(no subject)

[meganbmoore]

[Poll #1115911][Poll #1115911] ETA: And before everyone instinctively answers, I would just like to ask: How many fandoms like to write about teenaged boys getting it on with 30 foot tall robots? Don't answer, just ponder before clicking.

Comments

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

(Internet based, at least) J R R Tolkien fandom is scary batshit insane. I dipped my toes warily in the water many years ago and removed them again, quick smart. And this was before the films were even announced.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I've never actually heard of anything from the LOTR fandom.

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

I once got (textually) screamed at because I wasn't sufficiently homophobic. Considering that (at the time) I was discussing straight characters and not discussing sex at all I had no idea where that came from, except possibly something repressed in the screamer him- or herself.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Are we talking the Tolkien newsgroups here, or something else? I've dipped my toes into a.f.t and r.b.t. occasionally and neither seemed all *that* bad as fannish Usenet groups go -- after the films there was always the odd bit of n00b-bashing and wank over folks who only knew the movies butting horns with the sort of obsessive book fans who could cite H.O.M.E. chapter-and-verse, but many of the regulars seemed to have a sense of humor and the worst wankiness seemed to be all the off-topic political stuff that would drift in. But maybe I picked good days to wander in, and I freely admit that being one of those chapter-and-verse book nerds myself may have seriously skewed my perspective on scary insanity where Tolkien is concerned...

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

It was a newsgroup in my case - might have been r.a.b.t. I might have just shown up at a bad time though.

I was a bit of a chapter and verse nut myself, although there were much worse than me about: one infamous poster at the time was obsessed with the idea that all Balrogs had actual, physical, wings and refused even to countenance the idea that Tolkien could have been at all skilled at the art of metaphor. This Tolkien bloke was only a university professor and fairly much a professional word nerd, after all...

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

*nod* Or I might have shown up at a comparatively good one, with the movie/book canon flames drawing most of the crazies...although years of Usenet addiction, some of it spent in some very testy groups, may have just left me with a very very thick skin. (A quick trigger finger on the slrn scorefile also tended to be very helpful in increasing the sanity quotient.) I never followed either group religiously, but I dipped in occasionally off and on for several years, and the core group of regulars generally seemed mostly sane and good-humored -- there were definitely crazies about, but that was always pretty much par for the course for Usenet groups, especially after the September that never ended...

(And why oh why am I not surprised the Great Balrog Wing Debate cropped up, even in a brief visit? *snicker* Andrew Rilstone's essay (http://web.archive.org/web/20020203184619/http://www.aslan.demon.co.uk/misreading-LOTR.htm) on the subject is still my favorite commentary on that whole mess...)

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link to the essay - it's excellent. Particlarly the closing paragraph.

I vaguely remember two or three introductions to the concept of Crispy Fried Balrog Wings (or something similar) so may have tried the group again later on or something. I read quite a number of newsgroups at one point, although the current tally is down to four (three of which are currently moribund).

Although I must say, despite the copious quantities of batshit seen in on-line fandom, it simply pales in comparison to on-line political forums. Nobody in fandom has publicly threatened to kill me. Not ones who seriously meant it and were in a position to drive to the other end of the island and actually try to do it, anyway.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I remain inordinantly proud, in a shamefully geeky way, of the time I got the author of that piece to facepalm by answering a "so how do you pronounce 'drow'?" poll with "Moriquendi"...

Political forums do bring a particularly vitriolic flavor of batshit, but really I don't think there's any subject that can't degenerate into wank and insanity once it reaches a critical mass; it can just take one gadfly or unmedicated nutter to touch off a chain reaction, especially in a group that was previously sufficiently warm-and-fuzzy that the denizens have not learned to refrain from feeding trolls. I used to work for an ISP, dealing with complaints about spammers and online harassment and other general Customer Naughtiness, and one particularly groaner-worthy case had much of the readership of a figure-skating fan newsgroup reduced to shrieking bloodthirsty harpies because one of our users was SAYING MEAN, INSENSITIVE THINGS about a skater. THE HORROR!

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

Facepalming is never so much fun than when you make someone do it in real life, though. I managed to scare a friendly and good-natured bloke who's main vice was a liking for old-school punk rock by playing him a lounge singer version of a Dead Kennedys song. The reaction was the sort of priceless that belongs in a credit card advertisement.

I'm not really all that surprised that it was figure skating, of all the possible sports, that went that way, though: isn't that the sport that Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding were involved with?

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Lounge-singer DK cover? Oh, please tell me I can find a sample of that somewhere online; that sounds like the sort of Deep Wrongness that I live for!

And yes, after the endless drama of the Whiny Ice Bitches, I would cheerfully have taken a club to ALL of them. If only the run-of-the-mill wank and drama could have taken a page from the time we dealt with an out-of-control dispute between rival factions of U.S. Civil War reenactors -- those dear gentlemen managed to stay in character throughout the entire flamefest, and seeing such scathing insults exchanged in proper 1860s language brought a delighted tear to my eye, it was such a change of pace from the usual godawful prose...

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

A bit of quick googling has picked up a couple of possible links: this one, which looks rather dubious - I haven't been able to check due to having a very poor quality internet connection (http://richard-cheese-holiday-in-cambodia-dead--mp3-download.kohit.net/_/339559) - and this listing at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Nightclub-Richard-Against-Machine/dp/B000IOM49I) which doesn't, unfortunately, seem to have any way of actually listening to the songs concerned other than actually buying the disk itself.

I first found out about Richard Cheese and his Lounge Against the Machine two years ago on the regular summer bizarre-music-on-radio show I've mentioned elsewhere; they played his version of "Hey Ya". I was fairly much hooked at that point (I have been an aficionado of thoroughly inappropriate cover versions ever since hearing the Flying Lizards' version of "Money").

This idea of a civil war between rival groups of Civil War re-enactors appeals to my sense of irony; that they would carry out the flamewar in character is just the icing on the cake. People just don't seem to know how to really insult people any more. Nowadays it's all eff this and eff that and no originality at all.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

First link was fine, and oh, I think I love you now! THE JINGLE BELLS! This is quite possibly the most awesome thing since Pat Boone's heavy metal album, or the bluegrass cover of Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice", or the sensitive-70s-acoustic-folk-rock take on "Baby Got Back"...

I wish I'd had that song a week ago; must save a local copy so I can use it to traumatize folks next Christmastime...

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

The show I've been hearing that stuff on is "Matinee Idle (http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/matineeidle)", and has been accused by at least one emailer-to-the-presenters as only having seven CDs, six of which are "The Very Best of Doctor Demento".

That bluegrass cover... wouldn't have been by Hayseed Dixie, would it? I've heard a couple of their songs before (I think they visited the country a couple of years ago and therefore got a fair bit of radio yackety yak time).

I managed to traumatise my sister-in-law just before Christmas dinner by playing her this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WfoccRna6I). Last week's was probably the best behaved Christmas the extended family has had since my niece and nephew figured out how to be naughty...

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Nope, it's by The Gourds (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8njCwGwGwI)...although in the course of looking for that on YouTube I see there's a Richard Cheese lounge version now as well, sweetness!

And Beatles meets Led Zep? Nice. Now I have the urge to haul out the Rutles and Dread Zeppelin...

[chomiji]

I also appreciated that essay - I had never seen it before!

When I was writing for ICE, I had to plod through all of the Tolkien source material that was available at the time ... I used to have a card file of Elvish name/word elements. But I've always hated arguing about any of it!