Revamped Favourite (MSTings)
Nov. 30th, 2025 06:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWhile asking myself “what can I post about here next?” I happened to think of a project creeping towards completion, and pushed to finish it at last just so I could mention it. After revamping my home page last year (but well over “a year” ago when counting in months), my thoughts had turned to a sub-page where I’d talked up “some of my favourite MSTings.” Aware of all the time that had passed since I made that page and the links that had “rotted” in that time, I decided to revamp it. Rewriting my descriptions was a slow process, though; I suppose I was thinking they would have to “stick around” in a way these posts don’t quite have to.
Thoughts of adding a few MSTings to my “selection of favourites” did turn up. Along with having found increased amusement in the relatively early group work “Does God Love You?”, I did sort of want to acknowledge that long-running saga, “the Marrissa MSTings,” myself. My attention having settled on a late work from it some time ago somehow got my attention, but there I’m conscious of not having liked a certain story everyone else kept dwelling on, where Marrissa travels in time back to the 1990s to ensure the Star Trek universe comes to pass so as to keep rampaging through it. I have to admit to finding the cockeyed optimism of Stephen Ratliff, the author of the original stories, more appealing in general than the swift and certain cynicism the “riffing” responded with.
I did wonder about removing “BGC OVA” as not quite as significant as anything else, but when I took another look at that MSTing I did start thinking it was a brief yet amusing poke at “the overpowered ‘original’ male character who invites himself into an established story to solve everyone’s problem and romance at least one established female character.” Of course, save for “brief” this also describes Neon Exodus Evangelion, for which I went to the point of making all of the MSTings leading up to my particular pick available as well. I even contemplated how, through a search for an altogether different idea, I’d run across something vaguely like a MSTing that pressed on mocking its way through the entire bulk of “NXE”; the only problem there was that I have to admit to remember having disagreed with every one of the frequently expressed opinions about everything except for the fanfic itself, and the forum where I found it eventually closed down (although I did draw the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine’s attention to it before then...)
I also grappled for a little while with whether I should still include “The Eye of Argon.” The MSTing Canon made a point of it as “an ideal introductory MSTing,” but along with that possible sense of duplicated effort I was conscious of some complaints about how, now that we know the author of the story Jim Theis was a teenager when he wrote it, it’s somehow “too mean” to make fun of it. As I wondered about the other MSTings Adam Cadre had written as potential replacements, though, I looked back at a “deep dive” into the record of Jim Theis over the years and saw a suggestion he hadn’t been as hurt by the early amusement as other suggestions would make it.
Knocking the HTML and CSS into place took less time than writing the plain text had; as I said, I was intent on finishing by a deadline. I’m conscious my CSS might not be all that impressive under the hood, but beyond that I am wondering how long my home page will stand the way it is now.
Thoughts of adding a few MSTings to my “selection of favourites” did turn up. Along with having found increased amusement in the relatively early group work “Does God Love You?”, I did sort of want to acknowledge that long-running saga, “the Marrissa MSTings,” myself. My attention having settled on a late work from it some time ago somehow got my attention, but there I’m conscious of not having liked a certain story everyone else kept dwelling on, where Marrissa travels in time back to the 1990s to ensure the Star Trek universe comes to pass so as to keep rampaging through it. I have to admit to finding the cockeyed optimism of Stephen Ratliff, the author of the original stories, more appealing in general than the swift and certain cynicism the “riffing” responded with.
I did wonder about removing “BGC OVA” as not quite as significant as anything else, but when I took another look at that MSTing I did start thinking it was a brief yet amusing poke at “the overpowered ‘original’ male character who invites himself into an established story to solve everyone’s problem and romance at least one established female character.” Of course, save for “brief” this also describes Neon Exodus Evangelion, for which I went to the point of making all of the MSTings leading up to my particular pick available as well. I even contemplated how, through a search for an altogether different idea, I’d run across something vaguely like a MSTing that pressed on mocking its way through the entire bulk of “NXE”; the only problem there was that I have to admit to remember having disagreed with every one of the frequently expressed opinions about everything except for the fanfic itself, and the forum where I found it eventually closed down (although I did draw the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine’s attention to it before then...)
I also grappled for a little while with whether I should still include “The Eye of Argon.” The MSTing Canon made a point of it as “an ideal introductory MSTing,” but along with that possible sense of duplicated effort I was conscious of some complaints about how, now that we know the author of the story Jim Theis was a teenager when he wrote it, it’s somehow “too mean” to make fun of it. As I wondered about the other MSTings Adam Cadre had written as potential replacements, though, I looked back at a “deep dive” into the record of Jim Theis over the years and saw a suggestion he hadn’t been as hurt by the early amusement as other suggestions would make it.
Knocking the HTML and CSS into place took less time than writing the plain text had; as I said, I was intent on finishing by a deadline. I’m conscious my CSS might not be all that impressive under the hood, but beyond that I am wondering how long my home page will stand the way it is now.