Nostalga and Nuke 'em till they glow

[slickrcbd]

I decided to reread an old classic recently, specifically Benjamin Oliver's "Nuke 'em Till They Glow"
http://florestica.com/boliver/nettg/index.htm

I remember that over 20 years ago I found it to be a hilarious crack fic that I enjoyed. I recall it was one of those that you just couldn't put down.
However today I found parts of it to be a slog to get through, especially the super-long chapter 9, which is where I left off.

Was the story never that great in the first place, or is it just a factor that I'm not in my late teens or just turning 20 (I don't recall if I read it in the late '90s or 2000, the awards mentioned on Florestica suggests I was in my early 20's, but I thought I read it in 98 or 99) but am now over 40 and my tastes have changed?

Just wondering if anybody else finds that stuff they read when they were 19 might not be as great as they remember when they are now 42 (well, on the 8th).

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

No question there! Fanfiction when I was young (the Fifties and Sixties) was a very different thing - but I read it, I wrote it, and did fan-comics as well. Don and Maggie Thompson published "The Masked Marvels of Mollusc-on-the-Marsh" back then, and I'd love to get a chance to re-read it. Bruce Pelz' Tower Comics (I think that was the name, I gave my fan-comics collection to Bill Schelly, and can't check) would be dreadfully embarrassing to read today. But mainly, I have had a chance to re-read or re-view books and movies. I can guarantee I still like Forbidden Planet. I cringed when I re-watched Calamity Jane. I'm afraid to re-read Thorne Smith, as Topper was much worse when I re-read it. I don't want to lose my wonderful memories of The Night Life of the Gods. Ronn Foss made a fan-comic of it, but it was hardly the same as the book.

Much depends on who you were when you read it, and who you were when you re-read it. From twenty to forty is a considerable change in your headspace. What you knew about fanfic and that particular fandom then is minuscule compared to what you know now. That can't help but change your reading experience. My powers of reading and writing are pretty much the same now as they were in 2000; my knowledge of Ranma fanfic has enlarged immensely. I still can enjoy Girl Days. There are other stories I liked that I will no longer go near. And there are some I disliked that I'm thinking of re-evaluating.

[CRBWildcat]

Yeah... From college (2002-2007) down through today, I have hundreds of text files containing portions of fanfics, or even those stories in their entirety. I couldn't get enough of looking at them back then.

The older stories in my collection? Ehhhhh...

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

I ran "properties" on my stored fanfic. There are 2.94 GB there, 36,440 files in 3701 folders. I've read almost all of it, and some of the better ones twice. The biggest one I've read twice is "Desperately Seeking Ranma" by PixelWriter1. FFnet says it's up to 1,426,632 words. There's the usual overhead of disclaimers and comments, but not much of that. It is a fukufic.

I have a friend who's read it twice, and curses me for introducing him to such a time-sink; but he just can't help himself. I'm afraid to start re-reading Taylor Varga by mp3.1415player. It's ove two megawords, though the commentary and omakes are a larger part of this one. This one is a Worm fanfic, crossed over with a deservedly short-lived and little-known anime called Luna Varga. One of the goals of fanfic writing is, of course, to do better than the original. I dug up the original for comparison. The fanfic does it better.

Worm is, of course, a long and grimdark web novel. There are a lot of fanfics subverting the grimdark. Taylor Varga is one of them. Some of the omakes have been spun off as stories in their own right -- one of them ends (for now) with Herminone Granger auditing the books of Asgard because The Varga thinks Odin has busy fingers around interesting artifacts.

But we're talking re-reading. When I feel a story is finished, very fine, and worth re-reading, I put it in a special folder called "Good'n'complete". That one only has 78 MB in it. That's something like 2 1/2 percent. But as Theodore Sturgeon said, "90% of everything is crap."

[Sunshine Temple]

Huh and I was just thinking of "Nuke 'em Till They Glow".

[Spica75]

I ran "properties" on my stored fanfic. There are 2.94 GB there, 36,440 files in 3701 folders. I've read almost all of it, and some of the better ones twice. The biggest one I've read twice is "Desperately Seeking Ranma" by PixelWriter1. FFnet says it's up to 1,426,632 words. There's the usual overhead of disclaimers and comments, but not much of that. It is a fukufic.

I have a friend who's read it twice, and curses me for introducing him to such a time-sink; but he just can't help himself. I'm afraid to start re-reading Taylor Varga by mp3.1415player. It's ove two megawords, though the commentary and omakes are a larger part of this one. This one is a Worm fanfic, crossed over with a deservedly short-lived and little-known anime called Luna Varga. One of the goals of fanfic writing is, of course, to do better than the original. I dug up the original for comparison. The fanfic does it better.

If you like long stories, if you haven't read it already, take a look at Diane Castle's "The secret return of Alex Mack", which is part of a series, "A brane of extraordinary women":
https://www.tthfanfic.org/Series-2585
The physics joke in the title is a bonus.
It's completed at 1.2M words and has spawned dozens of fanfics by itself.

Worm is, of course, a long and grimdark web novel. There are a lot of fanfics subverting the grimdark. Taylor Varga is one of them. Some of the omakes have been spun off as stories in their own right -- one of them ends (for now) with Herminone Granger auditing the books of Asgard because The Varga thinks Odin has busy fingers around interesting artifacts.

But we're talking re-reading. When I feel a story is finished, very fine, and worth re-reading, I put it in a special folder called "Good'n'complete". That one only has 78 MB in it. That's something like 2 1/2 percent. But as Theodore Sturgeon said, "90% of everything is crap."

Worm, quite frankly SUCKS. But it's spawned lots of decent fanfics so i can aknowledge that upside at least.

Anyone and everyone could well do with taking a look at the other works of mp3.1415player, just about all of them are interesting, funny or both.

#####

I decided to reread an old classic recently, specifically Benjamin Oliver's "Nuke 'em Till They Glow"
http://florestica.com/boliver/nettg/index.htm

I remember that over 20 years ago I found it to be a hilarious crack fic that I enjoyed. I recall it was one of those that you just couldn't put down.
However today I found parts of it to be a slog to get through, especially the super-long chapter 9, which is where I left off.

Was the story never that great in the first place, or is it just a factor that I'm not in my late teens or just turning 20 (I don't recall if I read it in the late '90s or 2000, the awards mentioned on Florestica suggests I was in my early 20's, but I thought I read it in 98 or 99) but am now over 40 and my tastes have changed?

Just wondering if anybody else finds that stuff they read when they were 19 might not be as great as they remember when they are now 42 (well, on the 8th).

One thing i have found is that the stuff most worth re-reading/rewatching tends to not be the absolute best, but rather that which is the most impactful or entertaining while you read/watch it.

Do i still watch/read the same stuff as 20-25 years ago? Mostly no, but that's more because once i read 10 pages i can recall enough to recite most of the rest of the story. OTOH, those that fall under the above mentioned condition, those i still DO read/watch, like Terry Pratchett being ever so puntastic or Yoko Tsuno comics for the superb quality on the drawings, Carl Barks/Don Rosa comics for both of those along with some twisted funny stories.

I can still read Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie because i can appreciate the way they weave the story.
Meanwhile, i also read through David Eddings fantasy series in the 90s and today find them utterly "meh", because their formulaic storylines and predictable writing just isn't good enough to compete once i found better writings, much of which is fanfics.

Basically, yes, there's some things i have read or watched that definitely did not age well, some of it because me, some because of inherent flaws that i simply didn't notice at the time, some because they only looked good because i didn't have enough to compare with at the time...

Mostly though, i can still enjoy those, i have for example aquired most of Agatha Christie's books in English as well, because while they're the same stories, original vs translated does make a difference and it is more like reading something new even though i definitely know the plots they still feel different in another language.

And a few, i can keep on rereading an endless number of times. The series "Vren" by Lotta Olivecrona has ended up as one of those(and it's a big pity it doesn't exist in translated versions, and that the author haven't written anything more(she's a surgeon who once on a bus-tour vacation came up with the idea for the books and then just wrote it and got it published right away)).

Your perception does change over time, sometimes a lot, other times not so much, sometimes that matters a lot to how well you like something, sometimes it doesn't matter the slightest. It depends greatly on what you do like overall and the quality of the media.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

There's another way to divide fics: read once, read many times, regret reading. Terry Pratchett is a "Read Many" As far as I'm concerned, Agatha Christie is not to be read. It's a minority opinion, but she does not vary her books in a way I can appreciate. I know mystery writers who disagree strongly with me. A lot depends on the head you're writing with, too: Charlotte MacLeod and Alisa Craig are the same author, two pen names, two series each. Three of the series, I like. The grub-and-stakers, I won't even consider after reading one.

Much depends on the head you're reading with!

[slickrcbd]

One thing I can say, one of the very first Sailor Moon fics I read has aged better for me than Nuke 'em Till They Glow.
That is Sailor Moon Universal by Jendra.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050204092 ... om/jendra/

The fact that I still enjoy Universal while finding NETTG to be a slog to get through parts of it made me ask if it just wasn't as good as I remembered or if it was just a question of being more mature.
Given that Florestica shows that NETTG has several awards, it makes me wonder.

Twenty years ago I would have highly recommended both fics, but today I find I am less enthusiastic about NETTG. It's still mostly a good fanfic worth reading, but isn't living up to the hype I remembered in my own head. Worse, I probably have spread some of that hype over the last two decades because I used to enjoy it.


Interesting thing was that I got extremely lucky with Universal, as it happens to be the first fanfic I read off a webpage downloaded on my own computer after getting dial-up (at 33.6K), although I had read a crappy Star Trek fic off Usenet the night before that. I don't recall much about the Star Trek fic, I did say it was crappy and I didn't finish it. I'd mostly been testing the configuration of my newsreader, then got distracted looking at fanfics.
I'd read fanfics at home before, but it mostly consisted of going to the library or school computer lab and downloading to disk. Sometimes I wonder if that contributed to me liking the fic so much.

@Ellen Kuhfeld
What's so bad about Calamity Jane?
My mother had knee surgery last year, right before COVID. Anyways, I had to stay near her for a few days after she came home from the hospital, and just saw that movie for the first time last year when she was recovering and I had to stay nearby. I'm not a great musical fan, but it was OK, no worse than "7 Brides for 7 Brothers" or "Oklahoma".

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

The headspace of the viewer is important. My first viewing was as a teen, and second viewing was in my sixties. Two very different headspaces.

[Spica75]

As far as I'm concerned, Agatha Christie is not to be read. It's a minority opinion, but she does not vary her books in a way I can appreciate.

According to some, they're bad because they're too formulaic, according to others, they're bad because she supposedly decided on the "who" after mostly having finished the books and then rewrote anything that didn't work with that.

I very much disagree with all of the above and claim that she actually does variations better than the vast majority of authors.
Yes there's plenty of tropes and archetypes involved, buuut, if you read several of her books over a short time, you realise that the similarities are deceptive.

Especially for personalities, she has a very neat indirect way of "painting their pictures" so to speak. It's not even subtle most of the time, yet if you think about 2-3 apparently similar characters in different books, consider how you think about them, you find that in your minds eye, they're very distinctly different, but consciouscly you don't notice most of the ways she establishes their deeper personalities.

[Cheb]

To be honest, I have burned out on Ranma - most probably due to having written (combining their Russian and English versions) about 830 Kwords of Ranma crossovers, after translating 510 Kwords worth of Ranma fanfics from English (the first 11 chapters of Daigakusei no Ranma, the first 3 chapters of Lost Innocence, the first 6 chapters of On a clear day you can see forever, full Tunnel vision, full Sailor Ranko and several minor ones...)

I just... There was too much. And my understanding of what is a good fanfic changed. Looking back I now see Ranma fanfiction was a phenomenon of the early Internet where many writers were making horribly OOC Ranmas in name only. I've been there, done that, am now rewriting "Your destiny is annulled" into an Original with stand-in characters of my own.
Dance, Dance, Rumble is my first *proper* Ranma crossover and, ironically, my last.

Worm, quite frankly SUCKS. But it's spawned lots of decent fanfics so i can aknowledge that upside at least.

The same as Harry Potter. You can't make me touch the books themselves but I have read tons of HP fanfics. Surprisingly, there are many good, novel-sized HP fanfics in Russian. Like that one, "You only live thrice": "Potter. Harry Potter." and then MI6 gets its grubby mitts on the magical Britain's knowledge while Dumbledore and McGonagall are convinced -- via hilarious coincidence -- that Harry and Dolores Ambridge are lovers and want brain bleach
Makes me wish I had a magical translator genie to share them

Also, I read too many Worm fics to the point I can't look at them. Also had to unsubscribe from Tailor Varga apologizing to mp3.1415player because he always stretches a good thing too much and it becomes a slog. His *beginnings* are awesome, but...

I can guarantee I still like Forbidden Planet

One of my favorite films even at is is horribly slow-paced and has blaster bolts moving criminally slowly. When was I introduced to it? I think it was around the age the tv6 channel owner bought old Hollywood films (1930s-40s old) in bulk and flooded the channel with these black-and-white films. Was quite fresh stream of something never seen before at the beginning of the post-soviet turmoil. I lament they do not show these films anymore.
Anyway, I think Forbidden Planet got slipped in somewhere in there.

[Spica75]

The same as Harry Potter. You can't make me touch the books themselves but I have read tons of HP fanfics. Surprisingly, there are many good, novel-sized HP fanfics in Russian.

Oh yes, one of the most magnificently TERRIBLE stories there is.

There's just so much wrong and stupid with it that the more fanfics i've read that shows it off, the more obvious said terribleness becomes. And by now, the level is probably beyond comprehension.
And yet there's no end to new fanfics based on it that are good.

Also, I read too many Worm fics to the point I can't look at them. Also had to unsubscribe from Tailor Varga apologizing to mp3.1415player because he always stretches a good thing too much and it becomes a slog. His *beginnings* are awesome, but...

Ah, that's sad. I've switched to reading them on FFN, several chapters at once, works better i think. I think the biggest issue though is that worm as a setting is so absurd that anyone who prefers "amusing" over "grimderp" and still tries to retain canon baseline as Mpi does, it just requires so much overpoweredness that it ends up problematic to write.

One of my favorite films even at is is horribly slow-paced and has blaster bolts moving criminally slowly. When was I introduced to it? I think it was around the age the tv6 channel owner bought old Hollywood films (1930s-40s old) in bulk and flooded the channel with these black-and-white films. Was quite fresh stream of something never seen before at the beginning of the post-soviet turmoil. I lament they do not show these films anymore.
Anyway, I think Forbidden Planet got slipped in somewhere in there.

Oh yeah, there's lots of classics and older stuff that are still great to watch or read because they have a good "feel", they may have technical issues or be silly, hammy or whatever, but they ENTERTAIN far better.
It's ridiculous how uncommon it has become to show older movies or series nowadays, something i was very much reminded of last year when they DID run more than usual movies and stuff and i randomly ended up rewatching "Some like it hot".
How long ago since i saw something from classic B/W comedy, like say Buster Keaton, L&H or Chaplin? Even all together, it's >5 years ago i saw even ONE of their movies.

Another HUGE problem is how nowadays, if a series or movie just goes up on a single/few virtual channels, or something is regionlocked, sadly often, you don't even hear about it. Or how rare it is for anything beyond the "BIG" movies to be found outside their homeregions.
Extremely annoying.
As an example, up until yesterday when looking something up, i had never even heard about there being a "Spaceballs" animated series, despite it being over a decade old by now.

I just... There was too much. And my understanding of what is a good fanfic changed. Looking back I now see Ranma fanfiction was a phenomenon of the early Internet where many writers were making horribly OOC Ranmas in name only.

Similar to Harry Potter, but for different reasons(mostly rule of funny rather than author fiat convenience), it's a very exploitable and easy to use setting, so it was a convenient setting to use for all kinds of more or less creative and weird stories.

[slickrcbd]

I never really enjoyed "Forbidden Planet" like I did Star Wars, Star Trek, or Babylon 5; yet most people I know who liked Star Trek, Star Wars or Babylon 5 rave about it.
I too burned out on Ranma 10 years ago. I think I burned out on Harry Potter two years ago.
I'm currently on a Worm kick, but I came late to the party. I'm branching out into other fandoms, and to a lessor extent taking a look at some of the old ones.

I should post a thread asking for recs for finished Ranma fics from 2010 or later.

I think the biggest issue though is that worm as a setting is so absurd that anyone who prefers "amusing" over "grimderp" and still tries to retain canon baseline as Mpi does, it just requires so much overpoweredness that it ends up problematic to write.

Some things are more believable than people realize. Just about everything related to Taylor's experience at Winslow excluding The Locker incident is extremely believable. I can relate to similar experiences.
However, once she was hospitalized, that's when it became unbelievable. Maybe her father settling so quickly and easily because he didn't know about the ongoing bullying campaign is why they went back to business as usual, but even in the school I attended the police would have been called and the school would have taken action to protect from lawsuits.
Other than that, everything else was believable, including the meeting where they blew off Taylor's evidence. Been there, done that in almost exactly the same way in the mid-'90s.

[Spica75]

I never really enjoyed "Forbidden Planet" like I did Star Wars, Star Trek, or Babylon 5; yet most people I know who liked Star Trek, Star Wars or Babylon 5 rave about it.
I too burned out on Ranma 10 years ago. I think I burned out on Harry Potter two years ago.

The advantage with HP at least is that there's so absurdly MANY fanfics that if you want, you can always find something novel and creative. Sadly, it's just not easy to find those kinda fics quickly most of the time, but there's definitely lots of them.

Forbidden planet is more fun due to being a pioneer than being high quality, you can see stuff there that became tropes and is still common in brand new scifi today. It's "good" because it has a lot of "firsts" in it. There's also a fair degree of entertaining "charm" in it.

I'm currently on a Worm kick, but I came late to the party.

Problem is, Worm is even WORSE in every way. Yeah, there's a bundle of decent fanfics based on it, but the problem is that canon is so terrible that it just pulls everything down, except the more parodical stories, because there it doesn't matter that ms Mary Sue does a dozen impossible things before every breakfast. Ok, slightly exaggerated, but problem here is that it really just is SLIGHTLY.

Terribly unrealistic characters, daft story, idiotic setting and epic science fail all the damn time... *aarrgghh!*

I've tried reading it twice because of the good fanfics, but i just can't deal with it. So, i stick purely to the fanfics ever since. And preferably the nonserious ones because the serious ones are more likely to make me giggle at the enforced stupidities than make for a good story.

Pardon, rant over(hopefully?).

Some things are more believable than people realize. Just about everything related to Taylor's experience at Winslow excluding The Locker incident is extremely believable. I can relate to similar experiences.

Parts of it, yes. ALL TOGETHER? No. Just the thing about the principals actions? She literally BREAKS THE LAW several times in ways that are utterly stupid, ways that can end up as badly as throwing her in jail. While people can be serious assholes, very few dare go to such lengths, because it makes them VERY vulnerable.

Also, the more fanfics you read, same as with HP, the more blatant it becomes just how unlikely and unrealistic this all together is. Which is then of course excused by "it's a Simurgh plot!". Or the author forgot his brain, oops.

However, once she was hospitalized, that's when it became unbelievable. Maybe her father settling so quickly and easily because he didn't know about the ongoing bullying campaign is why they went back to business as usual, but even in the school I attended the police would have been called and the school would have taken action to protect from lawsuits.

You do realise that the locker falls under biowarfare terrorism laws? There is absolutely zero probability of that NOT getting serious attention from the police. And it would fall under those laws because there is a distinct probability of uncertain degree that it WOULD cause a mass epidemic outbreak at the school. And with such a mix of pathogens, there's a fairly high risk of multiple deaths as a result. No kidding.

And anything that puts a student in hospital in severe condition? The hospital MUST BY LAW report such things. The SCHOOL is obligated to report it. Not just the school as a whole, but every single teacher as individuals. And the more severe the situation, the greater risk everyone who shirks their duty are to get slammed with a date at court.

And yeah, they "would have taken action to protect from lawsuits"... And what happens in the story is the absolute opposite. The school behaves like a gang trying to use force to repress everything, the hospital completely fails to do their duty and the police completely fails to do their duty.
There's a point where the convergence of author convenient impossibilites just pile up far too much.

Because as canon is? There's actually quite a high nonzero chance that federal authorities should have gotten involved.

Other than that, everything else was believable, including the meeting where they blew off Taylor's evidence. Been there, done that in almost exactly the same way in the mid-'90s.

"everything else" includes a LOT of crap however. Her bugclones? Impossible, does not work. Just to take ONE example. Her use of bugs for fighting? Mostly impossible. Impossible as in physically cannot be done without adding outside forces.

Someone on SB went and wrote a long post on things observed in the story that was impossible, you can probably find it if you search.

And again, all of the setting interaction stuff, yeah, each issue by itself isn't unrealistic, because there's shitty people to be found everywhere(and it's sad to hear you had to deal with some), but there's a limit on how much you can force together and still make it believable. And the author doesn't even TRY to make it believable, he just basically goes "all these totally surreal things happened all at once to the same person"...
"And then lightning struck the poor poor grimderped protagonist once every 3 minutes for a week and then she died, the END", that does not make for a good story.

It's exactly the primary problem as with HP, author left logic and sanity by the door. There's no internal consistency.
And again, i tend to rant about it because of how much i absolutely detest the intellectual lazyness of the author. He didn't even try to come up with a way to make his story choices work.
/Rant over, again...

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

In fanfic (including Worm, HP, Ranma, Buffy, et al) it can be more fun if the author uses fanon instead of canon. There are more possibilities in fanon, which is built from earlier variations on canon, variations that have been approved by other fan writers. Mostly, the popular variations have been explored and had the rough edges knocked off of them.

There are warts in fanon. I've been annoyed by the number of fics that have Ranma living in Nermia, for instance, and the ones where all the female characters are bisexual and promiscuous. Bad habits, bad spelling, and peculiar grammar can breed just as actively as the good stuff. But it's easy enough to find authors you like, and most search filters let you filter things out as well as in. And as a number of you have pointed out, when you get tired of it you can stop reading it. You didn't pay for it, so it won't cost you to drop it.