Fic Commentary: Timey Wimey Antics

[thisbluespirit]

For the Fic Commentary Meme (still open if anyone wants me to talk a lot (or not) about a snippet of my fic), arcanetrivia asked for commentary on Timey Wimey Antics, a found poem (of sorts), made from AO3 tags from the Doctor Who fandom back in 2013.


I have been trying to find my original word doc version of this, but I haven't been able to, which is a shame for this meme, because it would have had the remaining unused tags still hanging about at the end, which might have helped illuminate my thought processes. It was directly inspired by Avengers Assemble, a found poem from Avengers tags by Isabear. (I see that since, someone has produced a Silmarillion one as well.)

So, given the nature of the fic, I'll c+p it in here (although use the link above to get the hyperlinked version that'll take you to the tags themselves - and believe me, that was by far the hardest bit of the fic - the formatting, and keeping the hyperlinks working while cutting and pasting things):

Summary: Time Agency romcom action adventure
idk i'm just kind of taking certain situations from Doctor Who

Notes: Doctor Who (just barely)
doctor who does this to me

I don't know, what can I say? These tags are/were all real and none of them were mine (although two of them turned out to be justice_turtle's). I collected all the freeform tags from the various Doctor Who fandom(s) (via the tag landing pages), deleted ones that weren't useful, then rearranged the others into related blocks and played around till I had something that resembled multiple small 'stories' and giggled a lot during the process.


The fic:
ambiguously Eleven/Amy
a million ginger babies
aliens in bow ties
Nurse!Rory
All of my Pondy feels!

Canton As Coulson’s Father
Canton isn’t having a good time
he meets a lot of companions

Amy Pond is a fighter
Donna Noble is Awesome
don’t mess with Jackie Tyler
River is kinda a bamf

It was 2013, so I started with then-current Who. It is a dodgy Eleven/Amy kidfic with Rory being even more patient than usual. Also a stealth crossover with Marvel in Canton's side-adventure.

Ace Rocked that Fez Like A Rockstar
Peri Brown is Schroedinger’s Companion
Evelyn can tell when any Doctor is sulking
Zoe is so much smarter than the Doctor

River Song and Ianto Jones are so Mother and Son
The TARDIS is a shipper
harry is like the twelfth doctor
The Doctor comes back for Sarah Jane

Jack had a relationship with the Tardis.
The TARDIS is a Minx
jealous doctor
time!baby
Jack’s missing two years

Immortal!Rose
ignores journey’s end
Opening the heart of a TARDIS is a Really Bad Idea
Is that Bad Wolf Bay?

The companion installment. I like Jack's affair with the TARDIS the best, but also the matching Classic Who set, which I'm pretty sure came from different authors.

In which the Master did not die after the Year that Never Was
John is Yana’s assistant
Sam Tyler is the Master
Delgado Master has standards

my fix for Journey’s End
mention of Harriet Jones
ten is so sorry
Meta-crisis angst
Nine is snarky

Nine needed some wholock love
the doctor is always there when sherlock needs him the most
Superwholockin

Ten is an idiot
the lonely god
Tencest
Slash All The Doctors
this isn’t classic Who

My favourite two lines. Sorry.

Iris is a Doctor-loving pervert
VampWho
Torchwood says hello

Because obviously they would if stuff like that is going down.

Nine has a lot of thoughts
bordering-on-ainley-simm-master
It involves the Cheetah Virus
(with a hint of Five/Ainley!Master)
Master!Kitty

The Doctor and the Master's Epic Hitchhiking Adventures Across the Galaxy
The Master can cook
The Master really likes his tea
The Master has the best Zombie Plan
The Master has too much time on his hands
The Master's plan backfires
But the Doctor still likes him anyway

The Doctor/Master portion of the fandom were responsible for a huge proportion of the tags; my 'poem' was forced to ship it. The Master really does have too much time on his hands...

Eight’s regeneration
The Last Great Time War
Untempered Schism
Vague Time Lord Mythology

Hello, EDAs.

Fobwatch crossover
will probably be largely nuWho based if it continues
which I was refusing to do because I didn’t want Rose to leave
i promise i've got decent reasoning behind a version of the Doctor making it to a Fourteenth life
Even if the Master doesn't get it at first

New Who problems.

Author shows off Classic Who knowledge
Adric’s shoes
Jo’s Boots
problem of Dodo
Gallifreyan Society
Implied Jo/Three
Beware my terrible Sea Devils impression

Classic Who elitism. I am fairly sure the last line was from a podfic.

Time Lords make awesome scientific advisors
The Brigadier is BAMF
The Fourth Doctor being … well the Fourth Doctor really
The Doctor kidnaps the Brigadier
Brig-a-my-dear
The Brigadier is tired of Time Lord games
Three is Perturbed

The Song of UNIT. Four is up to... whatever. The Brig is so not impressed.

The Cartmel Masterplan:
The Doctor’s Origins
Time’s Champion
Time Lady Ace

Most succint summary of the Cartmel Masterplan or what? *smug*

The Doctor Is A Bit Useless Really
The Master uses this to his advantage
The Master has a summoning kink
The Master's Summoning Plan Backfires
and then he became obsessed with The Doctor and immortality
time lords kind of suck

As I said, there were a lot of Doctor/Master tags.

Gibbs interrogates the Doctor
gallifreyan technology hurts Tony's brain
Stiles flies a TARDIS
That fic where Cas is a Weeping Angel
Mentions of The Dark Path

Donna Moss for Companion
Superwhoshock
Sailor Pluto is from Gallifrey
Secretly a Time Lady!Darcy
Gleevengerwholock

Collected crossovers, fairly obviously; I seem to remember having a lot to choose from (a fair few Character X is a Time Lord/Companion"), so had to cut them down to work in the maxmimum number of fandoms in the two sets.

we just usually don't ship things in Doctor Who??
only mentions of doctor/master or jack/ianto
Insanely hot 9/Rose/Jack
The Ponds And Their Wonderful Sex Life
Doctor on Doctor Sex (maybe)

only sort of jack/doctor
mentions of doctor/rose
very mild Jamie/Zoe
and Doctor/TARDIS banter
The Doctor isn't yenta the matchmaker
It's the curse of the Time Lords

:-D

but nothing’s timey-wimey.
everything was gay Time Lord sex and nothing hurt
Only right it got to Who eventually too


Notes:
YES DOCTOR WHO WAS MENTIONED


I feel a bit ashamed about labelling this as poetry, even found poetry, but whatever it was, it caused me a few giggles and hopefully some other people, and nobody seemed to be offended by the stealing of their tags.

Although back in the day none of my other main fandoms had enough tags to do this, and now I'm suddenly thinking, but MAYBE NOW THEY WILL...


Also, I couldn't find my original of this, but I did find my Tag Wrangler found Tag poem. I'm not sure why it was abandoned & left unfinished; I probably was feeling stupid having made another terrible mistake while wrangling and buried it, but it is here. It is fairly accurate about tag-wrangling:


Please Teach Me How To Tag (Wrangle)

Terrible Tag Wrangling Found Poem Using AO3 Tags on the Adventures of a Newbie Wrangler

Tag Wrangler Humor

Book 1: Wrangler Training and the New Wrangler
I don't know how this works
what even are tags man
How the hell do I tag?
someone teach me how to tag

never mind just go with it
i'll tag things as they come up

is that a tag
An actual tag
that was a tag why was that even a tag?

tagging: the struggle
i dont know how to tag this
i don't want to offend/hurt anyone
Tagging is harder than I thought
So many tags

im terrible at tagging
so bad at tagging
I didn't mean for this to happen

I hate tagging

Book 2: Wrangler Training and Messing About in Tags
Still learning how to tag
I don't want to talk about it don't look at me
how does one tag things
silly tags are silly

Is there a tag for that?
I don't know how to classify this
I don't expect anyone will want this
Guess The Wrangler!?
hello tag wrangler have some tags

A Fake Wrangling Challenge
quick wrangling test tag
is that how you tag that stuff?

Wrangler Trainees
abusing the tag field for fun and no profit
I'm Wrangling These Tags Anyway So What Do I Care?
The Author Is Shit At Tagging
author is sorry about the tags
that's a fitting tag right there

tag wrangler rpf
is also an actual tag omg

I love tagging

These tags!!
yeah that'll be a tag what else can i tag this as uh
Also these tags confuse me


tags are endlessly amusing



*goes off to see if there are Spooks tags involving Ros and a fork*

Comments

[glinda]

I do love the Tag wrangler found poetry.

(Tumblr has a lot to answer for in terms of terrible tagging practice - and very few people edit their tags when they import to AO3 - but weirdly that's the thing I like best about that godsforsaken site.)

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks! :-)

I like the odd freeforms, too, but tumblr does have a lot to answer for, because people tag for everything in all possible versions/spellings in all the fields due to its method of searching by tags, which is a huge nuisance on AO3, where all the syns are manually connected to one canonical. (also "&" and "/" are used interchangeably on tumblr, but they're not supposed to be on AO3. /wrangler grumbles.)

[longlivehumour]

The tumblr problem might not be so bad if more people knew it's only the first five tags that count.

(But are you not entertained when someone posts a landscape photo and tags #every #single #object? #tree #house #roof #tile #birdshit #mosquito
You are, admit it.)

[thisbluespirit]

I don't mind what tumblr does on tumblr, but when they take them to AO3 and put them in the fandom, character or relationships, I will reserve the right to at least mutter in a corner.

long chatty tags in the freeform field, though, are usually good for some entertainment!

And, actually, tagging stuff things like "hats" actually seems to work to get your stuff in tags that people watch, so fair enough.

[longlivehumour]

One thing that ff.net does have going for it is that it limits the number of characters to four, which hopefully forces people to think about the characters your story is really about - there's nothing more annoying than trusting the tag only to find the character you were interested in gets one line and a pratfall. Of course, limiting characters does screw over anyone writing a full ensemble fic...

[thisbluespirit]

The trouble is that everything has its upsides and its downsides!

[thisbluespirit]

Btw, I've been enjoying your gensplosion entries all month - would it be okay if I friended you?

[longlivehumour]

Absolutely! :D Although I'm mostly active on Tumblr and AO3 as I'm congenitally incapable of keeping a journal.

[thisbluespirit]

Yay! \o/

And, anyway, you can chat if you're around now, and I can back at you if you ever do feel moved to post stuff.

I'm on tumblr too, but I forget about it a lot, and, anyway, I mostly post screencaps of very old telly there, so it depends on how you feel about screencaps of very old telly and film and things.

[glinda]

Ugh yes, / and & are not interchangeable people! :S

*eye twitch*

[longlivehumour]

Slash All The Doctors
this isn’t classic Who

Strangely enough those are my favourite lines too. What does that say about me?

[thisbluespirit]

They were random tags that were secretly born to be together!

And it is a worthy crusade, even if outside of found poetry, I'm rubbish at it.

[circular_time]

It's fandom in a nutshell :-)

[liadt]

I remember the Master has Standards tag from the poetry:) I'm sure there were more Master and Tea tags ... there probably are;p

[thisbluespirit]

Well, I made that found poem four years ago; a more recent one would be bound to have a lot more Twelve, Clara & Missy!

But probably also more Master and more Tea, yes. :-)

[eve11]

lol-ing at your poem!

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks! It was a fun thing to play around with.

[astrogirl]

If I'd seen this before, I don't remember it, and, man, you'd think I would. So I'm glad you did this one. It's weirdly compelling, and just gets more and more hilarious as it goes along.

The tag wrangler one is fun, too. I can feel your pain vicariously. :)

I should do the fic commentary meme again and see if I have any takers. It's always good to have an excuse to blather on about my fic.

[thisbluespirit]

If I'd seen this before, I don't remember it, and, man, you'd think I would. So I'm glad you did this one.

LOL, you were the first person to comment on it when I posted it! It is terrifying what gets forgotten, but OTOH, it has been four years.

The tag wrangler one is fun, too. I can feel your pain vicariously.

That poem is 100% truth. *nods*

I should do the fic commentary meme again and see if I have any takers. It's always good to have an excuse to blather on about my fic.

Yes, do! I usually very much enjoy your entries.

[astrogirl]

Ha! Well, not for the first time, my terrible, terrible memory lets me enjoy something for the first time twice. :)

Yes, do! I usually very much enjoy your entries.

Already posted it! But are you sure? I think they generally end up with me talking way, way too much. Or else not remembering much about writing the thing at all. One or the other. :)

[paranoidangel]

I don't think I've seen that Tag Wrangler poem before, but I like it - it's funny.

*goes off to see if there are Spooks tags involving Ros and a fork*

If there aren't, there should be.

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks!

And I don't think there were any fork-related tags, but there is one that says, "no ros you can't shoot everyone" which is fair enough. :-)

[ravenskyewalker]

I love strange, random tags, so the tag poetry is great fun, and "no ros you can't shoot everyone" is also perfect.

[thisbluespirit]

The tag poetry thing is definitely a fun game. When I tag wrangle, the freeforms, once they're put into the fandom are organised alphabetically, which means you often get a slightly giggle-inducing line-up of tags about the same character: "Ros is a BAMF", "no ros you can't shoot everyone" "ros is a fluffy bunny".

I suppose it's only one step from accidental sentences spotted while wrangling to dodgy found poetry!

[paranoidangel]

That does sound like a good and useful tag for Ros fic :)

[sovay]

Timey Wimey Antics, a found poem (of sorts), made from AO3 tags from the Doctor Who fandom back in 2013.

I had never seen found tag poetry before and this is delightful.

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, thanks!

[circular_time]

This is brilliant and inspires me to include a few more long humorous tags.

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks! And, heh, there is always room for a few more daft tags! (Well, as long as you put them in the additional tags field, of course! ;-D)

[shewhostaples]

Hehe - both of those were a lot of fun! Problem of Dodo is mine :-D

[thisbluespirit]

Ha, cool! Obv. I nicked all the best people's tags. :-)