Let's jump in.

My online sobriquet of choice is Mercutio. This is the kind of name you think is awesome when you're sixteen, and the moderator of the Fanfic Mailing List is called Tybalt. I was fighting the power, man. Standing up for the little guy, the unjustly banned! That'll teach them to try and maintain control of their mailing list!

I usually go by Merc. Hi!

(Most places, Mercutio will already be taken, so there are a fair number of MMOs, discussion forums, and other locales out there where you'll find a 'Murcushio' registered. Because ripping off the Bard wasn't enough, I had to mangle the name as well.)

My first introduction to UF was fall of 1997. Kris Overstreet posted, I want to say the third part of Wilderness Station to the FFML. It was notable for being large enough to require you to download it as a file attachment, rather than being able to just read it. And I had no clue, none whatsoever, what the hell was going on. I just knew that stuff was blowing up and there were a million Wing Commander and Star Wars references I understood. That eventually led me... well, here. Well, not HERE here. The forum wasn't around then. I'm actually unsure if the website itself was either; I remember reading a lot of UF in it's r.a.a.c sub-group, but I don't know if that was by choice or not.

I know... some of the people here, I think. I know a fair few old FFML grognards float around these forums. I've met some of the production team; I'm privileged to call Phil Moyer a friend, and he's been bugging me to register here for ages. I got drunk at some con parties with MegaZone way way way back in the day. Gryphon and I spent like two hours arguing about Torpedo Spheres and DJ Croft at Katsucon once back around 2000, when they were still at Crystal City.

(He may remember me as the guy who went to the trouble of getting t-shirts decrying Eyrie's fanfiction hegemony made. Again; that's the sort of dick move that seems like it makes you a totally awesome rebel when you're a teenager.)

So yah. That's me. Talking about fanfiction was an enormous part of my life for seven years or so, then was a nonexistent part for a longer time. Recently the pendulum has begun swinging back the other way, and, well, here I am. I apologize for the rambling; I always figure that more words are better than less words.

-Merc
Keep Rat

Now there's a name I've not heard in a long, long time.

Polychrome

>My first introduction to UF was fall of 1997. (...) Well,
>not HERE here. The forum wasn't around then. I'm actually unsure if
>the website itself was either; I remember reading a lot of UF in it's
>r.a.a.c sub-group, but I don't know if that was by choice or not.

The website has existed since... sometime around that same time, I think, though it was originally a fan site. I don't remember when it came in-house. You're right about the Forum, though, it dates to early 2001.

>Gryphon and I spent like
>two hours arguing about Torpedo Spheres and DJ Croft at Katsucon once
>back around 2000, when they were still at Crystal City.

Heh, I remember the occasion, although I can't recall anything about the content of the conversation itself, except that I have the general impression that it was a fairly civil and productive exchange of views. (I don't, for instance, have a clue what a Torpedo Sphere even is now.) There may also have been some shuttle diplomacy by Phil to set the thing up in the first place; can't quite remember. I think that was 1999, and I may have been ill at the time. I usually was when I was fool enough to go to a con, particularly if I had to get on an airplane to get there. :)

>(He may remember me as the guy who went to the trouble of getting
>t-shirts decrying Eyrie's fanfiction hegemony made.

Heh, yes, I seem to recall not minding the having-a-beef-with-my-work thing so much, but rather taking exception to being described as "evil".

Anyhoo, nice to see you again; enjoy the site! New material coming soon, one hopes. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' we are not now that strength which in old days moved Earth and heaven, that which we are, we are. And so forth. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Heh, yes, I seem to recall not minding the having-a-beef-with-my-work
>thing so much, but rather taking exception to being described as
>"evil".

You've always been pretty laid back about that. AFAIK, you & Zoner only ever really got pissed off at one fan, going so far as to bar him from ever working in UF.

And, in all fairness, I probably deserved it. :)

>Heh, I remember the occasion, although I can't recall anything about
>the content of the conversation itself, except that I have the general
>impression that it was a fairly civil and productive exchange of
>views. (I don't, for instance, have a clue what a Torpedo Sphere even
>is now.)

The Torpedo Sphere was one of WEG's additions to the Star Wars universe. They were basically mini-Death Stars, much smaller and without the superlaser, but still, you know, floaty balls of space death. As I recall, I was of the opinion that Genom Corporation would probably have built a bunch of them to serve as an impressive entourage for the AT&T, whereas you and Overstreet were of the opinion that aesthetically speaking Largo would have wanted the thing to appear as uniquely badass as possible.

We somehow wasted like ninety minutes on that topic alone, if memory serves. The only other detail that leaps out me from the conversation is your contention that if you were ever going to self-insert yourself into Evangelion, you would 1) totally be in charge, because fuck Gendo, and 2) every single meeting at NERV would end with mandatory tacos.

>Phil to set the thing up in the first place; can't quite remember. I
>think that was 1999, and I may have been ill at the time. I
>usually was when I was fool enough to go to a con, particularly if I
>had to get on an airplane to get there. :)

I believe it was Katsucon 6, back in 2000. Notable for it's fanfic panel being "all UF writers, plus Stefan and Ryan Mathews."

>>(He may remember me as the guy who went to the trouble of getting
>>t-shirts decrying Eyrie's fanfiction hegemony made.
>
>Heh, yes, I seem to recall not minding the having-a-beef-with-my-work
>thing so much, but rather taking exception to being described as
>"evil".

You know, I owe you an apology for that. My only explanation is that, well, I was young and very, very stupid, and you guys were an enormously tempting target. There was less fanfic in general then (in 1999 it was actually possible, by dint of effort, to read ALL anime fanfiction in existence on the internet) so poking at the eye of the 800lb gorilla of that jungle would generally ensure people noticed you, if nothing else.

This may be a bad time to admit that I was -also- part of the Evangelion Fanfic Review Syndicate, which I believe now survives online only in that you guys made fun of us once in one of the NXE Bonus Theaters.

>Anyhoo, nice to see you again; enjoy the site!

I have been for years and years. It's pleasantly old-school.

Don't get me wrong, I love FF.net and various and sundry other places. But this place has always been a nice reminder of the days when the gold standard of fanfiction was to have your own web site for your collected stories, even if it was just a shitty little joint at geocities or angelfire.

Also, everything is formatted in plaintext and has a hard line-wrap and orients to the left side of the screen. The way God INTENDED.

>You know, I owe you an apology for that. My only explanation is that,
>well, I was young and very, very stupid, and you guys were an
>enormously tempting target. There was less fanfic in general then (in
>1999 it was actually possible, by dint of effort, to read ALL anime
>fanfiction in existence on the internet) so poking at the eye of the
>800lb gorilla of that jungle would generally ensure people noticed
>you, if nothing else.

*runs the numbers*

Oh god... you read Otaku Rising, didn't you....

Sorry about that. :)

>*runs the numbers*
>
>Oh god... you read Otaku Rising, didn't you....
>
>Sorry about that. :)

I reads it too, and no apologies necessary. I've read MUCH worse fanfic than that :)

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>

That doesn't mean it was any _good_. :D

Thanks, tho.

>The only other detail that leaps out me from the conversation
>is your contention that if you were ever going to self-insert yourself
>into Evangelion, you would 1) totally be in charge, because fuck
>Gendo, and 2) every single meeting at NERV would end with mandatory
>tacos.

... Well, much has changed, but I can't say I'd answer that one any differently now, anyway. :)

Mind you, that assumes I was in it as an adult. As one of the Children, I like to think that I'd have filled the Musashi/Benkei/Tiny Harper indestructible-comedy-big-dude role. The NXE team didn't really have one of those. Bit of an oversight on my part.

>You know, I owe you an apology for that. My only explanation is that,
>well, I was young and very, very stupid, and you guys were an
>enormously tempting target.

Well, heck, I'm hardly in a position to get after people for young-and-stupid.

>This may be a bad time to admit that I was -also- part of the
>Evangelion Fanfic Review Syndicate, which I believe now survives
>online only in that you guys made fun of us once in one of the NXE
>Bonus Theaters.

... yeah, not in any way surprising, actually. :)

>Also, everything is formatted in plaintext and has a hard line-wrap
>and orients to the left side of the screen. The way God INTENDED.

Well, not everything - the Forum stories and their HTML "omnibus edition" compilations aren't - but a lot still comes out that way, yeah. I've made the odd attempt to move to more modern formats, but not much has come of it so far. Too set in my ways, I suppose, like those people who didn't change to the Gregorian calendar until the 1700s.

Last year, after the experimentally-formatted Weapon of Choice came out, a couple of users took very creditable stabs at coming up with a stylesheet that would preserve something of the properly-justified, tabbed-paragraphs thing while allowing for modern font scaling, italics and whatnot, but I could never really get my head into the game. So, for example, the next part of Symphony No. 5 will still be a .txt file (although it does have a few Unicode characters in it - so I guess I've at least joined the 1990s :).

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Well, not everything - the Forum stories and their HTML
>"omnibus edition" compilations aren't - but a lot still comes out that
>way, yeah. I've made the odd attempt to move to more modern formats,
>but not much has come of it so far. Too set in my ways, I suppose,
>like those people who didn't change to the Gregorian calendar until
>the 1700s.

Speaking only for myself, I love the .txt files. As another guy who is pretty set in his ways, I have a lot of trouble reading stuff that stretches across the entire screen, and I've got no patience with fancy fonts and such, so I love it when something is in plain'old Courier New and wraps HARD at seventy or eighty characters no matter how wide the monitor is.

About the only thing the Omnibus Collections and Weapon of Choice had to recommend to me were the line breaks, rather than tabs, between paragraphs.

Oh, and the clever use of colored backgrounds to denote flashbacks and suchly. That was pretty neat.

-Merc
Keep Rat

I'm enjoying watching the "fanfic writers of the 1990's class reunion"-thing too much to jump into this on any but one item: I use a 32 inch widescreen TV as a monitor. The .txt thing is perfect. My neck would hurt trying to pan and scan wall to wall text on this thing!

----
Now Playing:
Daft Punk -- The Game Of Love (Random Access Memories, 2013)

< THIS SPACE FOR RENT >

>I'm enjoying watching the "fanfic writers of the 1990's class
>reunion"-thing too much to jump into this on any but one item: I use a
>32 inch widescreen TV as a monitor. The .txt thing is perfect.
>My neck would hurt trying to pan and scan wall to wall text on this
>thing!

Protip: rotate your monitor 90 degrees. So much text!

--
-Pasha
What was that feeling again?
Oh yes.
-Rage-

>I'm enjoying watching the "fanfic writers of the 1990's class
>reunion"-thing too much to jump into this on any but one item: I use a
>32 inch widescreen TV as a monitor. The .txt thing is perfect.
>My neck would hurt trying to pan and scan wall to wall text on this
>thing!

Non-maximized browser windows are available. I'm just saying. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Non-maximized browser windows are available. I'm just saying. :)
Well, yeah, but since the advent of tabbed browsing, I've perpetually got(hang on, I'm actually counting)22-25 websites open at once.

...I think I have a problem.
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...

< THIS SPACE FOR RENT >

>>Non-maximized browser windows are available. I'm just saying. :)
>Well, yeah, but since the advent of tabbed browsing, I've perpetually
>got(hang on, I'm actually counting)22-25 websites open at once.
>
Add a zero. :-)

S.

>Add a zero. :-)

You win the internet!

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...

< THIS SPACE FOR RENT >

>>Non-maximized browser windows are available. I'm just saying. :)
>
>Well, yeah, but since the advent of tabbed browsing, I've perpetually
>got (hang on, I'm actually counting) 22-25 websites open at once.
>
>...I think I have a problem.

Yeah, that's gonna have to get filed under "you're on your own with that, champ," sorry. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

College has exacerbated this problem; Researching papers is a tabbed browsing nightmare! On the upside, I think I've discovered the upper limits of Chrome's caching abilities. ...For whatever that's worth?
----
Now Playing:
...

< THIS SPACE FOR RENT >

>Last year, after the experimentally-formatted Weapon of Choice
>came out, a couple of users took very creditable stabs at coming up
>with a stylesheet that would preserve something of the
>properly-justified, tabbed-paragraphs thing while allowing for modern
>font scaling, italics and whatnot, but I could never really get my
>head into the game. So, for example, the next part of Symphony No.
>5 will still be a .txt file (although it does have a few Unicode
>characters in it - so I guess I've at least joined the 1990s :).
>
The only problem with the .txt format is that small-screen devices can be obnoxious about showing the whole thing left-to right unless you pan and zoom it juuuust right. But I'd rather have that problem (on an admitted edge case) than all the other issues using a fully-formatted document would cause (not the least of which is having every devices render it slightly differently in annoying ways) :)

It would be great if there was some way to just filter the text stories through a php page or something to turn them into styled HTML, but I know you've got better things to do than worry about that (and I'd rather you spend the time on writing rather than mucking around with it anyway... :)) Maybe I'll take another stab at it sometime.

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>