Rebuild of Elmer Studios, year twelve

After the big changes that came last year, I was going into this one with some degree of curiosity to see how it would pan out. And based on how it went, I’m actually rather pleased to say that the changes we made to our writing process and pacing seem to have worked. Yes, we’re no longer producing episodes at the same rate, but at the same time, we’re a lot more relaxed about it and honestly, it feels better than where we were at this time last year.

Despite the pacing change, we released a comfortable twelve episodes in the last year, or a nice one per month rate (more or less). And at the same time, I feel that we were getting better overall quality, both in terms of the fics we were doing as well as our material within it. And above all else, I really feel that we were having more fun with this than we’d had in a long time.

So let’s see what happened in this last year of the slightly new look Elmer Studios.

 

Trying something new and instantly regrettable

One of the things that genuinely surprised me in looking back in our history was that we’d never done a pure ‘AU’ fic. No coffee shops, no high schools, no thinly veiled Relyo fics being released as legitimate novels with the names scribbled over in crayon.

That all changed with The Neon Lily of Night City, which was one of those AUs that made one wonder why it was even written as an AU in the first place as it has no connection to the source material. Instead what it gave us was two stupid, horny people who bore so little resemblance to their inspirations that they might as well have been entirely original characters. Furthermore, it was written to support an author preferred pairing between two characters who barely even interacted in the source material.

What strikes me the most about the fic, however, is that we already had a Harry Potter/Cyberpunk 2077 crossover in the form of Death’s Fixer. Not only did it go out of its way to make the crossover work, but it was genuinely one of the best fics we’ve ever covered.

 

Fanfic? Fanfic never changes.

Crossovers continued to be a major part of our lives with a variety of different combinations throwing themselves at us. Aside from the aforementioned Neon Lily (Which may not actually be a crossover depending on how you define the concept) we were hit with two other examples of the type.

A Stranger Named Six was one of those fics that tried so desperately hard to be ‘edgy’ and ‘mature’ and yet only served to highlight how bad it was. On the fic side, it suffered badly from the usual issues of an overly forced premise, unlikable main character and a nonsense pairing. However, it also had the bonus of rants from the author about how ‘dark and serious’ its source material was that came over more as awkward self-justification than anything else.

But this was topped by Harry Potter the G.I. Joe: the Philosopher’s Stone, which seemed to be tyring its best to checklist every stupid cliché that came with its source material. Even by the standards of Harry Potter fics, it seemed to be determined to go all-in on the insane libertarian fantasy that seems to be a hallmark of the fanfics we’ve covered. It seemed to be determined to one-up itself with stupidity at every point and, yet, like so many other fics we cover, it simply crashed and burned after what amounted to an overly-long setup.

I’m a Lozer, baby

Every now and then we come across a fic that’s a pure gift. This time it was the ‘technically a single fic but not really’ that was The Newcomer and The New Adventures of the High Five. It was one of those ones that managed to do so much wrong and at the same time, do so much right.

On one side, the fic is terribly written with bad formatting, terrible punctuation, weird grammar, a strange semi-script format and stupidly shallow characterisation of what was already a wretchedly shallow cast and more. Its premise is a weak one at best that could easily be resolved (albeit by Akira from Programming) and the fic is stupidly repetitive. Above all else, its villain really had no presence, no personality and didn’t actually pose a threat.

But yet…

It had Lozer. And we love Lozer. It’s hard to put a finger on what it was we liked about him, but in many ways Lozer was the polar opposite of the odious OCs we normally see. Comedically bad at everything he did, skilled only at blowing himself up and at the point where he seemed to be an active deadweight, Lozer was also strangely compelling. Maybe it was because he was so inept. Maybe it was his strangely idiotic origin story. Maybe it was his minimal description. Or maybe it was simply because he was tyring to have fun and enjoy himself, which is such a rarity to us.

And above all else, the fic never once hit us with one of those moments that made us hate it. It’s a strange thing, but we came out of Lozer loving it and laughing. There’s nothing about it we disliked. There’s no horrible author tracts, no whiny self-justification, no weird swerves into unknown country or anything else. It’s a level of unashamed enjoyment of a fic that we get so rarely. As a rare bonus, it’s complete, something we find so rarely. We don’t have to wonder where it would have gone or if it would have ruined itself, because it’s complete and done.

 

So why don’t you gunt me?

In any other year, Birds of Prey would have been our top fic. Self-contained and incredibly stupid with jarring tonal shifts, it was a real wonder. But this is the same year that gave us the Lozer saga, so there’s no contest at all. The same needs to be said for the character of the year which is going to Lozer himself. Really, there was no contest.

 

So where do we go from here?

Unlike where we were this time last year, we’re actually doing pretty well for fics at the moment. Episode 477 should be out soon, while 478 to 483 are in various stages of preparation. Furthermore, we’ve got a large inventory of fics to come, which includes our single longest fic (in terms of pure wordcount/page length) to come. We’re pretty solidly booked all the way up to the big 500.

Speaking of which, we have something big planned for that key anniversary. We might not get there this year, but I think you’ll be surprised by what it is.