the ramble dump
Monday, April 10, 2006
Boardfic
So.
In the past few years, most writing I've done for online viewing has been for the various websites I've worked on, ultimately leading up to FMIT. But for almost as long, there's been another side to the whole thing. Namely, boardfic.
'Boardfic' was the name given by a small online community to fictional stories, usually humorous ones, about the members. I like writing them because they don't have the same demand as the stuff I put up on FMIT (they're usually consciously bad quality, a bit like Bananas and Laxatives was), because I get to make even less sense than I do in other writing, and because, selfishly, I get a kick out of the response, which is generally bemused but positive (I think). It's partly boardfic's fault that the progress of other projects has been so slow.
The community itself started out as the weird outcome of an unmoderated message board for the works of Terry Pratchett, based on the publisher's site (it moved about a year ago after disruptive troll activity). Whereas most message boards aimed at fans of something will have endless amounts of discussion and jokes about whatever it is the message board was actually intended for, the members of this one, probably due to the lack of moderators, didn't really talk about Pratchett all that much. The off-topic section, misleadingly titled 'Discworld Novels', was the biggest forum, and the others were pretty much inactive.
A funny kind of unserious microsociety had sprouted based on copious in-jokes that had nothing to do with Pratchett, and boardfics were a result of that. It probably deflected a lot of people visiting to the site, but apparently it wasn't a bad place for people like me who were casual fans (and I've met quite a few good friends there, who I still talk to even if they've moved on). To all intents and purposes, it was (and still is) pretty...well, pointless. A community for people who liked Pratchett but didn't really want to keep talking about him. I know I wouldn't have stuck around for more than a week if it was what it was supposed to be, having come across it by idly looking around at Pratchett-related stuff one day. After moving to a new place to escape the trolls, it's still advertised as a Terry Pratchett message board, but we couldn't really have made it anything else ('Sort Of Terry Pratchett But Not Really' somehow wouldn't have worked).
I've written a few boardfics. The first, Festive Destruction, was a short Christmas one in 2003 with practically no plot at all; the second one, The April Fools was a slightly longer Easter-themed sequel with slightly more plot (posted towards the end of a period of a few months where half the front page was occupied by boardfics, mostly direct, board-based parodies of books and other stuff). The most recent was Jesnails Returns, written with Ella Turnbull at the end of last year. City of Anarchy also started out as a boardfic, until I decided I had bigger plans for it.
But the biggest boardfic I've done, started only a week after The April Fools, and the longest running (April 2004 to February 2005), was SciBoard Fiction. SBF contained anything and everything.
The first 'episode' was about a man auditioning for a musical (of someone else's boardfic) at the Big Theatre and ending up as the third member of a group of cannibalistic drag queen henchmen.
The second episode followed the story of the Plaid One, a superhero whose very existence is challenged by the arrival of another superhero who is slightly better at the job and an evil goat she foolishly saved from the slopes of a volcano just before it errupted (completely missing the small village at its base).
The third episode was the SBF version of how two members of the board became a couple (although it never actually got that far), one an unsuccessful mime artist and the other a grammar obsessive, who ended up meeting each other through trying to destroy a tapestry that could tell the future, which had been set up in an extension of space-time on the stage of the Big Theatre (it was called the 'Tripod Tapestry', named after a board-based webcomic that had been started).
The fourth chronicled the events leading up to and following an alien invasion, with the shady Underworld and the 'World Above' having to team up to fight them off. It culminated in an insane Christmas Day finale with the protagonist Chimaera and several other characters (including the Plaid One, who had just woken up from a coma she fell into at the end of Episode 2) trying to destroy the impregnated 'mother' alien who was firing her offspring out like ammunition whilst sat in the Queen of the Underworld's throne. The Big Theatre was even blown up at the end.
The fifth and final episode followed the desperate conquest of a mix-and-match of surviving characters from previous episodes trying to stop the world from ending, which was happening because so much weird shit had gone on with the superheros and the tapestry and the aliens and stuff. The climax was with the characters interacting with Ba, a supernatural, 'god'-like presence, through a giant, ethereal BaMessenger™ window (an instant messaging service that had appeared throughout SBF, from the mysterious opening scene in the first episode to acting as means of aid and information to characters from others during the course of their adventures).
It was filled with references to the most obscure things as well as numerous board in-jokes and any strange and spare idea I had. And now, for a short, one-off episode, it's back. Some old SBF themes are continued, but it's a standalone story, not a proper sequel, and also less heavy on the in-jokes, so you should be able to follow it without getting too confused. Hopefully.
So...
Just for Easter, here's one final tip of the hat to this strange and unusual genre. SciBoard Resurrection. Enjoy.
Edit: link updated.
In the past few years, most writing I've done for online viewing has been for the various websites I've worked on, ultimately leading up to FMIT. But for almost as long, there's been another side to the whole thing. Namely, boardfic.
'Boardfic' was the name given by a small online community to fictional stories, usually humorous ones, about the members. I like writing them because they don't have the same demand as the stuff I put up on FMIT (they're usually consciously bad quality, a bit like Bananas and Laxatives was), because I get to make even less sense than I do in other writing, and because, selfishly, I get a kick out of the response, which is generally bemused but positive (I think). It's partly boardfic's fault that the progress of other projects has been so slow.
The community itself started out as the weird outcome of an unmoderated message board for the works of Terry Pratchett, based on the publisher's site (it moved about a year ago after disruptive troll activity). Whereas most message boards aimed at fans of something will have endless amounts of discussion and jokes about whatever it is the message board was actually intended for, the members of this one, probably due to the lack of moderators, didn't really talk about Pratchett all that much. The off-topic section, misleadingly titled 'Discworld Novels', was the biggest forum, and the others were pretty much inactive.
A funny kind of unserious microsociety had sprouted based on copious in-jokes that had nothing to do with Pratchett, and boardfics were a result of that. It probably deflected a lot of people visiting to the site, but apparently it wasn't a bad place for people like me who were casual fans (and I've met quite a few good friends there, who I still talk to even if they've moved on). To all intents and purposes, it was (and still is) pretty...well, pointless. A community for people who liked Pratchett but didn't really want to keep talking about him. I know I wouldn't have stuck around for more than a week if it was what it was supposed to be, having come across it by idly looking around at Pratchett-related stuff one day. After moving to a new place to escape the trolls, it's still advertised as a Terry Pratchett message board, but we couldn't really have made it anything else ('Sort Of Terry Pratchett But Not Really' somehow wouldn't have worked).
I've written a few boardfics. The first, Festive Destruction, was a short Christmas one in 2003 with practically no plot at all; the second one, The April Fools was a slightly longer Easter-themed sequel with slightly more plot (posted towards the end of a period of a few months where half the front page was occupied by boardfics, mostly direct, board-based parodies of books and other stuff). The most recent was Jesnails Returns, written with Ella Turnbull at the end of last year. City of Anarchy also started out as a boardfic, until I decided I had bigger plans for it.
But the biggest boardfic I've done, started only a week after The April Fools, and the longest running (April 2004 to February 2005), was SciBoard Fiction. SBF contained anything and everything.
The first 'episode' was about a man auditioning for a musical (of someone else's boardfic) at the Big Theatre and ending up as the third member of a group of cannibalistic drag queen henchmen.
The second episode followed the story of the Plaid One, a superhero whose very existence is challenged by the arrival of another superhero who is slightly better at the job and an evil goat she foolishly saved from the slopes of a volcano just before it errupted (completely missing the small village at its base).
The third episode was the SBF version of how two members of the board became a couple (although it never actually got that far), one an unsuccessful mime artist and the other a grammar obsessive, who ended up meeting each other through trying to destroy a tapestry that could tell the future, which had been set up in an extension of space-time on the stage of the Big Theatre (it was called the 'Tripod Tapestry', named after a board-based webcomic that had been started).
The fourth chronicled the events leading up to and following an alien invasion, with the shady Underworld and the 'World Above' having to team up to fight them off. It culminated in an insane Christmas Day finale with the protagonist Chimaera and several other characters (including the Plaid One, who had just woken up from a coma she fell into at the end of Episode 2) trying to destroy the impregnated 'mother' alien who was firing her offspring out like ammunition whilst sat in the Queen of the Underworld's throne. The Big Theatre was even blown up at the end.
The fifth and final episode followed the desperate conquest of a mix-and-match of surviving characters from previous episodes trying to stop the world from ending, which was happening because so much weird shit had gone on with the superheros and the tapestry and the aliens and stuff. The climax was with the characters interacting with Ba, a supernatural, 'god'-like presence, through a giant, ethereal BaMessenger™ window (an instant messaging service that had appeared throughout SBF, from the mysterious opening scene in the first episode to acting as means of aid and information to characters from others during the course of their adventures).
It was filled with references to the most obscure things as well as numerous board in-jokes and any strange and spare idea I had. And now, for a short, one-off episode, it's back. Some old SBF themes are continued, but it's a standalone story, not a proper sequel, and also less heavy on the in-jokes, so you should be able to follow it without getting too confused. Hopefully.
So...
Just for Easter, here's one final tip of the hat to this strange and unusual genre. SciBoard Resurrection. Enjoy.
Edit: link updated.
Labels: boardfic, i am the ramblemaster, jesnails, zombies
# posted by
Chris @ 4:25 PM 
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