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A New Canon (Listing)
Jul. 30th, 2021 05:48 pmAs my first benefit for chipping into the “revive the revival” Mystery Science Theater 3000 Kickstarter, I was sent an invitation to a new message board. It took me a little while to get around to completing my signup, but once I had some measure of nostalgia had me looking straight off for threads that might reference those antique fanworks of the series, MSTings.
There was indeed a thread on that subject, and along with happening to link to my minimalistic web site concatenating links to the MSTings that had been posted to Usenet, I noticed a site I hadn’t known about before called “The MSTing Canon.” In a brief compass, it sets out to introduce you to the subject (with “The Eye of Argon,” a work I’ve also thought would work well there even if its ever so slightly ominous conclusion leads on to the rest of Adam Cadre’s MSTings) and run through its decade-long history, with special emphasis on “the Marrissa MSTings.” While not all of my own personal favorites wound up included, that just proves the field is broad enough for interesting variations. Two group MSTings I contributed to did just happen to show up, anyway.
The person who put the site together has even written a new MSTing, in which Jonah and the bots “riff” on “My Immortal,” theoretically a Harry Potter fanfic. I recall having heard about the story back when I read the books to see what a good number of the positive Star Wars fans I’d fallen in with at last were also talking about, and diving into the MSTing now I realised I had looked at a work trying to be a deliberate parody of the source (although, of course, that’s a tricky thing to do with a poorly written story). It was a bit invigorating to discover I’m not alone in remembering MSTings, even if I can’t ask for much more; having got out of whatever habit of reading fanfiction I had, I’m not quite in a position to keep turning out MSTings of my own.
There was indeed a thread on that subject, and along with happening to link to my minimalistic web site concatenating links to the MSTings that had been posted to Usenet, I noticed a site I hadn’t known about before called “The MSTing Canon.” In a brief compass, it sets out to introduce you to the subject (with “The Eye of Argon,” a work I’ve also thought would work well there even if its ever so slightly ominous conclusion leads on to the rest of Adam Cadre’s MSTings) and run through its decade-long history, with special emphasis on “the Marrissa MSTings.” While not all of my own personal favorites wound up included, that just proves the field is broad enough for interesting variations. Two group MSTings I contributed to did just happen to show up, anyway.
The person who put the site together has even written a new MSTing, in which Jonah and the bots “riff” on “My Immortal,” theoretically a Harry Potter fanfic. I recall having heard about the story back when I read the books to see what a good number of the positive Star Wars fans I’d fallen in with at last were also talking about, and diving into the MSTing now I realised I had looked at a work trying to be a deliberate parody of the source (although, of course, that’s a tricky thing to do with a poorly written story). It was a bit invigorating to discover I’m not alone in remembering MSTings, even if I can’t ask for much more; having got out of whatever habit of reading fanfiction I had, I’m not quite in a position to keep turning out MSTings of my own.