General nonsense

[birdsofshore]

Happy Friday! I have things to discuss.

~~ snowgall, this made me think of you. A study (with bar charts! pie charts! all sorts of charts!) of "aggressive actions" in the HP series, book by book and character by character. Aggressive actions statistics. Can anyone draw any conclusions from this? I wasn't really sure what to make of it, except to marvel at the work that must have gone into it.

~~ I'm going to see James McAvoy in this tomorrow, and to have lunch with who_la_hoop. As you can imagine, I'm pretty excited. I mean, how could I not be. Lunch with who_la! \o/

I'm also fairly pleased about Mr McAvoy. ;) OK, this is embarrassing; I didn't know he was Scottish until yesterday. Why does nobody ever tell me these things?

~~ The very clever catch_life translated some of my fics into Russian for a translation battle. I can't read a word of them, but they look awfully pretty. Here are some links: At Tales told by Severus Snape and on fanfics.me, links 1, 2, 3 and 4. I don't know which is which, but the stories translated were What Potter Wants, This Monstrous Need, This Unstoppable Thirst and One Prick Away from Heaven. Mr Birds put the translation of the last one through Google translate and the title came out as One False Move and You're in Paradise, which both amused and pleased me. I'd imagine things like double meanings must be the worst to translate.

I find the idea of the translation battle really interesting. I don't know any details of how it works but I love the idea of it anyway! Can anyone tell us more details about how such a thing is run?

~~And finally, Steven Moffat has some interesting things to say about fanfiction:

What’s the best or funniest piece of Sherlock fan fiction or fan art you’ve seen?

I don’t know the funniest. There’s been some eye-watering stuff of Benedict and Martin together. A load of it has been superb. There’s a tendency to disparage it. I don’t agree. Even the slash fiction, that’s a great way to learn to work. No one really does three-act structure, but just trying to put words that make somebody else turned on, that’s going to teach you more about writing than any writing college you can go to. It’s creative and exciting. I refuse to mock it—because I’m a man who writes Sherlock Holmes fan fiction for a living!

More from Moffat, including lots of teasers about series 4, here.

Comments

[digthewriter]

cool stuff

[birdsofshore]

:)

[lightofdaye]

-gah. stats! Impressively done but weekend is time not to be thinking.

-He's scottish?! Wait, I probably new that. Charles Xavier: Starts scottish and ends up being from yorkshire. That link leads to googlemail though.

-I'm surprised. Moffat actually has his head screwed on properly in that respect. Even if I don't like his writing much anymore.

[birdsofshore]

Eek, thanks for spotting my link fail. Don't post when you're tired, is the moral. Think that was some photos of my kids' art group?

I think fanfic is accepted now in a way it wasn't even 5 years ago. I would suspect Moffat of saying what he thinks the fans want to hear, except he clearly has thought about it at least a little bit, and I really liked the suggestion that trying to make your erotic writing effective was a good way of learning writing skills in general!

[catch-life.livejournal.com]

Oh my... I am so flattered and pleased that you gave links to the translations at your livejournal :) I hope the translations do justice to the witty originals! At least I tried...
I nearly broke my head over the title "One Prick Away From Heaven"! But we have an idiom in Russian "one false move - and you are a father" (do you have something similar in English?), so I incorporated it into the title to give it a kind of a salty flair, in the loving memory of the word "prick" with its double meaning :)
The battle was not a translators' battle specifically, it was one of the big Russian multifandom games. They are called "fandom battles" and take place on the Russian site diary.ru twice a year. There is a big summer fandom battle, when fandoms compete, and a smaller winter temporary fandom battle, when small teams can be formed on different principles. There were 8 teams of the Harry Potter fandom this winter (Weasley, Snape, Lucius Malfoy, Dramione, Snager, Marauders, Death Eaters and Drarry) and I participated in the Drarry team. All the works at the battles are presented anonymously, Russian texts and translations together, and readers comment and vote. I had a lot of lovely comments under the translations, and I want to thank you one more time for your lovely work!

[birdsofshore]

Ah, thanks, I was hoping you might give us some more details on the battle! So how does voting work? Do the more popular pairings not get an unfair advantage?

We don't have an idiom like that which I can think of, no. I can only imagine the headaches that title would cause, but I liked your solution.

You're really most welcome. I was excited to think of my stories being transformed like that!

[alisanne.livejournal.com]

Hm. I wonder if Moffat is aware that most fanfic is written by women?

James McAvoy is delish. Do lick him for me. *g*

Congrats on the translations! Very exciting. :)

[lightofdaye]

Hm. I wonder if Moffat is aware that most fanfic is written by women?
Would that make a difference to his views, do you think?

[birdsofshore]

Do lick him for me

I will give it my best shot. Not sure if we're near enough the stage but never say never. *Practises tongue calisthenics* Last time we were at this theatre we saw Martin Freeman, and Amanda Abbingdon walked past us on the way to the loo! Well, so who_la says. I was looking the other way. *sigh*

[gryffindorj.livejournal.com]

The quote was amazing. I love it. Reminds me of Joss Whedon.

I want to study the charts and such but it's too late in the day and week for my brain to work.

[birdsofshore]

Yes, I think we're all feeling a little exhausted by the charts!

[brunettepet.livejournal.com]

Those statistics took a lot of procrastination!

That play looks fantastic.

It's cool your work has been translated!

Sometimes Moffat gets it right.

[birdsofshore]

I dread to think how long the stats must have taken. Seriously.

[fantasyfiend09.livejournal.com]

I feel like the main thing I got from the statistics is that the character who pov the books are from (and the people he spends the most time with) will get the biggest number. If the books were from Voldie's pov, I think the statistics would be radically different.

Have fun with Who-la and Mr. McAvoy! He's managing to look rather rugged these days, but I always remember him in Bright Young Things and he was just so ... pretty. Amazing actor, too, so I imagine it will be grand.

Moffat is awesome! Even more reason to love him!

[birdsofshore]

I completely agree about the stats. That was all I could come up with, myself. I did really like their point about Hermione suddenly becoming a real force in DH, though. I'm sure there's some other useful trends in there, too.

[torino10154]

Ooo, have a lovely lunch with Who_La and give her a big pic of Nicholas Cage smooch from me.

I have no opinion whatsoever about Moffat to know what he ~means by that quote but it does sound positive to me!

[birdsofshore]

Seeing who_la was the best, but lunch itself was a bit weird... I had some pasta filled with beetroot which managed to have the consistency of partly-cooked fried egg yolk, and it perturbed me greatly. Sorry to be weirdly specific, LOL. I just thought you'd like to know ;)

Edited to fix typo. Partly-cooked friend eggs would be even stranger O_o

[nearlyconscious.livejournal.com]

So cool about the translations! Indeed, so many things are hard to translate... I mean it's already the case from English to French and we do have some common roots/words, so I can't imagine how hard it would be in Russian. Happy to know more people will be able to read your stuff!!
Hey, that might be the first thing I hear from Moffat that I'm actually pleased about.

[birdsofshore]

I can't imagine trying to translate all of my quirky sentences into another language. I'm amazed anyone even wanted to attempt it :D

[lijahlover.livejournal.com]

I do like Moffat and his regard for slash writers :)))))

[birdsofshore]

I sort of assumed he would just say that so as not to annoy the fans, but this suggested to me that he had given it some consideration, maybe. It's nice to see fandom featuring in the media and not getting mocked!

[snowgall]

Wow. That person has me beat for sure! But as much as I love statistics, charts, and graphs, this was...almost overkill? Like, I began to feel a bit swamped by it all and just sort of felt like it was too much to take in. But yeah, fellow nerd alert! Thanks for pointing me to it :) It makes me think I need to be a bit more sparing with my charts and graphs ♥

And sorry I didn't comment sooner - I spent most of the day in the car driving with my family to visit my parents. The US is a car country. Taking the train is rarely a viable option, sadly. We live in upstate NY and my parents live near Washington, DC, so it's about a 6 hour drive, plus or minus. But we're here now, and will have an extended weekend while the kids are on their spring break.

[birdsofshore]

Ah, I hope you have a great long weekend. What a drive - I hope you're not too tired.

Heh at fellow nerd alert. I thought it was only right to draw this person to your attention ;)

[cabinetcaligari.livejournal.com]

<3 Fridays, <3 statistics, <3 language and the art of translating a fic. I hope you have a wonderful day with who_la!
I'm not completely agreeing with Mr Moffat here I think, he doesn't do right to a lot of epic stories of novel-length, fans expanding the known fandom universe with brilliant inventions (like magical lore in HP), and the emotional depth of a lot of fics. But he does say what a lot of people think about fandom I guess, namely that it's all about the smut. I don't think that prejudice is gonna disappear in the near future.

[birdsofshore]

I think the great thing about fic is its flexibility and variation. So we have stories that are 100 words, and stories that are 200.000. The mix of genres is amazing, too. I doubt many people who have just stuck a toe in by idly googling one afternoon have a clue of the breadth and extent of what is produced by fans.

[capitu]

I have a couple of Russian people following my recs. In fact, just the other day someone re-posted one of my entries at the community. It's happened in the past and it makes me so curious as to see more of their fandom. :D

I've to look carefully at this aggressive action. Too early yet for they to make sense at this hour. ^^

Have fun today! Give James McAvoy my best. LOL

<333

[birdsofshore]

I tried to give McAvoy your best, but I was too damn distracted by his intense hotness. SORRY.

I did give who_la a hug from you, though. Any excuse to give that woman a squeeze ;)

[zeitgeistic.livejournal.com]

sometimes steven moffat will say things that make me like him, and then i remember that he is largely a troll and then i feel conflicted.

[birdsofshore]

He does bring out conflicted feelings, I agree. I suspect that's what he likes to do most. Now I feel conflicted about feeling conflicted ;)