Ghost Soup Infidel Blue
Okay, so this fandom is remarkable in and of itself because it's for a non-existent property. It all started a few years ago when someone took a made-up fandom from a tutorial on how to write good request letters for Yuletide, and actually wrote a story in it. The tutorial used this fandom to show the ways things can go wrong, and made up some pretend bones of contention, and ever since, this fandom has been growing, with new bits of "canon" revealed each year, and more and more meta works. Comments are often fake flame wars. It's one of he most ridiculous things ever. This year's offerings include several pieces, including a collection of posts from the long dead Ghost Soup Infidel Blue forum (which is, naturally, full of trolls).
I've picked three things to share, none of which require any prior knowledge of the fandom (weirdly, prior knowledge is starting to become necessary for a lot of the GSIB stories these days). This is metafictional group story-telling at its silliest:
"Angst from the Id! Angst from the Subconscious!" -- This is the one that will give you an idea of "classic" GSIB fic, complete with terrible author notes left in brackets. The official summary reads, "Angela reconciles with her clone and then they both commiserate about how tragic their pasts are and then Luke finds out that Moira has been manipulating him and it ends in a Luke/Angela/Angela's Clone threesome." If you are not comfortable reading sex scenes, don't worry. The story cuts off before they actually get to that.
"The Raven King Does Yuletide" -- This one is a crossover with Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, in which the Raven King is tricksterishly controlling how people write GSIB stories. It is very short, and so recursively metafictional that my head is still spinning. Did you think Inception was hard to explain? Try explaining this to a complete stranger in one simple sentence!
"What's beyond rock bottom?" -- Okay, this is GSIB "RPF" (Real Person Fic), a translation of a very bitter Japanese article about the actors in an upcoming reboot of the Ghost Soup franchise. One of them is played by Martin Freeman's character from Love Actually. You know, the sex scene body double guy, John? Yeah, him.
Next year, someone really needs to upload pages from the manga...
XKCD
"Bigger Than You Think" -- Like the Anglo-Saxon poem I mentioned in the last post, this one belongs in the "OMG, someone MADE THIS" file. This is an interactive text adventure about the giant, explorable XKCD comic, "Click and Drag".
Wicked Girls (album) - Seanan McGuire
"No Longer a Friend of Narnia" -- Susan's POV on why she eschewed all things Narnian. Fiercely poignant, much like the song that inspired it (if you want to hear this song in much better audio quality, go buy the album version; it's really worth it).
Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein
DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE READ THE BOOK! Spoilers like whoa. And this is one of those books where it's much more satisfying to learn the story as you read, I think.
"Guilt" -- After the events in the book, Isolde searches for answers. This is bitterly, horribly good. I do want Isolde to be a decent person, and somehow come through all right. This gives about as much hope as one might without losing the meat of the original story.
"Dream a Little Dream" -- Sweet femmeslash with dancing and kissing. If you really wanted to see the two main characters together, this is a nice little vignette, which keeps them both in character.
Elementary
I have only seen one episode of this show, but I love Lucy Liu as Watson. You don't need to know any more than that to appreciate this story:
"The Case of the Amazon Wishlist" -- The official summary reads, "Holmes sets out to discover what will best irritate his father; Watson helps." Gleefully malicious in the silliest way!
Black Books
"Moving In" -- Bernard's arrival at the shop from Fran's POV. Perfectly in keeping with the show.
Community
"Hiatus" -- Troy and Abed talk about hiatus limbo. Very short. Very cute.
"Scenes from the Darkest Timeline" -- In the darkest timeline, Dean Pelton finally gets his wish. So horribly believable.
Literary RPF
"The Woman in White with the Knife" -- Emily Dickinson, Vampire Slayer. Five tiny chapters, based on her poems, and brilliant in their compactness.
Clueless (1995)
"The Best Blessings of Existence" -- Cher throws a baby shower for Ms. Geist. Perfect Cher voice. Hilarious. Sample: "Ms. Geist wants to use cloth diapers, so I got her a bunch of really nice ones, made out of a really great Italian silk."
AO3 Tags / Meta - Fandom
"Somebody had to write this (so why not me?)" -- Poem, composed entirely of tags people have used to label their works in the fanfiction archive, about how people think and talk about what they write. Someone once called something I wrote "annoyingly meta and self-aware". That person should never ever read this (but maybe you should?).
Comments
And now someone has rec'd The Woman in White with the Knife, which makes me SO happy, because it SO deserves to be rec'd! Thank you! I'm glad you found it and liked it also.