Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Comments: Finding Lois Lane

claire,

lol, and thanks.

rivka,

i'm sorry you didn't participate, but i'm glad you enjoyed. i'm very glad to hear it worked so well for you.

thank you. that was certainly a large part of the fun for me... coming up with little throw-aways, figuring out neat little twists, trying out possibilities to see what worked best, etc. glad to hear you enjoyed it, too.

wendy said:

wow, thanks! (/me suddenly wonders how many times he can say thanks in a single post without getting overly repetitive... ).

just funny that you should say that you didn't realize that this sort of mystery was what i'd intended. i guess some things were clear enough in my own mind that i sort of expected others to pick up on them as well. (that and my experience playing RPGs with friends led me to assume some basic rules and understandings)

which leads me to carole. i'm sorry for the misunderstanding. obviously, as i said, some things just weren't as clear as i'd thought.

registration dates appear in user's profiles. you can search for a specific profile in the directory (using the link in the upper right corner of most boards pages) or you can read someone's profile by clicking on the profile link found on each post (looks like a little person standing next to a rollodex card. it's the first icon after the post's timestamp).

also, in this specific case, if you'll look carefully at altclark's first post, you can see that i mentioned the fact that wells registered a week before clark.

moving on to anna's post..

i'm glad to hear you enjoyed it, and that i managed to keep you guessing. thanks for letting me know.

as for US vs UK english, the differences can be fairly subtle ("realize" vs "realise," for example). many wouldn't notice them at all. i certainly wouldn't expect it of someone whose native language is not english. also, let me add that you speak english very well; far better than i can speak any other language at this point (i'm a few years out of pratice).

as to audience participation fics in general, i agree; they're pretty fun. each one is different, based on the tone and direction the author takes and on the audience's responses. take a look at the clark letters (the first such fic in this fandom that i know of) and the lex letters (the only other one that i know of). this one is the third. each of the three was started by a different folc, each one had a different tone, each featured different characters, and each one went differently. they're all well worth the read, imo.

anyway, thanks again to everyone for your comments and participation. despite my panicking over one thing after another, i did have a lot of fun with this, too.

btw, i still haven't heard answers to my questions:

1. should the comments folder be archived with the main story?

2. if you posted in the main thread (and possibly if you posted here, too), do you mind having your work archived?

maybe it's better if i put question 2 this way:

please let me know here or by email if you don't want your post(s) archived.

also, as a follow-up to question 1:

if the comments folder is not included (for the record, i'm leaning towards not archiving it), any suggestions on how to include the "who is altclark?" explanation post?

Paul

did that after reading Wendy's post, but thanks for the technical explanation...yeah, I'm such a techie nerd, you know! (LOL)

Don't beat yourself down. Who wouldn't except a daily globe-trotter? What are your other languages? (if you don't mind the asking since it's not fic related). So for the 100% fanfic questions:

It's a tough one, but I think yes, it should. Either after the fanfic itself, or by including comments into the Finding Lois fic. I know it will be disturbing, and unconventionnal, but it could allow readers that didn't participate to follow the interrogations of the mb readers 'live' while sticking to the story's chronology. But it's just my 2 cents. That also mean you'll have to do a little patchwork exercice...

not at all.

See reply above.

Not archiving it? Ookaaay. Then I'll go for the explanation post as an epilogue. But again, these are just suggestions.

good luck with the pre-archiving work,

Carole

PS: and for HG Wells, I wouldn't even think of pushing things since I've got a clearer view of this issue now.

Thanks for the links, Paul. I read the Clark letters and now I'm going to read the Lex letters, too.

-Let me comment a few things here:) :

Thanks

It's natural. You have no idea how much I practice my foreign languages (although I'm still at the "learning" level).
And btw I loved the idea for Claude's last name.

-The answer to your first question:
Hmm... I'm not sure about what to say. I also tend to say "no", but there's this "who is AltClark" thing...

I have an idea to propose you: As Carole said, use an Epilogue, starting with:

For the ending I have two suggestions:
a) Only the b) All of your first post as Hatman.

This is my idea, feel free to use it or not use it.

-The answer to your second question:
Of course not! (Although my posts were not very... ehm... you know what I mean...)

Okay I think that's it (for the moment, at least)

LOL, I almost forgot Claude's last name. Thanks for making me aware of it Anna!

I had a great Laughing time with that though, the french in me would have gone for a masculin form of Chienne...but Claude Delechien or Duchien doesn't have the same punch.

Still, Claude Deschiens (plural...french tv show inside joke)

Carole

Paul!

lol! GREAT Job! I had no idea it was you...though I can't say it's surprising...it's totally something I could have seen you do.

I really enjoyed participating in it and I wish I could have more.

Count me in!

-Breanna

I would recommend against including the comments folder when you archive the story. It doesn't add anything to the plot, and I think it would be a distraction to the fun of the story to see all the behind the scenes stuff, especially since it wasn't all fun and games.

I would, however, add a "cast of characters" at the end of the file for those people who used aliases (Alt Clark, Alt Lois, Andrus, Wells if that person chooses). I personally wouldn't include the "how I did it" stuff either, but that's up to you.

And yes, you have my permission to include my posts in the archived story.

Kathy (if I missed any questions, let me know)

I'm not sure I posted anything worth archiving (I think I came in pretty late) but if you want to include anything by me, feel free.

PJ

Hey Paul

I finally catching up with this...

Well done mate...

It was a great idea and i loved reading it...

Meni

My dear fellow!

I am extremely distressed to discover that you are a Mr Paul Hatman rather than the Clark Kent I know and admire so well. Can it be that this is yet another alternate dimension in which Clark Kent and Lois Lane do not create Utopia? I suppose I should be grateful that your name is not Joseph. Do you, perchance, own a porcine companion?

I must confess that it is quite daunting to realise that there are universes where the various counterparts refuse to play their proper roles. I have just returned from such a dimension, where all my efforts to repair the damage to the correct timeline proved fruitless. How sad that the Lois Lane and Clark Kent of that universe ignored the true path to their destiny. Why do the young have to run before they can walk? There was another universe, as well, where the Clark Kent in question only reluctantly acceded to my insistence that he take up the mantle as Superman. Even if his sun was the wrong spectrum, he should have understood that it is only natural to follow my suggestions!

At times like these, I comfort myself by remembering my successes, of which there have been so many. I recall one universe in which Kal El became an *actor*, and it took a considerable amount of careful prompting and guidance before he realised his true vocation!

I am somewhat perplexed at this insistence that I, too, am hiding a secret identity. I can assure you all that this is not the case. I registered at this forum for the singular purpose of pursuing my self-appointed destiny as deus ex machina for all the Lois Lanes and Clark Kents of the infinite universes. Who is more suited, after all?

H.G. Wells

ROTFLMAO!!!!!

Oh, this is pricless! Let me guess ...

Pam's "H is for Hubris"?


Oh, shoot, I'm waiting for the sequel to get finished before I read the first one, but might this be Chris Carr's "An Extraordinary Man"?

LOL!! Is this Wendy's univers ... oh, shoot, what's the title? "Big Boys Do Fly"!

Too funny!

Kathy

carole,

i was once fluent in hebrew and i took french for a few years. other than that, i can understand dog most of the time (though i can't speak it), i can get by in c and c++, and i'm fairly good with odd facial expressions.

thanks for your input on archiving.

anna, hope you enjoyed the clark letters. have fun with the lex letters.

glad you liked claude's name. like i said, i hope no one was offended. good to hear you found it funny.

thanks for your suggestions, too.



thanks, breanna!

kathy, thank you. i like your idea. thinking things through, it seems like the best way to go. i think i may add a link to the boards TOC for those who want. not sure. in any case, i'm going to give it some time.

if i'd sent it in too early, i'd have missed wells's latest post, which was absolutely hilarious (though the one in this thread is even better).

pam, i'd like to include all the posts in the main thread. i just don't feel right archiving something that someone else wrote without checking first.

meni, thank you! i'm glad you enjoyed it. thanks for taking the time to let me know.

mr. wells,

i'm sorry for the confusion. no, i do not have a porcine companion, unless you count an overweight dog with an occasionally porcine appetite.

i'm also sorry to hear that the universes have been so uncooperative. all that pesky free will and chaotic anti-determinism must really get in your way sometimes.

as for your identity, that seems to have been a misunderstanding. what with all the rest of the confusion with alternate identities, things got a little mixed up. fortunately, i believe we were able to sort it out ourselves this time, leaving you to deal with confusion in your other adopted universes.

also, may i say, sir, that you are a much better deus ex machina than mr myxyzptlk.

kathy,

i agree. it is both hilarious and priceless.

/me tips his hat to the incomperable mr wells.

thanks for catching bbdf. that was a reference i'd been having trouble with. but you seem to have missed a couple, too...

chris carr's "a most irregular joe."

my smart kids un-twist, unless i'm mistaken.

the next one does sound like h is for hubris, but wasn't there also one more recently posted... some kind of challenge, i think... with wells and a "utopia" founded by dan scardino... can't seem to find it, tho.

i think the one after that is, indeed, extraodinary man. do read it soon. it's well worth it.

i think that's all. did i miss any?

(btw, mr wells, if you want to respond indirectly to any of this stuff about story references- to correct me or something- please feel free to email me and i'll pass it along)

Paul

Paul,

I didn't have much to say re the story (I read detective stories, I don't write 'em ), but it was great fun to read. Yes, do archive this! And I agree that a simple epilogue in which you "take off your glasses and put on your own," so to speak, is the perfect solution.

Oh, yeah. You tell him!

I agree that this would have been more fun if a few more "characters" would have joined the fray, but it was quite satisfying as is. Thanks for starting this, Paul!

Hazel, who can't help wondering in Yvonne ever plans to archive OUATIM...

Paul,

Thanks for sharing this language thing. As interesting as your grasp on dog dialect might be, I'm afraid it doesn't count.

Otherwise i'll have to mention my fluentness in cat, dog, fly and plant languages which, to my dismay, most academicians still won't consider as official nor minor languages (the nerve of some people!)...I still fail in understanding porcine representatives...go figure.

Carole

PS: still, I'm impressed with the Hebrew, cela ne doit pas être une langue facile.

I think the problem is finding the time to pull it all together out of the list posts, Hazel. I kind of volunteered my services there to Yvonne a few years back and had to give up after only a dozen posts - it was a complete nightmare and impossibly time-consuming. Sorry, Y!

So, I think the only way it will ever be archived, sadly, is if Yvonne or someone else ever gets a huge amount of free time together to sort it all out.

LabRat

Hmmm... I have all 322 e-mails saved in a separate mailbox of Eudora. Surely it wouldn't be that hard to edit out the techincal stuff with S&Rs? Or were you and Yvonne working from the weekly logs?

Paul, I'm not trying to preempt your thread here. But I think it would be lovely to have OUATIM see the light of day.

Hazel

"Jimmy, find me a dentist!"

hazel,

thanks for your comments and advice. glad to hear you enjoyed the story.

as to the characters, yeah it would have been more fun to have more people to play with, but i'm happy with what we had. the whole thing about this genre is that it's unpredictable. things could always be better or worse.

as for OATIM (which i am informed was a ficlist roleplay called "once upon a time in metropolis"), i'm sorry to have missed it. thanks for pointing it out. now i can look forward to (hopefully) seeing it later.

thanks, but don't worry about it. now that i've heard of the story, i'm very interested in seeing it, too. it is also related, in a way, to this story, so it seems appropriate to have continued the discussion here.

actually, let me add that i'll be going in and out of town a lot over the next couple of months, but that i should have time again in august. so if you (yvonne, labby, hazel, whoever) need help sorting through all those posts then, i'll be glad to do what i can.

carole,

while we're talking about languages, i realized that i didn't respond to this last time:

duchien (to my knowledge, there's no such thing as "de le") would not have worked. there's a particular english idiom having to do with men who are descended from female dogs. i suppose i could have gone with dechienne, which would have been less cumbersome but also less accurate or d'unechienne, which would have been more accurate but also more awkward. i thought de la chienne (literally translated: "from the female dog") was the best compromise.

it was an easy enough language for me, but that's probably because i started learning it nursery school (2 years before first grade). at that age, almost any language is easy to learn.

Paul

EDIT: sorry. logged in last night to write a response in the other thread, but my comp crashed before i could post. forgot i was still logged in with this nick. oh well.

you're right, that's intolerable!!

You're right (is it becoming a trade mark of yours)? Though In two years I added 4 new languages to my resume (and I don't find them uneasy to learn). True it's easier when you're young, I guess it has to do with the fear of not being understood by natives... but I might be *wrong* here.

These things happen. At one time in the fic, I was answering as Cyad. Just before hitting 'add reply' I noticed the "hello Altlois" greeting up there, in the window's left corner and I was like "whoops!"...An no, I'm not babbling or disgressing again!

Carole

I have no idea what Yvonne tried. For myself I didn't have much choice but to trawl through the list's archive searching for OUTIM posts as I didn't save them myself. For various reasons, S&R didn't help, no. It came down to manually removing dozens of text lines.

I've been offered help by The Lurker - thanks! - who had saved all the posts into one text file, which should certainly get us advanced at least one stage.

But if you think you have a handle on it and a file ready to go, Hazel, and that it will be easy for you to do, by all means have a go!

LabRat

Since the e-mails were in a separate folder, all I had to do was save the .mbx file as a .txt file. All done.

I see what you mean about the techie stuff needing to be removed manually: every e-mail is dated and marked individually! I spent half an hour just now scrolling through the file and removing chunks at a time, and I got through... um... about ten percent.

Does The Lurker have an addy where she can be reached? Maybe we can coordinate.

Hazel, who enjoys spontaneous RPG's

EDIT: I worked on this sporadically throughout the day, putting in, perhaps, another ninety minutes' worth. It wasn't as bad as I thought, since the deleting was exponential. By the time I'd deleted entire chunks of comments, discussions re trousers vs. pants and Heinlein, Star Trek, LotR, and the oldest living woman to give birth... At any rate, the file size went down from well over 400 pages to less than 150. So ~whew~!

So... who wants it now? Yvonne? Labby?

Hazel, who had forgotten the peanut butter jars and the tuning fork

last night, i had some time on my hands. kinda between fics at the moment, since i can't write the poll story until the poll closes and i've got no other active wips right now. a conversation on irc got me inspired to do something productive, so i decided to see if i could get this story ready for the archives.

well, i did the whole thing. wasn't too bad, really, since there isn't much editing involved. i kept the posts as-is, pretty much. removed signatures and such (in keeping with the format used for "the clark letters" and "the lex letters"), but not much else.

the part i'm stuck on is the author list.

currently, the way i have it is this:

the "cast of characters" with a listing of the 4 characters involved (alt-clark, alt-lois, wells, and andrus) with the names of the authors next to them. wells is credited as "Himself?" but for the other 3, i used whatever name was listed on the archive ("Paul-Gabriel Wiener," "Cyad," and "Alicia U," respectively).

after that, there's a list of the boards members who posted as themselves. "the clark letters" didn't include such a list, but "the lex letters" did. it seemed like a good idea to me, but i've been thinking about taking it one step further. what i have now is a list of the boards nicks of the members who posted (in order of posting), and, next to each poster who has at least one story on the archive, the name which that poster has listed on the archive (if different from the boards nick). for example, i have "HatMan AKA Paul-Gabriel Wiener" and "Tank AKA Tank Wilson."

what i want to know is if that's okay with everyone. i figured, since the archive is public, that would be okay, but i wanted to double-check. if you have a different preference, let me know -- here or privately. if it's okay, you can let me know that, too.

thanks,

Paul
p.s. hazel, i'd completely forgotten about that ficlist story. if you've still got the file, you can send it here. i'll work on it as i get the chance.