What The Van Hellsing Were You Thinking?
Actually, this little bit of nowhere has nothing to do with the movie, or my thoughts on it. I just thought it was a cool line, and needed to use it somewhere before I forgot it, and deprived the public of thinking, "That's such a stupid pun, it's almost clever."
I stress the
almost.
It feels like ages since I've had anything appearing in my little bit of nowhere. Mostly because it has been ages. You only feel as far behind as you really are, I suppose.
Not that I have absolutely no excuse for this being so empty as of recent. It has nothing to do with me mistaking a bout of laziness with mono. It does, however, have everything to do with the Confic for Anime North 2004.
For those of you who are unaware (and that's probably, oh, two of you), the Confic is just that: a piece of written fanfiction made exclusively for being read aloud at a convention. The process unto itself is tricky, considering you can't just read a story outloud like you would a book to a child you're tucking into bed.
I've discovered through 3 previous years of trials & tweakings that a loose screenplay format is what works, and the more visual the gags, the better. Of course, the dialogue is where I tend to excel, so that makes it easier to create visual gags without requiring a lot of fancy props and background scenery.
Adding to the overall complication of this project has been the chosen presentation. Our second Confic featured a story styled after the "Choose Your Own Adventure" format, where randomly-chosen audience members could, at a critical junction in the story, pick from a list of options what a character was going to do next.
As far as I know, I'm the only Anime fanfiction author to have ever attempted such a thing. Hell, I may be the first fanfiction author, period, to ever attempt such a thing for a second time. The first "Choose Your Own Disaster Fic" (if you know how inept the characters in the story are, you'll understand the 'disaster' part) had its problems. Especially with regards to the flow of the story and how long it would take for the audience to navigate their way through all the possible scenarios from beginning to an end.
This time around I hope we've managed to get rid of most of the glitches that plagued the first Disasterfic. There is a side-effect, however. A notable one. Namely the size of the story itself. I can only sigh and finally agree with many of my friends that I "don't know how to write anything small."
About 2 weeks ago, Kevin & I were absolutely proud to have finished a large outline for the "choose your own adventure"-styled fanfic that has 6 sprawling major arcs. It then occured to us that we were subsequently left with 3 weeks before the convention, so perhaps now was a good time start writing the actual story.
2 weeks and 211 pages later, there is a Confic. It's big. It's mean. It ideally makes sense in some deranged way. And in order to get it finished in time for Anime North, we had to axe two of the six major arcs, and a bunch of extra scenes & characters for time's sake.
Between working the usual 5 days a week, sitting at home frantically writing various parts of the Confic, sitting at Kevin's place frantically writing large parts of the Confic, and running around on every day off I've had for the last month (be it to Oshawa, Toronto or Stratford), I personally am amazed I'm still alive. And coherent.
Well...alive, at any rate.
So if you've been wondering just where the Van Hellsing I've been (say, I found a use for that line in this blog after all!), that's the long of it. As it's been already mentioned, I can't write small.
Aaaand in the midst of it all, while I was gone Blogger decided to mutate. Or upgrade. One of the two. It's a new look, a new way of posting, and ultimately a new headache as I engage it in mortal combat over whether or not this will get posted.
If you're reading this, you'll know I arose victorious. If I failed...you'll never know anyways, and your ignorance is my bliss.
Today's Shameless Pimping: Anime North 2004. May 21-23. Toronto. There's going to be a Confic. Be there for it. Please?
http://www.animenorth.com/index.html
posted by Phillip at 7:04 PM
