Uhhhhh ok by Ringmaster
Length: Oneshot
Sources: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Beavis and Butthead
Rating: 5/5
Have you ever found a story idea so unbelievably insane that crosses back into genius? Welcome to “Uhhhhh ok”. It’s a somewhat demented little oneshot which explores how funny things might get if Shinji and Rei decided to explore human reactions to the unusual by acting like Beavis and Butthead.
I’d say more, but with an insane oneshot, there rarely is much to say.
Of Great Turmoil and Excess Stupidity by Seaouryou
Length: Oneshot
Sources: Harry Potter, InuYasha
Rating: 5/5
While none of the core plot elements in this are overly original, originality takes a back seat in parodies and this is definitely a parody. It’s a story which doesn’t take itself seriously, but is of great enough quality to recognize the difference between humor and laziness. In short, Sesshomaru wakes up in one of Hagrid’s Care of Magical Creatures classes and things progress in their natural fashions… taking full advantage of any opportunities to make fun of other Harry Potter stories.
For example:
“You know,” Hermione said, frowning a little. “If this… youkai is kidnapping teachers, maybe it has something to do with Voldemort.”
“Voldemort!” Harry cried, leaping up from his seat at the Gryffindor table and brandishing a butter knife. “Where? He killed my godfather… and father! I’m going to kill him!”
Hermione sighed. “We know, Harry, you told us six times this morning.”
I can’t really say more without spoiling part of the fun, but it’s just a few screenfuls, so if you’ve got 10 or 15 minutes to spare, it makes for a great morning laugh. It’s not “I can’t breathe” funny, but it’s not often that I laugh out loud.
Story: Harry Potter: The ‘Boy’ Who Lived
Rating 5/5
One thing I won’t hesitate to admit is that, when I start reading fanfiction for a new series, looking for gender-benders is one of my first goals. Unfortunately, as with anything else, Sturgeon’s law holds true and 90% of it is crud. “Harry Potter: The ‘Boy’ Who Lived” is one of those rare stories that not only makes it into the top 10%, but the top 1%.
Anyone who reads a lot of Harry Potter fanfiction will probably recognize the “what if Harry Potter had been born a girl” plot, but it’s what the author does with it that makes this story special.:
First, as an additional layer of protection, Dumbledore convinced the Potters to tell everyone that they had a son… a charade he convinces “Hallie” to keep up during her first year at Hogwarts so that she could get a good reputation and gain peoples’ trust without having to worry about gender-related prejudice.
Second, the story puts some focus on Draco Malfoy as a person, rather than just a one-dimensional rival, as well as adjusting the chain of events leading to his rivalry with “Harry” just enough to make it fresh.
And finally third, the author recognizes one of the aspects of fanfiction writing which is far less common than it should be: If you are writing a derivative work, you don’t need to revisit every event that took place in the original… that usually just makes your story boring.
So, in conclusion, another story that deserves 5 out of 5. Just keep in mind that this only covers the first year, so you’ll have to start reading Hallie Potter: Secrets Revealed once you finish this.
Story: The Virus by Space Pirate Hamster (zip-format pack including sidestories by other authors)
Rating: 5/5
I can’t believe I forgot to review this. Anyway, “The Virus” by Space Pirate Hamster (and it’s many sidestories by others) is an addictive and highly amusing mega-crossover with a core of Ranma ½ and Tenchi Muyo. Ok, now that I’ve driven away half of my readers by saying “mega-crossover”, here’s the plot:
Of course, it doesn’t end there and the quality is in the details, so you’ll still want to read it. The main story and most of the sidestories are Ranma-style light-hearted stuff with the main story being a series of glimpses into events as the virus spreads. I think you can understand how such a format would work nicely for making well-written mega-crossovers. This has definitely earned it’s 5 out of 5 rating.
Oh, don’t forget to read Wandless Magic by Cloud Dreamer. It’s another good sidestory but, because it’s still very much alive and well, it’s not included in the “vanished fanfic archive” pack I’ve linked to. It explores how Nerimavirus might affect Harry Potter characters.
Having discovered that my old host STILL hasn’t fixed their DNS problems, I’ve moved this blog to NearlyFreeSpeech.NET. Let me know if you find any problems.
However, keep in mind that the contact form is still on my old host (I need to make some changes before it will work with NearlyFreeSpeech.NET’s mailer) so it may exhibit the same intermittent 404 errors that forced me to move the blog. If you have trouble with it, try again later and it will work. I’ll have it moved over as soon as I’ve got the script updated.
UPDATE: The mail form is now hosted on the same server as the blog, so there should be no more intermittent 404 errors.
Yes, I have added an adbox to my blog. For those who are wondering, no, I haven’t become a hypocrite. I still don’t like big banner and skyscraper ads all over, but I don’t mind a few small buttons… especially when the advertiser pays per day, rather than per impression or per click.
Pay-per-day ads like the ones I’m using allow people who aren’t interested (in most cases, that means me) to use tools like AdBlock Plus without hurting anyone (the only effect is a few less views on the graphs shown to potential advertisers) and, since it’s Project Wonderful ads, even I don’t block them. (The Project Wonderful guys run their ad service the way I would) It also helps that I’ve set my profile to refuse animated GIFs.
Anyway, I’ve set a minimum price per adbox of 1¢ per day and I’m providing two boxes. Hopefully, there will be enough interest that I won’t have to switch to one box at 2¢. My goal is to make this blog pay for itself when hosted on NearlyFreeSpeech.NET.
Note: This is still fragile, so I can’t help you if it doesn’t work on your system.
I finally got around to trying OSS 4 and I just can’t go back to ALSA. Not only is it less cantankerous, the mixer curve I get by leaving my soundcard on defaults and adjusting the vmix in-kernel mixer is much nicer.
Unfortunately, there was one problem. MIDI support for OSS 4 is still in development and I have old Windows games which use MIDI for their background music. With ALSA, I had been using Timidity as a software synth that Wine could hook into, but I couldn’t get that to work with libsalsa (the OSS 4 ALSA compatibility layer) so I decided to look for an alternative.
It’s a jerry-rig, but I figured out how to strap the ALSA userland onto OSS 4 so that Wine has a way to get MIDI events to Timidity. Details below…
(Remember to symlink /dev/dsp to your preferred /dev/dspN if it forgets.)
Make sure alsa-lib (or your equivalent) stays installed and that the lines in /usr/sbin/soundon
for setting up libsalsa are commented out. (The ebuild on bugs.gentoo.org which I used comes with a patch to
do this)
If you want to do this yourself, find the line which says “# Use library based ALSA compatibility”
and comment out the block which follows it. If you don’t know how to do this, I suggest grabbing
the patch from bugs.gentoo.org.
If you want to use the ebuild, it’s at Bug 184123.
It should contain only the following:
pcm.!default {
type oss
device /dev/dsp
}
Set up the following ALSA config in your kernel:
Device Drivers --> Sound -->
<M> Sound card support
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture --->
<M> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
<M> Sequencer support
[*] Support old ALSA API
The following were something I tested but didn’t see any difference to. Your mileage may vary.
<M> RTC Timer support
[*] Use RTC as default sequencer timer
Everything else should be disabled.
Make sure your init scripts successfully load OSS 4 and then adjust them to run “modprobe snd-seq” after it has checked and found no ALSA.
This part took the the longest to figure out. Timidity is VERY fickle in this setup, so your mileage may vary. Here’s what I had to do:
The command I used was “artsdsp timidity -iA -Os” but the -Os was just to make sure. (It was default on my system)
The second-best I found was “timidity -iA -Op” (Portaudio output without artsdsp) and it could be run from an initscript, but it would go silent after the first song or two.
Plain ordinary ALSA output had a similar problem, but also had timing glitches. Ironically, when Timidity is just playing a midi file directly as opposed to receiving MIDI events via ALSA, the timing glitches are absent.
I'm Stephan, a Linux user with a passion for open-source, UI/UX design, and exploring what makes fiction work.
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