(no subject)

[pensnest]

Remix Madness is open—an informal, anything-goes add-on to Remix, where you can just grab someone's work and go for it... I've signed up. Anyone with me? I don't have a clue whether I'll be able to get a story done or not, but let's see if we can get a couple of popslash offerings in under the wire, yes?

Comments

[zebraljb.livejournal.com]

Excuse my idiocy but what exactly is remixing?

[pensnest]

Ooh! Remixing is cool stuff. I *think* popslash invented the concept, quite a long time back. The main Remix challenge is an exchange, you sign up and are assigned a remixee (there are qualifying numbers of stories required), and you rewrite one of that author's stories in your preferred style.

It's a very 'writerly' challenge, I would say. It never got that much excitement from non-participants—remix stories rarely get much feedback. But I enjoyed it. It's like fanfic squared.

Initially, my impression is that a lot of people went with the 'tell it from the other person's point of view' option, but more recently participants were getting really brilliantly inventive. A 'still_gay' retelling, an academic paper, that kind of thing.

My own were: a 'very secret diary of JC Chasez' remix of a blackly humorous story; told from the bodyguard's POV; Justin justifying himself to his (prison) psychiatrist; set five years into the future from the original; from the frog's POV; in blank verse, and In Space. I think it's a lot of fun to read the original and then the remix, and see what has changed. Work on my stories includes: a Kevin story that accompanies my Hogwarts Christmas story; a New Orleans period remix of Warm Oil and an Innocent Smile, and a lovely retelling of If You Want To Fly from a dragon's POV. I think the stories that have been remixed link to the remix version. Hmm. There must have been others... at least one was a ST:TNG story, but I'll have to check through the popslash.

To see what's happened before, have a look here: http://boudicca.com/unaware/remix/index.html
and also http://remix7.livejournal.com/ (I don't know what happened to Remix 6...)

Of course, it really, really helps to be able to run the Remix challenge within one fandom, where anyone can be paired up with anyone else and will be aware of the characters, etc. Sadly, there's very little popslash interest in it these days. I did offer to do a private remix with anyone who's interested, and if you fancy having a remix exchange with me, we can do that!

That's, uh, probably more than you bargained for. :-D