melannen | Things I Have Learned Recently

Things I Have Learned Recently

1. I am never, ever going to be the next hot mashup artist, because none of the songs I want to mash up have acapella (or karaoke) tracks available. I mean I can understand Spike Jones or the Original Broadway Soundtrack of The Sound of Music not having any, but surely They Might Be Giants acapellas are out there somewhere?

1a. For some reason all my Homestuck fic bunnies now come with bonus mashup ideas.

1b. Why don't people do fannish mashups, anyway?

2. There's a small kinkmeme I'm reading where I've sworn to feedback every story (not hard, they are all really good), and I have learned that if my feedback options are a) leave a one-sentence anon comment after reading, or b) find the link to the AO3 repost, log in to AO3, navigate back to fic, scroll down to the kudos button, leave kudos, navigte back to kinkmeme, my brain still thinks that b) is easier.

3. I really need to stop reading Homestuck fic because now when I read fic in any other fandom and a character goes all angsty about how their love interest will never reciprocate because it's just pity, I can't understand why they would be upset...

4. Something in my head is unable to understand Clint/Coulson fic, because it keeps going "why would you write about two extremely minor male characters when you could have Darcy in your story instead?"

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re: 4, SO MUCH YES. There's a Clint/Coulson story that's been hanging around on the Pinboard popular fandom page for AGES and I keep on just being completely uninterested in reading it. DARCYYYYY.

YES. I mean, Clint is awesome, Coulson is awesome, their canon interaction is amusingly snarky, I read lots of other Marvel pairings without blinking, but for some reason I look at Clint/Coulson and all I can think is "BUT WHERE IS THE DARCY???"

#2 That is an admirable goal! And also, oh, your brain. Sometimes our brains have very creative ideas about what is and isn't easy. XD

Also 1b I wonder if there's someplace where people do, tbh! Especially given how multimedia HS fandom's creative output is. I have no idea where one would look, though.

I don't know! There are definitely mashups with fannish content/sensibilities (I have a small collection of mashups with Doctor Who sounds incorporated, for example), and there's been some stuff that involves editing spoken dialog from the show into remixes, etc., sometimes distributed through filk channels (and of course there's filk itself). But none of them seem to come through what I think of as mainstream fannish channels.

And there have been well-known fanvids done to other folks' mashups, and vidders do a fair amount of audio editing sometimes, And of course to some extent the vast majority of mashups are fannish in one way or another. But I don't really know of any in the sense that I am thinking about them, that of "this song totally speaks to this pairing/character/fandom/fic! And so does this one! And if you combine them you can make it perfectly and explicitly about this thing!"

But and it seems (to me) like mashups get to combine some of the best bits of vidding & fanmixes & filk & songfic, so why aren't there more?

(I once combined Vera Lynn's "There'll always be an England" ripped from the opening of the Sex Pistols' tour DVD, + the Sex Pistols' voiceovers, with the theme from Torchwood, to make a theme song for the fic I was working on, but I was only doing it because I couldn't find any interesting covers of the song, and I didn't even realize that was what I was doing until it was pretty much finished.)

I find Clint/Coulson vaguely appealing and am pretty amused that there is just so much of it considering the popularity of the characters, but your point is very compelling. I would like ALLLL the Darcy in fic, svp.

I don't *object* to Clint/Coulson, I have written a story with lots of Clint and Coulson myself! And it is totally the sort of thing a fandom for a movie that isn't out yet would fall for, but just, DARRRCY, why am I reading that when there could be DARRRCY.

Speaking from my limited mashing up experience (unsuccessful and not posted to the internet) - you don't have to work from karaoke tracks. You just isolate and remove of the higher frequency (vocal) bits and use the lower frequency parts. I don't remember if it's that easy to do in Audacity, but when I was using Adobe Audition it was a cakewalk. (I found Audition to be really annoying, though, so don't recommend.)

There's a way to get rid of the vocals in Audacity which is fairly easy, I've messed around with it a bit, but it depends on the fact that the vocals were a) originally recorded in a separate track, and b) mixed into the instrumentals exactly in the middle between the left and right stereo tracks.

This works reasonably well on most tracks that are mixed that way! But the older, and less pop/electronic mainstream, the track is, the less likely it seems to work. (most obvious: if it wasn't recorded in stereo or with multitracking, that ain't gonna work, which means to start with almost nothing recorded before 1960. Of course if it wasn't recorded with multitracking there aren't going to be surviving acapellas anyway, hence my dilemma.) Most TMBG vocals seem to be slightly off-center, which means you can get rid of *most* of the vocal, but not all of it, that way. And you can't do the reverse and erase the instrumentals and only leave vocals, though it seems like you should be able to.

Is there a way to do it using only frequencies? It would be awesome if there was...

Someday I will do the mashup of Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Kind of Life" and Counting Crows "St Robinson In His Cadillac Dream" that my ex-gf earwormed me into. I can't hear St Robinson without singing Semi-Charmed Kind of Life over the chorus anymore. It works too well.

I support this idea!

...of course my memory for tunes is such that half the time I end up doing things like that without realizing it. I spent much of 1997 involuntarily singing "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" over "My Heart Will Go On" every time I walked into a public space ...which for the record is the mashup from hell.

Surely someone has written that threesome?

You know, I don't think they have! Which is odd.

Not tagged on AO3, anyway. Bizarre. Get on that, Avengers fandom!

None on AO3, and AO3 has spoiled me so that I'm disinclined to try looking any harder... Although AO3 *does* have some Clint/Coulson/Natasha and Coulson/Darcy on offer, I may have to dip into that...

Re: (1)... you could do a lot of mashups of "O Do Not Forsake Me?" But somehow I think that was not what you meant about TMBG a cappella.

Well, there are the acapella-only tracks, but I do want to mash up some of the others too. :P

Totally agree about #4. Every story becomes 100% more awesome if there's Darcy in it.

Testify.

4. Something in my head is unable to understand Clint/Coulson fic, because it keeps going "why would you write about two extremely minor male characters when you could have Darcy in your story instead?"

As someone who has been reading ALL OF THE COULSON fic... okay, I have never actually seen Thor, and I'm not sure I'll ever get around to watching it (a friend who died was really looking forward to it and died before it came out, plus I have heard it's not that good -- a bad combination). And after discovering the character through reading Avengers fic and looking him up, I was able to dredge up the memory of Coulson from the Iron Man movies, which I have seen... and okay, I probably will not watch the Avengers, and it took me two days to get through Captain America (this speaks to how good the movie is, that I did end up finishing it. Usually when I go "oh my god I can't keep watching, humiliation squick", I never come back), and I am not exactly invested in these fandoms as movies, I am invested for the fic...

All that said (basically: I am here for the fic, what is this canon everyone talks about?): Coulson is My Kind Of Character. I have a type. I have a very specific type, and Coulson hits it. He is the guy in the corner, the really competant one, also sort of a crossover with my other type of The One Who Gets Left (as opposed to: The One Who Leaves, which are the heroes, the adventurers, etc), the background snarker, etc. He is my type!

And with Clint... I dunno. Because that's who he gets slashed with?

Also, the point about being minor: that's a selling point for me. I always fall in love with a minor character. And that's also a crossover with my Type: the really competant people? The people who get left? Are not the heroes. They are not the ones the story is about. And I want all the stories about them, so clearly I have to write them/seak them out in fic and squee because someone is writing the story that I wish the actual story (i.e. canon) had been about. And alas it wasn't, because we are never getting a 2 hour movie/400 page book about them.

I agree with everything in this comment! (I, too, have written the fic that is All About Coulson Being Awesome.)

And yet somehow my brain still goes "But it could have Darcy in it, you know." This is why I am puzzled.

(If you haven't experienced Darcy yet, you should find some fic with lots of Darcy in it. Lots of it is pretty heavy on the Thor canon, but to be honest, all you need to know about Thor canon is a) Jane and Darcy are women! Who are friends! And also smart! And these things are more important than any of the men in their story! b) Thor and Loki have major daddy issues and UST-ish sexual tension; Thor is the buff blonde one who hits things and Loki is the skinny dark one who manipulates people; and c) Clint and Coulson have a scene together in which there is snarky fondness.)

I have seen Darcy! She seems snarky competant and smart and pwns with science. I think I read one where she is with Loki and it was awesome? I got confused about Darcy early on, confusing her with XMFC (I think?) when I'd been told there was an awesome female character who got killed off in a red-shirt way to prove that the situation is so dangerous we'll kill a woman, so somewhere I got confused, and got the idea that Darcy died, oops.

And being Coulson/Clint does not mean that Darcy cannot be awesome in it. Like this one.

Do you have recs? I try to avoid really canon-heavy fics that require canon knowledge, which I do not have, but I've found that if the deep-in-the-guts-of-canon fic is well-written enough, you don't need to know more than the absolute basics about canon to follow along. (Those types of fics are also the sort where you go: why can't canon be as good as the fic? and weep.)

Oooh, I had not seen that one! Must go read. (Yeah, the Clint/Coulson this really applies mostly to are the ones that don't have much TEAM in them, if they have TEAM in them I'll read them regardless.)

Thor is the superhero movie this summer that did right by its female characters! ...completely unlike XMFC, I can see how confusing them would give the wrong impression.

I don't actually read too deeply in this fandom, but really you could do worse than starting at the top of the Clint/Darcy by hits page on AO3 and working your way down, as long as you don't mind a lot of Clint. (If you mind a lot of Clint, you might have trouble with Darcy fic.)

Also there's The One In Which Darcy Lewis Punches Captain America's V-Card, which is widely rec'd for a reason.

Thanks. :) I do not know what a v-card is, but I shall soon find out. ;)

Oh, and sort of an amazing thing about the TEAM thing: I get it! I get the team thing! This is amazing and awesome, because the other TEAM fandoms like SGA, I do not get it at all. Which is a shame. :( But I totally get it for the Avengers, which is yay. ♥ They are a team! They fight crime! They live together! Depending on who the writer is, different people are sleeping with each other! They get along! Together, they fight crime! I totally get it!

Edited 2012-03-12 00:22 (UTC)

I will give you a hint: it has nothing to do with war rationing!

And I get more TEAM with some fandoms than others, but *definitely* with Avengers. I think with SGA, I *wanted* to go all TEAM with it, but the show never really showed it (even SG1 - maybe it's partly the exgencies of series television - the team were absolutely bonded and I ate team!fic with a spoon, but, at least onscreen, it wasn't really like the Avengers, a sprawling cuddly family where once you're in, you're in for life, and so are all your friends and relations too...

I think with SGA, I *wanted* to go all TEAM with it, but the show never really showed it

Yay, not just me. I didn't watch all that much of canon -- 2.5 season? about that? -- so I'm never sure if it's not just that I missed the episode with a lot of TEAM feeling.

Also, and I wonder if this might have something to do with SG1 -- it's the issue that there's a military structure. SGA less so, but I loved Ford, so just handwave it: but TEAM, to me, seems like it might require a certain equality between the team members. It's the "we're all in this together" feeling, and that gets a little weird when you have that inside a military hierarchy where people are on different levels. Like, if they were all privates or all sergeants or all captains, that would be one thing. But you have O'Neill and Carter, and O'Neill's her commanding officer. And John Sheppard is the military commander of the entire base, and for all he's laid back, there is a certain heirarchy there. It's less of a puppy pile when you're calling someone Sir, y'know?

But this might just be me, and I haven't spent too long thinking that over. Hmm. There's the Fellowship, which certainly has hiearchies, but otoh, there is a sense of "we're all in this together to achieve that big goal", so there's that, so even with the tensions and the ring factors, they were united in the same goal and were getting there togther, with everyone's expeirence and expertise being valid and important... sort of. I used to have all the thoughts about Aragorn and Boromir's interactions and how Boromir basically chanced into being in Rivendell at the right time, he wasn't exactly invited, but even then, it's conflict that's somehow outside of it. It's not conflict about the main thing, it's conflict about something else that's occuring while they are all united. So we all have goal X, but meanwhile, we're still going ot argue about A, B, C, and Minas Tirith.

Clint/Coulson seems like a 'two white dudes' pairing to me (not I don't ship several combos of white dudes myself etc etc), but that could be because I have no interest in either.

It does seem very much a reaction to all the Steve/Tony but I read it because it's, er, not Steve/Tony.

I totally understand that reaction! I feel like I should feel the same way! But... you know, you could be reading something with Darcy in it instead... :P

I have read all the Darcy fic! I check the tag like every day. I have even ventured into the horrible stuff, but only so far because I have my limits. So I branch out. I would really, really like someone to write that threesome though.

Ah, see, when I run out of Darcy fic, (and Steve/Tony that actually looks interesting, and anything with Loki or Fury or Pepper or Rhodey in it, and gen teamfic, and...) I look at the Clint/Coulson, get two paragraphs in, and then decide to move on to a different fandom for a bit.

The benefits of being a total fannish butterfly!

My reading lately has been Avengers, Sherlock, Vampire Diaries, Sherlock, obscure fandom, Avengers, Avengers, obscure fandom, Vampire Diaries, Sherlock, etc. etc. Sometimes I get whiplash.

Mine lately is Avengers, Homestuck, Sherlock, Avengers, random other fandom, Homestuck, Homestuck, Avengers, Sherlock, other fandom, etc. It is fun! Except when I can't find an "other" fandom with enough I want to read in it to occupy me until there is more good stuff posted in Homestuck or Avengers, lala. Then I usually have to fall back on watching canon for something.

Couldn't Cap/Thor be the reaction instead ;-;

IDK, I kind of adore Thor/Jane in those times that I have a whole lot of interest in Thor himself.

I approve of Cap/Thor! (And pretty much any other possible Avengers pairing, but... it's the Avengers.) I am still messing with a Thor/Jane, Don Blake/Loki fic sometimes...

Oooooooh, that would be very interesting to read.

It is totally a two white dudes pairing, and it took awhile for the fandom to even settle on a characterization for Clint, but hey, I too have read and enjoyed pairings like that, and both Clint and Coulson are characters I like and they do throw sparks in their one scene together. And yet! I just don't know why this one in particular is making me yearn for something, anything, else.

I haven't found that much Avengers fic I've liked, but I think not (currently) knowing much of the comics background might add to that. I have enjoyed quite a bit of Thor fic, but it's usually written by someone who's familiar with the comics and/or the myths, and so can add depth.

I understand your Darcy thing. My Coulson fic that will someday get posted is Coulson/Duty, because that's the only ship I care about with Coulson, but since I couldn't use Darcy or Pepper in the time period, I had to invent a snarky female character for him to bounce one-liners off. Coulson needs a Darcy-type foil.

I wonder if maybe that's my issue with Clint/Coulson, actually: they both need somebody to bounce things off of, which is fine when they're bouncing things off of each other, actually, but that doesn't really work anymore when they're secretly schmoopy boyfriends...

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Things I Have Learned Recently

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