of the ten most popular non-anime TV fandoms (I just know nothing about anime and I suspect there are new variables introduced by the norms of anime/manga storytelling that affect their squiggability), looking at shipping specifically (just cuz that's what I was curious about) five of the ten were procedurals and five were serials!

Here's a shot of my spreadsheet:

These numbers are old - there are constantly new fics being posted, yay! - but my takeaway generally stands, I suspect.

(I don't remember what the row colors meant anymore, ie why some are white, lol. The gray/fainter rows are for secondary ships from the show, where the show had multiple ships with over or near 10k fics posted for second, third, etc ships.)

Anyway, all that to say, squiggability is FASCINATING.

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

“Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. The interior is therefore rather dim and poetic.”

— Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

[thursdayinspace]

[iconicscullyoutfits]

much of the allure of the x files is how lonely they make each other, they were lonely before they met and worse after and the only thing that could make their lives less painful and ease their global alienation is if they could love something more than they love the purity and privilege and devotion of being lonely in each other's name, if they could stop offering aloneness up as a shrine to the each other's honour and an agreement to conceal each other's shame.

[deepdwellingsteamboat]

THE X-FILES 1993 – 2018・1x02 Deep Throat

[retro-retrofuturism]

5.2 | Redux II

txf magic, or, moments i fell in love

[volpeantica]

… and here comes the DD/Fox Mulder hands appreciation post

Not much to say, except that they are infinitely graceful and elegant. I love that they are slightly feminine (really the best feature in male hands: his are the hands of a piano player, an artist, a reader, an intellectual) and, probably made for a heightened haptic perception and capable of tactile memory.

I think the New Spartans breaking his finger was the single most physically painful torture moment of the entire series for me.

[pinkstarlightcomputer]

John Everett Millais (8 June 1829 – 13 August 1896) The Bridesmaid Oil on panel, 1851 20.3 x 27.9 cm (7.99" x 10.98") Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, United Kingdom

google

[moldspace]

curly creature

[dartmoorpixie]

[pmamtraveller]

hair combs in the form of lily leaves in dewdrops. england, 1906

[draeca]

i love you prairie grasses i love you open skies i love you rolling hills i love you forests i love you great lakes i love you wildflowers

[rock-paper-blankets]

I stand by my interpretation of Half Man mostly taking place in Niall's book - in which he gets famous-ish writing a book about Ruben, and in which they kill each other because real-Niall can't live with Ruben and can't live without him.

There's just way too much in the show that feels written in the later episodes - the long hospital fight where nobody comes in, the long barn fight where nobody comes in, Joanna being at the wedding after telling Niall never to get in touch with her again, Ava being the woman version of Alby, Alby being so forgiving and supportive of Niall, who treated him like shit, Ruben's eulogy which is so clearly how Niall feels about his own mom...and that's not to mention that I'm pretty sure a few minor characters were played by the same actor - the doctor Niall talked to in the clinic doesn't show up in the current IMDB credits but I think it's the same guy who was the cop who arrested Niall after he crashed his car???

honestly I can't make sense of the show from a writing perspective any other way. But for viewers who aren't writers I think this interpretation is way too subtle for them to pick up on. The story treats Alby like shit, like a total device for trying to redeem Niall, and I can only make sense of that if the story is meant to have come out of Niall's brain, not Richard Gadd's.

Anyway, if I'm right then I think Half Man was pretty great. If I'm wrong I'm a bit disappointed but not too much, because second projects are often more ambitious but less successful than someone's first. Richard Gadd is absolutely smart and skilled; it's not like I won't be interested in whatever he does next.

[my-flying-sister]

I love rebloging. It’s the adult equivalent of showing everyone the cool rock I just found.

[the-dandy-liar]

[prettyscully]

[ngalitzine]

THE X-FILES | 3.12