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krpalmerEvery so often I get to thinking I should be reading more fiction I haven't read before; I can feel bad wondering if I'm just plain "intimidated" by literature, and melancholy that I don't even keep up with recent "genre" works. It took somehow or other overhearing a long-unfinished "fanfiction" series had been completed at last to remind me my reading habits there had fallen off as well from the days when, after much anticipation, I first got online and, in those text-heavy "dialup" days, fanfiction was one thing I sought out. It's easy enough to come up with reasons why: I can wonder if back then stories based on visual works were somehow a "substitute for the real thing" that nowadays I can easily afford, and also if, glutted with DVDs, I prefer not to get engaged with stories to the point of seeking out the developed thoughts of others in part because I suffer from "suspicions" about fandom "losing track of enjoying what they started off interested in." I suppose I could also admit MSTings had something to do with it; thinking back, it seemed easy enough to develop or even share in a superiority complex where we enlightened few saw right through the half-tossed word salad of everyone else. As much as I lament the atomisation of the "MSTing community" (even as I wonder if there are pockets of "snarkiness" hidden within multiple fandoms), I do want to think my perspective's become a little broader and perhaps even a little more self-aware (even if I've also perhaps decided my interest in Mystery Science Theater 3000 isn't a matter of "mocking (just about) everything.") As well, as I alluded to, just the number of extended works their writers seemed to lose interest in before I did might have had something to do with it.
The work I actually saw finished after a span of years, though, brought me back to days of reading Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfiction. One particular "crossover" (or perhaps "fusion") replaced the much-debated Judeo-Christian allusions with the "cosmic horror" of the "mythos" built up around the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, and as I read through John Biles and RPM's "Children of an Elder God," things seemed to pick up from a perhaps bland and uninvolved beginning, starting to carry some genuine impact that might even amount to "horror." Along the way, I also managed to move beyond a mere general cultural awareness of Lovecraft's work to actually reading it, which helped to knit together parts of the work that didn't just amount to "monsters from beyond." I suppose, too, deciding the introduction-writer of many of the anthologies I was picking up was promoting Lovecraft as a serious writer crafting postmodern tales of futility and despair, and then resolving to take that with a grain of salt, might have kept my interest in both the original and the derivative work not that complicated. When things tailed off very close to the obvious final confrontation, though, I might have just filed it away... until I heard about the completion. As aware as I am of "the weight of expectations built up over time," in the end rereading the whole work and at last finishing it worked for me.
I do have to acknowledge there are differences in the characters between the actual anime and this story (and only some of them seem to amount to "troubling effect"), which I can see being a problem for some; every so often I wonder about how much of the whole "Evangelion fandom" "faces hard facts." However, they seem acknowledged in some certain way as differences; I don't have a sense that "reinterpretations" are being "passed off as genuine." Too, after seeing more than a few MSTings of stories where ridiculous lengths were taken, my standards may have stretched a bit. After it was all done, I even "engaged with the larger fandom" a bit and found a few recommendations. Whether this will grow into anything extended I'm not sure yet, but it's at least been a fresh slice of something like nostalgia.
The work I actually saw finished after a span of years, though, brought me back to days of reading Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfiction. One particular "crossover" (or perhaps "fusion") replaced the much-debated Judeo-Christian allusions with the "cosmic horror" of the "mythos" built up around the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, and as I read through John Biles and RPM's "Children of an Elder God," things seemed to pick up from a perhaps bland and uninvolved beginning, starting to carry some genuine impact that might even amount to "horror." Along the way, I also managed to move beyond a mere general cultural awareness of Lovecraft's work to actually reading it, which helped to knit together parts of the work that didn't just amount to "monsters from beyond." I suppose, too, deciding the introduction-writer of many of the anthologies I was picking up was promoting Lovecraft as a serious writer crafting postmodern tales of futility and despair, and then resolving to take that with a grain of salt, might have kept my interest in both the original and the derivative work not that complicated. When things tailed off very close to the obvious final confrontation, though, I might have just filed it away... until I heard about the completion. As aware as I am of "the weight of expectations built up over time," in the end rereading the whole work and at last finishing it worked for me.
I do have to acknowledge there are differences in the characters between the actual anime and this story (and only some of them seem to amount to "troubling effect"), which I can see being a problem for some; every so often I wonder about how much of the whole "Evangelion fandom" "faces hard facts." However, they seem acknowledged in some certain way as differences; I don't have a sense that "reinterpretations" are being "passed off as genuine." Too, after seeing more than a few MSTings of stories where ridiculous lengths were taken, my standards may have stretched a bit. After it was all done, I even "engaged with the larger fandom" a bit and found a few recommendations. Whether this will grow into anything extended I'm not sure yet, but it's at least been a fresh slice of something like nostalgia.