Post-Reveals Remix Discussion

[cap_ironman_fe]

Now that our Steve/Tony Remix challenge is over and everyone has had a taste of what remixing fanworks means or can be like, we thought it might be interesting for our remixers and remixees and interested non-participants to have a place where they can talk about the remixes, the remixing processes and where everyone can share recs for well done remixes.

So tell us: What gave you your ideas? How did you go about remixing the works you chose and how did you choose them? What did surprise you in the remixes you saw? And what would you like to try if you get the chance to remix again? Have you learned anything while creating your remix or while looking at what the other creator's did, that you want to talk about?

Everyone is welcome to come in share their thoughts and discuss!

Comments

[teaberryblue.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOSH SO MUCH FIC CONGRATS EVERYONE ILU ALL.

I don't have anything really exciting to say yet, but this was SUCH an enjoyable event to participate in, thank you to the mods for making it go off without a hitch and for managing to arrange the main event AND the Madness, which was so much fun to do.

I wanted to remix EVERYONE <3

Sineala, thank you a TON for my amazing fic that I totally didn't guess was by you before they even went up, Muccamukk, thanks for signing up, it was a joy to read through a lot of your fic I hadn't read before and to remix your story!

I will probably say more later when I'm not at work! I would LOVE to talk to people about this!!!!

[muccamukk]

HI I LOVE YOU!

[sineala.livejournal.com]

that I totally didn't guess was by you before they even went up

To be fair, I was kind of wondering at what point "Hey, Sine has not once mentioned what she's writing!" was going to occur to you.

Clearly I needed a decoy remix. :)

[disco-pinecone.livejournal.com]

I NEED TO FLAIL AT YOU SOME MORE FOR THE AMAZING THAT WAS THE REMIX YOU DECIDED TO DESCEND FROM ON HIGH TO GIFT ME WITH OMG.

*ahem* I mean.

Err.

[navaan]

Glad you had fun!

I wanted to remix EVERYONE <3

That's why it's called Madness. XD This always happens to me.

[muccamukk]

I had such a fun time with this. I'm just so impressed by how much everyone wrote, and what creative, interesting directions the remixes went in.

I really liked the stories that took the same idea and changed the setting, like the kiss cam harry potter fic, and the Inception one that turned into a Noir one. It was fascinating to watch the changes between the fic, and what stayed the same.

Teaberryblue's remix of mine did that in a more amazing way than I'd ever have thought, which lead to long gushing comments, but seriously, it's so great.

I was so overwhelmed by who I got matched with (Sineala's a) great, b) prolific), that I actually got Valtyr to just pick something and tell me what to do. Because I was dithering for weeks otherwise, which is probably cheating, but eh.

[teaberryblue.livejournal.com]

I'm still completely entertained that I got you, you got Sineala, and Sineala got me. I still need to read yours!

<3 I'm still just so glad you liked it.

[sineala.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for writing for me, again! I had been really curious what my remixer was going to pick, because, uh, I have a lot of fic. And then you wrote something AMAZING, so. I may have basically been thrilled from the summary because Lower East Side! Yeah! Canon! Steve and Arnie!

Also, as the person who wrote Noir Inception, can I say that I am heartened by your support? I'd never done a remix before and pretty much all the remixes I had read had been basically POV swaps so I spent the time worried if I was allowed to do this or if I was changing too much for it to be a remix.

(I feel like I didn't set out to write Noir so much as it was more that Noir was the inevitable setting for my idea; I felt like Tea's original was about Tony going through Steve's imagined nostalgic dreamworld to bring him back to the present-day Avengers, and I thought, hey, what if I flip that? What if I make everything begin in the 40s? I KNOW A CANON FOR THAT. And then what if I make Steve's dreams be about the Avengers? So, uh, then I did that.)

[navaan]

Bahaha. I'm glad you had fun! I was thrilled when you signed up, because the Steve/Tony remix I wrote for you last year during the other Remix Madness was part of me catching the remix bug in the first place.

I don't think that letting someone else pick the story is cheating as long as our semi-anonymity is preserved. We had a whole discussion during BB about how things are always toeing the line with us not actually being that stealthy about our secret identities - and then we can still take each other by surprise during exchanges and remix. And I had such a hard time choosing a fic to remix and with more to choose from it just becomes an impossible task. XD

[veldeia.livejournal.com]

I was really anxious about the whole remix challenge, knowing how many talented people had signed up, but boy am I glad I did sign up, both for the main event and madness! I had a lot of fun writing the things I wrote myself, and I tried a couple of different things: a POV swap for the main remix, and a 'verse change and a slight plot alteration for madness. It was a lot of fun to explore what remixes can be! For the next remix event I take part in, I might consider taking a few more liberties and straying a little further from the original, because I do think the stories that did that tended to be among my favorites of what other people wrote.

Also, I can't repeat it enough how amazing the things that were written based on my fic were. Seriously, I feel like the fandom gods have smiled upon me. I just, yeah. I don't know how I got so lucky but last Sunday when I got my main remix fic and then madness was revealed was pretty much my happiest day in fandom ever <3

[navaan]

I'm glad you had fun! I've been infected with the Remix bug since last year and I'm glad that we got to spread it around a bit. :)

Writing my first remix was also really intimidating, but as a writing challenge it's really interesting and much of the fun is in experimenting. I've been told by friend who loves remixing and who got me to sign up for my first remix challenge, that taking liberties makes for the most interesting stories and I think there's something there, although I've seen remixes that stayed very close to the original and were also brilliant and poignant and just perfect. So it's always a matter of what you do with the idea you have.

I'm glad you enjoyed the remixes you got so much. The story I picked of yours made me smile so hard that I knew immediately that I wanted to play with it. :)

[laireshi]

Uh, I had some bad experiences with remixes, and also I was graduating, so I didn't sign up for the main challenge. But then when Madness was announced and everyone was so excited, I thought "well okay LET'S SEE". And I'm glad I did! It was fun!

Some of you know I was freaking out about writing a remix A LOT. But when I stopped panicking, it was great *_* I didn't really have much time to try writing more, but when there's a remix challenge in the future, I might give it a try, and I won't be an insecure mess anymore xD (Really though, tea, Sine, thanks!)

And I got two awesome stories! They were both absolutely great and gave me feels that were just unfair. I loved reading them, I was so happy. (And I was terrible at guessing the authors, too, even though I talk to one of them every day :P ).

[teaberryblue.livejournal.com]

<3 You did a great job!!!! Happy to help!!!

[navaan]

Oh, I'm sad to hear you had unpleasant remix experiences before this. Mine have been a blast so far, but I witnessed one case of unpleasantness last year in another remix and I was very glad that I was not a mod in charge of that. But with this community I had less worries of that happening.

But I'm glad Madness pulled you in and now you had a fun remix experience too! I got really excited when I saw you had signed up and then sadly because I was so busy time ran out and I didn't get to remix one of your brilliant fics!

I admit part of the idea of adapting the freer Madness challenge to our purposes was to give people to explore remixing without eh pressure of the exchange. I played in a Remix Madness twice before I ever dared to commit to the exchange part, because remixing made me really nervous at first too. (What if I mess up someone's story???) It's good to know that this worked out in your case!

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

I'd never done a remix before. I decided not to try the Main Remix because 'blind date' pairing never has worked well for me, but with the Madness the freedom to choose & the lack of a guarantee reassured me that no one would feel forced to remix me or disappointed if I remixed them badly.

I read the hintposts and thought, well, POV change, that I can do and see how it works & then see if I can try something more difficult.

No one was guaranteed a work of course but I thought it would be nice if everyone who came to the party got at least a thin slice of cake, so I decided to try to write as many short fic as possible, checking when I finished each one to see who still didn't have a fulfilled fic, giving precedence to those who didn't even have a claim.

At first I was looking for tight Stony focus where I could lift up the dialog nearly entire, and slip the other POV person in, because I'd decided to challenge myself to leave the story externally identical, but by changing POV add depth to the original. I did that for the first four I remixed.

Then I thought, hey, why not be sneaky and cracky, and take the plot and replace Tony and Steve with critters, but make it sound like they're people up until the 'final twist of the tail/tale', so I did that for the next two fic, and since that sort of story is basically a joke, keeping them very short worked well.

I was getting a bit more confident then and started thinking about changing genre and dialog while still keeping the essential plot/pairing & hit on vampires & werewolves for something entirely different.

The eighth and final one I was starting to feel a bit more confident & when I read Veldeia's 'Baiting the Water' conman 'The Sting' fusion, I knew I could keep the essence of the plot and pairing while making it an entirely different story, one that made me smile a lot.

And around about then, I ran out of time. :^)

Reading the other remixes has shown me lots of ways I could have gone if I'd been more confident. I especially loved the ones where the 'verse and details of plot changed/expanded scenes/etc, and yet the basics remained.

[navaan]

Thank you so much for playing and writing so many remixes! I was excited every time we approved another work by you and I'm so glad that the Madness round went so well. :)

I had hoped that the freer setup of that would draw in some people who were not comfortable with the different challenge the exchange presents. I do lots of multi-fandom exchanges and personally I love the challenge that comes with the "blind date" type of matching, where you can match to someone who might have very different likes and dislikes, because that pushes me to test my own limits sometimes. But I also enjoy the free and relaxed atmosphere that comes with the "treat whoever you like" or "pick who you remix" with Madness rounds, because the challenge there becomes a different one that can be an equal push.

I really like your approach and how your process changed with writing more remixes. That's really interesting to me. Next year you can start out with the new remixing confidence and try out new things. I hope to see you around for Madness at least. :)

[magicasen.livejournal.com]

I didn't sign up for the main event (because I was supposed to work on another fic that I ended up not touching at all...oops...). But I went for Madness, and it was so much fun! I'm really glad it got extended to two weeks! I wouldn't have had the time to write anything if it had only been the initially intended one.

I went with pretty typical remix set-ups: the sequel and the POV swap. I ran out of time, but was planning some other divergence fics, which isn't surprising as canon divergence AUs are by far my favorite type of story to write. (I looooooove What-Ifs?)

I always enjoy trying to slot my own idea into the original story and seeing how well it works, so things like changing the setting seem really cool but not really my style! Both of the remixes for my stories had those canon divergences and they were so well-done and fit perfectly with the original story I'd written :D

Can we leave event feedback too? I thought it was super well-run! The only thing I can say is that I thought Madness revealing/the anon period after that was kind of at a strange time. It was Sunday evening for people in the US, and Monday at 8 AM for me, and then authors were revealed on Friday at 5 AM for me. I don't think anon periods are that fun if there's no time to actually read all the goodies, haha!

[muccamukk]

Very late Sunday night was kind of an odd time for me, too. I was like, Must Read Fic, and then ended up falling over instead.

But everything else was really well done. I liked the staggered reveals on the main fic, which gave me more time to read things then everything at once. Especially with the long fic.

[navaan]

Glad you had fun! I was glad to see you sign up for madness. :)

Yeah, sure event feedback is very welcome. We knew it was a bit of a strange time, but after we had extended the Madness round it became pretty much the only time to do it for reasons of mod life time constraints, which if we plan this again with the extended time frame of madness we would of course take into account next time and try not to have reveals happen in the middle of the week, for example. (But we didn't want to have it happen on any of the dates when there were RBB announcements either, etc.)

We're not sure when to run the event in our busy calendar next year, so I can't say how much room we'll have to change around the dates, but if it's in the same slot and we know this before hand we would probably announce Madness so that it doesn't get so close to the RBB art claims day.

[sineala.livejournal.com]

I have to say I had a lot of fun and I want to thank the mods for doing this.

I'd never done this before and I want to say a couple things about writing remixes that I found out:

1. My key to picking stories to remix was to go for stories where I read them and thought HEY WHAT IF THIS HAPPENED INSTEAD (this is why I picked Tea's story and the one I did for Magic), or, alternatively HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO THEM (possibly this is why I picked those Teyke and Kiyaar and Muccamukk stories). Basically if the story gave me a lot of feelings, I wanted to write about it. It occurs to me now that maybe someone else might have wanted to fix the angsty ones, but, uh, not me.

2. As a reader it never really mattered to me when a remix was only a POV shift, but writing them, I eventually got to the point where I got to dialogue and I was copy/pasting dialogue and wondering if there was anything interesting I could say about it. So I'll say that I had more fun writing remixes that diverged more, or the sections of POV-shift remixes that let me incorporate new material (like, what the new POV character was doing when the old POV character wasn't around).

3. I ordinarily hate coming up with titles but coming up with remix titles was REALLY REALLY FUN. Like, "I should write another one so I can title it!"

remix titles, summaries

[lilian-cho.livejournal.com]

3. Ahh I agree. I feel like there's a lot more possibilities in titling remixes, esp. since you also have the original fic title for guidance.

My two favorite remix titles (that I wrote) are:
- The Witch's Menagerie (Moondust Sonatina)
- Unlucky (Five, Six, Seven Eight Nine Ten I Love You)

I love how most remix titles have parentheses! And I love slipping in musical references (because remixes/music covers).


IMO, genius remix titles for this round:
- Down the Waterfall (The Roaring Forties Remix)
omgthepun roaring waterfall Iloveit
- I’ll Be Home For Doom’s Day (The You Can Count on Doom Remix)
I can hear the title (remix subtitle) sung in my head HALP

I like your title:
Hour of Greatest Need (The Left to His Own Devices Remix)
Wow that was so mean good job. I haven't even read it yet but the title is already evil.


So, anyway, remix titles are great, but writing remix summaries is SO HARD. Especially if you keep the plot basically the same. How can you write a summary that doesn't sound 90% the same with the original?

[woadin.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to say thanks to all the participants for opening up your works lists. There was so much to choose from! I’m also very grateful that Madness was extended. :) I just wish I’d had a bit more time to do more.
The way I approached the initial remix was to break down the story that intrigued me into core concepts and then rebuild and sub things as necessary…kind of like deconstructing a recipe. And then for Madness I went in the direction of “What If?” Both were fun approaches.
And I adore all the remixes I got – they were so lovely! <3 navaan, you spoiled me rotten!

[navaan]

I wish I would have been less busy around Madness time too, but, yay, I'm glad you had fun anyway, and I'm overjoyed that you liked the remixes. o//o I had such a hard time choosing one of your fics, because there was so much interesting stuff. :) I think I need to go back now and leave comments on all your fic.

Ah, I like how you put that about breaking a story up into the core concepts and then rebuilding. (A very Tony metaphor, actually. XD) I think that is what I've been trying to do, but I'm not sure how successful I've been at it.

Thanks for taking part! This was fun!

Steve/Tony Remix

[lilian-cho.livejournal.com]

I love everything =D
I'll make sure that I have three Steve/Tony fics so I can participate in the main remix next year!

My 'complaint' is there are so many prolific authors participating in the remix that it took me a reaaaaaally long time to pick which story to remix.

I always love remixing, but I don't always have a good experience being remixed ^^;; In both not-so-good experiences, I felt that the remix was mostly a copy & paste of my fic, with numerous SpaG errors thrown in =|

Anyway, my remix approach is to pick the story with an angle, a line, a quote that grabs me.
With Woad's story it was "Ooh, Shakespeare!" and I skimmed Much Ado About Nothing and the original story for things that I can use.

I don't like copy-pasting dialogue because as a remix reader I personally find it boring (similar to regurgitating canon lines). What I do like is to use lines from the original and flip the meaning/context or switch the speaker.

So in Woad's fic, Tony says, “Eidetic memory is occasionally useful.”
In my remix, Steve/pov narrator goes:
He could see the page perfectly in his mind’s eye. Sometimes, eidetic memory could be a curse.

I'll talk about my past remixes in a second comment.

I'm v. impressed by how epic some of the remixes are; I'm used to remixes being on the shorter side =) One thousand words is the usual minimum word count for remixes; Merlin/Arthur remix was 1.5 K minimum and that was unusual.

A remix approach that is fabulous and I want to try out for myself! Switching universes.
Some remix fest rules are more strict (e.g. no changing AU into non-AU or non-AU into AU), but I think Steve/Tony is PERFECT for switching universes. Because canon.

I'm consuming whatever canon comes my way so I have more sand to play with. Yay!
I've been reading bits and pieces of comics from the library, and I keep on being thwarted by how many issues have The. Same. Title.
- I want to read Ults!Tony Stark...end up reading about blue body armored Tony with brain cells all over his body. ...no.
- I want to read the Invincible Iron Man run with Rumiko Fujikawa. End up reading the one set in Civil War. Erm.

Comics. So complicated.

Some of my past remixes & how/why I picked them

[lilian-cho.livejournal.com]

(I write wordy comments and short fics. Ahaha.)

- A line that stands out
I remixed a happy fluffy reincarnation fic into depressing, problematic reincarnation fic, inspired/spurred on by this line in the original:
"an old car tyre, sped away when [Arthur] died only to be ground up, shaken a little and pushed back out into the world"
(My tl;dr A/N (http://lilian-cho.dreamwidth.org/18600.html) or, An extremely brief discourse on reincarnation)

It's still the remix I'm proudest of to this date. Miracle of miracles, the remixee actually likes it ^^;;

- Pervasive imagery/motif
The main character is swimming for most of the original fic. I wrote a remix with repeating water motif throughout moments in the character's life.

- A character that I can showcase
Harder to do in pairing-specific remixes, but not impossible.
I've taken background characters in the original fic and make them the main character/pov character in my remix.
In Steve/Tony context, it would be like "The Fairy Godfather Remix" =)

- Atmosphere/tone
The hardest remix I pulled off (still not convinced I pulled it off). I changed the tone and the structure, but I feel that it was too similar to the original.

To give it a musical comparison:
"How do I live" sung by Trisha Yearwood and sung by LeAnn Rimes.
It's the same song and I don't hear? how it's different??

This would also be why I would never ever again remix a fic that's my favorite. Because then the fic would be SACRED and how would I go about remixing something SACRED?

So other than that one fic I've always picked fics that I like BUT also presents an obvious/interesting remixing angle.

[the-vorkosigan.livejournal.com]

I absolutely adored this event, it was so much fun! Great organization too, everything worked pat as far as I'm concerned, all the kudos and love to the mods.

It was my first time doing any remixes, and I had no idea how much liberty you were allowed to take, but I think I kind of figured it along the way and relaxed a bit. Maybe I kind of overestimated myself with taking up three remixes to do (it was a bit much for me in the end, I tend to write long stories :/). BUT I'm now also sorry I didn't have the time and energy to take part in the madness as well, because it seems like so much fun too! (And so many stories to read now!) (Also, yay, being contradictory ftw.)

The remix relay chains are so fascinating to me, just seeing how the works transformed along the way and what turns the stories took and how everyone's mind works was incredibly interesting. I wanted to take guesses at the order in the chains, but since I basically knew parts of both, it didn't seem right. Now I can say that, while I figured out the order partially, I was surprised in the end :D Also, I laughed so hard to find out where the Reptile!Steve came from in the fruit chain, I was really wondering where that idea emerged from :D

I was so happy to get Veldeia as my remixee in the main event. So many great stories to pick from, and so I had a perfect excuse to just sit and read instead of working :))) (hey, it's for an event, it almost counts as work!Iin the end I kind of went with something I plot-bunnied myself into because I could't really choose.

Also, the remix of my fic MiniRaven did for the main event was really great, and it was perfectly fascinating to look at your work through someone else's eyes, in a way, and all in all, it was lovely.

I'm done with superlatives and exclamation marks now, but I really loved this event, it was pure fun!